xihe | FICTION: iconic conetl, you can't go (AU)

ICONIC CONETL | many perigees in the future

When she calls, you come.

The Silence Before The Tridents Fall was old long before you hatched. The records say that it was one of the first to leave the planet, back in the mad rush of the first major exodus. You don’t know if that’s true, but it’s had over a dozen finned captains, and when you’d approached it in your shuttle, it’d looked ravaged by time. A dull metal relic, its hide mottled from centuries of repair.

The crew doesn’t look much better. The helmscolumn is an old style, integrated directly into the bridge, and trolls mill around you on every side, moving through their work with the ease that comes from centuries of doing the same thing. They don’t look at you. They don’t look at anything, really. They move like they’re sleeping, and if it weren’t for the green glow of their eyes, you’d wonder.

Iphige’s eyes are still amber. The dead thing locked in the wire beside hers aren’t, though. Its eyes are lime, and its body is linked into hers, bone knit to bone, mind knit to mind.

“His name was Nihilo,” she says, faintly displeased, and you flinch. It’s not that you expect her lips to move. Helmsmen aren’t people, not really: their voices are static and code that pours out of the speakers, and they don’t bother with their pilots. Even sitting here, facing hers, feels like a mis-step.

But Iphige’s speakers aren’t mounted to the walls. They’re the people milling around you, each movement perfectly matched, each word a mirror for their neighbours.

It’s been three hours since you boarded. You’d have figured your husk would’ve stopped crawling by now.

“Sorry, sweetheart.” You lean back in your chair, let your eyes drift up to the coil of wire above her head. She keeps it well-trimmed. Or her captain does? (You’ve seen no sign of a captain. You try not to think about that.) “Didn’t mean to stare. I was just thinking about.. ah…”

“You want to leave.” No matter where her voice is coming from, you’d know the tone. Tired. Bland. Just the faintest hint of recrimination, like when you first said you had to go, and she could come with you or not. But although you chew on the end of your cigarette, let the silence hang, she doesn’t scold you. Doesn’t say the all things you know must be banging against her teeth, begging to be let go.

(She shouldn’t be in some ancient patrol ship, cruising the edge of Imperial space. She should be in a church ship, surrounded by her subjuggulators.)

(And you should have been there with her.)

“Don’t go,” she says instead, and it’s not through her crew. It’s her voice, cracked and rusty and raw. “Please. Just stay.”