Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Ultra Brothers were not, strictly speaking, familial brothers.

Well, alright, two of them were. (Four? He couldn’t remember whether the paperwork had ever gotten sorted out on King just up and declaring the Leo brothers to be Ultra Brothers. Well, they counted to him, at least, official or not.) And a good chunk of them were related in some way or another, anyway.

But it wasn’t a requirement, or anything.

That said, Seven could certainly understand how people would get confused. Even setting aside the pre-existing family-of-some-sort bonds that some of them had, trusting your lives to each other on a regular basis formed its own strong bond, and the two could easily be mistaken for each other. Besides…

“I’m just saying, we haven’t even met her! Isn’t that weird?”

“I’d have settled for knowing she existed at all.”

“To be fair, didn’t Taro just show up out of the blue one day with a spouse and kid?”

“Hey, no, that’s not fair! It was a whirlwind romance! I told everybody as soon as I could, don’t be mean…”

“Yes, don’t be mean. We always knew Taro would end up getting a family in a ‘whirlwind’ sort of way, after all.”

“Yay, thanks, Ace!… I think.”

“… Sorry. Anyway, setting that aside, Seven’s still the one in the most trouble.”

Looking at the six of them now, gathered together for a night out at a quiet bar, listening to conversations like this… wouldn’t you assume it was a set of brothers-from-birth bickering?! Or at least some kind of family relations?!

Seven huddled over his drink with a sigh, trying to silently see his way through all the accusations flying over his head. A much younger him would have dealt with the awkward social situation by drinking several more of these. (That younger version of himself hadn’t had to worry so much about what kinds of memories might get dredged up from the buried corners of his mind.) He wasn’t even sure how things had gotten onto the subject of Alfia, other than the fact that his brothers-in-arms – he loved them, he did, he would’ve died for any of them but – well, they could be terrible when they thought something was funny. And they pretty much always found flustering him to be funny. So much so, sometimes, that it was hard to remember why he loved them.

Why had he agreed to go out with them tonight, again –

“So, when do we get to meet your wife, huh?” Jack said, slinging an arm around his shoulders; Taro had previously been the one complaining the loudest, but it seemed Jack had only been waiting for his turn to jump in.

“We’re not married,” Seven protested weakly, and did his best to ignore Zoffy quietly scoffing ‘of course you aren’t’ next to him. Right now, his only goals were trying – as he had been all evening – to dodge the actual question, and to get through this without Zoffy deciding he should be in serious trouble again.

It was working, for now at least; Taro leaned around Jack to blink at him in confusion. “Huh? But you have a kid, don’t’cha?”

“People can have children without being married,” Ultraman said, his mild voice floating into the conversation like a stray breeze. Seven was momentarily distracted by a pang of guilt as the thought ‘oh, right, he’s here too’ flitted likewise across his mind; it wasn’t his fault, though, really. The guy just tended to fade into the background of any given group. Anyway, Seven could tell he wasn’t the only one who’d had that thought, and in their defense, Ultraman seemed perfectly happy with his role as the team’s resident wallflower.

Anyway. More importantly, he wasn’t helping matters with that helpful little clarification.

“Yeah, not everyone’s family is as, uh, old-school as yours, buddy,” Jack chuckled at Taro, after the requisite split-second pause of slotting Ultraman back into the mental tally of people involved in this conversation. And then – after waving off the return protest of ‘but you’re part of my family’ with a quick ‘by marriage, whatever’ – then, unfortunately, he turned right back to Seven. “Alright, fine, when do we get to meet your girlfriend, then?”

Seven squirmed uncomfortably. The idea of downing about twenty shots in the next ten seconds was becoming more tempting by the minute. “She’s not – I mean – I don’t know, but, I don’t think we’re really… I don’t think you could really call it…” (What were they? They’d never put a label on it.) (Or, rather, he’d always been too afraid to ask… Well, whatever they were, he had some kind of place in her life, and that was all he could ask for, really.)

Jack looked baffled, but behind him, Taro’s face lit up with his usual megawatt grin. “Ohhh, I’ve heard of this,” he declared suddenly, and Seven braced himself for whatever was coming next. With Taro, it was always a toss-up as to whether he’d actually come up with something sensible or not. “It’s called a situationship!”

… Well.

Alright.

He wasn’t… wrong, per se.

“Who taught you that?” Ace demanded, eyes narrowing. The normally-calmest Brother had been more or less staying out of the whole conversation up until this point – he tended to try and stay out of Seven’s drama, a fact which Seven would appreciate more if it saved him from everyone else’s teasing at all – but when it came to defending Taro’s innocence, well…

Everyone suddenly endeavored to look as not-guilty as possible. (They probably all were; who knew where Taro picked up random ideas. Out of the aether, it often seemed.)

Except Zoffy, who just looked – as usual – tired. “Alright, alright, that’s enough.” Oh, thank the Light. Seven turned a grateful look onto their leader, but only received a deadpan stare in return. “Not that Seven doesn’t deserve it,” – ouch, never mind, he took back his gratitude – “but why are we harassing him about this, again?”

“C’mon, don’t you have any curiosity, Zoffy? We don’t even know what she looks like,” Jack whined, leaning around Seven to make sure their leader could see his pleading expression.

“Wait, hasn’t Zoffy met her before?” Taro jumped in suddenly, having settled his older brother down while everyone else was distracted. (Seven would have preferred if that had taken him longer, right now.) “Hey, Zoffy, what’s she look like, huh? Is she pretty?”

“I – I don’t know, what kind of question is that?” It was normally difficult to throw their leader off-kilter – about the only thing Seven had ever seen to do it routinely was when civilians were crying; Zoffy wasn’t well-trained in how to comfort others – but admittedly, Taro’s straightforward idiocy was too powerful for anyone to withstand. Zoffy cleared his throat, anyway, and quickly resumed his usual professional demeanor. “Don’t ask me inappropriate things. Anyway, I was having to bring bad news when I met her. Nobody is at their best, at such times.”

Seven winced under the withering, pointed glare that Zoffy shot him, at that line. He’d certainly earned it, though, so he said nothing.

“Aww. Oh, come to think of it, though, I think Mom’s met her,” Taro said next, drumming his fingers on the countertop before snapping them triumphantly. “Yeah! She said ‘Zero definitely gets his looks from his mother’!”

… Gee, thanks, Aunt Marie. It wasn’t completely untrue, though. “I think –” Seven finally managed to get a word in edgewise, two of them even, but –

“No, no, you’re biased,” Jack cut him off there. He hadn’t even been about to say anything about that! (… Although part of him did want to brag, a little, because he felt certain it wasn’t just his own bias that Alfia was beautiful.) (Every other part of him shut that down, in a wave of conflicted guilt and self-doubt.)

Well, fine, maybe he could use this as an excuse to, well, excuse himself entirely, since they clearly didn’t want his opinion, and all. “Well, then I should probably just –”

It probably wouldn’t have worked. Jack had already thrown an arm around his shoulders again, and Taro’s face was doing that thing where he looked like a kicked puppy at the mere idea of someone leaving early.

Regardless, the ping of a holocomms alert interrupted him.

There were several notable things about that. First of all, Seven didn’t exactly get a lot of messages, in general. He wasn’t on… great terms with most of his family – though he did quietly check on how his sister was doing every now and again, and of course, there was no escaping Aunt Marie and her sons, even before he’d ended up an Ultra Brother. Outside of this room, anyway, there were vanishingly few people even in his contacts list at all. And of that small list, only one was set to open a display holoscreen automatically whenever he got a message from them. And that person… had sent him a picture. Not a particularly notable or, well, explicit picture, but maybe, still, it was just a bit, well…

Seven hurriedly slammed the holoscreen down, out of existence.

Too late.

There was silence, for a moment, but it was the almost-ringing silence you got after an explosive had gone off.

Seven sat stoically through it, resigned to his fate, and then, all at once – chaos.

“Was that a picture of her?! It was, wasn’t it?!” Jack was staring at Seven as if trying to put together a puzzle with no pieces. “Hey, no offense, but – how the hell did you ever even get a conversation with her?!”… Seven didn’t have an answer for that, even to himself.

“Wasn’t she a meme on social media once?” Ultraman said next, before he could try harder to come up with one. Seven had honestly once again forgotten that he was here, and at this exact second, he wished he could have continued in ignorance.

Jack gasped. “You’re right! She was! Oh, that was ages ago. Someone spotted her in the background of a candid photo or something and – How’d the meme go again? ‘Unnecessarily hot SSTD scientist’, or something? – no, seriously, Seven, how’d you even talk to her?!” … Seven wondered, idly, whether there was any chance of the ground opening up and swallowing him whole within, oh, the next five seconds or so.

Zoffy was rubbing at that spot between his eyes, a gesture that almost always preceded someone being in serious trouble. “Seven… please turn off image previews in your holocomms,” he said, his voice grating out in a way that somehow conveyed what he’d really wanted to say, which was ‘you’re lucky I’m not putting you in the ground myself.’

“Seconded,” Ace said icily, with unsaid implications of his own: ‘as much as I hate family drama, I’d help Zoffy bury the body.’

“Hm, Mom was right,” Taro declared suddenly, nodding with the air of a great philosopher coming to a conclusion after years of hard study. “Shouldn’t you go answer that text, Seven? She didn’t look like someone you keep waiting.”

Seven took that excuse to leave without a second thought.

He loved his brothers-who-weren’t-really-brothers, he really did. They’d each saved his life more times than he could count.

He’d have died for any of them.

He was not going out with them again for at least another year.

Chapter Text

Zero paused on his old doorstep, and felt an overwhelming wave of dread seep into his very soul.

Not because of the location – sure, some of his memories of this house got a little complicated, and it wasn’t a place he called home anymore, but overall, he had warm feelings about the house he’d grown up in. (Overall.)

No, the problem was –

“What’s wrong, Zero, forget yer key or somethin’?"

“I do not think that comment qualifies as ‘best behavior,’ Glen Fire."

“Don’t ya take that tone with me, brat – an’ what’s that face, huh?! Oi, Fried Chicken, tell yer little brother to shape up!"

“Calling me ‘Fried Chicken’ is only proving his point, Glen Fire."

“Oi!"

… Yes, the problem was the chaos behind him.

He turned around, and regarded the suddenly very still, very polite looking crew behind him. The only one he believed was Mirror Knight, and that was only because he hadn’t actually heard him in the bickering just now. (Well, that and his tense posture screamed ‘I’m the only one who’s behaving right now and I have no idea how to correct everyone else’s behavior without not behaving anymore,’ which was very much Mirror Knight.)

“I still don’t know why you all even want to be here,” he started by complaining, glaring away any attempted interruptions as he went on, “I’m literally just leaving a letter, my mom’s probably – no, definitely – at work. But since you’re here, nobody had better cause any trouble, got it?"

He hadn’t even meant to come here at all. This whole trip had gone off the rails so badly, though – to start with, he’d only meant it to be a routine check-in with the Land of Light, make sure nothing had caught fire while he was away, but then his whole crew had insisted on coming along. Then he’d ended up staying at his great-aunt’s place, because when Mother of Ultra asked you to do something you didn’t say no, and then, well –

His plan had been to just send his mom a quick message. She was busy and her work was important, was the thing, and Zero always felt awful when he had to interrupt, especially when it was nothing important. Just letting her know he was still alive, and all. But then Mother of Ultra had asked him ‘when’ he was planning on going to visit his mom – not ‘if’, ‘when’ – and, well, what was he supposed to do? Ruin her good opinion of him? He’d die on the spot. So of course he’d immediately lied and said he was doing it today.

And of course, his crew immediately started begging and guilting him into letting them come along, too…

“C’mon, Zero, we already proved ourselves to be respectable an’ all that, didn’t we?” Glen Fire protested, and if the ex-pirate had been capable he definitely would’ve been wearing the biggest grin, his arms linked behind his neck casually. “We’ve already met most’a yer relatives, let us complete the set!"

“We really would like to see where you grew up,” Mirror Knight said quietly, sidling up beside him while the Jean-brothers both started scolding Glen Fire for his casual attitude. “And if Glen gets too… energetic, we’ll drag him out."

… A plan which definitely sounded like its own kind of embarrassing chaos, but Zero could appreciate the good intentions behind it, and he sighed in defeat. “Alright, alright. It’s just a boring regular house, though! My mom’s not even gonna be here, guys, I told you, she’s busy,” he grumbled, turning around and unlocking the door more by habit than conscious thought.

As he’d promised, the house was exactly as boring and normal as he’d remembered inside. One fake crystalline houseplant by the door, check. (Slightly dusty – geez, mom.) One little kitchen with its scuffed-up and slightly-wobbly old table, check. One living room with the shelves full of old trinkets and even older books and clusters of photos, check. Upstairs would be the bedrooms and the home office, but he was kind of hoping to avoid going upstairs, at least. The last thing he needed was for his crew to be judging his entire childhood by whatever random things he’d left there.

Speaking of his crew, though –

“Hm. This makes two kitchens we have seen. Zero, I thought you said your species does not often need to eat?"

“Zero, would your mother be mad if I took some of these books?"

“Holy crap Zero how tiny didja used to be?! Ahaha, Mir, look at this one!"

“Glen, don’t grab his family photos – Well, that one is cute, though…"

… His crew had, of course, immediately spread out to cause chaos, and he groaned as he tried to round them all back up again, scrambling to answer four different conversations at once. “We don’t eat much, my great-aunt’s house is just old as hell and my mom is weird. Jean-Nine, don’t you dare steal from my mom’s house, what is wrong with you. Mir, I’m not cute, and Glen, put those back the way they were or so help me I will throw you back to Mighty Base from here!"

There was the slightest pause, almost like the dip in air pressure before a storm, as all of his crew prepared to answer at once, and then –

“Hello?"

Everyone froze, all eyes (or equivalents thereof) turning towards the stairs at the sudden, extremely unexpected sound of a voice coming from the upper floor – and then sharply back towards Zero, half confused and half accusing.

Well, that had definitely been his mom’s voice, though he wasn’t sure how it was his fault that the universe had somehow rewritten itself to make him be wrong about his mom’s normally ironclad schedule. That, or something even weirder was going on. (She couldn’t be in trouble or anything, he’d have heard something about it… right?) He tiptoed over to the foot of the stairs hesitantly. “Uh, hello? Mom?"

An immediate, startlingly loud clattering noise rapidly resolved itself into – yes, that was his mom running out of her office and standing at the top of the stairs, staring down at him with a shock to match his own. Only for a moment, then –

“Zero!"

– she launched herself down the stairs to tackle him in a hug, which luckily he withstood well enough but, “Mom!! N-not in front of… C’mon, don’t embarrass me!"

“In front of who, starlight?” she replied, pulling back to give him a deadpan stare – which swiftly turned into a more bemused look, as she looked around and spotted his crew, still scattered around the house and standing stock-still. “Oh. Them, I suppose. And these are…?"

Zero cleared his throat and tried (unsuccessfully) to escape his mom’s arms. “Right. Uh. Well. Guys, gather up, this is my mom. Mom, these are, well, my crew.” … Ordinarily, he would’ve defended their team name against anybody, but admittedly, standing here with the one who’d given him the name ‘Zero’ in the first place, calling them ‘Ultimate Force Zero’ suddenly felt… a little bit silly. He cleared his throat, and moved on to pointing them out in order. “This’s Jean-Bot, Glen Fire, Mirror Knight, and Jean-Nine."

“Oh! The ones you’ve written to me about?” she confirmed, finally letting go of him to greet his crew with a polite bow as they shuffled forward. “Nice to meet you all. Thank you for taking care of my son."

“He has saved us more often than the reverse, so really, we ought to be thanking you,” Jean-Bot responded promptly, with a bow of his own – naturally the calmest and most polite in this sort of situation; Zero was glad that he didn’t have to worry about at least one of his crew.

“We have saved him pretty often too, though,” Jean-Nine piped up, proving why he wasn’t in that category as well, and blinked innocently at Zero when he glared.

“Y-Yeah, uh, what they said!” … Well, Glen Fire was trying, anyway. You could’ve used him as a yardstick, he was so stiff, but he was trying. “Um, this’s a real nice house, m-ma’am!” … Minus points for clearly trying to hide the damn photos he’d stolen behind his back, though.

“Regardless, it is an honor to meet you, ma’am,” Mirror Knight bowed with perfect elegance, likewise managing to sneak in a reprimand of Jean-Nine and Glen Fire’s childish attitudes while he was at it; honestly, under any other circumstance, he’d be right alongside Jean-Bot in the category of people who Zero wouldn’t worry about having trouble in a social situation. There was just one thing, though, and he really hoped it wouldn’t come up –

“Oh, my. Zero didn’t tell me his friends were polite and handsome,” his mom laughed, and – oh no, there it was. She’d always had a weird, teasing sense of humor, and, well…

The Jean-Brothers wouldn’t take much notice, probably. They’d be fine. But he could already see the early signs of Mirror Knight growing flustered – he’d never been good at dealing with being teased – and Glen Fire, well, the ex-pirate was usually better at handling that, but, somehow, even still, overall…

Zero found himself with a mysterious feeling like nails on a chalkboard, quickly jumping in to stammer out: “O-Okay, anyway! Mom, what – yeah, what are you even doing here?! Don’t you have work?!"

“Well, this is my house, starlight… But anyway, I forgot this here this morning,” she pouted, holding up some kind of small device (hell if he knew what, or what it was for; something important, no doubt). “So I had to come back for it. I suppose I should go back to the lab now, but –"

Oh no, no no no, no ‘but’s, he was dying here and besides – “You don’t need to stay here just because we interrupted! Your job’s important, mom, c’mon…"

His mom gave him some kind of look, but before he could parse how much she had just read off of him (she was too good at reading people; it had almost been a little lucky for his school-delinquent younger self that she hadn’t been around much to read him) – his crew, unfortunately, was already ramping up to protest.

“Aw, but Zero –"

This was all too much. “Nope! You’ve all met now! No more keeping my mom from her important job!” Zero insisted, and – in a fit of panic – he found himself picking his mom up and carrying her towards the door.

“Zero! Enough, enough, I can walk!” she laughed, thankfully taking it in good grace. He set her down next to the door, and tried not to look half so much like he was dying of embarrassment (even though he totally was). “Alright, starlight, you’re not wrong that I need to go. Promise me you’ll stop by again later, though, before you go back to your grand adventures? With or without your… friends. I promise to be less embarrassing next time – but I’d like to hear what you’ve been up to lately. Please?"

Zero froze up a little – there were, well, some things he hadn’t told her, recent developments in his life and – relationships, and things, and he’d meant to tell her, really! Just, not like this. Writing it down had seemed easier. And right now, this still wasn’t the right time, so – “Later,” he promised with a nod, hurriedly kissing her forehead while his crew couldn’t see and then turning her around towards the door again. “Now get going! – Sorry we interrupted your day!"

“You know I don’t mind! – Love you, starlight. Bye, now."

Zero breathed a huge sigh of relief as the door closed behind her…

“Oi, Zero."

… And yelped, as suddenly an arm was being thrown around his shoulders and it turned out his relief had been premature. “Geez, Glen, what now?” he grumbled, trying to shake free. He was too keyed up for the ex-pirate’s usual clingy style of affection –

“Why didn’t ya say yer mom was hot?"

Zero froze.

He was remembering, suddenly, why he’d stopped inviting friends over to his house, during the random periods of his childhood when he’d had a few to speak of. Because, as soon as everyone reached the age where curiosity started to bloom about romance and attraction, well…

“Absolutely not,” he heard himself saying, distantly. There were many terrible things in this world that his brain refused to consider, and what other people thought of his own mother was the absolute top of that list. “She is not."

“She is! Like, objectively – guys, Mir, back me up here!"

Mirror Knight startled, when they both turned to look at him, then stiffly shook his head. “I decline to comment."

… Because he disagreed, or because he agreed but just thought the question was too impolite? Zero wasn’t sure which answer he’d dislike more, really…

“Aw, c’mon! Fried Chicken –"

“I am not qualified to comment,” Jean-Bot said, and at least that could probably be taken at face value. Probably. “Also, that is still not my name."

Jean-Nine looked up from one of the shelves, where he’d been messing with the books again. “I have scraped the local social media services,” he declared suddenly, “and out of a sample size of 1,300 posts referencing, tagging, replying to, or featuring candid photos of Zero’s mother –"

No.

Absolutely not.

He was not going to listen to that.

“Alright, that does it! You’re all banned! Banished! Out, out!” Zero yelled, grabbing the two nearest members of his crew and dragging them towards the door, ignoring the chorus of protests that immediately arose. “None of you are allowed in my mom’s house anymore! Out!!"

… He didn’t really mean that, of course. And they knew that, probably. He just needed a few minutes to himself, without being embarrassed to the point of wanting to die, and after that he could go back to being their beloved leader and all that. But, for now, with everyone else shoved out the door –

Zero took a deep breath, pulling out the letter he’d meant to leave here, and took one last look around. His crew hadn’t made too much of an actual mess, thankfully. Some of the books were out of place, and he was going to have to go and take back the photos that Glen Fire had stolen. (Old habits died hard, he supposed. That, or he’d shoved him out the door too fast. Maybe both.) Speaking of the photos, though…

He got momentarily distracted by noticing that there was actually a new photo, or at least, new to him; the photo itself looked old, but he’d definitely never seen it before. He’d have remembered this one, for sure. Any photo of his old man… he’d have obsessed over that, when he was a kid. And then fast forward to just a few years ago, and he’d have thrown this photo as far as he could.

Now, he just looked at it and sighed heavily, running a hand over one of his sluggers. His relationship with Seven was… better, these days. Still complicated, and he still couldn’t see what his mom had ever seen in the guy, but… Things were better, than before. And… she looked really happy, in this photo.

So he only shoved it aside a little, out of center place, before fishing the photo out of the letter he’d brought – a photo of him and his crew, who he’d thought she might never get a chance to meet – and setting that down instead. There. Now everyone was in one place, and that looked… It looked good. More like home, even if this wasn’t his home anymore.

And then, tossing the letter onto the kitchen table, he ran back out the door. Time to wrangle his crew back together, and try to direct their chaos more towards harmless fun than anything that’d kill him, until it was time for them to dash off into the stars again on their next big adventure. There were an awful lot of those to be had, out there, and he looked forward to all of them.

Still…

It was nice to know, even when he was about as far away as a person could be –

– this place wasn’t ever going anywhere.

Chapter Text

Seven tried to look serious and imposing.

The small lab assistant (well – small by her generation’s averages; she was exactly his own height) wasn’t having any of it.

“She’s not here,” she declared once again, arms folded and big round eyes trying their best to glare, and though her voice was trembling slightly, she nevertheless conveyed such a sense of absolute finality that Seven almost believed it.

Only almost. Where else would Alfia be during the day, if not at her lab?

Admittedly, there was still a smidgen of doubt in his mind. She could have taken the day off, theoretically. (From what he’d heard, though, she hadn’t really taken many days off, not since Zero was very young. That was third-hand knowledge, of course; some of the other Brothers had more SSTD contacts than he did, or, hell, more contacts, period.) If she had taken a day off, he probably ought to be knocking at her house’s door instead of this one, but well, at that point he might as well wait until the evening just to be safe, or even just try another day entirely –

No.

He shook those thoughts off, recognizing them as the fearful procrastination he’d been fighting off for far, far too long already. He was doing this today. One way or another, no more putting it off and letting it eat him alive every night as he tried to get any sleep at all.

“You’re sure she isn’t here?” he asked – admittedly, if she was here and he just wasn’t going to be allowed to see her, it’d work out the same as if she wasn’t here at all, so perhaps the question was a little pointless. Either way, he’d have to head to Alfia’s house and hope that he wouldn’t be waiting too long. … But he’d ask first.

“She absolutely, positively isn’t –” the stubborn little assistant began to say, but then –

“Sora? Is something… oh!”

– Alfia herself stepping out of some sort of back room, taking off a welding mask and blinking in mild surprise at them, both interrupted the argument and proved Seven’s doubts right in one fell swoop.

Her assistant immediately wilted, all her former bravado gone in an instant. “A-Alfia! I, um, I…”

Alfia’s expression, meanwhile, had swiftly changed from surprise to quick assessment to some sort of understanding, and finally landed on a gentle smile. “Sorry, I know I went into the back room while you were taking your break, so you probably thought I’d stepped out, didn’t you? I am here, though. Seven, we can talk back here, if you don’t mind – Sora, are you still working on the victorium material report so we can send that out tomorrow?”

“Y-Yes’m! Working on it, ma’am!” Sora squeaked, secretly shooting Seven one last disapproving glance as he went by before turning back to her holoscreens.

“Sorry about my assistant,” Alfia said quietly as she showed him into the back room, which Seven took a cursory glance at (less natural light than the main room, thicker walls, full of complex-looking equipment and neatly-organized bins of materials) before returning his attention to her. “She’s being transferred to another lab soon – you know Hikari? Of course you do, everyone in the Garrison does – anyway, it’s got her a bit on-edge about making sure this lab’s in good shape before she leaves, that’s all. Silly of her, really. I can handle this place myself.”

Seven nodded along with the explanation politely. It certainly made sense – from Alfia’s perspective.

From his own perspective, however, he was pretty sure he’d clocked something completely different in the young assistant’s attitude and expressions. This was someone who’d clearly been working under Alfia for quite some time – long enough to have been around when Zero had been exiled, and all of the fallout surrounding that. He wasn’t sure how much Alfia had shared about her life with her coworkers at that time, but he’d met with her then and he could still remember how visibly not okay she’d been. (Yet another thing that haunted him every night. There was a long list, but that tended to place pretty high up on it.)

So, yes, he was pretty certain he’d correctly clocked that the assistant did not like him, and she particularly did not like the idea of him interacting with Alfia any further, and, well.

He couldn’t blame her.

“Well, starshine? I don’t think you’ve ever visited me here before, so I assume you have something important to say?” Alfia’s voice interrupted his thoughts, bright but just a bit brittle with dread underneath the obvious hope that this wouldn’t be anything bad.

He wished he could have a better answer to that hope, but then he’d never settle this old guilt, so… “There’s something I need to – something I didn’t tell you, before. About my time on Earth.”

Instantly, her expression shifted over to sympathy and understanding, though whatever she thought she understood, he hadn’t a clue. “You don’t have to tell me anything that’s painful,” she said quietly. “I always knew you left out the worst parts. You don’t need to relive bad memories for me.”

“That’s not it,” he said, though he had indeed also left out some of the worst parts, things that nobody else needed to have haunting their nightmares – and though part of him still desperately wanted to leave this part out, too, he soldiered on: “I need to tell you about Anne.”

The words poured out of him, until there were no more to be said.

That was always the easy part – even stories he didn’t want to be telling, once he started it was just a matter of letting words flow until they were done; as long as nothing interrupted, it wasn’t until after the words were gone that anything bad could happen because of them. Alfia had always been a good listener, present and attentive but never stopping the flow, simply nodding along quietly. Today was no exception.

Of course, today probably wouldn’t be an exception for the other thing that had always been true about her, either, and so he braced himself for it. There was always a chance that she’d be too upset with him to follow the usual pattern, but –

Alfia finished nodding to herself, staring up at the ceiling pensively, and – “Only Anne? It always sounded to me like several others would have been interested.” – the usual pattern held true, even still.

“C-Can you please just – please just take this seriously for once?!” Seven sputtered, nearly choking on nothing in spite of how he’d tried to prepare himself for Alfia’s usual habit of focusing on the strangest details. There was no preparing for it, though, not really – and anyway, now most of him was left adrift, trying hopelessly to gauge what her actual reaction had been, so that didn’t help.

He couldn’t figure it out. She should be mad at him. Oh, not disastrously mad, or at least so he’d hoped, though that would be justified too – he’d run away from her, run away from their son, and even if he’d always planned on returning, he’d let himself put off that return until he physically no longer could. And more than that, worse than that… he’d fallen in love with someone else.

(Which wasn’t… a sin, or anything, to put it in Earth terms – but it was the sort of thing you were supposed to try to avoid without discussing the relevant boundaries with any prior… claims, first. Which he definitely hadn’t. At all.)

And even if nothing had come of it, really, not before he’d had to tear himself away from the planet that had felt more like home than home? He still should have been more faithful, should never have let that happen, should have at the very least told her much sooner. He should have done better, and she had every right to be disappointed that he hadn’t. She should be mad.

And… she was joking about it, instead.

And… what did that even mean? It should be a relief to him, he’d hoped she wouldn’t be too mad, but for her to seemingly not be mad at all? He wasn’t sure what that meant, but part of his mind was already spinning up to catastrophize it, like clockwork…

Alfia blinked, slowly, with a bemused smile that didn’t help at all. “I was being serious.” And that helped even less…!

He could feel the panic setting in, gripping his chest tight while his mind raced, trying desperately to get some kind of read on her. He’d never been good at that, though, absolutely never. Her thoughts were almost always a mystery to him, her expressions almost always mild, her voice almost always calmly amused… almost every time. He had seen her upset exactly once, when their son had been in trouble, and thinking of how that contrasted against every other situation in their entire shared lives left him –

“Have… you found someone else?”

– panicking.

Now she looked really confused; he wished he knew whether that was a good sign or not. (Part of him, the part that had always feared he meant little to her and would be forgotten about any day now, was screaming that it couldn’t be.)

“’Found’…? Ah. I see. Why would I do that?” she asked, and though her voice was gentle, she seemed… honestly a little hurt, perhaps? He couldn’t tell, he couldn’t tell – “Or even when would I have? When I had Zero, I was too busy, and now you’re already back. Unless you were one day to tell me you didn’t plan on returning again,” she hesitated, just a fraction, then went on as calmly as before, “I don’t need my old routines anymore. I’ve told you, haven’t I? I much prefer someone who conveniently turns up on his own.”

Seven’s heart felt like it was balanced on a precipice, uncertain – this wasn’t a worst-case scenario, perhaps it was even a good thing, but, to hear her still speaking so casually, and to be described as a convenience – how was he supposed to feel at all secure in –

Alfia took his hands in hers, then, and his whirling thoughts jostled to a startled stop. “Perhaps I’m not being clear enough – let me try again. Seven, starshine, I cannot imagine a world in which I wouldn’t keep a space in my heart open for you to wander in and out of as you do,” she said, staring down at their joined hands with a quiet smile, “I don’t need to tie someone to me. I know it’s not very – storybook romance, but… As long as you hold a space for me, too – as long as you keep coming back… then I promise, I’m happier with that than anything else. I’ve no need to ‘find’ anybody else. Alright?”

Seven – blinked. Held her hands tight. Felt something in his chest, like a counterweight, loosen. The worries and doubts were still there, lurking in the back of his mind; they’d been constant companions throughout his life, so perhaps they might never go away. They’d be back in full force, at some point, over something-or-other else, as always.

But this was the farthest away they’d felt in a long, long time. He couldn’t understand her – but what did that matter? She was happy with him, as he was, and that was the only thing that mattered, wasn’t it? He could work on figuring everything else out. Work on being a better partner for her, for certain. (She deserved the universe and more, after everything he’d put her through.) But he had time to work on all that.

They had time.

He took a deep breath, and nodded. Focused on the feeling of her hands in his, warm and solid. Stammered out some kind of agreement, some kind of promise, then, after a quiet pause –

“So… circling back a bit. Is that what you’re into, then – our old pre-Spark forms? I’ve heard that’s what Earthlings look like. Can’t say I’ve ever tried that, but if that’s what you –”

And just like that, things settled back into their old shape again. Alfia teasing him (maybe? probably?!), him sputtering, and the world spinning on around her laughter as he instinctively tried to leave.

Although…

He paused just before the door as a stray thought hit him, turning back around again to hurriedly ask – “Can I – what time do you leave work? Can I see you then?”

“Sure, I’ll leave a little early. Before Sparkdim. You know where the house is, starshine,” she said, smiling bright and serene. “See you there.”

His heart skipped a beat.

And, with that promise –

It felt lighter than it had in years.