“What are you doing?” Emilia asked, peeking an eye open to peer up at Conrad, who for some reason was suddenly there, smushing her up against the wall.
Inside the virtual room, Sorvell and Wyren looked at her dubiously, clearly wondering what she was talking about because she’d accidentally spoken in both the real world and the virtual one. Hanalea continued playing kyra, accumulating more and more points. Seriously, they were gonna owe her so much pay, it was quite frankly embarrassing.
Fortunately, they were all extremely wealthy, so it was more a scratch on their egos that they’d managed to play so poorly, their effort in the game varying between intense and extremely distracted—at one point she may have chased Wyren around the virtual space, trying to force answers about Hyr out of him, leaving Sorvell to randomly choose cards from their hands to play. That round may have been their most chaotic round on record, impressive, considering she’d once attempted to play a game of kyra in the midst of an orgy.
“It’s been a while since I spent any time inside a virtual room,” she told her friends, pushing a vision of them off to the side of her Censor before opening her other eye.
“Well~ we’ll just have to force you to come play with us more often, then. Get you used to it again,” Wyren tried to tease, although the look in his eyes was definitely more than a little pleading.
“Wait. What’s happening in the raid? Are you gonna die? Can we watch?” Sorvell asked, taking the chance to swipe her snacks away from her empty avatar—they’d been fighting over them since the first time he’d swiped them. The fact that neither Wyren nor Hanalea had bothered trying to intervene—either through telling them they were children or just, you know, summoning them individual snacks—said far too much about how long they’d known each other. Each of them, regardless of the virtual, lawless aspect of their interaction, enjoyed treating it as though they were physically together—as though they really needed to bicker over snacks, as though they couldn’t just log out to escape invasive questions with nary a thought.
That said, Emilia still obediently granted her friends access to her vision.
“Is it just me, or does that guy look kinda familiar?” Wyren asked, picking a card out of her hand to play because apparently they weren’t stopping the game.
“A bit…” Sorvell grumbled, trying for an obscure trick and swearing when Hanalea cut him off. “My Censor’s coming up with nothing, though.”
“Nothing?” Wyren asked.
While both Wyren and Hanalea kept their temporary Censors on most of the time these days—at least according to the gossip she’d read over the years—Sorvell was the only Baalphorian, and in the end, even after a few decades of constant use, most Free Coloniers could never quite match the skill a Baalphorian had with theirs. It probably didn’t help that in cases like this—Sorvell leveraging his Censor to scan through his memories and the people he knew to see if he could find anyone who could have triggered the feeling of familiarity Conrad had brought on—most Free Coloniers chose to rely on their Baalphorian friends, rather than figuring out how to do it themselves.
Practice made perfect, but just like new Censor users tried to lean on their older relatives and friends, so did grown Free Coloniers, even if they knew better.
Wyren and Hanalea definitely knew better.
“Nothing,” Sorvell agreed, his frown showing even through the small reflection of the virtual room. “I swear, there’s something…”
“Ever meet someone named Sorvell in a raid?” Emilia asked Conrad, quickly tacking on the nickname her friend often used in raids.
Conrad shrugged, holding her eyes as he said if he had, they hadn’t left an impression. Sorvell’s scowl darkened, although that might have been more due to Wyren’s snickers.
“You didn’t answer my question about what you’re doing. Did you have fun beating up the person Hyr sent you after?”
“He didn’t beat me,” another voice said, one that she hadn’t heard in…
Emilia’s head turned, slow, like if she moved too quickly her childhood friend would disappear. He didn’t. Darrian was there, standing a few feet away, blocked by Conrad just enough that if she’d stayed staring up at him, she never would have seen him.
“Darrie…”
Conrad had barely stepped back before Darrian was there, hauling her into a hug, her feet left dangling because while her friend wasn’t nearly as tall as Hyr, he was still big.
“Emmie… you’re here.”
“Dude, this is so unfair. Why does Darrian get to be the first one to run into her again?” Wyren complained, Sorvell unhelpfully pointing out that Olivier, Simeon and Hetexia had run into her before Darrian, not to mention Samina. “That doesn’t make it any better! Olivier is… Olivier. Simeon and Samina were necessities, and Hetexia was an accident.”
Apparently, her meeting with Malcolm hadn’t gotten around yet—unsurprisingly, considering he wasn’t really a member of their unit and only occasionally sent messages—usually about Black Knot code alterations or ongoing echo attacks—to anyone, as far as she knew.
“I think Darrian is an accident as well,” Sorvell continued, gasping dramatically when Wyren erased his stolen snacks from the virtual room.
Emilia’s shoulders shook with suppressed laughter as she watched her very adult friends act like children, Hanalea continuing to play like nothing strange was happening around her.
“Are you crying?” Conrad asked, pushing her hair back to peek up at where she was tucked into Darrian’s neck, the man intent to keep her in his arms as long as he could. She didn’t even have to ask how long he intended to keep her there; she knew he’d hold her until she asked to be put down.
“No. Laughing,” she said, explaining that she’d been left there by Hyr with an order to chat with her friends and had been dragged into a virtual room with a few to play card games.
“They didn’t make you start a game of Jo Rong, did they?” Darrian asked with the darkness of someone who had been conned into playing before. It had been her—she’d been the one to con him and a dozen other people into that in the last few months of the war. Had he not learned his lesson then and been conned into another game since?
“No, just kyra,” she said, unsurprised when his avatar slid into a chair next to hers a few seconds later, intent to listen to their friends’ commentary just as much as she was.
“You are playing exceptionally badly,” he noted, rearranging their physical bodies until she could pull back and meet his eyes.
Darrian looked just as he always had, the intense little boy he had been just as attractive as the man he now was, just as dishevelled as well. When they were kids, half of them had been dirty little monsters, covered with mud and grime, seawater and kelp, more often than not. Now, her friend was covered in a thin layer of sweat, his clothes—his oddly stylish clothes—looking more rumpled than they were meant to, and they were clearly meant to look torn up.
“Yeah~” she sighed, leaning back and trusting Darrian not to let her fall. He never would.
While Darrian would never be as strong as some members of their unit—of their friend group—were, he was one of the most trustworthy, the most forgiving and understanding—someone who would put the happiness of everyone else above his own, unless his friends forced him to put himself first. It was because of this that she had been shocked when even he hadn’t responded to her message about the raid rewards, why it made sense that out of everyone, he’d be the one to reach out to her about how he thought it was a mistake, putting himself into the vulnerable position of risking her ire over some unwanted contact.
It was also why she trusted him to keep her safe, there in his arms, his laughter warm as she explained the various things that had distracted her and the others from the game.
“I look forward to meeting your little syn,” he teased, eyes glimmering like he saw far more in her quest to force information out of Wyren than anyone else had, save perhaps Conrad, his expression having darkened as she talked about Hyr.
Seriously, what was up with him? While she certainly hadn’t seen them interact
that
much, most of the time, he seemed to adore Hyr just as much as he did her. Other times, he seemed liable to hiss at the syn. Probably, it was just because he knew the two of them needed to sit down and chat about whatever was going on between them?
Yeah, even Emilia wasn’t convinced her finicky, overprotective friend was only concerned about the weird sexual energy she and Hyr were dealing with.
“Little syn?” she asked, rather than confront Conrad about his weird mood. “You pick that and all these marks up from Conrad?”
Darrian’s pale skin reddened as she rubbed at a mark on his cheek. It didn’t come off, whatever had caused it staining his skin black. Not one of her skills, but definitely one she wanted to see in the guts of. “Yes, Con is a vicious little thing,” he teased, smiling down at Conrad and—
Wait.
What!?
“Con!? Con!?” Emilia wiggled, intent to get down and demand why Conrad was allowing Darrian, whom he had only just met, to use a nickname she hadn’t even heard before! “Why does Darrie get to use a nickname and I don’t? I’ve known you longer! And Hyr’s known you even longer—which is also totally unfair!—and doesn’t use
Con
either!”
Darrian, rather annoyingly, refused to put her down, and she was instead left to glower down at Conrad. The little shit just smiled up at her before tucking himself into Darrian’s side.
“
Darrie
gets to call me Con because he told me to use his nickname first. You’re just Emilia. What was it Samina said? Something about how only your childhood friends get to use your -ie nicknames? Apparently, Darrie is an exception? Or am I an exception?”
The Free Colonier blinked prettily up at Darrian, and what in the world was going on between these two? Something weird, that was for sure. That said, only Samina had ever really gone along with only letting their childhood friends use their -ie nicknames. There were a few members of their unit who had been granted -ie nicknames, despite only coming into their lives long past their childhoods. Nettie in particular not only went by her -ie name with everyone she cared about, but used almost all of their -ie nicknames, and while Emilia hadn’t gone around introducing herself as Emmie since she was a teenager. On the other hand, unless something had changed, both of her siblings used their childhood nicknames exclusively… unless their parents were upset. Upset parents seemed to universally use their child’s full name while lecturing them.
Still, while she didn’t generally go around using Emmie, she had no qualms about bribing Conrad with it if it meant she could use his own nickname.
“Emilia didn’t even offer me Em, which her newer friends use,” Conrad sighed after Darrian had explained that while he didn’t generally use Darrie with anyone other than his childhood friends and the occasional war buddy, he wasn’t as strict as Samina either. Rather, offering someone use of
Darrie
was vibe-based.
What sort of vibe, Emilia wondered, eyeing up her friends with a critical eye. Clearly, Conrad was either fucking with Darrian or actually interested, if his physical proximity and teasing tone were any indication. Unfortunately, she didn’t know him well enough to guess which it was. Darrian… she had no idea. As far as she knew, he’d never been with anyone, her Censor informing her that even in their group messages no one had ever indicated the man had had any sexual or romantic entanglements in the last decade either. Interesting.
“You can call me Em or Emmie,” she told Conrad, turning big, pleading eyes on him. Honestly, if he’d asked before or just started using one, she wouldn't have stopped him. She also wouldn’t have thought to ask if he had any nicknames either, if only because she knew Conrad wasn’t his real name. Why have a nickname for what was already essentially a nickname?
Then again, there had been that moment, before he’d given her a name, back in the Risen Guard Compound, where she’d assumed that whatever name he gave her wouldn’t be his, but might very likely be a joke.
Con
could be a shortening of his real name, she supposed, her Censor bringing up a list of every name it knew of that could reasonably have such a nickname.
It was, unfortunately, an extremely long list, given that several Free Colonies—including Nur’tha, although Emilia would die of shock if Conrad turned out to be from the Northern Tribes—had strict naming patterns. In Nur’tha, this ended in siblings sharing parts of their given names—Hyr and Myr, Wyren and Nyren, Gino and Phino—but it varied by Free Colony. Several, however, included
Con
as potential naming aspects, one southwestern Free Colony in particular having over three hundred names that included it.
Yeah, there was no way that was going to be helpful.
“Hm~ can I decide later which one to use? And I’ll just keep calling you Emilia until I decide?” her friend asked, his smile sharpening in a way Emilia didn’t like. Darrian, rudely, snorted. Clearly he had also experienced some of the Free Colonier’s chaos and knew that whatever he was planning, it wouldn't be good.
Whatever. She’d deal with whatever nonsense he got up to later. For the time being, they could be Emilia and Con.
“Alright, Con,” she said, leaning down to brush her nose against his, enjoying the way he—not to mention the friends still watching their exchange—laughed at her silliness.
Once, her life had been filled with joy and fun. It wasn’t that her new friends
weren’t
fun, but they were a different sort of fun. Where her university friends were parties and laughter, her childhood friends were shared stories of chaos and far too much confidence, her war buddies the desperate fun of people who knew death could come for them at any moment, while Conrad and Hyr were a different fun that they still had to figure out.
Emilia was looking forward to that—to finding all the joy and laughter and love that her trauma had led her to leave behind. She didn’t regret leaving it behind—she was self-aware enough to know she would have been a miserable, unstable drain on her friends. Still, a little part of her regretted waiting so long to—
[
Hyr:
Do not regret the decisions you have made. They have led to this moment, to your friendships as they are. A single change and everything would be different. I do not think you regret the way your life has turned out, so do not regret the decisions that brought you here.
]
Was it weird that Hyr knew when to send her that sort of message? That they knew exactly what to say and had the confidence to declare that she didn’t regret the way her life had turned out? Probably a little. It was comforting, nonetheless.
“Should we go find Hyr?” Emilia asked, frowning when Conrad began to cackle, Darrian’s hands tensing under her. “What?”
.
!
Arc 7 | Chapter 266: a good reunion; a good hug
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