like a supernova

“to me beauty is not a perfect, shining engine,” he replies simply to endymion’s judgement of the ship. he’s a little miffed, of course, but then he thinks the response is to be expected from a prince like the younger man. it’s not good unless it’s in pristine state, with no faults to speak of. but henry doesn’t need finished products, because they don’t offer him a job; a home. henry likes the things that need work, the things that cry out in need of attention, the things that require to be undented, to be helped, to be given strength and purpose. henry likes the things that remind him of himself, and he likes to be the person for them that no one was for him.

he says none of this to endymion, of course.

when the young prince speaks of not knowing where to begin or what happened, he can’t help but breathe out a smile. yet the next moment he is asked if help can be given and he glances up at endymion. “at this point i’d rather not give too much out of hand. i need to know exactly how everything’s put together or it might cost us all our lives.” he knows he might be a little short but then the pressure on him currently is quite enormous. “i know you’re not bad at this but you might put a screw in differently than i would and the split second it would take me to figure that out could be the split second we can’t spare.” he glances around the room quickly, even as his fingers are still dutifully working on the piece he’s got between his legs, taking it apart so he can put it back together better.

“if you need something to keep busy with and you don’t mind small work you could sort the mess over there so i can more easily find what i need in it.” he nods over at the assortment of all kinds of screw, parts and pieces that is currently just a thrown together heap of things. “i haven’t had the time to organise lately.” he gives an apologetic shrug of his shoulders, as if to say he’s sorry he can’t give endymion anything more useful. then he picks back up on their earlier conversation.

“also, princeling,” he says, and it surprises even himself how the almost affectionate nickname he used to give the younger man back on zephyr rolls off his lips so easily even now, as if there’s not months and months of time between then and now, as if he’s not almost an entirely different person at this point. “i’m not your superior nor your father; i don’t need a detailed report of events. i’m just asking what happened to you. it doesn’t have to make sense.”

syxjaewon​:

(...) he stops walking with henry but keeps his tone nonchalant and unbothered, hoping this won’t descend into something disastrous. they’ve already had a lot to deal with the last few days. “hey, you go ahead without me, pick up the rest of what you need. i’ll meet you back at the ship in a few hours. we leave at sundown.” but before henry can take off, jaewon grabs the bag he has that’s holding the items he’s just purchased, and drops his stolen goods from the first store into it, emptying out his pockets and turning to stride away without another word.

jaewon walks away with him for a few steps before coming to a stop, and henry pauses alongside him automatically. too used to the way things usually go when jaewon is around, his hand already moves to his hip, checking his gun is free in its holster - when did he even start to carry a gun when out in public? he knows the answer to that, tries very hard not to think of it.

then suddenly jaewon is changing his mind, telling henry to go on alone, get what he needs, make it back to the ship. for a moment he’s thinking of making a comment about the sudden change in directives but then he just lets it go. it doesn’t matter. at least now he can be as charming or as brusque as he wants to be without jaewon’s face showing its judgement in his peripheral view. so he shrugs and nods his acceptance, about to step away when jaewon reaches for him and makes him wait, pulling down the bag to unload various items into it.

he knows, without having to ask or check, that these are unpaid items, and any other day he would probably have made some sort of sarcastic comment like “oh great, give me the stolen goods so i can get arrested”. he doesn’t this time. instead he simply bunches up the bag again, throws it back over his shoulder and walks off without so much as looking back. now browsing alone, he can skip all the stands he doesn’t need, skip everything he knows is just junk after a single glance, and just get what he needs. what he will have to do, however, is make a list of expenses so he can quote them back at jaewon and maybe one day get his credits paid back to him.

those are worries for later, though, now he first needs to try and make sure serenity is good to go again. before sundown, because apparently jaewon thinks he can fix an overheated, overworked mess in a matter of a few hours.

(...) he wants to reach out and touch him, he wants to grab his arms and pull him closer, but that would not get him the connection he wishes for, that would not bolster henry’s opinion of him. instead, he lets himself feel the relief, doing nothing to hinder that at least from crossing his face (because what could be the harm in that, right? relief to see a friend again? that’s normal, isn’t it?), and then reins himself back in. “i’ll be honest, i’m not great. i’m very frustrated, and i think if i don’t sit down soon i may fall down. but i’m,” he has to pause, to nod, to smile faintly, “i’m very glad to see you again, henry lau. doc told me you were here when i woke up and i didn’t want to wait.” he tries not to gulp as henry adjusts his clothing, even as his heart stops, his own fingers quick to realign his outfit to better perfection– he doesn’t want to look like a backberth in front of henry. “you work on a ship now? are you just passing through again?”

there’s relief in endymion’s features when they lock gazes at first, and he’s glad he can still recognise something like that - that he still knows this young man like he did once upon a time, that some things at least don’t change. then the prince is talking and from the first syllable passing those lips, he already knows. he recognises the weariness in endymion’s voice, the near conviction that nothing is going his way - that nothing might ever go his way again. he breathes out a soft sigh, not of annoyance but of understanding, as he already puts himself in motion again. he ducks away even as endymion’s still talking - asking him whether he works on the ship or if he’s passing through - but stays quiet as he rummages around the engine room. when he returns, it’s with a piece of metal in hand that will make do as a chair - at least for the time being. he puts it down against the metal plating of the engine room’s walls, patting the seat to see if it’s stable as well as to invite endymion over to sit down.

“i’m not passing through.” he thinks, but there’s honestly no saying anymore these days. for now though, for now he’s staying. “right now. this is...” home is a word he’s used too often, a word he can’t seem to put to anything anymore now because it always gets taken away from him. so he alters what he was going to say to something more befitting. “the ship i told you about working on. as much my blood as the red running through my veins.” he tilts up a corner of his mouth in an attempt to make it seem like something lighthearted, one of those jokes he would make. he doesn’t know if it works or if he just looks constipated. he doesn’t really care either.

“here i’ll get you some water.” he rummages around a little more in his personal corner, and comes out with a surprisingly clean cup filled with clean water. but then he’s learned the value of clean eating and drinking utensils from an early age onwards, and has always kept his tools and his surroundings cleaner than he’s kept himself. once endymion takes the cup from him, he disappears to the other side of the room again for a moment, going out of sight behind the engine, this time to return with a small part under one arm and a few bits and pieces in the other. “i hope you don’t mind if i work a bit while we talk, she’s almost falling apart as we speak and i’d rather make it to the nearest planet alive.” he flashes that half-smile of pretend amusement again as he glances at endymion shortly before moving to sit down on the floor. within moments he’s got the right tools plucked out of his belt again and he’s back to the task at hand.

he follows after jaewon, even if the comment about trying more wiles has him scoffing in the least amused way. he doesn’t make a fight out of it, though, there is absolutely no point. in fact, there is little point to anything much other than getting the parts he needs to keep serenity’s engine running so that somehow he can feel useful in a verse that has proven time and time again that he is not, not really. the only place where his presence has ever felt like it made a difference was in the hot engine room of the firefly class ship hurtling through the black randomly.

if not for jaewon having declared earlier that they should stick together, he would have wandered off on his own, simply getting the parts he needs and heading back. as it is, he catches jaewon’s muttered words, lets his gaze go over the items and utters a non-committal hum in response to them. “maybe you can try some wiles,” he says after a moment, as he already reaches out a hand to touch one of the pieces, for no other reason than to feel the metal under his fingertips, to learn through touch alone whether it’s decent or will give way at the first signs of strain.

it’s indeed surprisingly decent, not so bad as jaewon had named the stuff, and so he pulls his hand back as he lets his eyes go over the other things available. not for the first time he wishes he could just take whatever he needs, throw the asked price at the merchants and leave rather than having to barter his way from a ridiculous price down to something resembling normality. he’s tired of even that, tired of everything that does not allow him to put his heart and soul into making an engine run, a ship fly or a machine work. he’s tired of everything that requires energy of him outside of his work, because he just can’t find it in himself to care about any of that.

his gaze falters, his eyes unfocusing for a little while, and when he snaps back to it, he just lets out a sigh tinted with annoyance. he points out a few smaller things he knows he can use, some of them from the shiny items in the front, some of them covered in grease and soot in the back. the shopkeeper clearly tries to find the middle road between the price for shiny, pristine quality and grubby, disgusting looking ones to quote him on, but even before the man can utter three words, he sticks a hand in his inner pocket, pulls out a set of credit banks and throws them on the table in front of the man.

he’s not really expecting anyone - jaewon’s busy piloting the ship, the doctor’s taking care of their new passengers and harper’s probably feeding her daughter, so he doesn’t really hear anyone walk in. when his name is called, he catches it but barely, and so he takes a moment to just finish what he’s doing before he slowly straightens and turns around.

endymion is the last person he expected to find standing in the engine room calling for him, but he adapts to this new development quite easily, wiping his hands on a cloth - still relatively clean, surprisingly - he walks around the engine, ducking under some overhanging tubes and cables so that he can come out standing in the same part of the room as his old friend is, showing the young man a smile for good measure, even if there isn’t very much to smile about.

“if i’d seen saito i would have told you,” he replies almost instantly to jaewon’s question, but there’s no sharpness or blame in his voice, it’s a simple fact. “i didn’t see any of the upheaval, i was only learning about the mechs nothing else.” he tries not to think back to the larger than life machines, to the power held within a single one of them, to how he worked with their mechanics so closely that he’s pretty sure he could build one from scratch now if he tried. he tries not to think of the joy of building, of creating, of any of it, because it’s like the door in his mind shutting out all those ancient emotions has been ripped off its hinges and he simply can’t contain all of those feelings inside of him - and he’s trying to be professional here.

so he’s glad for the change of subject, even if it moves to his sister, even more glad when he doesn’t really have to reply to that because the subject moves on again, and it’s a relief greater than himself when he is capable of just focusing on the parts at hand and the subject of haggling.

“i did,” he replies easily, like it’s no big deal, because it really isn’t. he’s had to learn many things going off on his own in the black, and where perhaps jaewon might be thinking of the year that lies behind them now, he thinks of all those years before serenity, thinks of the years of horrors and betrayals he’s gone through, years that jaewon doesn’t even know about, and he wonders what the younger man really sees him as. does he look like a fool to jaewon’s biased eyes? does he look like a mechanic who’s never done much else than get lost in machinery and engines? does he look like an idiot with a limited view of the real world so far as it’s not in relation to his job?

“but i can’t put my apparently tantalising good looks into play the way harper can.” and he’s not calling her his sister, because he doesn’t think he could ever consider the sharp-edged, seductive mercenary the same person as the soft, gentle and warm whitney, but that is also something else that shouldn’t be voiced out loud. not here, not ever. when he shared that bottle of booze with jaewon, he should have kept his mouth shut, really. “i could give it a try, but i doubt you, the merchants nor i would appreciate it much.”

he turns to the stall’s owner then, motioning at the engine part he’s had his eyes on and asking for a price. what he’s being quoted is way too high a value even if it would’ve been in pristine condition, and so his features instantly fall into displease and he shakes his head, returning an offer that is way below the selling price. and from there it begins, the seemingly endless back and forth of numbers, the merchant’s claim of him somehow being the reason they’re poor until eventually he sets his final bid at a number still below the piece’s actual worth, and when it’s rejected he merely turns away and waves off the entire discussion.

jaewon asks about his knowledge of the prince, and he has no reason not to divulge the information, so he easily does as they make their way through the crowd. “doc and i spent a few months on his planet. doc was treating one of endy’s extended family.” he isn’t actually on a cute nickname basis with the prince, but he figures while they’re out in public and until they figure out what the fuck has happened to the planet and the royal family, it’s better not to use any names too easily. “i spent that time checking out their mechs and our unwilling passenger was the one showing me around. we taught each other a few things.”

he leaves it at that, because there isn’t really more to say. endymion was a friend at the time, perhaps, but one of those fleeting friends, more of a temporary good acquaintance - and henry had a heart to full of pain, loss and betrayal to really focus on anything other than taking his mind off that. perhaps he could have made actual friends with the prince if he hadn’t been so preoccupied, if he hadn’t been trying his hardest to forget about the whole damn verse and the existence of a specific one man. 

there’s no point in thinking about that now.

he follows the captain through the crowd, one hand always on his gun. he remembers a time when he’d not really carry many weapons, remembers a time when the only reason he’d go off-ship was because he knew the place well and knew where to find people who sold what he needed. he remembers a time when the ship was bustling with people and activity. it’s different now. it’s all different now. he tries not to let that feel as bleak as it sounds in his head.

when jaewon speaks again as they reach the marketplace and stalls, he lets his gaze go over their surroundings, takes in the stalls there are and already locks on to a few of them as places he could find what he needs. jaewon mentions medical supplies then and he nods in acceptance, takes on every job or part of a job he’s given because he understands the need for all of them to work together.

despite his family dying years ago, more than a decade ago, there has always been an invisible thread binding him to them, tying him to the remnants of a life once lived, to the tatters of his youth that stick to his skin as if he’s a entity running on excess fuel. he never thought he would last much longer, never thought the world between here and where the finish line would be spanned over a very large amount of space anymore. but still he kept going, driven by some sort of survival instinct, something that kept him moving, that made him want to somehow, in whatever way he could, get back at the people who destroyed his entire life.

and then things changed. he found peace in a small engine room on a beat up ship with no particular destination. he found peace within the metal-alloy plating carrying him through space. he found peace and a home in a ship that would perhaps burn to a crisp, but would never let her soul slip into oblivion if there was still a chance for henry to fix her, to put her back together and help her fly again. there’s an infinity in machines; a way to fix them over and over again, to replace parts with newer pieces until they outlive you by at least as many years as you spent working on them. this is the peace he found; the knowledge that there was one thing in the world that could not be taken from him before he would go himself.

funny, how that works.

he doesn’t think of the time when he left, doesn’t think of the crazy hunt across the galaxy until he found the person he went looking for. he doesn’t think of the months after, slowly nursing the man back to health, slowly trying to carve out a piece in the universe for the two of them. he doesn’t think of the moment when the realisation came that he’d gone and done something stupid again. he doesn’t think of the pain he felt when he packed up his things, landed their spaceship on one of the major travel hub planets in the verse and boarded something else - anything else - just to get out of there. he doesn’t think of how for a long time it felt like he left a part of him somewhere else.

at some point he ran into the doc then, two wandering souls trying to find purchase, and so they’d decided to travel together. he never asked what doc was running from, doc never asked what he was going towards. they just went, and went, and kept going. and then one day... one day they ended up on a planet doomed to head towards its own destruction, and doc had been asked to heal someone, and henry had found... something. his connection to machines, perhaps. a new challenge he couldn’t say no to, because no beaumondian engineer in their right mind could ever see a mech and decide to leave without getting a closer look. and perhaps he imagined the look on his father’s face if they would’ve seen this together, and perhaps it was just easier to lose himself in what he knew best for a while rather than to think of anything else.

but a planet is a planet. a planet is a sitting duck when someone’s out to target it. there is no moving in unexpected directions or hiding in unseen corners when you’re on a planet. and a planet blows up a whole lot more easily than most people think it does. 

so they left. they left and they set a new course. for the first time in the months they traveled together, henry told the doc of his home, of his baby flying out among the stars, and his wish to board her again. and so they’d followed every trail, every lead, until eventually he’d managed to pick up her signal again with his very own tracker, and they’d followed her across the black, until eventually they’d found her on this or the other planet, and henry had finally been able to put his feet back on home soil, bring himself back to safety, find peace again in the steady thrumming of her engine and the dependable rumble of her gears working.

there has always been an invisible thread binding him to his family, tying him to the remnants of a lost youth, of a time when he was still naive and innocent, when he could still afford to be naive and innocent. and then his sister walked back into his life, and contrary to what one would think would happen in the event of gaining back that which he lost, the thread snapped.

he sits with his back against the metal plating like the constant rumble of the ship will somehow chase the emptiness out of him, like serenity will be able to clear all the doubt from his mind, but she can’t. it is as if, like a ship without a pilot, he’s just floating out in the black, directionless, clueless, useless. the more serenity is coming back to full life around him as he works on her parts and tinkers on her pieces, the emptier it seems he grows, as if he’s letting his life force bleed into the ship, as if he’s giving it whatever is left of him, because what is he going to do with it anyway?

harper walked into his life, into the peace he’d carved out for himself, like a memory of everything bad that happened. rather than soothe him with her familiarity, rather than warm him with the recognition, she is an invasion on the home he’s made for himself. she is a stranger stepping into his most treasured space, but a stranger whose familiarity stabs at the softest, sorest parts of his core. a stranger who is a walking reminder suddenly, once more, of everything he has lost, of every little bit of all he once treasured that will never be the way it was again. and it was easier, he thinks, to handle the constant nagging pressure of that loss, when he wasn’t reminded of it every single time. when his sister wasn’t there with him like some caricature version of herself. it was easier when at least his memories were free from the reality of life; that nothing good can ever stay unbroken.

serenity hums all around him, steady and unchanging, but the peace he used to find here, in the heart of her, is gone. because just like his sister, just like everything good that he managed to find in his life, he now knows she, too, can be corrupted, will be corrupted, will become something entirely different from what he once knew.

it’s only a matter of time,

@syxjaewon​

when he walks into the room jaewon’s seated in that particular evening, he doesn’t really say anything. it’s out of the ordinary for him, he knows this, but it’s also out of the ordinary for him to have a bottle of alcohol and two glasses in hand, and it’s also out of the ordinary for him to sit down, pour them both a glass, push one over to jaewon and then pick up his own to take a proper sip of it. the bitter taste of the liquor has him making a face, coughing lightly after he’s swallowed, but even that doesn’t deter him from keeping a hold of the glass and planning to empty it.

what brought him here is not hard to figure out, probably, as it’s the only thing of such unsettling properties that they have aboard serenity. but then again, he’s not just met his niece today, he’s also gone out and bought them the equipment doc said he’d need as well as the things he felt were necessary to have aboard serenity before they would leave the planet and fly to who knows where in the black. his only duty is to the ship, to keeping it working properly, to keeping it intact and alive, and that he hasn’t been here for over a year is painfully obvious in some of the sub-par repairs that have been done on her. repairs that he plans to undo and redo in a proper manner when there is time for it - or in case it becomes necessary first.

“a baby girl,” is all he says after just quietly sitting there staring off into nowhere for a bit, though he figures jaewon might have preferred the silent drinking to him saying it out loud, but he had to voice it to someone, and though doc and him are friends, there is no one who would understand the unlikeliness of this phenomenon better than jaewon, his captain and brother, someone who’s lived with him for years, but who also knows his sister somewhat - perhaps even better than he himself does. “i did not see that coming.”

he lifts his glass to take another sip, to wash down the somehow biting truth of that as he sits there, still just staring at one of serenity’s wall panels, not even looking at the captain in the slightest. he can’t help remembering then, the way whitney had told him she plans on raising her daughter here, aboard this ship, with family to look out for her. he feels such a thing might not be the best to expect of said captain, but his sister had seemed quite sure about her choices, and seemed to have had no worry whatsoever about jaewon’s acceptance of the baby.