Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Darrow was kneeling before his own death. Ares is dead. The rebellion is over. As he looked up at his former friends— his brothers—who planned for his demise. Behind him is what used to be Victra, a spitfire and an embrace he never accepted, now a spent ember in a pool of her own blood. Antonia, Victra's Cain, looks on smugly as she instructs obsidians to carry away Augustus's dead body. The Jackal, still glowing from executing his father, watches on with fire in his eyes.

Mustang is nowhere to be found.

Darrow closes his eyes. Everything was for what? His cover is blown, his fearless leader is beheaded and stuffed with grapes. And Virginia is gone. Darrow can only feel a hole in his chest. Even his rage has left him. The fire that Eo's death once stoked has been snuffed out.

When He opens his eyes again he sees Cassius sneering above him,"How does it feel Darrow," his metalic arm clenching the razor in his hand as it points to Darrows neck. His adam apple bobs as he swallows, and the razor sinks into his skin by a millimeter to make a pearl of blood peek through his Carved skin, "to be the one on your knees? Brings back old memories eh Reaper?" He says the nickname like a curse. Like it tastes foul as his mouth forms the word.

Roque says nothing as Cassius plays with his prey. Darrow sees nothing given away as Cassius begins his death of a thousand cuts. First starting at his knees where he stood, then his abdomen, arms, leaving his chest and neck for last. It's excruciating, and tears fall silently down his face as Darrow realizes he will finally die. When Roque sees the tears fall he has to look away. The sight of his dearest friend and traitor accepting death like an old dog is too much for him.

Blood is trickling down Darrow's body donned in white for the momentous occasion. The irony of it all is not lost on him. His once-eggshell frock now dyed red in his blood. Cassius grins, it's cruel and beautiful, "Finally your clothes are befitting your lowly status." Then, as swift as Darrow wrought Cassius's arm from his body, Darrow's head is severed from his. As his head hits the floor with a sickening thud, Roque sees that Darrow's eyes were closed in a serene acceptance.

…

Darrow wakes up with a start. The air is hot and stuffy. The walls are earthen and to his eyes they are spining. He recognizes these walls. The walls of his home. In the Lykos mining colony.

His mind is reeling. When he looks down at his hands he sees the Red sigil on malnourished skin and bones. It's…his body. His old body? But–

"What troubles you, my love," a ghost murmurs. His blood chills. Next to him is his wife, his persephone. Eo.

Her hair is rusty and wild from sleep, her body is small. Was she always this small? She rubs her eyes from sleep and looks up a Darrow unaware of the malestrom of emotion that moves like a tempest within him. He says nothing as he gathers her into his arms and cries. First silently, then loudly. All the years he fought for her, because of her, gone in a single death. Now he's here, back in Hell with his love by his side. With their unborn child still growing inside of her.

What were the last 4 years? A horrible dream? The death and war and games that were played. Did they all mean nothing?

"Who died," calls out his brother Kieran. Their mother pokes her head through the curtain to their room and sees Darrow sobbing into Eo's narrow shoulder. Eo looks to her for help, unsure how to proceed other than to console him. Slowly rocking him back and forth the way a mother would console a child.

"Come now, boy," His mother chides, "Surely you don't dread the day that fiercely."

The next few hours are a whirlwind of information. Laureltide is only a few weeks away, Uncle Narol is the same drunk as he always was. Ugly Dan and the other tin pots haven't changed. Being back on the clawDrill truly felt like being back home. His tenacity was still admonished, the gallows still stood in the center of town, and the dances and songs are still danced and sung.

And Darrow is a Helldiver.

He and the other miners are working double time to win the Laurel this month, but in the back of his mind Darrow knows that it's a fool's errand. As he watches for pit vipers and gas pockets, his mind wanders. Why did he return to the past? Was he rejected by the Vale and the Old Man? Did the Old Man take pity on his futile struggle in the end and gave this day of normalcy as a final dream? As night falls and he has dinner with his family, he basks in the warmth of being with Eo again. Maybe, he thinks to himself, maybe I can just…stay here. I won't have to suffer the loss of Eo and my child. I won't have to lose everything. He's solemn as he ponders over this.

Later, the Laureltide comes. And colony Gamma wins just as before. But when the other miners look toward Darrow, instead of being beside himself as he was in the past, his brow is set in determination. He won't let his disappointment show, he won't let Eo see his upset. And she doesn't take him to the Grays' Garden to see the sun. She doesn't tell him to live for more than the next laurel, because she sees the change in him. And the next day she does not Martyr herself and Darrow does not have to kill her.

Instead life continues. That night Eo surprises him with the crib she had built in their bedroom, and Darrow works even harder to meet quota so that rations are not docked during her pregnancy. His mother and Lorna help Eo in making small clothes and gowns for the baby with spiderworm silk from the Webbery unfit for export. People from Gamma even notice the light that shines in Darrow's eyes the way it hadn't just days before, and they hear of the golden son's expectancy. Darrow is to be a father, a father like the one that was taken from him by the Society. Darrow won't let his child starve, won't let the absence of the Laurel to bog down his progress.

He relishes in hearing his child's heartbeat through Eo's stomach, amazed at his wife who's arms are still so scrawny and cheeks are still gaunt. He doesn't listen to her when she tries to tell him she has no appetite, and goes to Gamma houses to ask for scraps in her stead to make sure she is fed. For the first time in his life—this one or the last—he doesn't see Eo's ribs.

Before long their son is born into the world of the tunnels. Sloane. His cries are strong and are heard clear through their small home. Darrow cries with him and holds him and Eo close.

Ugly Dan even congratulates him when they pass each other on the way to the mines. Darrow burns with pride.

In this tranquility he still thinks about what happened this same time in his last life, his body was being torn about and rebuilt into a Gold. He doesn't miss the pain, but wonders how Dancer is faring.

The two of them sit in the glow of the street lights as others dance for another Laureltide. Once again won by Gamma. Darrow's mother is sitting away from them at another long table, showing off Sloane to other mothers.

Darrow breathes in her scent. How much he wished for this. No words can describe the relief he felt when that bloody day came and went, and Eo was still here. He is glad, but he still can't unsee how dainty her body was in comparison to her swollen belly. And how the smaller children look as they run around the other dancers their heads seemingly too big for their malnourished bodies, knowing that no matter how hard he works, Sloane will probably look the same. The thought furrows his brow.

Eo notices and reaches up to smooth the I-want line on his forehead, "What troubles you," she asks.

Darrow shakes his head. He almost doesn't want to tell her, because he knows she will agree, "I…I don't enjoy seeing our son underfed. I imagine the life he will live down here."

She perks up, "So now you see the chains that bind us." Darrow nods silently.

"But what can we do? We're just some bloodydamn lowerReds," the phrase lowerReds confuses Eo but she says nothing, "How can we make his life better? How can we give him more than this?" This thought aggravates Darrow. He somehow forgot that his life before the institue was still a life of a Red. He had his family, but has to watch them still suffer with no hope of salvation except from the Sons of Ares. And he knows that with only Titus being carved for the Institue it's only a matter of time before the rebellion is killed once more, and quicker.

Eo has no solution, but she intwines her hand with his and they keep watching the Reds of Lykos dance.

It's these thoughts in his head that Darrow returns to the mines the next day. He watches for Pitvipers and uses his Helldiver hands to mine for helium-3, when a crackle bursts through his comms. They aren't nearly as high-end as the ones he used during the war for Aegis on the Surface, so they crackle for a moment before Uncle Narol's voice cuts through with urgency, "Boyo! Hold your drill! We detect another gas pock—" and then there's a burning flash of heat and Darrow and the clawDrill and the Mining colony explode as he hits a large gas pocket. And Darrow dies again. This time with his eyes open.

He wakes with a start in his Red home, and a ghost murmurs:

"What troubles you, my love?"

Chapter Text

That next morning at breaskfast, after the explosion from yesterday, Darrow was quiet. Contemplative in a way Eo had never seen before. He was always a serious boy growing up—that's part of why she sought out to marry him—but never like this. When she reached for his hand he came back to her. His eyes full of warmth and love for her like they always did. It reasurred her. Her stomach growled and it made her flush. Darrow noticed.

"Hungry?"

"I eat less than a spider," she brushed off. When she turns her head away a lock of hair falls into her face.

He brushed the errant red strand of hair away and took her in again, like he was committing her to memory. Then he leaned in to kiss her temple.

Wordlessly, he got up and kissed his mother before he left the house with Keiran. His meal was half eaten on her plate, expertly placed without her noticing until it was too late. She didn't even have time to protest before he was out the door.

"He needs it more than I," Eo groused, "what good is a Helldiver half-starved?"

Deanna reached over and put a calming hand over the younger Red girl, her worn palms warming young, slender, bony fingers. Hands that were just starting to toughen from endless hours in the Webbery. "He lives make sure you eat, you starve to make sure he does. Strength is only good to fight with, he needs patience in order to work." Deanna then guides Eo's hands to the bowl and wrapped the young girl's hands around it, "Do not whine about a gift. Eat, child."

While he drilled, Darrow listened only to the hum of the molten fingers as it carved out martian soil. He died again. It was quick and bright. He thought of Sloane, who was still fat from relying on his mother's milk, and how short the time was that Darrow had had to know him. And yet he was back. How? Was it a sick joke doled out by the Old Man? Is this a test before entering the Vale? What was his next move? Living his life as a Red meant he would still die a Red death, trying to fight for a future he wanted for his family meant Eo had to die, or did it?

Darrow knew the identity of Ares, he knows how to fuction in Gold society and among young golds as peers. Did that mean he could seek out Ares himself without having to lose Eo and their child in the process?

And what of "Persephone"?

A voice of doubt. The devil's advocate that invades his mind. Without Persephone, and her swan song, the propaganda that the Sons had wouldn't come to be. The resistance would be smaller and wouldn't have the same foothold over other Red colonies. Despite this, Darrow would never consider her death a neccesity. She was his driving force in all things; he wanted her to see the sun, sky and the beatiful world their families had built with their hands and chains. He wanted Sloane to be born where there was grass under his small feet and his skin was soft and clean.

2 deaths, 6 years between the first life and the second. How many more bouts of failure could be had before he cannot return to this moment?

Darrow begins to throw himself into his work. Outputs for helium-3 are at an all time high in clan Lambda, and other clans are noticing the fire Darrow has lit under his other crew members. There's time before the laurel comes, and he works diligently with no fanfare. Uncle Narol notices and corners Darrow one night in the tavern Common, "Something's changed in you boy," he says with no preamble. Darrow missed the way Reds always got to the point when they spoke. No unnecessary words.

"What do you mean uncle?"

"Cut the shit. You're acting off."

"It's off to want to work more. Work better?" Darrow quipped.

Uncle Narol looked at him with narrowed eyes. As if he was looking at Darrow for the first time as a stranger. Darrow the Carved. Darrow au Andromedeus. In a quiet, gentler tone Narol said, "Keep your eyes down boy. Watch your feet before you begin the wrong dance." Darrow only nodded and gave his uncle a long embrace that Narol returned. Darrow remembered Narol being a large yet stout man in his younger years. Now, though he was still a beanpole of a boy, Darrow could feel the age on the older man. The way his muscle sagged against his bones. He was only thirty-five. That's it? Lorn was over 100 years old with more coal in his furnace to burn if he hadn't been assassinated at the Triumph. A young life is the reward a Red gets for making the Eden Golds claim they deserve. Darrow clutches his uncle even tighter and wonders if holding his father as an "old" man would also feel this way.

For the first and last time, he feels glad he got to witness his father die with his strength.

"Darrow," Keiran called from across the way, "Why are you working so bloodydamn hard? Trying to show up all the others?" He makes his way over and throws himself down next to Darrow, his mug of swill nudges against the Helldiver's shoulder and some sloshes out to wet it. Keiran is already half-drunk, "I don't remember the last time you didn't have some wise-crack thing to say," he whines mockingly.

"I want to win the Laurel," Darrow says coolly, "If I get numbers up now, it'll help our numbers down the line if we have to stop to scan gas pockets. We don't lose time and output."

Narol shakes his head, "Fool's errand boy. Focus on the quota. We don't have the chops to do what Gamma does." Darrow looks around and sees other men from the delta and theta clans listening in over their mugs. Their faces were solemn. He has to do this carefully. He didn't work at such a break neck efficency just for the Old heads to get scared off by his mere words.

"I think there's a way to be more efficient. That's what the MineMagistrate wants from us isn't there? If we can be just as efficient as Gamma then we are just as able to win the Laurel. We need to organize ourselves." The delta boys are openly listening now, the theta move closer to where the three sit. Before he can stop himself, Darrow plants a seed.

"If we don't win, then it was rigged from the start."

That quarter, Lambda began doing self scans—Darrow and the other helldivers start by setting the clawDrill to a rest position with its tentacles spread wide so they can creep through and scan a gas pockets register themselves. By reporting it this way, it cuts pauses that would happen if a scan team were called.

While the drills are off in abandoned mines, Darrow teaches the other divers how to swing themselves off the drill and toward the entry point of where a gas pocket could be located. They go over these maneuvers again and again, learning the steps like a dance. Resting position, leaping position, landing position. Fluidity and technique are a Helldiver's bread and butter; they need it in order to work the red hot tendrils that carve out the soil. The second shift Helldiver, Caron, was twenty-three and had a healthy pallor under the red dust. His eyes were a bright red, like that of an upperRed—though no one here would know. Caron followed closely to Darrow's instruction despite his seniority; wise men know when to argue and when to listen, Darrow thought.

When it came time for Laureltide, Darrow couldn't help but dream the way he did on that fateful day. What would his mother make with white sugar and cream? How much better will Eo look this time around when she starts to show her pregnancy? He thinks about the Old World traditions he learned about while training to be a gold and remembers a poem of children dreaming of sugared plums and small fairies, that's how he imagines the bounty that comes from winning. Things are different this time, he thought, it's not just me working for the Laurel. It's all of us.

Podigus comes up to the podium in the Commons, behind him an empty gallow stands like a tall shadow. The prepared noose swings but there is no breeze down here. He dabs his head before he begins to speak, and lies pour out like an endless spring. Darrow forgets to listen and focused on the eyes in the crowd. Lambda men look up restlessly. While they sit they bounce their knees and while they stand they shift from foot to foot. Gamma looks relaxed, like they know something no one else does. Looking at them so relaxed tightens something in his chest. When he looks back at the other clans, he sees the Thetas and Deltas—who eavedropped on his plan—looking at Gamma as well. He didn't need to read minds to know they were all asking the same question.

What if it was rigged?

Finally the time came for the announcement of who won the Laurel. There was no breath unbated. Podigus looked perplexed, only for a moment but Darrow caught it and he gripped Eo's hand tighter.

Once again, Gamma won. Now Darrow was sure. And he made it so the others could see this for what it was: a game made only for those chosen to win.

At first no one said anything. The Laurel boxes came down and no one moved. Word gets around fast, and the seed of discord Darrow planted grew like a choking vine all through the colony. The game was made for Gamma to win, for Gamma to be a flower on a high peak, but they were still slaves. They weren't the real masters.

The Grays could smell the dissent before the Copper could. But they were still too slow.

A Theta picked up a slingBlade and with a sure hand, threw it so it would catch into the neck of a gray. Poor bastard didn't even get a chance to raise his weapon. Darrow could see the Theta's eyes to be vacant, and realized this man had a son trying to work overtime for a past laurel, just to be caught by a pitviper that killed him while burrowing into his insides to lay its eggs.

Other silent Reds had taken advantage of the commotion to knock scorchers out of their hands and began wrestling with the Grays on the floor. 10 reds piled onto 1 gray, and by the end of it they were just as red as the rest of them.

It was like watching a dam burst open. The anger and despair and resentment that Reds had carried for generations took over everyone like a storm. What had changed? Darrow watched in shock as Grays began to run away. Ugly Dan unconscious—dead?— on the floor, Podigus was getting wrangled by malnourised underweight lowerReds and losing. The Laurel Boxes were ignored, and the Gammas, stronger due to being better fed, led the surge to get after Podigus, who spouted lies about effort and hardwork. About being cursed to be born a copper. What a tragedy.

Darrow didn't have an answer for the pandemonium going on around him, but he knew he didn't want to stick around while Eo was still living to jump into the fray. And lo and behold he caught her just as she was about to run past him with a liquid fire burning in her eyes. When they met his she smiled something ferocious.

"It's happening," she gasped.

"Let it happen without us," and not listening to a second of protest Darrow gathered her up in his arms and darted out of the town square, past the Commons and through the streets. A few times he clutches Eo tightly to him so that they hide between buildings when a few Grays run to the commotion. The first time Eo struggled against him, but when she heard gunfire and screams after they left her sight she was scared still. Darrow tried not to listen to voices he would recognize, he just ran.

Without thinking his feet directed him to the Webbery in front of the exhaust vent that would spit them out into the gray garden. Where in his last life—2 lives ago, hard to keep it straight—he watched a holographic sun crest over an unreal horizon.

…No.

No. It was real. They really saw the sun that day. Darrow knew this now.

"What are we doing here," Eo wriggles herself free finally, "How did you know…?"

"That you wanted to show me this surprise," Darrow finished for her, "The same way I know you're carrying our child." He took off the grate for the vent and climbed in. When he turned around to extend a hand to help Eo in, she hesitated. For the first time in his life he saw her hesitate as if she's out of her depth. As quick as it's there it's gone and she chambers in after him.

In his memories, the garden was a place with soft grass and simulated wind. Although he didn't have the words for it then, it was their brief Eden. A place where they learned the price of ignorance and being cast out into the harsh realities of their world. Of the Society. When he returned after his Carving he saw the garden as it was and how he sees it now: a derelict playground for Grays to throw their spent burners and refuse from meals taken outside. From where he stood the sun is just over the horizon. It sat like a coin standing on its side where it meets perfectly with the land. The dome was real, But the image it's displaying was in real time. Across the way was the door that would lead them to the outside.

"What if i told you we did this already," Darrow asked, "What if I knew we were going to lose the laurel, and that it was all a set up?"

Eo searched in his eyes, "Did you know they would…do that?" Darrow shook his head, though he didn't know if she was talking about how the Reds attacked or how the Gray reinforcements didn't hesitate to wipe them out. She doesn't say anything in return, and doesn't have time to before they hear shouts through the vent and Darrow started moving them again.

Going through this door, he's out of his depth. These are Gray halls, and they were clearly not Grays. If any errant soldier comes across their path it's a new start. Or the end. The pathways were metal and grated, meaning they would make less noise with their bare feet. The pair moved quiety, on light feet with practiced movements from years of dancing. If the worn metal whined under them they stopped, hearts like birds in their rib cages. Coming across another door they slip through and find a path going up. That's their ticket. Just as Darrow makes a step toward them there's an opposite tug on his arm. Eo, digging her heels in.

"It's not…" She struggled to find the words for what she wanted to say, "There's no air Darrow. Is it ready? Do you know that much?"

At first he was speechless; to Eo the world is still unfinished beyond the projected safety of the tunnels. How does he begin to tell her the vastness of what he knows? What does he keep from her? The only thing he can do is bring her close to feel her slight tremble under her adventerous facade, kissing the crown of her head. How he wished he could tell her that he will lead them to salvation away from here—the colony, Mars, the Society—and mean it. This fire spark of a girl, snuffed out because she sang a song that was a Red's birthright and therefore their death sentence. Despair nipped at his heels, and he started moving his feet again to outrun it.

Whatever happens in the next ten minutes doesn't matter, he decided, he just wants Eo to see the sun. To feel wind on a planet that they created together.

The walk up was slower than before, maybe Eo felt there was a finality in whatever Darrow was planning. They held hands, worn Helldiver hands too quick for their own good and Webbery hands that had traced calluses where she lets the threads run across her fingertips to wrap into a spool for looming. The stairs were loud, but there were no noises behind them that indicated anyone noticed their presence. Coming to another door Darrow placed his on it. It was metal cool to the touch, but as he kept his hand on it longer he could feel the warmth of the sun heating the other side and grinned. Eo saw it was a smile she hadn't seen in a few weeks, boyish and full of mischeif. When he looked at her with that face she didn't need a sun to feel the warmth of his love for her.

"What's beyond this," She asked, somehow already knowing his answer.

His grin split wider, "The truth."

The first thing Eo felt on the surface was a cool breeze. It lifted her hair off her narrow shoulders and ruffled the hem of her skirt. She was so startled at first she held her hands out in front of her as if she was being pushed and was trying to keep balance. The sun was warm, not hot. It was a sliver now over the horizon and she watched it sink under the soil. Where she once was. In the far distance she could see the lights of a bustling city. Darrow couldn't remember the name of it now, but it didn't matter to him. They weren't going there. Above her were stars, Earth a blue dot with Luna a smaller white one in its orbit. Her eyes were the size of supper dishes as she took everything in.

Suddenly her legs gave out from underneath her and Darrow caught her, laughing, "It's big isn't it?"

She shook her head frantically, "How…how long? For how long?"

Darrow knew what she meant, How long had it been a lie, "I don't know," he answered as he helped her back to her feet, "Long enough." That was good enough for her and she steeled herself once more. She tightened her grip on his hand and they set off walking under the night sky.

Darrow was out of his depth, truly. If he thought he was flying by the seat of his pants before, he didn't know the meaning of it until now. But Eo didn't care. She marveled with her head tilted up the whole time.

"They have names you know," Darrow said after a while. Eo spun to look at him eyes brimming with curiousity, and Darrow continued, "That's betelgeuse, and Spica. That one there is Polaris, on Earth they call it the North Star, because it can guide you north when you follow it in the night sky."

"What about here? Where does it point," Eo asked. There was a childish wonder in her voice. Darrow shrugged, the Golds hadn't taught him that far.

"Space direction is a Blue's job," He said simply.

Eo entwined her fingers with his as they walked, swinging their palms happily. Then she began to sing. The opening stanzas made Darrow break out into a cold sweat. The last time he heard this song was right before he had to snap Eo's neck on the gallows. Seeing her tilt her head back and sing the reaping song like it was a nursery rhyme was something he could never have imagined. She let go of his hand and began to dance as she sang. It was so beautiful Darrow began to choke up.

The cool air around them, the night sky above them. He was so caught up in the splendor of tasting freedon—true freedom, that he didn't see the light of GravBoots racing across the sky toward them until it was too late.

The first shot missed, glancing off of Eo's cheek and drawing blood. By the time the second shot rang out, Darrow began to run with Eo in tow. Their barefeet cut open against jagged gravel causing Eo to limp and just as Darrow turned back to gather her in his arms again, a third shot lands and she's gone. Just like that.

All Darrow hears a fourth shot before darkness blackens everything in an instant.

And he wakes up again.

Chapter Text

The third time Darrow died was arguably the worst. Darrow remembered how Eo looked as she hung all that time ago, but this last time was leagues different. He remembered seeing her slump over, a small trickle of blood, a burning smell. He thanked the old man he died quickly after. 

She still died immediately after singing the reaping song. That wasn't lost on him. 

When he woke up he still felt a phantom ringing in his skull, but didn't stir to wake up Eo sleeping beside him. Instead he moved slowly and spooned her small form against him. He breathed in her scent; soap made from tallow and her ainsel. Remembering the date again its the second month since the last Laureltide. They had been married for only 4 months. It occurs to him then that since his first death, he has had Eo longer in this loop than he ever did before he began his mission. In the loop when Sloane was born, he had a blissful 18 months. This last time was another 2 months, making it almost two years in total. How scared Eo looked when Darrow turned around that final time. She reached out to him right before the shot went through her—through the back of her head. Darrow softly kissed the point on the base of her hairline as she softly snored and she whined at the ticklish feeling, but still not waking. He chuckled silently at her. 

"Having fun bothering me," came a question gravelly from sleep. 

"I always do," he replied. 

Eo stirred and turned around to face him. She blinked sleep out of her eyes slowly, burgundy lashes catching in the dim light. Her lips were slightly chapped, and her collar bone seemed especially sharp. Her eyes so like Sloane's searched his for an answer to a question she doesn't even know she has. She went to sleep and woke up and her husband held the sadness of ten more years in his eyes—his soul. She feels something burning, or burning out, inside of him and it scares her. But Eo has always lived with Fear, so it feels more like the prick of a needle instead of the bite of a slingblade. She reaches out to him and gathers him in her arms. A bird like boy, with rib bones over sinewy muscle instead of wings. She traces them with her fingers, counting them like prayer beads. Only its the beating heart they cage that she truly has faith in. 

Everything about that first day back is always the same. Breakfast is quiet save for a stomach rumbling from Eo, Darrow expertly sneaks his share of food onto her plate, and goes down to the mines as if it were just another day, and not the same day for the fourth—or was it fifth—time. Darrow didn't do much thinking. What was there to think about, how the ion blast shot through Eo like a knife through butter? How what remained of her face still locked eyes with him for solace, for a last repsite? No. He decided he didn't want to try to tempt fate. Nothing good comes in threes. This could be his last go around after all. 

The days are a blur. He jokes with kieran at the tarvern, sweats his ass off in his frysuit, and showers Eo with affection. She mentions breaking chains and martyrs, but he half-listens, knowing all too well how much good a martyr is. When the Laureltide came, he doesn't risk his hide and listens to his uncle when he orders Darrow to hold for a scan. He wants to see Sloane again. 

This time was similar to the first time he returned to Lambda. He kept his head down, laughed when a joke was told, and bit his tongue and clenched his fist when he felt either begin to fly. He didn't think about how hungry he was when he gave Eo his food during her pregnancy. He didn't hesitate to ask for help from more well off clans to spare something for his wife. His neighbors pitied him, for they still knew he was a babe gearing to have his own. Eo didn't admonish him as much because for the first time she felt full. Darrow gave back kindness as well, helping the womenfolk build new add-ons to houses for growing families, helping widows mind children as they tended to their younger or sick ones. And this habit of passing on kindness found its way to the other men in the clan. HeadTalks from other work crews passed burners to Darrow that he traded with Tinpots, and the Tinpots brought more fresher food for Eo to eat. Once, a tinpot brought him a quarterkilo of sugar, which he brought back to his mother so she could make syrups with it. She made small vials and shared with neighbors. Slowly a network of contraband naturally weaved between the red clans and gray squads in Lykos. By the time Sloane was born, Eo had put on a healthy amount of weight, and looked beautiful as Darrow wiped the sweat from her brow. 

"It's a boy," she sighed, "Another troublesome man." Darrow laughed and kissed her temple. He helped his mother clean him up from the afterbirth and held him close as Dio and Deanna fretted over Eo. His small hand wrapped around his calloused thumb. And he in turn glided his fingers over the bony ridges that would be marked with a Sigil once the baby was old enough. When Kieran mentioned the prospect of another helldiver being born into the family—the third generation—Darrow was silent. He was facing away so Keiran couldn't see, but Eo facing him saw the dark cloud that loomed over his features as the thought of this new soul being subjected to the hell below their feet. But Darrow was well practiced in staying silent, so as not to ruin the festive nature his brother found himself in. 

It was still a great celebration for lambda. The son of a martyr becoming a father himself. His back was sore from all the claps and hand slaps he received as well wishes. He made fast friends with Caron, who was 7 years his senior but spoke with him as an equal. On rest days they shared, the two would sit together and talk as their children played. It was during one of these talks that Caron asked a strange thing. 

"Do you ever wonder when it'll end?"

"What do you mean," Darrow asked as he wiped gruel from the corner of Sloane's mouth, "when our lives end?"

"No. When the work will end." A beat of silence passed between the two of them. The work. "We reds have been working these mines and webberies for generations. How many more until the planet is fit to live on? I work so my child can see the sun, but so did my father, and my fathers father. Why are we starving? Why do the tinpots think they're so better than us when we're supposed to be the pioneers?" 

A pit grew in Darrow's stomach. He scanned the area to make sure there weren't any grays listening and knew it didn't matter. They were always being watched by unseen Green eyes in the commons. Sloane fussed in his arms and he set him down. Caron's children—twins, rare in the colonies—carried him with them to play a short ways from their fathers. That distraction gave Darrow time to form a reply. 

"Caron…we can't know that," he started slowly, "And we can't speak like that either. If we try to seek answers, or even ask the questions, we will leave our children without fathers." He clenched his fists in his lap as he spoke. He couldn't bear to look at his friend as he spoke the words that kept down his people.

"I remember your father," Caron said quietly after another long silence, "You look just like him. He was kind. And swift. We were never closer to winning the laureltide than when he was a Helldiver. Of course then you took the helm." Caron chuckled at that.

"My brother died in the mines before I could join in the effort. It ruined my mother, she wasn't the same. My father wouldn't look at me and died soon after. The drink took him. When Loran heard, he looked out for me. He taught me the dances my father didn't have the time to, he showed me what it meant to be a Red man. I remember meeting you then, as a babe. When I told him i would watch over you the way he did for me, he just laughed. 'A babe watching over a babe' he said." Darrow watched him now as he spun his yarn about the man he never got know.

"Before that last day, you had gotten sick. It was a fever that wouldn't break. Your father asked for medicine or something to cool the burn, but the reds had as much as he did, and the tinpots just laughed. 'What's one more dead ruster?'  To them you were just another number blackening out on their dash. It burned him up to hear that. But eventually you got better, and I thought the moment passed. But not to him." His hands were clasped together, his fingers turning white from the pressure. Darrow stayed silent. 

"He told Narol and I together his plan. And I begged him not to. Narol got so angry I thought they were going to come to blows. But still he told Narol to watch over you. Watching him dance he looked like if he had a slingblade he could cut down leagues of enemies. Hearing the song made me want to join in, he was that magnetic. After he died I wondered why he did that. Why leave you behind, why let you and your brother become the sons of a martyr," Caron looks Darrow in the eye now.

"But then I had children of my own. And I watched them starve. I watched them itch to enter the mines so they could slave for an unwinnable prize or die from any number of terrible ways. They want the work to be done so they can see the sky. I don't think your father wanted to martyr himself. I think that's what he thought was the only way to fight for you. Darrow, you have your own child. Do you understand?" 

Darrow swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded.