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on the ocean floor i began to rebuild

Summary:

The woman’s fingers curl around the blaster in his hand. Perhaps it is an amount of trust he cannot explain, or a faith he did not know he was still capable of, or simply his body giving up on him—but Jet’s grip loosens.

The gun does not have a stun setting. She removes the laser cart instead, then holsters it. Her eyes stay on him, wary, but something in her face has softened. Into the sudden silence she speaks the words that he will remember for the rest of his life.

In the dim light of the first floor of the Lighthouse, Jet Sikuliaq reinvents himself.

(Jet, Buddy, and the trust that grows from endless time.)

Notes:

this was like. supposed to be 3k max idk what happened.

content warnings:
- non-graphic mentions of drug use, alcohol consumption, and withdrawal symptoms
- depictions of depression and self harming behavior (only in the sense of buddy continuing to go up to the lighthouse)
- grief

(also this is 80% the first two years of jet and buddy, i.e. the years buddy was still going up to the lighthouse every night, so like. fair warning)

anyway. friemdship time

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

i.

In the fourteen years between stealing the Iris of Jupiter and meeting Buddy Aurinko, Jet can recall almost nothing of value. 

Logically, he knows what transpired. He landed on an asteroid in the main belt, safely only because of Ruby. He sold the Iris. Ruby told him about the fifteen people dead from what he had done, and Jet Sikuliaq proceeded to stumble into the nearest bar he could find and lose himself in it. 

Beyond that, his memory is one large blur. The years slid by quickly and meaninglessly. The Solar-Outer War ended. He continued to steal, smuggle, sell. He continued to use. He slept in the Ruby, on the few nights when he was too exhausted to find a hotel room or resist sleep. He either started a fight or found the most shadowed corner and drank until he passed out. 

The name Unnatural Disaster was already known amongst smaller circles before the Iris, but in the following years he made it true: Jet Sikuliaq is a smear across the galaxy, bringing calamity wherever he goes. 

It takes a woman with hair red as a Martian sky to stop a storm in its tracks. To teach him how to make more of himself than a warning sign, to hold his rage in his hands until it no longer controls him, and to identify the heavy weight sitting in his chest for what it is: guilt.

 

ii.

“You don’t understand,” Jet says, more to himself than anyone. “You do not know what I’ve done.”

“Don’t I?” the woman says, with a gaze that bores into him like blaster fire. “But I think I know you.”

Jet swallows. Is it a bluff? Does she truly know? Is he even recognizable like this, half slumped into the table and vision out of focus? If she already knows, he decides to beat her to it. “I—” His voice cracks into a bitter laugh. “I am the Unnatural Disaster.”

“No,” she says with a tone of finality. “You’re Jet Sikuliaq.”

He recoils. He did not think there was a difference anymore. 

The woman’s fingers curl around the blaster in his hand. Perhaps it is an amount of trust he cannot explain, or a faith he did not know he was still capable of, or simply his body giving up on him— but Jet’s grip loosens.

The gun does not have a stun setting. She removes the laser cart instead, then holsters it. Her eyes stay on him, wary, but something in her face has softened. Into the sudden silence she speaks the words that he will remember for the rest of his life. 

You should not die, Jet Sikuliaq.

Outside, the howling wind dies. The air is still. 

In the dim light of the first floor of the Lighthouse, Jet Sikuliaq reinvents himself.

 

iii. 

Jet wakes up in a room with Buddy Aurinko at his bedside. 

This is not the first time. Since Jet first put down the bottle and fell into a fitful rest in the Lighthouse’s guest bedroom, Buddy Aurinko has been there each time he has stirred, without fail.

Waking has been a painful ordeal of late. His head pounds and his stomach roils. 

But this time, when he opens his eyes, his head is clear for the first time that he can remember. When he looks around the room, his vision remains steady. It takes note of the early morning light through the window, the patchwork pattern of his blanket, the water Buddy is pouring into a glass. 

“Why are you—” Jet stops, his voice too loud. Why are you helping me? It’s a selfish line of questioning, and perhaps he may not like the answer. When he tries again his voice is more even. “What are you doing here? In the irradiated desert, doing…” What? Running a small business? One of the galaxy’s legends, holing herself up in a bar in the middle of nowhere? It does not make sense.

Buddy Aurinko raises one eyebrow. “I could have asked you the same when you stumbled into my bar.”

Jet tries not to scoff. Infamous or no, the legend of the Unnatural Disaster has been steadily rusting for years, and they both know it. He tells Buddy so, and watches her take in his words with some surprise.

“Well, then,” she says, a strange note in her voice. “If that’s truly so, Mister Sikuliaq, then we might make a funny pair indeed.”

 

iv.

To any casual onlooker, Jet thinks, Buddy Aurinko is as flawless as her reputation proclaims. She opens the bar right after sunset, on the dot. She is always dressed impeccably, with a sharp smile and not a hair out of place. 

But these are all fragments of the myth; in the months that pass, Jet forms his own impressions. Buddy Aurinko stays with him, and bids him to stay, through the rages and nightmares and the compulsions that try to claw out of his chest. She teaches him to breathe in rhythm on the nights that sleep refuses him. She offers to throw away every bottle of alcohol the Lighthouse owns, which Jet thinks is absurd, because the first floor of the Lighthouse functions primarily as a bar, and he must learn to manage the hungry thing inside of him through a more reliable method than mere avoidance. 

Buddy Aurinko, Jet concludes, is very kind.

Buddy Aurinko keeps a journal, and burns it when it is full. She holds a pen oddly, and has calluses on her right ring finger from writing by hand. She does not mind the many semi-autonomous music machines that turn on and off at will, unlike many residents of the Cerberus Province; she lets them play their repetitive tunes into the night, and if she is feeling particularly melancholy, she lets their soft notes coax her into a dance.

Jet catalogs these observations like they will give him a clearer picture, but perhaps the whole of any person is not so easily captured in a snapshot. Buddy Aurinko is an excellent storyteller; Buddy Aurinko talks more when nervous or upset; Buddy Aurinko prefers to stay up until the sunrise and sleep until near noon.

Buddy Aurinko hardly ever smiles when there is no one there to see. 

 

v.

“Hmmm,” Buddy draws out the sound, stirring honey into her cup. She points at him. “Alright. Messiest job.”

Buddy Aurinko can be very confusing at times. “That I have done, or that I have heard of?”

She waves a hand dismissively. “Either, both. Messiest job.”

A dozen different answers come to him immediately, but Jet makes himself pause to think on it for a moment. He sips his own tea: Venusian; he is not sure he likes the taste. “The Kuiper pistols.”

Her eyes widen. “What!” 

“The thieves forgot several of the cameras,” Jet shrugs. “And they stayed in the Outer too long. It is why they were caught five months later.”

“Stylish, though, wasn’t it,” Buddy says wistfully. “Their faces were plastered on every news station for the next decade; without the footage the heist wouldn’t be half so notorious.”

“I believe ‘foolish’ is a more accurate word for it.”

Buddy stares at him, amused. “Fine, fine; the Kuiper heist may be rather amateur, but good as legend.”

That, Jet will allow; he has begun to think that legends aren’t everything, no matter what Buddy says. And it is his turn, anyhow. “What would an ideal heist look like to Buddy Aurinko, then?”

She taps her lips, considering. She grins. “Planitia job of ‘31. The Regio crown and diadem.”

Jet huffs, pressing down on a smile. Buddy had executed that heist herself, with Vespa Ilkay. 

She tips her chin up, feigning arrogance. “Do you contest it, Mister Sikuliaq?”

He hums. In between sips of bitter tea: “It was flashier than necessary.”

Her mouth falls open. “Flashy!”

“And from what I hear the getaway was quite close.”

“What getaway isn’t?”

“The sharpshooter took two tries to take out the security as well, I believe.”

“The sharpshooter in question was me, you absolute—” 

Jet cannot help it: He smiles. Buddy catches the look on his face, and the jig is up, and she bursts into laughter so loud it takes up the room.

 

vi.

Of course, reputed thieves they may both be, creds still run out eventually.  Buddy remains at her bar; Jet returns, for a time, to his smuggling. 

It is far from what it was before, of course; he keeps to smaller, shorter jobs, now. And he keeps away from any kind of vice. 

He asks if she would like to join him, once. A low stakes jewelry theft at a poorly-guarded bank in Olympus Mons. He thinks she would like it. “You may come with me, if you like,” he says. “It is not a difficult job. But I would appreciate the company.”

Buddy seems to seriously consider it, seems to understand what it takes to say the words. In the end, though, her eyes are drawn to the stairs leading to the lighthouse’s lantern, the open Martian sky. She shakes her head. “I think I’d better stay, darling. But you must know— that means more to me than I could say.”

So Jet completes that job alone. 

But he is not alone, is the difference. After the theft, and the smuggling, and the sale— Jet returns to the Lighthouse.

At first it was only a place to stay. Shelter, from both himself and others. That was what he told himself. But things, as they tend to do, accumulate: His clothes pile up in the closet. The guest bedroom becomes his by unwritten law. Ruby plots the route to the Lighthouse faster than to any other location, and Buddy keeps a box of Jovian tea in the cupboard. 

He finds it to be an odd feeling. Jet Sikuliaq is, after all, a solo act, a singular storm; he has never been tethered, or allowed himself to be tethered, to a place like this—a home. A person. If you suggested the very idea of it to a Jet Sikuliaq ten years younger, he would have laughed in your face.

He finds that he does not mind it. He does not mind at all.

 

vii.

“I do not think so,” Jet is saying. “I believe it is the Arachne family.”

“You do love your far-fetched odds, don’t you,” Buddy quips. “The Arachnes were last sighted on the other end of the system, emptying some poor Mercurian senator’s mansion.”

“Yet this has all the hallmarks of an Arachne heist.”

“And none of the strategy! Trust me, darling, this has LeBeau written all over it; I may have taken a seat in the audience but you can bet I still know my criminal underworld.”

“What would you bet for it?” Jet asks curiously, before he can think twice about it. And Buddy fixes him with a very keen look.

(One of the Arachnes, as it turns out, has eloped with LeBeau. So they rule that one a draw. But it does start a pleasant tradition.)

 

viii.

Jet goes to the top of the Lighthouse on only three occasions in his lifetime. 

The first time, Jet comes back from a job precisely before sunset. There is something hurried in the way Buddy excuses herself after letting him in, and Jet’s curiosity gets the better of him at last. Her bedroom and the guest room are both empty, and the door to the stairs is open. 

Jet climbs to the lantern and finds Buddy staring down the sun.

“This is where you go every afternoon before the bar opens,” Jet says, horrified. He is not sure if he is asking or stating.

Buddy casts one eye back at him, then turns away, back to the sunset-blue Martian sky. A small smile appears on her face. “Why, Mister Sikuliaq, you’re breaking and entering. This floor of the Lighthouse isn’t open to guests.”

“Buddy, this amount of radiation at a daily interval is not good for you.”

She laughs like he’s said something funny, propping her chin on her hand. There is an empty dinner plate on a stool beside her. “I like to watch the sunset.”

He reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder, then thinks better of it. There is something quiet and frighteningly hollow in Buddy’s voice. “You will come inside. Now.”

“In a moment.”

“Every moment that passes on the surface is detrimental to your health.”

She’s looking directly into the undomed sun like something might burst from its core. “Really, Jet, you can be more dramatic than even me sometimes.”

“Buddy, I do not know what you are waiting for.”

Buddy doesn’t reply. Jet is impatient. Finally, the sun sinks below a crater, the blue darkening to black around them, and the Lighthouse’s rays flicker on, sending a beacon of light straight above. 

Jet waits. Buddy sighs like something’s disappointed her— the Lighthouse; the sky; the sun itself. 

“Do you know, Jet,” she says, turning away, “Sometimes, neither do I.”

 

ix.

Here is the unspoken agreement: Buddy does not ask him about the Iris, and Jet does not ask her about Vespa Ilkay.

Here is the quiet truth: They have not had anyone but each other for a very long time, and there are loads that are easier to carry when shared with a friend, and so the words spill out anyway.

 

x.

Buddy Aurinko is very, very stubborn. This is another thing Jet learns. 

“You should not return to the top of the Lighthouse,” Jet is saying. “You may not be experiencing any side effects now, but if this continues—” The corner of Buddy’s mouth twists strangely, at that. “Buddy,” he says, fists clenching on his knees. “Have you begun to experience side effects from the radiation?”

“Everyone knows everyone experiences those side effects differently, darling, you’ll have to be more specific,” Buddy replies airily. She turns away from him, pulling a bottle of something strong and see-through from the shelves. “Who’s to say?”

After everything Buddy has taught him, that she would be so cavalier with her own health— For the first time, anger curdles in his gut, burning and intrusive. He presses down on it, does not let it travel up his hands or his heart. He waits for his rage to fizzle out.

“Buddy,” Jet repeats.

“Mm?”

He hesitates. He wonders if it is his place, to say this. But who else will? The words, when they come out, seem more confused than anything. “You have been drinking more often than usual.”

A stillness, covered almost spotlessly by the clinking of glass, alcohol sloshing as it is poured. Buddy smiles at him, a mirage of light and charm. “Oh, Jet, you’re a dear as always. I appreciate your concern, but I promise you have absolutely no reason to worry about the nature of my consumption; I can control it well enough, thank you.”

I have not seen you eat or drink anything but alcohol in thirty-four hours, Jet thinks. You no longer eat full meals where I can see, you are finding it more difficult to breathe although you hide it well, and you wear your hair so it hides part of your face.

But he knows how Buddy is when she gets like this. He knows what it means when she puts on that veil of charisma and smooth talk, a wall as impenetrable as brick. He loves Buddy because he has come to know her, and so he knows that she will not listen to anyone in this moment. Not even him.

So Jet, against Buddy’s wishes, continues to worry. Which is fortunate, because Buddy does not keep her promise, either.

 

xi.

On the second occasion that he goes to the top of the Lighthouse, Jet curses the sun.

 

xii.

“I saw her,” Buddy says.

They are the first words she has volunteered since Hanataba’s operation. When she woke up again— Jet is very, very glad that Buddy Aurinko woke up again— she had seemed… lost in herself, caught in some far-off memory.

There is a fragility to her voice, now; no, Jet thinks, it is not shaky, or tearful. But… There is a silence around the words, a hesitance, that he has not seen Buddy Aurinko allow him to see before. She is cradling her cup— whiskey, not tea, not with an engine where her stomach used to be, now— and her gaze is very far away, as though seeing something else, as though looking at someone else. 

“Vespa Ilkay,” Jet says, half a question. 

Buddy closes her eyes and breathes in deep. “Yes.” It is a whisper.

He is not sure if questions would be welcome. So he waits.

“I didn’t save her,” Buddy says. That sparks some alarm in Jet, but she continues: “I wasn’t meant to. There was nothing I could have done. That was… always the problem, I think.” 

“I see,” Jet says. “That is good, then— that you accomplished the task Hanataba set for you.”

Buddy nods. She does not seem convinced. But she lets it pass, sipping absently from the cup.

“I was at Balder,” she offers eventually, the words precisely chosen, “and it was the night she…”

Jet waits.

“Died.” Something in her sags at the word. Jet realizes she has never said it aloud before. “She died.”  

“Yes,” Jet says, as gently as he can manage. “She is gone, Buddy.”

Buddy sets down the cup. Carefully—careful of her newly humming heart, and her whirring stomach, and her blindspot—she shifts, leaning into Jet’s side. Jet untenses. He moves his arm to better fit around her back. 

Buddy covers her face with her hands, half-bent over her lap, and sobs.

 

xiii.

Buddy is frowning when they pull up to the Lighthouse. She climbs out immediately before Jet can assist her, walking briskly as though she has not recently been through an operation that quite literally rearranged her insides. “Someone broke in, it seems.”

“Ah,” Jet coughs, a few steps behind her. “No. That was me.”

Buddy stills. She turns around, fixing Jet with an incredulous look. “You.”

“Yes. Me. I am Jet Sikuliaq—”

“You, Jet Sikuliaq, broke down my lovely, perfectly secure double-locked door.”

“The door would not open. It was past sundown. You were not answering my calls—”

Buddy shakes her head, though there is a smile tugging at her mouth, so Jet does not think she is terribly angry. She walks into the Lighthouse, steady as she has ever been. Jet follows after her— and then he realizes what he has done.

Buddy may have built herself a strong reputation, but there is still only one possible outcome after one leaves a barful of potent alcohol and valuable glassware open and unguarded for hours in a province of thieves and criminals. 

The place is ransacked. Chairs and tables overturned and out of place, light fixtures smashed or otherwise missing. Glass shards litter the floor. Every vodka bottle, beer can, and decanter is either empty, in pieces, or just absent, half the shelves sitting bare and abandoned. It looks nothing like what it was, miles from the tasteful, elegant image Buddy cultivated.

Buddy picks her way in, toeing aside a shattered plate. 

“Well,” she says, wry. “Lucky you bought that Schnapps for me after all, dear. It seems we’re fresh out of fuel for the moment.”

“Buddy,” Jet says, panicking, “I deeply apologize. I should not have broken your door. I also should not have left it—”

Buddy turns to him, eyebrows high with disbelief and lips tight in a close-mouthed smile. She braces an arm on the counter, which is scratched and marked as though used for target practice. “You apologize for saving my life?”

“No. That is not what I said. I apologize for breaking your door—”

For the first time in days, perhaps weeks, Buddy starts to laugh, and laugh, and laugh. 

 

xiv.

“Dearest Jet,” Buddy says, eye narrowed as he walks in. She has been peering through the window, which means she has taken note of the hoverbike he has returned with, instead of the Ruby. “Where is the car?”

“I do not have one.” In explanation, Jet pulls out the new yellow-ringed eye in his pocket, encased safely in a transparent box.

“The last I checked, you certainly—” Buddy leans away from it. “What is that?”

“It is an eye. Specifically, it is a cybernetic designed to help your balance and depth perception. Get on the hoverbike; we will return to Hanataba’s and—”

“Mister Sikuliaq,” Buddy says, attempting sternness. “Did you sell your car? For—”

“Though I drove it for several years, I rarely thought of the Ruby as mine,” Jet admits. “It always rather seemed to belong to itself—”

“Jet—Jet, darling, you cannot keep doing this,” Buddy says, already building up a good head of steam. “You cannot simply throw away everything you own for a—a patchwork of a woman! You will have to let me even out the scales at some point, Jet, or else—”

He blinks. “Buddy,” he says, matter-of-fact, “what you did for me on the day we met weighs heavier on the scales than anything else. Also there are no scales, because you are my friend, and I am not keeping score.”

“Jet,” Buddy says, pained. 

Jet wraps a hand around her wrist and tugs lightly; in his other hand he holds up the cybernetic. “You will have this eye,” he says, and it is as close to a demand as he will ever make of Buddy Aurinko: “And afterwards you will give shooting, and the world, one more try.” 

She sighs, her arm shaking off his only to clasp onto it more tightly, hand in hand. “The future is potential,” she murmurs, in lieu of a yes.  

 

xv.

Even with the new eye, Buddy’s skill with a gun does not immediately return to what it was. From what Jet can tell, this is not directly caused by the cybernetic or the mechanical heart and stomach; her vision is fine, and her depth perception restored. No, the less than perfect aim is only the natural consequence of being out of practice for nearly ten years, but Jet can tell it rankles her all the same. 

Jet catches her in the back room, shooting at painted targets. None of her shots have landed bullseye, yet.

After a round, Buddy lowers her gun. “Well, this is,” she begins, then stops, uncomposed. Barely audibly, Jet hears her say under her breath, “Goddamnit.” 

“Your aim will improve with time,” Jet says.

Buddy’s back straightens. She squares her shoulders and turns to face Jet. There’s a hard, flat look in her organic eye. “And what makes you so sure of that, Jet Sikuliaq? Do you presume to know me, to understand me well enough in so short a time as to accurately measure my capabilities? How do you know I won’t simply put the blaster away and never shoot again?”

It is a very good question. Jet tilts his head and considers. He is practicing this kind of caution lately, holding his impulses in his fists and looking them over before letting go. Buddy scoffs a little and turns away, glaring at the targets like they’ve committed a personal offense. She taps her foot impatiently. She doesn’t shoot.

In the end, he surprises himself with the answer. “I do not know. I have only known you for two years, and I cannot be sure that you will learn to shoot again. Perhaps you will succeed, or perhaps not. But… I have seen the strength you are capable of in Hanataba’s clinic, and well before that. I choose to believe you are capable of this, as well.”

Buddy stares at him a moment too long, and Jet realizes he has done the incredible feat of rendering Buddy Aurinko momentarily speechless. 

She turns away and covers the silence with a few half-hearted shots. Two of them miss by a hair; the third lands just outside of the center circle. “That,” she says eventually, recovering, “is a rather large amount of blind faith you have in me, Jet.”

“I do not think it is blind faith.”

“No?” Another two shots.

“I believe it requires roughly the same amount of faith as one who has lost all their former skill in shooting and yet chooses to take the shot anyway.”

Buddy pauses. “Ah.” She lowers the blaster for a moment, looking him in the eye. “Jet, dear, I’m afraid your honesty may be a sharper shot than I ever will be.”

“Would you prefer I lie to you?”

She laughs, light and overjoyed. “Oh, certainly not, no. Never lie to me, Jet. I would not have you any other way.” With that, she returns to her targets. “Take the shot anyway,” she mutters, still smiling. “I think I’ll remember that.”

 

xvi.

Beneath the relief of having survived at all, and the self-pity caused by the exact same thing, Buddy grieves. 

It is uglier, like this, without a grave to visit or ash to scatter. All Buddy has of Vespa Ilkay is her belongings, which still lay scattered about her room, waiting. Photos; notes; messages; Vespa’s favorite knife, still on Buddy’s nightstand; Vespa’s clothes, folded meticulously and stacked on a shelf in Buddy’s closet. 

“I won’t burn it,” Buddy says to him, with a tone almost begging for an argument. “Or throw it away, and nothing you say will convince me.”

“Alright,” Jet says agreeably. 

The tension leaks out of her shoulders. “Help me clean up, would you, Jet?”

Jet does.

Slowly, between looking over Vespa’s things, choosing which to pack away, Buddy starts telling him stories. She stows the knife in a nearby drawer, talking fondly about the knife fight they had on the second time they met. She moves the clothes into a chest, says: This was what she wore on that heist on Europa; I bought this for her on Venus—with stolen money, of course, but she loved it; she danced with me wearing this on our third job. I thought we were going to live forever.

The notes and photos go in a rectangular, silver box, dear and well-loved, but not so heavy a weight, anymore. This was taken on Pluto, can you imagine? We were so young.  

 

xvii.

Buddy presses something into Jet’s palm.

Jet stares at it, going very still. “You have given me a key,” he says, voice choked.

She raises her brows lightly. “So you won’t have a reason to break the new door down, my dear,” she says, mouth curled up. “Precautions.”

“I see,” he says. He closes his fingers over it, feels the edges of it bite against his skin. “Thank you. I will not lose it.”

“I should certainly hope not!” A laugh exhales out of her. “Though really, Jet, I should have done it a long time ago.”

But despite the fact that Jet now has a key and that Buddy is doing better, the Lighthouse remains closed. For weeks and then months and then years. Buddy does not go up to the Lighthouse’s balcony, but she stays in her room for most hours of the day. 

Jet does not speak on this. He has decided that he will allow Buddy as much time as she needs, as she did for him.

Steadily, Buddy’s aim does get better. More importantly, without the direct daily exposure to radiation, her health does as well: Her appetite returns, even though now there is nothing else she can consume but alcohol; the parts of her skin that have not already suffered from the Martian sun become less ashen and regain a healthier complexion.

These are things that Jet notices, even though his friend may not acknowledge them: Buddy Aurinko laughs without pretense again. Buddy Aurinko takes interest in the future, in newer things. Buddy Aurinko lives in the Lighthouse but is no longer held down by it. 

Buddy Aurinko lives for herself.

 

xviii.

A voicemail:

“Good morning, Mister Sikuliaq. Or perhaps I should say early dawn, considering you’re smuggling medicines by the sack in Marineris at the moment. How are you? You can’t answer that right now, of course, but I do hope you’re well.

“Now that I’ve dispensed with petty pleasantries: What I’ve been meaning to say is, or rather, the reason I called was— if you’re still interested— would you like a job?

“I’ve been thinking on it for a while, now, and I’ve decided it really is about time. I’ve even got the heist planned out. I’ll not go into tedious detail about it here, of course, but we’d start with a small sale, with the bar as venue— enough for a bit of capital— and with that we might get hold of a car, and a ship, and then, well, an entire host of possibilities… 

“Five years with nothing to show for it is rather embarrassing enough, don’t you think?

“Call me back, or come home soonest, dear. I’d need a partner in crime.”

 

xix.

“I’m sorry,” Buddy says, her voice cloaked in disbelief, “he’s working for who?”

“Juno Steel is working for Ramses O’Flaherty,” Jet repeats, deadpan. 

Buddy ticks an eyebrow. He hands her the intel on his comms and she reads through it. Juno Steel’s profile is an odd record, as are most of Buddy’s prospects: The detective is suspected to have been involved in the Utgard job only half a year ago. And now he is apparently saving mutated cats and working directly for the Hyperion mayoral candidate.

“Well, that certainly… throws a wrench in the works, to say the least.”

“There is also good news.”

Dry: “If you’re this worked up about it, it must be.”

“I am,” Jet says excitedly. “The hacker you are looking for is his secretary.”

That gets her. “Really,” she says, that telltale gleam in her eye. “All this time?”

“She is very good at controlling the flow of information about her.”

“Yes, yes, you’re a fan.” Buddy waves a hand, smiling. “But that is promising. In for a cred, in for the bank account, as they say. Keep an eye on them, would you, Jet?”

The prospect of a heist has not thrilled Jet this much in years. “Of course, Buddy.”

 

xx.

The heist is flawless; the sale, of course, goes bust. 

But on the third occasion that Jet returns to the top of the Lighthouse, there is music. 

There is a beautiful, unclouded sunset; a smile on Buddy’s face bright enough to rival it; and, Jet thinks, a happy ending.

Notes:

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opens hamds. pspspspsp? kudow?

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