Work Text:
They are hiding in the wastelands again, sleeping dry on cave floors.
The Psiioniic hates the sandy winds and endless quiet to a degree almost exactly proportional to how much the Disciple loves it out here, loves the rocky dark places that are so like where she grew up, loves the solitude and relative safety that being alone allows them.
The Psiioniic has always been prone to day terrors; some of his very earliest memories are of his lusus lifting him up out of slime to cradle him as he tried to stop shaking and crying from the horrors of his dreams. The intensity didn't abate as he got older, and the sweeps he spent at space traffic control -- trolls that are wired in always sleep dry -- were enough that even the memory still makes him shudder.
It's an hour until dusk still, at least. They are deep down underground here, in their makeshift home of tunnels and caves, but distance from sunlight makes no difference when it comes to the scorching brightness of his dreams. The Psiioniic bites his own tongue bloody trying not to scream.
"Shh," the Signless soothes, so quietly it's hardly more than a breath, his palm warm as he strokes the Psiioniic's cheek. It's the only part of him with anything like normal nerve endings left, his face. Only the Disciple, the Dolorosa, and the Signless know that secret. They're the only other trolls still living who have seen what's left of him underneath the half-cowl he wears over his neck and jaw, the scars and interface ports hidden by the band across his forehead.
He was assigned to space traffic control, rather than to helming a single ship, because of the strength of his powers. The augmentations are comparatively minor beside those for pilots. Compared to almost anything else, however, the body of a former space traffic controller looks more like leftover parts than a troll.
His fingers and hands were left as they were, for those rare occasions when he needed to use a keyboard interface to interact with crews too distant for other communications. From below the knob of his bony wrist to the joint of his elbow was repurposed, the nerves woven into the matrices of the landing docks and signalling systems, the useless muscle and flesh cut away for easier maitenance. The silicone sleeves he's worn over what remains have served him well enough since his escape, but the sand itches at the edges of the seals during these hide-out periods out in the wastelands.
It's largely more of the same below a halfway point on his chest, starting from just a little below where his deciduous wriggler legs were. Clothed, he looks no different to any other able-bodied troll, but without his psionics to help hold him up it's unlikely he'd be able to support his weight on what's left, let alone walk.
"Dolorosa's found more ammonis cornua, if you want to see later," the Signless goes on, keeping his tones low and gentle as he paps the Psiioniic's cheek. They've all fallen into the habit of collecting the fossilized remains when they come across them in the rock-piles and crannies of the caves, of bringing them back with them for the Disciple's collection. The Disciple's always had a fascination for any kind of history, and the small ancient spirals are as historical as things get.
"Our ancestors thought they were the horns of ancient trolls," the Psiioniic replies, even though he knows that the Signless already knows this as well as he does. It feels good to talk. It distracts from the aftershocks of daymare still making his skin clammy. "That's why they're called that. Cornu is Old Alternian for horn. But they're not. They're whole creatures in themselves, not the horns of something larger. Creatures from millions upon millions of sweeps ago. Almost as old as you are, SS."
The Signless makes a small sound of amusement, one that makes him sound every perigee of the ageless memories he was born with, older than the world and kinder than anything since. "You're a pitiful mess," he whispers.
"Lucky you pity me, then."
"I pity everyone," the Signless retorts.
The Psiioniic smiles, his eyes still closed. "I guess I'm doubly lucky, then."
That earns another soft laugh. "Pitiful. You're truly pitiful."
"He's not pitiful, he's pathetic," the Disciple spits. The Psiioniic doesn't open his eyes, but knows without looking that she's glaring down at the two of them. At him in particular. "He doesn't understand, not... not like we do. You could be preaching the merits of grubsauce and he'd follow you like a woolbeast with a herder if you preached it with enough conviction. The truth of what you say is secondary to hi--"
She cuts herself off as the Psiioniic snickers to himself. "What?" she snaps, fury cold in her voice.
"Ehehehe. Secondary," he replies. He's baiting her, unable to resist the chance to prod and rile. It's an old argument that he's heard her make a dozen, two dozen, times. He can even see some truth to it -- he's always been a troll who fell more naturally into obeying than into leading or going alone. Maybe he first paid attention to the Signless simply because it offered a better cause to follow than that afforded to him by servitude at the traffic control hub.
But whatever the beginning, he's here now, and he knows that she's wrong. He believes with all his vascular pump. He would do anything for the Signless, for the teachings that they spread. He's as faithful as they get. As faithful as she is.
With a growl she moves closer, her feet crunching on the pebbled ground of the cave. The Psiioniic opens his eyes, ready to fend off the pounce that she's about to make at him.
As always, the Signless is there between them, diffusing the fight before it can begin.
"Stop," he says, force without anger in his voice. Instinct makes them both back down, their glares banked embers as they face off across his shoulder and outstretched arm.
The Dolorosa doesn't often talk about her life before she dedicated herself to protecting and raising the Signless. But from what little she's said, it's plain to the Psiioniic that the great romance of her youth, the affair which even now makes her blush and smile at the memory of it, was ashen.
She's brought her son up to understand the importance and potential beauty of the quadrant, a respect not usually afforded to auspistices. The Signless, in turn, has helped the Psiioniic and the Disciple both understand how precious and vital clubs can be. The equal of diamonds.
It's likely that this is the only blackrom that the Psiioniic will ever have. They spend their nights preaching compassion and mercy, so opportunities for malicious feelings are few and far between. Those who wrong them, they do their best to forgive. The only times he can imagine truly hating another troll is when he remembers his time in traffic control. He thinks maybe he could hate someone, if someone ever put him back there.
The Psiioniic doesn't know for absolutely certain -- there's never been an opportunity to find out -- but suspects he's incapable of concupiscent romance. He doesn't know if that's because of the extensive grafting and amputation work done when he was fitted for service as a controller, nerves repurposed and connections severed, or if he was just hatched that way. He tries to imagine what he'd do if for some reason the Signless couldn't step in and halt one of the vicious arguments between himself and the Disciple before it turned physical, but it's just a confusion in his head.
It doesn't matter, anyway, because the Signless is always there, the balance between them, keeping everything just as it should be. The Psiioniic likes to think, in his sillier and more fanciful moments, that they must have been just this same way in the old world, the world that only the Signless can remember. He cannot imagine any world, no matter how different otherwise, in which their quadrants fit together in any way but the tangle that they share here and now.
Trolls of the Psiioniic's class often find their duality bleeding into relationships, he's always known that. So it's never struck him as anything but right and good that he should feel both pale and ashen for the Signless, one emotion as strong as the other.
The Disciple and the Signless go even further, conciliatory and concupiscent and red and black all at once. They are everything to each other that two trolls can be, like sides of a single coin.
The Disciple and the Psiioniic are too alike to have avoided ending up together one way or another, and their rivalry is like a simmering familiarity between them, a rare certainty in their unpredictable lives.
And the Signless... well, the Signless really does pity everyone. But he pities his three companions most off all, perhaps.
"It's going to be a long night. We should all get a little more sleep," the Signless says now, motioning for the Disciple to lie against him on his other side, away from the Psiioniic.
They drift off fast enough, and the Psiioniic doesn't think their quiet conversation ever woke the Dolorosa at all. The last one conscious, he tries to fall asleep as well, but the threat of more bad dreams keeps him from relaxing.
He doesn't mind that, though. If he could, he'd stay awake forever. He doesn't want to close his eyes. He doesn't want to miss a thing. Here in the dark, hidden and fugitive and itching on the edge of every wound, he can't imagine that any troll has ever felt as happy and as whole as he does.