Archive of Our Own ^beta

Half moon. Three-quarter moon. Crescent moon.

The dials spin past automatically. Down the sequence, one at a time.

Half moon. Three-quarter moon. Planet. Crescent moon.

Hatchling’s eyes are weary, blinking out of sync. Their finger on the rotator moves on its own. How many spins has it been this loop?

The one saving grace of all this was that they lost count of the number of tries long ago.

Half moon. Three-quarter moon. Planet. Half moon. Sun.

Each one checks a box. Each one reduces the number of possibilities a single digit. This is methodical, yet still - they’re aware - somewhat abominably ridiculous.

There’s no-one else here to judge.

The bridge ahead of them, stretching into the dark, remains obnoxiously lit. At odd times they’ve had to jerk awake, almost sinking into a meditative state while turning the controls. The worst possible thing that could happen would be losing their place in the sequence, or missing the result.

All things considered, there’s a solitude in this place that’s almost cosy. The residents of The Stranger never know Hatchling is there, given their quick route to shimmy through the bounds of the simulation and reach this spot in front of the vault, cloaked in darkness, never intended to be found. Hatchling has mused occasionally on the oddball Hearthian yearning for seclusion, and whether that, moreso than a desire for exploration or knowledge, compelled their species to seek the answers in the void.

Riebeck may be the odd one out. But the others?

Again, Hatchling mentally thanks Gabbro for teaching them how to lull their mind to rest, spinning the controls deftly, one by one, removing extant possibilities one at a time. Still awake, still watching the bridge and its sentinel, but the meditative half-awareness allows them space to think.

Half moon. Three-quarter moon. Planet. Three-quarter moon. A sliver of a moon… a hint of a moon…

The first place Hatchling had ever visited, their own moon. Just to test the waters. Getting their space legs, so to speak. And that must have been what qualifies as several lifetimes ago.

It’s dark, so dark, but it needs to be darker. There’s no other way. They’ve tried.

Dropping through the ether and trying to fall closer to the island. Blowing gusts of air across the bridge. They don’t have the Little Scout but they’d do anything for a fan. Camouflage. Swimming without the lit artifact in hand (it’s so far across that the world, and Hatchling’s lungs, unrender from pseudo-reality).

Hatchling doesn’t think their friends would really be proud of this. But there’s nothing else left.

One last mystery to uncover. Just one more. The Ash Twin Project is waiting, aching in its impenetrable shell, ready for someone to hover in and remove the warp core powering it. Hatchling has dies so many times, so many times, it’s a mere routine.

Once that warp core rests in their hands, the end begins. A hundred lifetimes, a thousand, a million - there’s still an end.

Just one more. One more solution to find. They could just die for it. Leave a burned corpse in the diving bell, never to be seen again, with Hornfels still ruminating and Hal still translating and Feldspar still playing a harmonica in the hazy, twisted depths, echoes of it spilling weakly from the bramble flower growing back home…

They could die for it and free The Prisoner.

Watch the Prisoner leave. Follow up, artifact in hand. Come to the water’s edge, bidden with a promise to end it all and leave it all behind.

Hatchling has done it. Over and over. As long as they don’t lose their place in the sequence, sometimes they’ll step straight into the fire instead, just to have someone to interact with. And, if they’re honest, the look the Prisoner gives them when it realises they’re someone new…

Hatchling blinks their haggard eyes and moves the dial one pip.

A familiar tug in the pit of their stomach, recognisable through a thousand-fold rites of familiarity. Back in their home system, the sun is exploding. Their memories are about to graze against the edge of scientific possibility as their accumulated knowledge is flung back and the process starts over.

Half moon. Three-quarter moon. Planet. Three-quarter moon. Half moon.

Music seeps through into the dream. Hatchling supposes it’s a Nomai warning signal for the teleport, but to them, it sounds like soft music from afar, being called home.

The lights on the bridge go out.

Hatchling’s hand stills, stopping dead in disbelief.

No. No no no.

It can’t be.

They didn’t miss it. It’s right there, as the edges of their vision start to crumble. The bridge, glaring back at them for loop after loop after loop, is pitch black just like the edges of the cave.

Half moon. Three-quarter moon. Planet. Three-quarter moon. Half moon.

The song is louder, the patterns are swimming, but Hatchling stares up at the input cylinder, not daring to hope. Committing it to memory desperately as the universe melts away underneath them.

Half moon. Three-quarter moon. Planet. Three-quarter moon. Half moon.

They wake. A few blinks, a glimpse of the good old quantum moon, and gorgeous purple shimmer of the probe cannon giving everything it has.

Unbelievable. It wasn’t even random. That was a sequence, is all they can think. Someone, eons and eons ago, put together a passcode by hand. An intentional pattern. Half, three-quarters, a ringed planet, three quarters… Hatchling can’t help but laugh.

“Least it’s better than a nightmare,” Slate monotones from the fireside.

“Hey Slate,” Hatchling says, looking up in the warm, flickering light, wondering if Slate noticed any of these loops that their voice slowly changed, sliding calmer and more confident. Slate pokes the fire and lends a glance. “I’m ready to die in space.”

“All the work I put into that ship, y’could give me a little-” they grumble, but Hatchling is already up, scurrying off. To get those launch codes.

It hardly feels real. Hatchling passes everyone in a daze, checking left and right on the path, giving everyone a nod. In the observatory - the collection of curiosities snatched from resting places across the solar system, the place that ignited Hatchling’s own curiosity for the other planets and doomed them all the same - in the observatory two people chatter in the entrance, beside the wide-awake Nomaian statue.

“Hal,” Hatchling flags him up to draw his attention away from what is admittedly a marvel. “Just got back from a flight-”

“Got back?” they frown. “I thought your first take off was set for this morning?”

“Oh no, no, did you get the days mixed up?” Hatchling breezes. “Been there and back a couple times. Listen, I got a few new language samples.”

“And the translator tool - did it work?” Hal drops any doubts in sheer excitement.

“It’s not Nomaian,” Hatchling grins. “Something new. Wanna take a crack at it?”

“Of course! Oh, this is so exciting!”

Still pondering the statue, Hornfels turns when waved to.

“I found Feldspar.”

They simply blink back, a whisper of sentimentality settling on their features.

“In Dark Bramble. Crashed,” Hatchling continues. “But happy as could be, really. Refused my offer to return home.”

“You have… no idea how grateful I am to hear it,” Hornfels sighs as though setting down a long-held weight. “Of course they would. That’s so Feldspar of them… Anyway, it should be Gossan who brings them home. I’ll radio right away… you have no idea how profoundly happy I am to hear they’re safe.”

Hal is on Hatchling’s shoulder, badgering them for further details.

“How about it, partner? If we really put out heads down we could make headway on this mystery language within about six months! You in?”

Hatchling, however, is already back-stepping out of the door. “You’re gonna need more samples, right? Leave it to me.”

With a grin and a wave, it’s not until Hatchling is on their ship, adjusting the settings like clockwork, already stamping down on the thrust, that they realise that was the last they’d ever see of Hal, the last word they’d speak on Hearthian soil.

They peer at the onboard computer, double-checking, recording the final simulation code just for good measure, to stop it ringing around their mind at a thousand kilometers a second. Setting the navigation targeting to the hidden Stranger, and then giving Timber Hearth one final look from its orbit with their hands at the controls. The sloshing streams. The ice-capped geysers. Firelight calling from the gorge.

With unparalleled ease, they twist the throttle and barrel deep into the blackness of space.

Hal and Hornfels were the best they could do. It’s unfortunate. Twenty-two minutes was all the Nomai could give. But they’ve said goodbye already, to everyone across the system, in a thousand different ways. A detour for a quick conversation. An apology for that time they dropped a certain hat down the geyser shaft when they were younger. An entire loop spent playing hide and seek with the kids. And better still, nobody on Timber Hearth will see what’s coming.

Chert, though? Hatchling feels awful about Chert.

Chert is going to realise and panic. Fishing out more equipment to stare at a thousand slowly exploding suns. Chert knows well enough that no stricken hope rises - there is no escape. For all the times Hatchling has sat with Chert until they faced the glow of the supernova with calm resignation, this time, they’ll be on their own. And Hatchling wishes it could be different, but.

For once, they’re low on time.

Feldspar had a great run. Riebeck at least knew about Solanum, comforted by the idea that Hearthians and Nomai could ever interact. And Solanum herself would understand the process in play, being only partway alive as she is. Gabbro agreed to the plan ages ago, of course, when Hatchling took a loop to sit and chat on Giant’s Deep and fill them in before beginning to search for the sequence.

“So I’ll be chilling for a random and indeterminate amount of time, followed by an unceremonious and unexpected death?” Gabbro had summed up. “Sounds just like life, dude. Do what you gotta do.”

The Stranger threw its cloaking tech over Hatchling’s shuttle, welcoming them in like an old friend as they piloted towards the exposed nodule in the hull.

Hal would be out there, looking at the sky. Thinking of all the possibilities to come. Excited for a new project.

That was the best Hal’s old friend could manage.

Flicking their light on over their shoulder to close the door letting the air out through the timesaving hull breach, Hatchling hops through the lodge doors into The Stranger.

Funny, how the ring-world had seemed stunning, almost alive on first visit. And now, countless arrivals later, after seeing the hallucination of the world it echoed, it seemed anything but. Living on a technicality, surviving by a thread that would soon be cut. The rough timbers cut down a galaxy away about to completely fall through. The trees deadened, drooping, sick and yellow.

Hatchling pumps their jetpack a few times to accelerate across the walkways of the gorge, over the calm waters below, eyes on the many ledges, the elevated structure with the projector inside, where they pick up their final artifact from its usual place.

Moments later as they doze off, the circular lantern births a glowing, green flame.

Most of the Stranger inhabitants would never know about their interloper rushing through and heralding an oncoming wave of death in the form of a flood. Artifact focusing its beam into a totem, they call a raft, silently disappear into the tunnel, and…

Fall through the simulated world, landing where they had so many uncounted times before.

The first two chains were undone with foreknowledge. And the third…

There’s no hesitation in their movements as they spin the dial on the code cylinder.

Half moon. Three-quarter moon. Planet. Three-quarter moon. Half moon.

Darkness.

Hatchling shades their artifact and crosses the bridge. The first new experience in a long while. And then to the vault, creaking it open, scurrying down the slim corridor, unafraid, slamming their artifact onto the plate to descend…

Without thinking, they reach out, stepping towards the tiny room’s darkest corner. Grasping for something. Unflinching as something grasps back.

The Prisoner lunges, eyes lit with the glow from the lantern, its mouth gaping open and coming to an abrupt stop as Hatching’s small hand grabs onto those massive talons, causing the Prisoner to shutter its eyes slowly.

But the Hatchling is steady, unerring, as if those claws are a lifeline, looking at the Prisoner with their eyes intent and decisive and completely unafraid as the verdant flame in their artifact pulses hungrily.

The Prisoner tilts its head. Huge eyes, still capable of curiosity, rove across the invader and their lit artifact, pulling back and standing up straight with its claws primly nestled together. It seems almost instantly at ease.

“Hey, buddy,” Hatching says, knowing full well the exact words spoken are irrelevant.

It stares back as it crosses the floor of the cell, robed in a shawl just like its brethren, its pearly eyes aglow, hooved legs clunking softly on the wood. One antler sweeping majestically above its head, the other broken near the root for reasons the hatchling will never have the words to discover. Its talon curls around a vision stick to offer a way around the language barrier, and Hatchling has seen this before, but will gladly see it all again.

The Prisoner’s memories wash over them in a glossy field of green light. Pulling back the dampening coil around the Eye of the Universe, if only for a few moments. Every one of their kind sealing the Prisoner in the vault to waste away, locked in a sunken bell.

Hatchling may be on a time limit, but just for this, their companion can have all the time they need.

They’re handed the vision device and return the favour. Everything after, everything Hatchling knows, channelled into a concentrated burst of understanding back to the creature, hunched over and eyes burning as it understands. Hatchling watches the moment it clicks that what it decided to do was not in vain, followed by it raising its plumed neck aloft and howling. Hatchling always has a feeling no device could translate that.

Then, as the Prisoner approaches the door to leave at last, Hatchling follows to offer the vision stick back and looks up, trembling. Never to see this creature again. The Prisoner bends its head to acknowledge its rescuer in the only way it can, and before it can pull back, Hatchling steps forward, hopping on their toes, able to touch their forehead to the Prisoner’s soft, ruffled face. No shock runs through it, no reluctance, simply a nudge back as Hatchling takes a breath.

The knowledge they shared was one thing. This was something new.

But Hatchling steps back, embarrassed to delay the Prisoner’s escape a moment longer, and watches the creature ascend to the floor above, stepping almost reverently.

The lift comes back for them, and they blink down everything that went unsaid.

There’s not enough time. There will never be enough time.

They hurry out of the blackness of the vault, almost stumbling with haste, following the cloven footsteps to the muddy edge of the water, where the vision stick is propped, beaming a final goodbye. Hatchling watches it despite their haste - a living world, a raft, a sunrise over the trees, and the two of them. Alien to one another, a little space-suited Hearthian and the long-gone Prisoner, boarding and setting off for things unknown.

Hatchling steels themselves, duty-bound to watch every frame.

“Meet you there, buddy,” they mutter, following the imprints to the lapping water and stepping in.

Their artifact snuffs out.

They wake up.

The mad hurtle out of The Stranger approaches a panic. Crossing the gorge again, rushing down the steps to the development lab, holding up a light to the door mechanism and wishing they had just left it open for all the air to escape, to save a few precious seconds.

They’re seated at their ship, letting muscle memory pull it off the strip they landed on and nudging past the Stranger’s whirling blades and newly deployed solar sails.

They realise, speeding away from the invisible juggernaut, that the water as they left had still been calm. The dam hadn’t even collapsed yet.

They almost overshoot the approach to Ash Twin out of jitters. To fail now would, of course, mean repeating this sequence of farewells to no one’s embarrassment but their own– but that was about to change.

The towers are long emerged from the depths of Ash Twin’s accumulated sand. It’s a soft landing for the ship, and Hatchling blasts themselves with ease on to the perch of the Hourglass Twins own teleporter tower. Their timing is bad - Ember Twin is nowhere to be seen.

They give the Nomai skeleton reaching out for the safety of the teleportation chamber a curt nod and wait. Agonisingly. Hiding in the tower’s alcove and feeling sickening pain as seconds mill by.

Finally the sand whips up around them, coursing through the tower, and they jump, not even landing on the teleporter, but sinking into a black hole into the centre of the planet before contact is made.

Then to deactivate the equipment in the chamber, the curls of flowing, rotating purple lights that have kept on for millennia. There’s no time to be careful and it feels irreverent to be touching it, and yet, Hatchling’s hand comes away with the warp core firmly under their fingers, ceasing the timeless displacement of memory and ambition.

Their jetpack blasts them back to the warp pad, body filled with a nauseating finality. The job’s not done, but it’s over either way. Gabbro has no idea this is their final loop.

Hatchling throws themselves back to their ship, hugging to the most precious object that’s ever existed among the stars. In their seat, buckled in, it’s calmer - their body knows what to do. Dark Bramble is a ways away, but as long as one’s careful…

The route to the vessel marked, Hatchling scoots the ship through the inner Dark Bramble haze, vision fixed on the red dot directly ahead until something forms through the intense fog.

A stem on one of the glowing lights, a mess of gargantuan teeth, looming, darkening, directly in the way.

And there’s nothing they can do. To touch any of the controls would be suicide. Final, complete, dooming the universe and everything in it.

Hatchling lifts their hands from the controls as the ship coasts closer to the beast. They could just look away. It’s past saving. It was pure luck that they never pressed the thruster as they got further in. It’s as though an alarm is going off, signaling the end of all things, and there’s nothing they can do.

The anglerfish groans, a deep, guttural sound, heavy in the fog, larger and larger on the viewport as the ship comes within swallowing distance of its maw.

Hatchling eyes the eject button.

They could make it from here. Ship abandoned in the gnashing jaws of a monster, they could throw themselves from the cockpit towards the glow…

They hover, awaiting the first moment of contact before hitting the button.

It doesn’t come.

Another resounding, deep purr, and the ship sails clear through the anglerfish’s curled lure, leaving the horrible thing unaware that anything happened. They don’t dare even turn the ship to look, waiting just long enough to be within shooting distance of the glowing red bramble seed, thrusting breathlessly into the opening.

Hatchling makes a strange noise. “There’s never been an anglerfish there,” they croak, ship plummeting serenely through the ether towards three more anglerfish, hovering, stationary, lights and teeth hovering in the fog in a way Hatchling knows very well.

A little more maneuvering gets them into the vessel’s seed, parking the ship, and wondering in a daze if that extra setback cost them too much time. They spend four extra seconds to open the coordinates on the ship’s log, rereading them, and thanking the computer for its diligence.

All the universe, every life still living in it, put on hold for a guilty, misguided diversion.

They float past the long, long forgotten skeletons of the first Nomai arrivals. Avoiding them where possible, they push off from the side of a tilted corridor, anything to arrive faster, turning sharply, careful not to overshoot past the centre of the navigation deck.

The only surviving Nomai warp core in their trembling hands, they press it into the vacant slots between the ship’s pillars, knowing their hunch has to be right.

And instantly, gravity turns on. The Nomai knew it was possible.

However, they were less brilliant at creating a navigation input that could be controlled in a hurry, as Hatchling’s sweaty hands inside the suit direct a rolling orb back and forth, creating the pattern of their salvation. There’s no time to think.

Code complete, all that’s left is to launch.

It barely registers. A black hole splits open, teleporting the entire ship out of its graveyard, and Hatchling falls to their knees on the main deck, staring at the sun that grew them, far out in the void. They can’t move. It can’t be real.

Each second that ticks by is agonising to think about. Each second is an extra breath they all get to take.

The explosion is pinpoint. Blue and beautiful and distant. Hatchling slumps forward. It’s an age before they move again.

Warping down to the eye itself, exploring it, everything the Nomai always wanted, with none of their excitement and enthusiasm. Hatchling wonders what any of them might have said in their place, had anyone eager to arrive ever made it. The eye is dark and incandescent and lures them in almost, until they’re surrounded by moaning screams and trees which explode into lightning, unphased.

On foot, alone. Making their way into the abyss.

Just like Solanum couldn’t, they have to fall into the sky and see what comes next, and they realise it’s all over when things start to look like home.

A thriving forest, smothered in darkness. Which part is more them? The residual spruces of Timber Hearth? Or the complete void they yearned for over and over in the heart of the alien simulation?

“I think you know the answer to that,” says Esker, causing Hatchling to turn and splutter. They take off their helmet. In their usual rocking chair, seated by a fire, the eldest Hearthian astronaut.

“Does it even matter any more?” Hatchling asks blankly.

“I think you’ll find it does,” says Esker, swaying back and forth. They say nothing else.

One by one the Hatchling picks through the forest, guided by music, taking hold of each person they remember and dragging that memory to its feet. Riebeck, Feldspar, Chert, even Gabbro, who greets them back at the fireside with a quick slap on the back.

“Coolio. Just like my poem,” they say.

Drifting notes guide the Hatchling to a circle of Nomai skeletons, pointing up, pointing to the stars. Still reaching. And when Hatchling returns to the fire, starting finally to smile, Solanum is there, performing a gesture that might be a greeting.

“I’m glad you remembered me,” she hums, in an esoteric voice Hatchling has never heard. “Hypothesis: everyone must be here before we can begin.”

The space-farers have their instruments at the ready. All the Hearthians are ready to play, and Solanum as well, but if there’s someone missing…

The scope reveals a whine, a lonely cry, emanating from the forest, as Hatchling dashes off to locate the source. Just within sight of the campfire gathering stands a wooden stage, instruments and bows waiting, and nearby, a grave.

When Hatchling returns to the group, a new member hovers to one side, too unsure to join the chorus.

Hatchling says nothing. Their hand extended, taking hold of the talon that isn’t holding the instrument, Hatchling tugs and tugs until the Prisoner walks slowly up to the fire, settling down with everyone else.

“I can’t wait to hear what it sounds like,” Hatchling says mostly to themselves.

“Are you sure?” asks the Prisoner. Hatchling’s head tilts up, mouth slightly agape. A stinging truth reminds them that the real Prisoner could never understand their speech, much like Solanum, but they ignore that. The Prisoner regards the firelight and blinks. Its voice is like the woods, like the safety of the night and being enshrouded by it. “After what we did? I am still of my kind and kin to their fear. Should I be a part of this?”

Hatchling shuffles closer. Their arms pressed against the chest of the creature, it all comes flooding back. Life after life of twenty-two minutes, launching into the void, sinking into sleep, spinning the combination through each possibility one by one. It’s soft, so soft, and Hatchling glories at the touch of feathers.

“I made sure you were free,” they sob, unable to keep the strangled cloy from their voice any longer. “I had to get you out. The one thing - the one thing I could change before it ended. You were free,” their eyes brim over, tears spilling from all four at once as the Prisoner’s claws dig into the Hatchling’s back, squeezing. They’re pressed into its down, sobbing incoherently, the raging sorrow of a hundred eons. The Prisoner lets them embed in its feathers and softly trills.

“Thank you,” murmurs the strange creature, bowing its horns, voice rumbling so low that no-one else will hear. “Whether I deserved it is not for me to say. Yet I think it was an unparalleled kindness.”

All the other travellers gently wait, letting the two have their moment to embrace. Hatchling is so small against the towering grandeur of the Prisoner that they seem to get enveloped entirely within its plumage, nestling close with their arms firmly around its chest.

“Thank you, too, Solanum,” Hatchling says, glancing towards her with watery eyes and a smile from amid the down. “We learned so much from your people.”

“I’m delighted to hear it,” she turns her angular mask to nod, her voice melodious and lilting. “As a being of fathomless curiosity, may I ask which of our tenets you found the most inspiring?”

“When something seems impossible…” Hatchling sighs, unwilling to loosen their grip. “If you have enough time? You can just brute force it.”

One by one, each of the five Hearthian travellers starts to play their welcome unified song, and with a wave of her tablet Solanum joins then, and instrument that Hatchling could never have heard deepening the music. The Prisoner shifts beneath them and places a bow against the strings of their upright, wooden device, drawing it across to swirl something unique into the song.

A chill rises through the Hatchling as everyone plays, in awe of how the Prisoner’s music sounds. It’s beautiful.

The sound haunts the firelight until everyone’s ready.