#ozy and dai. ozy and kallux. dai and kallux. dai and zaref.

[cityandking]

shouting down those better angels

“I swore an oath,” Daichi says. “Despite what you may think of me, I intend to keep it.” ozy/dai; background ozy/kallux and dai/zaref. arranged marriage au. 2.6k ozy belongs to @snapdragonling. for the prompt "cagamosis - an unhappy marriage" from @in-maidjan // prompts

Save for the confusing, overwhelming exception of their wedding night, they’ve kept separate wings of the house. This has been a perfectly satisfactory arrangement, as far as Daichi is concerned. He is not, nor has he ever been, under the pretense that there is any more to this union than the careful political pairing of Helaine’s cousin with the Asdoran king’s… whatever Ozymandias is. General, his title and estate indicate. Hunter, the people whisper when his back is turned. Hound, Helaine had called him with no small measure of disdain when the offer had been extended—but Daichi has met the man and seen him with His Majesty and does not think it is Rivenlus holding his leash.

In any case, theirs is a marriage of nations and armies more than men or hearts, and Daichi contents himself with that. He has his run of the grounds and his own wing, and he attends to the house and his own king and the looming threat of war with Kar’eh. He does not often see his husband outside of their duties as lords of their separate nations and political allies. Their marital business is restricted to dinners, mostly. Galas. Speeches and parades and public events. All the things Daichi hates most and Ozymandias navigates expertly.

It is something of a surprise, then, when he shows up for breakfast.

The girl laying out the plates startles at the knock on the door, but she ducks her head swiftly and goes back to her work before he can assure her that everything is fine. Daichi swallows a sigh. He has given up on this particular fight, despite the discomfort of being waited on. He is a soldier and a medic; he does not need tending.

“Come,” he calls, folding Zaref’s latest letter—the front remains quiet, tensions remain high, he remains missed; nothing, then, has changed—and slipping it under the lip of his plate as the door slides soundlessly open and lets a man in.

“Pardon the early intrusion, Master Eliades.” Ozymandias’ body man sketches a shallow bow as the door clicks shut behind him. At the table, the girl begins setting a second place, so Daichi know what is coming when Kallux says, “Might you be willing to receive a guest?”

“Daichi is fine, Kallux,” Daichi says. It is another fight he is losing, but one he is less willing to give up on. If he is to live here for the rest of his life—or at least til the war begins, and subsequently ends, which may be equally as long—he would like at least one friend on the staff. And if not a friend, at least someone to talk to who will not flinch and demure in his presence. He had never thought he would miss Izzy’s impropriety quite so badly. “Whom do I have the pleasure of entertaining?”

He knows, of course. There’s only one person that Kallux announces.

“The lord of the house desires your company.”

Daichi has never had a face for politics—nor the desire for them, for all that Helaine insists he could do well in the service so long as he keeps to letters and listening and lets someone else do his talking—so he’s sure his displeasure is obvious.

“So early?” He may not see his husband often, but he sees his husband’s staff and visitors and the entourage he takes when he leaves the estate. Ozymandias, unlike Daichi, is not one for early mornings. To catch Daichi at breakfast suggests a late night, or that he has planned for this. Given that he arrived back in town only a day ago, he’s not sure which is most likely. Either option leaves him wary.

“He has a busy day.”

This is the other reason Daichi hopes to eventually do away with the layers of formality and station between them—Kallux has a quiet, drawling humor that Daichi does enjoy. He’d like to see more of it.

For a moment, Daichi dearly wants to point out that this is Ozymandias’ home as well, and he must surely be welcome anywhere—but it would do no good to give up the vague illusion of privacy they have conjured up with their separate wings. And he has no doubt Ozymandias does not want him snooping around the east rooms any more than Daichi wants him snooping around his own.

“I would be glad to receive him,” he says. Kallux’s eyebrow twitches at that. Well, Daichi has never had a knack for lying. Another reason he will never escape the military.

“I’ll let him know,” says Kallux. Clearly, though, Ozymandias has been listening—no sooner does Kallux open the door than he steps inside, already tucked into his uniform, brass polished and hair neatly pushed back. His mismatched eyes glance around the room, and the girl setting out breakfast bows deep and disappears out some secret side door, leaving the breakfast cart empty and two places set. It’s a light fare, as it always is—fruit and coffee and a few slices of still-warm bread. A pot of tea has been added to his usual spread, alongside the second place setting. Clearly, this has been expected by everyone save Daichi.

“My lords,” says Kallux, bowing again—a far fuller courtesy than he had given Daichi, which Daichi thinks may be more symbol than slight; perhaps he’s getting through to the man after all—and then the door shuts behind him, leaving Daichi entirely alone with his husband for perhaps the first time since their wedding night.

“Please,” says Daichi, gesturing to the second place setting. Ozymandias’ mouth quirks as he takes his seat. The mockery of propriety is nearly laughable.

“Apologies for the early call.”

“I was awake.” He is always awake at sunrise. Ozymandias, he assumes, knows this. “I apologize that I wasn’t here yesterday to welcome you back. I was not aware you would be returning so soon.”

Not that he has ever gone out of his way to welcome Ozymandias home from his trip for the king, save for when propriety requires it. But given the circumstances, it seems prudent to point out the distance they both keep, as well as the upset of their planned itineraries. The unspoken question of why he is here ahead of schedule crowds the table alongside the breakfast service.

“No apology necessary.”

He doesn’t make mention that he had been scheduled to return tomorrow. A trip out to the countryside to see the king in his summer palace, he’d told the staff. If anything, he looks more pale than he had when he’d left. Daichi watches him as he reaches for the fruit plate, selecting a cluster of grapes, and pours himself a cup of coffee from the carafe. He does not offer Ozymandias tea.

“I trust you had a productive trip?” Not that he expects to hear much about it—Ozymandias is close-lipped about his dealings with his king.

Ozymandias’ fingers make careful work of plucking his grapes from their stems. “His Majesty sends his warmest regards.”

“How kind of His Majesty to think of me.”

Ozymandias smiles, though it doesn’t reach his mismatched eyes. His Majesty, they both know, is not kind. This union is proof of that—a binding meant to keep the king contented enough to turn his attention to the threat at their shared borders. Daichi’s role is as much hostage as it is bargaining chip and spy. Both of them know this.

“He hopes you’ll come along next time.”

Daichi can’t imagine anything he would enjoy less than a summer trip to Asdor’s court. The endless flat nothing of the southlands leave him homesick for the mountains. “It would be my pleasure.”

Ozymandias pops a grape in his mouth. “I hope you’ll lie to lie to him a little better than that.”

Daichi feels his lips thin. “I’ll practice.”

“If you require assistance—“

There is something about his husband, Daichi has learned in six months of marriage, that tries even his considerable patience. “Why are you here, Ozymandias?”

Ozymandias, damn him, doesn’t so much as blink at the outburst. “Can a man not breakfast with his husband?”

“A man usually doesn’t.” Particularly a man who is home two days early from seeing his king with war looming on the horizon. “You’ll forgive me if I’m surprised by the change.”

Ozymandias smiles again, bland, and turns to pluck another grape from his plate. But he doesn’t move fast enough to hide his flicker of displeasure. Daichi raises his cup to his lips, observing. It’s obvious, of course, that this is more than a mere social call. But perhaps he is not the only one on the back foot here. He certainly wouldn’t put it past Ozymandias to offset his own disadvantage by infringing upon Daichi’s well-tended privacy. Daichi hides the curl of his lip behind his coffee cup.

“I had hoped we might catch up. What news from the front?” Ozymandias' gaze dips down to the paper tucked beneath Daichi’s plate, unsubtle, and his mouth quirks. “Has your… friend sent an update?”

Damn him. Zaref is a low blow, even by his standards. Daichi sets his cup down, jaw tight.

“Only that there is no update.” He doesn’t slide the letter out of Ozymandias’ view, but it’s a near thing. Daichi is protective of plenty, but Zaref is— “Does the king feel otherwise?”

“No,” says Ozymandias, but there’s that flicker again. Not the king, then. But someone else. Someone whose opinion Ozymandias trusts. Trusts more than the king? It wouldn’t surprise him. From what he has seen, there is little lost love between Rivenlus and his top general. It is notable, he thinks—and Helaine and Scratch have both agreed—that for all his power, Ozymandias does not lead the Kingsguard.

But if not the king, then who? Daichi reaches for the fruit platter, running through anyone he or Airedon's intelligence apparatus has suggested might be supplying the south with information. He cannot think of anyone who would have better news of the front than Zaref himself. Or Scratch, he supposes, though he hears she advises Helaine exclusively these days. The way Izzy says it— exclusively— Well, Daichi has elected not to think too hard of it.

“Then we are fortunate,” said Daichi blandly. Ozymandias gives him a look, inscrutable, eyes gleaming, and Daichi thinks— the other one. Whoever truly holds his leash. It is more than mere loyalty. The thought sends a shiver down his spine that he covers with a cough. “May we see many years of peace.”

“And prosperity,” Ozymandias toasts, though neither of them have flutes to raise. Daichi watches him, waiting, and is watched in turn. There’s something going on, he knows, behind those eyes. Some calculation, some consideration. Daichi is plenty familiar with his own propensity for overthinking, but it doesn’t hold a candle to whatever vast system of measures and countermeasures Ozymandias considers behind his own placid mask.

This might have been different, he thinks. In another world, in another time. He is not so stone that he does not understand the beauty of the man before him. Daichi can admire the clear, bright line of his belief and action, if nothing else.

But he wields it like a cudgel, unthinking and blunt. It brings to mind a turn of phrase his father use to use, back during the war of independence, when fools were a dine a dozen and cowards more plentiful. His demons, whatever they may be, shout down his better angels, and Daichi wants no part in it. But here they are, both of them trapped in the web of their own making.

He thinks, maybe—despite Helaine, despite Zaref, despite the war—he could have found a happy partner in a version of Ozymandias that is not this one. But this one is all he has.

“Well,” says Ozymandias, clearly coming to a decision. “It is good to see you, dear. I hope we might dine together again.”

“You know where to find me,” Daichi says, disappointment leaden in his gut. He doesn't know what he expected, but he knows it wasn't this. “Perhaps some forewarning, next time.”

“Am I such a surprise?”

“I’d have dressed.”

Ozymandias gives him a look, taking in the brocade of his dressing gown and the unkempt ends of his braids, lacking their usual adornment. Daichi is only grateful his slippers are hidden beneath the table.

“I don’t mind,” Ozymandias says. Bastard.

“Nevertheless,” Daichi says, if only to say something. “Kallux can let me know.”

“If you wish,” says Ozymandias, and there is a flicker again—but one of a different sort. Interesting. He’ll have to keep a closer eye. Or maybe a less close eye. Though if his husband is sullying their marriage bed…

And he dares to judge Daichi for letters. Daichi swallows back something like a scoff, or perhaps fury. It is something to deal with later. Not now. Now, the question is of the war, and whose confidence his husband keeps, and why he has come to Daichi in the morning after what has clearly been some kind of failure that Daichi only understands the edges of.

Ozymandias is halfway to the door when Daichi turns to him over the back of his chair. He moves with a purpose—fleeing, Daichi would say, if he didn’t know better. He narrows his eyes.

“Ozy.”

His husband stops in his tracks. Daichi cannot see his face, but the line of his shoulders is tight. Afraid, he realizes. Something has scared him, enough to come to Daichi. To come to Daichi and decide to keep his secrets to himself, and Daichi cannot let that stand. Not only for their nations and this war, but also because he must share a house and a name and a life with this man, and he is tired of secrets. He will not live like this. He refuses.

“Daichi?” says Ozy, still not looking at him. His name is an odd thing in his husband’s mouth. Daichi takes a breath.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard,” he says, wishing desperately for Scratch, or Helaine, or anyone better suited for speech. This, he is certain deep in his bones, is important. It is more important than the discomfort of marriage to a man he does not love and more important than his disgust with his husband’s work and more important, possibly, than the politics of their nations’ truce. “But if it as serious as it appears, you have my ear and my counsel.”

“And if I said I did not need it?”

“I would say I don’t think you’re stupid enough to turn down help when offered.”

That catches him enough to turn him around, and for a moment his face is like the southern storms—dark, clouded, impassible. Uncontrolled. Daichi reads fear, and fury, and a deeper uncertainty than he could ever have imagined his husband possessed. It's a relief, he supposes, to know the man is human after all.

“You think so highly of me?”

Hardly highly, but Daichi will not say so. Not now, in any case, when he finally, for the first time in all their months of marriage and courtship, feels as though he finally has Ozy's full attention. “I think you are not your king's favored general for no reason.” He reaches across the table and pours a cup of tea, steam wisping from the surface. “And I think you did not come here on a whim.”

“No,” Ozy allows. “I did not.”

“Then give me the chance to provide what you came here seeking.”

“You ask for a great deal of trust.”

“I swore an oath,” Daichi says. It is an oath he did not wish to swear—not here, now now, not to him—but it is an oath nevertheless. “Despite what you may think of me, I intend to keep it.”

“I don’t doubt you,” Ozy says. It sounds almost—Daichi does not believe himself��like an apology.

“Then sit,” says Daichi, with every ounce of his considerable patience. “Come eat with me, and tell me what you have heard.”

And Ozy, miraculously, does.

[cityandking]

patterns of orbital decay

Daichi knows he’s thinking it. He knows they’re all thinking it, the heavy weight of what must be done. The only way to end a war of attrition. dai/zaref + pacific rim au. 2.5k for the prompt because they’re running out of time from @in-maidjan from a million years ago // prompts

Dobin is the one who postulates it. They explain their findings on a rainy Monday in April in the disused lecture hall on base, sliding blackboards covered in scrawling equations across the wall. The meeting is restricted to the few of them with top clearance, strictly need-to-know. Scratch nods along as Dobin speaks, asking quick and clever point-of-clarification questions about deteriorating downtime and exponential shifts in breach patterns and new categorization parameters. Zaref stands through it all with his arms folded, jaw set, listening. Daichi can barely follow the math as Dobin and Scratch toss numbers and hypotheticals back and forth, but he understands the core of the issue.

Shrinking windows. Repeat occurrences. A double event.

“How soon?” Zaref asks when Dobin is done. There are barely half a dozen of them in here, an embarrassingly small showing for a hall that could seat a hundred. Not that they’re the only people who will get this update—this information will go over to Los Angeles next, for all the good it will do, and then to the other shells of Shatterdomes still operating around the Pacific. Things aren’t looking good stateside, Daichi has heard—supposedly they’ve decommissioned everything, down to the newest Mark V. The golden coast, a shell of its former glory.

“We can’t say for certain,” Dobin says, leaning heavily on the desk.

“Your best guess?”

Dobin glances to Scratch, who sits forward with her fingers pressed against her lips. At the back of the room, even the twins are quiet. Ozy sits alone in the middle of it all, surrounded by a sea of empty seats. The term lone ranger has never seemed quite as appropriate.

“Two weeks,” Dobin says, and Scratch gives a nod. Daichi takes a long, slow breath. “We can expect one within the next two weeks.”

.

Los Angeles writes back prompt but hopeless, short on techs and suits and rangers. They’ll scramble what they can, but they’re little more than a listening post these days. They can confirm Dobin’s data, though. Smaller windows. Higher categorizations. The likelihood of a double event.

“What about Anchorage?” Scratch asks when Zaref gives them the update, worrying the sleeve of her disposable coffee cup. “Or Lima?”

“They’re sending us their data,” says Zaref. There are bruises beneath his eyes and a pallor to his skin that speaks to sleepless nights and too much coffee. Outside of his infrequent visits to LOCCENT, Daichi hasn’t seen him in days. “But both bases are decommissioned. Lima might be able to spin up an old Mark IV by the end of the month.”

“For all the good it will do,” says Laz, slouched in his chair with his feet kicked up on the conference table.

Next to him, Tosya looks equally unimpressed. “The wall was a bad idea.”

Of course the wall was a bad idea. They all know the wall was a bad idea, made worse by the sweeping swath of decommissions handed down by the PPDC leadership, who would rather hide in their inland bunkers than face the fight out in the ocean. They should know better than anyone that concrete and steel won’t keep a storm out forever.

“Our mandate hasn’t changed,” says Zaref. “We’ll keep monitoring.”

“And keep fighting,” Scratch adds. Her coffee sleeve is a small pile of cardboard shavings that she keeps nudging about with the tips of her fingers. The cup itself is abandoned at her elbow, the coffee inside sludgy and cold.

“Attrition will only last us so long,” Ozy says from his end of the table. His voice is quiet, and it carries. The medics have cleared him for duty, but the melted wreck of his eye peers out at them, still an unsettling, irritated red. “They’ll keep coming.”

“And we’ll keep fighting,” Scratch insists. “We aren’t going to give up.”

“I didn’t say we should,” Ozy says, mild as always. His one good eye finds Daichi across the table, and Daichi knows they’re thinking the same thing. They’ll keep coming unless something stops them. Unless that door is closed.

“We’ll figure it out,” Scratch insists. “We can beat them.”

The alternative weighs heavy over the conference room. They’ll figure it out, or there won’t be anything left to fight for.

At the head of the table, Zaref sighs. “Keep me appraised,” he says, pushing himself to his feet. The dismissal rings loud. “But be ready to move.”

He’s out the door before Daichi can reach him. Ozy’s eyes on the back of his neck feel like the desert sun, burning and inexorable. He sets his shoulders and steps out of the room.

.

There’s another incursion before Daichi finds time to speak with Zaref, a mean Cat IV, codename Skiptooth. The twins take it down a mile short of the shipyards, but it’s a messy brawl through Miracle Mile, and nobody comes out unscathed. Still, as soon as the medics clear him, he goes in search of Zaref.

Corners him is perhaps the better way to put it; Daichi gets his schedule from Scratch and lingers in the hall outside a J-tech debrief for the hour it takes for it to end, then falls into step with Zaref as he leaves. Silence follows them down half-empty halls long after the tech have dispersed. They’ve been hemorrhaging staff and technicians for months now. Everything feels the strain, Daichi thinks. Even the Shatterdome itself.

“You should rest,” he says when it becomes clear that Zaref won’t break the silence. Their feet lead them unerringly back towards mission control, eating up the distance. At Daichi’s voice, Zaref’s pace slows but doesn’t stop.

“I could tell you the same.”

He could. Daichi’s shoulder still aches, and he knows the bruise on his face is an ugly thing—he’s still not used to the sensation of only seeing out of one eye, not when he knows he has two. But it’s different for him. Daichi’s restlessness is all waiting, snapping between the adrenaline rush of the fight and the slow drag of nothing between encounters. Zaref walks down these concrete and steel halls with the weight of the base heavy over his shoulders. Heavier, Daichi thinks, when he’s out in the field. And he’s out in the field often, these days.

“The clock won’t speed up just because you get a few hours of sleep.”

“It won’t slow down either.”

“You’ll run yourself into the ground.”

Zaref slides him a look, wry in a way that Daichi remembers from earlier, easier days. It lodges somewhere in his chest, sweet and piercing at the same time. But he’s not here for quiet reprimands or to be called out for his hypocrisy.

“You’re no good to any of us exhausted.”

Zaref sighs. “Daichi—“

“Zaref.” He stops a the hall’s juncture, where the corridor to LOCCENT intersects with the corridor to personnel quarters, his hand at Zaref’s elbow. Zaref’s expression is cool and remote when he looks from Daichi’s hand to his face, but Daichi doesn’t mind that. He can be stubborn too. “Please.”

“There’s work to do.”

“The techs will see to repairs. Staff will monitor the breach. If Dobin’s math is right, we have time.” He steps closer. “I miss you.”

It is, perhaps a low blow. It’s also the truth. Daichi watches Zaref hear it, weigh it, resign himself to it. His shoulders hunch, ever so slightly. Daichi’s hand slides from his elbow down to his hand.

“Please,” he says. Words have never been his strong suit, but he can do rationality just as well as Scratch or Dobin. “A few hours. I haven’t seen you in days.”

“If something happens—“

“Then someone will fetch us.”

Zaref stares at him a moment longer, and then he sighs. It’s as good as a yes.

Daichi laces their fingers together and pulls him away from mission control towards quieter, calmer corridors.

.

Zaref’s bunk is nicer than Daichi’s, the subtle differences of a ranger and the chief of the Shanghai Shatterdome. He has a communications screen built into the wall of his rooms, and a full sized bed, and a shower large enough to fit two that doesn’t run out of hot water when they stand under the spray and press themselves together, gasping and hungry and haunted by the ever-ticking clock counting down the time before the next attack.

They collapse on the bed after, warm and steam-damp and mostly sated. Daichi tucks himself against Zaref’s side, breathing in the smell of him and the fresh scent of standard-issue soap. Zaref’s chest rises and falls, and his hand runs up and down Daichi’s flank, fingers catching intermittently on the edge of an old scar high on his hip. His touch is warm. His attention is far away.

“I can hear you thinking,” Daichi says, mouth pressed against Zaref’s shoulder. Zaref’s hand barely stutters.

“Said the pot to the kettle.”

Daichi supposes he can’t argue with that one. He takes a breath and pulls himself back enough to look at Zaref’s face. His eyes are fixed on the ceiling.

Daichi knows he’s thinking it. He knows they’re all thinking it, the heavy weight of what must be done. The only way to end a war of attrition. He’d hoped not to bring it here, to their bed, but it’s everywhere. If no one else will say it, he will.

“We have to close it.”

Zaref’s eyes drift shut. His hand goes still.

“We can’t keep fighting whatever comes through,” Daichi carries on. Speaking the truth is like ripping of a bandaid, he often finds. It’s best to simply get it over with. “Not with the program gutted. Not with double events. Certainly not with triple. We have to close it.”

“I know.”

“It will have to be a Jaeger team.”

“I know.”

“Scratch and Dobin—“

“They know too.”

“And?”

“Scratch has an idea.” Zaref’s eyes blink open. He still won’t look at Daichi. “She’s working on a way to get inside.”

That gives Daichi pause. “Into the breach?”

“Yes. She thinks it’s the only way to be sure it’s sealed.”

Daichi lets out a long, slow breath. Through the breach to close it. He has a dozen questions already, and a dozen possibilities and plans. And he is hurt, maybe, a little, that Zaref has not told him this before now.

“You asked Lima to scramble their Mark IV.”

“I have asked everyone,” says Zaref, the twist of his mouth wry and unhappy. “But I’m not holding my breath.”

“So it’s up to us.”

Daichi, pressed close against Zaref, feels the shudder that rolls though him. “Yes,” he says.

So this is why Zaref has been avoiding him. Daichi closes his eyes.

“You should have said.”

“It wasn’t a sure thing.”

That’s a bad excuse. Daichi pushes himself up onto one elbow to frown down at him.

“You should have said,” he repeats. Zaref sighs and sits up.

“Scratch wanted to wait before announcing it. She wanted to be sure.”

“All respect to Scratch, but she’s not a ranger. It isn’t her decision to make.”

“No,” Zaref says, steady in a way that Daichi knows means it’s taking immense control. “It’s mine.”

Daichi closes his eyes for a heartbeat, then pushes himself to sit as well. His shoulder aches.

“Zaref,” he says as gentle as he knows how. “You aren’t a ranger either. It’s our decision.”

It’s a tender subject, one they’ve danced around as long as Daichi has known him. And he does not doubt the strength of Zaref’s determination or his commitment to the fight. He certainly does not doubt his leadership, the mantle he has taken up as senior officer in the wake of Marshal Frida’s death. But he’s not a pilot.

Zaref’s shoulders go stiff, head turned away. Daichi sighs and puts a hand against his back, palm presses to the tension he carries.

“I’m sorry.”

“You know how this works,” Zaref says. “It’s still my order.”

“Zaref—“

“I’ll have to send you. When the time comes—“

“The time hasn’t come yet,” Daichi says. He can’t say he won’t go. He can’t say he’ll come back. He can’t even say he’ll be sorry for it, because he won’t. A ranger’s duty is the best and surest thing he has, and he will not shy away from its demands or its sacrifices.

But he doesn’t have to make them right now. And neither does Zaref.

“Dai—“

“Not yet,” he insists. “We have time.”

“But it will be soon.”

Daichi takes a deep breath and lets it out. He has no rebuttal for that.

At his silence, Zaref turns to him, and Daichi knows will never forget the look on his face. He wishes he had something he could say to fix it. He wishes he could take the weight on Zaref’s shoulders and carry it for him. He wishes they were not the ones left to contend with this while those safe behind their walls cut away the things they need to win this fight. He wishes he could make this easy.

He can’t. There’s nothing he can say to make it right, or better, or easy. There’s nothing he can say to change the fact that Zaref is right, and time is slipping through their hands, and one of them is a pilot and one of them is not.

Daichi gives up on trying to say anything at all and simply kisses him.

He kisses him with all the regret for the time they’ve lost and the time they’ve yet to lose. He kisses him with the fear he always carries—that this will be the last one; that there will not be enough time to say all he wants to say; that he will never find the words to tell Zaref just how deep this feeling goes.

Zaref makes a sound against his mouth, wounded, and cradles his face. Daichi may not have the words, but he thinks that here, like this, pressed together in the meager shelter of an officer’s bunk, maybe the words aren’t necessary. Maybe Zaref already knows.

They pull apart slow, reluctant. Zaref’s hand cradles the curve of Daichi’s skull. They share the same breath, the same heartbeat. Daichi breathes in time with him. He doesn’t want to open his eyes.

“I love you,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Zaref’s mouth presses against his again, fleeting. Daichi’s chin rises to follow him, but Zaref stays distant. Daichi blinks his eyes open.

“Come back,” Zaref says, staring at him with a look Daichi wishes he couldn’t read so easily. “You have to come back.”

Daichi takes a deep breath. He recognizes an order when he hears one.

“Okay,” he says, knowing as well as Zaref does that there’s no guarantee he can keep his word. “I will.”

.

(Later, when he hits the eject button for Ozy’s pod, he’s sorry all over again. But he’s a ranger. He’ll do his duty.

Still. The last think he thinks of, before the flash and the ejection and the long ride through the collapsing breach and the cloying dark, is that expression on Zaref’s face. He’d have spared him the heartbreak.

Then the breach opens, and the shockwave hits, and everything goes black.)

[cityandking]

sometimes I think about ozy and kallux having all of kallux's elf years plus whatever time they're off honeymooning in the astral sea or whatever vs dai and zaref having however many years zaref has left

[cityandking]

3, 16, 29, 53 for minah, dai and kol!

thank you my dear!! // specific but helpful character building questions

3. How often do they show their genuine emotions to others versus just the audience knowing?

MINAH — her cheerfulness, curiosity, and excitement are usually genuine. it’s just that she also projects those when she is absolutely Not experiencing those feelings so it can be tricky to tell when it’s genuine and when it’s The Mask (given that minah is a better liar than I am I think it’s probably pretty obvious above the table when she’s performing)

DAI & KOL — answered!

16. What kinds of people do they have arguments with in their head?

MINAH — mostly herself. I think she’s also got a little alesso in her head that she argues with about what’s good business

DAI — dai doesn’t have arguments so much as the vague annoyance of other people being wrong. sometimes his inner devil's advocate sounds a whole lot like ozy, though

KOL — her mother. a few old commanding officers. the niggling, burrowing voice of doubt she can’t silence that sounds uncannily like sora :/

29. How do they respond when someone doesn’t believe them?

MINAH — a laugh, a joke, maybe a clasp on the shoulder. sort of a general “whatever you say” carelessness that absolutely suggests she knows better than you but she’s humoring you. more confidence than condescension, but she’ll turn the dial if she really does think you’re an idiot. the point isn't to make the other person think she's actually right, the point is to make them think maybe they're actually wrong

DAI — an appeal to logic and reason, and if that doesn’t work then an appeal to pathos, and if that still doesn’t work then defeated resignation. though how much he’s willing to fight depends on who he’s talking to and what they aren’t believing him about. he’ll generally fight harder for someone else’s sake than he will for his own

KOL — not being believed makes her so mad. she’s a little willing to swallow it if she knows she’s in the wrong (like, if she does a bad job lying she'll be mad at herself just as much as whoever she's lying to). but if she’s being genuine? grit-toothed fury and bitterness and a seeping cloud of resentment. she’s good at holding her tongue, though. she doesn’t really fight back, she just goes out and picks other fights elsewhere.

53. Who would / do they believe without question?

MINAH — minah isn’t really big on trusting people unquestioningly, but she’d believe cian (unless he’s talking about himself). probably leo and also maybe (shockingly?) riya. alesso if it were something serious.

DAI — zaref. scratch unless she’s in one of her meddling moods. post-traveller ozy. kallux.

KOL — nobody these days, but the empire for a very long time.