As the doorway—well, curtain, but still—to the tiny dressing room was thrown open, Quinn cringed backwards and visibly blanched. As she recovered and gave an apologetic look to Madam Dague, a sick feeling began to build in the pit of her stomach. She closed her eye, took a long, deep breath. A second. A third. Then she slid under the curtain and let it fall shut behind her.

For just a moment, standing there, she felt a fierce urge to grip at her upper arms to ground herself. But with a herculean effort and the sharp awareness that she wasn't going to be able to avoid this kind of thing as much in Casoban, she loosened her hands—which she realized were clenched stark white against the black fabric of the dress—and carefully hung it up on one of the hooks. A minute or so passed as Quinn jimmied her feet out of her shoes and shucked her clothing off, tossing them haphazardly against the wall, until she finally grabbed the dress off the hook, pulled down the hidden zipper, and stepped in.

Outside of the dressing room, noises of muted frustration could be heard as Quinn fiddled, back to the mirror, trying to find the zipper behind her to pull it up. No more than a minute, again, and there was a huff of satisfaction, and the sound of a zipper fastening.

Then there was silence outside, as Quinn stared at herself in the mirror.

She flicked her braid this way and that until she finally felt happy with how it settled, then stared again.

She was...

Quinn had never ascribed the word to herself before, as far as she could remember. But, at least to her untrained eye, she was...something like beautiful.

She hoped.

Well, there was someone qualified to tell just outside, right? So, screwing up her courage and doing her best to swallow the lump in her throat, she reached a shaking hand out, pulled the curtain aside—congratulating herself as she did—and gingerly stepped out.

"How...how do I look?"

Dague was waiting outside, hand on her hip, foot tapping with anticipation. When Quinn emerged, however, she did not explode with screams of wonder or applause, nor did she bounce with delight or faint from joy. Instead, her tight-lipped smile widened just a bit, her eyebrows raised ever so slightly, and she let out a satisfied breath through her nose.

“Hm,” she said simply, and for a moment left it at that. Her eyes scanned Quinn’s form, traced the designs and how they wrapped around her, how the hem was high enough not to drag on the ground. She came over and adjusted her braid, then stepped back and appraised her again.

Only, it wasn’t just her she was judging. It was the dress, too. The craftsmanship. If it didn’t look good, who was that more of an indictment on? For someone of Madam Dague’s history, there could only ever be one to blame: herself.

Thankfully, however.

“Yes,” she finally said, and her smile grew just a bit more. “Yes, I believe you look quite wonderful. I would frame this moment, but I think you’ll do quite enough marketing for me, looking like that.”

She snapped her fingers, and the clerk poked her head out from the front. “Madam?”

“Ring it up. I don’t think there’s a force on Illun that could stop either of us from ensuring she leaves with that dress.”

Quinn...well, basked would be overly extreme, but she certainly absorbed the praise. She hadn't been told she looked wonderful or beautiful very often before. Not by somebody that meant it, at least, and she found that it was something that she could quite get used to. But before she could spend much longer enjoying it, the moment was shattered by those three words:

Ring it up.

Oh god.

With that phrase, visions of the price tags at the front of the store danced in her head, and her mouth suddenly went dry. She realized, at that exact moment, that she had no idea how much money she made, and how much she had to spend. Her pupil contracted, and she took a step back. "One moment!" she said, backing rapidly into the dressing room again and digging through her pants pocket to find her phone. Frantically navigating the menus and tapping on the wrong thing here and there because her hands were now shaking a bit for a reason vastly different from the normal, she finally arrived at her destination: the messages app. A few more taps brough her to her most texted contact: Deelie.

Texting as fast as she'd ever texted in her life, she held her arm out and took a quick picture of herself—looking perhaps a bit more perturbed than she did a moment ago—and attached it to the message before she finally tapped send.

Over in the Aerie, a message popped up on Dahlia's phone: a picture of a worried-looking Quinn in a very fancy dress, with the text beneath it:

DEELIE HOW MUCH MONEY DO I MAKE CAN I AFFORD 6500 DOLLARS

It had been a fraught morning on the Aerie since Quinn had left. Besca had spent just about every minute on the bridge, juggling seven conference calls, a dozen email chains, an IM thread with the marketing department, and a handful of unread texts from Toussaint that didn’t have the word “Quinn” in their preview. It had been suggested to her by the Board that she have a cot moved into her office, because she was at no time to be more than a room away from absolute availability.

So, Dahlia had done all of her worrying alone. As small as the RISC team had become since Hovvi, with Quinn here, she’d never actually felt lonely. Stressed, exhausted, anxious, and almost every other flavor of misery, but never lonely. Early into their friendship, she’d come to feel the same sort of constancy with Safie, and to a lesser extent, Ghaust and Lucis, who, even if they weren’t exactly friends, were still always around.

Now all Dahlia could do was lay on the couch in the dorms, too worried to force herself into a sim pod, or cook lunch, or watch TV out of fear that the news might suddenly alert her that the Ange had exploded, or seven-hundred singularities were opening up in Casoban and they were chucking Ablaze down alone.

The reality was less extreme, but that didn’t settle her any. Quinn was probably a wreck, she thought. Utterly lost in a strange place, without a single friendly face for thousands of miles in any direction. What if she had another episode? Who would she turn to? It wouldn’t matter to the CSC how loud she screamed or how hard she cried, they’d perched their whole treaty on her back and she was theirs for two weeks, six days, and however many hours. Too many. What if they made her duel? They had to know it wouldn’t work. Would they care? Wild conspiracies flooded her head, of plots to ruin Quinn’s reputation, and RISC’s image, to drive Casoban back into Eusero’s arms. People thought so much of pilots, but the truth was, sometimes, they really were nothing more than political pawns.

Her doom spiral was interrupted by a ding; a special ding—the one assigned to Quinn. She blinked, looked at the screen, and sure enough she saw Quinn’s name on the message. She stared. For many moments she just stared.

Then she was vertical on the couch, then on her stomach again to snatch her phone off the ground, then vertical again with a loud shriek of disbelief. The message was in all capitals, and her fears worked ahead of her eyes, warning her that something had gone wrong. She was hurt. She was scared. She was being attacked by something. Something awful something horrifying something—

Expensive.

Dahlia paused, and finally took a second to read. How much did she make? 6500 dollars? Confusing—more than confusing, baffling. Thankfully, there was a picture attached to give her the context she needed.

She screamed.

A door flung open and out flopped the irascible form of Roaki. “God what the fuck are you screaming about!”

Dahlia was reminded that she only wished she was alone. “Shut up!” she snapped. “Shut up Quinn texted me!”

“Nuh-uh!” the girl spat, hopping over to the foot of the couch, and clambering onto the cushions. “What’d she say? Is she crying? I bet she’s already crying a bunch.”

“She’s buying a dress shut up!”

Roaki face twisted with contempt and confusion. “A dress? Lemme see!”

Dahlia ignored her, typing furiously. A smile, both of relief and pure, unbridled elation, began to spread across her face. Quinn wasn’t hurt. She wasn’t in danger—at least not yet. She was…she was shopping. Besca wasn’t going to believe it.

Her reply was sent: You make plenty PLEASE buy the dress you look gorgeous!

For a while she just stood there, staring down at the picture of her sister, looking anxious in a dress that, frankly, seemed worth every cent of the price. But it could have been made out of burlap and rat fur and she’d still have urged her to buy it. Dahlia couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so light. Like a feather, or a balloon.

Or like she was falling.

She was falling. Roaki had knocked her over and sent her tumbling onto the carpet, snatching the phone from the air as she fell. A devilish giggle filled the air, followed promptly by Dahlia’s own furious shouting.

Shortly, a second text followed the first.

DERSS NOT GOOD HOW U GONA FIHGT IN A BLANKET BUY SUM KNIFES INSTEAD DUMB DEADGIRL

Only a few seconds after Quinn sent the message, she received one back, and the anxiety that had shot to the surface began to quell:

You make plenty PLEASE buy the dress you look gorgeous!

And then, unexpectedly, another:

DERSS NOT GOOD HOW U GONA FIHGT IN A BLANKET BUY SUM KNIFES INSTEAD DUMB DEADGIRL

She blinked at it for a moment, confused, until she got to the deadgirl at the end, and her lips curled into a smile. Roaki saw it too. And that also meant that Roaki and Dahlia were spending time together, at least a little bit, and maybe they'd be less oil-and-water when she got back (she tried to avoid thinking about the part that when she got back, Dahlia would be leaving right after). Still, the smile remained. Dahlia had called her gorgeous, and Roaki had texted her. That was worth something, at least, right?

She fired back a quick <3 to Dahlia, and then, after a moment's consideration, made one final text: <3 (for Roaki)

So, the decision was made, and the dress would be hers. Reaching down again and digging through her pants pocket for her wallet after replacing her phone, she fished through that too, until she found her 'debit card,' which she didn't think she'd ever actually used before. She frowned for just a moment as she realized this dress didn't have any pockets, and she was going to need to buy a purse at some point too, which would also probably cost a lot on the Ange; it was too important that a pilot have their phone on them at all times. '

But that frown didn't last long; her mood was being buoyed back up by thoughts of Dahlia and Roaki before too long. So it was with a smile she came back out to the cashier. She'd kind of wanted to put her normal clothing back on, but...

She also kind of didn't want to take this off so soon. There was a butterfly flutter of anxiety in her gut about going back out into the Upper Commons wearing it, and the firm knowledge that she wouldn't be avoiding any kind of attention, but she'd already squared herself with the fact that she was going to get an excess of attention in Casoban anyway. Just like Dahlia asking about the bathroom had followed her, it was best if she chose where she was going to get that attention first so people remembered it best.

So as she was fiddling with the card in preparation for buying something so expensive, she asked,

"Can I have a bag for my other clothes and wear this out?"

“Miss Loughvein,” Madam Dague said, handing Quinn a bag from behind the counter. “I would be insulted if you didn’t.”

It didn’t take long for her to get everything packed up, finished by the time the clerk was finished ringing up her dress. It was that easy. A simple swipe and now, the beautiful thing was her beautiful thing. Of course, that simplicity crumbled under more than a moment’s scrutiny; she had plenty of money, yes, but why?

From a certain perspective it had come rather easily. Pilots didn’t often work tirelessly throughout the day, collapsing sore and thankless in the early hours of the morning only to wake up exhausted to do it all over again. There were hordes of people in Illun who likely assumed this was Quinn’s life. Strolling through the most exclusive places in and out of the world, spending exorbitant amounts of cash on a spontaneous shopping sprees and skipping year-long waitlists on a whim for food she wouldn’t finish. Some would deride the lifestyle as detached and wasteful, others would envy it. A few might even envy the parts that afforded her these privileges.

The truth was, plenty of pilots never got to spend the money they made. How much capital did RISC make funneling Safie and Ghaust’s accounts back into their coffers? What had the CSC done with the windfall of Chateau’s demise? Or the pilots Roaki had killed?

Was Quinn’s bank account really a boon? Or was it a grim reminder, a taunt: ‘Even if you never make another cent, you’ll probably be dead before you dent it.’

She left the boutique behind, dress donned, bag in hand, and made a quick turn back for the lift. This time there was no inconspicuous shuffling or ducking of the head or stuffing of the braid to hide behind, and a crowd formed quickly behind her. As before, no one came up close, but several people called out, cheered, some waved small posters of Ablaze. One woman wore a shirt with a cartoonish rendition of Quinn herself on it, braid flowing, with a miniature of her Savior’s cannon hefted onto her shoulder. There were likely a few gift shops scattered throughout the district that would soon sell similar merchandise.

When the lift doors shut, the quiet returned. In the dim metal, Quinn could see a hazy reflection of herself. The silhouette was…unfamiliar, to be sure, even without the details. Who was this shape with her name? Would the girl who had ventured so apprehensively from that room in Hovvi recognize her now? Perhaps she could simply ask.

Before she could though, that reflection split as the doors opened once again, and she returned to the beige silence of the dorms.

As soon as Quinn got back in the lift and left the crowd behind, she let out a long, slow breath, and realized that she'd been holding it for a while. And for once, not solely out of anxiety; there had been a certain thrill in walking through the upper commons in full view and having people clustering around her—her alone—that she was quite unfamiliar with, but wasn't all unwelcome.

As she stared at the image in the door, she reached out her hand, laying it against her reflection's and marveling at how different it looked. It was so...sleek. Oh, what was that word she'd read in one of Dahlia's magazines once? Svelte? The last time she'd wore a dress was...well, it wasn't exactly a fun time for anybody—she felt her back teeth clench—but she was allowed to feel pretty now and then, right? She was allowed to feel pretty, and she was allowed to enjoy it when people cheered her name.

She'd somehow forgotten she was on the lift—it was just so quiet!—and jumped when the doors slid open before her. Stepping out, she was once more enwrapped in the cream-colored quiet. She stood still for a moment, then reached a hand into her pocket to check the time—

Oh. That was right, she didn't have any pockets in this, did she?

Well, whatever. It was probably about half an hour after lunch, so it was time anyway. Making her swift walk down the hall back to her dorm, she stepped into the enormous walk-in closet, nearly tripped over her luggage that she still needed to unpack, reminded herself that she still needed to order a dresser, and quickly—or, as quickly as someone vastly out of practice could—divested herself of her fancy new clothing, sliding a coathanger carefully into it and hanging it up as the first addition to her closet. She stared at it for another moment and found herself smiling.

Then she emptied out the Miséricorde bag, reclaimed her usual clothing, and popped it on. She breathed a sigh, one of paradoxical disappointment and relief, and checked the time for real this time. A little after one. It was a little later than she wished, but it was still around the right time, and she couldn't in good conscience wait any longer or else she'd start feeling guilty for skipping training. Tying up the drawstring in her sweatpants, she cracked her neck. Then she unzipped her bag just enough to pull out her water bottle, filled it up with fresh water in the bathroom, took a long, deep breath, and whacked the button to open her door again, wheeled on her heel to the right, and set off towards the gym.

Under the fluorescent lights and drumming of the overhead fans, time passed quickly. She was free of the crowds, of all company in fact. Neither the twins nor her nebulous third squad mate joined her, and so she was left to train alone, in the quiet. The gym was rather spacious for a single person, with a wide array of machines and free weights, with a wall of accessories ranging from exercise balls to jump ropes and elastic pulls. Whatever routine she had organized over her time on the Aerie could be readily mimicked and perhaps even improved here.

Getting herself acquainted took time, and when all was said and done, the clock read close to midnight. There wasn’t much of a way to tell, otherwise. It was much the same on the Aerie, but here, the massive windows lining the hall, letting in the light-touched void, could be disorienting. Illun floated below, half sunned and half shadowed, but up here time was almost entirely artificial.

A soft ding sounded from speakers in the ceiling. An automated woman’s voice followed.

Curfew is now in effect. Non-pilot personnel please exit the floor.

Though, there were no other personnel on the floor. Were there? Perhaps the message was simply automated. Then, behind her, the door to the auto-walkway opened and out walked Sybil, along with two or three crew members carrying what seemed to be empty boxes of art supplies. Maybe the system did know.

Either way, she made it back to her room without incident, and as the door sealed shut behind her, Quinn stood once more in the vastness of her own living space. She had, officially, finished her first day as Quinnlash Loughvein, pilot of the Casobani Savior Corps.

Twenty more to go. For now.

Quinn breathed in a deep sigh as the door slid shut behind her with a pneumatic hiss, and then let it out in a long, heavy breath. She needed to get used to working out alone, she supposed. Peeling off her sweat-soaked clothing, she hucked it carelessly into the closet; she'd deal with it tomorrow. Unzipping the bag, she picked out another set of comfy clothes to sleep in and a bag of toiletries, then headed into the oversize bathroom.

Still overwhelmed at the absurd size of everything, she headed immediately to the sink. She'd shower in the morning. Brushed her teeth, spat, washed her face, stared at her reflection like she was somehow looking at somebody else. A CSC pilot. She wasn't sure she liked it very much. She wanted to go home already.

Speaking of home...

She knew it was late, but she also knew that Besca hadn't slept before midnight probably since Quinn had been on the Aerie, and she probably wasn't starting now. Stepping out of the bathroom, she flinched as she looked at the window, out into the dizzying void of space, then walked over and smacked the button to shut it. Too much, a little too much. Another heavy breath, then she pulled the phone out of her pocket and trotted over to the bed, taking a seat on it as her heart grew a little bit lighter. She might not be able to go home, but at least she could ask about it.

God. The mattress was just...god. Everything was so luxurious. But still...she paused, and was again slapped by how quiet it was, still. Probably even moreso now; any minute hum of activity there might've been was long gone, leaving only a silence that she could hear her heartbeat in. She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat, shook her head, flicked her braid back, and tapped at her phone to find her second most called contact after Deelie: Besca <3

She hesitated, just for a second, struck with a sudden nameless anxiety that she couldn't place. It passed in a blink, though, and she tapped on the contact, and made the call.

The first ring hadn't even ended when it was answered. And at having that link back to the Aerie formed...that link back to all that was familiar to her, here in this strange place where she knew nothing and nobody, really: it was suddenly too much. And before Besca could even say anything, Quinn's self-control detonated, and just like that, she burst into tears.

"Why is it so quiet here?"

It had been one hell of a week. Or day. By the time she finally found a moment to sit down, Besca could hardly tell. For the past few days she’d survived off of a combination of coffee and micro-naps, and while that had done a number on her blood pressure and mental acuity, it had at least kept her going. Today though, the worry had kept her eyes open and her stomach paradoxically empty and without an appetite.

She had been saying Quinn’s name all day to people who only cared about how it looked on a document. No one had asked what she was doing, how she was doing—beyond one asshole prodding about why they didn’t have her client-side medical update yet, and indignantly huffing when Besca explained they couldn’t shove her into the doctor’s office first thing.

Talking with her own Board about pilots was always a grating exercise in retaining her humanity, but hearing this conference call of diplomats and think-tank’s discuss them like spare parts for a car was infuriating. What worked, what didn’t, what needed tuning, what needed replacing. More than once she heard nameless, faceless accountants and lawyers and theorymen bemoan a pilot’s poor performance, and suggest in the most abstract and legalese way that they be replaced as soon as possible.

Toussaint, for his part, vehemently shut down any suggestions towards pruning his own team. Eyes turned instead to the lesser cogs in the Savior Corps machine, the technicians, the low-ranking officials. People who could be removed without fuss. Besca was disheartened by how little she cared by then.

Now it was midnight, and she had another call in…soon. She didn’t know—someone would alert her. Her dinner, a microwaved bowl of pasta, was now cold and mostly untouched as she sat at her desk, head in her hands, and prayed that a vessel in her brain would suddenly pop and bring the nightmare to an end.

Then, her phone rang.

It had been a while since she’d had to quick-draw, she wasn’t sure how good her reflexes still were. But she had that phone up to her ear before the first ring had finished.

“Quinn?” she said, or would have, but there was sobbing in her ears immediately, and the word withered in her throat. She didn’t understand what Quinn meant, but she rarely did in times like this. When she was upset, sometimes she didn’t make much sense, and it was more a task of dissecting the feeling in her words than the words themselves.

Not a particularly difficult task, to be fair. Besca figured Quinn was feeling thereabouts exactly what she was, with an extra dash of homesickness, and a different kind of loneliness.

“I’m here, hun’,” she said, winding the frayed nerves up tight. “Breathe, okay? Breathe for me. Just like we practiced.” she took a deep, exaggerated breath to demonstrate. “You’re okay. Everything’s okay. Toussaint tells me the day’s over—you did it. You made it.”

Besca's voice, even over the phone, was like a balm on the burn of Quinn's feelings, and it wasn't long before the breathing started, and the sobbing petered down to sniffing, then just breathing. Shaky, yes, and she could still feel the tears beading at the corner of her eye. But after only a few minutes, she shook her head, took a few more sniffles, blew her nose, and wiped her eye with the corner of her shirt sleeve.

The day was over. She did it. She made it.

She took took one or two more deep breaths, and—back to herself—remembered to press the video call button, pointing the camera at her tear-stained face.

Tear-stained, yes, which was not uncommon; was debatably the most common. But what her face wasn't was still crumpled. Her eye, though misty with tears, was clear and focused instead of faraway like it tended to be sometimes. There was a shadow behind it, certainly. More than what was usually present, even. But steady. By the way the phone was focused on her face, it was clear that her hand wasn't shaking, or was at least only trembling a minimal amount. On the whole, despite the sudden outpouring of emotion that resembled one of her emotional breakdowns, the way she looked now was as composed as she ever really could look.

The other side of the screen blinked on and Besca's face came into focus. She was exhausted, clearly, and the creases of worry that Quinn had become so used to were pasted on her face. She clearly hadn't showered or brushed her hair in probably longer than was hygienic, and her face had a sunken look to it. The bags under her eyes had grown more pronounced. Really, she looked like hell.

But, like Quinn, her eye was bright, and she wore a smile that, while tired, was still wide, genuine, and clearly very happy.

And, a moment later, Quinn's face grew one to match. A sudden smile, one that she'd only matched once or twice before. And then, to make the blue moon even rarer, she gave a little self-conscious laugh.

"Ahaha, sorry about that. It's been a...well, a day, I'm just...it's a lot, you know?" she murmured, flopping down on her back so her hair spread out on the blanket like a crown as the smile grew more mellow. No less happy, but calmer.

"I'm so happy to see you."

Quinn smiled and Besca felt like the Aerie’s gravity had lapsed. Seeing her, seeing that she was okay brought more relief than a full night’s sleep and breakfast in bed. It had only been a few hours but to her Quinn looked…different. Not better but, not worse either. Tired, absolutely, but surprisingly clear.

It still hurt that she was gone, and that she was obviously struggling. Casoban and Runa had been allies for so long now, their identities were similar in so many ways, but there was no avoiding the lethal combination of homesickness and culture shock. It wouldn’t go away any time soon, Besca knew that much first-hand. Every morning would be weird, and every moment could turn alien without warning. This was only the start, and it would only get tougher.

But, she was smiling.

That was good enough for now.

With a rattled laugh, she leaned back in her chair. “Happy to see you too, hun’. So happy. How are you? How was…well, everything? Are you okay? Did you eat? Did anyone give you trouble?”

God, she should have written a list. She had things to run by Toussaint but for some reason, she hadn’t prepared for the calls that she herself had requested. Oh well, all that really mattered was that she could see her, hear her, and talk to her. At least for a little while.

Only when Besca asked Quinn what she'd done did she realize that she actually had answers. Quinn had lived with Besca in the Aerie for long enough now that it felt a bit strange to tell her secondhand all these miles and miles away; but like so many things she'd discovered since that day, strange was not necessarily bad.

"Well, uh, yeah, I went to eat with Cyril...uh...Derisa, I think his name was? One of the new pilots—well, first I met him and his sister, they have an obstacle course that must be half a mile long and I couldn't even make it past the first obstacle, haha. He took me out too a really fancy place called..." Oh, what was it? "...called, um, Lumière something?" She pushed back against the bed and popped back up to a sitting posiiton, shaking her head to get her braid settled against her back. "I've never seen anything like it, not even on TV. I couldn't even eat it all, it was just so much, you know?"

"The gym here is crazy too, the pilot gym back home could fit in a quarter of it. It's going to take me a long time to get used to it."

She paused for a moment, remember how the woman had reacted when they'd left the lift, and what Cyril had told her. Her voice grew a bit more subdued, then, but not unduly so; more thoughtful than pensive. "I thought Casoban would hate me. But they seem to like me, it's weird. Like after lunch, when I—"

She slapped her hand suddenly over her mouth to silence herself, and her eye went wide. She'd almost forgotten! She needed to show Besca! When she dropped the hand away from her face, she was wearing a downright giddy grin, and even bouncing a little, all thoughts of piloting and international relationships forgotten as she put her phone aside on the cover and bolted up. "Oooh I forgot! I gotta show you something!"

She gave a quick wave and bolted out of the camera's line of sight, and into her closet, where she snatched the dress off the hanger and held it out in front of her, brimming with excitement. Dahlia had called her gorgeous, right? She hoped she hadn't shown Besca the picture yet, she wanted it to be a surprise!

If Besca listened carefully, a few small noises of frustration could be heard as the camera faced the wide cream-colored ceiling. Only a moment later, though, there was the pitter-patter of rapid footsteps, and the phone was grabbed up too quickly for anything to be visible as she jogged a little ways. Eventually, the phone was settled against what seemed to be just beneath a sink in a very fancy-looking bathroom, just a flash of Quinn's hand visible as she slipped out of frame for just a moment, revealing a very posh looking bathroom and a door leading into a room of frankly concerning size.

...The view of which was blocked out a moment later, as Quinn nearly bounced back into frame, now wearing her brand-new dress. She spun on her feet as the long skirt flared out around her, nearly fell over, and then, facing the camera again, thrust out her arms to the sides and absolutely beamed:

"Ta-dah!"

The whole world drifted away as Quinn spoke, even her voice, in a way. Besca was listening, intently, but at the same time, what she was saying suddenly became so much less important than the fact that she was saying anything at all. Of course, she was glad to hear that the other pilots—or at least some of them—were treating her kindly, and that she enjoyed the amenities the Ange offered; but when it came down to it, Besca would have listened to her read the dictionary for hours without complaining.

Suddenly, she seemed to remember something, and hurried away, leaving Besca with a view of a rather lofty ceiling. Eventually Quinn did return, whisking her away hand-in-screen to a luxurious bathroom that peered back out in the room proper.

Despite the anticipation, Besca couldn’t help but feel relieved again. That was a lot of space, but she was glad Quinn had it. She deserved nice things, things beyond what the Board determined she should have. It was nice to know her time spent there seemed to be, if nothing else, comfortable.

But all of that fled her mind the instant Quinn came back into view.

Besca let out a loud gasp, rocketing up out of her seat so fast it almost toppled over. “Oh my god!” she cried, her voice a thin rasp that still managed to peak the phone’s microphone.

That was a dress. A dress. A really, really nice dress—where had she gotten a dress like that? She supposed there was no shortage of high-end shops on the Ange, but, even considering that, had Quinn really bought it for herself? Besca couldn’t recall her spending money on anything before, she’d always seemed content with whatever the Aerie provided for free. Dahlia was much the same, and it had always rubbed her the wrong way. They were kids, kids were supposed to want things, and she could count on one hand the times either of them had expressed a desire for anything.

It took her a few long moments to realize she was staring, and that she should probably stop doing that.

“Quinn, oh my god,” she said, settling back down in her seat, almost like she was bracing herself. Her heart had nearly burst in her chest when Quinn twirled around, smiling wide as she’d ever seen. “It’s amazing, I can’t believe it. You look beautiful! I don’t—I didn’t think…where did you even get that? It looks like it was made for you. Oh my god, you look perfect.”

Quinn's smile grew even wider, the widest that it had ever been since that faraway sunny afternoon. She gave one more twirl, slower this time, then plucked the phone from the sink again, practically vibrating with excitement. It had been a weird day for sure, but there wasn't a lot that boosted Quinn's mood like Besca telling her that she looked perfect!

"It was this little place called Miséricorde, I walked in 'cause I realized everyone on the Ange is really fancy so dressing like I usually do would look weird," she babbled, "Isn't it beautiful? She didn't need to alter it at ALL, it was just like this, it's like it was meant to be!" She practically skipped back into the bedroom, leaving the bathroom door open behind her, and tripped over herself because she was looking at the screen instead of where she was walking, nearly faceplanting into the baseboard of her bed.

Still, her cheer was unblunted. It was like talking to Besca after not even a full day in Casoban had unlocked a piece of Quinn that had been buried since Hovvi, and now that it had been let free Quinn was caught up in the current, unable to fully control it but more than happy to be along for the ride. She wheeled on the ball of her foot, stretching out her arm full length in front of her. "Ooh, I can show you my room! It's just..." She tapped the camera button on the video chat, displaying what was in front of her instead of her face and waving it around, "...SO huge! Look how huge it is!"

She nearly turned left, but held off, she wanted to save that for last. So instead she zipped off to the right and ducked into her closet, where her luggage laid forgotten on the ground still. "Look at this! This is a closet! It's like my whole room back at home! I'm never going to use all this space, but—ooh, I think I could get a couch up here! I bet it'd be great in there!"

Then she was off again, darting into the kitchen this time and panning Besca's vicarious eyes about. "I have a kitchen! I have a whole kitchen, just in my room! And guess what?" She popped open the fridge with a flourish, and proudly showed off the four pack of yuzu soda.

"And last but not least...!"

She finally ran over to the left again, and as she pointed the camera at the 'wall,' she whacked the button. The shutters disengaged, and the window once more showed off the starry void of space.

Finally, Quinn was quiet, but for a bit of heavy breathing that grew lighter as she wound down. She blinked hard once, twice. After a bit, she spoke again, and her voice had returned to something like its normal tone and cadence, if not even slower now. She swapped the camera again, and it once more displayed her, though her bright smile had grown softer, more tired.

"So. That's...that's my room."

Besca tried to remember if the name was familiar to her at all, but she’d never been a particularly fashionable person. Life in RISC had reduced her wardrobe to a series of nearly-indistinguishable long-sleeved shirts and button-ups and dress pants, and now and then she still found herself donning a long coat out of habit from her days in the lab. Thinking about it, she hadn’t owned a purse since she was a teenager; these days anything she couldn’t keep on her phone she kept in her office, where she spent most of her time anyway.

Quinn had been like that for a while, or really, up until now. A lot of pilots tended to eschew fashion for comfort when they were station-side. Dahlia likely wouldn’t wear anything besides sweat pants and a tank top until it was her turn on the Ange, and she suspected the change would be grudging. But now Quinn had something different, something she couldn’t train in, and that had to be kept as far away from a pilot’s regime as possible for its own sake. It was…a relief. It was hopeful. Besca wanted her to have as many opportunities to wear that dress as she could.

She tried not to think of how few that might be. Not now.

As Quinn finished the tour of her room, Besca was surprised by the view. Not that she didn’t see one just like it every day, but there was something about having it in the room. She’d spent such a large chunk of her life in space now, the void didn’t intimidate her like it used to, and she thought she might find a window like that quite pleasant.

The camera flipped back around, and Besca met Quinn’s smile with her own. “You worked hard today huh? You’ve earned some rest in a room like that. Don’t feel bad about sleeping in a bit, too. I know things are less rigid there, you don’t have to prove anything, alright? Get good sleep, don’t forget to eat, and don’t push yourself too hard. Loan or not, the most important thing is that you’re okay. Okay?”

Quinn lightly closed her eye for a bit, feeling all the energy bleeding out of her and leaving her just as tired as she'd ever been. It was midnight, after all, and she hadn't had a lot of sleep the night before. For obvious reasons. Still, the smile hovered on her face. With a quick word, she hung the dress up and reclaimed the pajamas she'd been wearing as she returned to her bed, flopping backwards onto it, still staring at Besca's smile. She nodded in reply, making to speak before her face was suddenly split by a tremendous yawn. When it was finally done, she blinked heavily a few times before nodding again. She was...much more tired than she'd though she was.

"Uh-huh," she murmured sleepily, "I'll do my best. The people here are nice, I think."

She flipped over, shimmied into the luxurious covers, and curled up onto her side, letting her body relax and groaning in relief as she did so. Quinn wasn't very good at relaxing these days, and it wasn't often that she let herself. But Besca was right. She'd earned it today. And this really was a very nice bed. Another yawn, as she popped off the elastics, tossed them haphazardly to her nightstand, and let her braid loosen: a true luxury for someone who, up until now, had been expected to be ready to go go go at the slightest notice at any moment.

Another yawn, and her eye fell to half-mast as she propped her phone up on her pillow—one of her pillows—so she didn't need to hold it any longer. She gave a contented hum, and relished the warmth; both within her and without.

"...I think...I'm going to go to sleep soon." She let her eye close completely, and the contented smile stayed.

"I love you."

This was the second time Quinn had thrown that punch, and it was the second time it had caught Besca directly in the gut and left her winded. It was just as baffling to her now as it had been before, and it drudged up the same panic, the same buried shame. With how tumultuous things had been, how close the shaves had become, she found herself thinking often of home. Westwel was a familiar haunt in her dreams, a land so thoroughly ruined no one would live there again until it was sunk, eroded, and a new land emerged to stand upon its corpse. That feeling of loss that lingered in her waking blinks was all she had left of it.

But, in these little moments, looking at Quinn, she thought she might remember what home really felt like.

“Love you too, hun,” she said, as naturally as she breathed. Like that, every ounce of panic and shame vanished. She smiled. “Sleep tight.”

Besca sat there for a long time, ignoring the messages and hails from outside, and did not leave until she was sure Quinn was asleep.

---

Despite how lax the Ange’s schedule seemed, everyone’s day started fairly early. The automated voice chimed at the approximate dawn to announce: “Curfew has lifted.” and shortly thereafter there was activity in the hallway. Through Quinn’s door she could hear Cyril and Sybil chatting on their way to the lift, but she herself didn’t rise for another hour or so. A ping on her phone alerted that an appointment had been made for her in the medical wing, and requested she come at her earliest convenience.

It was a quick ride. The lift took her up past the market floors, to the floor just above it. There she stepped off onto the thick, glass floor overlooking the district Cyril had brought her to yesterday. If she looked, she could have spotted the restaurant, or even Misericord .

Here things were less casual. Scores of employees in lab coats and uniforms scurried about the central plaza. A quintet of massive hallways split off in different directions, each designated with hanging signs like: RESARCH AND DEVELOPMENT or MODIOLOGY, which themselves had lists of subsections attached to them. At the front desk, a man politely directed her to the sign that read: MEDICAL, giving her a room number and assuring her the doctor would be ready shortly.

The hall was wide enough for a dozen people shoulder to shoulder, and split by a pair of autowalkways. Nurses hurried this way and that, ducking in and out of rooms while busy lab techs skirted their paths. Some patients lingered in the hall, or scooted themselves along in wheelchairs. Quinn still got the odd look here and there, but for the most part the personnel seemed to fixated to pay her much mind.

She found her room easy enough, and just like she’d been told, the doctor was in not a few minutes later. He seemed pleasant enough, a bit older and thinner in the hair than Follen, but he had a warm smile that the wrinkles of his face were accustomed to.

“Hello, miss Loughvein, thanks for coming in right away. I know you’re in good hands over on the Aerie, so this is mainly just for formality’s sake. For our records, you understand. Anyway, there’s a fair number of tests we’ve got to run through, nothing too invasive or terrible, but still, better to get it all out of the way now.”

He opened his tablet, flicking through a few pages of whatever document he’d prepared to guide them through the process.

“Right,” he said cheerily. “This shouldn’t take too long at all.”

---

Toussaint was calling. Besca declined, and went back to her salad. A moment later her phone rang again, and this time she let it ring until she had successfully extracted every disgusting baby tomato from her lunch—depositing them into the bin where they belonged—before, finally, she answered.

“Toussaint, I get ten minutes to eat.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” his voice was faux-calm, he’d never been good at hiding when he was upset. “I just needed to ask you a quick question, Besca.”

“Then ask, Jaime.”

“It’s nothing too pressing, really. I just need to know if you sent a fucking bomb to my space station..”

Ah, Quinn had gone to medical. Besca took another bite of her salad, checked the time. She’d barely gone through half and her break was almost over.

“Darroh?”

“She’s not a bomb.”

“There is modium in her head!”

“It’s inert.”

Toussaint sputtered. “There’s no such thing!”

“If there was no such thing, you’d be dead, whoever was in the room with her would be dead, whoever was around her for the past day would be dead, and in case you forgot the fact that it’s in her head, she would be dead.” Besca sacrificed another precious forkful to cut Toussaint off before he could argue further. “It’s inert. It’s not growing, it’s not radiating, it’s a rock stuck in her head.”

“It’s not just in her head, Besca, it’s on her brain.”

“Where is the brain located?”

“You—”

“Listen, she’s been with us for months. I’m not dead, Dahlia isn’t dead, no one who’s been around her has caught so much as a sniffle. We’ve seen no growths, no modium sickness, and as far as we can tell, she’s as healthy now as she’s ever been.” She elected to leave out how healthy she’d been when they found her. “If you want, I’ll put you on with our head of medical. He’s been personally overseeing Quinn since she got here. All the records you got, he wrote.”

“I’m assuming he wrote records on this as well. Funny how those weren’t included.”

“If they had been, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Casoban would be picking out a dress for its wedding to Eusero. Now call Aldous Follen, or don’t, but I have seven meetings to get to keep this treaty running on my end, and expect you to do the same on yours.”

There was silence on the other end, then a single, dejected sigh, before Toussaint hung up the phone.

---

It was hours before the door to Quinn’s exam room opened. It wasn’t the doctor who had returned, but rather, Toussaint. He looked tired, skeptical, and just a tad wary, and stayed on the other side of the room from her.

“Alright,” he said, clearing his throat. “We have determined that you are not, currently, a danger to yourself or anyone who might be in close proximity to you. However, we will continue to monitor you, closely and frequently. You will need to return here ever few days for a scan.

“As well, I believe it would be for the best if you not mention this to anyone right now. Especially your team. I want your integration here to be smooth, and frankly, this might make things…uncomfortable, if it were public. Business as usual.”

He stood there a moment, just looking at her, as if he might be able to see inside her skull. He shook his head. “Well, as long as you’re okay. Anyway, unless you have any questions, you’re free to go. I would suggest at some point today you drop by the hangar and check on your Savior. I believe your technician arrived this morning, and we’d like to make sure everything is up to standards.”

Quinn had, in fact, not expected her medical exam to take very long at all. It seemed strange to think it now, but she'd only just discovered there was modium in her head and with how busy she'd been since then, how tumultuous yesterday had been, she'd forgotten all about it. Despite the severity of a piece of modium in her head. And so it was that after an hour or two, once the easy parts of the exam were over and midway through the head scan, there had been faint sounds first of confusion and then alarm from the doctor who'd talked to her. Minutes passed, and so did rapid footsteps in the hallway outside. Then it had gone quiet. And so, Quinn had sat in the exam room for the last two hours, totally isolated from everyone, with nothing to do but think.

It had been a long time since she'd had a morning that leisurely. On the Aerie, the second she was up, she was eating, and the second she was fed, she was out, usually heading for the sims or the gym. So that morning had been one of nigh-inconceivable luxury. Taking a long shower with her braid undone, replaiting it, unpacking her luggage finally, ordering a dresser that would come up later that day, shooting a few texts back and forth with Deelie, putting the sweaty clothes from yesterday aside to wash them later...it felt like she'd come unbuttoned from time, she'd had so much.

The one thing she hadn't done was eat breakfast. She knew that some medical tests didn't work if you'd eaten, so she'd just had a bottle of clean, clear water to start the day. By the time she'd been pinged to come to medical, she was almost grateful for it. She didn't quite know what to do with herself for that long.

Perhaps there was something a bit sad about that.

She wasn't entirely sure how long she'd been sitting in the exam room, dawdling her feet off the side of the table where they'd seated her as she stared up at the ceiling. One of the lights flickered every so often, and it had started to captivate her attention in a way few things could. Strange things happened to a mind when it was bored. It had helped to distract her from the images of her destroying the treaty again, at least.

She frowned, itching to put her eyepatch back on—being without it was discomfiting—and sighed for the umpteenth time, only to this time be cut off by the door shuttled open, and Toussaint walked in. Quinn gave him her best smile, but it was strained no matter how hard she tried, and after a moment she dropped it, waiting to hear her sentence.

"We have determined that you are not, currently, a danger to yourself or anyone who might be in close proximity to you."

Quinn couldn't help it; she let out a loud breath of relief as he went on. She'd need to come back every few days. That was fine, she was used to visiting medical constantly now after Roaki. She nodded along as he asked her as well to keep it hidden. No problems there. She didn't want much to talk about it either.

He stood at stared at her, and she twitched, before he revealed the best news that he possibly could, except maybe that Casoban had decided that the treaty was fine and Quinn could go home to the Aerie. So the best news he realistically could: her technician had arrived. The smile came back to her face as she nodded, small but sincere this time.

"Mhmm. I'm...sorry about all of that."

An office’s worth of tests run by a fleet of the CSC’s most talented doctors, and Toussaint still wasn’t sure what to make of her. Or Besca, for that matter. Modium tumors on the brain were rare, and unfailingly fatal almost as soon as they appeared. By all rights, Quinn should have been a corpse inside a containment casket bound for Illun’s hottest crematorium. No one with a pulse should have been within a hundred feet of her without a turducken of hazmat suits.

Inert. Ridiculous. modium had been as lethal to humanity as the Modir—more, depending on who you listened to. But, even if he didn’t believe she’d had this growth for so long, the fact was, even if she’d suddenly sprouted it the second they ran their scans, she’d have been dead before they finished. Either it was inert, or it wasn’t modium. In either case, she wasn’t dangerous. For now.

“Hm,” he sighed, then stepped aside and opened the door for her. “Just…alert us if anything changes. If you feel ill, or…I don’t know, anything. And really, I don’t know if Commander Darroh put you up to it, but, no more secrets. We’re allies, Ms. Loughvein.”

The hallway had slowly repopulated while she waited, everything seemed on its way back to normal. Toussaint had clearly made sure to keep the details of the incident under wraps, and aside from a few stray looks, the personnel all went on with their busy schedules. Quinn took the lift down, and on the way the alien thoughts stirred. It wasn’t discomfort, and it wasn’t urgent danger, it was more…excitement.

The doors opened and Quinn emerged into the cathedralesque expanse of the Ange’s hangar. The Saviors all stood in their alcoves, encased in scaffolds and walkways, flanked by platforms rife with all kinds of equipment. Spectre and Enavant were housed next to one another, and on the opposite side, beside Foudre, was the familiar sight of Ablaze.

There were twice as many techs scurrying about her Savior than any of the others, especially around its head. Every last one of them wore a pale-blue hazard suit, even the ones on the platforms around it. They prodded Ablaze’s flesh, took scrapings from its modium plating, sampled saliva from its gums. Mostly, though, they clustered around its face, dividing themselves between its eyes in clusters of loud curiosity.

All except for one at the bottom, who wore a hazard suit as well, only it wasn’t blue. It was bright orange. They turned, like they’d sensed her, and despite that they were entirely obscured, they became obviously and incredibly excited.

“Quinn! Hey!” came the muffled, but familiar voice as jogged over, suit squeaking with every step. “Quinn! Uhm! It’s me—it’s Tillie! Commander Darroh sent me over to be our tech liaison! Me! Can you believe it? I get to work on the Ange with you!”