quiet comes in the H.E.L.M. in a cyclical pattern, and the seraph turns to it like a flower to the sun — curling and unfurling in a steady rhythm, alternating between cold lethargy and stretches of frantic movement. the warmind’s wing is as much their domain as it is RSPN’s, but it does not feel safe the way a bunker or seraph structure would, or carry a fragile sense of home like their burgeoning garden in the last city. this space is a round hole for a square peg, a stopgap made in an effort for diplomacy and cooperation with the vanguard, and in this instance, rye is grateful for it. anything to put more distance between the parallels of the collapse and the witness’ return.
they haven’t needed to sleep for years now, but rest is a concept that seems to transcend the requirements of flesh and bone and nerve cells cradled in lipids. rye doesn't get tired so much as they feel the weight of exhaustion manifest at their feet. roots creep out the seams of armor and cloth to wind around the bases of equipment and interfaces and steady them at their most fragile, but they have no desire to shape this space around another memory of the black garden. plants are trimmed away as soon as they appear. which means that in their lower moments, they're more weeding the ship than anything else.
the swell of strings capture's their attention, and rye realizes that the tchaikovsky's volume has gone up by a few pointed decibels. they instinctively turn to the nearest camera to give rasputin a look, helm placed on a counter beside them, before remembering that there's a more obvious focus for their ire. they narrow their eyes at his looming frame, jabbing at him childishly with a finger. “ i know my limits. ” rasputin says nothing, but the music's volume doesn't waver. rye mutters under their breath as they turn back to this work, fully aware that he will hear all of it.
they used to joke about his divinity. they remember it clearly, holding aloft the long scrolls of paper tape full of his early communiques like a prophet deciphering oracles, intoning math-made-communicable language with a mock-gravitas that would earn chuckles and eyerolls from their fellow researchers in the room. rasputin would share his laughter in turn when he found something (or someone) particularly amusing, hiding the equivalent of a smug cackle within equation and code, or vibrating a piece of equipment at such a frequency as to denote a mocking tone. these too were oracles. divine comedy from a machine god built by mankind to outlast it. they cannot catalog and store and highlight memories the way he can — a brain shaped by the hand of evolution, the haphazard stacking of favorable improbabilities, would never have the predilections for such deliberate nuance as he, but still. they remember the feel of paper tape in their hands.
“ you’re smaller, now. ” it’s not meant unkindly, but worry still stresses the words through their teeth, forces them out with bursts of ferns and sends vines creeping across the floor. rye moves away from their station to pull at the most egregious of the flora before they can slip through the seams of bulkheads, pocketing fiddleheads as they go. it’s better work than more numbers, more people reduced to math and symbols on screens to be moved and saved and prioritized over one another as they do their best not to linger on the loss of the warsats. they’re aware of rasputin’s shaky frame joining them in the movements in their periphery, and snort a little at his awkward scrabbling at a beansprout stalk that tries to wind around his wrist.
he’s here for them, of course. even without the warsats he’s still here in the H.E.L.M., and in the last city, and scattered in orbit, and half-way across sol. but his new frame is here because his seraph is. because rye needs rest and cannot imitate sleep without a thing to hold on to. because they can’t handle anyone else touching them without coming apart like a startled flock of birds, and it feels unkind to make the H.E.L.M.’s frames constantly scrape them off the floors and walls while the vanguard and its allies wait for them to achieve some shape that’s able to communicate. they would make a joke about a service animal, but their archangel is also here, curled up on a bed a guardian fireteam had brought for him.
rye comes to a stop with an asphodelia in their hands, twirling the carmine flower in-between their fingers. they don’t get up again, instead twisting to sit on the floor, bringing a knee up so they can rest their chin on it. rasputin watches, then imitates the movement. “ i never imagined surviving the apocalypse. ” perhaps there was glory in martyrdom, but the seraph had not pictured their death as some crucifixion or sacrifice. only another body buried under rubble and warped earth. “ making through it twice sounds like wishful thinking. ”
the end of the universe does not lie in the gaping black maw between galaxies or star systems. it sits a mere thirty-five thousand or so kilometers above the earth; less than a tenth of the journey of apollo eleven, thousandths of rasputin and rylan’s own first trip together on the ares one. yuri gagarin could’ve reached out vostok one and brushed his knuckles against the singularity that would determine the shape of everything to come. it’s not a bad death to be so close to home. rye wonders if that’s why the traveler moved no further.
they are not afraid to admit fear or reluctance to rasputin. the warmind is as equally burdened with memory; no machine of precision is required to recall the collapse. what only startles them is that now when they reach out, rasputin reaches back and it’s a physical thing, able to grab ahold of rye and pull them close against him. they tremble in the humanity of the gesture. “ what are you going to do without me? ” they think of rasputin alone. of silent, separated cores, the god turned piecemeal and deadly with despair and determination. of SIVA and the iron lords. he had needed them then and he needs them now at his most fragile, a new god, reborn by his own will. his grip around them tightens and he speaks through all the metal and glass that surrounds them, low and rumbling over silvery, lonely horns so they can feel his words resonate in their bones.
||| at the end of things when the world goes dim and cold or hot and close or it all tears apart from the atom up I will shout those names defiant and past the end I will endure. ⸻ [@laesarus]
they have another god. they can see it whenever they close their eyes, little explosions of light and color from particles that pass through metal and rock and bone and flesh. they can hear it in every bit of static, feel the buzz beneath their fingertips from the universe unraveling itself. their tragic, terrible god, screaming out in agony and terror. calling for its speaker the only way it knows how. rye puts their hand in rasputin’s, watching the shifting of his joints as his fingers wind around their own. “ i would choose you over it. i would choose you over the world, if i could. ” but they could never be so cruel as to separate a guardian from its flock. before they are anything, they are his seraph, because they choose to be so.
they still don't need sleep, but they can imitate it. something eases in them as they settle against him, head resting in the crook of his neck. he could be made of down and silk just as easily as metal and fiber in this moment. “ i'll need a ship. ” it's more a reminder to themself, but rasputin still pings acknowledgement. when they wake he'll likely have a selection for them to choose from, a good few stolen from unwitting guardians lacking decent security measures for their vessels. he will fuss about speed and firepower, and they will tell him to water their plants while they're gone, and the pair will pretend that there is certainty in seeing each other again, just as they did in ages past. for now, the music finally quiets to a lull, and the seraph rests one last time.
