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Shadows loom throughout the streets of Tibera in the witching hours of the morning. It's no big city, no lights line the streets powered by that wonderful electricity like they do in the cities he grew up in. The only form of light comes from the moons above, bathing the small pools of uncovered cobbles in a pale grey. There's barely a colour to be seen, no trace of chroma to be seen under the blanket of deep blue.
Maxwell is likely the only man awake at such an hour. It's a first for him- most times when he returns after a night of blowing off steam he's in a bustling metropolis and even in night they breathe life. This is decidedly not that, not by any stretch of the imagination.
He'd be bathed in an artificial glow; small pockets of warmth to scurry between as he pulls himself into some semblance of personhood before returning to the manor in Eisengeist, or one of the many dormitories he's been housed in. Somewhere he had a bed and somewhere he could hide away from the world, no matter how successful he'd actually be at that.
It's much too dark to read his wristwatch, but he knows that unless Marya had some late night of whatever it is she does he's the only crew member awake.
That's alright, he reasons, he's never had a welcoming party after a night on the town. He didn't tell anyone where he was going, or even that he was going. It's not any of their business- its far too late for any brawl to have started for him to be needed, and even if a fight had broken out he would be able to hear the pandemonium that they'd wreak across this town.
Some part of him aches. Distantly he remembers that his nose is broken.
Maxwell hisses through his teeth. Blood trickles through his moustache and iron is brought to the forefront of his mind. His hands throb in time to his heartbeat, a sick rendition of a drumbeat. Blood oozes out of the split skin of his knuckles and in one swift movement he sets his nose.
He's familiar with the process, and while he normally has a mirror to spare to ensure its realignment is as unnoticeable as he can manage, he's familiar enough with his face that he could probably reset it without one and have it be an insignificant change to his features. It's not like it isn't painfully obvious just what kind of man he is just by looking at him any ways. His ears make sure of that.
genealogical vanity aside, all he needs to focus on at the present time is getting back to the Zephyr mk II. It's no arduous task, but the emergence of chills across his shoulders will serve to make it just a smidge more difficult.
This time he doesn't have to sneak around well-intentioned-but-still-far-too-nosey groundskeepers though. That certainly makes it easier. It's almost a walk in the park. Despite the Wind Riders being, well, the Wind Riders- meaning they are naturally more aware of their surroundings- Maxwell has no reason to believe they sleep with one eye open. The youngest of them is eleven years older than him, and the elderly need to sleep a lot more than he does.
Not to say that Marya is elderly. If she is elderly that means that he almost is, and he's in his prime; the maths just doesn't add up.
He's not too far from the Zephyr mk II now, the buildings familiar even in the pale light of the moons. He can only hear his own breathing, and the sound of his shoes against the cobbled streets which can only be taken as a good sign. The chill, however, dampens any joy he might have felt at the silence.
Iron fills his mouth, and with a wince he swallows it. No matter how many times he swallows it, it will never get less gross.
His eyelids feel weighted, and he fights to keep them open. His nose, though now set, still aches and ebbs. His heartbeat echoes in his ears and his hands feel stiff. Whether that is because of the pulsing ache emanating from his knuckles or rather because of the cold of the night is not something he can tell.
The closer he is to the ship, the more it hurts.
The phenomenon isn't something new to Maxwell. It's rather common, actually. Some kind of encouragement to make it to wherever his current bed is at. A final push to avoid collapsing in the street.
He ignores how he staggers at the thought, a hand to his side touching wet.
This is among the worst he's felt of it, however. Likely has something to do with Zoodian gravity- or some equally science-y happenstance that he couldn't ever hope to understand. They have other crew members for that sort of thing. He's no scientist.
It doesn't matter all too much though. As long as he stays awake long enough to lick his wounds and then to slip into bed with no one the wiser. Yes, as long as all that is done it will all be alright.
It's none of their business what he gets up to. He deserves some privacy. Murph knows he doesn't get any as it stands.
He rounds the final corner, and then the Zephyr mk II is in front of him. A few hundred feet away, yes, but in front of him all the same.
His legs threaten to crumple beneath him.
It's always worse, when he can see his boarding.
Gritting his teeth, he pushes forward, hand pressed resolutely to his side. It helps dull the throbbing there, if only minutely. The wet remains still. There's only so much he can do. He's no doctor.
Bathroom, patch himself up, sort out some painkillers and then collapse into bed for at least five hours.
Yes, sounds like a plan. The corners of his mouth pull upwards.
His mind flashes the drums of whiskey they recently brought aboard. A quiet laugh tears itself free and iron slips into his mouth again. He doesn't bother swallowing it down this time. No one's going to notice that red (for he knows its red, intimately so, even though its almost black right now) come morning. There's no way to connect it back to him, even if they do. He is going to be fine.
His whole body throbs; a metronome in time to his heart. Right. He should hurry. No one's awake but the faster he gets some booze in him the faster its going to stop.
And the faster it stops, the likelihood of him passing out on the job decreases too.
He stumbles over his own feet. Not entirely unusual, not in these circumstances, but something that niggles at the back of his mind. Maybe he blew off too much steam. Fought with more than he actually had. All possibilities that now dawn on him that might ring true.
He sucks air in through his teeth.
He's onboard the Zephyr now, and his feet steer him towards the nearest first aid kit, tucked away under the sink in the galley. He is fortunate, Maxwell thinks to himself, it's close to the good booze. With that in his system he'll fall asleep the moment his head touches the pillow, perhaps even as his inner ear registers the change between vertical and horizontal if he's lucky.
Throwing open the cabinet door, Maxwell winces at the sound. He did not put that much power into it. His vision blurs a little. It takes longer than expected to pull the kit out. Longer still to unlatch the the lid and open the damn thing.
It's hard to make out its contents in the moonslight. Harsh shadows are cast over the usually inviting space. Maxwell can just about make out the things he will need in the low light, and he plucks them out of the box.
He blinks, and he gets to work taking off his various outer layers. He should probably attend to that wet feeling at his side first. He looks down, and he sees his shirt is spreading black.
"... huh."
He probably should have realised sooner. He casts his mind back to the entirety of his night. The pain bursts into the forefront of his mind, smattering light behind his eyes.
He can't remember when this happened. It was clearly a big (cheating) hit, given how much he's already lost, but he can't figure out when it happened.
The only thing that shaking his head grants him is vertigo.
Deep breath in. And then out.
He's patched up worse. Not on his own, but he has patched up worse and that has to count for something.
He grabs the disinfectant, pours it over a rag and then starts to mop up the blood coating his side. The sting is all-encompassing, and Maxwell cannot stop the hiss at the sensation. The pressure on the wound is helping, but only marginally so and only really through giving him a different pain to focus on.
He almost wishes someone else was up now. It'd be much easier to get to a state of not being in urgent danger of bleeding out. He must be making such a mess of the galley floor, blood filling every groove of the wood floorboards. It must be dripping between the gaps too.
He presses the rag harder into his side, before tossing it out of his reach. It hits the ground with a wet thud, and Maxwell groans at the sound.
No matter, the faster he bandages it the faster he can drink and the faster he can drink the faster he can sleep and leave this whole night behind him.
His hands are covered in his own blood as he tears open the little cloth bag the bandages come in. They're stark white, visible even in the midst of true night, is stained with the black of his own blood. If it weren't for the reflective finish of fluid he wouldn't be able to tell where his hands start and the bandages end.
It doesn't matter. The faster he cleans himself up the faster he can sleep. He's willing to forgo the alcohol at this point if it means he can just go to sleep.
Lost in his own stimuli, Maxwell does not hear the footsteps behind him. Nor does he recognise the pale blue of the moonlight get replaced by the warmth of artificial light. His world narrowed down to repetitive actions, simply going through the motions.
"Wh- Oh fuck!"
Maxwell does not flinch. Not in the slightest. His grip slips from the stained white taut around his mid-section, and the fabric begins to uncoil. Maxwell mutters a curse under his breath. A perfectly good roll bandage gone to waste.
"Gotch- what happened? Was there a fight?" Olethra continues to exclaim, closing the gap between Maxwell and the door. The warm light of the corridor contrasts with the light of the moon. Individual strands of wild brown hair are painted golden.
She kneels down, uncaring of the red-black that creeps into her night clothes.
"Is there someone after you," She continues to ask, "Max... what's going on?- We can help- I promise!"
Maxwell doesn't deign her a response, just fumbles for another bandage. He tosses the useless one next to the rag. It hits the ground in much the same manner.
His hands are shaking now. That's not good.
Maybe he shouldn't sleep at all.
Olethra grabs his shaking hands, his split knuckles almost scabbed over. He hopes the clamminess isn't too bad.
By the way her face, features barely visible in the low light, scrunches up Maxwell can tell that it is in fact too bad.
Olethra rises to a stand, and turns the galley light on.
"Shit- Max- you look awful."
Maxwell says nothing, just tries to blink the light-headedness away. As if that would work.
"Like- really bad. jeez- what happened to you?"
Maxwell looks over his side again. It's still leaking blood, in time to the beat of his heart. Maybe he was a little over-eager thinking that he coulld just wrap it and it'd be fine. It shouldn't need too many stitches, maybe only one or two. He's no doctor, no scientist either. Just the one they use to hit things. He's not even really a bouncer- that's more Van than anything.
That's alright, he thinks to himself.
Olethra has once more closed the gap between them, reaching over Maxwell to get to the first aid kit.
"If you aren't going to tell me," she reasons, "you have to at least let me help."
"Go back to sleep, I've got this handled" Is what Maxwell intends to say. What is actually said is closer to "Gba' t'slepiveg'haneled" which isn't any word or phrase in any legitimate language. At least not in any language he's aware of.
Olethra's face pops back into his field of view, and she does not look happy about that stumbling of words.
"I'm definitely not going after that"
Maxwell groans as quietly as he can manage.
"Hey," she whisper-exclaims, "you're lucky I'm not getting your brother."
"Wealwell wouldn't be much help." He slurs.
"Oh I know that- not him, the other one- Samwell. He'd kick your ass for this."
Maxwell acutely feels a cold shiver crawl down his spine. "Thank you," he nods, just in case his tongue decides to be uncooperative.
"You're welcome!" She chirps, and sets back to threading the needle.
They lapse into a silence of sorts, punctuated only by their breathing. Maxwell's attention is drawn to the sky of asteroids. He's not sure he'll ever grow used to the sight. It's so alien to him, he's so used to seeing one thing in the night's sky, and sometimes the smog would be so thick he couldn't even see that.
The sky in Zood is so clear, the air so clean. He's not sure if he's ever breathed such clean air before coming. Zern will soon have clean air too, and the thought brings a smile to his face. He deserves the clean air, more than anyone else.
The needle bites into his skin, and Maxwell brings air over his teeth and says little else.
Olethra doesn't say anything either. She focuses solely on stitching him back together. He can feel the shakiness of the hand pinching the wound together, and of the needle piercing his flesh.
Silence from Olethra is unnerving, Maxwell realises. There's something about it that sets his teeth on edge. He's never seen her quiet before, not really. The last time she was quiet was when the Professor passed.
"I've never done this before," she admits to the silence, "if it's a bad stitch job it's on you." she tries to joke.
Maxwell hums, ignoring how the vibration causes a sense of awareness that make his eyes itch. "It's okay," is the only thing he can think of to say, "you didn't get Sam- or Van- that's good enough."
That makes Olethra laugh, aborted as it is in the middle of the night, "oh that'd be *awful*- she'd be so mad."
"I'm not sure who'd be worse." Maxwell admits in mirth, his voice still slurred. It sounds more intelligible now, but he's unsure if that's just because he knows what he is going to say.
Olethra does not comment on if he's easier to comprehend now, returning the full breadth of her focus to stitching up the gash in his side. The glide of the needle through his skin feels uniquely weird, which isn't mitigated in any manner by the pin-prick pain it brings with it. The pain is hardly noticeable with the rest of the agony he finds himself in, which Maxwell cannot decide if that is a burden or not.
The thread pulls taut, and is tied off.
Exhaling a breath he didn't know he was holding, Maxwell casts his gaze down to his side. The stitches themselves are sloppy, but that's to be expected. They are good enough to hold his body together, at least for now, and therefore are good enough to bandage and fall asleep with. As long as he doesn't jostle himself too badly everyone else should be none the wiser.
He looks again at the stitches. Each of them are tied off with a bow, much like how one ties the laces on their shoes.
"So what happened?"
Maxwell shoots Olethra a dirty look, though he suspects it to be undercut by the fondness he feels.
"What? It's not like you can move right now-"
"That's not how stitches work-"
"-and I'm not going to leave you alone until you tell me! So cough it up! I can be very persistent if I want to."
Maxwell eyes the liquor cabinet.
"Only if I get a drink out of this."
Olethra snorts, rising to stand, "Woah- I have a girlfriend."
"You *know* that's not what I meant!" He cannot help but hiss, his head and side throbbing at his protestations. His face feels like its burning.
Olethra doesn't deign him with a response, merely giggling over his reaction. She still pours him a glass of... something. He hopes its brandy. He likes brandy.
His head thuds softly against a cabinet door, and he pulls out a dressing to apply to the stitch itself. Then white bandage coils around his midsection, over and over until the spool empties. Soon enough, the first aid kit is packed away, shoved hastily into the cabinet under the galley sink.
Olethra kneels back down beside him, leaning against a cabinet on the opposite row. She hands him his drink, and he realises that she has a drink of her own.
The drinks are a beautiful amber, in crystal glasses that refracts the artificial light in a way that makes Maxwell feel warm. His drink corroborates this feeling, lighting up the back of his throat with heat. His shoulders drop, and he swirls the liquid in its glass.
Olethra takes a sip too, and her face scrunches up.
"God- how do you drink that stuff? It's so bad!"
He suppresses his laughter, but pain lances up his side any ways. He takes another slug of his drink.
"I've been drinking much longer than you."
Olethra rolls her eyes, fixing Maxwell with a pointed look.
"I highly doubt that- you've met my parents," she bites back, a conspiratorial grin spreading across her face.
They lapse into silence once more. Maxwell polishes off his drink, relishing in the giddy warmth. He doesn't look at Olethra, his gaze fixed on the galley light swaying ever so slightly in time with the ship. He ignores the thick tension in the air. Once the drink kicks in he'll be out of here, and instead be in bed.
It won't take long. He hasn't eaten in a while; there's already lethargy pulling at his bones. He near downed it too. Soon enough the room will begin to spin and he will be pulled into a dreamless sleep. It's a well-worn pattern of behaviour. One that brings far too much comfort to simply discard; regardless of any health detriments that lie in wait over the horizon.
"I'm not moving until you tell me."
Maxwell's eyes slide over to the girl. They return to the ceiling.
"I'm not joking!"
He ignores her.
"I'll get Samwell."
Maxwell levels her with a look perfected through many years of being stuck in that house.
"I will- I promise," Olethra's vows, voice wavering with something Maxwell cannot define.
Maxwell rolls his eyes.
It's none of her business.
Olethra gets to her feet, the bottom of her nightclothes stained an awful burgundy. She storms to the hall, drink discarded on the floor.
"It's none of your concern, Olethra," he manages, "I don't see why you care so much. It's nothing to do with you," he pleas.
Olethra jolts in the doorway. She turns back to face Maxwell slowly, her face pinched.
Maxwell finds the common sense to wince.
"What do you mean it has nothing to do with me?"
Maxwell shrugs, unsure if the warmth in his face is due to the drink or the swirl of shame that now threatens to drown him. He refuses to look at her, turning to the window. His hands clasp around the empty glass, knuckles throbbing all the while.
"Maxwell, what do you mean it has nothing to do with me?" Her voice is closer than it was before.
Maxwell swallows against a lump in his throat.
"It was my decision to go out. It was just... I was just blowing off some steam. The Wind Rider's aren't my keepers, and you most certainly aren't either. These are just the consequences of that" is what he manages to say. His voice is level, carefully detached.
Olethra says nothing.
Maxwell refuses to look at her.
"We are at a lull point right now, though I'd be more than capable of fighting in this state. It would only concern you if I was unable to protect you- or anyone else on board."
Olethra says nothing.
"Is that a satisfactory answer Olethra?" He can't help but bite.
The tension has doubled, almost physical in the way it chokes the life out of this room. Maxwell can't bring himself to look at the woman near a decade his junior.
The booze must really be getting to him.
"Is that why you think we keep you around?"
There's a quality to Olethra's voice that causes Maxwell's head to finally turn to face her. It's shaking, but there's a lack of tears to follow. Her voice is oddly high, much higher that her voice usually is. Even with the upward intonation characteristic of questions, it is far too high. Her accent also is far more prominent than it has been in a long while, as if she had just arrived from Pilby. She sounds much younger in this moment than he has ever heard her be. Together, it paints a picture Maxwell isn't sure if he wants to confront. He has an idea of what Olethra is feeling, but he does not dare to presume.
Her face is blotchy, eyes clearly glassy with unshed tears. The line of her shoulders is shaky, tanned hands clutching at the ruined fabric of her night clothes. Olethra's nose threatens to run, and her bottom lip quivers under the weight of her feelings.
Maxwell's mouth runs dry, and he cannot find the words to answer her question.
Stillness envelops the galley. Neither willing to ease the strain suffocating the room.
its not an entirely new situation to him. Maxwell has oft brought a room to unsteady silence. The air will become overbearing, and words will be smothered in the wake of it. Eye contact becomes more hazardous than usual, and it takes little time for Maxwell to be left alone in the aftermath of whatever social faux pas he has committed this time, whether intentional or not.
It is not novel, and yet he is reeling from it any ways.
He's not sure how much time has passed, in the dead of night. There is no tick of a grandfather clock, nor is there the careful patrol of the night-time security. All he can hear is his and Olethra's breathing.
"I'm not sure what you want me to say, Olethra" is what he ends up saying. His voice feels unbefitting of him, younger than he ever remembers sounding. It makes his skin prickle, the moment the words leave his mouth, and he finds himself wishing he hadn't near-downed his drink.
He knows he could reach for Olethra's, but he's pushed far too many buttons already. It'd be for the best if he doesn't push any more.
She stands still, at the precipice of the galley- stuck between timelines. One version of her, turns on her heel. She leaves him stewing under the tension of this conversation, holding up the weight of their worlds on his shoulders. Their relationship is ruined- replaying the sins of their forefathers. The wind riders inevitably break up once more and this time there are no plucky upstarts to sew them back together like a wound to the side. They are each left aimless all due to one monster masquerading as man.
That timeline is not this one. She closes the distance between them, and kneels down at his side once more.
Maxwell shifts back at her actions, side screaming protest. His eyebrows furrow almost painfully, vision spinning at the movement. His hands are firmly pressing into the blood-slick wood panelling beneath him.
She recoils a little, backing out of his space. Her face is scrunched up, and the mist in her eyes finally begins to spill over onto her cheeks. She throws her arms out, and tugs him towards her. Her arms are firm against the top line of his back, hands splayed over his shoulder blades.
"I'm so glad your dad and awful fucking brother are dead- I'm serious."
He doesn't relax into her hold, but some of the tension fades, "me too."