Arc 9 | Chapter 408: A Little Moment to Snuggle
“What happens if we can’t find the entrance?” Baylor asked, kicking at the ground.
Taelor’s middle brother had returned from microsparking through the area to lean against his side, his hand seeking out Taelor’s until they were twined together. Briefly, Halen’s eyes had clocked their proximity, but just as when their former classmate had stumbled upon them at the SlideLine Transfer Station, there was more curiosity in his eyes than disgust or disinterest. It was interesting, as on top of the taboo aspect, Taelor had never suspected Halen of being interested in men.
That was something to consider another day, the question of whether Halen was interested for reasons unrelated to Emilia, or if he were simply curious if he would be okay joining them all together in bed. Halen also seemed to quickly realize that this wasn’t the time for thinking whatever thoughts were filling his head, his eyes subtly clouding over once more seconds later as he returned to analyzing everything they were getting from Coral. Now that Mikhail had noted a few things that the two of them had missed, they were focusing on sorting through the feeling for anything that seemed to indicate that the Drinarna were more involved in the situation than Emilia had let on.
There had been a moment, soon after Mikhail had sent back the feelings he thought were off, where Halen had been annoyed with Emilia were leaving things out. It was a good thing Baylor hadn’t been around to hear him—Halen had been cursing her for being terrible at relaying information. Taelor couldn’t actually disagree with him—Emilia was constantly making connections and then not giving over all the information—but in this case, he could read between everything that was and wasn’t being said.
Once Halen had realized there was a good chance The Black Knot had known something was happening in Lüshan—or Falmíer specifically—and told her through a locked relay, thus inhibiting her ability to tell them everything that was happening, the other boy had turned his annoyance instead onto The Black Knot.
Taelor couldn’t disagree with his annoyance there, either, although his own annoyance with the organization he worked for was for different reasons. Where Halen was annoyed that The Black Knot hadn’t put out an alert to Baalphorians to avoid travelling to Lüshan, Taelor understood why they hadn’t: it wasn’t worth it. Not enough Baalphorians travelled to the small Free Colony, and from Coral’s readings, it was pretty clear the situation was taking most of the Drinarna by surprise. In other words, even if the Drinarna higher ups had known something was going on in Falmíer, they likely hadn’t realized it was about to blow up. Chances were, The Black Knot was in a similar situation. Taelor had so far kept him suspicions on the matter between himself, his brothers, and Emilia, but he had an inkling that Olivier’s kidnapping had been entirely spontaneous and opportunistic. The parties involved had seen taking him as a chance to further their goals, so they’d taken it, likely without a solid plan. If he and his class hadn’t shown up in the city that morning, who knew how long the tension of the situation would have simmered for. It was a sentiment that Emilia agreed was possible, now that she could speak more freely on what she knew. So, no, Taelor couldn’t fault The Black Knot or the Drinarna for not publicly stirring up that tension.
Instead, he was annoyed that The Black Knot had never requested Emilia create a new form of their locked relay. Ideally, locked relays should have an option to allow them to disable under certain circumstances. It didn’t have to be something that affected all locked relays—after all, the organization also used locked relays to give sensitive information to citizens and politicians. That information was meant to force their hands one way or another, or give them hints as to where to look for such-and-such information that would further The Black Knot’s agenda. The reasons such information was sometimes given through locked relays were myriad, ranging from wanting to protect a source to just not wanting the world to know they knew something. In such cases, the organization definitely didn’t want their locked relays without their active consent. So, they needed a locked relay that could have a release criteria—stars knew enough agents died because they couldn’t get the necessary information to someone due to the bloody things.
As a result, most of The Black Knot would likely agree they needed a better system—after all, Malcolm would likely be horrified when he realized that his lock had inadvertently put Emilia into a position where she couldn’t easily warn them not to trust the Drinarna. That said, had any of them fessed up that they were headed her way, Malcolm would have been able to release the lock himself.
What Emilia had been able to tell them was that Cameron was being weird and to not use the official papers checkpoint if they could help it. In the case of Cameron, they had all assumed the woman was being a bitch as usual, while for the papers checkpoint, the assumption had been that she was worried about the Baalphorian government being alerted—unlikely through the normal checkpoint, but a near given if they used the diplomatic entrance. They were all hoping that no one would even discover they’d even left Baalphoria, after all, Halen having hacked into the slidelines in order to cover their tracks as they sped through the nation and into Seer’ik’tine. So, while Taelor didn’t doubt that was also a concern for Emilia, he now doubted it had ever been her main concern.
Annoying, and Taelor would be suggesting to Malcolm that they commission a new locked relay system from Emilia and Halen—this was the sort of thing that would be better split between them, what with all the testing it was liable to need. With any luck, no situation like this would ever occur again, and it would instead be Black Knot agents utilizing the release system to make sure that if shit started going down, they could tell non-agents about it. With Emilia in their lives, however, he had no doubt that things like this would happen again, and again, and again. Taelor wanted to be annoyed with her. He couldn’t—he loved her too much.
“If we can’t find the entrance soon, we’ll follow Corrie and the others and try to go through the papers checkpoint,” Taelor told his brother, noting that Halen was the only one around. Given he had probably already guessed at how close the three of them were, Taelor saw no reason not to pull his brother a little closer, his hands dragging over Baylor’s arms before he was cupping his cheeks and telling him it would be okay.
Baylor groaned and huffed and mumbled about how Taelor couldn’t promise such things.
Halen’s cheeks turned a slightly darker shade of brown—how much blood must be rushing to his face for his already dark skin to further darken? Still, his bright eyes watched them and—
Baylor turned a frown on Halen, who fortunately locked away, embarrassed, before Baylor could notice that he had been watching them. “Why are you horny? Is that really appropriate?”
Really, it was both amusing and terrible that Halen’s version of Emilia’s monitoring function still catalogued everything, even arousal. For the most part, it hadn’t been much of an issue, although Taelor had noticed Halen and Emilia’s arousal levels rising simultaneously before they stepped back onto the aetherstream. He didn’t think anyone who wasn’t already aware of Halen’s feeling for her had noticed—Codeth and Coral definitely had, the latter smacking the former when he tried to tease Halen about it—but eventually, if they weren’t careful, more people would notice. Overall, Taelor doubted something happening between them would be an issue… although, Baylor might not like it. They all knew how terrible Emilia was at keeping a grudge, and Baylor in particular had taken it upon himself to hold her grudges in her stead. Taelor could easily see a situation arising where Baylor would refuse to forgive Halen for everything that had happened between their groups the last fifteen years, even if Emilia begged him to let it go.
That would be messy, to say the least—the sort of messy that they were better off avoiding when everything was already so tense.
“Weren’t you horny just a little while ago?” Halen shot back, still not daring to look at them while they were pressed so close. “Was that appropriate?”
“Oh~ definitely not,” Baylor teased, Taelor’s hands tightening around their new home on his brother’s hips. Turning in Taelor’s grip, Baylor leaned back against him and Taelor went back to sorting through Coral’s readings while also prepping a skill to shut his brother up, if necessary. “Would you like to know what sorts of things Emmie and I were discussing to get us both riled up like that?”
Taelor had mixed feelings on both the play Baylor and Emilia sometimes partook in and on Baylor sharing those details with Halen. Emilia wouldn’t care… probably, while Halen, with his feeling for Emilia, definitely needed to realize what sort of play she would continue engaging in with the three of them—Rafe as well, if he ever got his head out of his ass and explained to any of them what his problem was. Still, this wasn’t exactly the appropriate place—someone who really didn’t need to know might come along, and Taelor had no doubt a few members of their group would lose their shit if they found out the things Emilia let Baylor do to her—and who really knew how Halen would react.
Most likely, he would digest the information and move on. That was how love worked—at least, that was how it worked for black knots. In no world could Taelor imagine Emilia doing anything to upset him so profoundly that he would cease to love her. People were always saying that wasn’t how normal people loved, but Taelor had his doubts as to whether it was really love if something could break it—affect it, perhaps, but break? Loren would probably tell him he was being too judgmental, but Taelor didn’t think real, true love could ever completely break. No matter what Emilia appeared before him, there would always be something of the little girl he had first met and fallen in love within her.
People were a million grains of sand, making up who they were. Those sands shifted and blew away, while more joined the pile, creating an ever shifting identity—creating a thousand different iterations of the same fundamental person as their exact makeup of personality traits and interests shifted. Yet, the foundation remained the same—these impossible to remove parts of who a person was, which only the most heartbreaking of earthquakes could ever damage. Even then, the pieces would remain, cracked and broken and yet fundamental and inseparable from the person they were under all those million grains of shifting sand.
To love truly was to love what lay under all those layers of sand. Taelor loved that foundation that Emilia built herself upon—the foundation that was her everything. Her smile and laugh. Her unending, stupidly self-sacrificing love. That foundation was her ability to remember each clone’s name after being introduced only once; her ability to forgive too fast and be a petty bitch when needed—but only ever for someone else.
Never for herself—only ever for the people she surrounded herself with.
Those things would never truly change. Perhaps circumstances would bend them into something not quite what they had once been, but they would still exist within the Emilia he knew and loved. If things were hard, smiles and laughter might come slower, less often; they would still come, each hard won quirk of her lips and giggle escaping her chest a gift to the world. One day, Emilia might figure out how to prioritize herself more, but it would never be something that would spread through all her relationships, only the ones where she realized that being so self-sacrificing was doing more harm than good.
Oddly, Taelor knew that Emilia would never cease being able to tell each clone apart. That was something that could never shift. That was something that Taelor would swear was engrained into Emilia’s very soul, inseparable from her existence by anything less than death itself.
As for all that forgiveness and being a petty bitch when needed? Taelor accepted those things, even if he wished Emilia hated a little longer, let herself be the beautiful, petty bitch he knew she could be more often.
All three of them—they would accept Emilia as she was. No matter how many decades passed, no matter how the world wore on them, they would love and accept the woman that little girl who had so fearlessly befriended them became.
A thousand years could pass, and she would still be their Emilia—always.