"Are you fucking kidding me?!" I finally snapped once we were away from Moldieki's lair and into the Crash proper, the thundering sound of rockfall almost cutting my voice short. "What the hell Victoria?"

"What?"

"Wanted by the Meritocracy to the point of extradition?" I hissed, "Just for being near you, you've got to be fucking kidding."

"They were already shooting at you," Victoria pointed out as if it would help.

"That's in the rim. Nobody fucking cares about what happens on the rim. I could have shot down one of their ships, and I wouldn't be wanted."

"Yes, you would. You're not even from Fotul. How wou-"

"Not on the list I'm fucking on. Do you think that was my first time shooting a Fotuan?" I snapped. Victoria recoiled.

Shit.

I took a deep breath; she didn't understand what was going on, but I wasn't going to fix it, or anything, by having her scared to speak up in the conversation. "There is a difference between acting as Merc in the rim and getting caught up on an extradition list," I explained, "the latter is essentially a death sentence."

"I know."

"I don't think you do. Do you know what I do for a living? Shit like this. I've spent my entire life since I was old enough to help Mom breaking the law, and I've never been on a list like that."

"Because you didn't get caught?"

"Because those lists are serious shit Victoria; it takes a lot to get put on one. In the whole fuckin' Galaxy, I'm one of their targets now."

"I know."

"No, you don't."

"I'm sorry."

"Not good enough."

"I'm on that fucking list too, okay?" Victoria finally snapped, breaking into a near sob halfway through. "Welcome to the club. I'm- I'm sorry-I…."

"What?"

"I'm on some list like that," Victoria repeated, "if they find me, or one of their allies finds me, I'm supposed to get taken back to Fotul an… and I don't know. I don't know what they want. I just know that I'm on it, and I'm sorry I didn't th-"

"Victoria."

"I didn't think I would care if you got caught up. You were supposed to just be a- You were suppose-"

Victoria trailed off and looked at the floor as the sound echoing from the mining operation crushed anything we could have said. I watched as she twiddled her thumb and tapped her foot, waiting for me to say something or for her to find better words so that she could continue. Cacophony reigned as we waited, both silent.

Fuck. She was just a lost kid. I was an idiot for shackling myself to it but-

No. I couldn't just let this go.

The sound of the offloading faded and was replaced by the distant grinding of machines. I walked across the pathway, leaning against the same railing as Victoria, joining her as opposed to accusing.

"You were just supposed to be some gun I hired to get me home but.." she swallowed, "I'm just sorry, Kingston. You can go talk to Moldieki about getting off the list and-" she could bring herself to fully dismiss me, I didn't know if it was just regular hesitation or if it was fear.

"What'd you do?" I asked.

"What?"

"What did you do? Why are you on the list?"

"Doesn't matter, does it?"

"I wouldn't be asking if it didn't matter," I pointed out as the rational part of me sighed, "what happened? Why do you want to go back if they're the whole problem?"

"I don't know where else to go," she admitted, "I don't know anything about being out here. I'd never been off Fotul and- and now I'm just here in the middle of the rim, shooting people, and I just want to go home."

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"But you can't Vic."

"Mom could protect me."

"Mom?"

"She's an ambassador, and maybe I…" she shook her head, "why are you asking? Let's just get this solved for you, and then we can both move on. Yo- I- I'll figure something out."

"Victora," I sighed. She was presenting the smart course of action. As much as I'd stifled myself from most of the outburst, I hadn't been overselling it. Getting onto an extradition list essentially banned you from the core worlds and colonies. The Fotuans had few allies, but all they needed was one member of law enforcement in the area, and I'd get shipped off.

At the same time.. I'd known the Hunters were after her when I'd doubled down on Mythellion. She was expecting me to walk away now, and maybe I should have been, but that wasn't happening today.

I would have said never, but we'd seen how that went before.

"Victoria," I repeated too softly for our surroundings; somehow she still perked up at the mention of her name. "I am going to need to talk to Moldieki, but-" I sighed again. "'What's the full story?"

God Dammit Kingston.

"I don't think it helps you to know."

"It's hard to get more fucked than we currently are," I pointed out. If the Universe was kind, that wouldn't be some sort of sick prediction.

"I do-"

"Victoria," I stared at her in a way that forced her to meet my eyes. For the first time since I'd met her, her eyes were a cold ice colour as opposed to their usual passive silver.

Victoria opened and closed her mouth several times before actually speaking. "All I did was run away."

"The-"

"Let me finish," she cut in, but as soon as she did, the cacophony of the Crash came back in to force us to exist in enforced silence.

She'd run away? That was it? I knew the Fotuans ran a tight ship, but even abandoning colony military service for human planets was essentially a slap on the wrist, and they were considered hard asses. Frankly, chasing someone across the Galaxy was rarely worth it, and somehow she'd racked that up by walking away.

Well, that and she'd become so toxic that helping her put you on the same level.

"I ran away, which is bad enough but-" she cut herself off by sighing again and lost momentum, putting her head into her hands before running them through her silver-black hair. Stress at least looked the same between our species. "I ran away and, I don't know how to describe it for human terms but-"

I nodded instead of offering commentary.

"The Meritocracy is different from a lot of other species, everyone needs to do their part, and your position is entirely dependent on how much you contribute, alongside how well you do it."

That sounded like propaganda she'd been fed.

"I am- I was, an exception to that. There aren't many but I was chosen to do a lot for the Meritocracy and- and I ran away from all of that."

I gave her a second to continue before speaking up, "Like?"

"Just a lot of wasted money and time in their eyes I guess. I was getting built up to be a weapon for the Meritocracy but-" she let her hands flop down to her side as if to say 'and instead, 'this."

"So you just didn't want that?" I asked.

"That's not how we work. Running away was a slight and- I just- I thought that maybe if I got back into the border and could plead my place that I could go back to it."

"Do you want to go back to it?"

"No. Fuck the Meritocracy," she hissed, "fuck the whole thing they put me through but- I'd been out here alone for a long time Kingston."

I didn't want to ask how long that was; she didn't need a lecture on how the galaxy was a dangerous place.

"I burned that bridge and I just don't know where to go except to try and cross that river without it," she explained, "so here I fucking am, getting the one person who's given a shit since I left into as deep shit as me." She swallowed again, "you can forget that last part."

"Did you blow something up on the way out?" I asked.

"No," she said.

"Leaving was burning the bridge?"

"Trying to get other people to leave was burning the bridge," she corrected, "I'm not the only 'investment' they've made and-"

"What do you mean by investment?"

"Doesn't matter, I'm half baked," she pointed out.

"So nothing."

"It's not nothing," she corrected, "just nothing worth writing- well, writing anywhere about, I suppose."

"But-"

"Kingston, do me a favour and read my lips."

I took my eyes away from hers and focused on her lips. Admittedly I had almost blurred them out of my mind over time like I did in most alien conversations. Trying to match their mouth movements to what the translator told you was just asking for a headache.

"And now I'm going to point out that I've been using a lot of turns of phrase in this conversation, which I shoul-"

She stopped speaking once she realized I'd got it. The bitch was speaking god-damned English without a translator. "What the he-"

"I was supposed to be an investment in ways to work against human interests in the Galaxy," she explained, "there was a lot more I was supposed to learn, but I was modified so I could speak more than one language and…. A lot of other things that we don't need to get into."

"So the reason they're so keen on taking you in is-"

"Because I'm supposed to be part of wartime preparations in case things got bad," she continued, almost matching what I was going to suggest, "I can't be out here, and that's probably why you're on the list too, considering you're a human. Must be more worrying for them. Even though I wasn't planning on telling you shit. Considering I'd dropped the whole idea of running away before I met you."

"So the entire time we were on Ottinio with Musc, you could understand me?" I asked.

"That's what you're hung up on?"

I nodded.

"Yes, but I wasn't going to tell you that because I wasn't trying to tell you anything about any of this at ANY point, let alone back then."

"You say back then like it was so long ago."

"To quote you, 'getting shot at is great for character development'."

I chuckled at that. There might have been a few choice things I'd said to Musc that could have gotten me in trouble, but it didn't seem to be the topic of the day. Instead, Victoria spoke up before the Crash cut us off again.

"What does this mean, Kingston?"

"I don't know," I admitted. I was still fucked and she was even more fucked than I was. Figuring out why hadn't made things better, it had just made things clear, "but let's get to solving problems."

"Which one first?"

"I hadn't gotten that far yet."