FIC: iconic conetl, dust 'em off

[xihe]

DUST ‘EM OFF (PUT 'EM BACK UP ON THE SHELF)

6TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEP
ICONIC CONETL: 10 SWEEPS / 21 YEARS OLD

six months prior to the detonation of the pidgin parlor

(14,181 words)

When you flee, there’s only one place that nobody would ever expect you to go.

You’ve rarely spent a lot of time in your hivestem, the past few sweeps. Why bother, when Raphae’s is so undeniably better? Your matesprit has got drones to clean it, heat running through the floors, and the sort of kitchen that’s large enough to keep three half-grown psionics fed through all of your molts. He’s got an entire floor to himself, with ceilings high enough that you can light into the air without even scraping your horns. The doorways are all large enough to fit your lusus through them, and there’s a private lift, straight from the lobby. It’s better, in every way, and after nearly four sweeps living there, it’s more your hive than his.

It’s your cozies strewn across the sofas. Your plushies are the ones nestled onto the beds, your porcelain kittens are on the coffee table, and it’s your ashtrays that cover every available surface. It’s your auspistice who sleeps in the spare room, and your moirail that sleeps in the enclade suite. Oh, Raphae has the master bedroom, but aside from his makeup cabinet and his gun cabinet, what in there’s actually his? It’s your colour that stains the walls, yellow so pale that it’s courting white.  The signs of Raphae’s touch rest like stains in the room: the drape of the black-out curtains over the windows, the purple hemming the bottom of each wall, and the faint smell of cat, clinging to every surface.

Everything always smells like cat, for a fellow who liked to keep his lusus outdoors.

Oh, Sipara lives there. So does Iphige, when she bothers to be around! But she’s hanging off of Shepherd’s arm more often than not, and Sipara knows who’s hive it is. Everyone does, by this point, and they keep their things to the backstage accordingly.

Except it’s not yours. And everything there is red.

This hivestem - nestled four blocks from the gate of the Kinnor campus, thin-walled and packed with enough lowbloods you can hear your neighbours breathing one block over - this is your hive, and it’s strange to walk back in, and realise exactly how much you’ve forgotten.

Raphae’s penthive looks like your home. This hivestem block looks like the memory of a home, maybe, at the very best! It looks like a snapshot of you back at seven sweeps, back when you’d thought painting the walls chalkboard black was the most brilliant idea you’d ever come across. You’d spent an night, and most of the day, painting all the walls. And then you’d spent what felt like half your stipend to decorate it in neon swirls and decorations.

There’s lists up on the walls, from the last day you’d been there. There’s ballet slippers on the counter - old, tattered, with yellow still dried on the tips. There’s a mug with the rim still entombed in sugar, and a dinosaur on the front, and a half-smoked pack of cigarettes next to it. Everything’s left just like you’d abandoned it, even down to the hoodie you’d tossed onto the floor.

You’d meant to wash it later! But you never quite got around to it. You’d never managed to sweep up the feathers on the floor, either, or fix the dent your lusus had left on the counter, or come back for your charger. The entire room, when you turn, feels like a list of things you’d left undone, that last night - but that was you, at age seven. Everything’d always felt a little undone.

You’d liked it that way, mostly.

When you breathe in, the air smells like dust, and birds, and there’s no traces of cats at all. The only colours here are your own pale yellow, and the sort of white on the stonework that comes from decades of sun exposure. It might be old, but it’s yours, from tip to bottom.

Almost. There is a glass on the counter. It’s shaped like a bear, round earred and soft-eyed, with the streaky yellow colour that comes from hand-painting. When you pick it up, the message’s still right there, just like you remember, back when you’d barely known your moirail’s kismesis as more than a name on a website:

ʕ(づ- ᴥ -)ʔづ

beary nice to meet you!

And he’d scribbled his name, raphae irrigo, in a wriggler’s heartfelt cursive across the bottom.

You bounce the mug in your hand, thoughtful, testing the weight of it, and then you hurl it hard against the wall.

A moment later, someone knocks on the door, crisp and loud as a gunshot in the freshly broken silence.

When you snatch the door open with your psi, Iphige doesn’t falter, or tip, or so much as flinch. She just looks at you. There’s moonlight streaming in from the window, dappling across her face, but there’s no expression there to illuminate. Is there ever? Your moirail’s like the walls scrubbed clean. Other trolls have expressions, but on her, all there is is ever solid black.

“Iconic,” she says, and her voice isn’t much better - “I have a proposition.” Then she pauses, casting her eyes across the room. For a moment, you can almost see it like she does: not a memory, but as an old, abandoned studio, with chalk on the floor and laundry strewn in a pile. She wrinkles her nose.

“Do you,” she says, delicate, “have any tea?”

---

12TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEP

ICONIC CONETL: 10 SWEEPS / 22 YEARS OLD

one minute prior to the detonation of the pidgin parlor

The second glass of tea feels like you’re drinking your own death.

The first glass had gone down like.. well, tea. But this one’s more honey than it is liquid, and it fights you all the way down, like taffy stretching through your throat. Unlike taffy, though, it breaks when you swallow, drops like a lead ball into your stomach, and you can feel when it explodes.

The impact has you doubling over. All around you, your telekinesis flickers. For a moment, you can feel fire licking at the walls, pulsing up against the threads of your psionics. It burns, worse than the shards in your gut, the electricity that’s ripping free of your mout hwith each breath out.

Then the honey kicks in, and your telekinesis flares, pulling it back in.

The apartment’s so bright. You can barely see through the red haze in your eyes: no shapes, only the barest outlines and impressions of the things around you, and you’re not sure if you’re seeing half of it, really, when it’s more that you can feel everything that your telekinesis touches. Your range’s farther than it should be, like this. You can feel every line in the wall, from the wires to the pipes to the pulse of gas running through them.

It’s so much. It’s too much, if you’re honest. It’s hot enough to see the lines of heat waving through the air, and it’s hot enough that everything is red.

When you were young, you used to enjoy watching the older trolls cook. Sitting down at Zambia’s counter, with your feet kicking at the ground, you’d brace your arms on the bar and your chin on your hands as she sliced open fruit and hollowed them out, so deft that she ought’ve been using psionics. Zambia’s rust, redder than Riccin, redder than even Sipara’s cherry-flushed cheeks, but she’d always favoured brighter fruits: mangoes, dragon-fruit, starfruit, bananas.

She’s two apartments below you right now. She’s cooking, like as not, because she’s always cooking, and if you close your eyes, you could almost imagine it’s her knife in your back, hollowing you out. But no: she’d never be this careless. It’s not a knife. It’s a thousand pricks of lightning, burrowing into your skin, ripping through everything they touch.

There’s a buzzing in your ears. It takes you a moment to realise that it’s you, your rattlereeds catching in something that can’t quite escape past the clatter of your teeth. There’s electricity in your body, pulsing through your veins, burning through you and leaving frayed wires behind in its path. Is this what it feels like to burn out, like an engine running on empty?

.. no.

No, goddamnit, you refuse.

The plan’s so simple. All you have to do is keep yourself from burning out, and keep the fire from touching you, when you pull the gas-line.

All you have to do is keep the fire away from you. It’s thermodynamics, Iphige had said. Or thermoreactions. Or thermonucleic syndromes - the thought won’t stick, no matter how much you try to wrestle it down. She’d said it, and you’d listened, but it’s gone, just like the moisture in your mouth, and the solidity of your hands. Your hands won’t stop fucking shaking.

You’re not going to let them shake.

You could die here. It’d be so easy to die here: just lay down in the heat and embrace it, so it solves all of your problems. If you’re dead, you can’t be helmed. If you’re dead, Iphige’s not your problem. If you’re dead, you’ll never lose control again, over any of this; not your life, not your moirail, not your psi, that’s trying to push out of you like the flames from this room.

It’ll all be done, and you won’t even have enough of a body left for them to carve open like a fruit. It’ll be sweeps and sweeps of work wasted, on Shepherd’s part. She’ll be furious. Will she blame Raphae? Of course she will. You can almost picture it. Poor, sloe-eyed Raphae, his head hung low, his ears bright with blood as his moirail - no, not a moirail, no more moirails than you and Iphige ever were - when his proctor lambasts him over your death.

He’ll probably be crying, even, the poor mess. You’ve seen Raphae cry, more times than you’d ever like to admit. It’s always been humiliating, for all that he doesn’t see it like that; the way that purple hangs off of his eyelashes, catches on his face, blotches up his nose. He cries like a pupa fresh out of a shell, but pupa’s, at least, have the courtesy to try to be dignified about it.

No, he’ll definitely be crying, and Shepherd’s never had even nearly the tolerance for it that you do. If he starts, she’ll blanche, her words will falter, and like a tree in a forest, the slightest push’ll make her give –

– and the thought of it all makes you laugh, the sound bursting from your lungs like a bird in the bush, and just like one, you startle back. The fire just barely skims your back, and then the laughter evaporates. You scream.

And, oh.

You’re not going to die here.

Dying fucking hurts. The pain cuts through the haze as if it was never there. It hurts, worse than anything you’ve ever felt before, and you’re not - it’s not - you’re not going to do it. You’re not giving anyone the satisfaction of finding your body, and if Raphae’s going to weep like this’s a tragedy, you’ll give him something to really cry about.

You have a plan. You’ve practiced your plan, over and over and over again, a thousand different times over the past six perigees with Iphige. And that’s what you have to remember. Machines don’t need to practice, but you aren’t one, and you have. Now.. all you need to do is stick to it. For all that Iphige’s a treacherous wretch, she helped you.

You don’t know if she ever expected you to survive this. But she helped you, and the least you can do is survive out of spite.

You take a breath. The air tastes like iron, and when you wipe at your eyes, more blood pools to replace it. It’s a little funny: in the heat of the room, your blood feels almost cold.

You reach out with your psionics, gather up the fire, and with most of your strength, give it a push.

You’re laughing again when the world turns white.

---

6TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEP

ICONIC CONETL: 10 SWEEPS / 21 YEARS OLD

six months prior to the detonation of the pidgin parlor

The day that you’d woken up from surgery with lightning in your back, you hadn’t waited for the anaesthesia to fail before you’d tried to rip Shepherd’s head clean off of her shoulders. It hadn’t worked. Your newly knitted skin had torn. Your nanny had lit up, harsher than you’d ever known it could go, and you’d lost consciousness before you’d even had time to admire the flash of pink on her skin.

The next time you’d woken up, it’d been to Iphige smoothing back the damp of your curls, reprimand in her eyes. “What did you think you were doing?” she’d asked.

She’d always been bad at comfort.

She doesn’t bother to try now.

“If they helm you, you’ll die,” she says, sliding into the rickety wooden chair in a splay of limbs. She spends hours and hours each night painting, until her skin’s sooty with the colours, but your moirail saves all of her elegance for her medium. In person, she always just looks clumsy, like yarn badly knit; there’s knots of tension splayed under her skin, tangled up in the threads of her muscles for so long they’re just a part of her system.

“Did you sleuth me up just to say that, Iphie?” Empress, you have to clean this kitchen. The drones took care of all the old food, at least! You know how that goes. Lopoda had been the first of you to be plucked up by a proctor in early Ascension, and they’d rounded up the lot of you in the communal lobby that same night, the contents of her pantries stacked up in piles for you to sort through. But that was only for the things with labels.

There’s still cans of food in here, suspiciously glossy despite the dust coating them. There’s plastic spoons and knives, bowls and plates, enough saccharine mugs to start a new collection.. And then finally, you find it, tucked away into the back: the violet tea you’d nicked from a proctor’s purse, when she’d been fool enough to leave it unguarded in the studio. It’s old enough to have grown roots, practically! If you’re honest, you’re not entirely sure it’s tea, not even after you lift a bag and sniff it. You’d never gotten the chance to actually try it.

But it probably is, and you’re not so fancy that you care, and neither’s she. The water still turns black! Isn’t that what matters? And just for safety’s sake, you leave it steeping as you turn to look at her, ass braced against the cheap plastic of the counter.

Your poor, darling moirail: she just looks so out of place here. Her clothing is blacker than the walls behind her, the sort of perfect ink that makes the purple trim pop, and it’s practically garish next to everything around her. With the crack in the tiles and the dust on the walls, she looks like one of Riccin’s photo shops: china hands resting on scuffed wood, a highblood’s purple brushing against brown-streaked cheeks. It just doesn’t fit.

You don’t, either, but it’s your hivestem. You don’t need to fit.

“It’s not sleuthing.” Her fingers are scratching at the cracks in the table. “You’re not subtle. Where else would you’ve gone?”

“Maybe I was off with Malawi. Helping her stress test out that new molt of hers, mm?” You lean forward, all fangs and cloying sweetness as you add: “- see exactly how much she’s grown! Have you looked at her, Iphie? Our little blueberry’s turning into a regular thornbush.”

With anyone else, they might’ve flinched. Your psi’s trailing a circuit around Iphige, ghosting around her shoulders, but she never gives you what you want, not really. She pays it as much mind as she would Sipara posturing at her.

She doesn’t so much as blink. All there is is a crackling of electricity rippling over your skull and your neck, catching on your ports, so familiar that it feels like a touch. And then your psi disrupts, fizzling out as neatly as a fire doused in water.

The hiss is reflective.

She doesn’t pay that any mind, either.

“You found Malawi tiresome.” She scrubs a hand over her shaved head, ears flicking forward, and her words are as blithe as if she was reading off a grocery list.

“Who said I’d be stopping by for her personality?” you purr back. “Because, let me tell you, my lovely little cinnamon roll, that’s just not the sort of conversation I’m after -”

“You find her tiresome in bed. She doesn’t fawn over you enough for your tastes. I know you, Iconic,” she says, and it’s with such certainty, it could make your heart pitter-patter. From anyone else, it would’ve! But you know your moirail. All you have to do is wait.

Sure enough, she pauses, considers, and carefully, meticulously, like a cat untangling yarn, Iphige ruins it like she always does: “- we all do. And besides, she’d never let you in her door when you’re like this.”

Oh, if this was anyone else, you’d bite her for that! Your lip is already curled, the words on your tongue to cut her down to size. You know a hundred different ways to make that smile evaporate, for all that you’ve never used them. After all, you know her.

And the problem is, she does know you, as well as the back of her hand, as well as any of the wrigglers that the both of you grew up with - and Malawi never would let you through the door like this, jittering, tension pulling you along as neatly as any puppet, aggression seeping out of your pores. You’re in the mood to, oh, rough someone up, and she’s only ever been in for flush.

It’s a shame. It’s a waste, really, that all of the bluebloods in your creche grew up so fucking weak.

But you’re not much better, are you? Iphige’s not your moirail, in anything except names. She hasn’t been, for sweeps and sweeps, and yet here you are: hanging off of her every word, letting the barest scrap of disapproval pacify you like a wriggler in the creche, like she even cares. She’s the one that hauled you into this program, back before you’d even shared a language. She’s been the one that’s always kept you here.

If they helm you, she said, you’ll die, because for all that you’ve always been besotted, Iphige’s never even loved you enough to offer you a proper escape.

You ooze back against the table, dragging your hand through your curls. You can’t stop moving right now, for whatever reason! But the flat-top isn’t doing much for you lately. Maybe you ought to just shave it all down. “What d’you want, Iphige?” you finally say, dragging out her name. “If they try to stick me in anything, Raphae’ll have bigger problems than me dying, sweetheart, I’m sorry to say! Did he send you over to guilt me? Because it won’t work. He’ll just have to find someone else for his matched set.”

“I’m not going to do it.” Your words are getting sharp, for all that the idea of hurting her makes your stomach twist. She isn’t your moirail, not really, but ripping her open would be like hurting yourself. “Did he think I was joking? I’ll let this fucking nanny fry both of us before I step in any goddamn ship -” There’s electricity rippling across your pan, a hundred little shocks, but you push through, letting the snarl catch on each word. “- and I’ll make sure it gets him first -”

“Shoosh,” she says, and oh, then you do snarl at her, high and throatier than any highblood’s would ever be.

Iphige considers you for a long moment. Then, in a rustle of fabric, she pushes herself to her feet with a sigh. You’re still growling when she steps in, but, oh, she’s never cared about that. Iphige treats you like Sipara. Everyone else flinches when you want them to. It’s only your poor moirail that’s never believed you could be a threat.

Her palm is warm when she places it against your cheek. “Shoosh, Iconic,” she says, softer this time, and you fall quiet.

“If you helm, you’ll die. I know this. You know this. And that’s all that matters. I am not here to lecture you, Iconic,” she says, flat, and, oh - you hate her, sometimes, even as you lean into her hand, because there’s nothing pale about the way she’s looking at you. Has there ever been? “And Raphae has nothing to do with this.”

“I’m here to save your life.”

---

6TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEP
ICONIC CONETL: 10 SWEEPS / 21 YEARS OLD

six minutes prior to the detonation of the pidgin parlor

When you drink the tea, it’s the first time in perigees that you’ve actually felt alive.

If this is what it’s like to be on honey, you think, you don’t know why you ever held back.

The world’s amazing like this. When your psi pools across your skin, catching on the edges like water, you can feel each and every small, fine hair there. When it touches the couch, you can feel every pore. And you could draw it back, but you don’t. Not yet! Why bother? You can feel everything right now. Your reach is so much farther then ten feet; it’s twenty, maybe, or thirty.

The colour’s not red anymore, or pink, or even white. It’s just pure light, as shining and brilliant as the sun at high noon, so bright that it’s bleaching out the room around you until the edges of your vision are blurred with it. It’s stripping all the colour from it, leaving it washed out and pale -

- all except for the yellow pooling across your vision.

You can feel every pore on the couch. You only feel the dampness under your nose when you reach up to wipe your eyes, and your wrist brushes wet skin instead. “Oh, goddamnit,” you exhale, and - you should’ve been on honey all along, because you don’t even feel the ping of your nanny’s protest

But you can’t focus on that. There’s blood trickling down your face. When you lick your lips, experimental, it’s to find the taste of salt and iron, replaced as quick as you displace it. There’s blood rolling down your chin, and pooling in your eyes, and your skin is hot as a furnace under your tongue.

A furnace? No. It’s like lightning, rolling straight out of your core and out through your mouth. There’s no sparks, yet, but you can feel them building up. When you take the second cup, it’ll be raining molten light, hot as the sun on your skin, and the skin at the back of your neck’s already prickling in anticipation of the heat.

Heat.

Oh. Right. Iphige’d said you need to watch the heat.

So you take a deep breath. Pulling your psionics in feels like wrestling a cat into a cage! It wails and it cries, but ultimately, it comes along, reluctant though it might be. There’s places to hold, when you’re getting too hot. You don’t know the names, but you don’t need to. The two of you spent perigees and perigees going over how to pinch, and where to press, and when to push, if things were getting too much. Burn-out’s literal, Iphige had murmured to you, but the thing about it is, any motherfucker could put out a fire. All you had to do was drop a blanket.

When you wipe the blood out of your eyes, it doesn’t repool. The air still reeks of iron when you take a sniff, but you know to watch for the trickle of blood, now - and where to pinch, when you feel it.

It’s a little more like holding down a blanket, you think. But that’s fine. Everything’s fine. The room’s not yellow anymore. It’s red, with the glow of someone else’s psionics, and you tilt your head up towards the ceiling, wetting your dry lips.

“Hey there, Mhimhi,” you say, faux-bright. “Do me a favour, lovebug, and don’t come back.”

Everything’s fine. All you need to do is keep things held down. You can do that.

After all, with the honey in your system, you’re not exactly short of hands.

---

6TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEP
ICONIC CONETL: 10 SWEEPS / 21 YEARS OLD

five months prior to the detonation of the pidgin parlor

This is what Iphige told you, a perigee ago: the entire plan will take a careful hand.

“Who’s the one with a control of ten, cinnamonstick?” you had asked her, as self-satisfied as any indigo, and oh, a month later -

- well! You don’t do regrets.

But right now, you almost do.

There’s blood dripping down your arm in sticky yellow rivulets, strangely warm for all that it’s your own hue. You’ve been trying to staunch the wound for the last five minutes, but it’s just not working. Oh, she’s shown you the diagrams. You’ve spent hours looking at those fucking diagrams, and practicing on bananas, and working your way through the basics of the idea. It should be simple.

You thread your psionics through the wound like thread, and you hold it in place.

Unfortunately, for all that you’ve got one of the highest control ratings in the program, your psionics were never intended for this. Puncturing the skin’s easy! You’ve spent the past seven sweeps learning to destroy anything you touch, one sliver at a time. Skin’s nothing but a hundred million threads woven together, and one of the very first things you’d learned was how to burn each and every one of them.

But it’s like trying to knit with fire. Every time you hook your psi around the next strand of skin, it fucking breaks.

Beside you, Iphige sighs, and then bats away your hand. “Enough,” she says, “before you hurt yourself.”

“Aren’t you just such a gentle nurse, sweetling,” you complain as she slaps the graft on. It burns! She’d wasted an hour trying to explain to you how this works, down to the filiments that hook into your skin, down to the very molecules that process the fusion. But she’s always been keen on books. Your moirail’s the smarter of you two, there’s no bones about it.

That’s why she came up with this plan, while you were busy contemplating things like poisoned tea and immolation.

It burns, and there’s always that familiar near-pain as the graft takes hold. “My civility schoolfeeds were always shit,” she says. “Stretch your fingers. Make sure it took.”

She’s applied these four times now, one for each attempt, and their only saving grace is the way you can peel them off after the skin underneath takes what it needs. It’s leaving little puckered scars, but nothing that won’t disappear after a perigee, and it’s not the sort of thing that can’t be covered with long sleeves. It knits on as soon as you

On a whim, you lean in, grabbing her hand with hers. You thread your fingers through, and she can’t feel it, but that’s fine. The two of you’ve been together long enough by now that she doesn’t even have to look down to match you. She just tightens her grip in response, cool porcelain hand squeezing around yours. And if her fingers are practically icy.. That’s fine, too.

She’s had these prosthetics since your sixth hatchday. You’re not sure you even remember what her hands were like before. You’re not sure you want to. Disconcerting as they are, each crack in her hand is as familiar to you as the lines in your own, even if the colour isn’t. Tonight, she’s painted her hands red, as brazen as the empress’s hue. “Y’know, Iphie - I haven’t said, but -”

“I appreciate all of this,” you say, quiet, and her ears flick forward. Iphige, Sipara, Mhinji: does every girl in your life have these ears? You’re starting to think you’re like Dysseu, chasing after a type. “Uh. A lot. I know you’re all about, mm, this whole helming business - well, not about it, precisely, pardon that little slip, cinnamonroll, but you’re not as - uh -”

“It is what it is,” she says, watching you.

“.. right.” She’s been with Shepherd since before she’d climbed out of the caverns. Has Iphige ever considered another life, except under that noose? At least you’d had until you were nine, nearly, before they’d laid you flat on the table and split you open.

They’d removed your moirail’s arms when she was six. She’s never had a chance to even think about it. But that’s what you’re here for! You had your freedom back when you were young, for all that you can barely remember it. And you’ve tested the boundaries of it since then. Maybe you don’t know how things work, precisely, but.. You’ve got an idea of things.

You’ve got enough of one to manage for the both of you.

“I appreciate it a lot, that’s all. I mean -” Do you know how to do this sort of thing? You’ve never been affectionate, as far as moirails go, not since you were kids. But you’ve seen films with Riccin and Sipara. You know how this sort of thing ought to go, so you drag your tongue across your fangs and give it a try: “- I appreciate that you know me, dearheart. And, uh, that I’m.. not you. Because I know you! And. Well. This is just an awful lot of work to do, when you don’t.. Necessarily understand it. Some folks would say, oh, Ico, why not suck it up?”

“But you didn’t,” you say, dogged, because she’s just watching you still, a line between her brows. You want to reach out with your thumb and press it smooth, but, oh, she doesn’t like to be touched. (And why should she?) “You decided that you ought to fix it! And I can.. uh. It’s just. Beyond the means, that’s all, of what.. you had to do. Or what I’d expect, sweetheart, so -”

“.. let’s move onto your other arm,” she says, and if she knows you, you know her, too, well enough that you’re already bracing yourself when her psi slices neatly into your arm. The hiss of pain gets you a sympathetic trill, but then she’s settling back into the chair, legs pulled up under her chin. “Try working slower, this time. Focus on the strands. Think of your arm as thread, and your psionics as the needle.”

“Could’ve waited ‘til I was done talking.” You don’t let your shoulders rise, for all that you want to sink between them. If she wants to focus on your arm.. that’s fair, you guess. You’ve only got a few perigees to go. She’s just being efficient, same as she always is.

Someone in this relationship ought to be! There’s no reason to feel stung.

“You can talk and work,” she says, mild. “And you’ll need to, if you want to live through our plan.”

---

12TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEP
ICONIC CONETL: 10 SWEEPS / 22 YEARS OLD

thirty minutes prior to the detonation of the pidgin parlor

“ID,” Mhinji complains, clapping her hands against the doorframe for balance, “dude, you’re destroyin’ my life, right now.”

You have to give her this: Mhinji is certainly pretty.

Lowbloods just don’t do it for you, on average! Oh, it’s nothing about them in particular. You’re not Dysseu, chasing after every cold bulge just on the principle of things. It’s just.. They’re so meek.

It’s not always a problem, admittedly. There’s always something flattering about the sort of troll that’s so determined to catch your attention, they’re willing to overlook the fact you terrify them. Why, that’s half of your fans! But it’s just not your thing, normally speaking, when you can take the brazen confidence of someone who thinks they’re owed your attention, and prove exactly how wrong they are. One’s easy. The other’s engaging.

But Mhinji, for all that she’s jade and practically a flat-scan, has never quite realised she ought to be spooked by you. No, she’s always looked at you as a sort of game, instead, and there’s something thrilling in that kind of complete disregard. There’s no guarded moments with her, when she slumps against her doorframe, straightening up the top of her camisole. Her neck’s bare. Her eyes are still half-lidded with sleep.

She doesn’t see you as a danger at all, and she proves it when she reaches out and snags the cigarette right from your lips.

“Taxes!” she sniffs, as soon as you open your mouth to protest. She’s still sluggish with sleep when she reaches down into her pocket, and her grip fumbles, just the slightest bit, when she goes to flick the lighter. It catches once, twice -

- and then, with a click of your tongue, you reach out with your psi and you light it for her.

“Is that apology enough?” you say, twisting your mouth into a mouie. You have to tilt your head up to look at her, even as she rolls her shoulder forward and cups her hand around the lighter. She’s so pretty, for a jadeblood, and that’s not a thought you have often. But it’s true. Mhinji’s got the sort of face that doesn’t distract you, and the sort of rack that’s worth actually looking at.

Most trolls might’ve slipped on something a little more before answering the door! But that’s part of why you like her. Mhinji’s one of the few trolls in the program without ports. You’ve checked, every time you’d ducked away into her apartment, but her skin’s unblemished, from top to bottom, without so much as a single surgical scar to marr the surface. There’s not so much as a mark of imperial red anywhere on her, or a trace of hardware in her.

But she doesn’t act like it. As far as she’s concerned, her body’s meat as much as the rest of yours, and she’s as careless about showing skin as you are.

“Or, my lovely little vineblossom, do I need to sacrifice more? Maybe you need a breathmint.” You make a great show of rummaging in your pockets, hooking your thumbs into the edge of your jacket - and then your pants, as you shift from leg to leg. “Mmm. Oh, no, I’m sorry, looks like I’m just fresh out of that. My goodness gracious, did I just empty out every pocket before I did laundry..?”

“You ruined my nap, dude.” She tilts her head back, closing her eyes as she exhales, and you take the moment to admire the sleek arch of her shoulders, and the way her shirt pulls up as she stretches back. When she straightens up, opening her eyes, you glance up, deliberately a moment too late –

– and she snorts, curling her lip at you. “And if you’re here for a show,” she sniffs, “that’ll be another cig. What’s up, bro?”

“What’s up, darling, is me wanting to drop by and give you a gift.” You grin at her, all fang, and she doesn’t have the sense to do anything but smile back, drowsy but pleased. “Oh?” she says, more a question than a word. “A gift? Just out of the blue?”

“What can I say? I’m generous like that.”

“You’re suspicious like that,” she corrects you, and takes a step back. Behind her, you can see her apartment, full of clutter as always. Mhinji’s the only precog that you’ve ever met, but you imagine most of them must have hives like this: covered in notes everywhere, from the walls papered in calendars, set to each month, set to each year, to the pads strewn across the table, the stray papers scattered across the floor. If you followed her inside, then you know from experience how well she navigates the mess. She always knows where each paper’s fallen, and what step she needs to take to avoid disrupting them.

It’s the sort of choreography so flawless that it belongs on the stage. You’d told her that once, overcome with a rare sort of fondness, and she’d laughed right in your face.

She laughs at you now, as you crane your neck to peer past her into her hive. “Are you waiting for an invitation to come in?” she says, amused. “Because if your gift’s a nook in a box -”

“Please,” you object, clasping your hands together in front of your mouth, “Mhinji, there’s children out here!”

The hallway’s empty. It’s almost always empty, at this time of night, which’s why you’d planned it this way. (No: why Iphige’d planned it, for all that the thought still stings. But your ex’s treachery isn’t the sort of thing you need to be thinking about, when you need to keep a smile plastered on your face.) And Mhinji knows that, too. She squints at you, makes a show of leaning forward -

- and, alright, you’re not actually paying attention to what she does after that, not until she straightens up, smug enough that she ought to have feathers sticking out of her mouth.

“Eyes up here, lech. If you’re still picking on Malawi for being two perigees younger,” she teases, “I’m going to tattle. If we’re talkin’ children, ID. Didn’t Chiloa tell you to stop bullying?”

You let the conversation rest for one, long beat, then you glance up at her, raising your eyebrows. Her grin’s widened, but this is why you like her, too; you’ve never met another troll quite as shameless as you. “I didn’t know we were listening to Chiloa, now,” you tell her, and she laughs, warm and throaty.

“Don’t be a fucking bulge. Some of us like him plenty fine, ID, even if he’s all churchy. What’s the gift? ‘Cause I don’t know about you, sunspot, but I’m fucking freezing. And if it’s a nook in a box, I dunno, dude, I think you forgot the box -”

“It’s an actual gift! A classy gift. Why, I’m betting you’ll love it,” you assure her, “bu~ut, I’m sorry to say, I just can’t step in right now.” A beat. “I’m terribly sorry to say. Genuinely sorry! Absolutely distressed, actually. Maybe I could stop by for, oh, five minutes or so, y’know, if you’re really insisting, sweetheart -”

She’s sliding the door shut.

With a yelp, you slide your psi in, just enough to keep it wedged open. Then you press your face up against the crack, fingers resting on the doorframe, a hand braced against the door itself. “You can’t go back to sleep,” you hiss. “The gift’s outside, you scoundrel. Try to build up a little enthusiasm!”

“Try to build up a little honesty,” she shoots back, pushing harder. She can’t burst your psi! She’s a jadeblood, not even a teal cusp, and for all that she spends her time exercising, nothing adds quite up to  “I got four fucking hours afore I’ve got to be awake, dude, go play your games with Malawi.”

“Truth be told, sweetheart - you won’t love it,” you admit, tapping your head, and just like that, some of her amusement fades. Mhinji’s one of the few trolls who knows what’s going on in your pan. She’d dragged you to her apartment as soon as she’d heard, where she’d stowed away more novelty cigarettes than you’d ever seen, and you’d spent the day downloading and mocking every horrible pailing video you could find online. It’d been a good bonding moment, all things considered, even if she was uniquely capable of finding the absolutely worst things you’d ever seen.

And the fact she never asked, even once, is what eventually had you spilling all of the details at noon, while she listened patiently and fed in yet another film.

“Truth be told,” she says, faintly displeased, and you roll your eyes, spreading your hands out in front of you. “Truth be told!”

“But you’ll appreciate it, ivyheart, and isn’t the best kind of gift?”

She rolls her eyes and then sighs, so hard that the cigarette falls from her mouth, and she has to scramble to grab it. “Fine,” she snaps, all exasperation: “- god, you’re such a fucking pest. What do I have to do?”

“Give me..” You look down at your wrist down at the watch there. Following your gaze to it, she squints.

“.. isn’t that Raphae’s?”

It is. Shepherd had bought it for him for his hatching day, six perigees ago, and usually, he takes it with him on filming - but, oh, he’d left it, and how could you not?”

“I think it looks better on me,” you tell her, bright. “Do me a favour, sweetheart! Go walk down to the store in, oh, five minutes, go buy something nice - not that glorified clover you’ve been smoking! - and then take a looksie at what I’m doing at.. Ten fifteen, how’s that?”

“I should have everything ready by then~.”

“.. you want me to take a looksie,” she drags out, “at what you’re doing? Is this going to be a Peewee Herman stripshow? I put on my longview peepers, and find you taking off your shirtsie-wirtsie? Flashing a little skinsie-winsie? Showing off your danger -” She pauses, then grimaces, dragging a hand across her cheek. “Oh, god, I’m going to puke. Never mind, holy shit, I can’t - that was fucking awful, dude, how do you even?”

“Sheer skill, sweetheart. And for the record -” You click your teeth at her. “It’d be skinsie-flintsie! C’mon now, sugarflake, get some creativity.”

“I’ll get some fucking buckshot, dude. You sure you’re not coming in?” she asks, and then she sighs, rolls her eyes. “Aw, fuck, I already know the answer. Never mind, you’re doing your surprise. Here -”

She takes a long drag of the cigarette, then shoves the door forward. There’s a hand on your shoulder, dragging you in, and then she’s catching your mouth in hers, fangs tugging at your skin.

“There,” she says, when she finally pulls back, and the raspiness of her voice’s got nothing to do with the smoke. She smirks at you, the expression as lopsided as her horns. “Y’know, for luck. Because I don’t know what weird shit you’re trying, but shit, bro, you’re gonna need it.”

---

6TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEP

ICONIC CONETL: 10 SWEEPS / 21 YEARS OLD

three months prior to the detonation of the pidgin parlor

“I don’t need luck,” Sipara squalls, ears pricked up and straight forward like a hound. Your lionhearted girl is always so aggressive! Her lip is curled, her fangs are out; if she had a set worth raking, her horns would be up, but as is, she just looks positively set to start baying.

So you reach out and squash her cheeks with both palms until the skin’s flushed brown under your hand. “You always need luck! What would I do if you went and got yourself banged up permanently, dearheart, while you’re all the way across the sea? Why, I’d rend my garments and practically shed a tear,” you say, cloying enough that she sets her ears back. “A single tear, mind you! Not a single one more. But -”

She twists her head enough to nip at your palm, a sharp enough sting that you actually yelp.

There’s gold running down her chin when she pulls away, and with a grimace, she scrubs it away with a palm. Against her skin, your blood almost looks white. “Don’t be dumb,” she jeers, “you’d fucking weep, dude. Like a big fat baby! Like, eye-dee-kay, Riccin stubbing her toe. Probs more’n Pher.”

Your hand stings, but that’s fine! Better than fine, really: Sipara’s always nothing but a shining light in the darkness of your life, for those nights that you want to sound as gothic as Dysseu, and this’s no exception. She was being a brat, but as always, she’s slipped and fallen into a sort of convenience for you, because this is a good time to practice. Holding your palm up to your face like you’re making a show of inspecting it, you can admire the fact that she got it good, your little beast of an auspistice. The skin’s slit so neatly, it could’ve been done with a scalpel! And there’s still yellow welling up along the seam even as you watch.

Maybe a perigee ago, you wouldn’t have been able to mend it. On stage, prior to Iphige’s little crash-course, all you’d ever been able to do is clamp a wound, like your own makeshift tourniquet. There was no point in bothering further! If they hit you hard enough to bleed, it was about time for the bout to wrap up, anyway.

But now, a little nick like this is easy. You eye it up, thinking, and it’s just a slip-and-tuck of your psi to forge the skin together. It takes concentration to maintain, but that’s fine. Iphige’d drilled you on how long it takes for each type of wound to close. You can’t remember it right now, but she has.

And when Sipara snags your wrist, yanking it down to inspect it, the cut’s nothing more than thin seam of pink, with so much of the light underneath that it’s scarcely noticable. “Oh,” she says, “neat. See, you’re good as new! Stop payin’ attention to that, dude, and pay attention to meee.” She doesn’t let go of your wrist, though; she uses it to tug you in closer, shoulder bumping hard into your ribs as she half-falls into you. Your ‘oomph’ isn’t just for theatrics.

She’s so touchy! She’s always so touchy, and of all the things that you think you’ll miss.. this just isn’t one of them.  Sipara’s about to leave for a whole four perigees across the sea, to the far continent, so she can run the roulette of rings for the championship belt. She’ll be brilliant. It’s the move of a century, and if you weren’t so keen to get off of the planet entirely, you’d have yanked your entire troupe into following her, since her worthless moirail can’t be bothered.

But you can’t, no matter how much she’d cried over that little admission. She’ll be going alone, and this is going to be the last time you’ll see her.

You feel like you should be memorising every last inch of her, from her face to her feet. It’s what they always do in the films! They take their quadrant’s face in their hands, turning it from side to side. They press their face into their hair, breathing in deeply, memorizing every last facet of their scent. They count the veins in their eyes. They count the scars on their hands.

But you know what Sipara smells like! You’ve got a vague idea of how many scars she’s got, but she’s always getting new ones. If you tried to breath in her hair, you’re fairly sure she’d bite you just on principle. Nestled against you like this, peering down at her horns, all you think that you need to remember is this feeling, really: the way your breath falls so neatly into line with hers, and the paft-paft-paft of her heart beating against you.

You let her lean for one moment, two - and then you’re wriggling free, one hand firm on her shoulder to keep her from following. You’ll keep that memory tucked in close to your pan, saved down to the wetware and the hardware, but you don’t need to prolong it. Sipara’s always been a touchy little limpet of a sprat, and maybe, associations aside, that’s why the two of you fell so easily into ash. You just don’t like that much contact. “I was examining my wound,” you complain, “you beast. What’re you going to do if I don’t pay attention to you, angelface? Bite me again? Put on your best little lamprey impression and sink your teeth in? Save that for the ring, now, I’m just not spritely enough to deal with that sort of abuse.”

“You admitting you can’t do something? Icooo,” she whines, peering up at you with those large red eyes, “dude, no fair! Chin up! I haven’t even been gone a night, and you’re already getting all weak on me -”

---

12TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEP

ICONIC CONETL: 10 SWEEPS / 22 YEARS OLD

one week prior to the detonation of the pidgin parlor

“Iconic,” Malawi whines, leaning over the counter close enough to brush her nose against yours: “- Raphae’s worried about you!”

You lean forward, rubbing your nose against hers. She mock-snarls at you, but it’s the same as any member of the helming division. For all that her skin’s four whole shades colder than yours, she’s more defanged than the average maroon. If she was ever aggressive, it must’ve been back when the lot of them were still in the nursery, because they beat it out of her young.

There’s even a trill to the snarl, the sort of apologetic high note that belongs more to a lowblood’s cant: I’m sorry, it sings, appeasing, it’s just play!

You’re never sure what to do with these sort of noises from people. Are you supposed to sound off back? Whine? You’ve never been very good at flush, and especially not with your crechemates; all the IEP trolls tend towards these sort of clingy, noisome habits, and for all that you’ve grown up with it, you’ve never been able to mirror it. At least when you pull back, eyes wide and brows knit, she’s too busy biting it off into a laugh to keep it up.

“And how would you know that?” you demand, placing a hand against your heart, and you let yourself drift into the air, your heel kicking you neatly back from the counter. “Why, my paper-pushing dove-oh-tee, are you here to tell me you’re flocking up with Raphae? Playing like a little bird in his ear? Sharing all of my sea-crests?”

Malawi has to tilt her head back when you twirl above her, your bangs hanging low enough to brush the prosthetic amplifiers netted over her horns. She’s the only cerulean in your hivestem! Why, she’s the only blueblood at all, and her and Mhinji combined make up your highbloods for the brood. If she’d ever petitioned, she could’ve had proper quarters in downtown Temasek. Maybe not next to Raphae’s! Amplification just isn’t as useful with voodoos as it is for psionics. But with the gunners, or one of the apartment’s left for the proctor’s themselves.

Why, if she ever thought to push her luck, she might’ve been assigned to work for someone like Sunyah, serving the church directly.

But she’s always been content to stay with the lot of you, and they’d graced her with the penthive. The ceilings here are high enough that it takes thought for even you to reach them, and her horns - nearly two feet long, for all that they’re curved back - don’t even brush the doorframes.

“Oh! Dove-vo-tee? Well, um -” She bounces up on her toes, craning her head up and back to follow you as you twirl over her head. “Maybe toucan’t believe it, but he was asking about you! Hey, Iconic, while you’re up there, can you get my ceilings?”

“There’s a dust bunny up there, and I tried getting on the table, but, like, it wouldn’t come down?” She twists around on her heel, braid whipping out behind her. When it hits the counter behind her with a thump, she jolts, spinning to face it, and.. it’s such a shame! All of the bluebloods in your cohort are like this.

It’s such a waste.

But isn’t everything about these program trolls a waste?

“Cobweb?” you ask, and then reach up, dragging your hand in an arc. With her right here, your reach’s nearly twice as it should be. The fifteen feet to the ceiling’s easy to hit, and you can feel each of the cobwebs catching under the tendrils of your psi. When you yank, they come down in a cascade.

Malawi shrieks when she sees them dropping towards her. She scrambles forward, launching herself over the counter and under it in one smooth motion -

- and then she pops out a moment later, cheeks flushed bright blue, when she realises the cobwebs aren’t dropping further. This time around, the snarl’s genuine, none of that puppy play pitch to it. “Iconic!” she cries. “Really?”

“I don’t know why you’re fussing, sweetheart~.” You tilt the cobwebs back and over the trash, knotting them into a tight ball before you drop them in. “Didja I was going to drop them on you? My sunshine girl? I could just be so gosh darned hurt, that you’d think I was this mean –”

She huffs. Malawi’s not really capable of looking fierce! Her teeth are as flat as any maroon’s, and for all that she’s got a blueblood’s stockiness, almost none of it’s proper muscle. It’s fat all the way down, highblood sleek, and though her adult molt finally gave her some proper curves, that doesn’t quite make her look capable. Not even the way she tosses her rack with a sharp jerk of her chin does more than gets her a laugh.

But the look she gives you over that’s nearly threatening. If you kept it up, maybe you could tease her into a proper pitch.

If you had time. But you don’t, and neither does she. Malawi’ll be as dead as everyone else in this hivestem, save Mhinji, by the end of the week, and when the iciness of her gaze fades into something softer, her cheeks dimpling as she pouts, you nearly feel bad.

Until she opens her mouth.

“You’re always mean,” she complains, twining her hand through her hair and pulling the weave straight. “And not just to me. But to Raphae! He asked me ‘n Mhihee about you, y’know. He said, um.. Well, you were worrying him, ever since he -”

She pauses, fangs biting into her lip, and my, it’s just amazing how fast your sympathy’s melted. You twist in the air until you’re back on your stomach, elbows propped up on something invisible, hands nestled under your chin. “Ever since he?” you prompt, and she falters.

But not for long. “Ever since he talked to you about the helming, that’s all.” Has she been anxious this entire time? Probably. It’s so hard to tell with Malawi! Chiloa can read her like a book. So can Mhinji, but you’d hope she can: she’s been piling her for the better part of the last sweep, and for all that your experience’s been poor with the quadrant, you know what she ought to know by now. But you’ve never been able to.

She’s never been interesting enough to devote the time to! Chiloa, Raphae, Malawi, even Mhinji: all of the campus is full of dogs on the Empire’s leash, small, and quivering with the need to please. It’s tedious. You’ve never liked dogs, and Malawi’s got the unique problem of always looking like she’s about ready to piss on her own shoes. The only reason you’d come down tonight, really, is to see how you felt about things.

Malawi’s going to die. Zambia’s going to die. Chillwe, Laitec, Iaciac, Cailin - well over half of your creche is all going to be gone tomorrow, and you wanted to see if you’d feel anything. It’s the sort of thing that you should, you think. You grew up with these trolls. Back when you’d thought the entire city were nothing more than babbling birds, full of harsh consonants and chirped syllables, they and your troupe had been the only ones who’d bothered to try to communicate with you despite that. They’re the ones you’d spent your life watching, as they’d molted, formed quadrants, and come into themselves.

They’d all come so far. When you’d first been hauled into Temasek, bristling and spitting in a language you can’t quite remember, your creche had been a bunch of gangly-pawed mongrels, but the Empire’s shaped them all, and it’s cleaned them up. Like puppies from a kennel, they’ve all grown so nicely into the collars your proctors had set out for them.

All of them, except for you.

You’ve never liked dogs, really, but you almost wish you could feel anything more than a bright kind of spite about this. It feels like you should.

“Really? Over helming?” you say, blithe. She’s got her hand slipped tight into her hair, nails hooking into the weave like hatchets. In another moment, she’ll be biting them. “Well, why d’you think I’d go and be upset over that, blueberry? He already went and got me all full up of ports! It’s not like it hasn’t been coming.”

“Well,” she says, faltering, “that’s what I said.” Her hands curl up towards her mouth, but - oh, that fucking wretch, she doesn’t bite into them. She’s all doe-eyed and meek, her ears tilted back like she doesn’t know that she ruined your little internal bet, or like she doesn’t care. You’re betting on the latter. “It’s not - well -”

“You’re not really upset, are you?” she says all at once. “Because you’ve been wearing sleeves, lately, and he said that, and, well, I did notice - I mean, of course I did, you’re usually not really wearing anything - and, um -” There! For a moment, you think she’s about to sink her fangs into her nails, but.. She’s foiling you again, apparently, because her hand just goes back into her hair.

It’s easier to fuss over her hands than it is to pay attention to the way she’s looking at you. Oh, you’d thought she was doe-eyed! You’d thought she was anxious. But you’re starting to get the idea that she’s not worried about herself. Oh, no.

She’s worried about you.

You should be kind. That’s what Mhinji’s always after you about! You can practically hear your dear morimo’s voice in your head even now, creeping up through your thoughts like an ivy: all she wants to do is help, Mhinji’d murmur, as soft and unimpressed as any proctor. You don’t have to punish her for that. But Mhinji’s never understood bluebloods, not properly, for all that she’s been raised into the program.

It’s not about helping. It never has been.

“Oh, Malawi, are you worried about me?” you croon at her, and her shoulders pull up like you’ve slapped her. You’re tempted. But you’re not going to ruin the plan, not this close to it. If Raphae drags you back to his hive for house arrest for a week - or worse yet, he decides to go rifling to see what’s got you in such a furor - well, the plan won’t last.

You’ve been working hard to keep him out of your pan, the last few perigees. You’ve rolled over before he’s even asked. You’ve always known what he’s wanted from you, but this is the first time you’ve ever worked to fulfill it. And evidently it’s that’s worrying the both of them. You could slap her. But if she’s been talking to Raphae - and of course she’s been talking to Raphae - it’s better to get her coaxing him into comfort.

“That’s so kind of you.” She blinks at you, and you go on, sickly sweet: “- but, why, it’s just not necessary! Why would I ever be upset, sweetheart? Like you said - I’ve known forever, there’s just no cause to go being riled over it. Maybe I’m just settling down into it, that’s all.”

“Oh,” she says, with such great relief that it makes your fingers itch. “Are you? I told him that, but, well, you know how he is –”

“Don’t I just?” When she smiles at you, brittle and ears still flat, it could feel like a victory, if your teeth weren’t set to rot. “Don’t worry about it,” you croon. “I’m perfectly fine, darling. And just between the two of us - well, let’s just say, I’m just finally realising what I ought to really care about.”

---

12TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEP
ICONIC CONETL: 10 SWEEPS / 22 YEARS OLD

five days prior to the detonation of the pidgin parlor

“Haven’t you ever wondered - well - shouldn’t we care?”

There’s only one benefit to Iphige’s wetware, and that’s that she can scan an entire room and tell you if it’s bugged in a glance. Oh, no one likes when you bring it up, but Shepherd bred her up like a dog, mixed the slurry in exactly the right combinations to get the results that she wanted; the Sfumat line is nothing but a finely cultivated slurrymix, made specially to serve as some highblood’s servant, and one of the traits that she’d worked so hard to refine is her ability to sense things.

You’ve sat through the meetings where she’s bragged about it, waiting at Raphae’s shoulder like he was holding your leash. Sfumato, she’d told Carnifex once, when she’d hauled him in for a sponsor hearing: the duty of the Sfumat was to work beyond the focus plane, and handle all of the things that their captain couldn’t see. Iphige could feel the electrical currents of tech and life in the same way that you, in your range, could feel the breeze stirring on an individual blade of grass. But unlike you, she’d never had to work at it. The scar across the back of her dome guaranteed that.

So the two of you have been planning this all out in your apartment. It’s less of a memory, now, and it’s more of a home. You’ve been hauling food back in here, the sort of tidbits that she likes to eat, and that won’t ruin your diet; fruits and yogurts, nuts, an entire head of spinach that she’d bitten into like an apple. Teas, stronger and less vile than the monstrosities in your cabinet. There’s a throw across the couch, where she’s nestled, and you’d even bothered to buy it in yellow. It’s more Riccin’s chrome than yours, but dragging imperial red into the one space entirely free of it had felt strange.

Not entirely free of it. Iphige’s limbs are aglow with it, as they always are, and you can feel it flaking in circuits from your face. You hadn’t bothered to shower after your last performance, not just yet, and there’s blood on your hands, spackling your cheek, and paint still all over your chest. She’s seen you at every state of undress. Raphae would’ve flinched and demanded you get in the shower, but this is the sort of reason that you love Iphige; she doesn’t so much as blink.

Your moirail’s always been unflappable.

“Care about what?” she asks, watching you. She’s sprawled out on your couch, knees curled up neatly against her, and she’d been watching your television, but a flick of her fingers dials the volume down to an almost indistinguishable murmur. “Did you come from the stage? You reek, Iconic.”

“I reek? Really? It’s just a little blood!” She curls her lip at you, and it’s silly, how much your heart jumps. But Iphige’s never one for emotion, not really! Maybe it’s silly, but it’s impossible not to play back into, too, so you pout at her, twisting your mouth into an exaggerated mouie, hooking your arms behind your head.

“And sweat,” she points out, and her psionics hook around your arms. Some trolls feel like electricity. Some trolls feel like fire. Iphige’s psi has always felt like water, cool but firm as it yanks your arms back down, and when you laugh, trying to jerk back, they just get firmer. “And filth. Are you trying to suffocate me, Iconic? Because if I’m dead from your stench, I won’t be able to hear your answer.”

“Oh, fine.” You let her drag your arms down, finally, and her psi dissipates like the retreat of the tide. She’s got a faint smile on her face, and that feels like a victory, honestly. When’s the last time you got her to actually smile? Not for weeks. “Like I was saying, Iphiepoo, don’t you think we should feel a little bad?”

“This whole -” No one can hear you in this hivestem! The walls are thick and old, there are no mind-readers who’d bother snooping on you hatched-and-raised progamites, and there’s no bugs in the place to drop words. Still, just in case Raphae goes snooping, he’s always been worse at memories than he is words. You cup your hands together, pooling aura between them, and then yank them apart.

Pink showers down around the room, dripping like snowflakes. “Plan,” you say, when one lands on Iphige’s nose. “Y’know! Because folks are going to die. And I don’t care, obviously, but you -” She’s supposed to be better than you, you want to say, but you don’t. It’s true! The both of you know it. As far as morals go - lines in the sand - she’s always been so much better at figuring out when it’s not worth the effort to keep trying.

You’ve never been good at that. Isn’t that why you’re knee-deep in this plan?

“Why would I care?” she says, dubious, and you pause. But she’s not joking! Her lusus wanders by and she plucks him up idly, dropping him on the couch, but she’s watching you. “My job is going to be to cull people, Iconic. What’s a few more?”

“Well. Uh.” You’ve never had the shoe on this foot before. But you brought it up, and you suppose this’s your job, isn’t it? This is how moirailing goes. “I - it’s awkward, sometimes, to cull folks you know, that’s all!” She’s watching you, and you’re fumbling, trying to draw up an answer you don’t quite know. If Sipara was here, she’d be able to explain it.

But she isn’t, and Iphige’s not her moirail, besides. “I mean, not for me, but - for most trolls, y’know? Can you imagine Sipara culling one of us? Why, she’d positively squall, poor mothball, she nicked me something awful the other night, and she was just about ready to throw down over just that.”

“It’s not my place to care about all of that, Iconic,” she finally says. “So I don’t. Are you feeling bad? If you want to back out..”

“Of course not!” You shake your head hard enough to set your bangs to flying. “Absolutely not, holy shit -” And the sting of the nanny is worth it. “Why would I ever? I just thought - well! Never mind what I thought, birchnut, it’s obviously just me being a little bit nattery. It’s alright, if you don’t see it. Why, I don’t quite get it, but - it can just be my place to care about it, then, if it’s not yours. It’s not a bother.”

Oh, you hate it when she just looks at you.

“What?” you say, a little reedy, because you’re stepping in it somewhere, and you don’t know where. “Alright, alright - uh, what did I say -”

But at the same time, she’s talking, too, her voice just loud enough to cut neatly over yours:

“- that’s not my place to care about that, Iconic, because Raphae’ll be the one handling it.”

Oh.

“Raphae,” you repeat, flat.

Iphige’s got her lusus cradled in the gap between her knees and her body. Kura-Kura’s not one for cuddling! His shell’s hard and his feathers are perpetually musty. Even when he’s dry, he smells like an old boot, but your moirail’s always prone to holding him despite that. You don’t quite get it, but then again, you’ve never had the relationship she’s had with her lusus.

It’s not like she does it for comfort, though! At least, it’s not for hers, because right now, Iphige’s as relaxed as you’ve ever seen her, the sopor cigarette dangling from her lip as she practically melts into the couch. If she wasn’t, you’d be on the couch near her, for all that she’s as keen about physical contact as you are. Oh, she’ll tolerate it, the few times that Dysseu’s reached out to her, but it’s the sort of thing that she and Raphae fight over.

A lowblood’s meant to be friendly, soft, pliable, and Iphige’s none of that, for all that she’s got enough curves to seem perfect for it. It’s always worked well for the both of you. She’s never reached for more than you’re willing to give, and you’ve never pushed for more than she can. After all, she’s had more than enough of people pawing at her.

The shining white of her limbs, green where they catch the flame of her cigarette, can attest for that.

“Did I stutter?” she says now, but it’s not sharp; it’s just confused, a touch thrown, her voice as languid as her movements. “I can’t go with you, Iconic. It’d be stupid. Did you think I was?”

“This entire plan is stupid,” you shoot back.

You should settle onto the couch next to her. But Iphige doesn’t like much contact, for all that you’re craving it right now. She never has! And you’re fine with that, really, but -

Your lusus can’t fit inside the hive. You almost wish he could, right now.

There’s a chill in your arms. It’s just nerves, though, the sort you haven’t felt since you were five and stepping onto the stage for the first time. You fold your arms, lifting your chin, and when you sink your claws into the folds of your skin, the pressure brings back faint pinpricks of heat. Enough to work with, at least, and remember your words.

“Maybe,” you say, stilted, and fuck your entire life, you sound like Malawi. “Maybe I thought you were, Iphie. Why would you want to stay here? I mean, you don’t have to come with, obviously, I’m not Raphae, dearheart, I’m not about to sling a rope around your neck and fu- fudging make you, but -” Everything’s coming out high, reedy, like it did when you were seven. Like you’re still seven, and, oh, you can’t handle this.

You should leave. You want to leave! But if you do, she won’t come with you.

How had you never considered that she wouldn’t come with you?

“Why would I leave?” Kuro-Kuro’s retreating into his shell the more that you talk. She trills at him, low, but it doesn’t pull him back out. Of course it doesn’t. Since when have lusii ever been good at listening to their charges? “This is what I was made for, Iconic.”

“I -”

There’s only been a handful of times, in your entire life, that you’ve ever been uncertain! It’s not something that comes naturally to you. Why should it? You were born with a confidence that most trolls would cull for. You’ve always known your limits. You’ve always had your goals, and you’ve never been in a situation where you couldn’t, if you tried hard enough, get what you wanted.

Even on impossible things. You’d wanted free from the program, and Iphige had come up with a way to get you out.

She’s just not coming with you.

“Breathe,” she says, shutting her eyes, and she takes in another deep drag of her joint. “Recollect your thoughts. Then try again.”

You don’t know what to do here. There’s heat in your cheeks, warmth collecting across the back of your neck like the worst kind of rash. Your tongue feels as heavy as lead in your mouth. If she wasn’t so averse to touch, you might step in close. If it was anyone else, you would.

But Iphige’s got her legs on the table, now, painted porcelain cold against the wood, and solid as barbed wire. “Don’t you want to come with me?” you say, and it takes you a moment to recognise the tone. It could be vulnerable. It’s not. You refuse to let it be, and so you sharpen your tone: “- because, y’know, sweetheart, most moirails would.”

She blinks at you.

Your earlier memory, back when you were still in Kuikiro, was dropping a rock in a pond. It’d been bigger than you, nearly the full weight of what you’d realise was your limit. You’d lifted it up, more than twice your height into the air, and you’d flung it in.

The water had splashed out of the sides, exposing the fish in the center. It’d come back in scarcely a minute, pouring off of the sides in a slurry dingy enough to make you feel bad, but for forty glorious seconds, your lusus had waded in and murdered half the fish.

Right now, you feel like the water’s left the room, and you’re waiting for the beak to come down. Iphige’s just looking at you, a crease furrowing between her eyebrows, her fangs biting into her lip. Her nose wrinkles whenever she makes an expression like this, and usually, you’d tease her about it. Offer to smooth it out, if she’s having such difficulty maintaining her usual stone-face.

But the water hasn’t come back into the room, and the words are dying in your throat.

“We’re not moirails,” she says, and then there’s something else after that, but you’re not - you don’t hear it. It’s not important, really, compared to the rest.

“How are we not moirails?” you say, when you can process words, and when you find them in the back of your throat. The water’s rushed all back into the room, and it feels like you’re drowning in it. You can’t get in quite enough air. You’ve never felt like this, not even once in your entire life, and you don’t - you don’t know what it’s called, exactly.

Your entire chest feels tight. Every second she doesn’t answer feels like there’s more and more water being added to your lungs. In a moment, maybe, all the air will be gone. You won’t be able to breathe at all.

“.. how are we?” is what she finally says, and it doesn’t ease up the tension at all.

It does let you find your words. “We’ve been moirails for over four sweeps,” you snap, stumbling over them. There’s a scratchiness to your voice that you don’t know how to eliminate. There’s too much to your voice, and you don’t - how are you supposed to define this? It feels like she cut you, almost, and the way she’s looking at you is just rubbing salt into the wound. “You shoosh me! You’re helping me leave - we live together -”

She’s just watching you still, with that same crinkle in her nose. “Legally,” she corrects herself, carefully, like she’s talking to one of the wrigglers, “we’re moirails. I didn’t know you took it so seriously.”

Taking it so seriously.

“You’re helping me leave,” you spit out, and you want to rip everything from your walls. You want to - oh, you don’t know, you don’t know anything, except there’s energy coursing through you, and it’s the sort of churning frustration you’d usually let out. But you can’t take it out on her. You won’t.

She stands up, setting her lusus to the side. And then she steps in close to you. You ought to pull back. If you had any sense, you would. She’s not your moirail, from her very own lips; there’s no reason for her to be this close to you, or this near. There’s no reason for her to be touching you, when the two of you have always been some of the few program trolls that’re still proper about things. You’ve never enjoyed much contact. Neither has she.

But you’ve never minded it from her. And right now -

She’s not pale for you. But when she hooks her hand around your neck, the chill of her fingers resting against your highest port, you lean back into it. There’s yellow tinting the room. You ignore it in favour of watching her, drinking in her features like you might not see them again.

Iphige was the first person you’d seen, back when you’d come to Temasek. You couldn’t speak Standard. You hadn’t understood a word in the city, and you wouldn’t have stayed, except she’d looked at you and your lusus, covered in scraps and dust and ribbons from the road, and she’d laughed.

They’d hauled you into the program when you tried to get her to do it again. But it’d been fine. Even after she’d dragged Raphae into your life, everything had been fine. You’d managed, and she’d been there, and long after your relationship had mellowed, she’d still been there. You’d never been affectionate moirails. It had never struck you that you could be.

Her fingers on your port are cold as stone, and twice as heavy.

“I’m doing this, Iconic, because I don’t want you to die,” she says, slow and precise. “Not because I’m pale for you. I’m sorry if I misled you.”

If she was anyone else, you’d hurt her over that. But it’s Iphige, and you’ve never had much of an interest in ruining her nights.

So you breathe out instead, swallowing down the lump in your throat. The room’s tinted yellow, but you’ve never wept a night in your life. Ten sweeps isn’t the point that you’re starting now. “I suppose I did take things a little more seriously than you.” If your voice is brittle, it doesn’t matter. She’s not your moirail. It’s none of her fucking business.

And maybe she realises that, too, because she lets go of your neck, and steps back. Iphige’s never been concerned about her clothing. She’s certainly never cared about her appearance. But she still smooths a palm over her dress, evening out a wrinkle you don’t think was ever there, and she nods. “I should go.” Have you ever heard her sound awkward? Not since you were pupas.

Not since you were moirails, evidently, and you can’t bring yourself to respond to her; you just jerk your chin towards the door, and she doesn’t even bother to stub out her joint before she’s out the door.

Your apartment feels so empty, suddenly. But at least on the couch, Kuro-Kuro is still hiding in his shell. You’re not sure why Iphige ever bothers trying to cuddle him; he’s not meant for it, not really. But your lusus is outside, and he’s still here. So you collapse into the couch, tuck him against your chest, and curl your knees in.

“You’re a terrible father,” you tell him as soon as he pokes his head out. God, you sound wretched. “Your charge’s off doing drugs and breaking hearts, darling, don’t you feel ashamed?”

He starts preening your hair.

It’s a small comfort, but it’ll do.

---

6TH PERIGEE OF THE 760TH SWEEP
ICONIC CONETL: 11 SWEEPS / 24 YEARS OLD

two years after the detonation of the pidgin parlor

---

UV: Ah.

UV: Since when is stalking considered a sign of pitch flirtation?

ID: To some folks, it can be. What’s more irritating than someone showing up ver you turn around?

ID: Or, why, folks showing up at your work? 〣( ºΔº )〣

ID: And it’s infallible, blueberry, trust me.

ID: If a little something broken doesn’t give them a hint, yo can always use words.

UV: Let me rephrase.

UV: Do you know this troll?

UV: Or is it a complete stranger stalking you.

UV: For two nights.

UV: And you have decided to take it as pitch flirtations.

ID: And what would you think it was, Vadaya?

ID: If you’re following someone for two nights and not doing anything about it, well, you’re proving awfully poor at your job.

UV: You may be being monitored.

There’s something lovely about the fact when you need to flee, there’s one place that nobody is ever allowed to go.

Your students know that you’ll slit their throats if they so much as dreamed of stepping up the stairs to you and Bonnie’s loft; it’s a residential hive, not a business one, and the few times you’d caught them so much as looking, you’d offered to put out their eyes. Your business is your own, and it’s not something you’re keen to let some gray-eyed sproglets take a look at, not just out of curiousity.

And you don’t sleep with your students, not even when they’re old enough to pay you. That’s the program’s sort of thing, not yours, and you’ve left all of that far, far behind.

No, no one’s allowed up in your loft save Bonnie, and - as far as you’re concerned - it’s the best thing about it. The second best thing’s the fact it looks like the two of you. There’s a rack for bikes on the wall near the door, where yours is resting and where hers sometimes sits. There’s her guns on the table, unloaded and mostly clean, and more of them under the couch. She’s got her exercise equipment tucked away by the kitchenette, which you’ve covered in cozies and knitwear. Your yarn’s in its basket, there’s feathers on the ground, there’s hampers in the corner..

Vadaya and Ullane would sniff that it’s messy, you’d bet. But there’s something soothing about the hominess, that settles you down as soon as you enter. Even when Bonnie’s not around, it’s all of the little things - like the half-empty mug on the table, or the eggs in the trash - that remind you that she’s still around.

And right now, you’d like to remember that, because at times like these, when there’s violet dripping all the way across the floor, you almost think you need a moirail.

There’s blood on your face, too, streaking across your nose and catching in your hair. You hadn’t meant to make such a show of things! But what had started off as just taking a fin to make a point had ended up escalating, as these sorts of things do, and by the end of it.. Well, he’d been down two fins, really, and you’d ended up using your fronds a great deal more than you’d ever intended.

He wasn’t dead when you left him. He’s probably fine even now, and if not, really, you’re just doing everyone a favour. What sort of highblood can’t handle a little blood loss? With as many times as your pan nanny’s zapped you tonight, and as much as your head is shrilling, you’re certain your migraine’s comparable - and you’re up and walking.

Up, walking and talking. Alexar’s not exactly the sort of troll you seek out! He’s so.. nice, is the thing, and you haven’t the faintest idea how to deal with that. But your head aches, and your moirail’s gone off on whatever trip she’d said she’d be off on. You think you’re owed a little nice right now.

Especially when it comes in such a lovely package.

(You still can’t believe he has a matesprit.)

Just as your kettle starts to shriek, and you’re turning on the water to wash your hands, someone knocks on the door.

You consider the faucet for a moment, then your hands. There’s violet still flaking off of your nose. Alexar’s still chattering in the back of your pan, something about pastries, and it’d only take a moment to wash off your hands, but there’s blood on your face. And the only folks in Derevnya who think it’s keen to go knocking on innocent stranger’s doors are prosleytizers.

You could wash your face..

.. but no. If they’re sun worshippers, you think, it’s better to scare them off now, before they spot Bonnie and decide she’s an easy mark. And if they’re not, they’ll deserve it.

Because they keep knocking, loud as anything, and each reverbation feels like a gunshot through your aching head.

“Coming!” you sing, and mercifully, they stop.

When you snatch the door open with your psi, you stop, too. Because it’s not the white-robed sunworshippers, their faces black with the symbols burnt into them. It’s not even clowns, white-skinned and purple-eyed. It takes you a moment to recognise the jadeblood in front of you, or the red implants resting neatly at her temples.

Mhinji just looks at you. There’s moonlight streaming in from the window, dappling across her face, but there’s no expression there to illuminate. The last time you’d seen her, she’d smiled at you to see you.

Right now, she just looks as blank as the subjuggulator lounging on the stairwell behind her, sloe-eyed and bored.

“Iconic, babe,” she says, and her voice is an echo that you think must be intentional - “it’s so nice to see you. Shep’s got a proposition for you, and your girl.” Then she pauses, peering over your head and past you into the apartment.

She wrinkles her nose.

“Do you,” she asks, “have any tea?”