Chapter Text
Torse’s optical sensor finally blinks back online. It’s whited out for a moment while the rest of his sensors readjust from his spontaneous and unplanned shut down. His internal clock appears broken. His total time disanimated was only five hours, but the date read more than a month had past.
Odd.
As the saturation balances in his vision, Torse looks down to see brown hair, much of it straying from it’s usually neat middle-part.
His heart ticks faster.
Maxwell Gotch- the greatest warrior in Gath, and Torse’s best friend- is smiling at him, what a wonderful thing to awaken to!
It had been six months, or maybe seven now, since Torse had returned to Zern with his tribe.
He’d been exchanging letters with Maxwell for five of those months every week, sometimes twice a week. Depending on the mail carrier.
Reading his words hadn’t been enough, Torse realized. He’d missed Maxwell’s presence in his life in every wire of his being.
Olethra had mentioned that Maxwell was -supposedly- nearly finished with his business in Gath.
His most recent letter had said he was preparing a ship to leave in the next few months.
Torse would never admit that he’d been a mess of excited and nervous anticipation for weeks. So much so that the other Aganti Zernai had teased him over it.
Jouk and Ampertis -his siblings- had been relentless, cooing over Torse’s ‘beloved’ coming to visit once his business was finalized. It didn’t seem to matter how much he corrected them.
He and Maxwell are friends.
Very good friends.
That’s all.
Not that semantics mattered anymore, Maxwell Gotch is here! Right in front of him again.
Torse knows his escapement gives away his delight at seeing Maxwell, but he can’t be bother to care. He’s sure he looks ridiculous, smiling and venting steam, but seeing Maxwell’s face again after months is so relieving.
“Maxwell. You’re here!” Torse says.
“There you are… Welcome back, Torse.” Maxwell says so softly, just for him.
A trickle of blood runs from the corner of his mouth down his scruffy chin.
Torse’s heart trips and clicks against something lodged in his chest.
With a flash of recollection, Torse suddenly remembers what happened before he lost consciousness: His tribesmen dropping like flies around him, and a glass-metal beetle….
He’d pushed Ampertis into the river to save her from the flood of scuttling, tempered glass. The bugs had overwhelmed him fast than he could destroy them. One ripped out wires in Torse’s chest, burrowing deep and taking over his articulation before shutting his mind off.
More than a month….
Just how much have I missed?
“Maxwell…” Torse notes the blood, the sudden paling of his complexion. Torse tries to move his hand up to thumb away the blood, but finds it stuck.
Maxwell grunts in pain.
Torse looks down to see Maxwell’s arm stuck through his chest plate, reaching into the cavity of his heart.
And, just below, Torse’s own knuckle knives embedded fully into Maxwell’s bare and bruised stomach- his curled fist being the only thing keeping Maxwell’s guts from spilling out of him.
Torse gasps, venting steam and trying to step back, but aborting the motion when he realizes he has to keep his blades in place. He frantically takes in the rest of their surroundings.
“Maxwell! I-! I didn’t-! How did this happen?!” Torse pulls Maxwell closer as the man sways. He catches him around the middle with his free arm and holds him up.
“I’m glad you’re okay.” Maxwell whispers against his chest plate.
Torse stands in Zern, in a wasteland field of broken Naughtomata and carnage.
A small Odan explorer vessel lay burning and smashed in a heap a little over two hundred feet away.
Signs of the meager crew dotted the horizon. Captain Dawderdale -grease covered and bleeding- fights off the remaining undead with a broken splinter of rail from the ship.
A cry from further away brings Torse’s attention to Olethra. She lassos a fleeing Naughtomota and brings it low with a pistol to its’ melted face.
She turns the second there’s nothing else to destroy and comes running, “MAX!!”
She fires off a shot and it glances off of Torse’s shoulder, barely damaging him but jostling the knives in Maxwell’s flesh.
The Gathie’s legs give out on him with a wheeze of pain. He leans heavily into Torse who kneels gently to cradle him close.
Glass shards fall in pieces from the interior of Torse’s chest.
Maxwell’s hand comes away from between his ribs with bloody cuts. He smiles proudly.
“Olethra! Get a medical kit.” Torse orders, ignoring the vibrating pitchiness of his voice box.
“Oh thank fuck, Torse!” Olethra stops short, lowering her gun, “You’re back! Sorry for shootin’ ya.”
He tenses, realizing she’d been trying to attack him. “I am, I -I don’t know what happened, but it’s not important right now. Maxwell needs help!” Torse begs her.
Olethra comes close enough to see the knives in Max’s gut and gasps, “Oh ssssshit. Okay, be right back, stay there.”
Olethra rushes off. She pulls her girlfriend, Ludmila, away from a disanimated corpse and they go searching through the ships wreckage.
With his attention no longer divided, Torse assesses Maxwell again.
“’m fine. ‘been stabbed before, no big deal.” Maxwell mutters.
“What happened?” Torse asks, caring less about how they got here and more about keeping the fading Maxwell awake.
He tests his knives in the meat of Maxwell’s torso only for the man to flinch and begin to sweat profusely and pant.
“…We…. tracked you…” Maxwell shudders through his words, “…there was an attack on RiverTown. Swarms of these bugs. They …infected you and the other Aganti Zernai.” he groans in discomfort, but continues, “It had been… controlling you like a toy for the last few weeks…”
He shifts again, trying in vain to get more comfortable in Torse’s embrace. As he pales further, Torse’s optical sensor blurs.
His faceplate feels wet with oil.
“Your letters stopped…” Maxwell whispers as his eyes start to close with a slight smile, “Everything else could wait.”
Torse’s mind races. He looks around for anything - anyone - who could help. He can’t move without hurting his friend, he’d already jostled the blades enough that blood was seeping past them and staining the ground beneath them.
“Maxwell! Do NOT shut down!” He begs then turns to look up at the wreckage around them, “OLETHRA!”
Long moments later, The Kid is rushing back towards them with a box under one arm. Ludmila behind her, peals off to collect scrap, moving deftly. She upturns an old life boat haul and throws her scrap in before hoping in herself.
Olethra skids to a halt beside Maxwell and opens the box, “Here, Here we go.”
She mutters as she finds bandages and Odan tinctures.
She looks over a few bottles frantically, “Uhh! Here! This one says ‘for blood loss’! She sets the yellow bottle on Maxwell’s chest like a table.
“Seems apt.” Maxwell tries to chuckle but a coughing fit takes over. His body convulses in pain and blood spurts from his mouth.
Torse holds his head and shoulders closer to his chest plate, leaning in and pressing his forehead to the top of Maxwell’s messy hair.
“I’m sorry…” Torse says and his voice comes out wobbly and wet, “I’m so sorry. This isn’t-…”
“Wasn’t you.” Maxwell responds simply and leans in closer to Torse’s chest.
Olethra works with quick hands to drop several droppers full of the yellow tincture into the spaces between Torse’s blades. She starts to remove them carefully, but as they slide Maxwell bites back a scream.
“STOP!” Torse yelps and Olethra’s hands fly up, “Leave them, we can detach the knives and bind around them. We need to find a healer. There’s one in RiverTown.”
Olethra shakes her head, “Torse, RiverTown’s been evacuated. We’re going to Zumhara as soon as Ludmila builds another vessel.”
More panic grips him.
His hold…
The newest settlement in Zern that he swore to protect.
He’d failed.
“Torse, Focus! How do I undo this?” Olethra shakes him out of his thoughts.
Torse nods and starts to explain how to remove the mechanism holding his knives to his wrist. Olethra listens carefully until they both hear a click, and see Maxwell detaching them with a practiced motion.
He looks like he wants to be smug about knowing Torse’s mechanics so well, but he only lets out a wheezing sound and coughs again.
“This is bad, he didn’t even say something lame!” Olethra says with a gentle hand on Maxwell’s shoulder. “I’ll finish binding this as best I can. You’ll have to carry him to the vessel.” She says.
“Of course.” Torse nods frantically, “Hurry.”
Shrieks of more Naughtomata in the distance sharpen their wits.
They’re in the open.
They need to move.
She binds Maxwell’s stomach tight, winding the strips of cloth around the knives to keep them from moving as much as possible.
Maxwell cries out again as he’s scooped up against Torse. His panting increases, but he’s no longer sweating, instead he trembles with chill.
Torse urges his own heart to tick faster, to move his internal gears harder, to provide heat. The friction chips away at his mechanisms but he continues regardless.
Torse follows Olethra as she runs ahead to help Ludmila. She’d already found enough scrap to rebuild a small life boat with treads and an open top.
Torse offers to help, but the women instruct him to sit in the life boat and watch Maxwell. He does as he’s told without argument. Maxwell curls towards his internal heat, the movement coloring his bandages red.
I did this.
Torse thinks to himself.
“This is my fault.” Torse whispers in crackled voice into Maxwell’s hair, “I promise I’ll never hurt you again, should we survive this.”
Maxwell… doesn’t respond.
“Maxwell?” Torse looks down at him, “Maxwell?” His voice box breaks over the name. Maxwell’s eyes are glazed over and unfocused, his breath comes out in slow, shallow wheezes too far apart.
Torse looks up and sees Dawderdale collecting the remaining crew. Two other women that Torse doesn’t know. He sees Olethra working at the front of the boat, screwing something in and calling for another tool.
Ludmila throws her a hammer and a spring and climbs in before locking eyes with Torse.
“He’s… too quiet.” is all Torse can muster.
Ludmila breaks away and crosses towards him. He places two fingers to Maxwell’s neck and waits a moment.
“He is dying.” She mutters and turns to Olethra, “My love! We must return to Zood at once!”
“Aye captain!” Olethra cups her hands and yells to the women working on the treads, “We’re moving NOW! Get in or get gone!”
They pile into the life boat instantly as Olethra tosses her wrench and grabs the controls.
Ludmila’s face is young. Looking at her, it is difficult to blame her for the current state of Zern. Especially as she now tries her best to repair the damages she’d done in what was essentially a past life.
Yet through the grace everyone had given her, Torse can see a heavy guilt in her eyes.
He recognizes it as something they share.
The treads make quick work to bring their small crew to the top of a mountain and the life boat spring rockets them into the atmosphere towards crystalline fields.
Maxwell is too still -too limp- in Torse’s arms. He rubs his thumb through the short hair at the base of his skull and barely notices the fall and subsequent parachute landing.
He whispers apologies over and over until his voice box crackles with static and oil dots Maxwell’s cheek.
The next thing Torse looks up to see is Zumhara. Olethra already hoping out and scrambling down a path screaming for help. Ludmila climbs out and offers to assist with Maxwell’s handling.
Torse doesn’t allow her. He nearly trips climbing out of the boat, but keeps Maxwell from being too jostled.
Only standing on the soft, un-blasted ground does Torse finally take in the damage level of his own body.
There are certain wires disconnected, a few dents near points of motion, certain pistons -stickied by mud- and one tension spring bent and undone all in very specific manners to slow him down.
All of it is easily fixed, minorly uncomfortable, and just enough damage to slow him down.
He’s brought out of his thoughts by an Odan man white grassy hair in a white coat running towards him alongside two other crystalline men.
Torse shrinks back, holding Maxwell to the side as his gears protest in a low rusted growl.
“My good man!” The doctor holds his hands up innocently, “We’re trying to help him.”
Ludmila’s hand lands on Torse’s arm.
He lays Maxwell on a stretcher and watches, caught in horrible indecision to chase after him or stay... as he’s taken away.
Frozen like a coward, Torse just watches until he looses sight of Maxwell.
His sensors buzz, blur, and fade to a minimal input of low saturation and droning sound.
He’d failed.
His Matron, his brother and tribesmen, who knows where they are. His poor sister can’t swim and yet he shoved her in the river.
Someone pulls on his hand to move him.
He’d sworn to protect RiverTown and it had fallen under his care.
Failure.
An insult to the warriors who raised him.
Someone fixes the tension spring in his heel.
Maxwell had dropped everything in Gath to rescue him. Maxwell always had to rescue him:In Ramansu, at Mount Charuck, in Zern, and now his homeland again.
How pathetic Torse had become; to allow himself to fail over and over and have to be saved.
Someone sits him down and reconnects the wires in his chest.
And now Maxwell could die because of Torse’s inadequacies.
Failure. Failure. Failure.
Someone wipes his tears away with a cloth and smiles at him with empathy.
“I know it is difficult to wait.” Ludmila says as she sits beside him on the bench outside the medical hall.
“He is in the best hands in all of Zood. And he is Maxwell Gotch! Gentleman fister and most powerful warrior in Gath!”
Ludmila softens her voice, “He will come through.”
Torse finds himself pulled to Ludmila. He leans slightly and she closes the remaining distance to lean against him.
The two of them had avoided each other the first few days she had come back to Zern. Dancing awkwardly through social interactions until Olethra locked them both in a closet.
Not that either felt trapped by a simple lock on a thin, sheet metal door, but Torse has sat down anyway. Ludmila had spoke first, tried to apologize for barely remembered crimes of her past self.
Torse had heard her out then refused her apology.
He looks at the slight golden glow emanating from her chest, “Anyone would have broken after so long, Ludmila. And you are no longer the Queen of rust and ruin.” He said. “There is nothing to be sorry for.”
She held a hand to her chest then and smiled softly, “This heart is heavy in my chest. It is full of guilt, and love. You carried it for so long, Torse, and I am honored to have it now. I feel... grateful that you do not seem to want it back.”
Torse listened to his own heart, iron and warm, and inscribed with words of love. He smiles, “I am… happy with the outcome of our hearts, Ludmila.” He reached out a hand to her, “I am happy to have the chance to know you.”
“I would…” Ludmila had set her hand in his, “I would like to be friends with you.”
As her hand held his, their hearts beat in time with each other, “I would like that.” Torse had agreed.
Though his addled mind tears at his self-worth, though he screams at himself for receiving grace for his failures, Torse can not reconcile rejecting comfort from his friend. He sighs and leans a bit heavier against Ludmila.
She pats his arm. “Everything will be alright. You will see.” She murmurs.
Torse lets her words sink into him. He looks at his remaining knuckle knives and then to his bare wrist.
“Ludmila, may I ask you a favor?”