Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s one thought in his mind - Helios, Helios, Helios - pounding so hard and so loud that he thinks he might be sick. And she’s in his way, Rue, as if she’s trying to get there first, like she has any right to that at all. He yanks her back, not caring that she falls when he does. His eyes meet Na’Avi’s where she kneels across from him, her hands moving in a way he recognises as her way of casting magic.

But nothing ’s happening.

“I’m sorry, Misha,” she starts, but he shakes his head once. Twice. Again.

“Your Aqueon can bring them back.” He’s vaguely aware he’s still shaking his head, because this can’t be happening. Na’Avi shakes her head back.

“Not from this. I can’t-”

“Try harder!” Misha yells, a cruelty to his voice he hasn’t heard in a long time, “ HEAL them! ”

Her eyes glaze for a second, like water rippling from the disturbance of a thrown rock, but it passes as she withstands the Command, and her gaze turns angry. Fuck, he doesn’t have time for this. He shoves her aside, kneels beside Helios. Interlacing his fingers, he finds Helios’ sternum and presses down hard. Again. Again. There’s a voice calling out, strained and cracking and anguished, and it takes him a moment to realise that it’s him, that he’s begging, pleading with Helios, asking them to come back, stay with me, don’t leave me alone…

And then, the same as every other time he had let his guard down and allowed his mind to drift away to sleep over the last few weeks, he woke up with a jolt, his heart racing as fast as it had then, his breaths just as ragged. The pressure of Na’Avi’s hand was gone from his back, he could no longer feel the lingering warmth of Helios’ motionless body. The glistening of gold disappeared, and he was alone again in the sparse, grey cargo hold of the Wyvern, the Spelljammer he’d begged passage on from an old friend. Far from Listea, far from…

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. No. He repeated that experience enough in his nightmares without spending his waking hours dwelling on it too. Above him, a door hissed open, and he rubbed viciously at his wet eyes with his sleeve before standing to face Boatswain Muhro, an arrogant, up-themselves member of the crew without the ranking to warrant it. Misha clenched his fists at the sight of them. Of course, his least favourite person on board would be the one to see him like this.

“You’ve got a letter.”

Misha’s eyes snapped to meet Muhro’s.

“I don’t want it,” he said.

Muhro shrugged.

“Your loss.” They started peering closely at the letter, and even from a level below them Misha could make out the shape of the name The Promised Morrow on Muhro’s lips. They stepped off the platform, a small burst from their hover boots slowing their descent, until they stood in front of Misha. He remained still as Muhro inspected the letter. Tensed when he saw their thick fingers reach to open the envelope.

“You don’t mind.”

It was a statement, not a question. Misha’s fingers twitched. He didn’t want to know what Anya had to say. Didn’t need to read her empty platitudes and condolences, her worries, her pleas for him to come home to the Morrow. Nothing she said could change anything, so nothing she said was worth his time.

Muhro broke the seal and tugged at the letter.

Before they could unfold it, Misha had punched that infuriating smirk off their face. Muhro staggered backwards, a furious look in their eyes.

Shit.

Misha had seen that look before, on Muhro and on countless others before them. There was a line with everyone, a final straw, and it seemed he’d finally found Muhro’s. He’d been discovering, recently, a lot of people drew their lines at being punched. They swiped at their mouth, streaking blood across their cheek. A humourless grin spread across their face.

“You’re off this ship, Komarov,” Muhro spat.

“Fuck you, Muhro.”

“You’re off my ship the second we next make port.”

Misha wouldn’t meet her eyes. Instead, he stood staring out into the depths of the Astral Sea. Captain Valindra Woodroot had known him since he was a child, back when she’d crewed The Promised Morrow under Temperance Greylocke. She’d always been sort of like a distant cousin, someone he had to hang out with because she was friends with his big sister. He knew exactly what he would see on her face. Pity. Familial disappointment. A look he’d give anything to see again.

Just not on her.

“Misha,” she continued, oh so softly. She’d come closer. “Are you listening?”

He nodded tersely. She clasped a hand on his shoulder.

“Mishka.”

“Don’t.” He jerked away from her like her touch burned. “I heard you. Off your Jammer next port. Got it. Gets me away from Muhro anyway.”

Valindra sighed, circling back to her desk. She leaned forward to consult a chart, a tiny, holographic copy of the navigation console up at the helm. Absentmindedly, she tucked a strand of her deep green hair behind a pointed ear.

“We’ll be berthed in Sigil City this time tomorrow.”

Sigil City. Rakos. Home.

“Anywhere else. Please.” He hated how desperate his voice sounded, at the plea he couldn’t hide. Valindra scoffed.

“You don’t get to punch my boatswain then demand I kick you off somewhere else, love.”

Misha turned to look at her, but only saw the look he’d dreaded he’d see. Averting his gaze, he stared intently at the holo-map, watching the swirls of stars passing by. He swallowed hard.

“Val, I’d live longer if you just threw me into the Astral.” He looked at her again. Made himself look her in the eyes. “I’m a dead man if I take one step into Rakos and you know it.”

Her eyes softened, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t still give Anya a run for her money on the whole disheartened sibling thing.

“I know this must be hard for you, Misha-”

“Oh, fuck off, Val-”

“-but you already had a lot of nerve asking for free passage on my ship after ignoring my letters for years,” she finished, staring him down pointedly. He swallowed hard. A slight nod of his head conceded her point, and she smiled grimly.

He’d be an idiot not to try once more, though.

“I’m not kidding when I say I’ll be a dead man walking. Screw a bounty, Carter’s probably given orders to kill me on sight. Please, Val.”

“Mishka, love.” Tender, but firm. She meant this. “After that stunt you pulled, my hands really are tied. I can’t make allowances for you if you insist on assaulting my crew.”

He clenched his jaw, a muscle twitching under the strain.

Valindra sighed.

“You’re dismissed, Mishka.”

And then she turned away, gazing out the windows to the Astral Sea.

The next time Val clasped a hand to his shoulder, as her crew finished securing the Wyvern, he didn’t pull away. He didn’t exactly lean in to the affectionate touch, but from the squeeze she gave him, he knew it didn’t matter.

“You know this is the best I can do, love.”

Misha gazed out, his face carefully held blank, over the nearly deserted pontoon she had docked to, as far from the hustle and bustle of Sigil Port as she could get.

“I still say I’d have been better off keelhauled in the Astral.”

She squeezed again. Paused for a moment. Pulled him into her arms for a proper embrace. She may have been a head shorter than him, but she was strong. Even if he’d wanted to, he wasn’t escaping this hug.

“Take care of yourself, Mishka.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You know how to reach us. You don’t have to do this alone.

He did. Because the only person he wanted with him through this god-awful experience was Helios. And that wasn’t fucking happening.

Chapter Text

Mishka,

I would say stay where you are, but I know you’re going to bolt. My best guess is home to Rakos, so that’s where I’m going. Please find me when you get there, kid. I know there’s nothing I can say to you now to ease the pain, but know that you don’t have to do this alone. We’re all here for you. Me and Tempe and the crew. She misses you. We both do. And we understand losing a friend.
We’ll be there soon.
Try not to do anything stupid before I find you.
All my love,

Anya

Misha crushed the letter in a fist, a burst of anger flooding him. What the fuck was that phrase meant to mean? There was so much wrong with it. Losing a friend. He often forgot that Anya, with her elven age and wisdom, really didn’t know what went on his head. Losing. Like he’d misplaced them, like all he had to do was go back to where he’d last seen them and there they’d be, waiting. Friend. He often forgot that he hadn’t really confided in Anya for a long time. Not truly.

If he’d lost a friend, he’d be back with the crew of Astralstrider, still on their journey to find Cheetha, and that fucking treasure. If he’d lost a friend, he would have Helios by his side, where they were meant to be.

Losing a friend.

Helios was dead. Gone. Never coming back. Anya’s letter didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what he was feeling.

There was so much he should have said.

To Helios. To Anya.

So much he should have admitted to himself.

Carefully, he smoothed out the letter, refolded it neatly, and tucked it away into his pocket.

He made his way further into Sigil City, away from the port. His limbs felt heavy, and unwieldy. Was his grief so great a burden to bear that he was literally collapsing under its weight? He couldn’t quite muster enough fucks to be surprised or confused about it. He stumbled further on, only half paying attention to what was going on around him. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to feel when he got back, he supposed the crushing, numbing, nothingness wasn’t a shock. Having his feet back on Rakos ground didn’t feel like the comforting familiarity of home, or a grief-stricken loneliness, or a paralysing fear of what Carter might do it she found him here. He just felt hollow, deadened, like he was experiencing the city he’d loved as an outsider, trapped in his own personal air bubble. Locked away. Separate. Hours, seconds, minutes later, Misha looked up. In front of him lay the entrance to the sewers. Puffs of scalding steam burst out in a pattern that was irregular to the casual observer. But Misha? Misha knew the rhythm like the back of his hand. He watched the steam, waiting for the gap in the spurts that would allow him inside. The burst came. And went. And he did not go inside.

Instead, he turned his back on the place he and Helios had once called home.

If you’d asked him, later, what he’d spent the next few days doing, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you. The days were foggy, with drink, with grief, with absolutely no thinking of Helios. He could tell you three things.

1. Rakos had changed. Significantly.

It was just a fact of life on Rakos that things changed quickly. Even when they’d lived there, the instability of the asteroid planet meant that entire businesses, entire streets, entire districts, could become unrecognisable overnight, or outright disappear altogether. But the things that were gone, or new, or wrong, were worlds beyond the normal. It seemed that, in his time away, Dakota and the Navy had only accelerated the city’s decline. He barely recognised the city he’d once called home. It was… orderly. It was quieter. Calmer. The city even smelled wrong, an undercurrent of fear tainting the usual stench of stale booze, piss and general city detritus.

There was something else he realised in those days, though he couldn’t remember how or why he knew it. Rakos, it seemed, wasn’t just politically and economically unstable, but literally, geographically, unstable. The heaviness he’d felt when he first landed, the weight he’d attributed to some physical embodiment of grief? The tiny asteroid he lived on was falling apart at the seams, and the only thing holding it together was Carter and her gravity tech. He was actually heavier here, because she had turned the gravity up to 11, making it stronger than the gravity of any planet - any asteroid - the size of Rakos had any right to be.

In hindsight, that made a whole lot more sense.

2. He was getting coin, which he only knew because he was consistently drunk.

If the nausea and hangovers hadn’t been enough to tell him that, the injuries he was covered in sealed the deal. Black eyes, multicoloured bruises across his ribs and lower back, scrapes to his knuckles, split lip. Wounds he didn’t quite recall getting. Wounds he only got when he was getting into fights. But he was paying for room, food and board. So somehow, he had money.

3. He was being followed.

It took him a few days. It took that long for the reminders to become less frequent. At first, everywhere he turned, there was something that made him think of Helios. The street urchins darting around him. The alley they’d met in. The inn where they’d enacted and failed in their very first con as a team. The street where they’d kissed, once. The dance club where they’d had one of their biggest fights, and hadn’t spoken for days afterwards. The mansion on the outskirts of town, where they’d found themselves blagging their way through leading an entire wine tasting. The arena he’d snuck them into for Helios’ birthday. The balcony he’d been sat on when he first realised he was in love with Helios.

There were still moments, when he passed an old haunt, when he had to stop and breathe, force down the rising wave of nausea. When the only thing he could focus on was how much easier being here would be if he could just forget. Forget Helios, forget their past together in Rakos, forget how much all this hurt.

So he was a little too distracted the first few days, before the haze lessened as being on Rakos became the mundane again, to notice that he was being followed.