Work Text:
Alarak sighed to himself, stepping into the small docking bay and welcoming the fresh, cool air that the shade washed over him. A Templar sat in a sunny corner with a screen, though their head snapped up the moment his foot hit the metal. They relaxed immediately, nodding to him, and gestured to the middle of the large room.
He should have known she would be here again.
It had been many months since he had agreed to allow the former phase-smith to inspect his personal ship. A mistake to be sure; mostly because she never answered her communicator when she was busy with it, and the dock that it was held in was far enough out of the main city that the walk was almost unbearable in the hot Aiur sun.
The flier was out of its cloak, door open. A small bag of scrap parts, and tools, and parchment with carefully drawn schematics lay scattered across the landing pad it hovered over, and the inside of the hull rang with psionic humming; an old hymn, perhaps? He vaguely recognised the melody.
Climbing up onto the landing pad, he first knocked on the side of the craft, then called her name.
“Ri’kara?”
There was a bang that shuddered through the ship’s underbelly, followed by a loud curse, causing Verinis to once again look up from their screen. A moment of silence followed.
“… Yes? I’m uh, I’m in the vents, hold on—”
“Don’t bother.”
He pulled himself through the open door and looked down at his aide, her large eyes with their sheepish expression blinking up at him as though she were about to get into trouble. For a moment, his hearts squeezed. He frowned.
“I have been attempting to call you for an hour.”
“Sorry. I…” She pulled herself out of the hatch, sitting on its rim and reaching for her screen with its insistent blinking light. “Oh. I didn’t hear it.”
“Make it louder. I should not be chasing after you.”
“Yes, Highlord. I apologise.”
With a long sigh, he seated himself against the wall next to where she had been working.
“How long have you even been fooling around with this?”
“A few hours. I had to go and see a friend this morning, and… After that I needed to come out here.”
The Highlord tilted his head. “’Needed’? What could have possibly happened that would require you to trouble yourself with this?”
“Nothing important.” Her eyes slid to the side, and she hopped back down into the hole. “It’s not like you to be so concerned.”
“I wasn’t.” He lied.
Silence fell between them for a little while. Boredom began to creep in with the monotone of metal tapping against metal. His eyes ran across the patterns of the panels until he started to see new shapes. He tapped his claws against the floor and sighed.
“Why would you even trouble yourself with something so—”
“Useless? Meaningless? You came here on this ship. I wouldn’t call the work that made that happen any of those things.”
Blinking a little at the open hostility, he tilted his head towards where he knew she was. “So outside of the purview of the work that you have been assigned. Do not assume, Ri’kara.”
“Oh... Sorry.”
“There is no need to be so ‘prickly’ as you say; I was not attempting insult.”
“… I’m just used to being mocked for it. Anyway, I don’t know. It’s comforting.”
He couldn’t help but let out an incredulous little scoff at the idea. “You find ‘comfort’ in this?”
“I guess that is a bit weird, considering what they put us through. You know. But I liked the work, I liked making things, I liked… Knowing what I was making would keep my friends safe. When I had more free time here, I’d watch the smiths rebuilding some of the spires and wish I could have been born Khalai so I could join in and be helpful…”
She trailed off, the sounds of tinkering not quite allowing the silence to fall. When she next spoke, she seemed nonchalant.
“I don’t know why I’d tell you about that. It’s not like you’re interested.”
He sighed again, leaning back against the curved wall. He wasn’t about to correct her; she didn’t need to know that, to his own surprise, he was. For all the talk about nothing between the work that they had to complete, all the digging into him and how to aid him, she had barely said a single word about herself. Of course he wasn’t interested in the beginning; he had enough to know that her motivations did not lie with killing him and so did not bother any further, but now…
His eyes rolled as he allowed himself to continue the conversation. “So you keep yourself from losing the skills you have learned so that you may be ‘helpful’ when I no longer require you.”
“Yeah, I suppose. I’d like to be a smith again someday, and… Well, I’ve had maybe one or two conversations with Cornu. She doesn’t like me, and I don’t blame her, so the best I can do is learn about my people from their new designs; see how they’ve evolved since I escaped.”
That surprised him; for all their similarities, he had expected those two particular thorns in his side to be as thick as thieves. “I thought she would be grateful for your demands to have me pay more attention to their plight.”
“She was, but… Between working with you and the fact that I left in the first place instead of staying and helping to make it better from there… She thinks I’m a coward, and she’s probably right. I could have stayed, and I didn’t. I could have done that rebellion myself, and I would have.” She sighed. “I would have. But I didn’t.”
The Highlord imagined Ri’kara stood at the other end of the underground control room, still smeared with the blood of the fifth Ascendant and ready to dart for the stolen scythe at the slightest hint of hostility from him, ready to fight him to the death if that’s what it took. It was an image he had briefly seen in the beginning when she had been so impulsively insolent on first meeting.
“I do not doubt that.” He shrugged. “Though I hardly believe choosing survival makes you a coward.”
“I thought you’d agree with her.”
“Hmph.” He rolled his eyes again. “You were not a warrior; you had no obligation to stay for something that you did not know would happen.”
Finally, she pulled herself out of the hatch, grabbing the parchment and making more precise, neat drafts of what she had currently been looking at. Her brow was furrowed in that little concentrated frown she often wore when she was thinking.
“… I’m glad you stayed.”
“What?”
She laughed a little, looking almost embarrassed all of a sudden. “I spent a lot of time hearing really insulting things about you before I came to Aiur. That you were a cowardly bastard, that you had no idea what you were doing, that you’d go back on your promise the moment it went unfavourably for you…”
Alarak scoffed. Whoever she had heard that from must have been bold to speak that way without him hearing of it.
“She hates you. You got there first.”
He tilted his head. A friend of hers perhaps. That would be why.
“When I used to meet with them behind the complex’ entrance, she would talk- in whispers, mind -of how she was going to climb the Chain, become Highlord, wrestle us from His rule. You know.”
“I am baffled as to how she has not been killed for both counts of heresy and slander—”
“We were secretive. Maybe someone did hear… But she was almost an Ascendant at the time, so maybe they knew better than to say anything when we were so close to ‘winning’ anyway.” Ri’kara shrugged. “Either way, I’m really glad she was wrong. About you. Not that I could ever tell her that, but…”
He blinked at her and then frowned. Part of him wanted to snap, to ask her how she could be so sure that he would not toss her aside at a moment’s notice, that he wouldn’t one day decide to take all these Tal’darim back with him to continue to conquer.
He tried not to imagine the incredulous look he would be given if he gave in to that urge, tried not to imagine how half-hearted it would sound.
I am becoming soft.
“You’ve decided, despite being so difficult about it, to keep going. You could have disappeared; faked your own death and gone into hiding to avoid fixing everything, or at least improving things as much as your pride will allow.”
“That would have been the coward’s way out. And this—” He gestured at nothing. “It is necessary to survive. Nothing more.”
Her smile was gentle, but there was an underlying flicker behind it, as though she knew something that he did not. “That’s fine. What’s important is it’s happening anyway. Your selfishness can’t really be all that selfish when it’s helping everyone else.”
“Tch. I could say the same of you.”
She wrote a label on the next part of the draft and ducked back into the underbelly of the ship. He glanced at the parchment.
‘Biometric identification to enter?’
“I don’t know. I admire you for it no matter what the reason. I probably would have died if I didn’t leave, but I still feel selfish. I could have stayed, and I didn’t, so I’ll do what I can from here.”
“Not that much will get done when you are crawling through the inner mechanisms of a personal flight vessel." He punctuated that with a chuckle; for some reason it felt as though it was needed.
“I’m allowed off days.” She laughed back. “I shouldn’t have rambled so much. Did you need me for anything?”
“… We were supposed to have met with Artanis at noon. Something about that little Daelaam agreement. Come now; you are the one that should know this already.”
“Hm?” She peeked up over the metal floor with a raised brow. “I asked the Hierarch if we could postpone it until tomorrow. Like I said, I needed to come out here for a bit.”
“He did not inform me of such.”
“Well. You’re informed now. Sorry to make you come all the way out here; you could have got some sleep.”
Alarak frowned, thinking back to how insistent Artanis had been for him to go and find his aide, as though that trivial, boring meeting were somehow the most important thing on this planet. He would have contacted him by now…
Of course it had been a trick.
“As though I need you to keep track of my resting habits.”
He rubbed his temple and tried not to let out his irritated growl. More and more that Templar had been trying to push him into spending more time with her outside of the usual. He had already voiced his disapproval at being toyed with, and yet he still managed to get the upper hand.
Ri’kara began humming again. It was the same tune from earlier; slow, solemn, in time with the tick of the tool against whatever she was adjusting. It was a strange sort of comfort.
While she was out of sight, he let his eyes focus more on the plans she was slowly forming of the ship, hoping to discern why she had been so interested in this thing. More of those labels that were phrased like questions stretched out in certain places, as though she were looking for weak points in the structure.
‘More biometrics? Vet phase-smiths before adding.’
‘Intruder detection in cockpit? Identify both armoured and unarmoured hand to prevent mishaps. Or body temperature? Iris? Something unique.’
He glanced at the hole that led into the ship’s belly. Why bother with something that he could have done the next time he left for Slayn? Was this all she had been thinking about from the moment she had stationed herself in that room, watching over his unconscious body?
Foolish.
Well, if anyone should be ensuring that another attempt on his life in that ship didn’t happen again, he would prefer it to be her, but…
Ri’kara popped her head back up. “You don’t have to stay here, you know. The Highlord doesn’t need to oversee a pet project.”
The usual faded dark circles under her eyes had deepened again. She was covered in the grime of the ship. A glance to the small bunk down near the back of the ship told him she had slept in there at least once.
What he could finally identify as guilt settled in his chest, so he scoffed and waved a dismissive hand. “Someone will have to ensure that you do not break my ship. And that you go back before dark.”
“Verinis is here.”
“As though I do not know how much they indulge your habits. I am no fool, Ri’kara.”
She made an embarrassed face, her eyes sliding to the side to avoid his gaze. Her fingers laced themselves together as she tried to find some way to defend herself. Her shoulders sagged.
“Fine. Surely you have better things to do, though. I thought this would be beneath you.”
It is.
For what seemed like the hundredth time, he rolled his eyes. “Be quiet and get on with it if you are so concerned with how I am to spend my time today.”
She gave no retort, the sound of clicking and scraping and the fizzle of sparks instead filling the space. There was an oddly smug undercurrent to her own silence; she hadn’t begun her humming again.
“I did not mean that you should be completely silent. Do not be a pedant.”
A soft, mischievous giggle drifted from the hatch after a few more moments.
“So I have your permission to hum then, Highlord?”
“Ugh. Yes.”
“Well thank you.” Then, she added; “I would have anyway. It helps me concentrate.”
Alarak nodded even though she could not see him, relaxing a little more against the ship wall as she settled back into her little choir of machinery and melody. It was comforting. He found his eyes slipping closed in spite of himself; despite the heat outside, the inside of the vessel maintained a bearable temperature. It shouldn’t have been a safe place to rest, but…
His eyes snapped open, the sloped ceiling of the ship greeting him in the dim red lighting. His hearts began to hammer as a voice caught his attention, and he quickly sat up, hand darting for the knife he kept in his robes as a last resort.
Ri’kara poked her head up from the bowels of the ship and blinked.
“Are you ok? I told you that you needed the rest.”
The sight of her somehow immediately put him at ease, and he looked down at the blankets draped over him, at his prosthetic stood next to him, ready to be put back into place.
“How—?”
“I tried to get you to wake up but you were out like a light.” She heaved herself out of the hatch and stretched her legs. “I thought it better to put you in there.”
“You had Verinis help?”
“No?” Her head tilted. “You’re heavy, but not that heavy.”
What?
He blinked. As she stretched her arms, the usually soft curve of her suddenly tensed with more muscle than he had thought, and then it disappeared as she relaxed. An odd feeling rested in the pit of his abdomen for a moment. He brushed it off with a scoff.
“I am at least three times your weight and size, Ri’kara.”
“You’re about twice my size, actually, and I’ve lifted ships off others before. Granted I was panicking.” She laughed a little, shrugging, and then gestured at the door. “It’s getting late. You said you were going to make sure I was back before dark?"
“Yes.”
Pulling the blankets from his legs, he took hold of both and swung himself around so that he could rest his one foot on the floor, reaching for his prosthetic to pull on.
Ri’kara was carefully packing her things away, though it was clear she was only partially focused, glancing up every so often as he wrestled the large metal limb into submission.
“It is rude to stare.”
Her face and crest immediately bloomed into that lilac shade, and she quickly gathered up her things. “Sorry! I’ll go outside.”
Rolling his eyes, the Highlord moved the limb experimentally and stood, allowing his robes to fall into place in order to hide the thing from sight before following her out into the blinding blood-red of the sunset that poured through the windows.
“Verinis.” She called quickly to the Templar still curled up in a patch of sun.
They immediately stood to attention.
“Done for the day? You are certainly early.”
“Val’ka was concerned for how long I’ve been working out here lately; he wanted me out before it got too dark.”
“Alright. Which way this time?”
“We took the long route this morning, so we’ll try the shortcut through one of the ruins? I think that’ll be safe enough.”
The ruins? Alarak frowned.
She glanced up at him, taking in his expression and thankfully realising that she should be explaining herself. “I like to make sure nobody follows me out here.”
“… And who would follow you?”
A strange look passed across her face, and then she shrugged, her tone too nonchalant for his liking. “Nobody, but it always pays to be careful.”
All he could do was nod, still frowning at her as she turned and began to walk, her guard falling behind him to watch their backs as they made their journey back into the main city. Something felt off, but he let it go right then; either she would tell him, or he would find out.
Once again Alarak found himself sat up against the wall of the ship, listening to his aide hum as she worked on its insides. It had been a little while since her last visit; between their constant back and forth with Artanis and her frequent visits to a friend of hers, she had apparently not had the opportunity.
That friend… She had been seeing him more and more as of late, putting that jealous lump into his abdomen at the idea that someone might be courting her. He thought, as he often did, all the way back to that gathering, back to the Nerazim that had snatched her hand and made her flush so furiously that even her shoulders had been tinged with it.
The idea that they were alone together so often, that he had no idea what happened during these meetings when so much of her time was usually in his company drove him almost mad, and so the opportunity to seek her out at the mention of the ship was something that he seized with both hands. That Templar did not need to tell him how he should spend his time.
Finally, he broke the bout of half-silence, letting his curiosity get the better of him. “I recognise the tune. The one that you use.”
“I think it’s repurposed from the hymns they chant at temple ceremonies. We were taught that our worship was our work, that we would be granted the ‘chance of ascension’ if we gave everything to it, so we’d often sing in time with the machinery to get things done faster.”
There was a slight mocking tone at the mention of ascension. He raised a brow. “You did not believe you would ascend?”
“No. I was told enough times I wouldn’t.” The click of her tools stopped. “Whenever I’d take Terrazine, I was just filled with dread and self-loathing. He spoke to me, told me I would never be worthy, as lowly as I was. At least, it was His voice, but I doubt He would have ever given me the time of day. I think the stuff just doesn’t react well with me.”
A twinge of pity tugged at Alarak’s chest. The highest point of pleasure and power he had ever felt was at the apex of a Terrazine dose. He couldn’t imagine being dragged that low into despair’s depths, even in the aftermath of an overdose.
“I just believed that I’d be granted a swift death when we won; that was enough for me.”
“And yet you believed in your friend’s little plan.”
“They saved me; my overseer had been pretty rough after I broke something, so I crawled up to the surface hoping that maybe the blood loss would kill me, and they found me. I was terrified at first, but they tended to my wounds and told me to meet with them again.
I hadn’t had that much kindness extended to me since… I can’t even remember. Of course I believed in her plan. I clung to it as tightly as I could, especially when the war finally started and all I did was build and build and drag dead colleagues out of wrecks on barely any sleep.”
For some reason, he was reminded of the fifth Ascendant at the time; a mouse-like, stuttering mess of a male that always seemed to be stressed about something or other. Every time Alarak had been sent to see him, he groveled and stumbled over his words as he assured him that ‘yes, master, we are working triple time, master’ in a way that made him want to tear his guts out.
At the time, he had thought he was just exaggerating the issues he had faced, but… If it had truly been that frantic for him…
“I seem to recall how insistent Ma’lash had been about swift production.”
“We certainly felt it. The overseers allowed us an hour’s rest at night in shifts. Most of us took to Terrazine to keep ourselves awake; there was a fissure at the bottom of the complex… Though I remember a few took it further and managed to smuggle in these Terran stims from that strange group He had allied with. They died pretty quickly.”
“Surely a something a Terran made would not kill us so easily.”
“I think… They took one, and nothing seemed to happen, so they took another and it compounded the effect. I don’t think even our hearts could take the overload. That’s what Uljia said after I described it.”
“Hmph.” He gestured to her. “And what about you?”
“I sometimes took Terrazine. It didn’t make me feel better, but it kept me alert enough that I didn’t get crushed like some of the others. Mostly I just tried to get what sleep I could. It’s taken a very long time to be able to sleep without waking up every hour. It’s… taken longer to get rid of the nightmares…”
A little sob rolled into a weak laugh, and then the tools she was holding began their work again. “By the void, I should not be rambling about this to you.”
“And why is that?”
“… It’s just sad. Nobody wants to hear about it. Least of all—”
“I would have ordered you to stop if I did not wish for the conversation. What bores me to death is your constant need to add apologetic little interjections between your ‘rambling’. Do you insist on doing the same with that ‘friend’ of yours you have been in the company of so much lately?”
Her head immediately popped up, her eyes a little wide. “We don’t… We don’t talk about me, so I don’t feel the need, no.”
The jab was a little vindictive, but the answer did ease him somewhat, even if the thought about what they could be doing other than that remained, along with a little guilt that he had employed such tactics.
Ri’kara seemed to relax slightly. “… I suppose I’m still constantly surprised that you don’t mind me talking about me.”
“You insist on having me talk of myself constantly—”
She scoffed. “As if that isn’t your favourite subject.”
“Do not interrupt.” He shot her a glare. “I have found it… refreshing that for once you have talked of yourself. It is certainly rare.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like to do it that much. It feels—”
“Selfish?”
She said nothing to that, pulling herself up from the hatch and drafting out what looked to be the final piece of the ship’s interior mechanisms with a frown that felt more angry than concentrated. She then reached for a dirty rag close by, wiping the grime and charcoal dust from her hands and wrists.
Alarak couldn’t help but soften a little then. “You are aware that I know some of what you likely endured; you have been inside that particular memory. I, on the other hand, have not had the privilege of seeing into yours.”
“… I have a few suggestions about security. We can get it done here, or I could send the plans to Cornu. That is, if you trust her enough.”
It was clear then that he had somehow scared her back into the cage she had seemingly built for herself in her mind. He made sure to make his irritation at that known, letting out a long, growled sigh before finally replying to her statement.
“Enough to know that she will not have me killed yet. I will have them done on Slayn; you have done more than required.”
“Alright.” Carefully, she rolled up each piece of parchment, securing them all with a ribbon and placing them in the small storage box. “She’ll know what to do with those; I wrote them in our script, so they should be understandable.”
He nodded, heaving himself up from the floor. “And what exactly will they be doing to my ship?”
“Oh… Not much, really.” She gestured first to the hatch. “This is going to have a biometric scanner. You can pick a few phase-smiths, and the hatch will only open for them. If one manages to get in there and they are not approved, the hatch will lock and they’ll be trapped.”
Then, she turned to the entrance. “The ship was already equipped with a scanner to let you in, but I want to have an extra contingency for intruders, so there will be another internal scanner that runs on the ship’s back-up power. Any psionic signature that is not yours or the approved phase-smiths’ will activate alarms. If you’re not on the ship—”
“It will kill them?”
“No, of course not; they’ll be trapped until they’re found, but you’ll have seen the alert already remotely. It means that even if they manage to bypass the rest of it, they’ll still be caught out. It should be able to see through cloak, but that may need testing.”
“I should imagine it would be more efficient to suffocate them if I am not on the ship or they are in the vents, hm?”
“… I don’t want to kill anyone.”
Alarak rolled his eyes but nodded. “Fine.”
He would have that feature added later.
“Anyway, I have a copy of the schematics for myself, so I’m… pretty much done here.” Her face lifted into that excited little smile. “You’ll have to bring something else back for me to tinker with; that was fun.”
Alarak would have answered then, but as she put a hand on the side of the ship to step out and onto the landing pad, he caught a glimpse of something on her wrist; a bruise. It was new, the same lilac as her scarring, and in the vague shape of a hand.
How had he not noticed it? It had been covered a little by the byproducts of her tinkering, but it should have still been obvious.
“What happened to your wrist?”
Her eyes widened and she lost her footing, stumbling out onto the landing pad and immediately putting both hands behind her back.
“It’s nothing. I fell the other day, that’s all.”
He shot her a glare, gesturing to her. “Of course. I was unaware that ‘falling’ could produce a hand-shaped bruise.”
She matched it, hopping off the pad. “Well, it’s the truth.”
“Tch. As you say.”
“You—” She turned on her heel, pointing at him. The offending wrist was kept behind her so that he couldn’t confirm his suspicion. “You can think what you like. It’s my business.”
Concern, irritation, and confusion swirled in his chest. He couldn’t even keep his frown, one brow raising at her sudden rage. It made it clearer that she was lying, but what could she possibly be lying about? That question kept him from escalating in a situation where he usually would have.
What do they do when they are alone?
Calling over her guard, Ri’kara decided to keep their conversation private, gesturing for him to follow only after they had, he assumed, decided on their route for the day. He couldn’t shake the guilt that rested just behind the insult at her treatment of him.
If you had not upset her, perhaps she would not be so difficult, hm?
As usual, they fell in step, Verinis taking their place behind them as they made the journey back. The silence felt heavy, and every so often, he could not help but glance behind her at her arm, how she kept it out of his sight. He couldn’t shake the feeling, couldn’t ignore his instinct.
Against his better judgement, however, he said nothing. She would likely tell him at some point regardless.