Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It is… strange, to say the least, not having Aventurine around.

Veritas Ratio has spent most of his life without some other non-familial figure in his vicinity. Despite that irrefutable fact, the moment Aventurine disappears from his life for any multitude of reasons, Veritas thinks it is more strange that he is not there. As if those years of no companionship were merely seconds. As if he had spent a lifetime with Aventurine.

Nevermind that it had only been only a handful of short years.

The cake cats still sleep at the feet of Aventurine’s side of the bed, like they usually do when he is on some sort of mission for the IPC. They wake up and, upon seeing a lack of blonde hair gently peeking out from underneath the covers, turn to Veritas for attention instead.

Veritas is already awake, as per usual. He does not sleep much anymore. Instead, the minutes tick by as he stares at the ceiling. Normally, during sleepless nights, Veritas can find comfort in Aventurine’s incessant sleep talking, or the way he abandons his side of the bed minutes after falling asleep to seek out his other (better) half, shuffling until he’s melting into Veritas’ side and leaving the other approximately eighty percent of the bed open.

Now, Veritas just finds himself counting the lines across the ceiling, hoping to find some semblance of tiredness to replace the weariness of that stupid, irrational loneliness that seeps past Veritas’ compact bones, through his medullary cavities, and into the marrow that lies inside.

Nonetheless, he gets up in the morning, feeds the cake cats and starts his routine for work.

It is… strange, to say the least, when Aventurine is not there. He is not there to hug Veritas from behind when he is shaving, rinsing his face, or partaking in some other task of his morning routine. He is not there to turn off the light while Veritas is in the shower, only to turn it back on a moment later with a chuckle while Veritas threatens to throw chalk at him.

He is not there for Veritas to help zip up that insufferable shirt he insists on wearing, even though he can do it himself. He is not there to reach up, standing on the tips of his toes, to pin Veritas’ ornament into his hair and hook his arms around his neck and spin them around and complain about work until Veritas kisses him gently and ushers them out the door.

Their paths to their respective works usually split ways the moment they reach the edge of the sidewalk. There are times, however, when Veritas is working at the IPC Headquarters and he veers to the right to join Aventurine and they walk together. Aventurine, on the other hand, never really joins Veritas as he makes his way to the university he teaches at. On his days off, he spends his time doing gods-knows-what until Veritas returns home to hug his husband, folding over to bury his face in his neck and melt into him the same way that Aventurine does to him. Without fail, he chuckles and asks Veritas if he had a rough day, to which Veritas would nod and lament about how this generation of students are more ignorant than the previous year’s.

On the days that he is up to it, Aventurine veers left and walks arm in arm with Veritas, leaning into him and conversing about whatever drama is going on at the IPC, laughing and somehow avoiding every misplaced stone and uneven edge that Veritas finds himself tripping over every so often. He sits in on Veritas’ lectures, answering emails on his laptop when he should be ignoring them, and staring lovingly at Veritas as he speaks, not at all absorbing the information. He answers the questions that no one else can, causing Veritas and the class to collectively roll their eyes (fondly), because everyone knows that he only knows the answers as Veritas writes and practices his lectures at home on the couch with Aventurine laying on him and reading and listening along.

(Their marriage was a public event, announced to the cosmos. It was extravagant and well-documented by the IPC, loud and well-populated by all of Aventurine’s co-workers and some of the people that Veritas tolerated from the Intelligentsia Guild. It was large and lavash and Veritas and Aventurine hated it. Aventurine smiled as he was supposed to and Veritas… did not put on his alabaster head for the whole event. They exchanged their vows and slipped on their rings and followed every miniscule thing that was expected of them, and the moment the afterparty started, the newlyweds scuttled off to a back room and slipped off their rings.

Veritas sat in silence with his alabaster head donned, Aventurine sitting in a chair across from him, ankles hooked and legs tangled. They sat that way for a little over an hour, the comfort of silence between them, until Veritas removed his bust and held out a hand for Aventurine to hold.

Soon, Veritas’ mothers would stumble inside the room, a wrapped gift in hand, gushing about how happy they are for the both of them. They handed the gift to Aventurine, and turned their attention to their son to tease him about anything and everything as the three of them gave Aventurine a little privacy. When he had cleared his throat and they turned around fully, he had set up some of the spare seats in the room to mock that of the grand hall they had just come from. There were two empty seats on the left side of the “hall”, to which Nora and Verena Ratio sat down quickly.

On the other side was a singular canvas painting of the family that Aventurine had lost, looking almost exactly in the way that he had remembered. With the help of Madam Herta’s Simulated Universe, Verena had painted a family photo for him. He propped it up on the singular chair on the right side, and said a quick prayer before joining Veritas at the makeshift altar.

It was there that Veritas and Kakavasha truly married, speaking altered versions of their vows, slipping back on their rings. It was there that Veritas truly let himself cry, something he had not done in years, to which Kakavasha laughed and, quite emotionally, kissed away his tears. Of course, that had set off both of Veritas’ mothers, and they all had to take a moment to wipe their tears and return to the staged event.)

A majority of their days go like the first situation, in which Veritas goes left and Aventurine goes right and they go about their respective days until they get home. Once the late party shuts the door behind him, they bicker about if they will have a home cooked meal or takeout, then about who will make it. It is never serious. It is part of their routine.

Which is why, when Veritas gets home today, he sits down and grades papers, and forgets to eat dinner. There is no telltale sound of a key turning in the lock, there is no loud argument with Topaz that carries through the door long before Aventurine actually reaches it. The only reason Veritas looks up from his work in the first place is because the cake cats start meowing for their dinners, and Veritas looks at the time. It is well past when he and Aventurine would usually eat, and so he sighs, feeds the small beasts, and uses their rarely-used Omni-Synthesizer for food rather than making it himself.

There is no one to eat with, so Veritas eats alone. He washes the singular dish and the utensils he ate with, and retreats into the bedroom to get ready for bed.

It is… strange, to say the least, going to bed without Aventurine. There is no goodnight kiss, no song sung to the cake cats that sleep by Aventurine's feet, no shuffling to Veritas’ side—just him, alone, laying in bed with an uncharacteristic longing creeping through every inch of his soul.

He is finally tired. Tired enough to sleep, he thinks briefly, but he tries not to let that boost of hope ruin the tiredness he so desperately asked for. And so the minutes tick by, that tiredness teeters on the line separating it from exhaustion, and Veritas stares up at the ceiling and counts the lines in the pattern until his eyelids start to close. And as his consciousness fades away into that of sleep, he irrationally, illogically, stupidly, ignorantly pushes down the voice in the back of his head that attempts to remind him that Aventurine is gone.

And he isn’t coming back.

Chapter Text

Veritas Ratio wakes up the following morning to the cake cats pressed up to his sides, as if chasing away the last remains of the bitter nightmare he had found himself in minutes prior. There is a phantom feeling of Aventurine underneath his fingertips, and his arm is extended into the space beside him where his husband would once lie.

The cake cats all look at him, and Veritas expects them to meow and start bothering him for food. Instead, they settle back down almost sadly. Animals are a lot more observant than one would believe, Veritas thinks, so perhaps they know too. Perhaps they have sensed the change in him, the change that comes with the acknowledgement of the situation he has found himself in: widowed and alone and grieving.

Perhaps they too, have acknowledged the loss of Aventurine in their lives.

Veritas’ theory is somewhat proven correct when he cracks open the cans of wet food to feed them and they do not leave the bed. Even when he clinks their designated spoon against the bowl, they just stay where they are, curled up together where Aventurine used to snuggle them for an extra five minutes on rough mornings. Veritas gets ready for work anyway, and when he comes out of the bathroom, the cake cats have not moved and the food remains untouched.

Veritas does not have much of an appetite either.

He makes his way out the building, veering left as he usually does, and he mourns the loss of Aventurine hanging off his arm. The news stands around him all shout and scream and announce IPC STONEHEART DEAD while Veritas, his lawfully wedded widowed husband, walks down the street past them and trips over the sidewalk cracks that Aventurine never even stepped on. He actually falls this time, scratching his hands as he catches himself, alabaster bust cracking at the chin as it clips the ground. And his heart flutters and he shakes in his arms, knees, everywhere as he picks himself up off the ground and he ignores the blood on his hands as he clenches them.

Because he’s never fallen before. Not while Aventurine was still alive to catch him falling—not while Aventurine was still alive to catch him falling in love—because every time that Veritas would trip Aventurine would steady him with a laugh and say something about paying people to fix the sidewalks but Veritas would tell him not to bother because how could he explain that part of the adrenaline from the fall was not the weightlessness or sinking stomach but the anticipation of Aventurine holding him?

Still. He picks himself up and brushes himself off and goes to teach, as he is supposed to. There is no room for a margin of error. He pushes back the irrational annoyance at his bloody hands and cracked bust, the seething vexation that threatens to swallow him whole as he curses Aventurine’s absence, and although his hands are shaking and his heart feels like it is weak and stuttering and that makes him almost breathless, he makes it to work.

Veritas, after a quick stop to wash and bandage his hands, finally makes it to his classroom with five minutes to spare, which means by his standards, he is ten minutes late. The moment he walks into the classroom, the class goes dead silent as he walks to his desk, before they start whispering to one another as if Veritas cannot hear them. He drops his mask to glare and silence them before pulling up his lecture notes (a rarity, reserved for when he doesn’t get a chance to practice his lectures) and turning to the board to begin.

Halfway through the lecture, Veritas asks the class the first question with the easiest answer possible. Yet, as he expected, not a soul answers. Not. One. Soul. Usually by now, Aventurine would take pity on the class and spare them Veritas’ rage, but instead, the silence is drawn out and awkward. A couple of particularly brave students look toward where Aventurine normally sat.

“Really? Nobody?” Veritas’ voice sounds like it did the first time he saw Aventurine’s lifeless body a handful of days ago. His voice cracks. “Nobody can answer such a simple question?”

No one speaks up. Not a single person utters the answer he’s looking for.

“Unbelievable. You are all graduate students. Do none of you know what an eigenvector is?!” He spits, his hands shaking and his heart fluttering and he feels cold, so cold, deathly cold and it travels from his heart to his hands and to his head, and he once again finds himself struggling to breathe. “Have I let you all be so dependent on him? So that you crumble the moment he’s not there?!” He slams his hands on the desk, and his shout echoes through the still, silent classroom.

That’s what it is. Anger, plain and simple, rising up within him. Embarrassingly, tears well up in his eyes, but he can’t find it in himself to care, because now all of his students are looking at him in fear, in horror, in shame, but the resounding look he gets is that of pity . Because Aventurine isn’t there to call out the answer. Because their marriage is a public fucking event, announced to the cosmos by the mother fucking IPC, loud and well-populated so everyone knows just exactly why Veritas is truly upset.

Because Veritas is angry, no, he’s pissed because Aventurine isn’t fucking there to answer the question that no one else has an answer to, because everyone is looking at him because they know what happened because the news stands were announcing it loud and proud that the IPC Stoneheart Aventurine has died and he’s never coming back, because Aventurine isn’t there to answer the question because he had to go out and fucking die . He’s not there to sing the cake cats to sleep, not to catch his husband when he falls, not to answer the single FUCKING question

Veritas is crying. Tears drip down his face and they do not stop, and the anger burns out as quickly as it came. He doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there, lost in his thoughts and anger. Worst of all, the class is whispering to each other, speaking low words like Aventurine and dead and married.

Worst of all, the pitying looks grow.

“Class dismissed,” he says hollowly, even though there’s forty-five minutes left in lecture. He lets go of the broken chalk in his fingers, crumbled from when he slammed it against the desk. Veritas closes his laptop and shoves it underneath his arm, stalking to the door.

“Doctor?”

“I said,” he snarls, opening the door, sunset eyes still red-rimmed and face tear streaked, “class is dismissed!” He slams the door behind him so hard it bounces, and passerbys stare at him with those damn pitying looks, so he dons his bust to shut out the world.

This would never have happened if Aventurine didn’t die. If he hadn’t been so stupid, so idiotic, so ignorant, so—so…

He just wanted him back. He wants him home so badly, to sing to the cake cats, to argue over dinner, to—to—

Veritas stops in his tracks. Abruptly, he turns around, practically stomping away from his office to where the more tenured officials can get transportation, interstellar or not, to other research facilities.

There is somewhere he needs to go.

Chapter Text

“How long have you been awake?”

“Not too long.” A lie.

Kakavasha knows him well. Too well. “C’mon. Be honest.”

“…A couple of hours.” Veritas had spent those hours taking in every little detail of his new husband. The wrinkles between his eyes as he furrowed his eyebrows while sleeping, the blemish on his chin usually hidden by makeup. The tattoo on his neck, disfigured by old scars and new bites, the silver band on his left ring finger, placed there the night before by the one staring. Silver, Kakavasha had said, would make it stand out against the other rings he wore on his hands. Nevermind that all of the rings he wears are on his right hand. There’s a matching gold one on Veritas’ left ring finger, and it matches the ornament normally in his hair. 

“What’s on your mind?” There is a pet name that slips out too, a Sigionian one that means “dearest”, and it causes Veritas’ face to warm up and for him to press his cold feet against Kakavasha’s warm legs. “Stop,” he giggles, “Why are your feet so cold?”

“Well, the thermoregulation—” is all Veritas can get out before his husband (he will never tire of saying that) kisses him, nipping at his bottom lip and causing them both to laugh.

Kakavasha looks up at him then, soft, blonde hair tousled from the pillows, striking eyes meeting that of Veritas’. “I love you.” He presses closer, tangling their legs together despite Veritas’ cold feet, tucking his head underneath Veritas’ chin.

“And I, you.”

“Why can’t you just say it normally?” Kakavasha faux complains, and Veritas can feel his silent laughter in the way his shoulders shake and his sides quiver in their embrace and how the air from his nose stutters against his chest.

Veritas rolls his eyes (fondly). “You are one of the least ignorant people I know.”

“Getting there.” A smile ghosting his collarbone.

Veritas pretends to think. “I smile when I think of you.”

“Almost…”

“I… I love you. So dearly.” It is different saying it now. It is different because they have rings on their fingers and their ceremony was only yesterday and they will spend this time together for the rest of their lives. Veritas will wake up every morning to Kakavasha’s face and get to say “I love you” whenever he wants, to press his cold feet against warm legs and to embrace him whenever he wants, protecting him from the horrors of his past on bad days and selfishly claiming him as his own on the good ones.

“That’s more like it.” When the first of Veritas’ tears reaches his head, Kakavasha moves back and looks up. “Are you crying?”

Instead of Veritas answering, he just tugs Kakavasha back in, causing him to laugh a little wetly. “Aww.” He tuts, squeezing Veritas a little tighter.

The warm sunlight flits in through the crack in the curtains on the morning of the day after their marriage, and Veritas buries his face into Kakavasha’s hair to avoid it.

“Are you smelling me?”

“No.” A lie.

Kakavasha knows him well. Too well. “C’mon. Be honest.”

“I love you,” Veritas says instead, and Kakavasha hums sleepily.

“I love you too.” 

“No,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

His sharp tone does not faze her. “I said no .” Ruan Mei is never truly fazed by anything. “What I did for Tingyun I cannot replicate for you.”

“You’ve never been one for morals,” Veritas spits.

“It is simply because I don’t want to. No other reason.” She sidesteps him and enters the lab that Madam Herta had provided for her upon her Space Station. “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

“Aren’t you so obsessed with life and how it works?” Veritas follows her in, and for a brief moment, he wonders if he looks like a madman. A raving lunatic. “Can’t you at least consider it?”

“My answer won’t change, Dr. Ratio.” She sees the way his gaze travels to the other side of her lab, full of beakers and chemicals and other things that the public should not have knowledge of. “And no, you may not use any of my things.”

A brief flicker of the anger that dwelled within him from earlier in the day, uncontrollable and grand, rises up within him once again. He digs his nails into his palms, and revels in the numbness that leaches out before the pain sets in. Takes a deep breath to ignore how his heart flutters. “Please, just—just… give me something.” He doesn’t quite beg , but it’s a near thing.

Even though her face is turned away from him, the look on it clearly shows that she thinks he’s begging. “No need to grovel at my shoes. I’m sure that Asta would provide you with a lab if you asked.” She finds the thing she is looking for and turns to gaze at him. “I wish you luck in your endeavors. It may be close to impossible to complete before the funeral.”

And how dare she.

“Please,” he scoffs, “I don’t even know why I’m surprised. You only do things for your own egomania.”

She shakes her head. “Dr. Ratio, mind your words. You’re grieving.”

“And you’re being selfish. You’ve created life before—what’s stopping you now?”

“Then wouldn’t you be indulging in this selfishness as well? Recreating your dead spouse?”

Veritas growls. “You do not have the right to judge me, especially after what you have done. Might I remind you of the little swarm beast you created? We’re lucky that it died so quickly.”

“A small mistake. As if you’ve never made one.”

“A small mistake?” Veritas laughs, bitter and humorlessly. “How do you expect to reach Aeonhood with all the mistakes you’ve made?” 

The only change in her demeanor is a brief souring of her expression.

“Fine.” Her words are unwavering, but she grabs a piece of paper nearby and scribbles something down on it before sliding it across the table to Veritas. She turns to leave. “I’ll leave you with this.” The click of her heels is loud in the mostly silent room. “A little hint to get you started. I’ll consider this another small mistake of mine.” Right before she leaves, she gazes upon him one last time. “Maybe this way, you can finally earn Nous’ gaze.”

The urge to throw away the paper grows for a moment before Veritas locks it away and picks it up.

Start with the eyes.

It takes a day or so, but Veritas gets access to an unused lab in the Base Zone. (Asta looks worried when she updates his key card. He reassures her that everything is fine.)

The lab is equipped with only half the chemicals he needs. He may have access to DNA ligase, but the restriction endonuclease he needs to dissect Aventurine’s DNA he’ll have to synthesize himself.

He stops home briefly to grab Aventurine’s hairbrush. He tries his best to pick out the roots from the strands, the usable from the useless, and separates them into two piles where he can dispose of the strands as he needs to. The process is not perfect by all means, and Veritas finds himself studying many under a microscope to determine if he can properly extract DNA from it. Currently, it is his most reliable form for DNA for Aventurine. (And if he so needs, he knows where they are keeping his husband’s body.) 

The next step is designing a container. A chamber that will hold the being until he (the second Aventurine, that is) is ready. Veritas synthesizes an embryonic fluid to suspend the creation in, and he’s not quite sure why it turns out the way that it does. It is a viscous liquid, almost fluorescent green in color, and Veritas briefly feels like an imitation of a scientist in a low-budget horror movie, especially the ones that Aventurine loved to watch. Still, his research and tests say that it will do its job just fine, so he leaves it as it is. The chamber, six foot seven inches in height, has clear glass and is cylindrical in shape. There are holes in the bottom to fill the chamber with liquid, and at the top there are tubes for Veritas to insert anything that he will need to recreate his husband. There’s a screen to tell him the progress. He brings a heart monitor from the medical wing, and wires it to the machine.

There is no stop button. Either it will work, or it will not.

By the time he finishes all these preparations, almost two weeks have passed. Not that Veritas realized that. Mostly because he would work and work until he found himself passed out from exhaustion wherever he sat last. As time goes on, however, he finds it increasingly easier to stay awake for longer periods of time. It is why he finds himself ready for the first trial at approximately three o’ clock in the morning.

(He needs to get this right. He does not know when the IPC will finish their investigation as to what exactly killed the Stoneheart. He does not know when they will hold the funeral. He does know that there will be a closed casket.)

The first time he starts the test, the creation’s eyes are brown. The test fails shortly afterwards, and Veritas is unsurprised but glad. It would have been a miracle if it had worked on its first try. It would have been a calamity if it made him improperly. He sees why Ruan Mei advised him to start with the eyes. There’s no telling what he would have done if he had woken up his beloved and discovered brown eyes.

He must have hit a recessive gene. Avgin eyes were the commonplace of their species, which means that they are most likely a dominant trait. Or, just as likely, the only eye color they can have. Which means that Veritas did something quite incorrectly.

The second and third tests he performs don’t even go further than a couple of threads of nerves. 

The fourth test gets significantly farther than the previous attempts. Everything works exactly as it should. The eyes develop properly, followed by the nervous system—

TEST FAILED .

Veritas shouts, he swears, and he almost, almost sweeps all the papers and beakers and chemicals off of the table behind him. His hands shake, from exhaustion or anger he cannot tell, and he throws himself into his chair.

Is it all worth it? Is anything worth it?

He will never be able to bring Aventurine back. He doesn’t know why he’s even trying. It’s not worth it. He slumps over, leaning his aching head against the cool table.

“What’s the matter?”

Veritas frowns. “Excuse me?”

“You’re moping.” Aventurine gestures at Veritas’ food with his own fork. “You haven’t even touched your lunch. So what’s the matter?”

Veritas pokes at the fish with his utensil. “Just a problem with work.”

“May I see?” When Veritas looks at him incredulously, Aventurine scoffs. “Please. I know I’m not in the Genius Society, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help in some way.”

“I’m not either. In the Genius Society.” Veritas blurts, idiotically. Why’d he even say that?

Aventurine’s eyebrows raise. “Really? Well, they’re missing out.” Veritas ignores the flutter in his chest and focuses on the insecurity that oozes out of Aventurine. Avoidant eyes, picking at his food, the slight blush on his cheeks. “Anyway, you can tell me. I can try my best to help.” He holds out a hand.

“Why? We’ve only known each other for a bit.”

Aventurine smiles. “Well, we’re having lunch now aren’t we? I’d say we know each other well enough.”

“I… I suppose.”

“That’s the spirit. Now, give it to me.” Aventurine wiggles his fingers.

Ah, what the hell. Veritas rustles through his papers in his bag, before grabbing his notepad of scratch work. “It’s this derivation.” He flips to the correct page and hands it over. “There must be an error in my work.”

Aventurine’s eyes widens, and Veritas barely holds back a scoff. Well, he thought, Kudos to him for trying. Veritas sticks a hand back out to grab the notepad, but Aventurine leans away from it. “Give me a moment to look at this.”

“Really? You probably haven’t even seen half of these theorems.”

“Well, yes.” Aventurine tilts his head, studying the paper. “But need I remind you of our first meeting? I’m generally pretty lucky. I think I can figure it out.”

Like he could ever forget it, with that idiotic stunt with the gun at that event. Veritas narrows his eyes. That wasn’t luck—it was pure roulette, pure chance. Plus, it was near impossible that simply “luck” would help in this case. Veritas stabs his fish with a little more force than necessary.

Aventurine squints at the page. “Your handwriting is shit.” He mumbles.

Veritas furrows his eyebrows. “What?” No it isn’t. 

“Nothing. Ah, here we go.” Pretending he didn’t just insult the man, Aventurine grabs something from his pocket—a red pen—and scribbles something on the page before handing it back over. “You wrote the wrong letter here. Must’ve messed up your further calculations.”

Veritas snatches it back, letting his fork clatter on the plate and studying the new marking on his math. It was… right. “How did you do that?”

“Luck.” Aventurine smirks, placing the pen on the table.

“Bullshit—”

“—I’m right, aren’t I?” Aventurine says, laughing at the uncharacteristic swear.

“I had all of my colleagues look over this. None of them caught it.”

He smiles. “Well, your ‘u’ and ‘v’ look similar. They probably didn’t think anything of it. Told you, I’m just lucky.”

“Damned gambler… I don’t believe in your ‘luck’. If it does exist, I bet it’ll run out someday.”

Aventurine hums. “Well, my next job is bringing me to Penacony. I’ll let you know just how lucky I can be.”

Penacony? Interesting. “Hmm. I look forward to proving you wrong. I won't quit until I do.”

Golden, honeyed laughter. “By all means. Go ahead.” Aventurine rests an elbow on the table, leaning forward while nudging Veritas’ foot with his own. “I don’t expect the great Veritas Ratio to ever quit.”

The pen rolls off of the table,

and Veritas jolts awake, hand spasming as he tries catching the pen as he did before. He sits up fully, rubbing at his eyes. When did he fall asleep? Checking his phone tells him it’s four in the morning—eighteen hours since the last trial.

I don’t expect the great Veritas Ratio to ever quit.

Veritas looks at the chamber, the screen still saying TEST FAILED . He has to succeed. His husband is waiting for him—for him to succeed. He is there on the edge of what is known and what isn’t, dormant and just out of reach.

Well, he’ll cross that line, reach into the unknown. After all, Veritas Ratio is not one to quit.

At some point between the fifteenth and twentieth tests, Ratio runs into a tea party. It was not one that he had ever been invited to (not that he minded), but one that he had stumbled upon in his snooping for more chemicals. It is Screwllum, Ruan Mei, and a Herta clone sitting at a round table, although he doubts that it is truly just a clone when she looks at him with a sharper gaze than he is used to.

Ruan Mei immediately brings her gaze back to her tea. Screwllum, always polite when deserved, greets him with idle pleasantries.

Herta, or rather The Herta, he supposes, fixes him with a stare of dull curiosity. “So,” she speaks, voice that of an older woman, “did you figure out how to elude death?”

Something about the way she says it, nonchalant but prying and doubtful, causes his heart to shutter and his hands to shake. He remembers to school his expression at the last moment, but by the way The Herta’s lips twitch upward for a second, he knows he failed.

Still. “It’s not death,” he says softly, because any louder and he'll shout, “but rather dormancy.”

The Herta’s eyebrows raise slightly and she tilts her head. Whatever she was expecting him to say, it was not that. She nods once, turns away, and that is that.

He briskly leaves (read: flees with his metaphorical tail between his legs) and waits a good couple of hours before even thinking of returning to that room.

The thirty-fifth test goes a lot further, further than he’d ever gotten before. The cardiovascular system develops first—something that should have happened prior, something that Ratio fucked up prior—followed by the muscular and skeletal system. It’s right around when Aventurine’s femur starts to develop when things go awry, and TEST FAILED blares across the screen as what was made dissolves to be reused, refiltered.

Ratio slams a hand on the table, turning away. His phone buzzes, for the first time in… a long time. Well, it’s the first one he’s noticed in a while. He briefly wonders if it’s Aventurine. Then, he promptly remembers the mess of cartilage and sinew currently draining from the chamber and determines that it cannot be him.

Still. He picks up his phone and looks at the notification name.

Interastral Peac…

It’s… It’s from the IPC. Is it about the investigation? His phone almost clatters to the table with how horribly his hands shake, and he clicks on it to see it.

Interastral Peace Appliances — The star of the store is back for a limited time! With the 10-credit festival coupon, save money on hot sales of 500 limited edition portable family-unit mini-sized nano-grinding face cleansers! For more information, please visit the official Interastral Peace Appliances website!

“FUCK!” Ratio drops the phone and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes until his pain receptors protest. The spam message, despite being one that he has gotten in the past, makes his hands shake and his heart stutter and he wants to throw his phone and stomp on it until the glass shifts when he picks it up and the words are unintelligible from the cracks that crawl across the screen.

“Never use the IPC makeup by the way.” Aventurine poked and prodded at his face. “It’s shit.”

Veritas raised an eyebrow. “Not your style?”

“Gives you acne. I volunteered to test it and now look at me.” He turned away from the mirror to point at his cheek.

Veritas couldn’t see it from where he was sitting. “Come here.”

“Ugh.” Aventurine shuffled over, dragging his feet, before squatting down to point at his cheek once again. “See?”

It’s… small. Barely noticeable. “I do,” Veritas said, and Aventurine shoved him.

“No you don’t! You’re just saying that.” He pouted, and Veritas could do nothing but lean in to soothe his oh-so-harsh words.

“Sorry,” Veritas whispered as he leaned back.

But when Kakavasha smiled up at him, Veritas could only think about how he wasn’t really sorry at all if it meant that he could have moments like those forever.

Ratio doesn’t know when his arms fell away from his face, hanging numb by his sides, and when tears replaced them instead. He doesn’t know how long he was lost in that memory, how long he’s been incognizant. “ Fuck. ”

So Ratio looks through his plethora of messages (mostly well wishes from colleagues, and a couple dozen of worried ones from his parents), and silences his phone except for any message from the IPC. 

When it inevitably dies, hours later, Ratio cannot bring himself to plug it in. He just simply… leaves it.

On the morning of the eighty-fourth test, an indeterminate amount of time later, Ratio hears a knock at the laboratory door and promptly ignores it. The blinds are closed, blocking him from the outside world. Whoever is there should take the hint that he does not want to be talked to. When that knock continues, grating on his already shot nerves, vitriol leaps up his throat and lays on his tongue, waiting. Multitudes of scathing words rush through his mind, and when he reaches the door—

“What. Is. It?!”

And March 7th shrinks back, curling into herself. “O-Oh! Sorry..” She slinks behind Dan Heng and the Trailblazer, and both glare at him with differing levels of anger.

Ah. The Astral Express children. Shame curls through his gut at the undeserved wrath he unleashed upon them. “No, I should apologize.” His voice is raspy from how little he’s used it in the past… time. “I… thought you were someone else. You don’t deserve my ire.” Not right now at least.

His lame excuse causes them to exchange glances, but luckily they don’t press any further. “Whatcha working on?” March 7th attempts to look past him, but Ratio quickly steps into the hallway and closes the door behind him.

“Just… something to hopefully get into the Genius Society.” He says the first thing that comes to mind. “I think this one could really make me number eighty-five.”

“Are… are you feeling okay?” March frowns. “I know it’s been hard…”

Ratio’s right hand clenches around the doorknob behind him, and he shoves his left into his hair. His appearance is… messy, for lack of a better word. From the reflection he catches from the lab windows across the hall, it’s clear he hasn’t been out in a while. He wonders if he looks like a madman. A raving lunatic.

“I am… managing,” he says tiredly. He thinks of the button he has to press, the one to start the trial, ready and waiting for him. “How have you all been?”

His stilted words do nothing to ease the worry from their faces, that he can tell.

“We’ve been assisting the IPC in their investigation. We tried contacting you.” Dan Heng’s words are soft. “They found out what did it.”

Just like that, Dr. Ratio’s world comes crashing down around him. “I…” he swallows. His legs shake and his hands are clammy. Or sweaty. He can’t tell. “What did…?”

“They neutralized it.”

“Yeah, we weren’t given many details.” March wrings her hands. “Sorry.”

He’s going to be sick. “That’s… thank you. I… I should go.” He turns to leave, to reenter his lab,

“We’ll see you at the funeral, Dr. Ratio.” March 7th says softly.

The funeral? “Excuse me?”

“Yeah, next week?” She still speaks quietly, as if he’s going to break. He thinks he should be angry about it, but it’s nothing compared to the hollowness clawing at his heart. “On Tuesday?”

“I…” Dr. Ratio fumbles for his phone before promptly remembering it died a long time ago. He never plugged it in. “What day is it today?”

Dan Heng shows him the time and date on his phone. “Thursday. About half past ten.”

How long has it been? How does he have so little time left?

“I… Please excuse me.” Dr. Ratio bolts into the lab and shuts them out, lightning quick. He runs over to the button and slams for it to start.

TEST FAILED.

The next handful of days pass, and Dr. Ratio has no recollection of them. All he knows is that it is Tuesday, sometime around seven in the morning, and some CCACCAGTGTGTATC (cont.) of Aventurine’s DNA sequence is burned into his eyes from that of the sequencer he unapologetically stole from Ruan Mei around the fifty-second trial.

He only has time for one last trial. Number eighty-five. He pressed the button and

It’s… working . The chamber fills with that practically fluorescent green embryonic fluid. The DNA synthesizes as it should, the machine creates life— creates his husband—

.

..

…

The heart monitor starts to beep.

Dr. Ratio laughs. He laughs until he cannot breathe, he laughs until tears spring to his eyes, he laughs he laughs and he laughs.

And then… he catches a reflection in the glass of the chamber. There is a man. Dr. Ratio looks behind him, but there is no one there. He turns and looks again, studying the man in the reflection. He has a crazed look in his eye, thin, so thin his cheekbones have started to jut out, and his violet hair is greasy and his sunset eyes are sunken deep into his face. The man looks so stupid, so… so mad, so ignorant—

He looks like Veritas.

It is Veritas.

Veritas staggers back from the chamber, slamming his spine into the metal table behind him, and he grasps at his own face, pressing his fingertips into the divots underneath his eyes, harsh gasps tearing themselves from his lungs.

What had he become?

His hands shake as he scrubs his face, and he puts more weight against the table as he stares at his creation. 

This—no, this wasn’t right . That wasn’t him—that that thing wasn’t Aventurine.

It could never be Kakavasha.

Veritas stumbles to the machine, pressing his fingers to the glass and watching in horror as the machine continues to create.

He had to shut it down.

And of course he had to be so stupid, so ignorant—no failsafe button in sight. No emergency stop. Except for one.

What would Aventurine think of him now?

The thought of the disappointment, gazing upon him from his late husband, radiating from where the creation’s distinct eyes had began to develop—

Veritas throws a fist at the glass. It cracks, and that’s when the warnings start blaring. Incomplete. The only way for it all to stop.

Because he didn’t want it to unless it was complete.

But Veritas is no longer the person he once was, ignorant and a Fool. Veritas is not Dr. Ratio right now, he is Veritas— he is a man, he is a husband, and he is human, and because he is human, he is alive and because he is alive he has emotions and because he has emotions he throws fist after fist, punch after punch, the chemicals draining quickly but not quickly enough as the glass shatters beneath his hands, cutting his fingers and palms and wherever it can reach, the viscous fluid inside oozing from the new hole and pouring onto the floor beneath his feet.

Veritas clutches his ruined hands to his chest, falling to his knees and letting the life-giving liquid soak into his pants, the loud, elongated beep of the flatline ringing in the silent room.

He does not know how long he kneels there, in the ruins of his cursed creation. A great weight has settled upon his shoulders, one that reminds him that it will not get better—that he will not get what he wants. Because even if he let it continue, let the process finish, he would be doing nothing but sullying Kakavasha’s name.

He feels it before he can comprehend it. The great weight is still on his shoulders, but the rest of his body is weightless. A burning sensation that rests on his hanging head,

and when he opens his eyes, he is no longer in the lab. 

and when he opens his eyes, he meets the gaze of Nous.

and Veritas laughs.

This is what it takes?

THEY look upon him expectantly.

Veritas has heard rumors. That upon meeting Nous, you can ask one question, and one question only.

Chapter Text

Veritas almost skips the funeral. Almost.

The funeral for the IPC Stoneheart Aventurine was a public event, announced to the cosmos. It was grand and well-documented by the IPC, quiet but well-populated by all of Aventurine’s co-workers and some of the people that Veritas tolerated from the Intelligentsia Guild.

Veritas does not exactly remember how he got there, but he thinks that Screwllum was the one that found him. He has blurry memories of being passed off to someone who passed him off to someone else but somehow, he got home in one piece. He found the suit left for him and then he looked in the mirror after dressing. He does not recognize the person that is there. Dark bags, eyes still red and puffy from his breakdown next to the chamber. Hair messy from the hundreds of times he must have ran his hands through them in frustration. Hands cut and bandaged from the shattering of the glass.

Mad scientist, they called Ruan Mei. He wondered if he’d get that title too.

Somebody brushed his hair for him. He thinks it was his Mom (Nora) because after however-many odd years he has been alive, his Mother (Verena) could not get his bangs styled in the way he liked. The gold ornament, his gold ornament, clipped in his hair and gave him some semblance of normalcy.

The next thing he remembers is being outside the building the IPC reserved for the funeral. That is when he stops, clarity rushing to the forefront of his mind, stomach churning, he can’t go in. he can’t

He is sitting in his seat. Front row, reserved for close family and friends. The bereaved. His mothers sit on either side of him, pressing gentle hands on his arms, but he feels none of it. Topaz sits behind him, and he only knows because she gives him a gentle squeeze on the shoulder and whispers her condolences, only pausing to momentarily adjust Numby by her feet.

There is a casket. It is closed. The IPC representative walks up to the stand, and she says something Veritas cannot hear, but he feels the burn of the gaze of the collective on the back of his neck, and he knows they expect him to say something.

Topaz stands up. She, Aventurine’s best friend, speaks. Veritas listens, but he does not hear. She tells of anecdotes about Aventurine from before Veritas—before their legs were tangled and their breathing was shared on cold mornings, before Aventurine became Kakavasha , before the Avgin man had stuck out a lazy hand, saying, “Nice to meet you.”

Stories that Veritas has never heard, not for any particular reason. Still. He sits and he listens and while the bereaved smile and laugh appropriately, Veritas thinks about how much he had yet to learn about his husband.

It is… strange, to say the least. He was so… naive. To believe that he’d have all the time in the world with him, to get to know him, to hear all those untold stories. Veritas knows—knew—a lot about his husband, from his favorite color to the way he always plated the meat before the vegetables, and from his dislike of onion to the way he put on his left glove first. His self-proclaimed favorite mint chocolate chip ice cream that would sit untouched in the freezer while Veritas’ strawberry kind would be devoured within seconds after he put down the grocery bags. The little things. The little, small, infinitesimal things that made him Aventurine. The things that made him Kakavasha.

Veritas knows his husband’s DNA sequence. It is etched in the crevices of his mind. He knows his preferences, the way he dislikes coffee, the gentle way he sips tea, the curve of his nose, the pink of his lips, bitten and raw, the way he snorts when he laughs—when he truly laughs—the way his feet are always cold but he refuses socks, the curve of the shell of his ears, his manicured nails, his DNA sequence

Veritas is standing at the lectern. He has just given a speech but he does not know what he said. There are tears pooling at his chin. He dabs them away. He isn’t the only one crying. Something he said must have moved people. He doesn’t know.

Apparently, someone had to walk him off the podium. The funeral ends shortly after. The only thing that Veritas had left in this foolish, stupid, ignorant world is six feet beneath his shoes, eleven feet beneath his heart. And Veritas finds himself in their apartment on the top floor. And the distance between them feels like miles.

Veritas laughed. He laughed until he cried. He laughed and he laughed and he laughed. “Oh, Nous. Is it all worth it? Is anything worth it?”

Nous said nothing, of course. THEY just gazed upon him.

And just like that, Veritas knew the answer.

“I must determine that for myself?”

THEY turn away, and Veritas finds himself back on that laboratory floor.

He does not know how long it has been. But he feels a new power at his fingertips, one that spreads rather than targets, and Veritas can no longer laugh. “What’s the point of it all?” He mutters. “Kakavasha… what am I supposed to do now?”

Screwllum finds him hours later.

Veritas does not know what he is supposed to do.

Three weeks pass quietly. Veritas has not gotten out of bed for anything longer than to relieve himself. Everyday, twice a day, clockwork, the front door opens and closes, and the cake cats leave his side and crowd the visitor. Cans of wet food are opened—two. Heels click on the hardwood floor. The synthesizer beeps. Cabinets open. Close. Open again. Running water from the sink. The squeak of the faucet.

There is a plate of food in front of him, on the bedside table. It’s been picked at. Veritas does not remember the taste, only the way it felt on his tongue and stuck in his teeth. The bedroom door, already cracked, widens further as Topaz pokes her head in before she makes her way in further. She replaces the barely-touched plate with a new one, and refills the water glass that Veritas had drained the night prior. He follows her with his eyes. He used to stare blankly at the wall, barely registering her arrivals and departures. When it is not her, it is one or both of his mothers, and those are usually the worst days.

There are good and bad ones. They ebb and flow. It is the difference between jolting awake and blinking awake, between tugging the sheet over your head or pushing it down to stretch. It is the difference between Veritas getting up to use the bathroom first thing in the morning or waiting until his bladder protests. It is the difference between the silent numbness and the gnawing, deep-seated hunger from the depths of his stomach.

His mothers always seem to visit on the bad days. He thinks they message Topaz, because she never visits when they are there. But Verena cooks while Nora lays next to him, and he presses his face into her shoulder and she squeezes the life out of him and it is like he is three, seven, twelve all over again, hurting and feeling quite alone. In those moments, he is no longer a widowed man, he is a grieving son, and his mothers cannot quite shield him from the world entirely but they try their best. He tries not to disrespect his mothers by associating their visits with the bad days, but maybe it is their presence that allows him to truly feel and that is what makes those days bad. He is reminded of all of his failures, of his regretful success, and how he hates the person that he has become.

Veritas does not know what he is supposed to do.

“What is the point, Jelena?”

Topaz startles when he talks—more like croaks—and she presses a hand to his forehead.

“I’m not sick,” he mumbles. He pushes himself up until he’s leaning against the baseboard, and Topaz sits at the edge of the bed.

“It’s just—you haven’t—” She cuts herself off. Veritas knows what she means anyway. You have not spoken once since the funeral. He reaches for the food, and Topaz’s whole hand spasms from where it rests on the bed, clenching and unclenching the sheets. “You’re… alright, right?”

It must be a shock seeing him act… somewhat normal. “I’m fine.” He pushes around the rice with his spoon before taking a bite. “Thank you. For everything.”

If anything, Topaz’s concern worsens. “You know that I care about you, right? And it’s not because of—” Veritas’ spoon scrapes loudly against the plate, and she clears her throat. “But because after all these years, you’re my friend .”

Hmm. “Then tell me. As my friend, Jelena, tell me. What’s the point?” He hesitates for a moment, “Is it all worth it? Is anything worth it?”

Topaz wrinkles her nose at the use of her given name, but she takes a deep breath in. “It’ll be hard. There won’t be a day that goes by when you don’t think of them. It’ll get easier, as the days go on. I think,” she fiddles with a bracelet around her wrist, “that Aventurine would want you to get back up. Take another gamble. Take another chance at life. Aeons know how long you guys spent not taking chances.”

Is it truly so simple? Veritas has spent the better part of the month just thinking, spending hours and hours on end alone with nothing but the cake cats and his thoughts. And he has never, not even once, thought of that. And it’s so unequivocally, so genuinely him. What is life without a gamble? Without chance?

“Speaking from experience?” He mutters, deflecting the fact that his whole world has shifted.

Her smile is thin. “Something like that.”

He has to start. He has to start somewhere. “Tell me that story again,” Veritas ignores how his stomach twists and threatens to dispose of the rice he just ate, “the one where you went to Evithid-V.”

“Veritas,” she smiles when he wrinkles his nose, turning the tables on him, “don’t push yourself. It takes time.”

“I think I’ve spent long enough waiting,” Veritas says, sounding somewhat like his old self. He’s shakey, he’s pale, but he is Veritas.

Whatever lingering, urgent concern of his mental wellbeing washes off of Topaz’s face, and she laughs softly. “Alright. So, a couple of years ago…”

Chapter Text

“Most of you may know him as Aventurine of Stratagems. Or maybe just Aventurine. A coworker. A friend. To me, he was… uhm…” Really? Veritas Ratio is not a man that… fumbles his words, much less says something like “uhm”. The thought brought laughter to his chest, and a chuckle escaped his lips. There’s a giddiness to him. He does not know where it came from. “I’m sure I don’t need to explain our relationship again, but I’ll remind you all that most of you were at our wedding.”

The audience laughed appropriately. (Veritas continued talking. Veritas cannot remember what he said. Until the end, that is, where he denounced everything he had worked for in his entire life.)

“I can’t help but wonder,” Veritas had laughed mirthlessly, “what he was thinking when he died. Certainly not about his funeral. Certainly not about how we’d fare afterwards. It’s destroying me, honestly. Not because I’m selfish and wish he was only thinking of me in his last moments, but because I don’t think that I could accept it if I learned. I’m supposed to be a scholar,” his lip curled for a brief moment, “but when it came to him, all my logic would fly out the window.”

He took a deep breath, and said the only thing that he had been thinking after the glass shattered beneath his knuckles and embedded itself into his hands. “I do not want to be a scholar, if it means ignoring how I feel about him.” green, soaking into his pants “If I were to be a scholar right now, it means that I would be working instead of being here.” (Veritas almost skipped the funeral. Almost.) “Instead of acknowledging that he’s gone.”

The giddiness had left his chest, leaving him hollow and empty. There were tears creeping down his cheeks, pooling on his chin and dripping onto the bandages on his hands as they rested on the lectern. “He’s gone.” Veritas croaked. “Whatever shall we do?”

Veritas was standing at the lectern. He had just given a speech but he did not know what he said. There were tears pooling at his chin. He dabbed them away. He wasn’t the only one crying. Something he said must have moved people. He didn’t know.

His Mom walked him off the podium.

As much as Veritas hated to admit it, Topaz was right. It did get easier as time went on. He stopped thinking about the what if’s and the what could’ve been and lets himself appreciate what they had. It was not easy. There were still good days and bad days.

On good days, Veritas went about his routine as if nothing ever changed. Any fleeting thoughts about Aventurine were met with a brief ache in his heart, and he would give himself a small moment to grieve before continuing with what he had been doing.

On bad days, Veritas sometimes found himself revisiting his lab on the Herta Space Station, staring at the broken glass chamber and the yet to be cleaned green fluid that no doubtedly stained the floors. The urge to start again itched from his heart to his fingertips, and he had to tear himself away before he became unrecognizable once again.

(There is a letter in his mailbox, addressed from the Genius Society. It is stamped with “Return to Sender”.)

He would wander through the hallways, passing researchers and scientists alike. (He apologized to Ruan Mei a while ago, but she still gave him the cold shoulder). He would explore deep into hallways and rooms that obviously had not had human traffic in quite some time.

Today was no different. Veritas was in the deepest part of the Station that he knew of, through a hallway and past a door he had never noticed in his however-many rounds of that loop in the Seclusion Zone.

I should have never come here, Veritas thinks, pressing a hand to the bloody gash on his side. He attempts to put pressure on it, but his hands don’t seem to respond the way they should. He fumbles with his phone as he tries to call for help, tries to warn about what lingers deep below.

He has no cell service. No one will find him. He cannot tell if the thought fills him with dread or relief.

Veritas does not move. He does not do anything else. His phone lays by his side. He has sent an SOS signal that no one may get. His eyes feel heavy. He hopes he is buried next to him. He has a paralytic running through his veins. He lets his mind be free.

He wonders if he is truly trying to save himself. Was he letting himself succumb to his wounds instead of finding some way out of this situation, some way to heal?

Will he fade like Akivili, grand and leaving the cosmos with a void that could never be filled? Or will he fade like Aventurine, inconsequential to anyone but those that knew him, mourned him, yet leaving a hole that could never be filled?

And as Veritas stops letting his mind wander, he realizes that this was probably what Aventurine was feeling in his last moments. Reminiscing about his life prior. The realization that this was the end.

Nihility had crept THEIR way into Aventurine’s being. THEY probably swept him up the moment his final exhale had left his chest. Who would be there to grasp him, Veritas wonders, now that the cold is seeping into his bones and dragging his soul elsewhere.

Aventurine had Nihility. Veritas doesn’t.

And so he fades, his hand sliding off of the wound, dragging blood with it and further staining his clothes.

Alone in the depths of her space station

he was fading

fading

and he feels a soft hand slip into his own