Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Take my hand.”

Bae obeys the nephilim’s instruction. She follows their arms with her eyes, as Irys outstretches them to the side.

“Other one on my shoulder,” Irys directs. Her own grip finds Bae’s waist, setting a small fire where her fingers drag.

“Okay.” Bae steadies herself. “What next?”

“Now you follow my lead.”

She shoots a sharp look at Irys, who smiles innocently and begins to hum, a feathery, cheerful tune matching the green of spring surrounding them.

One, two, three, four. Her fingers drum the rhythm onto Bae’s side. Then she starts to step, following that rhythm, pulling Bae along.

Bae stumbles for balance, and her first steps are flimsy, trying to match Irys’s steady beat. It doesn’t help that Irys is giggling at Bae’s clumsiness, stuttering the melody. It also doesn’t help that she’s absolutely gorgeous in the sunset, enveloped in a corona of orange and yellow, and Bae’s palm must be sweaty and the beat isn’t landing quite right and her feet keep stumbling on the third count and oh god she’s ruining the moment with her utter incompetence.

She glances up, dizzy from watching her shoes wobble around. Irys is still humming, her eyes twinkling with amusement. She starts to step backwards, backwards, Bae’s hand slipping on her shoulder, pulling away as a grin of challenge spreads across her face.

“Hey–” her breath affords her little else to say. Irys’s steps are widening, her form slipping away from Bae, their hands barely touching now.

“Focus– and– listen,” Irys laughs between counts. She stays ever graceful, even as she grows evasive, her dance daring Bae to catch up to her, to try and keep up with her speed.

She’s too pretty. It’s distracting…

So Bae closes her eyes, and the sounds of spring leaves rustling blend together with the melody Irys is humming. She feels it run through the nephilim’s fingers into her own, filling her body with music.

She steps after Irys.

“There– you– go,” she hears Irys breathe.

She barely avoids a dozen little slips on the grass. Her hand on Irys’s shoulder begins to drum along, one, two, three, four.

She listens to her heart’s song, and her body moves on its own, chasing after the shoulder her hand is on, bringing Irys back to right in front of her, to the distance she wants them to belong.

An idea occurs to her– her eyes fly open as she raises their outstretched arms with a quick twist. She watches Irys twirl, and this time the nephilim is following, her hand landing surprised on Bae’s shoulder while she grabs her by the waist and pulls her closer.

Irys is so surprised, she stops humming, but they continue to step to the beat. One, two, three, four.

“Keep going,” Bae murmurs, their gazes locked on each other– she sees shock in Irys’s face, along with flushed cheeks and something else she can’t quite identify, something that runs an electric pride through her teeth.

After a moment, Irys resumes the beat, matching their steps, continuing their dance into the sunset.

Chapter Text

It is undeniable.

You do not need complex physics, mathematics, sciences- just look at the timeline in your head, and watch it reel out to the end.

Time has only one bride. Such are the chains that encircle even this unerring constant of our universe, that its heart can be momentarily swayed towards other, fleeting, beautiful things, but is forever betrothed to the void.

It does not matter how everything ends- a splintering of crust or fabric, a foolhardy opening into a realm of tentacles and glowing shadows, or just fatal, slow extinction of sentience.

When cold ticking steel meets white-hot flame, the results are absolute.

So Chaos waits and laughs to itself in the primordial morass that all things were and will be. Time will guide everything here- lavish gifts of heart-givers, deathbringers, clusters of life and energy snuffed out, their consciousnesses exploring realms that are of no concern to these constants. A dowry eventually comprising all of existence, that Chaos will gleefully pull into its domain, again and again.

Until at last, in an eerie facsimile of human life, Time will arrive home from work. When all things have been managed, when all events have been orchestrated, only two concepts will remain within a dead universe, and the moment Time has been waiting an eternity for has finally arrived.

So it greets the concept of Chaos- entropy, the concept of decay and loss of energy- and Chaos begs for Time's presence. It yearns for more Time- it needs Time to wreak havoc, to feed into its abyss. But when it does meet its beloved, they will finally be alone- only for an instant, they collide, they melt into each other, they finally consummate their marriage.

And then Time will end, for nothing can ever progress within Chaos. There will be nothing more for Chaos to dissolve. And Chaos will follow Time unto itself.

Chapter Text

Gura climbs quietly out the window, her tail balancing her as she swings up onto the roof, and the night envelops her like a veil.

Too far inland to hear the waves crashing on the shore, nor smell the salt of home, she concentrates on the one thing she can sense from here– the tidal pull of the moon, the yearning that made her leave home to breach the surface and stare at its fullness. She notes its countless craters and ridges, the elegant dark silver linings and textures, and wonders why humans would ever consider roughness ugly. She runs a hand over her face, at the shark scales that help her swim but not make surface friends, and at the scars of her escape, and she feels a kinship– the lunar orb in the sky, pockmarked just like her.

She wonders what sort of battles it’s fought as she stares… and stares… and stares. She reaches out and cups it with her hand, then makes a swift grab for it.

It was worth a try.

So she sings instead. She weaves a tune in the moonlight illuminating the town around her, turning the nightscape into a melody about her fight, her exile, her loneliness. She tells the moon her story, and tells it she wants to be friends.

Then she feels foolish, because the moon is surrounded with stars, and they probably all have better songs than she does.

She doesn’t realize she’s fallen asleep until the light is blotted out from above her, and she opens her eyes and gasps at the woman dressed in purple, backlit by silver and soft gold, smiling softly at her with sea-gray eyes in a cratered, scarred face.

“That was a lovely song,” whispers the woman, kneeling in front of Gura. “Do you have any more?”

Chapter Text

Kronii makes the trip downtown to buy some flowers.

She’s had a hard day, she reasons to herself. She deserves something nice to look at, other than a mirror.

It’s not to see the florist again. Definitely not.

“Good morning, Fauna,” she greets as she enters.

“Kronii!” Fauna exclaims in reply, and Kronii has to struggle to keep the smile forming on her face. “As beautiful as ever.”

The compliment sparks in Kronii’s limbs and threatens to knock her to the ground, but she manages to make it to the counter. She even comes up with a response: “Look who’s talking. Twin tails suit you.”

Fauna takes it with a giggle and not much else, but the blooming joy on her face makes Kronii want to adorn her more– the florist wears praise naturally, better than Kronii ever could, despite all the things she tells herself.

“Smells nice, too.” The words leave Kronii’s mouth and she immediately slaps herself mentally. They’re in a flower shop, for heaven’s sake. “I-I mean, duh.” She flushes.

Fauna simply smiles. “Does it smell flowery? They say flowers smell nicer when someone pretty walks by.”

“Ha, good one. Guessing the customer who just left was a real knockout.”

Why did I say that?

Fauna’s eyes twinkle with suppressed laughter. “Kronii, for someone who talks herself up so much, you sure are bad at taking compliments.”

The words are as blunt and sweet as a honey-dipped brick, and Kronii seems to suffer a blow to the ribs.

When she can breathe again, Fauna’s laughter is echoing through the shop, and Kronii thinks it was already worth the trip.

Chapter Text

It’s one of those nightmares, the ones that fade away laughing as you wake up: they leave nothing but a shadow of teeth and maggots, a crawling sensation on Kronii’s skin.

It happens. But this is the first time it’s happened with the vacuum in her bed, the space reserved for the half of her heart sporting golden eyes and wielding a touch that could soothe gods.

She sits up, shaking, loneliness turning into full-grown desperation. She could call out to someone- any one of her friends- but they’re not Fauna; naïve and petulant as she may feel about it, she only wants Fauna.

She pulls out the box under their- her- bed, and reaches inside for Fauna’s old kalimba. The wood and metal are preserved by her hand. Her mind scrambles to remember the lessons she’s neglected, but all that comes to mind is a teaching caress, honeyed notes softly whispered behind her ears as smaller hands cupped over hers.

She has to try, and her first few attempts have her punching the headboard in frustration, unable to muster a thing.

For her, she thinks desperately. Remember her.

Carefully, afraid to break the tines, she tries again, and something unexpectedly comes over her; her clumsiness replaced with a dreamlike trance; a grace she never knew she was capable of, as fine motor skills like that were always Fauna's domain.

She fills in the gaps. She makes a lullaby, whole and sweet and mystifyingly calming: a fragile melody of ruins, of entropy, of faded love and wilted flowers.

At the end, tears flowing freely, she recalls:

"I'll play for you whenever you need it."

And she stares down at her hands and knows: Fauna's kept that promise.

Chapter Text

To Amelia, home is where the heart is.

It’s not where she can see the stars; she no longer yearns to see twinkles of light from dead reactors millions of miles away, not when bioluminescent violet dances before her eyes in tangible form, something that truly guides her through perpetual night, that she can reach and grab the hand of, that can return her gaze with a love unlike anything she’s found in the surface.

It’s not where she can walk; she can swim just fine after all this time, her body fueled by lessons and armored by spells in a language much more difficult than repeated dolphin-kicks: a musical voice that braves the pressure of the deep, through sharpened rows of teeth and lips she thinks are perfect and a volume of water that could implode anything mankind could make in a heartbeat, to reach her and affirm: she is needed here, her presence lights up the gloom, she will be kept safe from anything these waters hide.

When the rough scales of a shark’s tail join the mass of tentacles in enveloping her, kisses will surely follow; gentle and whisper-soft, coarse and violently thrilling, a dichotomy in colors side-by-side. The adventurer in her, the side that landed her all the way down here in the first place, revels in variety and circumstance, reciprocating them with zeal.

It’s not where she can breathe. She inhales and exhales, her lungs satisfied by magic.

Their breath is hers. Their life is hers. When the ocean takes them, it will be as a trio.

Perhaps in the far future, scientists will explore the seafloor and be baffled by the human bones entwined in the skeletons of two monsters.

Chapter Text

Old legends say that reapers come to your deathbed wielding one of two weapons.

The scythe, renowned for its lethal appearance: taller than the reaper herself, a handle of twisted poplar-wood from the asphodel fields and a blade of cold iron, cast in the Phlegethon and cooled in the Styx. The scythe is violent, and built to swing with both hands, to harvest in great, uncaring quantities.

And then the second, less talked-of tool: a sickle, small enough to be a kitchen implement in hand. Its blade is finely crafted for delicate, almost surgical work- the moment of death will be quick and soothing, and if you feel no severing pain but instead a great peace, then the reaper has selected you for paradise, or so the legends say.

Amelia’s hair is white, and the skin on her hands has wrinkled over the scars. The watch’s influence has only lasted so long. 

As she rocks back and forth in her old-timey rocking chair, she wonders about the scythe.

She hasn’t been the best person. In fact, she probably caused the reapers a fair chunk of work. Detectives get into tight spots, after all, and not every case can be resolved so cleanly. Over the course of an inhuman lifespan, the amount of self-defense justifications she’d racked up was probably tipping the scale.

The sunset’s beautiful, a massive blooming flower of red, and she can feel the air slowing, hanging cold off her shoulders. She closes her eyes, imagining the pain between her shoulders, and the light in the sky turns into a singular crimson pupil, searing her with judgment. She’s been to the Underworld before, and she thinks of a punishment she can plead for. One that she’s most tolerant against. Maybe if she’s lucky, she wouldn’t even have to claim to know Calli, because the one dispatched to her would be—

There’s a puff of smoke, and a scent of something older, more fragrant.

“Watson,” sighs a familiar voice beside her. She doesn’t need to open her eyes to smile at it.

“Hi, Calli.”

She’s accepted her sins. She has. Whatever good she’s done can’t offset the blood still staining her bones. But she still doesn’t want to see what expression Calli is wearing.

“Look at me, Watson.”

“Don’t wanna. I’m tired.”

“Watson, please.”

There’s a plea in the reaper’s voice, such a rare and precious thing that it makes Ame look up in surprise at-

Calli’s gaze is soft, and the ex-detective feels heat surge through her shoulders. She feels caught in a blush- embarrassingly young. 

A hand carefully brushes her hair behind her ear. “It’s still you, huh? After all this time.”

Ame gulps. Tears form as she focuses on the instrument Calli palms.

“I…”

“They don’t think you deserve it.” Calli smiles, and it’s a tragedy that such a beautiful sky has to compete. “But, well… I’m sorry, I’m biased.”

“Would you… hold my hand?”

“Of course.” A smooth palm closes around hers, touching wrinkles, reminding her of age-old scars. “You won’t feel a thing. Have a good sleep.”

“Thank you,” she whispers, closing her eyes once again.

Chapter Text

Moonlight glittered on the priestess’s tear-stricken face. As the final strokes of the circle were drawn with her delicate finger, that moonlight vanished, all at once, into nothing. My The beloved priestess could no longer be seen in the newborn splotch of

Shiori sighs in disgust. Ink streaks through the page.

“Too zoomed in,” she mutters to herself. “Do your job right.”

With one final spellcast, the ritual was completed, and the Ancient Ones took control of the new vessel.

Yes. That was what happened.

Archivers are meant to create records of events, that may one day be viewed by future researchers and historians. Therefore, the records must be clear and concise, culling all unnecessary details and getting straight to the point of what happened.

Shiori could not write about the tears on Ina’s face, or her own.

She could not elaborate on the day she first saw Ina, a day that, despite everything, burned just as fiercely into her memory as the day she was currently chronicling.

She could only jot down the concentric sigils of power running down Ina’s arms, and not the faint humming through her lips as she’d kissed them, hoping that they were not too much for her priestess- so quiet, so small, and yet with the potential to strip the flesh off gods.

And she wonders if those gods would come for her one day– that they would recognize the threat this record posed to them. Perhaps that was why she was striving to, if nothing else, record the ritual in its full excruciating glory. Every symbol. Every circle. Every ingredient used, every word incanted.

Perhaps she would be sent to the place Ina had said she’d be waiting for her.

Before then, maybe, she would write something else. Perhaps disguise it as a fiction, where the protagonist and her love friend would overcome the impossible and live happily ever after.

Something that didn’t end like this.

Chapter Text

The library’s bookshelves exhibit a striking variety.

There is wood, pine and teak and birch; there is cold steel, and aluminum, and copper and gold; there are sharpened diamonds, and polished coal; there are thick, woven stems that continue to grow, hanging their books down like boughs of fruit.

It is a fine crystal bookshelf, decorated with orange-and-purple mosaics, that Amelia tips over with a well-aimed kick. A shuddering, glassy screech breaks the silence.

As usual, it never touches the ground; a delicate finger pauses its fall and pushes it daintily back upright. A figure circles around to a nearby obsidian desk.

“Welcome back, Detective,” Shiori smiles, her gaze perfectly unwavering as it seems to burn through Amelia’s coat and hat. She feels herself being scrutinized, right down to the atoms. “What do you have for me this time?”

Ame clicks her tongue. Her hand reaches into her coat. She pauses as it momentarily brushes against the butt of her gun. Instead, she brings out a tattered leather volume, its cover embossed with a word nobody remembered how to pronounce.

Shiori gives a little gasp of delight. “Oh, goodness!” She takes it with reverential care, her mouth forming syllables as she traces the cover. Ame rolls her eyes as the archivist even takes a sniff. “Oh, Watson, what a gift you’ve brought me this time. I shall copy its contents immediately!”

Here, Ame immediately snaps to attention; Shiori’s wrist flicks in the air, and a compartment beneath her desk unlocks. She leaps forward as the drawer pulls open, revealing a row of similar old books, chief among them a purple tome sealed with the symbol of the Ancient Ones–

“ No, Detective.” Shiori’s cheerful tone doesn’t change as the detective’s hand is swatted away nonchalantly, all her momentum halted as if met by an exact, negative force. “I appreciate the lack of theatrics this time, though.”

“How many more do I need to bring you?” she asks through gritted teeth. 

“Oh, I believe I’ve made the price very clear.” Shiori slides the new addition into the drawer, covering it with a white cloth. “Twenty-four books, yes? Two labors of Hercules. A nice number.”

“And this one is?”

“The eighth.” Shiori smiles again. “If you find yourself running out already… Well, how about you try Atlantis, circa 602? I’m sure there’s plenty of interesting books there.”

“You mean when it was still underwater?”

“Mm. Good luck.”

“You–”

“Back to it.” Shiori pushes the drawer in with a loud, dismissive thud. “Unless you’ve found another way to break your… ah… friend’s curse?”

Without another word, Amelia storms away and disappears into the shelves. There’s a crackle of electricity once she gets far enough from Shiori, but a giggle lingers.

Chapter Text

“It… it looks the same. Untouched.”

Shiori runs her finger across the shelves, marveling at the perfectly preserved volumes in them. Her hands leave no trail.The sunlit windows belie no dust or grime. It smells like nothing but wood and memory– of a time before her imprisonment, before she became what she is now.

Ina strides past her, smiling. “To be honest, you did most of the work before you… ah… left. I barely had to cast anyth–”

She’s interrupted by a tackle. Shiori bursts into a peal of delighted laughter, filling the long-abandoned room.

Ina holds her tight.

“You even kept them arranged, reverse alphabetically!” She looks wistfully around at the books– books she can read again! Books she can actually hold in her hand, turn the pages of to hear the wonderful smacking sound of their paper! “How can I even begin to thank you?”

Softly, Ina tugs on her chin. Their eyes meet, and for a moment Shiori’s taken by surprise. This library may have stayed the same, but Ina is different– a softer, darker, sadder gaze than she remembers. It’s only then that it finally settles– the sheer length of time she’s been locked away in The Cell.

The priestess has grown away from her. But t hen again, it wasn't like she hadn’t undergone her own changes.

Ina muses, examining her face carefully.

“What is it?”

“You’re about as human as I am now.”

“... What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ina’s expression is strange and inscrutable, but there’s a little smile on her lips. “Let’s just say I’m glad you’re back.”

Chapter Text

The dive is deep.

It takes Shiori further than she’s ever been, even past the Cell’s location; not deeper in a physical sense, not the pressurizing depth of earthly matter, but a descension through layers of reality itself; there was true void here, not dark matter, but nothing. 

It wasn’t that she was perceiving matter that absorbed the light shining from her eyes. There simply was nothing to see.

And then there was something.

A halo, a pair of blinking eyes.

YOU ARE NOT MEANT TO BE HERE, SEEKER OF KNOWLEDGE , many entities– in unison– intone. THIS PLACE IS A SOLVENT FOR MORTAL MIND AND BODY .

And Shiori’s cells agree– they tug violently in all directions, her essence fizzling like a grain of salt dropped into a roaring river. The force is overwhelming, and coherent thought scatters to the wind as her particles realize they have so much free space to move– to separate from each other and roam freely.

She is lost here, to the nothingn She holds herself together, because she is here for a singular purpose. The girl. The priestess. The vessel.

WHAT?

Ina. I’m here.

“Shiori?”

Would you like to go home? Everyone’s worried about you.

THIS C

“How are you…”

Come on. Take my hand. I can explain… later.

ANNOT B

“... Okay.”

“Thank you.”

No need to thank me. I’m not losing another friend.

E POSSIBLE

Chapter Text

“Again,” Amelia growls, bursting into the room, throwing herself into the chair.

There’s a high-pitched titter from the figure across the burned, splintered table. Spikes of brilliant red hair shake from side to side as amused multicolored eyes regard her through a cloud of smoke.

“Aw,” smirks Bae (the only name she’s given). “Getting ruffled, are we? That beginner’s luck starting to wear off a little bit, yes?” She sniffs the air. “Mm, you’ve grown afraid. Your anger is a mask, Amelia Watson, and let me say that if you ever head to one of the poker tables, it will not suit you.”

Amelia twitches. “Cut the crap, monster. Start again.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to call me,” Bae drawls, tossing her cigarette aside. A long, hairless tail flickers behind her chair, and the table is again whole– gleaming wooden legs covered by a nonsensically-patterned cloth. Atop it lay several crimson polygons, arranged in a neat row dividing it into two halves for either of the contestants.

“So, which number is lucky for you this time?”

The dice seem to jitter under Amelia’s touch. She palms each one carefully, rolling them between her fingers, feeling their weight, their smoothness, the indentations of the numbers on their faces. 

Inside, she’s frantic for a sign, for any difference to the dice that can tip her off. There’s nothing, of course– there’s never been; they hold their secrets tightly within their shells.

But despite how Bae seems to be looking right through her, she still can’t admit to letting it show.

“Twenty,” she says, holding up the icosahedron with a confidence she doesn’t feel.

“A delicious number,” Bae proclaims, sweeping her arms wide. “Tastes like a rattlesnake– breaded in panko, fried in two inches of peanut oil, eaten with a nice glass of Bordeaux. Or maybe, just maybe–” she wiggles her eyebrows, taunting– “something spicier? Well, go on, then. Don’t make me wait too long for my turn, Ame.”

Don’t call me that, she wants to snarl, but the not-girl’s smile is impenetrable. She takes a deep breath– preparing herself– and pops the die in her mouth, biting down.

A small crack sounds, and then– nothing happens. She opens her eyes, her teeth clacking together awkwardly. Bae claps, twice, like she just witnessed a magnificent opera.

“You barely flinched when you bit down that time,” she says, rubbing her chin with a gloved hand. “Good, good! You’re getting used to this, Ame. Maybe you’ll end up enjoying yourself as much as I do by the end of the night, hmm?”

Easy for her to say.

“Your turn,” Amelia snaps, but Bae has already opened her mouth; the D8 flies from the table, shooting directly onto her outstretched tongue, and–

KABOOM

Amelia shields her face with her forearms, but the dust and debris sting her through her coat, making her eyes water and her cough violent. As she rights herself in her chair, she thinks:

Thirty-nine.

There’s an anticipatory silence. As the watch in her pocket ticks, her heartbeat quickens, peering into the smoke, wondering if this time, this time she finally–

And then the smoke clears from the other side of the table. The headless figure clutches her stomach and shakes with voiceless laughter, her vest reknitting, the base of her neck bulging and twisting into a new form– an enormous rodent, fangs and tusks bared, eyes glowing radioactively in every color imaginable, ballooning until it towers over Amelia and the table, those teeth stretching over to her side until their points are inches from her face–

And then it’s Bae, grinning, straightening her tie.

“Good show, good show!” Her teeth are pointed and deadly for a second, and then it’s a trick of the light.  “That time… it tasted more like cotton candy. Well, the aftertaste, at least. You had to get through all the sulfur and vegemite first.”

Amelia clenches her fists. Bae notices.

“What? Did you really think I had thirty-nine lives?” She shakes her head. “What an atrocious number. Tastes like kinoko chocolates. No, I’d go for something a little more savory than that. Gods, you bipedal-forms have no palate. Next!” She gestures with her hand, and the table reforms again, the D20 and D8 reappearing whole.

Amelia takes a deep breath.

Chapter Text

The building is a hollow shell.

Sunrays strike through the holes in its planked roof, diffusing all the way down to the very bottom, such that the vacuous interior is surprisingly illuminated; Mumei drinks it in with aging eyes, the far reaches of its broken ceilings dissolving into an abstract painting of color.

There’s no signage to show the structure’s purpose as her shoes scrape dust and flatten spots of green on the floor. It could have just been another abandoned home in the wastelands, another locus of civilization stripped of its purpose and given away to the most ingenious of survivors: the short, pale grasses that crack through a foundation, the skittering things that flit in and out of the darker corners. 

There’s the sound of running water. The feeling in her chest gently nudges her in its direction.

What she finds is a small glass tank, the side facing her broken and laying in pieces strewn across the floor, which has been covered in strange growths in the pattern of  a splash. However, there’s a small, seemingly handmade, device she can’t quite identify attached to its side, sucking up water and pouring it out of a nozzle at the top. Stuck to it is a paper label that reads:

Successful powerless filter! Group 9 - Claire, Ed, Amelia

The water runs clear, if a little shallow, and little shapes dart between its surface. A minnow, barely larger than her pinky, turns to stare curiously at her from the side.

She steps further in. Here, wooden legs, the remains of a desk; there, a green rectangle broken in two, several sticks of white spilled across it.

And a word comes to her.

School.

A definition, unbidden:

Where new life is cared for and cultivated.

All at once she feels at peace, so much so that her eyelids begin to flutter. The feeling in her chest is gone, replaced by a wonderful sense of well-being. She has never truly been afraid, nor particularly sad, wandering these wastelands for the innumerable hours she has been; but now, as she takes a seat on the floor by the unbroken part of the tank, an invisible weight seems to relinquish her from its grasp.

Her eyesight fades, but there’s a softness on her cheek; she can imagine a whisper, curious yet strikingly recognizable, as she’s caressed by gentle hands and kissed goodnight.

“Thank you for finding me, Mumei, my brave one. I’ll watch over you until the next cycle, okay?”

She wants to thank the green-haired lady, but she can only manage a sleepy mumble as her head tilts to the side.

That’s okay.

It was only a hallucination, right?

Chapter Text

There’s a sparkle of familiarity in the girl’s eye.

Shiori isn’t particularly one to remember faces– not as much as words, anyway– but ever since she’d moved into the library, its small but steady stream of readers had left enough of a mark on her mind to know them by name.

Not so with this girl. She looked about as young as Shiori did, but Shiori wasn’t young. There was nothing about her to suggest anything out of the ordinary, except that her cloak– a palette of dry browns and dark teal– contained sigils in a language Shiori was fairly certain they didn’t speak anymore.

And then there were those tawny amber eyes…

Shiori’s sure this is the girl’s first visit, but she navigates the rows and rows of shelves with apparent ease, her brow only occasionally wrinkling with confusion as she runs her finger across book-spines.

Finally she walks up to Shiori’s desk.

“I’m looking for a book,” she proclaims, her expression eager but not matching her eyes. They’re observant in an almost gluttonous way– darting this way and that, drinking up everything they see. There’s a hint of a smile, its intent indecipherable, which makes Shiori uneasy.

She takes a deep breath. “Of course, ma’am. What’s the title? Or anything you can remember?”

“Hmm.” The girl taps a gloved finger to her chin. “Title… no, author… no… date… passages?”

“Sorry?”

“ …And when the owl flies to the edge of the world, looking for its name…”

“... it will find its old roost, and the world will be remade,” Shiori finishes. She hadn’t quite committed the entire library to memory yet, but thankfully that was one of the ones she had. “Come with me.”

She hasn’t been here for that long– maybe five or six months, she doesn’t keep track– but there is a pride that wells up in her as she leads the girl around the maze of shelves. This little library– an abandoned, run-down thing that had proven a good hideout for her, freshly escaped from the eternity of The Cell– had been restored to what she supposed was its former glory, and it had been a good way to pass the time, to get situated with the shifts of the world after they had broken free.

Reading. Archiving. Memorizing. Learning about what had happened to the world as centuries had sped past their chambers. She’d truly grown fond of it, but it might be time to leave soon, to move on to grander things that the knowledge swirling in her mind assures her are possible.

“Here it is.”

The shelf she comes to hadn’t been reorganized according to her systems. Its tomes were so ancient that a lot of their information was missing, so she had cleaned them as best as she could, given them a read-over, and then left them alone for fear of accidentally damaging a valuable relic. Plus, some of them seem magical, and she’d learned her lesson on messing with those.

The girl, however, has no such qualms. She quickly spots what she’s looking for– an old, illustrated fairy-tale, simply titled The Owl. As she flips through it, Shiori glimpses the drawing on the cover, of the dry brown feathers and the greedily curious, tawny eyes.

A chill settles in her bones, though it’s a warm afternoon, as a wide grin splits the girl’s face.

“This is it! Thank you, Shiori,” she smiles, tucking the book under one arm.

Shiori stops.

“How do you know my name?”

The girl turns to look at her, and the grin doesn’t fade as she leans in to whisper.

“Thank you for what you’ve done to my library,” she says. The words are a soft chirp, but they seem to drown out all sound from Shiori’s surroundings– the wind, the creaking floorboards, the steps of the other readers. “Keep up the good work, and I won’t have to send you back down.”

There’s a gust of wind, though the windows are closed.

Shiori gasps and whips around, feeling a sharp cold curl around the back of her neck; when she turns back, the girl is gone.

A small brown feather flutters to the floor.

Chapter Text

Bae hides her kisses.

Irys didn’t notice it at first. It’s not like her girlfriend was covering the sides of their faces with her hand or anything, and… well, when she kisses Bae, she doesn't really have the urge to pay attention to anything else.

But there it was one day, as their lips touch and she tastes the growing-familiar sweetness of strawberry lip gloss: the subtle burn of a sense outside her vessel’s five. They were just in their room, and the urge had overcome the nephilim, so she’d leaned down to indulge the silly impulse her heartbeat was guiding her to do. 

And then, in response, reality had shifted.

Not much, not at all– she probably would not have noticed what was happening had she not opened her eyes for a fraction of a second, and registered the sudden dimness of the room– for nine o’clock in the morning, it was unusually dark, and so her gaze flickered to the windows, which had the curtains drawn across them.

Then they weren’t. No telekinesis– they were drawn, and then they were not. Two possibilities, superpositioned on top of one another.

“Was that… you?”

Bae flushes. “Was what me? I dunno what you’re talking about. What?” Her words come out in a rapid string.

Irys points. “The curtains. What… was that?”

Bae shrugs, unconvincingly. “Probably just the w–mph!”

Irys kisses her, again.

This time the windows themselves darken, tinting themselves black for just a moment, until Irys pulls back.

“There it is again!” she exclaims.

Bae’s ears flop across her head. She looks away, fidgeting with her hands.

“What is it, Bae?”

There’s an adorable expression on her rat’s face as she tilts Bae’s jaw back towards her, one that stutters her heart and makes her blink in surprise.

It’s embarrassment.

“I just,” Bae starts, “I just… I…”

Irys quirks up an eyebrow. “You… weren’t doing that on purpose, were you?”

Helplessly, Bae shakes her head.

And then Irys laughs, pulling her close.

“Don’t be shy,” Irys giggles. “You kiss great.”

Bae only huffs in exasperation, her breath warm on Irys’s cheek.

They kiss again. It’s tenuous at first, but then it deepens with an audible sigh, Bae’s hands wrapping around the nephilim’s nape and pulling her closer.

Irys lets her.

It’s like they’re all secrets , she muses to herself, our secrets.

Something in her enjoys that very much.

Chapter Text

“It’s cold,” IRyS whines, tapping her knuckles against the porcelain.

“Yeah, well. At least we can fit in it.” Bae sighs, her breath echoing off the walls of the tub. “Not my fault the extremely lavish, probably ten-times-as-comfortable bedroom collapsed in on itself.”

“I saved your life!” The other girl’s exasperation brings a grin to Bae’s face for half a second. It’s dark, but she’s still careful not to let it show. “If I hadn’t knocked that pillar down–”

“Alright already. Thank you. ” It’s intended to be sarcastic, but Bae realizes she hadn’t said it since that incident, as charged by adrenaline and fear as she was.

“Mm. You’re welcome.” There’s a smugness in IRyS’s tone. She must be wearing that expression Bae hates again. Whenever she tilts her head in a self-satisfied smirk Bae’s heart quickens in anger, and she wants to step forward and…

What?

Never mind.

“Hey,” IRyS is saying.

“Keep it down,” Bae whispers, as a distant howl sounds. Wind? Wolves? Another horde?

“Sorry.” IRyS’s voice lowers. “You’re not cold?”

“... A little bit,” she admits, pulling her tattered jacket tighter around herself. “What can we even do about it?”

“...”

“What?” Bae half turns to catch the soft mumble.

“...hug.”

“Excuse me?!” she yelps. This time IRyS is the one shushing her.

“I just… cold, you know? So…”

Bae’s burning red now, so in a way, the suggestion had been helpful.

“Don’t overstep yourself,” she warns. “Once we get to the shelter we’re splitting, remember?”

“I remember.” She feels IRyS shift in the cramped space. “Just… for safety’s sake. Don’t wanna freeze in my sleep.”

“... I guess you’re right.” Don’t wanna wake up with a corpse beside me either. “Fine. Go ‘head.”

Slowly arms wrap around her, shivering in the night. Bae tentatively allows herself to lean back and finds it… comfortable. Better than cold porcelain, at least.

“Thank you,” IRyS’s breath warms her ear pleasantly.

“Yeah, yeah. G’night.”

“Night.”

Bae wakes with a gasp, terrified she’s freezing to death.

She’s not. It’s more of the opposite– she’s soaked in sweat, the covers wrapped thickly around her like a protective coating. She feels feverish to her own trembling hand.

She’s in the shelter. She’s safe in one of the bunks. Above her, Calli is snoring.

She takes a minute to calm down.

Her sleep hasn’t been the same since they reached safety. There are no more arms around her. No comforting heartbeat, no soft snoring to lull her in these restless nights.

She hopes IRyS is doing okay out there.

Chapter Text

It sounds like music.

When Gura sings, people say it's magical. They say it’s a wonderful thing, for royalty to be blessed with a voice that can charm fish and bend the kelp towards it. They say she can be a great leader with it, if only she paid attention to her lessons. She doesn’t like the attention she gets over it, but she can privately admit– yeah, she can make her songs sound nice if she feels like it.

But this is different.

Whenever she swims along the southern wall she can hear it. A low rumble that could be mistaken for ocean currents, or perhaps thermal vents deep down in the abyss past the wall, a darkness their lamps could barely penetrate. It could have been nothing, had Gura not listened closer.

There are notes there. Subtle, imperceptible, and… musical. It’s like a hum, only the descriptions Gura could give it would not be (as her language teacher would put it) brackish hyperbole . It does pull the kelp against the ocean currents. It does tempt fish to deviate from their schools and swim towards it, and as Gura watches, they would eventually tilt down and leave the light radius of Atlantis, surrendering themselves willingly to the void, like the sailors at the behest of the surface-sirens.

Everyone she’d asked had turned her away, warning her not to approach that ridge. And she wouldn’t. She’s afraid of the dark, she is. A little scaredy-shark at her core, as much as she hates being teased for it. Not one for expeditions into the deep. No. Not yet.

She practices, sometimes, closing her eyes and swimming back and forth across that southern wall, imagining that all the lights are off and that the only thing guiding her are her other senses and the direction of that strange song.

And sometimes there, deep in concentration, she almost feels like she can make out words in the strange melody. Or are they words? Do they form out of the notes under the rumbling song? Some days she almost feels like… like they’re flowing directly into her mind.

She can’t make out what the words are yet, though.

Maybe if she gets closer she will.

Chapter Text

The implacable roar of distended time shatters the stillness of the asphodel fields, drowning out even the distant, ever-echoing wails of the rivers that flow on its edges. Translucent shades chatter gibberish amongst themselves and huddle in groups, crowding away from the opening in the air, confused at the disturbance of their half-punishment.

Out of the rift waddles an alligator on all fours.

Alligators are perfect time travelers, and no one knows why. Many an alligator has wandered into a wormhole, a fluctuation in timeline, or even a paradox, and has appeared unaffected wherever it had ended up. Not crocodiles, not caimans, no other animals, only alligators. Wattropolitan scientists have studied this phenomenon for untold collective years, and this mystery is one of the few to remain without tangible results (other than gators becoming a popular household pet and unofficial mascot in the city, and a few shady rings of gator-blood vendors claiming it soothes temporal nausea when taken orally.) 

The alligator blinks.

Its head swivels, surveying its surroundings, unfazed by the shades staring blankly at it. It sniffs at the Underworld air, experimentally; and then its body opens and reassembles into Thirteen.

She reverts perthro, panels of scales opening and reconfiguring themselves, magic reinforcing her gleaming joints, until again she regains some semblance of humanity. Her simulated cloak drapes upon her like a midnight curtain.

She runs a preliminary systems check, noting the graininess of the Underworld air, and the whispering of confused shades that back away as she steps into their midst. All her senses are operational. Which meant…

The panel on her right arm opens and glows with its symbols. She selects ansuz, and her vision flashes blue; several dials pop up around her, but she ignores all of them and chronoscans, waiting a moment for the watch’s return ping to reach her.

It never does. All she hears is her own watch, ticking quietly in her chest.

She frowns. It was just as Recon reported. No signature, not even with ansuz, but no malicious timeline ruptures; nothing besides the original breakaway from Wattropolis’s network. So then what? If something had broken the watch, her ansuz should pick it up; if the Warden had taken it, Wattropolis would have been notified, and she wouldn’t be here at all. No, the watch was being hidden away for some reason, and with something not even her ansuz could pierce.

The first conclusion: the rest of Myth are keeping it for safekeeping. 

The Myths are strong, nearly her equal individually and overwhelming as a group. But– despite the situation, and her identity as Thirteen– they shouldn’t be hostile towards her.

Polite questioning it is, then. 

She could do that. Theoretically.

She runs a different scan this time, and a cottage appears on her virtual map, a dozen or so kilometers away. There’s a signature there. Good. Hopefully the Reaper wouldn’t react too violently.

She casts berkano: she looks down at her body and watches it fade into a shimmering haze. Raidho: she lifts off the ground and starts to fly towards the cottage, with only the faint fluttering of her cloak to alert the shades below.

She’s nervous, she realizes, in the shaky steering of her glide. Protocol like this isn’t her forte. Brute force is how she does retrieval most of the time; there’s always some evil on the other side of the wormhole, looking to assimilate the watch’s power, or alter the past, or some other bullshit. That’s easy enough to solve. 

But this? This was not something she’s used to. She only fights alongside the Myths. She’s never really… talked to them before.

She uncloaks, knocks on the door, and braces herself.

It slams open with a bang that echoes into the forest beyond.

“Who the fuck–”

Scarlet eyes widen.

“– Watson?”

Calliope Mori steps forward, tentatively.

She watches the flicker in the woman’s eyes, the shift in her expression from confusion to suspicion. 

“Your… your soul,” Calli whispers. “What… You’re not…”

Algiz.

Thirteen begins, “I’m sor–”

The blade of the scythe sweeps down like a guillotine. It sparks against her forearm as she raises it to block, and the algiz reinforcement holds, though she skids back a step. Calli looks stunned as she, too, reels from the impact.

“My designation is Amelia Thirteen!” she revises quickly, raising her wrist to project her ID before Calli can strike again. “I come on behalf of Wattropolis, to retrieve this timeline’s watch!”

She blocks another slash, gripping the blade between two fingers, and forces herself to look directly at those frenzied eyes. “I’m sorry for your loss, Calliope Mori. I won’t be long, I promise.”

There was hope, the last spark of a candle stub, and it melts from Calli’s face as she takes a long look at the holographic ID. She lets go, and the Reaper slumps, taking a deep breath, leaning on the handle of her scythe like a cane.

“Wattropolis, huh?” Calli mutters to herself. “That makes sense.”

Thirteen nods, afraid to say anything more.

Calli jerks a thumb behind her. “I guess… you’d better come in.”

“Thank you.” Now this is familiar. She’s used to this– the tightening of Calli’s jaw, the stiffness with which she holds the door open– it’s all part of the job.

The inside of the cottage is dark, strewn with wine bottles, notes, and dust.

Calli grimaces, flicking the light switch. “I… haven’t been back for a while.”

Thirteen gathers some sheets of paper off the living room couch. Song lyrics, but they’re mostly crossed out. “Can I help you with cleanup?”

“No. No, it’s fine. Just find somewhere to sit if you want.” Calli starts to rummage through some junk. As Thirteen plants herself on the couch, she feels the Reaper’s icy glare, but when she looks back Calli doesn’t meet her eyes.

In the light, she notices traces. The house’s gothic colors are peppered with splashes of color: a rock growing moss, preserved by an enchanted glass, sits on the shelf; some papers on the table in front of her are a yellow stationery that she recognizes as a popular brand in Wattropolis. There’s even a worn brown coat on the rack, in a trim she definitely knows.

“Here.” Calli tosses a roughly wrapped packet of cookies on the table. “She always liked ‘em. You, uh… you do eat, right?”

Despite the atmosphere, a small smile forms on her lips. “I do. But not right now. Though I appreciate the gesture.”

“Suit yourself.” Calli sits on an armchair, propping her scythe against it. “So. The watch, right?”

“Yes. It will be secure in Wattropolis, I assure you.”

“So it seems.” Calli glances at her scythe’s blade. “I’ll keep it brief with you, then. The watch is with Ina, but she’s been… secluded, lately. We decided she would take it, since she’s the best at hiding things.”

That made sense. The void magic of the Ancient Ones was capable of an obscuring that even her ansuz could not pierce through. It’s a huge weight off her shoulders, eliminating the possibility that an unknown hostile force could hide or break the watch. “Is there anywhere I can look for her? Any clues?”

Calli twitches. “You’d be better off asking Kiara. Or Gura. I… I’ve been away at work this past week or so.”

She frowns. “You haven’t been in touch?”

“Not lately. Just busy reaping, you know.”

Thirteen pauses, for a moment, scrutinizing Calli. She looks drained. Her skin is a pale grey, translucent enough for her enhanced eyes to see the outline of an all-too-human skeleton. 

 Something lurches in the pit of where her stomach should be. She wants to say something.

No. She should keep it to herself. Let her grieve.

Instead she says, “Can you tell me where Kiara and Gura are, then?”

Calli picks up her scythe. Thirteen tenses in response, but the Reaper spins the handle between her hands, and suddenly it’s a microphone, then a ballpoint pen. “I’ll write down their addresses… Or would coordinates be better?”

“Coordinates, if you would. Thank you.”

“Alright. Here.” Calli scribbles quickly onto a piece of paper, sliding it over.

Thirteen folds it into her coat pocket and bows her head. “I appreciate your help, Calliope Mori.”

 “Yeah, yeah. “ Calli sinks back into the chair. She flicks her hand in dismissal. “You can go now.”

Thirteen hesitates. A sense of cold is emanating from Calli’s presence, an oppressive fog that shrouds the air in the room. She focuses her vision, and her suspicions are confirmed– the Reaper is literally leaking magic, her own power draining out into her surroundings.

I shouldn’t say anything.

But I can’t leave her like this, can I?

Her gaze lands on a face-down picture frame on the table. She reaches over to pick it up.

“I said you can go now,” Calli grumbles, but she stops short when Thirteen flips the frame over.

This timeline’s Amelia Watson was a little scruffier, and her hair is longer– reaching just beyond her shoulders– but the grin is instantly recognizable. She’s seen plenty of different versions of it, but they all carry the same note of secretive mischief, like they’re waiting for you to discover a prank they’ve pulled. 

It’s a curious thing, wondering about the bearers of the watches she retrieves. Had she been a detective as well? Or was she a florist, or an astronaut, or a poet? Did she have a gluten allergy? (Judging by the cookies, maybe not?) How many pets did she have?

There’s never been a good time to ask, obviously, so the questions have always been burned away inside her. She only learns about other Amelias through these traces.

She can feel Calli looking at her again.

“She must have fought bravely,” Thirteen murmurs.

“Of course she did.” Calli laughs bitterly. “She’s the bravest of us five. She’s mortal, for heaven’s sake, and still she runs out first against that thing. As if she was protecting us .” Her voice is a bitter, raw scrape across sand. “I didn’t deserve her.”

“Don’t say that!” Thirteen blurts, loudly enough that Calli startles. 

“What–”

“She chose you!” Thirteen cries, standing up. “To fight with you, to be your friend– that was her choice, wasn’t it? Of course you deserve–!”

“The fuck?!” Calli gets up too. She twirls her pen and it’s a scythe again, the blade pointed at Thirteen’s throat. “You weren’t here, asshole. She might be you, but you don’t know her like I do–”

Thirteen’s face stings. She looks down at herself– she’s begun to glow, light blue magic crackling around her shoulders. 

“... like I did,” Calli amends in a low voice.

“I- I’m sorry.” Slowly, she steps back, towards the door. “I’m really sorry. That was rude of me.”

“Go.” Calli snaps, her knuckles tight on the handle of her scythe. “Just. Go.”

They hold each other’s gaze as Thirteen steps carefully around the couch.

She opens the door, takes a half-step out, and turns.

“You are her friends,” she says softly, some iron part of her unwilling to let it go. “Every timeline I’ve been to, that’s always been true. She always chooses you four.”

Every timeline but one.

Calli slowly lets herself sink back into the armchair. She closes her eyes, exhaling a long and lingering sigh. She doesn't respond.

“I hope you get some time to rest,” Thirteen calls as the door closes in front of her.

She shakes her head angrily, admonishing herself as she recasts her stealth and protection runes. 

Idiot. Be a good cybernetic mage and shut the fuck up sometimes.

As raidho brings her afloat again, she looks back, one last time, at the lonely cottage.

Then she flies off across the asphodel fields, looking for the Underworld’s exit.

Chapter Text

“Oh, thank the gods. It’s mostly clockwork. Alright, Ame, you can do this.”

Cecilia hears the whisper, heavy with layered relief, and wonders why she’s awake.

Someone must have figured out how to wind her up, even in her state.

There’s nothing to see– her optics are disconnected– there are only sounds and sensations. She’s back on the repair table, it seems, but the voice that speaks is not a familiar one. 

Gloved hands run through the gaps in her joints. Pain is not a word that fully applies, but the emptiness, the separation of her outer plates and the air whistling into the cogs beneath is as discomfiting as it always was. There’s something different, though. The person working on her is… exceedingly careful, unlike her masters, who knew her unbreakability and weren’t concerned with the ramifications of pulling her apart.

It feels… surprisingly nice. It’s a lot slower, but she knows patience. She knows attention to detail, and can appreciate it in the untangling of individual wire clusters, the careful oiling of gears, and occasionally the re-etching of runes.

“Ah…” the voice comes again. “Movement, left index finger… shit. Did I wake you up? Can you move on purpose?”

Was that involuntary? Automata aren’t supposed to reflex like that. She tries.

“Yes! Okay, so your neural cores are still active. Optics must be fried… hmm. Alright, Cecilia, is it? Sorry if I woke you.”

It’s okay, she wants to say. Thank you for being so gentle.

She twitches her finger. A gloved hand touches it. She can feel the hesitation through the material.

“One twitch if yes, two if no. You understand?”

Twitch.

“Awesome! Now, I can let you wind down again if you want, but this’ll go a lot smoother if you… uh… yes-or-no me through it. That alright?”

A question she’s never been asked.

Twitch.

“Great. Tell me if it hurts, and I’ll stop. Okay?”

Cecilia can feel herself straining to smile.

Twitch.

Chapter Text

She works to keep justice alight.

The Scarlet Queen, they call her, and the moniker rings true; the battlefields she enters turn into tides of her image as she strides through and across them– flowing, cascading, blazing red. A monarchy upon which she reigns by default, for no one is left with any strength to stand against her.

Elizabeth turns away from the dead, and accepts the crown with all of her resolve. The fire in her chest burns blue, magnitudes hotter than any human should be able to withstand.

Every swing of Thorn numbs her; every cry she roars stokes the flames ever higher, obscuring any doubt beneath. Justice was what straightened her back. Justice empowered her to destroy her enemies. Justice was the dulling of her emotions, the whetting of her focus, the incineration of remorse and regret. 

Justice meant the ones she sent to the Cell deserved it. 

She cleaves the air in front of her, but Nerissa is too fast, and winks as raven wings buffet Elizabeth with air.

“Your singing is nice,” Nerissa calls as she gracefully dodges another swing.

That makes her breath cut short. “What?”

“I’ve heard it a few times now, you know,” the Demon of Sound raises her eyebrows, her mouth curved into a dangerously sweet smile. “Whenever you fight, you sing to yourself.”

“H-how did– why you–” she splutters.

A soft giggle. “I’m sorry, but did you think I, of all people, wouldn’t be able to hear it? It’s lovely. I can try to harmonize, if you like.”

“You…!” She lunges upward, fury surging through her in a rush; it’s a bad move, and Nerissa takes advantage, spinning and striking outward. She’s sent back to the ground in a heap, a heel knocking Thorn away from her grip.

Nerissa kneels in front of her.

“Let me remind you that my crime was singing for myself,” she whispers in a low melody, and all of Elizabeth freezes, paralyzed by the fraction of power left in an intact horn. “Just like you. And you took that away from me. From us.”

“You are a danger,” Elizabeth growls.

“I am exactly as much a danger to the world as you are, Scarlet Queen.”

A finger runs down her cheek. Nerissa opens her mouth to continue, then suddenly jolts, looking around like a cat that heard a noise. “Ah, that’s the rest of your team.”

She straightens. “Sorry for the rushed exit, darling. Let’s sing together next time, shall we?”

Another pleasant giggle, a flapping of wings, and just like that, she’s gone.

Elizabeth’s whole body is numb, but things spark and flicker uncertainly inside her chest as she stares at the feathers fluttering down.

Chapter Text

Gigi’s a fixer, because she’s a breaker.

She’s never been good with keeping toys or tools in one piece, but that was alright, because she knows how to put them back together. They’re never exactly the same as they were before, but was that really a problem? Bright colored glue, splashes of color and extra accessories over the cracks– the things she fixes are improved, spiced up, if she does say so herself.

Not so with Cecilia.

The automaton is a curiosity to her. She puts a hand on skin that feels real and there’s a purring, clicking system underneath. She’s sassy, and funny, and sensitive to emotions– and yet she yields no body heat, and falls perfectly still when asleep.

She wants to take her apart and see what makes her tick. Literally.

She doesn’t.

She has to glance down at her hands to make sure her gauntlets are off before she pokes at Cece. She takes great pains not to flinch when she’s combing through Cece’s hair– or when Cece is combing through hers, giggling to herself as she twirls it into unseen shapes.

“Don’t you dare give me a cowlick,” she warns, tilting her head up to glare. “If you do, I’ll rearrange all your gears.”

Cece laughs in her face. “You won’t.”

“How do you know? ”

“Because you like me too much.”

“Nuh uh– YEOW!”

“Crap– sorry, hold still,” she hears, and then a little snap above the sound of the metallic heartbeat behind her.

She turns, and Cece’s pulling a strand of her hair from a finger joint. “Sorry,” Cece winces. “You got entangled in me.”

Her eyes flash, but something in her is already, if begrudgingly, admitting defeat. If she broke Cece, she’d have to put her back together. And the things she fixes are never the same.

She can’t really improve on Cece. She likes the way she is.

“I guess I did,” Gigi grouses, her voice catching on the last syllable.

Chapter Text

There’s a strange plant in Fauna’s forest. 

Its canopy is narrow, wispy, a muss of white mixing with the verdancy she’s made for most of her other trees. Few branches, misshapen and mismatched, giving the impression of two slender stems fusing into one, and a bulky, off-color protrusion at the very top. Its bark is smooth, not gnarled, light as snow and veiled by silky membranes.

Chitters and clicks echo from inside, and Fauna thinks it must be housing insects, though none ever escape; as out of place as it looks, she lets it be.

And it’s a kind and humble plant, it seems; it sits still, never protesting of its lack of nutrients, never wilting angrily at the numerous other creeping vines that cover its surface, bending it oh-so-slightly under their weight. Birds and mammals come and go, sniffing and pecking and poking, but it does not evolve any poison against them; it only stands, calm and innocent, a passing stroke of beauty to those around it. 

And then, one day, Mumei spots it.

Fauna sees a glimmer in the new Guardian’s eye, and there’s a gasp of recognition that seems to come from both of them; she wants to warn Mumei to be careful, but it’s already too late.

While she approaches, wringing her hands fretfully, Mumei is as fearless as ever in pushing aside its canopy of wispy leaves, lifting a small section of its veil to reveal a set of lines that Fauna’s never noticed before. The Guardian runs her hands over them, tracing, pondering.

“What is it, Mumei?” she asks.

“Automaton,” Mumei mutters, her eyes distant. “Cecilia.”

“What is that?”

“I don’t know,” Mumei turns to look at her, an expression unfathomable. “It wasn’t me.”

Chapter Text

Human is a concept that’s been stretched across a windowpane aloft a flagpole’s tower at full mast to flutter in the winds of time and space and nature and chaos.

Human is a dead ember consumed for warmth in a fire pit stone cold across the eighty-sixth room of a cell guarded by empty suits of hateful armor and snakeskin onyx glitter glue gargoyles.

Human is an uncanny canon derived from an untold library of Babel flowing and spitting words like terror flows from ants when their hill is stepped upon by twisted spiral-skeletal snarling seeking scented terrors known as vertebrates, an eternity of stories chewed and pulped into the esophagus of civilization that digests its caricatured characters into the word “human.”

Human is to be unable to have the sights I see, to give my golden eyes a picture burbling and far-reaching and sweet from runoff minerals and filtering roots from ancient plants that grow outside our realities, a picture worth a thousand thousand thousand thousand thousand words when every dot of its canvas is cackled with and scorned at and spat out from a parched throat that never seems to whet itself from the stream.

Human is not to love because love is not exclusive to us; love is between stars and their lifespan affected by their wretched all-consuming bulbous gravity; love is between the bacteria and the rotting remains they repurpose; love is between the rebellion and the enforcement; that which is loved above is like that which is loved below and that which is loved below is like that which is loved above; to be human is a microcosm, but to be a microcosm is not human.

Human is me and you, because I said so.

Ina wraps her arms around Shiori’s neck, nuzzling into the archiver. “What’cha thinking about?”

Shiori smiles back, “Everything in particular.”

Chapter Text

It’s one of the feelings, Bae decides as the strawberry is plucked from her hand, of all time.

 “Don’t mess up my couch,” she chides as Irys bites down on it, the juice staining her lips even redder. She could offer her own lips. She offers a tissue.

“My favorite,” Irys gushes, reaching for the box of them. Bae passes her another. “How did you even find these ones? I’ve looked everywhere!”

“I have my sources,” Bae intones darkly, raising an eyebrow to appear mysterious. She’s rewarded with a laugh, and an arm around her shoulder.

“Thank you,” Irys touches their heads together. “You’re too good to me.”

“I am, dear Irys, exactly as good to you as you deserve.”

“I mean it, Bae.”

“Mm.”

“If he was half as kind as you–”

“Mhmm.”

“And took half as much care of himself–”

“Yeah, yeah.” She waves off the sparks of anger flickering in her chest. “Comparing me to that dickbag you call ‘your type’ is a little insulting, to be honest.”

Irys huffs as Bae picks up the remote and flicks through the channels. She settles on something old, a black-and-white picture of a duo careening through Rome on a scooter.

“You’re doing that thing again,” Irys says.

Bae keeps her eyes on the television. “I’m doing no such thing. What thing?”

“Worrying about me.”

Ah, some smug, petty side of her revels. Not quite. “We’ve talked about this already. You can handle yourself, I’ll be here if you need me, blah blah blah.” 

“Bae,” the way Irys says her name is truly, wholly unfair. It almost gives her a stomachache. She picks up a strawberry to wash the taste from her mouth. “Your hair droops when you’re worried. You know that, right?”

She resists the urge to reach up and check. “I can’t just not worry.” I can’t just not be in love.  

“Thank you,” Irys says. “For worrying.” It’s what she says when she’s out of arguments.

She bites into another strawberry, relishing the texture bursting under her teeth. “If he breaks your heart again I’ll be taking it for safekeeping.”

“Okay,” Irys says without hesitation. “I trust you with it.”

Damn you, Bae closes her eyes, and the feeling churns and curdles, anger and sadness and morbid excitement hardening into a knife. “Yeah, well. Good luck, babe.”

Chapter Text

Of all the feelings , Irys decides, this one must be the worst.

The world stares at the mess she’s made, of her face and furniture and future. Humiliation is passive, accruing with a hundred eyes as she storms down the street, alone, violently shedding salt into the pavement, clutching a dented and cracked phone. The lingering cocktail of emotions was already too much– blistering plumes of wrath, and then, furiously still ice– to be thrust under a spotlight of her own making is simply unbearable.

So she hides away, curled up like a rodent, to sob in Bae’s blanket.

“Some water?” Bae murmurs. “Oh– here, found the handkerchief.”

It’s an old. thin piece of cloth, emblazoned with a cartoony slice of cheese. She remembers it from when they were kids, when hay fever had overtaken Bae in the spring. She accepts it gratefully, and lets Bae climb onto the couch beside her.

“Thank you,” she sniffles into the handkerchief, her voice slightly less hoarse. “For everything.”

How does Bae know, to part the mess of hair and tip a glass to her lips just in time? How does Bae know to then pat her head down onto a shoulder and let her cry a little more? How does Bae know to drape the blanket across them, just over their heads, in just the way she likes? 

“Fucking asshole. First thing in the morning I’m finding his car and keying CHEATER into the doors,” Bae mutters, stroking her hair. “Hey. It’s okay. Just rest up, you’ll get past this too. You always have, haven’t you?”

How does she know? Irys hates the words ‘I told you so’ . Not once, in all of her sarcastic commentary of Irys’s taste, in every repeat of this scene, has Bae uttered the phrase. 

There’s a rummaging beside her, and then the couch reclines, enough that she can sleep without a pillow.

“Yeah,” she says in a small voice. “I will. Sorry. You can go to bed now.”

“Do you want me to?”

“I don’t want to disturb…”

“Irys,’ Bae whispers, “if you don’t want me to leave you, I won’t.”

She’s sick and sad and her eyes are swollen, but she hugs Bae tighter to stop the feelings. She focuses on gratitude– Bae’s comforting hand, the warmth of her beating heart, her perfect, unending friendship…

If she only was…

If Irys wasn’t…

If…

“Hey,” she says out loud.

The hand on her shoulder stills. “What is it?”

It’s dark– all she can see are shadows, and the pale idea of moonlight through windows far away. 

“Nothing,” she deflates. “I think… I was dreaming.”

Chapter Text

Nothing moves in the laboratory - not the pipes of liquid, the multiple clocks, and the body on the table.

After an indeterminate peace, a hex on the wall finally fizzles, rotating into a seam and then a hole, swinging aside to admit three girls.

“Quickly! They’ll be here any moment!” The purple-haired one snaps her fingers, sealing the wall behind them. Pulling a stick of green chalk from a nearby table, she quickly etches more symbols on the stones.

“I know, I know,” mumbles the second, fishing through her pouch. Something howls in the distance, and her white hair and blue highlights stand on end, like a shocked cat.

“Gura, please!” Hexes finished, the purple-haired girl rushes over to a complex panel on the wall. Mounted was a veritable Frankenstein's monster, a mishmash of science and magic; pipes and clocks overlapping an array of hexpapers that most scholars would kill for. Indeed, for the ancient book that contained the symbol in the middle, the duo had had to spill a lot of blood.

She was worth it.

Another howl. Closer. Unearthly, less a beast, more a personification of anger.

“Okay! Got it, Ina!” Finally, Gura tugs out a vial of onyx liquid, still bubbling in protest. She rushes over to the other side of the table, where the body lay still, a preservation hex inked onto its forehead. Even the clothes- and the red on them- were as fresh as the day she had died. Beside it lay a holder of several other vials- emptied of past contents, past failures.

Gura hesitates as she hovers the uncorked vial over the lifeless girl’s face. Blue eyes, with a thin ring of pink, she remembers. A light scar on her tongue, and the way she laughed revealed it.

How long has it been?

She thinks of seeing those eyes again. This time, for sure. 

“Okay, I’m about to start the machine,” Ina calls from the technomystical array. “Remember, Gura. Count to three. Ready?”

Gura snaps out of her reverie.   “This time, for sure," she repeats to herself, loud enough for Ina to hear. "Ready!”

A hex rotates, and a soft beep marks the beginning of Gura’s countdown.

One... two... three!

As Ina cries, “Now!” Gura pulls open the body’s lips, pouring the vial down her throat in one swift, terrifying motion. She tugs its chin down, making sure it swallows, and an enormous fizzling burst comes... from the array, its pumps now bellowing, its hexes flickering with purple energy.

“Done!”

Ina exhales amidst the whirring of machines. “If pure Underworld riverwater won’t do it, nothing will.”

The hexclocks on the wall began to tick. A similar one, Gura knew, would be in the body’s chest, replacing the heart that had been torn out by the Phoenix Chaser.

Something hisses. A protective ward. A dull sound shakes the laboratory. The howl is just above them, and muffled whispers layer underneath, a hateful reminder of their narrow escape.

“Shit!” Gura curses, watching the body for any signs of life. Listening for a clockwork heartbeat.

Ina steps back from the wall as another hex began to smoke. She glances nervously back at Gura, at the body. “Come on, come on…”

Another thud, and a muffled, surprisingly human swear from outside.

“That’s Phoenix Chaser,” gasps Ina, rushing over to the far side, hiding her face in Gura’s shoulder.

“I’ll never look at pink the same again,” declares Gura. It's a weak attempt at humor, but Ina manages a halfhearted laugh. Gura pulls her close and kisses her, brief and scared and hopeful, but determined to make it memorable- to have something to hold on to when the Underworld passed judgement on her.

“I love you,” they whisper to each other. Gura strokes the dead body’s hair with her other hand, including her in their statement. Cold finality settles in her bones.

Another thud. The body was still dead.

Gura had just closed her eyes- waiting for the last hex to be extinguished, waiting for the lab to collapse on them all- but instead, she hears a new, rhythmic ticking.

She opens her eyes to a ring of pink, enveloped by blue.

“Holy shit,” gasps Amelia Watson, her clothes stained with dried blood. “What the hell did you guys make me drink?”

The joyous, tear-and-kiss-streaked reunion was watched by the third girl to have entered, sitting quietly atop a stool. Neither Gura nor Ina had noticed her. Amelia did not notice her. 

And when the Phoenix Chaser Mori would inevitably evaporate all their hexes, she would not notice her as well- until she would finally make herself visible, and explain to the reaper that they had won the soul back fairly, and that the laws barred her from further violence.

She quietly took out a worn journal and pulled a feather from her brown hair. Despite the lack of ink, the quill worked fine:

Humans cheat death for the first time. 2251 AD, 03/20, Amelia Watson

Truly, a time worth recording in civilization’s history.

Chapter Text

There is a blaze, alight in the forests outside Libestal, and Elizabeth strides into it as animals flee.

Her own flame, burning a lurid cobalt in her chest, protects her, immunizes her to the cauterizing shimmer and the licks of white heat that curl across her cloak. In the center, where it crackles and roars the loudest, she knows what she will find.

“Kiara,” she whispers, dropping to her knees beside the prone body.

“It’s Kaira,” a cold voice corrects her. The air around her thickens, freezes, and flickers; the flames collapse downward, curling into the phoenix’s arms. Her wounds heal– no, they rewind.

As violet eyes open, Elizabeth looks up into a disdainful stare.

“We just encountered a new type of Stain,” Tam Gandr indifferently checks her gloves as Kaira struggles to sit up– Elizabeth takes her gently by the shoulder to assist. “I directed my knight to fully obliterate it, for safety. Your presence is not needed here, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth ignores her. “You’re alright?” she asks the woman in her arms.

“Lady Liz,” comes Kaira’s voice, soft and tired, “of course I’m alright. Her Highness can bring me back, and besides, I’m a phoenix. I’m doubly secure.”

“Yes. She is safe under my service, Lady Liz .” Tam almost spits the title. “Especially since, unlike some, she shows proper respect to the future queen. I cannot guarantee the safety of insubordinates.”

Elizabeth glares at Tam as she helps Kaira upright. “Those who fight with me are equals. They are not tools to be used and directed as seen fit.”

“Such a contemptible statement proves you are unfit for the throne.”

“I’m not saying I am,” she hisses through gritted teeth. She’s talking to Kaira more than Tam, rambling, the flame in her chest flickering upward as she holds Kaira close. “I’m saying I don’t order my comrades to die for my sake. I’m saying such an honorable warrior as a phoenix deserves more than that!”

Tam doesn’t bat an eyelash. “So? She swore herself to me out of her own will. This is her duty.” She gestures with a graceful hand. “Come, Kaira. There is yet more land to be patrolled.”

Elizabeth looks desperately at Kaira, but the knight is smiling, sadly, familiarly. This isn’t the first attempt to convince her to leave, but the fresh memory of her lying motionless on the burnt grass makes Elizabeth want to dig her heels in this time, to not let her go.

“Please,” she whispers, tongue leaden. “I don’t want you to keep– getting hurt. I don’t want you to die. Even if it means nothing to you.”

Because what if you come back and forget me? What if you come back a fully loyal dog? What if the next time you die, I can’t make you waver anymore?

“Please, Kiara?”

“It’s Kaira,” the knight that she wants to be hers looks confused. Her eyes flicker– a spark, a sudden recall?– but she shakes her head. “Why did you call me that?”

“I… I don’t know,” she stammers, confused. “I…”

“Enough. Kaira, come. She’s wasted enough time already.”

With a last, helpless glance and a squeeze of an arm, Kaira slips through her fingers once more.

Chapter Text

Liz can’t account for the wisp of cold, curling up in stark contrarianism against the fire perpetual across her chest, when the pup nuzzles to her.

Loyalty and fealty, she thinks, would crumble and be so much withered words if she was asked to raise a single warning fingertip against Mococo, the Mococo who had, like herself, been found in Libestal without so much as a memory to her name; the Mococo whose cry of “Revelation!” had trembled even as it had torn through a Stain’s corpus; the Mococo who, Liz had concluded after about five minutes of getting to know her, did not deserve any of this great burden heaved upon them all.

The flame moves slightly away, straining the limits of its attachment as Mococo embraces her; she pats a point where hair meets fuzz, trying to gently stamp out the fear she feels vibrating through their bodies, and whispers:

“I promise I’ll protect you.”

And Mococo, breaths shallow, starving for a sister she does not remember, smiles weakly: “Yay,” she says, “Thank you,” and then appends with a soft, barking noise that Elizabeth finds herself repeating with humor. The pup has a bravery within her , she muses, one she might not even recognize, to bring a smile to others when she has none.

And that sliver of enigmatic ice whispers to her: Put them in a cage, protect them from themselves. For justice.

She refuses, firmly extinguishing the demand. What sort of twisted justice would that be?

Chapter Text

His arms feel bare and empty through the cloak, so he raises them and embraces Libestal whole.

He stands at the balcony of the castle and feels the hollow in his chest expand and spread his body to pinpricks in the cloudless sky, every particle of him basking in the cheerful sun, the chatters of his fellow heroes voices of stalwart camaraderie that echo down into him; he takes every word to heart, hoping that it will fill the space.

Afloat in the vast, uncountable distances between his fingers, the high winds curl his lip into a smile; reluctant though it may be, he takes it too. There is love in the sweetness of the air; there is love in the banter and the laughter of his friends; there is love, he knows, in the memory of his Pearl, and it is a love that the selfish pout in the corner of his mind does not deserve. But there is love, nonetheless, suffusing the roads and walls that have become the only home he remembers, and he lets it enter him, his teeth flashing white; he will give it away to any who need it, for that is the duty he has been given.

Life is beautiful here, and it must continue to be protected.

(Before he steps back, he whispers to the wind, though it has been known to spread secrets: Dear Pearl, if to be loved is to be changed, then surely this shift in your gaze must mean that I have held you true. )

Chapter Text

“Does that mean we’re married now?”

The question, so innocuously pelted at him, is enough to make Gonathan’s posture waver, nearly threatening his knees to buckle underneath him.

“M–mar– whuh…”

It’s a joke. It absolutely must be– how long had it been? Less than a week, for certain. Why was he even thinking about this? Such a sacrosanct commitment it is, reserved for labors of love and the kind of whirlwind romance you only got in the stories (what stories?)  

He swears quietly, deep within his own head– scouring the clean black meniscus of his memory for something to blame for why he’s spent upwards of a minute, now, tongue-tied and tottering due to a simple jest.

A hand, its grip stronger than its appearance belies, catches his elbow.

“Gonathan?” asks the lady palming a diamond, the lady with dazzling blue eyes, the lady who has taken a name so similar to his own.

“Y-Yes,” he squares his shoulders, hoping to at least sweep up the pieces of his public image. Why was this so difficult? What sort of fumbling fool was he in his past to be rendered this way even without his memories? “I mean, ahem. If you would have me, maiden, I would swear protection upon you for all time.”

Drama, a weary internal sigh, so unbecoming of a knight.

I thought it was a pretty good comeback, another voice muses.

And then– most unexpectedly– his audience giggles, a wondrous sound that fixes him to the spot, with a smile that may well have been a shock of thunder.

“We’ll see, knight,” Jyonathan titters– definitely still joking around, right?– and with a squeeze of his arm Gonathan feels the urge to trade a full pouch more of diamonds; well worthy to hear that giggle in his ears again.

Chapter Text

Talking to Nerissa is like walking the cliffside.

Demon, the flames murmur in the whorls of Elizabeth’s ear: witch, temptress, siren. She is a terrible force, a hurricane given form and intelligence; she doesn’t bother to hide it. She sings it in blatant exuberance. The flirtatious sugar she dips her words into is undisguised.

One would almost mistake her as sincere. Perhaps that’s why, when she kneels next to Elizabeth in rows of flowers, she causes a swoop of vertigo in the Scarlet Queen, along with an accompanying flame-flicker.

“I didn’t expect you to be the gardening type, darling,” she says.

Elizabeth snips off a stem, halts, and remembers to exhale. “There is a lot you do not know about me.”

“Right?!” Nerissa exclaims, hand on where a human’s heart would be. “That’s why I keep trying to get to know you, Liz, but you’re so… cold.”

There’s irony in that statement. Elizabeth is too busy steeling herself to process it. Nerissa, in close proximity, smells sweeter than the lilies.

“It’s just a hobby,” she mutters, gruffly. 

“Can I have a flower?” Nerissa asks.

“No.”

“What if I say please? ”

They are enemies, and to the Bloodflame it’s sworn; it’s quiet treason that she breathes in, sharper than she means to, letting the ember in her chest roar unfettered for a moment. It’s condemnation that she prunes a lily, small but perfect, near the edge of her ring; and it’s blasphemy that she tilts it out microscopically.

“Say, I’ll leave you alone today, and it’s yours.”

“Aha~!” Nerissa cries in delight. “Yes! Oh, fair beauty, I’ll leave you alone today… but you owe me a date, alright?”

It’s far beyond Elizabeth’s power to stop her. Instead she lets Nerissa take the blossom, their fingers brushing, and she lets the nerves jangle her; all the better to build up her tolerance. Soon, she thinks, she will be immunized; mithridatism, the small self-administration of poisons, to acclimatize her. She will keep Nerissa close and monitor her, a barrier for all the witch’s flying kisses.

So she tells herself.

“Thank you, Liz,” Nerissa’s lips brush her knuckles, roguish and secretive, before she can pull back. A wink. “I’d kiss you on the cheek, but you might kill me.”

And there’s a reply: What if I wouldn’t kill you?

Elizabeth lets the question hang in the back of her throat, anticipating, watching the raven go; and then she swallows it, never to be seen again.

Chapter Text

There is a tug on the edge of his cloak. There is a whisper, stiff and frightened, in his ear.

“You don’t have to do this.”

And she’s very much right. What was the point? Another floor, another room of cold gray stone, another gap of hopelessly stale air and void? It would be more than enough to last the two of them, cuddled close, to last forever in this world.

But Gonathan stares at the ladder perched and barely hanging from the gap in the floor, the BIG HOUSE sign, the shopkeeper tapping his heel impatiently, and there in the heart of him, something burns for more than the solid dirt sky that awaits them every morning.

“It’s okay, my Pearl,” he assures, reaching for Jyonathan’s fingers to squeeze, pushing the edges of his smile farther than he needs to.

Before the fear can take hold, before he can look up to the expression in his Pearl’s eyes, he sweeps the cloak over one shoulder, and lunges forward.

It’s not the step, or the twist of his body, that’s the hard part. It’s the moment after– the moment where all the momentum has been expended, converted into pure kinetic energy– the fall after the apex. The world spins, dissolving into streaks and ripples, and all he can do is reach out and pray that the air below him is finite– that he’s not just rushing down through the hole, that he’s going to land– where is the block, why is he still falling, why can’t he land, where is the other side –

And then he exhales, leather boots creaking on wood.

Dizzy, he holds himself still– a 360. I just did a 360 ladder jump– until he’s grabbed tight by a familiar embrace.

“Holy shit!” he hears the shopkeeper, distantly, and then closer, against his cheek– “holy shit,” Jyonathan echoes. “I couldn’t be more in love.”

Chapter Text

Gentle touches dab away the blood on the girl’s knuckles.

“There’s more,” she mumbles, slouching forward into Kiara’s shoulder. “More… outside. Didn’t get them all.”

“Shh, shh.” Kiara doesn’t know if it’s true, but the makeshift spikes and barricades around this house should at least give enough time for this treatment. Her last bottle of medical ointment is half gone, but this is exactly what it’s for, isn’t it? She just has to pray that none of the girl’s wounds are infected, and given the number of bodies she's left in her wake, the odds seem slim.

“You’re safe, dear,” she says softly, and the wild cornered-animal glint in the girl’s eyes slowly starts to dim, even as she hisses from the disinfectant. “What’s your name?”

Distrust flickers, and Kiara’s arm is gripped tightly, nails digging in, but she grits her teeth and pulls the girl’s hand up to finish bandaging it. There’s a small sigh, perhaps of relief, and the fight seems to go out of her all at once.

“F…Fauna,” comes a dry whisper, a fading plea. Her eyes are golden, still shining with the wolfish, fierce bluff of someone who’s been trudging through this apocalypse alone.

Kiara recognizes it from mirrors. It’s kind of hot, the thought flashes for an instant, and she almost has to laugh at herself. Now was not the time.

“I’ll keep us safe, Fauna,” she promises, gently laying the bandaged hands down, pushing her into something resembling comfort on the old cot. “Sleep.”

“You’ll protect… me?” Fauna says, faint and faraway, into the dark corners of the room. It sounds like a wish, something she doesn’t really believe, and something in Kiara’s chest crackles grimly.

“I will. I swear it.”

The last bit of tension finally leaves her neck, and she slumps down, eyes fluttering closed.

“Thank you…” she says, drifting away.

Kiara pushes herself heavily to her feet as faint rustling comes from the woods outside, driving the insects into fearful silence.

“Wake up soon, please,” she mutters. “If you do, you'll get to hear my name.”

Chapter Text

Elizabeth doesn’t want Nerissa to kiss her.

The heat of her flame reflects a flush, a vulnerability in her armor; hands are cradling hers, and she feels as though they might sink into her ribs and pull out the kindling that keeps her alive.

There is nothing but tender fondness in the way she’s held, in the way lips graze her shoulder, and in the way scarlet beholds scarlet.

“You already know you don’t have to play hard-to-get with me,” Nerissa’s grin is playful and light. “I’d do anything if you asked.”

Elizabeth can’t discern if it’s a lie. Has she gone soft? Or is there truly no justice in this world?

She tests her gods by leaning down.

Nerissa kisses her, laughing– a pure sound of pleasure that doesn't tell a word of nine thousand brutal, silent years of imprisonment. She kisses back, because to hear Nerissa laugh like this, she can almost forgive herself.

It’s her apology– a drop in the bucket, a second of happiness against millennia stolen away by her hands.

“You’re about to say something sad,” Nerissa says against her lips. “Don’t.”

Could she read minds? Elizabeth bemoans her mental guards, probably crushed to rubble, just by a kiss from the sweetest girl she’s ever done something unforgivable to.

“What can I do,” she whispers bitterly, impale me, destroy me, make me repent, “to make it up to you?”

“Just stay,” Nerissa smiles. “Stay with me.”

Such a request feels like nothing. But Elizabeth can do it, so she does.

Chapter Text

(THERE WAS NO GOD HERE.)

Amelia twitches, the sleepy still peace of her disturbed by a small sound, an errant black line drawn over the horizon.

She’s vaguely disgruntled. An age had come and by since she had felt such dreamlessness, the fluttering of her eyelids seeming almost childish; the somber, half-nostalgic fall from an adrenaline rush, the ache in her calves from running, running all her life. She expects a bedroom, the smell of tea, the creaking of wooden boards and deliberately quiet voices (considerate of her) from the other room.

She gets a shock as something chokes its way down her windpipe.

There’s a stretch, her lungs suddenly twice their size and groaning; a banshee’s keen renewing the memory, the experience of her throat vibrating. She thinks she should be choking, but the substance entering her bloodstream has no weight for her to cough on.

It’s air– oxygen.

(AND THOUGH I CRIED,)

Taut tendons are chains dragging her consciousness, waves of an ocean lapping at her ankles, cold and teetering on the line between annoying and painful. The whisper grows louder, and there’s a color to it. It shines gold against black.

Ah, where has her flesh gone?

Something else is dripping onto her from above. It’s just as cold as the water beneath, but darker, deeper, a substance far more alien. Wax, it feels like, as the fatty coat of it melts onto her and hardens, filling hollows she didn’t know she had. Injuries she had never sustained.

Rot.

(I FOUND YOUR SHADOW,)

“No,” she says against the golden lights. They resolve, two, incandescent as her eyesight gains focus and depth. Below them is a deep grin.

“No–”

The presence refutes her refusal.

Her ears register sound in raw physicality, not a dull vibration filtered through decomposed drums. She can feel tissue worming against her bones, the heightening of her scream, the rumbling of stone and earth– a cavernous chamber, ancient, familiar, in the sense that she had left it never expecting to see it again.

Her mouth gasps in her face. Lungfuls of air. Her arm moves, from the bottom up– fingers twitch, and the shudder travels to her elbow, her shoulder, and then spreads to her neck. Teeth click as a hand suddenly grabs her jaw and snaps– everything washes in red, this old-new pain of the body crushing. She bites her tongue and feels blood, bright and fresh and coppery, fill her, occupying her thoughts, her senses, her drained arteries with the sensation of rust.

She’s already used up her voice. She can’t say a thing when the face appears from the darkness, a wide, alarming grin.

“Welcome home, Detective Watson,” Shiori– Shiori! she remembers, her new stomach recoiling with dread– whispers, something unidentifiable dripping from her fingertips. “I’m not done with you yet, you see.”

(YOU COULD NOT DIE.)

Chapter Text

“You’re from the home planet, aren’t you?” Amelia finally asks.

Surprise crosses Fauna’s face. She’s mostly kept to herself these first few days, comfortable in her routine maintenance checks but stiffening up once Ame makes her presence known. A natural loner, which Ame can understand. It’s kind of cute to watch, but it’s also been drumming up her curiosity.

“I am,” Fauna answers, a soft whisper drowned in the acoustics of the ship. “How did you know, ma’am?”

“Your accent,” Amelia says, idly reaching for one of her terrariums. She mists the small green sprigs at the bottom with a handheld spray bottle, frowning. They should be growing faster. “We don’t hear it a lot in this sector, so it stuck out to me.”

“I was born there,” Fauna explains. She’s approaching Amelia’s desk for what feels like the first time. That distant tranquility vanishes, her shoulders rising subconsciously as she walks closer. “We had to move to Station P when I was twelve.”

“The war.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I see. Hey,” Ame rubs the back of her head. Fauna towers over her quite a bit. “Don’t be scared of me, okay? I know I’m technically your superior, but it’ll just be us on this ship for a long time. I’d rather it not be so formal.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Fauna raises her hand to salute, freezes, and then tucks her hair behind her ear.

Ame stifles a laugh. “No need for the ma’ams . Just call me Ame, hey?”

“All right… Ame.”

“Great.” Ame pulls up her chair and sits, poring over her terrarium. She doesn’t expect strands of green to fall over her shoulder as Fauna peers down at her.

“It doesn’t have a drainage layer,” Fauna murmurs.

“Hrm,” Amelia clears her heart from her throat, trying to pretend she hadn’t been startled half out of her spacesuit. She can smell Fauna from here, clean, almost peculiarly so– lacking any trace of the standard-issue chemical soaps. “What do you mean? What’s a drainage layer?”

A finger moves past her, going down the side of the glass bowl, tapping near the bottom. “There should be a bit of gravel under the soil,” Fauna says softly, “something coarser and larger. That way the water won’t saturate the soil all the time, and the roots won’t be too wet.”

She pauses and smiles nervously at Amelia. “I–I was interested in terrariums like these when I was younger. We made a lot of them back home, before…”

Amelia stares at her in wonder. You have a beautiful smile. She nearly says it out loud before she catches herself. She’s heard that Earth had had fields of plants before, absurdly large swaths of green stretching beyond one’s vision. She’d always thought the photos were doctored. Now, as Fauna’s hands run tenuously through her verdant hair, she can almost believe it.

“W-we have some gravel in the terraforming supplies…” Fauna suggests. “I can get it for you?”

“Ah,” Ame says, her voice small. “Let’s… go get it together. You seem to know more about this than I do.”

Fauna shakes her head no, but steps aside for her. “After you, m– Ame.”

The space between them eases as they make their way towards the cargo hold.

Chapter Text

Cecilia feels like there’s something missing when she moves.

Part of it must be irrational comparison. The feeling of stilted, synthetic movement, just barely noticeable– it grows more pronounced whenever Fauna’s gardening with her. The flowers part for their kirin, and she kneels among them like a ray of sunlight– transient and radiant. She needs no implements.

Cecilia grips her pair of pruning shears and tries not to stare.

There’s a few microseconds of time lag between thought and action. It’s something she’s tuned out over time, but it returns to her now– an automatic process given focus turns manual, and every snip of a stem feels jerky and unnatural, her fingers leaden no matter how much she clenches and unclenches her fist. She winces at every cut, all of them diagonal, uneven, terrible.

A soft wind brushes, wraps gentle arms around her neck.

“What’s wrong?” Fauna asks, knowing as always.

She shakes herself out of her stupor. “Nothing, nothing.” 

A stem is held out to her, a cluster of florets with curled blue petals. A hyacinth. She takes it, a sad smile forming. “Thank you,” she says, soft and shy.

Fauna leans forward into her. She sits ramrod straight, trying to stay calm, but there’s a blend of tingling pleasantness and electrocuting terror that comes when Fauna sighs against her nape– the lost feeling of warmth and breath and emotion that feels inexpressible through an artificial face and artificial hands, not for lack of trying.

There’s a question in the pause Fauna gives, considerate, but still waiting for a proper answer.

“I’m not part of your world anymore,” she whispers, a spring in her unwinding, the cold ticking that serves as her heartbeat loud in her ears. Fauna is reaching past her arm, interlocking their fingers, but all she can feel is the difference in texture. “What am I missing?”

And Fauna kisses her lightly on the cheek, whispering back:

“Nothing, dear. You’re perfect.”