17: the turnover

Neither Ysh'vanna nor Avett attempt to speak with Lili after Alexei's departure. Not sincerely, anyway. Ysh'vanna hides her emotions behind a mask as she consoles the rest of the team about how she'll negotiate matters with the officials back on Therius, and that it's not Lili's fault in the slightest. It’s obvious that the former won’t work out.

Avett is a little more 'mask off.' He avoids Lili's gaze often, though the moment she takes her eyes off of him she can feel his smouldering stare on her back like a brand. The third repeat of this has him whispering to himself, "come on Avett, get mad at something else." Lili pretends not to hear. He excuses himself out of the ship at three.

It's around five in the evening when Auren invites Lili out into the hangar. He's got a bottle of green-glass wine in his hand; the label depicts a golden icon that swirls and curls into itself a thousand times over.

She says the obvious. “I thought you didn’t like drinking.”

Sitting on the asphalt with their backs against the hull of the Winnow, it’s hard for Auren to look taller than her in the moment. He gives up midway and slides the bottle over to Lili.

“You would be correct.”

She accepts it anyway. When she examines the bottle more closely, she sees the name of the wine that he bought her: Classic Gallian blue wine—blue? She tilts the bottle towards the overhead lights, and finds that the supposedly ‘blue’ liquid inside is black against the tint of the glass.

“A major export from Gallia’s Eldrakian regions,” Auren clarifies.

“You guys have blue grapes?”

He nods. “A slight discrepancy between realms, though the ‘discrepancy’ is more akin to an endemic plant. Not quite endemic anymore, however—Eldrakian grape plantations are commonplace on Therius in the present day. ”

Curious to see whether or not the wine is a true blue or a deep shade of purple, Lili twists the bottle cap off, tearing away the seal. She pours the wine out into the cap after, and sure enough, it’s blue—a dye-thick, sky-deep, midnight blue. It’s clear enough for her to see the bottom of the cap, and when she swirls it between her fingers she can see several dusty tannins suspended in the liquid.

She casts a look towards Auren. “Would you mind?"

He shakes his head. “Extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary mindsets.”

Down the hatch then. She regrets it immediately after her first sip. Not only does it sting going down, but it’s also offensively sweet to the point where she’d prefer downing an entire cup of honey.

“Your expression speaks volumes,” says Auren.

Lili tries her best to smooth her features to no avail. “Was I supposed to mix this with something?”

“Traditionally, no. However, the mass commercialisation of such an exotic product resulted in the degradation of its taste over time.” He looks at the label wistfully. “Therian wineries are Draconian owned, and often share a facility with other wine types—there is not a single Eldrakian on Therius who would care to work in such an industry. And Eldrak… cares very little for the matters of inter-realm trade. In this day and age, you would drink your Gallian wines with tea and milk.”

“You said you didn’t drink.”

“I am a first generation immigrant from Gallia. It would be a crime for me to not know my realm’s history.”

She tips the wine back into the bottle and screws the lid back on. In the distance, the hangar gates rattle open slowly, revealing a stained sky and a stretch of cotton-candy clouds. A ship taxis out from the corner and onto the runway; Lili watches it take off with nary an effort. It leaves behind a blue trail of flame as it sails into the sky, further and further, until she can no longer see where it is. At some point in time, the gate shutters down again, hard and fast enough to shatter eardrums.

The hangar deck is now completely empty, save for the Winnow.

“Was that the C ranked crew Ysh’vanna mentioned?” asks Lili.

“Yes.”

“Overnight mission?”

“They are to act as bodyguards to the environmental workers that were displaced during our prior mission.”

She toys with the dirt in her nails.

“Will we be ok?” she asks.

“We—” Auren stops himself. It’s the first time Lili’s really seen him this disgruntled.

“No?”

He coughs. “There are plenty of residential districts for Humans on Therius. The housing is free, and they will give you various job opportunities should the need for extra money arise. You will be catered for in Therius as a refugee."

"What about you?"

"I anticipate a fine and a mark on our records should Ysh'vanna fail to convince them of our innocence." Auren picks himself up from the ground. When he does, Lili can't help but notice how stilted his movements are. "I must prepare for dinner. You should not worry about me."

"Should I help?" she asks.

"Your efforts would be better spent on finding our arms specialist," he says as he heads up the stairs. "You two have gotten notably closer within the past two missions. Spend your time with him wisely."

When the doors to the Winnow slide open, Lili can hear Ysh'vanna's aggravated shouts as she negotiates her crew's circumstances with the official on the other side of the line. These shouts become muffled again once the doors reshut.

Lili really doesn't want to be a refugee on Therius. She can't imagine herself in such a place, can't foresee a future in which she's expected to sit down and live out the rest of her years in gratitory peace. If she can fight, then she should be fighting. She doesn't know what she'll do to herself if she ends up sitting in a shoddy—by Therian standards—communal prefab, where she'll be doing nothing but living. She doesn't know if it'll be easier or harder. If she'll enjoy her days of peace at all.

She doesn't get up. Instead, she pulls her knees to her chest and buries her head in her hands. She stays like that for god knows how long.

Lili supposes that she could use a drink. But one look at the bottle in her hand is enough to drag up all sorts of unpleasant memories. There might be a bar down in the Hive if she's really desperate.

"I am really desperate," she says to herself. Besides, Avett is probably there, and Auren's asked very nicely for her to go down and drag him back to the ship in time for dinner.

She leaves the bottle at the bottom of the staircase and makes for the Hive.

—

Lili finds Avett at the first bar she visits, probably because it's the only bar available. 'Finds' is a bit of a stretch—she'd asked for an Avett Ironsturm at the counter, and the bartender had given her a weird look and pointed to the stairs. Those stairs had led up to the inn rooms.

Lili knows better than to poke her nose where it doesn't belong, so she orders a fizzy drink and sips it in the corner. In the time between making the decision to come to the bar to actually arriving, she's completely swapped sides on the matter of whether or not she should be drinking tonight. If she can't get drunk, she might as well drink something she'll like the taste of.

What is she doing here, if not to drag Avett kicking and screaming back to the Winnow?

It could have been hours, maybe even days, in that little sulk corner of hers, but when Avett makes his merry way downstairs Lili feels as if she might snap inwardly. She's expecting a signature upper-lip-upturned scowl, or a rightfully deserved lashing. So it comes to her as a shock when he slaps both of his hands onto her shoulders and says, with a bounce in his voice, “We’re gonna run away.”

Lili takes a moment to respond. “Auren said dinner is ready soon.”

“Who cares what Auren thinks?” His face is flushed, though not from embarrassment. He’s clearly toed the line between buzzed and smashed a little too enthusiastically. “We’re running away. They can’t catch us if they don’t know where we are.”

He pulls away from Lili, sending her teetering on her feet. He continues, “It’d be so easy. We grab a commercial junker, I dismantle the tracker, then we fly out to New Therius or the Afflatus or somewhere shady. You could cook for us, you’ve already got years of experience with living off the grid—”

Lili follows him as he spirals out of the bar. He’s clearly riding off some sort of high, or some kind of short-lived clarity. “The authorities will come for us tomorrow,” she says.

Avett stops in front of a sign. The Hive doesn’t have the same day and night functions as the Afflatus; even though it’s seven in the evening the flood lights stay on, and the starkness of the ivory-bright corridors remain. Everything here is so corporately white. Maybe this is what’s driving him mad.

He proves her right when he says, “Then we’re going now.”

“No—no.” Try as she might, Lili can’t think of a proper reason in the moment as to why this might all be a terrible idea. “We’re having dinner now.”

Avett doesn’t care. He starts off in a random direction with a decisive stride, leaving Lili with no other decision but to keep up. No matter what she brings up—“We can’t just leave Ysh’vanna and Auren behind, we’re gonna be in so much worse trouble if we go through with this, they’re going to find out, how are we going to rent a ship without using our IDs?”—he doesn’t stop walking, doesn’t stop until he’s standing in front of a storefront that’s started to pack up and roll down their shutters for the night.

The renter is a Draconian man of short stature, and when he sees Lili he looks like he might just faint on the spot. He has to put down his sign to stop Avett from storming right through the doors.

“We’re closed, sir,” he says. “You can’t be here—”

This actually does stop Avett in his tracks. Lili is silently pleading with the boy to straighten his back and call somebody, anybody to escort Avett out of this mess, but for all she knows her glances are being taken by him as a threat. Which can’t possibly be helping at all.

“It’s an emergency, kid.” Avett lies easily to this stranger, but Lili can tell there’s panic in the way his voice has hitched. “Urgent business. Our ship broke down, and we need something to rent quick. So if you’ll excuse us.”

Avett steps past him easily. Doesn’t bother with payment either, because it’s an ‘emergency.’ At this point, Lili has given up convincing her partner otherwise. She hopes that this is all a phase, that it’ll pass once he’s gotten the ship above the clouds, and he’ll be heading back to the Hive when he’s done with himself.

She apologises to the boy as she stumbles past. He nods vaguely, as if dreaming.

Avett leaps over the counter and swipes a random cardkey off the rack. He throws it over to Lili, who juggles with it in her hands before she manages to get a hold of it. “Third ship from the left. Get to it, princess. I'm opening up the hangar."

She slaps the card against the lock panel of the corresponding ship. When Lili looks back at the entrance, she finds that the boy has already left. He’ll be contacting someone soon by the looks of it.

They’ve really dug themselves into a hole this time.

In no time flat, they’ve gone into the ship and locked the doors for good measure. Avett stands at the controls, his hands balled into fists as he looks through the navigation panels.

 "You know how to pilot, right?" asks Lili.

He grits his teeth and swipes at the panels. Lili hears a sputter from the engine room when he does, and from there she feels her stomach drop as the ship lifts from the ground.

"Of course." He keeps his eyes on the view outside his windshield. Save for a few runway lights, it's completely dark outside. Lili hopes that Avett's eyesight is enough to make up for it.

She looks at his hands. They're quivering in the air. "You’re sure?"

"It's a commercial junker. They're meant to be accessible." He releases a breath to blow his bangs out of his eyes. "Even a kid could pilot one if they wanted to."

Lili isn't satisfied with his answer. He's still trembling like a twig, and his hands aren't moving anymore. This isn't normal, and it's not like he doesn't know how to operate the navigation panel, because he'd swiped through them just fine earlier. There's something blocking him from doing anything more than turning on the engines. A mental blockade.

The boy could be back with someone any moment now. If they're planning on going ahead with their joyride they need to leave very soon. Lili can't figure out why Avett's decided to lock up now of all times; she can hear his breathing, can feel the way his chest is heaving from all of the extra panicking he's put himself through. He can't pilot jack shit. He's lied straight to Lili's face.

"Avett," she begins. "If you can't—"

"I can, ok?" His voice breaks on the last syllable, and he stops himself by slapping a hand over his mouth. He spends a few seconds like this as he tries to steady his breathing. It doesn't work.

Lili doesn't know what to do. "If you can't, it's ok."

"I can fucking pilot. I can." He braces himself against the counter. Lili can tell from his voice alone that he's started to cry. "What kind of mechanic doesn't know how to drive a commercial? I piloted a mercenary ship full of dead fucking bodies all the way back to headquarters. I know how to fucking pilot."

She freezes in place. Avett draws in a breath and sniffs.

"You have trauma," Lili says slowly.

"No, I don't."

"You do."

Avett doesn't respond to that. Maybe she can get through to him if she tries.

She takes a step towards him. "You need to breathe. Step away from the controls—"

He whirls on her, his features as fierce as a cornered animal.  "No. I. Don't. I don't have jack shit. Look at me; I'm fine. I'm not traumatized, because if I was I wouldn't be working, I would be fucking bedridden, or in a ward, or literally anywhere else but here. I'm not, I’m here, I’m an arms specialist and I’m working. So I'm fine."

She's heard those words before. He is not fine.

"Then go on." She rescinds that step forward and folds her arms. "Go ahead, I guess. Pilot your ship."

Unsurprisingly, this is exactly what he does. He turns back to the counter, and though Lili can’t see his expression she knows that there’s all sorts of shit swirling in those eyes of his. His hands hover over the panel. They hang there for a bit longer. Until he balls them into fists again. Until he slumps forward against the counter, seemingly never to stand again.

Then he screams. It’s a terrible, terrible sound—one that leaves even the ship shivering in its wake. “Fuck. Fuck! Why?”

Lili stays where she is. Maybe she shouldn’t have egged him on. He’s on the floor now, and the only thing keeping his body upright is the fact that he’s refusing to let go of the control panel. And for the first time in a while, Lili is all too aware of just how old Avett really is.

“I just want to go,” he sobs. “We can’t be here. I’ve spent my entire life working just to get here. I even came back from therapy for this, and no merc comes back from therapy, not how I did. I’m not letting some fucking backwater Human, or some red tape bullshit, or—or this—ruin my future.”

When Lili tries to move closer, Avett fixes her with an ice-cold glare. “You know things would be better if you’d just stayed in that shitty shed of yours.”

“I know.” She storms forward anyway. There’s a rattling near the entrance; no doubt it’s the boy and his authoritative figure. Lili needs to make her move now. Even if Avett is going to hate her for it.

Without hesitation, she grabs Avett by the arms.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he screeches.

“Pulling you out of the way.”

With her ether roiling and rioting against her muscles, there’s not a lot Avett can do against her except struggle in vain. He’s strong, yes—but he’s not ethereally enhanced, brutishly strong. He’s not ‘punch-through-a-ward-with-nothing-but-his-rage’ strong.

When she finally puts him up against the wall, it dawns on him regarding what she’s about to do. “I’m getting a real sense of deja vu from this situation, Lilith.”

“Tell me how to pilot the ship.”

Avett scrunches up his face.

Stubborn asshole. "Do you want to get out of here or not?"

He grits his teeth. "...Set the thrusters to manual and put it on 50%."

Lili looks down at the panels. This is all white noise to her. Which one dictates the thrust? Why would she want to tamper with the thrust power in the first place? Is there a reason why she needs to give the ship such a complicated command if it's 'just a 'commercial junker'? Shouldn't it all be streamlined already?

"The blue button on the bottom to your left, princess."

Oh, bottom left. Of course. But when she looks down in that general direction, there's a cluster of tiny boxes and numbers blinking back at her in response.

"There's a million buttons here, Avett."

"Yeah, but one of them says 'thruster' on it. You press that one, princess."

"None of these say 'thruster' on them."

"There should be. Look harder."

"You've never had to work in retail, and it shows."

"Fuck you. Look harder."

She can't physically fucking look any harder, because if she could she'd have vertically slitted eyes and a pair of swivelling cat ears. There is no thruster button. It just isn't there.

Lili moves the goalposts. In a stroke of genius, she actually manages to flick the ship back into basic mode. The panels flicker out of existence before they return as one big rectangle in the centre of the counter. There are little icons for every option; granted, she's not quite sure what the icon with the man kneeling is supposed to represent, but she knows she can at least make use of this. At least, she hopes. Where's the button that’ll make this ship fly?

Avett grumbles in the corner. "Top right. Press it, slide it forward, and you'll send us flying out of here."

"Is that a good thing?"

Her partner lifts his head just high enough to see out of the windshield. "It's a good thing if you want to knock that sanctuary enforcer right onto his ass."

Enforcer? She peers outside. There’s a Palerian man in a smartly ironed uniform, and he’s yelling all sorts of nice things at the cockpit. At least, that’s what Lili thinks he’s doing. The thick glass ensures that Lili can’t hear a single thing from him.

“He’s not going to shoot at us, right?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he pulls her down below the window. “Don’t let him see you,” he hisses.

Lili sucks in a breath through her teeth before slamming her fist into the topmost button. A slider appears; she lets it rise all the way to the right.

They’re still not moving.

She waits a bit before trying again. A bit too long. Something foul takes over her head, and she stumbles back from the counter. It’s like there’s a hand reaching inside of her skull, like someone’s taken their fingers and stuck them between her brain folds and wriggled them right through. They’ve started scratching around now—how can she feel all of this? Oh, god.

All of a sudden, it’s Avett standing next to her. He’s rolling down the windows and pointing his blaster outside. Lili can’t tell if he actually fires it, but what she does know is that the pain is gone, and that she has Avett to thank for that.

He flashes a glance at the counter before turning away again. “Auto pilot, top left. The ship’s still in manual mode, so your gear’s stuck on neutral.”

She presses that, and at last does the ship begin to teeter forward. 

They’re leaving.

They’re finally leaving.

Now it’s Lili’s turn to slump down against the counter. There’s a stupid, giddy little grin on her face as she watches the view change from machines and metals to night skies and milky ways. She releases a breath. The stars could kiss her silly, and she wouldn’t even give a damn. She’s always belittled Icarus for flying too close to the sun, but now she can see the specifics of why he’d done such a thing in the first place.

They’re free.

Avett sits down beside her. He’s close enough for her to feel his heat against her shoulders, but far enough for him to send a message. That’s ok. He can take as long as he wants, Lili thinks.

Then he shoots right back up again. “The tracker. I gotta take it out.”

Lili peers over as he rummages through his toolbelt and pulls out what appears to be a curved piece of metal. He sticks it between a gap in the counter and pries the surface off; the navigation panel automatically dulls to a soft grey.

More white noise for Lili to get confused over—or black noise, for that matter. The inside of the counter is a tidy arrangement of black wires and black boxes that mean nothing to Lili, but everything to Avett.

“Wow,” he mumbles. “Just my luck.”

“What’s wrong?”

He reaches into the counter and closes his hands around one particular box. “They’ve really upped their game since I last looked at one of these. They’ve started sticking the sonar trackers into the actual navigators, meaning if we don’t want them to catch us—”

With a grunt, Avett yanks the box clean off the wires. Sparks fly haphazardly from where he’s exposed the copper; he slams down the lid and hammers it back into place with his fist. “—We’ll have to pretty much navigate to New Therius in the dark. Shouldn't be too hard; the autopilot already had us in the right direction. I’m chucking this out the trash chute.”

When he comes back to navigation—thankfully—empty handed, he plops back down next to Lili. Same position, same distance… different demeanor.

“Why the fuck did you let me do this, Lili?” he asks.

She shrugs. “I thought it was a phase. That it’d blow over.”

Being ten kilometres above ground and having shot several warning shots at an enforcer, Lili guesses that it’s safe to say none of this will be ‘blowing over’ anytime soon. She slumps further into the ground. How she wishes that the floor would just swallow her up and spit her out into freefall.

Her next words quite literally tumble out of her. “And maybe I wanted to run away too.”

Avett breathes out hard enough to make his bangs flutter again. He’s not exasperated—instead, he’s smiling and biting back what seems to be a laugh. “Why is it that sometimes you feel every bit your age, and other times you feel… I don’t know. Fourteen?”

“What does that make you?” She gives him a lopsided grin. “Thirteen? Twelve?”

He rolls his eyes. “There’s no way you’re older than me.”

“I uh. I am.”

A snort. “Fucking get out. You’re twenty-one?”

“By four years, actually.” She holds up four fingers; Avett counts them with his eyes. “I turn twenty-four this year.”

He coughs and inches away, his ears drooping. “Now you really don’t have an excuse.”

Whatever. Lili goes back to staring at the wall in silence. They sit like that for a bit. The ground hums with energy at her shoes.

Lili is all too eager to rid the ship of that awkward void. "Do they have beds here?"

"Sleeping amenities should be on the right down that corridor. Pretty much the same layout we've got—just missing an armoury."

"Right. Right."

Thankfully, when Lili peeks into the sleeping quarters she's greeted with the delightful presence of two single beds. She flops onto the mattress, pulls out the sheets, and finds that they stick to her bare legs like cling film—these covers have not been washed in a while. At least there won't be any of that bed sharing nonsense, though when Avett steps into the room the first thing he does is—

Lili narrows her eyes. What the fuck is he doing?

He pulls his bed away from the wall, vaults over, then pushes it across so that one side presses up flush against Lili's bed.

"Wait." Lili tries to get up and stop him, but by the time she's sitting up Avett is already lying next to her with a grin that even a court jester would be jealous of. He's effectively caged her in like this.

"What's the matter? We're just two friends sharing a bed." He raises an eyebrow. "Nothing wrong with a little platonic bed sharing."

"Friends."

"Nothing more, nothing less," he says. This is coming from the guy who has no qualms about having casual sex above a bar. Who's had casual sex above a bar, for that matter, while drunk and irrationally upset. It doesn't help one bit when Avett adds, with a bit of a guttural roll to his voice, "Unless?"

Lili flips herself over and presses her face into the wall.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Look, I'll pull them apart again."

The bed frame rattles against the floor. Lili looks over her shoulder, and, lo and behold, Avett is now lying a good metre or two away from her. He's not totally against the wall, but it seems like he needs the company tonight. She supposes that she'll allow it.

"After we're done at New Therius, is there anywhere else you’d like to go?”

Lili thinks on this for a second. “The Human village.”

Avett’s silence speaks volumes.

She continues, “They’re almost defenseless out there. I want to give them any edge against the dragons that I can.”

“You’re forgetting that they’ve got an entire warehouse of firearms at their disposal.”

“Still.” She curls into her covers. They’re too thin to provide any sort of meaningful protection from the cold, and they’re certainly far too thin to protect her from Avett’s overpowering presence. “I don’t want to leave them there. Not alone. Not like that.”

For a moment, all Lili hears is the shuffle of sheets against sheets. Then the lights flick off, and she’s left to stare at the wall in complete darkness.

“Problem with that plan is they’ll know we’ll be there too.”

“There’s no way we’re that important to them, right?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Avett crawls back into his bed. Lili can feel his gaze boring into her from behind. “The world cares a whole lot more about money than you’d think.”

Lili chooses not to respond. It seems that, as usual, she’s unaware of the scope of the crime that they’ve committed. That, and Avett had taken a few shots at an enforcer earlier—the world definitely did care about things other than money. Avett just doesn’t want to admit to his blunder, and Lili doesn’t blame him for that at all. Admitting to anything would start him down on a long line of dominos, would send him spiralling down regret after regret. He would be forced to watch his carefully constructed world crumble around him, and he would be helpless to it all.

Though Lili wants badly to talk to him about the events that had occurred in the cockpit, she thinks against it. That same helplessness rests in the eye of the beholder, and they’re one misaligned conversation away from total collapse.

Lili speaks to the wall instead. “Goodnight, Avett Ironsturm.”

And of course, he’s already asleep.