Archive of Our Own ^beta

Quiet, then an awful screech of metal against metal, then a gunshot, then quiet, then a goat clacking its hooves against stone, then quiet again.

At some point, he had been a genius. Occasionally, he was an Excerpt. Today he was just a man with a brush and a bucket. What a pathetic figure he cut, sweating ferociously and climbing around this not-not-Divine trying to find whatever tiny place in it was causing a stink that could travel all the way outside. Arbit really was a masterpiece, Grand Magnificent supposed, but he wished he’d designed it to clean itself.

A drumroll, then a yelp, then quiet, then wind through trees, then wind through a city, then quiet, then glass shattering.

He found the spot eventually. It was a single dead flower, somehow rotting strongly enough to make the entire place uninhabitable. He didn’t appreciate how much he related to it.

Quiet, then a sneeze, then someone knocking on fifty foot tall doors.

Damn it. He had to answer that. He absolutely did not want to deal with any worshippers today, or any day, but he trudged to the entrance nonetheless.

Grand Magnificent threw a lever that dragged the monolithic door open, squinted against the sun, looked down the stairs at a courtyard full of a hundred people, and saw Echo Reverie standing at the front of the crowd with two duffel bags and a shitty little grin on their face. “Oh no, don’t start—”

Echo’s voice rang through the temple entrance like a hammer hitting a window, easily piercing through the crowd’s silence and overwhelming Grand’s plea. “Peace Returned to the Valley, The Rivers Flowed Clear and Blue, The Mountains Resplendent, Grand. Magnificent Light Shone on the Diligent and the Penitent Alike! May I have your permission to enter the Divine Arbit, sir Excerpt?”

Grand waited for a long moment. “You done?”

“Absolutely not,” Echo forced out between giggles. They dropped their bags with a concerningly loud thunk, strode right up the steps, and pulled him into a kiss that nearly knocked him unconscious. The assembled people gasped. “I missed you, you bastard.”

“In front of everyone else?” Grand mumbled into their mouth, absolutely definitely not blushing.

They pulled back with an even shittier grin and licked their lips. “If you’re thinking about anyone except me, I guess I need to refine my technique. You want to practice a bit?”

Grand shook his head fondly and stepped away. “I hate you.”

Echo turned to the crowd and, in a show of their skill as a teacher, raised their voice without yelling. “Sorry, everybody, but we have an urgent engagement! The Excerpt will be available to speak with you in a couple days.”

The congregants looked to him, he nodded despite his best intentions, and they began to file out. Echo immediately stared him down. “The way you’ve been avoiding my messages, I’d think you hated me. It’s a good thing for your health that we happen to know a lot of the same people and you’ve ignored all of them too.”

“I'm kind of in a meeting new people phase right now.” Grand gestured to the retreating group. “I’m seeing how many different ways I can build and immediately fuck up a relationship in one interaction. Haven't run out yet."

“There can’t be that many new people on Altar.”

Grand half-smiled. “Well, if I see anyone I know, I turn and walk in the other direction. It’s worked so far.”

“What happens when someone walks faster than you?”

“I imagine I’d end up in a conversation like this.” They looked at each other until Grand couldn’t bear the sight of Echo’s eyes for another second. “Alright, what’s this engagement we have?”

“I’m hungry. You have any food in this thing?”

“I have no idea. I found some sourdough starter in there a while back, but I left it where it was.” Grand ignored Echo’s cough of coward and closed Arbit’s doors. “How about we head back to my place instead?”

“You have a place that isn’t this?”

Grand rolled his eyes and picked up one of their bags. “Yeah, you know, someone saw me sleeping in a tent once and suddenly it’s a whole deal and there’s a construction company up in my business talking about how we can’t let our Excerpt live like that, or whatever. You would not believe how hard it was to give them money.”

“Oo, he’s humble and generous!” Echo fanned themselves with a hand and easily dodged Grand swiping at their shoulder.

“So they kept asking me about the design until I told them I was too busy designing the Arbit to offer anything, and I ended up with…well, you’ll see it.”

“Oh. Yeah, I see it.” The it in question was three stories, shiny, covered in woven bits of metal and glass, and reeked of someone desperate to impress. “You live in this big old house by yourself?”

“They gave me the deed to the land, so it’s a manor. Technically.”

“You are the worst kind of rich person.”

Echo made and demolished two sandwiches in the time it took Grand to carry their bags to a guest room. He paused in the entrance to the kitchen, refusing to let himself be completely entranced by the look of their face silhouetted by the afternoon light.

“Grand Magnificent.” They pointed at him with a knife covered in aioli.

“Echo Reverie.”

“Care to explain why you barely graced my mailbox with a single sentence since the last time we saw each other?”

Grand looked past them and stared at the horizon for an uncomfortable amount of time. “I’ve been busy.”

“You’ve been busy the whole time we’ve known each other, but I couldn’t pay you to stop talking for most of it. What changed?” Echo took their dishes to the sink, grimaced at the pile already in there, and started washing up.

“Arbit. Arbit changed everything, it changed—me.”

They fixed him with an incredulous look. “You know you don’t have to chain yourself to the Arbit forever, right?”

“I thought you were the type to understand dedication. Admire it, even.”

“Grand,” Echo sighed, and he cracked in an instant.

He slumped over the island and put his head in his hands. “It’s—yeah, whatever. It’s fine. I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight about this.”

“Then don’t. But I hate the thought of you sitting on an expensive, shitty chair in this expensive, shitty house and acting like you’re the only person who can do the things you do, and puttering around in that machine making tiny adjustments all day, and letting strangers tell you you’re doing the most important work in the universe so you can keep convincing yourself this is your penance.” Echo was too precise and too damn perceptive for someone struggling to figure out how his absurdly expensive hand dryer worked. Grand was beginning to remember why he’d stopped answering their messages.

“It’s a manor,” he muttered after chewing on his thoughts and finding them flavorless.

“Mhm,” Echo responded indulgently. “Let’s go sit.”

He obediently followed them to the parlor. “It isn’t that shitty.”

They smiled despite trying to hold their mouth sternly. “There are worse places to be stuck, I suppose, but it’s a good thing you don’t have to be stuck anywhere.”

He hid his own smile and flopped onto a couch. “I’d hoped you would be glad I finally found a sense of duty. I have Arbit, you have your family and your school.”

“Don’t mistake my concern for disappointment, Grand Magnificent.” They grabbed a bottle of something and filled two glasses with it, then slid next to him. “I just don’t want you to stop achieving impossible things.”

“Like Arbit?”

“That. And getting me to love you.” He froze and had to set his drink down immediately to avoid spilling it.

“Fuck.” He didn’t know what else to say. “I—I love you too. But this is bigger than both of us. Now that Arbit exists, the people of the Mirage expect things from me.”

Echo crossed their legs, and uncrossed them, and crossed them the other way. “The Tides of Harmony had expectations I despised, expectations I could never meet, and expectations that were both. I always saw the ships as paragons of the hypocritical balance preached by their denizens. Perigean and Seiche, held in perfect rigid alignment by the beautiful, untouchable corpse of Harmony at their center. I used to wonder how it would feel if it knew what its body became.”

“If this is a metaphor for me, it’s a clunky one.”

“Well, you’re not a corpse yet. And you are far from untouchable.” Echo leaned in and stroked a thumb across Grand’s jawline, and he turned a ferocious shade of pink.

Echo continued. “But there were valuable lessons to be learned there, as much as I tried to put my fingers in my ears. There’s a story we used to tell called the Fable of the Balloon and the Basket.

“There was a balloon who belonged to a happy child. The balloon loved the child so! It loved being at home, bumping into the rafters. It loved being taken on walks, oh-so-carefully tied to a wrist. It loved catching the eyes of everyone around with its beautiful dancing. But one day, while being walked through the forest, the balloon wanted to see what was above the trees, and it let go of its child. The balloon couldn’t get back down, no matter how hard it tried, and eventually its child went back home and forgot all about it.

“There was a basket who belonged to a happy couple. The basket loved the couple so! It loved being used to carry food and books and clothes and all sorts of wonderful things. It loved being held gently by one hand and firmly by another. It loved getting swung around and barely keeping its contents contained. But one day, the basket was holding too much, and it grew tired, and it quietly dropped a few things. The couple arrived at their destination and quickly realized what had happened, and in a fit of rage they threw the basket away.”

Grand took Echo’s hand and kissed the palm. “Hoisted with their own petards, huh?”

“Hush, Grand Magnificent, I’m getting to the good part.” Echo pinched him on the cheek and took a deep sip of their drink.

“The balloon floated far above everyone’s heads, hoping that someone would keep it in place for just a moment. The basket laid where it landed, hoping that someone would help it move just once. After a long time of waiting, they found each other.

“‘I want to be still, like you,’ said the balloon. ‘I want to be free, like you,’ said the basket. And a bolt of inspiration struck them both. The balloon took a great breath of air, the basket filled itself with heavy rocks, and they tied themselves together as tight as they possibly could. The balloon let them fly, the basket let them land, and together they chased the wind wherever they wanted.

“And the ending usually goes something like ‘a tether doesn’t have to be a chain, an anchor doesn’t have to weigh more than you can carry.’”

“Do you believe that?” Grand said quietly.

Echo shrugged. “I believe that you needed to hear it.”

He smiled. “So which of us is the basket and which is the balloon?”

“Who cares, Grand? We get to fly either way.”

Some weeks later

Grand hadn’t really wanted to go to a party that night, but Echo saw the invitation before he could throw it away and somehow (easily) convinced him that it was a good time to debut his first new mech project since Arbit.

“It’s a smooth ride.” Echo was wearing an uncharacteristically baggy dress that danced with their every motion, not that they needed any help to draw Grand’s gaze, and effortlessly piloting down the streets of Seance.

“Good. I’m too used to chaos engines, making a machine that drives in a straight line was almost challenging.” Grand honestly didn’t remember or care what outfit he put on, except that he couldn’t fit a multitool in any of the pockets. Echo had probably picked it out so he would stop tinkering long enough to actually get out of the door.

They slid to a stop in front of some extravagant venue or another and a young lavender-skinned woman in a valet uniform bounced over to them. “Hello! Welcome to—holy shit! You’re Peace Returned to the Valley, The Rivers Flowed Clear and Blue, The Mountains Resplendent, Grand. Magnificent Light Shone on the Diligent and the Penitent Alike!”

Echo started laughing under their breath and Grand rolled his eyes as they stepped out of the mech. “Yes, I am. What’s your name?”

“I’m Lucid Couplet, sir, I’m such a huge fan of yours! I actually was inspired by you to become a mechanical artist.”

Grand nodded at her. “Well, kid, I’m honored to be—”

Echo cut in before he could get through his canned response. “That’s so sweet! Can we see some of your work?”

Lucid swallowed audibly and pulled out a tablet with shaking hands. “Um, yes, of course! Let me just, um, OK, here!”

It was just a holographic model, and it had some rough edges, but…he couldn’t help but zoom in and highlight the front plane of the mecha. “What material is this meant to be?”

“Oh, fenestrated synthetic birchbark. My friend Rodeo is an exotic material fabricator.”

Grand squinted at the model and then at her uniform. “You like this job?”

“It’s nice to pilot fancy vehicles, but honestly, not really.”

“Good. Quit and show up to Arbit tomorrow morning. You’ve got potential as a designer, but we’ll have to see how you are with tools in your hands.”

She teared up and went to say something that was probably nauseatingly sweet, but he cut her off by thwacking a set of keys into her hand. “Crash it and you’re fired.”

Lucid looked at the keys like they would unlock paradise. “What’s it called, sir?”

Grand turned to Echo. “I don’t know, what do you think it’s called?” Echo looked the machine over, eyes catching all of its sharpened curves and soft edges, and thought for the briefest moment.

“Well, it’s made to take you to places you haven’t been before. How about the Grand Entrance?” Grand tilted his head back and laughed and laughed until his ribs hurt. 

Yes, Echo pulled him in one direction, Arbit in another, and the people of the Mirage in a million more, but he thought he just might be able to chart a course for himself.