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Chapter Text

There isn’t a sound barrier to break in space. Without even a rustle, wings outstretched to be a rudder in the minimal gravity, Elendira lands on Earth’s lone moon.

Under the lip of the largest crater on the natural satellite, she’s hidden from the loud, busy planet below in all its sparkling blue splendor. The sun’s rays are even deterred here, the dark and cold is unforgiving and silent but for her alighting on the apex of the inner ring of a circular structure.

She’ll admit that the Gods’ prisons are beautiful. At the epicenter of ancient stone circles etched with a seemingly-endless array of runes, is a cabochon. It’s effective in illustrating the broad strokes of the being held here; the man who once had a body and a face and a life is now only a few squares on an oval with two pin-points for the likeness of eyes. For a brief moment, Elendira wonders if he can even see where he has been trapped for thousands of years.

Only a moment, though. She has work to do. Pouring the magic that all fae possess into her crimson-tipped fingers, she traces over the thousands of runes one-by-one. From the start of her efforts, the seals she’s breaking fight her tooth and nail. The Gods’ handiwork won’t go down without a fight, as she expected.

Neither will she.

If she were like the sprites or elves on her home planet, she would be sweating by the time she reached the final inner ring of the array. Not that being an archfey is preventing her arms from trembling against the might of the Gods trying to keep her out and their prisoner in, the edges of the crimson banding on her body going blurry in her vision as she tucks her chin down against her chest, bracing herself as she strains to finish what she came here to do.

She is not freeing an enemy of Heaven for nothing. If they did not have a common goal, she would leave him here to rot. But he was once a member of the choirs on high, a God in his own right even still. No other being could hope to survive millennia of torturous isolation without sustenance, all senses locked away; mind, body, and soul reduced to something no larger than the pad of her thumb.

With a final, violent release of energy, Elendira would shout if she could as she’s thrown from the prison. The first real step in her mission is complete when she can stop herself spinning wildly across the crater. The rings of her new partner-in-crime’s cell fall, defeated, around her. The clouds of dust force her to rise again, dodging drifting debris as she drags herself, aching and exhausted and still with so much to do, to her prize.

“I have waited a long time for someone whose heart beats so similarly to mine to free me from this place,” the voice of her new ally reaches her with the echo of old, old, magic. Conrad is just as ancient and perceptive as the rumors had promised.

“Tell me what I must do,” she demands. She’s already wasted so much time mourning and searching, and she has no time for his silver-tongued attempts to burrow himself into her heart beside their shared cause. They are already on the same side, she doesn’t need his attempts at familiarity.

This makes him chuckle. Of course it would. But he doesn’t try to lollygag any further.

He’d already had the key to their success, before he’d been caught out and shackled here for eternity. Conrad directs her to Earth, where he can sense the girl he trained for this an eternity ago.

Elendira takes him with her, embedded into her skin, nestled between her shoulder blades to whisper the instructions for their absolution into her (drooping, translucent, venation-patterned) ears.

“Tesla?” Nicholas calls through the house, peeking into the common rooms as he goes up and down the halls. He can’t even find the twins, and the house is too damn big and quiet with just him in it. He calls out again, “sweetpea, we’re gonna be late!”

The open window in the ( also empty of any of his housemates) bathroom has the cat in it. Kuroneko blinks at him from the sill, big green eyes knowing more than a cat should, he swears.

“Where’s everyone at, huh?” He scratches at the stubble on his chin. He’d wanted to shave before taking off for the day, but there’s no time for both that and locating his girlfriend. His helmet’s gonna itch when he starts to sweat. Ugh.

Kuroneko trills at him, standing to stretch dramatically with an arch of her spine before hopping down to the floor via the toilet’s tank, tail quirked at the end as she trots right down the hall. He follows her, since he doesn’t have any better leads than a cat who probably just wants a second helping of breakfast.

At the door, she purrs and rubs up against his leg while he pulls of his boots and ties them snug to his ankles. He scratches her chin, too, before he stands to keep following her outside, just to be nice. The trail of her little paw prints in the dirt path around the back of the house leads him into the woods right up against the property lines, and Kuroneko stops right that the border and sits, tail sweeping up dust behind her and her face expectant, one ear swiveled to catch noise in the trees beyond.

With a sigh, he listens even as he lights a cigarette. Working himself up over his otherworldly girlfriend and her younger brothers being missing (as if that’s the most alarming thing that’s ever happened with those three) isn’t going to help him. A few puffs of nicotine take the edge off the worry beneath his ribs, and a breeze comes from the woods, carrying the smell of freshly sprouted leaves and…

Ah. Tesla’s out singing to things again. Smiling to himself, fond in spite of the stress so early in his day, he stoops to scratch Kuroneko between the ears as his way of thanking her. Nick steps into the treeline to see what his girl’s been working on.

Following the sweet sound of Tesla’s voice is as easy as ever. It’s never led him astray before, always bringing him right to her side. A break in the trees reveals what she’s gotten up to while he’s been getting ready for the day ahead: serenading the stump of a long-fallen tree, the sun shining down on her through the canopy above, bathing her and her angel in all its natural splendor.

Fuck. That never gets old. Her being all effortlessly beautiful and shit.

He steps forward to pull her out of her task so they can hit the road, but his wrist creaks when a hand grabs him like a damn vice. Another hand claps over his mouth, magically (yes, actual magic) silencing his yelp of pain.

“Don’t interrupt!” Nai, the middle child of the divine siblings, hisses at him.

Wolfwood rolls his eyes skyward to ask the Gods that don’t make a habit of driving him insane (for better and worse) for some patience, and only finds Vash hanging like a damn bat from the branch above, a Nai-pattented finger pressed to his lips for the universal signal to shut the hell up. Nick brings his gaze back down to follow where Vash points when he blinks twice to signal he gets it, he’ll be quiet.

He sees why they want him quiet. Not only is Tesla in her element, but there’s new growth sprouting from the tree he’d figured was dead ages ago. Huh.

A cloud passes overhead, obstructing the sunlight for a moment, and this seems to shake Tesla out of her focus. She glances over, probably looking for her brothers, but she smiles when she sees Wolfwood’s come to join the crowd.

“Oh, to be in love,” Vash sighs, dramatic. His coat, with similar flair, drifts down with him in a slow-motion flip to stand on the ground instead of the underside of a tree branch. Show-off.

“You’re about a million years too young,” Nai gripes, letting Wolfwood go now that he’s not a risk to Tesla’s work.

“We’re the same age!” Vash protests, starting one of (too) many rounds of bickering between the twins, their mirrored face markings (crescents like phases of the moon on each cheek and the forehead) when they butt their heads together like deer trying to lock antlers.

Nick’s gotten used to it. Tesla was used to it eons ago. She greets him with a peck of a kiss to his lips and a honey-sweet smile, resting a hand on his chest where his shirt lays open, as usual.

“Nice work,” he tells her, curling one hand around her waist. The other one comes up to sweep her hair out of her pretty greenish-blue eyes, “worth the speeding ticket we gotta risk gettin’ now.”

“Oh!” one of Tesla’s hands flies to her mouth, pale skin contrasting her petal-pink lips and the sunshine-orange varnish on her nails. Over her shoulder, Independence folds down against Tesla’s back and fades out of sight after blowing Nick a kiss. Tesla’s thick eyebrows are scrunched in worry as she asks, “did I make us late?”

“Not yet,” he assures her, “everything’s ready t’go, I jus’ couldn’t find’ja in time t’shave.”

“I’m sorry,” she frowns, her beauty mark turning town with her lips in a frown. The draw of her brows scrunches up the marking on her forehead, wrinkling the ring of blue.

“Yer fine, sweetpea, we just gotta get goin’ now if we don’t wanna actually speed,” he draws her with him as he turns back towards the twins, ushering them all towards the house.

Nai breaks his stare-off with Vash to level a mean look at Nick, who is very much suppressing another eye-roll because he’s nice like that. “I heard that! You better not speed with our sister in your sidecar, Nicholas!”

“Wasn’t gonna!” Nick mimics Nai’s tone just to piss him off. Tesla swats his chest without any real force behind it. “Meryl’d skin me alive if I drove like that on the way to a club event anyway, Bossy.”

“I should try speeding,” Vash muses aloud, provoking Nai’s wrath once again. Nico rolls his eyes as Vash winks over his brother’s shoulder at him conspiratorially.

Tesla giggles at her brothers’ antics, and Nick’s irritation with them melts away with the sound (mild as it was) . If she’s having this good a day, he’s not gonna get sucked up in the twins’ chaos, either . He’s looking forward to the show they’re gonna put on with the club today, anyways.

In the shoulder of the road by the stoop, Wolfwood warms Angelina up as Tesla tells the twins to behave just as she gets her helmet on. They promise to in spooky twin unison, Kuroneko meowing from where she’s cradled in Vash’s arms.

With a wave, they’re off. Winding down the mountainside, the neighbors and the owners of the shops they pass wave to them. Traffic’s light, so they make good enough time to pause at a barren intersection for Tesla to coo at a trio of striped kittens following their gray-tabby mother across the street and into a yard, squishing beneath the fence.

“I once trailed after a mentor like that,” Tesla says, just audible over the rumble of Angelina’s engine.

Wolfwood flips his visor up, looking down to her in the sidecar. She’s got her visor up too, for a better view of the cats, and it doesn’t even look like she’s on Earth. He opens his mouth to ask her if she’s alright, if she’ll explain what she means. Was this the same mentor that makes Vash’s eyes go all cold and mean and Nai’s get watery and sad when she mentions them?

But before he can make a sound, she shakes her head and smiles up at him, the corners of her eyes crinkling, “whoops, I held us up again. We should get moving.”

Nicholas can ask her about it later, when they’re alone. Much as the twins can get under his skin like a splinter and piss him off ten times as much, he hates making them upset.

Meryl winces halfway through her very meticulously scripted speech to rally interest in the Motor Club. Nicknamed “No-Man’s Land” for their low attendance and (comparatively to most other clubs in male-dominated spheres ) high ratio of girls to guys (it’s just evenly split, dammit) , which has only made it harder to bring in new members. Even with Tesla and her brothers (no matter their sparse history of participation) bringing their lion’s-share of luck to the club – and chaos to the campus at large – they still struggle to break double-digits in headcount at their regular meetings.

Now, if only she could have finished what she’d been practicing in the mirror all week . And Milly’s couch. And in front of Vash. Whoever let Razlo get ahold of a megaphone should be classified as a threat to society.

“Come’n see what the Motor Club has goin’ on!” Meryl thanks any deity that might be listening to her that he’s not cussing every other word, as he’s prone to. Maybe he learned his lesson from hijacking the campus PA system last year? “We got some real treats for the racetracks this year, y’hear? The competition don’t got a chance! We’re better’n ever!”

Livio’s voice makes her head whip around. To her horror, in the balcony right above her, stand s the other freakishly tall, buff blond twins bound and determined to turn her hair gray before she’s twenty-five. Not just the one with the death-hawk and competitive streak that could wrap around the whole damn planet, but his generally less-abrasive counterpart too . Both are in cowboy hats and concerningly little else. Everything that the law wants covered is tucked away into the shortest cutoffs Meryl’s ever seen, and they seem to have torn the sleeves off some vaguely-western shirts, muscles bulging as they pose. Their shirts are even tied up into scandalous little crop tops.

Meryl’s eye twitches. What in the macho eye-sore…

“If yer lookin’ for a good time, look no further!” Livio adds. “We’re the life of every rally!”

More like a migrating disaster, at this rate.

Meryl’s face feels hot, but she keeps her spine straight as she faces forward to the crowd of people in varying states of scandalization via matched seven-foot strongmen screaming at nine in the goddamn morning. She can turn this around. She’ll definitely grant that they drew attention, but they’re not gonna hear that from her until she’s bitten their heads off for pulling this little stunt.

“Um!” she clears her throat. Most eyes come back to her in her little pencil skirt and cardigan; practically a nun, considering her current company. God. “Please observe the successful project vehicles our club put together this past academic year!”

Clicking off the microphone, Meryl reaches to poke a couple buttons on the CD player hooked up to their old, trusty speakers on either side of the stage. With a (royalty-free, of course) classical victory fanfare as their signal, t he engines her friends poured their blood, sweat, and tears into for months rev loudly. In spite of her efforts to make them rest, Milly and Nicholas had gotten these things show-ready on a vicious time crunch for this. Pride thrills through her, drowning out some of Livio and Razlo’s hooting and hollering as the first car comes around the building behind her.

Milly doesn’t have enough room to drift like they’d talked about briefly. At least, not safely. But she still whips the low-set, triangular, F1-style car around to rumble happily in front of the stage at a flattering angle. The crowd eats it up, in awe of their club founder’s skill and the shine of the fresh ceramic-finish glimmering on the sage green paint. Rising from the bucket seat and slinging one long, muscular leg over the edge of the car for balance, Milly perches on the car she’d driven to victory in last year’s make-or-break race out in the dunes and takes her helmet off.

God, but Meryl’s roommate is beautiful with sweat on her brow and helmet hair. She almost forgets to announce her and the car, she’s so dazzled by how close the paint of the car and the fabric of her racing suit matches.

Almost. Luckily, she snaps out of it just in time to get a dazzling smile from the other girl, and she definitely misses the buzz of the other vehicle coming in hot. Just for a moment.

With a graceful lean, Tesla counter-balances the tomboy sidecar bike. Nicholas leans with her slightly, and Meryl sees his head swivel to take in the crowd. People yelp and cheer, laughing in delight as the pair whip by them. Coats and skirts flutter in the breeze they kick up.

If Meryl didn’t trust Nicholas with these machines, he’d never get within a hundred feet of them, much less at the helm. But it’s mostly Tesla’s uncanny ability to make things work against all odds that she trusts here, if she’s totally honest. Wolfwood’s a good, safe driver. Always has been. He’s improved in spades, too, since having a consistent passenger. But he’s also got a bit of a thing for adrenaline rushes, and that’s what Meryl doesn’t trust. The high of pulling crazy stunts has led many a prestigious driver astray, historically.

But nothing terrible happens, and they drift to a clean stop beside Milly, the angle of the bike matching the more classically designed car just so. Nicholas stays knelt on the bike as Tesla stands, both pulling their helmets off and shaking out their hair. The crowd around the spectacle murmur, excitement rippling through the people.

Pride makes Meryl’s chest feel full and warm, and she lowers the volume of the music to speak into the microphone again.

“As you can see, we have some really amazing vehicles and skilled drivers! If you’d like to get your hands on the throttle, or sit in the heart of a powerful machine, or even just learn what goes into a race, join us!”

The crowd parts in the middle for someone trying to push through. A tall, strikingly beautiful blond strides with a level of purpose that nearly sets Meryl’s teeth on edge across the asphalt. Right up to Wolfwood, specifically.

“Who do I speak with to sign up?” a husky voice with a feminine lilt to it demands to know. Whoever this person is, they look like they could be Tesla, Vash, and Nai’s cousin. Even their eyes are similar to the siblings’.

Wolfwood balks, and Meryl can see the hitch in his shoulders. Tesla swoops in to his rescue when he doesn’t immediately answer, one hand raking up into her hair to push it up and out of her face.

“I’m sure our founder, Ms. Thompson, or our admin, Ms. Stryfe, would be more than happy to help get you on our roster.” She gestures to Milly and Meryl in turn. Meryl really wishes she’d stop being so formal with them in public already.

Stark blue eyes cut to Tesla only briefly, gaze drawn back to Nicholas for another long, awkward moment before all that intense attention is beset upon Milly.

“Well, there y’have it!” Livio shouts into the stiff quiet.

Razlo follows up quickly, “we got another hottie with tons’a motivation in our ranks! Better line up real quick, if y’wanna be in on it!”

Meryl is going to kick both their asses later for nearly crashing the whole production she spent weeks agonizing over every little detail for. But she’ll go easy on them, since they now have half the crowd coming up to ask them all questions.

(The next morning, when she’s hungover on top of Milly, Meryl will notice that their first new member, a woman named Elendira according to her sign-up form, was watching Wolfwood until he and Tesla drove the tomboy bike back to the club’s garage.)

Out of the fifteen new members, only one shows up to their welcome party. Tesla’s heart had squeezed a little when Milly had teared up over it. Everyone had her hopes up this afternoon. Not that the brunette was giving up on everyone. Tesla had roped her into helping with the prep for all the food the existing club members will get to take home tonight.

If Milly and Elendira’s to-go containers ended up with a little extra in them, well. Nobody had to know. Out in the club’s meeting room, Meryl’s singing while Livio and Razlo shuffle around the room with drinks and plates – their penance for shaking up Meryl’s careful planning at the recruiting event earlier. Nico took a snack and a beer out to Elendira, who had taken one look at the lively crowd and chosen to linger in the entryway, perched on the stairs up into the attic where they store spare (and broken) parts, decorations, weatherizing supplies, and other gear.

It hadn’t escaped Tesla’s notice that their new member seemed to be a bit fixated on her boyfriend. She just wasn’t sure about the nature of it yet. If she should be worried about her intentions. At the moment, she’s chosen to presume he reminds her of someone, or that they’ve met somewhere in passing, and that she’s just more comfortable with him than the rest of their eclectic group. Tesla can’t really blame her, after all. Nick is a good man, and his gruffness isn’t as good a deterrent as he tries to make it be. His heart always bleeds through and warms those around him. It’s what she first noticed about him when they met, and dedicated a not-insignificant amount of time to teasing out from hiding.

Besides, even if Elendira has… Invasive intent towards Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Tesla knows he can handle himself. She trusts him to talk to her about these things, and to turn down any unwanted advances with no room for misunderstanding. But they’re just talking, so she really doesn’t know why she’s got this sense of dread.

Tesla’s about done with the dishes, head down to focus on something other than this strange spell of paranoia that’s come over her. (Elendira seems to just be unsure about the colorful crowd, that’s all it must be.) Her hand bumps into someone else’s when she reaches to the side to put a dish on the drying rack. Scarred, steady fingers take the bowl from her grasp, its match grabbing up a linen towel from the counter to wipe away the water.

Tesla smiles as she follows the path of ruddy brown skin up exposed forearms to the scruffy, handsome face she has come to look forward to seeing every night she goes to sleep beside it. Nico smiles back at her, the outline of him glowing pink for her.

“How is our newest addition?” she asks. She’s genuinely hoping Elendira will open up to the rest of the club – she’s stunning, and seems like the thoughtful type so far – but she also hopes that if Nick has any misgivings about her, that he’ll entrust them to Tesla.

“Well, she went n’ double-booked ‘erself, so she’s not tryin’a stay too long, but I let ‘er know she had a welcome gift from ya in ‘ere.” He winks at her, and Tesla feels her angel flutter within her, giddy from his attentions and including her in his plans to bring Elendira into the fold.

In an effort to quell the bristle of feathers along her spine – a physical ripple of her emotions – she kisses his cheek, quick and easy. A wordless thank-you for his consideration of both herself and the woman she hopes they can all befriend, given enough time.

“Tesssslaaaa!!!” Meryl slurs in a solid attempt at a two-syllable melody. Her voice comes through the speakers in the other room as she leans her shoulder into Tesla’s waist. A microphone is waved up in the blond’s face, “it’s your turn t’steal the show from the rest of us with your beee-oo – ugh – goor – ugh! – your pretty voice!”

Tesla smiles down at their faithful club admin, draping her arm around the tiny woman’s shoulders and turning the microphone off as she takes it from woozy hands. “Thank you, Meryl. I almost forgot.”

“I can finish these right up,” Nico’s holding back laughter. Even as he offers to take on Tesla’s work for her so that she can go have fun with their friends.

“Oh no you don’t!” Meryl decides for them both before Tesla can thank him. All at once, blue-black hair is no longer tucked against Tesla’s shoulder, but is shoved between Nick’s shoulder blades as Meryl tries to shove him into the other room. “You’re gonna come with! You both work too hard!”

Tesla listens to them bicker all the way to the two open seats beside Milly – whose entire body is swaying with how hard she’s waving at them – with overflowing fondness (and a little exasperation, seeing as it’s rather rich for Meryl to talk about others “working too hard”, what with her own… Intense work ethic). Nico riles Meryl up with teasing barbs at her height and how it somehow condenses her rage right up until Tesla’s chosen song starts with a static hum from the speakers. The microphone pops a little when she turns it back on.

The room doesn’t stay calm for her ballad for long. Honestly, Tesla wouldn’t have it any other way. Razlo’s provoked a playful kicking contest with Livio under the long table, and Meryl and Milly are leaning across Nico to talk to each other. Elendira has drummed up the courage to slip into the room and around the back of everyone, heading towards the kitchen. Tesla gives her a little wave, hoping she’s going for her to-go container of food before she leaves for her other obligations.

When Tesla sweeps her eyes back across the room, though, she abruptly stops singing. Her grip on the microphone tightens, and the speakers squeal loud and high-pitched enough to burst the glass bottles and cups in the room, spraying alcohol and water over everyone with a burst of her power, even as she attempts to reign it in.

Panicking over the loss of control resulting in a mess and a reveal of her powers, she bows with a hasty apology and dashes out of the room.

Outside the clubhouse and around the side of the building, Tesla leans against the wall and tries to breathe. Directing her attention up to the night sky, hazy with light pollution, she can’t get the sight that had spooked her out of her head until she gulps down at least five good, deep breaths. Meryl and Milly, bright with drunken mischief, the not-quite couple practically in Nico’s lap. Tesla’s extrasensory vision had picked up on his discomfort, and her temperamental protective streak had gone and lashed out without her conscious permission, or an ounce of hesitation. Hadn’t she just been thinking to herself how much she trusted him to handle himself in these types of situations?

“Foolish,” she hisses under her breath.

“Naw,” Nick’s voice makes her jump. He frowns, worry clear on his face and in the slate-blue haloing him, “those two had too much, anyways. Liv n’ Raz are gonna get the girls back to their place safe n’ sound, though. Y’alright?”

Tesla watches him pull a silver cigarette case from the pocket of his jeans, and the cross-emblazoned lighter from the other. As soon as he has it lit with a hand curled around the flame against the cool springtime breeze and a steady inhale, Tesla plucks it from the side of his mouth and takes in a deep drag of nicotine, herself. The chemical may not do anything to – or for – her, but Nico had once explained that sometimes it was the ritual of smoking itself that took the edge off of life’s stress. With her ability to repair his fragile, mortal lungs, she’s inclined to agree that it’s rather soothing.

“I’ll be fine,” Tesla sighs out, leaning her shoulder into his, “I didn’t mean to stop the night up short. Or explode a bunch of drinks on everyone.”

Calloused, skilled hands trace gentle fingertips over her cheek in a soothing gesture. His way of checking faces of sensitive souls for tears without rankling their pride. Nico takes the cigarette from her and says, “s’alright. Walk’n talk t’me?”

She follows him, strung along in his wake as he steps away from the building, his hand warm around hers as he leads her away from the scene of her embarrassment. Under the streetlamps, they cross the blurry border between the university campus and the rest of the surrounding city. Cherry blossoms flurry around them, and she spots Nick shiver slightly when the lingering cold hits his chest through the deep V of his half-buttoned shirt. Smoke escapes his lips in a stutter, and she takes their shared smoke from him with a pointed look to his leather jacket, draped over his arm.

Slipping his jacket on without complaint, he tells her, “I’m fine, yaknow. Jus’ wasn’t expectin’ ‘em t’make their first proper move on each other in my goddamn lap while shitfaced.”

Tesla huffs smoke out through her nose, amused. He really can read her so well; a skill he’d picked up frighteningly fast, and has spent the past three years honing to a fine point. Conversely, she’s never had any issue reading him, even in the early days when he’d asked her to “turn off” her extra senses. He’s come such a long way from how afraid he’d been when he first learned she could track his mood, his heart rate, and even the broader strokes of his thoughts. Nick sees her clairvoyance as a boon, these days, rather than an invasion.

“Do you think they’re making their second attempts in the back of Razlo’s van?” she muses.

Nico barks out a laugh, heedless of the sleeping city around them. She sticks their shared cigarette into the crease of his mouth when his hand reaches her way, lacing her fingers with his instead. He squeezes her hand, eyes crinkled at the corners, “he’d never lettem live it down.”

Tesla giggles, some of the mortification from earlier melting off of her shoulders again. She swings their hands between them, breathing in the perfume of nighttime flowers on the wind. She tells him, “I think this is my favorite season.”

“Why’s’at?” he tips his head at her like Kuroneko does when their resident feline remembers there’s three people in the house who speak her language.

Tesla smiles up at him as she brings his hand up to kiss his knuckles. “Because,” she hums, something tender squeezing behind her ribs, “it’s the season of new beginnings. And when we started to settle into our life together. I want to spend so many more with you, here on Earth.”

They stop beside the empty street, right under a street lamp, and he looks down at her like his heart wants to leap up out of his chest and into her hands. There’s a bright haze of maroon around him, adoration shining in her direction through coal-dark eyes.

He leans down to kiss her, but the wind abruptly changes direction. It catches her attention away from him, from their pocket of time and space that is all theirs. Something’s not as it should be, her senses pulled outward, and she steps in the direction of the tiny – but not insignificant – ping of all-too-familiar power on her radar.

Down at the end of the street, where an enclosed walkway between two buildings cuts off any traffic, is – it can’t be – but nobody else –

“Conrad?” Tesla steps forward, her head and heart rushing in too many directions. She can’t parse out what she’s feeling. But she should be excited.

“Tesla,” it’s definitely his voice. His face, drawn with age unfathomable by the mortals she’s kept as company for the past three years, pulls into a smile she’d studied to hard to earn when she was small.

She has to know he’s real. That this is honestly, truly happening. Tesla’s hand rips out of Nico’s as she runs to the man who taught her to harness the power she was born into, and she doesn’t have room in the noise of her thoughts to process what her beloved shouts after her. It’s something she can feel guilty for – and rectify – later. All she knows right now is that she needs to run, and she’s decided to go towards the man who had such a significant role in her upbringing.

Conrad’s arms around her feel like a trap. They feel like comfortable nostalgia. They burn her with how warm they are.

“Where have you been?” Tesla sobs, rare tears streaking down her cheeks. She’s trembling, and she doesn’t know why. Is she overwhelmed because she’s happy? That must be it. That has to be it. “You’ve been gone for so long, and nobody would tell me where you went! You just disappeared!”

“Dear child,” Conrad sighs. His thumb swipes away her tears. “Do not worry so much. All that matters is that I have come back for you.”

“HEY!” Tesla jumps when Nick shouts. When she looks back, she finally notices that he’s been following her at a slow, careful pace. His eyes are constantly darting between her face and Conrad’s, and she feels a wave of shame crest over her. She doesn’t know why, but she doesn’t want these two people of the utmost importance to her near one another. “Tess, baby, don’ run off on me like that. Who the hell’s this?”

Tesla perks up, pivoting away from Conrad. How careless of her, to not introduce them, “oh, what a coincidence, actually! Do you remember when I mentioned having a mentor a long time ago, this morning? This is him: Conrad. He had a large hand in who I am today! And Conrad, this is my life partner, Nicholas.”

When she turns back to her old teacher, he’s looking at her Nick with cold disdain. It’s so unlike him, but for some reason she’s not surprised. She’s terrified, and she suddenly very much wants to get between them. When did Conrad’s eyebrows pinch together so hard that the square marking on his forehead creased in on itself? Why is he making that face at Nico? Why is his hand snatching her wrist from where she’s started to reach for Nick? Why is he hurting her?

Vash picks up the phone after the third time in a row that it rings.

“Wolfwood and Saverem residence,” he sing-songs into the receiver, heedless of his irritation with the incessant ringing and the late hour.

“Vash, it’s him,” Chronica’s brassy alto voice comes through the line, grainy in the way calls from Heaven never are. She sounds almost frantic, which is a sign of the end-times if he’s ever seen one, “Conrad’s been freed and he’s been picked up by the System on Earth. He could be after Tesla, you need to –“

Vash slams the phone back on the rotary base, spooking Kuroneko as he bolts for the door. The broom propped up just outside is in his hands before he even thinks to shout back into the house, “Nai! Stay put! I’ll be right back! Don’t let anyone who doesn’t live here in while I’m gone!”

Vash is already perched on the broomstick and hundreds of feet in the sky, adrenaline pumping like molten metal through his limbs, when he hears Nai ask him to stop for popsicles while he’s out. He might just make the pit-stop for those, if he can get the drop on that nasty old fuck and end this quickly.

It’s easy to find Tesla and Wolfwood. He’d know their signals just about anywhere – the only person he’d recognize better is Nai, but they’re twins, so that’s kind of cheating – and they’re not far from home. Only a few blocks from campus and their beloved clubhouse, Vash picks them out.

Any hope that Chronica could have been wrong, that this is a false alarm? Gone. Vash holds up his left hand, diving right for the cluster of people. He’s got the best damn aim in all of Heaven, and he lines up his shot right for the empty center of the bald bastard’s oversized forehead with the arm Nai recently upgraded for fun –

Conrad yanks Tesla in the way, and Vash has to pull his shot wide to avoid shooting his sister or his best friend, cursing as he veers out of his nosedive as well. He lands hard, rolling with it when the broom clatters off. He can’t even check if it’s broken or not, because Wolfwood’s shouting an impressive amount of the expletives roaring between Vash’s ears. When he gets eyes on his sister again, Conrad’s greasy fucking paw is over her forehead, passing down over her eyes, and Tesla’s fallen limp in his arms.

The next five seconds would get away from any sane human, but Vash isn’t either of those things. He rolls up onto his feet, metal arm catching Tesla as Conrad steps back and away from the swing of Wolfwood trying to clock him in the nose. His flesh hand darts out as he heaves his sister, limp, into the crook of his elbow, her head lolling onto his shoulder. Wolfwood doesn’t escape his grip on the back of his leather biking jacket, and Vash snarls at Conrad’s retreating form as he darts up into the night, disappearing into a passing cloud and vanishing from even his extrasensory radar.

“Motherfucker!” Vash yanks Wolfwood into the cage of his other arm, spinning him to set his sights on Tesla. She takes priority right now.

Luckily, his best friend is as reliable as ever, even when he nearly chased after a god with nothing but his busted hands and his rage. “What’d he do to her? Why’s she out cold like that?”

“Some kind of spell,” Vash tells him. He resists the urge to hold his sister closer, when Nicholas reaches to pick her up in a princess-carry, “dunno what yet, but I got a call from Heaven. We need to get home and lock the temple down. Now.”

Vash lets Wolfwood go, walking in stride with him back down the street. Tesla’s pale in the halogen lighting, her golden-yellow dress washing her out, when it usually makes her almost glow a little bit. Vash fusses over her, tucking all her limbs into Wolfwood’s sidecar as the man shoves his own helmet on over stress-sweaty hair.

“I’ll follow you up above. Just drive,” Vash tells him when they’re more-or-less sure Tesla’s safe in her seat with her own helmet.

Nick just nods and opens up Angelina’s throttle.

Chapter Text

Chronica stands on the circular overhang, hands resting on the peak of a whiplash line on the ornate railing. Her eyes narrow down to slivers of cornflower blue, pupils scanning Yggdrasil's towering hologram display. Red pulses, incessant, within a dear and foundational node of the system. Tesla, compromised; of all the denizens of Heaven.

“Domina,” she calls down to her dedicated counterpart, their matching admin uniform suits glowing purple in the face of the virus making its mad dash for the mainframe of their carefully maintained systems.

“I know,” Domina’s hands don’t pause on the adjuster block or the strings. She does turn her head to meet her eyes, however, sleek black bob swishing with a flares of drama that actually feels somewhat appropriate, for once. Menus are popping up on her console, but she doesn’t need to see them to navigate them at a break-neck pace. This is why Chronica fought for her to be promoted. “We’re doing everything we can. Honestly, we got lucky with how fast we cut the inlet from her. A moment later, and we’d be screwed.”

Chronica’s shoulder twitches. She’s itching to snap at someone, something. It’s all screwed enough to have the goddess of the present infected with… Well, the Almighty would know. But her audience with Rem isn’t for a while yet, and they’re still waiting for Vash to call up on the secure line with an update. She’s glad she thought to encapsulate that before they quarantined Earth, the Gates sealed shut until they can clean up this massive mess.

Well. Nothing’s going to get done much faster with her standing over her right hand’s shoulder and breathing down her neck. Or biting her head off by stating the obvious. She’s just going to have to hope she doesn’t have to send the Valkyries down. She prefers to avoid deploying Legato. He always takes up too much bandwidth posturing to Vash when he sees any real action.

Chronica nods down to Domina, “then let’s jump in while we wait for news.”

Sitting at her own console, her high-back chair looking out over the other admin and all the nauseating alarm codes , she wills Vash to turn the rotary dial down on Earth and call her, already.

Nai flinches away from the burst of power, the dim room lighting up with his sister’s Angel. When the air stops sparking, tasting much less of ozone, he’s faced with the horrifying reality of what’s been done to Tesla. Independence hunches in on herself, the reflection of Tesla’s very soul gritting her teeth and wincing, pained. Feathered wings shield her face, but it’s her back that makes him want to throw up. His own Angel, Millions Knives, pushes at his skin painfully. It wants to punish the one who did this.

This is just like… Just like when he descended upon the outpost near the Judgment Gate, Legato speeding ahead of him. Vash at his back.

No, this is worse. Because his sister had been conscious when he’ d reached her, then. When he and Vash had taken her from Conrad, screaming nonsense questions like “why?” and “how could you?” that didn’t matter. Not so long as she was safe, away from that man forever. Independence hadn’t been… Broken.

An eye hangs by the optical nerve out of the socket, bloodshot around the blue iris. Her right hand is white-knuckled and trembling with the effort to hold her left arm to where it’s started to separate from her at the shoulder, the ball of the joint visible through the viscera of ripped skin, torn muscle, and straining tendons. There’s deep, blue-purple-black bruising that’s spreading from her diaphragm and down, down, down past where the tether that ties her to Tesla’s back in her visual manifestation wraps too-tightly around her hips.

Nicholas curses out a long, colorful ribbon of words at the sight. Nai can’t breathe, can’t look over to Vash, can’t move. To see Tesla so disfigured is… It’s too much. He nearly hits Vash, when he sees him reach for Independence in his periphery, but they’re twins, and he made his left arm, so he recognizes him as a non-threat just in time to merely twitch.

Vash’s magic glows a ruddy ox blood red, but what Nai knows from the familiarity of scraped knees and holy wars is a healing spell distressingly sparks off silver-tinged purple lightning. Independence lets out a silent scream, her wingspan swallowing up the room as she sinks, agonized, back into the center of Tesla’s spine. Feathers fall to the tatami flooring, wilting like cut flowers in a time-lapse before they disappear entirely.

With the carnage tucked away out of sight, Nai can finally turn his attention to Vash. “What are we going to do?”

At the wobbly sound of his voice, Vash’s already thunderous scowl twists in on itself, turning into a grimace. He reaches for Tesla, this time, and Nai helps him turn their sister over. Nicholas comes back into Nai’s narrowed field of sensory processing with a blanket, tucking it carefully over and around her too-still body. His hands, like Vash’s and unlike Nai’s, are steady as he brushes her hair from her face with the gentleness she deserves.

This is why he tolerates the man.

“I need to call Chronica back,” Vash decides, “check on Heaven. Sit tight.”

Nai can’t sit still. He can hear the crackling, spotty connection from here. He needs to get up there and pry, bare-handed, into Yggdrasil himself. It’s the best way he can help; while Vash works with Rem to heal their sister, he can fix the system. Nicholas can just find a new girlfriend if the time in Heaven goes too much faster than here on Earth. He won’t be alone without them, not really. But Nai nearly lost Tesla once, before, and he can’t replace his sister.

He knows it is more than just unkind to think such things of Nicholas. He knows, logically, that even if he were to find someone else he loved, that there would be no replacing Tesla for him anymore than it would be for Nai himself, or Vash, or even their mother Rem.

Except, when he fills the tub down the hall, it’s immediately apparent that Vash forgot to fucking tell him that the Gates are closed. Nai regrets not bothering to crank the temperature from snow-melt mountain-runoff freezing- fucking- cold to at least lukewarm. He shrieks, squirming out of the frigid water and burning some of his magic to dry off, though he’s still left shivering and flushed red .

“Nai?” Nicholas – for how much Nai doesn’t think he’s good enough for his sister (because nobody is) – calls from down the hall in genuine concern.

“I’m fine!” Nai calls back. Just so the bleeding heart doesn’t leave his sister alone in her current state. “Didn’t know I couldn’t go home!”

“Sorry about the ice bath,” Vash shouts from the entryway where they keep the landline. “I said to sit tight!”

Nai just grumbles and trudges back to Tesla’s side. Nicholas is already on his feet again, wrapping a blanket around Nai’s shoulders, because at least he’s the kind of human that can come in handy in an emergency. Nai clutches the blanket and watches his sister’s face for any changes, thinking.

What can he even do from the confines of Earth?

The little goddess stands in the sky. It’s as pretty a blue as ever, and the clouds as fluffy as she remembers them. Except she doesn’t remember them. They’re not supposed to be here, in her mind’s eye. But neither is that voice. Not like this.

Familiar calls of her name reach her on the wind. Far away, someone she cares for deeply sends a shiver of fear down her spine. It doesn’t feel right, like that feeling fits. Why would she be afraid of that voice? Its low, brassy timbre has seen her through so much, after all.

Another voice, sweeter, brings her back. The clouds look like spilled motor oil for a moment as they come back into focus. This voice is as sweet as the man it belongs to.

“Nico?” she reaches out one trembling hand, larger than she’d been expecting. “What’s going on?”

He stands before her in his clothes from the party. Torn denim jeans, old boots that have had their soles replaced three times, a white t-shirt with a deep v-neck, and his leather jacket for riding on Angelina. The little goddess wouldn’t know all of this, though. That he likes to show skin and repair things when they break so that he can keep using them until their time is truly up. That he looks dashing in a blazer and oxfords, or that he likes to sleep in nothing but patched linen pants. He stands around her in all of these, and his drag-racing jumpsuit, and his favorite striped sweater and slacks, and his swim trunks, and the stained tank tops he wears when he needs to work with his arms deep in an engine or his torso under a car.

And, and, and –!

The cacophony of all the ways he has said her name crescendos, and the goddess clamps her hands over her ears. Before her eyes, the clouds turn dark, and he is whisked away by gale winds.

Tesla wakes up when she realizes her eyes should already be closed.

She doesn’t know where she is, there’s a man sat in front of her that seems familiar, though they’ve never met, and she is on the floor of a house that feels much the same. Familiar, though it shouldn’t be.

Also familiar, is the presence of her brothers. Vash and Nai are sat beside and behind her, and she’s standing. Hadn’t she just been asleep?

“What are we all doing here on Earth?” she asks, trying to keep her voice light. The human man she’d seen when she’d woken up is blinding her with his growing panic. What could be so urgent with a client that she’s been sent with two Valkyries?

Right, her client! The man panicking before her is Nicholas D. Wolfwood. She doesn’t recall his straits being so dire, but maybe she’d placed the call when she realized as much when she arrived here.

Only… She doesn’t remember calling back to Heaven. Or why she would.

“Oh, uh –“ Vash clears his throat, awkward. That makes her worry more, for his usual winning smile to be absent in front of a stranger “– Tes, we all live here?”

Tesla doesn’t get why that would be a question.

Nai elbows Vash. He adds on, “we came to find you when you didn’t come home and found ways to stay. We’ve all been here for about three years.”

Tesla’s eyes go wide. Whatever is going on with Nicholas D. Wolfwood must be quite dire to have all three of the time deities present. She doesn’t know why they’ve been here so long, though. Perhaps a stealth mission? Or a long process in fulfilling his wish? Has she even offered him a wish?

“I am so terribly sorry!” Tesla bursts out, deciding they must have been undercover, “it must be terribly odd for you right now, Mr. Wolfwood! I am the Goddess Tesla, I have come from Heaven for the Heavenly Help Line to grant you your heart’s desire!”

She falls to her knees to be level with him, her white and orange robes billowing around her, silver jewelry jangling as her hair flies around her face and she pulls her business card from a pocket in her regalia. He must be scared and confused because he had no idea he was cohabitating with extraplanar beings! Especially ones of divine nature! Whatever has required their presence must be overwhelming on its own, much less such a strange revelation. It must be taxing upon his limited – though no less incredible than their own, she’s sure – mental faculties to handle all at once.

Vash starts to say something, but Nicholas D. Wolfwood holds up a hand and he stops. They must be rather close, because Vash actually clicks his teeth together with how fast he shuts his mouth. If only she could get him to listen to her so well! She just wishes she could remember how they all become so well-acquainted.

“That’s mighty nice’a ya, Miss Tesla,” his drawl is easy and casual, though he still looks so scared to her extrasensory perception. He takes her card with a polite little bow, and she can’t help but beam, ignoring the way the impersonal address makes her feel vaguely ill. “I’m sure I’ll figure out a way t’cope with all’a this. ‘Specially with you ‘round t’help.”

Tesla beams, relieved that her increasingly-apparent lapse of memory hasn’t put him off too terribly. “I will do my best, Mr. Wolfwood!”

She watches the human who has managed to befriend most of her beloved family clear his throat. Nai hasn’t said something, but she feels him prod morosely at the back of her mind. She tries to open herself to him, knowing he finds comfort with his conscious close to her and Vash’s. It doesn’t work, and that nearly makes her frown at her client.

When he speaks, it derails her focus on this new problem and the sinking feeling that something is very wrong. Just not for long, because he asks, “say, ma’am, what’s th’last thing ya remember?”

An easy question. Or, at least, it should be. As Goddess of the Present Time, Tesla has a quite immaculate memory. Right now, though, she can’t seem to pinpoint an exact answer to his question. She allows herself to frown, now.

“I… Don’t know,” she admits, turning to face her brothers instead.

The twins, abruptly, feel all-too contained. Vash has plastered a smile that looks painfully fake over his face, and Nai’s is blank. So unlike them both, when it comes to her. Didn’t she just witness how close they must be with their client, who they’ve been living with for three years. Whom she cannot remember at all? What could they have to hide, here?

“Hey,” said human’s voice calls her attention back, and she’s suddenly aware she’s begun to hyperventilate.

Since when does she do that? She doesn’t even need to breathe air. Any hope that she may have been in Heaven on an errand and simply missed those three years on Earth because of how strange time can work between the planes dissolves before it can set into any particular shape. He smiles at her, reassuring in a way it simply wouldn’t be from a stranger.

“Look, we’re gonna figure this shit aaalll out t’gether,” Nicholas D. Wolfwood soothes them all in an easy croon. He leans back on his palms. “S’alright if ya don’t remember stuff right now, we’ll work with it. But y’can stop bein’ so formal with me, okay? Jus’ Nick’s fine t’call me.”

Tesla… Nods. She kind of wants to call him Wolfwood, at least. If she doesn’t remember him, she should try to be polite, but if he’s asking her for familiarity, well… She’d said she was here to fulfill his heart’s desire.

“Alright then, Nick!” she chirps, light in a way she most certainly doesn’t feel. “I can do that! But seeing as this request is so small, I won’t count it against your one wish, okay?”

That makes his smile crinkle the corners of his eyes. “Yer too kind.”

Abruptly, the quiet room bursts into action. Nai is on his feet and stomping out of the room, muttering into the hand he’s pressing against his mouth. Vash shakes his head at her when she raises an eyebrow his way.

He clears his throat, “seems like you’re an amnesiac, Tes. But Wolfwood’s right, we’re gonna figure this out. Get you fixed right up! I think that’s what Nai just went to do – I should go help!”

Tesla blinks after the twins’ retreating forms, then back to Wolfwood. He’s glowering after them, himself. The trepidation bubbling in her chest doesn’t have time to hit a full boil. Nicholas heaves a great, big sigh and turns his attention back to her, standing up and offering her a hand. She takes it, and resists the urge to frown further when he resists letting her go once she’s on her feet.

“I’d try’n wish yer memory back,” Nick tells her, leading the way down the hall. She trails after him, lost in more ways than one. “But while y’were out, Heaven shut things down. We’re on our own here, but… We’re really gonna be fine.”

Tesla resists the urge to tell him she can tell he doesn’t believe that. She thinks he needs to feel like he’s reassured her in some way. She’d feel rude poking holes in his fragile conviction, anyways. She thinks he needs it more than she does.

It’s better to keep her focus on the tour of the house, anyways. Wolfwood doesn’t need her asking him where everything is later on, anyways.

It’s nice to know that Nai hasn’t changed in the three years Tesla is supposedly missing. She can’t help but smile when he makes a familiar shout of “trial twenty-six, model two!”. As the eldest and least trepidatious of his gadgets growing up, she’s been his proverbial guinea pig plenty of times. She wonders, idly, how many times she’s been in this very position here on Earth. Has Nick been in her place, with some dubious device on him, ready for whatever happened?

She doubts it, somewhat. They don’t seem to have the closest relationship with one another. Granted, three years is a blink for deities. Tesla wonders if that’s why they’ve all gotten away with being away from Heaven for such an extended period of time.

The gadget doesn’t work. Again. Vash trails after Nai when he stomps out of the room with the “Memory Restoration Helmet” in hand, cables trailing after him from the main body of it. He hasn’t lost hope – Nai’s always been stubborn when it comes to things like this. His technology, solving problems, and of course Tesla herself and her well being.

One would think that as the older twin and her little brother, he’d be more doting on Vash. But they’ve always been such contrary boys.

“Well,” Nicholas stands up from where he’d been sat in front of her. His legs must be rather strong from riding his motorcycle as his daily driver, because he levers himself upright easily from the comfortable, cross-legged position he’d settled into several hours ago. “I know those looks. It’s about t’be a blessin’ that we don’t got close neighbors. I give ‘em five minutes, maximum.”

It’s very strange to have someone she’s (for all purposes) just met speaking about her brothers with such familiarity. The fond exasperation in his voice speaks clearly to Tesla’s three missing years. It aches in her chest, dull and distant.

Nicholas offers her a hand, and she takes it. No hesitation, no prickle of unfamiliarity. Just uneasy deja-vu, almost. This strange, wiggling, strangled feeling she’s been getting from everything he does. Everything about him an afterimage of something she knows she should know.

Tesla’s mind remains blank with stubborn prejudice. When she’s on her feet, following him automatically like a lost dog after a stranger stopped to scratch it behind the ears, she holds her hands to her chest.

“I got afternoon classes,” he informs her when they reach the front entrance. The genkan is full of shoes in the sizes and preferred styles of all four of them, even Nai, who she knows would rather keep changing the same footwear to save time. “You do too, but you don’t gotta come. I’ll cover fer ya while we figure this all out.”

“Class?” Tesla tips her head to the side, her hands coming down to fidget nervously in front of her hips. “Cover for me? Do we study the same subjects?”

Nicholas tips his head up and back to look at her. His head, very carefully and purposefully, does not even brush his hair against her robes. He looks thoughtful, and it’s the most open she’s ever seen him – and simultaneously not even close to that.

“Yeah, I s’pose we do,” this seems like something he’s just noticed. “We did it at first t’make sure the System Force didn’t act up an’ hurt anyone, n’ then I guess we just kept doin’ it outta habit.”

“I see,” she can’t help but smile. “We must have been quite close, then, to naturally seek out each other’s company.”

It feels like she’s slapped him. Slapped them both. Her words make him flinch, recoiling down, away, and out of her sight. It sting like a burn against her sternum.

“Sure are,” he says, choked. His tense is very pointedly present, in direct opposition to her choice of the past.

“Then I should come with,” she blurts out. “Perhaps seeing what we have been learning will jog my memory somewhat.”

He pauses for long enough that she barrels on. “Besides – uhm – if your old wish is.. Still in effect, the system force…”

“Tesla,” his voice is tight, “I wasn’t gonna say no. I jus’ – can y’wait here? While I get Angelina outta the car port n’ ready t’ride?”

He needs privacy. A moment without her nerves jangling in discordant harmony with his. Tesla thinks she needs that, too.

“Alright,” she murmurs.

She can’t watch him walk out the door and shut it behind him.

Kitten heels in her exact size, made of burnt orange stained leather, do not take very long to put on.

As the Almighty, Rem makes a great many very difficult choices on the regular. It’s something She has had a long, long time to get used to.

Making these hard decisions about – and occasionally for Her children – is arguably the hardest part of Her station, though. Not that She has ever felt particularly compelled to express it.

This is not the first time She has wished She had simply done away with a dissenter. Not the least of which Conrad. His past transgressions had been more than enough to have Her considering it. If only She had listened to her sons more on this. Had not prioritized Her council over Her instincts as a Mother, and in this case, especially not what Her boys had to say about it. They were there to retrieve Tesla, had been the ones handling her recovery. Rem hadn’t listened, and Vash had been right to tell Her she should have heard Nai out more. Should not have tarnished their relationship.

Hindsight has always been the wisest of Her boys’ gifts. Especially Nai’s.

What’s done is done, however, and now there is an emergency to tend to.

“We have quarantined Tesla to the proxy system as You advised, Most Holy,” Chronica informs her from Heaven’s third highest dais. Her hands grip the railings on either side of her, a straight shot down into the bottomless depths of all existence but a step away.

“Excellent work,” Rem’s voice fills her fathomless audience chamber. Chronica seems to relax, as her Almighty One’s will to make this right rests upon her own shoulders like a mantle. She is glad that it is a reassurance instead of a burden. “Have you given thought to what we spoke of last?”

Chronica frowns, “some, yes. I find it difficult to make an objective decision without full knowledge of the situation, however. Even having consulted with Domina.”

Rem would nod, if she felt she could contain herself in any particular shape at the moment. “I understand. But if I am to allow you access to such record, you must swear Me the utmost secrecy.”

“Of course,” Her best admin agrees without hesitation.

Chronica’s willingness to follow Her every order without scrutiny is no boon here, however. No matter how heavily it weighed on Her choice to appoint her in that very station. So She warns her, “You are certain you will not have need of Domina?”

“I will bring it up if I feel the need,” a knowing smile tips the corners of Chronica’s mouth up.

Rem hums, pleased as she can be in their current predicament, “the information is yours to weigh in the decisions you must make, then. Know that I am entrusting this information to your best judgment, going forward. You may not have the time to come to Me for guidance or approval, in the most crucial moment.”

“With honor, Almighty One, Most Holy Rem Saverem,” Chronica bows her head in respectful deference.

Satisfied that She and Her intentions are understood, Rem bestows the knowledge upon Chronica.

It does not please Her, to see one of Her most reliable in distress over the things Rem must show her. But it is vindicating that Chronica is mortified by what Rem can stand to show her.

The Judgment Gate turned to rubble. The twisted, hateful, excited expression Conrad had worn right above Tesla’s young, horrified visage. The broken screams of a child with her understanding of reality and the man she had grown to trust most turned inside out. The desperation with which Conrad had fought to get to Tesla again.

It is the culmination of Rem’s worst mistakes.

Chronica doesn’t miss a single beat of respectful ritual when she leaves Rem’s presence. But her stride is sure and steady over the marble floor, and She knows that Her decision to trust another Heavenly being – one not bound by the loyalties of family – with Her beloved daughter was the correct one, this time.

Where Nai is usually much more indirect with his actions, he sure does refuse to be more than about a hundred feet away from Tesla during times when she needs them. Even if that need for family necessitates some distance. Not that he can blame him, it’s not like Vash wants to let any of their little household out of his sight right now.

But he thinks the nature of their current problem calls for some time spent watching over their sister and the human who’s managed to worm his way into all three of their hearts in one capacity or another (no matter how much Nai denies liking the guy even a single bit). Less being right on their heels. Even if it is a bit hilarious to watch Nai turn Wolfwood around to give Tesla privacy, even though the most they’ve done with their collective living arrangements has been to sleep on separate futons in the same room. Inseparable as ever.

Tesla changes outfits for the fifth time. She’d nearly made Vash choke on his own spit when she’d put on a goddamn middle school uniform before. Laughing from the rooftops wouldn’t have been sneaky.

He’d told them he was going to call Chronica. And he had, he’d just gotten Domina instead. Apparently his Mother had needed the head admin to pick and choose Heaven’s next steps. If it’d been anyone else, he’d be a bit nervous that Rem was going to be the way she was last time. But he trusts Chronica with this – he’d recommended her for this position when he’d refused it, after all. And he knows how much trust Rem puts into his endorsement and Chronica herself.

Really, he’s on the lookout for Conrad. He’d gotten in close to them without him noticing, and he sure as fuck wasn’t going to let that happen again. He doesn’t have a physical form of his own, not to mention the fact that he’s not a stupid man in any sense. He’s probably found someone he can stick himself onto like the parasite he is. Hiding himself from them all with someone else he’s manipulated into believing the bullshit he’d been spouting off way back when he’d had the audacity to break Vash’s family apart –

Vash’s rage is banked back down into a dull flame (not as dull as his baseline, not nearly, but still) when he catches odd movement in the corner of his periphery.

A woman he doesn’t recognize. She has a strange energy signature – nothing he’s ever seen on a human – and a smart-looking white-and-grey plaid coat on. To everyone else on campus, save his siblings continuing their quest to make Tesla blend in better, she blends in seamlessly. Walking through the quad just like anyone else. The only remarkable thing about her to the humans milling about seems to be her dashing appearance, by the way folks are going a bit pink when they rubberneck to get an extra look at her.

Elendira. The new member of the Motor Club.

Someone new, mysterious, and pretty. Vash watches her duck into an alleyway only one block down from his family before she’s just… Gone. No trace of some beautiful newcomer with a compelling strangeness to them. Vash makes an effort to remember what she looked like. Wolfwood had mentioned during Vash’s grilling of his and Tesla’s little evening walk-smoke-talk sesh.

Vash shouldn’t have stayed home with Nai to work on their fucking projects yesterday. He should have kept an eye on this woman. He was so stupid to have turned his extrasensory sight off like his sister. He should have been looking out for her.

Vash makes himself take a deep breath. It’s bracing and human and helps him remember that this isn’t about what he should have done. This isn’t about being guilty over not being paranoid when he’d had no real reason to be.

He’ll just have to tell Tesla and Wolfwood to watch each other’s backs when it came to Elendira. Tell Heaven he’s got a damn good lead on who’s helping Conrad fuck their shit up.

With a trotting step off the raised edge of the roof, Vash takes off towards home. It’s peak time on campus, and his family is as safe as they can be for the moment. Heaven needs this intel more than they do, right now.

Chapter Text

It’s pretty hard to ruin Milly’s good moods. Call it a Thompson thing, because her whole family tends to get stuck to their emotions like flies on sticky ribbons. But she’s usually at a baseline of “generally pleased with life”. She’s graduated, her club is still hers, and it’s thriving. She does what she loves with a lot of the people she loves. She’s got a cute little girlfriend now, too, thanks to Razlo dropping her and Meryl both off at her place after they got a bit too drunk last night. Who wouldn’t be sitting pretty in her position?

She was in such a good mood this morning, she’d told Livio to stay home when he’d called her on behalf of himself and Razlo to take a rain-check for their hangovers. Usually, she’d at least tease them, if not bribe them in with free lunch and her family hangover cure. Apparently their two-man “after party” had gone a bit off the rails.

Well, currently, she’s not sitting pretty anymore. Mostly because it’s changed very suddenly. Three of those people she loves are in their clubhouse right now, and two of them brought her some pretty upsetting news.

Nick looks like he’s about ready to step out for half a pack of cigarettes after only giving Milly and Meryl the broad strokes of this news. That Tesla had some kind of accident and has amnesia of the past three years she’s spent with Nick, with all of them here at the university. She can’t be Nick’s copilot on the tomboy like this, even if she’s physically unharmed and could potentially rely on muscle memory. It’s too risky, and they don’t gamble with safety in her club. Not even Vash. Not after he scared Meryl so bad she brought the wrath of any higher power that would listen down on him with her voice alone for three hours straight.

It doesn’t make sense to her. How she’s forgotten so much, so specifically, so suddenly, without getting hurt. But lots of things with the Saverems haven’t made a lick of sense since Nick started attracting them like cats to a can of wet food, so… Milly will do what she can with the information she has. Far be it from her to squint too closely at something she might not want to know the answer to.

“Well,” she smiles at Tesla, even though her friend doesn’t remember being her friend. She will, she’s sure, and it’s not like this is her fault either. Milly will always have a smile for her. “Until you’re back in shape to be driving, I suppose we’ll just have to pull out of the tandem races. I’ll call the organizers for the rally next week after you two take off and let them know we’ve hit a snag, and we’ll just play things by ear from there.”

Tesla has looked like she’s wanted to shout, or cry, or both since she walked in on Nick’s heels. Her hands have been clasped in front of her, stiff and proper like she’d been back when they’d first met. Milly wraps her hurt up and tucks it away for later. Her friend doesn’t need her hurt feelings right now, she need her support. So for now, she watches the other girl bend neatly into a polite, apologetic bow, and she’s already forgiven her before she’s finished taking a deep, bracing breath.

“I’m so sorry,” Tesla – their tenacious Tesla – sounds so sad it aches in Milly’s chest.

“What about the new girl?” Meryl chimes in right as Milly’s about to start fussing. Right, they don’t know what their newest member is capable of behind the wheel, or with a wrench, or anything yet. Milly had forgotten in the upset of Tesla’s condition.

“What about her?” Elendira’s husky voice comes from the open doorway. When the room turns to see her lingering in the doorway and Milly catches sight of her, one of her delicate ash-blonde brows is raised quizzically. Just like yesterday, she’s got tasteful red-and-black makeup to match her similarly dual-chrome outfit. “I do hope I’m not the subject of some gossip mill in here.”

“Not at all!” Milly stands, quick to re-assure. “I actually just realized that in all the excitement yesterday, we haven’t seen what you can do with a vehicle is all.”

Nick and Tesla step politely aside to encourage her into the clubhouse. Meryl shuffles closer to where Milly had been sitting to make more room for everyone. Elendira fills the space created for her easily, tall and graceful and –

“Is that a racing suit?” Nick blurts out, blinking. He sounds about as surprised as Milly feels. A quick glance to Meryl tells her she’s also a little shocked that she came so… Prepared. Speak of the devil.

It’d be awfully convenient if Elendira could ride anywhere near as well as Tesla. Even better if she and Nick were compatible on the track. Milly could try, too, if that doesn’t work, it’s just that solo racing is her main event. But she’s getting ahead of herself.

“I would hope so,” the other manicured eyebrow goes up. “I had a feeling you would want to see what I have to offer the club, so I did try to come prepared.”

“Oh!” Milly feels a bit lighter for the distraction, even if it feels like this woman is in her head. She’s just hopeful that the next few tandem races aren’t a total loss yet. “How considerate! Nick –“ she claps her hands together and looks to him “– are Vash or Nai on campus today?”

Nick’s jaw works for a moment, like he’s got too much to say in response to the question. Milly’s always had a good read on folks, especially him, but he’s also always been especially open to her. It definitely helps that she’s the one who showed him how to ride both as the driver and the counterbalance on the tomboys.

When Razlo had slipped from the cramped sidecar in a race with her and the asphalt had scraped the left side of his head down to the bone, she’d stopped racing with anyone for a while. She still doesn’t want anyone larger than her in her sidecar. She still doesn’t compete in tandem drag races, and in spite of her earlier consideration (as good a sign of her mental recovery as it may be), she’s not sure she’s ready to do it again just yet.

“Nai’s checkin’ on ‘his babies’ in the garage,” is the answer she gets.

“Perfect, then,” Milly decides, “would you be willing to take Miss Elendira over? If she can ride, we should see what she can do, don’t you think?”

Tesla lights up at the prospect, “a practice race? How exciting!”

Milly does not flinch at the way she’s got that new-racer sparkle to her again. She should be happy that her friend gets to experience the wonder of discovering something they enjoy for the first time again. Even if the circumstances are… Less than ideal, to say the least. She doesn’t even have the heart to correct her that it’s not a race.

With everyone’s backs but Meryl’s turned, though, she does frown. Watching Tesla trail out after Nick like a lost duckling while Elendira walks at his side like an old friend just feels wrong. Is wrong.

“Mills,” Meryl stands to lean into Milly’s side. “It’s gonna be fine.”

She almost sounds like she believes it, too. Milly could burst into tears right now, but she also really can’t. Not yet. She doesn’t want to burden her friends with her emotions when theirs are already a mess.

“I know,” she sighs out without heat or conviction. Meryl will have to forgive her the bullshitting for now. “But, you know, it is just like those two to be inseparable even in a rough spot like this.”

“Hey,” Meryl huffs back. She sticks her sharp little elbow into Milly’s squishy side, “that could be us someday, you know. But I’d rather be old than have some crazy accident if I’m going to lose my memories.”

Milly flushes in spite of herself, twisting and leaning to kiss her girlfriend on top of her soft bob of black hair. It still smells like her shampoo from the shower this morning. “A little early to think of growing old together, isn’t it? Especially with your skill behind the wheel.”

“Please,” Meryl snorts. The sound of her dry amusement buoys Milly’s heavy heart. “I’ve been thinking about it. Besides, you do all the driving, and we don’t have anything to worry about, do we?”

Milly laughs, twisting the arm closest to Meryl to take her hand in hers. Soft hands that are better suited to pen, paper, and keyboard than the throttle of a bike or a wrench. And thank goodness for that, really, because Milly’s still not amazing at it and nobody else has the patience for the club’s administrative tasks. Save, perhaps, Nicholas, but he doesn’t like it; Milly doesn’t want to ask him to do it. She likes how Meryl writes and organizes everything.

Goodness, but she’s fretting too far ahead of things an awful lot. She squeezes Meryl’s hand, gets a squeeze back, and makes herself walk forward into this now-uncertain future for her friends and the club they helped her build from nothing.

When they reach the larger group outside and around the corner, Milly finds herself smiling a little easier. Tesla seems more at-ease, as well. It would seem she hasn’t forgotten her brothers, what with how fond she looks, watching Nai grill Elendira about the tomboy he’s pulled out for the test drive, and how she needs to be gentle with every part of it. Luckily, it doesn’t seem like Milly and Meryl will need to step in to smooth any ruffled feathers, seeing the way Elendira is nodding along with a serious set to her jaw and shoulders, listening intently.

There’s a side-road that loops around the outer perimeter of campus, and as Nick stubbornly gives Elendira the run-down of counterbalancing in the sidecar, even though she’s just said something about getting the gist from watching him and Tesla on it the day before, Milly pulls out the stopwatch she remembered to grab on her way out of the clubhouse. Meryl has the little checkered flag they like to use for spur-of-the-moment races and test-drives like this.

“Good luck you two!” Tesla calls out, stepping up beside Milly with a distance between them that is far too polite for friends of three years. Milly chokes down the sting of it. It’s not about her. “Drive safely!”

Nick’s head snaps up and over to her, his eyes crinkling for a just a moment as he gives Tesla a thumbs-up before his coal-colored pupils flash as they cut to Elendira beside him. Her helmet is on like his, but her visor is already down. The ends of her hair peek out from under the helmet and curl up and around the edges. It’s kind of cute, if you ask Milly.

With a nod from Elendira, Nick flips his visor down, settles naturally into the crouch required for a bike so small and low to the ground, and gives one more thumbs-up before he revs the engine a little.

“Show-off!” Meryl jeers. It makes it all almost feel normal. Almost.

Milly counts them down, Meryl’s hand raised to drop for the go-ahead, and the duo speeds off at the exact time Milly clicks the switch on her stopwatch to start it.

When her head turns to follow the movement of the bike, Tesla’s stood still, watching after them, too. But by the look on her face, she seems far away from the scene of her forgotten boyfriend going down the road with another woman in his sidecar.

Nai grumbles from a short distance behind the three of them standing at the curb. Milly keeps an ear out for the shrill buzz of the tomboy’s powerful little motor, and trusts Meryl to grab her attention if she needs to pay attention to the drive again. She watches Nai step up to his sister’s side and bump their shoulders together. Careful in a way he only is with her.

It doesn’t shake her out of it. Milly just hopes that’s a sign that her mind is trying to remember something, and not the prelude to more forgetting.

Nicholas is a good driver. Safe. Elendira can tell he’s modulating his speed for her. She’ll readily admit he’s a respectable guy, making sure the stranger riding with him is secure on their first ride together. If this is the sort of man he is all the time, it’s no wonder Conrad would dash him from Tesla’s memories. Few can hope to contend with someone with who has a good, steady heart like this. Even a god who is remembered so fondly by the object of his affections.

What a shame that her goal is to shake him loose of her. Not that she particularly desires him, but rather that it is a necessary step towards her goal. It doesn’t hurt that he is objectively handsome on top of having a good head on his shoulders and a kind heart behind his ribs. The type of person she could, perhaps, learn to enjoy in these petty human ways.

Focus.

Elendira sighs aloud at Conrad. She had simply been wrapping her mind around her mission, thank you very much. But she also did’ nt come to this university to play house with a taken man in her mind. She came to remove the barriers the gods put between planets, between kindred hearts and minds. Between herself and – well, her motives are her own.

And as it is now, she simply loathes feeling limited. It’s the principal of the thing, at this point.

Here on Earth, she takes the opportunity a long stretch of straight roadway provides to tap Wolfwood on the back of his gloved hand. His helmeted profile comes into more direct view, and she flips her own reflective visor up and out of the way. She narrows her eyes at him, daring, ducking her head down and pointing at the wide turn ahead of them.

Faster, she urges him.

He nods, small and curt, and leans down lower to the hood of the bike. With a twist of his leather-gloved hand, he opens the throttle a bit more. Elendira endeavors to not feel offended that he’d been going slower than his comfortable turning speed on a straight-away. It’s meant as a kindness, and he doesn’t know she could handle ten times the Gs he could ever dream of.

On the bend, she leans in close to him. She’s careful about how much she touches him – she doesn’t want to get rejected when she’s trying to be subtle to start out, nor does she want them to crash. Though his untimely death would likely speed this process along.

Undue stress upon Tesla will not help us.

Forgive me for entertaining a shortcut.

The larger curve in the road ends in a hairpin turn in the opposite direction, and she has to more-or-less throw herself away from Nicholas to keep them from crashing. The trust he’s putting into her to react to an unfamiliar track at the drop of a hat is certainly something. Reckless, perhaps? He doesn’t seem nearly so weary, nor the type to be so run down by circumstance so quickly.

This is not a shortcut we can entertain. I will have need of him later.

Elendira grits her teeth against the sour taste of being bossed around about her own thoughts. Leaning into another sharp turn, she ever-so-slightly presses the softness of her chest into Wolfwood’s shoulder. She can feel his blood coursing with the rush of adrenaline beneath his fragile skin, and she’s not surprised to know that this must be his drug of choice, nicotine aside.

Elendira cannot blame him. She is familiar with the joy of going too-fast through one’s own world, basking in the feeling of flight; however approximate a tiny motorbike set milometers above the ground may be for it. This, too, is a freedom. Intoxicating. She understands the appeal.

The next turn brings them around the blind corner of a retaining wall, and the crowd of club members they’d left behind less than five minutes ago comes into view. They whip past them, but even Elendira, leaning to take the next turn for what she figures must be a second lap, can see Tesla stumble into the road, watching after them.

With a jerk of his entire body that spurns Elendira to follow, Nicholas brings the bike to a drift that will certainly get him yelled at by the middle-child Saverem boy. Her quick reaction keeps them from spinning out, and they manage to skid to a harsh stop.

As soon as the e-break is thrown into place, Wolfwood is up and yanking his helmet off, marching a beeline to Tesla. Elendira follows because she has to, and because Nai is running at a dead sprint to the bike, and she doesn’t want to witness his meltdown over the damn thing.

“– in th’road fer?” Wolfwood’s accent is thick in his urgency.

“I’m sorry, I just thought – I-I – I thought –“ Tesla stammers.

Elendira’s chest twists for a moment with an emotion that isn’t hers. Because why would she care about this girl when she is nothing more than a tool to her? Conrad’s presence within her desires to comfort the goddess before them, and turns itself over atop her stomach in disgust when Nicholas takes firm, careful hold of Tesla’s shoulders that heave with her panicked breathing.

“Hey, s’awright, le’s get outta th’road though, yeah?”

Conrad can’t stand to watch him herd her out of the street, so Elendira turns back around and decides to stay on the mechanic’s good side and help Nai get the bike back to the garage. Only, the tiny woman – Meryl – is already there.

Starting to feel somewhat superfluous, she scans for Milly. She will not stand around uselessly. Spotting the large woman making her way back to the clubhouse, Elendira jogs to catch up.

“Your time was pretty good for a first-timer,” the club’s founder says by way of greeting, “but you’re not going to get by solely on being a natural. Come see the garage and help me get it open for when Knives comes through.”

Elendira frowns, tucking the helmet dangling from her hand under her arm more securely, “Knives?”

“Oh!” Milly chirps like the little bird she is most definitely not. “Sorry! That’s what we call Nai when he’s in a tizzy. Maybe wait a bit to call him that, though. It’s a friends-only kind of thing. I’m sure you two will get there in no time, though! Especially if you help him out here and there and treat the vehicles nicely.”

“I know my way around a wrench,” Elendira half-lies. Conrad can just feed her the knowledge of a god about these things. If he wants her to be stealthy, he will.

We need to speak first. Get clean and dressed down to get us privacy.

“He won’t want your sweat on the tools,” Milly points out, ever-so-helpfully.

“Showers?” Elendira asks.

Milly shows her the way over once they have the garage open. She talks the whole way.

“Like I was saying earlier,” Milly’s head of mousy brown hair has disappeared into a narrow closet, rummaging for a spare towel. “You’re a natural. I’m impressed! But it’ll take a lot of practice to get you rally-ready. Nick and Tesla are our stars in tandem racing, and raw talent simply isn’t going to beat out the bond they have on that bike. You’ll ride as an alternate until Tesla is better, since it’s better for our club’s reputation to show up and at least try, but don’t get too hard on yourself if you’re not matching other, more seasoned pairs like them.”

Elendira doesn’t think she’s trying to be patronizing. Milly strikes her as much too pragmatic to be so condescending. But her ego is already chafed from Conrad’s pushiness and Wolfwood’s laser-focus on Tesla.

“What, you need to be in love to be in sync?” her tone is bitter.

“Not at all,” Milly denies. “I’ve just seen – ah-ha!” She emerges from the closet with a clean, if a bit dusty, towel and a smile. “I’ve seen new riders and drivers compare themselves to more experienced teams and have it ruin their confidence before.”

Elendira takes the towel and raises her eyebrow at her, “and? I am not that fragile.”

“Not fragile,” Milly rebuffs, stern but still kind. It’s no wonder she is still the leader of this club. Her personable attitude that doesn’t allow for being walked all over serves her quite well. Elendira takes this moment to admire it. “Too ambitious. Too eager. They get too deep in this grindset they make up in order to catch up, and they end up making mistakes.”

“You sound like you’ve been there,” Elendira points out. A friendly show of vulnerability like blood in the water, and she: a shark.

“You’ve seen Razlo’s face healed up,” Milly says easily. Like it’s a fact that she’s come to terms with. If she wasn’t so clearly a soft heart, Elendira would think she was unaffected. But the woman speaking to her is well-adjusted, not cold or callous. “I’m the reason nobody rides without a proper helmet, even if it needs to be custom, now. I don’t care if it comes out of my pocket.”

Elendira sees the weight of leadership on broad, freckled shoulders now. Lessons about “it won’t happen to me” mentalities etched into her riding partner’s body and her (indeed soft, but stable) heart.

“The shower’s through that door!” Abruptly, the opening in Milly’s affable armor is shut up tight again.

Elendira goes to take her shower. She wants to wash away that too-personal moment and scrub away the squishy feeling in her gut.

I will find a different host, Elendira, and deny you the fruits of your labor so far when I achieve our goals. Get it together.

The water, scalding hot, runs over every inch of Elendira’s skin. The lines in her narrow hips collect it in rivulets and send the streams down her thighs in pink-warm trails. She sets her hand on the tile in front of her and takes a deep breath.

Where do you get off questioning my devotion to this? I’m here, am I not?

Here in body, perhaps, but you are so easily distracted by pretty things like nice human men and unfortunate women.

I freed you for this. If anything, my distractions are selling my presence as more natural than you would have me do. If I am not friendly, they will suspect something is wrong. The middle brother already squints at me like he can see you past my disguise and my body. I am lending you credibility, you ungrateful –

A pulse of agonizing pain through her ribs cuts her short. She gasps in the steam that billows in the air, and must lean against the wall for support.

Are you quite finished with your whinging?

Elendira resists the urge to punch the wall. Mostly because she is strong enough to shatter the tile, and that would be more suspicious than being aloof. She growls through gritted teeth at the parasite she let into her skin.

“Fine!” she snaps. It echos off the tile dangerously. She hopes nobody’s heard her; she isn’t exactly confident in how thick the university may or may not have made the walls of this little clubhouse.

Good girl. Continue your false friendships, if you’re so committed. They will not matter soon, anyhow. I was attempting to save you some grief.

Oh, she hates him.

Tesla is quite certain, even with the gaping, Nicholas-shaped hole in her memories, that she has never felt unsafe with him at the wheel before. Much less in the sidecar attached to Angelina. His beloved bike, which shines and rumbles gleefully with his attentiveness to her needs . Among the storm of everything else in this life she has woken up in, it’s both reassuring to have this particular experience feel totally alien to her, and equally terrifying that it is happening now.

She really should have insisted she ferry them home. Her magic may be limited, what with her being quarantined from even Yggdrasil's most basic systems, but she could have easily pulled the two of them and Nicholas’ prized motorcycle through one of the large windows in the lobby of the science department’s building. But he had wanted to r ide, and she’s not in the business of denying people what will make them happy.

She should have played it safe.

He is tense, and the rapid fluctuations in the colors of his aura – flickering dim and bright, sporadic flashes of emotion that aren’t conducive to safe driving. Tesla keeps him in her periphery even as she remains vigilant of their surroundings. If he is distracted because of her circumstances, she should make up the difference, shouldn’t she?

Except… That feels as wrong as Nicholas driving recklessly does. Tesla frowns into the dark of the night, the lights of the city down in the valley twinkling in the middle distance prettily. But it had been prettier, before, she’s sure. With the comfortable wear on her perception of warm, fond familiarity. Like the sweeping panoramas of Heaven’s landscapes. Or like the first few measures of a lullaby she used to sing to sad, stubbornly undying trees –

The turn ahead is too sharp for the speed they’re going, like the flash of pain through her head. Nicholas isn’t turning yet, the rail won’t stop them from going over the cliff. Her supernatural calculations confirm that if she doesn’t do something, her memories won’t be nearly the most broken or lost things they’ll have to worry about.

With a clap of her hands and a pop of some important line or another within Angelina disconnecting (she should be able to discern this, she’s sure, but the knowledge is locked away with all of the different ways Nicholas smiles) , Tesla prays to the winds whipping through their clothes for safety. Her wish, desperate and selfish in h er currently misplaced way, is answered.

Catching a gust that slows the motorcycle enough to not punch straight through the steel rail, Tesla spreads her wings. They pull at her skin painfully, as if they’ve been hooked into place with barbs, but ultimately do what she needs them to. With a swoop of her arms and a burst of feathers, she grabs Nicholas off the seat of his bike, and gently places him on his feet on the tarmac in time with the crunch of Angelina’s frame against the barrier between all of them and hundreds of feet of tumbling down, down, down.

“Wha – Tess?” Nicholas’s voice is thick and muzzy as the spectacle of her power fades out of human perception once more. As if he’s waking up from a deep sleep. “Baby – I mean – ugh – yer shakin’.”

Tesla blinks and looks down at her hands, which are indeed trembling. Looking back up at Nicholas puts his guilt and shame for the incident on full display. It matches her own, for the way things have been since she forgot him. For crashing his beloved bike just now – even if it was to keep him from mortal injury.

They stare at one another, speechless for one another. Neither of them seem to be able to break out of this mutual stupor to comfort the other.

Nicholas takes a deep breath, first to turn away, first to move towards Angelina. Tesla follows, because what else is there to do? Angelina won’t start, not that she has the heart to tell him that. Not even to save him the trouble of trying. The engine fails to turn over when he cranks the ignition, Tesla’s magic not only popping that line, but shorting the electrical systems. Human technology has always struggled to shake hands with divine and demonic magics alike.

Nicholas pulls Angelina out of the dent she made in the rail by the cliff, turns her to the road, towards a home Tesla cannot remember, and starts pushing.

Tesla can’t handle seeing him so blue. In a fit of cowardice, s he blinks away the layers of extrasensory information, jogs to catch up with him, and makes herself useful.

“We can fix this, right?” Tesla isn’t only asking about Angelina.

Nicholas releases the breath he’d held over the transmission.

“Yeah. We’ve got it.”

The tightness of panic loosens in Tesla’s chest. He hadn’t been referring to Angelina alone, either.

If there’s one thing she’s willing to blindly cling to, it is the vague, detached certainty that if Nicholas thinks they can do it, then they absolutely can.

Domina frowns at the display in front of her. She’s been out of the central console for hours, but still she has been dogging at the heels of any lead she can think of. A few have borne fruit, but one stands out in particular. Chronica leans over her left shoulder, watching what she’s been monitoring for about half the time she’s been in this remote access terminal. One hand is set on the back of the pod-shaped chair Domina has spent far too long in, the other over her own head on the parallel, ivory-and-gold arch of the overhang above their heads.

“It’s mimicking Tesla’s frequencies,” Domina’s mentor comes to the same conclusion she had.

Domina huffs out a breath, disappointed that her less-experienced conclusions are correct when she had wanted so badly for her hunch to be wrong. Regardless of her feelings, she must work with the situation and not stubbornly cling to what she wishes it was. She asks, “to what end?”

Chronica’s eyes flick to hers, then back to the display. Her lips purse around the secrets she cannot impart upon her, “we both know you have a good idea, even if you don’t have the context or the motive. I need you confident, my dear.”

Domina’s jaw sets. She’s right, they can’t afford insecurities right now. She juts her chin out and plucks at the console strings, navigating to where they had managed to head off the virus’ progress. “Our culprit was bee-lining for highly classified information and deep-security processes within even our most foundational framework. He was looking for something very specific with credentials only allowed to first class deities, as well as those accessible by the Almighty’s closest kin and council. Even as he ran malicious processes to cripple our system far enough upstream that it could have collapsed everything into chaos.”

“Very good,” Chronica’s praise, even at a time like this, is a precious thing. Domina turns her chair as Chronica straightens up and steps back. “That narrows it down more than you know.”

Domina knows she can’t ask, so she clamps down on her curiosity and puts her bolstered energy into propping her closest friend up under the weight of what the Almighty showed her. “I presume you know where these things overlap, then.”

Even as tired as they are, this makes Chronica smile, slow and sly.

“That I do.”

Nick wakes up to an empty futon beside him. It’s gone cold when he rolls over and places his hand on the mattress. He doesn’t freak out, not like he did last night on the fucking switchbacks like a moron. Vash and Knives somehow didn’t wake him up losing their minds, and the house smells way too good and way too savory for it to be their doing. Tesla must have gotten up and stress cooked.

It almost feels normal. Almost.

But Tesla stopped making what counts as a feast for every meal a long time ago, so while this is familiar, it’s still… It’s not what they’d settled into. Hell, if this was before, it’s still stress-cooking. Something else would need to be terribly wrong to bring this on.

But maybe they all need this. The thought hits him when he shuffles out of bed, their room, and down the hall and he catches the twins huddled by the dining room door. They’re g awking at their sister as she hums her usual tune and sets the table with far too much food for one human man. Nai would never admit it, but both he and Vash find a lot of comfort in a good meal.

“G’mornin’,” Nick pastes a smile on, even though he’s still so tired and off-kilter. “What’s the occasion?”

“Oh!” Tesla turns and seems to even notice her nosy brothers for the first time. Her shoulders come up to her ears, her cheeks turning pink. She grips the well-used serving tray she’s using in front of her. Shy. “Well, I just thought… It’s been really hard on all of us lately, and that a nice, big, nutritious breakfast would be good to have. Don’t you think?”

Now, Nico’s the first to give Nai a hard time about being an unsociable little shit. But only when the social minutiae don’t involve his sister (where Vash is the last, because he can get away with poking his twin’s buttons past his tolerance threshold with all his limbs intact). This means, of course, that Nai is the first to move, the first to take this reprise of a years-gone status-quo in stride and take a seat at the table.

“Thoughtful as ever, dear sister, thank you.” Eyes the color of hoarfrost and twice as cold cut over his shoulder to glare back at Vash and Wolfwood, still stood uselessly in the doorway. “We’d be delighted to all have a nourishing meal together, wouldn’t we?”

As if some spell’s been broken (and wouldn’t that be nice?) Vash follows quickly, babbling out graceless agreements. Nick’s best friend is, of-fuckin’-course, a quick draw with more than just guns. He’s always got something ready, like some insufferable wise-crack, or in this case following his barely-older brother through some crazy family dynamic TETRIS speedrun. Three pairs of bright eyes stare at Nicholas, ranging through the full spectrum from anxious to expectant; sea glass teal to ice blue. He finally shakes off his sense of displacement in time since stumbling on their fucked up little tableau from a moment ago, and finds his smile comes easier.

“Yeah, Tess, thanks a bunch,” he elbows Vash in the ribs as he wedges himself in with all of them. And that, at least, feels really and honestly fucking normal. “Let’s hope the Stampede here leaves enough leftovers to have for lunch later.”

Tesla relaxes, her relief clear to him in a way that feels invasive in the face of her missing memories.

Nick looks away from her, just until the ache in his chest dulls, and he eats.