12. It All Tastes the Same

Kestrel stirred and let out a grunt of pain as he woke. Niko had laid him on the bed, an old and creaky but marginally comfortable thing that he knew had to be the same bed since the last time he’d stayed in the cabin. Kestrel’s shifting made the springs groan beneath him. Sunlight spilled over his face in slats from between drawn blinds; his hair fanned around him on the pillow like a wild halo. The faintest wisp of blond stubble graced his cheeks.

Niko shook his head, pulled from half-sleep himself. He sat forward in the makeshift bedside chair he’d stolen from the small dining table setup. The cabin offered a far more comfortable couch, but he wanted to be near when the other man woke. Even so, he felt a rush of unbidden nerves as Kestrel opened his eyes. He looked tired—no, exhausted—though some of the color had already returned to him. Baouban’s emergency patching had done the job. He’d been unconscious for two days.

Niko’s suit beeped in warning. He was running low on battery charge.

Kestrel twitched at the sound, turning his head sharply towards Niko and moving to sit up. Pain seemed to stop him in mid-movement, and he reached up reflexively to touch the bandaging across his shoulder and ribs, his breath hissing out through his teeth.

“Hey,” Niko said, slowly rising from his seat. The movement coaxed another warning beep from the suit. “It’s just me.” He briefly wondered if that was as reassuring as he’d meant it to be.

“Where—?” Kestrel asked. His voice was thin, hoarse.

“We’re at a safehouse. Nobody else knows where this place is.”

Kestrel lay still a moment on the bed, his tired, half-lidded look turning more vibrant, sharper, more acutely aware. He blinked rapidly, then pushed himself, though slowly this time, to sit up.

“Hey, take it easy,” Niko said. “You were shot.”

“So, this is what it feels like,” Kestrel said quietly, as though the irony of the idea amused him.

“Yeah, it’s not one of my favorite experiences, personally,” Niko said.

Kestrel glanced at him. “Someone managed to shoot you in that thing? I want to know their secret.”

Niko grunted. “Believe it or not, the suit’s a new addition. Most of the hunting I’ve done was without it.”

“RapiGel,” Kestrel observed, his attention back on his wounds. He peeled the bandaging back over his shoulder and prodded at the rubbery glaze over darkly bruised and sutured skin. Niko winced at knowing how much the gesture had to hurt, but the wound looked clean and was already closing.

“Yeah, the guy who owns this place helped you.”

Niko could see the muscles in his bare back tense sharply. The old and faded scar peeked out from beneath his bandages. Kestrel turned to look at him, eyes cold and sharp. It was the same distrust Niko was used to seeing pointed at him. “You said no one knew about this place.”

Niko glanced around at the cabin. It was small and plain, with a scattering of aged, dinged-up furniture and wooden walls. He’d drawn all the window blinds closed, though late afternoon light still slipped through in stubborn patches. “Baouban won’t sell us out. He charges premium but never gives away the secrets trusted with him. I’ve stayed here before a few times. This is a house for people who don’t have anywhere to go. No questions asked.”

Kestrel didn’t look convinced. He glanced away, his gaze trailing over the trappings of the cabin. Niko wondered what he thought of it all. He wondered what Kestrel thought of a lot of things.

A heavy silence fell between them that lingered.

Then Kestrel tensed again, turning a sharp and urgent gaze towards Niko suddenly. “Your phone.”

“What about it?”

“Give it to me.”

Niko hesitated before popping the slender, transparent glass chip free from his suit’s arm compartment. He held it out to Kestrel, who took it quickly.

“I have it shut off, so you’ll need to turn it back on first—”

“Good,” Kestrel murmured. Niko heard him release a quiet sigh that he could only think of as relief. Kestrel hunched forward into himself, fingernails digging and prying at the tiny and delicate wiring laced throughout the glass phone. Niko wanted to ask but didn’t dare speak, merely observing him in the silence of the cabin. Finally, Kestrel pulled a single, silvery-blue thread of wire free, thin as a human hair, then crushed the fragile thing between his fingers. He held the chip back out towards Niko, glancing up at him again.

Niko took the phone and turned it over in his hand before slotting it back into the arm compartment of his suit. The suit beeped in warning again at all the movement. “So, what was that about?”

“Tracking wire. It’s a good thing you didn’t have that on, or you’d be sending out a beacon to anyone who can access your service provider. You won’t have to worry about it anymore.”

“Right. Thanks.” Niko wasn’t used to being on the run.

He bent down to dig through a duffel bag he’d thrown together—various supplies he carried with him on jobs that might be useful—and pulled out a small bottle of painkillers and a folded, spare gray t-shirt. He opened the bottle and handed two pills to Kestrel.

“Here, take these. It’ll help.”

Kestrel did, swallowing them with a glass of water Niko had already put at the bedside table in anticipation of his waking. He rolled and shifted his shoulder, his expression turning tired and thin again. He looked at Niko, and Niko caught a light sheen of sweat on his face in the striped light of the bedside window. He held the shirt out to Kestrel, who took it and pulled it on. It was at least one size—maybe two—too big for him, hanging off his narrower frame.

He still bore the mark Niko had left on his neck, though significantly faded. Niko had to look away, or it would kill him.

“You helped me,” Kestrel said after a long silence.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Why?”

“It was the right thing to do,” said Niko.

“Was it?”

Niko stared at him. “It’s what I wanted to do.”

Kestrel drew quiet for a moment. “That was your brother.”

The air left the room, leaving nothing to breathe. The cabin felt suddenly like it was suspended in space, rather than drenched in sunlight. Niko didn’t have anything to say.

Kestrel had been conscious during their argument, after all.

He looked up at Niko, unexpected sorrow slanting his brow. “You’re close to him.”

I was,thought Niko. He cleared his throat and sank slowly back into the bedside chair, his suit issuing another warning beep. “Yeah, I am.”

“Will you tell me about him?”

It wasn’t what Niko expected, but Kestrel never was. He was always shifting, slipping through Niko’s grasp every time he thought he had a hold.

Where to start?

“So. There’s a lot here. I hope you don’t have anywhere to go.” He offered a wan smile.

“I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“Zann’s actually my half-brother. We weren’t really that close as kids, or anything. I loved him, of course, but we were just very different people. He was quiet and broody and didn’t have a lot of friends. He buried himself in school and got top grades in his class. Meanwhile, I just wanted to play football and occasionally beat people up.”

“Oh,” Kestrel remarked. “That’s not surprising. So, you were the school bully?”

“Eh. Not really. I just liked looking for reasons to fight. I actually knocked some of the real bullies around and kept an eye out on the kids they targeted. I looked out for Zann and my baby brother, Ryen, too. Zann got it bad sometimes. He was a smart little dweeb and a magnet for assholes. Even though we weren’t close, I still made sure that somebody always had his back. Though I think he mostly just found me annoying.

“It wasn’t until, uh, until Ryen and our mom got killed that Zann and I started to really bond. Ironically, he’s my best friend now.”

Or was.Niko had no way of knowing how things stood with Zann and thinking about it made him feel ill.

“You mentioned that about your mother and brother,” Kestrel said softly. “Back on Sunorrna.”

“Yeah, uh. It’s actually why I got into bounty hunting.”

“What happened?” Kestrel asked. Niko sighed, slumping into himself heavily. The deaths of his loved ones were precisely the last things he wanted to talk about right now. But wasn’t it grief and loss that had set them both on this very path that led to being here now? Their losses were the gravitational pull that had drawn them into orbit around one another. Niko felt he had to honor that.

“My mother, Yesenia, and brother, Ryen, were out running errands together when two guys accosted them. They wanted money. My mom just tried to give it but my brother—he was only thirteen at the time—put up a fight. Tried to protect her, I think. He gave them some trouble. The whole thing escalated and they both got hurt. But in the end, the guys got the money anyway. And could have left. They could have just left.

“But they didn’t. As they were leaving, one stopped and… and seemed to reconsider. He turned around. Ryen had given him a bloody nose. I guess he just didn’t like that. There was no reason, though. No reason to take their lives. But he did. He shot them both, right on the street. And then they fled.”

“Niko, I’m so sorry,” Kestrel said quietly, his eyes full of grief and sympathy. Niko figured if anyone could understand losing their world to senseless violence, it was him.

He shook his head and continued. “We had footage of it and everything, but they were never actually judged guilty. They caught a loophole in the system, some plea deal where in the end they only got convicted of theft and assault. And due to their cooperation, they served a whole two fucking weeks in jail with a month of community service. They skipped town after that. Ended up on the other end of the galaxy… counting their lucky stars. I guess.”

Kestrel said nothing. Niko could only imagine him being hardly surprised at hearing justice often failed those who needed it most. His insides twisted in shame as he thought of how he’d kept trying to use that very reliance on upheld justice to convince Kestrel to stop.

He’d just wanted there to be a better way than the dark and deeply isolated path Kestrel was on.

“Zann and I were livid. We didn’t want to just sit around and do nothing. We couldn’t. He ended up in the force and I became a hunter. He’s always had an investigative mind. When— After they died, even though Zann was just a teenager still in high school, he demanded the footage. We both watched it.” Like the Honeybliss recordings, that footage was something that had burned itself into Niko’s brain for the rest of his life. He still had nightmares about it sometimes. “But he watched it over and over, trying to dissect it. Trying to see if there was something we’d missed.

“Anyway— We worked together like that for years and it was great. He sent me after guys like them, trash who needed to be brought down. I never took small jobs on petty shit like theft. I only went after the absolute worst. The people who were truly a stain on society. It became my niche. I was known for it over time. I took jobs other hunters didn’t even want to touch. I honestly loved it. It was the first time I felt alive since what had happened.

“All the while, we worked together in private to find where our family’s killers ended up. It took a few years but eventually we did. Had to pull some strings in the black market, even. It wasn’t… it wasn’t entirely legal, but I hunted them down. I found them and I killed them. It wasn’t for Galapol that time. It was for Zann, and for me. It was for Ryen, who never got to grow up.

“I got the first one, but the other guy—the one who’d actually shot them—he was a real son of a bitch to get to. Quick and tough and just wouldn’t die. I kept after him. I was unstoppable. I was a monster. I didn’t sleep, I hardly ate. I’d been shot and just kept going. Nothing else mattered but getting to him.

“I finally did. I had him cornered in a skyscraper he was squatting in on Celelast. He’d gotten me disarmed so I was on him and I—I saw my chance. I slammed him right through the window. We both fell. It was nineteen stories.”

Niko laughed out his exasperation. “He broke my fucking fall. I don’t know how, but I survived. I shouldn’t have. People don’t survive falls like that. He ended up a stain but all I got was a shattered spine. I was lucky.”

Kestrel watched him quietly. “You were prepared to die for it,” he said.

“Yeah. Yeah, I was. I did things like that a lot.” Still do, Niko thought sardonically, and continued. “Stupid shit to make sure I got my mark. But this was different. Everything about this was different. All that mattered was that I saw it through to the end, at any cost. Even myself.”

“I understand,” Kestrel said. “I knew I probably wouldn’t survive this the moment I decided I was going to do it. It’s the other reason I’m saving Uru Taal for last. Other than hoping he hasn’t slept a night since I started. I thought it would be good motivation to not let myself give up early. To keep going and living no matter what.”

“Seems it’s worked out well so far,” Niko said.

The small, sly smile that graced Kestrel’s lips flooded Niko with utterly disproportionate warmth at the sight. He found that he liked making Kestrel smile. The man looked far better wearing a smile than the cold, bitter expression he usually carried when Niko crossed paths with him.

His smile faded and he eyed Niko. “Can I ask you something?”

Niko swallowed. “Yeah. Of course, sure.”

“I understand why you did everything you did regarding your family’s killers. Even to the point of going out that window. I’d probably have done the same. But I— You’re someone who understands what it’s like when your family is taken away by people who couldn’t give two fucks less.”

Niko glanced away. He knew where this was going.

“In your own experience, you had to take it into your own hands. Because no one else would.”

“Mmh,” Niko acknowledged.

“Then why? Why all the insistence on going to Galapol for justice?”

Niko cleared his throat. Because I thought if Zann knew, he would make a difference. Because I wanted to keep you safe—from yourself. From everything that wants you dead now. Because I’m selfish. Because I’ve been there before, and in the end, it only left me broken.

In so many ways.

“I guess I just wasn’t ready to let go of the hope that there could still be good out there. I’m sorry, Elliott. For being a hypocrite. For trying to stop you from doing what I would have never even let anyone else stop me from.”

“It’s alright, Niko. You did what you felt was right. I can’t fault anyone for that.”

“No, it’s not just that.” The words launched themselves from Niko, frustrated and sharp before he could take them back. “I have been there before. I know what it’s like. You can’t look away. It’s all you want to do. You live for it. The revenge becomes you. But then, one day, it’s over. And either you end up dead, like I almost did, or you end up having to live with the fucking void that comes after.”

Kestrel fell quiet.

Niko ran his hand over his face and the suit beeped again.

“What is that?”

“It’s my suit. It’s about out of battery and every time I move it uses a little bit more.”

Kestrel looked at him oddly. “Why don’t you ever take it off? You never do.” A thin smile crept across his lips again. “Am I really that scary? I guess I should be flattered.”

“No, it’s…” Actually, he wasn’t entirely inaccurate. The idea of Kestrel seeing him without his armor did terrify Niko. But not for any of the reasons the other man could probably have guessed. Niko felt a swell of anxiety, monstrous and consuming as the waves of Valaevanas, rise up whenever he thought of Kestrel seeing him in the chair for the first time, unable to do the feats he regularly pulled in their skirmishes.

There was also still the non-zero chance that Kestrel might weaponize his condition and leave him stranded when Niko couldn’t stop him.

But in the end, what scared him most was the idea of Kestrel seeing him as somehow… less. The very thought stole his breath away. It hurt.

But he had no choice now.

“I—” He swallowed. “I can’t walk without the suit. You know how I said I fell? Broke my spine? I didn’t really recover from that. I have paraplegia. The suit’s a custom commission my brother bought me that has neurotech. It lets me walk, but I can’t feel my legs when I do, so it’s tricky.”

Niko forced himself to look at Kestrel. He had to know. Kestrel looked shocked at the revelation, but his gaze quickly shifted to fascinated—even outright impressed. “So, you’re telling me that every time you ran after me, jumped, fought, you couldn’t feel what you were doing?”

“Uh. Not really, no.”

“That’s impressive, Niko. You’re quite audacious.”

Stupid, more like it,he thought. And stubborn.

“I’m going to go charge it. There’s a port in the ship I hook it up to. I have a chair there.”

“Do you need any help?”

“No.” Niko stood and walked out of the cabin and into the clear, late afternoon air of Vorna-12. Great trees towered all around him, their trunks rivaling the cabin in width. Their lofty canopy served to keep the safehouse obscured. The suit beeped at him again and he glanced at the indicator on his arm. It read six percent.

“Shit,” he mumbled. Closer than I thought.

Niko entered the So?adora and unlatched the suit, piece by piece. He hooked it up to its charger and transferred to the wheelchair he’d kept folded beside the charging port. Then he simply sat for a few moments, trying to clear his head. Kestrel knew now. He hadn’t taken the opportunity to dig into him. Niko hated how much he cared about that. It was like he was ten again, afraid his mother wouldn’t accept him for who he really was.

Zann, Loolae, and anyone else he’d actually kept communication with over the years since he fell had given nothing but encouragement and reassurance. But Niko still couldn’t grant that grace to himself. Even when he’d needed it most.

He made his way back down out of the ship, trying to steel himself, when he nearly startled at the sight of Kestrel outside. The other man stood against the doorframe of the cabin, his wounded shoulder slumped against it for support as he peered up into the trees. He was lithe and beautiful and perfect there in the sun. His wild hair shone in the dappled light as it poured in ribbons through the canopy.

Niko froze for a moment, his fear asserting control of every muscle. He looked at Kestrel and waited.

“Vorna-12?” Kestrel said, his gaze still cast upward.

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“I took a biology course that focused on the flora of alien worlds. I recognize these trees.”

Niko was more of an ‘in one ear and out the other’ kind of guy when it came to school. He hadn’t been able to graduate high school fast enough and had zero inclination to ever go further with it. “Sounds riveting.”

Kestrel turned his green eyes on Niko finally. A pleased smile spread across his lips. “It’s good to see you without the suit. You’re not just an abstract heap of armor. There’s a man underneath there after all.”

Niko felt himself flushing. The way Kestrel referred to him as a man was oddly thrilling. The fear that had wound itself tightly through him finally began to relent.

He tried for a gentle jab back at Kestrel. “Yeah, and you look better without that stupid assed bird mask. What was that, anyway? Cosplaying your own name?”

The clever clapback he’d anticipated never came. Instead, something dark shifted in Kestrel, the other man drawing into himself and looking away. His face drew into a startlingly bitter scowl.

“E-Elliott? I didn’t mean—”

“It was actually a present from my sister.”

Niko winced. Oops.

“It was the last thing she ever gave me. We were supposed to be going to a costume party together and she bought it for me. She thought it was funny, because of our last name and everything. We never got to go, though. She died the night before.” He hesitated before continuing. “I—I thought if I wore it, I’d feel closer to her somehow. Like she was with me through this. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Niko said. A sullen and uneasy quiet fell between them, until he spoke again. “Are you hungry? It’s been days since you last ate anything. I’ll make us some food.”

“I’d like to help,” Kestrel said.

Niko made his way into the kitchen—a small corner of the cabin with dilapidated cabinets. One didn’t hang right any longer, settling at an angle. The place had certainly seen wear and tear since he’d last been here four years ago. It had never been any semblance of luxury, nor had Baouban advertised it that way. But it did what it needed to do, and when you needed quick and reliable shelter, this was it.

He’d once heard a mercenary call Baouban’s safehouses ‘the most premium hovels in the galaxy.’ She hadn’t been wrong.

Kestrel followed shortly after, closing the door quietly behind him. Niko sifted through the cabinets, having to fight the crooked one. It was never much, but Baouban kept the place stocked with food and supplies, and from what Niko could see from his chair, the cabinets looked to have a decent selection of dried goods. A particular bag caught his eye and Niko couldn’t help the wide grin that spread across his face.

“Baouban, I could kiss you.”

Tortilla chips.

“Hey, Elliott. Do you like nachos?”

“Sure. That doesn’t sound like much of a meal though, if I’m being honest.”

“You haven’t tried them how I make them. Hey, could you, uh…” He pointed to the bag of chips which peeked out from a higher shelf. Kestrel reached up and handed it to him. Niko felt a blossom of warmth as he did—Kestrel was decidedly a much better assistant in the kitchen than T1-N4.

Niko froze.

Tina. Galapol had undoubtedly combed every inch of his apartment long since by now. Including the little assistant bot—and all of the deeply incriminating texts synced to her. And call records.

And a certain picture.

If there had ever been a chance of turning back before, it was gone now.

“What is it?” Kestrel was staring at him. He looked nervous and Niko realized it was likely a mirror of his own expression. He forced himself to appear neutral and shook his head.

“It’s nothing.” Niko maneuvered to the refrigerator and opened the freezer, praying for any sort of frozen meat. He didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to talk about everything that now lay exposed to Galapol. It would only bring the mood back down, and at this point, there was nothing either of them could do about it.

“Bingo,” he said, reaching into the back of the freezer and procuring a pack of gray, frozen meat encrusted with freezer burn. A single sticker on the front read: CHICKEN THIGH, with something else in Dvaab printed beneath it. Niko examined the meat closely; given that Baouban probably restocked the place through black market vendors, it was likely this was one of the myriad counterfeit ‘chicken’ meats that actually came from weird little alien fauna.

In the end, it all tasted the same. If you didn’t think too much about it.

They scraped together a scattering of ingredients. Niko would have loved to have had fresh vegetables and aromatic herbs, the way his mother had used when cooking. But he had to make do with a jar of dried cilantro flakes, shredded cheese, two old onions, broth, cumin, salt, and canned tomatoes.

They cooked together, Kestrel processing the vegetables as Niko cut the meat. Niko boiled the shredded meat and onions in broth until they were tender, then mixed it all together over a generous bed of tortilla chips and topped it with heaps of melting cheese. It didn’t escape him that the more the cabin filled with the scent of cooking food, the more Kestrel stared at the pot, pupils blown. He was definitely hungry.

It was surreal to be immersed in such a simple—domestic—task with the galaxy’s number one most wanted. Surreal, but not unwelcome.

This was something Niko could get used to.

When they sat down to eat, Kestrel was ravenous, digging into the food the moment his plate touched the table. He didn’t stop until every last scrap was gone, working out a ‘Diff if rully good’ through a mouthful of chicken. Niko swelled a little with pride, trying to ignore the fact that Kestrel technically hadn’t eaten in days, was probably famished, and would likely have given the same response if Niko had plated a raw potato for him instead.

After they were finished, they sat together at the little dining table, where Kestrel picked curiously at a vulgar engraving so ancient it predated Niko’s first stay here. He was already looking better, the color returning to his complexion.

“Elliott,” Niko said. “I told you about Zann. Will you tell me about Cleo?”

The light left Kestrel’s gaze and he stayed silent a while. Niko thought he had stumbled yet again and loaded up an apology, when the other man began speaking.

“Our parents really were awful. Our childhood home was dysfunctional and chaotic at best. Terrifying to be in on occasion. I don’t know why. They’ve always been that way. They would fight and scream and hit each other, and when it got particularly bad, it would spill over onto us. That started happening more and more the older we got.

“Anything could set them off. My mother was a ticking time bomb of anxiety and rage and any little perceived slight sent my father into violence. It’s probably good I got out when I did, because if I’d been there as a teenager, I think I would have started goading him on purpose. I’m like that. I can’t help but push back when people are awful. I don’t take it lying down. Neither did Cleo. She never antagonized them, though. But the moment either of them—especially our father—turned their rage on me, she was there, stepping in between us. She knew how to manipulate the situation, knew how to draw their attention and anger to her instead.

“I fought for her too, but she always hated it. I remember the first time I did. He was… he was choking her. She’d tried to keep me back but I was on him, punching and hitting him in the leg until he had no choice but to stop. I’d gotten his wrath too for it, of course. Later, Cleo was so upset at me for doing that. She always admonished me if I tried to pull their anger back away from her. She wanted to keep me innocent, I think. As innocent as growing up in that fucking household could ever be.”

Niko winced, nausea threatening to give him an unwanted encore of his cooking at the memory of Mary Kestrel telling the interrogator that Elliott had done that same violent act instead. Everything they’d used to paint their son as a monster was projection. They were the only ones who had ever harmed their children. There was never confusion nor derangement, only parents who didn’t deserve the family they’d been gifted. No wonder Elliott had changed his shared middle name the moment it was legal.

“She would send me away when it got really bad,” Elliott continued. “She had a method. I had terrible anxiety when I’d hear them start fighting. We knew all the tells. We knew when it would spill over onto us. So, Cleo would take me by the hand and lead me into her closet and put her favorite headphones on me. They were her birthday present. They were pink and had incredible bass. She really loved music. She’d turn on her favorites—pop songs from girl groups and idols and boy bands—and calm me down with it. It blocked out the shouting. The other sounds too.

“I still turn to music to this day when the anxiety gets to be too much. I put on her old songs and shuffle them with new ones. I’ve been fond of Hayura and Kuliedi Taan lately. It really helps me calm down and reminds me of her. She would have gone nuts seeing them collaborate.”

“So,” Niko interrupted, “do you always listen to music during your assassinations?”

Kestrel eyed him oddly. “I do.”

“Picked up your music frequency on Yhanwe-ha,” he explained. “It’s how I knew you were nearby.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

“Does it give you anxiety? Going out there and doing, uh, what you do.” Niko had imagined Kestrel cool and detached as he picked out his vantage point. As he lined up that pivotal shot.

“Of course it does,” Kestrel said. “Sometimes I can hardly stand it. I get panic attacks over it. I’m scared I’ll fuck up. It’s so much pressure. And once I’m actually there and not just planning it out anymore, it hits me every single time that this is all happening right now. And that it’s all very real.”

Niko blinked.

“What? Not what you expected?”

“I guess I imagined something far more aloof. You talk like you relish the work, even.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I do. Every time I spray one of those bastards’ gray matter, I celebrate. But it doesn’t mean I’m not scared, too.”

Niko thought about that for a moment, then tried to bring their thread of conversation back to Cleo. “You said when Cleo was sixteen, she finally got out of there?”

“Oh. Yes. She’d been auditioning with talent agencies in secret and wanted to represent herself. I’m not sure what strings she pulled but I think her agent realized she was in a pretty bad place and made some things happen for her in the background. In the end, Cleo was allowed to represent herself instead of as a minor with parental permission. The moment she got her first big check, she got an apartment. There are hardship laws on Delevia, where we lived, for people fifteen and up who are in a legitimately dangerous situation, so she got it for a discounted rate. After that, she was free. And she took me with her. I think in the end, our parents were relieved to not have to attempt taking marginal care of us anymore. We shared a cramped little studio for a while as she saved up. She was on me like a hawk. Made sure I stayed in school, that I kept my grades up, that I didn’t end up in some unsafe situations when I hit puberty and discovered other boys. She kept an eye on me. She was more of a mother to me than my own had ever been.”

“You mentioned she put you through college.”

“Yes. I wanted to get a job to help pay for it, but she fought me and said she wanted me to focus on doing the best I could at my studies. She was always telling me how smart I was, how capable, how far I’d go. How proud she was of me. But I wanted to do more. I wanted to return the favor and help her too. My dream was to one day be able to pay her back for everything she’d ever done for me.

“But I—” His voice grew quiet. “I never got to. Instead, I— I—”

Niko ached. “Elliott. She wouldn’t have wanted you to.” It was quite a presumptuous claim about someone he’d never get to meet, but Niko knew. “Your sister just loved you that much.”

A tremor of grief crossed Kestrel’s face, and if Niko didn’t know any better, he would have thought Kestrel just took a third gunshot wound. Then it was just as quickly gone, suppressed again somewhere deep inside.

Silence fell over the cabin now, the air dour and oppressive. Even the light had at some point faded, giving way now to the early evening symphony of nocturnal insects and little creatures outside the cabin walls. To Niko’s surprise, Kestrel spoke, though. “Thank you. For letting me talk about her. I never get to.”

Niko swallowed back a lump of emotion. He got it. How long had it been since he got to talk about his mother? About the kindness of her smile, or the way she’d struggled to get up and going any time before ten in the afternoon. How she’d loved to cook for others. How she had once brought the law down on a young and spindly Zann after he’d mocked Niko for a rejected and broken heart in his sophomore year. In that moment, she’d made Niko feel seen and heard in a way he hadn’t been cognizant of before.

People often didn’t know how to treat others who were grieving. He knew that intimately now. They skirted infinite circles around the subject, never wanting to offend, to stir up sorrow.

No one talked about the lives of the departed. No one asked about Niko”s favorite memories of them. They just stopped talking about it at all. Even Zann had, too.

“Sure, Elliott. I’m glad I asked. She sounds like a phenomenal person.”

“So, what happens now, Niko?”

Niko felt the room spin. He hadn’t been prepared for such a hard-hitting question. He had no plan and no direction. Once his time at the safehouse was up, he officially had nowhere to go. “Well, for right now, we should probably both clean up. I don’t think either of us has showered in two days.”

“I mean after that,” Kestrel said. “You don’t get to stay in this safehouse forever, do you?”

“No. I don’t.” Niko fell quiet.

“We’ll think of something,” Kestrel said, rising from the table.

We. The word burned bright as a star. He’d said we instead of I.