Work Text:
For as long as Aubrey could remember, she’d been looking for something bigger.
Something more .
Everywhere she’d been had felt so small, so simple, so… finite.
That probably had something to do with Aubrey being the living vessel of a primordial, planetary goddess of creation.
She used to dream of leaving West Virginia, of moving someplace bigger and louder and busier.
But now, now , as she sat on the back porch steps of Amnesty Lodge, she couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else.
Sylvain was great. Sylvain was awesome, and Aubrey loved it, but she’d left behind so much , and—
“Hey, uh,” Duck said, interrupting her thoughts. “You, uh. You doing alright?”
“Who, me?”
“Nah, the other person sitting alone on this porch while everyone else is inside celebrating—yeah, you,” Duck replied, sitting down beside her.
She punched him in the shoulder, and he didn’t even flinch.
“So Sylvain is good?” Duck asked. He had his arms propped up on his knees, his green and brown flannel rolled up around his elbows, and there was a bit of stubble on his face.
“Oh, yeah, it’s—she’s—we’re—good. All good. Or, uh. Getting there. Little bit every day and all that,” Aubrey said. “How’s… Brazil? You moved to Brazil?”
“Uh, yeah… I mean, there were all those fires, and I thought—well, I thought, you know, that’s a forest, looks like they could use, uh. Forest rangers and help and all that shit, so…”
“So it’s just you, down in Brazil by yourself?” Aubrey asked.
It’d been weird, not being around Duck after, well. Everything. They spent so long in each other’s pockets, the both of them and Ned.
She didn’t like the idea of Duck being alone.
Being alone was so hard , now.
“Nah, Juno’s there, and Minerva is… with me, and there’s always my Netflix queue if they’re busy—”
“You and Minerva, huh?”
“Yeah, me and Minerva.”
Aubrey laughed and held out a hand. “High-five for badass extraterrestrial girlfriends, dude!” she said, and Duck obliged after only a split second of hesitation, chuckling to himself.
There should have been another laugh, there, something lower and warmer and louder and bigger , but it wasn’t there, it wasn’t—
Duck cleared his throat after a moment. “So, uh, Kirby gave me the keys to the Cryptonomica van—”
“God yes, let’s go,” Aubrey interrupted, already pushing herself to her feet. “Like, this is great and all, but—”
“Yeah, I get you,” Duck said.
Of course he did.
It was him , and it was them , and if anyone could understand…
After all of it and everything, it had only been the two of them. Well, the two of them and Thacker, but Thacker…
It wasn’t the same.
The Cryptonomica van, however, seemed exactly how it was the last time Aubrey saw it.
Ned’s scarf hung on an arm rest. His coat was flung over the driver’s seat. There was a map of Kepler on one of the counters, covered in spiky, scribbled notes.
It was handwriting Aubrey knew well.
There was a letter written in that handwriting tucked into the pocket of her vest.
Duck started the van, and together they pulled out onto the open road, surrounded by the night sky.
Aubrey smiled as she stared up at the stars, and pressed play on Ned’s old tape deck.
They didn’t need to talk.
The van was full of the sounds of fiddles and guitars and steel drums, and Aubrey recognised the song immediately.
They’d spent an evening singing through this album, she and Ned belting the words as Duck muttered along, the windows open to the cool autumn air.
It was July, now, almost a year later, and the van was down one passenger, but the songs remained the same.
“You’re a waterfall rushing over me! I’m a thirsty man, let me drink you in!” Aubrey sang at the top of her lungs, hoping, hoping, maybe she’d be loud enough to cover up the quiet.
It wasn’t supposed to be quiet .
“I miss him,” Aubrey said a few minutes later as Gary LeVox sang about fast cars and freedom.
“Yeah,” Duck said quietly. “Me too.”
“The last thing I ever said to him was that I never wanted to see him again.”
“He sure did pick one hell of a time to actually listen.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Aubrey sighed. “I was lying.”
“I know you were.”
The stars were bright in Kepler, brighter than they were anywhere else Aubrey had ever been, travelling across the sky in constellations Aubrey hadn’t realised she’d missed so much until she saw them again.
She couldn’t help but smile, even as the brisk night air chilled the tears she hadn’t realised were running down her face.
Healing would take time, but those stars… those stars would always be there, waiting.
A reminder of home.