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greenninjagal-blog · 3 years

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Another One Bites the (Star)Dust pt2

Hey guys! Welcome to the next part of the newest installment of the Space and Everything In It series! Buckle up; its a fun one!

If you need a refresher, here’s the [previous chapter!]

Summary: Late at night, Virgil has a run in with the ship’s unfavored guest and Remus is rather insistent to turn it into a game of life and death.

Words: 8016

TW: Blood, Non-con drugging, Mentions of murder, forced attempted suicide

Quick Taglist: @alias290 @chelsvans @coyboi300 @dante-reblogs @dwbh888 @glitchybina @faithfulcat111 @felicianoromano @harrypotternerdprincess @holliberries @jemthebookworm @killerfangirl3 @mrbubbajones @musical-nerd18 @nonasficcollection @stricken-with-clairvoyancy @the-sunshine-dims @themagicheartmailman @themultishipperchild @thenaiads @treasureofpriam @vianadraws @welovelogansanders

Read on Ao3 || My General Writing Masterlist

“Certainty” wasn’t something that Virgil had in excess of all the way out in Space. There were always so many things he didn’t know, didn’t understand, didn't think to think of. He was constantly having to rework his understanding of planets and governmental structures and alien niceties because he just didn’t know what he was doing. Roman, Patton, and Logan sometimes forgot that he didn’t grow up learning about interplanetary wars and peace treaties and trading policies and it always came as a shock to them when he had to ask what the hell they were talking about. Virgil lived and breathed by trial and error and tried his very hardest not to do the error part.

So certainty was hard to come by these days.

However, he was certain that if Remus didn’t let him go in the next five minsannu Virgil’s lungs were going to implode and his neck was going to snap and he was going to be a very unhappy ghost.

The dust was not grey, Virgil thought, even as he saw the flutters of it flash on the back of his eyelids, imprinted like scars on his brain that just wouldn’t heal over. The dust was not grey and it wasn’t real because there was no dust on Roman’s ship and-- oh god he was going to die and they weren’t going to find his body.

Remus’s tail jerked and Virgil felt where the muscle tightened and the half regrown bone plates rotated in return, like knives all on their own. Virgil was pretty sure that his hands were bloody messes from trying to get between the mass and his throat, trying to loosen it a bit, trying to get air to his lungs and his feet back to the ground and his body somewhere that wasn’t there.

His head felt like it was full of fuzz, full of buzzing and screeching and alarms. Even in the darkness he could make out Remus’s face watching him with deep dark eyes that were twisted paradies of Roman’s, because Virgil had seen Roman’s so often, so much and associated them with the driven determination that bordered on self sacrifice and these weren’t those eyes.

Despite them being the same murky brown, Remus’s eyes different; there was something in them that Virgil’s panicking brain was screaming about, something that made his grin sinister where Roman’s was always charming, something that told Virgil Remus would enjoy watching the light leave his eyes. Something that told Virgil his own dull reflection in those eyes would be the last thing he saw before he passed on.

And Virgil did not come all this way to die because of Remus-- fucking-- Prince.

Really! At this point it would be a fucking insult to die becuase of an Erefren in the middle of space because he was too stupid to just go back to sleep and pretend like he didn’t need to see a space therapist for the traumatic-borderline-stupid nightmares he kept having.

He’d survived the accusation of murdering his best-friend-maybe-more, survived the humiliation of being stripped of everything that he owned by aliens, survived the Welsor Fighting Rings six fucking times, survived the mercanaries, the bounty hunters, the government agents-- everything that had come after him and his family in the past two years. He survived the Pol’turs and he survived getting Janus back.

He survived that, and no one was ever going to know about it because in the end Remus was going to send his lifeless corpse out the airlock because it was that easy to get rid of the evidence when you lived in Space. No wonder the space police went around trying to catch them with illegal merchandise. It wasn’t like they could prove or solve murder--

He gasped for air that couldn’t fit in his fiery lungs, and his eyes felt a bit like they were going to pop right out of his head with the pounding pressure building up from a heartbeat that he couldn’t keep going. His vision blurred, bubbled and popped until all he could see were blobs in the darkness. Unrecognizable blobs. His legs kicked, jerked, swung...fell... and... his... hands…drop...pe...d….

Virgil gasped for air like a drowning man-- or a suffocated one. His lungs burned hotter than any star he’d ever had the pleasure of hearing Logan ramble about. His head swam in the agony, in the stimuli that screamed from so many places that he couldn’t even see what was in front of him. He was faintly aware of his shuddering chest, of his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, and the raspy feeling of oxygen tearing through his esophagus like a pair of dull scissors through felt, handled by a second grader who’s fingers weren’t big enough to grip them properly.

His limbs were moving-- or rather being moved, but the moment the thought came to him was the moment he was also pressing his cheek against the cold polyfurnish flooring to alleviate at least one of the alerts in his brain. He thought he was crying, too. Crying over air that he didn’t think had ever been so sweet.

“Deathworlder, huh?” A voice said from over him, and Virgil tried to kick at it, only to find his legs weren’t moving quite right when the action jerked at his wrists and nearly dislodged his arms from their sockets and that was not good. “I used to think you guys were cool as fuck. Then I met one.”

Virgil coughed and curled in on himself, but his arms were trapped behind his back, and his shoulders cried weakly at the movement while his bloody fingers twitched. He shoved his face into the floor again, in a move that he thought probably looked really pitiful-- like if he couldn’t see the blob towering over him with a too-sharp-too-many-teeth grin, then Remus would just stop being there altogether.

Instead Remus’s foot came out and nudged his face. And then he kicked at Virgil’s knees and forced his body to twist until he was mostly facing upwards with his soft insides ready for plucking straight out of his stomach. His chest shuddered again, and his wrists yanked against whatever it was that Remus had bound him up with-- Virgil didn’t recognize the feeling of the material, but he was only used to being bound by polyfurnish chains that could absorb heat from an imploding star itself and metal handcuffs rom when the police wanted to pick him up for questioning for the second time in a week for something like jaywalking and ended up asking what he did to Janus Ekans anyway.

Whatever this was, it felt more like… like… fabric. Roman’s sash, or a T-shirt, but strong enough that there was no give, or knotted enough that Virgil’s stupid monkey brain couldn’t figure out how to undo it before Remus decided how to undo him.

Remus for his part just watched him for a minsannu, quisannu, phisannu-- Long enough that Virgil’s breath didn’t get any stronger and he couldn’t scream for help because of it. Remus crouched at his knees, draping his arms over his kneecaps, watched Virgil’s chest shake with a fascination while his fucking tail wagged in the background. Virgil caught sight of a dark liquid on one of the bone plates when it crossed into the line of red light and his entire body wracked with attempts to put distance between himself and Remus.

“Not so tough now, are you?” Remus said.

“Pl...eas…” Virgil gasped. “Fu..ck…Remus…”

Remus smiled wider, his lips cracking apart his face to show off all three rows of teeth that encircled his mouth and throat, sharpened like daggers. There was a chasm where his face should have been and Virgil tried to shove with his feet again, but they just yanked on his hands and forced his shoulders farther back like some type of back-fucking-bend.

“Roman loved hearing tales about creatures like you,” Remus said casually, like his voice alone wasn’t causing complete terror to crawl up Virgil’s throat and yank out his tongue. “They always made you guys sound like juggernauts. Unkillable beasts. Gods. When Roman was ten revolutions old he said he was going to exterminate all the Deathworlders so that no one else would be scared anymore.”

Remus looked down at Virgil and his eyes were empty abysses larger than black holes and colder than them too.

“Doesn’t look like he did too well on that front,” Remus said. “Guess I oughta help him with that.”

Remus’s hand reached out suddenly-- but Virgil’s brain saw it in slow motion, like Remus was reaching through a bowl of Shishdouble to wrap his claws around Virgil’s throat again. Virgil babbled out something, begging, pleading, and his bruised and sore body writhed against his bonds and the floor in desperate, hopeless movements.

((Virgil never wondered what worms felt like when they were plucked out of the ground and suspended in the air. He wasn’t pleased to know.))

Remus’s fingers were cold-- cold like ice that Janus had once shoved down his back in the middle of the night while they were sneaking food from the kitchen, cold like the metal chair he’d been forced to sit in while police officers and detectives asked him the same questions over and over and over again, cold like the endless expanse of space that surrounded their very tiny ship in the perfect graveyard for souls no one would remember to miss.

Virgil could feel each of Remus’s fingers pressing over his heaving throat. His claws were close to breaking Virgil’s tissue paper skin and his thumb sat right on Virgil’s pulse feeling for the way his hummingbird heart struggled to keep Virgil functioning. Just a squeeze and Virgil would be gone, just a curl of fingers and his blood would be all over the floor, just a twitch and Virgil would never have to think about the difference between grey and blue or what the last thing he said to Janus was.

“But you know,” Remus said. “I’m a pretty generous guy! I’ll give you one chance to convince me not to!”

“Fu..ck…” Virgil managed. “You.”

Remus brought up his other hand, and Virgil reactively squeezed his eyes closed. His heart stuttered, stuttered, stopped in his frantic chest, holding and waiting for the pain from whatever Remus was going to do to him for that; his claws were sharp enough to drag down Virgil’s cheeks, to cut out his tongue, to carve out his eyes--

But in the end all he did was use a finger to lift one of Virgil strands of hair off his sweat drenched forehead.

“That’s not very convincing at all.”

Virgil wanted to hiss at him, something threatening and violent like the Deathworlders of all the tales Remus was thinking of. But his mouth was dry, and all he could see was the last row of teeth in Remus’s mouth. He had never wished so badly that he was bad at math: because surely if he wasn’t able to count every inch between Remus’s pointed teeth and his own throat, then it wouldn’t be happening, right?

“Hmmm,” Remus said, possibly delightedly when Virgil’s voice failed him and his lungs begged for a mercy that Virgil couldn’t provide, because breathing means movement and the dumb rabbit part of his brain kept insisting that if he didn’t move, Remus wouldn’t see him. “Maybe I’ll just leave you here, Cikeriy-tied. Can you squeal, little Cikeriy? Squeal for me?”

Virgil didn’t make a sound, and honestly he wasn’t sure if that was the best move or not: angring Remus when he was already so close to death by not playing along with his sick-as-fuck game verses keeping what little diginity he had managed to retain after the Welsor Fighting Rings. Virgil’s throat tasted like blood coated dust and the bonds around his wrists and ankles dug into his skin the same way the chains at the Rings would, before Logan had come and freed him.

Instead he squeezed his eyes closed, counted to a frantic, unprovable five, and then he lunged straight up with all of his might. Remus didn’t have time to drop him, or move back and Virgil gladly took the blossoming pain in his forehead as payment for at least wiping that smug grin off the alien’s face as he hit the floor again.

Remus cursed in Erefreian, sounding a lot like Virgil’s Spanish Teacher when she saw the results after her quizzes and realized that bar Perfect Janus Ekans, no one was going to be passing her class that year. Remus pulled away and the red dulled light from the hall painted him in an astonishingly terrifying light. Virgil snarled at him the best he could when his heart was pounding in his ears and all he wanted was to scream for help but the words choked in his throat.

((Because if he screams, he thinks someone might come. And that would be a sight to see, wouldn’t it? Patton or Logan or Roman throwing open the door just in time to see Remus slice his throat open and spray his blood all over the Computer console? Virgil could forgive himself for a lot of things, but causing his family to think “if they had only been a little faster” was where he drew every single line every single time.))

Remus’s claws came back from his forehead, shamefully lacking any blood, though there might have been some type of bruising. Not that it would matter much considering the thickness of Erefreian skin; Remus wouldn’t even feel it in a few quisannu and no one else would ever know. He laughed, short, quick, and breathy and Virgil almost thought that he might be surprised.

“Oh,” Remus said and Virgil didn’t know what that meant, and didn’t think he wanted to find out.

He twisted his fingers and grabbed a hold of the knot tying his feet to his arms with the little give that there was. His hamstrings whined at the pull but Virgil only needed a minasunnu to create the 3D model in his head so that he knew where to wriggle and where to pull and where to curl-- like the worst kind of interactive puzzle and if he failed, he was going to die.

No pressure.

Virgil yanked his arms free just as Remus lunged for him again. He rolled and the alien hit the floor heavily where he’d been, with his tail already swinging at where Virgil was going, which was hilarious on some level because not even Virgil knew where he was going, but Remus seemed to predict it anyway. The bone plates on the edge of his tail were sharpened and they carved violent arcs into the wall in front of Virgil forcing him deeper into the room and farther from any sort of help.

He blocked the way to the only exit and Virgil scrambled backwards until he felt the floor vent that circled about two feet from the escape pods under his shoes. His chest heaved, and his vision danced between being hyper focused on every detail about Remus and being blurred so badly Virgil couldn’t have seen his own hand in front of his face. Distantly his fingers were aching with the cuts from the bone plates already, his blood made it hard to concentrate on the here-and-now and not the there-and-then.

((The Dust is not real. The blood is his own. There were no screaming crowds, no beaming sun, no grit under his nails--))

The floor was clear, he was empty handed, and while Virgil’s handprint, however bloody, could probably open the doors to an escape pod behind him, he didn’t think he’d be able to close them before Remus could follow after. Virgil’s head rang from the earlier impact, turning his carefully cultivated plans to fragments in his head with nothing to do. He was cornered in the worst part of the ship, with the worst person to be cornered with.

Remus was grinning again, crouching on the floor like a lion about to pounce, but wanted to have his fun first.

“What’s your plan here?” Remus asked. “Gonna call for help, little Cikeriy? Go on! I’d love to see the look on your face when you realize no one is going to come for you.”

“What… did… you do?” Virgil said between gasps. The chill of the ship cut through his thin sleep shirt, and made his skin feel too small, too little, not enough. Roman had been okay at dinner earlier, he knew-- a little more tired than normal, a little more snappish but he’d been that way since he had taken to keeping Remus away from anything important around the ship all day every day, because he didn’t trust Remus around any of the rest of them. Patton had made ten puns, which was one less than usual but Virgil had thought it was just because Logan had been excitedly telling them about--something fuck, a star? A research paper? Janus had kissed him like a nebula exploding and wished him a good night.

They’d been fine. Virgil had made sure of it. There was nothing that Remus could have--

And yet Remus’s grin etched wider, crueler, violenter. “Do you know the main difference between me and your lovely little Prince of the Stars? Other than the fact that I’m just the sexier twin, of course. I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t know. Roman doesn’t like to talk about the family disappointment.”

Virgil took a step back and Remus took one forward, like a game of tag. His tail swayed behind him looking deceivingly lackadaisical for a murder weapon.

“You see little Crikeriy--” Remus said with his eyes glinting at the nickname. “Erefrens like to fight, and your little Princey over there is the perfect little soldier! A killing machine when he isn’t so concerned about messing up his hair! Those toxins of his? Wowza! They’ve always packed a punch. Even when we were kids!”

Virgil didn’t like how he said punch. He didn’t like the way that Remus talked about Roman. He didn’t like the implication that Roman used those toxins on Remus before. He didn’t like the idea of anyone screaming the way that Orlen thief had back when he’d first seen Roman use it effectively.

He didn’t like the way Remus’s head tilted, like he was remembering the feeling of all his atoms igniting on fire and wanted to see if Virgil could feel that way, too.

“The pack was so proud the first time his toxins came in,” Remus said. “Much less proud when mine came in; after all what is causing immeasurable pain to your enemies compared to simply putting them to fucking sleep?”

Virgil jerked back another step and Remus took a generous one forward.

“It’s not glamorous enough,” Remus said, something slipping into his tone, dark and heavy and bloody. “That’s what they told me, my pack. There’s no honor in killing someone who’s asleep. No honor gained from resisting the pain when there’s no pain at all. It didn’t matter who I could knock out with just a drop of my toxins; I was always going to be nothing compared to Roman. He took my pack from me-- so I told myself I’d take his from him too. And I’d use my toxins to do it.”

“You…put them…?” Virgil dug his nails into his palms, his fingers sticking together in the excess of blood. “When... ?”

Remus laughed, “What, you think that anyone on this ship pays attention to what they’re eating? Roman is so wrapped up in his little fantasy that nothing can go wrong for him that he never notices when I put things in his drinks. Patton and Logan were child’s play. The only hard one was Janus-- ya never know with you Deathworlders what’s gonna work and what’s just gonna make you drowsy.”

“You drugged them,” Virgil said, and fought not to think about Janus on the Pol’tur ship struggling to keep his mind focused and so out of it that he nearly knifed Patton when the Reytin was trying to help him, about Janus’s disbelieving eyes when he saw Virgil there and thought it was more likely he was a figment than real, about Janus clinging to him afterwards when they were back on their own ship and Janus didn’t want to fall asleep lest Virgil disappear before he woke back up. “You-- You--!”

Remus looked immensely pleased with the fact, with his wording, with his anger, which made Virgil’s stomach roll all over again. Remus drugged his friends, his family, Janus. He drugged them and didn’t seem to look in any way sorry about it.

“Why not me?” Virgil choked out around the way his head was ringing, the way his blood was singing, the way that his fingers were curling and imagining the thump of a pulse under his thumbs, preferably Remus’s.

Remus flexed his fingers, his claws clinking together in a way that made the hair on the back of Virgil’s neck stand on end, even more than before. “Weren’t you listening? It’s not very fun talking to someone who’s dead asleep, now is it? Asleep people don’t scream the way awake people do.”

Wasn’t that ironic? Virgil’s heart thundered and he took solace in the idea that at least Remus had never been near him when he slept.

“I’m not going to scream,” Virgil said.

“That’s what they all think,” Remus said back.

“I’m not going to scream,” Virgil said, this time with more confidence than he thought he’d ever had before in his life. Stronger than when he’d told Janus that they were going to be friends regardless of what their parents thought, stronger than when he told the police that Janus was not dead, stronger than when he swore to Logan that he was happy here, with them. He wasn’t certain of a lot in space but he was certain of this.

“I’m not going to scream, and you’re not going to get away with whatever the fuck it is you think you’re doing right now.”

He planted his feet on the ground and squared his trembling fists into something that resembled a fighting stance-- not that it was anything official, not that it was anything good, but it was the stance that he had picked up from the Fighting Rings and if he survived that, he was going to survive Remus Prince with it, too, regardless of what his lungs and throat and brain were telling him.

Remus didn’t say anything for a quisannu. In the ruby light and the surplus of shadows it was hard to make out exactly what expression he was holding in his eyes, but Virgil hated how eerily similar it looked to Roman when he was trying to outsmart Logan with wordplay.

“Boorrringgg,” the Erefren decided suddenly, drawing out the syllables until they grated around Virgil’s brain and didn’t sound like actual Common at all.

“What?”

“You’re boring,” Remus said, flicking his tail. “I’m bored.”

“It’s the worst when he’s bored,” Roman had said once upon a time so long ago when Virgil had first asked what the hell a Remus was and why they seemed to like sending waves of assassins and bounty hunters and pirates after them. “Things tend to get… bloody when he’s bored.”

Virgil whose fingers were pulsing from cuts, who’s throat was aching, who could taste copper in his mouth and see specs of scarlet in the dim hall light whether they were real or not, thought that maybe things were already a little bloody. And if that was what it was like before Remus was bored, Virgil really wasn’t going to like whatever was coming.

“I’m not here for your entertainment,” Virgil spat.

“Aren’t you?” Remus grinned again and Virgil flinched at the sight of it. His head screamed at him to get away, get out, get help. But the exit was blocked and Virgil didn’t want to know what Remus would do to anyone who came running to help him, if they came at all. “I can’t think of another reason to keep a little Deathworlder around, you know. You’re all like dangerous little pets no one else wants to get close to. I was thinking when I go off again, I’m gonna take Janus with me-- he’s pretty funny you know, especially when that Sblorp bit him and he was begging us to get it off him.”

((“It was my fault,” Janus had said in a medical bay on the floor, trusting Virgil’s shaking hands to touch when he had no logical reason to. “I didn’t even see the thing until it was two inches from tearing out my large intestine.”))

And Remus was saying that was funny? That he let that happen? That if Remus hadn’t taken pity and helped get it off of Janus Virgil would have never found him again because he’d be dead on some forgotten planet?

Virgil’s nails dug into his palms, just to keep his brain focused on the present and keep himself from doing something extremely stupid, like lauching himself across the room at the smug Erefren and removing each and every bone from his body as painfully as possible.

“No,” Virgil said.

“No?”

“No!” He said again, “I’m not letting you take Janus.”

Not Janus who still smiled like Virgil hung the stars in the sky, who kissed like he wanted the whole cosmos to know Virgil was his, who had always been the strongest person Virgil had ever known. He didn’t care who Remus thought he was, didn’t care if Janus had been coerced to be part of Remus’s crew before, didn’t care at all. That was Janus and Virgil would not let Remus do anything else to him.

He was certain of that.

“Oh? And what if he wants to go with me?” Remus asked, like there was dimension out there where Janus might say yes anyway, where Janus had lost all his sense of self preservation among the nebulas, where Virgil wasn’t ready to claw through the fabrics of space and time and life and death just to make sure Janus didn’t have to.

Virgil tasted blood in the back of his throat, felt the grit in his teeth, smelled the burning of flesh in the air.

“Why would he ever want to go with you? If this is the shit you pull on him? If you’re going to get him killed just because you’re not being entertained? His life is worth more than that and I won’t let you convince him otherwise.”

Remus’s eyes narrowed: dark and dangerous and Virgil’s chest ached with the need to breathe but he ignored it. Alarms rang in the back of Virgil’s mind, singing out warnings that Virgil himself couldn’t even make out because if he took any of his concentration from Remus for a minsannu, everything around him would implode.

“Oh? Well, what about this, little Cikeriy,” the alien said, speaking deliberately slowly so that Virgil couldn’t misunderstand him even if he wanted to. “Let’s play a game, just you and me. I’ll leave Janus all alone, I’ll leave Roman and Patton and Logan all alone, too! When we touch down on TS-625, I’ll take my lovely bag of tricks that you just found and I’ll disappear completely and none of them will have to see me again! Your perfect little pack here can sleep safely knowing that I’m not going to send anymore mercenaries or bounty hunters or government agents after all of you! Doesn’t that sound nice, Cikeriy? I’ll even swear to the great god Disney to never bother them again-- on one condition.”

Virgil’s heart thudded so loudly in his chest he almost couldn't see. Remus’s smile was sharper than a knife, sharper than any of his bone plates, sharper than anything that Virgil had even felt and it cut right through his flesh like it was made of melted butter.

Remus splayed out his hands and wiggled his claws in the darkness.

“You just turn right around, get into that escape pod, and eject yourself into space.”

His lungs screamed as he became violently aware of the presence of the silent escape pods bearing witness to all this behind him. The pods that weren’t furnished with any provisions, that didn’t have any of his stuff because it was all in a bag that was behind Remus, that Virgil suspected weren’t made for humans at all and wouldn’t be capable of regulating the right amount of oxygen for his body for an extended period of time. The pods that Virgil had practiced piloting on a million times but had always flown right back here within the phisannu, because this was where he belonged. This was home.

Remus wanted him to purposely leave that? He wanted to watch Virgil cast himself into the empty expanse because it would be entertaining somehow? Virgil’s knees felt weak, his stomach offered up hints of the dinner they had all eaten together phisannus ago.

He’d have no food. He’d have no water. He’d barely have oxygen if he went.

And if he didn’t starve out there, or dehydrate, or run out of oxygen, and if the SOS system worked, then he’d be found by someone out there. If they weren’t pirates or smugglers that would sell him without a second thought, they’d be with the Universal Space Police Force and humans were illegal on this side of the universe.

If he did this it would be a suicide trip.

“It should be an easy decision for you, right? You or the others,” Remus said. “You or Janus?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Virgil hissed, and it felt like he was choking again, like Remus’s tail was hoisting in him to the air by his neck, like there was something in his throat that was blocking all the oxygen from making it to his chest. His hands were shaking and there was no hiding that.

Remus stood at his full height, and he looked like he was having the time of his life all of a sudden. The red light made his smile look insane.

And for the first time, Virgil thought that maybe that wasn’t entirely wrong.

Virgil didn’t know what growing up as an Erefren was like-- Roman was staunchy with the details and Logan and Patton were insistent that it was only Roman’s story to tell, despite them knowing it entirely. Virgil had wondered quietly, why someone whose species was supposed to travel in packs--teams-- families-- why Roman was floating out in space as a swashbuckling starlit hero without anyone else of his kind. Virgil had wondered.

He thought maybe he understood now, if Remus was the type to play this kind of sick game with people close to Roman, that Roman had left those people behind on a planet that Remus probably wouldn’t go back to. He understood why Roman had nearly begged them not to uphold the Oath of Brothers that Remus had enacted to get himself saved. He understood now, if it had been someone else with their backs to the escape pods being asked to make a decision like this.

He understood Roman not wanting to talk about Remus when Remus was asking him to choose between the people he loved and himself like the answer was something he had to even think about in the first place.

“Come on, Virgie,” Remus said. “Entertain me a bit. You know not even I will risk going back on an oath to the Great God. Unless, of course, you really don't care about your friends all that much after all.”

“Make the oath first,” Virgil said.

“Open the pod first,” Remus countered, like he was waiting for it. His tail twitched, flicked and danced in the air like a creature all of its own. Remus tilted his head to the side, letting some of his wavy hair fall over his eyes, and once upon a time Virgil might have thought that made him look a bit like Roman.

Instead it made Virgil’s stomach clench and twist and crawl up his throat real slow like it’s own little horror movie. It was deceptive, it was cruel; he didn’t look like someone who would kill anyone and everyone for his own entertainment, who took joy in making Virgil bleed late at night when there was no one but them to see.

He didn’t look like that guy they saved on the Pol’tur ship who could barely keep his eyes open, but demanded that they also save what was left of his crew. Virgil didn’t know where that person went, or if he’d been real at all. But the terror in his chest and the bruises on his neck told him the Erefren in front of him was as authentic as it got.

Virgil took the last step back and his shoulder blades hit the outer door to escape pod Alfie-- Alpha. Virgil vaguely remembered that first time that he and Roman had done their driving practices out there in the middle of an empty quadrant, in the middle of nowhere and nothing. It had been just like Janus and him picking out some empty parking lot at two AM for Janus to go through teaching him how to drive because his own parents couldn’t have been bothered. Patton had affectionately named the little pod Alfie, and gone through the trouble of renaming the pod in the computer system with an alien-like flower emoji to make Virgil smile. Logan had rolled his eyes, but had yet to change it back.

The memory tasted like his own stomach acids now, burning its way up his throat, and making his whole body feel feverish. He thought that if he closed his eyes and took a break from staring at Remus, he’d see Patton and his bug eyes staring up at him with a question on his lips and “Oh kiddo how could you?”

Virgil reached up and crossed his body to slam his palm on the palm reader without giving Remus access to his spine, without trusting Remus enough not to slam his tail into Virgil’s lower back when he was already complying, without letting his eyes close because he wasn’t going to cry after all this.

He survived the fighting rings. He survived Earth. He survived to find Janus again and see that smile that Virgil breathed every breath for. He survived this much.

He’d survive Remus too and he wouldn’t let Remus think otherwise for a quisannu.

The scanner was warm under his palm. For a moment there, Virgil was afraid that it wouldn’t recognize his human shaped hand amidst all the blood. ((He remembered when Logan first dragged him to the room to get his hand put into the system, an induction to the crew, back before Roman trusted him and Patton was still skittish and Virgil’s grasp of Common was barely more than the basics of conversation and necessity. Logan had been blinking lights a million ways, shining like a star all on his own, and it had taken Virgil too long to realize the dancing of his lower arms was because he was excited and happy and thrilled and that Virgil had made him that way. So different from the yesterday morning when Logan’s voice had dripped with an emptiness and “Did we make you unhappy?” ))

The scanner beeped. The doors slid open. Virgil swallowed the lump in his throat like it was a chunk of a meteor and the edges were carving into his esophagus.

Remus didn’t take the step forward to push him into the pod with his aura like Virgil expected. His tail froze motionless in the air beside him, more like a cardboard cut out prop than the weapon that shredded the wall to his right. The alien raised his left hand slowly, in something that looked so normal, so familiar, so human, that Virgil had to swallow the hysteria before it gained a hold on his tongue.

“I, Remus Prince, Denounced of the Prince Pack, Leader of None and Follower of Less,” Remus said, and the air in the room rang with his voice. Virgil willed back the weakness in his knees that threatened to send him to the ground at the rumbling of his tone. “I invoke the Great God Disney, Beholder of Oaths and Judge of Heroes, to witness here and now this vow: I swear to abandon my pledge to destroy all that my brother, Roman Prince, holds dear and resolve not to take human Janus Ekans with me when I leave, should human Virgil Storm press the eject button on the escape pod while inside it.”

Remus turned his palm upwards and tilted his head ever so slightly with a smug expression, nearly hidden in the shadows. “Does that work for you, Cikeriy?”

((“Does that work for you, Virgil?” Roman had said, when Virgil was frantically trying to wash blood off his hands in the bathroom and not crawl out of his skin. Virgil hadn’t been paying attention to anything other than getting the alien fluids off of himself, getting the feeling of a pulse dying under his fingers to fade, getting his breath to stop hitching at every inhale. There were a million other things that Roman should have been doing at the moment: helping Patton from where he was nearly shish kabobed, checking on Logan who they had to forcibly put to sleep because he couldn’t stop screaming at the brightness of the world around them once his visor broke, getting the blood off himself, getting rid of the bodies in the hall… but Roman was here talking to Virgil about everything and nothing and reaching out to turn off the water when Virgil wouldn’t stop scrubbing at his hands. “Listen to me Virgil. You’re okay here. You’re safe. I’m not going to let anything happen.”))

Virgil was shaking so much he wasn’t sure that he actually nodded at Remus’s non-rhetorical question. It felt barbed, it felt cold and vicious of him to ask, and Virgil thought that maybe that was the point of it. Remus’s teeth bared in a parody of something comforting.

It was the same smile that Mayor Ekans had been holding when he had Virgil forcibly ejected from the mansion the first time, the same smile that his teachers had when they gave him yet another detention, the same smile that the police officers gave him when they thought they had caught him in a lie about what had happened to Beloved Perfect Janus Ekans.

There were less than two halls between him and Janus’s bedroom, less two quisannu to get from here to that room where Janus was sleeping unaware of anything that was happening, less than eighteen days that he got to spend with Janus in the grand scheme of things.

It felt like a blink, like a mirage, like a dream that Virgil just woke up from and was feeling the blissfulness dissipate like he’d faced so many times before. The Hope had always been the worst thing about those first eight months: the hope that Janus would appear somewhere unconscious but alive, the hope that Janus would show up to clear his name, the hope that Janus would come back just to fix everything that had gone wrong with Virgil’s life when he was gone.

Virgil, ever the fool, had fallen into the trap that was Hope again and let himself get comfy with the idea that this time he couldn’t lose Janus again.

“Tick Tock,” Remus said.

“You know, Remus,” Virgil spit out, “I feel sorry for you.”

“That’s nice.”

“You clearly never learned what the fuck it was like to care about anyone other than yourself, and I as much as I would like to hate ever fiber of your being, the only thing I can feel is pity that you--”

“Really, these are gonna be your last words?” Remus cut in with an undertone of something far less entertained.

“There are a billion civilizations out there!” Virgil said over him. “And you couldn’t find one person in there that you could care about? You couldn’t let go of such a stupid hatred of your brother-- for a pack that didn’t deserve you-- for a life that you don’t even know if you would have liked! You had all of Space for yourself and you chained yourself up just to get a chance to get back at Roman? How the fuck are you so stupid? Do you know what I would have given to be you?”

Remus wasn’t smiling.

Virgil thought that he was. Grinning full of adrenaline and shaking with rage and wondering if he would ever taste Janus’s lips again because certainty in Space was a fickle thing.

“You had a spaceship. You had a crew. You could have gone anywhere and done anything with your life,” Virgil said. “And yet you chose to constantly come back to Roman. Dumbass.”

Remus made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded like a grumbling, a rumbling, a growling. Virgil flinched back into the pod, and he could already feel the artificial gravity loosening its hold. It took him another blink to realize that Remus was laughing at him, something darker and more dangerous than before.

He was insane and having fun before. Virgil thought that he might have just taken out the “having fun” and substituted in the “pissed off”.

“You know how long I’ve been thinking about this, Virgil?” Remus asked. “I went over a hundred different ways that I could have done this: I could have had you hang yourself, snapping your own neck. Could have given you the knife and told you to slit your own throat. Could have tossed you a Kochfas and told you to blow your brains out. I thought about making the others watch. And I wanted to see you do it so badly. Do you know what a pain it was to walk around these past disannu and see you with your guard completely down? To think of all the ways I would have killed you myself? I could have slit your throat and laughed as Patton screamed. But you know those rumors about Deathworlds say that you might have gotten up from that and I don’t ever want to see your stupid face again.”

Virgil’s chest heaved. He couldn’t tell if it was the thinner oxygen concentration in the pod, or just the rapid fire words in Remus’s mouth. The words that confirmed a suspicion that Virgil hadn’t realized he’d had this whole time. That this whole thing was too complex, too focused, too targeted.

“Oh? Nothing else to say?” Remus asked. “You were almost entertaining there for a moment.”

“This wasn’t about Roman, was it?” Virgil said. “This was about me. You hate me.”

Remus stuck out his tongue and pressed a claw to it-- some type of motion that Virgil only recognized from the number of times that Roman had done it to Logan’s back after he stated something incredibly obvious and Patton had batted his thigh over.

“Oh, is the little deathworlder getting the hint?” Remus asked. “What tipped you off? The drugging of all your friends or when I told you to eject yourself from the ship?”

“What…” Virgil shivered with his whole body. “Why…?”

“Don’t chicken out now, Virgie,” The alien said. “I’d simply hate to have to go through the trouble of stabbing out each of Patton’s hearts because you got cracked bone plates.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, a fake expression that made Virgil’s stomach twist in on itself. “Or maybe I’ll just start with Janus, and see how much pain a human can actually take.”

“Don’t,” Virgil’s voice comes out as its own growl, sounding damn near inhuman.

Virgil didn’t think about the Pol’turs, didn’t think about Janus on that table knowing that no one is coming for him, didn’t think about the scars on the side of his face that Janus pretended didn’t bother him, but Virgil had caught him pointedly not looking in the mirror so many times-- He didn’t think about it, but his brain screamed at him anyway.

“I don’t know what I did to you,” Virgil said. “But leave him out of this. All of them. Roman included. Look I… I’m sorr--”

The Erefren’s tail struck through the air and before Virgil knew what he was doing he slammed the button on the door lock and forced them shut. He stumbled deeper into the pod, nearly falling to the ground as the sound of Remus’s barbed tail spikes carved into the thick heavy metal separating them. The ship was so cold that Virgil could see his breath in the air, but all he felt was a feverish as he stared through the foggy window at where Remus was standing with an expression that was possibly more murderous than anything Virgil had ever seen before.

Janus’s mother had been vile and sadistic when she thought that Virgil had killed her perfect son, the police had been cold and merciless when they called him a suspect, the people Virgil hadn’t even known had become ruthless and brutal when they glared at him doing anything out in public. His own parents had looked at him with hatred when they realized that the rest of the world would shun them just because Virgil was their son, but even that had been nothing compared to the look in Remus’s dark eyes.

It was bloodlust. And it was directed at Virgil with no regard for anything else.

Remus sneered, almost loud enough for Virgil to hear through both the sets of doors and the static screaming in his ears. His mouth tasted like Dust, his skin prickled with a heat that wasn’t real, his fingers dripped with blood and ached in all the ways that his hands always did after he killed someone with them. He felt like if he took a single step he’d float right off into Space with or without the walls around him

Remus’s mouth moved, words or curses or whatever, but Virgil couldn’t hear them and cared even less.

“I don’t know what I did to you,” Virgil said with his hands shaking over the square red eject button. Last words for only him to know and no one else to ever find out. He thought of Janus asleep in his bed, safe and sound and not knowing anything that was going on. He thought of the feel of Janus’s lips on his, the featherlight touch and sweet honey-eyed look he reserved just for Virgil. He thought of those words he last said to him, “Later Loser, Sleep well” and thought it was ever so poetic that they mirrored those last things that Janus had said to him before he disappeared off the Earth three years ago.

Virgil hoped that Janus wouldn’t take them to heart too much-- not like Virgil had when he agonized over them and wouldn’t believe that Janus had run away without telling him and the rumors had first started their rounds. He hoped that Janus would forgive him for being stupid in the middle of the night. He hoped that Janus would wait for him to find a way back to them.

Out in Space, he wasn’t certain of much, but he was certain that he meant it when he gritted his teeth together, and said, “Remus, I hope you rot in Hell.”

Virgil slammed his bleeding fingers down on the eject button, and at the same moment blinding white light filled the Transport Room from the hall.

He got just enough time to recognize Roman’s unmistakable form stumbling into the room behind Remus, and then the entire pod lurched backwards.

[Part Three]

#Aliens #Space and Everything In It #virgil sanders #remus sanders #sanders sides #anxceit #Remus what the fuck are you doing #Virgil needs a hug. desperately #tw: blood #tw mentions of murder #tw: mentions of forced suicide #Virgil would really do anything for Janus #and thats the core of this tragedy #humans are space orcs #the fluff has died and I'm sorry

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