Chapter Text
Closing my eyes;
Wishing that I could turn back somehow.
♫ GoldTop ft Sam Tinnesz - Paradise Is Lost
Let's say that the dimensionator - or one of them, at any rate - was being kept in the Koba household. Kaden was tinkering with it; perhaps repairing it, or fiddling with the idea of upgrades. It doesn't really matter exactly what.
Percival Tachyon still makes the robots who will eventually become the pirates, and still manages to secure an alliance with the drophyds. Fastoon is still attacked. The lombaxes are still massacred. The Koba household is still destroyed.
Rayna is still alone here, alone except for her young son, barely able to crawl around. It's tradition to leave the child unnamed until they're a year old; there's a Naming ceremony that's meant to happen in three months that won't, now. Of course, by this point the child's parents have picked a name anyway. Nicodemus, the defender of the people. Little Nico is too young to defend much of anything right now, but his parents might've picked the most prophetic name possible for their child.
Rayna is a soldier. She's part of the Unified Armed Forces, Infantry division. She can hold her own in a fight, certainly much better than Kaden ever could. In one universe she fights to the bitter end, with all the ferocity of a mother protecting her child, holding her ground in the main hall until the ceiling collapses on her. In that universe - the colder, likelier universe - she doesn't survive, but little Nico does. In that universe, Kaden gets home far too late for his wife, but just in time for his son.
In this universe, Rayna still fights, and still knows she can't win. But... In this universe, she also knows she has an escape. She holds the drophyds off as long as she can, slowly being pushed back through the house to the sleeping quarters. But Kaden has always had trouble separating his work life and home life - and Rayna knows where the dimensionator is.
Rayna finally makes a break for her son, and then the dimensionator itself. She's injured and furious and terrified. Like Kaden in another world, she asks the dimensionator for a place where her son will be safe, please, please—
The dimensionator dumps her and little Nico out onto an unfamiliar desert. Then it makes a sad pop and shuts down. There is no otherworldly presence waiting for commands. Whatever Kaden had been doing with it, it was enough to render it inoperable after a single use.
Rayna clutches her crying son to her chest with one hand and her half-broken wrench in the other. She cries, too, from the pain of injury but just as much the pain of everything she's just lost. She escaped the Koba household with nothing but herself, her son, and the dimensionator. It's enough to break a person. It still might.
But for now, Rayna lives.
A galaxy away, Kaden makes it home. What's left of it. He digs anyway, praying he'll find them, please please please don't let them be dead—
Like in another universe, Alister stumbles to the Koba household, too. In this universe Kaden hasn't found his wife's body, and his son miraculously still alive. He hasn't found anything. So it's no surprise that he turns to Alister and snarls, "If I ever see your face again, I'll kill you."
(Kaden is a Director in the Center for Advanced Lombax Research: the highest rank possible in the science division of Fastoon's tripartite government. Kaden wasn't part of the decision to exile Alister as Fastoon fell - but he knows what Alister did, from the moment the truth came out.)
Kaden was Alister's first, closest friend, and the only person Alister has ever really been in love with. Their relationship has always been rocky, because Kaden has never been an easy person to get along with. They'd dated on and off for decades, until at last Kaden had met Rayna and Alister had - given up. Only, Rayna had never tried to separate them. They'd been considering trying to be a triad. They hadn't been sure if they could make it work, but... Alister has done a lot for Kaden he wouldn't otherwise. If there was so much as a chance...
(In another universe, a far kinder universe where Fastoon wasn't massacred, little Nico Koba grows up with a mother and two fathers.)
In this universe, Alister looks at Kaden, at his grief and wild fury. He knows without a doubt that Kaden means it. He will kill him, or at least try to, if he stays. He stays anyway.
"Let me help you dig," he begs, and it is begging. He doesn't love Rayna like Kaden does; he's never been attracted to women in his life. He still loves her anyway, different but not lesser. And their child - Alister loves him, too. Like a nephew. Like a son. "Then you can do whatever you want to me. Please, Kaden."
Kaden is a terribly emotional man. But he is also a brilliant one. The brightest lombax mind in centuries, without a doubt. It doesn't take a mind like Kaden's to calculate that his chances are better with Alister's help.
"Fine," he spits, and they dig.
In this universe, there is nothing to find. And so... They dig for far, far longer than they should. Alister realizes it's fruitless early, but he won't say anything, and he won't stop either, not until Kaden does. And Kaden, despite all his brilliance, will not stop.
So Fastoon falls around them. And Tachyon finds them both.
The fight is brief. Kaden is a scientist, not a soldier; he can fight well enough, but not while he's exhausted and on the verge of a breakdown. Alister fights too, just as hard, heedless of his own safety. He refuses to let Kaden die, no matter what. Everything else he loves has already been destroyed; he's not about to let Kaden be added to the tally.
The drophyds outnumber them badly, and there is Tachyon to consider as well. Even with their relationship in tatters, Kaden and Alister fight together in the way that only people who've fought together from childhood can. They take down almost the whole battalion of drophyds before finally—
Alister falls first, smacked hard enough to send him tumbling. Kaden snarls up at Tachyon, and leaps for him with nothing but his fists and mad fury. Tachyon lifts the leg of his throne, and slams Kaden into the dirt.
"How the mighty fall," Tachyon mocks Kaden, grinning down at him. "I've looked forward to this day for a long time, Director Koba."
Tachyon grinds the foot of his throne down, ever so slowly. Kaden growls, then screams - then chokes. There is a terrible crunch. Then silence.
Alister, barely clinging to consciousness, sees the whole thing. Something inside him breaks. "No," he tries to scream, but it comes out as a croak. He struggles to stand, has been struggling to stand for minutes, but he can barely manage to lift his head.
Tachyon finishes grinding what's left of Kaden into the dirt. He looks over at Alister, and smiles at him. "Thank you for your assistance, my friend," he tells him, perfectly sincere, perfectly mocking. "You know what? Just for being so helpful, I'll let you live."
Tachyon has broken just about every promise he's ever made. But this one? This one, he keeps. Alister, too, will live. He'll just wish he hadn't.
Rayna stumbles out of the Kyzil desert to the town on its outskirts. She has no idea where she is. It'll be a long time before she figures out why the dimensionator sent them to Veldin, but for now she has no choice but to trust that it sent them somewhere safe.
The townsfolk are wary of outsiders, in the way of many small towns, but they aren't heartless. After all, in another universe an orphaned lombax child managed to survive to adulthood. Rayna is helped. They ask her plenty of questions, but she answers almost none of them. At first it's because she simply can't make herself form the words - later it's because she's not sure how much she can trust them. Later still, it's as a form of protection. She asks them not to pry. For the most part they listen, and those who don't are elbowed to get them to shut up. The gossip and guessing never goes away, but for the most part people hold their tongues.
Rayna stays in Kyzil. She watches and waits and makes herself useful. Above all, she protects her son. At first it's just waiting for Kaden to find her, or anyone; there are multiple dimensionators after all, and if Kaden lived - if any of their families lived... Surely they'd come looking for her.
But they never do. Days turn into weeks turn into months. Three months later, Rayna holds her own private Naming ceremony for her son. It's all wrong, but it's... it's something. Nico grins up at her, carefree in the way of a child who has little to no memory of the trauma in his past, and Rayna tells herself it's still worth something. It has to be.
So Nico never becomes Ratchet, here. Kaden loved his son, but he'd loved his wife more, and for all Kaden's brilliance he was terribly impulsive and honestly kind of an idiot. That Kaden abandons his only child in his mad quest for vengeance, and doesn't live long enough to return.
Rayna does not and will not abandon her son. Even if she'd had a functional dimensionator she'd never leave Nico behind, to fight Tachyon or otherwise. She doesn't even consider trying to go back to Fastoon, or Polaris. It's not safe. She can't risk it. Nico is all she has, now.
Like Ratchet, Nico grows up on Veldin. He grows up knowing how to take care of himself, how to survive anything the galaxy throws at him. He grows up knowing how to fight, with words and with weapons. He grows up looking at the stars, and wondering what's out there.
But the similarities end there. Nico grows up loved. He grows up with someone in his corner, always, teaching him and encouraging him. He grows up knowing what and who he is, who his people are, where they're from, their history, their culture. He knows why he and his mom are the only lombaxes anyone has ever seen. Nico grows up knowing he wasn't left behind - he was protected.
And so, Nico grows up to be kind. He has the safety net to allow him the kindness that Ratchet didn't feel safe enough to show. He grows up helping others, and being helped in turn. He grows up to look very much like Kaden, but in many ways he's nothing like his father.
Rayna loves Kaden, still - she will always love him. But Kaden is a difficult man to love, and Rayna is not blind to his faults, not even years after what she correctly thinks must be his death. Rayna tells Nico about his father, but she does not hide his imperfections.
She tells Nico about Alister, too, the man who could've been a second father, if only they'd had more time. She doesn't hide Alister's imperfections either, though she hadn't known them as intimately as Kaden's. Ironically, Rayna's recollections of Alister are far more biased than those of Kaden, though she doesn't know it.
Rayna was significantly lower ranked than either Kaden or Alister, and on leave besides. The only reason she even knows the architect of Fastoon's fall is Percival Tachyon is because she'd overheard the drophyd chatter - and the only reason she even knows the name Percival Tachyon is because of Kaden. She has no idea that Alister played any role at all in what happened, never mind one so major.
(Not yet, at least.)
Eventually Rayna gives up on her family, or anyone from Fastoon, ever finding them. She curls up in bed one night, two days after Nico turns five, and cries silently. She feels like there are no more tears in her, and yet they still keep coming anyway.
The next day, Rayna starts growing out her mane. She'd kept it military short, only longer at the back of her neck. A warrior's cut. She'd never really wanted to grow it before, even as a child she'd mostly kept it short, but she grows it now. The mane grows and grows, up her spine and along her jaw, and she lets it. She braids it once it's long enough, counting the strands idly as they slide over her fingers.
Nico learns to braid it, too. He's six. The braids come out incredibly uneven, but Rayna wears them with pride anyway, in the same way that she pins Nico's child scribbles to the walls.
(There's three braids, representing the sacred trifecta. Body, mind, and soul, all growing together, in harmony. It's supposed to bring luck and prosperity. Rayna has never been particularly religious, but she takes comfort in it now. They need all the luck and prosperity they can get.)
For years, on and off, Rayna tries to fix the dimensionator. Like most lombaxes, she has at least basic competency with technology. She fixed her wrench to full working order within the first month, and she can usually figure out how to fix weapons and ships after some trial and error, even these unfamiliar Solana ones. It's a useful and sorely needed source of income. The dimensionator, however, is a different beast entirely. She never gets anywhere with it, though she never quite gives up trying.
When Nico turns nine, she sits down with him and tells him what the device is and what it did, and teaches him the few things about it she does know. He listens with a child's intensity at being given a new puzzle.
Nico has no formal learning, not like he would've on Fastoon. Rayna's taught him some things, and for the rest he goes to the Kyzil schoolhouse, like all the other kids. But... maybe he's inherited something of his father's brilliance. Nico, too, fiddles with the dimensionator on and off for years, at first under his mother's careful supervision and then on his own.
Nico does come to understand the dimensionator better than Rayna, but he doesn't manage to diagnose what the problem even is, and never mind how to fix it. Rayna tries not to feel disappointed. She thinks she manages to hide it from Nico, at least. It certainly wouldn't do him any good, thinking his mother was disappointed with him for failing at an impossible task.
Nico keeps growing. Body, mind, and soul. Rayna worries - she never stops worrying. For the most part she remembers those years as nothing more than constant worry, worry, worry. Worry that she'll do something wrong, that she'll raise Nico wrong, that she'll mess up on the job with fatal results and then Nico will be alone, that Tachyon will find them and—
It's a lot of worry. She tries to keep it from affecting Nico. Sometimes she thinks she does alright. Other times, not so much. She tries to give him space to grow, but encourages him to ask her if he needs help. Sometimes he does. Sometimes they fight. More, as he gets older, like all teenagers. For the most part Nico is an easy child, certainly much easier than Rayna herself had been. None of their fights last more than a day; they rarely even last more than a few hours. They both sometimes say things they don't mean, but they both try their best to make up. They don't ever get into anything approaching a screaming match. It could be better, but it could also be a lot worse.
Rayna carries trauma that will never go away, and sometimes it bleeds out. Sometimes she can hardly stand to leave the house, or let Nico leave. There isn't a therapist in Kyzil, and even if there was they'd be terribly under-equipped to deal with a war refugee, and that's assuming she could even manage to trust them enough to speak honestly. She handles it herself, as best she can. She tries to be mindful, and go easy on herself. It's not perfect. She's not perfect. She only hopes it will be good enough.
If you asked Ratchet what it was like growing up on Veldin, his honest answer wouldn't be all that different from Rayna's, minus the part about Tachyon. Ratchet's childhood is a lonely, worried one. It's not until Clank that he learns how to do more than scrape for survival. How to hope.
If you asked Nico what it was like growing up on Veldin, he'd say: it was light and happiness and love.
(Rayna, when she hears this for the first time, will cry. But at least they're happy tears.)
Eventually, Nico turns sixteen. Ratchet spent his sixteenth birthday alone, trying to clean out a sparrow-mite infestation from the abandoned garage he'd claimed for himself. Nico spends it with his friends, laughing and running wild. His mother leaves him be. She worries, but she refuses to let her worry smother him. For today at least she can put it aside, and let Nico be a kid.
Rayna tries to keep Nico from going on any particularly dangerous adventures, and she even manages to succeed. What she doesn't manage to do is prevent the call of adventure coming to them. Three months later, a micro-shuttle crashes on the Kyzil plateau, a klick away from the restored garage that the Kobas call home.
(Some things never change.)
Nico still investigates the crash. Partially to check for salvage still, sure, it's not like he and his mom are rich. But mostly to help anyone that might've survived. He's still the first one there.
Nico still brings the unnamed little robot back home with him. He grew up knowing he could ask his mom for advice, and now is no exception. Rayna comes home when Nico comms her; she'd already gone to investigate the crash herself. She's been working as law enforcement for Kyzil and the neighboring towns, among other things - certainly she is the most combat capable person in the whole region. This sort of thing is very much her domain.
The little robot wakes up. He tells his story. He asks for help, not for himself, but for Novalis.
Nico turns to his mother and says, "We have to help, Mom! We can't just let Novalis get destroyed."
Rayna thinks about Fastoon. She thinks about running, and hiding. Almost sixteen years of hiding, now. The wider galaxy isn't safe, not even Solana. Tachyon is still out there. They're just two people, and there is no emergency escape. But... Nico is right. They can't just ignore what's happening, what's about to happen to Novalis. What kind of people would they be if they did?
"You're right," she says, finally, and she prays that she's making the right choice. "Let's help."