Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Lance's tailor shop resided on a busy business street; a humble wooden building stowed snugly between two glass-paned edifices. Throngs of businesspeople in sharp suits and ties and dresses traversed by the cozy shop every minute without sparing it a second glance. His shop was as out of place as snow in the desert.

One would think that was not where a tailor shop should be, that business would go south and be bound to doom. Everyday, someone not-business-like balked at the presence of his little store and shook their head in pity. Lance spared them a knowing laugh as he waved cheerfully at them from inside. Oh how ignorant and pessimistic onlookers were, how hilarious that they not knowing all the suits of every business people on this street was fitted by him and fixed by him. He had more than enough money to find a new, less dingy place for business but that means this place would lost its charm and its most profitable, meaningful customers.

5pm.

Lance flipped the sign to “Close”, turned the doorknob counter clockwise four times and pulled it towards him. The thousand varying shades of the world beyond interflowed like alighted water. Brilliant sunset of a Midnight Kiss splattered in swirls of tangerine, neon red of tail lights, lonesome golden cones of street lights, eddying together so fast they became a mass of white light. It spun and spun until Lance started to notice a speckle of sky blue and leaf green.

The world was arriving at last.

Lance turned around and walked back to his work counter, whistling a cheerful ditty. All discarded cloth, rulers and chalks stayed behind in the other world, saving him the trouble of kicking them underneath the drawer and sweeping when closing time came around. Lance set up the shop for this world. A pot of scintillating melted gold, countertop spinner rack with spools of every shade of pink meticulously arranged in an ombre for aesthetic sake, a pincushion, cookies courtesy of Hunk and a notebook of all past and current appointments in two worlds. Lance opened it to the newest entry of the black paper half, pinching the paper between his fingers with care. He had an appointment due in - Lance glanced at the clock on the wall, wrong in one but right in the other - 2 dobashes. Too bad it wasn’t enough for a cup of coffee, something this world didn’t have and still made him shook his head in bafflement whenever he thought about it. He leant his hand against the counter, waiting. His eyes roved over the front door; the sign hadn’t been flipped back to open yet.

Sign flipped, door left slightly ajar, Lance made his way for the counter again, smoothing out non-existent creases on the vest the mannequin donned as he passed it. The pink heart on the chest was a nice touch of color, only for this world and not the other.

For in this world, Lance wasn’t just any tailor, he was the Tailor of the Hearts, Mender of Heartbreaks and Keeper of Love.

The day passed by peacefully, tea was made and notes were taken. Lance returned some hearts and took twice as many into his possession. Some so faded and rough he cut himself running his fingers along the edge; one so swollen with heartbreak he had to take immediate measures - a bag of frozen Brussels sprouts accomplished that. He listened to stories, too. A promise of old age broken with war, a lesson of negligence of loved ones, an requited love; all that needed healing and care.

At 4:56pm Lance saw the last customer off with a promise of returning her heart to her the day after. She had been crying so much none of his soothing tea worked, not even the magical coffee from the other world managed to keep her tears in check. Lance was no actual doctor but he knew enough to remind her to take a sip from her tea from time to time as he tried to make heads and tails of her story amongst the midst of sobs and thick voice.

Her heart was put on top of the waiting list. And it wouldn’t take too long to fix, so Lance set up his work counter for a gold mend and started working.

He could afford an overtime today.

With aqueous gold syringed along the fissures, Lance let it sit  to work its magic and started closing the shop. He was just anchoring the fragile beakers into place when the doorbell chimed unwelcomely.

"Shop's closed," Lance called, carefully extracting his head from inside the cabinet to peer over the counter. "Please come-"

Lance froze in his habitual request at what he saw, or the lack thereof. For every clientele that came through that door, as a force of habit, his eyes drew to the spot on the left side of the  chest to give the heart safely fitted there a superficial diagnosis. But the heart shaped dent was glaringly empty.

What the-

Lance swerved his eyes to the right; maybe the clientele's heart was there. He had met one with a reversal of organs before.

Once more there was no heart to observe.

"You see I don't have a heart right?" The clientele said, crossing his arms guardedly across his chest. He glared at Lance from under the thick curtain of his dark bangs, irises tinted with a violet glow.

“A war automaton.” Lance sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Of course you don’t have a heart.”

Lance loved this world, with its lush forests and vibrant dwellers, such contrast to his original one filled with smog and faux sentiments. All would have been perfect had it not been for the war. Naxzelans’ - for this world was called Naxzela - thirst for war was astounding; they brought about a new era of warfare. Automaton; unfeeling, untiring, and obedient machines with advanced weapons. The war got more destructive, more violent, and comparative of every adjective that were used to describe wars.

Lance was lucky enough to not have to suffer through it. He arrived just in time for the inauguration of an acclaimed benevolent sovereign as Naxzela entered post-war era and rebuilt itself. As for the automatons, most were trashed, melted down for metal or some of the newer models with higher intellectual capacity blended in with the people.

Incoherent mutter drew him back into the presence of a very alive automaton.

“Sorry, what?” Lance asked.

“I said I’m not!” The automaton snapped, eyes blazing with anger as he caught Lance’s own gaze.

“Not what? An automaton?” Lance leant forward, almost challengingly. “You, sir, are definitely a machine.” No human has skin perfect like that, he almost added but managed to  hold his tongue.

To his surprise, the automaton clientele actually deflated. He drew back within himself again, biting his lips hard enough to draw blood.

“I’m not for war,” he mumbled, so sad and ashamed Lance automatically drew himself back too.

Lance had never heard of an automaton not for war but he could keep his opinions open.

“If you say so.” Lance shrugged before looking at the clock. Damn, he was 5 minute late now. “And shop’s closed by the way. So if you can come-“

“Can you make hearts?” The automaton impolitely and impatiently cut in.

“-next week that would be great but since you’re asking that, please don’t come.” Lance ended his request with a cordial denial because you don't come to him asking for a heart. No sirs.

“What! Why?” The unabashed surprise came as expected.

"Because it’s completely out of the questions, that’s why!” Lance brought his volumes up and threw his hands in the air for good measures

"Aren't you a Tailor of Hearts?"

"Okay, okay, listen here- what’s your name?”

"Keith."

"Okay listen here Keith McMullet, I am Tailor of Hearts, not of Emotions,” Lance plowed over Keith's confused echo of 'McMullet'. "I don’t 'make hearts’.”

“What do you mean you don’t? Isn’t that what a tailor does?” Keith took a step forward. “Make things?”  

“Normal tailors, yes. But not me.” Lance drew himself up to his full height, which brought him to, annoyingly enough, only a forehead taller than Keith.

“So you’re saying all of this-“ Keith swung his arm wide, gesturing to the entire store front. “-is mere shakedown?”

Lance heard the words. His mind couldn’t register them, but his emotions had already made themselves known. His ears and nose heated up and the back of his eyeballs burned.

“Hold your goddamn horses. Are you implying that I lie about my skill?” Heckle raised, Lance jabbed a finger harshly against Keith’s chest.

“Misleading huckstering, that’s what you do.” Keith swiped his finger away and got straight into Lance’s face to ground out the spurious accusations.  

Lance stared hard at Keith’s dark frown, thought stalled. Then, slowly and painstakingly, he brought a twitching hand up and smoothed it over his face. Not once, during his ten years of being a Farer, had anyone expressed such vehement distrust in his talent and skill. Today was a day as good as any to start a diary then.

It wasn’t that making a heart was impossible; in fact, there existed a manual for it. He just need a minute or two to have it in his hands. It was the eccentric Archivist based there that he wasn’t prepared to meet. But for this dissenter, he could make an exception.

"Fine.” Lance leant over the counter and pulled out the client appointment notebooks with less care than normal. “Fine! You want a heart? Fine! I'll make you the best heart to learn the way of love and make you take back your words!”

Without leaving Keith any moment to process the information, Lance placed both hands on his shoulders and marched him out through the door before slamming it close and pulling the doorknob to start the jump.

The last of Keith that he saw was the half formed shout as Naxzela swirled together and disappeared.

Chapter Text

Lance chanted a rhyme under his breath, weaving between fabric rolls in the storage rooms to get to the backdoor.

“Lattice work, lattice work,

The bird in the cage.

When, oh when will it come out”

Lance didn’t like the Archivist one bit; every encounter with that guy gave him heebie jeebies. But, as far as his dimensional knowledge was concerned, Lance had to give him props. The rhyme was his idea to time exit points to enter the Pith. Without this, he would have missed the connecting step and floated to his eventual dissolution years ago.

“In the night of dawn

The crane and turtle slipped

Who is behind you now?”

Lance swung the backdoor open and stepped out, into the bright white of nothingness. There was a moment of  mini heart attack when his feet hovered above nothing before landing on a surface, just as white and blank as the space around it. The Archivist didn’t make an immediate appearance as he was usually wont to do so Lance let his hopes soar. There had been others, too, before they took off to mend a dimension rift. Maybe they were back already...?

“Coran? Allura? You here?” Lance called, his voice a multilayered version, like someone recorded his speech and played it at different times and laughed at how bad it was.

“You don’t seem happy to see me,” A deadpan velvety timbre answered instead.

Lance didn’t hide his groan as he pivoted around to face the de trop lofty Archivist.

“Lotor!” Lance pasted an unnatural smile on his face as he patted Lotor’s shoulders repeatedly. “Fancy seeing you this gorgeous day. Go out sometime mate. You’re as white as the space around here.”

Lotor took a step to the side. Lance hit air instead and stumbled forward.

“Your attempt at humor is applaudable.” Lotor brushed a hand over his well-kept dark vest, seemed to be flicking away Lance’s infectious mannerliness.

“Then applaud.”

“No.”

“Rude.”

“What do you want to know?” Lotor started walking away, his superior height forced Lance to take two steps to keep pace with him. “History? Legends? New world to try?”

“Can I not want to know about the well-being of my fave Archivist?” Lance said, already out of breath as Lotor led him to the main repository.

Around them, whiteness dimmed down to reveal shapeless silhouettes of other dimensions. They writhed and changed all the time; Lance never had the chance to make heads or tails of any of them. A flying carpet whizzed past; a group of fish stood over a septegram, looking ready to summon the fishy equivalent of Satan. Lance wondered if he could be a fish too if he ever got sent to that dimension; looked to be a land of watery fun and love.

The ground shimmered underneath his feet, splitting off into small squares with an echoing bubbly-rumble. Like gravity suddenly got switched off, the cubes lifted off into the air, bringing Lance and Lotor up with their plain sailing ascend. There was no sun here but somehow the glare still hit his eyes.

“You know as well as I do that the word ‘well’ encapsulates my state of being already.” Lotor hummed as he jumped onto an adjacent cube, getting one cube closer to the gathering of floating cubes up ahead. “Tell me, how is Naxzela?”

“Cliffy.” The entry point for Naxzela was located right on top of a treacherous cliff with thick forest enwreathed, so that was where the shop stayed. “And automaton war. You should know all this.”

“Knowing does not equate to witnessing.” Lotor returned sharply, hooking a hand onto the protruding part of a cube flowing parallel to the one he was standing on.

“That’s why I said you should go out.” Lance waited for another special cube to come within his reach and mirrored Lotor’s action. “You have thousands of worlds on hand, just pick one and skip a day.”

Lotor didn’t say anything to that, and with his stance as solid as a statue and back to Lance, he had no idea how well Lotor took his advice.

They stayed silent the rest of the way. White cubes floated around the place like bubbles at sea, haltingly peaceful. The silhouettes started fading away altogether. They were getting nearer to the center of the Pith. In front of him, Lotor started moving his hand in a specific movement. He made a circle, which appeared in the air in purple light, then slashed right through it horizontally. Lance had seen the Unlocking a few times already, by Allura and Coran, pink oval and orange triangle respectively. Their Unlockings had always filled him with wonder and excitement; Lotor’s violet circle Unlocking gave him a sense of tumbling into the unknown sea of knowledge, so deep and dangerous the more desperately he swam for the surface, the deeper he sank down.

A screech of braking vehicles careened around the empty space, sending chills up and down his spine as his jaw locked together in discomfort. Lance flipped a finger at Lotor’s back. Goddamn this extra fruitcake, he never did anything to lower the decibel of this part. He missed Allura’s and Coran’s thoughtfulness so much.

Lotor shrugged minutely, definitely enjoying Lance’s annoyance. The cubes started moving again, a clanking rumble of machines starting up, only this time, they all correlated on Lotor, and Lance by extension. Lance had no intention of finding out how heavy these cubes were so he drew within arms’ reach of Lotor.

About a dozen cubes lazily orbited around them. Lance kept an eye out for them all. He wouldn’t put it past Lotor to shift his place a smudge to the right and let a cube hit Lance.

“What are you looking for?” Lotor motioned a cube towards him and separated them into several smaller cubes by moving his hands apart.

Each little cube twinkled like faraway stars. Lotor stared hard at them, seeing things that a Farer like Lance was never privy to.

“Heart craft.” The moment he said that, all the circulating cubes got smashed out of orbit in a glorified collision of piercing clanging. “Will you stop that! I know my request is ridiculous enough as it is.” Keith McMullet had better be fucking grateful Lance was going through all this for his demand.

Lotor, damn him, regained the unflappable composure in one single breath and began rearranging the cubes like a mother duck calling her ducklings back into the nest.

“Farer McClain, you cognize the weight of what you are asking for, do you not?”

“Yes, yes I know,” Lance huffed. “Most ambitious thing yada yada that may result in dimension rift, yes I know.”

“You are not giving this due consideration.” Lotor shook his head minutely, his enviously lush white hair moving with the motion.

Any other day, Lance would take a minute to silently admire and gape at that but not today. He just wanted this day to end, not even his curiosity about Lotor’s hair-care procedure could ease his ire.

“Are you giving it to me or not?” Lance snapped. “I’m late for dinner with my family as it is.”

Lotor’s expression softened at the mention of family as he waved a distant cube over with masked resignation. Lance didn’t allow himself to think too much over that expression. He lived for the present, not the far future.

The cube that was meandering towards them differentiated from the rest with several black lines already dividing it into small cubes. Lotor waited for it to stop right in front of his face and with a grunt, he plunged his arm straight through the center of it. The cube shimmered and disintegrated into fleeting dust, pooling on top of Lotor's shiny dress shoes before vanishing as if it never existed.

The thing that Lotor held in his fist shone, swords of light stabbing through the opening. He turned around to face Lance and beckoned for him to raise his palm.

The moment the thing left Lotor's hand, it blinded Lance. It felt just like looking at the sun. It landed smoothly in his hand, a cold palm-sized sphere. Lance stuffed it straight into his jacket's pocket and zipped it close.

"Dimming will happen soon. That will be your guide." Lotor explained, before lowering his voice dangerously. "Stay aware of the danger it poses if someone not of this circle encounters it. This is meant for you and your intended only."

"Ten-four." Lance saluted with two fingers, dropping two candies a grateful old lady had insisted he have earlier when he returned her patched heart to her into Lotor's waiting palm.

"I asked for non-perishable items, Lance. Do advise for how long this may last."

"Just eat the candies and display the wrappers." Lance felt around his clothes for the shop's key before remembering he’d just started wearing it around his neck with a woven lanyard grandma knitted for him.

"Something of more value would be preferable next time you drop by."

"Ha! Like hell I'm coming back." Lance jabbed his key onto a random space in the air. The front door of his store appeared and Lance yanked it open. "Adieu."

Lance waved cheerfully and shut the door behind, plunging his little shop back into its familiar perpetual darkness.