Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Efreeti leads her down the hall, passing doors intermittently placed. Despite the comfortably warm temperature of the entire palace, which she now knows that she is under, the brisk pace at which she marches behind him brushes air over her now-buzzed scalp. She resists the urge to shiver or touch the much-lighter part of her head. It wouldn’t be proper form in front of a superior.

The man leading her immediately comes to a halt at a door to her left. “You have bunk 322. Report in two hours to the hall for debriefing.”

She nods, and he walks away.

She opens the door in front of her, marked Barracks 3, with her neatly folded uniform in her hands. Her forearm still aches a little bit from her new tattoo on her wrist. She glances down at it. Right now, it’s all red and puffy, but she knows what it will say in the months to come—her new identity. S-Mechanic-13.

Since she’s not fond of Dani anymore (Ugh, the name feels wrong just thinking about it—Dani doesn’t go here), she figures she can go by S-Mechanic-13. Maybe a shortened version of that. She’ll figure it out later.

The barracks are large and rectangular, maybe a quarter full of Genasi and Azer in quiet conversation with each other. All eyes turn to her as she walks in, a sea of reds, oranges, and blacks.

She glances at her arm again, this time looking at the skin—the vibrant blue that she has never seen another creature of fire have. She knows that it was a freak accident, in a fight of some kind, but she doesn’t remember a lot of the specifics.

It doesn't really matter how she got this way, she guesses. A blue flame burns hotter than all the others, and she’ll prove it to them. Could she go by the Blue Flame? Nah, not right.

Eventually, the eyes slide off of her, going back to whatever they were doing. A bit of the unease in her stomach settles. She walks in between the rows—five, of ten bunks each. The numbering system is starting to work itself out in her head. There must be 100 recruits in each room, which is why this is the third barracks. She can't figure out where 13 fits into it, though—is it just another way to mark her out?

She doesn’t want to be singled out, she realizes. It's a suffocating feeling forced upon her, crushing her down. She’d much prefer to be faceless—part of a whole being, one part of a moving-breathing crowd. Otherwise, something bad will happen. She's not sure what, and she's not inclined to ponder it.

That's why she's glad the Illuminated took her in. A surge of pride and Atka Ignari make her smile. Out on the streets, you can’t really rely on anyone but yourself, and she thinks that may have been the worst part. She ignores the growing unease in her gut (this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong); she's just nervous about starting. Here, she will be fed and will serve to protect the great City of Brass. Here, the others are just like her—just one part of the best unit.

She counts each bunk as she passes it, noting the numbers carved into the side. 318, 320—she stops as she reaches the one marked 322 in dark lettering.

“Woah, you must be a new recruit.” A voice comes from the bottom bed of the bunk, and she sees an orange-colored fire genasi laying there, legs crossed and hands folded back beneath his head, which she must not have noticed before. "Definitely, I haven’t seen you around before. Hey, do you happen to be three-two-two?” He asks, but before she can answer, he just keeps going. “I’ve been waiting for you for ages, man! Finally, I got a bunkmate! I’m three-two-one, but you can call me twenty-one.”

She hesitates as he sticks his hand towards her through the railing of the bunk bed, noting the tattoo on the inside of his wrist: S-Lum-321. Hm, that must be  where he gets his name from.

“Mechanic-13” She responds, keeping her voice clipped and professional, shaking the awkwardly held hand. “Mech for short.” Yeah, that sounds good. Not right, but good. She’ll get used to it.

“Oh, a mechanic? Figures, you seem special enough for it.” Mech’s gut twists. Does she have to be special? “There’s only one of you for every like.. thirty of us? You’ll probably get more details in your debrief—" Oh joy, she's a minority too,"—but yeah, it’s pretty cool. Welcome to barracks three, bunkmate, and welcome to the project.”

“Uh- thanks?” She shrugs, then climbs up to her assigned bed.

It’s mostly bare, with the semi-soft mattress having a single pillow on one end. She’s not sure what exactly to do, so she ends up lying down, staring at the ceiling above her.

“So, what do we do here?” Mech asks after a while.

“We wait, mostly. I got here with ten others, like, a week ago. You’re the only one who’s come in since. The whole barracks has to fill up before we start actually training.”

“Training for what?”

“For the project?”

“What’s the project?”

"Oh, right. We’re all here to train for a secret project. But I’ll let you in on it.” Mech looks over the side of the bunk as Twenty-One says this. The knowing grin he wears reminds her of someone. A name better left unsaid and unknown. Someone Dani knew, and Mech isn’t Dani anymore. “We’re working on a spelljammer.”

The thought should excite her more, but for some reason, it doesn’t. She nods, before laying back down.

“Oh, okay then.” He says, below her, “Well, I think it’s really cool. The debriefing makes it sound really cool. You’ll like it.”

"Sure, I will.” Mech nods, tone dry.

She tries to stave off the emptiness that suddenly washes over her for some reason; it turns to numbness just as quick.

She stares up at the ceiling, trying to make herself glad again that she’s been taken in by the Illuminated and that she has a project to work on. She shouldn’t feel like this about such good news.

Atka Ignari, she repeats to herself, feeling the dedication squeeze her heart at the words. All Enemies Shall Burn.

_-_-_

It’s a quiet day—well, as quiet as it gets in the heap—when Roy finally gets fed up with the ship that’s been docked for months now at the edge of the Heap.

The charred hull, the way gashes run into the side of the wood still creak in the heat. It’s going to drive him mad.

Sure, it was banged up when Dani first brought it here—worse than this, Oto was going to scrap it—but at least then it was being worked on, not floating like some hunk-of-junk.

He’s not sure why Oto has let it sit for so long. Actually, no, Roy can figure out his reasons. Beneath all the walls his boss puts up, if there was one person that he would have ever cared about—anyone who Oto could possibly even miss—it'd be Dani. With her gone, the ship is all that's left. Her last project. The thing that killed her. The thing that killed Egan. He wonders if Oto has guilt about sending her into hell or if he rationalized all of that away, like he does with everything else.

Y'know, before Dani died, Roy hated this ship for a long time. Hated it the minute Oto said she could fix it up, and he hated it the minute she flew off on it for the first time. Hated it when it took Egan away. Hated it eveytime Dani would come back different and act like nothing was wrong with that. Hated when it came back without her. But where did that hate get the both of them? Stuck alone, the last one left, rotting in the Heap.

He kinda just feels bad for it now, honestly.

...and if projecting his feelings on a broken ship isn't a summary of his current mental state, he doesn't know what is.

Dani would hate to see it like this—a project abandoned. She never abandoned a project. Maybe put it down for a while, but he can't name one time she set her mind to something that she didn't eventually finish. Knowing how upset she'd be makes him sadder than he thought it would. But what could he do about it? If Dani were here, she'd probably tell him something along the lines of So fix it up, idiot!

He'd have to remind her that he's awful at being a mechanic; he's not smart enough to fix up a ship. She’d know this, of course, but it feels like he’d have to remind her.

In response, she’d say, If you aren’t going to, who will? as if that would make him feel more confident in himself.

At this point in the conversation, Egan would come up behind them both, slap Roy on the back, and say something sappy and inspirational, an I believe in you! or You got this!

And Roy would roll his eyes, and they’d all go get a hoagie or something, and everything would be great.

Except Dani and Egan are dead, so they can’t say that, and he has the feeling that if he went out to eat, he’d barely be able to finish half of a meal.

Which leaves him and the ship, the Per Aspera, alone in the scrapyard once again. Maybe he will do something about it, after all.

Now a man on a mission, he makes swift steps towards Oto's office, making sure he gets there before he has the chance to back out. He tries to channel his inner Dani. What’s the worst thing he can do? Say no?

The door to the Otos Office is closed, like always, and Roy hesitates for a moment before knocking.

There are a lot worse things he can do than say no, who is he kidding? Stable employment is hard to come by, especially for someone like him—nope, he’s focusing. For Dani and Egan, this is going to be His Project. He knocks a few times, trying to keep his heart rate under control.

“Come in.” He hears Oto call from inside, and when he enters, the older man looks up at him expectantly, maybe a little annoyed. “What do you need, Roy?”

“You need to do something about the Per Aspera.” Roy starts, inwardly cringing. Bad start, this is going awful.

Oto is clearly surprised with the quick, aggressive tone as well, but he doesn’t say anything, so Roy keeps talking. “You know, as well as I do, it would kill Dani all over again to see that ship rotting there for months like you’ve let it. So either do what you were going to, and tear it up for scrap, or you let me fix it and get its crew back on there. It’s your choice, Oto, but please, just choose.”

The businessman sets down his stack of papers. “And why would you fix it up, boy? Why would I allow such a doomed venture?” Oto replies in his usual condescending tone, but Roy’s just too sick of it at this point to back down.

“If I don’t, then that ship, the last thing we both have of Dani, is useless. Everything she worked for is gone. I’d rather try to keep her memory alive than do nothing. I-“

“Okay.” Oto interrupts him. “Fine. You want to fix up that ship? Be my guest. But you do it on your own time, and I actually run the jobs on it this time. Do you understand me?”

Roy can’t believe it. That worked? Oto caved, Roy's fixing up this ship and has a job? He nods quickly. “Yes! Thank you, uncle Oto! I won’t let you down!” He dashes out of the office before Oto can say he was just joking or made a mistake.

He runs and runs until he reaches the ship, then has to stop to catch his breath, one hand on the bow of the Per Aspera as he leans against it.

His project now. The thought fills him with so much excitement that he thinks he may be vibrating. His.

Steadying himself, he goes to board. Surely Oto wouldn’t mind one check-over on the Heaps time, right?

The deck isn’t as bad as the hull, though a fine layer of ash has settled over the complete surface, leaving the glass bubble covered in grime. Roy narrows his eyes at the suspiciously person-shaped hole in the glass behind the pilot's seat but doesn’t investigate further.

The stairs creak and ache as he travels down them, passing door after door in the hallway below.

He doesn’t realize that he’s been beelining to the engine room out of habit until he stops in front of the door.

The few times he’s been on the ship before, never more than a few hours at a time, he’s ended up here. When it was being fixed up the first time, he and Egan used to joke that it was Dani’s domain. She’d spend straight days in here if one of them didn’t drag her away to sleep or do another job. Sometimes, he’d bring her something to eat or drink. He wonders if she left it much.

The door is oddly soundless while opening, giving way to the familiar room, empty as all the rest. One of the workbenches catches his eye, a stool tipped over beside it. He rights it before brushing the dust off of the papers and plans that rest on it.

It’s times like these that he wishes Dani had legible handwriting, Roy can’t read this at all!

A faint buzzing behind his head makes him turn, and he catches sight of a vibrating metal... something or another flying towards him very quickly, just in enough time to duck out of the way.

As he sidesteps the projectile, it rounds around in the air and comes at him again. Its surpisingly easy to snatch out of the air, and when it stops buzzing in Roy's hands, he can finally see its a small, metal wasp. He swears it's glaring at him, despite not having a very expressive face.

"Uh, hi?" he greets it. Could this be an old project from Danis? It certainly looks like a smaller homunclus—has it been alone on the ship this whole time? Speaking of Homunculi-

Roy takes another look around the room, and yep, Dani's cat is motionless on top of the engine. Part of its head is on the floor next to it. Another part of Roy's heart dies at the sight. "Have you been here all by yourself?" he asks the wasp, reaching down to pick up the piece of the other homunclus. He hesitates as the wasp seems to get agitated and start buzzing, trying to escape from Roy's grip. He moves his hand away, and the angry buzzing stops.

"Don't worry, little guy. We can both be the last ones left." He holds the wasp in front of his face before loosening his grip, letting it slowly fly around the room.

Soon, when the sun dims and the sky turns the deep red of night, he'll be back. Right now, Oto probably has something for him to move around.

_-_-_

The edge of the Rookery is no place for someone like her, Mech thinks. The seething pit of corruption and filth in the heart of such a noble and opulent city like hers… it’s wrong. Unnatural, even. A part of her wishes that she could just gather all of the Illuminated and lay waste to the ugly spot.

“Oh, come on, cheer up!” Twenty-One elbows her from where he walks behind her. He’s far too energetic for this early in the morning. “Last patrol, and then think—a spelljammer, out on the astral sea, seeing the planescape in all its glory!”

Mech narrows her eyes, glancing around. “Keep your voice down! You know that’s confidential.” She hisses, but the annoying grin on his face just grows wider.

“Don’t tell me Mechanic-Thirteen, who never hesitates to correct me on planes, isn’t excited to go see them?”

It takes her a few moments to realize what he’s referring to. “Okay, first off, I’m not even sure how you heard that the Gith Lich Queen kidnaps artificers and keeps them in her floating dead god-“

“Where else would have Mechanic-Seven gone?”

“Literally anywhere but Tu’unarath, I promise you. They only keep-“ Mech cuts herself off as a familiar, panicked, choking sensation squeezes inside her chest cavity. She refuses to acknowledge it, just gripping the longsword at her side a bit tighter.

“What? They only keep what?”

“Just- Nevermind. Forget I said anything.” Robots is a stupid answer. How would she know that? She doesn’t like thinking about it. This part of her brain, the one called Dani, has a lot of knowledge, but Mech knows she can’t trust any of what she gets from there. It feels wrong—a dark spot on an otherwise pristine Illuminated soldier. It’d fit well in the Rookery.

She turns her head back to see Twenty-One staring at his feet. She feels a little bit guilty and opens her mouth to say something.

The train of thought leading up to that instantly derails as a purple blur runs past the two of them, crossing the boundary between the city and the Rookery. It’s gone for a few seconds before another patrol of Illuminated reaches the two of them, all three heaving and panting. She recognizes one of them: Four-Zero-Zero. She tried to fight Three-Two-Zero when she first came to training.

“What’s this?” She snaps at the three breathless soldiers. She swears, if they let a criminal get away--

“A… fast… criminal.” One of the ones she doesn’t know pants. These idiots! “Purple… horns… has… a… strange weapon.” He continues, holding up his arm. Mech needs to take a step back as she beholds the withered limb, dark lines running through it. Necrotic energy, for sure- clearly dangerous. It brings the terribly familiar feeling back.

Oh, she’s going to have to go into the Rookery to clean up Four-Zero-Zeroes mess, isn’t she?

Right on cue, Twenty-One jumps in. “Mech, we saw which way they went, we gotta go!” He pulls her arm away from the three weaklings (she’s reporting them later, without a doubt, if she lives through the plunge into the Rookery) and into the streets where no good or loyal Illuminated should go.

It’s an immediate change—the stones of the street turn a jet black, and the stench of filth threatens to choke her.

“If we get killed in here, I’m going to kill you.” She whispers, keeping her voice low.

“Just search that alleyway—don't attack anyone, and you won’t get attacked. People in here have a whole system for when Illuminated come around.” Twenty-One rolls his eyes as Mech narrows hers. How would he know that? She needs to ask him about that later. He may be her best friend, but her loyalty belongs to the Palace of the Sun and Moon first and foremost. “What, don’t look at me like that! Just go search for the guy.” He lets go of her and disappears into his own alleyway.

His odd comments have only made her wariness of the area worse. Various hooded tieflings and other genasi stare at her, all dressed up in her shiny uniform. It feels like a threat. She needs to get out of here as soon as they find… whatever weapon did that. She peers into the nearest alleyway.

Mandy stares back at her, their back pressed against the stone wall at the end of the alley.

Mech blinks, a very wrong sense of familiarity rising from the empty part of her chest. She knows (no, that’s wrong—Dani knew, and Dani is dead now) this tiefling, knows the dark scar on their cheek and the sleeve of tattoos on one arm.

The purple tiefling shifts, their eyes never leaving her. A glint reflecting firelight at their hip catches Mechs eye, revealimg a gleaming scale set into a weapon- a gun. Mech would bet a week of rations on that being the weapon she’s supposed to be looking for. She should move, do something, or arrest them.

“Hey, Mech! Anything?” Twenty-One calls from somewhere behind her, but her eyes stay locked with the mercenary. They look... scared? Upset? Betrayed? It’s a Wrong look on their face.

Two separate feelings, unable to be named, fight a battle that seems to take hours in her mind. She can’t move, can’t breathe, and can’t decide or do anything.

Despite everything she knows, everything she’s been taught, despite everything she believes or feels, she finds herself turning around slowly. There are a few facts she knows about this situation.

1. If she were to turn in Mandy the criminal, they would surely be punished.
2. The punishment for assaulting an Illuminated officer and then fleeing the scene would surely be severe, probably an execution. Maybe a public one.
3. If Mandy the criminal were to be killed, they could surely never go back home.

Mech doesn’t understand why that last fact upsets her so much. It’s rare that she feels so emotional about any fact, and when she does, she only has one person to blame.

It’s almost like the ghost of Dani is possessing her, forcing her to take slow, methodical steps away from Mandy the criminal, no matter how hard Mech tries to call out for an arrest or assistance. Second after second, step after step, Dani walks her out of the alleyway, right to where Twenty-One is searching behind a rubbish bin that is also currently on fire.

“We’re leaving.” She snaps at him, picking up her own pace. She has to run, to get out of here. The Rookery is no place for someone like Mech, and if she stays here a moment longer, the feeling of Dani will just get stronger.

It’s wrong. Dani is dead, forgotten, and useless. She doesn’t deserve to live in Mechs mind like this.

“What? But-“

“I said, we’re leaving. Now.”

“What-“

“Three-Two-One, come with me now or so help me; you’re going to get left and reported alongside the rest of them.”

“Reported? For what?

“Endangering an officer, now get moving” Mech grabs him by the collar of his uniform and shoves him forward, to make him start walking.

Reporting her bunkmate probably wouldn’t help her at all, but she’s not above threatening to abuse her authority to make that decision for him. This place isn’t safe, no matter what he says or thinks.

The two of them march in silence past Four-Zero-Zero and her patrolmates. Mech gives them a nasty glare at the one nursing his withered hand, trying to kill the part of her grateful for their incompetence.

“Mech?” Twenty-One asks after a few minutes of walking in the empty streets of the outer Plume, “Can I ask you something personal?”

“I’m really not in the mood right now, Twenty-One.” She responds, almost wincing at the acid in her own tone. She’s only partially mad at him, but he’s the only one she can really take it out on, which leads to worse than he deserves.

He doesn’t look back at her, but stops walking so suddenly she nearly runs into him. “Please?” He asks again, and his voice is too vulnerable for her not to cave. She needs to work on that.

“Fine. What is it?”

He hesitates a moment before speaking, “I know you said you were a nobody before, everybody was, so was I-“ he pauses, turning to her as if he expects her to interrupt. She doesn’t. “-but do you ever feel like, I dunno, you’re being haunted by who you were before? Like they’re still there in your head?”

His exact wording makes her sure he knows exactly what happened. Suddenly, she’s more afraid than she has been all night. How much does he know? Will he report her for letting Mandy the criminal go? Does he plan to blackmail her? No, he’s not someone who would use blackmail.

“How in the hells do you know about that?” She hisses, her hand subconsciously drifting to her longsword. She wouldn’t be able to bring herself to hurt or kill another Illuminated, but knowing a weapon is close by brings her a minuscule amount of comfort.

“Woah, woah, woah! Wait, you do?” He sticks his hands up in response to her aggression. “I mean, me too! It’s awful, right?”

Oh. He doesn’t know. That’s… a relief, yeah. She nods. It really is awful. He continues, “I just—nevermind. It’s not fun to talk about anyway.” Various conflicting emotions cross his face, but she’s not interested in prying. She’s not sure how she feels about her bunkmate also having a dead street kid in his head. On one hand, she’s not the only one. That’s an automatic positive. But at the same time, it’s still a problem, one too uncomfortable to address.

“Let’s just get back.” Mech nods, pushing him along, all the way back home to the barracks, the dawn coming quickly.

_-_-_

Leaving at dawn was a bad idea, Roy realizes as the crimson night starts fading away from the edges of the sky.

He still can’t believe he’s leaving. It’s crazy to think about. He’s left Brass maybe once(?) before, and now he’s going to be living outside the plane of fire itself full-time.

Tick, the little clockwork wasp, buzzes on his shoulder, as if it’s angry to have woken up so early as well. Roy knows it doesn’t sleep, but it’s a funny thought.

Most of the heap is asleep, Roy having said his goodbyes the night before. The heap opens late in the morning for a reason, after all.

On the deck, a giant metal spider slowly stretches out each of her long legs. The blood-red eyes and blade-sharp edges would scare him if he didn’t know Lula was such a softie when she wasn’t killing anything.

He’s really glad Cressida agreed to join him. It’ll make finding the old crew of the Per Aspera much easier now that he has someone to track them with. The three-thousand gold he found in one of the rooms probably helped, but he’s glad she agreed either way. She’s been staying in one of the rooms, the empty one with only the hammock in it, for the last few days while he’s been putting the finishing touches on his ship. It’s now finally in ship-shape (ha) and ready to go.

He heads down to the heaps dock, almost ready to say goodbye to what’s been his home for the last... forever. He turns the inside of his wrist to see the updated tattoo that Sadie did for him almost a month ago, bearing Egan and Dani’s names. It’s easy to tell that they wrote the script themselves; it was easy to find Egans signature, with the half-finished stories in their old room all bearing his name in some way or another. Dani was harder to get. In all her plans, blueprints, and notes, he only found one with her name—a note on what he’s pretty sure was a bomb of some kind: “Dani, Do Not Touch -Dani”

With their names written on his arm, it feels to Roy like he’s taking a part of them with him—keeping a part of them alive.

Smiling softly, he goes to undo the knots holding the Per Aspera to the docks when he hears the telltale creak of the front gate of the Heap open and shut. He turns around to see Mandy (who else would it be, honestly?) making their way towards him. As they get closer, he can make out the sweat on their forehead- they ran here? Probably a while too; they’re pretty fit.

“Hey?” Roy greets.

“Roy, you have to listen to me—whatever the previous crew told you about what happened to Dani, it was a lie.” Their tone is uncharacteristically frantic.

“What?” He’s confused. Whatever he was subconsciously expecting them to say, that wasn’t it.

“You heard me—Dani didn’t die on that job in Bator.”

A beat passes.

“What are you saying, Mandy?”

“Do you know what this is, Roy?” They pull something from their belt, holding it out to him. He takes it, recognizing the gun that Finbar gave to Dani almost a year ago, but now it has some type of gem built into the hilt.

“This is Dani’s gun.” He thinks aloud. “Where did you get this?”

“It was in the Illuminateds trash heap.”

Everything that Roy thinks he knows about how he lost his sister instantly implodes in his mind.

“What?”

“You heard me, Roy. The Illuminated threw this away.”

“And you’re telling me this now?”

“I wasn’t completely sure of it until now, okay?”

“And what made you finally sure?”

“Forget it. Listen, if that crew lied to you about how Dani died, don’t go and search them out. Find a new crew. You can’t trust that one anymore.”

Roy isn’t sure what to think. “I can’t *not* search for answers, and that crew has them.” He decides, and Mandy grabs the gun back from him.

“You’re going to regret it.” They sneer. Something else is upsetting them, but Roy can’t figure out what. “When you-“

“Aren’t we ready to go?” Cressida’s voice comes from behind Roy, cutting the tense conversation in half. Mandy storms off, and Roy is left feeling confused and a bit betrayed. He needs to think about this. He’s not sure what to think about this.

“Yeah. Yeah, we’re ready.” He nods, undoing the knots with shaky hands, then climbs aboard and takes the helm. He slowly pilots it up to where he knows the portal to the astral sea is, and the excitement he had been feeling is completely extinguished by the bombshell that just got dropped on him.

He needs to find out what happened to Dani, now that it’s suddenly become a mystery to him.

Next stop, Sigil.

_-_-_

The stars are beautiful.

Looking up at them invokes a wonder that Mech has never really experienced before, emptying her thoughts as she gazes, relying on her grip on the ship's rails to keep her steady. The astral plane is no Brass, but it does win the award of her second-favorite plane of existence. Don’t count the fact that she’s only ever been to two.

For just a minute, when it's just her, the stars, and the ship underneath her boots, everything feels right.

Still, looking up at the pinpricks of light makes her feel homesick, but when she tries to think of Brass to make herself feel better, she realizes that it’s not the city that she’s missing. Something, somewhere else. She doesn’t like it.

The moment soured, she looks down at her hands, blue smudged by various oils she hasn’t bothered to clean up yet. The engines of the Illuminated warship, the Ignari, have been running excellently under the care of her and the other mechanics who made it through basic. Not everyone did, so three out of twenty bunks in the engine rooms lie empty. Twenty quit, Seventeen lost a hand, and Seven just… disappeared one night. Mech is very disappointed and disgusted with Twenty and Seven in particular. They had everything with the Illuminated, and decided to just throw that away? It’s not like they had anything to go back to—no one was anyone before they were assigned to the crew of the Ignari.

“So I had an idea-“

“By the Palace!” Mech swings at the voice behind her in surprise, only for her fist to be caught by none other than her Ex-Bunkmate. “Twenty-One, you know not to startle me!”

“Sorry! Sorry! I forgot.” Mech looks him up and down. For some reason, she was expecting… someone else. He’s a sight to behold, that’s for sure, wearing two layers of uniform under the blanket he’s wrapped up in, while also holding what seems to be a bottle of liquor in one hand. “How are you not freezing to death?

“It’s not that bad, you’re just being a big baby about it.”

“Have you noticed you’re the only one on deck?” He points out. She takes a visual sweep of the ship, and sure enough, they’re alone. “Yeah, everyone is keeping warm downstairs.”

“It’s been a week, we’ve had plenty of time to get used to the cold.”

“Right, right, keep telling yourself that. Anyway- I had an idea!” This should be good. Twenty-Ones ideas back in the barracks were either genius or the dumbest things she’s ever heard.

“Does it involve the alcohol you’re casually carrying around?”

“Yes! You’ve guessed it!” He holds the bottle up, before lowering his voice, despite there being no others around. “So I was thinking about the thing we talked about on our last patrol together.” Nope, Mech doesn’t want to talk about that night at all, “And I had an idea on how to fix it.”

“Fix it?”

“Yeah. The thought is- when the before-us version of us became the now-us version of us, we didn’t give them any proper memorial or send-off.” He pauses, looking to her for approval, but she just crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow, wanting to hear the rest. “So- if we do it now, maybe their ghosts will stop haunting us.”

Mech thinks about this. It’s a stretch, surely, but fighting Dani has only gotten worse since that last patrol, not better. She’s willing to try anything. “And where does the booze come into this?”

“Well, I don’t think we have any of their stuff to burn, and I’m definitely not setting myself on fire, that’s counterproductive, so I figured a toast would suffice.”

“You know what? Fair enough. Let’s get this over with.” Mech finally nods, and Twenty-One’s face lights up, producing two shot glasses from the folds of the blanket and setting them on the banister. It’s barely wide enough for them to fit on it, and they shake as he slowly pours the bright orange alcohol into them. Mech grabs the one closest to her as Twenty-One clears his throat.

“We are gathered here to remember and put to rest to-“ he pauses. “What was her name?”

Mech has to hesitate. She knows that the question isn’t invasive, but somehow it feels exposing. “Dani. Her name was Dani.”

“Put to rest Dani and Rhett. Insignificant in life, but in death, the use of who they are now is all the purpose they could hope for.”

“When did you become a poet?” Mech is honestly a little impressed. She's never seen him speak very eloquently.

“Consider it a final memorial,” he grins at her. “As I was saying- to Dani and Rhett! Dumb street kids, the both of them.” Mech finds herself giving a breathless laugh as he continues. “Let’s hope that putting them to rest will get them to leave us alone”

“Dead, Buried, and Forgotten, as they should be.” She agrees before raising her own glass. “And to us! To Mechanic-Thirteen and Three-Two-One. Better than Dani and Rhett ever could be.”

The two of them click their glasses together before downing the drink.

She takes a deep breath, hoping that maybe one of Twenty-One's crazy ideas might actually work this time.

Goodbye, Dani, she thinks to herself, I, for one, am not going to miss you.