by R. M. Olson
“Well. You and your brother need to get to bed. Come on,” said Ysbel, opening the door to the children’s adjoining room. “In you go, and change into your pyjamas, please. I’ll come in in a minute to tuck you in.”
Tanya lifted a drowsing Misko down from her hip and pushed him gently forward after Olya. “Go on then,” she said.
“I want mama to put me to bed!” Misko proclaimed sleepily.
“I will come put you to bed, I promise,” said Ysbel. “But you need to get changed.”
He nodded, and Tanya gently closed the door. When she looked up, she was watching Ysbel, and there was a soft look on her face.
“They love you, you know,” she said quietly. “They’ve always loved you—I told them about you every single day we were in prison. But now—” Her smile widened, and her eyes were slightly misty. “Now they are getting to know you. Not like some hero they tell stories about. Like a mother.”
Ysbel’s eyes were misty as well, and she leaned over to kiss her wife. “I suppose that’s why they act like little monsters when I try to get them to behave?” she grumbled.
Tanya chuckled. “Honestly, Ysi, it is. They’re not trying to impress you anymore. Because they know they don’t have to. They know you’ll love them no matter what they do.”
Ysbel swallowed down a lump in her throat and blinked back tears. “I do, you know.”
“I know that. And they know it too, now.”
Ysbel sighed, and put her arm around Tanya, holding her tight and leaning her head against her wife’s. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting herself relax against Tanya’s shoulder, feeling Tanya lean into her.
“Mama! Mama, we’re ready!”
“Mama, Misko pushed me! I was ready first, but he pushed me and he grabbed my nightshirt away!”
“I did not! Mama, Olya’s lying!”
Ysbel sighed and grimaced, but she was smiling despite herself. “I’m coming,” she called. “And Misko, if you pushed your sister, you’re going to have to tell her you’re sorry.”
She cast a rueful glance at Tanya. “I’m sorry. I’ll be back when they’re in bed.”
Tanya smiled up at her, and even though they were both older now, and even though so much had happened and so much time had passed, her smile was the same smile that Ysbel had fallen in love with so many years before. “I’ll be waiting for you,” she said softly.
And Ysbel turned away quickly to hide the sudden tears in her eyes.
Because perhaps that was what love was all about, really, if you came down to it. They could have their fights and their disagreements, and Ysbel could try and fail and try again to be the kind of wife that Tanya needed, and Tanya could get angry and frustrated and stressed, and the children could fight and cry, but at the end, when the dust had settled, they’d be there. Waiting for each other. Loving each other, no matter what happened.
She cleared her throat and pulled the door to the children’s room open. “Alright you two, what’s going on?”
But she couldn’t make her voice harsh, even if she’d wanted to.
Lev paused a moment, running his fingers through his hair. He grimaced at the wall at the end of the corridor.
When had he become the kind of person who paced?
He was going to turn into Jez sooner or later, the way things were going.
At any rate, he couldn’t seem to sit still, not with the thoughts chasing each other through his head.
They’d won. At least, they’d done what they’d set out to do. But—
He turned, and paced back down the corridor.
There was that kid Jez had brought back. There were people in the pleasure houses tonight who wouldn’t live to see the morning. Yes, they’d won, but there was a bitter aftertaste to the victory.
And Masha.
He shook his head in frustration. He should have thought of this. He should have seen the path she was leading them down, but he’d been fully occupied in trying to keep them alive.
Which was, of course, exactly what Masha had counted on.
They were with her again, for another mission, the end goal of which he had no real idea. But they’d do it anyways, because what choice did they have?
He paused in front of the door to the conference room. Really, he should be trying to get some sleep, but he wasn’t going to sleep tonight, he could already tell. He might as well do some research, get them prepared for whatever Masha was dragging them into next.
He’d pushed the door open and stepped inside before he noticed Jez. She was laying back on the couch, her head tipped back, eyes closed, and for a moment he almost tiptoed back out of the room, leaving her to sleep.
Then he noticed her hands, clenching and unclenching restlessly, the way they did when things were too much for her to handle, the stiffness in her posture, the way her face twitched slightly, as if she was in pain and trying to hide it.
He paused a moment, then stepped quietly out the door.
He made his way down the stairway to the darkened lobby, and over to the doors that led into Jez’s makeshift gambling hall. He tapped the light on his com, and by its dim glow, he sorted through the bottles behind the bar until he found the one he was looking for. Then he turned and stepped back out into the lobby, and almost bumped into Masha.
“Hello Lev,” she said quietly.
“Masha.” He kept his voice cold.
There was a moment of silence. At last she gestured down at the bottle in his hand, a question on her face.
“Jez,” he said shortly.
She nodded, and for a moment they stood there, neither meeting the other’s eye.
He took a deep breath and turned to go, but her voice stopped him.
“Lev.” She paused, and there was something in her tone that made him turn back. “Lev. Is Jez—is she alright?”
He frowned.
Masha’s face was shrouded in shadow in the darkened room, but there had been a note of something in her voice, almost desperation.
“She’s—I think she’s alright. I don’t know. I’m going up to check on her now,” he said at last. He hadn’t meant to say it, he’d meant to say something sharp and cutting, but somehow he hadn’t been able to bring himself to.
“Thank you,” said Masha, softly.
He looked at her for a long time. Then, at last, he turned back to the stairwell.
He tapped at the door of the conference room this time, and when he pushed it open, Jez had raised her head.
“Hey genius,” she said dully.
“Hey, Jez,” he said. He came over and sat beside her, and handed her the bottle wordlessly.
She looked at it, then back at him.
“You looked like you might need it,” he said, smiling despite himself at the look on her face. “I brought it in case you wanted to get drunk. Or—” He looked at the ceiling, as if trying to remember something. “Or, what did you say last time? We could both get drunk and have sex, that might help?”
She stared at him for a moment, then finally broke into a weak chuckle.
He grinned back at her.
“Thanks,” she said at last. She pulled the top off the bottle with her teeth, and Lev coughed, blinking back tears at the sharp sting of alcohol wafting from the bottle.
She glanced over at him and rolled her eyes, then put the bottle to her lips and tipped her head back.
He leaned back against the couch, but a few moments later she lowered the bottle and, after a moment’s hesitation, replaced the cap, placing it on the ground beside her.
He gave her a questioning look.
She managed a small smile. “Guess I don’t feel like getting drunk as much as I thought I would.”
He gave a small shrug. “That’s fair.”
For a few moments they sat in silence.
“Do you want me to leave you alone?” he asked at last, quietly. “I can go somewhere else if you want.”
“No.” She turned to him, something desperate in her face. “No,
please. I—” She closed her eyes for a moment, her whole posture slumping. “I mean—I mean, sure. You probably have plenty of stuff to do anyways.”
Her voice trembled slightly, and it made something inside him hurt.
“Jez,” he said, turning a little so he was facing her. “Look. I have no idea how to be a good friend, I know that. But I’m here for as long as you want me, OK?”
She looked up at him, blinking hard. “You—you don’t have to—” she started.
He shook his head and put up a hand to stop her. “I want to,” he said quietly. “Please. Like I said, I don’t know a whole lot about this, but I’m pretty sure that’s what friends do.”
She studied him for a long moment. Something tightened around his chest again, like it always did when he was looking into her eyes. But when at last her face relaxed and she dropped back against the the couch, close enough that their shoulders touched, her eyes closed in a sort of weary vulnerability—the tightness in his chest loosened just a little.
It hurt. It might never stop hurting, really. But Ysbel had been right about one thing, at least.
It was worth it.
It was worth whatever it cost, just for this. For him to be able to sit here next to her when she was hurting, and maybe make it a little better. For her to be able to lean against him when she was too weary to pretend anything, and trust that he’d just be there, nothing else. Just be there, for as long as she needed him.
“Genius?” she said after a few moments.
He turned towards her. “Yes, Jez?”
She’d opened her eyes, and was staring straight ahead. “You think any of this is worth it? In the end?” she asked in a low voice. “I mean—we do all this crap, but what difference does it make?” She stopped, swallowing hard. “Guess I’m just not sure what the point is anymore. I used to think it was pretty simple—we do crap to make things better. But turns out that’s all crap. We work so hard to do this, and what do we even change?” She turned to him, finally. “I—I guess I don’t know what the right thing is anymore. Guess I’ve always been kinda stupid.”
He reached out, and after a moment’s hesitation, rested his hand on her shoulder.
“Jez,” he said. “You were the one who trusted Masha, when none of the rest of us did. You talked me into telling her about Vitali, and it kept us all alive.”
“That’s what I mean, though,” she said, her voice dull. “I trusted her. I—I don’t know, maybe I still trust her. But … I saw her face in that room, Lev. She would have killed you. She would have shot you, if it came to that, and she wouldn’t even have thought about it twice.”
Jez’s words brought a spark of unease in the back of his brain.
Because she was right, he knew it deep down. Masha would have shot him. She wouldn’t have hesitated.
And yet—
“She didn’t, though,” he said. “She didn’t, and we all survived. And Jez—” He turned to her, face serious. “Somehow I doubt that Zhenya had a change of heart about Caz and Peti and the others.”
She frowned at him. “You mean—you mean, you think Masha—”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I think so.” He paused. “I don’t think we should tell Tae. I don’t know if he could handle it right now.”
Jez leaned back again with a faint chuckle. “Yeah. This has been kind of a lot, I think.”
“It has,” he said. “It’s been kind of a lot for all of us, I think.” He leaned back as well, so their shoulders were touching again, and there was something comforting in the warmth of her.
“You said you don’t know what the right thing is anymore,” he said finally. “I guess—well, I guess I never really did know. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot, since—well, since everything that happened on Grigory’s ship. I’d almost convinced myself that anything I did would be worth it, if I got what I wanted in the end.” He shifted, so he was looking at her. “But the thing is—I saw you. And you don’t believe that. There are things you won’t do no matter what, because they’re wrong. And—and I realized I’d never had that. A line I wouldn’t cross. I thought I had, but when things went wrong back in the university, I would have stepped over it and not thought twice. And since then I’ve been thinking about it, trying to figure out what’s the right thing and what’s the wrong thing, even in a place like this, that’s maybe the closest thing to hell I can think of.”
She sat up a little, turning towards him as well. “Yeah, genius? And what did you figure out?”
He smiled slightly. “I haven’t figured anything out, not really. But—but I think the difference is, when you have a choice between doing something kind, and just walking away, because it’s too much and nothing you do will make a difference anyway—you do the kind thing. When there’s something wrong, and someone’s getting hurt, and you can’t fix it, you do something anyways. Maybe that’s how people like Grigory win—because everyone knows no one can fix everything that’s wrong with the system, so you might as well just embrace it. But—but maybe that’s how things change, too. Enough people who won’t stop doing all those little, stupid, pointless things. Maybe that’s what changes everything, in the end.”
She was watching him, a frown creasing her forehead.
Finally she turned away. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “Yeah, I guess maybe you’re right.”
“It’s worth it, Jez,” he said, still watching her. “I think, in the end, it’s worth it. Because maybe you’re right. Maybe we don’t change much. But we change something. And maybe sometimes the people we trust aren’t trustworthy. But the thing is, maybe that’s better than just never trusting anyone. Better than just walking away because it seems hopeless. Better than just looking out for yourself, and screw everyone else.”
“Better than just being alone,” she said softly.
He gave her a small smile and leaned back next to her, and for a little while they sat in silence.
Finally, she turned her head to look at him. “For what it’s worth, genius,” she said softly. “I think you’re actually pretty damn good at this friend thing.”
Masha walked slowly up to her room, and closed the door behind her.
Lev wasn’t in his room yet—she’d watched him turn down the hallway in the other direction.
He was probably in talking to Jez.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
The look on Jez’s face when she’d seen Masha point her gun at Lev and pull the trigger.
She took a deep breath.
Just as well, really.
The same reason it was just as well she hadn’t told Tae about her bargain with Zhenya. She could have. It would have cemented his loyalty, or if not that, at least his guilt.
But it was better this way. Better that he didn’t trust her, that he believed she’d sell him out in a heartbeat if it advanced her agenda.
She wouldn’t let herself think the next thought.
That maybe, if they didn’t trust her, they’d be able to see through her plans and keep themselves alive.
Things were moving too quickly to stop now. Everything was falling into place. And this crew would get hurt. Possibly killed. There was no way around that, no matter how much she wished there was.
Maybe, if she’d known what she knew now, she’d have planned it differently, she’d have found a different way. But in those long, long years, while she smiled pleasantly and kept her head down and worked for the government that had killed her parents, and made her plans, planting the beginnings of the schemes that were just now beginning to bear fruit, she’d thought of the people she’d need for this as tools—no more, no less. Important, yes, but not more important than anyone else in the system. Just another life, in a system where lives were worth less than space-junk.
She sighed reluctantly.
Best get this over with before Lev came back.
She tapped her com. It buzzed for a few moments, and then a voice came through her earpiece.
“Masha.
Is that you?”
“Yes. I’m calling to let you know that I’ve done what I promised. Grigory is finished, and Olyessa as well. It’s time for you to start your part in all this.”
Her voice was steady and calm. She’d had years of practice keeping it that way, no matter what was happening around her.
“I’m impressed. Some of us thought you wouldn’t be able to pull it off.” There was a slight pause. “Everything went well, I assume? No additional complications we need to know about?”
For a moment, a picture of Zhenya flashed in her mind, the faint smile on their face as they watched her.
“I’ll watch your next move, Masha. I’ll watch. And I’ll tell you when I decide I’d like in.”
If anyone else knew about her bargain, they’d take precautions.
And Tae’s street-kid friends would die.
“No,” she said at last, in that same calm voice. “No complications to speak of. We can proceed as we’d planned.”
“Good. Then I will expect to see you soon.”
The com clicked off.
For a few moments Masha stood there, looking down at her com. Then, at last, she sank down onto her bed, jaw clenched tight, staring sightlessly ahead into the darkness of her room.
THE END
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