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silver-pieces · 1 year

Text

prisoners

Pairing: Cassian Andor x fem!reader

Word Count: Almost 8.7k

Synopsis: You never expected to find your soulmate here.

Warnings: 18+, minors DNI, smut (unprotected p in v sex, slight breeding kink), physical pain & trauma, depression, nightmares, prison, prison labour, open sea & dark water

A/N: For the prompt ‘Nightmare/Soulmark’ in Andor Bingo, created by @sw-andor This fic features major spoilers for Andor S1. Keef = Cassian. Divider by the amazing @firefly-graphics.

“What’s she doin’ ‘ere?”

“I think that’s obvious.”

“Yeah but, she’s a woman.”

“What do they care? Man, woman, we’re all just slaves - ”

“Oi! Table five.” Kino barks from behind you. He stalks over, meeting everyone’s eyes with a glare. “Is there a problem?”

“Yeh’ve given us a woman,” the redhead says. “No offence, love, but why are you here? Shouldn’t you be with the other birds?”

“Shut it,” Kino growls. “It doesn’t matter why she’s here. She is. Now stop wasting my time and get back to work. Unless you want to get fried.”

Your feet shift nervously at the memory. Hot, electric pain. Everyone else stiffens too, a shared sense of dread filling the sterile air.

He takes you by the shoulders and pushes you towards one of the men. “Keef.”

A man with dark hair and even darker eyes looks up at the sound of his name, his gaze falling on you as he pauses mid-crank.

Your lips part, and your gaze lingers on the sight of his sleeves rolled up, his arms tensing with each push so hard, that, in any other circumstance, you might find it appealing.

“Show her the ropes.” Kino lowers his voice to a menacing growl. “And make sure she understands what’s at stake.”

The man gives him a subtle nod.

“You’re down four now, boys,” Kino says, his gaze shifting to you, “... and girl. No more distractions. Let’s get this done!”

They get back to work - a synchronised effort that you struggle to follow, only adding to the chaos happening around you. There are lasers and cranks and drills and pieces of machinery that they have to manually fit together. And the sounds are overwhelming - hardened voices overlapping with the whirring and clanking of the machines.

“I’m Jemboc,” the older one next to Keef says. “This is Ham, Xaul, Melshi, and Taga.” He goes around the table, pointing at each one.

You say your name in return, but it comes out feeble, your throat still not working properly. Xaul, the redhead, pins you with a look. Melshi mutters something to himself, shaking his head.

“Here,” Keef grunts to get your attention, beckoning you to his side. There's a lilt to his voice that pleases your ears. “Watch what I do closely. You have to pull your weight around here, or we all get fried, you understand?”

You manage to nod.

He removes the crank from the machinery and sets it aside, his hands moving deftly from one task to the next. You’re drawn to his hands, the display of skill and strength sending heat down your spine. His brows are lowered, his gaze focused.

Each part requires something different - to pull, crank, lift, reach, press, load. It's heavy labour, but he proves himself more than capable.

"It's easy once you get into the swing of things," Jemboc's voice taking you out of your trance as he steps beside you.

"Right.” You’re not sure you want to get into the swing of things.

The older man frowns at you, but there's a kindness in his eyes.

"Are you getting it?" Keef growls to you as he lifts his hands and backs away from the table.

You nod.

He draws near and ducks his head down, a patient look in his eyes. "Any questions, you can just ask me."

Your heart flutters. Heat rises to your face, though you're not sure why. "Thanks."

With a nod, he turns back to the table and starts loading alongside the others, letting you stand by his side and watch.

No more words are exchanged apart from the occasional barked order from the others - push!, lift!, and hands away!

They get more frantic as time passes. Kino calls something out and your table groans in response.

You realise that they're falling behind.

Get back to work. Unless you want to get fried. Shit. There is no way you're taking that punishment again if you can help it.

Stomach in knots, you step up beside Keef. "I've seen enough, let me help."

He eyes you, a muscle feathering in his jaw, before handing you the crank. As your hand closes around it, he mutters, "Be careful."

A shiver runs down your spine. His voice is low and smooth and it does something to your body that momentarily distracts you from this hell.

Hesitantly, you take the crank from his grip and fasten it to the piece of machinery.

"Table five, your productivity levels are unacceptable. Proceed to the centre of the room and remain on program."

The soles of your feet tingle with each step on the floor. Your head is spinning, heart pounding, mouth drier than a desert.

The others at your table stand with you in the centre of the floor. For a second, you allow yourself a glance over at Keef.

He’s staring straight forward, a dead look in his eyes, but the tiniest shuddering expanse of his chest betrays his fear.

You close your eyes and wait.

No no no no no no no no no -

It slices through your body and your muscles seize with pain. A cry escapes your lips. Your knee hits the floor painfully hard as your legs give way, and the cries of the others violates your ears, inescapable.

It's over in seconds, but it feels like hours.

Your lungs draw ragged breaths. Tears leak from your eyes, and you wipe them away before anyone sees.

Stand. The others are already getting up - you need to follow, quickly, before they decide to punish you again. But your legs are too weak.

A familiar outstretched hand enters your vision.

Your gaze trails up the veins in his forearm, to the sleeves bunched up over his biceps. "Come on," Keef urges softly. "You have to get up."

With all your willpower, you reach up and grab him by the forearm, his hand closing around the inner side of your forearm, bracing you there to help you up.

"Ah!" you hiss, pulling away as a sudden burning sensation flares where his hand touches you.

“Shit!” He grits out, exchanging a confused look with you, and then looks down at his own arm, where you touched him.

Your breath halts as you see it - the symbol burned into your skin, on the inner side of your upper forearm. It’s a simple slashing of lines, but the meaning it carries is far more significant - a soulmark.

He’s staring at the same symbol on his own skin in stunned silence.

“Keef,” you breathe.

Then the deep warped voice of the prison interrupts.

“Prisoners on program. Proceed to your quarters.”

He takes one frantic look at you, and then turns his head forward, following the prison directive and raising his hands behind his head on program. The sleeve, you noticed, he pulls down to hide the mark.

You quickly do the same, assuming the position, even though every fibre of your being is flooded with shock.

As you file through the doors with the others, you can barely hear anything over the pounding of your own ears. Your mind struggles to make sense of what just happened, let alone process everything else that’s happened to you in the last twenty-four hours.

Keef falls in line behind you.

Instantly, you feel his eyes on you, the heat prickling at the back of your neck.

The line of prisoners shuffles along through a long corridor, passing the night shift, stopping and starting up again until you're at your quarters.

"Jemboc, give her the orientation," Kino directs the older man, before leaving you behind to deal with another group of men.

Jemboc turns to you. "Come on, I'll show you your cell."

As he takes you down through the hallway, you see Keef emerge out of the corner of your eye, and when he reaches his own cell, so do you. Directly opposite from each other.

Your eyes meet.

Stars. Finding a soulmate is rare, practically unheard of for most. But he’s here, and the mark is burned into your flesh, still throbbing with fresh pain as you run your fingers over it.

Jemboc starts explaining what the lights on the floor mean, but you can’t seem to take your eyes off of Keef, raking your gaze over his tense form, brown hair mussed and grown out, dark eyes you could lose yourself in, even as you listen to Jemboc listing all the various rules.

“You understand?” Jemboc asks you.

Not really. “Yes,” you reply with a nod, dragging your eyes away.

“What are you in for, anyway?”

“Loitering.” You’ve grown numb to the anger.

“I see.” Jemboc pats you on the shoulder. “You’ll be okay, sister. We all will be, soon.”

“Hey!” The bark of another prisoner cuts him off.

It’s Xaul, pushing past the others, stalking towards you with a deadly glare.

You take a step back on instinct, and Jemboc folds his arms defensively, but it’s Keef who gets in his way.

With a growl, he pushes off the wall, getting in Xaul’s face before he can reach you. “What’s your problem, huh?” he growls. “You’re scaring her.”

Xaul growls, jabs his finger in your direction, and shifts his glare to Jemboc. “Not her.”

They exchange unreadable glances.

Jemboc scowls and takes him by the shoulder, leading him out of earshot from you. The two of them begin talking in low, urgent tones, Xaul shooting you another glare.

Your hands curl into fists at your side.

Hesitantly, Keef turns to you, his head ducked low in sincerity. “Are you okay?” he asks, his voice coming out softer than you’ve heard before.

“No,” you say, even as warmth fills you at the concern in his devastatingly brown eyes. Stars, but the sight of him pleases you. “I think we need to talk.”

“Agreed,” he nods, holding his forearm with his other hand, his eyes briefly glancing down, “but we don’t have the time or the privacy in here.”

You draw nearer. “How long is left on your sentence?”

“No,” he shakes his head, “That doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I don’t understand.”

His eyes dart to Xaul and Jemboc. “I wish I could tell you. I - ” he cuts himself off as the floor lights start flashing.

In seconds, the hall clears as the rest of the inmates scramble to get into their cells. Keef pushes you towards yours. “Go.”

With his push, you step up into your cell before the lights can turn red. What was it Jemboc said? Seven seconds when the lights start flashing, then they turn red. And if you’re caught in the red light, you die.

On instinct, you turn back around to see Keef again.

Your soulmate.

He stands in his cell across from you, an unreadable expression on his face, his mouth in a grim line, as the lights begin to dim.

The floor lights turn red a second later.

There is no way to get to him now, and no way of talking across the hall without everyone in the surrounding cells hearing you. That’s not an option.

He lingers at the edge of his cell, and so do you, for a time, struggling with this new feeling inside you - this urge, compelling you towards him. Even if you don’t know him yet, you want to.

So you’re paralysed in silence; staring at each other across several feet of deadly flooring.

The murmurs of the other inmates eventually peter out, and as the snoring starts to rise, you feel your eyes growing heavy.

You curse beneath your breath.

Keef must hear it, because he raises his chin and nods in understanding, retreating from the edge of his cell and into darkness.

Grimly, you turn away from him, towards your bunk.

They're everywhere. They're watching you. They know what you've done. You're going to be punished -

You wake up in a cold sweat, gasping for air.

"Hey, hey, breathe." Keef's hushed voice carries across the cell.

Your eyes dart around until you see him, a broad mass in the shadows, sitting on the edge of his bunk across the way.

The soft sound of the other men snoring in their cells settles over the silence.

"It was just a nightmare," he whispers across the corridor. "I'm right here."

You blink back tears, and push yourself up by your elbows. “Did I wake you?”

“No,” he shakes his head. “I couldn’t sleep.”

You run your hand down over your face. There’s been a lot of that lately.

A few shifts in, you found yourself staring at the ceiling of your cell counting the seconds going by, running your fingers over the soulmark on your arm, unable to stop thinking about him.

You’ve memorised his form and features with almost no effort - the cut of his jawline, occasionally peppered with stubble if he hasn’t shaved, being your latest obsession.

And you can feel when he looks at you, too. Devouring glances out of the corner of your eye that set your cheeks aflame.

It’s like your body is on high alert at all times. Working alongside him throughout the day, barely able to exchange a few words without anyone overhearing, passing by each other, brushing past each other so close your skin hair raises, but not touching, never touching, just savouring the few small moments in his presence and then trying to go to sleep every night knowing he is a only few feet away from you.

But it’s worse, somehow, when you do manage to turn your brain off. That’s when the nightmares come.

It’s relentless and repetitive; nothing but the Empire and memories of pain, torturing you through your sleep.

Keef’s been developing shadows beneath his eyes as well. You wish you could talk to him about it, but he doesn’t seem to want anyone else to know about your soulmarks, and shit, neither do you. It's hard enough to even admit to yourself, let alone have the others staring at you, judging you more than they already do for being the only woman here.

And if the prison ever found out, they could take you away from each other. Your gut clenches at the thought.

Fuck. Trying to drag your emotions out of the gutter before you break is becoming harder everyday. The weight on your shoulders is crushing you, and you can’t see any light at the end of this tunnel.

“I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” you confess, wrapping your arms around yourself.

He stands, coming to the edge of his cell in the low, red lighting. “Don’t say that,” he whispers. “Don’t let them break you.”

You fiddle with your mattress. Don’t let them break you? They already are, and it isn’t your choice.

“Listen to me,” he says, raising his voice to a low growl.

You look up at him, drawing in a shaky breath.

“You had a nightmare, but you woke up from it.” The urgency in his baritone voice calls to you, and you stand, approaching the edge of your cell as he continues. “That’s all this place is. It’s a nightmare. You don’t realise it while you’re inside, but you’re in control. All you have to do is wake up.”

“What are you saying?”

He meets your gaze, an intense, unreadable look in his eyes. “I'm saying, hold on. Just a little while longer. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” you breathe, before you realise what you’re saying. You blink and look away from him, frowning. “I can.”

His words paint a picture in your mind, one of you, years from now, out of here. On some beach planet or forest town, enjoying the sun on your face. This place, a distant memory in the back of your mind.

Just a nightmare.

A slight smile finds its way onto your face at the thought. You meet Keef’s gaze again, the fierceness in his eyes amplified by the red of the floor, and nod in gratitude.

“I’ll try.”

His shoulders relax slightly, and he nods. “That’s all we can do.”

You sleep.

There’s a warmth in you when you wake, a buzz from the memory of last night. That was the longest conversation you’ve had yet, and even if you couldn’t talk openly, it still felt real.

When you first open your eyes, you’re drawn to his cell on instinct, drinking in the sight of him every chance you can get.

But it’s like he hasn’t moved all night. He’s leaning one shoulder against the wall at the edge of his cell, arms still folded, and he’s staring at you, his dark brows furrowed, the slight stubble peppering his clenched jaw telling you he hasn’t shaved since yesterday. Movement draws your gaze to his arm, where his knuckles shift back and forth, running over that small mark on his arm.

Heat slowly rises to your face.

The floor is still red. The others are awake too, the few you can see from your cell having breakfast or pacing around their small cell. The slight murmur of muted voices blending together.

“Did you sleep?” you ask him.

He gives the subtlest shake of his head.

Your heart sinks.

It’s not just being around him that you can’t bear, it’s also seeing him suffer and not being able to help. You have to keep holding back these strange, rising urges to comfort him. It doesn’t help that he has those big, soulful brown eyes that could melt you down into the cracks of the floor.

You’re not in love, but he matters to you more with each passing day, and that feeling is killing you.

Damn, you thought you’d grown numb to everything, but suddenly the despair is back with a vengeance, and you have to look away to blink back sudden tears.

“Hey,” he calls to you. “You okay?”

Shaking your head, you blow out a breath and chant in your head, don’t break, don’t let them get to you.

He curses, and then he’s pushing of the wall to pace his cell. His shoulders tense with each breath.

You draw near the edge of your cell, watching him try to walk out the tension in his body, your heart caught between desire and despair.

It’s a vicious cycle of suffering between the two of you.

Then the floor lights shift from red to white.

“On program!” Kino calls out.

Prisoners load out of their cells, slowly getting into their line with murmurs and sluggishness.

Keef is already on the floor when you tentatively step down, enduring that moment before your feet touch the metal with your heart in your throat every time. White lights means it’s safe, but -

He approaches you suddenly, closing his hand around the nape of your neck, tipping his forehead against yours. Warm electricity floods through your veins and over your skin at his touch.

“Keef,” you stutter out, shocked at his public display, even as you sink further into his touch. The sounds of shock and angry voices from the men around you start kicking off, but you ignore them.

“Please,” he breathes, his forehead pressed firmly against yours, his face inches away, “it’s killing me. I know you’re scared - I know. What can I do?”

You shake your head. “I - ”

“What the fuck are you two doing?”

Kino.

You pull him off you and step away.

He shudders at your touch, and you realise with a jolt that you took his arm right at the soulmark. For a brief moment, he cradles his arm, before Kino approaches and the two of you join the others in line.

“Hm?” The man raises his eyebrow at the both of you. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“It was nothing,” Keef responds. “Just making sure she’s okay.”

Kino glances at you, an unreadable look on his face. “Are you?”

“I’m fine,” you say, but even you can hear the shakiness in your own voice.

He blinks, searching your gaze. Then he grabs Keef by the arm and leans in to whisper something in his ear.

As Keef listens, he sets his eyes on you, before giving Kino a firm nod.

Apparently satisfied, the older man steps away and raises his voice to the rest of the men.

“Time to face another day. Everyone, move.”

As you begin walking forward, you turn your head to whisper back to him, “what was that?”

“Don’t worry,” Keef whispers. “He’s on our side.”

The tension is high at table five.

“I don’t think they should be next to each other today,” says Taga, eyes darting nervously between the two of you.

“Why?�� Keef growls.

“Does he really have to say why?” Xaul interrupts. “You like her.”

“It could be a distraction,” Ham mutters.

“No.” Keef glares. “She stays by my side. Kino’s orders.”

“Oh, ‘Kino’s orders’? Fuck that. We don’t want to get fried 'cuz of you,” Xaul growls.

Keef turns his ire on Xaul. "And when was the last time that happened? If memory serves, not since she started here, under my guidance."

A mutter goes around the table.

"Table five, get moving," Kino warns as he passes by.

"Let's get this done," Keef growls, and that's the end of the discussion.

The next days feel different, and the same.

You try to hold on, like you promised him, but the nightmares and the sleepless nights are getting worse.

You touched each other for the second time ever, felt the warmth of his hands on you, breathed the same air, the memory of seeing the depths of darkness in his brown eyes up close is carved into your mind, and now the yearning inside of you has developed; a deep ache in your bones.

The others can sense something more is up between you. You feel their eyes follow you; but you can't bring yourself to care whether they notice the way he always rushes to your aid, or the soft exchanges of words, or the way the two of you never move too far apart. You can't fight this growing need to be around him. You're soulmates. Whatever that means.

"Doctor! We need the doctor!"

Your ears prick at the commotion at table two. Everyone keeps working, but out of the corner of your eye you watch as Kino goes over to investigate.

"Is it another panic attack?"

You push down on the drill.

"...he's not breathin'"

You lift it up and inspect the results.

"Shit. I’ll call the doctor."

Your table begins to lift the cog off the table to load it on the rack. You step away, watching them move. Out of the corner of your eye, you see the man keeled over on the floor.

A little bit of your soul cracks.

Keef returns to your side, and it’s brief, but his arm brushes against yours.

He doesn’t even need to say anything - you meet his brown-eyed gaze and all the hurt in your lungs evaporates.

“Unit Five-Two-D on program.”

He flicks his gaze up to the entrance, a gleam in his eyes.

You put your hands behind your head and turn to face them as the doctor is lowered onto the floor.

The man is dead.

There’s a strange anticipation in the air, like the way the air gets dry before a storm hits.

You watch them carry the man away in a bodybag. You catch Xaul and Jemboc exchanging a look. You catch the way Kino nods subtly to Keef as he walks past.

Everyone goes silently to their quarters - not even a whisper.

“Fall out!” Kino yells.

You turn to Keef. “What is going on?”

He pulls you aside, leaning in with his voice down low. “Do you trust me?”

“Why?”

“Tomorrow, whatever Kino says, I want you to follow immediately. No hesitation. You understand?”

“What - ”

“I can’t explain. I wish I could, but - ” His eyes catch on someone over your shoulder, and his mouth closes in a grim line.

You glance back and see Xaul, watching from a distance, arms folded, jaw tense. He’s never seemed to trust you, and you don’t blame him, but the way he watches you at all times is hard to get comfortable with.

“I don’t understand,” you turn back to your soulmate and search his eyes, “but... I trust you.”

An unreadable expression flashes in his eyes, and then everything is swept away as he takes you by the waist, cups your chin, and sweeps you into a gentle kiss.

For a nanosecond you freeze, before the rush of adrenaline fills your veins and you melt against his lips. The soulmark pulses on your arm, and the most amazing feeling overtakes you, of drifting high up in the clouds and watching the sun rise. You pull him closer, threading your fingers through his hair. The bristle of his five-o’clock shadow makes itself known with each movement, desire pooling in your core as you move your body against his. He feels so real, solid and alive, and it’s breathtaking.

The sounds of the world around you only vaguely registers in your head. Men, shouting at you.

Fuck them. Nothing else matters. You’re in the arms of your soulmate and you never want to leave again.

Then one voice, Kino’s, pierces through your haze. “Oi! The floor!”

Your eyes fly open as Keef breaks off the kiss and pushes you towards your cell with a growl.

You barely have time to react. Between the flashing lights, you lunge for the safe zone, leaping up into it seconds before the place is bathed in red.

“Fuck!”

You turn around.

He stands in his cell across from you, panting, his hair mussed from your attention. His eyes are wild, staring at you like he’s waiting for you to drop dead.

The instinct to reassure him overwhelms you. “I’m okay,” you say, stepping away from the edge. “I made it.”

He closes his eyes, running a palm over his mouth, and his shoulders rise and fall with a deep, shuddering breath.

You look down at your soulmark. That heightened feeling is fading, fast, each second you’re not back in his arms. A vision enters your head, of you, throwing yourself across the hall, even though you know that ends in death.

“You two lovebirds have a death wish?” Kino yells from his cell.

Shit.

“I told you they were distracting each other.”

“Gonna get us killed.”

Murmurs ripple down the hall. Heads, poking out of their cells.

Keef shakes his head, eyes swimming with anger. His voice is low, but you still hear it above the din. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken that risk.”

His words should fill you with regret, but a part of you, a small, stubborn part, thinks that maybe it was worth it anyway, just to touch him again, to feel his arms around you, the dominance of his kiss.

You close your eyes, a hand going to your mouth on instinct, fingertips trailing where he had his mouth on yours.

“Enough!”

Kino’s bark gets everyone’s attention instantly. The chatter dies down.

You open your eyes, and Keef is staring at you, a hungry look in his eyes. Heat rises to your face.

“Everyone knows what the plan is. Yes?”

Mumbles of men in agreement echo through the hall. You tilt your head, trying to discern any information you can, but pick up nothing. Nothing except that Keef looking towards Kino’s cell with fire in his eyes - tense, almost like hope, but darker.

Anger.

“Good. Now’s the time to rest. Tomorrow, we fight.”

A chill runs down your spine.

He’s shirtless in the morning.

Instantly pushing yourself up, your gaze locked on his chest, his stomach v, his arms, you catch his attention with the sudden movement.

He snaps his gaze to yours, pausing mid-stretch. His arm pulled across his chest, braced against his other arm to stretch his shoulder, the ropes of his biceps on full display for you.

“Hi,” you say.

Your swear his mouth curves just slightly, a twitch in his face, and he nods at you.

“Hi.”

All the blood in your body has left your brain. You continue to stare at him like an idiot while he does some basic stretches, before the lights flick to white, and Kino yells his daily on program! while Keef slides his shirt back on.

You fall in line in front of him.

He stands closer to you than normal, pressing his up front against you, his breath fanning against the back of your head as he leans in. His lilting voice sounds lowly in your ear, a lilting, baritone sound. “Remember what I said?”

Your eyes flutter shut at the sensation. “F-Follow Kino,” you manage to stutter out.

He hums in approval. “Good girl.”

Your thighs clench together.

He’s getting more bold in front of the others, more playful, and you can’t help but feel excited and nervous by the shift. Why has he stopped hiding?

The line starts moving forward, and you follow the person in front of you to the showers as normal, trying to focus on anything but what he just said.

He thinks there’s a chance you could both escape, you think, and then immediately regret that line of thinking. But it’s too late. That future you imagined - the one that he planted in your mind with his words, shifts, and suddenly he’s there beside you in each vision, relaxing, laughing, grinning like an idiot.

Fuck.

The shift begins, the men exchanging knowing glances that have anticipation and dread growing in your belly. You know what this is by now, you’ve put the pieces together despite their weird reluctance in telling you.

This escape plan is really happening.

The new prisoner arrives shortly after your shift begins, and when Keef returns from the bathroom soaking wet, you barely have time to react before shit hits the fan.

Obeying Kino’s orders, you watch as together the other prisoners hijack the lift and short out the entire system - no more hot floor.

As he reaches the top, Keef turns back to pin you with a wild, furious look in his eyes that fills you with fire. He jerks his head for you to follow him.

So you do.

You climb. You run. You follow.

A guard catches you and tries to pull you away, but Keef is there in a flash of red and the smell of burning flesh, grabbing you by the hand and telling you to run as the man slumps to the ground.

The loading platform ends in a sheer drop to the sea. Your stomach drops as you pull back, glancing around as others begin to jump.

This is insane.

“I can’t swim!”

You barely hear Kino say it over the sound of the wind and the other prisoners, but then he says it again, and there is no doubt.

You step up beside him. “Me neither.”

Keef stares at you in shock.

And then he’s gone.

One of the men drags him off the edge by accident, and a shriek escapes you. “No!” but you can only watch as he disappears from sight.

A second goes by, then two. More men rush past.

There's nothing but the sound of blood pumping in your ears. No matter which way you think about it, if you follow, you're dead. There's no way you can swim that far, and if Keef tries to help you, he'll probably just die with you.

You fall to your knees.

Others race past you still, flinging themselves off the edge one by one. Kino stands by your side, watching them with an empty gaze.

“What do we do now?” you ask, and find yourself subconsciously cradling your arm, the soulmark on it beginning to throb painfully. Follow Kino, he said, but you’re not sure Kino has any moves left. There’s none you can see; no way to survive.

Maybe you should just jump anyway and let fate decide.

“Nothing.” Kino looks down at the gun in his hand. “We’re going out, one way or another.”

You nod and take in a deep breath of salty ocean air. “Agreed.”

He says nothing.

“Ah!” Your soulmark throbs again, and you grip your arm, hissing through your teeth. “Fuck off!”

“Sorry?” Kino growls.

"It’s uh,” you pull back your sleeve to him, “my soulmark.”

He blinks. “Damn. Keef?”

“Yeah.”

“That explains you two then.” He nods, casting his gaze out to sea. “I... I have a family.”

You peer up at him.

“I just wanted to see them again.” He looks down at the gun in his hands again.

“At least you know you tried,” you offer. “Sometimes...” Keef’s words ring true, pouring from your lips even as you hear the memory of his words spoken in your mind. “...that’s all we can do.”

The two of you linger in silence. Below you, the forms of men swimming away from the prison spread out, reaching towards the horizon. The soulmark on your arm is aching something fierce now, calling you to the edge. But it’s the realisation that Keef must be feeling this pain too, that hurts even more.

You hope he is trying anyway, down there, despite the pain.

He’s probably thinking the same thing about you.

Damn.

You stand. “Give me the gun.”

Kino hands it to you without even looking, his eyes remaining fixed on the horizon.

You turn around, facing the inside of the prison, and point the gun at one of the panels of the wall. The sound of the blast almost deafens you.

The panels sizzle where the blast hit, but as you approach, you can see them peeling away from each other at the seam. Without hesitation, you wedge the barrel of the gun in the hole, and with all your strength, try to peel the panel off the wall.

“What are you doing?” Kino growls.

You glance back at him with a half-cocked shrug.

“Finding something that floats.”

Wet.

Cassian’s fingers close around sand. His lungs are on fire, exacerbated by the stinging salt he inhales with each breath. Everything hurts.

A shadow relieves him from the sun. He looks up and for a moment, it’s you, the beautiful image of you reaching down for him tilting this world on its axis. Then he blinks, and Melshi comes into focus.

“We need to disappear,” he’s saying, scanning their surroundings.

Cassian tries to push himself up, but there’s a terrible ache emanating from his soulmark. It was easy to ignore in the sea - everything hurt. But now it spreads through his body, an urging like no other to wade back out into the dark waves - to go back for you.

He wants to punch the man who tackled him off the edge. Whoever it was. But as soon as he hit the water, swimming was the only way to survive.

“Did ya hear me? Keef?”

With a grunt, Cassian sits up and brushes off his hands, wincing when his arm throbs with the movement. “Did anyone else make it?”

Melshi squints. “If they did, they didn’t follow us.”

Yeah, that’s what he thought. Even if, by some miracle, you did make it, you could be miles apart, with no way of finding each other.

It would be enough to know that you survived, but he’s never been that lucky. No. He thinks of you, of your tentatively hopeful expressions that get him through the day, that beautifully trusting look in your eyes right before he kissed you, and has to tilt his head back to prevent his eyes from watering.

His soulmate. Dead.

He thought that maybe, just maybe, there was a chance he could save you.

“Keef.” Melshi stoops down beside him. “We have to move.”

“What do you know about soulmarks?” he murmurs.

Melshi sighs. “You’re dehydrated, mate. C’mon.” He goes to lift him up.

“No - no!” Cassian resists, pushing Melshi away and scrambling to his feet. He shoves back his sleeve and bares his soulmark. “I need to know! I need to...” He cuts himself off with a grimace as pain pulses through the mark.

Melshi stares at the mark, wide-eyed. “No shit. The girl?”

Cassian can only nod. “She doesn’t even know - my real name.” He chokes the words out past tears. “I thought I could save her. But she’s... she’s probably dead by now.” It feels like he’s separated from his body, like someone else is saying these things.

“Wouldn’t you know?”

Cassian stills. “What do you mean?”

Melshi hesitates.

“What do you mean?!” He grips at his hair, heart thudding in his chest so hard it might burst. “How would I know?!”

“I don’t know! It was just a story, back home - people said the marks are like homing beacons. So if she’s dead, your mark would... stop working.” He cringes, muttering, “it sounds stupid when I say it like that.”

Cassian looks down at it the throbbing, aching mark. He focuses on it, and - there - the throbbing pulls towards the sea.

He looks out at the waves. “She’s alive.”

His legs carry him forward, back into the sea. The sound of Melshi yelling behind him is a distant worry over the beating of his own heart, the very blood in his veins burning to get to you.

Then arms close around him, pulling him back. “You’re insane!”

He snarls and shoves Melshi back. “Get off me!”

“You’ll die!”

“I have to go back!”

Melshi lets him go. “Okay okay, just - just think about this! You’re no use to her dead.”

“You don’t get it. You don’t understand. If she’s alive - ”

“If she’s still alive, she’ll need more than just one man swimming out to rescue her!” His gaze darts down. “Is it getting better or worse?”

“What?”

He points to Cassian’s soulmark. “It’s painful, right? Is it getting worse?”

Cassian looks down at it. “It’s been about the same for a while now.” Fucking painful, but, “...maybe a little less than before. I don’t know!”

Melshi nods. “So she could be getting closer.”

“If that is how it works.” Instinct - the mark - tells him it does, but the panic in his chest won’t go away. He needs to see you. “So what do I do then? Wait around for her to find me? She can’t swim, so how - ”

“I don’t care!” Melshi interrupts. "But if you don’t return to shore with me, I will knock you unconscious and drag you back.” There’s a deadly serious look in the man’s eyes.

The ache within him isn’t going away. He’s not sure how much more he can take. But Melshi is right - it would be a death wish to swim back.

The prison is a blip on the horizon. Could you have really made it, somehow?

Melshi eyes him aggressively, waiting for him to make a move.

Cassian raises an eyebrow. “You really care about me that much?”

“You’ve been a bloody pain in my arse, but you were instrumental in our escape, so I figure I owe ya.”

With a nod, he looks back towards land, skimming his fingers over the waist-high water. “We wait here then.”

“They’ll be sending ships looking for us.”

“I won’t go any farther inland.”

Melshi shakes his head. “Fine.” With a splash, he begins wading toward the shore. “Then we’d better find some shelter for the night.”

It’s midnight. Probably, anyway. Cassian has no sense of time here, except that it's been dark for a while.

He sits with his face tilted up to the stars. The sea breeze is a cool rush of air, swaying the tree above and rustling his hair across his face.

He needs a haircut again.

The mark on his arm has steadied to a slow, aching pulse every few seconds, nothing more than the sensation of a mending bruise.

Melshi is right - he can feel it in his veins that you're getting close.

So he's waiting.

Sleep will not come to him tonight. Like you, it eludes him, and in its place, the unnatural sense that something is missing.

It's subtle, at first. A crashing of waves that don't fit the slow, steady beat he's been listening to all night.

Then, the sound of voices out there. A man's, deep and grating, and yours.

He'd recognise it anywhere.

He peers around the tree, out towards the sea, and sees a shape floating on the water.

“Melshi.” He hisses his companion’s name, getting up. “Melshi! It's them.”

“Huh,” Melshi starts, half awake.

“It’s them. I’m going to get her.”

He groans, shifting his arms up to cover his face. “They’re actually here? Wha’ are the chances? How?”

“I don’t know.” Breathless, Cassian turns toward the sea, towards the place his soulmark has been calling him towards all night. “But I’m going to find out. Come on.”

He runs to the water.

Sand sprays beneath his feet, then water splashes, and then he’s wading, then swimming, towards it. The shape blotting out the stars on the horizon morphs into two silhouettes sitting on some kind of raft. They’re slowly paddling their way towards the shore.

Cassian wants to weep with joy when he hears their voices - first Kino, then you.

“Is that - ”

“Keef? Keef!” you cry out, your voice hoarse.

His palm collides with the raft - a smooth white panel, and there you are, sitting on one side with a salt-streaked, wind-struck, beautiful face, staring down at him in wonder.

“Well shit,” Kino croaks, glancing at you. “You were right.”

Your hand rests over your soulmark as you stare down at Cassian.

Stars. There is so much he wants to say, but none of it seems like enough for this moment. He doesn’t want to take his eyes off you - he can’t.

But as the waves gently rise and fall, Kino clears his throat pointedly. “Much as I love being surrounded by water...”

“Right, right.” Cassian grabs hold of the panel. “I’ll take you to shore.”

The soft strokes of the sea abuts his efforts as he pulls the raft behind him, until the sea floor shallows out and he can put his feet beneath him.

“You should be good now. You can stand,” he says, instantly returning to your side of the raft. “Melshi’s with me, on the shore.”

Kino nods, sliding off the edge. “We should bury the panel.”

“Agreed.”

You hesitantly dip your legs in the water, and Cassian places his hands on your waist ready to help you down. “I’ve got you.”

In the darkness he can barely see your face, but he could swear there’s a heat reflected in your eyes.

It feels good, coming to you aid on instinct. Putting his hands on you.

As he holds you steady, you gently slip off the edge of the raft and collide against him with an oof as you land.

Despite his exhaustion, his shaft hardens. To go from be denied his soulmate for so long, to this...

“Here,” he says, roughly pushing the panel towards Kino, his eyes never leaving your face. “Go see Melshi. We’ll catch up.”

The man grunts something, and begins to wade to shore with the panel, and then he’s forgotten as Cassian is drawn back to you on instinct.

His arms tighten around your waist, and he opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. He’s struck.

You cup his face, gaze flitting between his eyes and his mouth, your breaths mingling, and then suddenly he’s pressing his mouth against yours.

You let out a cute little gasp against him, and his chest flutters, as you yield to him.

Yes. He burns with the rightness of this moment, and yet braces you against him as he deepens the kiss, like he’s afraid you’re going to slip away. He doesn’t quite believe you’re real yet.

Your fingers dig into his hair, and he likes it, the way you pull him into you with the same hunger and desperation he’s feeling.

“Cassian,” he breathes suddenly, pulling back for a moment, his forehead pressed against yours. “My real name is Cassian.”

“Cassian,” you repeat, and then your mouth curves into a smile - a fucking smile.

He almost groans. His soulmark pulses warmly against you. “You’re alive.”

“Yes,” you breathe, nodding against him.

“You’re my soulmate.”

You nod again, clinging tight to him. “Yes.”

A low, reverent chuckle escapes him, and you let out a light giggle in response; together relishing in the intimacy of this moment.

And then you cant your hips, and his laugh turns into a groan, a new kind of bliss making itself known in the hardening of his length beneath his pants. He thinks he’s never seen anything as beautiful as the look in your eyes. Full of passion - a beautiful, twisting flame, but also, understanding. You barely know each other, and yet it’s like your souls know each other intimately; bound together by something greater than either of you can fathom.

With a swift motion, he sweeps your legs out from underneath you and hitches your thighs around his waist so you're floating in the water, anchored in place by him alone.

You press yourself into him, arching your back and leaning forward to brush your lips against his.

He kisses you with all the fervour and unfulfilled need building inside him. His hands come around your ass and dig in, tugging your crotch against him so you can feel his hardness.

Another heady, submissive gasp escapes you against his mouth, and when your legs open further to let him settle against you, he's done for.

“I know you’re probably tired,” he murmurs, “and we should probably get to shore, but I...”

You're nodding before he even finishes the sentence, making his heart soar with the needy look in your eyes. “Yes,” you breathe. “Yes, yes, please, Cassian, please.”

With a breathless laugh, he drops your thighs and takes you by the waistband of your pants instead.

Together, you work to pull it off of you. It’s awkward, messy, not how he imagined this going, but it doesn’t matter. The mood is playful as you struggle to pull your pants off beneath the water - you, bracing yourself on his shoulders, and him, trying to pull it off your legs and getting splashed in the process.

But then suddenly you’re fully naked from the waist down, and your laughter quietens as you draw close to each other again.

He can’t see your naked lower half beneath the dark water, but he can feel when you wrap your legs around him again.

Slowly, he places his hand on your bare thigh, treating the moment with all the reverence of a ritual, his soulmark tingling in anticipation and sending a shudder through his body.

With his other hand, he cups your face, searching your gaze.

“I’m clean.”

“Same.”

“Birth control?”

Something like pain flickers in your eyes, and you shake your head. “Not since... before.”

“Right. Of course.”

He hesitates.

The two of you just escaped prison, and if he’s learnt anything, this is not the kind of galaxy he wants to risk bringing a child into. He’s not even sure if he’ll survive tomorrow.

“What do you want to do then?”

“We could die tomorrow.” You shift in his arms, pulling yourself flush against him until his hardness presses firmly between you. “Fuck it.”

He tilts his head, a slight grin curling on his face. Stars, when you say it like that... With a clench of his jaw, he pulls you down slowly and impales you on his hardness.

His head falls back. You’re fucking tight. A raw, incredulous groan rises from his throat.

Your reaction has his head spinning - fingers winding through his grown-out hair and pulling desperately against him. He loves little hiss you make.

“Look at me.”

Your eyes flutter open to meet his gaze and his seed almost spills, only holding himself back with the barest restraint. Must savour this moment. Finally being inside you - his soulmate.

He pulls you in for a hungry kiss. Heat rises between your bodies as you give yourself over to his touch, opening your mouth into his kiss and arching your back for him.

It’s too much. Unable to stop himself, his hands grip you by your thighs and he fully impales you, forcing your tight, inner channel muscles to give way and let his shaft thrust full inside you.

You brace his shoulders and writhe in pleasure. “Oh, Cassian, please, m-move - ”

That’s all he hears before his instincts take over, and he uses all his strength to thrust, desperate to wedge himself so far inside you he’ll never leave.

He plants his feet on the sea floor and braces you against him as you cant your hips for him. Your bodies are working overtime to create that toe-curling friction, thrusting into each other with bruising force, the waves splashing and breaking over your entwined forms.

Your mouths clash in a tangle of heated, desperate kisses that burn him from within. The tension is pulled taut between you, soulmarks thrumming in time with each other as you desperately unite your bodies as one.

He rocks his hips up between your open legs and hits home harder and harder with each slosh of the water. His hands grip you by the back of your shirt, fingers scrambling against the fabric to pull your body down as hard as he can.

Your head lols back in the water, a gasp escaping your throat. “Cassian! Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop - oh!”

He grunts in approval. His hunger for you grows, seeing you so vulnerable like this for him, desperate to hold out as long as he can to pleasure you. His thrusts grow even more frantic and sloppy - a fast, brutal jerking rhythm of pounding up into your cunt.

“My hope,” he murmurs in Kenari, barely hanging on to his sanity. “Better than anything I’d ever dreamt of.” He drinks in the sight of you, wet and vulnerable and all his, and his hardness gives a heady warning pulse of heat. He groans. “You’re everything. You’re mine.”

You let out a whimper in his arms, and then you’re tensing, your thighs, clenching around him with newfound strength.

“Cassian,” you moan through gritted teeth, “Cassian!”

The first jolt of pleasure wracks through his body without warning. At the realisation that you’re climaxing, he’s had it - he can’t hold back anymore.

He groans in disbelief. His brows draw together, the deep, intense, deliberate jerking of his body against yours faltering as pleasure takes over. A sound comes out of him, a mix between a desperate plea and praise, and then he’s coming inside you.

Fierce, intense waves of heat pulse into your raw, messy, clenching cunt.

His pleasure deepens as you open your legs even farther to receive his spend inside you. With a growl, he pulls you against him and jerks his hips against you once more, finishing himself off.

“Yes,” you moan, leaning forward and pressing your forehead against his. The change in angle shields your face from the starlight, but the sound of your shuddering, desperate pants of breath are clear as day. You’re high on this shared bliss together.

“Don’t want to wake up,” he murmurs against your lips.

“You think I’m a dream?”

He traces up your arm and wraps his hand around the back of your neck. “You’re too good to be real. I’m not that lucky.”

You chuckle. “You are now.”

“We’ll see.”

It isn’t until the next morning, when he opens his eyes to the first rays of sun and you’re still there, asleep in his arms, that he finally allows himself to believe.

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littlemisspascal · 1 year

Text

The When (Part 3)

Pairing: Ruescott Melshi x Female Reader

Word Count: 13k+

Summary: There is a story before, when, and after Keef Girgo enters your life. This is the When.

Rating: M (18+, minors please do not engage!)

Warnings: Prison/Narkina 5 storyline but an AU where woman inmates are assigned to each unit as ‘peacekeepers’, language, established relationship, non-descriptive smut + references of smut, possessiveness, violence + blood + injuries, non-important character deaths, talk of having children

- Reader has no official name and no physical traits described in detail. However, she is implied to be shorter than Melshi.

Author Note: Thank you everybody for the kind support of this story! So sorry it’s been such a long wait for this update, life’s been more hectic than I would like. This chapter's extra long though to make up for it 😄

Special thanks to @beecastle for beta reading and encouraging me 💜

The Before | The When Part 2 | The After

In the morning you only remember snippets of Keef and Melshi’s conversation. Neither of them act any different than usual, scarfing down their meals before the alarm sounds. Part of you wants to ask, to see their reactions play out across their faces and their bodies squirm like flies caught in a web. But the other part, louder and more insistent, demands you hold your tongue. Let Melshi come to you as he always has no matter the situation.

And if he doesn’t…well. What goes around comes around, right? You’re already familiar with the pain of lying to him. It can’t hurt much worse, you reckon, being on the other side.

You divert your gaze to your breakfast before Melshi can catch you staring, forcing yourself to swallow another bite. But it does nothing to fill the pit inside you.

—

It’s not until hour nine of your shift that Keef interrupts the sound of metal meeting metal, drill tip piercing through the widget’s charcoal gray exterior, by announcing an idea.

“Table Three’s starting to lag,” he points out, gesturing with a subtle nod of his head. Taga and Xaul’s eyes instantly follow the direction, listening as their hands continue the mindless task of twisting bolts into place. “We can take the shift if we push.”

“We’re already ahead of Four,” Jemboc says, looking at the stats screen on the console.

Taga’s eyes spark with determination. “I could use a proper meal.”

You can count on both hands the amount of times Table Five has finished first. Last win had been before Keef’s arrival. You remember the sweetened flavor added to the dinner mush had tasted like honey on your tongue and like heaven on Melshi’s lips.

“Two’s a threat,” Xaul declares, but that’s not what has your heartbeat stuttering.

Ulaf’s rubbing at his right hand, digits stiff and slightly swollen, a grimace of pain pulling at his mouth. The old man’s always been one of the hardest workers in the unit, but lately his strength has started to wane, especially in the aftermath of the resentencing and the worsening conditions.

“Ulaf?” Melshi asks, brow furrowed. His voice is quiet, carefully prodding.

Everyone plays a significant part in the group. And if something is wrong with one person, be it an injury or an illness or lapse of concentration, the consequences affect everyone. No way around it. The loss of Tress had Table Five winding up in the box. Melshi admitted it had been a damn miracle there hadn’t been a return trip when you’d been taken away yesterday so early in the shift, the boys hustling their asses off to stay ahead of last place.

Pushing harder for a victory isn’t worth the sweet reward if it worsens the poor state of Ulaf’s hand.

“What do you say, old timer?” Jemboc looks up from the screen for the deciding vote.

Xaul wags a correcting finger. “That’s short timer.”

Jemboc ignores the redhead, still looking at Ulaf. “Well? Wanna make a run for the win?”

Ulaf bites his lip, glancing around at the group with uncharacteristic apprehension. You know he’s hurting, that much is obvious in the tight lines of his face, but you also know he doesn’t want to be the weak link in the chain. Stupid men and their stupid stubborn pride.

His agreement with the plan is predictable.

What is not predictable is Keef offering to switch places with you so he’s next to Ulaf.

“What?” Your eyebrows climb up your forehead as he slides around you and nudges you into his former space with his elbow. You look to the others for an explanation when they don’t protest the change. “Why?”

“Keef is faster,” Melshi says without skipping a beat.

You give him a wide-eyed look, jaw dropping. “Excuse me.”

Melshi merely stares back, neither repeating nor refuting his claim, and you can’t help pouting. It’s only because you’re looking at him do you catch the subtle lifting of the corner of his mouth into a smirk, how his brown eyes light up with amusement.

“I’ll remember that,” you grumble even as a shiver runs along your spine, confirming once again how far gone you are for this man.

“Someone’s sleeping in the doghouse tonight,” Ham mutters teasingly while reaching for the overhead drill.

“He’s not wrong though,” Xaul says, only to duck his head with a wince when you send him a heated glare.

The sharp retort forming on your tongue is replaced with a startled gasp when Kino announces his presence by asking, “What’s all this?”

You’ll never understand how a man with such a loud, powerful voice and intimidating appearance can sneak around on silent feet. It’s like he enjoys sucking all the air from your lungs in one nerve-wracking whoosh.

Jemboc, to his credit, manages to refrain from jumping, but his stammering response betrays his nerves. “Oh, uh, just a little rebalancing.”

Kino steps forward, forcing the other man away from the console and then proceeds to tap at the screen.

“Ulaf.” The way the manager says his name is noticeably more bark than his usual bite, but nobody’s a big enough idiot to comment on it. “What do you owe?”

Rubbing at his aching hand, Ulaf answers, “It’ll be forty-one shifts tomorrow.”

“You are the next man out of here.” Kino presses a few more buttons on the screen, and there’s a new note of genuine praise slipping into his tone. If Kino was the type of man to regularly smile, you think he’d definitely be doing so now. “The shortest of the short.”

Ulaf manages a small, brief grin at the news.

Kino looks over at you, then Keef. “This swap your idea?”

You swallow, adjusting your grip on the tool in your now-sweaty hand. It’s impossible to tell whether he approves or not.

“Me? No.” Keef shakes his head before pointing a finger directly at you. “It was hers.”

Once your brain realizes how smoothly he’s shifted the blame, your whole body stiffens. Your eyes snap to Keef, delivering an incredulous look that roughly translate to are you fucking kidding me. He shrugs one shoulder, seemingly replying sorry not sorry.

“Smart move,” is all Kino says at last.

It takes everything in you not to let your jaw drop. Praise from Kino is just as rare as a first place win. You somehow manage a jerky nod of your head before Melshi saves you from further embarrassment by passing over the drill.

The way he’s looking at Kino though gives you pause. Not quite glaring, but the distrust is visible in his eyes, watching every movement critically.

The dynamic between the two men has shifted since yesterday. Melshi’s still angry about being seized against his will, how Kino prevented him from reaching you. Another prime example of stupid stubborn pride.

You hate that yesterday happened at all, but well, even you can acknowledge Kino’s unbreakable hold spared Melshi from ending up with a blaster bolt in the chest from the trigger-happy guards.

If you’re being totally honest, in an odd and twisted way you actually find yourself grateful for the manager’s intervention.

You hope Melshi will come to his senses sooner rather than later and let go of his grudge. You don’t like these lines being drawn, dividing friend from foe amongst the ranks. The only ones who are supposed to be the enemy are the guards and the puppet masters they report to.

You’re pulled out of your head, nearly drilling a hole straight into the table, when Keef decides to open his mouth and ask:

“So, in forty-two days we’ll get a new man?”

Out of the corner of your eye, you glimpse Keef looking at Kino and Kino resolutely staring down at his pad. It’s a dumb question. The kind of question meant to provoke a reaction—which kind Keef’s aiming for at this moment you have no idea, but you doubt it’s the long stretch of silence he receives.

“Always the next day, right?” Keef continues, eyes big and round, and he’s either as oblivious to the prison system as he sounds or he’s completely full to the brim of bantha-shit.

Kino slowly lifts his head, expression the flattest you’ve ever seen it be, as if it’s been carved in stone. It’s the kind of look a man gets when he’s reached his tolerance limit and is one irritation away from committing unforgivable acts of violence.

“You know the drill,” he says. The words themselves are bone dry, but the warning laced within them—don’t fuck around with me, boy—is a bucket of ice water poured over the entire group.

Everyone seems to exhale a simultaneous shaky breath once Kino’s moved on to shout at another table. Everyone that is, except for Keef.

When he turns around, you watch as his mouth curls into a smirk. It’s a smug little thing, almost amused. He catches Melshi’s eyes, and there’s something that passes between the two men that has you instinctively bristling, the memory of last night’s conversation flickering in the back of your mind.

You hadn’t been awake to hear if Melshi agreed to join Keef’s escape attempt or not, but looking at them now, your stomach can’t help sinking to your bare feet. Maker, you pray you’re wrong.

—

Ulaf’s behavior takes a turn for the stranger during the final hour of the day’s shift.

Blinking rapidly. Stalling in the middle of a task before seeming to jerk back to awareness. Sweating profusely. Little quirks which might not be noticeable on their own, but when combined in alarmingly increasing frequency it isn’t long before all the members of Table Five are shooting concerned glances his way.

Then he starts asking questions.

“Where do we stand?”

“Are we in the game?”

“What’s our time?”

Again, they might not seem troubling on their own, but—

“Ulaf,” Ham says, watching him carefully, “we just talked about this. We told you just a minute ago.”

He’s old and his memory’s not as sharp as it was ten, twenty years ago, but Ulaf’s never once repeated the same question less than three minutes after first asking it.

He also never loses his temper, even when the group’s dead last.

His wrinkled face scrunches up, eyes turning icy. “Do you think I don’t wanna win? Am I working or not?” he snaps.

You sneak a glance at the rest of the group, finding their expressions of discomfort match your own. Xaul and Taga’s eyes are glued to the tabletop, looking like they’d love to be anywhere else in the galaxy but here. Poor Ham resembles a scolded child in the wake of Ulaf’s verbal lashing with his head ducked down, lower lip clenched between his teeth.

Only Melshi’s brave enough—foolish enough—to maintain steady eye contact. You can sense the tension radiating off of him despite his neutral, almost empty expression. Once Ulaf notices Melshi’s stare, the old man bares his teeth like a cornered dog.

“Stop wasting our time staring at me.” Grabbing hold of the widget’s arm, he forcefully turns it in a surprising display of strength. “Shift’s not over yet.”

It doesn’t take a genius to know something’s deeply wrong here. Regardless, you tell yourself everything will be okay. He’s just tired, is all. Everybody has their off days, and today just happens to be Ulaf’s.

But deep down, somewhere dark and cold you don’t want to acknowledge, there’s a heavy weight of certainty this is a problem no amount of sleep will fix.

—

The usual rush of excitement that accompanied past wins doesn’t come this time. No satisfaction or joy either. There’s just raw and untamed worry buzzing so frenziedly along every nerve you can’t help staring at your feet, convinced for a genuine second or two the floor of the skybridge is hot. Even as a winner the effects of the box continue haunting you.

Melshi says nothing when you lean back against him, only settles his chin atop your head and a hand on your hip, his warmth a tether for you to cling to. That tension you sensed before is still there, still hidden. You wonder how he manages it, keeping his emotions caged the way he does when he’s such a tempest beneath the surface. Maybe he can teach you one day, little by little, just like Taga taught you the basics of signing.

During your first lesson, Taga told you the gestures used to communicate in the skybridges are as unique to Narkina 5 as the Tunqstoid floors, their origins tied to the prison’s inception and its first generation of inmates.

Only about three or four men in the unit, including Taga, are fluent enough to send and interpret messages back and forth with ease. A few, like you, can follow along with conversations by watching, but haven’t quite gotten down the hand motions enough to join in. The majority don’t have the patience to learn how to do either, and patience is perhaps the most important element of all.

Both arms are wholly used from shoulder to fingertip. Every flick of the wrists, flex of the fingers, and shrug combined together can share a whole story without one spoken word. However, like all languages, the Narkina 5 method of communication isn’t without its faults. It can take several days for news to spread from the highest level to the lowest since the groups only pass through the skybridges twice a day. Even worse, all it takes is one mistranslation of a gesture for the entire message to change.

Up ahead in the line, Taga’s arms are a flurry of motion, eyes locked with another prisoner’s across the distance. Your mind makes an attempt at translating, but there’s too much movement of men in-between obscuring your line of sight to piece the gestures together.

The queue is taking longer than usual. Every minute crawling by only increases the restlessness in the small space. Bodies start to sway, voices start to rise in volume.

“Keep it down,” Kino warns, but the effect only lasts mere seconds before the cycle of grumbling starts back up again.

Xaul stands in front of you, rubbing at his shoulder that you know flares up from time to time. And in front of him, faintly trembling and blinking up at the lights with squinty eyes, is a grim-looking Ulaf.

“I don’t like this,” you say, reaching up to squeeze Melshi’s forearm. Pressed this closely together, you feel the fluttering skip of his heartbeat. “How much longer do you think?”

“They could keep us here forever if they wanted,” he answers, a solemn edge to his voice that has you fighting back a shiver. Not the pleasurable kind this time.

Kino whirls around, threatening finger pointed at Melshi’s face. “That’s enough from you.”

You can’t see Melshi’s expression, but you don’t need to. The flexing of his fingers on your hip is telltale enough that the cage containing his anger has been rattled.

“Rue,” you breathe out, a quiet note swallowed by the echoing boom of Kino’s voice as he seeks to resume control of his rowdy unit again.

“Everybody settles down right now.”

It has the opposite effect this time though. The crowd grows incredibly antsy, complaints turning to nervous chatter and wide-eyed looks of apprehension.

“Something’s wrong.” Keef’s shaking his head, glancing around with a creased brow. He steps closer to Taga, who’s still furiously signing away, and asks, “What’s going on? What are they saying?”

Even though it forces Melshi to lift his head, you can’t help looking out the window at the inmate Taga’s communicating with. Strangely, the man’s repeating the same two gestures on loop.

Thumb and index on left hand making the letter L. Right hand holding up middle and index.

Then, both hands make a rolling over motion.

Your breath catches in your throat, watching as he conveys the message over and over again.

Level two. Multiple dead.

“Dream?” Melshi asks, noticing how still you’ve become.

You say nothing, unable to wrap your head around the message. It can’t be true. It just can’t be.

But Taga’s saying, “Something bad’s happened on level two,” confirming your fears, and the man’s still repeating himself, forcing the meaning to stick in your brain.

“Dreamer?” Melshi asks again, tugging at your sleeve to get you to look at him.

“Rue…” Your voice cracks around a ragged exhale, heart pumping like you’ve just run a marathon. There’s a burning behind your eyes, clothes suddenly too tight, suffocating, and that sickening feeling is back with a vengeance. It’s in the air, poisoning your bloodstream with every breath.

Dread. Nightmarish and unmistakable, you know it well.

“C’mere sweetheart,” Melshi’s low, soothing voice pierces through the tangled mess of panic blaring in your head. He pulls you closer, arms wrapped tightly around your back, and you don’t hesitate to bury your face in his chest. There’s nowhere else you feel better protected, but unfortunately even the blissful sound of Melshi’s heartbeat can’t entirely block out the unfolding crisis surrounding you.

“Taga, something’s broken?” Another voice asks from further down the line. Birnok, your agitated brain somehow manages to identify. “What’s happening over there?”

“It’s coming around on this side now,” someone else answers from the night shift line. An invisible force has you twisting out of Melshi’s hold to see for yourself, butterflies stirring within your stomach. Maybe this is all a giant misunderstanding. Maybe death hasn’t been a recent visitor of Narkina 5 once again.

You stand on your tiptoes for a glimpse out the far window, question tumbling off your lips before you can stop it. “What’s he saying—”

“Quiet!” Kino roars, effectively cutting off the exchange.

An ominous crackling noise follows a split second later. All eyes shoot towards the ceiling as the lights weakly flicker before submerging the skybridge into darkness. You flinch backwards, instinctively returning to the safety of Melshi’s arms and grabbing fistfuls of his scrubs. One of his hands immediately goes to the back of your neck, keeping you close.

The power outage is over in seconds, the returning light revealing a sea of faces wearing identical cautious expressions.

“What the fuck was that?” Xaul finally asks the question on everyone’s minds.

“Nothing,” Kino answers decisively before anybody else has a chance to chime in. “Someone didn’t load in and they’re counting heads.”

“So they cut the power?” Melshi asks doubtfully.

Kino’s jaw ticks, and you think if not for you clinging to the front of Melshi’s frame with trembling hands the older man wouldn’t have hesitated to answer with a punch.

Instead, he lets out a huff. “Well, what do you think’s happening?”

Both the alarm and Taga’s voice ring out simultaneously.

“Two’s in serious trouble!”

Those butterflies vanish in a puff of smoke, leaving no trace of their existence behind for you to mourn. Your shoulders sag, exhausted and defeated.

“They’re going too fast now,” Birnok says, sounding frustrated. “I can’t read it.”

Taga starts to shout again, unleashing his bubbling fears, only for Kino to grab hold of his shoulders and spin him around to face each other.

“Shut up,” Kino orders, words striking Taga harsher than a slap to the face. “You haven’t got a clue what they are saying. Level two, this. Level two, that.” He jabs a finger against his temple. “Are you all fucking scrambled or something?”

Kino sounds mad, which is one of his usual and expected moods, but there’s also a sort of wild gleam in his eyes that throws you for a loop. Desperation, perhaps, or—and it feels dangerous to even contemplate—could it be fear you’re seeing?

No way. That’s impossible.

And yet…

“It takes a week for one damn word to get all the way here. At least a dozen hands involved,” he continues, spittle flying. “And now you’re panicking about something on the other side of the building that might not have even happened!”

A beat of silence follows, broken up only by the resounding alarm and Kino’s heavy breathing. Some of the inmates exchange glances around the room, but most are too afraid of setting off Kino’s temper again to lift their eyes from the floor.

“It takes a long time, that’s true,” Jemboc says, stepping out from behind Melshi to better face Kino. You stare at him, unsure whether he’s an idiot or not for willingly painting a target on his chest. “But you’ve got to admit—”

The rest of his statement goes unheard, interrupted by the chilling, emotionless voice of the prison commander over the PA system.

“Stand in place. On program. Feet down. Face front. Hands on heads.”

Both units rush to follow the order without hesitation, lining up in two neat rows. For all that you complain about the guards being obedient puppets, it’s hard not to feel a tad hypocritical standing in line with your spine ramrod straight and eyes staring directly at the back of Xaul’s head. Moments like this force you to accept a dark truth about yourself.

You’ve got invisible strings sewn into your flesh too.

—

Returning to the sleep block, you curl up on Melshi’s cot, head pillowed on his thigh while he eats dinner. He makes three attempts to offer you food, holding the utensil in front of your mouth, before giving up after having his hand pushed away each time. Your nose burns at the thick, cloying scent of the flavored mush, nausea sweeping over you.

Level two. Multiple dead. You can’t shake the words out of your head.

Maker. You want to believe Kino’s right. That somewhere along the way somebody made a mistake. But if he’s not and these fatalities are real, then why did they happen? What possible reason could explain the loss?

Some kind of freak accident? An illness? A pissed off guard letting off steam? The consequence of a foiled escape attempt?

You press a hand against the ache blossoming in the center of your chest, all too aware of Melshi’s eyes peering down at the side of your face as he chews. He wants to ask about what happened on the skybridge. You can practically feel the question hanging above you, but you’re not ready to answer it, too shattered to speak.

Keef’s voice drifts into your ears from across the floor, snagging your attention. “You never think about escaping?”

Melshi stops eating, looking to the side, and at first you think the question is directed towards him, but then another voice answers. Low and gruff and distinctly Kino.

“You know I won’t answer that.”

Your brow wrinkles. Isn’t that an answer itself though?

“I’ll take that as a no,” Keef says with a humorless chuckle, apparently reaching the same conclusion.

“You flap that mouth of yours any longer, you’ll regret it,” Kino says, and you can picture the scowl on his face.

The sounds of faint chatter from other inmates is all you hear for the next minute. Your thoughts start to drift, wondering about Kino as a younger inmate, if he’s always been this cold and blunt or if it’s a side effect of his promotion. Maybe it had been his own choice to sever ties with his emotions, doing anything he could to survive against the horrors Narkina 5 threw at him. Afterall, he can’t have his heart broken if he no longer feels it.

“Tell me this at least,” Keef prompts, a different approach you’re already predicting will yield the same glowering response. “How many guards on each level?”

Melshi sets his empty plate down, careful not to jostle your head. He’s still turned away, listening to the conversation; the way his hand comes to rest on your upper arm, thumb rubbing at the fabric of your scrub, seems like a subconscious gesture. Something prickly inside of you relaxes at the touch.

“Turn that part of your brain off,” Kino answers, just as taciturn as you predicted. “Only way out is to follow the rules.”

Keef’s lack of counter argument surprises you. He sighs, a quiet, disappointed exhale you only hear because you’re listening for it. You can imagine him sitting on the cot of his cell with his knees drawn up, leaning his head back against the wall, and in that moment you’d do anything to understand his silences like you do Melshi’s.

“How many shifts do you have left?” he asks finally.

It’s Kino’s turn to sigh, but his is a louder huff through the nose, exasperated with the long list of questions.

“Two seventeen.”

Anxiety ripples through you, fingers twitching, a reflexive reaction whenever you hear someone’s tab. You hate how your brain automatically tallies the difference between your sentence and his, how it makes note of how much shorter your number is in comparison. You’ll be in the double digits again soon, reclaiming the milestone the resentencing briefly stole from you.

You pretend the numbness spreading along your limbs is because you’ve been lying in the same position too long, not at all stemming from the thought of being forced to leave Melshi behind.

“Tell me what you know before you go,” Keef says, and his voice is soft, coaxing.

Kino doesn’t take the bait. “You’ve been warned,” he declares in that flat, steely tone resembling the edge of a blade ready to draw blood.

Anyone else would have been chilled to the bone, but Keef’s always been different from the rest. He snorts out a laugh instead.

“You think they give a damn what we say?”

“You’re on your own with this.”

“Why?” is the immediate response, all traces of humor gone. “You think they’re listening? You think they care enough to make any kind of effort?”

“Like you would know,” Kino says, dropping his already low voice another octave. There’s something fragile about the change that sparks the memory of his face in the skybridge. You hadn’t thought a man like Kino, someone so tough and imposing, could ever be scared of anything, but now it’s like a veil has been lifted and it terrifies you.

“I know this,” Keef keeps pressing, firm in his conviction. “As long as they turn the floors on and keep their numbers rolling, they don’t need to care about anything. Why bother listening to us? We are nothing to them.”

Your mouth goes dry. It’s like their roles have abruptly switched and Keef’s become the intimidator, taking advantage of the hot floor separating them, speaking his mind without worrying about ending up in a bloody heap of broken limbs.

You don’t realize you’ve started trembling until Melshi’s knuckles stroke over your cheek, soothing in their repetitiveness. The desire to close your eyes, to bury your face against his leg and shut out the world is near-irresistible, but Keef’s voice brings you back to focus.

“We’re cheaper than droids and easier to replace.”

Kino scoffs. “Please. Those aren’t even your words, they’re Melshi’s.” There’s a clatter of a plate being reattached to the wall. “You might have been able to convince that imbecile to join your plot, but you won’t convince me.”

Your body stiffens, all of Melshi’s efforts to soften you undone in an instant. Slowly, you move to sit up on your knees, looking at the side of his face, searching for—an answer, an explanation, anything.

Melshi stares at his fisted hands in his lap, so still you’re not even sure he’s breathing. Then, he swallows hard, your eyes tracking the movement of his throat, and he’s nodding his head, confirming everything.

He agreed to help Keef and Birnok plan an escape. If the guards catch even the slightest whiff of his involvement, he’ll be killed on the spot. And where does that leave you? Lost and alone with a head full of dreams depicting an impossible future.

No more house full of sunlight. No more infant held to your chest. No more Melshi.

Those wouldn’t be dreams anymore. They’d be nightmares.

“Oh fuck,” you breathe, pressing a hand to your stomach.

The air between you shifts, heavy with tension and a promise whatever happens next will have permanent consequences.

“Nobody’s listening to us,” Keef’s saying across the room, pacing around his cell. If there’s a tempest within Melshi, then Keef’s got the fire of a sun, harsh and blazing. He’s come a long way from the wary turtle he was on his first day.

“Dreamer.” Melshi’s looking at you now with eyes burning bright in the dimness, a note of pleading in his voice. “I did it for us.”

He reaches out a hand, but there’s too much hitting you all at once. An avalanche of upsetting events. Your negative pregnancy, Ulaf’s behavior, the deaths on level two, now this—something fractures inside of you, tender and throbbing, and you’re flinching backwards before you can think twice.

“Don’t.” The word tastes like blood in your mouth. “I-I can’t…Just not right now. Please, Melshi.”

You never call him Melshi anymore, not even when you’re pissed at him. Maker, it hurts, seeing the pain written all over his face, how his hand retracts to his side into a curled fist of self-restraint. He recognizes the sound of his name for what it is: a request for distance in this cramped fishbowl of a space.

“Nobody’s listening!” Keef shouts, an explosion of pent up rage let loose upon the white cell walls, lingering in the air like static for minutes afterwards.

But he’s wrong.

Melshi’s listening.

He listens to your words and he listens to your silence when you curl into a ball on the other end of the cot, as far away from him as you can manage. He doesn’t make an attempt to touch you. Not a single one.

Melshi listens and he obeys.

It’s your worst night at Narkina 5, shivering from the cold air and heartache ripping a hole in your chest. And you know the second you reach out a hand, he’ll be there, wrapping himself around you, pressing kisses over every inch of skin, returning warmth to your body. That’s the thought that hurts worse than anything.

I’ll take care of her. Whatever she needs.

He’s willing to do anything for you, even sign up for a plan he believes will get him killed. He’s a fool.

But then, so are you.

You think about how you’d stood on the floor of the sleeping block what feels like a lifetime ago, willing to fry to death to prove a point. A point you still believe in with every fiber of your being.

The only thing you and Melshi can depend on is each other. You’re each other’s greatest strengths and biggest weak spots. Two halves of the same whole. Neither of you will last long in this world without the other.

His ending is your ending, no leftover ink in the pen for additional chapters. And if this is where it stops, right here in Narkina 5 where it all began, so be it.

But fuck if you won’t go down fighting until your last breath for a softer conclusion.

—

“Together,” you tell him in the morning, holding his face between your hands. “We do this together or not at all.”

There are dark circles beneath his eyes, hair an unkempt mess, and yet he’s still the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen.

“I can’t promise we’ll make it.”

There are two unspoken meanings—he can’t promise the escape will be successful or that you’ll both survive the attempt—and you acknowledge them both with a nod.

“Then don’t,” you say, resting your forehead against his as the rest of the inmates begin to stir awake, a new day beginning. “Lie to me instead.”

“Can I-” his tongue sweeps across his lower lip, breath hitching, “Please dream, can I touch you?”

“Yes, Rue,” you all but plead, and then he’s kissing you.

It’s passion and heat and raw neediness, lips moving, biting, devouring, and it’ll never be enough. You’ll always want more of him and his touch, his taste, his scent, frantically craving everything that makes him your Rue.

Eventually pulling apart, your eyes lazily blink open, distracted for a second by the redness of his swollen lips before noticing his serious expression.

“Don’t be afraid of the future, dream.” His voice is just a faint murmur, fingertips brushing over your temple. “No matter what happens, I'll be with you. Everything will be alright.”

You know he’s lying, but you swallow the words, savoring their bittersweetness. Just in case. Just in case the very worst should come to pass and you find yourself on your own—you’ll have them to numb away the pain until you’re in his arms again. In this life or whatever follows next.

—

You swear to yourself, prior to stepping into the skybridge, that you’re not going to allow your emotions to overwhelm you again.

If not for the news the night shift brings with them, you think your resolve would’ve lasted longer than twenty seconds.

“It’s Unit Two-Five,” one of the men across the barrier says, wide-eyed and urgent. “They were fried out.”

You step closer to Melshi, catching his eye when he looks over his shoulder. Whatever he sees on your face has him reaching to intertwine your fingers. For perhaps the first time though, his closeness doesn’t immediately bring you comfort.

Around you, your tablemates exchange looks of confusion and concern, hesitant to believe the gruesome details being hurled at them as fact.

Xaul says something—a question, you think, his eyebrows so furrowed they nearly touch—but it’s muffled by the roar of your heartbeat in your ears, the ragged heaves of your breath.

Ulaf pulls on your sleeve, startling you. “What’s going on? What happened on two?”

His eyes are squinty again and slightly glossy, adding further fuel to the panic burning a hole in your gut.

“I’m not sure—”

“You think we’re a bunch of liars?” Another inmate from the night shift interrupts, an older fellow with white hair and unexpected venom in his tone. “They were murdered like rats. All of them—gone.”

Melshi leans closer, hackles rising protectively in reaction to the hostility. Your eyes flick between them nervously, then to Kino as he approaches. Any optimism he’ll put an end to the clash before it officially starts fades once you get a better glimpse of his face.

The manager looks like he’s aged thirty years since entering the skybridge, skin a shade paler than usual, making the gray of his beard twice as distinctive. No one else seems to notice the worried pinch of his brow, and a part of you envies their obliviousness. Seeing the cracks in Kino’s composure reminds you how painfully mortal he truly is.

“Who’s saying this?”

“Maintenance tech.” It’s the peacekeeper who answers him, a woman a few years older than you with a curtain of dull green hair nearly reaching her waist. She sets a hand in-between the shoulder blades of the white-haired inmate, draining some of the heat from his fiery temper.

It’s jarring, seeing this glimpse of the kind of peacekeeper you’d be if you’d been assigned elsewhere. There’s not a single emotion in her face, blank, soulless eyes staring out from hollow sockets. You’ve seen the same look on other women in the showers, so deeply withdrawn inside themselves it’s a wonder they’re conscious enough to put one foot in front of the other.

“He said they fried the whole bridge,” she continues monotonously, oblivious or, more likely, indifferent to the further wrinkling of Kino’s forehead. Not her unit, not her responsibility. “Told Zinska everything.”

Everybody on your side of the skybridge within hearing distance straightens at the name. Zinska’s the floor manager of the night shift and as equally respected as Kino. Unlike Kino though who uses his voice as a tool to control the masses, Zinska can strike fear into hearts with merely a look.

“Why were they killed?” Keef asks, sounding torn between revolted by the guards’ actions and incensed on the victims’ behalves.

The peacekeeper nods with her head down the row. “Ask him yourself.”

You peer around Melshi’s body at the incoming tall, dark-skinned manager. His face is impossible to read except for the tightness in the corners of his eyes, the grinding of his jaw.

Kino must notice these traits too, voice dropping into that low and fragile state again. “Zinska?”

The other man sucks in a breath, steeling himself. “The tech heard they were making trouble. It got too out of hand and,” he shrugs a limp shoulder, “a choice was made.”

You press a hand over your mouth, holding back the whimper climbing up your throat. A whole skybridge—a hundred lives—killed with the single press of a button, and everyone’s supposed to continue working like all is fine and fucking dandy.

When the PA system clicks on, you flinch at the volume, body struggling against the chill in your veins to obey the commands. It feels like it takes hours to lift your arms up, teeth chattering so hard you worry they’ll shatter.

“I don’t understand,” Ulaf says from behind, a slur to his voice that wasn’t there before. “What went wrong on two?”

“They set ‘em all free,” Melshi answers, solemn and biting.

Kino’s on him faster than you can blink, delivering a solid punch against his stomach that has Melshi crumpling with a breathless grunt. His arm pulls back to strike another blow, and your instincts finally come online again, shielding Melshi with your own body, eyes squeezing shut in expectation of pain.

The hit doesn’t land, thank the Maker.

Keef comes to your rescue, hauling Kino backwards by grabbing him around the middle. “Stop it,” he scolds, shoving at the older man again until blue eyes lock onto him. “We need to be careful. The less they think we know, the better.”

For a tense second you think Keef’s going to be the next punching bag, but then Kino’s silently nodding his head, submitting to the logic. You exhale a sigh of relief.

Melshi slowly straightens back to full height, breathing shallowly through his mouth. “I’m fine,” he tells you, a hushed mumble accompanied by a gentle pat against your elbow, urging you to get back in line behind him.

You reluctantly obey, raising your hands again along with the three men. If you squint hard enough, you think you can see their strings as well. Puppets, every last one of you.

“Tighten up and listen!” Kino calls out, slipping so seamlessly back into his alpha role it nearly gives you whiplash. “It’s a rumor. Maybe it��s true, maybe it isn’t. We have heard nothing. So we’re going to keep our mouths shut, our heads down, and carry on with our shift.”

The door to the work ring opens and the inmates shuffle out of the skybridge wordlessly despite the heavy weight of unspoken questions adding further strain to the tense atmosphere. Keef’s right, it’s better not to draw unnecessary attention and it’s a well-established fact there are no answers on Narkina 5. No use wasting oxygen.

Still, when you pass by Kino, you almost stumble at the sound of his shaky whisper what the fuck is going on.

For both your sakes, you say nothing, pretending not to hear.

—

Keef switches places with you again, but even his quickness isn’t enough to cover for all of Ulaf’s mistakes. It’s as if there’s a delay in the old man’s comprehension. Tasks he’s done every day for years, easy to complete with a mere twist of the hand, are now performed at a sluggish pace, pulling the entire group down in rankings.

Every time he drops a tool or forgets to lift the widget’s arm, a wave of déjà vu sweeps over you, rewinding your memories back to Tress’ last shift. It’s the bewildered expression on Ulaf’s face though, growing in intensity with every hour and every new widget, that concerns you the most. It’s the look of a man who hasn’t the faintest idea where he is or what’s going on.

He lasts longer on his feet than you expect, right up until the final alarm buzzes. He flinches. Hard. Agony visible in every scrunched line. On Ulaf’s right, Keef leans closer, concerned, while on the left Xaul lays a careful hand on his shoulder, quietly uttering his name. There’s no response. Not even the faintest twitch to indicate awareness.

Kino’s announcing the first and last place tables when Ulaf’s breathing abruptly hitches, eyes vacant and mouth slack-jawed. There’s barely half a second to process the change before he’s collapsing against the table.

Keef grabs Ulaf’s forearms, knuckles straining, while Xaul holds the rest of his weight up by his underarms, preventing the old man from falling onto the floor. Jemboc does his best to cover them with his broad frame, purposefully widening his stance. The rest of you can only watch with held breaths, listening to Ulaf’s shuddering and Keef’s quiet assurances—it’s okay, you’re okay, it’ll pass soon.

You almost start to believe them yourself. Almost. Then the box is turned on and those assurances crumble into dust, blown away by Table One’s tortured screams.

—

As the tables start lining up to leave the work room, Kino snags Keef and Melshi by the collars of their scrubs.

“Get him to his cell,” he orders, no room for argument. Of course he’d been paying attention to the ongoing drama, sharp eyes missing nothing.

“He needs a doctor,” you insist, watching the pair all but drag Ulaf towards the door.

“Not here,” is the snappish reply. Kino scrubs a hand over his face, tossing a quick look up at the window. It’s empty of guards at the moment, but the meaning isn’t lost on you.

If they realize just how bad Ulaf’s condition is, what’s to stop them from choosing to kill him too?

It’s a distressing question that follows you out of the work room and sinks its fangs into your heart when Ulaf crumples in the middle of the skybridge. Keef and Melshi gently lower him down, joining him on the floor, and there’s something so pathetically vulnerable about the way Ulaf’s head is cushioned against Keef’s chest it physically hurts you to look at them.

Kino’s shoving at everyone to keep moving, the palm of his hand harsh against your middle back. You know you can’t stay, but it’s only when he swaps places with Melshi and you hear Melshi’s soft c’mon, dream that your feet find motivation to unstick from the floor.

You steal one last glance over your shoulder as Melshi wraps an arm around your waist. You know this moment with Ulaf—white as a sheet, more corpse than man—will be tattooed on the backs of your eyelids for months.

What you don’t know is that it’ll also be the last time you see him alive.

And when that news breaks, the bomb in the heart of Narkina 5 explodes with it.

—

Your body’s amped up with tension and so much dread you can’t bring yourself to eat, skipping dinner for a second evening in a row. You pace instead, pausing at the edge of the cell every thirty seconds to peer out and look for any signs of the three missing inmates.

Melshi makes himself a plate, but it sits beside him on the cot, untouched, one eye on you and one eye also watching the end of the hall.

Neither of you are idiots. When one minute becomes five and five becomes ten and they’re still not back yet, it’s obvious something terrible has happened. In the past the issue of not knowing what that something was didn’t bother you so much. As long as you and Melshi were both safe and together, then you didn’t think the trouble was worth worrying about.

But now, after what’s happened on level two, how volatile and unpredictable the guards have become, not knowing has never felt more dangerous. You curse your past naivety. Whoever said ignorance is blissful was a fucking liar. Ignorance is a snake winding itself around its victim’s throat, innocent in its approach until it’s wound so tightly they suffocate from their own cluelessness.

Without any details to cling to, your mind floods with violent possibilities of Ulaf, Keef, and Kino’s fates, each one bloodier than the last.

You press your forehead against Melshi’s leg, eyes falling shut. A second later you feel a hand settle on top of your head. I’m with you, the gesture says, and it’s all you need to switch off your brain’s gruesome imaginings. At least for now.

“I’m glad you’re here,” you say, quiet and sincere and so damn selfish. As soon as they’re out you want to take the words and shove them back down your throat again, but it’s too late now. They’re in the air, on the walls, impossible to ignore.

You keep your eyes closed, head bowed, scared of what you might see if you meet his gaze. Of what he might see in yours.

“Yeah?” Melshi returns, something in his husky voice, a hint of fondness, of timidity, that has your heartbeat skipping.

It should annoy you, the control he has over you, how the mere sound of your name on his lips can send you melting to the floor. It should annoy you, but then he tilts your whole world upside down, saying things like—

“I’m glad it’s you, too.”

You look up, no thoughts in your head, no more fear gnawing at your chest. His brown eyes are softer than you anticipate, looking down at you like you’re something precious, a smile tugging at his lips. The one nobody else ever gets to see.

And you can’t think of anything more thrilling.

—

The floors turn cold with an echoing clap followed by the telltale creak of the door opening at the end of the hall. One by one heads poke outside the cells, leaning as far as they dare for a glimpse. Melshi practically glues himself to your backside, holding a fistful of your scrub to prevent you from losing your balance, toes straining in your efforts for an unobstructed view.

Then you see them, two figures striding forward. Kino, eyes ahead, shoulders drawn back, ignoring the questions tossed at him from both sides. And Keef, one step behind, lips moving but speaking too low for you to hear yet. Behind them, the door shuts and the floor lights turn red again, preventing any pauses until they’re back in their cells where they belong.

Ulaf’s absence doesn’t go unmissed, your shoulders sinking even before you hear Keef confirm to Taga the old man is dead.

“What happened?” Jemboc questions.

Kino steps inside his cell in cold silence, but Keef isn’t so quick to let him off the hook.

“Tell them,” he urges. “They need to know!”

Xaul straightens from where he’d been leaning against his cot. “Tell us what?”

You and Keef both look at Kino, waiting for him to take charge of the situation, but he keeps his back turned, face hidden. Keef’s mouth twists into a frown, disappointed.

“A doctor came,” he explains, filling in the gaps himself. “He told us what happened on two.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Taga says, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “They fried the whole bridge.”

“It’s—” There’s a waver in Keef’s voice. He pauses, swallows, tries again, “It’s worse than that.”

“Holy shit,” someone mutters. Ham, you think.

“He said they made a mistake,” Keef’s shouting now, making sure every inmate hears, “and sent back a man who’d just been released! They fried two shifts to keep it quiet!”

Behind you, Melshi stiffens, every line of his body coiled tight with tension.

No, you want to say against the sensation the floor’s disappeared beneath your feet, leaving you in sickening limbo. No, that can’t be true because once your number’s up they can’t hold you anymore, they can’t hurt you or control you or do any-fucking-thing to you because your sentence is over. You’re free.

Jemboc’s shaking his head out of the corner of your eye. “You really heard him say all that?”

“I don’t believe it,” an unseen inmate further down yells back with a condescending scoff.

“He’s only a doctor,” another pipes up, “how would he know—”

“No one is getting out!” Kino shouts, a thunderous explosion startling the whole unit into silence.

You stand there, breath frozen in your lungs, exhausted and wide awake at the same time.

Slowly, Kino turns around, sending a chill coursing through you at the sight of his tortured expression, as if his heart’s been carved out of his chest. But underneath the anguish, there’s rage wafting off of him, visible in the throbbing vein on his neck and the gritting of his teeth.

“The rumors are true. They’re not letting us go. Ever.” His voice has become a flat monotone that unnerves everyone even more than the shout did. He inhales a shallow breath, looking up and down the row, purposefully drifting his eyes over every face. “We’re gonna die here. Or wherever they place us next.”

A beat follows, words sinking in, and whispers are exchanged. You tune them out, aware of nothing else except Melshi’s arm pulling you even closer and Kino drawing back his shoulders, bracing himself for what comes next.

“So let’s put our heads together—” he says, calmly packing away his anger for a later date. Back to looking like the shift manager you know and respect in a matter of mere seconds. “—and start figuring out tomorrow’s escape.”

—

It has to be tomorrow, Keef argues, because tomorrow a new man will come to replace Ulaf. Tomorrow the lift will lower and that moment, that precise, singular moment will mark the first strike of rebellion.

There won’t be a better shot than this. Waiting will only guarantee the guards will strengthen their numbers. It’s vital everyone must work together or everyone will fail.

So a plan is formed. It’s rushed and full of holes and there’s no guarantee everyone will make it or that it’ll even make it past step one, but it’s a plan nevertheless. A plan with a chance of working. A plan to never see these white walls and widgets again.

And for that sole reason alone, everyone agrees it’s worth the risks.

—

While the rest of the sleep block spends their final night in prison asleep, your head is filled with racing thoughts of violence and dread and nasty what ifs. You try to find peace in the feeling of Melshi’s face burrowed against your neck, the warm puffs of air on your skin, but inevitably your mind drifts back to unpleasant ideas, to the hellfire of the box and Ulaf’s shuddering end.

A foot brushes against your shin, your only forewarning before Melshi’s stirring awake and rolling on top of you, bracing himself on his forearms.

“You’re thinking too much, little dreamer,” he says, voice rough and thick with sleep but there’s concern flickering in his dark eyes, a candle flame sending orange heat all the way to your toes.

“Sorry,” you murmur, reaching a hand up to brush over his cheek, fingertips ghosting over the tight lines at the corners of his eyes.

He turns to press a kiss against your palm, the tender inside of your wrist. The scrape of his stubble threatens to drag out a moan from your throat but something else escapes instead.

“You ever think about having kids?”

Melshi’s brow lifts, surprised, then pensive. The moment feels delicate, balancing on a high-wire, too much pressure to either side and it’s a long way down. Nervousness skitters across your skin like ants the longer he stays silent, and the urge to squirm beneath him is near maddening, but his larger frame keeps you effectively pinned.

“I have,” he says, and if he hadn’t been this close, noses brushing, sharing the same air, you wouldn’t have heard the soft reply.

“You—” Your eyes widen, the tight ball of fear and insecurity you’ve been carrying since your examination daring to loosen just a little bit. “R-really?”

“Really.” Melshi confirms with a nod, but there’s something shy about the way he hides his face in the next breath, mouthing the words against the underside of your jaw. “It’s not a thought I indulge often,” he admits. “But the idea of a little you running around, it’s…a future I wouldn’t mind.” A pause follows, another tender kiss planted. “The galaxy needs more dreamers.”

There’s an urge to kiss him silly for the sappy statement. There’s also the urge to roll over with a groan so he doesn’t see the embarrassing watering of your eyes–it’s unfair really, how he can look so soft and gorgeous when he’s got sleep lines on his face and staring at you like that. The urge to kiss him wins out in the end.

He moans against your mouth, a sound that has sparks of arousal bursting in your blood, and your last night in prison is spent entangled together, two bodies blurring together in the dark, making love like you have all the time in the world.

—

“Listen up,” Kino announces first thing in the morning once the lights have flicked on.

Up and down the row prisoners stand on the edges of their cells, shoulders drawn back, alert, listening to their leader’s voice not unlike soldiers preparing to enter a warzone.

“We are done counting shifts,” he says, voice so cold and firm you swear it drops the temperature of the whole room. “There is only then and now.”

You stand next to Melshi, meeting Keef’s gaze across the floor, his eyes full of flames. It’s funny, the contrast of fire and ice, and yet for perhaps the first time since Keef’s arrival the men are on the same page as each other, fighting for the same cause: to see Narkina 5 fall.

“No sense in warning the night shift. They’ll hear about it one way or another soon enough.” Kino pauses for only a second, nodding his head almost as if to assure himself this is actually happening. “There is only one way out. Let’s give it our best shot.”

The floor turns cold.

You swallow hard, lining up behind Melshi and Keef.

One way out, you think, a mantra against the nervous trembling afflicting your body. One way out.

—

The tables work like it’s a usual day, putting together widgets, listening to Kino barking orders and competing for first place rank. Perfect little cogs powering the Empire’s machine. Any guard who happened to pass by and glance through the overhead window wouldn’t suspect a rebellion brewing, hiding in plain sight.

And with every passing hour, step one of the plan moves closer and closer until it’s finally time.

“We’re really doing this?” Jemboc asks, a nervous crack to his voice. He looks to Xaul. “You’re still on board?”

“I want out,” the redhead responds, face determined. “Don’t care how.”

Taga, on the other hand, looks two seconds away from a severe panic attack. His hands shake so hard he can barely use them as he tries to line up his wrench to tighten one of the loose bolts. “I’m gonna die,” he says, no louder than a brittle whisper. “I won’t make it.”

“Stop,” Keef growls, grabbing hold of Taga’s wrist in a vice-like grip. “Don’t die until you put up a fucking fight.”

In another life, Keef would make a good shift manager, you think, admiring the effect his words had in instantly stilling Taga’s hands. Every challenge thrown at him he navigates without completely losing himself to fear or doubt. A rare blend of vigilant and clever and so damn stubborn. Everything Table Five needed to get to this point.

As you watch him walk towards the refresher, a tool hidden up his sleeve, a thought skips across your mind and then sinks in as such a bone-jarring fact it startles you.

No matter how this ends, you’ll miss him.

And you don’t even know his real name.

—

“Where is he?” Taga’s eyes are flicking between the refresher, the guard window, and Ham so quickly it’s a wonder they don’t fall out of their sockets. “He’s been in there forever.”

You take the overhead drill from Melshi, briefly locking gazes.

A subtle lift of his eyebrow. You good?

Taking a deep breath, throat feeling tight, you nod your head. I’m good.

That eyebrow stays lifted, lines of skepticism and concern creasing his forehead, but he knows better than to keep pressing. Not now, of all times. Not when hell is this close to breaking loose.

“Just keep your calm,” Ham tells Taga, but you don’t miss the dart of his blue eyes towards the refresher. “Keef won’t let us down.”

Not intentionally, at least, your brain can’t help but tack on unhelpfully. You don’t know much about breaking water pipes, but even with tools you can’t imagine it’s an easy task. If he doesn’t finish the step in time, the rest of the plan might as well crumble into pieces.

You look up at the guard window, heart skipping a beat at the sight of a man peering inside. His eyes sweep the floor and then he steps away to tell the other guard at the control booth it’s good to open the door—exactly as Kino foretold last night while planning.

“It’s time,” Melshi says to the table.

Xaul whistles a short, piercing note, slicing through the noise of the work room like a knife.

There’s a change in the air, a prickle along your spine, and every inmate reacts to the cue like trained dogs. You let go of the drill and reach for your trusted wrench instead, grounding yourself in the familiar weight of it in your hand before hiding it up your sleeve. Within the span of mere seconds, the whole room has subtly armed themselves with makeshift weapons.

There’s still no sign of Keef.

The alarm blares, signaling the imminent arrival of the new prisoner. Damn it, you sink your teeth into your lower lip. C’mon Keef. Now or never.

“On program,” the announcer instructs as the door opens.

Standing at the back of the room, there’s something intensely satisfying about seeing the prisoners armed and dangerous, sights set on the same target. This fight has been a long time coming, and the enemy hasn’t the slightest idea Unit Five-Two-D is about to throw the first punch.

The two guards with blasters step out onto the upper deck, but it’s not them that has your eyes widening. Keef hastily emerges from the refresher, hands on his head. Strands of wet hair stick to his forehead, not because of sweat though. No, you realize, a weight lifting from your shoulders when he nods at Kino. It’s water.

He did it. He fucking did it.

And the guards above are entirely oblivious, not even noticing when Keef moves closer, preparing for when the lift lowers.

“New man on the floor.” The door opens again. A prison steps out with his hands on his head, dark-headed and visibly frightened. A part of you almost feels bad there’s no way to warn him what’s about to happen. “Everyone hold positions.”

There’s a painfully tense, drawn-out moment before the lift descends where the only sounds you can hear are your erratic heartbeat in your eardrums and the rhythmic buzzing of the alarm. Everyone’s on edge, recognizing this moment for what it truly is: a dividing line. Everything familiar will be swept away, never to be known again.

A resounding click echoes off the walls, followed in the next second by the whirring of gears as the lift activates.

It’s time.

Xaul, hands still in position, whips around, nearly nailing Ham in the face with an elbow. “What’d you say to me?”

Ham shakes his head, defensive. “I didn’t say anything.”

The redhead isn’t appeased, lowering his arms and squaring his shoulders. His lips twist into a cold scowl. “If you have a fucking problem with me, then you should spit it out.”

You take a breath, reminding yourself it’s just an act as the two men lunge at each other in a fit of slapping hands and curse words. It’s part of the plan, a distraction to keep the guards’ attention off of Keef and Birnok. Still, despite being in the know, your body still shudders with panic when the blasters immediately take aim at your table, booming voices shouting to get back on program.

Taga and Jemboc join the scuffle, attempting to pull apart the brawling inmates. The shouts from the upper deck intensify, increasing the volatility of the work room to a near fever pitch. And as far as distractions go, this one proves to be a perfect one. With all eyes on the fight, it’s almost comically easy for Keef to jam the lift with a hydrospanner, grinding it to an earsplitting halt.

“Now!” Kino orders.

You don’t need to be told twice. Together, you and Melshi yank on the overhead drill’s cables, fingers aching and jaws clenching until the piece of machinery comes crashing down. Other tables follow suit, drills falling with the same explosive heaviness as bombs, flashes of fiery sparks bursting out of the corner of your eye as the cables whip around in the air like angry snakes, deprived of their output sources.

Birnok makes an attempt at climbing the lift, but the sudden increase of weight proves too much for the wedged hydrospanner. With an ominous groan, the tool slips and the elevator loses its stability, tilting like a seesaw and sending Birnok falling on his back onto the ground.

It’s then the guards on the deck lose their last speck of patience, blasters firing at every moving target, including the new man who had just finished smashing in the face of a guard with his own zap rod.

The fight will never be a fair one so long as they’re armed. You pull out the wrench you’d stored up your sleeve, throw it with a battle cry at one of the guard’s faces and immediately grin with a sick twist of satisfaction when it strikes his nose with an outburst of blood.

Everything within reach of the prisoners becomes a projectile, tools and loose pieces of metal striking the guards and pinging off the deck railing. Your head becomes filled to the brim with a cacophony of noises, impossible to focus on. Every second feels chilling, dangerous, like it could very well be your last.

With each new body dropping dead on the floor, their scrubs singed from blaster wounds, pressure starts building in your chest, threatening to consume you whole. There’s Donovo from Table Two, pale green eyes staring up blankly at the ceiling. He’d been arrested for stealing medicine for his sick son. Alo, one of the youngest inmates in the unit who will now never see his next birthday, half of his face blown off. Kharzed, Cymin, Sosh…slaughtered, dead, gone.

You throw another tool, reacting without thinking, but your aim is off. It hits the wall several feet left of the guard, failing to stop him from firing another shot. You can only watch, dread bubbling in your throat, as Birnok’s struck in the middle of his chest. Dead before he hits the floor.

Your vision swims and narrows on the red puddle forming on the white floor, watching how it slowly widens and glistens in the light.

You’re no stranger to bloodshed or violence. You’ve killed someone before, watched the life fade from their eyes and their lungs exhale one final heave. You should be better than this. You need to be better than this. But here you stand, frozen like a pathetic deer in the path of an incoming vehicle, unable to feel your legs, heart pounding in silent terror.

The blaster shot doesn’t register at first.

There’s just a flash of heat against your side, similar enough to the time you’d burned yourself with the welding laser that it startles you out of your trance. You stagger backwards a step, knocking against the side of a table, and that’s when you finally feel it—white-hot, excruciating agony, like your blood is gasoline and someone’s lit you on fire from the inside out.

Fuck, you think, blinking rapidly against the sudden wave of nausea and dizziness. Holy fucking shit.

Your breath comes out in a shallow, anguished hiss when you finally gather your wits enough to glance down at the wound. A blaster bolt had skimmed against the flesh above your hip, searing the skin and leaving behind a nasty looking gash. Blood soaks into the fabric of your scrubs, drips down onto your bare feet and onto the floor, but you’re still standing, still breathing, and that has to count for something.

Before you can convince your throbbing body to move, you’re seized by frantic hands and dragged behind the table, hidden from the guards’ deadly aim. Even as every fiber of your being screams and burns, Melshi’s touch is instantly recognized. You meet his brown eyes, see the livid fury and raw fear battling for dominance in them, and past that, your own reflection. You look…well, there’s really no way to sugarcoat it. You look as weak as Ulaf had in his final moments.

“Stay with me, dreamer,” Melshi says, voice cracking over your nickname. He keeps leaning in close, hands hovering over your arms, your face, the wound, but doesn’t touch you again. Like you’d shatter into pieces if he did. He swallows hard, expression still torn between anger and concern. “Keep your eyes on me, alright?”

“Always, Rue,” you answer, sounding more breathless than you intend, and manage to snag his sleeve in a weak grip. He could easily pull away, but instead the gesture is his undoing, compelling him to grab the back of your neck and press his forehead against yours.

“You’ll be fine,” he all but growls the words against your lips, breath hot against your face. You don’t know which of you he’s trying to reassure more, but it doesn’t matter. Two halves of the same whole and all that.

You just wish your half wasn’t losing quite so much blood.

But feeling Melshi this close, real and living and all yours—it floods you with a feeling even more powerful than the torturous hurt. You want to live, damn it. Even if it’s just long enough to see the sun again, to feel it on your skin.

Just a little longer, you plead to the Maker, to the forces of the universe. Just a little bit more time.

Your internal begging is interrupted by the distinctive thud of a body hitting the floor, close enough you can’t help reflexively jolting then immediately bite back a groan. Melshi turns to look, but you don’t, too overwhelmed by the list of victims already taking up space in your head.

Taga’s distressed cry of “Xaul!” is like ice water poured over you.

You freeze, breath caught in our lungs, thoughts stuck on a loop of no no no no no!

Because Xaul—he’s not just a cellmate, not just another name. He’s one of your boys. And he can’t…he can’t be…

“No. No, please,” you choke out, pulling feebly on Melshi’s sleeve, eyes stinging with unshed tears.

Melshi’s hands cup your face, preventing you from seeing the rest of the room. He takes up your whole field of vision. Mouth set in a grim line, eyes looking down at your wound again with such tortured pain it’s as if he’s the one who’s bleeding out. Never have you seen your lover look so defeated.

Your mouth opens, a quiet attempt of reassurance poised on the tip of your tongue, only for another voice to rise above the chaos, harsh and strained with desperation.

“Spark the floor! Spark the fucking floor!”

What does that even-?

Another shout blasts out from a different part of the room, Kino this time, you’re certain of it. “Get on the tables!”

A brief flash of clarity hits you, remembering the broken pipe and Keef’s wet hair. There was a game you used to play as a child, where you’d clamber and leap across the furniture, evading all contact with the floor because in your imagination it was no longer carpet but boiling hot lava. Interesting, how life likes to repeat itself sometimes. Except instead of make believe fun, there’s the very real threat of fatal electrocution.

Inmates echo Kino’s warning to each other, voices overlapping and bleeding together, coupled with the sounds of rushing footsteps rivaling a stampede. It’s too much all at once. Makes you want to grit your teeth and slap your hands over your ears.

Melshi wraps his arms around your middle, yanking you upwards onto the table without hesitation. Your vision loses focus, another wave of pain exploding from your side, punching out a sharp keen from your mouth you’d thought only dying animals could make.

But then again, that’s exactly what you are. A dying animal.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Melshi holds you against his chest, but his voice is almost lost to sizzling sparks and wailing. Lips brush against your jaw, a plea for forgiveness. “I know it hurts. Just keep breathing, dream. In and out.”

You force yourself to obey, taking a breath through your nose, then another one, and another, denying the scream pressing insistently against the backs of your teeth.

A shadow passes over your eyes, swallowing everything in darkness. You blink hard several times, slow to understand it’s not just you that’s been affected. The work room has lost power.

The pulse of silence that follows is so still it’s as if time has frozen this moment solid. And you realize, right then, this is the changing of the tide. Defense becomes offense. No going back.

You lift your head despite the protesting aches, searching for Kino. He stands near the center of the room, chest heaving, miraculously unscathed, surrounded by the bodies of those less fortunate. It’s such a poignant scene, so tragic. It must mean something, you think. Must stand for something. Or maybe your blood loss is making you delirious, you can’t tell anymore.

Kino’s gaze slowly raises from his feet to the stunned guards. Then, with his lips twisted in a snarl far more wolfish than man, he shouts a one word rallying cry, “Attack!”

And just like that—all hell breaks loose.

The inmates split into two groups: one half surging forward to conquer the lift, the rest resume throwing whatever’s within reach. The guards take aim again, flashes of red bolts lighting up the room, but panic has gripped them in its claws, more shots missing than killing.

Melshi is quick to get you shielded behind the table again, doing a terrible job of hiding his worry when you don’t even groan at the movement. The gash doesn’t hurt anymore, numb in an odd way that’s as pleasant as it is troubling. Your eyelids flutter, fighting against unconsciousness. Just a little longer…

With your back to the battle, you don’t see Keef climb up the underside of the deck with an impressive display of strength and take out the guards with vicious cunningness. All you know is the firing abruptly stops and there’s a genuine second you think you’ve lost your hearing. But then Melshi’s lifting his head, the hold on your arm tightening, and when he looks back at you, his defeated nature has been replaced with steely resolution.

“We’re getting out of here, you hear me?” he says, putting an arm around your back to heft you upright. “Everything will be alright, dreamer. I’ll fucking kill anyone who tries to stop us.”

“Together,” you murmur once you’re on your feet, squeezing his hand to keep your balance. There’s a metallic taste on your tongue, words sticking to the roof of your mouth. “We-we go together.”

“I’ll be with you the whole time, that’s right.” Melshi urges you towards the lift where inmates have begun climbing to freedom. “Just keep moving, dream. Don’t stop.”

—

There’s a cabinet full of weapons beside the control booth, enough blasters and zap rods to arm almost half of the prisoners. Melshi grabs a pistol, holding it confidently, familiar with its weight and design, then starts helping Keef and Kino pass out the rest to the others.

The thundering of footsteps on the stairs makes your heartbeat stumble. It was only a matter of time before the rest of Narkina 5 caught on there was rebellion, you had just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon. Guards will come barreling down, blasters ready, and they’ll fire on anyone in scrubs and—no. You’ve lost too many people already.

When you see the first glimpse of a dark uniform you don’t think, you just react.

You snatch a blaster from an inmate’s unsteady grip and click the safety off before firing twice. The first guard dies with a hole in his stomach, collapsing in a lifeless heap. The second takes the hit in the shoulder, stumbling back against the wall with a grunt. Heart in your throat, your trembling hand moves to aim for a third shot, but Keef is quicker, ending the other man’s life with a solid blast to the chest.

Your breath comes out in a shuddered exhale, lungs pinched with lingering terror. Fuck, that could have gone so much worse, you think, squeezing your eyes shut.

“Hey, none of that. Stay with me,” Melshi chides, patting at your cheek. You slowly blink your heavy eyes back open, letting out a low whine that cuts off when you register Keef’s carefully sliding the blaster out of your quivering hand.

“Nice shot,” is all he says when he sees you staring, giving the weapon back to the inmate you’d taken it from.

You don’t respond, distracted by another wet trail of warmth leaking from your wound. Nausea flips your stomach upside down. Shit.

“Shit,” Melshi echoes your thoughts aloud, somehow sounding pissed and scared at the same time. He looks to Keef and there’s a silent exchange that follows between the two men, expressions pinched and eyes dark. You have the unpleasant suspicion you’re the subject.

Keef’s the one to break away first, turning back to the cabinet and searching for something on its lowest shelf. He pulls out a metal case with red markings—medical supplies, you recognize immediately—and throws something small from it at Melshi.

Melshi glares at the object like it’s personally insulted him. “She needs a bacta patch.”

“Stim-shot’s the best option she’s got.”

Melshi’s lips twist into a scowl, but there isn’t time to argue about the circumstances. He knows it and you know it. So when you nudge him with your arm, he only pauses the briefest of seconds to murmur another apology before sinking the dispenser’s needle into the flesh of your thigh.

There’s a sharp prick of hurt that manages to beat out the numbness. You hiss, pressing your forehead against Melshi’s shoulder, panting heavy breaths in time with your racing pulse. It’s a jittery, itchy sensation, this flood of adrenaline surging through your body making your muscles spasm and tingle. Too many similarities to the box’s aftermath for your liking, but the stim-shot does fulfill its purpose of getting your body to briefly forget about the injury.

“How’s she looking?” Kino asks, voice faintly raspier than usual.

You lift your head enough to meet the manager’s frown, making a face at him. “I’m not dead yet.”

Melshi makes a noise deep in his chest at that, a rumbling sort of growl. Maker, you really are a pack of wolves, aren’t you? Wolves and puppets desperate to be human again. You aren’t sure if you want to laugh or cry at the thought. Feels like your head is swimming, thoughts drifting from static to the memory of Melshi’s promise and back again.

I’ll never leave you, I’ll never leave you, I’ll never leave you.

“Good to hear it,” Kino replies with an approving nod. “It’s a long way up. Lots more inmates to free.”

“Enough talking then.” Keef lifts his blaster. “Let’s go.”

—

Everything after seems to happen in hazy flashes, faces and shapes coming in and out of focus. Like you’re watching the events unfold through someone else’s eyes.

Kino and Keef split off from everyone else, heading upstairs towards the eighth level command center, intent to take control of the entire facility.

Ham, sweet and blue-eyed Ham, runs down the halls like a man possessed, a wildness to him never before seen. He shoots a guard five times in the torso, the force of the hits knocking the screaming man over the deck railing of Unit Five-Four-D’s work room to his death.

“We’re getting out of here!” Ham yells, transforming the alarmed murmurs of the inmates into cheers of triumph.

A guard almost gets lucky when Melshi peers around a corner. His sharp gasp at the uncomfortably close bolt makes something tighten behind your ribs. He takes another breath to steady himself, then steps out and shoots the foe in the neck, decorating the walls in a spray of scarlet. It’s violent and grotesque, and if you weren’t riding the rush of a stim-shot with a hole in your side you’d grab him by the collar and kiss him silly.

Hurrying as quickly as you can over to the control console of Unit Five-One-D’s work room, you pull down the lever to open the doors. Next is the red button to lower the lift for the inmates to access.

“Join us,” Melshi yells at them with a jerk of his head. “Climb! Use whatever you–”

He’s interrupted by a swarm of guards charging forwards from the other hallway like they just popped into existence out of thin air, summoned by the loud voices. You instinctively duck to a crouch behind the console, but your eyes are on Melshi. Melshi, who barely has any time to react. Melshi, who is too exposed, too outnumbered. Melshi, who you aren’t ready to say goodbye to.

There’s a mangled cry tearing its way out of your throat when a crackling of rapid blaster fire tears through the air. The guards crumple to the floor, smoking holes in the backs of their uniforms.

Another group emerges from the hallway, this one outfitted in familiar white and orange scrubs. Only once your brain manages to push through the storm of anxiety and recognize Taga and Jemboc with blasters in their hands do you finally feel safe enough to stand again, hands clenching and unclenching restlessly.

Melshi nods at the group, a wordless thanks for the assist. There isn’t time to stop and make conversation. Every second of this escape attempt is precious. Can make the difference between dying a bloody death in the facility or getting a sweet taste of fresh air for the first time in years.

So when Melshi takes your hand, heading for the stairs, you don’t tell him about the black spots multiplying at the corners of your vision or how heavy your lungs feel, each breath a wheeze forced between gritted teeth.

He squeezes your hand tight enough to bruise, hearing the unspoken words in your silence as he always has.

Stay with me, the gesture says. Stay with me.

—

Kino’s voice booms throughout Narkina 5, down every hallway and corridor, into the ears of every prisoner and guard. “One way out! One way out! One way out!”

Three words. Simple on their own, but when chanted by the mouths of hundreds of men, loud and undaunted and fed up with the power imbalance—those words grow fangs, sharp and hungry.

“One way out! One way out! One way out!”

The guards are wise to hide, cowering in dark corners with held breaths. They’d be torn apart within seconds if seen, nothing left except for their blood staining the bottoms of prisoners’ feet, marking the path to freedom.

Red’s never been your favorite color, but it almost sounds pretty put like that. Prettier than the rust-colored splotch on your scrubs anyhow.

Reaching the top level, another wave of dizziness hits, too strong to withstand this time and your legs collapse underneath you. The world darkens for a second and someone curses—Melshi, you think faintly—but when your head lolls to the side to look, Keef is there, too, holding up your other arm.

“Keef,” you murmur, lips curling in a shaky smile. “Perfect timing.”

Behind him, Kino is still leading the chanting prisoners, pumping his fist in the air.

And behind the manager, down a hall connecting to a landing bay—there’s sunlight.

Keef adjusts your arm over the back of his shoulders, dark eyes casting a critical glance at your wound, but there’s softness in his tone when he replies, “Let’s get out of here, yeah?”

—

There’s a moment, standing on the edge of the landing bay, men and women taking the plunge into the water below, Melshi and Keef at your sides, where you feel an overwhelming sense of peace. The kind usually felt at the conclusion of a great book, when you’re certain the characters are going to be alright.

The sun is brighter than it had been in your memories and the wind’s howling in your ears. You might be crying but it’s hard to tell—everything’s gone numb, systems shutting down, content to just be here. To be free.

Darkness is creeping in again at the edges. Not even the sun, blazing and beautiful, can chase it away.

You force yourself to turn, to look at Melshi. He leans closer, hands cupping your face, a desperation in his eyes that threatens to rip another hole inside of you. His lips are moving, but there’s too much noise, too many people pushing and shoving, and you shake your head, regretting it instantly when the world becomes a senseless smear of colors.

I can’t, you think frantically, reaching to grab something, anything just to stay a little longer. I-

Something hard collides into you, a force of solid weight sending you careening sideways. You expect the ground to rise up to meet you, but you just keep falling, and falling, and falling. Nothing but air whizzing by.

And it’s…nice. This weightlessness. This nothingness.

Peace finds you again, eyes slipping shut.

You don’t even feel it when you hit the water.

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