#more of that 'I've had to do things you wouldn't forgive me for Warren' happening in 'firefly' oops

[artdecosupernova-writing]

Word Prompt

Word: Call WIP: Darkspace Portent Timeline: sometime in M31 CW: none Word Count: 968 Additional Notes: I want it to be known that this would never happen in canon I’m just suffering a lot right now lol (all of which is coincidentally still true)

***

Warren slapped the side of his helmet in the midst of a vicious firefight, peering through the augmented sight provided by the tech in his visor. He took out two venevans with one shot, inhaling deep as the accuracy of his aim required him to temporarily cease breathing. "Yeah, what?!"

The ringing in his ears stopped, replaced by a quiet voice on the other end of the comm. "I'm aware this isn't the best time..."

Ducking behind a shuttle, Warren motioned for two of his teammates to transition to cover closer to the base. "No, Thrive, this is literally the best time for any conversation. Let me just ask the venevans to stop shooting for two seconds."

"Warren, I need to discuss something serious with you."

"That sounds like a 'we need to talk' kinda talk." Warren leaned out of cover to line his sight with a sniper perched high above the fray in a tower, unaware that he had them within the crosshairs of his rifle. "Can this wait, like, three hours at least?"

"I…believe it would be best for both of us emotionally if we were to terminate our relationship. I'm writing Ommy to apply for a divorce, Warren."

A flash of paralysis snatched Warren of his focus and the entire planet and its inhabitants disappeared from around him. He frowned, somewhat cognizant of the fact that the sniper's laser had trained itself directly at the center of his chest plate, but he had no wherewithal to jump out of the way before the shot exploded under his chin and sent him flying back into the bushes.

"Cougar!" someone shouted.

Warren didn't hear that. He gasped, the wind knocked out of him upon landing, and he stared up at the starry sky with nothing short of unadulterated shock. "Wh—"

"We'll talk more when you get back to Tournaltis," Thrive said. "I would have waited to tell you, but I didn't want you to hear this from anyone else, and I'm afraid I'll be off-world on an assignment by the time you're home."

"Thrive," Warren wheezed, rolling onto his side, watching the sniper fall out of their tower and another two of his teammates break away from the fight to sprint in his direction. "Wait…what d'you..."

"Forgive me for my abruptness, but—"

"No..." Warren let Mercury pull him to his feet, watching him and saying something he couldn't hear. His head spun and dizziness faltered his balance. "Is this…is this a joke?"

There was a pause on the other end. "I wish it was."

"No, it's a joke," Warren waved Mercury away and stumbled over to the shuttle again, lifting the door to crawl inside. "This is a shitty joke, and it's not fucking funny, Thrive!"

"I love you incredibly," Thrive murmured into the comm. "I love you infinitely. But we both know you would be unhappy. I wouldn't have time for you and I would make you desperately unhappy for the rest of your life."

Warren's throat threatened to close and he glanced around the small interior of the sound-proof shuttle for something, anything to hold onto to prove he was in a hellscape he didn't ask for. "This is the worst Emmuli construct yet..."

"You know this is real. You know I'm right."

"Hey," Warren muttered, crouching and removing his helmet to rub his hands frantically over his hair. "Hey. No, just…look. Listen, don't do this, we can talk about this. All I've ever wanted was to talk. We can work this out, we've always worked things out before!"

"I don't have time," Thrive said at length. "You can stay in the capital house if you wish…I have no intention of ejecting you from our home unless that's what you want."

"Bastard," Warren hissed. He could hear it in Thrive's voice, though, the pain it caused him too. He knew he was right. He'd dreaded it for months but he didn't think it would happen like this. "How dare you break my fucking heart after I gave up my life for you."

Thrive didn't respond at first. "You're right. I don't expect to be forgiven."

The muffled thuds of venevan rifle fire against the mostly impervious exterior of the shuttle forced Warren to blink back his tears. "Please don't leave me. I…I can't do this without you, I can't keep going without you, please don't do this..."

"You are stronger than you would ever know, Warren. I've told you before and I'll tell you a thousand times."

The rest of the conversation was a blur. He said some other things and Thrive replied in that purposefully detached way. Warren went back out to fight, and their talk was over. Days later on Tournaltis, he quietly packed up his things and made a permanent move onto the Node.

They saw each other in passing in their separate lives but never spoke. Warren mourned for a whole year. Still occasionally talked to Gouna and Corin and the others, occasionally found himself waking up next to a passed-out Guetry until the frequency of such occasions turned into normalcy and they chose to pursue a curious relationship.

But Thrive never bounced back. Part of him had broken, and watching Warren start his healing process with someone else kept his own wounds open and raw. But he was glad Warren could be happy again. He'd accomplished what he'd intended after all.

He was invited to their wedding several years later. Not exactly a wedding, but a ceremony. A human one. Only the Ganymede crew plus Mercury and his sister, and the Sympas were welcome to come other than him.

Sitting alone in a dark office on Tournaltis, watching the sun set on a rainy evening, the waves of the distant ocean chopping the surf, Thrive declined to go.

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

Find the Word Tag Game

(I Feel Weird Edition)

(tw: violence)

tagged by: @sleepyowlwrites!! my words: blue, sky, dark, night, firefly, garden tagging: @sleepyowlwrites, @drippingmoon, @ashen-crest, @drabbleitout, @zmwrites, anyone who wants to, and the 42 filter apps I downloaded for selfies because I have a terrible time with my face and as long as it’s obvious why not lean into it ykwim your words: weak, warm, watch, water, wall, wince

blue (Rebirth)—

"It'll be best to take everything you have," Thrive said over his shoulder, following Calen back into the aircraft. "Luckily for you, you've been living light for a long time."

Warren entered his room a few minutes later, hopping into the shower and shaving before tucking his Earth possessions into his suitcase and his Tournaltis possessions in the gray bag. He spotted the envelope sitting on his marble dresser under a large blue geode moments after slipping on a shirt and a pair of jeans.

He slid the envelope out from under the rock, ready to toss it into his suitcase, but he stopped short when the flap dropped open. He knew Thrive had read the letter, but he expected it to have been resealed as if it had never been touched.

A strange image crossed his mind as he eyed the carefully broken seal. He envisioned Thrive opening it with trembling hands, sitting alone in a bare room, back against a half-finished wall as he fought to pull himself away from a wave of panic. He could practically see the look of anguish contorting his face, could almost feel how close he was to throwing in the towel.

sky (Aurora)—

Lilori escorted Warren to Edwa Falls, crowded into a shuttle with Genni and Guetry, whom he'd named to stand with him. Guetry fussed over Warren's outfit like a parent, smoothing out the lapels of his jacket, making sure he didn't sit in a way that would crease the pewter velveteen fabric of his pants. Even as they landed, Guetry put some finishing touches on his hair and the smoky kohl he'd insisted he wear.

"Knock it off, Get," Genni finally said when the shuttle opened. "You're gonna ruin it."

Lilori stepped out of the shuttle first. "This is Edwa Falls. I hope it is to your liking."

When Warren joined them and the siblings, he gazed around with wide eyes at the cliff overlooking miles and miles of lush blue foliage leading to a misty mountain range in the distance. Colossal fungi and ferns as big as a Morrite shaded the area from the sun, curled over the flat rock like giant umbrellas. Framed in the background ran a waterfall, sparkling and glittering with rainbows cascading from the spray, and in the sky arced two thick bands of pearlescent white, silk ribbon rings holding the planet together.

"The rest of the guests should already be here," Lilori said. "We made sure they were ready before fetching you."

dark (Meridian)—

Warren stood by the door of the med fac, hands in the pockets of his jeans as he watched Thrive's vitals monitors blip above the head of the bed. He'd stood there for long enough that everyone else on the ship had gone to sleep, and as he continued to stand and watch, he could feel the tendrils of exhaustion beginning to wrap themselves around his brain and attempt to coax him down with them.

The bandages around Thrive's chest hiding a gaping wound, the dark circles around his eyes, the contusions all along his torso from being hooked up to the cables and tubes in the temple...such vulnerability was a strange costume Warren wasn't sure he could handle.

Thrive's eyes opened with difficulty and found Warren. His exhaustion and pain palpable, it only just hid away the immense disappointment present in his stare since departing Meridian.

"Gotta get home, get that ——— out of you," Warren said. "You need your abilities back."

Heaving a tortured sigh, Thrive let a little more of that disappointment peek through. "Help me understand."

"I'm tired." Warren let the words hang in the air, attaching a half-hearted shrug to them. "I got scared. What do you want me to say?"

"Nobody deserves to die for me."

"No. And you don't deserve to die for them."

night (Rebirth)—

Warren spotted Osillo in the crowd some time later, and he stopped mid-dance to hit Guetry on the chest in order to pull his attention away from the third drink of the night.

"Yeah?" Guetry yelled over the music and the sheer volume of people. He took the metal cigarette from his mouth, exhaling a distinct citrusy scent as he brought his face down to Warren's ear. "What is it?!"

"I gotta piss!"

"Is that Osillo?!"

Warren nodded. "Uh...yeah, that might've been what I meant to say!"

"Hang on, you gotta go pee-pee?!"

"...Dude."

"Then go, you dumb idiot! I gotta find Alec, anyway; it's almost time to go on!"

firefly fire + fly (Rebirth + Aurora)—

"You've just made several fatal mistakes."

——— struggled to speak, to breathe, but Thrive didn't let up.

"You're beginning to picture them clearly, aren't you," he breathed, foggy hysteria forming at the forefront of his brain. He gritted his teeth against the uncontrollable rage and a stuttering fire coiled inside his chest and into his arms, fingers itching to close, to snap shut. "Placed in front of you one by one, in a methodical row. Your first mistake was boarding this vessel. Your second, killing ———. What was your third mistake, ———?"

He could see the pleading in ———'s wide, streaming eyes. The arm that wasn't hopelessly shattered clawed at him, desperate for him to let go.

"Thinking you could take me down. Thinking you could get away from me." Thrive's voice was barely a level whisper now. "That was your third mistake."

—

Thrive had picked up the stylus again, and began tapping it on the table with steadily increasing intensity.

"Orthrive'poliea," Sussa said. "I don't know why it can't seem to sink in with you that you are no longer alone. We need you, yes, but never would we expect you to do any of this on your own. It's just not going to happen."

"Shit," Warren added, "I'm apparently called the Most Important Human Alive for a reason, and at this rate I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the Emmuli."

The stylus started making small dents in the table.

"We want to help," Latx said. "We're ready to take this on. We know the risks; we always have."

Thrive flicked his fingers and the stylus went flying out of his grip and halfway into the metal wall like a dagger. He shifted uncomfortably, clearing his throat. "Skies…"

Warren disregarded the rush of ice in his veins and swung around to face the delegates, eyebrows meeting his hairline. "Okay! Hey, so I'm formally requesting a recess now. Right now."

garden bed (I’m greedy, sue me) (Eternal)—

The bridge disappeared. Warren, startled, looked around at his surroundings—they were not what he expected at all. Instead of being on the bridge of the Ganymede as he should've been, he was in a room with a bed...a motel room. Dingy and run down, with a flickering bathroom light, not anywhere he'd ever been before.

He turned around on the spot, then combed the space for some sort of hint as to where he could've been; stationery, a phone book, anything. He came up empty-handed. There wasn't even a TV or phone, and the blinds and curtains were down and drawn.

He walked to the door but the handle turned before he could touch it, and he backed up as it swung open and Thrive stood in the hall.

He stared at Warren with granite suspicion, then the room, then stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He took another hard look at the filth.

Warren frowned. He didn't recognize the garment he wore. It held a Tournaltis quality, but different. More...authentic and rich.

His eyes widened. "Were you just—"

"Cutting through dark space in the lodegan."

"I...thought something else, but that's equally horrific."