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Bertie's a big ox of a man, tall and strong and muscular where Tim had always been kind of skinny and gangly. He is also, without fail, kind- when the rest of the 42nd Battalion asks Tim to carry the supplies from place to place, Bertie jumps in to do it instead- he can sling the heavy bags of gunpowder and gun oil over a shoulder, and Tim- who'd always had snipers' eyes- helps him out, in boot camp.
When people need gunpowder, they shout, "Gunpowder," and Bertie comes running. Eventually it becomes their injoke- Bertie's funny and charismatic and responds to "Gunpowder" just as much as he does "Bertie," and soon, for every person who uses it as his nickname, there's a person who never knew his name in the first place.
When they get to the moon, it's pitch black in the tunnels. Tim stops leaving Bertie's side for any reason whatsoever. They become a unit. Bertie-and-Tim. Gunpowder-and-Tim. One isn't without the other. They were joined at the hip before; now they sleep in the same bunk, for comfort and warmth and safety. And for companionship, of course. As children their sleepovers had been frequently interrupted by them chattering and giggling- now they don't need to say anything. Tim knows what Bertie's feeling just by the look in his eyes, or what of it he can see in the pitch dark, and the feeling of Bertie's breath against his face and neck.
Bertie dies.
Tim doesn't.
It's the first day afterward- and isn't that a thought, Tim dividing his life into Bertie and post-Bertie- and someone unthinkingly shouts, "Hey, Gunpowder, Tim!"
and Tim, half-lunatic, half-grieving, laughs maniacally, says "That's me, Gunpowder Tim!" and the people around him give him looks of bone-deep pity, grief, and horrible, horrible fear, and Tim can barely see anything through the blood-red rage and the tears that have begun to form in his eyes, but when people start calling him Gunpowder Tim he answers anyway, because he always responded to their calls of "Gunpowder" when Bertie was alive, why not now?
When Tim gets mechanized, he doesn’t correct Jonny. He’s furious at Jonny, at the other Mechanisms, at Bertie for dying, at himself for not, and when Jonny introduces him to the other Mechanisms as Gunpowder Tim he has to take a deep breath because his entire face aches so deep he can feel it in his bones and his useless burnt out tear ducts still feel like- all his anger was burnt out with the nova-force explosion, and it’s left only raw aching grief in its place, and he wants to cry and scream and rage but he can’t do any of them so he stands there exhaustedly in front of the people who made him this way for another second and a half before turning and walking away
Later, years later, he talks to Brian about it, because Drumbot Brian who doesn’t remember his past and was named based off a tattoo might be the only one who gets it. He sits next to him, leans his head against Brian’s leg just enough to express vulnerability without fully showing his neck, and tells the whole story. Brian just listens as Tim explains, and then asks, “You still feel like that now?”
“No,” Tim exhales, tired all of a sudden. “No, I feel like I’m- like he’s with me. Like it’s my way to remember what really happened. But- but it was his.”
“And now it’s yours,” Brian says. “You’re putting it to good use.”
“He’d laugh at me.”
“I don’t think he would,” Brian says.
“You’re right. He’d probably cry. The sap.” It doesn’t have heat behind it. He doesn’t have the heart to put the heat behind it. He doesn’t know if he could ever have put heat behind it.
It’s his name now, anyway. Tim’s never been afraid of stealing things. He already stole Bertie’s warmth at night, his time, Bertie joked about Tim stealing his heart. What was a name to all of that?