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The bond between Jonny d’Ville and Nastya Rasputina was a complicated one, to say the least.
To outsiders, those who saw their shows or heard of their planetside adventures, it was a relationship that consisted of nothing but hate and animosity. The few times Nastya ever spoke were to point out Jonny's mistakes, or to poke fun at him, or to bicker with him.
To the Mechanisms, however, there was something beneath the hate. Something beneath the bickering and the threats. The more observant crewmates would catch glances, nods, even smiles and suppressed giggles. They'd notice the way that Jonny protected Nastya with a fire fiercer than any they'd seen in the universe. They'd see Nastya's defensiveness when anyone threatened Jonny. Even though they couldn't find the words to describe their relationship.
There were, perhaps, four people who truly knew the relationship between Jonny and Nastya: Jonny, Nastya, Carmilla, and Aurora.
They were able to say, without a shadow of a doubt, that Jonny d’Ville and Nastya Rasputina were siblings. And oddly enough, the last to know were Jonny and Nastya.
****
Jonny never had siblings back on New Texas. The only child of William and Rebecca Vangellis, he sought out company in the dirty alleys of his town. There were a few street kids he wanted to see as his older siblings. But older sisters don't leave at the first sign of danger. Older brothers don't leave you to take the beating that's meant for them.
So no, Jonny had no siblings. As far as he was concerned, he had no family at all.
Which was probably why he took Carmilla's hand that day.
****
Nastya grew up in a palace filled with people, including her older siblings. Despite this, Princess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova grew up lovely. She tried spending time with her brothers, but she wasn't allowed to do what they were doing, to learn what they learned. The only people she really had were Alyosha and her tutor.
She sometimes wished she was afforded that loneliness in what she thought were her final moments, bleeding out in the snow.
If she was, she probably wouldn't have taken Carmilla's hand that day.