Chapter Text
Buddy and Vespa greet their pilot warmly. Peter wonders if she’s Vespa’s smuggler friend, but he doesn’t ask, doesn’t say a word as they catch up, and soon they’re strapping in for atmospheric exit, their pilot in the cockpit, leaving Peter, Buddy, and Vespa together in the passengers’ cabin.
The exit from atmosphere, of course, is a raucous and turbulent affair, but once they’ve well and truly escaped Forsetti, and found themselves more comfortable seating arrangements, a heavy silence falls over the cabin. Peter lies back on a couch, barely held in place by the ship’s artificial gravity, too caught up in his thoughts to sleep but too tired to really think. His head aches.
After several long minutes lying there with his palms pressed against his eyes, he startles at a light touch against his elbow. He blinks away his exhaustion and sees Buddy standing over him, a blanket folded over one arm.
“You should get some sleep,” she says. “It’s a ten hour flight to the next planet in this system, and you were up all night working.”
He mumbles something about not being too tired, and closes his eyes. Buddy brushes his hair back from his forehead and drapes the blanket over him.
The night they spent in Rob’s apartment feels like it was years ago, and that’s another thought to weigh him down—Rob. He wonders if he’s okay. Of course he isn’t. He’d been drugged and robbed and used as a disguise for a crime; he’d learn part of the story from his coworkers tomorrow, maybe tonight if they call to check on him, but he’d never know it all, and if he were to learn… If he ever found out about Indigo Viceroy, or worse, about Peter Nureyev, surely he’d have only hate for him. He’d be right to.
He wonders about the camera on Rob’s coat. It’s probably still broadcasting its feed to his comms. He could check, to soothe his conscience, maybe. He thinks if he did, though, this pit in his heart would only grow deeper.
He promises himself he’ll forget Rob and forget Indigo Viceroy. He’ll put away the daydreams that once plagued him of a life on Forsetti; the wistful joy they once had will have turned to a rotting bitterness. He wishes he could forget Peter Nureyev, too, but all he can do is bury him and hope he doesn’t claw himself out of his grave again.
*
Vespa shakes him awake as they’re preparing to enter the atmosphere of another planet. Peter doesn’t remember the name of it. He doesn’t intend to stay.
They call him a cab to send him to the nearest spaceport once they land. Still bleary-eyed and ashamed, he dreads the formalities of saying goodbye. Buddy wants to wire him his payment for the job first, but he declines.
“I can’t imagine the revolution is well-funded,” he says. “If this is your smuggler friend’s money, she can keep it.”
“Your heart’s too soft for this kind of work,” Buddy tells him. “We took the job for free. It’s my money.”
He means to argue but sees in her eyes that she won’t take no for an answer, so he takes the money, and takes the other parting gift she offers, a long canister of the kind one might use to smuggle paintings. When his cab arrives, she bids him farewell with a kiss on the cheek. Vespa pulls him into a crushing embrace.
“Look after yourself,” she says gruffly as she pulls away.
“I will,” he says. As he gets in the car, he thinks he sees her wipe a tear from her eye. He stares out the window until they disappear from view.
*
He takes the first shuttle out of the star system, a two-week flight to Saturn. The accommodations are hardly ideal, but he wants to distance himself from this job as fast as possible, so he’ll swallow his discomfort and accept the coffin-like bunk in a room shared with seven strangers.
In the dark enclosure of his bunk, he finally opens the canister, holding a small penlight he’d found in someone’s purse between his teeth. As he guessed, it holds several paintings Buddy has stolen on her trip through the museum. He examines them, one by one, and realizes that each painting in the canister is one that had been on his list of possible targets for the heist the one she’d seen on the back of the museum map, the second night he’d spent at the lakehouse.
She’s been thinking of him, while she robbed the museum. It stings to know that he had needlessly marred their friendship, their trust. That she had cared for him, and he had poured gasoline over that bridge and held a match alight over it, and for what? Memories of the dead, a deranged old man and a naive child.
The last thing he pulls out of the canister is smaller, not canvas, but a little scrap of paper. It reads: Good luck out there, darling.
The message is the thing that takes up the least amount of space on the paper, written in a tight, cursive scrawl. Overshadowing it are two signatures—one in the same black ink as the message, with large, looping letters, and the other a jagged green swath of ink cutting into the other signature in places, all sharp lines, as if it had been carved into the page with a knife. Buddy and Vespa. Vespa and Buddy. It’s their autograph, he realizes, and he almost laughs, and he feels tears prick his eyes again.
Turning the paper over, he finds one more thing written on the back. Comms coordinates.
It had to have been written before the heist. He looks at the burner comms Buddy had given him, with her number programed into it. Of course she knew he would have to get rid of it after this job, so she’d given him another way to reach her. Had she hoped he’d stay in touch? That they might work together again? Or was it a lifeline, if he got himself into trouble he couldn’t get out of? He remembers the chilling question Vespa had asked him, the first time they’d met. Who’s going to come looking for you? And his response, No one.
He doesn’t let himself hope.
He’s about to remove the memory card from the burner comms when it buzzes with a message, and opening it he finds a picture from Buddy, one of herself and Vespa, grinning at the camera, and the words, thank you. He thinks about saving it. He has an overwhelming desire to keep the comms, save the picture, tuck it into the corner of his suitcase. Keep it hidden, carefully guarded. He’ll take it out, when he feels alone, and think about these few weeks they shared. Think about calling. He never will, but he’ll know that he can. He thinks about being the kind of person who can hold onto pieces of his past.
Instead he messages back, It was an honor to work with you, waits for it to go through, then rips out the comms’ memory card and crushes it in his palm.
He’ll fence the paintings they gave him. That, and the money they paid him for the heist, will give him the start he needs to do better. He’ll make himself a new alias, and another, and another, and burn all of them, become a thief without any name at all. He’ll run across the stars, never stop for a second, never leave any trace of himself behind. No one will know him, but they’ll know what he’s done.
He’ll leave the past behind entirely, start anew, this time for real.
*
He keeps the note with their autographs.