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The first thing Beryll did when he woke up was say his mothers’ names. “Zircon? Titania?” comes out of his vocal box before he could even think about where he was, how he was, and oh-sweet-Cultivator it was so bright—
“Hey, hey, you’re okay. You’re okay,” someone said, and pushed him back from where he was struggling to see. This, of course, only caused him to struggle more, remembering where he should be and how he should be and how his back hurt— or, how it should hurt— and why did it feel strange, melded together, as if someone had taken scrap to him?
“Stop struggling— hey— Dad, Dad!” that same someone called, more to another person than to Beryll, and he got one good swing in and felt their hands recede from where he was laying, no longer trying to push him down.
A new pair of footsteps appears, and the lights are still so bright but his receptors are adjusting, and his head feels heavy for no reason—
“He hit me when I was trying to calm him down,” someone whispers, and the new set of footsteps settles close to him. A shadow blocks his vision, and Beryll picks up on the fuzziness, the hair on this person’s— Apex? Is that an Apex? Is that what an Apex looked like?— face, the wrinkles and the bags under his eyes, the flat monkey nose and the sharp ears.
“Young man, you’re safe now,” the Apex says, and places a hand on his shoulder.
Beryll pushes it away, scrambling backward. “Panicked. Where am I— who are you— where are my mothers?”
The words tumble out without an allowance, without any say— his tone wobbles, almost visibly shaking, and oh— his wires must be crossed, because he’s shaking. Beryllium Boronzoate Liumite doesn’t shake. He stands steady, hands still despite the storied negotiations he has to go through.
And here he is. Shaking.
But that’s what he needs to do, isn’t it? Stand steady. So Beryll narrows his gaze and steadies his mechanical breath and clenches his hands into fists. His memories weren’t true. These two, they— they must’ve messed with him, in some sort of shape or form. There was no rebellion. There was no death.
“You almost died,” the one in the back pipes up, and Beryll’s gaze snaps up to look behind the older Apex.
“Denima.” The younger one shrugs, one hand rubbing at her face. That must be where he hit her, and he feels a surge of pride at that. See? He can still fight.
“It’s true.”
“Haughty. I don’t believe you. Now unhand me and take me back to my planet,” Beryll declares, but he cannot deny that he’s trapped. Cannot deny that he’s still shaking.
Can deny his faulty memory, at least.
The older Apex sighs. “The— what was it, son, a rebellion? That was real, I’m afraid. You did almost die; we saved you. Your… hm. Your mothers didn’t make it out, I’m afraid. Must’ve gotten guillotined. We didn’t see anyone resembling you amongst the bodies.”
Beryll is still.
“I’m sorry. My— er, condolences. But you are alive, yes? You are alive and you are under my care now.”
Beryll doesn’t breathe.
“It might be hard, readjusting. You aren’t a noble, anymore. You’ll probably be shunned, and—”
“Afraid. You’re lying.”
“Son—”
“Furious. You’re— you’re lying to me. You messed with my memory just to take me away, and what even— I will take myself back, if you won’t,” Beryll says, back against the wall. The Apex reaches for him and Beryll swings, catching him squarely in the chin. He topples, and Beryll takes his chance to run, only stopped by his legs giving way under him.
It’s then that he looks down. His body is in pieces, wires hanging out every which way. They had desecrated the body that his mothers had oh-so carefully put together for him, and he couldn’t breathe.
His vision fails him, and his wires short-circuit.
He warms up to Denima and her father over time. Time enough for him to grieve, he thinks. He wants to believe that he’s healed. That he’s better. But they never talk about it, and he doesn’t want to broach the subject.
Beryll has gotten used to the attachment on his head, the scar on his back, his new nightmares. He’s finally started to be less wary of using their informal names in serious conversation. He’s even gotten used to the financial troubles they have, somehow managing to stay afloat. Somehow, Denima’s father has gotten both of them put into the Protectorate.
Sometimes, he wakes up to his mothers’ words echoing in his ears. Titania— he used to call her Momma when he was younger— telling him to count to ten. Zircon— affectionately Mom— telling him that it was just a bad dream.
And it is. It is just a bad dream. One he always wakes up from alone, with a sinking feeling that he’s doing it all wrong. He gets one new chance at life, and he’s fucking it up.
Beryll shakes.
The feeling only worsens at the Protectorate. He barely knows what he’s doing. He excels at negotiation classes— and even occasionally at fighting— but it’s hard in a way he’s never had to make peace with before. The other Circleerites Glitch jeer and do their best to get under his shell. He was always able to fight back before. Now, he’ll just be sent out of the school, sent away from his best chance at a new life.
In his darkest moments, he wishes he'd been left there to die. Sometimes it just feels like a world without Beryll would have been an easier one.
He gets a single, for some lucky reason, and is able to isolate himself from his friends— or, the friends Denima makes who call him their friend too. Then the university contacts him and asks if they can place someone in his room, and despite his reservations, he says yes.
His new roommate keeps him out of the dorm, but it doesn’t exactly propel him into the arms of Denima and her friends. He wanders the academy and the mall strip near it, finds the hills and the gardens in the city, all those secret places locals never talk about.
Beryll isn’t exactly a local anywhere, anymore. Upon realizing that, he stayed in bed all weekend, until Kuiper pestered him out of it. Annoyed yet relieved, he high-trailed it to Denima’s dorm, who accepted that yes, it was a Sunday, and yes, he wanted some alcohol.
He doesn’t say why. She doesn’t pressure him to. They’re good friends like that.
She doesn’t pressure him when, in drunken stupor, he takes her to his favorite memorial garden— the one with the monuments to fighters, flowers planted for those who died in battle— and they sit there in silence for a good 15 minutes before she buys him a water bottle and some ice cream.
After that, he’s all for hanging out, as long as it keeps him out of the streets and distracted. Distracted means he can’t think about watching his mothers bodies being pulled away in the street. Distracted means he can’t wish they’d called him Beryll. Distracted means he can’t dwell on how he wished for something grand to happen so his mothers would love him like he saw others loving their children— openly, unashamedly.
And so, survivors guilt wraps its way into suicidality. On Mother’s Day— did you know that’s really a holiday on Earth?— he tries to remain unaffected, but he skips class the next day.
There is no end to this, he thinks. There is no release.
When he goes with Kuiper over the summer, he sees how their mother treats them— the overprotective fussing, the obvious, loud “I love you”s. It’s terrible of him to want that, too, the way he wanted it when he was five, ten, fifteen. Terrible of him to take his mothers’ love and view it as not enough. But it wasn’t, really. He can accept it. Accept it and move on, like all the other things in his life. Like the rebellion, like surviving.
He can accept it and move on.
It’s dark, and August is hot, humid, blanketing the city. Classes start in a week. Sophomore year, and Beryll doesn’t feel ready at all.
He sleeps in tank tops and boxers, the danger of overheating his systems a constant. The dorm room is air conditioned, and he stays in there, watching Kuiper move all the assorted things from his home in. The home Kuiper can go to, with the family that isn’t dead, with a mother that loves him openly and unashamedly.
Beryll does not feel jealous, nor guilty. He doesn’t want to, at least, so he tells himself that he isn’t. No, he just sits there, insomnia hitting even after Kuiper has gone to sleep, and isn’t that an achievement? He stares at the sewn sweaters, and home-made sweets that wouldn’t last more than a few days, and the photo book on the table.
Seething. That’s a good word. He’s seething.
One night, it’s too hot for Kuiper to go to sleep. They talk a bit. Beryll really isn’t in the mood to discuss anything, anything at all, but Kuiper always is, and so he humors the star. Eventually, he tires of that, and so he climbs down from his bunk and tells Kuiper that he’s going for a quick walk. Kuiper’s brand scrunches as Beryll wrestles a pair of pants on.
“It’s real hot out there, Beryll. You’ll get fried.”
“Dismissive. It’s three in the morning, I’ll be fine. It’ll be quick.”
Kuiper nods and tells him to text them when he’s coming back. Beryll says he will, not really intending to do so, but it’s a nice thought, right?
Something twists in him when he gets outside. He shouldn’t be out here. It would be all too easy to get fried, and Cultivator knows the Circleerites Glitch would be all over that.
Why shouldn’t I? he thinks.
Where do I go? he thinks.
So he walks to the Soldier’s Memorial Park, and sits in front of his favorite memorial. It would’ve been Titania’s favorite, and it has Zircon’s favorite mineral embedded throughout. His fans are whirring, working overtime. It’s nearing 94 degrees, and the night wind is blistering, and the city’s ever–present lights don’t help at all.
It comes to him suddenly. He’s in a park dedicated to soldiers, and one of his mothers was a blacksmith, and the other didn’t get the grace of dying on the battlefield. They aren’t soldiers. This park isn’t a memorial to them, no matter how much he wants it to be.
Beryll shakes. He’s long admitted that he cannot cry, and so shaking is the next best option. Of course, this does nothing for the overheating problem.
His mothers failed. They died— and didn’t even die in battle. They weren’t soldiers. They would, in their celestial forms, hate that he comes here. They would hate this place. They would hate his attachment to it.
He feels his fans whir, faster now, but he pays it no mind. His breathing is quick and heavy. What does he tell Kuiper? Five things he can see, four things he can touch, three things he can hear?
They’d hate him.
It strikes him as he thinks it, and he doubles over instinctively. Like a gut wound, like a slash to the back, the words ooze from him, ringing in his ears. They wouldn’t. They would. But they wouldn’t— they’ll always love him. But they would— why would they love him if they’d never loved him the way he asked them too?
Why couldn’t have they been here instead of him? They wouldn’t have wasted this. They would have moved on by now.
But no. He survived, and he’s so stuck in the past that he cannot think without remembering them. Without being angry with them. Without grieving, feeling guilty, wanting them to take his place.
Wanting is all he knows. He wants, and wants, and wants, and then is so angry about wanting that he shakes in his sleep, skips classes, fails in his social life so spectacularly that it’s surprising that he even still has friends.
He needs to stop. He needs to change.
So, he straightens up. When he tries to stand, his legs lock, and he suddenly realizes how warm he is. His thoughts feel sluggish— not just from the panic attack. Beryll blinks, and the world fades in and out in front of him.
Huh.
He grabs for his phone— it’s somewhere in his pants pocket— and he goes to text a message to anyone, anyone that would listen, about where he is and why he is and he’s suddenly so, so scared because he can’t. His wrist catches on the seam of his pocket and it’s getting harder and harder to pull it out, to unstick it, and suddenly he’s thinking about getting fried.
Beryll doesn’t want to die. And, logically, he won’t— he’ll be found in the morning and everything will be fine. But just the concept— he can’t see his mothers like this. He can’t die like this.
In one last ditch effort, he rips his wrist from his pocket. The phone goes skittering across the grass, and he reaches for it, grasping for it, a fish out of water. Somehow his fingers smash onto the screen, hitting several letters and “send”. Something blinks across his vision, red and blinking— and he can’t focus enough to read it. His vision blurs, and he feels himself slump.
He’s trapped.
His vision fails him, and his wires short-circuit.
“Beryll— Beryll— hey, Beryll—”
“Bee, wake up—”
“Let me clear something from his wires out—”
“No, I can do this by myself, get away from him—”
“I’m a fucking mechanic, I can do this—”
“And I’m his best friend—”
His vision is blurry. There’s two people standing over him.
“Emotion-file-not-found. Zircon? Titania?” he asks, not wanting to call them something he’ll regret. They were always too afraid to have him call them Mom and Momma after he started his work.
“Hey— he’s awake!” One of them says, and they don’t sound like his Momma, nor his Mom. They don’t sound like Glitch at all. But he needs to talk to them.
“Emotion-file-not-found. Tell them— tell them—” he reaches out, not quite expecting the cool touch of a Glitch— and he’s right, the arm is hairy instead. Someone's hand clasps over his, rubbing back and forth. Well, he needs to get them to get his moms, that’s the only option. He needs them now.
He needs to tell them that he’s sorry. He’s so, so fucking sorry.
“Hey, hey, settle down,” the person soothes.
He continues. “Emotion-file-not-found. Tell them that I— I want to see them— I need to talk to them.”
“Denima, what’s he talking about?” The blue blob asks, a southern accent lacing its way through the suspicion creeping into their voice, and the Apex— Denima— turns their head toward them. Beryll takes this chance to try and move, since neither of them are doing anything. It occurs to him that he probably knows these two, if they’re here and his moms aren’t.
“Uh,” Denima says, and she pushes him back onto the bed. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell them. What do you want me to say?”
“Denima—” Blue blob— Kuiper? That sounds familiar— starts, moving closer.
“Shut up,” Denima hisses, placing a hand on Beryll’s face. It occurs to him that he’s not wearing his helmet. “Still hot.”
“Emotion-file-not-found. I need to talk to them,” he says again, insistent. Why aren’t they here?
“You’ll talk to them when you’re better,” the other person— yeah, that’s Kuiper, right?— says, speaking up. “We’ll get them when you’re feeling better.” But he sounds clueless, like he has no idea what Beryll’s talking about. Like he’s humoring him.
Beryll closes his eyes. “Emotion-file-not-found. I need them now.”
It comes out petulant, like a lost child.
“They aren’t here— but, um, they’ll be back soon,” Denima says, her voice soothing in a way he doesn’t quite know how to react to. In the back of his mind, it sounds like she’s trying to keep him from them. Keep them from him.
Hasn’t that been his entire life?
He stops struggling, and Denima’s hand moves away. “Don’t ask,” she mutters, and he realizes after a second that it’s not directed at him. Beryll doesn’t open his eyes.
“I’m gonna ask,” Kuiper says, but he’s moving away. Beryll can hear his footsteps, following another pair— probably Denima’s.
His moms will be here when he wakes up. That should be enough.
When he wakes up again, he sees Kuiper and Denima arguing.
“I don’t want you here,” Denima mutters, her back turned to Kuiper, “you’re not helping.”
“I helped clean out his fans! I cleaned the junk out of his wires! You couldn’t have done that without me!” Kuiper argues back, his corona aflame. “I’m his friend too, whether you like it or not, and—”
“Confused. What’s going on?” he asks, and they both turn around. Denima looks like she’s been crying, and Kuiper looks angrier than he’s seen them in a while, and he wants to know what caused that, but he really has no idea what’s going on.
“You fucking idiot!” Kuiper yells, and Denima punches them. Beryll blinks. It’s obvious the two had been spending too much time together, because Kuiper jumps back and downright scowls at her.
“Don’t call him that,” she says, venom dripping in her tone, and Kuiper gestures wildly.
“He could have died out there—”
“But he didn’t—”
“Outta pure luck!”
Beryll remembers sitting at the memorial. Beryll doesn’t remember that much else. That means something probably happened.
“Wary. Something happened,” he tries to give the both of them a chance to explain, so of course they both start at the same time.
“You fucking overheated like I told you that you would and I went all around campus and couldn’t find you and why the hell were you even in the city and—”
“You went to that park that you took me to once and you overheated and you’re lucky that I knew where you were because Cultivator knows you fuck off anywhere at all hours of the day—”
“Overwhelmed. I overheated? At the memorial?”
“Yes!” They synchronize, and then turn to glare at each other. Honestly, he doesn’t know what to say. Really, he was tempting fate when he’d gone out, but he didn’t actually think he’d overheat. He just needed a break. He just wanted to get away.
He needed to do something to stop being jealous, and guilty, and upset.
“Apologetic. I apologize, I needed— I–I didn’t think—”
“No, you didn’t!”
“Oh, shut up,” Denima hisses, and wipes at her eyes. “He needed something, you heard him. And besides, it’s not like you’re helping.”
Kuiper glares at her. “His need for something doesn’t override the fact that he was being a real big fool by going out there in the first place.”
“It’s not like you stopped him! And you heard him! He was asking for someone else when he woke up! He did the same thing when—”
“Piqued. What?” Beryll asks, not wanting to know the answer. What did he say? This had to be the first time he’d woken up. Right?
“When you were— not lucid, you mentioned a Zircon and Titania. You did the same thing when you woke up on our ship when we saved you. I don’t— you don’t talk about them at all. They must have been important enough to you if you went out in that heat,” Denima mutters, looking down. Kuiper is still, staring at Denima, and then back at Beryll.
There’s silence.
“Sullen. I don’t want to talk about it,” Beryll says, quiet.
Denima glares at him. “Fine! Fine,” she downright sneers, and Beryll feels himself grow hot, angry.
“Perceptive. What’s that look for?” He shoots back, unable to control himself.
“You never, ever want to talk about it,” she mutters, and clenches her first. “No matter what I do. No matter how hurt you are. How destructive you are. Do you know how that feels, as your friend?”
Kuiper is standing by, quiet, not saying anything, stunned into silence— or maybe, just maybe, they want to hear all the gruesome details of how and why and what is going on with him too, and he feels his fans start to whir.
“Upset. That’s none of your business. I don’t have to tell you anything,” he says, low and angry.
“You don’t talk about it at all,” Kuiper says, careful. “It’s hurting you, Beryll.” Beryll feels something in him snap.
“Angry. Maybe I just don’t fucking want to! Whatever it’s doing to me, I don’t really give a shit, and it’s none of your business!”
“We’re your friends—” Kuiper starts, but Denima butts in, and Beryll’s head starts to spin as they start to argue.
“It’s my business because I had to fucking fish you out of your suicidal, self-hating, asshole move of going to that place in that heat—”
“Don’t fucking say that to him—”
“I don’t give a singular shit, he’s my friend and you are being an annoyance—”
Beryll feels all the anger, and uncertainty, and guilt all wrapped up inside of him burst. “Furious. Shut up! Both of you, shut up! The only thing you’ve done since I’ve woken up is argue, and I’m tired of it. They were my mothers— I–I don’t want to talk about it. It’s all over and done with anyway, so what does it fucking matter?”
They stop.
They stare.
Denima stands, and is the first to speak. “I didn’t know—”
“Seething. It doesn’t matter. I’m going back to my dorm.” Or, he tries to do, as he swings off the bed and his legs lock. Kuiper rushes forward and catches him.
“Hold on there pardner, your legs aren’t completely fixed yet,” they say, voice quavering, and Beryll just glares.
He doesn’t talk to either of them for the rest of the night.
Classes start in three days, and Kuiper is working on his legs. They’ve all silently elected not to take him to the nurse— for some reason— and he’s tried his best to hold onto his anger for that time.
Honestly, he’s just sad now.
“Beryll,” Kuiper says, and it’s more quiet than Beryll is used to. Denima is sorting something on the other side of the room, and he watches her turn, about to cut Kuiper off. “You know that your feelings matter, right?”
“Confused. What?” Beryll says, shocked into speech, and Denima blinks.
“You— you said it was over and done with. An that it didn’ matter because of that. You know that it still— it’s affecting you, it still matters,” Kuiper explains, not even looking up from where he’s cleaning Beryll’s knee joint. “You lost people close to you. You’re allowed to keep that to yourself, but it’s— it’s not nothin’. It’s a real big somethin’, in fact.”
Beryll stares. Denima clears her throat. She looks away. “You never talk about this shit, Bee. It— it worries me. I’m sorry I was trying to force you to talk about it, though. That was shitty of me. But I’m here to listen, if you need to. Y’know. Talk.”
“Shocked. Oh,” he says.
Kuiper nods, and the room lapses back into silence.
Classes start in a day, and Beryll can move again. He still hasn’t left Denima’s dorm. Kuiper is gone, though, organizing their dorm. Hanging stuff up, or something.
“Unsure. Zircon and Titania wouldn’t call me by my name,” Beryll opens with, and Denima turns, opens her mouth, tilts her head, and then says:
“Yeah?”
He nods. “Informing. They weren’t allowed to. All they could say was ‘your Grace’.” He’s shaking. Denima looks away, humming in response. They’re on her floor, unpacking her multitudes of sweatpants.
“Nostalgic. I could call them Mom and Momma before I was properly trained, but they didn’t want me to after that. But on my birthday, they’d shake me awake early, before my duties, and they’d call me Beryll and give me a gift. Usually a knife— I had a lot of those— but it meant the world.” The sweatpants slip out of his grasp, and he stops folding.
“I get so angry with them sometimes,” he confesses, “I get so mad that they didn’t love me like I wanted them too. But they did love me. And I–I miss that. I— I don’t know, I’m should stop talking about this.”
Denima reaches over and puts one of her hands on his. He doesn’t look up.
“Upset. I miss them so much,” he continues, even though he should stop. He should. “They didn’t even— they don’t have graves. They didn’t even die in battle. And I get mad at them.”
Denima has stopped folding now, too. “Sometimes it’s not enough,” she says. “I dunno, Bee.”
He nods, and picks up the sweatpants again, this time with a more steady hand.
When he comes back to their dorm, Kuiper gives him a hug and tells him he really wasn’t that mad, just scared. They talk, and Kuiper asks if Beryll would like to call Marin with them. “I don’ want to be, uh, insensitive or— I just—” Kuiper stammers, and Beryll laughs and says something about wanting to give the two some family time, but he’s touched.
He’s doing better this semester, all things considered. Sometimes he’ll take Kuiper or Denima into the city. They avoid the memorial garden.
He doesn’t shake as much anymore, but he still thinks about them.
Maybe they’d be proud of him. Denima and Kuiper say they would be, anyway, when he deigned to open up about his worry about how they’d hate him. All this strife, and Beryll is still here.
That’s sure something to think about.
It’s September, on his birthday, and Denima knocks his shoulder on the way to their shared afternoon weapons class.
“I got something for you!” She sings, and then rustles around in her bag for something. Out comes a bottle of nail polish, lip gloss, sunscreen— all not for him, she assures him— and then out comes a small, 3-D replicated knife attached to a little clip.
“I had to talk to Kuiper to get this made for you. He knows the teachers better than I do. But it was my idea, don’t get it twisted! And you’d better thank me for working with him.”
Beryll shakes when he takes the knife. It has initials in its holder, a “T+Z”, and a “B” at the very bottom.
“I dunno, you told me that they gave you knives, so I just figured it might be nice, y’know?” She says, flipping her hair as she looks away, but Beryll sees the way she glances back at him.
“Touched. Thank you, Denima.”
The knife is small in his hands, nothing like a real one— one that Titania would have crafted. But it’s something— more than something, really. Beryll clips it to his bag.
He shakes when he pulls her in for a hug.
“Thank you.”