Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Leif hurt.

Not that that was anything new. He’d been hurting ever since he woke up in Snakemouth. The dull ache in his chest, the burning pain that would come and go, the stabbing sensations that would shoot through his body at random—it was a lot to handle. Nothing he couldn’t deal with, but a definite hindrance.

When he first noticed the pain, a stubborn soreness that permeated his legs like a bruise constantly under pressure, he chalked it up to the simple, easily explained fact he hadn’t moved a muscle in decades. He’d been tied up in that spider’s web for generations, his body not exactly rotting, no, but slowly but surely withering away, even when he—he? It? The cordyceps—lived on inside. Of course, he would be weak. It was to be expected. Vi and Kabbu didn’t have to know it, but there was no denying such a long sleep took a toll on his body. He had always been frail, something that he had always been keenly aware of—especially when side by side with his absolutely powerhouse of a wife, Muse—but once woken up, it was even more so apparent. 

It was a miracle he had managed to beat that wretched spider, let alone make it through the rest of that tortuous den, when his scrawny legs were practically begging to give out with every step he took, every chunk of ice formed. Thankfully, the constant traveling by foot that comes with exploring did him a world of good. By the point in their journey that they had reached the swamplands, his original strength—no matter how little it was—had returned, along with a heap of newfound combat wisdom and experience.

So why, even after regaining his strength, did everything still hurt so much?

It wasn’t ever like this. Right? He couldn’t remember feeling like this before. In his original lifetime, so to speak. His memories of that time were admittedly foggy and sometimes hard to decipher—it wasn’t uncommon to spend nights awake, questioning whether or not that memory swimming lazily through his consciousness was actually a memory at all, or a mere figment of his imagination born from trying sort through his muddled thoughts—but he didn’t think he had this amount of pain before. Is that the kind of thing his body would bother remembering? Muse’s laugh, his parent’s faces, these are all things his body couldn’t forget if he tried. These memories survived even through death. But something as trivial as if his legs had always been achy on cold mornings? Those kinds of memories were lost to time, dead with the original Leif.

Tired. Sore. More often than not. He didn’t bring it up all too often to his teammates, as to not worry them. More specifically, as not to worry Kabbu. At the gentlest insinuation that any bug could be in the most minuscule, hardly noticeable amount of pain, Kabbu would start dancing in place in a fit of worry. It was preferable, though tiring, to put on a strong facade to keep Kabbu’s anxieties at bay. He still brought up the scorpion attack all these moons later, even with Leif’s never-ending reassurances that he was fine, fine, it was fine. Somehow, getting stabbed in the back by a giant scorpion was the least of his worries. The gnawing pain that sprung up at the faintest use of his magic hurt worlds more.

Leif hesitated to talk to Kabbu as to not worry him. Vi, on the other hand, when Leif did open up about his problems—as little as he ever did, and how often he’d skirt around the issue—was not concerned in the slightest. Unsurprising, for the little bee. You’re just old, of course you have bad knees! You’re, like, a gajillion years old, yeah your chest is gonna hurt! You’re practically on your death bed!

While it was true jabs at his situation got on his nerves—the chink in the armor of his normally so stoic nature, one could say—he, truthfully, didn’t mind the teasing. The lack of actual answers, however, he did mind.

But maybe it was fine. Maybe he didn’t need answers.

Vi didn’t seem worried, so it was probably nothing. Right? He told himself that every night he crawled beneath the covers with a heavy weight in his chest and a pulsating ache that never really went away. He’d never heard Chuck or even Rebecca complaining of debilitating pain, nothing out of the ordinary of what you’d expect for bugs so old, so why was he burdened as he was? He—physically, at least—was nowhere near as aged as they were. 

He supposed every bug was different, but there’s difference, and there’s abnormality. And, judging from every other aspect of Leif’s physiology, he probably fit squarely in that second category. 

This wasn’t normal, was it? But would that be such a shock? He wasn’t normal.

It wasn’t that bad—a phrase he told himself so often it played like a broken record in his stream of consciousness. Not that bad. This isn’t that bad. He could still fight. Fighting made it worse, a lot worse, the pain steadily growing and getting worse with each attack he sent out, but he had grown accustomed to it. It was normal, probably. Maybe. Most explorers experienced some discomfort after tedious fights. Most explorers had to push themselves to their limits to the point fighting had become a chore—at least, Leif assumed that was the case. 

No other explorers ever complained about it, sure, but that meant nothing. That didn’t mean fighting wasn’t excruciating for them, too. And if someone like Mothiva could suck it up and kick and fawn their way to the top, he sure as hell could, too. He, one of the top explorers, a member of team Snakemouth of all teams, wasn’t going to be the first to complain. The Wasp King had fallen at the hands of him and his team, he had slayed team Maki, he had beaten everything in Bugaria there was to beat, from the outskirts to the dead lands! A little pain wasn’t going to get in his way!

Still, sometimes it felt like his body was eating itself alive.

__________________________________________________

“Ice rain!”

The squeaky demand reverberated throughout the cave. Leif found himself face to face with Vi—as face to face they could be with the height difference—a fuzzy claw poking his chest, her other hand carrying her beemerang and a battered slip of paper, damp with her sweat. 

“Come on! Ice rain!” She demanded again, gesturing toward the flickering holograms in front of them. She stopped poking Leif and snatched up the slip of paper, waving it wildly in the air. 

“I got it all planned out, Leif—we can finally beat this stupid cave if we follow the plan! And the plan says, ice rain! Geez, I spent all night on this! Ice rain!”

“Give Leif a second to breathe, Vi!” Kabbu scolded. Leif nodded along as if agreeing with Kabbu, but deep down he didn’t mind Vi’s zeal. He admired it, if anything. She’d been raving for days now about the cave of trials, and the, as she said, super cool reward they’re bound to get. Her running theory was that the prize was a medal that instantly kills any enemy you encounter. Even with Kabbu gently explaining that even if that were the case, they probably shouldn’t use it as to not harm the wildlife population, she was making plans on how to use it.

Right. The battle. His turn to fight. His stomach dropped at the idea of having to fight any more—the battles up until this point had been relatively easy, and he was, if anything, tasked with producing bubble shields while Vi did most of the work. But even with the minimal effort it took to put up shields, his body protested. He wasn’t too keen on any more physical exertion, no matter how quick it’d be. 

Vi was staring at him. Her tiny, fuzzy bee feet drummed on the cave floor in impatience. Leif would have to move eventually. Even with the repulsive squirming that tickled his chest and abdomen.

Leif drew a breath and stretched his arms out, preparing to attack. The frigid chill of ice crystals formed on his hands, spreading out to his forearm, his—

An involuntary cry of pain interrupted the planned attack. Leif’s voice, so normally monotonous and stoic, peaked in a sudden, high pitched yelp. His breath hitching, his knees gave out beneath him. The ice forming faltered, falling and shattering into tiny shards that skittered across the dank cave floor. Thank goodness the enemy was just a hologram. Had this been an actual dead lander encounter, this would be a potentially fatal mistake. 

Everything hurt. Worse than usual. Leif clawed at his chest, trying to grab at the intangible burning pain in a confused attempt to make it go away. This was nothing new. He had to remind himself of this so he wouldn’t panic. This has happened before. He never collapsed like this, no, but…this is just a fluke. A one time incident means nothing. He’s fine. 

He’d better be fine.

He sunk to the floor, the stony, dripping cave floor doing nothing to soothe the unabating stinging sensation that was quickly spreading all throughout his body—although, the cool stone did, however, provide some sense of comfort. It felt quite nice against his cheek, now hot and flushed with sweat from the pain. If he didn’t have his teammates unrelenting gazes boring into him, he’d stay like this forever.

Quick flashes of green flashed across his vision. Yup. There was Kabbu doing his anxiety dance again. Not surprising at this point.

“By the holy statue of Venus!”

“Not helping! Shut it, Kabbu!”

Kabbu ignored Vi’s remark—and subsequent demand for silence—and, did not, in fact, shut it.

“Goodness gracious Leif, are you alright? What’s the matter? By the queen! By every god possibly out there! By the—”

“We are fine,” Leif interrupted, voice stiff with irritation and discomfort. Fine was an exaggeration. He was…alive. That’s really all he could say was going for him in the health department.

“Did your exoskeleton crack? Did you—”

“We are fine!” Leif insisted, louder this time. The dichotomy of his words and actions wasn’t lost on his teammates—no matter how loudly he insisted he was fine, he was still crumpled in a heap on the floor, writhing in agony.

“Where’s it hurt?” Vi asked, buzzing over beside him and looking him over for any visible signs of injury. Leif sighed. Not gonna be able to get out of this one, was he? He should’ve just held it together long enough to finish the attack. Hell, he should have just held it together entirely. The pain wasn’t really that bad, he was probably just exaggerating, or—

“Inside. It hurts inside,” he stammered. Vi rolled her eyes. Not the reaction he was expecting.

“Ugh. This isn’t some allegory for the emotional pain you feel, is it?”

“What? No! It—it hurts everywhere inside of us. Our chest especially.”

Kabbu rushed to his side, scooping him up in his arms dramatically. Kabbu always acted like there was a hidden camera around and he had to be the heroic main lead. He probably watches too much anime.

“Do not fear, Leif, we will help you. Do not move, lest the pain gets—”

“It’s gone now.” 

“Don’t be silly, Leif!”

It wasn’t a total lie. The excruciating agony had definitely ebbed to more of a dull ache with the occasional wave of burning stabs, but it wasn’t…as bad. He flailed around in an attempt to stand up, but was stopped by Vi, pressing the tip of her beemerang to his head and pushing him back down.

She rolled her eyes again, sympathetic, but visibly fuming on the inside from this sudden change of plans. “Don’t be a hero, Leif. We’ll go back home and give this another shot tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. Great. Doing this all over again. Just the thought brought the worst of the pain back. Maybe she was right, though. He would feel better by tomorrow. He knew he would.

But he’d been telling himself that every day for months now.

A loud sigh, foggy from the cold, slipped out his lips, drawing unwanted attention towards him. Calmer now, and finally able to think clearly, Kabbu picked up on the obvious tension in Leif’s behavior.

Leif was tired. Very tired. And he knew that Kabbu knew. And he was too tired to do anything about it anymore.

“Must we do this again tomorrow?” He whispered, coming across much more plaintive than intended. 

“Yes!” Vi burst out. “I mean, I guess not, if you don’t want to.”

“We don’t want to.”

Vi let out an exasperated groan, slinging her arms to her side tossing her head back in defeat. Aside from the childish show of disappointment, she didn’t protest further. The holograms slowly flickered out as it became clear they were abandoning the battle. So close to the finish, too…

“Now, Vi. You must respect Leif’s wishes,” Kabbu said. Always the parent of the group. Leif could only assume Kabbu picked up on it from his Master. 

Kabbu cupped Leif’s cheek in his hand, then his forehead, before pulling his hand away. Leif secretly wished Kabbu would continue the gentle touch. He didn’t often have the chance to be weak and doted on for just a moment.

“You don’t seem to be running a fever,” Kabbu observed. “Though, it may be hard to tell, what with you being so…naturally cold.”

“We’re not sick,” Leif murmured. “We’re always like this. It’s nothing, really.”

Probably shouldn’t have said that last part. Vi shot a skeptical glance his way, and Kabbu tensed up again with worry.

“Always? You, uh, seem pretty fine most of the time,” Vi said.

“We were exaggerating. Only feels like this sometimes. Old man stuff, and all,” Leif deflected. He hoped to kill the conversation off before if could really start.

“If you say so,” Kabbu said. “Are you well enough to stand on your own?”

A faint nod of Leif’s head answered Kabbu’s question. He shakily pushed himself up on his spindly legs. His assertion that he didn’t need help fell on deaf ears—Kabbu was glued to his side, refusing to give Leif any space, no matter how many nonverbal cues Leif gave him that he wanted personal space. Subtle or not.

By the time he’d reached the cave’s exit, stepping out into the bright sunlight, he became vaguely aware of…something. Some unplaceable feeling that dulled his every sense. Dark blobs swam across his vision. Just his eyes adjusting to the sunlight. Probably. It was bright out. The sound of grass rustling and water flowing grew distant, almost inaudible.

…The pain was starting to settle in again.

Whatever intuition—or worry—kept Kabbu so diligently poised by Leif’s side, proved correct. Leif, overcome by the wave of dizziness hitting him, closed his eyes for what, to him, felt like nothing more than a blink. Yet, when his eyes blearily pried open again, he was heavily slumped against Kabbu, hanging onto his horn for dear life. Consciousness barely there, drooped down on the grass. His limbs shook like a dry leaf in wind. His mind struggled to piece together what had just happened. 

Please, Venus, don’t let Kabbu start panicking. Don’t let Kabbu start panicking, don’t let Kabbu start panicking, don’t—

“By the—”

So much for prayer.

Kabbu, at the very least, stopped himself before spiraling again. Leif felt bad for him, but he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of annoyance at his often over the top reactions. It was…understandable, but more often than not, didn’t help anything.

“What happened?” Leif asked, voice barely audible. He knew the answer, but asked anyway. It felt better to have someone else say it. To confirm that he wasn’t just making it all up.

“You blacked out for a moment,” Kabbu said gently. “But you seem relatively alright now.”

Leif nodded, the movement causing his aching head to hurt more. “L-long?” the words were there in his head, but refused to come out properly. Despite the situation, Kabbu found himself stifling a grin at Leif’s stilted words. It wasn’t funny, he had to remind himself. 

“Ah, not long—like, barely 15 seconds,” Vi shrugged. “But you look pretty beat. I’ll let you take it easy tomorrow.”

What a gift. One day off. Leif didn’t want to know what the day after tomorrow would bring.

“Yes. We are. We are beat,” Leif stammered. He wrapped his velvety wings around himself as tight as he could, trying to preserve any heat he could. Fainting always made him so cold. Even before the whole…ice magic thing.

“Leif, we’d be more than happy to carry you home if you are too weak to go yourself,” Kabbu said.

“We?” Vi hissed. “Whaddya mean we? I hope to hell you’re doing that first person plural thing Leif does, and not talking about you and me.”

“Can you be sympathetic for a second, Vi?” Leif slurred. 

“Ah, uh, sorry,” Vi said sheepishly. “Yeah, uh, I could try, but you might be too big for me. You’re kinda scrawny, but tall. Can’t you do that…ice thing you do to fly?”

Leif shook his head. “We don’t want to. Hurts.”

“Nah, you won’t have to walk at all, you just have to do that floaty ice chunk ride you do!”

Leif’s words stuck in his throat. He didn’t want to admit to not being able to do it. Not wanting to do it. Not having the energy.

He didn’t want to have to finally admit that using his ice magic hurt.

Luckily for him—or unluckily—he didn’t have to. As he began to protest, that awful fuzzy feeling came back. Everything around him swirled into a muted, watercolor blur. He scrambled to his feet, his mind in an irrational state, hoping that for whatever reason he could walk it off, that standing would help, or something. He could faintly hear his teammates, concern in their voices.

This was humiliating. 

He didn’t want their concern.

Chapter Text

“—if?”

“—eif?”

“Leif?” 

Leif let out a small hum of confusion, pawing at his sheets to get a decent grip on them and pulling the soft fabric over his head. He couldn’t remember ever walking home—Vi must have caved in and carried him home, after all. Either that, or Kabbu did all the heavy lifting himself. Both possibilities were equally plausible. Whatever the case, he found himself to be sprawled out in bed, one leg hanging off the edge, sloppily tucked in. Chompy was snuggled up against his cheek, giving his antennae little nibbles as a sign of affection. It wasn’t the most healthy habit, but a chomper’s gotta chomp, no matter how decked out she is in pretty ribbons. Leif gently grasped Chompy’s jaw—the best he could, in the darkness under the bed covers—and dislodged her from his antennae, instead providing her his claw to nip.

The pain had significantly subsided, thank Venus. It still lingered, a stubborn stabbing in his chest when he breathed in, but that wasn’t abnormal. This was the baseline amount of pain. He was back to normal—barring a gross hangover-esque feeling—just like he thought he’d be. That he knew he’d be. Good as new. Maybe he could actually give the cave of trials another shot, after all.

A pulsating burning in his abdomen protested the mere thought of doing so. He winced, trying not to make any noise. Okay, maybe not. 

An airy whimper squeaked in his throat. Hopefully quiet enough that his teammates wouldn’t hear—not that there was much hope of hiding his deteriorating health. That was…quite apparent, by this point. Though, even as his mind tried to clear itself and wind down again for rest, he couldn’t help but contemplate some, any sort of clever string of words to get Kabbu and Vi off his back. 

He wasn’t much of a wordsmith—hell, for the first few weeks after reawakening, talking at all was a struggle. Not that his voice itself was weak, though that was a factor as well, but he simply couldn’t muster up the mental energy to talk much, if at all. His words felt stuck, his mind blanking when he was expected to speak. He’d pushed his way through, eventually regaining his voice and feeling a little more comfortable in talking, but a lingering inability to speak convincingly still remained. How he’d managed to convince the Elder to let them destroy the sapling, he still didn’t know.

Unless he could catch lightning in a bottle twice, convincing Vi and Kabbu that nothing was wrong would be impossible.

The words being muttered between his teammates were difficult to hear, but they were audibly strained with concern. Why even bother? No amount of convincing could get them to leave him be. His entire body sagged in defeat, and he curled up in on himself tightly, still cocooned in his bedsheets. He desperately wanted to go back to sleep, but that seemed all but impossible. 

A stubby reached out hand rubbed his back. Leif flinched, hurriedly pushing himself upward with a shaky arm, instinctively shooting a small icicle towards the direction of his supposed assailant. His attack was, thankfully, off kilter, piercing the team’s collective trophy shelf instead of Kabbu. A terrible pain shot through his arm, and he collapsed back in bed with a defeated huff.

Vi let out a short, celebratory whoop. Must’ve caught one of the falling trinkets before it could hit the floor. Wouldn’t want any of those precious items to be scratched. Her enthusiasm wasn’t shared—Leif couldn’t see what it was Kabbu was doing, but from the steady, faint footsteps, he assumed he was pacing nervously around the house.

“Ah, stop the fretting! He’s alright, Kabbu.”  Vi said. “See? He’s doing that grumpy-sleepy thing, like always. He’s fine.”

“You may have a point. Are you certain?”

Being spoken of like that behind his back was enough to get Leif fired up. He tore the sheets off himself, sitting upright. “We are not grumpy,” he glared.

“Ah, you were right, Vi. He seems to be…somewhat alright.” Kabbu stifled a smile. “I apologize. You look so silly when you’re cranky!”

Leif scoffed, running his claws through his tangled, disheveled fluff. Residual ice crystals stuck to his hands. He would retort with a more biting sarcastic remark, but he could tell his teammates were just happy to see him alright, even if their way of expressing that was…annoying.

“Hey, so…” Vi started. “You feeling alright now?”

Not really, but Leif didn’t have to tell them that. “We do not see why you two are so concerned,” he deadpanned. He leaned back on the heel of his hand, and was immediately met with a burning spreading across his palm. He jerked his hand away, trying to play it off the best he could in front of the others. 

“You, uh…” Vi trailed off, looking to Kabbu for guidance. There was a worrying glint of fear in her eyes. His stomach churned. Vi being worried was never a good sign. Leif scooped up Chompy into his frigid arms, habitually running his claws over Chompy’s ribbon. The texture was soothing to him. 

He caught a glimpse of his palm—it looked as if something had been physically eating away at certain parts. His heart skipped a beat. This had happened before, but never to this extent. It’d be alright. He quickly buried his hand in his wings. If anyone asked, it was Chompy’s fault.

He swung his legs over the side of the bunk, hopping down onto the wooden floor. He turned to Kabbu, his pale eyes widening in expectation. They were both awfully quiet, given how worried they seemed to be.

“You…it…hm.” Great, even Kabbu was at a loss for words.  He didn’t have to say anything, though. Leif had already come to the only possible conclusion drawn from Kabbu’s careful choice—or lack thereof—of words.

You. It.

“We…no, I…” Leif put his hands to his chest, feeling the unmistakable feeling of something moving pressing against his palms, and hemolymph pulsing through his body at a fast rate as his heart pounded. “Did I, um…” How could one ever phrase something like this? There was no way to say it, was there?

“Did I come out of Leif again?”

Kabbu averted his eyes for a moment, but nodded. “Very briefly. But it was concerning to us, as it—”

“I am not an it.” Leif’s voice, though attempting to be assertive, was heavy with doubt. Was he? Nothing but an it, a disgusting abomination, while the real Leif was the one who deserved all this love and admiration? He had sorted these thoughts out long ago. Tried to, at least. He thought the worries would end, that he could move on, but these thoughts still lingered in the back of his mind.

Kabbu flinched at the harshness of Leif’s words. “I’m sorry. You…do not show often, so all that gave us a bit of a scare.”

“Yeah, it was really freaky!” Vi piped, wiggling her fingers for effect. “It—um—you, squiggled around for a few seconds before retracting into him again. You’re really long, did you know that?”

“Be respectful, Vi,” Kabbu ordered, embarrassed by Vi’s conduct. Surely she had basic tact in there somewhere, deep down. It was no wonder she was once on such bad terms with her hive when this is how she spoke of her closest of friends. 

Leif’s mouth curled into a pointed smile. “Squiggling is something I am rather good at, if nothing else,” he boasted, unbothered by Vi’s nonchalance. If anything, it made him feel better. More normal. He could tell she meant well with her words, even if they came across rather brash or impudent. That, and Leif could tell she was, deep down, frightened. Something which hurt Leif deeply. She was just a child, no matter how much she fervently denied it. It had to take a toll on a young bee to have to bear witness to Leif’s ugliness.

“You’re awesome, really,” Vi said. Kabbu shot a skeptical look her way. Leif couldn’t decipher just what it was Kabbu was thinking, but something about the way he looked told him that Vi had been much more frightened than she was letting on.  A heavy guilt settled in his chest.

“I’m sorry we scared you two,” he said under his breath, growing embarrassed. “Though we must insist that we are fine, truly.”

“I don’t believe you.” 

“Vi!”

Vi’s words, though rather brazen, weren’t refuted. Kabbu didn’t believe Leif. Leif didn’t believe Leif.

“It’s…fine.” He brushed his claws against his body, ever so slightly undulating with the squirming fungi inside. It made him shiver to feel, but it was, in an inexplicable way, comforting. “That happens sometimes, when this body is in too much pain for me to handle. It’s kind of like a defense mechanism. If I think this body is in trouble or is going to hurt me, I reflexively try to escape. I can’t actually escape, because I’m so tightly integrated with Leif’s body, but when I “escape” like that, that’s me trying to protect myself. It’s not anything to worry about.”

“Cool!” Vi grinned. “But concerning!”

“I have to agree with Vi on this,” Kabbu said. “I wouldn’t say it’s nothing to worry about. You shouldn’t have been in that much pain in the first place.”

Leif made no effort to retort that. He took a seat on a small wooden stool, mindlessly nibbling on a nearby stash of crunchy leaves, blessing Chompy with the privilege of munching up the crumbs that fell to the floor. Oh, how he spoiled that little chomper. Leif sincerely hoped that Kabbu and Vi would just drop the matter. Dismiss him and brush it aside as an insignificant, one-off issue. 

Much to his chagrin, his friends were a lot more caring than to do that. No matter how many long nights he spent prying into his own subconscious to put a pin on just why he felt such aversion to letting his guard down for a moment and letting his weaknesses show, he couldn’t. Maybe pretending it didn’t bother him long enough would make it go away. Maybe he didn’t want to put any stress on his teammates. No explanation felt right. He couldn’t decipher his own feelings, and that frustrated him to no avail.

He blamed the cordyceps. Himself. The real Leif was never like this. The real Leif would let Muse sit and listen to his venting without this awful shame. The real Leif would let her give him warm, tender hugs, while this fake Leif took many moons to let other bugs give physical comfort.

He wished he was the real Leif. He was ruining Leif’s life. His legacy.

“You can always tell us when something is wrong, Leif,” Kabbu said, giving Leif a pat on the shoulder. Probably too rough, given Leif’s fragility, but it got the sentiment of camaraderie across well enough.

Again, no words broke Leif’s long silence. Already too deep within his own thoughts. Eyes staring unblinkingly at nothing at all.

Icy breaths fogged into the air in front of Leif. His own breath flowing against his shell stung. The pain in his palm wasn’t getting any better.

This was quickly becoming too much to handle. 

These seemingly random pains that plagued him for so many moons now were never ending, but now, with his focus fully on ever little sensation, it was becoming unbearable. It hadn’t even hit him how terrible he felt until it had crescendoed into spells of fainting and his own body trying to escape itself.

Hot tears sprung up in the corners of his snowy eyes, freezing on contact with his face. He quickly tried to wipe them away before they could be noticed. They felt like chemical burns eating away at his cheeks.

“Leif?” Kabbu brushed the ice crystals forming in Leif’s eyes, silently noting the strange, almost inflamed texture of where the tears had dripped down. 

“We’re very tired,” Leif finally said. It was a gross oversimplification, but properly articulating his thoughts was near impossible.

“Geez, I just wish you would tell us what’s the matter!” Vi cried. Her patience was quickly slipping. “You’re acting really weird!”

“We’re tired,” he repeated, venom in his tone. “Just give us a few days and we’ll be good as new.” He tilted his head up to the ceiling, trying to prevent more tears from burning his face. Chompy, sitting obliviously in his lap, nipped at the edge of his wings. He gave her a pat on the head and scratched at her chin, which she gratefully accepted. Vi leaned in to give Chompy a cautious pet, but suddenly stopped.

“What happened to your hand?” Vi asked. He jerked his hand back into the protective cloak of his wings, pretending to not have heard her. Not that he’d have an answer for her, anyway. His obvious reaction to her words couldn’t be ignored, only adding fuel to the flames.

Kabbu stepped forward and grabbed Leif’s wrist. Leif didn’t even bother putting up a fight. His foggy haze of fatigue and pain kept him from truly caring about much of what was happening, or having the strength to resist. Kabbu flipped his hand over, examining his trembling palm. 

“Goodness,” he said under his breath. “What—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Leif interrupted, answering the question before it could be asked. 

“It looks like something’s been eating at your hand,” Vi said, her claw hovering over Leif’s, resisting the temptation to run her fingers across the gnarled wound,

“You can blame Chompy for that,” Leif said with a forced laugh. It was a fairly believable excuse, right? Vi looked somewhat satiated by that response. 

Kabbu looked over to Chompy. Her little ribbon adorned head was bobbing side to side as she struggled to rip out the slightest tuft of golden fur from Leif’s wings. 

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that believable that she could do all that, but—

“We don’t know, alright?” Leif admitted. “It just happened a little bit after we…” he trailed off, omitting the detail that would give away what he refused to acce: it happened after he’d used his ice magic. He didn’t want to admit that to them, let alone himself. 

“You look burnt,” Vi pointed out, hovering beside him, breathing on his neck. “Something burn you? I knew we shouldn’t let you try to cook.”

“That wasn’t there before.” Kabbu was grabbing at Leif’s other hand to check for similar injuries, much too roughly. Chompy leapt off his lap, overwhelmed by the sudden crowding.

“You need a doctor or something?” Vi was speaking directly in his antennae, he could hear every squeak of her voice, every little buzz of her wings, every little—

“Did your ice do that to you?”

“W-we don’t know!” Leif shouted, knocking them both over with his shield. He took a moment to catch his breath, screwing his eyes shut. “Personal space. We need personal space.” He echoed the phrase repeatedly, even when Vi and Kabbu were plastered against the wall, as far as they could be. No amount of space was enough. It felt as if his body was trying to escape itself.

Vi and Kabbu murmured out rushed apologies. The reflective surface of Leif’s bubble shield began to waver, its protective structure breaking. It dissolved as quickly as it was put up, Leif crumbling to the floor alongside with it. At least using his bubble shield didn’t hurt. It drained him, sure, but better to be drained than in excruciating agony.

“We can’t do this,” Leif cried, voice growing in intensity as he spoke, his head sinking his head between his legs. “This isn’t—this is making us sick.” The words spilled out on their own, in spite of any concern the words may bring.

This was getting repetitive. Numbingly repetitive. A constant spiral of pain and denial that led nowhere.

As much as he fervently despised the idea, he’d have to put his pride aside eventually and say something.

Gangly limbs shaking with faint tremors, he pulled himself up and drew in a tense breath.

“Could we tell you two something?” He asked, throat tight with anxiety. 

Of course you can, we’ve all been practically begging you to tell us, you—

Vi bit back the scornful remarks that ran through her head. Now wasn’t the time. “Um, I mean, yeah!” 

“Leif, whatever it is that burdens you, I would be more than willing to lessen your suffering!” Kabbu said, almost theatrically.

Leif averted his gaze, wondering if he should actually say anything at all. The sudden silence bothered him, more than it bothered Kabbu or Vi. Just spit it out, already, he berated himself.

“We think our magic is hurting us,” Leif confessed. Such simple words, yet heavy with so much baggage. “We don’t know why. But every time we use it we feel really…awful, and dizzy. And sometimes we get those sores on our hands like you saw. We don’t think we can keep doing this.”

He had put all his hope into praying that saying it out loud, admitting to others and to himself, would make him feel better. Being such a private bug, he’d been told all his life—pre-snakemouth and otherwise—by well-meaning bugs that opening up would help him. Prevent him from ruminating on his issues. If there was any light at the end of the tunnel, it would be that finally saying something would make him feel better.

Instead, he felt worse.

Because, if he couldn’t keep living in his own little fantasy world where there was nothing wrong, where his magic wasn’t slowly eating away at him…then what? If he had to come to terms with his magic’s detrimental effects, how it was causing him significant harm, then what?

He’d lose all worth as an explorer, for one. His fighting prowess would be completely diminished. He wouldn’t be able to help his teammates traverse tough terrains, he wouldn’t be able to fly across long gaps, he wouldn’t be able to do something as simple as splashing a few ice cubes in Vi’s drinks or showing Tod what snow was like.

That wasn’t entirely accurate. He could still do all those things. He wouldn’t do any of those things. He wouldn’t have the energy, and his teammates wouldn’t allow him to put himself through that kind of pain. As ridiculous as it was, he felt that coming to terms with it, putting it all out there, was much worse than hiding it. 

It was an admittedly stupid way to think of it, but since when is any spiral of anxiety logical? If he hid it, maybe it would just go away. Maybe if he denied it enough, he wouldn’t be slowly withering away from the inside out. Maybe there was a way to backtrack what he’d just said.

But it was too late for denial, now, wasn’t it?

He blinked rapidly. There were those damn tears again.

“Wait, for how long?” Vi asked, a hint of franticness in her tone. She hadn’t been the cause of this, right? She had been overworking her teammates, but just a little…she wasn’t killing them, right?

“How long…” Leif echoed. “However long it has been that we’ve had our magic.”

Kabbu’s face tightened with concern at the notion this had been something Leif had been carrying for such a long time. Vi’s, on the other hand, relaxed a little. At least this wasn’t her doing.

“You, uh, could’ve told us that outright sooner!” Vi said, wings buzzing as she spoke. “We wouldn’t have pushed ya so hard if you weren’t so, y’know, vague about everything? You only sorta implied you were a little tired.”

“This is no fault on Leif’s part!” Kabbu cried. 

“Nah, she’s right,” Leif sniffled, trying to keep the sudden burst of emotion under control. “Guess we could’ve been a bit more honest. But some of those battles were really tight, and if we chickened out…”

“Oi, it’s not chickening out if you were in excruciating pain! Geez, have a little self respect!”

“We were not in excruciating pain! Just some mild discomfort and the occasional biting pain when we used our magic too much.”

“Sounds excruciating to me!”

“Sounds to us like you have a low pain tolerance.”

“Let’s not fight, team!” Kabbu interrupted, interjecting himself between the two. “We’re on the same team here! Literally and figuratively!” He turned to Leif, softening his voice. “We’re both simply concerned on your behalf, Leif. We have no reason to argue. The past is the past, we must focus solely on helping you in the present! Please, carry on with what you were saying.”

Leif averted his gaze, embarrassed. How did Kabbu not feel awkward spewing out such long, inspirational speeches? “Ah, well, there’s nothing really more to it. Our ice magic kinda…” he trailed off. He wouldn’t admit that Vi was right, but he did admit he was downplaying it, just a little. “…Really…hurts sometimes. All over. Easy battles we can handle, but when we exert ourselves too much, we get really bad pains. In our chest especially. Even our tears are hurting us. But…we figured that was normal.”

“What’s normal about that?” Vi demanded. “I never—”

“We meant normal for sorcerers,” Leif retorted. “This is probably just a side effect of it all. We can’t imagine having crystals in oneself can go on without consequences.”

“I would imagine that’s true,” Kabbu pondered. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go on without any help, now, does it?”

“We would agree, if “help” was something we could access easily,” Leif said bitterly.

Vi spun her beemerang between her fingers, attention already slipping from the present conversation. “There’s always Isau. She still owes us for getting her that what’s-it-called-petal.”

“She owes us nothing!” Kabbu burst. “She gave us a medal and a heaping of berries!”

“Kabbu’s right. She could’ve rewarded us with something lame, like a book,” Leif said.

“Ok, ok!” Vi rolled her eyes, hovering up to her top bunk and hanging upside down. Something which always scared Kabbu. Always worrying she’d fall and not be able to catch herself in time. “So, she doesn’t owe us anything. But she’s a sweet bug, she’ll examine you in a heartbeat. Maybe that petal thingy will be the magic cure for your troubles.”

Leif fiddled with his claws. “We can’t say in truth that we are too keen on the idea of that.” The wriggling in his chest grew stronger again. “We’re worried I’ll scare her.”

“That is a valid concern,” Kabbu admitted. “No fault of yours, but even medical professionals such as herself may find your case baffling.”

“Understatement,” Leif grumbled.

“Hey, I mean, that you mention it,” Vi said, “I think Zasp mentioned something about not going to Isau’s when you got stabbed by that scorpion. I don’t know if he ever said why, though. He was just very adamant we don’t.“

“Did he? I don’t remember that,” Kabbu said. He wasn’t all too surprised his memory of that whole incident was foggy. He was in a…rough state of mind, to say the least.

Vi gave a brief recollection of what happened. Her version of events, anyway. It was accurate enough, aside from a few gratuitous jabs at Team Mothiva. Mothiva wasn’t even there—any heroism, or the opposite, fell on Zasp’s shoulders, but old grudges die hard, Leif supposed.

Zasp knew. He knew that Leif was infected, or more accurately, fused, with cordyceps. That was the main point Vi made sure to drive home. Aside from casually robbing them of their own stash of clear water instead of using his own generous supply in order to clean out Leif’s wound—not an important point, but Vi went out of her way to mention it—Zasp was suspiciously skirting around the obvious question of what are those things in him? He never humored Vi’s demands for answers, only insisting that they don’t go to Isau’s. It would have been much easier than a hasty life saving procedure in the middle of the desert, wouldn’t it? Defiant Root wasn’t far, Kabbu could just sling Leif’s limp form over his shoulder and dash back to the main city.
Yet Zasp outright threatened them with violence if they tried to take matters into their own hands. No Isau. Absolutely no Isau. Even with Leif collapsed, face down in the sand, hemolymph pooling around him at an alarming rate, they must let Zasp deal with it himself.

The only reason he ever gave as to why they weren’t to get Leif proper medical attention—aside from the constant repetition of I’m the one in charge here, be quiet and let me work—was that doing so would only hurt Leif further. 

Vi had assumed for the longest time that it was a twisted power play on Zasp’s part, some sort of desperate attempt at glory. That he was running on pride and pride alone. But on further reflection, that interpretation of events felt…wrong. Oh, sure, she could picture Mothiva doing that, no question there, but the more she’d seen Zasp casually, Kabbu striking up friendly conversation—which Zasp honestly didn’t seem very interested in—she could tell he was…fine. 

Not good. Just fine. But he wasn’t Mothiva. He was just passionately making out with her, probably. There was a difference.

“…And, he had your hemolymph all over his claws, and he wasn’t even flinching. He was all sticky and covered in sand, and he was telling me with that weird wasp accent—you know the one, right?—but like, yeah, he told me, ‘If you—‘“

“Does this story have a point, Vi?” Leif deadpanned.

Kabbu internally thanked Leif for cutting Vi’s tortuous ways of storytelling short.

Vi deflated slightly, disappointed that she was no longer able to go on and on about the blood and carnage. “Oh, uh, yeah. It does. What I’m getting at is, he was right. You shouldn’t go to Isau’s.” She paused to see if they were listening again. “He was looking out for you.”

“How so?” Kabbu asked. Leif didn’t bother asking. Any excuse not to go to a doctor was good enough for him.

Vi’s face darkened, her casual body language turning uncomfortable. “Well, like I said, he never said for sure, but I’m guessing Isau would be able to tell you’re a cordyceps,” she explained. “And…Leif, do you really think they’d treat someone with cordyceps well?”

Leif honestly had no answer to that. Was it a trick question? A rhetorical one?

“They don’t,” she said, answering her own question. “Not to scare you or anything, but they’d probably quarantine you from everyone else for…ever, maybe? No direct interactions with your own species in case you’re contagious. I saw it happen once in the Hive when I was really little.” Her mouth pursed into a tight frown. “I might be remembering wrong, but I think they might’ve killed some of the cordyceps patients.”

“Why?” Leif asked airily.

“They didn’t want them to infect anyone else. Or for them to keep suffering. So, they just…” She made a quick gesture of a throat being slit. “Uh, got rid of them.”

“I don’t want to infect anyone. I’m fine in here. I don’t want us to die,” he said faintly.

“It really wasn’t common, Leif,” she tried assuring him. “This was a long time ago, there’re better systems in place now, you know? They have really good ways of dealing with all that now.”

“Vi is right,” Kabbu said. “Nobody will hurt you, Leif. If you don’t want to go to Isau, that’s quite alright. Whatever it takes to help you, we will do!”

“We don’t want to see Isau.” Leif said dismissively. He knew they were most likely right, but the slim chance of being eternally shunned if not killed wasn’t something he could gloss over. “We’ll be fine on our own. We just won’t use our magic as much,” . 

“Doesn’t sound like a good plan to me,” Vi said. “I, on the other hand, have a great idea.”

Oh, no. Coming from Vi, paired with that smug grin on her face, that wasn’t reassuring at all

“I know someone who would really love to give your case a shot. Maybe she’s not technically a medical doctor, but…”

No.

“Get up off the floor, you old man.”

That was an unnecessary jab.

“We’re going to the Hive.”

Oh, Venus, help him.

Chapter Text

Leif’s antennae swayed in the saccharine air of the Hive, picking up the sickeningly sweet scent of honey that seemed to flow through every corner of the waxy, golden honeycomb walls. It was stifling. In any other circumstance, the strong smell of freshly made honey wafting through the air and brushing against his bristles would be heavenly, but right now, it was starkly uninviting. If not downright nauseating.

His hand, snugly wrapped in a scrap of bandage—too tight for his comfort, his hand was already growing a bit numb from the constriction, but Kabbu had insisted on properly swathing the wound even with Leif’s convictions that it wouldn’t be necessary—intertwined with Vi’s little hand as she half-led, half-dragged him throughout the tortuous chambers. It never failed to impress Leif just how effortless she made navigating the Hive seem. To him, it all seemed the same. Dizzyingly so. The uniform hexagonal patterns unsettled him. It made sense, though, that Vi had such strong intuition on where to go. She’d grown up there, so of course she’d know the place like the back of her hand—especially with how overbearingly strict the Hive’s policies on leaving for just a moment were.

The three zig-zagged into another hall, thankfully one much less claustrophobic than the previous. A stony fountain spat flowing honey into the air, each fresh wave of honey that came up dripping down and mixing with the rest with a thick splash of sugary gold. The invasive pains and anxieties that plagued him and spoiled his appetite seemed, at once, wholly irrelevant.

“Can we make a quick pit st—”

“No.”

Drat.

“We’ll pass by again after your visit,” Kabbu offered. “We can stop by then. You can have all the honey you want.”

That wasn’t much of a consolation. The promise of honey was magnificent, but there was no promise that he’d have much of an appetite after being poked and prodded at by that creepy bee. Just the memory of her voice, casually asking to tear into him, sent a shiver through his entire being. Not to mention that Kabbu’s offer felt more akin to a bribe, rather than a casual gesture of kindness. Oh, if you make it through your doctor’s appointment, you’ll get a piece of candy! It felt much too condescending for him to truly appreciate, especially since he was, by a long shot, the oldest of the trio. It was frustratingly reminiscent of what his parents would tell him when he was a newly-eclosed moth, putting up a fight over the most insignificant of matters, only relenting when bribed with whatever sweet it was he’d set his eyes on.

So much had changed since then, at yet simultaneously, nothing at all.

The atmosphere gradually became more and more crowded. It started as just one or two stray bugs making a mad dash toward a small stall somewhere in the distance, or occasionally knocking into smaller bees and stepping on their feet by mistake, but it all abruptly evolved into an all out mob. This was no ordinary swarm of bees making their way to the factory for their shifts. There were bugs of all kinds, flocking toward one tiny corner, pushing each other aside for the sliver of a chance to meet the eye of the object of their affection.

Leif craned his neck, scanning the room to catch a glimpse of whoever—or whatever—was so enthralling that it made all these bugs lose any basic decency. Through the sea of antennae and buzzing wings clouding his view, he could vaguely make out a tall, fluffy moth adorned in hideous, artificially bright accessories. Ah. Well, that explained that. Zasp wasn’t too far behind her, trying to camouflage himself in a rack of screaming-red scarfs. Not a very good disguise. Leif had to wonder, were security guards supposed to always be hiding as part of the job, or was that just a Zasp thing? Either way, he looked ridiculous.

Vi’s pace picked up, her brisk stroll turning to a furious stomp, stampeding through the crowd and pushing anyone in her way aside. Leif nearly tripped over a dozen different bees, being dragged away before he could mutter out the most basic of apologies. Right as the trio pushed their way out of the crowd, Vi turned on her heel, stuck her tongue out at Mothiva, and ran off with a sharp cackle. 

Venus must have truly been watching over them, as Mothiva remained in blissful ignorance of the childish slight her ego had just suffered, too enveloped in her own fans and products to notice anything else. Leif didn’t want to deal with her, of all bugs, on top of everything else. The thought of fighting made his eyes droop in fatigue. Walking around the Hive, almost tripping and bumping into bees at every turn, was alone enough to drain him, bringing on the occasional wave of dizziness that would spin his head and make him feel sick.

Leif couldn’t wrap his head around why Vi had to continuously provoke Mothiva like that—oh, sure, he hated her too, but that living ball of nervous energy and pure, unadulterated hatred that took upon the form of a moth shouldn’t be messed with. To Leif, at least, she gave off the heavy impression that she was constantly on the verge of murder, and any little thing could fan those flames into an untamed explosion that could burn all of Bugaria to the ground.

Checking behind her to ensure she was out of hearing range, Vi let her thoughts be known. “What are those two doing in my hive, shilling products?” Vi cried, claws digging into Leif’s. He had no intention on running away—not yet, anyway, Vi’s outburst was a welcome, momentary distraction—but Vi continued to lead him hand-in-hand nonetheless. He didn’t really mind. It reminded him of what he’d always imagined fatherhood would have felt like, little claws intertwined with his own. If his child was a very angry bee and not a little moth.

“Vi, it’s not your hive. They have every right to be here,” Kabbu said.

“When we were your age, other bugs weren’t even allowed in the Hive, no matter the circumstances,” Leif recalled. “Still seems pretty restrictive, but quite the progress has been made, if we’re allowed here.”

“Yes!” Kabbu grinned. “See, Vi? The progress we’ve made as bugs is truly impressive!”

Vi fell silent for a second. “Maybe we should bring those restrictions back.”

Kabbu’s eyes went wide, giving Vi a horrified look. Vi scoffed in an attempt to backtrack that previous statement. That did not come across properly.

“It’s like they live here or something! They’re always here!” Vi fumed. 

“Maybe they do,” Leif pondered. “With the amount of cash she makes, would it really be so hard for her to buy her way into a nice, elite Bee Kingdom suite?”

Leif had never seen such a look of pure horror on Vi’s face. It was as if her very body was deflating. “Don’t even think about something like that.”

“Oh, but it’s so much fun to scare you,” Leif teased.

Vi shot him a dirty look that quickly morphed into a snide grin. “Feeling’s mutual. HB’s lab is right around the corner.”

The brief, sweet moment, free of any anxieties, came to an abrupt halt. He’d almost managed to forget about everything, why they were there in the first place, but the sight of a battered wooden sign swaying above the dark entryway to HB’s torture dungeon made it all much too real. This wasn’t something he could escape, not some awful nightmare he would soon wake up from in a start. Maybe this was for the best. Maybe she wouldn’t hurt him, and would actually help him. Maybe he could finally stop hurting. Maybe.

“Maybe we should just turn back,” Leif stammered. His teammates didn’t even humor him with a sigh. Their silence stung more than outright scorn. He was acting irrationally, and he knew it. “This probably won’t help anything. We’re a lost cause, and H.B.’s just some random scientist, this is a waste of time.”

“Oh, no,” Vi scowled. “HB is a total creep, sure, but she isn’t just some random scientist! She does actually has some medical knowledge. She used to be the Hive’s main doctor, before she…” Vi tilted her head back and forth, face crinkling as she thought of the best choice of words. “Uh, decided to go on a different path of knowledge.”

Different path of knowledge. Right. That’s one way to put it. Before she went off the deep end, would be a bit more accurate. Good to know, albeit not surprising. No sane bug would ever offer to slice another open in the name of science, no matter how fascinating the results may be. Willingly goring another bug, cutting their shells open with cold, icy tools, reaching into their warm, soft innards and prodding and pulling at things—it made Leif sick to think about. What if she wanted to do it again? She was keen on doing so before. He wouldn’t even be able to defend himself this time. His body felt heavy with fatigue and shakiness, and putting up a bubble shield in defense might do more harm than good. He’s completely defenseless. What if she came at him with a ton of needles, and—

“I’m gonna go talk to the doctor. Tell her what’s up, and stuff,” Vi said. “Kabbu, don’t let him run away. Hold onto him until I say so.”

Again, he felt he was being talked down to. Don’t let him run. As if he’d be able to, in this condition, even if he wanted to. He’d felt particularly sore from the moment he pried himself out of bed early that morning to make the trip to the Hive. Even with the extra night’s rest Vi let him take, he was exhausted. He made certain to put on a face of nonchalance for his teammates, but this was beyond worrying—he hadn’t even used his magic all day, he’d been sure not to, but he still felt beat.

If nothing else, Kabbu didn’t obey Vi’s order, giving Leif well-needed personal space. After a pause, he turned to Leif.

“I never asked. How are you feeling today? Any better?”

Leif frowned, running his claws against his bandaged hand. Was this basic small talk, or a genuine question? He could never tell. “We don’t know,” he shrugged. “At the very least, we’re not in as much pain as we were yesterday.”

“That’s good,” Kabbu nodded. “But you’re still going to see HB.”

“Fine, fine. We know,” Leif scoffed. He was hoping he could worm his way out of seeing her, but Kabbu read him like a book.

“Don’t you want to feel better?” Kabbu asked. The fact he was so genuine in asking was just salt in the wound.

“Obviously,” Leif said. “We’re just…scared.”

“You don’t have to be,” Kabbu said gently. “I’m sure HB will be very gentle with you. She’s not going to hurt you.”

“We can only hope,” Leif grimaced.

A harsh, unnatural light flickered on and illuminated the hallway in front of the two. Leif blinked rapidly, trying to adjust his eyes to the sudden brightness.

“Alright, you guys can come in now!” Vi squeaked, her voice echoing. Kabbu tightly grasped Leif’s arm and led him inside.

Good instinct on Kabbu’s end to do so. Leif was just about to make a run for it.

“Ah, welcome, welcome!” HB cried, grabbing Leif’s hand and shaking it fervently. He’d hardly had a second to gather his bearings, being bombarded by the doctor’s enthusiastic greeting the moment he took an uncertain step in her lab. Her lab had been hurriedly rearranged in a manner meant to look more akin to a doctor’s office, the B.O.S.S. hastily covered by a sheet. She escorted him in, digging into his shoulder with her claws. Already too touchy-feely. Her hands were icy cold, even to Leif—he didn’t even want to think how frigid those steel tools strewn across the floor would be, or what they’re meant for.

“It’s so lovely to see you. Please, take a seat.” Her voice was like nails on a chalkboard, dripping with malice and a repulsive sing-songy sway of feigned good intentions. Through her shattered glasses, she looked him up and down with hungry eyes, no doubt eager to slice up her next little test subject. Everything about her rubbed Leif the wrong way, from her slouched frame down to the frayed ends of her coat.

He sat himself down on a small wooden stool, admittedly thankful for the opportunity to not be standing anymore. If there was any consolation to all this, she at least let him sit down. Too drained of vitality to put up a defensive shield, he crossed his arms and cloaked himself in his wings in a small show of defiance. Anything to give himself that extra layer of protection against this madwoman. He would cooperate with her, but he wouldn’t do it with a smile.

She sat opposite of him in a steel stool that spun when she took a seat. Leif had never seen anything like it—everything else in her lab terrified him, but he couldn’t help but think about how fun it would be to spin around on one of those things. 

“Your little bee friend told me you haven’t been well,” she said, nodding towards Vi, who was sat off to the side next to Kabbu. Vi, mindlessly fidgeting with her claws. Vi glanced at Leif, but said nothing. Her beady eyes squinted with displeasure from being boiled down to Leif’s “little bee friend.” 

Leif tried to speak, but his words were hopelessly stuck. A simple yes would suffice, but HB’s presence in front of him dried his throat, making talking difficult, if not outright impossible. He bobbed his head in a shaky nod, praying she didn’t notice just how furiously he was breathing, how beads of frozen sweat rolled down his face and left behind streaks of burns in their wake. Something about her demeanor convinced Leif she had been preying on this opportunity to study him for many moons, and this was her sadistic fantasy come true. He didn’t want her to study him. He didn’t want her to figure out what was wrong with him. He didn’t want to know what the matter with him was. He just wanted to leave.

“Mhm,” she hummed, jotting something down on a clipboard. As if that silent nod could provide any information worth noting. Oh, just get on with the horrific experiments, already. “In what ways?”

She was being suspiciously normal. “Every way,” Leif croaked, finding his voice. “All of our body hurts. Especially on the inside.”

Pen scratching against paper was all Leif got in response. No questions, not even an acknowledgment of what he said. Reluctantly, he continued.

“And we keep almost fainting. It’s been getting hard to live normally,” he admitted. He stared up at the ceiling, avoiding making eye contact with any of the bugs in the room. He couldn’t bear to see Kabbu’s concerned face, or worse, HB’s one of pure curiosity.

“I see.” HB drawled. “May I ask what the bandage on your hand there is for?”

“We don’t know,” Leif said. He winced at HB’s skeptical glare. “Well, we sort of do. You can take a look yourself, if you want.”

HB pounced on the opportunity, hopping down from her seat and snapping her fingers. Crow materialized out of thin air with a box of thin, stretchy gloves, of which HB grabbed two and slipped them on. How bizarre. Leif had never seen anything like that—he’d seen gloves before, but those were for protection. These dinky things seemed more than worthless. Whatever sort of new-world standard it was, it must be rather useless.

HB snatched Leif’s afflicted hand with her own trembling one. She must be positively exhilarated to have this opportunity—that, or she just had a small tremor in her hands. She flipped his hand over, examining every inch. Leif hated the feeling of her gloved claws against his own. Those must be hell to wear.

Given her unsettling demeanor, HB was surprisingly gentle, carefully prying away the messily wrapped wound dressing, muttering to herself in what Leif assumed to be the standard Bee language. It was a relief to have those constricting bandages off, but even the slightest touch or a huff of his own frosty breath aggravated the pain. HB leaned in close, much too close for Leif’s comfort, and squinted down at his hand.

“Did you get burnt? What happened?” She asked. Almost the same question Vi had asked—burns must be common occurrences in the Hive, if that’s what both their minds immediately went to.

“No. We think our ice magic did that,” Leif explained.

HB looked up, meeting his eyes. “How so?”

How so? How was he meant to interpret that? Why he thought that? Why he thought it happened? How it happened? This was supposed to be helpful.

“We…don’t know,” Leif said. “Our ice magic was activated, and we put pressure on our hand, and…” He couldn’t think of anything more to add. His gnarled hand spoke for itself.

“Interesting,” HB hummed. “Very interesting indeed. Does this happen often?”

“Now it does,” Leif said. “It didn’t used to happen this much. It’s been getting a lot worse.”

“Mhm. You’re a smart bug, coming to see me before it gets any worse. I’ve seen many bugs who only come in when they’re practically on their deathbed.”

“Yeah.” Leif didn’t mention that he’d been literally dragged here by his teammates and, if given the choice, would definitely have put this off until he was hardly able to move without debilitating pain. He feared he was nearing that point.

“From a cursory look,” HB observed, “it appears similar to what would be expected from burns from contact with particularly cold ice. That would be an easy conclusion to come to, now, wouldn’t it? But that’s where I’m confused. When I say cold, I mean much colder than what you can produce. I’ve seen you three fight. If this was as simple as that, your little bee friend would be horrifically injured whenever you freeze her for that little…” she waved her hand a bit in thought. “…that frozen bee move, you three so blatantly overuse.”

“I have a name, and you know it!” Vi screamed. “And that frozen bee move is called frost bowling! Get it right! Geez, for someone who loves watching us fight so much, you sure aren’t observant!”

“Does my point not stand, Vi?” HB countered, proving she did in fact know Vi’s name and was purposely omitting it. “If being frozen for just a moment causes this kind of damage to the average bug, you would be dead!”

Vi fell silent. No argument there. HB sat back down, grabbing her clipboard and fervently documenting everything.

“A biopsy would be helpful.”

“A what?” Leif said. 

“You know.” HB shrugged. Leif immediately grew impatient. So arrogant. If he knew, he wouldn’t be asking. 

HB picked up a small, yet deadly looking blade. “Get a little something to numb your hand, and I carefully extract part of the afflicted area to study more closely. Simple, simple, simple. Nice and painless.”

That had to be some sick joke.

“It would be extremely helpful,” she continued. “You’re not my standard patient. I can’t do much to help you without knowing exactly what you are.”

This conversation was going downhill fast.

“With all due respect, the only ways I could help you with what I know right now, is to slather a bit of ointment on your burns and wish you good luck with everything else.” She put her clipboard down, folding her hands in her lap and leaning forward.

“I assume this is in some way related to the unknown entity within you,” she added, her tone swimming between a statement and a question. 

Unknown entity. It was getting hard to breathe, hard to swallow. How was he supposed to explain any of this to her, when it was still so difficult for him to understand, himself? He turned to Vi and Kabbu rather frantically, looking for guidance, but their faces only mirrored his lack of direction. 

There was no point in keeping secrets with her. She knew something was up, anyway, even if she lacked the specifics. And with her affinity for bizarre medical cases, maybe she wouldn’t be horrified by his condition. But was that any better? Is sick fascination better than horror? It was all just a lot of questions with no real answers.

“Not unknown,” Leif finally said. He knew he needed to add more context to that, but again, his words refused to come out.

HB’s eyes lit up behind her dark glasses. She clicked her pen repeatedly, anticipating further information.

He couldn’t. Leif couldn’t say anything. 

“Well?” HB asked, a tad too impatiently.

Leif couldn’t do anything. His mind was completely blank, his body was refusing to cooperate. Something about this felt wrong in a way he couldn’t pin down. 

Familiar. This was familiar, but not in any way he’d ever felt before. This wasn’t the same sense that overcame him when he saw Muze, or when old memories from Leif’s life resurfaced, this was a familiarity that came with a crushing fear that he’d sworn he’d never felt before, but it was familiar, it was all too familiar—

He could hear every stale breath HB took, the faint sound of her claw running across one of the metallic tools poised on the table beside her, up to the sharp tip of the blade. She dug the tip of her claw into it, a tiny trickle of hemolymph beading up.

His chest suddenly felt uneasy and light, a feeling that branched out to his head, his limbs, everywhere. Vivid blobs of color creeped into his eyesight, overtaking his ability to see. He screwed his eyes shut and willed himself not to faint again. Fainting wouldn’t get him anywhere. He tried to control his breathing, which was becoming much too heavy. 

“We need a second,” Leif panted. The ringing in his hearing slowly ebbing as his vision spottily came back. Given his condition, it was an obvious statement to make, but in his fuzzy state of mind he felt he had to explain every little movement he made to HB. Okay. He was okay. He could take a few seconds to calm himself, and he could continue talking.

He assumed it was just another fainting spell, numerous of which having had been weighing him down all day, but instead of the usual airiness, a stabbing pain hit his chest. He stifled a yell, trying to keep his composure. It felt wrong. It felt so, so wrong, but Dr. HB was right in front of him, and he had to keep his cool. 

He wrapped his spindly arms around his chest, trying to subdue the agony. He could feel his teammates staring at him, making it all so much worse.

Something warm brushed against his claws. Soft. Dripping. He didn’t have to look to know what it was. He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to see himself.

This wasn’t supposed to be happening. This was only supposed to happen once, not twice, not three times. Not twice in the span of a day or two. This wasn’t right. A violent shudder wracked his body. He’d never felt anything like that before, and he absolutely hated it. It was a blessing he usually fell unconscious when this happened.

“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what the issue is,” HB said drily, casually pointing that nauseating blade at him. Leif curled in on himself tighter, trying to keep himself within his shell. The same thoughts echoed through his mind. This wasn’t right. Something was wrong.

She was going to hurt him.

He couldn’t do this.

Leif ran.

He didn’t mean to, but his body moved on its own. It all happened in a flash, the world around him and his own body moving too quickly for him to process. Tendrils of cordyceps licked at the air, bursting from his chest and abdomen. His body went numb and limp, crumpling to the floor. HB jumped up from her stool towards Leif, her metallic seat spinning behind her. The sight only dizzied Leif further. A bitter, stinging frigid rush flowed through his body, out to his hands and to every wriggling shoot of cordyceps. A barrage of icicles involuntarily flowed out, trained on HB and knocking her back.

Before the world around him went dark, he saw a thin strand of cordyceps caught in the blast wither away to nothing.

For a brief moment, “Leif” stopped thinking. Ceased to be. His memories were blank, overrun by that of the cordyceps. It was no longer them, it was it.

It didn’t think it was capable of thought without Leif. It didn’t think it had memories of its own without Leif. It was an it. An emotionless parasite.

But memories that shouldn’t have existed came flooding back. Memories of it, and not Leif. Memories that for so long he assumed were foggy misconceptions. But they were too vivid, right now, to be a mere dream. It was too real. It was all still happening. It was still in that foggy cave room, surrounded by roaches in flowing lab coats, slicing it open, injecting it with a substance that ate away at its very form. And it couldn’t scream. It couldn’t move. It wasn’t supposed to be alive. Sentient. It shouldn’t be able to feel. It shouldn’t have emotions. It shouldn’t have memories.

And yet, it did.

Sharp tools traced across Leif’s shell, slicing at his abdomen. He mumbled the same question of what was going on repeatedly, but was met with no answer. A rough voice barked out orders at someone he couldn’t see in a language he couldn’t understand. It was all gibberish.

His mind slowly settled, his eyes flitting open, the words being spoken fading into cohesiveness. The “blade” pressed against his abdomen was H.B., holding onto Leif as he trembled on the floor, muttering to himself in an ancient tongue. H.B. wasn’t trying to hurt him. She was trying to help him. There was no blade. There was nobody tearing him open.

There wasn’t, but there had been. 

“Are you alright?” H.B.’s words felt deceptively gentle.

“What happened?” Leif stuttered. The proper Bugnish words were creeping back to his memory, but talking properly was still difficult. Kabbu was beside him, brushing his antennae out of his face. It was a miracle he kept his composure.

“You blacked out again for a moment there,” Vi butt in. H.B.’s face scrunched in displeasure with Vi’s interruption, but she only nodded along.

For a moment? That wasn’t right. That didn’t make sense. He was dead. He was trapped in some hellish lab, being experimented on before being carelessly discarded.

“No,” he shook his head, hearing the fear in his voice. “No, we—I was—I was stuck, and there were needles everywhere, and I was being…” the more he spoke, the less his words made sense to himself.

 He was fine. He was Leif. He wasn’t in Upper Snakemouth anymore. It was hard to remind himself of that, but he was fine. 

“We’re sorry about that,” he said sheepishly. “We—we don’t know why that happened. We forgot where we were for a second. We had this…very vivid memory.”

“You must be quite disoriented,” H.B. said. “Crow, fetch this moth some water. We’ll talk when you’re ready.”

Crow came dashing toward him with a cup of water, tripping over her own feet in the process and spilling some on the floor. She thrust the cup into Leif’s hands and ran off. Her leg got caught in her lab coat and she tripped again. H.B. made no effort to help her up, focused on Leif’s condition and nothing else.

Leif took a shaky sip. He hadn’t even realized how thirsty he was until then. “We can talk right now.”

H.B. wanted to protest, to insist Leif take just a few minutes to breathe after such an episode, but her curiosity won over. Leif couldn’t even blame her for that—he’d be curious, too. 

She leaned against the wall with a small sigh. “So, you’re infected with cordyceps. What a way for me to find out.”

“We’re not. I am the cordyceps.”

H.B. cocked an eyebrow, but otherwise was rather unfazed. Vi was, if anything, right in assuming H.B. wouldn’t make a huge deal out of things. Maybe it was wise to go to the most insane bug possible for this. “Are you, now? Meaning…”

“Meaning Leif is dead. I just use his mantle and memories,” Leif finished. “It’s not just me or him, it’s the both of us. I have my own…memories, too.”

“That is…extraordinary,” H.B. marveled. “I’ve seen cordyceps before, but never anything like this. From what I’ve seen, cordyceps is nothing but a parasitic fungus.”

“We’re not!” Leif protested. “We have feelings, too! We’re only here because everyone thought I was just some toy to experiment with.”

“Oh, I’m not denying that,” H.B. explained, her composure slipping at Leif’s sudden defensive outburst. “I’m just saying it’s unusual. Not impossible.”

“Sorry,” Leif whispered. It was a bad idea to be talking about all this right on the heels of such a visceral moment of panic, but he needed answers. “We know we’re not…normal. We’re just some vile Roach experiment.”

“I know,” H.B. said. “That’s where you got that nifty magic, isn’t it?”

“How did you—”

“I know Roach technology well. Even the ugly side of it. I know they experimented with cordyceps, but all the research I’ve done on the matter showed that they never succeeded. I’d assumed all their research died out.”

“A lot of it didn’t. We didn’t,” Leif said, throat tight. A small part of him wished he had died out. This was getting hard to talk about.

“This explains quite a bit,” H.B. mused after a brief lull. “You and the cordyceps are very closely connected, aren’t you? Both in mind and body.”

“We guess so,” Leif said.

“I’ll admit, for a while I thought you were using the royal we because you were full of yourself. I didn’t know it was because you were actually full of yourself! Fufufufu!”

“We don’t get it.”

“It’s because you’re also the cordyceps, and you’re inside your—oh, forget it. It wasn’t funny anyway. Now isn’t the time for that.” She cleared her throat, trying to play off the failed joke. “You don’t have the physical attributes of a standard moth, that’s for sure.” She took a step closer to him and grabbed his arm, examining every last crevice of it. Leif jerked away. She, thankfully, didn’t press the matter further, and let his arm go. When she wasn’t holding sharp objects, she wasn’t…that creepy.

“When I initially saw you, I wasn’t sure if it was normal or not. I hadn’t seen many moths up until that point,” she explained. “But I think I understand now.”

“Understand what? Do you know what’s wrong with him?” Kabbu interjected. He’d been doing so well at being quiet and letting H.B. perform her exam, but his concern was bound to win over, eventually.

“Oh, I believe so,” she said dismissively. “But you never know. This is an interesting case. Even my hypotheses could be wrong.” She walked across the room to the B.O.S.S., ripping off the sheet that had been draped over it and grumbled to herself. Grumbling quickly turned to shouting.

“Crow, how many times have I told you not to touch this?” She barked. “I told you to clean up the lab for the appointment, not to mess with precious technology!”

“You never told me that, ma’am! All I did was cover it up” Crow yelped. “But I’ll take that into consideration! I thought having a giant robot screen would distract you!”

H.B. furiously pounded away at the keyboard, unable to come up with a good answer to that. It probably would have distracted her, but she wouldn’t give Crow the satisfaction of being right.  “Leif, I hate to do this to you, but I’ll need you to come over here for a moment.”

“You want him to fight?” Vi cried, dumbfounded. “Geez, are you trying to make things worse, or what?”

“Silence, you petulant child!” H.B. yelled. “This is for science! It will not take longer than a minute!”

Leif heaved a sigh and stood up, shuffling over to H.B.. She gestured to the screen, displaying a pixelated image of a Weevil and Zombiant.

“I’d like to watch you fight these two. It should be an easy fight, for someone like you.”

“We don’t see how this will help,” Leif grumbled. 

“This is top-notch technology! These holograms are remarkably realistic! I’m the doctor here! Don’t get standoffish with me now,” H.B. snapped. “Get in there and fight.”

Leif groaned, slogging his way to the two holograms he was now tasked with beating up. This was beyond exhausting. He stepped up into the sterile arena, squinting at the bright lights beaming down on him. They didn’t serve to help his brewing headache at all. Had it always been this bright in here?

He cleared his mind, flexing his claws in preparation of the incoming attack. It stung, but wasn’t unbearable. A small icicle formed in his hand, but just as he drew back to toss it at the enemy in front of him, H.B. ran up in the middle of the arena, a tiny hop in her step. Leif faltered, digging the icicle into his leg to prevent it from hitting H.B. He hissed in pain and frustration, glaring at her with his pale eyes. How inconsiderate could she get?

“Don’t mind me,” H.B. grinned, poising herself right beside the holograms, oblivious to—or ignoring—Leif’s pain. “Just fight like I’m not even here.”

Leif sighed again. What else was there to do? There was nothing else he could do, or say, no way of possibly convincing her that she was definitely going to get hit. She was determined, he’d give her that. Insane, but determined. He could only pray she wouldn’t get upset when she inevitably got caught in the middle of the fight.

Focusing all his energy on hitting the two opponents in front of him and not H.B., he let the ice flow to his hands, piercing the two enemies, and—

And that was it.

Oh, he had the usual pain that came with using his ice magic, sure, but in terms of research potential? That was nothing special. He didn’t even faint, or anything interesting like that.

This was a remarkable waste of time. 

At least, it was to Leif. H.B. clearly found it enthralling, throwing herself directly into the action and taking copious amounts of notes on the two holographic bugs, dying and flickering before her. She was right, the holograms were rather realistic. He had to imagine she made it that way just to witness the blood and carnage for fun. At least they weren’t real. 

Despite her initial enthusiasm, her face morphed into a tight frown. She quickly wrote some notes, nodding at her own writings. She got to her feet as the holograms flickered away, walking stiffly back to the lab. “Come,” she ordered, pointing at Leif. “I have an answer for you.”

Leif’s stomach dropped. Her sudden shift in demeanor was worrying, to say the least. He scrambled to his feet, following her back into the lab.

“Kabbu, Vi,” H.B. announced, drawing in the two bugs’ attentions. They sat next to Leif on each side, Kabbu finding the stool to be rather uncomfortable, and Vi perched on her stool with her knees drawn up to her cheeks. They looked to the doctor expectantly, Vi leaning in closer and looking up with widened eyes.

H.B. perused her findings, flipping through the dozens of pages of scribbly, incomprehensible notes. “I had my suspicions on what the issue was the moment I saw the cordyceps, but that fight has solidified it in my mind,” she said. Kabbu turned to Leif with a small smile and patted his hand—Leif hadn’t even noticed he had started holding Kabbu’s hand. He drew back in embarrassment, hoping he wasn’t coming across as rude.

“If you were paying close attention to the intricacies of that battle,” H.B. continued, “you’d have seen how the Zombiant took significantly worse damage than the Weevil, even when faced with the same attack. I shouldn’t have to explain why, now, should I?”

Vi’s expression of curiosity soured. Being talked down to like that was sparking her temper. “Of course not, genius! We know how battles work! Geez!” She leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms. “A Weevil’s got more health,” she said flippantly.

“Well—yes, but that’s not the point!” H.B. hissed. “The Zombiant faced harsher damage, as Leif’s ice attacks eat away at the Zombiant’s very foundation of being, just as they would any other fungal based creature.”

She paused, waiting for her words to sink in. Vi tilted her head. A sour feeling was starting to grow in Leif’s chest. 

Adjusting her cracked glasses, she continued. “That kind of cold withers it away. It kills it.” 

Leif wished she would just get on with it already. He wasn’t up for these dramatics.

Her tone softened, and she set her clipboard down. Leif flinched—a calm and gentle, almost worried H.B. was scarier than a bloodthirsty one.

“Leif, your ice magic is destroying your own body. It’s eating you alive.”

Oh.

His heart skipped, and a sharp yelp escaped his throat, but in all truth, even though his body reacted so strongly, he wasn’t too surprised. He knew there was something wrong. He had for quite some time, even if he’d deny it. He knew his magic was hurting him in some way. It made sense. It was relieving, in a way, to have a reasonable explanation for it all.

Hearing it put like that, though, was terrifying.

There wasn’t any nice way to put it. Something like that would sound awful no matter how hard one tried to paint it in a disguise of flowery language. If anything, it’d be worse to hear it put nicely. His own body was at war with itself, the very cordyceps that gave him life again was slowly taking it away. 

His teammates’ silence, their statue-like stillness, only exacerbated his fears. He’d rather have them both be panicking than being so quiet. Their silence was so, so painfully unnerving. He could see every intricacy in their expressions as they silently worked out what they had just been told, trying to decipher just what exactly it meant. 

He was scared. Scared, but more so mad. Mad at whichever uncaring, piece of scum Roach thought to make a being in constant contradiction with itself, one that would slowly kill itself. He hoped whichever Roach it was suffered a vile, painful death. He understood Zommoth more than ever—if he could, he would rampage, too.

“Those ‘burns’ on your hand,” H.B. continued, breaking the heavy silence, “are the result of that. With how intertwined the cordyceps is with the rest of your body, your shell is rather sensitive to ice, as well. It’s unsurprising you’d be in so much pain.” Leif ran his claws down his face, feeling the similar wounds brought on by his frozen tears. Even his own tears were killing him. It was a horrifying thought. The injuries were quickly scarring over, but the gruesome mental image of his face torn up, disfigured by his own weeping.

“Is he going to be alright?” Kabbu asked, finally speaking up. His body was tense with worry, only adding to Leif’s own fears.

“Uh, yeah, he’s not going to die or anything, right?” Vi said.

Leif covered his antennae, trying to block out the answer. He didn’t want to know. He felt that he did know, and he wanted nothing more than to pretend it wasn’t the case. Vi’s question came from a place of genuine concern, of love, but the connotations behind it made him sick with dread. He’d never considered his own mortality—Leif’s, he had. But his own, the cordyceps, he never considered. Up until then, he’d been coasting along with a sense of invincibility, the inherent assumption that, given his condition, death wasn’t something he’d have to worry about. He’d already bested death, hadn’t he? 

“He’s here with us right now, isn’t he?” H.B. shrugged. “He’s survived this long, so I’d say, probably. Though, with his current state, I’d highly recommend being much, much more careful than you have been.”

Leif released a breath he didn’t know he was holding. H.B.’s nonchalance, almost unsureness of her words, provided no comfort. It came across more as downplaying the issue than a genuine belief that it would be alright. The gravity of the situation seemed to be lost on her. No doubt she was desensitized to such things by now. To her, this was just another casual conversation. Everything about this conversation was making him feel worse. Any relief he got from finally having answers was overshadowed by the subsequent implications.

“What are we supposed to do?” Vi asked. “Like, can we undo it, or whatever?” 

H.B. shook her head. “Nothing to be done, other than, like I said, take it easy on him. No reversing the effects, only slowing them.”

Be much more careful. Take it easy on him. His face twisted in anger. Was he nothing more to her than a fragile, porcelain doll that needed constant protection and doting on? Is that all he was? He was feeling less and less real by the second.

“Surely you have some sort of medicine that could help,” Kabbu suggested. “You said you’ve seen cordyceps before, haven’t you?”

“Our research on cordyceps focused on killing it, rather than nurturing it,” H.B. admitted. “Leif’s case is not the norm. Most of the time, cordyceps is something we try to destroy at all costs. So unless Leif feels it’s necessary to use that type of medicine on himself—”

“Can we go now?” Leif interrupted. He couldn’t bear to be there another second, to hear another foul word from H.B. “Please?”

Vi, just as eager to leave as he was, grabbed his hand, hopping off her seat. “Yeah. This place gives me the creeps. We can stay at Jaune’s for the night.”

“W-wait,” Kabbu stammered. He was hoping to find out more from H.B., but if Leif was at his limit, so be it. “Thank you for your time, professor,” he bowed, dashing out the door to keep up with his teammates. Either he was slow, or those two were particularly impulsive. They weren’t giving him a moment to process anything.

“Feel free to stop by any time!” She called out, unaware of the sour impression she’d left on Leif.

Leif slammed the lab door behind him, crumpling to the floor in a heap and burying his head in his hands the moment the door shut. Vi and Kabbu swarmed around him, muttering vague comforts and words of encouragement. None of their words came through to Leif. It all just sounded like noise. He wanted desperately to cry, to let himself break down, but he felt stuck. Paralyzed. He didn’t have the energy to stand, let alone make the short trip to Jaune’s studio. Everything was happening too fast. The appointment went by in a blur, yet simultaneously felt like it dragged on. Knowing exactly what was wrong with him made the pain so much worse—it was all exacerbated, making it the only thing he could feel.

His own body was trying to kill itself, and he could feel every little drip of ice that ate away at his innards. And he couldn’t fight, couldn’t fly, couldn’t do any of what made him Leif without speeding up that process. In an instant, his worth as an explorer was tanked. His worth as a bug. His life was all but over.

What was he supposed to do?

Chapter Text

Legs brought up and pressed against his tympanal organs, blotting out the steady stream of talking and buzzing of the Hive, Leif gripped his feathery antennae, smothering and pushing them against his face. Any external stimuli picked up by them was nulled. Dull pains buzzed down his antennae in protest of the pressure. 

He’d have to get up off the floor eventually. He knew that. His fuzz bristled with every questioning look from the traffic of passing bees, some briefly pausing to stare, but soon getting swept back up by the hustle of the hive. Kabbu and Vi’s constant repetition of the sentiment he so desperately wanted to ignore broke through his attempts at shutting out the world around him, a constant reminder that he’d have to face reality. This wasn’t something he could ignore.

But this was easier. And he needed something easy right now. Maybe if he tried hard enough, he could pretend wasn’t in the Hive, he wasn’t in awful pain, he was perfectly fine. And if he pretended hard enough, he could convince himself of it. And if he convinced himself well enough, maybe this would all just go away.

A sturdy hand pried Leif’s bony claws from his antennae, gently massaging his hand until it relaxed and uncurled. Leif cringed at just how sweaty his hand was. Cold beads of sweat dotted his palm, freezing on contact with his shell and searing into him, feeling like a cluster of needles digging through him. His opposite hand tugged on his antennae, his body moving in a confused attempt to distract himself from everything.

“Leif, don’t do that. You’re going to hurt your antennae.”

Reluctantly, Leif relaxed his grip—not yet fully releasing his antenna, but saving it from being yanked at unnatural angles that were bound to cause damage—and lowered his legs to listen. As much as he wanted to remain in his own little world, Kabbu was right. Antennae injuries weren’t to be taken lightly, and the last thing he needed was to lose that extra crutch of coordination. He’d seen other moths with broken antennae before—always stumbling into walls, their sense of smell dulled to near-nothingness.

Indistinguishable blobs of orange and yellow made up the world around him, his vision blurry from his eyes opening after being screwed shut so long. The sudden shift from little to no sensory input to all of it at once further crumbled any will he’d mustered up to stand up. A stubborn pounding set in at the back of his head, piercing behind his eyes. It felt like heavy lead was coursing through his body, weighing him down, forcing him to the floor and drooping his eyelids. Had it always been so bright? So loud?

“No,” Leif squeaked. He hadn’t even realized he was trembling until he heard the quiver that shook his voice. Normally so monotonous, the tremor that strangled his words was even more apparent. He didn’t know what he was saying no to, but pushing back was all he could do. What else was he to do? Everything, everything he’d been able to accomplish and set in stone was spiraling out of his control. He thought of himself as the kind of bug to go along with the flow of things, taking life as it came and not fighting back. He’d always been content with that. But now, only recognizing his need now that it had been so suddenly stripped away, he craved that sliver of control. Over what he could do with his magic, how far he could push himself, over his very life. 

The concept of death had never felt so potent before. He was supposed to be invincible. This new shot at life came with unimaginable heartbreaks, but it was exhilarating. Freeing. He was no longer just a mistake grown in a dank cave and tossed aside—he was Leif, and through all the confusion and loss, he loved being Leif. And now his second chance at life was being threatened if he didn’t change everything about himself. In all truth, he would continue using his ice magic, even if it meant pushing through the pain and dizziness, just to stay in control of his own autonomy. He would, if it weren’t for the overarching shadow of death that hung over him. He’d throw caution to the wind, use his magic as freely as he wanted ignoring all consequences, if it weren’t for that underlying truth that, if he wasn’t careful, his ice magic would gradually kill him from the inside out.

He hadn’t even realized he’d started tugging at his antennae again until Vi grabbed his fragile wrist and, rather roughly, forced his hand away from his head. Her thin wings hummed with barely masked irritation. Great, his moping was starting to get on Vi’s nerves. And no doubt Kabbu’s as well, but he had the courtesy and skill of not letting it be known. Already he was becoming a burden to them. No longer equal, no longer a valuable asset to the team, but instead a trembling bug with a shell of glass, needing to be coddled to keep him from shattering himself. What a pathetic existence. 

“It’s okay, Leif,” Vi said. Surprisingly gently. Her usual snark was nowhere to be found. Was that comforting, or concerning? Both? Neither? Bottom line, Leif didn’t want to cause any worry to Vi. It was probably too late for that though, wasn’t it?

“We can go throw rocks at Mothiva, if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Vi is ri—No!” Kabbu yelped, his train of thought immediately derailed. Leif could practically see his mind short circuiting. “No, we won’t be doing that!”

Despite everything, a ghost of a smile made its way onto Leif’s face. “Sounds like good stress relief to us.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying!”

Leif, though his eyes remained downcast—the Hive’s beaming lights paired with the vibrant orange of the walls did little to aid his brewing headache, especially with his already sensitive eyes—saw Vi quickly scan his face for his reaction out of the corner of his eye. A self-assured smile formed on her face. Not the usual look of mischief. If anything, she seemed relieved. Her shoulders deflated with a short huff. What a strange bee, she was. Maybe the thought of stoning Mothiva was just that thrilling to her. 

“Out of the way!” 

The booming command and accompanying rush of footsteps were paired with a swift thrust of a spear’s handle to Leif’s chest. Not hard, no, but his chest was still tender—agonizingly so—from the burst of cordyceps that it caused much more pain than intended. He scrambled up to his feet the best he could in his dizzied, weak state. Vibrant spots flew across his vision from the sudden movement—by some miracle, his vision cleared and the lightness in his head subsided, but oh, goodness, what a rude awakening, getting a spear shoved to his chest by an irate guard. How was he even functional at this point? It seemed nothing was going right for him.

Still standing dazed in the path of the soldier, he was forcibly pulled aside by Kabbu, who, without skipping a beat, lowered his head in a bow to the Bee. Kabbu’s horn grazed Leif’s shoulder as he gave his fervent show of respect—not hard enough to hurt Leif, but he needed to watch where he swung that thing.

“My apologies, ma’am,” Kabbu said, his valiant tone faltering from his gasps for breath. “We did not mean to impede your work.” Leif followed suit with his own rush of hurried, strikingly less verbose apologies. It was difficult to discern, but he could hear the mess of his words coming out of himself as both Bugnish and Roach. Something, something, we didn’t mean to, something, something, we’re not feeling well, something, something, please don’t get rid of me. The warmth that sprung up in his chest while trading riffs with his team—even if those jokes were all rather cruelly at another bug’s expense—had drained. He was left colder than ever. It felt as if the world was behind a foggy pane of glass he couldn’t quite see through.

“Watch it!” Vi snapped, a sharp buzz of her wings punctuating her anger as she hovered out of the way. “Have some tact, will ya?”

“Silence,” the Bee soldier ordered. Whether by coincidence or not, she rested her spear across her arms at such an angle that its tip sat with a threatening shine directly at Vi. “Apologies are not necessary. We merely need access to the lab. It’s an emergency.”

Vi pushed her ego aside and didn’t argue further, backing up farther out of the way. She was complying yes, but her face remained soured, scrunched up in a pointed look of displeasure. That is, until a figure off in the distance caught her eye. Her expression made a subtle shift from annoyance to wincing. “Yikes.”

Both Leif and Kabbu followed Vi’s glance. Their reactions mirrored hers. A second Bee soldier carefully cradled a limp figure in her arms. She was rushing, but taking deliberate steps as to not trip over the uneven Hive floor. It was rude, but Leif couldn’t help but stare. Rather noticeably. 

Interestingly, the injured bug in question wasn’t a bee—it seemed to be a moth. Seemed to be. It was hard to tell given the extent of its injuries. Leif’s vision was still rather foggy, but he could swear he saw the little moth actively smoldering. The strong smell of honey masked near all other scents, but something smelled burnt. Vi’s reaction was an understatement. It couldn’t have been a very old moth, if not outright a child. The sight was gruesome, but morbid curiosity kept his attention glued to the unfolding scene. How could such a thing happen? From what Leif had seen, the Hive—at least, outside of the factory—was strikingly safe. Sanitized. If they had the resources, they’d probably put rubber over every sharp corner so nobody got bruised. Either a freak factory accident, or something…else. He wasn’t sure what. It’d have to be a very freak accident for that to happen, but, honestly, he didn’t want to speculate. Thoughts of injury and death weren’t really what he wanted to be focusing on. If anything, this was just a harsh reminder of what could happen to him. What did. Maybe. Is that what he looked like to Kabbu and Vi? No wonder they were so concerned. He’d be, too. He was. 

As quickly as the Bee guards pushed the trio aside, they dipped into the lab without another word. A part of Leif felt bad for H.B., being bombarded by two separate medical emergencies in the span of a day when she, being all but officially retired, shouldn’t be dealing with any, but Leif’s petty side won out. No sympathy would be given. Not after how callously she treated him. 

Well, she was in all likelihood trying her best. It wasn’t her fault that all this was happening. Can’t blame the messenger. It’s not her job to comfort him and give him a big ol’ hug, but, well, maybe that’s all Leif wanted right now. 

“Geez, what happened to them? Well, we’re all on our feet, may as well head to Jaune’s now,” Vi rambled. What’s the point of asking a question if you interrupt yourself before even giving someone the chance to answer it? Vi abruptly stopped in her tracks and whipped around to face Leif. What, could she sense his inner snark, or something? 

“Oi, uh, Jaune’s is a few chambers down. Not too far, but…you can walk that far, right?”

Oh. A lot more innocuous than Leif had assumed. He really had to think better of Vi, sometimes. “Yeah. We can do that.” He was still dizzy, but the walk seemed a bit more bearable now with his adrenaline flowing. The idea that Vi of all bugs was concerned about him was simultaneously touching and embarrassing. Did she seriously think he wouldn’t be able to walk for a few minutes?

The more important question was, could he?

“Good!” Vi cried, turning on her heel and rushing down the hall. “No more carrying for me!”

So she did have to help lug him around, huh? Eh. She deserved it. She could use the strength training. Kabbu sighed, grabbing Leif’s hand and leading him toward Vi. He didn’t really need the extra support—if anything, Kabbu was dragging him along much too quickly, almost tripping him up on numerous occasions—but the sentiment was pure, so Leif didn’t complain.

“Want to stop at the honey fountain?” Kabbu offered again. 

Leif shook his head. “Nah. We’re not really that hungry.” His premonition that his appetite would be shot after visiting H.B. proved correct. If anything, he felt sick. His cordyceps normally absorbed anything he ate in a flash, but in its battered state, the thought of his usual eating habits made him nauseous. All of this was affecting him in more ways than he’d initially thought. The cordyceps was so closely tied to his very being, that it being damaged in any way would affect near every aspect of himself. Not just some soreness and occasional dizziness. Damaged cordyceps meant damaged everything. Maybe even his mind.

He didn’t want to think about that right now.

“Well, the fountain’s not going anywhere,” Kabbu said after a pause. “Tell me when you want to go there,”

“We think you’re more desperate for free honey than we are.”

“N-no, but I certainly wouldn’t find it undesirable,” Kabbu muttered. Leif could feel Kabbu’s hand grow sweaty with embarrassment,

“Don’t fret it,” Leif shrugged. “Believe us, the second we’re not so messed up inside, we’re gonna run that fountain dry. But it’s hard to eat when the stuff inside your body is hurting. Give it a bit, we’ll feel better. This has been happening for a while and we’ve always turned out fine, we just haven’t had an explanation for it until now.”

“Ah, I understand,” Kabbu nodded. “In…a theoretical way. I guess I can’t understand what that would feel like, but—”

“We said don’t fret it.”

“Right.”

Kabbu’s constant worrying was going from something Leif could put up with, if not sympathize with, to something incredibly annoying. It wasn’t Kabbu’s fault. Not at all. But Leif’s temper was quickly thinning. Old habits die hard, and his usual lighthearted snark was falling back into a genuine anger that was usually dulled from the less temperamental nature of the cordyceps.

“We know you’re scared about losing us,” Leif said stiffly, trying to be reassuring. “But we don’t want you to worry about us. We’re not going anywhere.”

“Of course you’re not,” Kabbu said. He squeezed Leif’s hand. “But I don’t believe for a second that you believe that.”

Leif pulled his hand away, crossing his arms to his chest defensively and picking up his pace. His mood changed in an instant—he was trying to help, yet Kabbu turned his own words against him. Kabbu wasn’t helping anything. Why did he even bother? A wave of anger flushed Leif’s face. His eyesight grew blurry with tears, burning his eyes, now narrowed with irritation.

Why did that simple statement bother him as much as it did? It was right, after all. He didn’t believe himself, not for a second. It wasn’t even a matter of repressed fears he didn’t know he held—these emotions were at the forefront of his mind, refusing to fizzle out, barely held back by feigned stoicism. Of the three, he was outwardly the most scared, even with his continuous attempts at hiding it.

“Leif, you don’t have to deal with this on your own, you know,” Kabbu continued, struggling to keep up with Leif’s long strides. “That wasn’t meant as a bad thing! Not at all! I know you’re upset, but how is pushing everyone away going to help?”

“Shut up.” Leif knew that wasn’t an answer, but he was quickly falling back into the pit of pushing back against anything he was told, and didn’t have the mental energy to deal with this horrible mix of emotions in a proper way. Why did he have to say that? He was just making everything worse for himself. His mood wouldn’t stop flipping back and forth from somewhat alright to furious and distressed. It was exhausting. He’d rather be consistently miserable than flip-flopping like this.

“You’re the one who brought it up,” Kabbu pointed out. Oh, if Kabbu wasn’t getting on his nerves before, he certainly was now. 

“We don’t want to hear how morally superior you are.”

“That’s not what I’m saying!”

Leif stomped his foot, unintentionally sending up a flurry of ion ice and snowflakes as he turned to face Kabbu. “We know!” He hissed. “We know. You’re right. Obviously, you are. Like always. But we don’t want to hear it right now.” He stormed off, trying to catch up with Vi, but his leg was starting to give him trouble. It wasn’t unbearable, he guessed, but the ice and snow particles that had come up in the heat of the moment had settled onto his lower leg, clinging to his shell and taking bits of flesh with them as they melted.

He could still walk, so it was fine. Mostly. He’d be fine. Jaune’s place was only a few steps away. He could crash there, try not to make an immediate fool of himself in front of such a prestigious Bee, and maybe try to apologize to Kabbu. 

He knew he wasn’t being fair. That was the worst part—such a sudden outburst over nothing at all. He was only proving Kabbu’s point, too. Responding to being told to stop pushing people away by pushing them away. The self awareness stung most of all. Easier to be unfair when you’re not keenly aware of it. But apologies weren’t possible right now, what with the pain shooting through his leg only souring his mood even more. He kept his eyes fixed ahead of him, not looking down at the fresh wound. It was best to just ignore it completely as to not stress him further. Thinking about it sent these awful waves of ice through his veins and out to his hands that he couldn’t control. Not easily, anyway.

He’d like to think he was in full control of his ice magic. To an extent, he was, but even then, in moments of high stress, his magic would take on a mind of its own. Activating on its own, sending flurries of ice everywhere. It was probably a natural defense mechanism, but it triggered so often in petty arguments that it felt more of a burden than anything. 

His ice magic was particularly erratic immediately after emerging from Snakemouth—as he was in almost every other regard, those first few days trying to figure out his own body weren’t very fun to say the least—and though abrupt bursts of ice generally weren’t a problem anymore, he was finding himself slipping into old habits and struggling to keep his magic under control during tense situations. Was it a habit? Or a consequence of…his more broad lack of control over himself? If it was a defense mechanism, what a stupid one it was, considering it only brought him more harm than good. 

For a brief moment he strongly considered marching back to H.B.’s lab and demanding she give him that medicine to kill off cordyceps, so he could get rid of this wretched magic that does more harm than good, but, no—Leif had to remind himself that killing the cordyceps would only lead to the exact scenario he was trying to avoid. Death. There was no answer to any of this, was there? Like a worm eating its own tail. 

It was amazing to Leif how much he hated his ice magic, yet simultaneously needed it to feel whole.

“Jaune!” Vi yelled, pounding her fists against the paint-splattered door. “Let us in, Jaune!”

Standing as tall as she could reach, Vi pressed her face against the small window atop the door. It was a pretty thing, Leif had to admit, carefully engraved with a perfectly symmetrical pattern and tinted faint colors. Impressive given its size, but not really great for functionality. He wasn’t keen on smushing his face against it to get a look inside like Vi was, no—his confidence had already tanked and all he really wanted to do was to curl up and disappear—but with the few looks he snuck from behind Vi, the patterned, undulating glass only served to distort the view inside. Why put beauty over utility? Or maybe it was meant to be like that? The Bees were a fascinating bunch.

Leif could barely make out Jaune, warped and tinted a slight reddish from the glass, storming towards the door, fiddling with the lock for an awkwardly long moment before swinging open the door. “Can the foolish bee not read?”

Kabbu and Vi exchanged a glance. Leif only kept his head down and eyes glued to the floor. Not walking into this one.

“Lunch break,” Jaune said slowly, voice muffled by what Leif could only assume to be the aforementioned lunch.

…It didn’t smell half bad, really. Nectar on dry bread, Leif guessed. Maybe his appetite was getting better. Too late to backtrack to the fountain now though, huh? And maybe not a good idea to gorge himself so soon, what with his mood switching up on the flip of a coin as it so often did when he was stressed. He was still debating whether or not he was still mad at Kabbu for his admittedly innocent remark.

“Oops,” Vi said sheepishly. She fiddled with her antenna, impatiently tapping her foot. There was always something moving on that bee. Never sitting still for a moment. Leif didn’t mind, but more often than not he’d find himself picking up on the fidgeting and, next thing you know, he couldn’t sit still either. “We’re crashing here for a bit, so—”

Jaune’s face pinched in displeasure. Oh, please don’t be difficult. If it came to it, he’d make himself a little cocoon of Mothiva’s merch to sleep in, he was so desperate for any kind of rest.

“Erm, if that’s alright with you,” Vi tacked on for the illusion of politeness. Jaune’s face relaxed, thank Venus, and she held out one arm to prop the door open, the other bringing Vi in for a quick hug.

“That’s better. My studio’s open to you three all the time. But don’t pound on my door like that. Everything in my studio was very expensive to make. High class stuff.”

“Sorry.” Strange to hear Vi act so polite, Leif thought—though her apologetics probably stemmed from the mention of expensive objects. Even stranger that she was raised in such a posh society, yet still managed to come out the other end with a foul mouth and blazing temper. Not that that’s a bad thing. She wouldn’t be Vi otherwise. A polite Vi was scarier than a rude one.

“Apology accepted,” Jaune said, stuffing another bite of her lunch in her mouth. “Come in. Just don’t touch anything I don’t explicitly say you can touch. Lots of paint everywhere. Wet paint.”

That wasn’t an exaggeration. Leif saw a small splotch of purple paint soaked into the stiff bread of her sandwich. He opened his mouth to point it out, but she just as quickly engulfed the remaining food. Okay then. Hopefully the paint is non-toxic.

Jaune turned on her heel, marching back to her current work in progress. Right back to work, not a second to breathe. She’s passionate, that’s for sure. As much as Vi might deny it, the two are very similar. 

Leif ducked into Jaune’s studio, antennae grazing the top of the doorway. Despite her warm—okay, maybe not warm—welcome, Leif couldn’t help but feel extremely self conscious. He’d been here before, but never when he was on the brink of a complete meltdown.

Brink was an understatement. He was pretty sure he was actively melting down but somehow keeping it together long enough to not cause any concern.

He kept his eyes glued to the floor, tuning out the sound of Kabbu making benign conversation. The floor wasn’t the uniform orange that permeated the rest of the Hive, but instead covered in a variety of shades of paints, dried up and difficult to remove. He gave a small streak of paint on the wall next to him a quick swipe of his claw, but it didn’t chip away at all. Must be infuriating living in a space like this. Too much going on at once. Given the look of the paintings drying, Jaune must be going through some sort of abstract phase. There had to be some spot where he could relax and not be bombarded by bright colors. Surely. 

He was tired. So much more than he had even realized. He knew he was, but it was really hitting him hard now. Jaune would offer him a place to sit eventually, right? Eventually wasn’t good enough. He leaned against the wall for support, letting his body deflate in a sigh. His two teammates and Jaune were still making mindless small talk. It sounded that way, anyway. They were discussing painting techniques and other miscellaneous adventures Team Snakemouth had been going on, but it all just sounded like words with no meaning. It felt strange whenever they brought him up in conversation. Leif did this, Leif did that, did he? He guessed he did. He remembered it all, he thought. Some parts felt a bit fuzzy, but he remembered enough of it all. Even then, everything felt so foreign. Like it was a different Leif who did all that. A better Leif who wasn’t standing off to the side with sunken eyes and wondering if he was ever going to do…anything useful, really. 

He was, in the most literal sense, a walking corpse, and he definitely felt like one right now. Detached and worthless. And not even making an attempt to engage. 

His eyes were drawn to the farthest corner to his right. Nothing there but a rough tarp crumpled in a heap, a few paint cans since cleaned empty, and a small painting hung up, much less vivid and distracting than the others. Perfect. He resigned himself to this little corner of dullness, blotting out all outside conversation and willing himself to focus solely on the artwork in front of him and not on the looming lightheadedness he could feel settling in.

The painting…it was quaint. Not on par with Jaune’s other works, and not groundbreaking in any way, Leif had to admit. He liked it, though—a simple landscape dotted by yellow marigolds. Unassuming on the surface, but it trudged up a wave of old memories. It was a near-perfect match with the old park he and Muse would lay in on warm days. Before it was turned into a residential area. Before Leif died. 

He couldn’t help but think of how much Muse would love the painting. She’d always been partial to the color yellow. Leif could still vividly remember plucking the cool, pale green stems where the flowers bloomed from and presenting them to Muse, and she’d brush the bright yellow petals against her face, and—

No, that’s not right. It was orange she liked, not yellow.

Or wasn’t it? Didn’t she dislike orange? No, she didn’t. Right?

That didn’t make sense. He should know this.

He closed his eyes, thinking back the best he could. But he couldn’t remember. It was as if someone had ripped the memory out of him, leaving a gap in its place that he knew shouldn’t be there, but didn’t know why exactly.

It was the park they’d go to, right? Not the outskirts? Maybe it was the outskirts. No, it wasn’t the park, the park was different.

Something as simple as what Muse liked and didn’t like and where they’d go to relax shouldn’t be so hard to remember. It shouldn’t bring this much distress, either. How can he not remember? Isn’t this something he should know? He thought he’d remembered, but things felt foggy now. Although it took him quite a while to recover memories linked to his cordyceps, or how he died…he never had trouble remembering easy things like Muse’s favorite color.

Or, did he? He wouldn’t be able to know if he’d forgotten. Those memories would simply slip away and, a vast majority of the time, he wouldn’t be able to tell they were missing. 

The thought was terrifying. He backed away from the painting like it grew eyes, staring back at him, mocking him. He wasn’t forgetting things. This was just a fluke. 

Or so he told himself, at least.

He was definitely getting dizzy now. How he was repressing the rising hysteria, he didn’t know.

“Is your moth friend alright?” 

Leif hadn’t noticed how heavily he’d begun leaning against the wall until Jaune pointed it out. Icy perspiration trickled down his forehead, leaving painful streaks. He gave an unconvincing nod of his head, but his limbs crumpled beneath him. The mind numbing loop continued on and on—fainting, thinking maybe you’re alright for a moment, fainting again, getting asked if you’re alright, deny deny deny.

“Leif is having some…problems,” he heard Vi confide in Jaune. Hearing her speak of him right in front of him, especially about his issues, was uncomfortable, but the topic would come up eventually. He knew that. At a certain point he had to admit he wasn’t doing well, even if it took his memory slipping and his body shutting down to prove that to him. Not that he’d have to admit that to anyone else.

“We just came back from H,B.’s,” Kabbu explained in a hushed voice. He spoke slowly, careful not to reveal too much. H.B. was unfazed by his condition, but that didn’t mean everyone else would be alright with having a cordyceps in their vicinity. Leif didn’t know what would happen if that information got out, but given what he’d seen as a young moth—cordyceps infected individuals being quarantined for the rest of their lives, without any hope of returning to normal life (and this was seen as the merciful outcome for them)—he could only hope it stayed that way. 

“He’s been having some…issues, and it doesn’t seem like they’re going to go away any time soon. We just wanted to stay here for a while to, well, give him a chance to recharge a little,” Kabbu said. “Magic can be hard on the body.”

Leif sighed. Some issues. That was one way to put it. Much less severe than it felt, but it got the sentiment across. The glimmer of pity in Jaune’s eyes only made him feel worse. That knot of anger rose up in his chest again, and he glared at Kabbu. He couldn’t pinpoint why he was mad, just that he was, and trying to calm himself down felt too great a task to deal with right now.

“Yeah, he like, might not be able to fight anymore,” Vi piped. “Real bummer.”

“But he’s still a valued member of the team, no doubt!” Kabbu butt in, embarrassed by Vi’s brashness. “A bummer it may be, but…er…”

The fact that Kabbu of all bugs couldn’t put a positive spin on things only rubbed salt in the wound.

“Hm. Leif, was it?” Jaune said, walking up to him, the dripping brush attached to her abdomen leaving a trail of paint in her wake. “A shame. Yes, quite a shame indeed. If it would be any consolation, you can spend the night in my bed if you’re not feeling well. It isn’t much, but it’s better than the floor.”

Vi’s eye twitched a bit from across the room. “Oh, but when I come to visit I have to sleep on the floor, huh?” She muttered to Kabbu. Kabbu side-eyed her and gave her a near-invisible shake of his head.

Leif weakly nodded, too tired to be embarrassed anymore. Fatigue had been clinging to him all day, but now especially it felt all but unbearable, as if it was physically boring into his eyes and weighing his entire body down. He’d curl up and go to sleep right here on the floor if he had to.

Jaune peeled back a rough canvas sheet pinned to the wall, revealing a small hexagonal alcove carved into the wall, padded with pillows and blankets that, surprisingly, unlike everything else in the room, seemed relatively untouched by paint. The bed was too small, Jaune wouldn’t stop rambling on and on about the “rules” for being in her private space, Vi wouldn’t stop yammering on about whatever random thought had crossed her mind, and the lights in the room seemed too bright to ever allow proper sleep, but, oh, Venus, was it the greatest thing Leif had seen all day. He crammed himself into the bed, the cool sheets soothing the stinging wounds burned into his shell from ice exposure. Jaune was right that it wasn’t much, but for now, it was more than enough. He burrowed in the sheets, letting his head sink into the admittedly somewhat lumpy pillow, and falling asleep what felt like instantly. 

His life was still falling apart. He was falling apart.

But this, at least, was a temporary moment of relief.

Muse was everywhere in his dreams. But was it her? Really her? At times Leif couldn’t tell. As the dreams wore on, growing more and more vivid as he became more and more lost, her face began to change—at first unnoticeable, but soon it was all Leif could focus on when he saw her. It dripped like candle wax into an amorphous blur of pinks and reds. Before long, her face was hardly a face anymore, and more so a blank slate, always hidden, never seen. Covered by her hands, covered by bunches of leaves, covered by nothing at all yet still somehow invisible. Her fur color kept changing. She was pink with cream-colored neck fluff. Then she was red with cream-colored neck fluff. Then he fluff was purple, then pink, then orange, then yellow, then orange again, and much like her face, the rest of her soon morphed into something unrecognizable.

But even with Muse misshapen and foreign to Leif, he was happy. She was with him, his family was with him, and he showed no sign of decay. He was Leif again. Just Leif. There was no “us.”

But everyone around him felt…off. It wasn’t just Muse. His parents didn’t look right. They were fading, too. Their faces were melting. And when he asked them why they looked like that, their blurry faces pinched in despair.

“What do you mean?” They asked. “You are the one who looks strange. Where are you going?”

Leif wasn’t sure. He caught glimpse of himself in a passing puddle and instead of seeing  a rusty red, vibrant moth staring back at him, he saw a pale blue thing who looked out of place everywhere he went. Ice encased his legs, suffocating them, breaking them.

“We’re not going anywhere,” he said, slow and uncertain. Loud static filled his head. What were they talking about again?

“You’re not here for us anymore,” Muse cried. “Who is ‘we’? Why aren’t you Leif anymore? What did you do to him?”

“What?” Leif backed up, looking around fervently. “It’s…me…and…” 

And who? There was someone else with him. Wasn’t there? Maybe there wasn’t. Nothing was making much sense anymore.

“Can you not recognize us anymore?” A voice asked. 

“Our faces are right here.” 

“Look at us, Leif.”

“Why are you abandoning us?”

“We’re not!” Leif spat. “We—I—I mean, I’m not. I know who you are. Of course I do. You’re my parents. You’re Muse. I know who you all are. Right?”

But no voice answered. 

“Right?”

Nothing.

He called out for Muse, for his parents, again and again, but nobody ever answered. Eventually, he forgot who he was looking for. His words grew tangled in his mouth. These names didn’t mean anything anymore. Who was Muse? Did it matter? It didn’t seem to matter.

He didn’t know what was happening, but he had the overwhelming sense he was forgetting something important.

Leif didn’t know how long he’d been asleep. By the time he snapped awake, trembling and sweating, the room was all but completely dark. It took him a moment to place himself, but his back, aching from being scrunched up in the tight bed, reminded him where he was. Who he was. He was Leif.

Right?

But if he was Leif, why could he still not remember Muse’s face? When he tried to conjure up an image of her, it was blurry. He’d chalk it up to being disoriented, but when he stopped to think about it…when was the last time he could remember what she looked like?

His stomach clenched. Physically, he felt much better after resting, but reality was hitting him hard. He remembered her smile, at least. He didn’t remember what fur color or her eye color or her face shape or anything, but he remembered her smile, and that was enough to hang onto for now.

If his ice was eating away at his body, wouldn’t it be just as plausible for it to be robbing him of his mind, too? Those precious memories he cherished over everything else?

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be, because without those memories, he wasn’t Leif anymore. He was a cordyceps who was meant to be thrown out and should’ve stayed that way. 

He tossed the sheets off of himself, stumbling out of the cramped bed and taking unsteady steps forward. He didn’t know where he was going, but he needed to go somewhere. He didn’t have it in him to be petty toward Vi or even Kabbu anymore. He just wanted to be near someone. 

But they were gone, too.

For a moment he wondered if this was just another dream, but a soft light caught his eye. He stared at it intently, momentarily distracted by the vibrant scene it illuminated. An unrecognizable swirl of colors, much like the appearance of Muse in his dreams. But, not quite—it had more of a shape to it. More intention behind each color.

The bristles on Jaune’s back stood on end, and she took a quick glance over her shoulder, starting at the sight of Leif staring at her. 

“By the Queen!” she yelped. “Goodness, you startled me. I’m just adding some last minute touches.”

It took Leif a moment to find his voice. Everything still felt off. “Where are…”

“Violet and the beetle one?” Jaune finished for him. “I think they’re off staying the night in the inn down in Defiant Root. The beetle said you wanted to be left alone. They’ll be back in the morning.”

“Oh,” is all Leif said. A heavy loneliness set in. This was his own fault, for being so harsh towards those two. They were just trying to help, but he pushed them away without a second thought.

“You could go down there to see them, but they’re probably asleep by now,” Jaune said.

“No, we were just wondering if we could see them now,” Leif shrugged, sighing. “Doesn’t matter. We can wait, we guess.”

“Why, is everything alright?” Jaune asked. The question was more of a formality, the way she asked it—barely giving Leif a second glance, her tone flat and uninterested—but the words felt like a punch in the gut.

“Not really,” Leif admitted, trying to hide the shaking in his claws. “We haven’t felt like ourselves. And we were rather snippy with our teammates earlier. We’d like to be able to apologize for that.” He looked down before adding, “and we can’t remember.”

“Can’t remember what?” Jaune asked, not bothering to turn to look at him.

“We can’t remember our wife’s favorite color.”

Jaune turned her head at that, giving him a confused look. “What?”

“We can’t remember,” Leif repeated, voice breaking. “We forgot. And we’re not sure if we’re forgetting other things too.” 

“I don’t…” Jaune trailed off.

“We don’t want to forget her!” Leif burst out. “We don’t know what’s happening to us, but we don’t want to forget her. She’s been gone for years, but we still love her. But we’re forgetting what we loved about her. Simple things we should know.” He crouched down, hiding his face in his wings. This was a lot to spring on Jaune in the middle of the night, but what else could he do? 

Jaune was quiet for a long time, ignoring Leif and carrying on with her project, but finally she said, “What do you remember?”

“What do we remember?” Leif repeated. “We remember…her name, for one. Her name was Muse.” He swallowed, thinking back as much as he could. “She had a funny smile. Really pointy looking. Like a triangle. And she was strong. A lot taller than me. Sometimes when we hugged, we couldn’t breathe.”

“Mhm,” Jaune nodded.  “Go on.”

More memories spilled out. “She was really fluffy. More so than most moths. And…we think…we think she was pink, but we can’t remember. We don’t remember what color her wings were, but she had patterns on them that looked like eyes. And she was loud. In a good way. She liked to talk and sing a lot, but she was never really on-key. But she still sounded nice to us. She was spunky. She didn’t trust a lot of people, but the ones she did she loved a lot. She always wanted to be a mom. Like, always. Even when we weren’t ready at all. She had an entire book of possible names that she knew by heart. But when we found out she was pregnant, we didn’t go with any of them. She went with the one I recommended as a joke. But we don’t know if she actually used the name because we weren’t…we weren’t there, and we don’t remember the name anymore.”

“It sounds like you remember a lot,” Jaune noted. 

“Not as much as we’d like to. And we’re scared we’ll forget.”

“Do you remember anything else about what she looked like?”

“Not really,” Leif muttered. “We don’t remember her face at all. But she—“ his antennae perked up as a foggy memory resurfaced—“she had one antenna that was curly and one that was straight. It looked weird. In a cute way.” 

Leif could hear the smile in Jaune’s voice. “Violet had the same thing when she was first born. She grew out of it, though. Shame. I always thought it was adorable. How did Muse wear her wings?”

“Like a cloak. Like us.” Leif smiled a bit. “Seems weird now, but that was the style back then. Well, for male moths, at least. Not that she cared. I liked that about her. She knew what she wanted, and did it regardless of what others thought.” Leif lifted his head out of his wings to see Jaune crouched on the ground, huddled over a blank canvas and etching vague scribbles with a jagged piece of charcoal. Her wings buzzed a little as she drew, and after a few moments she brushed her hands on her fuzz, staining her golden fluff with bits of charcoal and tentatively held out the canvas for Leif’s inspection.

Muse.

A rushed, unpainted sketch of her with jagged lines and uncertain features, but it was Muse. Her wings drooped around her shell, her mouth curled in an awkward smile. He hadn’t seen her outside of his own foggy memory for decades. 

It was just a drawing. He knew that. But it hit him so deeply that he could swear Muse was right there with him. And maybe in a way, she was.

It wasn’t an immediate fix. It didn’t miraculously spark his memories. But merely having a bit of her to cling on to, even if his memory was starting to skip…it was enough. He could fforgdt every detail of her, and he could mourn every lost day they spent together, but she was always there.

Freezing tears sprung to his eyes. Jaune’s antennae drooped, and she pressed her lips together tightly. “I’m sorry, I thought you—”

Leif shook his head, grabbing the canvas from her and pressing it tightly against himself, as if someone was going to steal it away from him. “No, we love it.”

“Oh, that’s a relief. That’s the beauty of art, isn’t it?” She puffed her chest out, her tone teetering on snobbish. “Memories fade, but paintings…paintings last—”

“Draw our parents next.”

“Hm?”

“We don’t want to forget them, either. Do them next.” 

A small smile formed on Jaune’s face. “I haven’t even finished the first one. Patience, patience. You should write down the things you remember now in case you forget.”

Leif held his tongue, tempted to spill every thought that came to mind but instead resigning himself back to bed to give Jaune the chance to work. Admittedly, gushing about all the things he loved and missed eased his mind a little. A bitter longing sat in his chest, but being able to voice that pain helped ease his grief. Maybe Kabbu was right. 

Not that he was necessarily ready to talk to him and Vi. Somehow it was easier to talk to what was essentially a stranger to him. There were less strings attached—he’d rather confide in someone he hardly saw than those he saw daily.

“Jaune?” He asked quietly. Somewhere in the near-darkness he could make out two curly antennae perking up. “What would you do if you couldn’t paint anymore?”

Jaune nibbled at the wooden end of her paintbrush, drumming her claws on the side of her canvas. “I’d draw,” she said after a pause.

A small huff of laughter escaped Leif. “No, if you couldn’t draw anymore, either. If you couldn’t do art anymore. If you couldn’t do what makes you feel like you.”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Probably mope around a lot. I really don’t know.”

Leif hummed in response, trying to ignore the pit in his stomach. What was he expecting? Some magic cure? Some perfect solution to all his problems? It was nice to get a fresh perspective on things, but Jaune couldn’t fix everything. He knew that—yet he still found himself having to push down bubbling anger at Jaune’s response.

She didn’t know. He didn’t know. Will anybody ever know?

Is there even anything to know?

“We don’t know either.” Leif said quietly, turning over the best he could in the cramped bed. “We’ve been feeling rather mopey ourselves.”

“Ah, uh, I’m positive you’ll find a way through this,” Jaune stuttered. Must’ve been caught off guard at the realization that wasn’t just some rhetorical question but a genuine one. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Just because I’d be moping around doesn’t mean you have to be. I mean, you fought the Wasp King. You saved Bugaria. You obviously have stronger willpower than me.”

It’s always about how he beat the Wasp King, isn’t it? Always about how he saved Bugaria? Oh, sure, those were impressive, but…

“Is that all there is to us?” Leif deadpanned, quickly adding, “that’s not a rhetorical question.”

“It’s all I know about you, but that doesn’t mean that’s all there is to you.” Jaune twisted the cap onto an open tube of paint, giving Leif a sleepy frown. “You’re still you, no matter what you do or don’t do.”

All Leif could think of was the cordyceps wriggling within him. “Are you sure?” 

Jaune rubbed the fatigue from her eyes, propping herself against the wall and shaking her head, closing her eyes.

“Leif, I don’t know.”

Chapter Text

Leif awoke from a dreamless sleep, disoriented and with a heavy soreness in his limbs. Sunlight poured in through the window, beaming onto his face and begging his tired eyes open. He propped himself up on one shaky elbow, blinking to clear the sleep from his eyes. What time was it? Late morning? Afternoon? The sun’s position suggested he’d slept for much longer than he’d anticipated.

He dreaded what the day would bring, but pushed through the sinking feeling in his chest and pried himself out of bed, freeing himself from the sheets that seemed to have tangled around him in his sleep. He felt alright, all things considered. As alright that he could feel. A thin layer of ice gripped his arms, most likely something done subconsciously during the night, stiffening his arms and starting the day with a stinging pain and a weakness in his muscles that gave his arms about the same amount of strength as a dead twig. Honestly, he’d gotten used to it, by this point. He couldn’t remember what it felt like to feel “good.” To him, a day like this, waking up exhausted and sore, was the norm.

It was tempting to immediately start spiraling into a panic again. Reveling in misery during a time like this was easier than trying to build yourself back up again. Doesn’t take nearly as much effort, and after a while, in some backwards way. you start getting addicted to that rush of self destruction.

But he couldn’t stay miserable at the sight of what was left out for him. A leaf omelet, wrapped up in a damp napkin, laying in front of a small canvas painted with the face of a smiling moth, her pink fluff ragged and ruffled, but so soft looking he wanted to reach out and run his claws through it. The painting was visibly hurried, with smudges of paint where they shouldn’t be, but the imperfections made it feel all the more real in a way. He wished he could say the sight of the finished portrait magically sparked his memories, and he suddenly remembered all the memories that had been taken from him, but once again, his mind came up blank when he tried to think back.

This was enough, though. Being able to put a face to the foggy memories he knew he had somewhere deep down, even if it might not be completely accurate to reality…it gave him a warmth in his chest so different to the icy dread that had been choking him. Her little pointed grin, the bits of wayward fluff sticking out this way and that, the feisty look in her eyes; Jaune captured her perfectly.

He felt by no means good, but well enough to take a few nibbles of the leaf omelet left out for him as he turned the canvas over in his claws, admiring every inch of it. When was the last time he’d eaten? A day? More? He couldn’t remember, but his stomach tensed in hunger at the scent of the omelet, which was a good sign. At least his appetite was recovering.

He couldn’t find Jaune—or Vi and Kabbu, for that matter—from a quick glance around the room, so he didn’t have the chance to properly thank her for her hospitality. Hopefully she would be able to know that Leif was grateful, even if he never outright said as such. He wasn’t exactly sure how he’d face his teammates, though. It’s not as if they haven’t gotten in petty squabbles before, and Leif had no qualms in admitting he’d been a bit snarky—even if he had good reason to be, considering just how stressed he was yesterday—but apologies would of course lead into the inevitable question of what next?

He didn’t know what next, and that was the trouble. He turned the question over in his mind, contemplating every possible answer as he made his way through the omelet—a bit bland, but palatable—but not once did a solution come to him. His entire life didn’t revolve around fighting, but as an explorer, it was a fairly important aspect that he of all bugs should at least have some talent in. It was mean, maybe, but his thoughts drifted to Gen and Eri and their…methods of exploration.

He liked the twins, of course he did, but he didn’t necessarily want to be like them. Not in the slightest.

So, what, had he just reached a dead end? Was there really nothing else to do? Such a bleak life to live. Maybe there was an obvious solution he just hadn’t thought of yet, but in truth, he was getting worn out from thinking about it so much. He instead busied his thoughts with Muse, brushing his claws gently against the canvas and wishing Jaune was able to encapsulate every detail of Muse the same way she encapsulated her appearance. He’d give anything to hear her voice again.

A fleck of color on the back of the canvas caught Leif’s attention. Flipping it around, he saw a small, rough looking painting of himself and Muse. Except, it wasn’t himself that was with Muse. It was themself. How Leif looked now. A dingy blue with lifeless eyes and stiff limbs that all screamed decay.

It made sense why Jaune would portray him that way, given that that’s the only version of him that she knew, but something about it struck a chord deep within him. It wasn’t right. That wasn’t Leif. He wasn’t Leif. He suddenly felt like an intruder in his own shell, which, in a way he was. Stealing Leif’s memories away and pretending they’re its own.

The question that bothered him the most was, would Muse still love him if he was like this? Wherever she was now, watching over him, did she feel nothing but contempt for this thing that’s pretending to be her husband? And here he was, in a rushed little painting, by her side and replacing the old Leif that should be there. How out of place he looked in the painting, his dead claws intertwined with Muse’s that, even in just a quick painting, radiated life.

He’d always imagined seeing Muse again, but he’d never considered the possibility that she wouldn’t want to see him. He wouldn’t be surprised. Their final interaction wasn’t one he wanted to remember, which of course, made it the one he remembered in the most vivid detail. What happened before it? He didn’t know. What happened afterwards? He didn’t know. What he did remember were the tearful words directed towards him:

“You never listen to me! You’re so distant all the time!”

And his own words, raised in anger, that he knew he must have said, but sound so foreign now:

“I’m not being distant, Muse! I’m telling you, it’s—”

…And Muse’s interjection.

“I don’t care what you’re saying, I’m telling you that—”

…And his own brazen response.

“Would you just shut up?”

And nothing more.

It really wasn’t fair what happened it him, was it?

Not just what was happening to him now, but every aspect of his life that led him here. He tried not to be bitter, but he sometimes couldn’t help but let that pettiness slip in. Pettiness that came with awful thoughts he knew he shouldn’t be thinking: how jealous he was of his teammates, for mending their own lives when he couldn’t. Kabbu, for how he was able to heal from his past losses, and Vi, for rekindling her relationships. He felt he was in a perpetual state of limbo, never quite moving on yet never quite living in the past.

He was especially jealous of Vi. Incredibly happy for her, but so, so burningly jealous. If he’d just been as mature—how strange it felt to use that word to describe Vi—as her, maybe the last memory he had of Muse wouldn’t be a heated argument. Maybe if he’d stopped lashing out when he got upset, he wouldn’t spend half his waking thoughts stressing over whether or not Muse was still mad at him.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. All a bunch of maybes with no concrete answers. The worst part of it all, he couldn’t even remember what they’d been arguing about. Most likely something so insignificant, it wouldn’t have become an issue if Leif hadn’t done…whatever it is he’d done. He wished he knew so he could apologize. He…it…has a lot to apologize for. This painting was making him think too much. He needed to clear his head. And maybe try to apologize to Kabbu before it’s too late again.

The door creaked open, startling him and causing him to almost choke on the last bite of omelet. A flurry of snowflakes burst up all around him—another unfortunate sign his self control was slipping—and he quickly wiped his sweaty palms on his wings. He at least wanted to look somewhat put together, and sitting on the floor soaked in sweat and hugging a painting to his chest didn’t inspire confidence.

“Ah, you’re awake,” Jaune said, nudging the door open with her hip, one hand barely clutching onto an already-ripping paper bag filled with miscellaneous art materials, the other reaching down to hold Vi’s hand. As per usual with Vi when anybody even remotely treated her like a child, she didn’t seem too pleased with the arrangement, and the sheer look of embarrassment on her face had Leif wishing he had been there to see it all go down.

“You doing better, or what?” Vi exclaimed, her wings buzzing as she spoke.

“We are a little bit better,” Leif said slowly, trying to gauge just how he was actually feeling. Physically? Well, he wasn’t in active agony or anything—except for the stray snowflakes that stung a bit on impact—so he wasn’t doing terrible. He was sore, yes, but it was hard to differentiate between chronic-pain-soreness and old-man-soreness. Mentally? Not too well, but, hey, he wasn’t crying or yelling at people anymore, so that’s good.

“Excellent!” Kabbu beamed, fidgeting with his claws. “I apologize for leaving you here alone like this, but Jaune had some errands to run, and I figured I’d show her around Defiant Root’s shops. Defiant Root has such a rich art culture, I couldn’t help but give her a quick tour of the place.”

“Uh-huh,” Leif nodded, feigning interest. “Yeah, uh, no, it’s not a problem. We haven’t been awake for very long anyway. What time is it?”

“Oh, it’s not too late,” Vi assured him. “It’s like, ten-thirty or something. Super early if you ask me.”

“She missed over half of her shifts at the factory because of how often she slept till noon,” Jaune said, shaking her head. “Ah, not important, not important. I see you liked my painting.”

Leif pried the canvas away from his chest. Tried to, at least. Frozen sweat stuck the canvas to his chest, and he ended up just covering himself with his wings in embarrassment. “Um, yes, we do. Thank you.”

“You made something for him?” Vi cried, bounding across the room and hovering around Leif. “Can I see?”

Leif cleared his throat, his face heating up in embarrassment. At least it helped melt some of the built up ice all over his shell. “It’s not that exciting,” he said sheepishly. “Don’t care,” Vi retorted with a flippant flick of her antennae. “Please? See, I’m asking nicely and everything.”

Leif sighed, his breath foggy from cold, and held the painting out with hesitation. Vi all but snatched it from him, buzzing into the air and holding it out in front of her to inspect it. “It’s just a portrait of our wife,” Leif explained quickly, before Vi could ask any questions. “At least, what we remember her looking like.”

“Aww, how sweet,” she cooed. Was she being sarcastic? Leif couldn’t tell. It’d be awfully rude of her if it was…

“Yes, I could tell you loved her a lot, so I put aside some of my other projects to make that for you as soon as I could,” Jaune explained, setting down the paper bags before the bottoms ripped. “It’s the least I could do, really. Memory loss is a cruel thing. I wanted to give you something to hold on to.”

Leif’s heart skipped a beat, and he darted his eyes away. The steady buzz of Vi’s wings paused inquisitively, coming out in short bursts, before stopping entirely. The faint sound of her fuzzy feet hitting the ground followed, and while Leif refused to look at anyone, he could feel all eyes on him. Venus, he just wanted to disappear.

“What do you mean?” Vi finally asked, and even without looking at the bee, Leif could hear the playfulness drained out of her in an instant. He hated when that happened. There was something so potent about hearing even Vi sounding so dejected, enough to make his eyes burn with fresh tears. It’s fine. It’d be fine. He’d been doing a good job at not being miserable today, and that wasn’t going to change.

The silence that followed only made things worse. Finally, Jaune said, “I’m sorry, was I not supposed to say anything about that?”

Jaune’s words only served to infuriate Vi. “What do you mean?” She demanded again, the worry in her voice morphing into anger. “Why’ve you been telling Jaune things but not us? Do you not even trust us anymore, or what?”

“It’s not that,” Leif whispered, finding his voice again. He put his hands up defensively, but he could feel such powerful magic surging through his body he worried he might accidentally hurt Vi, so he crossed his arms to his chest and hoped it would die down on its own. “We weren’t purposely not saying anything. You weren’t here last night, and that’s when…” he shrunk in on himself, antennae drooping. “That’s when we stopped to think about it and realized that something was off, and we weren’t just going crazy.”

“Is this because of…all that?” Kabbu asked vaguely. “We don’t know. But probably. We wouldn’t be surprised if all of this was affecting more than just our physical health.”

“Oh, dear,” Kabbu fretted, “we can always go back to H.B. and ask her if she could help. I know you don’t like her much, but—”

“Well, what a way to find out,” Vi interrupted, shoving the canvas back in Leif’s claws and staring up at him with a look of resentment. “So glad you were going to tell me about how you’re going to forget who I am.”

“It’s not like that,” Leif protested. His bristles stood on end, and it took the memory of his last conversation with Muse to remind him not to lose his temper—though in this case, nobody could really blame him if he did. Vi wasn’t being fair in the slightest! Couldn’t she at least pretend to be sympathetic? He knew she was a bit impulsive and temperamental at times, but this was just absurd. “You’ve hardly been here for five minutes, Vi. Obviously we were going to tell you, but that’s not the sort of thing we would spring on you immediately after you enter the room.”

Vi crossed her arms, her face down and pinched in anger. She didn’t have much of a retort to that, but her temper continued to simmer. Vi could get angry at the drop of a dime, but once she got going, it was near impossible to get her to stop.

“Don’t be like this, Vi,” Jaune lectured, narrowing her eyes at Vi. “What’s acting like a child going to help?”

“Oh, well, excuse me,” Vi spat. “Forgive me for being upset that my dear friend and teammate is going to forget who I am soon. I guess I should be handling that with grace, huh? I should be all smiles and laughter and rainbows?”

“Violet,” Jaune said, much sterner this time.

“We’re not going to forget you, Vi,” Leif tried to assure her, antennae twitching as he turned to Kabbu for guidance. Kabbu only looked concerned. Great. “It’s…it’s the older memories we’re having trouble with. Things that happened before we woke up in Snakemouth. We still remember you just fine. And that’s not going to change any time soon.”

Vi looked up at Leif with an inscrutable expression, her shoulders heaving with every angry huff of breath, and stormed out of the room without saying another word.

“What did we do wrong?” Leif asked nobody in particular. Kabbu shook his head, walking up to Leif and simply saying, “Vi’s been like that all day.” He wrapped his stubby arms around Leif in an awkward hug, which Leif hesitantly returned. Okay, now just apologize. Not that hard. Shouldn’t be hard. Just say sorry. Now’s a good time.

“Uh, sorry for being a prick yesterday,” Leif said stiffly. Good enough.

“Huh?” Kabbu hummed, tilting his head up—and, once again, nearly hitting Leif in the face with his horn. “Oh, it’s not a problem at all. I can’t imagine all this has you in the best of moods.” So it was that simple, huh? No begging for forgiveness or anything? It just made him feel all the worse he hadn’t been able to put his pride aside for a second all those decades ago and apologize to Muse. But the past is the past.

“Uh, yeah,” Leif murmured, pulling away from the hug. “We still have a lot to think about.”

“Of course, of course!” Kabbu said a bit too cheerfully. The overall mood was lighter than yesterday, but there was still a heavy air of tension and anxiety weighing everything down that Kabbu was trying desperately to defuse. “I am always available to help! Or talk! Or—or not talk, if that’s what you want! Point is—”

“Point taken. We’ll get back to you on that,” Leif deadpanned, resting his hand on the top of Kabbu’s head and lightly pushing him away. It was easy to brush off Kabbu’s concern as just Kabbu being Kabbu, but Leif couldn’t deny he felt the same way. He wouldn’t be too surprised if Vi was just as frazzled, but it’s impossible to say with her. Especially now that she was who knows where doing who knows what to calm down. She couldn’t be too far. Better to give her the space to blow off some steam.

“Yes, yes, how touching,” Jaune said, kneeling down to sort out her supplies and drumming her claws on the floor hurriedly. “I’ve many projects today, so…” She paused before adding the heartless truth of “I really want to be left alone now.”

Kabbu thankfully picked up on her wishes without her having to outright say it—no way that Leif would have been able to—and lowered his head in a grateful bow and nudged Leif with his elbow. “Our deepest gratitude for your help,” Kabbu said boldly as he continued to try to subtly communicate to Leif that they had to get going by tugging at his wings. “Truly. It means a lot to us.”

“Of course,” Jaune nodded, giving the pair a somewhat self assured smile. Seems Kabbu found his equal In terms of speaking with unnecessary pomposity. “Apologies for Violet’s behavior. I don’t know what’s gotten into her.”

“Oh, it’s not your responsibility to keep her on a leash at all times,” Kabbu said. “Vi is…she is spunky. There’s no predicting what she’ll do next. Emotions are running high, I’m sure she’ll come to her senses soon.”

Jaune only shrugged in response, but good-naturedly sent them on their way, reminding Leif to stop by any time—other than today, obviously—to talk to her about making more paintings for him. Leif agreed, hoping his memories would stick around long enough for him to be able to describe his family to her.

They would, most likely. It wasn’t as if his memories were disappearing all at once. Instead it was more so a steady stream of forgetting, starting with a few foggy patches that snowballed into full confusion and blankness. In a way, it was worse than having them go all at once. This slow drip of forgetting only made it hurt more. He’d rather not know he was mourning memories rather than having a foggy idea that something was wrong without being able to pinpoint what.

The pair mutually decided that, wherever Vi was, it was best to leave her be. Chasing her down and trying to talk sense into her would only make her more mad. In the meantime, they resigned themselves to a bench until Vi showed up again. Or until it got late enough that they decided they should go look for her. Either option worked. The bench was clearly made for bees, much too cramped for a bulky bug like Kabbu and a tall one such as Leif, but it was good enough.

Being in the main halls of the Hive was going to be crowded and hectic no matter what you do, but this spot wasn’t too crowded, at least. If anything, the traffic coming through mostly consisted of bugs on their way to worship the ground Mothiva stood on and blow hundreds of berries on overpriced merch. If Mothiva was good for anything, it was redirecting traffic away from Leif so he and Kabbu could talk with relative privacy. It would be good to talk things through with someone, even if just briefly.

That’s what Leif was hoping for, but Kabbu seemed bent on making menial small talk and nothing more.

“Something strange about Bee Kingdom architecture,” Kabbu rambled, scooting forward a little to point at a design quirk in the back of the bench, “is that many seats here have holes built in to the backs for stingers to go through, so you don’t have to crush them when you sit or accidentally sting someone next to you. Fascinating, isn’t it! I wonder if the Wasp Kingdom has similar features. We should visit sometime. I hear they’ve been making excellent progress in rebuilding. Isn’t that great?”

“Kabbu?”

“Yes?”

“Can you…” Leif tilted his head. “Talk a little bit less?”

“Oh!” Kabbu exclaimed. Leif could swear he could see Kabbu blush. “Oh, my bad.” He crossed his legs, slightly bouncing up and down. Oh, he just radiated anxiety. “I was just hoping to keep your mind off of things with some trivia.”

Leif found himself smiling. “We appreciate the thought,” he said, patting Kabbu on the shoulder, “but really, we’d appreciate it if you treated us…normally.”

“With all due respect, you haven’t been acting very normally,” Kabbu said.

“That’s true,” Leif admitted. “No, you’re right. We haven’t been. But we want to…” He fidgeted with his claws, weaving them in and out of one another. “…deal with things eventually, you know? We can’t distract ourselves forever. Even if bee architecture is rather interesting.”

“My offer still stands,” Kabbu reminded him. “You can talk to me anytime you want. I just figured now was a bad time, considering”—he gestured around vaguely—“we’re in one of the most densely populated areas in Bugaria.”

“Honestly, that’s the least of our concerns,” Leif said with a breathy laugh. “I think they’re more concerned with some overpriced silk scarves than our personal life.”

“True,” Kabbu said, “very true…I’m sorry, I’m changing the topic again, but—where do you think they get the silk from, anyway?”

“Mothiva’s a silk moth, isn’t she?”

“That’s why I’m curious. Doesn’t silk come from silk moth cocoons? Where’s she getting all those?” That question couldn’t be any less relevant to the burning issue of Leif being faced with life altering realizations, but…it was a good question. “You’d think if all this silk was harvested from leftover cocoons,” Kabbu continued, “we’d be seeing a lot more silk moths around. So many cocoons would imply many pupae, right?”

“She probably has some kind of silk harvesting technique,” Leif pondered, his mind already moving away from the more pressing matters at hand.

“Maybe she lays a bunch of eggs, nurtures them, then boils them alive for the silk.”

“You really think she’d do that?” Kabbu asked, eyes widening. “I mean, I read somewhere that that is how the Giants did it, but somehow it seems a lot more disturbing when it’s one’s own children…”

“We would not put it past her,” Leif said with a solemn nod. “The press is gonna love this one: ‘Mothiva has a breeding factory in which she boils her children alive for cheap merch.’”

Leif glanced down to see a tiny Ant child donning a crimson scarf and clutching a Mothiva plushie to her chest, giving Leif a horrified look before running away in tears.

“Oh—we were just kidding!” Kabbu called out to the traumatized child. He leaned back with a sigh. “Let’s not slander anyone anymore, okay?”

“Fine,” Leif agreed, watching as the crying Ant ran up to Mothiva, frantically pointing at her scarf and mouthing something about dead babies. Leif shook his head, trying to focus on the matter at hand and not the look of pure horror on confusion on the idol’s face. “We already apologized earlier, but, again, we are sorry for how we acted yesterday.”

“Leif, I’m not mad at you in the slightest,” Kabbu said. “I hardly considered that much of an argument, anyway. You were understandably stressed, and I wasn’t giving you the space you needed. I wouldn’t call that much of a fight that needs to be apologized for.”

“Yes, well, you never know what will happen,” Leif said quietly. “We’d rather apologize over nothing rather than never get the chance to. We…Leif…wasn’t always perfect. He was a bit temperamental. And he said things he didn’t mean. And he apologized afterwards, but sometimes he never got the chance, and now we have to deal with the fact that…” He swallowed hard. “He was probably not missed very much.”

“That’s an absurd idea!” Kabbu cried. “Goodness, Leif, I can guarantee that’s not true. Flip it around—if you got into a petty argument with someone, and something happened to them before they could apologize, would you be glad they were gone?”

“No, but—”

“No buts!” Kabbu interrupted. Venus, was he getting stern. He wasn’t exactly getting angry, but he was certainly getting heated. “I will not allow any friend of mine to speak of themselves that way. Don’t…don’t let yourself get caught up in guilt. Guilt won’t get you anywhere.”

“Uh-huh, so this is all just hunky-dory,” Leif drawled sarcastically, slumping his head down. “Guess we should just magically let go of the crushing guilt and be on our merry way, huh?”

“It’s not that simple. I know it’s not that easy,” Kabbu said softly. “But it’s the truth, and the sooner you learn to accept what happened and no longer feel guilty about it, the sooner you’ll feel better. You are a very sweet bug, Leif—if anything, your wish to not hurt others shows how compassionate you are.”

“We know it’s the truth,” Leif admitted. “But a part of us doesn’t want it to be. We feel like we don’t deserve forgiveness.”

“I understand,” Kabbu frowned. “I really do. I have my fair share of guilt I’m trying to let go of. It weighs on you, doesn’t it? I tell myself they wouldn’t be mad at me for surviving, but…” he shook his head. “You know just as well as I do that it’s not that simple. When I feel that way, I try to imagine what my friends would say if they were still here. I talk to them as if they were still here. I’d like to think they can listen, wherever they are. Maybe it’s a bit silly, but…it makes me feel better.”

Leif tried conjuring up Muse’s blurry face, but all that came to mind was her quivering voice and her wings trailing behind her as she ran off in tears. Leif’s stomach dropped, and he quickly blotted out that thought the best he could.

“Even if Muse forgives us, it’s not just the guilt,” he said tentatively. “That’s just the beginning. We weren’t exaggerating when we said we’re starting to forget things.” He cupped his head in his hand, sighing. “The memories that I wanted so desperately to be my own…I’m destroying them. I was supposed to carry on Leif’s legacy, but instead I’m just ruining it.” Tears flooded his eyes and he had to press his palms to his eyes to prevent them from falling. “I thought I was over this. I thought I was finally happy with myself, but then I remember I’m not the bug I think I am. I’m no bug at all. I’m a thief.”

Kabbu tensed up, as he so often did when Leif suddenly began referring to himself in the first person, but he grabbed Leif’s hand and gently pat it—a friendly gesture that embarrassed Leif, but he didn’t pull away. “That’s not true.”

Leif sat in silence, waiting for Kabbu to say anything further, to give him some indisputable evidence that he was wrong in thinking that way.

But he didn’t. He remained quiet, squeezing Leif’s hand but saying nothing more. Because there was nothing to say. No matter how you looked at it, Leif—not Leif, some thing—was so jealous of the love Leif was given—love that it was starting to worry wasn’t deserved—that it pretended to be him just to get a glimpse of what that life may be like. It stole his memories, and now it was losing them, and it was all its own fault. It is a fundamentally flawed, unstable being, that cannot sustain itself on its own. It is self destructive, and claiming Leif as a mantle it did nothing more than seal his shell to the fate of being slowly eaten alive by itself. How could you say anything comforting to a being who did this to itself? Kabbu may say it’s not the, but he is giving no evidence to the contrary. It’s true. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as he made it out to be, but it was true.

“Kabbu,” he whispered, “when I get to the point when I don’t remember any of what happened to Leif, and I only remember what happened to us, who will I be?”

Kabbu thought it over for a moment. “Still Leif,” he said finally.

“Still Leif,” Leif echoed. “But what would this ‘Leif’ do? Who would he be? I am only Leif because I stole his memories. If I lose those, I am just…an it. It is inconceivable for me to be anything but who I am in relation to Leif.”

“I don’t see it that way,” Kabbu said, tilting his head. “You are much more than Leif’s memories. You are his body, his personality, his desires…you are Leif. Even if you don’t remember everything that makes you Leif.”

Leif fell silent, thinking it over. “We wish this was easier,” is all he said.

“It was never easy. I don’t know if it ever will be easy. But hard doesn’t have to mean constant misery.” Kabbu nudged the canvas Leif was still clutching in one hand. “That portrait is an excellent start. You don’t have to lose Leif’s memories. You can write them down, draw them out, anything. Maybe you won’t be able to remember them, per se, but you don’t have to lose them.”

“We are confused,” Leif mumbled. “Do not talk to us. We are trying to figure this out.” Dizziness was starting to set in, and he hadn’t even realized how long he’d been holding his breath until he started gasping for air.

We are Leif. Muse does not hate us. Muse is not mad at us. We are Leif. I am Leif. I am not ruining Leif. I am still Leif. I don’t want to die. We cannot die again. Leif stared blankly ahead, repeating such words to himself in his head over and over. There is no reason to feel guilty. Muse has forgiven us. Muse loved us. I am Leif. There is no “Leif” and “me.” There is only Leif.

Anxiety still had a chokehold on him. Telling himself these things over and over calmed his mind, but just a little. As much as he reminded himself that he was Leif, that awful feeling that he wasn’t persisted. He wanted to be Leif. He badly wanted it, badly needed it to be true, because if there was no “us,” there is only a parasite. A manipulative, selfish parasite who robbed a dead bug of his life. It was not possible to discern what thoughts were its and which were “Leif’s”. Memories, they could sort through—memories of Muse were Leif’s, memories of Roaches were its, and memories of adventures with Vi and Kabbu were both of theirs. But individual thoughts could not be sorted out so easily. When he thought of Muse, and thought of how much he loved her, was that Leif thinking, it thinking, or both of them?

Can Leif think for himself anymore? All it really wants is to be able to ask him if it’s okay for it to continue to live as him. But it could not ask. Leif was gone. It was them now.

“We need some time,” he finally said, sitting upright. “This is hard to think about. It is very confusing. Is it true we are Leif?”

Kabbu nodded. “Yes. Nothing changes that.”

“Good,” Leif said dryly. “Good. We like being Leif. We hope…we hope that it is alright with him.”

“I’m sure it is,” Kabbu assured him. “If you’re alright with it, I’m certain that means Leif is, too. The way I see it, if you—as in the cordyceps—hold all of Leif’s memories and feelings, then it is up to you to decide whether or not this is okay. If it was not alright with Leif, you would know.”

“This is very confusing.” Leif nervously drummed his claws against the arm of the bench, his eyes flitting to Kabbu and then quickly back to the floor. “But you are right. It is alright with us. To live this way. So we hope that means that Leif is alright with it too. We do not have to lose Leif’s memories. We cannot control whether or not we forget them, but that doesn’t mean we have to lose them entirely.” He glanced down at the painting. “We do not remember what Muse looked like, but we remember how it felt to love her, and we suppose that is enough. We are not feeling good about any of this, but we are feeling a little more at peace.”

“Good!” Kabbu said a bit too loudly. “Very good. I can imagine this is very difficult for you, but I am always glad to talk things through with you. Sometimes a second opinion is all you need.”

“You couldn’t be more right.” Leif suppressed a smirk. “The next thing we need to do is get your anxiety under control. We have never seen a bug quite as sweaty as you.”

“What?” Kabbu stammered. “I don’t need therapy! I just get worried when my friends are upset, is all!”

“Whatever you say,” Leif drawled. He stood up from the bench, his legs stiff from sitting. He looked around, his antennae twitching in the air. “This place is making us hungry. We want some honey.”

The relief that flooded Kabbu’s face was unmistakable. Who knew all you had to do to convince someone you were no longer in the midst of a mental breakdown was wanting a snack? “That’s the Leif I’m used to,” Kabbu said, hopping down from the bench. To his own surprise, Leif found himself genuinely laughing.

“Oh, trust us, we—” An ear piercing crackle cut him off, followed by a flash of light so blinding it enveloped Leif’s vision, leaving his eyesight spotty and hazy for so long he worried for moment he may have actually been blinded. Loud static and ringing wrapped his head like cotton, leaving it even harder to think. The spots floating in his field of vision slowly subsided, and he whipped his head frantically from side to side to, looking for any clue as to what had just happened.

Kabbu was just as in shock as Leif, covering his face as if something was flying towards him, but after a moment he lowered his arms and looked around in confusion. “What was that?” He asked frantically. Leif shook his head in confusion. Kabbu said something, but Leif couldn’t hear him over the ringing in his head and the nearby commotion.

Bee guards rushed in to the scene, spears in hand, a mix of Bees and Ants and Moths vacated from the scene in swarms, and Leif and Kabbu were left caught in the middle of the bedlam. The alluring scent from the nearby honey fountain was overrun by a harsh smell of something burning which made Leif’s throat and eyes sting. A few Bee guards dragged out a stunned looking Bee from the chaos, her fuzz standing on end and one of her wings looking shriveled and blackened.

“Another accident?” Kabbu asked in disbelief. “We’re not even—” a dozen or so more flashes of light interrupted his thought, less drastic than the first but still enough to hurt Leif’s eyes and make it hard to hear. There were no injured bugs brought out this time, but the smell of burning chitin lingered.

What on earth was going on? It seemed not even the Bee guards knew, as they funneled traffic away from the spot where the incident had occurred, muttering amongst one another about starting an investigation—one incident was a strange accident, two was a pattern. But what could be causing it? It seemed as if the Hive itself was exploding.

By far the pleased with this budding situation was Mothiva, who had the misfortune of setting up her stand right next to where the injury occurred, making it necessary to immediately shut it down to inspect. She put up quite the fight, pulling the “don’t you know who I am” and “I’m one of the top explorers” cards multiple times, but eventually she tired herself out and, not even bothering to retrieve her singed merchandise, stormed off. At least there was a bright side to all this.

Kabbu, of course, was, right off the bat, much too eager to help. “May we ask what happened?” He asked, darting around numerous Bee guards and trying to find one who might have an answer—or be willing to give him the time of day. Any other bug doing this, interrupting important work and trying to butt in, would be undoubtedly kicked out immediately, but it seemed Team Snakemouth had a high enough reputation that they were at the very least allowed to stick around.

Nobody had any answers, though. Some theories were tossed around—stray bee-boops malfunctioning, other miscellaneous inventions gone wrong, planned enemy attacks—but none seemed very plausible. Even if by some miracle the Wasps managed to get their claws on bombs, attacking the Bee Kingdom made no sense, given their population had been more than halved after the Wasp King’s reign. Picking a fight would be more than stupid, but downright potentially lethal to their kind as a whole.

Even with numerous Bee guards inspecting every last crevice of the afflicted area, all that was found were a few scorch marks on the floor and nothing more. The Bee who had been injured didn’t have any idea what had happened, either. It was decided she would be asked again when she was in better condition, but even from her preliminary questioning it was clear she was just as confused as everyone else.

Leif had been joking earlier when he recommended Kabbu see a therapist, but it didn’t seem like much of a joke anymore. Kabbu had not, for one minute, stopped fretting. “What a disaster,” he said for the umpteenth time. “Leif, I’m very sorry about all of this. You should not have to deal with such a sudden catastrophe on top of what you’re already dealing with!”

“It’s whatever,” Leif shrugged. “We don’t mind. Gives us something to do other than ruminate.”

Hours passed, and still no answer as to what had happened. If this had been the action of an individual, they were still in the Hive, as a lockdown had been enforced soon after the accident, sealing in anyone who was already in the Hive. Something which, again, pissed Mothiva off, as now she wasn’t just angry, but she was angry and surrounded by a bunch of fans who, if Leif had to guess, were contractually not allowed to see her act any way unbecoming of a star like her. Not even she could convince the guards to let her out, even when she handed over her Exploration Permit, which a clear sign Kabbu and Leif would have just as much luck if they tried—which is to say, none. If Vi had left the Hive earlier, it would be a while until the trio would be able to meet up again.

The strangest part of it all was that, every once in a while, a similar flash of light followed by a stifled crackle could be heard. With the maze like structure of the Hive, it seemed a fruitless task trying to find where it originated from. Someone would check where it might have come from, but when inspected closer, there was nothing. It was just bizarre. Whatever it was, it was moving. The Hive was just too big, too littered with crevices to hide out in, to thoroughly search. One area could be deemed empty, and minutes later a fizzling sound could be heard, but when it would be checked again there was nothing.

It had gotten to the point many had chalked it up to mass hysteria, but the hurt moth and ant and the lingering stench of something burning couldn’t possibly be the result of mass hysteria. There was something, and oh, Venus, was it exhausting to try to figure out what.

Exhausting to the Bee guards, anyway. Leif, in all honesty, didn’t mind. Being locked up in the Hive was annoying and it was mildly claustrophobic, but given the week he’d been having? This was a welcome change of pace. It gave him some sort of structure to work with. That was nice. He needed some time to think.

He resigned himself to a cramped corner away from where Kabbu was, still, rambling to bees about what may have happened, and stared down at the portrait of Muse. It hurt his heart to look at, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of it. He felt like the same love-struck, awkward moth he used to be. The same moth who laughed at all of Muse’s jokes no matter how bad they were. The same moth who was so flattered when he was given roses that Muse swore his face flushed just as red as the flowers themselves.

Wherever Muse was, he hoped she held these memories just as fondly, and would keep them safe when he could no longer.

“I hope you can forgive us,” Leif said quietly. “And I hope you understand that we are the same Leif you loved before. We are different now, but”—he traced along the sketch of him and Muse on the back of the canvas—“we still love you all the same. That won’t change. Please don’t be mad at me. I wanted to love you like Leif loved you.”

He closed his eyes, trying to imagine what Muse would say if she were here. He couldn’t tell if she would be moved by how his love for her carried over through death, or horrified that it would steal her husband away from her like that.

The latter seemed more likely. But would she be horrified? Was the cordyceps itself the only one disgusted by what it had done? Everyone else who knew—which in fairness wasn’t a lot—was alright with its existence, and showed it pity and love that it had never experienced before. What would Muse think?

“That’s so weird,” he could imagine her exclaiming with a gasp, tracing along Leif’s shell with her claws. “More of you to love,” she might say. She always did put a positive spin on things, so unlike Leif’s stoicism that teetered into pessimism.

He could imagine her being fine with it all he wanted, but that wouldn’t make it the truth. A deep sigh escaped his chest, and he resorted to replaying happy memories of Muse in his mind to try to get the image of a vengeful and saddened Muse out of his mind. It was getting more and more distressing how hazy his memories were getting—it had gotten to the point, he realized, that he couldn’t quite remember their wedding. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t Leif. He knew that. He, it, they were Leif, whether he remembered what made him Leif or not.

He should be happy, really. He had a second shot at life with new friends and the entirety of Bugaria looked up to him as a hero. He didn’t have the family of his own he was so excited to start, but he had his descendants to fill that void. He didn’t have to use his magic. If he spent the rest of his life avoiding using it unless necessary, no harm would come to him. His body would not be eaten alive, his memories may not fade as quickly. All things considered, he was lucky.

But he didn’t feel lucky. He didn’t even feel happy. He was happy he had good friends, happy he was obviously loved by all, happy he gets to have a life he thought he would never have, but even if those things individually made him happy, he wasn’t. He was too caught up mourning a life it technically never lived, too distraught over the idea of becoming worthless again just like it was before it met Leif.

This hurt. He wanted to tell himself it didn’t, and that this was all okay, but it really, really hurt. Mentally, physically, in every way it hurt. Just when it felt like he might be feeling better, it would hit him again harder than before. And it especially hurt that Vi wasn’t even trying to help him. Maybe his friends weren’t as good as he thought. He needed a distraction, and quick.

Thankfully, the perfect one was mere steps away. Finally, after much suffering, Leif and his beloved were reunited. He crouched by the honey fountain, letting the thick golden honey run down his claws in stringy drips. Beautiful. Just beautiful. It was important, he thought, to at least allow himself some moments of comfort throughout all this. The sweet taste of the honey soothed him down to his heart, making him feel, for the first time in days, like he might have a shot at finding his footing in life again. Amazing what a few globs of bee spit can do to one’s mood.

A duo of snobbish bees passed by him and gave their hips an almost unnoticeable shake, communicating to one another in bee dance, a language never spoken outside of the Bee Kingdom, but one Leif had a loose grasp on due to Vi’s occasional lessons. She never taught him much outside of insults—how in character for her—but it seems her little lessons came in handy, given that Leif could understand every word these bees were saying about him. Something, something, unrefined, something, something, slob…the words he could fully comprehend were sparse, but he knew enough to understand he was being insulted. Thankfully, he knew a bit of bee dance himself, and wiggled his abdomen at the two with a look of pure hatred in his eyes. One of the bees turned its antennae up at him and walked away, while the other just looked offended.

…Hopefully that wasn’t, like, a bee slur or anything. He didn’t actually know what it meant, just that Vi said it was a “nice response to people being annoying.”

Whatever it is he said, it drove the bees away long enough for him to continue his meal—did raw honey and nothing else count as a proper meal? Didn’t matter. Oh, it was wonderful. If he could bathe in the stuff, he would. This was all he needed in life! This made all of it worth it! He brought his claws, glazed in a thin coat of honey, to his mouth and quickly lapped it up. Just as he leaned down to scoop up another handful, a loud crash echoed throughout the room. Leif lazily turned his head to look at the commotion, more concerned with the honey than with whatever was going on.

Shouts rang out from across the hall, starting with one panicked voice and quickly crescendoing into a chorus of yells and demands from at least a dozen Bee guards. A small crowd had gathered around the unfolding scene, which Leif assimilated himself into to get a better look. Two guards stood flanked by a line of Bees with their spears drawn as they dragged a limp bug across the floor, supported only from underneath its arms. Even from across the room, the smell of burnt flesh was overwhelming. The bug’s head hung low, its frazzled antennas brushing against the ground as its unconscious form was unceremoniously lugged around. Three injured in the span of two days. This was no way to be treating a bug already burned and unconscious. Leif opened his mouth to protest, but he suddenly stopped at the sight of the bug in question—not a Bee, not a Moth, but unquestionably a Wasp, and one he very much knew.

It was strangest of all that Zasp seemed relatively uninjured compared to the other bugs who experienced the same thing, whatever that thing may be. Not that he was in good shape, no—his legs were deeply singed with scars that trickled down his thighs all the way down to his feet, his palms were almost completely black from burns, and his entire shell seemed to be smoldering. Leif’s bristles stood on end, giving him a disheveled and almost pointy look, and the Bee guards immediately dropped Zasp and ducked away, their own fuzz standing on end. Many bugs in the crowd followed suit, even if they didn’t quite understand the situation, dashing off to the side and shoving one another out of the way. Something deep within Leif felt…tingly. The same uncomfortable pressure that would set in when he was around magic.

The pieces didn’t click into place until a familiar flash erupted, a burst of electricity coming not from a piece of faulty equipment or machinery, but directly from Zasp’s shell. His eyes shot open and his body shook with a jolt of electricity that seemed to simultaneously rejuvenate him and exhaust him. His limbs scuttled frantically on the floor in a struggle to push himself up, but even with the added support of his wings buzzing wildly behind him, he only managed to go airborne for half a second before crashing down again, Even after the initial blast, sparks of static danced over his body and two of the Bee guards had to drag him up from underneath with the wooden end of their spears.

They had found their culprit.

Chapter Text

It took Leif much too long to process the scene unfolding in front of him given the severity of it all, and even when his mind managed to piece together the thought that he should be attempting to help in some regard, he froze in uncertainty, taking a tentative step forward before immediately retracting it. He expected somebody else, any one of these dozens of bugs to leap in and condemn the abhorrent treatment on full display, but none moved. Some of them even looked satisfied with the situation, so deep in the assumption that this was justice being delivered they were. 

Even with his eyes visibly sunken with exhaustion and his body stiff and twitching from what Leif could only assume was from stray electricity, Zasp was putting up a fight, kneeing the Bee guards in the chest and blindly swatting at them. One of them grabbed him by the wrists and roughly pulled him down to restrain him. Her fuzz stood on end from the stray static flowing through his arms into their body. Zasp brought his leg to the Bee’s shins in a swift kick that knocked the guard backward, her steel mask slipping down her face and revealing her stunned expression twisting into one of pain.

“Don’t touch me!” Zasp demanded, panting, his words punctuated with a sharp, almost foreboding buzz of his wings. It was understandable for him to be so defensive, Leif wasn’t blaming him for that, but he was really just making things worse for himself. Assaulting countless guards while trying to disprove the assumption you were a danger wasn’t a good look. 

The guard stumbled to her feet and narrowed her eyes, her claws gripping her spear’s handle with intent. She lunged forward, fueled by blind pain and rage, and raised her spear over her head, driving it towards Zasp. In the split second the tip grazed his shell, freezing water droplets wrapped around the spear, enveloping it in a casing of ice. It hit Zasp in the waist, knocking him backward as he clutched his side where he was struck. The ice block skid across the floor, water seeping into the Hive floor as it quickly thawed in the warm atmosphere.

Leif bit the inside of his cheek, holding back a yelp of pain. Immediately his palm and forearm were covered in ugly stinging burns, but he simply hid the afflicted arm in his cloak and stepped forward, purposefully putting himself in between the remaining Bee guards and Zasp, whose wings were loudly buzzing in anger by this point. The stunned guards stirred, preparing a counterattack. Electricity jumped over a bruise blooming beneath Zasp’s shell from getting hit by the ice block, and he gave Leif a distrustful look which Leif only shook his head at. Doesn’t matter what he thinks. Better bruised than stabbed.

“Stop. That’s enough,” Leif said as firmly as his monotonous voice would allow, gesturing at the guards with a cloud of ice in his hand that he, in all reality, had no intention of using. That one blast of ice was painful enough, and the ice particles were already starting to burn his hand. The Bee guards stopped their assault, their blank masks turned towards him in a mixture of hesitation and confusion. He froze up—somewhat literally, as he had mistakenly shot a blast of ice up his arm—suddenly unsure of what to. He wasn’t actually expecting them to, well, stop. It was strange they were listening to him. His reputation preceded him, he supposed; he was never used to having this kind of influence before. The vague thought that this respect solely stemmed from the fear and admiration he received from his ice magic crossed his mind, but he shoved that thought out of his head the best he could. Now wasn’t the time for that. He’d done enough brooding already, and Zasp’s safety was more important. He had a feeling these guards were more than willing to jump on the opportunity to condemn a Wasp. He looked over at Zasp with what was meant to be a reassuring look, but Zasp just narrowed his eyes and tensed up and brought arms to his chest defensively. Whatever. Leif would help him whether he wanted his help or not. 

“Leave him alone. He didn’t do anything wrong,” Leif finally said, addressing the befuddled guards. “Obviously he’s going to fight back if you treat him like a prisoner. There’s no reason to be so rough with him. He’s an esteemed explorer.” Leif tacked that last part on the end in case the guards genuinely had no qualms with treating bugs they deemed unsafe like that. 

“I don’t know what you think is going on,” one of the guards said, voice muffled by their mask, “but this Wasp here nearly killed two defenseless children, and injured one of our own”—she gestured with the butt of her spear to the guard who’d tried to stab Zasp, groping an unmistakable crack in her exoskeleton—“and we will do what is necessary to protect the Hive and its people.”

“It was an accident!” Zasp cried, his voice wavering and bordering on pleading, a tone Leif had never heard from him before. “I can’t control it, I’m sorry, but I—”

“Silence,” the guard ordered, driving the tip of her spear in his face. She pried off her mask, exposing her stern and not in the least bit friendly face. “This entire situation is too suspicious to be taken at face value. Even if you are a sorcerer,” she said, voice dripping with bitter skepticism that left her suspicions out of the question, “what kind of a sorcerer cannot control their own abilities? What kind of a sorcerer would allow other bugs—children, at that—to be injured in their presence due to their own recklessness? Sorcerers are our most esteemed heroes. You are not.”

Zasp glared at the guard, his chest heaving with every hurried breath. Leif couldn’t help but wonder if that part about being heroic was in reference towards himself. The guard had given him a very pointed look when she said it—or was it his imagination? His face mirrored Zasp’s expression of distress. If he wasn’t a hero, what would that make him? A freak with dangerous, uncontrollable power? Just another worthless Moth not worth paying attention to? As hard as he tried to focus on any other thought, those nagging worries kept coming back. He berated himself for being so self centered as to only worry about his own concerns, but bullying himself into submission wasn’t working. Those thoughts always came back.

“It will be much easier for us if you cooperate,” the guard continued. Her fuzz bristled and stood on end. “Your exploration partner has been notified of your condition, as will soon be the Explorer’s Association.” A look of genuine hurt flashed across Zasp’s face. Whether it was from the idea of Mothiva abandoning him or getting shunned from the Association, Leif didn’t know. Probably a mix of both. Though, it seemed weird Mothiva wouldn’t know if Zasp had magic. That’s not exactly something you can hide very easily, especially with magic like that of Zasp’s—loud and unruly, not in the least bit subtle, and clearly a struggle to keep under control. Then again, Leif hadn’t known about his magic right up until now, and he’s able to physically feel when he’s around magic. Either this was something new, or Zasp was astoundingly good at hiding it. 

“Whatever they decide to do with you,” the guard said with finality, “is not up to us. Our order now is to remove you from the Hive immediately.” She slammed the butt of her spear to the floor, giving Zasp a look not unlike that of a parent waiting for a stubborn child to obey. Leif wanted to protest, to explain how unfair they were being, but he couldn’t come up with a coherent argument. Where on earth was Kabbu? He’d know exactly what to say. Should Leif go look for him? Why couldn’t he be as good with words as he was?

He didn’t have to be, though. He had mouth hung open dumbly, one hand slightly raised as if he was going to point something out, when an ear-splitting, crackling pop echoed through the air, followed by the harsh buzz of wings. Leif thought he’d grown accustomed to the lightning flashes after a day’s worth of being around them, but this was an entirely new experience. The world around him didn’t just go white, but erupted in a blitz of blinding colors. Shades of reds and blues swirled around him. Multicolored sparks rained down like confetti, and for a moment the air swelled to such a high temperature Leif genuinely worried his icy body—the cordyceps, more specifically—may melt. The sound was unlike anything he’d heard before; so shatteringly deafening he could feel it reverberating in his chest, in his head, echoing in his memory even as every other sound around him went silent and still.

He was knocked back, instinctively covering his head even though it served no protection against the raging sparks. He could feel piercing shocks running though his body, briefly paralyzing him and keeping him rooted to the ground. Every part of his body was screaming at him to run, but his limbs remained as still as a statue.

Somewhere in the commotion a crimson blur zipped by, out of the shimmering ball of electricity and towards the outside elevator. Even with the excruciating pain of getting electrocuted still flowing through his system, a ghost of a smile found its way to Leif’s face at the sight. He didn’t know why, exactly. Maybe it was just nice to see someone take matters into their own claws, when he’d been floundering and sniveling for the past few days, too tired and miserable to do anything remotely useful.

The guards positioned outside, for all their training to mold them into tough, stoic protectors of their home, were left with no choice but to duck out of the way and tackle one another to the ground to prevent their fellow guard from being knocked out by jolts of electricity. There are certain situations training doesn’t cover, and erratic, electrically charged bugs seemed to be one of those situations.

The air slowly cleared, but the residual smoke from the burning Hive floor left Leif and most of the guards stunned and coughing. Leif hesitantly stood up, brushing charred flakes of burnt wax from the Hive floor from his wings. His legs were shaking like dead leaves, and they felt like they had the same strength as dead leaves, too. He couldn’t tell how much of it came from his baseline exhaustion and how much was from the electrocution, but either way, it took a few attempts at standing up to actually be able to walk properly. It seems he got off lucky, all things considered; all around him were Bee guards who were much less fortunate than he had been, lying in heaps on the charred floor. Alive, but paralyzed. Guards who had avoided the worst of the blast came in swarms to aid their wounded sisters, muttering hushed words of anger between one another. 

The fuzz on the back of Leif’s neck stood up, and he became acutely aware of dozens of pairs of eyes trained on him. A crowd was quickly gathering at the scene, some bugs scared, others angry, others confused, but none the least bit willing to give Leif an iota of personal space. Some bugs questioned him directly on what had happened, and he had to disappoint them with a lackluster shrug of the shoulders, not only because he wasn’t keen on relaying everything that had happened and potentially dragging down Zasp’s reputation, but also because he was still so numb from the shock that he found it hard to talk. Ignoring the stifling atmosphere and the constant overwhelming sensation of other bugs brushing up against him, Leif elbowed his way through the crowd and out toward the outside elevator. 

Oh, how wonderful the fresh air felt against his shell. He hasn’t even realized how long he’d been cooped up inside the Hive until now. He hadn’t felt the breeze ruffle his fluff in over a day—had it really been such a short amount of time? With how things had been going for him, it felt like it’d been at least a week. His janky perception of time only fueled his overall sense of uneasiness. Nothing had felt very…normal as of late, and the Hive’s bright, repetitive, and almost maze-like structure cemented that dreamlike, confusing sense of dread in his mind.

But it would be okay. He’d be okay. He was fine. He had to be. 

The wooden railing creaked uncertainly when he leaned against it, but despite the ominous sounds of the rotting wood begging to splinter, he remained in place, craning his neck and squinting against the glaring sunlight. Even during sunset it was too bright. How did any bug live in a place like this? He was expecting some amount of pushback from the guards—he had no idea if he was allowed to be out there or not—but in their unnerved state they merely gave Leif a funny look and went about their business trying to find their bearings and conjure up a plan of action. One guard pointed a scraggly claw to the horizon, pointing out the blurry figure of Zasp flying away. Huh. Leif hadn’t even noticed him, even though he’d been actively scanning the sky for him. The vibrant reds and yellows of the setting sun served as excellent camouflage, but it wouldn’t be enough to keep him hidden forever. Leif was fully prepared for the guards to make scathing, threatening remarks toward the wasp, and he was more than willing to defend him against such accusations, but all the guard said was, “Strange.” 

A weary sigh escaped Leif’s chest. Strange was right. There wasn’t much he could do, nor much he should do, lest he makes the situation worse, but he couldn’t just stand around, could he? It felt rather gross in a way to not even bother helping when he himself knew better than anyone just how important the slightest bit of comfort was. Even then, he had to admit, a part of him just wanted to leave the situation be and focus on his own problems. He didn’t know what to do or how he felt. He was just tired and confused. Vi was still mad at him, wherever she ran off to. What has he done wrong? Thinking was getting difficult—he hasn’t even realized just how tired he was getting until now. He just wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep and let those sweet remaining memories of his past float back to his mind, where he could love Muse again without the guilt and fuzzy memories.

Leif was broken out of his thoughts by a loud crackle that startled both him and the guards. Right. Okay. He couldn’t sleep just yet.

Zasp’s sudden energy burst didn’t last long, it seemed. He’d just enough determination to break free from the guards and escape, but any further extortion than that was too much for his body to handle. As hard as it was to make him out in the distance, Leif could see his body spasming with a shock of electricity, and his wings beginning to falter. He darted around in the air, as if confused, his wings buzzing wildly behind him but struggling to support him. Leif shook his head, willing himself to stop staring and actually do something. He stepped onto the elevator, and the guard gave him a strange look again, but pulled the lever and sent the elevator rushing down.

Leif traced Zasp’s erratic form, watching him slowly fall before losing his strength entirely and, with a burst of electricity that illuminated the evening sky so brightly it looked as if it was midday again, crashing to the ground below from a distance much too high to be safe.

Leif winced, but couldn’t help but feel a grim amusement at the sheer absurdity of the situation. Here was was, Zasp’s knight in shining armor, descending from the heavens in the world’s creakiest elevator. He probably looked so, so dorky right now, leaning over the railing and staring down at Zasp’s crumpled form with wide eyes. At least maybe he was providing Zasp some amusement.

By the time Leif had reached the ground, Zasp had long since pried himself up, his shell smoldering with fractal burns that hugged around his chest and waist, and was half-walking, half dragging himself through the sand. He got a few odd looks from passersby making their way to Defiant Root, but very few if any made the connection between the giant ball of light and the frazzled Wasp lying in the sand—honestly, blaming it on him would be an absurd conclusion to come to given how rare sorcerers were—and they simply turned their heads as if they didn’t notice him. He didn’t mind being blatantly ignored, instead using the opportunity to slink into the outskirts connecting the Lost Sands and Defiant Root without further question. Leif watched him like a hawk as he stumbled into the Lost Sands, his head swiveling from side to side, desperately searching for a place to hide, and finally disappearing behind a worn down, abandoned house right on the edge of the outskirts. He remained there, unmoving, hiding from…what, the guards? Leif? Everyone? Leif was only certain Zasp was there because of the telltale bolts of lightning emitting from the area.

Leif strongly considered leaving him be, but the acrid smell of burning chitin from where Zasp hid was so unsettling and morbidly alluring in a way that Leif couldn’t ignore it. Besides, the least he could do was check up on him. Zasp had done plenty for Leif before that, and although Leif didn’t see favors as transactional, he knew Zasp tended to, so determined to stay “even” as he was. And so, reluctantly, he hopped off the elevator and took a few tentative steps through the sand, which had thankfully begun cooling off as the sun crept down the horizon. If it wasn’t bad enough that cold temperatures hurt him, hot temperatures hurt even more, and trekking through the Lost Sands with the sensation of his feet burning the entire time was just miserable. It wasn’t so bad during sunset, though, and he could actually appreciate the soft, tickling sensation of the sand beneath his feet. He didn’t like how it stuck to him, though. The tiniest grains of sand seemed hellbent on sticking to his shell where he had patches of sticky, semi-dried hemolymph, and needless to say it was uncomfortable. The patches of sand glued to his shell only served as a sort of visual reminder of his susceptibility to wounds. 

Leif had a tendency to get lost in the Lost Sands—unsurprisingly, given the land’s very accurate name—and even Defiant Root, for all its landmarks that should theoretically provide a perfect sense of direction, but weaving though the outskirts to find Zasp took no effort whatsoever. All he had to do was follow the unmistakable scent of charred chitin. As Leif brushed aside bugs coming into the town, he overheard their confused conversations that made it abundantly clear the smell wasn’t just apparent to Leif.

“Ugh, it smells like something’s burning.”

“Maybe it’s just Crisbee trying out a new recipe?”

“Ack! Venus, I hope not, if that’s the direction his recipes are headed, I’m switching to Kut’s.”

A few tourists covered their mouths and antennae as they walked by, muttering to one another about how Defiant Root was quite overrated, given it smelled like dead bodies.

“I mean, this is a historical site.”

“Does that mean they just have corpses out in the open?”

“I mean, maybe. I’ve never been here before.”

“And let’s not come here again.”

“Yeah.”

Well, it was a bit awkward hearing people casually making fun of the scent given Leif knew where it was coming from. A selfish part of Leif deep down thanked Venus his magic-induced maladies only looked ugly and didn’t smell like death. He paused when he reached the abandoned building he was certain Zasp was hiding behind, his mind blanking in confusion. Mostly because there was absolutely nowhere to hide. The crumbling building was pressed right up against an old, graffiti-coated stone slab that enveloped the entire back of the house. These was a small gap, between the building and stone, but Leif doubted he’d be able to wedge himself through, as lanky as he was.

But Zasp hadn’t just vanished into thin air. Willing himself to not fret over the possibility of getting stuck or murdered or whatever, Leif squeezed through the tight alleyway. If one could even call it that. His abdomen put up a fight, sandwiching him between the stone and building for a moment, but a bout of panicked pushing managed to cram it through. Once Leif had shoved his way through the initial squeeze, it got a little wider, and Leif was able to walk a tad more comfortably. Honestly, claustrophobia aside, it wasn’t too bad in there. Hard to reach, teetering on the edge of the Lost Sands meaning it wasn’t a prime tourist spot…In terms of hiding spots, he would definitely love to use something like this when he needed personal space. If only the Ant Kingdom had broke infrastructure like this he could hide behind…

It was nearly pitch black, the only real source of light being the occasional stifled flash of electricity. The flashes started off subtle and restrained, but as Leif trudged forward they grew near constant and intense, some bursts of lightning directly targeted at Leif. Zasp’s furious face lit up from the flashes, watching Leif wearily. Maybe it was Just Leif’s imagination, but it looked like Zasp himself was glowing in the dark. Almost like the abdomen of a firefly. In any other circumstance, it might look kind of cool.

Leif backed up, putting his hands up, and looking down at Zasp with the least threatening expression he could muster. Venus, was Zasp a wreck. And here Leif thought he seemed disheveled during the Ant Kingdim invasion. Compared to now, he was put together then. He was huddled up against the wall, caught in a dead end, staring back at Leif with wide, almost blank, unblinking eyes. His entire body trembled, every once in a while spasming with a burst of electricity that Leif could tell, from the wince on Zasp’s face, was excruciatingly painful. His antennas twitched this way and that in a confused dance, like he wasn’t sure where he should be going, his chest visibly shook with every strained breath…above all else, he looked terrified, which was so unlike Zasp that Leif didn’t know what to say at first. 

Leif crouched down, half to get to Zasp’s eye level and half to avoid the jolts of electricity he was still shooting out in Leif’s direction. Zasp flinched at Leif’s slightest movement, and Leif had to scoot back a bit to show he meant no harm. 

Zasp blinked at Leif, his face contorted in anger. “What do you”—A funny look crossed Zasp’s face and he tucked himself into a ball. Leif could hear the distinct pop of electricity. “D-do you w—” he was cut off again by a sharp yell and another surge of electricity. A puff of smoke flowed up from his burnt shell, hugging his face with an ugly, strangling wreath. His dark eyes, sparkling with reflections of the sparks dancing over his flesh, stung and teared up from the smoke. “What”—another jolt—“what do—do—“ He let out a small yell of frustration and slammed his fist down on the sand, over and over, sticking tiny grains of sand to his smoldering wounds.

“Take your time,” Leif said. He meant it as a genuine gesture of patience—he’d obviously dealt with his fair share of unwanted bursts of magic, though never to the extent he could hardly speak, and it looked beyond infuriating—but Zasp took it as a condescending jab and jeered at Leif, muttering obscenities under his breath as he tried to calm his sporadic shocks.

“Y-you—you—want? Want? What do you want?” Zasp finally finished through bouts of panting, uncurling himself and glaring at Leif.

“We just wanted to make sure that you’re okay,” Leif said, tucking his arms in his wings and trying to appear nonchalant to Zasp’s obvious distress. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

Zasp looked down, eyes still narrowed in anger, but visibly growing wet with repressed tears. “It’s f—” He twitched, making a small humming sound in his throat, and wrapped his arms around his waist, leaning forward. He shook with a fit of electricity that seemed to never die down, only getting worse and worse until it crescendoed into a blinding bolt of lightning that made Leif’s vision go spotty again. Zasp pulled his claws, smoldering and charred, away from his now-burnt waist. The smell of scorched flesh filled the air again, and Leif had to cover his mouth with his wings to keep himself from retching from the smell. Zasp leaned back, his shoulders drooping to the side, his head slumping downward as he struggled to catch his breath. He tried to say something, but only let out a barely audible whimper. His face grew a deeper shade of red from embarrassment. “Go away,” he rasped.

Leif couldn’t take his eyes off Zasp’s waist, as rude as it was to stare like that. His grayish shell had gone completely black in some areas, and maybe Leif’s eyes were playing tricks on him, but he could swear Zasp’s shell was burnt off entirely in some spots. Fractal burns rose and fell from his waist, stretching up to his neck and down to his legs in a dizzying pattern. To say it looked painful was an understatement. How was Zasp even conscious right now? A single bout of magic was usually enough to leave Leif faint and dizzy, let alone however many times Zasp had been trapped in the throes of electric shocks. It wouldn’t surprise Leif if Zasp had built up some tolerance to electricity over time, but, to be blunt, it clearly wasn’t enough to keep him from experiencing unpleasant side effects. 

Admittedly, that surprised even Leif—in theory, he should know all about the nasty effects that magic has on the body, but he’d been under the assumption that this was a him problem and not a problem with magic in general. His magic was unnatural, after all, developed and curated in a cruel facility that hadn’t any precautions in place to avoid potentially fatal consequences. He’d always thought natural sorcerers—bugs who got their magic from crystal exposure, as he was assuming Zasp did—would be immune to their own abilities, but apparently not. Magic is awful, is all he could manage to think, a basic conclusion he should have been able to come to much, much sooner than this, but even he was poisoned by the idealized image of sorcerers as mystical, powerful beings. Sometimes, like with him, they’re just unfortunate bugs who got dealt a bad hand in life, and have to fight their own bodies to avoid accidentally killing themselves.

As quickly as he could without hurting himself any more, Leif formed a thin sheet of ice in his claws. Gods, did it hurt, but he pushed through the discomfort of the ice running though his veins and laid the ice on Zasp’s singed waist. Zasp flinched, scooting back and staring at the ice like it had teeth, but the cool sheet of ice soothed his screaming wounds and, with a strained sigh, he let himself relax. He said nothing, but Leif could sense his silent gratitude.

“Do you want to talk?” Leif asked cautiously, positioning himself closer to Zasp in spite of the very real risk of electrocution. 

Zasp thought for a moment before roughly grabbing Leif’s arm, muttering, “make me more ice.”

Oh. Well, then. Leif didn’t appreciate being boiled down to a living ice machine, especially given his budding insecurities about being nothing more than just that, but he relented and froze Zasp’s torso in a very thin layer of ice. He couldn’t deny he was hounding Zasp a tad bit too much, so the least he could do was do as Zasp demanded. Even if it meant a few burns and painful wounds crawling up his arms. 

Zasp huffed a sigh of relief, relaxing his tense muscles. “So, do you—” Leif trailed off as Zasp turned away, refusing to even look Leif in the eye. “Go away,” Zasp said again, already back to being cold and distant. The irony wasn’t lost on Leif—he’d spent the last few days acting just as irritable, and now it was his turn to be on the receiving end. This had to be some karmic joke being played on him by Venus, right? At least Leif had the sympathy and experience to know not to just chalk it up as Zasp being an asshole for no reason.

“We don’t bite,” Leif deadpanned, but he backed up to give Zasp some more space. “Look, we’re really not trying to bother you. We just want to make sure you’re okay, like we said. We’ve been having a shitty few days because of our magic, too. We’re in the same boat here.” He hoped Zasp didn’t notice the quiver in his voice. Using his magic was a bad idea. Searing pains were starting to form all over his shell.

Zasp scoffed. “I don’t know what you think is going on here, b-but you,..” He turned towards Leif with a scowl and went silent, staring at Leif with wide eyes. More specifically, Leif’s arms, now covered in painful looking blisters and patches of burns. “Oh, gods, are you—”

Leif’s heart jumped to his throat, and in the blink of an eye he grabbed the edges of his wings and wrapped them around himself like a blanket, hiding all but his burning face. It was blatantly hypocritical to act so defensive and secretive when he was actively prying into Zasp and trying to get him to talk about the exact same issue. He stared back at Zasp, whose eyes flitted to the floor as if silently communicating the mutual agreement to pretend that had never happened. Leif was fully willing to go along with that, but his heart refused to stop pounding. The pain was getting overwhelming. He’d been using his magic too much. He’d gotten reckless and ignored his body’s obvious demands for him to stop. A tightness formed in his chest that he tried to ignore, but it didn’t go away. It felt as if a seam had popped in his exoskeleton and his chest was beginning to split open. This body was getting too painful. It needed to escape. It had to. It had to.

It all happened so suddenly. One moment he was fine, the next he wasn’t. What was happening? Leif didn’t know. “Leif” was unconscious again. “Leif” was a terrible host. “Leif” was broken. “Leif” was malfunctioning. It needed a better host than this. It didn’t have any other options. It had to stay with Leif if it didn’t want to lose those memories that made it happy. It was stuck in this awful, self-sabotaging husk. It had a vague idea of what was going on around it, but with its host knocked out, the world was fuzzy and confusing.

Zasp was staring at it in horror. No, not horror. This wasn’t a shock to him. He knew “Leif” was a freak. Fascination, would be more accurate. He reached out, shaking the static from his claws, and hesitantly touched it. Why? What was he doing? It liked it, though. It liked not being perceived as a threat. It wrapped itself around his claws in a strange kind of hug, and although his expression grew scared, he didn’t fight it. It liked this.

Leif woke up more disoriented than before. He didn’t even try to comprehend what had just happened. He only laid motionless on the ground, staring up at Zasp, whose wide, scarred eyes stared down at Leif with an alarming intensity. 

“We are sorry about that.” Leif murmured, too casually given what had just happened, sitting up and clutching his chest. Zasp shrugged, wiping the claw the cordyceps had touched in the sand. 

“It’s, uh, fine,” Zasp said. His antennae twitched from stray sparks. “I kinda knew you were…uh…like that. I just didn’t expect to…see it?”

“Neither did we,” Leif admitted. “I do that sometimes,” it explained. “When this body gets overwhelmed, I try to escape. I can’t really control it. I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable.”

“N-no, it’s whatever,” Zasp said dismissively. “Are you okay, though?” 

“Yes,” Leif said stiffly, embarrassed. He’d gone out of his way to try to help Zasp, and yet here he was doing the opposite. “Yes, we’re fine. It feels a bit weird for a few moments after, but we feel okay. We’re more so worried about you.” Admittedly he didn’t feel very fine, but he wasn’t looking to cause even more of a scene. Physically he felt no worse than before—aside from the obvious discomfort that having tendrils of cordyceps burst from your thorax does to you—but mentally, he was incredibly disoriented. It happened so suddenly and stopped just as quickly, that his mind was still reeling from trying to process it. That was strange. That was so, so strange. Not that those episodes ever made sense, but that one especially was disorienting for whatever reason.

He shook his head, trying to focus on the situation at hand. “Are you okay?” He asked.

Zasp turned away. “Oh, please. This isn’t about me. Look at yourself. Do you really think—” electricity flowed through his veins and to his palms, and he covered his hands in the crooks of his legs, sending burning shocks through them. Once. Twice. Nearly a dozen shocks rattled his system, and all his concern and coldness toward Leif disappeared. “Help me,” he stammered in between fits of shaking. “Help me. Help me. Leif, I need ice, it burns.” 

Leif was hit with a pang of sympathy, and any and all concern for what had just happened melted away. All he could focus on now was the scared Wasp in front of him. “We can’t,” Leif told him. “It’s—it’s like your magic. It hurts to use. That’s why we fainted. We’re not trying to pester you, we just wanted to see if we could help.”

Zasp gave him a skeptical look, but he only said, “Okay.” Leif was prepared for an argument, the words already on his tongue, but Zasp said nothing more. Leif had no idea if that was an invitation to talk or not, but he wasn’t actively telling Leif to shut up and go away, so…good enough.

“So,” Leif said cautiously, “fellow sorcerer, huh?” Maybe that was too casual a way to start the conversation, but Zasp loosened up just a bit, even if just out of amusement from Leif’s atrocious social skills.

“I guess,” Zasp mumbled, tracing his claw around in the sand, occasionally twitching from tiny shocks. Leif never noticed before just how shaky Zasp always was until now. Well, that’s not entirely true—he’d noticed it before and, being as nosy as he was, pointed it out to Vi and Kabbu. Kabbu had chalked it up to tics and, in probably the most stereotypically “Kabbu” way imaginable, spent about half an hour of what was supposed to be a mission stressing how imperative it was to not ever make fun of him for it. Like Leif was planning to. Vi on the other hand was a bit less charitable, and confidently explained how surely, it was the result of being around Mothiva for so long, and in the most stereotypically “Vi” way possible, fervently expressed just how important it was to make fun of Mothiva.

In retrospect, it was obvious something was up with him—those unexplained scars, his constant twitching, and most glaringly, that dizzy and confused feeling Leif got around him, the same feeling he got around the artifacts. But the odds were just so low of him being a sorcerer that Leif had just assumed it was something about Wasp pheromones that caused that feeling.

“We’re surprised,” Leif admitted. “We spent all our life thinking sorcerers were exceedingly rare, but you’re the third one we’ve met. Fourth if you count the Wasp King.”

“I don’t buy into the idea there’s only been a dozen in history. There are probably more,” Zasp shrugged. “They just don’t know it. Or they hide it.”

“Why did you try to hide it?” Leif asked. He’d expected Zasp to be insulted by the bluntness of the question, but rather than becoming irate, he fell mute and nervously bounced his leg.

“I don’t know,” he whispered nervously, his tone wavering as if he was worried he may say something wrong. “Lots of reasons. I don’t want the attention, for one. And I don’t want people to look at me differently.” He sighed. “I was once open about it, back home,” he admitted, bitterness creeping into his voice at the word home, “but instead of acting like it was some cool little quirk, everyone just acted like I was some kind of dangerous freak. Which, I guess I am.”

Leif nodded. He had his magic back in the Wasp Kingdom? So this wasn’t something new. Zasp was rather naturally inclined to hide out in the shadows away from crowds, but even then, it was impressive he managed to stay under wraps for so long. 

“So when I left the Wasp Kingdom,” Zasp continued, “I just figured, I don’t know, nobody needs to know, right? So why tell anyone if it’s just going to make my life miserable?” 

“Not even your beloved Mothiva?” Leif joked. His attempt at lightheartedness fell flat. Zasp’s expression twisted into one of despair. A violent shock shook Zasp’s body, and he had to slump his head to his knees to avoid fainting.

“No. Especially not her. She can’t know,” he stuttered. “But she does now, I guess, if what they said about notifying her about what I did was true.” He wiped his eyes, even though no tears were actually falling. “I kind of think she already knows, though. She just doesn’t bring it up. Either way, it’s going to have to be acknowledged eventually, and she’s going to be scared of me or jealous of me. And no matter what happens, she’ll see me differently. Which is exactly what I don’t want.” 

“Jealous?” Leif asked. “That”—he gestured vaguely toward Zasp’s arm, covered in charred scars and burns—“doesn’t seem too desirable.” 

Zasp’s eyes crinkled up in an awkward smile. “Oh, it’s not. But she wouldn’t think so. She wants—is it okay if I talk about her behind her back?”

“We want to hear all of the drama,” Leif said drily. 

Zasp laughed, a genuine laugh, not the mocking one Leif was used to. “It’s not really drama,” he said. His face sobered. “It’s just, well, Mothiva gets jealous easily. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that. She wants to be special. Powerful. She wants to…not be so reliant on me to protect herself. I don’t know. She might just feel worse if she finds out I’m…‘special’ and strong, and she’s not.” 

“That’s a pretty toxic mindset,” Leif said plainly.

“Not saying it isn’t,” Zasp shrugged. He convulsed in a sharp crackle of lightning. “It is. I don’t need to be told that. But at the same time, I can’t really be too upset about it, you know? I understand where she’s coming from. She’s been dealt a pretty bad hand in life, too.” 

Leif didn’t even bother to hide his true feelings, rolling his eyes and audibly scoffing. Mothiva? Dealt a bad hand in life? The same Mothiva who can get away with anything and everything and practically has the world in her claws? The one who’s beloved by all and has a mob of adoring fans who would do anything for her? That Mothiva? Were they talking about the same Mothiva?

“Oh, don’t be so sassy,” Zasp said, returning the eye roll. “You’ve seen her. She’s, uh…” He cleared his throat, trying to find the most polite phrasing. “Not…really…like…other moths. Her kind isn’t, er, natural. Her kind was bred by the Giants. She’s not built to be independent, or strong, or…anything, really. She’s—she’s so sweet and beautiful, of course she is, but if we’re just talking about her kind as a whole, they were sort of…bred to be useless without others.”

Oh. Leif hadn’t considered that aspect before. He’d heard of bugs who had been friends of the Giants, but he never thought about it any differently as he might a passing rumor, and he certainly never considered that Mothiva might be one of them. Frankly, he thought those stories were all made up to make the Giants sound more mysterious. It disturbed him. Maybe he related to the idea of being changed by forces beyond one’s ability to control a little too much.

“So, I don’t know,” Zasp sighed. “Not my place to talk about it. I don’t really like thinking about it too hard. I’m just saying, I think she might get upset if she realizes I’m so much stronger and more capable than her. I guess I already am if I’m being honest, but, well, there’s being strong and there’s being part of a revered group she’ll never be part of.”

“We understand where you’re coming from,” Leif said, “but, to be blunt, she’s going to have to know eventually. You can’t just hide parts of yourself just to protect her feelings.”

“Yeah, whatever. I’m done talking about that,” Zasp said gruffly. “Doesn’t matter. If she didn’t know already, she will soon. Stop talking about it. You’re bothering me.”

Touchy subject, it seemed. Leif could feel his fuzz beginning to raise, a telltale sign the air was growing thick with static. He nodded, hoping to defuse the situation. “We’re going to do what we can to help you, okay?”

Zasp swirled his claw in the sand, doodling a small picture of what was most likely supposed to be Mothiva. He remained silent, blinking rapidly. Still no tears came. “I hate this,” he said under his breath. “I hate this so much. It’s never done me any good. It just scares people away from me, like I need any more of that.” A slight tremor started up in the tips of his claws, slowly spreading up his arm, until it was shaking uncontrollably. He brought his quivering claws to his chest, putting his head between his knees and going rigid. What was he doing? Why did he keep curling up like that? 

Another burst of electricity ran through his system, causing Zasp to let out a choked, barely restrained sob. He uncurled himself again, tilting his head to look at Leif, but finding no energy to say anything. Smoldering streaks spread across his chest as if lanky fingers were gripping his chest and threatening to strangle him. 

“Stop doing that,” Leif demanded, grabbing Zasp’s wrists. “You’re hurting yourself when you do that. You’re directing all that electricity back into your system. It’s hurting you. Stop.”

“I know that. What else do you want me to do?” Zasp scowled. “You saw what happened when I let it flow naturally.” His confident tone wavered, and he yanked his wrists away from Leif and buried his face in his arms. The memory of those smoldering bugs came back to Leif’s mind, and it took substantial effort to not let the discomfort show on his face.

“That wasn’t your fault,” Leif said gently, resting a hand on Zasp’s shoulder. Even the slightest contact sent static through Leif’s veins. “You said it yourself—you can’t control it.”

“Bugs got hurt,” Zasp whispered, his voice detached as if he was explaining something that had happened to someone else. “They got hurt and it’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault,” Leif assured him. “Blaming yourself isn’t going to help anything,”

“I don’t…I don’t know what happened!” Zasp cried. “They were getting too close, and I was getting overwhelmed by the crowds, and they were all just—just rushing around, trying to see Mothiva, and I tried to gently move them away so she had personal space and then something happened and—” he tightly gripped the sides of his head, trying to blot out the memory. “How did it happen twice?” He asked. Leif didn’t have an answer for him. “It happened twice,” Zasp continued, “I hurt two kids by accident. They just wanted to meet their hero and I ruined everything. I feel like such a piece of shit. Once would be bad enough.” He looked at Leif with pleading eyes. “Leif, what do I do?”

Leif sighed, struggling to come up with a satisfying answer. There really was no solution, as Leif himself was learning the hard way. Sometimes things just are the way they are, and there’s no sudden fix. He’d been so caught up mourning the loss of being able to freely use his ice magic, he hadn’t even considered the possibility some bugs might not want magic at all. You can’t really choose the way you’re born—or in Leif’s case, designed would be more accurate—Sometimes magic isn’t something that helps you explore, or fight, or whatever. Sometimes magic is nothing more than a fancy impediment. All Leif knew was that the most one can do is stop punishing themselves for matters out of their comfort.

“Stop hurting yourself, for one,” Leif said gruffly.

“That isn’t what I meant! Tell me what I’m supposed to do to stop…all this!” Zasp snapped, his usual coldness coming back in full force. “You said you’d try to help me!”

“We won’t just sit back and watch you destroy yourself,” Leif continued, unfazed by Zasp’s outburst. “You’re a nice bug, Zasp, you need to treat yourself like one.”

“I’m sorry, did you not hear a word I said?” Zasp hissed. 

“We heard what you said, and we still think you need to stop doing that,” Leif retorted. “It looks like it hurts.” 

Zasp closed his eyes, taking a deep breath to calm himself. Midway through, the breath became more of a desperate gasp, and he suddenly gripped his chest. Shallow, panicked attempts at breaths shook his chest, but no actual air came into him. Before Leif could ask if he was alright, Zasp tenses up, leaning back, fingerlike strands of lightning erupting from his mouth, almost as if he was vomiting electricity.

A cold sweat ran over Leif’s shell, and he had to look away, praying Zasp didn’t notice his discomfort. Leif hated to be so rude, but he had to admit it was a grisly sight, watching Zasp practically choke on his own magic. It hadn’t occurred to Leif how unnerving, or even disgusting magic must be to an outsider until he became the outsider. Is that what it looks like to everyone else when he uses his ice magic? Some grotesque, unnerving show of power?

Zasp gasped for air, one hand desperately digging into the sand as he struggled to breathe through his spasming throat, the other hand clutching his chest. Leif reached out to him in a vague attempt to help, but Zasp only held up his claw as if to say, wait, I’m fine, just wait. After a worrying minute where it appeared to Leif that Zasp genuinely couldn’t breathe, the static ebbed and he managed to take a sharp intake of air. “Shit,” he cursed in between frantic gasps for air. “I’m fine. It’s fine. It does hurt, alright?”

It took Leif a moment to process that Zasp had answered his question. His mind was still stuck on the sight of him being strangled by his own electricity. Hopefully the panic didn’t show in his eyes. “Then stop doing it,” Leif finally managed to say, with as much patience as he could muster. Part of him was getting impatient with the wasp’s stubbornness, but it was hard to be mad at someone struggling to even breathe.

Dejected anger crept into Zasp’s voice. “I said, it hurts, which is exactly why I have to do it. Do you not understand? That electricity needs to go somewhere, and I’d much rather it goes to me than to an innocent bug.”

Leif paused, mulling over Zasp’s point. He didn’t want to say it was a good rebuttal. It wasn’t. Zasp shouldn’t be purposely sabotaging himself even if he might have reasons for it. But, at the same time, his thought process made sense, and it’s not like Leif was coming up with any better options. It was hard to come up with an eloquent response when Leif knew wholeheartedly that if his own magic was so reckless and dangerous, he would absolutely have it run through himself rather than Vi or Kabbu or anyone else who may be nearby. 

“So you’d rather not be able to breathe than to occasionally hurt someone?” Leif asked. He inwardly cringed at his own question—gods, that was a stupid point to try to make. What a stupid way to phrase it, making it sound like occasionally potentially fatally electrocuting people is for the greater good. Why couldn’t he be as good at the whole talking thing like Kabbu? Hell, even Vi would be more useful in the situation, as brash and arrogant as she is. 

“Yes,” Zasp said plainly, exactly the answer Leif was expecting from him. “It’s not a big deal. It just does that sometimes.” Though he outwardly brushed it off, he kept his hands to his throat and continued to take rapid breaths, hungry for air. “The electricity goes all around me, and sometimes it gets to my throat or lungs and makes it hard to breathe. It’s never lasted for more than a minute, though.”

“That—that doesn’t mean it’s okay,” Leif said, dumbfounded. “It’s fine to you if you suddenly can’t breathe as long as it doesn’t last more than a minute?

“It’s not fine,” Zasp admitted after an awkward lull. He hugged his knees to his chest, glancing at Leif out of the corner of his eye. “Make it stop.”

Leif’s frustration melted away. For all the times Leif had gotten into petty squabbles with Zasp, for all the times he’d made fun of him behind his back for his ridiculous obsession with Mothiva, for all the times Zasp had done something genuinely unethical for the sake of self gain, those three words hit a little too close to home. Make it stop. That’s all Leif wanted, too. And yet it never did stop. It only ever got worse and worse. Somehow, it didn’t seem like a good idea to tell Zasp that. All Leif could do was reluctantly reach out and rub Zasp’s back in what was supposed to be a comforting manner.

“Look, Leif, I know it’s not good for me,” Zasp mumbled, “I just don’t want to be seen as a threat. I don’t know any other way. But it’s killing me to keep living like this.” He slumped down with a shuddery sigh. “My head hurts all the time. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for any of this. Everything just feels so…fuzzy. How do you control it?”

“Our magic?” Leif asked dumbly.

“Yes. You use it all the time for good things. I need to know how you do that. Please, tell me. Maybe it could even be useful for once if I was able to harness it properly.”

Leif stretched his legs out the best he could in the cramped space. He couldn’t say he had much of a formula to controlling his magic. He just did, no deliberate thought put into it. But that wasn’t a helpful response. Trying to ignore the pit in his stomach that formed from Zasp’s notion of wanting to be useful—that was the clearest sign he was susceptible to being exploited if Leif ever heard one—he attempted a rational answer.

“We don’t do it consciously,” he explained. “But we guess the main component is we let it flow through our body naturally. It’s hard to say for certain, but we think you’re getting hurt so badly because you’re trying to resist it. If we feel ice building up, we don’t freak out and try to get rid of it somehow, we just let it flow through our veins and die down on its own. That usually works.” The word usually there was doing a lot of heavy lifting, given Leif’s own recent struggles with controlling his abilities.

Zasp nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t understand.”

Leif let out an ugly snort of laughter. “Okay, think of it like this. You have electricity going through your body, trailing down towards your claws.” He held up his hand, tracing across it with his claw. “You can panic and have it jump out of your body and potentially hurt someone, or you can focus on keeping that electricity inside and have it run back up your arm. Try to keep it within you and see if it tapers off. Then you won’t have to keep shocking yourself.”

“It’s not that easy, though.”

“Oh, believe us, we know,” Leif said with a bitter grin. “It sucks. But can you at least give it a try? Just focus on directing that energy within yourself. And if it escapes, don’t direct towards yourself. Just let it flow into the air.”

“I g-g—” Zasp winced, electricity pricking the corner of his eyes like tears. “Guess. Guess. Guess. I guess I can try. Try. Try. T—” He slammed the back of his head against the decrepit building in frustration, cursing under his breath. Noticing the look of confused concern on Leif’s face, he huffed a forced laugh and said, “Sorry. Talking’s a pain sometimes. It’s like my brain short circuits and gets caught up on a certain word and won’t stop until I say it, like, a million times. All—all—the better I keep quiet. Sorry for weirding you out with all this…stuff going on.” He pointed a shaky claw at his eye, now freely flowing with electricity. It looked like his very eye was melting into a stream of static. It…was a bizarre sight, Leif had to admit. 

“Oh, you don’t have to apologize.” Leif said sheepishly. “Don’t beat yourself up over any of this. It’s not a bad thing. We’re making weird faces because we didn’t realize until now how strange our magic must seem to everyone else.” 

“You calling me strange?” Zasp asked, cocking an eyebrow. 

“No! No, not that,” Leif yelped in such desperation that it surprised even himself. “No, of course not. We’re just, uh, well, a bit surprised.” 

“Nah, it’s fine,” Zasp laughed. “I’m a freak. We both are. That’s why I’m willing to talk to you.”

“So you only talk to freaks?” Leif joked. Thankfully, Zasp answered that question before Leif could tack on his other thought, “No wonder you like Mothiva so much.”

“About this kind of thing? Yeah,” Zasp shrugged. “I mean, you don’t know how people will react, right? I don’t want to be alienated.” His jovial demeanor slipped, and for a moment he looked genuinely hurt. “Guess I’m already past that point, though.”

“Those guards were just…cruel,” Leif said. “They were doing their job, but they were doing it horribly wrong. You’re not a freak, Zasp, and it’s not fair for you to say things like that about yourself. You’re just bullying yourself so it doesn’t feel so bad when other people do.” Zasp blinked at him. Leif was a bit surprised by his own…preachiness. Venus, was it obvious he was spending a lot of time around Kabbu. Not that he didn’t mean what he was saying, of course. 

“Okay, so I’m not a freak,” Zasp drawled. “But I’m still dangerous and reckless. Not a weirdo, though. Good to know.” 

Can you just be genuine for one second? Leif internally berated Zasp, but he kept his mouth shut and grabbed Zasp’s claws. “Do what we told you to do,” he said, ignoring Zasp’s snark. “Try keeping your magic within yourself and see if it doesn’t overwhelm you. Just try it.” 

Zasp stiffened, gripping Leif’s claws so tightly it hurt. Static crept into his veins, visibly glowing under his shell. Leif could feel Zasp’s pulse drumming in his hands. Tiny jolts zapped Leif, but they didn’t hurt—they were more akin to a static shock on a dry day. Zasp closed his eyes in focus, taking deep breaths. His pulse slowed, and the jolts running through his shell dulled, running up his arms and naturally fizzling out. “See?” Leif said. “It takes practice, but you can do it. It only gets overwhelming when you try to fight it.”

“Okay, right. I can do this.” Zasp’s eye twitched, and he keeled over, wincing. “It hurts,” he admitted.

“What?”

“It hurts,” he said louder. His claws dug into Leif’s palms so roughly Leif could feel Zasp’s current running through him. Like Zasp said, it hurt. It felt like his veins were on fire, yet simultaneously numb and unfeeling. His entire body felt like it was being stabbed by tiny needles. “It hurts to keep it in,” Zasp insisted, his voice growing more and more frantic. “It burns. How did the Giants do this? How did they harness such power without getting hurt?” 

“See if it goes away,” Leif recommended, but he had a gut feeling it was pointless. Electricity so potent would hurt no matter where it was directed, whether inside, outside, whatever. There was no getting around the truth that it was painful. Zasp’s face contorted in pain.

“What do I do?” Zasp begged Leif. “It hurts no matter what I do. No matter what. Help me. Leif. Leif. Leif. Leif, do something, I’m going to—”

Without even a twitch of warning, a dazzling bolt of lightning shot up from his shell and into the night sky, hitting one of the branches of the towering tree above with a loud explosion. By some miracle the branch stayed hanging by a thread to the tree, burnt and dead, but at no immediate risk of falling. Leif couldn’t help but gasp at the sight, even as Zasp fell limply to the side from exertion, slumping against Leif, charred and unconscious. His shoulders quivered with shallow breaths, but didn’t rouse when Leif  gently shook him. Out like a light. Unsure of what else to do, Leif hoisted the wasp up, half-carrying him and half-dragging him to the end of their little alleyway. His stomach turned when he brushed his hand against Zasp’s back and felt bits of burnt shell flaking off. Oh, gods. Ever so slightly illuminated by the moonlight, Leif peered at Zasp’s back, pushing his wings aside.

Well, he knew how Zasp had been hiding his magic for so long. His back was covered in layers and layers of deep burn scars otherwise hidden by his wings. It would be so simple, to feel those shocks coming through, to nonchalantly put your hands behind your back, to let the shocks burn and char your back where nobody would notice the scars…it was a simple plan, but given Leif had never noticed those scars before, it worked amazingly well.

He paused when he reached the cramped gap where he’d entered. How on earth was he supposed to get Zasp through there? It was hard enough for Leif himself to squeeze through. Just as he was prepared to leave Zasp there, he was interrupted by the sound of metal hitting stone. A sharp spear jammed through the gap, barely missing Leif, twisting in the gap and widening it by scraping away the loose stone. A blank mask peered back at him.

“Suspicious activity has been reported coming from here,” the Bee guard said plainly. Suspicious activity was an understatement, Zasp had nearly blown the Hive right out their tree.

Leif’s shell iced over in defense, stinging every scale on his shell. “Zasp didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, not trying to hide his disdain.

“That’s not up for either of us to say,” the guard said. “Bring him to us. Regardless of what you think, we cannot have a reckless and potentially dangerous bug on the loose.” 

“He’s not dangerous,” Leif argued, but he wasn’t so sure. Maybe not on purpose, but his potential to harm couldn’t be denied. “Don’t hurt him.”

“That was never part of our plan,” the guard said. “Quite the opposite. Bring him to us,” she repeated, “so we can give him proper medical treatment.”

“You’re bringing him to H.B.?” Leif questioned. 

“Yes. She’s the most qualified doctor we have.”

“Isau’s is right around the corner.”

“Please don’t be difficult.” 

Leif sighed, pushing himself through the—thankfully now much wider—gap, and gesturing toward the unconscious wasp. “He’s in there. Lay a finger on him with ill intent, and we’ll freeze your Hive to the ground.”

“Duly noted,” the guard deadpanned. She waved forward a group of thankfully unarmed guards, donned with thick rubber protective gear. They awkwardly lifted Zasp from the ground and into their arms, lugging him off to the elevator to his doom. Okay, maybe not his doom, but Leif made sure to give them all very pointed looks to reinforce his threat. He wasn’t exaggerating—he was fully prepared to sacrifice his own safety for the sake of petty revenge. 

“One last thing,” he called out, dashing up to the group. The guards turned to face him.

“Make sure to warn him, H.B. is a total freak, and not in the funny little you-and-I-are-not-so-different way we were talking about, okay? She’s just weird.”

“…I’ll remember that to the best of my ability,” the guard said. Leif nodded, satisfied.

He let his shoulders sag in exhaustion. Gods, was he tired. Playing therapist for a day certainly wasn’t his strong suit, and he felt more drained than pleased with himself for bothering to help. Being nice was tiring. He rubbed his eyes, watching as the smoldering tree branch swayed uncertainly in the wind. 

A part of him was worried about Zasp, but he was confident all would turn out well. He believed Zasp would be alright. He really did. A stubborn bug like him wouldn’t give into such a crushing depression like Leif was. He’d find a way to pull through, to control his magic, to not have to isolate himself any further. Maybe there was no cure for his magic, but he could learn to live with it, right? He could learn to handle it. He just had to do what Leif said—be more gentle with himself, more patient, not to berate himself for things out of his control…it was simple, really. 

Now, if only Leif could manage to take his own advice into consideration.

Chapter Text

Stray grains of sand littered the inn bed, finding their way throughout the sheets and onto Leif’s shell. This is exactly why the trio were never too keen on going to T&W’s, even if it meant another half hour’s worth of trudging around Bugaria to the other nearest inn. The inn owners were clearly nice bugs who put a lot of effort into their business, and the price per night was excellent, but you can’t ignore the major downside—sand got everywhere, all the time. No matter how clean the sheets were, sand would without question fall from the feet of weary travelers resting in bed and find its way into the smallest of crevices.

Leif didn’t have it in him to care tonight. Maybe it was just because he didn’t have Kabbu and Vi nearby to complain to, maybe the sand was somehow less itchy tonight, maybe anything was comfortable compared to cramming himself in an alleyway and getting electrocuted…whatever the reason, for once he could ignore the gritty sand and let himself relax. No thoughts, no worries, only the softness of the pillow that cradled his aching head. For how blazing hot it was during the daytime, Defiant Root got awfully cold during the night, and the heavy quilt blankets he’d before regarded as counterproductive came in handy. The quilt was rather shoddily made, but the loose stitches and occasional holes gave it personality. Little handmade designs were stitched into each square, depicting somewhat sloppy but charming designs of Wasps, Termites, and a variety of flowers Leif couldn’t recognize.

His eyes grew heavy as he scanned the quilt, admiring each stitch. The steady hum of the inn’s electricity buzzing lulled him into a sense of comfort. He was tired. When was the last time he wasn’t? He couldn’t remember, and he didn’t care enough to remember. For now, he was in that sweet spot between sleep and consciousness, where his mind was already prepared for sleep and out of energy to worry. Turning over, he stared out the open window with bleary eyes, watching the skies and letting the wind brush against his face.

It would be an awful lot more peaceful to be able to stargaze as he fell asleep, but even though the stars were on full display in the clear night sky, it was hard to make out much of anything through the swarms of Bee guards. Even after moons of seeing Vi fly around freely, it astonished him to see bugs in flight, especially in such a quantity. Tiny blurs of yellow and black zipped this way and that around the outside of the Hive in what must have been a very organized manner, but to Leif just looked like aimless buzzing. They were packed in such density that Leif could hardly see the sky behind them, and it only seemed more were coming. What on earth were they doing? He’d be so much more curious if he weren’t so exhausted.

The Hive entrance opened with a mechanical hum, and even in his sleepy trance, Leif had to gawk a little at the unfolding scene. In the blink of an eye, hundreds, if not thousands of Bees came flooding out. He didn’t even know the Hive had that many Bees living there. He vaguely remembered a random fun fact Vi casually told him once—calling it a fun fact was one way to put it, Leif didn’t find it “fun” at all—about how some bees in far off lands would surround intruding wasps in their hives and bake them alive with the heat of their buzzing wings. It was…a unique way of dealing with it, Leif would give them that. Hopefully this wasn’t the Hive’s attempt at recreating that method. Leif shook his head. The guard said no harm would come to Zasp, and he’d have to take her word on it. Whether or not she was trustworthy was a whole other question, but if by some chance Zasp was being baked alive, it’s probably not something Leif could even do anything to stop at this point.

But, no, they didn’t seem to be doing anything of the sort. The Bees swarmed around the loose branch dangling precariously over the city below, splitting into two groups. One bunch took the stringy tendrils of bark keeping the branch loosely attached to the tree, the other took the bottom of the branch. With an ear splitting crack, they ripped the branch off from the tree, struggling to keep it afloat as they slowly lowered it to the ground. Their wings roared with such intensity it sounded like thunder, and some Bees even began dropping from the sky from overexertion, thankfully getting caught before they hit the ground. Leif couldn’t help but wonder at what potential ramifications this may have towards Zasp—this was clearly a major inconvenience to the Bees, having to stop everything and send out every soldier they had to ensure no harm came to the city below, and Leif hoped Zasp didn’t catch the blame for causing such an inconvenience.

Slowly but surely, the branch was lowered to the ground, before finally being dropped into a stretch of uninhabited sand below once it was ensured there were no civilians in the vicinity. It was an impressive show of unity and strength from the Bees, but all Leif’s mind could focus on were the occasional flickers of light emitting from the Hive, glowing up the entire structure in a brilliant orange light. He had a feeling he knew what that was, and the gleaming bolt of lightning that shot up from the hive and sent the giant leaves of the tree above charred and floating to the ground proved his suspicions. A distinct, delighted cackle rang out into the night sky, definitely not one that ever could or would come from Zasp’s jaws.

Leif got up and slammed the window closed. He’d had enough of that.

He fell back into bed, not even bothering to cloak himself in the warm blankets, his eyes drooping shut the moment his head hit the pillow. Patches of neon green lights danced behind his eyelids after being in such close proximity to bright flashing lights, and they carried over into his dreams once his body finally let itself fall asleep.

Lights featured predominantly in his dreams. Lightning strikes, the bright fluorescent overhead lights of H.B.’s lab, flashlights being shone in his eyes by a figure that morphed between H.B. and a faceless Roach, the little dots of light that swam across his vision when he was dizzy—they all showed up in his subconscious. At one point he was stuck walking through the Lost Sands for hours on end with no sign of life, other than the odd glow creeping up from his thorax. His chest was patched together with rushed seams stitched into cutesy designs, and he was forced to hold his chest in place as he walked, swiveling his head back and forth desperately looking for either Kabbu or Vi. He could swear he heard Kabbu at one point, but when he asked where he was, Kabbu just said in his usual cheerful tone, “Oh, don’t mind me.”

Leif stumbled to the ground, his knees painfully grinding into the blazing sand. His thorax split open, but instead of cordyceps bursting out, a beam of light emitted, reflecting off the sky as if it was glass and shining back directly into his eyes. He awoke in a start, clutching his eyes in pain and blinking rapidly against a blinding light.

It took him an embarrassingly long time to realize the mysterious beam of light in question was the rising sun creeping up over the horizon, peeking through the inn windows and shining a thin beam of sunlight onto his face. Running a claw over his chest, he confirmed he was in still in one piece, and huffed a small laugh at his own expense. At a certain point, his jumpiness was just getting ridiculous to him. In a cruel stroke of irony, the second that thought crossed his mind, he turned his head slightly to the side and immediately let out a shriek of surprise so unlike anything that had ever left his mouth before that it dissolved into an embarrassed fit of laughter.

“Oh, goodness, I’m sorry,” Kabbu stammered, putting down the cup of tea he was sipping on. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I probably should have knocked first.”

“Probably,” Leif panted, pulling in a breath in an attempt to orient himself. He couldn’t imagine he looked very put together right now, fluff disheveled from sleep and his body shaking in an almost manic burst of laughter that surely looked more concerning than jovial. He was just happy to be in one piece and not exploding into a million fragments of light. “We didn’t expect to turn around and see someone watching us sleep, is all. When on earth did you get here?”

“I wasn’t watching you sleep,” Kabbu said. “I was just staring off into space. I guess that might have looked like me staring at you.”

“Right, and the question we asked?” Leif pressed.

“Oh, I came here overnight,” Kabbu explained. “I went off looking for you, and I asked the innkeeper if you were here, and he said yes, and I was planning to come here too, so…” Kabbu suddenly looked very nervous. “So I guess I assumed you wouldn’t mind if I came here too? In retrospect it was quite rude of me to make such an assumption—”

Leif resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “It’s fine. Nice to see a friendly face again.” He stood up, eyeing Kabbu’s cup of tea as he took a seat at the small table. He briefly considered outright snatching it for himself and taking a swig, but somehow it didn’t seem fair to repay Kabbu’s kindness with theft. “Got any for us?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Kabbu admitted rather sheepishly. “Almost all our supplies were in our pack, and, well…unless you have our pack, it seems Vi took it when she ran off.”

“Nope,” Leif confirmed. He knew sharing one pack would be a bad idea. “All we have on us are a few dozen berries. You seen her around anywhere?”

“Nope,” Kabbu echoed, pushing a crunchy leaf over to Leif, who graciously inhaled it in one gulp. “I’m not sure why she’s taking everything out on you. It doesn’t seem very fair to me.”

“We probably could have been a bit nicer these past few days,” Leif muttered. “Or at least a bit more open about our problems.” Deep down, he knew Vi wasn’t being fair to have been so brash with him when he was admitting something so hard for him to think about, but it was hard to be mad at her. She was just a kid—well, she was very much nearing 18, but to a bug as old as Leif that was practically a pupa. Why was she so upset? None of this affected her. Not that Vi was so devoid of empathy that seeing Leif be so miserable wouldn’t rub off on her, no, but it was definitely strange for her to have taken things so personally when, again, it truly had nothing to do with her at all. Maybe she was upset over losing a fighting partner? Leif’s stomach dropped at the prospect, and he suddenly wasn’t all that interested in eating anymore. Vi didn’t just see him as a useful tool, right? They were friends. Why was he thinking of Vi so lowly?

“Don’t blame yourself,” Kabbu frowned. “Leif, you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. You know that, right?” Leif nodded slowly. “Right,” Kabbu said. “We can look for her and find out why she’s upset, easy as that.”

Great. Hunting down an angry bee and interrogating her on why she suddenly hates her friends. Leif hated to be so negative, he really did, but he couldn’t think of anything less pleasant to do first thing in the morning. No, that wasn’t entirely true. He loved Vi. She was the perfect balance for the team, and despite her harsh nature, she was genuinely kindhearted deep down. In a strange way, she was sort of like a mini-Muse, the perfect blend of Muse’s feistiness and Leif’s dry sarcasm that Leif’s parents had always joked that Leif and Muse’s child would turn out like. Vi would probably kill him if he told her she was like the kid he never met, and that made the thought all the funnier to him.

It felt a lot different when Vi was genuinely mad at him, and not just puffing her cheeks out in an exaggerated pout and pointing the tip of her beemerang in his direction as a subtle threat. Kabbu was right, of course—Leif hadn’t done anything wrong. Vi was just being Vi, temperamental as always, but Leif couldn’t help but worry. Friends get in arguments. They fight, they make up, their bond strengthens from the learning experience, he knew that. But the nagging worry that life would repeat itself and something would happen to one of them before he could apologize wouldn’t leave his mind. It ate away at his mind like acid until he was back to worrying about Muse again.

Leif sighed. A bit too loudly, it seemed, as Kabbu tensed up. “We don’t have to go right now. I just want to make things right between the three of us as soon as possible.”

“No, no, we understand,” Leif said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “We’re just thinking about…” the words stuck in his throat.  “We’re thinking about…her, again.”

“Muse?” Kabbu whispered. Leif darted his gaze away in response. “Leif, I—”

“We are done talking about this,” Leif said firmly. His chest was beginning to hurt—not with the horrific sensation of cordyceps piercing through his shell, but with sadness. It hurt worse than any of the blistering wounds his ice magic caused him.

“I found it very therapeutic to set up a grave for my friends so I could be with them,” Kabbu hurried out. “Like I said, I find it helpful to talk to them as if they were there. You don’t have to do that, but maybe it would give you some closure if you visited her grave, or asked your family about her?”

Leif fell quiet. Both of those sounded nice. He needed someone’s actual memory of Muse, no matter how faint, instead of his own fuzzy memories that painted Muse as nothing more than a  defenseless, heartbroken bug he hurt beyond repair. It was a good idea. He wanted to do it. But he was so overwhelmed by everything else, so preoccupied with the stinging wounds covering his arms, all he managed was a quiet, “We said we are done talking about this.”

“Okay,” Kabbu said sheepishly. “I understand. You have a lot on your mind.”

“And we have a lot of…sand in our fluff,” he grumbled. batting at his antennae and shaking off bits of sand which promptly fell onto his wings. He muttered under his breath, leaning down to brush his wings with his claws.

“Oh, yes, that tends to happen!” Kabbu piped. “When I first came here, I couldn’t get the sand out of my shell for weeks. I realized after a while that—oh, Leif, are you okay?”

“Eh?” Leif hummed, looking up with squinted eyes. What was Kabbu talking about? Was Leif okay? Obviously not, but it’s not like he was doing glaringly worse.

“Your hands look…” Kabbu fell quiet, not wanting to seem rude. Leif stared down at his hands, wincing at the sight. They’d never had the chance to fully recover in the first place, and his recent magic usage had left them in worse shape than before. Fresh burns bore into the ugly purplish scars that had began to form, and the tip of one of his claws looked grotesque, almost like a melted candle. He immediately averted his gaze, not willing in the slightest to take another look at his malformed hands. He hadn’t even realized he was in such bad shape, which was only worrying if anything—was the pain really so mundane to him that he’d grown desensitized? That came with some nasty implications. He was potentially much more gravely injured at any given time than he’d even noticed.

“We had to use our magic a bit,” Leif said, counting down in his head. Five, four, three, two, one…

Right on cue, Kabbu’s eyes widened from underneath his chitin. He was so wonderfully predictable. “Why?” Kabbu demanded in a gasp, horrified. “Goodness, just when we got done explaining your magic is killing—uh, has the potential to harm you…” he looked around him nervously like someone would get mad at him for saying such a thing.

“Don’t sugarcoat it,” Leif deadpanned.

“Just when we got done explaining your magic…could kill you, you use it?” Kabbu asked in a stern whisper. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

It was both distressing and relieving to not dance around the issue with flowery euphemisms and indirect language. Still, the beetle was exaggerating the situation. “Using our magic a few times won’t kill us,” Leif scoffed with a dismissive wave of his hand. Still, the words made his guts knot in worry. “It’s overuse that’ll give us trouble. We’d rather get a few burns than let Zasp get stabbed.”

Kabbu leaned forward in his seat, drumming his claws on the table in intrigue. “Oh, right. Zasp. I heard…something was going on with him. He was the one who caused all that panic, right? By the time I got there to investigate, he was gone.”

It didn’t surprise Leif at all that Kabbu had intended to butt into the situation and try to resolve things himself. He was so endearing in that regard. “Yeah, that was him. He booked it pretty fast,” Leif shrugged. “We can’t blame him. We’d make a run for it, too. They were treating him horribly.”

“They were talking about him pretty horribly, too,” Kabbu admitted somewhat guiltily. “I didn’t say anything to defend him because I wasn’t sure if they were right or not about him. But I don’t think they were. He wouldn’t hurt anyone on purpose, right?”

“No. It wasn’t on purpose.” Leif looked down at his bleeding hands. He could feel those painful pins and needles of electricity jumping through his veins just from thinking about it. He tried to imagine that sensation being a constant, and it seemed utterly impossible to deal with. Then again, he was dealing with a pretty impossible situation himself. “He can’t control it.”

“Magic, right?” Kabbu asked. “I thought I overheard a guard saying something about electric magic. I had no idea he was a sorcerer—er, he is one, right?”

“We don’t want to confirm or deny anything, as it is not our place to reveal such personal details” Leif hummed, his vagueness answering Kabbu’s question immediately.

“Were you able to talk to him? I heard you left the Hive shortly after he did, but I don’t know if you were directly following him or just eager to leave.”

Leif grinned, a little embarrassed.“Ah, no, we were totally following him around.” He briefly considered relaying everything that had happened, but it felt wrong to casually discuss Zasp’s moments of distress behind his back. If Leif knew anything about him, it’s that he’d much prefer keeping everything that had happened as secretive as possible. So Leif only said, “He’s not really doing too good. We’re a bit worried, to be honest. They dragged him off to H.B.’s, and—”

Kabbu brought his hand up. “You don’t have to tell me,” he interjected, “I know. I saw that part. They were decked out in rubber and everything. It was an interesting sight. Mothiva was, uh, quite worked up.”

“In a concerned way or an angry way?” Leif asked, half joking and half genuinely curious. Mothiva was a loose cannon—who knew what sort of thoughts go through that mind of hers?—and it was a real struggle to draw the line between Mothiva the stage presence and Mothiva the actual bug, and even harder to discern her true feelings on things.

“Both, I think. She couldn’t figure out if she was more mad at Zasp for ruining her meet and greet with his…accidents, or more mad at the guards for mistreating him.”

“Figures.”

“Mm. I think concern won over. She started banging on the lab doors and demanding to see him, but H.B. just had some guards drag her away to cool off. She made quite the scene.”

“We wish we could have seen that.”

“Oh, it was just sort of sad. I don’t know if it was as funny as you’re imagining it to be. I also don’t know if that was the right move—I know Mothiva can be a bit much, but, well, you’ve battled them. Zasp is certainly a lot more energetic around her. Maybe just the sound of her voice would rejuvenate him. Last I saw of her, she’d parked herself right by the lab and was refusing to budge. They just left her there after a while.” Kabbu knocked back the rest of his tea, wiping his jaws. “Zasp’ll be okay. H.B. is a bit eccentric, but she truly has bugs’ best interests in mind.”

Leif didn’t hide the skepticism that washed over his face. Yeah, right.  Best interests his ass, he’d never heard a qualified doctor laughing maniacally when examining their patients. Eccentric was a gross understatement. Oh, sure, he didn’t have a doubt in his mind that H.B. would ensure Zasp’s safety—her curiosity and determination made her come across as cold and unsympathetic, but never outright malicious—but Zasp was in such a fragile state of mind that Leif couldn’t help but be concerned about what H.B. might be talking him into. Zasp was a living contradiction to himself, simultaneously the most frustratingly stubborn and at times rude bug he’d met, and a total pushover If you sweet talk him just right. The best outcome, in Leif’s mind, would be if Zasp was able to have those crystal fragments surgically removed somehow, or any other method of filtering them out of his body so he wouldn’t have to deal with such excruciating stress anymore. But the sheer joy in H.B.’s laughter at the prospect of having a new guinea pig to poke around the insides of suggested she wasn’t keen on letting him get off that easily.

“Any idea where our little bee friend ran off to?” Leif asked, changing the subject so he could get H.B.’s grinning face out of his head. “For all we know, she’s halfway across Bugaria.”

“Oh, she could be just about anywhere by now,” Kabbu sighed. “Poor Vi. She’s not taking any of this very well.”

“Sure, she is,” Leif said, standing up and stretching the fatigue from his legs. Aside from the whole running off thing, Vi was remarkably, almost annoyingly nonchalant about everything. Leif had never met a bug as casual as Vi. As hyper and aggressive as she could be, her usual approach to any serious situation was a sort of tongue in cheek, snippy shrug of her shoulders, usually punctuated with an out of place joke that usually fell flat. “We should look in the Hive first, shouldn’t we?”

“I doubt she’d be there,” Kabbu mused. “Even if she got trapped inside during the lockdown, I doubt she’d stick around for a moment longer after it was lifted. She can only tolerate the Hive for so long.”

“That’s true,” Leif said, “but if we’re going to have to scour all of Bugaria for her, we may as well look now so we don’t have to circle back later in case she actually is here.” He left the actual reason for wanting to circle back to the Hive to himself—he desperately wanted, no, needed, to make sure H.B. wasn’t currently elbow deep in Zasp’s guts, fiddling around with those cruel steel tools of hers and slicing things that shouldn’t be sliced and extracting things that shouldn’t be extracted. Kabbu, kind as he was, would without a doubt agree it would be nice to check in on Zasp and offer some surface level words of comfort out of camaraderie, but he might not appreciate the obvious implication that Leif was so paranoid about H.B. that he couldn’t trust her to be alone with someone for a day without dissecting them.

“Good point,” Kabbu nodded. “We may as well. It won’t harm anything to check.”

Grabbing the now-stale and slightly grimy complementary honey drop left by the innkeepers much earlier that morning, Leif started for the door. Kabbu gave him a mildly disgusted look.

“What?” Leif asked, slowly putting the honey to his lips, knowing full well where Kabbu’s discomfort stemmed from.

“Nothing,” he muttered, trying to be polite.

“Hey, look, we’ll take any upsides to this as we can,” Leif said, swallowing the honey drop in a single mouthful. “Food poisoning fears us.”

“Right, right,” Kabbu muttered, “you do you.”

___________________________________________________________________________________

Leif gripped the elevator railing, trying to calm the nervous ice running through his veins. He couldn’t place what exactly he was so anxious about, but his body was reacting beyond his control. He blamed it on the heights and the uncertain, jerky lurches of the elevator, but he knew deep down there was more to it than that. Even at his calmest, he still had a pit of anxiety in his stomach that refused to calm down.

“We should probably ask Madame Jaune if she’s seen Vi,” Kabbu said, more of a statement than a question, but he still looked up to Leif for approval, tapping his foot in a mix of nervous energy and impatience with the elevator’s slowness. Leif gave a noncommittal shrug of his shoulders, letting go of the railing and turning to look at Kabbu. He wasn’t too keen on potentially interrupting Jaune while she was painting—in a strange way, he was much more intimidated by her and her stern, sour expression than he was most of the foes he’d faced in battle—but she was probably their best shot at finding Vi. If she didn’t specifically know where Vi was, she could probably offer a suggestion on where she was most likely to run off to, given she’d spent such a long time dealing with Vi’s antics.

“You can check with Jaune,” he said, “and we can check the la—” no, wait, he shouldn’t be outright revealing his intentions lest Kabbu get into a state about his H.B. needed privacy to work. “…The rest of the Hive.”

Before Kabbu could voice he thoughts on that idea, the elevator screeched to a halt with the aggravating sound of creaking wood.  Kabbu stumbled a bit, but Leif, being so much lighter as he was, was nearly thrown straight off the elevator. He caught himself at the last moment, grasping the railing and being forced to soak in the dizzying view as he caught his breath. Leif glared down at the elevator as if it was a sentient being he could make feel ashamed of itself for its flaws. The rest of the Hive was so high technical, yet this is the best they had for the elevator? The first thing one would see during a tour of the Hive? Apparently, floating platforms were just fine in the Factory, but not anywhere else.

“What a load of junk,” he grumbled under his breath, wiping the stinging beads of sweat from his face. “Why do they need worthless stuff like this here? Why can’t they replace it already?” Kabbu laughed a bit, prompting Leif to give him an unamused side-eye. “We nearly got thrown straight off, nothing funny about it.”

“Oh, no, it’s not that,” Kabbu said. “I just think it’s funny you’re the exact opposite of what I expected you to be like at first.”

“What?” Leif muttered. What on earth was that supposed to mean? Leif was an open book. Very consistent. Well…personality-wise, at least. The whole cordyceps thing wasn’t all too apparent.

“I don’t know,” Kabbu grinned, “I guess I’m just so used to old bugs complaining about modern technology, it’s rather amusing to hear one complaining about the lack thereof.”

Leif scoffed. “We’re not that old.”

“You kind of are.”

“No we’re—well, we’re not old and cranky.”

“Oh, of course not!” Kabbu said cheerfully. In the back of Leif’s mind he could hear Vi’s squeaky voice drawling out, “oh, suuure, he’s not cranky at all.” Oh, how he missed that little Bee and her complete lack of a filter.

A single glance to his side immediately proved that security had been tightened in the Hive. The guards from last night were gone, replaced by much bulkier, maskless guards with stern, cold faces. They flanked the entrance to the Hive, watching the pair enter the automatic doors with close, but not quite skeptical stares. Leif knew the Hive took honey seriously, but even this seemed a bit overkill. He sighed as he made his way back into that cloying maze of chambers and hexagons, dreading the prospect of hunting down Vi, if she was even there at all. Not to mention H.B., and his personal goal of ensuring she wasn’t up to anything strange. It was a given she was, but it was worth checking nonetheless. At the very least, the bright lights of the Hive were turned off, allowing the only source of light to be the natural sunlight beaming in from outside. It was much easier on the eyes.

Kabbu must have agreed with his notion that splitting up would be wise, as he gave Leif a wordless nod as they entered and immediately headed towards Jaune’s studio. Leif stood there for a moment in confusion, his legs moving in one direction and then the other as he struggled to figure out where to go. Not wanting to look like a lost child separated from their parents, he steeled himself and forced his legs to take him to H.B.’s. Wherever that was. He was starting to regret making such a brazen decision. Oh, sure, he had no doubt he would be able to find H.B.’s lab after a few minutes of wandering, he wasn’t completely helpless, but the real question was what on earth he would do once he got there. He couldn’t exactly just storm in and, what, slap H.B. in the face?

…He smiled a bit at the mental picture of that. He didn’t hate H.B., he really didn’t, but sometimes when you’re scared of something, the best thing you can do is slap it. Oh, well. He’d figure it out when he got there, or at least, so he told himself.

As he wandered, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was bothering him. Oh, how he hated when that happened, when some worry would root its way into his mind subconsciously, but he couldn’t actually pinpoint what it was, so he couldn’t talk himself through it. Instead he was stuck with this feeling of discomfort in his mind that refused to let itself be known. Worse than being worried about something was forgetting what you were worried about, but still feeling the uneasiness, only multiplied tenfold because you can’t remember if you were worried about something mundane or something genuinely important.

A cyan light flashed across his vision, and he jumped back, looking up. H.B.’s crooked smile greeted him, and, by instinct, he swatted at her. His hand went straight through her face, the same cyan light as before beaming across his claws. Leif quickly looked around to make sure nobody just saw him walk straight into, and then try to slap, a hologram. Well, he’d made it to H.B.’s lab, or at least the general area. The hologram began reading off an automated message in a mind-numbing monologue. Leif backed away, craning his neck and squinting his eyes to peer into H.B’s lab through the foggy glass doors.

Empty. The lights were dimmed, and, sure enough, the doors didn’t pry themselves open when Leif waved a hand in front of them. He let out a sigh of frustration. Whatever H.B. was up to, she was doing it somewhere other than her lab, which made things infinitely more difficult for Leif. That stupid hologram wouldn’t shut up, and he marched right up to it and gave it another swat. He knew it wouldn’t do anything, not even pause the automatic voice, but it was starting to piss him off.

His eyes widened as the worry that had been eating away at him suddenly surfaced. Ah. What Kabbu had said moments ago, meant as a joke, had wormed its way into his mind and firmly planted itself there as yet another worry on top of everything else he was dealing with. Here he was, an old and cranky bug, irked by the world around him. That wasn’t what he was, of course, and he wasn’t worried about being perceived as a grumpy curmudgeon—honestly, at a certain point, he couldn’t care less about what others thought, a personality trait much different than the “original” Leif who was still just as dry and sarcastic but a tad bit insecure—but he was instead caught up on that other bit: old.

It was true. He was old. There wasn’t much he could do to change that, as every bug in existence has had to learn at some point. Time marches on whether you like it or not, and it always takes a toll on your body. And as much as he hated to say it, he was feeling that toll. Not just physically, but emotionally. He didn’t fit in very well, wherever he went. He didn’t understand younger bugs like Vi, bugs who were technically his age like Kabbu, or older bugs like Muze’s father. He was drifting in an awkward limbo where he was overwhelmed and confused by the new world he woke up in, and simultaneously still the same mental age he was when he died. The dichotomy was hard to handle, and the looming promise of death, whether very far off or not as far as he’d like, was beginning to eat at him.

The saccharine scent of flowing honey caught Leif’s attention, his antennae twitching in anticipation. Just as quickly has he had remembered what was worrying him, he forgot. A quick detour to the honey fountain wouldn’t hurt, right? These thoughts could wait. Preferably, they could be put off forever, and he could keep on pretending he wasn’t the confused old moth he really was. He hungrily eyed the flowing gold, the previous day’s indulgences being nowhere enough to satiate his appetite.

With a sharp buzzing hum, the lights above turned on, flickering in and out uncertainly before maintaining a steady current. Leif scrunched his eyes shut. The Hive had been a lot more tolerable when it wasn’t quite so bright, and instantly he was bombarded with shining oranges and yellows once again. To his relief, after a brief moment, they faded, and he could open his eyes again.

Then they lit up again. And went out. Over and over, to the point Leif didn’t even care about his aching eyes as he craned his neck to stare up at the ceiling to watch the lights struggle to come on. Some sort of power failure, maybe? Is that why H.B.’s lab was dark? Seemed odd for the Hive of all places to have a mechanical failure.

With a loud crackling noise, the lights came on, and this time remained stable. “That’s my big shot!” An all too familiar voice creaked out from behind. Leif flinched, instinctively covering the lower half of his face with his wings as he backed away into the shadows, but the tall, ragged Bee sped right past him, ducking into a pair of automatic doors way off to the side. H.B.’s voice was muffled, but even through the thick panes of glass obscuring her words, Leif could hear the enthusiasm in her tone clearly as she raved on. The doors whizzed open and she marched out, Zasp in tow.

Large patches of his shell were plastered in singed bandages, slightly damp with whatever brew of ointments H.B. was using to treat his burns, but he was still in one piece, so that was relieving. He was slightly hunched over, curled in on himself timidly and making himself look smaller than he actually was, but otherwise didn’t look like he was in any distress. He looked tired, though, very tired. That wasn’t anything too surprising, but it still sent a pang of sympathy through Leif’s heart. Everything about him just screamed fatigue, from his slumped posture to the obvious dark shadows ringing his eyes. Notably, he was donning a pair of thick rubber gloves that were simultaneously too big and too small for his long yet slender claws, stretching up to his elbows. That was a good idea, honestly. Leif had no complaints there, and he doubted Zasp did, either.

H.B. gave Zasp an approving slap on his bandaged back—which Zasp flinched at with a sharp yell, sending a bolt of electricity through H.B. that she didn’t even seem to notice —as she proudly paraded him forward, almost like he was a prized pet and not a grown Wasp. Pausing, she turned to look him in the eyes, tossing back her head and letting out that awful cackle of hers. “You’re a star, darling,” she exclaimed. “An absolute star! I can’t thank you enough.”

Zasp gave an almost unnoticeable nod of his head with a weary smile. Oddly enough, it seemed to be a genuine smile, at least to Leif. “Thanks,” Zasp muttered. “Or, uh, you’re welcome?”

“Take a moment to breathe, dear, I’ll get back to you at lunchtime. I have some notes to look over. Take care of yourself.” H.B. gave him another supportive pat on the shoulder, and, in a move that sent a shiver down Leif’s back, gave Leif a very much intended little wink. “Don’t look now, but it looks like you have a little visitor.” Before Zasp could say anything, she sauntered off to her lab, the doors whizzing open as she looked over her shoulder and gave Leif a very pointed look. She had to be trying to act creepy on purpose, right?

Zasp’s shoulders deflated in a sigh, but he quickly tensed up with a jolt of electricity. His eyes flitted to the side, and, noticing Leif out of the corner of his eye, he jumped back in and start, his very shell lighting up in a bright glow.

He hurried over to Leif, his eyes alight in excitement but his body sluggish and limp. “Oh, Leif,” he began, “I didn’t think you’d be here. I—”

Leif cut to the chase. “What’d she do?”

“Huh?” Zasp blinked. He fidgeted with the gauze wrapped around his shell. “H.B.? Uh, I don’t know. I was out if it most of the time, you—y-you know? She treated my burns, I know that much.” He roughly clawed at one of his bandaged arms, but the thick rubber and layers of cotton gauze made his efforts worthless. “Itches like hell, but that means it’s healing, right? Itching is better than pain.”

“We suppose,” Leif said slowly. “You’re certainly in a good mood. She didn’t mess with your head or anything, right?” His monotonous voice made everything he said sound like a dry, witty remark, but there was a hint of sincerity in that question.

Zasp just laughed. “Not that I’m aware of. I am a bit hyper, I guess. I got some good news. And I guess I’m kinda happy to see you, I…it...” He grew rather quiet, his words coming out slower and unsteady. “It’s…good to see you. I never got the chance to, uh, thank you for yesterday. It…it…um…” He swayed uncertainty to the side, putting his hand to his head with a dazed look. “…I need to sit down,” he said under his breath.

“Are you okay?” Leif asked, gently grabbing Zasp’s shoulders to steady him. Zasp hummed in assent, leaning into Leif and mumbling, “I’m just kind of tired. I was up all night. And I’m kind of hungry.”

Leif hoped that was because of the stress of the situation, or the unfamiliarity of wherever it was he slept last night, and not because H.B. pulled some kind of stunt by keeping him awake all night with her little experiments. “Why don’t we find a place to sit down?” Leif offered, ever so slightly pushing Zasp away. “The honey fountain is just over there. Kill two midges with one stone.”

Zasp nodded gratefully, wriggling away from Leif’s grasp and straightening his posture. “Yeah, that sounds good. Sorry, I really am alright, I’m just a bit lightheaded because I didn’t get the chance to eat yet today. I’ve been really busy.”

“Busy?” Leif questioned. The last thing Zasp should be is busy. He was hardly able to stand yesterday without collapsing in a fit of sparks. The fact he was up on his feet in the first place was absurd. Maybe Leif was just weak, but, imagining himself in Zasp’s position, he couldn’t fathom doing anything but resting in bed after a day like yesterday. “With what?”

“I’ll tell you once I sit down,” Zasp promised. Whatever it was that was piquing his enthusiasm and making that stoic wasp as giddy as Leif had ever seen him, it was something he deemed worth being cheery about, so it couldn’t be anything terribly bad. Zasp made a beeline for the honey fountain, stumbling a bit over his own feet. Leif trailed closely behind him in case he ended up fainting from exhaustion on the way. It seemed a distinct possibility.

“So,” Zasp started before he even crouched down at the fountain, “H.B. told—told—told—” He cursed under his breath, furrowing his eyes. “She told m—told me th—th—” He didn’t even bother finishing the sentence, instead scooping up a handful of honey to his jaws and taking a hungry sip. Halfway through his fifth or so handful of honey, a sudden jolt of electricity spasmed his body, causing him to choke and spit the honey right back out. “Ow, ow, th—th—th—” He stammered, face flushing a deep red.

After taking a moment to collect himself, he scoffed, “She didn’t fix whatever that is, obviously,” wiping his mouth. He spoke with an air of lightness, as if he was kidding, but his posture and expression were so stiff and forced that it was clear this was something genuinely uncomfortable and embarrassing for him that had begun to weigh on him.

“Uh, it’s fine,” Leif shrugged. “We don’t mind. Seriously. There’s nothing wrong with having a hard time talking. Doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. You’re a smart bug.”

“I know that, okay? I know it’s not wrong. And I know I’m not dumb. You don’t have to tell me that. It’s just…frustrating,” Zasp admitted. “I have the words in my mind, but then halfway through I lose them and I just get stuck. It wasn’t this bad before. It’s just been getting worse and worse as more time—t-time. Time. Time. Time goes on, instead of better.”

“What’d H.B. say about all that?” Leif asked. “Did she have any advice?” H.B. was insane, in Leif’s eyes, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have genuine advice and answers up her sleeve once in a blue moon.

Zasp leaned back on his hands, staring up at the bright Hive ceiling and sighing. “No. She said it’s only going to get worse. All of it is.” He closed his eyes with a light laugh. “Not a very comforting prognosis, but there’s not really much I can do to change that.”

Leif cocked his head to the side as he licked his claws clean of honey. “What makes her say that?” Zasp took a moment to scoop up some honey of his own, desperately drinking it up.

“Um, so, there’s crystals inside of me, obviously,” he explained. “H.B. says they were probably there since I was a pupa, but they weren’t as strong then. And they never really were very strong. But, uh, they’re spreading?”

“What?”

“That’s what she told me. In more…fancy terms, though. I mean, I’ve always had magic, I definitely had it as a kid, I remember it vividly, but it’s been especially strong recently. It was never like this before. It was more like…static, not like a lightning storm. Does that make sense? Even just a moon ago, I think the most damage I’d done was zapping myself in the arm and giving myself a nasty burn and twitch that didn’t heal for a week. H.B. says it’s getting worse all of a sudden because the crystals are sorta…feeding off each other’s energy and spreading all around me, becoming stronger. I mean, when I first came here to the Hive, the scanners didn’t even pick up on anything in me because the crystals were so weak. But now? Uh, now it’s a miracle if I can go an hour without having an electric fit.”

“Oh,” is all Leif could think to say. There was something deeply unsettling about that, even to a bug as unnatural as himself. Crystals growing within you like a tumor, rapidly spreading, not killing you, but making your life impossible to live normally. “We’re sorry to hear that.”

“It’s…fine,” Zasp said quietly, eyes shimmering with tears threatening to fall. “I asked her if I could get the crystals surgically removed, and she said it was too risky. The crystals are too deeply embedded within me. They’re…they’re not just in me, they’re a part of me now. They’re part of my organs. If that makes sense.”

“We get that,” Leif said. “If it wasn’t already obvious, we’re kinda…well, we can’t really get rid of our problems, either.”

Zasp drew in a deep breath, but it hitched in his throat. “No, I know. Not trying to one-up you. I think you got me beat in the freak department. But I just…can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen in the future, if it’s this bad now.”

“You’ll be okay,” Leif assured him, though he had no idea if that was true or not.

“I know,” Zasp whispered. “H.B. says it’s not gonna kill me, so that’s a relief, but I’m just…thinking about…” He sniffled, putting on a cheerful face and laughing ruefully at his own expense. “God, it’s kind of embarrassing, but I’m just kinda worried that someday I won’t even be able to touch anyone without hurting them. That’d suck.” He rapidly blinked back tears. “I’d really miss, um…oh, it sounds really dumb out loud, doesn’t it? I’d really miss being able to hug people, you know? Um, especially Mothiva. I dunno. That’s a stupid thing to say, but…I dunno. Guess a big scary wasp like me shouldn’t be wanting to hug people, anyway.”

That felt like a punch in the gut just to hear. Leif wished he could take back every negative thought he’d ever had about Zasp. It wouldn’t change any of this, of course, but he somehow felt immensely guilty for his previous ill will towards him.

Zasp shook his head, mustering up a smile. “It’s not all bad! It’s not. H.B. told me something wonderful. I’m really happy, actually, I know I seem like I’m being a downer, but I’m actually having a pretty good day.”

“Really, now? Let’s hear it,” Leif urged him, hoping to steer the conversation away from it’s admittedly very depressing turn.

“Well, H.B. told me about how my magic has the potential to do a lot of good,” Zasp explained, bouncing his leg in nervous excitement. “Electricity is really hard to harness, isn’t it?”

Was that a rhetorical question? Leif could never tell. He wasn’t much of an expert on electricity. The last he’d heard of it that he’d actually paid attention to was being told as a freshly eclosed moth to stay inside during storms so he didn’t get struck. “Yes?” Leif guessed.

“Yeah, it is,” Zasp said, picking up on Leif’s hesitation. “The Giants harnessed it in such great amounts. We don’t know how, but H.B. has been studying their technology very closely. Do you remember that giant structure in the dead lands? The really cold one?”

“Yes,” Leif said slowly. “We didn’t find it very cold, but Vi and Kabbu were complaining the entire time.”

“Oh, getting through there was awful. Nobody knew how to climb up, so me and Mothiva ended up having to stay behind so I could carry everyone else up, one by one.” Zasp shook his head. “Might not’ve been the worst, but it was so cold in there I started getting really tired and sluggish after a few minutes. Nearly fell asleep a few times.”

“We don’t see how that’s relevant to what you were talking about.” Leif wanted to slap himself immediately after saying that. He’d gotten a tad bit too comfortable and forgot that Zasp was more or less an acquaintance and might not appreciate his dry remarks. Thankfully, though, Zasp only laughed.

“Oh, uh, it’s not. I got sidetracked there,” he said sheepishly. “That structure was running on electricity, is my point. Even the termites couldn’t recreate something like that, as technologically advanced as they are. We don’t have such convenient power sources as the giants did. We have to rely on the spotty amounts of electricity we have and hope for the best. Even the Honey Factory was running on just the power of a single artifact for, uh, a while, and that’s one of the most high tech spots in Bugaria. Think about how much more powerful our technology could be if we had an infinite power supply. Think about the potential of reverse engineering giant technology and being able to actually use it like the giants did! Think about how useful it could be if you could make electricity”—he gave Leif an almost smug looking grin—“right at your fingertips.”

“Oh, interesting,” is all Leif could think to say. A bad feeling was rooting its way into the pit of his stomach.

“Last night, I”—Zasp cut himself off with a sharp yell as a stray spark ran through his body, triggered from the heightened emotion—“I used my electricity to power the lights in H.B.’s lab, and—and they ran all night, and that’s not something that could happen before! N-normally they have to be turned off after an—an—hour or two to conserve energy, but now they can run as long as they need to!”

That gnarled feeling only grew stronger. Zasp’s enthusiasm wasn’t rubbing off on Leif at all. Quite the opposite. The more he spoke, the more opposed Leif became. He was by no means against the idea of having consistent electricity—it sounded beyond amazing, in fact, if every household in Bugaria could have the type of technology the termites had, if not even greater. Having his own personal microwave like the one in the termite kingdom…just the thought put a smile on his face. But something about this felt very, very wrong, and it strangled any potential enthusiasm Leif would share.

“Even the lights right now”—Zasp pointed up with a gloved claw at the blinding fluorescent lights—“I powered those. H.B. had them turn them off this morning to see if I could get them to stay on with just my electricity alone. It took all morning, but I managed to do it. Isn’t that amazing? Think of all the energy being saved.”

It was impressive, sure, but it sounded painful. The memory of the lights flickering, paired with the shadows circling Zasp’s eyes, left a sour taste in Leif’s mouth now that he knew just why the lights were struggling to stay on as they were. No wonder Zasp looked so tired. No wonder he was “busy” all day. He was stuck working a job he shouldn’t ever be doing. In H.B.’s eyes, he was nothing more than a convenience.

“And, well, it’s not just the lights,” Zasp hurried on, oblivious to the way Leif’s face scrunched in skepticism. “It’s anything. Theoretically, I could provide enough energy for…for whatever needs it. They’re going to see if they can build a new elevator outside that I could help power. They weren’t able to before, because something of that size would be impossible to run day in and day out. But I think I could help. H.B. is thrilled with me, I’m exactly what she needed!” His body trembled in a sudden rush of electricity, somewhat ebbed by the rubber gloves he was wearing, but still enough to leave him breathless and with a pained wince on his face. “O-ow,” he panted, gripping his chest. “I’m okay, I’m okay, the electricity just g-got—g-g—stuck in my chest for a second there. Ignore that.”

Ah. That’s what’s wrong.

“All that is very interesting. But, Zasp,” Leif said quietly, hoping he wasn’t being too much of a wet blanket, “doesn’t using your magic hurt?”

Zasp blinked at him, a funny look crossing his face. He quickly looked away, fixated on a point in the distance, fidgeting rapidly with his claws. “Well—um, I…yeah, but…yeah.” he fell silent, not having much of an answer to that other than admitting the truth.

That hurt to hear. Maybe his mind was going to the worst case scenario, but all Leif could picture was Zasp, right off the heels of getting badly injured, up at all hours of the night to act as H.B.’s little plaything, even if it hurt him. And he was being told it was a good thing, that he was doing something admirable by being used. In the blink of an eye, Zasp was no longer a rival, an acquaintance, or even a friend. He was just a bug that Leif had to protect, above all else. “Don’t do it if it hurts,” Leif said a little too gruffly.

Zasp’s face tightened, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. A switch had flipped, and any good will he’d built towards Leif was gone in an instant. “It doesn’t hurt that bad. Don’t tell me what to do.”

Leif should have known better than to push back so blatantly, with how defensive Zasp could get over the slightest retaliation to what he had his mind set on. “Zasp,” Leif insisted. “Listen to us.”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Zasp snapped, his enthusiasm wilting away in a second. Leif felt overwhelmingly guilty, watching him go from so confident and happy to scared and angry again, but Zasp was too…familiar. Leif could see parts of himself in Zasp, and he refused to watch him fall down the same path of hinging his worth on his abilities. “What else do you want me to do?” Zasp scoffed. “Keep accidentally hurting people? I can’t…I can’t trust myself. This is the only good my magic has ever done for me! I can be useful for once!”

“You’re not useful,” Leif retorted. “Nobody is useful. Nobody should be useful. If you’re useful, you’re just being used.”

“I am not!” Zasp rose, crackling with electricity. One of his legs was tainted with unwrapped wounds, and refused to work properly. He had to stand at an awkward angle as to not put any pressure on it. “Stop acting like such a know-it-all. You’re trying to sound s-s-so—so smart, but you’re just coming off like a pretentious asshole. ‘Oh, you can’t do that, you’re just being used, blah blah blah.’ Why—why can’t you just pretend to be happy for me? You’re such a stick in the mud.”

“What are you gonna do if you can’t use your magic anymore?” Leif asked. “Give us a straight answer. What’ll you do when your usefulness runs out?”

Zasp’s eyes flickered with hurt. “Then I’ll go back to how I live now, when I’m not being useful.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Leif grumbled. “Look at you. You’re tired and injured and can barely stand after only a few hours of doing all that. Tell me how you’d be able to live like this the rest of your life.”

“I’m already living like this,” he snapped. “I don’t see why I can’t at least do something helpful with it if I’m always going to be miserable.” Leif didn’t have an immediate answer to that. Zasp had a way of coming up with the worst possible answers to his problems that couldn’t immediately be rebutted.

“You’re smarter than this,” Leif deadpanned, filling the dead air as to prevent Zasp from assuming Leif’s silence was him agreeing in some way.

“Leif, you’re bothering me,” Zasp said firmly. “Cut it out.” Sparkles of electricity wreathed his face as he spoke, and even with the oversized gloves hiding his hands, Leif could see the faint outline of him rapidly clenching and unclenching his fists.

“We’re just trying to help,” Leif said, casually leaning back, hoping Zasp would match his energy. “Have we not earned your trust yet?” Oh, Venus, that came across as entitled. He was just digging himself a deeper hole the more he tried to convince Zasp. He really needed to learn to think before he spoke.

For such a brazen, teetering on manipulative question, Zasp gave it genuine thought. “I trust you, Leif, I really do,” he finally said, his shoulders sagging in resignation. “But you’re starting to really annoy me, and I still disagree with you. I can both trust you and disagree with you. We needn’t be at odds.”

“Zasp, you’re—” Leif rubbed his tired eyes. “This isn’t a disagreement, this is us telling you to stop. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a demand, hate to break it to you. You want us to put it as simply as possible? You’re going to get yourself killed by doing that. There, laid out nice and simple for you. Or do we need to dumb it down even more?”

Zasp went quiet. Too quiet. Leif hoped at first Zasp was going to agree with him, but his face, as stoic as it was, darkened with a look of barely restrained anger. The moment Zasp took a step closer, Leif scurried to his feet, backing away from the wasp. Zasp’s claws roughly tugged at the gloves around his hands. Oh, he was just itching to take them off. He wouldn’t actually attack Leif, though, would he? Leif wanted to say he wasn’t that kind of bug, but that would be putting a positive spin on things a little too much. Zasp was cool, he was nice, maybe Leif would consider him a friend, even, but it’d be a lie to act as if, for all the good he’d done, he hadn’t wronged Leif in the past.

“We’re sorry, we lost our temper there,” Leif said quickly. “We’re not looking to fight.” His words meant nothing to Zasp. He ripped off the protective rubber gloves, exposing his horribly burned arms, snatched Leif by the fluff around his neck as he tried to back away, and—

And a weak, tiny jolt of electricity shot through Leif’s body. His fluff hardly stood on end.

Leif didn’t even notice it at first. He kept his face scrunched in a wince as he braced himself for the worst, not realizing that that was the worst. Hesitantly, he opened his eyes. Zasp’s burns looked even worse up close. And they were fresh. These weren’t yesterday’s injuries, bandaged and scarring over—these were recent, uncared for, and still smoldering.

Zasp’s breathing picked up to a worrying pace, and he somehow looked even more scared than Leif did. He grabbed Leif’s arm, once again trying to shock him, and once again failing, even after attempt after attempt. His entire body was emitting a low hum of electricity, but none actually flowed through.

“You’re hurt worse than you were yesterday.” Leif’s words weren’t meant to calm Zasp, they were merely an observation that had spilled out instead of staying in his head. Yet, of everything Leif had said, this was all Zasp listened to. Zasp let go of Leif with a shallow sigh, wearily putting his hand to his head and swaying to the side uncertainly.

“But it’s for the best, right?” He asked, his tone wavering. Leif couldn’t tell at first if it was a rhetorical question, but after a pause, Zasp muttered under his breath, “answer me.”

It was so hard to determine what was for “the best,” where that line was drawn, so Leif skirted around the question the best he could, repeating what he’d been trying to drill into Zasp’s head. “We don’t think you should be doing this.”

“I know.” Zasp looked like he was going to say something else, but he said no more. He couldn’t meet Leif’s gaze, whether out of shame or something else entirely.

“You, uh, wanna tell us what happened, instead of just trying to kill us?” Leif asked softly.

“I wasn’t going to kill you, I was just going to briefly shut you up,” Zasp scoffed. His demeanor grew heavy with guilt, and held his crossed arms to his chest tightly. “And that’s still bad, I know. My temper gets so short when I’m—I don’t—I don’t—I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

“Hey, no harm done,” Leif dismissed. He wasn’t sure if the incessant apologizing stemmed from an absurd amount of guilt, or was nothing more than another round of unintentionally echoing his own words, but either way, he wanted no apologies. “Seriously, we barely felt it.”

“I know,” Zasp sighed. His guilt turned to panic. “I know—know—I—” A weak bolt of electricity traveled up his back, dancing over his antennae. One wouldn’t even notice it if they didn’t know what they were looking for. “It’s not working,” he said, eyes widening in anxiety.

“Your magic?” Leif asked. Zasp nodded weakly. “Well, isn’t that a good thing? We thought you didn’t want it.”

“I don’t want it!” Zasp cried. “No, you’re not understanding. It’s still there, it’s just not working. I can’t explain it any other way. I’m still just as weird and shaky and as always, it’s still hurting me, but the electricity just—just won’t do anything. It won’t come out. I wasn’t able to use it just now. It wasn’t like this before. I don’t know what happened. I guess it’s a good thing, because I could’ve really hurt you, but what’s H.B. going to say? I’m too tired, Leif, I can’t make it happen even now that I learned how to harness it. Why isn’t it working?”

Leif resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the mention of H.B. The more he saw of her, the more he was convinced she wasn’t malicious, but instead so, so, so painfully caught up in her own little world, to the point of extreme ignorance of others. “Calm down, okay? It doesn’t matter what H.B. says.”

Zasp looked at Leif like he’d said the most absurd thing imaginable. “Yes, it does,” he said, hovering somewhere between a statement and a question. “I—I really don’t want to argue with you again, Leif, but I still stand by what I said. This is a good thing for everyone.”

Leif opted to just ignore that entirely. Their tempers were both ready to boil over again at any moment, and Leif would rather not have such a thing happen again. “Let’s not talk about that. Just tell us what happened, okay? We don’t know the full story. As much as we’d love to have been spying on you the entire time, we weren’t there.”

Zasp drew in a tremulous breath, closing his eyes. His legs looked like they were about to give out, but Leif hadn’t the chance to offer him the chance to sit down. Once Zasp started talking, he didn’t stop. “I powered H.B.’s lights, like I said. It wasn’t really that hard. It…it hurt, a little, but it wasn’t the worst, so I didn’t say anything. It seemed like a nice balance, right? A bit of pain for a lot of electricity. But again, like I said before, then she wanted to see if I could power the entire Hive. And I was curious, and I wanted to be helpful, so I agreed. And—and, I dunno, she lead me to the electrical room, or something like that, and told me to just…take off my gloves, give it a shot, to try channeling my electricity into one of the generators. I was in there for an hour.” Zasp opened his eyes. Dry, no tears, but he had a distinctly terrified look. “And I was getting so tired, even just 15 minutes in. It already hurt before, but now it was…really, really starting to hurt, and I wasn’t even making any progress, and I just ended up shocking myself over and over in an attempt to get it to work. Over and over, for so, so long. I think I might have fainted for a little bit, but it’s just so fuzzy. None of it makes sense. It took…all my energy to try and use my magic, and now I can’t even use it at all. I’m so tired. But even when I’m not using it, it still hurts.”

Leif gave Zasp a moment to catch his breath after talking so much and so quickly. “Using your magic so much can’t be good for you, you know. Especially not when it’s already painful, just as a baseline. It’s rather concerning you ended up fainting, surely you realize that. And H.B. just let it happen?” Leif asked.

“No, y-you don’t get it.” Zasp flapped his hand from nervous energy. “H.B. wasn’t there. She doesn’t know it hurts so badly. I didn’t tell H.B. I wasn’t feeling well because I…didn’t want to be…annoying.” He narrowed his eyes at Leif. “You’re making me sound really pathetic, you know that?”

An ugly snort of laughter escaped Leif. “You said it, not us. But seriously, Zasp, this is why we said you shouldn’t be doing that,” Leif said as gently as possible. “We weren’t trying to control you. We really weren’t. We think more electricity is a good idea in theory, too. But if it comes at the cost of your wellbeing…that’s not fair. Do you think it would be fair if we had to go through that?” When Zasp gave no reply, sinking his head down in a tired slouch, Leif pulled out his trump card. “Would it be fair if Mothiva had to be hurt every day just for everyone else to have a mild convenience?”

“It hurts,” is all Zasp said to that, a telltale sign he, rightfully, wouldn’t stand for such treatment. He gripped his arm, digging his claws into his angry flesh. “My arm doesn’t feel right. I’ve been having trouble moving it.”

“Goodness, then, stop!” Leif said, exasperated. “We’re going in circles. I think we’re both on the same page, here. You need to focus on recovering before anything else. We both can agree on that, at least.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Zasp said, voice raising in distress. “I just don’t want this pain to be good for nothing, you know?” Leif sighed. That stung, because, well, he did know. He knew exactly what Zasp meant, and if the roles were reversed, and he was the one breaking down and revealing his deepest thoughts and fears and not the one trying to he would be saying the same thing. All of that pain can’t be for nothing. He has to channel it into good, he has to be heroic, because otherwise, it’s only bitter memories. Painful nightmares that leave him paranoid and disoriented in the dead of night.

Zasp stared down at the floor, his afflicted arm hanging limply at his side. “I want to be able to be useful, like you.”

Ouch. That was meant as a compliment, surely, but given Leif’s own circumstances, it only rubbed salt in the wound. It was hard to talk Zasp down when he was falling down the same mental spiral. It seems Zasp picked up on Mothiva’s habit of wanting to be on the same standing—if not higher—than team Snakemouth. Problems with jealousy must run deep within Team Mothiva. Before Leif could dissuade Zasp from thinking that way, Zasp interrupted him with a curt, “I want to talk to Mothiva.”

“Oh, uh…” That derailed Leif’s train of thought. He was fully ready to go into an inspirational speech. “You can go look for her, if you want. How did she react, to the whole…everything?”

“I don’t know!” Zasp fretted. “I only got to talk to her for a minute, I couldn’t tell. I didn’t get to tell her anything. She was just asking if I was okay, and I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know. She didn’t look mad, but she didn’t look happy, either. And I haven’t had the chance to talk with her since. I’ve been so busy, and tired, and everything”—he cut himself off with a deep sigh—“I don’t even know, anymore. I can’t think right. I don’t know what to do, or what I’m even doing—I want to go to bed.”

“You’re…pretty obviously overtired,” Leif agreed. It was clear Zasp was just drifting from thought to thought at this point, with no regard for stringing together a coherent sentence.

Zasp listed to the side in exhaustion. “But H.B. wants me to keep working. Important things this afternoon. But I can’t.”

“Then don’t.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Zasp pinched between his eyes, squinting like a bright light was in his face. “I can’t say no to her. For all of the reasons I’ve already told you.”

“We can explain for her,” Leif offered.

Zasp shook his head. “No, it’s not that. I don’t…I don’t want to say no.” Before another argument could brew, he pulled Leif in for a sleepy hug. An unfair tactic, but Leif didn’t have the heart to shove Zasp away. His lanky frame convulsed every few seconds with weak shocks, so minuscule that they were no stronger than a fit of hiccups. There was no getting through to Zasp, was there? There wasn’t any chance he was ignorant of the toll this was taking on him. He simply didn’t care. Leif did, though, and he would be the most obnoxious bug imaginable if it meant beating it into Zasp’s head that he had to take it easy. Oh, the irony was so thick it was choking him. Leif could take his own advice into consideration once Vi wasn’t…wherever she was.

The two stayed like that for so long, enveloped in an awkward hug, that Leif began to wonder if Zasp had fallen asleep right there and then. But, after a minute, Zasp muttered, “Your team is waiting for you.”

Leif made a small hum of surprise, turning around. Sure enough, a familiar duo was trudging their way over. Guess Vi was in the hive, after all. Huh. Well, that made Leif’s life a whole lot easier. Or harder, if you consider that he’d have to soon actually talk things out with Vi and figure out what was wrong. He was wiped out for the day before noon had come after spending so much energy trying to convince Zasp that, no, it’s not okay to work yourself to death for the sake of the “greater good”.

“Vi,” he said stiffly, greeting the pouting little bee. Even through that tough mask of stoicism and anger, he could see a distinct look of distress on her face.

“Let’s just go,” she complained, speeding away from Leif and down towards the path leading to the elevator.

“Vi, don’t run off again,” Kabbu pleaded. “Go home. We’ll meet you there shortly.”

“Whatever! Ugh! You two are both so annoying!” Vi groaned.

“What’s her problem?” Zasp muttered it so quietly that only Leif heard him. He sounded concerningly out of it, and Leif dug his claws into Zasp’s shoulder so he didn’t outright fall over from exhaustion.

Kabbu shook his head. “Bad way to start a conversation. Hello, Leif. You were right, it seemed,” Kabbu paused, watching as Vi stormed off in the distance. “She was at Jaune’s. Surprising, isn’t it? I didn’t think Jaune would allow that. But, sisters are sisters, I guess, even if one of them is busy painting. I’m not complaining. It was very convenient. Jaune warned me she was in a bad mood—weirdly clingy, I think she said, but I’m only seeing the opposite—but I’m sure we can get through to her. Right, Leif?”

“Yeah, sure,” Leif deadpanned. He hoped they could, he genuinely did, but the longer he fished out every attempt at comfort or persuasion from his mind to tell to Zasp, the more he realized that he simply didn’t have the eloquent words needed to convince a stubborn bug of anything other than what they’re already convinced of. He couldn’t even get through to Zasp, who by all means definitely knew Leif was right.

“Hello to you too, Zasp,” Kabbu greeted. Zasp just looked away and rolled his eyes. Kabbu’s friendliness wasn’t always wanted, something Kabbu never let put him down. “It’s good to see you up and about. I assume you’re feeling better?”

“Never felt better,” Zasp grumbled, back to his usual crankiness. Either Leif had really damped his prior enthusiasm, or Zasp just didn’t like Kabbu. Leif had a hunch it was the prior, and although he felt guilty for that, he’d continue badgering him as much as he had to.

“Good, good,” Kabbu nodded. Was Kabbu really so trusting? So gullible? Zasp didn’t look anywhere near fine, just at a glance. Leif’s concern that he was about to faint was a genuine one—that spacey look in his eyes was too familiar to ignore.

“Er, I’m terribly sorry,” Kabbu continued, “I’d love to chat a bit longer, but we have to get going, now. We can’t leave Vi waiting. Have a good day.”

“Whatever,” Zasp huffed. Kabbu was a little disheartened by Zasp’s crassness, but he still endured to give him a little wave goodbye before he and Leif left.

_________________________________________________________________________________

“Hang on tight to the railing this time,” Kabbu reminded Leif as the two stepped onto the elevator. Leif gave a hum of assent, but his mind was focused solely on what Zasp had mentioned earlier about a potential new elevator being built. Leif would rather be nearly thrown off than to have Zasp…well, in that condition. The thought made him sicker than the uneasy lurches of the elevator starting up did. Surely there was something he could do. He was fully ready to just smack Zasp across the face and scream at him until he got the picture, but somehow, that didn’t seem the right way to go. There had to be something he hadn’t considered yet.

Oh, yes, there certainly was, now that he thought about it.

“We gotta make a quick stop,” Leif said suddenly, dashing off the elevator right as it started going down.

“W-wait!” Whatever Kabbu was about to say, Leif couldn’t hear it over the loud creaking. Leif slipped into the Hive for what felt like the millionth time. This time, he had a clear mission in mind. Was it manipulative? Maybe a tiny bit, but hardly so. Was it prone to failure? Definitely. Was he going to try anyway? The answer was obvious. He made a—for lack of a better word—beeline to the last place he’d heard that ill-tempered moth was lurking; somewhere by H.B.’s lab. And thank Venus, it seemed he was right. He was due a stroke of luck eventually, and how convenient this little trip ended up being was nothing short of a miracle.

“Sup,” he greeted, appearing beside Mothiva out of, from her perspective, thin air.

“Ugh, what do you want?” She spat, backing away from Leif like he was something physically repulsive. “Can’t you see I’m busy?

She didn’t look busy in the slightest, pouting silently and glaring at the locked doors of H.B.’s lab like staring at it any more could possibly open the doors for her. Leif leaned against the hive wall as casually as he could, trying to suppress his grin. He had this in the bag.

Hopefully. It was impossible to pinpoint how Mothiva would react to any given situation, but given how already sour she was, he had a feeling an explosive reaction was in store, and that was exactly what he needed.

“We’re sorry to bother you. We just thought you might want to know something,” he said.

“Then spit it out, icicle breath, I don’t have all day,” she sneered. “These stupid bees are—”

“Dr. H.B. is making Zasp stay up all night in order to work to the point of unbearable exhaustion and pain. Just so you know,” Leif said.

“…What?” She blinked at him, voice straining. Oh, yes, that is exactly the reaction Leif was hoping for.

“It’s not that big of a deal, she’s just using him for free labor.”

“What?”

“You told us to spit it out,” he said with an exaggerated shrug. “She’s using his electricity to power things for her. Even the lights right now, that was his doing.”

“…That’s certainly impressive,” Mothiva scowled. “I’m hoping I get some credit for this, too? Being his partner, and all.” She couldn’t look any more jealous, which was an amusing look, but not the reaction Leif wanted.

“Yeah, sure, but that’s not our point. It’s not good for him to be doing that.” Mothiva’s expression hardly changed. Gods, was she really so heartless as to not care about her exploration partner’s wellbeing? She was an entitled shithead, but Leif had at least assumed she had a soft spot for Zasp. “It’s making him sick. Think of how he was yesterday. Now think of that being how he is all the time,” Leif continued. He had more words of desperate pleading in store, but he didn’t need to use any of them. The moment Mothiva processed what Leif was telling her, she went from seething from jealousy to seething with jealousy and anger. There’s the Mothiva he was hoping for. Cruel, selfish, every negative adjective in the book, but at the very least, passionate.

“What, and you’re just letting it happen?” She burst, poking Leif in the chest. “This is all your fault, dumbass! Why don’t you do something, huh?”

“We tried.” Leif furrowed his eyes at her. “What, you think we didn’t? That’s why we’re telling you. Zasp won’t listen to a word we say.”

Mothiva put her nose up, crossing her arms dramatically. “Rightfully so! He’s not wrong for doing that. I’m glad he has good judgment of who to listen to.”

Leif decided against letting her know that Zasp was the one who initiated the conversation in the first place. “No need to be snippy. We’re on the same page here. We just want you to talk some sense into him before he goes and gets himself in even hotter water.”

“I know, right?” Mothiva said with an exasperated sigh. “You wouldn’t believe how wishy-washy he is. I’m always having to get him to use his brain. God, it’d be so sweet if he wasn’t so annoying about it. I mean, come on, like, he didn’t even tell me he had magic cause he’s such a little weirdo.”

“Cool,” Leif said blankly. “Wanna go convince him not to work himself to the point of death?”

“I think I will,” she hissed, “I think I will. I’ve been wanting to give that Dr. A-B-C-D-whatever the fuck her name is a piece of my mind all day.”

“Best of luck with that,” Leif said, not even giving the other moth a glance goodbye. He had done what was necessary, and that was all he could handle of her.

As he scurried back toward the elevator, both eager and dreading the conversations he had in store, he stopped in his tracks when he walked past the honey fountain. Not out of hunger this time, but curiosity. Zasp was still there, having not moved an inch. No, that wasn’t true. He’d went from standing up to leaning forward on the floor with his back to the fountain, his head in his knees. Which wouldn’t be so attention grabbing if it wasn’t for H.B. crouched right beside him, blotting his face with what Leif assumed to be a cool cloth. Leif kept his distance as to not be a disturbance, nor to get himself deeper into this mess than he already was, but he stood around to eavesdrop, just a little.

“—work today,” H.B. said sternly. Leif didn’t catch the first part, and was petrified for a moment that she was demanding Zasp keep pushing himself further, but Zasp’s response—a mumbly, “but I need to,”—suggested her words were the opposite.

“You’ve done all you need to do today. All I need from you for the rest of the day is for you to stay nice and still while I do some more tests.” Ugh. Even when speaking in a comforting tone, H.B.’s promise of tests made Leif feel sick.

“Can I sleep during them?” Zasp asked.

“Oh, of course,” H.B. grinned. “Sleep all you want. In fact, I was juuuust about to ask you”—Oh, the way she said that was so disturbing—“if you would be okay with me briefly putting you under. Just a peek inside. You won’t notice a thing.”

“Okay,” Zasp said. “Yeah, okay. You can do that. Just give me a few minutes.”

“Fufufu! My, I’m not going to let you even try to answer that right now,” H.B. laughed. “Goodness, dear, you’re half asleep right now. I’ll ask you when you’re actually awake.”

Leif didn’t stick around to hear any more. It was worse seeing H.B. being compassionate—as compassionate as she could be while still offering vivisections—than being a simple black-and-white evil mad scientist type bee. It was hard to hate someone who was so genuine in their enthusiasm for cutting people open to take a look inside.

The best Leif could do was leave. He missed his teammates. He missed his bed. And, oh, how he missed Chompy—he just wanted to go home. If nothing else, he was completely certain that no matter what, Mothiva would be more than willing to do any of the arguing that Leif so dreaded.

~~dubiously canon alternative ending suggested by The Discord~~

“It’s not that big of a deal, she’s just using him for free labor.”

“What?”

“We said—”

A loud revving broke into their conversation, drowning out both of the moth’s voices. “The hell is that?” Mothiva hissed to Leif, hardly able to be heard over the noise. As if he knew.

“Woo-hoo!” The haggard cheer rang out, loud enough to be clear as a bell over the incessant engine noise. Leif put his head in his hands, praying that the sound wasn’t what he thought it was. But, as helpful as Venus was throughout their journey, prayer proved itself to be worthless. H.B. zoomed past in a comically-small remote control car, the sheer speed being enough to blow Mothiva’s fluff all out of shape.

“How dare you?” She gasped, desperately looking up and down, trying to decide it was more important to send a death glare to the quickly diminishing silhouette of H.B. riding off, or more important to fix her fluff. “How dare you?” She repeated, louder this time. She shook her fist in fury, her bracelets clanking against one another, only adding to the overall racket bombarding Leif’s senses. Before either bug could comment on what had just happened, the revving sound returned with a vengeance, crescendoing into a deafening symphony of rackety engine sounds. H.B. pulled up to the two—is she doing circuits around the hive, or something? That can’t be safe for anyone—and gave them a smug grin, hanging her elbow off the side of her little car.

“Fufufu, haven’t seen anything of this caliber before, have you?” She asked. Leif had no idea what to say. He just side-eyed Mothiva, hoping she would, for lack of a better term, take the wheel here. Predictably, she was more than willing to share her thoughts.

“I can’t say I have,” Mothiva sneered, wrinkling her nose at the sight. “I also can’t say I find it very—”

“Woo! It’s so fast,” H.B. panted, interrupting Mothiva’s would-be snark. “So fast. I didn’t think it’d be this fast, fufufu…That’s the power of electricity, for you. Not even the termites could make something of this magnitude. Those itty bitty, slow machines of theirs just can’t compare. And you, darling,” She pointed up at Mothiva with a scraggly claw. “You have a goldmine on your hands.”

Mothiva scoffed. “You have a terrible fashion sense and you’re insane? God, pick a struggle.”

“Leif, surely you see the scientific beauty of something like this?” H.B. looked at Leif expectantly. Great. Just great.

“We think you can’t use Zasp to power your little…toys,” Leif deadpanned. “Mothiva, this is what we were trying to tell you. She’s treating him like a portable generator.”

Mothiva squinted at Leif like he had three heads. “What?”

“You didn’t know?” H.B. adjusted her glasses, leaning back in her cramped seat. “He’s helping me out a bit with some projects. Free electricity isn’t something I can pass up. It’s so hard to harness.”

“Wh—no! Nobody’s telling me anything!” Mothiva burst, beyond exasperated. “I didn’t even know he had magic up until a few hours ago! Nobody tells me anything! You didn’t even let me talk to him earlier!”

“Don’t get so pouty, missy,” H.B. scolded. Leif could practically see a blood vessel pop in Mothiva’s face. “It’s fine. Let me borrow him a while longer, and you can have him back.” She drummed her claws in thought. “Until I need him again, of course...”

“No! He’s not yours, he’s mine!” Mothiva cried. “How dare you treat a member of Team Mothiva in such a way? You absolute monster! Think of my reputation! You think I can be seen with him when he’s a pile of burning, shriveled up flesh? What the hell is wrong with you? Leif, what the hell is wrong with her?”

Leif backed up, putting his hands up. “Don’t look at us. We only came to you because we wanted you to talk some sense into her.” And that worked, it seemed, considering Mothiva seemed more than willing to take control of the situation. She was so predictable.

Mothiva glared at H.B. out of the corner of her eye, cracking her knuckles. “I’ll talk some sense into her, alright.”

“Whoops! Heh, looks like I gotta zoom my way back to work!” H.B. exclaimed, pulling a small red lever and rushing off. Without missing a beat, Mothiva ran after her. Huh. She was actually managing to stay right on H.B.’s tail. Leif knew Mothiva got hyper when she was angry, but this was ridiculous.

At least he didn’t have to deal with this anymore. He had succeeded in siccing the demon on H.B.. All Leif had to do now was to focus on his own problems, something it felt he hadn’t had a second to do in much too long. He wondered for a moment if he’d rather continue engrossing himself in other’s business to distract himself from the inevitable, but…

Mothiva managed to catch up to H.B. and pounced on her head, wrestling the controls from her. The remote control car immediately crashed into a wall, sending veiny cracks up the carefully crafted hive walls. Neither bug looked particularly hurt, but they certainly didn’t look happy.

…Leif was content with staying out of this for the time being.

Chapter Text

“Leif! There you are!” The moment Leif slipped down into the darkness of the ant mines, he was accosted by a frantic greeting. “I was wondering where you were. I was worried you ran off like Vi did,” Kabbu explained. Condensation from the damp soil above dripped down onto his horn, giving his shell an almost shiny appearance in the little bit of sunlight filtering into the ground.

“No, no,” Leif dismissed, ducking out of the way as droplets threatened to spill onto him. “We just had some unfinished business to deal with. Nothing serious.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Kabbu nodded, turning on his heel and beginning the trudge through the mines. “I told Vi to go home, so I suppose that’s where we should head next. I suppose we can’t know for certain if she actually followed my instructions, though.”

“It’ll be fine,” Leif shrugged. The cool soil beneath his feet was much more tolerable than the blazing sand of Defiant Root, and while most found the dank, claustrophobic walls of the mines to be suffocating, he found them to be a welcome change of pace from the Hive. If he could, he would simply slip into the miner’s break room and treat himself to a nap. But, no, finding Vi and ensuring she was alright was his top priority. It was almost funny in a way how quickly the tables had turned for him, going from being the one who needed comforting and support to suddenly being the one forced into the position of dishing it out to others. It would be much more amusing if it wasn’t so tiring. He didn’t mind being helpful to others, but it was beginning to wear on him. At the very least, he could go home and snuggle Chompy. She never needed any emotional support.

“Everything alright with you?” Kabbu questioned, quickening his pace to catch up with Leif. “I mean, aside from the obvious. It’s quite unlike you to run off on your own to finish up personal business that we don’t know about.”

“Is it?” Leif said, widening his eyes. “We thought we were pretty mysterious in general. But, uh, no, everything’s fine. Don’t worry about it. We were just checking in on Zasp, is all.”

“Really? How kind of you,” Kabbu beamed. Ugh. Leif loved Kabbu more deeply than words could ever express, but it definitely got on his nerves the way he came across as a proud parent whenever Leif—or Vi for that matter—did anything remotely kind. Was it really so shocking that Leif wasn’t always a stoic, sarcastic kind of moth?

…Leif knew the answer to that, and he chose to ignore the obvious.

“Yeah, we guess so. Just basic courtesy to try and help someone when they’re going through a tough time,” Leif brushed off. He wasn’t sure if he should mention everything going on with that whole…situation. He wasn’t keen on getting himself involved any more than he already was, and, most importantly, he didn’t want Kabbu to start worrying again. It was easy to poke fun at Kabbu’s tendency to spiral into a fit of worries at the slightest provocation, but after a certain point it was just sad to witness. Kabbu had been bearing the brunt of all of Leif’s problems these past few days, resigning himself to being nothing more than a shoulder to cry on—more accurately, a shoulder to scream and complain into—and a gnawing guilt was beginning to set into Leif’s guts when he thought about just how much he was stretching Kabbu thin. The last thing Kabbu needed was another reason to fret.

Besides, it certainly seemed that Mothiva had the situation under control. The last thing Leif had seen before leaving the Hive was Mothiva barreling towards Zasp, all but literally kicking H.B. away and tackling Zasp in a hug that he, by some miracle, didn’t topple over from. It might’ve been sweet if not for the foul language she was spewing in H.B.’s direction the entire time. Leif should have found it endearing, or annoying, or felt hopeful that she could talk some sense into him, or any emotion that would have made sense in that situation. But all he felt was a melancholic jealousy. As much as he hated Mothiva, as much as he found her obnoxious, arrogant, insufferable, every negative adjective in the book—she was above all else familiar, and that just might be what he hated the most about her. A feisty Moth with a brazen attitude and strong kicks was by no means a foreign concept to him. And while he’d pick Muse over that witch in a heartbeat, times like that made him feel a bitter loneliness over the way he had gotten those moments ripped away from him. He wanted Muse to run up into his arms and love him despite all his awkwardness. But here he was being nothing more than a creepy, jealous onlooker watching these insufferable bugs live the life he should have had. He didn’t even have it in him to be angry at the two, either. He just felt sad and had to leave before he started to think too hard about it.

“He wasn’t looking too good, was he?” Kabbu said, breaking Leif out of his thoughts. Well, it seems he was already fretting, anyway, even without Leif initiating the conversation. “Maybe I’m just paranoid these days, but he looked really tired and sick.”

“Believe us, he’s fine,” Leif muttered. “We’ve got everything under control.” It would be more true to reality to say that Mothiva had everything under control, but that was a hasty assumption to make, and he wasn’t looking to give that witch any credit for being helpful.

“Well, that’s good to hear. Very good,” Kabbu nodded. “I hope it stays that way. Tell me if there’s anything I can do to help, okay?”

Can you stop worrying for a second? Leif mentally berated him, but he kept his mouth shut and kept waking. It was hard to be mad at Kabbu for being such a wreck when he himself was by far more of a wreck in every regard. Just a quick glance down at Kabbu proved that he hadn’t made it through these past few days unscathed. Even through his exoskeleton, obscuring most of his face, Leif could see the distinct sag of his face from exhaustion. Every little movement of his, down the the slightest bounce—or, in this case, lack thereof—in his step screamed overwhelm. Leif stared up at the ceiling, forcing himself not to look at or even think about how haggard he was running that poor beetle.

“He looked like he was about to faint,” Kabbu continued, oblivious to Leif outwardly ignoring him. “Maybe we should turn back and make sure he’s okay. No, that’s a bad idea. He doesn’t like me. Does he? He seemed really mad at me. But maybe he was just cranky because he was tired. But I can still help someone who doesn’t like me, right? But then again…”

“Kabbu,” Leif burst in exasperation. He raised his fists as if he was about to strike Kabbu, but he merely tugged at his antennae in frustration. “Stop. It’s not your problem to solve.”

Kabbu blinked at Leif, suddenly turning very sheepish. “Oh, I’m sorry. I—”

“No!” Leif interrupted, jumping at the volume of his own voice. Goodness, he wasn’t used to being on high alert like this. “Stop apologizing. Stop worrying. Please. You’ve been so helpful to us, but for Venus’s sake, go take a break or something. You’re worrying yourself to death, stop.”

Kabbu sighed, sinking to the damp soil and running a claw through the dirt absentmindedly. “What about Vi?” He muttered. The simple fact he wasn’t denying he needed a rest said plenty. In any other circumstance he would fervently deny needing any sort of break, instead pushing on forward with a smile on his face and a million cheesy inspirational quotes at the ready. Leif prayed the guilt didn’t show on his face. This was a viscous cycle with no real way out—Leif goes to Kabbu for help, Kabbu obliges, Leif feels guilty for dumping all of his issues on Kabbu, Kabbu gets upset that Leif feels guilty, Leif feels even more guilty that his guilt is making Kabbu more upset—if Leif was learning anything throughout all of this, it was that it was surprisingly, worryingly easy to fall into these toxic spirals.

“What about her?” Leif asked, sitting down next to Kabbu. “She’s just being Vi. Cranky. Unreasonable. That’s just how she is sometimes.”

Kabbu took a deep breath, looking at Leif out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t want to talk about her behind her back, but…” Leif’s antennae instantly perked up, hungry for gossip. His enthusiasm admittedly helped lift Kabbu’s mood. “I don’t know how well she’s handling all of this,” he said meekly.

“We don’t know why she would care.” Leif shrugged, watching cold water droplets fall and absorb into the ground. “She’s not the one losing her…” It physically hurt to think about. Leif had taken it for granted how preoccupied he’d been, not having the chance to think about such things. It hit him all over again just how much he was losing, but he kept a stoic face as to not worry Kabbu again. “…She’s not the one losing herself.”

“But she’s—she—you don’t get it,” Kabbu sighed, resting his forehead in his hand. “I don’t like making such brazen assumptions about others, but I think she’s scared. She hasn’t been acting like herself.”

“How? She just seems angry to us. Nothing unusual for her.”

“There’s something different about it. Surely you realize this? This isn’t her usual moodiness. I feel like she’s just using it to cover something up,” Kabbu said. “Then again, what do I know? I suppose I can’t get into her head.” After an awkward pause, he added, “I think she had a nightmare the other night.“

Leif cocked his head to the side. “About?”

“You, I think.”

Leif laughed. There was nothing he found funny about that, but his body did it automatically to cover the crushing dread he felt. Near immediately, his eyes began to sting with tears. This was bound to happen eventually—they would realize just how much of a freak he really was. That outward demeanor of a normal bug would finally shatter, and his teammates would be able to see him for what he was: an ‘it,’ a parasite, something unnatural and unnerving. He knew this would happen, he just didn’t expect it to be so soon. He’d been hoping the highs of adventure would keep their minds off of the reality of what he was, but it seems that time had come before he was ready to accept it.

“We are a bit scary,” he chuckled, straining to keep the hurt out of his voice. “We can’t blame her.” But he did. His hurt was quickly becoming a deep seated anger towards Vi. He couldn’t control what he was. He was still the same Leif he always was, right? The same Leif she had always known, anyway.

“You’re not scary,” Kabbu frowned. “You’re a very sweet bug.”

“Kabbu, please. We can’t even discuss this in public without risking our safety,” Leif deadpanned. “We know I’m not very..,pleasant to look at, but I’ll try to stay hidden if it’ll make Vi happy, okay?”

“Okay,” Kabbu mumbled. Already his tone was becoming cautious now that the cordyceps was referring to itself specifically and not Leif as a whole. It was hard to ignore the annoyance welling up in his chest. Of course Leif wasn’t scary. The cordyceps is. Leif is a sweet bug. The cordyceps is scary. It’s scaring Vi, it’s scaring Kabbu, and they don’t have the decency to even try to hide it—

“Tjikerg frehtcir pricuains!” Leif—or more accurately the cordyceps—hissed. He clamped his hands over his mouth, staring at Kabbu blankly.

“What was that?” Kabbu asked.

“We don’t know,” he lied, hands muffling his words. The cordyceps had spewed out nasty words towards its teammates that it was beyond thankful they couldn’t understand. Nothing vulgar, but something much too personal for it to be comfortable saying: “I thought I finally found people who liked me.”

Leif lowered his hands, trying to keep his temper at bay. “It’s okay,” he muttered. “It’s fine, doesn’t matter. We’ll talk to Vi. You need to go take a break.”

Kabbu went to protest, but after a moment sagged his shoulders in resignation. “Okay,” he agreed. “Tell me if you need anything. I’m more than willing to help out.”

“We will,” Leif lied. To his dismay, Kabbu immediately stood up and began backtracking toward the tunnel leading to Defiant Root. “Kabbu,” Leif scolded, sighing.

Kabbu put his hands up defensively. “No, no, I’m not going back to the Hive. I’m just going to go visit Neolith.”

“You’d better,” Leif said a bit too gruffly, turning on his heel and making his way to the tunnels leading to the Ant Kingdom. The walk was slow and arduous, what with his energy being so low, but he made sure to savor each second. Every moment in the mines was another moment he wasn’t dealing with Vi.

It was almost disorienting to climb back up into the sunlight of the Ant Kingdom after spending the last few days in Defiant Root. Despite being well into midday, the air was warm, not stiflingly hot. The cool grass below his feet was a welcome change of pace from the burning sand, but he’d already forgotten just how tedious it was to have dewdrops freeze to his feet. He huffed a sigh of both dread and relief when he reached his home.

“Vi?” Leif called, slowly creaking the door open. No response, other than the excited chirping of Chompy, who made sure to give Leif dozens of little “welcome back” nibbles on his ankles. An antenna lazily perked up from a messy pile of blankets, flitting toward Leif before falling down again. The lights were on, but Vi had buried herself in bed, scrunched up and silent.

Leif leaned back against the wall, letting Chompy burrow her way into his wings and curl up, happy to finally have her owner back to love on her. For nearly a full, awkward half hour, the only sound in the entire house was Vi’s tense breathing and Chompy’s chirps of content whenever Leif stroked her head. This was a type of relaxation Leif hadn’t had the chance to experience in a while, but it was impossible to truly enjoy it with Vi’s stress making the atmosphere so constricting. Every time she exhaled, she did it with such strain that it sounded like hissing. Leif waited and waited for her to take the first step, to finally spill what was on her mind, but all she did was wiggle even farther into the bedsheets. As much as—and, as selfish as it was—he wanted to not say anything and let the moment be, Leif knew this would only be settled if he made the effort to pry into Vi’s anger. She was never the type to take the first leap when it came to starting somber conversations.

“So, Vi,” Leif said slowly, scratching Chompy under the chin. Already he was running dry on ideas for what to tell her. “Do you want to talk about anything?” All he got in reply was a subtle, but very purposeful flash of her stinger, pointed directly at him. Chompy winced at the icy cloud of breath that emitted from Leif as he sighed, biting at the ice particles that had dared interfere with her nap.

“You know,” he continued coyly, hoping matching Vi’s usual brash attitude would loosen her up enough to talk, “we’re gonna get you to talk, eventually. Just you wait. You can’t resist our awesomeness.”

Still nothing. He rubbed his eyes. Leif wasn’t sure if Chompy could emote like bugs could, but he was positive her little chirp was her way of laughing at his desperation. “Please?” Maybe a nicer approach was the key. “We’re not going to make fun of you for whatever you say.”

Nothing. “Vi,” he pleaded, “the silent treatment never works. Don’t be this way.”

Nothing but the slightest huff of her breath. “Vi, we can’t think of anything when you’re refusing to talk to us.”

Annoyance was turning to frustration. “Vi,” he said sternly.

He did get a response, that time. “Shut up, Leif.” She sounded so genuinely fed up with him that he had no choice but to do as she said. The silence returned, heavier than ever. Too heavy to handle. Scooping Chompy off his lap and tucking her into her little bed of leaves, Leif stood up to leave. He wasn’t sure where he was going, just that he needed something—he loved silence, especially after such an overwhelming past few days, but the house was getting so still, so tense, that it looped back around to being stressful. He would go nap at Chuck’s place or go to the ant palace library, or whatever. Somewhere in his muddled head he had the idea to spend some time with his family, and although that felt like such a bittersweet idea after everything he’d been through, it sounded like the best way to calm his nerves. He didn’t have to ask about Muse. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

His claw tightening around the doorknob in frustration, he muttered one last thing to Vi.

“We just wish you’d tell us what we did wrong, okay?”

The bunk creaked as Vi rolled over to face him, eyes sunken in anger and stress. She stared at him so intensely it made Leif’s shell crawl, but she only said in a faint voice, “it’s nothing you did.”

Neither Vi nor Leif himself expected the sudden, uncharacteristic wave of anger that flooded over him. He got the response he was waiting for, but her words weren’t the concise, simple explanation he was expecting. He let go of the doorknob, letting his arm fall limply to his side in exasperated disbelief. “You’re seriously saying that after everything?” He asked, venom on his tongue. He hated the bitterness of his words, but his temper was being stretched to its thinnest, and it was hard to keep the frustration from making itself known. “You’ve—you’ve done nothing but blame us. Running off and making our life a million times harder and making us think we did something wrong. And now you’re saying it’s not our fault? Don’t you think we’re going through enough already?”

“That’s not what I’m—”

“Well, how else do you want us to interpret all that?” Ice flowed through his veins at such a rate it made him dizzy, and he had to take a step back and calm his breathing. Vi’s lack of a response only made the ice come faster, his breathing more strained, his muscles more ready to fight. With a harsh buzz of her wings, Vi shot up, digging her claws into her pillow. When she threw it at Leif, smacking him directly in the face, it took all of his willpower not to retaliate by pelting her with ice shards. It didn’t hurt, of course, but Vi’s behavior was quickly getting on his nerves. Pelting him with a pillow was really the most innocuous thing she could do, but the intent behind it was what mattered.

“Can you act your age for a second?” Leif said, fuzz bristling. “You’re seventeen, you—”

Right before his temper boiled over,  that simple realization ebbed the bubble of anger ready to burst. That’s right. She is seventeen, isn’t she?

For all the teasing Leif did, enough to make him a walking, talking reminder of Vi’s naivety and immaturity compared to the rest of the team, he forgot sometimes that there was a kernel of truth to everything he said. Albeit, maybe the truth was a bit kinder than he was, and maybe he exaggerated some of Vi’s shortcomings a little too much, but the simple truth backing all of his words remained the same—Vi was a kid. Barely, yes, and as time went on the more she finally matured, but hero of Bugaria or not, she just didn’t have as much life experience as Leif or Kabbu. Her young age paired with most of her life having been spent in the stifling work culture of the Hive made her, whether she liked it or not, not quite as equipped for the world as her teammates. She’d always deny this, as per usual with Vi, somehow getting it in her head that being told an objective truth—she still has a lot to learn—was somehow an affront to her very existence. But it was true, whether Vi liked it or not, and that truth smacked Leif in the face harder than the pillow did.

It was as if there was a literal shift in the world around him. With blind anger no longer strangling his senses, everything felt much more potent than it had. Much more real. And Vi was no longer an enemy looking to get in his way, no longer an irritant of a bee trying to make everything about herself. She looked, if nothing else, scared, and oh, how dumb Leif felt when he realized just how long it took him to realize that. It didn’t excuse her behavior, no, not at all, but it recontextualized it. She was just a teenager.

The silence was so intense it was gut-churning. Both bugs stared each other down, waiting for the other to continue the argument. Vi looked just about ready to pop at any moment, her entire body lightly shaking with nervous rage. Leif slumped down against the door, staring up at Vi blankly. He racked his brain, looking for the best way to say what was swirling in his mind. “Are you feeling okay?” Is all he could muster.

Vi was the first to break eye contact. She rested her chin on the rickety edge of her bunk, staring down at the floor and training her full attention on Chompy’s sleeping form. “Duh, ‘course I am,” she shrugged, so starkly languid compared to her usual spunky attitude.

“We’re just making sure,” Leif nodded uncertainly. He rubbed his tired eyes, wincing when the iciness of his palms sent a pang of pain into his eyes. The conversation ended just as quickly as it had begun, and although the atmosphere was a little less tense now that Vi wasn’t outright refusing to talk to him, it was more awkward than ever. Once that door had been opened, it couldn’t be closed, and Leif would have to see this conversation to its end—whether or not that end would be pleasant was up in the air. What had he been expecting? That Vi would suddenly open up, and lay everything out in a concise manner? That’s just not Vi’s style.

“It’s just that these last few days have been a lot for us,” Leif continued, biting the bullet and forcing the conversation to carry forward despite his rusty social skills begging to be known, even if he would have to do all the talking. “And we don’t know if you’ve been holding up well. We never had the chance to ask.”

Sincerity proved fruitless immediately. Vi shook with a quick, squeaky laugh and a sudden buzz of her wings. She leaned forward until she was hanging upside down off the railing of her bed from the crook of her legs. “Me? Please,” she drawled. Letting her arms dangle limply, she went on. “Believe me, I’m fine. I’m not the one with the memory problems or the parasite or the ice magic or whatever else you have going on in there.”

“Then why are you so mad?” Leif could see Vi tense up with anger, her breath hitching, but after a moment she released it in a sigh and deflated. “Cause I was tired,” she said slowly, almost condescendingly. Even if the words she spoke lacked the venom they had before, her tone said it all: You’re an idiot, you need to stop asking so many questions, I already told you, shut up.

“Really?” Leif pressed, filled with such skepticism it was hardly an actual question but rather an accusation of sorts.

“Really!” Vi swung herself up, clumsily hovering down to the floor as the head rush set in and trudged on in her tirade defending herself, complete with dramatic arm gestures as she ranted. “I dunno what you think I was doing all that time by myself, but I wasn’t just sulking around. I’m not that kinda bee, you know? I don’t sulk. Just because I was on my own doesn’t mean I was miserable. It was the opposite, really! I was doing important business. Buying honey. Eating honey. Terrorizing Mothiva. Really, I was having a blast.”

“Didn’t look like you were having a blast when Kabbu dragged you back,” Leif pointed out, unsure whether or not the memory of Vi’s tiny face pinched in anger was funny or unnerving.

“Well, yeah, he was interrupting my fun. Obviously,” she stammered out, sensing she was being backed into a corner. “At least I wasn’t getting all snuggly with the guy who wants to slobber all over Mothiva’s face.”

“Please never say those words to us again.”

Vi let out a sharp cackle, playfully slapping Leif on the arm. “Oi, well, I’m not wrong, am I?” A strange look crossed her face, and she quickly buzzed farther away from Leif, turning her back on him. Why did she have to be so difficult? The moment Leif thought he’d got her to warm up, she immediately went cold again.

“We suppose not.” Leif fiddled with his claws, frantically musing on whether or not to pry any further. Vi seemed a bit more open to conversation, but her temper was still a ticking time bomb he didn’t want to test his luck on. “You’re not scared or anything, right?” Did that sound genuine enough? Too condescending? Too lighthearted? Too grave? He was severely overthinking this.

“Scared of what?” Vi turned to look at him out of the corner of her eye, cocking her head to the side. “Zasp? I mean, he’s kinda annoying, but not really scary. We’ve beat his ass twice before.”

“Er, no,” Leif said stiffly. “Us.” He could feel the sickening, anxious wriggling of the cordyceps shifting his organs around underneath his shell as he spoke.

“Am I scared of you?” Vi echoed his question with a laugh. She wrung her hands in her collar of fuzz, backing up and putting an even greater distance between her and Leif. Her eyes had a distinctly stunned look to them that Leif rarely, if ever saw. “Hell no. You’re weird, but not scary. Why’d I be scared of you? Stop asking dumb questions, why don’t you?”

“Definitely seems like you’re scared of us,” Leif joked. Was it a joke? It was genuinely hurtful the way Vi seemed to be avoiding him. Then again, from what he’d seen back at the Hive, it didn’t appear she was being all too friendly and sociable with Kabbu, either.

“I’m not, I’m just…” she gave a breathy laugh, her voice rising in emotion before cutting off. She went silent for nearly a minute before finally admitting in a much less confident voice, wavering with what Leif guessed—with much dismay—to be repressed tears, “I don’t know if I can handle being in this team anymore.”

Leif’s stomach dropped. She wasn’t serious, was she? She couldn’t be. Something like that coming from Vi of all bugs was ludicrous. She was the last bug he’d expect to want to split. She was a bit of a free spirit, there was no doubt there, but the idea that she’d willingly abandon her teammates—when one was going through such a major shift, at that—at the drop of a dime…well, it hurt. It hurt deeper than Leif expected it to, and no matter how long he stared at Vi, waiting for the ill-timed punchline, it never came. “Why?” He managed to ask.

“I’m too…” she trailed off, pushing herself farther away from Leif until she had crammed herself in the corner, kicking up clouds of dust that shone in the rays of the sun. She drew her knees up to her chest, tapping her foot anxiously. “I just think I could use some time to myself. This team is getting too…suffocating.”

“Suffocating?” Leif repeated. “We try to give you as much space as you need.”

“No, I know, I know,” she fretted. “I dunno how to phrase it without being rude. I just don’t really want to be around you guys this much anymore.”

“…You’re not acting right,” Leif said matter of factly, standing up and walking over to Vi’s huddled form. Was she acting off? Or was Leif just clinging to a shred of hope that the team wouldn’t dissolve this quickly? “Are you sure you’re okay? You can talk to us. Please?”

“I said what I said,” Vi said in a strained whisper. “It’s nothing personal. I just want some time to myself. A long time.”

Leif bit the inside of his cheek, trying not to let the sadness show on his face. It would only come across as manipulative if he started pleading with Vi to change her mind. He was hoping Vi would immediately change her mind, but she was never so simple. His only choice was to let her be. Badgering her to rethink would only make her mood worse. “Alright,” he said softly. “Alright. You can do what you want, Vi, it’s just that…” He put an icy hand on her shoulder. She flinched, but didn’t fight the gesture. “It’s just so sudden, is all. You only started acting this way once we started having problems. We aren’t trying to say you’re lying about what you want, we really aren’t, but…”

“But that’s basically what you’re saying,” Vi finished for him. “Look, all your stuff made me start rethinking my own stuff, okay? Life’s…” Leif could feel hemolymph wildly pulsating through her body as her heart began to thunder. “…Life’s too short to not live to the fullest. It’s really not a big deal.”

For something supposedly not a big deal, it certainly felt like it was one. “Will you be moving back to the hive with Jaune, then?” Leif asked.

“No, no,” she hurried, drumming her claws against the floor from nervous energy. “I don’t know if I want to be around Jaune much, either. I don’t want to have to—to be around anyone. I dunno.”

“Why?” Leif asked. “We know, we know, you’re sick of us asking why. But we don’t get it. You’ve no reason to suddenly start pushing everyone away like this. It’s not very reassuring.”

“Like you haven’t been doing the same,” Vi scoffed.

“That’s exactly why we’re concerned,” Leif said. “We weren’t just doing that for fun. It was because we were upset and didn’t know how to handle it.” Vi rolled her eyes, and Leif had to suppress the anger rising in his chest. “We’re just trying to make sure you’re okay.”

Vi plopped herself backwards so she was slumped over in Leif’s lap, making Leif jump. “Ugh, you’re such a nervous wreck. Just like Kabbu,” she groaned. Instinctively, Leif reached out and scratched her head. She sunk further into him in content. “Leif?” She said tentatively after a brief pause, clenching her fist.

“Yes?”

She tossed her arm over her eyes in exhaustion, the sliver of her normal attitude that had resurfaced quickly fading again. “…Can you just go away?”

Leif sighed, nodding wordlessly and, in a move a bit rougher than intended, shoved her off of him. Fine, then. He would just go to his family who wouldn’t abandon him in a heartbeat.

Right as Leif stood up, lanky claws tugged at his aged wings so roughly he worried for a moment they would rip right off. “Vi,” he sighed in exasperation, not bothering to even look down. He reached behind himself to pry Vi’s hand from his wings. The moment their claws touched, Vi gripped Leif’s hand so tightly it hurt. Her sharp claws dug into the tender shell of his palm, still not fully recovered from using his magic.

“No, wait,” she stammered. “Don’t go.”

A flurry of ice shot through Leif’s veins. As much as he was concerned, Vi was really, really testing his patience. “Do you care about us or not?” He snapped, glaring down at Vi with a stern, unamused scowl. At the sight of him, so imposing and uncharacteristically harsh, she shrunk down on herself, but refused to let go of Leif. “Answer us,” Leif demanded.

“I—I don’t—no, I d—I do, but…” Vi stuttered.

“We know you’re scared of us!” Leif burst, ice particles pricking the corner of his eyes. “We know it’s true, alright? We’d rather you just say it instead of making us feel like a piece of shit for something we can’t control. If you don’t want to be around us, then by all means, leave, but don’t take it out on us! We didn’t…we didn’t do anything!”

“But I’m not scared of you! I’m really not!” She pleaded.

“Then—then what’s your problem? Why are you so distant? Why do you hate us all of a sudden?” Leif shouted.

“I don’t!” Vi cried. “I don’t hate you, it’s just too...too much. I don’t hate you. I’m not scared. I just need a break.”

“Then for goodness sake, why are you being so rude to us?!”

Vi flinched, her knees turning to water. “Leif, it doesn’t even matter, it just…” her lower lip began to tremble and a small whimper escaped her throat. Leif didn’t have a second to reach out to hug her before she burst into tears, scooting away from Leif and weakly swatting him away. Leif had never, not once seen Vi cry before, not even when she was reuniting with Jaune, and it hurt him in a way words couldn’t scratch the surface of. It looked so wrong to see those beady eyes of hers flooded with tears rather than narrowed in a look of determination or anger. For a moment, he was struck with an overwhelming sensation that he was seeing something he wasn’t supposed to, and he pretended not to notice her at first. She sunk her head to her knees, doing everything in her power to keep her sobs quiet. Even just the faint sounds of her shuddery breaths and sniffling made Leif want to cry, himself. “I am scared,” she admitted through gasps for air. Leif cautiously sat down next to her, but was sure to keep his distance. His heart sank hearing it said aloud, but just as he was about to say something, she continued.

“I don’t wanna lose you,” she sputtered out, rubbing her eyes raw. No matter how much she wiped the tears away, they didn’t stop. “I didn’t—I didn’t—I’ve never had anyone die before.” She gripped her antennae as tightly as she could, tugging at them in distress. He suddenly felt an insurmountable guilt at the realization he had been thinking so lowly of Vi. They’d spent so many days together, went on so many journeys, learned each and every intricacy of one another, down to the slightest of things that made one tick. And yet, for every day he looked at that little bee, as he had realized just a few moments ago, he had begun to forget that she was so young. The sight of her looking younger than ever, curled up on herself with tears dampening her cheeks, sent a stabbing feeling through his chest. Her wings buzzed with every desperate attempt to breathe as she grabbed her chest as if it was physically hurting her. Is this what Kabbu and Vi had felt these last few days, watching Leif slowly unravel? Was he causing them as much distress as the sight of Vi was causing Leif? A heavy guilt began to strangle his thoughts, and he wished he could take back every tear he’d cried if it meant not stressing his teammates like he had been.

“Vi,” he said gently, resting a claw on her shoulder. In any other situation, Vi would resist the comforting touch, pulling away and making some snarky remark. But now was different. She grabbed Leif’s hand like it was all that was keeping her from floating away, refusing to let go. “I don’t know what to do,” she sobbed, shaking her head. “I don’t. This all just came out of nowhere. What do I do?”

“You don’t have to do anything. We’re not going anywhere, Vi,” Leif assured her, blinking back tears of his own as to not upset her any more. “Please don’t worry about us, alright? We’re okay, you’re okay…it’s going to be okay.”

“No!” Vi cried. “None of this is okay! You’re not okay! What am I gonna do without you? I’ve never lost anyone before, please don’t be the first. Please.”

“We won’t be. We promise,” he said with a squeeze of her hand. Leif’s heart began pounding profusely at the realization of what Vi had been so worried about. She shouldn’t have to worry about such morbid things. She shouldn’t have to be imagining and fretting over a death that hasn’t happened.

Vi squirmed away, wiping her face with the back of her hand before crossing her arms and attempting to put on a stern look through the tears that contorted her face. “I wish I could trust you,” she said, voice cracking.

“Why can’t you?” Leif asked. Vi only gave a small, almost unnoticeable shake of her head. Leif reached out and wiped the tears from her cheeks with his claws. “Listen, Vi—our ice magic is dangerous. We won’t pretend that it’s not. But it’s not going to kill us. We won’t let it. It’ll be hard, but…we can live without it.”

“You don’t get it,” Vi rasped. Her fists, balled up on her knees, started to shake, and she swallowed hard, choking out the thought that had been haunting her. “You’re going to die.”

“We’re not,” Leif said. “Why do you think we will?”

“Everyone dies,” Vi said coldly.

Leif chuckled ruefully. “Well, okay. That’s true. That’s not something we can deny.” Vi’s eyes went wide, and her chest began to heave with heavy breaths. Leif thought that was an innocuous comment, but Vi was clearly not in the same mindset. This was a reality she was not ready to face, one she was hoping Leif would deny. Instead he had reaffirmed her fears. “We’re not planning on dying anytime soon, Vi, believe us,” Leif said, pulling her into a hug. She buried her face in his wings, using them to dry her eyes.

“You’re going to, though,” Vi said quietly, going pale. “One of these days. And so is Kabbu. And Jaune. And the queen. Everyone.” She backed away a little, staring up at Leif with shimmering eyes. “And I’m gonna have to watch it all happen and wait for my turn.”

Leif sighed. He knew trying to have a serious conversation with Vi would be difficult, but this required a level of eloquence and gentleness he just didn’t have. “We can’t change that. But that doesn’t mean you have to let it weigh you down, you know?”

“Are you really trying to tell me that?” Vi cried, slamming her fists down on the floor. “Look at yourself! Look at yourself and tell me it’s not something I have to worry about!”

“What are you talking about?” Leif asked impatiently. Vi tugged on her antennae again, throwing herself back in Leif’s arms.

“You’re miserable,” she cried, voice quivering. “You think I don’t notice? You’re always talking about Muse and how much you miss her. You just seem so…sad about it. And Kabbu. He’s still upset over his friends’ deaths.” She closed her eyes tightly, an almost angry look sprawling over her face. “And you’re trying to tell me it’ll be okay? Are you fucking kidding me? I don’t want to be miserable like you two are. I want to stay happy.”

Muse being brought into this felt like a punch in the gut. Leif shook his head, partly to visualize his disagreement with that notion, and partly to get that lingering jealousy of Zasp out of his head. “We’re not miserable. We miss her badly, of course we do, but”—he took a moment to push those guilty thoughts, that memory of arguing with Muse, out of his head—“we’re not always sad. After a while, the grief sort of…calms down. You still feel it, but it doesn’t hurt quite as much.”

“I don’t want to feel it at all,” Vi whined, nervously rustling her fuzz. “Just shut up. Shut up.” Tears spilled over again, leaving damp streaks in her fluff. “You don’t get it, Leif. I’m the youngest. You both are gonna die before me, and I’m gonna—I’m gonna be all alone again. I don’t wanna deal with all that, so I’m not going to.”

“Vi, this isn’t something you can avoid,” Leif said as gently as he could, putting on the soothing voice he always thought he would use with him and Muse’s child. “We’re talking to you right now, aren’t we? We’re still here. We’ll be here for a long time.”

“You almost died!” Vi cried, gripping the sides of her head. “I’m—I’m scared. You almost worked yourself to death and it’s all my fault.” She hid her face in Leif’s wings from shame. Leif could feel every warm tear dribble from her cheeks onto his wings, every shuddery gasp escaping her lips. “It’s my fault. My fault. Gods, I’m so sorry.”

“How is any of this your fault?” Leif asked. His throat grew tight with tears, but he had to hold them back. Now was not the time. Crying would only make Vi feel worse. But, oh, Venus, with how hard she was crying, he felt like he had to cry along with her to not feel so guilty.

“Because,” Vi sobbed, muffled, “I’ve been pushing you s-so hard in battle even though it was making you sick.”

“You had no way of knowing it was hurting us,” Leif assured her. “It’s not your fault. Not at all. We were hiding it.”

“I’m such—such—such a selfish bitch,” she choked. “You don’t know the kind of awful thoughts I’ve had about you. Calling you weak and useless and not trying hard enough. I thought you were just being lazy because you didn’t care about me anymore. But you were just—j-just hurting, and I was too stupid to ever notice.”

It felt like his heart was shattering. He had often found Vi’s arrogance to be annoying at times, but it felt even worse to have her degrading herself like this, and Vi admitting she had been under the assumption Leif didn’t care about her…that hurt even more. Vi wasn’t obnoxious, she wasn’t trying to be mean, she was just a scared kid crying in his lap, tearing herself apart over thoughts she couldn’t control having. Her mind was conjuring the worst case scenario—that Leif hated her, wasn’t bothering to put in any effort in their shared battles—as nothing more than a defensive mechanism, trying to prime her for what it saw as an inevitable outcome. And it was backfiring greatly. Her mind was incorrect in assuming such things, and it was making up for its supposed cruelty with crushing guilt. “Oh, Vi,” Leif whispered, rubbing her back. “Vi, sweetheart, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

For a brief moment, Vi seemed to believe Leif, melting into his embrace and letting him shower her in love. But her guilt won out again. “Yes, I did,” She said quietly. “I’m such a bad friend. All y-you needed was support, and instead I—I just piled on my own problems and didn’t bother asking if y-you were okay. I should’ve just dealt with things on my own. I was s-so mean to you. It’s okay if you wanna just not be around me anymore. I understand.”

“No,” is all Leif managed to say before his own composure broke. Icy tears fell from his eyes, dripping onto Vi. “We forgive you,” he said through shaky breaths. “We aren’t mad at you. Please be easier on yourself.”

“You’re an idiot,” Vi grumbled. “Just shut up. I know I’ve been rude, just admit it.”

Leif rolled his eyes. “You certainly have been, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to forgive you. We’re not mad at you whether you want us to be or not.”

“You should be mad,” Vi glowered.

“But we aren’t.”

“Oh, come on, just—Why don’t you hate me already?” She burst, shoving Leif away as roughly as her gangly arms could. “Look, I’m being a jerk, aren’t I? So leave. Just leave and don’t talk to me ever again!” She swatted at Leif, grazing his arm with her sharp claws and leaving behind a faint scratch on his sensitive shell.

Leif backed away, eyes widened in surprise as his fuzz bristled. “Don’t hit us. We’re serious. You can’t hit people just because you’re upset,” he lectured.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she mocked, narrowing her eyes, still puffy from crying. “If ya don’t like me, then go away. I don’t care. I don’t want you around, either.”

“We do like you, Vi,” Leif said. “You’re our friend. Of course, we like you.”

“You shouldn’t,” she hissed.

“Why?”

Her voice dropped an octave. “Because, it…it’ll be so much easier if we hate each other. Because then it won’t matter when one of us dies, cause neither of us will care.” She grew very quiet, not even crying, and roughly fidgeted with her hands. Though her gaze remained downcast, she occasionally flitted her eyes up at Leif, almost expectantly, as if awaiting confirmation or denial of her words.

“It’s never that simple,” is all Leif could think to say.

“I know,” Vi hurried out the moment Leif finished his thought. This was clearly something that had been weighing her down, and she’d been begging for an excuse to say it out loud. “I know, I know, I know! It’s so dumb. It’s even dumber that I know that it’s dumb, but I’m doing it anyway.”

“Is…that what this is all about?” Leif asked quietly. “You’re trying to make us hate you?” Vi gave a sheepish nod.

“Yeah,” she admitted, voice breaking. “It’s even worse, cause I know what I’m doing is just hurting everyone. I’m not even doin’ this subconsciously like you were, I’m knowingly being a jerk. But I just thought that if I stopped being nice to you, the thoughts wouldn’t hurt as much. If you hate me, I won’t worry about you anymore.” She stared down blankly at the floor, shrugging. There was a painful moment of silence. “There ya go, I said it, all laid out for ya. You happy now?” Her sarcasm spiraled into sincere pleading. “I just—just don’t know any other option. It sounds so stupid out loud, because it is, but…”

“It’s okay, Vi,” Leif said awkwardly. If only Kabbu was here—he’d would know what to say.

“It’s not working,” Vi said faintly. “I still don’t hate you and you don’t hate me. I need to stop caring so much. This isn’t good. I don’t like loving people. It’s all too much. I need you and Kabbu to just…stop caring about me so much.”

“Love is very overwhelming,” Leif agreed. “But you’re not going to feel any better by trying to make yourself miserable. We have a feeling that even if we did hate each other, you would still be sad if something happened to us. Would you not care if Mothiva died?”

“No,” Vi said faintly. A sly grin grew on her otherwise sunken, shadowed face, the corners of her mouth tilting upward. “I’d care, alright. That sounds awesome.”

Leif let out an ugly snort of laughter—he should have expected such a response from Vi, but it caught him off guard nonetheless—but as quickly as Vi’d mood had lifted, it crashed down hard again. “I would care,” she blurted out, plastering her claws over her mouth like she’d said something she shouldn’t have, something vulgar. She began to tear up again, tears rolling down her face when she scrunched her eyes in frustration. “Damn it, that’s so stupid. I shouldn’t care. I—I don’t like her, I hate her, I don’t even want to see her be happy. But I don’t want her to…not be here anymore.”

“Exactly our point,” Leif said. But the seed had already been planted in Vi’s head, and with it came another bout of stress. Suggesting she conjure the emotions of someone’s potential death certainly got Leif’s point across, but it clearly wasn’t the right move, as Vi began to hyperventilate again.

“Zasp would be such a mess,” she panicked. “Like, do you even think he’d ever be happy ever again? And then that’d make me feel sad, and—oh, gods. Zasp is gonna die, too.”

“Everyone’s fine. Zasp is fine. Nobody’s dying,” Leif sighed.

“I’m not dumb,” she mumbled. “I saw him.”

“Uh-huh, and as you saw, he’s fine,” Leif insisted.

“No. I saw him before everyone else found him,” she explained. “He was in my hiding spot. Uh, I guess it’s not my spot, but I used to go there to skip work. Just a tiny little alcove. Whatever. He was there. And he wasn’t fine.”

“He’s fine now,” Leif said.

“Won’t be for long if he keeps choking to death on his own magic,” Vi grumbled.

“Er, okay,” Leif murmured, “let’s not think about that right now.” That wasn’t something he necessarily wanted to think about, either.

“You brought it up, genius,” Vi growled, wiping her eyes. “What do I do?”

“You don’t need to do anything,” Leif told her. “You’re not able to control what happens. You have to accept it’s out of your control.”

“N-no,” Vi shook her head, “what do I do to not feel so miserable? I’m so scared. Every time I close my eyes I see y-you, and you’re not okay, and I just remember what it looked like. It’s so vivid in my mind.”

Leif’s antennae twitched in curiosity. “What what looked like?”

“It,” Vi said, covering her eyes like a bright light was blinding her. “Th-the cordyceps. When we were in H.B.’s lab. I saw part of you…disappear. You—like, uh, the cordyceps—were out, and…your own ice made y-you shrivel up. I saw it.” She lowered her hands, now stained with tears. “It was only a little bit of you, but it was so”—she interrupted herself with a sharp gasp—“so scary, and I keep fucking seeing it. I keep replaying it in my head even though it makes me feel sick. I just keep thinking that’s what’s gonna happen to the rest of you.”

Leif’s heart dropped. There was no easy solution to that, was there? He didn’t have an excuse to spin that sight into something other than horrifying. Even his own foggy memory of it made him break out in a sweat. He couldn’t imagine how much worse it was for Vi, watching it all happen, having no way of helping.

“And you’re gonna forget me, aren’t you?” Vi whispered before Leif could say anything. “And I know, I know, it’s not the recent memories you’re forgetting, but…I’m just scared, okay?”

Leif again had no answer to that. All he could offer was the only solution he knew. “Would a hug help?”

Vi rolled her eyes with an exaggerated scoff, but after a brief moment she nodded meekly, shuffling up to Leif and wrapping her little arms around Leif in a tight hug. It was a bit embarrassing when Leif picked her up like a child so they could be at eye level, but she could ignore the humiliation enough to appreciate the steady pressure of Leif’s hug. Icy tears clouded his eyes, spilling onto Vi’s fuzz. Oh, he needed this. Seeing Vi in such a state hurt, but there was an unmistakable air of relief to her that Leif shared.

“I’m just making you upset, aren’t I?” she mumbled, lightly shivering from the cold. “This isn’t fair. You shouldn’t—you shouldn’t h-have to be comforting me when you’re the one who’s hurt.”

“You’re hurting, too,” Leif told her, holding her tighter. “We’re both hurting. That’s why we have to be here for each other.”

“You’re hurting more,” Vi sniffed. “You have actual p-problems, but I’m just complaining over nothing. I’m only hurting ‘cause you are. It’s just stupid.”

“That’s not true,” Leif assured her. “You have a big heart. We can tell. And it’s hurting just as badly as ours.”

“It’s not fair,” Vi insisted. “I’m not trying to be so selfish, I’m really not. I’m sorry. You’re hurting more than I am, but I’m m-making it all about myself by being so dramatic about everything.”

“You’re not being dramatic,” Leif said. “And, goodness, it’s not a competition. You don’t have to be more miserable than us for it to count.”

“I know,” Vi sniffled. “I—I know that’s true logically, but my head is still telling me that if you’re miserable, then I gotta be miserable too. And maybe if I make myself sad, you won’t feel your sadness as strongly. It’s…dumb. I know it’s dumb, but I gotta try it or I won’t be able to feel right. I’ll feel too guilty.”

“Don’t. We want you to be happy. Seeing you be miserable won’t make us any happier.”

“But—”

“No buts.”

Vi fell quiet, barring the occasional sniffle and stifled hiccup. She buried her face in Leif’s soft neck fluff, nuzzling against him. “Sorry for being such a loose cannon,” she finally mumbled. “I’ve been all over the place today.”

Leif chuckled softly. “Don’t worry about it. Get some rest, okay? All these strong emotions have to be wearing you out.”

“Mhm,” Vi hummed, relaxing her shoulders. Within what felt like seconds, she dozed off, contently snuggled against him in a show of friendship. The last thing Leif expected to feel was sorrow, but the sensation of Vi dozing against his shoulder left an emptiness in his chest. An emptiness where his own kid should be. His kid that he never even got to meet.

He laid Vi down in her bunk, trying not to focus on just how badly he craved that father-child connection that was stolen from him, the kind of connection that Vi couldn’t replace.

Maybe it was better that way. Maybe it would have just been worse to have not just Muse torn away from him, but his child, too. So he told himself, anyway.

Chompy woke up, skittering over to him and jumping in his lap, nuzzling him. After such an emotionally taxing day—gods, how many times has he been saying that lately?—it was nice to not have to think. Vi was asleep, Chompy was snuggling up with him, Kabbu was hopefully not worrying himself sick…

Leif smiled. He didn’t know why, but he did. It felt strange to let his normally stoic face show emotion—happiness, at that—but…for now, he would allow it.

Chapter Text

A sweet taste flooded Leif’s parched mouth as he took a slow sip of warm tea, savoring how nice it felt against his freezing throat. The steamy mug felt amazing against his claws, too, as if the stinging pain that had been suffocating them for so long was finally letting up and he could breathe again. Actually, he’d noticed that wrapping himself in his wings was an easy way to lessen the soreness and internal tension he otherwise couldn’t find any relief from. It still hurt, his chest still felt so tight sometimes that he felt as if he couldn’t breathe even when he was getting plenty of air, but wrapping himself up loosened up that pressure just enough for him to be able to close his eyes and for once feel as through his body wasn’t actively destroying itself.

Leif had forgotten just how nice these peaceful nights were. It felt like forever since he’d spent an evening without some sort of issue cropping up, and having a moment to just breathe and make himself some tea was a luxury he didn’t know he was so badly craving. So much so that, even as he was looking through the team’s first aid kit—rummaging would be a better way of putting it, considering how poor of a job Vi had done organizing everything—and patching up his most recent batch of wounds, he didn’t even think about how he got them or the implications it came with. The thought eventually came back, of course, as there was no real  chance of ignoring it all entirely, and when it inevitably hit him he felt the all too familiar distress, but there was something reassuring about knowing he’d went nearly an hour without thinking about it. It sounded like a pathetic accomplishment when he thought about it for too long, but pathetic or not, he clung to the hope that one hour of peace could lead to two, and three, and more and more until he felt normal again.

That hope was slippery. Hard to believe for more than a few minutes at a time. The momentary catharsis lead to doubt which led to more worrying. But quiet moments like this made pushing through worth it. Prying the window open, he let the crisp night air flow against his face. It was a beautiful night, he had to admit. Chilly, but not cold. Just enough lingering warmth to make his stinging shell be at peace.  A splash of clouds, violet in the darkness, slightly illuminated by the silvery glow of the full moon, drifted across the sky. If moths could still fly, he’d go up there for himself to try to touch the stars. They didn’t seem too far.

Leif had to laugh a little at just how intently he found himself staring. He—Leif, when he was just Leif and not Leif and it—had never been one for admiring the natural beauty of things. Muse was. She’d always drag him outside to stargaze, and of course he’d agree, but he’d spend the night with his head down and lying against her lap, his claws reaching up and braiding and unbraiding her fluff over and over, staring at the reflection of the moon in her eyes instead of the sky itself. The memories were blurry, as they all were, but he vaguely remembered once trying to spin it as something romantic—“you’re more beautiful than any sky could be,” something corny like that that made him cringe to look back on—and Muse just laughed, seeing right through him and jokingly telling him he was too cynical. But not before rewarding him with a flurry of kisses.

He was too cynical, he supposed, which made it all the more ironic he in his current worn down, traumatized state could suddenly appreciate what he couldn’t before. The cordyceps hadn’t seen the sky for…decades? From the moment it was created to when it escaped, all it had seen was the harsh fluorescent, unnatural lights shone in its face by a group of huddled roaches. It loved seeing the real world outside of the lab it was confined to. For the first few nights after it had awoken, it spent sleepless nights staring up at the sky with eyes that always felt wider and paler than usual, soaking in every detail for reasons he didn’t at the time understand. All he knew was that it felt freeing to know that there was a world out there outside the confines of a freezing stone room, and that there were these dazzling lights when he looked up, and not the suffocating sight of a lid being placed over him in hopes he’d suffocate and die out. And Leif so badly wished Muse was still there so they could watch the skies together. He would do anything to appreciate what he couldn’t appreciate before with her by his side. She may actually prefer stargazing with this “newer” iteration of Leif rather than how he was before.

No. No, that was a selfish thing to think. His insides contracted and the cordyceps squirmed at the thought in guilt. Comparing itself to Leif was cruel enough already, let alone assuming in any way that it could ever be better than him, or, most sickeningly of all, more lovable, even if in the smallest regard. It would never be Leif, it would never be as good as Leif, and it would most of all never be as dear to Muse as Leif. It couldn’t even remember her face. Leif would never forget, but it had. It wasn’t Leif. It knew that. 

But it still wanted to stargaze. It still wanted to make Muse happy, even if she was long gone.

Leif grabbed the painting Jaune had made him and ran his claws along the thin grooves of the canvas, tracing every brush stroke that made up the rough image of Muse’s face. Or, what might be her face. What it could have been, or could have not been, but was all Leif was left with regardless of whether the face he was putting his own to was the same woman he’d adored so deeply. He propped her up against the windowsill, facing her towards the sky as if she could truly see through the painting. Even if he wasn’t the Moth he used to be, he still craved this connection that he’d never been able to appreciate before.

Maybe he wasn’t truly, completely Leif, but maybe he didn’t…have to be. Maybe he wasn’t more or less lovable, but instead the same. He’d spent so long boxing himself into the categories of either worse or better than he was before that he hadn’t considered the very real possibility that he was neither. As addicting as it was to beat himself up and treat himself like a monster in order to protect himself from having to face the truth of what had happened, a part of him knew deep down it wasn’t true. He’d labeled that part selfish and unworthy and any and all awful things that could deem it invalid, but he’d never been able to dispute what that part was saying aside from sticking tacking insults on it and ignoring it. 

Kabbu had told him once that what happened to him was neither morally wrong nor right—was it wrong of the roaches to do such a thing to him? Yes. But was it his fault? No, not really. It was just something that had happened. And maybe the same applied to his worth as a bug—he wasn’t worth any more or less after what had happened, he just was, and if Muse were still here, she wouldn’t be labeling him as “worse” or ‘better” for something as petty as whether or not he liked watching the skies with her. Would she like doing so with him? Probably. Was he wrong for not doing it before, or wrong for wanting to do it now? He didn’t think so. He wasn’t exactly Leif, but he wasn’t any worse or better than how Leif was before. He just…was. And from what he remembered about Muse, she would see it the same way.

He stared up at the night sky, watching a cloud slowly drift over the moon and darkening the sky. He closed his eyes as the sky grew darker, trying to think as objectively as possible.

Muse would love stargazing with him. She would love for him to be as interested in doing so as she was. And that wasn’t a good or bad thing. A fuzzy warmth spread through his chest at the though. Because, if she would love stargazing with him, then surely she would love him for other reasons, too. And if it took something as simple as him liking the way the sky looked at night for him to believe that, then so be it. Muse would love him like this. He tried his hardest to push down the “maybes” that he was so tempted to add onto that. It wasn’t that maybe Muse would still love him, or that maybe she wouldn’t be mad at him, she still loved him, she wouldn’t be mad, and it felt so gross to think such things, but it felt even more gross to tell himself she wouldn’t love him.

And that hurt. It was less painful to try to convince himself she didn’t love him anymore than accept that wherever she was, she still did, and missed him just as much as he missed her, regardless of what had happened to him.

Leif was thankful for the noisy creaking of the bunkbed for distracting him from his rapidly spiraling thoughts. “Mffgh.” A groggy buzz emitted from under the pile of blankets on the top bunk “What time is it?” Vi grumbled. Yanking herself free of the blankets she’d somehow managed to completely entangle herself in within the span of her nap, she squinted as if expecting the afternoon sun to greet her, but was instead met with the dim light of the full moon. The sensation of the cool night breeze wafting through the open window brushed against her fuzz, slightly stiff with dried tears. 

Leif quickly wiped his own eyes clean of tears with his wings. “Evening,” he said vaguely, watching as Vi jumped from the top bunk, clumsily crashing to the ground—she had to be doing that just for the sake of doing it, right? She knew how to fly—and dusting herself off. “Geez, Leif, I can see that,” She huffed, running her antennae through her claws. “When in the evening?”

“Probably ten or so,” Leif guessed. “Not terribly late. For you, at least. It’s amazing how much energy is packed into a tiny thing like you.”

“We need a clock in here,” Vi loudly interrupted, immediately shutting the door on the topic of her height. “ I can’t even count the amount of times we’ve been late for something because someone is insisting we have enough time.”

“That someone is usually you,” Leif pointed out. 

“Duh! Course it is,” she laughed. “But I’d like to know how late we are, at least. Whatever.” She rubbed her face, stretching her eyes and cheeks back as she yawned. “Venus, I hate it when this happens. My sleep schedule is gonna be messed up for days.”

“Is it not already?” Leif joked. It was meant as nothing more than a lighthearted jab at Vi’s tendency to be prowling around the house in the dead of night doing who knows what, but her face darkened, her shoulders sinking down and the bags under her eyes looking all the more prominent.  “I guess. I haven’t really been able to sleep right recently. I have these…” In spite of the exhausted dread on her face, she laughed a bit. “Well, they’re really dumb if I try to explain them out loud. But these really vivid dreams are waking me up, and—and I know they’re not real. I don’t even feel scared afterwards, and that’s the worst part. I’m just all sweaty and weirded out. It’d be a lot easier to garner sympathy if I was waking up screaming and crying and not just covered in sweat.”

Venus, it was like hearing someone read his own thoughts aloud. He and Vi were more similar than he thought—she just had the brashness to say those thoughts out loud. “We get that.” Leif gestured for her to sit next to him. “Come here. The fresh air will do you some good.” Vi immediately obliged, sitting next to Leif with her stinger a bit too close to him for his comfort. but after a moment grew a little embarrassed at her apparent desperation and hopped up onto the windowsill, perching like a vulture over Leif. 

“I had this really vivid dream,” she began, antennae twitching in thought, “that you, uh, were dead? More dead than you already are, if you get what I’m saying. You were there at first, but you were acting all weird and confused, and then you just stopped showing up and I somehow knew you were dead even if nobody ever really said it. And the whole thing was so dumb, but, I don’t know, I guess I start worrying sometimes that it wasn’t a dream and you really did just forget about me.” Leif waited for her to continue, but she fell silent, deflating in a small, squeaky sigh. “Cause if this right now is all a dream, I’m gonna be really upset when I wake up and realize you aren’t here.”

“It’s…tricky to try to disprove something like that,” Leif said cautiously, “but we can assure you we’re real. If this was a dream, we wouldn’t be able to feel you breathing on our neck.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Vi rolled her eyes, not picking up on Leif’s hint for her to not be so close to him. “It’s not true. Like, logically, I know this is real. I just get all worked up sometimes.” She nervously tapped her claws against the windowsill, leaning her head back and staring at the night sky with as much enthusiasm as Leif had back when Muse was around. “Never got to tell you the rest of my dream. That was the good part. Mothiva was there, like, we were in some kinda crazy looking city, and she had the biggest snout I’ve ever seen. Imagine a mosquito’s nose but it was her entire face. It looked so stupid, and I told her something like, ‘you look like a’—well, I actually don’t remember what I said, but she got pissed. Like, Mothiva levels of pissed, and she grabbed me by the collar and pressed her big ol’ snout against my face. It like, was so long it was folding up against itself and it looked so funny. That’s when I woke up.”

“You have a rich inner life, Vi,” Leif deadpanned.

“Yeah, I know,” she said, cracking a grin. Her enthusiasm quickly faded, and she adopted a much more stressed demeanor. “I’m just kinda pissed ‘cause I thought…I dunno, that I’d be over it by now? I thought I’d gotten it all out of my system, but nope. Still freaked out. Still keep dreaming about you dying.” While her tone was causal and lighthearted as usual, there was a distinct hint of fear in her eyes that Leif immediately recognized. He’d seen the same look on his own face every time he’d walked past his reflection these last few days—not quite terror, not quite exhaustion, but an awful mix of the two that said so much without saying anything at all: “When will this be over? Why is this still happening? Why am I not over this yet?”

“This is the hard part,” Leif admitted, grabbing the painting from the windowsill so Vi didn’t knock it over. “You say it all out loud, you think you’ve gotten all the emotions out, and then when you can think straight again you realize everything’s the same and it’s not magically better.” Vi deflated, disappointed by the answer but nodding solemnly.

“So then, now what?” Vi asked, clenching her fists. “I’m just supposed to live like this? Go through every day knowing someday everyone’s gonna die someday?”

“Yes,” Leif said curtly. 

Vi stared at him with an incredulous, almost offended look. She narrowed her eyes, her voice growing noticeably strained. “What am I supposed to do about it then, huh? Just be miserable for the rest of my life? Have dreams every night about everyone dying?”

Leif held his arms out, cocking his head to the side. “We’re right here, Vi. Not dead. You can always come to us when you’re scared.”

Vi scoffed, crossing her arms in a childish pout. “Ugh, don’t be so…ugh.”

“Sorry, we’ll go back to being cold and sarcastic.”

“No!” Vi groaned, begrudgingly flinging herself into his arms. “Don’t be so annoying, just..,uh…”

Leif wrapped his wings around her. “Oh, don’t worry. We’ll make sure you look extra cool and self sufficient whenever you make a public appearance next.”

“Good,” she grumbled, hugging him as tight as possible to make sure he was really truly there and not splitting in half in a burst of withering fungus. “I just—Leif, what am I gonna do when you’re gone? I can’t stop thinking about it, and I know we already talked about this, b-but nothing ever seems like a good enough answer to me. I’m not ready to deal with that right now.”

“You don’t have to. You won’t have to worry about that for a long time,” Leif assured her, rubbing her back. “As long as we’re still breathing, we’re fine.”

“This doesn’t feel fine,” Vi sniffled. “I feel awful. I wish I could just…freeze time right now and keep everything like this. I’m perfectly happy the way I am now.”

Leif let out a rueful laugh. “That’s just a normal part of being your age, we’re afraid. It’d be stranger to us if you didn’t feel that way. We thought the same thing. But, well, it’s just not possible, and things turned out okay, anyway. If we refused to let things change and just stayed as an angsty rebellious teenager, we wouldn’t have ever met Muse. Or you, or Kabbu, or anyone who we ended up loving.”

Vi pinched her face in deep thought. Leif braced himself for whatever existential question she would have for him, preparing to worm his way out of having to answer a question he didn’t have a good response to. Instead she squinted her eyes, syncing her breathing with his, and slowly said, “I just can’t picture you as a rebellious teenager.”

Leif snorted, sending him into a rough coughing fit. “I’m serious!” Vi scolded, but her wings were twitching in the way they always did when she was holding back laughter. “Did you get a red streak in your fluff or something? Jaune did, I thought it was so cool. In retrospect it just looked like someone spilled berry juice on her.”

“No, no, we didn’t get a red streak in our fluff,” Leif said, smoothing down the scruffy fuzz on her head. 

“Oh. That’s a letdown.”

“It was blue, not red.”

“What?” Vi shrieked, shooting up and getting right in Leif’s face. “What? What?” Sure enough, she started hysterically laughing. “Let me see! Let me see a picture! Come on!”

“V-Vi,” Leif laughed, trying to push her down so she wasn’t screaming directly in his face, “we don’t have a picture, there were no cameras back then.”

“Oh.” Vi sat back, disappointed.

“So very sorry to disappoint. That’s precisely why it’s best for time to keep going forward,” Leif nodded wisely, patting her head. “Aren’t you glad we have cameras now so we can capture our most embarrassing moments?”

“Don’t turn this into a life lesson,” Vi glared. “Now that’s,” she added, leaning back against Leif, “something worth remembering. You should get Jaune to paint that next.”

“Maybe,” Leif shrugged. He didn’t actually hate the idea, as embarrassing as it was. It was just as important to preserve the old Leif in all his cringy glory than it was to preserve everyone else. “We’d rather get a portrait of our parents done first. But by all means, you can ask her to paint our worst moments. We’re sure she’d get right on that. You probably get a family discount, or something. Or at least first priority.”

“Nah, we think she’d rather paint your ideas first. She’s a real sap behind that scowl.” Vi grabbed the painting of Muse, staring intently at it. Leif wanted to tell her to put it down, don’t touch it, leave it be, but he let her look, tilting it at every angle to get a good look at every last detail. It was difficult to let these two parts of his life intermingle with one another, but he let it happen. Treating Muse like someone who mustn’t be discussed would help nothing, nor would treating his current teammates like a cheap replacement of her. If he was going to accept that he was Leif, he would need to accept that his past didn’t exist in a bubble.

“Is this what Muse actually looked like?” Vi asked. “She does look a heck of a lot like Muze.”

“We assume that’s what she looked like. We can’t really remember,” Leif shrugged. “We trust that Jaune has good judgment of how to interpret our description.”

“Oh yeah, definitely,” Vi nodded. “Her drawings of anything other than bees were kinda awful a few years ago, but she’s gotten a lot better. I’ll warn you, though, if you don’t give her a good enough description, she’ll take a lot of creative liberties when painting moths. I seriously thought moths were, like, 90% fluff for years. You should’ve seen how disappointed we were when a real moth came to the hive for the first time and she wasn’t a literal ball of fluff. I think Jaune might’ve cried a little,”

Leif smiled a little. There was something so endearing about these tangents Vi would find herself in. “Well, we don’t mind a bit of extra fluff. Our mother was a tolype moth.”

“Never heard of that,” Vi said flippantly. She crossed her arms, resting her head against Leif’s chest and calming her erratic breathing by matching Leif’s pace. “You don’t talk about your parents a lot,” Vi said quietly. “I mean, I guess you do, but you never seem really sad about them. Compared to Muse, at least.”

Leif drew in a deep breath, hoping his voice didn’t sound too shaky. That was a question he’d never really wanted to be asked, not because he couldn’t answer it, but because he knew why all too well. And the answer wasn’t too comforting for Vi to hear. “We are sad. But, it’s just, you know…well, they were already gone a little before we were. So, we guess it just wasn’t as much of a shock when we woke up to them being gone, because they were…they were already gone before we’d died, And we’d already gotten over the worst of the mourning. It still hurt, but…it wasn’t a sudden shock like the others.”

“Oh.” Vi’s antennae drooped as she gnawed at the inside of her cheek, suddenly very embarrassed for asking such a probing question. Leif could feel her breathing pick up again, her heart rate skyrocketing into a frenzy. He slowed his own breathing in an effort to get Vi to calm herself, but she continued to fall into a panic. “Venus, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Gods, how come everything I say is the wrong thing? You couldn’t have been that old when you died, right? How did you—how did you—how’d you handle all that when you were so—”

“Deep breaths,” Leif whispered, wrapping her in his wings. “It’s okay to think about these kind of things, but don’t stress yourself sick over it. Focus on the moment.”

“I’m trying,” Vi whined, hiccuping. “I’m trying so hard, but the moment—the moment is just as awful as the things I’m imagining. Everything is just so confusing right now, and every time I think I’m feeling better, I just feel awful again, and—“

“Let’s not talk about bad things anymore, okay?” Leif suggested. “It’s late, you’re tired. Nobody can think straight when they’re so tired,”

Vi drummed her fingers along the thin canvas, her sharp claws looking as if they may rip Muse’s face right out. Leif’s heart skipped a beat every time he thought her claws may snag the canvas, threatening to tear Muse away from him yet again. “Are you okay?” She asked timidly. “I’m sorry, I know I’m being such a pain right now, but I’m just…”

“Hm? What’s the problem?”

Vi closed her eyes, but tears still managed to creep through. “I just wanna see you be happy again,” Vi sniffled. “I feel like you—no, like, everyone—has been so miserable lately, and it’s just making everything so difficult. I don’t miss living in the hive, but the real world is a lot worse than I thought it’d be.”

“Oh, Vi, sweetheart, we are happy,” Leif whispered. “We’ve been feeling a lot better these last few days now that we’re thinking more clearly about everything. It’s gonna be an adjustment, but change doesn’t always have to be a bad thing, does it? Even if it’s not easy at first.”

“I don’t care about your stupid magic,” Vi grumbled. “I mean, no, I do care. Obviously I do. But I can live without having you toss me around in a ball of ice, you know? It’s just that, in general, everything seems really awful sometimes. Adventuring is fun until instead of fighting giant monsters you’re watching a buncha wars happen or you’re in the deadlands surrounded by dead bodies. That’s the one thing I miss about the hive. Everything was a heck of a lot easier to understand. It was good or bad, life or death, none of this nuance. I hated living there, but it’s a lot easier to swallow life when it’s sanitized for ya.”

“Believe us, we know,” Leif huffed. “We were never in a hive, but Venus, it would be a lot easier to comprehend life if it wasn’t so complicated. It’d be a lot easier for us to have a concrete opinion on Elizant II if she was the evil dictator we thought she was. And a lot easier if the wasps were the heartless monsters we were raised to think they were.”

“Has the world always been this sucky?” Vi asked it so bluntly but with such sincerity that Leif had to laugh.

“Pretty much. You just kinda have to learn to be happy regardless. We know you’re at that stage where you think nobody could ever understand you, but we were thinking the same exact thing when we were your age,” Leif shrugged. “‘Oh, the wasps and the bees are fighting again, is the world ever going to be okay?’ And our parents would tell us how they were asking the same question when they were young. We think the answer might just be no, as depressing as it sounds. But you don’t have to let it keep you down, right?”

“I guess,” Vi mumbled.

“Vi, listen. If there’s one thing we know for sure about you, it’s that you run off spite,” Leif told her. “You don’t let anyone tell you what to think or feel. So, go ahead. Keep being happy out of spite of the universe. We’ll do the same.”

“Okay,” she said softly after a long pause. “It’s not really that simple, but I’ll try.” Her wings buzzed behind her in a soft, contented drone. “Are you actually happy?” She asked.

Leif had to think about that. About Muse, about his parents, about everyone and everything he missed so badly, and everything he had—and was losing—now. It was a tricky question, especially when his emotions were still as turbulent as they were. But when he had such a cozy home, a pet chomper sleeping a few feet away, two teammates who meant the world to him, and a second chance at life he thought he’d never get, only one answer seemed fair.

“Yes,” he said after a long pause, “yes, we are.”

Vi seemed to relax down to her very core. Leif couldn’t tell if it was out of relief that he wasn’t as miserable as she was fretting he was, or because it gave her the confidence that if Leif could go through such turmoil and still find the good in things, she could, too. Maybe a mix of both, maybe neither, but whatever the reason, it was nice to finally have her relaxed and calm after such a stressful stretch of time.

Momentarily, at least. Vi was still Vi, after all, and this much affection was clearly getting on her nerves. She bolted upright, closed the window while muttering something about it being too cold, marched with crossed arms back to the bunkbed and gave Leif a very curt “goodnight” as she crawled back into her little “den”, as she called it.  Leif supposed he should be doing the same, soon. As long as morning didn’t come with a fresh batch of problems, he had a quick trip he wanted to make now that his body was feeling a bit better. He wasn’t completely recovered, and he had a feeling the lingering soreness and fatigue and occasional stabs of pain would never go away, but as long as he felt as decent as he ever could, he badly needed to spend some time with his family.

Tucking the painting of Muse under his wings, he hopped up into the middle bunk—Kabbu had asked on innumerable occasions if Leif would prefer the bottom bunk so he didn’t have to make the effort to get in at night, but the one time they’d tried that set up it was a disaster that ended with Kabbu having to be “rescued’ by Vi because he quickly realized he couldn’t get down—and laid down for the night, the canvas pressed tightly against his heart, hungry for her presence. He would hang it up properly tomorrow. Sometime. Eventually. Maybe he could put it on the wall by his bed, or next to the trophy shelf where the team stored all the assorted knickknacks they’d accumulated over the months. Though, putting Muse’s gentle face next to something as foreboding as the Wasp King’s crown felt a little unnatural. He’d rather they didn’t have the crown out on display at all after the time Vi jokingly put it on to see what would happen, and promptly got summoned to the Wasp Kingdom to be given a very, very stern talking to about not ever using it again. It still worked, apparently. It probably wasn’t too funny for the wasps, and Kabbu was rightfully horrified and spewing out apologies at a rate Leif didn’t know was possible, but Vi’s petrified face admittedly cracked Leif up a bit. 

He really was genuinely happy, wasn’t he? Even if it took those dumb memories to make him realize it? It felt weird to admit sometimes, like he was betraying Muse in some way by living a happy life without her. But she would want him to be happy, surely. And she was watching over him, wherever she was. He was certain of it.

Hopefully.

A rush of cold night air blew in as the door hesitantly creaked open, stinging Leif’s face. A beady white eye peeked through the crack, sweeping the dark room, searching for any sign of his two teammates. When he deemed the path clear, Kabbu crept inside as quietly as a bug as naturally noisy as him could, looking almost comical as he tiptoed around, setting a bag down in slow motion, careful not to wake his sleeping friends. Or, so he thought. Vi’s snores were a dead giveaway that she was already fast asleep, but Leif was still wide awake, watching Kabbu like a hawk. 

“Hey,” he whispered.

Leif swore Kabbu nearly jumped out of his shell. “Sweet Venus!” Kabbu cried, clutching his chest like he was having an actual heart attack. “By the queen, Leif, you scared the daylights out of me.

“As intended,” Leif said drily, slipping out of bed to make sure Kabbu didn’t literally fall over from shock. “Had a good time with Neo, we assume? It’s unlike you to be out so late.”

“Oh, yes,” Kabbu beamed, shaking his head to rid himself of the last few moments of shock. “I can’t say we did anything particularly exciting other than me listening to him talk for hours, but that’s plenty interesting to me. Now that the Wasp Kingdom has been allowing outsiders in again, he’s been able to do research there he’s been itching to get done all his life.”

“Cool,” Leif said.

“Very,” Kabbu nodded. “He also mentioned to me he was hoping to be given some of the old mechanics of the Hive elevator once they begin deconstruction. It’s a very old structure. Even if it doesn’t have any particular points of interest, it’s still very interesting to have.”

Leif’s heart skipped a beat. That’d better not mean what Leif thought it meant. Thankfully, he doubted Kabbu could see the look of pure disappointment and frustration on his face in the dark. “They’re renovating the elevator? What for?” He knew the answer, unfortunately. He could practically say the words in his head before Kabbu spoke them.

“It’s an old structure. Not up to date with current Bee Kingdom technology. And, well, they still have to be given the go on the new project, but they’re hoping to replace it with something more functional. This one will be powered by electricity, I hear.”

Damn it. Leif sighed, wanting nothing more than to bang his head against the wall in defeat. 

“Great,” Leif said stiffly, not at all enthusiastic sounding. “Wonderful.” As lowly as he thought of Mothiva, he had a hunch this wasn’t something she was too eager for, either. She was probably the one keeping them from officiating the project’s beginning, if he had to guess. He could only pray she had it in her to pitch enough of a fit to get everyone involved to get their head out of the clouds. He had no doubt she could be annoying enough to do so.

“Yes, it is certainly a needed upgrade.” After an awkward silence, Kabbu cleared his throat and asked in a lower tone, “is Vi, ah…is she doing okay? She was really, er…unstable when I last spoke with her.”

“Oh, Vi,” Leif drawled, crossing his arms and leaning back. “We talked things out. We don’t think she’s angry anymore. She’s all tuckered out now, though.”

“Oh, thank Venus,” Kabbu sighed. “I knew you two would be able to work things out. I was worried for a while there that this would tear the team apart. I know it’s ridiculous, but—“

“Emotions are running high,” Leif shrugged, interrupting him. He didn’t need to hear the rest. And he didn’t want to think about arguments tearing people apart any more than he already had. “We don’t blame her for being so angry with us. She hasn’t been handling things too well. Nasty mix of everything we’ve been going through and normal teenage angst. She’s…very worried about us, even if we keep insisting we’re fine now and we’re going to make sure it stays that way. She’s just a…tiny little fuzzball of stress, and it’s making her really angry.”

“Oh, poor thing,” Kabbu frowned, whispering in case Vi was somehow awake and listening in. She’d detest being spoken about like that. “It can’t be easy, can it? Even if nothing bad will happen, it must be such a shock to her system to go from feeling invincible to realizing…well, nobody is. Have you been able to talk her through things?”

“To the best of our abilities.” Leif briefly glanced up at the bed to ensure there wasn’t an antenna peeking out of the sheets like a periscope, eavesdropping on him. “We think we talked her through the worst of it, but just a few basic words won’t fix everything. We might’ve made things worse, in some regards. She was really upset. Crying herself asleep into our chest kind of upset.”

“Poor thing,” Kabbu repeated. “I’ve never really heard her cry before recently. I think she might’ve been, when I found her with Jaune earlier, but I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable by asking. She seemed cranky enough already. Is she feeling better now? Should I try to talk to her about it in the morning, or is it best to just let her be?”

“Maybe. We think she’s still really worried about what happened to you with your friends happening to her. But for now…just let her be. She finally calmed down enough to get some sleep, we think she could use a break from worrying. We certainly could.”

“Yes, that would be…quite the relief for everyone. Is everything okay with you, though?” Kabbu asked. “I was so concerned for Vi I forgot to ask.”

“We are…not terrible, actually,” Leif said. “We’ve been feeling a bit better. Not perfect, but…well, we do not want to be too presumptuous, but maybe we can start figuring out where to go from here, soon.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Kabbu said, his tone much less worried than before. “Very good. Don’t hesitate to ask me if you need anything, okay? Ah, wait, I actually have something that might be able to help. Might.” Before Leif could ask, Kabbu began rummaging through the bags he dragged in, producing a clump of something such a screaming red it seemed it was glowing in the dark. “Erm, when I was leaving Neo’s, Team Mothiva stopped me to give me something for you. Here you go.” He handed Leif a pair of gloves with what Leif could only assume to be Mothiva’s brand logo tenderly stitched in the corner of each.

Leif’s mind went completely blank. Any previous concerns he had about Zasp’s wellbeing went right out the window. He was, more than anything else, extremely confused. “What?” He asked incredulously, furrowing his eyes and looking down at the gloves like they might detonate.

“Well, it was more so Zasp, but Mothiva was there too, I guess,” Kabbu explained. “She didn’t really say anything, she just thrust it into my hands and went off to go lurk in the distance.”

“No, like, what is it? Just…gloves? And why?”

“Oh. It’s some of Mothiva’s clothing line, I think. A few pairs of gloves and a scarf or two, I think,” Kabbu said. Leif immediately rolled his eyes, but let Kabbu finish. “I think one of the scarves is handmade. Zasp told me that he wears scarves and gloves when he gets cold because the cold makes him feel sick, and he and Mothiva thought that maybe if you were able to stay comfortable, you might feel a little bit better? I’m not sure if it’ll actually help with anything, but the thought is very sweet, isn’t it?”

Leif sighed. Okay, fine, maybe it was. It was hard to ignore the glaring implications of the elevator being remodeled, and even harder to get the mental image of Zasp struggling to breathe as electricity ravaged his body, but as dumb as might be, Leif felt a childish excitement at being given a gift. Even if it was something he’d ordinarily never want anywhere near him. He pinched the fine fabric of the gloves between his claws, inspecting them closely. Aside from the unnaturally bright coloring, they were rather nice. High quality, soft, made with attention to detail and not something mass produced on a whim. Huh. Well, he wasn’t too surprised Mothiva put the effort in to make her things nice. She was a total jerk, but she had standards. He pulled the gloves on, immediately finding himself liking them more than he probably should have. The smooth velvet inside felt great against his stinging shell, and while they weren’t a perfect fit—he had a hunch they must’ve been Zasp’s old pair, because the fingers were just a bit too long for his hands and they were a bit worn out—they were certainly warm. 

“Cool,” Leif muttered, stretching out his claws. It was probably just a placebo, but the constant tingling soreness in his hands that he honestly thought was normal suddenly felt a little more at ease once his hands were enveloped in warmth.

“I think Zasp said you might feel a bit more energetic if you’re not cold all the time?” Kabbu said cautiously, careful to get his words exactly right. “He told me he thinks you’re like the giant cold structure in the deadlands. Something like that.” 

Leif blinked at Kabbu, trying to hold back a laugh. “He said it better than that,” Kabbu shook his head, rubbing the fatigue from his eyes. “His theory is that, because cold makes people tired, maybe because you’re constantly cold, you’re constantly tired. So he thought maybe putting on some warm clothes could help. Especially once winter comes around.”

“Not a terrible idea. Though we’re sure turning us into a walking advertisement for Mothiva’s merch is another incentive,” Leif joked. 

“Oh, I’m sure their intentions are pure,” Kabbu assured him, not picking up on the sarcasm. He grabbed a knitted scarf of a much more tasteful color from the bag, handing it to Leif. “This one isn’t even branded, it’s just something Zasp made in his spare time. I’m sure if they wanted you to be a walking billboard, they’d make sure to slap the logo everywhere they could.”

Leif fiddled with the scarf, poking his claws through the small holes. Somehow it seemed both completely in character and totally out of character for Zasp to be casually knitting soft pink scarves in his spare time. Yeah, he could picture that. Needles were his choice of weapon, made sense he’d…Leif didn’t know, pick up arts and crafts involving needles? “Sweet,” Leif said as dry as ever, though he was genuinely thankful. “How do we even use this, do we just”—he tied it around his neck in a tight knot, his face growing flush from the restriction—“like this? This isn’t very comfortable.”

“L-Leif, no,” Kabbu fretted, quickly reachig up and untying the scarf from his throat. “No, absolutely not like that!”

“Oh. It’s quite warm, though,” Leif choked. “We aren’t one for clothes, but this is nice. Makes our throat not feel as tight. Very soothing. Ten out of ten. Woo-hoo.” Kabbu gave him a funny look. “Sorry, we’re really tired right now. Our brain isn’t working.”

“Yes, I can tell,” Kabbu smiled, “I am too. We can talk more in the morning.”

Leif swiftly turned around and crawled back in bed, nuzzling under the covers. “We’re washing these the second we get the chance,” Leif said matter-of-factly, tearing off the gloves and slowly unwrapping the scarf as to not accidentally strangle himself again. He attempted to toss them back in the bag, but he couldn’t see too well in the dark and ended up flinging them at Kabbu. “No offense to Zasp, but these still smell like wasp pheromones.”

“That’s probably a good idea. I noticed that,” Kabbu admitted, putting the scarf to his face and making a weird face at the strong, sickly sweet smell. “I’ll wash them in the morning for you. He doesn’t smell…bad…but I can’t help but correlate that smell with how it was in the Wasp Kingdom. You probably don’t want to be wearing things that smell like wasp distress signals. Worst case scenario, you get swarmed.”

Leif heaved a deep sigh. So that’s why he was able to recognize that cloying scent, able to correlate it with feelings of anxiety and fear. That’s what it was. Distress signals. Great. It wasn’t a promising sign that Zasp’s clothes literally smelled like stress and warnings that danger was nearby. All Leif could really do was hope that Mothiva could somehow get through to him, but he had a gut feeling it wouldn’t be as easy as her just telling him to stop. Self destructive habits were remarkably good at sticking around no matter what anyone did or said,  “We’d be stressed if we were him, too,” is all Leif said, turning on his side to go to sleep. He heard the low tones of Kabbu saying something further, but his tired mind couldn’t comprehend any of it, and before he could ask Kabbu to repeat himself, he was fast asleep.

Leif woke up rather abruptly to the sound of Vi tumbling out of bed and onto the floor. Given her sharp yelp and awkward landing position, it probably wasn’t on purpose that time. “By the goddesses!” Kabbu cried, dashing across the room to help Vi up. Only adding to the overall absurdity of this early morning altercation, Kabbu’s arms were dripping wet, something Vi wasn’t too happy to figure out when she pawed at him, trying to get up. She cursed under her breath, rubbing her sore knee and ignoring Kabbu’s desperate tirade about how they need to install some sort of barrier, Vi’s legs are going to pay dearly for this in the future, how this was the third time that month. Was it? Huh. Leif must have slept through the other two times.

“Ugh. May as well have breakfast now that I’m up,” Vi grumbled, dusting herself off. She caught Leif’s gaze, giving him an inscrutable, groggy look. “Didn’t mean to wake you up, sleeping beauty.”

“It is not a problem,” Leif said calmly, prying the blankets off of himself. Venus, was it cold that morning. Colder than usual. He could feel the cordyceps growing rigid within him, wrapping tightly around his muscles and suffocating him in a dull, constant soreness. Maybe Zasp had the right idea in staying warm. 

“You’re both having breakfast?” Kabbu asked, eyes widening as he intently watched Vi hop onto her chair, perching on the edge like always.

“Uh, yeah?” Vi said, cracking open—much to Leif’s disgust and horror—a Mega Rush, taking a swig and immediately perking up. He could never understand how she was fine with dumping that much sugar into herself first thing in the morning.

“Is one of us not supposed to?” Leif asked, cocking an eyebrow as he began boiling water over the stove with one hand and rummaging through the cabinets for the leftover leaf omelet he was sure they still had with the other.

“No, no!” Kabbu said, frantically shaking his hands—thusly getting water droplets everywhere—and doing a nervous run in place. “That’s a good thing! It’s felt like so long since we’ve all been together as a team…”

“It’s only been a few days,” Vi scoffed, swirling her drink around to get the stubborn clumps of sugar to dissolve. “But, uh, I guess you’re right. I haven’t really been too…” her antennae drooped, and she pursed her lips shut tightly. “I’m sorry for being so mean to you two. It’s, uh…I’m…you know. My bad. Whoops.”

Kabbu wrung his hands around a towel, a sympathetic smile crossing his face. “You are forgiven. It’s been a rough time for all of us.”

“Yeah. What he said.” Leif slammed the cabinets shut once finding the omelet he was searching for, unwrapping it and biting off half in one mouthful. “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Vi huffed, suddenly very embarrassed. “As long as I’m not as bitchy as Mothiva, I’m calling myself good. I’m like, a saint compared to her. Not a high bar, though.”

Before Kabbu could reprimand her for her crass language, he tilted his head to the side in thought. “Ah, that’s what it was I was going to say.” He dipped his hands into a soapy basin placed in the sink, wringing out a stretch of fabric that, unfortunately, was of high enough quality to not lose any of its vivid coloring while being washed. Kabbu slung it over a nearby rack, wiping his claws on his sides to dry them. “I made sure to wash those for you, Leif. Not everything’s done yet, but I’ve got a pair of gloves and the scarf washed and dried. I tossed them next to your bed for you.”

“The heck are you two talking about?” Vi asked, antennae twitching and face scrunching in confusion. Well, that was a good sign that she hadn’t been listening in on Leif and Kabbu’s late night discussion about her. Before she could be given an answer, she marched right over to Leif’s bedside, crouched down to look at the neatly folded up clothes, and let out an exaggerated “Ew!”, no doubt having had seen the Mothiva brand logo.

“Now, now, Vi,” Kabbu scolded her, claws on his hips, “that was a very thoughtful gift from them. Goodness, if they were as bad as you’d like to think they are, they wouldn’t have bothered to try to help Leif at all, now, would they?”

Vi picked up one of the gloves, pinching the slightest amount of stray fibers with the tips of her claws to touch as little of it as possible. “Not sure how this would help anything. Gods, it’d just make me feel worse, actually.”

“Ah, shut up,” Leif said, his monotonous tone making him sound a bit more aggressive and less jovial than intended. “Better than always having frostbite on our hands. We dunno how well they actually work, but they’re at least a little cozy. Gimmus.”

“Gimmus?”

“Plural equivalent of gimme. Surely, you should know this.”

Vi rolled her eyes and handed him the gloves, but refused to hand over the scarf, instead shoving it in her face and taking a whiff with her antennae. “And what’s this? Some kinda factory reject?”

“Nah, that’s handmade. Zasp gave it to us,” Leif explained, pulling the gloves on and relishing in the immediate comfort. Venus, he hadn’t realized just how badly he needed temperature regulation. The pain was still there, but it was much easier to ignore when he wasn’t freezing.

“Oh.” Vi cleared her throat, tugging at the scarf and holding it out in front of herself. She looked behind her nervously as if Zasp may materialize out of thin air and crush her skull in for insulting his handiwork. “Uh, in that case, it’s not too bad.” She wrapped it around herself, contently sitting back down and, hopefully, if what Kabbu had said about washing them was true, not getting wasp distress pheromones all over her fuzz. “Not the worst thing in the world. Besides, it’s been getting kinda cold out. And, I mean, we’re not really supporting their business by wearing these, right? If anything, they’re losing money cause we got it for free. Yeah. Get fucked.”

“Whatever makes you feel better, sweetheart,” Leif deadpanned, grabbing the now-boiling water and pouring it into a mug, slipping in a spicy-tea bag. “Maybe it’s just in our head, but we do actually feel a bit better when we have these on.”

“It makes some sense, doesn’t it?” Kabbu said, sitting down with his teammates. “If the cordyceps is in pain because it’s too cold—”

“Or too hot,” Leif interjected. “We can’t stand the desert heat.”

“—Er, right, or too hot, it makes sense that keeping warm will give the cordyceps a comfortable environment to live in.”

Vi perked up, nibbling at the scarf around her neck in nervous anticipation. “Wait, so you’re all better now? That’s all it took? Wait, can we go back to fighting, now—“

“No,” Leif said firmly. “We’re still in a lot of pain. Sorry. We have to take it easy on ourselves or we might get hurt again. Or maybe die.”

Any and all playfulness drained from Vi in a second. Leif knew saying that last part would be a bad idea, but it slipped out anyway. “Oh. I mean, yeah, makes sense. I don’t want you to…I dunno, get any worse or lose any more memories.”

Leif bit his tongue. He didn’t have the heart to tell Vi that, even if he took as best care of himself as possible, there was really no restoring those old memories. “We probably won’t be able to do any more battling for…ever,” he admitted, feeling just as torn up about it as Vi. “It is a bummer. But we’d rather not take that risk.”

“Understandable,” Kabbu nodded. “There’s no shame in that. Taking care of yourself is more important.”

“But what if something like the wasp king happens again?” Vi burst. “Like, some big world-ending threat that would be a lot easier to handle with a wizard on our team.”

“We’ll still be on the team, won’t we? Though we will certainly miss,” Leif began, taking a slow sip of his tea and silently cringing as Vi took another swig of her energy drink, “fighting alongside you two. It’s a shame we can’t finish all of the bounties we were hoping to, but we’re certain you two can manage on your own. We will be…the most exhilarated cheerleader from the sidelines.”

“We need to do that,” Vi announced, slamming her tin can down hard enough to crumple the bottom. “We need to get you pom-poms. I guarantee you Zasp has some, we can place a bet on that or something. He seems like the type to just have them around for some godforsaken reason, right? And we need to teach you how to do stupid dances. I’m gonna kick ass twice as hard if I have an old man cheering me on while doing dumb poses.”

“I would find that…very distracting,” Kabbu admitted. He clasped his hands together, an idea popping into his head. “Oh, but Leif, you don’t have to stay by the sidelines, do you? You have a variety of other skills that don’t involve ice.”

“Oh, yeah!” Vi piped enthusiastically, though she seemed a bit disappointed that her pompom idea was already being shafted. “You can do the whole bubble shield thing, yeah? And boost our attack, our defense, stuff like that,” she listed, tapping each claw as she counted. “‘Kay, scratch the cheerleader idea, let’s really get that shielding skill down. But we can’t use it too much, that’ll make things boring. I could use some cool looking scars!”

Leif blew a sigh of relief. There was the Vi he was used to. He didn’t doubt she was still grappling with those heavy thoughts, weighing her down and causing her too much stress for her young mind to handle, but it was so, so relieving to hear her say such brash things again. “We’ll see. It all depends on how much energy those take to use. It should be fine, if we’re not using any ice, but again, we’d rather not push our luck.”

“Yeah, well, that, or,” Vi said said quickly, slamming the table, “I teach you the art of the beemerang. I can probably convince Dr. Honeycomb to get me another one now that I’m, like, a total hero.”

“Would it even be a beemerang if we used it?” Leif asked. “Wouldn’t it be a…moth…erang? A motherang?”

“Mushroomerang?” Kabbu suggested, instantly looking embarrassed and mildly ashamed for making a stupid pun out of such a touchy subject.

“Oh, yeah,” Leif nodded, unfazed by Kabbu’s potentially upsetting joke. “Mushroomerang. That’s a lot better than motherang. Well, we’ll consider it. Either way, we’re flattered that you’re willing to share your secret knowledge of the art of the beemerang with us. That’s very nice of you.”

“I can’t tell if that’s sarcasm or not, but I’ll take the compliment anyway!” Vi burst, buzzing up a few feet off the ground. “Well, I think I’m gonna explode if I don’t start moving immediately! What’s the plan for today, huh?”

Leif and Kabbu exchanged a look. On one hand, it was nice for Vi to be somewhat back to her regular self. On the other, her regular self definitely had a sugar dependency they needed to address. “I don’t know. I’d prefer to spend the day at home, if I’m being honest…”

“We, uh, we have something we’d like to do, actually,” Leif spoke up. Vi looked at him expectantly, making him feel a little embarrassed. “Uh, we were hoping to briefly visit our family today. We want to see if they have any information on Muse, or if she…dunno. Maybe have a photo of her.”

“Not a bad idea,” Vi said, thinking it over. “Yeah, I’m down!

“I wasn’t planning on doing anything today, but I’m more than willing to accompany you, if you—”

“No,” Leif said rigidly, pursing his mouth shut tightly. “No, we were hoping to go alone, actually. This is kind of, uh, personal to us. No offense.”

“Oh, no, I understand completely,” Kabbu said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “By all means, take some time for yourself. I think it will do you some good to spend some quiet time with your family.” Vi nodded along, but her face was ripe with skepticism. No, not skepticism. Concern would be more accurate. The same look of nervous acceptance Leif had the faintest memory of seeing on Muse’s face every time he left for a particularly risky expedition.

“You can come with us, Vi,” Leif recommended. “Well, we’d prefer to talk to our family alone, but you’re welcome to walk us over. Make sure we get there safe, and all.”

“Pssh, are you serious? What could possibly happen on a five minute walk?” The pink scarf brought up to her mouth really accentuated the embarrassed blush spreading over her cheeks. Ah. Leif would have a to a bit less…direct, when it came to making sure Vi wasn’t worried about him. He did promise to make sure she kept up her cool and tough public image, didn’t he? “But, eh, I mean, may as well,” Vi said, shrugging nonchalantly. “Got nothing better to do.”

“Great. We really shouldn’t take too long. Admittedly, the chances of them having a photo is slim. We don’t know when cameras were invented, but we can’t imagine it was very long before Muse died. We’re hopeful, though—if somehow someone in the family got their hands on a camera before she died, we guarantee she’d be all over it. She seems like she’d be a… ‘photobomber,’ as this generation puts it.”

“See, that’s the spirit!” Vi piped. “Just tell me when you’re going!”

“Relax a little,” Leif sighed. “We’re old and slow, have a little mercy on us.”

“That’s one way to say you’re a procrastinator.”

Leif rolled his eyes, cracking a small smile.  Please. He wasn’t a procrastinator. It wasn’t a lie to say he was old and slow, that was unequivocally the truth.

It just so happened that, alongside being old and slow, he was absolutely terrified.

As dumb as of an idea Leif was certain bringing Vi along for the walk was, it turned out to be, embarrassingly enough, a bit of a blessing. The second Leif walked up to the front door and raised his hand to knock, he had second thoughts, and swiftly turned on his heel and walked off. He probably wouldn’t have bothered at all if not for Vi being his personal wingman.

“Come on, Leif!” Vi urged him, shoving him back toward the door the best her lanky little arms could. “What’s the worst that could happen? They don’t have a picture? You won’t know if ya don’t ask!”

“The worst that could happen is that they do have a picture, and they—and we—and I get so scared that I come out of Leif, and we get exposed for being the freak we are, and—” Leif stammered out under his breath.

“Don’t be so negative, Leif!” Vi cried. “Besides, I think Tod would find that cool and not scary.”

“This isn’t just about him, nor does cool negate the weirdness.”

“Oh, shut it. It’s not like you to be this nervous.”

Leif swallowed hard. Vi was right, he supposed, though he had every right to be skittish. Intruding on their life was hard enough, but pressing them on a bug they realistically probably knew nothing about in hopes of finding some sense of closure was even worse. Not because he was afraid of rejection as he was before, no, but because a part of him was absolutely terrified of Muse, everything she represented to him, every unknown about her. And the idea of confronting that fear and finding closure felt more nerve wracking than exciting. In a sense, he didn’t want closure. He didn’t want to be able to know once and for all what had happened to Muse, because that would mean saying goodbye and truly, wholeheartedly accepting that she was gone, and worst of all, that she had loved him. 

Leif hesitantly knocked on the door. Vi scurried off, satisfied now that her job of shoving Leif around was complete. After a moment of bloodcurdling silence, Muze answered the door, greeting Leif with a warm hug that Leif struggled to return. That was just another way she was like Muse, wasn’t it?—always such a hugger, and Leif would always get nervous and be unable to hug her back. Some things haven’t changed at all, he guessed.

“Oh, Leif, come inside,” she said, ushering him. “It’s just me and Grandpa home today. Tod’s started school this week, so you won’t be seeing much of him unless you drop by in the evenings.”

“Mhm,” Leif hummed. Another benefit of the gloves was that he wasn’t constantly shredding his palms with his claws when he got stressed. “That’s alright. Works well enough for us. Uh, we have a…strange question.”

“Shoot.”

Venus, he already wasn’t sure what to say. Should he be direct? Sort of hint at what he wanted and hope she picked up on it? Why did talking always have to feel like a game he wasn’t told the rules of? He drew in a deep breath, hoping his initial question wasn’t too much at once. “Do you have any…old photographs?”

“Of? Muze asked.

“Uh, our…” What would Muse be if he was one of Muze’s uncles? His grandmother? The longer he stayed silent, the weirder this all seemed. “…Grandmother? Or some relative from around that time…”

Muze nodded, slightly frowning. Leif prayed he didn’t say the wrong thing. “I can see what we’ve got. We have a lot of pictures from recently, but I don’t know about that long ago.”

“It’s fine if you don’t,” Leif muttered, tapping his foot nervously. “Cameras aren’t very…” He was going to say old, but, no, to Muze’s generation they probably would be fairly standard fare. “They weren’t very common that far back. They probably weren’t made until she was a bit older.”

“Yes,” Muze agreed, “but that doesn’t mean we don’t have any pictures. We have an old album in the attic, maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for.” She led Leif upstairs, briefly peeking her head into Grandpa’s room and asking if he knew of any old photos she didn’t. He didn’t, but he was more than willing to share a lifetimes worth of old family anecdotes. Anecdotes that made Leif sick to hear, anecdotes that made his shell run colder than it already was and his breathing grow quick and nervous.

“You want a picture of Grandma?” He asked Leif, climbing into the attic. “I don’t remember if we’ve got one. It’ll be a real treat if we do, though—she was a real sweet lady. A bit camera shy, though.”

“Pretty shy in general, if I’m remembering her right,” Muze added. “I didn’t see a lot of her as a kid.”

What? That didn’t seem right. Please don’t be talking about Muse. Please. Please. It couldn’t be Muse, surely. She was anything but shy.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say shy,” Grandpa joked, “she could be real fiery if you got to know her. I’d say she was more reclusive than anything.”

Leif gripped the stair railing tighter to make sure he didn’t fall. He just wanted to run away. This was too much to handle. They weren’t talking about his Muse. This was all going too fast.

“I wish she’d lived long enough for me to be able to know her better,” Muze said wistfully. “I don’t remember much about her.”

Leif followed the pair into the attic, wishing his heart would stop beating so fast.

Grandpa chuckled. “Oh, she was a dead ringer for you, sweetheart. The moment you came out of your cocoon we knew who we were naming you after.”

Leif genuinely thought for a moment he might throw up. He sank to the floor, suddenly feeling too weak to stand or even sit up. He rested his cheek against the dusty floor, willing his breakfast to stay down.

“Leif?” Muze asked, eyes knit in worry. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Leif muttered, forcing himself to sit up and not immediately burst into tears. He didn’t know why he was so upset, but he was. There was something so viscerally gutting about hearing Muse talked about by others, especially in the past tense, and especially in the context of her being called reclusive. No, she wasn’t. They were talking about someone else. “Stairs kill our back. We’re all good, though.”

“Oh, don’t I know it! These stairs get steeper every year, I swear.” Grandpa said. “Here, the album should be in this box over here. Feel free to take a look.”

Leif stared at him blankly, unable to speak. He still felt faint. So, so faint, and the idea of opening up that book and seeing all those bugs that were his descendants who he never met might just tip him over the edge. But he had to know. He walked over to the box, gripped the book, hoping the shaking in his claws wasn’t too obvious, leafing through the pages of unfamiliar faces, and—

And he jolted. One face stuck out from all the others. It was in just one photo, in the background, blurry, half covered and uncolored, but it was enough to send an agonizing pain through his chest.

That was her. That was his Muse. Looking so much older and tired than he’d ever remembered her looking, but undoubtedly her, and just as beautiful and radiant as she’d ever been. Even with the lack of color, he could see just how bright she still was. She looked happy. Maybe. It was hard to tell with the picture quality, but Leif thought he could tract a smile on her face. Her claws were over her eyes, obscuring most of her face, her head tilted slightly down as if trying to hide away from the camera as much as possible. But it was her. He had no doubt in his mind that that was her.

She didn’t look real. It was as if Muse had been nothing more than a vague memory in his head for so long, that the realization that she was real and that all of that had actually happened…well, it hurt. It didn’t make any sense. She wasn’t…she was…how…

Leif’s head hurt. He slammed the book shut, unable to look at herfor a second longer. He wasn’t ready for this. He should have prepared himself. Why didn’t he prepare himself? From the sliver of her face he could she, she looked almost exactly like how Jaune had portrayed her, with some slight differences and hints of beauty Jaune would never be able to capture in a brushstroke. He felt sick. He felt so, so sick. This wasn’t the relief he was hoping for. Only one word managed to escape his lips. “Muse?” He said it so faintly it was more of a hoarse whisper.

“Yes, her name was Muse,” Grandpa nodded. “With an S, though, not a Z.”

“What do you mean, she was reclusive?” Leif asked faintly. He knew asking such a strange question would only draw suspicion his way, but he didn’t care. “She wasn’t…reclusive. Our Muse wasn’t reclusive. What…happened?”

“Oh, that’s…” Grandpa became just as despondent as Leif. “That’s something we weren’t allowed to talk about around her. A bit of an open secret in the family, I guess. She…lost her husband in a scouting accident when she was expecting. Very suddenly. He went to investigate one of the nearby caves and he never came back.”

“Snakemouth Den, I think,” Muze said quietly. “Is that right? I remember when I heard your team name I thought, um, how bittersweet it was that someone in the family finally conquered that place, when her husband never could.”

Grandpa nodded. “She had a hard time finding peace again after that. She would always go back there and wait for him to come back, but he never did. Peer into the cave and sing to him in case he was still there. She always held onto a little bit of hope that he was still alive, because they never found his body. So she thought maybe he was still there, waiting for her.”

Oh—That was all Leif would had to say: oh. A simple, sympathetic oh to show he was listening, and he could leave and never think about this again. He just had to say one word and he would be okay. But his breath hitched in his throat, his guts clenched, and instead of simply saying “oh,” he burst into tears.

He was immediately swarmed with somewhat confused reassurances, hesitant pats on the back that from touch alone he could tell were ripe with confusion. In their eyes, he had no reason to be reacting this strongly. Maybe a slight melancholy would be normal—it was a sad story, certainly—but doubling over in fits of sobbing wasn’t the expected reaction, and it showed on their faces. But how could he react any other way? How could he keep himself regulated when he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, he had ruined Muse’s life? Stripped her of her feistiness and turned her into a husk of who she once was? He had no doubts in his mind about whether or not she loved him or not—she didn’t. She wouldn’t after what he did to her by getting himself killed and leaving her all alone. It wasn’t about whether or not she’d forget the cordyceps for stealing her husband, anymore. Regardless of what it did, it would have hated him anyway. And he just couldn’t deal with that.

“It’s all our fault,” Leif cried, trying in vain to dab away the stinging tears that were quickly ripping apart his flesh. “It’s—it’s—we ruined her. We broke her. We made her so—s-so sad all the time. We didn’t mean to, we promise. We’re sorry.”

“Leif, how is any of that your fault?” Muze asked, wiping away his tears with her wings. She seemed unfazed by the ice crystals embedded within his tears. “You weren’t alive when any of that happened. Sweetheart, that was decades ago.”

Leif shook his head. He couldn’t get himself to explain any of what had happened, but he was too weak to keep up the act of being just another random relative. Not when Muse’s face was fresh in his mind, taunting him with its beauty. “Our fault,” he sobbed, hiding his face in his wings and curling in on himself in case the cordyceps tried to make itself known. Thank Venus Tod wasn’t home. He didn’t know what he’d do if he had to keep a straight face in front of him. “We shouldn’t have ever”—he gasped for breath, hyperventilating from the sobs—“ever g-gone on that stupid t-trip. I’m such a freak. We’re so s-stupid for thinking that she’d still love us after all that. Why did we th-think there was a chance?”

“Goodness, what are you saying?” Grandpa asked, trying to help him up. “Muze is right. You weren’t alive for that. Don’t worry yourself sick over what happened in the past. Muse is at peace now, surely. She’s with her husband again.”

Leif felt dizzy. “No, she’s not!” He screamed into his wings. “We’re not—she’s not—we’re still not with her! We’re still here! We wish we were with her, but”—he wiped his eyes, the gloves thankfully keeping his palms from getting burnt from the cold tears—“we’re not. We’re here.”

“Leif, you—” Grandpa paused, staring intently at Leif. “Leif,” he repeated under his breath. Why? Out of confusion? Or did he recognize the name? Leif prayed he didn’t, but the look on his face suggested he was making the connection between this pathetic, sniveling moth in front of him, and the moth he was barred from speaking about.

Leif wiped his eyes, propping himself up on his elbow and staring back at Muze’s father just as intensely. He couldn’t imagine he looked all too friendly with his antennae plastered backwards in distress and his eyes paler then ever, glazed over with ice. “Wh-what? What do you want?” 

“Are you…?”

Leif nodded, frozen tears cutting lines in the dust on his cheek. He wasn’t surprised that his lie was being called out. He honestly wasn’t. He could tell from the start that he wasn’t fully believed. But it was easier to sell a ridiculous lie when the truth was even more ridiculous. “We know we’re a liar. Please don’t be mad at us. Or scared. We don’t want to have to explain. It’s too much. Please just tell us that Muse still loves us. Please?”

“Father, what is…” Muze stammered, mouth agape. She turned her attention to Leif, staring at him in what he hoped wasn’t horror. “How are you still here?” She whispered to him. “How?”

Leif stood up, backing himself into the corner against a stack of boxes, blinking back tears. “We don’t want to tell you!” He cried. “You’ll be scared of us. We’re…unnatural, can’t you tell? We’re not ready to explain, it’s already…so, so confusing for us. Can you just—we just want to know if Muse loves us. You weren’t supposed to know any of this, we just wanted to make sure Muse wasn’t mad at us anymore, but it sounds like she was, and we just…can’t…we didn’t mean to die. We never meant to hurt her like that. And we never meant to come back, either.”

Before Leif could say anything more, Muze pulled him into a hug. Her father did the same. And, as always, Leif was too scared to move. He hid his face in their shoulders. “Did Muse still love us? Did she love Leif? Did she ever forgive us?”

“She never stopped loving you,” Grandpa assured him. “And she was never mad at you. She loved you more than I can even describe. She wanted to be buried in Snakemouth Den when she died. It was too dangerous to do such a thing, but Venus, Leif, she wanted to be with you forever. She didn’t hate you at all.”

“Okay,” is all Leif could muster the energy to say. If he wasn’t being hugged so tightly, he was certain he would be falling to the ground. This was too much. This was all too much. The shame of letting such personal secrets slip in a moment of weakness was almost unbearable. He had to let himself trust them for now. Trust that, yes, Muse did love him, and no, she wasn’t mad at him. He let out a deep, shuddery sigh, finally feeling just a tiny bit more at ease. 

“We’re sorry,” he repeated, voice trembling. “This is weird. This is really weird.”

Grandpa laughed. “Actually, it was weirder when I thought I had a brother I’d somehow forgotten about. None of this was ever exactly normal. But why does weird have to mean bad, or scary, or whatever it is you think this is?”

“We dunno. Okay,” Leif repeated. “We just feel so bad for her. We feel bad for…living a life without her. We never meant to abandon her, we promise. This wasn’t ever supposed to happen, I’m a…mistake.”

“I don’t know how you’re here, or why you’re here, or…anything,” Muze said timidly, “but if I know anything about Muse, it’s that she’d want you to be happy, even if she isn’t here. That’s the best you can do right now, right?”

“Do you really think that?” Leif mumbled. “Would she really be okay with us even if we’re different, now?”

“Well, I’m okay with it,” Muze said. “I’m confused, but I’m okay with it. You’re family, no matter who you are. And Father seems to be okay with it. Why wouldn’t Muse be?”

“You don’t understand,” Leif sniffled, wiping his face with his elbow. “You don’t understand what we are.”

“You can tell us,” Grandpa said. “You can explain it to us, and maybe then we’ll understand.”

Leif shook his head. “No. Not yet. We’ll explain later. We can’t think about it right now.” He crossed his arms to his chest, eyes downcast as he struggled to think of what else to say. “Can we have the picture of her?”

“Of course,” Muze nodded, crouching down to get the album and slipping the picture with Muse out. “It’s all yours.”

“Thank you,” Leif said under his breath, keeping the picture close against his chest and under his wings until he was ready to look at it again. This time, it was Leif who brought them into a hug. “And thank you for not…not being mad at us for lying.”

“We have no reason to be mad,” Muze’s father assured him. “Though, I’d like an explanation. I think we deserve that much.”

“Uh-huh. L-later. We can’t right now. Everything’s still spinning.”

“Oh, of course not right now,” Muze said. “Go home and be with Muse for a while. I’m sure you’ve missed her.”

Leif nodded. His heart was still beating too fast, his cheeks stung from tears, but he couldn’t help but smile. He had missed Muse. Dearly. And it hurt him so deeply to know how torn apart she’d been over his death, but he let himself hold onto the hope that what Muze was was right, and that she would want nothing more than for him to be happy.

The walk home felt like a blur. Maybe Vi tried to start some casual conversation, but if she had, Leif didn’t notice. His mind was in an entirely different place. He only really snapped out of his stupor when he walked in the door and was greeted with the sharp stabbing sensation of Chompy nibbling at his ankle. When he caught Kabbu’s eye, he attempted to give a small smile, but his face refused to cooperate. It wasn’t that he was unhappy. He really wasn’t. He was just…overwhelmed, too much to be able to push through with a smile. “We got a picture of her,” Leif said weakly, holding up the photograph before quickly tucking it under his wings again to keep it safe.

Kabbu didn’t say anything. Maybe he picked up on how hoarse Leif’s voice sounded, or how his cheeks were still raw from icy tears, but whatever the reason, he drew Leif in for a hug. Vi quickly followed suit, tackling them both to the ground in what was probably meant to be a show of affection.

None of them said anything, which was admittedly a welcome relief for Leif. He didn’t have the words to describe how he was feeling or what had happened. He just wanted to stay like this, on the floor, snuggled up with his teammates.

Leif had the vague thought that maybe he didn’t have to bother not using his ice magic. Maybe he could let it destroy himself, and he could be, as Muze’s father had assumed he was, back with Muse. But as much as the idea was alluring in its gruesomeness, Leif couldn’t bear the idea of leaving this life behind. It hurt sometimes, both physically and emotionally, but he was happy, as strange as it felt to admit that to himself. When he first woke up in snakemouth den and stepped out into the world and came to the harrowing realization he’d lost everything he’d ever had, he was so sure he would never be happy again that he never even let himself consider the possibility of finding joy again. But somehow, he had. It felt now more than ever that life was trying to rip that joy away from him again, punishing him for daring to be happy by stealing his memories and his ability to fight, but the warmth of genuine happiness persisted even though the pain. He didn’t want to risk leaving this life behind just to be able to perceive himself as useful. 

Kabbu’s head drooped against Leif’s shoulder. There was an air to him much lighter than before, much less tense. His sharp chitin against Leif’s shell wasn’t particularly comfortable, but the steady pressure of him being there made up for it. Vi snuggled up further in his arms, buzzing contently, not bothering to stop herself from expressing affection. Affection that stemmed from him being there at all. As hard as it was to convince himself of such a thing when he, they, it had been created solely to be useful, he was worth something outside of his perceived value. The fact it had fought against its intended purpose was proof enough of that.

Neither Vi nor Kabbu loved him because he was a sorcerer, but because he was Leif. And as impossible as it felt to let go of such a big part of himself, he didn’t have to go through it alone. It would never not hurt, it would never be easy, but that didn’t mean he had to push everyone away and get through it on his own.

And while he was still in pain, still in the throes of mourning everything and everyone he had lost in the blink of an eye, still shrouded in doubt and confusion over the very fact he was standing here today, breathing, not suffocating in a web, Leif was happy. And he wouldn’t let anything or anyone rip that away from him again. 

Especially not himself.