Work Text:
Jonny was in the middle of one of his favorite games, known to him as “How many of the crew can I sneak up on and irritate before getting killed in the process?”.
Everyone else mostly called it “Jonny you—” with various strings of multilingual expletives. So far, he had managed to knock off Brian’s hat with a well-aimed boot (one of Marius’s belt-laden monstrosities) and steal three key pieces from the board game that Nastya and Ivy were playing. Good times.
Now, he sauntered through the halls of the ship, plotting out his next move and kicking at the odd stray octokitten. If he crawled through the vents he could probably get the drop on Tim, literally.
His cheerful scheming stuttered to a halt at the sight of a slumped figure in the corridor, which soon resolved into that of one Ashes O’Reilly. The quartermaster was sitting against the wall with their knees pulled into their chest, staring at the opposite wall with blank eyes.
Jonny sidled up cautiously, game forgotten for the moment—it wasn’t any fun if they weren’t in a position to at least try to stab him in retaliation. He could see their shoulders rising and falling with their breath so they probably weren’t dead.
“Ashes?” he called. “Are you frozen or something? I told Raphaella not to play around with those paralytic gasses outside of the lab.” No response, just the slightest of motions as they hunched in a little further. Well, fuck.
The crew of the Aurora all had their share of issues from their assorted shitty pasts and each handled them—with varying degrees of success—in their own ways. Ashes was normally partial to some light arson and messing with the structures of powerful crime families. Jonny could respect that, although his own preferred outlet was getting up close and personal in the pursuit of delivering extreme violence, aided by any weapon he could get his hands on and maybe some whiskey.
But sometimes the specters of the past weren’t the sort that could be kept at bay by wreaking havoc planetside. Sometimes they would just press in, reaching freezing fingers to clutch at the very core of your being until you were left utterly adrift, detached from your own senses, your own thoughts, from everything except for the creeping chill which consumed you from the inside out.
Or so Jonny had heard.
...Alright, perhaps he wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with this type of brainfuckery situation himself. Staring down the bleak expanse of unwanted immortality could do a number on the mind even without the heap of baggage that had come before it and, well, Doc Carmilla never did get his bioprogramming quite right. Still, seeing cool, collected Ashes shrunk in on themself was something uncomfortably different. Not right at all.
No one could ever accuse Jonny of being good at interacting with others in any way that did not consist of copious amounts of bloodshed but he was, despite his whole himself, not entirely heartless.
He reached Ashes while remaining free of any bullet holes, which he took as an encouraging sign, and slid down the wall to sit beside them, stretching out his legs in front of him in counterpoint to their tense huddle of limbs. He didn’t say anything, just contemplated the silvery and faintly humming wall of the Aurora as if that had been his entire purpose for coming over. It was a pretty good wall, as far as walls went, he supposed. Nastya would find out somehow and come clobber him with a wrench if he dared to think otherwise.
A few long moments passed until Ashes shifted incrementally next to him, arms still wrapped around their knees.
“I couldn’t breathe,” they said, voice little more than an exhale. “I wasn’t even—I was just walking. Going to the storeroom, like I do every goddamn day, and then I couldn’t breathe. Like these—” they thumped their sternum with a faintly-trembling fist “—were just some hunks of dead metal, weighing me down while I choked and that bastard Mickey laughed. And then all I could think of was her voice, saying that she had done all that work to make me better and look at me now.”
Jonny felt his hands spasm reflexively. They had been a mess on Carmilla’s operating table, gasping uncontrollably, skin streaked with blood and soot. Carmilla's face had shone with glee as she motioned Jonny to fetch her scalpel, eager for a challenge. As he complied, he had wondered distantly if she’d had the same expression when she had carved into his own chest.
“—couldn’t even make it back to my room,” Ashes added with a self-deprecating sound masquerading as a laugh. "So I've just been sitting here like a weak little baby."
Jonny patted his pocket for his pack of cigarettes, pulling one out to place in his mouth though he didn't light it.
"Don't make me laugh," he said. "You've never been weak and even if you were, who gives a fuck. You’re Ashes O’Reilly. You can roll thirteen on a pair of dice and strum a bass like nobody’s business. And you gave that piece of shit Mickey what he deserved."
Ashes didn't answer beyond an outstretched hand. He passed them a cigarette, lighting theirs then his with a flick of his lighter.
They sat in silence for a long moment, twin tails of smoke drifting up from their cigarettes.
"And the doc?" Ashes asked eventually.
“What about her.”
“Do you think that? That she made us better?”
“I don't give a shit about what she made us,” he said vehemently. “She’s gone, and good fucking riddance. What matters is us here and now.” He even mostly meant it.
Ashes’s eyes widened for a brief second before their gaze softened. They turned to elbow him in the ribs. “That was almost sweet, you know.”
“Fuck off, Ashes,” Jonny retorted, though without any bite. “Go to Marius if you want psychiatrist shit”.
“Not a chance. Between you and me,” they lowered their voice dramatically. “I don’t believe that man’s ever been to medical school.”
“What?” Jonny gasped with all of the affront he could muster, which was a considerable amount. “Next thing you’ll be telling me is he’s not really a baron.”
Ashes chuckled and Jonny joined in, glad to be back in familiar territory. He made to get up, before an arm on his thigh stopped him.
“Jonny.” Then, softly: “Thanks.”
Jonny fiddled with his lighter so that he didn’t have to look at them. “Sure.”
“If you tell anyone about this,” they added. “I will shove a flamethrower down your throat, barbecue your spleen, and chuck you out the airlock. And I won’t bother making it look like an accident.”
“Ashes O’Reilly,” Jonny said with utter sincerity. “I would rather jump out the airlock myself than have to relive even a second of sharing feelings with you.”
They nodded solemnly at that and got to their feet, using one hand to easily tug him up as well.
“At least pretend that took you some effort, asshole,” Jonny groused.
Ashes scoffed. “In your dreams, d’Ville.” They squinted a little as they peered down the hallway. “What is that octokitten doing?”
Turning around, Jonny saw the oozing form of an octokitten triumphantly clutching the twin of the belt-bedecked boot that he had stolen from Marius’s room earlier. The little buggers did have a penchant for the self-proclaimed doctor’s belongings and Jonny had perhaps semi-accidentally forgotten to relock the door after breaking into his room. Oops. It did remind him of his unfinished game, however.
“No idea,” he lied cheerfully. “Hey, wanna go prank Tim with me?”
Their face lit up with an incandescent grin, the sort that could set a planet aflame. “Now you’re talking.”