Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Tower lifts him off his feet he can’t help but feel like something is wrong, not with the dancing (although he’s pretty sure most dances don’t involve this much lifting) but with the scene as a whole. There’s an itch at the back of his mind that he has to go find Maritime, because something’s up and she’s supposed to be dead. Maybe? He just saw her yesterday, so she’s probably fine. It can wait.

Tower looks nice out of his school uniform. If Mako blinks the mesh away the goofy fake armor disappears and he’s wearing just a t-shirt and some jeans. It’s more relaxed than what they wear on their few days off, piling on as many layers of neon as they can before going to the mall to see Ted. Wasn’t Ted supposed to be in their grade? Mako never saw him in class anymore, only at the mall when Mako needed help getting something. 

“Something on your mind?” Tower squeezes Mako’s shoulder. The music has switched to something slower, and Mako’s feet are back on the floor for the most part.

“No, I mean well yeah, yes, but it doesn’t really matter.” The itch of static is getting stronger, like the world itself is glitching. Underneath it all is a low mechanical hum. “I think there’s something I need to do, but I can’t remember what it was so it’s probably not important. Anyway I’m dancing now. We’re dancing.”

“Yeah, we are.” Tower pulls him a little closer. “Thanks for dancing with me Mako.”

“No thank you- I mean yeah thanks. This is nice.” Mako curses himself for tripping over his own tongue. Tower just laughs. It’s a nice laugh, warm and fond and almost too perfect to be real.

Chapter Text

“Have you ever been on a sleep detachment?” Morning’s Observation stirs his coffee with a tiny wooden stick.

Tender takes a sip from her drink. “Nope.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Morning’s continues stirring, though all the cream and sugar was thoroughly mixed in at least a few minutes ago. “Anyway, it’s weird. For me it was like, you know when you’re on a trip in a car or a small ship and you fall asleep? And then you wake up and you’re not sure where you are, and the lighting’s changed and you don’t know how long you were asleep? It was like that. I dozed off and suddenly shit was pink and purple and 300 years had passed.”

“Isn’t that kinda what you would expect from a sleep detachment?” Tender’s tail twitches, amused.

“Yeah, but what I didn’t expect was to see people from home after I got here.” He gestures around at the rest of the room. The bar at the Brink is filled with people from all kinds of cultures, but Tender can pick out a few that are obviously from Earth, one or two whose style is close to Morning’s and then a couple who look like they only set out for the Quire system last week. “To those guys, I’m history. I left Earth 300 years before they were born, maybe a little less, maybe a little more. I must be so old to them, but also, like, I’m twenty. I’ve been awake for twenty years. All that time I was asleep? It’s just not real to me.”

He sighs and takes a sip of his now cool coffee. “I dunno. I just can’t wrap my head around how I can be old and young at the same time.”

“Well if it helps, you’re still a little punk kid to me.” Tender reaches over and ruffles Morning’s hair as he grumbles. “Don’t stress out about it too much. Time is weird, especially now. Just kick back and try to take life as it comes.” She drains the last of her drink and sets it down on the bar. “We’re all history to someone at some point. Might as well start when you’re young.”

“Thanks Tender.” Morning’s face is plastered with a crooked grin. “I needed that.”

Chapter Text

The first time was painful, worse than almost dying and having a strange synthesis-creature blend him together with the Mirage. He could feel the glintwing’s metal rush into his open palms, liquid but cold in his veins. He could feel the muscles in his back shift and stretch to accomodate for steel bones. He could feel the skin on his back rip apart as the wings emerged, like a butterfly from a cocoon.

Since then he had settled into the growth. It was still strange when, the day after burning one of his hands on a overheating exhaust pipe, he woke to find the skin on his palms thick and leathery like gloves. Other times it was a more conscious process, like wishing this technological connection to his brain was just a tiny bit faster, and then having his hair be replaced by a swarm of tendrils, each able to attach to ships and listen to what the metal had to say.

His friends have mixed reactions, to say the least. Echo recoils when they first see him, not that he would blame them. Grand regards him with the same cool detachment he uses to respond with everything these days. Gig, on the opposite end of the spectrum, is cheerful and enthusiastic, releasing his eye from its socket so that he can examine the way Even’s skin has turned into a sort of plate armor.

Surprisingly, it’s Signet’s reaction that he enjoys the most. He’s drifting in the sort of half-sleep that he’s become accustomed to when she walks into the cockpit. It’s her startled jump backwards that wakes him fully, blinking and hurriedly untangling himself from the ceiling.

“No, don’t get up because of me,” she says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that anyone was sleeping here. I was just trying to get a feel for the layout of the ship.”

“It’s fine.” Even smiles, and for a brief moment he hopes it isn’t frightening. “I’m used to waking up early.”

“Well it isn’t morning yet.” The tension in her shoulders is gone now, lingering fear replaced with the calm kindness she seems to radiate. “You know, when you’re hanging up there you almost look like an insect hanging from a branch.”

“Really?” Even has definitely been compared to a bug before, but this one is new.

“Yeah,” she says, quickly following it up with “In a nice way. It looks like you’re supposed to be up there.”

“I didn’t think I looked like I was supposed to be anywhere.” He motions at the wings, the tendrils.

“Everyone belongs somewhere, you just have to find where that somewhere is.” Signet nods and stifles a yawn. “I think you’re fitting in just fine here. Good night Even.”

“Good night Signet.”

The door closes behind her with a soft swish. Even waits until he can no longer hear her footsteps before stretching his tendrils to the ceiling and stringing himself up like a cocoon on a branch.

Chapter Text

Officially they're here as Executive Joie-Green of the Righteous Vanguard and her wife Jacqui, part of a larger consortium of diplomats and politicians gathered to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the creation of Weight.

Unofficially, they're here on vacation.

“Sometimes I wish I could just live here,” Aria says, stretching out in the sand. Her metal arm is wrapped in a towel to keep off the sun and sand, but the rest of her is enjoying the warmth.

“We probably could.” Jacqui’s face is hidden under a comically large sun hat, but Aria can still hear her smile in her voice. “I don’t think anyone would try to stop us.”

“Hmm.” Aria takes off her sunglasses and looks up at the clear blue sky. “Counterweight is too important. I don’t want to leave it until it’s as beautiful as this place, and at that point we won’t even have to leave.”

“That’ll be nice.” Jacqui reaches to take Aria’s hand in hers. “We can go to the beach on weekends. Or we can build a house right near the ocean, so that each morning we can wake up to the sound of waves.” She leans down and presses a kiss to Aria’s forehead. “It’ll be like a vacation every day.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to live in a tiny apartment on the outskirts of Centralia and resume our criminal activities?” Aria tilts her head up to kiss her back.

“If it was with you, I don’t think I’d mind.”

“Babe, that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” Aria places a free hand over her heart. “If I wasn’t already married to you, I would totally marry you for that.”

“We could always get married again,” Jacqui says, “We could run off to Vox or Sigilia, make up some new names and get married in a casino by and Aria Joie impersonator while both of us are tipsy.”

“Sounds like a romantic getaway.” Aria settles back down into the sand. “Let’s finish this vacation first though, okay?”

“With pleasure.”

Chapter Text

Hella loved the sound of metal on metal, the ring of clashing swords and the harsh scrape of blade on blade as her opponent started to give up inch by inch. The sound of sharpened steel was the sound of hard work, of victory.

This new blade though, it seemed to sing differently.

When that family gave it to her as payment for chasing off the pack of wolves that circled them with unusual persistence, she asked what kind of metal it was made of. She had never seen steel or iron so dark- it almost resembled the obsidian knife that her cousin had brought back from his trip to the City of First Light, black and shiny like glass. The mother said that they didn’t know, that her mother had brought it back from the Plains of Celebration after a battle without any knowledge about the thing. From there it had sat in a storage room for decades, unwrapped only once or twice.

The blade doesn’t sound like metal when she strikes. It doesn’t even sound like obsidian. It doesn’t ring out when she parries Brandish’s sword, instead it hums, like many voices in a choir. When she cuts his throat, she swears she can hear a scream that isn't his.

Chapter Text

Ephrim’s earliest memories were filled with fire, great sheets of yellow and orange and red cutting ribbons across the plains. They danced along with the rhythm in the air, the thousand thousand hoofbeats in the distance.

The Grand Tour was coming. The best they could do was get out of the way.

Ephrim’s parents were gone long before he knew how to control his flame, and he was shuffled between aunts and uncles who bore no blood relation, relatives by circumstance. He asked once if they had been trampled by the stampede, and one of the aunties just shook her head.

“Run down or brought into, there’s no difference with the Grand Tour,” she grumbled, and she turned back to tend the fire.

The fire flared higher in that moment than it had any right to.

He doesn’t remember when his powers manifested. Some things are better off not remembered. What he does remember is fields of green and gold and brown turned black by his hand.

“Find a way to control that power of yours,” an uncle warned him, “or it will end up burning you too.”

He never meant to lash out, but the fire listened to him when he was hurting. It did what it thought he would have wanted, and it did it without asking.

Chapter Text

“No no no stop!”

“I got it Aria, geez.” Mako elbowed Aria in the ribs and repositioned his hands on the controller.

“He was about to see you!” Aria leaned closer to the screen.

“No, they can’t see you when you’re standing still.”

“Seriously?”

From across the room, AuDy turned in their chair. “What are you playing?”

“Some shitty game that Mako bought off a guy on the street,” Aria replied.

“What is it about?”

“It’s like, a survival horror game, heavy on the survival, and also totally incomprehensible. Here, come here.” Mako gestured AuDy over. “So here are the statuses. We have health, pulse, sleepy, mood, medicine, thirsty, hungry, toilet, clean hands, clean clothes, warm body. If any of those go too low you die. Also there are these creepy shadow guys that attack you when you move.”

“That sounds complicated.” AuDy sat down on the couch next to Mako. “Is there any way to defend against the shadows?”

“Well we have this axe that I keep trying and failing to use” Mako gasped and bounced up and down. “Also! Also we can ‘get ready’. Watch this.”

He pressed a few buttons and the figure on screen crouched and put their hands out.

“What is that supposed to accomplish?”

“Good question! We don’t know!” Mako replied.

AuDy gave no response. Instead they just sat and watched as Mako continued with the game.

Cass came across the three of them hours later, sitting in the exact same spot.

“Have you guys been here all day?” they asked, folding their arms over their chest.

“We’re playing a game,” Mako said, pointedly not answering the question. Cass peered over his shoulder at the screen.

“You just got eaten by a bear.”

“Yeah, that happens.” Mako scooted over into AuDy’s unyielding form. “Here, come play with us. It’s fun.”

“As much as I would love to,” Cass said, drier than any fish had a right to be, “I have to get ready for the next mission.”

“Get ready,” the other three responded at once, holding their hands out.

Cass shook their head. “I don’t understand why I’m friends with any of you.”

Chapter Text

“I still can’t believe that you named your spaceship after a pirate ship in an anime.” Mako is leaning so far back in his chair that it looks like he could fall at any moment. Across the table, Orth shrugs his shoulders.

“It’s a good name for a ship,” he says, poking his fork at the ink-black pasta, “What I can’t believe is that you ran through the entire simulation and that is the thing you decide to call me out on.”

“I mean, you can’t help being a dumbass sometimes.” Mako’s chair wobbles a bit underneath him. “What you can help is being a fucking nerd.”

At this exclamation Mako's chair slips out from underneath him and he lands on his back with a thud, rattling every dish in the kitchen.

Across the room, Cass grimaces. “If you just gave yourself a concussion from falling out of your chair, I swear to the eidelons that I’m going to kick your ass.”

‘“I’m good,” Mako says, continuing to lay on the floor. “And my point still stands.”

“Yeah, but you don’t.” Cass walks over and prods Mako with the tip of their toe.

“Ugh.” Mako rolls over into Cass’s legs. “Orrrthh, Cass is bullying me.”

“Good.” Orth takes a sip of his drink. “Don’t insult my ship.”

Chapter Text

It is warm down in the forge, not a comforting warmth, but a stifling one, one that drips sweat down the back of your neck and makes your skin stick to itself as you move.

It is warm, but the heat brings no light.

Alyosha hammers down on the anvil, mechanical. Lift arm, position hammer, swing hammer down. Repeat. Repeat. He does not notice the way sweat plasters his robes to his back.

When he first awoke in this comfortable haze he had no idea what he was making, only that that the hammer wanted to swing and his arm wanted to swing it. Now he can see the thing he is creating taking shape around him in swirls of color.

He is building a garden

Alyosha does not stop to consider the young man lying on the floor of the forge, with his tan skin and his hair that looks like it could be made of gold. He does not look at the gash in the man’s chest where blood spills like roses and carnations and tulips. He has work to do, and soon the vines and saplings will cover up everything that is left.

The air is warm. Spring is coming and he will see it bloom.

Chapter Text

There were stars in the sky on the night the first stellar combustor dropped and then, in an instant, there weren't.

Liberty and Discovery watched as the sky filled with bright white light, strong enough to have blinded them if they had human eyes. They knew as the world shattered to pieces billions of miles away from them that this would not be the end. Their armies had no way to guarantee that Rigour was even within the radius of the bomb, that their explosion would even scratch his giant steel form. But after decades of fighting, this was enough. The people that had started to call themselves the Automated Diaspora would survive, and in their lifetimes they would not see Rigour again.

As they watched the explosion, they tried to remember the planets they had just sacrificed. So many of them didn’t have names, or if they did they were things like PS-1332 or Fueling Station 7-Delta. There were a few though. Shinel. Proserpina. Octave. Places with cities and farms and cultures and festivals and people and people and people. So many people dead, but so many more freed.

When the sky began to clear the picture was different, constellations rearranged or erased. But interrupting the darkness were streaks of light, like trails from falling stars.

Chapter Text

For the third time in as many weeks Aria Joie was stuck waiting for a transport that stubbornly refused to arrive. She had gone halfway across the planet for work, and now that the only thing she wanted was to go home she was stuck at the spaceport in the middle of the night without a ride. Worse than that, her phone was dead and it was too dark for her solar charger to work, leaving her unable to call Jacqui and tell her that she would be home late.

If you hadn’t stopped to talk to that fan, then we could have gotten an earlier flight, and this wouldn’t be a problem. Righteousness said, cold in the back of her mind. Aria didn’t respond.

From the corner of her eye she saw a car pull up, an older model of the type she usually called. The back door opened automatically, as did, strangely, the door to the passenger seat. Aria grabbed her bags and hurried forward, too desperate to be suspicious.

As she slid into the back, she glanced up at the driver, ready to tell them where to take her. The figure in the driver’s seat was an old Automated Dynamics unit- not the one she was so familiar with, this one had all its original limbs and two antennae, but it was the same make and model. It had to be a coincidence though, there was no way…

“AuDy?” The words left her mouth before she could stop herself. At the same time, the bit of Righteousness in the back of her mind whispered Discovery.

“Hello Aria,” they said, and it was the same voice that Aria remembered. “Are you ready to go home?”

“Yeah.” She wiped away a tear that was threatening to fall. “Let’s go home, AuDy.”

Chapter Text

“Time is long,” Samol said, plucking out an easy rhythm on his guitar, “and it don’t help that we kept folding it over on itself. Least now that reconfiguration’s stopped history can go on in a straight line.”

“But do you know how long Hieron has existed?” Lem looked starstruck. “The New Archives barely has records of what happened before the Erasure. You could tell us so much.”

“Boy, all I can tell you is that Hieron is as old as I am. Giving you the whole story would take to much time, time that you ain’t got. ‘Sides, I’m tired.”

“But-” Lem quieted only when Hella punched him on the shoulder, slightly harder than was necessary.

“Y’all can go explore the garden or the house if you want.” Samol took off his hat and smoothed a hand over his hair, white dreads that sprouted into willow branches. “Don’t matter much to me. Just don’t break anything; this old fool’s sentimental.”

Then he got up, grabbed his guitar, and went back inside, letting the porch door swing closed behind him.

“Hella,” Lem looked over at the fighter, eyes wide. “Hella, he must know so much!”

“He knows enough to not humor excitable archivists who want to know everything there is to know.” She punched him on the shoulder again, softer this time. “Leave the poor guy alone.”

“But-”

“Go take a walk, Lem.” Hella picked herself up off the ground and dusted the dirt off her pants. “Things are weird enough already. I’m not in the mood to piss off another god.”

Before Lem could respond, she ducked around a corner of the house and disappeared from sight.

Chapter Text

“You ever regret going into your line of work?”

Fourteen is sitting at the bar of The Steady while Tender mixes their drink, pouring some kind of bright yellow syrup into a tall glass. They watch her as she works, her hands moving on autopilot while she talks.

“I think that you have to remember something in order to regret it.” They play with a paper straw wrapper, folding it into tiny zig-zags until it moves like a spring between their fingers.

“I wouldn’t say so.” Tender turns and grabs a bottle of vodka from the freezer.

“Well the thing is,” Fourteen aims the straw wrapper at the back of Tender’s head and lets it go. It falls short and lands on the floor. “I can’t regret it because I don’t remember why I started to work for Castlerose in the first place. It could have been for a very important reason, and I can’t fault past me for that. And I can’t even regret choosing to become a being of data, because I doubt anyone knew that I would start to decay. And who knows, maybe if I had stayed in my original body I would still have a bad memory, just for different reasons.”

Once the vodka is poured, Tender flicks on her lighter and lights the drink up in a burst of blue flame. She slides the glass over and Fourteen sticks their straw in it and slurps.

“I think you’re very kind to your past self.” Tender rests her elbows on the bar and leans towards Fourteen, pointing her ears forward. “It’s sweet. I don’t think that I could do the same.”

“It’s easier to be kind to someone when they’re basically a stranger.” Fourteen traces patterns in the condensation on the glass.

From somewhere behind the bar Tender pulls out a shot glass and pours herself some vodka.

“Cheers,” she says, tapping the rim of her glass to Fourteen’s. “To regret, or lack thereof.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

Chapter Text

It started with a tiny cactus in the cockpit, the little terra-cotta pot duct taped in place so that it wouldn't topple over during turbulence. Then a spider plant in a hanging pot in the kitchen, vines reaching down to try to find more soil. On the day Mako found a ficus taking up most of the space in his tiny bedroom he started to ask questions. Cass and Aria, who had both found succulents inside of their shoes, had no answers.

“AuDy.” Mako opened the cockpit door and nearly knocked over a potted aloe as he did so. “Are you the one who keeps putting plants everywhere?”

From the captain’s chair AuDy looked at Mako, and then over his shoulder at Aria and Cass, who were standing in the hallway.

“Why do you ask?” they said, synthetic voice quiet and level.

“Because it’s starting to become, like, a bit of a problem.”

AuDy was quiet for a moment. “I am not responsible,” they said, and they turned in their chair so that their back was too the rest of the group.

“AuDy, you’re a great pilot, but you’re a shit liar.” Aria pushed past Mako into the cockpit.

“I’m not even sure they’re a good pilot,” Cass muttered from behind her.

“You’re a great pilot,” Aria repeated, “but we can’t have all these plants on the ship. The next time we have to pull some crazy stunt on a mission you’re going to have a ship full of upturned plants and loose dirt.”

“There was already dirt in my coffee cup this morning,” Cass said, “We haven’t moved the ship in a week. I have no idea how that happened.”

“Oh that one might be on me,” replied Mako.

As Cass entered the cockpit to start lecturing Mako, AuDy turned to Aria.

“You are correct that this ship is not a good place for plants.”

“Oh thank fuck.”

“The humidity levels here are incorrect, and they are not getting enough sunlight. I will move them to a location where they are more likely to thrive.”

“I-” Aria stopped mid-sentence and took a deep breath. “No, okay, that’s great. Please do. I can even help you move them if you want, just as I can reclaim my platform shoes from whatever’s growing in them right now.”

“Assistance will not be necessary.” AuDy stood up and picked the cactus up off the dashboard. “I know where I will bring them.”

A week later Yuki Hiss, secretary for Consolidated Counterweight Technocracy, opened the door to Orth Godlove’s office and was met with a wall of green.  

“Are the plants new?” they asked, reaching out to touch the leaf of an African violet.

Orth, who somehow looked even more exhausted than usual, rubbed at his temples.

“Yes, they’re new. A friend of mine couldn’t take care of them anymore, and so they gave them to me.”

Yuki set a few papers on Orth’s desk. “I think it’s nice, really makes the space seem lively. Your friend should be glad that you could help take care of these things.”

“Yeah.” Orth leaned back in his chair. “Glad is probably the right word there.”

Chapter Text

“Aria, can you grab the pot from the stove and put it on the table?”

“You got it. Do you know where the pot holders are?”

“They were on the counter last I saw them.”

“Can’t see them. It’s fine, I don’t need them.”

“Yes you do, because if you burn your hands then I have to patch them up, and I know you’ll whine the whole time.”

“I will not!”

“Yes you will, and we all know it.”

Two soft knocks on the door to the kitchen and the fighting stopped. In the doorway Jacqui stood with her arms folded, trying to look inconspicuous and failing completely.

“Is it okay if I join?” she asked, directing her question towards Aria. “I don’t know if this is like, a family thing or what.” She shifted slightly, a gesture that would be normal for anyone else, but which looked like pure discomfort on a tall muscled soldier.

“Of course you can join!” Aria’s voice took on a bounciness that she normally reserved for interviews. “What’s that old saying, when you’re here you’re family?”

“Aria, that’s the slogan for Olive Garden.” From behind her Cass was pulling plates out of the cabinet and trying not to smile.

“We’re having pasta, so it’s fine.” Aria walked over and pulled Jacqui in by the hand, bringing her over to the table. “Hey Mako!” she called into the hallway, “can you get us an extra chair?”

“Oh come on!” Mako entered the room, Orth and AuDy close behind him. “I already got these two to come to dinner, that should be enough work for one night.”

“I do not understand why I need to be present,” AuDy said as they took a seat. “I do not need to eat.”

“Because meals are nicer when all of your friends and family are there with you. That includes you Orth!” Aria grabbed the man in question by the back of his shirt before he could sneak back out the door.

“I was going to go get that chair,” he protested.

“No you weren’t, you were going to go sneak off and do work or something, and then four hours later you would realize that you hadn’t eaten anything all day and you would try to sneak into the kitchen while everyone else was asleep and drink a couple of protein shakes to try to make up for it.” Aria shook her head. “Sit down. I’ll go get the chair”

Without another word she disappeared from the room. Reluctantly, Orth slid into the chair next to Jacqui. Mako slid into his seat, kicked his shoes off, and tucked his legs underneath him. Cass, still at the stove, finally turned the heat off and carried the pot of pasta over to the table with their sleeves over their hands.

Aria returned, folding chair in hand. In one swift motion she unfolded the chair and placed it right between Orth and Jacqui, a close enough fit that she had to squeeze into the space. If anyone saw how close she came to Jacqui as she sat down, no one decided to mention it.

“Alright!” Cass clapped their hands together. “Tonight’s meal is squid ink pasta. If you don’t like it, then make something else, and that will mean more for the rest of us. Otherwise, let’s eat.”

“Hell yeah!” Aria cheered, leaning towards Jacqui. Across the table Mako was already loading up his plate. Cass, back up on their feet, was pouring everyone a glass of wine. Outside the ship’s hum disappeared into the vacuum of space, but for that moment all that mattered was what happened in that room.