Chapter Text
Before Peter Nureyev was the son of a revolutionary who never existed, before he was the son of a thief who built him up with lies, before his name was a threat held over a floating city, he was a pickpocket, nothing more. His name, Peter Nureyev, was worth as little as the petty scraps he stole to survive. It’s good, he thinks, to return to his roots. It’s good to know he can survive on his own, bring his life back into his own hands, hold it safe in the sleight of his quick fingers. It’s good to know he isn’t just what Mag made him into, that who he was before wasn’t lost beneath all the lies and the “first rules of thieving.” And it’s good to be nameless.
And, god, it’s so easy now. Peter remembers, growing up, how the wealthy would cling tight to their riches, purses clutched in curled claws and jewelry hidden under their crisply tailored clothing. How they would walk faster to pass him by, eyes cast anywhere but the dirty faces of Brahma’s street rats and beggars. He remembers the ones who would deign to show a guilty grimace as they hurried by, and the ones who would sneer at him without a trace of pity.
Here, the wealthy flaunt their riches, and none of them would even dream that the poor pickpocket they guarded themselves against on the street dances among them, cloaked in their own shining garb. They put on quite a show, all these celebrities and nobles, heiresses and executives. Every person present and every wall of the ballroom is draped in jewelry and art, gilded and glimmering in the lights cast from floating diamond chandeliers. The music hangs light and airy and always changing, never ending, a flawless construct without room for human error. The food, too, is exquisite, ingredients imported fresh even across the light years from where they were grown on Earth, and prepared by private chefs that half the attendees even at this garish occasion couldn’t afford. And of course, ferried around the ballroom by android waiters--the hosts would never tolerate the presence of common people at this event. Peter mourns the easy disguise that would have been as he plucks an appetizer from a silver platter.
“Thank you,” he says softly to the faceless android, attracting a mocking laugh from some shiny CEO beside him.
“The thing’s not sentient, you know,” the man says, at the same time that a robotic voice states, “Your gratitude is appreciated.”
Peter smiles to himself, not quite as smugly as he wants to, and says, “Well, it wouldn’t do to forget my manners, would it?” He offers up his hand to shake. “Indigo Viceroy. And you might be?”
Indigo makes a point of only really speaking about himself. After all, Peter doesn’t want the man’s name. He’s much more interested in the gold watch he slips from his wrist when the man takes his hand, and no one would suspect someone so self-absorbed to take any interest in them, or their possessions. He makes conversation long enough to relieve him of his ruby cufflinks, three gold rings, and his wallet, and hopes when he leaves that the name he chose tonight is just ostentatious enough to be forgettable. It’s a troublesome balance, trying to remain inconspicuous among the deliberately conspicuous. Nothing he has to worry about when he’s posing as waitstaff.
Still, the trouble will be worth it soon enough. As impressive as this party is, Peter is still waiting on the real show to start. He’s been chasing it long enough that he can recognize the more subtle cues now; across the room, just a minute ago, he saw a security guard whisper something to the host. Just a minor abnormality in the system, should be fixed in a moment. Then there was the slightest shift of lighting as the shielding mechanisms outside the windows all turned on. Soon the power will cut out, just for a moment. Peter wants to be up to the second floor balcony before that happens—the view from there will be much better—but he can’t move too urgently through the crowd. Indigo Viceroy is a conspicuous alias, and too much is at risk if Peter gets caught.
Peter counts the seconds as he weaves his way towards the staircase, allowing himself to be stopped ever so briefly along his way by smiling strangers and the treasures they carry. The clock in his head is ticking down faster than he’d like, so clasps the hand of his latest victim apologetically and excuses himself. He’s barely finished scaling the stairs when the power finally cuts. Seven seconds earlier than he anticipated.
Instantly he whips around and clings to the railing of the balcony, eyes sweeping over the room as panicked screams and whispers rise up from the crowd below. He wonders how they’ll make their entrance tonight.
This is the eleventh heist in eight months he’s followed them to, just to watch, to learn how the greatest thieves on the Outer Rim do their work. No matter how many times he sees it, it never gets any less spectacular.
He’s busy scanning the crowd for anything out of the ordinary when it happens. There’s a sound as loud as thunder, and as high and bright as chimes. His eyes catch on a piece of glass halfway through its descent, and his gaze rises to the ceiling, once a shining glass dome, now shattered into millions of confetti-like pieces raining down into the ballroom. Through that shattered wreck drop Buddy and Vespa, Vespa and Buddy—the bane of law enforcement across the Outer Rim.
They land in the center of the room with impossible lightness, as if they’d fallen from only one foot up instead of fifty. Vespa vanishes in a cloud of smoke as soon as she lands, disappearing into the shadows or the crowd, but Buddy stays center stage, arms outspread to the sky as though the last few pieces of falling glass are only gentle snowflakes to her. She cuts a stunning figure, her dress embroidered every inch with shining gold detailing, with red, feathery plumes cascading down the skirt from her hips to the floor. And she laughs, quietly, but still the sound reaches his ears because the whole of the crowd has fallen silent and still in inexplicable awe and terror. She is the whole of their focus, and Peter’s as well.
In fact, he’s so enraptured by the scene that he doesn’t notice the silent form creeping up behind him until they’re right up against him. One arm wrapping around his chest, trapping his arms at his sides, they haul him back away from the railing and into the empty shadows. He doesn’t cry out, but he tries for a second to wrest himself from their grip, when his attacker’s other arm comes up and a knife flicks open at his throat. His momentum carries him for just a moment too long, bring his skin flush against the blade, and an impossibly small noise flees his throat as he feels the knife slice into him.
His attacker tightens their arm around his chest, and then, in a low growl, says, “Keep quiet and don’t move.”
He drags in a slow, ragged breath, and tries to keep his heart from rattling out of his chest. It’s clear the second he hears that voice who his attacker is. “Vespa?” he says, awestruck.
“The hell do you think ‘keep quiet’ means?” she says.
“I—“ he’s caught between compliance and apology, catching the words in his throat. Slowly, the well at the cut in his neck spills over, and he feels a droplet of blood run cold as it rolls down to stain the crisp ivory collar of his shirt. The feeling of it sends a chill through him, clears his head for the first time since the ceiling shattered above him. He’s been caught. He’s in danger. He needs to disappear.
And still, his heart flutters when Vespa speaks to him again. “You and I are getting out of here. I just need you to tell me, when we go, who’s going to come looking for you?”
The question catches Peter off guard, more than anything else about this. It’s so alien to him that he doesn’t even begin to formulate an answer until Vespa snarls impatiently, “Well?”
“No one,” he stammers.
Vespa taps the flat of the blade against his neck and says, “If you’re lying, I’m making it your problem.”
“I’m not, I sw—”
“Hush.” Vespa drops the arm around his chest, instead grabbing him by the shoulder and shepherding him towards a high, arching set of glass doors that opens onto a balcony outside. Vespa’s hold on him shifts once they’re stopped in front of the door, just enough for him to feel her have to lean around him to get a clear look at its locking mechanism. She keeps the blade pressed a hair’s breadth from his throat all the while, offering no chance for a quick escape.
“Hands on the door, keep them where I can see them,” she says.
Peter obediently lays his hands against the cold glass. Still apparently dissatisfied, Vespa digs her elbow down into his shoulder, forcing him to drop down to one knee, and then crouch lower still as she leans over him. It’s odd, he realizes, pressed up as close to her as he is—for a figure so much larger than life, Vespa is a remarkably small woman.
There’s a high, electric buzzing sound as Vespa presses something against the lock. A spark and a burning smell, and then the blue glow fades as the shielding shuts off.
Vespa pushes him through the doors, out onto the balcony, and into the cold night air. Out here, he can hear sirens in the distance. Vespa draws in a sharp breath, grips his arm tight with the hand that’s not at his throat. But that can’t be right, because there’s no way they could be heading here already. His comms had stopped working as soon as the lights had cut—they were using a signal jammer.
“Damn it this is too soon,” she mutters under her breath.
Peter studies the streets, looking for the telltale flashing of red and blue, and he sees it, maybe ten blocks away. They’re coming closer, but— “It’s an ambulance,” he says. “They’re not coming here.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Vespa snaps, but loosens her grip on his arm nevertheless. “Wasn’t talking to anyone, just… talking to myself again.” She takes a slow breath, and Peter can practically hear her gritting her teeth.
Another moment passes. Peter tries not to shiver from the cold, and the fear, and the excitement, and then a sleek black car pulls up in front of the balcony with a sharp gust of wind. The driver’s side door flies open and Peter locks eyes with Buddy Aurinko. She shines him a smile, bright and soft and deadly all at once, an expression he’s practiced in front of a mirror a thousand times and never perfected. It leaves him breathless.
“Oh lovely, you found him,” she says, stepping out of the car. “Vespa, would you care to introduce us?”
“Not really. Let’s get out of here,” Vespa says. She lets go of him, drops the knife at his throat for the first time and climbs into the driver’s seat.
Buddy opens the door to the back seat and gestures for Peter to get in. “You heard her, darling.”
Peter can feel a blush creeping up his face, can barely stop staring—wide eyed, jaw dropped, stunned that Buddy Aurinko is even looking at him, much less speaking to him. Then she shifts her skirt, and he sees a blaster holstered at her thigh, and a piercing look in her eyes tells him not to keep them waiting.
As he gets into the car he realizes that brief moment might have been his only real chance for escape. With Vespa momentarily out of the way, maybe he could have pulled a knife on Buddy before she had a chance to reach for that blaster. Maybe he could have dropped down from the balcony and made a break for it. It’s too late now though, with Buddy sliding into the car next to him and pulling the door shut behind her.
The car takes off with a jolt. Buddy looks at Peter, her eyes appraising, calculating. Then she turns to Vespa. “He’s bleeding.”
“I told him not to move, it’s not my fault he didn’t listen,” she grumbles, but her hand is fishing something from a pocket, and a second later she’s passing back a bandaid and a sealed antiseptic wipe. Buddy takes Vespa’s hand before she takes what’s offered in it. Presses a kiss to Vespa’s knuckles and looks up into the rearview mirror to see a softened smile grace her lips.
“Do me a favor and clean that up, will you?” Buddy asks Peter, passing him the bandaid and wipe. “I try not to leave too much blood at a crime scene when I can help it.”
Peter stares down at her hands, not taking the supplies. “Where are you taking me?”
“That depends. I’m sure I’ll have made up my mind by the time we get there. Now, who are you?”
“I—“
“I did ask you to clean that up, didn’t I?” Buddy pushes the medical supplies into Peter’s hand, along with a small hand mirror.
Peter flicks the mirror open and sees Indigo Viceroy’s reflection. There’s something reassuring about that, at least—remembering that the mask is still on. Indigo Viceroy is more a piece of art than a person, and he likes it that way. Glitter and dark asymmetrical patterns sprawl out from his eye makeup, not quite enough to fool facial recognition if a camera catches full view of his face, but he’s gotten smarter at avoiding them these past couple years, so it’s enough to do the job. A deep purple hue paints his lips, albeit a bit smudged; he fixes that quickly before he even thinks about the wound on his neck. Indigo is vain above all else. He’s also, unfortunately, utterly useless here, a flimsy construction not made for anything more than being charming and distracting the rich while he robs them blind. It doesn’t take much, really.
He flits his eyes back up to Buddy before dealing with the cut on his neck, her gaze steady and dissatisfied and dangerous.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not say,” Peter says as he cleans up the wound.
Buddy’s lips curl into a cold smile, unfazed by his refusal to answer. “Emile Lord, was it? A waiter at the Alshain Bistro on Váli? And then it was Jason Viscount at the bank on Ymir. Razia Baron, Adrien Charlemagne, Hyacinth Archon, Peleus Vidame… am I missing any?”
Peter tries to appear unmoved, but he can feel the blood draining from his face. “I’m sorry, you must be confusing me with someone else. Several someones else, it seems.”
Buddy carries on as if he’d never spoken. “It’s impressive, really. Resumes, job applications, financial transactions, even family histories, for some of them. There’s a remarkable amount of information available, considering none of them even exist. Of course what makes it so difficult to track them down is the face. Terribly camera-shy, all of them.”
“Not everyone can achieve your level of celebrity status, Ms. Aurinko,” he says. It doesn’t come out sounding nearly as confident and composed as he’d like it to.
“And it seems you don’t particularly want to,” Buddy continues. “So. What is it that you want?”
Peter almost laughs at the simplicity of the question. What does he want? He’d wanted a chance to see his idols in action. Talking to them, being in this car with them, it’s at once more than he ever dreamed of and utterly terrifying. But instead of saying as much, he just smiles and says, “Your autograph?”
Buddy’s gaze darkens. There was an air of levity about her than Peter hadn’t entirely noticed until it disappeared. Now, she speaks with a burning severity, “I’m not here to play games, darling. You’ve been following us for months. If you won’t tell us why, then you can at least tell us where to mail your corpse so Dark Matters or whoever it is you’re working with can find it.”
Peter’s breath catches in his throat, and not in the awed, starstruck way that being this close to Buddy and Vespa does to him.
“Dark Matters is after you?” he says. Nothing he’s seen at any of their jobs has suggested Dark Matters’ involvement, but then, how would he know? He’s inexperienced enough that Dark Matters has only ever been a rumor to him, a frightening bedtime story to remind him to never get caught, to keep getting better. Even Mag had never run into them in his lifetime. If he had— well, maybe then Peter wouldn’t have his blood on his hands.
But Peter’s fine. Peter doesn’t need him. Peter did what he had to, and he can handle this on his own, can handle anything on his own, even Dark Matters, if need be.
But if anything might have caught their attention, Peter suspects, New Kinshasa would have beat out anything Buddy and Vespa had done.
His racing mind snaps back to Buddy when she speaks. “They could be,” she says, almost flippantly. It’s distressingly unhelpful. “You said it yourself, Vespa and I have quite a reputation.”
Peter purses his lips, tries to dig deeper. “But do you have any evidence? Besides me?”
“That’s nothing you need to worry about,” Buddy deflects.
This is getting him nowhere. Better, then, to just deal with the immediate issue at hand. “Why, because I’m going to be dead before I get a chance to find out?”
Buddy laughs. “Oh don’t be so crass, dear. Only if you don’t cooperate. So I’d suggest you start answering my questions soon. Starting with this one: who are you?” She leans in a little closer—almost imperceptibly—as she says that, like all she really wants is to get to know him, and all the threatening manner about her dissipates. He can see in that moment, in spite of all the fear she strikes into the heart of the galaxy, why she’s just as good a con woman as she is a robber.
But Peter doesn’t have the privilege of being known, with all the secrets he keeps. So he’ll only give away half the mystery. He does the first thing he can think to do and reaches into his pockets, grabbing handfuls of jewelry and spilling them out onto the seat between himself and Buddy. “This is all I was here for,” he says. “Picking pockets and enjoying the privilege of witnessing two of the greatest thieves in the galaxy.”
He frowns at the small collection of his spoils, and keeps rummaging through his pockets for more—wallets and watches and rings. There are other little bits of ephemera that make their way into the pile as well—a small knife disguised as a key. Tickets to an opera neither he nor the original ticket-holder ever saw. A pen he slipped into his pocket at a hotel several days ago, the end of it somewhat mangled where he’d been absently chewing on it. An engraved, silver teaspoon from some fancy cafe he’d been to. A couple of souvenir keychains with names on them—Lucius, Amal, Cassiopeia, Peter; his pulse quickens at that one. He doesn’t remember stealing the keychains at all, and he hastily shoves them and as many of the other objects as he can back into his pockets.
Buddy just watches it all pile up with an amused smile.
“Well.” She raises an eyebrow and picks up a gold necklace fashioned like the branches of a tree, and heavy-laden with rubies the size of cherries. “I suppose that’s one way to answer. Best thieves in the galaxy, what do you think of that, Vespa?”
Buddy turns away from Peter and leans forward, reaching around the seat in front of her to drum her fingers against Vespa’s shoulder.
“I think flattery’s not gonna get him anywhere,” Vespa says.
“Oh but isn’t it nice to be admired?” Buddy says.
“Sure, if he wasn’t stalking us too,” Vespa says.
Buddy leans back again and rolls her eyes fondly. Addressing Peter again, she says, “I assume I won’t be getting a name along with this answer?”
“That depends on what you’re willing to believe.”
“Very little, from your mouth, unfortunately. How about your latest alias, at least? It’s not polite, you know, giving a lady nothing to call you.”
“You seem to be managing quite fine. But if you insist, tonight I’m Indigo Viceroy.”
Buddy laughs at that. “Well, that does sound about right for the company you’ve been keeping. Any of them would overlook a forged invitation if the name on it was flashy enough.”
Peter knows that it’s safest to let people underestimate him, but it seems that modesty is a harder skill to cultivate than subtlety, so he corrects her. “The invitation wasn’t forged at all. Just the identity.”
And that seems to pique Buddy’s interest even more. “Oh? Then Indigo Viceroy must have friends in some very high places.”
Peter grins. “He knows how to make them. All it takes is saying the right words to the right people; half the time I don’t even need the forged ID.”
“And when you do?”
Peter reaches into the inner pocket of his blazer. He only keeps one thing there; anything marked with his face is too dangerous to risk losing. He hands a slim booklet to Buddy—Indigo Viceroy’s interplanetary passport.
Buddy flicks through the pages, examining each one quickly and methodically. She pays special attention to the careful inking of the watermarks, the texture of the laminate, the precise lines of coding that will insert his identity into citizens databases.
Instead of addressing Peter again, Buddy says to Vespa, “You’ll want to see this.”
Vespa tenses. “You’re getting an idea, aren’t you.”
“It would be a shame to see such immaculate work wasted on a job like this. Forsetti, Vespa. I think—”
“Do you, Bud? Because I think this job deserves a lot more consideration than a stranger’s forgery portfolio.”
“That’s not a no.”
Vespa sighs.
Peter furrows his brow, looking between the two, utterly excluded from this particular discussion.
“We’ll talk about it,” Vespa says.
“That’s all I ask.” Buddy turns her attention back to Peter. “You seem quite confident. How about this: you’re breaking into a building with only one ground floor entrance. In order to get in, you need a retina scan, fingerprint identification, and an authorized key card. The card’s codes shift every day, updated to the next day’s codes only when you leave the day before. Security can’t be disabled from the outside. How do you get in?”
Peter frowns and thinks for a moment. “Anything with security measures like that… you’re breaking into a planetary government building?”
“He’s sharp,” Vespa says. Peter can see her narrowed eyes in the rearview mirror.
“You like sharp things,” Buddy says, reaching forward to take a short curl of green hair trailing down the back of Vespa’s neck and twirl it around her finger.
“Don’t try to be cute,” Vespa counters. “You already are; it doesn’t do anything to help your case.” Then, to Peter, she says, “You’ve made a decent guess at the target, now answer the question. How do you get in?”
“Easy,” Peter replies automatically. “I’d pull a long con. There’s a good chance they keep interns around, otherwise a cleaning job should work just as well. I could falsify background information, get the job, and be handed all the keys I need.”
“Won’t work,” Vespa says shortly. “Besides, you really want to risk putting your fingerprints in a government database?”
“Of course not,” Peter says. “I don’t have any.” He’d burned them off after Brahma, not wanting to make up excuses to wear gloves during any con he pulled. It had cost a pretty penny to have the scars cleaned up, but the neat blank slate left behind would serve him well for the rest of his career in crime. “It’s not too difficult to make a new set with a simple makeup prosthetic, and the right product will scan just as easily as real skin. I’d use contacts for the retina scans as well.”
Vespa raises an eyebrow.
“So why won’t it work?”
“We only have a month,” Buddy clarifies. “Certainly not enough time to get the job you’re looking for, and if you can’t disable the security remotely, then you certainly can’t hack into it to put yourself on their payroll.”
“I’ll come up with something else, then,” he insists. “What do you need to do once you’re inside?”
“That’s not the question you should be asking,” Buddy says. “It’s what you need to do once you’re inside. We’ve had someone write a virus that will wipe out the security systems for us. We only need someone to get in and plant it in the building’s server room so that we can get in. You’d be opening the door for us.”
The reality of it finally sinks in. “You’re… offering me a job?” he says in amazement.
“We’re considering you for a job. But only if you can make a plan that will work,” Buddy says. “The Forsetti capitol building houses a museum with one of the most impressive collections of art and artifacts in the galaxy. Usually, with a museum job we’d just walk in the front door, but because it’s housed in a government building, security is a much bigger issue, and our employer would prefer that we use a more… delicate method than we usually do.”
“I shouldn’t need more than a week to research the target and make a plan,” Peter says quickly. “Please. I’d be honored to work with you.”
Vespa rolls her eyes with a pained sigh, but Buddy says, “We’ll have you meet us on Forsetti in a week, then. Bring us your plan, and make sure it’s a good one. I’ll message you the details.”
She pulls a burner comms from her pocket and hands it to him, and can’t stop an awed grin from spreading over his face. And then he’s thrown forward, as the car comes to an abrupt stop in an empty field. He looks around. Vespa gets out, opens the door for Buddy, and tosses Peter the keys to the car.
“Try not to get arrested for stealing this before we see you again,” Vespa says.
Buddy steps out of the car, and Peter sees a spaceship flicker into view, its light-deflecting cloaking shields dropping away. Buddy and Vespa board the ship, Buddy calling back, “We’ll see you in a week. It was a pleasure to meet you, darling,” as Peter stares with his jaw dropped.
He doesn’t manage a word in reply. The ships doors close, and it’s rumbling engine has roars to life and lifts them up into the stars. What follows is a deafening silence as he stares up into the sky until long after they’ve disappeared. And finally he sits down in the grass, grinning again, dizzy with joy.