The Language I Spoke Yesterday

Don't bruise my tomato

I was met by concerned glances and an angry stare on the deck of the Polar Tang. I stormed passed all but the Captain.

"Androm-"

I grabbed the sleeve of his jacket and pulled him into the ship. I was too angry to articulate immediately. Instead, I marched us through the halls to the bathroom. I set him with his back against a stall and then drew the curtain behind myself.

I barely managed to get undressed, growling and grunting as my frozen fingers fumbled painfully. Fortunately, Law waited in silence. Finally I was able to scald myself on the cold water.

"What does it look like?" I didn't get an immediate answer, and I couldn't see his face. Whether it was wise or not, I pressed on. "Amber Lead Disease. What does it look like?"

Another pause stretched for nearly a minute. "The patient would exhibit a decrease in energy. Painful white patches begin to appear during the final stages."

"Fucking ass hole." I muttered into the water. "And white lead can be made into a bunch of different things?"

"Yes."

I felt bad for bringing up such a negatively charged subject. I hated thinking of the captain, who I had started thinking of as a friend, in pain. I hated feeling his discomfort, knowing that he thought he should have 'moved on', and that that he knew he would never. It would always be right there, waiting for him to turn out the lights.

"Cups? Necklaces? Wedding rings?"

"Yes. Where are you going with this?"

"Shit-face poisoned my mother." I adjusted the water so I could lean against the other side of the stall. "I ran into her husband. He said... She had a bad reaction to her wedding ring. The doctors couldn't help her." My throat tightened. She hadn't been good to me in the end, but she was the only mother I had ever known. "Yan said her skin was so blotchy they had to have a closed casket..."

Law sighed heavily. "Andromeda-ya, Amber Lead Syndrome takes years, generations to accumulate. He wouldn't have been able to poison her in any reasonable length of time. Besides, it's almost impossible to get ahold of white lead anymore. Even the underground won't touch it."

"Yan was stationed in Anba, Flevance fourteen years ago. He was promoted to captain for his 'heroics'." I rolled my eyes. "The ring he gave Mum was pure white with a pretty little diamond set directly into it. It didn't shine, but it had a luster. Same as the earrings he gave her on her birthday, and the coffee cup, and the necklace..."

I turned up the water temperature while I waited for Law's reaction. "The amount of White Lead needed to kill someone in just a few years would be massive. Even living in a town built out of it, being born to a family who lived there for generations... I was thirteen before it almost killed me."

That was information I didn't have before. Guilt gnawed on me. I wanted to apologize, but I doubted any amount of words would do any good.

"Although... If the posts were made of white lead. If that was the only cup she used..."

I let him think for a bit, coming to the same question he asked only a moment later. "With the amount of lead there must have been in the house, why don't you show any signs of contamination?"

"Probably because I was never home." My adrenaline rush was fully over, leaving me feeling drained both physically and emotionally. "Yan and I fought from the very start. Mum was seeing him for a few years before she left Dad. Vance was probably his son..."

Again, we came to the same conclusion. "So, he started poisoning her before they were married. And your brother could also be in danger."

"I'm gonna kill him."