space au.

[whatthefuckami]

Anne Bonny can never decide if she loves or hates docking in the Belt. Anywhere, maybe, but they're always in the Belt anymore; Earth's slipping away from her, everything from the wretched smell of garbage in the heat to the way the ground pulls everyone toward it, harder than anything out here. She's almost fourteen years old, married almost a year, and when she's off the ship, she doesn't have to worry about anyone on the crew cornering her.

She does, however, have to take care not to breathe too loudly, look too bored, eat too quickly, eat too slowly, slump in her seat--anything that'll set James Bonny off. Something always does, the one thing she doesn't think of, and he always makes her regret it. Today, it's fidgeting where she sits, trying to keep from putting too much weight on the burn blistering the side of one thigh.

"Fuck're you doing?" he snarls. They're in a bar, he with a bottle of what the Belters call rowm, she watching. Someone's supposed to meet them, a new job for the trawler to take up. Whoever it is, they're late, and her husband's pissed.

Anne stares at the table. If she talks back, it'll only be worse. She's done that--lived to regret it, too. There're things he can't do, here in public, but he's not above dragging her away somewhere he can, if he's mad enough. If he isn't, there's always the chance he'll go back to his beer and let her alone.

His hand lands in the matted mess of hair at the back of her head, yanking it so sharply that she yelps, tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. "I asked you a question."

"Sorry." It's no more than breath--he's pulling her head back so hard there's no room in her throat for any kind of tone. It's walking a line of broken glass, knowing how much to answer and how much to disappear into the chair beside him, and right now, she can hardly manage either.

Comments

are these baby icons even the right age, who knows, waves hands

[acreage]

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Enter: (1) James Holden, freshly dishonorably discharged from the UNN, and currently working aboard a shitty old freighter that's also docked in the Belt. He'd been leaving, really, when he noticed the sudden violent movement out of the corner of his eye.

It's not, exactly, his business. But that's never stopped him before.

[whatthefuckami]

Anne feels the grip on her head relax, and she takes advantages of the moment, gulping in air. It's going to turn, it always does, and she'll regret it in a second or two--but until then, she's going to breathe.

Her husband, meanwhile, he's got one hand going for his pocket, and fuck, is she going to pay for this later. Anne doesn't even look at the stranger, once her neck's bent the right way, too busy watching every move James Bonny makes. "Having a talk. Get on your way."

There's steel behind that instruction, something silent that takes it into the territory of demand. Who knows if the stranger'll figure it out before it's too late. Anne doesn't care--she just wants it all to be over.

[acreage]

"Funny, because it looks a lot like you're hurting a kid."

Holden's not armed; no reason to be, working on a civilian freighter, not working any kind of security detail. So, on the one hand, if this man is armed, that's a problem. On the other hand, he'd been pretty good in a scrap even before the military training.

Most importantly, this is wrong, so there's no situation where he doesn't push his luck here.

"Let her go."

[whatthefuckami]

Oh, fuck. Her stomach ices over like Ganymede outside the colony--and now she does look at the man, if only to try and get him to stop. She doesn't know how to communicate that in a look, every word you say's another lash on my back, but she tries. It mostly looks like she's expecting someone to punch her in the face: defiant, but in a flickering kind of way, glancing back every moment or two to judge where James Bonny's heavy hands've gone.

"Find your own business to tend to, sabakawala." His accent for Belter's terrible, and he doesn't try to hide it. Revels in it, maybe, pulling a gun out like all he means to do is polish the muzzle while they talk. "The wife and I already have ours."

This is the last warning the man's getting. Anne's not sure he realizes it.

[acreage]

He might or might not realize it. He certainly doesn't care, regardless.

Anne's expression doesn't do anything to cool his temper, despite her intentions, nor does the gun. The thing that causes him to blanch, briefly, is the word wife. He looks from Bonny to the child and back again, openly outraged.

He could, of course, back off. But that's not a real option if you're James Holden. What he does instead is hook a foot under Bonny's barstool, and give it a sharp jerk. With any luck, the man will lose his balance entirely -- or at least a little, momentarily.

[whatthefuckami]

Anne goes rigid when her husband's balance goes awry--and it does, he's drunk enough that he's not as quick as usual about any of his instincts except the mean ones. It's not enough to send him sprawling, but he clearly has to think to right himself.

And when he does, it's because he's coming up on the man who started this fight, looking to get his pistol wedged up against his ribs. There's no smart talking now; James Bonny means to kill his newfound enemy, and Anne's going to have to watch. She sits there, stone-eyed, and waits for it to be over.

[acreage]

The seconds it takes Bonny to figure out how to right himself are what Holden had been banking on -- it would've been better if the man had fallen, or at least dropped his gun, but you take what you can get.

In this case, that means moving so as to not be a still target, trying to land a punch before the man can get him at gunpoint.

[whatthefuckami]

The punch catches him in the cheekbone, knocking him off-balance again, and all Anne can think is hope his gun goes off, hope it gets him in the chest. If he was shot, she could run away someplace else on the station, and he'd have no idea where, once the blood was stopped. Or if he died--

You aren't supposed to hope people die. It's evil. She wants it with all the strength of her nails biting into her palms.

"Jesus Christ!" he roars, coming up again. Anne hears something in his gun click. "Twitchy little bastard, little pashangwala--"

[acreage]

Even when he was a cadet, there were two things he'd hear all the time. One was that he had a good head for strategy, but -- and this was the second -- that he'd inevitably bungle things with his hot head. Picking a fight with this man had been an impulsive decision, and he hadn't done a lot of thinking ahead.

Luckily, what needs to be done is pretty straightforward: get the man away from that gun.

Which is to say he'll duck in closer, trying to get a grip on Bonny's wrist to give it a good twist -- or bang it against the counter hard enough -- so he's forced to release the weapon.

[whatthefuckami]

It works, once the side of his wrist hits the edge of the counter, the bone slamming against the hard corner. With another shout, his hand's open and metal's skidding over the dirty floor. The bartender's coming over, saying something in a sharp voice, but it's too little, too late.

Anne slides down from her stool and scurries over to the gun, getting it between her hands the way she's seen some people do--the smaller ones on Bonny's crew and elsewhere, who can't handle kickback from a gun the same way. The grip's smooth between her palms, well-worn in places; the muzzle wobbles a little as she points it at James Bonny.

It happens fast, all of it, too fast to think. But then she's there, holding a gun when she's never shot one in her life, and her husband's attention's gone away from the stranger. Even with him looking at the stranger, aiming a punch with his free hand, Anne knows his mind's on her. He's going to kill her when this is over, or make her wish he did--if he walks away from this fight in one piece, she's going to catch all manner of hell.

[acreage]

Holding Bonny's other hand captive, there's no room to dodge when the blow comes. Bonny hits, and hard, enough to make Holden reel back a step or two, raising a hand to his face.

They're both, in this moment, distracted; but maybe it means Holden won't pay for the moment of vulnerability.

[whatthefuckami]

Anne winces, knowing the feeling of a punch like that. The stranger'll be lucky to get away with a black eye; if he's not lucky, it'll be a bent nose or a chipped tooth.

Problem is, with the stranger falling back, touching his face to make sure it's still there, James Bonny's wrenching his hands away and turning back to Anne. She can already see the murder there in his eyes.

What if he was dead, she thinks, her mouth acrid like it gets before she vomits, and pulls the trigger. The recoil knocks her back on her arse, skinny thing she is, and--if her husband's furious shout is anything to go by--the bullet's buried someplace in his flesh.

[acreage]

His head jerks up when he hears the gunshot, throbbing pain in his face momentarily forgotten.

It means he sees it when Bonny staggers back, touches at his chest and comes back with a bloody hand. The man growls, "You fucking bitch -- " as he falls.

[whatthefuckami]

Anne gets back up, crouching like she expects she'll need to spring away at any moment, and watches her husband crumple to the ground. I shot him, she thinks. I am going to watch him die.

It's a quiet, settled feeling, like the way water stays at the bottom of a cup when the gravity's going. She's seen people die before, but only from far away; she doesn't know what it looks like up close.

People are yelling. She knows that, distantly, but the whole world feels muffled, with too much space between her and everyone else for the words to come across. She talks a halting step closer, still staring at the blood soaking the cloth around the hole in her husband's chest, and watches his shirt get wetter and redder.

[acreage]

The next few hours pass in a blur.

He remembers crossing to the girl -- Anne -- and slowly taking her shoulders with shaking hands. Trying to make sure she was okay, unsure what else to do. There's Star Helix that gets involved, takes statements from the both of them, ultimately concludes domestic dispute. It would've gone worse for Holden if she hadn't clearly been the one with the gun, shot the man in broad daylight, no question to it.

Since it's a domestic matter, since the man was a Belter with no strong affiliations to OPA or anyone else, not much else is done. The XO on Holden's ship turns up to speak on his behalf -- must've heard about what happened -- but tells him afterwards that if he gets into any other trouble like this, he can consider himself out of a job.

He sees her afterwards, sitting outside the precinct, and approaches her slowly.

"Are you okay?"

[whatthefuckami]

Her muscles all stiffen when the stranger touches her, but he gets the idea pretty quick that she doesn't want to be touched. There's shouting, and people show up, and she has to make her fingers unwind from the gun--they're white with the effort of holding it, stiff when she finally lets go and a man from Star Helix takes it away.

She barely speaks when they take her statement, has to be told multiple times to answer the questions they set before her. She keeps forgetting to listen. All she really wants to do is curl up in a corner, someplace dark and tight and safe, and talk to nobody.

Anne's never killed anyone before. Stabbed someone once, with a table knife--lived to regret it, too--but never killed.

She notices that her leg's pained sometime after they have her put her thumbprint to a statement--in all the commotion, the blister on her thigh tore some, she'd bet. Wouldn't be the first time. She's sitting on a bench outside the station where all the Star Helix people have moved on to some other problem with a missing child, the good leg pulled up to her chest and the bad one stretched out. And the stranger's back before her, looking like he thinks she might shoot him, too. She doesn't have the heart to point out they took her husband's gun away.

(Some things, she learned even as she felt like she'd left her body and watched it from afar: his name is James Holden. He's not a pirate. He might've picked up bits and pieces about her--Anne Bonny, James Bonny, the Plague, pirates no one gives a damn about--but she's not sure.)

This means I'm a widow, she could say, or I don't know where I go now. Everyone knows what happens to a crew when the captain's gone--they pick a new one, keep going under new orders--but she doesn't know what happens to the captain's wife when he's dead. She doesn't want to know. She'll be damned if she ever goes back aboard the Plague, willingly or otherwise.

Lacking an answer that doesn't make her mouth taste like bile, she shrugs, looking up at him from behind her stringy red hair. He must want something, or he wouldn't be here--but she doesn't know what. Better off finding out before she says much.

[acreage]

He crouches down in front of her.

It brings him closer to eye level, but doesn't intrude in the way that sitting beside her might. He's not here to get into her space, or take anything else away from her. Of course she isn't okay; that's a stupid question.

What he says, softly, is, "I'm so sorry."

[whatthefuckami]

Her brows draw down hard over her eyes, mouth a tense little line as she regards him. It's a little bit suspicion, a little bit confusion. "Why?"

Because that's what people say when husbands die, you idiot. She can't remember the last time somebody apologized to her, though. Feels out of place, especially when all of this is her fault.

[acreage]

"For acting without thinking. For getting involved like that."

Not exactly for getting involved by itself, but. He could've done things better. There had to be a better way than what happened.

[whatthefuckami]

Oh.

She shifts, moving more of her weight onto her good side, her chin just about resting on her knee. Her gaze falls to her scuffed boots. "No one else ever did."

[acreage]

There's an anger that flares in his eyes, but he keeps it carefully off his face and out of his voice, or tries to.

"You should never have been put in that position in the first place."

Killing that man, or married to him.

[whatthefuckami]

Anne curls up tighter, then winces--her damn burn's chafing against the fabric of her pant leg. He's not angry at her, she's nearly certain of that, but he's angry. And that always puts her on edge, knowing someone's pissed and that she's the only thing within reach.

"He said--" Her throat closes up. She has to swallow before she can try to explain. Not defend James Bonny, exactly, but try to make that anger in this man's eyes disappear. Talking doesn't usually make things better, but that's because her husband hadn't liked to talk. This doesn't feel like that. "Told my ma he'd take care of me. Wouldn't matter about being undocumented, out here."