heisrisen | 29. stray

[Public video, backdated to September 23]

[The video is from the lab. Barbara and Iris can be seen a few feet behind, scrutinizing a monitor; Mal is visible, prone, on an examination chair, looks a little haggard, maybe dozing. The Emperor looks a wreck. A very composed wreck, clothes clean and hair passable, reclining in his own exam chair, but a wreck nonetheless. He has deep shadows under his eyes, his gaze loses focus, trails about, then jitters and darts, his jaw clenching as he tries to get his attention on track. The camera frame actually shakes slightly, hand trembling as he holds it. He flicks his eyes back to Iris and Babs once, as though to confirm they're occupied, but doesn't bother whispering. His voice is raspy, physiologically strained.]

Listen. Listen. There's going -

[A fit of coughing; brief but violent.]

There's going to be a door. Don't go through it. Don't go near it. Don't - don't be arrogant contrarian divas for once in your lives, and take my word for it. All of our -

[He jerks his head to indicate Babs and Iris, a little wildly.]

They did the work. Rigorous. It was falling apart, but now it's not, the other - the hell barge. It ate us. It killed us, and ate us, and put us back together from its - ichor, and the door is the maw. I'm not - mad. I am appropriately mad. I'm unraveling, but I'm right.

[The camera is shaking a little harder now, and Babs comes over, gently pries it from him. He makes a soft wounded noise, looks lost, before she turns the camera away from him and onto herself.]

He is right. Everyone who went through the door, or was seized by it, has displayed similar symptoms each time we approached the other barge, and everyone who let us analyze them shows evidence of the mirror barge itself woven into them. Normally it lies dormant, but right now it is using that connection to drag us back.

You don't want this to happen to you, and you don't want to strengthen that place. The door is usually found on deck, and very obvious. Stay clear.

[Spam for Sylvanas]

[After he's released from the lab - or before? Was he in the lab for something? He can't breathe, and he can't stop breathing. His vision swims and he stumbles, sags against a wall. No, a door. Something about -

- he jolts back to his feet, fear spiking, a jumble of adrenaline and invisible thorns. He wants to run, doesn't, walks with all the dizzy dignity he can manage, mouth dry, glancing behind him. The butcherman - no. He rubs the hem of his shirt between his fingers. There's a scar - belly, not lungs. So the butcher hasn't got him yet. No, it's something else.

He knows where to go. Not why, not what he's running from or whether he's alive or dead - neither seems quite right - but he knows where to go. The door is - the right door, not - wood, not steel, heavy and warm, handcarved, worn smooth but without chemical varnish. He traces the old mechanism of the latch, thinks of Çatalhöyük, the city built before doors. Intermediate history.

He thumps against the wood, whole-bodied, weary. He's safe here.]

[Private to Morgana]

[Raw, urgent, choking the words out before he forgets, scrawling make morgana leave on his arm so he can repeat it, if he has to.]

You're a warden. You can escape, you can - the planet I gave you for Christmas. Go. You should go there, if you can't go home yet. Tell the admiral to send you there. A month. A month should be enough?

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[He makes a noise in his throat, a rasping whine, his hands tightening on hers, clutching, clinging to the contact. Like the world is spinning and she's the only still point to hold on to.]

How. How. What's ours. What's ours? Me before I went through a all-purpose spectral meat grinder? Because that me isn't there. What it's taken burned. Coal. Damned. It's hell, isn't it? It burns.

What. Will you bring back in a shuttle?

[She might, if she could find anything. Tardis. But there are limits on that, too, with respect to the shuttle.]

Infiltration doesn't - it only - it doesn't matter if you're in, it doesn't fix the problem, we can't do it from there and we know because we've been there before!

Now you're just being daft, Emperor. 'Ow many times does every atom of you replace itself, over a lifetime? My great-grandma's axe is still 'er axe, no matter 'ow many times I replace the blade and the 'andle. You're still you once we sever the connection, and we will.

[She holds his hands with one of her own, gathers him into her arms with the other.]

We will fix this. Between Rex and the Joker and you, I probably know more nanite tech now than any bugger on either ship, and you'll 'ave two of me working from both ends. We are not chucking anyone overboard.

That's not the point. That's not. Of course I'm me. The point is you can't make white paint out of grey once the black's mixed in. You can't sever it. I know nanites, and they don't - they won't rebuilt us on that level, it's not the same, it's energy and essence and atoms, maybe this barge could but we can't risk more contamination -

And even if you could, it'll only get more while you, it won't stop, it won't stop -

Aslan.

[She holds him, holds him fiercely, and she takes hold of his hair to tip his head back to meet her eyes.

He's never told her his name. Iris knows it because the Grand Fairy, older than empires, knew it in his world; it's for this reason she uses it deliberately now.]

Do you need to ask if I'll hesitate? Once I'm sure that killing's the only answer?

I'm not sure yet. When I am - if I am, I'll do it meself.

[Trust me, she says with her touch, with her eyes, with every line of her face and body; she doesn't quite have the gall to say it aloud.]

Can you just sit tight a little longer? I swear to you I will not let it 'appen.

[A scientist believes in the evidence. And the evidence is - a knife, in his back, the memory vivid and raw. He makes a noise in his throat, high and harsh, animal, jerking his head, trying with no leverage to pull away.]

You won't let me free and you won't let me die amd you can't save me!

[If he had the strength for it, he'd be screaming.]

No, I won't let you die, you adorable ass.

[She holds him, lets him thrash against her, fills herself with thoughts of calm and how much she will always love him, despite himself and herself and everything they'll always disagree on. And her mind is racing with the work she's doing on the nanites - she got some of it from being a Rix, in that breach, and she shows him that too, because she disagreed with them as well, but it was beautiful being part of that, connected with Barbara cell-deep.

Because she will not allow the other barge to feed off him and no one knows better than Aslan does how far Iris will go when she's put her foot down, and she's putting it down here and now.]

And we bloody well can save you, you see if we don't.

29. stray

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