Learning to Dance

glassy, the blanket wrapped around her. She looked
miserable.
He finally got up the nerve to ask. “What’s going on,
Taz? I’ve never seen you act like this before.”
She didn’t say anything for a while, and then the words
came out of her as if by accident. “It’s my birthday
tomorrow.”
Up stopped, and frowned. Was it? Taz didn’t usually pay
much mind to birthdays. “Happy – birthday?” he said,
confused as to what this had to do with anything.
“I’ll be twenty-five,” she told the bathtub beside him.
“Ten years ago-”
And then he understood. It had been her birthday the day
her family and village had been destroyed by robots, the
day he’d found her hanging upside-down, a human piñata
at her own quinceañera. “I didn’t realize it still-”
“Bothered me?” she said bitterly. “Watching everyone I
cared about being blasted and ripped into pieces while I
was powerless to stop it? Why should that still bother me?”
“Taz, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. He pulled the
last shard of glass from her palm. “There.”
She didn’t pull her hand away. He looked at her, dark
eyes and all-over-the-place hair, a fresh cut on her eyebrow,
the curve of her shoulder disappearing into the blanket that
had slipped down her arm. She looked more vulnerable
now than she had in a long time. Sometimes he forgot how
young she had been when she first joined the Academy. He
suddenly felt overwhelmed by an intense desire to take her
in his arms again, remind her that she wasn’t alone. She had
him. She would always have him.
His communicator beeped.
“Commander Up?”
He had to let go of her hand to raise the communicator to
his mouth.