Chapter Text
Brian surveyed the workshop around him.
Nastya had just entered the room, the door sliding shut behind her. Jonny had followed behind Raphaella a moment before, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. Marius was uneasily sitting with the Toy Soldier, who was pretending to cast a concerned glance at the door. Ashes was flicking their lighter on and off, watching the flame burst out and die just as quickly. Ivy was keeping a white-knuckled grip on her book, mechanical brain humming quietly as she calculated through endless possibilities, wincing where she saw them end in blood and tragedy.
Tim was sitting next to him, one hand laid over his own. He’d been in the workshop the whole time, on account of a late night finishing up a project.
A split second before the explosion forced him properly awake, Brian had bolted upright, head bombarded with blurry visions of his crew back inside the lab, someone screaming in pain, the rest silent with paralyzing terror. He had awoken with a hand clutched at his metal chest, feeling for where his heart thudded from within its chamber.
Then he saw Nastya running for the common room on the hall cameras, and all fear for the future fell away.
You have to protect her.
Brian ran as fast he dared, glancing up as Aurora pulled up camera feeds on each screen he passed. Nastya running down the hall. Smoke pouring into the common room. He winced sympathetically at the sight of the gaping hole in the side of the ship, bleeding from around the edges.
Then he saw something that made him stand dead still.
In front of the wound was a tall, elegant figure holding a cane in one hand and a railgun in the other.
He knew that figure.
“Oh god, Aurora,” he breathed, barely even daring to say it aloud. “We’re in deep shit, aren’t we?”
He turned away and into the hallway where Nastya was. As she opened her mouth - maybe to call out to her love, maybe just to shout - he clapped one hand over it.
"Don’t move." He said, feeling a phantom tightness in his brass chest at the noise of protest coming from the engineer.
"She's here.” He was rambling, barely having a chance to think over his words before they came spilling out.
“I was walking the same way as you were when Aurora flicked on the camera feed on the screen by my quarters. Stay as far from the common room as possible. she's armed."
In the light of the hall, he could see Nastya flush silver, a sudden fondness accompanying the sight. They’d been together for so long, Aurora and Nastya, Nastya and Aurora. It must have been terrifying for her.
He held out his hand to her, and they walked quietly back down the hallway.
Nastya walked next to him with the poise and composure only born of her unique blend of nobility and hardship. He remembered well when she would stumble out of Carmilla’s lab, the same look on her face, even as it was betrayed by the countless bandages up and down her arms, the unsteady sway in her step, the way she flinched every time she heard the muffled sound of Jonny’s scream.
Brian hated that look.
It reminded him of the nights where Nastya would wake up shivering and sore, unable to move. The times she’d come out of the lab, shaking and terrified, and she still wouldn’t let him hold her. Only Jonny curling up next to her, wrapping his hands around her and pressing his overheated face to her chest, would ever help.
He was glad they’d found that comfort in each other.
Still, he couldn’t deny that it stung.
He turned to her, pulled out of his memories by the sound of her voice. “You go get the others," she whispered to him, "I’ll get Jonny."
A billion memories of the boy thrashing, yelling, snarling at Carmilla, at him, at the universe seemed to surface. "He could get loud or violent, Nastya-"
She cut him off. "And if you get him, he'll assume the worst happened to me, and then he'll definitely get loud and violent. I’ll take care of it." Her gaze still glinted with steel, distant and so cold.
He couldn't deny that she had a point there. He opened his mouth to respond, but found he had nothing to say. Turning around and heading for Ivy’s quarters, he tried not to focus on how his heart ached in its chamber.
Getting the others had been easy enough. Ivy had already been awake when he got there, and rattled off the statistical likelihood of this scenario as they went to get the others. He suspected it was comforting to her, and hearing her talking about margins of error like nothing was wrong put him just a bit more at ease. They had gone to get Raphaella first, Ivy nervously mumbling that there was less than a 5% chance that Carmilla had beaten them there.
Brian had responded with a reassurance that the scientist could hold her own in a fight, but it still made him uneasy to think about.
Carmilla had beaten those odds before.
Raphaella had nearly shot them with some sort of experimental gun before she saw them. Brian smiled as she dropped it onto the table and ran forward to scoop up her girlfriend, arms and wings wrapping around her as she murmured “My darling” into her hair. “I’m glad you’re safe, lovebird. We’re going to go get the others.”
Before long, they had rounded up the others and made their way to the workshop. Tim was standing there, gun in his hands and a relieved smile on his face. Brian sighed as he slumped onto his shoulder.
“Everyone safe?” Tim’s hands were gently stroking his hair, untangling the thin wires where they were tangled up in each other.
“Mmmm.” Brian responded, not lifting his head from Tim’s chest. “Nastya’s bringing Jonny.”
Tim’s hands continued to card through his hair. “Was it really… her? Like Aurora said?”
Brian shuddered as the memory returned. “Yes. It was.” He shut his eyes, hearing a faint squeak as he did. There was silence for a while
So gently, Tim kissed the top of his head. “My dearheart.” His voice shook in the way Brian had fallen utterly in love with, the one so heavy with devotion it reshaped the very sound of the word. “My brave, brave dearheart.”
Brian could not cry. He had never remembered being able to, though he knows he must have once. But here, in Tim’s arms, he thought he could imagine the way the tears would well up in his aching eyes, spill over, soak into the gunner’s coat.
Tim made him feel human. He will forever be grateful for that.
As Nastya stepped inside and the door closed behind her, Tim tangled up his fingers in Brian’s own. A few looked up at her as she entered. She seemed more at ease than she had before, though there was still that steely glint in her eye that gave Brian an impression of shivers to behold.
“Alright, so I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you all what’s going on. Carmilla has boarded the ship.”
A nearly visible wave of discomfort passed through the crew, people shuddering or flinching at the name. At last, Ashes piped up from their seat, still watching their lighter.
“The last time she showed up, she did sort of just… drag us to a bake sale. And then left.”
There’s something stabilizing about the quartermaster’s presence, Brian thinks. It sets everyone at ease. In this case, it gets everyone to chime in. Simultaneously. Brian winced as Jonny and Marius started to yell at the same time.
“Ashes, she blew up the common room-” “You do have a point there! Maybe she-”
They both cut off, Jonny glaring daggers at Marius while the not-baron grinned back at him.
“Jonny is correct, actually. The chances of Carmilla coming back with peaceful intent were only about 15% to begin with, and dropped by 50% when she set off the explosion in the common room.” Ivy chimed in, thumb running across the spine of her book.
Well. That killed the mood properly. The group settled into an uncomfortable silence, the tension so thick you could cut it with a plasma knife. Brian shivered as he momentarily recalled the vision he had seen. A nightmare or a prophecy? He still couldn’t quite be sure.
Tim’s hand squeezed his own, a marksman’s hand, ever-steady.
“Alright, then. Let’s work with what we’ve got. How is Aurora, Nastya?”
The engineer looked up from her boots at the sound of her name.
“I wasn’t able to see the full extent of the damage, but considering one of her sides got blasted clean open, probably not well.”
Brian once again found himself speaking before he’d thought about it.
“The brunt of the damage was along the common room wall.” Nastya and Tim both looked at him, swiftly followed by the rest of the crew.
“I couldn’t get a full visual due to the smoke, but what I could see looked… bad. Really bad.” He gripped at his sleeve as he spoke, hands trembling. The memory of blistering burns on the sides of the wall rose unbidden, broken pipes and veins spilling out into the vacuum around the ship. Brian had been able to hear the frantic, fearful thud of Aurora’s heart, hammering away like there was no tomorrow.
The sight had made his own heart climb into his throat, his body feeling far too light all of a sudden.
Here and now, it was Tim’s hand coming to gently pry his away from his arm, lacing their fingers together, that was anchoring him.
“Let’s not get sidetracked.” The master-at-arms stepped in. “There are nine of us, as it stands, and only one of her. Ideally, we would all split up, but I don’t want anyone to get caught alone.” His gaze drifted to the door for just a moment, mechanical eyes going distant, before they returned to the people around him. “Everyone find someone and stick with them. We can’t let her get the jump on anyone.”
His grip tightened on Brian’s hand as he spoke, steady and strong against the slight trembling of his own. The feeling made him smile as he watched his family around the table.
Jonny said nothing, but pressed himself closer to Nastya, glaring daggers at the floor. Raphaella’s wings were curled protectively around Ivy, and Ashes had offered a hand to the Toy Soldier, which it had pretended to accept with a relieved smile.
“Marius?” It called to the not-doctor, who was sitting awkwardly by himself in the center of the pairs that had formed around him. He seemed to curl in on himself even further at the sound of its voice. “You can come with us if you want, old chap!” It extended a hand to him, its painted grin radiating a kindness that was irrefutably real, no matter how often it argued otherwise.
“Thank you, TS.” Marius pulled himself up with the offered hand, though his expression remained drawn. He tugged at a loose thread on his coat, not meeting anyone’s eyes.
“M-Marius- wait.” Raphaella stuttered out, a faint flush on her face, wings twitching this way and that, alight with nervous energy.
“Would you- That is- Come with us? Please?”
He finally looked up, blinking in surprise. “I- Of course, if you insist.”
Brian bit back a chuckle and turned to Tim.
“Alright, we’ve got groups. Does everyone know where they’re going? Remember, don’t leave anyone alone.”
A chorus of mumbled assent sent the Mechanisms out of the workshop door and branching out to their respective paths.
“Nastya.”
The ex-princess turned at the sound.
“Keep him safe.” Be safe, he wanted to say, but he hadn’t earned that right.
“I will.” Her poise was perfect as she turned and walked out into the hall, though her eyes sparkled in the lights of the shop.
Brian watched her leave, pushing aside the memory of the vision that had awoken him. He clenched his fists, ignoring their tremor that had only worsened since the start of the night. Carmilla would not hurt his family. Never again.
He grabbed Tim’s other hand, letting it be his anchor, sails, compass. “Let’s get out of here.”