Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sarah Steel, for all her failings as a parent, recognized what had happened the moment she saw the child that would become Juno Steel. It had to be said that, even amongst the ever-wary parents of Hyperion city, that not every mother could recognize a changeling at just a short glance.

(Maybe, if someone had looked closer, they would see the franticness in how she handled the situation as a precursor to her overreliance on her human son. Would see the cruel way she burned the changeling as proof she would burn her human son all the same.)

(Maybe, if someone realized that Hyperion was not just the city but the woods and the fae it contained as well, they would understand that cruelty to the changeling was as good as cruelty to the human child.)

But to her friends and neighbors, it was nothing but rational for Sarah Steel to tuck the changeling under her arm and march to the wood’s edge. To hold him out, her hands shaking, and demand they return her son. And, when she received no response, it was nothing but unfortunate when she was forced to press her iron pendant to the child’s skin. After all, it was the changeling’s screams that finally brought a fae to meet her.

(And, if the child that would become Juno Steel would bear the scare for the rest of his life, then Hyperion- not the city, not the woods or the fae or the people, but the soul- would notice and remember.)

“For what purpose are you here?”

Had she not been glaring so furiously, Sarah may have heard the fae before she saw him. As it was, she sawn him as he peeled his way from the bark and lichen of the tree before her, lips only talking form to curl around every monotone word.

Sarah pulled her pendant away from the changeling- the child still screaming, the flesh of his shoulder red and blistering in the shape of a many-petalled flower. She clutched the chain, freshly broken, in her hand, dangling the pendant between herself and the faerie. His eyes, like two notches in the wood, pocked with rot, watched it as it spun, light flashing off it as it swung aimlessly.

“I want you to give me my son back,” she spat, voice raised over the changeling’s wails.

“You are dissatisfied with our trade?” the green man asked, lichen face folding with a frown.

“I don’t want this child- I want my son, the one you took from me!” Sarah shook the pendant again, moving closer. Like a tree in a storm, the faerie gave a shudder, his voice the sound of branches shaking in the wind.

“Very well.”

With a sound like a prey animal shifting through the underbrush, the trees parted around thick branches like hands presenting a small bundle, wrapped tight in green cloth.

The changeling, for all he looked like the human Benzaiten Steel, was far from a perfect replica. Both children had Sarah Steel’s brown skin, her tight coils of black-brown hair just long enough to spill over their scalps. Their faces were identically soft and round, flushed pink from the early spring cold.

But even now, clutched in the branching hands of the fae of Hyperion, Benzaiten Steel was all smiles. All quiet cries and easy nights of sleep. The changeling fussed, squirmed. His cries were loud, insistent, his small hands flailing in ineffective strikes. In all the time he’d been with Sarah Steel, the changeling that would be Juno Steel had not opened his eyes. In part, this was by design- changelings, as a species, were adapted to be mistaken for human babies. The best changelings, the ones that lived to adulthood and returned to the fae, were the ones that could pass as humans for just long enough to cement their place in the human home. And everyone in Hyperion knew that even the most powerful of fae couldn’t shift away their eyes.

(There was also the far more reasonable explanation that it had only been an hour or so that the changeling had been in Sarah Steel’s care, and fae eyes were sensitive. It had not been nearly long enough for the changeling’s eyes to adapt to the brightness.)

Sarah Steel, for all her faults, did not toss the changeling to the ground in her rush to scoop up her own son. This can likely be attributed to the fact that, for all his unnatural temperament, the child that would be Juno Steel was still fundamentally a child. Even a mother as inadequate as Sarah Steel would struggle to throw a child so small.

So the changeling was set gently, if a bit hastily, in the grass, and Benzaiten Steel was returned to his mother’s arms. Both children fussed at the sudden shifts, the changeling still choking quietly on the pain of the iron burn. The hands retreated to the forest.

It was a few seconds of deep breaths and frantic checking-over of her child before Sarah Steel returned her gaze to the faerie and the changeling.

“Aren’t you going to take him back?”

“We do not want him,” the faerie answered, wooden eyes unblinking. “Changelings take only one form, and his form has serves no purpose anymore.” The changeling had gone quiet, seemingly aware of the delicateness of his situation. His eyes, now open, beamed up at Sarah Steel and the bundle in her arms. Despite the identical face they sat in, the disarming gold of them was impossibly inhuman, so unlike the real Benzaiten Steel.

“So you’re just going to leave him here?”

Returning the changeling to the fae had always seemed the obvious solution, for as minimal thought as Sarah Steel had given it. It didn’t matter in the slightest what they did with the child- it was theirs to do with whatever they wished. Whatever happened to the changeling would happen out of her sight, would not be her concern. The fact that the child had already been abandoned, left with her, by those she was returning it to- she couldn’t let that thought cross her mind. Not without feeling unnecessarily cruel.

It was a different kind of cruelty entirely to walk away when she knew what would happen. To walk away while the changeling- the child- stared her down with those uncanny gold eyes. To leave the child here when the faerie had not spared a single glance for it.

When she looked again at the tree, the green man had gone.

Sarah Steel spent several more minutes there, desperately hoping that some sort of bluff may be called. That the faerie would return, would take back this burden she was beginning to realize she would have to saddle.

“You can’t just leave him here to starve!” she shouted to the woods, “Even the fae can’t be so cruel to their children!”

But all of Hyperion, city and woods, humans and fae alike, knew that the fae could not lie.

None of her friends or neighbors could find fault in any of Sarah Steel’s actions.

“Such a shame,” they could offer, or perhaps “You did the right thing.” Or later, when Sarah’s back was turned, “I couldn’t have done it.”

And Hyperion city grew used to the image of Sarah Steel, both arms laden with a child instead of just the one. Of bright, smiling Benzaiten Steel, an enviably easy child, sweet and pleasant. And in her other arm, stormy and frowning Juno Steel, with the tongue that couldn’t tell a lie and gold eyes that hurt to stare into for too long.

(“I’m glad it wasn’t me,” other mothers of Hyperion city whispered. “I don’t know what I’d do if it were me.”)

“Hey! You looked real lonely sitting here by yourself, so I thought I’d come over and see if you’d want to be friends! My name’s-“

“Mick! Don’t be stupid!” The girl snapped, yanking on his arm, pulling him roughly back from the changeling on the bench.

“I’m not going to steal your name,” the child that had grown into Juno Steel shot back, arms crossed tightly over his chest. His curls were kept long, easier to distinguish him from his brother, but otherwise he looked the same as he always had- that is, nearly identical to one Benzaiten Steel.

The girl harrumphed, crossing her arms to match Juno’s. “Still. You should always introduce yourself with ‘you can call me.’”

“Oh, oh right!” Mick answered, no less emphatic as he held out a hand. “You can call me Mick Mercury! Or you can call me ‘the king of the playground’-“
Juno stared awkwardly at Mick’s outstretched hand, the tight coil of his crossed arms loosening slightly.

He turned his gaze to the girl, eyes wide and cautiously expectant. She sighed again, looking over her shoulder nervously.

“You can call me Sasha. I know who you are.”

“Well I don’t!” Mick continued, his outstretched hand shaking slightly as he held it in place. Tentatively, Juno reached out, shaking it slowly.

“You can call me Juno,” he offered. “Why are you king of the playground?”

Mick readily launched into his explanation, hand slipping out of Juno’s to gesture wildly as he spoke. Sasha took the moment to slide on the bench next to Juno, still carefully placing an inch or so between them.

“Where’s the real Steel kid?” she asked, legs swinging over the edge of the bench. Juno scooted over, adding a few more inches between them.

“Ben’s my brother. And he’s home sick.”

“Oh! Are you twins?” Mick broke in, abandoning his explanation with seeming no concern that neither of the other children had been listening. Sasha and Juno blinked at him, stunned, so Mick continued unphased. “Because I think I’ve seen you two around- you look exactly alike!”

“Juno’s a changeling, Mick,” Sasha said slowly. “He’s not human.” Juno squirmed uncomfortably. Mick’s jaw dropped, eyes flicking from Sasha to Juno.

“You’re not messing with me? You’re really a-“ he leaned in, whispering conspiratorially. “A faerie?” Juno scowled.

“It’s not a secret. You’d have to be pretty stupid to not know- everyone else does.” He fidgeted in his seat, tucking a curl of hair behind a sharply pointed ear. Mick continued to gawk. “That’s why I’m sitting here alone- you can go away now.”

“Go away? Why would I go away?” Mick asked, voice spilling over with excitement. “How many other kids have friends who aren’t human?”

“Friends?” Sasha and Juno spluttered in unison, faces slack in concern and surprise respectively. Mick smiled brightly, all the eagerness and slobber of a puppy waiting for a ball to be thrown.

“Well yeah!” He hopped up on the bench between them, pressing wide the space between Juno and Sasha, all three of their knobbly shoulders knocking up together. “So Juno- if you’re a faerie, can you turn our teacher into a frog?”

If Juno thought he could scare Mick Mercury away by explaining fae magic in depth, he was completely disappointed.

“So you can’t turn people into frogs, you can’t turn into a frog, you can’t summon an army of frogs-”

“No frog related powers,” Sasha summarized. Somewhere along the explanation, her focus had shifted from ‘Pretending not to pay attention’ to ‘holding raptly onto every word that left Juno’s mouth.’ Even Mick’s cluelessly interruptions had dissuaded her, eyes wide and pasted to Juno’s face.

“I wouldn’t call any of them powers,” Juno complained, the stiff tone of someone who’d said it one too many times. “More like a curse.”

“But adult fae can control their magic,” Sasha countered. “So you probably could one day too.”

“What can you do?” Mick pressed, schemes still building themselves behind his eyes. “Could you fill the classroom with poison flowers so that class gets canceled?”

Juno put his head in his hands. “No.”

“Mick, poisonous flowers only hurt you if you eat them,” Sasha added. Mick thought about it for a second, chin perched in a thoughtful palm.

“What about poisonous bugs?”

The reactions to the group that would come to be known as the Oldtown trio—or the terrible trio, depending who you asked—were varied greatly. Benzaiten Steel, at the very least, was thrilled.

“Friends, Super Steel! I would have stayed home sick ages ago if I knew you’d make friends!”

“Sounds like you’re happy to get rid of me,” Juno grumbled, face squashed where it pressed into his brother’s lap. Ben swatted at him, pausing in his gentle combing of Juno’s hair to deliver an annoyed flick to his sister’s ear.

“Wanting you to make friends doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere,” Ben promised. “You deserve more than just me.” Juno grumbled, but before he could complain any further, Ben continued with “you need more than just me, then.”

Juno had had a few responses to that- That no, he didn’t need anything more. Or that maybe what he needed more than friends was to stop being some inhuman thing. To not cause their entire family to uproot and move because their home in Halcyon had “too much iron in the walls.” To not need Ben to point people out to him when his eyes glazed over them because they wore their coat inside out.

But he didn’t say any of that. He didn’t even know if he could; half the time he didn’t even know he was lying until the words failed and burned in his mouth.

Juno himself seemed less certain than anyone regarding his newly acquired “friends.” It had started with both Juno and Sasha on edge- wary and uncomfortable around the other, trying to decide if it was the correct kind of situation to be afraid. But sometime between their introduction and the third or fourth time they got chewed out by faculty, Sasha’s wariness became curious camaraderie, and Juno’s discomfort became familiarity. Not that he would ever tell Ben, but it was far easier getting yelled at with Mick and Sasha by his side than it was with Ben. With Ben, he was constantly ready to redirect a punch, to ensure whatever blow came landed on him and not his brother. When it came to the trio, there was nothing to worry about. Sasha would beat the shit out of him if he even tried to take a punch for her- and it wasn’t like either Mick’s or Sasha’s dads would hit them all that hard for getting in trouble. He’d never seen either of them come to school with any bruises he didn’t remember them getting- and he knew it wasn’t because they stayed out of trouble. The one thing Juno was certain he liked about their trio was their ability to get into trouble. That, and the fact that it was much easier to get out of trouble when he wasn’t on his own.

Oldtown Elementary was not as half as big of a fan of the trio as Benten had been. Every teacher found themselves yelling at one or more of them at some point or another. Come fall, whichever grade was soon to accept them would be full of teachers checking their class lists with half-covered eyes.

All three of them wore the label with pride- four, if you counted the way Benten’s eyes gleamed whenever he saw his sister with his friends.

Chapter Text

It was the first revel Juno had been to since he went sober way back in his twenties. And, with the way fae revels could sometimes work, there was always a chance it was the same revel that Rita and Mick had dragged him out of nearly a decade ago. Time didn’t always work right when it came to revels- you could go into one for an hour or so and stumble out thirteen years later, the same age you were when you entered. Only fae themselves could control what time did to them as they entered or exited.
That was why Juno Steel, private eye, was here. Hyperion’s own Anthony DiMaggio had disappeared, supposedly around a half moon revel, and Juno had finally agreed to the case. It wasn’t about the money being particularly good (it was) or the client particularly convincing. (If anything, Julian DiMaggio would be better at dissuading him from taking a case than persuading.)

Taking this case was more about proving that he could. Whether it was about proving it to Rita, or to Mick, or to the sliver of Sarah Steel that still haunted him years later.
So far, it seemed revels were just as annoying as he remembered; doubly so when he was sober. Bodies spun and slammed together, every foot slapping the ground only on the beat of the drum. Juno barely had a sense of rhythm himself, but he was damningly familiar with the way the music—hardly heard but always felt, thrumming through the ground, controlling his heartbeat until it was just as irregular—puppeted its dancers, as addictive as faerie wine. The dancers were all but hovering, flying in their spinning circles, only allowed the stability of the ground beneath them when the music deemed them worthy.

Knowing the DiMaggios the way Juno did, (extensively and mostly against his will) this had always seemed more of Julian’s scene than his husband. Julian was the one who was enamored with the perceived glamor and beauty of the fae, which was as good as a deathwish in Hyperion. But it was Anthony who had vanished, and if it was at a revel that he’d ended up, it was only Juno who could successfully drag him out sometime this century.

It was while he lingered, on the outskirts of the ring of dancers, that Juno ran into a problem
.
Usually, the fact that Juno smelled him before he saw him would be a red flag, but most scents were preferable to the veritable haze of faerie wine that hung in clouds over the clearing. Plus, as Juno turned to find the source of the smell, he found that the faerie in question already had more than enough red flags to go around.
Juno was more than aware of his tendency to run headlong into danger. Worse still, he was more than aware of how that extended into his taste in partners.
So when his eyes landed immediately on a set of teeth, all but human save canines long enough to kill him with a single nip, Juno knew he was fucked.

“You look a bit out of your depth here, darling.”

His ears were taller even than Juno’s, sticking out through hair that could be called black if its carefully smoothed surface didn’t glimmer blue and green like a beetle’s wing. His eyes were hidden behind intricate glasses frames, lenses thick in a way that indicated necessity rather than fashion.

“Just been a while,” Juno answered, shrugging with a step back away from the dancers and towards the new arrival. “You’re a new face.”

“Not a dancer?” Juno responded with a glance behind him, to where the whirling bodies of fae and fool alike still thudded against the ground and one another. He looked back, and immediately he made the mistake of looking into this faerie’s eyes. Whether or not he really needed those glasses—and who had ever heard of a faerie that needed glasses?—they served as a nice barrier between Juno and that many-lensed gaze. From a distance, his eyes were normal- blue, maybe, or gray. But at such close range, the iris and pupil were compound, forming honeycomb patterns in every shade from black to blue, purple to gray.

“Not much of a dancer anymore,” Juno agreed, distractingly trying to refocus instead on cheekbones like ice shards and skin like moonlight.

(Fuck-)

“Anymore? I can’t tempt you into it?” the faerie pressed, moving steadily closer with each word. He rested a hand on his collarbone. “Call me Rex Glass.”

“Juno.”

“Juno!” Glass exclaimed, rolling the name around his tongue as if he could taste its truth. “A lovely name for a lovely lady.”

Juno had graduated from flinching when his true name was used. He’d never bothered much with a false one- Sarah Steel hadn’t done him the favor of giving him a name he could hide. Hardly a single person in Hyperion didn’t know Juno Steel, their resident faerie changeling.

And really, there was only so much someone could do with a first name alone.

“Lovely, sure-” Juno managed, shifting his heels back as much as he could without visibly stepping back. “Listen, Glass, have you seen a human-” The music swelled, the sound of feet slapping the ground, heaving and falling like uneven breaths. Gasping, desperate for air.

“A human?” Glass answered, waving a hand in an attempt to get Juno to elaborate. “I don’t suppose you could give me any more description-”

“Shut up,” Juno interrupted, raising a hand to Glass His chest burned with a lack of air, his lungs desperately getting their fill whenever the music paused to inhale.

“My, Juno-” Glass spluttered, scandalized and flushed like a lady hiding behind her handkerchief. No- not flushed with emotion. Red from a lack of air.

“Seriously,” Juno reiterated, moving close so her could speak with with only the softest of words and shallowest of breaths. “Save your air.”

Save my- Glass mouthed before his eyes widened and his hand stilled over his heart. “Oh.”

The dancers were a flurry of silks and foliage, feet bloody against grass that had gone darker than the night sky above.

“Juno!” Glass hissed, suddenly loud in the way that told Juno he’d been saying it for a while to no avail. His hand was tight around Juno’s wrist. “We need to run.”

“They’re dying,” Juno said, breathing suddenly too shallow, heart too fast. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the blood-slick grass.

“Let’s not join them, then,” Glass argued, beginning to move and dragging Juno with him.

They stumbled through the outskirts of the ring where they’d met, through the other circles and crowds of fae mulling about. Some had obviously figured out that something was wrong, but still others raised glasses of honeyed mead, unaware of the hearts about to beat out of their chests.

Then they broke the treeline, collapsing in a heap. For a few moments, neither of them moved, their limbs entangled like a briar patch. Metaphorically holding their breath in wait while they heaved and panted for uncontaminated air.

It was several minutes before Juno was certain that the racing of his heart was his own. From here- tucked between the trees where the revel could be seen but the drums not heard.

From where they rested, the dancers seemed doll-like. Moving and spinning in the muscleless way that a carousel spun. Each jump left them hovering in the air just a moment too long, their rises and descents impossibly slow and controlled, always in perfect synchrony with everyone else. It was like watching a display in a storefront, everything plastic and motorized. At the center of it all, a bonfire flared, the flames flickering lazily, the smoke and heat making the scene waver like a mirage.

“Something isn’t right,” Juno said, disentangling himself and standing up, looking out over the scene with a hand to steady himself on a tree.

“Do you think?” Glass spat, still sprawled on the ground. His white silk shirt was dirtied, rumpled from their fall and consequent recovery period on the first floor. Annoyingly, his hair was just as iridescent when tousled, each runaway strand shining in those eye-catching blues and greens. There were two strands, longer than the others, that curved back over his head, disappearing behind him. Juno found his eyes tracing them curiously, following them back to where they began at Glass’s temples.

Glass broke his eye contact, those strands--antenna, Juno realized--twitching and tucked themselves tighter against the rest of his hair. Juno looked back to the scene before them, suddenly feeling like an intruder.

“Has this happened before?” he asked, back to Glass.

“Not when I’ve been here,” Glass answered, standing up and joining him. At the rate the drums were going, Juno kept expecting dancers to drop, to give out. When they all spun on, he wondered if they were able to collapse at all before the dance was done with them.

Well. Juno knew a few ways to stop a dance in its tracks. Unfortunately, most of them required him to be drunk and on the dance floor, so his usual methods were out.

That left one more.

“Where are you going?” Glass called, carefully following him as he trudged his way through the treeline around the revel glade.

“If we stop the drummer, this should stop, right?”

“And if that stops their hearts?” Glass retorted, already caught up and keeping on Juno’s heels. Juno stumbled.

“Listen, I’m going to do something when I find the drummer,” he amended, shoulders up to his ears defensively.

“That something is going to be ‘Die Painfully,’ I expect.”

“Then why are you following me, Glass?” Juno spat, stopping in his tracks and turning back to face him.

Rex Glass was so unapologetically fae in this light. Sparkling with the light of the fireflies and flames that composed the patchy visibility of a revel. His every feature was exaggerated, inhuman. Every time he blinked his eyelashes fluttered like insect wings.

Juno was used to the spark of fear that Hyperion City cultivated in all of its children. The fear of the inhuman, the fear of the fae that Sarah Steel had blown into a bonfire. It ran in Juno’s veins just as firmly as it did any of Hyperion’s human children. It hadn’t felt protective then, and it didn’t feel protective now, as that fear began to fade.

“I would much rather die trying to save these people then kill myself later knowing that I never tried,” Juno spat, eyes sparking. The magic in the air was palpable, and Juno’s own magic sparked against it as his anger made it boil over.

“Alright,” Glass answered, his own shoulders squaring with a final deep breath. “Lead on.”

By the time they reached the drummer, the music had swelled to a painful volume. Glass had pressed a wad of beeswax into Juno’s hands, and he’d stuffed it into his ears without question. It didn’t do a thing for the thudding of the beat in the dirt beneath them, but it lessened the pounding in Juno’s head just a bit.

It had been awhile since Juno’s last revel, and he hadn’t spent that night picking up on details or paying attention to the musicians. Honestly, when it came to the music, he could barely remember three things total between the dozens upon dozens of revels he’d attended. Juno glanced over to Glass, reading a similar hesitance in his furrowed brow and tightened jaw. Their feet rested uneasily just a step away from the dancing circle.

“He doesn’t look any different to you, either, I’m guessing?” Glass asked, tilting his head to Juno without taking his eyes off the dancers. They were moving too fast again, never misstepping. Now that they were closer, Juno could make out their individual expressions. Faces too pale or brightly flushed, shining with sweat. Teeth ground tight and mouths hanging open to desperately take in more air. The grass below their feet shone like oil in the firelight, glinting with blood of every shade. The iron smell mingled with the smoke and honey scents.

“Nothing I can think of,” Juno agreed, tearing his eyes away to examine the drummer.

His posture was stiff, tendons visible and tensed to snapping where they jutted from his wrists. There were plates like an exoskeleton, over his shoulders and chest, and where Juno would expect sweat, steam billowed up between the plates like geysers.

“Seems to be affecting him as well?” Glass asked, cutting Juno off before he could even voice the observation.

“Yeah, I don’t think he’s our source.” Juno shoved his coat aside, removing his gun from its holster. It was risky business, bringing a human weapon into a faerie revel. The handle had been wrapped several times over, as if that could stifle the discomfort of cold iron in his hands. But it was more reliable than the fae magic that lurked under his skin; if there was any part of Juno Steel Hyperion city could trust, it was his aim. That surety was worth the discomfort of cold iron bouncing off his hip whenever he moved. And it wasn’t like he wasn’t accustomed to carrying the painful weight of steel.

To his credit, Glass didn’t flinch when Juno pressed the barrel of his gun to the surface of the drum and fired through it. He did turn, breaking his fixed gaze from where it had been focused on the dancers. Juno pressed his lips together, frowning.

“Was there a goal to that?” Glass demanded, voice wavering, eyes wild. His antenna were sliding forward again, their slightly feathered tips visible just over his head.

“I was hoping that if the drum couldn’t make any noise, then the music would stop.” It had seemed a logical progression, but Juno couldn’t say he was surprised that the drum beat on just as loud even with the gaping hole through the stretched leather of the top.

“Did you really think it would be that simple?”

“Call me an optimist.”

Juno looked out over the sea of spinning bodies. Some of their faces had gone slack, their eyes blank and cold despite the firelight.

“If it’s not the drums themselves, it’s got to be at the center,” Juno said with a nod at the bonfire.

“By what logic?” Glass spluttered. “Is that how you think magic works?”

“You got a better idea?” They were shouting now, voices shrill and desperate over the shrieking music.

Glass hesitated, antenna sagging as he came to the same conclusion. He drew a blade from his hip, twirling it into position.

“We have to move fast. If we can’t find anything to fix it, we run. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” Juno raised his blaster, trying his best not to compare its clunky human make to the bronze leaf shaped blade and delicate handle carving of Glass’s weapon.
Their eyes met, and they plunged into the inferno.

There is an overused metaphor about boiling a frog- that if you put a frog in boiling water, he will jump out, but if you raise the temperature slowly over time, he will stay in place, boiling alive as a result.

Juno felt like he had jumped straight into the boiling water. Every instinct he had, every fragment of human nurture and faerie nature was demanding he turn tail. The ring was suffused with poison magic like a toxic fog, burning in his lungs every time it forced him to take a breath in. Glass was struggling too, his chest rising and falling erratically as they ran.

When Glass spoke, he had to shout over the roaring of the fire and the thudding heartbeat of the drums; “Can you disrupt the magic?” Juno shook his head, though from Glass’s subsequent swearing, it was unclear whether he had taken it as a ‘No, I can’t.’ or an ‘I can’t hear you.’

They shoved through the tides of dancers, bodies slamming into them from all sides. No matter how hard they shoved, not a single dancer fell. Bruises bloomed on their skin, red leaking into the eyes of anyone whose eyes had been white to begin with. Hair was askew, clothing ripped and out of place. Even wings hung limp, delicate membranes ripped.

All too soon and not soon enough, they arrived at the bonfire. It was customary, unassuming- enough so that Juno had barely looked at it at all since he’d arrived. There was a delicate ring of stones around it, more for decoration than preventing the fire from spreading. Now even those stones were drenched in blood, black and glistening.

“Is the fire bleeding?” Juno said suddenly, kneeling down. He covered his mouth with a flap of his coat to keep the smoke from invading his tender lungs. He pretended it was the smoke and heat that was making his vision waver while his heart pounded faster and faster.

Glass made a noise that was clearly meant to convey ‘That’s not possible’ while conserving air, but he bent down alongside Juno nonetheless. Sure enough, the iridescent slick of blood stretched over the ring of stones, bubbling slightly as it neared the fire. Getting more red the further in that it got.

“There’s something hidden-” Glass began, raising a hand and holding his palm to the fire. The poor light made him look like a mime; his face moonlight white, his lips big and dark as he laid a palm flat on a wall only he could see. “There!”

The silhouette of his hand burned a deep blue, the color of hot flame, of a star burning under his skin. It bloomed out, spreading over the entire fire, peeling away the veneer of a normal blaze and revealing-

“Oh god,” Juno managed, tearing his eyes away. It wasn’t the first time that night his stomach had requested a moment to upheave his most recent meal, but this felt more like a demand. He choked it back, looking to Glass instead.

Glass’s expression was about as telling as the scene itself. His moment of excitement at banishing the illusion fading rapidly as he took in the reality of the bonfire.

“Is this the human you were looking for?” Glass managed, his voice choked but not from lack of air.

Where before there had been a simple bonfire, nearly human in its simplicity, there was now a wreath of red flame. It leapt and fell in pillars taller than any Juno had ever seen, the smoke the same acrid red. There was no wood, no fuel- just a pool of bright blood, boiling and burning beneath them. And in the center--standing but by no means alive--Anthony DiMaggio. His eyes stared out, glassy as a corpse. Symbols were carved into his skin, blood dripping lazily from the wounds and feeding the spell. Juno leaned forward and threw up, trying not to look at the body. Glass stepped forward, resting a hand on Juno’s back and helping him to his feet.

“I don’t have the power to disrupt a spell like this,” he all but shouted in Juno’s ear. “We’ve done all we can.” The smell of hot blood was burning in his nostrils, thankfully blocking the smell of hot vomit, though it probably wasn’t an improvement.

“Juno,” Glass repeated, voice hoarse. “We have to run.” He sank to the ground next to Juno anyways, hand sliding to Juno’s shoulder in an attempt to keep them both upright.

The music had sped up as they’d stared at DiMaggio, the drum beat a buzz in their ears. Juno could feel his heart hum along in his chest, frantically trying to keep up.

“Bit late for that,” Juno managed, turning to face Glass. The whir of dancers moved faster and faster, around them, perfectly in sync with the whirl of flame around DiMaggio. “Should have- listened to you.” Glass’s expression was frantic, terrified. Still, he grasped for Juno’s hand, taking it and squeezing it in his own. He forced a smile, teeth sharper in the light.

“Not your fault,” he managed. There was a sharp pain building in Juno’s chest, his lungs burning with smoke and lack of air. The spinning of the dancers blended with his own spinning vision, the burnt-sugar flavor of magic dense in the air.

“Sorry, Glass,” Juno managed, squeezing his hand back.

“It’s Peter Nureyev,” he answered in return, face pale and eyes unfocused. The same flame-blue magic sparked at his fingers, flickering around his antenna. “My real name.”

It was- Juno could taste that too, a sweet taste at the tip of his tongue. The power of a true name, a full name.

“Say it?” Nureyev rasped, lips parted. His free hand came up to clasp his chest, fingers curling absently.

“Peter Nureyev,” Juno repeated, the taste of it flooding his mouth. Like blackberries, freshly plucked from the bushes on the edge of the wood on a trip away from Hyperion. “Peter Nureyev.” It was a sensation worth his final breaths.

A real smile burst across Nureyev’s face, his eyes red and pained. “I wanted to hear it before-”

“Yeah,” Juno agreed, his world tilting as he slid to his side. Nureyev followed suit, his weight settling on Juno’s legs. Around them, dancers dropped like flies, crumpling like sheets falling from a clothesline. The thudding of Nureyev’s heart against his hip matched the panicked thudding of his own. His grip slackened on his weapon, the discomfort of the metal secondary to the stabbing in his chest.

Iron. There was iron in the bullets.

Vision swimming, Juno turned, thankful the blurring prevented him from making out the face or injuries of the man he’d come here to save.

True, Juno didn’t know much about magic, even with the shock of it that ran in his veins. But nothing hurt fae like iron, and there was no better way to stop a spell than to hurt the source.

“Sorry,” he muttered, unsure if there were tears running down his face or streams of blood.

With the sound of a bullet, everything stopped.

Juno had to focus on the rate of his breathing, fast and as deep as he could manage, until his heart rate slowed. It was probably still too fast, still unhealthy, but it felt like hours between each beat even once Juno managed to pull himself upright.

Nureyev was blinking at him, eyes wide and more than bloodshot. Juno couldn’t bring himself to look at the bonfire. Even among the drums--now silent--and the sound of his own heart thudding, Juno had heard DiMaggio’s body crumple to the ground. The absence of red light shining on Nureyev’s face and the fading smell of burnt sugar would have to do.

“You did it,” Nureyev managed, voice still rough, lips curled in a disbelieving smile. Around them, fae were pulling themselves up from the ground, faces slack in agony or wide with relief. Juno tried not to count how many didn’t get up at all.

“We lived,” he said in return, letting his weapon slip from his hand.

“That we did,” Nureyev agreed. In a motion far too smooth for anyone who’d gone through what they had, he leaned forward, pressing a kiss to Juno’s forehead. Clumsily,
Juno grasped for his chin, pulling his lips down to meet his own.

Nureyev’s lips tasted like blackberries on his own.

“Until I see you again, Juno,” he promised.

And just like that, Peter Nureyev was gone.

Chapter Text

They had been planning on her refusing.

The Wires were more paranoid than most, having moved to Hyperion not long after their wedding. Sasha had only stopped wearing her coat inside out after three months of being friends with Juno, and her pockets were still always laden with preventative herbs and charms. And if Sasha couldn’t be fully protected, then they would make do with smothering Annie. All her zippers and buttons were iron or steel, her hair braided with daisies.

The last morning Juno visited the Wire household was the morning before Annie Wire vanished. It was by no ruling of the Wires themselves- something Hyperion city didn’t take kindly to. Any other household would hang further iron charms, plant more rowan and St. John’s wort. And many other houses did- not that that differed from the usual behavior following a child’s disappearance.

In fact, Juno didn’t speak a word to either of the Wire parents from that day onward, and neither of the Wires sought to break that imposed isolation. But much to the surprise of Hyperion townsfolk, this did not shatter the Oldtown trio.

(Hyperion the place, the breathing soul, did not share this surprise. Why would it? Annie Wire may have been lost to her family, to her friends, but she had not left Hyperion. She was not lost to it.)

The morning after Annie Wire disappeared, a dry cold Monday, everyone expected a solitary Juno Steel. Accompanied not by Mick Mercury or Sasha Wire- maybe back to being Benzaitens shadow, gold eyes downturned. Instead they were met, as always, by the trio of Mick, Sasha, and Juno. Subdued, yes, on a hiatus from the usual vigor of their schemes. But by no means broken.

Mick’s challenge had come first. The Hyperion drinking age was legally 18, but getting alcohol was a cinch over the age of 8. For Juno or Mick, it was as simple as snagging a beer from the fridge, whether that was behind Sarah’s back or in full view of Mick’s father. And every member of the Oldtown trio knew which corner stores conveniently left unsupervised drinks on the counter after Sasha or Mick overpaid for a candy bar.

Annie had snuck a drink with them before, on days the trio was in too good a mood to ruin it by kicking her out. The concoction Mick presented to her, however, would’ve been enough to tell any grown man without a liver turned wholly to stone. One part beer purchased from the Pour and Floor; one part shitty vodka stolen from Mick’s uncle. One part wine mixed with thick, half-dissolved honey. (Juno’s preference, because fae stomachs and livers far preferred honeyed mead to shitty beer.) Throw in several parts energy drink and whatever Mick Mercury could find, and you had the King of the Playground Special. It was never the same two days in a row and had never before been mixed with any real intent to drink it, even if Mick claimed each night that he would “really do it this time” and tipped the sludge closer to his lips. Annie knew this too- had laughed louder than anyone when she had seen Mick threatening to drink his concoction. But Annie was a Wire, as stubborn as her sister. She had refused to make a complaint when she knocked Mick’s monstrosity down, and she hadn’t again when it had come back up moments later.

Sasha, complaining all the while, had held her hair back. Mick had patted her shoulder. Juno has stood awkwardly, dragging a foot through the dirt.

Then they’d whisked her away again, sending her alone and empty-handed, stomach still churning, to the top of Faust’s Fun House.

The only explanation anyone had been able to come up with for what happened to Faust’s was simply that Hyperion itself wanted it gone. But it was much easier said that the parents and hospitals of Hyperion city wanted Faust’s closed for good. After all, it had been their court cases and lawsuits that drained their bank. That made it so that, when storms and chance damaged Faust’s beyond repair, there were no funds left to fix it. So Faust’s was forced to close, less than six months after opening.

(Hyperion itself considered the destruction of Faust’s to be a prime example of cooperation between the townsfolk and itself. Whether it knew that many Hyperion city residents blamed it entirely was unknown. Mortal opinions were a bit too small for Hyperion to understand.)

But if the parents of Hyperion thought that closing Faust’s was enough to stop it from doing damage, they were either lying to themselves or truly foolish. Certainly, many children never crossed Faust’s doorway after the closure of the Fun House. But that didn’t stop Oldtown kids from climbing the fence.

Faust’s had become overgrown in the three years since it had closed. Plastic tunnels had faded unevenly in the sun, bolts rusted and sliding out of place. The whole place had been roped off originally, marked with signs proclaiming the structure “unstable” and “unsafe.” Oldtown kids had taken those ropes and signs and shuffled them, marking the tunnels that ended in an open gap, noting which ones shook under their weight.

Getting to the top of the Fun House tube maze was one of the highest points for bragging among Oldtown kids. Having done it not once but twice should have given Sasha Wire quite the status among their peers at school, had she not lost her chances at popularity when she befriended a changeling.

In the time it had been closed, rumors had grown like fungus around the maze. That along with vermin and insects, the fae had crept in. Pixies or brownies waiting to misdirect you, to turn the tunnel you crawled through into a gate to Faerie. Everyone knew the story of a child who had disappeared into the tube maze to never return. Nevermind that no one actually knew anyone who had disappeared.

“Juno,” Sasha had encouraged, pulling her ear away from a lower tunnel and nodding at it.

Juno had stepped forward, pressed his ear to the spot Sasha had just pulled away from. He’d listened carefully for the sound of Annie approaching, pulling away with a nod when he got verification. Then he had pressed both hands to the plastic of the tube, closing his eyes as he focused.

It was a cold night, though not so cold to be memorable up until that moment. The plastic of Faust’s tube maze was the same dim temperature as the rest of Hyperion.
But that didn’t matter much, at that time, because Juno was always colder. His skin, when anyone dared touch it, was chill to the touch. Pleasant in the summer, yes, but unforgiving in the colder months. Benten compared him to an icicle, taking his brother’s hands and pressing them to his own forehead, enhancing his tomfoolery by loudly announcing that Juno had “cured his raging headache!”

Though his powers were still erratic and not entirely within his control, Juno had mastered this particular trick ages ago. With his eyes closed and palms flat, he had spread a thin path of frost over the surface of the faded red plastic. For a moment, it flared with blue, starbursts flaring in bright patterns over the tube. Then it had faded, simmering down to just regular white frost, gray and yellow in the light of Hyperion’s lamps. There were two handprints left where his hands had been, the ice thick and whorled over with fractals.

Mick’s eyes had been ten times brighter than any streetlight could ever be.

“That’s so cool, Jay,” he spluttered, voice more a stage-whisper than anything with any subtlety.

“You’ve seen me do it before, Mick,” Juno grumbled, cheeks flushed and eyes shining as they always were after calling on his magic.

“I mean yeah, but-” Mick continued.

“Shh!” Sasha snapped, pressing her ear to the tube again. “She’s almost here!” She pulled her head away, rubbing at her ear. “That’s really cold, Juno.” Her breath clouded in the air in front of her.

“What did you expect?” he snapped back, moving his head closer to listen.

Distantly, the sounds of Annie Wire scrambling through the maze grew closer, the muffled thudding and creaking of old tubes. There was an audible hiss when she hit the section of tubes that Juno had turned into a cooler.

“That’s not fair!” she had snapped, complaint weakened by the layer of frozen plastic between them. Mick stifled a giggle, hands clapped over his mouth. Sasha shushed him again, and for the next few moments the only sound was the skid of hands and knees over creaking tubes broken occasionally with a pause where only Annie’s shivering was audible.

Sasha had had to rub Annie’s arms to warm her up when she finally emerged, successfully and blue at the lips and fingertips. Her prideful smirk, not dissimilar from her older sister’s, was partially obscured by the chattering of her teeth.

Then it was Juno’s challenge. Why they’d left his last, none of them quite sure. Perhaps that his would undoubtedly be the most difficult, that they hadn’t expected it to get this far. More likely than not it had happened by simple chance- not just Annie had been drinking foul concoctions that night, and the rest of them had long since learned to keep it down, fermenting their livers. None of them were really thinking clearly.

(That was what Benten had told him, after the HCPD had been called, after Juno had been returned home, face red and arm gripped tight by Sarah Steel. Benten had taken him from there, after Sarah had reassured herself that he was alive and safe. Juno hadn’t spoken for hours after, neither did he sleep. Ben had tried to stay up with him, but he eventually dozed off himself, slumped back on a pile of pillows with his brother’s head in his lap.)

“Go in there,” was what Juno had said, jerking a bruised chin as he gestured to the woods surrounding Hyperion.

Sasha remembered herself exchanging glances with Mick, a dissent waiting on her tongue but never leaving. She remembers that she was just steps away from putting a stop to it, calling off Juno’s challenge. Juno remembered it this way too, remembers his friends staring him down, seconds away from pulling him back.

Only Mick remembered it correctly, the way Hyperion saw it. That none of them spoke up, none of them realized what forces they were playing with. Juno came the closest to understanding the danger the fae of Hyperion posed, but only insofar as it applied to himself. He hadn’t yet realized there were many things in the woods far more dangerous than himself.

(With the way the people of Hyperion city looked at him sometimes, he still sometimes forgot how little a threat he posed in comparison to the rest of Hyperion’s fae.)

If any of them had spoken up, they would’ve called it off. Instead, they all watched, waiting in vain for one of the others to put an end to this. Instead, Annie Wire walked into the woods and was never seen again.

Chapter Text

Juno permitted himself one day of staying in bed, facedown in his pillows. He only got up around dinner, and only to answer his phone in the hopes it would be enough to convince Rita to stop calling about last night’s job. Sometime around lunch he’d gotten fed up with the near-constant buzzing and thrown his phone across the room. Just his luck that it had hit the wall at precisely the right angle to turn the ringer on, and ever since he’d been serenaded by whatever glitzy hyperpop song Rita had set as his ringtone. Despite that, it was still several hours before he worked up the energy to peel himself from his sheets and put an end to the ringing.

“Ohmygod Boss! I was convinced you’d died out there- or worse, that you were all wound up in that faerie nonsense- or turned into a tree- or caught up and turned into a tree- OR Mistah DiMaggio had been turned into a tree-”

“Anthony DiMaggio is dead, Rita,” he interrupted, voice rasping. It might have been from the night of screaming and asphyxiating, but it could just as easily have been from a full day of disuse.

“Oh.” Rita said, out of breath all at once. “Did you tell the other Mistah DiMaggio?”

“Not yet,” Juno answered, realization hitting him like the pain of stepping on a rake, followed immediately by the force of guilt like the rake handle to his face.

“Do you want me to do it, Boss?” Rita said, voice small. Juno hesitated, something between hunger and nausea stewing in his stomach, spitting up into his throat and corroding it from within.

“No,” he managed. “I’ll handle it.”

“Okay.” Rita gave him a second. “I know I don’t know much about what happened last night, Mistah Steel. But I know you pretty well by now, and I think you gotta trust that it probably isn’t your fault, okay?”

“Rita-”

“You just take care of yourself, okay Mistah Steel?”

“Rita-”

“Promise!?” she shrieked, voice crackling with how close her mouth was to the receiver. Juno winced.

“I’ll try,” he answered, as much of a truth as he could say.

He climbed back in bed. Sleep was self-care, probably.

His sheets hadn’t gotten any more appealing since he’d vacated them. He needed the weight of them to even consider the idea of sleep, but losing the last of their heat had left them feeling cold and damp with sweat. Juno clambered beneath them anyways, more than familiar with the repulsive way they immediately wicked the moisture from his skin.

It was proof that something had gone truly wrong when the people of Hyperion came to Juno Steel for help with the fae. The disappearance of Anthony DiMaggio had been one- not that it had ended well. One had to fall rather far to be willing to ask a faerie to help with the fae.

And sometimes they came to Juno because they didn’t know which it was. No one knew the fae like one of their own.

“Do you really think it has to do with the Fair Folk, Mistah Steel?” Rita asked for the fourth or fifth time as they grew nearer and nearer to their client’s home.

“Could go either way,” Juno answered for the fifth or sixth time, hands deep in his pockets and collar high.

The Kanagawa family lived in one of the biggest mansions in Hyperion. They were old money in theory, but they’d been old money for so long that they’d forgotten what it meant, and had since wrapped back around to act like new money. Cassandra, the youngest only by technicality, (something Juno could relate to) was about the only one of them that could be considered tolerable. She met them at the door, arms crossed and hair bleached to breaking.

“Can’t believe Min called you in,” she scoffed, using her back to push the door wider to let them in.

“You don’t think it’s that bad?” Juno pressed, hovering at the doorway. Cass snorted again, nodding Juno inside. Her earrings swung as she moved, dulled iron spikes ringing vaguely in Juno’s periphery as he entered.

“It’s Dad that’s flipping out. Doesn’t matter how many strings Min’s got in her web- Croesus is the bigger spider.” She kicked the door shut. “Hence all the extra iron.”

“You doin okay Mistah Steel?” Rita stage-whispered, hand pressed to the side of her mouth as if it could stop Cass from hearing, “I know iron buildings get to you-”

“I’m fine, Rita,” he grit out between tight teeth.

If you thought about it, iron intolerance was just like being allergic to cats. The Kanagawa’s simply had a cat, and Juno only needed to spend a day or so in their home until he could leave them and their cat dander behind.

Except the cat dander was built into the walls, hanging from every candle sconce, woven into the curtains and lining the windows. It was on every button of Cass’s designer “punk” jacket. Juno felt it on every wall around him, pressing in.

But really, when it came down to it, when it left him with a lingering migraine and blurry vision and a persistent itch so deep under his skin his nails couldn’t reach it- Basically an allergy, honestly?

“So what’s got the old man on edge?” Juno asked, strolling languidly around the foyer with his hands fisted in his pockets. Cass shoulder checked him as she pushed past, gesturing for them to follow.

“He’ll explain in more detail, but- just weird shit, really. Food spoiling, things moving around, weird smells…”

“Must’ve been a lot of food gone bad for Croesus to waste the money on me,” Juno quipped back, following Cass down the hall with Rita hustling along behind. Her children’s shoes made tiny clicks compared to the dull thuds of Juno and Cass’s heavy boots.

“It was the doors that got him, I think. Left open when they should be closed, that sort of thing.” She paused, arms closed over her chest, outside of her father’s office. “Last thing left open was the safe.”

“Ohhh,” Rita said, scribbling furiously on her notepad. Her eyes were creased in wonderment, sparkling like it was the good part of one of her streams. “That’s real good…” Juno gave her a glare, and she winced. “Or… real bad. Real good at being real bad.”

“Yeah. Well,” Cass said, rapping on the door with her knuckles before jiggling it open. “Ask him yourself.”

Croesus Kanagawa was a large man- which, coming from Juno, (who was admittedly short but not a small lady nonetheless) was saying something. His desk was massive to match him, and the chairs before it were strategically shorter than average. Rita was unphased, pattering forward and clambering atop a chair. From where the head of the Kanagawa family was sitting, she probably looked like nothing more than a poof of rust red hair.

“Steel,” he intoned, brow low. He gestured to the remaining seat with a nod of his head- could a penchant for pointing without their hands be a family trait?

“I’ll stand, thanks,” Juno said, even as his ankles shook. “Cass gave me the rundown- anything else I should know?”

“This home is under siege by the fae, Steel,” Croesus spat, a bead of sweat creeping down his temple. “I do not call you here for conversation.”

“Surprised you called me here at all after what happened with Cecil.” Rita kicked him in the shin, her sneakers lighting up upon impact to highlight her point. Croesus grit his teeth further.

“I will not hold past events against you in light of the current predicament.” Juno raised an eyebrow. Croesus groaned low in his throat, guttural. Rita scribbled furiously.

“What makes you so certain this is a siege?” Juno posed, spreading his hands wise. Rita looked up, her glasses making her eyes wide and owlish.

“Cassandra told you about the safe?” he sighed out, massaging his temple with the heel of his hand. “The doors opening on their own? There’s only so much time before that door invites in someone who wishes this family harm.” He lowered his shoulders, which still only brought them level with his ears.

“I’ll call Cecil to show you to the problem areas.” He looked Juno in the eyes, holding his gaze. “I want to ensure no fae will be getting beyond these walls.”

“So whaddya think, boss?” Rita asked while they waited outside of Croesus’s office, rolling back and forth from the tips of her toes to the back edge of her heels. Small beads of pink and blue lights flashed periodically, doing nothing for the slow-mounting pain behind Juno’s eyes.

“I think that the fae have to be invited in,” Juno said, biting at the skin next to his thumb. “And that it’s cheaper to change the locks than call me in every time something goes wrong. You get anything out of that?”

“I couldn’t see much of his face,” Rita said, bottom lip sticking out in a pout. “And I could barely hear anything over the sounds of him scratching.”

“Charming,” Juno said drily.

“Tell me why-” crooned a voice from down the hall, “-I had to hear from Daddy that you’d dropped by for a visit?”

Juno slumped, all but the tips of his reddening ears vanishing behind the collar of his coat.

“Hi Mistah Cecil,” Rita said with a small wave, voice muffled as she held back a downpour of laughter.

Cecil Kanagawa was identical to his sister in the same way Juno had been to Ben; that is to say, almost completely identical yet still impossible to mistake for one another.

Cassandra’s black and bleached and be-spiked clothes were the shadow to Cecil’s neons and pastels and downright radioactively bright makeup. Juno had to resist the urge to rifle in his pockets for sunglasses he knew he didn’t have.

Almost invisibly behind Cecil bobbed a second figure, basically headless for the massive camera mounted on their shoulder.

The last time Juno had been hired by Croesus Kanagawa, it had been Cecil’s ass he was dragging out of the woods. The older Kanagawa child ran an apparently successful internet show, as either Cecil or Rita would happily tell you. And, as Cecil had been wailing the whole time Juno was carrying him out of the woods, unexplained phenomenon did amazing things for his view counts.

(“Getting abducted good for views too?” Juno remembered grumbling, the muscles in his throat tense from the strain of carrying Cecil’s leggy form.

“Obviously!” Cecil had cried, hand still clutching at the stump of his shoulder where his arm had been removed. Something about payment for violating fae hospitality. Juno had been happy for the excuse not to investigate that any further- an excuse that came in the near-constant noise from Cecil’s mouth. He hadn’t even been bleeding; the wound had healed over almost before the limb was fully severed.)

“I’m not here to be on your show, Cecil,” Juno said, emerging from his coat collar.

“Oh but they loved you last time, Junebug,” Cecil pleaded, eyes huge under several gallons of glitter. “The dashing detective with the pretty golden eyes, so eager to jump to my rescue-”

“It was good television, Mistah Steel, you gotta give ‘em that,” Rita chimed in, giving a semi-apologetic look at him. Juno could almost picture her with a popcorn bucket, eyes flicking from him to Cecil to the camera.

“The only thing I’ve ‘got to give’ is a safe house. Then I ‘get’ paid and ‘get’ out,” Juno retorted, using finger quotes perhaps a bit too liberally. Cecil pouted, and it was either a miracle or money that kept his lipstick from smearing over his teeth at the movement.

“Can I at least film the tour I’m giving you of the house? Please, Junebug?”

“No,” Juno spat at the same time Rita squealed an affirmation.

“Oh please please PLEASE, Mistah Steel? I’ve always wanted to be Internet famous!” Juno groaned again, thunking his head against the nearest wall. He turned back, pointing at Cecil.

“I’m not signing any waivers,” he warned Cecil. The influencer broke into a grin, using one chrome finger to cross his heart.

Juno fell into step alongside the camera man as they walked, watching Cecil’s attempts to walk backward while narrating a tour. Several times he narrowly avoided tripping over the ostentatious carpet runner that ran the never-ending length of the hall.

“So, how long have you been working with Cecil?” Juno asked the camera man, hands innocently returned to his jacket pockets as they strolled.

“Not long,” came the reply, muffled by the camera between them.

“Picked them up a few days back,” Cecil said dismissively. “Last one couldn’t keep up with me.”

“I know the feeling,” Juno snorted, lightly elbowing the camera man while glaring pointedly at Cecil’s obnoxiously long legs and heels. There was a light sound from the other side of the camera that he decided to take as a chuckle.

“So- has this door been left open? Or this one? Or-” Rita rambled on, taking notes at the speed of light without leaving Cecil a chance to answer. Cecil let out a laugh, the sound whirring like a record.

“I don’t know what Cass told you, but I haven’t noticed a thing. I’ll show you to the safe and the security office, but I do think this whole thing is a bit unnecessary.” His voice inflected up and down as he beamed with too-bright teeth at the camera. “Though maybe I’ll follow it up with a visit to the kitchen- maybe you can ‘detect’ that we need a better refrigerator.” He flashed another grin for the camera, punctuating this one with a wink.

“What’s up with you, Cecil? Thought you’d love fae breaking into your house- good follow up for your abduction.”

Cecil’s smile didn’t falter as he faced the camera.

“Edit this bit out,” he said without blinking before he spun and faced Juno, stepping forward intently. His smile held.

“Listen, Junebug. I’ve looked into all this already, and I’ve found that the ‘faeries’ angle doesn’t go over so well more than once. My audience like you, don’t get me wrong-” he caressed Juno’s collar carefully, smoothing it flat when he was done. “But not many people outside of Hyperion buy the whole ‘faerie’ angle.” Juno scoffed.

“Oh, so how do they think you lost an arm?”

“Oh! Oh! I know this one,” Rita chimed in, bouncing in place, hand in the air. “They think it was a mafia thing, right? You have to dig into the comments for that one, but-”

“Fine, fine!” Juno threw his hands in the air. “Just show me the damn safe.”

“With pleasure,” Cecil agreed, straightening back up and returning to his position before the camera. “Go ahead and resume, Shah.”

There was nothing notable about the safe- it had since been resealed, hidden away behind a family portrait that Cecil happily swung open for his inspection. Rita climbed up on the nearest chair, leaning in to look at the electronic lock.

Juno drifted to the window instead, looking out over the gardens below.

“Hey Cecil,” he called over his shoulder, hyper aware of the eye of the camera on him. “Show me the gardens before the security office?”

Stepping out of the mansion and into the garden was almost a relief. It was, however, also underscored by Cecil’s frantic cries as he and his camera man adjusted the settings for daylight.

There had been a chunk of time when Ben had tried to convince Juno to take up gardening, hoping it would be a good channel for the magic that had so often exploded out from Juno’s hands. It hadn’t worked, and worse, the plants so often made him feel even more sick. They had never totally determined which plants fae were averse to, and in Hyperion they were so often cross contaminated with those plants guaranteed to make Juno cough and wheeze.

So he felt as out of place in the Kanagawa’s garden as he did anywhere else in Hyperion, but at least he wasn’t being stifled in iron. Small victories.

“Hey Rita- what does this shape look like to you,” he said, toeing at a patch of what looked like wildflowers amidst the fields of well kept roses and hydrangea.

“I dunno,” she said, holding a handkerchief over her mouth and nose. “All this pollen makes me sneeze- it smells weird out here, Mistah Steel-” She cut off with another sneeze, looking away while Juno pushed up some mulch with his boot. He dropped to a kneel, scooping up the chunk and examining the soil around it before heaving himself back to a standing position.

“Alright, this was great. Kitchen, now?” he asked, dusting his hands off.

“Kitchen? We said the security office, next, Junebug-”

“Nah, we’ll get there last. Think you can scrounge up a family meeting?” Cecil blinked at him, and the look on his face said that he’d be frowning if he hadn’t had a camera up his nose.

“Family drama is great for the camera, Mistah Cecil,” Rita added helpfully, still breathing through her handkerchief.

And that had all led them here- Juno seated at the massive dining table, feet up on a second chair, while every other member of the Kanagawa family (plus or minus a few members of the family staff) stared irritably down at him.

“Lovely view you have from in here,” Juno commented, casting his gaze to the window. “Lovely garden right outside, and right beyond that- Would you look at that, it’s the woods. Only ground floor room with a window facing the woods directly, if you’d believe. Which means-” he continued, dropping his feet to the floor and standing up with as much respect as he could give to his aching joints. “If you were going to invite a faerie into the house, this would be the easier entrance.”

“Into the house?” Croesus Kanagawa demanded. “You mean to say that someone has invited it inside?”

“I’m glad you understand,” Juno agreed. “Now, as for what you called me in for,” he continued, beginning to pace.

“You’ve been told what you’re here for,” Croesus growled. Juno clicked his tongue.

“Now, that’s the thing! Because Cass told me-” he said with a gesture at Cass, who tightened her crossed arms, “that you’d give me the details. You said Cass had already told me everything and passed me off to Cecil, who claimed that you had already explained.” Croesus’s face was growing increasingly more red.

“Listen here-”

“See, Cass and Cecil’s answers make sense. You called me, of course you’d be the one to explain. But you haven’t been particularly forthcoming even when you’re the one shelling out the money.” The camera swiveled to face Croesus, who batted it out of the way, causing the camera man to dip and rebalance to avoid dropping it.

“I told you-”

“That the safe was opened, yeah. What else?” Croesus spluttered. For the head of the family, his own was getting redder and shinier by the minute.

“Doors have been left open, food spoiling-”

“That’s not enough to call me, c’mon,” Juno said, wrapping a knuckle on the table. “You hate me- no judgment there, I know the feeling well enough. What am I missing?”

Croesus cast a look at his wife, reaching into his jacket pocket. Min didn’t do a thing but blink. Min Kanagawa was a slip of a woman next to her husband, which made the way he looked to her for permission all the scarier.

He removed a folded note, pressing it flat on the tabletop and sliding it across towards Juno, who took it with a raised eyebrow.

“The life of the one who calls himself Croesus Kanagawa is in danger,” Juno read aloud. “Taking shelter in such a large house only provides more entrances.” He held the note up to the light, examining it.

“I found it on the open safe,” Croesus said stiffly, taking a seat at the head of the table.

“If they’re here for your life, why would they bother opening the safe?” Juno asked, turning back to look at the family, all clustered around the table. “Why would they leave it open?” Croesus furrowed his brow, confused.

“It could have been proof that even my possessions weren’t safe-”

“Cut the crap, Croesus.” Cass and Cecil both visibly tensed, the former looking at Juno like he’d expressed a desire to be dropped out a window. “What’s in that safe you’re so worried about?”

“That is none of your concern-”

“More importantly,” Juno interrupted, pacing back around the table to lean over a chair, looking at Croesus like he was an artifact in a museum. “Who’s buried in your garden?”

Instantly the camera spun to Juno, taking breaks on the way to capture Cass’s white face, Min’s bland surprise, and Cecil’s dramatic gasp. Croesus’s face went very red.

“What do you mean by that?” Juno sighed, spinning around and away from his chair.

“I ‘mean’ that there’s a patch of native wildflowers in your garden- pretty, yeah, but out of place given all of the roses and topiaries you’ve got everywhere else.”

“Why does that mean there’s a corpse in our garden?” Cass said with a quick look to her father, arms crossed tight in discomfort.

“Well, I suppose it could be anything buried there, really, but it’d have to be pretty big. Size of a large man, probably? About your size, actually.” Juno speculated, pulling a chair out and taking a seat. He laced his fingers, leaning forward with hands on his thighs to look at Croesus.

“Which begs the question; if Croesus Kanagawa is buried in your garden, then who are you?”

Instantly there was an uproar from the assembled Kanagawa family. The camera man moved in a frenzy to catch all of the expressions, ranging from outraged to shocked to confused.

“I don’t like what you’re implying-”

“What do you mean Daddy’s buried in the garden-”

“-a pretty big leap there, Juno-”

Juno held up a hand to silence them.

“If I’ve made too big an assumption, you can go ahead and put it to rest.” He zeroed in on the head of the family once more. “Just tell me that you’re Croesus Kanagawa.”

“I will do no such thing!” Croesus spat, slamming a hand on the table as he stood. “You cannot come into this house and demand I prove myself to you!”

“It is interesting that you invited me here, I’ve got to say. What was it you said to me last time- you’d wring my feeble faerie throat if I ever came back here?”

“Steel-”

“Oh, did you not say that?” Juno said, voice still mocking. “Was that not you?”

“JUNO STEEL-”

“I’d yell your name back if I knew it!”

“Croesus,” Min said, voice soft as a whisper after all their yelling. “Just tell the detective you are who you say.”

A vein was popping in Croesus Kanagawa’ forehead, his receding hairline showing inch after inch of sweaty red skin. The camera man crept as close as he dared, zooming in on Croesus’s face.

“Unless you can’t,” Juno said smugly, crossing his arms.

“Mistah Steel?”

Rita pushed open the dining room door, footsteps echoing in the sudden silence.

“I looked at that footage you asked about,” she said softly, smaller in the collective gaze of the entire family. Even the camera had swiveled to face her. “On those specific times.”

“What’d you find?” Juno asked. Rita hurried over, obviously pulling up the notes on her phone.

“Well, the footage from when the safe was opened is missing like you said it would be, but it does come back for a few minutes before the camera goes out AGAIN and then the note shows up. Well, okay, it doesn’t come back entirely, but that footage isn’t missing, just deleted, so I got it back.” She paused for a breath, scrolled on her phone for a second, then continued.

“There’s no footage of whatever happened in the garden- it gets all grainy and fuzzy the way cameras do around you sometimes, Mistah Steel. But when it cleared up, that patch of wildflowers showed up. Oh! And Mistah Kanagawa--that is, the older Mistah Kanagawa--was the only one who the cameras saw goin outside around that time.”

“Interesting,” Juno said, giving a cruel smile to where Croesus sat. “And on this big window?” Rita took another deep breath.

“Took a bit longer to find that one- but just like you said! Window left cracked, small bowl of cream on the windowsill,” she said proudly, tucking her phone in her pocket.

“Did you see who it was that left it?” Juno asked. Rita giggled.

“Sure did! Sorry, I don’t get to do the big reveal most of the time-” she began, hands shaking. “It was Miss Cassandra!”

“What?” Cass said, pulling away from where Cecil was still sobbing. “I’m not stupid- I wouldn’t do any of that! I might as well have left the door open and screamed for every faerie in a mile to come in.” Min stepped forward, bringing a hand to Cass’s bicep. Cass wrenched herself out of her grasp.

“Your medication, Cass-” Min said, voice gentle.

“I don’t need the damn medication!”

“Cass-” Juno tried.

“I didn’t get my father killed!” she snapped.

“Even if you did, it’s not your fault, Cass,” Juno cut in. He looked over his shoulder to Croesus. “It’s the fault of the faerie who actually did it.”

Croesus’s furious expression dropped into an uncharacteristic sneer, and it was only now, at close range, that Juno could see the way his irises undulated, twisting and writhing browns and blacks. The eyes were the hardest part to hide, after all.

“I was on the run, being hunted down- Why shouldn’t I refuse a direct invitation? No one respects the old ways anymore, no one makes deals. Humans stopped leaving out offerings to our kind ages ago!”

“You weren’t running from humans though, were you? You wouldn’t hide here if that was the risk,” Juno retaliated, moving closer. He brushed aside his coat, hand resting on the handle of his gun. “What was in the safe? What were they trying to take from you?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” the faerie hissed, disguise melting and rupturing at the seams. Limbs bent too far, joints moving in the wrong places. “All but human- your name is barely worth a thing, now.”

“How do you hide a name in a safe?” Rita asked questioningly.

“Easy,” Juno said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a single stone. Marbled in colors impossible to name, smooth and rounded like a river stone.

The faerie hissed, lunging forward at Juno only to be caught by the biceps, held firm by members of the household staff that Juno had barely noticed slip into the room.

“That’s why you had me open the safe?” Rita said suddenly. “You said you were investigatin- not stealing!”

“It wasn’t supposed to be in there anyways,” Juno said with a wave. “Wanna see how it works?” Rita nodded enthusiastically.

Juno raised the rock in his hand, bringing it high above his head.

And then he threw it to the ground, the sound of it cracking almost inaudible for the scream that the faerie let out. A moment of silence, save Cecil’s cries and Cass’s heavy breathing-

“Miasma?” Juno said questioningly. “Strange kind of name, I suppose.” Miasma flinched, guise fully faded now.

“So you break the rock and you just- know?” Rita said, brow furrowed. “Mistah Steel, if you have a rock hidden somewhere-”

“I don’t, Rita. Hiding your name like that means you can’t tell anyone your name- helpful, sure, but only if you think you’re gonna be interrogated.”

“Well,” Min said, clapping her hands and stepping forward. “Take Miasma away, then. We can handle it from here, Mr. Steel.”

“Now wait just a moment,” Juno said. “There’s still parts of this I don’t have figured out-”

“I’m not concerned with things that keep you up at night, Mr. Steel,” Min said, waving the guards toting Miasma out of the room, another pair guiding Cecil and Cass away. “This problem has been dealt with, and the corresponding payment will be sent your way.”

“But what reason would Cass have to leave that cream out? She doesn’t benefit in any way from this- if she made the deal, even accidentally, there would be some spin that helps her, right?”

“Maybe you aren’t as versed in the art of deals as you believe,” she continued, hands clasped behind her back. Her eyes were dark, iris and pupil indistinguishable even at such a short distance.

“Unless,” Juno began, eyes flitting to where Min’s ears were hidden by her hair. “Unless it wasn’t Cass at all who made the deal.” Min watched him consider for a few seconds.

“You have no evidence to back up your theory, Mr. Steel. I suggest you and your secretary take your leave.” She nodded to the camera man. “Take him with you, if you will. And leave the camera, Mr. Shah. You are no longer required.”

With a tug at his jacket, Rita wrenched Juno away. He turned numbly and followed her out the door, the camera man on his heels.

Juno had seized Shah’s wrist as the camera man made to leave, pulling him seemingly out of nowhere and into the hall alongside Rita and himself.

“Got somewhere to be, Shah?” he asked, grip still white-knuckled around Shah’s arm.

“What do you mean?” the camera man asked, stiff in the detective’s grasp. Free of the burden of his camera, he was a thin, craggy man, his face generic enough that your mind would find it easier to substitute any other similar face rather than expend excess energy remembering this one specifically,

“Front door is this way- are you really that new here?”

“It’s easy to get turned around in a house this large,” Shah said with a smile.

“Yeah, I bet,” Juno agreed, slowly releasing Shah’s arm.

“So, what made you want to be a camera man, Mistah Shah?”

“You’re welcome to call me Perseus,” he said, turning to accompany Rita and Juno as they exited the mansion.

“No thanks! Was it because of your favorite movie? Sometimes watchin movies makes ME want to go into movie making-”

“I suppose I just enjoy capturing the beauty of the natural world, and a camera allows me to do so,” Shah said, shedding his discomfort like the drop of a curtain and sliding into conversation the moment Rita paused for breath.

“So why’d you end up working for Cecil?” Juno pressed, casting a sly glance over his shoulder and up at Shah.

“Oh, convenience,” he said with an elegant shrug.

“What’s your favorite movie?” Rita pressed, eyes bright and wide. The rhinestones on her glasses flashed twice as bright as the crystals on the chandelier hanging above them. Juno took an additional step forward, turning to look back at Rita and Shah. The man’s eyes flicked to where Juno stood, obviously clocking the way Juno was blocking his easiest exit. The detective crossed his arms, trying and failing to hide the smug look blooming over his face.

“I must confess, I cannot choose one,” Shah said, stealthily swiping a bead of sweat from his forehead.

“Don’t have one?” Rita shrieked, cutting odd any further explanation from Shah as well as any extra pressing from Juno. “How can you not have a favorite?”

“Rita, you have hundreds of favorites,” Juno corrected, stepping up next to her. Forming a wall between Perseus Shah and the front door.

“What are some of your favorites, then?” he tried, expression steady as he tracked Juno’s move with only his eyes. Juno nudged Rita’s foot with his own, trying to diffuse the excited shaking that had overtaken her like a bomb waiting to go off.

“She’ll tell you later,” he offered, stepping aside and waving towards the door. Juno offered his bent elbow. “Want to get out of here, Shah?”

There was a barely visible reluctance in the way Perseus Shah stepped forward, curling long fingers around the proffered arm. He offered Juno the same sharp smile in return, perhaps a bit more jagged on the edges now than it had been before.

“Boss!...” Rita grumbled, following after them and out the door. Juno heaved a sigh of relief the moment he cleared the doorstep.

“Bit of a walk back to my place,” Juno said conversationally, giving a smile. “Not a fan of big iron vehicles- I’m sure you understand.”

“I’d imagine,” Shah said stiffly. His eyes had moved straight ahead.

“You dodged a bullet there, Mistah Shah,” Rita chimed in. “Mistah Steel’s a real bad driver.”

“You try driving when the walls of a car are actively giving you a headache!” Juno retaliated. Perseus Shah chuckled nervously.

“That does sound like it would be difficult,” he added.

They continued like that--Juno and Rita helmed the conversation, Shah chiming in when relevant, when prompted.

“This one’s mine,” Juno said at least, nodding at the crooked building when they arrived at it. “Not much, but there’s a lot less iron in the walls.”

“You want me to stick around and put on ‘Revenge of the Avenging Revengers 4?” Rita asked innocently, swinging her arms back and forth impatiently.

“Another night, Rita,” Juno answered. Her mouth scrunched, disappointed.

“Alright. You call me if you need, alright?” she said, pointing at finger at Juno as she walked over to where she’d left her car.

“Okay, Rita.”

“And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

“Okay, Rita!”

Juno looked back to Perseus Shah, waiting for the rumble of Rita’s engine to start before he spoke.

“Come inside?” he asked, fidgeting with the raw edge of his thumb nailbed.

“Since you were so kind as to invite me,” Shah said drily, smiling bitterly as Juno ushered him inside.

“Sorry it’s a mess,” Juno continued, flicking lights on as he went. He began to move around the kitchen, shuffling old takeout boxes into the trash and pouring himself a glass from a nearby bottle. “Want a drink?”

“Juno, what do you mean by this?” Shah said, standing in front of the counter, arms spread, expression as uncomfortable as Juno had ever seen him. Juno sighed, setting down an already half-empty glass.

“I think I liked Rex Glass more. Shah doesn’t fill the space in the same way.” Shah—Glass—scoffed.

“He was made to work with Cecil Kanagawa. He wasn’t going to waste his breath trying to get a word in.”

“I didn’t like it,” Juno repeated. “I could see you thinking the whole time. You had things to say.”

“So what was the point in bringing me here?” he pressed again. “Why not unmask me at the manor as a part of your grand speech?”

“Because I didn’t know if Min Kanagawa knew what you were,” Juno answered, sliding into a seat. “Whatever you use to disguise yourself is powerful.”

“But evidently not enough,” Nureyev sniffed in return. Juno waved him off.

“That was a detective trick, not a failure of your magic disguise. It helped that I’d met you before. I’d say there was no way Min could’ve seen through it-”

“But it’d be foolish to assume she didn’t know what happened in her house,” Nureyev finished. Juno nodded, toasting his answer before taking another sip.

“Thank you, I suppose,” Nureyev said softly after a moment’s pause.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Juno snorted. “Besides, you’re not off the hook.” Nureyev raised an eyebrow.

“You left that safe open. Min wrote the note, sure, but she didn’t open it.” Nureyev leaned forward, resting his elbows on the counter and his chin on one manicured hand.

“Do go on, detective. I’d hate to deny you another dramatic reveal.” When he smiled this time, he made no effort to hide the sharp points of his teeth.

Juno’s mouth was suddenly dry; he took another sip of his drink before continuing.

“Miasma ran to the Kanagawa’s to avoid you--or whoever sent you after her--getting your hands on her name. You pick the locks on the safe, get interrupted, have to run- it gets left open. Min, disguised as Cass, left the window cracked and the cream out as an open invitation for the fae to come in and deal with Croesus- which looked like a perfect deal for Miasma to take. Min won’t hurt her, the manor is protected; she starts to think she’s safe for you and your lot.”

“But the devious thief found her there anyway?” Nureyev suggested innocently. Juno shot him a glare.

“And you get yourself hired as a camera man even though you have no camera experience whatsoever, because you didn’t manage to nab what it was you wanted the first time around.” Nureyev opened his mouth to argue, and Juno blundered on, unwilling to be cut off. “And Min calls me in to deal with the faerie she invited in. Miasma’s served her purpose, but Min swore not to hurt her. If I catch her and call her out for what she is, Min gets rid of her husband and the exterminator in one fell swoop, and her hands look nice and clean.” Juno was gaining speed, now standing and pacing as he explained.

“And the note?” Nureyev asked, still lounging against the counter.

“Planted to convince Miasma that you’re on her trail. That way Miasma agrees to call me—to deal with you—and Min can pretend it was Miasma’s idea all along to bring the detective in.” Juno cracked his fingers one by one, jaw tight.

“And now she can pin all the blame on other people. Miasma for being paranoid and calling me; Cass, for letting in the faerie that killed her father. None of it points back to Min.” Juno’s face burned, and he knocked back the remainder of his drink as if alcohol had ever done a thing to cool a fire.

Hands landed on his shoulders, heaving as they were. One rose to cup his jaw, fingers nimble and warm against his skin.

“You look very handsome like this, detective. Sexy, dare I say.”

“Like what?”

“Morally outraged.” His free hand migrated from Juno’s shoulder, tracing down the collar of his coat, making it lay flat. It was Juno’s turn to scoff, pulling away from Nureyev’s hands but not yet moving out of arm's reach.

“Fat lot of good it did Cass or Miasma,” he said, eyes on the ground. Nureyev took his chin again, tilting the detective’s gaze up to meet his own.

“There are not a lot of our kind with a heart like yours, Juno. Fewer still with one brave enough to wear it on their sleeve.” Rather than soften, Juno’s expression hardened, eyes narrowing.

“Who paid you to go after Miasma, Nureyev?”

Peter Nureyev chuckled, glasses sliding down his nose to reveal eyes that glinted in the dim light. Endless facets of a fresh cut sapphire, every seam sharp.

“And take all the mystery of me away, detective? How can I know for certain you’ll still chase me if I’m no longer someone you can solve?”

“I get the feeling you’ve got mysteries aplenty, Nureyev.” He shivered at his name, leaning forward to capture Juno’s mouth with his own, kissing desperately like he could scrape his own name from the detective’s mouth in the same way he stole the air from his lungs.

“I hope that’s enough of a case to keep you invested, detective,” he said, breathless as he pulled away.

And in the next breath, Peter Nureyev was gone.

Chapter Text

Juno stepped back for a few years after it happened. Didn’t return home for nearly four weeks, letting his apartment kick his stuff to the curb. He wouldn’t have had the money for the rent anyways. Wouldn’t have been able to go to work to try to make some of it up either.

It had been years since he had last drifted this way. Wandering from room to room in their little house in Oldtown. The house that was far enough out of the way to be quiet, was cheap enough to have minimal iron protection in the walls.

He was used to it being loud. To hearing doors slam, hearing Sarah’s or his own voice screeching above everything. To hearing music turned up loud to drown out the sound of shattering dishes. Even when it had been quiet, it had been anticipatory. Holding its breath, at attention. Waiting, anxiously for the next outburst.

Now it was dead. Quiet and empty in a way that burned and buzzed like static. Sarah had gone without a fight, tucked away in one of Hyperion’s jails. And Ben-

It was probably fortunate that Juno did nothing but drift during those weeks. His feet only traced old patterns, fitting into spaces where they’d already worn tracks in the carpet. It occurred to him several times that there wasn’t anything keeping him in Hyperion. More than a fair share of townsfolk would be happy to see him gone. No one had said to his face that he ought to return to the woods, not since he was young. But sometimes Juno thought that maybe, if those tracks he was following had led him into the woods, he may not have followed them back out.

He was a poor replica of Benten. Always had been, if Sarah’s immediate realization was any proof. And still, every time he found himself standing before a mirror, there was a moment
where relief sprung in his throat. Where he thought, for a moment, that it was all a bad dream.

And then he saw the point of his ears, the gold of his eyes. The undeniable proof that Benten was dead, and all that was left was this shitty copy.

(“What good are you?” Sarah had asked, pill bottle shaking in her hand. “What’s the point in looking like him after he’s gone? Don’t you have your own face?”)

He hadn’t known if he would look the same, now that Benten was gone. He didn’t know if he had ever considered it, the idea of Juno outliving Ben. He hadn’t been allowed to consider it; Juno was the extra, the spare, the collateral damage. If he was ever going to be worth anything, it was going to be because he died for Benten.

But Sarah Steel had failed at the one thing she’d ever been good at. Somewhere along the line, she stopped being able to tell her son from the changeling.

He understood, of course, that Diamond liked him for the novelty. That it was the rush of adrenaline she got from her mother’s disapproval that made it all worth it to her. Oh, she thought his golden eyes were beautiful, and she enjoyed sinking her teeth into the lobe of his pointed ear. But Diamond Hijikata knew as well as anyone in Hyperion of the danger posed by the fae.

Her method of protecting herself was just a bit different.

Before she and Juno had begun dating, Diamond had carried a sachet of St. John’s Wort and clover in each pocket, had iron rings and necklaces of every pattern to match her every mood. Even her coat had been sewn and designed to be in fashion when inside out. Captain Hijikata had spared no expense protecting her treasure.

When she’d bundled Juno into her life and home, Diamond had done away easily with the St. John’s Wort, had tucked her good coat into the back of her closet. But she still kept her iron necklaces, even when the rings were safely packed away in a jewelry box.

To her credit, she always wore them tucked under her shirt, where the metal was unlikely to come into contact with Juno’s sensitive skin. She would take them off and set them to the side table whenever they were more active in bed, even if she slipped them back on the moment they finished. Juno knew that she did all she could to avoid hurting him.

There was always a voice in the back of his head though, insisting that someone who trusted him wholly wouldn’t need an iron pendant. It was a familiar voice, almost Juno’s own. But it had never been Juno himself that argued against the cruelty Hyperion city showed him.

“You wouldn’t leave a young lady unprotected!”

(“Even you can’t go out unprotected, Lady Raincloud!”)

Diamond had first found him practicing his shots in the alley behind the HCPD office, recognizing him as her mother’s newest recruit. His eyes had been streaming, bloodshot, his hand shaking even as bottle after bottle shattered with his shots. She had tried, at first, to take the gun from his hand, convinced that, despite the leather wrapping, he was crying from the pain.

(He wasn’t, really- it had been a long time since the iron in his gun had really hurt him enough to bring tears to his eyes. He’d insisted to Ben that the pain would lessen with time, that the leather wrapping on the handle would ease the worst of it. It could have been true, when he’d said it, but it had been a long time since Juno believed either statement enough to repeat them.)

There was a version of Juno Steel that would have hit her, that would’ve fought back as she slid the gun from his hand. But he’d been a few bottles deep, a bit farther gone than he’d meant. Diamond had figured out the real problem after the gun had left his hand, after his sobs had only continued. He was her project, her fixer-upper. An exciting new adventure with pretty golden eyes.

It was only because of his shooting that they’d let him join the HCPD at all. It was the only reason they kept him at all, in those days. His hands shook too much to sign a single damn form, but his aim never wavered.

The first thing Rita did upon meeting him was spill her popcorn.

She did a few other things too- babble something about her favorite show, threw in a few awestruck comments about his eyes or his ears. It was difficult for Juno to hear back then over the roar in his ears and even more difficult after the fact given the embarrassment that clouded the memory. Suddenly he had been small again, kneeling on the shitty linoleum of their kitchen, counting beans or rice or whatever else Sarah had spilled while drunk or yelling this time. Mayve Sarah was standing over him, still screeching about how he’d ruined their lives, how he was a poor copy, how he was bleeding them dry like the leech he was. Or maybe Benten was behind him, pulling Juno back into his lap, trying to straighten his spine so it wouldn’t ache when he was finally allowed to stop counting. His hands stung sympathetically, remembering when the jar had fallen along with the chocolate chips kept inside, and he’d been forced to count even as the glass shards cut his palms. Benten had done his best to remove most of them after that had happened, but he’d only been seven at the time, and Juno had had to go to the nurse afterwards anyways when the cuts had gotten infected.

In the end, he was on the floor of the HCPD, Rita sitting criss-crossed opposite him. Her earrings and socks both jingled with the clatter of plastic beads as she shifted closer. Juno put his head in his hands.

“Pretty sure that’s the worst I ever done at meeting someone for the first time,” Rita said solemnly.

“Can’t say this is my best either,” he mumbled between his fingers. He could hear Rita’s hands flapping on the other side of his fingers, could vaguely make out where she was sorting through the beads hemmed into her socks with her fingers.

“Oh gosh, no, Mistah Steel-” she stammered. “It was all my fault really. I was just too excited--got all clumsy with it--and then I didn’t know what to do, and you were just sitting there-”

“Rita-”

“And I just felt real bad, and I;m sure you were feeling way way way worse-”

“Rita!” It came out as a yell. It didn't help that his little episode still had the image of Sarah Steel so close to the front of his mind; there was only one thing he knew how to do when faced with her.

“Just…” he breathed, scooping up the pile of spilled popcorn and kernels (46 pieces in all, he knew now) and depositing them in a nearby wastebasket. “You can just leave me if that happens again.”

“Aren’t you like, stuck there counting until it’s all done?” Rita asked quietly, slowly getting back to her feet. “Wouldn’t it go faster if someone could help?” She offered Juno a hand as he continued trying to stand himself. He ignored her, gripping onto the nearest desk as he cracked his spine back into submission, standing as straight as he could usually manage.

“Doesn’t work that way,” Juno answered gruffly. “You’re more likely to make me lose count than anything else.” Rita looked crestfallen, eyes huge and shining behind her glasses.

“You don’t have to worry about it, Rita,” he sighed out. “It’s stupid changeling bullshit- not in your job description.”

“Next time it happens, can I still sit with you?” Rita burst out, almost shaking with the force. Her hands were clenched in tiny fists. “You just- you looked real far away, just then. It just ain’t right, letting you sit there all sad like that.”

“Sure, Rita. Your time to waste.”

“Uh huh. Can you hear me when you get like that?” Rita continued, already guiding him down the halls of the HCPD.

As much as Juno hated it--as often as he pitched a fit like he so often did when his vulnerabilities were on display--it slowly became routine. It didn’t happen often, thank god; Rita quickly got good at not spilling her snacks or at least at hiding her mess-ups until she could clean them herself.

But it didn’t save him entirely. More than once he’d pissed off another officer enough that they’d conveniently knock over a cup of pens for the excuse to laugh at him. Once he’d even been pinned to the floor for hours, long past his shift should’ve ended, counting out hundreds of rice grains that smushed against his fingers as he went. It had been disgusting, dirty work, and he’d had to wash his for what felt like ages afterwards to get the feeling of dusty, cold rice from his fingers.

Rita had sat with him the entire time, recounting the plots of her streams as he counted. He barely heard a word, much less understood them, but it wasn’t like he usually did. And it certainly wasn’t something Sarah Steel would have done, and Rita’s voice didn’t have a thing in common with hers. As far as he may have drifted, Rita did what she could to pull him back. She carried eye drops and forced them into his hands because she’d seen too many times how bloodshot his got after so long barely blinking in case he lost count. The other officers slowly learned not to pick on Juno where Rita could see them, at the very least to avoid her lengthy admonishments.

Juno had been drunk when he’d first met Diamond Hijikata. He was drunk the last time he saw her too.

“You’re not making this very easy on me, doll,” Diamond had said, door cracked open with her willowy form blocking most of the light from inside.

“Diamond,” he had breathed, distantly aware of how his breath must have reeked of drink. Even with his vision tinged faintly red with the rage that had been steering him for so many days on end, he was still breathless at the sight of her, still blinded by the way the light behind her haloed her white hair.

“Why are you here, Juno? You know you’re not allowed.” Her arms were crossed, make-up impeccable even with the way her eyes seemed shiny with tears. The desperate childish part of Juno loved that parallel- the way her makeup was flawless while his was smeared, days old. It was proof that she was in the wrong, that he was the victim; after all, who but a villain came out of combat so pristine, so unmarred? The good guy always took a few hits, came out scuffed up. He took that story and wrapped his wounds with it, ignoring the places his bandages were threadbare and weak.

“I just-” he began, trailing off. What had he meant by coming here? When he’d imagined it on the walk over, he’d pictured a fight, an argument. Screaming and cursing- a few punches if he was lucky. But all the malice had been dragged out of him, left alongside his reputation in the dirt. “We let him die.”

“We didn’t ‘let’ him do anything, doll,” Diamond said, eyes sad but not red-ringed like Juno’s. “You did what you could. He could have been anywhere in the woods by then.”

Juno could feel the clicks of gears as his brain turned that sentence over, information processing slow as sludge.

“You knew where they were taking him?” he stammered out, the wreath of light behind Diamond turning painful. He turned his gaze to the well-lit street beyond instead. “You knew where they were going when we lost him?”

“What would you have done?” Diamond pleaded, stepping forward and reaching out to him. Juno staggered back away from her grasp. “Fought them off all on your own, one on who knows how many? You’d get yourself killed like that.”

“Someone did get killed, Di!”

“And it wasn’t you, Juno!” she shot back, letting the door hang open behind her. Juno had half a mind to push his way in, find Captain Hijikata and see what screams he had left for her. But Diamond’s hand on his shoulder had him rooted to the spot, his mind miles away by now.
“Come on- You’re not supposed to come inside, but I know how to sneak you past Mom. We’ll get you cleaned up, okay?”

“How can you live with her?” Juno mumbled, slumping in her grasp. “Knowing that she sent that man to the woods to die?” Diamond’s expression turned pitying.

“Where else would I go, Juno? At least I know I’m safe- we could be safe. I don’t think she’d set you back up at the HCPD, but maybe, if you took it all back-”

“Safe?” Juno spat, ripping himself out of her grasp. “Don’t you care?”

“Of course I care!” Diamond cried back, volume rising to meet Juno’s. “But I can’t help anyone if I run away now! Do you know why my mother feeds people to the woods rather than dealing with them another way?” Her hands had migrated to her hips. “It’s a sacrifice, Juno. One person every once in a while to keep all of Hyperion safe. To keep the children from being taken.” Juno took a step back. Diamond pursued, the door swinging almost closed behind her.

“I thought I knew you,” Juno muttered. “How long have you known about this? How long have you been lying about this?” Diamond paused, anger bleeding away for pity yet again.

“I haven’t been lying,” she said softly. “You’ve just learned more.”

He hadn’t seen her since.

Chapter Text

Her mouth always tasted of blood these days.

Some days it was a comfort- a small relief from several years gone without food. Other days it was a constant rain of iron and viscera down the back of her throat, staining the root of her tongue. Leaving her on the brink of nausea as if there had been anything in her stomach in recent memory.

Most of the other humans she saw on a daily basis had long since given up on that much. The fact that time didn’t pass for them while they remained in the courts didn’t protect them from the mounting hunger. Didn’t mean the thirst didn’t scar their throats raw. But it wouldn’t kill her. She wouldn’t age, wouldn’t wither and die from going years without food or water.

She would live. That was how the Unseelie Court functioned- no one here could kill her, save herself.

They’d nearly gotten her a few times. Hallucinations, elaborate ploys. She wasn’t used to not trusting her vision. A lifetime spent with the Sight had given her the impression that what she saw was always the truth, the most reliable vision of those around her. No illusions could fool her, no faerie glamorous could mislead her. But that couldn’t protect her from exhaustion, from overwork and heat, from delirium as the dehydration set in. Couldn’t beat the hallucinogenic effects of the haze of pollen and flowers and faerie wine that hung thick in the air and her lungs. They didn’t need to waste their precious illusions on their captives; they had far more mundane means for that.

She knew she had a name, knew it was the most precious thing she had. It made her laugh sometimes, that her name was all she had to her name. She always quashed that laughter quickly. Compared to the delicate mocking laugh of the fae, her laughter felt coarse, unnatural. Every noise she made felt out of place, too flawed and organic amongst the chiming words around her. Plus, the laughter caused the higher ups in the court to look at her, and nothing good ever came of their attentions.

She had done everything in her power to make sure they couldn’t change her. No, she certainly wasn’t the woman she had been before, but she wasn’t anything new either. Even if they managed to strip her away layer by layer, they never managed to leave anything behind. The other prisoners all warped, reshaping into creatures with long limbs and sharp ears. Gradually progressing from tortured to torturer. She didn’t know what kept her human, whether it was her refusal to eat the food or the fact that she still held her name.

She knew she still had her name- knew it even if she refused to think it for fear of her mind being invaded by her captors. And she wished she could say it was her clever mind and strong will that kept her name safe and out of their grasp. Still, there was something else, some seal for the Unseelie to snarl at every time they attempted to drag her name from her lips. But it wouldn’t make sense for someone else to hold her name; if her name belonged to someone, then why wouldn’t she be with them, suffering under their sway rather than here? She couldn’t think of an explanation that made it all make sense.

Even so, she thought she might remember who really held her name sometimes when she woke to a swirl of red and orange leaves, but the madness of the courts swept her away before her lips ever managed to form the name.

-

Juno had tailed enough people to know when he was being followed. Whoever this lug was, he’d been on Juno’s case for maybe two days before it was impossible to ignore him any longer.

So naturally, when Juno felt least like dealing with a stalker, the man finally caught up to him for a chat.

“Big guy like you follows a lady around, makes me think of all sorts of dangerous things,” Juno drawled, picking himself up from the dirt outside the outer boundary of the woods. He slid his jacket back to display the weapon holstered at his side.

“That was not my intention,” the large figure answered, raising up the lantern he held at his side. His face was grizzled, in need of a shave for the rough white stubble there. He had his head tilted to look down at Juno, his expression nonchalant as if he hadn’t just seen Juno thrown bodily from the woods and land gracelessly with his ass in the dirt. Juno tried to subtly brush any dust he could from the rear of his coat.

“To attack me or to scare me?”

“Neither, though I apologize if I have done the latter.”

“You know, if you’re trying to hire a detective, I keep an office, Juno grumbled, crossing his arms while adjusting his stance, tipping a let forward to keep his holster in view.

“I am aware,” the man agreed, the hand not holding the lantern kept secure in his jacket pocket. It was a good coat- some kind of leather or hide, obviously old and well-loved in the oiled seams. “I am also aware that most of what you do there is drink, and I did not wish to discuss with you while you were either drunk or hungover. You do very competent detective work when you are out of your office, and it is for those skills I wish to speak with you.”

Juno’s scowl dropped into an open mouthed stare.

“I also decided to approach you now rather than tomorrow morning in your office because you seem to be lost and in need of aid,” he elaborated after a pause.

“First of all, I’m not lost,” Juno began, aghast. “I’ve just… hit a dead end in a case.”

“I’m surprised that you can say that, given that you haven’t been contracted for any case that involves the revel you were just evicted from.”

“Well you’re really blunt for a human, so-” Juno spat back.

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t mean that as a compliment!”

“I am well aware,” the man in the jacket agreed. “But I do make an effort to be as honest as possible as a courtesy to friends of mine who are fae and therefore cannot lie, so I appreciate the recognition of my efforts.”

“Huh,” Juno breathed, slumping slightly. “You’re- welcome?”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, not doing that- So you were following me to… hire me?”

“My friend was considering hiring your services, yes.”

“And they didn’t, I don’t know, consider coming to my offices for that because…”

“She is not welcome in Hyperion for reasons I’m sure you are sympathetic to.” He paused again. “And to avoid making this conversation unnecessarily long-”

“Too late,” Juno grumbled under his breath.

“-I will answer what I expect to be your next question; I chose to tail you in order to ensure her faith in you was not misplaced.”

“And am I worthy?” Juno asked sardonically, shoulders tightening inwards. The man tilted his head further.

“I am still unsure. But you are getting nowhere where you are at currently, and I am at least assured that the greatest threat you pose to us is wasting our time.”

“What- hey!”

“If you are interested in taking her case, I would ask that you come with me now.”

The sun rose as the man in the jacket led Juno through the woods. It wasn’t close to morning, even if the absence of conversation (Not due to a lack of effort on Juno’s part) made the minutes stretch to hours. And even if the trees hadn’t obscured the sky above them, it would be obvious that this wasn’t a true sunrise. It wasn’t that the sun was moving in the sky; they were. Not in the expected the-planet-spinning-on-its-axis way, but specifically Juno and the man in the jacket, walking so fast it seemed the sun was chasing them, following their terrestrial path from its spot in the sky.

It was late afternoon when they reached their destination. The sun was as round and gold in the sky as the curled leaves crunching underfoot, the semi-pleasant smell of autumn rot in the air. Juno’s guide came to a sudden halt, causing Juno to nearly collide with his solid frame.

“What’s the-“

A woman—a fae woman, angular and lithe and visibly non-threatening, not that it meant anything with the fae—had joined them in the small clearing. More specifically she had entered from a tree itself, parting from the trunk like she was stepping through a beaded curtain, hands exiting first to part the way. Juno did his best to stop his mouth from hanging open, but it had been a rough, if short, day.

“Very flattering, darling,” she said, smiling a fas-sharp smile that would’ve sent nine out of ten Hyperion residents running and brought the tenth to their knees. “My friend here didn’t put you through too much, I hope.” She brushed a hand against her curling bangs, pointedly not displacing them from where they covered half of her face. Every careful curl was the same color as the leaves caught in them- somehow gold and red and every fiery shade in between. Juno met her single visible eye, trying to pull what information he could from her coppery gaze. He flipped back to look at the human who had walked him here.

“Did you know-“ he began, beginning to pace around the clearing, swinging each step out wide as he could. Keeping the fae woman in his peripheral even when his back was all but turned to her. “-That most fae are so used to humans being unable to read their facial expressions because of their fae features…” He spun back to face the fae woman, his head cocked forward accusatorily while she smirked at him amusedly. “That they don’t make any effort to actually mask their face?”

She raised an eyebrow, chuckling warmly.

“Tell me Detective Steel- which of my bluffs are you calling?”

Juno considered. “None of them, yet.”

“Well then, allow me.” She turned and waved for Juno and her friend in the jacket to follow her, then disappeared inside the tree again. Juno approached the tree, doing a quick circle around its base, running a hand around it as he did so. The bark was rough, peeling off in rough blackened sheets that crinkled and caught at the edges.

“How do we..?” he asked, looking up at the face of the man in the jacket far above him. Juno found his shoulders suddenly seized, and before he could react his face was inches away from being intimately acquainted with the trunk of the tree. He clenched his eyes shut, preparing for the familiar crunch of a truly broken nose that never came.

Instead he cautiously opened his eyes to the interior of a small room, the walls the same wood of the tree trunk outside and complete with a wallpapering of that peeling bark. The whole room was lit with the flickering golden glow of a campfire, though there was no visible source, and the smell of autumn rot was even thicker in the air.

“Take a seat,” the fae woman said, head resting on a curled hand. She was seated on a rather simple wood chair like it was a throne, a set of small glass goblets on the table before her. With her seated and Juno standing, he should have felt the power of being taller, of looking down at her, but it felt like a sin instead. As if he were being rude by standing in her presence.

Juno took the seat opposite her, moving slowly with choreographed caution.

“My friend here found you after you were thrown out of a new moon revel where you were pressing the wrong people for information, is that correct?” she asked innocently, tilting her head forward curiously. “Which leads me to the assumption you’ve been keeping track of some of the stranger occurrences in my ‘neck’ of Hyperion, so to speak.” She pushed forward the proffered glass with the flat side of her nails, deep red liquid sloshing and glinting gold in the light. Juno eyed it, running a finger around the misshapen amber glass base.

“Oh come on darling, I have no reason to poison you.”

“That-“ Juno said, picking up the glass and gesturing at her with it, “is a very specific way of phrasing that conveniently doesn’t mention if this is poisoned.” He took a long swig anyways, only allowing himself a moment to savor the heavy mulled sweetness before knocking it back. It was never smart to let himself get used to the luxuries of real fae food. Juno threw his legs up on the table, crossing one over the other and drawing attention to where his jeans were splattered with mud at the hems. The woman toasted him in turn, taking a fair more respectable—though certainly not reserved—sip.

“I’m glad to see you’re exactly what I believed you to be, Juno.”

“Oh, are we on first name basis?” Juno retorted, leaning in with a smirk. “I’d hate to be left out.” She returned his smile with a bright chuckle, resettling her glass and threading her fingers.

“You can call me Buddy.”

“Buddy?” Juno snorted. “I don’t think we’re friends quite yet, lady-“

“She is letting you call her that because it is her name,” came a voice from behind them. Juno jumped, almost kicking his cup over as he glanced over to see the man in the jacket standing behind him.

“Not all of it, mind,” Buddy corrected. “But yes, it is very much my name.”

“Right,” Juno breathed, tone flat. He decided to test the waters. “Strange occurrences, you said? Like all the unaffiliated fae fleeing to Hyperion city?”

“Not to mention all the chaos at the half moon revel last month,” she added. Juno suppressed a shudder.

“Yeah, I got up close and personal with that one,” he agreed, washing his mouth out with another swig of mead.

“I thought you might have,” Buddy continued. “It’s part of what put you on my watch, to be frank. You saved the life of an informant of mine, by the way- she’s quite grateful.”

“A lot of others weren’t,” Juno grumbled.

-

The Autumn Court of Unseelie made Buddy’s little clearing smell like a pumpkin spice candle by comparison. It was the same dead leaves and old wood and damp earth smell dialed up to eleven. Juno found his lungs spluttering on reflex, so used to dust in the air being a sign of any of Hyperion City’s anti-fae precautions. Unlike the Winter Court, suspended in an unending state of twilight, the Autumn Court was caught in perpetual sunset without a sun in sight. Just an inescapable sky of blazing vermillion caught behind a thicket of leaves.

“‘Won’t stick out,’” he muttered under his breath, jaw grit tight in frustration. Every figure around him was bedecked and glittering in every color that nature could think to break out for the season. It was a big part of why Juno hated visiting any of the Courts themselves. The revels were one thing- none of these types would be caught dead at a moon phase revel. The fae who attended those were weird, sure, but they were much closer to Juno’s type of weird. Those fae didn’t scoff at him, didn’t stare at him from the corner of their eye and mutter about human stench. They didn’t shuffle carefully away when he approached.

Thankfully the gown Buddy had laced him into did a lot in the way of keeping them away, mostly by virtue of having a skirt so damn wide they couldn’t have approached if they tried.

The lord of the Autumn Court--second only to the Unseelie King--wasn’t terribly difficult to pick from the crowd, dragging as much velvet behind him as Juno. He didn’t have a throne; according to Buddy, it was because it wasn’t worth the risk of offending the Unseelie King by ‘presenting himself in such a grand manner.’

“The Courts are all politics, you understand,” Buddy had told him, swirling the liquid in her goblet and contemplating it like it offered a solution other than alcohol. “Autumn and Spring particularly. Always maintaining a fine balance between quality and poverty- better than the unaffiliated, but not so good as to threaten their respective monarchs. Everyone in power in those courts is perhaps half the strength of their counterpart in Winter or Summer, and they know it- and then they make up for it in desperation and ferocity.”

“Noted,” Juno nodded. “And you need me for this-”

“Well, our friend here sticks out like a sore thumb, so despite my faith in his skills, I can’t send him into the Autumn Court.”

“And you think I’ll stick out any less-”

“A fae changeling and Unseelie at that? Yes, Juno, you’ll blend in far better.”

“But you’re actually-” Juno gestured desperately. “Autumn-like.” Buddy chuckled.

“You’re not wrong,” she agreed. “I am a native of the Autumn Court. I am also, however, banished from Court proceedings and excluded completely from their protections.”

And that put Juno here, lurking just on the fringes while the Autumn Court prepared to welcome a guest. From the whispers he was picking up, whoever this guest was had requested the audience with the Unseelie King. But, as Juno was gathering, the Unseelie King wouldn’t do anything himself when he could make the Autumn Lord do it instead. It made the general energy of the Court tense and vaguely irritated, crackling in the air like flame. There was nothing quite as unsettling as the taste of smoke on the air inside a house of dead and dying leaves.

Juno watched the Autumn Lord, keeping the antlered form in his peripheral at all times.

That was, until he saw the Autumn Court welcome in their guest.

The crowd cut a clear path for their Lord and their guest, pulling a set of seats from somewhere Juno couldn’t see--his eyes were caught and holding strong on the figure taking a seat beside the Autumn Lord.

“So, what is it I’d be doing in the Autumn Court?” Juno posited, discarding his empty goblet and uncrossing his legs. “And how would I be paid?” Buddy steepled her fingers.

“I have informants in the Winter Court telling me that a human has requested an audience with the Unseelie King. Following proper protocol and practices, as I hear.”

“But you’re asking me to go to Autumn.”

“Yes. Said human has implied they have a connection with the recent… occurrences. Obviously the Unseelie King wasn’t about to take any risks in inviting a potentially dangerous human into his court.”

“So he’s using the Autumn Court as what, a test run?” Juno asked incredulously. “And you want me in the middle of it?”

“You do have a history of surviving and even stopping these disasters,” the man in the jacket pointed out. Juno scoffed, stammering for a moment before going silent with a grumble.

“Have there been any other events like the one at the half moon revel?” he asked suddenly, spine going stiff and boots sliding off the table. Buddy and the man in the jacket exchanged glances. “C’mon, just one incident in a revel shouldn’t shake the Unseelie King.”

“There have been two others,” Buddy confirmed, rising to stand. “One on the outskirts of the Autumn Court that was not dissimilar to your encounter and the other not far from the Spring Court itself. There was no Juno Steel there to stop it, so not much information has been recovered about that particular event.” Juno’s stomach crumpled, and his posture must’ve shrunk to match it, as he felt a firm hand balance itself on the chair back behind him.

“We can offer you a favor in return for your services,” the man in the jacket said, voice still a rumbling monotone. “But from what we know of you, the opportunity to save innocent people and the answers to the questions you have will both be enough to convince you to help.”

“Maybe I can’t help anyone,” Juno muttered back. “Maybe I’m not the horse to bet on.”

“What had you seeking audience with the Unseelie King?” the Lord of Autumn asked calmly, hands with too many joints folded serenely in his lap.

“I’m here to issue an ultimatum,” Sasha Wire said calmly, posture ramrod straight to match the fae lord.

Chapter Text

She’d tried to escape a few times before, she was fairly certain. It was in her nature to fight back, she knew that much. And she certainly had the memories of escape attempts, but memory didn’t mean much when seeing wasn’t truth. The farthest she’d gotten, the farthest she remembered getting was all the way out of the court, into the part of the forest where the sky was truly dark. She had paused then, panting for breath with her hands on her knees, finally realizing that she didn’t know where to go from here. There was somewhere she was meant to be, somewhere she missed. Somewhere that maybe even missed her.

And suddenly there had been nowhere else she could go, even if she didn’t know the way home. Even when her mind hadn’t cleared enough to remember where home was.

They’d caught up to her not long after, laughing as she screamed and clawed and bit and fought against the fae dragging her back. They’d even thanked her for such a lovely hunt.

But she wouldn’t put it past them to implant false memories, make her hallucinate a failed escape to dissuade her from trying again.

“Besides,” a voice in her head whispered, shimmery soft and roiling like silk, “Past failures don’t prevent future success.”

She clutched tight to the stolen blade she had squirreled away. It wasn’t pure iron, wasn’t more than three or four inches in length. The handle was wrapped and ornate, the blade too pretty to have ever seen blood, much less battle. But it would do the trick.

She held it tight, and she waited.

-

Sasha Wire hadn’t changed in the 15 years since Juno had last seen her. Sure, she was less soft in the face, her eyes dogged by heavy bags and lines. But she had the same straight backed posture, the same broad but sharp shoulders and perfect angled hair.

Juno had assumed she’d left Hyperion, had gotten out of here like the Oldtown Trio had always dreamed. Done what Juno would never be able to do, what Mick didn’t have the funds or the nerve for. He had been almost grateful, between bouts of depressed jealousy, that one of them had actually made it out. But no: Here she was, face impassive as she threatened the Lord of the Autumn Court.

“An ultimatum?” he chuckled, one hand stroking his mane of crunching brown leaves while the other curled tight around the gnarled staff he held at his side. “Tell me, human child, what threat you think you pose to the autumn court.”

Sasha sighed again, tone heart-wrenching familiar from every time Juno had heard it in response to one of Mick’s schemes.

“I know you’re aware of the recent attacks made against the fae of these woods.”

“I would be, yes,” the Lord agreed, face shifting impassive. “And you would claim to be responsible?”

“You don’t believe me,” Sasha responded with corresponding bluntness.

“I hope you don’t take offense,” The Autumn Lord assured her, a small smile on his lips revealing jagged brown teeth, sharp as splinters.

“No, I did expect that,” she agreed, unfolding her hands. Juno, unable to wrench his eyes from where she said, watched her palm something she’d sneakily pulled from her pocket. He went tense, beginning to push through the crowd.

“Humans have a history of lying to us, you understand,” The Autumn Lord continued, smile the same as the one every Oldtown Elementary teacher had given Juno while watching him struggle. “Many are eager to take advantage of our honesty.”

“And you assumed a mere human couldn’t have access to the magic used in the recent attacks,” Sasha pressed, eyebrows raised. Juno shoved further into the crowd, pausing every few seconds to strain to see above horned and antennaed heads.

The Autumn Lord leaned in, head tilted like a curious stag. “You call them attacks. Are you admitting to attacking the fae courts of Hyperion?” His staff dipped forward, the jagged bottom tip dragging through the mud and leaves. Sasha sighed again, and Juno had to pause to take a breath.

“Admitting to something isn’t really the intended goal of meeting you here today,” Sasha began, talking while her hands waved in a stilted, unnatural way.

“Yes, your… ultimatum.”

“Not only am I taking my deserved credit for the attacks,” Sasha continued, louder than before to cut off The Autumn Lord’s attempts at interrupting. “-But I am promising to inflict more, this time closer to the heart of the courts if my demands aren’t met.”

The Autumn Lord threw his head back and laughed, the sight of splintered wooden teeth accompanied by the sound of wood warping, a crackling laughter like the shattering of branches.

“The courts of Hyperion will not accept any demand from a human child.”

Sasha’s grin tightened, the same lowering of her brow and thinning of her lips that Juno knew meant she was steeling herself. He broke through the crowd at the same time as someone else leapt from it opposite him. They met eyes for half a second, Juno and this woman with wild eyes, green hair, and what seemed to be some sort of ceremonial dagger clutched in her hand. For a moment, Juno hoped she would help him, would grab The Autumn Lord from where she stood behind him while Juno did the same to Sasha. Who knew what Sasha Wire was planning to do; Juno had only seen that look of stern determination a handful of times, and each was accompanied by a memory he’d rather forget.

But then the green-haired woman--a human, Juno realized with a jolt of shock--raised her knife, teeth grit and bared, and Juno was moving without knowing what choice he was making.

A pinch of pain above his left hip followed by an immediate insurmountable blossom of burning pain, a sun with a stab wound epicenter. Juno grappled for it blindly, eyesight still bloated with pain, and his hands found the hilt of the ceremonial dagger just in time for the human to pull it free, searing his fingers with the taste of iron.

“What the fuck are you doing?” the woman bit out, sneer momentarily disrupted. The Autumn Lord echoed her question on a second of a delay, though without the profanity, and turned back over his shoulder to see where Juno stood between him and his would-be-assassin.

“Juno?” Sasha said, voice higher in her confusion. From the corner of his eyes, Juno could see her rise to her feet, one hand still folded close. But the wound under his hand was still dribbling blood, inconsistently cauterized by the iron burns, and his vision was still blurred with pain. Plus experience had taught him better than to let the woman who had stabbed him out of his line of sight.

“Hold on,” Juno managed, throwing out a hand and taking a woozy step back to bring everyone into view. “Let’s all take a second-”

The green-haired woman lunged at The Autumn Lord, knife raised and still wet with Juno’s blood. The part of Juno still woozy with pain wondered if his blood type would be compatible with The Autumn Lord, or if that kind of thing wasn’t a problem for the fae.

But before the knife could be rehomed in The Autumn Lord’s heart, he stumbled back into Sasha’s grasp. With the moment of distraction as leverage, Sasha wrenched The Autumn Lord’s staff from his hand, sending him crashing to the ground with both humans looking down on him.

“Wire, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Juno snapped. “You’re killing people!”

“You wouldn’t understand, Juno,” Sasha said, staff tight in one hand and who-knows-what held tight in her other. “You’re only interested in sacrifice when you’re the one making it.”

“She doesn’t leave here alive!” The Autumn Lord bellowed, snarling and slowly hefting himself to a standing position. Before he could make it to his feet, Sasha lifted his staff, bringing its rough edge down into his upper chest. She curled her other hand around it, pressing the scrap of cloth she held into the wood, and she pushed.

The sharpened point of the staff punched through his chest with a crunch like broken canvas, his skin immediately peeling back like old bark, coiling into thick spirals. Bones snapped with the sound of burning timber. He gave a final heave of breath, and with it came a wave of decay, moisture leaching from his skin and his eyes going creamy with cataracts before receding back into his skull.

“For what it’s worth, Juno,” Sasha said, standing unphased by the sudden dryness and taste of death in the air. “I really do hope you make it out of here.”

Juno grappled through his skirts for his gun, tearing layers of tulle in his haste. The material caught and pulled on his skin as his hands dried, tightening and constricting and stinging when he tried to move,

“What are you doing?” the green-haired woman snapped, grabbing Juno’s arm gruffly as he raised his gun. Sasha had vanished sometime in the interim, leaving only Juno, the woman, and the desiccated Autumn Lord in the center of the Court. Everyone else had fallen in a crooked starburst, caught mid-flee by whatever spell Sasha had enacted. Their skin was as dead and dry as Juno’s, their muscles tailing as they went taut against skin that tore like paper at the pressure.

“It worked… last time…” Juno managed, the words carving their way through his desert of a throat. He fumbled for the trigger, aiming the shot with eyes that hurt to blink.

The bullet made a hollow of The Autumn Lord’s face, bone crumbling away to sand, but the air was as dead and dry as before.

“Great, he’s more dead,” the woman snapped. “Are you coming, or am I leaving you?”

Juno turned to look at her- cheeks still red with emotion, skin wrinkled but no more than it had been before.

“Are humans unaffected?” he wondered aloud. She growled at him, seizing his wrist instead.

“Unless you know some magic to fix this, we need to run now.”

“Your knife-” Juno tried. “It’s iron-”

She began to pull, walking through the graveyard that the Autumn Court had become like it was nothing. Juno stumbled after her, each heaving breath scorching his lungs.

“Everyone else-”

“You’re lucky I’m saving you!” she countered. She spared a look back at Juno, readjusting her grip so as not to pull the skin off his hand like a glove. “We don’t have time.”

Juno hadn’t been fond of the Autumn Court and its thick smell of rot and decay before, but that was at least the smell of life. It had been the smell of decomposition, of wet leaves and mud, scavengers and fungi and insects. Now the ground was dust beneath his feet, leaves already trampled into nonexistence. As for the other things on the ground- Juno didn’t want to think about them. Besides, it took all his focus to keep his feet moving. If it weren’t for the human woman dragging him along, he was certain he’d be joining the bodies on the ground.

A hand curled around his ankle, bringing him to a stumble and jerking the human in front of him to a stop.

“What?” she hissed, but Juno’s eyes were stuck on the body on the ground.

Their skin was sucked tight into their skull, and the pair of spider-like pincers that curled from their lips looked deflated, wrinkled. Their eight eyes would have been swimming in their face had there been a drop of moisture left to their name.

“Get up,” Juno urged, barely a rasp of his voice left. He clumsily extended his free hand.

But their face was twisting in disgust, skin cracking at every corner with the attempt.

“I’d rather die as my own kind than live as a human,” they hissed, and with a final tug from the woman in front of him, Juno resumed his graceless departure.

They were several yards out of the reach of the spell before Juno got the woman to stop. His knees gave out before he managed to get any of the words out.

“What now?” she’d bit out, her grip and momentum nearly snapping Juno’s arm from its socket.

“We’re good,” Juno mouthed, wheezing. He gave her a weak thumbs up, gulping in huge breaths of air that was downright swamp-like compared to where they’d been before. “Out of range.”

Her shoulders sagged in relief, and she dropped to sit alongside Juno, also panting.

“You sure?” she asked. When he nodded, she dropped her head back, letting her eyes flick closed.

“Why’d you save me?” Juno managed once his throat felt less like sandpaper. With how hard she was still breathing, it took him a second to recognize her shrug.

“A few reasons, probably,” she muttered. “Didn’t think you save yourself, for one.”

“Felt bad for stabbing me?” Juno offered.

“Shit!” she swore, eyes fluttering shut. “Forgot about that.” Juno coughed out a laugh, rubbing his throat soothingly.

“It’s fine,” he wheezed. “Iron cauterized it.” She looked at him with doubt visible in her eyes.

“How can you even say that?” Juno shrugged.

“Maybe the adrenaline hasn’t worn off.” The woman ‘hrmphed’ in response, bracing herself with one hand against a tree and clambering back to her feet. Juno groaned, still feeling like a raisin way past its prime.

“Five more minutes,” Juno whined hopefully, batting his eyes despite the audible dry clicking they made.

“Listen, you may be new here, but I’m not taking the risk of getting dragged back there,” she snapped.

“Dragged back by who?” Juno retorted, lip curled. “The mummified victims back there? Don’t think they’ll be running any time soon.”

(His fault, his fault, he could’ve saved them-)

“Yeah, but I know better than to trust my safety to that shit,” she was snarling down at Juno, posture military stiff as she glared down her crooked nose at him. She still had the ceremonial dagger grasped firmly in a fist at her side. Not raised, not battle-ready, but never too far from either. Prepared. Strung taut as a tripwire just waiting for Juno to step in the wrong direction. “Listen- your kind likes deals. How about this; I saved your life getting you out of there, and now you owe me. Get me out of here, and we’ll call it even.” She indicated the woods around them with knifepoint.

“You’ve been there a long while, huh?” She blinked, shoulders sliding back in surprise.

“I don’t know,” she answered, crossing her arms and breaking his gaze. “Felt like it.”

“But who knows what they might be making you feel,” Juno admitted, climbing to his feet despite the zinging lightening of pains as he did. “Yeah, alright. Call it a deal. Got a destination in mind?”

(If he could still do good, he could save her- If he saved her that meant he could still do good)

(If he could still do good, then he had failed everyone else back there.)

Her face scrunched into an expression one part snarl and one part consideration. “Yeah,” she finally admitted. “But I wouldn’t know how to get there.”

“Great news then,” Juno tried, smiling, and her eyes flicked to him in a look that burned like iron. “I only know how to get one place from here anyways.” Her expression stayed threatening.

“And how do I know this isn’t another one of their tricks? Maybe you’re going to guide me right back the way we came and trap me again.” Juno paused, licking his incredibly chapped lips like he had spit enough to spare.

“I promise that if this is a trick, you can stab me again.” Her lips curled again in that shape of baffled frustration that Juno was pretty sure contained some mild amusement this time around.

“You do realize that doesn’t mean anything if this isn’t real,” she rasped slowly. Juno waved her off, lifting an eyebrow cockily.

“Yea, but would one of those court fae really say that?”

She muttered angrily under her breath, something along the lines of ‘stupid reason’ and ‘don’t trust you,’ but she began to follow as Juno walked, so he counted it as a win.

They made it a few weak steps into the woods, Juno stumbling and staggering like he was drunker than he’d ever been since high school. The human began to shiver as they well and truly exited the protective warmth of the Autumn Court.

“Hey, I didn’t hear your name-” Juno asked casually, mostly out of concern that she’d drop dead of exhaustion if he didn’t keep her awake. At first, when the only response he could was a low growl and a pause in her footsteps, he thought she might have already collapsed. But when he turned to look at her head on, he saw she’d just stopped, feet planted firmly but still shivering in the wind like a sapling in a storm.

“Fae are all the fucking same,” she snarled, thrusting her dagger out between them. Juno took a step away as fast as his overtaxed muscles would allow and threw his hands up in surrender. “Not enough that I saved you- you want payment for guiding me out of the woods. Can’t help yourself from trying to trap me yourself.”

“No-” Juno explained, too tired to even sound frantic as he shuffled back. “That’s-”

“That’s why you stood out so much from the others, why you talk so strangely-” She advanced slowly.

“Listen, I just meant-”

“That’s your thing, isn’t it? Lull me into a false sense of security by acting human-”

“I don’t want your name!” Juno spat, scrubbing a hand over his face. “For fuck’s sake, I just want something to call you!”

“A likely story.”

“I literally cannot lie! What do you want me to say?” She huffed at him, teeth still bared as she lowered her knife.

“Doesn’t matter,” she muttered, resuming her pace while Juno blinked at her in shock. “I don’t know it either, so it’s not like you could even steal it.”

“You don’t know it?” Juno asked, shuffling as quick as he could muster to catch up. “Like someone else has it?”

“Probably,” she said, arms wrapped around herself for warmth. Juno wished his coat wasn’t back with Buddy at the tree so he could offer it. Then he decided he was thankful not to have the option. She’d probably try to strangle him with it if he offered his jacket like some schmuck from Rita’s streams.

“Not the Autumn Court, though,” Juno probed. “Or it would’ve been way harder to get you out.:

“Nah,” she answered. “None of them ever got it out of me.”

“So you don’t know who does have it?”

“I’m not talking about this with you.” Her eyes were fixed straight ahead on their route through the trees, shoulders hunched.

“Okay, new topic; what do I call you?”

“I don’t know, what do I call you?”

“Uh uh,” Juno countered, waggling a finger. “I asked first.” She clenched her jaw in a frown.

“Doctor.”

“Do you actually have a medical license?” Juno asked curiously. “Or more like ‘What’s up, Doc?’” She glared at him again. “Fine, fine- Juno Steel, private eye. Pleasure to meet you.” He held out a hand for her to shake.

‘Doc’ snorted out a laugh. She had a wheezing, braying kind of laugh, the type that scrunched her whole face up and rocketed her eyebrows up into her hairline.

“What are you, some kind of faerie cop? Finding out who stole the acorns from the gnomes or whatever?” she chortled. Juno’s mouth dropped open in offense.

“I’m from Hyperion City! I solve normal, human crimes!” Doc gave him another hard-to-read look. “And sometimes fae-related crimes, but those are pretty rare and usually it's just a raccoon in someone’s attic.”

Doc hesitated. “Do you ever do, like, missing persons cases?”

“Yeah?”

“Ever get one about somebody like me?”

Juno almost came to a full stop, but Doc was full speed pressing forward, eyes still pointed forcefully forward, head tilted up, and jaw set. Juno looked to the ground.

“I didn’t, no. Sorry.”

“Don’t see why you’re apologizing.”

The sun was still beaming and high in the center of the sky when they stumbled into Buddy’s territory, leaning on one another for support like the world’s most pathetic contestants in a three-legged race.

“Juno!” Buddy called, slipping out of her tree and rushing to meet them as they staggered further into her clearing. Her movements were bordering on frantic, leaves buffeting up behind her in a swirl of her own personal whirlwind. A redness hung high on her singular visible cheekbone, and it may have just been from her sudden speed, but her hair looked tousled.

“Hey,” Juno croaked, trying for a smile and ruining the effect with split and bleeding lips. Buddy crashed to a halt, hurried breath catching in her throat as she got a good look at them. “I’d apologize for the state of your dress, but I think it’s actually in a better state than I-”

“Vespa,” Buddy gasped, eyes skipping over Juno entirely and landing on Doc, blinking at her like she was trying to look at the sun.

Still propped up against Juno, Doc squirmed, pulling away from him and Buddy, trying to escape the spotlights on her.

“Hi?” Doc managed, voice a rasp. “Sorry, my memory is all-” She swirled her hand vaguely, mouth in a nervous smile. Her shoulders had crept up again, feet shifting slowly so she remained silent as she shuffled back. Buddy’s forehead creased, a small furrow blooming between her brows and splitting her face down the middle in distress.

“I-” she stammered, bringing a hand up to brush her hair back before catching herself and pulling away. “Where have you been? I- I thought you were dead.”

“Do you recognize her?” Juno asked, letting Doc slip from his grasp as he looked between the two. He wasn’t sure who he was asking, but both rushed to answer him.

“No,” Doc mumbled out, raising a hand to her hairline.

“Yes,” Buddy professed, hands curled into knots and armed curled around herself. Her legs were so tight, feet so dug into the ground that Juno expected to see them rooted there.

“You know who she is?” Juno asked, reaching a hand out to each of them.

“No,” Doc spit out, her dagger out again. “You don’t get to tell me who I am. I have had enough-” her voice split, cracking like old wood, “-of voices in my head telling me who I am.”

“Vesp-” Buddy began, taking a halting step back, face crumpled like it pained her to do so. “I’m sorry.” The sun high above them finally vanished below the horizon, the sky slipping beneath a dark shroud of cloud. Buddy took another step back, dropping to her knees. Her hair looked duller in this light, the brown-gray of leaves in early winter.

“Listen, Doc,” Juno tried, bringing his hands in sight as slowly as he was able. “Buddy isn’t with the Autumn Court.”

“I can’t even be sure we’ve left the Autumn Court,” Doc spit out, looking at Juno, looking over his shoulder, looking over her own shoulder and behind her, looking anywhere but at Buddy. “How do I know if either of you are even real?”

There was a wrenching sound, the earth splitting open, but when Juno looked it was just Buddy, hand over her mouth and eyes shining with amber tears, moving slow as sap. Her fingers were long and branching, pointed like claws and gnarled like wood. The hand not over her mouth was dug into the ground, and the claws there did appear to cut down into the dirt, spiraling and rooting out of sight.

“I would have come for you,” she whispered, voice muffled as she moved her hand. She took a deep breath in, shaking like a leaf. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I shouldn’t use you as a stand-in for the woman I knew. I was being selfish.” She staggered back to a standing position, snapping the claws from one hand and leaving them buried in the dirt. She brushed her skirt off, pulling a smile back on, swiping sap from her eyes.

Doc took a shaky step forward, almost unconsciously even while her eyes remained squinted distrustfully. The dagger point dipped towards the ground.

“Why are you out here and not in the Autumn Court?” she asked slowly. “You would have known where I was if you’re an autumn like you look.”

Buddy’s smile tweaked, pulling the hidden skin of her face taut. “I was banished from the Autumn Court. Exiled, if you must know.”

“Why?” Doc challenged immediately, knife drifting back up. Juno watched Buddy carefully, tracked her hand as she adjusted her hair again.

“My- partner at the time was a human woman. Taken as a child and stolen again as an adult for retaining the Sight.” Buddy resettled her shoulders, tucking her branching claws behind her back. “I helped her escape again and hid her from the Court. When I was caught, we were separated, and I was made to believe she was dead.”

“Is that supposed to be about me?” Doc asked, creeping forward again. Juno was beginning to get dizzy from looking between them, though that may have been the adrenaline finally failing him. He told the black at the edges of his vision to hold off until the emotional moment had ended.

Buddy’s face twisted again. “I moved my tree to a spot on the edge of the woods- a spot we had met at before, somewhere I hoped she might find me. But the edges of the woods are in human territory far more than they are in the fae, and I no longer had the protections of the Autumn Court.” Buddy stepped forward, hand resting at the edges of her hair where it hid her face. Her voice was choked, and Doc watched her every move, rapt.

“Hyperion’s human population are scared of us- maybe rightly so, given what my former court did to you,” she continued, finally pulling back the curtain to reveal her full face. “So they spray pesticides, herbicides, poisons at the edge of the wood.” The skin there was peeling, burnt and blackened compared to the rich golden brown of the rest of Buddy’s face. Her eye was gone, replaced by a burning gold light half-hidden by the warped sheets of skin that curled up her jaw.

“I have to assume they put iron in it, for the way it burned,” Buddy said, dropping Doc’s gaze and shifting her hair over her face again. It couldn’t completely cover the scarring now that it had been unveiled, hair catching on rough edges, pulling on the strips of skin where they jutted out. Buddy turned her head, looking at the ground. “It took a dear friend’s interference to convince me to move again, to accept her passing. I would’ve died there without him, I fear.” She gave a sharp laugh, cutting and pained. “Most of the unaffiliated fae in the area aren’t so lucky.”

Doc had crept a few steps forward, dagger fully dropped to her side and one hand half outstretched.

Juno hit the ground, his shoulder crunching unpleasantly amongst the leaves. Immediately footsteps rushed towards him, but his vision was too blurred and obscured by mulch to see.

“Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled, lips and nose free bleeding into the dirt. It was almost surprising that he had any liquid left in his body for blood.

“Don’t think you can hide a stab wound from the person you stabbed you,” Doc grumbled, using the iron dagger to carefully slice away the remains of Juno’s borrowed dress to get a good look at the wound.

“Would hate to undo your hard work,” Juno groaned, unable to hide his wince at the iron’s proximity to his skin.

“Shut it,” Doc said, looking over her shoulder to Buddy. “You got anything we can use to patch him up?”

“Yes-” Buddy said haltingly, looking around. “My tree, here-”

Juno expected Doc to argue, but instead felt an arm slip behind his neck and its pair under his knees. His vision went kaleidoscopic, sliding into fragments and nonsense shapes, blurs of color as the ground vanished beneath him. Doc might as well have been ballroom dancing while carrying him for all the spinning his vision was doing. That thought was actually kind of funny, and Juno was distantly worried about the potential stupid grin on his face.

“-lay him out here-” he heard Buddy say, shortly followed by reverberating thud of his back and shoulders connecting with the hard, smooth surface surface he assumed was the table he’d drank at not long before.

“Darling, if you wouldn’t mind grabbing the med kit I have stashed away?” Buddy asked, voice pitchy and nervous. Heavy footsteps came from behind him, and Juno craned his neck back to catch a glimpse of the big guy leaving the room and returning with a bulging canvas bag in hand.

“Water, too, unless that bag is stocked for a saline drip,” Doc rattled off, accompanied by the snap of gloves.

“There’s a ‘thirsty’ joke to me made in there,” Juno muttered weakly, hyper-aware of the taste of blood as it slid in a sheet down the back of his throat.

“If you don’t want your doctor to leave you for dead, you won’t,” Doc warned distractedly. Next came a rattling of medical supplies as she dug through the bag, setting things down alongside Juno on the table. “Well stocked kit you’ve got here.”

“Water for Juno here and another glass behind you for you, dear.”

“For me?”

“Can’t leave our medic dehydrated either,” Buddy said, tone strained. Doc snorted again, eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Thanks Bud,” she chuckled, cutting off Juno’s snide remark by swiping disinfectant over his wound and making him gasp in shock. “Might sting a little,” she added smugly.

“Bud?” Juno asked, voice a wheeze. The hands above him stilled, and he tilted his head forward for a better look.

Buddy had gone vaguely stiff, hands hovering just around a glass she had obviously set down several seconds ago. She was blinking rapidly, eyes out of focus, or maybe that was just Juno. Doc had paused too, chin pointing curiously to the side.

“Yeah,” she said slowly, face confused but torn, and her jaw set. “Bud. Short for Buddy.”

“Buddy…” Juno prompted slowly, eyebrows furrowed.

“Aurinko,” Doc finished, freezing then looking suddenly to the dryad whose eyes were rapidly beading with amber.

“Vespa?” she whispered.

Doc dropped the wipe.

Juno dropped his head back to the table with a thunk, focusing on the curling knots of the ceiling high above him. A large face loomed above him, though upside down as it was, it took a second for Juno to recognize the big guy.

“I wouldn’t interrupt them,” the big guy whispered solemnly before straightening back up. Juno rolled his eyes, gesturing argumentatively as best he could with his closed lips.

“Hey Bud,” Vespa said, voice softer than Juno could’ve imagined she was capable of.

“Oh Vespa,” Buddy sighed out, voice muffled into what was probably Vespa’s shoulder or hair. “I thought-”

“I kept remembering your voice,” Vespa breathed out, voice thick in her throat, words coming out phlegmy. Juno traced the rings of the ceiling above with his eyes again. “I couldn’t remember my name, or who I was, but I kept remembering your voice- I knew there was somewhere I had to be…”

“Of course you couldn’t remember your name,” Buddy choked out, voice just as clouded. “You gave it to me- I kept it safe.”

“I think it saved me,” Vespa answered. “I think I might have lost it if it weren’t for you.”

Juno’s addled mind helpfully waited until after several seconds of wet, intrusive kissing noises filled his ears before letting him drop off into unconsciousness.

-

It was another day and a half before Vespa cleared him for the walk home and another hour after that before the big guy was ready to leave. Juno had paced the length of the tree several times, had left it in favor of outside to give the newly reunited Buddy and Vespa some privacy.

The quiet didn’t suddenly do wonders for his restless thoughts, and it wasn’t long after before images of Sasha flooded his head. Of the Autumn Court, desiccated and dead, scattered like leaves across the ground. Of how he’d done nothing but run.

“I find that a long walk helps clear my head,” the big guy observed, appearing suddenly from the tree, hands tucked in his pockets.

“I find that a night in my own bed does wonders too,” Juno replied drily. The big guy looked at the sky above them, at the sun that had returned to its perpetual state in the center of the sky.

“I think we have time for a walk before then,” he answered, and obviously Juno’s eye roll didn’t dissuade him, as he began to set a fast pace that Juno had to jog to keep up with.

Juno spent the walk chattering as best he could, though the big guy didn’t seem eager to join in discussion. It only just kept the thoughts of Sasha at bay, at how he had solved the mystery and opened up several more in its stead. At how Vespa had proved he could still help people, which made all the corpses in his footsteps much more glaring. He still had the power to help, which only stood to prove where he had failed.

It was just as he was ready to say goodbye to the big guy, turning into his street under a blanket of moonlight. He’d been preparing a line about how it really had been night, and the big guy had been screwing with him, maybe a quip about a first date kiss goodbye on the doorstep.

It didn’t matter much what he’d been planning on saying though. Someone else was waiting there, sprawled out across Juno’s doorstep himself.