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It took Nastya years to get used to the added senses from the Aurora. Everything was so loud, and her skin was constantly picking up both Aurora’s and her own stimuli. The feelings of her coat resting on her shoulders overlapping with the feeling of the vast coldness of space had nearly sent her mad at the start.
When she’d only just joined the crew it had been her, Doctor Carmilla, and Jonny d’Ville, as well as the Aurora, of course. Nastya hadn’t known if what she was experiencing was just normal adaptation issues, and hadn’t wanted to make a big deal or show weakness. She hadn’t liked Jonny and she certainly hadn’t trusted him, so the idea of going to him for help was the most counterintuitive option for her. As for the Doc, she’d just made Nastya feel the new pain, she wasn’t going to go to her to try and fix it.
Ultimately, Nastya only had the Aurora. She would curl up deep within the ship and try to block out all the extra stimuli. It never worked, but Aurora’s gentle crooning and the humming of her engines often made her feel more at ease than anything else. Considering everything, it was inevitable that Nastya and the Aurora ended up as close as they did, though few people expected the more romantic side of their relationship to last very long. They were the only two members of the crew who could possibly understand the other.
“Naaaaaaastyaaaaa,” Jonny wailed, wandering about the corridors of the Aurora on the hunt for his sister. Hunt wasn’t the right word, since Jonny d’Ville was a ferocious hunter when he needed to be, it was more of a searching amble.
Nastya was ignoring him. Not because she didn’t see him, but simply… simply because she didn’t want to see him. The whole world seemed to hurt, blinking her eyes made her head scream and rolling over sent her vision spinning, and unfortunately her brother was not a force of calm and gentle relaxation. She loved him, she did – after deciding to make him her brother it would be hard for her not to – but sometimes Nastya needed to be left to lie alone in the peaceful darkness.
Not alone. She always had the Aurora with her, stabilising her despite being the one to often cause her overstimulation issues. Nastya could never be upset with Aurora for the constant onslaught of mechanical stimuli, it was in no way her fault that Carmilla had chosen to link the two of them. In fact, she found peace knowing that no matter how overwhelming everything got, she always knew the source of it all, and she knew she had no reason to fear. Nastya could be upset with the other Mechanisms, though. Despite being warned repeatedly, none of them ever seemed capable of remembering that both the ship and her engineer could feel the damage they did. When it had just been a few other people, Nastya and the Aurora could handle it; she was big enough that the tiny pinpricks of pain hardly registered. However once the crew got too large, it quickly became overwhelming and constantly painful.
For Nastya, those pains manifested as crippling migraines, the humanised version of Aurora’s aches. Still, she always had the Aurora with her, powering through the consequences of the Mechanisms’ careless actions with her beloved at her side. Aurora would create a perfect environment to deal with Nastya’s migraines, and Nastya would patch her up expertly as soon as she could. Together, they survived the Mechanisms’ whims, and it really only brought them closer as a couple. Nastya knew everything about Aurora’s feelings, just as Aurora knew all of hers’.
“Nastyaaaaaa,” Jonny cried again, finding the room Nastya was holed up in and pushing open the door. The light made her want to cry and hide her face, but she couldn’t be bothered and she knew he’d only just unearth her again.
“Go away,” Nastya grumbled.
“No, I won’t,” Jonny said.
“Why not.”
“Because you didn’t come to dinner. You have to come to dinner.”
“I’m not going to,” Nastya snapped, finding a surprising well of fire in her. “Because you idiots never listen to Aurora and I, and you just keep making things worse! Every time you hurt her, you hurt the both of us.”
“That can’t be how that works.”
“Well, it is. Now fuck off.”
Somehow, eventually, Jonny fucked off. Nastya wasn’t sure how she managed that, but one of the best parts of having Aurora constantly feeding her sensations through to her was that if she focused on Aurora’s experiences instead of her own, she could effectively disconnect from her own world completely.
Nastya no longer got migraines. She knew this wasn’t because the crew had stopped hurting her love, because she was still fixing all those damages. They were only getting gradually worse, but somehow Nastya was feeling less and less of the pain.
Obviously, there was an answer, but Nastya hated to even consider it. The idea that the Aurora had been changed so much that the ship Doctor Carmilla had connected her to was no longer the same Aurora she curled up with at night was terrifying to her. Nastya was all too familiar with changes, she herself had gone through many throughout her life, but something about Aurora’s changes shook her to the bone. Because when Nastya had changed – when all the rest of the crew had changed, as well – she’d only grown closer to those she cared about. She’d found a new family when she was Mechanised by the Doc, she’d found herself when she’d come out as a child. What was Aurora finding, or was she just losing Nastya?
There was no way for Nastya Rasputina, the engineer, to recalibrate the quicksilver blood in her veins to stay connected to Aurora. She had no choice but to watch as her pain got better and her love got farther. The experience of a gradual loss was worse than all of her migraines combined.
“Nastya?” Jonny said, pushing open her door to find her lying in darkness. “Is it the migraines?”
“No.”
“No? Then what’s wrong with you?”
“Maybe I’m just feeling an emotion, Jonny, ever considered that?” Nastya had no patience for anyone or anything as she waited for the day she finally stopped feeling the Aurora in her blood. She wasn’t sure what she intended to do once that horrible day came, all she knew was that she was waiting. There was dust gathering on her coat. She’d been waiting for a while.
One day, Nastya felt oddly like Anastasia again. The second she opened her eyes in the morning, she knew the day had finally come. She was alone in her blood, in her body. The Aurora had gone off and become someone new – someone breathtaking and gorgeous – and had left Nastya behind in the dust.
“Why?” she asked vaguely, hoping the Aurora was listening. She no longer had any way of knowing what Aurora was up to unless she was told directly. Which was normal, Nastya told herself. She had no reason to be so afraid, so devastated just because she no longer had direct access to her girlfriend’s mind. But it was different, with them. They’d never known each other at a time when they were normal, and Nastya couldn’t help but feel discarded by the woman she loved most in life. Nastya had changed, of course, during the millennia since she’d been Mechanised, but she had always brought Aurora along with her, because she couldn’t imagine a world without her.
“Why?” Nastya repeated, more desperate, more angry.
She sat up suddenly, grabbing her coat and pulling it on harshly. She grabbed a crowbar and screwdriver and plunged them into her pockets. If anyone else was around, she never saw them.
Nastya went to the airlock and pulled on a breathing mask, hopping out into space only to rappel along the Aurora’s side until she made it to the old nameplate that had never once been replaced since Nastya met Aurora. She unscrewed it enough that she could thrust the crowbar under it and violently rip it off. Nastya was thrilled to feel tiny traces of her formerly familiar migraine creeping back in. She’d been right, the nameplate was the last piece of the Aurora as she’d known her. The last piece of an Aurora that loved her.
Weeks later, Nastya went back to the airlock, the nameplate clutched in her arms. If she was to die, she’d always wanted it to be with Aurora.
Jonny tried to stop her. Nastya wondered briefly, uncharitably, if he was finally regretting what he did to Carmilla. She found she didn’t care.
Dying over and over and over was overwhelming, but not unpleasant. It reminded her of the Aurora. The frigid cold of space made her think of the chill that had constantly been pressing down on her while she and Aurora were still linked. Each time Nastya woke back up, more time had passed and her migraine was worse. She was waiting with a sort of giddy impatience for the time she never came to.