Work Text:
Raphaella la Cognizi had once heard that it was possible to graft the branches of different trees to each other. It wasn’t a new experiment but it was one she had still tried out eagerly. An orange branch on a lemon tree that still grew oranges . It was one of her first major experiments when she was still mortal; an innocent one, really. A harmless one. Very few of her experiments remained harmless anymore. But she had learnt a lot that day. She had learnt that you didn’t have to have all the original pieces to be whole. Raphaella had also learnt that additions weren’t necessary weaknesses .
Ever since she was a child, she had dreamed of flying. She had dreamed of soaring above everyone else; of true freedom. But of course, that had just been a childish daydream! Raphaella didn’t have wings! She couldn’t fly! No one could! It was...entirely illogical. Still, she always found herself thinking about the tree; of how additions could be made. It was what got her so interested in science. She had always been good at it but her interest...simply blossomed. That was how she found herself studying both biomedicine and neuroscience. Raphaella always had been a bit of an overachiever.
It was...enlightening. It gave her near perfect insight into how the body worked; how nerves worked. The university also gave her access to a unique set of equipment. When she had fantasized about flying as a child, it had never been with real wings. It had been metal ones. They would be more durable. They wouldn’t grow tired. They would have let her keep flying . Getting the materials she needed to actually make the many prototypes of the wings wasn’t easy nor was making them, but she managed. What was easier than expected was test subjects. Poor souls from the crowded city that wouldn’t be missed. Besides, they wouldn’t be gone forever! Raphaella always made sure the bodies were left in places they would be found!
Her experiments were in part based on old research papers she had found; existing results of adding metallic elements to human physiology. There had been an attempt to censor the doctor’s name but she could still make out the capital ‘C’ at the beginning. It would be a long time before she finally found out exactly what C stood for or met the results of C’s experiments. Her own implementations of the research were..messy. The subjects barely survived past her connecting her attempts at welding the wings to their shoulder blades. Honestly! You’d think they would be more eager to live! Even those that did survive would never fully cooperate! They would panic or freak out. Some would flat out refuse to test out the wings and others...Well, others just couldn’t fly. Raphaella really wasn’t fond of dealing with failed experiments but she couldn’t keep them alive. They were liabilities.
Raphaella’s body count was well into the twenties when she made the decision to test out the wings herself. She had...mostly worked out the issues at that point and those that remained hardly seemed lethal. She wouldn’t lie. Welding metal wings to her back and connecting them to her nerve endings was painful . It hurt more than anything else ever had but when she was finished? She could feel her wings! She could move them! It had worked! Just like the tree branch had! Though, testing them out was a tad...trial and error. It was hard keeping control of the wings; adjusting to both their weight and their movement. But she grew used to them. Though, there was one incident that didn’t quite make sense to Raphaella. She had over-estimated herself; tried to fly from some too high, and simply...fallen. By all means, Raphaella should have been dead. She should have died on the pavement. But she didn’t. She got back up and tried again.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long until she got caught. Not thatI it was overly surprising. Raphaella had left the wings on the bodies of her experiments. It would have been too much effort to remove them. When they asked her why she had done it, Raphaella had simply smiled. “Why, for scientific advancement! I could hardly just...give up.” That was apparently not the answer they had wanted to hear. Naturally, Raphaella found herself with a life sentence.
She should have died in prison. Her family and friends were quick to disown him, snapping her out of their lives like she was a rotten branch. They were protecting the tree as a whole by getting rid of the ‘unhealthy’ part; the dangerous part. But the longer she stayed in prison, the more apparent it became that Raphaella was not aging. Years and years passed but she looked no older than the day she was arrested.It scared the guards. It scared the fellow prisoners. It scared everyone. But still, her sentence remained a life one. No one wanted to let her out. She was a freak of nature! Raphaella once heard someone refer to her as a ‘fallen angel’. She hadn’t stopped laughing for days after. What a ridiculous notion! She wasn’t some celestial being. She was...simply one of them .
Raphaella never expected anyone to break her out of prison - least of all a group of gun wielding space pirates. But they had. They had blown up one of the prison walls and turned the prison into their own personal shooting range. Guards and prisoners were the same to them. Just targets. Only, unlike the other prisoners, Raphaella got back up every time they shot her down. If that didn’t grab their attention then the metal sticking out of her back certainly did. It was enough for them to stop shooting at her, at least. The revelation as to who se research she had followed was enough for them to insist she went with them - if only because apparently a new crew member would piss off Jonny. As Raphaella would go on to learn, pissing off Jonny always was a fun way to blow off some steam! With nothing worth staying for, she left with them. She officially became a Mechanism.
Things were...nice after that. She settled into her life on the Aurora easily enough. A few other members joined their mismatched crew. They soon became Raphaella’s friends and then...then they became something more. Raphaella had never thought much about love before. She had no reason to. But now...Well, it was hard to spend centuries with people and not grow fond of them. Sure, they kissed sometimes and cuddled and were just...sincere. But Raphaella had never called it love. She’d never thought about it before.
It wasn’t until the Toy Soldier directly told her how it felt that she fully clicked on. She had found herself snuggled up with TS and Ivy; both being rather insistent that she take a break from her work. Apparently spending over a week in her lab wasn't healthy - not even by immortal standards.They had practically dragged her to her bed. “We Only Do It Because We Love You, Raphaella!” The Toy Soldier’s voice was just as upbeat as usual.
“...What?”
“We love you…?” Confusion filled Ivy’s voice as she spoke; clearly unable to compute as to why Raphaella could possibly think otherwise. “In fact, there’s a 100% chance we all adore you deeply.” Her words were accompanied with a forehead kiss that made Raphaella’s face go every shade of red.
She couldn’t bring herself to speak for a few moments as Ivy and the Toy Soldier’s arms tightened around her, boxing her in with pure affection. Looking back on the centuries she had spent with them, it was obvious that they were far more than friends. It was a level of affection that went far deeper than words could describe. “...I love you too. Dearly.”
Raphaella thought back to the lemon tree with the orange branch; the experiment that had started all of this. Her lovers were like a tree; an amalgamation of different beings that had no right coming together. Mismatched branches welded to the same trunk. The universe was worse off by them meeting, but her life was vastly improved by it. Each branch may have been rotten inside but it was hers. They were hers .