[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Do us Part (Alte Day)

Genre: Slice of Life

Length: 1446 words

BD: I was asked to do a story for 'Alte Day' by Altela, which falls on March 11. So, here it is! It's only a small piece, since I'm currently not writing fanfic for public posting and am instead working on either commissions or the VN.

For just one moment, all is as it should be.

She drinks it in, luxuriates in it. His hand on her waist, the smell of his cologne. Gentle music in the background. He even lit candles. Candles! They’re so hard to find nowadays. She dimly remembers there being rationing when she was a child, but it was never quite as intense as it is now – and yet, there are far fewer people.

She stops herself, shakes her head. This time is rare, and precious. She won’t let anything else get in the way.

“Darling,” she whispers. “I’ve missed you so much. Every minute, of every day.”

“I’ve missed you too,” her husbands whispers back. “Alte. My dear, sweet Alte.”

She leans her head against his chest and exhales. Feels the knot of emotion, hardened by battle, begin to come loose.

They’ve given her leave, or what passes for it, after what they called ‘a particularly successful scouting mission’. It wasn’t a success, and it wasn’t a scouting mission. It was a hastily scrambled offence following an enemy retreat, and the casualties were atrocious for both sides. These desperate gambles seem to be the only thing either army has strength for; they scrabble with their fingernails on both sides, never truly stabilising before the next bout of desperation. Circling the drain.

Even these few moments are not sacred. Nothing is. They can scramble her at any time, for any reason; not a second goes by when she doesn’t fear being snatched from her husband’s arms by the grasping hands of the military.

But, as scant as it might be, this time is all they have. There are no sights left worth seeing, no landmarks left untouched; the last cities now are on their knees, and Mother Nature has fallen barren under the demands of her most grasping children.

So, they dance. They dance as they danced on their wedding day, looking into each other’s eyes, letting the world take care of itself for just a little while. They are a little clumsy, a little stiff; her husband was never a sprightly sort, and her war wounds have begun to catch up with her. But this is all they’ve got. It’s all they need. It has to be.

“How are things going with the spaceship?” she asks.

“...Better than we could have hoped,” he says. She loves his voice; grave, but warm at the same time. Even about the silliest little things. “The AI that will guide the ship was born quite recently.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Born? You mean made.”

“Not quite. She’s… well. Not human, but close to human. She needs to be. She’ll be guiding that ship for hundreds, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years… She needs to be human enough for people to love her, and for her to love them in return.”

She smiles. In her heart of hearts, she thinks it a childish, naive kind of idea. But the fact that her husband – a grave, serious man, with an intellect polished in every facet until it gleamed – could still have such ideas, and pursue them with such earnestness, was important to her.

Still, she prods him a little, challenges him – as she knows he likes her to. “You’re sure a regular AI couldn’t do it? It would only need to monitor the systems, after all.”

“Ah, but… In a sense, the settlers aboard that ship will be a brand new genesis for the human race. The greatest minds left to this planet will be among them, but… well. The greatest minds have grown old, and… in a sense, they’ve been defeated. We are retreating, my love,” he says, a little sheepishly. “Those people – that new society – to avoid the mistakes of the humans that came before them, they will need guidance, and they will need it after we’re gone.”

She gives him a crooked smile. No, not crooked. Perhaps ‘dented’ would be a better word. “It’ll take more than a little guidance to redeem human nature, my love. I can’t help but feel you’re being too optimistic.”

“Perhaps,” he admits. “But being here, with you, is the reason I can be optimistic.”

“Oh, you.”

They kiss for a while, and she is happy; discussion is all well and good, but it doesn’t make her heart pound the way his lips do. Nothing does.

“But yes… it’s progressing well, my love. According to her simulator results, she’s already mastered the subsystems of the ship. Now they’re just teaching her… well, human things. Showing her films, fashion magazines, flowers. Things like that. Trying to get her to understand us,” he carries on, when they’re ready to talk again.

“I see. Almost like a child.” Her heart aches a little as she says the word. “Maybe you should teach her how to dance.”

He chuckles gently. “That might be an idea.”

“Who else will? I can’t imagine any of those stuffy scientists know how.”

“It’s not like I’m any better.”

“That’s never stopped us,” she replies, stroking his face fondly. “You want to dance with me, and I want to dance with you. It’s the desire that matters. Not the skill. Although, if you’d like to stop stepping on my toes, I wouldn’t complain.”

“I think… that spaceship will be long gone before I learn to dance properly. I don’t have time to be teaching anybody else.” He grins bashfully, and takes her hand again.

As they dance, he never asks her how things are going at the front. She doesn’t talk about the front. The front is the front, and right now, she’s not on the front; she is here, and she is in his arms, and that’s where she has every intention of staying – body and mind. The front can take care of itself.

She could take herself out of the war, if only for a little while. But she’s finding it more and more difficult to take the war out of herself.

“Darling,” she says, haltingly, “I need to speak to you about something.” Her voice, which is always sweeter and lighter with her husband, dips a little; for a second, it is stern, and grim. “Do you remember our wedding vows?”

“As though it were yesterday,” he replies. His hands are steady, and his voice level.

“Till death do us part. That was what we said.”

“That,” he says, hesitating, “was what we said.”

“Which means–” She bites her tongue, chokes on the words. “Which means, if one of us dies, the other is free. If things go badly, and – I, I mean, in the war, and – if I’m not around anymore, you… You need to be aboard that ship.” She squeezes his hand as tightly as she dares; hers is a grip that can hold a machine gun steady. “You need to be… be free. And be happy. Without me. Promise me.”

“Alte, I–”

“Promise me.”

“...Yes. Of course,” he lies. She’s the one who loves him the most. Knows him the most. She can hear it in his voice. “But in that case, my love, your… treatments will extend your life beyond mine. So, when I die, you must be free as well. To love other people. Even to forget me, if you must. Promise me.”

“…Okay. I promise,” she lies back.

His brow wrinkles, and she knows that he has seen through her as well. But they don’t have time to argue about it. They have to enjoy what they have. The future, like the front, must take care of itself; there are things they need in the here and the now.

“I’m sorry. I spoiled the mood, but I really do adore all the effort you put in for tonight,” she says. “The music, the candles… even the dancing. It almost feels like our wedding day all over again.”

“Well,” he says, and scratches his chin. “We did just exchange vows, after a fashion.”

She kisses him again, and subtly repositions the hand that’s on her waist. “Come to think of it, I recall that we did something else on our wedding day as well.”

The corners of his eyes crinkle as he smiles. “Wasn’t that the honeymoon?”

“That’s just what we told your parents.”

She doesn’t know how long she has left with her husband. She never does. They live balanced on the edge of a knife, and no matter which way they step, it cuts. But there’s no sense in not moving. They have to seize their opportunities, at every chance they can. Make the most of every hour.

But for Alte, the next few hours will fly by very quickly indeed.

A/N: She's a married woman, she can have fun. I wanted to link Alte's personal story back into the greater narrative a bit and make it feel like she has a greater impact; given that her husband was on Hime's ship and Hime was made around that time in all probability, the two probably interacted, and some of Hime's more romantic traits were perhaps influenced by Alte's husband telling stories about his wife.