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stillness-in-green · 5 years

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Scenes from a Wedding (3/4)

A look at Kudelia and Atra’s wedding, from proposal to planning to the main event. Expect copious Chad/Yamagi on the side. Also, the whole thing giving Eugene a big headache.

Chapter 3: Planning Part Deux (The future gets closer; unfortunately, so does the past.)

(Yes, finally. Also, while mobile gets linebreaks today, it does not, apparently, feel like acknowledging horizontal lines denoting section breaks. I have inserted some asterisks to denote such breaks.)

1 Month Out:

At least once a week, some newly baffling gift showed up at Kudelia’s Chairwoman address, the Assembly Hall offices being the best equipped to vet packages before passing them onto the leader of Mars or her P.A.

“It was a painting a few days ago,” Chad told Yamagi over beer. “The weird thing was not being able to figure out who it was of.”

“Just—a random painting?” Yamagi asked, smiling.

“Just some old man,” Chad confirmed. “No label, and no one at the office recognized the face. The best we got was the clothes being old-fashioned.” He shook his head, adding ruefully, “Eugene said, ‘I bet it’s just some rich cheapskate cleaning house.’”

Yamagi huffed a laugh and tipped his bottle in his boyfriend’s direction. “But you have to admit it’s better than last week’s.”

Chad gave him a profoundly put-upon look, color rising to his cheeks immediately. “Anything would be better than—than last week’s.” He punctuated the sentence with a drink.

“At least it can’t get any worse than that?”

***

The parade of things for the Union Assembly to deal with continued unabated—term limits for representatives had come up, and with them, anti-corruption laws. On Earth, Makanai was finally making a breakthrough on the abolishment of Human Debris, and so the debate rippled to Mars, where not insignificant portions of the workforce were composed of children wearing the red stripe. It had been a cause of Kudelia’s from the beginning, but the contrarian impulse—just because Earth is turning against it, why should we?—was grinding her progress on that front to a halt.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered into Atra’s hair on a surprise visit home, curled in bed together. She had greeted Atra on the doorstep in tears with, I can’t go on the honeymoon.

“There’s nothing for you to apologize for!” Atra hugged her tightly, voice soft and fierce. “This is more important.”

“We’ll go as soon as we can. I promise.”

“I know. I know.” Atra rubbed her hand in aimless circles over her fiancée’s back until Kudelia’s breathing evened out.

The next day, with Kudelia seen safely out the door with renewed fire, Atra took Akatsuki out to the memorial to explain things. He listened to her with his usual solemnity, a frown drawing down the corners of his mouth.

“We’ll still go, though, right?” he broke in eventually.

“I promise we will.” Atra had always tried very hard not to make promises she wasn’t sure of. This one was in Kudelia’s court, but Atra wouldn’t be marrying her if she didn’t believe the woman kept her word.

“Okay.” Akatsuki paused. “Can we look at the pictures again?”

She smiled with relief and scooped her son up into a hug. “Of course!”

***

At the beginning of the next week, Dante brought Atra into town to pick up the marriage license. In unspoken agreement, they waited until they got back to the car before bowing their heads together to enthuse over the paper’s thick texture and the seal embossed in rose gold at the bottom corner. Atra held it delicately in both hands the whole way home, nervous as a waitress with a full platter on her first shift.

The house’s data slate sat flashing a message-received light when they made it back. It went unnoticed for several hours, Atra busy with tucking the license away at the bottom of Cookie and Cracker’s veil box before she headed out to the orphanage to help with lunch. She didn’t get back to the house until after the afternoon lessons let out; leaving Akatsuki to play with the other children under Derma’s watchful eye, she carried in a load of laundry and, finally, spotted the flickering green dot. Unknown sender, the screen told her as she tapped the playback.

“I know you used to work for Tekkadan,” said the voice in the message, crackling and distorted, and the clothes basket slipped from Atra’s nerveless hands. “A wanted criminal is about to marry the head of the Martian Union. I bet Gjallarhorn would pay for information like that.”

The trembling started in her knees and hands. The message droned on, inaudible under the thrumming of her pulse in her ears and the slurry of half-formed thoughts tumbling through her brain. Gjallarhorn—blackmail? Kudelia—Akatsuki! Everyone here, they—

When the data slate blinked to life again with an incoming call, she slammed the line connection button before the screen even had time to display the sender’s name. For a moment, no one spoke. Throat tight, Atra waited for that warped voice to speak again, for a list of demands or a price to pay for the future.

“Hey, is Atra there?” A young voice, reluctant to speak first, with a shadow of suspicion hanging over it.

Ride, she realized, and her knees finally gave out.

He’d called to tell her that he wasn’t going to come to the wedding. She didn’t register much more than that—if he was busy with something, if he was refusing on principle, if he was speaking for just himself or everyone in his group as well—because the black tank of fear had closed her up again. They’d been close enough, once, that it took him barely any time to realize something was wrong, and, unable to stop herself, she let it all tumble out of her like stones shaken loose from a transport truck.

“Don’t do anything,” he told her, voice almost as dark as it had been the night he left, but far colder. “I’m coming over.”

He came in time for dinner and, probably in deference to Atra’s nerves, let himself be bullied into eating. It was an awkward affair, for all that Atra strove to keep the conversation light and vague. Akatsuki was always quiet around strangers, which Ride had become since well before the boy was old enough to remember him clearly. Sakura Pretzel, meanwhile, knew very well about Ride’s falling-out with the former members of Tekkadan and gave him a penetrating stare the moment she walked in the door and saw him sitting at the table.

After the meal, the old woman commandeered Akatsuki to help her with the day’s-end chores at the farm. As she was headed out the door, a firm hand on the boy’s shoulder, she looked back at Ride.

“Anyone else you want to see while you’re here?”

“Dante,” Ride answered levelly, looking from her to the data slate.

Sakura nodded and closed the door behind her with a quiet click.

“When did it come in?” Ride turned to Atra as the footsteps crossed the porch and stepped off into the yard.

“Sometime this afternoon,” Atra replied in low misery, knitting her hands together, shoulders bowing under his gaze. “No one was here to pick up, so…”

“Have you told anyone else?” When Atra shook her head, he scowled at the table. “But Miss Sakura knows something’s wrong. Will she say anything?”

“Of course she won’t!” The words burst out of her, loud, with a trembling high pitch. At Ride’s flinch, she gasped a quick breath, bit her lip, and went on, more quietly. “She’s kept secrets for years for us—since the first time Kudelia came. Why would you even think she’d give this away?”

“I just,” Ride said lamely, then turned his head away and muttered, “You just have to be careful.”

“We all know we have to be—” She couldn’t even finish the sentence. She stood up instead and started gathering plates, avoiding his eyes. “I’m going to do the dishes.”

He nodded, a tight motion, and left the table, stalking over to the desk with the data slate in its cradle. Shuddering as the message painted its ugliness across her walls again, she turned the sink water on at full volume and threw herself into scrubbing.

Ride disappeared with Dante and the data slate into the orphanage’s back office soon after. Atra bathed Akatsuki and put him to bed on autopilot, slipping into familiar cheer like an old glove with thin-worn fingertips. Sakura was waiting on the couch with a stern look when she came back to the front and Atra folded into her arms with only a moment’s hesitation.

“I feel like we should just call the whole thing off,” she managed, voice wobbly, once the initial tearful explanation was through. It won’t just be me, she thought, and the enormity of it hollowed out her stomach, all the dreams, all the toil, all the people that an investigation into Kudelia’s close associates would ruin. “If this gets out—”

“Huh!” Sakura tutted dismissively at the suggestion. “If whoever this is had anything real, they’d have come forward with it years ago.” She hugged Atra, the sun-weathered strength of her bracing and stolid. “Don’t borrow trouble. Those boys of yours will be paying it back soon enough.”

***

Atra woke up the next morning to a note from Dante saying he’d told Chad that Atra was sick and to leave her out of the wedding planning for a few days. There were three new messages on the data slate that, when she eventually forced herself to open them, proved to consist entirely of solicitous calls from Chad and Kudelia, and one piece of mail from Zack who, judging by the attached file, had missed Dante’s memo.

Zack had volunteered to do the wedding photography, rather than having a stranger with a camera wandering around the event, and had been entertaining himself on his days off by puttering around Chryse with a rental, trying out different lighting conditions and shutter speeds and sending her any results he was particularly pleased with. The morning’s batch included the clearest nighttime photo he’d yet managed—a shot of the fountain outside the Union Assembly Hall, the water sparkling in the building’s warm exterior lights—as well as a silly bit of forced perspective involving a straight-faced Dane and one of the old downtown maintenance shacks. He’d also included a list of what he must have found when he went looking for examples of wedding photography on Ariadne, shots of different arrangements of the wedding party and the couple’s parents, particular moments during the ceremony and reception, and so on.

How many of these do you guys want? And do you have a number for your lady at Cyllene? I want to know the good spots to take pictures so I’m not hunting for them on the wedding day, you know? his message read, happily ignorant of what had happened the day before.

Atra smiled wanly at the screen, breathing out the tension of the night’s extremely fitful sleep, and went to go wake Akatsuki up for school.

***

With Atra sick, Chad found himself left to the task of finalizing the guest list. There were the expected declinations; Makanai was very busy, and his health was too delicate these days for interplanetary travel anyway, while McMurdo Barriston, invited as a matter of deference, would be sending a gift with Azee in lieu of attending. Hirume, whom Chad had figured to be included in Ride’s general refusal, had sent a surprising confirmation last night.

More surprising still was a lack of communication from Derma. That one took some wrestling—when contacted about it, Derma claimed a concern for security at the orphanage, with so many people due to be away at the wedding all day. That was true, and fair, and still left Chad with the certainty that no one would want Derma to miss out for a reason like that.

And it wasn’t like they didn’t still have contacts with people who did protection jobs for a living.

Eco, when he used one of the encrypted lines at the Admoss Company to call the Jacunda (the flagship of the organization she and Azee had rebuilt after the latter won the permission to do so in a chess match against their boss), agreed in extremely colorful terms.

“It’s not quite like one of your usual jobs,” Chad allowed after explaining, “but…”

“Nah, but you had the right idea.” Eco flapped a hand at the screen in reassurance. “It’s hardly even out of the way! We’ve got people with us now who never even met Atra and Kudelia—they were just gonna sightsee anyway.” She looked over her shoulder at muffled words in Azee’s voice, then nodded, pigtails bobbing. The screen blinked, then shifted to the wider view of the bridge and the captain’s austere face.

“Hana misses having children around,” Azee pronounced. “I’ll arrange for her and some others to stay for a few days. Tell Derma he’s coming or we’ll drag him there ourselves.” A burst of laughter from Eco and the other bridge girls followed the ultimatum.

Chad smiled, abashed, and nodded. “Thanks. When should we send—”

“If you’re about to offer money, don’t. This is a gift for old friends.”

And that settled that.

For the last issue with the guest list, though, he found himself with no such easy solution at hand. After a day or two’s consideration left him still at a loss, he invited Cucubita out to lunch to discuss it.

“She must still be trying to make up her mind,” the woman said, staring at the last unmarked name on Chad’s list—Tomomi Bernstein. “There’s nothing like a wedding to make you reevaluate family grudges.

“You should call her,” she declared, and reached over to pat Chad’s hand when his eyes widened. She sniffed, a disapproving frown pulling itself over her face, the expression familiar from previous conversations about Kudelia’s family. “You have every right to. Just handle it like any other call. And if she won’t talk to you, then that’s that. She can regret it herself, and the rest of us can get on with things.”

It took Chad the rest of the day to work up the courage, and he spent several long minutes in the bathrooms beforehand, finger-combing his hair and adjusting and readjusting his tie, but in the end it all amounted to an anticlimax. A mild-voiced woman answered his call to the Bernstein home and listened with polite interest to his careful, neutrally-worded explanation before putting him on hold for several minutes—just long enough for him to start worrying about the length of the wait.

“Mr. Karlen?” The silence of the line shifted to a fine hum as the voice returned.

“Y-yes?” It’s the same woman. So she won’t talk to me?

“Miss Bernstein thanks you for taking the time to call and apologizes for the late reply. She’s asked me to tell you that she will be attending Miss Kudelia’s wedding. Will there be anything else?”

Chad opened his mouth but caught himself before stammering again. With no one to watch—the Bernstein home’s LCS-connection was audio-only, it seemed—he leaned back from the data slate and drew in a silent, shallow breath, gathering himself before leaning back in.

“That’s all I needed. Thank you very much, ma’am. To Miss Bernstein as well.”

“Mm. Good afternoon, then.” The line disconnected.

Chad sat staring at the screen for the next few minutes, then finally sighed and set about messaging Eugene to relay the news.

***

It took Dante and Ride just two days. The man had not covered his tracks well, which told them from the beginning that they weren’t dealing with an expert. They tracked the message to an apartment building in one of Chryse’s low-income neighborhoods, where a discreet break-in in the dead of night secured them a tenant list. Back at Ride’s place, Dante spent the morning chugging coffee and doing research while Ride filled in the rest of his group.

Ride had declared the voice “familiar” after the decryption process finished, and anyone with a voice he knew that also knew Atra from the Tekkadan days almost had to be an ex-employee. They’d agreed that the man sounded too old to be from Tekkadan, which left CGS’s First Division, and so the group separated out the women’s names first, to be circled back around to as potential spouses, then went through the rest and pulled anything that pinged memories from over eight years ago. Dante, using an account for a non-existent business he maintained for its access to Chryse’s online archives, then ran the names through the archives’ search function, crawling through old news articles looking for pictures from wedding announcements, arrest reports, and anything else the news outlets from back then had run for local color or at needling from Gjallarhorn or the African Union.

They got it down to two, and between the options, one had lived at the apartment for two decades, while the other had moved in just after CGS disbanded. Grent Ollas, forty-five years old, unmarried, arrested two years ago and released for a drunk-and-disorderly after a fine. Just one more face that had been on the right end of a club, as far as Dante was concerned, but Ride could remember shades of a self-effacing camaraderie with the other members of First Division.

The group agreed to catch a few hours of sleep before rushing off, stupid from sleep-deprivation. Dante crashed on the couch. Ride waited until he heard the snoring, then snuck out with the others anyway.

***

Atra was sitting on her porch with a polishing cloth and a basket of utensils, the latest targets of her deep-cleaning spree, when she spotted Dante and Ride pulling into the orphanage’s parking lot. She swallowed against the sudden tightness in her throat and stood, gathering everything up and bringing it back inside. When she came back out for the chair, Ride and Dante had already crossed the gate between the parking lot and the house; Ride caught her eye and she fell still, folding her hands across the back of the chair to still their trembling.

“It’s done,” he said as soon as they came up to the porch, and Atra’s knees nearly gave out in relief. “He’s not going to bother you anymore.”

“What happened?” she asked, though she knew, logically, what words like that had to mean. “Who was it?”

“He worked at CGS,” Dante filled in when Ride hesitated. “He must have seen you on the news and gotten desperate. Looked like he’d been down on his luck the last few years—drinking too much, not making his rent—”

“It doesn’t matter how his life was going,” Ride broke in, voice harsh, shooting Dante a glare. “He was a bastard trying to take advantage to line his pockets.”

“What happened?” Atra repeated, squeezing the back of the chair. Ride looked back at her and his jaw clenched, the stubborn angle of it so familiar it drew stinging tears to her eyes.

“He’s not going to bother you anymore,” he said, slower and firmer than before.

The silence drew out between them, and she finally broke it by asking, voice small, “Will you be okay?”

Surprise flashed through his eyes, and he blinked at her. Like he didn’t know how to answer. Like he hadn’t even expected the question. She shoved the chair out of the way and stepped over, two quick strides before she had him in a tight hug. She just caught the way his breath hissed in shock before his arms came up to catch her.

“They’ll be fine,” Dante snorted from beside them, traces of anger in his tone. “I made sure of that, anyway.”

“Okay…” Atra nodded jerkily and hugged Ride tighter. He patted her awkwardly on the back and the three of them stood together for another quiet moment before she sniffled and drew back, wiping at her eyes. “Ride… Please say you’ll come to the wedding.”

He stiffened at the words and, before she could pull him back into the hug, backed off, out of reach.

“I can’t,” he said, then, voice hard, “I won’t.” He kept his gaze turned away as he stepped past her, shrugging away from her outstretched hand, and off the porch. “I’m sending Hirume to make sure nothing else goes wrong. Enjoy the wedding, you two.” Bitterness chewed an unspoken accusation in the words.

“Ride!”

He ignored her, shoulders drawing down into a hunch as he walked away.

Behind Atra, Dante released a gusty, forceful sigh. He stepped up beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, giving her a quick squeeze.

“He hasn’t changed his mind about moving forward,” he told her, the phrasing echoing the words she’d heard so many times since Orga’s death, and Mikazuki’s, a final order that had turned into the ultimate intractable argument that split the Tekkadan survivors apart, older from younger, and sent the latter stalking away from the future. “But no one’s going to track this back to them, I promise. So try to cheer up, okay?”

“I’ll try…” Atra turned into him, slipping her arms around his waist in a mournful clinging as the two of them watched Ride climb into his car and pull away.

“So what’s the next thing we’ve got to do?” he prompted after a few minutes, once the dust on the road had settled again.

“…The last dress fitting is next week.” She sighed, then looked up to meet Dante’s tired grin with a watery smile of her own. “And no, I won’t be needing your help with that.”

“Darn.” He snapped his fingers in exaggerated disappointment. “How about dancing lessons?”

She tilted her head. “Dancing lessons?”

“Chad got worried about how he’s going to have to dance with Miss Cucubita in front of everyone. He got Yamagi going over to his place this weekend to coach him. I thought I could dance just fine, but—”

“But it’ll be Miss Azee for you,” she realized.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “Can’t let down Teach. So let's go pull up the playlist and practice some, alright?”

Atra chuckled, just a bit. “Okay. I guess I could brush up on that, too. Just let me put on my shoes.”

***

At the lessons, Chad let Yamagi lead him around in careful circles, smiling shyly into the cornflower blue of Yamagi’s eyes as old Earth waltzes played on the data slate, crackling and staticky with distance.

The dress fitting was for the outfit in its entirety—not just the dress, but the jewelry, the shoes, the veil, and more convoluted underwear than Atra had imagined could ever need to exist in the world. She fought the good fight and let Cucubita’s cheerful teasing ease her back into something like normalcy.

***

1 Week Out:

With seven days left, Kudelia took a weekend break to visit the farm and get her final haircut. Dante, who had found that childcare—particularly childcare on a tight budget—demanded all sorts of new skills, had been cutting the children’s hair for years. He was no stylist, but he was an able enough hand to give her a trim after Atra washed her hair. Seated in a kitchen chair with a towel spread beneath it, she held obediently still, fighting back laughter as the two of them bantered behind her back about Other Peoples’ fidgetiness under scissors.

Once it was done, to speed the air-drying, she made the long walk out across the fields and up the rocky bluff to the memorial. Bits of growth had begun to overtake the stone in recent years, threads of green bittersweet climbing across the base while thin patches of moss hid in the cool shadows cupped between the plaque and its supporting walls. Kudelia had originally fretted about this, but Atra had smiled, rubbed her head, and said, “We have so much to do. They’d understand.”

She crouched down in front of the stone and set down the offering cup she’d brought from the house, the scratched plastic walls lent a bright shine by the sunlight. There wasn’t much in it today—a coin from Akatsuki that he’d borrowed off Dante, a scrap of blue fabric stitched with the familiar white emblem that Atra had tucked inside, and a folded piece of paper on which Kudelia had written, in tiny letters, her love and hope for the future.

Should I tell them? she wondered. Earlier that day, a representative had said, on a live broadcast, that Gjallarhorn would enforce any laws the Spheres passed abolishing Human Debris. A major victory, to be sure, but bringing up Gjallarhorn at the Tekkadan memorial was… She breathed out.

“I’ve done my best,” she murmured, letting the wind toss her hair where it would, and ran her fingers over Akihiro’s name, the letters scored in the stone. “I should have good news to bring soon.”

She smiled, ducking her head, and slid her touch lower, past Orga’s name, to rest against Mikazuki’s. End-of-summer heat bathing her in warmth, she closed her eyes, imagining the pressure of his arms around her back, the weight of his hand cupped against her shoulder blade, the press of his fingers along her spine. He had smelled of metal that day, a tang of blood clinging to the cable tying him to Barbatos, but his hair had been soft on her cheek and his eyes more gentle than she had seen them in months. And then Atra had joined them and for a small, stolen while, everything had been perfect.

Footsteps coming up the bluff broke her out of the reverie; she stood and turned in time to see Sakura make it up onto the lip of the overlook, tipping back the brim of her hat and taking a moment to catch her breath.

They talked, for a bit, of the past—Biscuit’s mother, and Mikazuki and Orga trailing Biscuit back to the farm one day, a year or so after he had joined CGS. The conversation inevitably turned to the wedding, Kudelia asking for weather-watching tips, and Sakura mentioning Atra wearing her fancy shoes around the house to break them in before the ceremony.

“Good to see her cheering up again, too,” Sakura said, when they had both done chuckling at the image of Atra, in her practical bandanna and apron, doing chores in her gold heels while scrupulously avoiding the dusty outdoors. “A nasty business, that.”

The gusting wind filled the next moment, a horrible few beats of silence between them, and then she turned a disbelieving stare onto Kudelia’s expression of frozen confusion.

“Don’t tell me she hasn’t told you.”

“I—I’m sorry, she—what hasn’t she told me?” Kudelia asked as panic begin to pluck at her with grasping, pricking fingers.

Sakura closed her eyes on a hard exhale, frustration knitting her eyebrows together. “That girl—!” She reached over and lay a gloved hand on Kudelia’s shoulder, a gesture Kudelia took for reassurance until the old woman’s fingers tightened and she began to stride down the bluff, Kudelia in tow. “Come on. We’ll take the truck back.”

Kudelia stumbled after her, trying to keep from falling on the steep, uneven path. “What is it? What happened?”

“It’s all right now,” Sakura told her, “so don’t get yourself twisted up about it. But someone from their old company called at the beginning of the week.”

Sakura filled her in on the rest on their way back. Kudelia listened in near-unbroken silence, tears climbing up her throat and blurring her vision.

I promised to protect her. The thought repeated itself over and over, wings battering against cage bars. I promised Mikazuki that I’d protect her.

When they got back to the house, Kudelia pulled along in Sakura’s insistent wake, Dante was just pulling a towel from around Akatsuki’s shoulders and brushing off his neck. The two of them and Atra looked up, Dante opening his mouth with words that withered into a few stuttered syllables under Sakura’s heat-lamp glare.

“The brides-to-be need to have a talk,” she pronounced, every word an intoned doom. As Dante scooped Akatsuki up and fled out the door, head ducked to the side to avoid catching anyone else’s eye, she turned the expression on Atra, who was staring at them with dawning dismay. “Keeping secrets is no way to start a marriage, young woman.”

Atra winced, her hands twisting together at her waist. Sakura reached behind her and caught Kudelia’s elbow, guiding her around. She looked over the both of them, scowling, then nudged Kudelia forward.

“Talk to each other,” she commanded, then turned and stalked out, pulling the door closed behind her with a firm snap.

“I’m sorry!” Atra burst out immediately. “I just didn’t want you to worry!”

Kudelia swallowed, blinking rapidly, and forced herself to take two more stiff steps in her fiancée’s direction.

“It’s all right now!” Atra continued when Kudelia didn’t respond. She offered up a desperate smile, her knuckles slowly bleaching white. “Ride called right after; he came over as soon as he found out.”

“Ride did,” Kudelia said, voice hollow, aware of the white-noise roar steadily overtaking her hearing, drowning out all other sound.

He’s killed him, she thought. He’s killed someone, again. Because I couldn’t—

The room spun around her, leaving her light-headed, cheeks burning—maybe the tears she’d been fighting back, maybe the flush of shame. Atra’s mouth still moved, but Kudelia couldn’t hear the words anymore. She raked through the chaos of her fragmenting thoughts, looking for something to say, but what fell out of her mouth was selfishness, pure selfishness.

“I’ll have to rewrite my vows.”

Atra stopped, and the silence drained away the clamor in Kudelia’s ears. “…Huh?”

“I went up to the memorial today,” Kudelia went on, “to tell Mikazuki that I was going to keep my promise to him. My promise to protect you.” Her voice broke; her gaze fell. She reached up and felt the wetness on her own cheeks. “But now I’ve broken it.” A sob escaped her. “How can—”

Atra’s hands closed around her shoulders with a fierce strength; when Kudelia looked back up, Atra had closed the distance between them, her eyes distraught but unflinching. “You’ve protected us so much already! I’ve never thought you couldn’t do that! You don’t have to rewrite anything!

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she continued, the words coming more slowly. “It’s just—Ride called right after I heard it; I hardly had a chance to do anything. And then I just—he told me not to do anything, so I didn’t. It all seemed like it was happening so fast.”

“Would you have? Called me?” Kudelia asked, misery a knot wedged under her breastbone. It thudded with a renewed sharpness when Atra hesitated before answering.

“I… I thought about just calling the whole thing off.” Atra’s throat moved in a rough swallow. “I couldn’t be the one to—to mess everything up. For you, for Mars…”

Kudelia gasped in another choked breath and raised her hands to cup the other woman’s cheeks. She screwed her eyes shut and leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together. “Atra.”

Atra sniffed, her arms wrapping hesitantly around Kudelia’s shoulders. “I’m—sorry.”

“I’m sorry I made you feel like Mars was more important.”

“Mars is more important!”

Kudelia pulled back to stare into Atra’s eyes, the same burnished copper red that painters had used for the mural of Mars in the Assembly Hall’s atrium.

“It’s the same,” she said, soft and urgent, palms still cradling Atra’s face. “Atra. I will never choose one of you over the other.”

“Kudelia, you can’t—”

“Listen…” Kudelia drew them back towards the couch and sat, tugging Atra down with her. She clasped their hands together and swallowed, gathering her thoughts. She had not been expecting a discussion about sovereignty and extradition today. “Someday, inevitably, Mars will come into conflict with Gjallarhorn or Earth about a citizen. Someone they want to take from us to prosecute for crimes committed against them. When that happens, the Union will have to decide whether or not we’re willing to give that person over. Do we think that what they did was a crime? How much authority are we willing to give Gjallarhorn over the processes of our justice?”

Atra listened, hands tense in Kudelia’s grasp.

“It will happen someday. Our history is too fraught for me to think that it won’t.” She reached up and pushed a lock of Atra’s hair back behind her ear. “I wouldn’t let Eugene follow me around everywhere, in front of every camera I smile into every day, if I wasn’t willing to have that fight. Having it over Tekkadan would be—probably easier, even, than someone new. No matter what Gjallarhorn has said, Mars remembers what Tekkadan did. Now that we have both feet under us, we won’t let one of them go without a fight.”

“But a fight like that is…” Atra’s voice wobbled, her gaze straying across the room to the door. Kudelia squeezed her hand.

“I know. I don’t want it to come to that. And…” She bit her lip but went on. “Frankly, I don’t think Gjallarhorn wants it to come to that, either. They’re in a delicate place right now—they will be for some time yet. I don’t think they want to push things.”

Atra looked down at her lap. Finally, she nodded. At the haunted look in her eyes, Kudelia faltered.

“…If—if you still want to call it off, Atra…” Her voice sounded strangled to her own ears; her grip on Atra’s hand had to be painfully tight, but refused to loosen even as her better judgment strove to relax its clutching.

Atra drew in a shuddering breath, then, still looking down, leaned forward and wrapped her free arm around Kudelia’s back, resting her head on Kudelia’s shoulder and squeezing her hand in return.

“I’ve loved you since I was fourteen years old,” she whispered. “I’m not letting you get away from me now.”

Fresh tears slipped down Kudelia’s cheeks. She nodded, humming a thready assent.

When Dante and Akatsuki cracked the door open an hour later, they found the two women still curled together on the couch, tangled in loose waves of freshly-trimmed hair.

***

Through the rest of the week, the wedding party handled the last few necessities.

Haba paid Atra a visit with a satchel full of supplies for what she called the bridal emergency kit—a small sewing kit, toiletries, a few packets of headache relief pills, two small bottles of water (regular water for hydration, and seltzer water for emergency stain removal), a roll of white fabric tape, a handful of hairpins, and some homemade energy bars. She offered a miniature flask of vodka with a grin—“A bit of liquid courage?”—which prompted a gay laugh from Atra, and left privately surprised to have found the bride-to-be so calm.

Eugene took a day off from Kudelia’s security complement to meet Merribit and Dexter at Cyllene and confer with the wedding planner there about security and last-minute finances. They’d pared down the outsiders as much as they could, and of course most of the major expenses were being handled by the sponsors, but there was no getting around the officiant and the stylist. Dexter took responsibility for the pair of creamy white envelopes with cash tucked inside as the other two took turns sighting each other along different angles of Cyllene’s windows, halls, and front walk.

Merribit also took the opportunity to force Eugene’s script into his hand—a short reading at the ceremony had been the only thing the wedding party could rope him into, and for all that he was complaining still, Merribit smiled to see the sober concentration in his eyes and his tugging frown as he looked over the paper before folding it up and tucking it away.

Three days before the wedding, the Turbines made it to Mars, and that, more or less, began the final countdown.

***

They held the welcoming party/rehearsal dinner at Intemperance, a club in the old part of downtown hidden—literally—behind the façade of a company office, accessed through what had at one time been disguised as nothing more remarkable than a storage closet. The outside remained nondescript save for a colorful sign in the unusually-intact windows, the entrance and lobby still done up to resemble a somewhat old-fashioned frontier office, but the interior was sleek and dark, lit with modern fixtures that could usually be seen flickering in purples, greens and blues in the small windows lining the walls near the ceiling.

The venue—a holdover from a very brief period in Chryse’s early history when the African Union had banned alcohol—was Cookie and Cracker’s choice. They had been outspoken with their feelings that everyone else in the wedding party was a) too old or b) too serious to be trusted with picking a good place for a party, as was obvious from the lack of a kitchen shower, a bachelorette party, or any of the system’s other various traditions for pre-wedding celebrations. (Atra had asked, the day before, about whether it would be all right to bring Akatsuki; they had assured her it would be fine, and assiduously not mentioned the amount of under-the-counter networking that had gone into making sure the manager wouldn’t be complaining about the presence of a six-year-old.)

The group spent two hours in the upper floor event room discussing the ceremony with those who’d been somewhat further removed from the immediate planning, then running through it in abbreviated form, its entrances, readings, and general timing.

Once Merribit finally declared them all competent, Cookie and Cracker stepped up to take the reins of the evening.

“The food and drinks should be in in just a few minutes, everyone,” Cracker announced. “But while we’re waiting…”

Cookie leaned up against her sister, grinning. “It’s time for presents! No one get up, especially you two!” Atra, who’d been sitting with Akatsuki and Kudelia at the center of the table, stilled halfway through standing, blinking at the finger aimed at her. “We’ll hand out everything!”

Cracker nodded emphatically. “You’ve all been doing more than enough; tonight is a night to loosen up and have fun!”

“Please take this time to figure out who’s going to be drinking and who’s going to be driving,” Cookie chimed back in, “because we plan to make a lot of drink disappear tonight.”

Amidst the laughter that followed, Yamagi—Chad’s plus-one—gave his date a trim half-smile. “You work on loosening up; I’ll drive,” he instructed, and leaned over to slip his hand unceremoniously into Chad’s jacket pocket and steal the car keys.

Chad opened his mouth to protest, then decided to let it go, easing his way into a returned smile. “If you say so.”

“I do. Don’t worry; I’ll have some now and be sober enough to drive later.” Yamagi tucked the keys away. “Any hints about what the presents are?”

“They’ve been really secretive about it so far. Eugene might know. I think it’s just the wedding party tonight, though.”

The guess turned out to be accurate, as Cookie and Cracker ducked around the room with spritely teenaged energy, dispensing gifts from a side table at their own inscrutable rhythm. For each hand-off, they traded positions, one of them announcing the giftee’s name and role while the other took pictures with a data slate, its metal casing covered with stray paint-pen doodles of flowers and stars, that they swapped back and forth like two children sharing a rare bit of candy.

For Azee, who sat watching events with an urbane, matriarchal smile, there was a new fedora in her signature white with a shining blue-black band. At her elbow, Eco nudged and goaded until the woman put it on, looking every bit a rogue in her black and white evening gown.

For Cucubita, who’d listened to the stories about the bar’s history with a delighted grin, a season pass for the stage theater built in Chryse last year, which was beginning to host more and more plays put on by the local schools and at least one artistically-inclined activist group. She beamed and tucked the glossy voucher into her purse with a vow to keep Kudelia up to date with everything she saw.

The twins moved to Akatsuki next. The boy looked around, furtive under so many eyes, then pulled the gift across the table and into his lap, ignoring Cookie’s scolding to open it where everyone could see. Atra did make him hold it up long enough to get a picture, though—an ornate wooden puzzle box that he spent most of dinner occupied with, eyes narrowed intently as his hands worked.

Chad came next; a gift of a book titled After the End: A History of the Earth System Following the Calamity War. Yamagi, slanting a glance over at Kudelia and finding her wearing what he thought of as her That’s Classified And You Know It, But I Appreciate You Asking smile, made a mental note to get Zack to look the book up next time he was at the factory visiting Dane. He was very prepared to bet that a book like that was on a restricted access list, but how restricted was a thing worth knowing. Chad, at any rate, thanked the pair with a wide smile, running a marveling touch over the binding and flipping abstractly through the pages on and off through the rest of the evening.

The twins took one look at Dante’s eager face, grinned at each other, and then moved to Merribit and the old man. Over Dante’s loud complaints, the couple opened a serving tray for breakfasts in bed, a gift in expectation of their next anniversary, birthday, sick day, or any other excuse one or the other of them could make to stay in bed. Merribit laughed and promised to make time for it, while Yukinojo stared at it with an expression of poorly veiled skepticism—imagining, Yamagi guessed, the last time he had fled the garage because he’d left eggs cooking on the stove and needed to make sure the house didn’t burn down.

Cookie and Cracker made a show of training the data slate on the fiancées and prompting them to stand up and reveal their gifts for each other, but finally relented to Atra’s laughing rebukes and moved to Dante instead. For him, who slept in a spare room at the orphanage far more often than he did in his own cramped apartment, there was a small rug, handwoven in riotously bright colors—something, Atra said, to help keep out the chill of the floor when he stayed up long into the night or had to get up before dawn. He unfurled it on the spot, spread it out over his chair at the table, and sat there looking pleased with himself for the duration of the dinner.

Afterward, Kudelia stood up. The chatter died down—even among friends, her poise still commanded attention—as she accepted a small package from the twins and turned to offer it down to Atra.

“It isn’t much,” she demurred as Atra’s nimble fingers made quick work of the wrapping, “but I hope you like it.”

“Yeah, she only worked on it for three months,” Eugene called with a grin that belied the sarcasm, and laughter followed the tint of pink to Kudelia’s cheeks.

It mostly covered Atra’s soft gasp, but Yamagi, watching closely, saw the slight rise in her shoulders as she pulled the red bracelet with its glinting silver bead out of the gift box. She lifted the braided ring closer to her face to examine the charm and smiled at what she found there, eyebrows drawing together. Yamagi wasn’t close enough to see any tears, but they were audible in her voice when she stood up to reply.

“It’s—it’s perfect, Kudelia. I’ll wear it all the time.” She slipped the bracelet onto her wrist and held it up for the rest off the audience to see, to a round of applause. And as far as Yamagi could see, it was perfect; he smiled and joined in the clapping. “I—thank you so much!”

She threw her arms around her fiancée, who looked briefly startled before hugging her back. After a long moment, Atra drew back, sniffling and wiping at her eyes.

“Oh—just give her hers already,” she said, voice uneven, and waved at the twins. But she smiled all the same when Cracker beamed and presented Kudelia with another tiny package, even smaller than the last one.

“She checked half the jewelry stores in Chryse for those,” Cookie boasted, then laughed when her sister swatted at her and made shushing motions. “I’m just saying!”

Another gift box, another glinting of metal, and Kudelia’s free hand lifted up to her mouth, not quite hiding the gentle upturn of her lips, a look of recognition filling her eyes.

“Atra, they’re beautiful,” she said, smiling down at her partner. “I will—I will treasure them.”

“Show ‘em off!” Dante called through cupped hands to another burst of laughter. At Yamagi’s side, Chad leaned forward, squinting for a better look as Kudelia chuckled and tucked one arm around Atra’s shoulders, holding the box out for the room to see.

“If anyone can’t see them, they’re earrings shaped like—”

“Flowers,” Chad breathed at the same time Kudelia said lilies, and a warm fondness burst in Yamagi’s heart, gentle as sunrise. “The Tekkadan flower. Where’d she ever find those?”

“Some jewelry store, obviously.” Yamagi smiled, scooting his chair closer. His boyfriend looked down at him, eyes a little widened. “Something wrong?”

“No, no, it’s just…” Chad looked back at the earrings—gleaming silver, and each set with a small, brilliant purple stone at the base—as Kudelia carefully put them on. “Tekkadan is… Is it okay for her to wear those?” The note of vulnerability underscoring his concern drew a sigh out of Yamagi, who leaned closer, pressing their shoulders together.

“Everyone knows who brought Kudelia to Earth the first time,” he answered softly. “She’s never tried to hide that and she never will.” He dropped his voice to a whisper, not wanting to say an enemy’s name aloud at a celebration. “Gjallarhorn lost their chance to do something about that a long time ago.”

“I guess so…” Chad hesitated for a moment, then dropped one hand down over Yamagi’s, giving him a quick, grateful smile. Yamagi returned it unstintingly, then shifted to a more comfortable position to listen to the brides-to-be’s speech thanking the guests for all their support.

***

The Day Before:

Takaki and Fuka arrived at the Chryse spaceport in the wee hours of the morning; Chad was there with Yamagi to greet them. All the way back to Chad’s apartment, the four of them filled the air with new stories and old reminiscences. Over a simple breakfast, they sketched out plans for that day and the next: sightseeing, a trip up to the memorial and the farm, a meeting with Kudelia in Takaki’s official capacity as Makanai’s representative.

“Is Ride…?” Takaki hazarded eventually.

“…He’s off-planet,” Yamagi said after he and Chad exchanged a look. “At least that’s what Trow said last time I was there.”

“Hirume will be at the wedding,” Chad offered, sympathetic. “You could try asking him?”

Takaki nodded, looking briefly downcast. Fuka scooted her chair a little closer, tucking her hand around his elbow.

“Do you think we can hit a grocery store while we’re here?” she asked. “I want to pick up some dried plums--the ones on Earth just aren’t the same.”

“That’s probably because they’re higher quality,” Yamagi opined, but Chad chuckled.

“I know what you mean,” he said. “Yeah, there’s a good-sized one a few blocks from here. We could go after breakfast, if you want—stock up on some things for tonight and tomorrow.”

Fuka nodded. “That sounds fun!”

“It does sound fun.” At her side, Takaki sighed and straightened his shoulders, a smile finding its way back to his face. “Though we’ll have to be careful about getting anything we can’t bring back.”

“Is there much like that at a grocery store?” Fuka asked, tilting her head.

“More than you’d think,” Chad answered, turning off the stove and moving a pan of bacon to a cold burner. “I’ll pull up the latest list.”

***

Across town, Merribit was engaging in some last-minute skullduggery with Azee and Eco.

“They really don’t do the spa day here?” Eco asked, sprawled on her back on her hotel bed, unbound hair a spill of honey blond ringlets coiling on the carpet. “Seriously?”

“They have something called a kitchen shower,” Merribit explained from where she sat tucked into the writing desk chair. “Like a bridal shower, but only for kitchen supplies.”

“How practical.” Sitting upright in the other bed, her long legs crossed at the ankles, Azee deadpanned the words over Eco’s theatrical gagging.

“Mars doesn’t quite have Jupiter’s flare, it’s true. But of course the spa day is usually sponsored by the bride’s family, and though we have two brides…”

“Not so much in the family department, huh?” Eco tutted.

“Regrettably not,” Merribit said smoothly. “Atra has something of a mother-figure, thankfully, but she’s already taking care of the catering.”

“Right.” Eco nodded understanding. She rolled over, propping herself up to look at her companion. “What do you think, Azee?”

Azee said nothing for a long moment, staring down at her entwined fingers. Merribit shot a look back at Eco, but the younger woman didn’t look away from her captain, expression intent and patient.

“Women are the sun,” Azee said at last, her voice gone distant and wistful. “Naze used to say that. I don’t think it’s true all the time, for every woman. But it should be true at weddings.” She looked up at Merribit. “They’ll both be at Atra’s home today?”

Merribit nodded, allowing herself a smile. “All day, in fact.”

“And do you already have an appointment made?”

Merribit answered by letting her smile grow incrementally wider and tilting her head.

“Did they ever figure out how dangerous you are?” Eco laughed, sitting up and beginning to part her hair for her usual pigtails.

“You flatter me, Miss Eco.”

Azee released a soft snort, mouth flicking up at one corner. “This could be fun,” she said in a slow drawl. “It’s been a long time since the Turbines played pirates.”

***

Which was how the brides found themselves more-or-less kidnapped for the day, Azee and Eco ignoring any protestations and shamelessly roping the Griffon twins into their efforts. The group of them, piled into a large rental vehicle, met Merribit and a confused-but-pleased Cucubita at a spa on the southern side of Chryse, where they were presented with bathrobes, a menu of options for pampering and access to the sauna and snack bar in between treatments.

The twins split up. Cracker, a bit shy of her farm-girl hands but entertained by the notion of mud masks, joined Atra and Cucubita for a facial, while Cookie, not in the least ashamed of her calluses, tagged along with Kudelia and Azee to have, in Cookie’s own words, a “proper professional” combination manicure/pedicure. Eco and Merribit, both having more advanced notions of self-care (and some maternity stretch marks, in the latter’s case), opted for massages.

With a second service, Atra and Kudelia held hands nervously through a couple’s massage, from which they emerged glowing and refreshed and still holding hands.

Afterward, the women retired to the Turbines’ hotel room, called in for dinner, and spent the rest of the evening trying to keep the brides from worrying themselves too much about the next day. When she and Cucubita finally got up to head to Cucubita’s home, Kudelia stole a last unmarried kiss from Atra at the hotel room door, giggling and pleased and still a bit tipsy from Merribit’s surreptitiously overpoured martinis.

***

At the farm, Dante ran through the wedding checklist again as he lay out the things to bring with them tomorrow: all the accessories, his clothes, Atra’s clothes, Atra’s change of clothes, the gifts for Miss Haba and Kudelia’s mother, the emergency kit, the license…

A flash of movement caught his eye—Akatsuki’s feet kicking in the air from where he watched from the arm of the couch. Belatedly, Dante checked the time and winced. It had gotten late on him. He straightened up, shooting a grin over his shoulder.

“Hey, kiddo. It’s bedtime, but you want to help me with something first?”

“Yeah. What should I do?” Akatsuki answered without hesitation, his feet falling still as he perked up.

“You know how to dig up Chad’s number on the slate, right?” When Akatsuki nodded, hopping down, Dante grinned. “I bet he’s staying up late worrying. Call him and tell him Dante said to go to bed already.”

Akatsuki shot him a rare grin in return, eyes crinkling, and darted over to the desk. Dante stretched his arms over his head, grimacing, then skimmed down the checklist one final time. Dexter’s got the vendor pay, Merribit or Chad have Kudelia’s stuff, Zack’s got the camera—

A light knock on the door interrupted his train of thought and he looked up to find Derma slipping in. The younger man glanced around the room, eyes landing first on Akatsuki—who looked between the two of them and promptly darted off towards the back, data slate in hand—then Dante, who raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“I thought I’d better come make sure you get to bed,” Derma said quietly, joining Dante at the table. “Both of you.”

“We’re just about there,” Dante answered. “Soon as the kid gets off the call, he’s headed down.”

“And what about you?”

“Just as soon as the girls get back.” Dante leaned back from Derma’s hard stare. “I promise, okay?”

“Cookie and Cracker aren’t in the wedding party. You are.” Unswayed, Derma leaned over and plucked the checklist out of his hand. “Go to bed.”

“But—”

“Dante, they’re with the Turbines. They’ll be fine. I’ll stay long enough to make sure they get in okay if you’re worried.”

Dante looked back and forth between him and the checklist, now gripped in unyielding metal fingers, and finally heaved a defeated sigh.

“You both showered, right?” Derma asked, folding up the checklist. “So there’s nothing else to stay up for?”

“Yeah, right after dinner. Just gotta brush our teeth and stuff. And I was gonna do the dishes—” Dante half-turned towards the sink, then winced as Derma caught him by the sleeve.

“I’ll take care of it.” Derma gave him a light shove, a slight smile betraying the gesture. “Go to bed. It’s a big day tomorrow.”

The sense of bubbling excitement returning, Dante smiled back and nodded assent.

#mobile suit gundam: iron-blooded orphans #gundam ibo #g tekketsu #kudelia aina bernstein #atra mixta #chad chadan #yamagi gilmerton #my writing #ficcing #scenes from a wedding

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