#koteus

Divian sighed and stepped fully into the kitchen. Of course, the obsession was less about the kitchen being clean and more about exercising control over the space. Often was this the case with higher castes, he’d never been surprised to find a seadweller dying to be the master of a space. It didn’t much fit Koteus and his typical demeanor though.

“Come now, didn’t you receive that arm for the project you were commissioned for? Some rest will do you good.”

“I said no, Finnis.” This time as he responded, he stood a little straighter, broadened his shoulders even, in a subconscious bid to remind him whose title was colonel, a rank he himself never felt properly described him, and who was only the crew therapist. A reminder of the difference in caste between them, some form of primal defense mechanism.

“I think that you need to take a break.”

Silence.

“Come on, it has been a long night. You can get back to it in the evening.”

More silence.

Something in the cabinet cracked. Divian advanced slowly, studying the body language of the behemoth as he did. He knew Koteus didn’t have the heart to hurt anyone, that it was only peacocking. On the same hand, accidents can happen.

“It has to be good enough, Koteus. Come on.”

“You’re fucking intolerable, did you know?” His voice wavered, he stood stockstill. 

“Mhm. I’ve heard that. I think from your mouth.” Divian paused. “What was it again? Korste misplaced some tools, sent you on a tizzy of reorganizing ‘the whole damn ship, if I have to.’ Very early on into our meeting. Really told us a lot about the young man whose job it was to lead us into the great unknown. The violet blood and his crew of mid and low bloods.”

“Shut up.”

“Consensus was that he wasn’t so bad. Just a guy forced to do a job he didn’t want. Didn’t want to boss us around, but it was out of his control. What could he control? The shelf the socket wrench sat on, how far away the different diagnostic tools lived from each other.”

“Fuck’s sake. I was there, Divian. You’re not saying anything new or that I don’t know!”

“Well, it isn’t really my job to tell you things that you don’t know.”

Crunch. The sound of whatever dish he gripped crumbling in his hand. Koteus growled at the new mess in the cabinet. At the lack of control he had over himself.

Emotions were the worst for him in this state.

Standing right behind him, Divian watched his shoulders shake from the tension. “Come now, let me help you.”

“Fuck you.”

”Mhm, I know.”

Koteus whipped around to stare down at him, his locs jostling restlessly from the movement, the beads that clung onto them bouncing off any and all nearby surfaces. 

Divian only smiled sadly.

“Really. Fuck you! You think that just because you come back that you’re going to automatically set the world to rights? Are you insane? People died, Finnis. Do you understand? People I was responsible for, that didn’t listen to me or Kleihe.” A riot fully out of his control.

He balled his hands into fists at his sides, but made no other moves toward the therapist he loomed over, everything from that night to today washed over his features in a kaleidoscope of emotion. Pain, frustration, sadness, anger. They all flashed in the twitch of his eye, in the furrow of his brows. He was visibly shaking by the time the dam broke and tears escaped containment.

”I know.”

“You know. Then we got back here, stripped of home and family. Death would have been too good for us, we needed to suffer for our incompetencies. Isn’t that fucked up?” A bitter laugh. “Even then, somehow, we found normalcy. We found Dawn. Have they told you about her? It has been the talk of the hive these last few weeks.”

Koteus gestured broadly, Divian nodded.

“She was amazing. Spectacular. A free spirit that couldn’t be put down no matter how volatile Alternia was. Dawn… She faced the horrors head on, life could be an adventure. She saved us from ourselves. Do you know what it’s like to have one of the most important people in your life rotting in the bed next to you and not being able to do anything about it because you’re rotting at the same rate? Do you?”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

“She saved us from ourselves and we couldn’t even,” He choked on a sob that clawed its way out of his throat and accepted the offer when Divian reached to lead him to take a seat at the table. “I couldn’t stop her from leaving that night. I couldn’t protect her, every fiber in my being screamed for me to go out the door right after her and drag her back in if I had to. I didn’t do anything. Like I never do anything. It was out of my hands.”

Koteus leaned forward in the chair concealing his face behind a veil of his hair as he finally stopped fighting back the tears. His shoulders shook between each desperate sob as he used his left hand to massage the right.

Sure, it was what he set out for since the night began, but it was hard to watch. Divian frowned and rested a gentle hand on his back. After an eternity of Koteus sobbing in silence, the behemoth took in a shaky breath.

“And how am I meant to feel sorry for myself when there are still people depending on me to be okay?”

Rubbing his back in circles, small and slow, the jade blood couldn’t help but see that same young man from so many sweeps ago sitting before him. Thrust out into a cruel world with only the task to make it crueler in front of him. Forced into shoes far too big, far too soon. There was a lot to be said with going through such forced development, but nothing that would be helpful right now.

Small steps.

“How long do you think you can go on in survival mode like this? Does it feel sustainable?”

Silence. Koteus took a moment to catch his breath.

“Obviously not.”

“Would it kill you? To let us carry that load with you, Koteus? It isn’t just the two of you anymore.”

“I know. I don’t,” another shaky breath. “I don’t know if I can.”

“We’ll work on it. It may never look perfect again, but we’ll work on it.”

Koteus lifted his head to look at him for a moment, he looked like he’d aged a hundred sweeps in the last ten minutes, but he forced a sad smile. “It won’t be easy.”

“Ah,” Divian shook his head, wrapped his arm around his shoulders, and shifted into a language that sounded and tasted more like home. “It does not have to be easy, but that does not mean it cannot be done.” 

That’s another change, imperfections decorate the violet blood in a map that tells the story of where he has been. Of who he is now. A fractured horn and torn ear and fin. This is not the Velrum that disappeared all of those sweeps ago.

Zurven should be surprised, but he knew what to expect. Harlan’s intervention made sure of it. 

Velrum waves a three fingered hand as he comes closer, and he tries not to let his stare linger. But the gold band around the middle digit draws the eye with the way the twin moons shine off of it. The seadweller does not seem bothered.

“Zurven, is that you?” Even his voice doesn’t ring with the same uptight, strictness that it did in the past. Instead, it seems light. Free of burden. He comes to sit and lets one of his legs dangle over the sea below.

Though neither of their feet touch the water, Zurven cannot help but notice how much further his own is away from it.

“Wow, how long has it been?”

The smaller troll makes like he is looking at a watch that isn’t there and shrugs.

Velrum laughs.

“Doesn’t matter. I’m glad to see you..” He pauses to get a good look at him. “Out. Away from all of that.”

The sailor sounds unsure as he speaks, each of the six words enunciated slowly. Worry almost creases his brow.

A quick nod assuages his fear and he lets out a quick sigh.

“Good. It was a fucked up situation.”

“No kidding.” Zurven sighs. “How did you do it?”

“Hm?”

“Move on from everything.”

Velrum seems taken aback by the question. Anyone who knows anything about Zurven would guess that he would sooner swallow his tongue than choose to speak about this for longer than necessary. Even someone who hasn’t seen the brown blood since he was six sweeps old.

The seadweller runs a hand through his hair, knocking it so it cascades down along his back instead of over his shoulder. It frames his face in a way that makes him look much older than he is.

“Zurven,” he starts, moving to take one of his hands between both of his. The metal of his jewelry feels cool against the smaller troll’s skin. “Time is a weird thing.”

Zurven's laugh is breathless.

“Tell me about it.”

The response he receives is a squeeze, one designed to keep him grounded.

“Time and space are a wonderful tool. They will not heal all of your wounds. They can only provide you with the chance to come to terms with them.”

“That’s what people say. All the time, it’s what they say.”

“It’s hard as hell, Zurv.”

“Doable?”

“I didn’t say impossible, kid.”

Zurven swallows his uncertainty, not really sure what he was expecting to hear in the first place.

The Soldier

Koteus is much easier to track down, despite the claims that he is all but a hermit now. The seadweller lived in the same hive, surrounded by dense forest and an expansive lake from the time he was discharged from the fleet. What is surprising, however, is the sprawling garden that hugs around a considerable length of the hive, and the lively sheet moss that grows up the wall that the hive shares with the garden.

It is a sight to behold.

Certainly not one anyone would expect a so-called shut in to keep up with. Zurven sucks in a deep breath, admiring the warmth of the garden as it brings him to life.

“Hey kid, y’lost or somethin’?” Calls out a yellow blood from the front door, he waves a robotic hand in the air to get his attention.

The brown blood blinks back at him, kicking himself internally for neglecting to account for hivemates when setting out for this trip.

“I’m just here to see Koteus.” He finally says, when the silence blankets them the same way the moss did the residence. “It’s been a while.”

“‘Course you are,” The stranger starts, then pauses to look at a display on his arm. Finally, he motions for him to follow him as he moves back into the hive. “C’mon.”

Zurven nods and toddles along after him.

The yellow blood leads him through a front room and a living room first, where he takes in all the sights the home has to offer. The most important thing he could note was that there were family pictures littered throughout the two rooms. All sorts of faces smiled back at him, with each other, as the pair made their way into a kitchen much larger than he would know what to do with.

“Little man!” A familiar voice calls out and draws his attention to an island at its center.

Standing there beside it is Koteus, a bright smile on his face and a curtain of dreads that threaten to kiss the floor despite much of it being tied up into a bun. The tattoo on his face obscures much of his expression, but it is easy to tell he is happy.

“Little is right.” The cyborg emphasizes as he exits the way they entered.

Zurven can’t find it in him to be offended by the sentiment, he is easily the shortest person in the room. Aside from the very small human that sits on the counter, handing Koteus bowls of varying sizes with great enthusiasm.

She uses a free hand to wave at him.

“Jessie, Zurven. Zurven, Jessie.”

“Hi!” Jessie beams, pointing at Zurven and then her own chest. “Your sign?”

“Horologium.” He says pulling the hoodie he’d stolen from his partner tighter around his shoulders, suddenly incredibly self conscious. “It’s a clock.”

“Har-go-lum!” Jessie shouts as she clasps her hands together before getting back to her very serious job of handing the violet blood her bowls. 

“Hawr-uh-lo-jee-um.” He says, slowly this time.

She nods with vigor and goes on to mouth the word Horologium to herself, going through the motions of learning a new difficult word.

He is momentarily taken back to a time when the name of his own sign was foreign to him. Five sweeps old when he learned what to call it, how to pronounce it. Thuein and Lopard were patient, but the pity they felt reigned in their eyes.

A human will learn how to say it better before she hits three sweeps.

Dwelling doesn’t last long, Koteus’s voice fills the room again and brings him back from his thoughts.

“Had I known you wanted to meet, I could have met you somewhere more convenient.” His voice is apologetic. “Middle of nowhere is a little out of the way, yeah?”

“I think I needed the trip.” He admits.

“Clear skies’ll cure a cluttered mind like nothing else.” The seadweller says as he lifts the young human off of the counter and sets her on her feet.  “Something on your mind?”

“I think so. If you have time.”

Koteus watches as Jessie quickly finds her way to the entrance of the kitchen and disappears further into the hive. He smiles.

“A spot just opened up.”

Despite his time in the fleet, Koteus’s scars are not physical ones. The only markings on his skin are the tattoos he received from the planet he was stationed on. But the scars on his heart, Zurven thinks, must be innumerable. Impossible to count. Heavy.

He leads Zurven to the table and they sit across from each other.

Koteus looks wiser than he would ever care to admit. Always said wisdom means you’re old.

“Lay it on me, little man.”

“You’ve uh. You’ve been through a lot, right?”

“Nothing I didn’t sign up for.” He sighs. “But yeah.”

“Doesn’t it weigh a ton? How do you–”

“Carry it all?” He interjects, voice soft.

Zurven nods slowly.

The soldier leans forward, causing the beads clinging to his dreads to knock against the table between them.

“Not all at once, and never on my own.” He whispers, and the safety of Benjins hoodie starts to feel more real.

The Magician

There is a market in the city, filled with fresh produce from the grounds of the House of Restoration and other goods ferried from parts of Alternia the typical city dweller would never find the time to visit.

Zurven stands among the produce, fighting hard to remember the instructions given to him by Achina on how to pick out the perfect avocado. He is fairly certain the one in his hand is hard enough to give someone a concussion.

“Nah, brother. You try ‘n eat somethin’ that unripe it’ll knock your teeth right outta your skull.”

Zurvens gaze drifts from the rock in his hand to the observer he must have been preventing from getting one of his own.

“Think ya’ gotta put it in a paper bag to make it ripe faster or somethin’. Unless you’re tryin’a--“

The purple blood stops cold as they lock eyes, the recognition on either side is instantaneous. The swirly face paint that starts at the tip of his nose and spirals outward takes Zurven back to a place he doesn’t want to be and he gives the avocado a harsh squeeze. Hard as a baseball, it does not yield to his attempted mutilation.

“Shit! Little fuckin’, Curly top? Zurven? Damn! You grown up, huh?” The clown sputters out clumsily, measuring Zurven up with his hand as he does.

“Didn’t see you none once the. Well, y’know.” He says as he mimes a hand over his left eye, mimicking the trauma Persep subjected his illusionist friend to. “And you’re all out and about and shit, huh?”

“It’s nice to see you too, Parcae.” Zurven mumbles, resisting the urge that threatens to pull his thoughts back to the past. “You’re always so peppy, despite everything. That’s a real wonder to me-- “

The brown blood is cut off by the magician as he scoops him up into his arms and crushes him close against his chest.

Zurven goes stiff.

“Nah, we ain’t talkin’ about me. We’re talking about you!” He does not seem to care that the display is causing his suit jacket to wrinkle. Not that that really comes as a surprise. “Been thinkin’ about you, brother. Always wanted to scoop y’up like that and let ya know how you were always stronger than you shoulda had to be and shit.”

He says nothing.

“Y’know? I’m thinkin’ you’re one a the strongest guys I ever met. I’m thinkin’ you could survive anything, brother.”