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delimeful · 11 months

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you can’t go back (9)

Intermission Part 2: Remus

warnings: involuntary drug use, murder (intentional and unintentional), blood & injury, remus POV shenaniganry (specifically mentions of cannibalism, sex, spiders, & gore), tension, and misunderstandings (lmk if i missed any!)

It was possible that Remus should have waited until the drugs had worn off a little more before indulging in a blitz through a ship full of aliens.

Unlike what one might expect, the realization wasn’t actually for his own sake. In fact, the drug had left him numb around the edges in a way that was vastly preferable to the bone-deep ache that had slowly seeped into his entire skeleton over the course of his imprisonment.

He was more than fine with delaying that particular feeling, even if it meant dealing with staggering steps and clumsy movements.

The doorways he’d slammed into the edges of probably weren’t as happy with the situation. The aliens that he’d swung at with far less precision than normal were probably even unhappier.

Since they were the ones who had abducted him, he found he didn’t really care about their feelings on the matter.

They should have watched Alien, done a little bit of cultural research on humans. Maybe then they would have had a better idea of what kind of response snooping around on a planet’s surface and picking up passengers would earn them.

Sadly, Remus didn’t have acid blood, but he did have a bile-producing liver and the ability to projectile vomit on command. If these aliens had been even half as badass as Sigourney Weaver, he might have even gotten the chance to try it.

Instead, he’d gotten splattered with alien blood that didn’t so much as sting, and also with his own blood when a lucky swipe had shredded the right straps of his muzzle and the flesh of his cheek alike, and also also with the growing realization that extraterrestrials were far less durable than Star Trek would have led him to believe.

He should have waited for the drug to wear off. His face would be stinging right now, his arm would be even worse, and his fighting style would still have been best described as ‘berserker’, but at least he would have had a better idea of just how much force he was inflicting. Maybe then he wouldn’t still be feeling the sickly pop of organs and bone alike giving way under his knuckles.

Every alien he’d encountered on the ship was down. He wasn’t sure how many were still breathing, and he didn’t particularly want to check.

Well. He knew there was at least one alien onboard that hadn’t gotten their brains bashed out.

Not by him, anyways. With how squishy aliens apparently were, it seemed possible that the guy had slipped and bashed themself right into brain death the moment Remus had walked out the door.

He wouldn’t know until he checked, so he started his way back to his former prison cell, stepping around the limp or twitching bodies as best he could without directly looking at them.

(His imagination filled in the blanks, as always.)

The new guy had caught Remus’s attention from the moment they stepped into his line of sight, because they had familiar crunchy beetle-shell plating in angular, armor-like patterns over their skin.

Just like Tall, Dark, and Spidery. The only alien who hadn’t seemed onboard with the abduction plan, and the one who had been subdued and dragged away right in front of him.

(He’d caught a glimpse of the other cells, during his first escape attempt. They’d been empty.)

There were clear differences between the two, most notably that Spidery was about a foot taller, not even counting the stabby spider-legs on their back, and their plating had been even and symmetrical. Remus remembered how it had gone from charcoal gray to inkwell black, like the plates were full of hundreds of tiny squids, all flushing their ink sacs all at once.

(He’d been pretty thoroughly drugged by that point. Not that thinking about cephalopods was unusual for him.)

Newbie’s plates had been far more translucent, a pearly-gold color, and the ones climbing up the left side of their face were jagged, irregular patches, like a giraffe’s spots. But they had the same glossy glazed-icing shine as Spidery’s plates, a texture that had been promptly wedged between marbles and porcelain in the edible-if-you’re-not-a-coward section of Remus’s brain.

They had the same big, dark eyes, the direction of their gaze only visible by the miniscule movements of the muscles framing it. He’d wondered if they’d known Spidery, and then he’d watched them stare up at the scratches in the ceiling and he’d been certain that they did.

He hadn’t been planning to move much, hoping that inactivity would keep them from upping the dosage of whatever space-elephant-tranquilizers they’d put him on, and yet he found himself slowly skulking closer to the cell’s front as the muted conversation continued.

Last time, Remus had distracted Spidery at the wrong moment, but Patches had had their back to him. If it turned out that Remus was actually the fly-bait for another spiderguy mugging, he figured he could lunge silently at the barrier and distract the others.

Instead, Patches had revealed their own set of extra limbs, ones that were far less sharp than Spidery’s but turned out to be just as good at stabbing.

At that point, he’d been practically wired with adrenaline, his brain already convinced that Patches was about to be murdered or dragged-off-and-vanished right in front of him. He hadn’t thought twice before lunging through the newly-opened cell door and promptly performing the most lethal headbutt of his life.

In hindsight, maybe inflicting massive blunt force trauma without hesitation wasn’t the way to make friends with new acquaintances that were extremely vulnerable to blunt force trauma.

Sure, Patches had technically started the violent murder streak with their own expert knife-wielding, but Remus had (only somewhat intentionally) continued that streak all the way through the ship. He’d have scared off plenty of humans with his behavior, let alone aliens.

When Remus poked his head back through the doorway to the undersized prison hall, though, he found that Patches hadn’t run for the hills after all.

In fact, they hardly seem to have moved in his absence, despite the open doorway and all the alien screeching and wailing that must have carried down the hall.

(Going by how sore his throat was, he’d probably been screaming too. Maybe they’d thought he was being murdered right back? Or maybe that catchy tagline had been right all along: in space, no one could hear you scream!)

Patches was half-slumped against the wall, their extra arms laying limp against the ground at either side of them, palms up and fingers uncurled. Remus couldn’t see any blood, but his heart still jumped strangely at the sight of the alien so lax and still. The only sign that they were still alive was the barest twitch around their eyes as their gaze flicked over to take in Remus’s arrival.

Their plates slowly deepened to a dark grey, a pale imitation of the sharp flush of pitch-black that had overtaken them while they’d been gutting the boss alien earlier. Remus was guessing it was some kind of reflexive threat display, since he remembered that Spidery had done the same at the mere sight of him.

Patches’ half-hearted attempt was almost funny, except it felt less like they weren’t that scared, and more like they were too resigned to really try, which was much less funny.

“You don’t look too hot,” Remus told them, ignoring the still-dripping gouges on his own face. The broken muzzle was still dangling from one ear, and it swayed slightly as he tilted his head. “In the possibly-dying way, not in a you’re-unattractive way. At least if you do kick the bucket, you’ll still look sexy doing it!”

The alien didn’t respond, which Remus decided to take as an invitation to keep chattering, stepping into the hall and squatting so that they were closer to eye level.

From this close, he could see that the irregular plates along Patches’ left side were still that same shiny gold color, even as the rest of their plates went even darker at Remus’s proximity. He absently wondered if it was some kind of scarring or something they’d been born with.

Did spiderguys even have live birth? Were they hatched? Could they produce webbing? Were there huge insects on their planet?

“Do you bite the heads off your baby daddies after doing the nasty?” Remus asked, still scanning them for visible bumps or bruises. “Or are you the guy getting devoured? Is it like a matriarchy run by huge cannibalistic spider ladies?”

Patches didn’t say anything in response, gaze still locked on him, but a pair of transparent eyelids distinctly swept across their dark eyes, once, twice.

Honestly, those eyes kind of looked like really big boba balls. Would that be a societally appropriate thought to share if they were cannibalistic? Actually, if the cannibalism took place during sex like some Earth spiders, it would probably come across as flirty.

“Your eyes look like boba balls,” Remus told them, because obviously he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to flirt with an alien, recent traumatizing experience or not! “Wait, if it’s just the ladies that eat people, does that mean that spiderdude-on-spiderdude action is the only nonlethal boinking on the planet? Gay guys don’t get to participate in the cannibal dystopia? Tsk, tsk. Hannibal would be so disappointed in—!”

He cut off mid-admonishment as Patches lunged for him with an alarming number of limbs, his whole body twitching sharply as he just barely wrestled down the impulse to lash out. He could still hear the crunch of the last ribcage he’d immolated, and he wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.

Instead of hands on his throat, or possibly even a knife to the torso, he looked down to find Patches had simply grabbed onto his ratty, bloodstained pajama shirt in six different places, stretching the fabric slightly with the force of their grip. Their chin had dipped down slightly, as though bracing for a blow.

The lunge had been violent and startling, but the actual ‘attack’ had been harmless, as though they hadn’t even expected to get that far. As though they’d known the motion was a bad idea and done it anyway, like a spider held in the palm of a hand biting down even though it meant triggering the reflex of the massive, crushing fingers around it.

Except Patches was a lot smarter than a spider, smart enough to know what their movement would provoke, especially when Remus had spent the last half hour displaying exactly what a twitchy, half-drugged human would do when attacked. And they’d done it anyway.

Remus had originally thought that Patches and Spidery were different. That he’d been freed because they saw humans as more than bloodthirsty animals, unlike the aliens who had literally strapped a muzzle on him.

Now, it was looking more like they’d just found out that their goth friend had been disappeared-probably-murdered, proceeded to stab someone to death in an act of furious all-consuming vengeance, and finally set a dangerous feral creature loose in a theatrical murder-suicide attempt.

“That hurts my feelings,” Remus informed them. “I’m a very emotionally complex murderbeast who didn’t ask for any of this, and also it’s hypocritical of you to treat me like a monster when you potentially live in a society that runs on sex-cannibalism.”

Patches lifted their head up to stare at Remus directly and hissed, the single large plate on the right side of their face shifting back so they could properly display a pair of wicked-looking curved fangs. They were translucent enough to show the venom within, shining like liquid gold, and positioned awfully close to his neck.

It was one of the most blatant goading attempts he’d ever seen, and Remus grew up with Roman.

(Remus had spent his childhood doing just about every inadvisable thing he could think of. He had plenty of experience keeping his hands still and gentle while spiders bit him.)

“Do you envenomate your prey?” he asked, leaning back slightly to rest his weight on his hands in a purposefully relaxed manner. “It seems like you’d need a lot of venom for me since I’m so big, but I also don’t know your organ arrangement, your torso could totally be full of venom sacs instead of lungs or something. Hey, if you did melt my insides into a smoothie, would you use a straw or shotgun me like a frat boy with a beer?”

His new friend’s hiss slowly spluttered out, their grip loosening as Remus continued to not tear their head off or punch through their chest or perform any of the reflexive murder they were trying to prompt.

“If you’re not going to drink me like a soup, we will become BFFs,” Remus warned them. “A blood pact will be involved, and also at least three jars of mayo, and also also, semi-regular ritual sacrifices to appease the ancient Earth deity, Hatsune Miku.”

Patches, who had dropped the snarl and withdrawn far enough back to look at Remus properly, jerked back with wide eyes. He had half a second to wonder if the guy could actually understand him after all before there was a stinging impact against his spine, sending a painful paralyzing pulse through him.

His muscles seized for a moment— he wasn’t sure if the weird space-tasers actually used electrical currents, but it sure felt like the time he’d reached up and touched an exposed wire on a shitty theme-park carousel— and he caught a glimpse of Patches diving past him as he listed sloppily to the side.

Nobody new had entered the space, and there was only one body behind him, so there was only one alien it could have been. The tall one that followed the boss alien around everywhere like a bodyguard.

Huh. Guess his headbutt hadn’t one-shotted them, after all.

As annoying as the weapon’s blast was, it wasn’t exactly debilitating until he’d been hit by it like seven times in a row while also trying not to breathe in more drugged air, which was coincidentally how his last escape attempt had gone.

He had more important things to worry about now. Remus forced himself to move through the pain, pushing back up to his knees, and immediately twisted around, ready to come to his new buddy’s aid whether they liked it or not.

His new buddy had knocked the weapon from Bodyguard’s grip and was now shaking them like a ragdoll, tense as a live wire, as though they hadn’t been resignedly waiting to die five minutes ago.

Bodyguard made some truly wretched-sounding noises— probably due in part to losing whatever had splintered to bits under the force of Remus’s skull— and seemed altogether unconcerned about the new knife that Patches was now holding against the underside of their jaw.

(So they did have more knives. Fun!)

Humans that sounded that level of gurgly tended to be in the process of dying, so it made sense that Bodyguard cared about the threat to their life about as much as Patches had while threatening Remus. Being inured to death wasn’t the same as being inured to pain, though, and their nonchalance didn’t hold up against being stabbed through an arm, especially not when Patches twisted the blade like that.

Remus settled back onto his haunches. Going by the interrotorture, Patches probably didn’t need his help with this one. If he’d had access to someone who’d caused Roman’s death, he definitely wouldn’t want someone else elbowing in on his bloody and excruciating vengeance. He’d also be doing much worse, but Patches seemed too focused for this to solely be about revenge.

He could see the moment they got what they needed, their entire frame going stiff with tension at whatever information Bodyguard had just ground out. They headed towards the door, and Remus pushed himself up to his feet to follow.

At the movement, Patches whipped around and scrambled back a few paces at the same time, like a snake rearing back but not quite striking.

At some point, one of their hands must have sneakily scooped the abandoned space-taser weapon off the ground. It was pointed directly at him.

Maybe they’d only just found out that he was the reason Spidery was gone.

“If you’re going to crazy-murder me for not saving them, you should at least do it with a cool knife. I don’t even know if you can murder me with that thing, unless it's got a setting strong enough to induce heart failure.” Except if they didn’t want to murder him, it would eventually work to incapacitate him. Which meant he’d probably be going right back in that cell.

Remus’s hands balled up at his sides, part of him already bracing for the sting. “Come on, I know it’s not as effortless as pulling a trigger but a little stabbing action won’t kill you. I’ll even make my death throes super dramatic and overblown, as an added bonus.”

Remus had spent the last however many days so drugged he couldn’t feel his toes, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d seen the way the others had looked at him, the excitement some of them had shown after he’d dragged his nails down an alien’s arm and gouged far deeper than he’d meant to.

He’d mauled one of their own, and they’d liked it. They wanted violence from him, and they didn’t care who he’d be hurting, because it benefited them somehow.

Even back on Earth, they’d thought he was too impulsive, too strange, too violent. He’d tried not to be, and then when that hadn’t changed anything, he’d embraced it, voiced all his gross, gory thoughts until everyone already knew what to expect. Why bother changing himself when it was never quite enough to avoid disappointing them either way?

Out here, they thought he was feral, bloodthirsty, a weapon to be pointed in whatever direction they preferred. How long would it take to convince himself he enjoyed it? How long would it take for him to forget how to be anything else?

Space wasn’t even horrifying in the fun ways. Remus wanted to go home.

Patches was still watching him, not lowering the weapon but not drawing a knife, either. Their extra arms were stretched out on either side of them, hands slowly flexing open and closed as though grasping the air. It kind of looked like the motions a cat made when kneading.

“Hanging out with you was a lot more fun when you were still thinking about liquefying all my flesh into palatable mush,” Remus told them.

Their hands tightened on the gun, and Remus’s whole body scrunched up in anticipation, his eyes slamming closed and his chin ducking against his chest without conscious thought.

“Knowing if you will try to kill me would take less effort if you’d stop thinking strongly about cannibalism,” a dry voice said in slanted but entirely understandable English.

Remus’s head jolted up, and he found that Patches had tucked both the weapon and most of their arms out of sight, and was now watching him with a calmness that was only slightly undercut by their stone-gray plating.

“Did I imagine that or did you just talk to me with human words,” he asked blankly.

“Talk,” Patches echoed, fangs flashing as they shaped the syllables. “That’s the word. Stop talking about cannibalism.”

They’d understood what he’d been saying the whole time.

… Holy shit, that was so funny.

“No can do, boss,” Remus replied, grinning unabashedly. “I’m a romantic at heart. Which, coincidentally, is one of my most edible organs.”

“I do not liquefy organs,” Patches told him haughtily. “And drinking your organs, coincidentally, would give me death throes.”

Remus couldn’t stop smiling, even as he mimed a blow to the chest. “Ouch! You really know how to make a guy swoon.”

Patches ignored his wink, rotating their wrists in what looked kind of like a nervous tic as they formulated their next sentence. “If you’re thinking about crazy-murder me with bite,” they gestured to their own mouth, mimicking Remus’s exposed teeth in a hilarious-looking grimace, “do not.”

The flat delivery was too much for Remus, and a slightly-unhinged cackle slipped out, presumably not helping de-escalate the situation at all.

“Wait, wait, no. I promise I will not crazy-murder you,” he told them, voice pitching high with barely-suppressed hilarity. “You are much cooler and funnier alive.”

Despite the unconvincing delivery, the alien took his promise in stride. “I will not crazy-murder you. I will not envenomate, stab, liquefy, melt, bite,” they made a little encirculating gesture with cupped hands, as though to say ‘and so on, you get the idea,’ “murder, cannibalize you.”

“Boo,” Remus protested, though the mirth was fading. “What do you want from me, then?”

“Lungs,” Patches started, ominously enough. They gestured to their chest and their sides, and inhaled loudly through their mouth. “Do you? To alive?”

“I need my lungs to live, yeah,” Remus told them, nonplussed. “For breathing, and stuff.”

He took a deep breath, his own torso swelling significantly more than theirs had. Patches made a short clicking noise, getting tenser in what seemed like excitement. Was that the spiderguy version of a nod?

“I want to know your breathing– Earth breathing?” they tried, hands returning to that air-kneading gesture as they searched for the right words. “Will it crazy-murder me?”

“Earth breathing? Breathing on Earth? Like… the atmosphere?” Remus puzzled aloud. “Wait, like you want to know if you can breathe on Earth?”

“Breathe on Earth,” Patches echoed immediately. “Alive on Earth?”

Okay, so however they were picking up the language, it wasn’t exactly fluency. They probably hadn’t actually understood everything Remus had said right away. In fact, it was possible they’d spent that entire silent stare down earlier trying to piece together a coherent sentence.

“I mean, you guys have reverse spacesuits for that, right?” Remus replied, miming the blocky helmets he’d seen out in the fields, shortly before receiving what he assumed was the space version of a shovel to the skull. “That’s how they came down and got me in the first place.”

Patches repeated the charade. “Yeah reverse spacesuits for breathing, right? No reverse spacesuits.” They mimed taking the helmet off, and then inhaled again. “I am alive, right? No? Will the atmosphere breathing kill me?”

Remus understood the question. Unfortunately, he didn’t know the answer.

“I don’t know. The air on Earth is oxygen, carbon dioxide, uh, nitrogen I think…,” Remus trailed off, realizing that however they were translating, something as specific as humanity’s periodic table wasn’t going to be easy to convey. “Why? Do you want to go to Earth?”

Patches hesitated for a long moment. “They came down to Earth.”

Remus frowned. “Yeah, I was there for that part.”

“Not…,” they clenched their hands. “Not you. Me, not me. Spiderguy. Chelcerae.”

The last word was too sibilant to be an attempt at imitating one of Remus’s words. “Spiderguy, but not you. Another spiderguy. Your spiderguy? Spidery?”

Remus held his arms up, trying to imitate the shape of Spidery’s long, sharp limbs, and struck down at an invisible opponent a few times. “From before, right? They saw me in the cell, freaked out, got attacked?”

“Yeah, right, yeah,” Patches replied with more of those confirmation clicks. “The spiderguy, Virgil. They came down to Earth with Virgil. He would talk about you in the cell.”

The pieces snapped into place. “So they left Virgil on Earth. Without a spacesuit. To kill him.”

“Will it kill him?” Patches asked, stuck with present tense even though this had already happened. Did he die?

“I don’t know what you breathe!” Remus groaned, finally on the same page and now just as frustrated with the non-answer. “I don’t know, he could be dead. He could not be dead.”

Schrodinger’s Alien.

Patches had clasped their hands together firmly, but Remus could see the way their cape was rippling slightly from the agitated motions of the limbs tucked underneath. “Virgil is dead,” they said, as though trying to convince themself. “Breathing or no breathing, Earth will crazy-murder him.”

“I mean, yeah, probably, but there’s a chance that he’s still alive,” Remus pointed out. “It’s worth checking, right?”

Patches’ right face plate twitched back and forth slightly in agitation. “Earth will crazy-murder me.”

Remus rolled his eyes, a gesture that Patches watched with mild concern. “You were ready to get crazy-murdered by me like ten minutes ago, remember? Besides, I’ll be there. I’m an Earth native, I know all the ways people get crazy-murdered there, and I’ll make sure none of that happens to you.”

All of their fidgeting went still. “...Why?”

“Because I think you’re funnier alive, remember?” Their expectant silence continued, and Remus sighed petulantly. “Because I want to go home. And also because he was the only one who tried to get them to put me back. Unless he just wanted them to kill me, I guess. I didn’t exactly catch what they were saying.”

Patches made a weird kshh sound, and when they spoke, they sounded amused. “No, Virgil is not like that. He is… ‘I’ll make sure none of that happens to you,’ to me and you and little ones and hurt ones. Saving them. He doesn’t need liquefying venom. His insides are a lot mush.”

“A total softie, huh?” Remus snorted. “He’d probably get along with my brother. His brains are mush, too.”

“... You want to go back to him?”

Remus pulled a face on principle, but ultimately nodded. “It’s my solemn duty as his twin. His hubris would grow too strong without me there to mock him, and I can’t exactly vibe check him from off-planet.”

Patches made that whispery noise again, longer this time, and Remus realized it was a laugh.

“To crazy-murder planet, then.”

#sanders sides fic #space au #humans are deathworlders #you cant go back #ycgb #ts janus #ts remus #my writing #writing #i cant believe this intermission ended up being this long. good lord

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delimeful · 11 months

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you can’t go back (8)

Intermission Part 1: Janus

warnings: misunderstandings, lying, violence/injury/blood, dehumanization, on-screen minor character murder, dissociation, implications of self destructive behavior, lmk if i missed any

Janus knew something was wrong well before he stepped on board the transfer ship.

They hadn’t docked properly, remaining detached from the main station and letting their ship hang in the low-orbit field for refueling. According to the frustratingly vague e-report, the crew had picked up some ‘hazardous elements’ and was partaking in a ‘low-level precautionary quarantine’ for the safety of the rest of the port.

Seeing as Leond and her ilk were one of the stupider and more arrogant crews around, he seriously doubted that. If she’d picked up merchandise that was valuable enough to risk contamination for, she would be on the station bragging about it the moment they arrived. If asked, she then would have brushed aside questions about exposure by claiming that a few lower-level lackeys were the only ones to make contact with it directly, and so she’d obviously put them in a decontam cell.

Janus knew a thing or two about how con artists worked, occasionally taking up the role himself. Suffice to say, he wasn’t buying it until he saw the underside of the coin for himself.

See, the claim to be in quarantine wouldn’t be entirely unbelievable, not with Virgil on board. His role on the mission had been auxiliary at best, and the real purpose behind his presence was to keep a few eyes on Leond’s activities, the dynamics of her crew, any information Janus could tuck away and use later.

People were wary of Janus and his reputation. They often forgot to be wary of his twitchy, reclusive Second, who clearly spent more time bodyguarding than thinking.

If something hazardous had infected the ship, though, Virgil would have broken his cover without a second thought. He answered to Janus first and foremost, and if he’d thought for a moment that docking properly could infect his First with anything dangerous or even lethal, he wouldn’t hesitate to lock the ship down, even if it meant jettisoning the chain of command right out the trash chute.

Except.

Except Janus hadn’t received a single comm call from Virgil for the past 7 sim-cycles, not even a simple long-correspondence message complaining about all the basic safety protocols he’d had to manage himself.

Except his own L-C message checking up on the mission progress had received a short, flippant response from someone else, who hadn’t even bothered mentioning the status of his Second.

Except when he pinged the transport a request to come aboard in a hazsuit, it had been granted without a word of warning.

Even the most stringent precautions were scorned by Virgil’s paranoia. He would have reached out to make digital contact long before ever letting Janus enter a contaminated ship, hazsuit or not.

(Unless he wasn’t conscious enough to stop him. Unless he wasn’t onboard at all–)

All that to say, by the time Janus was stepping from the small transfer pod into the ship proper, he was operating on the assumption that 1. something had gone deeply, horribly wrong for his Second, and 2. Janus needed to find him and whisk him away before his exoskeleton collapsed from stress.

Not that Leond needed to know that. Janus had kept their interactions pleasant and inoffensive, which is how he’d gotten the chance to send Virgil on a mission with them in the first place. As far as they were concerned, this was a standard visit from someone with a stake in their profits.

The alien in question was waiting in the hanger bay, a few of her ever-present followers behind her. Virgil had called the smaller one– an Evalka, by the look of it– her Second out of habit, which meant they were the most loyal.

“Deceit,” she greeted, wearing a suspiciously smooth expression for someone supposedly in quarantine. “Welcome aboard! I’m glad you were confident enough to venture over, there have been some very exciting developments.”

The formal tint to her speech shouldn’t have irritated him so quickly, but he couldn’t help but recall Virgil complaining that she casually spoke down to him. Some species really couldn’t grasp that an insult to one of them was an insult to both, regardless of who was ‘in charge’ at the moment.

“What a surprise,” he answered smoothly, forcing down the instinctive hiss until there wasn’t a chance of it slipping free. “I’ve heard so little from this vessel, I’d begun to worry that there had been some sort of… trouble.”

The wry amusement of the pause came through perfectly, just as practiced. He’d researched the vocal indicators of Leond’s homeplanet extensively while awaiting the ship’s return, and the work paid off now, as her demeanor thawed further into something conspiratorial.

“One could say that. Anything worth its cost comes with a little trouble,” she told him with a glint in her eyes, dropping some of the standard lilts of Common and returning to her species’ customary blunt cadence. “Forgive the silence. Our current trouble isn’t the type that can be spoken of over comms.”

There was an uneasy shift that seemed to ripple through her followers as she spoke, but Janus gave no indication of noticing.

“An interesting sort of trouble. That’s my favorite kind,” he replied, working hard to keep his own typical vocal flourishes muted as well. “I suppose that your wise discretion must be why Anxiety didn’t respond to me.”

There was a subtle yet distinct difference between Leond’s natural flat expression and the lax stillness of her hiding a reaction. It was hard to see, but then, Janus had excellent vision.

“All contact was limited,” she confirmed, and Janus could practically taste the lie slipping in between her words. “I’m sure your neurotic little friend is wandering around somewhere, ensuring all our hallway lightstrips are fully charged or something.”

If that were true, Virgil would have been the first face Janus saw the moment he stepped out of the pod. Virgil would be standing at his back now, an ominous, looming threat against the world on his behalf.

Behind his back, his clasped aux limbs twitched just slightly under his capelet. It was the only loss of composure he would allow himself.

“He is often preoccupied with safety,” he replied casually, as if his Second’s location was hardly relevant to him. “I’ll forgive it, seeing as you’ve seen it fit to introduce me to your valuable new trouble.”

The act was flawless, because he couldn’t afford to lose. He was all too aware of how close her followers were, how many of them there were in the bay alone.

When it came to battlefields, there were only two available here. Physical and mental. Janus already knew exactly which one he would find victory on.

“I knew you held a keenness for opportunity,” Leond praised, more accurately than she knew. “Follow me. I’ll show you our newest investment.”

Janus let himself be guided without hesitation, not showing a single twitch of tension as her crew fell into step behind him. She was surrounding him on purpose, putting eyes on him to see how he would react, what it would give away.

He gave her nothing.

Transport ships weren’t typically too large, so it didn’t take them long to traverse the levels and reach their final destination. Janus didn’t glance down halls or into the rooms they passed, because the chance that his Second would miraculously be there wasn’t worth the odds that his searching would be noticed. If he was going to look for Virgil, it would have to be without eyes on him.

In the end, they stopped outside the entryway to the cellblock, alarmingly enough. Holding cells were a precautionary measure typically only used for stowaways or captured raiders, with the rare exception of small-time bounty hunters that couldn’t afford a better ship.

Janus didn’t ask, but his mind was already buzzing through possibilities. What ‘valuable trouble’ would be put in a cell? Livestock transit required special containers, and was rarely requested around the Reach, anyhow. Some infamous outlaw with a huge bounty? Leond certainly wouldn’t have brought Janus in if that was the case.

“Aisleen, with me. The rest of you, scatter. Make yourselves useful elsewhere.” Despite her confident directions, her hand automatically ghosted over the holster strapped onto her side, which held a paralyzer that looked distinctly illegally-modded.

The motion was telling. Whatever her investment was, it had her frightened.

Considering Leond had more hubris than sense, it was more than enough for Janus to raise his guard as he followed her and her underling into the narrow hall.

There were three large cells, each with a door and a front wall made of clear, thick plastic, so one could see inside.

The first cell they passed was empty. The second cell was also empty, presumably because the viewing wall had been shattered right through the center, a rust-brown substance splattered on the ground and the jagged edges of the hole. The third cell was more reinforced, a wall of metal bars accompanying the plastic guard wall.

The third cell also held a Human.

Janus stopped dead, a deeply-ingrained survival instinct holding him still, as though the Human’s eyes weren’t already on him.

Even without the eyes, he would have recognized it. Being part of a shadier trading company meant that he’d learned the infamous Deathworlders weren’t a hoax early on. Everyone seemed to have a Human story they’d heard from a friend of a friend, and though the validity of them varied, the potential threat was enough that Janus had dug up as much information as he could.

Every word of it paled in comparison to witnessing one in person.

The Human was seated, half-slumped against one of the walls, oddly-jointed arms bound behind it in a way that looked downright painful. There was a streak of that same red substance smeared along the floor, from the center of the cell all the way to where the Human sat, as though they’d crawled there.

“You see the need for secrecy.”

Janus jolted at Leond’s voice, barely able to drag his gaze away from the Deathworlder in front of him. His single pair of auxiliary eyes opened on reflex to track the heat signature of the threat.

It was an appalling show of weakness, but Leond seemed satisfied by his reaction.

“We’ve had quite the trip, trying to keep it contained on a ship like this. The restraints, the drugs, even the cells aren’t built to withstand its level of strength. Poor Gally got gouged trying to force it back in, nearly lost his entire arm.” Her words were grim, but Janus could see the bright glimmer of greed in her gaze. “Can you imagine how well it will do in the rings?”

The Human had lifted itself forward just slightly, its head bobbing unsteadily as though it couldn’t quite find the energy to hold it up. Those half-lidded eyes were still locked unerringly on Janus.

“You’d make a fortune,” Janus’s mouth said on autopilot.

His mind was preoccupied with the knowledge that Virgil would never have let this happen willingly.

And he knew what happened to those who got between traffickers and their money.

“Yes, I will. And we’re offering you a part of it.” Leona’s voice was cajoling now, as though Janus was too much of an idiot to understand that she wanted someone to take the fall when she inevitably was tracked down by the authorities or worse, someone who had a reputation for cunning words and deceiving deals.

Janus stepped closer to the clear barrier, as though entranced. The Human roused further, head tilting sickeningly far to one side, gaze flickering between him and Leond with surprising intelligence.

“Is it secure now?” he asked, and with his face too close to the glass for her to track his eyes, he flicked his gaze upwards.

In the ceiling of the hall, thin enough to go unnoticed by most, there were gouges. The kind left behind by something sharp and narrow catching on the ceiling unexpectedly.

The kind Janus knew from his own quarters, where Virgil had gotten too worked up over a conspiracy thread and in his startlement, accidentally fully extended his aux limbs and voided their rental deposit by scraping a long line into the wallpaper.

These ones were deeper. Marks from offensive, full-force strikes that had gotten snagged and lost all their momentum, because a narrowed corridor like this was the worst place for a Chelcerae like Virgil to fight–

“Of course.” Leond’s mildly affronted voice seemed oddly distant as she gestured to the cell door. “The second cell was really a simple experiment, just to test the strength of our specimen. Even if it could somehow destroy the solid plylon bars, we’ve been administering regular doses of the tranquilizer since then. The next one is due soon; see for yourself how weak it becomes.”

Even hidden under fleshy opaque eyelids, the Human’s eyes seemed a little too bright. Janus let his tightly-folded aux limbs begin to unclasp, the movement rendered invisible under his cloak.

“I’d be a fool to turn down such a generous offer,” he said as he turned towards her, his posture open and disarming. “Frankly, I’m shocked Anxiety didn’t accept on my behalf.”

The carefully calculated words earned him a derisive scoff of amusement.

“I expect your underling isn’t as attuned to your desires as you thought,” Leond replied. “He objected to the presence of the Deathworlder even after we graciously offered him a cut of the profits.”

Janus didn’t have near as much plating as Virgil did, but the ones he had were visible enough for any shift in color to be noticeable. It took all of his willpower to hold back the reflexive threat display.

“My, how surprising. I suppose you didn’t take too kindly to that kind of insubordination.” The implied question rang clear: Where is he?

“I did not.” Leond shook out her mane in a gesture of casual impatience. “I didn’t want to inform you before you could see our investment firsthand, but Anxiety is no longer on board. We left him planetside, but still alive out of respect for you.”

Planetside. On the world they’d most recently retrieved ‘cargo’ from.

They’d put Virgil on a Deathworld. They’d left him there.

“What a shame that he didn’t catch on immediately. How long has it been since?” he asked, somehow not tripping through the words. “I’m reluctant to lose my own… investment, particularly one I’ve spent so long cultivating.”

Leond’s gaze flickered absently, as though trying to recall, but Aisleen shifted a step forward.

“It is too late. He was granted the mercy of a quick death, as is proper.” The low gravel of their voice was almost indistinguishable from the ringing that rose up in Janus’s mind.

“Aisleen!” Leond scolded, as though her crewmate had simply knocked over something delicate. “You take all the fun out of it when you do that.”

“I am sorry for displeasing you,” Aisleen replied, the words so dull they felt almost recited. The barest possible apology, one that showed no regret for the crime committed.

“An unfortunate ending. Once we’ve won the first tournament, we’ll grant you the cost of your investment back in full,” Leond said, placating but firm.

Janus folded himself away into a space small enough to hide the truth of him, because it couldn’t help him accomplish what he needed to accomplish.

Only his mask responded now, squeezing itself into a brief, mild annoyance before giving a dismissive shrug. A false shell to help him pretend he could ever brush off the loss of Virgil with such callousness. “As long as this plan of yours works as it should, I won’t take offense. My agreement is yours.”

A front hand offered forward, for the common arm clasp used by many for sealing barter deals. The other front hand held up in a silent signal of honesty.

Leond’s face was smooth and flat with smug surety when she stepped forward to accept the grip.

It didn’t remain that way for long.

With one hand, Janus dug his claws into her arm and pulled her forward.

With another hand, he drove a dagger through her gut, the hooked edge of it catching like a viper’s fangs.

With another hand, he reached out to the walls around him.

With another hand, he pulled the paralyzer from Leond’s holster, dragging it up to point at his non-stabbed opponent.

“What are you—?” Leond choked, before her words became too wet to distinguish.

Janus let his faceplate snap back to bare his teeth, his plates flushed pitch and his venom shining bright gold in a display that wasn’t a threat, but a promise. His aux limbs had all unfolded their way out from under his cloak, shorter but far more dexterous than Virgil’s, and were easily able to navigate the narrow hall.

His other front hand was still held aloft, and he leaned in to grant Leond the truth for the first and last time in their conversation.

“There is no toll you could pay that would even begin to match the worth of my Second. Your life and all it’s ever held is worth less than the tip of his claw,” he snarled, twisting the blade deeper. “But it’s certainly somewhere to ssstart.”

A flicker of motion out of the corner of his vision. Janus pulled the trigger, but Aisleen ducked under the paralyzer shot and crashed into him with their full weight, moving faster than he’d imagined they could to try and slam his back— and by extension, the vulnerable section of nerves between his aux arms— against the wall.

His brace barely held, and he dropped Leond’s thrashing body to press another two hands to the wall and give himself more support as Aisleen attempted to wrench the paralyzer from his hands.

No. He snapped his teeth, but his opponent managed to wedge an arm against his throat, holding him off as his booklungs flared to compensate for the lack of air.

“Release it! Or I’ll ensure you don’t receive the same mercy as your brethren,” they growled, and the last lingering threads of self-control in Janus’s mind snapped clean in half.

Most of his aux arms had been relegated to pressing palm-first against the walls, keeping him locked in place so he didn’t lose any ground or get cornered.

One of them was wrapped around a thick red emergency handle. It twisted easily under his grip.

“Your mercy is only another word for murder,” Janus spat, and wrenched open the door to the Human’s cell. “Receive it yourself.”

The Human, who’s heat signature had crept closer and closer to the front of the cell over the last few moments, dropped all hazy-eyed pretenses of being drugged in favor of lunging for the escape that had been granted to it.

Janus released his hold on the paralyzer, drew all his limbs in tight, and dropped to the floor. Aisleen staggered from the sudden lack of opposition, and recovered just in time for the charging Human to slam its skull directly into the stretch of rigid exoskeleton between their chin and their chest.

The bone shattered under the force like a piece of dropped glassware. The Human’s only sign of injury was a brief scrunch of the nose.

Aisleen dropped to the ground, paralyzer skidding from their limp fingers, and the Human stepped over them to the cell block entryway. Janus remained entirely still where he was huddled on the floor.

Without even glancing at him, the Human contorted horrifyingly to get its still-bound arms back in front of it. Then, with one sharp movement, it brought a knee up and its arms down at the same moment.

The bonds snapped apart easily, as though the cuffs were made from hollow branches.

The Human ignored the door keypad next to the entryway in favor of simply grabbing the manual handle and sliding the door open in one heave. Between one blink and the next, it was gone, the barest sprinting footsteps audible.

Janus lay there for a moment, between two soon-to-be corpses, and wondered why he wasn’t dead.

Distantly, he could hear echoing screams as the rest of the crew presumably encountered the consequences of their latest get-rich-quick scheme.

He didn’t particularly care. There was a little voice in the back of his mind that was frantically demanding he get up, grab the paralyzer, and see if he could circle around to his pod.

Janus considered it idly, getting as far as pushing himself upright before abandoning the effort and leaning back against the wall instead. He let his arms settle limply around him. The Deathworlder would be back for him sooner or later.

Live, that little voice demanded. It sounded like Virgil.

He’d sit here and listen to it a while longer.

#sanders sides fic #space au #humans are deathworlders #ts janus #ts remus #you cant go back #ycgb #my writing #writing #sorry for the delay i had a silly goofy moment this week (fell down some stairs)

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