A deep peace welled up in his gut, flowing out through him, lifting him up and out of his body. He relaxed into it. The thing in his throat was gone. Or no. That was never going to happen. It was sated. Back in the deep place where it belonged. He felt like the moment after orgasm, only better. Deeper. More real.
Eventually, he noticed Bobbie wasn’t kicking him anymore. He rolled onto his back. Opened his eyes. There was blood on the bulkheads and the deck. His testicles felt like soccer balls made of agony. Drying blood glued his left eye closed. His throat ached and burned when he swallowed, but the thing was gone. Something was weird about his breathing, though. It took him a second to figure out what. It was that he wasn’t the only one wheezing.
Bobbie sat with her back against the door. Her legs were spread a little, taking up the space. Her hands were on her knees. The little bleeding divots where the skin over her knuckles had split looked like art. Her hair was plastered to her neck. Mostly by sweat.
He looked at her looking back at him. Neither one of them spoke for a while. The hum of the station was the only sound.
“So,” Bobbie said, then took another couple breaths before she went on. “The fuck was that?”
Amos swallowed. It hurt a little less this time. He tried to sit up, then thought better of it. There were even a few spatters of blood on the ceiling. One of them looked a little like a cartoon dog face.
“I don’t,” he said, then gulped in another breath. “I don’t want things. You know what I mean?”
“Nope.”
“People … people want things. They want kids. Or they want to get famous or rich or something. And then they get all screwed up trying to get it. So I just don’t want anything. Not like that.”
“All right,” Bobbie said.
“Only I fucked up. Didn’t even know I was doing it, but it got where I wanted a thing.” He waited for the lump to come back to his throat, and when it didn’t, he went on. “I want Peaches to get to die at home. With her family.”
“On the
“Yeah, I want that. Only ever since we got back from Freehold, it’s all coming apart. It wasn’t so bad when it was just Holden and Naomi peeling off on their own, because they picked that.”
“And also they never actually went away,” Bobbie said.
“But then that big bastard came through the Laconia gate, and now we’re locked off the
They were silent for a long moment. Amos tried sitting up again, and managed it this time.
“All right,” Bobbie said. “I get it.”
“You do?”
“Close enough,” she said. “I get it close enough.”
She levered herself up to standing, then held a hand out to him. He took it, his hand on her wrist, hers on his. They pulled together and got him to standing. Her face was almost unmarked, but there were some bruises starting to show around her neck. “You really beat the shit out of me,” he said.
“Would have been easier to kill you,” Babs said, and grinned with bloody teeth. “But I feel like we still need your dumb ass.”
He nodded. She was right about both things.
“We should get you some ice,” he said.
“Fuck you,” she said. “If I did half my job, you’ll be stuffing your jock with every cold thing we have.”
“Yeah. You can have it when I’m done, though.”
She managed another bloody smile and turned toward the door.
“Hey, Babs,” he said. “No hard feelings, right?”
“Just next time you need to beat someone up, how about you don’t insult me first.”
He chuckled. It hurt. “If I need to beat someone up, I’ve got a whole station full of possibilities. But if I’m looking to
She took a second. “Fair point.”
It took him about five minutes to get to the head. He washed up the best he could, but he was going to need some fresh clothes, and washing his eye pulled the clot a little bit loose. It started bleeding again. He’d talk to Saba about getting someone to stitch it closed. But clothes first.
“Jesus Christ,” Peaches said when he stepped into the room. “What happened?”
“Huh? Oh, you mean this? Me and Babs were doing a little sparring. I put my face where it shouldn’t have been. It ain’t nothing.”
Her face balanced between not believing him and choosing to, despite the thinness of the lie. He looked at her collarbone, waiting for the thing to come up with some way to break it, but nothing came. So that was good.
“You need to be less rusty,” she said at last.
“That’s not wrong,” Amos said. “What’re you up to?”
“I was going to go smear some food on my mouth like a toddler,” she said.
“Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll go with you.”
“Wake up. We have to go,” someone said. “Now. Go, go, go.”
