Archive of Our Own ^beta

Emma paused in the corridor just outside of Reccoa’s room, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet like she did in the Mk. II when she was standing poised on the catapult deck preparing to launch.

She was, in all likelihood, being ridiculous. She recognized that. She wasn’t going into battle, she was knocking on her friend’s door, and she had no reason to be so nervous. She’d been wondering about Reccoa for nearly as long as they’d known each other, wondering if she should be reading any meaning into the way Reccoa’s smile brightened when Emma entered a room, or how Reccoa’s hand lingered on her shoulder sometimes before she drifted away after a conversation that lasted just a few moments longer than it needed to, leaving Emma’s skin tingling in her wake. Reccoa was a friendly woman, welcoming, and it could have been nothing more than her way of making Emma feel comfortable on the Argama. Maybe she would’ve been this warm, this sweet with anyone. Maybe it didn’t mean what Emma wanted it to.

If she had still been with the Titans, she wouldn’t have dared. It was a narrow line to walk: act too feminine, too receptive to any of the flirting she’d had to endure from the men who should have been her colleagues, and no one would take her seriously, but too uninterested, too much herself, and she would have been an object of scorn. And it still wouldn’t have stopped the flirting. By the end at least most people thought she was capable enough, and that was probably the best she could get. She’d told herself it was worth it, that she was proud of her rank and her piloting skills and the job she thought she’d signed up for, preventing another war.

She had been in high school when the war broke out, didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life yet but when the colony fell on Sydney and the skies were dark for weeks with dust and ash she knew she would commit herself to making sure nothing like that ever happened again. She hadn’t yet learned that the people she’d trusted to keep her family safe were just as capable of atrocities as the enemy she’d wanted to keep her family safe from.

But Emma knew better now. She knew the Titans for what they were, she knew that she had made the right choice, the only choice she could’ve made, and she knew that she was where she was meant to be.

Onboard the Argama, that is. She wasn’t quite so sure that she was meant to be standing outside of Reccoa’s door, wondering if a wink had meant what she wanted it to.

Lt. Emma Sheen, taking off, she thought, and she knocked on the door.

The door slid open on Reccoa’s smile, sweet and welcoming and—maybe Emma was reading too much into it—not at all surprised.

“I came to thank you properly,” Emma said, “for the gift.”

“Of course,” said Reccoa, stepping back into her quarters, leaving Emma space to follow. There were potted plants on her desk, soil damp and leaves wilting, as though they hadn’t been watered since Reccoa had been offship. Emma felt faintly ashamed, like she should’ve offered to look after Reccoa’s plants and as if by not offering she’d failed some kind of test.

Probably it was the same test she’d been failing ever since she was a child, when she didn’t understand why the boys in her class were so mad that she could beat them at basketball, and why none of the girls stood up for her.

She understood now, just as she understood why her parents looked so wistful when they told her that some of her classmates were already married and having children of their own. Of course they’re rushing into it because of the war, her mother said, but young love is so nice to see.

It was a narrow line to walk with her parents too, sticking to her decision to leave, but acting just enough like the daughter they wanted that they could convince themselves that this was temporary, that after the war was over she would return to her senses and settle down with a husband and raise his children.

She’d worn a skirt last time she visited, a concession that they didn’t even realize she was making, and her mother had smiled and said that it suited her. Maybe it did; she could, aesthetically, understand the appeal of a skirt. She didn’t even really mind wearing them herself. What she minded was what people thought about her when she did. She could see it in their eyes, the way they looked at her and classified her as woman, as girlfriend, as mother of my children.

When she was in uniform, she was a soldier first; when she was in a mobile suit, she was only a pilot. She wasn’t sure if that was better or not, but at least then no one was asking her when she was getting married.

Still. She probably should’ve offered to water Reccoa’s plants. She wasn’t convinced she was made for motherhood, but she could give Kamille advice to keep him alive in battle, and surely she could handle keeping some plants alive for a few weeks.

She did wonder at Reccoa’s choice to keep the plants at all, though. It took dedication to sustain any sort of life in space. And on Earth, too, she supposed, thinking about the barren dustlands outside the town where she grew up, the bleached soil that her father said used to be farm fields. But even still, dandelions sprouted up between cracks in the pavement, despite the dry soil and acid rain, without anyone having to plant them. Everything in space had to be done so deliberately. It felt like a miracle, sometimes, that people lived up here at all, and the metal shells of ships and colonies and mobile suits felt impossibly fragile against the massive, crushing void.

It seemed like it shouldn’t be possible, but it was, and somehow that gave her hope.

“I was expecting you,” said Reccoa.

“Oh?” said Emma, mouth dry. “Were you?”

“Of course,” Reccoa said, still with that same easy, pleasant smile. “I thought you might have more to say to Captain Henken that you didn’t want to say quite so publicly.”

Captain Henken. Right. It had been his gift that Reccoa delivered. But still, the wink… Surely that hadn’t come from him; it didn’t seem his style.

“As the messenger,” Emma said, “you deserve just as much praise.”

Please, she thought, tell me that you understand. Tell me that you can hear what I can’t say.

But Reccoa’s smile remained unchanging, pleasant and friendly, without any hint of the boldness Emma had thought she’d seen in her earlier, the boldness that made her think, maybe…

“I’m sure you would do the same for me,” said Reccoa. Her voice betrayed nothing, no hint of the inner turmoil that Emma would have felt in her position, delivering a love gift on behalf of a man to a woman she– Well, to a woman. “After all, what kind of friends would we be if we didn’t help each other out?”

“Of course,” said Emma, with an enthusiasm she didn’t feel. She was realizing, with a sinking, queasy feeling in her stomach as though she’d flipped her mobile suit upside down faster than the stabilizers could compensate for, that she had misjudged the entire tenor of their interactions.

“Now,” said Reccoa, “what message would you like me to carry to Captain Henken?”

“You must thank him for me,” said Emma, stalling for time while she tried to find the most painless way to extricate herself from this conversation. She found herself hoping, selfishly, desperately, that they would be called to the bridge for a briefing, that the Titans had caught up to them, anything to give her an excuse to flee.

“Of course I will,” said Reccoa, putting her hand on Emma’s bare arm in a way that was probably meant to be reassuring but sent a jolt of adrenaline through her, and it took all of her self-control to smile back and not pull away. “But I thought you might want your message to be a little more personal.”

And this was how Reccoa made Emma doubt herself, because Emma had been on the verge of giving up, of admitting that this had always been a fool’s errand, and now her hand was on her arm and her face was close enough that all Emma had to do was lean forward…

Some girls didn’t see any problem with that sort of thing, Emma knew. Some girls took pride in thinking nothing of it when they fell asleep in a friend’s bed or held a friend’s hand to keep from getting lost in a crowd. Maybe Reccoa simply didn’t notice, didn’t realize how she came across or what effect she was having on Emma, but Emma didn’t think Reccoa was careless enough for that. She was a spy; she had to be in control of how people perceived her.

Emma had never quite been able to pull off that level of nonchalance no matter how hard she tried, but then again her classmates, even her friends, were always telling her that she took everything too seriously for her own good.

That was probably what her best friend—a girl she’d left behind on Earth after they’d driven across North America together and hardly ever thought about anymore—would say if she knew that Emma had left the Titans. She’d say that Emma was overthinking things as usual, that no one was happy in their job—or marriage—all the time, and that surely things were done the way they were done for a reason, so who was Emma to think that she knew better?

In retrospect, Emma had probably wanted to kiss her at least a little bit, even though she would say things like that. Emma hoped that if she was married already, she was happy with her choice. If she was, Emma was glad that she didn’t have to see it.

“I’m not sure what I would say to him,” said Emma. She felt pinned in place where Reccoa was touching her, though her actual touch was feather light.

“I could help you with that,” said Reccoa. “I could show you what I would do, if a man had given you a gift for me.”

“Okay,” said Emma, because there was nothing else that she could say. She didn’t want to think about Captain Henken, or what Reccoa thought she should want to say to him, but she didn’t want Reccoa to stop touching her, to stop looking at her with the kind of hungry, cautious awe that Emma had felt the first time she’d seen Earth from space, or the first time she’d climbed inside the cockpit of a Gundam.

“It would go something like this,” said Reccoa, sliding her hand up Emma’s arm, and Emma shivered. If this was how Reccoa wanted to play it, then fine. Fine. Emma was here anyway, and she might as well take what she could get. Reccoa might be lying to her, and lying to herself, but that wasn’t any of Emma’s business. “I find that showing works better than telling.”

It wasn’t a surprise when Reccoa kissed her. Her lips were soft and warm, and her hand tangled in Emma’s hair, and Emma wondered who she was thinking about. Not Captain Henken, surely, or else she was doing a remarkable job of hiding her jealousy, and she might have been a good undercover agent but Emma didn’t think she was that good.

She’d never noticed her paying any special attention to the mechanics that tended to their mobile suits, Kamille was still just a child, despite his posturing and despite all the responsibility they’d burdened him with, Captain Bright was married—not that that would necessarily stop her from fantasizing, or even acting on it; plenty of men cheated on their wives, and his was far away on Earth—and Lt. Quattro was…

Lt. Quattro was a good pilot and a good soldier, and he was the kind of man that Emma would claim to like, if she had to claim to like a man in order to prove herself a woman, because at least she knew he wouldn’t care more for her than she could care for him.

Emma panted against Reccoa’s mouth, Reccoa’s shaky breaths warm on her lips, and Emma couldn’t tell she was trembling with arousal or whatever emotions she was attempting to suppress. Both, Emma suspected, but Reccoa kept on kissing her as if there were nothing else she’d rather be doing and nowhere else she’d rather be.

Her hands found their way to the collar of Reccoa’s jacket and she gripped her by the lapels, wanting to slip her hands underneath but unsure if that would break whatever force—whatever weak, unsteady orbit—held them together. She thought that Reccoa might allow herself this kiss under the cover of plausible deniability, but no more. Woman could kiss one another—on a dare, after a few drinks, in a moment of celebration of the sheer relief of surviving a battle—and she could slide her hand lower to lay her palm flat against the fabric of Reccoa’s jacket above her frantically beating heart.

But as desperate as Reccoa was to get her tongue inside Emma’s mouth, she seemed equally as desperate to avoid thinking about what she was doing, what it might mean.

And then, either because she was out of breath or because she couldn’t stand the cognitive dissonance anymore, Reccoa broke the kiss. “And that’s how I would show my gratitude,” she said, a little breathily. Emma was having difficulty drawing her eyes away from her lips. Reccoa’s hand fell from the back of her neck, drifting down her shoulder, arm, wrist, and Emma was tempted to catch it and hold it for a moment in her own. Instead she pulled her hand back and clenched her fist.

It would have taken so little effort to take Reccoa’s hand, less exertion even than squeezing the controls for her beam rifle, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“Thank you,” she said. And then, as a horrifying thought occurred to her: “Please don’t do all of that with Captain Henken on my behalf.”

“Of course not,” said Reccoa. “I’m sure that’s a message you would prefer to deliver yourself.”

“Right,” said Emma, unconvincingly. Mostly she hoped that enough time passed until she saw him again that she could pretend to forget he’d ever sent her anything, as unfair as that might be to him. But at this point she didn’t know if she could ever look him in the eyes again without thinking of how Reccoa’s tongue had felt inside her mouth.

“And let me know if you want to practice with me again,” said Reccoa, voice hoarse with desire or desperation that broke through her facade of casual friendliness. Emma felt sorry for her, and so very tired. In some ways it would have been easier if she’d entirely misjudged the situation and Reccoa hadn’t wanted to kiss her at all. It was one thing for Reccoa to not like women, but it was another thing entirely for Reccoa to like women and lie to herself about it, even here.

Where else could someone like her go, then, if space wasn’t far enough? And sure, she knew about the laws that the Federation had made for the colonies, but they were criminals, outlaws, deserters. But maybe that was part of the trouble; too many of them were soldiers, and with their experience and military discipline they’d brought a few too many of their military regulations, their assumptions about how the world worked and their place in it, and none of them knew any other way to live.

Emma didn’t know how to be anything other than a soldier. She wasn’t sure what the world would look like if that wasn’t what she needed to be.

“Sure,” she said. Maybe she would follow through, maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe once the fighting subsided they would have a chance to talk properly, and maybe by then Emma would figure out the words she needed so that they could finally understand each other.

Her smile was strained as she made her excuses and said her goodbyes, and she bumped into the table on the way out, nearly knocking one of Reccoa’s potted plants to the floor. But the pot only shuddered and didn’t fall, and when the door hissed closed behind her, leaving her painfully alone, Emma breathed a sigh of relief.