Awakening

Author Note:This story began as a drabble prompt by Nasturtian for "Waking Up" as a concept, and Miller/Julie, and somehow it blossomed from there into an actual fic.

If you'd like to see some glimpse of where I think they go from here, check out ch. 4 of my other fic Miller/Julie fic "world enough and time". I've been dying to write a "Julie Lives" fic for awhile, and this was the perfect opportunity.

For the purpose of this fic, Julie is the age of her actress in the TV series, Florence Faivre, who was in her early thirties, instead of Julie's book canon age of being in her early twenties, because I say so.

I hope you enjoy.

The ship was called the Rocinante , a Mars corvette class warship. It was the ship that Anderson Dawes had sent to rescue her, and she was awake. She was strapped down in a medical chair with a half dozen tubes jabbed into her veins. She was awake, which meant she was alive.

She wasn't supposed to be alive.

Julie Mao closed her eyes, and moisture trickled out from the corners and down her cheeks. Maybe the tears came from exhaustion, from shock, or maybe they were from relief so sharp it cut like a knife. Had she been standing, it would have brought her to her knees.

She shouldn't be alive, but she didn't want to die. Not alone. The chair, the tubes, the ache she could feel in her bones through the haze of painkillers as if it was waiting on the other side of a wall… no matter how bad it was, at least she hadn't died alone. Someone had come for her. Someone had cared.

There were two other bodies strapped down beside her. Male, from the size, one a Belter from the height, the other a squat Earther. Both were pale, hospital pale, like they'd gone into shock. She thought she recognized one. Through the haze she had taken for her own body dying, lying in her own filth, dehydration swelling her tongue in her throat, she still remembered a figure stepping through the door. The flutter of wings. Muttered voices and strong hands lifting her.

She'd thought it was a hallucination. Or maybe she'd been wrong about religion, the afterlife. Maybe some holy book had gotten it right, and this was an angel coming to take her away. Did she even deserve angels? She hadn't been strong enough at the time to wonder. She had only wept then, as she did now, that someone had come at all. An angel of Anderson Dawes. In any case, a Belter man was a sweeter sight than any angel, if it meant she was going to live.

The Belter did not wake at the weight of her gaze upon him. This was not a fairytale where he felt her eyes upon him and looked up and smiled. But she had hours awake to watch him. After days and weeks of delirium, drifting in and out of dreams, she was scared to sleep again. Scared this might be a dream and she was back in the filthy room dying by inches. He had saved her from that. She might love him a little for that. Love him as she loved life, and the one who had cared enough to give it back to her.

Her mind spun new dreams, fantasies of the Belter man while he slept. Dreams that he was kind, that he cared, that he would not simply take the first shuttle back to Dawes once he awoke with hardly a glance at Julie, without any acknowledgment of the role he had played in her life.

Julie began to talk to him, whispered words under her breath at first. She was tired of talking to herself, had been tired ever since the Anubis, in the banal way that even a slow death can become dull and repetitive. With time her voice rose. She noted aloud the words on his monitor, the subdermal implant on his shoulder. Radiation poisoning. She asked him how it had happened, how they had found her on Eros. She asked him not to send her away, then she pleaded. Then she convinced herself he wouldn't, that no bribe would be enough to sway him.

She was going crazy, she knew. Isolation would do that and the crew was too busy above to check on her, she could hear from the panicked voices that occasionally penetrated the decks. So while she waited, and watched, and healed, Julie Mao looked over over the Belter man in the next chair over and realized she loved him and laughed at herself for it, until she was too tired to laugh anymore.

Another day, another nutrition injection. She was healing, getting stronger. His vital signs were getting stronger. He would wake soon, and the Earther beside him.

Don't be a creep, Julie chided herself. He saved your life. Don't make it weird.

Just his name, that's all she'd ask. Maybe shake his hand and pretend she hadn't wondered what those long fingers would feel like against her palms, the touch she had only felt once when he lifted her from the room and held her close. There was no care in that touch, she reminded herself. He'd held her close because she had been dying, covered in her own filth, and it it was easier to carry her quickly that way.

Ok, his name, and you can shake his hand, Julie allowed herself. Just be professional .

…And maybe ask why he had done it, why he had saved her? Was it for money, for the OPA?

Fine , the serious voice in her head sighed. But only because he definitely did it for money, or for the OPA.

If it was the OPA, maybe Dawes will let them work together sometime.

You're acting like a schoolgirl , the voice said, and it was her voice, her Mission Voice, the one that reminded her how to be an OPA agent and not a spoiled rich girl from Luna.

I almost died and I'm probably delirious , she retorted. I'm allowed to daydream .

This was ridiculous anyway. She looked closer, trying to see past the haze of her own rescue, the thrill of wonder and relief and yeah, a little bit of infatuation for the person who had walked in the door just when she thought the darkness was going to swallow her down. He was older than her, probably forty, though Belter living could be hard. She'd be thirty herself in a couple years, there were worse differences.

Julie rolled her eyes at the thought, and at herself. She told herself she should sleep. When she woke, she wouldn't be so sick anymore, and the machines would have done their work. The hallucinations would be over, and probably with it this crazy obsessions. She could put the whole crazy dream behind him. She thought the last with a stiff nod to herself. She definitely did not, in the last seconds before she drifted off to sleep, think…

… that when she woke up, he'd be awake too.

"Juliette Andromeda Mao," a voice said, drawing Julie from doze. It was a man's voice, low and rasping. Usually when others said her full name it was mocking drawl, a stern command, or a stunned realization that a fellow OPA soldier came from a family with more money than their entire movement.

This voice whispered her name like a prayer.

He was strapped beside her, her nameless Belter, his face turned towards her. Awake, the lines on his face were no longer smoothed, and she could see that his eyes carried sadness that seemed engraced on his face. The twist in his lips was one of habitual self-mockery, but there was no mockery in his expression when he looked at her. Neither of them could move their arms, but she felt as if they were reaching out to each other.

"Sorry," she said, and hoped the rush of blood to her cheeks wasn't too obvious. God, she had imagined whole conversations with this man that had never happened, and now she was reading things into his face that weren't there. He was probably just checking if she was awake too, and the softness in his expression when he looked at her was all in her head, just the result of all the pain killers being pumped into her system. "Sorry, I—uh— I don't know your name."

Please tell me your name, her stupid thoughts whispered.

"Miller." That twist in his lips deepened, like he was laughing at himself, though the sadness did not shift from his eyes. "Right, there's no way you could have known. Joe Miller. I was sent to find you. I come from Ceres."

Ceres. So that's where he came from in the Belt. They could have passed each other every day in those airtight halls and never known it. What a waste. "From Anderson Dawes?"

He flinched, his expression growing rueful. It was hard to tell if it was his grip or the chemo, but his knuckles had gone white. "Nah. For your dad."

Julie seized in her chair, a thrill of fear jolting her and the needles in her arm pinched and the bonds held . Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. How had she been so stupid, how— But he was still talking, hard to hear because he had looked away and there was shame in every line of his body. Maybe she could talk him out of it. All those fantasies and flirtation in her mind blown to pieces. It was a fucking kidnap job, but if he was ashamed at least, she could try to work with that. "… then I left Star Helix and, well, I guess then I was looking for me."

He glanced up, and the sadness in his eyes had deepened, like it went on forever and it was mixed with loathing now and she saw how the twist of those lips was all inward and his shoulders were hunched, not from pain but like a dog expecting to be kicked. "And here you are so… Once we're out of here, I'll help you get home. Wherever that is. If you want. Or you can stick with this crew, but I warn you there a bunch of whackjobs and I don't trust 'em. But they helped you so that counts. Counts for a lot in my book." Tension corded in his body, tightening his jaw and she saw those long fingers fidgeting. She wanted to take them in hers, the pain in her heart flaring at the sight.

"So you won't take me back to my father?" Julie said. That was good, even it made no sense that he'd drop a contract like that, her dad would have paid him well. She should be suspicious. She wasn't. Then again, he could have just not told her about Jules-Pierre Mao at all and kept her trusting. He could have knocked her out and taken her back in chains. She was an easy target right now, too high on gratitude to think straight, every word he said bouncing around in side her and brushing off that little threads of longing and loneliness inside. She didn't want to part ways just yet. She wanted more than his name. She wanted.

"No," Miller said, and his head fell back into his seat. He closed his eyes. "That job never sat right with me."

"Where will you go?" Julie said.

"Wherever you—" Miller stopped himself. Laughed to himself under his breath, a faded, rasping sound. "Back to Ceres, I guess. I've got nowhere else to be anymore."

Julie bit her lip. "How did you find me?"

"Docking reports, mostly," Miller said, eyes still closed, voice murmuring. As if he didn't dare look at her. "Got a tip from Dawes. You shouldn't trust him. He's going to get you killed one of these days."

"Dawes helped you?" Julie said, leaning forward.

Miller shook his head, the motion world-weary and exhausted. "He would have let you die. You're just another soldier to him."

It stung. Hell, it was agony, the thought of Dawes letting her die alone in that room, confirming the worst of her suspicions. But there was something Miller wasn't telling her and she dug at it. "But not to you?"

Miller didn't answer. In the quiet of the ship she could hear the hissing of the machinery, the muttering of the crew above. She heard his breathing, deep and even, and wondered if Miller had fallen asleep again.

"No," he said, and so quiet she wondered if she had imagined it, "not to me."

A few hours later the crew comes down to check on them. A woman named Naomi Nagata fussed over the man in the far chair, their captain, a man named James Holden. The crew seemed wary of Miller, but they were friendly enough to her, asking after her health, how she was feeling. The metal cuffs came off, but Naomi told Julie and Miller that they should still consider sleeping in the chairs until their vitals returned to normal. Naomi was a Belter, possibly OPA if the tattoo was any hint, and Julie liked her immediately.

The crew made no invitation to the upper decks, and they locked the hatch behind the once Holden was well enough to join them, pale and tottering. A shame, really. The ship made her fingers itch to see what it could do, how fast a Mars warship could go, but she probably wouldn't get the chance any time soon.

After Holden disappeared above Miller, somehow, grew even more quiet than when he was asleep. After that initial burst of conversation he barely looked at her, just fiddled restlessly with his hand terminal. They were offline, so he'd only have whatever he had saved to the device since they left Eros, and from the intermittent grumbles of frustration there wasn't much. Julie sat quietly in her chair, tried to sleep or at least look like she was sleeping while she watched him.

Eventually Miller looked up, flashing the blank screen towards her, the wry twist returned to his lips, almost sheepish. "It's all the stuff I, uh, used to find you. Kind of out of date now. Wonder if the ship's library has anything good or if it's all Martian propaganda." He still barely met her eyes when the spoke. "Listen, I'm sorry you're stuck down here too. You were in pretty rough shape when we found you. High fever, something nasty and viral. Holden and I stumbled into some empty room on the way out, I don't know what. A holding cell. Left you outside, but nuked ourselves pretty good trying to find a way to get you out of there under the radar. Fred Johnson needs to hear about it, and to debrief you. If nothing else then to make sure you're not carrying some kind of bug by the time we get back to Tycho."

"It's fine," Julie said. He was still so skittish around her, she wondered if he would bolt if she stood up. "I'd do the same if I were Fred." She tilted her head, and almost caught his eye before he looked away as if he suddenly found the corner of their makeshift chrome hospital room fascinating.

Tycho. That was good, it was where she was needed. She still had the information from the Anubis, the deaths of her crew members to report. It was coming back through the haze of her… guess it had to have been a fever, according to Miller. Immune system failure thanks to being locked in a room on a dying ship without water for days. She could work herself up about getting to Tycho faster, but there didn't seem much point in that. There was nothing she could do except get better and hope they were telling her the truth. And if they weren't… well, she would have to figure that out later too.

That left her only with the mystery that was Joe Miller. Ceres, but not OPA. Star Helix, private security scum hired for a kidnapping job, but he had given all of that up to save her. He still wouldn't tell her why, hadn't volunteered the information since bringing it up just that once. The misguided flutter in her heart was no longer powered by her delirium, the conversations she had with him in her head were silent now, but the questions remained.

Who are you?

Why did you save me?

Why did you care?

The last question fluttered about inside her as something that was as hopeful as it was nameless, and sharp enough to cut. Her work for the OPA was largely undercover, solitary unless she was piloting a larger crew. The dating profiles she made up were fronts for her contacts, everything about them was fake, from her name to her age. With her features she was useful as an agent who could imitate everything from fifteen to a well-preserved fifty. There wasn't anything on them that was real, no place in her life for anything real except the OPA, the cause.

It's the mystery, she reassured herself. I just want him to talk again, dammit. That'll be the end of it.

Time was running out. He looked healthier than when she first awoke, the color back in his skin, and she didn't feel as weak. Soon there would be Tycho and the wide world of the Belt. There would be the OPA calling her home. There would be Ceres calling Miller. Only so much time to solve the mystery of the savior in the doorway who now would barely meet her eye.

"Right, so, these are your rooms," Naomi said, clapping her hands together self-consciously then pointed to the two nondescript doors side by side at the far end of the Rocinante's crew quarters. "You're not confined, but we'd rather you keep your movements to this deck, yeah? The kitchen is down that way. We're stocked for a crew twice the size of the one we've got, so help yourselves."

Her tone was light, but there was tightness around her eyes and she always stayed a few steps away from Miller and Julie. There was another man beside her, a bruiser named Amos whose expression never shifted from flat disinterest that could hide anything. Julie knew she was quick, and her fists hit hard, but this Amos had strength and reach she could never match if things went sideways. He had the build of hired muscle and the eyes of a man comfortable with killing. It was best not to give him any reason to try.

She wondered if Miller had noticed that too. He'd been a cop, and the whole time Naomi spoke Julie had watched him watching Amos out of the corner of his eye. But Miller's demeanor never changed, and at the end of of Naomi's speech he gave a lazy Belter shrug, hands rising and falling.

"Sure thing, boss," Miller said. "We're not here to cause trouble. Just trying to get to Tycho in one piece."

"Two weeks," Naomi said. "It's going to be slow going. We don't know who's out there looking for you two, and we don't want to get caught in the middle of it. Be good until then, yeah?"

Miller was opening the door the minute Naomi and Amos turned their backs. He barely paused to survey the inside before stepping forward, prepared to vanish from sight. But Julie was faster, moving before the rising panic at his absence could become words. She jammed her hand into the doorway, catching it before it snapped shut. It stopped a hairsbreadth short of biting her fingers in half, the locking mechanism brushing the hairs on her skin like the blade of a guillotine.

He started at the sound, turning and Julie didn't miss the motion of his hand going to a gun that wasn't there. The surprise fell from Miller's worn features at the sight of her, but not the wariness. He took a step back, folded his arms and leaned against the stacked beds. "You know there's another room, right? Figured a rich kid like you'd be wanting all that space to yourself."

It was the first time he'd made any reference to her past and it stung unexpectedly that he knew, and that he judged her for it. "If you know about that, then you know I left all of that behind me."

He snorted. "Yeah, I…" His jaw tightened. He looked up at her, one of those rare times where he looked her full in the face but she felt like she wasn't looking at him. It was like he'd put on a mask. The wariness went out of his limbs and he drawled as he spoke, "I never got that part. Why you left the lap of luxury to work with a bunch of scum on the edge of the galaxy?"

He was baiting her. Why? Nevertheless, she wasn't stupid, and with his first jab he'd left open his guard. "Maybe for the same reason you left your job at Star Helix."

It was a shot in the dark. She wasn't even sure what she had said, but somehow she'd glanced off something inside him, the missingx in the equation of why both of them were here.

His expression shuttered. "You don't know anything about that."

"No, I don't," said Julie. "Just like I don't know anything about you. Why did you go looking for me? Why you did you give upeverything ?"

Panic stirred in his expression, panic and shame, but he laughed and it was the worst sound she'd ever heard from a man she had met half-dead. "I was fired, alright? Looking for you that was just… entertainment. Something to kill time while I waited for the job offers to come in."

"Job offers?" Julie said in flat disbelief.

"Yeah, back at Star Helix I was…" Miller paused, as if catching himself in the midst of a joke even he didn't funny, "… the best. Yeah. Plenty of job offers waiting for me now that I'm done here."

"Hey," she leaned down, catching his averted gaze and trying to draw it up. "I'm not trying to grill you, I just want to understand. Because all of that? Was a fucking lie."

His expression shuttered. "Alright, enough. I don't need this from you. Get out." The panic was still there in his eyes, and the shame, but his voice was low and dangerous. "I don't need a fucking interrogation right now. Get out."

"Miller," Julie said he took a step towards her, crowding her towards the open door. She could grab his arm and deck him easy as breathing. "Joe, please."

He stopped. Forget decking him, at the sound of his name he looked at her like she had stabbed him. Then his lips drew to a line.

"Only my ex-wife gets to call me that," he said. His palm was warm against her shoulder, and she felt it for only an instant as he pushed her out the door, and slammed the button to snap it shut behind her.

"I thought I told you two to be good," Naomi's exasperated voice came over the com the moment the door to Julie's room closed behind her. Julie spotted the camera in the corner of the room.

"And I though we could expect not to be spied on," Julie said with a pointed glare.

"So did I, but the sensors detected raised voices, some kind of Martian discipline alarm," Naomi's tone was casual, conversational. She seemed more at ease when she was with her crew, with walls between her and the "interlopers" Julie and Miller no doubt represented. Her face popped up on the wall screen. "Sorry, but I have to ask, what was that? Some sort of lover's tiff?"

"Lover's tiff?" Julie had no time to school her expression, and the surprise must have shown on her face.

"Oh, you—you're not? I assumed… When we met him, Miller, I mean that was only a few minutes before he found you, but it seemed obvious that you two were close. He was positively frantic at the sight of you in that room." Where she had been covered in her own filth, delirious and half dead. Julie remembered raised voices, warm arms holding her close, but if there had been any words spoken between the Rocinante crew and Miller she could not remember them.

"I've never met him before," Julie confessed. She looked to the wall despite herself, where he was somewhere on the other side. Were the walls insulated enough to block out her voice? She could not tell from his end, when all he gave off was silence.

"Jesus." Naomi's expression dropped into one of dismay. "We had you in there with him for days. Do you want us to find you some other quarters? If he's been bothering you…"

"What? No!" Julie laughed under her breath. "If anything, that was me bothering him."

"Oh. Right. Well, if that changes, you can let me know. We can make sure you're dropped off somewhere safe and that he doesn't follow you," Naomi said, her tone subdued.

Julie opened her mouth to protest, to point out how unnecessary that was, but a memory drew her short. A realization. Naomi's reaction, the shame in Miller's eyes. Had she been too sick, too delirious to see it what must have been obvious to both of them?

Julie's gaze drifted back towards the wall, where Miller's room lay on the other side.

"Do you think I should worry?" Julie said.

Naomi sighed and made a face. "My instincts have hardly been the best in the past, so don't go taking my word, but…I don't think he would hurt you. That look on his face when he found you? Look, it's what made us think you were his wife or something. Just… devotion, and fear for you. He seemed possessed trying to get you back to the Roci." Naomi frowned. "But devotion like that can change quickly, you know? Go bad. Especially from a stranger. Like I said, if you ever feel unsafe you should tell us."

"Thank you," Julie said. "But honestly, whatever that was before, I don't think he wants anything to do with me now."

"Maybe that's for the best," Naomi murmured.

"Maybe," Julie agreed, and offered a faint smile. Naomi returned it, and the screen switched off.

Two weeks to Tycho, and they were only two days in. It felt like an eternity of waiting in her bunk, flitting back and forth to the kitchen for water, nutrition chips, just to stretch her legs and remind herself she wasn't back on the Anubis, trapped and slowly dehydrating to death. Naomi would occasionally call in to chat, but the Roci crew was an insular one and while they invited her to share meals with them, the conversation always dropped off once she arrived.

Miller never appeared outside his quarters, at least not at a time Julie saw. She had to sleep sometimes, and if she didn't know better she'd say the man was hoarding his supplies, coming out to restock in the dead of night so he never needed to see another soul. Not that she had been hoping to spot him during her frequent trips up and down the halls of the crew quarters, but even when it turned out the entertainment was more than just Martian propaganda, she could not shake her restlessness. She couldn't exactly stake out outside his room, but as the hours passed she was severely tempted.

Day three and still nothing. Julie flirted with the idea of asking Naomi if he still had vital signs in there, but figured she would have heard the commotion if anything had happened. Chances were, the man was simply quiet, and she felt a measure of guilt for driving him away, at whatever it was that she had said which made him pull back so violently from her and the rest of the crew.

It called for a change of tactics. It had not been easy, finding the OPA on Ceres and winning their trust. She had needed to learn the vagaries of Belter culture, social propriety, socialization. This was no different than any other undercover mission.

When she knocked on Miller's door it was with two thermoses of coffee in hand, the one luxury the ship seemed to have in spades and which she felt no guilt in purloining for her purposes. She was hardly surprised when the door did not open at her knock.

"I come in peace, detective," she called. "Can we talk?"

There was no answer. A minute ticked by, and then another, and Julie began to wonder if she was wasting her time here.

The door slid open.

Had he been waiting? Standing on the other side, weighing the options, just as she had been? He looked more put together than when last she had seen him, showered and relatively cleaned up with freshly trimmed hair and a shave. He wore the same tight, black shirt as when they were in the medical bay, the twin to what she wore now. His expression was blank, but there was suspicion in every line of his body.

"Former detective," he remarked, glancing between her face and the thermoses.

"Former or not, you found me, didn't you?" Julie said, and handed him one of the coffees. He seemed to accept it more by instinct, eying it, then the door, as if not sure he should have opened it in the first place.

"Yeah, well, you probably shouldn't go thanking me for that just yet," Miller said. He took an unconscious sip of the coffee, and his wild eyebrows rose in surprised appreciation. "It's not bad."

"Put in a whole two scoops, hopefully the crew doesn't space me for it," Julie said. "Can I come in?"

She did not know if she had ever seen a man so at war with himself over such a simple question. The room behind him was sterile, she wasn't sure either of them had any stuff to clutter it with, now that she knew Miller hadn't come in to Eros on the Rocinante. They were the ship's two vagabonds, all that tied them together was the mystery of how they'd come to be here in the first place.

"Have a seat," Miller said tersely. There was only a desk chair and a set of bunk beds, and he pulled out the desk chair for her before slouching down onto the bunk. She stole a glance, couldn't help it. Though he treated her like a wasp that gotten trapped in the room—always keeping his eyes on her—he moved in the relative low G with the unconscious grace of a Belter, mesmerizing in its freedom. "Look, if you just want to chat, I'm afraid I'm not much good at conversation. It's a cop thing. Hard to make small talk when I've got a file with everything you could say about your life."

"We could always talk about you," Julie said casually, and took a sip of her coffee.

He grimaced, wagging a finger. "Nah. Nah I'm not falling for that one. Besides, there's nothing to tell. I was born on Ceres, would have died on Ceres, probably pretty soon too what with the riots if Star Helix hadn't fired me. Belter life is short, and usually cheap."

"I know," Julie said. People like her father had seen Belters as expendable, with the sort of casual disregard for human life that had so incensed her until one day she took off on her own for the Belt.

"Yeah, guess you would. Or at least think you did," he held up a hand. "Never mind, I don't want to go down that road again. I've had enough with delusional Earthers telling me how much they care after El Capitan upstairs. So, what do you want from me?"

"Like I said, just to talk," Julie said. "You saved my life. Least I can do is bring you coffee, maybe spend a few minutes getting to know you."

"I'm not really my favorite subject," Miller said.

"I guessed from the way you threw me out of here last time," Julie said. "What I don't get is why."

"You're not going to let this go if I kick you out again, are you?" Miller said, and chuckled under his breath at what must have been the answering expression on her face. No way in hell . "Yeah. You never back down. Fine," he put his coffee down on the desk and spread his hands. "Ask away."

His tone was casual, but there was a shadow in his eyes and a set in his shoulders that looked he would rather have a hull breach suck the air from the room than answer her questions.

"Relax, I'm not here for, what did you call it last time? An interrogation," Julie said. "And you say you already know everything about me. That's probably not true, but fine. Same one as last time, then: why did you come looking for me? Feel free to skip the hard parts."

"Star Helix threatened to fire me if I didn't stop looking for you and I told them to screw off, so they fired me," Miller said. "Couldn't exactly stop looking after a stand like that, so I followed the trail and found you on Eros. Picked up these chuckleheads along the way, still not sure how that happened. Oh, and got cancer looking for a way down to the docks without tripping over those goons that were chasing Holden."

"That's more than I knew before," Julie said, and took another sip. "That's good, that helps fill in some of the gaps. I still don't understand why."

"And you don't want to."

"Why not?"

"Look, what is it you really want here?" Miller said. "Some company on the trip to Tycho? There's a whole crew upstairs more sympathetic to the OPA than I'll ever be. If you want small talk, you should go to them."

"I'm honestly not even sure we should be going to Tycho," Julie said. The thought had been weighing on her since Miller had pulled her delirious body out of that flophouse. What she had seen on the Anubis, what it could mean, what she had to do. "There was something on that ship," Julie said.

"So what, you want to get it back, give the OPA whatever shady shit was in there?" Miller said, he grimaced as he took a sip of his coffee.

Julie shook her head slowly. "I want to destroy it. Before it hurts anyone else." Miller perked up at this sad basset hound eyes giving way to something awake.

Quickly shut off, like he flipped a switch inside him whenever hope dared rear its head. "That's nice. That's nice of you. You gonna ask Fred Johnson to put you up with a crew and a ship? I always thought the Butcher of Anderson Station was more about harvesting weapons than destroying them."

"No." Julie leaned forward, her lips drawn to a thin line as she mapped out her plan in the air, mentally interacting with the projector map as clearly as if she could see it. "I hid the Anubis, and I intend to keep it hidden until we can destroy it. Besides me, only you and the Roci crew have any inkling of where it could be. At least, if you've been paying attention." She frowned. "I'm not about to cut them loose with that knowledge. I'll pay them if I have to, I'm not without resources from before I broke ties with my father. We'll convince them to help us destroy it, so no one can ever make use of what was on that ship again. I might be able to do it alone. Might not. What I need is an ally." She raised her eyes to Miller. "And I'd like it to be you."

She might as well have turned around and gut punched him, for the look he gave her. Pale, shocked, with that lingering hint of tragedy. "Me? Listen, you're better off dropping me on the nearest asteroid and go about this hero business on your own."

She frowned, disappointment threatening to settle inside her like a stone. "So you don't want to, is that it?"

"You don't want me to help," Miller said, and beneath the fire in his tone she heard it again, that thread of desperation. "I'm a fuckup. I thought I was hot shit on Ceres, then right before they cut me loose my own boss told me that everyone thought I was a fucking joke. The guys up there? They're the hero type, they care about shit like this. Nobody with any brains wants someone like me messing shit up."

"I do," Julie said simply. "The OPA… I'm never going to give up on the Belt, but I don't trust them with this. They left me to die on Eros. Anderson Dawes, Fred Johnson, we're going to need to have a long talk after this before I take orders from them again. The Roci crew seem like good people, but they're hiding something from us. Nagata is former OPA if there ever was one, and neither of us know really why they were on Eros."

She felt as if she was getting through to him as he leaned forward despite himself, growing focused. The tension was leaving his shoulders and understanding dawning on his face, the grimace fading. "Right now, you're the only person in this whole world I trust. I was hoping I could earn your trust in return. This is bigger than either of us, but you came for me when no one else did. I think together we can get rid of that thing on the ship when no one else can, Joe."

Calling him by his name was underhanded, she knew, but it felt right. All of this, it was too important to leave to chance and there wasn't a single lie in it. She didn't know the Roci, she wasn't sure she could face Dawes again without punching him, or screaming in his face, or both. But this Belter had done more for her than anyone, even her family, in years.

"Julie." She didn't even realize she'd been leaning forward, that he had as well until he jerked back and with a muttered groan rubbed his hands over his face. Miller was wild-eyed when his hands fell away. "You don't know anything about me. You want to make me your sidekick on this crazy mission, and you haven't got the faintest idea what I did."

"So tell me," she said.

She thought he would kick her out again, right then. That the churning panic that lingered so close to the surface would explode outward. But he looked at her, studied her, as if seeing her for the first time since they awoke, and his shoulders fell in defeat. He hung his head, and started talking, each word directed at the floor.

"Looking for you….it was during a pretty dark point in my life. I did some fucked up shit" He spoke as if each word was being dragged from his body. "And looking for you helped, but it wasn't all good. You know I didn't even want the damn job at first? I put it off. You could have died while I was putting it off. but then I found a lead and became about, I dunno, I had something to prove. And then I got to know you better," he glanced up at this and then away, flickers of that familiar shame. "Well, I got to know your file better. Your dating profile, visited your dojo, your apartment. You've got a great shower, by the way."

"You used my shower?" Julie said blankly.

"See, told you it got messed up. Yeah, my water ration ran out on the day I was supposed to sweep your apartment for clues. Figured you weren't using it," Miller said with deceptive ease, his body was tightening in on itself even as his tone remained loose. "Look, I'm trying to tell you, a lot of crazy bullshit happened while I was looking for you, but it was all my crazy bullshit. I was seeing things, imagining things, imagining…" He stopped, and his features twisted into the expression of a man who just realized he was drowning. "But that doesn't make it your problem. You should let it go, stop knocking on my door, stop thinking I can help you."

"After all you went through, you want to just, what? Part ways and never speak to each other again?" Julie said.

"After all that, the last thing you need is some fucked-up ex-cop hanging off your life," his tone changed, and she couldn't tell if he was angry at her or himself. There was desperation in his voice, like a plea he couldn't give words to. "I'm not up to your level, alright? You're more Belter than I am. And you can't live up to whatever fucked up vision I dreamed up about you. Every time we talk it will get worse. We'll be tripping over time bombs here before you see what the hell I am, or I see what the hell you are and we both end up disappointed."

"I can handle disappointment," Julie said.

"I can't," Miller said. "I just. I can't. It was all I had. It was unbelievebly, fucked up, but it was all I had. Just… let me have that, alright? Let me have that I found you and you were fine, and you went on to save the world from whatever is on that ship, or went back to your dad or the OPA or wherever else you want to go and it was… it was fine."

"Joe," Julie whispered. She reached for him, she couldn't help herself. It was worse than when she had seen him lying half dead on the medical deck. His hands were clutching one another and a tremor went through him like his whole body was about to fly apart.

His cheek was hot beneath her hand as she closed the distance between them and brushed the strand of hair from his face. His eyes closed as if he couldn't bear to look at her but he couldn't bear to pull away. It could have been the tremors that raced through him, but he seemed to lean into her touch.

"I saw you everywhere, back when I was looking for you," he mumbled. "I imagined you talking to me, encouraging me, sometimes, or dressing me down. Sometimes you didn't talk at all just sat there, quiet and it was… the happiest I'd been in, God, in years . I was losing my mind, but all I could think was that if I found you, it would be alright. That I would be alright, that I could be better than some.. drunk, some washed out welwala ." There was dampness against her skin and he turned his face into her palm, her thumb traced the line of his eyebrow as his words left him in a rush, like a confession running against the clock. "And you don't need any of that in your life. It's not your problem that some creep went crazy, that I dreamed up a version of you that never existed."

Her throat was tight. So tight it made it hard to swallow, hard to breathe. But she moved until she was sitting beside him on the bed. Her hand fell from his cheek, back to the fused bone at the top of his spine. He shivered at her touch, as she drew him close so his forehead rested just above her heart.

He was tense in her arms, and she held her breath. The intimacy of it… it was too close, too fast. But then she felt his arms wrap around her middle, a sigh gusting from his chest that could have been a sob.

"Why?" was all he said, but she could hear all the real question churning behind it. Why don't you hate me? Why do you care?

Julie closed her eyes. "When I was in that room, on Eros," she croaked. She could see it so clearly. "Everything hurt, so much. I watched while Dawes give speech after speech, when no one would answer my messages. I was dying, and no one cared." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "I just wanted someone, anyone to help me. And then they didn't and I thought I just didn't want to die alone. That someone would walk in the door, not even to rescue me, just to hold my hand while I died. Sometimes I wanted it so badly I… I thought I saw him."

She loosened her grip a little, gave him the chance to pull away if he wanted, but he was frozen."Maybe I did. And maybe I'll be less than the woman you saw. And maybe you'll be less than the savior in my head." His breathing hitched. "Or maybe, we won't be. And isn't that worth trying?"

The Roci was quiet, flying without thrust in the continuous vacuum of space on arc that would travel forever without interference if no asteroid or planet got in the way. Alex dozed in his chair, hand poised on the control panel for any alert. Holden slept below, still recovering from their ordeal on Eros, and Amos was silent as was his way, not needing conversation to feel comfortable, sometimes for days at a time.

Meanwhile, Naomi kept half an eye on their "guests". She'd muted the audio from Miller's room out of respect when the two sat down together, content to monitor the hallways for any disturbance. She had watched the moment Julie put her arms around Miller, pulling him close, his face turned from the camera. His body shook and while Julie's lips moved there was no sound across the line. She placed her chin on the top of Miller's head, murmuring, and his arms tightened around her.

It was too much, it was too intimate a moment to watch so closely, but Naomi did not dare turn off the feed. She turned half away instead, feeling heat in her cheeks as she kept half an eye on the feed, glancing back only occasionally to see they were still there.

It was an hour before movement caught her eye on the screen, jerking her out of her half-doze. They'd moved on from the bunk to the kitchen, sitting across from one another beside the false window with a glow meant to mimic the sun on a spring day through the leaves, or so Holden had mused to her. Not much had changed, except for Miller coming out of his isolation. The man had more issues than a twenty year long run of a comic book, so the fact he'd gone to ground as soon as he was out of the medical bay hadn't been a particular surprise. The fact that Julie had gone to him to find answers was no surprise either.

This? This was a surprise.

He didn't look young. Naomi doubted that someone like Miller had ever been young. But that ever-present tension, as if always braced against the world waiting to kick him when he was down, had loosened. Relaxed in a way Naomi had never seen in her admittedly brief time knowing him. It wasn't just suspicion that had the Roci crew tensed at the sight of Miller on Eros. He had been feral, a being of intent wearing the shape of a man.

She felt as if she was finally seeing a glimpse of the man now and maybe, for the first time in a long time, he was too.

Julie smiled at him, comforting and encouraging, and when she offered her hand across the table, Miller's long, Belter fingers clasped it in return.

Author Note: I would appreciate it immensely if you shared any thoughts you may have had on this piece, I admittedly live and breathe for feedback, especially in such a small fandom as this. Thank you for reading!