The Weight of the Family

36 (REVISED)

KEREN

Happy sweet sixteen? What a joke. They've never been happy... but at least he stopped getting me stupid presents... but he's always too busy to finish off the rest of my model ships with me...

He spent most of his days training in self-defense with Ethan and how to use their families special weapon — chain blasters. His aim improved with slighter accuracy, but the dread in his stomach kept him in constant company. He learned routes the Malakai's used for smuggling, and the borders of their territory with the Azaika's, learning more than he ever wanted to know until it came time to put them into practice. Every technique to survive the planetary underworld.

To succeed and have strength as Ethan had — the one in control.

Keren fiddled with his model scout Ethan built with him while he tapped settings on the stove. Food sizzled and popped on the burners. One rare instance where Ethan found time to cook them both breakfast. Ethan was right... cookbots take out the taste. Dull, like the maelstrom of terror in his stomach.

Clouds puffed out and blocked the sun. Keren lifted his head from his examination of his broken childhood when Ethan swiped a capsule out of the cabinets and shook it at him. "Want some, Ker?"

"Want some what?"

Ethan placed the capsule in front of him with a wry smile. "Remember this?" He tapped the top. "I haven't forgiven you for dumping mine out, you know."

Tersilian coffee beans, an import of Eteran's, with their family wresting control of any goods coming from Tersilia — Ethan's birth planet. Due to its rare popularity, it was another avenue of control and power. I don't know why people love coffee so much... "I hate the taste of it, Ethan."

"Oh? I don't remember you having tried it." Ethan pushed it into the mixer and pushed his finger into the swirl of the interface. He traced the eye and chose other settings at the menu which popped up, then leaned on the counter while it brewed. "When did you try it?"

"You don't remember?" Keren frowned at Ethan's slip of memory. Exhausted and overworked, but he no longer tried to convince Ethan otherwise. "You were there. Chalen had me try some before your shift in the pit."

"That explains it." Ethan nudged the humming cleaning bot with his foot. "He puts a ridiculous amount of cream and sugar into his." He moved the food-full pots into the serving area, and the stove turned off. "See, I do my coffee the proper way. It's definitely nothing you've ever tasted before."

Keren folded his arms against his chest. "And how do you take yours?"

"Black."

Keren stuck his tongue out in disgust. "Blech. No, thank you." He took his breakfast plate from Ethan when he handed it to him and dug in to drown the unease. Ethan sat in his regular chair with his mug in one hand and holozine in the other. Noise built up in his ears at the continuous projection of the I-Screen, twisted white noise. Bones cracked underneath jaws.

Keren turned to check on his back, but sighed at the lack of anything ready to stab him in it, but he jumped when Ethan whispered, "Are you nervous today?"

"Uh..." Keren brushed his hair back from his brow. "A little, Chalen said I'd be moving something today?" Ethan nodded and downed the rest of his coffee, so he continued with a question on the edge of his tongue. "You're not coming with me, are you?"

His mug clicked against the glass of the table when he set it down. White noise gave way into silence, and he drove his fingers into the fleeting edge of life and tried not to throw up Ethan's carefully prepared breakfast. Ethan tented his fingers and stared down at his reflection through the glass. "I can come with you to the entrance of the tunnel, but yes... You'll be doing this on your own. I tried to talk to Father about it, but you know how the old man gets." He slid into the back of his chair and rubbed his cheek with his palm, and a wave of nausea threatened to betray his throat. "You can do this, Keren."