Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

  Oh.

I’m going to die.

That’s fine, isn’t it? He’s going to live.

But…

-

Ivan stirs.

No pain, no fatigue. Not much of anything, really. Only an absence of the deafening sound of the instrumental and no crowd either. No sodden clothes, wet with blood. There’s only a comfortable warmth, muffled silence.

Ah. So this must be death.

“Hello, Ivan.”

It makes some sense that Sua is here.

“You took your time,” she continues. Opening his eyes doesn’t do too much for him, but he can make out shapes as they get used to the dim light. Ivan’s not particularly sure how to feel that the afterlife looks like an alien manufactured reception lobby, all greys and whites. “And I thought I took a while to come round. You may have broken a record.”

Ivan gives a questioning noise. On focusing through the dark, Sua’s looks notably different. The wings aren’t a shock, but she didn’t used to have white hair, and it certainly used to be pin straight. Her pale purple eyes have taken on a pinker hue. It’s a strange outfit she wears too – like rebel equipment but in pure white, a colossal firearm on her back. It’s all topped off with a massive helmet. The combination looks kind of stupid.

Ivan tells her as much as he sits up.

“Very funny. You should look at yourself.”

Something flutters behind him – he doesn’t need to check to know they’re feathered wings, but he does so anyway. They look a little too small to carry his weight and move without him really thinking about it.

Sua hasn’t bothered to sit or crouch to his level throughout this, nor did he really expect her to. He towers over her just as he used to when he stands, finding his footing unfamiliar in chunky leather boots. The clothes are scratchier than the ones he’s worn in recent memory, but made of a sturdy material in some kind of baggy belted combo with plenty of pockets, bags and harnesses. Everything on his body seems to glow, all shades of blue white.

He’s not transparent or translucent though. Very much opaque. He squeezes his gloved hand and feels the twist of leather, the strain behind it.

“We’re dead,” Ivan says, as an offhanded, clarifying statement to confirm what he’s fairly sure he already knows.

Sua’s pink eyes look back at him. “Sort of. We’re cupids.”

There’s nothing Ivan can really say to that, so he just tilts his head to imply that she should go on, and she heaves a little sigh.

“Cupids were angels of a Goddess of Love. Some believed they made humans fall in love. It’s not wrong. We simply shoot compatible ones with these firearms.” Sua shifts to take the rifle off her back, as though it weighs nothing at all, and points it directly at his face. Ivan stares at it and her blankly before realising that the sleek white barrel is shaped, inexplicably, into the perfect form of a cartoon heart.

“Those who die unlucky in love are given another chance to live life again as cupids. We exist outside of human and segyein rules and perception, unless we want to be seen – and then, we’re easily forgotten. If you make enough humans fall in love, you’ll earn enough Karma to return to your human life.”

‘Unlucky in love’? A feeling like love at the same whim of a bullet – if compatible ones were shot, then did they make a mistake with him? Or, dryly, wildly, Ivan wonders if maybe they made a mistake with Till instead, but he expels that thought from his mind as soon as he considers it.

To return to your human life.

And all that entailed? Pain, hunger, to be constantly hanging onto the tailcoats of segyein – to be afraid of losing his life again?

“… It used to be that humans who didn’t experience love and felt regret about it would become cupids. It’s changed to the opposite. The ones who didn’t have love didn’t try very hard to become human again, because they had nothing to go back for.”

Though mounting realisation, laughter bubbles. Involuntarily. Sua pauses to stare at him in what he can only categorise as her usual mien of blank judgement.

“My mentor thought there was an overpopulation of loveless cupids of people who died badly, and nobody wanted to return to their lives. Nothing had changed since they’d left the human realm; their regret for not experiencing love wasn’t strong enough to outweigh their desire to fly away to the stars instead. So they lowered the Karma quota to become human again and started picking those who’d loved.”

Sua didn’t need to say anything else. Ivan had already understood. Life wasn’t worth living – so instead, the cupids had become those who had found people worth dying for. If they were worth dying for, then they’d be worth living for as well.

“You said I’ve been gone for a while. How long?”

“Seven years, give or take. You wake up where you died, but our Alien Stage was destroyed years ago. They built a museum on top of it, so.” Sua gestured in a here you are kind of movement.

Ivan’s chest slips.

“Is he –”

“I just know he’s alive,” Sua interrupts fast enough that the sensation of dread dies as soon as it comes. “It wouldn’t be good bait for you if he wasn’t.”

There’s a feeling on top of his relief. It’s the muted feeling that was hidden behind all the adrenaline that he recalls from what feels like merely five minutes ago, in the pouring rain and the electronic thrum of Cure, of Till’s eyes solely on him.

“He won?”

“No, actually,” Sua mutters, and Ivan can’t catch his expression fast enough to stop his eyebrows going up. “Till’s just durable, he got rescued by rebels. Mizi’s alive too, since you’ve forgotten to ask.”

Ivan’s relieved about that too, but he can’t help the question that drops from him after. “And you’re not with her?”

Sua’s face twists.

“You think I haven’t tried?” Ivan considers too late that it probably wasn’t a good idea for him to provoke the woman holding a gun, and she jabs him in the chest sharply with the barrel, with her eyes flaring. It’s practically nothing of a sensation though, and he can’t quite tell if it’s Sua’s strength or the new plane of existence that they’re navigating. “I’m a million strangers named Sua to her. She’s waiting for me, she needs me.”

In the pause that follows, it’s as if Ivan isn’t here anymore. Sua’s gun is still pressed to his chest, but her gaze has fallen to her hands and all he can see is the top of her stupid helmet fringed by her wavy white hair.

He could’ve probably answered his question by himself.

“You’ll understand,” she says quietly. “I say my name to her and it doesn’t sound right to either of us when she says it, even though there’s nothing wrong with how it’s being said. She sees my face and only thinks I’m familiar. I can beg for her to remember me but it never works. I stay for as long as possible and then I have to do it all over again. But we’ll be together… soon. I’m only five off; I’m only here because I sensed you on the way to find more people.”

The silence goes on. Sua’s eyes are shadowed as steps back and puts her rifle away again.

“… How many people do you need?”

“A hundred. It used to be three hundred from my mentor’s mentor, higher before that. We return the same age we died and everything. The faster we finish our task, the more time we’ll have to spend together.”

Ivan fumbles with all the thoughts in his head and everything smoothly returns back to Till. Green eyes questioning. Gagged and in unrestful slumber. Smashing a guitar. Bright eyed and drawing. Throwing punches on the grass. To the meteor shower. He’s spent what feels like his whole life wanting what Mizi and Sua have. It was always hard to tear his eyes away from them. Till used to always look at them too – he used to look at Mizi.

It’s been seven years. Of course Mizi’s waiting for Sua, even though she saw her die. Their love didn’t look like one that they could move on from, and Ivan yearned for it. He barely even needs to think to know that Till is now 28. He hasn’t got the love that they have together – Till, perhaps thankfully, never had anything to move on from.

Of course nothing had changed. Maybe even his second chance was a mistake by someone.

“Stop looking like that.”

“Like what?” Ivan says after a second of buffering.

“Like I’ve just kicked you while you’re down – it wouldn’t even be anything you don’t deserve, but I’ve got things I have to explain to you before I can leave you to fend for yourself.” Sua holds up her hand and there’s a comedic, cloud-like poof, as a tablet materialises out of nothing. The screen looks unnervingly like the Alien Stage UI. “You have one of these too, this is a target data record. This shows data of targets that need pairings, like their previous objects of affection and comments from other cupids. Till is not on this, which means he’s currently in love with someone else who isn’t on here – take that as you will. Mizi isn’t either but I’ve been talking to her, so I know it’s me. You can’t shoot just anyone and it’ll be a match, by the way. Love is more complicated than that; we just spark what’s already there.”

Sua softens at the end. Ivan doesn’t have anything to say to that.

“…Firearms and bullets take Karma as well, so you’ll need to math that out. I’ll start you off with some stuff. Put out your arms.”

Ivan complies obediently, far less wary then he probably should be as she steps in close again and she busies herself around his holsters, pockets and bags. “Do you know if Till’s alright?”

“I haven’t seen him outside of old wanted posters – he’s not with Mizi. No one’s with Mizi but me.” Sua says, putting various bits of weaponry on top of others. Ivan hasn’t seen half of these things before. A gun is stuffed into the holster around his chest. “The gauge on those will make a sound and light up on successful pairing, they’ll track your Karma. If you want to interact with humans, you just have to tuck your wings. They’ll forget you and you’ll disappear as soon as you untuck them again – it’ll tire you out after a while to keep them tucked. They will never recognise you for who you are.”

You’ll understand, she said. But for once, Ivan didn’t think so. He could understand the pain that Sua would have from Mizi not being able to recognise her, but he and Till… what was there, really? It was unplaceable, but everything that Ivan didn’t have Till seemed to direct at least absently to others – perhaps there was something before he ruined it all by taking that chance on the meteor shower.

Could they start afresh?

Could Ivan be someone that Till could smile at?

“How can I find him?”

Cartridges are being tucked into little slots and magazines are being poofed into the air.

“You figure that out yourself the traditional human way. We can’t find non-targets easily.” Sua sighs, seemingly finally content with the ammo that she’s loaded onto him. It should feel heavier, but when Ivan experimentally shuffles around he feels like the bags are weightless, the pockets unfilled. “Don’t bother paying me back, you won’t be able to. I’ll be done already – I won’t need any of this anymore. That’s why I’m giving it all to you.”

Ivan shifts with the huge thing she stuck in his hands, running a thumb over the little glass heart gauge on the side.

“That’s a grenade launcher. Suits a brute like you. If you want to know what happened after you died at Alien Stage, you should look at the museum. It’s lucky you happened to wake up here.”

“Thanks,” Ivan says, entirely sincerely. Seven years may have passed, but Sua is just as she always has been – reassuringly familiar in her mildly frustrated demeanour with him.

“Don’t mention it,” She says, in a tone that seems like she really did wish he didn’t mention it. Sua brushes herself off for non-existentent dust, readjusts the sniper rifle on her back and fixes her helmet strap. Her wings flutter and flap, and she seems to bend her knees slightly to take off. Ivan watches out of sheer fascination of hoping to see the wings in action before she suddenly seems to stutter in her movements.

“What?”

“I forgot to tell you happy birthday.”

His ears must be ringing. “What?” Ivan repeats, gormlessly and in a whole new tone.

“Cupids are reborn on their birthdays. It’s November 18th. Happy birthday. And… good luck.”

With that, Sua’s wings produce a violent gust as she shoots upwards through an open skylight, leaving Ivan standing there – having completely missed the entire process from having to cover his face from the wind. Alone and with things to consider.

Chapter Text

Ivan has all the time in the world to ruminate on everything – that alone is something brand new to wrap his head around. Nobody is looking for him and the only place he has to be is the one where he wants to be. Making things appear with a puff of smoke in his hand is no trouble and the laws of corporeality seem to be a suggestion rather than a hard rule for him, but Ivan decides to put all of his new afterlife matters aside for now to glean what he has missed in his seven years of absence.

The museum is a hive of silent noise – dull humming from electric screens. His footsteps are heavy on the sparkling floors by virtue of his hefty boots, and the only other sounds are the jangling and shifting of all the ammo in his harness. Despite it being the dead of night, each hall is illuminated by displays that still flicker with life and familiar faces. He’s entered a large room with one that spans the entire length and breadth of a wall when he realises it’s coming.

He sees Sua as he walks past, smiling brightly with dark hair and lilac eyes on the set of round one. Mizi smiles back. They look right at each other in unbridled joy, Ivan’s footsteps slow, and the screen flicks away just before Sua gets killed.

He stops in his tracks when it’s Till, mouth wide open in a scream of silent sound – bright eyed and spirited and looking directly at him.

It’s not quite as Ivan remembers him last. That Till shows up seconds later, subdued and deadened in black with that terrible expression on his face, and that’s the expression that he did get to see for himself. His own expression is impassive as he casts his microphone to the floor; the clip cuts as it hits the ground with a splash, but Ivan’s mind is already paces ahead of where the video is.

And then it’s a Till Ivan’s never seen before in an explosion of colour compared to their monochrome, in neon green and strobing lights. ‘A’ Till, he catches himself thinking, but that’s an arbritary category created by their performances. ‘Unknown’ Till, ‘Cure’ Till – all that happens is a costume change and barely a couple days of rest if they’re lucky, and it’s most apparent on Till in what he can only assume is the final. His face is strained, his eyes are unfocused in the way Ivan remembers staring back at him from Cure. Luka’s serene smile appears instead to encompass the entire wall, and Ivan watches as his blue tinted fingers fall past Till’s hair and ears, meandering to wrap around Till’s pale throat in a way that Ivan knows intimately.

What?

The sensation that claws and crawls up his spine is frigid. Till roughly pushes Luka away and Luka lets him and the moment is over, but what he can only understand as horror seemingly made a home in Ivan. Had Luka seen – of course Luka had seen. Everyone saw round six, that was the whole point. But did he… imitate?

Ivan can’t be sure how long he stands there, but by the end of it the clip is imprinted in his mind and he’s come no closer to unpicking the intention behind what Luka did beyond the fact he’s certain he didn’t like it. By the time he moves again, there’s a few segyein ambling to and fro, paying him no mind at all and populating the place with chatter.

The rest of the museum is a strange puzzle of their lives on and off stage, especially with all the exhibits now active. He sees what he thought was his round six costume, but must instead be a replica – he can’t spot any stains or holes in the back when he finds himself circling round to the back to check. His ‘birthday’ is listed as February 14th, but now Ivan knows for absolute and complete certainty that it isn’t. There are microphones, instruments, highlighted music sheets, each and every item carefully encased in glass. There’s even a mildly entertaining interactive exhibit with cutouts of them lined up against a height chart, which plays little voice clips of them on pressing a button. Not that Ivan needed confirmation, but he doesn’t need to gingerly press his winged back to his own measuring chart to know. Just standing in front of the lifesize image of Till tells his gut that he hasn’t grown a centimetre.

As it turns out, the Alien Stage museum focuses more on the performances and their lives at Anakt in preparation for them rather than what happened at the end of the final. It’s on circling what feels like the entire building that he finally comes to a room with lights built into the ground that outline the matchups of the entire tournament – it also seems to be the biggest feature, with the most foot traffic. Mizi and Sua’s dresses stand side by side. Till’s guitars sit dormant. There’s a wall on the far side entirely blocked off by the segyein crowding in front of it.

On trying to gently push through, Ivan just watches as his hand sinks through the back of an alien with less resistance than air. So he walks on through and finds himself looking into his own eyes.

With a shock of pink hair.

Ivan just stares.

There are other children dotted around in the enclosure, static and together. Blond, teal, dark hair, features jumbled and mixed nonsensically. Sua’s eyes. Luka’s hair. Sua’s lithe form. Till’s hair. Till’s eyes.

And this one…

Their eyes are entirely unseeing. Ivan’s familiar enough at this point to know that they can’t see him, but they even look far beyond the crowd, pressed up against the glass. Crouching down to their height, he sees his own reflection in the glass as well as their visage – a shock of white, a glint of deep blood red. It doesn’t exactly match, where he’s sure it would’ve before.

The conclusions aren’t difficult to draw, from recollections of various blood tests, gurneys, strapping contraptions and needles. Of course this would be the most popular exhibit, painted blue skies and rolling green grass in a mockery of Anakt. The girl with Till’s hair fiddles with her fingers. The brown haired boy with Till’s eyes sweeps his gaze over and beyond him in a fashion that’s far too familiar. The amalgamation of himself and Mizi stares unflinchingly through him.

He reaches for their hand – the cold glass far from an obstacle – it never makes contact and falls away.

Ivan leaves then. It starts as a brisk walk, pacing through the crowds – as he makes it out, it becomes a run, and then a sprint as fast as he can, rushing and stumbling through all the memorabilia of seven years ago and seven hours ago to him in a kaleidoscope of colours and memories. His lungs don’t burn, his wings are only an absent weight on his back and his bags thud against his body with their very light weight. It is only when he stops that he realises his breath comes in pants and his heart thrums violently in his chest, but all the processes seem to happen for routine rather than functionality.

It is cruel irony, he thinks, that the room that he stops in is red. Crimson, lit by videos of falling, fiery debris.

You think I haven’t tried? I’m a million strangers named Sua to her. She’s waiting for me. She needs me.

But we’ll be together… soon.

Envy feels familiar. It sits in his heart as a constant friend and it seems he can’t even be free of it in death. Dreams were always occupied by fantasies of having what he didn’t have. It used to be base, carnal and instinctual, a slum child’s desire for survival – as time went on and he saw the face on the other side of that glass, it became refined. Forged into something desperate and viciously greedy for warmth. For attention, a hand in another hand as they fled under a crimson sky, laughter directed towards him alone.

If he could be greedy and confess silently to himself, then he’d call it something beyond affection. Love, unwanted and unwelcome, but his all the same.

It’s miserable for Sua now, to be nothing but ‘somebody else’ to Mizi. But that was practically what he’d lived. He and Till existed together but apart, after that night. Perhaps it was even worse than that – any eyes upon him at all would be through irritation or apathy or at best, confusion. Ivan thought there might be some satisfaction, anything for the fact that Sua maybe now understood him more intimately than ever to the extent that she was expecting understanding from him; but nothing at all comes but emptiness.

Her plight is temporary, but Ivan was going to use this opportunity.

Where was Till now? Could Ivan get to know him as a million different someones other than himself, just like Sua? Sua’s chance would be granted upon returning to her life, but Ivan couldn’t fool himself into thinking there would be something for him beyond scraps. His ‘chance’ came in the form of his current state of affairs as dead and forgettable.

Sua didn’t mention anything about shooting the unwilling, but he had a feeling anything that crossed his mind wouldn’t work. If he happened to see and shoot Till… no doubt nothing could come of it with a man he could never remember beyond who knows how long he could keep his wings hidden for. They had to be compatible, anyway, and everyone knew they were everything but that – Sua said cupids could only ignite what was there.

But scraps. Ivan is greedy enough for that, and whatever power had made him a cupid likely counted on it. Did it even matter to him that he wanted Till to smile for Ivan, as long as he’s on the receiving end of it? He could make the most of what he is now, and decide what he wanted to do later, whether that be becoming Ivan again or remaining as any number of strangers. Shifting with his equipment, Ivan dimly thinks, not for the first time, that the pistol that Sua put in his hip holster looks stupid. It has a heart shaped gauge on the side and isn’t a dark or ominous metal – it’s bleached and pale like everything else on his person, a weapon of love.

The bullets that Ivan was experienced with were far more physical, but he could only imagine that being hit with these would feel similarly warm and damning. What did it mean to be an igniter of love? To make couples like Sua and Mizi? The idea of himself being in charge of any of that is so ridiculous that his sudden forced chuckle almost scares himself. He turns gaze back to the museum.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE FINAL, is the sign that he missed when running into this room. Some of the footage shows rebel figures, clearly distinguishable by being the only humans running around in the havoc of what appeared to be the entire area aflame. Thinking about the meteor shower is unavoidable. Inevitable as the memory of little hands intertwined, ones he’s far outgrown. He thinks about the child with his eyes in a replica of Anakt’s uniform, and wonders if anything could get them to shine.able. Inevitable as the memory of little hands intertwined, ones he’s far outgrown. He thinks about the child with his eyes in a replica of Anakt’s uniform, and wonders if anything could get them to shine. If so, he’d like to know what.

Chapter Text

It’s only a matter of time until what appears to be a pseudo pager on his person starts blipping constantly and Ivan resolves to leave the museum. Standing underneath the open skylight Sua masterfully shot through, all Ivan can muster is some confused flapping and a dusting of feathers falling to the floor. He doesn’t particularly think wings suit him at all anyway, so he resigns himself to walking aimlessly out the door after only a couple half-hearted attempts.

As he walks, early dawn lightens the sky until the stars smatter out of sight and the blinking lights of ships turn off to simply become hovering dark shapes. Beams of the sun filter through flickering holographic news screens and he can see each and every pixel of at the close distance he stands at. The adverts are meaningless, the news just as irrelevant to him – if there’s further rebel insurgence, then it certainly doesn’t seem to be making it into reports. *Alien Stage Museum Open!* is the biggest screen he notices. It must be newer, then. Perhaps it had always been waiting for the children to be displayable to complete it.

Ivan’s own eyes flash through his mind again, and stare back at him from under their messy tufts of bright pink hair – but, perhaps more importantly, the one with Till’s unmistakable gaze looked listless and unnervingly dull. Did they spend all their time in that box?

He toys with the idea of going back for them in his head. Hand in hand. The stars seem to fade even faster into the pale blue sky above him as he turns his eyes away from the holograms. The area Ivan walked through didn’t seem unfamiliar – if the urban planning hasn’t changed, then the old tunnel should still exist, and if the old tunnel still exists, then perhaps the rebel hideout still does too. Maybe it’s even expanded – or it might have moved, if he thinks a bit more negatively. But if Till was rescued by rebels, he’d be thereabouts too, surely? How much time could he have with his wings folded?

It wouldn’t hurt him to check the route, especially now he can go entirely undetected. Ivan wants to find his way back to him. Even if Till isn’t there, it’s likely to be his best bet anyway. The mapping is one that he couldn’t forget even if he tried, one that he now weaves through narrow streets, entirely desolate alleyways, ones he used to trace and torment himself with in his waking dreams with Till at his side.

The stars are long gone by the time he reaches the outskirts of the city. Under the pale blue sky, it’s just a wasteland – but he can feel the fresh wind on his face, the smell of living rancour far behind him. He can feel it through his wings too, cool and tickling through his feathers, teasing him to spread them out just a little wider to catch the breeze.

He can’t pinpoint where he and Till parted ways. Perhaps it was here, where you can just barely see some of the tarpaulin on the small backend slum buildings. Or perhaps even further, here, because he doesn’t remember how long they kept holding hands – it felt like forever and no time at all simultaneously.

His solitary walk into nothing is peppered with backwards glances, but it is only when the city becomes a flat sprawl of jutting dark on the horizon that Ivan can do nothing but admit that Till left him long before this spot.

On that night, he’d stood there as Till left. He looked back at him as a spot of white under the red sky, tearing off back to captivity at top speed – not even a second glance was spared at Ivan the whole way. Yet all he felt in his chest was terrible and awfully damning. He’d felt the emptiness in his hand and his heart drop, watching Till run away, thought ‘I’ll make sure he gets back safely’, and followed him back as soon as he’d just dipped back into the city.

He stands idly again now to look back, the wind tussling flyaway strands of wavy white hair out of the slick back he’d died in.

They wouldn’t have ever made it anyway. Two children, barefoot and running with nothing but giddy exhilaration. Nothing but dirt and dust for ages, and the realisation kicks in slowly but surely as his boots keep trudging onwards, under a sun that crawls its way higher into the sky. Being caught and taken back to Anakt was probably an inevitability, and then the tunnel would’ve been blocked off and security no doubt tightened. But they would’ve been together and as free as Till deserved to be for just a moment, and Till would’ve chosen him, so it didn’t matter what would’ve happened after that even with Alien Stage. He’d do it again if he could, as many times as it took for Till to hold onto him just a little tighter.

Not that Till ever needed him for that matter. He had made that fact painfully clear to him and likely needed him even less so now as a rebel himself and properly grown at 28, perhaps as somebody entirely new and unrecognisable. Maybe he’d even forgotten about Ivan already.

Could he be allowed to fantasize? A make-believe fantasy reality where Till had chosen him, hugged his arm close as they tore off through this wasteland – fantasy was what had led to that impossible spike of courage and it all falling apart in the first place, but he was dead already and in this situation so it physically couldn’t get worse – and they’d grown up with the rebels, inseparable and free. Till would draw things beyond anything he could’ve possibly comprehended back when they’d lived in Anakt, and he’d sing whatever he wanted all the time for nobody but himself. Ivan would know how to say something to make Till laugh. He’d be able to properly make a fire for Till, and they’d fall asleep curled together under the open sky and wake up again in the morning intertwined, dry and warm, arms around each other, Till’s head tucked under his chin or even his own face buried in the crook of Till’s neck –

He wonders how far he can take this until it feels too far fetched and concludes that wondering that is likely the line that has to be drawn.

Eventually, after the city has disappeared from view, Ivan finds that he’s come to a huge road. There isn’t a vehicle in sight, only a solitary sign declaring how far they are from the city for incomers. Clearly he started walking diagonally instead of onwards at some point, getting lost outside of his thoughts as well as within them.

The pager blips again. Ivan mildly considers smashing it.

With no alternatives besides the destruction of dubiously physical technology, Ivan walks on the road instead, taking the middle lane just because he can. In all fairness to himself, he might’ve been overly pessimistic about his earlier assessment – if tenacious children could make it to the road, then they could easily be picked up and taken to rebel civilisation with nothing but minor heat stroke and scuffed feet. That would, however, assume that somebody took this road. Maybe they did seven years ago, but despite its multiple lanes, Ivan’s pale winged silhouette was the only thing between this wasteland’s strip of cement and the sky.

Unless, perhaps, he could talk to someone and convince them to organise a pickup?

For the sake of trying it, he does as Sua said and wills his wings to tuck in as close to his body as he can. The effect is instantaneous – he feels more weighty, probably as he should’ve felt during life but had already become accustomed to his incorporeality. Craning his neck to try and take a look at his back has him seeing nothing but the meat of his shoulder, feathers gone without a trace. Funnily enough, his clothes seem to morph seamlessly into a plain black tank top and a militant green jacket – clothing he’s never worn before, but has seen the fashion of in humans far away from segyein influence. His hair still appears to be white when he crosses his eyes to look at it, which feels redundant, but Sua’s words drift in his head. She sees my face and only thinks I’m familiar. There’s probably something beyond his understanding at work.

A tightness on his back that Ivan would only associate with holding his breath – faint, but there – has him assuming that he’s found what measures his fatigue limit for tucking his wings from sight and blending with humans. At the current state of the sensation, Ivan feels like he can maintain it for quite a while. Certainly more than a few hours, though he has full intention of verifying. Definitely long enough to execute an organised escape for a small squadron of children – although the planning would probably have to be far more rigorous than the conveniences afforded to him in life with his privileges of bypassing segyein security, but could still be as simple as abusing intangibility to check patrol schedules and lock codes.

Ivan’s fanciful thoughts come back after more idle walking, not a ‘what if’ but a hopefully more realistic ‘later’. All of those multicoloured children walking beside him, outside of those tiny display rooms. The ones that look like Till would run up ahead, with the one that reminds him of himself following along, hopping along the white lines. Or maybe leading, like that one time he was bold enough to try, and they’d keep up with each other. The little one that looked like Sua would chase after pink hair probably instinctively – Ivan had always felt that would be printed into her DNA in whatever form it took.

The daydream inevitably runs away from him and Ivan puts up an absolutely dismal fight to keep it within the bounds of reality. Till would probably like the one that looked like Mizi too, but any envious sensation in his chest would be quelled by the dark eyes that are unmistakably his. Shining with glee, maybe, clinging onto Till’s neck as he laughs.

Ivan doesn’t register the roar of a motorbike until it’s too late.

The screeching of rubber on the road is the only thing that takes him out of his reverie – he sees a flash of his own wide eyes in the visor of a black helmet before it swerves harmlessly through his shoulder. The bike spins out of control, rider bailing and rolling across the ground punctuated by the ear splitting scream of metal across cement as the bike skids a few yards further.

The motor putters on as both rider and bike lie still.

Ivan stands frozen under the thudding heat of the sun.

Shit.

Chapter Text

By all accounts, the man could be dead, with the way he's splayed across the ground. Ivan takes a few moments to react, fumbling on heavy feet towards the rider – it's quite a distance from where he was standing.

When he gets there, Ivan isn't quite sure what to do. He can see himself looming in the visor of the man's helmet, which looks oddly like customised and repurposed segyein scrap than anything that came out of janky human make. Squatting down on his haunches, he hesitates a moment – before gently knocking on the visor with a clonk clonk, seemingly corporeal now he's not actively in danger of being hit by a vehicle.

There's a quiet groan – the man twitches to prop himself up. Ivan breathes out a sigh of relief that he didn't know he was holding before realising that the rider's now looking at him expectantly.

Ah. It's probably not going to go down well if he asks for a ride after nearly killing the motorist. Still, there's not much else for it – it's been decades since he's talked to another human outside of segyein influence, at this point, but similar manners may carry over.

"Are you alright?" Ivan asks the stranger with a smile, normal and rehearsed. "I thought the road was empty – I don't know how you didn't see me either. Do you know how far it is to the nearest rebel settlement?"

The mirror of the helmet is wholly unreadable, and nothing in the man's body language gives anything away. His own face looks fine and pleasant in the reflection. Ivan's thighs are beginning to hurt from crouching down for so long.

"… Sir?" Ivan puts his hand on the man's shoulder, just to check he's still solid and being seen – he is, there's the sensation of touch, the sun warmed canvas of his jacket.

The contact seems to jolt the motorist out of his reverie, and he suddenly begins to fumble to pat himself down, rifling through his pockets before producing a worn notepad and a pencil and scribbling. Ivan hopes that whatever gets flipped around on that pad isn't anything telling him to go find his own way when he's given a couple peering glances over the notepad. Thankfully, the response is nothing of the sort.

Just bruised I think. Sorry about the scare, I'm glad I missed you. It's still quite a ways out by bike. Were you planning to walk?

Ivan has to double take at the writing, which is crammed into the little page, scrawly, and slightly familiar – it wouldn't look out of place squeezed into margins of crumpled sheet music. He shakes the feeling off to respond affirmatively anyway, and takes the time the motorist uses to pencil his answer to examine him further.

The man's build is nothing extraordinary. His clothes are clearly durable enough to have sustained minimal wear from rolling across the tarmac; he's a little overdressed for the weather, but perhaps the purpose of the layered clothing is to keep him safe from scenarios such as these. The man has scars just visible under the seam of the tight fitting helmet, which Ivan distantly recognises as nothing out the ordinary for humans and rebel humans alike. He feels fairly confident at this point that the man's going to give him what he wants – something about his cupid-to-human glamour maybe evoking trust, or perhaps just his trained smile. Ivan widens it a margin at the turn of the notepad again.

I'll take you. I don't have another helmet, so hold on tight.

Getting the bike up isn't much of a collaborative effort. Ivan offers his hand when the man puts his own out at him from the floor expectantly to get up and dust himself off. He's quite tall and lanky, but clearly has enough muscle to wave Ivan off when he approaches the bike on the ground; he hauls the thing up all on his lonesome with a quiet grunt, kicking at a part to make it stand and giving it a detailed once over. After shaking his head sufficiently at scuffs Ivan can only imagine are new additions, he swings his leg over the thing and the helmet looks at Ivan expectantly, jabbing a backwards thumb over his shoulder.

Ivan feels mildly sceptical about the amount of space there is on the bike, but goes for it anyway and imitates the man the best he can to gingerly seat himself behind him. The resulting seat is very close. The bike's trucking noises between his legs makes him feel like he's sitting on something alive. Ivan's never felt this out of his depth in his life; the last time he was this close to someone, he was actively getting shot – and the last time he was this close to someone other than Till, it was still far from a stranger.

The motorist seems to wait for him longer still, before doing some weird motion with his arms out and wiggling his hands at Ivan behind his back. Ivan looks at him strangely and the man flaps his hands at him harder, before suddenly losing his patience and grabbing at where Ivan's hands rest on his own thighs and Ivan's heart goes to his throat as he's yanked forward.

His arms are tightly situated around the other man's middle, and they're given a light pat pat well done, Ivan's chest pressed to the man's back as he mentally checks out. The notepad and pencil is produced swiftly from the breast pocket, held up to be viewed inches from Ivan's face with the hold on tight underlined so hard the writing is nearly obscured by the scribble.

Right. Of course. Ivan nods, close enough to the man's back that he can feel the motion, and is barely given a moment to panic before the thing starts moving, and starts moving fast with a rising roar. The wind begins to whistle through his ears, his eyes begin to water – the heat of the sun is entirely forgotten in the warm breeze buffeting through his hair and streaming through the folds of his clothes. They tear past desert wasteland at speeds Ivan can't see himself ever comprehending. The transport he was familiar with was certainly fast, but it's plainly clear that the sleek windows and enclosed spaces offered emotional distance from understanding the speed that they actually travelled at.

He'd meant to loosen his grip and settle back a bit away from the stranger when he'd become distracted by riding, but that felt like a death sentence to do now – not that Ivan could die again, but he equally didn't want to find out – and it took all his will to not pull himself even closer for the security of holding onto something solid amidst the sensation of nearly being divorced from his skin, his heart going at the same speed the lines on the road use to vanish into the distance covered behind them.

In an attempt to not smother his face in the crook of the stranger's shoulder, Ivan abandons seeking respite from the wind and peers upwards at the sky. The sensation is dizzying and has the unique effect of making him feel like he'll tip too far back, right off the back of the bike – but Ivan finds it growing on him, and a scratching, instinctual itch in the back of his mind asks what it would feel like if he puts out his wings to coast through the air stream as well. He's sorely tempted for a moment, before registering the mirrors on the bike, and thinks twice about causing a second accident for this man in the span of an hour.

The road is long and straight, and the flat, desolate plains get craggier as they travel. Just as Ivan settles into the familiarity of the ride the bike turns a corner in a heart-wrenching tilt, and Ivan lets out an ungraceful yelp that the man most definitely hears if the chuckle reverberating through his body is anything to go by.

Ivan feels his ears go hot in a way that the warmth of the sun can't hide.

After a literal lifetime of learning to execute instructions to a facsimile of perfection, doing what he was directed to do, and specifically things that he learnt to do well – sing, play a crowd, smiling wasn't in his repertoire but it was nothing that the segyein couldn't find a way to fix – being veritably amateurish is wholly unfamiliar. The fumbling newness Ivan's taken on in this second chance and the multifaceted world, made up of rules he's yet to learn ways to follow and break – the feeling reminds him of Till, a rending impact through monotony the way the notes of his guitar would slice through silence. Where Ivan's pedigree at Anakt always afforded him near unshakable composure and some control, in himself, in how he was seen and treated, the only thing that he's in control of now is how tight he can hold onto this other man as an anchor to a bike being ridden like he'd just stolen it.

Just like how Till would toss all supposed 'control' and composure Ivan had aside at Anakt and do his best to beat him to the ground.

How embarrassing. How exhilarating.

And the man isn't angry or impatient at his inexperience either – he finds Ivan funny.

It's on that idle rumination that he finally realises that brick and tarpaulin buildings have scattered themselves amidst this little valley that they're riding through, and the road is no longer smooth and dark but one that kicks up dust in their wake. The rider's slowed down significantly, and Ivan peers owlishly over his shoulder to watch as children in various shades of brown and red and green scamper across the dirt road; they give dirty-handed grinning waves at the rider as he stops to let them pass.

A couple other vehicles roll down the side of the road too at idle pace – each and every one is greeted with a slight nod from Ivan's benefactor and a small salute back. People mill around chattering with crates and materials, unloading a large truck that just arrived, and beyond the smell of gasoline and engine oil there's a mouthwatering savoury scent from somewhere that catches Ivan's nose on the wind.

His pager is also absolutely incessant here. Ivan digs through his pockets for it, and watches in mild disquiet as it seems to adjust to the newfound civilization and slows down a little. Jabbing at a button, or every button, seems to mollify it slightly. The rider gave no sign of having heard the noise, so truthfully Ivan shut it up for his own peace of mind – he'll deal with it, and everything that came along with his cupid affairs, later. There's too much new to absorb now to be thinking about all that.

Truly, Ivan can barely stop peering around. Where Ivan thought the buildings were simply utilitarian before, each one also seems to have its own colourful touch to it – unlit neon lights likely salvaged from buildings in the city, posters of human adverts pasted to walls with text written over the faces, paint splattered boldly across brick in a colourful graffiti declaration of the rebel symbol. There's other graffiti'd art too – nothing he can spot is as detailed as some of his favourites from Till, but the tagging on the walls alone makes it somewhere that he can see his imaginary Till, naturally emerging from the crowd with a smile.

It isn't just the art either – the people here seem to show affection so freely. Arms are slung over shoulders. Hugs given one after another. At this speed, Ivan suddenly registers that he no longer needs to retain his death grip on the rider; he rubs feeling back into them, staring off at the crowded cargo bay as they roll slowly onwards until it vanishes around the corner and they come to a stop next to an unassuming building, the engine idling until it's twisted into silence.

"We're here?" Ivan asks. The man nods, getting off the bike and putting down the kickstand. Ivan swings his leg back over the thing to get off from the other side, shakily planting both feet back on solid ground – the man's already got his notepad and pencil out in the meantime, probably to tell Ivan what to do. He's moving to tear off the paper and hand it to Ivan when the door slams open behind him – Ivan's head whips up towards it as a huge man with wild hair emerges from it gleefully and promptly shatters his brain.

"Till, you're back!"

"Till?" Ivan echoes distantly.

"Oh, you brought someone back, welcome!" The man keeps talking at Ivan, moving slightly in front of. To take Ivan's hand in introduction, something about his name, something or the other, on and on. Ivan can't stop looking over the man's shoulder to where the rider stands, going to unlatch and pull off his helmet, his own baffled face in the reflection replaced with –

And sparkling green eyes and a warm commiserating smile are placed squarely on Ivan and everything feels right.