It’s out of her mouth before she can decide if she’s ready for the answer. That’s what thishasto mean, though, right? That Clarke’s P2 today convinced Elemental’s leadership to keep her around? Unless she really was supposed to have been invited all along, like Matthew said, and this was just Yves correcting that mistake, and he’s about to tell her that she needs to look elsewhere if she wants to keep racing.
The doubts grow, stifling that heartbeat of hope. She shouldn’t have asked. If he says no right now, after everything that’s happened today, Clarke’s not sure how she’ll react.
Yves slides the holoscreen back into the table. “We’re considering it.”
Clarke nods. Swallows. Not the answer she wanted, but not ano. “What can I do to help with the consideration process?”
Yves rises from the table. “What you should’ve been doing all along. Win.”
Win. Inthisship. Underthisteam principal.
Clarke’s a professional. She keeps the outrage that’s threatening to tear her apart off her face, tells Yves she’ll see him at the meeting, and leaves.
10
Clarke’s house is fifteen minutesfrom Elemental Headquarters on Luna, Earth’s moon, and that’s all there is to say about Clarke’s house. The distance from HQ is why she bought it. It’s perfectly nice, but it’s not her home. When Clarke wants to go home, she goes to Mars.
Imogen Clarke has lived in the same two-story redstone in Sinai Planum Clarke’s entire life. It’s at the edge of the city proper, close enough to Valles Marineris that you can see the canyons on a clear day. Clarke and Julian honed their agility in those canyons, sneaking out after dark to weave among the arches and needles. They used to compete to see who could stay closest to the irregular walls without losing speed in cobbled-together ships that would make an FIC safety coordinator whimper with despair.
Inside, Imogen’s house is an explosion of color and textures and stuff. Imogen’s never met a fuzzy blanket or decorative bowl she didn’t want to keep forever. Her husband, Ihaka, is more purposeful but no less voluminous in his collecting, and their son, Kuari, is a thirteen-year-old boy. Every surface is layered three-deep with items that caught the eye of someone who lives here. Everything in this house is loved by someone Clarke loves.
When Clarke is here, she remembers that she is loved in return, too. She doesn’tdoubtit when she’s somewhere else, but her life of high-stakes racing and planet-hopping and endorsement deals sometimes seems impossibly out of sync with her family’s life in a way that no number of calls or messages can fix. But she comes here, and among the hundreds of photos scrolling across holoscreens is Clarke’s face from infancy up through the Lion’s Head podium ceremony. A jacket she forgot during her last visit is hung on a hook, waiting for her, and the pockets have been stuffed with a hand-painted set of playing cards her mom found at a market, several new recipes Ihaka swears by, and some drawings of neat bugs Kuari’s seen on his walk home from school. Her childhood bedroom is mostly the same as she left it, but not quite—the sheets have been cleaned, the curtains swapped out for a different pattern, some new shelves hung on the wall.
Clarke’s family holds space for her when she’s not here, and they tend to that space. If that’s not love, Clarke doesn’t know what is.
There’s a park near the house that Clarke goes running in while she’s home. Running is not Clarke’s favorite form of exercise (It’s boring and slow. Everything is boring and slow compared to Clarke’s day job), but it keeps her trainer off her back. Plus, it’s full Martian summer, so she has to get up early to get her run in without sweating to death. It’s a good way to make sure she doesn’t sleep the day away. Mid-season break it may be, but Clarke can’t afford to slack off.
“You’re pushing yourself pretty hard.”
Clarke sits up from where she’d been sprawled on the porch. Her outline stays behind, a silhouette in sweat on the boards. She accepts the glass her mother is offering, something iced and tangy. “I have to. I told you what Yves said.”
Imogen settles onto a swinging chair, pressing her own glass against the side of her neck. The suns are barely up, but the heat is already formidable. “Sure. What Yves said.”
Clarke narrows her eyes. “Mom.”
“Your inability to sit still has nothing to do with what they’re saying about you and Julian.”
Clarke doesn’t read her own press. That’s why Elemental has Naomi. And the mandatory fourteen-consecutive-day shutdown each team must take at some point during the five-week break only applies to ships and conversations about ships, not press, so Naomi has been keeping Clarke apprised of the fallout from Lion’s Head.
Clarke wishes she weren’t.
Clarke’s no stranger to vitriol. She’s been hated by people she’s never met since she started winning when it mattered in the youth circuits; parents of kids Clarke beat, mostly, furious that Clarke was taking what they saw as their child’s rightful spot. Every step she’s taken forward in her career has been met by an increased level of loathing, from competitors and people who support her competitors to the occasional archaic bigot who still thinks women don’t belong in racing. She knows how to tune all of that out.
It’s different, when people are hating Clarke because of Julian. When they’re writing her off in comparison to him, or slamming her for saying he’s only winning because Chronicle’s well-funded. She’s being called bitter, spiteful, and immature. Naomi highlights those words in the summaries she sends.
“I’m not supposed to feed the beast, or whatever,” Clarke says, bending one leg up and folding over the other for a stretch. “But if I don’t respond, all I can do is hope people understand it was just me and Julian being me and Julian, and that doesn’t feel like enough.”
“Whatwouldfeel like enough?”
Clarke drops her forehead onto her kneecap. “I don’t know. But I don’t want Julian to…We just keep getting further apart.”
“The two of you were never the same, after Connor.”
Clarke makes an assenting noise, feeling just as shitty about blaming the fracture between her and Julian on Connor as she always does but unwilling to try to explain.
Clarke and Julian’s other best friend, Connor Bennett, was killed two and a half years ago during a lower circuit race. There was a multi-ship collision, and Connor was in the middle of it. He died instantly.
Clarke and Julian didn’t handle Connor’s death well, but that’s not what broke them. No, what happened between Clarke and Julian was death by a thousand cuts. They’d been digging the chasm between them for years, in love with each other and aware of it, but Clarke wasn’t willing to cross that line and Julian wasn’t willing to pull her over it. He wanted her tochoosehim, he always said, not just go along with it because he pushed hard enough. And Clarke chose herself. Her career. Her independence. She was already going to be Anders Dalsing’s daughter; she didn’t think she’d survive being Julian Casperi’s girlfriend, too.
