Chapter Text
Fria was slowly learning to whittle from a wooden soldier. For its credit, it seemed rather enthusiastic about it. It’d shown up outside the room she was staying in with an immaculately carved set of hands one day, she’d been learning ever since.
They were sitting on the top of Lyf’s ship in the depths of the Aurora. Slivers of wood fell to the floor as Fria carved floral patterns into a wooden arm. One plus side of having a completely fabricated body was that she could change it on a whim.
“Oh! Wonderful Choice Of Flowers!” The Toy Soldier grinned over at her as it whittled another finger onto a growing wooden bush of them.
“Thank you Soldier, they’re forget-me-not’s.” Fria smiled softly to herself, detailing a petal.
“Fantastic! Might I Suggest A Daisy? I Think They Are Neat!”
“You may! I’ll carve them on the other one, that's a great idea Soldier!”
“It’s Nothing! Simply Helping!”
“Well you're really good helper Toy!” The Toy Soldier hummed in response and the two of them continued to carve in silence. It might have been the abundance of wood in both of their bodies- but her and the Toy Soldier had got along the fastest out of the other crew members. Might have also been it’s never ending smile, but who really could say.
The Toy Soldier was singing to itself now, a song all its own.
“Hey Toy Soldier?”
“Yes?”
“Do you ever feel detached? You know, like you’re not fully there?” she set her carving tools beside her and turned towards it.
“Well, I’m Not Real You See! So I’m Never Here!” The Toy Soldier smiled as it spoke, but it was always smiling.
“Toy… that’s-” the Toy Soldier was standing up now, picking up its tools and carving.
“I’ve Got To Be Going Now! I Need To Feed The Octokittens!” it jumped off the top of the ship.
“Toy! Wait!” The Toy Soldier stopped in its tracks. “Am I real?” Fria leaned forward off the edge of the ship, balancing on the palms of the hands it had carved for her.
“Of Course!” It fully turned its head backwards on its neck to face her.
“Then you are too. We’re practically identical Toy…” she smiled down at the wooden soldier, “Just two conciusness’s attached to shells.”
“Well! You See My Friend, You Are A Person! I Am A Toy!” Fria laughs at that.
“I don’t think I’ve really been a person for a while Toy Soldier. Not being one doesn’t make you any less real.”
“Interesting! I Will Consider It!” With that, the Toy Soldier left.
----
Fria didn’t speak with the Aurora for a while, when she did it came as a surprise. The crew had naturally failed to tell her that the ship was sentient. Because of that, when Aurora popped up one of her screens to speak, Fria nearly shattered it in shock. (Thankfully she did not, as Aurora soon became one of her closest relationships on the ship.)
Fria met Aurora when Nastya was gone. (She came back, eventually, but it took a while.) Aurora missed her after all, in her own way. If she’d just stayed the same, maybe Nastya would have stayed? Maybe she’d have been around to meet Fria when she first showed up on board?
But she hadn’t been. So Aurora talked to Fria, using a combination of eldritch nonsense and AI speech to bypass the limited screens. She taught Fria to patch up issues with her machinery, granted Fria wasn’t the best at it but the repairs needed to be done. Aurora still needed love. Fria offered friendship and that soon became enough.
——-
Raphaella had gotten sidetracked again. It was to be expected, Fria just hadn’t expected “let’s put your consciousness into different forms and make them go fast ” to come from making her wings. Fria was currently running a treadmill for some reason as Raphaella took notes on a small pad.
“Excellent! Fascinating! That’s more than I could get it to accomplish before!”
/Hey Raph? I know this is cool and all but can you put me back?/ Fria’s most commonly used body was sitting lifeless across the room, it was a little unsettling. The two of them had been building an entirely different winged body, something about spinal structure? Fria didn’t entirely understand.
“Oh! Sure thing! One moment,” Raphaella leaned down and Fria’s vision blacked out.
She blinked her eyes open a few minutes later back in her usual wooden shell.
“Man that’s disorienting.” Raphaella scribbled something down on her notepad.
“It’s all very good science!” She grinned and snapped her notepad shut.
“Well, I’d appreciate it if that particular science didn’t happen for a while.” Fria flexed her fingers, getting used to this form again.
“There’s much other science to explore! I’ve still got to corner Lyf so I can take measurements!” Raphaella took off into the air and flew up to a small raised platform. It was fun to see her doing Science, she almost became a different person in this environment. Not that she hadn’t been great to talk to on Midgard, this was just- different.
“Anything interesting up there?” Fria called from the ground. Not being able to follow was taking some getting used to. Where the wings were an extra appendage to Raphaella, Fria’d had them her whole life (minus the millennia of Bifrost but let’s not dwell on that) and it felt as if something was missing.
“Not in particular, the science is being rather elusive.” Raphaella was now hovering upside down in the air holding various chemicals.
“Okay… um, I’m gonna go before I get confined to a toaster for a week again. Bye Raph!” The scientist sent a wave her way and Fria ran from the room.
----
Lyf practically avoided her for about a year before she was able to catch them in the depths of the ship in the forge. They’d been evidently working there during their time on board, had built it themselves early on. It’d been a small hobby of theirs that Fria was glad they were able to truly pursue. She was not glad that the place usually ran in the upper hundreds of degrees. A wooden body and high temperatures did not go well together.
She cornered them on their way out of the forge.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she says as she flares the mechanical wings Raph and Toy have been helping her build for the past month across the narrow corridor.
“I have not been avoiding you.” They say as they try and duck underneath the metal.
“That’s blatantly untrue. I haven’t seen anything of you since I got back.”
“Why would you want to? Fria- I left. I left the whole planet behind, why would you want to see anything of me?”
“Lyf- look.” She folded her hands together, the wood had no give but it was a familiar motion nonetheless. “Yggdrasil is gone. We’re not getting it back.”
“Well yes, but-“
“It’s gone. Lyf,” she ran a hand through synthetic hair. “I was in there, inside of the mess itself, for a millennia. There’s nothing left. All that’s there is, pardon my language, roiling nuclear chaos. The fact that even I got out like this,” Fria thunked a fist against the metal of her face, “is a miracle, Ivy could tell you as much. The Bifrost consumed Yggdrasil completely.”
“But I could have helped, I could have saved someone else I could have-“
“If we’re going by that logic, I could’ve too!. But there’s no going back now, is there. Sigyn, Lyf. I had a life outside work you know? Had a girlfriend for a while there, she broke up with me about a week before the world was consumed, that's fun to think about. There’s a lot we could have done. The damn train crushed my apartment, I could have noticed something was wrong then but I didn’t. You didn’t until it was literally staring you in the face. That’s just the nature of it all. There’s nothing we could have done to stop Yog-sothoth’s arrival.”
“I should have never investigated the Black Box.” Fria laughed.
“You think that would have stopped it? If anything the investigation made it possible for anything to escape. Call me crazy but it’d be quite the coincidence if the only two people to hear the recording were also the people who made it out.”
“I sent it to the higher ups too!” Lyf protested.
“No one else was about to listen to an hour long recording by Inspector Second Class Lyfrassir Edda, especially not at lunch time.” She smiles a bit, but it’s a sad imitation of one.
“Lunchtime?”
“Bifrost came at about 3? Couldn’t tell you the exact time, had a few other things to keep track of. There wasn’t nearly enough time to do anything but try and leave.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m here now aren’t I? Back again to harass you about Marius. You dating again yet?” That’s enough sad retrospection for the day. Back to more important matters. Lyf was avoiding eye contact with her. “Lyfrassir Edda. You're telling me it’s been a millennia and you still haven’t admitted feelings to Marius Von Raum and co.? Lyf, and I say this in the most loving was possible, you fucking absolute moron.”
-----
“WE’LL MURDER ALL THE LUNAR MEN WITH FURY HEAVEN SENT, AND-”
“We’ll carpet all the tunnels with the rounds that we have spent.” Fria was standing in a vortex of color, the Bifrost whirling, spinning throughout her ship. It was around her, no it was her- she was the Bifrost, the laser she was shooting the Bifrost was the Bifrost itself. She was singing sound waves into an endless void of nothing, or maybe it was everything all at once.
“THEY TRIED TO BREAK OUR FIRM RESOLVE BUT-“ Yog-sothoth was here.
“Tim, stop.” Fria sunk metal tipped fingers into the table she was leaning against. You are yourself, you are here, you are an individual. You are here.
“Stop! Why? Do you not like my singing anymore?” Tim swung around to face her from the other side of the kitchen. He looked legitimately offended.
“It- it's not that.” Fria sighed, or at least as much as she could without actual lungs. “Your voice is- really nice. It's just- the song.”
“You got something against war songs?” Tim flipped the pistol in his hand as if to aim it at her.
“When I sang them when I was dying, yes!” The words snapped out of her mouth as she whipped straight upwards, fabricated wings flaring out to either side. “Fuck, Tim! I- sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t shout.”
“You died?” Fria blanked, continued in a deadpan. Where did he think she came from?
“Yes Tim. I died. Haven’t you done that before?”
“You do have a point there.”
A long span of silence was drawn in the empty air of the kitchen.
“I miss it sometimes, Yggdrasil, Midgard. I know it’s gone but- still.” Tim hummed.
“Get that.”
Another period of silence, more comfortable than the first.
“I miss Saga.”
“Saga?”
“Old girlfriend. Not that that matters much now but you know.”
“Mm. Want to shoot Jonny?"
“What?”
“That’s what I do when I’m down.” Tim shrugged, tossed the weapon he was holding towards her.
“Tim that’s not-“ Fria snatched the gun out of the air, “You know what? Sure. Where is the bastard?”
-----
Marius Von Raum was not a doctor. Fria had made it her personal mission to kick him out of the medbay since her arrival. Granted, she didn’t know a whole lot about medicine but she was fairly confident that the singular first aid course she’d taken for transport police training was more then he’d ever received.
“Marius what are you doing,” she said, leaning against the doorframe of the medbay. He was holding a hammer up to his own broken arm.
“Fixing it.”
“That’s- what. No? Don’t?” she snatched the hammer from him. “Don’t you know how to wrap this instead of just breaking it?”
“What’s that?” He moved to try and take it back before she threw it across the room.
“Marius you’re a terrible doctor, you shouldn’t be allowed near medical equipment.”
“Hasn’t stopped me yet.”
“Why do you guys even need a doctor, aren’t you all immortal and self healing?” Marius just shrugged. “I swear- stay there. I’m going to go find some bandages. If you have that hammer when I get back I will break your other arm.”
“Good luck, it's made of metal.”
“Don’t fucking doubt my abilities Marius.”
——-
Out of everyone on board, Ivy seemed the most invested in her experience in the Bifrost. Raphaella was a close second of course, but the lack of definable science made her more mad than invested. The two of them would sit in the library behind piles of books for hours, talking on the subject.
Fria did not remember her time on Midgard the way memory was supposed to work. There were years entirely missing, what seemed to remain were memories of tragedy, worry, and dread. She could recall being consumed as if it happened yesterday, but happier memories were harder to come by. So she’d taken to filling in the blanks herself. Lyf hadn’t noticed, she didn’t expect them to, didn’t want them to ask. Ivy had though, after asking her opinion on arson and getting a quizzical stare in response.
Fria never thought she’d hear stories of her own life that she did not recall. Guess that was a consequence of existing for an indeterminate amount of time. She told Ivy of the Bifrost in response. Of being part of something so much bigger than herself, of clinging to something slipping slowly from her fingers. Ivy just listened, wrote down page after page of Frias ramblings.
After a year on the ship Ivy gave her a large book. The cover read “Intern Fria Lyresie: Comedy.” Written neatly inside the covers was everything Ivy had on file that Fria herself could not remember. It earned a special place on Fria’s growing bookshelf, right next to a journal she’d been keeping on her own.
——
“Your move,” Ashes said, laying down an ace. Fria looked at the card and was overtaken by an intense urge to flip Ashes off.
“I still don’t know how you’re cheating at War but I will find out one of these days,” she said while laying down her last king. Ashes about had her beat by now, that was the last nail in the coffin.
“Many have tried,” they grinned easily, sweeping the cards into their hand.
“It’s War! How are you even-“ Fria flipped a ten down, Ashes countered with a jack. “Oh come on!”
“Thought Lyf said you were good?”
“First, this is War, there is little to no skill involved. Second, that’s because they suck. I just picked up a few party tricks,” Fria was still laying down cards absentmindedly, fighting a losing battle. “Midgardian card games are a bit odd anyway. Use like a 73 card deck, weird as shit. Don’t think one of ‘em even had any rules, you just made them up as you went.”
Ashes took the rest of Fria’s cards easily.
“Good game,” they held out a hand. When Fria took it they pulled sharply, which only resulted in her arm unjointing at the elbow. Ashes was left holding a hand attached to a wooden forearm.
“...can I have that back?” Ashes handed the wooden arm back to Fria silently, then left the room. Fria sighed, tucked it under her other arm.
“Aurora? Where’s Raph?”
——-
Jonny D’Ville was a violent man. No one could tell you otherwise. Which was why Fria was so shocked when she managed to knock him out by accident.
He’d been aiming to punch her for some reason or another. Probably because she was defending Toy Soldier from being thrown out the airlock again. Regardless, she’d completely blindsided him with a wing while dodging.
So there he lay, sprawled out of the floor, knocked out cold
“...something tells me I should probably leave…” was the only coherent thought Fria managed before Jonny sat bolt upright and shot her in the chest.
Fria, oddly enough, wasn’t affected at all. The bullet simply sunk in a couple inches before stopping, halted by the wood. Fria and Jonny blinked at each other as his gun continued to smoke.
“Well that was disappointing.”
“I’ll say.”
-----
Floating in space without a physical form after being consumed during the destruction of an entire civilization was a very weird mutual experience. Nonetheless, it was one Fria and Brian shared. Most of their conversations ended in agressively one upping each other over the matter, much to the disappointment of the rest of the crew.
“I’m just sayin, if Jonny really tried he could make an entire outfit solely of belts,” Fria spoke from where she was sitting on the floor by the pilots seat, leaning over the star map she was painting.
“Please don’t encourage him.”
“Just sayin!” Fria continued sketching, glancing up at the open window periodically. Brain was piloting the ship through new territory, or at least new to her. It’d been a while now, fifty years or so. She’d been getting used to the general rhythm of the ship. Apparently they were headed to some sort of heist? All she knew was that her and the Toy Soldier were going on a “special mission” to infiltrate a toy store.
“We get enough trouble from Jonny’s belt obsession, you don’t need to remind him.”
“I mean, now I’m curious.” Brain just laughed and continued to pilot the ship forward.
——-
Nastya Rasputina arrived back on the Aurora a couple centuries after Fria did. There wasn’t all that much of a change. The Aurora ran smoother, seemed happier. That was reason enough in Fria’s book.
The first actual conversation they had occurred when Nastya showed up below deck to repair Aurora only to find Fria halfway done. After all, she’d gotten used to repairing the ship while Nastya was gone. Her lack of lungs had helped her patch up the outer hull.
“What are you doing?” Fria nearly dented her forehead when she jolted upwards to address the voice.
“Repairs?” she responded, wriggling out from where she’d curled herself into.
“Why?”
“Someone’s got to.” She stood back up and looked at Nastya, who was just staring at her. Then she hummed, nodded, and simply began fixing up Aurora again. Fria shrugged and went back to what she was doing before.
Nastya and Fria were never exactly close, but they got along well enough. The Aurora always needed upkeep, having an extra set of hands never hurt anything. Lyf was recruited at some point, the three of them would work in silent understanding of being slightly out of sync with the rest of the crew.
----
Family is found.