I don’t usually go for all the passionate kissing but when I do it’s a proper snog! This will definitely be one of the ones I clean up and refine later.
This is a snippet of an AU in the world of the Locked Tomb books. There are major spoilers for Gideon the Ninth and minor spoilers for Harrow the Ninth in this; feel free to revisit this ficlet after you’ve read the books which are super good.
I’ve taken some heavy liberties with the setting for cavalier/necromancer driftrod reasons.
“We’ve found you a partner,” Springer says as Hot Rod walks into his office.
Hot Rod isn’t surprised. No one’s supposed to know that a Second House cav, a Sixth House cav, and a Third House dignitary with no battle skills to speak of were, more or less willingly, recovered from Canaan House and supposedly recruited, but everyone knows anyway. Most of the base doesn’t like this plan - of course survivors of whatever Lyctor-murderfest was going on there would join up when they don’t have anywhere else to go, and of course they’re going to ditch BoE the second they see a way home.
BoE needs them, though. Or at least, Hot Rod does. Everyone knows that he wouldn’t last ten minutes on a battlefield without someone watching his back, and no one trains for that job in BoE. House necromancers, the only necromancers out here, have to be paired with House cavaliers.
He’d assumed that Arcee would be his cavalier forever when they’d first been matched after Hot Rod arrived, but she and her wife have a baby now and Hot Rod’s been all but grounded ever since she quit going out in the field. They would send him out alone if there was an emergency, of course. Hot Rod suspects he’s only alive because there hasn’t been an emergency.
Arcee had been hoping he’d quit too, he thinks. She’d understood his drive to fight, but she’d also seen the way they look at him - like he’s a weapon, like he’s a thing. She’d probably thought that if he walked away, he could find family again like she had.
But he’s still alive for one reason only, and that’s to fight back. His only skill to speak of is destruction, and even though it makes him monstrous in BoE’s eyes, they’re willing to send him on missions because no one else here can do what he does. He could do without them being just as willing to laugh at him for the way he passes out if he doesn’t have dirt to siphon thanergy from as they leave a planet and the disciplinary marks he gets for having to sleep through most of his first forty-eight hours on any space station, but none of that is enough to make him give up.
“Which one is it?” Hot Rod asks. Surely Springer knows that he knows about the recruits - he’s at least as tapped into the gossip as Hot Rod.
“His name is Deadlock,” says Springer.
That’s quite possibly the least Sixth House name Hot Rod has ever heard, so Second House it is. Dread curdles in his gut. He’d heard that the Second House cav had only stopped fighting back when he’d been stabbed and nearly killed. He’s probably a soldier, and more likely than the rest to still be loyal to the Houses. How is he going to react to Hot Rod, who betrayed them so explosively?
But he can’t say any of that to Springer. Whatever goes wrong is certainly no more than he deserves. “Understood.”
**
“I’m Rodimus. It looks like we’re going to be working together,” Rodimus says, forcing a smile. He’d been considering the switch for years, with the way his old name sometimes feels like a secure thread connecting him to his past but more and more often like the weight of it yoked over his shoulders. He’d submitted the official name change request as soon as he’d left Springer’s office and sent a memo to his closest associates, of which there aren’t many. The name change isn’t guaranteed to keep Deadlock from figuring out who he is, but it’s certainly worth trying.
Deadlock looks like he’s around Rodimus’s age, wary and obviously still injured as he looks at him from across the table. There’s a stretch of silence before he speaks, and Rodimus braces himself for Deadlock to have figured out his secret already.
“I’m Drift,” he says, finally. Rodimus takes note of the change, hopes it was the reason for the pause instead of anything to do with Rodimus.
It feels like it means something, that he’s chosen to change his name now. It feels like it means he won’t kill Rodimus in his sleep, at least.
**
Rodimus and Drift are largely left alone to train together; no one in BoE wants to supervise a partnership that goes against everything they stand for, even though they’re willing to keep whatever necros and cavs they get their hands on for their undeniable effectiveness. Springer is the closest thing to a real supporter, but even he insists on just letting them train how they like, with the polite excuse that he has nothing to contribute. Rodimus tries to keep himself from feeling slighted or abandoned and it never really works.
It slips his mind easily enough when his and Drift’s shuttle lands on a quiet corner of one of BoE’s sanctuary planets, and he has thanergy at his fingertips for the first time in months.
There are no humans buried nearby, so Rodimus is limited to the corpses of small animals. It’s plenty of thanergy to channel into a region far from the shuttle and free of live animals and tweak it into a massive fireball that sends flames and smoke high into the air.
Drift steps up beside him, one hand on his sheathed rapier. “Wow. That was just...wow.”
Rodimus glances at him, looking for irony or a flat-out lie, but he’s still staring at the blacked dirt where the fireball was, eyes wide in seemingly genuine awe. “You were Cohort, right? Haven’t you seen a Fourth House necro work before?”
Drift looks at Rodimus, in that intense way he has that makes Rodimus want to take a step back. “I only joined a few years ago,” he says. What he doesn’t say, after all the Fourth House necromancers died, sits thick in the air between them.
“Right.” It makes sense, now that Rodimus thinks about it. Most houses don’t start shipping adepts into the field until they’ve turned 18. And after...well, after Rodimus, technically, the Fourth House hadn't had anyone left to spare.
He wonders who Fourth House sent to the First at the Emperor’s call. He hopes it wasn’t Flamewar, but he doesn’t bother to hope very hard.
Drift is still looking at him, and when he notices again he does take a step away, shaking his head and clapping his hands. “Okay. Training. I have complete control over the blast radius, but that only helps me avoid hitting you if I know where you are,” he says. “My last cav and I worked a lot on positioning for different types of fights. I can walk you through what we did, and we’ll adapt what we need to.”
“Your last cav...” Drift trails off instead of finishing his question, but it’s obvious what he wants to ask.
“She’s alive! She’s fine, she just has a family now and wanted to retire from active duty.”
“Oh.” Drift tries to smile, but it’s thin and troubled.
“You were paired with a necro before you were picked up, right?”
Drift’s smile disappears. He nods.
Rodimus waits. They’re going to have to talk about it if they’re going to work together at all, so it might as well be now, when the loss isn’t a schism between them yet.
“His name was Wing,” Drift says, sounding...unlike himself. Angry, bitter. More like Rodimus had expected Deadlock to sound, before they’d actually been introduced. “He died at Canaan House.”
“I’m sorry,” Rodimus said.
Drift smiles at him, softer and more real this time, then looks off into the distance. “I know who you are, you know,” he says. “There’s only been one Fourth House defector in decades.”
Rodimus’s whole body tenses. “Who am I, then?” he asks.
Drift smiles again. “You’re Rodimus. My necromancer.”
You ever wonder what makes a person choose the way they do? Hot Rod wouldn’t find out how invasive Deadlock’s brand ceremony really was until much, much later...
