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Another One Bites the (Star)Dust pt3

Its just a month of updates, isn't it? Are you guys excited for the conclusion? If you missed the beginning you can find it [here], or you can find the last chapter [here!]

Summary: In the middle of the night, Remus and Virgil have a conversation. Or at least as much of one as they can when Remus kinda wants Virgil dead and Virgil kinda doesn't want to die and they both are finding they have more in common than they thought.

Words: 12606

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Read on Ao3 || Space Series || My General Writing Masterlist

The feeling of weightlessness was terrifying. Virgil’s known that for a year now; ever since he had first shown an interest in flying ships and Logan had declared him mentally stable enough to do so and Roman and he had come to those awkward first stages of understanding each other. Roman had been the one to help teach him the insides and outside of flying, how to fix ships like the Mindscape and how to read the blueprints of other alien designed ships which Virgil had poured over until he memorized.

Patton had been the one who settled up with him in his first test run, although it should have been Logan-- the Tenkarie had been having an off day, barely responsive to anything and Roman had coaxed him into lying down beside him, while Patton took Virgil to see the official insides of the escape pods, just to have something to do that wasn’t being an overbearing shadow whose greatest attribute was overthinking.

The problem had been they were both too excitable when left alone: Patton wasn’t the best at explaining and where words would have been sufficient Patton pressed the buttons to show him personally.

Losing gravity without warning was terrifying.

The heaviness of gravity multiplying was infinitely worse though, in Virgil’s not-at-all humble Jesus-fucking opinion.

Virgil hit the ground in the pod, slamming his head on the dashboard control panel in a way that sent his vision spiraling. When he blinked back to focus, he was on the ground of the ship, feeling like his body couldn’t move and the emergency lights of the pod flashing red in uniform time overhead in a way that reminded Virgil faintly of Logan’s lights. The ship was buzzing in a way it should not be, sounding like a thousand wasps somehow found their ways to The Great Expanse of Space and were surviving a lot better than Virgil was.

Notably, though, Virgil realized that the pod was not moving away from the port and that was definitely not what the escape pod was supposed to be doing in an emergency.

Nothing about this made any sort of sense. Virgil strained under the suction of gravity. It wasn’t too bad: perhaps only a few extra pounds on the normal Earth gravity, which was a few pounds lighter than the planet that Logan had picked him up from all those months ago. But comparatively, the extra gravity after so long without such a thing left Virgil’s head spinning. His limbs were weak and shaky, his organs felt like they were made of solid rocks, and he was probably going to be very incredibly sick, but he was infinitely better off than Patton would have been, or Logan, or Roman.

((Humans and their adaptability, eh? Virgil thought for a second that he could actually see what made them so terrifying compared to other species.))

He used the control panel to lift himself up, gagging as his intestines rearranged themselves and his head tried to stop ringing so much. The windows were uncovered so that the emptiness of space and the distant stars could be seen and the navigation screen was up, but where the coordinates input area would be, there was what looked like an error message, in Erefren, maybe. Virgil’s vision spun for a moment as he tried to make out the sharp jagged lines that made up the language. The lights flashed again, on and off, even as Virgil’s fingers ran over the buttons that didn’t react in the ways they were supposed to.

Something was… Virgil wasn’t the leading expert in the mechanics of space travel and spaceship-ness. He stuck to his robots like glue, not daring to try to wrap his head around the physics of artificial gravity and oxygen supply and power thrusters on a large scale. He could memorize all the maps he wanted but Virgil wouldn’t dare try to build one himself.

Still he knew enough to know he was lucky.

Something must have jammed the escape pod port ejector but he was still connected to the main ship, still connected to the main ship's oxygen supply, and still able to move around despite the gravity being shifty. He wasn’t off in Space turning the little escape pod into a coffin, he wasn’t running low on oxygen thinking about the last words he said to everyone. He wasn’t alone, silent, and forgotten.

He wasn’t dying.

Not to Remus. Not like this.

“Remus,” Virgil remembered in the next second, “Roman!”

He forced his aching knees towards the doors again, hugging the wall for support. The window was a bit fogged up, the temperature fluctuating between too cold and too warm, survivable and maybe-not-so-much, but Virgil wiped away the condensation with his forearm that left ice shavings on his raised skin.

At first he didn’t see anything; he thought maybe that Roman and Remus had tumbled into a wrestling match of some sort and rolled right out of the room into the hall he couldn’t see, or maybe that Roman had been an illusion of his desperate mind and that Remus had simply left the room satisfied that Virgil would die in the emptiness without anyone to see him go.

But fractured bone plates were scattered across the floor as the remains of a fight that must have happened in the blink of an eye: as quick and deadly as expected when they both were from a planet that thrived on violence. The lack of lights and the blurring of his own vision made it nearly impossible to make out the movement in the shadows. By the time that Virgil figured out that the awkward shapes on the ground were Roman and Remus…

Remus was climbing off his limp unmoving brother.

He wasn’t at the right angle to see much of anything: hardly enough to make sure that it was Remus standing with his bone plates cracked and shattered still from the Pol’turs, spitting blood in a glob to the floor right next to where Roman’s face would be--

And Virgil really didn’t like the way that Remus was looking at Roman’s body.

Virgil slammed his fist into the window, hard enough to send rivets of pain through his veins to his elbow.

Remus jerked back from Roman’s body to turn to face him, almost as if he had forgotten Virgil existed now that he was in the escape pod that should have been ejected into space. There were too many shadows for Virgil to make out whatever expression he was wearing, but he knew it wasn’t good from the tension riding in Remus’s tail.

Screw their agreement, their deal, their oath or whatever it was that Remus had probably never even intended on keeping in the first place: Virgil’s heart was beating in his ears as his fingers fumbled over the handle to the pod. It was made for other shaped hands or limbs-- likely an Erefren tail, but Virgil crammed his fingers in the slim compartment anyway because all he could think about was Roman’s form on the ground, the feeling of Remus’s tail around his own neck, the taste of dust in his mouth and the scent of blood in his nose.

((He’d seen once upon a time how Quitans had ambushed them on a small moon dwarf planet and dragged Roman back to their camp, and he remembered how the aliens had sadistically ripped Roman’s spikes from his spine just to hear him scream.))

“Those toxins of his? Wowza!” Remus had said, “They’ve always packed a punch. Even when we were kids!”

Remus had been trying to hurt them, to hurt Roman’s crew, to hurt Roman since as long as Virgil had known them and probably long before that too. Virgil had heard the unbridled malice in Remus’s tone earlier. For as alien as he was, Virgil would have picked up the murderous intent in the guttural sounds of Remus’s common even if he were deaf.

Roman was on the ground, not moving, not even to breathe and Virgil yanked on the door handle with everything he had because he was not going to let Roman stay there at the mercy of his brother like this.

Virgil had never wanted to take a life before in his existence (never wanted to feel that warm, sticky blood pouring down his hands, never wanted to see the little flicker of life leaving the eyes, never wanted to taste the sweat and the dust and the grit as his lungs heaved for too-thin air when he’s wrapped around the corpse of someone he’d just murderer for entertainment--), but he thought that if Remus touched Roman one more time, Virgil would gladly see him die.

Roman who learned to mimic Virgil’s grins when he learned they were a sign of warmth and comfortability, Roman who stayed with him every time he couldn’t get the feeling of being unsafe under control, who bought overpriced shoushdouble and cried over his sword collection and liked shampoo that smelled like cinnamon. Roman who was the first to jump to anyone’s defense if he thought they were in danger, who decided that a human like Virgil was still worth keeping around, whose one goal had always been “help everyone, no matter what.”

Roman who was a good person.

And Virgil had been around enough bad people to know the universe needed more good people like him.

Except well.

The door opened without Virgil actually managing to get his hand around the handle.

It jerked to the side automatically, an alarm blared from inside the ship that reminded Virgil of the G-note without the rest of The Black Parade to follow it. Virgil tumbled from the pod, slamming to the ground. Not that it mattered much because Virgil scrambled back to his feet barely giving his lungs time to breathe, with adrenaline thrummmming through his veins, and his vision had focused solely on Remus and Roman and getting Remus the fuck away from Roman.

Remus was still standing over Roman’s body when Virgil threw himself at him, when Virgil’s hand wrapped around Remus’s shirt, when Virgil flung him to the ground and landed on top of him and slammed his fist into Remus’s so very punchable face.

Something snapped, cracked, screamed. Virgil’s knuckles stung, but he wound back, and brought his fist down on Remus again. His eyes burned, his chest ached from the bruises and the broken ribs and the knife wound that needed stitching he couldn’t get. Not here, not ever. They didn’t know how and Virgil couldn’t ask and he didn’t know if he wanted to anyway-- Wouldn’t it be better if he died from infection? Shouldn’t he be relieved? Shouldn’t he be shoving as much dirt into his wound as he can? Shouldn’t shouldn’t shouldn’t--

His head hurt from where he hit the ground minsannus ago so hard that his vision blurred and all he had been able to see is that dust moving in slow motion right over him.

He could hear the cheers all around him still, the echoing violent wordless noises made from clickings and growls and gurgles and screeches and his blood was pumping in his veins, making him dizzy as fuck.

He doesn’t know what alien he’s fighting, doesn’t know what language it’s speaking; it attacked him first, swinging before Virgil could try one of the three hundred calming tactics that he spent all that time in his cell obsessing over.

((Why does it never work? Why do they hate him?))

The dust is not grey but it burns in his mouth, sawdust dry and making it impossible to swallow. Something wrapped around his forearm from behind him, and yanked his fist backwards before it could connect with the creature under him.

Virgil snarled, straining against the grasp on him, twisting to grab at the appendage and tear it off of him. The sun was burning into his skin, blazing through the layers of dirt and dust and sweat that was desperately trying to protect him from being boiled alive in front of everyone. His lungs screamed against the harshness of the air.

The alien threw him away and Virgil landed on his shoulder again, already rolling back to his feet to defend himself. Blood was pouring over his knuckles, the scabs already having been torn through and the stinging pain already forgotten in his mind. He lunged forward curling his fingers around the throat of the creature in front of him and throwing all of his weight down on the alien before it could recover.

It writhed and bucked, but Virgil caught the tail before it could get close to his body again and pinned it under his knees. It’s eyes were wide and frantic and a deep brown that looked so human, so lively, so strong and desperate--He couldn’t breathe and the crowd was so loud and he just wanted to be left alone, he didn't know what the creature was gurgling and Virgil didn’t want to know either.

It’s claws were digging into Virgil’s arms, tearing through his flesh desperately as Virgil cut off its access to oxygen but Virgil couldn’t feel it through the pounding adrenaline in him. His head was thundering, the sun was sweltering, he didn’t have much time, he was sorry, They were going to kill him, they were going to kill him they were…

And Virgil has always been a coward.

He was laughing, maybe. He was laughing and crying and sobbing and giggling and he wanted to go home please, he wanted to go home, he didn’t want to be here he didn’t he didn’t he didn’t the Dust was everywhere and it was grey and Logan promised he’d never have to come back why didn’t Logan keep his promise why did Logan leave him--

Then without warning the world around him flipped. Virgil let out a pitched yell as his vision spun out and gravity just fucking shut off. His lungs screamed and Virgil thrashed in the weightlessness for something to hold on to, but there was nothing. His heart was pounding in his throat all of a sudden, making his mouth taste like his own stomach acids.

There was nothing he was in Space He couldn’t breathe He was going to die He never said goodbye to Janus He didn’t want to die like this all alone with his skin on fire and his throat so dry and--

He blinked. His lungs constricted. There were clumps of… of water in the air, and it took him a moment to feel the sting enough to know that he was crying-- he was crying and his tears were lumping together in the zero gravity on his eyeball and he couldn’t see anything. His ribs ached distantly as he forced oxygen into them, and rubbed the tears away again and again and again and--

He wasn’t… he didn’t… Virgil thought…

He wasn’t on the Welsor Planet, not in the fighting rings or the middle of a fight and there wasn’t a speck of Dust in the air anywhere around him. His skin buzzed like there were invisible beetles crawling all over him, around him, in him and his throat was dry and burning and aching in all the ways that Virgil hated. He was floating in a zero gravity zone, curled in on himself, slowly rotating in the nothingness and he thought that he was going to be sick.

It was silent as a tomb. Dark and comforting and Virgil couldn’t get a grip on himself at all.

“Great God of fucking Disney,” Remus’s voice rasped from somewhere down below him. “What the hell is wrong with all of you?”

Virgil spun in the air, trying to twist back around to face the ground. Just a few feet below him to his right, Remus was sitting on the ground rubbing his neck, flecks of blood in his claws.

Because there was blood trailing along Virgil’s forearms, deep red cuts swelling with a sea of that bright red completely human blood and his fingers were pulsing with a nauseating pain. He pressed his palms into them, trying to stifle the bleeding as much as he could in panicky desperation and hissing in pain as the droplets peeled off his arm and rolled through the air around him in perfect spheres.

Even in zero gravity, Virgil was shake, shake, shaking apart. Remus was underneath him climbing to his feet, still out of reach and glaring in a way that did not suggest anything good at all. Virgil’s heart jumped straight to his throat, blocking the air from entering his chest because he could count the feet between them, and Virgil couldn’t move anywhere or do anything and Remus was going to kill Roman right in front of him.

“You have--” Remus hissed out a word in Erefren. “-- and no one told me?!”

“R-Remus,” Virgil breathed. His tears were blurring his vision, turning the Erefren into a distorted watercolor painting straight from the last time Virgil had taken an art class and spilled a cup of rinse water all over what he had been trying to make.

Remus spit out more words in his native language and Virgil felt like he was going to be sick. His stomach was inching up his esophagus and he couldn’t get his body to still in the air long enough to focus on the words or parse out anything beyond threat and bad and dangerous.

“I knew he was stupid!” Remus yelled, in common. “I didn’t think he was suicidal!” He spun toward where Roman was on the ground, still unmoving, possibly already, possibly totally, completely one hundred percent Virgil’s fault.

“Disney Fucking--” A series of sharp dangerous growls that made Virgil’s heart stop in his chest spilled out of his mouth as he took a step towards Roman.

“Remus!” Virgil yelled, and it came out far more pathetically than he meant it to. He tried to swim towards them, tried to throw himself between the two of them and at least take some of the rage back on himself, but there was nothing to swim in and nothing to move through and he was just stuck there watching as gravity worked for everything but him.

Remus sneered in his face, “You’re taking a--” Another growl, “--Understand?”

“I d-don’t know what that means!” Virgil shouted. “Please Don’t-- don’t hurt him. It’s me you hate, right? Leave him out of this!”

Remus let out a growl that probably shook the whole ship, and maybe if they weren’t drugged to high hell, any of the rest of the crew might have come running at the sound of it. Virgil thought it was like a war cry, like someone’s final guttural scream before they’re gutted, like a call for the aid of a god whose reach doesn’t extend to fucking Space and Everything In It.

“Of course you fucking don’t!” Remus snarled up at him and then he proceeded to pick up Roman like he was a sack of grain, and begin dragging him towards the door, back to the rest of the group. “Stay right there, Bitch.”

“REMUS!”

He used his tail to slam the door closed behind him.

Virgil’s stomach churned in his chest, out of place, out of tune, out of his control. His mouth and throat and tongue all tasted like Dust, so much dust that was coating every inch of him and also not at all and no manner clawing at his own skin was getting it off. His head was pounding and his heart was stuttering, and the air was too dense to breathe and they were all going to die.

Remus could do it so fast; he’d managed to knock out Roman in seconds and Roman had to be the best fighter they had outside of Logan who’s best weapon was the art of surprise. Remus could kill Roman with a swipe of his tail, digging those bone plates right through the soft flesh of Roman’s neck. Roman wouldn’t ever wake up and the Remus would go for Logan and then Logan’s lights would never spark again, and there wouldn’t be a place in this ship that Patton could hide even as a Reytin; Remus could work the rafters just as easily as Patton could and--

He needed to get down. He needed to get down and stop Remus from killing Roman. He needed to get down and find Roman and protect his family and he needed--he needed--

He needed to catch his breath. He needed to breathe in and hold it like there weren’t fist sized holes in his holes that all the oxygen was slipping out through. He needed to hold his breath and stop panicking and not let his heart explode and splatter fleshy human insides all over the Transport Room.

He needed to get back to the ground.

He shook his head, trying to gain some mystical clarity in his thoughts as he flipped over in the nothingness. Remus hadn’t turned off all the gravity based on how he and Roman and all the various supplies in the room were fine, sturdy on the ground. Remus must have found a way to turn it off for just Virgil.

There must be a device-- something from Logan’s collection of gadgets that would do it since Remus obviously had no trouble pilfering for his own needs and it was probably small enough that it had gone missing some time ago when he’d stolen and squirreled away things for his go-bag and Virgil tries not to think too hard about anything at all. His hands are shaking as he pries them off his arms, more of his blood floating up in the void next to him.

Virgil was not wearing his hoodie and his pants didn’t have any pockets that it could have been slipped in. He checked over his arms and aside from the blood and stinging cuts that matched Remus’s claws, they were still bare. His legs were free for all the good it did him, and Virgil didn’t find a hint of any foreign object attached to them, or his boots. His back was clear--

The door opened again flooding the room with ruby red light and Virgil jerked on instinct, sending his body spinning violently to the left as Remus let himself back in with all an angry sort of flair. He slammed the door behind him, and the thunder nearly drowned out his next words.

“Having fun?” he asked.

Virgil hissed trying to stabilize himself. “What did you do to him?!”

Remus rolled his eyes so hard that Virgil felt his own eyes hurt from the action. “I tucked him in. Gave him a good night kiss, too. Sang a lullaby for him.”

“Remus--”

“I dumped him in his room,” he said. “I swear to Disney or whatever. In the morning he’ll be a little sore, and probably won’t remember anything because like an idiot he still leads with his left foot, and I’m still much quicker at injecting him with my toxin than he is at dodging off his left foot. You’d think he’d learn after the fourth time it happened.”

Virgil clamped his jaw shut, fighting down the urge to swear at the Erefren who quite literally was holding him hostage in the room where he had no leverage or way to move besides spinning until his stomach ejected itself from his body. His blood was warm and thick and Virgil really didn’t like to think about how he was going to keep it all from leaking out of his body if he didn’t figure out a way out of this.

The dust was not grey and it wasn’t coating his tongue and his vision was not blurring out again because he was not about to start crying in front of the dangerous alien.

“Now,” Remus said, “if I let you down, are you going to go for my throat again?”

Virgil gritted his teeth. “No.”

“Can you at least be a little more convincing?” Remus asked. “I’ve had people actively shoving knives in my back lie more convincingly than you. I know it's not a Deathworlder thing; Janus lies just fine.”

“You tried to choke me to death, nearly clawed out several of my important internal organs, had me eject myself out into Space which didn’t work by pure fucking miracle--”

“Not a miracle.”

Virgil squeezed his own forearm tightly. “What.”

Remus jerked his tail towards the open escape pod that was stuck in the launch pad, lights flashing sadly and all. “It wasn’t some miracle, dipshit. I took the liberty of editing the controls earlier and so that it would give a false launch if a pod opened by you was set to eject from the port within a quisannu of the door being closed.”

He pulled a hand held remote control from his pocket and walked over to the control panel where Logan usually worked when he was dealing with the transport watches or fiddling with other gadgets or performing coordinate checks, casually. Remus moved like he belonged in the room. Like he owned the ship itself.

Like Roman never existed.

“Your biometrics have been scanned into your incredibly shitty system which means that once I have access to the system through Patton’s passcode that he doesn’t know how to keep secret, I control what doors unlock and lock for you and can track where you’ve been recently. Also because you all have your gravity system interfaced through your emergency life supporting systems I was able to link your personal gravity to biometrics which means I can turn gravity on and off for everyone on this ship, except Janus.”

Virgil’s head was spinning by the fourth word, ringing from hitting the ground or the escape pod control panel or the ground (again) or something else in the middle of all that. It didn’t sound remotely like something that was physically possible by human standards.

But Remus literally had several rows of teeth and a tail and they were in Space. On a good day, Virgil’s understanding of physics and gravity were content to stay somewhere where gravity was a controlled factor. What the fuck did he know about biometrics and alien technology?

What did he know about anything?

Something really bad was crawling up his throat and Virgil tried not to let the panic latch into his brain.

"Surprise, Surprise!" Remus said blandly, his voice bouncing off the metal walls of the ship and echoing pointlessly around them. "It's boring but you were never in any danger, Cikeriy!"

Except for the part where his hands were covered in gashes, his forearms were bleeding, and there were bruises around his neck from being hoisted in the air in a move that would have snapped his neck at any other angle. Except for the part where his head was ringing from it slamming on the ground multiple times, and the blinking lights of the escape pod was making the back of his throat itch with the urge to vomit up whatever it was that he had last eaten.

Except for the part where Remus was a massive fucking liar.

“....What the Fucking Hell was all of that?!” Virgil yelled. “Any of this?!”

Remus blinked as if Virgil was the insane one of the two of them. The ship seemed to pulse with the way that Virgil’s heart was beating, almost like a force in and of itself; Virgil could have sworn he felt some invisible hand slam against his chest, but he refused to give any more satisfaction to the psychopath below him by staring to sob.

“You really need me to spell it out for you, little Deathworlder?” he asked finally. “It was a test. I was testing you.”

“Bullshit!”

The taste of dust in his mouth begged to differ. Loudly. The look in Remus’s eyes when Virgil had tried to apologize for whatever he’d done to piss Remus off wasn’t fake. The bloodlust radiating off of him hadn’t been some magical illusion designed as a test.

Remus had made an oath, swore on his god, and nearly killed Virgil. And Virgil had in turn nearly strangled him to death, and he had his own bruises to prove it.

It hadn’t been a test.

It couldn’t have been.

No one was that insane.

Remus used his tail and hit a button on the control panel. Virgil had half a minsannu to brace himself before an invisible hand reached up and grabbed him, and slammed him right to the floor. He gasped in pain as gravity resettled in his shaking limbs, heavier than before, stronger than before, more effective than before, which must have been amusing for Remus to watch.

An object slapped the floor next to him and Virgil flinched away from it before he could make out the familiar shape and size of a Skrad healing pad.

“Why don’t you run along, little Crikeriy,” Remus said, with a flick of his tail. “Go back to sleep and pretend this was all a fun little nightmare. Or go cozy up to Janus if you want. He shouldn’t wake up for a bit, but if you want to play around with hi--”

“Shut the fuck up,” Virgil snarled.

“What’s wrong?” Remus asked innocently. “Didn’t the two of you discuss your bedroom boundaries already? Or is Janus just not into--”

“I said shut up!”

“I can’t imagine what else you’ve been talking about all this time,” Remus went on, as if he didn’t actually know the meaning of the Common words. “You’ve been plastered to each other’s sides for so long I would have thought you two already covered all the consent conversations!”

“It’s none of your business!” Virgil sneered, ignoring the burn in his throat from where his breath came too harshly. His hands were shaking, his head pounding. The anger in his chest was swirling like a fire that made his whole body feel like it was an inferno, but every jerk of his body made white stars flicker on the back of his eyelids.

Remus stared at him, his eyes hidden in the shadows. Virgil thought about reaching out and grabbing his neck (again) and and squeezing that expression off his stupid face the next time he opened his mouth.

“Right,” Remus said tonelessly.

“What do you mean, ‘right?!’” Virgil’s voice boomed in the room, echoing off the interior of the ship far louder than it had any right too. Virgil barely refrained from covering his own ears at the sudden noise in the infinite silence, and Remus’s tail twitched, but other than that the alien ignored the question entirely.

“Remus!” Virgil said. “I’m done playing your unmedicated, mood-swing games! What the hell are you after?!”

“I got it,” Remus said, like that was supposed to make Virgil feel fucking better after all this.

((The dust was not grey. It didn’t taste like dirt over his tongue. Virgil was not losing his mind despite Remus trying his damn hardest to make him feel like he was, fucking breathe dumbass.))

Virgil forced himself to his feet, stumbling like some newly borne fawn at best, a demon possessed host body at worst. Either way, Remus gave him a twitch of his tail in response, something like a warning that Virgil was far beyond being capable of heeding, with the throbbing in his head.

“Cute. Now use the healing pad,” Remus told him, sounding strangely like an order from someone who is not Virgil’s captain, doctor, or friend. “And go fuck around somewhere else. Check on Roman for all I care. I’m busy now.”

“Busy?”

“The whole echo thing is getting boring,” Remus warned, poking a button on the control panel causing a whirling sound to rumble through the room. “Keep it up and I’m going to cut out your tongue and see if Deathworlders can regrow that.”

“I’m not--”

“Or I might just cut it out if you continue to talk at all.” Remus shrugs very human like for something so alien. “I haven’t really decided yet!”

Virgil closed his mouth, breathing in and out and reminding his lungs that rupturing themselves was not going to help anyone at this point. There were splatters of his blood on the ground at his feet and more forming as his arms sluggishly leaked. It was going to be a problem, as soon as his pulsing adrenalin faded away and the pain started to pick apart his thoughts. Logically he knew that.

He did not survive Janus’s parents, the Welsor Fighting Rings, and the expanse of Space to bleed out slowly and painfully in his own ship. That would be stupid. That would be infuriating.

Especially when Remus had thrown a Skrad healing pad at him, like a bastardized version of an olive branch truce offering.

“What are you waiting for?” Remus asked. “An apology?”

Something had changed in Remus; flipped like a switch and when Virgil breathed out a little more slowly, he could almost see it. Faintly. Like a ghost settling over reality reminding Virgil of how much blood he’s lost and how tired he is and why the fuck did he have to wandering around the ship because of a stupid nightmare tonight?

“You’re really… not trying to kill me,” Virgil said slowly as the realization was coming to him. “You’re not trying to hurt Roman, either?”

“Oh fucking Disney,” Remus exclaimed. “No, I’m done with that now. It’s boring. Besides the oath? Can’t hurt Roman or things he holds dear. You’re part of what Roman holds dear, dumbass. Go get lost.”

“You were serious about the Oath?”

Remus growled out something that probably wasn’t flattering to anything about Virgil, but he didn’t offer anything else. Virgil hesitated another moment before he picked up the healing pad and did his best to unwrap the translucent cardboard-like material. It cracked like a glow stick as he moved it, activating with a soft soothing silver light. He winced as he wrapped it around his bleeding forearm, all the way to his fingertips and the familiar warm numbing settled on his limb.

Remus punched a button on the control panel again and glanced up at escape pod Alfie, like he was waiting for it to explode into a blackhole and kill them all and couldn’t wait for it. Instead, there was another buzzing sound, the G-note ringing from inside the pod, and the lights flashed off. Remus pressed the button again-- the same button from what Virgil could see-- but nothing more happened.

Remus didn’t even look over at him, Virgil thought. His fingers were numb under the healing pad, and his head was starting to feel far more sluggish than it should. Remus wasn’t trying to kill him. He called it a test.

Remus is insane. He’s waiting for Virgil to put his guard down. When Virgil closes his eyes and relaxes, Remus’s tail is going to whip out and crush Virgil’s windpipe and then he’s going to use his bone plates to cut Virgil apart piece by piece just like how the Pol’turs did to Remus’s original crew--

In the silver glow of the skrad healing pad, Virgil could see his skin patching itself up, weaving together his flesh and helping his blood for their scabs. He thought, randomly, that he was lucky the wounds weren’t deeper, because a Skrad healing pad wouldn’t be enough to heal those types without leaving marks (which he knows because he’s seen Janus’s face, he put a healing cream on Janus’s cuts, he stared at those scars that Janus had to live with and cried about how he wasn’t fast enough to stop them from occurring).

And part of him was screaming about how he was getting rid of evidence, of proof that Remus needed to be ejected off this ship ASAP, no Logan we are not going to vote about this, he tried to Virgil last night!

Virgil also thought that the screaming part of him sounded a lot like Janus’s mother three days after Janus had gone missing and she had decided that Virgil had been on the one to make that happen.

“Why did you make the Oath?” Virgil asked, just to drown out his own thoughts before he started tearing out his own hair.

“Go fuck yourself, Deathworlder,” Remus said with a lot more heat than Virgil expected.

Virgil unwrapped the healing pad from his arm and gently switched it to the other. The door was behind him, but despite Virgil's common sense and the nausea in his stomach, he couldn't quite make himself... move towards it. He was rooted to the spot in the Transport room, watching Remus Prince stand there, like he there was something he was missing from his exchange (beyond that self preservation instinct he clearly never had).

Remus ignored him, studying the panel in front of him with an annoyed expression, although Virgil could contribute that to his presence over just the confusing set up that neither Roman nor Logan had ever successfully explained to Virgil. He didn’t doubt that both of them had been dodging around it-- he half expected that between all three of his alien family they only figured out how to use about 3/4ths of the actual system.

Remus tapped two square buttons and then slid to the keyboard in front of the computer screen and typed out a command code. The screen flashed purple, and Remus huffed out a sigh and pressed and held another button until the screen and half the control panel lights shut off completely.

“What are you doing?”

“Ship maintenance,” Remus said, in a tone that matched Roman’s when he was daring Virgil to challenge him on a fact of Space life. He flipped two switches, stalked to a closed wall panel to his left and flicked it open to reveal pulsing blue wires connecting what Virgil assumed were alien versions of circuit boards. He distractedly leaned inside the window port and hummed. “Make yourself useful, Cikeriy: when was the last time you idiots had someone do a maintenance check?”

Virgil frowned, pulling his hand from the pad and flexing his fingers, working away the last of the numbness, before folding the pad up again and wondering if he should be offering it back to Remus to deal with the bruises on his throat that must have been hurting at least a little. “How often are they supposed to happen?”

Remus scowled at the wires like they personally offended him. Virgil got the feeling that he somehow said the wrong thing.

“Of course,” the Erefren said, laced with bitterness that made the air in Virgil’s lungs rust.

“What?”

Instead of answering Remus reached into the wires with his claws and yanked several of them out. Sparks flew out in bursts of red and green and Virgil had thought that he’d used up all his adrenaline but apparently not because he was suddenly wide awake and ready to scream.

“What are you doing?!”

“I literally just fucking told you,” Remus said. “I should just rig this entire thing to explode. That would be fucking funny.”

It didn’t sound like it would actually. Remus didn’t even sound like he believed it would be funny. Virgil was too busy trying not to launch himself at the Erefren and stop him to wonder exactly why Remus would say something like that when one of their escape pods was so obviously out of commission and Remus would be caught in any type of explosion that did occur.

The Erefren swept across the room to his discarded go-bag, rifling through it in a much more chaotic manner than Virgil had, before pulling out a roll of tools-- more specifically Virgil’s roll of handheld tools that he kept in his lab for when he was working on his robots or EMPs. It had been a gift from Patton once Logan had told the others Virgil didn’t want to go back to Earth and it was definitely something that he had cherished greatly.

He hadn’t been in his lab in a few days, Virgil realized with a jolt. Not since he had shown Janus his lab and Janus had commented on how cool his robots were and Virgil had been starkly reminded that time passed and people change and is it lying if Janus never asked what had happened back on Earth after he “died”?

Remus didn’t seem to care who it belonged to, because he had stolen it and intended to flee with it and Virgil wasn’t sure he would have noticed it missing because going back to his work space meant facing that truth again and Virgil was a coward.

He pulled a wrench from the roll and dropped the rest of it on the control panel before crouching down and beginning to undo the screws on the panel mainframe itself. The wires he pulled in the wall sparked again, but Remus didn’t so much as glance at them.

“Are those…?”

Remus growled out a warning syllable in Erefren. “No tail conducting from the Deathworlder. The robots are cute, but you aren’t anywhere near my level.”

“Level?”

“In my league? On my level?” Remus said. “I know Janus has used these stupid ass expressions before. I’m better than you at this so shut the fuck up before I make you shut up.”

“You can’t hurt me or anyone else on this ship.”

“This ship is one stray screw away from blowing itself up,” Remus said, disappearing into the control panel. “I don’t fucking need to do anything for you to die at this point and it would still count as honoring my Oath to Disney.”

Virgil shuffled closer slightly so he could watch whatever Remus was doing on the ground, although Remus was right. Virgil was far out of his depth in knowing what wires Remus was looking at, much less what they did around the ship.

Remus poked around for a few quisannu before pulling his head out and glaring at the escape pod.

“Who fucking wired this shithole?” he asked, probably mainly to himself. Before he shoved the door of the panel back in place and moved back to the one on the wall.

“Do you do this often?” Virgil asked, nervously.

“What, rewire ships of my dumbass brother so they’re less likely to blow up in the middle of the night?” Remus snapped. “No. Why are you still here? Unless, of course, you want to go for a round two, little Cikeriy, which would involve me shoving this wrench down your throat.”

“It would be a round three, actually,” Virgil countered. “Where did you learn to do this?”

“I don’t have my certification, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Remus said, "But I fucking built my first ship myself out of scraps; saved up money from every single thing I could and then took the rest from Roman when he wasn’t looking. While the precious Prince was off doing his perfect soldier boy routine, I was studying how to create rocket fuel and rig an engine to get me off that planet. Is that good enough for you? Fucker."

That…okay. That didn’t sound like it should have been remotely true. Virgil’s face must have given him away because Remus snorted.

"What? Don’t believe me Crikeriy? TS-03 is a little--” Remus growled out a syllable that Virgil had absolutely never heard before, but Remus didn’t bother to translate it. “The entire Erefren race is one one little continent surrounded by water and instead of exploring the oceans, all our people decided to have a continual war over the same 3.7 million squared miles."

((Or at least Virgil assumed that he meant miles. He got a headache trying to define measures of distance to Logan a year ago, so he decided to just… always assume the aliens used the imperial system. On cynical days, Virgil liked to muse at how very American that was of him.))

"Why?"

"Because Disney!" Remus pointed the wrench at him. "Because our great god of holiness passed down a million different sacred ways to fight and kill each other and no way to determine who gets to be in charge! It's free for all! A blood bath!! But for honor!!"

He looked back at the panel. "You wouldn't last a day there."

Virgil felt the dust on his skin, under his nails, in his mouth. "I'm not exactly a fighter."

"Well crack my spine plates, Cikeriy!" Remus said in what Virgil was beginning to understand was sarcasm. The human shaped handprints on his neck seemed to glow in the dull blue light. "I wouldn't have guessed that at all! If the little scars make you nervous; I'd hate to see what you think of the big ones."

"What big ones?"

Remus fiddled with the wires, sticking his tongue out through all his rows of teeth as he worked. Virgil inched slightly to the side watching the movement that Remus made with a curious eye despite himself. He didn't exactly know how or what Remus was doing, but Remus didn't seem to hesitate in any of his motions.

He held the same confidence in himself as Roman did when he was showing off his sword skills, as Janus did when he was speaking another language, as Virgil did when he was presenting his award winning robot and getting second place to Perfect Janus Ekans just to have the second worst night of his life.

Of course, Remus could have just been rewiring the entire ship so that their warp core overheats and kills them all. Or shutting down the engines so they’d be at the mercy of any space pirate that floated by. Or sending out a beacon to attract the space government that hates Deathworlders just to get Virgil killed because Remus couldn’t do it himself anymore.

His tail whipped backwards, suddenly, and Virgil yelped dodging to the side before the spiked plates cut through his ribcage, he never should have let his guard down, Remus was fucking insane--

Remus’s tail wrapped around a wire stripper and flicked it into the air where he skillfully caught it and went back to the panel with his stupid growling laughter following after.

"You could have asked!" Virgil snapped, fighting down the sudden adrenaline rush.

"Where would be the fun in that, Cikeriy?" the Erefren asked. "I heard that Deathworlder reflexes slow down if you don't practice them often!"

"I heard that Erefrens taste good with Wendy’s dipping sauce," Virgil muttered back.

Remus barked a laugh, somehow sounding more terrifying than his other laughs. "I bet we do."

"You don't even know what a Wendy’s is."

"Food place, right?"

Virgil blinked for a quisannu, stunned in a way he hadn’t expected. Remus was halfway in the control panel, his head and arms nearly completely out of view but his tail was swaying back and forth like it was waiting to defend from a backstab.

"Janus said it was his favorite," Remus's voice came.

"Janus is a little liar," Virgil said. "Wendy's is my favorite place."

Remus stopped. His head jerked upwards slightly until it seemed like he was staring directly into the metal slab of the control panel back and Virgil almost thought he'd climb back out, but the quisannu passed and he went back to his tinkering.

Somehow the room was tense again and Virgil wasn’t sure what made it that way. The darkness was still accented with the red light, the ship was still asleep, the entire universe consisted of just the two of them in the transport room. And despite all that, Virgil’s arms wrapped around himself and he tried to convince thoughts that the silence was not the roars of an invisible crowd.

Something sparked in front of Remus, cutting off whatever Virgil was going to say to fill the void. Remus hissed between all of his teeth in a way that made every hair on Virgil’s body stand on edge. There was a noise like a curse that Virgil had once heard Patton reprimand Roman for saying after they finished stitching him back up from the ritualistic torture the Quitans put him through.

“Hey,” Remus called over his shoulder. “Hit the boot up button.”

Virgil’s eyes flicked down to the control panel and the plentiful series of buttons over the dash none of which stood out from each other or had a label-- not that a label would have actually helped. Virgil had put off learning written Common as long as he could and he was starting to think that wasn’t his best decision ever.

“Third row, second column, the orange square looking one,” Remus said.

“Uh,” Virgil said. “This isn’t going to blow up the ship, right? Because I’d like to think we actually reached an agreement--”

“Why are you Deathworlders so boring?” Remus asked, using his tail to knock Virgil out of the way as gently as it came with Remus and press the button himself.

There was a buzzing in the room, loud like the entire ship had been filled with cicadas suddenly and Virgil got an excellent mental image of giant cicada-aliens breaking through the hull and eating them both and that’s really not any better than Remus having sent him out in to Space.

But instead of any type of hull crackling, the buzzing died down to a barely noticeable noise and the various buttons across the panel began to light up, including the screen in front of Virgil that displayed a screen of just white Eferen text and a blinking space that seemed to be waiting for a confirmation button press.

Remus wiggled himself back from the wires, shrugging around the few that got hooked on his forearm spikes. There were indigo smears on his face that he seemed unaware of, most likely some type of ash from the spark or a protective grease that he hadn’t bothered to wipe from his claws. He tossed the wire stripper to the side and nudged his way in front of Virgil to read the text.

He lets out a low pleased sound. “This idiot is lucky I still remember how to rework shit on DEVOS 3. He’s got to be the only person still operating with a system like this.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Other than being old and outdated?” Remus asked tapping the screen to add a command of some type. “It’s shitty. Borderline torture. I think it’s outlawed in twenty systems for being a cruel and unusual punishment on anyone with a brain.”

“You have a brain?”

“It’s not too late for me to throw you out of the airlock myself, Crikeriy,” the alien responded, pressing a final button. The screen changed to a symbol Virgil vaguely recognized-- like a circular loading sign but it was the shape of a triangular bone plate. After another blink, it cleared to make way for a line of text.

Escape pod Alfie glowed with an orange light and Virgil stared wide eyed as the secure locks reset and the door reenaged.

“See?” Remus said. “Good as new!”

Virgil’s eyes immediately traced the outline of the claw marks in the wall just left of the pod door, where Remus barely missed tearing out Virgil’s intestines to make his point.

“Yeah,” Virgil said. “Sure.”

If Remus heard the disagreement in Virgil’s tone, he didn’t make a point to care. He pressed another button-- a small round blue one at the top of the control panel and the pod entered sleep mode and plunged them back into the semi darkness.

There’s no Dust here, there’s no blood under his nails, there’s no tail wrapping around his neck hoisting him off the grou--

“I need a drink,” Remus said.

Virgil startled at that, jerking to attention at the sudden declaration. There wasn’t anything in his tone that suggested it, but Virgil got the impression suddenly that Remus was…. Tired. Bone Tired. Dead Tired.

It was too dark to really make out his expression and his silhouette didn’t betray the weakness as Remus suddenly pushed away from the control panel and ghosted his way over to that forgotten Go-Bag that had started all of this, tail swaying in the air behind him. When Roman got exhausted, his Common started to roll, stressing on the words with hard “r” sounds, his tail dragged on the ground, his shoulders slumped slightly and he leaned forward to compensate for the shift in weight. Living with him for the year had led Virgil to be so very aware of how to tell when Roman was one quisannu from passing out.

But Remus… Remus wasn’t doing any of those things. In fact, he had a pep in his step, a bounce. He looked just as energetic as he had when he’d wrapped his tail around Virgil’s neck and tried to kill him.

Virgil squinted at the Erefren's back, making out the pinches of his rigid bone plates that shifted and--

Oh, Virgil realized. Remus’s steps were audible. The shifting of his bone plates was audible. His breathing was audible.

He was making noise.

It was such a little detail. But once Virgil noticed it, the sounds slammed into him like a wrecking ball. He tried to think back over the hazy first few days of Janus and Remus being on the ship, wiping off the rose-tint that colored his memories with euphoria: they had dragged Janus and Remus to the medical bay-- Remus had been unconscious, covered in blood and everything had been in chaos trying to make sure the Pol’turs didn’t blow them all to smithereens.

Logan and Patton had patched Remus up while Virgil had been obsessed with the softness of Janus’s fingers while he shook off the dregs of the drug that had kept him too weak to fight back. Roman had come and gone, rooms for their guests had been prepared.

Virgil and Janus had fallen asleep on a medical cot, tangled up in each other.

When Virgil had woken up Remus had been gone.

And ever since then, Virgil had, at most, gotten only fleeting sightings of him on the ship. He hadn’t noticed because he had been thinking about Janus and Janus being alive and Janus being alive here with him, but Remus… he really hadn’t seen Remus much more than a slip of him leaving the room when Virgil entered or passing through when he and Janus were talking.

Each time Remus had been quieter than a ghost.

He wasn’t quiet now.

He unzipped the bag and tossed around a few things until he brought out a bottle-- the same one that he had seen in Logan’s lab. Remus didn’t bother with a bottle opener (not that Virgil could imagine where he would find one on this ship); he crossed his opposite arm and dug one of his spiked forearm plates into the cork-like material, flexed his wrist, and the lid popped off with a satisfying hiss.

Virgil almost opened his mouth to tell him what a nice party trick that was, but in the next blink, Remus threw his head back and chugged half the bottle.

“Holy shit!” Virgil said instead.

Remus’s lips smacked off the bottle audibly and his face got caught in the faint red light just enough for Virgil to make out the curl of his lips that didn’t look even remotely humorous. Virgil was beginning to wonder if Remus actually did find anything funny, or if he had adopted a Deathworlder smile just for this purpose. Goosebumps raced along Virgil’s arms, and that tiny voice in his head that he liked to think was common sense was telling him to run all over again.

Unfortunately, Remus was blocking the exit. Again.

Remus twisted the bottle in his hand holding it up enough to squint at the label. Virgil wasn’t familiar with the dialect considering it was a little more foreign than Spanish or French. Back when he had first noticed it in Logan’s lab he’d thought the marks looked a bit how German sounded, with heavy bold marks that scratched their way across the paper in shapes that meant nothing to Virgil.

“Tenekaries,” Remus said, licking his lips and then taking another swig.

“That good?” Virgil asked, and immediately wondered if being an idiot was a learned habit or a genetic one.

“That bad,” Remus corrected like he wasn’t trying to replace the oxygen in his lungs with whatever was in the bottle. “You think rocks know shit about alcohol? They don’t. This should have been poured down the drain.”

“You’re still drinking it.”

“You’re still in my line of sight,” Remus shot back. “The alternative is me ripping out your insides and chewing on your liver, Prometheus.”

Virgil blinked for a second. “Prometheus?” He repeated slowly. The word sounded familiar, like an inch in the back of his brain. Something, something, something…. It wasn’t a conjugation of a word he knew in Common. Was it Erefren? Roman sometimes tossed Erefren in with his words when they were talking, but he had toned it down a lot when Virgil had gotten confused back at the beginning of his stay and Virgil couldn’t really remember the last time he’d slipped Erefren willingly into a conversation.

“Prometheus,” Virgil said again. “What the hell….Is that an insult? It’s an insult, right?”

Remus was looking at him. Something danced in his eyes, twisting with emotions that Virgil really couldn’t figure out at the moment, be it from exhaustion or just how alien he was.

“Prometheus,” Remus repeated. “The guy.” He made a motion with his arm. “The Fire guy. Liver. Birds? Yeah, Birds.”

“Birds? OH!” Virgil said, snapping his fingers. “The Titan! Brought fire down to the humans! Right!” He frowned, tilting his head. “Wait a fuck-- why do you know about Greek myths? It’s a Hum--a Deathworlder thing.”

Remus swished his bottle, his claws tapping on the glass with a barely audible tink-tink-tink. “Don’t you have somewhere to be, Little Cikeriy? Go back to sleep. In your own bed or Janus’s. I don’t care.”

“Something tells me you actually do.”

Remus gave him a look that was deep, dark, and promising death if he pushed it again. Virgil resisted the urge to step back again, but his breath shallowed out like Remus had driven his fist into Virgil’s aching diaphragm.

“Fine,” Virgil said. “We won’t talk about it.”

“There wasn’t going to be much talking,” Remus said. “Just you screaming.”

“Last time I checked you had to turn off gravity to get me to stop killing you.”

“Last time I checked you’re scared of killing people,” Remus said pointedly and Virgil’s heart stopped beating in his chest for a beat, two, three…

“That’s what--” Remus made a growl, the same growl from a while ago, deep and throaty and unpleasant in all the ways that a word could ever be, “-- is. That’s what it does. Is Roman just an idiot or did he not know?”

“I don’t even know what you’re saying,” Virgil said.

“An idiot then,” Remus decided, he licked the rim of his bottle and then tilted his head back to look at Virgil again. “Let’s see… how to explain it to the Deathworlder…. It’s a sickness. It’s really common in Erefrens because of the whole war loving, but I know that other races can get it too. I didn’t think Deathworlders could, but who actually knows shit about you guys?” He shook his head as if to clear the thought. “When you do or have something bad done to you it can cause a sickness in you that you can’t cure with a skrad healing pad; it's in your head and it makes you forget where you are sometimes.”

Virgil stared at him.

“You mean like… PTSD,” Virgil said. “You think I have PTSD.”

“What the fuck are you saying?”

“I don’t have PTSD,” Virgil said. “I can’t have it! I’m happy--”

“It doesn’t fucking mean you aren’t happy, bitch,” Remus said. “It doesn’t mean shit, actually. You can still be Janus’s picture perfect boytoy waiting at his every beck and call. You can still be my brother’s shitty little charity case or Logan’s science experiment or whatever you and Patton have going on. Whatever the group of you want to be, you can still be that.”

Virgil felt like he wasn’t breathing, something in his chest was twisting in a way that it wasn’t meant to be. He wrapped his arms around himself as tightly as he could, because he really didn’t want to know what would happen if he just shattered right then and there.

“I don’t have it,” he repeated. “I don’t.”

Remus stared at him. “Real convincing. Did Roman teach you those acting tricks?”

“Remus, I don’t.”

“Shockingly, I still don’t believe you,” Remus said, motioning to his neck and the handprints on his neck. “It’s not the fucking end of the world, Disney. My entire pack has it! And I know Roman has it, so there’s no way he missed you having it, dipshit.”

“Do you have it?” Virgil snapped.

The air stilled, buzzing with some type of energy that made Virgil want to peel his own skin off. Remus shifted his weight and carefully set the bottle on the ground at his knee out of his way.

“Yeah, Cikeriy,” Remus said. “I have it. I’ve done things I didn’t like and sometimes if I stare at the mirror too long I get the urge to rip my bone plates out. Sometimes I can’t sleep for weeks because I’m too afraid of what I’m going to see when I close my eyes. Sometimes if I listen to Roman talk for too long, I get the urge to kill all of you.”

Virgil didn’t dare move. Remus’s eyes pinned him in place, deep, dark, and disgusted. The faint red light from the hall highlighted the nearly invisible scars on his face: one on his cheek, one through his eyebrow, one barely hidden under his dark curls and they played off the bruises around his neck and the strain in his voice in a way that made Virgil have a hard time breathing.

“You’re lying,” Virgil said so quietly he himself almost didn’t hear it. “You don’t want us dead.”

“Anyone you find running around in Space like the way that we do is going to be all sorts of fucked up,” Remus said. “You think Logan left home for the fun of it? That Patton won’t fall apart the moment that he’s on a planet for more than three days? Roman’s been on the run from himself for years. So you might want to be careful who you ask that of next.”

Virgil’s arm ached, even though the skrad healing pad had worked and there wasn’t so much as a scar left over. His ribs creaked in his chest as his lungs pressed against them.

“You regret it?” Virgil asked. “The things you did to Roman? To us? Were the pirates and mercenaries and assassins just your idea of a practical joke?"

Remus snorted, taking another swig from the nearly empty bottle. Virgil didn’t have a clue how long it took alcohol to work on aliens, but he did get the feeling that Remus would not be looking at him like this if there wasn’t the entire bottle in his bloodstream. Oh Jesus Christ, was that going to kill him? "Nah. Those guys were bad. Like real bad. Not like us bad."

He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "We were a team of… I don't know the common word for it but in Erefren it’s--" he made a growling noise deep in his throat that ended in a sharpened hiss and very, very easily set all of Virgil’s hairs on end. Remus's eyes flickered over to him with an amused half smirk that looked more threatening than any of his glares. "It means like...we pretend to be a pack to our enemies and then sell them out. Or in this case send them towards Roman’s little team of lucky bastards and let him take the glory for beating them and handing them over to the space police."

Virgil blinked, "Oh my god, you're a Fixer."

"A what?" Remus asked and it took Virgil a moment to realize he dropped back to English. His mind rolled over the translation to common but the tense is all wrong and he really wished that Janus was here to puzzle it out, because Janus had always had a better mind for languages and talking and generally not ending up in a life-or-death fight at who-knows-when o’clock.

"It’s uh…" Virgil tried to repeat the animalistic noise that Remus had made but it came out so bad that Remus tossed his head back and laughed like he was dying.

"I'm not even gonna tell you what you said there, Cikeriy." He brought the bottle back to his mouth, almost missing because he was shaking so hard. He mimicked the noise with a snort, "Disney, I can see why he likes you."

Virgil felt his face flush and beat the humiliation away with a mental broom and desperation. He wrung his hands in the air wondering why the fuck he cared about anything when it came to Remus. "Shut up, shut up, okay! Listen for Deathworlders in English terms, we call-- whatever you said a fixer. I think the nearest translation to common is fixing-- because they fix the situation for a desired outcome."

Okay, that might not have been entirely true. Virgil’s knowledge of criminal empires really capped out at a few episodes of a TV show that he’d watched at Janus’s house instead of studying for Spanish, and even then he’d followed the way than Janus mouthed words silently to himself more than he followed the plot of said TV show.

But Remus was quiet for a moment, staring at nothing, and his hand loose around the bottle. The low hum of the control panel made the ship feel so empty, the room so lonely, Space so large and vast and incomprehensible. It felt like it was just the two of them alone in the universe and Virgil wondered if saying something will cause that feeling to shatter, and Remus to remember that he hated Virgil’s Deathworlder guts.

"These...fixings of yours," Remus said quietly, slowly, tiredly. "Are…they good guys?"

Virgil felt his heart sink in his chest. "What?"

"It’s okay if they aren't," Remus said. "I don't care. It's just...being one is the greatest insult in Erefren, you know? They hate that spy shit. No honor in backstabbing."

And Virgil was well adept at reading between the lines of Erefren body language, almost an expert if it weren't for Patton and Logan having known Roman for longer. He can see the brokenness of the question, the desperate hope flitting underneath the cracks in his nonchalance, the silent "please" that Remus was absolutely too proud to say out loud.

"Doesn't everyone think they're the good guy?" Virgil asked.

Remus snorted, again, bringing the rim of the bottle to his mouth and licking it. "Fuck, that sounds like Janus."

“You talk to Janus a lot?” Virgil asked.

“When would I have had the chance?”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop. Remus froze before he actually took another gulp of his alien alcohol and the silence made Virgil feel like he’d been pushed underwater and held down there.

“You’ve been plastered to each other’s sides for so long,” Remus had said. He’d referenced Prometheus and knew what a Wendy’s was.

Virgil hadn’t noticed it when he had first said it. He’d been too busy being angry, being furious, being irritated at Remus for his assumptions and actions and fucking everything.

But with Virgil staring at Remus now, he was starting to wonder if maybe that had been intended, too.

“Do….” Virgil started without a clue where he was going with it. His sentence trailed off into the darkness, grasping for something that he couldn’t see and wasn’t sure what it was.

“I did it, you know,” Remus said suddenly.

“What?”

“Built a rocket. Got off the planet,” he was looking at the bottle again, intently, as if he was talking to it and not Virgil. “Got arrested at the first planet I made it to, which was good because if the police hadn’t been there I would have been killed in a bar fight. Didn’t know a tail swing of Common back then. My ship was no better than scrap metal, and I only had the clothes on my back to my name. It was just me. Me against the Universe.”

He rolled his fingers around the bottle. “Ever played Vace-un, Cikeriy?”

Virgil shook his head, but Remus must have seen it anyway.

“It’s a card game. Involves betting and making combinations of cards. Janus said it was similar to something called Poker,” he said. “I won my ship in a game of Vace-un. Lied and Cheated, but the Yurink didn’t know any better. I got a ship and this stupid little Dreyfel chased after me as I was leaving asking if I would take him with me and then at the next planet a Rolberjan joined up, then a Skrad-- I got my… I got…”

Oh, Virgil realized. Oh no.

“Roman’s a lucky bastard,” Remus said in something that sounded suspiciously like a wobbling. “No matter what… No matter what gets thrown at him… he always… he always comes out on top. Disney has got to love him. He’s got some type of magic--fucking-- bullshit--”

“Remus…”

“How?!” Remus brought his free hand up to his face, dragging his claws through his hair. “How the fuck are you all still alive? How does he do it? How does he keep all of you alive every time?!”

Virgil's mouth taste like Dust and he can feel the grit under his hands and in his clothes again, like a whole year hasn't passed and he's never been happy at all.

“They trusted me,” Remus said. “Every shitty time! I made us take dangerous chemicals halfway across a galaxy! I helped start a war on TS-14! I picked up a Deathworld and gave him a room on my ship without a single lock in place and they trusted me that everything was going to be okay. They-- They trusted me and… I got my entire fucking crew killed brutually and I have to find and inform their families that they won’t be returning. Ever.”

The air was stinging with the admissions and Virgil felt like he wasn’t breathing as he stared at the Erefren.

“I let them down.” Remus said. “I was a terrible captain."

“You weren’t,” Virgil shot back, and part of him remembered suddenly that for all he was a coward, he’d still always been better at confronting people and comforting them. The back of his throat tasted like Dust and Remus’s skin was a dull color compared to how vibrant Roman’s was and Janus once said “I like that you’re honest, Virgil,” like Virgil wasn’t a straight up liar.

He didn’t know shit about being a space cowboy pirate captain, or how to actually fly a ship, or work the communications logs, or find jobs like how they were always getting paid to do. He didn’t know shit about what it took to hire a crew or how to make people who hate you fall in line and not commit mutiny by the next moon. He didn’t know.

But Remus was one of the most feared captains in the cosmos and there wasn’t a planet that they had traveled to that didn’t know about Remus and his crew, no matter how remote that planet was or what language the people spoke.

Deathworlders were boogeymen, but Remus and his Crew were very real and very dangerous and very respected.

And Virgil couldn’t see how something as monumental as that could mean that Remus had been a bad captain.

“You weren’t a bad captain, Remus,” Virgil said a little bit more confident than before. “A bad captain wouldn't... he wouldn't care. About them. About their families knowing."

"I shouldn’t have ever left TS-03.”

"You know what would have happened if you had never left TS-03? Every single person that Roman defeated would still be out there hurting people. The pirates, the mercenaries, hell, everyone. Can you even count the number of times that you’ve saved people by doing this? And throughout all of that you kept your crew safe from the police and other criminals by sheer force of reputation, Remus. Do you hear me? That’s insane. No one ever has done what you tried to do!

“And…” Virgil licked his lips, swallowed hard, and forced himself to meet Remus’s eyes. “And Janus would still be on whatever planet you picked him up from. I would never have gotten to see him again. Remus, do you know what that means to me? I thought he was dead and you brought him back to life.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t really, though,” Remus said. “If I had really been a decent person I would have brought him back to your Deathworld years ago. Because he asked me. He begged me. He did not shut up about you, Virgil Storm, and I refused to bring him home.”

For a moment Virgil imagined it: a world where Janus had crash landed back into his life back on Earth, a month or two or eight after he’d disappeared, suddenly showing back up, worn and torn, but alive and saying that none of it had been Virgil’s fault. Janus would have had a clever little lie ready, something about running away, something about being kidnapped and escaping, something about completely normal Earth things that could have happened. Janus might have even told Virgil the truth, but probably not, considering Virgil-from-two-years-ago wouldn’t have been able to imagine that Janus liked him enough to have given up Space for him.

A world where Janus sat next to him in Spanish III and got him drunk on Seagrams at two in the morning and never knew what a liar that Virgil could be.

There was a pain in his chest thinking about it; a small part of him wanted to ask Remus why he didn’t. Surely of all the dangerous things Remus had ever done, going to a Deathworld wasn’t that taboo.

“I’m glad,” Virgil’s mouth said instead, because that was what he meant and once he thought it the geyser of relief bursts forth from his chest and drowns the bit that hurts. “I’m glad you didn’t, Remus.”

Because the Janus who smiled at him now, was not the shell that walked around school. Because, in a twisted way, holding him hostage in Space gave Janus that taste of freedom he deserved. Because the more Virgil thought about what being back on Earth might have done to Janus, the more he thought that aliens were right to call it a Deathworld.

“Shut up,” Remus said.

“I’ll help you,” Virgil blurted out, and almost immediately regretted it when his own brain registered what the fuck he was saying. “I’ll help you track down the families and tell them about your crew. If… If that’s okay. You shouldn’t… you shouldn’t have to do it alone.”

Remus stared at him, eyes unreadable in every way that Virgil had come to learn to understand Erefrens.

“Oh,” Remus said. “That’s why.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry about it, idiot,” Remus said and then he wobbled to his feet, nearly falling as he tried to keep his balance. He twisted the empty bottle in his hands. “I’m going to sleep.”

“Remus--”

“You should too, Virgil,” Remus said. Virgil himself swallows every thought he had at the sound of his same rolling off Remus’s tongue: sounding so similar to how Roman said and yet different all the same, harsh on the first syllable, softer on the second. There was some emotion coating it, thick and heavy like honey, and yet Virgil couldn’t identify exactly what it meant at all.

In his moment of hesitation, Remus disappeared through the door without a look back, leaving Virgil alone in the Transport room as if nothing had happened in there at all and certainly nothing that would have made his throat dry and coated with imaginary blue-grey dust.

#alien au #sanders sides #remus sanders #virgil sanders #PTSD mention #wow they need therapy #whoops #Virgil really said lets not think about that right now #when remus calls him on his denial #does this count as them bonding #blood mention #anxceit #demus #you ever fall in love with someone whos already in love with someone else?#sorry remus #Space and Everything In It #humans are space orcs

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