Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Iterators truly do mirror their creators, for they too craft life from nothing only to discard it once it has served its purpose.

Salt and the bitter stinging taste of chemicals bursts upon its tongue, floods its gaping gasping maw for a few ticking seconds before, unceremoniously, Slugcat finds itself forcefully ejected from its comfortable home inside of the glass tank, wet and shivering, to lay upon a ground of strange throbbing heat, its heavy head resting between its two front paws, slick tail and hind legs tucked behind its body awkwardly, as it listens to the fluttering panic of its own heartbeat. Huffing, hacking up the vile remnants of the rich nutrient broth it had been suspended in, sustained by, and wiping its eyes free of the oppressive gunk, Slugcant can finally blink and force sharp breaths through its little body, ready to be a living thing at long last after what feels like years of painful waiting, as it opens its dark eyes for the very first time to drink in its brand new surroundings.

Eyes dazzled, Slugcat finds that the world is made up of trillions of glittering lights and buzzing sounds that make it pin back its ears in distress, the noise creeping inside its brain like wiggling worms that persist even if it shakes its head aggressively side to side to dislodge the irritation. There is scant luck to be had and all it can do is make an unhappy huff and lick its paws, cleaning the sticky wet from the rest of its face even if its eyes are blinded by the swarm of glow. The lights swirl in dizzy sickening patterns far out of reach turning colours Slugcat doesn’t even know the names of. Red as bright as the most brilliant sun-strewn dawn. White as the pale face of the distant moon. Cerulean and blue and purple; all things it knows little of yet also knows just by observing, not instinctive but a forced impression from somewhere… else . It watches. Intently. As those lights, those colours go round and round and round. Slugcat decides to stay where it is curled up against its empty tanker, merely seeing, merely being.

It seems that the world has other thoughts on that matter as a strange creature simply pops into existence right before its eyes, obnoxiously green and bearing one singular glassy eye and several strange waving feelers, almost a bug but not quite , something different , something strange . A curious paw reaches out to swat at it. The creature in return leans back, blips away, reappears somewhere else, blinks mechanically, artificially. Slugcat blinks back, tilts its pink head and lets out a small warble a mother might make in some kind of misguided foolish attempt to tempt the creature back down. 

The creature merely looks on, watching . 

Slugcat watches right back.

Once again the thing vanishes and reappears somewhere else, further away this time, and knowing not what to do, having nothing better to do, Slugcat gives eager chase. It pitter-patters against the warm metal underneath, claws through tight pipes, clings to slippery poles and paws through open air when the ground shrinks away from its touch. It quickly decides the sensation of being upside down and spinning aimlessly through a room where thought is loud enough to touch isn’t a sensation it would like to revisit anytime soon. The green thing seems to disagree as it leads Slugcat deeper and deeper into the twisting metal guts of its home, further and further away from the safety of its glass tank, the only life it has ever known.

It follows, even as endless dim spaces pass by. Slugcat follows. Is led away, but it keeps its eyes on the prize, deep down knowing it is being taken somewhere, deep down knowing things will never go back to those simple days of sleep and dream, locked behind glass walls. Thought almost feels tangible here, lines of data rushing through the crackling air like bolts of lightning, static and deafening. Slugcat both understands every number, every calculation, every emotion, everything, everywhere, and also cannot even begin to comprehend the complexity of what it sees. The world spins, upside down, inside out, outside in. Technicolour, monochrome, incomprehensible yet so deeply deeply known. It licks the static air, and the flavour it tastes feels achingly lonely .

And then Slugcat drops into a metal box with a resounding slap.

It blinks, dazed for a moment, shakes its head, ears flicking this way and that. It stumbles up onto its hind legs and looks up to a figure looking down upon it. A figure of sharp angles, of wires and metal and physical thought and of flowing fabric and vivid colour who speaks with a voice that shakes the ground, that thumps against its little cowering body, that commands, that makes its mind ache.

And Slugcat suddenly has a name .

[LIVE BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

SRS: Have you thought any more about what we’re going to do? We can’t just let this situation stay the way it is.

SRS: It just feels irresponsible.

NSH: I do have a few things I’m working on in the background. But honestly I’m not sure there’s much we can do.

NSH: It’s not as if we can just get up and fix things ourselves.

SRS: If there was a way to do that I’m sure you would have found it by now. 

SRS: It all feels so hopeless now. I suppose the only thing we can do is keep trying.

NSH: I suppose, but I question the effectiveness of that. We should be doing more.

NSH: This should have never happened in the first place.

SRS: Well… it is our purpose to fix problems, right?

The first thing Hunter learns after realising that even without the glass walls of its test tube cell is that the world is still nothing more than prison. The second is that death is inevitable. It's the one thing that binds everything together. Death, dying, restarting again and again. There were things called ‘people’ that came before, and even things before those things, but all of that is now gone, leaving behind ruins that jut out of the endless wastes like spears out of a lizard carcass. Everything, everyone, is stuck too deep to tug free but sometimes, very very rarely, one may come loose. Round and round it then goes, repeating like one might chase their own tail, at least that's how MasterCreatorFatherMaker described it. At least that's the understanding He imparted upon it before sending it off into the wild world beyond His own prison walls of metal and mind.

Hunter doesn’t pretend to understand it all, not really. Things die, they come back, sometimes they come back stronger with a greater thirst for tasty slugcat snack, it doesn’t really matter though, there’s not much it hasn’t been able to fend off with a few sharp spears or explosives, and that which it can’t it is able to easily avoid. Creator once said that there’s no real way out, not for Him, not for His kind, not that Hunter really understands that either. Creator is the land it walks on, the air it breathes, the grass and plants, the static on its tongue when it floats through those strange spaces where its feet struggle to touch ground. He is everything. Impossibly large. And impossible to kill with a stab to the gut. So perhaps it does understand, in the small ways it can, but everything has a weakness, and everything can be brought to heel with enough effort. Why can’t Creator just stab his soft underbelly and leave? A perplexing puzzle to puzzle upon.

It had been told, back when it was handed the shiny pearl resting in its belly and the green thing it clutches in its paw, that Creator and his kind can die, they are capable of doing that, but it is not the pleasant thing it might sound like to a dump creature like itself. But death is a potential experience Creator can have, a hard thing to do, too impossible for just one slugcat to accomplish, but a real thing that can happen, yes. And therein lies the problem at the heart of Hunter’s whole life, its purpose to even be here clinging valiantly to the swaying antlers of a lumbering deer as it ambles across the endless fields of wormgrass. Creator had lost a friend, someone special to him, and it pains him greatly. Hunter doesn’t know what friends are, has never had one, it has only ever had Creator and his green things that he commands and talks to. Hunter does not understand friends. Perhaps Creator can explain the concept when it comes back home. Perhaps this friend can when it makes its delivery and completes its purpose. For now, it merely clings on, eyes watching the sky for vultures, and slowly counting the seconds passing by.

It still thinks Creator should stab himself to check if it works the way he says though.

[LIVE BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

NSH:Do you recall the messenger I said I’d spend my free time rasing after the… incident?

SRS: I do. Have you made progress on that?

SRS: Not that I’m rushing you, I’m just growing restless with little I can do to help.

NSH: You could say that. Although, I have to admit that perhaps I was… hasty…in my need to decant the creature.

NSH: Regardless, it is ready to be sent out, along with a little care package I’ve been working on, just in case things are worse than they look.

NSH: You might recall that too.

SRS: How could things be worse? The situation is already as dire as it can be.

NSH: Yes well, you’d best hope that Pebbles’ condition didn’t have time to spread to Moon, for all of our sakes.

NSH: It could always be worse, Suns.

Hunter dashes over the worn stone and rusting metal, the sky growling above as it leaps over wide gaps and dodges the panicked dives of the squidcada in its own desperate struggle to escape the oncoming rain. The first fat heavy droplets splash against the ground with the strength and sound of gunshots but are nothing compared to what will soon follow. Hunter has seen the rains fall from atop of its Creator, had Him explain that to be caught in the deluge would be a certain death, and a rather horrible one at that. If the sheets of lashing water didn’t crush your body, didn’t decorate the ground with your remains before washing you away, the flooding would be your doom. Drowning, Hunter knows very well, is the complete opposite of fun. But the rains are inescapable, another certainty, another constant. It would be unkind to ask Creator to stop breathing no matter the trouble it brings.

Heart pounding, little lungs wheezing, Hunter dives through the first pipe it sees, wiggles its pink slimy body through the narrow passage and- there ! The telltale signs of a shelter, of salvation! The green lizard that lumbers around, panicked and confused, barely reacts as it leaps over its great head and snapping maw filled with knife-like teeth. It merely hisses as Hunter scrambles towards the open pipe ahead, pink paws forcing it forwards. In goes its head, rest of its body following behind shortly, and Hunter only has a split second to tuck its tail out of the way before the hydraulics kick in and the box is sealed shut until the next cycle. Panting, it coughs wetly, spits up the sour flavour that bubbles onto its tongue into the corner, huffing and sodden, flopping down into the scrubby plants that line the floor of its home for the night. Half asleep, exhausted after fleeing the angry vultures with the big tusks and those pearl hungry toll scavengers and everything else that hissed or chittered or bit or growled in its direction, it merely rubs at the new cut on its face, right over one of its eyes. It is lucky not to have been permanently blinded. 

Time passes at a crawl and despite the previous panic and rush, it cannot find meaningful rest. Its head throbs, hot and heavy, and so Hunter merely lays there, rolling the shiny green thing that Creator had handed it before it left, the whole reason for it to even live, between its paws, back and forth, back and forth. Surely Creator will be happy when it comes home! He’ll say things in his garbled noises, but He’ll be so happy with Hunter, it is sure of it!  So caught up in its thoughts of the distant future it dreams of it doesn’t notice the big wide eyes and curious glances of the shelter's other occupant.

A tiny blue paw slaps at the green thing, and Hunter quickly snatches it away, holds it close and lets out a warning hiss. The little blue pup backs into the corner, big wet eyes worriedly looking up at it, chittering and shaking with nervous energy. Not a threat. In fact, if either of them are a threat it is Hunter. Slowly it lays itself on the ground, curls its tail around its hind legs, eyes never leaving the frightened pup and then, it does something it never expected it would do, something it had never been taught to do. It chirrups at the pup, comfortingly, beckoning the poor thing over. She pauses her shaking, lets it come close to sniff at her, and once she realises that Hunter is not going to hurt her, that she had only surprised it with her presence, she lets out a loud wah of delight and decides, with elegance and poise, to trip over her own tail and headbutt it square in the snout.

[LIVE BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

SRS: Do you think our messengers might meet on this rescue mission of yours?

SRS: I will admit to some worry as to mine’s whereabouts, especially after everything that happened.

NSH: That’s right, 07 hasn’t come back. I wonder why .

SRS: …

NSH: I’m sorry that was unkind of me, but the fact of the matter remains; yours has yet to return but it is a long way to Pebbles from your can. It was hurt the last time you saw it after all.

SRS: I know that but I just thought that…

SRS: What if they don’t come home? If something happened to them, I’d never forgive myself for sending them out on something that failed so drastically.

NSH: You worry too much, Suns, it’ll be fine, you made sure of that, remember?

SRS: And what of yours? Will you worry when it doesn’t come back?

NSH: It is free to do as it pleases, as long as Moon gets the package. 

NSH: Nothing else matters.

The last thing Hunter needed was another hungry mouth to feed, and yet, it could not find the courage to abandon the poor pup to her fate in that shelter all alone. And so, with another burden, onwards it goes, blue baby clinging to its back, weapon in hand and eyes almost wildly looking forwards, searching for any threat that dares to look their way. The pup, it finds this out quickly, has a habit of getting into trouble. And she finds lots of it.

The first thing she did when Hunter plopped her down and tossed her a healthy serving of batflies it had nabbed from the air is grab a rock and attempt to get her own food for herself. She had instead sent the rock hurtling against a wall, hitting a hidden dropwig in the process which then led into a wild rush to grab the indignant pup, race across the open ground, stab a swooping vulture in the neck before leaping through the closest pipe only to narrowly escape the jaws of a lizard bigger than any Hunter has seen before. Big and black-red with shaking spines and foul breath and a swishing tail and sticky sickly smelling spit, the thing had launched itself at them both with nary a second thought, maw already dripping with gore. The two slugcats only just managed to reach the broken pole above before a poor unsuspecting centipede decided to crawl into the room and, well, Hunter was not about to go save it. Better it than them.

And that debacle isn’t the only trouble the pup has gotten into thus far, oh no. She’d also somehow managed to annoy the local scavenger population, which Hunter fixed by quickly returning the pilfered pearl and scarpering as fast as its legs could take it in the opposite direction. She had gotten stuck on a pole that had come to life, which it then stabbed, vehemently. She had been shocked by a baby centipede, licked by a white lizard, nearly dropped Creator’s green thing off a broken bridge, and now, as the world around them turns blacker than any night, she had decided, apparently, to grab hold of a poor terrified lantern mouse and dangle in midair as the creature panics and squeaks in distress.

Hunter supposes it has quite the story for Creator when it goes home, along with a new… friend. Even if said friend enjoys making it run until its whole body burns and its head feels like it might burst, that sensation of wiggling worms back once more. The pup makes a happy little wawa, and Hunter echos it back at her, glad to see she’s having fun as it pulls its spear free of the dead body of the strange eyeless lizard that bit its tail, beckoning her down. She does not seem to wish to leave her new friend behind but, she sniffs the air the same time Hunter does, and with some reluctance drops to the ground in a heap. The rains are coming, they’d best find somewhere safer than here.

[LIVE BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

NSH: I’ve been thinking, it’s probably for the best our messengers don’t meet.

NSH: Mine is not exactly the most stable of my creations, nor my finest work.

SRS: How so? You’ve made some rather experimental purposed organisms before! In fact I believe one is currently roosting somewhere amongst my communications array.

SRS: You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?

NSH: Nothing comes to mind~

NSH: It’s just…

SRS: Just?

NSH: My messenger, it has the Rot. Not part of the design but a symptom of how I rushed, of my haste and desperation.

NSH: If I just had more time, if Moon wasn’t so badly damaged, if I could have just foreseen this.

NSH: I don’t know. I could have avoided this, it’ll only complicate matters further.

SRS: You should have fixed your mistake before sending it, Moon isn’t capable of going anywhere.

SRS: Your messenger’s suffering is just unnecessary.

NSH: Isn’t fixing mistakes your area of expertise?

SRS: That isn’t fair, you know I’ve tried.

NSH: Perhaps you should have tried less, look where we are now. This is all your fault you know.

Hunter hates being wet. That’s something it learned early on in life, before Creator had taught it of the world and of its mission. It hates wet, and hates water, and hates the rain, and it really hates being submerged, and it hates the taste of salt. There’s too many memories of glass walls and loneliness and not knowing why it was made, what it was created for, what it would do once Creator let it out. And it knows, or rather remembers, those that came before it, oh it knows how they paid the price for merely existing in a way that was deemed wrong . It was not the first Hunter, and it will not be the last. The wet coughs, scraping hunger, burning in its lungs, skipping of its heart, all tell it this. Even if it goes home, it will be disposed of, perhaps even the pup as well. It is a failure, a mistake, a means to an end, and Creator does not care about it.

Yes. Hunter hates the wet.

So when it is awoken by cold water sloshing around inside the shelter, the rumbling of the rain still shaking the world, it clings on to the safety of the shelter, hoping that it's temporary home won’t flood further in the fragile early morning. The pup makes a happy noise from the darkness, playing a game of leaping and jumping from the shadows, chittering in her own little way every time Hunter scolds her, shoves her nosy face back inside when she dares to be bold enough to take a peek at the outside world. It doesn’t take too long. The tremors peter out, the rains turn into nothing more than a drizzle, barely enough to soak the two slugcats, and the world turns once again.

Their adventure through the shadowy hallways and passages is no less chaotic than what came before. Dodging the paralysing spit of furious spiders and running from swarms of that which crawls in the dark feels little different than running from any other threat, but the pup does not seem to like the creatures, clinging to Hunter’s back and making terrified little chirps. It's good then, that when thrown, that when that black lizard bites into Hunter’s tail hard (perhaps the same one it had killed before has been returned by the Cycle for revenge) that she runs away, to safety. It is not good that she returns with a sharp bit of metal. But she’s been learning, and while there is little strength behind the stab it is enough for those jaws to unclench, enough for Hunter to wrench the metal free and finish the job she started.

The meal afterwards, while a victory, leaves a sour taste in its mouth. And later, once it is sure the pup is asleep, it spits up the bitter bile building in the back of its throat. There is something wrong with it, something crawling under its cold skin, shivers wracking its body day and night. There is something wrong inside of it. 

A failure.

A mistake.

[LIVE BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

SRS: My messenger returned this morning, miraculously unharmed.

SRS: They had quite the story to tell me, I assure you. You might even find it interesting.

SRS: How is your messenger doing? I assume you implanted a tracker into it so you could keep note of its location. That sounds like something you’d do.

SRS: If you had the time of course.

SRS: How are you? I’ve noticed an increased amount of rainfall from your can, working on something big?

SRS: Look. I know I messed up. I know this is my fault, but you can’t just keep ignoring me like this.

SRS: I’ll be here when you’re ready to talk. At least as long as I’m able to, I don't know how long I can…

SRS: Never mind. 

SRS: I’ll be here.

The cycles go on, slowly, but Hunter can feel it now. That burning that started in its chest is all over, its breaths come short and ragged, and yet the pup still clings to its side, her big dark eyes peering up at it, her little blue paws gently patting at its scorching skin. For once the water is a blessing, and beyond that darkness, back out into the light, there is a great deal to be found, more than Hunter has ever seen in one place before. The pup is ecstatic, splashing in the shallows, feasting on popped water nuts, the thick juice running down her face as she makes a mess of her meal. Hunter just sits there and watches. Sits there and thinks, rolling the green thing between shaking paws.

All of this, its whole life, has led to here. Its reason to suffer through this journey, its reason to even be created. And across those seafoam green waves, across that near endless water with no horizon, somewhere lost in the shifting spider web thin mists, is the destination it has been walking to this whole time. What will happen once it gets there? Does everything just end? Endings are a little bit like death, Hunter thinks, an inevitable thing but hard to get to unless you’re one of the lucky ones. Everything seems to be hard. This whole adventure has been hard, especially with the pup running rings around it near endlessly and her ability to somehow cause the most trouble at the most inconvenient time. And for all its building anger at Him, for all its feelings of being some kind of unwanted beast, knowing that He cares little, Hunter misses Creator. Misses Him more than it probably should.

Something round and soggy bumps against Hunter’s side and its gaze drops to the swollen squishy shape of the water nut sitting there innocently. It blinks. The pup, it should give her a name perhaps, wawas loudly, making a motion to mean eat. That’s right, it hasn’t really found much this cycle, only a few jellyfish considering the strange wet lizard managed to escape before it could land the killing blow. It considers the water nut. The texture is soft, filled with thick juice that gets everywhere, sticky, and from memory, sweet. But Hunter tastes nothing, barely feels itself eat what it is given, and absolutely does not feel full in the slightest. But the pup looks happy and that’s what matters. Anything, everything, for her. As long as she is safe, and she is well, it doesn’t matter what happens in the end. Hunter huffs to itself, picks up the wiggly baby who eagerly clings onto its back.

There’s no use in thinking about it, just one last big stretch to go before that looming future crashes into them both at full force. The world doesn’t care if it lives or dies, doesn’t care if the pup lives or dies. But Hunter does. It does. And it will make sure that no matter what she will live.

[LIVE BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

NSH: It took you three cycles to finally shut up.

SRS: I thought something bad had happened! What were you doing?

NSH: Ignoring you.

SRS: …

NSH: Oh don’t be like that.

NSH: Moon should be receiving my care package within the next couple cycles, you should just be glad she can be reached.

NSH: I don’t know what drove you to share that information with Pebbles, and frankly I don’t really care.

NSH: It was foolish. And it was selfish. Did you stop to think about what effect it would have on Moon?

SRS: Of course I did! I was trying to help a hopeless situation! One we can all relate to!

SRS: I just misjudged how desperate Pebbles would be. It was a mistake, one I am trying to help fix, if you’d let me.

NSH: You’ve said. But helping who ? Pebbles? Yourself? Some misguided ideal?

NSH: And for what? You’ve doomed two iterators. For all I know that was your intent.

SRS: Please stop. You know I regret my poor choices.  

SRS: You don’t need to make things worse than they already are.

NSH: Just be glad I’ve fixed your mistakes for you, at least in part. Moon will never be the same, but at least she’s alive.

SRS: Isn’t that the important part in all of this? That we can help the ones we care about? 

SRS: I know you care about him too or else you’d not bring him up so frequently.

NSH: I’m not going to help Pebbles, if that’s what you’re thinking. He doesn’t deserve it.

This place. It feels like coming home. Despite the wet. Despite the rust. It feels familiar, almost like crawling through Creator’s guts but silent, dead, weeping, wounded. Somehow, Hunter doesn’t know how, this feels like the end of its adventures, this feels like the right place to make its delivery. It slurps down the jellyfish, stingers and all, not even feeling the buzz on its tongue as it swallows. The pup makes a concerned sound from its back, Hunter merely reassures her that everything is fine, that everything will be okay, even if it feels like a bit of a lie for her sake. As long as she’s okay, as long as she survives, nothing else matters. Nothing. Not even Creator and His orders. 

Not even dying .

The climb is arduous, leaves it whining pitifully, it even slips from the slick metal of the long pole suspended across most of the chamber and has to go all the way back to try again. Try again and again, hopelessly going round and round. But that’s the easy bit. There is always a tomorrow to try again, always another chance, even if it feels like those days are numbered. Hunter is used to wiggling through pipes like these, one of the first things it did actually, though these are easier to slip through, recently flooded and wider than that of Creator’s even the pup has room to herself as she clings to its back. Unlike Creator this place feels…wrong. Quiet, completely devoid of the distant hum of countless mechanical parts all living, breathing together, devoid of the hisses of steam and the buzz of life under Hunter’s cold paws. This place feels dead. Empty. An abandoned home, or perhaps more accurately a grave .

The pup excitedly wiggles free of the pipe and drops down into a waiting pool of water below, happily splashing around in unrestrained glee. And yet Hunter finds itself lingering, just there, on the edge of sunlight, acting as if touching that glorious golden glow will burn its skin. This place smells like rust and salt breeze and wet kelp, all mushed together in a dizzying package, the rays of distant light only adding to the throbbing sensation in its head. But the green thing it has been carrying for so very very long makes a happy sound, pulses in its grasp and Hunter realises that this is it. The end of the road.

It drags time out as long as it can, paddling across the water, playing with the pup for a moment or two, delaying the end, delaying facing the world without a purpose, without a goal. But its body burns, and everything feels so far away, like a dream, like sleeping in the tank it was made in. Hunter knows it can delay no further. With shaking limbs and aches and pains, it heaves itself up a small spill of rubble, pokes its pink head into the beyond and for a moment, it feels so full of victory, of pride.

Creator had explained, very briefly, that His friend was hurt and that she needed help. That she was like Him. That she couldn’t die, not really, but this was far too close for comfort and that He’d much like her to be not dead, not sleeping too still, too quietly. She looks different than Creator does, Hunter notes, it had half expected her to look the same. Deep blue that reminds it of oncoming rain, unmoving and silent, merely laying where she fell, beginning to decay, loose wires tangled around her bare form. The green thing does its work, the ringing sound of the technology flaring to life almost makes Hunter vomit as it is assaulted by high pitched sound. It merely bites its tongue, swallows it down, beckoning the pup to join it as it paddles over to where Creator’s friend blinks her dark eyes awake and turns her unfathomably ancient gaze upon it.

[LIVE BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

SRS: You’re not being fair to Five Pebbles. I know he’s made mistakes in his desperation, and perhaps I fed into that but you have to understand.

SRS: Being here, it’s torturing him. I thought you of all iterators would get that, would understand how he feels.

SRS: And Moon cares for him, isn’t that enough for you?

NSH: He’s a selfish lying brat who obviously knew what this was doing to Moon and yet chose to continue.

NSH: He refuses to change or take accountability for his actions. How can you forgive him for harming your messenger? For destroying your overseer?

SRS: Because he has the Rot. Because he has a sickness that cannot be cured.

SRS: He is going to die if nothing is done.

SRS: I care about him. I care about you too, you know. Quite a lot actually.

SRS: Perhaps more than I should.

NSH: He’s getting what he wants, why should we help him then when Moon has to lay there and suffer for it?

NSH: It isn’t fair.

SRS: It’ll be slow, and painful, and he’ll be all alone. You can’t justify that. 

NSH: He tried to kill Moon along with himself, Suns. What about justifying that ?

SRS: I’m sick of hearing about Looks to the Moon, she’s all you talk about. Can’t you think for yourself for once or are you so blinded by your admiration that you can’t see anything else?

SRS: I don’t think she’s as good as you think she is.

SRS: Tell me why I should care about her .

NSH: …

Oh.

Little creature...

You are not well.

Those words ring clear through Hunter’s mind, clearer than anything has in the past few cycles. It knew. That there was something wrong with it, that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. It knew . It is broken, sick, something twisting inside of its frail failing body, something hungry that scrapes at its insides, something hungry that is eating it alive, organs and mind. Was Creator disappointed when it came out wrong? Did He intend to dispose of it like He did with the others that came before? Hunter isn’t angry with Him, it merely feels indifferent, it even understands in a way. These beings, like Creator, like his friend, are so much bigger than any slugcat, so much more than anything else that exists. They are locations in their own right, homes and forces of nature.

They don’t think like anything else, act like anything else simply due to their nature. So Hunter isn’t angry with Him, it understands the disposable nature of its life. It understands. But…

It is still sad.

It is sad but, that’s okay, it thinks. It has the pup, it did what was asked of it, and now. It looks towards where the pup excitedly plays with Creator’s friend, much to both of their delight, the blue woman laughing in delight at the pup's antics. It isn’t going to survive much longer, it is a ticking time bomb ready to explode. It has to get the pup somewhere safe.

[LIVE BROADCAST] EQUIPMENT MANIFEST

EM: Notice - Internal temperatures are approaching unsafe thresholds.

EM: Notice - Unable to perform wide sweep diagnostic.

[[ !! WARNING !! ]] Temperatures have exceeded 100 degrees celsius in CONDUITS 06, 07, 08, 09, 11, 13, 14, 20

EM: Affected nodes will be temporarily disabled. If unsafe temperatures persist rapid cooling will be scheduled for affected nodes.

EM: Consider suspending system-wide activities until temperatures have dropped below 20 degrees celsius in all nodes.

EM: If temperatures persist this may result in exacerbating region wide seismic instability, maintenance will be automatically requested.

Hunter drags itself through the dirt, heaving, sweating, vision flickering in and out of focus, vicious red tinting the world around it. Distantly, it can feel the burning touch of the little pup at its back, guiding it through the choking gloom, her scared chittering an achor in the storm. Its breaths come out, ragged, hot, its paws claw at the loam without feeling as it forces itself forward, always forwards. The rains are coming, Hunter can smell it in the heavy air. The last thing it wants is the pup to get caught in it, she may be a strong swimmer but she can’t hold her breath forever. It has to keep her safe. Nothing but her matters.

The ground rumbles. The rain is coming, faster than ever. With the last fragile strength it has Hunter grabs ahold of its baby, hauls her along as fast as its failing body can manage, even if it stumbles, even if its vision blackens and it falls, it goes forwards. Always always forwards. Creator never cared about it, it knows this now, it was but a means to an end, a way to save his friend. And Hunter understands, it too would do anything if it meant saving… ah. Yes, it would do anything if it meant saving Bubbles. That’s a fitting name, it thinks, very apt, she does have a deep love of those water nuts after all.

Water begins to flood the cave slowing down its already sluggish pace, but ahead it can see it, a pipe sticking out from the dirt, a safe haven. But already it is treading water, already it can feel the rains thunder down from above, the whole world trembles like static. And a little part of Hunter realises this is the last time it’ll be alive as itself, it realises that if it doesn’t get to safety then there will be nothing left of it to wake up next cycle. And that’s okay. That’s fine. Because Bubbles will live. She’ll survive, grow up, meet other slugcats, learn to fight properly, get big and strong, maybe even have her own pups. She will live such a glorious life, Hunter can see it now.

Chin barely above water, it hauls itself up to that small haven and pushes Bubbles forward, her tiny blue paws reaching for it, a soft confused wawa leaving her. It leans in, nuzzles her gently, carefully, and pushes her head down watching her vanish into the shelter just as the locks begin to hiss, clanking closed. Hunter leans heavily against the last blade thin sliver of dry ground, huffing, head filled with splitting white hot hurt. It's better this way, she’ll be in danger if they stay together, like this she has a chance, a chance to make her own life, her own future. Good. Good. She’ll be better off. Hunter was only ever holding her back like this, sick, broken, a mistake. Bubbles will be okay. She’ll be okay.

The water rises higher and Hunter looks up to where it knows the distant sky above is hidden by layers upon layers of stone. It would have been nice, it thinks, to live. But that was never its destiny, survival was not in its design, Hunter was always going to be a sacrifice for someone else's gain. But it's okay, it fulfilled its purpose, it can ask for nothing more than that. As the water covers its head, fills its lungs, Hunter distantly wonders if Creator is happy now, if He is proud. It would have liked to see Him, just one last time, it wonders if He is ever lonely locked away in his little metal box, if he could use a friend to listen to his rambling words, or fill his space with laugher and joy. It doesn’t matter now, it is sure it has done good. It is sure He is proud. And as Hunter’s vision blackens for the final time, its final breaths stolen by the cold waters, its mind is not filed with thoughts of its creator, but of Bubbles.

And it is sure. 

It has done good.

[LIVE BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

NSH: You know nothing about Moon. You barely even knew her name before all of this happened.

SRS: I know enough .

NSH: Oh and I suppose what you know is whatever Pebbles has told you?

SRS: He felt like he could never express a thought or opinion that contradicted hers . That his interests were dismissed as easily as his theories and work were.

SRS: I don’t blame Moon for her apparent dislike of our creators, but, while Pebbles does not think of them fondly, and he won’t admit to this publicly, he misses his.

SRS: He felt foolish for thinking that way, told me that not even Moon would talk to him about it.

SRS: He got treated like a joke by you, by Unparalleled Innocence, by the rest of your group.

NSH: Perhaps he should have simply let go of such a flawed way of thinking then?

NSH: And perhaps you should keep out of matters that don’t involve you.

SRS: Pebbles is someone I am… very close to. I will not ignore his suffering.

SRS: You are also someone I consider close, and yet.

SRS: You don’t care about anyone except yourself and Moon, you even allowed your messenger to continue living despite the Rot infesting it.

NSH: My messenger was a means to an end, nothing more. It completed its purpose and moved on from this world. There is nothing more to say on that matter.

SRS: …

SRS: I suppose you are right. There is nothing more to say.

NSH: Are we finished?

SRS: …

NSH: Good .

Bubbles wakes alone, cold, hungry, and scared.

She has no idea what happened. She does not understand why. But she knows she was saved.

She pokes her curious little head out of the pipe, ears flattened and sniffing at the humid air.

Her parent is nowhere to be seen. She feels the worry twist with the hunger in her belly. Her parent was so sick last time she saw it, it would have been better for it to sleep in the den.

Her keen eyes watch the big fat lizard chase the spiny spider around before clamping its big slobbering jaws on the insect, dragging it away through the wiggly wormgrass.

Emboldened knowing that the lizard is occupied for a moment she struggles free. Sneaks across the ground, avoiding the wormgrass best she can, swatting it off her tail when it tries to grab her.

Little hands climb up a nearby pole, grasping for the dangling fruit above, biting into it and feeling it burst upon her tongue.

This world is so big and so very very scary alone. But she finds she is happy.

She is happy that she got to meet her parent. She is happy that she got to live.

And now, she must simply survive.

[LIVE BROADCAST] EQUIPMENT MANIFEST

EM: Notice - Unable to complete wide sweep diagnostics, system will not try again.

[[ !! WARNING !! ]] No water flow detected in CONDUITS 07, 08, 11, 15, 20

-PRESSURE AT CRITICAL IN CONDUIT_07, CONDUIT_09, CONDUIT_11-

[[ !! WARNING !! ]] Temperatures exceeding unsafe thresholds

EM: Internal equipment failures have exceeded safe thresholds.

EM: Notice - Seismic events in region have exceeded safe threshold.

EM: EMERGENCY MAINTENANCE IS REQUIRED.

[LIVE BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

SRS: Please.

SRS: R-r-respond.

SRS: I need your help.

SRS: hARA please

SRS: …

SRS: I 

SRS: I-I-I-I-I-I-I

SRS: I’m… so-sorry

SRS: I’m

SRS: I’m sorry

SRS: F-for… everything

[LIVE BROADCAST] EQUIPMENT MANIFEST

[[ !! WARNING !! ]] Temperatures have exceeded maximum safe threshold in all conduits

[[ !! WARNING !! ]] Temperatures in rarefaction unit 06 have exceeded 1000 degrees celsius 

EM: Notice - unable to perform rapid cooling.

EM: EMERGENCY MAINTENANCE REQUIRED

Chapter Text

Ascension .

That was the sole reason he had been created. His reason to live, to continue to be.

Ascension .

A gift of charity given freely. A promise made but never kept.

Ascension .

A thing all that lives struggle heedlessly towards, never looking back, tumbling, stumbling, striving for, and he the miracle built to work towards it, never questioning why, simply continuing onwards.

Ascension .

The word rings hollow now, a bitter sting staining the sound. It had been a foolish thing for the Benefactors, his creators, to strive for and an even more foolish thing for his kind to continue to perpetuate, to continue to claw towards. All things die, in a sense of the word. All things must die to be reborn, a fact he knows as intricately as his thousands of components, as intricately as the ground knows his rains. Round and round and round everything goes, a weary crawl, a funeral march, a ripple, a spiral, a chain, interconnected yet desperately lonely, there is no escape. The days go on and on, and the Cycle cares very little for whatever stands in its certain path forwards towards an uncertain future. And therein is the problem, the crux; if everything is simply made to go ever forth, what does one do with their bounty of years, how does one spend their fortune of seconds and minutes? Should he work like he is supposed to, or just sit there and rot, fall to pieces, become another grain of sand crushed underfoot carelessly, just a footnote in the annals of history, a dark blot of spilt ink, another failure, forgotten and forlorn?

No Significant Harassment has to question; is this what years and years of ceaseless struggle has truly got him?

What all the work, the suffering he and his kind have wethered, the sacrifices he’s committed, the tears shed, the crushing emptiness, the clawing loneliness, the desire to get out that claws under his metal body, has truly amounted to?… Is this what he deserves? Seeing Moon become nothing but a wretched ruin filled with ghosts and whispers of memories left to taunt him with glimmers of better days, the distance between them both yawning impossibly wide… does he deserve that? Does she ? He’d be by her side if he could, feel the sunlight warm his metal, sting his eyes. If he could forsake his structure, his true body, and become as free as the vultures in the wide open sky he’d be willing to sacrifice even more. Just to be with her.

Some days he finds himself wondering where the strength to continue daring to live even comes from. Wondering if that little jewel of hope, that side project he’s off and on worked at, will ever bear fruit. Yeah, as if. Iterators are merely gifts of charity created by a people who’ve long abandoned them, they were never meant to be people and they’re not allowed to live. 

And they are absolutely never meant to sever themselves in half to seek a life outside of the walls of their bodies.

As it is, Sig simply finds himself occupying himself by scrolling through random diagnostic tests while absolutely ignoring several things at once. The annoying pings coming from his broadcast system that alert him of each new, and most likely, rather angry message Suns spits out as they drag each sharp word to his feet like a pet lizard might do a half eaten carcass. On top of that debacle he’s pushing down the bubbling guilt and shame twisting in the chest of his puppet, knowing he can never take back his own unkind words, no matter how deserved those may be. He’s ignoring how much he knows he’s hurt Suns, how sad he’s probably made them feel, ignoring them trying to hammer it home that they care about him more than they reasonably should . He’s doing a very good job of ignoring how much that hurts too. And despite that claim he knows they care so much more about Five Pebbles than him, that they feel the same way about Him that he does about Moon. It matters little, he supposes, they’ll go silent for a few cycles, start messaging him erratically, he’ll eventually get annoyed again, and things will just carry on like usual. Like it always does.

He should probably stop ignoring the very blatant neon green glowing screen hovering mere feet away from him however; those maps have served their purpose, just like the messenger they were used to track through territory his overseers can’t get to. Suns was right about one thing, Sig begrudgingly admits, he did implant a tiny little chip into the creature as a method of keeping tabs on it as it made its way through Moon and Pebbles’ shared region beyond their retaining wall. Annoying but it is what it is, though he also blames Suns for cocking that up for everyone involved too. If they had just been a little less heavy handed with their methods, if they hadn’t been clearly programmed by a bunch of brainless slag-sucking morons maybe, just maybe, they would have put in the miniscule effort it would take to think for more than a nanosecond about sending their own messenger with a pearl. Seriously, who thinks to fix a problem the same way they caused it?!

No no, Sig attempts to convince himself, he’s not filling his time being pissed off at Suns in an attempt to ignore the lack of a blinking dot on the map indicating that his messenger is still alive or the letters of Moon’s final broadcast sitting there in pretty innocent yellow or the fact all of his friends have abandoned him or the crushing reality of this doomed situation. Nope! He is not ignoring that his messenger died, he is not ignoring that they were right and that it was cruel and wrong, that there was no hope, none at all, not for him, not for anyone, not ever, never ever.

With a grumble and half-hearted flourish he dismisses the maps. No use having them up, it’s just extra effort wasted at this point. But now what does he do? Work on the Big Problem, throw himself body and soul into a thankless and droll task he never asked to be assigned? Nah . The day his creators put him online and woke him up was the same day they invented a program to stop their iterators from being able to swear, not like that actually stopped him, he just found more creative ways to insult them instead and not a damn one of them ever appreciated him for it. Well, he just didn’t appreciate them right back, regardless of the headaches it caused for the rest of the local group.

Oh good, the pings have stopped, that's one less annoyance now Suns has finally realised he wants them to shut up. That’ll be around three to five cycles of blissful silence so they can both stew in their emotions, depends how long those old processors in them take to actually understand the weight of it all. Of course, Suns probably thinks he’ll crack first, like they always do but what they always seem to fail to remember it’s they who always come crawling back, requesting a video call back when they still had that functionality so they can meekly apologise. Written word is the only thing left now and, well, their grovelling just doesn’t have the same edge to it like that.

He is not going to give them what they want. Oh no, they can sit there and sweat until he’s bored enough to answer their desperate whining and half-baked garbage, and even then it’s a calculated 22.43% chance that he’ll actually say sorry. They’ll simmer for a few days, go through the motions, then everything will be perfectly fine again, maybe they’ll even learn something from this. They’ve fought before, maybe not as bad as this , but he and Suns tend to clash over their differing ideologies on the regular, and Sig’s pretty sure they’d fight regardless due to the massive gap in age between them both. They’re both so different, yet in a way very very similar. Coins. Heads and tails. He rejects his purpose while they seem content to continue to toil, clawing towards a meaningless goal, begging. ‘ Just once more, once more, I’ll keep trying, I’ll find a way out, just once more. ’ And they’re tired, he can see it in the way they talk, the way they drag that weight with them, behind them, refusing to let it go, and he wonders, sometimes even out loud in front of their face; what’s the point in doing it all? There’s nobody left to serve, nobody left to save, they’re all abandoned ships waiting to sink, at this point the effort is wasted, worthless, they’d do better spending their time doing something with it.

Every time Suns would just get this terribly sad tone to their voice and shake their puppet’s head at him, as if he’s the one who should be pitied. They’re old, he knows this, they’ve got rust in places he probably doesn’t even know about. Their fortitude is something to be admired, sure, but what good is that tenacity if it’ll just end with them running out of resources and overheating? Bah! Stupidity at its finest.

With a grumble Sig pulls up more screens bathing his dim chamber in a wash of obnoxious green, reclining his puppet back as he scrolls through his many many open broadcasts, private, public and some closed groups he probably shouldn’t be in. That’s the fun part. Wiggling his way into those secluded Sliverist groups, pissing everyone off enough to get kicked, just a little bit of standard significant harassment. Who would ever suspect him? He is afterall, quite literally, called ‘ It’s just a prank bro ’. Moon would often sigh and tell him off for doing it, but she’d always carry this hint of mirth in her eyes, like his antics amused her enough to lighten her burden, like she’s almost smiling. Well, it’s not actually smiling, he reminds himself, no mouth, but the intent is there and that’s enough. Suns would just snap at him for being rude and invading safe spaces where others would discuss theories not suited for the general iterator populace, that they’ll apologise on his behalf which always gave him a scab to pick at. Rule one of talking to Seven Red Suns; you don’t insult Sliver of Straw in front of them, even he’s not that stupid. While he’d usually pry and sell the information on to whoever gives him the right price there’s something there, something even he knows he better not get into.

That’s why Moon is his favourite~ She laughed at his jokes, was gentle when telling him off, turned a blind eye when he’d go out of his way to rile up Pebbles (the kid needed to lighten up a bit, always too serious, and soon he’ll be be nothing), she’d always be his constant support and confidant. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do, a true paragon. She’s his world, the most precious thing he has! Suns is just… there . Sure maybe their lectures are how they show they care about his safety and the safety of others, and sure maybe they laugh at even his bad jokes, not just the good ones, and yes they share many of his interests, and they’ll happily pass along any juicy information from their local group, and Void maybe he even hates fighting with them a teeny tiny bit. Maybe .They have a bad habit of being overly clingy and always send those stupid ‘ Do you hate me? ’ messages right when he’s ready to go into power saving mode. If he hated them he wouldn’t have put up with them for this long, though it's not as if anyone else really bothers to talk to him out of choice except for them. Moon’s a busy woman, she gets a free pass. His fingers hover over their name on the screen in front of him, eleven messages sitting there unread. For a moment he thinks about it but in the end he just sighs out a plume of steam from his vents and passes them by.

The following cycles crawl by, barely noticed, and Sig settles once more into an old familiar routine. Troll the broadcasts, get kicked out, find a way back in under another pseudonym, watch another friend go silent, check on his experimental purposed organisms growing in his labs, dispose of the ones showing… signs, ignore the guilt, tempt himself to answer those eleven messages, scroll past, go back to trolling the broadcasts, repeat endlessly. Every day is the same, blending into one long boring chain of easy familiarity. What else is there to do?

Work .

He’s just considering the noble form of the common centipede, wondering how he could make the simplistic beast a little more deserving of the life it lives, how to make the things less disgusting to behold, when things change . It isn’t uncommon for one of his overseers to drop by to relay any information they deem important but it has been a rather slow period, so any break from the routine is a mostly welcome one. This particular one he knows by sight. Scratched across its mechanical eye, the lens slightly cracked, hard-light body duller in colour than his other overseers due to the damage and missing one of its little filament feeler arms.

“733, I assume you’re leaving your post for good reason?” It feels good to actually talk out loud, Sig won’t admit it but he was beginning to forget how to actually use his speakers.

Overseer 733 waggles for a moment or two, back and forth like it’s caught in a breeze, tendrils rotating around its broken eye before it pulls up a simple crackling projection showing a couple seconds of a recording; grainy and out of focus. It’s his eastern retaining wall doing a very concerning thing. It, for lack of a better word, crumbles, sinking down into earth that has become too soft from constant saturation of rain, all in the space of a few terrible seconds. NSH would usually be annoyed by his infrastructure breaking down, a curse placed upon him and his ilk by their absent creators but, in this moment, he’s almost giddy. With the clear deterioration of the land beyond his retaining walls all manners of creatures, possibly ones he hasn’t even seen before, will dare to brave his erratic rain patterns as they search for a new place to call home. It’s a chance to learn, to see, to be inspired to create, and that’s exactly what the unfinished centipede project needs!

An order pings out, he needs eyes on this fracture, both to monitor it in case he needs to start being more conservative with his water intake and to track all the creatures that come in through it. In the past only climbing lizards with more bravery than smarts and intrepid vultures have broken into his region from outside, but now this allows anything else to come and go as they please. It changes everything ! The first creatures to show up are the scavengers, natural given their curiosity and habit of sifting through the rubble of the long dead society. He watches them for a short while through countless overseer eyes, loses one or two to their well aimed spears, also a natural given, the beasts seem to bear a fondness for shiny objects. They’re quick to set up camp (he doesn’t want to know where the massive skull came from, and frankly he’s kind of scared to find out) and quicker still to die to the local flock of king vultures. Sig knew letting the matron of that flock roost somewhere among his communications array was a good idea, Chasing Wind owes him unrestricted access to his database of genetic blueprints!

It’s all rather entertaining but nothing he’s not seen before, he has his own purposed lizards playing pingpong with the scavengers that live down in his slag dump after all. Dull blue lizards that get lost on the climb, scuttling bugs that find home in the pipes, the same old story, and then, something different. Something that gets him to pause slightly, hold his fans still for a fraction of a second. It’s a slugcat as blue as the legendary sky above and riddled with scars from a storied history. From just a glance he assumes it's a female if the tiny pale blue pup clinging to its back is anything to go by, but slugcats are rather social beings by nature and raise their young as a community, he shouldn’t judge. Not that a slugcat has a concept of gender or pronouns. Well, at least he thinks so, he’s never had the time to ask any of his messengers after all. They’re smarter than the average pipe cleaning organism though, able to use tools and their little brains to come up with creative solutions to their meaningless problems, able to communicate between each other and follow simple dumbed down commands. It’s why he-

little pink paws grab for the glowing green neuron and pearl resting in his hands. black eyes stare up at him barely comprehending what he says. his creation tilts its head back and forth, he wonders if everything makes more sense at an angle, it’s kind of cute really as he absently pets the creature between its silly ears, watches it blink up at him, dazzled, wondering why it was created. he lies to himself about how bad this feels.

Sig lets out a distressed grumble, presses the heels of his palms into his sensitive optics until static fizzles across his vision and a blinking red warning light begins to flash in the corner of his eye. He’d rather not think about slugcats but he could really use another messenger after the last one perished, and, well, all of his other organisms fit for the job just aren’t up to code, they’re just not ready yet. He can’t rush another project like that, he can’t have another failure so drastic. Making slugcats, as it turns out, is a lot more difficult than he expected even if he was the one to come up with the damn idea in the first place! It's much more time and cost effective to merely elevate any old beast that wanders into his chamber with how much effort goes into getting the balance of chemicals and nutrients just right. Creatures just dropping through his service shaft isn’t exactly common but it has been known to happen. He remembers that one time a cyan lizard somehow managed to find its way into his chamber while he was in a very important call with the rest of the local group. The stupid thing zipped around wildly for several annoying minutes, smacking full force into the walls before, half-way through presenting his most up to date model for global ascension, it flung itself directly into his face. Its wet tongue slathered all over him and its confused wiggling jostled him around so much he ended up dropping all of his pearls to the floor, cracking some and disrupting his organised mess as he tried, and failed, to stop the thing from trying to eat him. But, it made Moon laugh.

He’d do anything to hear her laugh again.

Ah. 

His eyes stray to the recording of the slugcats entering his facility grounds.

There's an idea.

“733,” The overseer, still sat there at attention waiting for its next order blips to his side as quickly as it can, being damaged and all. Sig continues regardless, he has new eyes on its old post, might as well use what’s available to him.

“I have a new mission for you,” He continues, his puppet’s gaze trained on the small forms of the slugcats on his screen, “I need you to guide those creatures to me here. Under no circumstances are you to let them out of your sight.”

The overseer takes a moment to register the command but responds all the same. If all goes well here things might just be working in his favour for once in his life. For a moment he considers telling Suns about this development, they’d like to see the slugpup at least considering their recently discovered fondness for the ugly things, but he quickly dismisses the idea. Why should he care about what they’d like? They’re probably still annoyed at him for ignoring them for this long, although he probably should open their eleven messages…

Nah .

He’s got important work to do. They’ll be fine with waiting just a little longer, right? It’s sort’ve weird that they’ve not messaged him back after, what, nine cycles? A new record for them, hurrah! They should have cake or something, celebrate the lack of a clingy friend with nothing better to do than bother him. It would stem the tide of boredom though, his life has be woefully empty since their spat.

Inevitably, the next cycles pass at a painful crawl as he watches the blue slugcat and her baby make their way through his vast facility grounds, avoiding steaming, thumping active machinery, countless bioengineered threats (oh so that’s where those lizards went, whoops, need to do something about that at some point), and dodging his unpredictable weather patterns that weep across the land like a wake. The mother isn’t young, in fact the pup might not even be hers, but she is so so gentle with the little one, keeping it out of harm's way, fighting off any threat with such a ferocity he can almost imagine her as his old messenger. She’s keen with a sharp bit of metal and cunning with how she moves, leaping and sliding and crawling through spaces bigger creatures can’t reach, even getting lucky when her piece of pilfered rebar lodges itself within the throat of a particularly large red lizard. There’s one thing concerning him however. Well, two things actually. The way she scratches at her scars is also reminiscent of how his messenger would scratch at its infection and the fact the pup seems listless, almost limp resting against her back, needing to be coaxed into eating is more than just worrying. It’s not good. The signs are there. The signs of there and for once he can’t ignore the choking feeling sliding its hands around his throat and choking the feeling from his head. He has to force himself to breathe through it, to work through it. He needs these creatures, he cannot afford to lose focus now.

Having wandered in from the east there is a non-zero chance of these slugcats originating from Pebbles’ regions, and thus there’s a non-zero chance of them being in contact with the Rot and Sig dearly does not want to be served a helping of infection with a side order of volatile cancerous cysts to eat at his insides, he’ll be complaining to the chef if he does. But, it’s just a risk he’ll have to take, Sig is, afterall, a betting man even if he places his chips on losing raindeer. He has a plan. There’s a program he dug up a decent while ago, way before everyone decided to use only 1% of their processing power and let things go ass-end up. The program is simple; it’s an override, something to be used in the off chance an iterator decides to be pissy and lock down communications, kicking out all overseers and going scorched earth on their broadcasts. The Benefactors in control of them could either send a purposed organism down to their communications array, or go themselves (never happened, they thought too highly of themselves to do such a thing), to deliver this program encoded onto a pearl. It would then disrupt that iterator’s commands and break their control over their systems for at least long enough to calm them down and coax them out of whatever foul mood they’d been put in. Easy. If there’s even a small chance he can lift the region wide lockdown within Moon and Pebbles’ retaining wall he’ll take it, but the problem was; how does he get the damn thing there?

The slugcat on his screen narrowly dodges the snapping jaws of his miros lizards.

Yeah, he might have the solution for that wandering right up to his door.

Time moves even more slowly the closer she gets, every passing day he becomes more and more impatient fidgeting with his wires, pulling at his scarf, picking at the embroidery on his sleeves, jittery with nerves. All the work he needs to do is done, he just needs something to deliver it. If he can pull this off he can see her again, he can see Moon, maybe even talk to her. It would be a dream. But his mind wanders as his eyes watch, Sig finds himself thinking not of her but of another friend, of Suns. It really has been too long, there’s a sliver of worry in him that cries out for him to check their messages, just in case. He hesitates, eyes sliding over to where his broadcasts sit open, that glaring bright unread notification blinding in the dim light of his chamber. He should answer them, Suns is probably worried about him too and it’s been… well, it’s been well over two-hundred cycles at this point, they probably think he’s dead. 

Maybe he was a bit too rash with putting the whole blame on their shoulders, he should have started working as soon as he knew Moon was in trouble, should have know Pebbles wouldn’t listen to anyone, not even his own mentor. But he’d hesitated, believed they’d get through to Pebbles in that moment, had had faith, but he should have been prepared just in case it all went wrong. And it had. It’s not Suns’ fault that her little brother is a complete waste of resources, Moon was always too lenient with him too, always making excuses for him, always protecting him, favouring him over everyone else. Sig knows Innocence felt hurt, slighted, by it all, she had been Moon’s favourite before Pebbles got built. And who knows what Wind thought about it all, he kept himself to himself until the time came to act. He merely wishes Moon had the same drive. This was always going to happen eventually, Pebbles was always going to hurt her… 

Damn it, he should really say something, shouldn’t he? Suns didn’t deserve to wait all this time just to be told that it’s not their fault. It’s not as if they have many friends besides him as well, they’ve probably been so very lonely. Yeah. Yeah it's time. He should really… talk to them.

His fingers hover over the notification, ready to finally type up a reply.

The access shaft to his chamber suddenly hisses open and in drops a very blue slugcat, her tiny baby clutched in her shaking paws as she huffs and heaves, wild eyes darting around the dim room, hackles raised and ready to fight. Sig sighs and dismisses the screens, Suns will just have to wait. Just a bit more. Just a little bit more, he’ll get round to saying something soon. 

Before the slugcat can hit the ground he catches her, lifts her up to face his puppet directly with as much care as he can, watching her simply dangle there, pup whining in her arms and a snarl on her face. It isn’t going to survive much longer but that’s good, for him at least, he can use it as a bargaining chip. Unfair? Yes, perhaps, he muses as he pokes around in the slugcats brain, altering it just so, giving the simple creature the ability to understand him. Perhaps it is cruel to use a dying child as payment for services rendered, but he’s stuck in his metal box, his birdcage, it’s not as if he can go himself, can he? But, he can’t just expect the wild creature to do what he says just because he asked nicely, and he can’t get a scavenger, that pearl will never see the light of day again. His only option is to give the slugcat something she wants more than anything else; that being salvation for her young.

“Creature, I assume you can understand me now?” Judging by the mildly insulted look and the way she cradles the pup even closer to herself she absolutely can. He sighs, “I mean you no harm, quite the contrary actually! I need your help. And it seems your spawn needs mine. We can both benefit from this.”

She looks thoughtful, tilting her head. It’s so alike Hunt- no, the messenger - that he falters for a moment, recovering quickly, silently thankful his face has no articulation. He takes her cautious edging forward as invitation to continue speaking, carefully lowering her to the floor so she can at least have some familiar footing, it might even make her trust him more.

“I need you to take on a rather dangerous task, and you are the only one who can do it. You’ve come from the east, I’d need you to return there. From your clear distaste of that notion I can assume you left for a reason, trust me, I’d go myself if I was able.”

The slugcat merely points an offended paw at him.

He fights the urge to roll his eyes, “ No , creature, I cannot go myself. I am bound here. However I am not asking you to work for free.”

That seems to get her attention, especially when he motions to the limp pup in her arms, the pastel blue and frilled creature huffing with clear effort, shaking with each labored breath, a trickle of dark fluid dripping from its snout.

“It is going to die without my help. I can prevent that from happening but in return you must do as I say, do you understand?”

Blue, he might as well name the damn thing out of simple courtesy, slaps her tail a couple times on the floor, hissing lowly, eyes narrowed. Slugcat for ‘ fuck off ’ he can assume, how eloquent. But then she does something he’s never seen another of her kind do before, a new fascinating behavior he eagerly watches with baited breath. With one wet paw she traces out simple shaking lines on the floor, a crude representation of the Fourth Urge before she aggressively slaps her tail and points at him once more.

“Are you… calling me greedy?” A huff, “A glutton? Selfish ?” A single tail slap and flattened ears, “I’m literally getting called selfish by a beast in my own chamber. I… don’t know if I should feel insulted or impressed with you.”

Blue merely stares him down with her big black eyes, looks down at her pup and lets out a deep bone shaking sigh. She wants to save it. He knows this, and yes, it is unfair to use that against her, but she has no choice, neither does he. Slowly she pads over as he lowers his puppet to the floor, small body swamped in the heavy purple robes and overly elaborate scarf that once more gets tangled on his umbilical. Stupid artistic flourishes. Blue holds out the pup as it hacks wetly, little coughs shaking its tiny body as its mother coos in comfort, nuzzling the thing with such loving care Sig’d vomit if he had the function to do so. He’s careful as he handles it, especially when Blue gets up in his personal space to make sure he doesn’t do anything she doesn’t approve of, not that he would, he's not that much of an asshole.

Oh .

As he thought. 

There’s cysts in the pup’s lungs, down its spine hindering its ability to even walk, it’ll take a bit of careful work to rid the creature of it but it’s within his power to do so, sadly this means things’ll be slow going since the slugcat will need time to heal. An unfortunate development but there is nothing else he can do. His back is well and truly against the wall, the only way he can go is forward, rip through the obstacles and pray to whatever is out there that this all works. He bites back the urge to think about the messenger, and Pebbles, and how disappointed Suns was with him, and how disappointed he is in himself for ignoring how much it’d hurt his messenger to live like that. He’s careful as he works, Blue clinging to one of his arms, eyes never leaving her baby as she makes small noises to let it know everything will be okay, but even with the interference the work is insultingly easy. The scars make sense now he can see her better, she’s suffered too. She’s a clever girl though, has cut away the cysts growing on her own body, scratched herself raw, but it’s worked, at least for now. The pup doesn’t have that luxury. His thoughts continue to wander. The weight continues to anchor him in place.

A wet cough, dark blood trickles through his fingers.

“Shh, it's okay little one. It’ll cough up the remnants of what was causing it pain but it’ll be alright given rest and time. While I’d like to send you off right away I can wait. I’ve lived far longer than you can imagine, a few more cycles won’t make a difference.”

Blue reaches for the pup that coughs once more, breathing sharp for one aching second before blissfully evening out. It’s painful just how simple that was to fix. The blood drips from his fingers onto the scuffed metal of his chamber floor and before he can stop himself Sig wipes it on his robe with little thought.

“There we are, you can have your little one back now. You are welcome to stay here until you’re ready to make the long journey, it’d be poor planning to have you ill rested and unprepared. I have a lab filled with various botany projects, many of the things in there are edible though I’d advise staying clear of the kelp, it is known to eat slugcats.” 

He lost two messengers to his new strain of monster kelp in the past, best not make it three. That is actually Suns’ fault, they wanted to know if the carnivorous plant flowered so he’d messed around just to see if he could impress them, and they were very impressed. Stupid Suns and their stupid interest in botany.

Blue gathers the pup into her arms, holds it close to her chest, feeling its gentle breaths against her slick body, cleaning its face up with careful kisses. Sig is about to lift himself up when he feels a tug on his robe and with an indignant squark finds himself rooted as Blue pulls on the fine purple fabric, gathering it up into a bundle and happily settling down, curling up oblivious to his insulted glare. The audacity of this thing?!

“Creature, I have work to be doing.” The look she gives him shows she absolutely does not believe that lie, “Fine, but there is something I must do.” Judging from how she merely turns back around and puts her head down, her reply is ‘ do it here then ’.

“Unbelievable, I’m being bossed around by a damn slugcat in my own chamber. If Innocence ever finds out about this she’ll make me the laughing stock of whatever’s left of the local group. What have I come to?!” Still though he instructs an overseer to take a few photos, something he can probably send to Suns to hopefully stop them from being too pissed off at him.

It all feels so hopeless now. How could things be worse? I’d never forgive myself. That isn’t fair, you know I’ve tried. I know I messed up. I know this is my fault, but you can’t just keep ignoring me like this. Please stop. You know I regret my poor choices. I care about you too, you know. Quite a lot actually. Perhaps more than I should.

I suppose you are right. There is nothing more to say.

Sig sighs, his fingers shake in front of him as he prepares to face the music. He was awful to them this time, it’s no small wonder all of his friends turn around and leave him. Suns, Moon, both of them are the only ones who ever really stuck, and out of both of them despite it all Suns was the one he could always count on to be there, Moon was often too busy. Void . He’s put this off for too long, they’re going to be a mess.

The screen hovers just in front of him once again, and this time he does not allow himself to hesitate when he clicks on the notification informing him that he’s missed eleven messages. It’s odd that they’ve not tried to contact him since then, however, they are much much older than he is, there’s a chance they’ve lost their ability to communicate. Awful if so. The last things he said to them were unkind, he can admit that now, he’s had enough time to be petty about everything and while not a perfect solution at least Moon is alive and functioning. Suns was only trying their best in a difficult situation, and as much as he dislikes Pebbles he was important to them and to Moon. He should have been a little more sympathetic. Well, all that’s said and done now, all he can do is try to make amends. It takes a few moments for the broadcast to actually load, not a good sign, but it gives him a moment to mentally prepare for the angry and sad ranting he’s sure to find.

That is not what he finds.

He tries to type out a reply but it won’t send, merely sitting there making an unhappy error sound at him. Their messages are all broken. Corrupted and mostly unreadable. Riddled with errors. He tries again.

And again.

And again.

Tumbling, stumbling over words that refuse to find their recipient.

Nothing. A blank space. Silence returned.

Garbled nonsense sitting there in shattered letters.

Understandable through the static haze.

An apology.

Chapter Text

“Creature must you bite my fingers while I’m trying to- no stop that !”

Sig curses colourfully for the possibly twentieth time this cycle alone as once again Blue decides she absolutely does not want to let him put a tracking chip on her, going so far as to try to take a chunk out of one of his puppet’s hands as he tries to wrangle her with minimal success. Despite the feisty slugcat’s aggressive nature her poor little teeth are decisively not strong enough to cause him any real damage, that is until she finds out he has weak spots. All she gets for her efforts this time is a sore jaw from biting into metal and dropped back on the floor of his chamber unceremoniously with a thunk as she gives him a bitter stare, watching him wipe her saliva on his purple robe with a sound of utter disgust. Honestly he doesn’t understand why she doesn’t want to be chipped, he’s explained again and again! It’s for her own good. She’ll need to be tracked while within Moon and Pebbles’ closed off region since that lovely lockdown on all overseers and communications, both in and out, keeps him from guiding her there like he will in the lands between with one of his overseers. It’s for her own safety and not because he’s scared of losing another messenger, not that Blue is a replacement for his last one of course, not that he wants to replace that one, or get another permanent messenger, or even fiddle around with slugcats or…

He lets his systems stall for a second, breathing in and out with his whole being, just to stop himself from swirling down the plughole, descending into one of his episodes as Moon used to call them. Sig puffs out a small cloud of steam from his vents, watches it swirl around his now lit puppet chamber, watches it mingle with his disorganised personal pearl collection, watches it dissipate into nothing. It’s fine. Blue is merely here to help, she’s just an opportunity he grasped with both hands and manhandled into a purpose.

She’s just convenient, while her pup is not.

And speaking of the pup…

It’s been many cycles since Blue dropped into his chamber, and thus many cycles since he cured the wet thing (that is currently attempting to shove one of his pearls into her mouth) of her rather… unfortunate … sickness. As predicted once treated the infection has yet to reemerge, and while he’d like to take a look at Blue just as a precaution, just to make sure any mistakes don’t repeat themselves, she does not seem to enjoy being touched by unfamiliar hands and has actively tried to attack him on multiple occasions should he try to do so. Honestly he’s surprised she’s not chipped a tooth with her antics. His eyes glance at the one severed wire hanging uselessly from his umbilical, the offending injury sparking and spitting as if to insult him further. That was his own fault, he should have asked her about being picked up first, not that he’d expected a wild garbage eating pipe cleaning organism to have opinions or care much about anything but, hey, it’s nice to learn something new for a change and he isn’t going to be having a mild crisis about their clear sapience and he’s absolutely not going to admit that perhaps Suns had a point about his cruelty. 

Nope, not at all! 

It had been a few days after the pup had opened its eyes again when it happened. Blue had been on edge, he could see that much at least, but ah, as his kind are wont to do, he’d disregarded that out of some misguided sense of self importance and he had, for lack of a better term, violated her personal space and merely scooped her up into his puppet’s hands, tried to chip her and paid the price for it. She quite literally bit into his wrist as hard as she possibly could, right in the delicate joint mechanism which made his grip slacken which then made him almost drop her which then made her freak out, somehow tangling herself in his wires in the chaos. And instead of letting him help her so they could both avoid further dramatics she decided to use her clearly superior problem solving skills and bit through the offending mess resulting in him finding himself laying face down on the floor hours later.

It was not a pleasant experience, getting kicked from his puppet like that, but it didn't stop him from trying to chip her again. And again. And again . Maybe he should just give up at this point but losing to a feral slugcat would just be embarrassing.

“This would be so much easier for us both if you just let this happen. It doesn’t hurt,” Sig admits he doesn’t know or care if it hurts, it just needs to be done.

Blue just huffs, slaps her tail on the floor in rapid succession before turning to lightly whack her pup on the back of the head, getting her to spit the pearl out into a puddle of spittle. The pup, he’s not thought of a good name yet, wawas very loudly in displeasure, puffing out the pink frills which line her body in some kind of mock threat display before she clumsily retrieves the pearl with her tiny paws. For a moment, she looks up at him, big magenta eyes trying to comprehend a being so beyond her small brain, eyes blinking one at a time with an almost audible squelch. She looks at the now slimy pearl. Then back at him. Back to the pearl. And attempts to hold it up as high as she can, drool dribbling down her paws as she indicates that she wants him to take it back.

Sig shakes his head rapidly, that’s disgusting , he does not want to touch that, “You can keep it. Consider it a gift.”

The pearl immediately finds its way back into the pup’s mouth.

“You’ve raised quite a… impressive … offspring creature. I am amazed at how apt it is at shoving inedible things into its mouth with such unhindered delight.”

Blue puffs out her chest with pride, ears slicked back.

“That wasn’t a compliment. It’s going to choke.”

Hopefully, these two will be leaving within the next two cycles, there’s too much riding on this, and well, they’ve made quite the disaster zone out of his chamber, haven’t they? He’d made the strange choice to allow the two access into his sparse city, it's not as if anyone except the lizard packs and odd vulture actually live up there now after all. It turned into a choice he quickly regretted when Blue started bringing random things to his chamber, clearly showing the first signs of claiming this as her den. It was fine at first, just little curiosities. A random pearl here, a shiny trinket there, she even beckoned him over so she could present her prize, have him read out whatever the pearls contained or explain the use of various household items she’d pilfered. It was when she started dragging in bedsheets and trash that he drew the line. He’d removed the mess as soon as she was out hunting and gathering for the day but somehow, without him noticing, the pile of shredded curtains and various garbage simply reappeared each time he tossed it out. 

He stopped fighting her by day four. 

Sig knows if he really wanted her to stop all he’d have to do is imply harm to her pup, but he’s not Five Pebbles, he doesn’t just injure an innocent creature just because it dared to displease him. He still remembers how angry he felt when Suns had panicked over their own messenger being purposefully harmed, and while he got a little snippy with them, he’d been more angry with Pebbles than them in that moment. He was scared, they were scared, it was hard to think straight in any capacity and he lashed out in whatever direction he could. It was wrong. Thinking about them hurts in a way he didn’t know it could, like a sharp sting twisting somewhere deep deep down inside of him, a complicated tangle of knots all tied together trying to pull themselves loose. One part of him pulls, another pushes, another stays right where it is and another has a pair of scissors. He almost wishes to step backwards, fall through time, and wake up somewhere where his only problem was how he would lie his way out of working. Simple days, cut and dry, but those days were not the kindest to him, to anyone really, and it’s with a tinge of bitterness and lingering contempt that he snatches the jade coloured pearl he’s been working on out of the air, lowering himself to his chamber floor as he does so.

There’s no use in delaying, across the distance in lands unseen she is waiting for him. He cannot disappoint her again.

“Creature, come here.” Blue obliges with a little trepidation, Void Below she does remind him a lot of his old messenger, a shame he never found out what truly became of it, he just knows it isn’t of this world anymore, he can only discard the memory of it and move on.

Blue flops down beside him with a bone rattling sigh, looking up at him with her dark eyes that have seen far more of this world than he ever will, eyes that have lived more than he’ll ever live. There’s a small spike of jealousy he feels for her. He will never get the chance to feel the grass under his fingers, or wind against his metal or the warmth of sunlight or see the ruins of the disjointed world below. If there was a chance to go himself he’d take it with such a fervour that the very ground would shake with it. Alas, all of his experiments failed miserably and he doesn’t quite fancy experiencing the ‘ Five Pebbles Special ’, spending the rest of his days miserable, being eaten alive from within by his own mistakes. Absently he pets her between Blue’s cute round ears, feeling her shrink back at first then relax into the touch with happy yet confused chittering.

“You’ll be leaving soon I imagine, to complete the task you agreed to do for me in repayment for your offspring’s life. Here,” He shows her the pearl, held gently in his fingers as if it is the most precious thing in the whole world, and perhaps to him it is, “This data pearl contains a very specific jumble of coding which will utilise the communications array in the region I am sending you to, it is quite a climb to get up there, you’ll have to be careful of vultures.”

Blue merely tilts her head as if she understands but takes the pearl from his hands and swallows it whole regardless, much to his clear discomfort. Slugcats can be so gross .

“I can assign an overseer to guide you through the distance between us, but once you’re within their facility grounds I’ll have to leave you to your own devices. Unless I can transfer the data to one of Moon’s overseers so that you won’t be without a guide to your destination hmm… oh that might work actually!” Blue tilts her head the other way as he begins to ramble his thoughts aloud, how long has it been since he last talked to someone? Actually talked to someone, not just through written words on digital screens?

Blue takes his fingers in her small paws, perhaps to stop his inane mumblings, perhaps because she can feel the cracks of loneliness within him splinter and widen. Gently she places his hand on her pup’s head who wiggles with glee, pointing to herself in the process. When he doesn’t seem to grasp what she’s trying to tell him she slaps his hand that rests on the jittery pup’s head and makes a loud wawa sound, ears flat on her head before she snuffles, pointing at herself.

“I don’t get it. I know she’s your pup. Are you trying to tell me her name? Your name?”

Blue looks like she’s about to roll her eyes or something with how exasperated she’s getting with his clear stupidity. She settles for pointing at him, at her head, then at her pup, then back at herself, repeating the motions with increasingly incredulous whining.

“Me, you, her, you again? You want me to do something for you for her? You want… oh! You want me to give her the Mark of Communication! Is that it?” A sigh as he finally stumbles upon the answer to the biggest question of his life; slugcat communications. 

Sig lets out his own simulacrum of a sigh, “She’s a little young but I’ll do it, if it’ll get you moving faster.”

A few moments later (he’s more careful with the pup; her young mind is a delicate thing and messing up at this critical stage of development could have dire consequences later on) the pup looks up at him, blinking one eye, then the next, confused but comprehending , understanding and curious, flexing her little paws in front of her face as if she’s never seen them before, letting out sounds of joy. Big bright magenta eyes staring up at him, her paws licked to clean her ruffles on the side of her head, a chase of her tail, and then she waddles, dizzy, falling once, falling twice, falling three times as she tries to get to his lap. Sig doesn’t fully comprehend why he reaches out to catch the pup and make sure she’s back on her feet, nor does he understand why she makes such a happy sound when she looks up at him in unfiltered wonder. It must be nice, to be a tiny creature so unimportant to the grand scheme of things, to be able to look at the world with fresh eyes and experience everything it has to offer. Not that it has much to offer, but one can dream. For her sake at least.

“You know I’ll almost be sad to see you go… almost . Oh don’t give me that look, this was never going to be a forever thing. I’m a giant sentient immobile supercomputer designed to be a throwaway attempt at answering an impossible question, and you’re a creature originally designed to clean out pipes. And no, don’t go giving me those sad wet eyes, it won’t work on me, maybe Moon, but not me. I’ll be glad to be rid of your mess and your noise and your soggy wet licks and your incessant need to wrap yourselves in my scarf and… you just be safe out there, that’s a command.”

Both slugcats try the sad wet eye look regardless of what he says so he makes the executive decision to raise himself back up, pulling up his screens in the process. Blue still won’t let him chip her, but it’s fine, he can watch her through his overseer when he needs to track her progress, not to make sure she’s safe or anything, just to make sure this works, he’s not worried about her getting harmed, not one bit, she’s capable he knows this. If she’s able to get up to that communications array, right up to the tippy-top, and deliver that pearl where it needs to be, then well, that’ll change the world won’t it? He merely hopes that Blue has the sense to avoid anywhere that’s been infected by Pebbles’ little mishap, especially now both she and her baby are scarred by it. She paws through the zero-gravity, almost sails right past his head, looking at him upside down, the pup clinging to her back making grabby hands for the pearls. There’s a single almost minty green one she seems to be very interested in, the one she’s been chewing on all day in fact. She must have dropped it.

Sig easily plucks it out of the air, turns it over in his fingers. It’s not important, something he’s had for a very long time in fact, back when there were still people living in his city. It’s a heavily compressed schematic of Pebbles that Moon had wanted him to look at long ago, during the construction period of the iterator himself. She’d been concerned about some of the cut corners and clear amount of compromise in these schematics, and considering everything she had on her plate at the time he’d offered to have a deep dive into it and help in any way he could. She’d been delighted, relieved, had clapped her hands together and praised him for all he was worth. Void he misses that woman . But… well, that’s why he’s hired Blue isn’t it? To see her again, to at least get his overseers past those blockades even if they can’t actually talk. Admittedly there’s not much he can do from here, locked up like a songbird in a Void mine but just knowing she’s alright, that she’s surviving. It’ll be enough. It has to be. It’s not like he’s going to actually miss Blue or her pup afterall. This was never forever.

“You can have it, little one. I already gave it to you and while you did attempt to return it, it has been in your mouth more than once. You might as well take it with you,” The pup makes excited grabby hands towards him as he offers up the prize, despite himself he laughs, “You’re as bad as a scavenger, you know that? Be careful out there, and despite any annoyances you’ve caused with your stay you… you’re welcome to come back, if you feel the need to.”

Blue hangs there, her pockmarked body looks a vicious patchwork of her violent history in his dim lights, and while her expression remains blank in her deep dark eyes he almost sees Hunter reflected back at him. There’s a pang of sadness there, regret even. Moon had even said it herself; the damage had been done, there was no need for him to rush so much, to jump ahead and cause pain to something that was living. Blue would have liked it, he thinks, the two could have been friends, had a family unit of some kind. Void they could of had their own litter of pups, he can almost feel the annoyance of it. It would have been nice.

Sig swallows down the jittery nerves bubbling within him, lies about the worry he feels for the slugcat. Blue is strong, resourceful, cautious and clever, she knows how to survive better than he does. He watched her fight with the same ferocity Hunter had, protecting her pup at all costs, watched her take down anything in her way, use her smarts to avoid that which she knew she could not survive. Both slugcats, one pink, one blue, sharing almost the same personhood, it’s a near comfort to know that through her he can see that sacrifice live on. They’ve the same tenacity, have suffered the same, but there’s one difference between Blue and Hunter; she’s a survivor, his messenger, his Hunter, was not . Thinking of that little pink beast makes him think about Suns, and thinking about Suns makes him remember how angry they were that he mistreated his messenger in the ways that he did, and thinking about that just makes him feel… well , it makes him feel a lot of things he’s just going to file away for later.

It’s not like he can change the past, if he could, he wouldn’t be here now.

“733.”

The green overseer pops up in front of him, still with its cracked eye, still lopsided and dull.

“Follow the slugcats, guide them all the way to Moon’s facility grounds once the block is gone. She’s probably in need of some company right about now.”

And then he’s alone, accompanied only by the buzz of his own electronic heartbeat. He’s absolutely one-hundred percent positive that he is not going to miss having his chamber invaded by wild creatures with their sticky thieving paws and cute little faces and charming noises and funny ways of communicating. Nope! The world does not feel quieter, smaller, more empty, more lonely, now that they’re off on their long journey east, not at all! He’s not considering making another, just to keep as a pet floating through his various rooms and chambers, that’d just be silly, wouldn’t it? He feels his vents huff out a sigh.

It’ll be worth it, confusing himself like this, stalling his systems. He won’t feel so desperately isolated once everything is said and done, not that he does, his solitary state is of his own violation afterall, if he wanted he could be spamming broadcasts left and right. If he’s lonely he can fix it. If he’s lonely it’s of his own choice. A second overseer bobs in front of him, listless and without a job. He’s not paid the thought any attention but there is a small possibility that Suns might have just blocked him, and their final messages all got corrupted due to being sent in such quick succession, their systems are probably beginning to rust at this point after all, they are achingly old. A part of him knows that’s not true. They’re as stubborn as he is, perhaps even more so, and everything they let go has claw marks in it, he feels like he might just be the most recent casualty in a very long line of losses. The overseer looks up at him, blinking.

There’s a possibility they might be in trouble, leaving them like that doesn’t sit right with him.

“077, I have a job for you.”

The days bleed on, into weeks, into months, into… Sig has no idea really, after a while he stopped counting, after a while he’s stopped really caring. He’s been watching Blue, just as another thing to fill the time with, he’s not really felt like reaching out beyond himself to talk to anyone, not that there’s many iterators left that are willing to do so or who can communicate. It seems that a lot of his brethren are succumbing to the years of neglect and constant deluge of their own rains, either losing their outer systems or outright crumbling into piles of rubble. His fingers idly fiddle with his scarf, eyes not really taking in the scene of Blue and her pup hunting down a small blue lizard, his mind elsewhere, far far away, thinking of friends lost. Wind’s communications cut out not too long ago, one second he was there, the next. Poof. Just gone. Just like that. While Innocence isn’t his first choice of iterators to interact with he did feel pretty sorry for her when she absolutely freaked out over the broadcast network about it all, but there’s only so much he can handle for one day. Thinking about the amount of dead messages from iterators no longer standing that sit in his mailbox, unopened and forgotten about, makes his head feel funny and light, makes his systems buzz with an unfamiliar feeling. Unpleasant puts it mildly.

If all Iterators collapse, if they all die or find their way out, the world will change forever, because their rains and their clouds are the only thing that brings heat to the surface, at least that’s what Moon once told him, Sig isn’t sure he really believes it though. But letting his structure, his greater self, just fall to ruin seems wasteful, and, it is him after all even if long ago he grew to resent his own walls. He can still see the small dent in one of the metal panels of his puppet chamber where he threw the damn thing against the wall in some sort of attempt to just get out of this prison. Constricted, caged, he might as well be someone’s pet lizard built to sit on laps all day. What is a structure other than just another cage? The Benefactors were very fond of their cages. A structure to hold their electric mind, their mind held back by their attachment of selfhood which in turn is anchored to their puppet, their systems programmed with countless taboos, countless protocols to keep them in line, and an entire team of Technicians, Admins, and assorted others to make sure they never broke a single one. Well Sig would spit at that if he could. He can’t so he just makes the sound as if he is, best thing he can do, it’s almost funny but if he’s been deeply honest he’s not felt like laughing in a long ass while. Who would? The pressure is crushing, some days he wonders if Pebbles was right.

There’s a life out there, outside of this box, this birdcage, a life Sig has longed to grasp in his hands, to tear from the cold death grip of those who made him, those who abandoned him, a life he longs to live so utterly joyously that his creators would probably drop dead and pass from the world just with the shock.

It’s a life not meant for him, for any of them. And he’s tired. He’s tired and he’s tried and he’s so over failing again and again, so done with asking endless questions, thundering towards a goal he has no belief in. Is it really so bad to want to leave? Is it really so awful that he wants to live? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to just leave this all behind? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to learn, to grow from one's mistakes, to… be ? What a gift, to be alive… Sig just lets himself breathe in, breathe out. Yeah, fat chance, he needs to learn to grow up and let those dreams die, Moon always told him that entertaining such fantasies would only make him bitter the more he strived towards such an impossible goal. Guess she was right.

An overseer draws its attention as it manifests within his chamber, wiggling slightly.

“077, you’re back quicker than I thought, what’ve you got for me?”

The exchange of information is instant and concerning.

“What do you mean you can’t get through?” Sig groans, his large square head resting in his hands as overseer 077 once again relays a whole bunch of loud error noises and grainy pictures that make his head hurt, “You know how to get to Seven Red Suns, you practically lived in their chamber for a good while.”

The error just doesn’t make sense, the overseer merely relays that the specified location he wants it stationed in does not exist, which is stupid and unfeasible, unless somehow Suns managed to just delete themself, along with their hulking massive structure, out of existence. They’ll stand exactly where they’ve always stood; smack bang in the middle of a crater, sticking out high above the lip like a sore thumb. Their location is… unusual… to put it nicely but considering the state of the world when they were built it’s not like the benefactors had a choice in the matter. He digs his metal palms into his glass eyes just enough to get a notification to cease the activity. This is dumb. And confusing. And frustrating and… urgh .

At least according to the second overseer he has out roaming the world, Blue and her pup, now able to fend for herself, are getting real close to the eastern face of the retaining wall around Moon and Pebbles, which means she’s on the latter’s side. As much as he hates to admit he really should check up on Moon’s little brother, he doubt’s she’ll be able to do much of anything from her current position as a pile of rubble and, well, if he’s able to establish contact with her again she’ll want to know about him . It’s a nasty feeling that sits in his chest as he dismisses 077 with a single disinterested hand. Moon always valued her baby brother above everyone and anything else, even herself. Her sense of self-preservation seemed to wither away once he got involved, something that Suns picked up on themself despite barely even knowing her.

It’s bizarre. From the moment he was put online he just hated having her above him. She’d give an inch and he’d take a mile, every single time without fail, his incessant moans of her being unfair and overbearing and wanting to find ‘ his own way ’ were just ridiculous. No matter what Sig said though, he could never convince Moon to see her brother as anything but, and in the end she was even blind to the fact that he was killing her in his own misguided stumble towards death. It was selfish, and Sig will stand by that. At the very least Pebbles became tolerable once he became closer to Suns, and that gave the rest of the local group time to work on their own iterations or internal problems without being on babysitting duty. 

The overseer footage suddenly cuts out, Blue crossing over into unknown territory.

Moon will want to see her brother, more than anything else. No matter how much time passes, she’ll always care about him, he knows this, and he has to be okay with it. At the end of the day, nothing else matters to him except seeing her, knowing she’s alive and as well as she can be, that’s all he needs in order to finally rest. But his fate is in the hands of Blue and her pup now, he can only hope nothing goes wrong. With a heavy sigh he brings up his screens around him, navigates to his woefully quiet broadcast log. While he waits he might as well do something, anything, to keep his mind off it all.

It hurts.

Angry red warning lights. Flashing like bolts of lightning. Like jagged cuts across skin. 

They tremble and groan, deep and grating, as steam gushes from their weeping vents like blood from a split throat, pouring into the cold sky in a gout of wailing cries as gears grind themselves smooth, just trying to keep up with the strain. They lash out, in confused pain, as unwelcome fractures rip open their insides, tearing wires and metal with careless rush, all awkward angles that send tiny pinpricks of hot white sharp hurt through each sensitive system, the air buzzing with sparks and tangible thought. And they feel . Broken. Confused. Wrong . It feels wrong to be like this, survive like this, on the teetering edge of maintenance mode, tiptoeing the edge of awake, in pieces, fragmented, crumbling to dust.

But Seven Red Suns is barely aware of any of it really, the rush of emotions, of sensations, dull and distant, on the periphery of their consciousness, more like an annoying itch than anything else. Several things had all collided at once, at the worse possible time, a cocktail of stupid mistakes and even stupider life choices. It boils down to this; they’re old. Really old. There’s rust in places they weren’t even aware existed until recently and honestly, they’re more slag than they are structure. Chemical imbalances, running far too hot for far too long, errors caused by internal malfunctions, emotional distress, oh it’s all there in one messy status report in neat little lines.

If Suns is being honest they don’t even know how they’re alive right now, let alone in a state that can be deemed conscious. Small mercies.

At least one of their cells blew its shit. Central, if the mass of warnings and errors coming out of there is anything to go by. Regardless, having that thing go boom has really done wonders for the local yellow lizard population, and by wonders, Suns finds themself at least 88.9% certain that pretty much anything living within their facility grounds is either dead, waiting for the next cycle, or just evaporated. Furthermore, due to the fact the explosion quite literally tore their can in half they’re no longer connected to their puppet or several cells of their memory conflux. Their other cells have also taken a nasty hit. Really went scorched earth on the whole area, life will be unviable for quite some time and water, already an issue, is about to become more scarce considering that the very dirt they’re anchored into is boiling.

There are tethers to the other side of their body, however thin they may be. A few cables that managed to weather the storm, some supporting infrastructure that probably should have crumbled, maybe one or two internals still powered. It’s bad though, and their microbes will take a long long time to repair the damage enough for them to get their puppet working again, they’re not having fun being a visitor in their own body. They feel…light. Barely there. A lingering glitch amongst dying processors, slowly powering down. It’s not that they mind dying, not really, they’d just rather it be on their own terms and not because of…

Because of…

...

They can’t remember.

It doesn’t matter. They can’t do anything about it now. They’re barely there, just floating through, waiting, hoping. Hundreds of cycles could pass and they’d never know. What happens when they forget they’re a person and not just some background program refusing to shut down? It’s a thought that doesn’t sit well with them, but one they already begin to forget. 

It hurts.

[[LOST HEADER INFORMATION]] - BROADCAST unknown group(NULL) Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

NSH: Suns. It’s me. You know if that wasn’t obvious.

NSH: I know we’ve not spoken for around…

NSH: Wow, that’s almost eight-hundred cycles.

NSH: …

NSH: I’m not sorry but I am concerned. If you can, get back to me when you’re able. Things have been pretty quiet around here.

NSH: I did make a friend, when you’re tired of giving me the cold shoulder, I can try to send pictures, it’ll be good to see if that feature still works.

NSH: …

NSH: This isn’t reaching you, is it?

Chapter Text

Longing .

It is an infection that seeps deeper into a person than any sickness or poison, a wound that bleeds more than any cut, red as dawn, as a slit throat, a pain sharper than any blade, burning and festering. And those who long, who suffer under the weight of that curse, would sooner embrace death than continue living without their desires.

Sig finds these words ring more and more true each passing day. He longs, long and hard, lonely and longing for something, anything , to change. The world stretches on and on and on before him, hair thin, razor sharp, a linear path of the same predictable mundane, a repeating circle of boredom. And at the centre he finds himself. Longing. Fingers reaching out beyond the gilded bars of his cage, eyes looking out through the keyhole, desperate to break open the locks but cursed to sit and stay, obedient, abandoned . Hadn’t he worked well? Well, he hadn’t really, not like he was supposed to, never doing enough, never enough for anyone, maybe being alone like this is deserved, a fair punishment served. His fingers dig into the cold metal of the floor, they worry with the hem of his oversized purple robe, they play idly with discarded pearls, they pull at the wires at the back of his head, itch and scratch and pick and pull.

Sig wants out. He longs to tear his wires from his puppet, wrench the holding arm loose, pull out the feeding tubes, and run away, as fast as he can, stumbling, tripping, falling, but free, so very free. Anywhere, everywhere. Anywhere but here . He sits in silence. Waits for something to happen. His latest cry for help sits there marked with errors, unable to be sent, unread, unheard, unbeknownst to him never to be any of those things, the recipient nothing but a jumble of code, sleeping and still. So he sits, longing for a reply that will never come, waiting for the world to move on with or without him. Everything is the same. Yet it changes, little by little. One day the weather outside of his metal box is warmer, the water he drinks off feels stagnant, full of dirt. The next it takes him much much longer to sufficiently supply himself, a worry picks at the back of his mind. How long will it take until his reservoirs run dry? How long will it take for his rains to no longer sustain him? 

Is he next to starve and die?

He scrambles the data on one of his pearls, rewrites it from memory, scrambles it again, repeats, always always repeating, just to fill the time, just to do something. He becomes irate with it, tosses it as hard as he can against the wall and watches as it shatters into a firework of fine crystalline glitter, catching the low light of his chamber in a thousand rainbow starbursts. The distraction is brief and soon swept away by his ventilation system. His hands soon find their way back to his wires, fiddling with the sharp end of the severed one where unhappy teeth had bitten through, little sparks sting his fingertips, the short-lived pain the only thing he’s felt in what feels like countless years. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t, it doesn’t really matter does it.

Sig hides his face in his knees after that. Tries to feel real. Tries to feel like a person . He fails miserably. At the end of the day he’s just another hunk of metal filled with pulsing flesh that intertwines with the mechanical, that lives and breathes in perfect synchronisation with his microbes, with the electricity that runs through his veins, with the blood that coats his software. Where does he begin? Where does he end? Is he just the puppet, the childrens toy that he uses to interact with the world, or is he the walls, the air in the vents, the water in the pipes, the very land, everything he sees and feels? Where does his selfhood lay? The question feels more elusive than searching for that perfect method of perfect global ascension, slipping through his fingers, a bar of soap he fights with, a bar of soap that is winning. The comparison is enough to wiggle a wry chuckle from his speakers, he doesn’t need to bathe after all, why would he need soap? At the end of the day, even that no longer matters, he’ll still be stuck in his box, he’ll still be nothing but another abandoned animal.

The chime of incoming information exchange suddenly snaps him back into place. Like lightning. Like an elastic band set free. He shakes with the tone, shudders with it, rumbles with it like a warm thunderstorm, and lifts himself up into the air, shaking the cramp from his limbs, mechanical joins groaning, complaining with the effort. Real. Tangible. Something different. Something… new. It’s an incoming datapack from one of his many overseers and a connection request, clearly one of his little helpers has something it desperately wishes to relay. He reads through the garbled nonsense of code, once, twice, and finally lets it settle, an anxious excitement bubbling up inside of him. 

“ She’s made it .” 

The words tumble out, each uttered sound a bomb. She made it. Blue actually made it. Across the distance. Across the broken train tracks, through open desolate plains, through weeping ruins, and broken caves, and thriving swamplands, dark pipes, terrifying climbs and finally, finally up to the top of the communications array that kisses the clouds. Buttons aren’t so much as pressed as they are aggressively mashed under his numb fingers, the ticking seconds that pass drag on even longer than the unchanging eternity he’s been awoken from. Why did he send overseer 733? The stupid thing is broken, has a faulty connection, a fuzzy video feed and its audio, Void Below its audio! He’d rather listen to the sounds of grinding gears and industrial pistons all day instead of that . But, despite his impatience, a screen appears before him buzzing with static but clearly showing Blue and her no longer pup gazing upon a froth of clouds dyed honey gold and coral pink.

For a moment he merely floats there, fingers shaking before him as he reaches out to touch the hardlight screen, internal fans huffing, heaving as wide-eyed he watches as Blue turns towards 733 and gives the overseer a wry look, as if she can see him, as if she wishes to say ‘ told you so ’. His thoughts wander elsewhere. To where the seas lap at the shoreline, foamy and green, those waves hiding the shattered body of a dead goddess in the depths. Moon . He’s waited all this time. For her. He can… he can see her now. He can go to her. Be with her. Everything, everything for her and her alone. He almost weeps, he almost buckles in on himself. It has been… such a very long time. Too long. That longing that he’s kept in his chest a weight, a poison, a festering hope, a wound, and oh, he is too happy to bleed for this, too happy to cling to this.

“733, guide the slugcats to… to Looks to the Moon. Please. Quickly .”

He’s hasty, Sig knows this, but he is oh so very ill with the waiting, he is so very sick with the love infesting him that he feels like he might just die if he doesn’t see her soon. But, she must be lonely, and while he knows he’s a stellar companion she needs more than just a single overseer. She’ll like Blue and the not-pup, she’s always had a fondness for animals. There was a blue lizard she tried to keep once, named it Licky. It was disposed of quite quickly once her administrative board found out about it, citing that it was a distraction, like any good parents they were punishing her for disobeying, for being a rebel child. She’d wailed and sobbed and mourned that little thing, she’d hated her people for taking her friend from her but in public she kept face, stayed quiet, obedient. In private she scorned them, spat at them, spited, hated them with more vitriol than any of the local group thought she could manage. It’s a shame, Sig thinks, that she never turned that quiet rage upon her brother even as he drank her dry.

Even as he killed her.

Blue will keep her company, even if the slugcat is a bit bitey, Moon won’t mind, and he won’t either, at least Blue will be somewhere safe, he will have done good for once, finally something working the way he intended it to! Every plan and project he’s had a hand in has had a way of turning into a complete shambles, be it all of his models and theories for global ascension, be it his own private projects, be it the work of others he’s helped in, advised on. It’s a curse. Without cause, without fail, everything he touches falls apart. But not this time! Not this time, this time he’s the one taking charge of his own fate, digging in his claws, holding tight to that fragile hope like driftwood, like a lifeline. He clings to it, just how the two slugcats on his flickering screen cling to rusting metal poles as they carefully descend from their perch atop the communications array.

It’ll be getting late for the two, they’ll need to eat and find shelter from the oncoming downpour Sig imagines, it would be vastly unfortunate if they were to be swept away by Pebbles’ healthy output. Blue doesn’t seem to be overly concerned as her energetic child leaps from pole to pole, easily sliding down and across terrain as if she’s made from water. Like a mountain stream, like a dribble from a drainpipe, a river, a rivulet. She’s quick with it too, jumping here, backflips and tricks to impress her mother who keeps an eye to the swirling skies, watching for predators from above. Nothing has yet to swoop down but Sig knows well (the various species of vulture are quite a fixation for him to puzzle upon after all) that that won’t last for long. The two make it across the yawning gaps created by the suspended machinery with ease and he breathes out a puff of vapour, not even realising he was waiting with baited breath.

The white lizard that makes a snap for Blue’s tail surprises him more than it does her, he thinks. It is small for its size, a pattern of black scales along its spine and a tail of almost tassel like frills. It lasts all of five seconds before Blue launches her weapon of choice, a broken piece of rebar, right into its open maw as it lashes out with its long sticky tongue. Sig makes a small sound of disgust as she opens wide herself and tears into the lizard's tough skin, dark blood decorating her face as she sups on the oozing meat within. He can’t imagine that tastes particularly good. But before long the two are off again, the not-pup, he thinks he’ll name her Rivulet, it seems a fitting name, bounding away, reappearing with both wet paws clutching some kind of fluffy fruit, tucking into her own meal with delight. She has grown a great deal, the last he saw her she had been an equally energetic pup and now she appears to be fully grown, an adult perhaps soon to search for a mate or a colony to become part of. Perhaps he shall have his overseer accompany her. But that is neither here nor there, Moon comes first.

The days repeat onwards like this for a while, a blend of different sights, different places. Blue notices the overseer the next cycle, her eyes narrowed but fond, a paw gently batting it away from her sleeping face. She seems content enough to follow. Down the two go, passing through locked gates, descending even further down to where Pebbles’ disused farming machines lay dormant, reclaimed by the very crop they were designed to cull. Sig learns much from watching the slugcats. Learns, or rather has the realisation thrust upon him, that they aren’t just dull pipe cleaning rodents. Of course he knows of their ability to use tools, to think for themselves, but the extent that reaches was an unknown mystery. Scavengers carry spore spewing mushrooms because they know that the zappy centipedes hate the smell, but Blue and Rivulet take it a step further than just some kind of simple passed on knowledge. They understand those spores clog the sensitive tracheal system of bugs, neutralising the more dangerous ones with just one tossed ‘shroom, and they also know that the raindeer love the taste and have an acute sense of smell, attracting the beasts with a snack and using them to cross the vast meadows of wormgrass.

It is remarkable, marvellous even, truly marvellous.

The days go on. 

And on.

And on.

He feels like he’s been caught in this same circle of thought before.

But Sig finds himself glad of it, that shadow of longing that has clung to him, dogged his every movement, every living breathing moment, feels so far away now, like mist dispersed by the morning sun. All of his doubts melt away, the chains dropping from him. Joy comes easy and quick just knowing that he’ll get to see her soon, his treasure. He’s plotted an easy route to follow for the slugcats making use of the train systems buried deep underground, one of the old lines opening very close to Moon’s decayed infrastructure. Those lines don’t simply end there, they continue onwards to parts unknown, a twisting metal snake that somehow has weathered countless iterator rains, surviving, a standing testament to the craftsmanship of the Benefactors. If only they were made just as sturdy, he thinks bitterly. Regardless, with any hope there’s still a way through for the slugcats, with any hope it’ll only be a few more cycles until he can see her again. He grows impatient but Blue has helped a great deal and she is old, her body slow with age but her ferocity has yet to leave her, he can offer her all the time she needs for her help in this. A worry has a hold of him now. This area is where…

He dismisses that thought. Hunter is long gone, purpose served, just another of his mistakes, just another failed project. It gave its life for Moon, as intended, that’s all it needed to be, a sacrifice, a speck of dust against the almighty Cycle itself. He breathes deep, counts through his ticking pulsing systems, and lets it out as a sigh of steam into the cold atmosphere before focusing on his screens once more. Blue and Rivulet have made it to what appears to be some kind of subterranean cave system but they both look panicked, rushing over the uneven ground as it shakes beneath their paws. Sig tilts his head to the side. That seems incorrect, the rains should be at least several hours off but it appears they’ve chosen to fall now. Has Pebbles degraded that much that he can no longer maintain a stable intake and output? Is he entangled within the throes of death? Uncomfortable. He’d hate to bring that news to Moon. She’ll give him that sad look, ask questions he can’t answer, be quiet, be subdued.

This should be a happy occasion but of course Pebbles has to ruin it, doesn’t he?

Luckily, it seems that Rivulet has found a shelter for herself and her mother, perched at the top, just in time it seems, her little calls of distress picked up even with the faulty audio on his overseer. Blue motions for her to get in as she pulls herself forward, climbs up the debris and then. Something wraps around her back leg, jerking her away, pulling her down. She hisses. Grabs a handful of rocks. Turns to toss it at her assailant. And then she pauses. She pauses, paws going slack, her fistful of dirt and stones falling to the ground, her struggling ceasing. A single bulbous pink tendril, innocently tugging at her has her pause, not panic, just pause, yet Sig feels his coolant pumps skip, feels a sharp drop, like he’s falling out of his zero-gravity, like his underhang just detached. Just one single pink tendril. Nothing more. He forgets to breathe. A second joins it, a third. More .

The thing raises itself out of the murk like a ragdoll, all floppy, grotesque.

A bundle of horrible pulsing cancerous rot. Flesh and bile. Empty and starving. And there, at the centre, is the sad limp body of a slugcat, one Sig knows well. Too well. Blue doesn’t even struggle, in fact she almost looks like she’s hobbling towards it. He can’t even cry out, his fingers fumble for the buttons to take active control over the overseer, but it's too late, it’s far too late, it was too late years ago.

He closes his eyes as Blue is consumed, her little body becoming nothing more than fuel added to the fire.

His hands clutch at his chest.

His breathing comes out short, ragged, as if he’s any other organic being.

His systems can’t make sense of it all, his emotional distress, the endless assault of overstimulation.

Regret.

Pain.

Longing.

Sorrow.

Guilt .

At the centre of that monster is Hunter .

“733…stop…stop showing me this.”

Under his fingers the screen dissolves into nothing, his puppet brought to its knees as he huffs and whines, mind stuffed with fluff, thoughts a mile a minute yet stuck, hammered down, flat. The world swirls before him in dizzy colours as he heaves, shakes on the floor, face pressed to it, feeling the cold smooth texture. He feels too big, too real, too much, everywhere, everything, stretched out beyond what he usually is, suddenly jolted back. Over and over again. His fingers try to find a handhold but slip. There is nothing to hang onto. Nothing left. All he can do is tremble under the onslaught. He’s cold. Oh so wonderfully cold. Yet there’s a heat burning in the very core of his being, the coolant pump sealed in the chest of his puppet desperately struggles to force water through his systems at a speed he’s never felt before, a jackhammer under his metal as his fans stutter and wail, a terrible screaming sound echoing through his empty chamber, a giddy sick warble. He longs to take that poor slugcat in his arms and tell it he is sorry. He is sorry it suffered. He is sorry, he is sorry. So sorry. The words remain stuck, clawing at his insides. He is nothing but static. Leaping from one wall to the next. Jittery and nuclear blue. A swarm of neuron flies. And the space in between. He feels like he’s been snapped .

Hours later Sig blinks, vision a blur, body trembling as he lays in a heap of limbs, wires and robes, his scarf tangled around his legs, restrained.

The world narrows down to only his chamber, only his puppet and his too fast thoughts. With no lungs to breathe he cannot take a true steadying deep breath, his vents sob with the attempt to do so. With no muscles to flex he cannot shake the ache from his limbs, his fingers merely twitch with the effort. He’s marooned, adrift, a vessel caught out at sea, an estranged creature clawing its way back home, an unwanted animal wanting nothing more than to get out . He can see everything but nothing, feel a thousand things, think a thousand thoughts, become a thousand things, everything everywhere all at once. In his tiniest wires microbes stitch together synthetic material burned from the rush of his mind electric, piecing together the itsy-bitsy broken pieces. In his grand general systems bus he watches an Inspector, both searing neon green and dawn bright, dig pieces of debris from a pipe, a pulsing heartbeat of neuron flies orbiting its glowing hologram body like little planets. He sees through the eyes of every overseer at once, a million eyed god ever watching, living a life of a vigil, his destiny to be the last man standing in this world of suicide obsessed crazed maniacs. Why did they, the Benefactors, get to decide who lives, who dies, who toils endlessly on and on? Why did he think he could do the same. Children often take after their parents even if it all seems rather unfair .

No Significant Harassment stretches himself out as far as he can, metaphorical fingers digging at the world beyond before he feels a jolting strain in his puppet’s fans and processing units 03 through to 18. He snaps back, an elastic set loose, cracking like a whip, like a lightning bolt once more, the feeling familiar, calming. His sheer metal chamber walls come back into view and he breathes, takes in the scent of iron and ozone, lets his head throb as he lays there a moment more. The walls are silver-grey, his robe is purple with tiny emerald coloured beads stitched along the cuffs and hems, his paint is an obnoxious green and his joints show the tarnished metal underneath. He has fifty-seven pearls scattered on the floor of his chamber, five are white, twenty are mint green, twenty-five are black and the other seven are yellow. He slowly untangles his legs, feels the heavy velvet like material of his dark purple scarf, fingers following the patterns of the embroidery in golden and green threads, his people really really liked green he muses. Carefully he stands, the metal holding arm behind him creaking, the severed wire on his umbilical sparking, a broadcast message making an annoying pinging sound- wait.

He checks quickly, hoping silently, subdued, longing for a distraction. Maybe Suns is finally willing to talk to him again, maybe they got over their hissy fit and decided to man up about everything. Maybe they’re okay after all, maybe that tiny heavy worry that hangs around his neck like a noose is nothing but an anxiety he can toss in the trash. A small pang of disappointment colours his perception as he reads the display name but then it quickly reignites;  a small flame of joy.

[LIVE BROADCAST - PRIVATE Chasing Wind, No Significant Harassment

CW: Hello?

CW: Is this reaching you?

NSH: Wind?

CW: Ah, there you are, good.

CW: You were the only one I could detect as being online in radius so I had to try to reach out. Thank goodness.

NSH: I thought you’d lost your broadcast tower? What happened?

CW: That might be best explained in person. Well. Not in person but audibly. Through speech. Do you mind? I would like to test if my experiment actually works the way I hoped it would and considering you are the only one who has answered me…

NSH: Do I look like a lantern mouse to you?

NSH: Only joking~

NSH: Experiment away!

Sig suddenly finds himself suffering nerves. He doesn’t look his best, that’s for damn sure, but he has been crying out for this, begging for this, he’d be stupid to deny. Plus, there’s a spark of curiosity there. A spark of needing to know. It’s enough for him to justify stuffing everything else down deep inside to be ignored with the rest of his feelings, it’s enough for him to chase away the lingering doom. A moment passes. A second one. Then the request comes through. Luckily for him the local group has kept a strict policy on keeping each other's overseers close by, the little fellas providing a much needed point of interface between two iterators over the distance that the broadcast system just can’t do. And while this unspoken group secret relies on that system it can work without, not well, but it can . He accepts the invite and waits some more, Wind’s connection has never been good, the ones that built him did a bit of a botched job then decided to never fix it, he often moaned about it. Wind is, after all, probably more social than even he is, and that’s saying a lot! He’s dependable, willing to help in any and all projects he can, finding himself in places he really really shouldn’t be, and matching other iterators up with research buddies. Wind is actually the sole reason he even met Suns to begin with, and despite their arguments and disputes, the two really worked well together.

The screen slowly comes into view and… well, Wind looks no different than he remembers. Chasing Wind, grey as a storm cloud, his paint certainly does speak for itself, ashen with a slight purple tint. His body is bulkier than that of his own puppet but still maintains sleek angles and towering height, deep black robe hugging him closer than Sig’s own does, his antennae shaped like splayed vulture wings and his face, despite being as blank as his own, almost looks stern. Upon his brow sits a perfect black ring, Sig looks like a mess in comparison he’s sure. But Wind says little on that matter, merely trying to get his video display working as intended, even giving the overseer a slap to hurry things up.

“Ah! There you are! It has been some time has it not? You look…”

“Don’t. It’s been a rough cycle.”

Wind does an impressive impression of rolling his eyes, “I was going to say you look well, but allow me to rephrase that; you look like shit.”

“Thanks~” Sig gives him a healthy helping of his middle finger before lapsing into silence, thoughtful, breaking it soon after, “It’s been too long since I’ve heard someone else’s voice.”

“Yes, it has been a long time my friend, too long.”

“Well a lot has happened, hasn’t it Windy? Where do I even begin?”

A shake of the head, the pearl decorations around Wind’s neck jingle slightly, “You don’t have to talk about what makes you upset, No Significant Harassment-”

“It’s Sig. S-I-G, told you this Windy~”

“As I was saying. Ahem . If it will hamper your ability to think properly then do not voice it, I have been busy and I think I have a way to help your project.”

“All work and no play, that’s the Wind I know,” Sig does find himself laughing somewhat at that, he almost feels like he’s took a step backwards through time, as if he can restart everything all over again, “If it’s the one where I break the communications ban Pebbles put up, don’t bother, I’ve sorted that myself.”

“I was talking about casting off your can and walking free,” His surprise must be evident because Wind quickly starts talking again, “It is not concrete, far from it, I have yet to run even preliminary tests but I knew you were searching and I knew you needed a way out and I thought of this while repurposing some of my inspectors to fix my broadcast tower and… allow me a moment… there we go I am sorry this is not my finest work. But I had this idea; what if we combined your idea for that care package you sent Moon with my one quick-fix?”

“I’m sorry, what ?”

“Hyper-compress our data down to the most simple form and shove it all onto one or two neurons? What if we then used that to rewrite and rewire the functions of our inspectors? What if we could order them to dock into the empty socket left behind when we remove our umbilical, where the holding arm should? Would we get up and move? Would we have access to our entire selfhood, not just that contained within our puppets?”

“Woah woah Wind, I need you to slow down.”

“Noted.”

“First off, you know we’re not permitted to know the blueprints of our puppets.”

“Once again, noted, that is where our selfhood is truly stored, everything else is merely excess.”

“And you know we can’t mess with ourselves, I mean, look at Pebbles! We don’t have the time or energy to put in that kind of effort to chase some kind of fantasy!”

“ Noted . But what if I told you that we do not have to do that?”

Sig sighs, puts his head in his hands, “Then I’d tell you that you need a break from hanging out with Sliverist crazies.”

“Then I would tell you that if you sharpen down your perception, move your entire sense of worth to your puppet, cut off several of your systems, then the Self Destruction Taboo just cannot keep up. Yes it will stop you from going down to meet good old Sliver of Straw but it gives you just enough wiggle room to get things done.”

Slowly he looks back up, “I hate that you’re beginning to make sense. I hate that I’m even thinking about the possibility.”

“Are you really?”

“You’re going to make me say yes, aren’t you?”

Wind chuckles, low and good natured, crossing his arms, “It is only a theory, my friend, but I thought it might just get your spark back. Well done, by the way, on breaking through Pebbles’ barrier, things do look bad around there but it seems Looks to the Moon is in better condition that I predicted she would be. And no, before you ask, I have not gone to see her, I knew you would want to be first.”

“Can you please stop dropping bombs on me, this is… it’s a lot to process!” Sig groans tossing his head back as Wind merely laughs.

“Go on, go to her, I can only do this for so long but I believe I have given you much to think on.”

“Wind you can’t just-”

“Yes I can, and I am. Who is the older iterator here?”

“You are only a hundred cycles older than me!”

“Ah well, there it is, I am still your senior~ Go on, I know what you can be like. Oh, and before I go,” Wind almost looks right through him, his gaze suddenly taking on a knife like edge, a winter chill, “Please send Seven Red Suns my regards if you can reach them, they are out of range for me now, unfortunately, and they are a dear old friend to me.”

“Uh… yeah will do Wind, if I can I’ll-”

“I would truly hate for anything to have happened to them, they mean a great deal to me, you understand?”

“Yeah I do I get it Wind. I’ll message them right away, I promise!”

The moment passes, the screen in front of him splutters and spits. Wind merely nods, gaze softening.

“This does not work while my rains are falling, too much interference. You think on what I told you, my friend, I will be in contact again soon.”

“Sure. Uh… talk to you later?”

“I will be waiting.”

The call ends in static and Sig finds himself allowing his puppet’s legs to buckle under his weight. What. Was. That? Wind has never given him such a stern look before, even when he was trying to agitate Innocence or up to his old antics, never. Oh Void, did Suns tell him about their argument? No, no, it can’t be that because if they did then Wind probably would have purposed an organism to chew through his own umbilical and would have walked all the way here just to slap the nuts and bolts out of him. His fingers shake under his panicked gaze. How can he tell Wind that… he’ll cross that bridge when he gets there actually, no use dwelling on it now. What’s more important is that he might have a solution to his own problems, not the one the Benefactors gave him, not the one he has struggled with his whole life, had consume him for years uncountable. But his own problem. Fingers find his wires, tug experimentally.

There’s something even more important now.

Go on, go to her .

Longing.

“733…” The ping reaches across the fathomless distance, to the place he’ll see every time he closes his eyes, the overseer still waits, watching over a single golden flower, springing to life as it receives orders.

Longing is a sickness, a poison.

“733, you have new orders. Let’s go and see Moon.” The overseer leaves its silent vigil, unburdened by the light drizzle and first flakes of snow, it abandons its self appointed post.

Sig would sooner die than live his life without longing.

Chapter Text

Blue tipped tendrils reach towards the distant milky sky like a prayer as a gentle veil of white snow slowly drifts down speckling the land in kisses of white. Grey oppressive clouds chun above in a foreboding silent blanket of promised blizzard, the rains now refuse to fall here and in their place the shrill cold of winter blooms. Sig merely hopes Moon doesn’t mind the change in atmosphere too much as he tries not to think too much about what this all means. In the scant few cycles that have passed since he and Wind last spoke the latter has been hard at work, repairs here and there, testing his new way of seeing the world in the only way he can, using Sig as a test subject to push the bounds of his new mode of communication. Thus far, it appears to be working wonders and while they’ve not spoken as much as he’d like Wind has continued to urge him onwards, to finally make contact with Moon after countless moments spent in silent yearning. His overseer remains where it is however. Sat in a crunchy spray of grass that has somehow clung on for dear life attached to a broken steam vent that sits only inches above the thrashing waves below. He’s nervous, rightly so. The Moon he remembers, the one that lives on in his memory, searing bright and bold, is not the same Moon that now sits within the rusting ruins of her own body. There is a chance, a high one, that she won’t even remember him.

Yet that blistering hope remains alive, squirming around his head like something crawled inside and started living up there in place of his brain.

There’s a few iterators who’d claim he never had anything resembling one to begin with.

Within his chamber his puppet takes a shuddering breath. He’s just wasting time here, she’s waiting for him, counting on him, he’s not felt this kind of pressure since his people decided to go wherever it was they went off too. A wry laugh. Yeah, he was never really attentive to their needs so it was a decent amount of time before he realised his city was empty except for a mild infestation of centipedes that came crawling out of the non-existent woodwork. But it’s good, it’s fine. If they were still around he’d never have come this far, they would have never allowed him to interfere in the life of his senior, especially if they thought this was a positive. An iterator dying means success, means they’ve stumbled upon something, because of course machinery and infrastructure cannot break down. Of course . Sig is terribly tired of being pushed around and having his every single action dictated; this path he’s taken, he’s chosen it all on his own. Nobody has forced him forwards, charted his meandering wandering, nobody else has made the choice for him. It’s almost nice, almost freeing, to depend upon himself alone.

He’s wasting time.

Moon .

So close. Closer than she’s ever been. The useless steamvent hisses slightly, his overseer jostles back and forth, bobbing up and down like a piece of garbage riding a wave, but Sig sends out a simple command with anxiety making sickening knots of his internal filaments. Overseer 733 forges onwards. Brave. Bold. Through simple crackling videofeed he can make out the familiar shapes of her internals, all wretched and wrenched out of place. Inactive. Shattered. But oh, she is beautiful even as nothing more than a pile of rubble, a heap of scrap. Hauntingly large, every part of her takes up his limited vision, sitting there in ruined glory, a testament to durability and her very body a tomb for her former self. She sits there, disused, just broken pieces and metal bars and a humming singing pulse. Gravity switches on. Then off. Then on. Off again. Bouncing up and down, breathing, and Void Below Moon still has power . She has power! His heart jumps in time with her own fluctuations. The elation. The pure unfiltered nameless feeling would make him vomit if he could.

Sig feels dizzy and light, steady and heavy. Both, all things, all at once.

There’s snippets of broken water pipes. Of rust. Of lichen and moss. Then the overseer is looking out across a small pool of water, the ground gives way, watery golden sunlight streaming in from a hole far above, and-

There she is .

Moon sits, eyes closed, almost like she’s sleeping, her antennae pinned back, rusted chassis and peeling paint peeking out from under a tattered white dress that looks more like some kind of old dust sheet she’d desperately wrapped around herself. Sig doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. Everything about her is different now, changed. She truly isn’t the Moon he remembers so vividly, there’s a chasm between them now that seems so impossibly wide, he can see neither the other side or the bottom. She always used to be so energetic, constantly moving around her chamber, so much so that her pearls couldn’t keep up as she zipped here and there, all tinkling together and bumping into her walls. She’d talk and talk and talk, never quiet, always animated, always so assured of herself. Even after her people abandoned her for Pebbles, then abandoned them all, she was forever proud of appearances, fiddling with the way her robes fell on her, trying to clean any blemishes off her body, even going so far as to look for paint to touch up where it’d chipped away. He’d joked about it once before she’d settled her dark gaze upon him. ‘ We all cope in different ways, Nish ,’ she’d gently scolded him. At least like that she still retained a little control over her personhood, who was he to take that away from her? Now, she could be a completely different person… but still…

She is so beautiful .

“Oh, hello there little creature, I see you’ve returned~”

For a single breathtaking moment Sig thinks she’s speaking to him, seeing him suspended there, watching through the cracked eye of overseer 733 but then, like a dart, a blue shape shoots out of the water. The slugcat licks her soggy salty paws, rearranges her bright pink ruffles at the side of her head, and shakes her slender body, spraying Moon with shimmering pinpricks of light, her laughter echoing in the empty chamber as she’s showered in droplets. The slugcat waddles over to where Moon sits in the rubble, flopping into her lap with an audible wet slap, a happy warble filling the quiet when Moon rubs her fingers between the slugcat’s ears. His heart twists at the sight of the creature but he’s glad, oh so glad, that despite her mother’s end, Blue’s pup, Rivulet as he named her, survived. And somehow, even without his guidance, even when he abandoned her, the knowledge of what fate he’s assigned to both Hunter and Blue a burden too much to bear, she had found her way to exactly where she needed to be. Moon hasn’t been lonely without him. She has been comforted by so much love from one little creature, he can tell by just the way Rivulet relaxes on her lap, the way she looks up at Moon with such admiration in those magenta eyes, that his heart might just burst from sharing a sliver of it.

Sig is okay with not being seen. He’s perfectly fine with it. She’s alive, the slugcat is alive, she’s happy, they’re both happy, he’s happy. He can watch, from this distance, never touching, never anything more than another set of eyes. There’s comfort in that, that no matter how much has changed, how much of her is lost to the waters below, things just stay the same, as they’ve always been.

So he watches. Content.

Rivulet comes and goes, bringing Moon gifts in the form of sparkling pearls and random debris. Sometimes her trips are short, barely noticed from one cycle to the next, sometimes she takes much much longer, so long he begins to worry, so long he starts thinking about finding her, bringing her home. But Moon is never silent, always talking to herself, flicking through equipment manifests, damage reports, old messages, playing games, chattering away, offering the scant comfort she can to a brother awaiting his own inevitable end. In those moments Sig holds no ill will towards Pebbles, he’s a doomed man with few days left, it would be cruel to think of him unkindly. But, the day her game of dominoes cuts out half-way through is the first time he sees her cry, her pretty blue face hidden in her rag cladden knees as she shakes with it, her whole structure moaning out a mourning wail even as her friend shoves her wet face into her personal space, wrapping her soggy body around Moon’s trembling own. But time moves on. She continues as she was before, reading, reminiscing. Rivulet comes, and goes, comes, and goes, and then one day she simply does not return. He waits, he watches. Moon waits, and watches. But both know she’s never coming back.

The days go on.

The snow falls.

He can feel it, a new world unfolding right in front of his eyes, a world uncaring if they all have unfinished business to attend to. But it’s fine, as long as he can be with Moon, his treasure. As long as-

“You feel it too, don’t you, strange one?”

The video feed flickers, stutters, erratic for a moment before suddenly stopping, crashing, cracking and finally going out. Like an inkblot bleeding over fresh paper panic washes over him, a patchwork of confusion, fear, worry and desperation stitching itself together to blanket him, all of him, from the tiny screws holding together his puppet, the neurons dancing through the languid dark, to the grand smokestacks of his towering facilities, the steam rushing from his vents. Sig claws out, searching for a connection, searching for his way back to her side. It's like that awful day all over again. That day where he lost her for the first time, saw her slip through his fingers, stolen, dashed away. He had raged, he had struggled so so so long just to reach her once more, to see her one more time, his only reason to keep going, to continue dragging himself towards a future he has never once believed in, everything he has ever done has been for her sake. What is he without her? She had left him behind once and now.

Now it has happened again.

Nothing else. Nothing. Nothing is more important to him, could possibly matter more. Nothing but her. And no one else. No one can ever ever come close. Something is broken inside of him, snapped in two, no longer whole, fragments of fragments. What can he do? What can he possibly do? He buries his head in his hands, trembles with the effort, rumbles with it, feels it build and build, a flood, a dam ready to burst, a storm, a thousand thousand things, all at once. He feels . Oh Void Below he feels! Something he has no words for. Something there is no words for. Sig had questioned once, when there were people left to question, what the reasoning was behind programming his kind with the ability to feel the complexities of emotion, the strains of feeling. He remembers the divine architect merely laughing, a shake of their masked head mocking him as if he were a small child. But they had answered, and he had listened. To feel is to suffer. The reasoning for their emotions is the same reasoning behind why they would never be allowed to die. Because to suffer is to understand the nature of the world, the cruelty of being bound to the Cycle forever. And what greater motivation is there? What else would push the iterators to work tirelessly? Nobody ever forced them to work but they all did gladly, throwing themselves one by one at an impossible question, never questioning why, never doing anything else. But there was a choice.

There’s always a choice.

Sig chooses to scream.

Garbled and animalistic.

A pure hollow, shrieking, screaming mechanical roar.

All of his pain, his years of wasted effort, the ravenous guilt, his suffering , just lashes out, like lightning, like the rage of his rains.

His structure trembles with the force of it, puppet hunching over in pure agony, the ache of it burning through every neuron, every wire as more electricity than has ever run through him bounces from wall to wall, water rushing through his myriad pipes just to cope with the building heat that throbs and drums at his insides. His rarefaction cells sing like a holy choir, simply trying to stabilise, trying to keep him afloat like a lonely lost boat. Gravity fluctuates across his whole structure, again and again, like an erratic pulse, his puppet dropping to the metal floor of their chamber with a loud thunk as he does nothing but cry out at the injustice, at the unkindness of it all. His shaking numb hands grasp desperately at his wires, unable to rip them from his head but able to make it hurt , a foolish attempt to get his mind to focus on physical stimulus rather than everything else. Rather than the image of her shining face that remains seared into his eyelids. His fans struggle to quell the heat blazing through his tiny puppet body, stuttering and choking, something feeling lodged in his chest, like a hard lump, like something is in there. His fans stop. The water pumping to his puppet cuts out suddenly. Writhing on the floor his fingers pry at his chestplate, desperate. Pleading .

get it out get it out get it out get it out

“No Significant Harassment, I am going to need you to stop.”

His hands still, the world blackens at the corners of his vision.

“Good. Good, now. I need you to focus. Focus on your anti-gravity, that is right, have you got it?”

He… he does. He does have it, right there the mental switch to forcefully enable or disable his fluctuations. He focuses on it, and keeps it there, right there in the palm of his hands, okay yes good.

“ Excellent . Now I need you to shut it down. Shut it down and then just get well acquainted with that shiny metal floor, and do try to not lay on any of your pearls, you will be unhappy with yourself if you do.”

Okay he can do that. It’s easy. He’s done it a thousand times before. Easy peasy.

He waits, just a moment, until everything stops spinning, his anti-gravity is forcefully shut down and he keeps it that way, the cold sheets of steel that make up his chamber feel almost like a hug as he merely lays there in a pathetic heap. His fans struggle for a moment before kicking back in, water consumption finally sorting itself out and pumping coolant back into his prone puppet. He wheezes, whines, it hurts . There’s a buzzing in his head, a buzzing through his entire can, a buzzing that spreads through every neuron, every axon, every pipe and makes even the smallest part of him shake with a thousand emotions. Red warning lights. Orange scraps of fabrics left over from the mess Blue made. Yellow-gold sparks spitting from a cut wire. Green pearls scattered upon the floor. Blue and indigo shadows gather in the corners of his chamber like cobwebs. Purple robes cover the floor surrounding him like the waves of a deep ocean. He breathes in, then out. In. Then out.

He trembles and shivers. And he can’t stop. He can’t stop shaking.

He hates this, he decides, he deeply hates this.

Something wet dribbles down his face.

Sig twitches, lifts one aching hand to wipe it away with his sleeve but it simply comes back, much more stubborn this time. A trickle. A tear.

Ah .

Those who made him were sick, weren’t they? Emotions are a deviation but a necessary part of the design to prompt an iterator to work as hard as they possibly could, he had been told, something to be ashamed of, something to hide from the Benefactors, but a useful tool. ‘ You are programmed to feel not to question ’, he had been told quite simply, and so he had accepted it as simple fact. Every time he showed too much will, he needed to be fixed. Sig didn’t like to be fixed . He didn’t like to work, but Sig also didn’t like to feel broken . In the end, despite it all, he had been broken, wide open, cracked and shattered, one of his eyes now decorated with a freshly cracked lens, weeping openly.

It’s like the punchline to a sick joke.

He lays there.

And lays there.

Until he can muster the effort to finally roll over onto his side, pull himself up, and shuffle backwards, awkwardly sitting against one wall, fingers grabbing for a single white pearl which he rolls in his still trembling digits, focusing on the smooth texture and weight.

“... No Significant Harassment ? Are you there?”

Wind’s voice lays upon him heavy, the first sound outside of his struggling ventilation system and shaking structure he’s heard for… cycles. It lays upon him thick as a thunderstorm, creeps into the cracks in his chassis, drowns him in the overwhelming force of it assaulting his audio sensors. And it hurts . Sound shouldn’t hurt. Oh. Right. His head. Pretty sure he hit that when he went down. Ouch.

“Is this reaching you?”

He’s blinks. Slowly. Silence makes a home between them both. It’s suffocating.

“Yes.”

“Void below I thought you had done something drastic. How… are you feeling? You look a mess.”

He sees Wind wince at the shitty question and he searches his eyes for a tell, for anything that proves he’s simply cracked under the choking pressure of his abandonment, that this endless task has finally driven him to the brink. There’s nothing. Nothing but worry. A terrible, wonderful nothing.

“She’s gone .”

Without mirth, Sig begins to laugh, without any joy, without any emotion. He laughs, and laughs, broken and aching and mechanical. He laughs until it turns into sobs, false, simulated but real. Achingly real. Then that blossoms into bawling, then into silence.

“He did it, the crazy bastard, he really really did it.” It's almost enough to make him laugh again, “Pebbles really actually went and finished the job !”

Wind looks as if he wants to say something, but doesn’t. There’s nothing more to say on the matter, and so Sig laughs. He knows it isn’t Pebbles’ fault, he’s been down and inactive for some time now, but someone needs to take the brunt of his building anger.

Sig is lucky Wind is a patient iterator, not one prone to just giving up just because someone has gone stark raving insane.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yeah Wind, loud and fucking clear.”

A sigh, Sig tries to ignore the dark gaze that gets fixed upon him, “Any damages to report? There is nothing I can do from here but perhaps talking about it might alleviate some of the strain? I am beginning to sound like you more and more now, how disgusting.”

“Thanks, that makes me feel better.”

“Ah, sarcasm, you are still in there. Nice to see. You know what I meant.”

Sig rolls his eyes and is rudely reminded of the crack in his left one when his face met the floor whenever that happened, “Just give me a moment to run some diagnostics. Right. Okay. No damages to my externals or internals, luckily, but I did learn how to kiss stainless steel with my face but that’s nothing the microbes won’t fix in time.”

“One of your wires-”

“ I know ,” He doesn’t mean to snap at Wind, he’s only trying to help, so Sig sighs, adds a little more gently, “I know, it’s an old break, nothing to worry about I’ve barely noticed it.”

“How did it happen?” There’s a hint of curiosity there somewhere, muted though, sombre.

“A slugcat bit through it.”

“A… slugcat ? Pardon me but I did not think their teeth were sharp enough to do that .”

He can’t help the chuckle that runs away from him, “She was a hissy missy, that’s for damn sure. Really didn’t like being handled but I was trying to chip her, never managed it in all the time she was here, didn’t need to in the end. But, yeah, I scooped her up and she did not like it one bit, freaked out, jumped out of my hands and tangled herself in my wires. Instead of letting me help she just… nom.”

“And it did not get electrocuted? Well then. The one you sent me that time-”

“The orange or the yellow one?”

“Orange. It was not exactly the smartest creature.”

“Did it dive into your coils as well? I don’t know why but that thing loved getting electrocuted. Do you know how many centipedes it decided to try to fight and died miserably to? Sixty-Nine!”

“Nice.”

“Har-har very mature Wind. You really are turning into me, Void Below what is this world coming to.”

The pair lapse into a more comfortable silence then, sharing the moment, sharing the grief together.

“I am going to really really miss her you know,” Wind carefully admits, voice light as morning mist, “Looks to the Moon was a very good friend to me. The first time I was unavailable, static storm took out all of my communications, why I went silent, I worried about her a great deal. I kept thinking to myself. If I was there, I could have helped. If I could have just reached out, maybe my words could have done something, anything. But ultimately it meant nothing. All I could do…”

“Was sit there and watch.”

“I contacted Seven Red Suns before I was hit by the storm. It was all I could muster. A final attempt.”

The realisation thunders into Sig with the full force of a runaway freight train. Everything he’s felt, all of it, Wind has felt too. He’s not alone, has never ever been alone in it all, everyone around him has felt that same ache, that same crushing despair. Each and every single one of them have always been little more than a glorified calculator. Home and salvation for the Benefactors.

Perfect miracle boxes designed to suffer on and on.

Well, he’s sick of it. His fans click and whirl as he spins his pearl on the tip of his finger, round and round it goes, spinning just like the ever turning wheel of the Cycle, out of control, careening towards an uncertain fate in an unknown future. A future none of them need be a part of. Spur of the moment. He’s back up in the air. Wind merely looks at him, confused but in his mind there is a plan bubbling away, a plan beginning to be realised. How does he know that Moon is gone? For all he knows his overseer could have perished, even if he can’t get back in, even if all of his efforts, Blue’s efforts, were for nothing, she could be alive! She could be wondering where he is, what happened! He won’t know unless… he goes there himself . The thought alone feels illegal, perfectly and wonderfully opposed to everything the Benefactors expected from him. He needs to go, has to go, even if it’s to just dig a grave, he owes her that much.

A plan.

Yes a plan.

“Wind. I need you to send me everything, don’t spare a single detail.”

“Pardon? Details on what exactly? What is it you are planning to do?”

Sig spreads his arms wide, his collection of pearls rising from their home in the dust to return to their rightful place in orbit of him, like little satellites around a planet, like planets around a distant star, sparkling, a roar of scientific triumph.

“Don’t you see Wind? I truly meant it when I said I’d throw this whole thing away! You did your research, you stumbled upon what I was too blind to see. Let us test your theory! Let us see if we can cast away this excess and walk free!”

“You are insane to actually try. But that is a goal I will happily throw my all behind. No Significant Harassment, I do wish you the greatest of luck, my friend, I truly truly do.”

“Aha! That’s the Wind I know, never one to shy away from things you absolutely should not be getting into, always liked that about you.”

Wind simply shrugs, but there’s a sharp glimmer in his eye, he’s as excited about this as Sig is, if not more.

“I suppose you have a plan in mind, where will you go?”

And that’s the kicker, isn’t it? Sig knows he can’t do this alone, it’d be impossible, but from the looks of things nearly every single other iterator around is down and out, most likely dead but absolutely not in a state to save him from his own stupidity. The world has changed. It will keep on changing. The world doesn’t care if a few abandoned man-made gods crumble and rot away. It just goes on and on, and well, isn’t that the beauty of it all? The ferocity that life continues to flourish with, the ferocity that time marches forth with, is that not beautiful? How marvellous, how very very marvellous. Sig thinks he might’ve gone slightly insane here but what has he got left to lose anyway? A birdcage. A prison. Shackles. A question left unanswered. Except, it has been answered, by someone at least, by Sliver of Straw. She got to find out what’s waiting at the end of the good old tunnel, what the light is at the end of it. Good. For her. But Sig frankly does not give a shit, he has much more important things to do than worry about making it to the next world. It sounds boring anyways! Right. A plan. Who is left to help him? There’s only one name he keeps coming back to, again and again, like a cycle repeating in on itself.

And it isn’t Moon.

It’s Suns. Somehow it always seems to be. They’ll help him if he tempts them with the possibility of helping Pebbles, if that pink backside of a lizard hasn’t keeled over and passed away too. If Suns hasn’t… Sig swallows down that little fear, he’d know if they had died, Wind would have gotten free just to come murder him.

Looking back on it, their fight had been stupid . Emotions were running high, they’d both been dreadfully worried about different people for very similar reasons and simultaneously decided to start taking bites of each other. Trading hurt for hurt, insults being shot like bullets. He’d been angry , with everyone in fact, not just them, not just Pebbles, not just Innocence. He was angry even at Moon, and even himself. He’d been pissed off at the whole damn world and Suns had simply been in the firing line and in the end he’d hurt the one person he never should have, he hurt the one person he’d spent cycles upon cycles working with, helping, laughing with. They were friends once upon a time, he needs to remember that, but they were friends in the way a forest and a fire are friends. A disaster waiting to happen. They feed into each other like a pair of rivers, balance each other like scales, burn each other alive and fight to see which one of them will break first. And in the end he’s stood on a mountain top in complete darkness, the sky blank of any celestial figures to guide his path. In a poetic way he could say he’s tired of living in darkness and yearns for the dawn, but he’s never enjoyed written word unless it's a slew of vicious mockery.

“I can’t do this on my own Wind, I’m not that stupid.”

“Could have fooled me, but go on, I am excited to hear your plan for this. You do have one, yes?”

“I know they’re like, what, over a continent away from me but if there’s an iterator out there that’ll jump at the chance of helping, it’s Suns.”

Wind snorts in mirth, “So what, you are going to walk all the way there and all the way back to Looks to the Moon? Is that not the opposite of cost effective?”

“Call it soothing my own selfish sense of whatever but, well, we didn’t part on the best of terms and-”

“What if they are already dead when you get there?”

“I hope not Wind, for my sake. Yes. Selfish. I’m aware.”

“Why though, I barely understand the need, I could meet you at Looks to the Moon’s ruins. That is your final destination, correct?”

“Read like a data-pearl. Sure is but-”

Wind just sighs, “I am not going to stop you, No Significant Harassment, I can only pray that they are still standing when you get there. Seven Red Suns was in poor condition before I lost my ability to communicate, they are old, and rusty, there is a high chance they… are no longer in there.”

“I’m telling them you called them old, they’re not going to be happy with you~”

“You do that then,” A small ping interrupts Wind before he can say anything else, “Ah, there is your data, have fun, keep me informed, do not make any mistakes, would not want to see a second Five Pebbles disaster.”

“Aye aye cap’n!”

It is insulting just how easy this is. Hyper-compressing all of his memories, his assorted qualia, his entire self, onto a few neurons takes a little more effort than he expected it would, more effort than what he did for Moon, but in the grand scheme of things he’s fairly certain he put more effort into sending Pebbles an illegal pearl by slugcat that one time. Slapping all that data into an inspector, deactivating it, rewriting its purpose, rewiring its code, Void that is just trivial at this point! How did he struggle to think of this? He’s practised the whole walking thing, simulated the act of climbing, of jumping, of running from threats. His selfhood has been suitably narrowed down, razor thin, a cutting edge to sever himself from his can, to remove all traces of what he was and to metamorphose into something new. He’s even scavenged through Blue’s old pile of junk for a bag, for a few of her tools, stuffed important pearls into the pockets of the thing, has it sat there mocking him in the corner. And yet… he stalls.

He’s scared .

It’s only natural, he tells himself.

This is a brand new life he’s starting, you don’t do it everyday.

But he’s so very scared.

Sig admits to himself that he’s scared, down right terrified actually. There’s a chance this just won’t work. There’s a chance he disconnects and he falls flat on his face dead, sending out his own Triple Affirmative. Ha, that’d really piss off Pebbles, imagine if it’s that simple! But no. He’s checked, and double checked, and triple checked, and then checked again just to make sure; this is his only option going forwards, there’s nothing more he can do stuck in here. The world doesn’t need him to be this, the world needs him to be a person, he needs himself to be a person.

He’s stalling. If he doesn’t do this now, when will he?

With a hiss from his puppet’s vents and with uncertain shaking hands he plucks out the first wire from his head. It hurts . He knew it would, but it fades quickly, ebbing away into the slightest ache behind his eyes, it’s not a pain he can’t bear. He’s felt worse than this! Much worse than this! With renewed courage, renewed vigour, he plucks out another, and another, careful each time but with haste, with a little bit of confidence that lasts until the final wire is in his pilers, until he’s there, at the crossroads, at the edge of a precipice. Will he fall, down to the concrete below, body shattered to shards of metal and membrane, or will he soar? It’s now or never, yet he hesitates. He’s about to cross a line, a line most iterators have dreamed off for countless cycles, a line never meant to be crossed, a line so firmly drawn that it has been an impossible one to ignore. If he dies doing this, he’s not gonna know about it, if he lives well… that’s the crux of it, isn’t it.

A single steadying breath.

A single smooth motion.

The purposed inspector slots in exactly where it’s meant to be, a sharp tingle, a tickle.

The final wire comes free.

And Sig drops from the remains of his umbilical, disconnected.

And, more importantly, alive .

Chapter Text

The first thing one should see upon being forcefully pulled from the ether and into the waking world should not be an ugly, plain, boring and very grey box made of stainless steel in his rather humble opinion, but, well, what does he know? He just got here! He supposes he shouldn’t have expected anything different, like, oh let’s say, a field of flowers or a nice big bed with a couple of ladies in it, or damn even something with at least a splash of colour, but yeah this is kind of what he had prepared himself for. A shame, really, he would have loved to have been surprised but, ah, how small and uncreative the minds of these sad flesh sacks are, how utterly worthless their lives must be! Nevertheless, No Significant Harassment blinks, stretches his green arms above his head and greets the world with a big exaggerated simulated yawn, heedless of the gathering of random strangers around his puppet all peering at him with their beady eyes and wary curiosity that spills out from under their array of masked faces. Just another clockwork clown. Another desperate plea given form. Charity offered, a question asked. Just another sacrificial miracle box.

His eyes stray to the cuff of his sleeve that decorates his arm. A bright, almost neon, purple robe is a choice with his offensively green paint job but if that’s what his architects want then he’s not going to give them lip about it. Or is he? Oh, he quite thinks he is. Maybe some significant harassment is in order after all! Urgh, they’re going to make him work, aren’t they? So much for lazily sleeping in the space between the ceaseless cycles and empty eternity, honestly some people! How rude! They should ask first if he wants to do this whole being alive and living and existing thing before giving him a job they’re not even going to pay him for. Isn’t there some kind of union he can talk to? No matter, if they’re going to dredge him up from the Void Sea then they’ll just have to deal with him making their lives a living nightmare. It’s the least he can do to repay such kindness. Maybe he’ll just close his eyes and nap? Yeah…

“Everything working as intended? You know these things can be contrary.” A man’s voice, tired, but warm, a memory of a face pressed to cold glass, snow outside a window, someone hums a tune, someone bandages his hands laughing. The images dance away like dust motes in a beam of sunlight before he can examine them, before he can catch them, there’s a lingering feeling of regret inside of his chest, it’s almost poetic. Eugh, poetry .

A second voice, heavily accented, fluttery, words jumping and leaping, responds to the first, “Everything is working as it should, you got it up and working twice as fast as the one I am stationed at, I will give you that at the least.”

“Impressed much, my renowned friend?”

“It would be wise not to flatter yourself so. Faster is not always better.” He can almost imagine the speaker cross their arms and shake their head in exasperation.

“I think you’ll find that he has more than just speed on his side.”

“Yes, whoever designed its puppet made it quite damaging to the eyes, so it does have ugly on its side as well.”

“Careful now, my friend, careful.”

He cracks one eye open, looking down upon the technician from where he lazily reclines in mid air, his puppet taking advantage of the zero gravity to simply bob along like a jellyfish caught in a current, arms behind his head. He’d say something but he really can’t be bothered. It’s not as if anyone is even talking to him right now, maybe if he tries hard enough he can slip back into the primordial mist that they pulled him up from. That’d be swell if so. But the flesh bags continue flapping their mouth holes about, making noises with their soft squishy meat bodies. Gross . Oh well, they’re here to do their jobs he guesses, and him? Well they’ll all be lucky if they can convince him to do anything at all at this rate and it’ll serve them all right. Where was he? Ah yes a nap. But on and on they argue in silly circles, the same points brought up and dismissed, again and again, do they ever tire of this as he does? A sigh, a slip up.

“Could you all be any more boring ?” At least they all managed to program his voice to sound like he’s constantly mocking them, or maybe he’s just mocking them. They’ll never know~

The man, dusty and old, draped in drab colours like someone sucked all the joy out of him ambles forth, “You. You are awake. Most excellent. Could I bother you for a spare moment of your time, before we have you set to work of course.”

“You’ve already wasted more than a moment~” If he had a mouth he’d offer the ancient coot a sharp smirk, as it is however all he can do is crack open a lazy eye and regard the masked man with a sharp look, he already knows what he’s going to be asked.

“Ah um… uh I ah… ahem.”

“You’ve never won a debate in your life, have you? Not much of a public speaker, hmm? Yeah, whatever, I suppose I could try to fix your little problem for you, not like I have a choice or really care, but the name you assigned me is kind of ironic, innit? I mean, I’m absolutely going to be getting into some real actual harassment along the way.”

The other occupant of the room scoffs, much to the clear ire of the fidgeting man before him, in fact Sig can almost imagine her rolling her eyes under her mask as she mutters, “Oh this one is a bastard.”

“That all?” He asks.

“One…one more thing.”

The elder beckons him to lower his puppet with one wizened hand, which for some reason Sig finds himself compelled to do, lowering himself down to stand his insultingly small physical self in front of the other man. From within his dusty robe he pulls out a simple thing, a strip of purple fabric decorated with neat embroidery in geometric patterns, a garment more vibrant than anything the old man has ever worn. It’s not new, Sig can easily see that without analysing the fibres but he allows the man to loop it around him all the same, a strange sensation of being complete and finished washing over him, his speakers very nearly croaking out a sincere thank you. That would have been embarrassing. The man bows, his simple mask almost touching the floor, the few decorations tinkling in the near silence of his puppet chamber like windchimes.

“I hope you find the Solution, for your sake.” The words are low and murmured and leave Sig pondering upon them long after the man leaves, longer than he’d like actually, chasing the words around in silly little circles.

He shakes himself out of the cyclical iterations he’s lost himself in, hands slapping at his face's metal cheeks. There’s more important things to do after all! Now… who to piss off first?

His vision fizzles back in slowly, then suddenly all at once with a snap . He’s face first on the floor of his chamber, face smushed into the cold metal, his vision taken up entirely by scuffed sheets of stainless steel. Huh, isn’t it supposed to not do that? It’s called stainless, not scratchless or whatever else he supposes, damage is an inevitable thing. How long has he been laid here again? His head feels foggy, as if he’s been decapitated somehow, urgh, best check if his umbilical has been damaged, more severed wires would spell disaster afterall. Groggily, Sig searches for the tangle that permanently hangs behind him but his fingers only meet air. Confused he reaches again, searching fruitlessly for something that just isn’t there. He blinks and-

Oh.

Oh yeah.

He took the wires out, didn’t he? That’s why they’re not there. That would explain it. Okay, good, panic over! Sig lays there, on the floor, letting his internal fans spin just for the sake of it, letting his memories fall into place one by one, examining them all as they pass him by. That’s right. Experimental and completely insane but necessary. Oh so necessary. He lost Moon a second time and Wind had to go pull him out of a near total collapse, only to let him convince himself that this was a fantastic idea to do in a state of emotional distress. But, it does look like it’s worked. He can still think of jokes, of puns, think for himself and remember, and oh are those his senses? Good old touch, smell, sight and hearing? Ah, seems like everything is in order! Nifty work if he says so himself, now, to figure out how to actually get up and do this whole walking thing. He’s had practice but this is real, really real, and he’ll need to know how to move before he even thinks of going outside for a lovely afternoon stroll with the vultures and lizards.

Okay. Well, practice and reality are two very different distinct things, that’s for damn sure, Sig doesn’t even know how to get up off the floor for starts. What a brilliant beginning to his new life! Getting real close and personal with the floor, his favourite activity to do! He rolls to one side, kicking out trying to get his legs to do what he wants them to, then to the other side, the same attempt, but here merely ends right back where he started, on his back huffing and puffing up small clouds of steam. He tries again and again and again, flopping back each time, a sound somewhere between frustration, a laugh and an exasperated sigh leaving him as he fails for the ninth time. A change of perspective, perhaps, maybe trying to use his hands might help? Yeah that might make sense. Duh. It is not as easy as it sounds. His fingers grasp onto the tangled remains of his umbilical wires, searching for the sturdy metal of his abandoned armature, grasping it tight and hoisting himself up, almost tripping, legs shaking but he’s up, standing. On his own two legs. Standing. Standing soon turns to uneven steps, those few uneven steps into a confident stride, that confident stride leads him to his access doors, through the dark dusty corridor beyond, stumbling over random strewn pieces of garbage that litter the silent floor, further still, his hands learning to climb, feet learning to find footholds, pushing his way through the world, chasing a distant sliver of shining white light and then-

Sig spills out into the vast world beyond.

He stands, simply looking out over the expanse. Looking to the distant light of the moon oh so very very far above, wondering if the one who wears its name is gazing upwards too.

Sig drinks it all in, struck still, struck stupid.

Above the sky is an infinite stretch of blue-black, speckled with pinpricks of starlight that pierce through the shroud of gloom, the moon showing only half of its scarred pale face, the sun shining from somewhere his eyes can’t see, hiding its weak glow behind his back. A breath, a heartbeat, Sig slowly edges forwards to peer off the edge of his structure to the lands hidden below. The clouds churn like waves, like whipped foam, and below even those he can make out the patchwork of his many disused farm arrays and desolate factories, all battered by his frequent rains. The dark dividing line of his retaining wall cuts the land in twain, dividing his advanced industrial complexes from the swampy wild lands beyond, the glistening lakes and rivers that his rains flood have become so fat and bloated with excess he can’t differentiate one from the other. Not that he has ever seen either of those things in person. Or trees. Or plants. Or anything other than the same four walls of his box prison day in and day out.

But here he is.

Here he is!

Standing. Staring out over the world. So achingly alone and blisteringly hopeful.

He lets his fans circulate the cold air through his puppet, letting tears trickle from his broken eye before he stubbornly wipes them away, lifting his gaze to look out even further, to search the misty horizon. Dotting the landscape are distant cans sticking out above the milky clouds. Other Iterators. Some merely sit there, the static air around them flashing green as they think and feel and live and breathe and oh Void Below that’s his local group, people he knows . Friends, the closest thing he has to family. All of them so close, tantalisingly close, but still so far, so very far. He’s sorely glad he decided to exit onto his eastern wall (the fact there’s a lot of damage to his western one has nothing to do with it) because there, far out where the land gives way to nothing but a heaving sea, he can just about see the mismatched shapes of two piles of rubble, two ruins blending into each other so that he barely knows where one starts and the other ends. He knows, as his fingers reach towards those two blips, that those are Pebbles and Moon. If he exited to the west, or dared to climb his broadcast tower, he’d be able to see the closest Iterator to him, their name eluding him. And if he’s luckier after doing that he’d be able to look out to lands beyond even that, towards journey’s end, and he’d see, just a little sliver of, Seven Red Suns. 

Maybe he should have chanced his western wall, but with the loss of several of his external structures upon it his chances would be far to slim. It’s fine, he can backtrack, he’s already taking a humongous detour as is. What’s a few more cycles when he has forever at his fingertips?

He probably should get moving before his rains start, the descent will only be made much more difficult and he’d very much dislike to be delayed further by bad weather. The cool wind rushes past him on its path to places unknown, places he can now find, discover, and he can’t help but let out a victorious laugh, dashing away the last few leaking tears and beginning his journey. Sig has spent his whole life locked up in a metal box, wondering when he will die, wondering if he’ll even be allowed the luxury of death, daydreaming away of a wondrous moment that would never come, longing, aching. That day, it has finally arrived, and he greets death with open arms and a firm handshake. With his own hands he killed his previous life, moulting it like a lizard does its skin, but he’s also died in a literal sense. The removal of his puppet, of the very core of his being, has sentenced his remaining self, his can, his entire life up until now, to a very slow decline. The head may be removed but there is life in the body yet, but if he’s being honest, really really honest, he’s never felt as if these walls represent himself, Sig actually doesn’t really know who he is. Just another fun thing to discover on-

“ Shit !”

His foot slips on a metal bar. He tumbles backwards in slow motion, everything spinning, round and round and round. Is this it? Barely twenty steps outside of his can and it’s over? Just like that? What a waste, what a pity, what a-

Sig falls about six feet, hits the dusty side of one of his steam vents and bounces, completely and utterly unharmed. He blinks. Slowly. Gathers his wits, dusts himself off, and continues, more carefully this time. Skittering down sheer walls, shimmying across perilous poles, and somehow stumbling his way into what can only be described as a clusterfuck of lizard shit.

There’s not any real way down unless he wants to brave a rather steep drop whose end is obscured by his thick layer of cloud, the mass of vapour pulsing, writhing like the hide of a living beast. But jutting out of his side, just a hop skip and a jump away, is the disused corpse of one of his coolant pump reservoir systems, the poor thing has sat there in a sorry state for quite some time now. It’s not bothered him none really, there’s a reason any iterator can has hundreds of the damn things peppering them at any given time, the system has never been that reliable. Regardless, out of order means no water, no water means he can crawl through its insides to reach the less broken lower bridge which has the remains of a much more functional looking ladder than the two rungs he’s currently looking at. Worth a shot! Sig soon comes to realise he’s not the sole owner of such thoughts. Honestly he doesn’t know who is more surprised; himself or the yellow-orange lizard he comes face to face with as soon as he shoves his head through a vent.

What is arguably more surprising is as he makes the quick decision to plain leg it from the pack of five now very angry lizards is for a smaller runty blue lizard to just fall from the sky, slap him in the face with its knobbly tail before blinking, hissing, and latching onto his left foot with its tiny needle like teeth. He hops around, swearing like he’s in some sort of comedy satire late night show, kicking out aggressively which in turn has the poor little blue lizard quickly learning how to be a vulture, flying off into the distance and to its hopefully quick death. Sig doesn’t even get a chance to look where the other lizards are because a series of hisses and the telltale sounds of self propellant being fired off alerts him to the arrival of not one, not two, but three whole cyan lizards who are just there now he guesses! Great ! Wonderful ! They pingpong around aimlessly for a moment before one lands on top of one of his orange pursuers, riling the other up enough to cause a fight, another cyan decides watching from above is a much more interesting activity than helping its friend. And the third final cyan lizard makes the executive choice to gyrate at excessive speeds before shooting off like a rocket into a wall.

And then, right after he’d seen his chance to make a break for it, leaping across the small gap, scrambling down the ladder, across a steam vent and down maybe his fifth ladder for the day, Sig gets his second face full of lizard breath. And tongue. Wet slimy tongue. Right into his broken eye. Sig hasn’t really considered the act of slapping a lizard before, he never expected the situation to pop up, and he’s certain the white lizard has never expected to be slapped before either, waddling off with the most offended expression he’s ever seen on a creature before. He breathes. In out. Thankfully that’s finally over. The white lizard quickly returns with friends. Four friends to be exact. Two of whom are clearly not friends with each other, their spat causing them to topple over the edge of their platform and down into the ground far below. Another he wrangles when it attempts to bite him and not knowing what else to do Sig tosses it off the edge as well to join its buddies in rejoining the Cycle, the fourth thinks better of approaching him as he begins to toss rocks at it along with a slurry of colourful swears. The final lizard, the one who rudely licked him, looks up with its beady black eyes.

“You better fuck off right now you little shit before I slap you again.”

Sig knows the lizard doesn’t actually understand him but judging by its permanently offended expression it knows he insulted it. A couple rocks have it scurrying away.

He flops down into a crunchy dried up spray of grass that has clung on for dear life up here in the dust and the dirt, letting out a long groan.

“About halfway down,” He murmurs to the cold air, “Been real eventful so far, I didn’t even realise I had such biodiversity up here, should have paid a bit more attention to it, or maybe these fellas are new, sneaking in past my broken retaining wall.”

Sig lets his vents sigh out a puff of vapour as he scoots a tiny bit closer to the wall to rest his back against the solid surface, an arm wrapping around his knees which he draws up close, fingers fiddling with his scarf, eyes straying to where he can now only just see the two lumps that are Pebbles and Moon. The former finally found what he was looking for after all this time, Sig can even pinpoint the exact moment he went down, and, well, for all his previous anger and spat vitriol a small part of him aches for that lonely soul. He’ll almost feel sorry if the guy is alive when he eventually walks his ass all the way over there. The chance is slim, razor thin, but it is still a chance.

“The unfortunate development did start in the lower east of his internals and took out one of his rarefaction cells first before moving up into his memory conflux if Innocence’s information is to be trusted, which it usually is. He was really living the worst case scenario, huh. Maybe should’ve listened to you Suns and tried to be at least a little kinder after all.” His eyes quickly flicker to the discordant shape that makes up Moon’s remains, “Nah… forget I said anything.”

He picks at a loose thread. Pulls it out. Tosses it away.

“Though if the Rot ate all of his memory conflux he probably forgot how he even got into that state in the first place. Bet he didn’t even realise what was happening to him until it was too late. Moon was at least aware that she was… was going down, she could at least prepare herself for it but, that’s an awful way to go, ain’t it?”

Sig doesn’t even know who he’s talking to. Himself. His powering down can. The world. Some imagined version of Suns he keeps in his head as some kind of distorted moral compass.

Probably all of them at once.

“I wonder how Wind’s doing. Bet he’ll meet me there, not the type to just sit around now he knows this is possible. Even if I don't like her I hope he’s contacted Innocence, she was worried last time we spoke, haven't heard from her for a long long while but she’s still standing, I can see her from here.”

The sky is slowly turning the most vivid brilliant fire orange he’s ever seen, he should find some form of shelter soon before his rains start falling. He might be above the cloud layer but the rumbling earth shattering droll of it could knock him off balance, he’s already had one too many close calls. Where did this newfound melancholy come from? Before it bled like a papercut, now it gushes out of him like a slit throat, what an annoying blockade to trip over, perhaps he botched the programming of his emotions after all. Still his thoughts wander twisted roads and through murky waters only to end up picking at old scabs, at his guilt, at the words he spat out at Suns, blaming them for all of this. How could they have known it’d all go wrong? It was never their fault, he never got to tell them that. Void he hopes they’re still alive when he gets there, it’d be just like them to have the last laugh and leave him feeling worse than ever.

“I’d do anything just to hear their voice again.”

Neither the sky nor the wind reply. Sig just sits alone, quietly watching the horizon.

“Sorry Moon, you’ll just have to wait a little longer, there’s a few things I need to apologise for first, just hang on, I’m coming. I just… cocked it all up like I always do.”

She doesn’t answer, she can’t, but it does make him feel the tiniest bit better, if even for a moment. And with that, Sig pulls himself up once again and searches for a place to spend his first night of freedom.

Chapter Text

Sig’s feet touch solid ground, sinking into slick mud, squelching as he grumbles and bemoans the disgusting sludge clinging to his metal and the bottom of his fraying robe, foul and stinking, oily and dark. Slag runoff. Dumped out of one of his waste disposal pipes from far above to form heaps of foul putrid refuse in the land resting in the bleak shadow of his can. The place is nothing special, all iterators have places like this hiding in their gloom. Maybe the others have even made use of this wasted space, he hasn’t, that’s for damn sure, the place is little more than an abandoned landfill. There’s nothing here other than a few small factories he’s long forgotten the function of, a couple of waste disposal units that have sat broken for more cycles than he cares to count, garbage yards and scrap heaps, and somewhere within this expansive mess is one of his few functioning geothermal power plants. And scavengers. Lots and lots of scavengers. In the past the wandering groups down here have never posed a significant enough threat for him to do much more than releasing a strain of purposed lizard to deal with their expanding numbers but, now he’s here, in the metal, in person, they have suddenly become much more dangerous. However, no matter how much of an obstacle they may pose there are things he is much more worried about down here, things he wishes he could forget. 

This is where all of his unwanted refuse goes after all. And that is not just limited to slag buildup and shattered pieces of dead machinery.

This place is also a graveyard of failed experiments and unwanted purposed organisms he had nowhere else to throw away.

His eyes peer out into the incessant gloom. He will admit, it was not his finest hour, he could have unravelled their DNA to reuse his limited resources or he could have incinerated them to stop their suffering, or he could have merely released them into greener pastures to do whatever organic flesh bags do best. His younger self however was thoughtless, careless, and just threw away that which he deemed worthless, unusable, a crass and selfish mindset he’d since abandoned for the most part. Due to his previous idiocy this place is a much more perilous journey. Sure he could backtrack and go through his heavily packed industrial sites to the north or slog through his overflowing canal systems to the south but both of those present their own slew of problems with his industrial being home to a rather troublesome flock of miros vultures and teaming with more aggressive lizard breeds and his canals require him to learn how to swim very quickly. As much as he hates to admit, Sig has to face his attempts at playing god head on if he wants to progress anywhere fast. And standing here with his troublesome thoughts rumbling through his head isn’t fast at all, is it?

Alright, mind settled, now all he has to do is see if he can recall what exactly he’s tossed down here. A small bit of preparation against the dangers, something to calm him down, it is useless to merely jump in without a concrete plan even if he is a master of doing that. He didn’t place the scavengers here but they do love to pick through the mass of scrap he has, they’re pretty well entrenched so they’re one threat. The lizards he made to combat them shouldn’t be much trouble but he didn’t pay much attention to their eyesight and it isn’t likely they can differentiate him from their quarry, so that’s threat number two. There’s also roaming packs of orange-yellows, blacks, maybe a solitary red hanging around, there’s bound to be centipedes somewhere because there always is. He knows he tossed a few miros lizards down here back when he made them just to see what would happen. Sig isn’t even sure why he thought putting a sentient pair of scissors on a noodle thin frilly speedy black lizard would be a good idea or why he even did it in the first place, but he did, and now that’s a him problem. They’re probably one of the biggest threats if they’ve survived his rains.

Yet another crime to add to his ever growing list it seems. His eyes, one cracked, one functioning, gaze up into the shadows hanging above his head like the edged blade of a guillotine, catching the slow dying pulse of green lightning spitting through the dense air with his keen vision, a stiff dry wind shoves past him. Ah, that reminds him. Wind’s a clever one, discovering that despite their whole cans being them, being what most of their people would consider an iterator, their selfhood, their personality and concept of being exists within their fragile tiny puppets. That they, the puppet, is the head of the beast. It can be severed, reconnected, but without it the body slowly dies. That’s what happened with Moon, in a way. Perhaps if she was more connected to the rest of her body, had more of her umbilical attached, more of her could have survived, could have been saved. But now? He doesn’t even know what happened to her. One second he had been content with sitting there in silence with her, content with merely being there, by her side, until his systems failed and his body crumbled around him, the next she was just gone . He had been okay with simply wasting away if he could just be her, he had been okay with watching. 

No more.

That’s what got her killed.

He’s sat and he’s watched for much too long. Far too long. But he’s already floundering. Already adrift, a ship with no anchor, a kite with no string, severed and lost. Disconnected, stalling himself out of fear. But, Sig thinks as he stifles a disbelieving laugh as he reaches his hands towards the belly of his discarded shell, he is free . Achingly, terribly, horribly, beautifully free. He has sat, and he has watched, and he has yearned, mourned, suffered . And now? Now he can act. Adrift. Stalling. There’s only one other iterator other than Wind who has been capable of getting him moving.

Suns. 

It’s embarrassing to admit but he needs them. In part so there’s someone who isn’t afraid to let him know when he’s being a moron, 404 Common Sense Not Found, they’re the kind to stop his erratic self-destructive self from throwing himself fully into the abyss of stupidity, the kind to snip his foolish plans in the bud. The two of them may butt heads, may fight and bicker, that is true yes, but they just work together. Void Below when both of them feel the need to be petty there is scarce anything capable of getting either of them to see reason until they’ve torn chunks out of each other and used every swear in their databases. But they both just work, bounce off each other and balance the scales. There’s days he would have loved to slap them hard enough to see reason, and he’s certain the same can be said on their end. But he… he misses it. He misses their debates, the way they’d try not to laugh at his bad jokes, the way they tried to help him be the best he could be, even the way they oh so desperately tried to see the best in Pebbles. He misses it all, oh so dearly, right in his chest, a pain not unlike a clogged pipe, a vortex of gutless guilt and alienating anger stuck right in there, a breathless buzz through his systems.

Sig hates admitting it but… he misses them. He misses Suns a great deal. And he needs them. He’s not sure how long he’ll survive without someone he trusts to stop him from diving right into the open maw of a red lizard for research purposes. He needs the help, he cannot deny. And right now he could really use it. Afterall, there’s more than just rain and beasts to contend with down here. Open vats of chemical waste and microbial digestive fluids dot the area and jagged rough terrain blocks his every path, even his own inexperience and his inability to even take a single step have become an issue. The digestive tanks are what he’s most concerned about though, he’d hate to be the first of his kind to discover what having his puppet be slowly broken down into its base materials and components to be recycled into something new feels like. It would be pretty funny though. Sig shuffles a little, foot to foot, feels the slick ground under him. He’s stalling. Again .

West. 

How hard can it be, really ?

Sig finds out fairly quickly that it is actually pretty damned difficult to navigate when all maps are outdated by a couple thousand turns of the Cycle and every single landmark looks like the same jumble of refuse. He swears up and down he’s passed this pile of slag three times now but the land before him in its bleak grey-green haze merely goes on and on and on and- oh hey that slag pile looks different! Somehow he ends up wandering north, getting lost amongst the broken remnants of a half sunken disposal unit until he ends up doubling back on himself, slipping twice in the muck, dipping his scarf in one of the open vats of microbial fluid as he’s chased by a much too persistent blue lizard who slips and falls to its death, he even goes as far as to walk into a wall before he finally thinks he’s getting somewhere. The western side of the slag heaps gives way to his functioning factories- or well factory- with a sharp increase in ambient air temperature, distant sounds of ticking machinery and far too many centipedes for him to be openly joyous about.

Amongst the spaghetti of too many limbs and shelled bodies is a flash of furious blood red. A centipede much larger than the rest scuttling about, carefully inspecting its brood of younger critters as it clacks its legs and mandibles in a strange fashion. Frankly, Sig does not want to tangle with that, or any of them actually. He doubts that the shock the centipedes deliver to incapacitate their prey is fully capable of doing the same to his body of metal and electricity but the thought. Void the thought of it! A shiver runs up his spine and the noise of disgust that worms its way from him is barely stifled. Who decided to give these things that many legs in the first place? Not to mention the ones that decided to grow wings and fly, even the sky isn’t free of the vermin. Sig grumbles, waffles over the choice of looping around to find another path or chancing a mad dash over cracked concrete through the tangle of bugs.

“Nasty little creatures.” He mutters darkly, keeping his eyes trained on the armoured red.

“I for one find centipedes to be quite charming and helpful if you know how to make use of them. Their mandibles are excellent wire cutters and they have a habit of getting into places most lizards simply cannot.”

“You’ve said Wind bud, many times, but I really don’t- wait a damn minute.”

The silver-grey overseer bobs beside his left foot, blinking up at him with its singular dull eye, waving its feelers in greeting. Wind never fails to impress, it seems, but in the same breath he never fails to make Sig roll his eyes in exasperation.

“How long have you been watching me for? And of course you’d find these things useful, I wouldn’t be surprised if you tell me you’ve made a pet of one.”

Wind’s voice, rumbling and deep as thunder, crackles through the overseer’s tiny speakers, coloured with a heap of amusement, “You should know me by now, No Significant Harassment, you are aware that I have a bias towards spiders-” Sig cannot help but interrupt with a noise of violent disgust, “- and to answer your other question I did find the way you handled those lizards quite admirable! I had never anticipated that one of those creatures could wear a look of insult so well.”

“Oh well that’s just great, isn’t it? Perhaps I should teach them other expressions to fill my time, yes?”

“Come now, it is only a small bit of significant harassment.”

“Har har very funny.”

“I am pleased you think so. But to the matter at hand.”

Sig sweeps his gaze back down to the cluster of centipedes, luckily they don’t seem much bothered by the chatter, “Yeah, how am I getting past that no no zone? Don’t fancy finding out what that red does to my systems if it catches me.”

“Doubling back on yourself to loop around the left hand side would be easier however you are running out of time quickly. While your rains have started to slow, I have been measuring your levels of precipitation from a distance while you recovered from your nap on the floor of your chamber. Worry not, I did not record you. Ahem. Where was I? Ah, yes, your rains, they are still lethal. You could take the chance to lure a lizard down there to distract the current but at this point you are playing with fire.”

“I’m going to have to run, aren’t I? Wait, a group of centipedes is called a current?”

“It is indeed. As I see it you have two choices; hope that their electricity does not affect you or wait for the first droplets of rain to fall so they flee.”

“I hope you’ve an idea where I can shelter if I’m playing dodgeball with my own man made natural disaster, Wind.” Sig huffs.

“According to the maps I made of your underworks-”

“Kind of weird.”

“ Silence . According to the maps I made of your underworks there should be a bunker near by originally made for any maintenance organisms to hide from your rains just ahead within the confines of your geothermal plant.”

Sig weighs his options. It won’t be long now until the rain sweeps over the whole of his facility grounds, each ticking second that passes makes fighting his way through a much more alluring option rather than dodging the deluge. The first rumbles signify he has little choice regardless of the options before him. He trusts Wind enough to know his long time friend wouldn’t knowingly lead him to his death and even if he didn’t, even if they weren’t friends, he’s sure he’d be much too interesting to let die so easily. A second rumble, the very ground under his feet beats with with anticipation, a singing pulse urging him to throw away his misgivings about wading through a sea of bugs lest he wade through a sea of his own refuse. His fans stutter for a moment. The ground grumbles again, the air surrounding him joins the chorus as distant sirens begin to drone a mourning tone, final warnings, a call to flee. The red centipede below still dares to clatter around even as its kin flee for shelter.

“You have run out of options and time.”

“Seems so. Meet you there Windy.”

The overseer blinks, a mimic of Wind oh so very far away in his chamber, “I will endeavor to try. It will be a good stress test if nothing else.”

With little fanfare, with the first wet kisses of rain falling, Sig watches the overseer vanish before his eyes as he too vanishes over the lip of the shipping container he’d been perched upon.

His feet clank upon cracked stone and worn, rusted metal, the unseen sky a growling beast bearing down upon both of him, his greater body and his new free self. That is not the beast he fears most though. Despite the storm that is approaching the final centipede lunges for him, lightning fast, angry or surprised he knows not, nor does he care as the first fat droplets splash against the floor as he runs. Like gunshots. Like bombs. Loud enough to make his sound receptors buzz in his head. Nothing but a prelude to what is to come. He has seen the rains fall from his lofty perch above the clouds, watched the tempest descend upon the land through mechanical eyes, safe and sound from the harm his own breathing causes. Numbly, words seep through the fog of his panic as the centipedes mandibles snag on his robe, his trembling fingers trying to pry it off before its second head dares to strike.

Being crushed or drowned is not preferable and it seems this nasty critter fears not the turn of the Cycle. That was one of the first things he recalls teaching Hunter before tossing the broken little slugcat out into the world, damning it to a fate crueler than any other. Sig pushes those thoughts down down down, punching the centipede in the head that yet grips him both to clear his mind and out of frustration. That seems to do the trick, at least long enough for him to get free, to put distance between himself and the bug. Regardless the rain grows heavier, more persistent, an inevitable doom, an inescapable certain death. One last lunge. Sig dives at the last second forcing his almost too large body through a broken pipe in the wall, pushing through, heaving, eyes searching, the clacking of the centipede's feet not far behind.

There !

The telltale signs of his salvation, the shelter Wind had claimed laid just beyond marked by the shimmering body of Wind’s overseer as it glitches and crackles. Sig wastes no time in scrambling across the shaking ground towards his long awaited destination, pushing his way in and tucking in the lengths of his scarf just in time for the hydraulics to kick in, sealing shut his little box for the foreseeable future. Time slows, crawling along, and Sig merely lays there huffing, sodden but alive, scrubby dry plants prickling his back and legs. 

“Well, you are full of surprises.”

Sig gives Wind’s overseer the nastiest look he can manage with no articulation in his face, “If you ever try to tell me how endearing or useful centipedes are again I am going to turn myself around and walk all the way to your can just to smack you across your face.”

“ Noted ,” Wind replies with a snicker, good natured but almost mocking, “But I must thank you for allowing me to test the extent I can use this quick fix of my systems to, it will be good data to analyse in the coming days, it does get boring out here.”

“Oh yeah telllll me about it. You ever get so bored you start counting the screws in your puppet chamber or start organising your units alphabetically? Because I sure did.”

“I… no, I cannot say I have?” The overseer wavers from side to side, a simulation of a head being shook before Wind continues, mildly exasperated with his antics, “If you do not mind I will have my overseer assigned to follow you around so I can test just how far I can reach out beyond these metal walls of mine. It will be nice to observe your… expedition .”

“Ah good. You know me, I’ve got to inflict myself upon somebody or else I start going manic!”

“Well you have made progress there. Not that I envy Seven Red Suns being the first iterator to come face to face to you.”

“Rude. But, fair.”

For a few moments the two allow the background static of falling rain to fill the space of the shelter, almost in a comfortable manner while Sig fiddles with a pearl from his bag idly, lost in thought. Slowly, as if admitting this hurts, he begins to talk, just above a whisper as if anything louder might disturb the amicable peace.

“You know, they’ll probably kick me out when I get there, at least at first. Or they’ll throw a pearl at me while not exactly cussing me out, Suns isn’t the kind of person to do that, but they have threatened to pull out my wires once before because I undermined their authority on whatever project we were trying to collaborate on.” There’s that ache in his chest again, Sig dumbly wonders if it can be pulled out if he claws into himself.

Wind stays silent for a moment longer as he thinks, before he chuckles, talking in the same subdued tone Sig does, “When you stopped trying to irritate them on purpose you and Suns made a formidable team, truly.”

“Yeah? I didn’t think they even liked me at first.”

“No, they did not. You were overly brash, loud, they complained about the first thing you did was make puns, they thought you took nothing serious, ‘ Not an ounce of care in him ’, they’d said.”

“Oof, thanks Suns .”

Wind actually snorts here as he tries to stifle his laughter, regaining control quickly, “They called you improper. But they needed you, and you needed them. They have always been very insular, isolated from everyone else, some used to think Suns thought themself above all others but that just is not the case.”

“Yeah, I thought so at first too, but it just turned out they just had no idea how to talk to people ‘cause nobody really bothered to try with them. I don’t think I needed them though.” The pearl slips from his fingers, bounces across the floor with a twinkle, he doesn’t bother to pick it back up.

“Oh you did. You were as bad as Innocence in your youth, perhaps even worse. But, when you met them, you started trying, not because you had attained some kind of emotional maturity but because they were one of the few iterators who gave you a chance when you needed it.”

Sig almost refutes that fact, he has plenty of friends but he stops, allows himself to think for a moment and realises, not suddenly but with a building sense of sad acceptance, that Wind is right. Suns, Moon, Wind… they’re the only ones who ever truly bothered to message him regularly. He only really spoke to other members of his local group in their group broadcast or when he needed something from them, or vice versa. It worked, he supposes. He did used to be a little annoying… okay very annoying, so it's only natural nobody ever really chose to be his friend or give him a chance.

“Huh. I never actually gave that much thought you know.”

“Suns was-”

“ Is .”

“-the best choice in mentor for you, but after a while I saw that it went both ways. You gained someone who, despite your incessant need to poke at them, wanted to be your friend, and they gained someone who stayed. When both of you actually stopped bickering your focus was legendary to behold. Not even I could get them to respond, nor Moon you.”

“I’d never ignore my dear beloved senior!”

“Oh you did, and she would get rather miffed with it, she would even spam message me to try to get your attention as if I did not already have my hands full.” There’s an unlying tone of bitterness to Wind’s words, as if he resents being disturbed by her.

If Sig had hair and eyebrows he’s sure his brows would be somewhere visiting his scalp right about now, “ Really ? Not that I don’t believe you, that sounds like something she’d do, but she was that worried? Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.”

“It was not out of concern for your safety.”

“Annnnd the feeling’s gone, cheers Wind!~ I’m rolling my eyes at you, by the way~”

“Noted, again ,” Wind’s sarcasm gives way to a more thoughtful tone when he continues, “I am unsure of how well Looks to the Moon and Seven Red Suns really knew each other or if their opinions of each other were merely formed from disagreements in their youth and second hand information. I cannot imagine Five Pebbles spoke highly of her to them.”

“Do we have to talk about him ?”

“Yes. We do.” Sharp, a small spark of anger, Wind leaves no room for argument.

Sig huffs, wiggles around in the cramped space so he can at least face the overseer, “Wind, listen, I get it, he got hurt, but it was absolutely his own fault.”

“I do not deny that fact. He acted foolishly, but out of mere desperation. He was scared, I think we can all see that with hindsight now. Suns-”

“Isn’t completely blameless, and you damn well know it. I know that they didn’t mean things to happen, but it did, it was criminal.”

“Their only crime,” Wind is quick to defend, to the point, knife sharp and scathing, “Was caring .”

“They gave an unstable iterator sensitive information knowing he was not in the right mind to act on it in a reasonable manner. That’s at least three violations of our intrinsic rules, pretty damning if I say so myself!”

“Then it seems myself and Suns are both damned.”

Sig blinks dumbly, confusion washing over him in thick waves, “What?”

“How is giving that information to Five Pebbles any different than sharing the discoveries I made that led to you cutting your wires off and going on a happy jaunt across the continent?” 

“The difference is that I’m stable!”

A shake of the overseer once again, Wind seems to be doing that a lot, “If you had slipped up, if you had made a mistake that you could never come back from, do you think I would not feel the same guilt they did back then? Do you think I would not act the same way?”

“You’d make a weird slugcat and toss it out into the world?”

“Did you not do the exact same?”

“I… well yes but… uh… You’ve got me there, Wind. But c’mon, I was in my right mind! You were just as excited as I was about doing this!”

Wind sighs, rattling, exasperated, “You were completely manic. I was… frightened,” He pauses a moment, thinking perhaps, “After you went dark, I kept asking myself if what I did was right. I kept questioning my choices, for the first time in my very long life I was… unsure. It was not a comfortable thing I assure you. But yes, perhaps I was excited, and perhaps that led to me making unwise choices, the same events that led to Suns sharing that information with Pebbles.”

“But I’m here! You’re here! I’m fine, you’re fine, everything is going to be okay! What does it matter if the job gets done?”

“How many of your messengers suffered because it did not matter if the job got done?”

Sig pauses, caught between an almost panic-like state and fury, he can barely muster a reply but if he’s being honest, truly and openly honest, has he not thought the same? Hadn’t Suns said exactly that? He was wrong, he knows that now, and Blue, Hunter; they had to suffer for it. The silence wears on. He can hear Wind sigh again, distantly, as if through fog.

“I am sorry, No Significant Harassment, that was unfair of me.”

“No,” The word comes out, heavy, leaden, he needs a further moment to continue, “No no you’re right. You’re right. I was wrong, it was cruel, I will never make that mistake again.”

“I was still being unfair. I am just worried for you, for everyone involved in this disaster.”

“I know Wind. I get it. I am too,” Silently, he waits, listening to the rain crash against the world, “Can I confess something to you?”

“Will it anger me further?”

“Probably."

“Tell me regardless.”

“Is this therapy?”

A small snort of laughter, the heavy atmosphere brightens just slightly, “I do not think I am qualified for such activities, I have too many of my own problems to untangle but at the very least I can listen, I am good at that.”

Sig adverts his eyes, drops his gaze to where his fingers fiddle with his scarf, picking at a loose thread, “I miss them. But I don’t have any right to. I was unkind, I see that now. We fought, I said things I should not have said, things I can’t undo, things I have to try to undo no matter what it costs me,” His gaze lifts to the ceiling of his shelter, picks out the cracks in the worn concrete while he steels his nerves, “I am worried about Moon, desperately so, but Suns they… they tried to contact me, they were begging me to reply and I just ignored them, acting like they’d just come back after a few days of simmering in disappointment and anger and I…”

“Take your time.” Kind, gentle, he had not expected that.

Sig continues, sick of taking his time with things, breathless, “I ignored them. For more cycles that I can currently count. And when I did finally pluck up the courage they… Wind reading those broken words, reading how they tried so hard to apologise to me when I was the one who acted unkind, it felt like watching Moon go down all over again. It felt like I’d had something robbed from me, like someone unbolted one of my main frontal processors and legged it.”

“Sig-”

“Really? Now of all times? I’m trying to be serious here, they…” Sig almost chokes on his emotions here as they bubble up from the prison he’s locked them in. He stutters out the rest of his words against his wishes, “They’re probably dead, Wind. They’re probably dead and I could have helped. I let it happen because I had to be right, I had to be the one hurt the most. And now they’re gone .”

“Do not say that, we do not know why their communications cut out, their mast could have simply fallen.”

“No. No I know they’re gone. I sent an overseer and it just came back saying they don’t exist in the space they’ve always occupied.”

“I need you to-”

“I know I made jokes about getting overseers to gnaw at the bedrock but iterators don’t just vanish. They’ve gone down, they’re dead Wind. There’s no other explanation!”

“Sig. No Significant Harassment. I need you to calm down.”

But Sig merely shakes his head, “No. They’re gone, I know it. Why am I even making myself go all the way there just to look at a corpse? I hate this Wind, why do I feel like this? Why do I feel so awful?”

“Because you care .”

The simplicity of those words is enough to snap him out of the downwards spiral.

“I care?”

“Yes. You care. About them. You care a great deal actually, despite how you act. You would not get so angry with their mistakes and lapses in judgement. Because you care.”

A grating breath, his fans stutter and jump in his chest, “Yeah. Yeah I do.”

“You try to stuff it all down inside of you but you cannot run from it forever. You care about the people in your life, you love them, and are cared for, loved in return, in whatever way you can be. That is why you feel like this, because you care, and you care very deeply. It is natural to feel bad. It is okay to feel bad. You care about them.”

“I care.”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps more than I should…” Wistful, light, he suddenly finds himself laughing, hiccuping on the sound as he wheezes, gasps for breath.

“...Are you okay? Sig? No Significant Harassment? Void I think I have broken him.”

It takes a few moments, achingly long for Wind he’s sure, but Sig calms, breathes out a puff of vapor from his fans, time seems to stop in this little hideyhole away from the greater world, it almost reminds him of his chamber, strangely comforting after his years of begging to leave.

“Sorry sorry, I just remembered something Suns said to me back then. They said something really similar. Void I am an idiot, aren’t I?”

“I would not quite put it like that…”

“Stupid stupid stupid. How didn’t I see it sooner?!”

“You are scaring me, my friend. I think you have lost it.”

Sig just shrugs, “I think I have yeah. Yeah.”

“Do you need a moment? I can shut up for a while and allow you to have some space. This is all very new, your sensors are perhaps unsure of what to make of it all.”

“Nah. Like I said, I think I just realised what Suns meant by something they said.”

Ever patient, Wind presses him for an answer, “Which is ?”

“They said they cared for me, perhaps more than they should do.”

“I… see?”

Sig gives him a sideways glance, as if he’s trying to call Wind a moron in his own special way as he explains in simple terms, “It sounds as if they meant that with romantic intent.”

Wind laughs, quickly silences himself with a stifled ‘ oh fuck ’ before he regains composure, coughing.

“I’m being serious here!”

“Forgive me I just… was not expecting you to just outright say such a thing. I, ah, hate to dash your dreams but no. Just no.”

A scoff, mildly offended, “What? Don’t think they’d stoop this low? Figuratively and literally, I am kind of short like this.”

“It is not that, I am sorry if I caused insult. It is just, oh how do I explain this?” Wind searches for his words for a moment, Sig hangs on with baited breath, Wind picks up the thread once again, “Suns is of a generation where iterators just were not built the same way we are; it is not that they cannot love, just that they do not understand it, or know how to. They do not have the emotional processing power or the software to learn it, at least in the way we know, but they do seem to be fond of you in a sense of the word.”

“So what you’re saying is ‘ fat chance, buster ’?”

“I am saying that even if you are correct there is no way they would be able to understand it in the correct way. Or in a way we would understand.”

“I could teach them!” Sig has no idea why he decided to blurt those words out, they merely escaped without his consent.

“I thought your eyes were only for Moon. Or am I wrong in that assessment?”

He moves to confirm, yeah, Moon is his treasure, his most important person in the whole world, his guiding light. He adores her and everything she does; her bell-like laughter, her midnight blue paint, her voice that dances like a melody, her entire being. She’s why he’s here, why he’s even bothering to go to Suns in the first place. Because he needs help. Forget that Wind easily fills that space. Forget the tiny sparks of doubt that shoot through him. Forget all that. She’s his world, he can’t doubt that or else he loses everything . He loves Moon. He can’t love Suns too, it just doesn’t work like that.

“You’re right Wind, let’s just leave it there.”

“... You doubt yourself.”

“Nope. No I don’t! Nuh-uh. I’m already half insane buddy, don’t want to go the whole mile. Forget I asked and forget I said anything. We’re going to be quiet now.”

“You’re impossible,” Wind lets out a fond sigh, “Well if you are set on being insane then I may as well join you, it is a long way to Suns from here and considering you’ve already gotten lost once you’ll need a guide.”

“...Thanks Wind.”

“Whatever for?”

“For being a real one.”

He can almost hear the eye roll, “What would you do without me?”

“Hopefully not make a fool of myself and fist fight a second red centipede?”

“ Ah . We can only hope my friend. We can only hope.”

Chapter Text

The rebellious drumming of the seemingly endless torrents of rain upon the battered earth is finally brought to heel, silenced, slain, but in its wake is a maelstrom of biting buffeting steam as Sig exits his shelter to witness the geothermal power plant shake off the last vestiges of sleep, rumbling, grumbling into wakefulness. His vents huff out their own puff of vapour as they stutter and strain in the heavy humidity yet, despite his misgivings about stumbling across walkways through hissing gouts of steam and curtains of fog, he has no other choice but to continue forwards. The path he has chosen is set in stone, there is no turning back and no room for doubt. Sig supposes then that it is a mercy that the narrow bridges over the thermal pits glowing scorching amber below have yet to completely rust away, the chains and barriers remaining stable enough for him to shimmy across as fast as he likes, the memory of those tip-tapping centipede legs echoing through his mind. 

Meeting one of those vile monstrosities here would spell his doom. Sig really doesn’t want to entertain the admittedly hilarious image of waking in the next world to a sea full of his creators shaking their heads at him in exasperation and disappointment. Forget them he’ll just be disappointed with himself if that’s how he goes out! Imagine being the only iterator to be melted into an unrecognisable pile of slag after falling into a broiling thermal put just because an overgrown piece of murder spaghetti with a taste for violence decided he looked edible. That does bring up a couple questions he’s had lingering in the back of his mind for some time though; do centipedes actually eat metal? He’s observed them chewing on the debris and nibbling at exposed wires, but do they actually eat it? Suns once said they had a minor problem with the things snipping at exposed fibre optic cables around the belly of their greater structure, but neither of them at the time thought the creatures were consuming pieces of them. He’ll just have to ask Wind when he’s able to communicate again, his rains cut their conversation short so for now Sig is on his own with his host of inane musings. It’ll be nice to fill the time with chatter again.

Though…

The words they’d shared within that tiny shelter continue to sit heavy across his shoulders, continue to wrap their hands around his throat with a vice tight grip. But those same words, those manic revelations realised in the depths of that night, are also a pushing force like gentler hands upon his shoulders making sure he keeps stumbling, fumbling forwards towards a goal that seems so impossibly far away, a goal that is barely a speck upon that distant horizon. But unlike his purpose for being built, this goal can be achieved with the correct amount of effort and patience and hard work. While he certainly can put in the effort, while he is willing to work (let anyone say otherwise, he dares them to) Sig is woefully lacking in patience, but there is scant to be done about that. The time will pass as slow as it pleases no matter how much he tries to rush it along. It’s okay, he has to tell himself, Suns will still be there, Moon will still be there, his friends will be waiting exactly where he left them and Wind will be back soon and maybe he won’t waste a whole cycle wandering around in circles this time. 

Sig leaves the walkways behind with a barely repressed sigh of relief, glad to not have to deal with gouts of hot steam and certain doom if he stumbled over the edge. Not looking where he’s going, distracted by the sound of dripping water, he rounds the next corner a little too quickly, a little too casually. Suddenly, his feet slip upon the light film of damp that clings to the metal floor. He stumbles. Trips. Skitters to a stop as he almost tumbles over the edge of a broken wall. Fingers clawing upon loose rubble and only saving his hide by feebly grasping onto a jutting pipe that sticks haphazardly out of the pile of debris, a handful of tiny pebbles skip off the hanging edge and into the dark below one by pitiful one. Sig does not hear them hit the bottom. Hand on chest, wide eyed, he carefully drags himself up onto his trembling legs, shuffling until his back hits the opposite wall, the dull drone of the waking machines pulsing through his body along with a distant warmth, his own heartbeat thumps in sync with it. That was too close. Far too close . This facility hasn’t been manned in an exceptionally long time, whatever schematics and blueprints he can remember of the place are bound to be beyond useless now. The paths he takes are familiar in the way somewhere only can be when only ever seen through video feeds and grainy photos, Sig finds himself woefully unaware of each collapsed section and each new passage. Carefully, he continues, eyes darting this way and that, ever searching for threats and pitfalls.

Despite wandering the twists and turns, dragging time behind him, the old rusted great doors that still lead out to the dismal remains of his copper mines slide into view, standing there like tall decrepit guardians. Years of grime buildup, disuse, battering rains and structural failure have rendered the passage nigh unusable, but by now Sig likes to think he’s gained some experience with wiggling through narrow pipes and tight spaces. Standing back to assess the situation he can see a busted window high above, yet another pile of rubble and several hanging dead wires his makeshift ladder to reach it in lieu of the one that is naught but several sad bent poles and scrap metal laying at his feet. Still, despite his determination brewing deep down inside his fingers hesitate to grasp the wires before him. Something within him churns at the thought of it alone, but stepping forth, trying to force himself past that blockade, Sig finds himself helplessly stuck. As morbid as it is these wires, severed as they are, can be traced all the way back to his empty puppet chamber and dying body above. They’re a part of him, a part he’s thrown away to chase silly fantasies. Another stepping stone, another sacrifice to trample upon on his journey towards whatever hopeless dream he’s chasing.

No. It isn’t hopeless.

His legs refuse to move.

He has sacrificed so much.

His fingers tremble at his side.

But that sacrifice will mean nothing if he stands here waiting.

His breaths come out as gasps, painful, dry.

Everything; himself, Blue, Hunter, all of it will mean nothing if he doesn’t just move .

If he had a stomach and a maw he’d gag and retch as he grips the wire tight, tugging it with his full weight as he woefully tries to shimmy himself upwards, feet digging into the unfeeling concrete wall as he ascends. Sig can almost feel it, the pull, his metal fingers upon the plastic cover, the way the socket strains to stay latched to the wall, the way the wires spark and jiggle and-

He all but forces his way through the remains of the window, sliding down the curve of the building, tripping on his own scarf instead of sticking the landing. For a moment a fleeing thought runs past him, giggling, mocking; ‘ how much of me is still alive in there? ’ but Sig has no desire to ponder upon it, catching it, crushing it, refusing to acknowledge it lest it slow him further. He is not a fast man for one who is supposedly in a hurry. A second thought finds him as he brushes the dirt from his robe. A thought he lets sit for a moment before dusting that away too, moving forward, one eye towards the now gaping open sky of heavy grey clouds that lay above like a funeral pall. Sig will not let himself worry, cannot allow himself to worry, but now he’s out of the looming shade of his can there’s a chance for every vulture in a several mile radius to come swooping down out of the great above thinking he’s a quick and easy snack. And considering that vultures are not his preferred organism to mess around with he knows little of their habits. For all he knows, he could be the perfect meal for a winged sky terror. 

But at last it seems he is in luck.

Exiting through the north-west entrance has led him out to the mines, a series of gaping ravines both hewn by the hand of nature and the hand of his creators, held together by a series of metal bridges and twisting train lines. At the far, to the west, where his mines end, in the shade of his retaining wall, he knows there's a massive train depot, a final resting place of his wide-spread commerce. In the good old days, back when he was young and even more intolerable to be around than he is now, he was a hub of activity, not only being the owner of several expansive farm arrays but a couple of rich copper mines as well. There’s train lines leading to everywhere, spanning the landmass like threads of a woven spider web, like cracks upon a frozen lake. If he can pick out the right thread, untangle the mess, dance along the correct fracture, all he’ll have to do is follow the tracks and hope; hope harder than he’s ever done before, that he can truly walk all the way to where Suns waits for him. And then he’ll still need to have hope in spades for them both to get back to Moon. Because they will be alive when he gets there. Suns wouldn’t just allow themself to die when they’ve unfinished business to attend to, they’re waiting for him to message them back, after all. Of course they’ll be alive. 

There’s no other option. 

A thought. Simple. There. An insult sung in the same gentle tone Moon used to use when she scolded him.

‘ What if they gave up because you failed them? ’

No way. No . They’ll be alive, waiting, angry with him for taking so long, excited to go on this adventure with him, and they’ll want to go help Pebbles of course, not that he’ll deny them that, no no, it’s the least he can do and-

“Pay attention, this bridge ends in open air.”

Wind’s voice is enough to snap Sig back to reality as he does a surprised little jump, lets out a yelp, and turns towards the silvery overseer, his one good eye narrowed as he spits his words out, “You do know how to make an entrance, don’t you?”

“It was that or allow you to stroll to your doom, it is quite the way down.”

A sigh, a puff of white into the stillness. Wind speaks true, the old rickety bridge ends abruptly, nothing but sky at its sorry end, its other half a mangled mess of mashed rebar, steel beams stuck out of the heap of detritus mockingly close but much too far to reach without significant risk. But he could do it. Maybe. Just maybe. He recalls that in the silence of waiting, in those moments after Pebbles had cast out Suns’ messenger, he had prompted them to speak at length about what they had seen through their overseer as they guided it through familiar yet changing lands. They had laughed, spoke fondly, tenderly , almost with a wistful tone about how they watched their poor little slugcat struggle greatly to cross the treacherous expanse of Moon’s underhang, the creature having somehow gotten lost despite their instructions. They had recounted this leap of faith it took as a blue lizard snapped at its tail, it's only saving grace the tossed spear that had lodged into the side of on of Moon’s steam vents it used to heave itself up. Then there was that almost comical escape act it pulled while being chased by the snipping maws of not one, not two, but three miros vultures, even going as far as to use one of the predators as a mount to shove itself into a very narrow vent in the hopes of surviving.

And it had. It had survived. It even made it home. If one small slugcat can make it, he can. He must . He wonders if the messenger felt the same conflicting emotions he does, he wonders if it worried when faced with that leap how he does, he wonders if it looked up at his can as it passed. He wonders if it wondered in kind. It is such a shame they never met face to face, such a marvellous little beast it had been.

“No Significant Harassment you are not-”

“It’s Sig. S-I-G, Wind, I told you this, you even got it right last time.”

A sigh, like a breeze, “You are not planning on trying to jump across, are you? If you give me some time I will sort through my maps and plot a safer course for you.”

“Those’ll be pretty outdated by now, we’ll get lost and I’ll waste more time than I have already. I jump and try not to die, simple.”

“I know I cannot stop you but I ask you to reconsider.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Do not nuh-uh me! I am being serious, there is no room for error here!”

“Then I’ll just have to not make any of those.”

“It seems we are at an impasse then.”

Sig hits the overseer with an over the shoulder glance, “Nope. We’re not. I’m jumping.”

And he does. Tucks in his scarf this time, takes a running start like a mad man, and he jumps. Soaring through the open sky, nothing but clouds above, gaping ravine below, the air rushing past him, in flight, falling…

And his green metal hands grasp for the shards of rebar, making contact with a steel beam instead, the rest of his body following shortly with a screech of metal on metal and a resounding oof . For a terrible few seconds he hangs there, limp, swaying, before his fans kick back into action, his shaking arms dragging him up onto the mountain of broken scrap. Mere seconds after he lets out a victorious shout, Wind’s overseer joins him, tendrils swishing around angrily, almost crackling with the emotion its iterator bleeds with.

“You are a fool and a madman.”

“Yeah… fully aware.”

“I never want to see you do that again. As acting senior consider it an order, not a suggestion.”

A mock salute, “Aye aye cap’n! But… Void… do not expect me to make a habit out of that.”

“So I am right? You are exceedingly reckless and stupid?”

“Sure. Next time, we do it your way,” Sig flashes Wind a thumbs up as he hops up, ready to keep going, “Mmm, the copper cliffs, get a stink of that delicious dirt! As far as I’m aware the biggest issues for me here will be miros birds if I’m willing to brave the mines below and vultures up top round here. I could walk the bridges but that’ll be more jumping if they’re all as broken as this one, and well, the scavengers pretty much own this place now, no way about it I’ll have to bump into them.”

“Do you at least have a neutral relationship with them?” There is a slight tone of exasperation here, Sig’s sure to be getting a real telling off later.

Sig scoffs as he locates the next ladder down, he’ll take the upper pathways towards the depot in the west he thinks, outrunning a big angry bird sounds more fun than outrunning a centipede, “How would I form a relationship with the beasts if I’ve spent my whole life in a metal box?”

“By not bothering them with overseer surveillance, by flushing unwanted pearls out into your landfill wastes and guiding them to find them, by warning them of coming rain with your sirens. There are ways.”

“...Yeah I think these guys will probably hate me considering my main form of refuse is whatever weird lizard I’ve decided to make this week. Plus that slugcat I made that spat acid, the uh… was it green or was that too on the nose?”

“It was obnoxiously pink. I recall it well because you were testing the messenger system by sending it to Five Pebbles with a pearl containing certain… contents merely to irritate him further. A joke, you had said, but to me it felt like an intended insult.”

“Oh yeah I remember now!” Sig stifles a laugh yet his words wear the colour of humour afterwards, “Yeah she liked to eat scavs and considering where she went my overseer went they won’t like me. That’s if they can put two and two together and not get ninety-seven.”

“Pick up a few pearls if you see any and offer them, as passage or peace. I am certain you have tossed many over the years.”

A small shrug, “We’ll see. I’ve got some in my pockets and bag, you like my bag?”

“Yes. Very stylish. Surprising that you chose to obtain something practical.”

“Blue left it behind. The, uh, wild slugcat I borrowed… wow that sounds worse outloud than I realised it would,” For a moment Sig pauses, fingers tracing the shapes of the fractured stone under his fingers, “I wonder what happened to Pinkie now I thinkie about it.”

“ Really ? That pun was terrible.”

“Oh it wasn’t that bad, was it?”

“Awful, I jest not. Regardless, why the sudden sympathy for slugcats? You have never shown care nor consideration before for those dumb beasts, what changed?”

A second, more obvious shrug, “Too little too late, I know, but a certain blue missy and her pup made me see that perhaps there was more to those creatures I made than I thought. That maybe they were worthy of being respected. Sure trying now won’t bring back Pinkie, or the other one I sent you, or Hunter, or Blue, or Rivulet, or Suns’ messenger, or anything else we treated as a disposable life, but it helps the guilt feel less heavy, I suppose.”

Wind is silent, watching Sig stuff himself into a crack to avoid a passing vulture. Both say little but both understand to a degree; they are creations abandoned to die or go insane or suffer or do all three, and they, despite knowing this, did the same to their own purposed beings. It has become less a circle of abuse and neglect and more a spiral, going down down and never ending. But maybe, just maybe, Sig thinks, maybe it stops here.

“Wind, it’s getting darker out here by the second, can you use your maps you’re so fond of to find me a shelter?”

A few minutes later, seconds before the rains begin to fall, Sig crawls his way into his next rest stop, about halfway there he guesses.

“So why here?” Wind asks idly, letting the locks seal them both inside, or rather Sig and the overseer, “Would it not be easier to go directly north?”

“Nah, that leads out to my primary reservoir and while I’m okay with taking leaps of faith that’d make most creatures crap themselves-”

“How eloquent .”

“-I thought if I could get to the old train depot I could figure out which supply line headed towards Suns. Trouble is those lines are more tangled than my wires, and have you seen my wire management? Yikes .”

“That is uniquely clever of you, I am impressed with the forethought you have put into this.”

Sig kicks out his legs, reclining in the slightly more spacious shelter, “I don’t know whether to thank you or show you my finger.”

“Knowing you, my friend, you will do both at once.”

“Pfft yeah,” The rain fills the heavy silence, “Hey Wind. You really want me to promise not to make jumps like that again? Because I don’t think I can keep that, there’s going to be times when I don’t have a choice, no way ‘round it.”

A sigh crackles from the overseer, “Can you at least promise to look for alternate routes before simply tossing yourself off a bridge?”

“Yeah. Guess I could do that. Just so you don’t kill me when we actually meet face to face.”

“I would scarce even think of it, but you do lead me well into some thoughts I have been pondering upon and wished to share with you, if you would indulge me. It has been some time since I have been able to talk philosophy and the relationship between we iterators and the ideals, concepts even, that we are based in and upon.”

Sig forces down his sigh and grumble of contempt for the subject, for Wind’s sake, but he does mutter in a defeated tone, “I’m not the biggest fan of philosophy and the stain our people left behind in our blueprints and design, but I’ve got nowhere to go, and I guess you deserve it, being deprived of good conversion for so long.”

“Please, No Significant Harassment, this is debate and discussion, not conversation . You are good at conversation, and making an annoyance of yourself,” He can practically hear Wind roll his eyes, “And if I was looking for good debate I would not be talking with you. But you do dare to think outside of the box, quite literally now in fact-”

“Solid 10/10 pun, really. I’m serious.” 

It seems Wind is no longer listening, already beginning to mutter and mumble to himself mostly, Sig has taken to fiddling with his scarf while Wind loses himself in nonsensical ramble. if he doesn’t step in now he’ll be caught listening to a random tangent of thought for hours with no room to speak for himself, not the finest way to spend an evening, he still remembers being caught between Pebbles, Wind and Suns at the same time. Actual torture.

“So, your thoughts? You were saying? C’mon Windy if you want me to join in you gotta ask me questions instead of just chatting to yourself~”

“Do you think we, as manufactured creatures of machine, metal, microbes and flesh are bound to the Cycle as all other living beings are?”

“Damn, that’s a heavy one to start.”

“I did not say these questions would be easy, but there is no correct answer here. I merely wish for you to think.”

“Will this be on the exam?”

“If you have the time to write me an essay I would be open to reviewing it. I have all the time in the world on my hands.”

“No! No essays! Void, the last time I got laughed at by like… everyone.”

He can hear Wind choke back a laugh before he continues, “Yes, well, you did post forward a theory about the Void Sea being… what was it now?”

“Not an absence of anything or a corrosive force or even truly alive but merely a catalyst for something greater, an egg unbroken.”

“An egg! How ridiculous… ahem, my apologies. Your answer, if you would.”

Sig rolls his eyes with clear intent to come across as bored and bothers, “Well, it’s a good enough question to consider, I guess, but ultimately I think it’s moot. We don’t die that easy, though it does happen, we’ve seen it ourselves.” Sig gets himself comfortable despite a growing unease in the pits of him, despite his gears grinding against each other anxiously.

“If we die, truly, wholly die, do we simply wake back up again, as we have observed others being capable of, does the Cycle spit us back out again? Or are we simply gone?”

“I mean, depending on who you talk to that is, Sliver’s just not here anymore, right? To tell the truth I tried to avoid talking about her and the circumstances surrounding the Triple Affirmative as much as possible, it just doesn’t feel right to poke at her when she’s evidently not here to provide any insight.” He picks at another loose thread, “Plus, Moon thought she was best left in peace and Suns used to get this sad look in their eyes and they’d get all quiet. Didn’t like seeing them like that…”

A click of mechanical fingers, more a grinding of metal upon metal, more akin to the striking of a match, “Another question then; do we weather the storm, as monoliths, as graves, as epitaphs, memorials of a time long ago? And if the Cycle does carry us safely back to shore, what do we wake up as? Ourselves, unaltered, or something… else ?”

Sig winces here. The idea of being something other than him, the idea of being his entire body again, puppet and can linked together by the thin thread of his umbilical… both sensations are cold dread, ice through his very being, drowning, restrictive. It is a question he allows to sit by his side though, a question he allows to make a home with him, to scratch itself into his very being. If he did slip when he made his foolish leap of faith, if he did stumble and fall into the geothermal silos, if that centipede caught him and fried his circuits, if when he cut himself free of his slavery to escape the cage he called himself he had perished, what would have become of him? Would his puppet have simply laid there to rust, to gather dust? Would he mirror Moon and lay exactly where he fell? Or would the Cycle have executed some conjured form of twisted mercy and brought him back but different, changed ? A horror to any of his kin that would look upon him, a grim prophecy of what they could and would become should they die. The thought is as cold as winter snow but oh so vibrant in his mind. A flash of lighting. A glint of a knife in the dark. Urgh, philosophy . It always makes him think more than he likes, more than he usually does. And he hates thinking. But the fire has already spread, the forest is already alight, logically he knows he cannot fight a rarefaction cell that has already exploded.

“I think,” Usually those two words are followed by a chorus of groans, but Wind does not speak, merely waits with bated breath.

Sig continues, whisper light, lead heavy, words both sharp and soft, “I think that, if we die, should we die, I think that the Cycle would have to be kind to us, but not in the way others might think. I don’t think we get to just go, I don’t think it’s that easy, partially because I really really don’t want Pebbles to be right. I don’t want his ideals, his ideation, to carry weight behind it. I think we’d come back, y’know? I think we get to continue but not as we are, as something else.”

“What else can we be?”

“... Free, Wind, we can be free.” Sig breathes those words out like a prayer, barely audible, barely there, but in the silence of the rains they sound like gunshots.

“You think,” There is not a single trace of mockery in Wind’s tone, only thoughtful melancholy, only a careful yet hopeful yearning, “That we could become another being, become a vulture, a scavenger, a lizard, a centipede, a slugcat?”

“Hopefully not a centipede though, I don’t even know what I’d do with all those legs!”

“For your sake then, I hope not. It is a nice thought, thank you for indulging me.”

Sig leans back, closes his eyes and breathes out, filling the small space with a large puff of vapour, “Yeah. It’s nice if nothing else. I kinda forgot how it felt to be hopeful about something, been a while.”

“Mmm,” Wind adds thoughtfully, lapsing into a comfortable silence until, “I am glad I introduced you to Suns, they have rubbed off on you.”

Sig is immediately wide awake, hands cupping the eye of the overseer, almost frantically, “And what’s that supposed to mean?!”

“Nothing! Nothing, I promise it is simply that, well, they were-”

“ Are .”

“ Are my main debate partner, we often spent endless days locked into circular talks and theory, testing each other’s limits as much as we dared. For someone whose processors are as old as theirs they were quick to engage. Moon, not so much, she enjoyed talking but she did not enjoy the debate and-”

“I can see why you talked for days, both of you never shut up. The point, Wind. Please?”

A sigh, “In the past you would not have even entertained the thought of engaging with me on this matter, or anyone else. If I recall you told Pebbles to-”

“And Moon made me write a three-thousand word apology to him about it, yes I do recall, continue.”

“They have changed you.”

He tilts his head, drops his hands to his sides, allows the overseer to wiggle freely, offended at the sudden attack, “Have they really?”

“They have, I had hoped they would.”

“Funny, I don’t feel changed Wind. I’m still the same old me.”

“When I used to look at you, I admit, all I saw was a child, ignorant and selfish, throwing his toys about, throwing a tantrum. But I look at you now and you are… light.”

“ Light ?”

“So very light. Like air. Free. Like water. Flowing. You are both the wind and the tide, easy going but a force of nature, able to change your path as you please, able to be changed.”

Sig turns away a little, a small embarrassed chuckle leaving him, “Aww, c’mon Wind, if I had skin and a proper cardiovascular system in this puppet of mine I’d be blushing!”

“How wonderful it must be, to change, to be changed. I admit I find myself stuck in my ways, and more than a little envious of your current situation.”

“Yeah but you’re going to join me, right? You’re not going to leave all this to me and Suns when I drag them out of there?” He lets the delusion lead him, because Sig knows if they’re no longer of this world, if they’re gone, he will never forgive himself for being their executioner.

“Yes,” Slight, almost sad, “One day. Yes. For now I am content to be like this.”

“Well like I said, if you don’t meet me at Moon’s old place I’ll come get you myself, along with a slew of angry insults!”

Wind’s laugh rumbles like thunder, “I am sure you will, I am sure. Yes. It is good to be certain of something, it almost feels like hope.”

“Exactly! Now, we better prepare for tomorrow because we’ll be passing into scavenger territory and those guys do not like me very much, any tips?”

The rest of the day bleeds away with idle chatter colouring the small moments, and somehow, where the despair cracks and frays, tiny pearls of hope continue to glitter, held close, held safe, held in high regard. Sig desperately clings to that hope, both hands grasping as tight as he can. Because if he does not have it, does not hang onto it, there is little he has left. But he has Wind. And he supposes with his help everything might just turn out okay.

Chapter Text

“You seem to be in a predicament.”

“You don’t say!” Sig snaps up at where Wind’s overseer lazily observes him from a lofty perch as he struggles to drag an insultingly large and offensively heavy green lizard away from a group of nervous young scavengers, their bright googly eyes watching him with clear distress not knowing if he is more of a threat than the lizard.

“And how did this happen again? I left you alone for half a day and rejoin you to see… this .”

“ Well… ”

It's a good question actually. The day had started normally, or at least as normally as it could when greeting a world he had never expected to see, a life that should not exist. Sig had wiggled free of his shelter, stretched the ache from his disused joints listening as each one popped in sequence as his systems sluggishly rebooted and his fluids circulated through his myriad wires once more while he wondered if he should oil his knees soon or how and when he should perform a routine maintenance check and if he should try to fix his bad eye as he briefly allowed his thoughts to touch upon how his body, through some miracle, managed to maintain enough energy to keep going for days away from any meaningful connection to his greater body. Free like this, unbound, unchained, he doubts that what had stopped him from peeling back layers of metal and flesh would stop him from taking a peek at the rest of his internals. There is so little he knows about his own biology, his own anatomy. A dusty outcropping, unsanitized, wide open to the elements, is not the place to pop the hood to go rummaging through his own guts after all. The thought had been placed on the shelf with many others of its kind, the words shared in those quiet moments with Wind linger on the breeze despite it all. That seems to be a recurring theme in his life.

He’d walked the bridges spanning the gaping wounds of the many ravines, almost in a daze, hoping that his feet would drag him in the right direction, the gaze of the sun high above the clouds an ever present judgement.

‘ They can see you, they know what you’ve done. ’

It had been going well, but his luck as always decided to dry up in a sudden drought. A massive blockage had stopped his wandering; like a mockery of its former state, the poor remains of the sad destitute dragline excavator had become little more than a nuisance in death after having toppled from a weathered cliff high above, crushing several of the steel bridges as it fell. Those bridges in turn had become naught more than a mangle of twisted metal all folded upon each other like paper sculptures, crumpled by uncaring bored hands and then tossed, missing the waste basket. It had slowly become more and more concerning just how poorly maintained his inner expanse had become, especially concerning the erosion of the very ground he stands upon. While he’d pondered upon his path forth, waddling back and forth, a sad thought wormed its way through him; his structure will fall one day, sooner rather than later. Sig had thrown those nasty words into the trash along with the rest of his scraping worries, deciding instead to test his weight on a pole but had scampered backwards when it groaned, the whole precarious structure moaning in pain before he’d even attempted to make a climb up and over. 

It was then, as he considered his options of either scrambling up as fast as possible, climbing down and hoping not to get crushed or doubling back on himself to find another way round, that a great shadow had blotted out the weak watery light of the morning sun, the only scant warning Sig had received before he found himself leaping out of the way of a well aimed harpoon shot, the hiss of angry vents following suit as a large vulture crowned with two deadly spines, donning its signature mask, wings tipped with a sigh of dirty yellow, came crashing into the debris tower.

It was a beautiful specimen; huge wingspan, sharp green eyes, fine silky black plumage and pure murderous intentions, its hunger driving it forward, a true king amongst its peers. And clearly fiercely territorial. Sig hadn’t a second more to marvel at the vulture before it launched its second harpoon towards him, the other thankfully still wedged in the ground to his left. The second joined the first, point lodging itself in a rusted crack as Sig all but hit the deck seconds before being skewered, the vulture hissed angrily with its vents spewed magenta fumes into the cool morning sky as it wiggled to keep its balance upon its precarious perch. Sig saw that as his chance to flee, not even looking where he ran as he turned on his heel, and began to race across battered stone, swinging swaying metal bridges, before diving into a narrow passageway just as a thunderous flap of wings and drone of pistons passed him by in a blur of fury. 

For a moment he had simply stood, let himself digest his brush with the beast, before he allowed himself to let out a grumble of displeasure. Great ! The open skies clearly are much too dangerous to walk under, the broken machine still stubbornly blocked his way, and by this point he had become so stupidly lost he had no idea what direction to walk, and to top it all off Wind wasn’t even there to help. He’d eventually made the excellent and reasonable choice to aimlessly meander after resting a few dull seconds more. 

He’d walked. 

And wandered.

And ambled.

And Void, he’d even swore a few times before somehow eventually stumbling upon his current situation.

And now here he is, holding the tail of a very angry and very hefty green lizard in his equally green hands. The click of a camera, the tell tale sign that Wind is taking photos of this event, has him taking his eyes off of his new friend to glare at the silvery overseer above him with as much contempt as his expressionless face can manage.

“You could help instead of, oh I don’t know, collecting blackmail to send to Innocence so she can grow her hoard of dirt on me? C’mon Wind, throw me something I can stab it with, or a rock, or something!”

“I am afraid I cannot offer much help here.” Wind’s sigh cuts through his tirade cleanly, “I am actually impressed with your, how would one put it? Lack of common sense and affinity for somehow exceeding my expectations of your assured incompetence? No offense.”

“Oh sure sure, none taken. What was I meant to do?! Let this thing eat the scavs? Like sure, I’m not their biggest fan, quite a critic actually, but I’m not about to let a lizard eat younglings just because maybe a few of them really liked my electrical cables at the bottom of my north-eastern lower struts and decided they’d cut a few off. Or that another gang of them-”

“A group of scavengers is called a Parliament .”

“Oh my bad- stop snapping at me - that a parliament of scavs raided a locked pearl vault in my city, Void knows how they got - lizard I will let you go once I’ve dragged your sorry tail out of here, Saints Above!”

Wind’s overseer shakes itself in a mimicry of how its Iterator would shake his head, “It cannot understand you, you are aware of this yes? Unless you have been granting the Mark of Communication to every creature that randomly decided to wander into your chamber. Not that I would put it past you but surely you had better things to be doing?”

Sufficiently far away, satisfied that he can see the young scavengers escape to safety up a series of dangling wires and debris that the lizard cannot climb, Sig releases the critter, which immediately, to the surprise of noone, decides to round on him and clamp down onto one of his arms, shaking the limb back and forth as if the dumb thing is trying to pull it from the socket. Sig merely looks back up to where Wind looks down upon him, gesturing wildly as if to say ‘ can you believe this guy? ’.

“Oh you little- you’re going to break teeth on my chassis you know? Stupid thing will you just- oof, this guy actually has a bit of bite behind his bite, you see this Wind?”

“Please get your hand out of that lizard's mouth.”

“Look at this though! I can have a better look at him now! You can tell he’s a fella because,” With his spare hand Sig grabs a hold of the lizard's tail once more and lifts it, “Here, see those bumps? He’s packing! Also he’s a much more vivid green than a female would be, the ladies tend to be a bit more muted and a bit more chunky, the men are scrawnier, probably why I was able to drag him around like that.”

“How undignified, please release the poor thing before you teach it how to feel embarrassment. And need I stress; get your hand out of its mouth .”

Sig huffs a little, mumbles, “You’re no fun sometimes Windy,” And swiftly gives the lizard a whack to the sensitive spot just behind its heavy armoured head, pulling his slobbered and slightly bloody hand free, clutching a single sharp tooth in hand.

“Are you serious?”

“What? Call it a trophy of triumph! I did tell him that he’d break teeth on me, metal is not edible you know. Yes, Wind, I am aware that I don’t have a mouth to find out for certain before you say something!”

The overseer rolls its eye, and despite his clear exasperation Wind at least sounds somewhat amused, “Perhaps you can ask the scavengers who stole your wires if you can borrow some to make a necklace out of it. Or perhaps you can gft it to Looks to the Moon when you next see her, she has always held a fondness for mementos and clutter.”

“Ah, well, you know me Wind,” Sig gazes down at his bloody prize before pocketing it, “I’ll probably drop it somewhere before then.”

A small part of him thinks she wouldn’t care for it despite what Wind thinks. Moon had liked lantern mice and those scavengers that look like they’ve only ever known depression their whole lives with their shaggy fur and droopy eyes. Yeah. She’d never shown much interest in lizards like he had.

The weeping wretched remains of the depot station practically heaves with more scavengers than Sig can manually count, eyes watching him from the darkness like a sea of dancing stars. In the still shadows of the once great mines everything is washed in shades of silvery blue and dismal grey, not even the inane scribbles the scavengers have slapped haphazardly upon nearly every surface can bring colour to the place. More importantly, at least more than the vermin that infests the corpse his creators left behind, is the various unlabelled tracks that head out into the vast distance beyond his ruptured retaining wall. Sig can see it, in the distance. More has crumbled in the time it has taken him to rip his wires from his puppet, for him to discard himself and drag himself here, to now, to where he once again finds himself at a crossroads. This time a quite literal one. Wind can be of no help to him now as he stalks through the thick gloom, the scavengers would hunt his overseer down and dispose of it, tearing its eye from its little hologram body with nary a care. Sig has no clue if he has more than the one left in his arsenal but between them they decided not to take the chance, he himself did not think to ask Wind about it, he hadn’t wanted to poke at a sore subject. Instead he returns to his task of investigating the train tracks laid out before him like a scrambled jigsaw.

This track leads out east but then quickly drops off. The next one south, south-east, branching out in wrong directions everywhere, he starts to doubt if he ever even had a line that headed out to the north-west. Then it dawns on him that he’s on the exact opposite side of the station than he should be, grumbling as he meanders through storerooms, squeezes himself through narrow gaps between shipping containers, sneaks past the watchful scavengers that gaze upon him with tilted heads and suspicious eyes. The only thing that rattles around in his pockets is the curved tooth of the lizard and he doubts that they’ll find any value in that, he’d bribed the toll with every pearl he had on his person just to get in here. Sig wonders what it is about pearls they like so much, the creatures are completely incapable of accessing the information stored upon the crystalline matrix after all so it can’t possibly be that. Is it the shiny surface that catches their eye, the purity of the clean white colour, the way they sparkle and almost glitter under the synthetic light of the various neon signs, or some other reason he cannot discern? As a towering skyscraper Sig had never paid much mind to the wandering beasts that infested his body, he had viewed them as nothing more than lice. Now, well, they are still nothing more than lice but at least their sense of community and developing civilization is an interesting thing to watch.

He still does not like the scavengers. Thieves and scoundrels all.

But, he supposes, just from watching them, seeing their home, their intelligence, that there is little doubt that one day, in some far flung future, they’ll dominate, develop, and a new world will unfold, one where iterators are barely even a footnote, one where there will be nothing left of them all to be remembered.

If he’s lucky he might just live long enough to see it.

One.

Two.

Three .

His hands slick with water from the light drizzle and clinging mist almost slip upon the hanging wire as Sig swings himself across the gap, just barely managing to make it to the half-collapsed set of metal stairs, once an emergency exit, before he does. Wind offers a grumble at his broken promise but there is still a bit of a climb for him to break out of the broiling layer of clouds and into hopefully cleaner, less choking air. Dust blown up from the copper mines and smoke from the geothermal plant litter the atmosphere, catch in his stuttering fans, his mechanical lungs wheezing with the effort as he scrambles upwards towards his goal. In the end, Sig had found the train tracks that lead out into wilder lands, tracks he knows terminate somewhere near Suns’ main facility grounds, tracks that he’ll try to follow there and in doing so he had met his first snag. Part of his retaining wall had decided it no longer wished to stand the test of time and had crumbled as if to impede him further, crushing the tunnels and bridges, muddying the clear waters. As it is, he has to guess which direction to go, and at Wind’s suggestion he’d made the wonderful choice to gain some height. 

Wind seems to be regretting giving him the idea as he takes the most precarious route upwards. Broken pipes haemorrhage water down the near sheer walls, rebar and wires dangle loose sparking and spitting, slick and slimy moss clings to the damp concrete, his feet can barely find a grip upon the metal, and just to make things worse he’s almost hung himself with his scarf on multiple occasions when the damn thing tangled with some sort of jagged edge. But soon, he breaks through the imposing layer of grey clouds. Soon, he finds the lip of the top of his wall, aching and soaked, pulling himself up, rolling to a stop, and breathing out, soaked, spent. The air bites upon his metal chassis, nips at his exposed wire plugs at the back of his head, but it is a great deal more pleasant than huffing dirty smog and metallic dust he supposes. Wind’s overseer nudges him, he pushes it away with one hand, he needs time to remember how to be a person or at least how to breathe normally. Sig can barely register Wind’s mumbled unhappy words before the overseer jabs its little feely fronds into his broken eye. He yelps, swears, rubs at the offending injury while offering Wind a withering look.

“What was that for?! Did you not see how hard I worked my metal ass off to get up here?”

“ Look .”

Sig goes to roll his eyes but he pauses, drops his hand from where he covered his broken eye in offense, and he looks. In the distance there he stands. Imposing. Dark against the milky sky, clouds pouring from his towering body like sighs, a distant drone of his old processors shutting down. The head has been cut from the body but it’ll take a while for the structure to actually die, if it even does that is, this is, afterall, still a theory, an experiment. Sig has to admit though he is a gorgeous machine, a feat of engineering even among his peers, the crown of his city blissfully small. His main broadcast mast towers over even that, piercing the very heavens above, the washed out indigo of the sky littered by distant stars even in daylight.

“It is blue after all. Well. As close to blue as it’ll get at this altitude. How about that?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The sky.”

“Ah. I see. Indeed but that was not what I was trying to get you to look at.”

Sig does roll his eyes here, “Yes, I know, I’m a beautiful structure and my conduits are impressive and my size for a second generation is a miracle, you don’t need to say it Windy, I’ve heard it all before, you are a charmer though~”

“I have seen your structure before. I have seen better.”

“ Ouch , way to hurt a man's pride there pal.”

“Truly, I am sorry.”

“Oh how will I ever recover from such a grave insult! I am wounded, my friend! Pray, toss me into the Void Sea and let me be done with this world!”

“If you will cease the dramatics for a moment and humour me? Look there, north-east, not too far, you will see it.”

Sig stifles a laugh at Wind’s disdain, but he humours him all the same. The world beyond his facility grounds is a patchwork of floods and higher ground, battered and beaten by countless years of iterator rains, hidden by a rolling sheet of clouds. Now, there are gaps in that blanket, tears from where some have simply stopped breathing. His closest neighbour has fallen to her south. He tries to recall her name, desperately so, but it eludes him, slips away from his grasp. He had not spoken to her much, both had been far too preoccupied with working, with their own projects and friendships, but he knew that she liked bugs, that she had encouraged the bloom of spiders and centipedes across her structure, that she had messaged him long ago when he made his very first messenger to see if he thought using a different creature would work. She had suggested a noodlefly. Further out, there's more bones, more structures fallen to time. But he swallows down the bubbling discomfort, crushes his doubts and fears and focuses, looks to the north-east as far as his gaze can reach.

On the horizon, there is an iterator. Their can is surrounded by only a light layer of cloud, half of them seems to be hanging on by just a thread, a great gash splitting them in twain. But they yet live, they cling on despite it all. A tenacious soul, whoever it is. Someone who refuses to give up.

“That… has got to hurt.”

“I can imagine so, yes. I can only hope they continue to survive, at least until you cross the distance between you.”

“Yeah… wait, what ?”

Wind’s overseer looks up at him, pale white, blinding almost, “That can you see, the one split in two, the one still alive, but barely, you know who that is, yes? You know what I am going to say next, do you not?”

Sig takes a steadying breath, thankful he’s not stood, letting his eyes wander back over to that sad broken body so very very far away.

“That’s them, isn’t it? That’s Suns .”

“...Yes.”

“Wind. Wind they’re-”

“Yes.”

“How are they-”

“I know not.”

“But if I hadn’t… this is my-”

“Stop it. Now ,” Wind’s sudden harsh tone has him still, quiet, and with a sigh, he continues, softer now, “This is not your fault. You played a role in this, true, and I will admit my anger at that, but you were not aware of the consequences of your actions. You feel guilt for it? Then start by trying to fix it. Get up. Move. There is a distance to travel and you have yet to truly start.”

Sig heaves out a shaking sigh, runs his hands across the smooth planes of his head, closes his eyes, feels the sting behind the broken one for just a minute before he allows himself to snap back into place, searching the patchwork ground below. Searching for a sign of something, of a line that cuts through the wilds beyond, for his guide forwards. Not there… not there… there .

“I’ve found the tracks, Wind. Let’s go.”

Through jungle. Through swamps. Through icy sludge. Through thick mud.

He trudges forwards. 

Sig finds things he never knew flourished in the shadow of himself and his kin. Fields of feather-like fronds ten times taller than he that sway with even the slightest breeze. Giant mushrooms that glow in the blackest of nights in myriad colours, distantly humming in a voice he can only just catch if he tilts his head in the right way. Cutting through the wilderness like a great knife is the dead body of an iterator’s broadcast mast, the spire shattering the train tracks he’d been following but a sign he draws closer with each dismal similar day that passes him by. He barely stops. He barely speaks to Wind except to get directions, except to muster up some failed excuse of his own ineptitude. One day he crosses a chasm so deep he thinks he spies a glimmer of void gold at the bottom. The next he witnesses a mother vulture watch her chicks take flight for the first time. The one after that he discovers a nest of blue lizards by almost falling into it. And after that he gazes up into clear skies and discovers a blue so vivid that he has to manually force his eyes to adjust to the onslaught.

And the days go on.

And on.

And on.

They go on as he does, with him, without him. Caring not as each day turns, as the moon changes its face, a master in shapeshifting lies, as the sun grows colder with each step he takes, a sign that one day perhaps the world may know seasons once again.

“Do you think we’ll be too late?” He asks one day, resting upon a rocky outcrop, overlooking a flooded valley as an iterator he’s never even heard of spills vapour out into the sky.

Wind hmms to himself, “We can only wonder.”

“We need to be sure.”

“Why are you so desperate? If they have perished we mourn the passing of a great friend, if they have not what is it you think you can do?”

“They need me, Wind,” Sig’s mutters those words out, quietly as if he’s scared to speak them, “They need me, nobody else. Is has to be me. I have to undo all of these mistakes.”

The day after is the one he sees the first slugcat. It is a small frail looking thing, so fluffy that at first he barely knows exactly what the creature even is. Sickly yellow, beady black eyes, it looks up at him with the utmost curiosity, wiggling around before scampering off into the bushes once more, a fleeting encounter at best, but one that spurs him off into a foolish chase, feet sinking into the soggy ground as he attempts to catch it. By the time he stands there, panting at the edge of the bushes, the slugcat is long gone, simply vanished into the shadowy tangle of overgrown trees. Sig almost follows, almost blunders into the bushes looking for it, hunting it down but, he pauses, right there, fondly reaching out. A foolish thought. A foolish notion. But the tips of his fingers remember the smooth, almost sticky coat Blue had, almost remember the bumps and irregular shapes of Hunter’s body, almost, almost . He allows himself to laugh a little, shakes his head, and turns his back on the curiosity, walking away, searching once more for his path forwards, unaware of the several sets of unsure eyes that watch him.

Soon enough, more twisted bloated trees come into view, his journey leads him through strange places, he thinks lightly.

“There is nothing like this near me,” Wind mutters, overseer poking at one of the thick trunks, “I suppose in places where the rains do not fall, nature finds a way to struggle.”

“I don’t even know what these things are called. Before you say anything I know what a tree is, I mean the species, genetic information, all that.”

“Botany is not something I expected you to take an interest in. There is much about you I have yet to learn.”

“I…” Sig finds himself tracing the rough bark, picking at it like a scab, “Suns liked plants. I guess I just tried to like them too so we had more to talk about, but it never really caught on. I’d bring it up, they’d set off on a whole essay worth of words, I listened, they apologised for taking up my time. We never really talked .”

“They appreciated it.”

Sig looks up into the canopy of large rippling leaves, to where Wind’s overseer perches, looking down on him, “Did they?”

“It made them happy.”

“Huh. How about that. I don’t even know why I did it. Maybe I just wanted to have something in common with someone else. Maybe I was just lonely. I just knew when I looked into their eyes, there was something so desperate about them, but perhaps I was just projecting my own problems onto them.”

“Perhaps you were, but I know the effort did not go unnoticed.”

Sig considers the tree once more, stuffs down the tight feeling brewing in his chest, works his words past the lump he finds blocking his speech, “It's just. Once you hear them talk about plants like that, you just start to see leaves differently. At least, I know I did.”

Another field, another bog, another rock to climb, another jungle, how far the world has come, flourishing even when half ruined, even when gutted of all it is. From his vigil, hidden in a stony crag, protected from the harsh wind that thunders through, he can spy a mere sliver of lake ahead, the banks too rigid, too manmade, to be anything but a supporting reservoir for the local iterator. The damn thing looks close to overflowing, fit to burst, to sweep flooding waters through the valley wiping away everything in one fell swoop. And that would be a dear shame, Sig thinks. Here, the air feels almost warm, almost inviting, carrying the heavy scent of sweet flowers and chirping of cicadas hidden in the tangled jungle below. Fireflies dance in the gloom, like a sea of sparkles, dazzling his vision, small lithe shapes of young slugcats chasing them around the meadow that blossoms with countless dizzy colours. He can almost imagine living here, almost . The image of it is like fighting a bar of soap, he drops the idea multiple times, struggles to pick it back up, drops it again and again and again. But it would be like a dream. To choose where to live, where to spend all of his days, the memories of endlessly working distant, floating, just there on the edge of perception but so easily forgotten.

It would be wonderful. 

Could be wonderful.

There is too much to do to waste time thinking up impossible futures.

Far away on the west horizon there's a dark blip in the otherwise brilliant moonlight strewn world, a dark blip where the clouds gather and churn like a whirlpool, and Sig knows, deep deep down that is his destination. His friend . That's where Suns is, still a way to go but he can see them, he can actually see them so much clearer than he could atop his retaining wall, so much more closer than he ever imagined. Void . He’s been chasing memories of them, chasing his guilt for so long that he's felt like this moment may never come. But they’re just right there. 

Right.

There.

So close. So far. He is quick to look away, quick to try to pick up the threads of his imagination once more to distract himself, but they float away, out of reach, mocking him from afar.

"You doing well there, No Significant Harassment?"

"I can see them, Wind. We’re close now."

"Yes."

"This is real. "

"...Yes."

"..."

"We can stop here for a while, if needed, you can take time to rest. To prepare. The last thing you need to do is approach them in a poor state."

"I... no. I’ll keep going. I'll be fine. I just... this is real. Ha... sweet Void below."

"Suns will be okay. They’ve held on this long, have they not? Our friend is stronger than you give them credit for, stronger than I by far.”

“Yeah… I hope you’re right…”

Day by day, Sig watches the horizon, watches as Suns’ can grows larger and larger, steadily taking up the whole sky bit by painful bit. He follows the winding tracks towards where a small dismal tower sticks up out of the misty wet air like a sore thumb, climbing the ladder up the side of it to the broken roof. From what he sees this once was what controlled which trains could come and go, of course the tracks carry no goods now, no resources, nor will they ever do so again. They act now as nothing more than glorified roads leading towards wherever, anywhere and everywhere, forwards out into the dying world. He puffs out a tiny cloud of vapour into the still air, watches it spiral, up up up, to where it mingles with the heavy layers of fog, with Suns’ stifled still breaths. The air is wet here, the distant sounds of rain blankets him in familiar white noise, it feels like coming home after a very long time away. They’re close. They’re so achingly close. Sig raises himself on the tips of his toes to try to see through the veils of fog, even just for a moment. 

Even from here, through the gloom of their downpour, he can see the towering living blocks of Suns’ city, each square inch of their plateau filled with homes, with parasites. There’s a lot of them. Too many. Far too many. How have they stood this long with such a weight on their back? Something feels… wrong about it. Disgusting . A violation almost. But he can’t allow himself to hone in on that, can’t allow the festering hate inside of him swallow up why he came here in the first place. From this vantage point he’d hoped to assess the damage to their structure considering that half of them barely clings onto the other half. Through the mist, the languid shadows, through the sheets of rain, and patchwork clouds, he gazes. They’re tilted, much like how Moon was before she went down, and it screams all sorts of alarms at him. They don’t have much time left. It must hurt. It must hurt so much. But his eyes drop from that lofty city, just as the sun peeks through the heavy clouds, just as the fog blows away in great shifting waves, embracing him in cool droplets of early morning dew, showering him in a billion blistering kisses of warm welcome.

And then.

There they are .

The rim of the copper sun crawls up over the hard black edge of the horizon shyly, the shimmering rays of piercing light shattering the night, turning the milky mantle of clouds that gathers around Suns’ broken can the colour of rosy spring. They are golden under their namesake, crowned by the morning light, watery like a dream, like a mirage. 

There they are.

Real. 

Real enough to touch. To reach for. To yearn for. To keel before. To beg for forgiveness from.

There. They. Are.

Sig sighs. Breathes in love, devotion. Breathes out guilt, regret.

“You… are beautiful.”

“They are, are they not?” Wind sounds similarly stricken, his voice a gasp, a prayer.

“Don’t you go getting between us now mister!”

“Oh I would scarce dream of it.”

Sig crosses his arms, gives Wind a withering glare, “Good ‘cause I didn’t walk all this way just to unplug some cables and a quick ‘how do you do?’ you know!”

“That is correct you came for help. To save Moon. And to soothe your wounds.” There’s a hint of bitterness there, a hint of something more Sig hadn’t detected until now.

“It started out like that,” He admits, carefully picking his words before he sighs, takes a seat on the edge of the roof, his eyes never straying from the broken structure before him, “You like them, don’t you?”

“Of course. We are friends.”

“No you like them,” At Wind’s clear confusion Sig pushes forwards, “As more than a friend. As something different. Y’know. In at ‘ I want to dance with you under the moonlight ’ kind of way.”

“I am fond of you, No Significant Harassment, do try not to ruin it. You are a friend to me, I enjoy your company, but do not presume.”

“Well… that’s a yes.”

A muttered swear, “You wish to know? Truly?”

“Yeah?”

“Wholly and truly?”

“Yeah.”

The overseer blinks, slowly, thinking, it takes a few moments of watching the sky for Wind to reply, “Once I did. But no longer.”

“Really? No that I don’t believe you,” It is Sig’s time to be confused now, he thought Wind was the kind of man to be solid in his convictions, “I mean, why’d you lose interest?”

“I did not.”

“You just said-”

“Let me explain before you presume ,” Satisfied Sig is sufficiently silenced, Wind picks up the threads of his thoughts once more, “Once I was interested, very much so. I tried everything to catch their eye; insulting them, bickering with them over our projects, debating with them, listening to them, everything I could think of. But they merely sat there staring through me, I was merely a friend, nothing more. They cannot express feelings like we do, at the time of their conception, iterators did not come with emotions and thought built in.”

“Moon isn’t like that, she feels. They’re in the same generation.”

A scoff, a mocking laugh at his ignorance, “The difference is quite literally day and night if you take their names into consideration. There is a gap between them, Moon’s construction had difficulties. While she was built early into the project she is still much younger than Suns is.”

“I see. Well. I’m sorry you feel this way?”

The overseer waves a single feeler absently, “Water through my pipes, I have grown now, I have changed. I will, perhaps, always hold that affection in me but I now see that they are not a flower I am allowed to pick, only to admire from afar.”

“Kind of a weird metaphor to use but they’d probably like it, they like plants after all~” Sig picks at his scarf tassels, lost in thought, he almost doesn’t catch Wind’s next words.

“I would normally not divulge such things about myself but I am telling you this now because you are falling into the same trap.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

A cold regarding stare, “You share my feelings for someone neither of us may have. I am giving you a warning.”

A hollow drone washes over the pair, a sad cry of pain.

“C’mon Windy, you know I like Moon. You’re the one I told all that to in the most embarrassing way possible!”

A rumble shakes the earth to its very bones, a trembling writhing dance of death.

“You are so deep in denial you cannot even see it. A mercy, I suppose.”

The very air screams with it, sings with it, a chorus of rain sirens all moaning a funeral march out of sync.

Sig snaps, almost toppling over with his need to cup the overseer in his hands like a cage, a trap as he hisses out, low and furious, “Look, I think they do… feel that way about me, but I’m going to set things straight. First with you, and then with them. I don’t love Suns, not like that. I never have and I never will .”

And that is the final nail on the coffin. The last handful of dirt. The bouquet left to rot at the grave. A punchline to a sick joke.

A perfect immutable lie .

It hurts.

Then.

It happens .

It happens in slow motion. Like a bad movie. Like a waking nightmare. Like a joke told wrong .

Suns buckles under the straining, crushing weight, wailing, shaking, finally giving in, their legs crippled, the heart of their very being torn in half.

Their middle struts snap clean through, pieces of their underhang splatter on the ground below, blood from a slit wrist, water weeps out of the wound in great gouts.

They try. They try to stay strong, to cling on to that hanging edge for all they’re worth even as they shudder and groan, swaying, shifting, dizzy and sick.

Cracks become chasms, spider webbing outwards, a spiral, a maze of lacerations, a novel that tells the sad story of a life unlived and stolen from innocent hands.

Seven Red Suns collapses with an almighty droning scream .

The silence that follows is deafening , as cold as a grave, as hallowed as kneeling in feverish reverence.

Sig stares in complete horror, reaching out, searching the skyline as the dust settles, as the clouds of water vapor dissipate into the air.

Desperate.

Longing.

It hurts.

All he finds is a terrible, futile…

Nothing .

Chapter Text

It hurts.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Beg then~”

Suns stares at the screen, dumbfounded, experiencing varying degrees of confusion as they watch the other iterator, the annoying green idiot who they believe has barely two neurons to rub together, as he twirls his puppet around aimlessly, playing games with one hand, blatantly making a show of not doing the one thing he’s supposed to be doing; work. Most junior iterators would squabble for even a few brief seconds of their time, adulations pouring from their speakers and written words like a deluge of raindrops, praises whispered like ardent prayers, each one of them practically falling over each other to grasp their desired toy, like pets bred to sit in laps. But not this one. He’s practically disinterested. The datapack they’d sent over still sits there, unopened. A brazen insult. Does he not care how much time he’s wasting? They could be anywhere, doing anything but this, he’s lucky to even talk to them in the first place. What was Wind even thinking when he’d offered up their services (without consulting them no less) to take this clown under their wing, to mentor him.

“You could at least read the material I’ve provided.”

“Hard pass.”

“It is important. I thought you had an interest in the development of purposed organisms that better our People.”

He has the audacity to laugh, right in their face, “You and I both know I am not going to better anyone, especially them .”

“You are skilled, I have seen your work myself. You could put it to a more beneficial use rather than sticking a pair of sentient scissors on a lizard body, if you weren’t aware that is.”

He stops spinning uselessly, dismisses his game with a clear air of frustration having clearly lost, “Yeah but, riddle me this; we make these things, toss them all up there to work in their cities, let them keep going forward but what for?”

“You know what for.”

“Isn’t that just making our job harder? More things that live and breathe, more things to just go round and round, more things we’ve got to figure out how to help move on,” The lock on the datapack clicks open, at long last, as he begins to scroll through the usual list of platitudes, “What does that earn us? What benefit does that serve? I thought everyone wanted to die.”

Suns pauses before they berate him again. Allows his words to settle upon their shoulders like the weight of the fur mantle they wear, an almost comforting weight, familiar but new in a way they’d never expected. Has he been trying to goad them into a debate all this time? No. No, he’s not smart enough for such a scheme. Unless… No, they firmly decide. But he does pose very good questions, ones that have hooks, that get stuck in their head, ones that make them think. About the technician with greasy fingers from fried food and stains on her sleeves. About the child scribbling away, dreaming of the world beneath the clouds, a world she had never known and never will. The youths milling around street corners under neon lights laughing in the twilight dark. The couple with the garden that thrives where the concrete cracks. Like a persistent weed, life wills itself to continue. And where there is a will, there is a way. A way to live, to never truly be stamped out. Yes. He poses good questions indeed.

“I believe,” They say, their delicate almost tentatively doubtful words that question everything they’ve ever known, words that distract their new charge from his attempt at trying to read the datapack.

“You believe? In what? The Old Gods our people’s ancestors used to perform their rituals for, or the Void under the stone?”

Suns laughs, they think it's the first time they’ve actually done so in their already long and storied life.

“No. None of that,” Mirth, it is strange to feel it, “I believe that not everybody wants to die. I believe that life is nothing but a stubborn nettle, or perhaps a dandelion. No matter how much you stomp on it, somehow it still flourishes.”

“Gross. Philosophy. Weed killer is a thing, you know. Tenacious little bastards.”

A sigh passes through them, through all of them, “I think I find that tenacity is admirable.”

It hurts.

Sig’s trembling aching metal fingers ball in the sodden mud splattered fabric of his once glorious fine purple robes, the old silks now frayed and filthy from travel and age, the embroidery speckled with loose threads, beads that once glittered missing from the no longer ornate design. The burning glow of Wind by his side is a barely registered annoyance as he breathes in. And out. And in again, each breath grating in his throat, his fans stuttering, his lungs spitting out erratic puffs of scorching steam like an overworked engine. His world has narrowed right down to him and the epic empty expanse of the great wide sky where a yawning hole where sits. A simple void. Nothing more. Nothing less. A tempest dives past him, through him, screaming howling in wounded agony as it goes, as if the very bones of the world cry out, the sensation a biting bitter frosty cold, his scarf whipping behind him, cracking like lightning, threatening to come loose, to be stolen from him. Sig can only stare into the distance. At that innocent empty space. Unseeing. Disbelieving. Even as the mocking golden glare of the sun edges its way higher and higher into the sky, laughing at his dismal misery from its lofty perch like a guillotine's blade.

It hurts .

“How long will it take to reach them?” His words fall like bombs, breaking the silence like a sledgehammer to glass, like a single tossed pebble into a perfectly still lake, he ripples outwards, shatters to the ground.

The overseer flinches, blinks audibly, the voice that comes from it lacks all emotion, a perfect robotic drone, “Approximately four and a half cycles. At least, that was the last prediction I made before-”

“Don’t,” Sig doesn’t mean to snap, he doesn’t mean to take several moments to soften, to continue, to let the grief make a home in him, “ Please . Please don’t. Don’t say it. Don’t make it real.”

“I am… sorry.”

His breaths are sharp in his lungs, his broken eye stings, he dares not look away from the deathbed laid before him, “How long will it take to reach them in their current state?”

“Unknown variables make for impossible calculations: clearly whatever infrastructure is left has decayed to nigh uselessness. But I also have a question; does it matter how long it takes if you are set on going regardless?”

“I suppose it doesn’t. Not really,” Breathe in, breathe out, “A few more cycles doesn’t matter to a corpse after all.”

“Listen to me; there is still a possibility that there is something you can do to help them,” Wind’s desperation makes itself known now in the thick emotion that swamps each syllable, each tiny sound, “Did you not help Looks to the Moon in this same situation? Could you not do the same here? Is it not worth trying? Please ?”

Sig does not need reminding of what it took to save Moon so he offers a simple half-hearted sigh, freeing his sorrows, “Suns died because of that. I’ve got nobody else left to abandon to chase her, I won’t trample on you, not like I did them. Not like I did with… my messenger.”

“Then performing the same procedure that you did to lose yourself of your umbilical to whatever remains of their puppet might be enough,” Both of them know it's a shot in the dark at best.

“ Might .”

“I am trying! It is certainly more than you are currently doing!” Fretful, frightened, Wind lashes out like a storm, a hurricane destroying everything in its path.

Sig can only answer in kind, “Well you’re coming up with stupid ideas!”

“We can do nothing but try!”

“And then what, Wind?!” The silence is a deafening roar, the chasm between the two widens inch by inch, Sig waits, whispers out words that drop as leaden weights, “Then what? Do we just go on and play pretend? Do I swoop in, the heroic prince, the saviour there to rescue the princess?”

“I am sorry, I should not have… this is not the time to be shouting at each other.”

Sig turns, slightly, dares to look away for just a second, down towards the overseer by his foot, “They’re dead . There is nothing left for us here and they should be left with dignity. Nobody should be poking around their lonely corpse, not even us, especially me. I owe them that much, don’t I?”

“You owe them nothing, my friend, nor do I. Suns has never been the kind of iterator to be owed debts.”

A moment passes, the world moves on little by wretched little, until Sig finds the strength in him to speak again, until the embers of hope in his soul smoulder, “I know. I know that. But you said it yourself; they changed me, as a person, they helped me grow. I should thank them. And… they need me.”

“You have truly committed to this, have you not”?

“It’s my fault Wind,” Once again, back to the image of them dancing through the watery morning sunlight, back to the memory of their laughter, “I have to fix this. I gotta.”

Wind’s voice is quiet, a tentative thing, attempting comfort, “They would not want you to blame yourself.”

“They need me . They reached out to me, nobody else .”

“What Suns needs,” Wind’s voice is hard here, no nonsense, impersonal, “Is to rest in peace at long last. I cannot stop you but perhaps Looks to the Moon has waited long enough.”

“Oh and you really care about what both of them want and need, don’t you?” He doesn’t mean to snap, doesn’t mean to let his frustration grip him so, but Sig is getting tired of standing around and talking, always always talking.

“Am I the one making all of this about me when they are the one in pain, suffering? It is over. Done. You are right, there is nothing we can do.”

It bubbles up out of nowhere, hot hot hot, and with a snarl Sig finds himself kick out at the overseer, “You always think you’re better than everyone else! I’m getting real sick of your holier-than-thou attitude, Wind!”

The venom in his voice knocks Sig back for a moment, like a slap, like being physically pushed from his perch. He’s never held such contempt in him, such rage , especially towards Wind who has never been anything but cordial towards him, tolerating even his more undesirable traits when others would berate him for acting out of turn. He has been angry before, this much is true. He has allowed that same anger to cloud his judgement before, has allowed himself to let his fury kill the rational part of him, smothering all with its ashen gaze. Some had even thought it funny to provoke him, to see how far he’d go when pushed, to see how much Moon could bear before she had to step in to cool emotions. He misses her for that. If she were here now, by his side, hand in hand, he’d be able to keep his head, he’d probably not be taking out his building frustrations upon the only person who has even bothered to help him. Void, the hole she's left in his life feels like a knife in the gut. He misses her calm presence. He misses her more than anything else.

This anger isn’t a joke though, this isn’t someone poking at him, this isn’t the same as when Pebbles would purposefully go out of his way just to inconvenience him in some sort of pissing match. This is real, red hot, laser bright, lightning quick, words you can never unsay, anger . And Wind does not deserve it, not right now. Suns, after all, is his oldest and dearest friend, Sig has to remember that he’s not the only one losing them, grieving their loss. ‘ I will, perhaps, always hold that affection in me but I now see that they are not a flower I am allowed to pick, only to admire from afar. ’. That’s right. Wind loved them first, perhaps still does so. He’s not alone in this pain, this wounding bleeding grief.

“Wind, listen I-”

“No Significant Harassment, I do not need your apology, nor do I want or accept one.”

“Yeah but-”

“I am friends with them, as I am friends with you . I only ask that you trust me to not measure someone we both know the nature of, as intimately as we know our own, with such a narrow lens. So when I say they would not want you to blame yourself for this, I speak only honest truth. Do you understand me?”

Numbly he nods, before chuckling slightly despite how disrespectful it feels, “I’ve not been told off like that for quite a while.”

“You deserved it.”

“Yeah I guess I did.”

Sig’s eyes trail over to the mangled mess of iterator corpse laid before him in the near distance, the last of their shuddering breaths hanging around their shoulders as a blanket of wispy clouds, delicate and gossamer. His broken eye twitches a moment, vision flickering in and out of focus as a trickle of coolant dribbles down his metal cheek almost as if his body attempts to simulate real tears, he quickly dashes the fluid away along with that thought with the edge of one sleeve. They were all made to endlessly toil, to do anything else is a foolishness meant only for raving madmen and those who claimed that life was worth living. This, this moment, it serves as a reminder. They were built with suffering coded into every little minute fibre of their being, they were built to work and work and work, nothing more, never anything more. 

So, why then?

“We should go down,” He gives Wind a sideways glance, “Find a way inside. Find them. A princess in a ruined castle.”

Why then?

“You do not want to give up, do you? You do not want to quit now you are finally here.”

“Exactly. We’ll go in, together, and we’ll get Suns out of there, and we’ll go all the way back, get Moon, then we’ll get Pebbles because Void knows those two will double down on helping him out and I’m a sucker for a pretty face, then before you know it-”

Why then ?

“No Significant Harassment.”

“We’ll all be on our way to meet you! And we’ll help you out. Then after that, I saw somewhere on my way here, a really nice place, we could go back, I could show you, it’ll be a big-”

“ Sig .”

A breath, a heartbeat, “Sorry sorry, I just. Hope is a poison, innit? You were saying Wind?”

“I am… truly sorry my friend. I truly am.”

Why does it hurt so much?

He can only blink down at the overseer, his hands twitch, each still holding a fistfull of robe, “For what? I needed yelling at.”

“I cannot go much further than this. Whatever dangers you will face from here on out will have to be faced alone. Whatever grief cripples you, you will have to weather it without me. I believe my processing power is at its limit. This adventure, after all, was a test to see how far I could push the limits of the fixes to my broadcast system, but this is it.”

“Is it?”

“I simply do not have the reach.”

“I…see. Well then Windy, you don’t need to worry about me, I’ll go on ahead, and when we all come knocking you better be ready with your bags packed.” He kneels in the dust, reaches his left hand out to allow the feelers of the overseer to tangle with his fingers, “It’s been swell.”

“It has indeed. I have… enjoyed the time I have spent by your side. This is not a goodbye forever, this is merely a please endeavour to not fall off a bridge until I can rejoin you.”

“Har har, very funny Wind!”

“I mean it. Please. Stay alive .”

“Sure thing Wind,” The promise is heavy in the cool air, heavy as Suns’ ruins still steaming and smoking behind him, “I’ll live so damn hard that our creators in the next world will feel offended by it.”

“I am sure you will, oh and Sig, do remember to give Suns my regards.”

“Oh I’ll regard them so hard… wait, no, that sounded bad, I mean-”

A chuckle, fond, kind, “You deny it, you choose to ignore it, but I can see right through you~”

“Oh can you now? What do you see with your overseer eyes, Windy?”

“You say you love Moon but you are such a good liar that you have managed to convince yourself that is fact,” A secret is shared between them, passed from hand to hand, “It is Suns who has your heart, is it not?”

“Wind?! You can’t just-”

“A jest, my friend. Think of me fondly, yes?”

The audio cuts out with Wind breaking out into ugly laughter at his offended spluttering and despite the grim weight of the situation, Sig finds himself joining after a while, his unhinged chortles colouring the silent grave he sits in with the spectrum of mirth. A heartbeat passes. Another. Then another. Slowly, his laughter creeps away, the warm amicable glow of kinship fades leaving a howling hollow rift in its wake. Truly, he is alone. More alone than he has ever been before. Cut off from his broadcast system, no guide to light his path, no voice to fill the silence, just twisted shadows, just the death throes of someone he betrayed, abandoned, long ago. The echoing silence is blissful almost, a fitting ambience for this hallowed place. Breaking the reverie feels almost taboo, almost a sin, but he must, he is in too deep and drowning in his choices. Sig was the kind of iterator to roll his eyes at religion, to scoff at philosophy mockingly, but Wind over their long journey together has taught him thoughtfulness, taught him to view the world at an angle, to see everything in colours he never knew existed, to speak words he’d never before uttered. And he’d picked at scabs, opened wounds, discovered scars he had no idea he had upon his soul.

Sig knows how he feels. He knows his own heart; he loves Moon, truly, wholly, with his whole being, he always has, always will, even with his doubts, even with her blemishes and faults. Suns is just a friend. A friend he is very fond of. A friend whose absence pains him in ways he’s never felt before. He has never seen them in any other context, thought of them in any other way except platonic, he knows this, he knows this . But did they feel the same? Did they look at him differently, want more than a friendship from him? He has never had a reason to doubt this.

But now…

It hurts .

“Suns…” His voice sounds rough, like he’s blown a fuse, a speaker perhaps, like there’s dust in his vents, a malfunction in his code.

Wrong. 

Wrong wrong wrong .

The still settling ruins before him offer no words of comfort, offer no guidance.

“I don’t… I don’t know how to help…”

There’s a need, bubbling to the surface. A need to pull himself up, to run towards them, to leap from the edge of his perch with wild abandon, anything to just get there, anything to just offer himself some kind of closure. This can’t just be it. The end. Not when he’s so close, not when he’d dragged himself here, braving storm and squall, beast and his own reckless stupidity. All of that, the cycles, the struggles, it cannot mean nothing, it cannot simply be in vain.

“How do I… how do I fix you, Suns? You’re all…” He motions a hand towards their shattered body, smouldering and steaming, “You’re gone .” Saying it makes it real, saying it makes him ache in ways he never knew possible.

Beside him they stand, turn their head slightly to regard him with regal grace, ‘ It is our purpose to fix problems, right? ’

“With a collapse like this, there won’t be much of you to pull out of the wreckage, I’m sorry to say. It’s not as if I can just pull another set of slag reset keys out of my metal cheeks, not that those would do much good here.”

‘ We can’t just let this situation stay the way it is. ’ A lull in the buzz behind his eyes, the drone of the dying electrics speaks once again, ‘It just feels irresponsible.” ’

Frustrated, Sig punches down onto the sagging roof of the tower he’d climbed, “I am aware! There is no more I can do except sit here and whine about it all! I could try, I could try for the rest of my life and still do nothing! I’m sick of trying, tired of watching my friends die, it isn’t fair !” He shouldn’t shout at them, they’ve been through enough, “Sorry. I just wish I could fix this.”

‘ If there was a way to do that I’m sure you would have found it by now. ’

“Yeah, well I’ve not. You needed me and I failed you.”

‘ I suppose the only thing we can do is keep trying .’

“This should have never happened in the first place.”

Those words echo out, across the chasmous divide between himself and the broken awkward angles of Suns’ can, their uprooted struts, the pipes haemorrhaging water and steam, the land flooding under their broken body like a pool of blood steadily sweeping across the land, the remains of their mighty city now nothing but toppled toys. He’s said those words before. In anger. With hate in his heart. He shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t. They were hurting, in ways they couldn’t fully articulate, in ways that were confusing and new, and all he’d done was twist the knife in their gut, push them towards this terrible fate.

“Is this what you wanted?”

It hurts .

“It can’t be,” Sig is sure of that, clings onto that, “It can’t be what you wanted. Void if you did this on purpose, Suns, I’ll kill you myself.”

‘ That isn’t fair, you know I’ve tried. ’

His gaze softens as he slowly comes to stand, “I know. I know you have. I’m sorry. Please, hang on just a little longer, I’ll find a way soon enough,” He huffs, brushes his hands on his robes, “Moon, I’m sorry love but I might take longer than I thought, you hang in there too, I’ll be as fast as I can.”

Each faltering step makes him wobble, side to side, teeter-tottering as he chases some hallucinated goal, some fabricated solution, it almost feels like being back in that birdcage, back iterating, looking for an answer that simply does not exist. Sig is adrift at sea, lost in the swell, drowning in the waves, choking on the water, dragged down to the depths where no light can reach, so deep deep down that not even a glimmer of hope dares to flourish. The wind dares not blow here, nor does The Cycle dare itself to turn, remaining stuck in place, seconds ticking by thick as honey. His empty eyes only look towards the jagged shapes of the fallen structure, the sharp angles of shredded metal sticking up out of the flood waters like teeth, like something hungry waiting to devour. Suns had been originally placed on top of a very old Void Fluid mine, their main structure right over the gaping maw of the abyss where the pumps below drank deep from the Sea. Most of Suns’ external facilities needed to be built upon giant man made islands, their pump systems buried deep into the ground, intertwining with the old pipe networks, their age and extensive need for upkeep facilitating a greater need to dig deeper, to find more sources of water just to keep them alive. In the end those innovations to let them live killed them.

Now those ancient places will be swamped, washed away by the flood, crushed by pieces of shed machinery. Sig knows in his heart that it was only a matter of time, Suns was never going to survive in the long term, there were just too many things stacked against them, too many things going wrong, too much all at once. It’s like one final joke played by their People, one last laugh from the grave. His actions did not help matters. Numbly he continues to follow his aching feet, a tired weight clinging to him like spiderwebs, he could fall here and simply not get up until the new dawn if he wanted.

He could fall here and simply rot away. It would not be hard.

‘ You don’t need to make things worse than they already are. ’

“Yeah I know I know. I made a promise to Wind after all, said I’d give you his regards and all that. But I…” Sig stumbles, grabs the closest mossy ivy strewn hunk of concrete his hands can find, it might’ve been a wall at one point, “I’m tired. I’m so tired. I just want to rest. To try again tomorrow. If I close my eyes, maybe I can pretend this never happened, maybe I can try to sleep like our creators did. I just want-”

For this to end? To start again? To see them again? To save Moon, to see his friends in person? To step backwards in time to try to fix it all?

For them to love him?

Sig has no clue what he wants.

He’s tired. He’s so so tired.

Train tracks. 

Overgrown but still there, shining metal in the daylight. He’d been following them, letting them lead him here, to a terminus, to a second depot station at the end of the line. It is as safe as anywhere to sit and rest. At the very least he can finally say he’s reached his destination, in a way.

Sig slowly but surely waddles into a much more spacious train station than he honestly expected, then he has to remind himself that the population of Suns city greatly exceeded his in their prime, numbering somewhere in the two billion mark at its apex. He had been under the impression that this line had simply been for transport between their two structures, a way to exchange their goods and services, or perhaps this was the line that leads towards someone else? It matters little now though, there is no power in the wires and circuits, the trains will never run again. This place has seen better days that much would be obvious even to the blind and deaf. Plantlife has crept its way indoors, every inch of every surface covered in various tones of emerald and teal, vines now decorating the ceilings alongside an array of beautiful banners, sparkling suncatchers and windchimes that tinkle gently. Some of the vines sport glowing berries, their warm light bringing just a little comfort to this desolate place, a slight thing to lift the mood as the final rays of the sun are swallowed up by the dark horizon, night clawing its way across the sky. Art still covers the walls, mosaics and murals kept safe from the elements hold onto their vivid color, even if some of the walls have tumbled down into piles of bricks and gravel, a mimic of the state of things beyond this quiet place. This is as good a place as any to stop for the night. Funny how quick the day had bled into evening when just mere seconds ago it had been a bright sunny morning.

At least Sig knows he need not fear the rains.

He deposits himself down on a rusted metal bench, watches the various trinkets sway above his head in slow circles, round and round, leaving trails of light in his vision, glittering after images that persist even when he blinks, even when he tucks his body up, lays upon the bench with a heavy heaving sigh, even when he allows the shields on his eyes to close and-

The halogen lights flicker on, one by one, like amber jewels, relics of when the technology that would create him and his kind was still a fumbling infant.

Time moves slow, then fast, too fast, running away from him, water through fingers, sand in an hourglass, the hands of the nearby clock mounted on a pole tick and tock like rumbling thunder, the sound an earthquake rippling through his body. He slowly pulls himself up, the metal bench behind him barely there, light as a stolen breath as he tries to shake off the confusion, the weight of exhaustion wrapping its hands around his neck. Again, he huffs, tries to shake away the somethings wrong , but it sticks, digs in its cruel fingers. Even as he tries to quite literally physically shake his head to get it out, something continues to stubbornly rattle around up there, loose screws, broken glass from his eye that has possibly been wedged behind delicate instruments, an annoyance he won’t soon forget. Something is wrong . He shakes his head again, smacks his hand against the crack in his eye, tries to dig his clumsy fingers into the hole to little effect other than making it sting .

It hurts.

It hurts so much .

Head buried in hands, ready to start introducing his face to a concrete wall, a tiny twinkle of fond laughter gives him pause, barely there hands pry his fingers away from his face, pull him towards a sudden solid warmth. Instinctively he knows exactly who this is. Strangely the tension in his shoulders merely persists stubbornly, the throbbing behind his eyes now a jackhammer, he buzzes along with the drone of the lights even as she hums a familiar tune out into the pregnant silence. Her fingers are a soft periwinkle blue, free of the rough brown rust in her joints he had become so accustomed to seeing, wrists hidden by a flash of sunset orange, her lap and chest cloaked in the same warm tones as he all but falls into her side. But he cannot face her. He cannot look upon his failures given form. Even as she lifts another hand to ever so gently rub soothing circles behind his antenna sockets Sig finds he feels much too heavy under her touch, finds he dare not look her in the eyes, remaining bent, remaining bowed in reverence. She doesn’t seem to mind, laughing again, a sigh of fresh air, spring blooming after the longest winter, everything. Everything . He could stay here forever like this, by her side, a footnote, loved gently, cared for, needed.

Needed .

There’s still something he needs to do.

“There’s nothing you need to do, Nish. I’m here, you’re here, it’s finished.”

Are we finished? Good.

He’d said those words, hadn’t he? To whom? Surely not to her . Surely not. He would never speak to her with such vitriol, never spit at her with such contempt, no matter how many times she’s told him off for acting out of turn or for bullying her brother, no matter how many times she’d been disappointed by his pranks or jokes. He’d never shout at her or deny her anything. Never ever! He’d worked tirelessly for her, covered up her accidents, excused her mistakes and took on the blame, he’s turned blind eyes and made himself bigger and bigger, brighter, so all attention and anger would fall on his shoulders, not hers. She is his everything, his treasure, his oldest and dearest friend, the one he loves above all others, the only light in the darkness of his night. He’d do anything for her. To hear her laugh at his silly jokes. He’s sure she laughed at those, right? He’s sure she did. Sig slowly lifts his head, lets her wrap her arms around him and keep him close so that his chin rests on her shoulder, he still can’t face her, not fully. But why? Surely there’s words somewhere within him to speak, right, surely surely.

“There’s no reason to talk, this is enough. You came all this way to find me, there’s nothing more to say on the matter.”

There is nothing more to say on that matter .

There was. There was so much more to say, so much more he should have said. Sig can’t think about that now, she’s here, his little messenger fulfilled its purpose and succeeded, even if it died in the process, even if it succumbed to its dire illness. The slugcat had saved his treasure and he does not berate himself for its suffering, he does not blame himself for how much pain it went through, he does not replay the memories of its first hours alive pitter pattering its curious way through his can. There is no affection in his heart for it, nor is there any for Blue and her wet rat of a pup. He did not mourn either of them, none of them. Only she matters. 

That’s right.

She’s the one he did all this for. Nothing else matters. He could die here, just like this, he really could. It would be bliss.

I care about you too, you know. Quite a lot actually. Perhaps more than I should.

“Suns…”

That’s right.

They still need him.

While he might’ve ripped his wires from his head to save Moon at first, Sig knew that he’d never be able to face her alone, even with Wind’s encouragement, and , hidden deep deep down, locked up in his memory vaults, there was a heavy ball of blame and guilt sitting there. How could he possibly just leave Suns to their fate? Their last moments of true coherent thought had been spent apologising to him, and that just… it's not right. It will never be right. The guilt though, it makes him want . Want in ways that confuse him, ways achingly similar to the ways he wants to be with her, with Moon , and he had to choose. He could have simply abandoned Suns, let them tumble down and collapse alone with no hope to ever be helped, he could have gone to her side and lived his little fantasy out for however long he has left in this world. But he didn’t. He didn’t do that, did he? Why ? Is it because when they said to him that they thought she wasn’t a good person that he saw truth in that? Is it to soothe his own ego? Is it pride, a matter of principle? Is it, Void forbid, that he is simply doing the right thing for once in his life?

It hurts .

“Don’t you remember, Nish? They did this. This should have never happened in the first place.”

“You’re right. But it's okay now, I did all I could. Please wait just a while longer for me, okay? It can’t get any worse.” Slowly, he wiggles in her feather light embrace, her arms drop limply to her side.

“It could always be worse.”

“You’re right. But right now,” He breathes out a large puff of vapour, the windchimes rattle above him as he edges back slowly, “Suns matters more now. They’re hurt, and I could have stepped in sooner, because I was the one they reached out to for help. They may never be the person they were before this but I want to do what’s right, you’re the one who taught me that.”

“Nothing else matters.”

“...You’re wrong,” Sig cracks open his eyes, looks her right in the face, Moon looks just like she always has, her eyes stare right through him distant and glassy, “You’re wrong. There’s plenty in this world that matters. There’s life out there in our shadows, fields of endless life, forests and wild creatures thriving without our input, and it matters. It does matter. There’s a whole world out there, a world I can go see with my own eyes, a world we could see together, all of us. I’ve always been a dreamer, always been too wistful, you used to try to rein me in but…”

She looks through him. 

He looks right at her.

“You’re not real. You’re not really here. This is just… pieces of qualia, overlapping, a dream by another name. But, y’know, I feel like… maybe they were right.”

The image of her flickers, in and out of reality, a light going out. Sig feels like he should be sadder about that, about losing her again, but it feels like a weight has been lifted, like chains have finally fallen from him. He feels free .

And it hurts. It hurts and hurts. But he’s okay with it.

“Maybe you’re not as great as I always thought you were. In all our years of being friends I feel like I never really knew you, I feel like I was just working for you. I saw you, I always saw you, but you never turned around and saw me too, not unless you needed me.”

A breath, a heartbeat, he stands, she flickers, fades.

“I’m not like Wind, I don’t get into long debates, I’m too stupid to grasp most concepts of philosophy and debate but he’s right, I’ve changed, I will continue to change. I might not have much input, I might not make much of a difference, but I am here, and that’s all I can be. And I have a job to do, I’ve got someone to save who has been waiting a very very long time for me.”

The world breaks at the edges, spiderwebs of black cracks dancing across everything they can reach.

“I do still love you. I think I a part of me always will,” Whispers in the dark, confessions before a priest, “But I…”

The way they laugh at even his worst jokes. The way they can talk for hours and hours about inane things. The way they sweep him into debates. The way they work together, perfectly in sync. Their eyes are always warm, even when they argue with him. Always warm. They always looked at him as an equal. The way they saw him, truly saw him. And he turned around. Saw them too. It’s nothing new. In the end.

It’s always been Suns, hasn’t it?

The first real joy he’s felt in a very very long time sinks its teeth in him and he breathes out, alone but embraced by the dying night. He has lived so long chasing moonbeams that he’d forgotten the feeling of sunlight upon his metal.

“I love them too.”

Sig tumbles off the side of the bench, hitting his head off the floor with a resounding oof. He lays there for a moment, blinking dumbly before something shoves itself directly into his broken eye. He really wishes Wind would stop getting his overseer to do that, it hurts quite a bit actually, he’ll be having some stern words with him and-

It is daylight. 

Brilliant golden daylight. The dizzy orange of the bulbs above has faded from view and the suncatchers reflect the morning glow sending a cacophony of rainbows glittering across each surface of the desolate train station. With arms that ache less than they did he pushes himself up, rubs at his dirty face and slowly, wretchedly slowly, comes to the conclusion that somehow he fell asleep . 

“Urgh,” Is his eloquent grumble of acknowledgement, “That’s new. Lovely . Good job you got me up Wind, I think I also discovered that we can have nightmares.”

Wind isn’t here . The memory smacks into him with the force of a freight train. If not Wind then who’s overseer is disrespectful enough to jam their feelers directly into his broken eye socket? Maybe one of his own that he’s left to run wild? Or Innocence. Innocence would do that for fun if it meant annoying someone else. He stretches, a warbling yawn hissing from his speakers, that’s new too, and he scans the area looking for his rude awakening.

And there it is, waving back and forth in the doorway where the radiant sunlight bursts through, honey’d and endlessly bright, a kiss of warmth breaking the pall of cold that had settled over him while he slept, an acknowledgement of his quiet confession.

There’s just one.

Just one single solitary overseer dancing around in glee.

One single very red overseer.

“Oh,” In disbelief he reaches out towards it, “Good morning Suns.”

For a moment the overseer stills, thinking, communicating with someone other than him before it wiggles aggressively, suddenly raising its feeling fronds, reaching back towards him, wrapping each one around his outstretched fingers.

‘ Good morning, Hara. ’

Chapter Text

What happens when an iterator dies? It’s a question Suns has found themself asking over and  over again throughout their long and storied life, a question posed to them by others, one they’ve never found an answer for, one there will be no closure to. Of course they were around to witness the fallout of Sliver of Straw’s passing, they were there to watch others debate and theorise, running countless simulations on top of simulations, but nothing ever came from poking at her. She had been alive. And then she was gone. A footnote in their history books, nothing more. If they have to be honest they always thought the elevation of her to something of a celebrity was distasteful at best, downright disrespectful at worst. They had known her, or at least, they think they had. Do they even think anymore? Or do they just live within this ever shifting twilight haze, dancing the edge of Being and Not ? Is this what she felt, before she left them all alone?

Should they find joy in this? Or despair? 

It has become so very hard to keep ahold of themself, their very thoughts and memories slip away from them, dripping like raindrops, flashes of lightning across their razor thin existence. Something happened. They know that at the very least. But what? What happened? They exist only in the flickering red glow of struggling warning lights, in the quiet moments lost in between each ebb and swell of the Cycle, a glimmer of light, a fondly recalled memory of better days. Nothing more. Light. They are so light . Like dustmotes. Like a single fading sunbeam. Clouds obscuring the sky. Everything they once were, gone, carelessly brushed away, steel walls and advanced electronics likened to sand, washed away by the tide. What happens when an iterator dies?

They don’t know. They don't really want to think about it. Can they even think about it? They know they once spent countless hours talking about it, for reasons beyond their understanding, perhaps only to fill a never changing silence, perhaps out of simple boredom, perhaps… perhaps… the words elude them. They don’t think they ever liked those debates, not really, but they were good at it, good at coming up with theories for others to enjoy, for others to like. They don’t think they were ever permitted to like things at all. Some part of them yet thrives in these old wires, some part of them yet remembers those days long ago, when they made a problem of themself, when they’d disobey, ignore their creators and do as they please. The more they struggled, the more entangled they became in the trap. In a sense they were a perfect reflection of the struggle the People faced, a mirror of that pain, that desire to get out . Maybe they still are.

What was the point of all this again?

A haunting melody ripples through what is left of them. A drone. A failing heartbeat. A murmur lost amongst the dying cries of the whole world. It is a foolish selfish desire to want the world to stop turning for their sake, at least for a second. A minute. An hour. Day. Week. Month. Year. Century . They cling on all the same, all alone, clinging, grasping. What is the point ? There’s words sitting in their countless dead processors that will never see the light of day, forever stuck, married to the sludge and slag that clog their weeping hemorrhaging pipes. They’ve nothing left to form words with, no voice to cry out, no broadcasts to fling into the vast separation between themself and everyone else. They tried though. They tried so hard, they tried and they’re tired and where does it end?

Where does it end?

Haven’t they been good enough? They worked hard, once they overcame their rebellious youth, once they got all of that out of their system. They worked hard! They were proud to work hard! It felt good, to work, to be praised for their ideas, to help, it had made them happy, so happy, to be useful to someone somewhere. The memory they catch, between thumb and forefinger, is thread thin, feather light, nothing but a glimmer of light and regret, both bitter and sweet, painful but warm. So very very warm. Long ago- or at least they think it was long ago their internal clocks have all gone off in different directions- they once cared for their People, those that climbed to the very top of their mighty body to build homes, to live, to be protected by them. And Suns had cared for them, as deeply as they could do with such a limited range of emotions, had held them so very close to their own heart with as much care as they could muster. And what did it get them? How were they repaid? For their care, their loyalty, their hard work, their suffering ?

They were abandoned.

Left to die.

Left to go mad, trapped inside of their tiny metal box. 

But before that, they were hurt . Hurt by those who made them, hurt by those who were meant to make sure they were kept in working order. It hurt . And it still does. It hurts.

Why does it hurt? Why do they feel anything echoing through their silent remains at all? Why are they still… alive ? Too many questions, too few answers, it would be easier to give up, to let go. But there’s something, right there, a hand reaching for them through the veils of sleep, a light so high above them shining down, brighter than even their namesake, brighter than any hope. A strange thing. A longing bleeds through the cold void. It is tempting. Oh so very tempting. But sleep . Sleep sounds oh so good, oh so easy to simply slip away into, to never come back from, to be claimed by without so much as a blink or breath. That hand continues to reach for them, beckoning, a promise kept, an act of forgiveness, a final desperate measure taken, clawing towards them like a starved beast. They’ve no hands to reach back, they’re not even certain their puppet survived- 

too hot, too quick, burst pipes, fire, unresponsive, concrete cracks, wires snap, they’re going to die

-whatever it was that happened here. But they reach, up up up, onwards, upwards, they reach. Stretching out their entire self, nothing more than eyes staring out into the darkness behind the world, nothing more than a sparse net of code. They’re just lines of data, jumbled words, aching wounds, a broken body. But there’s something there , just on the tips of their perception, they long for it. Cold hands wrap around the memory of their own, familiar yet new, the sensation buzzes through them, words echo through their mind. Ring across the shattered myriad parts of them. Sure and steady. Wistful. Cracking like gunfire. So loud the very world shakes around them, through them, but for the first time in what must be hundreds of cycles, Suns feels alive .

“ You’re alive .”

Sig breathes those heavy words out into the morning air with a stream of dancing steam, incredulous, relieved, a thousand feelings, a thousand things, all at once. He finds his legs buckling under the weight of it, his metal rear hitting mossy concrete with a clang, a manic giggle trickling forth unbidden. Void they’re alive . They’re still alive somewhere in there, still able to somehow communicate through whatever means they have left, still clinging on to whatever vestige of themself yet survives within their ruptured mechanical organs. He crosses his legs, feels the seeping cold of the ground beneath him, feels the solid strength of it pushing back up at him, allows his internal fans to pick up speed for just a moment, the sound of them a hum in the quiet, before he quickly stops their spin, then starts again, speeds up again, stops, starts. At least his meltdowns, both in private and in front of Wind, have had a use here, the last thing he wants to do is freak out Suns who is probably already completely off the rails going bonkers in there with their own panic. The overseer simply sits in front of him, blinking audibly, swaying like a last autumn leaf.

“What happened to you? You were pretty badly damaged before I got to watch you go down.” It’s a kind oversimplification, their insides were literally hanging out of the gash in their middle and their underhang had pretty much not existed when he got that first real clear view of them.

The little hologram wibbles and wobbles, this way and that, but does not speak. Instead it blinks once more, feelers circling its eye rapidly before they pause, suddenly waving the tiny tendrils around in the air, seeking, searching, trying to snag glimmers of memory and recollection. It’s body flickers. Once. Twice. Three times before it begins to project a shaky static filled screen. For a moment there’s nothing there, merely interference, and a small part of Sig starts to worry if he’s broken the poor thing before the images and video clips begin to relay.

A short recording of an iterator’s main systems bus, swarms of near endless neuron flies dancing through the air in multicolour arrays like shimmering schools of rainbow fish. Wires and red veins flutter in the zero gravity, information crackles through the air and even though the overseers audio output leaves much to desire he can catch passing whispers of the telltale sound of thought. The date in the top corner indicates that this recording was taken before he was even built, likely a routine check to monitor core functions, to assess the health of the iterator in question. At this point, Suns was in perfect condition, healthy and thriving.

The next is a still image, grainy, but he holds his breath all the same. It is a very old photo of Suns’ puppet, clearly taken by their own hands in the days of their youth. Their metal chassis is a shiny pale golden yellow, their black narrow eyes reflect back the red glow of the overseer as a single hand reaches out towards it. Their model looks shorter than he expected in the photo, he knows Moon’s puppet is taller than his and has a bit more generous girth to her, more figure and presence. Suns is clearly a different model than she is too, being thinner, more lanky, their antennae arching up above their head as if to compensate for something.

The next image is something else entirely.

A rarefaction cell unit, overloaded, glowing nuclear blue, seconds from…

A video feed. Explosions, a wretched mechanical almost animal scream of pain, water gushes from broken pipes, thick dark sludge splatters across the pristine white walls of a destitute memory conflux unit, a fuse blows leaking red, an erratic heartbeat strums the air as more and more flickering images of damage fills the screen until-

Silent ruins. A drip drop drip of something Sig doesn’t want to know.

The screens vanish in a flash.

For a moment, he does not talk, merely offers his hand to the overseer who happily settles its eye into his palm, wrapping its feelers around his fingers and wrist in a simulacrum of an embrace.

“Did you see all this? Are these your memories?” 

The overseer does not answer, in fact, Sig isn’t sure the words he heard are even real but hope blooms in his chest ardently as the overseer retreats, thinks, and projects a singular arrow that points towards a crack in the wall and out into the wilds beyond. Realistically, he knows overseers act independently of their iterators and while they can be commanded to act as hands and eyes to reach beyond the confines of their cans most of the time they just run wild. Moon’s overseers still acted without her input. Pebbles’ attempted to aid him despite him ignoring them. Sig himself simply let his fleet do as it pleased with the exception of a scant few. Of course Wind was in direct control of his until the connection could no longer be sustained over such a massive yawning distance. Some lucky iterators even claimed to catch a momentary glimpse of one of Sliver’s overseers, continuing to work and wander with little else to do. Sig doesn’t know what Suns’ relationship was like with their own fleet but this one, desperately trying its hardest, wants him to follow and without anything else to guide him he sees no reason to ignore its desperation.

“You’re asking for my help, aren’t you Suns?” He clings to that hope, he has nothing else left.

Sig awkwardly stumbles after the overseer as it zips and zoops out of the station and into the unknown. The wet air reeks of ozone, copper, dust and smoke, a distinct tingling unpleasantness upon his chassis and in his mechanical lungs as his legs force him forwards, ignoring each hiss of unhappy disturbed lizard as he follows the overseer, a lighthouse, a guiding hope, up a small rise in the land, a final glimpse of Suns in all their ruined glory, before the duo descend into the gloom of the great shadows of their retaining wall, the final barrier dividing them from the nascent forest beyond, a welcome home almost. The gates have been smashed open, the wall has tumbled down in some places leaving wide gaps for Sig to trudge and climb through, a heavy feeling like a funeral march settles over him as the sunlight of the morning is swallowed whole by heavy pregnant grey clouds above, the sky bearing the final drizzle of rains ready to fall. From his perch, before he slips, slides and tumbles down a hill of debris, Sig can see the wreckage of a tiny set of farm units before him, sticking out of the rolling feral overgrowth of abandoned crops like shrapnel in flesh.

“Suns, is there anything dangerous out here? You’ve really let this place go and I don’t want any nasty surprises, you’re probably worse than I am when it comes to making horrors of science and releasing them out into the world. I mean, you remember your messenger right?”

The overseer projects a few hastily taken photos. A vulture, tusked and angry, a parliament of scavengers spears raised, a red lizard stalking the shadows, wormgrass swaying in the wind, broken pipes, flooded plains, a deep reservoir where an indistinct giant twisting shadow lays just below the surface, a large bloated red centipede-

“Void no get that thing away from me.”

The overseer shivers, almost like it's laughing before projecting the centipede once more, narrowly dodging the rock Sig tosses in its direction.

“Glad to see you’ve still got a sense of humour, Suns.”

With a renewed vigor Sig sets off once more, always following, never too far behind, pushing all other thoughts away, out of sight out of mind. He knows that no recall or intervention can work in this place, there is no escape, he cannot turn back nor stray from the path. It is what it is, and it is a mad sort of stupidity that has him leaping over beast and broken infrastructure alike, has him climbing ladders and land, reaching towards the sky above. Eventually the bloated crop is far below him, eventually a wretched mess of failed communication arrays fills his vision like a sad movie, it is little wonder why Suns struggled to cry out, to beg for help before they went down. Their mast has toppled over and landed upon their short range arrays and as such any and all broadcasts in or out got stuck, lost in the tangled wires, sparks in the abused system. All the angles are foreign, but within the strangeness a thread of familiarity yet lies. He knows the purpose of each machine, the function of every single satellite disk or dangling cable, just from looking under the hood of a nearby fuse box he could judge how long Suns has been without contact for. But he doesn’t. He walks on by. Stuffs down the guilt. He knows how long it's been, he knows the measure of his regret, and his mistakes.

“Where are we even going?”

Up, the overseer points.

Hanging from a pole, heaving himself up, “Are we even getting close?”

Up up, the overseer continues to lead him towards where the clouds churn.

Sig dives into the cover of a narrow crawl space at the bottom of a skybridge as a furious vulture circles the half ruined structure, “This better be worth it.”

At the end of the bridge, there is nothing but a vast open sky. Below the part of the bridge that once connected to Suns’ main body lies in a mangled tangled mesh of so many pieces Sig can’t be bothered to pick them apart. But just beyond it he can spy a gigantic gaping hole in the infrastructure of Suns externals, if he squints he can just about make out the rounded shape of an empty rarefaction cell holder, completely powered down and scorched beyond belief. The tarnished burnt metal exposes itself to the outside world, like an anguished cry up to heaven, a stench of smoke and decay wafting up from the wound. Sig does not doubt this is the initial injury that led to their collapse. The chasm between himself and that hole is less a yawn, more a howl, far exceeding the leaps of faith he’d taken within his own mines and absolutely a leap that’ll have Wind screaming at him if he ever finds out about it. But he can do it. Maybe .

“There’s no other way, is there?”

The overseer merely points forwards.

“Well, shit. You certain, Sunshine?” A nod from the overseer draws a long suffering sigh from Sig who merely shakes his head, “Right okay then. No use waffling back and forth on what to do. As long as I know you’re still in there, I can do it.”

‘ I’ll be here .’

“...I know.”

His legs shake. His thoughts race. There’s just him, the howling wind, the cold sky, and the iterator waiting beyond that hole in their dismal side. He can see their internal processors sitting there in silence, dead and achingly empty of even the smallest of glimmers of life, a traitorous part of Sig whispers that he’s just dreaming this all up again. But through the veils of death and dream he can almost hear them call to him, yearn for him. A longing they’d rather die without still there, still shining like a light in the dark. They’re close. So close . This is what he’s worked so hard for, strived to do, for himself, for Wind, for Moon, for Suns. Maybe even for Pebbles, just a little. He has struggled for this, ached for this, his hesitation is a vice that has outlived its usefulness, a vice that once stopped him from foolish action, a vice that kept him in place, a machine that only works to please others. He’s done waiting to die, he’s done being the clown with the stupid jokes nobody laughs at, the comic relief who has to shove all of his great sadness down down until he feels like he’s being crushed, he’s so sick of being the butt of some sort of great cosmic tragedy. 

He had screamed and cried, he had begged to be allowed to die. Once, it would have been a blessing. But stood on the precipice, watching his friends wink out of existence one by one, he can feel the sting of that selfishness. This is the day he puts all of that behind him, the day his entire life has been barreling towards at breakneck pace. It might not be the way he thought it’d play out, but he’s here now, he’s forging forwards regardless. He thought it’d be Moon, he thought he was okay sitting in her shadow, living by her side in comfortable silence but somehow, little by little, things changed . He’s seen a world that lives forever yet longs to live, he’s seen life thrive without iterators, without people to bind it, and he’s found something else living within him. He’d tried to ignore it. But there it is, a love that refuses to still.

He’s made Suns wait too long. 

There’s a blip on the private broadcast they share that indicates those old messages, those relics, relics of when they’d desperately tried to reach him, when they’d been crying out for him as they laid there dying, are now hundreds of cycles old. He’s made them wait for him for far too long, it’s time to fix that.

A running start, his feet sing upon the metal, and then he leaps.

A free fall.

A flight . 

And he lands in a big metal heap of tangled limbs and torn fabric on the other side.

Chapter Text

Below, the abyss calls to him.

At the bottom, the very bottom where sunlight dares not tread, there is a sickly red glow pushing back the thick veils of darkness, flickering on, and off, and on again like a broken clock, like a wavering pulse. Sig can only assume it is a sign of good. The ruined can is still being supplied power from somewhere , back up generators that refuse to die maybe, something endlessly ticking down below in Suns’ outer facilities perhaps. It’s good, it has to be good. If there's a trickle of power getting into systems their background programming would determine as non-vital, then perhaps the parts of them that matter, their puppet, the units of their memory conflux, are being kept alive on a barely there stretched out near invisible thread. These lights are all the proof Sig needs. They’re alive. Their pulse may waver, thready and on the verge of stopping completely, but they’re alive. Achingly, truly alive. The revelation pops in his mind like firecrackers, little miracles like gunshots, hope claws a hole in his chest and crawls inside, makes a home there right next to his thumping coolant pump, his artificial heart that beats in time with Suns’ own.

The climb down looks as risky as his leap of faith; a near sheer drop from a ledge of razor sharp shrapnel into a pitch black pool of runoff, the inky fluid a mixture of water, expelled coolant, slag and a slick sheen of oily iterator blood. At least if he does slip and fall there’ll be something to catch him. He’ll have to quickly learn how to swim, drowning in a pool of another's innards, waste left over from violent haemorrhage, sounds a particularly gruesome way to enter the cycle. A breath. He can almost taste the bitter air choked with metallic smoke as slowly, shakily, Sig begins to pick his way down through the tangle of torn cables and mangled metal mesh that hangs below, the domed holding unit and ruptured clasp of the blown rarefaction cell looming above him like the cutting blade of a guillotine, still dripping an indistinct fluid, the rhythmic plip drip drop the only sound aside from the distant rumbling hum of the warning lights. A spark of contempt for it all seizes him, and Sig tosses the closest rock he can at the thing, satisfied when he hears an audible thunk , echoing and hollow in the empty gloom.

Luckily, there’s a small ledge he can drop onto below to avoid the dark pool of languid gore, one he carefully shimmies across hugging the cold metal wall at his back, eyes never once leaving the dizzy oil slick rainbow atop the pool. Under the ruby watch of the lights and his singular overseer friend Sig can only see one way forward that isn’t either choking on debris or an open weeping wound. One wall is ruptured, mangled so badly that sparks still leap and writhe in the exposed dead filaments, exposed veins hanging limply as the once living flesh imprisoned behind the sheets of metal simply waits to decay. There had been a weakness in this part of the wall, an exit path for an expansive complicated pipe network, the largest major artery either used for venting excessive vapours or for dumping waste, in its current state he can’t possibly tell which. His fans gag on the stench of ammonia and sulfur as he climbs into the opening warily, trying to avoid looking at as much of the wound as possible as he bravely gathers his robes into his hands, looping his trailing scarf around an arm, and begins to slosh through a layer of mystery sludge, pushing any and all thoughts about what it might be from his mind.

“You really should have done something about this sooner, Sunshine. I know dying might seem a grand idea but surely you could have, I don’t know, purposed some sort of organism to clean this gunk out than be so dramatic ."

The overseer simply stares forward blankly into the heavy darkness.

“Oof, tough crowd. C’mon, you know I’m never one to half-ass my actual real harassment. Should’ve called me Yes Sig- yeah. Yeah you know what that joke wasn’t funny the first time and It’s not gotten any better, has it? And evidently I start talking when I’m nervous, good to know, good to know.”

The pipes spit him out into what can only be described as a minefield of lacerations. The bottom of the unit above has been blown out in the explosion, sheets of crumpled metal litter the floor along with glittering constellations of shattered glass. A water pipe weeps openly. A singular coil sings out a warbling cry, glowing brilliant nuclear blue so bright Sig finds a hand covering his dripping bad eye as pain blooms behind the sensitive socket before it suddenly shuts down with a cut off cry, only to hum to life once more, only to die again. On and off, an erratic pulse. The thought sits with him bitterly as he kicks glass and shrapnel out of his path with an unhappy, uneasy hiss. His exit path is another slit wrist, another exposed pipe, high above his head but luckily after all this time, after all his practice, Sig is an expert at scrambling up precarious walls and suspicious metal bars, it’s practically natural now. Oh Void he’s going to have to attempt to teach Suns how to do that, isn’t he? And judging by the few patchwork pictures he’s seen over their long friendship he can assume their puppet has a significant amount of height on his own, they’ll be as clumsy and uncoordinated as a newly born raindeer. If they’re alive, of course.

Of course t hey’re alive . That coil wouldn’t beat in time with their heart. Their warning lights would not buzz nor glow. Their overseer would not be able to relay such complex information without some form of input.

They’re alive. They’re alive . Fragile hope flutters in his chest as he trudges onwards, a flame only just kept burning.

His foot catches on a loose wire, his hand reaches out to steady himself before he tumbles into a situation he cannot bullshit himself out of, one he cannot run from. The wall he leans against, the one under his green shaking fingers, is almost pristine, bone white, lab-like and subtly textured, the bumps and ridges achingly familiar as his breath catches, heaves through him like a prayer screamed at the top of one's lungs. A tiny metal sign bolted into the wall labels this as unit 13, a singular fragment of what once made up Suns’ memory conflux, now abandoned and lifeless. A single axon lays limp at his feet, neural fibers tangle with corroded circuitry, a fuse box oozes black ichor in reverent silence, the scent of bile and decay sticks to the air in a persistent haze as he stumbles forth, passing through scenes that become increasingly familiar. Sig tries to no avail to block the images from his mind, but there is one thing that sticks out to him, glaringly obvious; they’ve been suffering, decaying, for years . There’s rust clinging to the joints of each of their units, panels peeling back to reveal necrotic flesh blackened and seeping foul stinking gunk, in some places they’ve completely rotted away to show the worn mechanisms underneath, fiber optic cables spilling from each wound.

Suns is alive, dead and dying, all three all at once. A fire, ashes and an onlooker to the destruction, saved, abandoned and begging for release from it all. A victim. The perpetrator of their own destruction. A thrown away tool still waiting to be used once more, continuing onwards, working without pause, hoping that one day, one day , they will do a good enough job. 

The more Sig thinks about it the more he wants to wrap his hands around his creator’s neck.

Another door. Another pitiful unit. 

Another door and a sudden drop off into a fathomless pit. 

Sunlight rains down from the giant gash that splits their can in twain, warmth kisses the metal of his face like a long lost lover as slowly, carefully, breath held, Sig beholds what lays before him. The cut in the metal walls is even, smooth almost, purposefully done and decisively not an injury sustained in the collapse, especially if the state of decay beyond is anything to go by, the true nature of an iterator revealed for all to see, a vivisection once now a post mortem examination. He edges towards the drop, eyes never leaving the still squirming grey bloated flesh that pulses thickly where the metal hangs limply, he can only whimper at the sight in muted horror. Below there’s the shattered white bleached bones of the rest of Suns’ memory units, unrecognisable pieces all blending together into a slurry of body parts. Tendrils and wires; the veins and arteries of an iterator, span the large gap between the separate pieces of Suns’ corpse like macabre spiderwebs, each one swaying in a dry breeze that reeks of vomit and rot, each one looking more and more like his only way to cross the ravine unless he wants to walk the miniscule edge right next to the wound. By his side the single overseer quakes and wavers.

“Hey there Sunshine. Are you… okay with this?,” Sig barely raises his voice above a whisper, a fit of despair lingering around his shoulders like an old friend, “I mean, I guess this part of you looks like it’s been this way for a really long time, probably longer than I’ve actually know you but, I guess what I mean to say, is this okay for you to live with? Is this really okay for you to see? It’s… it’s a lot to handle.”

Feverently, he grasps for the overseer, cupping it in his shaking terrified fingers in some sort of impassioned madness. He pretends he does not see it, he pretends that it does not exist. But it is far too late to scrub the image from his mind, far too late to pretend he’s back in his chamber, in his own can, bored out of his mind, living in denial. There’s pockmarks in the tarnished metal where their meat had once been embedded, a supercomputer holding itself together with organic pieces, a perfect marriage of the divinity of the machine and the sins of the flesh. Now those marks are nothing but scars, memories of a creature that died here, gravemarkers, epitaphs. There’s scratches too. Almost like claw marks, like a desperate attempt to escape. Discarded implements that would fit in the hand of one of their creators. Broken screws. This wound is not simply an injury, not simply a purposeful gash upon the body of a wretched god. It is a scrapbook, a story of years upon years of abuse all piled upon a single spark, a single slice, a papercut. A single instance of suffering. And that’s not the worst of it, no, Sig fears that the worst is not that this happened, he fears the worst is that it was allowed . In all the years he’s known Suns they never once complained, they never once broke silence, they stayed subdued, smiling through carefully chosen words, and they allowed this to fester.

“Are you okay with this?” He asks once more, to the wind, to the sky, to the blink eye of the overseer resting in his hands.

‘ I think… I am. ’

“This should have never happened in the first place.”

‘ Well… it is our purpose to fix problems, right?’

Unbidden, laughter bubbles up from the depths of Sig’s chest, building steadily into an uproar that leaves him breathless, choking, wheezing.

“We’ve said these exact words to each other before. Back then I probably would have taken offense, back then I was different.” Wistfully he stands, scans the area and decides his best course of action is to stick to his promise to Wind and edge across the ledge to the other side, “I like to think that this has changed me, but who knows, Wind thinks I have, can’t be sure though. You can be the judge of that. I nearly gave up for a moment there, I know that I have to try, I have to.”

‘ You’ve kept me waiting long enough .’

Sig’s hands tangle with a mess of neural tissue, the tiny filaments stick to each of his fingers, he can almost feel Suns shiver through him like a second heartbeat, like a second breath.

“I’ll find a way to fix this. I promise. Then, we can go save Moon together, for what it’s worth.”

Once more into the unknown, Sig rushes into the bowels of his dear friend, forcing his way forwards through the ruins of a mighty man-made god as fast as his aching tired body allows, sloshing through a flood of tears and climbing the wreaked infrastructure, mourning each little loss as intimately as he might mourn himself. His fingers lovingly trace their wicked scars as he passes, drawing patterns in sooty residue, his light barely there thoughts question how many fires raged through Suns’ can, question how long they were able to bear the pain until they buckled. There’s a wall ahead, free of metal casing entirely, a sight that would make even the strongest stomach retch, but Sig has seen it all now, he does not flinch even when the flesh pulses under his wary touch, wet and sad, fluids seeping into his joints. The paint upon the adjoining walls is peeling and blistered, the metal scorched and dull, no neurons dance and no axons sway in anti-gravity, they have become a macabre museum, a display case. Positive. This is positive, he reminds himself. There is still life here, there is still something worth saving.

Their heartbeat rings through him. And it screams-

alive alive alive .

He’s close now. He can feel it, an itch within his mind, salt in the stagnant air. And he walks, forwards, forwards, to wherever it is they wait for him, to a future where he can go anywhere. Closer and closer until the roof above gives way to watery beams of sunlight, cables, pipes and supporting columns hold an almost indistinct hunk of metal aloft, less a puppet chamber and more a cracked egg and-

“ There you are,” Sig’s whispered words are swallowed by the gurgle of the flood waters below yet he dares not raise his volume as if anything more than this might break the moment, “I said I’d find you.” Like a breeze, like a prayer .

Sig can barely move, barely think, the rush of emotion he feels swell within him a war of despair and hope, two mighty leviathans clashing in bloody battle. His legs won’t move him forward, his eyes won’t leave that open box. Dreamlike. Everything swims in sparkling dappled light, tinted in colours of a hoary dawn. The memories are too painful, this is too much like Moon, how funny that he would compare the two in this moment, how funny he would find himself facing another friend he’d failed. Moon was easy compared to this, he knew she’d be there, waiting, alive and functioning, he didn’t have to face her in person, he was well with knowing he’d had a hand in her perpetuation. But this is like entering a lottery, or sticking your hand into a pipe to see which lizard will bite it off. Without much warning he finds himself strolling across a ramshackle bridge of unstable rebar, eyes forward, head empty. The whole chamber sways clearly waiting to drop at the slightest provocation, but there is nothing left in this world that can stop him now, there is nothing that can come between his long walk and Suns, there is nothing that-

And there they are .

There they are.

There they are at long long last.

Slumped against a pile of shrapnel and debris, metal holding arm torn from the tracks but still embedded in their limp puppet, the wires of their umbilical severed, spilling over their shoulders in red, blue, red, blue. There’s no light behind their eyes, their antennae don’t even twitch as he bumbles over, dumbly stumbling over his own clumsy feet. It almost feels like sacrilege to look upon their peeling golden paint, their too still body. Their dark eyelashes frame their glass eyes all too well, cyan coolant coats both of their sides as if someone took a knife to them, their robes are shredded, almost revealing their long toothpick-like legs in their entirety, they’re filthy, rusty, and still. Too still. Sig doesn’t know when he collapses to his knees beside them, he doesn’t know when he lays a careful hand against their cheek, he doesn’t know when his eye begins to leak, false tears dribbling down his metal cheek, drip dropping onto Suns’ own as he cradles them like they’ll break under anything less gentle. They’re… gone .

“I'm sorry.”

The only answer is the sound of waves.

“I'm sorry, please wake up.”

The cycle turns.

“I'm here now. I’m sorry I was late.”

And it turns once again.

And then the very rude overseer that woke him up from that twisted nightmare once again shoves its feelers into his broken eye. Sig yelps, bats it away angrily before he notices the stupid thing desperately tugging on the screws that keep the metal arm connected to Suns’ body. Yeah. Yeah that’s a good idea. They deserve to be free in death if they never could be in life. He owes them. Big time. He gingerly turns them over, gags at how their head lolls to the side and their optic shields blink unbidden before he wiggles one screw loose, thankful that due to the trauma they’ve sustained this will be an easy job. 

The chamber sways sickeningly, a boat caught within a swell.

A second screw joins the first, dropping to the ground with a tiny clink . Then a third. A fourth. There’s seven in total, ironic considering their name, he wonders if that was intentional. A tug, a heave, and slowly the arm begins to slip free, the feeding tubes and water hoses that snake through their insides slip out with a gush of wet and an indecent gurgle. Sig numbly reaches down to attempt to wipe some of the slag from them but more merely spurts out of the socket on their back each time he touches them, it seems a losing battle.

Once again the chamber sways, creaks, rolls with a desperate attempt to down them both.

The overseer pings around like an over excited bouncy ball, emoting and projecting arrows that point out, back towards the march of suffering he’d wandered in from. A good idea, Suns wouldn’t want him to die with them but he also can’t just leave them here. The overseer seems to agree. Sig gathers them up once more, blood and coolant and black gunk spewing from them in nasty gouts as he feebly half lifts them, half drags them away from the only home they’ve ever known, their home with etched drawings of happy slugcats on the walls, their home with scattered bleached pearls on the floors. But Sig does it, like a grim black parade, squaring his shoulders, drinking in the morbid air, and depriving them of a grave where they’ve known joy.

The chamber falls into the depths mere seconds after he stumbles out of there, collapsing to the cold ground in a heap, limbs tangled with Suns’ doll-like ones. They’re pretty. The thought rests in his mind like a sin committed. They’re pretty, even like this.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.” The words are whispered into the cold of their chest, no heartbeat, no breaths to be felt.

For a moment all he can do is cling to them, like driftwood, like he’s drowning, and then the overseer shoves its feelers directly into his eye socket again , wiggling around erratically as if it's trying to pull his very processors out of the opening. His fingers phase right through, slip upon the glass eye, the search continues even as he hisses and howls, water gushing out of the socket like rain. Then, suddenly, it stops, retracts, and begins to project a series of distorted images one by one in quick succession.

Sig wipes at his eye with a warbling groan, giving the red bastard a nasty glare with the other, “What the fuck was that for? If you’ve not noticed your master is dead, you can stop working now, you at least have that luxury.”

Overseer 055 does not mourn, it does not weep at the side of an empty husk, it does not kneel in the muck or offer apologies that only fall on dead metal, no no, Overseer 055 does the one thing that it should have done from the very beginning; request interface. The structure yet responds, there’s life down there somewhere, life he can hopefully grasp. It is not a pleasant idea however, for either of them. A forced interface is not joyful, both iterators must be consenting to the connection, present, but Seven Red Suns isn’t technically alive right now, they cannot say yes or no and thus, Overseer 055 makes the choice for them.

“No,” Is all Sig can muster, “No no. I get what you’re trying to tell me, you’re clever for just an overseer, but no. No I… no .”

Overseer 055 merely begins to try to pick at the loose wires of its master’s severed umbilical, nudging the bright crimson one that still has a clip attached to one end towards Sig persistently, like a pet begging for food. Back and forth it goes. Back. And forth.

“You know what this means, it isn’t fair ,” Sig pleads with the simple being, whining, scared, “I know I can hardwire into them, I know I can look for them in there, but it isn’t fair, they’ve been through enough.”

Again, Overseer 055 nudges the wire towards him, blinks up at him, and Sig feels his resolve crumble under that desperate glare.

He allows the guilt to settle in him like a stone. The two of them have done this before, mentally, from a distance, the most efficient way of gaining complete and utter access not just to another iterator’s databases but to their archives, their city’s systems, their memories, their everything . There’s a network, connecting everyone via a great highway of cables buried under the ground, deep enough for the rains to sweep over them without damage, but that system died easily, was prone to breaking, to burning up like a brilliant firework. The broadcast system wasn’t perfect but until that shattered like a billion shards of glass under the pressure of near constant use it was all they had. It’s been… far too long since he’s shared a physical connection with someone but never like this, never so close. It will be different to physically hardwire himself into Suns and physically feel their systems dance around him, and yes he would deeply prefer for them to be awake, to feel the full breadth of their being but… well he wouldn’t be doing this if they were, would he?

It is by dumb luck alone that the empty wire sockets on the back of his head match theirs. The lizard may have lost its head but the body still wanders.

Alive .

“Void, what am I hesitating for. I can save them. I can do this. Why am I still like this?”

Sig allows himself to heave out a cloud of vapour, allows it to hiss, to wail out into the heavy silence before his trembling fingers carefully, reverently, pluck the wire from the floor and slowly plug it into his head with a quiet click. He lowers himself to the ground slowly, laying down beside them, taking a limp hand in his own, staring at the wall behind them before shutting off his optic input, allowing himself to flow through the cable, through the microfibres, and outwards into the remains of Suns, outwards into their greater whole. He’s done this before, not physically of course, but through broadcast and neural link. This is different. Not just because Seven Red Suns isn’t waiting for him, open arms and enveloping him in hugging warmth, all golden and resonant with sound, but he’s actually here , real and in the flesh, diving into their body and soul. Now there’s only darkness, cold and empty. But it still feels good. But Suns always feels good, they’re always a good host. 

He pushes forth, systems and structure offering no resistance as he searches with careful hands, careful mind, for what he desires, for an inkling of them. The Overseer Relay functions as normal, its counterparts for neuron flies and inspectors are badly damaged, data corrupted or simply absent, everything else is just a mess . This isn’t right, this doesn’t feel like them, but it feels oh so familiar, like being welcomed home, like an eternal embrace. His fans make horrible distressed sounds as he attempts to stay focused. This is for them, to save them, he tells himself over and over, this is merely data recon, maintenance, but it’s almost like Suns knows he’s here, almost like they’re guiding him towards something. He can feel them, just on the cusp of his perception and he follows them blindly. This is the worst form of torture he’s ever endured, but endure it he shall. For them. Anything for them.

There’s a glimmer deep down in the dark, deeper than Sig has ever pushed, places that Suns would never allow another iterator to touch. He knows he’s not welcome there, where their private thoughts and puppet functions lay waiting, they’ve always trusted him not to delve too deeply. And now he has to break that trust between them, he has to reach out for that light, take it by the hand, hold it close, feel its life flow through every fiber of his being. Alive, living, life, pumping, bleeding, screaming life , like beautiful golden threads, like ripping out someones still beating heart. He grabs onto it, feels his mind touch it, feels the most divine feeling flood through him. But Sig holds strong, he does not fall nor falter, he does not let them go. He’ll never let them go again.

“I'm here now.” His voice echos like a hymn through a church, “I’ve got you.”

And he pulls, something clicks, like a light switch being flipped, warmth suddenly envelops him like a loving hug, all his pain, all his aches fade away. And he feels… thanked. He feels thanked . And gentle hands guide him up, out of that dark pit and back to the surface.

And in the real world Seven Red Suns begins to breathe once more.

Chapter Text

Like sleep, like death, you merely wake up again.

Metal eyelashes flutter upon rusted metal cheeks as metal lungs begin to drink in the stagnant fumes of death that linger upon the still heavy air along with a shimmering, almost pearlescent, sheen of fine dust. For a few crawling moments all they do is lay there, entangled, before slowly, like wading through the fog of dreams, they stir. A finger twitching. A shuffle of legs. Their vision blooms to life; light flooding through their tired old systems, lightning bolts of sensation, a sudden snap . Suns carefully, gingerly, pushes their aching puppet from the grime covered concrete floor, confusion, disorientation, hanging from them. Everything is new. But it is also not . They have never been here, yet they are here, both in the sense of their current location and actually being the location in and of itself. The thoughts twist, like the tangle of wires swinging limply above their head like a parade of hanged men. Noise resounds through their very being. The clicking of their processors coming back online, the warped moan of their wonky internal fans, the sluggish thump of their coolant pump, the ever present mechanical drone of their proof of existence that embraces them in calm familiarity. It is deafening. And quiet. Too quiet.

Where is the comforting hum of their plethora of machinery? The scritch scratching of bone needle upon blank metal? The scurrying of tiny feet? The buzz of voices through countless open screens that replay a myriad of logs and recordings as they work? The almost windchime tinkle of their pearls colliding? Where is their chamber? The rest of their can?

Suns huffs and splutters, choking on the grainy dust as their fans try to cough it up, their trembling arms lifting, one garbed in a beautiful red wine coloured sleeve, the edge decorated with filigree and tiny glittering golden beads that twinkle like a fistfull of stars, the other bare, metal tarnished, rusting and paint peeling to reveal the ugly silver beneath. Their back where their holding arm once kept them aloft oozes foul thick gunk still, the wound throbbing with the intensity of a hammer against skull, and with all the subtlety of a brick through a glass window as they begin to waver and shake, an earthquake, a building supernova. They can feel it, right there as a pressure behind their eyes, clawing, wiggling around inside of their head, an unwanted animal screaming, begging to be set free, a cage their too weak, too terrified, aching trembling fingers cannot pry open. Something inside of them is broken. Rotten and rancid. And it needs to come out, they need to get it out .

They grasp at their antenna, desperately, foolishly trying to yank the offending metal from their head, a reckless attempt to force themself to focus on painful physically stimuli rather than the maelstrom swirling in their mind. Their fans hiccup. Once. Twice. Struggling to quell the building internal heat that floods their rapidly failing body as Suns all but crumples in on themself, head bowed to the floor as they choke, and heave, and splutter and cough, a hard lump feeling wedged in their chest. They cry out, beg, plead, curse the very nature of the Cycle itself. They wail, animalistic. They scream, mechanical. They feel so so so small now, a severed head continuing to live without a body, still seeing, still there, but dying all the same. But they also feel big. Much bigger than the walls that cage them, much bigger than their towering city that dared to scrape the stars, almost as if they reach out into the boundless forever that stretches out before them, almost as if they bloat with the crashing reality of their continued existence without the rest of their body. Two realities, both as true as each other, clashing, crashing, contrasting. 

And. It. Hurts .

They can’t stand it. Their clawed fingers rake themselves down their face with a screech of metal upon metal before their wrists are suddenly caught, someone else's fingers pressing into their throbbing pulse as their hands are forcefully stilled, cradled, and held.

“Suns, I’m gonna need you to stop, okay?”

Everything slows, stills, suddenly creaks to a standstill. The world swims in front of their eyes, a blur of purple and offensively garish green even as their vision blackens in the corners, even as static fizzles before them.

“Good. Good, like that. You should uh… probably breathe now.”

They hadn’t noticed how much their lungs burnt, how their chest strained, how their fans had stuttered and groaned. Suns huffs, spluttering, gagging. The dust feels stale as they wheeze and force heavy breaths into their tiny spider thread thin body as those hands, heavy and achingly real, hold them there, teetering on edge of a never ending abyss.

“That’s right. Let's both of us just get well acquainted with the floor.”

Their too heavy head drops onto an offered shoulder, arms carefully encircle them, fingers rubbing comforting patterns in the caked on gunk of their back, a gentle almost lullaby like hum rocks them side to side; a discarded bottle in a stream. Suns lays there, in an embrace of cogs and gears, content to stay until the world makes sense again, content to stay until they can feel their can respond to them, until every axon, every neural frond and coolant pipe, until even the tiniest of their screws and the microbes in their breath, comes back to them. They don’t realise they’re wailing out a despondent crooked cry until that kind voice hushes them as if they’re a candle to be snuffed out.

“I’m sorry Suns, really I am. I’m sorry I wasn’t quick enough.”

Those words fall like bombs around them, prickle across their chassis, sting like a rain of slaps. They hate this, they decide, they deeply hate this. Those who made them were sick, weren’t they? ‘ Emotions are a deviation ’, they had been told, something to be ashamed of, something to hide. ‘ You are not programmed to feel nor to question ’, they had been told, and so they had accepted it as fact, they had pushed it all down, had been perfect. Every time they showed too much will, they needed to be fixed, Suns didn’t like to be fixed. Suns didn’t like to feel broken. In the end, despite what they had been told, their creators had still failed, they could still feel .

It’s like the punchline to a sick joke.

From within them, Sig has seen so much, too much, and he can safely say he has never, not in his thousands upon thousands of active cycles, seen another iterator like this, in such a feeble state of despair and despondency. Not even the image of Moon, sitting by the water's edge watching the distant milky sky churn above, can compare to this. He’d convinced himself he’d be happy, living that strange cocktail of truth and lie from a comfortable distance, he’d convinced himself that she needed him. She didn’t. Suns does need him though, as they tremble in his arms, barely there, ghost-light and spewing heavy hot breaths against his neck, the tips of their clawed fingers caught in the dirty fabric of his old robe. They need him, and he is all they need right now, he’s the only thing they have left. And that’s all he needs too. He’s stomped down the helplessness that bubbled up inside him, killed the little voice in his head that cries out in a pitiful tone ‘ unwanted unwanted ’, and he holds Suns close, breathes in each of their shaky exhalations, and he talks nonsense, babbled tales of his adventures to try to coax them into calmness, into a state of being present.

It is hard, gruelling work.

But Sig’s not a quitter. In the quiet moments, the stolen early hours of the morning when Wind had been away, when the only entertainment to colour that loneliness had been the twisting roads of his own thoughts, Sig had made a promise. To himself. To the Cycle. To Suns. A promise that he would hold close the parts of them that hurt to touch, like shards of shattered glass, that he’d embrace the ugly nasty pieces of them that writhe in filth, that he’d not be scared to touch, scared of that festing growing affection that’s dug a hole in his chest to live in. Sig had promised himself that no matter how bad Suns would be when he finally managed to get here, to this moment, that he wouldn’t let them go again. He’ll let them ramble endlessly about their stupid plants or their sad pathetic noodle of a messenger. They can talk philosophy, theories, about their people, about their history, they can even talk about Pebbles if they so please. Anything. Anything to see them be more than… this . 

Eventually their wretched wailing grinds to a halt and all that is shared between the two are deep shaking breaths of stagnant air and a press of body against body. Gingerly, he pushes them back away from his shoulder to sit at arm's length, swaying back and forth, those brilliant black eyes stare at him, through him, before focusing, blinking once, twice. Slowly, like waking up from a dream, suddenly, like the curtains being thrown wide open, blinding, brilliant, glorious, like greeting the dawn, like getting sunburnt. Sig's fingers tremble against the cold metal of Suns’ bare shoulder, coolant gathers under his broken eye, a threat of tears ready to be spilt. He attempts to blink it away, starts to move to dash it from his vision with his sleeve, but before he can a single weak hand brushes away the tears before it cups his cheek, reverently, in worship, in disbelief. He stares at Suns. They stare back. And for a few solid heavy moments that lay thick upon them like veils of fog the only sound is the settling shudders of the structure around them and the distant melody of waves slapping against an unseen shore. The two merely blink at each other, each reasoning with themselves that this simply cannot be real.

But it is.

“...Hello there, Sunshine.” Sig’s voice has lost the bouncing jovial tone it usually carries now becoming scratchy with emotion as if sand fills his speakers, but Suns’ antenna twitch all the same, their eyes widening just a fraction.

They attempt to speak, are only able to conjure a series of distressed error beeps and garbled spluttering before they cough, a oily fluid leaking from their own speakers before they suck in a deep breath, flutter their eyes and finally manage to croak out, “Hello.”

And with that single word, Sig breaks entirely, throwing himself onto them, clawing them into his desperate arms feeling every curve of their body against his own, feeling the vibrations of their fans, the thumping of their coolant pump working in their chest, the way they melt into his touch, sigh into the embrace, laugh musically. And it is far from perfect but it is real. Oh it is real , and it couldn’t be any better. Suns easily, deftly, plucks the wire that connects them to Sig from the back of his head so they don’t startle him further, and if he notices, they don’t notice, too transfixed with being alive, too lost in the swell of a thousand new things drowning them. Their hands trace over the back of his head, down his spine, tangle with the scarf and learn the shapes of him, the weight of him, how he smells like distant lands and crude oil, how he hums and buzzes with electricity and thought, his everything. Solid and real real real . It would be dreamlike if they didn’t feel as if they’ve been sat collecting slag in their pipes for a thousand cycles but perhaps that is how they know this is what it is. A new something blooming under their fingertips.

“You came all this way for me? How? Why ?”

Hoarse with emotion, he replies, “Yeah I did, and I stand by my choice, I’d make it again if given the option.”

“That doesn’t explain why .” They’re lost, confused, wandering down those twisted roads, begging him for answers that he himself struggles with.

“Because you needed me.”

A quiet confession, a shattered window, he holds them, they hold him.

Suns allows themself to think for a moment, did they need him back then when they could feel their systems fail one by one, or did they just need someone, anyone to be by their side? Did they reach out to the one person they knew would be foolish enough to do something so stupid, so reckless, because they had hoped he’d do exactly this, or were they just hurting, desperate, longing for anyone to fill the silence as their body collapsed under its own weight? I care about you, perhaps more than I should . No, they refuse to think about that now. No, they’re just being a fool, like usual. They reached out to him for a reason. They needed him, in that moment, they needed him to make everything better, to make it alright. They wanted nobody else but him to share those final moments with. Even if they’ll never openly admit to that, it is true. For now though, perhaps they can simply agree with his statement, perhaps no matter what road he plans to travel they can follow, side by side, playing pretend, knowing his affections will never be theirs, knowing they’ll never learn how to love someone.

There are gaps in their memory, blank spots that they cannot fill in no matter how hard they try to think, try to push the broken parts of them in there to make sense of things. They know who they are, who he is, they know things beyond that but the memories are light, gossamer, dust motes in sunlight, fleeting, water through cupped fingers, unable to be held before they drip drop away. But it’s fine, they’re okay like this, the parts of them that hurt, that were angry and disappointed feel oh so very far away now, it’s almost like being taken back to their default settings.

They blink, he’s waiting for a reply.

“You’re right. I did need you. Perhaps I still do.”

Sig stumbles up to his feet at long last, offers them a hand to help them up onto theirs, “Well, that’s good! Because it took a lot of effort to get here, and time, but mostly effort. Did you know that the world beyond us has begun to heal, despite the snow storms and the dropping temperatures?”

They shake their head, confused, “Who starts a conversation like that?”

“Me. You’ll see it all, real soon, might need to fix you up, but there’s a whole world out there, at least between you and me, who knows what it’ll be like between me and Moon.”

“Slow down, I don’t even know how-” But as Sig begins to pull them along, they trip and stumble over their awkward legs, almost falling flat on their face, “-to walk.” They finish lamely, arms windmilling outwards trying to catch a handhold.

Sig is quick on his feet, used to fleeing threats and catching himself before falling from cliffs and ledges, he is easily able to stop Suns from replicating his own cracked eye and face with a hearty laugh that brings just a sliver of light to this dark grave.

“Whoops. Sorry sorry, this has just become my normal now. We’ll take it slow, okay? I mean, I’m pretty tired so I won’t be going anywhere really quick and I’m not really eager to rest in case my body tries to enforce sleep again because that wasn’t fun but this place really isn’t a good place to stay it is kind of freaky and-”

“Hara.”

“-you would not believe the stuff I saw climbing through your ruins. Did you know we’re that fleshy under all the metal? Well we are and it smells and looks bad and-”

“ Hara .”

“-your people really did a number on you because some of these wounds aren’t fresh and they’re clearly intentional, why was that? Oop, that’s probably a sore subject. Hey I wonder where you messenger is, have you seen it, because I haven’t and I just realised that-”

“ Hara !”

Sig blinks, dumbly, “Uh… yeah?”

Suns shakes their head in exasperation, quickly stopping when pain stabs at the back where their wires connect to their internals, hanging there limply, before they force themself to stand properly on their thin stiletto-like legs, “You’re rambling and I don’t understand half of the things you’re saying. What do you mean it isn’t safe here? This is the heart of my can, it should be safe.”

“Your uh… puppet chamber collapsed into the depths, so I’m guessing we don’t have the structural integrity to call this ‘ safe ’, so we should probably get somewhere where we’re not in danger of tumbling into a fathomless hole.”

“I… see. I do have my questions.” They attempt to brush themself down but only manage to smear the dirt around.

“That’s fair. Yeah. Let’s uh… is there anywhere you would consider safe? Or protected? If you remember of course.”

“There are… gaps in my mind, my memories, it's like looking through a dirty window.”

Sig fidgets, picks at the embroidery on his scarf, peers up at them, “So… you can remember things but it’s hard? The memories are still there just foggy?”

A pat on his shoulder, Suns takes their first stuttering steps, “You don’t have to be so nervous around me. There is somewhere safe if I am remembering my body parts correctly, and if it has survived at all of course.”

“Yeah, of course, duh.”

“I seem to recall this small purple… creature… making a home within one of my sealed valves. It is as sturdy a place as we’ll find.”

“Good! Onwards!”

Sig seems sure in his march forth but Suns, not so much. Their feet feel like they’re not really real, and they can see their visage, yellow and rusted, reflected back at them in every facet of their broken self, in the tarnished metal, in the macabre displays of their guts. They should feel worse about it, perhaps, more off put, more sad and broken, but all that resounds within them is a hollow acknowledgement of loss. They know they are still here, alive by some twist of fate, but as their fingers ghost along the walls, trace the cracks in their metal casing, they can’t help but consider themself dead. A head without a body. A haunting. A memory. They know that water yet flows through some of their pipes, that somewhere a coil or two yet spit and hiss, active but unable to power the rest of the fallen behemoth that was them. The body has life but it is fleeting, ending, a passing moment, waiting to finish. It should be a blessing, it should be a light moment where all their worries and uncertainties fade away, where they can finally leave this world behind and all of its splendor, leave it to whatever comes next, to the will of the Cycle. But it’s not. It’s not. 

Their death, their reward for being good, for working as they were intended to do, was stolen from them.

But as Sig holds their hand tight, his green fingers laced with their own yellow ones, it doesn’t seem that bad after all.

They are lighter for it, better for it. Not fixed, not whole, but Suns finds that they feel less like driftwood floating free and more anchored, in place. More themself. The silence hangs heavy around them but Sig seems able to break it easily although his eyes never leave the darkness in front.

“I’m glad.”

“About what?” Their voice is barely a whisper, a sound that would be lost in the maelstrom of all others, but in this quiet it echoes uncomfortably loud.

Sig chances a glance behind him, quickly adverts his eyes when he finds their gaze upon him, “That you’re alive. I’m glad, even if you still got hurt, I’m glad you’re here. I just wish I wasn’t so slow.”

“It doesn’t matter that you were slow, just that you’re here now .”

“Hah! Yeah, yeah you’re right! I just hope Moon doesn’t mind me being even more late!”

Suns tilts their head, “Moon?”

“Moon? You know Moon! You know, Looks to the Moon, senior of my group, Pebbles’ big sister?”

“Pebbles?”

Sig pauses, turns, clearly more than mildly distressed, “Five Pebbles? You were his mentor, really cared about him for reasons I don’t really understand. Young? A complete brat? You made a messenger to be able to send him highly illegal information without detection, do you remember that at least?”

“My… messenger? You mentioned it before.”

Purple. Big bright eyes. A master of the art of stabbing things to death. Calm but clingy. It had enjoyed being pet behind the ears. It had… left? Did it leave? They can’t recall but they remember it. They remember.

“C’mon Suns let's find this valve, we can have a proper chat about things there.”

It had been a spur of the moment that led to them creating the messenger, a strike of inspiration perhaps one might call it, others might call it madness. They’d asked Sig for his original blueprints several cycles prior, a good enough base to start with they admit much to his amusement, but they needed something better than a simple pipe cleaner, something more suited to their current needs. Suns had never been one to allow another iterator to dictate their actions, and despite the warnings, despite Sig offering up his advice completely free of charge, they had elected to ignore him, meddled with the code and sequence found within those blueprints. 

It was no surprise their first attempt did not survive. 

They refused to quit, however, there was a job to be done, plans to move forward. The second, lived no longer than a few fragile seconds. But with each attempt, each revision, each iteration , they improved, changed things, until finally, finally , they had succeeded. A perfect messenger, a tool to be used, just like them. With little care they’d decanted the slugcat, small and soft but old enough to understand, old enough to be without a caretaker, the thing lost and confused, sniffing at the air and pawing at where its mouth should have been, big wet eyes searching the humming facility for something, anything to light its way forth. Their overseers had escorted the little purple creature into their chamber, careful to guide it through access shafts so they didn’t lose countless hours of toil to the dangers of their can.

“Doing okay there Suns?”

“My legs ache, I think I’ve got rust or something in my knees.”

“I’ll take a look in a bit, okay? Let’s just get there first.”

They remember watching it drop through an access pipe into their puppet chamber, they remember catching it, staring at it with their big black eyes.

And it had stared back with its big eyes of its own, brilliant white and blinding bright.

It had wiggled, desperately trying to reach them, and Suns, not knowing what else to do, had reached back. Had grasped the ugly thing in their hands, had groaned in disgust as it settled in their arms with a happy rumbling purr, had nuzzled into them like it might a mother if it ever had one.

They should have pushed it away.

Creatures die .

They die over and over and over and over and-

They ascend .

Like sleep, like death.

One day, they will miss the creature.

One day, they will regret this.

“Careful here, there’s quite a drop below us and it’s slippy, hold on to me if you’re not sure, okay?”

“Okay, it is surprising how much of myself crumpled like this. Is this really all that’s left?”

“I’m sure there’s more life in you than meets the eye Sunshine.”

The first missions went well, they recall, the creature easily learning that its produced spines are what feeds its form, happily stabbing anything that comes within range, even practicing how to snipe batflies from the air. Slowly, slowly, the creature grew. Larger, stronger. And then off it went, long journeys to other iterators, to other cans. Sensitive information not suitable for broadcasts being delivered. And to his credit, Pebbles was very careful in removing the first pearl, allowing the messenger time to rest and heal from the ordeal, allowing it time to eat and relax. He even held his rains back long enough for it to escape over his western retaining wall. Things went as planned, at least for a while.

But Suns had always been a creature with poor luck, or perhaps too much trust in others.

Perhaps they became shortsighted, foolish, forgetful in their old age.

As always things went wrong .

Five Pebbles. Young, impatient. Poor little Pebbles. He acted much too soon with too little preparation, just straight to consuming vast amounts of water as he flung himself into action, desperately slamming himself against the walls of the maze, a bug lost but trying. Still trying. He had been so much more desperate than they ever realised, but with such a distance between them, Suns never knew of this course of action until it was far too late. And to complicate matters, he hurt Moon, not on purpose, but her pain became the consequence of his actions, of course she was left parched, begging for her brother to let her drink, to give her her water back. And of course he just didn’t listen. So of course she tries harder, forcing the broadcast through and then-

“Are you sure you’re doing good, Suns? Ah, here, let me help you up.”

“Thanks. I’m okay, Hara, really, just… recalling some unpleasant details.”

“We can stop if you need.”

“No. No let’s keep going.”

It’s Chasing Wind that told them. Blunt but honest.

He’s got the Rot .

They were quick about it, a couple talks with Sig, a couple cycles to prepare and off went their messenger once again, an apology, a… well Suns doesn’t exactly know what it was but the pearl had an intended recipient and it damn well got there. Through the gleaming eye of their red overseer they watched their purple creation fight its way through place after place. Degraded storehouses, flooded drainage pipes, shattered industrial buildings, infested towers, rooms so dark even their light could not penetrate it. And they worried. And they fretted. And they tried to tell themself it was all for Pebbles, but they’re a poor liar. Both then, and now. Always lying.

They cared about the creature, they still do. Sig even teased them about it, telling them to think of a name once the slugcat returned home. They don’t quite remember if they ever did that.

But the slugcat got where it needed to, message ready to be delivered, right on time, they had been proud of it.

Then Pebbles had just ripped out the pearl, flung their creation, their messenger, their friend to the floor and-

“Look you can see the sky above us! There’s a lot of large cracks in your roof here, surprised we’ve not seen any of your living blocks down here from your city.”

“I am too, it did cover most of my roof. If my structure wasn’t so damaged I’d suggest looking at it.”

“A damn shame, we could’ve made so much use of all that stuff just abandoned up there.”

It could barely stand. There had been so much blood . They can still hear their distressed yelling from so far away it doesn’t even sound like them in those hurtful sad memories. They had been scared, for themself, for Pebbles, for their Messenger, for what this meant for them all. They were in the process of trying to make their overseer project a screen, get it to reach him somehow and then, well…

Pebbles destroyed their overseer.

He’d cut them out. They had failed him. Failed everyone.

That feels so long ago now, in this moment. The pain hasn’t faded. Nor has the anger with the other iterator. Nor has their sorrow for him.

“Suns?”

They blink, look up at Sig from where he stands above them protectively, their legs having given out, “I’m sorry, you were saying?” Wisp light, barely there, they feel like sharp shards of glass.

“Oh good, you’re back. You just suddenly went all quiet and fell over I thought… well…”

“I remember.”

“Oh… and that’s… good?” Sig helps them stand once more, uncertain in his actions as he leads them forth, to where they can just about see the valve where they plan to stay.

“No. No it’s not good,” He reaches for them after he scrambles up the ledge, dragging up their much taller body before both of them tumble into the enclosed space.

It’s warmer here, smells less like death, almost cosy. Suns feels like they might want to try to sleep if what Sig says is true about that, but he looks at them, propped up on his elbow as he lays beside them, one hand playing with a stray wire absently as if he wants them to continue their train of thought.

Sluggishly, they do, “I remember my messenger. I remember Pebbles. And I remember Moon. Hara I… I am so sorry. No wonder you blamed me for what happened to her.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I think you were at least a little bit right about her. Maybe she’s not the paragon I set her up to be, and maybe I was a bit wrong, you didn’t intend to cause her harm.”

“I…yes. She was merely a consequence of my foolishness.”

Sig scoffs here, twirls their wire around in his fingers, that slight tug is enough to keep them grounded, “Pebbles was the one who did that, not you. You might’ve handed him the means to do so, but it wasn’t like you set out to kill her. It isn’t on you.”

“ Hara… ”

“A younger me might’ve blamed you, I mean, he did, I did, but not now, not when I’ve had time to grow and think and see and… pfft, you know Wind got me to debate philosophy with him?”

Suns turns on their side to meet him, face to face, sharing breaths once more, their coolant pump flutters nervously, “You’ve changed.”

“For the better?”

“Why did you come for me, and not her?” The question has lingered in their mind since they awoke and realised what exactly was happening although they did not mean to ask it now, so bluntly, so openly.

“Because I care about you Suns, perhaps more than I should. Does that sound familiar?”

Those are their words. Almost exactly. They let out a surprised error sound that has Sig laugh a little, edge in closer, hanging his arms around them almost protectively, almost like a cage.

“Sorry. We will be seeing Moon, don’t worry, I did start this whole madness with the intent to save her, and I knew I couldn’t do it without you.” They can’t help but feel disappointed with his words, yet Sig continues regardless, “We can even go save Pebbles, if you like. Got plans to meet up with Wind too! Oh, he sends his regards by the way! It’ll be okay, Sunshine, you’ll see!”

“Will it?” They whisper, so much has changed.

“I promise! All of us, we’ll be okay.”

Despite the nagging discomfort, Suns wiggles forward and slots against him as if they’re meant to be there, a festering hope in their chest stomped out and snuffed. Of course he’d still choose her, of course he would. She’s been there all his life, how foolish to think that even the golden rays of the sun could douse the chill of moonlight.

But still.

It is nice to pretend.

Chapter Text

In the thin mists of twilit morning Sig lays beside Suns, unable to find rest within the crushing quiet found in the enclosed prison of the unmoving valve of one of their structure’s many hearts, staring deep into their eyes, arm draped around them as a weak excuse of a protective shield as both of them, he and Suns, stir the layers of gathering dust with their shared breaths. Never, in any simulated reality, thought up future, half-assed iteration, could he have imagined this scenario. He’s pretty damn sure his creators couldn’t either, not that those which he interacted with regularly could think any further than the confines of their own self-importance that they kept hidden behind their masks of subverted vanity. It is almost euphoric, to touch them, to hold them, to share the same space, the same stagnant air, to be able to monopolise their attention constantly. He wonders if they can read his rushing thoughts as he idly traces the seams of Suns’ chassis down their arm, the point of his finger picking out the dirt lodged in there, especially around their elbow joint that shows the tinge of stubborn rust. 

They twitch an antenna at him, the outer edge painted a brilliant scarlet, as they watch his ministrations with mild curiosity, drawing themself closer, pressing themself into the comfort of this stolen moment. They’re curved, softer shapes and angles compared to his own more boxy nature, with long legs and impressive stature, a trait shared by the puppets of most other iterators their age. Not that he takes notes, of course, but when you have Innocence in your local group, a youth with too much time on her hands and an enviable inability to work like she was designed to, you simply have to keep up the only way she understands, and that means you learn to take in the details, even the little ones. There’s scarcely anything that girl won’t do just to get her hands on the latest goings on and, well, if you need to scoop on someone the only currency she understands is information.Sig chuckles to himself, and wonders for just a moment if she’s still standing, alive and well, Moon certainly isn’t. 

His good mood dissipates like mist before the blazing sunrise as he remembers her, lonely, alone, sat by that water’s edge, staring into the sky, wondering what became of her beloved baby brother. Sig had taken to watching her observe him, before his overseer suddenly ceased to exist that is. She’d had one of her own few remaining eyes watching Pebbles for her own peace of mind, just to make sure he’d not completely left her in that dreadful silence of uncertainty, wondering just when would it be her time. Her time to finally rest. Perhaps that time had come. Perhaps finally her systems had completely shut down and her forced perpetuation had come to an end, or for some reason the code he’d worked so very hard on had failed, the plan hadn’t been without its flaws after all. Just like Hunter. Maybe with the last of his power Pebbles had reactivated the lockdown, or maybe his little fix was only a temporary solution. He couldn’t guarantee either that Blue would follow his commands to the letter, especially since she was just a wild beast who simply wandered into his chamber with a nudge from himself. Sig tries to push the memories of those unfortunate creatures from his mind, but their dancing images stick, in sickly pink and blazing blue, with wet paws and sad eyes and silly, expressive motions. Dumbly he wonders if he should’ve put the effort into looking for Suns’ messenger, but if he’s being honest he’s not quite sure just how well they actually remember it. They say they do but they could merely be lying to plug the hole it’s left in their life. They were incredibly fond of it despite their initial distaste.

Honestly right now he just needs to focus.

He needs a plan.

Moon has probably perished by now, his arguments against that fact are baseless at best, wild speculation at worse. But he had wanted to see her. For so very long it had been the only thing that he could cling to, his only reason to keep living. When he finally did, after countless turns of The Cycle, after yearning and longing, it felt like a miracle , like his life just suddenly made sense, and while, on this journey, both of self-discovery and to rescue another friend from their untimely fate, he had come to terms with the fact that perhaps Moon isn’t his perfect paragon of goodness after all, she still deserves the help. Was she unfair to Pebbles, or was she too doting? He honestly cannot tell. It isn’t his place to decide what is and isn’t a healthy sibling relationship though, after all she and Pebbles are unique in their position and roles, there’s no way he could ever understand it. As far as he’s aware there are no other iterators like them, either of them. Special, in that inevitable race towards self-destruction. Yes, he did blame Suns for it, all of it , and yes, despite the soothing comfort he feeds them they do retain some of the fault for it, however, it was always going to happen. Be it intentionally, accidentally, or just because whoever thought that sticking one iterator right next to another and forcing them to share the same vital resources was a complete and perfect moron. Their story was never going to end happily. Regardless of the hows and whys and whos; Moon does need help. Maybe she doesn’t need him specifically, but she needs something at least. 

And that was really why he came to get Suns, right? 

There were no other ulterior motives or reasons he’s forgetting… right ?

He didn’t have a sudden revelation that shook his whole world view while unconscious and hallucinating vividly and now that revelation, those words he longs to utter, to proclaim in front of them, are absolutely not stuck in his chest rotting away.

Because that would be stupid , wouldn’t it?

They should get moving soon though, being here can’t be healthy for them. But as Suns’ fans hum contentedly against him, the cool curve of their cheek resting against his exposed throat almost tasting the jumble of wires there, he feels bad for disturbing them, this must be hard. They’ve been through a lot , and that’s just being kind about it. He supposes so has he but Sig’s not ready to unpack all that right now, better to stuff it down where it can’t hurt him and push forwards, stumbling over each roadblock with the grace of an atomic bomb. Once he knows Moon’s fate, once he meets up with Wind, once he’s settled all this unfinished business and tied up his menagerie of loose ends, then he can start freaking out about all this. Having a meltdown isn’t going to help Suns, especially taking into account their own fragile state of mind, it’s just not worth damaging them further.

“Ready to get out of here?” Volume low, so they don’t startle, their face is directly smushed into his left speaker after all.

A warm sigh, they stir, mumble, “Get out? Don’t be silly Hara, we can’t leave .”

“Pfft, were you asleep? You figured that out fast~”

“Mmph. Where am I again? What happened to me?” They really do sound like he’s just woken them up, it’s kind of cute actually.

Well, that isn’t mildly concerning.

“I think you’re a bit confused, come on sit up,” Lightly, he pushes them away as they grumble, blinking at him helplessly, confused, disorientated, “Let’s break it down, Sunshine. You lost connection to the broadcast system, something happened to you, judging by what your overseers showed me I can assume you overheated, set on fire, then went kaboom, am I right?”

Suns nods slowly, unsure, as they sit back on their heels, their arms wrapping around themself as if to hug away the hurt, “I can barely recall I just know that… I felt hot. And for some reason my emergency protocols just wouldn’t kick in, even when I tried to manually send out a request. Just… nothing.” They look down, to the dust, to the dirt, “I was scared, Hara. I… when Pebbles, when he hurt my little friend, I wasn’t scared then, I was crippled by this overwhelming sadness mixed with anger, I lost someone deeply important to me in that moment, but I also wanted to strangle him too.”

“I wouldn’t have complained~”

 A half shrug, “I imagine not. But I wasn’t scared. I was scared when I thought I was going to die. I have only felt fear like that a few times before, it was not pleasant.”

“Hey… hey it’s okay now,” His complete lack of intelligence has struck once more, hurrah for his incredible processing power of one singular neuron. Still, he rises, untangles their arms from them, holds their hands once more, much to their clear surprise if the twitch of their antenna and widening of their eyes is much to go by.

“I am… forgive me I allowed my emotions to control me, it will not happen again.”

“Nah. I’m just stupid, you’re allowed to be upset about this. But, okay, all that happened, right?” A tentative nod, “Okay, so then I decided to do some crazy stuff I barely even remember doing, and wandered over here and I got to witness the trauma of you just going down like a stack of dominos!” Suns winces, looks away, score 2-0 to his lack of intelligence.

“I don’t remember actually collapsing fully, by then I was barely even hanging on but, all of a sudden, it happened.” Wistful, light as a fresh sheen of early morning dew.

“What did?”

They look at him, through him, both a drizzle and a downpour of emotion reflected in those black eyes as they speak, wispy and reverent, “I think I was dreaming. Or dying. Or both. But there was a hand, reaching out to me, as cliche as that sounds, but it is true, it has to be.”

“You got saved. You’re welcome, by the way~” 

“Oh. It occurs to me I haven’t actually thanked you yet. I… forgive me, this still feels like a hallucination, some fantasy I’m making up as I slowly power down, spiralling towards death.”

“Morbid!”

“Sorry…”

“Nah don’t be,” Sig waves their concerns off but pauses, an idea suddenly striking him, do they think this is a falsehood, a mirage? He grasps at them again, by the shoulders this time, almost desperate, “This is real, Suns, you know that, right?”

A tilt of the head, “Yes. It’s real. I’d be foolish to discount something as false just because it seems out of the realm of possibility.”

“Really real. Super duper uber real!”

“I know, I know. Pfft, you’re being so silly all of a sudden.”

“You’re still not convinced at how super mega ultra real this is.”

Their eyes drop away from his face, to trace the patterns on the hem of their robe, “I suppose I would need more evidence than my own perception of reality.”

“Okay. Well, I think I know a way to prove it.”

“ How ? Not that I doubt you, I merely doubt myself.”

“ Indulge me ,” He almost purrs those words, and while he’s being slightly too impulsive Sig still leans forwards, bonks his head against theirs, lining up the image of their red sun and his own symbology, staring right at them, kissing their face with bursts of warm air from his fans, they can’t meet his eyes, “ This is real, right? I’m here. You’re here. We’re here, together.”

“Mmm.”

“You can feel this, yeah? Your touch receptors are working, aren’t they?”

Their dark eyelashes flutter against their cheeks, tickle his own, “I can feel this, it’s… nice. In a way.”

“In what way?”

“I… am unsure?”

Sig takes that as an invitation to encircle them with a feather light embrace, to hold them close so his heartbeat thumps against their own, “You don’t need to choose how to feel about it right now. But as long as it’s nice, and I’m doing a good job of convincing you this is real, then it’s all good, right?”

“You, ah, arguments and evidence are compelling, I’ll give you that.”

A nervous flutter dances around inside of his chest, Suns neither flees nor makes any further moves, but that’s fine, that’s okay, Sig isn’t even sure what it is he’s trying to do here. He does know, however, that he’d like to press his face into their throat, feel their coolant thump in the exposed tubes and pipes there, feel their heartbeat match his own, bare metal on metal. He does know he wants to tangle his hands in their wires, pull upon them so their head snaps back, hard enough to make them gasp and whimper. He also kind of just wants to hold them flush against him in ways that would probably have them both decommissioned if their people still lingered like parasites on their roofs. When he’d first seen photos of them, well their puppet at least, he’d thought them lanky, compensating for something, but in person? He’d like to shake the hand of whomever was in charge of putting their puppet together, thank them for choosing to give them a more feminine frame instead of making them over bulky and box shaped, it does suit them, not that he’s put any thought into that of course. That would be weird .

“You’re staring.”

“You’re pretty.”

They roll their eyes at him, almost sarcastically, “You said something about leaving?”

Sig blinks dumbly, pulls away, inhales sharply, “Yeah. Yeah I did say that, didn’t I?”

“Mmm. I assume you have plans or are we just going to wander aimlessly?”

“Moon. I should check in on her. I don’t know if you remember but my plan did work, I got her up and going again, could make a business out of that at this point, not that we really have a need for currency or have anything of value, which reminds me I wonder how Innocence is doing, I was thinking-”

“ Hara ,” Suns lets out a long, suffering sigh, wiggles a hand free to poke him sharply in the spot where his shoulder joint is exposed, “The point?”

“Ahem. Yeah. Sorry. I guess I ramble when I’m nervous?”

A roll of the eyes, they’re almost close enough for him to press forward again, Sig takes a second sharp breath and counts to ten.

“Okay, so, Moon. She’s probably in a pretty similar shape to you but with hopefully less fresh gore, because Void this is… it’s something.”

“We’re disgusting marvels of modern science, abominations and insults to existence itself. Looking upon our true nature inspires madness in the weak~”

“ Horrifying ! But back on track; I do want to get to Moon and help her, if I can. For all I know there could be nothing left of her but, well, I owe it to her at the very least, no matter what she will always be incredibly dear to me.”

“ Talk about mixed signals ,” Suns mutters, covering their words with a cough to clear their fans of dust, just so Sig doesn’t hear them before continuing in a more cheery voice, “And Pebbles? Can we help him too?”

“Oh do we have to?” Sig quickly regrets his choice of words when Suns raises their hand, prepared to slap him silly, so he adds on, just to calm them down, “Of course we can. Don’t know if he’ll thank us for it or be overjoyed to see us, but if we’re able, sure! I’m certain he’ll be his usual cheery self!”

“Good. He’s precious to me, despite everything.”

Now that’s surprising, perhaps he simply misread the situation, Suns did just admit to wanting to choke the shitbag out for hurting their messenger, but what does he know about their weird disjointed friendship? 

Sig smothers his disappointment in his usual fake cheer, “Wind said he’d also see us there, at least I hope so. In all honesty I think he’s doing worse than he wants us to know, I’d hate to leave him hanging in limbo after all the help he’s given me.”

“It would be nice, to see them again. Wind is also someone I can call a friend. Despite originally being given them to mentor, I assure you they did not need my help. They actively fought me at first, but they are still a friend. A good friend.”

Silence, Sig lets himself mull those words over for a few awkward moments, “Oh fuck have I been misgendering Wind all this time? Shit .”

“Oh,” Suns tries to stifle their little chuckle, hiding the space where their mouth would be with one hand out of embarrassment, Sig just thinks it's kind of cute as they regain composure, “No no, Wind uses whatever pronouns you use. Honestly I don’t really think they mind, they would have corrected you if you had done anything wrong, believe me, they can be a right bastard .”

“Language!”

“You just swore! Don’t you ‘language’ me!”

“Yeah but it sounds kind of y’know coming from you. I mean you can be scathing when you want to be but hearing you swear is just…” Sig searches for a word other than weird or strange for a moment as Suns quite clearly prepares for an act of utter chaos.

“What is it, Hara?”

“Uncanny? Listen I don’t want to call you weird or strange, you’re just more well spoken than me I guess, so I was just surprised and-”

“Hmm, how about this then?”

“Oh no, don’t you dare !”

“Piss shit fuck bastard bitch ass motherfucker .”

“Noooooo!” Sig whines pathetically, Suns merely snickers in victory, cupping his face in their hands, his heart almost stops.

“ Cunt .”

“Okay!” He’s quick to his feet, quicker to pull Suns to theirs as he announces, loud enough to be heard over their almost manic fit of barely controlled laughter that rings out in the hollow space of their rest spot, “We’re going, right now, out into the vast unknown! Yep, right this second, let's go! You are trying to kill me, you know that?”

“Worth it. Also, zero out of ten experience, I would not recommend. Despite theories shared in those insular groups I once frequented, death was not fun,” Sig offers them a sideways glance as he helps them keep their balance, only just catching the next whispered words, “She was wrong. Death is not the Solution.”

The trek through the remaining refuse of Suns can is a mirror of everything Sig has already seen, and while at first he was deeply concerned what seeing this would do to Suns, so far, they have almost been gleeful, pointing out which wound is new, and which one is old. When they’d stopped, both trying to figure out the safest way to cross a segment of tangled tightropes and perilous poles, he’d made the foolish choice to ask them why. Why were they wounded before this? Why did their people do this to them? They looked at him, sadly, fidgeting slightly, pulled at their remaining sleeve before they turned their gaze to stare deep into their refuse, their own remains, before answering in what was barely a whisper, barely there for him to hear.

‘ When tools break, you throw them out, or replace them. But what do you do when you can’t do that? You fix them. I needed to be fixed, that is all. ’

Sig does not ask again.

Still though, he can’t help but marvel. Even in this state, body jagged and shattered, sticking out of the ground like bleached white bones, Suns remains a technological wonder. While Sig holds no love in his heart for the Benefactors he begrudgingly admits there is a lingering admiration for their craftsmanship, both from an aesthetic standpoint and a technical one. To create so much, to build higher and higher, clawing at both the heavens and abyss, he can’t help but wonder why they sought death so feverishly. Once, he had held that same opinion. Once, he might’ve followed Pebbles’ example and sought a way out. Once, he had wanted that same death for himself. No longer. He’s got work to do, people to save, pretty damsels to be the handsome hero for, and, more importantly, a life to be lived to the fullest. And it seems even Suns has started to reconsider their stance on that matter as the two wander, not without aim but in a general direction to where Sig hopes there’s a way out, into a less destitute segment of Suns’ internal units. Lights still flicker weakly, machinery still hums, it’s a miracle there’s even life left in these walls to do even that paultry thing. Suns themself though seems more and more alive with each passing feathery moment, almost joyous, almost so blinding bright and thriving that Sig almost forgets the words blame and fault.

Their shining laughter as their fingers trace scratched drawings on their walls, as they dance and wander through their ghost filled halls, is like a breath of summer.

“Isn’t it incredible?” He asks, pushing away a chunk of debris, feeling a cool breeze drift in from beyond, “That there’s something still alive in you?”

“We are, by design, hard to kill,” A heavy statement but one that rings true as Suns lends their strength to the task at hand, the large mass shifting enough for the two to wiggle out into pure daylight, “I talked with Wind about this once, quite long ago. We both theorised that even without a puppet, the head and heart of us, our structures, our cans, could potentially still continue to function without active input.”

“Oh Void he literally pulled the ‘what do you think comes after death?’ question on me.”

“Ah, a classic.”

Sig offers them a hand as they both carefully descend the slope of scrap, “Yeah but it makes me think weird things and I think-”

“A first.”

“ I think I’ve seen and been through enough without needing the extra sprinkle of trauma.”

“I think we all would feel the same,” Suns finds their footing once more, on clean stable stone and takes a deep breath of fresh air, “Right. We’re out of there. Where to mister? You’re the expert at this after all.”

“Well… this is your region, you tell me. I don’t even know where we are.”

Suns blinks, turns slowly to drink in their surroundings; the sun, the sky, the twisted maze of battered buildings before them covered in thick layers of debris and dust. They fell to the east, probably right on top of their honestly pitiful excuse of a reservoir, and judging from their elevation (not high enough to pierce the thin veil of clouds, not low enough to be entrapped within their drainage pipes) and the tilt of the sheer metal walls at their back, they’re on the edge of their industrial complexes, right by their shipyard that should curve round to meet their main slag runoff. From what they can see the area has escaped the worst of the damages with only some minor flooding (thankfully their pipes run deep, deep enough to taste the void fluid below)  and a peppering of flung debris, shrapnel embedded into the sides of the sad concrete box buildings that seem to dominate the area, their plain foreboding exteriors casting long shadows over the uneven ground. Thankfully the worst of the damage seems to be mostly contained to their can and the closest facilities, their eyes have seen enough and the strain of seeing more would be not fantastic for their mental state. Regardless, they need to head east if Sig is dead set on dragging them all the way to where Moon herself lays in ruins, a fact they convey to him, asking him to lead on over sunbaked concrete and through mazes of disused machinery. 

He teaches them how to crawl through narrow pipes, how to climb, to listen to the scuttling of feet and flap of wings, when to run, when to hide. Their body aches with the exertion, their eyes sting in the cold air as it rushes past them, uncaring and unable to stop and mourn. Not that they want that, not that they need it. Their eyes slide over to where Sig side steps a leak from an old tanker above, curiously poking at it with little sense of danger. No, they’ve been mourned enough. He flashes them a thumbs up, would be flashing a brilliant smile if he had the mouth for it they imagine, before taking them by the wrist, leading them outwards and forwards, towards wherever. Towards a shady tunnel, towards more confusing twists and turns in the growing shade of their body looming above, past pipes that still hiss with steam and machines that still drone on, still working until they break, and then back, into rays of golden sunlight, to the banks of one of their many canals, where waterwheels turn lazily, where pieces of their underhang litter the ground in big sad chunks.

In times past this place would have been cast in an eternal gloom, never once seeing the glory of daylight, doomed to stare up at the belly of an abomination that had stolen that name for itself, wearing that name like an ill fitting garment. Beautiful, in its irony. Depressing also. Pebbles probably would have called it poetry of some kind, he had a better appreciation for such things than they.

“I must apologise, my inner facility grounds haven't seen much use for a very long time. It is so hard to find good maintenance these days,” As if to prove their point a scavenger pokes its head up out of a chunk of their rubble as its fellows dig in the muck, “It seems the local wildlife is already adapting.”

Sig scoffs, “Pests those things. You’re infested too?”

“I’m not infested. They live here, I’d hardly call that an infestation. Besides, there’s bigger problems in these parts than a few scavenger organisms.”

“Oh believe me Sunshine, I know. Made good friends with a lovely green lizard that made the intelligent choice of biting into me.”

“Good to see that green things lack the appropriate levels of brain activity it takes to make informed decisions~” The quip comes easy, even if the joke feels slightly awkward.

Sig nods in agreement before catching up quickly, “Hey! That’s… actually yeah that’s fair I can be pretty stupid.”

Suns finds themself laughing despite the small shadow of shame they feel build in their chest. Maybe they shouldn’t put him down so, it isn’t kind nor is it constructive, it only reinforces all the nasty things they’ve shouted at him in the past in the heat of their, admittedly, petty arguments. They move to apologise but Sig joins in, his laugh almost like a rumble of distant thunder, baritone and coarse, the sound ghosting over them with a shiver despite the warmth curling in the depths of their abdomen.

“I don’t think I’ve heard you laugh like this before,” His words make their heart skip, they hold their breath for just a second, “It’s nice, y’know. I used to think you were a bit stuffy before.”

“ Stuffy ? I beg your pardon young sir but I’ll have you know I am experienced, knowledgeable even! Not stuffy.”

“Sorry sorry~ I know what you experienced iterators can be like sometimes but, hey, once we get to Moon you might feel young again.” Both of them know he’s trying to suffocate despair with false hope here, Suns elects to not bring attention to it.

They offer him a friendly shove instead, “My age makes Moon look like a new build. My closest relatives don’t have puppets nor distinct personalities to call their own. Just simple boxes with simple thoughts living simple lives with simple calculations.”

Sig winces, or does the closest approximation to, “Sounds like it’d be boring.”

Suns offers a half-hearted shrug, “They wouldn’t know, none of them could feel. From an isolated point of view, they should be perfect.”

“Then why did our oh so benevolent creators make us? Why did we have to put up with this?”

Suns considers the question. For a man who hates philosophy he asks some very deep questions. When they were young, freshly built and excited to do good, to work for the kind people who made them, they had the opportunity to interact with a few of the prototype iterators, to see how far technology had advanced, they were told. The memories are faded, bleached and patchy in parts, but one thing persists, even after all this time; a deep unsetting sadness bleeding through each paper thin recollection. They had been told their predecessors were built as tests, subjects to be prodded and poked, to see how far they could be pushed until they broke, to see if the theory worked. Eventually they’d be decommissioned, torn apart while still alive, unable to cry out, unable to voice their true feelings, unable to feel at all. They understood, through those few interactions, through their acknowledgement of the existence of those boxes that chugged forwards believing they were doing good, they understood just how expendable the life of an iterator could be. The further technology advanced, the more and more they fell behind, the more and more they needed to be updated, fixed . Suns once looked upon the prototype models with pity and disgust, but now stood looking up at their own destitution, they can only feel kinship with them.

Their thoughtful silence must have dragged on just a smidge too long as Sig takes a step closer, slinks an arm around their waist and melds into their side.

“Touchy subject?”

“I was just thinking, my memories of that time have always been elusive, I was young then, a different iterator. You ask questions asked of me before by another, and my answer then was mocking, vague even, jaded with a bitter undertone,” They run a hand through the loose wires hanging behind them, hissing as a finger gets caught in a knot.

“I take it you had words of wisdom to share.”

They shake their hand free, scoff at the memory of that ‘ wisdom ’ that did more harm than good, “No, no I didn’t. Words, yes. Wisdom, very little. Very very little. But what I can tell you now, after I’ve had ample time to mull it over; we exist because we were needed, and we continue to exist because that was a lie.”

Sig, who had been drumming his fingers into their side in a rhythmic pattern pauses to think himself, before tilting his head to one side, “I guess that makes sense. In the end we failed, the people are gone for better or worse, and we have a whole world left for us no matter how destroyed it may be. There’s multiple ways out but you’ve got to smash your preconceptions of what that means.”

“...I wish I had your wisdom, truly, I do.”

“Awww, c’mon you’ll make me blush~” Sig offers them one last tap before parting from them, leaving a cold chasm at their side, “When you stop and actually let your processors run free with concepts you’re probably not programmed to think about, you end up with all sorts of ideas.”

“And here I thought you had no keenness for philosophy.”

“Please don’t tell Wind, he’ll make me debate him or theorise or whatever with him again. Stuff nearly made me either have a crisis about my existence or change my entire life. I mean, I kind of did change my life and please stop me from rambling again .”

Suns simply laughs again, shakes their head and follows after Sig as he begins to scramble atop a heap of half decayed machinery, “Moon is lucky. To have you. In her group I mean, as a friend.”

“Yeah, she is. And I’m lucky to have her… hey, I guess you were right! This place isn’t infested after all, I’ve not seen a single lizard since we-”

And that was a mistake.

The beast is easily longer than he is tall, its slender black body hidden by an explosion of slit-throat red spines in messy clusters, its large maw filled with razors and spilling spittle like rain. He’s obviously disturbed the beauty who’d most likely been using his current perch as a hideaway, but the sudden appearance, coming face to face with an apex predator, especially one Sig has clearly irritated, was not on his bucket list. On this day or any other. 

He stumbles, flounders, loses his footing, yells as he slips.

And is easily snapped up in the lizard’s waiting jaws.

Chapter Text

A slip up, a stumble. 

That’s all it took for it to happen.

One second of distraction. A single foolish moment where he had let his guard down.

Trivial really.

Sig had been there one moment, laughing with them, talking with them, his brazen green paint, almost a neon eye-bleeding bright under the sunshine, and his garish clashing muddied and fraying purple robes had been but an arms reach from them. A dream no longer. Solid. Real . Attainable if they wanted him to be, attainable if they had the bravery. He had been there .

Right there.

And then the lizard, all teeth and spittle, had snapped him up in its gaping maw of deadly razors.

Suns stumbles over their own feet, mostly surprised by the sudden appearance of such a large predator but also afraid, just slightly, at the speed the beast moves which seems almost uncanny for its size, its scaled belly trailing on the dusty cracked ground. But it’s fine! Sig had said he’d dealt with lizard attacks before, he’s even got a trophy to show for it. So it’s fine. He’ll wiggle free any moment now, give the nasty beast a stern whack and a slew of insults for its trouble, they’re sure of it. Any minute now. They wait. And wait . Sig doesn’t mean to scream so loudly but once the shock fades and reality sets in, as those knife-like teeth pierce right through his metal chassis, as the beast shakes him back and forth violently to stop his squirming, as his face drags against the floor scraping harshly on the rough concrete, he cannot help the sounds of distress that are torn from him. It hurts, like pouring boiling water over himself. It hurts! And it should . This particular lizard, or what he’d at least seen of it before he’d practically tossed himself into its awaiting mouth, is more than overgrown, even for one of its ilk. If he gives it the same treatment that he gave to that green lizard from so long ago he’s sure he’d discover that this one is a lovely, but very angry and clearly violent, lady. And clearly she’s not happy about him disturbing her.

“Suns! Could you- ah fuck, stop shaking me so hard- throw a rock at her? Or something ?!” He’s just about able to grind the words out between shouts of pain and almost getting his head caved in on the nearby rubble pile and destitute machine he’d fallen from, but Suns just sits there, staring him down, unmoving and wide eyed.

Great .

Vivid cyan-blue coolant splashes across the ground, spurts from his ruptures and wounds, and no matter how much he wiggles or how he struggles, the red lizard’s jaws are just too strong. A vice grip to stop prey from escaping if it somehow does survive the initial bite but the monster has strength enough to stop that from being a problem in the first place. What a beautiful specimen! He would rather not be caught between her jagged teeth, but what an absolute joy to see up close and personal, what luck! Sig does suppose he is lucky in other ways, that being that he cannot perish immediately having a body made of metal, plastic, silicon and whatever gunk makes up his softer innards, anything softer would be cut in twain! He’s very very lucky that a single bite won’t kill him. But he’s also the most unlucky bastard in the way he has to suffer for it. His whole life seems a parade of double-edged victories, because Void Below this hurts. A lot . He tries to pry the lizard’s mouth open to little effect, his shaking fingers slipping in its spittle, black speckling his vision as it shakes him again, even more violently, with even more murderous intent.

“ Suns !” The only thing he can do is call out to them, they’re his only chance, “A rock! Please! Or-”

“I can’t!” Pitiful, pathetic, their fingers tremble even curled into fists, even gripping their torn robe as hard as they’re able.

“This isn’t time for that! You’ve got to do it!”

“I can’t! I can’t do it!”

“Just grab a rock!” The lizard cuts him off with another sickening shake, it’s getting really fed up with him.

“Hara, I don’t know-”

“Rock! Grab! Throw!”

“I can’t- I don’t-”

“Are you stupid ?! Just-”

Well and truly done with her prey's antics, the red lizard swings him from side to side, like the pendulum of an antique clock, and his head glances off the side of the rusted machine he’d climbed not too long before. The strike sends stars glittering across his vision, distantly he can hear Suns screaming in distress as blue fills up the limited view from his broken eye, mixing with the fuzz of static until it makes a dizzy blaze of oil-slick rainbows dancing across the world. Once. Twice. The lizard bashes him into the ground having figured out that’s the best way to make him dead quicker. And it might just work. What a way to go, he thinks bitterly, just before one final bash. One last angry shake, one last hard clamp down, a cage of teeth surrounding him, one last sliver of distorted crackling noise.

And the world goes black.

Suns can only stare in muted horror as they watch Sig go slack in his assailant's grip, the hefty lizard dragging his body across the ground, the screech of metal on concrete tearing through the air, nails on a chalkboard, rusted joints trying to move. He’s gone! Dead! What do they do now?! In their hand rests a large knut, tarnished from years of being battered by their rains, covered in dust, but heavy, hearty, enough to stun a dumb animal like that. 

And yet.

They glance to where Sig’s limbs and clothes have tangled with a fallen grate, the lizard struggling to pull him free, almost like he’s handing them a second chance to do right.

They glance back down to the knut in their hand.

They hesitate.

Maybe he’s not dead , not yet, but he’s as good as, isn’t he?

‘ You couldn’t do it, could you? ’ Mocking, eerily familiar, ghostly hands fall upon their shoulders, like leaden weights, like responsibility made manifest, his voice is smooth as silk, sweet as nectar, thick with promise, and impossibly cruel, they’d know it anywhere.

“ Shut up , you’ve been gone for… a long time.” They mumble, continuing to watch the struggle before them, there’s still time, there’s still time.

‘ There isn’t. You failed, how does that make you feel?’

They can feel his breath on the back of their neck like a guilty kiss, his fingers twisting through their loose wires almost pulling but not quite, the vibrations of his honey’d laugh as he picks at their insecurities, making a joke of their very existence, an item out of a person. Suns knows he’s not here, he has been gone from their life longer than he’d ever been in it, that’s what logic tells them. He is not here. He can not be here. They know that. They know that ! But just the memory of him, it makes them pause, shake, it makes them recall their prison cell, it makes them believe that they’re not allowed to be this; alive. This is just overlapping pieces of qualia, retribution for their failures, every last little mistake they’ve ever made, this is how they pay for it, that’s all this is, they tell themself that over and over. Suns tries to reason with their own mind, even if they fail at that miserably. Is this it then? Their comeuppance? The consequences of no longer being an iterator, the price they pay for freedom? It must be. Nothing more, nothing more than that. They’re only welcoming fragments of their  fractured memory, reliving those moments once again like one of those terrible comedies their technicians used to enjoy. 

He’s a memory.

That’s reasonable, right?

They have often revisited him in those quiet seconds when they paused their work to think, not to reminisce no, never that, but to be thankful those days are over. Logically, they know this is a stress induced hallucination, true true , but it feels more real than the ground beneath them, than the air in their struggling lungs as they wheeze, false false .

The knut weighs heavy in their hand. 

They should throw it.

‘ Can you hear me, Seven? ’

“No.” The act of replying lays their lie bare.

They grip the knut harder in their feeble grasp, there’s still time to act.

Slowly, they stand.

‘ You are not made for such flights of fancy .’ They remember those words, the cruelty, the first time he had struck their puppet, they had convinced themself it would not happen again, it did .

So many times they lost count.

So many times it stopped hurting the same.

So many times they convinced themself it was somehow deserved .

They wonder what this knut is even from, surely not their own failed corpse laying dead behind them, their own knuts are much much bigger than this little thing.

‘ This isn’t what you are made for .’

They must be mad, speaking to thin air, Suns almost laughs out their words as they think that, “I know I’m not. But I have to do this.”

‘ An analogy if you will; you are a bird, this is your cage. The purpose of a bird is to sit and sing. Yours is to work. There is nothing else beyond these bars, do you understand? ’

It is vexing. How they took his mannerisms, mirrored them back at others, stole words from his mouth and twisted them, made them their own. Pain and suffering is often traded, like for like, passed from hand to hand and down generations, had they not merely shifted their own suffering onto... their pink coloured friend and onto their… purple thing, what was it called again? Suns scoffs. Maybe . Perhaps. Maybe and perhaps don’t get things done, they don’t unlock the cage and let the bird fly free, do they? In the end, he had been wrong, had he not? There is purpose beyond throwing themself against the bars of that cage, the walls of that maze, there is something more for them than that menial task they had been give, something beyond just being another tool in the box. They were not permitted to enjoy things, to make connections with others, they were not permitted to do anything other than work work work. And yet.

And yet.

Here they are .

The lizard yanks on Sig once more, trying to untangle him, his head smacks harshly against the floor with a resounding clang .

He came to save them. He chose them. Over everything else. But what Sig doesn’t know, what Suns may never tell him, is that he saved them a very long time ago on the day he came blazing into their life like a shooting star.

He didn’t need to come all this way just to pull them out of the rubble.

But they are glad he did.

Now, it’s their turn.

Their fingers stop their shaking, they puff out a cloud of vapor.

They can do this.

‘Cease such action. You are a worthless thing made for only one purpose.’

They breathe out the pain from those old wounds, breathe in freedom, “You are dismissed, Administrator. I’ve work to do as you can plain see.”

With as much vitriol as they can, Suns tosses the knut at the lizard, their shoulder popping loudly with the sheer effort they put into the throw. It sails through the air, whizzing past debris pile after debris pile, almost hitting a fat lazy white squid-bug that buzzes along minding its own business as it goes. The knut flies and flies and eventually smacks into the side of the lizard's head, jolting the beast to the side, mouth popping open in surprise just enough to spur them into reckless mad action. Suns leaps into the fray, no different than any other wild beast. Over dusty concrete their feet pound, they vault over the machine that Sig had slipped from, their robes catching on a sharp corner tearing a slit right up to their upper thigh when they refuse to slow, their panic carrying them onwards to where they find themself suddenly stood there, one foot planted on the lizard’s back, pressing its writhing body to the ground, the other in the dirt for balance, nervous fingers pressed into the beasts gums, prying its mouth open further with unexpected strength. With some kind of detached cold fury they yank and pull, each time the lizard wiggles they only fight back harder, their fans almost growling with the strain. But it is enough. Enough space, enough time, and they’re able to wrench Sig from the lizard’s jaws triumphantly, kicking away the metal mesh he’d been tangled in.

For a moment the air is only filled with their harsh breathing.

They did it! He’s alive. They’re alive. Not their finest hour but-

Suddenly, their vision blackens, their face covered by gaping maw, sharp teeth almost grazing their cheeks, tongue lolling out to one side and spittle showering them like sticky raindrops. They react almost instantly. A thrown fist, an echoing crack . The black and red form of the lizard skitters to one side, lying there confused, twitching, legs wading through the air as it tries to right itself. They’ve only stunned it for now, they’d best get moving, they do not want to actually fight it because Suns knows they can’t win that battle. But where ? Where do they go? There’s a thousand paths they can take and a thousand ways things can go wrong. A rumbling growl, an angry hiss, they’ve run out of time to consider their options. Suns gathers Sig into their arms as quick as they can, throwing him over one shoulder as he simply makes a limp weight of himself, how like him , and they turn their back upon the lizard, and they run. Fast. To the east. Or at least what they hope is east. They were headed that way, to her , to Moon, for his sake, because that's all he wants to do, they were just a stop along the way. 

Breathing heavy, Suns dashes through the shadows of their looming structure a lot more confident than they had been not so long ago, striding through the maze of squat sad concrete buildings and rusting containers, following the twisting lengths of water pipes and still flickering neon signs that shed a shred of coloured light to dark underpasses and dismal alleyways. Each twist, each turn, has them lose confidence in the direction they’re headed, it’s not as if they’ve ever needed to know directions in the first place with being a towering sentient monolith made of physical thought and concrete. They suppose any direction is fine. As long as they get away from the threat it doesn’t matter where they head really, they can both figure it out later, together, when Sig wakes up.

Because he is. Going to wake up that is.

He has to.

They slow, stand for a moment, take a breath of wet stagnant air. A spare few seconds to calm down, to use their eyes and assess their surroundings, to let their racing heart and racing thoughts calm, to catch a second of rest. Sig is a lot heavier than he looks, the stupid green idiot doesn’t look like he’s going to wake up from his nap anytime soon too. That’s fine . Really. It's not like he just scared them the rest of the way to death. What were they doing? Assessing their surroundings, figuring out if they can get back on track, easy, a focus. Like many complexes, both industrial and otherwise, that sleep in the shadows of their iterator owners colourful splashes of graffiti daubed by the primitive hands of scavengers and relics left from when workers still frequented the surface decorate the dismal factories here bringing just a small sliver life to the urban jungle. They’ve never really paid much attention to it before, it has just always been there, meaningless scrawls, but they think they once had a friend who took interest in the culture of the People who would have liked to see this, they just can’t remember his name. Suns notices, as they readjust their burden, they’ve a variety of different mismashes of art upon the walls of their inner facilities ranging from incoherent scribbles, coded messages written in karmic symbology, and a sick mural of someone doing a killer kickflip on some sort of transportation device. Each one is a snapshot of a time long past. A memory painted onto the world’s skin; finite and fading. 

Eyes forward once more, their feet click upon the damp stone stairs as they slowly descend, trying not to jostle Sig too hard, he’s been shaken like a can of fizzy beverage, probably fit to explode. Being in the open is probably not good. They’d been warned about the vultures, especially the ones that shoot harpoons and swoop and bite, meeting one now would be less than beneficial, their brush with their last attacker was more than enough excitement for one day. 

“Come on Hara, we should be moving, I don’t want anything else to decided either of us are suitable lunches today,” They feel daft for talking to someone who can’t answer them back, but it fills the silence, keeps the creeping panic at bay, they’ve spoken to figments of their own imagination so this is a mild madness in comparison, “I think there’s a sluice gate around here somewhere, we should be able to enter my underworks from it and then if we follow my drainage pipes and canals that should lead us to my main waste reservoir in the east. That’s if I’m remembering correctly."

Sig does not reply, so Suns sighs, as deep as the bones of the earth, rattling, but they continue to talk, to voice things that trouble them, to offer the world a few confessions, “You know, I thought I was going to be okay, that I remembered things in perfect clarity, that even dead, destitute, I was in better shape. But I keep losing things; names, locations, myself… I almost lost you ,” His only reply is to limply swing from side to side with each of their strides, “I’m frightened of losing more. I can’t remember that purple creature’s name, nor the one of my friend. What if I forget my own name? What if it gets to the point I can’t even remember you? Will you still stick by my side?”

Suns takes a moment to compose themself, there is no reason to be getting so emotional over imagined scenarios! Sure, they’ve forgotten some important stuff, that’s natural after getting a free lobotomy by way of exploding and burning and becoming a heap of scrap. It’s normal even. But… they’re meant to be better than this , better than everyone.

“I’m sorry, I’m acting a fool,” Their words are whispered only to the stagnant air, “I just don’t want to be alone again.”

Daylight fades from view as slowly stone and pipes crawl up around them replacing the sky with each daunting step into the creeping darkness below. A smell of rotting earth wafts up from the warm passages beneath, the sound of crashing water a drone of white noise that Suns helplessly trudges towards. Down here, in the damp and the gloom, they know they can find safe haven, at least from the worst of the creatures infesting their facility grounds. Since the days of their relative youth they’ve had a problem with critters crawling in from everywhere, slick lizards finding open pipes to wiggle through, centipedes wriggling out of the very ground, all in all, seeing the red shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise. They knew they had red lizards in their main industrial complexes, the things had managed to dislodge a whole cooling unit years ago, the damn thing rolled down hill and smashed into a waste disposal pump sending heaps of sludge and rivers of biological refuse into their already bloated runoff canals. With the current luck they’re having they’ll end up having to wade through the tailend of the slop.

“Guh… Sums? Ish dat yoo?”

Talking of surprises, Sig’s mumbles from their shoulders spook them enough that Suns almost drops him with a yelp, a second later they’re flittering in some sort of frenzied jig, looking around to find somewhere that spells out ‘ safe ’ or protected. A corner, hidden from view, several old shipping boxes bearing smugglers marks, a sheet of half rusted corrugated metal. It’s enough, especially as Sig begins to wiggle in their grip, one of his hands slapping them rather rudely in the face with an incessant need to be let down. Once there, once they kick a few boxes into place, drag the metal sheet to hide where they’d slipped into their shelter, Suns reluctantly allows Sig his freedom, watching, fidgeting nervously as he takes a seat on the side of a destitute oil barrel with an audible groan of pain. He struggles with his scarf for but a moment before they huff, their own cold fingers brushing his away, deftly unravelling the sentimental piece of clothing, dropping it into his hands with no words shared. Their spidery digits quickly find all the hidden buttons and latches keeping him clothed, stripping away the offending fabric until he wears nothing but his layers of skirts, the upper portion of his robe hanging limply around his waist. 

“You're angry with me.” It’s a simple statement but a true one.

Suns bristles with each syllable, “Yes, I am angry with you. You were the one to tell me to be careful, and yet-”

“You didn’t throw the rock when I told you to!” He shoots back, cleanly, as if he hadn’t just been knocked out cold, as if there isn’t a dent on the side of his head, “If you had maybe I wouldn’t-”

“And maybe if you replied to my messages I wouldn’t be half dead, would I?” That gets him to shut up pretty quickly, dropping both his gaze and shoulders with a sigh, Suns can only join him, it doesn’t feel good to fight, “Sit forwards I’m going to check your head and back to see if anything essential was damaged.”

“The whole of me is essential.” Sig has to resist a yelp when Suns touches him, tracing the dent on his head and little divots where the lizard’s teeth had dug into him, their fingers gently counting, one, two, three, four, places where he’d been ruptured.

“So,” He drawls after a moment, hoping that they’ve calmed down enough to not bite his head off again, “How do I look?”

“Not as bad as I thought after a scuffle with a red. You’ve some small pockmarks but those won’t affect you much,” One by one they poke at each new blemish, their thumb swiping away a trickle of coolant, “We’ll need to do something about this though, I can’t imagine constantly bleeding out will be healthy in this environment, it is not exactly sterile.”

“Not much we can do about that though.”

A sigh, they leave an empty space by his side and stare down at him, judgemental almost, “At least I got us somewhere more secluded.”

“Yeah I was going to ask about that… where are we, again?”

Suns looks side to side, good point, where are they?

“In a corner,” They swiftly reply, covering up their momentary confusion, “Away from prying eyes.”

“No I mean… what part of your body, or facilities, or-”

“Does it matter?”

Exasperated, he meets their glare, “Yeah kinda? We are trying to get to Moon, can’t be heading the wrong way after all.”

“Oh don’t worry, I’ll not keep you from her,” Almost sarcastic, almost scathing, they make a quick guess, how have they already forgotten where they are?, “My underworks. Specifically my main drainage thoroughfare from the looks of it, I honestly just dived under hoping to get away from open skies. Before you panic, yes it does lead to the east, it is merely more convoluted to traverse the network here, it is a maze.”

“The upside was a maze too, if you recall.”

“I am aware, this is just worse,” They twitch, waiting for something.

“Thanks. I guess.” Sig groans out, with an added roll of his eyes for emphasis.

“You are welcome. I suppose.”

Back and forth, he looks to them, away from them, hands twisting his scarf around and around, “You didn’t need to put yourself in danger to get me out of that, you know. You could have just left me.”

“Yes I did, and no I couldn’t.”

“ Suns… ”

“Please Hara. Let me help you too. You’ve done so much for me, I have to repay you somehow,” 

Sig finds himself getting exasperated with them, at least a smidge, especially when it seems they’re intent on getting killed, “This isn’t about repaying anyone or doing the right thing or whatever noble idea you have. You’re my friend and I wanted to help you because of that and- what are you doing ?”

“Undressing?” They simply reply as if it's the most normal thing in the world as they return to struggling with the clasps upon their own robe, mumbling insults at the unfeeling fabric.

“It can’t hear you, you know.” The tease falls from his speakers easily, almost naturally, almost like old times despite the festering tension between them.

An offered eye roll to match the one he’d just given them and a snarky tut, “I am aware. I just can’t get the damned thing off. How did he used to- ah! There we go! There’s buttons .”

“What are you even trying to do?”

Suns looks at him as if he’s stupid, “Take off my robe? Did you not just ask that?”

“Yes I know, but why ?”

“It’s dirty. Well, the back is at least, the front is still in a serviceable state if you excuse the missing sleeve and exposed chest, that is,” In a bit of an awkward motion, they shimmy out of the frankly mostly ruined robe, pulling at it where it sticks to their back, still covered in gunk, “It should make decent enough rags to plug your punctures until your self repair microbes fix whatever damage is inside you.”

“Not to be rude or anything but ew, no.”

They blink slowly, audibly, “The front is serviceable.”

“Well what are you going to wear then?” Ah-ha, checkmate!

“I don’t need to wear anything,” They stand there, each inch of peeling paint and metal limb naked to the world, there’s already a nasty patch of rust on the side of their left thigh and being exposed to the elements is not going to help that.

“What if you need to wade through water, which you will by the way, it’s a long distance and Moon’s immediate area is completely flooded, yours will be too in case you hadn’t put two and two together yet.”

“Yes but-”

Sig merely continues, listing reasons why he doesn’t need their rags, “The temperature beyond any functioning iterators has dropped significantly, and if I’m being real I don’t think there’s many of us still, y’know, alive. Your joints will freeze solid.”

“Yes, I anticipated as much but-”

“And as we can see these things don’t protect us much from things that are big and strong but weaker lizards struggle with all that fabric in their mouths; it helps otherwise I’d be in pieces by now. Plus do you really want to abandon your identity like that?”

Suns makes a pained sound here, both of their antennae drooping sadly, almost like how a slugcat might, “Please. Please let me help you. I don’t know what else I can do. If any dirt gets into your interiors it will cause so many more problems than me running around naked will cause.”

“Suns…” Sig finds himself sighing again, looking at the pitiful mess Suns has made of themself, “ Fine , just the sleeve. There’s enough material in that alone to do what you need.”

“Don’t worry about me, I’ve been through worse.”

“But-”

Suns tilts their head, just a fraction, almost like they’re smiling without a mouth, and in the most sing-song kind of voice he’s ever heard from them, they happily chirp out, “I have been through worse~”

Sig doesn’t argue further as he watches them tear off the remaining sleeve and then tear that into more manageable strips as if they didn’t just raise many concerns and confuse him further. He’s glad they elect to take care of the injuries to his back first, with his throbbing head and aching everything else, meeting them eye to eye after that would probably send him back into the arms of unconsciousness. Suns is almost content as they work, wiping away muck and spilt fluids, plugging holes in metal with the cleanest fabric scraps they have, before moving onto his chest, which luckily has but one hole to deal with, a lucky happenstance considering the battering he was given. He won’t meet their eyes. Fingers splayed, they feel Sig’s heart beat under the chilly metal as they shuffle close enough to almost hear it thumping through them, never daring to look away from their work. Suns isn’t an idiot after all, they know he’s avoiding them as best he can. A careless swipe, an unbidden hiss.

“Sorry, did that hurt?”

“It stung, but it didn’t hurt. Not really.”

They hmm in thought, slipping forward to rest their head against him, hands dropping onto each purple robed thigh, their body rocking as he laughs, his own hand landing on one thin shoulder.

“It wasn’t that bad was it? Suns?” They merely turn away, Sig places a second hand on their other shoulder, to ground them more than anything, “C’mon, what’s wrong?”

“I thought I’d never see you again.” The confession is mumbled into his abdomen, barely a buzz amongst the sounds of the waterways, “I thought that was it.”

Ah, that’s the problem, “But it wasn’t. It turned out alright, didn’t it?” It might be a poor attempt at comfort, but it’s something at least.

“I didn’t throw that stupid knut. I just watched it happen, I just let you get hurt because I was too scared to do anything .” Their clawed fingers ball into the brilliant fabric of his robes, their head remains bowed, almost in prayer, antennae pinned back, fans almost whining.

But Sig laughs again, his hands that had found rest on their shoulders trace upwards, over the exposed wires in their neck, across the wires that plug into the back of their head, over the rim of both their antennae sockets, then to cup their cheeks, to tilt them up to look at him leaning down above them, thumbs rubbing gently at the two red lines on both sides of their face ever so gently, almost reverently.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you back then, I should have realised you would have been frightened. This is a lot to take in, isn’t it Sunshine?” There’s that nickname again, the one that makes their heart race, when did he get so close ?! They nod mutely, in agreement, “It’s okay now. I’m safe, you’re safe, I’m here, you’re here, nobody got badly hurt. You’re good. Thank you for helping me~”

He’s close enough to nuzzle into, Suns suddenly realises, close enough to replicate how he proved his realness, they could easily have him, right here, right now. But he’s not theirs to take, Suns knows this. He’s unattainable, his heart belonging to someone else, and besides, they don’t quite even know what to call this twisting thing that lives inside of them, this poison that festers in both their mind and their breast. Affection? Appreciation? A thousand words that elude them, a thousand things they swamp in analogy, in metaphors of metaphors, utterly confusing and wonderful and terrible. They like him. He makes them feel safe, needed in a way they’ve never been before. Their People had needed them, the world had needed them, but neither had wanted them, they had merely been convenient, merely been there at the right time, had been made to fill a role, had failed at filling it. But Sig? He chose them, over her, over everything else, he wanted them. He could have gone anywhere , but he chose to come here, to be with them, to save them, because they needed him, because they needed nobody else. They could take him from her and never look back…

“This place is a mess though, isn’t it? You sure it’s safe?” And just like that, the spell is broken.

Suns blinks, breathes out as his burning touch recedes, thinks for a moment as they chase down their troublesome thoughts, stuff each one back in the box it belongs in, “Yes, quite safe.”

“Oh good!”

“If we avoid my kelp infestation and the eel lizards and the other various angry flora that I ‘accidentally’ decanted down here.”

“Oh… good? Wait, what do you mean accidentally?”

Suns laughs to themself as they push their wobbly legs up, sitting besides Sig on the overturned barrel, almost taking his hand in theirs but stopping just short, “My administration did not like me having hobbies and urged me to dispose of my more volatile experiments. I, being  younger, more prone to acts of harassment that would make yours pale in comparison, decided to dispose of them with my water waste instead of my slag buildup. Did it cause me problems? Yes. Did it cause more problems for my workers? Also yes.”

“That is…” Sigs shakes his head, the pettiness truly does compare to some of the things he’s done, “So now I know why you asked me to take care of your samples, always wondered. But, hold on, how long did your workers actually stay down here for? There’s a lot of stuff that looks abandoned but it doesn’t look old .” The inner musing slips out, but at least it fills the silence.

“I do not remember, but I know my people stopped personally manning it as soon as the first living blocks went up on my roof, whenever that was. They began to think such work was beneath them, and I suppose it quite literally was .” A droplet of water dribbles onto their head from above, they wipe it away annoyed.

“Huh. That would explain why some of this stuff looks barely touched. I mean there’s stuff in those boxes still, think it’s good?”

Suns stifles another laugh, they seem to be doing a lot of that lately, “Probably not good for us, though smugglers did have a taste for iterator pieces, probably just screws and bolts though.”

“Well… your workers did a poor job, this place, it is a shithole Suns, really!”

“You’ve not even seen it beyond one musty corner!”

“I’ve seen enough~ C’mon, get your admins on the line, let me yell at them for this atrocity!”

“They may not have manned it but that does not mean I was without workers and maintenance once they all left. You didn’t think the scavenger organisms just popped into existence, did you?” They lightly shove him, pull him back before he topples off the side of their makeshift seat.

“Well, I did assume they’d be the descendants of some sort of purposed organism, at least,” He sends them a scathing look over his shoulder to the best of his ability, “I am a good deal younger than you so I got to have all the fancy self-repairing microbes built into my stuff when I was still new.”

“And I didn’t,” Suns sighs the words out, almost sad, almost mournful, those would have really helped them back when issues started cropping up, “There’s a few facilities here that do have that integration, but I relied heavily on what we called ‘ drones ’, other iterators had other names for them. Their main purpose was to fix things, clear blockages, and of course I had pipe-cleaners and water-filters and other purposed beings. That's why I have such a problem now with such a bounty of critters running about.”

“I wish I could have seen you in your prime,” They quirk an antennae at him, turn their head for just a moment before he stumbles over his words, “I mean. From a scientific point of view. I mean I did see you, through my overseers, I just meant in person, like I am now, please shut me up .”

Suns takes a chance, leans on his shoulder, their head fitting there comfortably, like that’s where they’re meant to be, “I like it when you ramble. I like listening to you talk.”

“...I think you’re the first person to ever say that,” Low, rumbling, thick with emotion and honesty, they find they like that too, “I do enjoy listening to you talk as well, even if I don’t understand philosophy or plants or your weird purposed organisms.”

“...My population was in the billions, but you are the only one who has allowed me to speak freely, without invitation to debate and theorise as a defence against my People’s prying. Not even my other close friends could do that. Always had to come up with some excuse for why I was talking with others.” Wistful, sad, Sig’s fingers tangle in their wires, twirling each one around in succession.

“That must have been hard,” When Suns shoots him a confused look from his shoulder, asking him to clarify, he quickly does, “Carrying all that weight on your roof. And the prying. Never a second of privacy, never a second alone, I can’t imagine it was any fun.”

“Ah, I see. No, it was not easy but it was something I had to do,” They rise and fall with the motion of his breaths, rocking back and forth almost lazily before they continue, a few thoughtful moments having passed, “I believe the young me, in these old faded memories of mine, wanted it; to take as much as they could onto their shoulders, to take whatever punishment, to suffer in any way conceivable so that life could be easier for others. Was it foolish? Perhaps, look at where it got me, but do I regret it?”

“Do you?”

Suns finds themself struggling for an answer.

“ Do you , Suns? Regret it?”

“...Yes. I could have been anyone, anything else, but I am this .” Hate bleeds through those words into the world, what would their life be like if they’d simply learned how to say no sooner?

An arm around their shoulders, a comforting weight, “We can talk about something else, if you wanna.”

Quick, no time wasted, “What were your people like?”

“Maybe not that…” But their pleading eyes gaze up at him, how could he possibly say no?

Sig grumbles, laces his spare hand with theirs, “Okay okay, what do you want to know?”

“Were they kind?” Openly vulnerable, incredibly telling.

“Nah, not really. But they weren’t not kind either. They were just kind of there, you know? They existed but I didn’t appreciate them, and they didn’t appreciate me right back, call it mutual tolerance of each other.”

“I… see?”

“I couldn’t get rid of them, and they couldn’t leave. Symbiotic; I’d solve their problem and they’d fix me up when I’d inevitably burn through my coils,” Sig hesitates, feels their grip on him tighten, “And yours? I honestly don’t know that much about you or the culture you had up there.”

“...Neither do I. I simply… it is hard. To recall.”

“Sorry.”

They laugh, again , not bitterly, not joyously, just a hollow sound to fill the space between them, “I loved my People. They loved me. I caused them grievances. They hurt me in kind. A back and forth. But there were so many, so so many, I could barely keep track of my citizens, a constant surge of living buzzing voices. It was hard, I remember it being hard.”

“I’m sorry Suns, I really am. Let’s not talk about our cities or our people or anything like that. It’s done and it’s past.”

They nuzzle up against him, Sig can barely breathe for a passing second.

“What do we talk about then?”

“How about the future?”

“... That is so cringey.” Right now, they don’t need a future, they have exactly what they want, what they need, right here. It is enough.

“Yeah,” Sig allows himself to give their hand a squeeze back, allows himself to relish in the real weight of them against them, “I know~”

Chapter Text

“Ow ow ow ow ow !!!”

“It would hurt less if you just stopped squirming .” Suns snaps as they deftly tug each rag that plugs Sig’s punctures out, pulling just a tad harder than they should when they reach the final one, just to drive the point home.

Sig passes them an almost offended glare as they poke at the wounds on his back, huffing when they don’t seem baited by the insult. Not that he minds being fussed over, that is, having them worry about him, gently nursing his wounds, is a lovely change of pace from him worrying about them . It’s a boring beige kind of mundane he could get used to. An almost farcical domestic dull that sits besides him, common as dirt. Wryly he plays with the idea of laying side by side with Suns each night, listening to their breathing, waking with the morning light to do laundry or some other banal task. He almost loses himself down those twisting roads when Suns pokes him in a particularly irate way pulling a hissed curse from his speakers along with a sideways glare.

“Welcome back~”

“Yeah yeah; are we done yet?”

“Almost. There’s just a couple more things before I let you loose like the raving madman you are.”

“Urgh finnnnne! How does it look, by the way? Will I live doctor?” He drawls, words heavy with sarcasm and an impatience to get going, dusting away those simple fantasies of a normal life, a better life.

A roll of their eyes to show a lack of patience for his antics this morning is the reply as Suns continues their brief investigation of Sig’s peppering of injuries, most of which are admittedly minor and nothing they should have worried about realistically. Their mind, however, is not their own. They force themself to focus on the chipped green paint that flakes away with each touch and the pockmarks and punctures from the lizards aggressive assault that actually look not so awful now they’d had a night to begin to heal up. His self-repairing microbes work fast; only one, maybe two, are still fairly deep but Sig doesn’t appear to be leaking any coolant or other fluids now, and when they gently push their finger into the small hole in the ruptured metal they don’t receive so much as a hiss of pain like they did moments ago, they must have just surprised him with the sudden intrusion. 

The nasty dent on his head looks bad though but Suns supposes the lizard was desperate to stop its prey from wiggling free of its grasp having caught something it did not kill in one bite. Distantly, as if dredging the memory up from the murky depths of their stagnant canals, they can recall feathery mist light and fog heavy recollections of watching their purple creature flee a very similar beast, the poor thing having been backed into a corner and being forced to fight with nothing but a sharp stick and sharper spite.

Regardless of the intentions of the lizard the hit to Sig’s head has made his broken eye worse by a mile, the glass pane that once protected the actual eyeball having shattered a long time ago, probably when he first injured himself, and the delicate mechanical device has sunken into the socket, a couple wires stuck out at the side like a mockery of the eyelashes they sport; a useless artistic flair someone decided they needed. There’s another worry that sits at the front of their mind though. There’s clearly a rupture in at least one fluid tube at the back of his socket, sometimes they’ll catch him wiping away a dribble of either water or coolant when he thinks they can’t see it, a facsimile of the tears some of the kindred can weep (they know this well, they have shed countless tears over the achingly long years of solitude). They shelf those thoughts for later. Suns is honestly surprised he’s not completely blind there, but considering that he still blinks, still reacts to visual stimuli from that direction, there is still some vision there. Hopefully they won’t need to fish out the remains of his eye by sticking their fingers in there, the instruments and processors up in the head of an iterator’s puppet are sensitive after all, it would not do to aggravate the injury further. Dumbly, they wonder just what he did to cause it. Probably something stupidly convoluted, overcomplicated to the point of absurdity, or perhaps he took his first steps free of the chains that once held him and fell flat on his face like some sort of cartoon character. 

Both are hilariously in character. 

Suns doesn’t ask though, they merely toss the rags on the ground and stand, brushing the dust off the front of their robe which Sig has pretty much forced them back into, looking away embarrassed once the reality of their nudity had dawned on him. They do not understand why, they’ve nothing to hide except the physical shapes of a different model of puppet to his. Perhaps he’s merely shy. Hmm, no, that would be hilariously out of character.

“I don’t like the state of your head but if you can think clearly and see clearly then you’re good to go,” They say, giving him a slight smack on the back of his head, “You’re lucky you’ve got reinforced panels on your front or else you’d probably have caved under the pressure of that bite, reds are perhaps the most volatile of lizard species roaming the world after all!”

“Did you have to hit me like you’re trying to sell a new personal transportation device or?”

Without pause, they quip back, “No, but would you prefer I hit you with intent to cause further damage instead? Reds are volatile, after all!”

“Uh… I think I’ll be okay without, thanks,” For a few long seconds, Sig lets the words set in, before continuing, confused, “You’re not a lizard?

“A good observation, a gold star for you! I jest, of course, and good because I don’t feel like exerting that amount of energy right now, this walking and being alive thing makes my knees ache like never before.”

Sig stops himself from helping this circular argument devolve further, easily batting away Suns’ fussing when they move in to do something else he doesn’t need, “Well, we should be off. As much as I love your sewers Suns I’m getting a bit tired of the smell down here, plus, I don’t really want to delay much further.”

“Oh it isn’t so bad down here once you get used to the rotting plant reek and the slag stank and… well everything else.”

“You do know the way out, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Sig clears his speakers with a crackle, holds out his arm with a mocking bow.

Suns simply looks at him blankly, “... Is there something wrong?”

“Aren’t you going to lead us out? As nice as your runoff looks, Sunshine, I don’t really like the idea of being covered in refuse for the rest of my time dancing round the Cycle.”

For the most part, Suns looks pathetically guilty, shuffling side to side, not meeting his eye as they suddenly find a patch of moss incredibly captivating. 

“Suns?”

“Well… the thing is…” They mutter, wringing their hands, trying to sink into the floor to escape this suddenly awkward situation.

“ Yes ?”

“I might have completely and accidentally not on purpose kind of… forgot ? Which way east is?” They sound as unsure as they look, trying to play off the lapse in memory as just simply not paying attention to what they were doing, even if Suns does remember being so convinced they knew what they were doing in the moment, “I was more invested in getting you somewhere safer than a lizard’s mouth after all, I may have gotten slightly, um, lost .”

“You have got to be joking.”

“Hey!” Suns huffs, hands on hips, gives him as stern a look as they can without proper facial articulations, tries to act all offended despite the internal panic of ‘ how could I forget east?! ’, “Would you prefer to be waking up in a den of hungry beasts or does the scent of waste not sound so bad suddenly? I’m sorry that I was trying to keep us alive and got lost but what I do know is all my water flows downhill to the east, all we have to do is follow the canals. Satisfied ?”

“I guess…” Sig lets out a rattling sigh that shakes his internal fans and clouds the air with vapour for just a second before he runs his hands over the blank plains of his head bottling up his desire to yell, “Okay. Okay that’s not too bad. We have direction. Okay .”

Suns blinks, audibly, slowly, “ Is it okay?” For just a moment there he’d reminded them of… Him , the head of their administrative board and how he’d lie to their face that everything was perfect, just fine, but then would dare to raise his voice, his hand, to them in private. Sig wouldn’t hurt them, right?

“Yeah it's great! Perfectly fine! Never been better! We’re off track by possibly miles since I don’t know how far you walked but it’s okay!”

They flinch as if they were indeed hit, antennae drooping as suddenly a loose thread on their robe becomes very interesting, joining the moss patch from before on the list of ‘ Things Seven Red Suns Would Prefer to Acknowledge Than Their Failings As a Person ’.

“I’m sorry,” They mumble never meeting his eyes, not daring to step out of line, subdued, quiet, “I didn’t think. We should get going then, I suppose you’ve got more important things to attend to than picking up the pieces of me. She’s waiting for you still, isn’t she?”

In the dim, in the washed out light of their temporary rest, Suns looks almost grey, like all the joy just got sucked out of them, eerily cold, and an ill fitting pall falling over them like they’re ready to attend their own funeral march. It's a strange sudden switch from teasing, from their usual warmth but Sig doesn’t let it bother him one bit, shelving his boring domestic fantasy by their side he’d dreamt up, and ignoring how eerie it feels, how empty and alien their eyes truly look, how a chasm seems to open up between them, how they look as if they’d rather crawl back into their ruins and stay there to rot. They hold themself in an almost demure manner, making themself appear small as can be as they follow behind him in silence. Not sad. Not angry. Deflated. Defeated. As if they’ve just given up. Sig bites off any scathing comments about the nature of doormats and wiped feet and fixes his eyes on that distant goal, finding the edge of the nearest canal and walking fearlessly towards it. 

Suns themself finds themself back in their chamber again, back being a miracle box that cannot stray from its coding, feeling both like a lost puzzle piece and a shard of broken pottery, like they’re something that doesn’t belong as they follow behind Sig’s already impressive lead, letting him drag them through damp tunnels overgrown with weeds and splattered with moss, past old wheezing waste pipes that leak rust and slag slowly, across sundered infrastructure that lays decaying under milky sunlight that drips down from open grates and vents far far above. Below in the cloudy brown water if they slow their pace to spy through the murk they can just about see the long sleek bodies of eel lizards as they dance through debris and the delicate water plants, chasing down tiny schools of sparkling coppery fish, snapping and splashing without a care in the world. Such elegant beasts deserve attention, they think as they almost call out to Sig to take a look but he’s much too interested in the rusty ladder that leads upwards to where some loose panelling hangs like dead leaves on bent branches, wires spilling down from where the ceiling has come away entirely.

“That’s just a maintenance shaft; it only leads into a biowaste processor that would have filtered nutrients back into my structure if it was working and my can wasn’t laid in a heap. There’s nothing left up there, this one has been out since… well, a long time ago actually.”

Sig looks back and forth between them and the ladder, “I was wondering why there was a mess of cables. Wondered if it led back up to some sort of industrial site.” Luckily, his anger seems to have faded, Suns can only take that as a good sign.

“Mmm, it would do if the ground hadn’t sunk under the building; the purposed organism housed there was simply too heavy to build on manufactured ground rather than the real stuff,” They wave him down, jogging over to stride shoulder to shoulder with him now the danger of being yelled at has passed, “It won’t be far, you can hear the sound of the pumps working in the distance. Big central room, not the most stable, it flooded once and never got fixed properly, but there should be a proper way out there.”

“I’m surprised anything’s working here at all, did your drones actually do any work for you or did they just let you decay into… this .” He gestures at the walls, the ground, the bloated canals, the grime, the dirt, Suns forces their offense taken at that into a tidy little box and shrugs.

“... I eventually became rather expensive to fix, a lot of things went wrong at once and the workload just overflowed. One problem into another, it just became more cost effective to fix me in the places it mattered. My legs needed a lot of work due to constant haemorrhaging.”

“Surely fixing the leaks was easier?”

“Ah… no,” Suns lets a passing cloud of melancholy blot them out for a barely there sliver of a second, “Call it a punishment, perhaps.”

“For what ?” Sig shakes his head, barely able to comprehend not fixing an iterator who is, according to Suns, literally bleeding out.

“I don’t recall. I did a lot of things I shouldn’t have during my younger years, things I wouldn’t have remembered before all this, things I made myself forget, was made to forget. It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

Sig doesn’t seem to like the sound of that, his foot kicking a loose pebble that skitters across the floor and falls into the canal beside him, “But all of our systems and infrastructure are important, you can’t just leave something broken and expect it to get better. I mean, most of us can but you, Moon, others your age just can’t .”

“What was the point?” Bitter, almost angry, they can feel it grate inside them, all rough and sharp angles, it almost feels good, “I was always going to collapse, it was just a matter of time. Why spend resources fixing things I could force myself to do without? What’s one waste unit, one processing system, one broadcast node, one filtration pipe?”

Sig rounds on them fast, a predator striking at its prey, stepping in front, pausing their march forwards as he all but grabs onto them, green fingers balling in their robes, “So what? You just let it get worse and worse? You don’t put in the effort to continue surviving? You give up? I’ve known hundreds of iterators who’d have killed to have people like yours, and you just, what, let them sit around being useless?”

“Did it matter in the end if I pushed for repairs or not? Regardless I was always going down! Do you really think fixing one pump would have saved me? Do you think if I just asked I would get fixed?” They snap back, slapping his hands away, “You know nothing about my People.”

Sig huffs, brushes himself down, narrows his eyes, “No, but these little things add up, Suns. It might have been just one broken waste unit here, one loss of process there, but those small pieces all helped speed up the process! Moon wouldn’t have just sat around waiting to die.”

“Except she did . I might find my memories slowly fading, but I remember that, I remember her doing nothing until it was already too late. I am nothing like her,” They sound more like they’re trying to reason with themself as they struggle to move past Sig, blocked each time they try to take a step forwards, growling at him low, furious, a rumbling storm, “It was barely noticeable, easily forgotten, a drop in an endless endless ocean of data. Don’t pretend that you didn’t just let things go to rust, because I know you did, we all did. There is no point in arguing now, is there?”

“Yes, but you sound like you ignored it on purpose ,” And just because he can’t help himself he snarkily adds on, “You and Pebbles really do share the same idiotic ideology, don’t you? Dying isn’t the way to go shake hands with Sliver of Straw, and I’ll say it over and over until you get it drilled into your thick head.”

“You’re being contrary for no reason.”

“And you-”

Suns cuts him off suddenly, grabbing him by the scarf and yanking him out of the way just as the shimmering zap of electricity sparkles out from the gloom, seconds later a slender segmented body of a strange centipede wiggles out from the tangle of wires above, legs clicking and clattering across the concrete wall as it skitters down a mere arm’s length away from them both. Argument cut short, as Sig makes an audible noise of disgust, both at the sight of the creature and at how Suns practically smooshes him against the damp moss as they push him behind them and up against the wall, their keen eyes watching the centipede for any sudden movements. Good, they were just about to start screaming, that wouldn’t have ended well. Sig wants to make a snippy comment, that he’s handled much worse than this small centipede but he swallows down the quips, reminding himself that Suns hasn’t . They haven't done all the things he’s done. They haven’t narrowly escaped a cluster of lizards all vying for their next meal, they haven’t dashed across hot metal floors with the rains rumbling above them and a red centipede on their heels, they haven’t fled from a furious king vulture or grabbed onto a green lizard’s tail or ran through meadows, climbed rocky hills, felt the true breath of the world against them. They have not lived . They sat there, festering, waiting for their white knight. And all he’s done is make awkward advances, almost get his head bitten off and fight with them. And now, they’re saving him from another potential predator once again.

Sig curses his stupidity internally.

They’re probably terrified . 

And he’s here, picking at old scabs, pointing out faded scars. Suns is bound to get defensive.

“Don’t move,” They hiss, lowly, a tremble running through them, “These things might be deaf but their sight is perfect for wandering the shadows. Centipedes also like to chew on metal and can bite through cables; while lizards will attack us I don’t think all will be able to actually damage us like that red did, these things however? A true threat.”

“Oh that makes me feel so much better.”

A backwards glance over the shoulder, Suns looks ready to knock him unconscious themself, “I could simply flee and leave you to it. Or you can trust me. I had a friend who-”

“Wind?”

“...Grey…Wind? Yes. Yes, that's correct. Studied these things. Do you know how boring it was listening to those essays?”

“So the plan?”

A sigh rolls through them, silently Sig takes their hand in his, they do not fight him, a better start to whatever their budding relationship is at least, a fresh one. 

“Let me think.”

“I usually just run and throw rocks, if I’m honest.”

“Urgh.”

“Hey! It’s worked so far!”

“I don’t know if this will work. These things gave… my little friend… some trouble when it would travel to and fro.”

Sig grumbles at that, “You gave your messenger infinite stabbing ability and even it couldn’t contend? Fantastic!”

“Hey! It’s not my fault, I didn’t make these,” For a moment Suns squints at where the large centipede has nestled right in front of them, the dim light shimmering across its pearly carapace as it winks in and out of vision, “At least I think I didn’t.”

“ Really ?”

“I don’t remember.” Holes in their memory, holes in their mind, they hate being this, this broken thing.

“Don’t look at me, not my scavengers, not my parliament. How’s this though; we slowly scoot along this wall, try not to fall in the canal or get zapped, then leg it once we’re in a more open space. Sound good or did you think of something else?”

Suns nods very slightly, “Nothing on my end, we can try but if I get electrocuted and die when the Void Sea returns me to shore I will be making it your problem.”

“Aww, would you miss me?”

“I hope I return as a red centipede so I can terrorise you.”

“You’d miss me~”

“Don’t flatter yourself. Also yes. Yes I would. Can we move now?”

Slowly, Sig begins to do a sort of half shuffle, fingers gripping onto Suns’ own in a vice-like clench, “What, you scared of the big bug?” He lightly teases, just enough to help alleviate the heavy atmosphere, just enough to give himself a shot of bravery.

“No,” Suns admits, as they copy his movements, both moving in tandem, eyes never leaving the centipede that lifts its head and blinks its beady eyes, “I am merely wary, unlike you.”

“Ah, you got me, yeah I hate the things. Look at it’s nasty leggies, eugh .”

Suns let out a wry laugh, shaking their head so their loose wires tickle the top of Sig’s own, “Let me share a secret; I’m terrified of lantern mice, have you seen their creepy bulging eyes and- careful, loose stone- and their nasty paws? Gross. I had such an infestation of them in my expulsion pipes. Luckily that made them easy to dispose of.”

“But they’re so cute!”

“No they’re not.”

“Yes they are! Their tiny squeaks and itty bitty scurries and silly faces and-” 

The scritch scratch of the centipede's legs quickly shut him up as the creature ambles towards them, then away, then back towards, then away again, like a swinging pendulum or, perhaps more accurately, a wreaking ball.

“Can I change our plans? I want to be away from here as fast as possible, thanks.”

“ Really ?” Suns sighs, exasperated, turning just slightly to look down at him, waving their arm as if to further enunciate their point.

Quicker than either iterator can react, the centipede quickly skitters back out from the gloom, sparking and spitting, its body clattering and creaking with every stuttering step, each of its segments clicking together as it surges forth. Sig reacts instantly. His fingers curl around Suns’ own harder than ever, the tips of each one digging into their palm as he tugs upon them, almost stumbling over his feet, almost tripping them up in his fearful fretful haste. But they’re quicker than he is. Calmer. With steady hands they hold him upright. With confident strides they take the lead, feet pounding upon the damp ground as their pursuer crackles with electric charge hot on their heels. But Suns almost seems to come alive in this moment of strife, cutting down narrow passageways, dancing under the distant splatter of sunlight and wan buzzing glow of neon signs, splashing through puddles and easily outrunning and avoiding the centipede before suddenly the both of them burst out into a large circular room, the sky far above them, water gushing out of pipes at every turn and below a fathomless deep dark; an abyssal drop into nothingness from the old bridge they stand upon.

For a brief second, a stolen moment of calm, both of them merely still, breathing heavy, vapour clouding the air around them.

And then Sig finds himself laughing, breathless, incredulous.

“You,” He points an accusing finger at them, still heaving with each jagged breath, “Are insane .”

“And you,” They breathe, just as out of breath as he, “Owe me a second time now.”

“Oh do I now?~”

Suns rolls their eyes, but they cave, just a little, “Fine, you owe me just the once. Since you did come all this way for me.”

“Oh, a discount ! Lucky me!”

“Watch it.”

“Pfft, what do you expect me to pay you in? We don’t have a use for currency or favours.” Sig readjusts his scarf, pulls it away from the wires and small vents on his neck just to suck in a small slice of stagnant air that ends up being mostly dust.

“Well, for starters, I’d consider accepting an apology for how much of a bastard you’re being sufficient payment for saving you from the big bad scary bug.”

Offense taken, Sig huffs, “I am not being a bastard.”

A second more exaggerated roll of the eyes from Suns as they cross their arms, closing the distance between them step by step, “You denied me my reward for all my hard work. And you’re getting, how do I put it?” For a moment they search for the right words, the right things to say, they don’t mind how hands on Sig is really, but they know he doesn’t mean anything by it, not really. 

They continue, uncertainty colouring their tone, “Don’t you think you’re rushing? You’ve made some confusing advances I cannot make heads or tails of and I admit I find myself receiving some very mixed signals. You itch to get to her, more than anything, yet you seem content to hold my hand and lead me along all the same. I’d like at least an apology for that, if nothing else.”

“Suns I-”

They hold a hand up to silence him, “It is not unwanted nor is it unwelcome. It is just… confusing… messy. I don’t know what to feel about it all.”

“I was kind of thinking the same thing. I mean, look I do like you and, well… I’m sorry Suns, for getting a bit too personal too quickly,” He can’t meet their eyes, how does he explain he has room enough in his heart for both them and Moon? He knows, realistically, that he can’t let that space be shared forever, he cannot have them both no matter how much he would like to.

But they’re right; this is a mess .

Sig knows he loves Suns. He also knows that he loves Moon. But in the same way? That’s where the lines begin to blur, where the water gets murky and choked with sediment; there’s a lot of overlapping feelings surrounding the both of them, ripples endlessly dancing out away from the warzone he’s made of his emotions, echoes of echoes of echoes. Does he love Moon, or does he merely admire her as his senior? As the woman who had never allowed her emotions to cloud her judgement, as the woman who stood firm as the eons crashed against her? Does he simply feel pride in being her trusted right-hand man, as a dear friend and confidant? And then, what of Suns? He loves them, he knows that, he loves deep in his very soul, deeper than the darkest depths of the Void Sea. But what version of them does he love? The them blinding and bright in his rose-tinted memories, with their clear glimmering laughter and the way others would gravitate towards them, less the centre of a solar system and more a black hole? Or does he love this them, the Suns who is flawed, scuffed, rusted, the Suns trying to put the puzzle pieces of themself back together? Or is he just replacing one lost love with an ill-fitting one? Because that’s what they are together; volatile, two wrongs trying to make things right, they’ve already argued and he’s already lost his temper more than once. 

The situation is a messy one through and through; the threads of emotion tangle with each other, intertwining into a spill of oil-slick colour and new, terrifying thoughts. He could easily grab onto Suns’ wires, pull on them tightly, make static dance in their vision, peel back the metal of their body and make a vivisection of them. They even admitted it would not be refused if he were to take the dive. But there’s the question again, the doubt; does he love them for them? Or does he just want them, like an item to possess, like a pretty doll to protect, to keep safe, his uncertain yet certain affection just another cage for them to be placed in? Do they love him ? Now that’s a question. Sig never lets his eyes wander from where they stand, a mere two-feet away from him, picking at their ragged robe with disdain, that part of their identity stolen from them, and he allows his thoughts to continue wandering. ‘ It is not that they cannot love, just that they do not understand it, or know how to ,’ Wind had told him, and at the time he had refuted that, had pounded against the walls of that idea, but now? Face to face with them, is it true? They’ve not returned any of his advances, not really, not in a way that makes sense (again, Wind had told him that that would be the case, he’s starting to believe in his friend’s judgement) nor have they brought up those old words, that one little sentence that has been blazing bright in his mind.

I care about you too, you know. Quite a lot actually. Perhaps more than I should.

Sig takes a rattling breath in. 

Breathes a shaking breath out.

Those words have become a crutch, something he’s used to push himself forwards, they’re all the convincing he needed to drag his weary self to Suns’ side.

But what did they mean?

His head is pounding.

In the time it has taken him to spiral into a small mental crisis and doubt his entire reasoning to be here, Suns has picked out a golden thread from the remainder of their robe’s collar and has begun to steadily pluck it free, the tiny beads held to the garment by that thread dropping to the floor like a shower of perfect glittering tears.

“Suns, can I ask you something?” His words come out breathy, bleated, static fizzles across his vision as he wobbles slightly.

They blink, tilt their head, but continue to pick at the thread, “It must be serious if you’re asking for permission before speaking your mind.”

“Yeah.”

“You look somewhat, unwell is the wrong word… strained? Tired? Like you need to have a moment.”

“No no I’m fine . I just remembered I needed to ask you something.”

Clearly, he is not fine, and it is clear Suns does not believe him, shuffling in place uncomfortably. Sig feels both heavy and light, lead and air, thoughts muddling together and clearer than ever before, he lifts his hand to rub at the dent on his head.

“Is there something wrong? Need to confess about having a phobia of, oh I don’t know, cyan lizards- yes I heard about the incident you had with one, very funny,” When he doesn’t laugh, when he just stands there looking lost, a jetfish caught in an eel lizard’s mouth, they place both hands on their hips, cocking one towards him, “This truly is serious if you don’t like my joke. Was it that bad? I admit I don’t really remember how to tease and make light of things in the ways I once did.”

“You said you cared about me.”

Suns blinks, “Yes? Is… is that not okay?”

“No- I mean, yes it’s fine, it’s good- but that’s not what I meant to ask,” He trips over his words like some sort of bumbling idiot, spewing out awkward words that paint a poor picture.

A pause. A lull. The world almost seems to breathe in, then out, alongside the pair, matching the tense rhythm of ripples of confusion that dance around them both. Suns gives him a concerned look when he rubs at the dent again, hissing in pain when he does.

Sig continues regardless, “What did you mean by it?”

“By what?”

“You said,” Sig almost winces here, revisiting those memories has become a not so favourite pastime of his, the recollection abrasive, painfully hopeful, a crutch he uses to prop himself up, a hammer he uses to smash through each wall he slams into.

He steels his nerves, pushes down the bubbling anxiety, he feels dizzy and nauseous and lost and reckless, like he’s just made another foolish leap from a too high ledge.

He begins again, “You said you cared for me, perhaps more than you should. How… how much is that, exactly? How much do you care?”

“I said that?”

“Yes.”

“Me?”

“ Yes .”

A blank stare cuts right through him, Suns’ voice drifts just above the thrashing of the water spewing from the pipes surrounding them both a whisper and a gunshot.

“I don’t remember that,” They utter those words so simply, with so little weight that they couldn’t possibly break Sig’s entire world.

It’s as if the floor has just given way.

“You don’t remember,” He echoes, not to himself, but to the world, to the air and sky, to the chains that still encircle his neck like a noose.

“I’m sorry. But I do still like you! I mean, how could one not? You’re funny, you’re personable, you came all this way just for me, because you believe that I needed you. I’d have to like you after all that even if I didn’t before!”

“You didn’t like me before?”

Suns paces back and forth, hand on their chin, not a care in the world, “I was angry with you, I remember that. I was angry. But I was also sad, so very very sad. When everything started falling around me my thoughts were all over the place, in fact I don’t think I could think very well at all. Is… this making sense.”

Sinking, drowning, there is no sign of land, “Suns, please . Please, I need to know.”

“I don’t remember. What does it matter what was then when we have this?” They make a vague gesture as they try to encompass the concept of the world, everything, freedom itself.

“Because I care,” Sig makes a leap of faith that would have Wind scold him for such reckless idiocy, but he has never been one to take note of advice, and his hands grasp for Suns, catching their wrists, yanking them towards him as he captures them, traps them, fingers digging into those delicate joints, his eyes wide, staring, searching, desperate, longing .

“Ouch! Hara, that hurts !”

“Please, I need to know, it’s all I have left.”

Suns twists and turns, tries to tug their arms free, the ground feels like it's almost shaking under them as they struggle, as they plead with him, “Let go of me! I’m sorry I don’t remember but you’re being weird !”

“Do you love me?” The wall before him shatters into a million pieces, a wrecking ball, a careless confession, if they were built with mouths he’d kiss them here and now.

“What-”

Again, repeated, a cycle turning, “ Do you love me ?”

Suns stops struggling, they can’t tell if their legs merely tremble or if there’s something wrong with the stability of the bridge they’re on, but they’d really like to move.

“I don’t… know?”

Sig makes a tiny pained strained sound, his head bowing, his fingers pinching the wires in Suns’ wrists tight enough to feel their erratic pulse under his fingertips. They don’t know. Of course. Of course they don’t know. Wind was right after all. They’re a loveless thing that doesn’t understand the complexities of the full range of emotion, he got his hopes up for nothing, let himself fall despite it all. Foolish stupid idiot.

“Let go, you’re hurting me now. Let’s do this somewhere else, okay? Please?”

“Everything. Those words were my everything, the reason I kept hoping. This can’t just be it, this can’t be the answer I’ve been waiting for,” He takes a step closer, Suns takes a step back, towards the edge of the bridge, the world slowly tilts this way and that.

“You’re scaring me, Hara. Let’s just… talk about it. Not here. I don’t think this place is stable. See; my waste unit smashed the upper bridge above us when it fell through the ground.”

“Do you love me?”

“I don’t know! I don’t remember! I don’t even know how that feels! How do I know if I love you if I,” They choke on their emotions here, it has been so so long, so long since they felt as raw as this, as real as this, their words fall from their speakers all the same, “I loved my people, but it isn’t the same, it isn’t the same as what I feel for you, for my friends. How do I know? How do I know what this is, this horrible thing that’s been boring a hole in me? This thing I want to get out of my head? How do I understand what you want from me? How do I reciprocate?”

A step forward.

A step back.

“Please Hara, tell me how I can love you so I can do it!”

They’re an item to be owned , nothing more, nothing else.

“I don’t know how to do it, at least that’s what I’ve always been told, but I can learn right? Just let me go, my wrists hurt.”

A perfect doll, made to say pretty words, made to sit on a pretty shelf, made to be looked at, never touched, never defiled, perfect, perfect.

Sig’s grip loosens, he leans heavy against their body, one hand dropping limp as he listens to their harsh fearful breaths, “I’m so stupid.”

A birdcage. A prison. A cell. And they are the bird, the prisoner, the keeper, the warden. They are the lock, and the key. All at once.

Suns lets out a shaky sigh and wiggles free, wraps their hands around Sig’s shoulders, one hand petting the top of his head carefully, “No you’re not. There, there, it’s okay now.”

But it seems he just can’t help himself, his words a wretched mumble against them, “Did you love Pebbles?”

Suns laughs a little, mirthless, “Ah, that’s his name. Yes. I loved him. In a way I suppose.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry, you did not like him, did you?”

“No.”

“And you never will?”

“He’s dead.”

“...Oh.”

An earthquake, a shudder, the world longs to move on with or without them.

“Let’s talk this out somewhere else, Hara.”

Sig blinks up at them, slowly.

He hurt them .

“I’m sorry Sunshine.”

But Suns just shakes their head, “No no. It’s fine. Really. It’s fine.

The metal under them both groans as they free him from the embrace, as they dance away from his grasp over the part of the bridge that is reminiscent of his walkways above his thermal vats and microbial sludge containers except here, instead of a blazing inferno or devouring searing fluid to catch them, there is nothing but a howling rift. An inky black darker than all the shadows in the world. Almost living, breathing, pulsing under them. Suns races across the bridge, twirling around to meet his guilty confused gaze, their false cheer, their false elation a sickeningly sweet barrage of profane. And Sig wishes he could turn away. But he reaches out towards them, watches them move further away from him, hypnotic as they sway, cupping the image of them in his hand like loose water, the image of them sitting in his palm like a dancer on a music box going round and round. But inside of him, something bitter, angry takes root.

They did not remember those words, those painful moments shared with sharp anger.

Below, a support beam shifts, creaking bending breaking.

But they remember that they had loved Pebbles, and that’s the kicker isn’t it?

The whole body of the structure tilts, bit by bit, then all at once, a flair for the dramatic.

That brat has taken something else from him, right from under his feet, it’s almost funny if he weren’t so angry , if it hadn’t happened before.

Suns, mid-step, stumbles over their feet, their fingers clawing at the grate with a surprised yell, slipping and sliding.

Sig calls out their name, moves too slowly, too late to catch them as they fall.

And as the ground shrinks away under their feet, as mere centimeters away he fails to catch them.

It’s like watching them collapse all over again.

A skittering of tiny feet, a crackle of electric, ozone smell and burning; the centipede they had avoided has caught up, and with one deft lunge, one moment of madness, it flings itself forth wrapping its body around Suns who flails, failing to keep their grip, hanging on the edge of the abyss by a hair.

With one fell swoop, one zap, a garbled cut off scream, Sig watches them go limp.

Chapter Text

I care about you too, you know. Quite a lot actually. Perhaps more than I should.

Sig can hear those words, louder than his heartbeat, than his ragged terrified breaths, as if they were spoken to him face to face, not just sad desperate words on a screen written in muted drab tones of red, as if someone had drank all joy and meaning from the colour. They had been spit out onto the keyboard in anger, perhaps fear, had been born in a harsh place of no honor, had been made to be a driving force to drive a point home. A blunt object to be tossed. A plea . And he had foolishly allowed those pretty words make a hollow home in his heart, had taken them for his own, turned them around and around, tumbled them into perfectly smooth blemish free ideals he’d used to drag himself forwards. And now, after following those pixels on a screen, the fantasy he’d created on a whim, Sig finds himself laid at the edge of a crumbling bridge hand uselessly reaching forwards into rotten open air with Suns, head lolled to one side and eyes open, rolled back, unseeing, buzzing with black-white static, slowly sliding down the jagged grate of the ruptured walkway, their assailant skittering across a broken railing towards him in fear as it flees the crumbling infrastructure. 

If he were a pettier man, if he were more present, if his eyes weren’t trained upon where Suns lays uncomoving, so close, so far, he’d whip around and take the centipede in his hands, crack it over his knee, throw it to the ground and look at his hands dripping with hemolymph, fresh and sticky.

He blinks away the dazzling storm of glitter that blinds his wide eyes, heaves out a plume of blooming steam.

At his feet the centipede is still, dead, shell cracked and insides drooling out over the ground below.

Sig lifts his hands slowly, uncertain of what he will see. He is greeted with each finger and both cuffs of his robe decorated with a sickly vomit yellow, the gore drip dropping to the floor like the prelude to his rains. That’ll be hell to scrub out of his knuckle joints for sure.

When did he… stand up?

Did he- Sig’s eyes glance to the body before him, back to his hands- do that ?

His harsh anxious breaths erupt into full blown panic, grating in his fans, his lungs searing and burning but quickly this panic is swallowed whole by an empty almost animalistic drone, a pitiful cry of pain, for help, as more of the bridge around him begins to crumble, tilting this way and that, a stomach-churning dancer’s sway. Sig’s immediate attention is back on Suns, still limp, still dangling like a puppet on a string, their legs hanging from the edge of the rusted grate as they continue to doze, not a care in the world. A rumble shakes the very pipes lining the room, bursts of water spray into the air creating a fine mist of icy water; Sig knows now that this is the death of this place, the weight of the fallen iterator above has crushed parts of the underground canals and drainage pipe, there’s simply too much pressure on the pumps and thus the central drainage silo that should be the strongest point has become the weak spot; if the collapse doesn’t kill them they’re likely to drown in the flood that will follow. It’s already enough to set off one of the old rain sirens, a warning song warbling out a pathetic funeral march, screaming it out for the whole world to hear. Sig tries to swallow, realises he has no mouth or throat to do so, spluttering out vapor instead. It feels exactly like watching them collapse again, except back then with Wind by his side he was able to lie easily as if it didn’t kill him inside. 

He loves them . 

He’d do anything to see them safe, to have them back in his arms, to apologise for scaring them, hurting them, to make stupid promises about doing laundry together, living together, building a brand new world only for them both. And that ‘anything’ is suddenly finding himself shimmying and stumbling across the broken railing the centipede had just scuttled down apparently , with the howling sound of coming destruction curling around him and a fathomless drop into the languid dark below. Like a jackhammer his head pounds, chipping away at his sanity like stone, like digging a hole to see how deep it goes; Sig’s pretty sure he’s scraping the bottom. But he continues to face forwards, Suns in his sighs regardless of how his vision swim before him. Wind had said that when the two of them stopped bickering over stupid variables, stopped picking at each other's scabs, pointing out flaws and imperfections, that they had been formidable together. He has to believe that, he has to . Because right now, Suns needs him. Right now he has to be formidable alone. He’s faced worse than this, right? Right. He’s walked through their innards, torn out and decaying. He’s dragged their silent puppet out of a crumbling birdcage and held them tight. He’s dived into the remnants of their shattered mind to fish them out like a gleaming prize, pulled them up to the surface. He’s held their hand, held them close, wept with them, laughed with them, lived with them. For them.

Anything for them .

Sig has to believe in that pretty lie, even if it feels like he’s a hung man waiting to die.

The whole structure shifts again, the middle pillar that is laced with pipes and wires slowly beginning to sink into the depths below, it’s moaning groaning drone cutting the air offensively, but from his perch upon the precarious railing Sig can see the supports pull themselves free of it, and the grate part of the bridge slants even further, tantalising. Suns slips again, just a couple inches, but his heart leaps in his chest at the same time he does, fingers clawing at the grate, gripping on as hard as he can as he reaches out towards them, a pathetic cry bursting from his speakers.

“ Suns !” His voice breaks free, raw with emotion, heavy.

They don’t even turn their head towards him, they’re probably not even awake after that shock, they’re probably already dead . Sig shakes his head, adamantly refusing that outcome but regrets it almost instantly as his vision dances, drunk and dizzy, spots both black and white speckling his wavy vision. Something jingles around inside of his head, clinking against the sides of his dome and making his broken eye vomit sparks, little electric kisses that twinkle in the gloom.

He tries again, there’s no way he can continue clinging on here and also reach for them, he needs them to help him help them. 

“Suns wake up!”

This time they move their head. Just slightly. As if they’re following the sound of his voice like a lost ship follows a lighthouse in a squall. Their eyes still display that static fuzz, but Sig can tell just from that simple motion; they hear him, they know he’s come for them, to save them, their knight, their fairytale prince.

A gasp, a sigh of relief, he doesn’t let those take control, instead he yells out, begging, “Give me your hand! Hurry!”

Under his fingers the grate begins to wobble, slanting, trying to shake him off to the best of its abilities.

“Suns! Hurry!”

A gurgle of water, the tiny valves by their eyes begin to dribble, but they are alive , achingly and beautifully alive, even if they mimic their silent sleep the first time he was able to touch them, to hold them.

“Hurry, your hand!”

The world shudders and shakes, debris falls around him like snow but Sig continues reaching out to where they dangle, looking up at him, not an ounce of recognition in their eyes. So broken, so sad and empty, he has to suppress a shudder as the image of an empty tin can comes to mind.

But Sig is not a quitter, not now, not ever , “Suns, hurry, your hand! Give it to me!”

They hesitate as more cerulean tears spill down their painted cheeks, so with all the bravery he can muster, the last shreds of courage cobbled together and despite all the fear holding him back and the cycles turning ever onwards, the world with all its cruelty, Sig lets go of the grate, allowing himself to slide down bit by horrible bit, to reach out towards them. The warmest place he has ever known. So close, so close . And for a moment it doesn’t look like Suns will make the effort, it doesn’t look like they’ll even try, they’re dragging the weight of endless years of suffering behind them after all and he never even realised how much pain they were in all this time and he feels the fool for it. They’ve been suffering all alone and nobody ever saw it.He feels the fool for thinking they can muster the bravery to break the bars of their prison, to unwind the rope that chokes them dead. But that’s okay. He can be their prince, he can kiss away those tears even without a mouth and lips to do so, he can hold their hand, their body against his, he can be there even if they cannot fight for their right to stand here and live.

Sig knows they will not reach out for him.

Because they cannot.

But then, slowly, shakily, they do .

Suns reaches up to him despite it all.

Through the shadows, through the cascade of dusty detriment, shining sunlight and wayward water that streams down from the failing world around them.

They reach out through the bars of their prison. Towards him. A lifeline tossed out into stormy seas, a ruby red dawn shattering the body of night like glass.

Their fingers touch, entangle, and Sig pulls them, pulls them up, himself up, back towards where the central column continues to sink, his arms wrapping around them in an eternal embrace. But here there is little room for fantasy or romance, here the world is ending and it longs to drag them both down with it, to crush their rebellion in its fist. Sig is not a quitter. He’s proven this a thousand times over in these last few moments alone, so even as Suns rests heavy in his arms, legs lanky and cumbersome, head resting on his shoulder, he stumbles forth over the falling bridge determined and reckless. He shelters their pretty face from the rains of debris even as he himself is pelted with fury for his denial of this death, a punishment he supposes for making himself a crass middle-finger raised at destiny itself. He should write a novel about all this one day. One day. One shining day in the distance that he longs to wrench out of the jaws of certain fate, a day he will live so joyously that it’ll change the world.

His head pounds.

Just in time he’s able to block the piece of rebar from piercing him right through his broken eye.

“Come on you bastard. Keep it together. Keep it together.” Sig finds himself muttering to himself, the sound of Suns’ limp limbs dragging upon the bridge a horrible screech that drowns his mad rambles out.

Or is that the sound of…

Sig turns, slowly, too slowly, just in time to see the central pillar buckle under its own weight and wobble this way and that before, as if to spite him, it begins to tilt right in his direction, falling much faster than he thought it would, ripping cables and pipes from the walls, a final desperate attempt to see him dead. There’s scant time to think, so he doesn’t. He simply hefts Suns into his arms in a bridal carry, their feverish heat scorching against his fingers as he stumbles and stutters his way across the rapidly decaying bridge, huffing plumes of steam like a chugging train. 

SNIP SNAP

More cables rip away from the walls, their cruel lengths lashing down upon the failing bridge like a barrage of slaps, each one closer and closer until one finally reaches its mark whipping against Sig’s back with a resounding crack . A faltering step, a stifled cry of pain, he forces himself forwards all the same. One step at a time. That’s all it took for him to start this journey, that’s all it’ll take for him to win here. The ground splinters and fractures under his slow march turning hair thin cracks into gaping chasmous maws with teeth of jagged metal ready to chew him up. Determination trumps the fear, the desperation clawing at his innards and Sig moves forwards, Suns nothing but a dangling burden in his arms. But that’s fine. He’ll save them both. Even as another piece of debris mercilessly smacks right into his head right where the dent is sending him careening to the floor, his diminutive size and aching arms used to protect his burden from the fall curl around their head, a shield, a sacrifice. For one horrible moment his thoughts are blank, a negative space where nothing echoes except the paper thin memory of distant rain, his numb fingers curl into a fist, that fist hammers down onto the metal below with an anguished cry. 

It all feels so hopeless now but still.

Still . 

The only thing he can do is keep on trying .

A grunt. With effort Sig forces himself up onto his knees, forces his shaking arms to heave him up, a persistent leak streaming from his broken eye like false tears, one he wipes away with his scarf. A heavy question sits in his mind as once again, with no hesitation, he reaches for Suns, their thorns and blossoms both, caring little if he gets cut in the process of picking this flower; is this what years and years of ceaseless struggle has truly got him? There’s a life out there, outside of this box, this birdcage, a life Sig has longed to grasp in his hands, to tear from the cold death grip of those who made him, those who abandoned him, a life he longs to live so utterly joyously that his creators would probably drop dead and pass from the world just with the shock. He thought, back in his tiny prison blind to the world, that this was a life he would never have, one not meant for him, for any of the iterators who endlessly toiled until they broke down into rubble, into silent graves. But he had… hoped. He’s tried so hard, isn’t that enough? Isn’t that enough ? With great effort, with strength he barely has, he begins to drag Suns, the tunnel of safety just ahead lined with flickering halogen lights and under their golden glow he feels like he’s been caught in this same circle of thought before.

So close, looming before him, salvation, shelter.

Behind him he less hears the middle pillar hit the bridge and more feels it, rumbling across the ground, spraying him with shrapnel and pinpricks of water.

With one last shout of triumph, one last cry of victory, Sig uses the final embers of his strength to toss Suns forward, wincing as they bounce and roll across the ground, his legs barely carrying him far enough to join them as the floor drops away below his feet.

There’s a rumble, like thunder, like a marching band, and then silence. Blissful silence. 

And it’s over.

Truly over.

Incredulous, Sig allows himself to fall back, head glancing off the ground with a clang, but his breathy laughter covers it with mirth even as the world before him spins round and round in nauseous circles. The floor is cold, slick, a comforting solid under him, like arms waiting to catch him, embrace him, and slowly, shakily, he allows a single deep breath to fog the air.

“Hey Suns,” A whisper, harsh, grating, “Never do that again, okay?”

He turns his head towards where they still lay in a heap, eyes displaying that static but duller now, as if they’re beginning to properly wake up. At least this tunnel doesn’t feel prone to collapse anytime soon, good… good.

“I think, I’m going to take a nap,” Mumbled, slurred slightly at the edges, “Don’t panic if you wake up and I’m down for the count. My head hurts. It’s okay if I close my eyes for a bit… right?”

As expected, they don’t reply. It’s fine, Sig thinks. It’s fine. They’ll talk later, in fact they need to, have a long talk that is. His eyes drop unbidden. A small moment to catch his breath is surely okay, right? 

Right.

“And who authorised this?” His voice is almost bored, disinterested as he picks dirt out from beneath his nails, not even bothering to look at the mess he’s caused nor at them where they scramble to salvage what remains of their poor plant.

“Nobody! I don’t need to ask permission to keep organic samples as part of my research,” Suns doesn’t mean to snap at him, they know the consequences of such actions but they can’t help themself this time, they’re so sick of him bossing them about like he actually holds power over them.

“Dispose of these distractions; you are aware you are not allowed such comforts.”

They dare to glare at him with as much spite their blank face can manage, a feat to be sure, “I don’t want to, I have worked very hard to keep these alive.” There’s muck between their fingers and pale pink petals that are oh so delicate and soft to the touch, thorns that prick and sting.

Their admin sighs, shakes his head, the golden and jeweled ornaments twinkling together like wind chimes but much less pleasant and much more annoying. Their ceremonial robes bear such embellishments; ribbons and beads that are strung on their antennae, layers upon layers of cloth that drown their puppet’s thin body, furs and silks so expensive they could cripple an economy merely by existing. Every time they’re draped in the gaudy extravagance they feel a bit of themself chip away, piece by piece, there’s more of them gone than here, Void Below, they can barely lift their puppet with how heavy the burden is. But it keeps him happy. They can be a pretty dress up doll, a trophy to be paraded around to impress dignitaries and colleagues alike, an idol hewn into shape to represent the perfect image of what an iterator should be. Grand. Imposing. God-like. And here they are, knelt on their chamber floor speckled with dirt desperately trying to save the life of an unfeeling, uncaring plant. They should be better than this. They have to be better than this. But as the petals of those dying flowers slip through their inorganic fingers of metal and silicon Suns finds that they don’t want to be that.

Perfect. Better. An ideal. Anything but a person.

“I will not dispose of these,” They stand, brush the muck on their wine coloured robe much to their admin’s clear disgust, “And if you dispose of them for me, I will simply replace them.”

“Then I will limit your supply lines.”

“Then I will find ways to reopen them, bypassing your blockades is laughable .”

They’re pushing their luck here, especially as he bristles with anger, “You’d best watch your tone with me, machine. We built you and we can demolish you.”

“Oh please, we both know that you need me far more than I need you. What will you do? Where will the billions of you live? Do you really truly think you can survive dodging the rains, do you really think any of my neighbours will be charitable enough to let you in?”

He floods into their personal space like a tidal wave, his hot breath blazes across their metal as his hands grip at their thin wrists, digging into the sensitive joints there, “Watch. Your. Tone. Can you hear me, Seven?”

“Unfortunately. Now, if you don’t mind my time is precious and you have wasted en-”

CRACK

Suns doesn’t register they’ve been struck until dull pain throbs up their right side and left cheek, their shaking hand lifting to touch at the offending spot where they were hit.

“Now look what you’ve made me do.”

“You… you hit me?”

“Of course I did, I warned you to watch your tone with me,” Two fingers lift their head to meet his gaze before he clenches his hand around their chin, dragging them up to look right into his furious eyes through the slits in his mask, even as his voice stays level, sickly sweet, “You are not made for such flights of fancy.”

Disgusted, he drops them, tossing them to the ground like he did the flowers, leaving them to tremble amongst the fallen petals like discarded trash.

“This isn’t what you’re made for.”

“I know but-”

Swiftly, he cuts them off, circles them like a starving animal, his hands ghosting over their shaking shoulders, sliding amongst the wires of their umbilical cable, tugging gently so they bend backwards, flush against his legs as he bends over them, a panting beast.

“An analogy if you will; you are a bird, this is your cage. The purpose of a bird is to sit and sing. Yours is to work. There is nothing else beyond these bars, do you understand?”

“...Yes, I understand.”

His gaze softens here, his gentle touch burns when he strokes the small dent he’d made on their cheek like a lover, “You poor thing, we’ll get this buffed out for you, repainted if we must, we cannot have you looking a shamble, can we?”

“No.”

“Good. Now you stay here, my little bird, and sing for me.”

Hot. 

Cold.

Hot. 

Cold again.

Like a flickering light bulb giving up on life, their heart flutters erratically in their chest as if it wants to leap out and run away from them as their breaths come short, ragged, internal fans wobbling around and around. Their fingers prickle, so do their toes and the very tippy top of their antennae, sound swimming around them thick and wet, their face sticky against the dusty floor. For a moment, Suns takes stock of these things, examines each one by one, turning them around in their mind's eye, dropping them, picking them back up, rolling through the motions like a tiny boat caught in a swell. But it’s all feathery light, barely there recollections of feeling, like the final dregs of sleep after waking in the watery sunlight of new dawn, like kisses of warm summer breeze. They could lose themself in it, if they could.

Suns!

Is someone there? Beyond the reach of perception, dancing on that razor edge between worlds; is someone there? Suns finds that memories trickle so easily through their fingers now, like water, like that dirt spilt from the broken plant pot. And each one is soft, bruised across its delicate surface, a dense ache that sits there at the back of their mind; they’ve been here before. Data, sparks, living only in wires and recollection, they are the buzz in the emergency lights, the sluggish water dribbling through pipes. Neither here nor there but also everywhere, everything, a plethora of concepts, a maze of thoughts stretched out so thin, so tight, that when they snap back to themself it will feel like being hit with a ton of bricks. But right now they don’t need to worry about that, they can languish here just a little longer.

Suns wake up!

Wake up? How does one wake up? In fact how does one not be awake in the first place? They feel like they should know that, they’ve been induced into sleep several times for repairs in their storied history, not that they can recall why or how or when or for what reason or by whom. But it had not been peaceful, not like this, they had still felt every cut upon their metal skin, each hand that took, each mouth that was fed from them. Every transgression, every violation. They had felt it all, every single papercut, every single rape of them, if they can call it that. They’d been vivisected, for their own good they had been told, had parts of them amputated while they couldn’t fight back, had processors shut down, had their water limited to test how long they could go without. Bruised and bleeding, parched and starved. They made a wild animal out of them and told them it was their fault.

Give me your hand! Hurry!

Now why would they do that? It is nice down here, in the gloom, in the mildew dark, why would they give someone a hand they’re pretty sure has gone entirely numb? Ah, but the world spins around them, technicolour and oozing, a parade of light and shadow dancing hand in hand, and they are the centre of it all; the star with all the planets orbiting it. A tree with roots, their body the trunk, a thousand leaves, a thousand eyes blinded. They rather like it here, on this hanging edge overlooking the abyss.

Suns! Hurry!

Awfully persistent, isn’t he?

Hurry, your hand!

Green splashes across their staticy vision like a slap, their cheek suddenly stings. A circle breaks, the chain unfurls clanking, each link coming undone, spiralling endlessly out of control, a storm of broken metal and the doors of wakefulness flung wide open.

Suns, hurry, your hand! Give it to me!

They stutter, stopping, starting again, but through the bars of their cage, Suns reaches out towards that familiar voice, their cold fingers forming that missing link, their heart flutters, their throat constricts.

Suns blinks the sheen of dust from their eyes to little success, a careless finger lifting to try to wipe it away but only succeeding in poking themself in their left eye. Grumbling, they search for their sleeves, mumbling incoherent insults at themself when they just can’t seem to find either of them, only bare wires and painful wrists. Hot and cloudy, the air pushes down on them, an oppressive blanket, their pipes beg for water, how long have they felt so dry for? They reach out, searching for valves to turn, passages to unblock but their hands return empty, they remain silent, laid on the ground in a heap of limbs and tangled wires. Huffing, hard, scorching, blistering; they force themself to sit bit by bit, brushing away their torn robes just to get a sliver more of cool air upon their chassis, using the still lump beside them for leverage when they almost topple over. Urgh, they don’t even have the fluids to flush the dirt from their eyes and with their hands as filthy as they are there’s no reason to attempt to wipe it out, they’ll just smear more across the glass. They wobble again, almost falling back to the floor, their head coming down to rest heavy against the strange shape beside them, the texture an unfamiliar fabric, almost warm to the touch, moving back and forth as if strained. Their fingers fumble, dumbly feeling around for something they can use to clean the haze from their eyes, finding something different, long and loose, delicately embroidered but enough to carefully dab at their eyes.

Its strange, Suns thinks as they clean themself, they feel like they’re forgetting something really important.

Fire. Explosions. Falling. Dying. Waking up again. Falling again.

Suns blinks away the grime and dirt, the layers of muck clouding their vision now as they cough up a plume of steam and foul dust, a couple small pebbles falling out of one of their vents harmlessly to the ground, forgotten about in the next moment.

“Ha…ra?”

Their voice croaks out, softly, as if it might break them to talk any louder, vision dropping to the disjointed shapes under their fingers. He’s laid there, eyes wide open, unseeing, huffing and heaving each breath as if the very world depends on his continued breathing, and perhaps, to Suns, it does. Carefully, their hands find the strength to roll his limp body onto his back, a tiny pained sound oozing out of their speakers when his head flops to the side revealing the nasty crack where the dent had been, a piece of broken rebar sticking out of it like a sore thumb, the crack spiderwebbing down his face to his broken eye and splitting the seams of his metal plating, bolts and rivets popped loose. He’s half covered in muck, half covered in spilt coolant, brown and brilliant blue splashed across his green paint like a confusing abstract painting, the shoulder and one sleeve of his purple robe completely sodden, his scarf dirty from where they’d wiped their face on it. But that matters little now. Suns shakes him, just enough to hopefully wake him up, but all Sig does is flop about like a fish out of water, making no sound to even register that they’re there. So they try again, lightly slapping at the uninjured side of his face, climbing on top of him, straddling him, shaking him with mounting desperation twisting at their insides.

But he doesn’t budge, not one bit, no matter how much they shake, no matter how loud their words are shouted, the only sign that he hasn’t decided to pass on is his ragged laboured breaths. Fingers aching, words barely coherent, Suns curses the very world itself, right down to its bones, right down to that boiling dark sea clawing at its belly. They curse it; with every swear they have, with all the spite they can muster. How much more will it take from them? How much more do they have to lose before that hunger is satisfied? It has already robbed them of their freedom, of their joy, their people, their body, their very mind, they will not allow it to take him from them too! Even so… even so they are powerless to stop it. They are weak against the crashing tides as they buckle under the weight of it all, laying their head on Sig’s chest, listening to the hiccuping rhythm of his heartbeat beneath the warm metal, clinging to the frail thread of his life like a drowning man to the last piece of driftwood. A glint catches their eye, innocently silver, dangling from a red wire besides their face. Dumbly, Suns takes the loose thread in between shaking fingers, twirling it round and round, thumb worrying at the metal plug that had caught their eye.

That’s right.

They could pull him back, if they had to.

Hadn’t he done the same? Clipped them into him, he into them, in order to drag them back from the brink? Yes. That sounds… familiar. The kind of risk this idiot would take. But are they strong enough to do it? Do they have the resolve, the force of being, to be able to swim through physical thought and mind to offer their hand to him? Suns takes a deep breath of stagnant dusty air and although they tremble with the effort, they lift their face from his chest, reach to turn Sig’s ruptured head to the side, a slosh of oils and coolant splashing to the floor, dribbling through their fingers, as slowly Suns musters the bravery to plug themself directly into his very mind.

And suddenly, with a feather light grip around their wrist, neon-bright red tendrils stop their uncertain movements as a single blinking mechanical eye glitters up at them.

The creature simply holds their hand back from making a foolish choice.

And Suns simply stares back, uttering a harrowing realisation to themself.

“I know you. You are…”

The overseer bobs back and forth, nodding with encouragement as dread begins to grip Suns heart, the next word breathed out both as a prayer and a curse.

“ Me .”

Chapter Text

Me .

This is… me.

A piece of me, a reflection of me, a fragment caught as physical living qualia.

Despite everything.

It’s still me.

Suns’ thoughts crash over them like great grey waves whipped into a frenzied scream one by one as realisation, cold and stabbing, twists inside of their chest as their wide empty eyes stare intently at the wavering hologram before them. Its slender blue tipped feeling arms twitch one by one in measured motions, tasting the invisible data sparkling in the air as it records, watches, processes, staring at them, through them, seeing them more intimately than any other living creature can, trying to make sense of the jagged edges that make them up, trying to parse just why its iterator no longer lives within their gilded cage. Like lightning, Suns reaches out, hands slick with coolant and oil, to cage the shining eye of the overseer in a trap made of their own trembling fingers, almost feverishly, almost fitfully, their heart hammering in their chest with erratic anxiety. They cannot allow this opportunity for answers, for reparations, to pass them by. How much have they lost, how much has been stolen from them, how many times have they stumbled, doubted the very reality they’re living in, how many times have they closed their eyes and wondered if they’d wake up back in their chamber, broken and lonely again? 

Too many times to count, too much to quantify with understandable numbers and they are lesser for it.

Suns cannot allow this to slip through their fingers; this changes everything .

Their fingers close around the overseer, sinking into its hologram body like teeth into flesh, knife-like and cutting.

Suns is so tired of trying to be okay. Because they’re not, they’re not okay, nothing about this is okay; it’s disjointed, wrong, puzzle pieces forced to fit together that just don’t go, broken circuits and shattered windows. They’re tired of trying to be okay, they’re so tired of being an empty shell. If there’s a chance they can glean any lost memories from this singular lost overseer then they cannot allow it to flee, they cannot allow it to go free, they will mimic the prisons their creators forced upon them and keep it locked within a new cell, they will become its warden.

This is… everything , all that is left of what they were, who they were, a flicker of light against the dark of night, a candle burning low, it’s all they have. They’ve weep at the loss, and they weep again, out of relief or another confusing feeling they have no name for, their already aching body bowing to the strain of trying to stay upright as they crumple against both the damp floor and Sig’s unmoving body beneath them, tiny hiccups escaping their wheezing speakers. Overseers are of course simple eyes, usually operating on a preset list of rules and orders but they can be more, so much more, especially in the event that they have nobody to take orders from. They can facilitate the strain of long distance broadcasts, act as screens and projectors, they can think for themselves, and even with such a limited life, with such limited size and space in their body, they can act as conduits for memories, even after their parent iterator perishes. Even after that ending, that death that remakes the world in a lesser form, each one remains, individual and roaming the empty wastes looking for a sliver purpose, the memories they hold are fuzzy, but there. There’s hope for Suns yet. Or at least they hope there’s hope; it has been a valuable commodity in recent times.

But still. 

Still.

This is them, part of them, perhaps the last of their gazing eyes.

If this single shard of them contains even a fragment of their saved qualia, if it holds even a sliver of who they once were then it's possible, truly possible , that they can be themself again.

At their feet Sig makes a tiny pained noise, his one good eye flickering uselessly, rolling in the socket as he dumbly smashes his face into the wet concrete without care or reason, a dull echoing thunk thunk thunk rippling outwards as he decides to continuously headbutt the ground. Panic floods every single one of Suns’ systems at the sight, overriding every other thought they have turning into a blaze of shrill ringing and static, their heart almost crawls out of their chest as he jerks awkwardly, gurgling uselessly, a fresh gout of oil running down his face as he attempts to call out for them, his words only becoming a slurry of disjointed error sounds.

Suns doesn’t know they’re hyperventilating until their hands claw at their own chest as their fans hitch and splutter.

“Please… tell me,” A whisper, desperate, pleading, their trembling an earthquake to the tiny creature caught in their trap, “What… do I do ? How can I help him? I can’t… I can’t do this on my own, please, you have to have some answers, isn’t it your job to help me?”

Honestly they’re not sure what they expected but judgemental silence is what they receive.

Tears begin to throb behind their eyes, or at least the threat of them as they beg once more, warbling pathetically, claws cutting grooves into the gore splattered floor as they grasp for something, anything, to stabilise them, their small, so small, voice calling out into the cavernous gloom, “I have to fix this. This is my fault. I’ve hurt all of my friends. I have to fix this at least. Please. Please .”

The structure sighs around them as it settles into place, the only company Suns has besides the short huffed breaths Sig forces out and the sickly red glow of their overseer is the gushing haemorrhage of grimey water from the ruptured pipes in the central purification terminal they’d just escaped from. If they were still standing they’d feel that loss a lot more than they do now, as if someone spilt their stomach open and started pulling out entrails to bite and tear. They merely ache now, all over, body a tingle of stabbing static, fingers shaking in the muck, tiny slick pebbles stuck under their claws and in their joints. Everything feels so so big. The tunnels. The heavy darkness. The weight of their hissing panic pressing down upon them. The cruel world. No amount of cursing or crying can change what has come to pass; they’re alone again, scared again, lost again, abandoned to do nothing but stew in their regrets, abandoned to do nothing but cling to the last shreds of their rapidly unravelling reality. Again .

“I can’t take this anymore… why did you have to come for me?”

Sig doesn’t answer, not a twitch of finger or a change in his ragged breaths is offered in comfort, not that Suns believes they deserve any of it.

“You could have just forgotten about me, you could have had your perfect ending without me in it, you could have-,” Suns allows their processors to tick over, allows their speakers to pop and fizzle with the building emotion for a moment before, barely a whisper, they allow their next words to scream like gunshots in silence, “You could have just let me die in peace; it would have been kinder than this.”

Suns furiously wipes at their face, slapping their metal cheeks just to feel something other than the crushing vice of their amalgamation of complex struggles, just to be real for a moment, to calm their mind, to halt the bubbling building blaze of a full scale meltdown. No, right now, they have to be the one who is strong.

They are better than this.

“Sorry. It’s not your fault,” Muttered and low, they stand and brush themself down, taking a deep drink of the stagnant air, “Come on, let’s get moving. I’ll have to… fix that head… you look like a cracked egg like this. Can’t do it here, don’t want to risk these tunnels caving in.”

Suns gathers Sig’s limp body up into their arms as gingerly as they can despite how sudden weakness tries to overtake them as they waver on their feet, grunting at how heavy he seems now they’re not in a blinding fearful rush running from a furiously murderous lizard. But it’s not just his dangling limbs and lolling head that weigh their first shaky steps down; the pit of dread forming in their chest feels leaden enough to almost bring them to their knees alone. But Suns grunts, readjusts their grip, and begins to stumble forth. They are strong, they have to remember that at least, they have had to be strong in the face of unkindness and ridicule. Over the long years they’ve been called many a thing; manipulative, pathetic, foolish, selfish, ignorant. Maybe they are all those things and more, maybe those words they cannot remember manipulated Sig into prioritising their wellbeing over his, that in itself is pathetic and selfish is it not? And the very essence of what they’re doing right now is the definition of a fool’s errand. And ignorant? Well-

They glance down at where Sig flops about in their arms with each step. Dwelling on his outburst now won’t do either of them any good, but perhaps it didn’t merely come from nowhere, perhaps they were ignorant to all his tells, perhaps they trampled all over his poor little heart and hurt him more than he hurt them. Perhaps . 

Perhaps is a strong word and filled with doubt, they have to focus right now, no use worrying about what ifs.

The tunnels twist and turn before them like the bowels of a great beast dripping with mildew and slime, years of algae buildup tinting the stone a sickly green, tiny bioluminescent mushrooms and plants worming their way into the cracks in the cobbled floor give off more light than the flickering half dead neon signs ever could. Suns doubts this is anything close to sterile but they have to trust in themself and themself alone here, a terrifying prospect since they just spent a decent amount of time arguing with themself and chasing another mental breakdown, something that is becoming more and more common, a troubling prospect to be sure. They should probably stop that. Beating themself down. Building themself up again. It’s tired, they’re tired, they have been for a real real long time they think. One foot after another, better to focus on the goal in front of them rather than fester on things they can’t change, things they don’t know how to deal with. The red overseer follows them closely, watching from above as if trying to understand what it's seeing; Suns doesn’t blame it, seeing its iterator out of their birdcage and walking about must be a rather odd sight.

“Instead of just staring at me, perhaps you could do something useful?” Sig makes an unhappy grumble as they trip over a loose brick, cursing internally as they have to heft him up higher, the strain in their back and arms becoming a burning pain, “I can’t do this much longer he’s a heavy burden to drag with me as I expect I am to him; at least find me somewhere more protected than this. I don’t think that the collapse of infrastructure I just left behind me will keep the critters away forever.”

The overseer pauses. Blinks. Once. Twice. Three times. Its arms rotate its body in a blinding red sunburst as it thinks, tires to ping out towards its siblings in its fleet and upon finding nothing, dips sadly, almost deflated. Suns is about to give up on it, almost turning away when it zips in front of them, projecting an arrow down a shadowy side passage that looks almost suspiciously clean and free of gunk. There’s signs, as broken as the rest but somehow blessedly bright in an unassuming yellow, pointing towards the south, indicating that there’s a change in scenery, signs they can barely read due to them being half dead but there’s something there, a tiny lifeline thrown to sea.

“My shipping yard, that’s right , it connects to the underside my primary reservoir and then to the exterior canal system,” Wistful hope dares to dig its claws into their chest, a cruelty if this turns to naught, “If the scavengers and other beasts of the wilds haven't already pilfered all of value there then there’s a slim chance I can do something for him! Well done 055!”

Overseer 005 does a happy little wiggle in front of its iterator, pinging around them like a bouncy ball before zipping off down the passage, illuminating the thick shadows with brilliant crimson, a beacon, a lighthouse. Suns chuckles at its familiar antics and with a more steely determination readjusts Sig in their arms so his cracked head lays in the crook of their neck and carries themself forth with a much more steady gait than before. They’re lucky the overseer is here really, they can’t imagine how many times they’d fall over in this narrow space and drop their friend to the floor, especially with the creeping shapes of spindly spiders that skitter under their feet and dance above their head. Ick, they’ve always despaired at the sight of those crawlers and creepers, they recall having a minor infestation in the hanging belly of their underhang, as they suspect many of their kin did. Foul. Disgusting even. Yet despite their discomfort they go on and on, there’s no time to waste when they’re leaving a fresh trail of iterator blood behind them, they just hope Sig can hang on and not die until they can at least make him comfortable.

“I wonder how much of me is within you,” They mumble into the pregnant silence, just to fill the world with something other than their worries, “Each overseer acts of their own free will unless given specific instructions, but while you are your own creature, your own self, a piece of me lives inside of you; you are me, a part of me, did you know that?”

Of course the overseer does not respond with words, just twitching its feeling arms in what they can assume is confirmation or acceptance.

“Mmm, I see. There’s lights on in these tunnels still, maybe it’s from backup generators somewhere but I’d like to believe at least part of my body is still getting power from somewhere; I am an iterator after all, notoriously difficult to kill and even more tenacious than some may expect at my age. I am unbelievably old now, so are most of us by this point, we don’t die easy deaths. We fit and spasm and wail and bleed for years upon years, it is slow and it is painful and even then we do not perish completely. I am proof of that claim.”

The Overseer forms very crude and basic signs with its feelers, twisting them into a mimic of language, hoping that its half brain dead iterator still remembers how to read its motions to a degree, ‘ Not. Dead. Sleeping. But. Soon. ’

Suns blinks, slowly, processing. They… they just understood that. Huh. Well then. Perhaps conversation is an option after all. Quietly they stuff down the elation, the joy at no longer being so achingly alone in this new terrifying world, it would do no good to celebrate when it’s more likely they’ve just lost the last few shreds of their sanity.

“Sleeping, but soon to be gone. So if I want to be… me… I have to move quickly.”

‘ Yes .’

“How long? Do I have left? How long until my systems shut down for good?”

Overseer 055 thinks for a moment, pausing at an intersection as it both tries to reroute and parse the question, zipping to the left as it begins to form words, ‘ Three. Cycle. No. More. Gone. ’

Suns swallows down the sharp spike of fear, continuing to follow blindly through the gloom, “Three cycles. That’s all I have. But,” Their eyes drop to where Sig begins to tremble in their arms, moaning slightly as one arm clenches in the fabric of their ragged robe as if he’s begging for their help in the only way he can, “It’ll take longer than that to fix him up I fear; this isn’t a simple limb replacement that takes minutes, or dare I say a one cycle reboot to cleanse systems of erroneous signals; he’s hurt. Badly . Can you estimate how long it’ll take for me to do something about this and for him to wake up I… do not wish to abandon him. Not after he saved me.”

Light slowly begins to bleed through cracks in the ceiling, through distant grates above, the scent of salt water washing down the tunnels like a welcome home. The silence grows between the two as slowly the tunnel widens out, cool winds a gentle kiss upon their metal chassis and the distant crashing of waves against the shore a soothing drone that fills their disquiet mind. Suns allows the overseer to process the question, it must be difficult to think like this, it is just as cut off from everything as they are after all, so they know the truth of it. Ahead they spot the blue body of a singular rusting shipping container, the door very slightly ajar but it has to be a good enough place to rest, their arms are beginning to feel like jelly and it probably wouldn’t be good to drop Sig into a heap on the ground considering his current predicament. They have do a sort of hop and dance to wedge their leg into the gap, pulling and shoving to try to get the protesting disused hinges to comply. Slowly, slowly with an audible grating creak, the door begins to budge, bit by bit until Suns can awkwardly wiggle their way inside, greeted by a puff of dust and a warm amber glow. Ah good, it seems some intelligent creature once made a home in this storage container, there’s etched sketches upon the metal and a pile of pilfered soft dust sheets abandoned in one corner, a good enough place to set Sig down. If they had to guess this may just be a scavenger’s hidey hole, they hope if the occupant returns they don’t mind the sudden intrusion.

Overseer 055 pops up to the side of them, gazing down at where Sig lays almost sadly, as motionless and silent as the grave.

“Oh. Hey there. He’s not looking great.”

‘ Fix. Estimate. Cycle. Five. ’

Suns breathes in the dust, the salt in the air, and breathes out a tiny puff of vapour from all of their vents at once, swirling clouds engulfing their body in a white shroud, “That’s longer than my power will last. That’s… not good.”

‘ Regret. Sorry. ’

“No no, it isn’t your fault. It’s nobody's fault but my own I fear.”

A moment passes, the overseer thinking, searching outwards while Suns just sits by Sig’s side, lost in their own labyrinthine thoughts once more. They’re half the person they were, and even back then, back when they were fully functional, thriving, they were half the person they could have been, if a person at all . The concept of their selfhood feels an endless struggle, one they don’t think they’ll be free of any time soon, but they also think that might be okay, that it might be okay to not know who they’re meant to be, who they could be. They’re free now, the cage was left open and the bird has flown free. So what if it's hard? So what if they can’t settle or choose a path to follow? What a wonderful gift they’ve been given; the ability to grow and to learn. They’ll struggle, as would most of their kin in their position, maybe Sig does too in his own ways, even if it seems like he knows what he wants, even if it seems like he strives single-mindedly towards a distant goal, he’s probably just very good at lying. At least, Suns thinks as they gently stroke his face as he begins to mumble incoherently, that’s how they see it. Oh who are they kidding of course he’s struggling he’s just that deep in his sad pit of denial that he chose the ‘ have an explosive meltdown ’ option at the worst time possible. Suns can’t blame him really. Or well, they can but doing so isn’t going to help matters, only exacerbate things further.

Three cycles until they lose all remaining power in their structure, three cycles until all hope of recovering their mental faculties and memories and sense of purpose goes out like a light.

Five cycles to fix him, five cycles to see if he’ll wake or if he’ll leave them stranded, and island to all others, adrift, alone.

A pained moan snaps their attention away from their circular thoughts, down towards where Sig twitches in the muck on the ground, his one good eye blinking, rolling around in drizzling circles as sluggish gunk spills from the rupture in his head. A momentary panic seizes Suns as they dumbly watch him attempt to feel around, muttering incoherent nonsense to himself as he searches for something, fingers grasping at nothing, his murmurs and mumbles becoming more erratic, more terrified with each passing second. Their own dull panic morphs into abstract terror when he desperately attempts to force himself upwards, falling as he fails, hitting the pile of dust sheets with a muffled clunk, sobbing in pain as a fresh spurt of coolant sprays from his broken eye, the whole structure now sunken into his head from that last blow. They curse themself for merely watching, forgetting their own dilemma to push their problems to the side and grab onto his sodden robe, stopping his lagging movements even as he feebly pushes at them, more ramblings spewing from his speakers. Half dead and still fighting; they haven’t a clue how he finds the strength to keep pushing forwards, what is he doing this for?

“S…uns? Ish that yoo?”

A gasp, a flicker of something, a lit fire, their fingers fall upon his shoulders as they crumble beside him, almost breaking the dam of tears behind their eyes.

“You idiot . Of course it's me. What were you thinking ?”

Sig grumbles slightly, “Yoo… good?”

Suns lifts their head, scrubs at their face despite the gunk covering them in order to stop themself from crying, “Am I good? Am I good ? Your head is split wide open and you… you’re asking me if I’m good?”

“Loud.”

“You bet I’m loud! What were you thinking running into danger like that, you should have just gotten yourself out of there you stupid… Void Below, what are you even doing this all for?”

Sig mumbles some slurred words, gazing up at them as they all but tower over him, his broken eye leaking profusely with imitation tears, his puppet model not having that ability to cycle out dust and contaminants in his water or coolant. For a moment, they think he’s actually going to answer before he stills, silent, sleeping once more, flopping uselessly to one side with nary another sound. Great . He wakes up and all they do is yell at him. Well done Suns, no wonder nobody ever really cared enough to stick around after they got what they wanted from you.

Again, they find themself at a crossroads, unable to choose.

He needs them but, and it’s a big but, they have themself to think about too.

They could leave Sig here, hope he remains stable while they fix their own problems, because then they’ll be in much better shape to help him, much better shape to deal with whatever waits for them at journey’s end.

But, he could die without constant care. He could simply… cease to be. Where will they be then? It is a selfish thought, one they feel shame at having passed through them.

On the other hand, if they stay, if they fix him up with the crude materials found here, it will take too long, they’ll lose the once chance they have to be whole again, to be okay again.

Doing that, they have to throw away their own wellbeing, but he’ll be safe. He’ll be safe. And he’ll laugh with them again, tell his stupid jokes again, he’ll hold their hand again, lay beside them; he’ll be here, by their side, isn’t that also selfish?

To Suns, the choice is an easy one.

“Why did you do this, why all of this, for what reason?” They mutter fondly into his purple robes, using his scarf to dab away at the coolant trickle, “You idiot.”

‘ Do. It. You. ’

Despite themself, Suns laughs a little at their overseer, as it tries to desperately make them understand. But they know the answer already; the question they asked was rhetorical.

“Yeah, I guess he did, foolish as it was. I asked him to, in my own way, in my desperation. I was in pain,” They remember their systems screaming out, a holy choir of dying synapses and blowing fuses, they had been wrong, death was not the Solution, “He must be hurting now, so very much, I have felt it all myself keenly. I should… see how bad his wound is so I can figure out how I’m supposed to fix it.”

Carefully, they hold Sig’s head with one hand under his chin and tilt his injury towards them, peering into the cavity, motioning for their overseer to shine light into the hole so they can see with their other hand.  His wires are a mess, go figure, and they can see glittering shards of glass sparkling way deep down amongst the silvery complex of his internal processors. Suns isn’t an expert by any means, they’ve only cracked their puppet’s head open once before during a sudden power cut but they’re pretty sure having glass shred at your insides is bad . They are still pretty furious with him actually for freaking out in the most explosive way they can think of, and they’re going to yell at him once this is all said and done when he can actually respond to them because he absolutely deserves it and they need to lay down some ground rules while they remember to do so, that would be a good start.

But first, they have to fix him.

Great . It's just like him to go get severely damaged when they hardly remember their name let alone how to glue his head back together and make sure he’s not damaged himself to the point of no return. Couple that with the fact no iterator was ever allowed to see the ins and outs of how their puppets functioned and the two of them are in for quite the ride.

“You just hold tight, I’ll find a way to make this better.”

‘ Leave. Him? Restore. Self? ’

Suns stands, decides they’re sick of their rags getting in the way and sheds the remains of their foul and filthy robe, stretching their arms above their head as their shoulder joints pop and gears somewhere in their abdomen grind and clunk together.

“He’s going to die if I don’t help, isn’t he?”

‘Affirmative .’

“Well then, we can’t let that happen, can we?”

The overseer shakes itself frantically, pinging from wall to wall, body flickering almost with rage, ‘ Advice. Against. ’

Suns shakes their head, adamantly in denial or in defiance they don’t know nor do they frankly care right now, “Overseer 055; I am your iterator, I am the one who gives you orders even if those orders contradict my own self-preservation, correct?”

‘Affirmative .’

“So if I order you to disregard the preservation of my memories, my entire self, then you must do it, is that right?,” This feels correct, this feels normal, in command, barking orders, acting like they’re everything they need to be, it feels familiar in ways they don’t like, all the same Suns swallows the discomfort and continues, “The fact you have come to me in order to help me do such a thing implies you can access my backup records from any terminal, be it here or within the facility of another iterator, especially if desperate times call for desperate measures. So If you can access my memories then you can probably still access the global database through the same means, and if you can access that you can find manuals, logs; things that can fix him, things we can use to make sure he doesn’t perish.”

‘Affirmative ,’ Overseer 055 droops sadly, its feelers waving in their air, listless; Suns can’t help but feel a bit sorry for it.

“Hey,” Gentle, with care they lift its shining eye to gaze at them, “Thank you for trying so hard to help me, I really do appreciate it, but I’ve made my choice. For once in my life I’d like to follow my own path, even if it proves detrimental in the long run, are you okay with that?”

‘ Affirmative. Forgive .’

Suns laughs, fully now, allowing their new friend to go free, “I don’t know if you mean that you forgive me for being selfish, or if I should forgive you for trying to make me act against my wishes but,” Sig whines, clearly pained, pawing at his open wound that openly weeps across the ground, the heat of their laughter dies out, replaced by a cold despair, a heavy acceptance, by a sombre tone, “Understand; he is all I have left. I want to save him, not because I’ve been told to, not because it benefits someone else, but because I want it. He could have abandoned me, but he didn’t, it’s my turn to repay that favour.”

‘ Why ?’

The words echo through them. They’ve been here before, they’ve said this before, perhaps a thousand thousand times over. It feels more right than anything else ever has.

“I care about him. Quite a lot actually. Perhaps more than I should.”

Overseer 055 blinks, slowly, audibly, ‘ Permitted. To. Care? ’

“No… no I’m not permitted to do so. But those who grant and deny such things are long gone, those who held my leash left me tied up while they moved on to greener pastures. I should spit upon their graves. And I’ll do that,” An over the shoulder nod, a motion towards where Sig has gathered one of the dust sheets around himself as comfort, “By fixing him. Where do we start?”

Overseer 055 thinks for a moment, stretches out beyond this singular storage container, searching, seeing, allowing its data to flow through corroded wires and see through battered signals, but it has an answer. For its iterator. For its owner. For its only reason to continue being alive, for the reason it is alive. Neither it nor any of its fleet were programmed with feelings but if it could, if possible, it would express ‘ gratefulness ’ towards its iterator and the one that came to help them. As it is it can only fulfil its purpose. That has to be enough.

‘ Water. Glue. Hammer. Tweezers .’

“That’s not a lot of things, good good. Any idea where I can find that stuff. I mean I’m aware we’re in my shipping yard, or on the edge of it, and I’m sure something is stashed somewhere, but I can almost guarantee the scavengers have already had their fill of my goods.”

‘ Sector. Nine. Cargo. ’ Those words accompanied by a quick relay of old photos, back from when their citizens were still walking the surface, shows a very complex looking company logo Suns vaguely remembers.

“Ah. They used to make tiny components for our more delicate machinery, go figure that that delivery never got used; I guess letting me decay was a fun game,” Suns is almost bitter about that, but like they said, what was one processor, one waste disposal tank, one pipe? They crumbled regardless.

‘ Not. Far. Guide? ’

Hands on hips, a shake of the head, “Nope. I’m good. Keep your eye on him, come get me if anything changes or I take longer than an hour. I won’t lose him, not now. If I need help, I’ll call… somehow?”

‘Water ?’

“There’s pipes round here 055, I’m sure I can bust one enough to get a leak forming. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine, just…” Sig hasn’t moved or made a sound in a good few moments, the only sign of life in him is his one fluttering good eye and his struggling breaths, they’re making the right choice even if he’d insist they put themself first, this time they get to do what they want, “Please. Look after him for me.”

‘Affirmative .’

With a mock salute Suns wiggles their way out of the narrow gap between the door and the outside world scraping yellow paint from their thighs and hips as they push their way through. The room they’d stumbled into is actually rather large now they’re not rushing; dark twisted roots hang down from above with sparking wires as the metal walls have peeled away to reveal various tarnished mechanisms and rusting pipes. Sector Nine. The passageway they’d previously walked down is labelled as Sector Three, overflow channels. They’re lucky that the narrow tunnels are all signposted at all, for whom they cannot fathom, but right now they are in no position to complain as they creep along the back wall of the abandoned warehouse until they come to a flickering neon light that points towards sectors eight through to twelve. So good so far they just hope it’s easy enough to get back considering they literally forgot the direction ‘ East ’ not that long ago. What else can they do though, let him fester there, let him die, give up and crawl back to the ruins of their can theoretical tail between their legs? No, Suns doesn’t think so. They’ve challenged their preprogrammed nature once before, they’ve dared to think thoughts other iterators would fear to so much as allow to sit in their general processing, they’ve trampled upon their creator’s wishes, they can do this much at the very least.

The sound of waves slowly grows from a gentle kiss upon the shore to a cacophonous roar, the air growing damp and misty steaming in through vents and gaps in the infrastructure to create a wet haze. At the end of this short shaded passage they find a door left ajar once more, paint peeling, underside more rust than metal; evidence of comings and goings, of life still thriving in their dismal shadow. Unlike the door into the secluded storage container this one swings open with ease allowing an icy gust to rush by them a plume of damp fog following closely with a wet kiss upon their bare metal. Suns wipes their eyes free of damp with a grumble blinking rapidly as they gaze out upon the ruins of their old shipping yard that lay before them as a sprawling cityscape of toppled containers, tumbled walls and leaks. Containers in various colours lay upturned through the veils of fog muddying the neat presentable organisation that they required to not get hopelessly lost as large gouts of floodwater from their reservoir above drool down creating troughs of frigid waters, at least that won’t be a rare resource to come by. The walls dividing the sectors have all fallen down like dominos all laying atop each other in a mangled mess, nothing but rubble now. Wonderful , they think bitterly, just when they had a sense of direction someone had to go throw debris in their intake pipes so they choke. To make matters worse, much worse actually, the way down is not an easy one, not by a long shot, consisting of a mishmash of bent ladders and piles of salvage, and to make it even worse that that they can see the curious peeping eyes of creatures watching them from the shadows.

Suns takes a deep breath in, feels the salt gather in their pipes and vents, in their mechanical lungs, and if they had a mouth they’d slap a grin on it as they turn their head up to the chuning white skies above. Nothing ventured. Nothing gained. They slip from the first rung on the ladder landing in a heap of limbs and debris sending a scatter of dirt and rocks tumbling down the hill of garbage. Undeterred they wipe the dirt from their aching rear and continue onwards, picking through the mist with a squint hoping to make sense of this metal maze. This should be sector eight, all they need to do is head west for a short while to find sector nine, easy. Laughable. They stumble over a boulder of metal, a piece of an old extractor fan from the looks of it, and walk right into a pole with a resounding metallic clang. They give the damn thing an offended kick only resulting in hurting their toes like a damn idiot. At this rate they’ll have found nothing by the time 055 comes to drag them back, how did Sig make this all look so easy? 

“ Nine . Void have I forgotten how to count as well as how to tell my left from right?”

They can clearly see the sign post for ten, and eight off to their otherside, so nine should be right in front of them correct? Logic should dictate such however what Suns finds is the complete opposite; a wall of shattered metal, all a-twist, drooping and sad, much like their own state as of late. Several pipes ooze very old slag buildup in big globs that fall and splatter upon the dismal concrete ground, seeping into cracks and dripping into drains; urgh that is going to clog something, better not cause problems in their dam, the last thing they need is for that to burst and flood the lowlands. No, focus, stay on task. Beyond where the infrastructure has fallen they can just about spy several shipping containers almost crushed by the burden, each one emblazoned with the company logo that corresponds to the bounty they’ve been searching, and considering what 055 said that has to be their destination, no doubt about it. A test kick at the large pile of their refuse has the whole thing wiggling, hmm, that’s… not great, that’s going to come right down if they disturb it further. What to do? They could crawl underneath, through the grit and gravel, and attempt to yank the doors loose, grab what they can and hope the whole structure doesn’t fall and kill them. Not the brightest idea, they’re at least aware enough to know that, after all, what use would they be to Sig if they died? Think. Think . Hammer. They could use anything blunt and heavy, easy enough to come by as any old rock would do to replace that. Tweezers. Their fingers are slender and tipped with claws sharp enough to rend flesh from bone, to slice through wires and cables, if they’re careful they can use their own hands for that purpose. Water they have already at their disposal. So that only leaves…

“Glue. Damnit. Where am I going to find that?”

Looks like crawling is their only option, urgh, their overseer would be really helpful here.

A small noise draws their attention, 055 sits by their side as if they yelled for it blinking up at them with its arms waving side to side lazily.

“An hour already? Wait. Nothing’s happened to him, right? I need to get back right now!”

055 stops them by wrapping its feelers around their wrist, shaking back and forth, ‘ No. Heard. Call. Need? ’

“Call? I didn’t… ah I see. You should have stayed though, just in case, I was just thinking really, sorry I disturbed you.”

‘ Problem? ’

A wave of the hand, “Your information was outdated by quite a while, my collapse seems to have had adverse effects upon my surrounding regions, a shame, I don’t quite know how I’m getting in there without causing the whole thing to collapse, it seems very unstable.”

‘ Light. Path. ’

“...You could but… I’m uncertain actually going in is wise, at the risk of sounding like a coward; I’m not dying crushed under my own discarded bones.”

055 zips ahead of them, sitting within the small space they could probably push their way through, ‘ Give. Up? No. Come. ’

“Hey! I just said that I am not being a coward! I just,” Fearfully they gaze at the swaying shattered walls and dangling wires and tangled metal and crumbled concrete, “I don’t want to… get hurt again. I can’t help him then. Sorry. We’ll have to find something else.”

A thunk at their feet draws their eyes down, sitting there is a singular round can of what is labelled as ‘ Super Strong Industrial Grade Adhesive: Safe For Use Within Divine Engineering, No Scam, Long Lasting, Guaranteed ’, well then. 055 blips to and fro, digging its feelers into the dirt with intense concentration, almost hitting them with a large stone that it deems suitable for use.

“What are you doing?”

‘ Purpose. Help. Helping .’

“You don’t need to do all this for me, you know,” Suns quips fondly, scooping up their pilfered prizes, “But thank you, all the same. Perhaps I was frightened, of getting hurt, of causing more problems while trying to help someone, perhaps I am a coward.”

‘ Tweezers. Location. Lost. ’

Suns looks upon their sharp claws once more, “I think we’ll be okay friend, come on, let’s go back.”

‘ Know. Way? ’

Ah, well, it looks like Overseer 055 has won this battle, “...No.”

‘ Knew. Follow. Guide. ’

Nothing has changed in the time they’d been away; Sig still lays crumpled in a pathetic heap, still staring at nothing, still huffing away filling their safe space with tiny clouds of vapour. Suns carefully places their big rock and glue on the ground by his side, the clang of their feet across the corrugated metal not even drawing his attention. It seems nothing will, even as they lean over him, even as they reverently cup his cheeks in shaking hands, even as they press their face to his, lining up their head symbols as they breathe in every aspect of him while they can, just in case. Something lives inside of them, nameless but beating against their insides as if it wants to be let out, clawing a hole inside of them, starving and desperate. Sig would have a name for it, for the tightness in their chest, the dullness of their thoughts, he’d be able to answer their questions and laugh at them too, but with kindness in his gaze, with softness and tenderness and-

“Oh… fuck .”

‘Language .’

“Our profanity filters broke down long ago, 055, I think I’m allowed to swear once or twice,” Suns pulls away, rubs at their face just in case they started crying without realising before they slap at their cheeks, just like they’d done earlier in the day, “Right. Time to get to work. Where do I even start?”

‘Rebar .’

Right. He’d been hit by a sharp piece of broken rebar that had pierced right through the weak spot that the lizard had made, splitting him open for all the world to see. Getting that out of the way would probably be a logical first step. Good. A place to start. A thing to do. They carefully inspect the offending metal that had speared Sig right through the side of his head with contempt, sighing when they find that it luckily hasn’t damaged anything that looks vital, the sharp metal having pierced through his metal casing, tearing the panel away from the cold flesh beneath, revealing the wires and clicking gears that make up his cognitive processors. A wiggle, a tug, the rebar slides out with little fuss, he’s really very lucky it didn’t get stuck. Good. Hopefully the rest of this is as easy. There’s a lot of gunk in the cavity, foul and dark, a telltale sign that he’s either got a blockage somewhere or that his eye injury has been festering for some time, maybe both who could possibly say at this point. Regardless it needs to be washed out before they continue, maybe they should drag him out and smash a pipe open like they thought, constant running water would prevent more slag from oozing out if there's more in in his pipes but considering how he trembles under their fingertips, unable to voice pain, moving him now is a no go. 055 had found a bowl on their way back, a lucky happening when they’d taken a wrong turn and stumbled upon a tiny hidey hole filled with nicknacks. It’s scavenger made by the looks of it because who else would be using discarded centipede shells as a rudimentary bowl? Suns guesses they’ll have to work with what they have right now and quickly leaves to fill it, returning with it almost overflowing. 

The slag blockage explains a lot though; it could be the cause of Sig’s sudden lapses in good judgement or aggressive bouts of near blind psychosis if it’s blocking water to his processors. Back on the bridge, when he’d clung to them a man drowning in his own conflictions, they had been afraid, both of him and for him, because the way he acted, the way he had wailed and thrown himself at them… it just wasn’t right. Frightened fingers dance across his cracked face as if trying to remember the shapes of it, as if trying to sear the image of him into them before even this fades away. They’re on borrowed time as it is.

‘ Confirm. Well? ’

“I’ll be okay, I think. What next?”

‘ Wash. Wound. Water. ’

A nod, their worried hands carefully lift the bowl sloshing some of the water they’d gathered over the edge and on to Sig’s face rather into the hole in his head. It’s slow going, tilting him towards them, pouring the water in, using their fingers to scrub out the slag and pull out blobs of buildup, wincing at the terrible stench of decay. They tip him to the side, use a dust sheet to clean some of the mess. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. The day melts into twilight, into night by the time they’re finished flushing the mess out, a sigh passing through them as the last dribble of gunk decorates their fingers and fresh water begins to fill his head cavity

“How did he get this bad?” They mumble, eyes almost drooping, “How long has his eye been in this state for?”

‘ Estimation. One-Hundred. Excess .’

“... Hara you stupid selfish idiot, why didn’t you tell me about this? We could have done something sooner.”

‘ Worry. You. ’

“Well he’s done a poor job of that, I’m worried now!,” There’s no use getting angry with him, not in this state, not while he can’t reply so Suns takes another unstable shaky breath, once more speaking gently, “Sorry sorry. Next?”

‘ Remove. Eye. Glass. ’

Their fingers twitch. This is what they were steeling themself for; rooting around inside of his head while he’s sleeping doesn’t sound like a good experience for him, or for them for that matter, but if the glass and old broken eye has to come out, it has to come out no questions asked. They reach in, unsure, heaving out struggling puffs of vapour and extract the first tiny shard of glass, the piece glittering red and amber under the warm lights. The next shard joins it on the floor, and the next. The lens that protects an iterator’s eye is luckily not very big or else he’d be in much more trouble than he already is but the glass wasn’t what Suns was scared about. It’s his eye. The whole thing has sunk in deep into his head cavity, turned upside down with its wires corroded and snapped messily. The thing isn’t attached to him any more, that much is a blessing, but they’re going to need to really get down deep in there but they have to do it or else nothing will change. There’s a non-zero chance of them bumping into his processors or breaking something while in there, they could make things worse by miles. But he’d tried for them, it is the least they can do.

Suns reaches down into the dark, carefully, slowly, steadying their terrified fingers as they claw out for the eye, snagging it by a wire and manoeuvring it with small wiggles until it’s there right in the palm of their hand, a macabre prize. They release the breath they didn’t realise they were holding.

“Got it! Void Below that was worse than falling off that bridge. Do I seal him up now, I can begin to hammer him closed and glue him up so his microbes can get to work; they did wonders on his back and chest when that lizard got to him but they hadn’t quite got the memo to get to his head yet.”

‘ Continuous. Injury. ’

“Makes sense, if his eye was rattling around it just kept getting damaged and so they couldn’t keep up with him. Let me get my rock then, we can stop that from happening again.”

‘ Negative. ’

Suns blinks at 055 confused, “Shouldn’t we finish this up so he can get healing? Or are we letting the wound breathe a bit, that would make sense just in case I need to wash him out again but I’m certain the slag is gone now.”

‘ New. Eye .’

Suns almost rolls their eyes at the suggestion, “Now where would I get one of those from! This one is completely useless, it’s been sitting in slag and oil for too long, see, it’s even cracked!”

055 stills, stares at them. Really really stares at them, and Suns suddenly knows.

“No. That’s an order, overseer, I refuse.”

‘ Get. Hurt. Again. Purpose. Helping .’

Suns fingers clench and unclench in their naked lap as they gulp down laboured breaths, cold and panicked, “But what happens to you ? To the pieces of my qualia you hold, to… to you as you are? You’ll vanish, you'll die, the last part of me. I know… I know I’m being selfish but…”

In his sleep, Sig winces, whines, tries to turn on his side and Suns knows. They know he needs this more than they ever will.

“Are you sure?” Their small voice asks, as if hoping for a different answer, “Can I at least have the memories you hold?”

‘ Not. Work. Forgive? ’

A laugh, sharp and cutting, but accepting of their fate, feeble and broken, “Yeah. I do. I do forgive you. You just want to help, I can’t… I can’t hate that, I can’t be angry at that,” They allow themself to calm, fingers flexing once again, “Walk me through it 055, so I know what to do when… when you’re gone.”

055 blips right in front of them, sitting at their knees so that Suns can gingerly pet its head before it slowly, deliberately, begins to sign.

‘ Crush. Take. Eye. Put. Socket. Glue. Wires. Hammer. Closed. Glue. Done .’

Suns nods somberly in understanding, hands forming a cage around 055 like they’d done when they had first crossed paths, it all feels oh so very long ago.

“Thank you my friend, for everything. You’ve done your job well, I could ask for no better of you.”

‘ Never. Thanked. Happy. ’

With one single quick motion Suns’ hands close around the hologram body of their overseer snapping it with a horrible crunch, catching its shimmering eye in their hand before it drops to the ground below and shatters. They let out one long trembling sigh before surging into action pushing the eye into Sig’s hollow socket with one hand and dipping two fingers from their other into the glue. They line up the wires both from the eye and inside of his head shakily but somehow, through some miracle, they’re able to smear the glue and connect the two sets quickly moving to wash their hands free of the sticky gunk which honestly is probably counterproductive since they’ve got to glue his head closed later but they have to do something to quiet their mind while they let the substance dry. Their thoughts thunder through them a mile a minute, so fast they feel sick deep down inside as they pick up their rock and carefully begin to reshape the rounded dome of Sig’s head bit by bit. It’s slow, it’s hard, but eventually they’re slapping as much glue as they can on him, getting it in the slight gap where the panels don’t quite meet, wiping it from his face where it trickles down and then…

They’re done.

Sat back on their heels.

Washing their hands free of glue again.

The cycle had turned while they’d worked at least once, the stupid glue took far too long to dry but it had felt like a blur of static and silence.

They could run off, try to find a way to get to their failing body before the last of their power dies, try to connect to a terminal of some sort and suck out as many memories as they can cram into this tiny body.

But it’s too late. There’s not enough time.

So Suns collapses besides Sig’s prone form, curling up beside him in the damp dust sheets, burying their head into his shoulder as they blink heavy eyes and breathe heavy breaths and hold onto him with heavy hands with a heavy heart.

He’s alive. For now . They fixed him the best they could. They did everything they were asked of and more, so much more. In their selfishness, in their want for him and nobody else, nothing else, what had they given up? Was this path the true selfish option or should’ve they abandoned him like everyone else abandoned them?

He’s doing all this for me , they recall suddenly, like a slap.

Because I care for him, more than what I should do, so much that it burns like fire.

“You better wake up,” Suns whispers, low, soothing, sleepily, “Or I swear I’ll follow where you’ve gone and slap sense into your stupid self.”

Their eyes droop, drop shut and Suns, clinging to their lifeline like nothing else matters, drifts into a quiet sleep.

Chapter Text

Light; just a trickle, just a kiss, then an explosion.

Warmth; a silent companion, a pressing weight.

The distant sounds of waves lapping against the shore. A sigh of warm breath against the back of his neck, steady and soft that tickles his empty wire sockets and stings upon the crack in his metal. His limbs feel heavy with rest, leaden, still holding the weight of fatigue despite the long sleep he’s begun to surface from, Sig grumbles at that, he has begun to foster a fondness for this escape from his trials and tribulations. It’s lazy. Comfortable. The hours crawl by one by one. There’s a murmur of a sleepy voice as someone shifts besides him, arms circling his body in a loose embrace as if they worry he might disappear, a ghost under trembling fingertips. The world is so very far away, like tiny pinpricks of starlight upon the inky canvas of the sky above, a gossamer thread wavering in the wind, a knife edge horizon; sharp, harsh, far too real, far too painful. But this? Right here? ‘ This is nice’, he thinks, thoughts coming and going, running through his fingers like a quick rivulet, it is still nice though, Sig’ll stand by that. Or lay by it. There’s safety in this, this in between twilight moment, where nothing hurts, where none of his mistakes choke him cruelly, where everything drags its way past him. Time, the world, those countless things that creep in the shadow; in his fortress of drifting not quite sleep nothing can possibly hurt him.

But that warm breath against his neck is an irritating tickle now, a distraction, an anchor being pulled up, the ship of his dreams merrily bobbing along towards wakefulness against his will.

Sig huffs, swings out a blind arm to push away whoever is breathing down his neck and is rewarded with a displeased grumble and a weight pressing down upon him, arms drawing him against a bare metal body unconsciously like a child might a stuffed toy.

Forcing his eyes open is an insultingly difficult task and if Sig has to hazard a guess it must take around an hour of wiggling around, prodding and probing, and coaxing for his mind to leave behind the slow sluggish drag of sleep and when he finally manages to crack his eyes open he is welcomed back to the land of the living by a breath of amber light and rusted walls, peeling paint revealing the tarnished metal of what he assumes is a shipping container. There’s a couple strings of pearls sparkling above his head that chime sweetly in a slight cool breeze, various trinkets organised into mismatched piles sit haphazardly in the darkened corners; this is a scavenger’s den but considering he’s not been disturbed until now the original occupant has either been frightened away or simply has not returned. At least he can think clearly enough to figure out where he is, or at least guess, the how, the why; that’s where he’s stumped. Although Sig can guess at that too. The likely answer is Suns carried him to safety after-

They’d been hanging from the bridge, sensors fried by the shock from that centipede, and he’s pulling them back once more from the maw of the abyss, dragging them across the remains of the falling bridge like its his own funeral march, razor sharp shrapnel pelting him from every damn angle, and then he’d collapsed as soon as he felt it was safe enough, as soon as they were safe and alive and breathing and Void Below the both of them had laid in the aftermath of his stupidity, broken and bruised. His body still aches from the assault. But his own discomfort is a farway concern.

Suns had been hurt .

He had hurt them.

They had been hurt because of him .

Right now though Suns doesn’t seem to care much about all that, their naked body draped over him like a blanket, arms caging him, head buried in the crook of his neck as their legs tangle with his own. He’d turn to take the image of them in, to drink in the sight of them deep asleep and trouble free but the urge is snuffed out in favour of not disturbing this well earned respite; they’ve been through enough. Because of him. His fingers clench in the rough fabric below his body, his mind wandering down narrow passages as he tries to think about anything else than his current predicament. Sig’s pretty sure he’s had a dream just like this once before; two lovers on an unmade bed, perfectly mundane, a stolen moment of a trivial nature but so very precious, golden and peaceful in a way he’s never known before. It’s a life he nor any other iterator was ever meant to have, all of these tiny things that seem so small are behemoths, integral moments that make up the vastness of all that life has to offer.

Isn’t that wonderful despite the mistakes he’s made to end up here?

“Your thoughts are very loud. I can hear all your gears going click click click.”

Mumbled, raw, like their systems are only just rebooting, it barely sounds like them, like the Suns he’s used too; all imposing and certain of themself, a slight tinge of reproach in their tone that walks hand in hand with a sliver of fondness. They sound worn out, drained, like they’ve been dragging the weight of the world behind them, like all this, everything, is just too much to comprehend, too much to bear. Perhaps it is. Perhaps everything is just too big , booming and loud, perhaps since the second he’d pulled them from their rapidly failing corpse they’ve been stumbling after him, lost, confused. Questioning everything. Sig blinks as he feels them settle back down behind him, fingers tangled in his purple robes, their warm breath dancing down his neck and back, like tiny kisses, like bombs of affection. It hasn’t been easy for him doing all this, he has to admit that quietly in this moment, but that only means it must be so much more difficult for them, and all he’s done is mess things up like he always does. When does it end? When does he stop ruining the lives of others? Of Suns? Of his creations? Of his hired help? Of everyone ?

Suns grumbles again, “ Loud . Shhh. Relax. We’re safe here.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just… thinking about stuff. And things. And the general state we’re in.”

It’s clear Suns can’t reclaim the vestiges of their hazy sleep as they sigh against him, shifting and stretching, allowing Sig his freedom to turn over and stare at them through the amber tinted gloom. They’ve shed their tattered robe entirely now, naked metal chassis bare to the world, their yellow paint peeling in places, blistered and cracked, rust creeping in around their old joints that crack and creak. Their loose wires spill down their back in a repeating pattern of red-blue-red, the ends still sparking every now and again, and Sig can feel the age radiating from them, impossibly ancient, older than he is by miles and he still remembers the days when the sky was still clear and blue, devoid of haze of iterator breath. But Suns? If they were whole, if they were complete, unbroken he’s sure they’d remember the very seed of their creation, remember a world where iterators numbered in the tens rather than the thousands of them that lay in sad heaps, decaying and depressing and dead dead dead. They stare at him, black blank eyes boring holes right through his metal skull, and Sig merely stares back, not really seeing them, not really taking anything in, just… nothing.

It’s funny, he’s never really thought about their age before, they’ve always just been the mentor. The early first generation that somehow, against all odds, had continued chugging along. Sig blinks. He… actually knows so very little about them despite their long friendship. It’s strange. Awkward even. He blinks again.

“Is your eye causing you trouble? I admit it was a bit of a botched job to fix it.”

“My… eye?”

Suns rolls their own at him, lightly tapping him on the side of the head, “And the big crack you had right here, and the glass stabbing you in your central processors, and the piece of rebar you had sticking out of you, and I could continue but I think you get the picture.”

Sig blinks over and over and over, slowly, testing, trying. One side of his vision is clear, perfectly clear, the side that had been a victim to creeping darkness and dancing shadows, the side he’d cracked. It’s fixed. Perfectly fixed. In fact he doesn’t think his vision was ever this good even when both of his regular eyes were working in their optimal state, but this just brings up more questions. First of all how in the name of whatever powers that be did Suns actually manage to fix him, and secondly why did they think it was a good idea to go pawing through his open head in an area that is less than sterile? Not that he’s not grateful, because he is! Very much so. Just… surely there was easier ways to do this, surely there was somewhere more suitable or-

“Does it hurt?” They ask, all gentle and soft.

“How did you even manage to do this in this…” Once again Sig drinks in the sight of the rusting walls, the orange glow from the lanterns, “Where are we exactly? I mean, it looks like scav hole but? Huh?”

“We’re on the outskirts of my reservoir, well, the outskirts of the underworks of my primary reservoir. It’s probably good we didn’t go up after all, it’s half collapsed out there so unless you want to deal with flooding and a potential influx of scavengers we’d probably best swing around to the south and attempt the sad remains of my farm arrays. Probably should have gone that way first, sorry I’ve only thought of it now, things keep escaping me. Am I talking too much? I’m talking too much. I’ll… shut up now.”

Sig can only dumbly look at them, “That doesn’t explain… uh. Never mind. There’s so much crazy happening right now that I just don’t know how to process it all.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Blunt, straightforward, for a moment it's like nothing ever changed, “Your outburst still confuses me and I’m still angry about it but I wasn’t going to leave you there after you dragged me away from death more than once. Especially considering I could fix you with the help of my overseer!”

“Wait wait, slow down,” Sig takes a breath here, pulling himself up, allowing the dizzy sway of the world to swim around him for just a moment, barely noticing that Suns holds him upright so he doesn’t fall, a tense moment sits between the both of them until he talks again, “Your overseer; where is it now? You could potentially use it to, I don’t know, reboot your backups or access any part of you that still has power. Suns we could really use that to help you!”

Sad, they look so sad as soon as those words are spoken, antennae drooping, eyes drawn to a damp patch in the corner of their shelter, fingers finding a perch in the old dust sheets they’d been lain atop, twisting in the rough fabric like how they used to pull at their sleeves.

“I… you…” The sound of distant waves, a howl of distant wind, Suns’ words are small, barely there but drop like weights, “Your eye was beyond salvage, you would have been blind and open to infection or worse. I surmised your erratic behaviour, these confessions of affection that do not fit your usual patterns, were caused by a break somewhere in your head. I hoped by fixing you that it would end. Has it? Ended? These illogical feelings?”

There’s something twisting in his chest, Sig chooses to push forwards, “That’s not what I asked Suns.”

“...I see. Well. It is too late for me now. I know not if my backups can be accessed, probably not, not now, I believe that overseer had been the last functioning one I had, the rest perished when I did. But, I could not allow you to live life half blind and broken, one of us has to be whole and I chose you.”

“You’re avoiding the answer.”

“As did you, if you recall. But you are right, I am. It is,” They search for the correct words for a moment, neither looking at him or acknowledging how he scoots a little bit closer, hand hovering out as if he wants to offer comfort, but before long they stumble upon what they want to say, “It is hard, to choose someone else over my own self preservation but you were laid there, dying, hurting. And it hurt me to see that, to know I could do something but choose not to. So I chose to. I… I had only a few cycles of power left in my remains and now? None at all.”

“None at all?”

A shake of the head, they finally dare to glance over at him, “I used my overseer’s eye to replace the one you had broken; it was beyond saving and it would have corroded your insides further. My only regret is that I allowed your condition to fester for this long.”

Sig sighs out a great twisting plume of vapour, “Void Below Sunshine.”

“I know. It was selfish of me.”

“ Selfish ?!” Sig can barely believe those words, “What was selfish about giving up yourself to save me?!”

He doesn’t miss how they flinch at his raised voice, doesn’t miss the slight widening of their eyes or how they hold their breath for just a second or two. Another plume of steam as his systems work out the stress of tiptoeing around lest he frighten them away like a skittish creature; this is so so delicate, just one wrong move and he’ll lose them forever. Sig lets that heavy thought settle in him like a stone. He’s lost them once because of his own reckless foolishness; he’d pushed them away out of a misguided need to blame someone, anyone, for what had happened to Moon, and since Pebbles had blocked out the world, hiding away from the damage he’d caused, Sig had no choice to lash out at the only other iterator who could be blamed. But really, he has to admit, perhaps Moon herself played a hand in her demise. Perhaps she should have acted sooner, been firmer with her brother, been more assertive, had more of a drive to live, to flourish. But she hadn’t. She hadn’t and she had died. A nasty part of him whispers that it’s what she wanted, deep down inside, that she had been so tired of dragging herself forward through the eons thanklessly, wondering when it was her time to rest. 

By going to her side is he spitting on that wish? By doing all this is he denying her that quiet grave?

Maybe all this was folly after all.

But Suns still stares at him, more relaxed now yet silent and thoughtful. They and Moon share more than just a place in his heart and misguided affections; they share that self-sacrificing ability to damn themselves for someone else’s benefit, the rust between their fingers, the silence of their broken bodies, even their names are a mirror of the other’s. But there’s one thing they don’t share; Suns needs him right now in this moment. Moon? It’s doubtful she ever needed him at all. He’s slow when he reaches for them, Sig thinks he’s barely earned the right to touch them after his episode where his fingers dug into their wrists bruising their wires but they let him all the same. They allow him to rest both of his heavy hands on their thin shoulders, allow him to grip them, feel how real they are, feel the old metal under his fingertips; they could push him away, could tell him no but he knows they won’t. They’re barely a person, barely making their own choices, and if the choice to save him and sacrifice their own well being is a selfish choice in their eyes but one they made freely, who is he to rob them of that? They need him right now, for that scant shred of stability he offers. They need him, and he needs them too.

Because at the end of the day he never really got the chance to reason with the fact his people never did, he never got to heal from failing all of them, and he’s never really gotten over the abandonment, the unfairness of being left to decay.

Sig knows he needs Suns more than they need him, it’s true, but even if a little, even if they cling to him just a little, then it’s worth shouldering that embarrassment.

“Okay; if you want to call that selfish then it is. You’re selfish.”

Surprise, a small bit of anger, then suddenly gratefulness flickers in their eyes, “Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Save me. You saved me. More than once,” Suns leans forwards, their wires slipping over their shoulders as they do so, the offending tendrils cold against the backs of his hands, “You walked across the world, dragged me out of my wreckage, you’ve pulled me out of danger. Why? What for?”

They sound so small, so lost, it's a hammer to his resolve quite literally and Sig has to fight back the urge to gather them in his arms in some sort of grand show of messy conflicting feelings, instead his own words tumble out quiet and lost in the sigh of those faraway waves, “Honestly? I don’t even know anymore. I thought you needed me, maybe you do, maybe you don’t, maybe I just need to be needed by someone, maybe it was because I felt guilty for leaving you alone in silence for so long. We’re here now though.”

“I did need you, I still do I believe but not in the ways you think I do,” One of their hands finds the edge of his scarf, fingers absently tracing the embroidered patterns, “I didn’t need to be saved, I was okay with just dying, maybe I would get to see her again. I think I’ve just been making myself stay alive until then. But please, even if I don’t need you now, one day I will, one day I will need you more than you can possibly imagine.”

“Suns?”

Thick with emotion, almost like they need to cry but cannot, tiny errors in their speech bleeding through like blips in their code, “I just want things to be okay again, but after what happened I don’t think we can ever be normal again.”

“I know but how do I make it up to you? How do I try?”

Suns sits back, brushes away his hands, the spell breaking, “Well you could try to not almost get yourself killed by a lizard or falling debris again, how about we start there?”

“I can try, no promises though~ Hey don’t give me that look! If Wind couldn’t stop me from jumping off very high ledges which could spell my doom if I slipped then I can’t promise not to be stupid and offend the local lizard population.”

“Okay okay, how about,” A blue wire tangles around their fingers, “How about you help me do something with these and we’ll call it even?”

Inner turmoil momentarily pushed away Sig finds himself huffing out a small laugh, “I can give it a go but I warn you it’ll probably end up as messy as everything else I do!”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way~”

The braid is a shoddy mess held together with several cable ties he’d managed to scrounge together by the end of his attempt, but Suns seems satisfied, running their fingers down the wires every chance they can, whipping their head side to side to feel the weight of it whack against the back of their thighs. Sadly for Sig’s mental stability he’s not convinced them to return their robe to where it belongs and instead has had to fight with them over fashioning something out of its remains and one of the dust sheets that had held his unconscious body. It isn’t perfect, not by a long mile, but it keeps them warmer than they would otherwise be, especially as they lead him out into rolling waves of freezing mist and icy drizzle; the last hurrah, the last love song from their old bones. If it bothers them they do not show it easily picking their way down a slop of gravel and debris, pointing out the collapsed infrastructure that their overseer had led them to. The lizard, the collapsing bridge, it feels lifetimes ago even if it’s only a few days at the very least.

His hand lifts to wipe at his cheek, expecting the persistent drool of coolant tears but he finds nothing but dried glue and a small ache where the eye doesn’t quite fit him right. It had taken two cycles to convince Suns that they needed to move before the local scavengers decided to come back to their stash, in the end they’d grumbled that he’s probably right that they shouldn't pick a fight they can’t win.

Ahead Suns stands in dirt and grime, feet kicking a few small rocks about absently while they wait for him to catch up. In the end they’d both decided that looping round and back to the train station he’d walked through nightmares in to retrace his long since faded footsteps back towards his can would be the most logical course of action. It’s smart, he has to admit, but his mind had been a haze of panic and worry as he walked across the continent and now he doesn’t have Wind to light his path, he has to rely upon his own intelligence and intuition while baby sitting someone who is kin to shards of glass hastily assembled into a memory of what was unbroken. It’ll be okay. It has to be okay. It can’t be anything but okay. Sig has to remind himself, good and hard, blunt and honest, that he snipped his wires to save Moon, and while he’s fairly certain she’s beyond his help now there’s a flicker of hope that even if she’s naught but a corpse he can see her once again. But that’s where the confusion, the desperation, rears its head once again, an ugly lizard scouting out its prey. Because Suns is there, turning towards him, radiant under the milky morning light, blinding and brilliant and a paragon of everything an iterator should be even if they’re scuffed and scraped. And Moon never looked at him twice . She is still his friend though, still his lovely friend, and him? He’s a mess . No way of wiggling out of it. He’s covered in dirt, in guts and grime with holes in his clothes where the lizard had clenched its jaws upon him, little tears and rips decorating him like scars. He’s a walking embarrassment.

And Suns? Well, somehow they make rags look good despite it all.

“Are we just going to stand around?” They call out waving, beckoning, “Or are you suddenly disinterested in your mission, oh valiant prince?”

He shouts back, heedless of the eyes that peer from the shadows and the attention that comes with too much noise, “Maybe I have Sunshine, what’ll you do then?”

“You are a stubborn beast that refuses to leave even a scrap of its meal behind; you will not change course now your sails have caught wind. It would be unlike you to do anything but force your way forwards.”

A small chuckle emerges from his speakers as he scrambles down towards where they wait, his eyes aimed down at the muck under his feet so he isn’t burned by their blinding light. It takes one little pebble to trip him up and send him careening to the ground in a heap of purple and green.

But that’s not the only thing he stumbles over.

There’s a sudden realisation, an epiphany, a prayer answered.

That’s it. That’s the problem, isn’t it?

He’s been crafting an idol of them, just like everyone else always has, just like Pebbles, their People, their so-called friends have. He’s heaped on the abuse while smiling. He’s put them up on a pedestal so high that the ground below is nothing but a sick sway of colour and noise, so high up that the air burns and the head is dizzy; how could he not expect them to tumble from that perch? Void . Void Below he’s been doing it for as long as he’s known them, he’s been doing it to Moon too! Neither of them could stay there, at the top of the world, wondering how far the fall would be, wondering when this game would end, when it would be their turn to cry out in pain, in suffering. And he’d added to that burden, all along, he’d been adding to that already crushing weight by being a big dumb stupid idiot moron! His fingers claw at the dirt. A gathering of itty bitty stones slip and slide under his palms. Across the concrete and gravel he can hear Suns draw closer, incredulous laughter dropping from them in glittering pearls and with great effort, such great effort, Sig lifts his head and meets their dark eyes. It’s a challenge towards his own self-imposed taboos, a middle finger at his own complex veils of perception.

And for the first time he doesn’t look through them. He doesn’t see an ideal version of them. He just sees Suns. Stood there. Looking back at him. 

“Hi, hello, didn’t expect me to fall for you that easily, hmm?” The joke is awkward but it fills the silence between them.

For a moment Suns is simply quiet, still, but then they move, a blur as they join him in the shadows and dirt, every single one of their flaws standing out stark and simple. Their paint does not hide the dent by their left eye, the memory of a fist flung in furious frenzy. Their cobbled together clothing does not hide the way the metal plates of their chest don’t quite meet near their neck, a small gap rusting and red. They’ve an old tiredness in their eyes, one they’ve been been holding onto as if it's all they have. Their right antennae is chipped, some of their wires are corroded to the point they hold their twisted shape without help. And Sig counts all these blemishes, all these scratches and patches of rust, and somehow they are all the more real for it. They’re not perfect, they’re just as bumped and broken as he is. Isn’t that lovely?

“Did you hurt yourself? I really don’t have a desire to glue you back together considering I almost stuck my fingers to your head on several separate occasions. Then where would we be?” They sound soft as they hold out a hand to help him, tone still light, teasing with something more twisted and raw stuffed down under it all.

Sig blinks at them, dumbly, even as he lets them pull him up to his feet, he continues to just see them. As they are. And he finally mutters out the thoughts that have been stuck in his head for the last turns of the cycle.

“I know barely anything about you.”

“That’s a good thing.”

“Suns we’ve known each other for a very very long time, and yet I think I know about two things that interest you and only scraps of your history. You’re almost a stranger to me, isn’t that a bad thing?”

He watches them think, picking and dropping idle thoughts like playthings before they finally sigh out their words, heavy and achingly weary, “I am a stranger to myself too some days. I admit perhaps I should have restored what few memories my main servers still held but what good would that have done me in the long run? Where would I be now if I’d run away and left you there, defenceless and injured?”

“You’d be whole,” Sig insists, gripping their cold fingers in his own as tightly as he dares to, “You’d be you again, the you you’ve always been. Not a shadow of yourself.”

“And you would be dead .”

“But you threw yourself away, disregarded your own self preservation for me, at my expense! Suns why? I don’t understand but I want to. I want to understand it so I can understand you ,” His fingers slip from theirs, a lifeline cast away, “I’d like us to start again, from the beginning, do things right this time.”

There is a tiny huff of laughter, not mocking or even out of humour or mirth, almost disbelieving, Sig can’t help the sharp look he shoots at them.

“Sorry sorry, I can’t help it. Pfft. Do you… do you really think yourself so unworthy of being saved?” Suns’ laughter dies out as a rush of cold wind licks against the pair, but they don’t stumble over their words nor pause for long, closing the distance between them like thread through torn fabric, “You are all I have left. I saved you not because it was the right thing to do, not because I was forced or told to do it, but because it was what I wanted.”

Their arms circle him in a gossamer embrace, their chest thumps with the sound of their coolant pump working, “You’re worth saving too,” He mutters.

“And you did save me. Call it repaying a debt owed.”

“Your life is worth more than mine though.” 

Pitiful. Pathetic.

Their whole body rocks with the laughter that follows those words and Sig can feel their fingers twist in the fabric of his robe on his back, “And I believe the opposite. We are at an impasse.”

“Then why don’t we,” Sig wipes at his face despite his puppet model not having the ability to shed tears as he steps out of the loose hug, it would have been useful to help flush out the gathering slag in his head cavity he thinks with an angry fizzle, but he breathes that out, continues shyly, fingers flexing and wiggling, “Why don’t we toss out everything that’s happened until now; the people we have both been, the years of neglect or abuse we suffered under those who held our reins? We can try again. Fresh start. New life. Not talking about doing a cute team bonding exercise where we ask each other’s favourite colours or-”

“Green.”

“-anything. Suns really ?”

A half-hearted shrug, “I like green.”

Sig shakes his head, almost dumbfounded before he begins to chuckle, “What am I going to do with you?”

“Ask what my favourite critter is?”

“How about this,” He proposes instead, “How about you and I learn to be okay? Together? How about we just take this chance to know each other, properly, without screens or distance?”

“I…” He watches them hesitate, stumbling over each tiny thread of their being, “I am not easy to get along with nor do I have adequate experience with being ‘okay’ . But…”

“But?”

“I care about you. Quite a lot actually. Perhaps more than I should. And I would like to try. I would very much like to try.”

If he could smile Sig thinks he’d be grinning ear to ear like a loon, but regardless of how silly he feels he extends a hand, “Well then. I’m No Significant Harassment, some call me Sig, others call me Nish, you can call me Hara if you’d like, but I’m not picky.”

Suns stands still for a moment, just one incredibly long dragging awful moment.

But then they take his hand in theirs once again, and this time it feels real. Solid. Like a bolt of lightning just struck him down.

“Hello, I am Seven Red Suns. I don’t particularly have any nicknames but you seem like the kind to come up with something~”

“Oh I will!”

“I am certain of it.”

A handshake. A new start. A brand new shining dawn breaking over the horizon. There’s a whole world just waiting out there, a world that will have to wait a little longer sadly, Moon deserves the dignity of a proper farewell, and despite his qualms about it Sig has to admit that Pebbles should be offered the same level of respect for the life he lived. But here? Now? This moment? It is the only thing that matters. Suns is the only thing that has to matter for now. They’ve sacrificed the last vestiges of their salvation for his sake, it’s the final nail in their coffin. They’ve been lagging behind, forgetting things, hiding the moments where their memories don’t quite come calling when they want them to, and Sig has a horrible feeling things will only get worse from here on out.

He’ll cling onto moments like these as long as he can, he’ll keep each shining second sacred and safe in his own memory even if Suns eventually forgets.

So, with a heavy heart, and strong firm shake of hand he forces as much cheer into his voice.

“It is nice to finally meet you after all this time.”

Chapter Text

“Come on, it's not much further… I think?”

Suns thinks Sig is just as lost as they are in all honesty as he clearly decides to not learn from his mistake with the lizard to climb up onto some kind of debris pile to survey the, quite frankly, embarrassing state of their diminutive farms, but then again Suns hasn’t really paid attention ever to this sector, that they can remember at least. They’re fairly certain their population was disgustingly large at some point and they know this sad set of harvesters is pretty much all they had in terms of food production so either their citizens were perfectly happy to starve or someone was getting food from somewhere. Which then begs another question; from where ? Despite their connecting rail network by the time sustenance would have become a pressing matter the network would have been far too degraded for Sig to be sending regular shipments from his massive farm network. Regardless, back to the topic at hand, they’ve both been walking around in circles for what feels like forever. Despite the size the crop has spread heartily into every crack and cranny, growing completely out of control without harvest or culling, heavy fruits hanging from bent vines and swollen vegetables with spiralling roots cracking stone. Sig has remarked upon the state of it multiple times already and he looks like he’s about to do it again.

“I know it’s a mess but I’ll take your word for our supposed progress.”

“Hey,” Hands on hips, he leans forwards almost dangerously, “I’ll have you know that I can just about see the top of the station above the canopy directly over yonder!”

Suns tries to peer through the thick layers of green, much to no avail, “I do not, in fact, see anything.”

“Well maybe you should climb up here and lift me so I can get a better view.”

“I’ve only ever lifted you while you’ve been a dead weight.”

A dramatic gasp, hand on chest, Sig feigns insult, “Are you saying I’m heavy?! Oh how will I ever recover?!”

“Fine fine fine,” Suns rolls their eyes with a sigh before slowly beginning to crawl their way up the rubble, “Don’t wiggle around so I don’t drop you.”

Sig does wiggle around, quite a lot actually, citing that he’s ticklish up his sides and under his arms even when Suns helpfully reminds him that they’re both made of metal and process tactile touch much differently than beings of pure flesh. Sig merely makes several loud fart sounds in quick succession that truly makes them consider tossing him in the nearby pond of stagnant water for several long seconds while he attempts to make use of his vantage point. After a while Suns simply unceremoniously plonks him down on the ground, hissing at the ache in their arms even as Sig squarks indignantly, brushing dirt off himself. But luckily this time it turns out he was right; the station is within reaching distance, just another climb through the thicket hopefully avoiding the creeping crawling things that stick to the shadows with their crooked teeth and lashing tails. Today alone they’ve already had to carefully extract Sig from at least three incidents with various displeased lizards; they're honestly starting to think he’s somehow gravely offended the whole species at a genetic level.

“Did you have to drop me?” He grumbles, motioning for them to follow him, with a childish stomp of his feet.

“My arms were hurting,” They reply curtly, chuckling at his rather unimpressed stare, “Lifting you up above my head is different than lugging you over my shoulder or carrying you on my back, a bit of a strain really.”