Work Text:
The depths of the ocean beckon below and above and below again as his heavy slow body sinks or rises or drifts with the waves. Aventurine tries to tell but can’t, thoughts muddied in clear waters. There are lights above, he thinks, but it is not the moon and stars. It is a heaviness that rests in his bones, a heaviness soon to find his lungs as he parts his sluggish lips to draw breath.
Water rushes inside his mouth and his mind finds itself too dull to panic. It hurts, somewhere far removed from him, it hurts as it would in a dream. His chest expanding uselessly, every part of him dead weight. He laughs and drowns faster for it. He is sinking slow. To his right, the shimmering scales of fish. Below, the depths. Above-
Something breaks the light, dives towards him and takes hold of his collar. He is tugged up and into blinding being, into a sea no more familiar.
Aventurine coughs and sputters and vomits hot water until his lungs ache, until his throat is sore and his tongue tastes like bile. The world is askew, indecipherable. Wet fabric clings to his shivering body and he is heavy, so heavy, thoughts dim and limbs leaden.
“Are you crazy?” someone snaps and their voice is the chime of a bell humming in his ears where his pulse beats fast. “Aventurine, what were you-“
“Ow,” Aventurine gets out. “Loud. Hurts.”
They fall quiet, mercifully. He sways and feels the ocean sway with him. The ocean? There is glass under his fingertips, there is a ceiling above. The light breaks and he stumbles until the hand on his collar is joined by one on his hip.
“Mr. Aventurine,” they say, slower and lower and so melodious it becomes a song to him. “Can you hear me? Can you look at me?”
Aventurine blinks. The world comes into view, blurry and unfocused. He reaches up and his hand bumps into his nose. A dull ache. Vague shapes, drawn out, a whirlwind of surrounding him. The water laps at his sides.
The hand steadying him stays on his chest. Another touches his chin and Aventurine feels his head turn, one side to the other. Appraising a face, his teeth. Meat. A good purchase.
It takes him a while to understand the whimper he hears is his own voice. His own trembling body, soaked through, labored breaths. The hand retreats. He chases it, shame curling in his chest.
“He was drugged,” the first person says to a shadow moving to their right. Worry in a soft voice. The words don’t make sense but they are pretty. Aventurine laughs, the whirlwind spinning again.
The shadow replies with a much lower tone. A rumble like thunder approaching.
“We can’t just leave him here,” the first one says, entreating, firm.
“You can’t,” the shadow adds.
Aventurine clings to the hand that dragged him from his watery grave. His legs jitter and everything is cold and drenched and any time he takes a step it feels like being swallowed by the earth. Expecting a stair to continue when it doesn’t, his whole body fumbling trying to find purchase on reality.
“Mr. Aventurine,” the first person says. “You are going to have to lean on me if you want to walk.”
Aventurine hums. The warmth of another body next to him, cozy and comfortable and smelling nice. He leans into them, gladly, and giggles as something brushes his face. Feathers, softer than silk.
“Songbird,” Aventurine slurs.
The shadow speaks behind them. The songbird does not reply. They keep him steady, and close, and Aventurine feels giddy and nauseous and sorrowful and does not remember a single reason why.
Aventurine sits when they nudge him to, his knees buckling on their own.
“I will get you some water and a towel to dry you off,” the songbird tells him. “Do you feel unwell? Are you in pain?”
“Dizzy,” Aventurine says. “Don’t leave. Your voice is pretty.”
Silence for a moment.
“I will be right back.”
Aventurine lays down where he is sitting, his temple pressed to something rough but not metal. Not rock. Not grass. Not-
“This was not in the script,” the shadow says. No judgment, a simply assertion. They speak with certainty and gravity, every word a burden. On themselves? On someone. Aventurine does not hear the reply.
He shudders as the touch returns.
“You have to sit up,” the bird sings to him. “I’ll help you drink but you need to sit up first.”
Aventurine nods. Some of the shapes start to look familiar. Colors he has seen before. The touch to his jaw is tender and the water crystal clear. He drinks deep, greedy, and shudders again as the cold sets into his bones.
“We need to get you out of these clothes or you will get sick,” the songbird says. “Is that alright?”
Aventurine nods. Was it the rain? The ocean? The surface above?
He slips away into dreams, a towel rubbing his hair dry a faint sensation at the edge of his perception. He feels good. Light. Safe.
“Friend of yours?”
“Oh, I do not believe he would enjoy hearing you say that.”
“He seemed content trusting you.”
“Because he does not know who I am.”
The seat’s pattern has pressed into his cheek for so long that Aventurine can feel the lines mirrored on his skin as he wakes up. His head pounds but there is a comfortable heaviness to his limbs. He tries to move but every twitch takes an hour and his body barely budges. His eyes, however, clear, with a blink.
The engine hums, the purr of a ship in motion. Through the wide windows the stars beckon in myriads.
Aventurine blinks again. Someone sits ahead of him in the pilot’s seat, unmoving and silent. Their long hair spills out into view sometimes. He watches the strands sway as they turn their head.
“Our guest seems to have awoken,” they say and they are the shadow out of the corner of his eye. Their stare is amber and honey and unblinking before it returns to the stars ahead.
The shadow’s words stir movement beside him and Aventurine blinks a third time. The songbird stayed beside him, crammed into the small space on the ship’s backseat. His stomach twists and turns but not as much as it should. A twinge rather than turmoil.
Sunday watches him with a crease in his brow, concern undisguised. His time as a fugitive has changed little about him. Only his clothes are a darker shade, fewer eyes, fewer holy symbols. Dark purple and black. His hair is still light and so are the wings adorning his head. They flap once as their eyes meet and Sunday reaches up to keep them still.
“Mr. Aventurine,” he says, his voice still lowered to wherever it did not hurt the first time. “You look more lucid than before. Can you hear me?”
Aventurine stares at him and their intertwined hands, the black-gloved hand he grasped in his stupor and never let go of in his sleep. Sunday clears his throat.
“This isn’t optimal but-“
“I can hear you,” Aventurine replies and his voice still stretches syllables long without his consent.
Sunday nods. The movement of his wings is mesmerizing, soft blue-grey feathers bouncing and swaying.
“That is… good. Are you in pain?”
“Head hurts.”
“I am not sure if it is wise to administer painkillers in this stage, unfortunately.”
“You have your powers,” the shadow says from the front and Sunday stiffens fast, a reflex carefully hewn into him.
“No,” he says before turning to Aventurine once more. “You were drugged by someone at the casino on Asto-II’s space station, it seems. They appear to have thrown you into their decorative fish tank hoping you would simply drown.”
Floating in space, in an endless ocean, or perhaps only a shallow puddle. Aventurine doesn’t laugh.
“I was surprised, I admit,” Sunday says. “I did not know your luck could run out.”
Aventurine shifts and his body still barely moves. A nudge when he wants a leap. Increments. He glances at the hand in his and feels a pang of something when Sunday abruptly lets go.
“It looks like it did not.”
“If you were in your right mind you would not call chancing upon me lucky,” Sunday answers dryly. “You do remember me, yes? Or has your memory suffered?”
Aventurine stares, a pit in his stomach. The wings twitch one more time, cute little things, feathers soft and shiny.
“I thought we could get along,” he says with a heavy tongue and watches confusion morph into dismay. “When we first met. I thought maybe you could be someone who understands, picked up for your powers, shaped into a tool. Funny, that.”
Sunday presses his lips together. He folds his gloved hands on his leg, forcing his fingers to intertwine and stay still.
“At least now you have the certainty of knowing that is untrue.”
“Yeah,” Aventurine mumbles. “I do.”
“You were in no condition to answer questions,” Sunday continues. “So we took you to a hotel. However, due to our current… occupation we had to leave in a hurry. Your phone is out of commission, otherwise I would have tried to contact that Doctor of yours to pick you up.”
“Mhmm.”
“We tried to put the phone in rice,” the man in the front seat adds.
Aventurine chuckles.
“That usually works.”
“It didn’t.”
“Must’ve done it wrong.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” the man says. “It’s a long way down.”
Sunday sits up straighter.
“Blade,” he says, irritated. “That’s not- we’re not going to throw you out of the window, Mr. Aventurine.”
‘Blade’ laughs.
“And Kafka says I'm bad with jokes.”
“It’s not a joke if he- If I-“
Aventurine groans, his head spinning. He closes his eyes again and rests his cheek on the seat. The voices blur into each other, disharmonious, discordant. Kaleidoscopic mirages following every sound, coalescing into pupils and red sand and the timer in his heart ticking down to zero. Branded a lost cause. Branded property.
Aventurine wakes with a mouth so dry his tongue hurts to move. He coughs and tries to sit up reflexively. His body obeys, gets him up halfway before the nausea forces him back down.
“Don’t move,” Blade says from the front seat. The ship is still. No one else is with them.
Aventurine obeys, for now, grimacing.
“Did your fight escalate so much you tossed the bird out of the window?”
“No.”
“Shame.”
“Birds can fly.”
“Not this one,” Aventurine says. “Does he call you Blade because you’re a tool to him? Is he in your head?”
Blade fixes him with a bored look. There is amusement buried somewhere below, faint as a stray thought.
“He calls me that because it is my name.”
Aventurine’s racing heart slows. Calm waves, growing gentler with the moon.
“Ah.”
“He is in my head, however.”
A spike of fear, of anger, of pure unadulterated terror.
“What-“
“I asked him to be,” Blade continues, unbothered. “Soothing my illness comes easily to him, as reluctant a healer he may be.”
Aventurine huffs.
“You are polite for a wanted murderer.”
“I am an undying abomination of the Abundance,” Blade replies. “And you should not move and let the effects of the drug fade.”
“Where’s Sunday?”
“Not here.”
“Planning to-“
“Getting you some water and food,” Blade tells him. “If I recall correctly.”
Aventurine rests his head once more, the corners of his mouth downturned. A grudging, gradual acceptance. There was an ocean to drown in, no matter how small, and Sunday did not have to reach for the hapless creature tossed in.
Any words of gratitude still don’t make it past his lips as Sunday returns. Aventurine watches every controlled motion. Sunday sits in the ship’s back seat, locks the door once, then twice, then one more time. He shifts as he notices he is being watched.
“How are you feeling?” he asks. “Do you think you are able to eat and drink on your own?”
Aventurine’s stomach growls on command. He huffs, trying for a lazy smile.
“If I say no, will you nurse me back to health like a baby bird?”
Sunday’s wings flap.
“I would offer my help, I suppose.”
“What if I want your friend to do it instead?”
“I am not offering,” Blade says from the front as he starts up the ship’s engine again. “He picked you up, he’ll deal with you.”
Sunday waits until Aventurine gives him reluctant permission to touch. The black gloves are cold against his still feverish skin but Sunday handles him like something precious, a porcelain vase in the halls of Dewlight Pavilion. Aventurine bites back the nausea.
It is alright, otherwise, being carefully pulled up into a seated position. A hand tipping back his head to ease the flow of the water. Bread, piece by piece, and a vegetable he cannot place. The sluggishness returns quick.
“It will be a while before we reach our destination,” Sunday says, carefully aiding him while laying down again. “Try to rest until then. It must have been quite the drug to harm you so.”
What do you care? What do you know? Is this all another part of the grand design?
Aventurine closes his eyes. The seat scratches against his cheek.
“He thinks you’re the dangerous one,” Blade says and sounds decidedly amused this time. “Hilarious.”
“He knows me to be,” Sunday replies. “It makes sense.”
“Should I let the mara take over the next time he wakes up?”
“No. No, you should not.”
Aventurine falls asleep to the sound of Blade’s soft laughter. Petals in spring. It is not order that watches over him.
The vast ocean of Nihility never ends. The void at the horizon, the black waters below lapping at his boots, then his ankles, then the line of his waist. He tries to walk and his legs weigh more than the world, dragged down. Tossed into the water with stones tied to his ankles and he breathes only NOTHING only DEATH.
The touch to his shoulder retreats the moment he gasps awake.
“Mr. Aventurine,” Sunday says, achingly genuine in his worry. “You were having a nightmare, I believe, and I-“
“You were trying to help,” Aventurine croaks and coughs and squeezes his eyes shut. “Isn’t that nice to hear.”
He gets no response aside from the sound of feathers, briefly. Aventurine looks, eventually, curiosity squirming in him like a living breathing thing nesting in his chest.
Sunday sits on the seat beside him still. There is little space with Aventurine laying down and Sunday has squeezed himself into the corner against the door, legs drawn up onto the seat. He looks almost human like this, uncomfortable, approachable.
“Thank you,” Aventurine says, throat tight. “For trying to help.”
Sunday glances over at him and doesn’t look away as their eyes meet. The hum in the air is not Harmony, is not the engine.
“I know this is not the most optimal situation,” Sunday says. “We will get you to a safer place and then we never have to cross paths again.”
“Why didn’t you leave me to drown?”
Sunday blinks.
“Because I do not want you dead,” he says and shifts, his fingers drumming a rhythm against the inside of the door until he stops himself. “I do not consider us enemies. I never should have.”
Aventurine watches the gentle sway of his hair, the soft feathers, the line of his jaw. He rolls onto his back and groans as vertigo sets in once more.
“I would not have enjoyed your dream.”
“Good,” Sunday replies. “It was a fool’s errand.”
An easy admission. Three months since a cell in Penacony’s depths was left empty. There is no crease in the suit and no hair out of place and yet Aventurine knows that nothing shields this bird from dying from its fall this time.
“Someone did slip something into my drink,” Aventurine mumbles. “It tasted funny but when I realized that it was already too late.”
Sunday’s jaw hardens.
“Do you have an idea as to who it was?”
“No.”
The stars outside are still and cold. The ship’s front doors are both open. Fresh night air drifts in and with it the smell of distant fires.
“I was awake for a while, couldn’t control my body,” Aventurine says. “I heard them call me names, felt them drag me along and couldn’t do a thing.”
Sunday listens quietly.
“That’s why I thought it was you,” Aventurine continues. “Some semblance of revenge.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You are, aren’t you?”
Aventurine laughs. Sunday does not join him.
“You take a lot of breaks.”
Blade fixes him with his amber stare once more.
“You do not wish to see what could happen if I did not,” he says. “It won’t be long.”
The signs of his illness are readily apparent, a tremor in bandaged hands and a restlessness that has the amber of his eyes bleed into red, into frenzy. Mara, the insanity of immortals, the sap spilling from swollen veins, unceasing.
“What were you there for?” Aventurine asks.
“That is of no consequence now. We went against the script and now the opportunity is gone.”
“So secretive. I am here, at your mercy, can you not offer me something in exchange?”
“No,” Blade says but he sounds amused again. “I have no guilt that compels me to give you more than I should.”
More than you deserve, Aventurine thinks and shudders, suddenly eager to get up and sit straight and keep his chin high.
“So,” he says, swaying slightly and seeing stars with strain. “How come he is with you?”
“With me?”
“A Stellaron Hunter.”
“Elio made him a promise, as he did all of us,” Blade says. “End of story.”
Aventurine reserves his questions because his vision still flickers. Before long Sunday returns and nudges him to drink more, eat an apple cut into even pieces. The engine hums again.
“You were disgusted by me,” Aventurine mumbles, stretched out across the seat again. “When I flirted with you during one of those first meetings. Am I suddenly not so despicable anymore or do you consider yourself enough of a sinner now to pretend your disdain away?”
Sunday watches him, the streetlamps outside casting pale light through his halo, through the gaps between hair and feathers.
“I was not disgusted by you.”
“Oh, please.”
“I was ashamed of my own desire to reciprocate,” Sunday says and shifts. “Nothing else.”
It jitters in Aventurine’s chest.
“A pretty lie.”
“A truth for a truth, Mr. Aventurine.”
The ship is empty the next time Aventurine wakes. His head pounds with a migraine and he squirms as chills run through his body, frozen electric currents reaching down even to his ankles.
He sits up and his limbs are numb but they move. A groan escapes his dry lips and then, suddenly, he hears growling. Aventurine’s eyes snap open. The noise comes from the dead silent twilight surrounding the ship. In the distance a city’s lights stand out more and more as bright pinpricks in the vast grey sky.
He shifts closer to the door and peers outside. The ship rests on a green hill overlooking a set of waterfalls flowing upwards from a basin of tangled yellow roots.
The growling comes from a creature hunched over a figure on the ground. A rumble like a feral dog, a beast chasing down unsuspecting passers-by.
Aventurine’s eyes need a moment to focus but then he spots the wing. Blueish grey feathers, flattened to the grass, caught beneath whatever monster has found its prey. His heart squeezes in his chest and his hand is on the door before he knows it.
“Hey,” he calls out, standing on unsteady legs. “Get the fuck away from-“
“Shh,” Sunday says, sounding tired. “Mr. Aventurine, either lay down or return to the ship. He needs the quiet.”
And as Aventurine stares, confused, he recognizes the strands of long dark hair, too. Blade, growling like an animal, his body curled on top of Sunday. Aventurine lowers himself into the grass beside them, the dew wetting his clothes anew.
Blade turns and his amber eyes are blood red, a swirling nest of flames, the traces of golden abundance in every blink. He growls, teeth bared, but quiets as a gloved hand gently pets his hair.
“Is he going to be okay?” Aventurine asks.
Sunday hums and the tune vibrates through all their bodies, calming, soothing.
“He will be. I will see to it.”
It is a simple song. Blade slumps within half an hour, falling asleep as soon as the red dissolved from his eyes. Sunday carries him back to the ship with some difficulty and then offers his hand to Aventurine, too.
“We’re not too far from a place controlled by the IPC,” Sunday tells him after making sure they all returned safely to the ship. “A few more hours of travel.”
Aventurine nods.
“Once your pilot is not passed out.”
“I can set the course just as well. He can use the rest, the stubborn fool.”
The engine’s hum follows no tune. Aventurine tries to rest some more, too, sleep off the rest of the fog in his head. He lays awake, wondering, debating, musing.
When they land at the edge of a city blessed by Qlipoth he gathers himself and his broken phone. Sunday hands him a small object, a chip barely the size of his thumb.
“The camera footage may aid you in finding out who did this to you,” he says. “Good luck.”
Aventurine almost lets him go.
“So, we are never meeting again, you said?”
Sunday pauses, his hand on the ship’s door and the early morning light catching beautifully in his hair. His surprise is not displeasure.
“I assumed you would prefer it that way.”
“What if I didn’t?”
Sunday stares at him. Then he reaches inside a compartment in the ship’s interior and procures a black marker. He walks over and writes a number on Aventurine’s palm in pristine strokes.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll use it to track you?” Aventurine asks, watching the ink dry in seconds.
Sunday shrugs. His wings flap. Almost a smile, almost.
“Isn’t that risk what gambling is all about, Mr. Aventurine?”
They’re gone within a minute, the ship and the hunters within. Aventurine watches as the vehicle disappears on the horizon. A small dot, growing smaller until it is no more. He turns to the IPC building eventually, the beige couches and plastic plants of the lobby.
“Hi,” he says to the person manning the front desk. “Aventurine of the Stonehearts. I need a new phone. Have to make a note of something really important, you see.”