Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Aubrey, behind you!” Kel yelled, throwing his hands in front of him. A gust of wind followed and knocked a small black bipedal shadow off the husk of the ship. Aubrey careened to the side, grabbing the railing and swinging her hand out, a flurry of flames rushing out. It burnt another shadow to the ground, careful not to eat into the wood.

Night brought along the worst of the monsters. They crawled up from the sea, pulling themselves up the sides of the ship until they covered every inch of the deck. Sometimes, Seaboy or Sweetheart’s crew would get mops and just knock them off until day broke and the monsters retreated for safety—to where, Kel didn’t know; maybe the bottom of the ocean? Were they zombie shadows? Was that a thing? Kel really didn’t want to know—but Kel and Aubrey made quick work of them.

Aubrey would never admit it since she was still trying to act cool and composed, but fighting was fun. Kel had never been on even a boat before, and nearly every motion made him seasick. He felt the ‘ground’ beneath him shake, would let out a low moan, and ran to the railing to vomit into the sea.

Hero would usually come to comfort him, but it didn’t help Kel much. Once, Hero did try to look through that book of his to see if there was some kind of spell for seasickness. There wasn’t. It could apparently only cure cancer, but not a little nausea. Kel was forced to suffer alone.

But this? This helped Kel. The wind beneath his fingers and between his hair made him feel alive. Even if he was too scared to float off the ground—because what if something knocked him off the ground and he fell overboard? He didn’t want to figure out if he was still a good swimmer in the ocean—he felt like he was floating. He felt like he was powerful, like he could save everyone.

“Kel, snap the fuck out of it!” Kel ducked to avoid a rush of Aubrey’s flames. She had gotten stronger, although it was mainly because she was angrier when they were fighting. Over the last month, they hadn’t found a way to— ah, right, Kel was spacing out again, and he rolled to the side to avoid Aubrey’s axe impaling him.

“Pay attention, wind for brains, they’re everywhere!” was Aubrey’s demand, and Kel gave her a mock salute before sending off another gust of that very wind.

It took about twenty more minutes of this and Kel using his arrows as daggers before silence washed in with the waves. Nothing more crawled onto the husk. The two glanced at each other before collapsing.

The sun hadn’t begun to rise, and the shadows would come back any second now. But Kel knew from experience that if he just rode on the adrenaline alone, he would die by the time morning came. He had only enough stamina inside of him.

“Where’s your head today?” Aubrey asked him, panting too hard to be able to put the proper venom she needed into it.

“I dunno,” Kel replied, spreading his arms out against the wood. “Just reflecting.”

“Why can’t you reflect in the day?”

“The ocean does enough of that for me.”

“Hardy ha ha,” she sighed, leaning against a crate. She dropped the axe on her lap and ran her fingers over all the scratches that adorned it. Like it was sacred—to her, it probably was. It was her protection of choice from bad to worse. “How many did you get?”

Groaning, Kel closed his eyes. “I didn’t count.”

“You didn’t count?” Scandalized, Aubrey sat up and scoffed. “That’s the only thing we have going! You really do have wind for brains, worse than usual.”

“Don’t even lie. You like fighting, you sadistic monster.”

“I also like beating you.” Kel opened his eyes to find Aubrey sticking her tongue out at him.

“Sucks for you that it never happens.” He stuck his tongue out at her until they both let out tired giggles.

As Kel had thought earlier, they had been at this for a month. Aubrey and he had fallen into something of a routine, and this battle exhaustion was woven into everything they’d done. Kel had gotten used to fighting, alongside Sweetheart’s crew or alongside Aubrey, and he didn’t know how it made him feel.

It didn’t matter. He was comfortable—especially with Aubrey. The same way he’d seen her with her Hooligans, that was the kind of comfort that settled between them. And Kel really liked that, made him feel like himself again in a way he hadn’t in years.

But maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe Aubrey was comfortable, or maybe she was just acting.

Like he knew Sunny was.

As Kel moved to stand up, he noticed on Aubrey’s cheek a strike of red. Without hesitation, he pushed himself to his knees and reached forward to swipe at it. “Hey!”

He ignored Aubrey and held up his hand to her face. “You’re bleeding,” he said, and he couldn’t suppress the humor in his voice. “Fighting recklessly again, huh?”

“Oh, fuck you.” She rolled her eyes and wiped at the scratch. It wasn’t just her who had gotten reckless; both of them let themselves fall without wondering what was at the bottom, knowing they had Hero’s spellbook to fall back on. There would be a safety net to pull them back up—plus, Hero liked to feel useful.

Still, when Kel stood up and offered a hand to Aubrey, she hesitated. He turned his head at her. “Where’s your head today?”

Studying the smear of blood on her hand, Aubrey shrugged. “It’s just… I…”

She trailed off, and Kel sometimes needed to remind himself that they were barely talking before this. When they would see each other on the street, there would be a flash of recognition in each other’s eyes, a ‘hey, we used to be each other’s most important person, remember?’ And it was hard to be honest with each other.

But Kel believed that, if anything, spending some time in hell together was great team bonding. “C’mon, you can tell me anything. What, are there worms in your blood?”

Startled out of her head, Aubrey looked up at him and furrowed her eyebrows. “What? Worms in my— what? What does that even mean? No, dumbass, I was just thinking that it’s weird we’ve been here for a pretty long time and…my period hasn’t come yet.”

“Your period?” Kel’s hand fell to his side, and he blew out some air. Faraway’s sex-ed class wasn’t that great, but his older brother was studying to be a doctor. He wouldn’t let Kel get away with only knowing that being safe was ‘hip,’ as their gym teacher put it. “Oh. That sure is. Strange. Uhm… Are you—”

“If you’re about to ask if I’m pregnant, I will throw you into the water.”

“Wouldn’t be your first time,” slipped out before Kel could stop it. It was like there was a demon inside Kel that purposely said the wrong things.

He wished all his friends had those demons, because then they’d at least say things instead of leaving him in the dark.

Aubrey gaped at him before sighing. “That’s…fair.”

“Sorry,” Kel coughed out. “I really gotta learn to keep my mouth shut, huh? But your period… Think it has something to do with this world?”

“I guess. Almost like someone forgot they existed, which I’m not complaining about.” Aubrey threw her hands up and pressed her lips into a thin line. “It’s just weird.”

“Any weirder than the fact that more monsters are crawling up the side of the ship?”

The light scratching sound that would start to haunt Kel’s nightmares in a few months had returned. In a few moments, the black, gooey horror fuel would be back, and Kel and Aubrey would be back in monster-killing business. Aubrey hummed. “No, not weirder than that.”

Kel held out his hand again, and Aubrey took it without hesitation, her blood smearing onto both of their hands. There was no bad blood between them aside from that, but there were a thousand secrets on either side.

He pulled her up and she got into stance, bending her knees with the axe poised to kill. Holding the arrow like one would a dagger, Kel blew out some air.

He wished he could go rest along with Sunny—he had been sleeping lately like there was no tomorrow, so much better than when they first came here. Kel refused to let his mind think ‘but sleep is for the dead,’ because he had had enough of comparing Sunny to that.

Instead, he just grinned. He would have some more fun with the monsters and competing with Aubrey.

There was no way to get fresh water in the middle of the ocean, so Kel had to clean up using rags with seawater. It was a bit disgusting to wipe grime off him with towels covered in salt, but the alternative was to sleep in complete filth. He shared a room with the others, and he didn’t want to bother them (he remembered vividly the first time he came back from a fight and Sunny’s nose had scrunched up to unbelievable levels), so this is what he had.

When he finished wiping himself, he wrung the rag and dropped it in his bucket before walking out of his room. Aubrey was probably cleaning up in another quarter, Hero was studying, and Sunny wasn’t in their room, so that meant he wasn’t sleeping. (Kel knew if he kept thinking about Sunny, he would fall into an obsessive pattern, so he didn’t think about Sunny. He wouldn’t think about him or Basil.)

The night had about an hour or so before it would end. Whenever the monsters would come, no one would get any sleep. They would all just walk around like zombies on deck in the daytime until they all passed out on the forecastle at night. Kel usually would pretend to help out before finding some nice corner to sleep in.

Right now, adrenaline still pumped through him. That meant he needed to go talk to someone; given his friends were preoccupied, Seaboy was in charge of navigation at night, and Sweetheart was…Sweetheart, that only left one special painter.

Kel weaved his way through the crew members walking through the sleeping quarters until he found a cabin near the captain’s. He knocked on the door and, without waiting for a response, opened it.

“Hello, Kel,” Rococo said without turning around. He was gathering his jars of paint and brushes, setting them down on the floor where he would set up his easel now that the erratic movement had stopped. Kel had come to bother Rococo enough times that he knew this routine by heart. “Looking for company?”

“You betcha.” The room was small, with only a few feet between the bed and the chest of Rococo’s belongings, but Rococo made do. Kel squeezed past him to grab the easel folded in the corner and set it between the things, smiling over it at Rococo. “How far are you in your painting?”

“You come here every other day.” Rococo looked up and offered a smile. “Shouldn’t you be able to tell?”

Rococo acted differently when he wasn’t around Seaboy or Sweetheart. Around them, Kel noticed he tried to make himself bigger. Tried to make himself seem more important, always projecting his voice and forcing it steady. But in the safety of unfamiliar friends, Rococo was true. He was teasing and playful, reminding Kel of Mari.

It made Kel sad that Rococo wasn’t honest with his longest friends. But Kel was pretty used to all these guises and secrets, so he just enjoyed that Rococo was happier with him (and would pay attention to what made him, Seaboy, and Sweetheart so on edge.)

“A horse,” Kel guessed.

“Not even close.”

“A house.”

“I’m using an awful lot of green for a house, no?”

“Well damn, I’m out of answers. Guess you’ll finally have to explain to me what you’re painting? Or are you gonna leave me in the dark?”

Rococo reached under his bed to pull out the canvas he had covered in a blanket. He gave Kel a warm smile. “Nope. Unless you can guess it, you’ll have to get used to the darkness.”

(And if Kel wasn’t great at that.)

Folding the blanket onto the floor, Rococo set the painting onto the easel, and Kel sighed dramatically. For the past month, Rococo had been working on the exact same project. Kel had racked his brain for everything he knew and didn’t know about art to try to figure out what it was; all he learned was that Rococo was an absolute mystery. Or, Rococo was fucking with him.

(Both of those ideas resonated deeply with Kel. Maybe Rococo was the world manifest.)

Moving to stand next to Rococo, Kel studied the painting. It had a purple sky and green grass, and there were two figures he couldn’t make out in the middle. ‘Landscape’ didn’t do it for Rococo, and neither did ‘home.’

Kel readjusted his gloves and blew out air. “Guess we’ll have to play this game again tomorrow.”

“Guess so.” Rococo, having set the jars around him, flipped the lids open and began to gather some pigments onto the slab of wood he’d fashioned into a palette with the help of Hero’s steady hand. His brush picked together the colors into shades he could use, and Kel studied them.

The green was like the grass in Faraway. Though in Faraway, it was yellowing and grew in patches because no one bothered enough to grow them. The blue was like the ocean Kel only got to visit a handful of times. Now, the ocean was all around him. The purple was like—

Kel’s eyes flicked back up to the painting. The sky, the people, the grass, it all felt so familiar and so strange. It wasn’t a landscape, it was something more. And it wasn’t home, only in the way a stranger could be a home.

It was a memory Kel never had. His chest tightened like a rope around his throat: suffocating and inescapable. And so foreign, so unwanted, so not his.

Clearing his throat from the sudden burning that crept in, Kel side-stepped Rococo and flopped onto his bed. He earned an amused glance from Rococo, but Kel focused wholly on the wooden ceiling.

Beneath them, the world rocked with the waves. It made Kel uncomfortable how quickly he’d accepted all this, how quickly he’d accepted this different reality and all these memories that weren’t his. It made Kel uncomfortable how little of a fuss he made, but he always did that.

Easygoing and always smiling Kel, the one with a thousand questions he never aired. The happy, stupid one who would keep everyone positive. And he would do that, he would!

But for once, he decided to break free. “Why are you painting this?”

With the scratch of bristles on canvas, Rococo hummed, “Hm?”

“Well, I keep asking you what you’re painting, but not really why.”

Kel watched Rococo consider that. He turned his head at the canvas before turning to Kel. He wasn’t an open book (Kel figured that no one really was, given that everyone assumed he was one), but Kel could guess the question before it was asked. “Are you having a crisis of some sort?”

‘This isn’t like you’ is what Rococo means.

Well, nothing’s really like me, is it?

“I don’t think so,” Kel replied. At the very least, Rococo’s tone wasn’t off, the way Hero’s could be if Kel asked too bright a question.

“I mean, it’s a good question, but it’s rather…” Dipping his brush into the jar of dirty water, Rococo turned his lip. “Unlike you. No offense, but you don’t seem like the one to care about meanings.”

Kel laughed lightly. Wouldn’t that be nice? “Oh, I care.”

Rococo smiled. “Apologies for taking away your depth. I forget not everyone’s Sweetheart.” Kel snorted. “Sometimes you just… You know when something just suddenly takes over you? And you just have to see it out? That’s what this is like. I just have to, I suppose.”

Sitting up, Kel watched Rococo’s steady hand add streaks of blue to his foreign world. Kel sometimes wished he had a creative hobby like Rococo’s. He’d drawn a few times, especially with Sunny when they were smaller, but it was more of a game than a hobby. It never struck a chord with him, didn’t make him feel like the poetry he’d learn in school.

But Kel was well familiar with obsession. (He never cleaned like the year after Mari died. He didn’t want Hero’s side to get too dirty.)

“Kind of like you coming here, right? To see things out.”

Quickly, like he had been born just to say this, Rococo replied, “Kind of like you coming here.”

“I had to come here, remember? I’m looking for my friend.” Kel laughed, but Rococo didn’t join him in his humor. He set down his paintbrush on the easel, staring intensely at his painting for a moment before turning that intensity to Kel.

“I recall your friend the saint needing to come,” Rococo reasoned. “And of course, you’ve come to back him up—but that was of your free will. You’re right. I did come to see things out and to help make sure it finished. I came to help a stranger live because no one deserves to die like that. And so did you, but Sunny is no stranger. You’re asking me what I’m doing here. Maybe you should ask yourself.”

It was a dumb request. It was an extremely dumb request, even by Kel’s standards. Rococo already answered himself: Sunny was no stranger and neither was Basil. Of course, Kel and the others would go help, help Sunny survive whatever execution Sweetheart wanted and help Basil survive whatever hell he fell into. Help each other survive this world.

There was no question about it; there wasn’t even another choice to be made.

But there was, wasn’t there?

When Kel spent that year helping Hero, he didn’t have to. It was an obsession, helping his brother. And when Kel kept knocking on Sunny’s door, he didn’t have to. It was an obsession, bringing his friends back together. Bringing his best friend back home. And when Kel brought Sunny around Faraway for one last week together, he didn’t have to. But Kel wouldn’t call that an obsession.

If it were an obsession, Kel would never have let Sunny wind up in the hospital.

And this wasn’t an obsession. Sunny was his best friend once upon a time, and so was Basil. But there was always a choice. Kel didn’t have to help. He could run and see how things would turn out from afar.

“I’m not just going to see this out,” Kel said. Because he didn’t want to just know the ending. This wasn’t an obsession with the outcome. This wasn’t trying to get his brother or his friend back on his feet. “I’m going to bring my friends home. We’re going home.”

Rococo smiled. “Don’t lose sight of that, then.”

He licked his thumb, then swiped at his painting. When Kel stood to leave, he saw that the two figures were now smeared, merging with the background.

That was all Kel could do, after all. The secrets, the questions, it didn’t matter. What mattered was going home.

Right?