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i.
The ride is quiet. Their car is stuffy and sparsely occupied. The scent of coffee lingers through the compartment.
Outside, the sun shines down and clouds are gray and few. The lake outside has only just begun to freeze over; winter is at hand. Ilana fidgets in the window seat, unsure what to do with herself. Her clothes, drab and low-key, were once-bought at the mall, and have been long-forgotten up until today. She is uncomfortably warm in the sun's rays, and the fabric itches. She knows now why she never wore this outfit. The vents above are useless—too many buttons and wheels to take notice of in her state of distress.
Lance is quiet, but that's hardly any different from normal. Maybe he's asleep. She doubts it, though. Lance doesn't sleep much these days. Neither of them do, if they can help it.
There are miniature televisions set into the ceiling above each cubicle. One or two are deactivated, but those that are online are set to the local newscast, where the horned Mutraddi is still wreaking havoc over Sherman. Ilana tries to ignore the brightly flashing colors, the panicked register of the news-anchor live on scene. Several explosions and another inhuman screech from the Mutraddi. Many screams follow, all-too human, and gunfire chops recognizably through the chaos. The camerawork is too shaky to be decipherable.
Ilana looks around anxiously in an attempt to distract herself from the noise until Lance hisses from the corner of his mouth, ratty cap shielding his face and eyes set on the floor of their compartment, that people will notice her strange behavior. She jolts, looking out the window, self-conscious, realizing how tight her throat is and how her heart is beating fast and frantic in her chest. Lance's haversack rests heavily against her naked calf.
She waits. A man sitting in a booth adjacent to theirs adjusts his newspaper with a quiet cough. No one says anything for a full minute. Slowly, she begins to relax again.
No one must know who they are. She's thought about dyeing her hair and plucking her eyebrows, but there's been no time for any of that. They'd had to get packed before their enemies came looking for them; it was enough of a hassle to get on board without drawing too much attention to themselves—Lance still isn't convinced the conductor believes their story. Maybe the G3 are tearing apart the house even as she sits here. Maybe the American government has gotten there first. It doesn't matter.
Now she is here, with no help in sight for the three of them and the televisions blaring, and she feels utterly powerless. She slinks back into the seat and wants to disappear into the hot leather. Unwilling to look at Lance or the news anymore, she steals a glance at the man reading the newspaper. Squinting, she catches the headline, bold and black—WHERE IS TITAN?—and the picture below it. And Ilana wishes she hadn't looked at all.
The Mutraddi seems to glare right at her from the page with its yellow eyes, incisors sharp, mouth open in a phantom scream. Memory strikes her so powerfully that she trembles involuntarily, catching her breath softly enough that she does not wake Lance. In this hypersensitive state she can hear him breathing, wonders yet again if he is really asleep to begin with.
At last, she turns her eyes downward to the cold weight pressing painfully on her leg.
Octus.
The metal case gleams in the sun like a cruel reminder of his importance. She shivers, and leans down very carefully, just in case Lance really is asleep, and covers the shell of their companion with the heavy leather flap. Then she turns her head to rest against the cold glass, skin tingling, and thinks about Lance, and Octus, and all her friends at Sherman High that they have left behind, wallowing in anguish because there will be no time for it later.
In the reflection of the window, Ilana's face falls and tears do not.
ii.
The next two weeks are some of the loneliest in Ilana's memory. It's like living a scene straight out of those survival programs she's seen on TV; they hitch rides on trains and buses, traveling far from Illinois, across the wasteland beyond with nothing but the clothes on their backs and two packs between them.
The area is mainly comprised of rocky wastes and small towns that even the most audacious of tourists know to avoid. An ocean of desert. Her mouth is either overflowing with saliva or dehydrated and foul. Bottled water becomes the most precious resource they can get their hands on, and she's never been more thankful for Lance's keen sense of conservation.
Bus-stops are their deliverance, even with the expense of no air-conditioning and the nauseating smell of gasoline and stale sweat from about twenty tourists and locals that makes her want to throw up every time she thinks about it. There is hardly ever an up-to-date source of information as to what is happening in Sherman—and elsewhere, for that matter—except for the word of locals and every newspaper Ilana can get her hands on.
Ilana handles the negotiations with locals, because Lance is the bodyguard, and she is the diplomat, as stereotypical as it sounds. They need each other more than ever, she begins to realize, with Octus…out-of-commission.
He can't be dead.
Ilana puts on a mask, offering a friendly, albeit self-conscious sort of smile to strangers and every bus-driver, every store clerk and overworked employee they come across, and afterwards, she isn't sure how she manages it. She pretends she doesn't mind how many of the people they encounter look at them both as nothing more than outsiders. Troublemakers, even.
It would have been funny a couple days ago. She would have been incensed, and Lance probably would have laughed at her for it. Now, she feels nothing but a rising despair.
Lance retains an exhausted kind of vigilance, urging them forward, despite what seems every day to become that much more of an impossible task to complete.
She misses her father. And she misses Octus, too, more than she will care to admit to Lance, because it's killing him.
The two of them are too tired to start arguments. Each day becomes less about the need to stay positive as much as keeping each other sane.
At the start of the second week, they find a place that can hold them for more than a twelve-hour period. The hotel is run-down and grungy, named something generic and forgettable. People stare at Lance, at her, or maybe Ilana's only become paranoid filling the shoes of a fugitive. The man in the lobby asks no questions, looking the two of them up and down before he tosses Lance the key for some cash and relays them to the location.
The room is mainly derelict. The walls are old, not yet peeling. Carpet at their feet, too dark to see in the poor lighting from the fluorescent lamp, but probably saturated with God-knows what—a silent agreement is made to keep their shoes on at all times. One bathroom with off-white tile and a garish orange shower curtain crusted over with mold, two lumpy beds, and a microwave that looks like it hasn't been turned on by anyone in years. An old, satellite TV sits at the feet of both beds on a cabinet, collecting dust. It's certainly the nicest set-up both of them have seen in a week. Lance does not mince words, but walks over to the desk and starts unloading his pack.
Ilana leaves him alone to see what she can do about making their living conditions a bit more hospitable. She investigates the bathroom first.
The only thing that seems to be untouched is the soap and other toiletries. The sink doesn't appear to be working. The toilet, for reasons beyond her comprehension, is the one facet that runs as it should.
There's a loud thud from the main room; Lance curses.
Ilana almost calls out to ask if he's okay, and then stops herself. She isn't sure why.
Disregarding the curtain, the shower itself seems to be okay, until she tries turning it on. It hisses for a few seconds, and then without warning ups the ante and spits out orange water. She cries out, misses half the spray, turns it off quickly and resolves not to try that again. Ever.
Hair and shoulders dripping with rusty water—well, she hopes that it's rust—Ilana reminds herself that it could have been worse. It didn't burn her, it isn't freezing. She wants to cry, anyway.
Lance is in the doorway when she looks up, asking if she's all right. Ilana doesn't know what to say to him except: "I think the shower's broken."
Her voice is suspiciously thick. He looks at her funny. Ilana feels as though she's failed somehow, but he doesn't push it beyond the simple question: "You need a towel?"
"Do we even have any clean towels?" she asks skeptically, a trace of pitifulness in her voice.
Lance shrugs. "There's usually a number for room service. We could try that, I guess."
It's probably a bad sign when he's the one paying more attention to these things. Ilana decides to humor him.
"I'll be careful," he says before he leaves. "I've got a key. You do, too. Don't do anything rash."
As soon as he's gone she snatches up the TV remote—tacky with a substance of indeterminable origin—and fumbles with the tiny buttons, half of which are sticking. Desperate, she searches the perimeter of the console itself for a power button. Her fingers find the plastic nubs, she presses each one individually until, with an electric buzz, the screen comes to life. Comforted by the fact, Ilana sits back upon her bed and searches for a news station, ignoring the barrage of light and sound interchanging with static. After switching about fifteen channels she finds what she's looking for.
"…There's still no sight of Titan after last week's battle in the streets, which saw two armored robots fail to stop the creature and flee from the scene. What is certain is that the creature is still very much alive, and there seems to be no way of stopping it…."
She stares into the face of liquid crystal, at the backdrop of destruction behind the news anchor, fingers locked together over her mouth, and trembles, guilty. And she watches for several minutes without really taking anything in.
When the station cuts to a commercial, she snaps out of her trance. She's trembling as she realizes she dropped the remote. As she bends down to retrieve it from the floor, the door opens. Ilana shrieks and her hand shoots up to her watch.
But it's just Lance, with a bundle of undeniably clean-looking towels in his arms. They stare at each other, and then Lance looks to the TV. He seems old, then, so old and exhausted in the flickering fluorescence. But his face quickly settles into something more familiar and stoic, strained.
He gives her the bundle of towels and stalks over to his place at the desk.
"There are many soldiers that have died to save both of us," he says quietly. "And there will be more, unless we can find a way to make this work."
She knows he means to comfort her, but is glad all the same when he turns away.
iii.
It's been more than two weeks of running. They move out of the desert and up north into winter country.
No one bothers them anymore. No one cares about the two teenagers in ratty clothing traveling together. It doesn't make Lance feel any better about their current situation, though. By this point, he is staying alert for Ilana's sake more than his own, because her father is depending on him. This whole planet is depending on them. He cannot fail.
But as mountain ranges give way to wetlands and forests, and while Ilana sleeps peacefully on his shoulder and the light shines down on the notebook with its distribution of multi-colored tabs, Lance can't help but stare at his own scratchy handwriting and wonder if it's a hopeless errand to fix Octus on his own.
On the third week, they find refuge in a seedy little establishment called the Motor Road Inn.
Lance goes from hardly sleeping to passing out on the single bed for hours at a time. The first time it happens, when he wakes up, it's dark and he's alone. Adrenaline floods him; he's trained, he's ready. He knows there is a collection of cutlery in the drawers by the kitchen area—plastic, not sharp enough to wound without a lot of manpower—and he's got his watch, a few clips of ammunition and a spare pistol from the G3—he does not know why he has it, because it's jammed. The MANUS armor needs to be double-checked for damage, malfunctions. Lance hasn't activated it since their run-in with the Mutraddi back in Sherman, Illinois. He's been too busy working on Octus to keep proper maintenance—this is a poor tactic, will only lead to failure. In the dark he berates himself, sitting up. His hair feels greasy and suffocating when he clears it from his face, rubbing his scalp with vicious efficiency. Staring down at Octus's lifeless case in the light from the lamp, his vision blurs easily and his head throbs again. He knows he is dehydrated and overworked. He knows he needs to stop—and knows that's not an option. War is not kind. War will not allow you to rest. The G3 could come bursting in at any moment, and if he's plodding along like this God only knows what might happen—
Movement from the far right corner, by the bed. He gasps, and whirls to his feet, nearly knocking over the chair. Ilana is there, startling at the violence of his reaction. He notes she is—or was, before he freaked out—sitting comfortably. How long has she been there?
There is a quiet moment where Ilana continues to stare at him and Lance wonders what she sees in the dim blue glow of their alarm clock.
"What time is it?" he asks, and his voice drags into something more like a slur. God, does he look as bad as he sounds? She'll kill him. He hasn't got time to worry about this.
"It's twelve…wait, sorry, it's two-o'three aay-em," Ilana reports, squinting at the clock with its digital numberings.
"Shouldn't you be asleep?" he mumbles.
"What about you?" she says severely. "Neither of us can afford to work ourselves to exhaustion like this!"
Lance really doesn't have a response to this, because it's kind of true. He settles for: "We'r'n the middle of a war. Can't afford to get lenient."
Ilana shoots him a look that clearly indicates she doesn't care.
The next few nights are better, because Lance has somehow forgotten that Ilana can be kind of intimidating when she's in her stride—it's no different at two in the morning—and unwilling to take anyone's bullshit, least of all, his. He can respect her aptitude a little more than usual when he's working on a few hours of sleep—this is probably a very bad sign, this willingness to comply. Usually they bicker about these sorts of topics under pressure. But even he can agree; he needs to rest, because he'll feel much better and it'll shut her up.
It takes roughly four days to undo most of the damage Lance has done to himself. He quickly realizes Ilana's not going to leave him alone, either. Maybe she thinks he'll try and drug himself with coffee or something if she even takes her eyes off of him for a second. Maybe she has a point, though. Obviously, he figures she can't be by his side all the time, but he has a feeling that she'll catch wind of his antics if he so much as glances in the general direction of a pack of five-hour energy.
He respects her far too much to tempt fate.
Ilana makes him accompany her on trips to the grocer like some overprotective legal guardian. He tries, admittedly without much effort, not to resent and/or envy her method of operation. This only makes him feel more like an equally distrusting kid. He does not want to feel like an equally distrusting kid as Ilana scopes the aisles for discounts, or flags down a worker and asks where the bread is. He doesn't have time to feel like an equally distrusting kid. He needs to fix Octus before Modula's newest Mudtraddi comes after them, or Solomon changes his mind about their threat to Earth, or the Military decides to pop in unannounced. Why not all three of these things?
…And he's back to the kid analogy. He has to stop this. It's getting both of them nowhere and he feels worse just thinking about it. Struggling for something more positive to latch onto, he finds a promising start when Ilana notes, on their way out, that no one's tried to cause them trouble in here.
"Yeah," he says, a little too quickly. She glances at him oddly from behind the bag that's nearly as twice as large as she is. Lance says: "We should probably get back before we do get into trouble, as is usually the case." He tries to smirk but thinks he might have forgotten how because the muscles in his face feel exhausted. He didn't even know that was possible.
Ilana realizes he's joking, takes her cue from him and says: "Like that time you tackled the vendor in the mall?"
"It was a weird spray," Lance mutters. "That was months ago, how do you remember this stuff."
"It was perfume." She grins, nudging his arm with her elbow, and coincidentally, the contents of the grocery bag, staggering him slightly. "I see you're feeling better."
Lance offers to carry the bag for her. She tells him she thinks she's got it, but she'll hold on to his offer just in case.
iv.
On the sixth day of their third week on the lam, Ilana appears to decide that Lance is capable of being left on his own again, for which he is silently appreciative. He proceeds to demonstrate said gratitude by showing a little restraint and not working himself to exhaustion.
Their relationship blossoms from here.
It's another evening spent fixing Octus. Lance takes care of himself under her discretion and a pervasive sense of guilt.
Ilana leaves to get some extra groceries, because they both are eating a lot these days. He's working when she leaves, and when she comes back. He forgets how long it's been until the door opens. Instinct turns his head. He recognizes her gait beneath what he initially perceives as a walking bag of groceries, and relaxes.
"You made sure you weren't followed, right?"
"Of course I made sure," Ilana says, a little testily, setting down the bag.
"It's just..." Lance turns away from the desk so he can see her. "We have to be careful. Without Octus, there's no Titan. We just have to keep off the grid until I can figure out how to bring him back." She must understand what he means.
"I know," Ilana says softly, voice low. "I just miss him." She creeps over to stand behind his shoulder, peering down at his hands as they prod Octus's lifeless shell with the voltage reader. "How's it going?"
As much as Lance would rather not speak of his current lack of progress, he knows the truth will probably be best for her. "I don't know. I'm not even sure what I'm doing will work." Saying the words aloud only seems to further the desperate nature of their current situation.
"Maybe we should've taken Solomon's offer and stayed with G3 after what happened on that space station."
"No." His voice is sharper than he intends it to be. "Every time we get mixed up with those people, something bad happens." He turns back to look at Octus. "This is the right thing for us to do." By now, this is a reminder to himself. Solomon has failed them, and the G3 are tied too close to the American military for his liking. But it's tempting to agree with Ilana now, after they're approaching three weeks of successive failure, and anger boils in his blood for wanting to agree to such a stupid solution now. It's not her fault. It's not anyone's fault. They're exhausted and running out of time. He's still pissed off.
Fueled by emotion, Lance prods Octus a little too sharply and gets zapped. He yells in pain, and sends the lamp crashing to the floor with a sweep of his left arm. It doesn't help. His hand is now uncomfortably numb, forearm tingling at the exertion.
There is a silence.
"Lance, why don't you take a break?" Ilana asks.
He can't feel any of his fingers in his left hand. He doesn't say anything. He refrains from looking at her, either.
"Here, you want the chicken or the tuna-fish?"
His hand is probably going to hurt like hell in a few minutes. He hopes the lamp is still functioning.
"I want the chicken, Ilana," she responds in his stead, in a garbled, but pretty accurate impression of his voice, returning to her normal register to press the matter: "Here, eat."
Lance looks up at the sub she's offering, then her. Smiles, despite himself. "Thanks. I will, in a bit."
v.
Ilana doesn't remember falling asleep until Lance rouses her with a gentle shake of the shoulder. He has to call her name twice before she's up in a flash. "Huh? Is something wrong?"
"No. I think I figured it out this time." He's smiling for once, which gives her a little hope. "See, I haven't been getting enough power, so I tapped into the main electrical relay for the motel."
"Will that work?"
"It should…I think."
"Well, if Octus was here he could tell us right away," Ilana jokes.
"He might be in a few seconds." Twisting the handle on the electronic apparatus, Lance leans back in the chair. "Stand back," he advises, "there could be a spark."
The moment he pushes the handle down, the electricity runs up the wires and into the wall. The lamp goes out, bulbs bursting. The next thing either of them know, the lights outside their window go out, too. In the distance they can both hear the sound of the neighbors expressing confusion and distress.
So Lance and Ilana pack their admittedly meager quantity of supplies and head downstairs to the entrance hall. Lance forks over some cash and the guy behind the counter throws them a key to a seedier section of the motel's complex.
Fifteen minutes later, they're unpacked and situated under the purple neon lights shining in from outside. There are no curtains, only battered blinds. Ilana draws them closed and Lance checks the doors.
It's five in the morning. Neither of them feel particularly tired.
So Ilana, feeling numb and strangely hopeful, walks over to Lance, who is studying the blinds. And she takes a risk, hand planted on his shoulder. He turns to her, she leans up on her toes.
And hugs him.
He's unresponsive but submissive when she extricates herself from his arms, and not quite meeting his eye, she leans forward, head pressed against his chest.
Lance stares wide-eyed at the crown of her head in the poor light and then Ilana looks up, smile lopsided and quivering. It's uncharacteristic—and he realizes her eyes are a little too bright and…he has no idea what he's supposed to do with this.
She ducks down again, mumbles an apology into his t-shirt and he's confused, equally conflicted.
"For what?" he asks.
"Is this weird?" The words are muffled. She glances up at him like she's afraid he'll take it the wrong way. He grunts, shrugging evasively. Ilana looks close to terrified and he feels a wave of fresh anger directed at himself for being such a hardass, then hesitates, because he's always been a hardass and Ilana has more or less coached him on some level of restraint with the locals.
Now is obviously not the time for hardassery.
"I don't think so?" he mutters awkwardly.
Ilana's face crumbles and she snorts wetly into his shirt.
"Um…are you okay?" he asks, grasping her shoulders.
She makes a quiet noise. A minute passes, and together they sit down on the bed and she lets him hold her in silence. And it is almost like being home again, but they've never been alone like this, mainly because it's always been kind of weird to think about anything resembling a relationship when Octus and Kimmy were a definite 'thing' at one point and were still going strong before they left. Not to mention the fact that he's her bodyguard.
But Octus isn't here. And circumstances have forced them closer than what is probably considered appropriate for a princess-to-be-Queen and her personal guard.
Besides, this probably isn't the same as…whatever deal Octus and Kimmy had figured out. It's Ilana who's holding onto Lance while they both try, in the suffocating silence between their breathing, to understand how the hell their contemporaries can just…approach this with any kind of confidence.
It's Ilana that Lance grapples for like something new—and she is new, smells like stale sweat and gasoline fumes imbued from the parking lot. (She's pleasantly heavy in his arms, soft and warm in places he has never allowed himself to imagine until now.)
And Ilana is the one to settle the silent question that hangs between them, offering reassurance with a smaller smile and a few words, because this is about forgetting what lies ahead, just for a little while. It's about celebrating the fact they're even alive, even though neither of them are particularly sure what is left to forget, or celebrate.
In the aftermath she is shivering and emptier in heart than anything; so he gives her the blanket and doesn't speak to her, head down, shoulders tense. He lapses back into the single bed and lets his body take up a shape in the mattress and tries not to think too profoundly about what their actions might or might not mean for the future.
A minute passes, and Ilana flops down next to him, naked and strangely unabashed. And she speaks the question burning undeniably in their minds: "What do we do now?"
"This doesn't change anything," he says bluntly. "We can't afford to get side-tracked now."
Again, he turns to look at her, and fearing she has misunderstood, Lance clasps her smaller hand gruffly in his in what Ilana thinks might be an attempt at consoling her. She wants to cry, wants to laugh, but she's exhausted. So she smiles, tired, hair all tousled, and they bump shoulders.
The people of Earth and Galaluna need them desperately—just as they need one other. But this is known, and not said.
vi.
Early in the morning, she showers, fearing she has broken something until she sees Lance squatting intently in front of the small television, and remembers where they stand.
She makes a suggestion about the water but he does not reply. Ilana hears the voice of a reporter and her breath catches. She sits down hastily beside him, still dripping and spotted with suds, separated by a towel and space alone, and together they watch the H.M.E.R. take on the Horned Mutraddi.
And when the story finishes with the American Military victorious, cutting to some topic of vastly less importance, the two exchange looks, and Ilana knows she's thinking the same thing as Lance.
And when she's dressed and situated with Lance in the closest café they can find, they're already formulating a plan of action.