Written for the 2016 KuroFai Olympics. Prompt: "These are not the droids you're looking for."

Very special thanks goes to lilfoodmonster, the husband, and Blossom for their support and feedback through this period! Also a thank you to everyone else who has cheered me on along the way! :D From the outline I had, I was definitely not expecting this fic to explode like it did... but you know me and long fics, lol.

Warnings: Suicide ideation, Loss of body parts, Body issues, Self-esteem issues, Illness, Discrimination, Violence, Mentions of death, Space

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles and its characters do not belong to me. My writing does, however.

The Stars We Live By

Chapter 1: Rust

"Come on now, Syaoran. Get further back. Two more meters. Yes! There, behind that rock. Good. Are you both ready?"

Fai Fluorite glances at his children—one hunched over twenty meters to the left, behind a towering bolder, the other on his right, crouched down flat in the tall grass next to him, hands over her short neck—and makes his decision. The rock shielding himself and Sakura is large enough, streaked through with vertical black cracks, and it watches over them as he covers Sakura's smooth metal back with his own body, tucking his head over hers.

"Executing blast sequence in—three, two, one!"

He does not allow himself to hesitate when he pushes the button. There is an explosion, a soundless gust of sweeping winds and dust blowing all around them, and his throat closes.

Within the stillness of his suit, he hears echoes of other explosions, thinks about the tiny body curled beneath his instead, and touches his helmet to her head. The clink of metal on fiberglass is grounding; Sakura reaches out for his hand, holds it, and Fai listens to the stream of pop music she sends through the radio feed.

Think think think of me whenever you're feeling down

He cracks a smile at the lyrics, ignores the itch in his leg. "Thank you, Sakura," he says. "Flower baby."

"Am I really a flower baby?" Her voice rings through his headset, warm and bright and clear, and Fai grins for real, this time.

"Yes, of course you are," he tells her fondly.

"Sakura is the best flower princess," Syaoran chimes in from his own radio.

When Fai looks up from the gritty sand and tiny rocks between wide, flat blades of grass, dregs of red dust are trailing away from them, into the flat, distant horizon. He pulls away from Sakura, cautiously peering around their rock to observe the destruction. "Can you give me a reading on a sample, Syaoran?"

From the base of his red-dusted boulder, Syaoran gets to his feet in a single fluid motion, takes certain steps out onto the debris-strewn field. A spot on his dark visor flashes green. Fai waits, watches the droid as his chunky legs bring him through swaying yellow grass to the hollowed hillside before them. The hill is tall, maybe five times Fai's height (and Fai is regarded as one of the tallest people on the Station), one in a series of connected hills that run across the prairie on Planet XS4695-beta. Above, a pink-yellow sky stretches over them, cloudless, and it feels as though they're very tiny and insignificant in this expanse of space.

Like all the other times they've been through this process, Syaoran pulverizes a fist-sized rock sample in an ultrasonic chamber he's brought along. Fai picks his way over with Sakura, crouches down by Syaoran so he can look them both in the visor.

A minute later, the report from Syaoran comes in: "Sandstone at 56.7%. Bornite at 15.4%. Sphalerite at 10.3%. EEA at 5.3%..."

Something lifts in Fai's chest. This is the highest concentration of EEA they've found to date; it is a rare material, and with any luck, things will finally look up for him when they get back to the Station. "Do a bio-threat scan," he interrupts, his voice high and breathless. "As well as the rest. Sakura, get the sample box ready."

The droid on his other side moves. Like Syaoran, she's tiny and humanoid, coming up to Fai's hips when he stands. Droids on the Clow Station are built this way: heavy on the feet and torso, lighter on the limbs and head. Fai doesn't really believe it when people say they're painted white for neutrality. It really is more of a cleanliness thing, when it's easier to inspect the droids for spills, damage... Maybe it's because they blend in to the stark whiteness of the Station's interior.

Fai stops thinking about that.

Instead, he takes the clear sample box from Sakura and steps over to where the best selection of shattered rock is. The lab prefers smaller chunks for convenient study, so he looks over the jagged pieces for ores with the highest visible mineral content. "Sakura, return to the Sparrow and await further instructions. Be careful!"

"Will do," she hums over the radio.

Fai watches her slow trek across the landscape to where the ship lies docked along the foot of another hill, thirty meters away. With its pointed nose and flat wings, Little Sparrow is the most apt name for it. The Station's Commander rejected Fai's renaming request, though, so it remains The Voyager on Station records, and "Sparrow" in Fai's tiny circle.

"0.00% trace of microorganisms," Syaoran reads, visor blinking green. "0.00% trace of parasites and other multicellular organisms."

"Good," Fai breathes. The little bubble of excitement in his chest threatens to overwhelm him. With this much EEA... "Keep scanning. Sakura, initiate the air jet. That was a lot of dust on everyone. We don't need more complaints from the cleaning crew, now, do we?"

"Nope!" Her voice is quieter from this distance. Fai sees Sakura step beneath a wing-mounted engine, hears the loud swoosh of air over her microphones. He turns her feed down, circles the jagged pieces of red rock torn from the steep hill. A casual survey shows no visual discrepancies; he picks up a smaller piece, studies the lines of black streaking through striated red stone. Held certain ways, the black ore gleams a beautiful purple-blue, and Fai thinks about stashing a sample for himself. It would be so prettyin his collection.

He hefts the rock for weight, gives it a once-over to make sure there're no visible bugs, and sets it carefully into the sample case instead.

Sakura flies the ship over in minutes. Fai gathers Syaoran close to himself, steadies the droid with a hand to his back so he doesn't fall over when the ship engines gust nearby, covering them in yet more dust. When the wind settles, Fai wipes dust off the front of his helmet, does the same for Syaoran's visor with the back of his glove.

"All systems set and ready for takeoff," Sakura announces in his ear.

It doesn't take long for Fai and Syaoran to board the ship. Once the sample box is secured in place, and once the locking systems are engaged, Sakura takes them up and out through the atmosphere, towards the next planet on the list.

x
x

Two days later, they're docked back on the Station. Fai doesn't miss this place when they go on their week-long missions, not really. The Clow Station is huge, self-sufficient, full of people and droids, and Fai feels better being away from all of them.

But a job is a job, and he has to deliver these samples.

"In another lifetime, I think Sakura can be the princess of a city," Syaoran says behind him, still strapped into the third pilot's seat.

"In another lifetime, I think Syaoran can be my prince," Sakura answers from her own seat.

Fai doesn't look away from checking off his sample boxes, but he grins.

"I will drive Princess Sakura around in a carriage."

"No, I will drive Prince Syaoran around in a carriage."

"But Fai says I should be gentlemanly."

"Fai says girls have equal rights as boys."

"You both can take turns," Fai tells them, holding down his laughter as best as he can. "Have you been reading 'Princess of the City', Sakura?"

Sakura nods, unstrapping herself from her seat. She lands on the cockpit floor with two heavy thumps, and Syaoran is quick to follow, keeping close to her now that they aren't on a mission.

"I liked Princess Aldi," Sakura says. "But her Prince Charming was not nice."

"Oh?" Checks complete, Fai unstraps the sample boxes, walking around the Sparrow's narrow interior for a last scan before he hands it over to the cleanup crew.

It's far less cold and empty in the ship with the children around, he thinks. Even if Syaoran and Sakura are tiny compared to the tall corridors, and even if there are only the three of them in a space long enough to fit a bus. Despite the years they've spent in this ship, the inside of the Sparrow remains hardly decorated; the passageway is free of clutter, the walls are empty sheets of sturdy metal, outfitted with collapsible shelving and bunk beds for long-haul missions.

"Why do you say he wasn't nice?"

"He was rude," she says immediately. "Unlike Syaoran."

If droids could blush, Fai is certain that Syaoran would. As it is, his son flashes two spots of red on his visor, and Fai is delighted to no end. "Would you rather read something else, Sakura?"

Her hands swivel up and down; her equivalent of a shrug. "I don't know. I learn something new with all of them."

"Same here," Syaoran chips in.

"More books on love poems, Syaoran?" Fai says.

Syaoran nods. "I can write poems now."

Fai sets the sample boxes down on the floor beside them, torn between asking Syaoran for a quick demonstration, and getting them ready to go. They have a minute before they're due out.

He decides to be safe. Fai ducks down into a crouch, faces his children. "Okay. I want to hear a poem tonight, Syaoran. Can you do that?"

Syaoran bobs his head again.

"Good! Now, give me a hug, both of you." His children shuffle in close, rounded feet bumping against his thighs, and Fai throws his arms around them both, pulling them close. "You guys are the best," he whispers.

"We love you," they chorus, solid, steady hands on his back.

"Right." Fai glances at the time display on the cockpit, pulls a face, and sighs. "MokoScript, deactivate."

They don't feel any different in his arms, not really. There is no blue light flashing when the program switches to standby, and they are frozen around him now, like puppets awaiting a command. Fai slips away from them, touches gentle fingers to the stickers beneath their chins. Seeing them like this fills him with great sadness and guilt; they are children, and they should be allowed to run around and play. Not be strung up like that.

It's only when he leans in close to inspect a scratch that he sees the spots on them, faint, pinprick points of something black on the pure white of their bodies. Dirt? The spots do not go away with a swipe of his thumb, and not even when he scrapes a nail over them. Rust?

Fai frowns. He rocks back on his heels and issues a command: "1143G and 2315A, report to Fai Fluorite's sleeping quarters at 2300 hours tonight."

Both droids flash green on their visors. Fai fills their hands with sample boxes; two each for the droids, six for himself, and leads them out of the Sparrow.

Outside, the air pressure has equalized, and the low buzz of machines fills his ears. The constant background noise of the Station is vastly different from the empty silence of space, or the roar of his ship. Along the edges of the hangar, droids wait to begin work on the Sparrow. They are white against white walls, with dark visors to indicate their presence—almost forgotten, but not quite. Fai flashes his ID at the hangar exit, waits for the reader to beep, and strides through the parting maws of the doorway, his two assigned droids at his heels.

He passes the occasional staff on the Station. No one really greets him, or smiles, and that is fine. He keeps his head down, sample boxes tucked beneath his arms like a hen with chicks, and heads towards the research labs, his pulse kicking up when he thinks about the potential of the samples he's got.

With any luck, these samples will gain the Commander's approval, and Fai will be able to quickly repay the debt sitting on his shoulders, maybe even earn kind glances his way again.

x

x

His eyes flick over the lines of the too-bright computer screen, roving faster as he nears the end of the article. By the last few paragraphs, Youou Kurogane isn't even reading anymore. He's hitting "Print" and throwing his arms in the air, thanking the powers that watch over them.

"What's up?" Two desks over, his colleague throws a disinterested glance over his shoulder, before resuming his riffle through the supply cabinet. "You sure we have copper sulfate? I don't see any here."

"Check my bench," Kurogane answers. He leaps to his feet, crossing the few paces to one of the remaining inkjet printers on the Station. When the printer spits the last sheet out, whirring and cranking, he grabs the entire set, hurrying over to Touya to wave it in his face. "Look at this! Look!"

"What?" Touya looks. "Oh."

"Not just 'Oh'," Kurogane retorts, waving the pages so they flop back and forth. "It's a new law on the damn AIs! Free rein to search anywhere if you suspect their presence! No warrants needed."

"There are no more AIs," Touya says, deadpan. "We made sure of that 10 years ago. Hell, I don't think there's any within a thousand light-years of the Aquarius galaxies."

"So you say," Kurogane mutters darkly. "If you aren't careful, these bastards'll sneak up on you and slit your throat. You'll be dead before you can say 'No more AIs'."

"Geez, thanks." Touya punches his shoulder. "C'mon, hand over your copper sulfate so I can get back to work already."

Kurogane glares at him. Sure, Touya's kind of cute and they've kind of dated, and he really doesn't mind having a fellow Japanese (the only other) on board, but the jerk can really be an idiot sometimes. Kurogane stalks over to his bench, sweeps a critical eye over his tidy plastic bottles, and lobs the right one at Touya's head.

"Hey!" With an admirably quick reflex, Touya catches the bottle before it hits him in the eye. In another life, he'd have been a soccer star, maybe. In this life, they're both scientists, and damn if Kurogane doesn't hate his job. "Damn you, Kurogane."

"Damn yourself." Kurogane turns his back on Touya, ignores the prickle of those eyes staring at him, and goes to pin the sheets of the new AI law on the lab notice board.

"No one's going to see that," Touya calls from across the lab. "The words are way too fucking tiny."

"Not my fault your eyesight is shit." Kurogane goes back to his computer to print a larger version of the pages. Except the settings on his computer refuse to work, and he has to copy the entire thing onto a word program, enlarge the text, and print it from there. "There, font size 70. Can you see it now?"

Touya gives him a dismissive wave. Kurogane flips him off.

He's in the middle of sticking plastic thumbtacks through the last sheet when the lab doors slide open, smooth and quiet.

The man who walks in is a familiar one—blond, blue-eyed, tall (just about as tall as Touya, but shorter than Kurogane), in a green-grey uniform. Kurogane knows vague details about him, like he's always on sample collection missions in the galaxies further away, that his samples, more often than not, aren't very good at all, that people like Touya would rather not speak to him if they don't have to.

Kurogane glances at his colleague, who has his back steadfastly turned to the door, and sighs. "Put your samples in that corner." He gestures vaguely. "Don't knock anything down."

"I don't knock anything down," Fai Fluorite says brightly, a grin stretched across his face so fake that Kurogane doesn't know why he even bothers. "But please could you start on sample 9504 first? It's got a 5% reading on EEA."

"We're out of methanol," Touya says without turning around. "No silver either. Can't process any of that right now."

Fluorite's grin slips. Kurogane sees it, does not comment.

Fluorite's interest in EEA is understandable. EEA is a metallic compound that can be refined to produce the material so critical for metal-to-nerve connections—the very thing that gives cyborgs fluid movement at all. Kurogane hears it in the step of Fluorite's gait; the heavy thump of one foot, and the light pat of the other.

Fluorite is a cyborg, the most disliked one on the Station. Kurogane doesn't know how much of him was replaced—there are rumors, of course, the guy wears enough to cover everything he can—but it isn't his business, and it's not like the guy jumped his sister's queue on medical treatment. Unlike how it is for Touya, which is why Kurogane puts up with talking to him, but Touya doesn't. Kurogane had a sister, once—

Something clatters to the floor, clanging like lightweight metal, and across the cluttered lab, Fluorite flinches. Touya swears beneath his breath. Kurogane sighs again. He watches as Fluorite ducks down between steel-topped benches, between the photospectrometer and various retort stands bearing samples in glass flasks. A second later, the blond straightens, holding up the fallen apparatus with a smile that's more a grimace. Kurogane waves him on.

Fluorite sets the samples on the side counter without any further incident. The two droids are still dogging his heels when he approaches the lab exit, where Kurogane stands by the latex notice board, spare thumbtacks in his palm.

Blue eyes flicker over the angry black words of the new AI law. They widen by a fraction. Fluorite looks back at Kurogane, tries to smile again, and fails.

"You should stop trying to smile," Kurogane says. But at least someone saw the new law, other than him. He's proud of that.

Fluorite winces. "Well, I had no idea that AIs are still around," he says brightly. "Are you going to be a cyber-vigilante of some sort? Yoohoo, I'll cheer you on!"

There's always something off about him, so Kurogane accepts his reaction as the set of things that make Fluorite weird. Like he really needs more reason to push him away, because this guy is just too pretty for his own good, and Kurogane doesn't need him in his lab. Or anywhere else nearby, really.

"Yeah, well, get going if you're done," he answers, turning away so he can deposit the thumbtacks at his desk.

The doors slide shut, and Fluorite and his droids are gone.

"I don't trust that guy," Touya says over the low hum of the machines around them. His knuckles are white, his eyes narrowed.

Kurogane doesn't, either, but Touya doesn't need to hear it.

He returns to his work with a reluctant sigh.

x

x

At precisely 2300 hours, the intercom at Fai's door buzzes. Fai looks up from the tools he pulled out of his desk, sets them down on the large, clear sheet of plastic spread out across his floor. "Who goes there?"

"Droids 1143G and 2315A reporting," comes the flat monotone across the speaker.

"Permission granted," Fai answers.

The locks disengage with a quiet snap. A second later, the door slides open, and the droids thump steadily in the room, waiting just by the inside of the doorway for further instruction.

Fai waits for the door to slide fully shut, for the locks to engage once more, before he says, "MokoScript, activate."

Just like that, a spot of sky-blue winks on each of their visors. Their heads perk up, and Sakura shakes the stiffness out of her little body. Syaoran looks immediately towards Fai.

"Welcome back," he tells them, spreading his arms out with relief. They're fine. Nothing's happened to them while they were gone. As one, his children plod forward, skirting around the various tools to return his hug. "I missed you guys."

"We would have missed you if we were conscious between Sparrow and here," Sakura says over his shoulder, her tone very slightly reproachful.

"It's safer that way," Fai and Syaoran answer at the same time. It's a habitual response by this point; Fai almost thinks he should have programmed her to be slightly more cautious, but so far, it's only resulted in her being funnier than Syaoran. "Besides, if you rewind your recordings to about 1600 hours, you'll see that a new law was introduced while we were gone."

The droids are silent as they scan through the footage from their cameras.

"Kurogane looks happier," Sakura says. "Usually he's a grump."

Fai huffs. "Fast forward to the notice board. I think that's what he was happy about."

Syaoran is the first to flash two yellow lights, distressed. "A warrantless search? For AIs?"

The sinking feeling is back in his chest, and Fai pulls Syaoran closer, guiding Sakura onto the floor beside him. His children do not protest as they follow his nonverbal cues, sitting quietly where he leaves them. "You see now, don't you?" Fai says softly. "We can't afford mistakes. I cannot lose you guys, do you understand?"

"We won't make mistakes," Sakura tells him indignantly, flashing red.

"It's just— People aren't kind to AIs, Sakura. They'll take any chance they get to say bad things about you. I don't want you to get hurt, or angry that they're saying things like that."

"I'm allowed to feel." Those words were a direct lesson from him, and Fai does not miss the irony.

He plugs the drill into the wall socket, pulls his goggles down over his eyes and a mask over his nose, and begins work on the miniscule spots on Syaoran's body. "You are. I'd just rather not have you so angry that you forget yourself. Everyone else thinks you're ordinary droids."

Sakura makes a little impatient noise, gets to her feet, and begins to pace.

"Don't walk where there's no plastic sheet," Fai says without looking away from the sander attachment on his drill. It presses down on the little black spots on Syaoran's chest, there and gone, rust and paint grinding off to reveal the darker metal of Syaoran's chest plate. "Or you'll be the one cleaning up."

Sakura harrumphs. "But there's nothing else to walk on! Your quarters are tiny, Fai. Everyone else's is bigger. It's not like there's a lack of space on the Station."

And she's right. Fai's quarters are miniscule, barely enough for a narrow bed, a desk, a closet, and some floor space. Every other personnel on the ship has rooms twice this big. His rock collection is crammed onto the back end of his desk, colorful in all their sparkling glory, but...

"I don't, I don't deserve it," he tells her, resigned. "You know that. Ashura agreed that this was the best course of action."

"Screw Ashura," Sakura snaps, flashing red again. Before him, Syaoran shines yellow. "You're the best person on the Station, Fai. I don't see how anyone can fail to recognize that."

"Complex sentences, Sakura. Very acid. I'm proud of you." Fai's mouth quirks into a smile. "But you see, I can't risk you having an outburst like that around people. That'll be very dangerous for you."

"I don't care about me," she protests.

"I do," Fai says. "And so does Syaoran. You're an important person, Sakura. Don't forget that."

She's silent for a few moments, and Syaoran bleeps his agreement. Fai focuses on getting as many spots off Syaoran as he can, because these spots are tiny and taking forever, and already, he can feel his eyes getting tired. His leg itches again.

"Syaoran, do you have a poem of your own?" he asks. "You said you did earlier."

Syaoran bobs his head. "It's a love poem. It's not very good though, I've only read two books so far."

"That's all right. I'm sure it's beautiful."

Syaoran flashes two spots of red, and after a moment, begins to recite:

"City lights, blue and white
The road passes us by
We look up, breaths fogging
The night is not so dark
All is at peace."

"It's very good," Fai says, patting his son on the shoulder. "I like it."

"I like it too," Sakura says. "But it's not very lovey-dovey."

Syaoran sags.

"Straighten up, Syaoran," Fai tells him, turning the droid around to get at the spots on his back. "Sakura, grab the Size 00 brush and do touchups on the sanded spots, won't you? The paint is on my other side."

With Sakura working on Syaoran's chest plate, Fai continues, "A poem doesn't have to be lovey-dovey, Syaoran. That was still very good!"

"I wanted it to be lovey-dovey," Syaoran mumbles. "For Sakura."

"I like it anyway," Sakura assures. "Don't worry about it!"

It's three entire hours before both Sakura and Syaoran are newly sanded and painted, and by the end of it all, Fai feels as though his eyes have shrunken in their sockets. He pats the dust off his pants, gathers up the four corners of the plastic sheet, and shakes the powdered rust into the disposal chute.

"The paint should be dry in an hour if you go to the disinfection chamber," Fai says with a yawn. "Come back later so I can do touchups, okay?"

They beep and nod, crowding around him.

He drops kisses on their visors this time, whispers, "MokoScript, deactivate," and sends them away with a new meeting time for tomorrow.

Fai isn't fond of his quarters in the Station, so anything that makes him fall asleep immediately is a welcome distraction. He shrugs out of his clothes, shuts the lights off, and falls into bed, unconscious before he knows it.

x
x

There's a fine dusting of brownish-black on the children, and a sick sense of dread in Fai's stomach. His patch itches, and his leg itches, and he wants to pull out all his hair, and he... can't.

"You should try to sleep," Syaoran says next to him, completely unphased while Fai lies strapped into the lowest bunk bed in the Sparrow.

"I can't sleep," Fai hisses at him, and winces when Syaoran pushes himself backwards. "No, no, don't go. I'm sorry, Syaoran. I didn't mean that. I just..."

"I understand," Syaoran tells him, floating closer.

Fai can barely look at his son. It's been seven days since they were last on the Station, and it's the first time he's wanted to return to that place so badly.

There's something wrong with his children.

For over a week, now, the spots on their bodies have returned steadily, eating through paint and metal both. Fai thought it a simple rust problem at first, when he saw those spots and sanded them off, and painted over them. Two days later, the spots reappeared, right before they were due to head out on another mission. He spent the next three hours tense, teeth gritted, sanding the spots off all over again.

To be safe, he brought his sander along on the trip, as well as a can of paint, and when they weren't busy navigating swamps and oceans and sinkholes on other planets, Fai sanded the spots off his children on rocky beaches, on the top of cliffs, anywhere out in the open, in case the rust particles somehow contaminate the inside of the ship. The rest of the time was spent collecting samples, or scrutinizing the Sparrow's interior, just to make sure there weren't any strange black spots that had taken on all the metal surfaces.

(Fai discovered a spot on Syaoran's arm, thumbnail-sized, and he swore he could see the slow spread of it before his very eyes. It made his stomach turn.)

A week later, the tip of the sander has ground down to nothing. Fai has tried his best to scrub the spots off the children, but it doesn't help, and the spots are still blooming where they were before. The paintwork on their bodies is uneven, now; raised rings of accumulated paint circle the spots, only to be sanded down in the middle, and added on to with a new coat.

Fai desperately wants to bring them to the Engineering Department, to see if there's a way the rust can be removed, for once and for all. But the moment he considers that, he knows that the scientists there will keep them in quarantine, maybe even keep him in quarantine, and he will not get any say in the treatments they deem fit to use on his children. Droids are droids. Droids have no feelings.

He can't do that to them. He can't.

He decides that the best thing he can do is to treat them himself. He was once a mechanic, familiar with rust of all sorts, and he has some treatments to deal with this. But they're all back in his quarters, and won't the Sparrow fly any faster already?

"How much more time?" he asks.

"5 hours, 34 minutes and 23 seconds," Syaoran answers patiently. "Do you want a partial dose of Estazolam?"

Fai doesn't look at Syaoran when he nods. "Just for about four hours or so. I need to be awake when we dock."

Syaoran moves away to fetch the medication, and Fai considers his other options. He will need various chemicals to experiment with the rust, in case his doesn't work. He will need someone with access to them. He will—

He thinks of red eyes, and knows what his next course of action should be. He doesn't like it at all.

When Syaoran returns with a broken pill, Fai swallows it with some water. He drops off soon after.

x

x

Hikari+ is singing a catchy pop song, her voice carrying over the low drone of lab machines, and Kurogane sings along, off-key, unable to hit her high notes. It doesn't matter, though. Touya's not in the lab, and there's no one else around, so it isn't as if he's embarrassing himself in any way.

It's late. Everyone else is slacking off after work, and Kurogane is slacking off, himself. He's got a length of nickel wire in his hands and the 3D image of a Gundam on his screen, and he bends the wire with almost-perfect accuracy, following the structure of the Gundam's upper arm, trailing down to fit its chunky elbow...

The doors slide open. Kurogane startles, swears, and stops singing immediately. He thinks he's a little too late with that, but the man on the other side doesn't seem to care.

Fluorite strides into the lab in his uniform, hair mussed, as if he tried to make it stick up every which way and it all flopped down in defeat. He's in bad shape, like he's been working twenty-four hours straight in knee-deep muck, and, to top it off, received a cutting lecture from the Commander. But none of this is Kurogane's business.

Blue eyes meet his before he can look back down at his wire model, and Fluorite nods at him, arms full of sample boxes.

"Thought you usually drop those off earlier," Kurogane says. "Don't knock anything down."

"I won't knock things down." Fluorite's tone is sharper today, without the fake cheer, and it's refreshing. Kurogane's interest prickles. "Have you analyzed Sample 9504 yet?"

"No." He shrugs when Fluorite frowns over at him, on the verge of a retort. The sample boxes go down on the counter, next to the stack from last week. "Still haven't got testing chemicals. You should go look for some silver."

Fluorite purses his lips. "I follow the planet set I'm given, you know. I can't deviate from that. The other 'borgs are supposed to be the ones collecting for lab materials—"

"Thing is, we still don't have them."

"Fine, don't touch the samples," Fluorite snaps, his face drawn. He turns away, takes a deep breath to control himself before stalking over, a sort of tension about his shoulders that he's never had before. Fluorite waves a piece of half-cylinder in his hand—it looks like a droid part. "I have a challenge for you," he says more calmly, even forcing a grin. "It's a really fun one. Do you want to take it up?"

"What is it?" Kurogane asks, wary. He's never known this guy to come asking for favors in the lab. From this close, he sees little specks of opaque white on Fluorite's face, like he lost badly against some glitter machine.

"This keeps rusting." Fluorite sets the part down on the bench next to him, one made of polished granite. "All I want is for the spots to go away. Permanently."

"If it's just rust, can't you deal with it yourself?"

"If I could," Fluorite says, deliberately slow, "I would have done it myself."

And that, right there, is pretty damn suspicious. "Why're you not going to the Eng. Dept?"

Fluorite shrugs. "You're the ones doing research, right? You have more materials than they do, a wider range. I think you'll be able to figure it out faster." He pauses, a sort of slyness slipping into his eyes. Thin lips pull into a grin. "Unless you can't."

And damn him, but Kurogane will rise to a challenge if it butts up to him like that. "I'll see about it, damn you," he says. "Where's your droids?"

"Around." Fluorite shrugs. "Contact me as soon as you figure it out, okay? Or do you want me to ask the Engineering Department as well? So you guys can race against each other?"

Kurogane rolls his eyes. "Don't be an idiot. That's from your droids, isn't it?" He jerks his head at the droid part—oddly dull, come to think of it. "Run into trouble?"

Fluorite flaps his hand. It's just as dismissive as Touya's wave, but about ten times more annoying. "Something like that. But I think it'll be better if we have more people working on it."

"Not like we have unlimited resources." Kurogane stares at the man, wishing he's watched him more closely in the past. He doesn't know this guy's tells as well as he probably should. "Anything we should watch out for? You sound desperate."

"I'm not." And there it is, that fake grin again, that tells him Fluorite doesn't mean half of what he says. Is this sample really important? Or is he throwing them for a loop? Touya, for one, has said enough stupid things to the guy for him to want revenge, and Kurogane would not be surprised if Fluorite wants to take out any banked anger on the lab. "Well," Fluorite says, "the parts are a steel-aluminum alloy, so you probably don't want brine on that."

Kurogane rolls his eyes. "Even idiots know that."

Fluorite turns to go. "Tell me when you have some results. I'll be on the Station for the next two days. After that, you can reach me on the Sp— The Voyager by email, and so on."

"Fine. Whatever." Kurogane looks back to his computer, wire figurine forgotten in his hands. The droid that's supposed to be washing apparatus in the lab hasn't shown up, and he kind of wants his things clean for tomorrow. "Hey, hang on," he says.

Fluorite stops just by the door, looking back with a smile plastered across his face. "Yes?"

"Since you like droids so much. Any idea where this one went?"

The man blinks blankly at him. After a too-long pause, he says, "But all droids are the same, aren't they? I wouldn't know where this one went."

Which makes Kurogane think he knows, but Fluorite is gone before he can even get a word out.

Annoyed, he spins around in his seat, sees the droid part balanced delicately on the bench, and turns his back on it. Hikari+ is still singing on his speakers, too soft in the new quiet of the lab. Kurogane turns the volume up, sees the Gundam outline on his screen, and returns his attention to his figurine. He completes its other arm, then its torso, and its legs.

An hour later, the droid still hasn't shown up, and Kurogane's just about ready for bed. He stands, stretches, finally looks at the droid part that Fluorite left.

It's slightly off-white, bumpy on the surface, as though it's gone through a bad paint job. Whoever did that should probably be fired, or rotated. Whatever. There are hardly any spots on it that Kurogane sees, just teeny, tiny dots, and he rolls his eyes. Fluorite probably left that to annoy the hell out of Touya.

He turns most of the lights off, heads over to the door. To his surprise, there's a droid standing on the other side, smelling faintly of disinfectant. All its surfaces are gleaming white and smooth.

"'Bout time you showed up," Kurogane mutters, but the droid doesn't answer. He walks out, the droid heads into the lab, and Kurogane turns his thoughts towards sweet, peaceful rest.

x
x

Two days later, Kurogane looks at the droid part early in the morning, and swears.

A/N: Concrit appreciated and welcome! Or, just telling me your reactions as you read is just as appreciated ;)