The first thing Emilia knew was someone calling for her. It might have been V, his voice cut over with a frantic memory of the child he had once been screaming on the front.

If it was his voice, he never made it to her.

Instead, another set of familiar arms pulled her up. Strong and safe, heaving her up as though she weighed nothing.

Boundary.

How had he gotten there?

How had he known where to find her?

⸂You mentioned Clarity to both Honey and me,⸃ the man whispered into her as they moved, flickering in and out of existence as he teleported them. His words were useless, Emilia might remember him saving her—remember V’s left behind voice—but she wouldn’t remember the moments in between being rescued and coming weakly to in Boundary’s home in more than drips of phantom knowledge.

⸂Did Honey tell you that?⸃ she asked. Had she asked? A day later—multiple days later?—she felt like she had asked that and a thousand other little questions as they went, reality and dream and nightmare floating together in a soup of misunderstandings.

Did you know Honey was an Enclave spy? Not until she warned me.

Was revealing herself worth saving me? No.

Boundary had—maybe—mumbled something about how even Honey knew that whatever was about to happen would be bad—even amongst the Enclave, the Ingogia family had a bad reputation. Emilia would ask about that again later, when she was fully conscious of the world. It was important information, maybe. Other bits were less important, concoctions of a curious and barely conscious brain.

What time is it? Just before day will open in the cities.

Why aren’t you wearing your armour? I was in a hurry.

Other questions were important.

Will the Risen Guard be mad about you saving me? Probably.

Aren’t you worried? I doubt they will do anything to me.

Where are we going? Home.

Boundary and his husband hadn’t deserved this to happen to their home—for revenge to come slamming down around them. Where had Villy gone, anyways? Had someone mentioned a late night market? He and the boy—the formerly nameless boy that Emilia had never thought she’d see again—gone out? Had they managed to escape the oppression of that asshole’s energy assault?

⸂Oh please, it’s not like I killed anyone.⸃

Emilia blinked up at the man who just kept showing up. Sometimes when he was needed, other times, things would have been fine without him there. Now was probably one of those times.

⸂Ah~⸃ Conrad cooed, smiling lazily down at her, teeth sparkling white in the dim light. ⸂Does that mean y’want me t’go without ya, Emilia?⸃

✮ ✮ ✮ An Hour or So Earlier ✮ ✮ ✮

A little body clambered onto Emilia. Not onto her bed, onto her physically, their palms and knees and elbows digging painfully into her. It wasn’t exactly the best time to be used as a jungle gym, what with her body still aching on and off from Jerrina’s attacks—seriously, that gift had been fucking nasty. She couldn’t even fault the Enclave for killing the woman. Actually, if they’d let her live and risked that gift being used on them, then she probably would have judged them.

⸂Apologies, he wanted to see you again.⸃

Emilia bolted out of the dream that had been trying to tug her back under, away from the pain clinging to her body. She’d gotten so used to children being handsy with her over the past week—had it been more than a week?—that she hadn’t even clued in that, as far as she’d known until a moment earlier, only she and Boundary were in his house.

The man leaning against the door frame of her temporary door was definitely not Boundary, but he did look slightly familiar. Emilia’s mind raced, trying to pull up memories of every local she’d met since arriving in this world. Faced blurred and stacked, but thankfully, she’d met this man recently: he was one of the guards she’d knocked out during their escape from the Risen Guard complex.

The one who had been guarding the door to the labyrinth.

⸂Villy?⸃

The man smiled and nodded. ⸂That was quite the technique you used on me,⸃ he laughed, eyes flickering over her—assessing—before he pushed himself off the door frame and came to sit beside her. ⸂I was out for almost an hour! Really freaked Boundary out.⸃

“⸂Boundary is your…?⸃” Emilia trailed off, partially because she was using both her voice and aethervoice to speak again, partially because she didn’t want to make assumptions.

⸂Husband,⸃ Villy supplied, lips twitching in amusement when—despite her best efforts to tamp her thoughts down—a collection of recollections of inappropriate thoughts she had had about Boundary spiralled out of her. ⸂He is quite a dish, isn’t he?⸃

Was death an option? It felt like it should be an option. Next raid she was joining, there would be an instant death escape skill—or, more sensibly, a way to log out at will.

Abruptly, Emilia remembered the child sitting quietly in her lap, head tucked into her chest. None of this was appropriate for his little ears, or er… whatever people used to hear aethervoices?

⸂We have a special organ behind our jaw, near our ears,⸃ Villy explained because he was apparently infinitely nicer and more open to conversation and questions than his husband.

⸂I heard that,⸃ came Boundary’s annoyed voice from wherever he had gone off to while she slept. ⸂To make dinner.⸃

Emilia contemplated the image of Boundary cooking for a moment. He’d been wearing normal clothes before her nap, the dark red sweater highlighting the hidden red of his hair. Had he changed, or just pulled up his sleeves?

Glancing at Villy, taking in his own oversized, dark red sweater…

⸂I always liked wearing Olivier’s clothes, too.⸃

⸂Your husband?⸃

Emilia almost laughed. Laughing would have been better than the stream of disparaging remarks that leaked out of her.

Ya, right.

He didn’t—doesn’t—like me like that.

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He had his chance, he didn’t take it.

I wish.

How would my life be different if things had worked out between us?

Sighing, Emilia explained in broad strokes the way relationships in her world were more diverse. Villy nodded, seeming to take in all the information with more severity than it deserved.

⸂All knowledge is important,⸃ the man replied, shrugging and leaning forward to poke at the blob of child in her arms.

The boy peeked up, and where Emilia might have been expecting to find an oddly friendly but unknown child, willing to hug the stranger who had taken over a room in their house, she instead found a pair of eyes she recognized.

The little nameless boy, who none of the Livery children had recognized. Given Astra’s newly revealed identity as a visitor, Emilia eyes him up someone suspiciously.

⸂Oh, the other child was a visitor?⸃ Villy asked at the same time his eavesdropping husband hissed ⸂What!?⸃ into the room.

Emilia… hadn’t meant to reveal that. Damn local tongue, turning every internal thought that wasn’t a fucking image into words that everyone in the general vicinity could hear.

Villy seemed unconcerned, telling her there wasn’t much they could do to Astra, since she was lost to the wind. At the very least, Conrad and the kids hadn’t been caught by the Risen Guard after their hopefully successful escape from Clarity.

⸂We’re also sure this boy is a local—they found a doctor in Livery who knew him.⸃ He reached forward, pulling the boy up and gently nudging his head to the side. Under each of his ears were tiny scars. ⸂He was born without the organs I spoke of and can’t hear. His parents went to some charlatan in another city, who claimed they could fix him.⸃

⸂There’s nothing to fix,⸃ Emilia growled, her hands beginning to naturally sign as the reality that the boy couldn’t hear her, even now that she could speak the local tongue, settled into her. All that effort—not to mention a healthy dose of stupidity and possibly the influence of the labyrinth—to gain the ability to speak directly with locals, and here she was, still using sign language to communicate with one.

Villy’s mouth fell open, his eyes flicking between hers. He seemed to be looking for something there—something he apparently found, mouth pulling into a bright smile. ⸂I don’t think there’s anything to fix, either.⸃ He leaned back, letting the boy return to snuggling himself into Emilia’s chest.

⸂So, he can’t hear or speak?⸃

⸂He could perhaps learn to speak; however, it would be difficult without being able to hear any advice on how to do so. We will look into getting him access to the Risen Guard system early, so we can teach him to read. There is nothing like your⸃—he motioned with his hands and Emilia supplied the word—⸂sign language here, but we may look into devising one. Boundary has already begun experimenting. It’s rather cute.⸃ The last bit came out exclusively for her, followed by a wink.

⸂We?⸃

The man’s eyes crinkled when his smile deepened. They weren’t deep wrinkles, and Emilia wondered if they’d become like her own mother’s in the years to come—in the years he would be a parent to this little boy. Wrinkles deepening under the oppressive smiles and love of parenthood, of watching your child be happy and miserable, of watching them try their best to get away with the most insane shit—and even sometimes letting them—of watching them love and fuck up and keep going, knowing you’re there behind them, always.

⸂Adoption isn’t exactly common here, but Boundary and the boy bonded… very quickly,⸃ Villy said, when he’d stopped blubbering over her reminiscing about her own mother’s wrinkles, his hands reaching up to finger his own lines.

Emilia snorted, the sound amusingly only coming through as a physical sound. Apparently, since she hadn’t actually thought the sound, only made it on instinct, it didn’t come out as an echo through her aethervoice. Fascinating, especially considering how often her mind was dragged to such sounds when locals made them.

⸂Fast indeed. It’s been, what? Three? Four days?⸃ Boundary had been rather reluctant to tell her how long she’d been slipping in and out of consciousness for, since the mission to the Ingogia estate.

⸂Something like that,⸃ Villy laughed, ignoring the way Boundary called from the kitchen that it had not been that fast. ⸂And no, I don’t think he was bringing the boy back to you the night you left, even if you hadn’t vanished,⸃ he added, answering Emilia’s accidental musings about what the man would have done with the child he grew so immediately attached to, had she not run off.

Hesitantly, Emilia asked about the boy’s parents.

Apparently, even if they had wanted him back—which apparently they didn’t—the Risen Guard wouldn’t have returned him. Taking your child for an experimental medical procedure—which was already heavily monitored and restricted due to the blood curse—was bad enough, but they had also proceeded to hide the boy away for most of his life. The doctor had only known of him because he had gotten extremely sick earlier that year and his parents had been forced to bring him in; if the boy had died, they would have had a dead body to deal with, and even under the corrupt overseer, they probably wouldn’t have gotten away with letting their child die from a common childhood illness.

That was as far as the overseers' kindness went, however.

⸂The doctor knew something was wrong, but without an overseer who would actually do something…⸃

⸂He could report it, knowing nothing would be done, at most.⸃

⸂Exactly,⸃ Villy agreed, his face no longer happy or smiling at the idea of a life with his new child, but gazing sadly upon the little boy, who was lightly dozing in Emilia’s arms. He continued watching the boy—his son—as Emilia’s mind rambled about corruption in the Free Colonies.

⸂Like, we knew some of the Free Colonies were terrible at running their colonies, right?⸃ she said, after she had finally given up on suppressing her thoughts and decided to just tell the story her brain wanted to reminisce on. ⸂But no one really expected it to affect how soldiers behaved, in relation to the chain of command. Stupid, I know. You can remove the person from their environment, but their brain still exists in that place—their memories still chase them and force their decisions one way or another. Things were such a mess at the beginning of the war, though, and—⸃

Emilia shook herself, trying not to think of those first few years. The last years of the war might have been the deadliest, the monsters of war powerful and nigh unkillable to the average soldier, but the first years had been filled with so much disorganization. The deaths in those first years had been due to stupidity more than anything else, and that alone made them more frustrating, especially when some of the assholes who had mismanaged and mangled operations were now considered war heroes, as though their later, minor contributions to the war could wipe out their earlier fuck-ups.

The government needed heroes, though, and with so many of its true heroes broken or unwilling to be public figures, they were left with what scraps they could find.

⸂Anyways, what I was trying to say, was there were a lot of Free Coloniers who didn’t trust the higher ups. Originally, we assumed it was because the brass and unit leaders were mostly Baalphorians, but eventually, we realized it was because they didn’t trust any authority figure to do anything—or do the right thing, or even know they should be doing something. Not sure which is worse, honestly. Incompetence, probably.⸃

⸂Definitely incompetence.⸃

She and Villy looked to the doorway, where Boundary was suddenly standing with a platter of food.

⸂I ran out of food for him,⸃ he said, weight shifting nervously from side to side. It really didn’t suit the usually quiet and confident man.

Villy sighed, muttering about how he was feeding their son too much, Boundary muttering back that he was too skinny, and he wasn’t about to deny him food.

Shaking his head, Villy lifted his son off Emilia, the boy’s eyes fluttering open. ⸂Let’s go get your silly daddy more ingredients for your food, shall we?⸃ he asked, and Emilia wondered if the boy could feel his words, the way she had been able to feel the occasional rustle of conversation even before she could hear locals. ⸂Perhaps,⸃ Villy agreed, bending over, so Emilia could plant a kiss on the boy’s cheek, ⸂we may be able to test it one day—feel out his energy while we talk, and see if it shifts with our words—but in the meantime, I just like talking to him.⸃

He looked resolute when he told her they would be continuing to figure out a better way to communicate, regardless. Emilia was glad of that, having spent her childhood watching several caregivers and parents try to force the most convenient—for them—mode of communication onto the children within their care.

Emilia waved goodbye as they left, the boy waving over his new father’s shoulder, Boundary waving adorably to him in return and telling them not to go farther than the night market, a wisp of worry sliding into his expression. Seriously, how could he not be worried, what with all the murderous visitors running around? Not to mention the crazy Enclave families who were willing to kill anyone for their goals.

⸂Did you give him a name?⸃ Emilia asked when Boundary snapped out of whatever worries had been consuming him, and he placed the platter of questionable looking food next to her.

The man’s hands paused before he straightened. ⸂Yes.⸃ He turned to leave as Emilia gaped at his back, throwing all the insults she could about his stupid refusal to answer half her questions at his back.

⸂Ridiculous man,⸃ she muttered, chastising herself for not asking Villy before he left as she glowered at her food.

Boundary was gone, the door closed behind him, when his voice slid through her, soft and shaking, and she wondered if he just hadn’t been able to tell her straight to her face. ⸂His name is Emile, after the person who brought him to us.⸃

Emilia glared harder at her food, blinking back tears threatening her eyes. The last thing she needed was her sobs echoing out into the whole damn neighbourhood. ⸂Stupid.⸃

⸂I know.⸃