NEW FIC: "Rise In Perfect Light" Jupiter Ascending. Gen. Aleksa Jones. Nino Bolotnikov.
[title]: Rise In Perfect Light
[author]: splash_the_cat
[fandom]: Jupiter Ascending
[details]: G. Gen. Aleksa Jones. Nino Bolotnikov. Jupiter Jones. Caine Wise. Background Jupiter/Caine. 1985 words. posted 12/2/2015
[summary]: Aleksa and Nino and the promises of the stars.
[notes]: for the fuckyeahjupiterascending.tumblr.com fic challenge 8: A Promise.
on AO3
on livejournal
on dreamwidth
It is Nino who comes at her hysterical call, who calls the authorities, who covers Max's body with the quilt from their bed, who pulls Aleksa into the tiny bathroom and wipes the blood from her hands and her face as she shakes and shakes. Who takes her away from the empty apartment and the bright red stain on the carpet that reeks of iron and endings.
She falls asleep hours later on Nino's tiny settee, her head in Nino's lap, like so many many years ago when they were so young. Aleksa had always been the practical one of the two, her head in her books and her numbers while Nino floated among the patterns of the stars from her charts. She loved Nino fiercely, devotedly, but dismissed her sister's flights of fancy, her ascerbic tongue already razor sharp even in childhood. Her condemnations were well meant, most of the time, for she knew Nino to be smarter than these unscientific fooleries, and could not for the life of her understand why she would not just dispense with her notions that she could divine the truth of life's events from numerologies outside the realm of mathematics, but they were callous all the same.
As they grew Aleksa tried to curb her scorn for the things her sister loved and believed, but such embracing such virtues as patience and temperance was often beyond her abilities. "And what do you do with your numbers, Aleksa," Nino would reply, serene and still as Aleksa stomped around their room and waved her beloved copy of Synopsis of Pure Mathematics like a conqueror would wave a flag, "that I do not do with mine?"
But it is Nino now who cuts through Aleksa's grief and uncertainty with ruthless efficiency. When, in the blurred weeks after the incident as she calls it, comfortably distant and concise, the shadows that follow her sometimes from their little apartment to her University office resolve into the shapes of actual men, familiar men, it is Nino who sees the danger, who says the hard words that need saying.
"What happened, Aleksa. That could not have been random, not if they follow you like this even now." Nino sits on her worn settee in her tiny apartment, and Aleksa paces the floor, tracing precise geometric patterns with her steps.
"Maybe they're worried about witnesses. I saw them, their faces."
"If so, you would be dead in an alley already. So why then have they not done just that?"
Aleksa stills, though the thrust of momentum in her heartbeat tries to drive her on, drive her away from Nino's words and the wheels they start in motion in her head. "Do you think Maximillian..."
"What?" Nino flings a hand to the side, throwing away that notion entirely. "No, of course not. Brilliant he was, but far too away in the skies to conceive of the kind of schemes that would bring such attention. Now that father of his, all stuffed and proper," and Nino heaves up off the settee to march around the room, her chest puffed out, her mimicry exaggerated, but only just barely. "That one, I'd bet he has his little diplomatic fingers in many pots well outside his jurisdiction. Ambitious men are often best managed through their own blood. And if someone wanted to send him a message, a little scare..."
A little scare gone horribly wrong, because Max would not let go of the stars.
Aleksa had seen Max's father at the funeral, ashen and pale, reticent to do little more than acknowledge her presence, and that, she thought only because ignoring his son's very pregnant wife at his funeral would tarnish his image among his peers. But perhaps his unwillingness to meet her eye had less to do with his perpetual disapproval at his son's choice of life and wife, and more to do with guilt.
"Imperialist pigs, the lot of them," Nino scoffs. "Maximillian excepted," she allows, but still mutters "Mostly," and the baby is kicking and kicking and Aleksa has no breath to reply. Nino presses her hands to Aleksa's belly and the baby quiets as Nino croons a wordless lullaby. "We will figure it all out. The stars promised it will be all right."
Fuck the stars, Aleksa thinks. What good have they done her so far? What gall they had, to give her Max, and then to take him away. They were nothing more than useless sparkling fripperies that had done nothing but distract her and saddle her with this bulging belly, and the terrifying miracle within it.
"The stars are liars," is what she says, but Nino, placid, patient unflappable Nino just strokes her hair and continues to hum that low soothing croon.
"You will see," Nino says, shining bright with the righteous determination of a true believer, and Aleksa is not sure if Nino is speaking to her, or the child growing within her.
But Aleksa vows right then she will not allow this child to be lured by the false light of the night skies. She will not let this child be taken from her by the stars.
*******
It is Nino who finds them passage on the ship, three days after Aleksa stands in the street, shivering in just her nightdress. The rock that was flung through her bedroom window, followed by the home-made fire bomb, is clutched in her fist as she watches the fire brigades pour water into the fire burning her home. It is Nino who gathers the few things Aleksa kept in her University office, and packs them both spare, lean bags.
"Vassily is in America," Nino says. "I called him. He has space for us. We will go to him. And you can request asylum."
"We?" Aleksa heard nothing after that. "Nino, what we?"
Nino rolls her eyes. "We as in two of us. One," she points to Aleksa, "plus one," and taps her own chest, "makes two. That math is simple enough even for me."
"Nino, why would you do this?" Aleksa grabs her hands, pulling her away from where she is folding away things for the baby. "And don't you dare tell me the stars told you."
Nino pulls free, only to cup Aleksa's face in her hands. "The stars would not have to tell me to do this, little sister. That is a decision I made all on my own. As if I could let you do this by yourself. Pah. What kind of monster do you think me to be?"
"A foolish one," Aleksa replied. "A beautiful, brave, foolish one."
"That the stars did tell me," Nino says, smile like the sun itself, and Aleksa huffs, indignant, even as she brushes away the tears spilling down her cheeks.
******
It is Nino who helps her down the steep gangway of the ship, her legs like jelly from the weeks of rocking on the waves and the loss of blood. The emptiness in her belly is now a light yet terrible weight bundled against her chest - Max's mighty planet distilled down into a tiny, red-faced squalling girl.
Aleksa sucks her pinky finger clean and uses it to sooth the child, Max's child. Her child, but she cannot yet think of this tiny creature like that, cannot hold her that close. Too many wounds, some torn fresh, some torn open anew and Aleksa first needs time to find a place for everything to fit, an order, a reason.
But there is no reason, none, no reason for her to be standing here on foreign ground that suddenly makes her dizzy in its solidity, no reason other than the caprice of the universe, the tall-tales of Nino's stars, for her life to be such a fractured array, kaledeiscope sharp angles that haven't yet aligned into the reflective symmetry that will make everything whole and sensible again.
It is Nino who takes her hand and, humming her little lullaby, leads them away, into their new life, their new world, under these new stars that Aleksa refuses to look upon.
*****
Her heart is so tight in her chest that Aleksa wonders if it is to burst right here. She stands again upon the deck of a ship, and for a moment she is again dizzy, too, heart thudthudthuding so loud that she can't hear herself think through the patterns and parallels, can't think through fitting all this into its place, for she stands upon a starship, and below her the Earth turns and turns, and the lights of her adopted home tiny glittering stars along the night-dark curve of the great lake.
Nino is pressed right up against the glass, nose squished, small sounds of delight escaping her every few moments. But Aleksa watches Jupiter, her beautiful Jupiter, with her stalwart wolf. Jupiter, too, is riveted to the view outside the glass, but him, he has eyes only for her daughter, watches her as Maximillian once watched his stars, had once gazed upon Aleksa and their child that she carried within her.
He looks at Jupiter as if she is his sky full of miracles.
Nino sidles up, face wreathed in gleeful smiles as she links her arms through Aleksa's. "Did I not always say she was born under the sign of great things, and now look at her, Aleksa. Our Jupiter has brought us to see all of this."
Jupiter told Aleksa and Nino of what had happened to her just an hour before, while they stood on the breakwater below the Adler Planetarium, just before Caine Wise removed his coat to reveal his wings, just before the glittering beam of light appeared to bring them up to this starship. She'd told them here, haltingly, staring down at the curve of the Earth against the black of space, of the choice she'd made deep in the eye of the storm of the planet for which her father had chosen to name her.
The probability calculations of a genetic recurrance alone are enough to give her the vapors, but Aleksa cannot deny the reality of the Earth spinning below her, or of the winged wolf man who shadows her daughter's every step with a devotion that breaks her heart for her own loss, even as it fills her with joy and pride at the woman her daughter has become.
"See," Nino says, "the stars knew. Everything I told you, everything I told Jupiter. True." Satisfaction coats her words like heavy cream, smooth and sweet, and Aleksa huffs, but it is a shallow sound of habit without any real recrimination behind it. Perhaps the stars know more than Aleksa wishes to credit them. Perhaps they do not lie. Perhaps, if she looks at them the way her Max had, she will see what he saw, can love them as he did, as he loved her and his beautiful, shining Jupiter, both the majestic world he saw in his telescope, and the astonishing child he would never get to see.
"You okay, Mama? I know this is a lot." Jupiter stands before her, still hesitant.
"Oh my ridiculous child," Aleksa says, and pulls her in tight, squashing Jupiter between herself and Nino, but Jupiter does not complain, just clings tight like she has not done since she was so very small. The wolf - the boy who so clearly loves her daughter - stands awkwardly behind Jupiter until Aleksa pulls him in too, close enough to press a kiss to his forehead, close enough to see his eyes go wide and his ears pink. She pats his cheek and laughs aloud as he shuffles his feet.
"I am fine. We are fine." Aleksa says as she meets Nino's triumphant gaze. "The stars promised. They always knew."
[author]: splash_the_cat
[fandom]: Jupiter Ascending
[details]: G. Gen. Aleksa Jones. Nino Bolotnikov. Jupiter Jones. Caine Wise. Background Jupiter/Caine. 1985 words. posted 12/2/2015
[summary]: Aleksa and Nino and the promises of the stars.
[notes]: for the fuckyeahjupiterascending.tumblr.com fic challenge 8: A Promise.
on AO3
on livejournal
on dreamwidth
It is Nino who comes at her hysterical call, who calls the authorities, who covers Max's body with the quilt from their bed, who pulls Aleksa into the tiny bathroom and wipes the blood from her hands and her face as she shakes and shakes. Who takes her away from the empty apartment and the bright red stain on the carpet that reeks of iron and endings.
She falls asleep hours later on Nino's tiny settee, her head in Nino's lap, like so many many years ago when they were so young. Aleksa had always been the practical one of the two, her head in her books and her numbers while Nino floated among the patterns of the stars from her charts. She loved Nino fiercely, devotedly, but dismissed her sister's flights of fancy, her ascerbic tongue already razor sharp even in childhood. Her condemnations were well meant, most of the time, for she knew Nino to be smarter than these unscientific fooleries, and could not for the life of her understand why she would not just dispense with her notions that she could divine the truth of life's events from numerologies outside the realm of mathematics, but they were callous all the same.
As they grew Aleksa tried to curb her scorn for the things her sister loved and believed, but such embracing such virtues as patience and temperance was often beyond her abilities. "And what do you do with your numbers, Aleksa," Nino would reply, serene and still as Aleksa stomped around their room and waved her beloved copy of Synopsis of Pure Mathematics like a conqueror would wave a flag, "that I do not do with mine?"
But it is Nino now who cuts through Aleksa's grief and uncertainty with ruthless efficiency. When, in the blurred weeks after the incident as she calls it, comfortably distant and concise, the shadows that follow her sometimes from their little apartment to her University office resolve into the shapes of actual men, familiar men, it is Nino who sees the danger, who says the hard words that need saying.
"What happened, Aleksa. That could not have been random, not if they follow you like this even now." Nino sits on her worn settee in her tiny apartment, and Aleksa paces the floor, tracing precise geometric patterns with her steps.
"Maybe they're worried about witnesses. I saw them, their faces."
"If so, you would be dead in an alley already. So why then have they not done just that?"
Aleksa stills, though the thrust of momentum in her heartbeat tries to drive her on, drive her away from Nino's words and the wheels they start in motion in her head. "Do you think Maximillian..."
"What?" Nino flings a hand to the side, throwing away that notion entirely. "No, of course not. Brilliant he was, but far too away in the skies to conceive of the kind of schemes that would bring such attention. Now that father of his, all stuffed and proper," and Nino heaves up off the settee to march around the room, her chest puffed out, her mimicry exaggerated, but only just barely. "That one, I'd bet he has his little diplomatic fingers in many pots well outside his jurisdiction. Ambitious men are often best managed through their own blood. And if someone wanted to send him a message, a little scare..."
A little scare gone horribly wrong, because Max would not let go of the stars.
Aleksa had seen Max's father at the funeral, ashen and pale, reticent to do little more than acknowledge her presence, and that, she thought only because ignoring his son's very pregnant wife at his funeral would tarnish his image among his peers. But perhaps his unwillingness to meet her eye had less to do with his perpetual disapproval at his son's choice of life and wife, and more to do with guilt.
"Imperialist pigs, the lot of them," Nino scoffs. "Maximillian excepted," she allows, but still mutters "Mostly," and the baby is kicking and kicking and Aleksa has no breath to reply. Nino presses her hands to Aleksa's belly and the baby quiets as Nino croons a wordless lullaby. "We will figure it all out. The stars promised it will be all right."
Fuck the stars, Aleksa thinks. What good have they done her so far? What gall they had, to give her Max, and then to take him away. They were nothing more than useless sparkling fripperies that had done nothing but distract her and saddle her with this bulging belly, and the terrifying miracle within it.
"The stars are liars," is what she says, but Nino, placid, patient unflappable Nino just strokes her hair and continues to hum that low soothing croon.
"You will see," Nino says, shining bright with the righteous determination of a true believer, and Aleksa is not sure if Nino is speaking to her, or the child growing within her.
But Aleksa vows right then she will not allow this child to be lured by the false light of the night skies. She will not let this child be taken from her by the stars.
*******
It is Nino who finds them passage on the ship, three days after Aleksa stands in the street, shivering in just her nightdress. The rock that was flung through her bedroom window, followed by the home-made fire bomb, is clutched in her fist as she watches the fire brigades pour water into the fire burning her home. It is Nino who gathers the few things Aleksa kept in her University office, and packs them both spare, lean bags.
"Vassily is in America," Nino says. "I called him. He has space for us. We will go to him. And you can request asylum."
"We?" Aleksa heard nothing after that. "Nino, what we?"
Nino rolls her eyes. "We as in two of us. One," she points to Aleksa, "plus one," and taps her own chest, "makes two. That math is simple enough even for me."
"Nino, why would you do this?" Aleksa grabs her hands, pulling her away from where she is folding away things for the baby. "And don't you dare tell me the stars told you."
Nino pulls free, only to cup Aleksa's face in her hands. "The stars would not have to tell me to do this, little sister. That is a decision I made all on my own. As if I could let you do this by yourself. Pah. What kind of monster do you think me to be?"
"A foolish one," Aleksa replied. "A beautiful, brave, foolish one."
"That the stars did tell me," Nino says, smile like the sun itself, and Aleksa huffs, indignant, even as she brushes away the tears spilling down her cheeks.
******
It is Nino who helps her down the steep gangway of the ship, her legs like jelly from the weeks of rocking on the waves and the loss of blood. The emptiness in her belly is now a light yet terrible weight bundled against her chest - Max's mighty planet distilled down into a tiny, red-faced squalling girl.
Aleksa sucks her pinky finger clean and uses it to sooth the child, Max's child. Her child, but she cannot yet think of this tiny creature like that, cannot hold her that close. Too many wounds, some torn fresh, some torn open anew and Aleksa first needs time to find a place for everything to fit, an order, a reason.
But there is no reason, none, no reason for her to be standing here on foreign ground that suddenly makes her dizzy in its solidity, no reason other than the caprice of the universe, the tall-tales of Nino's stars, for her life to be such a fractured array, kaledeiscope sharp angles that haven't yet aligned into the reflective symmetry that will make everything whole and sensible again.
It is Nino who takes her hand and, humming her little lullaby, leads them away, into their new life, their new world, under these new stars that Aleksa refuses to look upon.
*****
Her heart is so tight in her chest that Aleksa wonders if it is to burst right here. She stands again upon the deck of a ship, and for a moment she is again dizzy, too, heart thudthudthuding so loud that she can't hear herself think through the patterns and parallels, can't think through fitting all this into its place, for she stands upon a starship, and below her the Earth turns and turns, and the lights of her adopted home tiny glittering stars along the night-dark curve of the great lake.
Nino is pressed right up against the glass, nose squished, small sounds of delight escaping her every few moments. But Aleksa watches Jupiter, her beautiful Jupiter, with her stalwart wolf. Jupiter, too, is riveted to the view outside the glass, but him, he has eyes only for her daughter, watches her as Maximillian once watched his stars, had once gazed upon Aleksa and their child that she carried within her.
He looks at Jupiter as if she is his sky full of miracles.
Nino sidles up, face wreathed in gleeful smiles as she links her arms through Aleksa's. "Did I not always say she was born under the sign of great things, and now look at her, Aleksa. Our Jupiter has brought us to see all of this."
Jupiter told Aleksa and Nino of what had happened to her just an hour before, while they stood on the breakwater below the Adler Planetarium, just before Caine Wise removed his coat to reveal his wings, just before the glittering beam of light appeared to bring them up to this starship. She'd told them here, haltingly, staring down at the curve of the Earth against the black of space, of the choice she'd made deep in the eye of the storm of the planet for which her father had chosen to name her.
The probability calculations of a genetic recurrance alone are enough to give her the vapors, but Aleksa cannot deny the reality of the Earth spinning below her, or of the winged wolf man who shadows her daughter's every step with a devotion that breaks her heart for her own loss, even as it fills her with joy and pride at the woman her daughter has become.
"See," Nino says, "the stars knew. Everything I told you, everything I told Jupiter. True." Satisfaction coats her words like heavy cream, smooth and sweet, and Aleksa huffs, but it is a shallow sound of habit without any real recrimination behind it. Perhaps the stars know more than Aleksa wishes to credit them. Perhaps they do not lie. Perhaps, if she looks at them the way her Max had, she will see what he saw, can love them as he did, as he loved her and his beautiful, shining Jupiter, both the majestic world he saw in his telescope, and the astonishing child he would never get to see.
"You okay, Mama? I know this is a lot." Jupiter stands before her, still hesitant.
"Oh my ridiculous child," Aleksa says, and pulls her in tight, squashing Jupiter between herself and Nino, but Jupiter does not complain, just clings tight like she has not done since she was so very small. The wolf - the boy who so clearly loves her daughter - stands awkwardly behind Jupiter until Aleksa pulls him in too, close enough to press a kiss to his forehead, close enough to see his eyes go wide and his ears pink. She pats his cheek and laughs aloud as he shuffles his feet.
"I am fine. We are fine." Aleksa says as she meets Nino's triumphant gaze. "The stars promised. They always knew."