Reasons

[intheheart]

Title: Reasons
Rating: PG-13 for cussing.
Summary: Danny gets a reason. And some kids.
AU: IN SPAAAACE
Notes: Part one, I think.


Somehow, in some way, this was all Lars's fault.

At the very least, Danny was going to blame him.

Stuck behind enemy lines, on a goddamn space station, no way off but to steal or stow away on a ship. Both had their downsides-- she couldn't fly a ship very well by herself, she'd never been good at stealth, and she was likely to get shot either way. She hissed through her teeth, readjusted her grip on her gun, and tried to think.

Futile attempt; she needed quiet and calm and she wasn't going to get any. Footsteps echoed off the wall. Danny spat a curse under her breath and ran down the hall. Whatever noise she made would be drowned out by the sound, so forget stealth-- what she needed now was a hiding place.

She got one with suspicious immediacy. A door loomed up on her right, palm-lock blinking green-red, green-red. Danny skidded to a stop by it, frowned briefly at the lock-- it registered as locked from the inside, which made no goddamn sense-- then shrugged, because beggars couldn't be choosers, and flattened her palm against the lock.

The door hissed open, she dove inside, the door hissed shut almost on her foot. She whirled to a crouching position, aiming where she thought the door was, and waited panting in the dark, trying to bring her breathing under control, listening with every muscle wound tight for the telltale slap of someone opening the palm-lock from the outside.

It never came. Her breathing slowed; her muscles relaxed. Minutes passed. She eased back to a sitting position, and exhaled.

Safe for now.

Quiet and calm she'd needed, to form a plan. Quiet and calm she'd gotten. So...

Then someone in the dark whimpered, and Danny slammed back to high alert.

"Who's there?" she hissed.

A series of tiny gasps broke the silence, then nothing for a long minute, until a high-pitched voice said, bravely, "Who's there?"

Danny scowled. "I asked first," she said.

"We were here first," the high-pitched voice pointed out.

She frowned harder. "We?"

Another long, dark silence.

Then, a voice, younger than the first, said, "Turn on the light, Kit. Please?"

Light burst.

Danny blinked frantically against the white starbursts for a moment until they began to clear, her eyes adjusting to the sudden fluorescence. The room was a stark white, which accounted for some of the horrendous glare. There was no furniture, no windows, no break in the wall but the door behind her, palm lock blinking red-red-red. Locked in, but Danny had a gun and right now that was the least of her worries.

The only things in the room were four lines of rickety metal bunk beds, rattling under the movements of their occupants. And on those bed...

Children. Wide-eyed children, thin children, hiding behind small white pillows, lounging on thin mattresses, pulling ratty blankets over their heads. Some huddled two to a bed, arms around each other for the comfort it brought. Some curled against the walls, as far from Danny as they could get. One, a wary-eyed girl, stood beside a bed, knuckles white on the metal frame, other hand still resting on the light-pad.

Children. God damn it.

"You're a solider," said the girl, in that first high-pitched voice. Kit, the other voice had called her. "Are you one of them?"

Danny eyed her warily, trying so hard not to see her own frightened eyes in the young girl's face. She was no damn good with children, why her? "I don't know," she said. "Who's them?"

"Them," the girl said. "The bluecoats."

Danny glanced down at her own sensible brown jacket and black pants, and said, "Uh. No. I'm not a bluecoat. Your turn. Who the fuck are you all?"

The girl, Kit, shrugged.

"Hostages," one of the boys spoke up. He peered over the top of a bunk bed, thin blanket tucked over his head. "'S what Beth said."

"Beth?" Danny scanned the children. "Which one of you is Beth?"

Heavy silence fell. Kit turned and glared at the boy atop his bunk; he shrank back under the covers. Finally, she turned back around and said, tightly, "Beth is gone. It's just us. What are you doing here?"

"Hiding," Danny said, bluntly. She was too wound up to lie successfully, so better to not even try.

"From the bluecoath?" Another girl. This one didn't look more than four or five, and lisped a little. "How come?"

"Stuck behind enemy lines," Danny told her. "I'm fighting them. What was this about hostages?"

Kit crossed her arms, and took two steps forward, putting her thin body between Danny and the rest of the kids. "It doesn't matter," she said, belligerently. "We're here and it's not like you're going to do anything about it."

Danny narrowed her eyes, and looked to the little boy atop the bunk bed. He had retreated so far beneath his blankets that all she could see were his eyes. "You," she said. "What did you mean by hostages?"

"Don't tell her, Michael," Kit snapped.

Michael. The name hit her like a punch to the gut. Her expression must have changed, because Kit stepped back, and Michael came forward just a little, out from under the blanket.

"Beth said," he said, paused, and looked at Kit. But she was staring at Danny, and after a minute, he went on. "Beth said that we were hostages. 'Cause our parents weren't bluecoats. 'Cause the bluecoats wanted 'em. So they took us to make our parents do what they want. Beth said she was going to stand up to them, and she did, and then she was gone."

"Beth was stupid," Kit said, and this time Danny heard it, the pain hiding under the anger. "And you need to go. Now."

"Door'th locked," the little lisping girl volunteered. "She can't get out."

Danny sat slowly on the floor, and lowered her gun to the ground. Beth stood up, and Beth was gone. Hostages. These children were hostages.

She'd been fighting this war for no reason, before; just because she was angry and needed someone to fight. Now...

The little boy, Michael, had climbed down from his bunk and now stood at her elbow. "Beth's dead, isn't she?" he asked, his voice sad but not surprised. "They killed her."

Danny looked down at his face, at the solemn eyes and the thin arms. Then she looked up, at Kit, thin and scared and angry. At the little lisping girl, at her big eyes. At the children clinging to themselves and each other because they had nowhere else to go.

"Yes," she said, finally, looking once more at Kit. "Beth is probably dead."

"And they're going to kill us, too," Kit said, flatly.

"No they aren't," Danny said, and smiled, sharply.

Kit frowned. Michael's eyes widened. The little lisping girl raised her head. "Why not?"

"Because," Danny said, meeting each of their eyes in turn, "I'm going to show you how to defend yourselves. And then..." She saved Kit for last, looking into those old-young eyes, so like hers. Nobody had helped her, but somebody was by-God going to help Kit. "And then we're going to get them. All together."

Kit stared at her, disbelieving. "You're not serious," she said.

"I am," Danny said.

No reason.

Well she damn well had one now.