Chapter Text
“Jonny! Wake up!”
Lily was bouncing up and down, grabbing onto his coat.
He blinked several times, looking up at her. She was wearing one of Ashes’s waistcoats over one of his shirts and he couldn’t even see the shorts she was wearing under it. Her hair had purple streaks in it- when did that happen?.
“What do you want, Lily?” he sat up and tried to push his hair out of his face, only to find that he was still mostly wearing his goggles. There were going to be red marks on his face when he did take them off. “Why is your hair purple?” He glanced down. His shirt had a lot of blood on it.
“It’s my birthday!” she announced proudly. “That’s why my hair is purple! Ashes did it!”
“What’s a birthday again?” he hadn’t ever celebrated his as a kid. He didn’t remember when it was.
“The day you were born! It means you’re older!” Lily tugged at his coat again. “We need to have a party!”
“How old are you again?” his head hurt a lot. There was more dried blood in his hair.
“I’m NINE now!”
Ashes followed Lily into the room, their hands stained purple from hair dye. “I told Lily Lemon here to leave you alone since you died what, three times last night?”
Jonny stood up, heavily leaning on the wall. “Four, probably. I don’t remember too clearly.”
“Jonny….” Lily wined, wrapping her arms around his leg. “We need to have a party….”
“How about you let Jonny here change his clothes so he’s not all bloody at your party?” Ashes looked up at Jonny. “I’d wash your hair too.”
“What happened toTim?”
“He has been up since I was coloring Lily’s hair. He drank less than you last night, and you only killed him twice.”
“Great. Fucking wonderful. I’m going to take a shower and then kill him again.” Jonny stomped out of the room
Everyone was in the kitchen when Jonny came back, gathered around Lily and the Toy Soldier as they drew an elaborate birthday cake on a blank paper ripped from the end of a book. Ivy looked rather upset about it.
Jonny picked up an opened milk carton from the counter and took a swig, only to realize it was whiskey. He drank it anyway, before actually looking at the carton. It was labeled “WHISKEY. NOT FOR LILY.” in raphealla’s handwriting.
“Who left this out?” he demanded, holding up the carton.
“You did.” Marius said, not taking his eyes off lily
Jonny made eye contact with Tim, who was looking as put together as Tim ever did and only had a little gunpowder on his face, and flipped him off.
“Not in front of Lily!” Marius said.
“You can curse in front of Lily, she’s used to it.”
Lily looked up from where she was coloring in the three tier cake her and the Toy Soldier were coloring, and cheerfully announced, “Fuck!”
“A swear? A swear? ” Marius practically yelled at both Lily and Jonny.
Jonny gave him a look he hoped translated to “I’m going to kill you later” as he took another drink from the whiskey milk carton.
“When’s your birthday?” Lily asked the Toy Soldier.
“I don’t have one, for I was never born.” it said. “However, I quite like the idea of having one. What day do you think I should pick?”
“How about tomorrow?” Lily suggested. “Then we can have a party tomorrow too.”
“I like that plan,” it said, before carefully drawing a curly mustache like its own on the cake.
Meanwhile, Jonny was glaring daggers at Marius, his hand on his gun.
“Ashes? When is your birthday?” Lily was altogether too excited about this, in Ashes’s opinion, although they had enjoyed doing the hair dye.
“Well, I was in an orphan house for the first eleven years of my life. I have no idea when I was born.”
“Pick a day then!” Lily reached up to ashes, who sighed and handed her their hat.
“How about the day I got my revenge .” Ashes pulled a lighter out of their pocket and flipped off the top, showing Lily the small flame that came out.
“Ohh! Revenge on who?” Lily tipped Ashes’s hat back from her eyes.
“My shit eating uncle.” they put the lighter back in their pocket. “Burned him and the whole planet too, after they burned me the first time. Smoke inhalation is a bitch, kid, don’t forget that.”
Marius glared at Ashes. “Watch. Your. language.” he hissed.
“Jonny, when’s your birthday?” Lily asked, completely oblivious to the invisible firefight above her head. “How old are you?”
His face softened as he looked down at her, an abrupt change from the glare he had been wearing a second ago.
“Well, I don’t remember how old I am. Probably close to a thousand, maybe two thousand, years now. My birthday, well,” he paused for a second, looking down at her smiling face. “That’d be the day we picked you up now, wouldn’t it.”
“Really?” She asked, practically glowing.
“yeah.” He reached down and ruffled her hair before turning his attention back to glaring at Marius and Tim.
“What about you, Ivy?” Lily asked, drawing a smiley face with a curly mustache on the back of the Toy Soldier’s wooden hand.
Ivy switched from looking distraught about the destruction of the book where the paper Lily was drawing on had come from to looking confused.
“I know this.” She said. “I actually know this.”
“What is it then?” Lily asked.
She shrugged. “I can’t remember anymore. I think it was in the fall.” She knew that meant nothing to Lily, who had lived her whole life on a starship.
Tim was trying to avoid eye contact with Jonny. Normally Tim would just pull a grenade out of his boot and chuck it on the table, but Lily was mortal and she was… bad with explosions and the mechs being dead near her. He was pretty sure Jonny wouldn’t kill him since Lily was there, but he would later as vengeance for that coat. Jonny loved the horrible old thing, insisting on mending it over and over and killing whoever had put the most recent bullet holes in it. Marius was in danger too, as he had tried to tell Lily off.
“What about you, Tim?” Lily asked. He looked over to her, glad for the excuse not to have to look at Jonny anymore.
“The day,” he began dramatically, “that I blew up the moon.”
“Don’t pick the day you died Tim, that’s depressing,” Raphealla said. She was investigating a jar of faintly glowing pink goo she had left on one of the shelves, that she had carefully labeled “RAPHEALLA’S DON'T TOUCH” to keep Lily from trying to eat it to see what it would taste like.
“Raph, that was the day I lived .” Tim spread his arms out and looked up at the ceiling as lily giggled.
“Why do we need birthdays again?” Marius asked, picking at a knife mark in the table to avoid looking at Jonny as Lily’s face fell.
“That’s it .” Jonny pulled out his gun. “You be nice to Lily.”
Marius froze, looking down the barrel of Jonny’s six shooter
“Damn it.” He whispered, before suddenly leaping into the table, and sprinting into the hallway as Jonny fried twice, striking the wall above his head.
“GET BACK HERE, YOU BASTARD SO I CAN SHOOT YOU PROPER!” Jonny started chasing Marius out the door.
“YOU CAN'T SHOOT ME TODAY!” Marius yelled back.
“AND WHY EXACTLY NOT.” Jonny fired two more shots in Marius’s direction.
“BECAUSE ITS MY BIRTHDAY!” Marius shrieked as another gunshot went off.
“FUCK YOU!” Jonny yelled, but he put his gun away and sulked back into the room.
“Marius! It’s your birthday too?” Lily asked. “How old are you?”
Marius walked back into the room with an amount of swagger Jonny found very annoying, fiddling with a rip in his shirt. “Five hundred…. and twenty six.” He said.
“You just made that up.” Ivy said.
“I did. ” Marius took a pen from the Toy Soldiers hand and, on the drawing of the cake under the words “LILY! NINE!” He added in small letters “Marius Von Raum! 526!”
“What else do you do on birthdays?” Brian asked. He had been very quiet, not wanting to get shot by Jonny, either now or later.
“Well,” Lily said. “We decorate and we make cake and eat snacks and give each other presents, like when Ashes did my hair or Tim gave me this!” she pulled a small laser pistol out of her boot, set to stun and decorated with rainbow stripes.
All of the mechs except the Toy Soldier all looked at each other, thinking the same thing.
“You get people GIFTS on their birthday?” Marius souded pleased, while Jonny, who had spoken at the same time, sounded horrified.
Brian, very quietly, whispered. “Oh, shit.”