Chapter Text
Eros
She lies broken in the dark, and when the door opens the light sears her skin. He’s alone and his breath is a drum beat that intensifies with a sudden exhalation at the sight of her. Her head is pounding and parched lips can hardly form a plea when she sees him. She can feel the putrescence climbing around inside her like scrabbling claws, turning her skin into a bonfire.
“Julie, Julie Mao?” he says as he crouches beside her. The bird flutters around him, its wings beating like a heartbeat. He doesn’t notice. His hands reach for her and she tries to bat him away.
Don’t, she whispers through cracked lips, you’ll catch it. But he ignores her, or doesn’t hear her and she is rising, she is in his arm. He holds her as if she weighs nothing, uncaring of the mess of her body, bathed in sweat and filth, against his coat.
“We gotta get you to a doctor,” he says, half to himself. He is hazy in her vision, face wavering in and out. The bird fades in and out.
Are you really here? Julie Mao says, and she’s not sure if her lips are moving. Can’t he see the black spores crawling up her body? If they step into the light it will be over and he will go with her and the disease will spread and spread and spread…
“Spores?” he stops and looks down at her. “Jesus, you’re burning up.”
She blinks, consciousness a hazy unreality, figures dancing in her vision as it speckles like the marks on her skin, like the marks…
Julie looks down her naked body and squints against the pain of the light, the pounding in her head and the ache in her limbs. The pale expanse of flesh, her ribs visible through skin that hangs from her frame from starvation and thirst.
But no marks.
Julie shakes her head, frowning down at her chest mottled by bruises and sick but no growth, no spores. The rest is a blur, the startled looks at a man carrying a naked woman through the halls, her vision wavering in and out until she’s set down in a bed, head lolling.
“Dehydration, hallucinations, some kind of fever. She’s been alone in there for, I don’t know, weeks, doc you gotta…”
Julie’s eyes roll back, voices cutting off as the lights go out.
Julie wakes surrounded by white. Stark hospital curtains, sterilized sheets, the beep and whirr of medical machinery. She feels the tug of a catheter in her right hand, every inch of her body pounding with the dull ache of dehydration. Her lips are cracked and she feels like one gigantic bruise, but she’s alive. How?
Julie turns her head, and sees him. His hat is pulled down over his eyes and he’s hunched over in his chair, dozing. It gives her a minute to study him, the few days of stubble on his cheeks, the long Belter fingers curled in his lap. He’s wearing a gray suit jacket, blue shirt, black slacks. There’s an empty holster at his hip. He looks familiar, someone from Ceres?
A shadow stepping in from the doorway, the necklace trailing from his fingertips and a bird beats its wings…
He shifts, a sliver shining as he cracks opens one eye.
“Who are you?” Julie croaks.
He smiles wryly to himself and sits up, spine popping as he straightens. “Right, of course, how the hell would you know me?”
“No, I know you,” she whispers. “I saw you in my dreams. You were looking for me,” she pauses in confusion. “I know you. But who are you?”
Whatever wry humor that had lingered in the twist of his lips falls away, the expression that replaces it is haunted. “Miller. I was a detective on Ceres, your father… Well, it doesn’t matter what he wanted. I’m off that assignment now, and that job.”
Julie frowns, and even that motion aches. “Then why are you here?”
“You know, I ask myself that every day,” Miller says, and looks away. “I guess I just wanted to make sure you were safe.”
“You saved my life...” she says, not sure if it’s a statement or a question. Miller laughs under his breath.
“Almost didn’t. Doctor said you were in pretty rough shape: dehydration, malnutrition. You were hallucinating when I found you. You were almost…” he pauses, swallows. “Yeah, you were in a bad way.”
Julie absorbs this, going quiet. The fog is clearing from her head, what she can only assume is some kind of pain medication, because the headache that’s taking its place isn’t much better. She remembers a little, the days she spent locked up on the Anubis, her crew. She remembers arriving on Eros, sick and certain someone was chasing her, certain she had to hide. Now that the haze is clearing she can see just how ill she must have been to reach that level of paranoia. Even the memory of the hallucination, those black spots crawling up her skin, is enough to make her shudder.
And this man, this Detective Miller, if not for him she would have died in a puddle of her own sweat and sick, too far gone to even call for the help that was right outside her door. On the one hand, her father had sent him to kidnap her, her family no longer even pretending to value her choices or autonomy. Most people would have left it there, but Miller had stuck with it, had tracked her down to Eros probably within hours of her death. And she had seen him, seen him in the doors and corners, in the shadows out of the corner of her eye, talking to her. Telling her it was going to be alright, that he was coming to help her.
Jesus, she had been more sick than she realized.
“Where will you go now?” Julie says.
“Oh.” Miller looks taken aback by the question. “I don’t know. Back to Ceres maybe? Find a new job, get my life together.” His long Belter fingers fidget, as if suddenly self-conscious. He stands and tips his hat to her. “But I’ve already taken enough of your time. I just wanted to make sure you woke up before I took off. I won’t bother you further.” He turns to go.
It’s agony to move, and the catheter in her hand pinches as she reaches out, grabbing Miller by the wrist before he’s out of range. Everything hurts, but she can’t let go. She thinks she’ll go crazy if she lets him out of her sight.
“Stay, please,” she pleads. “At least until I’m— I need to go to Ceres too. You could come with me.”
She needs to know: how does she already recognize him? Where has she seen him? She can she feel her own death pressing down around her, so close it feels more like a memory than a nightmare. Like the walls of reality are so thin she can see where her body lies, and Miller standing above it, his expression horribly blank. She knows it’s crazy, and for now she can only blame it on the painkillers in her system, the smell of death covered in sterilizers that pervades the hospital, the fact he’s the only living thing she can see.
If this was just a job, he’ll pull away now, maybe give her a stiff smile before declining. He’ll vanish back into the Belt, and it will be the last she sees of him and she’ll never get to ask… why, and how, and stay. She won’t get to learn how she knows him, how well she could know him.
But he stops. He takes off his hat and holds it in hand like a supplicant, a tic from another time. “Alright, Julie,” he says softly, and there’s something in his expression so subtle and transforming he looks like a different person. A spark of life. “Alright, I’ll stay.”
You belong with me, she wants to say. But they just met, and he doesn’t owe her anything. He’s already given too much. But she thinks she sees as much relief in his eyes as she feels. Relief and recognition. Oh, there you are, finally. It’s crazy. She won’t say it now, but maybe later, when they figure out where to go from here. Later.
They have time.