Kyuzo closes his eyes until the red emptiness behind his eyelids where an open comline window used to be fades, before slowly, deliberately, moving from his observatory position.
He doesn't say anything, not at first. First, he lets the warkasters try to speak, out of respect for the position; he does not believe anything they say will impact Maya Antares, right now, but they do not need to hear that from him.
It is when everyone has lapsed into uncertainly respectful silence that he moves again, when he finally speaks. He keeps it simple.
"Major Antares." It is not a question. It is as close to a command as he will ever allow himself to come.
Maya doesn't move for a few seconds more, gathering herself, and then she snaps upright. Her shoulders are wrenched into rigidity and her eyes are bright and her face is white, but she is standing straight. Knowing that Kyuzo doesn't need to speak to her, that he was catching her attention and reminding her of her duty, she breathes. Her eyes flick to her guardsman briefly -- and she can read in the minute shift of his weight, in his return look, what he's telling her without saying a word; 'Would you let Alex see you like this?' he seems to say -- and Maya's steady gaze moves straight to First Lieutenant Kozlova
( ... )
In that moment of silence, the false lull of an emptied battlefield (which Kyuzo knows and remembers himself is simply the result of a war choked on too many bodies to continue at its proper pace), Kyuzo comes to stand by Maya's side, adding no noise to the steady hum of an efficiently failing offensive.
His gaze is steady, watchful, and the hand on Maya's shoulder comes and goes without fanfare. It is what it is, as Kyuzo remains what he is, what he will always be. It does not stay long - no, it never could - but it is there long enough.
Alex was - though for less of a time than she was Maya's - someone he considered a friend, too.
Now she is dead. Kyuzo is too pragmatic to let himself believe her death will matter, among the thousands of war dead clogging Nokgorka's steel arteries - but he is so, so weary of these wars. He is tired of losing friends in failed offenses.
Maya doesn't say anything; doesn't even glance toward Kyuzo. When he places a hand on her shoulder, she covers it with hers -- as much as is possible, when his hand is so much larger than her own -- for a second or two, and gives a squeeze of gratitude, and of silent reassurance
( ... )
Strategy and direction is not an area with which men like Kyuzo have reason to concern themselves; he has read the books of theory, the strategy analyses old, retired 'kasters like to write when there is nothing left of their lives but to record their tired, dry memories into history, into campaigns for younger, stupider soldiers to idolize and memorize and die mimicking - but he has no place in those books.
His place is by Maya's side, keeping her safe and keeping her whole.
Around them are the rumbling, clunking, whirring sounds of the great engines and inner workings of the proud Konstantinov, groaning under the demands of its 'kasters, its crew, its government. It was an old, sturdy ship - one of the finest. Kyuzo was proud to serve on it.
It would be a horrible way to die, he thinks, to be trapped here inside this floating carapace of metal as it falls from the sky.
Horrible but fitting.
Accompanied by these thoughts, he says nothing, and he follows.
She always said Maya ought to think about more than the past, right? 'Get a damn hobby, woman.' This isn't a hobby, Maya thinks bitterly, but she isn't thinking about Marcus.
Of course, this isn't likely what Alex had in mind, either.
Maya ought to be headed straight to Urik, to give a preliminary report on this disaster of a mission before she writes and hands him the formal one. She never takes advantage of the fact that the skyfurnace's marshall is her brother-in-law, always fulfills her duties to the letter -- but today, he's going to be Uri instead of Skymarshall Antares, because Maya can't bring herself to carry herself officially, and she damn well can't bring herself to say the three words that she knows are true, and the world is growing increasingly watery and blurry.
When they reach the corridor where she ought to veer off to the right, to head toward Urik and command, Maya shears left, toward personnel quarters.
The air is dry, heat-bleached, on Kyuzo's tongue. He knows it is not really anything of the kind, but it was like that in Al'istaan, the day Marcus died (protect her, and he has) and he sometimes wonders how much he resembles a character in the old, cynical literature, that he can still taste the air of that day when he allows himself the luxury of it.
Some bad memories deserve to be choked with a promise.
When Maya turns left, away from Urik and the useless barriers of the command structure, Kyuzo stops, pinned between the two corridors, and watches her run away.
There are no windows in this corridor. Kyuzo is grateful for that; if he were to look now, he knows where he would glance first.
He shuts his eyes, tight against the blank walls before, behind, around him, and continues on behind Maya, one foot in front of the other.
He does not drink, and he has not cried in many years; these are not actions that make up anything of who he is. He keeps walking. That is his way of fighting invisible ghosts.
Maya is willing her breath to remain in check and the pain to sit like a rock in her chest until she's behind the closed door of her quarters; willing it so hard that her short nails are digging white half-moons into her palms.
But 'willing' is not 'doing,' and it is not enough. When the unshed tears, shining brightly in her eyes, are about to become more than that, when she can feel the grief fight to claw its way up her throat, her swift pace (not a run, not quite, but a damned fast walk, her uniform greatcoat snapping behind her) takes her sideways rather than forward.
It is a briefing room, still and silent. It is not the briefing room that Maya first thinks it is, when she shoulders the door open, but it might as well be. Through the great window taking up one long wall, Bahamut sits dully under the thin light of the setting sun, fading rays barely punching through the cloud cover enough to crawl across the hulking shells of buildings and rubble below.
Kyuzo does not reach out his arms and embrace her, to pull her close and claim that things will be better later on if she just fights harder, that this will all be worth it in the end, that any of this is worth it, or that he has any comfort to give.
He has none. What comfort is there in dust and smoke from burning corpses?
The shadows of the clouds are like scattered ashes over an ocean of warped steel. He watches them shift, tear, and reform, and does not look away.
A second sob follows hard on the heels of the first, then a third and a fourth, each as silent and deep as the one before it, and Maya is weeping the way that she has grown accustomed to weeping over the past ten years -- wrenching and soundless, all too conscious of the thin walls of a government-owned apartment complex, and the thinner still bulkheads of a skyfurnace.
The only sound is her ragged breaths; struggling to breathe around crying, and not giving a damn if she manages it or not.
In between sharp, ragged breaths, there is another sound: the hard footfalls of a Guardsman's boots thunking against the metal floor.
When Maya starts to shake, a steadying hand reaches down to grasp her shoulder, solid and unwavering.
Below, gunfire breaks out among the rubble, little sparks in among the shadows with no sound. He cannot see the hooks failing to block forever from here, but he doesn't have to.
His hand tightens on Maya's shoulder. He says nothing.
They cannot win this - but they should not have to continue losing each other because of it.
This is what it comes down to: Alexandra Goncharova is angry, passionate, blunt, brash, occasionally something of a witch, and always the best goddamn friend a woman could have. Alex is dead, Alex is gone, Alex is never going to laugh at Maya again, green eyes fond under all the layers of sarcasm and wicked glinting.
This is what it comes down to: Alex's corpse is freezing into the snow somewhere down in this damned wasteland they call a city, because Maya didn't figure out the protocol shielding fast enough; because Maya didn't insist on better maps; because Maya didn't make Urik send her down with the strike team.
This is what it comes down to: It's an awful lot easier to hide your face in a broad shoulder than a slim hand.
Kyuzo looks out over Bahamut, his expression a close cousin of the dented, sturdy metal of his Guardsman's armor; it is hard enough and pounded enough, anyway.
He shuts his eyes. After a moment, his arm curls around Maya's shoulders. Silence - and another kind of warmth than the usual, glaring, inhuman heat of memory.
This will not last - not this moment of comfort and not this war. A part of Kyuzo wishes he were a different man; if he were, he might believe they could survive both. The rest of him knows he will fight anyway.
Someday his corpse will join Alex's on the cold, unforgiving ground. Until then, he has his duty.
He doesn't say anything, not at first. First, he lets the warkasters try to speak, out of respect for the position; he does not believe anything they say will impact Maya Antares, right now, but they do not need to hear that from him.
It is when everyone has lapsed into uncertainly respectful silence that he moves again, when he finally speaks. He keeps it simple.
"Major Antares." It is not a question. It is as close to a command as he will ever allow himself to come.
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His gaze is steady, watchful, and the hand on Maya's shoulder comes and goes without fanfare. It is what it is, as Kyuzo remains what he is, what he will always be. It does not stay long - no, it never could - but it is there long enough.
Alex was - though for less of a time than she was Maya's - someone he considered a friend, too.
Now she is dead. Kyuzo is too pragmatic to let himself believe her death will matter, among the thousands of war dead clogging Nokgorka's steel arteries - but he is so, so weary of these wars. He is tired of losing friends in failed offenses.
So damned tired.
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His place is by Maya's side, keeping her safe and keeping her whole.
Around them are the rumbling, clunking, whirring sounds of the great engines and inner workings of the proud Konstantinov, groaning under the demands of its 'kasters, its crew, its government. It was an old, sturdy ship - one of the finest. Kyuzo was proud to serve on it.
It would be a horrible way to die, he thinks, to be trapped here inside this floating carapace of metal as it falls from the sky.
Horrible but fitting.
Accompanied by these thoughts, he says nothing, and he follows.
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She always said Maya ought to think about more than the past, right? 'Get a damn hobby, woman.' This isn't a hobby, Maya thinks bitterly, but she isn't thinking about Marcus.
Of course, this isn't likely what Alex had in mind, either.
Maya ought to be headed straight to Urik, to give a preliminary report on this disaster of a mission before she writes and hands him the formal one. She never takes advantage of the fact that the skyfurnace's marshall is her brother-in-law, always fulfills her duties to the letter -- but today, he's going to be Uri instead of Skymarshall Antares, because Maya can't bring herself to carry herself officially, and she damn well can't bring herself to say the three words that she knows are true, and the world is growing increasingly watery and blurry.
When they reach the corridor where she ought to veer off to the right, to head toward Urik and command, Maya shears left, toward personnel quarters.
Reply
Some bad memories deserve to be choked with a promise.
When Maya turns left, away from Urik and the useless barriers of the command structure, Kyuzo stops, pinned between the two corridors, and watches her run away.
There are no windows in this corridor. Kyuzo is grateful for that; if he were to look now, he knows where he would glance first.
He shuts his eyes, tight against the blank walls before, behind, around him, and continues on behind Maya, one foot in front of the other.
He does not drink, and he has not cried in many years; these are not actions that make up anything of who he is. He keeps walking. That is his way of fighting invisible ghosts.
Reply
But 'willing' is not 'doing,' and it is not enough. When the unshed tears, shining brightly in her eyes, are about to become more than that, when she can feel the grief fight to claw its way up her throat, her swift pace (not a run, not quite, but a damned fast walk, her uniform greatcoat snapping behind her) takes her sideways rather than forward.
It is a briefing room, still and silent. It is not the briefing room that Maya first thinks it is, when she shoulders the door open, but it might as well be. Through the great window taking up one long wall, Bahamut sits dully under the thin light of the setting sun, fading rays barely punching through the cloud cover enough to crawl across the hulking shells of buildings and rubble below.
Alex died down there, Maya thinks,
Alex diedand as she wheels away ( ... )
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He has none. What comfort is there in dust and smoke from burning corpses?
The shadows of the clouds are like scattered ashes over an ocean of warped steel. He watches them shift, tear, and reform, and does not look away.
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The only sound is her ragged breaths; struggling to breathe around crying, and not giving a damn if she manages it or not.
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When Maya starts to shake, a steadying hand reaches down to grasp her shoulder, solid and unwavering.
Below, gunfire breaks out among the rubble, little sparks in among the shadows with no sound. He cannot see the hooks failing to block forever from here, but he doesn't have to.
His hand tightens on Maya's shoulder. He says nothing.
They cannot win this - but they should not have to continue losing each other because of it.
Reply
This is what it comes down to: Alex's corpse is freezing into the snow somewhere down in this damned wasteland they call a city, because Maya didn't figure out the protocol shielding fast enough; because Maya didn't insist on better maps; because Maya didn't make Urik send her down with the strike team.
This is what it comes down to: It's an awful lot easier to hide your face in a broad shoulder than a slim hand.
Reply
He shuts his eyes. After a moment, his arm curls around Maya's shoulders. Silence - and another kind of warmth than the usual, glaring, inhuman heat of memory.
This will not last - not this moment of comfort and not this war. A part of Kyuzo wishes he were a different man; if he were, he might believe they could survive both. The rest of him knows he will fight anyway.
Someday his corpse will join Alex's on the cold, unforgiving ground. Until then, he has his duty.
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