Mal jerked out of a dead sleep, itchy with dried sweat, blood, and chemical residue, absolutely certain that she was still trapped inside the MEC. When her breathing slowed and her eyes cleared, she was staring up at a ceiling blotched with brown water stains rather than the underside of a mattress, and when she turned her head she didn't see a row of bunkbeds in the dull lamplight: instead, she saw Jay standing beside the crib, swaying on the spot and humming an old song, cradling her fussing daughter with one hand and holding a bottle of formula with the other.
“I’m awake.” Her voice was hoarse as she swung herself upright from the couch and slowly walked across the room, wary of losing her balance as she sleepily unbuttoned her shirt. A few hours' rest was not enough to recover from what she had put her body through — every step felt precarious, and the tiny nursery felt like it was miles across. “Istá’s here, my girl, c'mere—”
Jay looked at her pointedly, no doubt seeing all the things she tried to shroud under a brave face. “I have her, Mal. Just get some rest.”
She shook her head, trembling fingers struggling against the task of forcing the buttons open. “I need to keep feeding her, otherwise—”
“I know, I know, but I already have a bottle ready. It would be a shame not to use it.”
Her waste-not sensibilities betrayed her as she sullenly buttoned her shirt back together, but she didn't heed his instruction to return to bed. She regarded the bottled formula with deep hatred and let her hands fall to her sides, where they could clench into fists out of sight. Once her breathing steadied and her fingers loosened, she held her hands out expectantly. "Give her to me."
"I really think that you should rest."
“Give her to me.”
He looked like he might refuse, for a moment, until she advanced with a heavy step that threatened to break the sleepy quiet and summon the house's other occupants. With a quiet sigh, he leaned down and shuffled Clover into her arms: she didn’t miss how he confirmed twice that she had her before letting go, how his body was preemptively tense as he slowly moved back, how he remained in the room as she padded back to the couch and sank into its old cushions. There was no reason for him to linger, but also no reason to leave, so Mal didn't bother making a decision one way or the other — she had forbidden Etienne and Sabine from camping out in the nursery while she slept, but having someone nearby while she was awake was a deep comfort, at least until Kaia came back. She glanced at the clock: they had stepped out on a mission to shake down whichever unfortunate soul happened to be manning the Domino Clinic for some spare medical supplies, and would be back soon. She looked forward to splitting the too-small couch with them once they returned, and made a mental note to rinse off before draping herself over their back like a blanket.
She rubbed her eyes as Clover latched onto the bottle, taking her time in re-learning the shape of her daughter's face, the shade of her dark eyes, the wavy tufts of her soft hair. It felt as though she was coming out of a fitful, draining sleep, a singularly long and mundane nightmare that had had its hooks in her ever since she had heard that the Niña was preparing to launch: now that she had resurfaced, the thrashing unease in her chest was settling down some, and breathing came easier than it had in months. It seemed ridiculous in hindsight that she had been walking around with a lump in her throat and a shadow over her head, as though it was normal to be so miserable, as though every parent regarded their child with a sense of impending doom.
Twenty minutes later, once Clover was fed and on her way back to sleep, Mal pushed herself onto her feet and walked slowly back to the crib, singing all the while; once her daughter was safely back in her bed, legs kicking gently in her sleep, she took a deep breath, coached herself to sound curious rather than accusatory, and turned to face Jay. “When are my parents getting here?”
He hummed thoughtfully as he folded a blanket, focusing all his attention on the crisp lines and corners. “What do you mean?”
“I asked you to send a message to them, if something happened.” She picked up the hairbrush on the coffee table — most likely left there by Kaia, as an unsubtle message to the state of her hair — and began the process of unwinding her rumpled braid. Every pass of the brush pulled on tangles and knots that seemed to be forming out of thin air just to spite her. "Remember?"
Jay set down the blanket, perfectly folded, and moved to gather up the dishes left on the coffee table, still choosing not to look at her. “They wouldn’t have made it in time, not at their age — your Kaia was half-dead when they got here.”
"I would have wanted them to take her back to Kawehno:ke, and to help lay me to rest." The brush pushed the last tangle through the ends of her lank hair, and she took a deep breath and tried to unclench her fingers from the handle. She knew that Clover could still be happy and loved on Proxima, even without her mother — but she also knew that Jay would not have allowed Kaia to take Clover back to Kawehno:ke, ever. If Mal had been killed, Kaia would have been stuck in an unfamiliar place, trying to act in Clover’s best interest with the whole city against them, all because she hadn't thought to include them in her custody arrangements. She had sown the seeds of doubt herself, going around insisting that they had no part or interest in her daughter’s life, and that stung like bile in her mouth; Clover might know their face well enough to smile, but that alone would never have been enough to balance the scales.
Jay crossed the room and laid heavy hands on her shoulders, gently steering her toward the door. “This isn't doing you any good, right now — come and eat something, and we'll talk after.”
She wanted to ask if he would have respected her wishes, had she included Kaia of the Bear Clan on her list of next-of-kin, but she dreaded what the answer might be, if he was honest enough to give her one. She put it aside for other things, like squinting in the soft yellow light over the stove and salivating over the smell of hot, familiar food. The stew ladled from a beat-up saucepan was rich and spicy, reminding her of long childhood nights eating this same meal at this same table, fighting her cousins for seconds of what little there often was, Auntie Emmeline scolding them for talking with their mouths full or playing with the leftover bones and gristle if they were lucky enough to have meat. Even without, the stew was perfect, pulling her in with a dozen well-worn pleasures: pearl potatoes snapping between her teeth, puffball morsels gliding over her tongue like velvet, the gravy just shy of too-salty and begging to be chased with another spoonful. By the time she resurfaced, her bowl was empty and licked clean, washed down with water that tasted only of the normal kinds of minerals and iron. She sniffed the air curiously as she noisily drained her second cup: now that the stew was out of the way, she could pick out the notes of the second saucepan's contents as it burbled quietly on the stove, filling the spaces in-between with a blend of several Kawehno:ke teas that she hadn’t realized she was missing.
After ensuring she had no room for seconds, Jay finally said, “You understand why, don’t you? Even if your parents could get here in time, it’s for the best that Clover goes to Proxima.”
After one false start, she decided that she didn’t actually want to talk about this. “Gwenh’s alive,” she told him, staring down at the names scratched into the table's surface — her cousins', their friends', her own, probably Gwenh's and Tai-Song's if she looked hard enough. "She made me leave her behind."
His silence stretched, first in shock and then in consideration of the problem for which she was seeking counsel. “You’re not responsible for everyone in the world, Mal.”
“I’m responsible for her.” She could feel her expression crumpling and hid her face in her hands, fingernails digging into her forehead and lining her monobrow with eight tiny crescents. “I could have saved her from all of that, back then, if I had just—”
“Or we could have had three funerals instead of one,” he gently reminded her. “She’s handled herself this long without you, and she must have stayed behind for a good reason. Don’t you trust her judgement?”
She bit her lip, staring down at the table. Gwenh’s judgement hardly mattered, not when she was sick and abused and in desperate need of rescue — and if something went wrong, Mal would be the last to know, and she would be too far away to help. She wanted to take the Mal of yesterday by the shoulders and shake until the terminally stupid parts of her brain were knocked loose, until she remembered that Gwenh being alive and safe was the only thing that mattered, not a stupid agreement she had only made to keep her happy—
The front door knocked open to make way for Kaia, sweeping in at top speed and slapping the door shut with their elbow. They pulled their mask down around their neck and tossed a cloth-wrapped package on the table, eagerly kicking off their shoes. “I got it,” they huffed, past flushed and now drawn with exertion, unaccustomed to the modified breathing it took to wear a snorkel while running around Delany. Their shoulders rose and fell like crashing waves as they tried to catch their breath.
Jay looked faintly surprised, with an undercurrent of something like distrust — of what, she couldn't say. “John came through?” he said, carefully neutral.
“John was out for a smoke, but Miguel was good to me — even had spares.” They sat down beside Mal, spreading the package’s contents over the table: a blood-pressure cuff, a stethoscope, and a handful of blood-testing kits. They glanced briefly at the stove, bottom lip pulling gently before they re-focused on Mal. “How are you feeling?”
“Shaky.” Kaia wouldn't dare fetch themself a bowl of stew without being expressly granted permission, but Jay's house rules had always been that you served yourself unless both your arms were broken, and he would not pick up on the disconnect until his guest fainted from hunger. She pushed herself out of her seat and walked to the stove, moving easily through the kitchen cupboards to find a clean bowl and ladle out a serving. "How's Goose?" She wasn’t bothered that Willow had dropped them off and puttered away in the night without a word — he had a war to tend to, after all — but Goose’s quiet departure worried her. They hadn't spoken up at all during the boat-ride to Delany, and they hadn’t even seen her home, peeling off along the way to sequester in their warehouse without a word of goodbye, just the sound of crutches clacking off into the night. Kaia would have stopped by on their way to the clinic, if not on the way back.
They sat up as she set down a bowl before them, falling into the food just as ravenously as she had. “They want to go charging in," they said breathlessly, speaking between mouthfuls. "First thing in the morning.”
“That’s suicide—“
“I know, I know, that’s what I said. It’s just— maybe you should keep your distance for a while. Hurt people always say things they don’t mean.” Basic need for sustenance accounted for in record time, they pushed their bowl away and pulled a testing kit out of its sterile packaging, laying the components out on the table as their voice turned soft, firm, and quiet. “You do owe them an apology, though. It's not my place to say why, but they're going to have a talk with you, after the funeral. Just let them be until then, alright?”
It wasn’t in her nature to leave people alone — Goose was hurting, and she wanted so badly to make it better, even if it meant hearing all the cruel-but-true things they had been holding back until now. That would be a problem for another day, she supposed; for now, she nodded and allowed Kaia to take her hand, watching curiously as they pricked her finger and dropped a sample of her blood into the vial. “What are you testing for?”
“As many things as I can.” They slipped the blood-pressure cuff over her bicep and pinned their fingers to the pulse in her wrist, eyes on the dial as they inflated the cuff. “Uncle, would you mind bringing over some tea for her? It should be ready.”
“No sugar.” She glanced over at Jay as she spoke, and almost recoiled at his disdainful expression, directed past her and squarely at Kaia. She blinked, suddenly off-balance, and quietly added, “Please?”
He nodded curtly, expression smoothing back into polite neutrality as he rose from his chair. She bit her lip hard enough to tear flesh as she watched the stiff line of his shoulders, wondering what disagreement she had missed, how she was supposed to navigate it and keep the peace when neither party would ever tell her what the issue was. Her gut seized in anxiety, and then with cramps, and with the wave of flushing heat through her body the rashes on her legs made themselves known again — spiteful, itching clouds of pinprick-marks, the worst of it concentrated to the insteps and between her toes. She was dutiful enough not to scratch open the skin with her sharp fingernails, but under the table she kicked off her moccasins and rubbed her feet against the legs of her chair, scrubbing hard enough to bleed.
“Calm down,” Kaia told her quietly, listening intently to the pulse in her forearm. “You’re throwing off the baseline.”
She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, counting back from twenty and thinking of warm gravy as they took a second reading. The cuff squeezed her arm and pumped to capacity, and as soon as she thought her fingers were going to fall off the air released and the sticky vinyl was pulled away from her skin. Kaia pulled the stethoscope out of their ears and scribbled down the measurements, glancing over at the blood-test; some of the markers were already activating, despite the minutes left to go. “Blood pressure’s low — not dangerously, from your last check-up, but we’ll have to keep an eye on it. I’m recommending that you keep Clover on a formula diet until you stop bleeding, just as a precaution: your body needs to prioritize replenishing the lost blood, and on the off-chance that your milk still carries the traces, those extra days will flush it out of your system before it can get to her.”
It was kind of them not to point out that weaning was likely closer on the horizon than planned, now that she was menstruating again, and Mal nodded silently at the decree.
“It was only vitamins,” Jay said, setting down a steaming mug of tea before her — he had a cup filled to the brim with black coffee for himself, but nothing for Kaia. “I’m sure she would be fine.”
Kaia frowned, eyes firmly on their work. “In my medical opinion, I say there’s enough of a risk to be cautious.”
She turned to Jay before he could pick more of a fight, mustering a smile. "It's lucky you had that formula ready, Uncle — you've saved me some worry. How much do we have left?”
“Plenty.” His head tilted in genial appreciation for the compliment, antagonism forgotten for the moment. “It’ll last until boarding, but we can stretch it out if we supplement with some solid foods, if you'd like a buffer.”
"Good." She ignored the look Kaia gave her, taking a scalding mouthful of her tea — bitter notes of willow bark, dandelion, and raspberry, all cocooned in soothing catnip, chamomile, and lavender. "I'll give her some solid food tomorrow, I think. Something exciting, as a treat."
The timer ended, and Kaia grabbed the testing card to study the results. Looking more thoughtful than worried, they lifted her chin and performed a quick examination of her neck. “T4 and T3 hormones are a little high — we’ll have to keep an eye on that too, make sure it doesn’t develop into a thyroid condition. Hemoglobin's good, iron's better than I thought: I'll test again in a few days, but I think, if all goes well, you'll be able to switch back to milk in about a week. Just focus on eating well and getting your strength back up."
"Bedrest, too," Jay muttered, taking a sip of coffee.
"After the funeral," she replied firmly. "Once Tai-Song is in the ground, I'll take it easy."
"I'll go with you," Kaia said quickly, perhaps sensing that Jay would argue for her to miss it. "I'm not too worried, but if you need anything, I can help out."
That was a good compromise, so of course Jay couldn't agree: "It's not proper for you to go — you didn't know him."
Kaia tilted their head, seeming bewildered at how that entered into consideration. "I can't go to support a friend?"
"You can come," Mal reassured them, and turned to Jay, willing him to let it go. "It's different in Kawehno:ke, Uncle. We all were there for Kaia when their grandmother died, even though we didn't know her well — I'd like it if they were there with me."
"And do you think that Yuen-Fa or Dominik or Willow want a stranger hanging around while they mourn? You may as well bring along the drone for the extra fuss."
"Anyone who has a problem with Kaia or Zed being there can come and explain to me why," she sharply answered, patience wearing thin on an issue barely worth sticking on. "But I don't recall seeing anyone else working to bring his body home, so I can't promise I'll listen."
"I won't make a scene," Kaia quickly promised, when Jay seemed unwilling to answer. "You won't even know I'm there."
"Good, it's settled." She continued to watch Jay, waiting for him to find something else to make noise about: instead of speaking to cede the argument or to keep it going, he rose out of his seat and collected the dirty dishes without a word, carrying them over to the sink to be washed. Her tightened shoulders relaxed as she rubbed her forehead and turned back to Kaia, gesturing tiredly to the cards and instruments before her. "What's next?"
"Let me see your legs." They moved to the floor and rolled up the hems of her pants, examining the rash-laden skin with a frown. "Still itchy?"
"Like you wouldn't believe."
"You can do another vinegar-and-baking-soda scrub in the morning." They reached into their bag for a roll of gauze, soaking it through with their water bottle before winding the lengths of damp bandages around her feet like a boxer's wrap, layering over them with dry ones. "This should help, until then — the water will keep the skin cool, and hopefully protect it from getting scratched open."
She sighed as the bandages soothed her skin — the water made the gauze cool and scratchy, enough to provide a little relief against the constant itch. Her limbs were heavy with exhaustion, but not heavy enough to make falling asleep at the table an appealing idea. She picked up her moccasins and her tea as she stood up, blinking sleepily down at Kaia. "I'm tired. Are you sleeping here, tonight?"
They fidgeted guilty. "Probably at Goose's," they said quietly, pursing their lips in Jay's direction; he had his back to them, attention focused on the dishes in the sink. "Okay?"
She nodded grimly, and gestured them to follow her to the nursery. "Come and say goodnight to Clover first."
"Of course, let me—" They stood and gathered up the discarded supplies; Mal caught sight of another furtive, distrusting glance from Jay, before he averted his eyes and muttered something to himself, lightly shaking his head.