vault-crossed lovers know no stars
Pound has some time to wander the corridors before the scheduled date. Pontecorvo has Synergy business to attend to. She stops by the cinema. Casablanca is on, yet again. She wonders how long rolls of film can last. Couples, elbow to elbow, coo at the genesis capsules visible from the Nursery window. The coveted new citizens waiting to be assigned to newly minted families. She doesn't linger on the thought that she might actually get one assigned to her, with Pontecorvo of all people.
Just as she is about to reach the Diner, she sees him coming up the stairs, Popper bubbling around him full of questions and hope. The C:\MASTIFF presidential candidate was personally appointed by him, and she represents the fresh face of reformist politics in the Bunker. Pound feels a strange affection towards her. She's not yet jaded by the dust. While Pontecorvo handles Popper and the other Mastiff representatives, Penhaligon catches Pound by her arm, positioning himself between her and the group, like he's been waiting there for exactly this moment.
"Can I talk to you? Alone."
Pound doesn't move, at first, not until Penhaligon's eyes drop to her hands, to the way she's holding them a little too still, then to her smile, too loose and not as calculated as usual, then back to her slightly glazed eyes, and something in his face shifts.
"You're... On something."
She could deny it. She doesn't. "Harmonix," she says, flat. "Toscanini prescribed it to me just before dinner. I have the prescription right here if y-"
"Show me."
She hands him the folded prescription slip without arguing, mostly because arguing costs more than she has right now. He reads it once, then again, like the second read might say something different. When he looks up, it's not at her.
"You're taking her on a date while she's high?" His voice climbs fast, too fast for the tunnels' concrete walls to dampen. Pontecorvo, Popper and the Synergy representatives slow down their conversation as they notice Penhaligon is screaming in their direction.
"Penny, shut up!" Pound pulls him to the side trying to defuse the situation. Pontecorvo sends Popper and the rest of his group away, approaching them with a serious look on his face. "This was my idea." Her voice comes out softer than she means it to. "I asked Toscanini for something to help me with the Unamuno thing. You know everything about it. Can't I ask for help?"
"That's not the point-"
"It's exactly the point." She's aware, distantly, that she's arguing on Pontecorvo's behalf, and that this should bother her more than it does.
Pontecorvo raises a hand to Penhaligon. "Lower your voice. We're in public."
"Don't tell me what to do!" Penny whisper screams.
"Penhaligon." Pontecorvo's tone doesn't change, but something underneath it does. "Say what you really want to say."
"You're taking advantage of her while she's drugged. Did you have any idea?" Before Pontecorvo can reply, Penny turns to her instead, and for a second the anger drops out of his face entirely, replaced by something closer to fear. "Are you of capable mind right now? Actually. Tell me the truth."
"I'm fine. I promise." The words come easily. Too easily, maybe, but true. She doesn't feel the drug lying for her when she says them, just making the road to saying them smoother.
"You don't have to prove anything to anyone, Pound." Penny's voice has gone quiet now, urgent in a different way. "Not to him. Not to me. Stop performing for one minute and just..."
"Maybe I am trying to prove something." She hears herself say it before she's decided to. "But did you consider maybe it's not to him? And not to you either?" She doesn't wait to see what that does to his face. She walks into the diner, and behind her, faintly, she hears Penny say something low and furious to Pontecorvo that she doesn't stay to catch.
The diner has the particular cheerfulness of a room that's been told to look festive on a budget. A UnaOne waiter - nerdy, but painfully attentive - seats them at a booth with a little too much ceremony, and they've barely settled before a cluster of other UnaOnes drifts towards the table beside them, too close for comfort.
"Excuse me? Do you mind?" Pontecorvo says to them, not with the tone of a teacher trying to control a rowdy classroom, more like a father ready to make their children fear for their lives. Pound's hand finds his shoulder. A soft, public gesture, exactly the kind a couple performs naturally.
"Ponte, darling," she says, sweet enough for the room, sharp enough for him alone. "Be nice!" Underneath the sweetness, she digs her fingers in until he goes rigid. His shoulder twitches when she calls him "Ponte." It's the first time anyone's called him by anything other than his full name, and she watches it land somewhere he wasn't braced for.
The waiter reappears, his name tag says USTANOV, and under it, in a smaller font: Mainframe OP, Diner. He asks them about their favourite songs, easy opening small talk, and they answer like two people who've done this before: Ponte can't find a key even when someone hands it to him directly, Pound only really trusts Billie Holiday to say anything true about heartbreak. Ustanov laughs at the right places and drifts off towards another table, visibly pleased with what he's seen.
Alone again, the silence that's left behind doesn't stay silent for long.
"So," Pontecorvo says, turning his water glass slowly on the table. "Since we're here. We've both done our share of damage. Let's not dress it up right now."
Under the Harmonix, that assertion doesn't land the way it would have this morning. It doesn't ignite anything, doesn't ask to be defended against. She just responds to it.
"Indeed. But you've never once seen me as anything but a threat," she says, plainly. "Not to the family. To you. To your control of it. That's why you ripped my neckerchief."
"I never asked to be entrusted with the future of the family. I don't see you as a threat, I see you as a lost person who needs guidance. I see that neckerchief every day as your refusal to accept that."
"Then do you hate me because of Petrich?" She asks, and watches something in him go very still. "Do you resent me, or Poe, or Proust, because we were there when he died?" She carries that guilt herself. The illegal brawl between Poe and a TerraThree that tanked the Synergy efforts to erect a statue commemorating Pavese, and ultimately led to Petrich's death, covered up by a family that barks too loudly about justice, but is far too afraid of the upper blocks to actually bite.
"That was an unfortunate tragedy, but that's not why I hate you," he says, quiet, almost surprised at his own honesty. "I don't hate you at all. You infuriate me because you refuse to be one of us. Your vanity makes you look at UnaOne like they have something worth wanting, when everything we've ever fought for says otherwise."
"I don't want to be UnaOne." She's mildly astonished at how easy the words come out, drug-smoothed. "I want them to look at a PentaFive and not see dust. I want to prove no one has to be defined by the block they were born into. That's not vanity. That's the same freedom you've spent your whole life demanding. I just went looking for it somewhere you didn't expect."
He's quiet long enough that she almost thinks he's about to give up this charade then and there.
"I didn't know it went deeper than vanity." He holds her gaze.
"You never looked past it." She holds his too.
Neither of them says anything for a moment. But they notice, for the first time, that they might be fighting the same fight from opposite ends. The first quiet either of them has shared without needing to win it. They savour it together. It's not peace. Not even close. A ceasefire, maybe.
By the time Ustanov returns with his little notepad of questions, Pound can feel the Harmonix starting to loosen its grip, her usual edge finding its way back into the her at the margins. That's when Unamuno arrives.
"I'm training," she announces, to no one in particular. "Waitressing. Same skill set as bartending, more or less. Ustanov said I could shadow him tonight." She smiles at Pound with all the warmth of a closed door. "Small world."
Ustanov is not bothered by the interruption yet, somewhat charmed by Unamuno's smiles and funny tirades. They're both UnaOne, same family. He just continues with his program, like nothing happened. "What's something you don't know about each other?"
Pound tells them; feeling her armour of grace and wit slip back onto her like cool chain mail; that she stole a beautiful brass button from a UnaOne censor when she was thirteen, because it was just hanging there, like he didn't care. It was a beautifully crafted thing, and it was going to fall anyway. She repurposed it into a brooch. Ustanov finds the confession amusing. Unamuno cheerfully disagrees.
"You little thief!" She turns to Ustanov. "You better put that in your report to the commission!" He laughs, and she laughs too, but Pound knows that was not a joke.
Pontecorvo shares he actually cares a lot about how he smells, in spite of the sweaty work they do every day. He has a small collection of perfumes developed by a TerraThree. Under the watchful eye of Ustanov and Unamuno, and her performance skills back to her baseline, Pound makes a show of holding Pontecorvo's hand and looking sweetly into his eyes.
"That doesn't count, Ponte. That's something I already know about you. Of course I've noticed your perfume before." Then she winks at him, while caressing his hand. Bravissima, take a bow.
"And a liar!" Unamuno interjects, this joke not landing as well as the previous one. Ustanov shoos her off with a laugh, thanking her for her input and apologising for the interruption. She stays close through the rest of the meal, finding reasons to linger, refilling water no one asked for, commenting on how unexpected this pairing is, how she always thought Pontecorvo more of a solitary type. Pound and Ponte hold the line without acknowledging her, a hand over a hand here, a soft shoulder touch there. Ustanov finishes the interview by asking them what hey liked most about each other.
"Her resilience." Ponte says, like a fact rather than a compliment. It lands harder for that reason. "Even under intense... Scrutiny. She never lowers her head. And that's why she's the first person I look at when I come into our family meetings."
That catches Pound by surprise. It might be the closest thing to an apology she will ever get from Pontecorvo. She drinks it all up, trying not to show it. Ustanov writes it down with a pleased smile on his face. He looks at Pound, waiting for her to answer, but she's still taken aback by what Pontecorvo just said. Five seconds too late, her armour slipping, she finally catches it before it hits the floor completely.
"His devotion." She wants to say "to the family" but she knows that won't fly with a UnaOne. Ustanov misses it, but the blank beat she leaves before continuing is long enough for Ponte to fill in himself. "To politics, to the betterment of the Bunker. To equality. He's never not working. If it's not the vaults, it's the Synergy. He never tires."
At this, Pontecorvo actually smiles. Not a performed smile, a genuine one. Like someone that just felt seen. Something small and entirely unwelcome flickers between them. It has no time to spark before Ustanov closes his notebook and tells them - genuinely, warmly - that he'll be recommending the union favourably to the Commission, if that's the direction they decide to go.
Hand in hand, they say goodbye to Ustanov and exit the diner with a sense of accomplishment, only slightly tainted by the fact it was all a farce. Finally alone, they can drop the act.
"Do you actually want to go through with this?" Pontecorvo asks. His hand lingers on hers for a second before letting go.
"Tomorrow we start Reboot operations. I don't know what that means yet." She hears her own voice shake, just slightly, and doesn't try to hide it. "Ask me again if we're both alive tomorrow."
"I just want you to know I'd never force you to do something you don't want," he says, and it's so plain, so without agenda, that it startles her.
She'd braced for pressure. For duty dressed up as persuasion, the kind she'd have known how to resist. She hadn't braced for this. And strangely, she has nothing to say.
"Take your time," he says, and turns to go, leaving her standing in the corridor with something unfamiliar settling where the hatred used to be.