Work Text:
She is searching again. Kneeling amidst the endless rubble of Scrapsylvania. Ignoring the way her aching thighs beg for relief as she leans forward, hunches over, picking through yet another pile of scraps. Operating on autopilot, tossing aside all and any junk that is not what she is looking for.
The sharp, serrated edges of metal shards prick her fingers, her palms, as she picks them up. On occasion, she feels the scrap press deeper, passing the threshold from prodding nuisance into open wound. Her hands are cut up from all the finding she has been doing, a mishmash of oozing blood and dried scabs. They throb with pinpricks of pain that shoot electricity through her veins.
Marya does not mind. She welcomes the pain, if nothing else. It breaks through the numbness that has so thoroughly engulfed her. Her thick gloves remain at home, gathering dust.
The Scrapsylvanian sun shines down upon her, weak little rays of light that somehow still manage to break through thick, grey clouds. They refract, bounce off the endless hills of debris. Glinting metal that threatens to pierce her vision if she turns at a particular angle, adjusts her posture so she stands at a specific side. A temporary blindness. An obstruction to her search.
Wordlessly, Marya pulls her goggles over her eyes and presses on.
She searches because it is the only thing she can do. She is nearly two months out from the incident that destroyed her, ruined her life — though that is a selfish way to look at it, in Marya's opinion. She is the only one who survived the wreckage of the Kingfisher, after all; for all the pain she experiences now, forcing her still-healing body to get to work, Marya is alive.
Everyone else is not. Everyone else has been swallowed up by the fiery maw of the Straka, torn asunder by its metal jaw or incinerated by the unbearable heat within its mouth. Marya has lived, but at an unbearable cost. It clings to her soul, drags her down, threatens to bury her six feet under like everyone else.
There were no corpses left intact. The human body is exceedingly fragile, flesh torn to strips, skin seared by roaring flames. But what there is, in lieu of a dozen dead bodies, is the rubble, the wreckage. A ship splintered into a thousand pieces, burning through the skies. Falling and falling until it crashes into the endless ocean below.
All rubble will find its way to Scrapsylvania, one way or another; it is written in their myths. Scrapsylvania is a homing beacon for junk, for the very scrap it is named after. The cradle, the root, the point of origin. A return to the wellspring, to experience a mechanical rebirth — the old made new in an endless dance.
Standing near the shore day after day, watching the water wash in yet another wave littered with familiar debris, Marya can no longer find it in herself to disbelieve it.
It is easy for her to spot the remnants of the Kingfisher, picking them out from the endless scrap. A dented cylinder, once part of a system of whistling pipes. A large gear that once ticked and tocked in endless rhythm inside the engine room. The half-melted axle of the steering wheel, steel surviving where wood had not. The waves bring them all in, and Marya collects them meticulously, tucks them away in her bag.
Kočka helps, too, brings her what little he finds while squeezing in and out of the rubble. Nuts and bolts that Marya, against all odds, recognises. A tiny sliver of metal that she knows once made up a part of her ship. An attunement, perhaps, to the qualities of metal. An instinctive recognition brought about by her Scrapsylvanian heritage — to know what something was once used for.
It is painful knowledge. It is also her burden to bear.
It is impossible to rebuild the Kingfisher. Whatever washes up on Scrapsylvanian shores is but a small part of what was once a majestic skyship, the place Marya called home. Most of it has been devoured in the Straka's mighty jaws — wood burning to cinders, cloth incinerating into ash. Only the metal remains, melted into misshapen states, swept along by ocean waves until they reach Scrapsylvanian shores.
But Marya is not looking to rebuild the Kingfisher. She cannot. What happened with the Straka was an omen, a cruel reminder of the truth Marya had so recklessly ignored in her sky-eyed naivety: There is no place for someone like her in the sprawling skies. She cannot — will not — take off so recklessly, doom another crew to the same, tragic fate.
Instead, she collects the rubble so she can honour them. Build a monument, perhaps, something to remember them by. Or perhaps to bury in lieu of their corpses, swallowed by the Straka forevermore.
So she will wait, day after day. Keep her eyes trained upon the sealine, waiting until the tides wash in another wave of junk. And then she will search until her hands bleed and her muscles ache, until she can no longer see her surroundings, shrouded in the darkness of night. Kočka will scamper onto her shoulder, squeaking furiously into her ear. It will be the only thing to draw her out of her daze.
And then she will depart, returning to the familiar weight of her heavy heart.
She finds it tucked under a lead pipe, one day. Peculiarly shaped, enough so that Marya blinks a little as soon as her eyes catch on it, drawn out of her mindless stupor in favour of reaching out to pick it up. Half-melted and metallic, caught somewhere between a coalesced clump and an elegant trinket. It sings to her as she touches it, a low hum that echoes through her bones.
Marya does not recognise it. Ordinarily, she would look it over before tossing it aside. It is different from most of the scrap, both in appearance and in what lies within, but it is still scrap. It is not the remains of the Kingfisher, the broken pieces of the skyship; as such, it is worthless to her.
But then she hears a squeak.
"What is it, Kočka?" Her voice is a rasp, talons scratching up the inside of her throat. Kočka squeaks again, and Marya feels it as he leaps from her shoulder, scurries precariously across the expanse of her arm. Unfurling her hand on instinct, she watches as Kočka scampers to the edge of her fingertips — right next to the misshapen, metal thing, clutched in Marya's other hand.
Something stirs within her, watching him. Kočka does not normally act out like this, save for yelping at Marya when darkness falls and she has yet to begin making her way back for the night. To watch him sniff the metal, whiskers twitching, before his beady eyes widen, ears flattening as he shrinks back…
"Come, come," she tells him, coaxing the trembling rat back onto her shoulder. Soothing him, hoping she is doing this right. Then, with a deep breath and a rat clinging tightly to her, feeling his tiny paws clutching at the fabric of her shirt, Marya takes a closer look at the mysterious, metal mess.
She turns it over in her hand, slowly, carefully. Watches as the metal catches the weak sunlight, rays refracting off iron and copper and brass. The different materials have alloyed together at certain points, as though partially melted and then resolidified. Where the metal mass is not a shapeless clump, it has been carved into slender ovals, the craftwork elegant, refined.
She realises what this is when she reaches out to touch it, to brush her fingers against the thin, slender strips. Petals, Marya thinks, her eyes widening as it finally clicks. These are petals.
And I have seen them before.
(A memory, resurfacing from the depths of her grief-riddled mind. Walking into the workshop aboard the Kingfisher in search of her protégé. Watching her fly to her feet as soon as Marya pushes the door open, stepping inside. Eyes wide, clearly flustered. Darting forward, closing the gap between them. The hurry in her words does not slip Marya's notice, nor does her panic. When she smiles at Marya, her lips strain too thin.
"I am busy," she had said, slightly breathless, a touch apologetic. "I will come later, I swear. Just— give me a moment, Marya. One moment."
"What is that you are working on?" Marya had asked, curiosity bubbling up within her. She had swung slightly to the side, trying to peek over the other girl's shoulder — but she moved with Marya, swerving her body to try and block Marya's view of the table. At that, Marya had smirked. "Oh? Keeping secrets from your mentor? I see how it is, Mila."
A flustered expression. A pitched voice. "It is a surprise," her protégé insisted, voice cracking. "So just— leave. Please.")
Her breath catches in her throat as she lays out the memory within her mind, dissects it with a mechanical efficiency. Marya had not been able to see what had been resting on that workshop table. Her view had been obstructed in part, shielded by a stubborn girl weaving back and forth.
But thinking back on it, remembering what little she had managed to see, Marya thinks she saw—
Her heart lurches, slams against her sternum with a sick crack.
"Kočka," Marya croaks. Her hands begin to tremble. "This— did Mila make this?"
Silence. Nothing but the waves crashing against the shore, washing in debris over and over again. Nothing but the shallow, sharp spurts of Marya's own breathing, in and out and in and out.
Kočka does not speak. But after a while, Marya feels a warm, furry head bump against the side of her neck. Subtle, silent — but it is enough. Enough for her world to collapse in on her.
Marya recognises the misshapen metal for what it is now: flowers, a bouquet. She clutches it, runs her fingers across what remains of the delicate petals. How long must it have taken Ludmila to carve this? But that question escapes her mind as her fingertips graze against etchings in the metal — razor-thin, smudged over by the fiery heat of the Straka's throat. She brings it as close to her eyes as she possibly can, until she can read it.
Two names, over and over, scratched into alternating petals. Marya and Ludmila.
A broken sob breaks through the air. It takes Marya a few seconds too long to realise that the sound is coming from herself.
Her composure cracks, splintering into pieces. The thick shield of numbness she has used to guard her heart, to block out the worst of her grief from so thoroughly ravaging her, breaks right into half. In, everything crashes, flooding her chest and choking her up until she feels as though she is drowning under the sheer pressure of her own emotions: of love and grief and all the tender moments caught in-between.
I should have known, Marya thinks, beginning to shake — but she had known, had she not? It had just been buried in the wake of tragedy, every single painful memory shoved six feet under. Marya had known. She had always known. Ludmila was not— was never exactly subtle in her affections for Marya. This, Marya knows well because she recognised in Ludmila what she once saw in herself.
She was like Ludmila, once — young and sky-eyed, filled with the reckless energy that comes with youth. She had flirted with women twice her age, skillfully hiding the way her heart tripped over itself each time they reciprocated. A sultry smile, a long-lashed wink. A broad, muscular arm pinning her against the walls of the Zephyr before swooping in to swallow her lips in a kiss.
And Marya had seen all the same signs in Ludmila, even if her Mila was much more nervous about it, much less bold than Marya had been. Coming up with a thousand and one excuses to keep hanging around her. Constantly touching her, resting her head against Marya's shoulder, covering Marya's hand with her own. Asking to talk before awkwardly shrugging it off, as though abandoning plans to confess midway through.
She had been waiting for Ludmila to make the first move — just as Marya had done many times before. And Mila was planning to, Marya thinks, clutching the melted bouquet like a lifeline. And now she never will.
Pain stabs through her knees. Distantly, Marya realises she has collapsed to the ground, sharp shards of scrap digging into her legs, cutting up the fabric of her pants, the flesh underneath. She does not care. She cannot care. The physicality of the pain is nothing, nothing, compared to the colossal agony tearing her apart and ripping her to pieces.
A squeak. Something pressing against her throat, nuzzling with ferocity. "Kočka," Marya sobs, voice cracking. "Mila, she— oh god, she—"
But the words do not make it out. They collide into each other, choking up her throat. A fresh wave of grief bursts forth from her soul — but it is different, this time. Gone is the numbness she has surrounded herself with, the grief of lives lost, of an existence now sentenced to guilt and loneliness. What she experiences now, rended asunder by the jagged edges of rusted blades, is the grief of what could have been. A confession never spoken, a love never returned.
And for the first time since the incident, since losing everyone, since losing Mila—
Marya cries.