idk what it is about writing future caleb that brings out these raw lines but holy shit y’all this thing from yesterday is actually pretty good
“And if he ever returns to the city,” Caleb says quietly to the pensive elven mage before him, two cups of tea set between them and the teleportation circle upstairs still murmuring with warmth, “kill him.”
Welcome to the linked universe fandom friend! I originally followed you for taz and I think this is the first fandom since then you’ve gotten into that I actually know, so I’m very excited! I loved your writing so much it’s just so beautiful and emotional and I can’t wait to see what you do with LU.
But prompts, hmmm…..take your favourite two or three of the boys and write them bonding? Optional starter/premise: ‘don’t tell Time’
:D!!! Hey, anon! Thank you, that means a lot!! I'm glad we're matching up again. And oh boy, do I have more of that writing coming. The LU boys have absolutely overtaken my brain, and none of them have enough rupees to pay rent.
Hope you enjoy!
--
A muffled clatter and half-bitten curse tugs Hyrule from sleep.
He blinks awake, and the timbers of the old man’s ranch stretch across his view. Small motes of dust alight with soft pinks and golds, drifting through the air like fairies, and Hyrule pulls himself upright. The sun is little more than a sliver atop the trees.
“It’s too early for this,” he mutters to himself, and leaps out of his skin when another voice responds, “Yeah, it is.”
He whips around to meet the grinning face of the Captain. For someone whose thigh is currently being used as a sailor's pillow, who is running their hands through an eternally salt-crusted head of hair, he looks awfully smug. “Got you.”
Hyrule ignores him and instead asks, “What was that? What happened?”
“Champion and the rancher happened. They’re making something for the old man.”
Beside him, Legend rolls over in sleep. Further back on the beds, which they’d all shoved together late last night, Four’s arm is wholly bound by Sky’s vicelike grip. Their first Chosen has his head pillowed on Four’s shoulder, and Hyrule bites back a grin at the view. He’s pretty sure Four’s fingers are turning purple.
“Poor smithy,” the Captain murmurs, dripping with false sympathy, and Hyrule stuffs his hand against his mouth to keep from laughing.
He yawns and rolls out of bed and picks his way over the sleeping bodies of his brothers, making it through the doorframe without disaster. The corners of the walls are rose, this early in the morning, as he treads softly through the halls. He's blinking away sleep as he rounds the corner of the kitchen.
“What,” Hyrule whispers, “the fuck.”
Wild and Twilight both freeze, whipping around with fear in their eyes. When they see it’s him, they both deflate. Then Wild swells right back up again, leveling one flour-covered finger at him. “You!” he hisses. “Get out!”
Time’s kitchen, Time’s spotless, well-loved kitchen, is covered in flour. It looks as though a small snowstorm has flurried directly over all of his counters. Wild and Twilight's clothes are the epicenter of the storm. Was Wild's tunic once blue? Hyrule sure can't tell.
Hyrule takes an awed step closer, and Wild hisses, literally hisses at him, brandishing a wooden mixing spoon. “Get out! Traveler!”
“Make me,” Hyrule says, peering curiously into Twilight’s bowl. He’s punching some weird, tan glob. The imprint of his knuckles rises on the surface. “What are you making?”
“Nothing!”
“Wild, honestly,” Twilight sighs, long-suffering.
“Twi, the last time he tried to cook, the stew animated. It tried to kill us, Twi.”
It had. Hyrule’s still not entirely clear on how that happened, but hey—that’s their cook’s problem, not his.
“I don’t think our cinnamon rolls are going to develop homicidal tendencies if Hyrule watches us make them, Wild.”
“Do you really want to risk it?” Wild whispers, brandishing his spoon now in Twilight’s direction. “Really?”
Twilight hesitates. Hyrule holds up his hands in the universal gesture of peace. “I’m not gonna touch anything!” he promises, as convincingly as he can.
Wild squints at him. Twilight sighs, and goes back to sparring his weird inflatable punching bag. Hyrule emphatically does not understand the point of challenging an opponent who cannot hit back and is probably also going to turn into food. “But really, what are you doing?”
“Baking,” Wild grumbles. “Cinnamon rolls.”
“Cinnamon rolls?”
“For the old man,” Twilight explains, pulling off a piece of the dough and handing it to Wild, who promptly turns to the window and stretches it and holds it up like he’s making an offering to Hylia. Hyrule stares at him, perplexed. “They’re his favorites.”
Hyrule’s seen these before, he thinks. “Huh. Are those the ones that swirl around?”
Wild’s hands drop from where he was spreading the dough and he whips around on his heel. “Have you never had a cinnamon roll before?”
“Uh,” Hyrule says, “no?”
Both of them stare at him, oddly aghast. Hyrule feels his shoulders rise to his ears, uncomfortable. “Sorry?”
“Sorry?” Wild hisses. He slaps the piece of dough into Twilight’s bowl. “A few more minutes. And Hyrule’s getting the first one.”
“No arguments from me, Champion.”
“So…what are they?”
“Heaven in your mouth,” Wild says, at the same time Twilight says, “Cinnamon-flavored baked good.”
“With icing,” Wild adds.
“I see,” says Hyrule, who does not see at all. “What’s icing?”
Wild stares at him. He then, very slowly, puts his face in his hands.
Twilight pats his shoulder consolingly. “Remember when Wild made that cake?”
Hyrule brightens. “The fruitcake! Yeah!” It was one of the best things he can ever remember eating. To be fair, he says that about all of what Wild makes, but that fruitcake was good even for Wild, which is saying something. There were these fruits Wild called wildberries, which had made everyone within earshot laugh when he announced them, for the perfect suitability of the name—you even got berries named after you, Champion?—and sliced apples and a soft fluffy white spread on top that had reminded Hyrule of clouds, and Sky’s sailcloth when the Chosen hero folds it up for one of their injured to use as a pillow.
“The white stuff on top? That was icing.”
“I loved that stuff!” Hyrule pauses. “I mean, I loved the whole cake. But that was really good too!”
Wild snorts. “Fine. He can stay,” he mutters, and waves Hyrule to a chair, a grin breaking across his face. Hyrule laughs. He’ll happily hand out more compliments if he gets to stay and watch this strange process of baking happen.
Eventually Twilight finishes punching the dough into submission. Wild rolls it out, spreads something along the inside, rolls it back up, and sticks it in the brick oven. Twilight wipes sweat off his face and then after a moment’s contemplation wipes his sweat on Wild’s forearm and then dances away, laughing, as Wild tries to retaliate with an armful of cinnamon rolls and nearly drops them all.
“Careful, Champion,” Twilight chides, in a deep, resonant imitation of Time’s voice, and Wild rolls his eyes as Twilight grins and pulls up a chair next to Hyrule.
“What now?” Hyrule asks, peering at the oven. Nothing seems to be happening—there are no flames rolling out from the inside, or any fire magic at all, as far as he can sense—but neither Wild nor Twilight seem concerned by this lack of movement, so it’s probably fine.
“Now, we wait.”
The old man is an early riser. Not as early as their Champion or Captain, but he’s normally up before the sun makes a full circle in the sky. At Lon Lon Ranch, though, he tends to sleep even later than their birdbrained Chosen. So slowly, the rest of their merry little band trickles into the kitchen, wiping sleep from their eyes and sniffing at the air.
And every single time, both Wild and Twilight tense, and every time they relax, seeing a face that isn’t Time’s.
After watching this same process happen for the third time, as a sleepy Wind stumbles into the room and goes wide-eyed at the smell, Legend leans over to Hyrule and whispers, “I’m gonna tell Time.”
Hyrule glares at him. “Don’t you dare.”
Legend holds up his hands in easy surrender, but Hyrule keeps glaring, just in case. He has no idea if the veteran knows how to make cinnamon rolls, but Hyrule kind of does now, so he knows how much care went into this surprise. “Veteran, don’t.”
“Fine,” Legend grumbles, settling back with a steaming mug of tea in hand. “Spoilsport.”
If he weren’t holding tea, Hyrule would shove him off his chair. From the smirk on Legend’s lips, he knows. Hyrule bares his teeth and Legend’s grin only widens, raising his mug in mock-salute.
Finally, Sky staggers into the kitchen, nosing at the air through half-lidded eyes. Wild pours him a wordless cup of coffee, which Sky accepts with a half-nod and a truly impressive chug, then opens the oven. He leans back as a wave of heat licks into the kitchen, then reaches in.
Twilight grabs his elbow and hands him an oven mitt. With a longsuffering sigh, Wild takes it.
From the oven he pulls a tray of glistening, golden-brown spirals. They’ve grown significantly since Hyrule saw them last, and he watches curiously as Wild taps his fingernail against one. After nodding, satisfied, he reaches for another bowl and sets to stirring something. Behind him, Twilight starts dusting off the countertop, and after more than a couple pointed glares and muttered threats about watch rotations, the rest of the boys groan and gripe to their feet to help.
The sound of footsteps down the hall has all of them freezing in place, heads sticking up from behind the countertops like panicked gophers. Six of them scatter. Twilight tries to readjust the tray of rolls and bites back a curse, shaking out his burned hand. Wild grabs his bowl and upends the white concoction—that must be icing—on the cinnamon rolls in an impressive display of speed and precision. He’s just set the bowl rattling on the countertops when Time walks in, already frowning at the strange smell.
Time looks at the cinnamon rolls. He looks at Twilight and Wild, stood behind a clean countertop, surrounded by freshly-cleaned bowls, clothes absolutely covered in flour. He looks at the rest of the boys, who are seated on the various furniture in a truly terrible imitation of casualness. Legend is holding his book upside-down.
“Ah,” Time says. “Malon told you?”
“Wild asked,” Twilight says immediately, and Wild gapes at the betrayal.
“Twilight! You liar, you literally asked last night!”
Time starts laughing, and both of them stare at him, before breaking out into huge grins of their own. “It smells heavenly,” he says, pulling the chair out. His grin only widens as the six of them, Hyrule leading the pack, hurry around the table. “You made these for me?”
“For welcoming us,” Wild says; quieter, Hyrule thinks, than he means to. “Into your home. You didn’t have to.”
Time’s expression softens. Wild picks up one of the cinnamon rolls and pushes it across the table, shoulders riding up to his ears as his cheeks flush, and Time says, “It’s my pleasure, Champion. You are always welcome here. Don’t forget that.”
“And for, y’know, always saving our lives,” Twilight says dryly, and the weight of the quiet moment shatters, drawing chuckles from the whole group. “Traveler! You’re next!”
Hyrule bounds forward, not bothering to disguise his eagerness. “Eat it while it’s warm,” Wild says. “And if it starts trying to kill you, then that is your fault and you are not getting another one.”
“Hey!” Hyrule yelps, as laughter spills out of him. The rest of the heroes descend eagerly on the warm creations. It doesn’t take long before the first of the buns are devoured, and within moments, Wind is hauling himself bodily over the table, grabbing for seconds.
A few minutes later, the heroes burst out into welcoming cheers as Malon wanders into the kitchen, a knowing glint in her eyes. She gasps with ill-feigned shock at the cinnamon rolls, a glint of mischief in her eyes that perfectly matches the one the old man sometimes wears, and Time wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her close. Her eyes close contentedly as he kisses her cheek.
“You have to make these more often,” Hyrule tells Wild, as he’s polished off his second and claimed a third. Across the table, a scuffle erupts as Four steals Warriors’s second cinnamon bun, protesting how hard it is to reach the middle of the table with his short arms, and ducks away from their Captain's retaliatory shove, shaking with silent laughter.
“Sure,” Wild says, then nudges Hyrule’s shoulder with his own. “Hey, traveler. You got a favorite dessert? For no reason in particular,” he adds hastily. “Just…curious.”
Hyrule grins. “I haven’t had many,” he confesses, and Wild’s expression turns considering. “Give me a few more samples and then I’ll pick.”
Wild nods, satisfied. "I will."
Across the table, Time sets a hand on Twilight’s shoulder. There are matching smiles curled up their lips. Between them, Malon sets one hand on her hips, and messes up Twilight’s hair with the other, leaving the rancher to try to smooth it back out in dismay. He rears back, indignant, and Time and Malon laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
The first of the sun’s rays brush the top of the kitchen table, setting the corners of the wood ablaze with embers of light, as outside, dawn spins soft and golden into morning.
An FYI masterpost of the in-jokes, side-notes and fun-facts of At The Tenth Hour, the Penumbra longfic I'm working on! Will be updated as more of the story comes out. There won't be any spoilers for the rest of the fic until I've posted the whole story.
Want to read the fic? You can find it here!
The Prologue
[To be added when fic is finished; there's a lot for this section, but almost all of it is spoilers!]
Chapter One
The Chet (Ricochet) and the Scope: basically, this duo can take information at any wavelength and send it anywhere. The signal is then passed through galaxies, oftentimes using the reflective atmospheres of other planets to make tight turns. The albedos mentioned in Chapter Two are essentially measures of a planet's reflectivity, and therefore a quantitative estimate of how much information would be lost if that planet was used as a mirror. But you wanna know what it really was? A fetch quest! Love a good fetch quest for the Carte Blanche.
The Solar Councils are split into three sections. The Inner Council governs the inner planets, which are split from the outer planets by the asteroid belt. Basically that means the Inner Council is Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars; the Outer Council is Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The Council of the Belts is the asteroid belt, the Kuiper Belt (which involves Pluto), and also the hand-wavey misc. category.
The "fiddly screw in the bottom-left-hand corner" is 100% a screw that Nureyev has messed with while making a ruckus in the CB's vent systems. He knows they're all pointed directly vertical because he always leaves them that way when he uses the vents. Oh, Nureyev.
The location Tonlap is based on the Cambodian lake Tonle Sap, which has a number of floating villages from which I drew pretty direct inspiration. Touk is the Khmer word for - you guessed it - boat. The customs, like tipping and eyeless fish and such, were from the mind of yours truly.
The name Eris comes from the Greek goddess of discord. She's the one who threw the Apple of Menelaus into the council of the gods and said "that's for the fairest" and then basically kickstarted a war because Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite are just the sorest losers you'll ever meet.
The environment of Susano'o is based on the Nether in Minecraft. Yep, that video game about blocks and weird-looking sheep. Good thing there aren't any Ghasts on Susano'o.
Jet's "near-infinite battery" is made from technology he salvaged from M'tendere's inventions. It's his way of honoring an old friend, and continuing their work. He doesn't quite have the trick of a truly bottomless battery, but he's getting there.
Sure is weird how Eris died, huh?
Chapter Two
The names Cirilla, Regis, and Jaskier are all taken from the Witcher franchise. Is there a reason for this? Not really! I just love the franchise and the names are cool. (Hot take: Regis is a criminally underrated character, though that's probably because he only shows up in the expansion pack for Wild Hunt.)
Pancakes! Guess who used to make the pancakes the family doesn't eat anymore! Yep, it's Juno. Sad.
Sun of the Cerberus - yep, a title I made up for Buddy! Vespa's complement is the Moon of Ranga, because I love titles like that.
The bit about Saturnian Redwings was entirely to highlight how badly Nureyev's always wanted a parental figure. Just...kid Nureyev, hearing about creatures whose parents are with them until they die. I think he'd really like that.
Bicak is Turkish for "knife", and mesec an anglicization of "moon" in Croatian. Ilanga is an anglicization of "sun" in Xhosa. Jade is the same color as the Ruby.
Nureyev's bit about sub-Jovian points is accurate (as far as my limited astronomical knowledge goes)! There's a sub-Jovian point on Callisto's surface, from which Jupiter is always visible overhead. Flashy, isn't it?
The whole bit about the Ionian pet trade was a direct pull from one of Nureyev's lines from, gosh, one of the episodes (Mega Ultrabots, maybe?). Juno's like "have you ever smuggled an elephant from a crowded building" and Nureyev was like "yes" and so I decided I was gonna riff on that. So that's where he smuggled the elephant out. Good for him.
The name Pelias comes from Greek mythology. He's the one who issued Jason's challenges, the ones Jason had to complete to regain the throne he stole. There were three challenges, and one of them was to plant dragon teeth in a field. He was tipped off that the teeth would turn into warriors, so he threw a stone between them to cause them to fight amongst themselves. Inspiration for the brawls at the gala came directly from that.
Selene Emera's name sure was weird, wasn't it? Wonder where those names came from.
Yasha catches him before she leaves. "Wait," she asks, so he does. "I wanted to give you this."
She holds out the Holy Avenger.
Caleb looks at it, then looks up at her. She looks as earnest as ever, and affection pangs through him just as strongly as his bafflement. "Yasha," he says, pointing to his pathetic biceps, "I am a stick."
"What? No. No, I don't want you to use this. I would be more worried about you cutting yourself open than someone else."
"Ja, as would I," Caleb says. Behind her, Beau buries her laughter into her fist, and Caleb rolls his eyes at her. "I assume there is another reason you are giving me this?"
"Oh! Yes, well, you had mentioned that you were going to see the Lady Allura, and her wife was very clear that if I did not return the sword, she would kill me." Yasha cocks her head. "Actually, I think it was something more along the lines of if you die and lose the sword, then I will kill you, but I think she was mostly worried about the sword and not me."
"I would not be so sure, she liked you well enough to offer you the sword in the first place," Caleb says. "Though perhaps that was simply because she enjoyed the world not being razed to the ground by a flying city of flesh. Also you should know that if I take that sword from you, I will drop it, and then I will have no right foot."
"Oh come on, Caleb, it's not that heavy."
Caleb pats her biceps. "You are very strong, my friend."
"He's right," Beau calls from behind Yasha. "You're super strong, babe. Caleb's kinda really weak though."
"Thank you as always, Beauregard."
She shoots him a thumbs-up. He flicks her off and says, "If you put it down, I will add it to my vault. There I am not in danger of losing my toes."
"Okay, okay, okay," Yasha says, and sets it down. "Do send the Lady Kima my regards, would you?"
Caleb pulls out his vault of amber and begins to cast. "Of course, of course."
--
He offers to take the rest of the Nein with him, but they decline. Jester, Fjord and Kingsley are preparing for their voyage, Veth happy with her family and Caduceus already departed for the Blooming Grove. So it is with Essek alone that he makes the journey.
They arrive to the estate in Tal'dorei at midmorning by Caleb's estimation, which was just past sunset in Nicodranas. At their knock, they are admitted--the estate does not even blink at the presence of a drow holding a lace-embroidered parasol as a shield against the sun--and gestured to wait for the presence of the Lady Allura Vysoren.
After five minutes or so Essek leans over and whispers, "Now this is somewhere I would love to study."
Caleb smiles. "I as well. However that possibility is contingent on us making a good impression, I believe, and to do so we will need to return these." He nods at the sword, which had taken his and Essek's combined strength to haul up the stairs.
Essek looks longingly at the staff held loosely in Caleb's left hand. "Even that focus, Caleb, the power it holds. I would very much like to create one for myself."
"It is not a simple task, to be sure," says another voice, and the Lady Allura Vysoren glides down the staircase, smiling at Caleb and nodding to Essek. "I thank you for your considerate notification of your arrival. If I am to understand my colleague correctly, such foresight is not so common in your group."
"Contrary to popular belief, we are indeed capable of learning," Caleb jests back dryly. "I am also under the impression that if we were to forget to return these items to you two, the life of our barbarian would be in mortal danger, so we would like to do so now."
Allura looks at the Holy Avenger and runs her fingertips across it. She closes her eyes, and from behind them, a pale blue colors the insides of her eyelids. She nods, appeased at the sword's truth, then takes the proffered Staff of Power. She was not tense at her first appearance, but her stance relaxes as the white staff is returned to her grasp. She holds it up and runs an assessing gaze of the oak, and nods again when she finds it maintained to her satisfaction.
"Thank you for taking such good care of these," she says. "In the hands of other adventuring parties, and I am not sure I would have faith that they would return in one piece."
"It is the favor of fortune itself that returned these items to you from our hands," Caleb says dryly, "I am not sure we deserve all of the credit. Still, we owe you a debt for your generosity, Lady Allura, you and your wife. As does the world, though it may not ever know."
Allura smiles wryly, settling the staff back at her side. "I find that the world knows me well enough already. Your group, on the other hand. I learned of what you have done from Yussa, and the Council is aware, but apart from that, I am afraid that it is not likely that renown will ever be yours."
Caleb nods. At his side Essek says, "We are well aware. That is also not why we did what we did."
Allura looks at him and tilts her head. "I don't believe we've met."
"Forgive my manners. I am Essek Thelyss, of Rosohna."
Caleb looks at him sidelong as he proffers his hand for a shake. It is rare that Essek introduces himself with his true name, much less with the name of his home. But there is respect and perhaps awe in his eyes as he shakes the Lady Allura's hand, and Caleb finds himself muffling a smile of his own. Compassion, Caleb thinks, has changed Essek more than even the drow himself knows.
"Lady Allura Vysoren of Tal'dorei," Allura says in return. "And a number of rather excessive titles that I would normally include, but don't seem quite as relevant here." Allura grins at Caleb. "I will return this blade to my wife, and your barbarian will be safe from her wrath."
"Ah, that is all we can ask," he says, grinning in return. "Please also pass along our friend's sincerest regards. Thanks in part to this blade, we are all alive. That is all we could wish for at the end of our venture."
"Yes," Allura says slowly. "About that."
She hesitates for a moment. Then she snaps her fingers, and a fire springs into the hearth beside her. She sits. After a moment of confusion, Essek and Caleb follow suit.
"What you've done here will not be recognized by the world," Allura says, her voice more grounded now than it was before. "And that is a shame, but also a necessity. It does little good to alarm the public of a threat already passed."
Embers sprout from the fire like a dragon's wings. Allura's gaze drifts to the flame, and Caleb finds himself following suit. He clears his throat and says, "We know. I did not lie when I said that we have made our peace with this."
Allura looks at him. Her gaze is quick and sharp, and on the receiving end of such a keen-minded gaze Caleb feels as though he is being dissected himself. He does not know how to arrange himself under such scrutiny, and before he can think of what to do she nods to herself another time and places the staff over her lap.
"We cannot do so in the public ear," Allura says, "but for your service the Council of Tal'dorei thanks you. And for this reason, I feel comfortable giving you this."
She reaches underneath the cushion of the chair she sits in. Caleb watches curiously as she pulls out a small bag, and from that bag, seven gray stones. She puddles them in her palm and looks at them for a moment, then looks at Essek. She says, "How many are your number? There were seven when I saw you last, but if I am not mistaken you have added at least one to your group."
"Ah, we are now nine."
A slow smile unfurls across Allura's face. "It seems your nickname was prophecy."
"Something like that. Prophecy sounds better than sheer dumb luck."
Allura returns to her bag. Caleb glances sidelong at Essek and finds his cheeks darkened slightly, only barely visible by the flickering light of the fire. He is flustered, as he always is, at being claimed openly as one of their own. Caleb holds out his hand, and Essek takes it. Caleb squeezes their hands together, once, before letting go; and softly, into the firelight, Essek smiles.
"Here we are," Allura mutters to herself. "Pike's going to kill me, she gave me theirs for safekeeping, but--" She pulls two more stones from the bag. "No matter. I can procure others."
In her hands, Caleb studies them. They look like little more than riverstones, smooth gray rocks of varying sizes. They are indistinguishable from the gravel that lines the paths leading from Rexxentrum, and if not for the gravity with which Allura holds them he would dismiss them on sight.
Allura holds out her hand, and Caleb, automatically, cups his palms. She pours the stones into his hands and says, "Do you know what these are?"
Caleb shakes his head.
Allura smiles.
--
Caduceus is several hours from Rexxentrum when a voice sounds in his head. "Caduceus! It's me, it's Jester, and I know you're like super excited to get home but you've gotta turn back around. Caleb and Essek have--"
Caduceus looks out over the open road. It will be days before he reaches home, and though it has not been long, he still misses the Grove.
Caduceus sighs, and finds himself smiling as he replies. "I'm not sure I even want to know what those two have done," he says, "but sure. See you soon, Jester."
--
"The hell are these?"
"These," Caleb says, a smile flickering over his lips, "are called Stones of Farspeech."
"They look like river rocks," Beau complains, even as she picks one up and turns it over in her fingers. "I'm gonna lose this like immediately."
"Ah, but they come with cuffs," Caleb says. "Or, no, I have fashioned them to come with cuffs, because if we do not have them I think we will all lose them in time." Caleb pours the stones onto the table, then begins passing the silver cuffs around to each one of the Nein. "I have done my best to mold them to your ears, but I was working from memory, so if it pinches or does not fit, please let me know. Jester, yours has a little hole there should you like to adorn it with a gem or something of the sort. Caduceus, I am sorry but I would be surprised if yours fits immediately. I was not very well able to remember the shape of your ears."
"They are sort of floppy," Caduceus says agreeably. He loops the cuff over his ear, clips it into place, and winces. "Oh, yeah, that pinches. Make it a little wider, would you, Mister Caleb?"
"Of course," Caleb says. He takes the cuff and sets it on the table, muttering under his breath as the silver begins to bend and fold.
"I'm definitely going to get a sapphire for mine," Jester says, tilting her ear in Fjord's direction. "That way everyone will know I am the Sapphire of the Sea!"
"These are very nice, Caleb," Fjord says, "but what do they do?"
"Let me demonstrate," Caleb says, his cheeks beginning to hurt with how widely he is grinning. "I have no wire on me and am not casting spells as I do this."
Caleb backs away from the table. Caduceus fits his stone to his ear and joins the rest of the Nein watching him go. To be fair, so does most of the rest of the pub, as Caleb navigates backward through a sea of tables and chairs, but Caleb does not pay them any mind. Once he is a good distance away he cups his hands over his mouth and, thinking of Beauregard, whispers, "Boo."
"What the fuck?" Beau rips her cuff off her ear and stares at it. Then she buries her face in her hands and mutters, "Oh my god. Literal farspeech."
Caleb laughs, long and loud, and heads back to the table. To the whole Nein he explains into the stone, "They will allow us to communicate with each other, no matter the distance."
"Ooh! Ooh! Does that mean I can talk to all of you and Fjord doesn't have to count my words on his fingers?"
"It is unlimited, yes," Caleb says, returning to his seat at Essek's side. He adjusts the cuff on his ear, tapping it to rework the metal over the curve of cartilage by his temple. "That way you will not have to waste spells, and each of us can talk to the other whenever we like."
Veth leans forward. "Where did you get these, Caleb?"
"From the Lady Allura," Caleb says. "In return, I think, for saving the world."
"Wow," Veth says. "Wow. This is, like, super powerful."
"I think she liked you all very much," Essek adds from Caleb's side. His stone is already cuffed to his ear, a small crafted moon dripping like an earring from a carefully-transmuted chain.
"Are you sure you want to trust me with one of these?" Kingsley eyes his stone with trepidation. "You're all, you know--" he waves a hand at them, "--stupidly powerful or whatever. I'm basically a baby."
"Yes, but a very charming baby," Jester points out. "Even if you lose it I am sure you could get it back."
"Not if I lose it," Kingsley mutters, but he strings his over his ear. "Fine. Thanks, I guess."
"This is a handsome gift," Fjord agrees. "Are you sure we owe no debt?"
"The Lady Allura was insistent that saving the world was repayment enough," Caleb says. "I think you were quite convincing when you petitioned for her help, Fjord."
"That really was just meant to be for the fight."
"Yes, well, you do make quite the impression." Caleb looks across the table. The weight of the moment settles on his shoulders, and he cannot help the mournfulness that crawls into his tone. He will miss them all, so dearly. He loves them. "We are all leaving, now. Going our separate ways. And I cannot speak for all of you, but if you are ever...in need of help, or of company, or any other reason, I will come."
A moment of silence follows his proclamation. A smile curves across Beau's face, and she shakes her head ruefully. Sounds of conversations across the pub trickle into their little sphere of nine.
Then Veth says, "Nah, I'm outta here actually. You guys can go to hell."
"Same," Fjord says. "This shit sucked."
"Hey, fuck you!"
"Wow, Veth. I thought you said you loved me."
"Clearly I spoke too soon, if I'd known you were just going to--"
"I think what they are trying to say," Jester interrupts, "is that of course you will come running. And so will we! This just makes it way easier to call everyone more quickly!" Jester reaches over the table and pats Caleb's hand. "We will use these all the time, I am sure. Though I might still send just because it is so much fun. But still, it is a great gift, Caleb and Essek. Thank you."
Essek laughs, a shade nervously. "It is not truly ours, we are only messengers."
"Just shut up and take the thanks," Beau growls.
"We will call you every day," Yasha promises. "All of you. I mean, not if that is too much. Every other day?"
"We'll figure it out."
Caleb's jaw hurts again from smiling so wide, and he buries his face in his hands. He is not sure what he expected, implying that his family would not do the same, if he ever called for help. Whatever it had been, he should have expected this: Fjord and Veth shouting at each other across the table, Yasha flushed a faint pink and Beau looking at her utterly besotted, Caduceus with a cup of tea conjured from nowhere and Kingsley looking at him with wide eyes, Jester beaming at him and Essek looking at them all, awed, as if he still cannot believe he belongs.
"I suppose that is what I should have expected," Caleb mutters to himself, and raises a hand to signal the bartender. "Well, all I can say now is that neither Essek nor I are covering this round. Beauregard, if you would do the honors?"
Just like that, Beau turns on him, shouting in the exact same tone Veth had turned on Fjord only moments ago. And as chaos descends, Caleb leans back in his seat and smiles, warmth in his chest and a comforting weight cuffed around his ear.
“The codename you just used,” Juno says. “You called h—you called them Angel.”
Sasha looks up from her datapadd. Thirty-some years, and she’s never heard Juno like this. Not quite panicked, determination sparking in his eyes. “Why do you want to know?”
“Just tell me, Sasha. Please.”
He even sounds different. But then of course he does; he’s surrounded by criminals. Of course he would pick up a mask or two. But that’s all it is: a mask.
Because people never really change.
“It’s a codename, Juno. I’m sure you’re familiar with him, since you’ve contented yourself with the company of liars and thieves, now.” She powers off her datapadd and stands up. After this whole of this long, long week, he doesn’t dislocate his shoulder trying to stand with her. “It’s our name for the Angel of Brahma.”
—
When she steps into his quarters next there’s a set to his shoulders that hadn’t been there before. She pretends she doesn’t see it, taking her seat and crossing her legs as always, and just as she expected, the second she powers on her datapadd he opens his mouth.
“I want to make a deal,” he says.
“You don’t have any power here, Juno. In case you’ve forgotten, we’ve kidnapped you and the rest of your murdering, thieving band of criminals—”
“I have information,” Juno interrupts. He doesn’t rise to the bait. Buddy Aurinko must have trained him well; the Juno Steel she knew would have surged for her throat, bandying about an insult like that, especially toward his secretary. He never did take kindly to any slights against that Rita woman. “A whole database, Sasha. Hundreds of the people we’ve worked with, and against, and what I’ve figured out about them.”
Sasha looks up. “Oh?”
“You know the name Nova Zolotovna? I know her weaknesses, what she knows about the people she works for, and how to exploit what she does and doesn’t know.”
“Dark Matters doesn’t care about one arrogant heiress, Juno.”
“She’s one of hundreds,” Juno continues. “I…dug up some stuff on M’tendere, too. Some of Buddy’s old accomplices, Jet’s war buddies. Smugglers and…how did you put it, Sasha? Murderers and thieves?”
There’s a ghost of a smile on his face, stretched thin and exhausted. It’s not a good look on him. “Why offer this up?”
“Because I want you to stop this,” Juno says, concise and sharp. “I want you to let everyone on board go, and I want you to stop tracking Buddy and Vespa and Jet and all the people who’ve tried to do good for this galaxy that you’re hunting for pride or whatever the hell else motive you have, like the Angel of Brahma. I want you to let this crew distribute the Curemother Prime, because that is the greatest good, Sasha, and you know it. And in return, you get the information I’ve collected over this past year, and you get me, too.”
Sasha stares. “What?”
He takes a breath. “You Dark Matters types, you’re spooks. People can see you from a mile away. Hell, I did, when you first sent Glass to work with me. Not great at finding information from common people, you lot. But with me as a rogue agent, well. I could make your life a hell of a lot easier.”
Sasha sets aside her datapadd, considering. “We have trained interrogators, Juno. Whittled against the most gruesome parts of war.”
“Yeah, but what good are they on the ground, Sash? Talking with people, actually investigating? You can’t tell me your Dark Matters types, suits and glasses and all, really do well with gaining trust.”
That hasn’t changed either, his hatred of Dark Matters. For a moment she wonders why he would even make this offer, but then again that was always Juno, wasn’t it? Throwing himself away for the first cause that struck him as ‘good.’
Then she wonders, briefly, how they ended up on opposite sides: her with the mental checklist of interrogation procedures and questions, him in handcuffs, bleeding from a cut above his right eye, before dismissing the thought like it stings.
“I’ll consider it,” Sasha says at last.
Juno looks grateful. “Thank you.”
—
Nureyev calls to him, later that night, as Juno knew he would. He sounds furious, but then Juno expected that too.
“What do you think you’re playing at, detective?”
“I’m not playing, Ransom,” Juno murmurs. He’s so tired. He wants his family free again. “This is the only way to get Dark Matters off your tail and you know it.”
“Your?” Nureyev snaps, voice never wavering above a low thrum. Juno closes his eyes, leans his head back, and lets himself rest in the sound of that voice. As angry as Nureyev is, he’s going to miss this. “You’ve already decided, then, to leave us behind?”
To leave me behind? Nureyev doesn’t ask it, but Juno doesn’t need Martian gunk in his blood to understand the unspoken question. “We don’t have a better plan, Ransom. And if you and Buddy don’t have anything, well, it’s only a few days before Sasha finds something, and then it’s game over for the whole goddamn galaxy, and that’s…I can’t let that happen. We can’t let that happen. You know that.”
“So you’ll give yourself up? Just like that, detective?”
He’s furious. Juno smiles. It’s not often their conversations go so long without a dear, a my dear detective, a love. “Got a lot to lose, Ransom. Besides, if we don’t do something soon, she’ll find you. And I won’t let that happen.”
It’s a statement of fact, but even though Juno can’t see Nureyev’s face he can feel the indignation and hurt from here. “I can take care of myself, Juno.”
“I know,” Juno says quietly. “I wish you didn’t think you had to.”
Silence. Juno closes his eye.
Around them, the engine of the Carte Blanche thrums.
Juno looks up. “Ransom?” he asks, but there’s no response.
—
“I need a full list of all the names you can provide.”
“Oh, c’mon, Sash, that spoils the whole thing.”
“This isn’t a game, Juno!” Sasha snaps. God, all these years later and he’s still insufferable, joking at anything he pleases. Were she not Director, he would never make it past the first level of Dark Matters clearance. He’s lucky she knows what he can do. “I’m not asking to steal it from you, I’m verifying the terms of our exchange.”
Juno looks at her, and the smile is gone from his face. He sits up, his wrists red and raw from the bindings, and says, in a voice that’s almost small, “Fine.”
He runs through the list. Sasha’s not even sure he’s aware of the full notoriety of some of the names on his list. At the end of the impressive litany, voice hoarse, he murmurs, “Hey, Sash, would you…would you pass on a message to the crew?”
“Oh come on, Juno.”
“I’m serious, Sasha.”
“You’re making this part of the deal?”
“No. I’m asking a favor.”
“Give me the message and I’ll consider it.”
“Tell them I’m sorry,” Juno says softly. “And tell them…hell, I don’t know, Sasha.” He takes a deep breath, then shakes his head. “Nope. Just tell them that.”
—
“Juno.”
Juno jolts awake, head spinning. When he was younger he could’ve been on his feet in seconds after spending a week sleeping in a metal chair, but he’s beginning to understand what Nureyev was griping about, all these unwelcome aches and pains that come with age.
“Ransom.”
“The Captain’s quite angry with you. I thought you should know.”
Juno snorts. “I’m sure she’s not the only one.”
“Yes, well, Rita’s hardly happy either.”
“I know. Vespa’s probably over the asteroids, though.”
“She’s furious,” Nureyev says quietly. “She told me she wanted to slit your throat.”
Juno chuckles, trying to disguise the ache in his chest. “Gets rid of me either way.”
“Juno. Love, please.”
“They just got married,” Juno murmurs. “And Jet gave that whole speech, and Rita….” He’d scrub at his face, if he could. “And besides, Ransom. This way, you…you’re free.”
“Don’t.”
His voice is dangerous. Juno was never one to pay danger much mind. “Made that clear in my terms, by the way. So I hope…I hope it sticks.”
Nureyev’s voice breaks. “Juno, I never wanted this.”
“Yeah, I didn’t either, but sometimes we just get dealt a shit hand.”
“It’s an explanation,” Juno says, “and it’s good enough for me. I don’t hold it against you, Ransom.” He trips over the name, a little. Even still, he can’t get the name Ransom to stick for Nureyev. It just doesn’t fit.
“You should.”
“I don’t think you get to decide that.”
There’s a sobbing laugh from above him, and Juno wishes desperately that he could turn to see Nureyev’s face; but the vents open behind him, and all the masseuses in the world couldn’t let his neck crane like that. So instead he tilts his head back, closes his eyes, and lets the sound of that voice wash over him, for what may be the very last time. “You’ve become quite the thief, Juno. Stealing my own words from me.”
“Yeah, well, they’re good ones. Helped me through a lot.”
“You…deserved much better than me, Juno.”
“Ransom….”
“You don’t have to do this, you know. Dark Matters has been after the Angel of Brahma for a very long time. With Rita’s help we could draw the Director’s attention away from the Carte Blanche, convince her to pursue, and give you all enough time to escape.”
Nureyev’s probably had this planned out for a week now, since the second Sasha Wire gate-crashed the wedding of Vespa and Buddy, but there’s one fatal flaw in his plan. Judging by the resignation in his voice even as he presents the plan’s outline, they both know it. “Rita would never help you.”
“I think you underestimate how much she cares for you, Juno.”
“I think you underestimate how much this family cares for you, Ransom,” Juno says right back. “I go with them, I’m alive. You try to run, and you’re as good as dead.”
“You can’t run from Dark Matters, Juno. You won’t be able to escape. You know that.”
“Eh, well. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past year, it’s that nothing’s impossible. Not really.”
“Juno….”
“Besides, this new family of mine’s a merry band of thieves. I figure, hell, if anyone can get me out of this, it’ll be them.”
“Then don’t get into it, detective. You don’t have to do this.”
“You got any better ideas? ‘Cause I’d love to hear them.”
Quiet, again. Hope springs up and dies, just as quick.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Juno says. “Hey, Ransom, I asked Sasha to give the crew one last message, once this whole mess is over, but I only gave her the first part. Could you give them the second?”
Nureyev sounds scared. No, not scared; apprehensive. Pained. “What is it, love?”
“I told her to tell them I’m sorry,” Juno says. “Could you tell them I….” He breathes out through his nose, hard. Hell, this never gets any easier. “Tell them I love them, would you?”
“Juno—”
“Please.”
Nureyev sounds like he’s been stabbed. Or electrocuted. Juno knows that last one well. “I will.”
“Thanks. And, uh, Ransom?”
“Yes, Juno?”
“I love you,” he says. “You know that, right?”
“I do,” Nureyev says softly. “Oh, Juno, of course I do.”
—
When Sasha opens the door next, Juno is sleeping.
Fitfully, and uncomfortably, of course. There’s no way to weather an interrogation like this one without a good deal of pain, but then of course Juno Steel would be well-accustomed to that.
She means to wake him up. Instead, for a long moment, she watches him rest.
She hasn’t seen him looking this young in years.
“Juno,” she says finally, and straightens when he looks up. “I’m going to untie you, and you’re going to come with me.” She sets the datapadd in front of him. “These are the terms of your contract.”
She unties him, and he takes the datapadd, scrolling through it with an ease she has never seen on him before, not with electronics. She wonders at it, briefly, before pushing that thought away.
When he reaches the section listing the names Dark Matters has agreed not to pursue, he lingers. Then, after a long moment, he nods, and hands it back to her. “Looks good to me.”
She takes it, fingers numb. “You’re really doing this.”
“I asked for this, Sasha. Did you forget?”
“You’ve always hated Dark Matters.”
“Yeah, well, I hate seeing my family in danger even more,” Juno says, smiling wryly. “Turns out all those kid cartoons were right, Sasha, love really is stronger than hate. Who knew?”
And all at once she sees him clearly.
“One last thing. Can I see Rita before we go?” he asks. He is still Juno Steel, the ill-disguised apprehension plastered over with bravado is Oldtown Steel through-and-through, but the request itself, those words, those are new. Those are changed. “I asked you to send her a message, but, uh, I want to tell her, at least, in person.”
He gets to the door, shaking out his wrists, and stops. Turns. Frowns, and asks, “Sasha?”
Damn him, he sounds worried. He sounds worried, about her.
“I’ll never understand you,” she says.
Juno grins. “Yeah, me neither. Think I’m getting there though.”
—
His secretary sobs, which doesn’t surprise her. Juno sobs too, which surprises her so badly that she loses her words. If they could’ve hugged through the DM-field thrown up in Rita’s doorway, Sasha thinks, they would have. As it was, Juno fell to his knees the second he saw Rita’s face again, smiling like he was seconds away from dying. He apologized, again and again, hardly hearing his secretary’s forgiveness. Then, just as Sasha blankly called ten seconds left, Juno leaned forward and whispered, easy as anything, I love you, and that’s when Sasha knows for sure.
He walks off the ship with his head held high. A few times he looks up—toward the vents, Sasha realizes, and then realizes several more things in rapid succession, letting none of them show on her face.
They step into the Dark Matters shuttle, the door between it and the Carte Blanche’s loading bay closing.
Carte Blanche, Sasha thinks, the long-buried academic raising her head. Fresh note. Blank slate.
Juno Steel has only been aboard my ship for an hour, and already Peter Ransom cannot seem to keep his eyes off him.
Oh, he tries to hide it, of course, and he does so exceedingly well. From our weeks working together I know that much about him, at least: his resume was not an exaggeration, and masks are his forte. I will admit I had not anticipated how thoroughly he maintains the one he currently wears, but it is with no small amount of satisfaction that I catch it waver.
Juno misses it every single time, the poor darling. Probably because he’s sneaking sideways glances of his own, these flickering, nervous little things that screw up their courage before dissipating beneath Ransom’s icy silence.
I am absolutely certain that there is something there, in the pointed silence between the two of them. I watch, hiding a smirk of my own, as Juno approaches Ransom after our first meeting together as a family. He entreats Ransom for a conversation, and Ransom, with all the grace of a master thief evading a particularly troublesome mark, shuts him down quite firmly. In fact I might have written it off as a lost cause, if not for those sideways glances that Pete tries so hard to hide.
Just like that, then, I know precisely who will be infiltrating Zolotov’s ball tonight. Why, we are all supposed to be one family unit, and I can hardly have the two of them at such odds, now can I? Of course not. That would be foolish.
So I ask Jet to do some quick alterations to one of my golden ballgowns, prepare the schematics of Zolotov’s auctions, and call another family meeting to the table.
Juno chokes on his coffee, spluttering at my innuendo and my wide-eyed innocence, as though that hadn’t been what I meant at all, talking about the two of them spending time together tonight. As he does, he misses the look that flashes across Pete’s face, the hurt he is trying so hard to hide, and the amusement and affection doing their best to follow.
Juno expels espresso from his lungs, and Pete’s mask slides back into place, but I have not missed it. And I am confident this heist will work.
II.
In response to humor, the most Ransom will allow himself is a quick smile. In true response, at least: he laughs quite loudly at my own jokes, the same Jet’s, but he is painfully insincere. It is equally painful, how out of practice Ransom is at existing around other people.
Weeks pass since Juno boarded the ship, and still those glances of true emotion from Ransom are quite rare, so when I pass the lounge just in time to hear Peter laugh—a real, genuine, inelegant little thing—I turn to look.
It is him and Juno, of course, sitting tentatively close on the couch. Juno’s face is alight with a surprised sort of pride before he looks away, hand moving to the back of his neck. Pete looks rather surprised at himself, for his part, when he realizes what he’s done, in a common area no less—and then his gaze turns to Juno, and that surprise melts into softened affection as the detective stumbles his way through an explanation, or perhaps a corollary to whatever crack he’d just made.
The affection is gone by the time Juno looks up, of course, because heavens forbid Peter Ransom let himself be seen expressing a truth in the open, but I am satisfied as I walk away. It is good to be reminded, sometimes, that there is indeed a man behind the mask.
III.
The 3D projection, streamed on two axes from Juno’s goggles to the projector above the appropriated kitchen table, flickers and statics as Juno drops to his knees.
“Juno!”
“’m fine,” Juno grunts. At that moment our video primary switches to Ransom’s goggles, and the flickering projection stabilizes. Already Juno is staggering back to his feet, one hand clutching at his side.
“Juno, you were—”
“—shot, yeah, I know, so let’s get the hell outta here,” Juno mutters. Along the far wall, a door opens, and Juno fires instinctively. It takes four shots—three more than he would like, I know, though his shooting is markedly improved since he first boarded the Carte Blanche—before the lone guard falls.
But I see all of this in my peripheries, even as Rita cheers her ex-employer on with an enthusiasm potent enough to short earpieces, because I am not watching Juno’s shots. I have seen Juno shoot every Sunday since he stepped foot aboard this ship. I am watching Peter Ransom.
He does not disappoint. Aware though he must be that we are watching, he cannot seem to help that concern that staggers across his features as he hefts Juno’s left arm over his shoulders, crouching slightly to accommodate for their difference in heights. “Juno.”
“Just a scratch,” Juno says, softer than I would have expected from him, and lifts up the hem of his shirt to prove it. “C’mon, Ransom. Let’s get out of here.”
They do. And as they go, I am certain I have never seen Peter Ransom move more quickly—or more ferociously—than when they are surprised halfway to the Ruby 7. Ransom, instantly positioning himself between Juno and the man, moves faster even than the norm of my Vespa, and in a flash of steel the guard is dead.
“Ransom,” Juno pants, reaching for him even before the man has hit the floor.
“Juno,” Ransom murmurs, gently taking the detective’s weight again, and I am struck by the familiarity of it—of holding entire conversations in a single word. In a single name. The way Ransom looks at Juno, the way he speaks Juno’s name….
Well. I look at my Vespa, and think that it is familiar.
IV.
The Mora heist is dangerous. One of our most dangerous yet, in fact. Not for the guards, nor for any sort of blaster fire, but for the technology armed within her mansion.
Last night my family had attempted an infiltration: a standard, run-of-the-mill billionaire’s ball hosted in the lair of a woman who’d gotten rich from the weaponry trade in Shiva. The thievery had been going swimmingly, too—I even caught Ransom returning some of what he’d pickpocketed, bless his blossoming heart—until Rita’s comms had started beeping at an alarming rate, and—well. Long story short, we’d had to cut it off.
Turns out a genius of technology like that is also a genius of databases and surveillance, and as such, re-entry to the mansion on Ransom’s part would have him caught immediately. Try as he might, there is only so much a master thief can do to change the structure of the bones in his face. As for myself, Vespa, and Jet, well, we’ve been unto legends for years. It was why we sent in Ransom alone, with Juno for backup.
Which left Juno and Rita as the only ones uncatalogued by security, at the end of the night.
So it is Juno I ask to attempt the heist again. Rita, dear as she is, is far less suited for the stealth demanded for such missions than even her loudmouthed ex-employer. Juno accepts, of course.
Truth be told, sometimes I worry about him, and how readily he takes on dangers like this. I…do believe he sees us as family. I know, at the very least, that he trusts us as such. Which is why it is startlingly difficult for me to ask this of him.
Because the heist will be difficult, yes. But it is also because I know what rogue technology has done to him. It was how I tempted him into allowing me to contract his services the first time, after all. I am nervous for him.
I am not the only one.
Rita does not bother trying to disguise her worry. She brings nothing directly to me, of course, but in the sparse afternoon hours between this morning’s hasty planning session and the evening’s second attempt, she stays by Juno’s side, whispering fiercely to him. I do not do them the disservice of eavesdropping, wretchedly curious though I am. Jet is tense, as I do not often see on him, and even my Vespa, who has grown reluctantly fond of him since our impromptu beachside excursion—though she would sooner give up her scalpels for good than admit it—snaps more often than usual.
Ransom, however, does not seem affected at all, and that is telling. Nothing draws any reaction out of him, of any sort. For one of the very few times I have seen since I have known him, there is neither man nor mask. There is only stone.
Juno, for his part, seeing this as well as I do, worries after Ransom. It would be comical, the blockheadedness the two of them share regarding each other, if he did not need to be much more worried about himself.
That stone-face stays firmly in place until mere moments before the Carte Blanche docks for a second attempt. My first warning comes when I catch Ransom’s hands flexing behind his back; then, just before Juno steps off the ship, Ransom darts forward. He takes Juno’s face in his hands and presses a firm kiss to his forehead, whispers something I cannot hear, and manages one shaky smile before stepping back.
All in all, a sloppy move, as Juno appears dazed as he leaves the ship, but I cannot find it within myself to fault him for his actions. I know that feeling well.
As Juno performs, I take Ransom aside and pour him a drink. It is a champagne picked up from the Solar planets, which I know to be a favorite of his. I am surprised, then, as he exchanges it for a mixture of an Outer Rim liquor with some sort of ginger extract.
It occurs to me, as I watch a man whose name I do not know down a drink I have never tried before—quite a feat, given my primary and only form of sustenance—that this worry he is allowing me to see is an expression of trust. Whether unconscious or conscious, I know how much that means.
So we drink in silence, attuned to Rita’s occasional calls of progress. Ransom’s hands shake around his glass.
At the end of the evening, when Juno steps aboard the ship—singed and bruised, but thankfully alive—Ransom moves so quickly that he leaves his drink behind.
It is not like him to leave bits of himself strewn about the ship like that. Still, in his haste, I do not believe he even noticed.
I pick up the glass, feeling the weight of it in my hand, before returning it to the sink.
V.
In one day, I was married, captured by Dark Matters, freed from Dark Matters, and summarily captured again. One month to that day, I was once more freed, and gifted the incredible rush of throwing a Dark Matters director into my very own brig. All in all, that rush was one of the best gifts Juno and Ransom could have gifted our family for our honeymoon, and it is with satisfaction that I tell myself there is no way our lives could get any more interesting than this.
That, of course, is when Ransom calls a family meeting. As I sit at the kitchen table, still in my battered wedding dress, I am wry with the confidence that my earlier suspicion was wrong—today is about to get much more interesting.
“Well then, darling,” I say, because Ransom looks far too nervous about—something—to begin whatever meeting he’s called. “Don’t leave us all in suspense.”
“Yes,” Ransom says. He clears his throat, and says nothing at all. He looks down.
Juno, at his side, takes Ransom’s hand.
Ransom says, “My name is Peter Nureyev.”
My thoughts, in order, are this: first, a fond sort of relief that at least I will not have to change the nicknames I use to needle the man. Second, a fonder sort of exasperation that he used his true first name as an alias, all the while styling himself as a master con.
Third, a bone-deep chill as I process the implications of the last name he has used to introduce myself, and disbelief-shock-wonder, all smashed together and stuffed down my gut like a particularly rude shot of whiskey.
Which is not a very good metaphor, but all of this is to say that for once my Vespa is quicker on the draw with her words than I am, and when I blink back she is snarling something at Ransom, who is trying to muster his stone-faced mask and failing. At his side I see Juno readying himself for a counterattack, and as I clear my throat I think of a strange drink made of ginger extract, and a thousand looks toward Juno Steel that I must have missed in between the ones I caught.
“Well then,” I say, cutting off Juno’s retort before it can begin. “As a general rule, I would sooner cast thieves as devils than Angels, but I suppose there are exceptions to every rule, aren’t there, darling?”
Ransom—hm, no, but this is not Peter Ransom, is it? Not anymore. This is Peter Nureyev’s face, then, that blanches with something I think to be fear, before tightening into dispassionate disdain. A defense mechanism as quick as my Vespa’s anger, and as familiar to me as my own half-rotted face.
“Quite, Captain.”
“Captain,” I repeat, rolling the word around in my mouth, and sit back. I know what I will say after this, of course. I may not have prepared myself to formally welcome the Angel of Brahma to my crew, but I have often wondered what could have led a man like the one I knew as Peter Ransom to bury his name so thoroughly. Later I will process the full implications of this, but for now I am far more concerned with getting to know the man before me. “An interesting thing to call me, Pete. I don’t believe we’ve met before.”
It is not true, of course. Peter Nureyev sat with me during the Mora heist, after all, and I have seen flickers of him for months. But as I had hoped, he stiffens as if under attack and says with honesty, “I had hoped this would serve as an introduction.”
My Vespa draws breath. A glance sideways tells me everything I need to know. She’d been quite invested in the story of the Angel of Brahma, spending her rebellious early twenties as she had on the streets of its sister planet, and to know that she had met Brahma’s Angel and despised him must sting indeed. Later I will reassure her that this particular angel had not shown her his true face, but for now I am more concerned with being sure he does not disappear.
Because the more I think on it, the more convinced I grow that I do not want Peter Nureyev to leave my crew. Though I will not be Captain much longer, I know that he has a place upon it. And, much like the small hints of himself he has left scattered in our presence, his name, I know, is a gift.
“Well met, then, Peter Nureyev,” I say, and hold out my hand. He stares. I smile, and in a quieter tone add, “It’s a handshake, darling.”
“Of course,” he says, and his words are not smooth at all. When he takes my hand I can feel his fingers trembling.
“Well, that was all quite dramatic,” I say, releasing his hand with a pat, “but I, for one, would love to be out of this wedding dress. Not that it is not immensely important to me, Vespa, but it is immensely stifling. Would you help me take it off?”
Vespa looks from me, to Peter, then back to me. She says my name— “Buddy?” —and there is a galaxy of questions contained within it. She is asking whether I trust him, she is asking how I trust him, she is trying to reconcile the man she knew with the hero of her homeworld’s sister planet.
But that is not a conversation I can have here, so instead I say “Vespa, my love,” and it comes out soothing without any conscious effort on my part.
“It is good to meet you,” my dear Jet says, blunt as ever, and holds out his hand as well. Nureyev, bless his heart, looks as though he’s seconds away from keeling over. Juno looks torn between giddy excitement and laughter. “I look forward to learning whatever else about yourself that you feel able to share.”
“Uh, yeah, great to meet you for the first time ever Mista Nureyev!”
I swallow laughter. Oh, Rita. I do adore her so.
Vespa looks from Nureyev, to me, and back to Nureyev. She sets her feet and grits her teeth and says, “Fine.”
“Come again?”
“I said fine,” she growls. “I’m not throwing you out an airlock today.” That said, she pivots on her foot and storms off to our quarters, muttering invectives as she goes.
I laugh, fondly, watching her. “That’s my cue, darlings,” I say airily, and set a hand on Pete’s shoulder. “If you don’t mind, darling, I’ll continue calling you Pete. Unless you’d prefer something else?”
“Pete is fine, thank you,” Peter says, looking stunned. It is, if I may say so myself, a good look on him. “You—you aren’t—?”
“Outraged? Offended? Furious?” I laugh. In my defense, it truly is quite funny. “You have no idea how you are remembered on Brahma, do you, darling? No matter. I would recommend you look yourself up sometime. Or have Rita do it, perhaps, if she hasn’t already.”
Juno winces, and I laugh again. Once upon a time that would have made him nervous, the darling; now he only ducks his head, sheepish, knowing he and Rita have been caught.
I turn my gaze back to Peter, who is looking at me as though he does not know me. I take my hand from his shoulder. “Collect your jaw from the ground, darling, and don’t think this changes a thing.” I look over. “For our stream night, Rita, I trust you have something prepared?”
“Yes ma’am! Mista Jet and I are gonna, uh, go set it up right now!”
“Good,” I say. “Then I’ll see you all there.”
As Jet and Rita scamper off I turn on my heel, a smile growing across my lips, and I do not look over my shoulder as I go. I already know the shape of Peter Nureyev’s face when he looks at Juno Steel.
It is the first thing I trusted about the man, and it has not failed me once.
shoutout to the tpp adults discord, especially everyone who pitched in to make the conversation about the last name ransom as painful as physically possible
putting this up before heart of it all part two comes out and blows it out of the water. enjoy!
—
“If I ever see your face again, thief,” Vespa snarls, “I’m taking your head clean off your shoulders.”
“Understood,” says Peter Nureyev, and closes his comms.
—
Three strong knocks on the door. “Rita?”
“Oh, Mista Jet,” Rita says. “Come in.”
The door opens, and he does. He’s almost comically large in her doorway, as he is in most of the doorways aboard the Carte Blanche. “Hi,” she says, and pats the end of her bed. “It’s, uh, good to see you.”
“And it is good to see you too, Rita,” Jet says gravely. “I was…hoping I might join you.”
“Yeah, sure,” Rita says, unbalancing as he sits on the edge of her bed. She hesitates for a moment before shuffling closer to him. He holds out his arm, and she tucks herself against his side, pretending for a moment his chest is less barrel-like, his arm thinner but still roped, and then she buries her face in his ribs.
“Oh, Rita,” he murmurs, his solemn voice gentle. “I am so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she sniffles, winding her arms tight across her own chest. “It’s okay, I know I ain’t—I ain’t the only person who cared a whole lot about him, Mista Jet, and the whole crew’s real mad in their own ways ‘cept Miss Vespa just sorta scares me and I ain’t seen the Captain at all today even when I went to go get my snacks even though I ain’t even picked up my snacks and I know you—I know he—you and Mista—”
She buries her face in his side again, and Jet shushes her softly, his calloused fingers deceptively gentle as they thread through her hair. “I know,” Jet says. “Each of us will deal with loss in our own way. My way is that of reflection.”
Rita mouths a soft oh. “I like the sound of that,” Rita says weakly, “but I don’t know if I’m ready for any reflectin’ just yet. I still…I can’t.”
“I know,” Jet says again, and tugs her closer. He’s sturdy and exceptionally comforting and even though Rita feels mostly empty right now she’s glad he’s here. “That is not your way to mourn. I have always admired how freely you allow yourself to feel as you do. When you are ready to talk about it, I am here.”
He holds her close. Several long minutes pass that way, Rita’s shoulders shaking with sobs she can’t bring herself to vocalize, not like she would back—back when she was still just a secretary, ‘cause whenever her boss heard her crying he would always come grouching into the room and mutter something about making too much hot chocolate even though even back then she knew he never made hot chocolate for himself even though it was one of his favorite drinks and then he’d sit next to her and start ranting about whatever was on the screen and then he’d ask her in his earnest, awkward way what pissed her off, and it would always be funny a little because Rita’s not really an angry person and she don’t really get mad but she’d talk about what made her sad, and he never really knew exactly the right things to say but he always tried, and that always mattered so much more.
She misses him. She misses him so much.
Jet’s shoulders shake around her exactly once, and when she looks up, startled from her grief, she sees tears moving soundlessly down his cheeks as well.
“Oh, Mista Jet,” she whispers.
“He was good,” Jet manages, his voice breaking like Rita has never quite heard it before. “When I reflect on all that he was, this is what I think of first: he was good.”
—
“No, Vespa.”
“I can find him,” Vespa hisses. “Or the hacker can. Siquliak’d probably come with me, even if you won’t.”
“Vespa, darling,” Buddy says, looking exhausted. “He’s dangerous. We know that now.”
“That wasn’t a revelation,” Vespa snarls. “We knew he was dangerous from minute one and yet we still decided to sign him on because we thought he’d be a good addition to our family. And we were wrong. And he hurt—one of us, so now I’m going to kill him.”
“And what will that do, hm?” Buddy looks up from her glass for the first time since Vespa had stopped pacing the halls of the Carte Blanche to pace instead inside their shared quarters, cursing and growling and planning in the same breath. “Death does not beget more life, my darling. This—this quest for vengeance, it won’t fix anything. It will only put you in danger.”
“He deserves to die,” Vespa snaps. “Or did you somehow forget what he did? He betrayed all of us, Bud. We took him in and gave him a family. You called him your son. And he—he—”
“You must forgive me my selfishness,” Buddy says, fingers shaking around her glass. “But I have already lost two of my family today. I would much prefer not to lose another.”
—
“I trust you have received my payment,” says the thief named Peter Nureyev, his back ramrod-straight, his hands unshaking.
“We have,” says the Monsieur Rossignol, letting a self-satisfied smirk playing around the edges of his lips for only a moment before it dissipates. “A splendid centerpiece that Globe will make. You’ve done well for us, Peter Nureyev.”
“A thief must always pay his debts.”
“Ah, yes. The first rule of thieving, I believe that was.”
Peter Nureyev does not flinch. Instead he says, “Is there anything else?”
Rossignol pretends to think, drumming his fingertips on the table. “Well, Peter,” he says, voice musing. “Your payment is rather behind schedule.”
“I delivered exactly what I promised—”
“Several days beyond your deadline, which may I remind you, you set yourself,” Rossignol finishes, lifting a single hand. “You are aware how compound interest works, as we both know. You are also aware that it renews annually.”
“Yes, and I paid my debt in full.”
“The principal balance, yes. But your interest rates have, hm…well. Increased since last year, shall we say.”
For the first time, Peter Nureyev’s façade cracks. Rossignol does not hide the glee that gives him. “Ridiculous. I paid my interest three times over.”
“Ah, well, you know how difficult these times have been. Particularly here on the Outer Rim.”
“Oh, yes, because the Barachiel Corporation has done such an excellent job rebuilding this planet—”
“Your place is not to criticize my work, thief,” Rossignol says smoothly. “Your place is to repay your debts. And if it is any consolation, what you now owe is far less than what you owed before.”
“No.”
Rossignol raises an eyebrow. Strange; the hard set of the thief’s mouth shakes. Nervousness, perhaps. Rage is ugly on his face. “Beg pardon?”
“I refuse.”
The second eyebrow raises the first, then both lower. “Very well then.”
“I’m glad we can see eye-to-eye.”
Save the quiver of rage, the once-renowned Angel of Brahma seems expressionless. “Surely. Well then. Who would you like for us to target next? Buddy Aurinko, was that her name?”
And oh, there it is. When Peter Nureyev speaks next his voice is shattered, his whole body shaking. “You already took from me the person I love most in this world,” he snarls. “You have taken my name. What else do I have to lose? My old Captain, who would just as soon see me dead? My name, which links me to the defining moment of my life, trying to destroy you? No, I have failed on all counts, countless times over, and I do not care. Do what you will, Rossignol. I will not play your game anymore.”
“The nameless thief, willingly handing over his identity,” Rossignol says, almost awestruck. And to think that he was the one to bring Peter Nureyev so low. In his moments of honesty this, the key to manipulating the most skilled thief in the world, fell into his lap by chance. But the Monsieur Rossignol is nothing if not a man of opportunity, and this stroke of chance has paid dividends over and over again. “Who will you even be? Do you mean to simply die?”
“I do not care,” Peter Nureyev repeats, the words brandished toward him like a shield. “I don’t care what you do with my name, for you to attack the crew of the Carte Blanche would be for you to do me a favor, even my—my life savings, pitiful as you’ve made them—you may as well take them. I don’t care. I have lost everything, Rossignol, and I will fade into obscurity before I earn another cent on the behalf of a man as vile and wretched as yourself.”
Rossignol leans back. He lets a long, slow smile creep over his face. The thief before him is disheveled, red-faced, and now that Rossignol knows to look for it, sees grief in the slant of every muscle. What was the name of the lady he’d had Nureyev kill? Juno Steel? A pity.
“Well,” he says, self-satisfaction thick in his throat. Look at him: this man, this galaxy-class thief, brought so low by Rossignol’s own handiwork. “I suppose that’s it then: I reveal your name, and after that you’re hardly useful to me. You won’t be able to steal much of anything, ever again.”
The anger and rage and grief retracts, stuffed behind a mask choked with exhaustion. In this moment Peter Nureyev looks more tired than any other man Rossignol has ever seen. “Fine,” he says. “Do as you will with my name. Just…do not contact me, ever again.”
“Oh, no,” Peter Nureyev says, laughing a quiet, broken thing. “If I could have done that, I would have done so the moment I laid eyes on you. Goodbye, Monsieur Rossignol. To whatever angels are out there, I pray you will rot in hell.”
—
Peter Nureyev’s comms ring. He does not answer.
First he removes his coat. Then he pushes his hair back from his face. There is still a faint tremor in his hand, small enough be noticeable to only the handful of people who know him best in the world.
His comms ring again. His hand pauses over the device until, with a sigh, he picks it up.
“Nureyev speaking.”
“Wanna tell me where you are?”
“Vespa,” Nureyev sighs. He should be afraid, perhaps, but so soon after his conversation with Rossignol he’s struggling to feel anything at all. “How delightful to speak with you again. I assume you ask so that you may kill me.”
“I would love to do worse,” Vespa snarls. “I should. I fucking should. Hey, Nureyev, did you know that Steel loved you?”
“Stop.”
“Do you think he even realized what you were going to do before you—”
“Stop it, Vespa.”
“Why?” she demands. “Why should I stop? Did you even think twice before stabbing through his spine?”
Nureyev removes the comms from his ear, takes a deep breath. Oh, there it is again, the way his whole body shakes. It is new, that he cannot push this away. She continues speaking, but Nureyev filters it out and waits until she finishes.
He puts the comms to his ear again. “I did what I had to do,” he says, calm, and hangs up.
It rings back immediately, of course. He doesn’t bother picking up.
The hotel room he bought as a base of organization to conduct this final transaction is bare, empty save Nureyev himself. The walls are dusty and splattered with odd stains, the lone drawer in the lone table in the lone room adjacent on its hinges, the carpet threadbare and patterned unnaturally. It is a storied room, but Nureyev does not have a detective’s eye, so he cannot read the words written beneath the fibers of the carpet, nor the ones behind room’s thin walls.
The uncomfortable mattress remains dented from where a body laid in it just a few hours ago. Nureyev sits on the mattress, studying the curve of the pillow for a long time, before lowering himself into that phantom warmth and closing his eyes in a pale facsimile of sleep.
—
Afternoon turns to evening turns to a very early morning. Peter Nureyev does not open his eyes.
—
Somewhere around dawn his comms ring again. Limbs heavy, he picks up. He doesn’t bother introducing himself.
“Buddy insisted I give you a courtesy warning,” growls the voice of Vespa Ilkay. “The hacker’s got a lock on this comms, and Siquliak and I are very, very happy to see you.”
“Do you want me to run?” Some long-buried part of him is vaguely curious why she’s even called.
He can hear her grin through the call. “I would love nothing more.”
—
About an hour later, a global news alert flashes across his comm’s screen: Barachiel Corporation Head Monsieur Rossignol Found Dead in Unowned Vault; No Foul Play Suspected, Officials Blame Preexisting Heart Conditions.
For a moment, Nureyev stares at the screen. Tension unspools from his shoulders in degrees, his expression easing, as the last mask Peter Nureyev will ever wear slips from his face.
Slowly, slowly, the persona of the spurned Angel folds away, like so many ruffled feathers smoothing.
Then, for the first time in a very, very long time, Peter Nureyev smiles.
—
As he sprints through the streets of New Kinshasa, a long-dead part of him stirs, and from somewhere inside of him—a ghost, or a memory—he hears an old melody. Something sweet and slightly haunting. He remembers it being played on a guitar.
Faces turn as he passes, this strange unknown man sprinting through the streets, but after so long concerned with his own invisibility Peter Nureyev simply does not care. He could call a cab—one would not be hard to find, not in this area of New Kinshasa—but for some strange reason, he doesn’t want to speak. He’s spent so much of his life wasting words. Now, he wants to save them for the one person who matters most.
He arrives at the park in a rush, out-of-breath, hair windswept and legs trembling faintly with exertion, which is more a testament to the distance than to any physical ailment. There is no one else in the park, and when his eye catches on a café shrouded partially by trees, he thinks giddily that it would be so easy to go inside, order one cup of Venusian fine-ground coffee and another of Martian espresso with two sugars, and he could sit on the bench just beneath that tree, and he would not take a single sip until he was no longer alone.
So he does. He feels weightless. He moves into the café, and places exactly that order, checking over his shoulder every ten seconds, just to make sure he won’t have to wait any longer than he has to. When the order arrives, the barista is studying him with no small amount of concern, and his hands are shaking and he is absolutely sure his grin looks maniacal, but for the first time in a public place he knows that his face is not wearing the expression it should and he simply does not care.
He carries those two cups carefully to the shade of the bench, and sits.
He does not have to wait long. A shape materializes on the path directly across from where Nureyev sits, and even shrouded by the water’s spray Nureyev knows immediately who it is, of course he does. He sets the coffees down, laughing to himself at how naïve he had been to think he would want his hands full for this, and sprints to intercept the lady limping into the park by colliding bodily with that form.
“Was that a coffee in your hand,” Nureyev’s detective chuckles, “or are you just happy to see me?”
“Oh do shut up, dear.” Nureyev laughs too, holding Juno Steel tight to his chest. He feels jittery and squeezes him once, tight, before pulling back to hold Juno at arm’s length. “You’re not hurt, are you, Juno?”
“Not a scratch,” Juno confirms. “Well, except the one, y’know. On my back. But aside from that.”
“My impossible detective,” Nureyev says fondly. “I hope you know—”
“Oh, shut up,” Juno grumbles, then grabs his collar and drags him down into a kiss.
It is exactly as wonderful as the first time, that kiss that lit the first spark of love in Nureyev’s chest, and he sinks into it, forgetting entirely about the park, the fountain, the world around them, the coffee cooling on the bench. He winds his arms around Juno’s neck, feeling Juno’s settle securely across the small of his back, and feels relief crash through him all at once.
“Hey,” Juno says, leaning back, concerned. “Nureyev, are you—?”
“I’m fine, dear,” Nureyev manages through laughter, brushing his own tears away. “I was simply worried, dear, you know how I get—”
“I do,” Juno says, and reaches up to cradle Nureyev’s face in his hands. Two calloused thumbs wipe with infinite gentleness along his cheeks, and Nureyev lets himself drift forward, tugged as always toward the sunlight that is Juno Steel, eyes falling closed as Juno’s forehead presses against his own. “Hey. Nureyev.”
“Hm?”
“I love you.”
Nureyev lets out a sob that could be a laugh; even he’s not quite sure what it is. He takes one of Juno’s hands in his own, presses a kiss to the palm of the other. “I bought us coffee,” Nureyev says, leading his detective back to the bench. “Martian espresso. The cafes in New Kinshasa are the envy of the Outer Rim, and I think this one might remind you of home.”
Juno sits next to Nureyev, planting himself firmly on the wood in a mirror to Nureyev’s careless grace, and brings the cup to his lips. His eye widens. “Damn,” he mutters. “You weren’t kidding. I, uh...you know I don’t need this to feel at home.”
“Oh, Juno,” Nureyev murmurs. “I don’t deserve you, my love.”
Juno elbows him, to show him how little he appreciates that comment, no doubt. Nureyev takes a sip of his own coffee, and lets the sweet taste settle over his tongue.
“He was right where you said he’d be,” Juno says after a moment. “You pick that vault number? 624?”
“Of course. So what was it, my dear detective? A high-speed chase, perhaps?”
“A stakeout,” Juno snorts, “since you sorta gave me the key. Besides, for such a high-end bank, their security was kinda shit.”
“Yes, well, most thieves aren’t given the chance to hone their skills,” Nureyev says, fighting to keep the darkness from his tone. “Most are, well, dealt with. Before they can become truly great.”
Juno just looks at him, that one dark eye flickering with concern and patience and love. Then he nods and leans into Nureyev’s side, head dropping against his shoulder. Nureyev looks down just as Juno’s eye closes, and all of him—tattered coat, the scuff marks high on his cheekbone, the eyepatch slightly askew on his face—relaxes in his presence.
It feels like a gift. Like the most precious treasure Nureyev has ever stolen—though it was not stolen, but gifted. Given freely.
He winds an arm across Juno’s shoulders, and together, they sit beneath the rising sun of New Kinshasa.
When the sound of a hovercraft landing explodes across the plaza, Nureyev says, “Ah.”
Juno sits upright. “Is it Barachiel?”
“No, not quite,” Nureyev says, trepidation settling over him. “No. Juno, there’s something I quite—hm.”
Juno’s spotted the landingcraft, and is on his feet before something clicks visibly and he turns back to Nureyev. Not quite wary, but perhaps a little anxious. “Nureyev, what haven’t you told me?”
“Juno, my love, you know that things sometimes slip my mind, particularly when I am…stressed?”
“Yes,” Juno says impatiently. “What is it?”
“I may have, ah…gotten a call from the crew.”
“Oh, shit. You didn’t pick up, though, did you?”
“I did.”
“Nureyev! We talked about this, Rita could—”
“And she did. And our dear doctor might be quite determined to kill me.”
Juno looks at him for one long, long moment. Then he swears, and loudly. “Oh, goddamnit, you didn’t explain—?”
“I was more preoccupied with making sure you were okay, Juno!”
“They’re coming to kill you, Nureyev!”
“Yes, well, I suppose you’d best go talk them down, hm?”
Juno sighs, his lovely irascible detective, a scowl settling over his features. He brandishes a finger toward Nureyev and says, “You owe me for this, Nureyev.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
“Big time.”
“Of course.” It is a debt he welcomes.
Juno turns, then pauses, then turns back and grabs Nureyev’s collar and kisses him again. “I’m angry that you didn’t at least call Rita,” he says. “But we’ll deal with that later.”
Across the square, the Carte Blanche’s small shuttle decompresses. “It wasn’t just Rita, Juno, my love,” Nureyev says quietly. “You should know that.”
Juno stills again. Then he tilts his head in silent acknowledgement. “I’ll be back,” he promises.
And Nureyev believes him.
—
First through the doors is Jet, a blaster in his hand set to kill. His eyes flick past Juno, to Nureyev, before refocusing on Juno with an impossibly long pause. He stares. Juno opens his mouth to say something, probably something stupid knowing himself, except then Vespa crawls out the hatch and lands on the ground in a crouch and sees him immediately.
She looks to Jet, and Juno says, “Not a hallucination.”
“I watched you die,” she snarls. “I watched Nureyev stab you in the back.”
“Collapsible knife and a bunch of blood bags,” Juno says. “Also one hell of a tranq. But I’m alive.”
Vespa stares. Jet stares, then turns and announces to the interior of the ship, “He is alive.”
“I rather expected so, darling, we’re here to kill him.”
“Not Peter Nureyev,” Jet clarifies. “I am referring to Juno.”
Fucking immediately there is a clatter of an impossible number of footsteps, and moments later, Rita comes barreling out of the ship at top speed. She sees him, shrieks loud enough to startle the birds from the trees, yells “Mista Steel, I thought you were dead!” and then barrels directly into his chest.
Juno stumbles a considerable number of feet, laughing despite himself. “Rita, hey, I’m okay, I’m alive—”
“I know, boss, I can see that! How’re you alive? Was it some kinda miraculous resurrection or some kinda kiss of life or oh! Oh! Did your spirit just decide you weren’t gonna die ‘cause you had business that you ain’t finished back in the mortal world ‘cause you gotta go kill Mista Nureyev—”
“None of that,” Juno interrupts, and kneels before her. “He, uh...I had to get him out of a bad spot.”
“By pretendin’ to be dead?”
“Actually, yeah,” Juno winces. Behind her, Buddy Aurinko emerges from the shuttlecraft, her eyes immediately finding his and holding them for just a moment before striding forward. Juno pulls Rita into another hug and says, “I’m so sorry we had to make you think I was dead, Rita. If there was any other way, we would’ve taken it. I’m sorry.”
“Just a moment, darling,” Buddy says. “We?”
Juno kisses the top of Rita’s forehead, closing his eyes briefly, before letting her go and standing again. “We were being held ransom,” he says. This doesn’t seem like the time for long-winded explanations, and Vespa’s grace period before her anger runs out and she decides to just stab Nureyev for the hell of it—are her cheeks blotched?—is probably pretty short. “All of us. You know Nureyev’s name. To get off New Kinshasa and Brahma the first time, he took out a loan that the Rossignols took over. They found out he was working with us and upped his debt when they realized they had more collateral.”
Silence stretches out before them, long and dumbfounded. Juno takes a deep breath, then blows it out. “We needed to clear his debts and remove their collateral. Make him think that you didn’t matter to him anymore and drop Rossignol’s guard. There weren’t…this was the best we could come up with. Rossignol’s dead now, but that, uh, isn’t really my story to tell.” He turns and waves, and Nureyev, nervousness telegraphed in every movement of those long limbs of his, stands.
“Well then,” Buddy says, brushing her fireball hair back from her face, allowing Juno a rare glimpse of her cybernetic eye. “That’s one hell of a story, darling.”
“Yeah. All true, too.”
“And you could think of nothing else.”
“Yeah,” Juno says awkwardly. “There weren’t—Nureyev, uh…I mean, I can’t speak for him. But he, uh…you guys matter. There wasn’t much else we could….”
“I’m glad you’re okay, boss,” Rita says.
“Thanks, Rita.”
“As am I.”
“Oh, uh, thanks, big guy, that’s—”
“I was getting ready to skin Nureyev,” Vespa announces, which Juno takes a moment to parse as a compliment.
“Uh—”
“You had all of us quite riled up, darling. Enough to have us all embarking on a crusade for vengeance and everything.”
“Right. Yeah. Sorry, Captain.”
“Forgiven, darling.” She takes two long steps toward him and hugs him, smelling of cinnamon whiskey, and Juno leans into the embrace, taken aback and overwhelmed. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
“Thank you.”
“And if you do it again, darling, this mechanical heart may well fail for good, so I would request that you do not do anything like this, ever again.”
“Oh—”
“Miss Vespa was real mad,” Rita chirps. “And I was pretty angry too! Didn’t even realize I was so mad until Mista Jet pointed it out!”
“We spent much of last night sharing stories and discussing how deeply we both cared for you.”
“Okay,” Juno says, bewildered. Making sense of this is far harder than investigating and tailing Rossignol had been. “Should I—what kind of stories?”
“All good ones, boss!”
“That is untrue. Several of the ones Rita shared with me were quite sad.”
“Some of them were from, y’know, right after the HCPD and all that,” Rita stage-whispers. “Sorry, boss. I thought you were dead.”
“It’s all right, Rita.”
“If anything, it only heightened my opinion of you. I hope that is a comfort, Juno.”
“Sure,” Juno says weakly. “I don’t want to know. I mean I do, but not right now. You all, uh….” Juno trails off, unsure how to even ask. “You—”
“I don’t know if somehow the quest for vengeance escaped your notice, Steel, but yes, we care,” Vespa spits. “Obviously. So get those tears out of your eyes and keep me from gutting Nureyev with my knife, because trust me, Steel, it’s still really, really tempting.”
“Which she says mostly because of how angry she was,” Buddy says.
“Hey! Bud!”
Buddy shrugs, smiling in the way that only Vespa can pull from her, playful and sincere. “I’m hardly lying, dearest.”
“That doesn’t mean you should just—”
“Nureyev.”
Vespa’s attention snaps back to Juno, and then to the man just by Juno’s shoulder. Juno follows Jet’s gaze to Nureyev, his tread utterly silent in his nervousness, and motions Nureyev closer with his shoulder. Quietly, reassuringly, he takes Nureyev’s hand.
“Hello,” Nureyev says, and Juno tries his level best not to wince.
Vespa is not so considerate. “Nice,” she snaps. “Way to begin these next few minutes in which you’ll be begging for your life.”
“Vespa, dearest,” Buddy murmurs. Then, to Nureyev: “So. Juno is alive.”
“Ah, yes, Captain.”
One of Buddy’s brows half-arches at the title. Nureyev flinches minutely, and Juno squeezes Nureyev’s hand reassuringly. She doesn’t comment, however, and instead says, “You didn’t kill him, then.”
“No. Not—no.”
“Typically this is where you would explain yourself, darling,” Buddy says dryly.
“Right,” Nureyev says, and for once his anxieties are plain on his face. Juno is so, so proud of him. “So. You all know who I am by now, I am sure. This…place, the planet below it, was my home.”
“Brahma,” Vespa rasps. “Outer Rim.”
Nureyev nods to her. “Yes. More specifically, I was its Angel,” Nureyev sighs, contempt and exhaustion lacing the word. Vespa’s brows shoot to the top of her forehead, jaw going slack. “And before I became the nameless thief, my name was—well. My name was Peter Nureyev.”
Juno nudges him, just slightly. Nureyev’s gaze flicks to Juno briefly before he clears his throat and corrects himself. “Is,” he says. “My name is Peter Nureyev.”
There is a long moment of silence. Then Jet says, “I am Jet Siquliak.”
“Yes, I—”
“And I’m Rita!” Rita half-cheers, startling the birds that had tentatively resettled in its branches into flight.
“Well then. I suppose I’m Buddy Aurinko, famed thief and Juno-proclaimed ‘human fireball’.”
“This is stupid,” Vespa says, and Buddy says, “Vespa, darling,” and Vespa glares daggers at Nureyev and spits like the words jab like knives into her tongue, “Vespa Ilkay, which you know already.”
“Yes, well.” Nureyev blinks, a little breathless. “Thank you all for that. It is, um…good. To meet you. Again.”
“And you as well, darling,” Buddy says. “Well, I’ll be honest with you all. Losing a daughter and then finding him again does absolutely no good for a mechanical heart, and finding out that your son is still your son after all is even more so, so I find myself quite exhausted. I’m sure yours is quite the riveting story, Pete, Juno, but if you don’t mind I’d much rather hear it in the comfort of our home.”
“Oh,” Nureyev says quietly, and Juno’s heart aches. “I…would like that. Very much.”
Buddy cocks her head at him. Then she says, “You know what, darling? I believe you.”
Then she disappears through the hatch and into the belly of the shuttle.
“I’m still furious with you,” Vespa growls. “I haven’t forgiven you for anything.”
“I could expect nothing less.”
“If you ever hurt Mista Steel like you pretended to, I’ll tear you apart,” Rita says cheerfully. “But also I’m real glad you ain’t evil after all ‘cause I like you a lot, Mista Nureyev! Besides we still got a ton of streams we gotta finish and I was gonna play one from Brahma but now I’m thinkin’ maybe that ain’t such a great idea and we’ll save that for much much later.”
They vanish. Jet lingers for a moment, watching Rita clamber into the hatch after Vespa, then turns to Nureyev, who stiffens anxiously under the scrutiny.
Jet clears his throat.
“It did not escape me that it was us held for ransom for your debts, Peter Nureyev.”
Nureyev’s gaze flicks to Juno again, who shrugs slightly. He didn’t really see much point in hiding that particular detail, not after everything. “Ah, yes. That is true.”
Jet nods. He says, “When I was the Unnatural Disaster, it was caring for Buddy that pulled me out of my violent habits. I am no longer the man I once was. And I do not think you are the man I thought you were. I look forward to meeting Peter Nureyev, because although I know little of him, what I have learned of him leads me to respect him already.”
Then he turns and goes.
Nureyev makes a quiet choked-off noise and Juno turns and silently pulls him into his arms.
“I’m sorry,” Nureyev manages into Juno’s shoulder, one hand raising to grip Juno’s shoulderblade tightly. “I did not think—I hardly imagined—”
“Quite,” Nureyev sob-laughs, burying his face in Juno’s shoulder. He slumps against Juno, bone-deep exhaustion heavy on Juno’s skin, and Juno holds him. Then, after a long moment, he leans back, wiping his own eyes and smiling. “That went…so much better than I expected.”
Juno scoffs. “I knew it was gonna go that well.”
“No you didn’t, my love.”
“Maybe I didn’t,” Juno admits. “But it doesn’t surprise me.”
Nureyev takes Juno’s hand and leads him toward the shuttle, primed already to return them home. “No?”
“No,” Juno says decisively. “They didn’t want to hate you, Nureyev. They just—I mean, you can’t have betrayal if you don’t first have trust. That’s why they were so angry.”
Nureyev is silent. Juno takes the ladder first, then turns to help Nureyev, quite unnecessarily, through the hatch. Juno sits by Rita, and Nureyev, he is unsurprised to see, sits wordlessly by Jet.
Jet, who moves over to accommodate his place.
“Well then, darlings,” Buddy says from the cockpit, Vespa in the co-pilot’s seat. “Homeward we go.”
—
“Okay, so this one’s real special,” Rita announces, brandishing the stream’s cover in front of them. In flashes Juno can make out a tall, thin man with outstretched wings. “And it’s probably also gonna be real weird but I’ve wanted to watch it for months and months and months now, ever since I found out Mista Nureyev’s real name! And I ain’t seen it so I don’t know how good it is but I thought it’d be a great stream to watch with the whole family!”
“Oh no,” says Nureyev.
“Oh yes,” Rita cheers, flicking the stream on and squishing herself into Juno’s other side, burrowing into his ribs until he lifts his arm to pull her close by the shoulders. “Time for a family night special: The Angel of Brahma!”
The opening sequence begins. Nureyev’s forehead lands solidly on Juno’s other shoulder, and Juno laughs. “Nervous?”
“No one knew,” Juno murmurs. “It couldn’t show up in the movie. And honestly, from the cover, it was rebel-made, right? Probably gonna paint you in a real flattering light.”
“Hardly true to life.”
“I don’t know,” Juno says musingly, and turns to drop a kiss to the back of Nureyev’s head. “I don’t think so.”
“You flatter me, my love.”
“You make it easy.”
Nureyev laughs softly, turning his head to nestle into the crook of Juno’s neck. “I love you, Juno Steel.”
The opening sequence fades to black. An anticipatory hush falls along the family: Buddy and Vespa curled against one arm of the couch, Rita’s legs sprawled over Jet’s lap, her head butting into Juno’s shoulders, Juno’s fingers twined with Nureyev’s as his forehead dips slightly into Juno’s collarbone. Juno adjusts the blanket over Nureyev and Rita both.
Juno turns his head for just a moment to rest his cheekbone atop Nureyev’s head, and murmurs, simple and soft, “I love you too.”
“He’s not here,” Jon breathes, looking incredulously around the Panopticon. For months they’ve traveled—at least as well as he can figure in this changed world—only to find Magnus, the coward, left his throne empty. Jon approaches it, eyes narrowed, and curses at the plush unblemished velvet. Damn him, there’s a little golden crown sat artfully askance at the edge of the crest rail. A single sapphire sits in the middle like a cold blue eye. “Damn it!”
His voice echoes around the chamber. Jon grits his teeth, hands balled into fists. In response to his incredulous rage, his fury, eyes pop out all over his skin like boils, all narrowed and hateful, for all the good it does him in the Panopticon. Here, he can’t see through them. It doesn’t matter. Magnus isn’t here.
Jon sighs. “Let’s keep looking,” he says. “Maybe we’ll find something in the—Martin?”
He looks around. The room is empty. Martin had just been— “Martin?”
No response. The single word, the call, echoes quiet and ominous through the room.
Fear ricochets through him. He takes two quick steps forward, looking around as though Martin would just be sat against the wall, leaned against the door, but there’s no sign of him. “Martin!”
The vast emptiness of the room presses in on him, and Jon shakes it away angrily. Yes, this is the epicenter of all the fears, but the Vast and the Lonely have already gnawed their marks into him and Jon has no intention of letting them take a second bite. Maybe Martin’s gone down to the Archives. Yes, he’d always rather wanted to continue the work he began just before the Unknowing. Maybe he means to set the whole damn place on fire.
Jon sets off for the long, toiling stairwell that coils up to the top of the Eye’s Tower. They’ve been separated before, but they’ve always found each other. There’s no sign of Magnus, so this is Jon’s domain now, and no harm can come to Martin here. Few things would dare cross this world’s Archive.
And then:
“Jon?”
“Martin!” Jon turns, relief shuddering through him, and finds Martin stood next to the throne. He steps forward, but Martin stays where he is. “Where did you go? What happened? I just looked back and you were gone!”
Martin shrugs, one-shouldered, and smiles. It stretches oddly on his face. Like a mask. “I went exploring,” he says, in a voice that isn’t quite right. Jon’s frantic steps slow. “I’ve always been curious.”
His eyes are blue.
Jon freezes. Martin’s eyes are blue. Bright, cold, ice-chipped sapphire blue.
As he watches, a smile curls across Martin’s face, sinuous and slow.
“No.”
“Oh, yes.”
“No,” Jon breathes, voice cracked. “No, you—no!”
Martin tilts his head, expression turned simpering, sickeningly sympathetic. “What’s wrong, Jon?”
“Give him back,” Jon demands, vicious and aching. He steps forward, viper-quick, raises his chin to glare deep into eyes that aren’t Martin’s. “Give him back! You can’t have him!”
“Oh, Jon,” Jonah Magnus says, cloyingly sweet, “I already do.”
Jon shakes his head. “No,” he says, fighting to keep his composure, to keep his eyes inside his skin, to keep the static that crackles just beneath his skin in check. No. No. “Get out.”
Magnus laughs. “I’m afraid it’s permanent, Jon.” His head tilts. “You really should take better care of your things.”
“Martin can take care of himself.”
Magnus hums. “Maybe before, but here? He was so trusting, Jon. You told him this was your domain, and he was so comfortable. He dropped his guard.” The sweet expression sours into a smirk. “What was it you said, about this world you have made? You cannot trust comfort.”
Magnus had heard him. An anger so powerful it feels unreal shivers through him, and he no longer cares, no longer bothers to struggle as eyes sprout along his skin, wide and staring. When his jaw aches he realizes he’s snarling. Magnus just chuckles, unconcerned, and sits, languid, on his throne. Martin’s fingers look delicate as he picks the crown off the inlaid wood and spins it, considering, in his hands. “You’d done so well, too. Both of you. His performance in the Lonely? Stirring.”
“Shut up.”
“Why? What are you going to do, Jon? Beat me to death? No.” Magnus crosses his legs, crosses Martin’s legs, and settles the crown gently on hair that Jon has run his fingers through countless times, as comfort, for Martin and for him as they’d grieved the changed world and it sickens him to know that Magnus watched that, too. As though he knows what Jon’s thinking, Magnus smiles, and adjusts the crown on his head. “It’s ornamental, really, and probably too gaudy for your tastes. Martin certainly would’ve hated it,” Magnus says, and Jon sees red, but what can he do? What can he do? If he has any chance, if he has any chance of getting Martin back then he—then he can’t— “I do love it though.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s inspiring, really,” Magnus says, voice almost gentle. “How far you two made it, before you reached the end.”
The rage boils up and over and Jon reaches out, tears into him as he has so many, searching for weaknesses and points to grip, to rend, to destroy, but the Eye is a ward around Magnus and all his anger collapses like cloth against a barricade, finding no purchase. He tries again, searching, desperate, for anything Magnus might know that Jon could use, he’s been stealing bodies for so long and he must know something about regret or recrimination, and if not him then Rayner, anything that could bring Martin back, but his mind is impervious and faintly when Jon staggers back, drained and head aching, he hears Magnus laughing.
“This may be your domain, my beautiful Archive,” Magnus says, almost fond, and Jon wants to be sick, he wants, he wants to be overwhelmingly furious and powerful but all of his despair and anger cannot make a dent against a mind a hundred years older than Jon’s. “But it was mine long before you were born. You have no power here.”
No. No. Jon refuses to accept that. He refuses. He will not let Magnus win. He will not let Magnus take him.
Jon takes a deep breath, pushing down his fury and despair and shoving it away, down where all the other dark and broken parts of him lay scattered, and decides, then, that if he dies in this attempt it will be a mercy; but he will not, because he will not fail, because he is this ruined world and he will not accept anything less. “This may be your Institute,” Jon grits, his whole body shivering, eyes sprouting along the backs of his hands, his shoulders, along his back, and something great and awful unfurls from his shoulderblades as he growls in a voice that is not his own, “but the ruined world is mine.”
And then he digs.
Because Magnus may be hundreds of years old but Jon knows the agony of millions, and he detaches himself from the frail flesh form of the Archivist, bereft and grieving, and becomes more. His feet leave the ground and he feels his body pulse, shaking apart, and he reaches out to every single person still living and aching and breaking in the world that he destroyed and summons it: their fear, their terror, the love that this world twisted and made rotten, and shoves.
It batters and pours against Magnus’s wall, and from far, far away Jon watches Magnus’s eyes—those eyes that he hates like nothing else—go wide. With fear, or surprise, perhaps? It doesn’t matter either way, because in one moment Jon and all the forces of fear he has wrought slam against a warded mind and the next they spill through. The Archivist’s frail body shakes and splits with veins too delicate and thin to maintain that much weight, and Jon leans into it, leans into the fear and terror and love, spoilt and rotten though he made it, and shoves it into Magnus’s mind, and watches, detached and crumpling, as Magnus’s mind strains and fights and breaks, blood rocketing to his eyes and spilling out as they finally, finally, finally go dark.
Jon drops to the ground.
His vision fringes. Blackness encroaches, and there is not a part of him that does not want to twist and die with agony, but he pulls himself to his elbows, to his knees, and crawls over to Martin—to Martin—
Blood trickles down Martin’s face. He lays unmoving, save for the faint breath of wind that trickles around the ruined top layer of the Panopticon. Jon crumbles, landing hard on his side, and reaches out to cup a cheek stained crimson in a cooling pool of blood. He tries to whisper, to speak, just one word, just one, but his voice catches and breaks. He shifts, and along his back something twinges and he winces, then laughs, at that one hurt temporarily overruling all the others when none of them matter. Jon forces himself to peer closer, a trembling hand lifted to brush the hair from Martin’s face.
His eyes are closed. Aside from the teartracks of red staining down his face, he could be asleep.
Jon chokes on a laugh. His vision grays, and Jon traces his own bloodied hand across Martin’s other cheek, brushing the hair along his ear, and curls a sob into his chest.
All across his body, eyes blink and sway, overtaking his skin entirely, not just atop him but within him, bitten into every inch of his flesh. The hand he rests against Martin’s chest, knuckles curled against his heart, blinks tiredly back at him.
Jon swallows, feels the river-smooth-pebble twine of his throat, the pull of air through dimpled lungs. His tongue is pockmarked flesh. He breathes out: just one word. A name, or maybe a hopeless prayer. It should have sounded so, so sweet.
Jon closes his eyes.
—
He aches.
He sucks in a breath in a rush and winces, the air cool and harsh against his throat. He tries to open his eyes—he can’t remember why he should be surprised that he woke up at all—and fails. Something has gummed them closed, and Jon gives up quickly on trying to open them.
Martin.
God, Martin.
Jon slumps back to the floor. He remembers, now, why he hadn’t thought he was surprised. He remembers the ruining of the world, and then Magnus, and Martin….
Then: “Jon?”
That’s…he knows that voice. Jon wrenches his eyes open, and meets a familiar face, heavily scarred and framed with a jagged crop. “Hey,” she says.
He tries a smile and thinks he succeeds. Strange: his cheeks no longer feel like river-rocks. He tries to lift a hand and grimaces, giving up. “Daisy.”
“Eyes are gone,” she says, and shifts to sit more comfortably next to him. Jon looks around himself, and is stunned to realize he only has two eyes. He tries to sit up and retches, pain spearing through his chest, and she pushes him back down with a wry snort. “Said your eyes were gone, Sims. Stop trying to look around.”
“Where—?”
“Panopticon,” she grunts. Her arms are folded over top her knees. “Been here awhile.”
Jon steels himself. He is proud of how empty his voice is when he asks, “And Magnus?”
“Dead,” Daisy says. She looks sidelong at him, and he keeps his gaze fixed up, toward the ceiling.
Jon has nothing to say to that. So he doesn’t.
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t want to. Daisy doesn’t bother him; she just sits next to him, eyes closed, head tipped peacefully against the wall. He wants to know how she is here, how she came back to him, and where the rest of them are, but he can’t bring himself to be curious about it. Can’t bring himself to be curious about anything at all.
If he could, he would laugh at the irony. Now, five years later and after the end of the world, now his curiosity is gone from him. One last cosmic irony, he supposes. It tastes bitter.
Eventually Jon finds that he can move his neck. For a while he doesn’t, preferring to keep his gaze on the ceiling. It takes several minutes of steeling before he looks to the side, then looks away again as though he’d been burned. No, he’s been burned before; even faster than that.
They’d moved Martin’s body, at least. He can’t decide how he feels about that. He can’t feel much of anything at all.
He can’t tell how much time passes. Time doesn’t pass anymore anyway; it more winds and loops and distorts. He used to measure it in the steady wavebeats of fear, but they’re gone from his consciousness now. For the first time in years, the only eyes on his body are the two sunk deep in his face.
He should panic, he knows. He should be full of fear for consequence. He should probably be dead. He can’t bring himself to care.
Jon closes his eyes and rests.
—
The Panopticon trembles.
Daisy sucks in a breath. Jon opens his eyes, drags himself into a seated position. His voice is little more than a croak. “Daisy?”
“Hold on.”
“What?”
She grabs his arm, eyes narrowed. “Hold on to me.”
Now, too late, fear shoots through him. “Daisy, what—?”
“Trust me,” she grits, and crouches next to him, shielding his body with her back. He struggles—he doesn’t want her doing this, he doesn’t care, if he’s in danger she needs to run—but her grip is a vice of iron, and she doesn’t yield.
“Let me go.”
“No,” she grunts, face buried in the back of his head. Something booms, and Jon doesn’t Know but he thinks it’s part of the ceiling, slammed onto this top floor.
“Daisy, get out of here!”
“Shut it,” she snaps, and the metal beneath them shakes.
“Daisy! Run!”
“Not leaving you!”
He wants to shout. He wants to cry. “Daisy, please.”
She just holds him tighter. He slumps against her as the world around them shakes apart. Her grip on him stays tight but he goes limp, willing it to be over. For all of it to be over.
Then, just as suddenly as it began, the shaking stops.
A shifting as Daisy looks up. She makes a small pleased noise, then lets him go. “Sims.”
“What?”
“Stop swanning,” she says, and sounds so content that he looks up.
“What, Daisy—?”
The floor beneath them is smooth. Before them are windows. The sky outside is blue.
Daisy stands, brushing off her knees. Jon stares, open-mouthed, gaping. “Right then,” she says. “Let’s go find the others, yeah?”
“The…the others?”
“Yeah, the others,” she repeats, almost amused, as if Jon were not staring at the simple white cloud puffing above a street full of buildings. Straight-edged, right-cornered buildings, windows of glass and clear-paned. They can’t be any more than two stories up.
“Daisy?” he manages weakly.
“C’mon,” she says, and offers him a hand. “Easier to see than explain.”
—
She takes him to the house on Hilltop Road, except, of course, there is no longer a house there. Instead, there is a crater in the ground. Next to the crater, the house crouched behind the door they knock upon is a squat one-storied thing that looks like it contains no more than three rooms. Basira answers the door.
“Hey,” Daisy says, smiling, and Basira wordlessly grabs her and kisses her, there on the doorstep. Jon looks away.
After a moment they break apart. Daisy is more flushed than he’s ever seen her, and Basira is grinning. She leans over her shoulder and shouts, “Jon’s here!”
There are immediate footsteps, almost comically quick. Basira blocks most of the door, allowing Daisy to slip inside, but over her shoulder he can see Georgie, waving frantically at him, Melanie flipping off his general direction, the Admiral thrumming on her shoulder, and—and….
Basira moves out of the way and closes the door. The street is empty, the world set back to rights, and Martin’s arms are so covered in bandages that Jon can’t count his freckles, but his eyes are a soft brown and he’s smiling, wiping at his eyes as he steps out onto the porch.
“Hi,” he says, and Jon stares at him.
He realizes he’s shaking his head. “I—you—”
“Yeah,” Martin says softly. “Me.”
“You died.”
“You saved me.”
Jon chokes on a sob. He reaches out, hand shaking, instinctively pinning Martin with eyes that no longer exist, desperately straining to know if this is Martin, if this is his Martin, if this is a trick; but then his hand lands on Martin’s shoulder, still blood-streaked, pressing a faint handprint into the ragged orange wool of his jumper, and it’s real.
“Oh,” he manages, voice gone high-pitched, before burying his face in Martin’s chest and breaking into the most painful sobs of his life.
Martin presses his face into Jon’s hair, holding him up with a familiar easy strength. He murmurs oh, Jon, like it’s Jon that he’d worried for, and every part of him aches as he crumples in Martin’s embrace and wraps his arms so tight around Martin’s waist that he’s sure the fabric of the jumper stretches and he just does not care.
“I’m sorry,” he shudders, “Martin, I’m so—I didn’t mean—I’m so sorry—”
“None of that,” Martin says softly, his fingers tousling gently into Jon’s hair, brushing it back in small, soothing movements. “You did so well.”
“I lost you.”
“And I found you again,” Martin says gently. Jon presses his face into Martin’s chest so hard that the press of his glasses against his face is painful but Jon revels in it, leans into it, because it means he’s real, that he’s woken up, and he’s not dreaming. “We said we always would.”
Jon bursts into helpless laughter at that. “I suppose we did,” he says shakily. He rests his cheek over Martin’s heart, eyes slipping closed as he listens to the heartbeat there, slow and steady and deep. One of Martin’s hands slides down to curl around the small of his back, the other cupping the point of his jaw. He brushes a kiss to Jon’s forehead.
There, in the distance, is birdsong.
Jon feels himself smile.
—
Jon doesn’t let go of Martin’s hand. They’ve appropriated a table from—whoever lived here before Georgie co-opted it from the terror of the Dark that held it captive—and the six of them cluster tight around it. Melanie has one leg hitched over Georgie’s lap, and Basira’s shoulder brushes against Daisy’s, easy and sure.
“How?”
Basira looks to Martin. Martin colors, and shrugs. Jon counts the freckles on his face. There are more than there were before, Jon notices, helplessly happy, and thinks about how much he wants to kiss each one. “I found out what the Web wanted,” he says, as though that were simple. “And then I sort of…made a web of my own.”
Jon laughs, just as helpless, just as enamored, because of course. Of course, at the end, it was that simple. “Brilliant,” he says, and Martin smiles down at him, fond and crinkled, and Jon can’t help but smile back.
—
Martin’s flat stands at it had before the changing of the world, save a perpetual low-hanging mist that coats the ground floor. They, as do the rest of the once-residents of that building, decide against returning.
Jon’s flat is decrepit; not from the world’s end but from simple disuse. He burns with faint embarrassment as he unlocks the door with a key that miraculously reformed after melting in the Desolation’s fire, but Martin just looks around and elbows Jon, teasing him about something—the furniture, maybe, or the dust thick along the counter, but Jon doesn’t care. He can’t. He laughs, harder than the comment warrants, and then Martin is laughing too. He leans on Martin, who scoops him up. Jon makes a quick startled noise, latching onto Martin’s shoulder, but Martin is strong—always has been—and seems unbothered as he carries them both to the small sofa that courts the space generously called a living room. He plops them both down, and Jon kisses the underside of his chin, marking a single one off the list of freckles he means to map with his lips over, and over, and over again.
—
Even the nonperishables in Jon’s apartment are rotted, and that fact, coupled with the realization that the pain in his stomach is indeed hunger of the regular human variety, sends Jon and Martin tentatively to one of the corner shops that stock frozen meals.
They aren’t the only ones browsing the aisles. People whose scalps are half-burned, people who limp on unfeeling legs, people who look around quick and fearful. Jon and Martin pass through them unnoticed. An old man stumbles on his way from the store, laden with bags too stuffed to carry, and a young woman with bright blue hair and a slow smile takes one for him and walks with him through the automatic doors and out.
Outside, the London rain returns. As Jon and Martin step outside, along the street they see dozens of people do the same. The automatic door stays open as shoppers discard their bags by the door, piled in the corner, stretching out their arms and turning overjoyed faces toward the sky.
The water is clean. Someone bursts into tears. Another handful start laughing. Jon takes Martin’s hand as they cross the street, a small incredulous smile of his own spreading across his face as the buildings of London are washed with a fresh spring rain.
When he looks to the side, a small contented smile to mirror his has slid across Martin’s face. And when Martin catches Jon looking, he squeezes their hands together, then tilts his head back and sticks out his tongue.
Jon laughs, as Martin continues unabashedly catching raindrops on his tongue, before giving into childlike giddy glee and doing the same.
—
That weekend, they take a vacation. Daisy’s safehouse in the Scottish Highlands isn’t quite large enough for six, but they bring sleeping bags and camper beds and an overwhelming amount of good humor, and somehow they all fit. The firehouse roars for hours, and only dwindles in the late hours of the morning. Daisy and Basira tuck into the single bed that Jon and Martin had once claimed as their own, and Melanie and Georgie set up sleeping bags outside; Melanie can’t seem to get enough of hearing the world, returned to its rightful place, ensconced as happily in a choir of crickets and owl-hoots as in blankets and warmth.
Martin holds a still-warm mug of tea in his hands, eyes glinting with mirth as he and Jon talk about nothing at all. Apparently, Jon learns, he wants to start a garden. Jon concedes on the condition that they get a cat. Martin asks what they’d name her, and Jon says, decisive, “The Corporal.”
Martin snorts. “A rank below the Admiral, hm?”
“Yes.”
A pause. Martin leans back. In the distance, a cow lows, and Jon finds himself smiling again. Long-disused muscles in his face ache from all the smiling he’s doing, and he curls closer to Martin, anchored by the warmth of his side. “I’m calling her Cooper.”
“Absolutely not.”
“It’s a nickname, Jon.”
“It’s disrespectful!”
“You can’t stop me!”
Jon splutters and Martin laughs, shoulders shaking. Jon keeps up his pretense of indignation, just because he can, because he wants to, because Martin’s laughter is his favorite song in the world. He grumbles and grumps his way onto Martin’s lap and waits as his laughter subsides.
“Hello,” Martin says, unbearably fond, and Jon mumbles something unintelligible at him before pressing a kiss to his jawbone. He stills. “Jon?”
“Hush,” Jon says, kissing along his cheek, in a pattern he sees when he presses against his eyelids.
“Jon?” Martin sounds confused now, hands settling against Jon’s waist. “What are you doing?”
Jon hums, making his way around to Martin’s nose, before leaning back and saying, serious as anything, “Kissing your freckles.”
Martin looks back at him. Then he snorts, pushing at Jon’s cheek. “You’re ridiculous.”
“You’re lovely,” Jon says, catching Martin’s hand, and Martin stares at him. Even in the dim light of the embers, glinting from their cradle of wood, he colors visibly.
“Jon….”
Jon smiles. “I know.”
Martin brings a hand up, brushing the hair from Jon’s face, eyes traveling soft along Jon’s face as he does. “When I woke up….”
He trails off. Jon tilts his head, and Martin cups his cheek, swallowing. He opens his mouth, jaw working, and Jon says, quiet, “You don’t have to.”
Martin shakes his head, so Jon waits.
“I thought you’d died,” Martin murmurs. His hand slips from Jon’s cheek, curling empty in his lap. “It was awful.”
Jon keeps quiet, sympathetic. He knows the feeling well.
“You had wings,” Martin says, “did you know?” His lips quirk in a hollow smile, and Jon hurts for it, that even still he smiles to reassure Jon even as he aches. Martin reaches over his shoulder and pats the top of his shoulderblades. “Two of them. Full of eyes. They were closed.”
“My eyes?”
“Yeah,” Martin says, folding his hands together. They wring, anxious. “All of them. That’s what…that’s why I thought you’d….”
Jon winces. “I’m sorry.”
Martin brushes the comment away. “You were all eyes,” he says instead, soft and haunted. “And when I—when I called your name, you didn’t…not a single eye looked at me, Jon. That had never happened before, when I tried to wake you up.” He laughs, quiet and empty. “I tried so many times.”
He falls silent, hands fallen still. Outside, a nature renewed sings its gentle chorus: creatures of the night, chirping and cooing and thrumming and lowing, all a distant murmur, a blanket. A comfort.
Jon takes Martin’s hands in his own. He laces their fingers together, carefully, and lifts one pair of their interlaced hands, and brushes a kiss to the starburst of freckles running along his forearm, ending on the back of his palm.
“Do you remember it?” he asks, not sure whether he wants the answer. For once, he doesn’t have to mind the compulsion that threaded so easily through his voice, and the low resonance of his tone is entirely his own making. “When Magnus….”
“Took over? No.”
“Good,” Jon says, grateful. What he’d done to Magnus— “Good.”
Martin huffs a little laugh. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Jon says, purposefully too quick.
“Jon.”
“Martin.”
Martin swats at him with his free hand, and Jon ducks out of the way, his sharp exhale rounded with mirth. “Whatever you did, it must have been a lot.”
“A lot. Yes, that’s…one way to put it.”
Martin doesn’t say anything to that, just watches him quietly. He reaches out, then, and takes Jon’s other hand; winds their fingers together, just as deliberate, just as tender. “I love you, you know,” he says, voice soft.
Jon looks at him. In the low lighting of the ember-bed keeping them warm, Martin’s hair—which never quite recovered its full hue after the Lonely—glints with burnished golds, the fire highlighting and haloing his head. His eyes are soft, and open, and sure.
“Of course I do,” Jon murmurs. “Martin Blackwood. I am in love with you.”
He says it, quiet and even, and watches with pleasure as Martin’s expression slides oddly along his face, the truth of Jon’s words warring with Martin’s doubt. His fight with the Lonely had not ended with the righting of the world.
Jon raises their interlocked hands, wraps his around to cup the back of Martin’s, brings it to his mouth. Presses a kiss, feather-light, to the heel of his palm. “I love you,” Jon says again, because he can, because it makes Martin smile, faint and helpless; because every time he says it, Martin believes him a little more.
He laces their fingers back and leans forward, chin raised, and Martin bows his head obligingly. Jon moves across his forehead, trailing kisses along the wrinkles there, eyes slipping closed; if he misses one, well, he’ll get it the next time around.
“Jon,” Martin says, half-laughing, unbearably fond, and Jon leans back. “You ridiculous man.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“I love you.”
“I know,” Jon says, warm. “I love you too.”
Martin hesitates. Jon keeps his gaze, steady, patient.
“I know,” Martin murmurs. “I do.”
Jon smiles. He shifts back around to tuck himself against Martin’s side, and yelps quietly when Martin picks him up, then sets them on the couch and tugs them both sideways, lying face-to-face. Martin drapes Daisy’s old tartan quilt over them, adjusting it carefully over Jon’s shoulders, and lies still, obliging, as Jon does the same.
Jon closes his eyes, presses a kiss to the freckle just between Martin’s eyebrows, feeling them scrunch beneath his lips. There are more, he sees, on the image of Martin he holds in his mind; wound around his eyebrow and drifting toward his temple, but those, Jon thinks, he can leave a little while.
