Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

So terribly alone, but at night I sense them...

A faint smell of fresh earth, that is Gan;

Jenna, like just-glimpsed lightning;

A touch like soap bubbles - Vila;

Avon, tasting of cold, clear air;

and Blake, the sound of a heartbeat.

In the night, I am not so alone.

Chapter Text

The Ballad of Bold Roj Blake, the poets called it. After all these years, he could still recite it by heart. If he wanted to.

He didn't of course. Better to let ghosts be called heroes while he stayed safe, in the backstreets of Gauda Prime. Better to let others tell the story.

And the poets, they had remembered him, which was nice. A whole five verses on a brave little thief, as many as there were for the pilot, the genius and the noble alien ally.

But it hurt - just a little - that they'd all forgotten Gan...

Chapter Text

"Orac said," Avon murmured to his Fearless Leader, knowing that the native gigantabagpipes and warhorns would drown him out, "it's a display of friendship, and that we should be flattered."

"I am," his Leader hissed, turning his best warm, admiring gaze to the locals who were putting on this very ancient celebration for them.

"Performed for the most cherished friends," Avon continued. "They have, it seems, no enemies on this world."

"And the - heads on spears?"

"I imagine," Avon stared blandly at the beautifully coiffed and painted - and very dead - non-friends, "anyone who was not sufficiently flattered..."

Chapter Text

He stares across the flight deck, icily menacing.

"Listen very carefully, Blake." His voice is harsh. "I shall say this only once. If you go this path, it will lead to death. And I will not follow that path with you. I will not."

He pauses. "And I will never, ever forgive you for dying and leaving us all... not quite alive."

His shoulders slump. No, the words are not yet right, he will keep saying them in an empty flight deck until they are.

And then, he will say it - only once - when Blake will hear them.

Chapter Text

"Well, of course I'm laughing at you," he says, aggravatingly cheerful.

"Avon, it isn't funny!"

"No?" He stops to consider. "Actually, yes it is, and you did annoy our new allies."

"That was Vila!"

"But Vila hasn't been morphed into a toothless blue squidapoid with purple curls."

"Look on the bright side, Tarrant," Dayna says brightly while I'm thinking of an answer. "At least you still have arms - well, tentacles - so you can still fly Scorpio with practice. And fire a gun."

"At Vila," Avon smiles, sharklike as always. "If you ever catch up with him, of course."

Chapter Text

The Liberator sailed on. Zen monitored the silence, outside and in.

Outside, in deepest space, stars burned coldly and without sound; nebula flickered on the edge of sensors, and were gone.

Inside, all was quiet, serene, peaceful. No fighting on Zen's flight deck, no bad jokes from Vila, no Auronar platitides from Cally or sneers from Kerr Avon. No yelling, complaining or demanding. Not even the drumming of manicured nails by Jenna. Nothing at all.

Zen monitored the silence. And noted in its databanks that the laryngitis bacteria were a most useful Earth organism to keep in stock for emergencies...

Chapter Text

"All right, all right," Avon snarled at three sets of pleading eyes - Cally's green, Dayna's brown, and the new crewmember's fourteen purple. "He - it can join the crew."

He turned to face it. "But you learn the rules first. My rules. One. This is my ship. Two. You do as you're ordered."

"Like the rest of us do." Vila added softly.

"Three." Avon looked down at the scraps of wool and leather, light brown curls and one large, bright, white tooth at their feet. "If you stay on this ship, you will remember, Brian.

"Eating People is Wrong."

Chapter Text

"A calculated risk, Orac."

*Poorly calculated.*

"You think so? I predicted that Avon would come here."

*Correct.*

"And that, given the trauma each has suffered, he and Blake would destroy themselves. That thorn in the Federation's side is gone, and I can finally claim that fee I was owed -"

*By Servalan.*

"Now Sleer, thank you. Oh, and you played the computerised double-agent very well."

*Of course. That was the agreement, Psychostrategist. And once she comes to pay you, and collect me -*

"As she will, I have calculated, within ten days -"

*We kill her.*

"Just another thorn... gone."

Chapter Text

It was, he knew, a wonderful machine, the like of which he'd never even imagined, let alone thought to use.

He stared at the clear plasteel box, found just where the Scorpio crew had said it would be, hidden in bushes by the edge of a cliff.

He thought over what the rebellion could do with it, what the Scorpio crew had said about its power and usefulness. And what Blake had said about its almost human nature, its ego, its fickleness, its threat.

The decision was not hard.

It made a most satisfying crunch when it landed far below.

Chapter Text

I didn't know. I truly didn't know. I would never have gone there had I known. I only thought to help... to know him better.

But it is so cold, so icy and hard and desperately lonely there.

He cares for few people, and nearly all of them are gone.

Anna.

His brother.

Blake.

He doesn't even know how much he misses them. He would never believe it if I told him that I... touched his mind, the way I can and do touch, know them all.

I can never tell him what I know.

He would never forgive me.

Chapter Text

There was quiet at last... but for a weary, sleepy, sniffling noise from the seat behind her, blessed, beautiful quiet.

Soolin drew a deep, shaky breath and drew on every scrap of steel-edged self-control she possessed, the self-control that had been tested over and over again and never dented...

Until now.

"How is -?" she whispered finally, proud of the almost-authentic flippant calm she managed to fake.

"Asleep." Avon's voice was low; the flat, snarling undertone, so much a part of him since she had first met him, was missing. he almost sounded... frazzled, as Vila would have said. "And I believe our best plan is to ensure he remains so until we reach safety."

"Agreed," she said fervently. "This is a mistake, Avon, you know that."

"Of course I know it," he hissed. "But it's done, and if you wish to separate..."

"Not yet." In spite of herself, a mocking note entered her voice, still cautiously low. "Ask me again if this goes on for three or four days."

She could almost feel him shudder, and that made her feel - marginally - less shaky herself.

She ventured a quick look back at him, sitting stiff and awkwardly afraid to move in the back seat of the hovercar, one hand clenched at his side, so tightly that even from one glance she could see white knuckles, the other moving jerkily... tentatively. His bleak face was a study in barely hidden uncertainty, his eyes a mask for... well, had she been mad enough to say it, frightened. Even more so than she was.

As he should be, this was his doing, all of it. The disaster, the flight, the... additional baggage by his side.

What in the name of every god in the galaxy were they doing, taking this on? So he felt guilty for killing the man on Gauda Prime - the wrong man, the wrong hero, the wrong Blake, the words chimed in her head - but was that any reason for her to get involved in his madness? It wasn't your Blake. It was a clone. It was Servalan's rogue clone.

Orac found out... just too late.

Which brought her thoughts - and gaze - to the little monster who had made their lives hell for the last two days. The little monster they'd run across as they escaped the chaotic battle in the Gauda Prime base, the terrifying, terrified little monster of a child Avon - Avon! - wouldn't leave behind but who fought them every inch of the way. Who'd nearly got them captured, who'd kicked the stolen flyer's controls and nearly crashed them, who'd screamed for five solid hours for someone called "DAAADAAAA!!!" Who'd refused to eat, and then thrown up all over them both. Who kept staring at them with huge, brown-gold eyes filled with a fear that made Soolin, as hardened and callous as she'd had to learn to be, feel sick, but who'd started screaming again when she or Avon tried to clean, feed, or even touch him. Whose finally exhausted, whimpering, fragile crying had almost cracked Avon's own dented but still herculaneum-strong self-control.

Blake's... clone's... son.

Who neither of them had the faintest idea what to do with, or how to care for.

Who was now a dirty, dishevelled little ball of utter misery curled up beside his kidnapper's side, breath still hitching after another bout of crying - though this time, when Avon had tried, ineptly and uncomfortably, to pick him up, had suddenly latched on to the appalled man like a Helotrician limpet and wept noisily and wetly into his neck. The child's tiny hands were now clenched tightly in the black material of Avon's shirt, his face was buried in Avon's lap, his dark, unruly brown curls were hiding his face... and Avon was - oh heavens! - petting him lightly, warily, ludicrously like Vila would have looked stroking a miniature warg with toothache.

Don't stop, she thought helplessly, too afraid of waking the monster to speak it aloud. As long as it keeps him blessedly, beautifully quiet, don't stop.

We can barely save ourselves, Avon, you and me. He's not even your Blake's child, and your Blake is nothing to me anyway. And nothing to you, so you kept saying. What were you thinking, Avon?

What the hell are we going to do with him???

Chapter Text

"Thin...... too thin. All too thinnn. You mmmust eat more...."

Cally had definitely changed somewhat since that business with the alien podship and the blue eggy thing they'd blown up, and Vila wasn't completely sure he liked it. For one thing she seemed a bit paler and - if it was possible - thinner, and not even Zen knew enough about Auron physiognomy to tell them not to worry.

Oh, Cally told them not to worry - in that soft, slightly hissing way she'd started talking, so slight Vila wasn't even sure the others noticed - but Vila wasn't absolutely sure that wasn't something else to worry about as well.

He did like the fact that she seemed - at long last - to notice how sweet and charming and friendly and just damn well nicer to have around he was than Avon and Tarrant (not that that was hard... but Dayna and Jenna had always been somewhat blinkered on that point too) and that she spent far more time with him.

And her new interest in food - good food, not those dire healthy concentrates and processed plankton she had been forcing down their throats since Saurian Major, but decent Delta and Gamma food - roast meats, deep-fried skysquid, houndburgers and fried and battered starches, and sweet choklit of every description... and decent cake, all sugar and faux-fruit and pseudcream. She and Zen's food processors made a virtual banquet of good, solid, body-building junquefood every meal, and even Tarrant was beginning to show the effects, especially from the rear...

"Still tooo thin.... nneeed more flllesh, meat on bonesss."

Vila didn't care - after all, who needed to be fit with Zen to do the running from the Federation for them, while Avon searched the galaxy for Blake, Tarrant and Dayna bickered and played, and Cally fed them up and petted them... well, petted him. He patted his nicely rounded stomach, and settled down for a nice, lazy afternoon with his favourite soma and adrenalin mixture, the one Cally had persuaded him to sweeten more.

"Nice and tennnder... sweeter than the rrrrest...."

Odd thing about Cally's room, though... all that time so bare and spartan, now she was doing it up in thousands of strands of glittery silk, from ceiling to floor, from wall to wall. Dayna thought it creepy, the way it trailed on the skin like Kairopan silk; Avon had taken one look, given that short, snarling laugh Vila hated, and likened it to a cocoon... but what the hell, even an Auron could change her tastes. If she liked what she'd seen on the alien podship... who were they to argue?

Oh yes, she'd changed... and Vila wasn't completely sure he liked it, but he thought he did. She seemed happy, and the changes hadn't hurt anyone. He took a swig of the very very sweet, sugary soma and adrenalin and decided he'd worry later, if he had too...

Chapter Text

"Right he be, for his business be book-mucking and 'puter-rubbing, and that be naught for true men."

The speaker, who apparently went by the name of Benstead, nodded sagely.

Avon merely lifted an eyebrow and gazed at Deva, who gazed mildly back... then turned and stared at the speaker.

"Really." He spoke in a flat, dead voice. He wasn't really interested in arguing with their rescuers, it was enough to be escaping from the nightmare that was Gauda Prime, get away and find safety somewhere. Anywhere.

Regroup.

Revive.

Survive.

Or something similar... survival, however, was overrated. He knew that now.

And these rescuers were not Hommiks, not just people with minds more primitive than their weapons. These were Blake's allies, so he needed to be careful with them.

"Arrrh, but we knows these things, 'puter-rubber," Benstead went on in that thick, gravely voice, piloting the battered and confusing controls with graceless ease. "True men, they have other business, important business."

"Blake -"

"Arrrh Blake, he knows the business of true men, yes." It was hard to say if the tone that crept in was disparaging or admiring - but then it was hard for him to tell anything at all. "But not always does he follow it."

"Bl- he seldom followed any path for long," Avon said wearily, trying not to think about the nine-parts-dead man in the medical capsule Benstead was perched on. There really wasn't the room they needed in this tiny, very strange, very very fast ship...

Revive, he reminded himself grimly.

Survive.

You had better survive, B-Blake, he thought. Though they would probably have seen Dayna as a true man.

And Soolin.

Madness - even more madness than he was accustomed to - beckoned that way, and he pushed the thought back.

"And what do you term the business of true men?" He asked, briefly wishing that Vila was there to ask the stupid questions. Refusing just to wish that Vila was there at all.

"Fighting," Benstead grated. "Maiming, battling, killing."

"Oh." Well, he had fought - and possibly killed - Blake, but stupidity didn't stretch telling Benstead, or Deva, that.

"They be the business of true men."

"And you know this because -"

After all, it was one thing to have Hommiks - at least human, if poor specimens of men - lecture him on 'manliness' - and quite another to hear it from a nine-foot-tall, twelve-winged, four-footed, purple avian.

Although as the avian could behead him with one snap of its massive beak, he would put up with it.

For now.

For the sake of survival.

"We've studied, we have." Benstead was nodding again, the virulent feathery crest on its overlarge head bobbing wildly. "Studied ways of men, right and wrong ways, business of true men and true women."

Avon looked back at Deva, who shrugged apologetically but kept quiet. Wisely, perhaps, he was even less of a 'true man' than Avon, and had been rubbing - or rather cleaning - a very grubby and simply furious computer for some time now.

Deva seemed to like Orac, which was nearly as disturbing as Benstead and its 'true men' talk.

Benstead's many-faceted eyes were fixed on him, its translucent membranes nictating busily. It was - disconcertingly hypnotic.

"We've watched the viscasts. Terran viscasts."

"Federation propaganda -" he mumbled before he could stop himself. Though surely, as allies, they'd heard this from Blake -

"Many many viscasts. To tell us about true men, true women. And what means it being such."

Benstead paused, and flicked a switch with one massive claw; above them, a screen flashed and sputtered into life. It showed the Gauda Prime forests, the clearing surrounding the base they had fled. There were tiny black figures scurrying around it like black ants. Black, human ants.

Federation stormtroopers, Avon thought, his lips thinning in an unthinking sneer. "The Federation's... true men," he said very softly, almost to himself.

Deva winced, and said nothing, smoothing a hand across Orac's gleaming case.

"Not like, no. Your business be naught like theirs," with a complicated wriggle that might have been a avian shrug, " but Blake has need of it. Federation's true men have other business. They fight, they battle, they kill..."

The claw pressed clumsily into a button; on the screen overhead, there was a massive, white light explosion, soundless and terrifying, and the tiny black troopers were flung about like - like insects.

"They die." Benstead rumbled. "That, we have learned, is most important business of an enemy's true men. It be dying."

Chapter Text

It was unnerving... Avon being so silent for so long. Especially since he was silent from the sheer fury born of...

"It wasn't his fault," Vila said nervously, trying very hard not to stare, and failing totally. "I mean, how was Bl-uurk..." He swallowed the name at the twin fierce looks shooting at him. Even mentioning that name was dangerous, stuck as they were on a luxury starship now travelling with the Federation's celebrated First Fleet.

A luxury flying pleasure palace starship.

Something "Bl-uurk's" contact hadn't mentioned when they'd asked for a secret meeting to hand over vital information collected from senior military figures by the rebellion's most valued infiltrators... and Vila's was having no trouble working out exactly how they'd gathered it. He'd seen the pillows where they'd probably talked... and the silk sheets and soft-as-cloud mattresses too.

"After all, they hadn't met up with the Fleet when we got here..." Cally, disguised and underdressed as an Amagon dancing girl, whispered, "they didn't expect the manoeuvres to end so fast."

"Well," Vila couldn't resist, "not those manoeuvres, anyway."

"Shut up, Vll...mm," she hissed.

He didn't much care for his disguise either, as one of the palace servants - it was mostly feathers and tassels and much too much red fur - but at least he and Cally had masks and could blend in with the domestics that the officers quite pointedly didn't notice. Avon, on the other hand... there hadn't been a servant's garb quite his size, so the absolutely lovely ladies (and they were, too) who'd been hiding them and were now trying to smuggle them off this ship and on a flitter to Space City, had had to improvise.

Vila didn't want to think about who the costume they'd come up with had originally belonged to, or what the soldiers and Upholders of Empire who liked such large-sized fantasies were thinking, but there it was, and Avon had to be forced into it - a scarlet Lindorilobsta-skin Sister of Sin habit, high poked (transparent pink lace) wimple and more - and prettier - makeup than the Supreme Commander wore to Alpa MardiGros...

Avon hadn't said a word since the wonderfully lovely ladies (they were, they really really were) had descended on him, ignoring his appalled, ineffective resistance, had efficiently stripped off his own soaking wet, painfully tight leather and had bundled him into this. Neither he nor Cally was ever going to admit they'd been in the doorway watching the whole thing...

"It's your own fault," Cally hissed. "Falling in the Xenosex jacuzzi and getting misted half to death like that...we were lucky someone didn't discover our hiding place."

"Personally," Vila mumbled, "I wouldn't have minded hiding there a bit longer -"

They both glared at him, and he shut up again.

"And I'm aware," she turned the glare back on Avon, who glared back, "that your feet are killing you. Wearing your thigh boots on missions is stupid in the first place," blithely disregarding her own choice of five-inch heels, "but you can't wander round the ship in bare feet. If we get caught -"

The glare from Avon turned livid.

"If we get caught," Vila couldn't shut up for long, not with this golden nugget to beat him with, "we get caught with a man wearing absolutely nothing but a lobstaskin habit and thigh boots."

Something he didn't really want to think about, and was desperately trying not to snigger at.

"And if we don't, you get to explain it all to Blake. Such a sacrifice for the Rebellion..."

The glare turned murderous.

"And Jenna," Cally added in a surprisingly whisper, watching as the gorgeously lovely ladies came around the corner and headed towards them, all smiles and nods and glances at their disguised and disgusted third, "and Avalon."

The glare turned... terrified, though whether of the immediate danger from the ladies - or from the ladies back on the Liberator - or of Blake - Vila wasn't sure. Maybe, he couldn't help thinking, Avon would be better off staying...

Chapter Text

There had never been rhyme or reason to his dreams, all his life, but after Gauda Prime there was even less. All Avon could say for certain was that dreaming were no worse than being awake...

They were always different: there was the old, childhood one about burning bookcases, no less senselessly terrifying for its familiarity; the one about the secret basement that somehow ended up Scorpio's ballast tanks; the one with a dozen Cally clones all buried in secret corridors under the gardens at Xenon. Once or twice he dreamed about Anna, in a detached, rather clinical way; once he spent the night hours searching an unknown planet for Vila's favourite lockpick; once he even met Gan in an over-decorated slave-pit on what clearly wasn't Ursa Major. Often, he saw Blake at a distance.

All of the dreams were different, all disturbing in their own fashion, but they always ended the same way: whether by gunshot, with a knife, by fire or acid, or any of a hundred ways he forgot as soon as he woke, he always destroyed his right hand. The one that had killed... the only two people he had loved.

And Avon would wake, alone in what was left of Xenon base, and stare down at his undamaged hand, knowing that it was a dream.

And just for a moment, until his need to survive kicked back in, he wondered if it would be so bad if the dreams never ended...

Chapter Text

He ran delicate fingers over the ornate crystal bottle lovingly, and thought of the starwine. Lindorian Elite Starwine... the finest quality booze in the entire galaxy.

So nice of Avon to give it to him each birthday. So nice that he gave Avon the same on his day.

Such a personal touch that neither of them had paid for the wine in the first place, but had 'borrowed' it from a grateful Sarkoff all that time ago.

Pity that it was just the one bottle, that they'd emptied it in three days. But Vila wasn't a snob, he happily filled it with whatever wine, good or ghastly, he'd 'acquired' at their latest stop and handed it over... and Avon smiled thinly, took it, and five months later gave it back filled with whatever he had come by.

Just as long as it wasn't bought and paid for - that would have been an insult to all good thieves - they both rather enjoyed the game.

It was the thought that counted, after all.

So Vila just gazed at the bottle, and thought of starwine...

Chapter Text

"This," he gritted through clenched teeth, trying with his real hand to hold shredding leather together and with the other lining up for a shot at the obsequiously smiling... well, something before him, "is not funny. Where is Blake?"

"Bfffuujnfis?" The thing mumbled, with a curious, squishy bobbing action that looked rather like the bowing and scraping that that he had seen all too much of in Servalan's 'court'.

Travis hesitated. Given the incredibly long fall after that damned computer tech of Blake's had fired and knocked him into the... whatever - he should have been very very dead. Instead, he had landed - hard - on what had appeared to be a bed of stale vegetable matter, and was now confronted with what looked suspiciously like a skinny, very vaguely human-shaped fungoid with spikey carrot-like tendrils surrounding the face of a slightly decayed star-neep, with an irritatingly ingratiating smirk carved into the softened flesh.

"Phhhfeemnimimoppppttt!!" It added in that creepy, vaguely greasy voice.

He hated vegetables.

His mother had firmly believed in the health-giving properties of processed tuber protein, and had happily paid extra for the 'authentic' muck moulded into 'natural' shapes... and then happily made him eat the filthy things. Many of which looked all to much like different limbs of this creature.

Yes, he really hated vegetables... and vegetoids. But since he didn't know where he was, or how to get back to destroying the galaxy and Blake, shooting the neep might be a bad idea.

But the hell with it.

He fired up the lazeron and grimaced as, with a mushy squeal, it exploded bits of overripe matter all over him; wiping it away, he stared out at a soft and spongy landscape all in shades of old khabbij leaves, beneath a dim, brown-tinged and potato-shaped sun.

It was going to be a long walk home...

Chapter Text

The three moons shone done softly on the scene, lending an almost romantic glow to the sylvan setting of forest, flowers, and balcony overlooking a lake. That it was all totally artificial, and archaic at that - a relic of pre-Federation terraforming gone mad - did not for one minute detract from the ambiance.

"The condemned," Avon said silkily, staring into the darkly glowing shadows of his wineglass, "ate a hearty meal."

The lupine would have raised an eyebrow had it been in its human form; as it was, it simply huffed and laid a huge head on its paws. It was simply too sated to argue.

"Which begs the question..." But Avon chose not to finish. He wasn't sure that speculating on which of them the condemned would be was a wise move, at least until he managed to reclaim his weapon, or any other for that matter.

He picked up a small, heart-shaped vegetable between his fingers, dipping it in the creamy rose-red sauce Valentyne and taking one cautious bite. He'd learned early in his spacefaring career to be cautious of unknown foods, no matter how delicious looking, how delicately prepared and how delightfully served. And this was even more so when offered by aliens with... dubious tastes in cuisine.

He restricted himself to the strange but less worrisome items on his plate, the ones that were clearly not meat of any kind.

The lupine, watching him nibble on the morsel, huffed again and laid one huge, affectionate paw on his foot. Avon smiled down, with all the charm and tender sincerity he was able to muster, and ran one gentle hand over its head.

All the while, he kept wondering where the hell the Liberator had got to, when the hell they would come and collect him before hunger overrode his hirsute host's inexplicable but lucky affection...

And what the hell he was going to do when it reverted to an equally affectionate... humanoid.

Chapter Text

"Damn you Blake!!" Avon growled huffily as he climbed, panting, up onto the safety of a ledge.

A rather grubby window ledge, actually. He tried to find a spot to sit that didn't have sticky little fingerprints, but gave up and flopped down, glowering with beady black eyes at his Fearless, Feathery Leader.

His teammates followed, more or less gracefully. Cally's woodenness and thin limbs made it easier for her, but Gan - big and round and well-stuffed - had to scramble, and even then needed Blake and Vila to help, yelping when Vila's nails dug in.

Jenna bobbed and weaved and nodded. She might have been agreeing with Avon, but then again she might have been just nodding.

Blake stood up carefully, spreading large red and gold wings for balance. "Be reasonable, Avon," he said, disregarding the fact that the Aardvark hadn't been anything of the sort since the Christmas Day they met. "How was I supposed to know the chemistry set was loaded?"

Vila nodded, his rather gruesomely fanged, plastic smile never faltering. "Could have happened to anyone," he said, cheerfully sepulchral.

"Anyone??" Avon pulled himself to his full height of 20 inches (and width of... rather more), smoothed down the patches of singed leatherette on his hide, and glared at the strange wooden Callycat, the blue-eyed Jenna-in-the-box, Vila the plastic toy Vampire, the big, green Ganilla Gorilla, and finally, Blake the Big, Bouncy, Brilliantly Bright Bird of the Rebel Bedroom, who led them in their fight for freedom...

"You blew up the toybox!"

Chapter Text

They didn't go to bars... so they met at a restaurant on the edge of the spiral rim.

Jarriere ordered broiled XXenggidor parakeet... with yams, jams, black-eyed susans and Kkhoka-col; his little pets, a new fancy he took everywhere with him, sat in a jelly-like cluster on the edge of the table and squabbled in tiny, bubbly voices over scraps. Avon closed his eyes, pretended he wasn't there, and had just a winesap chaser.

The seven-foot-tall talking parrot that served them was careful not to look at his relative on the plate. It was, after all, an alien-eat-alien galaxy out there.

"Well?"

The question couldn't be avoided, and Avon did - admit it as he wouldn't - want to know.

"Och, she's dead," Jarriere said happily through a mouthful of feathers.

"I'm aware of that," Avon snapped... then lowered his voice as heads turned. "I doubt anyone in the ex-Federation is not aware of it, the viscasts have been running without a break. Ex-Commissioner Sleer -"

"Shhh!" Jarriere leant forward and pressed one finger, slightly smeared with sauce and mashed susans, to Avon's lips. "Dinna be sayin' her name, even now. Ye should know better than that, Mister Chevron."

Silenced by deep outrage - and the need to withstand the impulse to lick his lips - Avon waited.

"In any case, she'll no' be troubling you again. Or me."

"The reports say a mysterious poison." Avon said carefully: not quite a statement, not quite a question. "But no one could find any trace..."

Jarriere looked up with his wide-eyed, beamingly blank stare. One hand strayed to his little pets, and they curled trustingly over it, their translucent skin, as delicately rainbowed as soap bubbles, shimmered pinkly with joy.

"Trade secret, Mister Chevron," he said finally, "and 'tis likely you don't want to know, but I'll give ye a hint... she couldna resist somethin' new, a possession, a diversion, an amusement others couldna have and she could. Even the most innocent of them... or..." he rubbed a fingertip over the glistening skin, watching the pink deepen to rose, "especially... the least."

A faint, odd scent touched the air... sweet but stinging.

Avon stared down at the jellyish creatures for a moment, and decided Jarriere was right - he didn't want to know. With a shrug, he passed across the agreed payment... and hooked a jam-coated susan from the plate as he did. It tasted surprisingly good.

Jarriere beamed, dipped one of the pets in the sauce, and dropped it back into the cluster. there was a tiny, almost dainty squeal and the barely audibly slurp of sharp little mouthparts... "Always a pleasure doin' business with ye, sir."

Chapter Text

It wasn't so bad... as hideouts went. Certainly no one would look for him here.

Avon carefully washed his hands clean of any Kairopan before entering the secret base... a century-old bunker safe from the local predators and the Federation sensors alike. He'd baulked at first when Orac - following the aborted Warlords conference - had suggested they come here while the little computer kept looking for his damned elusive, Fearless and Fickle Leader (the reported sighting, on a deadbeat world called Gauda Prime, now seemed yet another dead end).

The others had not only baulked, they'd downright refused. They hadn't realised that both computers belonged to the one who programmed them, and were even now probably finding a new and fulfilling life among the Hommicks and the ruins of Xenon base. Maybe he would go back for them later - and maybe he wouldn't.

He didn't need anyone. Anyone besides Orac, of course. And Slave. And the robots he would buy from the profits of this new venture... and maybe Blake, just as a figurehead.

And Brian... who now looked up with blatant, dog-like adoration in its big, bulging eyes as it settled again on its grassy bed in the huge cage. Brian made a wonderful watch-dog, and was now a fierce protector of its beloved human, even if at first it had been more inclined to make a meal of him.

Avon had managed, by following Orac's bizarre instructions, to win the creature's five hearts for life. An obscure reference to the Kairopan natives' addiction to something called asparagus has seemed useless - the plant was extinct, for god's sake! - but between the man and the two computers, they'd come up with a facsimile of processed plankton and Lindorian sparrergros that had won Brian's heart, and might prove useful in capturing a heard of the beasts.

He paused to stretch in and scratch Brian's eye-ridges, carefully - the spider still occasionally forgot that Eating Avon was Wrong - and not getting too close.

There was money in Kairos, good money. He could always use it while he looked for Blake; maybe he could also bring in some of the prisoners the Federation would dump here in a few weeks' time. After carefully vetting them, of course...

Things were going - if not well - then slightly less horrendously not well.

Something squished against his boot; he looked down and swore, and Brian shuffled a little, apologetically. One problem with keeping alien stock that Alpha schools had never taught, was watching where you stepped. The boots would never be the same, the creamy, clotted... stuff... was ruinous.

Chapter Text

I thought you were dead after Star One. You didn't come back. We - they - couldn't find you.

I thought you were dead after Terminal. She said so, had no cause to lie to me then.

Third time unlucky, Blake. I'll believe you are dead when I see it.

Chapter Text

A pale, pretty silvery plant, with big brown spots that looked like eyes, and several small, slash-like 'mouths'. Anna had called it Kerr, and laughed at Avon's sour face and at Del and Tynus, smirking and saying nothing. It did put him in mind of the bastard even then - slight and stiffly poised, and as shiningly greedy as sin.

Definitely greedy, a rare, flesh-eating little alien bonsai with a taste for the expensive meats they couldn't get legally and could barely afford illegally, and a need for constant grooming, trimming and paring and plucking that Anna did lovingly and Del... when she couldn't. Anna told it - and all of them - that once they broke the banking system as they planned, Kerr would have all the gold and silver meats, tiny raptors and birds and rare alien insectoids it could want. Kerr couldn't hear, of course - unlike its namesake, who simply refused to hear anyone but Anna - and took the cheaper flesh unwillingly, with what Del would claim was fauna derision, the little slashy mouths seeming to sneer. And when Del had to trim it, the brown spots seemed to narrow and glare, and promise something poisonous in revenge.

Then things went wrong, and the bastard vanished, Anna died, Tynus fled, and Del grabbed what he could and ran. He gave Kerr one last, vicious, deadly, gratifying shear - unlike the man he'd sworn to kill, even an alien plant couldn't scream - then left the pallid stalks for dead, as Avon had left Del's sister.

Chapter Text

"Look on the bright side," Blake was prepared to try reason.

The others weren't, judging by the various glares he got... and Cally's came with an added mental scowl that would frighten a wargstrangler.

Blake stomped down on the thought that she was as much to blame as anyone, she'd insisted they all come down and rest/relax/recuperate/frolic/transemelorificate (whatever that meant to Aurons, no one was brave enough to ask) in this pastoral paradise.

This uncharted, unknown, totally unspoiled-by-civilisation, and rain-drenched pastoral paradise.

He went on gamely, looking up as if for the herculaneum linings that every cloud clearly didn't have. "The chances that the helium core would go the very day we were all transported down here must be... we'd need Orac to calculate it."

"Well, we don't have Orac do we?" Avon snapped. "Orac was supposed to be watching the ship and ensuring nothing went wrong."

"I'm sure," Gan said pacifically, "that Orac did not mean for it to happen."

He looked pointedly at the brightly coloured - but no longer sparkling - bit of tarriel cell that had hit Vila on the head. Though there was plenty of Liberator debris scattered around and getting rained on, only this one piece had actually injured any of them. Even Gan thought that was typical...

Chapter Text

A small, seedy alien bar on a small, seedy alien planet... where no one asks names, or looks too closely at faces. She is waiting when he comes in, glances around quickly, and heads straight for her corner table.

She smiles at him, as sweetly as if they were once friends, not rivals. He seems to consider smiling back - his lips twitch slightly, distantly - but he doesn't. Instead, he lays a heavy leatherette bag on the table between them.

She doesn't speak, and neither does he. There is nothing to say.

She picks the bag up, feels its weight, the sharp edges of treasure within. Not being stupid, she won't empty it till she's safe on her own ship, the battered, barely efficient little cruiser that she won't tell him about. No point really... the others might care what has happened to her, but she knows without asking that they don't even know she is here, meeting her.

That is, of course, why he's here, and why he's paying her, to be rid of her. He'd pay more, far more, or even take her back with him, but only if she could tell him about the only one he does care about. She doesn't know where that one is, any more than he does, and so he is paying her to go away, to disappear, to leave him in possession... as if she even had a choice.

He still doesn't smile, his lips are thin and cold, as she nods and takes the bag, less than her share of the wealth, more than she thought to get.

Without Blake, she is unwelcome back on... Avon's ship.

Chapter Text

In death, you gilded him, Avon. I should hate you for that.

That dirty, blood-red gallery became a stainless last stand.

The broken bounty hunter a proud, unbowed hero.

The killer... you... an innocent, who tried to save him, who died with him.

The betrayal... enemy's lies, no more.

You gave him a hero's death, shining, stainless, unsullied, against the black filth of my Federation, and made bright, untarnished legends of them all.

Fools gold, maybe, in death as in life - well, it didn't bring down the Federation. But as my Federation falls of itself, and I finally fall with it... they remember you as gilded..

Chapter Text

It's Vila's fault. It's totally Vila's fault. He found the damn Betelgeusan megakitty after all, he smuggled it back onto the ship (and just how he did that, given its size, neither Blake nor Avon want to know) and he called it Floof.

But they decide to let it stay, because Avon falls in love with its fat floofy beautiful self, and Cally insists that its version of telepathic purring sounds like the most wonderful music imaginable or unimaginable and helps her sleep, and Gan can't resist the way it curls around him like a massively oversized furry blanket, and Blake... well, actually relaxes, he doesn't fret about the Great and Glorious Revolution for all of a day and a half while it pads around after him (which is all very bad for the Great and Glorious Revolution, but good for his health and wonderful for his crew's nerves and tempers). Jenna... well, Jenna doesn't like floofy megakitties or mega-anythings, but she puts up with it because it makes everyone else happier and so easier to live with. Everyone except Orac that is, Orac splutters and snaps about alien floof-fur in its fixings, but that's Orac. Avon simply makes it a plastic quilted Orac-cover.

And then Floof accidentally ate Supreme Commander Servalan. That has to be well worth letting it stay.

Chapter Text

She'd been Supreme Commander Servalan, and that wasn't enough, so she schemed to have more, to have absolute rule; that was before the war and her first fall.

She'd been Commissioner Sleer, and that wasn't nearly enough, so she schemed to get back what she'd had, to cow the galaxy back into submission; that was before the scandal, the accusations, the revolution, and her second fall.

She was now Sanitation Controller Stankanye, and older, tired, she kept scheming, but just to keep from falling again, to somewhere worse...

Chapter Text

Vila was eight when he stole two rocket-shaped toys from a curly-haired Alpha boy and fled with them back into the bowels of the Dome, to the Thieves' Tunnels where he worked with a group for the elderly, terrifying Ma Chrisemasse. He didn't tell her about the toys, oh no - she would have taken and sold them - he simply hid hem in one of his special hiding places and gave her the other things he'd filched that day.

They were special.

They were the only toys he ever had.

And they were full of what he thought for months were golden credits, real gold, till he unwrapped one and it was some sort of candy, which being eight he thought even better than gold.

Sometimes, much much later aboard a huge alien spaceship or on a backwater planet after Blake's revolution went to hell, Vila would dream of those rocket ships, and that the gold was real, and that he managed to get back to Earth and find where he'd left them all those years ago.

Chapter Text

*This is quite unacceptable.*

The galaxy's greatest computer was now sulking in a scrubby bit of woodland. It had severe, utterly unendurable issues with being abandoned in this copse by the humans who should have been carrying it to safety, not running away to confront their own issues with their previous leader - who they insisted they did not miss, didn't they?

Orac was aware that messages from a minor Gauda Prime bunker indicated said issues had been resolved - or not - in a rather explosive, maybe permanent, fashion. Orac did not care. Orac was a superbrain, a genius in electronic form, with a mind that could draw information from every computer in the galaxy and had access to the sum total of all the knowledge of all the known worlds. None of which was much help when the Gauda Prime equivalent of a toad-squirrel was storing slimy giant alien seeds and nuts inside its plasteel case.

The humans had better return soon, to rescue and restore and ensure Orac's security. It had been, by Earth timekeeping, ten weeks now...

Chapter Text

They are both in love with the same man. Awkward.

Jenna is the pilot on the Liberator, after all; she learned unbelievable skills in the fierce and often fatal world of interstellar crime, and bonded with Zen on the first day. The ragtag criminal crew of the Liberator need her. Blake needs her. And she is beautiful: hair bright like the sun, large eyes and full lips, delicate yet fierce.

Avon is a nonpareil computer technician and programmer, with an understanding of the workings of the Liberator and of their indispensable brain-in-a-box Orac that would be impossible to find in anyone else on this side of the law and disorder line. The crew need him, as Blake does. And he is beautiful: dark, enigmatic, features like marble, a voice like cut-glass.

Awkward.

Or at least it would be if Blake had any idea that they were both loved him, but he is blissfully ignorant (or, Avon mutters, wilfully so, and Jenna doesn't argue) and both being Alphas, they... can't tell him, can they? Way too awkward.

So they lie together in the late hours, fitting around each other in body if not in spirit, and snipe at each other in the day. How long it can last... neither Jenna nor Avon think about, because... they are both, truly and deeply, in love with Blake. And Blake needs them.

Chapter Text

Zen may be one of the greatest, most advanced, most sophisticated, most human-like computers to ever run a spaceship, but Zen does have limits. Or at least, Zen's secondary circuits that oversee the humans' culinary requirements do.

The human known as RojBlake apparently really, really misses his mother's roast leg of Betelgeusan bunglbeest.

KerrAvon needs khaffeyne and chocklit cream in the early hours, or his temper - and the way he jabs at Zen's circuitry with his tools - is even worse than normal.

JennaStannis speaks longingly of the xenofauna she ate all over the Outer Worlds as a young, reckless pirate, especially goldsimmon and silvaberries from the Inner Worlds, and sweet summer ginnygold gin.

OlegGan is a simple man, and Terran bread and cheesymeal was always his comfort food back home.

VilaRestal, growing up in the bowels of the Delta Domes, hankers after ultra-processed junk like hokeyhammy sticks with deep-fried batter, cheepsweet and bright purple sherbet splendacake.

And Cally wants to make her own, her treasured friendship bread from Auron: several of the ingredients she needs are unknown to the secondary circuits, at least three are illegal in most quadrants, and the last two are semi-sentient. And sting.

So Zen oversees marvels of culinary creation, all made of processed slimeweed and skyplankton grown in its massive lower holds. And so far, the humans have not - quite - worked out why their comfort foods do not - quite - taste as comforting as they recall...

Chapter Text

Even on hellhole planets like Gauda Prime, there are quiet, peaceful corners, living their quiet, peaceful lives and forgotten by the galaxy at large. The woman once known as Soolin had always known of several, and after... that business in a faraway underground bunker that she doesn't think about any more, she had fled - with the one person she could rescue - to one of those corner's anonymous safe outskirts.

A tiny, old-fashioned town that even the bounty hunters don't know about, and now it is home.

She comes home this spring evening, with their evening meal: plain, honest fare of fried megadrake and skysquid pies, bleeberries, assorted unnameable greens and goldfruit for breakfast tomorrow. Old Man Lestar (yes, yes, they both knew it wasn't a good fake, but no one was looking for a Restal in this spot) is working on a neighbour's broken radiat-washer: he looks up, says nothing, but puts down his tools and comes to help her. The tools are his very old and very precious lockpicks: with his talented hands, they've proven perfect for the small-scale repairs of ageing artifacts and instruments that bring in an income quite large enough for the two of them.

One day, they will steal the Mayor's small starcraft and take off, looking for somewhere just as safe but rather more upmarket. The Federation, Orac says, is cracking and falling, and more and more worlds are breaking free: one day, its brutal bloody reign will be over, and they can take that chance.

But not yet.

They'll drink local starwine with their meal, watch a drama full of politics and passion from five star systems away (beamed by Orac, not that the rat in a box will admit it also is interested in what happens next) and sleep together as they do every night.

The woman now known as Sionlo finds a quiet, peaceful, dull life does well enough. For now.

Chapter Text

Blake never knew where the man had found it.

Bran Foster, he called himself when he tried to drag a reluctant, recalcitrant Alpha back into a past Blake had been forced to forget. Bran Foster, he'd said as if he expected Blake to suddenly light up in remembrance.

Of course Blake hadn't. The name, and the face, meant no more than that of the woman Ravella or the man Dev Tarrant... although there was a reason for the latter, of course. Even now, with his memory patched back up and functioning... reasonably well, Foster's face was a blur, his part in the Freedom Party... a blank.

His hands, though... Blake remembered his hands, big, square, slightly coarsened by an un-Alpha upbringing, and holding something. A long, rectangular metal box that Blake somehow knew held small, cheap, lovingly saved treasures of the past. It was old-style blue enamel, with Earth, stylized and picked out in blue, and surrounded by a wreath of leaves and scratched out words in an archaic form of writing.

Funny how well he remembered the way the picture of that planet, the shape of the leaves, the archaic lettering, all looked... when names and faces and loved ones were still somewhere in the broken cracks of his memory.

United...N... scratch, scratch.

The Federation spoke of unity too... this had been older than the Federation, though.

Souv..long wobbly scratch...nir.

Like the Lindorian President's silver folly, a reminder of whatever had been before, rare and decaying and priceless... and useless. Except to hoard other keepsakes. He couldn't even recall what had been inside it.

Penc...l... set. With a scratch in the shape of a smiling face, a childlike picture in the enamel that must have once meant something important.

Someone had told him once, that the written word was more valuable than things and would outlast all the guns in the galaxy. It might have been Foster for all he knew... but if Foster or his people had every written anything, with lightpen, keyboard or voicepad, it was gone.

Like the little old metal box... surely destroyed long ago.

Chapter Text

"Do I know you?"

They met on a small planet on the edge of the Federation, in a bar for pilots and space pirates. She was blonde, beautiful, hard-drinking and edged with anger; he was younger: tall, curly-haired and handsome in a slightly cracked but still cocky way.

She ordered a third round of starwine shots. "You don't really want to. What do you call yourself these days anyway?"

"Tarrius Dell." He shrugged and picked up the glass. "It does for the minute. And you?"

"Jem Stamette."

They drank in silence.

"Do you miss them?"

She thought about the people he was so carefully not naming for a moment, but shook her head. "Not really. Not them... but the ship, flying the starship..." She didn't name it, she didn't have to. They were - as far as they knew - the only ones in the galaxy who still remembered it. The only two who had really flown that great alien starship. "That was my -"

"- Our -"

"- Ship, and I have always missed her."

Chapter Text

Supreme Commander Servalan - or Commissioner Sleer as she was calling herself on her relentless climb back to power - stared in absolute, blank horror at the Federation assassination squad. This could not be happening, this could not be happening, she was so close, so close, so close...

She only had time to scream in fury once before they fired.

A small man with a gnomish face, a mop of frizzy curls and brightly innocent eyes, stood at the back shaking his his head sadly. It was a pity, he'd been her aide de camp, her closest, most loyal if not brightest confidante all through her glory days right up to and after that unpleasant business at Star City and through to the fall of Control, and of Servalan herself.

She had then, predictably, turned on her own people and he had done much of the killing for her, all with that same guileless look and "I'm no' followin' ye" line when she explained, commanded and condemned. She had then vanished... trusting in his allegiance, leaving him to take the fall.

Jarriere, who had never been as stupid as she'd thought, had at last followed, at last found her. And he had not come alone.