Archive of Our Own ^beta

Stove.

Skillet.

Spatula.

Fridge.

Eggs.

Onion.

Cheese.

Sausage.

Peppers.

No tomatoes, because the needs of the pizza industry to feed the entire Ma-non population have taken them all again. Until a massive boost in production efficiency happens, Lin will have to forgo her Perfect Omelet.

It's a shame. Maybe her Perfect Omelet would help her actually have a good morning.

Lao falls. Lin screams.

...Or maybe not, if that's going to keep happening.

"Linly!" Oh. And Tatsu's up early. She must have made more noise getting her ingredients than she thought. "At least pretend to listen to Tatsu!"

"Were you saying something?" She thinks the pan must be hot enough by now. How long has she been standing here, again? Long enough, surely. She can't actually remember what time it was when she entered the kitchen.

"Tatsu want to know Linly's plans for today. Must have some kind of plan. Been long time since last big idea. Tatsu is here to serve!"

Plans? Lin can't think of a single idea she has that might need Tatsu.

Or any ideas at all. All she can think of is breakfast, and how dim the lights above her feel, and getting the images from last night out of her head. Not necessarily in that order. "Today's just... going to be a normal day. I think." She hasn't had a new vision about anything involving her physically being present since...

Well. Since Sylvalum.

It's nice. Means there's nothing new to feel responsible for.

But it's also a bit worrying, because she hadn't realized it's possible to have a moment's peace on Mira. Let alone this much of it. "Again? Normal days boring!"

"You could always start colecting Miralife cards." Lin thinks Tatsu would be a lot more entertaining if he had a hobby. "...Quit distracting me. You're gonna make me burn my omelet." How long has it been in the skillet, again?

"Linly..." He shuts up after that, but she can still feel his eyes drilling into her back.

Her omelet ends up lightly singed around the edges. It tastes okay. Elma doesn't let her make breakfast for anyone else. Something about being worried she'll set the kitchen on fire.

It probably says something that Lin can't bring herself to disagree.

There actually is something to do that day. A mission that Lin probably should have seen coming, except she'd only had a relevant vision once, and at the time, she'd been completely overwhelmed with a bunch of other visions all resolving themselves at the same time.

She thinks she feels sorry for Ryyz, just a little. It's far from the worst death she's seen, but there's something oddly pitiful about it. Maybe seeing people die all the time is starting to get to her.

Or maybe Sylvalum's just a place that makes her feel bad. She wants to say it's that. It's an easy thing to claim, given the last time she was here.

But she knows it's definitely the vision thing.

Lin doesn't sleep very well that night, either.

It should be easier once she's back to her own work. It should be nice, and simple, and entirely under her control.

It should. But it doesn't. "Okay, we're taking a break," Lao declares.

"What? But we just started!" She makes the mistake of turning around.

Lao falls. Lin screams.

"Can you repeat a single thing I've said in the past ten minutes?"

"Um..." She's sure he must have said something, now that he's mentioned it. But she can't come up with anything.

"That's what I thought." He physically picks her up and plops her into one of her beanbag chairs. "Si-el, pretend to be useful for a bit. Don't need anyone else seeing her like this." Si-el, to Lin's amazement, actually listens. They never listen. To anything. She mostly just keeps them around because nobody else actually knows that.

And also because she has a history of getting attached to things she shouldn't. Like the planet. And the person next to her. "Lao, it's not that bad!"

Lao falls. Lin screams.

"You couldn't even try 'I'm fine.'" Which. Is a fair point. "I'm giving you two options. Option one is you take a nap and see if that makes it any better."

"...What's option two?"

"I call Elma, say I told you about her, and you get to have that conversation." Oh. He's serious.

Lin tries to picture how she'd go about that conversation. Not having to be honest about the how might help. She could just say it's new information, and by the time Elma can suspect otherwise, they'll have bigger problems.

But that feels like a lie that could easily come back to haunt them. And she doesn't want to have the honest version of that conversation today, either. "...I'll take option one."

"I thought so." She's not sure when he moved the beanbags together, she just suddenly becomes aware that they've sort of merged into one big nest. Which is... probably another argument in favor of her needing real sleep, actually. Damn it. "Will it help if I stay?"

She wants to say it will. For a long time, being able to fall asleep on top of him was a comfort. A promise that he's still alive, and he'll definitely be there when she wakes up.

It's just that, last time, letting herself doze off would have meant never seeing him again. And it would have been her fault for making him want to kill himself. And-

Lao falls. Lin screams.

...And she's already clinging to him, and Lao isn't that kind of stupid, so there isn't any point in saying otherwise. "You have to actually stay this time."

"I will. I promise." And her vision doesn't change, so there isn't any reason not to believe him, really. Nothing besides his general tendency to blow off commitments, anyway, and he hasn't been doing that recently. How much of that is him genuinely wanting to get better, versus the court order, remains to be seen. But whatever the reason, right now is the most reliable he's ever been. "Get some sleep, Lin."

Okay. Okay. If she closes her eyes, that's one less trigger for the visions, anyway, so it should help her. It should.

At the very least, she loses consciousness quickly enough that she can't really tell herself she didn't need it.

Unfortunately, being too tired to work with heavy machinery is not the same as being too tired for nightmares. Or maybe the bad things have just engraved themselves on Lin's brain so fully she can no longer escape. Either way, once she's awake, she needs to see it's not real.

Lao falls. Lin screams.

...Opening her eyes was a mistake. "Lin?"

Lao falls. Lin screams.

"I-I'm okay." She doesn't think she's going to zone out while doing safety checks anymore, at least, and that's good enough, right? She can go back to work on stuff where she actually knows what to do? "It's just..."

Lao-

Lao somehow manages to hold her even closer, squeezes her tight enough to banish the vision, which she hadn't realized was possible. "...It's not a nightmare, is it?" She shakes her head. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. "How do I make that not happen?"

It's a question Lin's asked herself several times. Something she's never had an answer to, because while all the details keep changing, while all of the circumstances have shifted so much it's hard to call it the same event, the core of it remained the same. The only time it changed was when he just wouldn't live long enough to be there. As long as he- "Don't go to the Lifehold."

"I won't. I won't." The vision shatters. "Won't even think about it."

And she believes him, because for the first time, she can look at him without something horrible hanging over her head. It... it was that easy? That's all she needed to say?

...She's too relieved to be disappointed. "Okay." Somehow, all the tension deserting her body has made her press even closer to him. Which, again, shouldn't be possible. She's discovering all sorts of new levels of clinginess today. "You're... agreeing. Just like that."

"I was paying attention when you told me what the alternative is," Lao points out. "Sounded bad enough before I knew any of the details."

He still doesn't know a lot of the details. Lin's never been able to bring herself to talk that closely about it. Whatever it is he's picturing, she knows it was ten times worse.

Was. Not will be. Was. Because it's not going to happen.

He's safe. "If I didn't know better... I'd say it was on purpose. To try and stop us from missing you." She knows it wasn't, she's been in his head, or had him in hers enough for it to be the same thing, but she also doesn't think he would have minded if that was the case. Which doesn't actually make it much better. "It didn't work." Even in the earliest versions, the ones where he'd done the most terrible things he could beforehand, Lao's death has never been surrounded by anything but grief. The whole thing was so horrible, it outweighed any anger they might have had left.

"I know." He can't. There's no way he can understand the secondhand pain she's been feeling for months. "It's okay. I'm okay. I'm not going to hurt you like that." That's the biggest problem he has with it?

...Of course it is. She doesn't know why she bothers wishing for anything else. "You didn't-"

"Then why are you crying?"

Because the nightmare is finally over. Because she gets to keep him. Because maybe, just maybe, he's finally decided she's worth living for. "I'm just glad you're safe." And all she had to do was tell him why he wouldn't be.

...Which means there's a lot of conversations she has to have with other people, doesn't it?

But. That's a problem for later. Maybe not as much later as she'd like, but... later. "Lao? Can we stay here for a bit? I- I don't actually want to do a test flight today." Right now, she just wants to soak in the fact that this is real.

"I wasn't going to trust you to do safety checks, anyway."