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The first time Lop meets Ochō after— after she’s left them. Ochō smiles at her, brighter and wider than she has in ages. Lop can contextualize all the quiet moods now, the soft frowns that seemed to grace Ochō’s features, the hesitant pause before she said their father’s name.
When they were little, they used to keep secrets — not from each other, never from each other. Lop doesn’t remember them, they were silly things. As a child, you are the center of your own universe; your secrets and truths are so big to you that you can’t imagine it not being the same to everyone else. Their father used to shrug and chuckle to himself whenever they shushed themselves around him. Children will keep secrets if they can, he said, sounding untroubled, amused, even. There was no reason to worry, whatever they were doing, Lop and Ochō were doing it together.
Now, Ochō sits alone and straight-backed, her back pressed to the transparisteel barrier on one of the newer buildings. The Empire has no plans to stop building in low-atmosphere. A prison, Lop has heard, is next. Lop sits across from her and the seat drags unpleasantly against her clothes. She supposes Ochō doesn’t have that problem in her pristine white officer’s uniform. The thought is sharp and uncharitable. This is her sister, she reminds herself, and vanishes it.
“I’ve missed you,” she says and reaches out across the table for Ochō.
Ochō reaches back, an encouraging gesture, and her glove-clad hand grips Lop’s. The material of her glove is cold, but underneath is her warm skin, blood pulsing as usual. “I wasn’t sure would come. I’m not sure what father has told you about me by now,” she says, looking down and away.
“Just that he wants you to come home.”
Ochō’s smile goes from sad to fixed, growing cold. Lop can almost feel the tension in Ochō’s face and her muscles ache in solidarity. “I have something to show you,” Ochō says, pulling out a small, hexagonal object; it’s black and fits in the palm of her hand. “You probably haven’t seen one of these before.” There’s an edge to her voice now, something belittling and dishonest. It’s new, Lop tells herself, it’s something she’s learned here, something she’s been forcibly taught.
“What is it?”
“See for yourself.” She passes it across the table and several holo readouts pop out of the device, hovering over the table.
Lop’s eyes try to follow the figures, the images, this new language that she and Ochō seem to use now instead of their known words. “What is it?” she repeats, her confusion warring with dread.
“These are the Empire’s latest statistics. We got them yesterday. I couldn’t wait to show you,” she says, and Lop can believe it, believe her; she sounds excited and alive, her eyes gleaming. “Here, here.” She scrolls quickly from one readout to another until she lands on one with several red bars. “Recruitment numbers are at an all-time high. These—” She turns to look at Lop now, intently and openly, the honesty there demands Lop’s attention. “—are galaxy-wide numbers, but these are from Tao. This is the change we’re building.”
The silence that follows is expectant and it stretches, Lop unwilling to fill it in with what she wants to say. Did you go so wrong that numbers matter to you more than family? What is wrong with you? Were you always this way? “I don’t know what to say,” she says, at last. “Do you see this change as something good? You’re confused.”
Ochō scoffs. “Is that what he has told you? I’m not surprised. Papa has always seen me that way. An aimless girl chasing after whims, dragging whatever will keep her entertained back home.”
Lop doesn’t know who the dig is intended for, but it lands on her. With a little time, we’re going to become a proper family, she remembers Ochō saying, remembers the beach, the weight of the collar disappearing, the shuttle ride to her new home, the cavernous walls her first night there, Ochō’s hand finding her in the dark.
“Father loves you.”
“I’m not refuting that. I love him too. I’m saying he doesn’t respect me. He doesn’t trust me to know what’s best.”
“Do you?”
The open, easy demeanor disappears at once and Ochō’s eyes go sharp, her lips shaping into a flat line. “Papa is old. He won’t get to see the progress we’re building here, sister. Learn the one thing I did: you don’t have to follow in his footsteps. Please join me.”
When they were eleven standard years old, Ochō heard about a creature that hid itself on Tao’s tallest trees. It had a life there, a house, food, but no one who would visit it, Ochō said. She convinced Lop to go exploring the woods and climbing the trees every night for a standard month. On the thirty-fifth day, Lop fell from a branch that was more slippery than she thought. Ochō caught her, but her arm twisted unnaturally. They stopped after that. That’s what Lop remembers now, a playful join me whispered in the middle of the night.
“No, I came to bring you home. I—”
“You wasted your time, then,” she says, and brushes her hair away from her eyes. She takes a deep breath, swallows visibly. “You’ve wasted mine.”
“How is she?” is the first thing her father tells her when she returns home, dawn approaching.
“She’s—” herself. No, she’s been turned into someone else. “—okay.”
Her father stares at her, comes closer. “Has she been harmed? Is she—?”
“She’s healthy. She’s alive.” More alive than Lop has seen her in years, in fact.
“Papa won’t get to see the future,” Ochō repeats, with more certainty now, the next time they meet. They’re on a starship this time, some sort of fancy officers’ lounge. Maybe Ochō is trying to seem impressive but it seems like trying too hard. “It’s not because he’s a traditionalist, you know. He clings to the old ways because it’s what gave him power and adulation.” In a mocking tone, she adds, “Boss Yasaburō always does the right thing. He can only see things as they relate to him.”
“That’s not how he is,” Lop says fiercely.
“What would you know? I’ve known him longer than you,” Ochō says, casually vicious and petty. She scoffs, harsh and mean. “It’s why he hates me.”
“That’s not true.”
“So it’s not him spreading lies about the so-called abuses the Empire is committing across the galaxy?”
“That has nothing to do with how he feels about you. People are allowed to speak the truth and remain family,” Lop explains. She doesn’t feel as if she should have to explain what family is; they’ve lived it.
“There are bigger things than family,” Ochō says sharply. "Up there in your palace, you can't tell, but people were struggling to even feed themselves. We've brought job opportunities —"
“It seems to me they’re struggling to feed themselves now on the half-rations the Empire deems to provide whenever productivity on the mines meets their approval.”
Ochō raises a hand, palm out, to stall the guard advancing on Lop. “She doesn’t know the treason she speaks of,” she tells his armored reflection, and the guard backs away. She turns to Lop. “Do you know the things I’ve done for you? The ones I continue to do for my treasonous family, living unperturbed in the center of the town?” She shakes her head and a loud, bitter exhalation passes her lips. “You know what someone told me the other day? You are the successor, but the process of succession can be so long and full of needless waiting. This family owes me its safety and continued existence.”
“That’s not what family is.”
For all that Lop’s words were loud, Ochō remains unmovable. “You wouldn’t have these lofty ideas about family without me. I convinced him to take you in. I gave you a family, not him.”
Lop frowns. “You’re both my family. Don’t do this. We will never stop being a family.” She reaches out now, but Ochō’s hand is out of reach. “I trust you to carry this family forward.”
“Then join me.” This time, Lop can tell, it is an ultimatum.
“No,” she says, and fails to swallow back tears.
Ochō looks away, her hands balled into fists. After a moment, she stands to leave. “Goodbye, sister,” she says without turning.
When she returns home, the place is quiet. The silence around them keeps growing. It seems as if every day someone new voluntarily vanishes. Her father is only illuminated by the moonlight that filters in from the outside. The room is cold. “You’ve gone to see her again, then,” he says, a long sigh at the end of his words.
“I’ll bring her back, father,” she says, instead of for as long as she’ll see me. “She— she wants to come back. I know it.” Silence falls over the room, more telling than anything her father might say. “We’ll be together as a family again.”
“Maybe I can go see her next time,” he says quietly before saying goodnight.
Lop walks the long and cold corridors of her empty home and on her way to her room she crosses paths with no one. Her room is dark when she enters. She flips on the holo of the three of them together, of her family, and guides herself around the room using the faint light it emits, blue and powerful.