THE BODY HOLDS THE SPEAR

and the fractious, fragmentary world spun loose of its orbit

And Mars, scalpel, gunsight, Port Lethe opportunist who had followed him for the promise of his dreamed future, looked at him with her flint-dark eyes, penetrating so he could see the calculation behind them, and bet on him. 

It’s hard on her, he knows. Holding up the world when his knees buckle. Biting her tongue and biding her time when he falters, lockstep with him in front of the crew, raising her voice only in the relative privacy of his quarters. Picking up his slack anyway. 

Dragging him to Mary’s, running the ship in his absence. Meridian, Betsy, second love; even now, coming out of it, tongue thick in his mouth and watching the world lag around him as he struggles to sit, he sees her running the numbers, calculating. What can we afford to lose? How much can we ask the crew to endure? Braids hanging over her arm, hiding her bruise-dark exhaustion, what he puts her through. She doesn’t look up as he stands (weak as a newborn foal); she doesn’t have to. Like his own body, he feels her. 

“Mars,” he says, soft — or, trying for soft, because his voice comes out rough, scraping his throat. He swallows. “Fuck. I’ll handle it.” 

“You will not.” She looks up. Eyes sharp, the scar stark beneath. “You can’t.” 

(I know you, I know you, I know you. It burns.) 

“I’m fine,” he insists, coming up beside her, brushing her braids back behind her shoulders; she stiffens, then sinks, a minor, hard-won victory. “Mars.” 

“Mikhael.” 

There’s no day, out here, flung between the stars, no night. (And she got you through the launch, sailed you how far from Port, to the comfort of the dark, and you insensate through all of it?) They live in shifts, captain and quartermaster relieving each-other, giving each-other space to rest. 

Except Captain is broken. And Quartermaster, she— 

“I’m fine,” he says, again. Army-boy grin, charm from another life. Head spinning. She’s unconvinced — convince her. “I have it— fuck. It’s under control.” 

She opens her mouth. Same old argument, running in circles, and all the while his limbs drag and his head pounds and (look at your hands) he’s split his knuckles again, and she’ll press her advantage as she always does, when it’s just the two of them— but she doesn’t. All she does is click her tongue and look away. Scalpel-sharp Mars, eschewing sentiment even in the dark. 

“We can’t go on like this,” she says. Quiet but never soft. But her eyes are glassy (you live in shifts, and how many has she lived, back-to-back-to-back, to cover for you), and her tongue is heavy, flattens the syllables. Mikhael is a person held together by stitches tied poorly too flush to the skin. Mars has been fixing the damage for too long. 

Here only, in the quiet of his own quarters with what fraction of the crew can be awake and working, ear cocked to the silence of the comms that promises no new catastrophe, no new need: he hitches himself onto the desk, legs across hers, and leans in as she looks up. Here only, he presses this corpse’s lips between her brows. She stares at him, uncomprehending. 

“It’s under control,” he repeats, making up for confidence with vehemence. “Fuck, Mars. Sleep here if you want, but sleep.”

For a long moment, she doesn’t even blink. The black of her eyes, swallowing him. Then: she stands.