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Chapter Text

His heart thundered in his chest. The pale glimmer of hemolymph filled his vision, hot on his hand and needle and staining the rags he called clothes.

Astotheles choked on his own breath, heaving in great gulps of air that couldn’t get past his constricting airways.

He hadn’t meant to…

He hadn’t. He wasn’t trying to—

The wasp lay on the ground in front of him, her eyes blank and cold. Hemolymph that should have been carrying life through her body instead spilled out onto the sand, senseless and wasted.

He didn’t want to kill her.

He hadn’t been trying to kill her.

He’d—he’d pounced, just hoping for a few berries, not— not her life. She’d… she’d fought back, of course, and… and then she tried to sting him and he….

He should have run. He should have just left the moment she fought back he should have turn around he should have run before she tried to sting him he—

He should have…

Who was…?

Astotheles looked up. His heart—just beginning to slow—picked up its hammering pace again. A butterfly was running towards him, a pouch on her hip. The doctor.

Isau.

His hands shook. In any other moment he’d be glad to see her. He’d have smiled and reached out his arm for her.

She didn’t look at him. She’d dropped next to the wasp, searching for anything she could do.

“It’s… too late,” he rasped. His voice sounded wrong. Raw. Hollow. Choked.

Isau continued anyways.

It wasn’t until a few minutes later that she finally stopped and her hands began to shake and she finally looked at him.

His stomach dropped at the tears in her eyes. Not even anger, just grief.

Her anger he could handle, but her grief? Grief he could not handle, not when he had caused it.

“Isau, I—”

“Why?” she whispered.

“I wasn’t— I didn’t want to—”

“And yet you did.”

“I… I didn’t… she….”

Isau stared at him with watery eyes, and Astotheles could feel his own growing damp against his will. His chest ached under that silent, weeping stare and he scrambled for words. He’d never wanted to kill and yet he’d killed one of her people. Her, who he claimed to love. Her, who he’d reassured so often that he would never kill one of her people, and her who had held so many reservations, so many uncertainties. So many worries that he’d prove her wrong.

And here he was, with innocent blood on his hands, the worst kind of thief there could be.

He would be hunted down for murder.

“Isau….”

She sniffed softly and tried to dry her eyes. “I don’t think you can get away from this one, Asto.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, barely a hoarse breath in the still desert night.

The sand shifted.

Footsteps.  

Someone was coming.

“Please, Isau, I’m sorry—”

Guards.

“—I’m sorry, please, I—”

But sorry wouldn’t fix it, would it?

“Sorry” wasn’t much in front of a court.

Isau vanished among running guards and clinking chains. Cold metal pressed around his blood-stained wrist and neck.

Astotheles couldn’t bring himself to fight.  

Chapter Text

Cool, sandy stone supported Astotheles’ tired body as he sat. The night was cooling and the hideout was tired that night, so he crept out to one of the many high, quiet rocks in the desert to think.

He was coming to enjoy this particular rock. And hate it, at the same time.

It provided a full view of the desert, unobstructed and solitary. He could see most everything, but most wouldn’t see him from below. He loved to come here and rest. Meditate.

But surveying the whole desert did indeed mean all of it, and tonight that weighed heavily on him.

In the distance, dotting the horizon, he could see the glimmer of light. Candles, mostly, sitting in windowsills and trying their best to substitute for the day’s sun. Defiant Root sprawled across its little patch of sand, so small from here that he could hardly tell building from building, if not for the lit windows.

He’d been there at night, sometimes. He could almost make himself hear the sounds he would hear if he were there, walking in the streets.

The laughter of families, late-night bartering over goods, hushed and tired murmurs of older bugs settling in for the night and the complaints of the younger ones at such an early bedtime, the chatter of friend and family around the dinner table, enjoying a meal together….

Such tight-knit families, all healthy, fed… safe so long as the guards kept their vigil. Never having to worry about their next meal, or what would happen if they got sick. The bakery was right there. So was the clinic. They had their jobs and their crafts, they could afford it.

The bitterness usually came, right about now. Resentment. That they were so… so unbothered, while he and his own motley family struggled to get by in the sands.

The bitterness was quiet tonight, though. No sour sting in his gut, no bad taste in his mouth. Something else had come instead.

His throat had begun to tighten.

He longed, so sorely, for that same safety and comfort for his own people. That they would never starve; no skipped meals or short rations, no quiet, strained smiles from the older bugs as they silently gave their own small meal to one of the littles so they wouldn’t suffer later. That they would be safe; no fear of the weather or of beasts. That they would never need to fear illness or what havoc it might wreak if it spread through their numbers, that a plague would never be a source of terror for them.

That they wouldn’t be hated, either.

He wished, so deeply, that he could just… set them down in Defiant Root, let them meld into the society there. Or that they could trade freely with them, as a people instead of outlaws.

The gardens bloomed, they were closer to stable food, yet still so far. The desert was not kind or generous with its harvest. Forget medicine entirely. And the scorpions….

They had no chance, did they? Not really.

They would wither away out here in time, forgotten to the world. Good riddance, it would say.

Astotheles shook himself. He shivered in the chilly wind and glanced one last time at the little, dancing lights on the horizon. He could almost feel their warmth.

Almost.

…Enough of such thoughts.

He leapt down from his rock and crept back into the hideout, seeking what little solace he could from the warmth of his own family.

Chapter Text

Mothiva shivered uncontrollably against the elevator wall. Her erratic, ragged breathing filled the small box. The hum of mechanisms beyond the wall filled the rest of the air.

She was only vaguely aware of a gentle hand on her shoulder. Of the tall figure to whom it belonged crouching between her and the door, keeping watch. His hand stayed. His other stayed near the button panel.

The tiny space blurred into vague colors through her tears and exhaustion. She jammed herself into the corner and wrapped her arms around her head, still shivering like a leaf. The hand stayed. She tried to focus on it. On its warmth. She tried so, so hard.

Her breathing wouldn’t calm. She could barely breathe at all. Her throat squeezed shut and her chest constricted painfully.

She tried to focus on his hand.

He wasn’t looking at her right now.

Good.

She’d had too much of being looked at. Being scrutinized. Having someone breathing down her neck and keeping one eye on her ever motion.

She had barely even been able to enjoy dinner, with how closely that stupid…

She almost wanted Zasp to look at her.

She didn’t mind when it was him.

Something dinged, and it was cold. Cold for a bit, then warm again. Then she was on a mattress. Something soft was over her shoulders. Something… hissed? And clicked, and the room got darker. She felt a dip, and then warm arms and a soft, pleasant buzz.

Zasp must have closed the blinds.

Mothiva curled in on herself.

He was murmuring something to her. Soft reassurances, probably. She couldn’t hear very well. The yelling still rang in her ears. The angry glare was still burned into the back of her eyes. The too-tight left a phantom echo on her arms.

“Mothiva?”

She hummed softly. Barely even a sound.

“Can you talk to me?”

She wanted to shake her head no. Her voice didn’t want to cooperate. But she had to get the thought whirling through her head out or it would tear its way free without her permission.

She buried her face in the crook of his neck, almost terrified to say it aloud for fear of somehow being heard by anyone else.

“I…”

Zasp ran a hand gently over her antennae, then massaged gently at the back of her neck. “‘Thiva?”

“I want my life back, Zasp.” Her breath hitched, and a sob finally broke free. “I want it back.”

Zasp exhaled softly, tightening his hold. “I know.”

He really did.

He saw the way her agent was. The way she had to be oh so very careful how she tread in public, where people could see her.

He knew all too well.  

Chapter Text

The world wouldn’t focus.

Kabbu couldn’t make it focus.

His senses still choked on that overpowering cloud.

His mind was free, and yet….

And yet Kabbu couldn’t make the world focus.

He couldn’t move his arms.

He couldn’t blink.

The smell and sting and haze and taste of pheromones was still burned into every sense.

He willed his head to tilt, his wings to shift, his fingers to twitch.

He willed anything to obey him. To obey him.

He was free of them. Free of the control. Kali was gone. Dealt with. No commands.

But his body wouldn’t heed him.

His body wasn’t his, right now.

It was his, but… it wouldn’t listen. No matter how hard he tried.

Someone was talking. They might have been worried. He wasn’t sure who, or what they were saying. But someone was talking.

He thought, vaguely, that someone might be touching him.

Kabbu couldn’t make the world focus.