Notes: Well, this is by far the longest fic I've ever written. It's pretty much totally AU; the story line diverges from cannon before the major events in either the manga or the anime. The SEEDS ships do not crash. This story is set about 40-50 years after the colonists find and settle a habitable planet.

 

Thanks: Go out to Kanzeyori, Tiggy Malvern and Renet for betaing and generally talking me through the editing process. Thank you all so much!

 

 

 

 

 

How to Sleep Above the Sky

 

 

0.

 

There was a weight against his mind, something dark and smothering that made him want to shrink away. He could feel the goldwarm presence of his brother, trying to hide from that heaviness in his own cooler aura. The others he could sense were broadcasting distress, fear and anger and it was from one of them, that sickening feeling that he didn't recognize. It made him feel tainted and not like himself. The sounds they were making were loud and lightly distorted by glass and fluid.

 

"I don't care what your goals are, I will not have these monstrosities loose on my ship."

 

"But Sir, they are still plants. We can't just kill something that valuable."

 

"Fine. If you keep them contained and make them productive, I will allow your work to continue. But if you can't- or won't- I'll terminate your project and destroy those things myself."

 

"Yes, Sir."

 

The black feeling faded as one of them left. His brother's relief tickled his mind.

 

Quietly: "Rem will be devastated."

 

 

 

1.

 

Space sucked. It was cold, quiet, dark and either terrifying or monotonous but never anything in between. He'd been stuck in this tin can full of freaks for six months and he was already desperate to leave. Too bad his tour of duty as plant engineer was five years long. They didn't even need him. Legato Bluesummers, the captain, had been the plant engineer before his promotion and still insisted on taking care of the plants himself, leaving one Nicholas D. Wolfwood reduced to assistant electrician. Normally he'd have been happy for the chance to slack with impunity, but up here there was nothing to do but work, exercise and sleep. He supposed he could hang out with the other crew members, but space tended to attract loners and eccentrics and he swore the longer they stayed up here the more batshit crazy they got. Sometimes he thought he could go crazy pretty easily himself.

 

What the hell had he been thinking anyway? Sometimes, looking back, his whole life seemed like a string of bad choices. Of course the options he'd been presented with hadn't been that great, but somehow he invariably picked the worst of the lot.

 

No, that wasn't true. He could be down in the mines with all the kids he'd grown up with. Thank god that circuit teacher had gotten to him before he'd been old enough to start work. Thank god he'd placed so high on his aptitude tests. He really should have been a teacher himself, he loved kids. But for some reason he'd just kept taking engineering classes and when it came time for his internship, the only one he'd qualified for was at a plant in a fledgling port town.

 

That had been ok at first in spite of the pervasive rot-sweet scent of the sponge harvest and the monotony of actually being a plant engineer. But staying in one place for even the two years it took to complete his training had tested his patience. Free from the sleepy port, he'd drifted from town to town taking whatever short-term assignments were available, staying in dormitories and spare rooms. Nowhere he'd been had felt right to him. Nowhere had fit. And he'd kept moving on as if searching for something, though what exactly that was, he still didn't know.

 

Whatever it was, it apparently wasn't on this ship either. Not if his restiveness since he'd come aboard was any indication. He was a fool for letting himself drift like that and a bigger fool for taking this assignment on a whim. Crewing the SEEDS ship that had been left in orbit had seemed like a great idea at the time. He'd thought it would be a challenge, an adventure and, most importantly, totally different from his life so far. He should have actually thought about what living on a space station would be like. He should have let the five year time frame of the assignment deter him. He should have taken the career assignment officer's baffled look and repeated queries if he was sure he wanted to do this as a sign of what he was getting into rather than a challenge. Sometimes, he was a goddamn stubborn, romantic fool.

 

Admitting these things now, though, wasn't going change anything. He was still stuck up here no matter how honest he got with himself.

 

He was startled from his self-examination when Monev delivered a ringing cuff to the back of his head. He glared a little at the burly red haired spacer, who laughed loudly. Monev did everything loudly. Crazy fucker.

 

"No sleeping on the job, kid." He hated that they all called him kid. He wasn't even the youngest crew member. At sixteen, Zazie was almost four years younger. But Zazie had also been in space for almost two years, completing his internship with his father.

 

He grunted a little and refocused his eyes on the monitor he was slouched over. It was very early in the ship's artificial day cycle. He, Monev and Hoppered were probably the only ones awake right now. God, only two more hours and he could go get some sleep. Not that it would do him much good; he hadn't slept through the night in almost three weeks and he'd been having weird dreams practically every night since he came aboard. He'd hoped rest would come more easily as he got used to living on the station, but instead had been increasingly elusive. He was exhausted and irritable all the time, souring his relations with his crewmates.

 

He stifled a yawn behind his hand and glanced casually at the power read outs from the ship's plants. Normal, normal, normal, normal, nor- no. That was the auxiliary power feed. That shouldn't be reading anything.

 

"Hey, Hoppered take a look at this."

 

Hoppered's unusually long arms folded across the back of Nicholas's chair, his shaven head silhouetted against the glow of the planet on the main screen.

 

"Huh. Probably just a malfunctioning sensor. With all the redundancy in the main plant system those things should never have to activate."

 

"Think we should wake the captain?"

 

"Nah, let him get his beauty sleep." Monev chimed in, leaning dangerously far back in his chair, feet on the console. "He'll be bitchy enough once he comes on shift even without us waking him up for nothing."

 

"Why don't you just go down there and take a look? You're supposed to be the plant engineer anyway, right?"

 

"Yeah. Right," he snorted. Supposed to be. Nicholas rose, slowly pulling his aching spine straight. "I could use a walk anyway."

 

 

 

"How much further is this thing?" He'd been trudging around the unused corridors behind the main power supplies for nearly half an hour. They all looked the same: dim and narrow, lined with mute unmarked doors. He had a sinking feeling he wouldn't be able to find his way back out of here by himself. Hoppered's voice was slightly muffled over the com. He was probably checking the circuit boards on the bridge computers to make sure the reading was really coming from down here. He treated this damn ship like his kid.

 

"Did you come to the T intersection yet?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Turn left. End of the hall on the right."

 

"There's nothing in here."

 

"Are you sure? That's where the malfunctioning circuits are routed from. Check around or something."

 

Grumbling, Nicholas examined the room in more detail. It appeared to be an old storage room, though judging from the marks on the floor, there had once been technical equipment in here: lab tables, shelves, computer stations. It was empty now and one of the overhead lights needed to be replaced. He walked back into the hall and checked the room next door. It was in a similar state of disuse, but about twice as deep. Bingo.

 

He returned to the former lab, absently noting a smell like sand and rubber. That far wall did look slightly different than the others. He squatted in front of the large ventilation grille mounted in it. There was light coming from the other side.

 

"Hey Hoppered, I've got something. There's a false wall."

 

"Huh. Can you get around it?"

 

He pried the grate off and let it clatter to the metal floor. Inside, he could see a short dark crawlspace and the room's real far wall. Stale air puffed out at him redolent of plant solution, the ozone smell of electronics and, improbably, the ocean.

 

"There's a crawlspace. Hang on."

 

Nicholas was skinny, but he had broad shoulders and the narrow opening was just barely wide enough. The air inside was unyielding, like pushing through water or thick grass. The darkness appeared to crawl with colors. A rushing sound like wind or thousands of falling pebbles surrounded him. The soles of his feet were being jabbed with pins. A taste like burning green exploded across his tongue. And a strange pressure moved in his mind like a shining leviathan breaking through a dark surface, filling his skull with flailing flippers or wings.

 

 

 

"C'mon Kid!" That was Hoppered's tinny voice in his ear. "If you don't answer me right now I'm coming down there."

 

"What?" he croaked. The metal floor was cold on his face. He looked around. Everything looked fine. He was fine. What the fuck was that?

 

"Wolfwood? You OK? I've been trying to get you to answer me for like ten minutes. What were you, just jerking me around?"

 

"Christ" he swore, "Just... yes. I'm fine. Let's get on with this."

 

"As I've been trying to tell you, the power spikes have stopped completely. All readings are normal. Maybe you should just forget it and come back up here." Hoppered really must have been rattled if he was suggesting they not investigate a problem like this.

 

"I'm still going to check the power source. I didn't come all the way down here just to hope this crate's fixed itself.”

 

"Fine. Stubborn bastard."

 

He wiggled the rest of the way out of the crawlspace, sat up gingerly and touched his cheek where he'd apparently hit the deck. He might have a nasty shiner there in an hour or so. He glared at the small, dark passageway as if it were solely responsible for whatever had just happened. What the hell was wrong with him? He hadn't thought he was claustrophobic. He wouldn't have been allowed to come up here if he hadn't passed the psych screenings. Could he have given himself a concussion? He didn't feel dizzy or anything. When was the last time he'd eaten?

 

He shook his head and tried to focus. He'd figure out what was wrong with him later. Right now he had work to do. The false wall was apparently made up of the auxiliary power system itself; only a narrow walkway was left between it and the bulkhead. The crawlway he'd just squeezed through was the only way in or out. The power sources themselves bore a vague resemblance to cryopods. They appeared to have been converted from cylindrical metal storage containers, with solid sides and hinged hatches at the bottom. There were two of them, suspended at about head height, surrounded by a tangled mass of cables and tubes. He recognized a standard self-contained plant support system and control computer as well as the thick power cables leading up through holes torched messily in the ceiling. But there was a lot of extra wiring, a second mainframe and a whole extra bank of pipes and canisters. He'd never seen a plant system quite like this. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. This had all been added some time after the SEEDS ships left Earth. Someone had obviously gone to some length to conceal it as well, tucking it down in a little-used part of the ship with the entrance in what looked like a normal ventilation duct. He placed his hand flat on the nearest container. It was so cold he jerked away in surprise. A chill worked its way down his back.

 

"Hoppered, what the fuck are these things?"

 

"Don't know. Must have been a late addition. They're not on the main system plan. The whole auxiliary power system is a black box. Keeps coming up classified when I try to access the schematics."

 

"Great."

 

His instincts were screaming 'danger,' but that was likely left over from the weird spell he'd just had. He resolutely clamped down on the rising urge to panic as he surveyed the wall of coiled tubes and the twin coffin-like containers. What exactly were these things and why were they hidden down here? He was clearly in over his head. They'd just have to report the anomalous power spikes to Legato and hope he knew how to take care of it. So much for Nicholas's chance to prove himself competent.

 

"The readings on the auxiliary circuits are holding at normal?"

 

"Sure are. Like nothing ever happened."

 

"This is some weird shit. I'm not going to mess with it."

 

"Aw, come on. Aren't you curious?" He could never tell when Hoppered was being sarcastic.

 

"If you want to come down here after hours and take it apart, that's your business. I'm coming back up."

 

"Your call. See you in a few."

 

 

 

He couldn't remember ever being so glad to get off shift, and he'd been on with Legato and EG at the same time. Of course they'd asked him what had happened; he'd gone dead silent for all of fifteen minutes despite Hoppered practically screaming at him through the com. He was strangely reluctant to talk about whatever that was down in the crawlspace, and he couldn't even come up with a reasonable lie to get them off his back, so he  brushed it off and glared until they left him alone. Fortunately Hoppered could take a hint and Monev just didn't give a fuck. He'd brooded until Rai-Dei came up to relieve him.

 

On the way down to quarters he noticed the captain was in his office. Sighing, he stopped to report the problem with the auxiliary power system. Legato fixed him with a strange look, his sulfurous yellow eyes coolly appraising.

 

"You went down to the auxiliaries to investigate." It was a statement, not a question.

 

"We thought it was just a problem with the sensors. We didn't realize you were awake, sir, or we'd have alerted you."

 

Nicholas had always found the captain vaguely unsettling but could never place exactly why. His soft, high tenor brushed the nerves like thin copper wire.

 

"You didn't notice anything... unusual during your examination?"

 

The blue-haired man was testing him, but why or for what? The hairs along the back of his arms prickled.

 

"The auxiliary power unit itself is... unusual. I've never seen a plant system like it. By the time I'd gotten all the way down there, the power spikes had stopped, anyway, so I decided it would be best to simply report the situation to you."

 

Legato stared at him a moment longer, his cold gaze attempting to eat through the engineer's body and into the bulkhead behind. Finally he dismissed him without further comment. Nicholas left gratefully. The captain was even more distant and suspicious with him than he was with the rest of the crew. He wasn't sure if it was because he was new, or because he was supposed to have taken over care of his precious plants. He suspected it was the latter, as the captain showed no sign of thawing towards him even after six months.

 

 

 

Nicholas had hoped to make it to his room without running into anyone else but apparently that was too much to ask. Someone was still sitting up in the common room.

 

"Hey Wolfwood."

 

"Midvalley. What are you doing up?" he grudgingly resigned himself to making conversation while he ate. Midvalley would talk to him whether he liked it or not. The outgoing brunette worked as a lab assistant for Leonoff, a chemist and materials engineer who used the zero-g portion of the ship for his experiments. He also cooked most of their meals and played the saxophone. That was odd; usually only music teachers owned or could play the rare old Earth instruments. Nicholas figured there must be some elaborate story attached to it, but he'd never cared enough to ask.

 

"Hoppered's not off for another hour," He told him.

 

"I know." The musician sounded even more amused than usual. "You're chipper this evening. Long shift?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"There's some leftover curry."

 

"Thanks."

 

Wolfwood dug the container out of the fridge, grabbed a fork and ate it cold. Midvalley wasn't the best chef ever, but compared to the freeze-dried meals they'd end up eating when stores got low, this was gourmet. The tech watched him, smirking slightly and drumming his long fingers idly on the table.

 

"So, how's the mad doctor? Guys been doing anything fun lately?"

 

"Stress tested some new polymerized alloys. He seemed pleased. Almost cracked a smile but he caught it just in time."

 

"How's Dominique?"

 

"Cold as ice. Did you know she left her two kids when they were like, 4 years old?"

 

He knew. Midvalley brought that up whenever anyone mentioned the standoffish but professional graduate student. He probably resented the woman for not wanting to fuck him.

 

"How many kids do you have, Midvalley?"

 

"Five or six. Why?"

 

Nicholas just looked at him. The horn player glanced over at him and had one of his sudden mood shifts, going from bemused to concerned in less than a second.

 

"What happened to your face?"

 

Nicholas scowled at him. "I'm fine."

 

He turned to put the container and fork in the dishwasher. When he turned back, Midvalley was suddenly right next to him, touching the darkening bruise on his face. Nicholas stiffened involuntarily.

 

"You should ice this." The older man's liquid brown eyes held him in place. "Wolfwood, if there's something wrong you need to tell us about it. Hoppered and I can help you out, before everyone on the damn ship notices and gets involved. You know how these dramas get started up here."

 

His reasonable, even tone and the implications of his little speech were pissing Nicholas off. He glared at the tech, jerked away from his touch, then turned on his heel and started back into quarters.

 

"Goodnight, Midvalley."

 

"Fine. Be a dick about it. Just remember, you can come talk to me anytime."

 

"Goodnight!"

 

 

 

His closet-sized cabin was blissfully quiet and dark. He found an anti-inflammatory derm strip for his face, then shucked his jumpsuit and settled onto his bunk. He was just starting to relax into sleep when it happened.

 

"Hello, Nicholas!" chirped a sunny voice that seemed to rise like a bubble and burst in the center of his skull.

 

He froze against the sheets, a familiar chill shooting down his back.

 

"Can you understand me? I think I'm doing this right... I've never done it before, though."

 

"Who said that?" he whispered.

 

A tickling feeling like distant laughter bushed across his mind.

 

"My name is Vash." The name felt different than the rest, like cool wind, stars, a woman's voice.

 

"Vash," he repeated, dumbly. The name fell flat from his tongue, an empty sound. Slowly, he asked, "Where are you?"

 

A feeling of confusion. "I'm right here."

 

"Where's that?"

 

Consideration. "Where I've always been."

 

Out of the blankness of his shock, realization.

 

"You're the one who made me pass out... or whatever that was. What did you do to me?"

 

"I didn't hurt you, did I?" The voice was suddenly small and guilty feeling. "I guess I came on kind of strong at first. You were ignoring me. But then you were scared, so I backed off. I'm sorry." The warm gold voice was apologetic. He frowned.

 

"What did you mean you've never done this before?" he demanded.

 

Again that shivery impression of laughter, nervous this time and an urge to scratch the back of his head, "Words. They're kind of tricky. I just learned them."

 

"How?" he had a suspicion, one that was making him angry and frightened in equal measures.

 

"From you." A sense of pride at the accomplishment snarled around through his own conflicting emotions. Nicholas resisted the urge to clutch his head. Christ. Now, on top of every thing else that went wrong today, he was having a conversation with an imaginary voice. Out loud. Fuck.

 

"Hey, hey, hey, hey, stop that."

 

"Stop what?" he mumbled, massaging his temples.

 

"You're shutting me out again. I'm real. Or at least I think I am. Maybe you're the one who's not real. Maybe I'm dreaming this whole thing. How 'bout that?" The voice was smugly triumphant at this leap of logic. He chuckled, surprising himself and causing a ripple of happiness to swim across his thoughts.

 

"Oh! You're laughing. It feels nice." Nicholas got a distinct impression that if Vash had been physically present, he would be hugging him, rubbing his head on his shoulder. He could no longer dismiss this. Someone... or some thing, he guessed, was talking to him in his mind. And just like he'd flipped a switch, the rapport between them was suddenly much too intimate. He felt his face get hot.

 

"Vash."

 

"Nick," the voice purred, the sensation of being cuddled intensified.

 

"Nicholas," he corrected. "Stop that."

 

The sensation faded immediately. "I'm sorry." And Nicholas could tell he genuinely was. This Vash person (thing?) seemed completely child-like and sincere.

 

"What are you?"

 

"I'm me. What are you?" Just like that, back to buoyant amusement. Nick tried to maintain his annoyance, but couldn't muster the energy anymore.  

 

"Listen. It's been a long day, I'm very tired and I need to sleep. Do you understand what sleep is?"

 

"Yes." The word felt brittle.

 

"Ok, well, I need you to leave me alone now. Can you do that?"

 

"Ok." The voice felt forlorn, then immediately brightened. "We can talk more when you wake up!" And just like that the golden presence was gone from his mind, leaving him wrung out and slightly disoriented.

 

In spite of his whirling thoughts, Nicholas's exhaustion quickly pulled him down into sleep. Maybe he'd wake up in the morning and everything would be back to normal. Good god he hoped so.

 

 

 

2.

 

As usual, his sleep was restless, disturbed by strange dreams, and he half-woke several times, lingering at the edge of them. Fitful, disconnected images crawled through his mind, flashes of the Household where he'd grown up and the low rugged hills where he'd played. Places and people he'd never seen before, the trees too green, the people's skin frosted and dead looking. He woke once thinking there was someone pressed against him in his narrow bunk. He dreamt he heard a woman singing in a language he didn't know and it filled his cabin with sunlit space and sky.

 

 

 

Grey and Dominique were in the galley when he finally stumbled out of quarters, hair still damp from his sponge bath. God, he really missed showers. Grey nodded at him, his vast bulk reclined comfortably in the corner, a steaming mug almost lost in his enormous hand. The navigator was the biggest man he'd ever seen, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and an almost inhumanly calm temperament. He was in his mid-forties, old enough that he must have been one of the first born after Settlement.

 

Dominique was reading something technical-looking, her long dark hair falling across her eye patch. She'd lost her right eye in some kind of industrial accident when she was fourteen. Midvalley had told him about it. The man loved gossip. Dominique didn't acknowledge his entrance, but then she'd barely said two words to him the entire time he'd known her. The only person she talked to regularly was Leonoff, and then only in the context of their work. Seeing her in the common area was actually pretty rare.

 

Being the only woman aboard must be tough on her, he thought. She probably missed her children, though she'd chosen to leave them behind and start a career. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She couldn't be much older than him and she was already finishing her doctorate. She must have joined a Household as soon as she'd turned sixteen, had her children and left as soon as they were old enough that they could be cared for without her. Women, especially young women, were expected to be mothers first and themselves second. He was glad he'd been born a male; that kind of self-sacrifice would never be expected of him. Though Dominique's choice was often maligned it was by no means uncommon. Maybe Midvalley's mother had made the same decision. Maybe that's why he kept bringing it up.

 

He revised his opinion of the musician somewhat as he dug absently through a bin for his favorite mug. He almost jumped out of his skin when Vash suddenly popped into his head.

 

"Good morning!"

 

Oh, hell. He'd been hoping that had been a dream.

 

If the greeting had just been words he might have been able to write them off as some kind of auditory hallucination brought on by his low-level insomnia. But Vash was a definite presence, a sunny energy licking the edges of his mind that felt nothing like him or anything normal to his experience. He wasn't going to be able to ignore him, either. He could feel the... whatever he was (somehow Nicholas got a definite impression of masculinity, though he couldn't have said why) impatiently waiting for him to answer, to acknowledge his presence.

 

He groaned, then froze as he remembered his crewmates were still sitting behind him. He glanced at them. Grey was watching him with his usual unreadable expression. He held Nicholas's gaze for a moment then looked away.

 

"I can't talk to you when people are around," he muttered into the cabinet, returning to the search for his mug. "They'll think I'm talking to myself."

 

"So, don't talk out loud."

 

Somehow the idea of just thinking at him felt much more wrong than the rest of this situation. If they were both talking in his head, he might start to lose his sense of what was him and what was Vash. He was confused enough even while that gold presence felt distinctly separate from his own thoughts. He guessed he'd just have to ignore the perky bastard while he was working. Christ.

 

"Who are they?"

 

"Grey and Dominique," he said, as softly as he could.

 

A feeling like a wide smile. "I've felt them around. I never knew their names."

 

"You can't just read their minds?"

 

"Hmm... I guess I could if I tried. Why should I though?"

 

"Why would you read mine?" He hoped Vash could pick up the edge to his tone.

 

"I like you."

 

He wondered what had he done to deserve this kind of luck. With a long-suffering sigh, he finally located his mug and poured himself his morning coffee. It was black, strong and now he felt about a hundred times better. He made a mental note not to argue with disembodied voices before his daily dose of caffeine.

 

"Ick."

 

"Ick what?" he asked into his cup.

 

"That tastes bad."

 

"You can taste it?"

 

"Yeah."

 

He really should feel more violated by that, but nothing about this situation was surprising him anymore.

 

"You still not sleeping, Wolfwood?" He'd forgotten Grey was there.

 

"No," he told him, peevishly. "No, I'm not."

 

"Maybe you should stop drinking coffee."

 

Yeah, right. Nicholas made a face and poured himself another cup, downing it like water. Grey shrugged and went back to nursing his tea.

 

He stuck his head into the refrigerator and asked Vash, "Did you cause those power fluctuations yesterday?"

 

"Yup! It took me a while to figure out how to do it, but I did eventually."

 

"Why?"

 

"I was trying to get your attention."

 

"My attention or just anyone's attention?"

 

"Yours."

 

"How long have you been watching me?"

 

"I've felt you around since you got here."

 

"What does that mean?"

 

"I can feel everyone around here."

 

The tip of his nose was starting to get cold. He grabbed something at random and closed the refrigerator. Dominique had left when he wasn't watching, and he caught Grey looking away from him as he stood up. He looked at what was in his hand. A beer. For a moment he wished savagely that he wasn't going on shift. He could really use a drink. He tore open the refrigerator door and put the can back.

 

"What do you mean, feel them?"

 

"Their- I guess you could call it their energy. Everyone's feels a certain way, and that's them. And I can tell who they are and where, if they're close enough."

 

Monev clapped him on the shoulder as he passed behind him and made some booming crack that Nicholas didn't catch. Knowing Monev it was probably lewd and unfunny anyway. Nicholas shut the fridge and leaned on the counter next to it, hands over his face, massaging his sinuses.

 

"Why me?" he asked again.

 

"Most people don't listen. I could probably make them, but I might hurt them. And I don't want to hurt them. But you felt like you listened better than other people and besides, I liked you best. You feel good."

 

Nicholas decided he wasn't hungry.

 

 

 

EG and Zazie were on the bridge when he got up there. EG, the prickly communications officer, hated space even more than Nicholas, if that was possible. He was almost as relentlessly grating as Monev, but in an uptight, snarky way rather than a crude and thoughtless one. Zazie was a little creep too, with too-large staring eyes and the same imperturbable mien as his father, Grey. This was going to be even worse than yesterday's shift, he could tell already.

 

Meanwhile, Vash had asked him exactly twenty-three questions on his way up to the bridge (he'd counted), and was now busily pointing out things about the monitors, consoles and the other men, at least some of which he'd never noticed before. When Vash started deliberately trying to make him laugh, he rested his arm across his console and placed his forehead against it.

 

"Vash, do you always talk this much?"

 

"No. Before you I never really talked at all, remember?"

 

Oh, right. He guessed he couldn't really blame him for wanting company. But still.

 

"You know, sometimes it's ok to be around someone without talking to them all the time. EG and Zazie and I haven't talked since I came up here."

 

"You don't like them."

 

Nicholas gritted his teeth in annoyance.

 

"Ok, I get it. I don't need to talk all the time."

 

Vash's energy settled into a steady, almost tranquil gold glow. It felt nice, like sitting in a ray of sunlight on a cool day. Nicholas sighed and leaned back in his chair. After a few minutes of blessed silence he idly checked the power reads.

 

"Is this really all you do all day?" He'd known it was too good to last. He crossed his arms on his console and rested his chin against them again, talking into his sleeve.

 

"My job is supposed to be taking care of the plants. But the captain won't let me."

 

"That's too bad. You'd be good at it, I think."

 

"Are you a plant?"

 

Consideration. "Sort of. But I'm different than the other ones."

 

Something occurred to him, "Do you talk to them?"

 

"Sometimes. Their thoughts move differently from ours. They're hard to understand."

 

"How so?"

 

"It's hard to explain... I don't think they understand what time is."

 

It had never occurred to him before that plants might be intelligent. Plants were the primary power source for the whole planet. If they were sentient creatures, that would make their entire civilization based on slavery. Or worse than slavery.

 

"Vash, do the plants understand what we're doing to them?"

 

"What do you mean?"

 

"Are we exploiting intelligent creatures? Isn't that bad?"

 

Vash still seemed confused by his questions.

 

"Would they be better off if people left them alone?" he tried.

 

"Why would they be? I'm not sure they'd know the difference."

 

Nicholas didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't say anything.

 

 

 

He was still brooding about the plants when his shift ended. Plants were veritable magic, living machines, able to produce power and a number of chemical and biological compounds depending on how they were programmed. As an engineer, he knew more about them than most people, how to care for them and use them to create what people needed to survive. But he didn't understand how it was they did what they did, or even exactly what they were. Before meeting Vash, he'd never thought about them as anything other than tools, property. Now the thought brought on a pang of guilt.

 

"You're still worried about them?" it was a rhetorical question.

 

"Come on," a slight tug in the direction of the plant room. "I'll introduce you."

 

The station had four plants, their clear polymer bulbs ringing a large round room in the heart of the ship. He hoped Legato wasn't lurking around anywhere. The last and only time he'd been in here had been right after he came up from the planet, during the tour Grey had given him of the ship. He'd stopped to familiarize himself with the stations' power and atmospheric systems, but the blue-haired captain had found him and ordered him not to touch the plant system, ever. He wasn't sure what Legato would do if he found him in here, disobeying orders, and he wasn't keen on finding out.

 

"Don't worry." Vash told him, evidently sensing his concern, "I'll warn you if anyone comes."

 

Peering upward into the glow of the closest plant, he was barely able to make out her slender human-like shape within the gently waving mass of her wings. He pressed his hand against the clear polymer housing, which was rigid as diamond and soapy-slick. Plants couldn't live outside the fluid-filled enclosures they were kept in and were the single most valuable commodity the human race had. Thus, the bulbs, for all their resemblance to glass, were made of the toughest material ever invented. He'd seen them pulled from the mangled wrecks of steamers and dug from collapsed mines without a single scratch. He wondered if those plants had been able to tell when they'd been in an accident, if the plants here could sense his presence.

 

"They know. Here."

 

There was a sensation of opening, as if a window had suddenly appeared on a vast expanse of space. A glittering pink feeling rippled up his skin, a tendril of the unimaginably dense, alien mass of emotion and sensation he could now sense within the bulb, like a looming cloud. Vash's more familiar energy braced him against a sudden splash of vertigo. Her presence gave the impression of thought, but somehow none of it was actually there. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing something that didn't exist in the actual room. She touched them again, curiously, filling his mouth with a taste like cool water on the hottest day of the year. He smelled the stars burning. There was a phantom laugh, rippling with secrets that seemed to amuse only her and then the plant's attention wandered away, leaving him pressed weakly to the bulb, awestruck. That. She-

 

Vash was transmitting pure joy and affection into his mind like a floodlight.

 

"They love so much," he said. "But they're kind of self-absorbed."

 

 

 

In an inexplicable good mood after his encounter with the plant but not yet ready to deal with the others, Nicholas wandered the sprawling hallways of the station. Only about a third of the vast ship was kept pressurized and for living and working they only needed a fraction of that space. There were plenty of places onboard to be alone. Nicholas had often been grateful for this fact as his relations with most of his crewmates were uncertain at best. Tonight, he remembered, was dinner night; the one night in each week when the schedule allowed the majority of the crew to sit down together and eat. Midvalley would be up in the galley already, cheerfully threatening whoever was off duty until they helped him cook. The musician loved playing host. Nicholas wondered if he'd had been the one to start the tradition. He really couldn't imagine anyone else coercing everyone into it.

 

Nicholas strolled back towards quarters unhurriedly, enjoying the quiet and Vash humming contentedly at the back of his skull. He caught himself smiling, slightly. For the first time in a very long time, he didn't feel alone. He wondered if maybe his own feeling of being an outsider was part of his problem with the rest of the crew. If he still had to endure four more years up here, he should probably make more of an effort to get along with people. He resolved not to isolate himself anymore.

 

Vash seemed to approve of his train of thought, his energy folding around Nicholas in a warm caress. He felt really good. This may have been the best mood he'd been in since he came to space. Maybe things were finally looking up.

 

 

 

The common room was noisy and almost crowded with nine people in it, the smell of garlic hanging in the air invitingly. Nicholas had been corralled into helping Zazie set the table as soon as he set foot in the door. The atmosphere was comfortable; the unspoken rule of dinner night was that all personal problems, fights and grudges were left at the door. They were, he realized, at least for tonight, family. Maybe not the family he would have chosen, maybe a little more tense and uneasy than a family should be, but close enough that it didn't much matter.

 

Legato appeared just as the meal was ready, dampening the atmosphere some. He ate quickly and with immense concentration, then left again without a word to anyone. This was standard for one of these evenings. The captain would go up and relieve whoever was on the bridge, and the rest of the meal would be spent in more-or-less easy camaraderie. There'd be alcohol and laughter. Monev would tell one of his more involved dirty jokes. Midvalley would say something typically sexist and Dominique would bristle and maybe storm out. Eventually they'd drift off singly or in pairs, back to their duties or to rest.

 

Tonight the conversation turned to Legato and Nicholas asked, "How'd he get to be captain anyway? I didn't think plant engineers were that high on the chain of command."

 

"Seniority." Grey rumbled.

 

Nicholas raised his eyebrows. "How long has he been aboard?"

 

"Longer than any us... except Leonoff."

 

"He's been here nine years and three months," the scientist said in his precise way. "He arrived as an intern and never left."

 

"And how long have you been aboard, you old coot?" Midvalley teased. Only the musician could joke around with Leonoff that way. The pair had a kind of odd, dry, father-son relationship.

 

"Twenty-three years." Leonoff said, seriously. He paused at the expressions on their faces then excused himself without inflection. Nicholas though he heard a soft chuckle as he disappeared down the hallway.

 

 

 

That night he slept soundly for the first time in weeks. He woke up feeling lazy and relaxed and immediately remembered he had to pull a double shift today while Rai-dei, Zazie and Monev were out doing satellite maintenance. He cursed sleepily and rolled over, determined not to get up until he absolutely had to. Vash arrived more gently this time, slipping into his mind as he lay in his warm bunk, stealing a few more minutes before he even started to think about moving.

 

"Morning, Nicholas. Sleep ok?" he asked as if he already knew the answer.

 

Nicholas frowned, eyes closed resolutely.

 

"Yes. Why?"

 

A feeling like a nervous smile. "Oh, just wondering, s'all."

 

"You're the reason I haven't slept in weeks, aren't you?"

 

The nervousness increased. "Was it a very long time? Please don't be mad. I was trying to talk to you."

 

His mood was deteriorating rapidly and he hadn't even gotten out of bed yet. He thought this must be some kind of record. He was really, really not up to dealing with anything right now and decided to fall back asleep. Unfortunately his alarm chose that moment to go off. He surfaced from his blanket reluctantly, squinting against the fluorescents as they came on. Damn it. 

 

 

 

Vash fell quiet as he went about his morning, his energy lingering in the back of his skull but not communicating anything. When he went on shift, even that edge of gold faded out. With his earlier crankiness dampened by caffeine, Nicholas felt almost normal for the first time since he'd come aboard. As the shift wore on, though, he kept catching Legato watching him. The constant feel of those strange eyes began to make his shoulders knot up. He'd never been so happy to see EG as when he came up to relieve the captain. Nicholas willed his muscles to unlock and watched the planet on the main monitor, the blue-green sea giving way to deep red and ivory as the main continent rolled over the horizon.

 

"What's it like? Down there?" Vash asked.

 

Nicholas propped his elbow on his knee and leaned forward, concealing his mouth with his hand.

 

"It's hard. People have to work all the time, to get enough food, to build places to live and make things they need. But it's beautiful. There's so much space under the sky, much more space than there is out here. The trees are all purple and red and there's always wind blowing through them. And there are people always around, people you've never met before."

 

He trailed off, remembering the countless too-similar streets of his wanderings, the dusty square of the mining camp he'd been born in. An image of his mother blossomed to the forefront of his mind, the one clear memory he had of her. They were sitting on the porch of the Household, he watching the stream of red-streaked miners limp from the cable cars to their dormitory, she resting gravid in a rocking chair reading her bible. He was perhaps five, one of only three children too young to work. A man who was not his father approached the porch, kissed her on the cheek and went inside, his boots leaving a trail of perfect rusty prints. His mother had gotten up and followed him in, but he had stayed, running his finger through one boot mark, erasing the pattern of the treads.

 

"She's beautiful."

 

"She's dead."

 

And those words unbidden summoned up his memory of that day, of feeling helpless and afraid and being shooed from place to place by the older girls. The Householders had firmly shut the door as he tried to get to her, panicked by her cries. Later, he had sneaked down when everyone was asleep and found her cold and still under the sheet, with a tiny bundle placed by her head and he'd screamed and his memory was being drowned out in Vash's gold voice saying "No. No."

 

"Vash, stop it," he snarled, forgetting to be quiet.

 

"Wolfwood, will you shut up? Some of us don't want to have to hear your private conversations." The communications officer looked both annoyed and entirely self-satisfied with his remark, but Nicholas was too busy being pissed off at Vash to care that he'd slipped up or that EG was sniping at him again.

 

He'd felt Vash trying to nudge his mind away from his mother's death and he got the feeling that if Vash had really wanted to change what he was thinking, he'd have been helpless to stop him. What the fuck gave him the right? This, he decided, was stopping right now. His mind was his own, and no one, but no one, could make Nicholas D. Wolfwood helpless. Ever. He remembered that Vash had had trouble reaching him when he didn't believe he was real. Maybe if he could concentrate on not believing in him he could shut him out of his head for a while so he could think.

 

The real problem was that, despite his anger, he didn't really want to shut the plant out. He rather liked his comfortable gold energy curling into his mind. Vash had made him actually laugh for the first time in weeks. But considering Vash was a voice that was snooping around his head uninvited, that could sense all his thoughts and everything he was feeling, and that he couldn't seem to hide himself from made the ease with which he had accepted this situation pretty unaccountable now that he really thought about it. The thought that Vash might be somehow forcing him to like him pierced his chest with a cold spike of terror and betrayal.

 

He felt Vash lurking guiltily around the edges of his consciousness. It seemed that pretending he didn't exist and thinking seriously about their relationship, such as it was, were mutually exclusive. That edge of guilt was only confirming his suspicions, though. He went back to furiously ignoring all little voices until the end of the shift.

 

 

 

Finally allowed off the bridge for a break, he headed down to quarters and locked himself in his cabin.

 

"Vash! You can't just go around changing how people think!"

 

"But Nick-"

 

"Nicholas!"

 

"I didn't do anything but like you. I can't just stop liking you." Vash was hurt by his accusation, and his mind-voice radiated concern and contrition. Nicholas felt his anger start to melt at the edges.

 

"You're doing it again," he pointed out.

 

"I can't help it! You don't really want to be angry and I don't like it. Why can't you just stop?"

 

"Yes, I do want to be angry. I have every right to be angry when you're trying to brainwash me!"

 

"What? I am not! I just want you to like me back."

 

"You just want- That's it. I'm not talking to you anymore."

 

"But how am I supposed to-"

 

"Go away, Vash."

 

"But-"

 

Snarling, he tried to push Vash out of his mind, concentrating on the well-known non-existence of psychic powers. A glance at the clock told him he had forty minutes before he had to be back on duty. His stomach grumbled a little, reminding him that he'd, as usual, forgone breakfast. Ignoring Vash's existence was effective but took a lot of concentration. He hoped he'd be able to keep it up long enough to get through the rest of the day.

 

 

 

Satellite maintenance was standard procedure; they did this at least once a week, more often when things went wrong. The planet-wide array of satellites was used by every major science and industry for communications, tracking, mapping, mineral prospecting, meteorology and so on. If it weren't for the satellites, and especially the powerful communications equipment on this ship, they probably wouldn't have to be up here at all.

 

He tried to pay attention to his job, keeping an eye on the power reads for the shuttle and the complex layout of the satellite grid, but every time he relaxed his guard against Vash, the gold tinge was back at the edge of his mind.

 

"Have you forgiven me yet?"

 

"No."

 

He shut the plant out again, cursing under his breath.

 

 

 

By the time he was freed from the bridge, his eyes were bleary from looking at the screens, and he had a dull headache from staying so focused for so long. He was still angry with the plant, though. He'd almost gotten him in trouble, popping into his head every time Nicholas stopped paying attention to not letting him in. The plant returned yet again as he paced through quarters back to his room.

 

"I just didn't want you to feel bad. Why would you want to feel bad, if I could fix it? But I won't do it anymore, if that's what you want."

 

Vash seemed genuinely sorry, and he really did want to believe he could trust him to stop. But he couldn't trust that desire to trust, couldn't trust any of his feelings about the plant anymore. Fighting with Vash was so frustrating. He had plenty of legitimate reasons to be angry, but he had to concentrate hard to maintain that anger in the face of Vash's contrition and distress. He stalked down the corridor, ignoring the glimpse of flesh through the open door to Midvalley's cabin.

 

"What were they doing?" A hungry, prickly curiosity. Oh god, he so did not need to try to explain sex to something he wasn't even one hundred percent sure had a gender right now. He was still busy with his righteous wrath.

 

"Nothing. Now get out of my head and stop trying to control me."

 

"They were-" the sensation of searching, "touching? Nick, I said I was sorry!"

 

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD."

 

"But I-" Christ, he was whining again. Nicholas's headache started to throb dully against the back of his eyes. He finally reached his cabin, folding down the bunk and collapsing on to it in one motion.

 

"OUT!"

 

Vash's presence faded sheepishly from his mind. Nicholas rolled over and fumbled through his drawers until he found a painkiller, fiercely disbelieving in imaginary voices and telepathy in general. Smoothing the medicated strip against his neck, he relaxed slowly as his headache started to ebb. His door wooshed open.

 

"Hey, Wolfwood."

 

"Midvalley. Don't you ever knock?"

 

The older man ignored both his question and his vicious glare. Unflappable, arrogant bastard.

 

"What's up with you today?"

 

"Nothing, Mom."

 

The older man raised an elegant eyebrow. "Really. Well, if you're going to go space-crazy could you keep it down? Yelling at yourself in the hallway's not exactly discreet, and some of us are kind of... busy."

 

Nicholas unaccountably blushed to the roots of his hair. The musician watched him amusedly for a moment then left without another word. He could hear his smooth baritone retreat down the hallway, answered by Hoppered's gravelly tenor.

 

 

 

3.

 

He dreamed he was sitting on a stone floor in an airy, sunlit space. There was a presence somewhere behind him which he knew was Vash, though he also knew with the certitude of a dream that if he turned and looked there would be no one there. They were watching a woman with long dark hair. She was sweeping.

 

"Vash. What are you doing?"

 

"I'm dreaming with you."

 

His anger was there but distant, and dream-hazy. He couldn't feel Vash's mind touching his anywhere, so he let it continue. He was curious.

 

"Who's she?"

 

"That's Rem. I used to dream with her too, before I went to sleep. She gave me my name."

 

Vash's voice was sound but not-sound. The trees outside the windows were so green. Too green.

 

"Is this Earth?"

 

"I think it must be. It's one of her memories."

 

"How do you have her memories?"

 

"I used to hide with her. When... when I was scared. I'd hide with her and she'd look at the stars or cook or fix something and she'd be thinking about what she was doing or about people on the ship or about Earth or the future. Sometimes she'd think about me. And sometimes she'd come to where I was and talk to me, though at the time I didn't understand what she was saying. But then I learned words from you, and I remembered things she said, and that's how I know what my name is."

 

Nicholas considered this for a while, listening to the scrape of the bristles across the floor. Rem was humming sweetly under her breath and sweeping in time to the song.

 

"Why didn't you learn words from her?"

 

"My...  it didn't occur to me, I guess."

 

He had a feeling Vash was hiding something, but in his dream the suspicion was slippery and fell away half-recognized.

 

"What was she like?" he asked instead.  

 

"She was sad, but always kind and full of hope. She had lost someone she loved, but she forgave him for leaving her, and the world for taking him away and she kept going."

 

They were silent for a while, the Vash-feeling behind him approaching cautiously until he was very close. Close enough to touch, had there been anything there.

 

"I thought, maybe I should show you her, so you could understand. That it would be fair."

 

After a moment he said, "Thank you," and then he said, "Do you understand why I was angry?"

 

"At first I didn't. But Rem told me that our memories make us who we are."

 

Nicholas nodded, his distant anger fading.

 

"How long ago did you know her?"

 

"I don't know. I was very young, and she was always there for a while and then for a long time there was nothing. I'm not sure how long it was."

 

"Nothing?"

 

Nicholas was suddenly engulfed in the utter absence of darkness and light. He couldn't tell which way was up, his mind spun with phantom vertigo that would have made him horribly nauseous had been able to feel his body. There was no sound, not even the buzzing ring of absolute silence.

 

When he came back to himself someone was screaming. He found himself in the fetal position on his floor, hand clamped over his mouth. There was a heavy pounding on his door, and someone yelling something outside it. Vash had disappeared completely. He wobbled to his feet just as the door opened, spilling both Midvalley, in only a backwards pair of boxers and Hoppered, his jumpsuit hanging open over his bare chest, into the tiny space. Midvalley grabbed him by both shoulders, looked at him searchingly and said "Jesus, Wolfwood. What the fuck?"

 

Nicholas's throat felt raw. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out so he shut it again. He wasn't going to cry, especially not in front of them.

 

Hoppered somehow squeezed next to the musician in the small space, laying his hand to Nicholas's head to check his temperature. Before either of them could say or do anything else however, another voice intruded into the scene, making his skin crawl.

 

"Wolfwood. My office. Now."

 

Legato.

 

 

 

The captain's office was a spare, sterile room tucked just outside the residential section of the ship. He stood before the blocky desk which was the only furnishing and fidgeted nervously as Captain Legato Bluesummers circled him like a stalking cat. His flat yellow eyes were narrow, weighing him, burning through him so that he felt utterly exposed.

 

Vash brushed the back of his mind and withdrew immediately.  

 

Suddenly, he found himself hoisted off his feet by the front of his jumpsuit, the captain's oddly blank glare now mere inches away. He hadn't even seen him move.

 

"He's mine," Legato growled, except this wasn't Legato. This wasn't even human.

 

A knife of sickly cold white scraped through his brain, wringing a terrified little cry from his lips. That hurt. His vision started to crawl, going dark around the edges. Icy fire licked along his nerves, laboring his heart and trying to still his lungs. Fortunately, Vash bloomed golden in the front of his skull, pushing the whiteness away. There was a brief struggle, the pressure in his head fluctuating wildly, his eyes focusing and unfocusing in time. He felt a thin wet trickle slip from his nose. When Legato finally dropped him, he collapsed into a limp pile on the deck.

 

"Get some sleeping pills from stores. If your disruptive behavior continues I will be forced to take disciplinary action. Dismissed."

 

Nicholas slowly pulled himself to his feet, caught his balance and stumbled from the room.

 

 

 

Vash was subdued when Nicholas finally collected himself enough to ask what the fuck that had been. His answers were clipped, his presence brooding and distant.

 

"It was my brother."

 

"Your brother? Your brother?" The other pod down in that horrible room. Why hadn't it occurred to him before? "What the hell did he do to Legato? What the hell did he do to me?"

 

"It's complicated."

 

"Complicated?" His voice was high with fear and disbelief.

 

"Nicholas, calm down."

 

"Not until you start explaining what the fuck is going on around here.”

 

"I don't want to talk about it." He sounded petulant, like a small child.

 

"You god damn well better talk about it before you get me killed!"

 

Vash's presence turned to ice in his mind then he simply snapped their connection closed with the finality of a slamming door.

 

"Vash?  ...Shit."

 

He closed his eyes, forced his jaw to unclench and concentrated on the sounds that used to keep him awake when he'd first come aboard: the constant buzz of fluorescent lights, the subliminal drone of the engines, the muffled sounds of the crew moving around their cabins. It occurred to him that Legato knew where his room was. He felt like he'd been running all his life and now for the first time he was truly backed into a corner. He imagined he could feel the airlessness of space crushing in on the station from all sides. The metal of the hull seemed too thin to hold it at bay for as long as it had. He sat limply in his bunk and watched the wall. It didn't come any closer. After he stopped shaking, he rose, took his blanket and thin pillow and slipped out through the empty lounge into the maze of sterile hallways.

 

 

 

He woke up in an empty storage bin at the back of an unused bay with a dull ache in his chest and Vash frantically calling his name. He was about to say something irate when he was doubled over with a sudden spasm of intense pain. As the feeling ebbed, he rolled limply out of his hiding place and pulled himself to his feet, swearing.

 

"Vash! What the hell is going on?"

 

"Nichol... ni... he's ...ing m-" Vash's mind voice was fading in and out as if reaching him was a major effort. Another burst of phantom pain pulled him off his feet like a tall wave. He collapsed back onto his blanket, gritting out.

 

"Vash. Stop. Can't."

 

Vash's contact faded out abruptly, leaving only a distant echo of his voice.

 

"Hurts."

 

The empty silence in his mind was almost worse that Vash's pain. He leaped to his feet and sprinted dizzily between the stacks of containers for the door.

 

 

 

He barely remembered his mad run through ship, past the plant room and into the maze of halls that led to the auxiliary power system. Fortunately, his feet seemed to remember which turns to take by themselves; his mind was far too occupied with Vash's frightening absence. An occasional weak whimper reached his mind as if from a great distance. He finally reached the abandoned lab and threw himself through the crawlspace.

 

Growling, he strode over to the pod and simply ripped out the wires leading to the magnetic locks. There was a clunk as they disengaged and then he was hauling at the bottom of the cylinder with all his weight. The hinges were poorly fitting, as obviously improvised as the rest of this rig, and gave all at once. A gush of foully sweet smelling plant solution soaked him, and then a body hit his legs, knocking him to the floor. He sat up and frantically pawed through the mass of yard-long blond hair, disconnecting cables and tubes. Finally, he pulled Vash (because this was Vash, he'd known as soon as he'd touched him if not before) free and scraped the wet hair off his face. He wasn't breathing. Shit! Did he even need to breathe? As he hesitated, the plant suddenly jackknifed out of his lap and started retching up the solution that filled his lungs. Nicholas pounded his back, making sure not to hit any of the metal sockets embedded in it. Finally, his breath evened out into painful-sounding rasps instead of wrenching coughs, and he collapsed backward slowly into Nicholas's body. The blond's hand wavered up to touch Nicholas's cheek, something like wonder and joy glowing softly in his mind and on Vash's face. Then his unearthly green eyes rolled back and he passed out.

 

Nick just sat a moment, the plant's head cradled in his lap, and breathed. Vash was- well. He didn't look like any other plant that Nicholas had ever seen. For one thing, he was undeniably male. In fact if it weren't for the scars and the metal bits and those strangely colored eyes he'd glimpsed, he'd look just like a normal human. Vash's pale skin was riddled with scars. He looked like he'd been hacked to pieces then put back together. No, he decided, dissected. The marks were vicious in their geometric precision. Nicholas's stomach turned over at the thought, and he swallowed bile. He looked away from Vash's body and back down at the unmarred beauty of his face, tracing his strong jaw and long aquiline nose. Oddly, he had what appeared to be a couple days growth of beard stubble.

 

Feeling calmer, he returned to his examination of the plant's body. Aside from those on his back, the left side of his chest was covered in a grid of wire-sized sockets. More alarmingly, his left arm ended just below his bicep, where a wrist-sized cable had been attached. Nicholas's mind churned with anger. How could anyone even consider doing anything remotely like this to anyone, much less someone as kind, loving and obviously intelligent as Vash?

 

And what the hell had just happened?  He carefully scrambled out from under Vash and to his feet, slipping a little in the gooey puddle of solution. Leaning down, he scooped the naked plant up off the floor. He was surprisingly light though his limp, gangly limbs and tangle of hair were unwieldy. How the hell was Nicholas going to get him through the crawlspace? Fuck. He'd have to wait until Vash woke up. He wasn't sure how weak the plant might be after who knows how many years in that jar and he wasn't willing to risk hurting him.

 

He gingerly settled them on the floor, leaning against the wall and pulling the plant back into his lap. Vash's skin was cool to the touch and, come to think of it, he was kind of cold himself. The plant fluid seemed to draw the heat from his body as it dried, and its increasing stickiness was making his clothing and Vash's hair cling uncomfortably to his skin. What the hell was he supposed to do with Vash now, anyway? He wondered briefly if anyone had seen him tearing through the halls like a madman. They must not have, or he figured they would be here now and he'd have a lot of explaining to do. He shivered a little and pulled the blond closer, settling in to wait.

 

 

 

Some interminable amount of time later, Nicholas was half-dozing, staring at the beauty mark under Vash's left eye. The plant had gradually warmed up until he was radiating heat like a furnace. It was making him sleepy.

 

"Your eyes are so blue."

 

He hadn't even noticed Vash was awake. The blond was examining his face with a soft, sad smile.

 

He shook himself out of his stupor and asked, "Are you ok? What happened?"

 

The gold of Vash's aura was muted and his lingering tiredness only dimly felt.

 

"They short circuited my power collection system."

 

That explained why it had felt like all his energy was being drained away. It had been. "Who?"

 

"Knives. My brother Knives. And Legato."

 

The memory of the confrontation in Legato's office surfaced and he reflexively touched his nose to check for blood. He looked up at where the intact capsule hung ominously from the wall. They shouldn't stay here any longer. Who knew how much this Knives could sense of his surroundings? Legato could be on his way down here right now. The back of his neck prickled, making him want to hunch his shoulders.

 

"Vash, let's get out of here." He murmured. He pulled them into an upright position and motioned toward the crawlspace. "We have to go through there."

 

Vash flexed his arm and legs experimentally. "I'll try."

 

 

 

For someone who'd never walked before, Vash seemed to pick it up uncannily quickly. The plant had gotten a second wind too; by the time they made it up into the populated sections of the ship, Vash was practically skipping, running his hand over everything and grinning like crazy. His mind-voice was getting stronger, though it was still distant and carried much less of Vash's emotions and warm energy than it used to. Nicholas paced deliberately behind the exuberant blond, watching his balance carefully.

 

"You don't need to worry so much. This walking stuff is easy!" To prove his point, Vash spun around in a circle, arm outstretched, and smacked him in the chest.

 

"Oops!" Vash giggled. Out loud. The high, burbling sound surprised them both. After a second they were both laughing. Vash hugged him happily, slouching to put his head on Nicholas's shoulder despite their similar height. Nicholas patted his back awkwardly, descending back into paranoia as he recalled the events that had led up to this moment.

 

"Why aren't you worried?" he asked softly. "Your brother just tried to kill you."

 

The plant went rigid in his arms.

 

"No." His denial was immediate and total.

 

"But you said-"

 

"No. No, no no, he wouldn't do that. He didn't know. He-"

 

"Vash," he whispered, staring down at his scarred shoulder. Vash buried his face further into Nicholas's chest, his weight knocking him off balance a bit, so he had to lean into the wall. His hands slid across the blond's back, automatically soothing him as the plant's distress sang in his brain.

 

"You don't understand how he is. He gets so angry sometimes. And we had this fight, and I stopped talking to him. And then I started talking to you and he found out and he didn't like it, so we had another fight. He never used to let me talk to anyone but him, and it's not fair and I told him I wasn't going to let him- let him push me around anymore. And he just got so angry." Vash pulled his face off his chest, and looked up at him, dry eyed. "But he wouldn't have-  He wouldn't- He's my brother! He's- we're-"

 

Vash apparently wasn't finding what he wanted in Nicholas's expression because he suddenly took a step back, posture radiating fury.

 

"What gives you the right to say something like that about him? You don't even know him! You couldn't possibly understand!"

 

Vash's anger was fortunately somewhat muffled by the lack of physical contact. Even so, it rocked him like a hard slap to the face. He was reminded that Vash, for all his innocence and sincerity, was at least as dangerous as his brother, if not more so. Nick found himself shrinking back against the wall, both palms flat against it.

 

And just as abruptly as it had appeared, that dangerous rage vanished completely.

 

"I'm sorry."

 

Vash looked small and lost standing naked in the cool hallway, his matted blond locks straggling around his thin, scarred body, apologizing.

 

"You were scared of me. It felt...  bad. I don't want to make you afraid of me. Ever."

 

Vash's desire for forgiveness fluttered needy against his thoughts. Nicholas took a deep breath, pushing himself off the wall but not approaching the plant.

 

"Come on," he said.

 

"Nick, I would never want to hurt you."

 

He believed it in spite of himself.

 

"Come on."

 

The plant smiled at him tentatively and they started back up the hallway. He hoped no one was awake up in quarters. He needed to at least get Vash into some clothes before any more shit hit the fan.

 

 

 

4.

 

Thankfully, he managed to get Vash through quarters and into the bathroom without running into anyone. After a moment's hesitation he stripped off his gummy jumpsuit, telling himself that if the plant wasn't embarrassed, he wouldn't be either. Vash eyed his body with child-like curiosity as he hurriedly showed him how to bathe, ears open for any signs of life in the hallway. Vash's hair was a mess and he had to retrieve the kitchen scissors and cut most of it off before they could get it clean. The longish remains hung raggedly in his face, but he seemed relieved to be free of it. The bottom half of his hair was dull black, the color a plant's hair turned when it died. Whether it was because of what had just happened or what had happened long ago, neither of them could say.

 

Vash was rapidly tiring, his burst of energy on the walk up proving short-lived. Even so, a hushed argument broke out when he tried to get the plant to put on clothing.

 

"I don't like it. It feels funny."

 

"Please? Hey, don't take those off!"

 

"Hmm... too bad. In fact, you should leave yours off too."

 

Nicholas nearly choked. "What? Hey!" He dodged as Vash made a grab for his towel.

 

"Cut that out," he hissed "And put those back on."

 

The blond pouted indignantly. "Is there something wrong with me?" He went very still and looked down at himself, hand coming up to touch the scars that seamed his abdomen. "Am I ugly?"

 

"NO." Nicholas said, louder than he'd intended, making them both jump. He found himself touching the plant, his hand running comfortingly down his left shoulder without conscious direction. "No, it's just. People wear clothes. They're going to think it's weird if you don't."

 

The plant looked up at him, a strange hunger creeping across his features.

 

"Nicholas, can I... please touch you?"

 

That stopped him cold, his hand lingering forgotten on Vash's warm skin. The plant leaned into it, his simple, desperate, sensual enjoyment of the touch licking at the back of Nicholas's mind. Vash, it occurred to him, had never really touched another person before. The blond's frightening flash of temper spun through his mind, along with an echo of his own sustained anger the day before. But there was something in who he was, he acknowledged, that responded to the plant. That knew and trusted him. Letting Vash touch him was hardly as intimate as sharing his brain with him. And right now, he needed.... needed. If it got too... weird, he could ask him to stop. The engineer swallowed hard and nodded.

 

"Thank you." It was a sigh, a prayer.

 

The brief flash of gratitude was subsumed in curiosity and enjoyment as Vash's hand collided with the skin of his chest. Nicholas suppressed his nagging suspicion that this could be sexual, that maybe some baffling and embarrassing portion of him even wanted it to be sexual. Vash's hand moved slowly, testing the give of skin and muscle, tracing across the lines of his collarbone and shoulder around to his back. He held himself very still as the plant explored the planes of his body, lifting up his arms and tracing ticklishly over his ribs, making him jump and give the blond a dirty look. Vash ignored it, busy cataloging the way the darker man tensed under his touch, the smooth transition from his broad shoulders to his narrower waist. He crouched, running his hand up and down his left leg to feel the coarseness of his hair. The plant's mind-touch was somehow hungry and ecstatically joyful and detachedly curious all at once. Nicholas, lost somewhere both near and nowhere near the edge of arousal, started to wonder where exactly his control was coming from and how he was going to extricate himself from this situation. After touching each one of his toes, the plant rose smoothly and pressed himself full length to Nicholas's chest, pressing his hand between his shoulder blades and bringing as much of their skin as possible into contact, making the engineer thankful he'd retained his towel. He pressed his rough cheek against Nicholas's, which by now could probably use a shave also, and inhaled deeply, scenting him. He tentatively wrapped his arms around the plant's waist, cautiously letting himself enjoy the embrace.

 

"Thank you," the plant sent again, almost reverently. His face slid down against Nicholas's neck, their stubble scratching together almost unpleasantly. "Thank you."

 

"You're welcome."

 

Vash pulled back a little to smile at him, eyes crinkling into impossibly green slits. He ran his hand all the way up his spine and into his damp black hair, exploring his ear and the features of his face.

 

"How come I can't feel you in my head as much anymore?"

 

At the question, Vash's aura immediately grew stronger, like the sun returning from behind a cloud, then faded again as Vash began tracing idle patterns on his back.

 

"Being able to see and hear and stuff is kind of distracting."

 

"Oh." He guessed that made sense. It was a relief not to have him so forcefully present in his mind. Made him feel more like himself again. "Are you tired?"

 

"I don't want to sleep. Done too much of that already."

 

He nodded, considering what to do next. It wasn't often strangers showed up unexpectedly on space stations. He had no idea how he'd explain Vash's presence to the rest of the crew. And that wasn't even considering what Legato and Knives might do if they found out the plant had been released from his capsule. Assuming they didn't know already. The prospect of confronting the captain again sent chills down his spine.

 

"Do you think Legato might still try to hurt us?"

 

Vash bit his lip, eyes going distant for a moment.

 

"Knives is shutting me out," he said. "But he does that whenever we fight."

 

At any rate, naked in the bathroom together was probably not the best place to be discovered. Reluctantly, Nicholas stepped out of Vash's loose embrace and began pulling on clean clothes. Vash watched a moment more, eyes caressing his form like his hand had, then turned to his own pile of clothing without another word.

 

 

 

Down the hall, he could see Grey and Hoppered sitting in the lounge, engaged in some kind of quietly intense debate. Fortunately, neither noticed their presence as he showed Vash his cabin and told him to wait there. Nicholas surveyed the pair from the doorway before approaching. The big man looked oddly bemused as usual, but the mechanic's body was tense and his brow furrowed.

 

"What's up, guys?" Come to think of it, shouldn't they be on duty right now?

 

"Legato pulled rank and kicked us off the bridge," Hoppered said without looking at him. "Said he'd handle the whole shift by himself."

 

"Legato's up there by himself?" He felt Vash jump to attention inside his skull.

 

"Oh, no. He wouldn't."

 

"Wouldn't what?"

 

"I mean he sometimes talked about it, but I don't think he'd really do something like that."

 

"Something like what, Vash?" he asked, ignoring his crewmates perturbed stares.

 

"He wanted to crash the ship into the City."

 

"WHAT?" He rounded on Hoppered, grabbing the man by the front of his jumpsuit. "How long has he been up there alone?"

 

"Maybe half an hour," the bald man replied, slowly.

 

"Fuck!" Nicholas dropped him and sprinted from the room.

 

 

 

Arriving at the bridge with Hoppered and Grey at his heels, he took in the mangled wreckage of the Nav station before throwing himself on Legato's back, trying to wrestle him away from the main com system. The blue haired man let out a piercing shriek and flung him off. He hit the floor and the next thing he knew, he was staring into those dead yellow eyes again as Legato's hands tightened around his throat, cutting off his breath. He experienced an endless note of pure terror before Grey's meaty arms closed over the captain and pulled him off. Legato fought him with inhuman and single-minded ferocity. It took all three of them to subdue the captain but eventually they got him tied to a chair with ragged ended wires. Grey had to practically sit on him to hold him in place until his struggles ceased and he went limp.

 

"He passed out," the navigator rumbled.

 

Hoppered was mourning the remains of his precious computers. "Look at this mess. What the hell would he do this for?"

 

Nicholas called up the flight plans on the only intact computer. Sure enough, the thruster firing routine that kept the ship in orbit was offline. All the mainframes that handled it had been trashed. Some thrusters were jammed on, others incapable of being fired.

 

"Grey. Look at this."

 

The huge man practically knocked him away from the workstation as he caught sight of the screen.  After a moment's perusal he said one word very quietly and very forcefully.

 

"Fuck."

 

If Grey was swearing that meant they were in some very deep shit indeed.

 

Rapid typing. "He wiped the entire navigation system. We have seventy-eight minutes before the ship hits the ionosphere."

 

Hoppered was already at the com station, frantically connecting wires. After a moment, the whine of feedback echoed down all the corridors, followed hard by Grey's quiet bass.

 

"All hands, report to your stations. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill. All coms are to be left open until further notice."

 

Response was immediate and ranged from sleepy grumbling to animated swearing, crackly and incomprehensibly jumbled.

 

"The Nav system's gone. We have an hour to fix the thrusters or this ship is going down."

 

Nicholas watched over Grey's shoulder as he began re-calculating the firing order that kept them in orbit. He steeled himself to be the bearer of bad news.

 

"It's worse than that," he said, voice echoing down the ship with the coms' slight delay. "If we don't fix it, it's going to crash right into Landing."

 

Landing. The city where the first colonial ship had touched down housed almost half the planet's population, was the seat of government, science and culture. The station would obliterate it. The consequences of Landing being destroyed were too vast to contemplate.

 

Hoppered looked at him, his too-light eyes hard with suspicion.

 

"How do you know that?"

 

"It's a long story."

 

"The manual overrides are jammed." Monev must have headed down to the engines the second the alarm went up. "Whoever did this was damned thorough."

 

"Would cutting out the power to the thrusters help?" Nicholas asked, mentally going over the power grid for weak links. He wished there was something more he could do to help but this was way out of his area of expertise. After only six months shipside he was still learning the systems.

 

A moment of frantic typing. "No. The ship would still fall into a populated area."

 

"What about venting some of the atmosphere?" Hoppered asked, leaning over Grey to get a look at his screens.

 

More typing "Even if we vent all of it, it won't be enough to correct course. Not on the heading we're at now."

 

They weren't going to be able to save the station. There was a slight pause as everyone acknowledged this fact. Nicholas clenched and unclenched his hands in the fabric of his jumpsuit, feeling useless.

 

"We're going to need a big enough explosion to knock the ship off course. Maybe break it up, so it'll burn." Grey said.

 

"We can cook up a batch of C-4." Dominique's husky alto sounded tense, almost fierce. "Where do you want it?"

 

"Who the hell are you?" Hoppered asked, incredulously.

 

Nicholas glanced at Hoppered, confused. The mechanic was staring up the bridge, his body tense as if ready to fight or run. He followed his line of sight and found Vash standing in the doorway, something that seemed to consist entirely of long pale legs and damp, cornsilk blond hair slung over his right shoulder.

 

"Vash, that's- Is that-" Nicholas sputtered.

 

"Knives," he said.

 

Legato jerked awake with a little panicked cry and started struggling against his bindings either trying to get closer to or away from the plants. Hoppered took a step toward them, but Nicholas stepped into his way.

 

"Hoppered? What's going on up there?" Midvalley asked, sounding as usual far too calm for the situation.

 

"We have an intruder," Hoppered spat.

 

"How could there an intruder on a fucking space station?" Monev asked.

 

Vash looked inappropriately amused.

 

"He's not an intruder. He's...  they were the auxiliary power system," Nicholas said.

 

There was a moment of incredulous silence. Then, everyone was talking at once, the coms letting out a little whine of feedback in protest.

 

"We don't have time for this!" Rai-Dei barked in a tone that instantly shut everyone else up. He'd always been good at shutting people up. "Anyone not on the shuttle by 0650 gets left behind."

 

Grey was immediately back to business. "Wolfwood, take them and Legato down to the shuttle and get them out of the way. Hoppered, I need you down in section eight with a remote detonator. Now."

 

Nicholas eyed the still struggling captain. How was he supposed to get him down to the shuttle? He unwired one of his hands, cautiously. The blue-haired man made a short, choked sound at the touch of Nicholas's skin and passed out again. Odd, but too convenient to analyze too closely right now. He made short work of the rest of his bindings and led the way from the bridge.

 

They stopped in quarters and got the other plant into a spare jumpsuit. Vash's face was grim and he handled his brother's unconscious form as if he were made of glass. Knives looked disturbingly, exactly like Vash, but paler and with only a single, fist sized socket between his shoulder blades. They stuffed his mass of hair down the back of the shirt to keep it out of the way. Legato was a dead weight over his shoulder. He couldn't tell if the captain was conscious or not.

 

Hoppered returned from his room with Midvalley, who was carrying something long and black. His saxophone case. The pair just looked at each other a moment and then the mechanic disappeared into the corridor.

 

 

 

Rai-Dei barely glanced at them as they finally maneuvered aboard the shuttle, busy performing his pre-flight checks. Midvalley helped them strap Legato and Knives into one of the three man fight couches, then Zazie appeared and they were commandeered to help put in the spares. Vash moved in zero-g as if he'd been born there, helping to maneuver the bulky seating into position. EG was reading some kind of statistics or coordinates over the com like a mantra.

 

Finally, with nothing else to do, he and Vash ended up floating next to each other, staring down at the unconscious pair.

 

"Maybe we should separate them," Nicholas suggested.

 

Vash shook his head. "I'm not sure it would make any difference." He pulled himself into the seat next to Knives, fastening the webbing over his torso.

 

"How long do we have?"

 

"Fifteen," Zazie said. "Strap in."

 

He took the couch across the aisle, frowning.

 

"Why didn't you tell me, Vash?" Nicholas muttered,

 

"I thought I'd talked him out of it, after he made me remember."

 

"Remember what?"

 

"What they did to me."

 

Fuck.

 

"I forgave them. They didn't realize they were hurting me and I didn't know how to tell them. He made me remember but I wanted to be like Rem, so I forgave them and I forgave him. I thought that was the end of it."

 

"Why would your brother do that to you?"

 

"He didn't understand why I was mad at him for killing the captain. He wanted to show me that humans are vermin. That they don't deserve to live."

 

"He killed the captain?" he asked, quietly. He'd heard the captain had died of a cerebral aneurysm, quietly and in his sleep.

 

"I wasn't awake then, or I would have stopped him. I'm sorry."

 

"It wasn't your fault."

 

Knives must have killed the captain so his thrall would be promoted. He frowned at the former engineer, who was slouched forward against the flight straps. He wondered how long it had been since Knives had started influencing him and whether there was even a Legato left in there.

 

Leonoff had come in while they weren't watching and was sitting as far away from the plants as possible. Monev drifted up the aisle into the cockpit, his expression guarded and suspicious.

 

Midvalley settled in next to him, stretching his long legs out as far as possible in the confines of the shuttle. He smirked at Nicholas.

 

"So, is that who you've been talking to? Not bad." He winked at Vash, who smiled back and looked mildly confused.

 

"Vash, this is Midvalley. Midvalley, Vash," he said quickly. Thank goodness the tech was taking this weirdness in stride. At least someone would be on their side in the inevitable confrontation with the rest of the crew.

 

"He's the musician right? Saxophone? Ask him if he likes Charlie Parker."

 

"You ask him."

 

Vash stuck his tongue out at him then looked at Midvalley intently. He would have laughed at the musician's expression, an odd mix of fear, disbelief and intense interest, but he was too busy with the odd little sick feeling in his chest. Was he jealous? Why the hell would he be jealous that the plant was talking to someone else? And how did Vash know anything about music anyway?

 

"Rem loved Jazz," Vash sent him, absently.

 

Embarrassed that the plant might have picked up on his jealousy, he firmly ignored their debate over the merits of various Old Earth musicians he'd never heard of. He craned his neck to try and see what was going on outside the still open shuttle doors, catching sight of Zazie clinging to his father's arm near the hatch. He couldn't decipher what was going on on the coms, which were booming and slightly garbled by echoes in the expanse of the shuttle bay.

 

"Five minutes," Rai-dei announced.

 

A tiny high pitched sound and a frantic scuffle brought all their attention to the blue-haired captain. Legato was pressed as far from Knives as his seat webbing would allow, eyes wide in his slack face, hands making little abortive movements toward the still unconscious plant next to him. He gave a small shriek, jerking violently as Vash winced.

 

"Vash? He-"

 

The scarred blond looked over at him, eyes full of sorrow.

 

"Knives was awake a long time before I was. I don't think I can fix him."

 

But before he could ask anything else, Hoppered was slipping past him, folding himself in next to Midvalley and outside the increasing scream of the engines was cut off as Grey sealed the hatch. Dominique dropped into the seat behind Legato, peering at his half-turned face with something like concern.

 

And then there was the gut-clenching feel of the shuttle's acceleration as they shot free of the doomed ship and glided into the darkness of space. Rai-dei circled them around, so they could track their falling home's descent, all of them craning to see the main screen through the door into the cockpit. Grey's deep voice was keeping some kind of countdown as the ionosphere began to glow around the superheated hull.

 

They watched as blooms of fire curled from the ship, breaking it into three pieces spinning in a shower of fragments. The remains of the station streaked burning over the continent, leaving a grapeshot trail of wreckage. It skimmed safely over the eastern towns and out over the inland sea, the small debris clattering on roofs and into the water not enough to cause much damage. The majority of the ship plunged into the ocean well short of Landing, sending up a double plume of white spray and a ring of waves that smashed harmlessly across the long, sandy barrier islands that protected the port. The largest fragment clipped one island, leaving an oblique scrape of a crater that immediately began filling with water.

 

In the shuttle, the silence was only broken by Legato's heavy breathing.

 

 

 

5.

 

They are told to land at a remote research station on the barren northern coast until the bureaucrats can figure out what to do with them. It's iles from anything like a tree, but being back on dirt under sky is good enough for now. Vash is amazed by everything, and when he's not hovering around Knives, waiting for him to wake up, he's tearing all over the place looking, touching, smelling. He disappears for about half an hour mid-morning and comes back talking out loud. And then he's talking to everyone, playing with the kids, charming the Householders and annoying the resident scientists with a thousand questions. Nicholas spends most of the afternoon sitting on a tall spar of rock, enjoying the wind and trying hard not to think about anything. From up there he can see the whole station, perched in a cranny on the craggy white cliffs, but he spends most of his time looking at the greenish sea, the high clouds and the blue-white sky.

 

They'd arrived at noon local time, but in early morning by shipboard time and despite his general lack of sound sleep in the last few months, he's still wide awake as the sun set stretches the shadows out to the horizon. Vash finds him as darkness gathers and sits nearby. They watch the twin moons rise in silence, first pale red, then white.

 

Sitting here in the faint moonlight the plant could be just another young man flopped across a dusty rock listening to the hum of night insects. He could be anyone. He is, Nicholas realizes, almost painfully beautiful.

 

He also realizes that they will never get to be together like this again, and just for a moment Nicholas lets himself forget. He forgets the anger and fear that have been dogging him, forgets Vash's brother lying unconscious somewhere in the buildings below. He forgets everything that's happened to them, forgets almost dying twice and having his mind picked over for days. He forgets that Vash is not human. He forgets everything but a vague yearning to feel that gentle, knowing mind touch his again.

 

Before he can stop himself he leans over and kisses Vash, firmly closing his lips over the plant's. Gold fire spreads out from his mouth, crackling up his nerves and threatening to consume him entirely. Nicholas jerks away from it almost violently and they stare at each other. His breath hitches painfully in his chest. The plant's eyes are a green weight against him, threatening to push him off balance, to topple him backwards into the dust.

 

Nicholas is terrified by the force of his own desire.

 

"Nick," Vash says, sighing the name so softly he's not sure he hears it.

 

He looks away from the dark haired man, down at his clunky, borrowed boots then up at the doubled crescent of the moons. When the plant finally looks back at him, his face is remorseful. Nicholas shakes his head and turns away before he can say anything. He knows he shouldn't have kissed him, but he won't apologize. It would be too much like lying.

 

The next day Vash and Knives are gone. Nicholas is numb and unsurprised, the crew ambivalent and the bureaucrats almost relieved. No one was looking forward to trying to explain what they were to people or to proving how exactly Knives was responsible for the fall of the ship. This way they can blame Legato, lock him up in a psychiatric ward and simply put out word to all enforcement personnel to watch for anyone of Knives and Vash's description.

 

That same morning, Nicholas and the crew are loaded onto a bus and sent back to Landing. Once he gets there, he decides, he'll go down to central processing and request training as a teacher. He thinks about moving south, where it's always warm and the trees are more gold than red and the canopy blocks all view of the stars. That, he decides, would be ideal.