Fic: Not Quite Paradise [13/?]

[reikah]

Title: Not Quite Paradise [13/?; ongoing]
Fandom: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Pairing: Fai/Kurogane/Yuui
Author: Co-write between mikkeneko & reikah
Rating: R
Word count: 10,615 this chapter (97,505 total)
Notes: "In a future where science and psionics rule the skies, and both are controlled by the iron fist of the Earth government, two young men make a desperate leap into the unknown in order to evade capture and slavery. AU, Kurogane/Yuui/Fai."

Part One - Earth: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

Part Two - Mars: [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

Part Three - Europa: [13]

← back to chapter twelve

Part three: Europa
i want but i have none

As the shockwave of human colonization spread out through the center of the solar system, the frantic rush for extraterrestrial real estate gradually slowed. Once all the inner-planet territory had been claimed, the colonial spirit waned. Apart from the bold Indian entrepreneurs who bought a few acres of the asteroid belt to convert into luxurious pleasure resorts - the ultimate getaway vacation - no one had much interest in the cold and distant reaches of the outer solar system. No planet besides Mars had any hope of terraforming, and if you were going to go to the trouble of building an entire space station to house your new population, most people preferred to avoid such a long commute.

But where the lure of exploration and colonization failed, one incentive remained strong - money. Mankind's energy needs were vast in this nuclear age, and there simply were not enough heavy metals to fuel the fission reactors needed to fill that voracious need. Fissionable mines sprang up on the rocky, toxic satellites orbiting Sol's gas giants; Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, and distant Triton soon sported outposts of their own. Much of the mining process was automated, but there was always a need for human brains and human hands.

Few men, however impoverished, were eager to accept the cold and barren exile from the inner heart of the solar system. Even with the most advanced military technology, even when the planets were in perfect alignment, it was still over a two-month trip one way; for such passages as these men could afford, it could be four or even six months before they could see Earth again.

As desperate for labor as Earth was for energy, the private owners of the Jovian mines soon hit on an age-old solution; prison labor. Earth's prisons were claustrophobicly overcrowded, and the mine owners offered their inmates a deal: commute their sentence to Triton, provide the labor for the mines and have their years in prison reduced, and even get a little pay for that effort. For this there was no lack of volunteers; at last, a steady supply of labor enabled the miners to grow fantastically rich on the back of their work gangs.

The social consequences of such a bargain were, perhaps, predictable. The outer colonies soon gained an infamous reputation for being the roughest, most lawless place still within reach of human civilization. The robber barons had little interest in maintaining law or order, only in keeping the goods flowing; they settled quickly into an amicable relationship with the shady underworld of a dozen different human nations, trading their precious goods for cargoes of drugs and slave labor.

Once they had served their sentences the workers were free to return to Earth, but in practice few did; many of them, had nothing to go back to, and the wild and lawless atmosphere of the miner colonies was almost as addictive as the drugs the robber barons took care to freely distribute. Few women lived on the outer colony, and even fewer children; those women who ended up there by chance or misfortune were close-knit and wary, striking their own deals to survive.

For the most part the peoples of Earth were perfectly content to keep it so; Jupiter was a long way away, far enough that the excesses of the miner colonies did not trouble them, and they were just as happy to see that their most violent criminals went there and never returned.

But while your earth man-on-the-street might not care about the rampant corruption and disorder of a mining colony ten million kilometers away, there were some who did; those whose profits were most unhappily pinched by the peculation of the robber barons, whose sense of order most outraged by the rampant lawlessness of the colonies.

The Ministry of Extraterrestrial Affairs - more colloquially known as the Ministry of Space - was an odd entity, a wildly lopsided conglomeration of different governing entities tangled into one. The Ministry of Space had first been created in the early days of Lunar colonization by the United Nations, a tiny department meant to regulate the then-tiny collection of scientific and commercial enterprises that represented all of Mankind's efforts in space.

But as human habitation of space expanded, so did the responsibilities and rights of the Ministry, until the Ministry of Extraterrestrial affairs was not only the largest bureau in the UN council, but in fact the largest coherent governing body remaining on Earth. It should have been broken down into smaller regulatory bodies decades before, but the power of the Ministers of Space - well supported by the vast amounts of wealth that poured through them from the Martian and Lunar and Jovian colonies - successfully resisted the change.

Fei Wong Reed was but the latest in a long series of Ministers of Space who, in their own person, held more power in his office than any freely elected leader in the civilized world and commanded more wealth and military clout than any totalitarian despot. But unlike his predecessors who were content to rest on their laurels, Fei Wong Reed - a minor bureaucratic official in the Ministry's emergency response forensic department until he managed to buy and bribe his way into a position of power - showed a vast and energetic ambition. Not content with his control over the near-Earth space lanes and Lunar construction facilities, he sought to reassert Earth dominance over the now-independent planetary nation of Mars - and over the prodigal Jovian mining colonies.

It is not to be underestimated the extent of the power that the Ministry of Space could wield; unlike almost any other government body they had no regulations, no external oversight. They commanded almost exclusive control over the elite psionic commando forces trained and graduated from the Academy, and enough money from space tariff and taxes to build a navy that dwarfed any sovereign nation.

All of Fei Wong Reed's wealth and power, however, could not overcome the sheer handicap posed by the vast gulf yawning between Earth and Jupiter. At a gap of nearly ten million miles and two to three month's lag time in effective response, the martial law he sought to enforce on the Jupiter colonies was nearly impossible to enforce. Every worker's riot, every sly underhanded move on the part of the robber barons demanded a response that would take billions of yenbucks and months of preparation time to launch.

The result has been an uneven, unofficial war raging back and forth over the middle solar system for almost a decade. Despite the handicaps he faces, the vast income offered by the Jovian mines as well as the Minister's own wrathful pride will not allow him to give in; and it is difficult to gauge the lengths to which he would go to find a solution that will allow him to realize his dreams of conquest.

The cockpit was empty but not silent, what with the hum of the computers and the fans and Syaoran's fingers drumming out a pattern on the keys. He could have put on a film or some music, which was what he did most of the time when Sakura was too busy to keep him company and the captain was busy in his own room, but he preferred to write without distractions. The only sound was Mokona's voice, patiently correcting his grammar and syntax errors before he had time to go edit them out himself. He supposed he could have muted her, but he disliked treating her poorly, and so he said nothing as he carefully typed:

Dear Kimihiro,

No, that sounded too formal. He frowned at the email header and then deleted it and replaced it with Watanuki, his pet name for his twin.

We are still flying toward Jupiter. Thank you very muuch for the cake recipe.

"Unknown word detected. Suggested replacement: 'much'," said Mokona.

"Thank you, Mokona-chan," Syaoran replied politely, having already corrected it while she was talking. He bit at his lower lip and squinted at the screen again. It has now been two weeks since the incident of which I wrote you last. Our guest has been relocated from his temporary quarters to the Rec Room by the Captain, who claims it is because he is taking up space someone might need. I suspect he is not being wholly honest, but our guest seems to not mind. He is still not fully recovered and is convalescing on the couch. Your recipe was most appreciated as he says cooking gives him something to do that does not require alot of focus- ~

"'Alot' detected. Suggested replacement: a lot. Two words," said Mokona.

Syaoran nodded absently, correcting the error, and added, the Princess and I have been keeping an eye out for him as best we can, although all we seem to be able to do for him is fetch him sweets he has already made himself! He is getting better steadily, though. The Captain says he isn't allowed to bring our other guest up out of his hibernation, as it were, until he is fully recovered.

I saw your complaint about Shizuka in your last email and would like to remind you that Shizuka ate my cooking and complimented me on it before I left home. I'm not sure I'm wholly unbiased here. The Princess said to tell you that you're too harsh on Shizuka and to give her love to Himiwari-chan, which I am sure you will have no problems doing.

Regarding your last point: I don't know when we'll be home. I'm sorry I didn't stop by during our recent trip downside, but considering the company I was keeping I didn't want to trouble the family. Tell mother and father I love them, and the Princess asked me to ask you to drop an email to her family friend 'Yuki'. The usual code, she says.

"Grammatical error: 'The usual code, she says' is a sentence fragment. Perhaps you would like to revise it?" Mokona offered, and Syaoran sighed.

"No thank you," he said, keeping his tone courteous as his mother had scared into him, "I'll ignore it this once."

He stared at the screen, trying to remember if there had been anything else worth putting in. He couldn't think of anything. Sakura-chan had held his hand two days ago, but he didn't want to tell Watanuki that because he could just imagine his brother's reaction. Perhaps some shipboard gossip? There had been precious little of that since the incident. Well. Except for the big thing.

I know how eager you are for shipboard gossip,and it seems my suspicions

No, that wouldn't do. He frowned and deleted the paragraph.

Our guest and the Captain may be up to

No, not that either. Frustrated, he simply added, on a lighter note, the Captain and our guest seem to have become very good friends already. More than you would think.

After a pause, he underlined and bolded the 'more' for emphasis. Watanuki would pick it up. Or he wouldn't, either way. He signed the letter with his name and gave it a quick once-over, before rolling up the keypad and picking up his mug of fruit juice. "Mokona, encrypt and send," he said, and the screen shivered as Mokona ran the email through his custom code program and then mailed it.

Not for the first time, he reflected on how lucky he had been that Earth had never seen his face that night he'd rescued Sakura from them. His family were unmonitored, and through them he had a link home. Sakura didn't; when Earth had announced her demise after her rescue she'd forbidden him from telling her family, and though she wouldn't tell him whether or not one of her visions had been behind the order he suspected it had. She was still uncomfortable talking about them, and that made him sad.

Time would lessen that. She'd told him Yuui-san wanted to teach her more about her gift, and for alone Syaoran appreciated the older man. He was proving to be a good friend to Sakura, someone older and wiser she could talk to when she couldn't even talk to him, and Syaoran was happy for her. It could get awfully lonely on this ship sometimes.

"Mokona, I'm going to the rec room to get something to drink," he said. "Please tell Captain Kurogane on my behalf. And make sure you forward all danger alerts to his cabin first."

"Affirmative," she replied as he stood up from the narrow pilot's chair, wincing. Even in low gravity his behind ached. Maybe he'd put in some time on the treadmill when he was down in the rec room.

The ship's corridors were empty and silent when he made his way down, which didn't surprise him. Sakura was busy in the engine room doing something complicated to the steerage, and she had made it gently but firmly plain that she didn't want to be distracted. He was so proud of her for that. Neither of them had known more than the basics of piloting or engine maintenance when they'd more or less turned up on the Captain's feet, and both of them had learned as much as they could from Kurogane and taught themselves from manuals and pirated university textbooks when they'd surpassed his knowledge, determined to be useful.

The rec room door opened quietly at his touch on the keypad, and he made his way in with a conscious effort to keep his footsteps quiet. Good thing, too: Yuui was passed out on the sofa, curled up under one of the green self-warming infirmary blankets. He was using the arm of the couch for a pillow, and his mouth was hanging open. He was even snoring lightly, which made Syaoran smile despite himself as he tiptoed carefully past Yuui to the galley.

He filled up his cup and drained it, and then filled it up again as he contemplated the exercise equipment. There was no way he could climb on one of those without waking Yuui up, he thought, ruefully, and decided he'd come back just before dinner. The Captain would be putting in his time soon anyway. Instead, he opted to stretch the cramp out of his legs by wandering in circles across the galley floor, his hands on his hips. He must have woke Yuui up, because his tousled blond haired appeared over the back of the sofa and stared at him in confusion through blurry blue eyes.

"Syaoran?" Yuui said, muzzily. "What are you doing?"

"I didn't mean to wake you, Yuui-san," Syaoran said. "I'm just stretching my legs."

"Oh." Yuui seemed to be considering this. "It's okay, you didn't wake me. I was hungry." He yawned hugely, and Syaoran smiled.

"Is there anything I can get you?" he asked. "We still have some of the brownies you made."

"Some of those would be fine," said Yuui, and gave him a sleepy smile. "Thank you."

"It's no problem," Syaoran reassured him as he dug around in the cupboard for the little box of brownies. Yuui had baked them during their orbit of Mars, after they'd returned from shopping but before he'd gone to see the triads, and it was a good thing he'd made hundreds because they were disappearing at an alarming speed. The captain eschewed them noisily, but Syaoran had observed the quiet, pleased look on his face when he tried the tiramasu Yuui had made him.

Speak of the devil, a few minutes later the Captain himself came into the galley. He was dressed in his workout clothes, and Syaoran sighed in disappointment as he said good-bye to any hope of getting a chance at the exercise equipment today.

He would have to be blind to miss the way Yuui brightened up in the captain's presence, or the way Kurogane's eyes lingered just a little too long on the other man in his habitual sweep of the room.

Kurogane tossed his hand towel over his neck, strode over to the couch and stood there looking down with a thoughtful frown, hands on his hips. "Good to see you're behaving yourself," he grumbled, which Syaoran and Yuui both translated as Captain-speak for You're looking better.

Yuui beamed a smile up at him. "Everyone has been taking such very good care of me," he said. "Even though I feel silly, lazing about like a slug while everybody else is working!"

Kurogane snorted. "Don't be an idiot. What exactly else would you be doing?" he said. "We've got at least another three months in flight before we get anywhere near Jupiter, so it's not like there's any hurry."

Yuui frowned and fidgeted. "I don't understand why I'm so out of it. It's not like I was even injured," he objected. "I could have… Fai could already be awake by now."

"Yuui-san, hard vacuum is nothing to play around with," Syaoran objected seriously. "It's very hard on your throat and lungs. Even if there were no viruses involved, it's still as much trauma to your lungs as a bout of pneumonia. You really do need to take it easy."

"And if you ignore common sense and try to prance around like your usual dumbass self, you'll just make it take even longer," Kurogane dictated to him. "So sit down, shut up, and take your medicine."

Yuui sighed. "I just wish I could take a bath," he complained. "All this coughing makes me ache, but the little cupboard of a shower just doesn't do very much to help."

Syaoran could sympathize with the aches, if not the bath; his family hadn't been able to afford a luxury like a bathtub in the tiny Martian town where he'd grown up, so he'd never really seen what the appeal was supposed to be. Much to his surprise, though, Kurogane cleared his throat. "As a matter of fact, I have a bath… a small one, anyway… in my quarters," he said. "It's Japanese-style, not Western; there's not enough room to stretch out, but you can at least sit down in hot water."

Syaoran whipped around to gawk at his captain; Kurogane was normally incredibly private and defensive about his personal space. He and Sakura had been on the ship for three years and never been inside Kurogane's personal quarters, and now he was actually offering Yuui-san…?

"You mean it?" Yuui looked touched and embarrassed, enough that the hint of a blush rose to his cheeks. Then he covered it up with another smile, batting his eyelashes exaggeratedly at Kurogane. "Well, then, how could I turn down an invitation from such a handsome stud into his bed - er, bathroom? Of course, I'll need your help to make sure I don't fall in and drown…"

"Hn." Kurogane looked to the side, fiddling with the settings on the weight machine, but despite his darker skin, there was an unmistakable flush to the back of his neck. "I suppose I'd better, just to make sure you don't drop the soap, slip on the tiles and break your neck."

Drop the - good god, could they at least pretend to be discreet? Syaoran choked, and Kurogane looked over at him with a glower. "What are you still doing here?" he demanded. "If you wanted to use the exercise equipment, too bad. They're mine for the next hour or so."

"No, thanks," Syaoran said hastily, reaching for his cup and another of the brownies. "As a matter of fact, I was just going somewhere else. Anywhere else."

"Oh, Syaoran," Yuui called out as he headed for the door. "Could you ask Sakura to come up, please? I wanted to start her lessons today, and I might as well make use of the time while Captain Sweaty is… occupied."

"I'll tell her," Syaoran yelled back hastily, and swung his way down the ladder into the corridor shaking his head. His next letter to Watanuki was going to be difficult to write; even if he told his twin about half this, he knew Watanuki would never believe him.

Sakura was up to her armpits in the guts of the engine, both hands full and a flashlight clenched between her teeth, when she heard boots on the ladder. "Don't touch anything," she ordered, somewhat muffled around the obstruction. "It's that way for a reason!"

"... What?"

Oh, she knew that voice. Hastily she jerked out of the open hatchway and spat the flashlight into the palm of one of her rough workgloves; Syaoran was floating with his hand on the bottom run of the ladder looking at her oddly.

"I had to pull the wiring out," she said. "There's a coolant leak somewhere in here, and I -" An idea struck. "Um, actually, maybe you could hold this for me?"

"Of course, princess," he said, and carefully pushed off the ladder, accepting the flashlight when she held it out to him. He clipped himself into position on the crosshatched railings marching across the engine casing and curled his fingers around the edge of the hatch, shining the light inside; relieved, Sakura bent forward to resume poking at its innards.

"Mokona said she was running half a degree hotter than normal about an hour ago. With the amount of stress she's put on her parts lately, I suppose it was just a matter of time before something broke," she said, and Syaoran nodded.

"We need to replace some bits when we stop at Europa, if we can," he said. "I don't know where we're going next."

Sakura bit her lip. She'd had dreams, vague and unhelpful, of herself in the shuttle... but she wouldn't be leaving the ship at the outer colonies - too dangerous by far - which meant they must be going planet-side again at some point, but no more details had been forthcoming. She hated how useless her gift was, sometimes.

Syaoran was frowning at her, and hastily she reached for something to change the topic. Syaoran was so very kind, she hated burdening him anything more than she had to. "Did you come from the cockpit, Syaoran-kun?" she asked, instead.

"No, I was in the galley getting a snack. Yuui-san said he wants you to go see him, when you can, for your training?"

"Oh!" said Sakura, and smiled. She'd been looking forward to those. Yuui wasn't a precog like her, but he had attended their classes, and he was no doubt the closest thing to a real instructor she was going to get. If anyone could help train her gift to be more handy, he could. "Well, I'm just about finished here."

"Are you sure?" Syaoran said.

"Yeah." Sakura stripped off her protective goggles and gloves, stowing them haphazardly in one of the many null-gee pockets around the engine room, and stretched her back to try to relieve the stiffness of working in null-gee for so long. "No time like the present, right?"

She took hold of the ladder leading out of the engine room and then hesitated, struck by a sudden doubt. She'd never talked with a real psionic at length before; what if Yuui told her that she was no good, her talent was too weak, and she just didn't have what it took to master it? Yuui-san was kind, he wouldn't put it in those words - but that wouldn't change the reality of it, would it?

"Princess," Syaoran called out, and Sakura turned towards him quickly. He pushed himself lightly off the engine wall, floating towards her. His brown eyes were serious and earnest - those eyes she'd always loved - and he reached out to capture both her hands, grubby and sweaty from the work. A slight pressure braked him to a stop, and he hung there in midair with no anchor points except for her.

"I believe in you," he told her with absolute conviction. "Whatever this training takes, you'll master it. You're going to be the most amazing precog ever."

Sakura's cheeks flamed, and she ducked her face away. She let go of her own handhold to give him a matching two-handed grip, the two of them just floating in space for a moment, with eyes for no one but each other.

Then she broke the contact and twisted away, grabbing the nearest handhold and towed Syaoran to it. "I'd better not keep him waiting," she said breathlessly, and pulled herself rapidly up out of the hatch into ship's gravity.

Yuui was resting on the couch in the rec room when she went in, and she felt an almost motherly spike of worry for him. For all that he was a good three decimeters taller than her he looked almost fragile sprawled out on the couch. The captain was there too, working out on the exercise machines on the highest settings; Sakura gave him a side glance, wondering how she was going to manage to do this with him listening in.

Yuui looked up at her and smiled when he saw her, and she smiled back.

"Ready for your first lesson now?" he said.

"Yes," Sakura replied, and tried not to let her nervousness show through.

"Come and sit down, get comfortable," Yuui said, patting the empty couch cushion opposite him. Sakura sat, her back stiff and hands clenched tightly in her lap.

The weight bar banged down on the stack, and Yuui looked up with a frown creasing his lips. "I don't think we need an audience for this lesson, Captain Sweaty," he said, and Sakura gaped at Yuui; neither she nor Syaoran would ever have dared to talk to the captain like that. "Don't you have anything else to do, any more old B-grade films to go watch?"

"It's my ship. Go have your lesson somewhere else," Kurogane objected, but Yuui just smiled with an odd hard edge to it.

"But you told me to stay in the rec room couch and not move around too much," he said sweetly. "Unless you were the one who wanted to be on the couch?"

Kurogane looked at him for a long moment, taking a deep breath as though to explode; then he let it out all at once, and shook his head in disgust as he sat up from the work bench. "I'm going to work out in peace, in my quarters," he announced, as though it had been his idea the whole time, and stalked out.

"There's no need to be anxious, Sakura-chan," Yuui assured her, and Sakura flushed despite herself, her skin feeling hot and cold at once. "This isn't a test; there are no wrong answers. I'm not exactly an expert on precognitive visions myself, you know; you'll be teaching me as much as I'm teaching you."

Sakura blew out her breath. "Okay," she said, and gave him a firm nod. "What do you want me to do? I can't… I mean, I don't think I can make a vision just come…"

"We aren't going to worry about that right now," Yuui assured her. "We'll start with the ones you've already had. When was the last time you had a vision?"

"You mean, the last one I can remember clearly?" Sakura asked. "I had one earlier this morning, but it went by so fast that I hardly remember it. Before that, there was one yesterday that was a little bit longer and clearer - it wasn't an important one, though."

"It doesn't need to be important, just one that you remember clearly." Yuui said with a nod. "All right, close your eyes. I want you to think back on that vision. Don't try to do anything else yet, just bring it to your mind."

Obediently, Sakura closed her eyes and tried to recall the vision from yesterday. "Okay," she said.

"Keep your eyes closed, try to keep yourself in the vision as much as possible," Yuui advised her. "I'm going to ask a few questions, and I want you to answer them as best you can.

"In the vision, where are you?"

"Here," Sakura said. "In the Mokona's gallery, I mean."

"How do you know that?"

"What?" Confused, Sakura opened her eyes to stare at Yuui. "I - I mean, it just is. I recognize it."

"What things do you recognize, exactly?" Yuui said patiently. "Don't just leap to conclusions. Tell me what you actually see, in the vision. Keep your eyes closed."

Frowning, Sakura did as she was told; she tried to call the vision back to her, focusing on the little details. "It's the same room - I mean, the walls are the same color," she said, "and the same shape, and the gallery is over in a corner and the exercise machines are by the wall. There's the panel where the vid screen and libraries are kept, although they're closed."

"Focus on the kitchen area. Do you see anything there?"

Sakura concentrated on the vision. "Yes," Sakura said, somewhat to her own surprise. "There's a - there's a bin on the counter that I've never seen before, although I can't see what's in it."

"Can you see anything on the walls? Clocks, calendars, posters, anything like that?"

"No," Sakura said. "But, I mean, there isn't anything on the walls, is there?"

"There isn't anything on the walls now," Yuui corrected her. "Don't jump to conclusions. Don't assume that just because something looks familiar, you know everything about it. Things may have changed. What else do you see?"

"All right," Sakura said. She squinted her eyes closed again, so hard her cheeks scrunched up with the effort, but after a moment blinked them open again. "I can't really tell anything else," she said apologetically. "It was yesterday, it's already begun to fade."

"That's all right," Yuui said reassuringly. "From now on, when you have a vision, try to get as many details as possible. Do you write your visions down?"

"Sometimes," Sakura said. "Only the important ones."

"Starting from today, I want you to write all of your visions down, no matter how unimportant they seem," Yuui instructed her. "Little details, even if they seem trivial at the time, all add up to give you the most complete picture as possible."

"Okay," Sakura said, a little daunted by the scope of the task. "But, Yuui-san, I don't think you understand. When I say they're not important, I mean - they're really not important. Most of the things I see are just - just little flashes of me on a normal day, except it's a different day. Working on the engine, walking through the corridors, washing my hands - there's nothing about them that makes them different from any other day. It's not like - it's maybe only one time in ten, maybe less, that I see something that's at all unusual."

She felt ashamed, admitting that; she always wished her power was more useful, that it would show her things that actually mattered instead of just peppering her with mundane details all out of the wrong timeline. When her gift had first started to manifest itself, at first Sakura hadn't even understood that she was seeing visions out of the future at all; she would flash forward to dinner, or going to pick up the mail, and then just shake off the dizziness and move on. It had been months before she started to make the connection, to realize that she was 'remembering' things that hadn't even happened yet.

Until the visions started to change. Until she started seeing flashes of herself - not in her familiar family home but in strange places, with strange people, not her family and friends at all. She kept seeing herself in the back of a darkened van, in a tiny room with blank walls, in a whitewashed corridor with glaring lights. She saw strangers, tall and uniformed and hard-faced, and heard her own voice crying.

Sakura had spent weeks in a terrified fog of uncertainty, not knowing if the visions were real or nightmare, afraid of something that was going to happen but not knowing when. She'd been afraid to tell her family, afraid they would think her crazy if it wasn't true, afraid they would be put in danger if it was. The only one she'd dared to tell had been Syaoran, and he had believed her immediately; without his strong and steady support, Sakura thought she really would have gone crazy. And if he hadn't come to rescue her…

"Sakura-chan," Yuui said, and something touched her elbow gently; Sakura realized she'd drawn into a tight miserable huddle on the couch, and straightened up to look at her new teacher. He was smiling encouragingly at her, and Sakura gave him a shaky smile back.

"Believe it or not, that's actually perfectly normal for precognitives," Yuui told her encouragingly. "At least when they're starting out. Some older precogs, who have had decades of practice to master their powers, claim to be able to direct their visions; but for most of them, it happens at completely random times."

Sakura frowned. "I always thought that was why precogs went to the academy, to learn how to control their power so they don't see useless stuff," she said. "So they can get stronger."

Yuui laughed. "No, not really," he said. "Strong or weak when we're talking about precognitive ability only refers to how far into the future they can see, and how long they can maintain a vision once they've had it. We'll have to do a little more work before we can determine how strong you are, but believe me, it's nothing to feel ashamed about. A stronger power is actually harder to control and interpret, because the range of things you see is so much wider; it could be tomorrow, or six months from now, or even six years. If you know for sure that what you're seeing can only occur in the next few months, that makes it much easier to narrow it down to when it is."

"But how can I figure out when a vision is?" Sakura said, frustrated and mystified.

"There are two ways to find that out," Yuui said. "First of all, keep a comprehensive log of all of your visions, no matter how minor. That way when the moment of the vision occurs, you can match it up with your entry in the log, and get a sense of your range that way. The other way is using signal systems."

"What do you mean?" Sakura asked.

Yuui waved at the walls around them. "Remember how I asked whether you saw posters or calendars on the walls?" he said. "Most precogs develop a system of things they can control in their environment, which they can use to orient themselves inside a vision and nail down the time it takes place."

Sakura stared at him. "You mean, like putting a calendar in every room?" What a simple concept! Why had that never occurred to her before? With every computer console on the ship set to display the time and date, most people had gotten out of the habit of putting up a separate physical calendar that they would have to update manually - but the idea made perfect sense now that he had suggested it to her.

"That's a start," Yuui replied, "but you don't always know that you're going to be in one of those rooms, now do you? There's a time and date display on every wall at the psionic academy for just that reason, but the precogs develop their own systems. They have certain clothes they wear on certain days of the week, or certain ways of doing their hair - I know one girl who changed her nail polish every day, so that she could always tell what day of the week it was by looking at her hands."

Sakura couldn't help it; she burst into giggles. "I don't think I'd want to do that," she said, "it would be way too much trouble to change it every day."

Yuui chuckled along with her. "You can try different things, to see what works best for you," he said. "Now, when you go to write down a vision, you should always include what they call the five big W's. When does the vision take place - and we just covered how you would know that. Where is the vision - if it's some place you don't know, then describe it in as much detail as possible. Who is in the vision with you, and what is going on. Got that so far?"

"I think so." Sakura nodded slowly.

"Let's try it on your vision from yesterday. We know where it was - the Mokona's rec room. We don't know when it was, so let's leave that for later. So the next step is, who was in the vision with you, and what happened?"

"Syaoran was the other person in the vision," Sakura said promptly. "As for what was happening - well, I don't really know. We were laughing about something - we were both laughing almost too hard to talk. We had…" She had to close her eyes again for a moment to recall the vision, and when she did she almost jumped off the couch in surprise. "We had a bottle of something!"

"Oh, really?" Yuui's eyebrows rose in surprise, and his voice was dry. "Is this something that the Captain needs to hear about?"

Sakura flushed. "The Martian drinking age is fifteen!" she argued. "We're both of age."

"Sometimes I really have to wonder about you Martians," Yuui said in a voice of mock reproof. "All right, so you and Syaoran were having a party, and apparently laughing yourselves silly. Did anything else happen?"

"I don't know. It wasn't very long - less than a minute." Sakura paused as a detail that had almost disappeared from her memory resurfaced. "In the last few seconds - just before I lose it - the door opened and you came in. You were laughing, too."

"I was there?" Yuui's laughing eyes seemed to dim, his smile to fade a bit. "It can't have been too far in the future, then."

"What?" Sakura frowned at him. "Why do you say that?"

He shook his head, smiling. "Nothing, Sakura-chan," he said.

Sakura thought back over their lesson. "You said there were five big W's, but you only mentioned four," she said slowly. "Where, when, who, and what. What's the last one?"

"Ah," Yuui sighed. "That one's a little tricky, and I'm not sure we can get to it in the first lesson. The fifth W is actually 'how.' Don't ask me why they decided it begins with a W, when it doesn't."

"How?" Sakura asked curiously. "What do they mean, how?"

"How as in, how does the vision feel to you," Yuui explained. "I said it was tricky, and I don't think it's something that I ever fully understood, since I'm not a precognitive myself. The best way I can explain it is that all the precogs I know have said that their visions have a 'feeling' to them, either good or bad. I know it's extremely vague, and not very helpful to -"

"No," Sakura said, thinking back on her memories of her own visions. "I think I know what they mean."

Although she'd never tried to put a color or a sensation to it, she'd always relied on her 'feelings' about what she saw to tell whether any given future was good or bad. Syaoran and Kurogane had come to rely on it too, and always listened to her when she had any 'bad feelings.'

"You do?" Yuui brightened. "Well, that's a relief, because I don't really know how else to explain it. Like with the signal systems, each precog has their own way of thinking about these 'feelings,' but they're encouraged to develop a system, or a scale between two extremes, to codify those 'feelings.' Some people find it easiest to think of the visions like 'hot' and 'cold,' and others describe in terms of an aura of colors. In the classes they encourage you to think of it like a traffic light - green for 'go,' red for 'stop,' and so on. The instructors say that the more you concentrate on being able to recognize and classify these feelings, the more you'll be able to recognize them."

Sakura frowned, absently rubbing her forehead with one hand as she tried to add this new concept to the stack of new ideas Yuui had given her this session. "There's a lot to learn," she said, half complaining, half apologizing.

"Well, tell you what," Yuui said. "I think that's quite enough for the first lesson. Captain Puppy says that we have quite a while to go before we reach Jupiter…"

Sakura nodded. "At this time of year, normally we could do it in three months," she said. "But because we burned so much fuel during the battle, we have to go slowly to make up for it."

"Then we have plenty of time to continue the lessons along the way," Yuui said. "For now, your homework is to start keeping a log of all of your visions, and to come up with some systems for the 'when' and the 'how' of the vision. You don't necessarily have to use the examples I gave you - it should be something that makes sense to you. In the meantime, I'll talk with Syaoran about putting up some calendars."

"You don't think the Captain will mind, do you?" Sakura said anxiously. Although they could do what they liked in their private quarters, Kurogane had always put his foot down when it came to decorating the public spaces.

Yuui smiled, and his blue eyes glinted. "If he does, then I'll talk to him as well," he said. "I'm sure I can get him to come around."

"I hope so." Privately, Sakura was sure that he would. It was easy to forget sometimes that Yuui-san had only been on the ship with them for a few weeks; sometimes it seemed like he had been there for years. Especially with how close he and Captain Kurogane had gotten; she'd never seen Kurogane take to anyone so quickly and so well.

But then, she thought, Yuui-san was really very charming.

It just highlighted the injustice of the world they lived in, Yuui thought, when he couldn't even cook dinner without the sharp steam from the stove sending his chest into painful seizures.

All throughout dinner he'd had to periodically go sit down on the couch until he was able to suppress the coughs, directing Sakura (but definitely not Syaoran) to tend the dishes for him. They fell easily into the role of mentor and student, and it made Yuui feel odd to have someone looking up to him as though he were actually a competant adult. As though he actually knew enough to teach anyone anything.

He hadn't opted for anything complex. Sakura was learning fast, but he wasn't certain he could leave some of his recipes in her hands, especially since she had an unfortunate tendency to start reading engineering manuals instead of watching over delicately boiling concoctions, and so he was making two dishes at the same time, seafood for the captain and something actually edible for himself and the kids. He still loved cooking, the simple act of preparing things that people could enjoy, and unlike most teenagers Syaoran and Sakura were both happy to lend a hand with the clean-up afterward.

Still, it was sobering to realize that very soon now he likely wouldn't have time to prepare a full meal. Fai would be awake before long. The captain hadn't let him thaw out his twin while he was still sick - he'd said Yuui needed to be fully healed, and Yuui knew he was thinking of Fai's addictions because he hadn't told Kurogane what Fai's mental state had been like those few hours they'd had together before he'd put his brother to sleep.

Truth be told, he didn't really want to dwell on that much himself.

They had the drugs now, and he had consulted Mokona's medical unit about dosage and frequency. She had helped him run the tox screen that had identified the substances, and her databanks far surpassed his pathetic knowledge. He'd taken combat medic courses at the academy, of course, but they only covered basic triage; how to close wounds, administer an injection, splint broken limbs. He had been sort of interested in going into proper military medic training after they graduated, and then he'd outed himself and the psionic academy had happened instead.

He sighed heavily and turned his chin away from the galley. The rec room was filling up slowly with the horrifying scent of fish, the air filters running at lower power since the fight. He hoped the Captain liked his meal, because if he didn't Yuui would quite happily never touch the stuff again.

"Yuui-san?" Sakura had materialized at his elbow, wearing an anxious look. "There's a skin forming on the sauce, is that bad?"

"It means you need to turn the heat down," Yuui said, and climbed slowly to his feet, following her back to the galley. He showed her how to remove the skin and to thin the sauce, which had thickened too much; her green eyes followed everything he did and she wore a determined expression.

"Do you think I could show Syaoran-kun how to do this?" she said. "I'm sure he could be a better cook if he practiced..."

Yuui bit back his instinctive denial, and gave her a reassuring smile. "Maybe," he said encouragingly. "I'm not going to have much time for cooking soon, I'll be busy with Fai."

"Oh," she said, and frowned; Yuui raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"What is it, Sakura-chan?"

"Nothing," she said, and gave him a quick smile before shaking her head and pressing on. "It's just - we've never eaten so well as we have since you started cooking for us. Won't your brother let you keep on cooking?"

There was a plaintive note to her voice, and Yuui sighed. He didn't really want to tell her that it wasn't so much a matter of Fai 'letting' him cook as Fai needing to be around him all the time, and he could hardly juggle Fai if he had been... the way he was in a kitchen surrounded by sharp objects and heat sources.

"I don't think I can, Sakura-chan," he said, gently. "He's going to be quite sick when he wakes up. Earth was... not kind to him."

"I'm sorry," she said, turning pink. "That was selfish of me, I'm so sorry," and she might have kept on apologizing if he hadn't wordlessly leaned over and gathered her into an embrace. She hugged him back tightly, and he felt his throat closing as he realised this was the first hug he had had since Fai had been stolen from him. Kurogane might be okay with kissing, but embracing like this was so far off the table it was an impossibility.

He didn't let her go until the microwave oven bleeped at them, and then it was rather a mad dash to get plates assembled. Syaoran trooped in as they were putting out serving bowls, and his whole face lit up at the spread.

"Is the Captain not with you?" Yuui asked, confused, and the boy shook his head as he took his seat.

"He wasn't in the bridge," he said. "That looks amazing, Sakura-chan."

She blushed deeply. "Thank you," she said, with a bright smile. "Yuui-san did most of the work though..."

"But not all," Yuui finished for her smoothly, and was just wondering whether or not to have Mokona page Kurogane when the door hissed open and the man himself came in, clearly freshly showered and dressed in one of his old-fashioned Japanese-style garments.

"Huh," he said, looking over at the counter. His nostrils flared subtlety as he inhaled. "That tuna?"

Yuui nodded. "It's for you," he said, and found a hint of shyness in his voice. Embarassed, he tucked a strand of hair behind his ear and covered up for it by sliding into his seat, next to Sakura. Kurogane took his chair at the head of the table and accepted the chopsticks Syaoran passed him, his eyes narrowed and a quirk to his mouth that spoke of his good humour, and Yuui wondered just when he had become so adept at reading the minute changes in Kurogane's stoic counterance.

"Did you watch that film after all, Captain?" Syaoran inquired politely as they tucked in, and Kurogane grunted.

"I got about halfway through. You were right, the plot went downhill."

"What film is this?" Yuui asked, and Kurogane snorted, picking at the steaming chunks of tuna delicately.

"A Martian film, Tokyo Falling. It's about that deep space colony that fell apart."

"I heard it was really good," Sakura interjected. "They said it was very well researched."

"I've heard of that colony," said Yuui. "The terraforming went bad, didn't it?"

"So they say," said Syaoran darkly, and Yuui and Sakura shot him matching looks of surprise. Flushing, he swallowed the mouthful of beef he'd been chewing and continued. "Earth are the ones telling us this stuff, right? But it doesn't make sense, if you look at the exchanges between the colony ship 'paths and the Earth ones, there's whole chunks of censored information."

"But that's how 'path talk works," Sakura countered. "They don't really talk in words, everyone says that."

"Um," Yuui said, and both the kids glanced at him. "Actually, they do. They're trained that way. It's the empaths who 'talk' in pictures and feelings, and nobody's sure whether empaths are really a seperate species of psionic or proto-'paths."

"Does it matter?" Kurogane said.

"I'm just saying, it seems really... fishy," Syaoran argued. "We already know Earth lies, they did it about the Princess and... and about you and Fai-san, right?" He pointed his chopsticks at Yuui, who had to nod agreement with this.

"Didn't think you were a conspiracy theorist, kid," Kurogane said.

"Well, he has a point," Yuui replied, and Kurogane shot him a look of mild exasperation. "There's obviously something going on with Earth's space program and psionics."

"Yes," Sakura agreed slowly. "Like with Fai-san. You said you didn't know what they wanted him for, right?"

Yuui shook his head, and busied himself taking another mouthful of his food. Kurogane was steadily demolishing his way through his dish with no complaints, which was a very high compliment from him. Sakura twirled her chopsticks experimentally and said, slowly, "What could they be trying to lie about, with regards to the New Tokyo colony? Was there something special about it?"

Kurogane snorted. "Nothing that makes it any different from all the other deep space rocks," he said scornfully. "Just dirt and cloned livestock and a few hundred people dreaming of an Earth that never existed."

"Says the spacer," Yuui couldn't resist needling him, and Kurogane rolled his eyes and went back to his dinner. For some reason Syaoran coughed awkwardly at this and looked away, and Yuui gave the top of his head a puzzled gaze before deciding it was time to change the topic. "So do you often have time to watch films, Captain Geek?"

That earned him a small irritable growl, and he grinned to himself in triumph. "'course I do," Kurogane said. "It's months from here to Jupiter. You don't think I'm going to be sitting in that damn captain's chair staring at displays all that time?"

"Syaoran-kun does," Yuui said sweetly.

"And he's too damn dutiful," said Kurogane. Syaoran turned faintly pink. "He could be down here or in his room... or in the engine room, if he wanted," and Syaoran squeaked and turned an even brighter shade.

"Oh, that would be nice," Sakura said, her own cheeks warmer than they should be. "If... if Syaoran-kun wanted to join me, I wouldn't mind at all."

Yuui met Kurogane's eyes across the table while the kids were avoiding eye contact by staring intently at their plates and trying to out-blush each other, and to his surprise the captain winked at him. He could feel a chuckle in his own chest and so he hastily took a bite of his food to waylay it. Kurogane was not a particularly subtle matchmaker.

The rest of dinner passed unremarkably. Sakura had to leave quickly to perform some maintenance before bed; she'd put it off for lessons and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Syaoran chose to follow her, leaving Kurogane behind to help deal with the dishes. It wasn't the first time they'd been alone together since he'd left the infirmary, but there was something... different about today, and after Syaoran had left and Yuui had stacked the last plate in the dishwasher Kurogane caught him with one broad palm cupping the back of his neck and bent down to kiss him.

Yuui leaned backwards, evading him before their mouths could meet, and Kurogane let him go with a frustrated growl. "Are you really going to do this?" he said. "This hot and cold, pretending like you don't want this thing? Haven't you had enough of being so fucking indecisive?"

"No," said Yuui. "I'm just not kissing you when you've eaten tuna."

Kurogane paused. "Oh," he said.

"Captain Fish can try again after he's brushed his teeth," Yuui added archly, and Kurogane sighed.

"Yeah, yeah," he said, but he had the grace to look a little bit guilty. Yuui didn't feel like telling him that he had had thoughts about doing just what he'd been accused of - denying this thing, pretending he hadn't kissed Kurogane that day in the infirmary or that it didn't matter or something stupid, because in truth he wasn't quite sure what the hell to do.

It had been two weeks since he'd pulled Kurogane down for a kiss in the infirmary bed, sick and lonely and scared and wanting that much contact with someone warm and there. Two weeks and there had been other kisses, ranging from the confident to the hesitant. Kurogane didn't kiss like Fai, and he seemed surprised by Yuui's expertise. Two weeks and all the flirting and strangeness between them even before that, and Yuui didn't know, because he had sworn he wouldn't do this, and he was here now with the Captain's body heat still burning against him even though the man himself had moved away, and the back of his neck where Kurogane's palm had rested was still tingling.

Idiot, he thought at himself angrily, and half-turned away from Kurogane to wipe down the galley surfaces. His throat began ticking and his chest contracted with another fit of coughing halfway through, and he hid his mouth in his upper arm as he let out several hoarse, barking coughs. Kurogane made a cranky noise and flipped the switch on the kettle, opening one of the cupboards and taking out the 'flu tea he kept making Yuui drink to soothe his throat after all the coughing, and he thrust the box at Yuui grumpily.

"Make some of that," he said, and Yuui nodded wearily and fetched a mug. He was aware of Kurogane's eyes boring on him from behind as he emptied the sachet into the bottom of the cup and added the hot water, detaching the plastic spoon from the packaging to help the tea dissolve faster.

"Thank you," he said, a little raspily, and sensed Kurogane's flippant shrug out of the corner of his eye.

"This is why I want you to wait to get your brother out of that box," Kurogane said abruptly. "He's sick, isn't he? He looked pretty roughed up when I saw him."

Yuui thought about downplaying Fai's condition, his fingers lacing around the mug of tea, and then decided he would truly be a fool to do so. "Yes," he said. "I think they tortured him, Captain."

"Yeah," Kurogane said. "I worked that one out already. Was he lucid?"

That one hurt. Yuui closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, remembering his twin's babbling. "... No. Not particularly."

"I see."

"I'm sorry for not mentioning it sooner," Yuui said, quietly, and Kurogane snorted.

"You should have," he said sharply. "You want to unbox a psionic with an unknown talent on my ship, and now you tell me he's unhinged. I get why you didn't, psychic, but I'm the Captain. I have to keep us safe. All of us."

"I know," Yuui replied softly, and Kurogane's boots scraped across the floor as he came to Yuui's side and touched his shoulder with surprising gentleness.

"Tell me," he said, "and be absolutely honest. You know him. Do you think he's dangerous?"

Yuui shook his head, suddenly unable to speak, and his vision was blurring as his throat clogged with something that wasn't down to vacuum damage to his lungs. Dimly he sensed Kurogane putting an awkward arm across his shoulders, his blazing body heat comforting even as he felt his heart was tearing in two, because he hadn't wanted to think of Fai as that - as something dangerous, an unknown weapon, a threat, as anything but as Fai, his twin and his best friend and his lover for all of his life.

But he was a potential danger. Even if his mystery gift wasn't a lethal one, Yuui was suddenly coming to realize that the real reason he had decided not to cook with Fai in in his care wasn't because he thought Fai might need him but because some part of him already knew Fai could no longer be trusted around safety hazards. That his brilliant mathematician twin might cut himself with a kitchen knife or burn himself on a hot stove, like a child.

The knowledge hit him harder than losing Fai ever had, grief like a needle in his chest, but Kurogane was here and he didn't - he couldn't - he wouldn't think of that. He turned his face away from Kurogane, and took several shaky breaths before sipping at his tea.

"Look," Kurogane said, his voice a steady rumble. He let go of Yuui and stepped away, and despite himself Yuui turned to look at him; he was standing in the middle of the galley with his hands in his pockets. "If you think he's fine, then whatever. You can defrost him. But you need to take responsibility for him, okay?"

"Yeah," Yuui said, his voice stiff and sad. "Don't worry. I wasn't intending to do anything else."

Kurogane sighed and reached out, clearly on impulse, and caught his sleeve. "I didn't think you were," he said, firmly. "But... Look. I don't want the kids near him, just in case, but if you need help..." His red eyes cut away, uncomfortably. Yuui stared at him, aware of how ridiculous his face must look. "If you need any help," Kurogane continued. "I don't mind. You're not alone anymore, spoonbender."

I never used to be, either, Yuui thought with a pang of sadness. Fai was always there for me. But Fai was broken, and he wouldn't be himself for a long time, and it wasn't fair. He forced himself to smile, and thanked Kurogane in a low voice; the Captain made a cranky Tch! noise and let go of him, stuffing his hands back in his pockets and scowling at the dishwasher as though it had personally wronged him.

"You gonna be okay in that closet?" he asked abruptly, and Yuui lifted his eyebrows, confused. "The room you've got," Kurogane clarified. "It's not really built for two."

"We can adapt," Yuui said. They'd shared a smaller bed growing up, although they had been smaller then too. Kurogane nodded, uncomfortably, and Yuui realized it was the first time he'd seen his grouchy, gruff, larger-than-life Captain look anything other than fully confident.

"If... If you want, I could. Uh. My cabin's plenty large. You could stay with me, and let your brother have your room," he said.

If his expression had looked absurd before, Yuui was sure his face now could only be described as ridiculous. It was only sheer willpower that kept his jaw from dropping open, and he sensed the only thing that prevented him having his dumbstruck features commented upon was that Kurogane seemed to be having immense difficulty holding eye contact, instead staring at a point two inches above and six inches beside Yuui's left ear.

It took him some time to find his voice again, and when he did his first instinct was to blurt out something stupid, some unnecessary comment about what this meant. Instead he held his tongue and thought about it, and realized there was only one response to that that he could make. He shook his head, and now Kurogane's eyes focused on him as his eyebrows drew together.

"You're going to share that cabin?" he said, brusquely, and Yuui nodded.

"He's going to need me," he said quietly. "I want to be near him, so he doesn't need to go far. Thank you, though, Captain." For once he didn't attach a ridiculous suffix to the title, to convey how touched he was by the offer. "Perhaps once he is a little better, but for the immediate future, I... I want to be where he can reach me."

And where I can reach him, he thought. The thought of having Fai back in his arms was a reassuring one, no matter what. He just didn't feel up to admitting the true reason he had no problem with sharing to the Captain.

"If you're sure," Kurogane said, sounding dubious. "Offer's out there, if you change your mind."

Yuui smiled for him, and it was a lot less fake now. "I know," he said. "Thank you."

Kurogane eyed him thoughtfully, and then grunted and nodded. "It's fine," he said, briskly. "I'm going to go back to my cabin and watch another movie, you- " - and he pointed at Yuui with one oversized finger - "You, get your scrawny ass on those exercise machines. You're not going to have too much time in the future."

Yuui grinned at that. "Maybe not," he agreed mildly, and when Kurogane went to walk past him his hand darted out and grabbed the cloth of his yukata firmly by the elbow. Kurogane turned at the touch, head tilted curiously, and Yuui raised himself onto the balls of his feet to kiss him; he didn't shy away this time and their mouths met, soft and firm.

Truth be told, he was glad he had Kurogane. Glad enough he could even (mostly) overlook the tuna breath.

In the end, he did it at night, when the shipboard lighting was low and the kids were asleep in their respective bedrooms. He didn't tell Kurogane what he was planning, but maybe he didn't have to; the man handed him the golden swipe card to the shuttle deck and said in a voice of affected indifference, "Our stuff is in the crate marked with black tape. When you're done bring the card back."

"But -"

"There's a box of hypodermic needles under the bed in the infirmary," Kurogane interrupted, and only then turned to look at him, his red eyes sharp. "Do whatever you want."

It took several trips to gather the supplies, and he had to pile most of them up on his bed; the folded medical blanket, the box of needles (combination-locked), the crate containing sacks of plastic-wrapped powders and vials of clear colourless liquids; scissors, nail files, spare clothes, a thermos flask of tea and another of tasteless shipboard broth, an electric self-heating cannister of recycled bathing water, a bucket, a sponge and a bar of soap to go with it - but eventually he had what he needed, and it was just him and the cryo-container in the corner.

He didn't know how Fai would be. Tired, obviously; being frozen in suspended animation wasn't anything like real sleep. Tired, and anxious, and... sane, with any luck, because surely the stuff that they'd given him had been what was behind his disorientation and his paranoia. Not that it mattered. He would do anything he could either way.

Still. It had been long enough. Way back on Earth he had wanted to get Fai out here in the endless black, where he would have time to understand what had happened, and he was here now, and it was time. He tapped at the cryo-storage unit's keypad, and told it to defrost its occupant, and it flashed him an hourglass and a progress bar.

06:00:00, it flashed at him. Six hours to thaw, and then Fai would be here, for better or for worse. Yuui drew in a deep breath, ignored the voice that whispered, and how's he going to feel about the Captain? and thumbed the 'start' button, and the clock stopped flashing and began counting down, implacable and inevitable.

Here we go, he thought.

Onto chapter fourteen →

-tbc