#nemmie

sol takes him seriously, because that’s what vace is there for. he unholsters his plaspistol (for show, because it’s not like he actually know how to use the thing), goes for a sample of this last plant, and then they’ll get moving back to the transport.

first rule of vertumna: it’s never just a plant.

this plant turns out to be the hook for a creature fairly reminiscent of a snapbladder. and the second sol touches it, the trap springs.

it gets a decent clamp on sol. across his left shoulder and chest. it’s clearly not sized for human prey, but it’s bite is strong enough. it’ll bruise, and its teeth break the skin, but it’s not all that worrying.

it lets go when vace fires some non-lethal shots into it, and scurried away. vace goes to check on the doc, who assures him that it’s all fine.

but they haven’t been unnoticed. all day, noctilucent has been keeping tabs on them. waiting for a good opportunity to strike. and what better opening than worried distraction?

but he’s mean. he aims for the hard hits.

he drops a tree on them.

vace manages to swing the doc out of the way, and takes the full force of a falling tree on himself. not that solane being present would’ve changed that, then they’d just both take the full force of a falling tree. and it would end much worse for one of them.

it’ll leave some bruises on him. might’ve even left a few small cracks in the bones. but this is vace. he’ll be fine.

there’s only one major problem.

his legs are pinned under it. and he’s strong, but not super strong, and it’s hard to get proper leverage when you’re face down on the ground. sol is managed to catch his breath after being thrown to the ground (really just failing to catch himself), and is about to get up and go to vace…

but noctilucent emerges from the bushes. still dripping, like he’d crawled right out of the swamp water.

(he did)

sol hasn’t met noct before, but he knows about gardeners from sym

particularly that there are a number of gardeners who want the whole colony gone. and who think “dead” is good enough.

and in this particular scenario? he doesn’t really get the feeling this is going to be a friendly chat. he wonders if noct was the one responsible for the looming stormclouds.

noct knows how to threat assess. also, he’s been watching them all day. he knows that one of these individuals knows how to use a gun, and the other is a goddamn nerd. so vace presently being stuck under a tree? means that problem can be dealt with immediately.

so noct goes to him.

and stomps on vace’s head with those ugly ass hooves of his.

but, it’s vace. he’s built different. it’ll leave a bump, and left a little split in the skin that bleeds a bit, but it’s probably not even enough for a concussion.

(sol definitely has that brief moment of “i just witnessed a murder” before he remembered vace’s augment)

but noct keeps going. he gets another 3-4 in before sol throws himself on vace, literally wrapping around noctilucent’s leg like an octopus. screaming for him to stop.

and noct backs up a step. mostly because he’s surprised by the sheer audacity sol is showing.

and sol covers vace’s body with his own.

he doesn’t know how to fight. his plaspistol isn’t in reach, he can’t see vace’s plasrifle, the only thing he has is the knowledge that gardeners don’t die when their body is killed. he isn’t a soldier.

but he has to be.

vace is out of it. he seems to be wavering on consciousness, but his legs are still stuck and he definitely has at least a concussion now.

sol is the only one who can help them right now.

he’s shaking and sobbing, pressed overtop of vace. he can see something like amusement in noct’s eyes, and it pushes him that much further.

noct leans down. he wants to meet this human eye to eye, to mock sol for this before he kills them both. he’s absolutely focused on the full-faced misery of sol.

it’s classic, really. a common trick used by magicians in old holovids.

misdirection.

noct doesn’t see sol work vace’s knife free of the belt. he isn’t as guarded with sol. this human has only ventured beyond the colony a handful of times, and has never shown any prowess for combat.

sol isn’t a threat.

and as the doctor, lightning quick, wraps a hand around the back of noctilucent’s neck and slices so deep he leaves a cut across his own palm, he wonders if noct will remember this. feel some primal unease the next time he sees solane. or if, like his recent memories, all sense of threat melts away with his body.

the sprinkling rain is starting to grow heavier. sol uses a thick branch to leverage the tree off of vace, and wishes desperately that he had the time to fully exam the damage.

but he doesn’t. utopia will probably realize something is wrong soon—probably sent a message to the transport when stratos picked up on the storm moving in, and is waiting for a response that indicates they’re heading back to the colony.

when it doesn’t come, she’ll report them as missing. normal protocol is a search and rescue party.

but the storm would make for hostile conditions. if it raises the water too much, there are parts of the road that’ll flood, and they might not even be able to get a squad to the swamp. unless the storm blows over in minutes (which is possible, if not likely), it’ll be nightfall or later by the time anyone can make it.

and nighttime isn’t a good time for a rescue squad. it just puts more people at risk. in most cases, they’d wait until day. rhett wouldn’t get any sleep over the worry and guilt, but he’d make the choice anyway.

except, maybe, for sol.

he’s a doctor. the only one who knows what to do besides instance. he has more old-school knowledge than instance, and a xenobotanist background. he’s valuable, and he hates knowing that. that someone might consider it worthwhile to risk other lives to save his own.

but others can be trained. medbeds can handle just about any problem, as long as they stay functional. rhett knows that, as much as he knows sol wouldn’t want others to risk themselves unnecessarily for him.

the doctor honestly doesn’t know what choice rhett will make, and doesn’t envy him having to make it.

(he’ll buy something nice for the security chief, if he gets out of this.)

(when. it has to be when.)

vace is conscious enough to move, a little. support his own weight, hopefully. but that’s about it.

sol gets him up, supports his weight on one side. vace has about eight inches and ninety pounds on sol, which is a fucking problem.

sol puts on his best rhett voice, and barks orders at vace. “time to push it, soldier! if you don’t, we’re both dead!”

he can’t honestly tell if it helped. he knows vace can’t do much. he knows he was mostly saying it for himself.

because if sol can’t manage this, they’re both dead.

they might get lucky. rhett might send a squad after all. nem might defy orders to come after them herself. dys might come for sol’s sake, with her or own his own. he might even get word to sym.

but sol can’t act like help is coming. can’t let himself do anything less than as much as he fucking can.

the sun has set by the time he gets them back to the transport, drenched and muddy and shaking. he barely manages to open the sliding door with one hand, and then has to lay vace on the floor from outside, get in, and drag him the rest of the way. he pulls wads of fabric from between his own teeth, put there to keep his teeth from cracking when he clenched it shut.

he can barely get the scraps out, with how tightly wound the muscles are. that’ll hurt in the morning.

(he’ll just add it to the list.)

he locks them inside the transport, and takes a chance to examine vace. he’s semi-conscious, definitely has a concussion. he can talk, a little, and vaguely understand context.

(he swears, mostly. given the context, yeah. sounds about right.)

the bleeding has stopped. there are some cracks in his skull, but nothing that feels imminently dangerous. already bruises and a hell of a black eye, and sol is pretty sure there’s a fracture along his left orbital bone. but those are all things a medbed can handle just fine. as long as he makes it to one.

sol straps vace into one of the bench seats, and gets the transport started. as expected, there’s several messages from utopia, and one from rhett. the storm interferes too much with comms for much to get through, but sol does what he can. a distress signal, canceled after three seconds. three seconds of silence, and then the signal sent again, canceled after three seconds. deliberate enough for them to know it’s a message.

he starts the transport home.

about ten minutes of slow travel down the road, it’s flooded. sol isn’t going to risk it, not after what he just went through. he parks them.

he unbuckles vace so he can lay the soldier down on the seats, and try to get some sleep. sol takes the floor, and sleeps in fits.

eventually, he jolts awake to the sound of a quiet drizzle.

he straps vace back in. he’s relieved to hear the mumbled complaints about ruining his sleep.

the floods come fast in the swamp, but they leave that way, too.

it takes another hour and a half, but eventually he sees the lights of the colony.

utopia and rhett are already at the outer post, pacing and watching the road. they see the approaching transport before the lookouts do, but not before dys and nem.

both of whom are sequestered right next to the security chief, and looking rather dour.

sol can see how much self restraint it takes to wait for the transport to roll in, and not just run to it.

as soon as it’s parked, someone starts trying to yank the door open.

(it’s locked and dead bolted, because sol wasn’t taking any chances.)

he unlocks it, and rhett yanks it open before sol can. all the doctor manages to say is vace’s name, before he’s being unbuckled and carried out in rhett’s arms.

held like a princess, limp and soaked in a way that makes his clothes and hair cling to him, vace looks like the kid he is. barely sixteen, too young to be dealing with this shit.

(they both are. hell, all of them are.)

sol doesn’t need help to move. he knows he looks like shit, but his adrenaline has been running so high for so long that he sprints ahead to prepare a medbed.

instance is waiting, but she knows someone who needs work when she sees it. she’ll be the one who cleans and cares for sol’s own wounds later, in the quiet silence of an active medbed. tang will uncurl from the corner where she’d been watching owlishly, to play the part of nursing assistant.

vace will be under for three days. it’ll heal all the worrying injuries, but sol knows the soldier can’t stand to spend forever in a medbed, even if he doesn’t remember it.

(and he doesn’t remember the medbed. but he does remember a surprising amount of that day. remembers the dissonance of hearing sol sobbing while also feeling deft fingers work his knife loose. knows noct died, and he couldn’t have been the one to do it. gets flashes of the slog back, of sol carrying him when he could only feel frustration at his weak, sluggish legs slipping in the mud.)

they’re different, after that. sol never acts like vace owes him anything, and starts taking self-defense lessons. neither one of them actually suggested it. they just made eye contact across the cafeteria one morning a week after the event, and walked to the garrison together to start.

vace trusts sol to do what’s necessary, and to know what that is. it’s hard not to, when you know the empathetic, xeno-loving doctor willingly killed a gardener. his trust grows from there.

and sol trusts vace to have subtlety, and sympathy. he never says more about that day than what sol himself admits, even after he tells sol he remembers it. he seems to pick up on the days when it’s really bothering the doctor, and finds a way to hover nearby. whether it makes sol feel safe, or reminds him that he saved someone, vace doesn’t know.

seeing the most trusted kids from each ship suddenly get along has a deep impact on not just their peers, but the adults too.

(lum hates it. he never managed to scare them, but he could usually get them to cooperate. now they do nothing less than exactly what they think is right, and the few times he’s tried to control them, they both just fixed him with a stare that said he was a problem they could solve the moment they decided to.)

it’s the start of a new era for stratos-helios relations.

the violent soldier who toughened the kind doctor, and let himself be soothed in return.

(nothing changed in them. not really.)

(they just learned how to balance.)