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lyfrasilly-edda · 6 days ago

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Working title: Lyf and Marius un-divorce

Cw: discussions of Out, dying, and similar

When Nastya found Lyf, they were in slightly better shape than they had been when she’d seen them storming out of the room. They were still glowing a bit, the rainbows in their eyes swirling more than usual, but the more eldritch parts of their form seemed to have calmed down. At least, the excess eyes had shut, and the colorful cracks in their skin had lessened. They were clutching a stuffed cow close to their chest, sitting curled up and staring out the window and at the stars beyond. A strange amount of the cow plushies and similar dotted the floor beside them. Tears still stained their cheeks, but their gaze was hard.

Nastya didn’t bother to hide her approach, but they didn’t acknowledge her appearance as she stood next to them. “Mind if I join you?” She asked. Instead of looking at her, they glared at one of the walls of the ship.

“Aurora.” they chided the wall. Nastya let out a soft sigh as one of Aurora’s panels flickered to life.

“You calmed down enough to the point of being safe around hours ago.” The panel read. “Talk to someone.” Lyf snorted, looking away from the wall and back out the window. They didn’t seem that upset. They’d probably expected she’d send somewhere their way soon enough.

“Fine.” Nastya took that as an invitation and plopped down next to them. She stayed silent, though, instead staring at the stars like Lyf was. They were nowhere near any celestial object, so the sky was near empty, dark and littered with small pinpricks of light. Just an endless void of stars and darkness.

“Are you going to give me a lecture about Marius’s reason for lying, too?” Lyf grumbled. Nastya leaned her head against Aurora’s wall, letting out a deep breath.

“Could you consider that lying?” She asked in turn. They squeezed the cow plush tighter.

“He certainly wasn’t telling me anything.” They growled. “I’ve been on the ship for fifty years, he could’ve told me it at any time- I’ve asked why he doesn’t like the octokittens. He could’ve told me then. I asked what the anons were talking about, with the watches and octokittens and 11.7 seconds- he just told me not to worry about it. He was trying to hide it from me.”

“You know he hates it when you worry.”

“And he knows I hate it when he brushes off his problems like that.” They responded. “He should know better than to avoid this stuff- after everything, he should know better.”

Nastya let out a hum of acknowledgement, and they sighed, resting their chin on the cow plush. “I thought it was just a normal phobia- I was trying to get him more used to having them around, because I thought if there wasn’t anything to be scared of- he was probably panicking the whole time. They're the only thing that can kill him, that is going to kill him, and I was just treating them like pets.” they shoved their face into the fluffy fabric. “Gods, I feel like shit.”

“How were you supposed to know?” Nastya commented. “He did not tell you.”

“He was still scared of them, and I just kept having them in the room.”

“I thought you were mad at Marius, not yourself?” She said, and Lyf pursed their lips. “Sounds like you are blaming yourself. Again.”

“I’m not-” they let out a huff. “Alright, maybe. I’m pissed at him for not telling me, but I- I don’t know. I feel like I should’ve noticed sooner.”

“Once again, he did not tell you.”

“I know.” They growled. “And I don’t know why he didn’t. He does it every time. One bit off his thumb last week. He plays himself up, never lets himself have problems. Just- shoves it away.”

“He is not used to someone caring.” Nastya stated, curling her knees up. Lyf scoffed. “Never has been. It’s been millenia, and he still is not. He is a caretaker. He does not think he should be allowed to have issues.”

“He’s an idiot, is what he is.” Lyf grumbled, and Nastya hummed in agreement.

“He is. But you knew that already. You did sign up for this.”

They sighed. “I did, didn’t I?”

“He is an idiot, and he is going to make dumb decisions, but fortunately for you, he has already written an apology note that’s at least six pages long. Might be longer now.” Lyf let out a snorting laugh, rubbing a hand over their eyes.

“Gods, has he really?”

“Did you expect anything less?”

They sighed. “No, I guess not.” they paused for a second, continuing to stare out the window, before they spoke again. “... Nastya, it isn’t happening soon, is it?”

Nastya leaned back and let out a sigh. “Did Marius actually tell you what powers our Mechanisms?”

Lyf considered that a moment. “...No. He just said he didn’t know when it would happen.”

She held up her hand, inspecting the skin, and more specifically, the quicksilver blood that ran under it. She could barely remember what her flesh looked like when red ran beneath it, the silvery blue had been there so long. It was cold, it was cursed, it was unnatural, but it was a part of her. She could hardly imagine a life where she didn’t bleed silver. “You know we are storytellers, yes?”

“Couldn’t have guessed.” Lyf muttured in response.

“Hm. Well, we are storytellers. Not just in the fact that we tell stories, it’s a part of who we are. And stories are what power our mechanisms.” Lyf looked at her curiously. They obviously hadn’t heard this yet.

“Now, according to our prophesied deaths, and according to the doctor, once we run out of stories, we die.” she continued. “When there are no more tales to be told, we have our final death, getting devoured by octokittens or floating in space or burning in a library or what have you.”

“But, there is something that neither the doctor, nor any of Brian’s prophecies could have anticipated.” Lyf raised an eyebrow at Nastya, and she smiled.

“Technically, I am dead.” She proclaimed with a shrug. “According to Brian’s prophecy, I was supposed to go Out and never return. I thought that without Aurora, my story was done.” She rested a hand on Aurora’s wall, and the temperature raised in the room by a few degrees. Nastya gave a soft smile, and Lyf stared at her in interest.

“But I am still here. And I do not plan on going anywhere anytime soon.” She turned back to them with a smile. “So there’s no guarantee anyone else is leaving, either. Who knows? Maybe I’ll go Out again. I don’t plan to, I don’t want to, but things can change. Or maybe, what was supposed to be my death was just another part of life. And maybe it’ll be the same for everybody else, too.”

Lyf stayed silent for a moment, thinking over her words, before letting out a sigh. “I need to talk to him, don’t I?”

“You should.”

They rubbed their eyes, which Nastya noted were red and puffy. “I will, I just…”

Nastya nodded. “Take your time. He’ll understand. He might not like it, but he’ll understand.”

“Right.” They sniffed. “It still… He still hid it from me. He was still putting himself in danger just because I thought those damn things were cute.” They shoved their face into the cow plush, their voice coming out muffled as they continued. “I didn’t think about him dying before. I thought it was the one thing we didn’t have to worry about, I had people I couldn’t lose. Not like…”

Nastya put a hand on their shoulder, rubbing it slightly. Neither of them needed to hear the end of that sentence.

Death was always a strange thing for the Mechanisms. None of them had ever really had mortal lives. They never had calm moments, always fighting for their next meal, getting stabbed in the back left and right. Some of them worse, some of them better, but there had been so much they would have never experienced if not for their extended lifespans.

Millenia, though? Thousands, millions of years, living every day, watching billions die, causing billions of deaths themselves, living every experience ever thought of and dying in every way imaginable? Nastya had been the first to snap, after she had thought Aurora had died. She by far was not the only one who had stared out into the void, and wondered what it would be like to spend the rest of eternity out there. She was happy now, but they all knew their deaths were inevitable. Nothing could last forever.

Lyf was new to immortality, though. The idea and wish for an eternal rest had probably barely even occurred to them. 350 years wasn’t much in the face of forever. Nastya knew even Marius, in all his masks and smiles and laughs, had resigned to his death a long time ago. She didn’t know how Lyf had shaken his viewpoint on that, but death was only natural. None of them wanted to live forever, at this point.

Lyf let out a shaky sigh, lifting their head back up. New tears had begun to flow from their eyes, but they quickly wiped them away and stood up. They took a few slow, deep breaths, before giving Nastya a shaky smile. “I’m going to go talk to him now.” She rose with them, giving them a silent nod.

When Lyf opened the door to walk back into the cabin, they were immediately barreled into by Marius giving them a massive hug. Nastya snorted as they stumbled a bit, before wrapping their arms around him in turn. He shoved his face into their shirt, blubbering out barely comprehensible apologies and promises to never to never hide anything from them again.

Lyf let out a fond sigh and ran a hand through his hair. “Marius, love, give me some time to breathe first.” He immediately took a step back, wiping tears from his eyes.

“Shit, sorry- Schatz, I’m so fucking sorry- I just- fuck.” He shoved his face into his hands. “I should have- I didn’t want you to worry about me, so I just-”

“Kjære, breathe.” Lyf leaned down so they were at eye level with him, rubbing his arm. Marius let out a small sniffle, wiping the tears from his eyes, but did as they instructed and took a few deep breaths in. Lyf smiled at him. “It’s alright, I’m not mad, I just-” They gave another sigh. “Well, I am a bit mad. But Nastya said you were ready to apologize?”

“Right- I-” Marius took in a deep breath, closing his eyes as he tried to get his words in order. “I’m sorry, I just- I shouldn’t have hid it from you. You deserved to know, even if I didn’t want you to worry, because hiding things from you is stupid-”

“You’re not stupid.” Lyf chided. “What you need to know is that you’re allowed to have your own problems, alright? And you need to stop trying to brush things off for my sake.” They wiped a tear from his cheek. “Alright?”

“Yeah, I’ll- I’ll stop. I promise. To try, at least.”

“Good.” They wrapped him in a crushing hug, letting out a soft laugh. “And I’m sorry for yelling at you, too. I shouldn’t- I understand why you didn’t want to talk about it. I just…”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Marius murmured. “You were justified in yelling.”

“I still shouldn’t have.”

Nastya sighed as the two continued to whisper reassurance and apologies to each other, folding her arms. She turned to the doorway where every single one of the crew was very obviously peeping into the conversation, and raised an eyebrow at them. In an instant, they disappeared, scampering away to who-knows-where.

“Nosy asses.” She muttered.

#rainbow rambles #doctors orders #nastya’s nerding #narrative times #violinspector divorce arc lmao

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