Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A murder on the station, wow. That was so rare that they’d locked the whole station down.

… and there was a good chance that a murder on Preservation Station was Overse’s fault. She was too darn good at that sort of thing.

Well, nothing for it. Ratthi would have to go make sure SecUnit found whoever Overse’d coerced into doing the deed and didn’t find out that Overse had been behind all this! Too bad he couldn’t ask Overse if she’d actually planned this, she was on-planet with Arada and they hadn’t answered his texts all day.

It was probably her though.

He followed SecUnit around for a while, until it told him to call Station Security in. He did, thankful that so far there hadn’t been anything about Overse’s involvement, and then he decided to ask the question on his mind. “You don’t think this is related to GrayCris, do you?”

(Really, he just wanted to know if it had a suspect, and if that suspect was Overse.)

But things were fine, even if he’d had to make sure it didn’t get arrested for the murder. He’d hung around a while longer, then went home and hung around there until Overse texted him back. It wasn’t me, for once.

Well, that was good.

Chapter Text

Arada sighed, tucking herself into Overse’s side. “Hey, babe.”

“How’d the meeting go? Any progress?”

“The survey’s on track. Mensah’s still as good as ever, she solved all the problems before I could even bring them up.”

“Damn. You sure you can’t find anything to sabotage?” Overse ruffled Arada’s hair. “We need the chaos.”

“I know, babe.” Arada hummed. “What if we tried something else? Something further afield? They can hardly blame us for another group dragging us into their chaos…”

“Oh, I like that, babe,” Overse said. She kissed the top of Arada’s head. “And you know I love when you make plans of your own.”

“You’re better at it, but I try. Now, let’s see…”

Reluctantly, Arada sat up. Snapping her fingers, her human guise fell: her skin turned purple; her hair grew and became a corona of flame, flowing down from the top of her head and up from her now-cloven feet to cover her body (finally, a comfortable temperature, the apartment was always too cold); her fingers sharpened into claws; her vision sharpened as her eyes went back to normal. She flared her corona, then brought it back down to her skin. Shouldn’t burn the couch yet, they still needed it for the plan. In the few seconds it took to settle herself into her proper body, Overse had moved away from her and grabbed the handheld from the charger behind the couch.

Overse handed Arada the handheld and let her own glamor go. Arada watched; her beautiful wife so rarely let her masks fall these days. Overse still seemed human, but her skin had gone just a bit too smooth and shiny; her augments had become visible, delicate ironwork surrounding her hands and growing up her arms to her neck; her hair grew and shifted, just slightly too bright a pink to seem normally dyed and too perfect to be real; and even her eyes no longer seemed the brown of her mortal disguise, black in the iris and pure white in the sclera.

Arada could feel Overse sink into the feed, as she shifted her corona away from her claws to use the handheld. Overse hung there, seemingly content to watch Arada slip through the feed networks and the network of people she’d suborned through tricks and deals, looking for people who might be able to interrupt the survey.

And there was something. SecUnit must have run into them, Arada could see the connections there in the feed. A ship and its precious crew, the ship being the one who’d met SecUnit, but its captain… yes, its captain owed a favor to an administrator at the university who owed Arada a few favors as payment.

Now, to engineer the perfect way to get that ship to interrupt the survey and maybe even get SecUnit out of the way for a bit.

She slid back into her body, passing the information to Overse. “The Perihelion has promise.”

“They do colony rescue.” Overse traced a figure-eight in the air, the black void left behind her finger dissipating a moment later. “Point them to one sufficiently dangerous, ensure there’s opposition in the area, and create a situation such that going to find SecUnit would be the easiest, most plausible path forward. Yes, that could…” She trailed off, pacing the floor and leaving void behind with each step, digging deeper into the feed for research.

Arada watched for a moment, then snapped her fingers. Overse could plan. She’d seen a few opportune moments for deals both magical and mundane, and she needed to point some underlings at those people.

Chapter Text

Arada had almost had Mensah’s soul, a few times. Decades of temptation in disguise as friendship, years-long plans to trick her into a situation so bad that she’d have no choice but to give up her soul to fix it, everything she’d asked Overse to arrange, and she’d been close enough to touch it.

But Mensah hadn’t agreed, hadn’t been that tempted. And really, Arada wanted Mensah to come to her of her free will. Desperation was delicious, but it was always so much more amusing when a high priority target approached her first.

So Arada hadn’t approached Mensah while Mensah had been kidnapped. It wouldn’t be right to take advantage of the worst moments of Mensah’s life to recruit her easily.

(Even if Arada had asked Overse to arrange things so that SecUnit came back, neither of them had planned on it being so… devastating. Arada didn’t understand mortals as well as she’d like to think she did, and Overse tended to forget about mortal responses to traumatic events. Arada had ensured GrayCris’s full destruction after the assassination attempt, as the closest thing to an apology she could offer.)

And despite Pin-Lee being an equally high-value target, Arada had left her alone during the rescue too. Pin-Lee’s soul would be so much more useful if she sought out a devil without desperation behind her actions.

So Arada had been limiting herself. Honeyed words to get her targets to trust her. Casual mentions of her vast contact network. Offers to help with various innocuous things, never as a deal in the devil’s way.

Just… as close to friendship as she’d get.

Perhaps that was odd. The Queen of Devils, surrounding herself with her dark mage consort, a loyal (if mortal) underling, two high-value targets, and a few other mortals. But it worked, and it afforded her and Overse a measure of protection, if anyone cared to ask why her mortal vessel bothered with Preservation’s outsystem politics. A “friendship” with Mensah and Pin-Lee was believable in a way that “keeping track of the system she was personally destroying” would not be.

Chapter Text

It was all over. The mess was supposed to be a simple disruption (a kidnapping in Preservation space, quickly resolved), which would hopefully have tipped Mensah over into being willing to make a deal for her family’s protection, even if Arada probably wouldn’t have gotten her soul out of this one. Instead, it had become a whole thing.

But things were pretty okay for now. They were on the Preservation ship, heading home again. It had been kind of nice to be rescued, even. Mortals didn’t usually rescue devils.

Pin-Lee sighed, throwing herself onto the couch next to Arada.

Overse opened an eye, realized it was just Pin-Lee, and snuggled back into Ratthi’s lap.

Pin-Lee sighed again. “Ughhhhh. We had better be fucking done with fucking outsystem bullshit after this.”

“Wow, Pin-Lee, tell us how you really feel,” Ratthi muttered.

“Shut up. I’m just so done with all of this. Every fucking time someone’s left Preservation in the last year I’ve had to deal with kidnapping, attempted murder, every possible type of drastic crisis shit. I’m exhausted.”

“I get it,” Arada said, although she didn’t, really. “It’s a lot, and you’ve definitely got the hardest job here.”

“Yeah, well, someone’s got to do it. And, yeah, some days I honestly would bargain with a devil to get the kind of power that could protect us from all of these fucking situations, but it’s not like I even have that fucking option in the first place, unless I want to go summoning randomly, so I’ve just got to fucking deal with this bullshit, okay?”

Well, shit.

Ratthi said something in return, but Arada didn’t hear.

She hadn’t even hinted at the idea with Pin-Lee for months, almost a year. She’d made an underling send a dream once, right after getting Mensah back, but that hadn’t mentioned devils, that had been about setting Pin-Lee up to take credit for one of Overse’s plots.

Pin-Lee’s soul was right there on a silver platter. Sure, she technically hadn’t sold it yet. But Arada could talk to her, now, even. Drop her human form, or perhaps just summon another facet of herself as a devil, offer Pin-Lee the standard contract for high-value targets, and assert her rights to a soul she’d tried to get for decades.

It was perfect! And Pin-Lee was a lawyer, a brilliant one, Arada was nearly certain to get a good challenge in the process. It might even be worth arranging it so she would get Pin-Lee as a new underdevil after death rather than immediately claiming her soul, that would be the real jewel in Arada’s crown.

So why did her human mouth feel like she just ate sand?

(She didn’t even eat.) (Technically, it was more that she didn’t have to eat, but she often did.)

Well, she had time. She shouldn’t do it here and now, she should wait a few days and make absolutely sure, and then do it as soon as they’re back on Preservation. It wouldn’t be good to blow her cover now, not when everyone here trusted her so much.

She reached for Overse’s hand and squeezed, not willing to say anything now.

Love you too, babe, Overse sent.