Remnants of the Earth

   Yavul watched as Mia worked to tame her hair with no small amount of sadness. He hadn’t missed the change in address— it was a rare moment indeed when any of his kids called him “Commander”, least of all Mia, their resident ray of sunshine.

   Yavul nodded a bit at her “explanation” for the flyaways, lips pursed in semi-serious thought as he looked around at their survey work. Malfunctioning probes would be a pain in the ass, and make their already slow progress even slower for lack of the adequate equipment. But Mia had a point in that stopping to try and fix them every ten steps was only holding them back even longer.

   At Mia’s pause, Yavul looked over at her, brows knit tight over blue eyes, adding one more tiny wrinkle to what was, more and more, proving to be a regular collection of the damn things.

   “Listen, Mia… I ain’t wantin’ you thinkin’ you have t’ be someone you’re not—” he began, and probably might have managed to complete were it not for the sudden rumbling beneath their feet. Catching a flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye, Yavul turned to see a veritable flood of sprangers leaping clean over the gates, the animals fleeing in their panic as the earth beneath the ranch cracked open and crumbled inwards. The edges kept eroding away, getting closer and closer to the house at the very edge of it, which had the teams of military personnel bolting from the doors as shouts of warning went up.

   Yavul was already moving, helmet snapping into place, when the second series of rumbling hit— this time to a peal of terrified shrieks. A second sinkhole appeared, this one fully engulfing a barn and swallowing it whole as if it had never been. The barn they had directed the ranchers to stay beside in order to avoid getting in the way of a military operation.

   Yavul felt like someone had reached into his chest and clenched at his heart.

   “Clear! Get fuckin’ clear! Get t’ them trees where it’s stable!”

   Why hadn’t he put them there in the first place? Why hadn’t he thought— too little too late, the military who were scrambling to follow his orders and regroup by the few lone apple trees were finding the fading soil too tough to run in, each step taking longer to finish and gaining them too little ground as the sinkholes grew and grew. The house was completely gone now, as was most of the fence, and it seemed like the earth would never stop until it pulled them all under—

   Pulled.

   Mia.

   Yavul snapped around to find, much to his relief, that his young squad member was still standing even as the earth shook beneath them.

   “Mia!” He yelled, gesturing wildly at the area where the barn had once stood, bits of the roof yet still visible. “Mia, get them civvies out of there now!”

   Regrouping. If these were the tunnels, if these were the Trapdoors, they needed to regroup. Yavul flexed his robotic hand in rapidfire succession— onetwothreefourfive— and heard the high pitched whirr of the electrical generators coming online. Locked and loaded.

   “Form up! Defensive positions! I want eyes on every last—”

   Whatever Yavul was about to say, it never made it out into the open air. Because as he took his next step, the earth gave a shudder beneath his feet, buckling under him like coming down wrong on a mechanical bull. There wasn’t even time to correct his balance— he was dead center for the next sinkhole, falling quicker than he could even scream, before his helmet slammed into the rocks deep below the earth, more sand and rubble piling on top of him until everything went black.

   At first, Jonesy wasn’t sure exactly how pissed he should be. Should he be mildly annoyed? Mildly annoyed seemed a bit underseasoned, honestly. Like if you made instant noodles and never added the flavor packet. Which, on a particularly bad day— set of days— Jonesy absolutely had done. He didn’t even remember what it had tasted like, unless nothing and mush was what it had tasted like. Mostly he just remembered how he felt: sluggish and annoyed that three minutes in the microwave took that long.

   Angry also seemed to be not quite up to the task. Sure, it fit well enough when Archer, Joan, threw his dismissal right out the window and instead of leaving, focused on seeing how great her finger strength was at. Angry might have covered whatever damage she seemed intent upon doing to the upholstery, but it didn’t even come close to making a dent in the large bill that was the next words that came out of the Cardinal’s mouth.

   For a moment, all sound just… ceased to be. Even Archer’s mouth moved without any actual words escaping. Jonesy knew she was talking though. She was talking and talking, and even though Jonesy could hear none of it, it felt like she was screaming right inside of his head. He took in a deep, sharp breath.

   Moaning Joan.

   Jonesy took another breath, wanting desperately to just shout at her to shut up, to get the hell out of his office, to get the fuck out of his sight and to never come back again. But no matter how many breaths he took, no matter how many times he tried to fill his lungs, it never took. The more he tried, the less air he got, his pulse picking up into a rapid drumroll the longer he spent clutching onto his desk, white knuckled and nails dug into the wood.

   Moaning Joan.

   “You…” he hissed between gritted teeth with air he didn’t have. He looked from where her fingers dug into the chair, and up to her face, as ashen and grey and lifeless as the rest of the office space between them.

   Jonesy had never been… fair… to Joan Archer. He knew that. He knew he treated her differently, but no matter what he tried, every time he heard her name he—

   He hated her. He hated her, just like he hated her now, and oh, did he hate her now. His breathing picked up, but this time he had something to anchor him to the moment rather than drifting through an ocean just barely underwater. He focused, and he pushed, and he broke the surface with a deep, snarling growl.

   “Don’t you ever—”

   So, it seemed like ‘absolute seething, blistering rage’ was the appropriate level of angry. Everything melted away, even the walls, until all that was left was him, Archer, and a hazy white tunnel.

   “Don’t you ever fucking call me that, you fucking piece of shit!”

   He’d known it was only a matter of time.

   Not even because of what had happened, either— somewhere, deep in his soul, there had always lingered the shivering fear that one day, and one day very soon, everything he’d tried so hard to bury six feet under the dirt would just get dug right up again. In his worst and wildest nightmares, it involved a terribly public appeal, or because his psychological case file had been opened and through some feat of cruelty, it got everywhere. Entirely baseless exercises in paranoia, of course, but still the fear lingered.

   He’d known it would be something. After the debacle in the equipment hangar, after what he’d seen and felt, and what he’d bombarded his subordinates with…

   “Cole,” is what Joan had called him. A mirror-echo of his own inability to call her by her given name, Joan had never used his rank or his surname before without duress involved, and never to his face. To have it used like that, right then, was jarring to say the least. It was enough to set him on edge even more than he already was; something that Ellis, thankfully, remained blissfully immune to.

   The few Borises that had taken up shop in the quiet corners of his desk, however, curled up defensively and huddled in the shadows, sensing danger, foreboding, a sense of impending doom that felt too much like a boot at the back of his neck.

   Jonesy let out a deep breath through his nose, and watched as Amaryllis left and his doom entered, barely containing her own fury as she snapped through all the military etiquette that had been drilled into her skull over Candidacy.

   He’d known this was bound to happen, and yet it didn’t stop the rolling sensation of nausea and terror that wormed its way into his guts, coiling tight with every word the younger Pilot spoke. What ended up breaking the spell, however, was the idea that he had to explain anything to her at all— this was, after all, top secret intel. Sealed away. Locked up and the key thrown into the deepest thermal vents in Travica.

   But she’d seen, hadn’t she? She’d seen him lose his mind. He knew what she was capable of— there was no getting around what she had to already know. Or, at the least, had to have already begun to guess. Somehow, that felt worse— what had she guessed? All the worst case scenarios seemed to pile up, one after the other, each one more nauseating than the last, with the crowning thought of—

   Had she guessed he’d…?

   Swallowing thickly around the sudden, desperate urge to throw up, Jonesy took another breath through his nose and fixed his most pointed glare at Joan Archer from his seated position at his desk.

   “And what matter is that? Last I checked, I didn’t have to do a goddamn thing.”

{NAME}
Pilot Echo Rocco Cyprio Renato da Travica

{ALIASES}
Rocco

{AGE}
62, about his thirties for his people

{GENDER, SEXUALITY}
Male, homosexual for the most part

{SPECIES/ETHNICITY}
Ashman, Copperblooded, Aedolian

{HEIGHT/BUILD}
5'1”, strong build

{OCCUPATION}
Energy Administrator for the Department of Ministry. Pilot Echo rank.

{RESIDENCE}
Travica, Aedolis



{PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION}

• Low center of gravity; As with the rest of his kind, Rocco is not tall. Boasting a compact but strong build, it takes quite a bit to knock him over or honestly even to get him to lose his balance. Standing at just a bit over five feet tall, it's easy at first to not quite realize he's there. At first.
• Copper blooded; Born of the highest caste in Ashman society, like his forebears, Rocco has vibrant copper eyes that seem like molten fire. They're especially vibrant against his pale grey skin and jet black hair, and the twisting metallic inlay that winds around his neck and shoulders is equally vivid.
• Clean cut but not clean shaven; Rocco skirts the line between acceptable military grooming and more traditional Ashman style. He used to keep his hair relatively close-cropped, with the top of his hair dyed a deep maroon. However, more and more recently he's been "getting back to basics" and letting the dye slowly grow out more and more. Now it's long enough on top to pull back and braid in several places, though the sides and back he keeps shaved short just to avoid a heat stroke or worse.
• Muscles for days; Despite his rather science oriented, “cushy” specialization, Rocco spends an extraordinary amount of time at the gym maintaining his physical fitness. His hard work has paid off with a trim waist, strong chest, and thick, sturdy biceps. His legs are similarly built, though there's a bit more muscle there, and as much as it looks like it'd hurt to get punched by the guy, it would hurt worse to get kicked.
• Islander; While his people haven't lived on their native Ashman islands for millenia, their culture has held strong, and this is no more obvious than when Rocco speaks. He has a strong Islander accent, and tends to gesture emphatically with his hands as he speaks. For us real worlders, he's more Brooklyn than Brooklyn when he talks.
• Marble; Rocco is what is known amongst his people as a Marble. In the olden days, an Ashman born with marbling on his person was meant to fill a specialized role within their caste. Depending on blood caste, these were courtesans, trained speakers, entertainers, escorts, quasi-therapists and masters of interpersonal mediation should the need arise. Nowadays there's less of a strict demand that marbling translate to this sort of career path, though for some older families there is a more "traditional" mindset. ...Rocco is not following tradition in the slightest, in this regard.

{PERSONALITY}

• He's a douche. Full stop.; Rocco is not cuddly. He's not here to hold your hand, or do anything passively. When he sees behavior he thinks needs correcting, his first instinct is to insult you into shame before addressing the “proper” way to do things. He's also prone to giving horribly embarrassing nicknames if he thinks someone is doing something particularly foolish, like “Pisspot” or “Pizza Girl” or “Psycho Noodle Murderer”. Any protest to your nickname almost guarantees he'll keep calling you it until you're dead.
• Honorable; That being said, while he can be an abrasive loudmouth at any given moment, he is not shy about doling it out twice as hard if someone's behaving in a particularly bad way. This attitude is especially potent if the person on the receiving end of scuzzy behavior is a woman, and due to Ashman cultural norms, he's prone to explosive bouts of temper if a female of any species is being mistreated. He does tend to overdo it in places, though.
• Party boy; Rocco likes to have a good time, full stop.
• An amazing dweeb; Rocco has a nerdy side that's most obvious if he's talking science, chemistry, physics, math puzzles, or puzzles in general. He loves ordering puzzle boxes off the net just to see how long it takes him to solve them.

Fun Facts!:

• His Nonno taught him how to cook, and he is very proud of the food he makes. Get out of here with your subpar bs.
• Anyone who isn't an Ashman is little more than a barbarian, as is apparent custom amongst the Islanders. The only ones that get an automatic pass are Kulshedra, who Rocco will affectionately call cuz or cousin during light banter.
• However, growing up around Aedolians most of his life has tempered his cultural distaste by a wide margin. So he usually waits until you do something dumb before he comments about how “Mainlanders” raise their goddamn kids.
• Being amongst Aedolian standards of beauty has also left him with a bit of a napoleonic complex. He's at constant war with his inate pride in his father's work, and a mild embarrassment about not being just a little bit taller.

{SPECIAL ABILITIES}
Telepathic - He's talented enough to focus his thoughts over a block if he knows a specific person is there. He's also talented enough to be capable of bringing up shields to block most surface thoughts or light probes.

Pyrokinetic - Much to his family's pride, Rocco has a special understanding and control of heat and fire. He can track heat patterns by “feeling out”, and uses this ability the most while he's working surveying geothermal activities. He can direct fire and heat to a degree, pushing it to a safe distance if he and his survey team happen to be caught unawares by a burst.

{RELATIONSHIPS}
His father, Renato, and his Nonno, Adamo. Both are incredibly important to him, and he does everything he can to make them proud.

Bishop, his bffsie for life, and one hell of a singer both before and after their third pub of the evening.

{HISTORY}
He's been a bit fucked up, going into candidacy extremely young for his kind. But the needs of Aedolis outweigh the needs of your emotional development, so… you get an angry rock boy every now and again.

As a copperblood, however, becoming one of the highest social classes in Aedolean culture is a huge honor. The fact that Rocco was a Pilot, the tip-top of the world, should have written his ticket amongst his kind. ...However, his personal habits have gotten in the way, leading to a very strained relationship with his father, who disapproves of his lifestyle and cavorting with barbarians as much as Rocco does.

The fact Rocco works as a low-level scientist for the Energy department is likewise a huge disappointment, especially with Rocco being a high-caste Marble-- Renato would have much more rather seen Rocco working PR, or climbing the ranks on his way to Pilot Royal. Rocco struggles with this quite a bit, and can't decide what's worth keeping more: his identity or his family.

   His only warning was a soft hiss. He'd been so wrapped up in unwrapping his Sniggers (as much as he wanted and did glare at Joan for the mild insult), he'd almost not realized what that kind of hiss in this kind of room might mean.

   Before Jonesy could so much as shout, the soft hiss became a deafening crack. The canister in front of Ellis exploded open, burying the young Pilot in a malevolent cloud of highlighter-yellow gas. Jonesy shot to his feet, his laptop clattering to the floor as he yanked his shirt collar up and over his mouth and nose. As if that would actually do anything.

   But, survival instincts didn’t always care for logic.

   Luckily, the room’s sensor’s seemed to understand the situation with total clarity. Unluckily, this meant there was the rattling thunk-thunk-thunk as the locking mechanism rolled into place at the sliding doors, emergency sirens blaring intermittently between a robotic— if painfully informative— voice detailing,

   “Contaminant breach. Warning. Contaminant breach. Warning. Lockdown measures in effect. Warning. Please wait for decontamination protocols. Warning. Contaminant breach.”

   O2 masks. He needed to get to the O2 masks. The gas had completely filled the room, a putrid-colored fog that rendered visibility next to zero. It was designed that way— the less you could see, the more alone you felt, and there was something about that sickly yellow that set off all the little animal alarm bells in your head.

   The emergency masks were tucked away inside a false-wall compartment, helpfully outlined and labelled ‘In Case of Emergency, Press Here’. He just needed to get to them, get some airflow while he waited for the decon fans to kick on, and—

   There was a horrible, jarring juttering screech of metal on metal overhead, followed by a rapid-fire click-click-clicking. The telltale whoosh of the fans sucking out the tainted air never came. Shit. SHIT.

   Without the fans, the masks would only do so much. It was an insidious little gas, specially designed for ruthless efficacy courtesy of the most sadistic minds R&D had to offer. It found its way in however it could— the respiratory system was, of course, the quickest. In close confines like this, even the filters of gas masks wouldn’t hold up for very long. He had a better chance with an alternate source of oxygen of course, but…

   Left in close confines like this, with the whole room saturated, dermal absorption was also inevitable.

   He needed to get to the O2 masks.

   “Contaminant breach. Warning. Contaminant breach. Warning. Lockdown measures in effect. Warning. Please wait for decontamination protocols. Warning. Contaminant breach.”

   Jonesy felt along the wall, trying to keep his breaths as short as possible, squinting against the gas for the telltale shapes of his squadmembers. Had they taken the antidote like he’d told them to? Why the fuck hadn’t he himself remembered his own warning? Too late it remembered the series of vials he kept in his desk, his own extra stash tucked away for emergencies. Emergencies like this.

   Ellis might be okay. He didn’t feel fear, not the way this gas was meant to make a person feel fear. He might just imagine his Lobster Husband and a thousand spider wives, and be in utterly insensible maniac for a time. The canister had gone off as he was working on it, though. Had it burst and hurt him? Where was Joan—

   Joan.

   “Archer!” He shouted, as much as he dared with as much breath as he dared, “Archer, masks, get your masks on!”

   She didn’t have Ellis’ talent for shrugging off fear. If she hadn’t had her dose, there was no telling what would happen— victims of the hallucinogenic were never meant to recover—

   A shadow moved in the gas, just as Jonesy’s hand hit the panel, and the wall split open with a soft hydraulic hiss. A set of small oxygen masks and accompanying canisters waited there, nestled in soft fluorescent lighting with helpful instructions spelled out in helpful images. Breathable, uncontaminated air.

   “Get it on, quick— grab another, ELLIS, stay where you are!” Jonesy was already pulling a set free, and turned to shove the equipment into Joan’s waiting hands when the gas thinned just long enough for Jonesy to see—

   calloused hands scarred knuckles a grip too strong to break but never strong enough to bruise the telltale glint of a ring gifted on graduation black steel set with violent vibrant garnet pride and joy and somehow always burning ice cold despite never having been removed once

   Jonesy’s heart stopped.

   A cold sweat broke over him in waves, like how the arctic ocean might have felt if he’d had any concept of what the arctic ocean could feel like. His neurons screamed with misfire after misfire, and Jonesy jerked back as the hands, those telltale hands, turned into the rest: a razorblade grin and the kind of self-assured swagger that told him there was nowhere to run.

   The sudden motion backwards was too much for the sudden jelly of his legs to handle. Jonesy stumbled back against the wall, and on some base, stupid, animal instinct he thrust the oxygen tank at Ruslan as if that bit of defense would help. It clattered, useless, to the floor, and Jonesy soon followed, slipping to the ground as every muscle in him failed.

   “Well, well, well, look who it is—”

   “Get the FUCK away from me!” Jonesy lashed out, but the hand with the ring shot forward like a viper, gripping his jaw and squeezing until Jonesy was sure the bones would break. He kicked out, but Ruslan didn’t seem to even feel it.

   “Our… very… own…”

   Jonesy shrieked against the hand that gripped him, scratched at whatever part of this tormenting apparition he could reach— something, anything, but like a true nightmare the man somehow remained completely out of reach, a mere inch beyond every raking swipe—

   “moaning Joan.” Ruslan began to laugh, a horrible, bubbling laugh. He loomed over Jonesy, the laughter turning to wretched hacking as piles of black maggots erupted from his grinning mouth. The entire mass of vileness spewed out and over Jonesy’s chest, his stomach, his flailing arms— they bit and burrowed, and no manner of clawing seemed to deter them in their quest to get at every scrap of skin left bare to the world— and all the while he kept screaming. Screaming and wailing a harmony with the sirens overhead, but neither they nor Jonesy’s voice nor the roar of the fans overhead were enough to drown out the ragged breathing above him.

   Content warning for (technically) involuntary drugging, intense hallucinations, gross bug imagery, PTSD and Jonesy’s tendency to drop F bombs.

   —

   There was a point, once, where Jonah Cole commanded some measure of respect. It was, perhaps, not the kind of respect that other commanding officers and squad leaders might consider “good” respect, but it had always worked for him. After all, Jonesy wasn’t really capable of achieving the other kind of respect— the kind that had an entire city in mourning when they thought their Commander lost to the perils of the void.

   Someone, somewhere in history, once asked if it was better to be loved or to be feared. A kind of shitty question, if half the options weren’t available to you. Such was Jonesy’s dilemma, because he was already hamstrung as it was, and now he had these new recruits who adamantly refused to fall in line to the only option their Squad Lead had left.

   One was physically incapable of feeling fear. No manner of intimidation, of Jonesy’s natural aura, of threatening swarms of spiders could shake the guy. Ellis was like trying to scare one of those wild, wiggly noodle men one sometimes found outside of a grand opening of some shop or another. Utterly fruitless, and it never dampened that damn smile.

   The other, Joan, Jonesy knew was capable of feeling fear. She just seemed to prefer challenging it. Which wasn’t unheard of. Some people, when pressed far enough, turned violent rather than into a gibbering mess. Fought back. Got tougher. It was a good trait to have, being able to stare fear in the face and tell it to sit down and shut the fuck up. It did, however, make her remarkably difficult to handle. At least Darzi had the decency to pretend to obey him half the time, simpering for Jack’s benefit and digging her heels in all other hours of the day. Joan just dug her heels in. Twenty four hours. Seven days a week. Three hundred and fucking sixty five days a year.

   It was such that Jonesy had found himself acquiescing more than he would have ever done so at any point in his career before now. Where before he could stonewall and glare his way into victory, stonewalling and glaring got him nothing but worse and worse results. So, it took a few compromises. Giving into the little things to keep the big things from becoming a big problem.

   Like the big problem of Ellis dragging every last dingy, dirty piece of equipment into his office to scrape the filth out over his floor. Like the big problem of Joan let loose with neon paint cans, spraying over their helmets and probably the furniture while she was at it.

   So desperate for his company. Which was the most bizarre twist of it all— so his fear tactics didn’t work on them, fine. But he never made himself pleasant to be around. He wasn’t fun. He was allergic to the mere concept of it, if Joan’s implications were anything to go by. And yet she— and Ellis, even more so— absolutely insisted in haranguing him at every spare minute either of them had. Others would have gotten the hint, cut their losses, and given up on a lost cause.

   These two had Jonesy carting his laptop down three levels of the Scorpions HQ, to the equipment room, so he could work on next week’s simulations in one corner while the two young Cardinals did their chores. He could only imagine that, somehow, this made them happy. It didn’t make sense, but it made even less sense without this explanation.

   Sighing as he got settled on a far bench, Jonesy looked over the thin screen at the other Pilots in the room, watching as they began the standard and, admittedly, utterly BORING task of scraping old, faded paint off of helmets, and the grime of buildup off of the gas dispensers. The crust was harmless in this ancient state, of course, but it tended to get into the more delicate portions of the dispensers, and could potentially compromise shutoff valves with very dangerous consequences.

   Jonesy tried to remember who had had this task last, thought it might have been Vijaya, and tried to remember if Jack had been around when he’d given the order or not.

   Ah well. Didn’t matter. What mattered was it got done now, and he got the next drills programmed, and this day ended so he could go home, light up, get high and watch something stupid and brightly colored on television the whole weekend.

   Petulant though they could both be about following orders, Joan and Ellis weren’t idiots. So Jonesy sat back and focused on the coding in front of him, brows knit and a deep scowl on his face as he placed trap after trap. Maybe some live Teinari targets this time, the sooner they all got used to screaming, the better. Simulated screams always had a kind of comforting falseness to them— you couldn’t feel sympathy for a computer program like you could for a person. Nothing ever quite measured the same thing.

   Jonesy typed in a quick allocations request, and continued formatting the rest of the first room.

   "Make sure you scrape with the grain, Archer. You chip those helmets and you're explaining to Distribution why we need a whole new set."

   Yavul was going to be covered in bruises by the time he reached Amristah. Already his skin was splotched red on the backs of his hands, shaking as they were, but that didn’t stop him from taking bits of skin between his fingers and just pinching the ever loving crap out of it.

   Everything felt unreal. His suit didn’t feel real. The headband keeping his hair tamed back didn’t feel real. The cloth-covered seat didn’t feel real. The gentle rock and sway of the rail didn’t feel real. He’d dreamed of this, hoped for this, remembered this for so long that the idea that it was actually happening, the knowledge that Grisham was actually—

   He was home. He was safe and he was home. He was alive, and Yavul pinched himself just a little harder, tears pricking at his eyes as full, shaking relief rolled over him like a sandstorm. Grisham was alive and this wasn’t just another dream. Slowly, Yavul brought his hands up to his face, curled over his knees with his elbows resting atop. He took deep breaths, feeling each one hitch and pull as his ribs shuddered, and he sniffed hard against his hands as he fought and failed to find some kind of control.

   Grisham was alive and he was home. Not just home, but their home, and it hadn’t taken much more than that assurance to have Yavul bolting right out of the simulation rooms with barely an explanation, break meal utterly forgotten in the process. Not that his squad needed an explanation— they were good, they were so good, and even if it weren’t for the shared link they all maintained, all it would require was one look at the pilot chat Yavul had been hunched over.

   Had he dropped his com? He had dropped it at first sight of Grisham’s name there. Cool as you please. “I’m coming home to you”. So amazingly, painfully Grisham that Yavul couldn’t ever suspect cruelty and impersonation behind it. But in the flurry of throwing his barely eaten sandwich in the nearest trash can, in his hurry to get out and to the rails, had he remembered—

   There it was. A quick pat found the com he hadn’t remembered shoving in one of the utility pouches of his suit, and he flicked open the screen. Nearly wept in another wave of relief when he scrolled up to see that no, he hadn’t gone crazy. His mind wasn’t playing tricks on him. This was real, this was so real, and for the second time in Yavul’s life he felt like the luckiest man alive.

   The rest of the trip was a blur, both literally and figuratively. It felt like time warped, entire minutes passing along like several hours, and then an hour disappearing in the flash of an instant. He could barely keep focus, his vision swimming and face rubbed raw for all his attempts to keep his tears in check. It was a thankful thing to have the car to himself, able to slip out to the bathroom and douse his face in water.

   It was okay. It was okay. Grisham was home and Yavul would be able to see him, to hear him, to bring him close and hold him and never let go again. They were both tall guys. They could figure out how to shuffle from place to place like some unholy fusion of limbs, right? Yavul laughed wetly, sniffed hard again, and dried his face with a wad of paper towels. He held them to his face for a moment, still shaking in raw, giddy laughter, until that fit too passed and he was left leaning back against the rail bathroom’s wall.

   An unholy fusion of limbs. Straight out of a horror movie. But gods both, if it didn’t sound like the best thing in the world. Yavul bit his lip, tossed the damp paper into the provided bin, and then took two more sheets out into the car with him.

   He sat, for a time, hunched over the task of folding them, the rocking of the rails and his own shaking, pinch-heavy hands making the job more difficult. But still, he managed, and he was sure any fault in the folding would be forgiven. He shifted a bit, sliding from his seat and onto the car floor, the thin carpet doing nothing for his knees even through the padding of his suit.

   He set the twin paper pyramids down, then, one to the east and one to the west. Took a breath, long and deep and not nearly so shaky as it had been before— and bowed low, his forehead to the scratchy green carpeting and without a care for whatever foul substances might have been spilled on it over the years.

   In his grief, he had thought the world cruel. In his terror, he had believed, for half of a moment, that this was just another in a long line of his curse. In the long, empty, lonely nights that followed, he had begun to wonder if this wasn’t just how it was meant to be. But luck and fortune, fate and blessings, they weren’t for him to parse and understand and lay heavy claims on. The world happened as it would happen, and that wasn’t nearly so important as what was done for it.

   Yavul had failed that, miserably. He had fallen apart, barely patched back together with tape and drywall, held up only by virtue of all the others he’d been so lucky to have in his life. And he’d been so, so lucky. He’d been lucky in his friends, in Blu, who despite her own horrors and sorrows had still saw fit to reach out for him. In Harley, who in his own weird, toddly way had made sure Yavul never spent his time alone.

   In his squad, in Raz who despite being overwhelmingly hasty to throw himself into dangerous situations, had his heart so firmly in the right place that Yavul couldn’t really find fault in it. In Chouchou, who was now expecting so many little squadmembers of her own, a thought that never failed to make Yavul grin from ear to ear.

   In Adele, their resident oddity, who had pushed through all the old hates as if they were tissue paper and had taken so much time out of their lives just to make sure Yavul didn’t starve to death on the really bad days. In Hannibal, who Yavul suspected but couldn’t quite confirm had been the one to make sure Addie themself had been well taken care of. Which had been a very huge change from the initial meeting. In Mia, who had kept the world from turning completely grey, even if that meant turning it glittery instead.

   Yavul had been so lucky, and luckier still, because the universe had seen fit to grant him the best of it all, and when the rail car gave one final shudder before stopping, Yavul rose up from where he had been kneeling, and regarded the two paper pyramids with a shuddering laugh.

   “Merci de rester avec lui,” he said, pushing back fresh tears of gratitude and relief. He lifted the pyramids from the floor, and carried them outside onto the station platform, where they found a new home under the awning and on a tall wall of painted glass welcoming Yavul to the city of the Angels.

   But it wasn’t angels he was so excited to see. It wasn’t angels that had him running at full pace out of the station, and it wasn’t angels that had him taking stairs two at a time to get into the apartment building. For Yavul, all he wanted was a devil, and it was a devil that he ran through his front door for, nearly tripping over the strap of Grisham’s bag and all the more giddy for it.

   He didn’t have more than a few moments to look at the Hellion, his Hellion, noting the cropped short hair and the much fuller beard. It didn’t matter, not right then, not when Yavul’s time was so much better spent dropping to his knees by the couch and crushing his mouth to Grisham’s own, messy as it was with the fresh stream of tears pouring out of him.

   For a good few moments Yavul didn’t even breathe beyond the necessary gasps in between kiss after kiss, fingers pressed against the stubble of Grisham’s scalp as he pushed to touch as much as he could. Because this was real— this was really real, and for the third time in Yavul’s life he was the luckiest man alive.

   “You,” he said, shaky and full of as many tears as it was open laughter. He was an utter mess, blotchy skin and rubbed-raw eyes and now a fresh stream of salt to make it all complete. “Are late. Mon trésor au-delà des trésors.”

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.



A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its

recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

JesseRiver@aedolis.net

    host mx4.aedolis.net[65.55.37.120]

    S110M001T010P error from remote mail server after 11111111 30310000000
110
F110R001O010M110:<J001ainD010au@aedolis.net> S110I001Z010E110=25766:

    550 SC-001 (C110O001L004-M010C1104F00115) Unfortunately, messages from 198.154.225.18

weren't sent. P010lease contact your Internet service provider or refer to our F110A001Q.010
30 31 31 31 31 30 30 31 20 30 31 31 30 31 31 31 31 20 30 31 31 31 30 31 30 31 20 30 30 31 30 30 30 30 30 20 30 31 31 30 30 30 30 31 20 30 31 31 31 30 30 31 30 20 30 31 31 30 30 31 30 31 20 30 30 31 30 30 30 30 30 20 30 31 31 31 31 30 30 31 20 30 31 31 30 31 31 31 31 20 30 31 31 31 30 31 30 31 20 30 30 31 30 30 30 30 30 20 30 31 31 30 30 30 30 31 20 30 31 31 30 31 31 31 30 20 30 31 31 30 30 31 30 30 20 30 30 31 30 30 30 30 30 20 30 31 31 31 31 30 30 31 20 30 31 31 30 31 31 31 31 20 30 31 31 31 30 31 30 31 20 30 30 31 30 30 30 30 30 20 30 31 31 30 30 30 30 31 20 30 31 31 31 30 30 31 30 20 30 31 31 30 30 31 30 31 20 30 30 31 30 30 30 30 30 20 30 31 31 30 30 31 30 31 20 30 31 31 30 31 31 31 30 20 30 31 31 30 31 31 31 31 20 30 31 31 31 30 31 30 31 20 30 31 31 30 30 31 31 31 20 30 31 31 30 31 30 30 30 20 30 30 31 30 30 30 30 30 20 30 31 31 30 30 30 30 31 20 30 31 31 30 31 31 31 30 20 30 31 31 30 30 31 30 30 20 30 30 31 30 30 30 30 30 20 30 31 31 30 31 30 30 31 20 30 30 31 30 30 30 30 30 20 30 31 31 30 31 31 30 30 20 30 31 31 30 31 31 31 31 20 30 31 31 31 30 31 31 30 20 30 31 31 30 30 31 30 31 20 30 30 31 30 30 30 30 30 20 30 31 31 31 31 30 30 31 20 30 31 31 30 31 31 31 31 20 30 31 31 31 30 31 30 31

   “I don’t think it’s th’ land. It’s the people what’s cursed. Who else goes t’ a carnival?”

   “You’re plenty things, Bluebell Moon. Stubborn as a jackass an’ twice th’ hard worker, cheater at bets an’ master a’ makin’ nefarious deals with devil men, but ain’t no one. Ever. Been worse off havin’ had you around. Don’t let a pig shit like that sell you any lies.”