The Difference Between Happy and Content

May 786 UC, Odin, Phezzan

The journey off Odin was somehow both easier and more difficult than expected. Reinhard didn’t process most of it. His mother took care of the broad strokes of calling in favors from old family friends, distant relatives whose names Reinhard had never heard before and would never hear again, childhood acquaintances, a man his mother had known before she was married, any string she could pull anywhere. They spent a night on someone’s couch, Reinhard unable to sleep, staring at the wall, Annerose’s feet draped over his lap as she snored loudly, his mother sleeping in a guest bedroom upstairs. They rode to the space port in the back of a van of workers, Annerose and his mother dressed in uncomfortable looking janitor’s uniforms, with Annerose’s hair tied in an unflattering bun and tucked underneath a cap that hid her face. Reinhard, who was too visibly young to pretend to be staff, dressed in a school uniform that someone had given to him, and clutched an identification card that had someone else’s name on it, and pushed all their luggage on a cart by himself, and answered every question that came his way with such an imperious and self assured voice that no one dared to ask him any questions.

“Yes, I’m quite sure that I know where I’m going. No, I’m not waiting for my family. I’m travelling alone. Thank you for the offer of assistance, but I’m quite alright. I’m meeting my uncle on Phezzan.”

And so they made it into a departing merchant ship, and that took them away from Odin. None of the three of them had ever felt the pull of FTL engines before. Reinhard’s mother fell into a dead faint the first time. Annerose covered her mouth with her arm, and Reinhard thought she was biting it to keep from throwing up, as she ran to their mother who was slumped over in her seat. Reinhard, for his part, felt the movement horribly in his stomach, but despite the unpleasantness, it felt natural in a way that little else had, and watching the stars outside the little porthole was a pleasure that took his mind off what had been left behind, if only momentarily.

He had begged Annerose to give him a piece of her jewelry, a little locket. She had relented, and Reinhard had tucked the chunk of Kircheis’s hair inside it. It was a girlish thing, maybe, but he wore it under his shirt anyway, against his chest, and he fiddled with it unconsciously as he looked out the window.

Although his mother had arranged the broad strokes of getting them off Odin, by the time they arrived at Phezzan, she was a wreck. Interstellar travel was difficult for anyone not in good health, and, in Reinhard’s lifetime, his mother had done little other than lay in the dark on her bed, not healthy on a good day. Although her willingness to go into action for Annerose’s sake had raised her in his esteem by several notches, that didn’t cure her general frailty. So that left Annerose once again in charge of the details. She booked them a hotel room, and, with the very last of their money, asked around after passage into the FPA. She found it readily enough. On Phezzan, as long as payment was at hand, no one asked too many questions.

It wasn’t as though refugees from the Empire were particularly uncommon. There was a steady stream of people going the opposite direction, as well. Most refugees in either direction got to Phezzan and then just stayed there. It was one of the easiest places to be, because anything could be bought and sold there, and for both Imperial and Alliance citizens, it was enough like “home” that they could be lured into staying. Annerose, though, made sure that they didn’t fall into that trap. She and Reinhard sat around the table of their dingy hotel room while their mother slept, and carefully went over their finances and situation. They had enough money for a trip out to Heinessen, but that sum of money wouldn’t stretch very far on Phezzan, especially since none of the three of them had particularly employable skills. Annerose might have been able to find work (again, no one on Phezzan would ever ask about age when hiring someone who looked enough like an adult), but, thinking over the types of employment that she could get, it seemed better to not linger. Besides, Phezzan was technically part of the Empire, which meant that arrest warrants could be served against them, if they were caught.

So, even though the idea felt more and more unpleasant by the second, they again boarded a ship bound for Heinessen.

Reinhard was alone in one of the ship’s hallways, leaning on the lip of the porthole window and looking out at the stars, when he was approached by someone whose footsteps he didn’t recognize. It was late, by the ship’s time, and Annerose and his mother were both sleeping. He had been unable to sleep, so he took a walk.

“Hey, kid,” the approaching person said. Reinhard turned and looked at the young man. He was maybe twenty, stocky, with blonde hair. He spoke in heavily accented imperial.

“Hello,” Reinhard said. He hadn’t met this man before, but he looked much like a younger version of the captain of the ship, so Reinhard presumed that they were related. “Konev, was it?”

“I’d say the one and only, but there are plenty around.”

Reinhard just nodded.

“Boris. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Reinhard von Müsel.” They shook hands.

“Where are you headed, Reinhard?”

“You don’t know the itinerary of your own ship?”

Konev rolled his eyes. “I was asking where on Heinessen you were planning to end up.”

“That hasn’t been decided yet.”

“So, no idea.”

“Do most refugees know where they’re going?”

“People are more likely to go somewhere if they know they have friends or something waiting for them,” Konev said with a shrug. “I’ve seen plenty of people go in either direction.”

“I’m sure I’ll figure something out.”

Konev laughed at his childish assurance. “Well, the refugee intake people aren’t so bad. They’ll at least give you a roof over your head, which is more than you can say you have now.”

Reinhard nodded. “I appreciate their charity.”

“Hah. They’ll want you to pay it back, eventually.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know.” Konev waved his hands. “They like it when refugees demonstrate their loyalty to their new home. That sort of thing. Make you look like you’re not just a leech, or a spy.”

“I’m not a spy.”

“Did I say you were? Look, kid, do you even speak--” Konev switched languages into what Reinhard recognized as the language of the FPA, but he didn’t understand a word of what Konev said.

“No.”

Konev grimaced. “You’ll want to learn.”

“I’m sure I will pick it up.”

“Yeah, better sooner rather than later. You seem like a smart kid.”

“Why are you talking to me?” Reinhard asked, suddenly suspicious.

“Hey, calm down,” Konev said, holding up his hands. “Can’t I be friendly?”

Reinhard narrowed his eyes. “You’ll forgive me for having my apprehensions.”

“What could I even be trying to get out of you?”

“Out of me?” Reinhard asked, the particular raise of his voice making the question quite clear. Konev laughed.

“Ah, I’m less smooth than I hoped.”

Reinhard crossed his arms and faced Konev. “So. What do you want?”

“How old is your sister?”

“Too young for you.”

“Jeeze, can’t a man get a straight answer? I’m not going to bother her if she doesn’t want to be bothered.”

“She doesn’t want to be bothered.”

“And you’re her spokesman?”

“Yes.”

Konev sighed. “Look, kid-- Reinhard-- give her my number, will you?” He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket, on which was already written his contact information, as though he kept it prepared for just such an occasion.

“You don’t even live on Heinessen.”

“You don’t need to live in a place to enjoy a person’s company there,” Konev pointed out. He handed Reinhard the paper, and Reinhard took it as though it were a dirty tissue. “Just tell her to call me, or something.”

“And why didn’t you talk to her yourself?”

“From the way you’re acting, I think that was a wise choice on my part.”

That made Reinhard nod. “How old are you?”

“Would you be more impressed by an older number or happier with a lower one?”

“You’re rapidly losing my goodwill and patience.”

Konev snorted with laughter. “I’m at the mercy of a twelve year old.”

“Ten.”

“Hah. Even worse. I’m twenty.”

“Then my sister thanks you for your interest, but politely declines.”

“And if I said twenty three?”

“Then my sister kindly requests that you stay far away from her.”

“Ah, so I have no hope, then.”

“Correct.”

“And she doesn’t get a say in the matter?”

“Do you honestly think her answers would be any different?”

“Well, she has more of a chance of being swayed by my dashing good looks.”

Reinhard looked him over, wearing an expression that indicated he was measuring the man like he might estimate the length of a rope. “Unlikely.”

“You are funny, kid, but it’s not really you I’m trying to impress.”

“Unfortunately, I’m the one you’re speaking with.” Reinhard decided that Konev was mostly harmless, so the tension in his voice abated a little.

“Alright, alright, I get it. Not interested.” He raised his hands again, in a gesture of surrender. “You keep that number though. If you ever need anything, feel free to give me a call.”

“And what would you be asking for in exchange?”

“You’d think me a poor Phezzani if I didn’t say money.”

Reinhard nodded. “That’s at least an honest transaction.”

Again, Konev laughed. “Good luck on Heinessen, kid. You’ll do alright.” He turned around and headed down the hallway before Reinhard could even decide to thank him for the maybe-compliment.

May 786 UC, Heinessen

Konev hadn’t been lying when he said that the refugee intake process was a smooth and well understood one. When they approached Heinessen, the captain of the ship declared the ship’s manifest over the radio, including their refugee status, and so when they got down to the ground, there was a tired looking social worker waiting there to meet them.

She was a thin lipped woman with grey hair, dressed in a boxy, professional looking grey skirt and jacket that was far less gaudy and more conservative than most of the other outfits people in the spaceport were wearing. Compared to the staid fashions of the Empire, the clothing choices of people in the FPA were odd, to Reinhard’s eyes.

“Welcome to Heinessen,” the social worker said. “I’m Xiao Li-min.”

Reinhard’s mother, who was grimacing in the bright lights of the spaceport, shook her hand. “Pleasure, Frau Li-min.”

“Oh, it’s an Eastern name, the family name comes first,” Xiao said. “Don’t see that very often in the Empire, but it’s one of the traditions we managed to hold on to over here.”

“Sorry,” Reinhard’s mother said. “I’m not used to these things.”

“Of course, it’s fine. Right this way, I have some things that we should go over in my office. These are your children?”

“Yes, Reinhard and Annerose.”

Xiao led them through the crowded spaceport into a series of offices, where she sat the three of them down in a well worn conference room where the light buzzed loudly overhead. She pulled out a computer and led them through a long, long questionnaire, filling out every detail of their reason for coming to Heinessen, their family ties in the FPA (none) and the Empire (none worth speaking about), their financial status (out of money), their education and training (none), their health (Caribelle’s was poor, Reinhard and Annerose were fine), and it seemed like every other question under the sun.

“After we’re done in here, I’ll send you to get ID cards and official identities. This might seem like a lot,” Xiao said. “But it’s actually a lot easier than changing your internal citizenship from one planet to another within the FPA.” She laughed, as though this was a joke, but none of the three understood what was funny.

“Refugees get special status,” she explained. “It’s not exactly citizenship, but you have full protection under the law.”

“What does it take to get citizenship?” Annerose asked, speaking for the first time.

Xiao seemed surprised at the question. “Oh! Well, not much. If you’re a resident for fifteen years, you can apply for it, and cases get put before a committee, or you can serve in the Fleet, that’s an automatic path to citizenship. But you’re a little young for that.”

Annerose nodded. Reinhard was glad she had asked the question, because it seemed that Xiao was being intentionally vague about what “special status” implied. Probably nothing good.

Xiao clicked through various things on her computer. “Since you don’t have any assets, I’ve been given approval to give you council housing and put you on a special assistance program, which will be good. You’ll be in an area that’s used to taking in refugees…” She said everything without looking at the Müsels, sucking her teeth and not waiting for any responses. This was all perfunctory.

“I’ll have someone come by every once in a while to check in on you, make sure that you’re adjusting well…” Some more clicking.

“As far as money…” Again, tapping through whatever long intake form she was using. “The children will get a special allowance, especially because you don’t have a husband. Ms. Müsel, you’ll probably want to get a job at some point, but the special assistance fund should be enough at least until you’re settled.” She tapped her finger on her chin. “Though I suppose I should mention, most people who come here have an opportunity to make a little money up front.” She dug through her bag and pulled out a shiny pamphlet that she pushed across the table. “This is a little bit of a, well, I suppose there’s no point in not calling it what it is, a propaganda show. Particularly photogenic people coming over from the Empire have the opportunity to go on this television program. You tell your story to the public, you get a little bit of money. It’s not difficult.”

Caribelle picked up the pamphlet and looked it over. “My story?”

“Well, it’s your daughter’s that’s particularly interesting, in your case. I think she would do well. In some ways, sympathy is a useful currency around here.”

Reinhard looked at the pamphlet in his mother’s hands, the downcast turn of Annerose’s eyes, the calculating look of the social worker. “No,” he said. “We won’t do it.”

Annerose didn’t look at him. “If it will help us…” she whispered.

Reinhard looked Xiao in the eyes. “Are people to be bought and sold for consumption here, as well?”

Xiao was startled at Reinhard’s sudden taking over of the conversation, but his mother was nodding slightly. “It’s hardly the same thing,” Xiao said.

“A feast for the public eye, rather than the private one.”

“Reinhard,” Annerose said. “Stop.”

He did stop, then, but he crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, still resolute. His mother laid the pamphlet back down on the table and slid it back towards Xiao. “I think we can survive without the money,” she said.

“Your choice, I suppose,” Xiao said, though her eyes were slightly narrowed when she glanced across the trio. “Keep this, just in case you change your mind.”

June-September 786 UC, Heinessen

They weren’t exactly put in the capital city, Heinessenopolis. They ended up about one city over, a sprawling place called Wrightsville. Reinhard might have said that the city had seen better days, but he was sure, looking at its crumbling brick buildings, that it hadn’t. It had once been highly industrial, probably the manufacturing center for most things that went into Heinessenopolis, but as the FPA had expanded, the necessity for such centralized production had diminished, so the city was left with the unmistakable spine of industry, but wrapped in a skin of mere habitation. Old mills became apartments, but smokestacks still pierced the sky, and the sluggish river that ran through the center of the city, under trestle railroads and along dingy canal walks, was grey at best, occasionally punctured by patches of bubbly foam or odd colored dye as someone dumped something into the water.

If there had been places like this on Odin, Reinhard had never seen them. It grated on his senses. The buildings were tall enough to block easy view of the sun, which disrupted his sense of direction, and the streets were winding and confused, as though in the rush to build as much as possible as quickly as possible, people had placed buildings at random and the streets had tangled up around them. It was noisy: vehicles everywhere, and the hum of heavy air systems on every building, and the rumble of water underground, and the buzzing of power lines overhead, and the wind whipping through the buildings so quickly as to make them whistle. It smelled bad, like too many people crowded together; factories still working on whatever it was they made on the outskirts of the city; and the river with its peculiar and mercurial scent, always carried along on the wind, no matter where he stood.

Their fourth-floor apartment was not in one of the old mill buildings, but it was right next to one. It had once been housing for the people who worked in the mill, and so it was both ancient and without the luxury of having been remodeled while being converted from one purpose to another. It had two bedrooms, a combined kitchen and living room, and a bathroom which was no larger than a closet. It was furnished, which was a relief, though the furniture had seen better days. One window looked out onto an alley, another looked directly out at a brick wall that was close enough to touch when Reinhard stuck his hand out. The walls were so thin that they could hear rumbling and indistinct conversations from what felt like every direction, and baby cries pierced the air at random points.

It was such a far cry from their previous way of life that it almost made Odin feel like a weird dream in comparison. But Annerose approached their new situation with the same tenacity she had shown years ago, when they had moved into their old house, and she set to making the place liveable and some approximation of “home”.

They had originally thought that Annerose and their mother would share one room, and Reinhard would have the other, but, almost immediately, Annerose realized that her presence aggravated her mother’s headaches, no matter how quietly she moved around the tiny, dark bedroom. So, after about a week of this, without any discussion being had on anyone’s part, she moved into Reinhard’s room. He let her have the bed, and he took up a position on the floor. He didn’t mind; it was hardly any different than camping, and he found he liked having Annerose nearby much better than he liked being alone.

With their limited budget, Annerose procured a wardrobe for them from the nearby thrift store so that they wouldn’t stand out so much. Reinhard found the colorful and plasticky clothes odd at first, but then accepted them. For herself, Annerose picked out the most dour and conservative skirts and blouses she could find. If it was in an attempt to not stand out, it didn’t work, and if it was in an attempt to remind herself of the fashions of the home she had left behind, Reinhard couldn’t think that it worked for that, either.

Reinhard spent several days walking by himself through the city, shrugging on his colorblock jacket and walking out into the chill, but somehow still soupy feeling, late autumn air. He built up a mental map in this fashion: wandering, observing.

He stopped by the huge school building and leaned on the fence, with his hands tangled in the wires. On Odin, his class had only had maybe a hundred boys in it, and they had all worn neat little uniforms. Here, streaming out of the building in the afternoon in a great wave, there must have been thousands of students, boys and girls, screaming and yelling, dressed in every fashion on the planet. They passed by Reinhard without seeing him.

He took himself on an informal tour of the industrial part of town and jaunts to what passed for a city center, shops and restaurants. He paid for a movie ticket at an automated kiosk, guessing his best guess for what all the words meant, then sat in the theater all day, sneaking in between different showings, just absorbing the cadence and tenor of the language. On the ears, it felt like someone had taken his native tongue and turned it sideways. He knew the two languages shared a root, but the Imperial language, when it had been instituted and adopted, was a return to a purer form of speaking, an ancient tongue. This language had something like that at its base, but it was filled every third syllable with something jarring and out of place, borrowed sounds from elsewhere, long chains of mutations on the form. He would pick it apart and understand it eventually, but it frustrated him that it would take time.

Time. That was something that he suddenly felt he did not have. His life being uprooted had instilled in him a sense of urgency that he hadn’t realized he possessed. Where even two months ago, he might have been content to simply move on with the normal course of life, so long as Kircheis was by his side, he was gripped now by the certainty that if he did not make his mark, somehow, he would be trapped in this grey city forever. All of the ingredients for a great fire were coming together in his mind, though he couldn’t have expressed it in so many words. The feeling he got when he held the gun he had stolen from his father, the bitter anger about the injustice that had almost been done to Annerose, the loss of Kircheis, the rushing feeling of stardrive engines beneath his feet, the clarity of stars when out in space, and the total invisibility of stars beneath the smog and light pollution of Wrightsville’s sky, all of these things and more were like tinder and wood and gasoline and flint in his brain. He only needed to arrange them into the proper form to start a conflagration. But he had to wait.

After two weeks, a social worker arrived at their doorstep and announced that Reinhard and Annerose had been enrolled in the local school. She gave them packets full of instructions written in poorly translated Imperial, then told them what the start times were and who to speak to when they got there. It was as perfunctory of a visit as it could be, but it served its purpose.

So, on the next Monday, Reinhard and Annerose walked to school together. The school district packed everyone but the primary school students into the same huge building. It was chaotic, and finding their way around when neither of them could speak the language to stop and ask for directions was difficult, though Reinhard would not have submitted to that indignity even if they could have.

They were both put in classes with students a year younger than they were, which Reinhard took as an insult immediately. If at least he had been put with his true peers, he might have made an attempt to make friends, but he glared around at the students around him instead, crossed his arms, and then pretended like they didn’t exist. Reinhard sat in the front of the class, wrote his name on the top of his papers in pristine cursive, stared down at unintelligible text, listened to the teacher, and put the language together in his mind, word by painstaking word.

After several months of this, both Reinhard and Annerose were approaching, if not fluency, then something close enough to be useful. They took to the language with enough alacrity that they used it at home, partially to practice, partially to have whispered conversations that their mother had no chance of eavesdropping on. They both still spoke with an unavoidable accent, though they each approached it differently. Reinhard said every word with clipped preciseness, enunciating every sound, trying to bear himself in a way that communicated he knew exactly what he was saying and how he was saying it. Annerose was quieter, more subdued, and she tried to disguise gaps in her vocabulary and odd tones in her speech by developing a kind of poetic and flowing work-around. She spoke around issues, said things by implication. Though this was as natural to her as breathing-- after all, it was the way that communication often was in the Empire, secrets half-spoken-- it was anathema to her classmates, who often didn’t understand.

“They’re just stupid,” Reinhard said one day on the walk home from school. “I understand you perfectly.”

“I rarely have had to worry about you not understanding me,” Annerose said. “But I do try to fit in.”

“Why?”

“This is our home, now. I told you once that you should try to make friends.”

“And you enjoyed so much what that did for me.” His hand went unconsciously to the locket tucked under his shirt.

“Reinhard,” she said, with the same tone she always used when she wasn’t quite sure what to say to him.

“Annerose.”

“Don’t close yourself off,” she said finally, though with a tension in her shoulders that Reinhard couldn’t help but notice.

When he decided he could speak well enough that he had absolutely no reason to tolerate being in with the younger students any longer, Reinhard marched himself down to the school offices and demanded that he be promoted. The counsellors there called his homeroom teacher, who gave halfhearted permission (“Go ahead and test him,” he said. “If he’s below level, he’s below level.”), and then had Reinhard sit down at a computer and take a placement exam to determine his correct grade level. They seemed certain that he would test low, but he instead tested shockingly high, so much so that they made him take a seperate test, on paper, to make sure that he wasn’t cheating.

They moved Reinhard up three grade levels.

This was, most certainly, a mistake.

It wasn’t that the work was challenging for Reinhard. He could have handled any work that any grade in the school was teaching. The problem was that while in the younger class, the students had been content to either ignore him as an odd stranger or fear him as someone older, this group of students now perceived him as an explicit threat. He was an upstart, arriving young, unmistakably foreign, and in the middle of the year. This latent animosity might have been curtailed somewhat if Reinhard had been friendly, but he was not.

Reinhard had, at least, over his years of knowing Kircheis, learned not to rise to most verbal provocation. It helped that the school was so large and crowded that no one realized that he had a sister, let alone that they could use that to make him lose his temper. So he suffered insults and only returned them in kind, or, if they felt particularly low-class, with only a mocking stare.

Things came to a head one day in the pool locker room. The pool was in the basement of the school building, and the locker rooms smelled of ancient mildew and heady chlorine. They were somewhat labyrinthine in their construction, with a disorienting number of corners, behind each one a wall of lockers or a set of bathroom stalls, or a dizzying set of scratched up mirrors.

His class had just returned from swimming. Reinhard was a strong swimmer, though not one with a lot of formal practice. The actual lesson had gone alright. Most of the students had enough sense not to cause trouble when there were teachers around, but after everyone had gotten out of the pool, Reinhard had been delayed in returning to the locker room because someone had summoned the teacher to adjudicate a made up dispute-- a claim that Reinhard had stolen someone’s towel. It was patently, obviously false, and the teacher let him go after a short moment, but Reinhard had seen the sly looks his classmates exchanged as they returned to the locker room, and he knew that nothing good was waiting for them there.

He walked back into the locker room already expecting the worst. He didn’t hold himself tense-- he was above that-- but he did hold himself ready, looking around the corners nonchalantly, listening to the echoing voices down the stained white walls.

When he got to the locker where he had left his clothes, he found someone had already opened it. He knew exactly how: the combinations for the lockers were all stored in a big binder that the gym teacher had in his office. At least once a class, some forgetful student needed to go look up what their number was, and it would have been quite easy enough for him to run his fingers down the lines of numbers and remember the code to someone else’s locker instead of his own.

Reinhard felt eyes on him, watching him come to this realization. He made a little show of opening the locker and discovering that his bag was missing, then smiled grimly and leaned back against the wall, the metal vents of the lockers digging into his bare back. “I’d like my bag back.”

He didn’t see who had it, but there were plenty of boys around, a few years older than himself, waiting and watching with expressions that ranged from amusement to apprehension.

“And why should you get it back?” one asked, a brown-haired boy named Steven, who had a towel draped around his neck.

“You don’t expect to go to my next class in my swim shorts, do you?” There was a mild bout of stifled laughter from the back of the assembled crowd, but Reinhard kept his voice perfectly flat. “If I get a teacher in here, they’ll search you all. You should save yourself some trouble.”

“You’d run and yell for a teacher?”

Reinhard shrugged. “I don’t want to be late for algebra.” It would be a little shameful to go find a teacher, but he was pretty sure it wouldn’t come down to that. He was just using it as a threat. Annerose would be unhappy with him if he did start a fight in here, and he wasn’t going to over something as simple as clothing.

“This what you’re looking for?” one of the boys asked. Reinhard didn’t flinch as his bag came sailing at him, the top open, one of his shoes falling out. Reinhard caught the bag and picked up the shoe.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said. He tried to take a couple steps out of the crowd of boys, but they formed up around him and prevented him from moving to a more private location to change.

“Aren’t you going to change, pretty boy?” Steven asked. Again, there was mild laughter, but this time there was an edge to it, and some of the people at the back of the crowd seemed distinctly uncomfortable. Reinhard didn’t expect any help from them, but he did find their cowardice repulsive. The least they could do was walk away, if they didn’t want to participate in this.

“I had no idea you wanted to see me naked so much,” Reinhard said, flatly. Again, snickers. Most of the crowd seemed to be reacting to anyone who had the upper hand in this moment, and the retort made it belong to Reinhard, if only for a second. He was still trapped, but he wasn’t cowed. If this was meant to humiliate him, it wasn’t working.

His primary tormenter decided that the best option was silence, and he put his hands on his hips, taking a wide stance to block Reinhard from leaving. Reinhard shrugged, put his bag down on the bench, and pulled out his clothes. He noticed, as he was doing so, something that made his blood run cold, but he was pragmatic, and he wasn’t going to bring it up until he at least wasn’t naked. The room was almost dead silent as he changed. He felt eyes on him, but he didn’t rush or stumble. Let them look.

He waited until he had his jeans on, his shirt neatly tucked in, and his shoes firmly on his feet before he said, “And now that you’ve had your show, I would like back what you took from me.”

“Anyone know what he’s talking about?” Steven asked, looking around at his compatriots. “I haven’t a clue.”

General murmurings, a mixture of genuine and false confusion, followed.

“You took something out of my bag. I would like it back.”

“And what is it that you think I took?” Steven was wearing a smug smile.

Although his strategy of being unbothered by attempted humiliation had been working thus far, he was too attached to the missing locket to remain unaffected. He spared a hope that the redness in his face would appear more like the anger that it was than embarrassment. “My necklace,” he said.

“Oh, I thought this was girl’s jewelry,” Steven said, pulling out the locket from his back pocket and dangling it in the air. He was far out of Reinhard’s reach at the moment, across the bench. Reinhard stilled himself, taking a breath to forestall violence. He would give one warning. “Didn’t realize it was yours,” Steven continued.

“This is your one warning to give it back to me,” Reinhard said, and held out his hand.

“What are you gonna do?” Steven was at least six inches taller than Reinhard, but that didn’t matter. He continued to dangle the locket out of Reinhard’s reach. Reinhard gave him three seconds, which would have been plenty if he was going to give the locket back. Since he clearly wasn’t, though, Reinhard was forced to take action.

Jumping at the locket would have been futile. Obviously, Steven would have just snatched it away. Instead, Reinhard threw himself over the bench between them sideways, faster than Steven could react. Steven’s immediate instinct was to protect the locket and stop Reinhard from getting it, but that instinct ended up costing him. At the sudden outbreak of action, the other students surrounding them backed off a little.

As Steven flinched sideways and pulled in his arm to his chest, Reinhard grabbed his shoulder and shoved him, sending him stumbling towards the sideways wall of lockers. Reinhard had another advantage: he had been allowed to put on his shoes. Steven was still barefoot on the wet tile floor in his swim trunks. So, when Reinhard shoved him, he had no choice but to move forward or fall, and he did move, throwing out his arms to protect himself from hitting the lockers. His hands impacted with a clang as the lockers rattled. Reinhard took another step forward as Steven recovered a little and turned around back towards him, trying to throw a punch with his empty left hand. It wasn’t his dominant hand, though, and it was clear that Steven had never been in an actual fight.

Reinhard dodged the punch with a hop to the side, which again put him rather behind Stephen’s shoulders, his intended position. Several students backed off even further.

Reinhard was done being gentle. He grabbed Steven’s wet hair, causing the boy to yelp, and slammed his head into the wall of lockers, hitting with his cheek. It was easy. Several students yelled or gasped in alarm as Steven flailed, trying to push Reinhard off of him. Reinhard kneed Steven hard in the stomach, still holding his hair to keep him partially upright. Steven’s arms whacked his chest, but without any real leverage behind them, they were about as ineffective as an open palm slap.

He let go of Steven’s hair, then, and the boy might have fallen, if Reinhard hadn’t grasped his right wrist, the hand holding the locket, and jammed it into one of the open lockers. He stomped on Steven’s bare foot, causing the boy to yell, then slammed the locker door shut on Steven’s hand, as hard as he could. After the first hit, Steven unclenched his fist, dropping the locket, but Reinhard didn’t see that; all he could feel was Steven trying to pull his hand out of his grip, so he smashed the locker door closed again, this time directly onto Steven’s fingers.

There was a sickening feeling of something giving, and the scream that Steven let out was blood curdling. He dropped to the floor and Reinhard let him go. He cradled his hand to his chest, blood welling out of a deep gash across the backs of his pinky and ring fingers, which were bent at a wrong angle. Reinhard picked up the locket from the bottom of the locker, slipped it over his neck and underneath his shirt, grabbed his backpack, and stepped over the crying Steven, leaving the locker room under the shocked and horrified stares of his classmates.

He went to algebra as though nothing was wrong, but after sitting in class for about fifteen minutes, the phone on the wall of the classroom rang, and the teacher answered it and looked at Reinhard with an odd look. He stared back at her impassively, though his hand went to the locket under his shirt. “He’s here,” she said. A pause. “I doubt that’s necessary. No, everything is fine. Alright. I’ll send him down.” She hung up the phone. “Reinhard, main office wants you.”

He nodded and gathered all his belongings. “Can you give me the homework?” he asked. She handed him a packet, which he tucked into his backpack. He nodded at her curtly, then left, walking down the silent hallways towards the main office.

He was perfectly calm when he got there, which seemed to do more to disconcert the mass of adults more than anything. They had him sit in a small meeting room as they discussed what to do with him outside. He took out his math homework and did it, just to fill the time.

When the principal and the gym teacher came in to ask him questions, he didn’t bother to deny anything that he had done. He described the fight, though it had been very one sided, in clinical detail when they asked.

“Why did you do that?” the principal asked.

“He had taken something that belonged to me,” Reinhard said. “I determined that was the most likely way of getting it back. You can ask anyone who was there.” He named several of the students he thought were most likely to give an honest recounting of events: the cowards who had stood in the back and watched. They were no friends of his, but they might be useful, and feel guilty.

“We’ll interview them,” the principal said. “But right now, I’m asking for your side of the story.”

“That’s all there is. I retaliated when provoked.”

“You could have come to me,” the gym teacher said. “There’s no need to resort to violence.”

Reinhard said nothing in response to that. It was laughably false, but there was no reason to waste effort explaining it. After a long moment of silence, the principal said, “We’re going to call your mother to discuss punishment.”

“She doesn’t speak your language.”

The principal and gym teacher glanced at each other. “Do we have a translator?” the gym teacher asked.

“We could call his social worker…”

“My sister will translate for you,” Reinhard said. It wasn’t as though Annerose wouldn’t find out about this eventually. He glanced at the clock. “She’s in chorus right now.”

Though it was clear from their faces that they didn’t want to involve another student, specifically one who was likely to be partial, they didn’t have much of a choice without calling in outside help. They left Reinhard alone in the room again, and a minute later, he heard them call her name over the muted crackle of the intercom.

A few minutes later, he heard her speaking to them, just outside the door, and could clearly picture how she would look, furious and disappointed but hiding it. That hurt Reinhard more than whatever punishment he was about to receive was. Not that she was angry at him for fighting, really, but more that she probably wouldn’t understand his reason for fighting. He had tried, for her sake, and for Kircheis’s, to curtail his worst instincts, but there were some lines he could not allow to be crossed. This had been one of them, and he felt like he had taken care of it as swiftly and as cleanly as he could.

The principal and Annerose came back into the room, then, and Annerose stared at him with such a sad expression that Reinhard wanted to apologize to her immediately, but he didn’t. He could try to explain later, when they were alone, but she probably wouldn’t understand.

The principal poked at the conference phone in the center of the table, dialing their mother’s number on file. She answered with a heavily accented, “Hello?”

“Ms. Müsel, this is Jennifer Waterstone, the principal of Wrightville General School III. I’m here with your son and daughter. Annerose will be translating for us.”

Annerose did faithfully translate this sentence into the Imperial language, though there was a quiver in her voice.

“Is there something wrong?” their mother asked.

“I’m sorry to report that Reinhard was involved in a fight with another student,” Waterstone said.

“Is he hurt?”

“I’m fine,” Reinhard said, first in the Imperial language, then repeated it in the Alliance’s language for Waterstone’s benefit.

“Oh. That’s good,” his mother said. “I’m glad you’re alright.”

“I am glad that Reinhard was not injured,” Waterstone said, “but the fact remains that another child was.”

“What did he do?”

“I am not at liberty to give out confidential medical information.”

“I think I broke two of his fingers,” Reinhard said, in the Imperial language. “I didn’t look closely.”

Annerose paled. Her hands, which had been sitting on the table, curled into fists so tightly that her knuckles were white, and her fingernails dug into her palms.

“What did he say?” Waterstone asked.

“He said he broke two of the other boy’s fingers.”

“What were they fighting over?”

“Nothing, mother,” Reinhard said. Annerose helpfully translated this before Waterstone could even ask.

“I find it hard to believe it was ‘nothing’, Reinhard.”

“Then I fought him so that no one else would bother me,” Reinhard said, resisting the urge to grit his teeth. It was true, in a way, but that had not been the motivation on his mind when he had smashed Steven into the lockers. It was just an added benefit.

“Fighting is not a way to solve problems,” Waterstone said. Reinhard resisted the urge to laugh. That was a funny thing to say when one lived in a society that had been at war for functionally its entire existence. “And even if it were, it is completely unacceptable to hurt another student, especially that severely.”

“Are you expelling him?”

Waterstone tapped a pen on the table. “For incidents on this scale, we have a three strikes system. No, Reinhard will be allowed to stay in school, though he will be suspended for one week. This will go on his permanent record, however.”

“Oh. Well, that’s fine, then.”

“Ms. Müsel, I’m not sure that you’re taking this with the seriousness that it deserves.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Waterstone,” she said, voice dry and tight over the phone. “Please do not take this as me being lenient on my son, but I believe I have a fairly good idea of what he is capable of. The fact that he has made it this far into the school year without any prior incident…” She trailed off, as though she had lost her train of thought.

“In my years as administrator here, I have rarely seen an injury this severe with no sign of remorse from the perpetrator,” Waterstone said. Her face was slightly flushed.

“Were you expecting me to apologize?” Reinhard asked.

“No, you’re going to be kept as far away from him as possible.”

“Why? I’m not going to bother him.” As far as he was concerned, the matter was over and dealt with. He didn’t want to rearrange his class schedule, because it felt like it would be a pain. He had just gotten put in these classes. “And I assume he won’t bother me.”

Waterstone pinched the bridge of her nose. “If something did happen, and I had failed to separate you, the school would be held liable.”

The whole thing, Reinhard found funny, on some level. If this incident had happened at his old school, on Odin, he probably would have been simply whipped by the teacher, and that would have been the end of it. The fact that he was essentially getting a week’s vacation seemed like no kind of punishment at all. It was just one of the odd ways that life here was different.

The principal continued to speak to his mother, and Annerose continued to translate and grow more and more agitated, just below her skin, but Reinhard decided that there was very little more to be gained from the conversation, so he let it go by him without contributing. Eventually, the prolonged conversation ended. The whole thing could have been said as just a statement of facts, but for some reason, Waterstone wanted to pry into how his mother felt about all of this. It was clear how she felt: on the scale of things that Reinhard was capable of, fighting another student was rather low on the list. She had seen him nearly shoot his own father, after all.

It was only a little while before the end of the school day, so while Annerose was sent back to class to gather her belongings, Reinhard was confined to the little conference room until the bell rang, and then he was released to the city streets. He waited by the fence for Annerose, who saw him and walked with him, but did not speak to him at first.

It was difficult, walking through the city back to their apartment, to speak. Reinhard wanted the privacy of speaking their native tongue, but Annerose always hated to do that in public, because it attracted more attention than it deflected. He was forced to wait until they were back at home. He wondered if his mother would want to talk to him, but her door was closed, and, listening closely, he could hear the even sound of her sleep-breathing, so the answer was probably no.

He sat at the little kitchen table, then, and waited for Annerose to say something. She leaned over the sink, hair falling loosely over her face in a curtain, blocking his view of her.

“Explain to me,” she said, very quietly, and in the Alliance language, “what made you break a child’s fingers.”

“You won’t like my reasons.”

“I like even less the idea that you would do it for no reason.”

So, for the second time that day, Reinhard explained the fight, starting with a brief mention of the animosity his classmates had had towards him since he joined the class, then the whole scene in the bathroom. It surprised him, but Annerose flinched a little when he described the attempted humiliation of making him change in front of everyone else, though that had bothered Reinhard the least.

“I did try not to fight,” he said finally. “But it was going to come eventually. So I ended it as quickly as possible.”

Annerose was silent for a long minute.

“Are you upset at me still?” Reinhard asked.

“Why can’t you keep your head down?” she asked. “Why can’t you be…”

“Normal?”

Annerose stiffened, then nodded fractionally. “I just want you to have a future.”

This statement made no sense to Reinhard. “I have one.” He was planning to seize it, whenever the opportunity arose. This was a step on that path.

“This is on your permanent record. It’s a black mark that’s going to be attached to your name forever.”

“So?”

“This is our home. We have to try.”

“I am trying.”

“If you get into fights, they are going to kick you out. And then where will you be?”

“Why would that matter?”

“Reinhard!” He fell silent, and Annerose turned towards him, eyes red. “I don’t know what you think your future looks like, but I wake up every day terrified that you’re going to throw it away over some short sighted-- awful-- stupid--” She took a deep breath. “I would do anything for you, and you want to-- I don’t even know what it is you want. I--”

She stopped when she saw Reinhard contemplatively fiddling with the locket. “What do you want me to be?” Reinhard asked. “If you want me to try, I’ll try. I do try. For you.”

“I don’t know,” Annerose said. She sounded almost defeated, perhaps by the sight of Reinhard twisting the chain of the locket around his finger. “I’m afraid—”

“Of what?”

“I could demand something of you that you can’t give. And then we’ll both start to resent each other for it.”

“The fact that you aren’t means that I can trust that you won’t.” Reinhard paused. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t even know what you’re apologizing for.”

“Whatever you like.”

“Then it’s not a true apology.”

“Perhaps. But wouldn’t it be better than nothing?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry for fighting, then, because it upsets you. And I’m sorry that you want things from me that you know I can’t give you.”

“I don’t want it for me,” Annerose said. “I just want… I want you to be happy. Content.”

“There is a world of difference between those two things.”

“I’m worried that you won’t be either, if you keep going on the path you’re on.”

“I know how to be happy,” Reinhard said.

Annerose shook her head. “But are you?”

“Having you around makes me happy.”

“I’m not the only thing, though.”

“Of course not.”

“And I’m not enough.”

“You don’t need to be.”

“I want to be. If that’s what it takes to stop you from—“ She shook her head.

“And what makes you happy?” Reinhard asked.

“We’re not talking about me.”

“We’re not?” Reinhard stared at her, though she didn’t meet his eyes. “You fear that I want too much. Should I fear that you want too little?”

“Stop it,” she said, and her voice was so raw that Reinhard did.

He stood and walked over next to her, leaning his head on her shoulder and wrapping his arm around her side. “I love you, you know. And I know you’re just trying to look out for me. But I think I’ll be okay. Don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t help it.”

“I know.”