Title: Asked Me on a Voyage to Go
Fandom: Hikaru no Go
Challenge: Blind Go Round 018
Pseudonym: Ajisai
Word count: 1,918
Summary: Generic SF AU. Akira is probably lonely.

(A/N: Title and lyrics from Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl's Space Girl's Song)



My mama told me I should never venture into space
But I did, I did, I did.
She said no Terran girl could trust the Martian race
But I did, I did, I did.

There was a boy on the transport when it arrived.

Akira wasn’t part of the crew that handled deliveries, but he could hear Waya gossipping about it loudly to his friends.

They asked, “How did he even get on?” and, “I thought they were all automated, these days,” and “How did he survive the trip?”

”He hasn’t woken up yet, duh,” Waya replied, bloated with pride at being the one in the know. ”So no one knows how.”

Akira could have told them that the security on the transports was targeted to inflight defenses--easy enough to sneak on while the transport was being loaded and hide among the crates until it was launched. Akira could have told them that the transports hadn’t always been automated, and they all still had tiny crew quarters and life-support, which could be activated with only a few simple modifications to the overhead software. Akira could have told them that it wasn’t that difficult to find rations on a transport headed to the colonies, which were stocked full of food supplies.

Akira could have told them, but they weren’t asking him.

◦◦◦

”He woke up!” Waya bellowed as he crashed down the corridor, spreading the news to the entire station. ”The mystery boy is awake!”

Akira bent his head over his work and didn’t follow the rush of people.

The station wasn’t that big; he’d meet the mystery boy eventually, and they would either get along, or--more likely--they wouldn’t.

◦◦◦

Akira was fiddling with the controls for the aft sensor array when he heard Waya again, loudly giving a tour of the station to his new friend. Akira tried not to scowl down at the panel in front of him; Waya made friends so easily.

“And that’s Touya over there. You don’t need to say hello to him--he can’t be bothered to talk to the non-prodigy type.”

Not that he’d ever been interested in being friends with Akira. But then, the only one who ever had been was--

”Akira?”

Akira’s head shot up, and he dropped his spanner directly on the unprotected wires revealed by the open panel. Akira wasn’t one to use expletives--instead, he stared, frozen in mute horror as the spanner began sparking and the wires slowly began to give under its weight.

Then, with a few soft clicks of the controls, the power to the panel was cut, and a gloved hand was reaching past him, brushing against his arm, to remove the fallen spanner.

Akira cleared his throat, face red. “I--sorry, I’m not usually so--”

“Akira, it is you!”

And Akira looked up into the face of Shindou Hikaru for the first time in more than a year. Still the same laughing grey eyes, the same bleached-blond bangs against his dark-brown hair, the same smiling mouth. He felt the breath being pulled out of him in a wave of emotions he couldn’t even begin to process.

Well, except for one.

◦◦◦

“I can’t believe you punched me!”

Akira crossed his arms over his chest and huffed. Hikaru was sitting on one of the stiff, medical bay pallets, rubbing his sore cheek and pouting aggressively. Not that Akira would know, as he was resolutely focused on ignoring everything that Hikaru did, and had been since Waya had dragged Hikaru to the med-bay, scowling fiercely at Akira as he did.

“I just got out of the med-bay and then you punched me back in!”

Akira felt a brief twinge of guilt, but quickly tried to stifle it.

“Not that I really needed the med-bay, I guess; I mean, it was a pretty lame punch.”

Stifled guilt achieved. Akira finally turned to Hikaru, ready to glare Hikaru into submission, to find Hikaru was now leaning back comfortably, hands crossed behind his head, smiling at Akira with light eyes.

Akira felt another twinge of something, but it wasn’t guilt this time.

•••

The first time Akira met Hikaru, it felt something like a dream.

For a brief period when Akira and Hikaru were twelve or thirteen, inter-neural virtual-reality role-plays had been a big hit for their age group. Akira had been wandering aimlessly down a terrestrial street, visiting his grandparents and miserable about it. Everything was wrong here--the air, the food, the gravity, the sky--and he felt lonely but didn’t really understand what that was. He happened to see the internet arcade at the same moment his fingers, buried in his pocket, brushed against his credit chip.

Inside, Akira was seated in a chair as a bored employee efficiently strapped the neural nodes to his forehead, rattling off disclaimers as she did so.

“--Might feel a slight sensation of vertigo--”

Akira shivered when he opened his eyes to a different world. Around him were rows upon rows of elegant go boards, all standing on soft tatami. He bent down to run his fingers over the smooth wood, inhaling sharply. It was beautiful.

And empty.

Of course, Akira’s choice of game would be the one that no one else was interested in, be it among his peer group on the station where he lived with his parents, or here, among an entire planet full of youth.

Akira sighed, and sank down into seiza. He was just reaching into the full goke, brushing his fingers against the cold stones, when a soft chime rang out through the still air.

Entered: 1 new player. Username: sai.

That must get irritating in the really full games, Akira thought absently as he looked up to meet the startlingly grey eyes of his opponent.

◦◦◦

“--Can’t believe you were so irresponsible!”

Akira stood, back straight, arms held stiffly at his sides.

“Attacking a civilian, entirely without provocation!”

Akira’s fingers twitched, thumb sliding over the insignia engraved into the ring on his forefinger. Sakamaki noticed, of course.

“And may I remind you, Touya,” Sakamaki continued in a calmer voice. “I could have you demoted--or suspended--for this incident.” He frowned severely at Akira, heavy brows turned sharply down. “I frankly expected better from you.”

“I understand, sir,” he replied evenly. “It won’t happen again.”

•••

“Is that really what you look like?” asked thirteen-year old Akira, tilting his head as he peered at the screen. He was back home, now, far away from Hikaru. He had felt a knot form in his chest as the passenger transport departed, but he wasn’t sure what that meant. “I thought you were using one of the built-in game avatars when we met in the go game.” He didn’t ask, Your eyes are really that colour? He didn’t know that he could, yet.

“That’s what I thought about you! You really keep your hair like that? Wait, you’re not weari--oh, no, you are, oh Akira, no.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my clothes,” Akira responded primly, well used to defending this point by now. He smoothed down his shirt--a present from his grandmother--and swallowed nervously. “So, are we really doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Talking. About… social things.”

“Sure.” Hikaru was smiling at him from the screen as though Akira wasn’t awkward, as though he wasn’t saying all the wrong things. “What do you normally talk about?”

“With my parents, school. Future aspirations with my teachers.” Akira felt his face flush, and he ducked his head, hoping Hikaru wouldn’t notice.

“Uh. We can talk about those things, I guess,” Hikaru replied, shrugging. “Or we can talk about anything else. Whatever you want, Akira.”

“I don’t really know how,” Akira admitted softly. “Is it alright if we just play more go?”

“Fine with me. Do you mind if I talk, though? I love talking.”

“I don’t mind.” Not at all…

◦◦◦

Hikaru was leaning insolently against the control panel to Akira’s quarters when Akira returned from his meeting with Sakamaki, and Akira, past the point of arguing, simply waved Hikaru aside so he could run his access card along the sensor.

“What do you want, Hikaru?” he sighed, letting Hikaru slide into the room behind him. “Why are you even here?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“I meant, why are you here on this station.”

“I just said--I wanted to talk to you.”

Akira looked at him disbelievingly. “You’re trying to tell me that you spent three weeks on an interplanetary transport vessel with outdated safety supports just to talk to me? You could have talked to me at any point in the last year--at least to let me know you were still alive--but did you bother to? No. Not once.”

“I wanted to talk to you in person,” Hikaru said, voice strange. “I needed--after Sai left, I couldn’t--”

Akira stared at Hikaru, confused and angry and not a little relieved as it began to slowly sink in that Hikaru really was there, that Hikaru really was alright, that this wasn’t a dream. “What are you talking about? I thought you were Sai.”

“Not--not exactly. Sai was--it doesn’t matter. We were different people, but he could only touch the world through me.”

“Okay,” said Akira slowly. “Then why did he leave?”

“He--I mean, he’s gone. Forever. He--passed on.”

Akira let out a slow breath. “I’m sorry, Hikaru.”

“At first, I just wanted to forget everything, I don’t know. But then, I got to realise that… If I don’t remember him, then he really is gone, you know?”

Akira reached out a hand and laid it tentatively on Hikaru’s shoulder. “I know.”

Hikaru was a hugger, Akira noted absently as Hikaru threw himself at him. Akira should have guessed. “I’m sorry it took me so long to figure myself out, Akira.”

Akira raised his arms and wrapped them around Hikaru awkwardly, uncertain that he was doing it correctly. Slowly, he began to relax, and he let his head fall forward onto Hikaru’s shoulder. “I’m glad you’re alright,” he whispered. “I’m glad you’re here.”

•••

To: sai
Hikaru, I haven’t heard back from you recently. Let me know you’re okay.
Status: Received, unread.

To: sai
Hikaru, you still haven’t responded to my last few e-mails, and I’m getting really worried. Please contact me as soon as is convenient.
Status: Received, unread.

To: sai
Did I do something to make you angry? If I did, I’m sorry.
Status: Received, unread.

To: sai
I told you, I’m not good at this. At least let me know what I did wrong.
Status: Received, unread.

To: sai
Hikaru, we’ve been friends for years. Are you really going to end it like this?
Status: Received, unread.

◦◦◦

Hikaru laughed easily at Waya’s joke, leaning back in his chair and swinging an arm casually over Akira’s shoulders as he did so. Since appearing on the station, he’d been doing that more and more, as though he needed reassurance that Akira was really there.

Akira tried to lean into Hikaru’s touch as subtly as possible as he let the conversation drift and move around him.

“--penalties for illegal transit--”

“--impressed with the way you modified the transport--”

“--engineering prodigy to rival Touya--”

“--mostly waived--”

“--mandatory station service--”

“--get away with everything, it’s seriously not fair--”

“--asleep?”

“Nah,” Hikaru’s voice rumbled under Akira’s cheek. He hadn’t realised that his position had become so… cuddly. “He’s just bored.”

Akira peered up through his bangs at Hikaru and felt himself smile. “If I’m bored,” he sighed, “then surely the question is, why are you so boring?”

Isumi chuckled softly, and Waya guffawed at the indignant expression on Hikaru’s face.

Akira snuggled back into Hikaru’s shoulder, feeling warm.


A rocket pilot asked me on a voyage to go
And I was so romantic I just couldn't say no
That he was just a servo robot how was I to know?
So I did, I did, I did.

--

"Mom, I--"

"--could have at least sent a quick message, Hikaru, we've been worried sick--"

"Yeah, Mom, but--"

"--had to hear from your grandfather that you're alright--"

"Wow, I forgot I have a shift coming up, sorry, gotta run!"

"Hikar--!"

Hikaru disconnected the video call hurriedly and collapsed on the panel, expression tortured.

"Weren't you going to ask her to send your old data files?" asked Akira dryly from his position in the corner of the room, well out of sight of the camera.

Hikaru turned his head slightly so he could scowl at Akira. "When exactly did she give me a chance to say anything?"

"I don't know," said Akira thoughtfully. "Maybe any time in the last six weeks?"

"Ugh," groaned Hikaru. "Not you, too."

Akira gave him a long look.

"Ugh," said Hikaru again, but he slowly pushed himself upright and grumpily tapped a few commands onto the keypad.

"Hikaru!"

"Okay, so I didn't really have to work. But there's someone I'd love for you to meet--"