#just null things

Kom'rk takes the second run, and doesn't come home in half the time. Doesn't come home at the scheduled time. Doesn't want to come home at all. “Work like this takes finesse, ner vode. Can't rush art.”

“Osik,” Jaing cuts too fast, too sharp. Half a galaxy away and they may well all be gripping arms with desperation under fire and three years old. Time’s changed the pace and the place but not the circumstance. “I'm coming out there.”

“It's not your turn.”

“Like hell it's not—”

“I'll trade you,” Prudii pipes up, voice even and steady. Even and steady, for him, means he might be forgetting to breathe, teeth tight over what he doesn't know how and when to say.

Mereel tightens his grip on his brothers’ forearms and tastes the lightly sweet gum of det between his teeth. Three years old and he's about to do something jarela, but if it isn't him who else could? Eleven years old and he chews empty air on his tongue over a comm call minus one, and memory—memory is funny. It bleeds into present at the request of the slightest unrelated thing.

Each one a sixth of the galaxy away, but their voices he feels in phantom vices on his skin.

“You can have mine after his.”

“Can we—” Kom'rk pauses and Mereel can't tell if it's hesitation or irritation, or both. “Can we do that?”

A’den laughs and Mereel thinks of a time after Before. Lost in the next: “Who'll stop us, ner vod?”

The subject at hand unspoken and left out of the conversation as surely as the grayed circle in Present And Accounted For—gray as the fog that says Not Something, Not Someone Else. You.

They whisper around it, like Kal is listening.

“I'm sure we can find some other pressing matter to occupy our time.” Mereel smiles to lift his voice—if A'den can break the grief, Mereel can ease its injury. Agony lies in the seconds between the journey and the destination. In arms’ reach their entire lives, now trying to navigate their sudden separation by the knife of war.

When did he get so poetic?

“So long as business as usual and no slack’s missed, it won't matter to anyone who's where.”

“Best to play to our strengths.” Prudii yawns, and maybe it occurs to him it's half passed too late for him to be up. “And Ut'roya should be a two man show.”

“Ord’ika pushed for it for two. Didn't get the OK yet.”

“Poor Ord’ika, when does he sleep?”

“Right now, if he's missing us.”

A soft string of chuckles ring around the comm.

Mereel's seen it first hand—and they all laugh to ease the worry. How hard it was, it is, to sleep without someone, one of them, nearby. “I'll take his next rotation. Leave him home.”

“Shouldn't you ask him, first?”

Mereel eases back in his chair, focuses to release his death hold on the yoke of his liberated speeder. “Since when has Ordo ever denied me anything?”

“Yesterday.” “The mynock—” “Wing 47?” “Commando Group 01 and the h—”

“Udes’ udesii—I get it, I got it.” E’choyla cracks in the warmth of his brothers voices in his ears. “Tch. Where's the faith?”

“Tucked under the covers of a soft bed half a galaxy away.” Kom'rk offers helpfully, in the gentle way that bends voice and suddenly they can't tell if he's joking or serious.

And they're quiet again.

Then: “You don't have to stay out there, Kom'rk.”

“And here I thought you're already on your way, Jan’ja.”

“I am.”

“Then I better not go anywhere in a hurry.” It treads personal, almost too personal—but the Nulls don't know too personal, and they won't start now. “Hate for you to show up without a welcoming party.”

Mereel finds himself unfocused, staring just left of Ordo’s grayed circle. Staring through the HUD to bore holes into the curved transparisteel of his liberated speeder. Ordo doesn't miss meetings, but he's missing this one.

He could swing back to Triple Zero, stop over in the 18 hour gap before he moves on to the next op. They grab dinner, drinks, waste two hours on a holo. Nap.

Gray flickers deep, deep, red, and: “I can hear you di’kute scheming all the way from over here.” Tight. High. Voice edged like the kind of strung out someone gets after a solid seventy two.

“Ord’ika, that's no apology.” A’den ho-hums in an echo of Kal, unable to hide his affection even when he chides Ordo—tone only for Ordo. “Prudii’s waited up way past his bedtime.”

A soft sigh. A breath. A longer, deeper, lower exhale that breaks halfway through. Short stop. The hang of silence just before words—but it dies on the next inhale. Another long, controlled inhale.

“Ni ceta.” A tight, clipped cough. “No excuse.”

“Ah, kih’parjai, Ord’ika,” Prudii rumbles. “You can make it up to me next I see you. Plan a spa day—I want to be pampered.”

“Done.”

The stillness of surprise rises and fades in the beat it takes to register what Ordo just said.

“Well that was easy.” “What if I want a spa day, too?” “So how about two tickets to the opera…” “Baby strill to keep me company?”

The fog of e’choyla disperses with every sputter, snap, agitated denial Ordo spouts to every following request in What? No. Absolutely not. What the hell is that? No. Nu draar.