Chapter Text
Only 10% of comets survive 50 passages. Only 1% survive more than 2,000.
Ratio had observed many comets in his time.
From the deck of the Herta space station to a small research vessel hovering over the remains of a dead planet, he’d seen hundreds of them, brilliant flashes of light across the empty void of space as a ball of ice met its end in the hands of the sun. It wasn’t his area of study, but his eyes were always drawn to them from frosted to grimy windows.
But out of the dozens of comets he’d noted in the margins of his many journals, Aventurine burned the brightest.
Aventurine, the stoneheart with copious amounts of gold lining his pockets.
Aventurine, the Signonian slave.
Aventurine, the man that had the gall to try and die under his watchful eye.
He’d always considered himself to be a rational man. Every action of his was paved in logic, every movement calculated down to the smallest bit of friction. His mind was always working, even when the curtains were drawn and he curled up beneath mounds of blankets. His dreams were of ducks floating in the void of space, and the calculations necessary to make it to the nearest star. He was calm, yet his mind always raced to keep up with the clock and the endless stream of stimuli to his eyes and ears. He lived his life in cycles, rinsing off the day’s grime and rising with the sun to do it all again, each meal matching the exact digits on the clock, each lecture with the same questions, the same answers, the same facts.
But then Aventurine exploded into his orbit, breaking apart the carefully constructed blueprint of his life.
Aventurine ate when he felt hungry. Aventurine took off in whatever direction he desired, laughing the whole way through each unexpected challenge. He didn’t get engrossed in books and plans the way Ratio did, no. He jumped into each gambit head-first, uncaring that he was working against the human design with each step. He broke the rules, he destroyed the foundations of what Ratio knew , and damned as he was, he took Ratio’s heart with him. Aventurine was the oil to his water, constantly repelling him, yet settling close enough that Ratio found himself carving the man’s features into his newest statue, a soft smile and bright eyes captured in marble eternal. The statue was never finished, each new feature added as Ratio picked them up, but it was a project that kept his hands busy and yearning at bay. The gentle curve of Aventurine’s nose, the smile lines that cradled his lips, the freckles across his nose that only showed under brilliant casino lights- each and every perfection was captured in his art, piece by piece.
He didn’t dare work on the piece when Aventurine was present. It stayed hidden in his bags with his chisels and stool, only pulled from the heap when Ratio knew the man would be drinking and gambling the night away. With each careful tap of his hammer, he broke away the stone that encased his new fascination, a comet that would take up more than just a margin in the pages of his life. No, Aventurine was a whole paper’s worth, a study that Ratio had never dared conduct.
But just as a comet is consumed by the sun, Aventurine burned brightest right before he was fated to die.
That was when the rationale fell away from Ratio’s mind, abandoned like a malfunctioning piece of a ship, shed to keep his crew, his mind , safe. He pushed through the crowds as they flooded the streets, coins raining down from above, shouts of joy and shock echoing in his ears. He ran , desperate to meet that falling beam of light, what remained of Aventurine, to save him before the sun consumed him whole-
And he cried.
Finding Aventurine’s body fractured upon the stones of the city of dreams had forced tears down his cheeks, constricting his throat to the point that he could barely breathe. He’d cradled his companion’s body, holding him as the mask evaporated in a shower of golden light, revealing the bloody face to the eternal night that stretched above. A part of him screamed that this was just a dream, that Aventurine was fine , but seeing him in such a state, blood glittering as it ran down his face and over the tattoo on his neck, fingers twitching erratically in pain- it hurt.
When he’d jerked awake back in the Reverie, he’d had to wash his hands. Scrubbing frantically, shaking like a child, he’d struggled to keep his breathing even, his heart pounding in his ears. Aventurine hadn’t woken up yet, and a traitorous little part of him wondered if he would. He’d sat next to the pool for hours, leafing through old journals, struggling to keep his mind in check as he read the names and descriptions of comets, over and over and over and over and over-
And finally, Aventurine thrashed himself awake.
But he wasn’t Aventurine.
No, Ratio found himself staring into the scared eyes of a man he didn’t know.
Not the smug, half lidded ones of a gambler, goading him on in some dingy bar. Not the wide, thoughtful ones that followed him as he rambled about cosmic theory, hanging on his every word. Not the soft, unguarded ones that he’d only seen once, yet committed to memory as the most beautiful set he’d ever seen.
Aventurine wasn’t Aventurine as he gasped and choked loudly, clawing at his chest as if he were trying to carve out his own heart. His frantic movements were like that of a cornered animal, his eyes looking through instead of at Ratio.
The dread that festered in Ratio’s gut only grew when Aventurine tried to fight his touch, shoving him away with meager force when he tried to stop him from hurting himself. Despite the mental fortitude he showed in negotiations, Aventurine had the horrible habit of not eating, instead drinking as much liquor as his gut would allow to cure the ache. He was light, malnourished, fighting with all his power against Ratio, only to hit his head on the side of the tub, blood staining his hair and dribbling down his face. In his shock, Ratio had let go of the stoneheart, only to have Aventurine bolt, making for the hall faster than he could follow. By the time he’d caught up to the smaller man, he was bleeding all over the lobby’s floor, crying hysterically under the stars in a language even Ratio didn’t understand.
Then, Aventurine had passed out, right on the cold tile of the Reverie’s lobby.
Mental fracture, the IPC assigned doctor had later said. Aventurine’s mind had shattered somewhere in the Nihility, leaving behind only pieces of his former self. It wasn’t unheard of, but surviving being consumed was exceedingly rare.
“We’re flying blind, at the moment.” They said, “I’m sorry, but all we can do is continue to monitor his brain for any changes.”
Just hearing those words from their lips made Ratio regret not getting a PhD in medical sciences.
Then, he could fix Aventurine. He could make him better, whole again.
But it was simple fact that Aventurine had burned out completely, leaving nothing more than an afterimage in Ratio’s eye.
He was gone.
That was how he found himself sitting in front of the statue once more, running his fingers over lovingly carved features. It was all he had left of him, a frozen memory. He sat before it for hours, too scared to touch it with the chisel, too cowardly to return to the hospital where he was waiting.
So he covered the statue with a sheet once more, the only thing visible being Aventurine’s smile.
It was only after he covered it that he realized it.
Aventurine’s smile was crooked.