#post-out

Stories were fascinating, because they often spoke the truth–of history, of lives, of romance and hatred and family, of pain and kindness–but the truth was always hidden by embellishments, and the older the story, the grander the embellishments. So while he was a liar in the day-to-day, he never considered the small things in the stories he told as lies. They were embellishments. Especially when it came to stories they told over and over and over again–dramatisation, exaggeration, embellishments. They never changed much for their albums, after all–just small things. Overall unimportant things. They tried to keep to the heart of the tragedies they told. It seemed disrespectful, almost, to change a story so drastically when they were there to properly witness whatever had happened. Though, if the Mechanisms were anything, disrespectful was probably the kindest thing they could be called.

At the very least, it was in Jonny’s nature to be disrespectful. His own story, he warped and changed it the moment he was off the hunk of rock and sand he called ‘home’ once upon a time. He barely remembered it now, but he knows most of what he put into song had to have been made up. He was never clever or quick as a child, he simply didn’t have room in his head for anything but pure survival. Any connection with whoever Jack may or may not have been was just that–born out of a need to live. He’d been so desperate for life that he hadn’t even thought twice before taking the hand of a shady doctor and disappearing into the stars. Naturally, the desperation led to exaggeration. Especially since he wanted to leave everything behind.

The others were less so concerned about the nature of stories, and whether or not embellishing them was disrespectful. They were more focused on telling the stories than anything, however that looked, they didn’t ever seem to think more on the subject.

Jonny could understand, somewhat. When you live for millenia, it’s hard to find time or energy worth caring over something so small. There were other things to think about, other things to worry over, after all. Things more worth the time.

But Jonny loved looking for stories in every little thing, and often found himself thinking about the nature of storytelling. It’s how he came to the realization that the Narrative was such an important, driving force in their lives–thinking, noticing things, seeing patterns. Taking a step back, removing himself from the story and making himself nothing more than an outside observer, a relayer, a narrator, actually helped him to see the weavings of their own stories. The Narrative that seemed to dictate their lives and actions and mechanisms. Even if N– any of the others thought he was just pulling shit out of his ass–which he couldn’t blame them for, he was a liar and his Crew knew that deeply. But stories were different, and he never thought of it as lying when it was a story.

He was simply a storyteller.

They all were storytellers. And if some of them thought that made them liars, then they’d just have to deal with that themselves. They all embellished their own stories, after all. The only one who didn’t was– was her, though only because she left so little in the song that she and the Doc wrote shortly after she came aboard. Mostly because the Doc wrote most of it, probably. The Doc had different views about which things needed embellishing and which things needed to be told in earnest than Jonny did.

Aurora only rarely hummed a lullaby from a mother long since dead, and only ever spoke in clipped, short sentences of her time with the Cyberian army, and never mentioned what it was like before she was forced into a form that was not hers. Jonny didn’t push, though he itched to know more, but Aurora didn’t say much. She was always straightforward, telling what she will, and considering the state he found her in, he was much inclined to believe every word she said. She wasn’t the kind of ship to embellish, to add or subtract details–always straight to the point and clinical when she described the horror of her body being broken and burned and remolded, her mind being torn from her and forced into a shape it was not designed to take. She never spared a gory detail, when she did tell. Though it remained rare for her speak on such matters.

Ivy didn’t have a story to tell, and Brian only recalled perhaps a month or so total of his life before his death, flashes of scattered memories and the stinging bite of the empty void of space the only things left of the doctor he once was.

Raph embellished what little she did tell, talking about a mad scientist and her visions of grandeur and greatness, seeking to recreate the work of the mythologized Doctor Carmilla, succeeding and being tossed aside and taking flight. There wasn’t much else she told, of how she gained her mechanical wings. Sometimes, if he managed to get her drunk enough, she’ll mumble quiet nonsense about sickness and infection, wasting away, a fevered rush, the need to keep going. Though it never made sense to Jonny, it showed that one was even capable of embellishing a story simply by stripping it to its bare bones.

Ashes embellished in the same way, simplifying the tragedy that was Malone’s fall. An entire planet burned for the harm only one man caused, a rage so bright and painful that it took everything down with it. They were much more honest, they didn’t add or subtract as many details, paint themself in a better or grander light. They were a mobster, and their gang betrayed them, and so they betrayed their planet. Based on what Jonny could remember, there was much more raw hurt involved in the whole situation than Ashes implied.

Gunpowder didn’t exactly embellish his tales of the Lunar War, though mostly because he hardly ever spoke about it. Most of his embellishments were grief filled, memories from a nostalgic, grieving mind painting things either in rosier tones or bleaker shadows. Sometimes the color of the memories seemed to depend on the day. And any embellishments in the song they wrote, those were all Jonny’s ideas. He didn’t know how the gunner wrought so much havoc and chaos in those last few months, and he’d never gotten the courage to ask, but he’d seen the slaughter that followed Tim’s existence first hand. He’d seen the blood and gore that followed his name. Though he hated it when other soldiers would call the gunner such a name, Gunpowder really was a monster on the battlefield. It was horrifying and mesmerizing to watch, the one time Jonny saw him in action during his killing spree. And the carnage afterwards–of each battle, but especially of Tim’s capture–was surely talked about for decades. Jonny wouldn’t know, they never visited Earth after the moon blew up on account of Tim being a wanted war criminal.

The Toy Soldier never seemed to embellish, if only because it didn’t seem to understand the concept. When it had one day slipped a little booklet into everyone’s rooms, a story detailing how a wooden man became a Toy Soldier, Jonny overheard Ashes attempting to talk to it about the booklet. The doll didn’t seem to fully grasp some of the subtle horrors and quiet pains its story spoke of. It just cheerily explained that it was much happier now, the old woman was dead, and a Toy couldn’t get hurt. It had marched off, but the conversation he was totally-not-eavesdropping-on seemed to rattle Ashes. The Toy Soldier just didn’t seem to understand everything that happened to it. Any embellishing was purely incidental, then, when it came to its sad tale.

Marius, however, certainly understood embellishing. Understood the grandeur of storytelling, of brightening and changing and chronicling things they ran into, things they once were. He was just so damn stubborn when it came to telling his own tale. Nothing he told was anything worthwhile, and every other sentence contradicted the tales he told until it was a weaving mess of nothing. He was a baron of a planet that had no barons that burned in a star that drowned at sea, his arm was removed while he defended a brilliant estate while he burned and it was never removed and was molded with something new and he ran afoul of a mad scientist he was doing the experimentation on–

Marius, if nothing else, was very good at using many, many words to deliver exactly net-zero information. It was one of the few things that was consistent with the Not-a-Baron–he lied more than he breathed. It was one of the many unspoken rules on The Aurora, that they wouldn’t push for backstories beyond what was necessary for performances. So Jonny never asked the Not-a-Doctor for the truth through his empty stories, but damn did his verbose way of expositing complete hogwash make Jonny curious. He desperately wanted the false doctor to tell his story, to tell of whoever he was before he was the chaotic medic for a group of immortals. Jonny felt like he and Marius could bond over it, almost–over the stories they were actually molded from despite telling completely different tales on stage. But he didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t ask Marius for more. Not like he could trust the man to say anything true–he lied more than he breathed. But he desperately wanted to know, wanted something at least coherent to put together. He didn’t even leave any easily identified nuggets of truth like Raphaella or Jonny himself–he just never said anything.

It was one of the most tantalizing stories they’d come across since fishing Brian out of that sun, having to drag two hundred years worth of history and tragedy out of the Drumbot over the course of decades.

But it was a rule on Aurora, and there were few rules they actually had. So he let the Not-a-Baron keep his cards close to his chest, let him talk around his history and never about it, and never prodded him to reveal more.

It ate at him, but so did every story that he didn’t get to learn. He had a need to learn every story, even though he liked to keep his own close to his chest. It was the only reason he was allowing this. The only reason he wasn’t going to stop them–Raph, Marius, and Ivy. He could feel that itch, the burn and hunger he felt whenever a story was near. But he had to stay, he couldn’t bring himself to leave again. It’d been so long since she left and this damned Crew needed a Captain to look for their engineer. He’d never forgive himself if he was gone when she was found.

But he could feel the new story itching away at him, could see it in the way Ivy was pacing as she read, mumbling the words to herself, the way Raph flew around the ship looking for something but never clarifying what, the way Marius just couldn’t seem to sit still or stop humming. Could see it in the way Ivy’s memories had been growing more volatile, the way Raph’s wings shimmered with iridescence when they fluttered with anxiety, the way Marius was almost always playing his damned violin. They could all feel it, a story not far from here, one that promised intrigue and tragedy. But the Captain needed to stay, he needed to keep watch on his Crew. So he had to leave it up to three of his Crewmates.

He had to trust they’d come back, they’d be alright, like they always were.