The office of the Junior Fight Promoter is never closed, not anymore. Jolie keeps it propped open with a brick from a wall that was blown out in a barfight at the noodle shop across the street from the M, and it’s only thanks to her peculiar breed of nostalgia that I slip inside with the occupants none the wiser.
Not that I needed the help. Bright autumn morning, frost and sunlight clings to the waking city beyond the vast windows. Reflected sunrays splay above the four people roped into an argument around the grand wooden desk that’s more of a throne than the one Mars never sits in. Away from the stream cams, you’d never suspect the twin siblings and bickering old men in this room hold all the power to decide the fate of our Section. The mood couldn’t be more casual.
Jolie, as always, lounges in her high-backed chair. Greggus Rebun, soon-retiring General Manager and golden-tongued shoutcaster of Mars’ era, keeps his thick arms crossed while he wanders through a vast holoprojection that slowly rotates above the office’s white metal floor. A short, gnarled old stick of a man with sharp silver hair lounges on the plush couches in simple grey sweatpants half a century out of style, stroking his moustache and making sure to grunt his disagreement every so often. And sitting on the corner of the desk holding a battered training rapier in his hands, the brother, father, son and hero who ties them all together watches the city outside with an idle gaze. Thumbing over the decades-old stunning edge, trying his hardest to not look as distracted as he so obviously is. It isn’t working.
And the hidden fifth? She sees me slip inside from her much smaller post beside the door, sees the amount of paperwork tucked beneath my arm, and very slowly scoots over to make room. I linger for a moment at her side.
Sixteen now, as ever, Cal is still my equal in mind if not in height. The older we grow, the more pronounced the dissimilarities between us have become. My drive to please, her rebellious rejection of responsibility. My charisma, her wit. Always content to lurk in my shadow, never feeling the hunger to reach for more as I so often do. Even our colors have started to diverge. The darkness of our hair, the molten cracks within our irises. Which is how I already know how she’ll reply to what I have to say. I still try anyways, catching her eye during a lull in the discussion.
“You’ll have to meet Tetsuka sometime. There’s no better chance than tonight,” I murmur. “She’s not scary. You’d get along well with her.”
Cal answers by picking at a damascene bangle she slips off her wrist, lazily turning it in the light. Half-lidded eyes inspect the black metal like it holds some hidden inscription. “I’m sure I would. She sounds great.”
“…Cal.”
“Hm.”
“I’m serious.”
“I am too,” she drawls, swinging the bracelet on a loop around her finger. “I appreciate the concern, Thane. But you’re my brother. Not my mom.” She tips her head towards the rest of the office. “Champ’s been waiting for you for half an hour. Go help him out, dude.”
“It’d be rude when they’re arguing.” I watch her spin the bangle again. “Still playing with that old thing?”
“You should try to sound a little less fatalistic about my chances of cracking it, considering how hard you begged Jojo to give it to me.”
“Begged is a crass way of phrasing signed a materiel requisition,” I sigh. I steal it from her fingers between blinks, checking out the metal for myself. “What do you think it does?”
“Beats me. Not like the Creators left notes on these things.”
“You’d be the first in a thousand years to turn a dead one on.”
She smiles faintly at that. “Well. It’s about time someone did, yeah?”
Passing the bracelet back, I work my way around the perimeter of Jolie’s office. Past the bookcases of technical tomes and legal codes and last-century romance novels, past the gifted mementos and memoirs from faraway Sections, past the meticulous arrangements of potted plants and rigid clipboards. Finally noticing my arrival, Mars glances away from the window and carefully leans that training rapier back against the desk. When he rises, even Rebun quiets out of habit. Despite his gentility, there’s a gravity when Mars moves, like watching a lion finally deign to stir from its repose.
How many people look at the man as I do and see nothing but a hero? A peg on which to hang every one of their hopes and dreams? I stand among the few he allows to see the weary human beneath the legend. Mars may be taller, broader, more laconic and brutal from his years on the throne, but he’s also more tired, and not in a way that any rest can repair. An entire year he spent selflessly aiding our allies in the western Sections, holding the line against the massacres and uprisings funded by the last of the Shimano clan, yet not a month has passed since his return before the responsibilities of rule have buried him once more- as they have time and time again.
Even now he dreams only of abdicating this life, this room, this tower and this city. I see it in his wistful gaze. The jaded sadness of the older man on the couch, knowing his successor suffers so in silence. Mars has never craved power. If the world were different, he would have left to live on that farm in the east long ago. But that is not the world we were given. And that’s what truly makes him the most dangerous of his peers. Not his strength, nor cunning, nor skill; but his selflessness. He wants only to return to his daughter at the edge of the world. Yet until it is safe to do so, he will do whatever it takes to make that day come, because someone must.
Mars buries his sorrow in a heartbeat as he stands, flashing me a smile like he doesn’t carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Perfect. My distraction.”
I bow low in traditional village style as I deposit my paperwork on Jolie’s desk. She waves for Rebun to quiet. “What is this, Thane?”
“Last month’s counterespionage report from the Vents, ma’am.”
“Don’t ma’am me ever again, please. We’re both too old for it.” Reaching forward, she thumbs through the pages with practiced ease. “See anything new down there?”
I spare a glance at the old man who watches me from behind, ignoring the hair-raising intensity of his attention. “Less activism by local vigilantes, and Dynasty has been entirely forced back inside the Orange.” I raise out of my bow and look to Mars, playing out the formality. “You summoned me?”
“You summoned him,” Jolie echoes as she reads, half-question half-accusation.
“I summoned him,” Mars replies with a roll of his eyes, watching his sister flip through the report. “Don’t tell me you forgot, Jojo.”
“Forgot what?” Rebun asks.
Jolie arches her eyebrows. “That it’s the first day of fall, sir. Tetsuka’s birthday.” She snorts quietly and drops the report; dull slap as it hits her desk. Looks up with a sparkle in her eye and a faint smile on her lips. “Did you think I had my bike refueled this morning for nothing?”
Mars raises a finger, opens his mouth, pauses to pick his next words, and closes his mouth. He claps one scarred hand on my shoulder and the other on Rebun’s suited back. “It’s her seventeenth. I need to see her before we leave for Section Z. Can you cover for me?”
Rebun’s lips purse. “You got that big sendoff match tomorrow with Winter…”
“She already knows.”
“And Gami on the weekend?”
He sighs. “That’s the bigger issue. I need you to hold him off until we’re back from the front lines.”
“He’s rank three now, Mars. Fight all the Shimanos you have to, I can’t stall one of our leaguers forever without it getting illegal pretty damn quick.” Still, the bald man fingers his chin in thought. Unquestioningly preparing to bend every rule in the book for the sake of a man who made his name breaking them.
“I’ll do what I can,” Rebun finally says. “No promises though.”
“What you can is all I need.”
The heavier man nods approvingly. “And tell that little rascal I have a qualifier match waiting with her name on it, when she’s ready.” His bulldog jowls tip towards me, shoutcaster’s smile quickly forming. “Still gotta clear out some room for you in the major leagues, son. Haha!”
I meet his humor with an appreciative dip of my head. “I’ll be taking my time, sir. But thank you.”
Mars glances at Jolie as she scoops her JOY off her desk, headed for the door. “What’s with the rush?”
“You want to race, don’t you?”
“Maybe,” he admits. “What for this time?” he asks. “Pride?”
“Pick something better.”
“Pride and… frozen drinks.”
She’s past Cal and out the door a moment later. Rebun explodes into laughter and slaps Mars on the back so hard he almost goes stumbling, then makes to follow her out. “Only you can get Jojo out of her desk like that, man. Take your time with your girl, and bash some Shimano circuitheads for me. I’ll hold things down till you two get back.”
“I’m counting on it,” my Champion says, before turning back to me. “Ready?”
I nod.
“Good.” Fishing his JOY out of his pocket, Mars slings it to me with a wink. “You’re driving this time.”
-
I’ll admit, I’ve been practicing with Jolie to prepare for this day. I didn’t think it’d happen so soon, though. Nor be so simple.
Driving a machine that pilots itself is perhaps the easiest challenge I’ve faced this year. Eight hours straight, give or take, till we finally see the last seaside mountain on the horizon and I know we’re almost home. The harder part is talking with Mars. Sometimes it feels like he sees right through me, no matter how closely I keep my cards to my chest. Today his mind is elsewhere. Nearer to the storms that lurk beyond the horizon. I’m glad for it.
Jolie’s autobike is still cooling in the last rays of sunset when we arrive. Autumn has already taken hold on the idle countryside that surrounds the estate. Low white walls crawl with red vines and tall, dark grasses meander through cracks in the road. An endless sea of golden rice surrounds the house for miles upon miles, rustling with a sound like ocean waves. As I pull myself out of the car, my heartbeat rises in wordless excitement as the wind that stirs the fields suddenly changes direction, as if the world itself has finally noticed my arrival. My heart sings in tune with the rising gale. Joyous, overflowing energy suffusing the air so richly that my exhaustion peels away like wet clothes. Mars feels it too, smiling as the breeze caresses his crimson mane.
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I see her then.
Standing on the wooden porch at sunset, the paper door slid open, her aunt watching her from behind with a loving gaze. Draped in simple summer silk. Hair like white gold and raw silver, twined in a tail of petals that wreathes her shoulders. Eyes a ruby red as deep as blood. Skin glowing with an internal light, burning with love overflowing. Beautiful like a virtuoso’s song, a lover’s dance, the kiss of the wind on a blazing day.
Her eyes tighten, watering, and a smile splits her face.
Tetsuka crashes into me with the force of a storm, throwing her arms around my neck. We kiss once, hard. Her hair cocoons us and her scent takes over; salt and sun. I hold her tight around the waist, silhouetted by the setting sun, until a change ripples in the wind. She pulls away with a final look and dives into her father’s embrace next.
Mars clutches her close, brushing a careful hand over her hair. “Hey, butterball.”
She buries her face in his chest. “Missed you, Dad.”
And one by one, he sheds his burdens beneath the unfaltering force of her love.
-
That night, we gather in the kitchen for drinks while Jolie and I handle the cooking. Tetsuka’s favorite dish- cutlet curry- bubbles on the old-fashioned stovetop, filling the estate with a rich aroma of ginger and spice. Warm firelight crackles in the hearth. Laughter and quick smiles fire back and forth over the counters as Mars grills her over her latest tournament performances.
“… hey hey, don’t give me that look. They might not be able to tell, but I know you’re slacking.”
“Mah, not slacking exactly,” Tetsuka drawls, voice mature and moody, dipping in and out of village slang as she pleases. I’ve never loved a voice like I do hers. “I just don’t like beating them too hard. Thane gets it.”
I snort quietly. “I don’t hold back.”
Jolie reaches over from her pot and pinches my nose without looking.
“…usually, at least.”
Tetsuka’s eyes dance as she watches me, curling a hand under her chin. “So what gives, Dad? Thane didn’t tell me either you or Auntie were coming home.”
Mars scratches the back of his head. “Well…”
“It was supposed to be a surprise,” Jolie smoothly finishes. “Your father was going to meet you at the end of your tournament. Something else came up.”
“…But I’ll be here for a few days,” Mars adds. “We’re heading straight to Section Z after.”
“Z?” Tets’s eyes widen. “Can I go with you?”
“Not this time, Tetsuka. It’s dangerous.”
“You say that every time,” she grumbles.
Jolie coughs politely. “Because it is dangerous, honey. Not even Thane gets to go.” She dips her finger in the sauce I’ve been brewing; no reaction. “War is no place for children.”
Her skin pulses dangerously in response to the temper within her heart. We all feel the needling tension that begins prickling our skin. It’s no metaphor feeling. Tetsuka passively radiates so much aura these days that even without thinking, without trying to amplify that ki at all, it soaks the world around her to supersaturation. Like a living star that blasts her surroundings with endless fountains of invisible life energy.
Ordinarily, just standing around her is like a sauna, a long rest, a full meal, and a shot of stimulants all at once. Moments like these remind me how easily strength like hers could be put to cataclysmic purpose. If she ever snapped, power like this could melt us to slag in a heartbeat.
But she doesn’t. Frowning, five fingers tightening into a silent fist, she reigns it all back in. The glow fades. Mars places both larger hands over her one. Guiltily, I look away from the family of two and return to my task. Jolie nudges my shoulder, resting her glasses above the crown of her forehead. “You’ve been quiet.”
“A lot on my mind,” I murmur, stirring the sauce for the thousandth time. “Mars. Gami. War. School. This place.” My eyes trace the wooden rafters above. “Her.”
“When I was your age, I was just trying to keep my brother out of trouble.” She glances fondly over her shoulder, Mars and Tetsuka already onto another animated conversation. Never letting grief linger for long. “Some things never change.”
Her pocket rumbles quietly. Not the first time it’s happened tonight. Every time she grows a little more distant, looks around this quaint house a little more longingly. The darkness waiting outside these walls refuses to wait. We fight it off as long as we can with the fire. And when the fire burns low and our meal is nearly done, Mars pats me on the shoulder and slips a cold bottle into my free hand, having nabbed the spatula when I wasn’t looking. He passes it to Jolie without a second thought.
“Thane is going to help me get firewood. We’ll be back in a minute.”
“Thank you, Jolie,” I add.
I pass my apron to Tetsuka, who’s now idly sitting on the edge of the counter. She chucks it back over her head and into a basket in the nearby hall. “I can help.”
Jolie shakes her head. “Boys talk, dear.” She points the ladle towards the living room. “I have a gift for you, too. Could you fetch it?”
“…Sure,” she softly says. She hops off the counter, landing lightly on the wood. Squeezes my hand, kisses my cheek as she passes. Her voice rises to its usual volume when she rounds the corner. “Is it a new arm?”
Jolie’s voice fades as I slide the back door shut behind us. The porch creaks dark and quiet around me. Thatch shifts. In the dim light filtering through the house’s paper walls, I spy Mars already sitting on the low steps leading to the marble fighting square where I spent so many of my summers training with Tay. His powerful shoulders are hunched, chin held high, eyes on the full moon and cloudless night.
Faint, silvery moonlight paints the garden in cold tones. Rolling the bottle of liquor between my hands, I focus the pressure of my steps so I don’t make a sound as I cross the creaking boards and take a seat behind him. We sit like that for a moment. Wordless, he’s wrapped up in that moon, mind still wandering elsewhere. Another time, another year, maybe even just in the kitchen behind us, where Tetsuka gasps in delight at the new arm Jolie crafted for her. I pop the cap and wait, sipping quietly.
“You’re worried,” is the first thing he says.
I’m so taken aback by his simplicity that I can’t help but nod.
“How many birthdays have you two spent together, now?” Mars scratches at his stubble. “You should be just as happy as she is. But you’re brooding just as bad as I am.”
I take a long drink. “Was it that obvious?”
“You’re good, Thane. But you aren’t that good. Not yet.”
My lips twitch against the bottle. “Rousing praise, coming from my Champion.”
“And from the father of the girl you’re dating?”
“Yet another reminder how fortunate I am.”
“So what’s bugging you?”
“I could ask you the same thing, Mars.”
“But you’re not going to. And that’s an order,” he chuckles. “Spill.”
“I…”
My fingers drum lightly against the bottle. Black hair whispers past my face, longer these days. I brush it back. Finally realizing he’s been watching me the whole time. Those midnight blue eyes focused on me alone. So pure, raw, uncalculating in their honesty that they make every ounce of my being seem so false in comparison. The force of his expecting silence drags the rest out of me.
“I’m worried I’m going to become my father,” I finish, unable to keep meeting his gaze. My elbows come to rest on my knees as I lean forward. “The more I research him, the more I watch about his past, the more I wonder if I’m making the same mistakes he did. Chasing strength as if it were a compulsion, craving more challenges, letting logic rule me. Carra-”
“-is nothing like you, Thane.” Mars’ hand tightens around his drink. “Take it from someone who actually knows the guy. You may have his hair. And his eyes. And even his talent. But you also have something he never did.” Laughter echoes from the kitchen; we both pause to listen. “You have love, and that’s something he couldn’t even comprehend. It’s what will make you a better man than he ever could be.”
“Love.” I echo the word in a murmur. “Can I… ask you something?”
“Mhm?”
“Did love ever stop you from doing something you had to?”
He settles back against the steps, elbows on the deck. Eyes sinking to the marble our feet rest atop. Silent in thought, searching the tides deep within. “Sometimes I wish it had.”
I wait for him to continue.
“Every time I come home, I wish it had stopped me. I feel like a monster, seeing her all grown up and knowing just how little I’ve been here for. But it doesn’t keep me from leaving again. And somehow, that’s even worse.”
“That doesn’t make you a bad man, Mars.”
“Maybe. But it does make me a terrible father.” He shakes his head, gaze returning to the moonswept fields. “And now she’s already a woman of her own. Seventeen. My little girl. But she’s not even mine, really. So many of you have spent more time with her than I have.” Regret, not frustration, stains his voice. “She only wanted one thing, and I couldn’t let myself give it to her. I had to be a hero. The guy everyone counted on. Someone had to, right? Because so many people out there need something to believe in, Thane, and they need something that believes in them too. And if I’m not up there… it’s going to be someone else, and there’s no guarantee they’ll be the right one.”
We finish our bottles at the same time.
“Our world is cruel,” Mars continues. “If I’ve learned one thing in my life, it’s that good men are not supposed to win, and the bad ones usually do. That’s why I want to make sure the right person is coming after me. I knew when the old man gave me the laurel that I’d fight as long as I had to until I found that person. And lately, I’ve started to wonder if I have.” He lays a heavy, scarred hand on my knee. “Thane, I-”
The kitchen door slides open behind us. Golden light and a woman’s silhouette slashes between us. Mars closes his eyes, knowing the words that always come next. Someone, somewhere, needs him more.
For a moment I see the shadow of the boy he used to be, cast by the fading candle he has cradled so long within his heart. I see the pain it brings to betray that boy and his ideals yet again, knowing he has become the very thing he has always feared becoming most: a man of compromise. A man who will put the many above the few, who will forgo his own child to save a hundred more, and who knows he cannot stop himself from doing it again. It gnaws at him in a way no external accusation ever could.
Then the moment passes. His face settles. The grief is buried. And the mask of my Champion returns once more as he faces the light.
“It’s Crucible,” Jolie says, holding out a projection for him to read. “New weather patterns are erupting inside the interdiction zone. Our launch window is moving up.”
“To when?”
“As soon as we can make it to the Defiance,” she answers, casting an apologetic glance my way. “Mori’s already on her way for an airlift. Keep your tracker on and fly north. I’ll link up with you as soon as I have Tay’s arm calibrated.”
Mars looks back over his shoulder and raises a finger at me. “We’ll finish this later. Okay?”
Only I see the tears trickling from his daughter’s eyes, staining the table beneath her calloused palm.
-
Hand in hand, we sit out in the rice fields atop our favorite sunning rock amidst the grainy sea. Leaning on each other in the silvery night. The moon fills her eyes to the brim as she watches the lonely comet piercing the northward sky.
Off being a hero again.
“He’ll be back,” Tetsuka bravely says, as she always does.
I lean into her, and she into I. “He wanted to stay,” I say.
“I know.” A small, angry tremble runs from her body to mine. “But he didn’t.”
The wind embraces us for a long moment. Her hair drifts aimlessly around our shoulders, and she leans in harder, nestling between my arms. My fingers trace the sensitive skin of her missing side.
“Do you think this will ever end?” she asks the night. The glow beneath her skin fades like a dying candle. “I feel so… powerless. I’m so strong now. Stronger than ever before. But I can’t stop Dad from leaving, and I can’t stop worrying that you’re going to leave too, Thane.”
“I’m not leaving. We’ll always be together.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “And some day he’ll join us, too. I won’t stop until he does.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” I press my lips into her hair. “But I will make it so. I promise.”
Tay’s uncertainty persists. I feel it in the tension of her shoulders, in the way she leans against me, not wanting me to leave. She fears what the future will bring.
Men like her father were never meant to carry so much for so long. Mars fights so hard for the future that he can’t see the darkness rising in the present. Some day, I will lift the Champion’s burden from his shoulders and carry it myself, just as he hopes. But that day is so far distant. His throne will be taken from him by force before then. Whether by a beast like Gami or some other force, one day, the unfaltering hero will finally crack. His hope and stalling so I might take his place before then only makes his enemies more ravenous.
I’ve seen it coming for months. But war is all Mars has ever known. He doesn’t know how to put down the sword. He cannot see when the time has come to melt it into a plough. And when he tries, he is swept back into the tempest time and time again, doing what he always has because he always must. Because if he does not, then who will?
As we watch her father trail from a comet to a star to a dark spot in the sky, I finally understand the burden I must shoulder.
I just don’t know if I have the strength to see it through.