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Chapter six

Skeevy Larry

Elliott showered in the morning and Niko stuck to a can of dry shampoo.

There seemed to be a mutually shared aura of feeling like shit due to insufficient sleep.

Once they were dressed and Niko was back in the suit, a knock came early to their door.

They paused, eyeing one another, before Niko made his way over.

“Yeah?” he called warily, keeping it closed.

“Oh, please pardon me, Niko. I hope I'm not disturbing you. Mistress has requested you meet with her in the conference room again,” came the soft voice of Sweetheart.

Kinky , Elliott mouthed silently at Niko. Niko scowled at him and mumbled back, “Don’t. Don’t even think about it.” Then he unlocked and opened the door for her with a smile.

“Good morning, ma’am,” Niko said. “Thanks for letting us know. We appreciate it.”

Sweetheart squinted happily at him, her patterns rippling to a peachy warm tint. “I hope you slept comfortably and that our accommodations have been satisfying. Did you enjoy being back in your room?”

“Yeah, of course. I missed being back in this place. We appreciate your hospitality.”

“You know that you’re always welcome here, Niko. Your dearheart as well.” She paused, holding her hands over her face in sudden horror, and cast a nervous glance towards Elliott. “I—I shouldn't have made assumptions. Perhaps I'm overstepping.”

“You’re not overstepping,” Niko quickly corrected. He glanced over his shoulder at Elliott and gave him a small smile as their gazes met. “He’s my dearheart.”

Elliott smiled back, a warm and private thing. Something honey gold and liquid poured through Niko at seeing it.

“Oh! I’m relieved. Your dearheart is always welcome, as well. Please do come speak with Mistress, though. I think she’s been waiting a very long time for you to uphold your bargain.”

Niko winced at the reminder, but offered her a kind smile nonetheless.

It was never an act with Sweetheart—despite living in a compound that could probably endure a nuclear strike, in the heart of a criminal society, she was single-handedly the sweetest, most genuinely benevolent person he’d ever met.

Sweetheart had earned her name. Being kind to her was an unspoken, harshly enforced rule on Dainna—but it wasn’t something Niko had ever found himself having to force.

He’d always liked her.

She had a certain sweet naivety that was both bizarre and refreshing in a place like this. He had no doubt that if Lady Death had viewed the rancid videos and pictures they’d sent her, she’d probably shielded Sweetheart from them all.

“Then we shouldn’t keep her waiting,” he said.

Sweetheart stepped aside, all four spindly, boneless legs moving with the inherent grace and elegance of a dancer.

Niko noticed she had delicate pink ribbons crisscrossing up them.

The ribbons terminated in bows that matched her collar.

She waved happily to Elliott as they passed, and he flashed her his best show pony smile, all charm and charisma again.

He and Niko stepped out and made their way to the conference room, where Death was already waiting, swiping through some of the holographic photos displaying the galaxy’s cruelest atrocities.

Yalsa was there this time, hovering over Death’s shoulder and observing the holograms, her long serpentine tail coiled around itself.

She turned her gaze on Niko, eyeing him keenly from behind her transparent, jeweled veil.

Sweetheart had followed them. Niko froze in the doorway the moment he realized, blocking her view. “Uh,” he started. “Ma'am, I don't think you want to see any of this.”

“Why not? What's—”

Death stood when she saw them, gesturing the hologram away, and walked briskly over. She shouldered past Niko, then rested her hands gently on the Xermotl's shoulders.

“Beloved, you shouldn't be in here. Not this morning.”

“Why not?” Sweetheart asked again. Her patterns faded to a distraught indigo. “I want to be near you and Yalsa. I want to see Niko again—”

“I know. We're going to spend time together this afternoon, remember? But what we're looking at now is terrible. Some of the cruelest, sickest things even I've ever seen. You don't need to have that in your pretty head, okay? It'll get stuck there.”

Sweetheart hesitated. She glanced at Niko and Elliott.

“I’m not weak,” she said quietly. Her patterns flared to a deep chartreuse, giving Niko pause. In all the years of knowing her, he had never seen the Xermotl woman actually angry before.

Trouble in paradise? Maybe not everything had stayed quite the same as he’d initially thought.

“No, you’re not weak,” Yalsa said from inside the conference room. “But you are soft. That footage is rancid bile. Watching it will only hurt you.”

Elliott looked like he wanted to argue, but Niko subtly shook his head at him. Whatever was going on between the three of them, he didn’t want to contribute to elevating an argument into an outright fight—nor did he want to piss Death off after only just getting back into her good graces.

Instead, Elliott only murmured, voice sullen, “It stays with you. I wish I’d never had to see.”

Sweetheart finally relented, her patterns shifting to a morose, deep blue. “Okay.”

“We’ll talk about this later, alright?” Death said, casting Sweetheart a private and intense glance.

“Yes, let’s,” Sweetheart said, her eyes squinting and her patterns turning a faint teal in what Niko could only describe as a forced smile. “Bye, Niko. Elliott. Be well today.” She made her way out and down the long hall that led to an elevator. Niko watched her go.

He glanced back at Death, puzzled by whatever that interaction had been, but she was staring at Elliott now instead, quite intensely.

“You,” she said. “Come here.”

Elliott hesitated, but before he could act, she stepped toward him. She reached forward and pulled the slender, blond man into a tight hug. Elliott went stiff, seeming utterly taken aback. His expression was outright panicked.

Niko was shocked as well, gaping at them in silence.

Only after a moment did he realize his mouth was hanging open.

A quick glance around the room revealed it had stunned everyone else present in the background too; the other compound denizens had stopped what they’d been doing, blinking at Lady Death.

Then she pulled away and clasped Elliott’s face in her hands. He stared back at her with bewildered, wide eyes, a shade paler than usual.

“I saw the footage,” she said so quietly that Niko could barely even hear, standing right beside them. This was a private conversation, it seemed, meant only for Elliott. She spoke in Sala Heenvan to him. “You know the one I'm talking about.”

Elliott swallowed, his look of bewilderment quietly changing to something deeply pained. Pleading, even.

“You're strong,” she said. “I am humbled by you, Elliott Kestrel. I am impressed by you. You have a resilience as rare as diamond.”

Elliott was trembling now, seeming uncertain how to even respond to such words. He looked utterly devastated, broken. Niko watched him reach up and tightly grip Death’s wrists and hold them, her hands still cupping his cheeks.

“How did you—” she’d begun asking, but Niko couldn’t hear the rest. Another voice came slithering in, louder and clearer, addressing him directly from several feet away.

“ Killjoy .”

“Hey, Yalsa,” he said a little uneasily. He glanced back at Death and Elliott, who were still talking to one another in near-inaudible tones. Elliott was telling her something now and she nodded at him. Niko wanted so badly to hear, but Yalsa spoke again.

“It’s been a very long time.”

Not long enough. Fuck off, Yalsa . Of course she’d had to start talking to him right now of all times.

He cast her a distracted glance again. “Yeah. Feels good to be back, though.”

“I’m surprised you decided to show your face here after hiding away for so long.

Quite brazen. But Deleera has always been soft on you.

” She had his attention now. He reluctantly peeled his gaze away from Elliott, focusing fully on the ethereal snake before him instead.

Hesitantly, he stepped over toward her. “Though I wonder if you would have bothered ever coming back if you hadn’t needed something from her now. ”

Niko swallowed.

Fair point.

“I—I always wanted to. I thought about you guys all the time. I missed this place, this life. But I wasn’t really… doing so well, either.”

Yalsa trailed her gaze slowly toward Elliott in the background. “Many Quwa-quay back home haven’t been doing so well either after your lover murdered the Grand Sovereign before the eyes of millions.”

Niko shifted uneasily, unsure of what to say to her. He didn’t like where this was going.

“Though I see now why he did it,” she continued.

“Good riddance. They were a false, corrupted vessel. Soon, others will understand too. I respect your lover. That he was able to compile all this data and take their justice into his own hands after what happened with his sibling is fiercely admirable. That he has survived this long is perhaps even more so.”

“Yeah,” Niko said quietly. The graduation photograph of both siblings from his old Galapol files flashed through his mind—the shared joy between them, the obvious and unconditional love.

He tried not to think about the glimpse he’d gotten of Cleo’s video—Uru Taal looming over her like a nightmare, ignoring her pleas.

The reminder that Elliott had at some point found footage of his beloved sister’s torment and murder online—which Niko himself still couldn’t even bear to fully witness—hurt him more deeply than he had words for. His heart ached for Elliott.

Niko cast a quick glance back at him again. The man looked shaken to his core, brows knit into a wounded frown as he nodded at Death, his eyes searching her face as she murmured something to him.

He wished he could have fucking heard it.