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Olethra was in the MechLeod long after everyone else retired for the night. She made sure of it, bidding them good night with a smile, and assuring them there was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
Pappy did not believe her. Olethra could tell from the tip of his hat, the lingering glance on her before whistling for Ghost Dog to heel.
Marya likely was not convinced either, but Olethra hid all her weak points from her instinctively by now. She needed to be strong; failing that, she needed Marya to believe she was.
Olethra flicked one of the pointless levers in the MechLeod, unable to shake the embarrassment of opening her bloodied eyes to the frightened face of Montgomery LaMontgommery. At least she had gotten a shot off on Mordecestershire. Maybe it had been useful. Or maybe she had wasted a bullet for nothing.
Monty had been showing more gentle concern than ever, understandably, but he had gone to sleep in the trashed apartment, his fretting over her cut short. Within Olethra’s eyeline, in any case.
She hated the eggshells she was forcing them all to walk on. Everyone came close to death in adventures, that was a part of the deal. She had spent her childhood reading about it, and had now seen it with her own eyes.
Feeling her lifeblood drain from her with no strength or will to hold on to it… the memory stuck clearly in the front of her mind. The cold grasp of nothingness, the searing fingers of someone inside her brain, prying her open, her soul cracking like a hazelnut with not even the ability to flinch away from it. Was that the universal experience? Was that what it was always going to feel like?
Everything had been so fast after that. It was back to the ship, back on the trail, back to mysteries and supplies and arguing, and all throughout all of it, Olethra could not stop the violating, sharp, loud,
I almost died. I almost died so hard I could taste it.
Olethra darkened the visor of the mech, bathed in the calm orange of the internal lights. Adventure had been fun until it wasn’t. The thrill had been beautiful until it turned horrifying, a freezing rush of nightmare with every step past the treeline.
She missed her parents. They would know what to say, and Olethra would know how to find wisdom in the insanity of their words. The first bad trip she had been on as a teenager, her father had grasped her by the trembling shoulders and said with so much sincerity,
“You think you’re alone. You ain’t. You’re crazy if you think we ain’t been exactly where you are right now. Take a breath, love.”
Maybe Olethra should talk to the crew. But there was so much more at stake than just her. They had the whole world to wake up and save in the morning. And if the world ended, well, that was Olethra’s fault. She had read the name of the nameless god and not been smart enough to hide it. And Mordecestershire had known that, and now he knew it. Because of Olethra. If she was cleverer, more experienced. Or just quieter, faster. Or stronger, or-
Tap tap
Olethra jumped. Her muscles seized like one of the ceiling wires was live. Her brain stuttered, until her hands scrambling over the control panel flipped the switch that brightened the visor. On the deck of the Zephyr, patient, stood Maxwell.
Shoving all of her broken pieces down her sore throat and burying them with a painted-on smile, Olethra leaned out of the mech.
“Hey,” she said, hoping Maxwell had a question that was easy to answer.
“Hey. What are you doing up so late?” he asked. Damnit.
“Oh, I was just, uh, tinkering. Figuring out some stuff in the mech,” she said, vaguely, and technically not lying. “What are you doing up?” she asked, watched the twitch in Maxwell’s posture.
“Talking to Torse. Figuring out some stuff,” he said, exactly as cryptic. “Would you like to take a turn around the deck?” he asked.
Olethra tucked her hair behind her ear, back from the breeze. Her eyes flitted to the unprotected edges of the ship, and the darkened hills of Oda. Unpopulated, too quiet compared to the frenzy of the daytime.
“Or,” Maxwell amended himself before Olethra had the chance to word a polite refusal, “we could sit in my cabin. Out of the wind.” He caught her eye. Olethra swallowed, feeling shards in her throat.
“Don’t you share with Wealwell?” she asked. As much as she would like to find out whatever Maxwell was trying to do, the image of Wealwell snoring in the background was deeply distracting and only a bit funny. Maxwell sighed.
“Well, he heard that Monty was sleeping… elsewhere, and called dibs on his bed. So, for now, I’m by myself.” He hated it, Olethra thought. One night with his own thoughts and he was going round the deck talking to anyone awake. First Torse, then her.
“Sure, let’s go inside,” she said, more curious than anything. She jumped out of the mech, landing lightly on her feet despite the ache that ripped through her legs at the impact.
Maxwell did not lead the way to his cabin, but walked at Olethra’s side. His hands were not clasped behind his back as they usually were; one hovered behind Olethra, shepherding her, protective. Eggshells.
Maxwell opened the door, and let her walk in first. The room was sized well enough for two people, but the ceiling was low, the walls enclosed and windowless. Maxwell shut the door and the air became still, warm, quiet. Olethra breathed it in, shaky. She could see the whole room at once. The only thing at her back was Maxwell. Her legs were hurting so much. She breathed out, shakier, the jagged pieces tearing at her chest and eyes, clawing their way out.
“Olethra.”
Unprepared for the scale of it all, the enormity of her own panic, Olethra turned. She fell bodily into Maxwell’s chest, and pulled a ragged sob into herself.
Everything spilled out. Breath ripped at her lungs, tears slipped down her face and stained Maxwell’s shirt as she dug her fingers into it. His arms were around her, warming and solid. She could not hear anything except her own sobs and a dreadful ringing in her ears. She was unable to even open her eyes against the salt blur, every iota of repressed fear and terror catching up with a vengeance.
She had not breathed since waking back up because she knew this would happen if she sighed too deep, thought for too long. She was scared. In way over her head. The only way to deal with that had been to pretend that she wasn’t. Monty was sleeping in Mordecestershire’s bed, and Olethra had hid in her mech at the first opportunity and hadn’t come out until there was a new hole to burrow herself into.
The farm had been small, and dutifully guarded. Never in her life had she felt so hellishly unsafe.
“I died,” she blubbered. “I died and it hurt.” Her head throbbed, brain raw from whatever psychic bullshit tried to kill her. Her legs stabbed her with every shift of weight, not used to sprinting for her life.
“I know. I’m sorry. We should have been looking out.” Maxwell’s voice resonated deep in Olethra’s skull. She shook her head against his chest, hair sticking to her face and hiding her shame.
“You shouldn’t have to,” she sobbed. “I should have- I should-“
Maxwell took her suddenly by the shoulders, looking her straight in her wet, tear-stained face. Olethra had been here before.
“Not because you need it. Because you deserve it, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong, you just got unlucky. And you deserve more than just a pat on the back for getting back to us in one piece.” His face was stern, and his words were completely certain. True or not, Maxwell believed it with his whole heart.
Olethra sniffled, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She didn’t want to make eye contact anymore.
“I’m sorry,” she said, not even really knowing why. Just generally. For existing. Maxwell pulled a handkerchief out of his inner pocket, burgundy like the rest of his suit.
“It’s alright. Also, your nose keeps bleeding and that’s- it’s concerning,” he said, and took her hand to place the handkerchief in her palm. Olethra looked at the hand she had just used to wipe her face; fresh blood was smeared along her knuckles. She cursed under her breath. Her nose had been bleeding on and off all afternoon, but she thought she had been really very good at catching it before anyone else saw.
“How could you tell?” she smiled weakly, dabbing her face with the soft silk. Her blood blended into the colour. She was starting to understand more about Maxwell’s fashion choices.
“I’m used to spotting blood on sleeves,” he said, nodding to the stained cuff of her other arm.
“Ah.” A wave of embarrassment filtered through her body. The crew had not been watching her because they were worried that she might break; she had been breaking in front of them the whole time.
“Do you want to sit down?” Maxwell coaxed her to one of the beds. Olethra could not tell before he did which bed was Wealwell’s, and this realisation surprised her a little. She sat down next to Maxwell, staring at the handkerchief as she pulled it between her fingers. “How are you feeling?” he asked. He was not very used to doing this, that much was obvious, but his companionship was… normalising. Olethra, for this moment, was not in a magical, fabled land – just in a friend’s room.
“My head hurts,” she admitted. “And the rest of me. I don’t know. I’m so embarrassed that I feel like running home but I’m so scared that I can’t move.” What a waste of an adventurer she was.
Maxwell sighed beside her, pensively.
“I really don’t think you need looking out for. I don’t think you’re in danger of dying every time you leave the ship, or the farm, whatever. Not more danger than any one of us, anyway. We’re up against things none of us understand, and we weren’t ready for it. But right now, you’re in the safest place you can be, even though it might not always feel it,” he said, as if he definitely did not feel it. Olethra leaned her head on his shoulder, and was beginning to.
“Just sucks. I can’t go anywhere without the mech,” she muttered. Frustrating as it was to admit, her parents were probably right: the world was big and evil and everything wanted to kill her.
“That’s not true. Well, it keeps you safer than the rest of us, that’s for sure.” Olethra’s mind wandered back to Maxwell bitten almost in half by a dinosaur – had that been yesterday? “But you are smart, and quick, and brave. You. Not the mech.” Maxwell nudged her slightly, to get his point across. It was working, annoyingly. “It’s okay to not feel safe. We’re literally hunting occultists. It’s not a failure to be scared.”
“Are you scared?” she asked. Maxwell was not the easiest to read, despite his straightforwardness, but Olethra had never seen him as anything other than immensely courageous. A moment passed, Olethra listening to his breathing.
“Not when I should be. In a fight or flight, I pick fight, even when that’s the stupid thing to do. Being afraid comes with being cautious, and I don’t know that I am enough of that,” he said. Olethra remembered him in the ring in Tabira City, staring at a brachiosaurus with far too much confidence. She smiled.
“I don’t know. What was all that about a friendship ritual?” Maxwell shoved at her gently.
“Stop,” he said, covering his face that Olethra knew had a grin on it. She kicked him in the shin.
“Whatever you say, Mr Big Britches.” Maxwell groaned, falling back on the bed, and Olethra laughed. A genuine, actual laugh, because something made her happy. A first since this morning. A spark lit up in her chest, soft.
“I’ll take that to mean you’re feeling okay,” he huffed, still covering his face. Olethra curled up small on the bed next to him. An old habit, making sure all of her limbs were close by in case she needed them.
“Better,” she hummed. “I’ll get back to okay, I think.”
“You will,” Maxwell said, that complete conviction back in his voice. “And you are welcome back to talk whenever you need.” The spark glowed bright in Olethra’s heart.
“Thank you.”
She knew it was a given with this crew. A family knitted through adversity and trauma, and any of them would be at her side at the drop of a cowboy hat. But having it said out loud… felt like being at home again, this unconditional backing. She would pay it back any way she could.
“What were you talking to Torse about?” she asked, out of simple, motiveless curiosity. Maxwell sat up, back to unreadable.
“Things he was curious about. Combat, family. You came up, actually, how we met,” he said.
“My parents lacing your coffee?” Olethra said, and Maxwell frowned.
“N- I knew there was a reason I didn’t drink that – no, before that. Here,” he said, gesturing to the ship. Right.
Olethra knew, and was reminded often, that the crew knew her as a baby. The light in all of their eyes whenever they linked the child to the girl she was now, was unmistakeably the same. But of course, Maxwell knew her, too.
“What did you tell him?” she asked.
“You were small,” he said, held out his hands in an approximation of her size. “I had never held a baby before, but they trusted me, for whatever reason.”
Olethra had come across the photos once, and recalled thinking Maxwell was the most grown-up looking child she had ever seen. The Maxwell in front of her stared past the ceiling beams, remembering.
“Not that there was a lot of safety precautions going on that day, anyway. A lot of guns. Wild animals. Ropes kind of everywhere. The only reason I got to hold you was to stop Comfrey tossing you in the air.”
Got to. Like it had been a privilege. Olethra couldn’t quite reconcile the image of nine-year-old Maxwell Gotch standing just as tall as his grandfather, with the Maxwell who got to hold a young child and treasured the experience. She wasn’t going to bring that up.
“She threw me in the air?” she grinned instead. Hearing about her grandma still made her stomach twist in an uncomfortably unfamiliar manner, but this was a memory she could get behind. She watched the way Maxwell’s brow furrowed as he tried to recall.
“I think she and Monty played catch with you at some point. I may be misremembering,” he said.
“I’ll ask,” Olethra said. Even if it was not true, she could still pretend. Maxwell could, too. “Don’t you feel better? Off the ground?” she asked.
She had done her fair share of being tied to one place, tethered. At least it had been drilled into her that she was free to do anything her heart desired. Anyone who tried to stop her from living her life would get the business end of a shotgun. Even if- even though it had led her straight towards death, it had led her to a beautiful way of life. Olethra would not give up her freedom for anything. She had been an adventurer since the day she was born.
Maxwell… Maxwell was having to absolutely speed through this line of thinking. But despite his reservations about the adventuring life, Olethra did not miss the way he stared at the Zoodian horizon, the lingering touch of his fingertips on foreign flowers. His immediate kinship with a clockwork revolutionary. He smiled faintly.
“Off the ground,” he almost breathed. It was nice being with someone else for whom adventuring was still new, and big, and terrifying, Olethra decided. “I don’t know. Mostly, I’m trying to do what would make my grandfather proud and my father deeply, deeply disappointed in me.”
“Well, if it helps, you’re one of the rowdiest people I’ve ever met,” Olethra smiled. This was her honest conviction. Maxwell’s gaze turned to her for the first time in a while.
“It does. Thank you.”
Olethra shuffled, and rested her head on his lap. A sign of trust that he probably hated, but he did not protest. And only a moment later, she felt his hand touch gently her hair.
“Thank you. For looking out for me,” she said.
“Least I could do. I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he replied.
“It helps knowing I’m not the only one. You know, friendship ritual and all that.”
Maxwell sighed heavily, and Olethra giggled, sitting up. The empty feeling at her back lingered, but not as freezing as before.
“I’ll get out of your hair, I think,” she said, and Maxwell nodded.
“I’ll walk you out.” He stood and walked to the door before Olethra could pretend she didn’t want that.
The wind had picked up. The sky was bright with asteroids, and Oda remained quiet, although the humming of grasshoppers and the rustling of leaves did not intimidate her like earlier. Olethra’s hair whipped into her face, dry from tears, and she tried to comb the tangles back with her fingers.
“Oh, here,” Maxwell said from behind her. Olethra watched him pull a hairband off his wrist, concealed by his cuff. He handed it to her, firmly not making eye contact. “Someone dropped it on the deck a few days ago, and I never found out who,” he excused, as if he needed an excuse to be nice.
Olethra took it from him, immediately recognising it as one of Marya’s, and pulled her hair back. As she did, she studied Maxwell under this alien starlight.
“I know Wealwell’s the hot one,” she said, needing to offset the weight of the compliment she was about to pay him; she could not bear to do it all at once, “but I think you’re my favourite Gotch. I think I’d like a sibling like you.”
Said the only child to the youngest of seven. In what world could he actually comprehend how much that statement meant to her? Olethra’s long, dry years in a desert under the shadow of more desert – a brother would have been nice.
“You know,” Maxwell said, the glint in his eye focused on her, “I thought the exact same thing about you twenty years ago.”
For a moment, Olethra could see them both from the outside. Two of the loneliest, most sky-eyed children in all of Gath, now stood in the breeze of another land, adventurers. Granted a second family, granted companionship in the face of overwhelming danger. They were not strangers, and never had been.
“Good night, Olethra,” Maxwell said, with his polite half-bow, as he walked back towards his room.
“Night, Max.”
She ducked into the captain’s quarters, comforted by familiar breathing in the dark. Ghost Dog lifted his head briefly to her entrance, and she petted him down. Maxwell’s handkerchief was still tucked into her cuff. How lucky she was.
How lucky she was.