Stardust

     Limbs shaking, sharp nails splitting the skin of her palms open to smear stinging wells of blood across her hands, June stumbled into her father’s office. She didn’t know where else to go.

     Daddy started to greet her as she opened the door, but as he took her in—wide-eyed, red-faced, trembling with the effort of keeping herself from screaming—his face darkened and he set his screen to lay on his desk, facedown. June let the door slam carelessly shut behind her; he winced visibly at the colossal crash, but all he said was “Sweetheart—what’s wrong?”

     June practically threw herself at him; she stumbled hastily and heedlessly across the office and let herself fall all over him like a tunnel caving in. Her body slung over his lap, her face beelining into the crook of his neck as his arms wrapped around her, soothing the shivers wracking her shoulders with gentle pressure. For a solid few minutes, June was entirely nonverbal, panting raggedly and brokenly into Daddy’s skin; as the warm, piney scent of his cologne filled her nose, she slowly began unsticking her fingernails from her palms, one-by-one. The flesh was warm and damp.

     June sat back, still straddling Daddy’s lap, and brought her palms in front of her to examine the damage. There were light red smears all across her hands; Daddy sucked in a breath through his front teeth, grasping her hands in his own, and brought them up to his mouth, where he kissed each knuckle in turn.

     “Mary,” he said quietly. There was a hint of accusation in his voice, underneath the concern.

     “Sorry,” June choked out, and that was all she could manage before her face screwed up again and she made an awful, ugly, incoherent sound.

     Daddy’s face softened. He reached out and plucked a lock of hair from her cheek, where it was plastered with sweat—not tears, obviously, she was just so fucking angry, there was cold sweat all over her body—and then he tucked it behind her ear. “No—no, sweetheart, it’s alright. Tell me what happened.”

     And in a loud, breakneck rush, tripping over her words and stumbling around in frantic, angry verbal circles, the story came out. How she’d gone to see July again—how she’d fucked up, said things she wasn’t supposed to say, pushed her too far too fast—but she couldn’t deal, she didn’t want this to be happening, she didn’t want July to hate him—they were supposed to be a family, a real one this time, he’d promised—

     “I have every intention of keeping my word,” Daddy said, a quiet interjection that stopped June’s hysterical rant in its tracks.

     “I know,” she said, shame curdling in her stomach, “I know, that wasn’t fair, it’s not your fault—”

     Another gentle pet to her hair, his fingers combing the whole way through a single lock, scalp-to-tip, and then he cupped the side of her face, palm warm and rough against her skin. She met his eyes—black on black, gravity pulling at her heartstrings so hard, she teetered on his lap. He smiled, soft and thin. “No, but maybe I’ve put too much on you.”

     Her breath caught. June let herself sag further against her father, leaning in til their foreheads pressed together, and closed her eyes. He would take care of it. It would be alright if he took care of it.

     His hand cupped the back of her head, nails scratching comfortably at the base of her skull. “It’s a pity she won’t trust me. Still—why don’t we go for a drive and talk about it?”

     Daddy’s breath was warm against June’s face. It smelled bitter and sharp, like black coffee. She didn’t reply verbally, just nodded, her skull rocking against his.

###

     The soft red leather of Daddy’s driving gloves perfectly matched the shade of his Bentley convertible. He’d commissioned a custom paint job a handful of years back, a few weeks after an awkward, freshly-adolescent June gave him the patent leather gloves as a Christmas present.

     Under the faded-orange light of the evening sun, a gravid sphere smoldering low on the horizon, that specific shade of crimson stood out brilliantly against the pale leather of the steering wheel and ashy wooden dashboard panels. His fingers curled around the wheel, cherry-red, palms loose, wrists moving with the kind of fluid ease that only came from decades of highway miles; a space between his shirt cuffs and the very edge of his gloves yawned open, exposing thin curls of silver hair at his wrists that flashed yellow in the sunset.

     June didn’t know where they were. Daddy never bothered to tell her when they went planetside for drives—it didn’t matter, after all, when the point was to get as far away from civilization as possible. It was one of the very few circumstances where he would return to the surface without his secret service detail.

     The open road stretched out before them, flat and deserted, highway disappearing out into the horizon, where it kissed the hazy, faint outline of low, rocky mountains. Wherever they were, it wasn’t DC; the earth was sun-baked red and brown, dirt cracked and covered with purpleish bursts of scrub low to the ground; trees were scarce, and when June caught sight of them, they were scraggly and small; periodically, there were boulders jutting from the earth, surrounded by crumbled rock and rubble. The convertible top was down, and the wind whipping against her face was brisk, but not freezing.

     June leaned back in her seat, tilting her face up to the sky and half-lidding her eyes. Smears of deep, vibrant purple and red danced through her lashes; passing clouds refracted and scattered the sunset til it swirled abstractly in her vision. Her limbs felt heavy and languid, while her heart raced and soared—the engine thrummed in her ears, a low bass to complement the roar of the wind, and throbbed through the creamy leather of her seat to sing against her skin.

     Oh—the sky—the sun—the light—June raised her arms over her head, feeling the wind drag heavy against her palms, and breathed in, sharp and long and laden with pleasure.

     She unclipped her seatbelt—Daddy said something, but she couldn’t hear him over the wind—and leaned forward to grip the top of the windshield. Its metal rim was warm against her fingers, even in the chill descending over the landscape as the sun dipped lower and lower—she hoisted herself to her feet in one powerful motion, teetered and swayed for a moment, footing unsteady, and braced the backs of her shins against her seat as she raised her hands up over her head again.

     June’s braid whipped behind her, her jacket falling open, her blouse blown tight against her stomach and breasts—she gave a loud whoop, half-giddy, and cast another glance at her father.

     He was grinning, eyes caught between the road and quick little glances over toward June; his left arm now rested on the edge of his window, fingers drifting lightly over the wood panel set into his door, petting it in smooth, idle strokes. As she met his eyes, he let their gaze linger—grin spreading across his marble-chiseled face, wrinkles by his eyes creasing—and then she stumbled, collapsed back into her seat in a laughing pile of limbs and hair and feeling.

     Once June collected herself, he brought his left hand back to the steering wheel and reached over to her with his right; Daddy grasped her hand in his, leather warm and soft and supple against her palm, and laced their fingers together.

     Later on, when the sun had dripped fully down the purple-dark sky to hide below the horizon, they pulled over and tramped out into the open fields of dirt with a blanket. They laid down side-by-side and watched the Milky Way spin its faint arms of stars over their heads, her head on her father's shoulder, his voice low and steady in her ears.

     “It's only been a few weeks,” Daddy said. June knew it was meant to be reassuring, but it felt empty to her. He squeezed the arm around her shoulders, solid and warm. “I think you should show her how good your life is—slowly, of course—but I think she'll come around when she sees there's nothing to be afraid of here.”

     Now that the sun was gone, the air was more than brisk, it was freezing. It smarted against June's bare nose. She wiggled closer into his torso. “She already gets basically whatever she wants.”

     “Does she seem to trust Ophelia?”

     June was quiet. She fought the urge to pout.

     “I didn't think so.” Daddy sighed, his chest rising and falling heavily against the back of her skull. “She won't trust me—Lord knows, she definitely won't trust Remus, either—not until she learns not to be wary of reptilians.”

     This made perfect sense. June decided against bringing up that July didn't seem to like the government much entirely outside of its Dusty members, either. She had avoided talking to Daddy about their mom in-depth for several years, and she didn't plan to start right then.

     It was her turn to sigh heavily. She let her gaze skate carelessly over the glimmering fabric of the sky above them til the stars turned into an incoherent, glittery blur.

     June didn't get to see the stars often. Every time she did, she was caught off-guard, over and over again, by the sheer scale of it all; every glimmering dot of light was a sun just like their own, a million-billion churning nuclear furnaces reduced to tiny sparkles. Even more overwhelming was that, out of all those millions of particles scattered across the sky, one of them was the Dusties' home planet—the birthplace of their empire, now a stardust-choked wasteland clogged with greenhouse gasses, but always the cradle of their civilization's history.

     It was a morbid train of thought, but the stars always tugged June's mind in that direction. It was difficult to see the infinite tapestry of space and not wonder—which of these dots was their home star? Which ones did their colonies orbit? Which ones were planets the Dusties had never so much as stepped foot on?

     “Introduce her to Anna.” Daddy's voice jolted her out of her reverie abruptly.

     Without thinking, June snorted.

     He sounded injured. “I mean it.”

     Instinctively, she took his hand on her shoulder and gave it a soothing squeeze. “Sorry, Daddy. It's just, like…” While June struggled to word her thoughts, she craned her neck up to press a brief kiss against his whiskery cheek, then returned her gaze to the stars. They winked unhelpfully. “If she doesn't trust me, then—”

     “She does trust you.” His voice was firm and confident. “You're her sister, and by proxy, she'll extend her trust in you to Anna, as well. Once she trusts you both, I can introduce myself to her—maybe even Remus. It's a matter of victory by small measures, Mary—you really must learn to be more patient.”

     That stung, for reasons June couldn't quite identify. She nodded anyway.

     “I'll speak with Ophelia about establishing their rapport, but I don't think we have any reason to worry. She's very good at her job.” It didn't sound complimentary, coming out of Daddy's mouth—it sounded matter-of-fact, like saying a pen was good for writing, or that a screwdriver was good for dismantling furniture.

     “Maybe I'll invite her to Anna's birthday party,” June offered.

     “That's a good idea.” He sounded very pleased.

     They watched the stars for a while longer, June feeling very small and useless. It seemed like Daddy considered the issue handled, so she returned her attention to the empire hanging, tantalizingly, millions of light-years over her head. She wondered when their family would finally move off-planet—not just onto a ship, but into another colony entirely. Daddy had been talking about it for years—they even had one picked out, a massive center of industry and technological innovation that spanned an entire planet, filled with bustling cities, populated by Dusties alongside another species of reptilian aliens, and the proud home of the Dusty central bank—but with each of Remus's re-elections, that day only ever seemed to get farther away.

     It was nice to be off the ship, at least.

     Daddy kissed the top of her head. They lay together in peaceable silence for a long time.