Archive of Our Own

X years later

---

The message that changed your life came on a rainy day. The Astral Express was parked at Kalsas, where March had led a couple new recruits out on an aid mission for a nomadic group of Clayforms. It hadn’t stopped raining in the five days since the Express arrived, and on fifth, you were staring out the window, grateful to be home in your warm cabin, when your phone buzzed.

You’re always glad for an excuse to visit Claretwheel Temple. In the years since you first met Samatha, then an ordinary rank-and-file monk, the temple has nearly tripled in population – despite having fewer orphans than ever requiring their care. They’ve become all but self-sufficient, and even their need for outside mercenary defense has shrunk to a mere formality thanks to a hard-won treaty with the Borisin homeworld finally assuring them protection from their onetime biggest threat. Helping them back when they were a tiny, unknown faction was the best thing I ever did. Well, second best. Maybe third best… Top ten at least.

Claretwheel – and Samatha in particular – had never forgotten your assistance, much to your exhaustion: they could be so overbearing with their praise. Even so, every time you’ve visited, it’s been a joy to see one little slice of your dreams come true. The universe may not be at complete peace – may never be, no matter how many worlds you save – but as long as there’s a home for those willing to reach out and hold each other’s hands, there will always be hope.

The cabin door opens and your wife walks in, carrying a tray. “Chef made burgers today,” she says, setting it down and handing you one of two foil-wrapped meals. “Thought I’d bring them back here, since you didn’t show any sign of leaving our room today.”

“Thanks, Fi. Synth, right?” you ask, peeling the wrapper.

“You see any livestock around here?” Firefly teases as she opens her own.

“I still haven’t made it back to explore the newest cars. Could be hiding anything back there.” You take a bite. Convincing a professional chef to run away to the stars last year was the best thing you’ve ever done. Top… fifteen, definitely. “Oh,” you mumble, mouth full, “look who wrote.” You nudge your phone with your elbow and Firefly takes it.

“You can just call her Sam,” she chides you. “I barely even think of myself when I hear it anymore.”

“Nah. Too weird. And not as fun.”

“Who do you think she’s got there?”

“Mmm,” you shrug, mouth full. You swallow and breathe. “How about… the new Xianzhou general? Maybe she’s decided to retire the entire fleet and devote herself to pacifism.”

“You certainly don’t dream small.” Firefly shakes her head with a smile.

“Nice way to say I’m never satisfied. Nah, I dunno. Figure we’ll head there soon as March comes home?”

“Just ignoring the schedule? Pom won’t be happy.”

“We saved the universe. We get to cut in line.”

Firefly bumps you with her shoulder. “Never a humble hero, are you?”

“Not a chance.”

---

“Samatha!” you cry, throwing your arms around your fuzzy old friend. “You haven’t aged a day!”

“Aeons,” Firefly groans, “enough with that.” She clasps Samatha’s hand in both of hers once you let her go. “Sorry. That’s her favorite long-lived species joke.”

“I could say the same to both of you,” Revered Master Samatha replies with a toothy grin.

“Oh, I know it,” Firefly sighs. “Everyone else keeps getting older, and I’m still being mistaken for a teenager. Every time March takes us out drinking it’s a huge pain.”

“I swear,” you swear, “you give a girl the gift of eternal youth and she’s still not satisfied.”

“Always happy to spend another day in eternity with you, Star~”

Samatha lets out a barking laugh. “Looks aside, there’s no hiding that you two have become an old married couple.” She turns and waves you in. “Now, please, let’s get out of this cold already!”

The first time you visited Claretwheel Temple, you had expected some rustic, run-down shrine being held together by love and superglue, but the temple’s main building turned out to be perfectly modern in design and offering all the amenities you could ask for. But then, you grew up on a train, so you aren’t too picky. As you peer down an unexpected hallway to your left, you try to remember your last visit. “That new?” you ask, tipping your chin.

“Yes,” Samatha says, “our most recent expansion. Housing and facilities for another thousand people. We couldn’t have done it without your support.”

“Don’t start with that. I’m making a new rule: Every time you treat me like a stranger you’re hitting up for donations, I’m cutting one percent from your grant.”

“She’s let her fame and power go to her head,” Firefly tattles on you.

You stage-whisper to Samatha, “She’s hot when she’s mad.” When Samatha doesn’t laugh, you explain, “Get it, hot? ‘Cause—”

“Oh my Goddd,” Firefly groans dramatically. “Get some new material.”

“She loves me,” you brag. Then, content to give your wife a break (for now), you ask, “So, where’s your special guest we came all this way for?”

“Not a guest,” Samatha says as she leads you into the orphanage wing. “One of our charges.”

---

“What… is it?” you ask, looking through a window at a toddler playing with its caretaker. The baby looks generally human, but while it’s hard to be sure from this distance, it seems to have thin patches of fur starting to sprout on its upper arms and neck.

“Half-Foxian, Half-Borisin,” Samatha says.

You spin to gape at her and catch Firefly’s equally startled eyes on the way. “That’s possible?”

“Genetically, yes, we’re close enough, though a pregnancy surviving through live birth is uncommon, and the offspring are always sterile. Socially, of course…”

No kidding. I can’t even imagine how rare it must be. The Borisin position on Foxians has treated them as nothing more than animals for centuries, while Foxians have viewed the Borisin as monsters in return. Even with all the progress made in the last few years, it’s impossible to imagine the two species intermingling socially. “So, this little one…”

“Was incredibly lucky, all things considered.” Samatha relieves your unspoken worry, explaining, “She had loving parents who wanted their child, but her Foxian mother fell ill during childbirth and died shortly afterward. The father… He’s not a bad man. He genuinely cared for the child’s mother, despite all the stigma against it. However, single fatherhood is not generally practiced among the Borisin even in the best of conditions. Were the child full Borisin, the norm would be to have it raised in a military academy. But with this baby destined to be an outcast among its own people, he chose to give her to us.”

That doesn’t sound like the action of a good man to you, but it’s not your culture. Compared to the alternatives, maybe he truly thought this would give her the best life possible. He could have stayed here with her though…

“I suppose most Foxians probably wouldn’t accept her either,” Firefly says.

“Attitudes are changing,” Samatha says, “but not fast enough for her generation. I don’t expect to find someone from either of her peoples’ worlds willing to take her in.”

Well that’s crushingly depressing. But still, that this could even happen… maybe reunification isn’t as far off as everyone thinks. You get why Samatha called you here. This child is one tiny little sign that the future you’ve dreamed of isn’t impossible. “Thank you, Samatha. You were right, this is a wonderful surprise. Is there anything the Astral Express can do to help?”

“Stelle…” Firefly’s looking at you with a face you can’t identify.

“What?” You look from her to Samatha. They both seem to understand something you don’t.

“Would you like to meet her?”

You laugh dismissively. “I don’t know how to handle kids. ‘Sides, that’d just make me feel even worse when we leave her behind.” Don’t get too attached. That’s the Astral Express way.

“Stelle,” Firefly repeats, and you focus on her, trying to interpret her expression. Sad? No, that’s not it. She looks so intense… “I don’t think Samatha called us for the Astral Express’ help.” You continue to stare at her blankly. Barely above a whisper, Firefly says, “She’s asking if we want to adopt her.”

The world around you wobbles as you turn to the monk and stare, waiting for her to deny it. She doesn’t.

“Could you give us a minute?” You hear Firefly’s voice far in the distance, and Samatha walks away. “Stelle? Are you panicking?”

“Little bit.”

“Okay. Hug or no?”

“Yeah.”

You feel pressure around you, and gradually the world comes into focus. “This is…”

“A lot to take in. I know. Don’t rush.”

“Fi…”

“I know.”

---

“We can’t, right? It’s insane.”

“Why?”

“Why?! Because…” You try to speak, but words don’t form. Because you’re still a dumb little baby yourself. Because you’re on a suicide mission to save the universe from Destruction. Because you can’t risk having a child with your unnatural body and Firefly’s genetics.  Because your child would die before you. There are so many reasons, and yet… None of that is true now. I grew up. We already won. The kid doesn’t have our genes. And… a Borisin-Foxian kid could actually outlive me…

That last thought digs up its own fears, but you don’t have time for them right now.

“Because…” I’m scared.

“I’m scared too,” Firefly says. “It’s really sudden. But… isn’t this the chance you’ve been waiting for?”

“What about you?” you deflect.

“I’ve always known you were destined to bring life into the world in one way or another.” Despite your nerves, you manage to laugh at her flowery language. “And this is way better than you ascending to aeonhood and raising the dead.”

“I’m freaking out and you’re making fun of me.”

“Yep.” Firefly kisses the side of your head. “You think it’s hot.”

“Heh.” It’s still funny. “But seriously, Flyfly… is this what you want?”

“I can’t imagine anything more beautiful than seeing you get to be a mother.”

Not fair. She used that word on purpose.

“And… me too.” Firefly’s voice finally turns earnest. “You know I’d never even considered it before you saved me. There was no point thinking about it when I didn’t expect to survive. But even since then, for so long it felt like this world was too unstable to bring a child into. But now… You made it better, Star.”

“We did together. All of us.” You shut your eyes and think of the friends who didn’t make it.

“We did,” she agrees. “Now we get to create the future we want.”

“But there’s just… how… I don’t even know where to start. And a child of another species… I barely know how I work half the time.”

“I don’t know either. But first, all that aside, do you want to?”

If you didn’t want it, it wouldn’t be this hard. There’s no denying what this terrifying pressure in your chest means. Now you just have to make the words come out. I… want… You try not to hyperventilate. “I want—” You can’t complete your sentence before your throat closes up, but you nod rapidly. I want a child. This child. This symbol of peace. No, not a symbol. A person. My… You can’t get there quite yet, but you have time.

---

When Samatha returned, she found you and Firefly wrapped in an endless embrace. Your emotions were so exhausted that you didn’t even care that she saw. Firefly pulled away first and nodded to her. “Can we meet her?”

Samatha led you into a small room filled with toys and child-size furniture, nodded to the man looking after the child, and then left with him, leaving you here, now, sitting across a small table from Firefly, who’s holding the Borisin-Foxian child in her lap. It’s taking all of your focus to continue existing in this moment and not dissociate.

She points at you and looks down at the toddler. “That’s Stelle,” she says in a chipper voice. “Can you say Stelle?”

“Sss— taaa,” the baby hisses out.

“Hehe, that’ll work too, won’t it, Star?”

That does it. That’s the end for your control. You can’t move to wipe the tears you feel rolling down your left cheek. Why just the left? Why is only one eye crying? It’s a ridiculous thing to be thinking about, and that wet spot is the only thing convincing you this is real. You need to hear it anyway. “Is this a dream?”

“It’s not a dream,” Firefly says. “We’re here. We made it.” She gives you an impossibly beautiful smile. Then, lowering her face, she repeats in baby talk, “It’s not a dream. No it’s not. No it’s not~”

She’s too perfect. What am I doing? I’ll never— I can barely talk to other adults… How am I supposed to…

“Stelle? You want to hold her?”

“No—”

Firefly ignores you, carrying the child over and depositing it on you. “Don’t sit there like a log; come on, use your arms.”

Stiffly, you pull the kid onto your lap and hold her in place. No magic occurs. You don’t suddenly understand what to do in a flash of intuition. You don’t have a divine revelation and know beyond all doubt that this is what you’re meant to do. You’re still terrified.

But you want this.

“What do we call her?”

That finally freezes Firefly. “I… don’t know… You?”

You shake your head. “I thought about naming her after someone we lost along the way, but picking just one feels… and it seems wrong not to give her a name from her own culture. Actually…”

You really don’t like where your thoughts are going right now. It’s somewhere even scarier than the thought of being responsible for a child.

“I don’t feel good about ripping her out of her culture at all,” you say.

“Neither of her cultures want her,” Firefly says gently.

“I know, but this place…”

“Is wonderful, but it’s no replacement for having real parents. If she stays here her whole childhood, passed between caregivers… that’d be so sad, I think.”

“That’s not…” You really, really don’t want to say it. “Even at peace, raising a child on the Astral Express… there’s no school, no other kids, at least not who stay around.”

“What are you saying?” Firefly says, the shock on her face showing she knows exactly what you’re saying.

You realize you’re clutching the child tightly. You loosen your grip, and she leans against you, sleepily. It’s almost too much. I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to say it.

“What if we stayed here with her?”