Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You? You’re no person.”

Tuba closes her eyes as she falls. She doesn't want the last thing she sees to be Simon's face, though at the same time she's glad he waited until Hazel was gone. A surprising amount of charity, from him. The girl doesn't need to see this.   

If Simon has something to say as he sends her to her death, Tuba doesn't hear it. Good, she thinks, because he doesn't deserve an audience for his cruelty. The roar of the train against its tracks is deafening, louder than she ever was, coupled with the mechanical shifts and hisses of machinery and, of course, the rumble of the wheels. Tuba lets her body go slack, some instinct telling her that the impact will only be worse if she’s tensed. Limp, deafened, and blind, she could almost be sleeping. It’s a nice thought. 

She doesn’t get to hold onto it for long.                                                                                     

The hands that wrench at Tuba’s shoulders are rough and cold, wasting no time for comfort as they seize handfuls of fur and drag her up against the body of the train, then in.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

"Got her, got her, got her!” a voice promises, and she slams down into something soft, then rolls onto something hard, the momentum of her fall leaving her helpless in motion before she finally comes to a stop on her back.                                                                                                                                                                                           

“Told you we needed a bigger landing pad.” A different voice, lower. Not Simon, not Hazel or Grace, not any other voice Tuba knows.                                                  

She’s afraid to open her eyes, her heart pounding, her body playing dead, all of her in shock. The floor below her rumbles with a familiar tune, though the rhythm of the train is rougher, closer, here, than in the cars. She is not falling, not dashed against the wasteland rocks or crushed beneath the wheels. Tuba is . . .                        

“Alive,” she murmurs, and at last takes the risk of blinking up at her surroundings. She’s never seen a place like this before, in all her travels.                                                                           

It’s a room in the shape of a car, though the ceiling is low, so low that if she stood from her prone position she’d be forced to hunch over. It’s dim, lit with miner’s lamps like a half-finished construction site, though light from the wastelands filters in through the chunks of the walls that are skeletal scaffold, not the heavy metal plating that armors most of the upper train. The light from those windows is scarce and flickering, the sky blocked out by rushes of machinery that roar by the sides of this space every few seconds.                                                                                

The wheels?            

Tuba’s stomach lurches. Just the thought of the wheels, of what they mean to the Apex, of what they almost meant for her, makes her feel sick, and seeing their brutality this close up doesn’t help. She wretches, curling into herself, a low note escaping her instruments, and her companions in this strange space make themselves known.    

“Woah, woah!” The cold hand is back, gentler now, on her shoulder. “You were right, you’re alive, remember, hold onto that!”              

“Easy, Erl. I mean, I tried to bite your arm off when you saved me, and this one looks like she’s got almost as mean a bite.” The lower voice, from behind her. Tuba doesn’t like feeling surrounded, not after the day she’s had. She bites back her bile and rolls over and up, until she’s hunched on her back legs with the edges of her instruments scraping the ceiling, keeping her back to a solid portion of wall.                                                                                                                          

“I’m alive,” she murmurs again, half to herself, feeling the ache of the bruises Simon left when he crushed her hand.

“Yes,” agrees the one she assumes to be Erl, with relief. “And we’re very glad.”

Erl, cold and rough-handed, is a silver person, metallic and passenger-shaped. Tuba can see her own mussed and shell-shocked reflection in their face.

“Thanks to us,” adds low-voice, her face guarded but not unkind, her arms crossed. “You’re welcome. I’m Anise.” 

To Tuba, she’s a far more alien creature, and she has no doubt Anise is another denizen of the train. She’s passenger-shaped too, though in a much looser sense than Erl was, short and stocky and wide-chested where they are tall and soft-shouldered. Her skin is scaled, sandy-colored and mottled, and her head flat, with a curved beak and dark, beady eyes; A snapping turtle of a woman, dressed in plate armor of many thick, overlapping shells.                       

If Tuba were the nosy type--if Tuba were Hazel--she’d ask if Anise grew them herself. Instead, she nods to her new company.             

“I’m Tuba,” she offers up. “It’s very nice to meet you. I need to find my passenger.”                                                                        

Erl beams, the reflection off their silver teeth almost blinding, and they open their arms in a grand gesture to the cramped space. Anise rolls her eyes, and Tuba gets the distinct sense that this is a moment Erl’s been waiting for.

“Welcome,” announces the metal denizen, returning Tuba’s nod with a knowing wink, “To the Undercarriage.”

“The what,” rumbles Tuba. Anise chuckles. 

"I told you, Sterling," she says affectionately, under her breath, then, to Tuba, "Tuba, I can tell you're a little more practical than my shiny friend here, so let me lay it out. We grab people who get wheeled by the passengers, and pull 'em into this crawlspace under the main cars. Passengers don't tend to get down here--they hate the wheels, since they're so soft and fleshy. You're free to do what you want, now, though you might want to lay low with us. I heard some nasty human monologuing up there."

Tuba glances around, from the pile of mattresses and blankets she made her landing on, to the swathes of paper tacked to one wall, depicting maps of sections of the train that have been scribbled-over and crossed-out beyond help.

The snapping-woman's beak shifts into a wry smile, and something in Tuba's chest loosens. She chuckles, becoming a low-register orchestra as she imagines Simon's reaction to such a label. The two denizens watch her with polite wariness, giving in to laughter, too, when Anise decides Tuba's instruments aren't a danger and puts a scaly hand on her arm. 

"I like you, Tuba," Erl smiles. "You're welcome to stay as long as you'd like, but you mentioned a passenger? Not the bastard who dropped you, I assume."

Tuba stills, sobering, remembering Hazel's distraught face as Grace led her away. She couldn't be too far away, not yet, might even be in the car overhead. She frowns.

"Yes. My--a child. Her name is Hazel, she was taken away by another passenger." 

Erl scowls, and Anise's eyes darken. "That creep has your kid?"

Tuba doesn't correct her. "His companion does. Hazel was told he stayed behind to help me. When he returns, she'll be upset, and . . . I don't know how they'll react. I'm worried for her."

Anise nods, adjusting her shell-armor. "You want backup, or you need to go alone?"

Tuba assesses the two of them, denizens like her, forced into hiding from the cruel side of the passengers. They are ready, already, after saving her life, to risk their own for her passenger friend. There will be no one to catch them if they fall. She shakes her head.

"I'll go alone. Thank you. I know who I'm dealing with now." She rolls her shoulders, feeling the strain from her rough landing.

"One last thing?" It's Erl who catches her attention last before she begins her ascent. "If your Hazel needs a place to stay . . . we usually don't harbor passengers in the Undercarriage, but I think we could make an exception."

Tuba's face softens into a smile, imagining Hazel's delight at meeting a person made of mirror and a snapping-turtle knight, let alone their secret clubhouse.

"Yes. I think she'd like that."

Chapter Text

“Grace!” Simon calls through cupped hands. Environment cars are the worst for getting split up in. He makes a face at what looks like a walking marshmallow, sending it scurrying. “Grace, I’m back!” He takes a breath to call again.

Then he feels it.

Simon freezes, his hands curled white-knuckled on his pack as the forest floor shakes beneath him. He knows what it is without turning around; footsteps, weighted down with brass instruments and fur and fury.

“Simon.”

Its voice sends an awful jolt down his spine, heavy with more emotion than Tuba’s ever directed towards him, at least before he wheeled her. Simon spins to face her and regrets it almost immediately, the null the size of an elephant bounding through the trees at him, her dark eyes fixed with single-minded purpose. He thinks, vaguely, that it’s serendipity that they’d meet again in another forest. He thinks, more urgently, that she’s supposed to be gone.

The null doesn’t wait for him to respond, which is probably for the best, because he’s still processing this, stumbling back until he hits a tree. He failed.

He can’t let Grace see this thing still alive.

“Where is Hazel,” Tuba demands. It’s barely a question. She stops a meter from him, close enough that he can see how the fall from the train blew back her fur, close enough that he can see the strength under her pelt, the tight anger in her face.

She could snap his neck, crush him, in an instant, she should, for what he did to her, it’s what he would do--but as Simon wills his heartbeat to slow, counting down the digits on his arm like Grace taught him when he used to panic, 8, 3, 6, 6, he’s certain she won’t.

What was it Hazel had said when they’d first met? “Hitting is wrong, Tuba!”
What a goddamn child. Simon shakes his head, breathing slowing. He’s sure now that this is supposed to be one of the harmless ones, a simple, smiling automaton to usher passengers along. Nothing to be too afraid of.

Tuba shakes the ground again with one fist.

“Where is Hazel?”

Simon takes another breath, 7, 1, 2, 9, and puts on a harsh, self-righteous smile of his own. It’s a very familiar one, easy to pull on when he’s afraid; he’s self-aware enough to know he’s a harsh, self-righteous man by nature. And if this stubborn monkey doesn’t give up, he’s happy to show her that all over again. He lets his teeth show.

“She’ll be with the Apex by now.” He gestures at the symbol on his chest, in case the null doesn’t get it. “With us, remember? Safe and sound. Just go home to your pineapples, if you don’t want to finish what we started out there.”

Tuba’s face is unreadable, already a fangy frown, but she takes another step towards him. Simon thumbs the triggers of his harpoon pack, and digs his grave a little deeper, holding his ground. As afraid as he is of Tuba’s size, goading a null into a fight would help him get some of this nervous energy out of his system, he thinks. His worries about Grace, his irritation with the kid--and hey, maybe they can melt down those useless instruments into something sharp.

“Look, you’ll never get to her, null. She’s with her people now. People like me, like Grace, that’s what a weak kid like her needs. She doesn’t need a big blue crutch,” he bites out with a cruel grin, and that’s what breaks the tension. Tuba roars, Simon cringes back, and he shoots both harpoons square into her chest.

Simon, Tuba registers, has shot her. Two slugs of metal, the magnetic ones Grace’s people use to swing, thunk against her body, sending her stumbling back before they fall to the forest floor. Just more bruising, she decides. She’ll live. She bares her fangs in earnest, watching Simon scramble to retract the harpoons for another go, watching him duck around the tree like they’re playing hide-and-seek. But that’s Hazel’s game, and Tuba isn’t going to let him play.

She roars, and is glad again that Hazel isn’t with her, because she doesn’t want her to see this. Tuba bounds forwards, wrapping one arm around the tree and snagging Simon’s pack with the other, dragging him up into the air with a yelp before slamming him down.

“You people do not deserve Hazel,” Tuba snarls, gratified to see his awful smile collapse, and swings him up again against the tree’s trunk, so they’re eye-level. “We’re family. You obviously don’t understand what that means. But that’s okay.” She pulls him closer and slams him back against the tree again, for good measure. In the back of her mind, she registers that he’s gone paler than usual, his breaths ragged. The wind knocked out of him, she judges, and she doesn’t really care.

“I’m not going to kill you, Simon,” Tuba tells him, exercising really incredible restraint. “Because I don’t want to. I don’t like killing, and I’m not going to do anything else I don’t like for you. I’m finding Hazel and going home.”

Simon spits at her, weakly. She ignores it. He looks awfully young without all his spite and bravado. She sighs, heavily, looks around for a sturdy high branch, high enough it'll take him a bit to get down, and throws the man unceremoniously over it.

“Grow up, Simon,” she mutters. “Grow out of this. Or you’re going to end up hurt worse.” She snaps the straps of his harpoon pack easily with one hand, gathering the device carefully in the other to take with her. A present for Hazel when she finds her. Simon doesn’t respond, though whether he’s dazed or just thinking she isn’t sure.

“Grow up,” she repeats over her shoulder, as she starts out into the forest to find her girl.

It’s the best advice she can think to give.