Technically, Ekos wasn’t lost.
Hurtling end over end, nose over thruster through the cold deep in the dying light of a riftspace tidal wave. He only hoped the wave of byte and digit and signal flares he’d worked it in passed all the intended checkpoints.
He felt lost.
He’d destroyed the solar system, shredded riftspace throughout, and left the enemy squadron in smatterings and pieces. His own hull was damaged, engines not firing, adrift wherever he’d fall or riftspace would take him.
Ekos had been alone too long already, but now—
It burned within him coldly, he wouldn’t be found.
Mikoto stood in the doorway to the bar, and Kusanagi just looked at him for a long moment before Mikoto shrugged and dropped onto his usual seat at the front.
It wasn’t his way to apologize. Kusanagi had been the one to tell him that ages ago.
“You’ve had that in your system for years,” Kusanagi commented. His voice was just slightly sharper than usual, more disappointed.
Mikoto leaned his head back. Kusanagi was too close to this, too close to Mikoto’s inability to protect Totsuka, and he’d be the first hit when Mikoto left him holding all the pieces. There wouldn’t have been comfort in Kusanagi’s bed.
Munakata should know this was the only warning he was going to get.
“Did you find the gun?” Mikoto asked.
Kusanagi studied him for a long moment, seeming to pack up his pain, his disappointment, his face and tone smoothing out to something both casual and dangerous. “Yes.”
Why did you leave me? Yata’s heart demanded. Weren’t you there when my friends turned against me? Weren’t you there when my family no longer needed me?
Wind whipped through his hair.
He couldn’t quite believe the feeling, flames burning on Saruhiko’s chest. He didn’t need Yata anymore and could not have made it more clear.
Yata slipped and lost his grip on the skateboard, flying into a wall. It hurt, it hurt, but that was good. He could focus on the pain in his knee, his arm, and pull himself upright.
It hurt so much less than his heart.
When it first started, Judith wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or horrified. She was leaning toward horrified. First it was the city council members bringing their questions and ideas and disputes, as if they had not enough wisdom in their own heads to do their jobs; then it was the suitors. It was really the suitors that were the problem. Well, to be truthful, they were generally one and the same.