Title: Any Day With You
Author: Rana Eros
Summary: "Music, she saved my life. Now I'm loving her through day and night."
Author's Notes: For
halfamoon and Eliza.
Any Day With You
"This one," BoA says, tapping the poster featuring a colorful cube made of words. Talk, play, love, over and over, in opposition to the Speaker's latest monotonous drone. Bora takes it and rolls it up, slipping it into a separate tube from the rest, which she rolls up together for later spraydown and reuse.
"I'll get it to Lina this afternoon." Now that Lina's moved shop again, Bora's more confident about taking things to her without getting caught. The press is a pain to transport, but the security's worth it.
When BoA doesn't say anything else, Bora looks up to see her tapping at her lips pensively, multi-colored nails gleaming in the streaks of sunlight falling through the high windows. Red, blue, and green, the colors of the old flag, the colors of their former school's soccer team.
"What is it?" Bora asks, and BoA's eyes are sharp as her nails, dark and fierce and unlikely to soften anytime soon.
"It'll be five years next week," she says, and the world stills.
Five years since SAM declared their new regime. Five years since Bora was a good schoolgirl in designer shoes, trying to find a way to tell her mother she didn't want to study graphic art at university, that she wanted her music to be more than a "suitable hobby." Five years since BoA was that girl Bora's mother both wanted her to avoid and wanted her to be nice to out of pity. Motherless BoA in her thriftstore glory, her father working two jobs so his daughter could go to school.
Five years since SAM's troops came marching onto campus, and BoA had grabbed Bora's hand and said, "Come on. Tablo's getting Xiah, I'll show you where they won't find us."
Almost five years gone, and they're both motherless now, fatherless, dressed in scavenged finds from abandoned attics all over the city. Grown up and grown wild, native plants cracking the concrete of SAM's regime wide, breaking it down. Bora papers the city with art calling for revolution, plays her keyboards to drown out the Speaker, to lift up BoA's voice, Xiah's, Tablo and Xiah's guitars.
It's working. Kangin confirmed the new location of the broadcast array, the lack of guards. Youngwoong's sent updates that his ranks are swelling, Micky and Yunho running deserters past the decimated border patrol. People walk the streets in the lines SAM proscribes, but nobody's turning in their neighbors for breaking formation at home. Nobody looks at Bora when she puts up her posters in broad daylight, when she helps Xiah carry speakers up the stairwells of buildings SAM can't keep locked.
"They won't make it that long," Bora says, sets her hand over BoA's on top of the poster, spreads her fingers so the colors of BoA's nails shine through. Spreads her fingers so the words are visible: Talk. Play. Love.
She does. BoA with her fury, a time bomb who's set herself to blow SAM skyhigh. Xiah with his hope, his sun-flared hair and sun-bright smile and sun-fierce voice. Tablo with his patience, as relentless an enemy as SAM could ever wish not to make. Herself, the legacy of her father, her mother who taught her to draw, to play, to fight. She loves.
"They won't." BoA places her other hand over both of theirs, and Bora thinks she'd better see if Lina can print a flag while she's in there this afternoon. "We're going to win."
Bora smiles, leans forward to kiss BoA, say against her lips, "We're winning now."
END