Goosey Jossip

lineart & lettering @jadedbugart

He’d just made up his mind to get up and return another day, when he heard the door of the next compartment open. Finally.

He clasped his hands, and waited silently for the ritual to begin.

“This… is a confession box, isn’t it, Father?”

Lucien stilled. That voice…

“A place where I can admit things that I’ve done wrong, and be forgiven for them?”

The sound of it, the tone – it was a fresh breeze that parted the grey clouds of his mind. A voice that he heard so rarely, outside of his dreams.

“Father?” came Elain’s voice again, the tone pleading.

Oh gods, his mate had gone into the wrong side of the confessional. What was he meant to do?

Enormous thanks to @themadmorrigan, @frostystarlight and @chaol-apologist for reading this through for me!

And to @zenkindoflove who inadvertently started this whole thing off with a wheel-picker game back in February!

There were millions of tiny hammers raining down on Lucien’s temple. He could feel the pounding down to the base of his spine, and he wanted to groan, but the cottonmouth made it nearly impossible. He slowly opened his eyes, hands reaching blindly towards what he assumed was a nightstand.

Water. Fuck, I need water. What the hell did I drink last night?

His fingertips met a bottle of water (so the gods were merciful after all), and he wrestled the cap off to drink when his stomach roiled painfully.

Okay, as far as hangovers went, this was nearing a five-alarm fire. Sips it was.

The first taste of water was heavenly, and this time Lucien did groan, low and loud, when a small snore and the mattress shifting cut him off. He froze. The slow turn of his head was somewhere between horror and comedy as he looked down at the intruder in his bed.

Sleeping to his left, looking like an absolute dream (even with her mascara smudged and curls creating a tiny rat’s nest between her cheek and the pillow), was Elain fucking Archeron.

Jurian waited until Elain vanished down a rough hewn hall, quickly dug to hide them from the heat seeking drones of the Imperium. This base had lasted them far longer than any others, which was saying something. Lucien doubted his older brother had gotten sloppy. 

If only they could replicate it in other places. 

Lucien followed Jurian down the hall, nodding at those wedging past in the narrow passages. Tiny rooms that held two, sometimes three and at their most desperate, four, were carved out every couple feet. There were other places, too—an armory, a makeshift kitchen, places to gather, a rather pathetic war room for plotting and planning, and anything else they might need. Lucien was rather pressed with their work.

Jurian took him to the war room, yanking a sheet across the opening for as much privacy as they could muster. Doors were simply too complicated to put together in an underground bunker that occasionally collapsed in on itself. 

Besides, when materials were scarce, why waste what little you had on privacy? Of course Lucien wished he could take a shit in total peace, but he believed in a future where that was possible for him again. 

Jurian braced his palms against the oak table in the center of the room.

“From fucking space,” he breathed, hair covering his expression.

Lucien pushed messy wisps off his own sweaty forehead. “She could be lying.”

“Did they look like liars?” Jurian snarled. Lucien held up a hand in warning.  Don’t fucking talk to me like that.

“No,” he agreed, “but that doesn’t mean they’re being honest, either. They could be confused, or…or…”

“Or they fell out of the sky in a tin can and now…fuck!”

Lucien rubbed his eyes. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes everything. How long have we been living in space? What the fuck are we doing up there? Do they have weapons we don’t know about? Some kind of Death Star—”

“This isn’t Star Wars,” Lucien said, turning toward the off-white sheet as he took a deep breath. “And we can ask her when Vassa brings her back.”

“We need to find her friend,” Jurian said urgently, finally looking up at Lucien. He looked wild, angrier than Lucien had ever seen him, and Lucien had seen him angry before. 

“Eris has her by now,” Lucien breathed. “He’ll know everything we know exactly as we know it.”

Jurian swore under his breath for the hundredth time. “Okay, new plan.”

Lucien stood there, arms crossed, as he waited for Jurian to elaborate. His friend never did. Jurian merely began to pace, eyes bouncing around the room as he tried to figure out what to do next. Not that Lucien had better ideas. He, too, was reeling from the knowledge that humanity was in space, and Elain’s confusion that anyone might be living on Earth.

He didn’t have to wait long for answers. As he and Jurian murmured different possibilities, none of them realistic given Jurian suggested assembling a nuclear bomb, Vassa pushed open the sheet and gently pushed Elain inside. Her hair was neatly braided down her back, creating a wet spot on her green tunic from the water. Her face was clean and a little bandage had been placed across the bridge of her nose.

She was beautiful. Lucien was immediately ashamed all over again for thinking so—he’d thought the same thing the first time she’d stood before him, facing him fully. Elain was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. It seemed a betrayal of Jesminda, his would-be fiance had she not been killed in a strike by the Imperium. 

Lucien had sworn he was done after that. It had been him who’d dragged Jes into the rebellion, and it had been that decision that killed her. She’d never been much of a fighter, and he’d known it. A better man would have taken himself to a therapist’s office and swallowed his anger, but he’d been young and hot-blooded. 

Elain turned her pair of soft, round, brown eyes on him. “Have you found Arina?”

Jurian looked close to exploding. “Who?”

“Her friend,” Lucien reminded Jurian, walking around the smooth, oblong table to offer Elain a chair. “And no, we haven’t.”

“How long—”

“How long?! Your friend is dead!” Jurian exploded, slamming his fist on the table. Elain, who’d just sat, jumped back. Lucien fisted his hands at his side to keep himself from fighting with Jurian.

“Why don’t you let me handle this?” Lucien suggested, hoping his look was pointed. Jurian was in his blind spot, a blurry explosion of colors that set his teeth on edge. Losing vision in one of his eyes, to his own father, was a sore spot for Lucien. 

Not that Beron had deigned to do it himself—no, he’d sent one of his generals to teach his wayward son a lesson, as if killing Lucien’s soon-to-be-wife hadn’t been punishment enough.

“Fine,” Jurian grumbled, storming out of the room. 

Elain wiped the corner of her eye on her sleeve. “Is she—”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Lucien rushed to assure Elain, though in truth he agreed with Jurian. He believed Eris would report what had happened, and he believed that Eris wouldn’t be the one to kill her…but Lucien also believed someone else would. “But I need you to tell me everything.”

A calculated gleam shone in her gaze. “I have questions of my own.”

Lucien made a show of sitting across from her, resting his elbows on the table. Candles illuminated the space, creating more heat than Lucien preferred. Shadows danced across her expression, half obscuring her. That was for the best—if he had to look fully at her, he thought he might start stuttering from nerves.

“Okay. Let’s hear them.”

“How are you here?”

“Elaborate.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Everyone knows Earth isn’t habitable—it’s classified as a level four planet—”

“A level four planet?” he asked, suddenly concerned. “What does that mean?”

Her fingers drummed against the wood, head cocked as she considered. “Every planet has a designation. Level four planets are unable to support life in any form and are often considered toxic even to mine minerals on.”

A dry, bitter laugh escaped from his throat. “Guess no one bothered to tell us. When did you all leave?”

Elain rattled off a date that made the bile in Lucien’s stomach rise into his throat. “Five hundred years,” he breathed, leaning back in his chair. “Meanwhile, our politicians make a show of cutting our space programs.”

“I don’t understand,” Elain admitted, looking at him as if he could give her an answer that would explain everything.

“Neither do I,” Lucien admitted. To what end did this need to be a secret when they could simply make space travel so wildly unaffordable nothing would change at all. That was what Lucien couldn’t understand—why the lies? Why so much secrecy?

“Are you military?” 

Elain shook her head, a pretty smile ghosting her face. “Horticulturlist.”

He was losing his mind. “What, you grow tomatoes?”

“Bananas,” she admitted, looking down at her hands spread across the table. 

“Banana’s,” he repeated. “You’re growing something that gets shipped to every city in the Imperium, and costs less than a nickel.”

“No one has tasted a banana since we were forced to flee—”

“You weren’t forced to flee,” he spat, his frustration getting the best of him, “your ancestors left us all here and told the rest of you a lie. Why?”

She blinked again, looking close to tears. “I don’t know?”

“Neither do I,” he replied, resting his forehead against the palm of his hand. “We never left. There was no catastrophe, no world war or major virus. Just…another day.”

“Then we have to find out why,” Elain said, taking Lucien by surprise. He’d expected…well, he didn’t expect anything, to be fair. He hadn’t thought of her at all as he’d begun to grapple with this new information. It was a problem for him and Jurian, sure, and eventually the rest of the tangled, occasionally fractured network of rebellion cells. He’d get word through the channels before the night ended, just in case Elain turned out to be unreliable or they were all killed for taking her in. At least, then, someone else could pick up where he left off.

“We?” he asked with some amusement. “You want to stay?”

“Well, my best friend is…somewhere,” she began, her tone entirely reasonable, “and I’m here, too. I want to know why, too.”

“It’ll be dangerous,” he warned, curious to see what she might say. “This isn’t like a space movie—people die.”

She shot him a look that he rather liked. She had spunk, he decided. Despite looking like someone's cherished, spoiled daughter, Elain had a little fire to her. Good. She’d need it. Lucien didn’t think she knew what she was up against. "Good. It would be boring if it wasn't. Besides...I took down a Teryx,” she added, as if he was supposed to know what that was. His expression must have betrayed him.

“They’re…they’re like men, but with huge wings and shadowy magic.”

“Wings…and shadowy magic,” he repeated blankly.

“Or tech.”

“Right, of course. Or tech, because magic…isn’t real…” Lucien said, his whole worldview upended in the span of an hour. “How many different kinds of aliens are there, exactly?”

“More than I know of, for sure. The donjon keeps an official record, but it’s always in dispute because of how they determine if a species is intelligent or not—”

“Are you telling me they have space phrenology? Is no place safe?” he grumbled, annoyed that the glorious future he’d been promised didn’t seem any more enlightened than his current home.

“Well…there is a race called the plejarens. They have really large, pointed ears, and they were censured three years ago, I think, because everyone found out that they measure ears for length and shape, and if someones ear is misshapen, they’re considered stupid and given menial tasks in their society? Like, it’s all based on the way ears look—it was a huge scandal, they lost their membership to the council.”

Lucien understood half the words she was saying, though one stuck. “Council? You have a council?”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “But membership is mostly highly advanced races, technologically speaking.”

“Does humanity have a seat?”

She nodded, averting her gaze. “We got ours about fifty years ago…it expanded our ability to colonize other planets.”

Lucien wanted to cry. He was so overwhelmed and exhausted that there was no guarantee he wouldn’t. Five hundred years living in space, walking amongst aliens, creating whole political structures…and no one had any idea.

“The colonization is for a home,” Elain told him softly, “but we haven’t found one.”

“Because humanity already has one,” he whispered, feeling more broken than angry. “Why not Earth?”

She only shrugged. 

The pair sat there in silence until one of the candles on the table guttered, a mess of melted wax and string.

“Lucien?” Elain finally asked, sliding her hands into her lap, “am I a prisoner?”

“No—maybe,” he amended. “Not technically, but…”

“But?” she pressed.

“Look, Elain, you’ve told me more than I’ve ever imagined, and I have no way of proving it. For all I know, you’re a really convincing actress and tomorrow, the Imperium will have us all lined up for execution.”

To her credit, Elain seemed horrified at the notion. “I wouldn’t.” The conviction in those words nearly convinced him. 

“There are good people here, Elain,” he said softly, “and I hope you can understand that my duty is to all of them. Not you.”

She nodded. “Do what you need to do, and find me when you’re ready to begin,” she replied, rising from her chair. “I think I’m done, though.”

He was, too—at least for the moment. Lucien called for Vassa, asking if she’d set Elain up in a bunk somewhere and get her a few things to help keep her comfortable. They didn’t have much, and luckily Elain’s shoes seemed to be in good shape. Some clothes, a few hair ties, and toiletries were about all they could spare.

Lucien made his way to his own room—one of the lucky few that didn’t have to share—and began writing missives of what he’d learned, to be sent out across the North and South American continent—all under the Imperiums control.

It would take all of them united if they stood even a chance against the machine that was the Imperial States of the Americas.

But Lucien was strangely convinced Elain was an omen of fortune, assuming she was being honest. Hadn’t he wished for help? 

Well, here she was. 

Eris 

“Now,” Eris ground out, immensely frustrated with the woman seated across from him, “tell me about your friend.”

She blinked dark lashes at him, her vivid green eyes disconcerting. “What friend?”

He was going to strangle her.

“Arina,” he tried again, trading his scowl for a smile that didn’t meet his eyes, “I’ve answered every question you had, even when it turned into an interrogation. Surely you can answer one question for me?”

“I came here alone,” she replied, drumming long, slender fingers along the metal table. “Did you hit your head?”

Eris had to bite back the urge to throw himself across the table and throttle her. 

“All I want is to send you back,” Eris reminded her truthfully. He wanted nothing more than to rid himself of the woman named Arina Novak—he had a whole dossier on her sitting at his home that he hadn’t had a chance to look through because she was currently holding him hostage in a windowless interrogation room. “I can’t do that if you won’t tell me where your friend is.”

“I don’t have a friend,” she replied. “I came alone.”

Eris rose from his seat. “I need a drink,” he said, turning for the door.

“Get me water!” she yelled at his retreating back. Eris let the heavy door swing shut behind him. Looking upward at the fluorescent lights, he recalled what Beron had said to him over the phone.

Don’t let her out of your sight, and find the woman she came with. Keep them somewhere until I can make contact and determine what they want us to do.

Eris suspected his father would do what he always did when a problem arose—kill it. He wanted both women in the same place so it was easier to execute them both at the same time, tie up all the loose ends, and bury them in a ditch. Ordinarily, that wasn’t Eris’ problem, but it didn’t sit right with him.

Arina was…irritating. Easily the most difficult woman he’d ever met in his entire life, and probably the first one who didn’t seem impressed by him. That was how Eris knew she wasn’t lying about where she’d come from or what she believed—if she was from here, she’d be looking for any way out of her miserable, bleak existence.

And he was one of the few ways out. 

His original plan was to leave her in a cell—that was why he’d brought her to Cook County’s Jail to begin with. Eris genuinely believed if he’d flashed her a few smiles, let her see how handsome and charming he could be, and answered all her questions, she’d be melted butter in his palm.

He hadn’t expected her to see right through him. 

She wasn’t hiding her contempt of him, either—it was written all over her face. Well, she could get in line with everyone else who wanted to see his head on a pike, he supposed. Eris looked through the two way mirror to find her looking right back.

“She can’t see you,” he whispered, but even he didn’t believe it. 

Don’t be a coward.

He had one card left to play, and decided he might as well play it. Turning back for the door, Eris stepped back inside. She was handcuffed to the table, at least, which meant she couldn’t hit him. His cock still ached from her knee—he’d tried to take a piss earlier and nearly wept like a baby from the pain.

“Arina,” he began after exhaling a short breath, “let me explain how this is going to go—”

“No need,” she interrupted. “This is the part where you start threatening me, right?”

Eris said nothing, folding his arms behind his back while staring at her unblinkingly. 

She leaned forward, handcuffs rattling on the desk. He hadn’t allowed her a chance to change, and she didn’t seem to care that he could see nearly all of her tits. 

“A day ago, a creature twice as tall as you and with wings the size of both your arms stretched one after another held me down by my throat,” she began, her gaze pinning him in place. “He’s dead.”

Heat slithered up his spine as he imagined how she must have gotten the upper hand. What she’d done to get away. There was no blood smeared over her, so whatever it had been had been relatively quick, which impressed him even more. Though, perhaps the alien creature she spoke of didn’t have blood—Eris knew very little about what went on outside of his small domain in the Upper Plains of the Imperium. 

Undaunted, she continued, “So you can make any threats you like, but in the end, you’ll be sprawled on the floor dead, just like he was, and I’ll be walking away without thinking about you ever again.” Eris raised his brows. “You don’t even know where you are.”

“Some kind of jail.”

“Some kind of jail,” he repeated slowly. “Handcuffed to the tay…ble…”

She raised both wrists, revealing she’d somehow escaped them. Arina cocked her head to the side, blonde hair spilling over slim, bare shoulders. Eris wanted to punish her, wanted to throw her in the general population and see how cocky she was then.

“I’m not going anywhere unless it’s on a ship off this shithole planet,” she hissed, nose wrinkled with hatred. 

“Shithole planet?” he scoffed. “You’ve barely seen any of it.”

“I saw how many people were sleeping in that park,” she replied with open disgust. 

“You don’t have poverty in space?” 

“Why do you have poverty here?” she shot back. “You seem to have enough money.”

“I earned it,” he retorted.

“Oh yeah? Doing what? Tell me all about the hard work you’ve done to keep yourself off the streets.”

Eris should have known she’d call his bluff, just like he knew he couldn’t answer her honestly. Everything he had, he’d inherited from his father, who’d inherited from his, and from his, and on and on all the way back to the gilded age when his family had the sense to invest in steel and rail. But she hadn’t been able to say space had eradicated the ills of humanity, either. Eris was willing to bet that it was worse. 

“You first, princess,” he snarled, done with the back and forth. “Let me tell you, now, how this is going to go. Since you won’t tell me the things I need to know so I can get you home, you’ll be living with me, in my home, until someone from your station can vouch for you.”

That seemed to alarm her. “And if they can’t?”

He almost asked why she thought they wouldn’t, but bit his tongue. He had her on the ropes, and that was all that mattered. 

“Then you’ll be having a very different conversation with someone far less charming and handsome than I am.”

“That could be anyone,” she grumbled. “Put me in a jail cell.

“Well, now that I know you want it…no, I don’t think I will. Get up,” he added, having had enough of being trapped in that tiny room with her, breathing the exact same air. At least at home there were doors with locks he could hide behind. Hell, he could lock her in the basement and still keep his promise to his father. 

She hesitated before standing, following him out the door quickly. Eris didn’t think she wanted to be in a cell at all—he was starting to suspect she merely just said so because so few people ever dared to call her on her bluff. Him, included. 

Beron would have been furious if he’d left her there, especially knowing she was adept at getting herself out of handcuffs. God help him, she’d escape from there, too, and he’d have an international incident on his hands.

She said nothing until they were back out in the muggy evening air. His car hadn’t pulled up quite yet, so the two waited on the platform, watching vehicles zip past in the sky lanes. Far, far below, cars with wheels still ran on gasoline, though how anyone could afford to pay a hundred and twelve dollars for a gallon of gas was beyond him. Wages were capped at twelve dollars an hour by the federal government, and still people somehow managed it.

There was no underground public transportation system anymore. Only the sky rail, which required a biometric scan of a person's face along with a scan of their phone, which tracked them from location to location.

As Eris mused on the poor, Arina had spotted The Church of Chicago illuminated in the distance. It was their largest building after all—no wonder she’d seen it. “What is that monstrosity?” she asked.

Eris panicked, catching her by the arm and spinning her away from a nearby watching camera. “Watch your mouth,” he whispered, making it obvious what he was looking at. “That is our Church.”

She seemed bewildered. Did they not have religion in space? Or was space less controlled than their lives here on the surface? Eris had assumed her life was an extension of his—tightly controlled and surveilled. Speaking against the state religion? Well, that was enough to get someone disappeared at best. 

Arina’s eyes had found the camera, darting from one to the other. Was she realizing how many there were, pointed in every direction. She didn’t know that those cameras could see into a person's vehicle, documenting their face, speed, location, and a million other things. Eris knew that those cameras were used to track the whereabouts of everyone, while capturing every conversation in between.

The Imperium was forever worried about dissenters and traitors. Eris supposed they had good reason for it, given his own brother was leading the Upper Plains chapter of the Rebellion like it was some kind of fraternity. At the rate he was going, he’d be dead before he turned fifty.

His car arrived just in time to spare him from another miserable conversation.

“Just…try to keep your mouth closed in the car,” he hissed, dragging her into the sleek vehicle without any further prompting. To her credit, Arina plopped down in the seat beside him, leaving space between them. She was squished against the door, nose practically pressed to the glass. 

“Home,” he murmured to the driver, turning to look out his own window.

Was it wrong that he wanted to leave? 

Eris hadn’t known there were people living in space—he’d gotten a crash course in the last five centuries of space exploration and conquest over the phone from his father. It changed everything. Now, in between his frustrations with Arina, all he could do was imagine what lay beyond the stars. 

What was it like? How did they travel from planet to planet? He wanted to see all of it. Some part of him felt like an eight year old little boy again, squished on a couch with the rest of his brothers as his mother turned on A New Hope for the first time. Wasn’t that every little kids dream? To wield a lightsaber or fly a Tie Fighter?

“Do you have lightsabers?” he asked, needing to know. If she said yes, Eris thought he might die from the unfairness of it all.

“How old are you, twelve?” she replied, not looking away from the window. Bright lights from billboards advertising products and services, buildings, and passing cars blurred past them as they too zipped through the lanes. Was she comparing it to all the places she’d seen? Did she find it wanting?

It was impossible to tell. 

The car pulled up outside his home. The top three floors belonged to him, complete with a parking spot for his car, not that he ever did. It obscured his view of the skyline. Besides, that was why he paid all that money for a parking spot, right?

“Welcome home,” he told her. “The entire first floor is yours.”

Arina walked toward the railing on the roof, ignoring the pool and the bar, both empty of people, to look out at the city, too. 

“I didn’t know any of this existed,” she told him.

“What do you think about it?” he asked, curious if she might decide she wanted to stay on Earth. Eris couldn’t imagine anyone making that choice when they could leave for space. He’d leave it all behind, except, perhaps, his money. He’d buy a ship, ditch the expensive clothes for a slouchy belt at his hip, and vanish entirely. Start over where no one had ever heard of the Vanserra’s. Be his own man, for once. 

Make his own decisions.

She turned to look at him, face half illuminated by the warm glow of artificial lights from the city and oh. He hadn’t noticed before right then because she’d been pissing him off, but she was beautiful. 

“There is a planet off the Obsidian Rift—Ash Meridian—that has buildings like this. I thought it was the best place I’d ever seen…and I was right.”

He should have known.

“You don’t like Earth?”

“I don’t like this,” she disagreed, gesturing around him. “Why are you being watched?”

“Everyone is being watched,” he replied without passion, “for the safety of all citizens.”

“How does that keep you safe?”

“Dissidents vanish, and the state perseveres," he let himself say, knowing that should she be asked, she’d likely tell everything to punish him. 

“That sounds like tyranny,” she said.