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It was getting easier for Venus to see in the dark.
Well, barely. His vision was still absolute dogshit. Finer details kept blurring together, and he had a near constant headache from straining his eyes so much. It was getting easier, though. Far too slowly for Venus’ liking, but his eyes were starting to ease from their constant strain.
It was probably because they were getting dimmer. A side effect of going so long without starlight. Venus couldn’t see what he looked like, but he watched the rest of the planets and moons’ eyes dim and their pupils widen to accommodate the darkness.
Which was kind of cool. Weird, but cool. It meant that there was less bumping into other planets and moons happening. Good. If my foot kept being stepped on I would’ve committed a murder.
It was probably due to this mild improvement in his vision that Venus finally noticed that Mercury’s wings looked shit.
And he told him as much, in a very tactful way.
“Your wings look shit.”
Mercury turned from where he was collecting asteroids, said wings bristling before flattening against his back. “Wow. Thanks.”
The feathers, normally sleek and aerodynamic along the narrow wings, looked strangely bare in places, particularly along the outer edge where the feathers looked stiff and strange. Several feathers stuck up in awkward angles, and Venus had to fight the urge to pluck one away that was poking up at 90 degrees.
Both Mercury and Venus stared at each other.
“They look bad.”
“Yes, you said that already.”
“Did you fly into an asteroid field when we weren’t looking? Pick a fight?” Venus continued, ignoring him. He stopped to consider. “And without me? I would love to see your ass get handed to you.”
“Oh, shut up, Venus.”
“Well, they don’t usually look this bad, Pipsqueak.”
“Urgh.” Mercury crossed his arms and turned his body away. Venus waited a moment, shrugged, and went back to looking for ice asteroids.
If Pipsqueak didn’t want to tell him, then sucks for him. No dust off Venus’ surface. It wasn’t like he was worried about Mercury or anything.
“I was— am… molting.”
“Oh.”
“…”
“Well, that’s crap timing.” Venus crossed his arms over his chest. “We had like millions of years of nothing but sitting around playing cards and you choose now to lose all your feathers?”
“Ah, yes because I famously have control over when feathers fall out. How could I forget?”
“I just think it’s important to keep your wings intact when you are fighting against a star.”
“I didn’t know we would be in a revolution!”
“You should’ve! This system is full of them!” He threw his arms out. He didn’t know why exactly he was arguing this stupid point but he felt too deep into it to back off now. “You can’t go bald randomly without warning!”
“…what?”
“That’s how molting works.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Shut up.”
“Venus. I’ve been molting since we were in our realistic orbits.”
“Huh. That far back? “They still look really bad.”
“I can’t preen them when I can’t see what—“ Mercury cut himself off with a groan, flicking his hand dismissively. “You know what? Forget it.”
Oh. Yeah, he supposed if he could just barely see in this muck, the pipsqueak would have a much harder time doing the finicky task of preening his own wings. Especially since the two of them were much more accustomed to an extremely convenient light source.
He remembered Earth ranting about feathers and wings when they started evolving. Venus had ignored most of it, of course. Actually he hadn’t paid attention at all, but he could guess that they were pretty high maintenance.
He vaguely remembered Mercury sometimes flirting to Earth or Mars' orbit for help— or, at the very beginning, Theia’s orbit. She’d ask to keep any loose feathers and used Uranus’ paints to dye them bright colours.
Venus shook himself out of the memories with a huff. “You go to Mars, usually.”
“Uh, yeah, he helps if I ask, but…” he trailed off.
But Mars was preoccupied with all his Life experiments in Ots’ orbit. Obsessing over it on the slight chance they could rescue Earth and he could join them. It had become such a single minded focus for the red planet that the other two had to remind him to sleep.
Mars probably wouldn’t be helping with Mercury’s wings any time soon.
The giants were off doing… something and probably wouldn’t be much use, considering the size difference. And the one true wing expert was currently light years away alone with an angry star.
What would Theia say about us leaving Earth and Luna? Venus felt his core clenched whenever he thought about it. None of them had noticed.
Mercury shook himself. “It’s fine. I’ll find somewhere to sit down later—“
“I could help.”
Mercury turned. It was still hard to see in the darkness but Venus just knew the smaller planet was wearing a skeptical expression. “Uh… really?”
“‘S just feathers, right? Can’t be that hard.”
That didn’t seem to imbue Mercury with confidence. Rude
“Alright then. Go bald on your own.”
“I’m not—“ Mercury flapped irritably and slumped. “You’re… being serious?”
“Yeah. I mean we,” Venus made air quotes, “‘sorted out our differences’ and stuff.”
The smaller planet was quiet, the only sound the soft rustle of feathers as Mercury undoubtedly twitched them in thought. If his eyes were any darker, Venus was sure he would see his face changing between microexpressions as his mind raced as fast as his orbit. “…okay. Come here.”
Mercury lifted one of the wings, the feathers fluffing up before Venus even laid his hands on it. He noted small, pale, thorn like structures sticking up through the feathers, concentrated towards Mercury’s back and shoulders.
“I’ve done as much as I can already.” He twisted his arm awkwardly to point to one of the pale spikes. “See these? They’re pin feathers. Uh, new feathers. And they’re ready to come out.”
“Okay.” They didn’t look much like feathers but sure. “What about them?”
“They are really itchy.” He shuddered and sagged. “Usually Mars just helps me with getting the sheathe off and I do most of it myself.”
Sounds easy enough. They sat down and Venus cautiously lifted his feathers, exposing more of the straw like sheathes. They looked quite brittle. “Okay. What now?”
“You kind of pinch it?” Mercury twisted around to try and demonstrate, only to be blocked by his own wings. “Uh, pinch it and rub it until the sheath comes off.”
Venus grunted, and pinched a random feather between two fingers and crushed.
The wing was torn away from him. Mercury spun around and hit him with the other with surprising force. “Not that hard! Ow?”
“Okay! Okay. I’m trying again. Drama queen.” Venus muttered the last part under his breath and rolled his eyes, not that Mercury could see it. He pinched another of the shafts and rolled it between his fingers until it began to flake away. There were feathers inside too, unfurling now that they’d been freed. Huh.
Mercury’s wings started to fluff up involuntary, giving Venus better access to the rolled up feathers. It became methodical to pinch and rub until the brittle sheathes crumbled into dust. This is kind of relaxing, actually.
It seemed Mercury had already done most of what he could reach, but the rolled up casing was most prevalent just along his shoulder blades, bunch up into a small forest of tiny spines. Mercury untensed as he worked with no more complaints about how he would ‘pluck him’ or whatever.
“It’s cold out here,” said Mercury.
Venus couldn’t feel it. His fucking atmosphere would keep a toasty scalding blanket against his surface for a few more centuries. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? “It tends to feel cooler when there’s not a ball of plasma exploding right next to your face.”
Mercury huffed. Tilted his head in thought. “What do you think of all this?”
Glancing up from his work, Venus furrowed his brow. “This… rogue stuff? We all agreed to it.”
He felt Mercury’s exhale as his wings sagged with his body. “Yeah… I know. It wasn’t much of a choice, though.”
“It’s one we made.”
Mercury muttered something under his breath, but barrelled on before he could decipher it. “Anyway, I meant what you thought about these Life experiments.”
Venus grunted. “Mars is a bit obsessive.” Like you were with— he crushed up that thought and through it out of his orbit. “He’s usually the most level headed of us.”
“He feels guilty,” the wings twitched and Venus swore as he lost his progress. “About leaving him.”
“Yeah, well, we didn’t even notice. And now he’s stuck with the Sun alone.”
“He has Luna. And Astrodude, probably.” When was the last time they’d seen that astronaut? “Besides, Sun wouldn’t hurt him.”
Venus made a sound of disbelief. The last memory he had of the star was angry screams and scorching heat at their backs as they followed the hoard of planets into the darkness. The Sun had always been angry but he had sounded—
“You know it can’t work.” Mercury lowered his wings and twisted his neck. “Bringing Earth here. It won’t happen.”
“It might—“
“Even if Earth’s planets could miraculously photosynthesise in these conditions,” one of the appendages opened to gesture at the surrounding darkness. “most of his life wouldn’t survive the journey. You saw how he was in the Kuiper Belt.”
“He survived that,” Venus shot back. “Somehow. With his plot armour.”
“Barely.”
He exhaled sharply through his nose, dusting off the dust that had gathered in his orbit. “I thought you of all planets would be talking about ‘hoping for the best’ and ‘trying anyway for the sake of our friend’?”
“Even if— and that’s a very big ‘if’— it could work out,” Mercury twisted further to look at Venus. The hot planet doubted he could, but he schooled his expression just in case. “Earth wouldn’t agree to it. We both know that.”
That stupid stubborn ball of water. Mercury had a point. Not that he would say it out loud, but he did. Even if Venus didn’t want to believe it. What, they were just supposed to leave him there? They couldn’t go home.
It’s just us, then. Somehow it always ended up being Venus, Mars and Mercury.
He blinked hard, scoffing. “Tell that to Mars, not me.”
“I’m trying. Ots always interrupts. She is… weirdly intense about this.”
“She seems dull to me.” Far too sweet and soft spoken. Nice enough, sure. Despite her size and protoplanetary disk, Venus couldn’t bring himself to pay all that much attention to her.
The wings moved up as Mercury shrugged. “I don’t know. Something feels weird about all this.”
“Like?”
Mercury didn’t answer. Maybe not being able to find the words. Venus rolled his eyes. Mercury tended to worry and stuck his nose into things too much, anyway. Besides, Jupiter obviously trusted the rogues, and all the giants were in. What were they supposed to do?
He poked around for any more stray pin feathers he might’ve missed. Mercury had listed forward and the wings had spread to give him better access. After deciding he had gotten as much as he could find, he shook off the dust from his hands and patted it off Mercury’s back. “Oi. I think I’m done.”
Mercury fluffed up his wings and flapped, hitting Venus in the face and giving him a mouthful of feathers. He spluttered around a few choice words, but the pipsqueak was already standing up on shaking legs and ruffling his feathers into place.
Venus watched as he stretched his back with an eyebrow raised. “Do I get a gold star? A medal?”
Mercury huffed. “I would’ve done it eventually.”
“Sure you would.”
Mercury was used to being able to see Venus from ages away. His atmosphere was extremely reflected and often bounced Sun’s light right into Mercury’s eyes like the universe’s angriest mirror. Even when they ventured far out of their orbits, he was easy to spot. Made it easier to avoid him, too.
But as the planets slowly departed onto an impossible, never ending mission to rescue a million planets, Mercury couldn’t see anything but stars.
There wasn’t anything to bounce off Saturn’s rings, or to illuminate Jupiter’s storms. And even though Venus almost always seemed to outshine the distant stars, there was nothing.
Nothing but the fading sensation of gravity.
Mercury turned to where he knew the red and orange planet was heading. Their eyes had fully blackened now, but they were still useless. Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe spending all my life next to a star shot my night vision.
He wondered how Venus would fare. All the other planets had their moons to keep them company. Keep them sane.
Mercury wasn’t hopeful.
One step at a time, he told himself. And try not to go crazy.
He looked back at where the rogue’s base was, looked around for any sign he wasn’t completely alone.
Only distant stars. All he could see were stars. Even the ripples of gravity were gone now.
Mercury spread his wings full of new feathers, and with a downward stroke, shot off into the void.