Work Text:
The shading on her most recent work was not quite correct. If she could just redefine —
“You cannot seriously consider that as an option?” Her mother was saying. The warm weight beside her shifted on the sofa and she leaned more heavily towards it. Winter was steadily approaching Cyne and Graye was always so warm at her side.
“Of course Lady Gwenora. It is the option that will net us the maximum amount of resources in the shortest amount of time. I do not understand why you continue to disagree. It is illogical.”
“It is also the only option that completely destroys three villages, the habitat of nine unique species of fauna and endangers no less than three species of flora. I will not agree to it, and I will not allow your motion to pass. I will ensure that it dies in preliminary review.”
Now that she thought about it, the composition wasn’t quite right either. Maybe she should just start over. But this piece had already taken several hours. Maybe if she just erased the arm and readjusted the shoulder so it looked like it was—-
“Lady Gwe–”
“Did you have anything else to discuss, Fabricator General?”
“You must listen to–”
“If you do not have further topics for discussion, then I believe we are finished for the day. I will have my notes sent to the Mechanicus office for review. May the Emperor shine upon you, Fabricator General. Good day.”
There, that looked better. And once she got the shading right, she was pretty sure that this one would be completed, and she could move on to the abstract she had planned after this.
“Sorry about that.” Her mother stated, her tone changing slightly, but still a little tense after her discussion with what Celeste not-so-fondly called her mother’s arch nemesis. Celeste started putting away the pencils and charcoal into their cases.
“Don’t worry about it. We’re not in any hurry,” she replied, looking for the rag she uses to clean her hands.
“I wasn’t expecting them to comm before lunch or I would have rescheduled. I hate making you wait,” the Lady of Order continued as she scribbled onto parchment. “I just need to make a few notes and then we can go.” She was still distracted, wearing her Lady of Order mask, but Celeste didn’t mind.
Graye handed her the rag and she hummed in thanks as she started cleaning up. The call had only been about ten minutes, but they had arrived early due to Graye’s nervousness and had been sitting in the office for nearly 30 minutes by that point. Celeste just hadn’t been able to get this piece out of her mind and decided to pull it from her bag and work on it while they waited.
Finally, Gwenora stopped moving her hand, took a relaxing breath and smiled tiredly over the desk at them. “Sorry. Why don’t you kids go req a transport from the hanger and I’ll meet you down there in a few. I’ll let them know you’re coming.”
“Sure. Any requests?” Celeste asked as she stood, pulling her strap over her head to settle her bag on her left hip, leaving easy access to the concealed pistol on her right.
“Don’t let Hurro be assigned as the driver please. Last time he nearly drove through a flock of carrion birds and sent us down in the Botanical fields. Otherwise, surprise me.”
“Sweet.” Celeste smiled excited to have free reign over the choice of transports, and reached for Graye’s much larger hand to tug him to the door. “See you in a bit!” she called as the door slid shut behind them.
It was just past midday, and the halls were not as full as they were during business, most of the aides and representatives already having left for their lunch.
Celeste waved to a few of the cleaning staff as she passed. They returned the gesture with smiles. They had known her since she was eight, when they would catch her snooping through halls and rooms that really weren’t fit for an eight year old, and tricking her to help clean by making up games.
“I just can’t see it.” Graye’s low voice cut the silence. Celeste looked over to see him staring into the polished floors as they walked, his brows furrowed in thought.
“See what?” Quiet was Graye’s default, especially when he was unsure of a situation (or nervous to be eating lunch with her parents). Celeste called it his ‘observation phase’. He must now be moving into the ‘analysis phase.’
“How you’re related to them. Lord Kirsk is always silently giving off murder vibes, even when hes smiling. Sometimes I forget he’s in the room until he speaks, like he doesn’t want people to know he’s there. It’s… terrifying honestly.” Celeste huffed a laugh and he cut her a serious look.
“Sorry, go on.” She smiled up at him as she started swinging their hands back and forth gently between them. She cut to the right towards the hanger.
“And Lady Gwenora. She’s… I mean, I’ve seen her in her home, she seems softer there, and she clearly adores you. But it’s like. Most of the time I’m in a room with her, I feel like she's staring into my core, looking for weaknesses to exploit. The way she spoke to the Fabricator General, she wasn’t taking any of his nonsense and she shut him down. I’ve listened to her speeches. She’s very impassioned, and she really seems dedicated to her work.”
“And I’m not?” Celeste teased.
“That's not what I mean Daab’ika. I’m just saying that they’re both so sharp-edged, terrifying in their own ways. And you’re…” here he cuts himself off and chuckles as he squeezed their hands still swinging between them. “You.” He finished, pulling them to a stop on the side of the hall.
She looked up into his blue-gray eyes and just observed him for a moment, her face blank as she read him. “You see them as dedicated leaders, politicians. You see them as dangerous tacticians. Impossible to approach on a friendly level.” He nodded once to assent to her summary.
She felt a smile slowly spread on her face as she whispered, “then you’ve fallen for the trap.” He made a face at the implication and she laughed softly.
“You see exactly what they want everyone else to see. But I see the woman who raised me in secret because she loved me too much to let me go. I see the man who taught me everything I know about stealth because he never wants me in the hands of the enemy. I see the woman who would turn off her cogitator full of work to do in the middle of the night, just to tell me a story because I had nightmares. I see the man who sings to my mother when all she wants to do is break down from the stress. I see a woman who guilts herself for not being able to save everyone. I see a man who won't share his past because of how terrible it was but strives to do better for those he cares about. I see,” here she paused, stepping closer to him, ”a couple, who alone would be broken, but together make eachother whole. Who are doing their damndest to leave behind a world that is better than the ones they came from so that their children, and their children's children, have a home to be proud of, to be safe in. I see love.”
She could see the cogs turning in his head as he filed away the details she revealed into neat little boxes for later. Finally a soft smile appeared.
“Like I said, you’re you. Eyn vercopa'la.”
“I’ve been called worse, Alor.” She leaned up to steal a quick kiss before continuing their way to the hanger.
*****
“I think I see it now,” Graye said quietly, as he continued stripping his gear. The heavy chest plate hit the bench with a loud noise and she turned from where she was still unstrapping her own a few lockers down.
“See what?”
They were both sweaty, and sore from their shift. Out of the two of them, she was worse off, smaller and more easily trampled before she started using her size to slip between the crowd.
“Remember a few months ago, I said I couldn’t understand how you were raised by the Vanderbelts?” He was removing the leg plates now, one heavy boot on the bench as he spoke.
She sighed in relief when the chest plate finally came loose. They had been voluntold to assist the Arbites while on leave, and there had been a riot during their shift. Del had bloodied her fists when her weapon had been kicked away, Doc had nearly been shot trying to treat one of the injured rebels, and Kad had been separated early on but ended up with a different squad until the riot was controlled. Fraga had been unscathed, eyes gleaming from when he’d been tackling the rebels at the knees so Graye could more easily take them out with his sword.
And Graye, all seven feet of him, was fine. A little sweaty from the exercise, but not a scratch on him. Celeste rolled the shoulder she had landed on when she had been shoved from the top of a ten foot bridge at the start of the scuffle. It hadn’t even been a rebel trying to kill her, it was just the rush of panicked citizens bowling her over.
And shortly after that she had found herself negotiating with one of the terrorists, pleading for them not to harm the group of kids that had been caught in the streets when the attack had begun, walking back to school from a trip to the park. She’d tried so hard to get through to the panicked young man holding one of them at gunpoint, but when he twitched towards the trigger she had had no choice but to pull her own. She was still hearing the children's screams in her ears as the rebel’s body hit the ground, several hours after the encounter.
“Sure, you said I was too soft to be like my parents,” she stated plainly, distracted as she shook the image from her mind and moved on to her own leg plates.
Graye stopped moving, his hands still on the laces of his boots as he looked up at her.
“That’s not what I said.” He furrowed his brow in concern. “I said you were a dreamer. You see the world differently than the rest of us. It’s not a bad thing….” He ducked his head as he switched to the other boot.
Celeste pulled the last leg plate off and set it in the locker. “Hey,” she called his attention back to her. “I know you weren’t saying it to be mean.” He shot her a shy smile as he finished with his boots and started pulling clean civs from the locker to change into after the showers. She turned back to finish doffing the uniform she’d been lent. “What do you see now, anyway, that you didn’t see then?”
His movements slowed, like he was looking for something deep in the locker. But the lockers weren’t that deep and he was already holding all his clothes.
Softly, he spoke, “I see your mothers compassion for others. I see your father’s single minded focus and attention to detail. And I see both of their dedication to finish the job.” He had stopped moving, but he was still looking into the back of the locker like he was contemplating how to fold all of his muscled seven feet into it to hide away from whatever revelation he was having.
With her clean clothes draped over her arm, her bare feet on the cool tiles, she approached him. She reached out and placed her free hand on the elbow of the arm still hiding inside the locker and she waited for his eyes to find hers.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“It’s not obvious at first. When you meet them and you. You act so differently on a surface level. But inside, you are so much like them. But… more. And I wonder…” He hesitated, looking back away from her and finally closing the locker door. “How much of my parents are in me …?” His voice a whisper and his brows furrowed, eyes deep in thought.
Graye’s relationship with his family, his tribe, was tenuous at best, his mother most of all. Celeste could see it, his parents in him. His fathers calm assurance that was often seen as coldness, his ability to lead, to protect. His mothers loyalty to her tribe, and traditions. Graye was like them that way. But Celeste couldn’t bring herself to say that, not when he looked like any traces of them in him would be a taint so terrible it might break him.
He had been rejected at such a young age, too small to be useful to the tribe. And he had wanted so badly to be wanted, to be accepted by them. They had grown to tolerate him, as he proved himself time and time again at the academy, and Celeste thought his siblings cared at least a little about his well being. But, she supposed, the fact that they could outcast their own child, when children were so important to the tribe and their culture, dug into him so deeply even a decade later.
Yet, he still tried his best to visit at least once every leave. Because he loved them.
“Graye, it isn’t about the genetics you inherit, or even the lessons you learn from them that matter. It’s how you use the things you get from them.” She thought of how his cool calmness had transferred to his squad. Where other teams had panicked, he remained as steady as a rock in a river, allowing them precious extra time to process information during simulations. His loyalty to both her and to their squad was admiral. He would do anything to protect those under his care.
He was a product of his parents' making. But he had used the things he despised about the way they treated him, and used them to become his own person instead. Stronger, kinder, more , as he had described her.
“You are you.” She echoed his words back at him. “And that’s all I could ask for.”