The someone, a gleaming brass robot in a top hat, seems just as surprised to see Honey as the reverse. He shouts something off to the side, the words inaudible through the viewport screen. A brief argument with an unseen person ensues, which ends with the robot getting up and leaving Honey's field of vision.

A short time later, he emerges from an airlock on the ship's exterior, a cable attached to his belt, and begins making his way towards Honey with the aid of a jetpack. 

If his lungs hadn't been evacuated a while ago, Honey might have sighed in relief. He was figuring that there were about even odds that he was going to have to suffer through reentry, that he was going to burn up in a star, or that he was just going to drift forever. But! It looked like he beat the odds.

Honey brings a hand up in greeting, and then gently tosses himself in the direction of the robot.

The robot catches him, reeling them both in with the cable. Once they're safely in the airlock and the air pressure is high enough for Honey to breathe, he speaks. 

"Do you need medical attention, or will you be alright?" 

Honey takes a moment or two to force some air into his lungs before responding. "I'll be fine."

Straightening up his posture a bit, he offers a handshake. "Thanks for bringing me in. I'm Honey."

"It was no trouble! I'm Martin." His hand is covered by a glove, and moves with the same articulation as a human's, but feels like metal beneath the fabric.

"It's a pleasure—and a surprise—to meet you. Are you immortal, or merely durable?" 

Honey gives a firm shake, though not enough to have hurt even if Martin were a human. "Haven't been killed yet, though I haven't been trying too hard either."

He looks around, taking in the airlock and what he can see of the inside through the hatch window. "I take it that there's more to this place than just an airlock?"

"Of course—although, if you've not yet tested your mortality," Martin says as he opens the door, "you should possibly duck if you meet any of my crewmates. Anyway, welcome to the Aurora." 

The hallway beyond the hatch is of a design subtly unlike any ship Honey has been on before. It seems almost organic, as though the lines and panels on the walls grew in place rather than being put there by human hands. Martin waves for Honey to follow him down the corridor. 

Honey doesn't bother mentioning that, while he hasn't been 'testing' himself, he has been actively participating in a war, on the front lines. If he gets shot, it won't be his first time. Regardless, he follows Martin to wherever he's taking him.

Wherever they're going, it's a bit of a walk. They don't pass anyone else on the way. 

"Is there anywhere you need to be? Should we be dropping you off somewhere in particular? I'm afraid I can't guarantee a precise timeframe, especially if it's out of the system."

Honey ponders that for a moment. His first instinct is to ask if they can bring him back to the nearest Rebel base, but aside from not knowing whether saying that would get him spaced again, he isn't really sure whether he can be of much more use to the rebellion.

"Not really. My last plan didn't work out too well, so I think I might just wander for a while."

"Well, I'm not the only one who has a say in it, but perhaps you could travel with us for now? We do tend to wander quite a lot." 

They reach a door marked LIBRARY. A handwritten sign reading NO GUNS is taped underneath. Next to the door is a box labelled GUNS, currently empty. 

Martin, who doesn't appear to be carrying a gun, walks right in. 

Honey nods at that. He can live with either possibility.

Once at the door, Honey quickly pats himself down. He could have sworn that he'd held onto a gun after the Prospero got blown up, but he guesses he lost track of it sometime in the intervening days. Finding himself unarmed, Honey follows Martin through the door.

The library is big. This is quite possibly the most books Honey has ever seen in one place. It's a bit of a maze, but Martin seems to know where he's going. 

Honey's not much of a book person, and he doesn't want to get lost in here, so he's focused on following Martin.

And then they turn a corner to find a young woman tucked into an alcove, reading a very old book. 

She looks up, smiles at Martin, then sees Honey and raises an eyebrow. 

Honey waves a greeting silently. It's a library after all, don't want to disturb the quiet.

"Ivy, this is Honey. I saw him floating in space and he wasn't dead, so I brought him inside. Honey, this is Ivy Alexandria, our ship's archivist and navigator." 

Ivy puts down her book and looks at Honey more closely.

"I don't see any mechanical parts. How are you still alive?" 

Honey shrugs. "I've been tough and strong for as long as I can remember. Never really wondered why."

"Hmm." Her tone suggests that she finds this an unsatisfying answer. "How tough, and how strong? Have you tested?" 

"At least let the boy sit down before you start bombarding him with questions," Martin says, shifting a few books to make space for Honey on the seat opposite Ivy. 

"Honey, would you like anything to eat or drink? I can leave you here talking to Ivy while I fetch something from the kitchen, if that's alright with both of you." (Ivy nods distractedly while rearranging the books he moved.) 

Being called a 'boy' rattles Honey, just a bit. He's a grown man. But, he doesn't comment on it, and takes the seat offered. "Yes, both please. And, no, I've never bothered testing it, not intentionally anyway. I haven't been living the safest life I could have been, either."

"Well, was there anything else that should have killed you but didn't?" 

(Martin leaves, presumably to fetch food and drink.) 

"Well, I suppose the most recent was being spaced for a few days. The ship I was on exploding also probably should have killed me on its own. I've been shot more than a few times and never really been much worse for wear. Old King Cole had his way with me for a couple years and he didn't manage to do any lasting damage before I escaped...Nothing else really comes to mind."

That gets her attention. "You met King Cole and lived? Tell me everything." 

Honey fails to school his expression, more so than before anyway. "Not a time I care to remember in much detail. He tried to take me apart to find out what made me the way I am. He didn't find it."

"Ah. Right." Ivy nods. "I won't ask any more about that. You said you've been shot," she continues, switching tracks. "Fighting in this war?" 

He nods. "More times than I can be bothered to count. I tend to end up being a bit of a target."

"Which side? If that used to be a uniform, there's not enough of it left to tell," she adds, looking at his scorched and tattered clothes. 

Honey considers this for a long moment. He guesses the truth is necessary, but maybe not clearest truth he can conjure. "Both sides, at different times."

She takes this in stride, not even seeming surprised, and starts asking him about what he's seen of the two sides' tactics. 

He explains what he can. He never got very far up the ranks on either side. He was moved from the war-machine to the laboratory as soon as the King recognized his oddity, so he didn't have much experience except as a grunt on that side. On the rebel side, they were understandably not especially trusting, and even once he'd proven himself a foe of King Cole, he'd shown his worth as grenadier and generally stayed to the front lines. In terms of compare and contrast, he can't really remember too many differences, other than the rebellion officers usually softening up a bit once they got to know him.

Ivy seems fascinated, anyway, and is getting him to recount what he remembers of specific battles by the time Martin returns. 

"Here we are! I wasn't sure what you'd like, Honey, so I brought a selection of Ivy's favourites for both of you to share." 

This time, Ivy moves the books herself to clear space for the tray. There is, indeed, a varied selection of food and drink. 

Honey's hands go for whatever seems like it might be sweetest, without even really thinking.

Ivy eats as well, taking a break from interrogating Honey while she does so. 

Martin sits next to her, but he doesn't touch the food. 

"Did you learn anything that might be interesting to Kit?" 

"The workings of Kit's mind are a mystery to me," Ivy replies between mouthfuls. "But there is a greater than sixty percent chance he will be interested in Honey's story." 

Honey raises an eyebrow. "Kit?"

Martin answers since Ivy is busy eating again. 

"He's...the closest thing we have to a captain. If he decides you can stay, you're almost guaranteed a place on the crew. If not, well. He can be difficult to dissuade from a course of action." 

Honey nods. That seems reasonable to him. 'Difficult to dissuade' seems to practically be a requirement for someone ending up with a ship to run. Honey continues to grab whatever's sweet off the tray, though it's probable that he finishes them not long after.

Shortly, the food is polished off.

"I expect Kit knows you're here by now, or will soon. Gossip travels fast in a crew like this one." As he speaks, Martin starts clearing away the empty dishes. 

"He'll find you in his own time, but I can make sure I'm there if you like." 

Honey shakes his head. "No need to take yourself from whatever you might be busy with. I know how there's always something to do, aboard ships like these."

He looks to Ivy. "Any other questions? It's not every day that somebody's got so many for me."

"I'm not an everyday sort of person. And neither are you." 

And she has more questions about the battles he's been in, and what his life was like before joining the army, and whether his parents ever said anything about what might have caused his peculiar qualities. 

The battles, and participating in the war in general, are probably the least detailed parts of his life history, despite making up the majority of his life time-wise. It all sort of blends together, eventually. He was born and raised on...honestly he never learned the name of the planet. His parents just called it "the world," and he's pretty sure that they'd lost their history and some point. He and his parents lived in a big metal ruin surrounded by deep, dark forest. Maybe it was some real ancient crashed ship or something like that, neither he nor his parents had the context for that while they were living there. They lived simply, day to day, hunting and gathering food from the woods, cooking at campfires, washing in the river. The ruin itself wasn't really much more than an odd cave, in terms of how they used it.

His parents always said that there must have been some magic, in the forest or the ruins or both, that made him strong. He has a hard time believing it, the old place was deader than dead as far as he ever saw and the woods never seemed to have anything else magic about them, but, he'll never get to double check, since the whole place got torched when King Cole conquered the planet.

Ivy listens intently.

"I might be able to figure out the name of the planet if you give me more details," she offers. 

Honey shrugs. "I'm not sure what sort of details there are to give?"

"What colour were the sky, the sun, and the plants? Was the gravity higher or lower than other worlds you've been on? Which other planets was it close to?" 

"Well, the sky was blue, the sun was yellow, or yellow-ish anyway, I didn't make a habit of staring at it, and the plants were green. Gravity-wise, I guess, maybe a little higher than average? Never really tried to compare it. And I don't know if it was near any other planets. Planets were just, stars that moved, up until King Cole showed up and that part of my life ended."

Ivy pouts. "Well, that could be any of half a dozen planets in the empire. What about the ruin you lived in? What was that like?" 

"Uh...dark. It was pretty solidly built, not a lot holes in it, that was why it was nice to stay in compared to a lean-to or something. No power, though, so the insides were all pitch black. The outside was all bumpy, with wires and stuff coming out of it, which I guess could have been comms antennae, not that they worked. Not much rust or wear either, so it must have been made of tough stuff."

Ivy asks a few more questions, trying to pull out any details that might suggest the ship's origin, but gets nowhere.

"And there was nothing else identifying about it?" 

Honey shrugs, as he has likely done multiple times over the past couple minutes. "Nothing I can remember. I'd say sorry, but honestly, if I had that kind of information to give King Cole would probably have his hands on it by now, which I think I'd rather he not."

"At least that would have been interesting," Ivy sighs. "I hate dead ends." 

"Speaking of interesting," someone says, "I heard we had a stowaway." 

The new arrival leans on a bookcase a few feet away, arms crossed over his chest. His right arm is metal, of the same design as Martin's visible parts. 

Honey quickly looks to the unfamiliar person, then back to Ivy, then back to the person.

"Hello?" He says cautiously.

(Ivy is rolling her eyes, and seems neither surprised nor alarmed.) 

"Kit Sinistre," the newcomer introduces himself, with a bow. "Captain of the Aurora." 

"First Mate," Ivy corrects mildly. 

Honey stands up from his seat and offers his right hand for a handshake. "Honey."

They shake. Kit's metal hand is cold and solid, with a noticeably stronger grip than a regular human. 

"And what brings you here, Honey?" 

Honey matches Kit's grip, just like his parents taught him to.

"Well, the last ship I was on exploded, and I happened to get tossed on a trajectory straight to you. A bit of good luck, that."

He steps back and looks Honey up and down, mostly checking for signs of damage but quite obviously also checking out his muscles. 

"You don't look like you just got shot through open space. More 'good luck'?" 

Honey’s posture closes up a bit under the inspection. “I guess, though not quite same sort. I’ve been talking about that with Ivy here, among other things.”

Kit raises an eyebrow at Ivy. 

"He doesn't have a mechanism, but he's survived things that would kill most mortals, including bullets to the chest, explosions, and several days in vacuum," she summarises. "He doesn't know why, and Cole's 'doctors' didn't find anything either; my best guess is environmental factors during gestation and childhood. Also, he's fought on both sides of Cole's war, so I've been asking him about battle tactics."

"...interesting." 

He turns back to Honey. "Anything to add?" 

Honey shakes his head. "No, sir."

Kit looks like he's about to say something, then shakes his head. 

"...let's leave Ivy in peace," he says with a smile. "Walk with me?" 

Honey nods, and proceeds to follow Kit wherever it is he’s leading.

Kit takes them on a wandering path through the library, heading in the vague direction of the exit. 

"Did Martin and Ivy explain...anything, or did they just ask you a lot of questions?" 

Honey shrugs. “What sort of explanation would I need? I’ve gathered so far that ‘mortal’ is something the crew isn’t. Anything else I should know?”

He laughs. "That's a decent start. You've met Martin, and me, so you've noticed at least some of us are partly mechanical." He wiggles his metal fingers demonstratively. 

"Everyone on this ship, apart from you, is a cyborg. We used to be human, and mortal, before we died and were...improved...by a biomechanical scientist. So now we're all immortal! That means we come back when we die, we heal fast, aaaand we don't age. However old you think any of us are, multiply it by at least ten." 

Honey nods, though his mood grows a little darker. “Good to know, sir.”

"So, are you planning on sticking around?" Kit asks casually. "Or are we dropping you off next time we make port?" 

“I don’t really have anywhere else to be, and I figure that being an extra pair of hands is better than being nothing in particular, so I was hoping to stay.”

He nods, in a 'that makes sense' sort of way. "Any particular talents or inclinations?" 

“I’m about as strong as I am tough. I’m not...entirely unfamiliar with ship maintenance, even if I’m used to more recent models. I can shoot a gun, about as well as any other cannon fodder.” Honey shrugs.

Kit grins. "You'll fit right in. I'm sure we can find something for you to do."

And now they're at the library door, where he retrieves two different pistols from the GUNS box. Both are of unfamiliar makes and look heavily modified. 

"Any last questions for now?" 

“No, I think I’m set for now. Thank you for the information, sir.”

"Excellent. Well, see you around, kid. Oh—and watch out for the octokittens," he adds cheerily. "They bite." 

With that, he walks away, whistling. 

Having successfully negotiated a place on this odd crew, and having secured a bit of food and hydration, the exhaustion of a long day (or, days, technically) begins to wash over Honey. He begins his search for a sufficiently out of the way corner, before eventually curling up in an overhead nook that has a good amount of airflow.

He is undisturbed for the next few hours. 

Having recovered about as much as he needed to, Honey extracts himself the nook, and begins wandering the halls of the vessel, meandering more than heading somewhere, but still trending towards whatever seems most like an engineering deck, in the hopes of finding work to do.

—and something small and dark, about the size of a smallish dog but with a lot of legs, skitters across the hallway in front of him. It disappears back into the shadows before he can get a good look at it. 

Honey freezes, briefly, before recalling the first mate’s warning regarding...octokittens? Curious, he carefully approaches the shadows he saw the shape dash to and gropes around for the creature.

The shadow hisses and bites his hand, drawing blood and nearly taking off a finger. 

Honey lifts his hand up, creature presumably still attached. “You’ve got some real teeth on you, don’t you?” He says, more to himself than anyone else.

In the light, the thing turns out to be a ball of far too many writhing limbs attached to a head and torso that resemble a stray cat. It hisses again, lets go of Honey's finger, and drops to the ground, skittering away again on its multitude of legs. 

“Huh.” Honey stands back up and continues his wandering. “Octokittens.” He nods.

There seem to be a lot more of the octokittens down on the engineering levels.

He spots an orangeish one curled up in a tangle of limbs on top of a humming machine, probably attracted to the warmth. Others in various colours and patterns are play-fighting in the dust of an abandoned room as he walks past its open door. They squeak at headache-inducing pitches and make rusty-engine-like growling noises at each other. 

They don’t honestly seem too different from other cats Honey has encountered, even if he can’t say that’s all that many. Now that he knows what broadly to expect, he doesn’t pay them much mind.

As he descends deeper into the heart of the Aurora, the air around him begins to grow warm, and the thrum of the engines gets louder. 

Faint sounds of clanging metal can be heard from somewhere up ahead. 

Clanging metal sounds like something to Honey. Whether it’s something broken, or something someone is working on, or something else, he’s interested. He does his best to head straight towards the clangs.

This part of the ship is fairly maze-like, the chambers and corridors—now more akin to tunnels—seeming to follow no logical pattern he can discern. More than once, he hits a dead-end or finds himself heading away from the source of the noise instead of towards it. 

Eventually, the sound of metal on metal grows louder, the engines thrumming in counterpoint. 

Turning a corner, Honey comes upon a pale-skinned man fixing a broken section of pipes. His clothes are stained with engine grease, and at some point, he has stripped down to his shirt; a long navy coat is hung carefully over a chair out of the way. Twin ports on the inside of each wrist, laid bare by his rolled-up sleeves, look like they might be data sockets. 

Absorbed in his task, the man doesn't immediately notice Honey. 

Honey approaches the man and his work, trying to get a better look at the broken section of piping. “Anything I can do to help?” He asks.

He drops his wrench with a clang, one hand going to the gun at his waist. 

"What—oh, you're the stray Martin picked up." As he speaks, he relaxes again, although his hand stays near his weapon. "How long have you been standing there?" 

Honey reaches down, grabs the wrench, and hands it back to the presumed engineer. “Just a few seconds. Just looking for something to do.”

The engineer looks at him assessingly.

"Alright then." He raps a pipe with his knuckles. "Ever worked on something like this before?" 

The specific design is as alien as everything else on this ship, but pipes are pipes. It's not hard to tell what needs fixing. 

Honey nods, and moves forwards under the assumption of the plumbing being...more or less ordinary.

"Straight to business, huh? I like it." The pipes behave like ordinary pipes, at least so far as he can tell. 

"Name's Kolya, by the way," the engineer says as he gets to work on a different section. "Nice to meet you." 

“Honey.” He says. He’s less than familiar with whatever Kolya’s moves onto, but he hangs around in case he can do something useful under instruction.

Once the easier parts are done, Honey is pretty much relegated to standing around and handing Kolya the tools he asks for. Every so often, Kolya will ask him to help hold something in place while he secures it. 

The hum of the engines fills the air, making extended conversation difficult. 

The lack of conversation doesn’t especially bother Honey. He handled a few days of total isolation just fine.

This routine probably continues for a while.

When they're done, Kolya steps back with a satisfied smile. 

"There," he says, patting the newly repaired section. "All better, old girl." The ambient humming changes tone briefly, as if in response. 

Honey quirks an eyebrow at the reaction, but only for a moment. He supposed this is hardly the first time he’s seen someone personify a ship.

”Anything else on the docket?”

Kolya looks around like he's expecting a task to materialise out of thin air.

"Aurora? Got anything else for us, love?" 

On the far wall, a blank panel flickers and brightens, displaying a series of letters and numbers. 

Honey might be passingly familiar with the more physical aspects of maintenance, but he suspects this is beyond him. “What’s the word?”

"Something's jammed in one of the power converters, couple of levels up," Kolya interprets. "You coming?" 

Honey nods quickly. “Happy to be of service.”

Wherever Kolya’s headed, Honey’s following, at least until someone asks for him.

Then he can assist with a few more repairs around the ship. 

The corridors are deserted, apart from the two of them and the occasional octokitten. They walk past empty rooms and leave footprints in the dust of unused hallways. Kolya doesn't seem to notice or care. 

Honey does notice. Honestly, he’s a bit perturbed by how seemingly uninhabited this part of the ship is supposed to be. How many people are on this ship? How many people are there supposed to be?

Honey doesn’t say any of this, but he isn’t especially good at schooling his expression, especially when he doesn’t think someone is watching.

Kolya picks up on his mood after a while.

"Something wrong?" 

Honey ponders how to respond for a moment. “What’s the history with you all, and this ship?”

He's silent for a few moments before responding.

"That's...a very long story. Why do you ask?" 

Honey sighs. “Just a lot of oddity, and, I have a good bit of oddity already. Knowing where it started might spare me it.”

"If you want every oddity on this ship explained, we'll be here for millennia," Kolya warns. "But I suppose I could tell you the bare bones. Enough that you won't put your foot in your mouth, at least." 

He sighs. "It's Kit who's the real storyteller...but he doesn't like telling this one, so I'll make do." 

Since they're likely to be here a while, Kolya pauses to set his toolbox down and lean against the wall. 

When he speaks again, his voice is slower, measured and distant.

"Once upon a time, before the civilisation that first settled New Constantinople was a glint in the eye of its founders, there was a prince. Born in the last decades of a dying regime, he grew up with the growing clouds of revolution hanging overhead. He was still a boy, though he thought himself a man, when the clouds broke and fire rained down from the sky.

"The revolutionaries were merciless and thorough. Not content with unplugging the old king from the machines that extended his life, they hunted down and executed the rest of the royal family, down to the youngest child. The prince was shot, and left bleeding out on the palace floor." 

The engines whine, and the vents above them huff out a gust of warm air. 

Honey is probably paying more attention to this than any other single thing since coming aboard this ship. He is rapt.

"He didn't die. As he lay there, waiting for death, someone else found him. A pair of wandering immortals, not part of the revolution, who'd slipped into the palace in the rioters' wake and were taking advantage of the chaos. Something about the prince caught the eye of the younger one, and he persuaded the other to intervene and save the dying boy's life." 

Kolya takes a ragged breath. 

"They offered me a choice. A chance. To run away with them, see the stars, run and keep running so death could never catch up. I...said yes. Obviously." There's something in his voice, as though he's trying to convince himself as much as Honey. 

"I couldn't stay on Cyberia after that. Even immortal, it wasn't safe to be the last of the royal bloodline. So we stole a ship, the three of us. Myself, Kit, and the Doctor." The capital letter is practically audible; it's a title, not just a description. "Aurora was a battle cruiser, built for war in the shipyards of Cyberia. She wasn't meant to function with so small a crew, but she likes us, so she's learned to make do. She's...our home. The one constant thing through the centuries, apart from each other." 

A tension inside Honey that he had only been half-aware of releases its energy suddenly. He lets out a loud laugh, and smiles. "Thank you for that, Kolya. That cleared up quite a bit, actually."

He wipes a hand across his face, cleaning off some imaginary detritus. "I don't know how much Ivy's shared, so you might already know everything I have to say, but since you've offered me a tale it only seems fair I offer you mine, if you want to hear it."

When Honey laughs, Kolya jumps, then he pulls a face like he's not sure whether to be offended. 

"Ivy—? Why am I always the last person to hear these things..." he mutters. "No, I've not heard anything from Ivy," he continues at a more conversational volume. "Go ahead; I'm listening."

Honey nods. "I was born in an old steel ruin, in the middle of a deep, dark forest. It was just my parents and me, for a while. I was like I am now then, though, maybe a bit less so, it does seem like I've grown into it a bit. I'd hunt with my dad sometimes, until I broke the bow he made by pulling on it too hard. After that I helped my mom gather instead, usually I'd pick roots and tubers out of the ground since I had an easier time digging than my mom did. She always had an issue with her back..."

He looks around for a moment, briefly seeming lost, before coming back to the present. "Anyway, we lived there like that for a while, up until the Old King— Ah, the local old king that is, King Cole, and his army happened upon whatever planet we were on and decided that we were all together far too happy. He burned the whole place down to ashes, and took everyone who survived. I ended up in his army myself for a time, managed to convince myself that at least I was useful to someone, even if that someone wasn't much more than an ugly piece of leather pinned a chair. That lasted up until King Cole heard about my exceptional performance. He decided I had more to contribute in the lab than on the battlefield."

Honey shivers. "Those were a long two years. They never did figure out just why I was like this. Security got lax once they started to doubt I'd be worth anything, so I decided to make my leave. After that, it was just, nothing for a while, until the rebels found me. I didn't tell them much, and they didn't need to hear much. Not hard to believe someone when they say they've got a bone to pick with the king and his men. That lasted for another few years, right up until the Prospero got hit by that missile and went up like a firework. Then you all picked me up."

He seems a bit deflated, somehow, having said that all.

"That's...I'm sorry." Kolya's expression is one of deep sympathy. 

"All of us on this ship know a little about being a science experiment. We—" He stops, shakes his head. "I'm glad you got out." 

Honey nods, and ponders for a moment. “Happy to be of service.” He repeats, though his inflection subtly flatter than the first time. That doesn’t quite fit right but for some reason better words aren’t available.

"No." Kolya's voice is quiet but firm. 

"Not—I'm not glad you're here because you've helped me today. I'm glad you got out because you escaped something horrible, and I know exactly how horrible, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone." 

Honey nods, and just kind of leaves it at that. He thinks they were headed to fix something else, somewhere in the ship.

Yep, that's enough talking about feelings for now.

"Right then!" Kolya pushes himself away from the wall and grabs his toolkit. "Coming?" 

“Lead the way.” And Honey follows.

So they can fix some more things that have gone wrong with the ship. And a few more. And after a while, when Kolya asks Aurora for their next task, the projector instead displays the video feed from a kitchen where Martin is cooking something. 

"Oh, alright. I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself, you know." 

The engines hum.

Honey is a little surprised when the ship points then towards mess, particularly given it doesn’t seem like there’s anything wrong there.

He considers himself for a moment, and nods. “I am getting a little hungry.”

"—ah, right. Yes. Say something next time? I tend to work until I drop if no-one reminds me." 

Kolya leads them the shortest way to the kitchen without missing a turn, although the route is complicated enough that Honey probably couldn't retrace it from memory. 

Honey nods again. He almost mentions that he’s actually usually similar, but he guesses he hasn’t really been his usual self here yet.

By the time they’re to the kitchen, he would probably consider himself properly lost if he weren’t following someone right there.

Martin, who seems to be very busy doing at least five things at once, looks up briefly as they arrive.

"Oh, good, I was hoping you'd both turn up! How are you settling in, Honey?" 

“Well enough, I think.” Honey looks to Kolya. “Learned some more about my situation, which was helpful.” He turns back. “What were you thinking of having us for?”

"Well, I'm cooking dinner!" Martin answers distractedly as he goes back to juggling several different food-preparation tasks. "I know Kolya has a tendency to skip meals, and I wasn't sure you'd be able to find the kitchen on your own, so I'm glad you both made it on time." 

Honey nods, then looks between Martin and Kolya. “Anything I can do to help with the cooking?”

"No, don't worry, I've got it all under control." 

And indeed, somehow, it looks like he does. 

Kit shows up around five minutes before the meal is going to be served. He wanders into the kitchen, not announcing himself, and tries to steal a taste of the stew. 

Without looking, Martin clicks his tongue—it makes a metallic 'ting' sound—and Kit seamlessly switches to giving the pot a stir as if that was his intention all along. 

That's an interesting dynamic. Not something that Honey is interested in trying, though. Looking around, he looks for a place that seems like it won't get in people's way and reclines there, waiting for the food to be done.

Ivy trails in just as the food is going on the table. With her is a person of indeterminate gender, with warm brown skin and short curly hair. 

"So you're Martin's stray, then? I'm Ashes O'Reilly. Quartermaster." 

"Honey." He says with a nod. He waits for everyone else who seems like they're going to eat to find a place around the food before finding one himself.

He ends up sitting with Martin on one side and Kolya on the other.

Martin doesn't eat, but he participates enthusiastically in the argument that springs up between Kit and Ashes over the key in which a song should be played. It quickly gets very technical, and at one point Ivy lends Martin a piece of paper and pen to note down the pros and cons. 

Honey does eat, though not with quite as much vigor as yesterday. He carefully makes sure to have a mouthful of food whenever it seems like the argument might turn to him for a word. He is neither qualified nor interested in having an opinion on this.

No-one seems like they have any interest in Honey's opinion on this topic, even when Kolya and Ivy get pulled into the debate. 

Tempers start to flare, and voices get raised. Then Kit pulls out a knife and stabs it into the table through Ashes' hand. 

Honey has heard that everyone here is a cyborg. Intellectually, he was at least on his way to thinking of these people as about as bothered by these sorts of things as he would be.

Those thoughts have not percolated to the deeper parts of his brain, though. Consequently, Honey makes a perhaps rash decision to pluck the knife out of Ashes' hand (and Kit's, if he is still holding it) and flinging it away from the table, all at maximum speed. This likely results in some minor damage to the table, and in the knife being embedded in some nearby wall or ceiling.

Kit shoves himself away from the table, chair legs screeching on the floor. 

Walking over to the knife, he yanks it out of the wall with his metal hand and then stalks out of the room without another word. 

"Good reflexes, kid." 

Ashes flexes their hand; the wound is already closing. "Little overenthusiastic, but I appreciate the effort." 

"Uh." Honey says, his thoughts racing to catch up with his body. He relaxes and brings his arm back to his seat, and doesn't verbally respond further, simply nodding and going back to eating. He thinks he might have gotten too comfortable helping Kolya with work, and forgotten a bit where he was.

He doesn't spend too much longer eating, and once he's done he takes his plate and utensils over to the nearest sink and starts to wash them.

The conversation is subdued for the rest of the meal, although no-one seems shocked by what happened. 

Kolya leaves the table when Honey does, despite not having finished, and heads out of the room the same way Kit went. 

Everyone else drifts away as they finish eating. 

Martin sticks around to clear up and settles into a rhythm of washing dishes alongside Honey. 

Once they're the only ones left, he sighs. "In case you were wondering, yes, that does happen often." 

Honey nods absently. He had almost wanted that to not be true, but words only confirm the nonchalance with which the exchange passed. He will have to work on his response for the next time.

Honey continues cleaning until there's nothing obviously dirty, he looks to Martin. "Anything you can use me for?"

"I can't think of anything right now, I'm afraid. But you've been a great help with the dishes, thank you."  

He frowns, the metal plates of his face shifting over each other. "Did you find somewhere to sleep last night? We do have plenty of empty rooms, but I'm not sure how many are furnished..." 

Honey shrugs. "Somewhere. Not the worst place I've slept."

With no task, Honey just sort of wanders off, meandering the halls randomly until he hears something that might be a crew member who could use an extra pair of hands. He's not expecting to find any soon.

Martin lets him go without comment, looking somewhat concerned but not enough to stop him leaving. 

The hallways are empty. The area immediately around the kitchen looks like it sees higher foot traffic than most areas of the ship, though: there's no dust on the floor, and the walkways are pretty much clear of detritus. Most of the rooms off to the sides seem to be in use, as well, although mostly for storage. 

Honey is very familiar with the sound of gunfire. Right now, it's coming from...somewhere over there. 

That was faster than expected. Honey heads towards the noise, not knowing what exactly he's going to do when he gets to it, if he gets to it, but still figuring it will be better than not knowing what he's going to do while walking in no particular direction.

What he finds, when he gets there, is Kit. 

He's slumped blank-faced against a wall, mostly upright, emptying his pistol into what might have been an octokitten when he started. It's not even twitching. 

This...is not a situation that Honey is sure how he can help. So instead he just stands and watches.

After a minute, Kit's gaze flicks towards him. 

Without breaking eye contact, he cocks his gun and aims it at Honey. 

Honey faces Kit and quirks an eyebrow, but otherwise doesn't really respond.

Other people being unthreatened by physical injury? That's somewhat new. Someone point a gun at him? Not especially.

Oh, well, that's no fun. 

He shoots Honey anyway on principle, then pushes himself upright and walks away. 

Honey takes a second to dig the bullet out of wherever it landed and pocket it, before following along behind Kit. He figures that with the mood he seems to be in, there will be something to help with, soon enough, though whether it will be helping Kit or someone else is yet to be seen.

The next time Kit turns a corner, he notices Honey is still following and growls wordlessly at him. 

Honey laughs, the same sharp, loud, singular laugh that might have been audible earlier. Part of him predicts this will, in fact, be unhelpful, but that part is less powerful than it would like.

With a snarl of rage, Kit charges, lashing out with the knife that's now back in his hand.

The first attempted stab bounces off Honey's ribcage. The next swing is aimed to slit his throat. 

The cut is ragged, but complete. There's a good spurt of blood or two, before it starts bubbling a bit. Then it hardens into a red crust, which Honey casually pats to make sure nothing is sticking out. He gives Kit another quirked eyebrow, and internally starts counting down to when his voice will be understandable.

Growling in frustration, Kit keeps slashing away at him, not waiting to see whether one swing actually did any damage before taking the next. 

As he continues to be incapable of actually hurting Honey, his growls give way to screams of pain and rage, tears building in his eyes. 

Part of Honey tells him that this shift in emotional expression was what this whole ordeal was for. He supposes that means this is broadly headed in the right direction, and stops affecting as much. He lets Kit slash at him as long as he needs to. The part of him that knows this is a bad idea has transitioned from trying to make him stop right now, to just generating enough sour-feelings to make him regret doing it in the future.

Kolya dashes around a corner towards them, alarm on his face.

"Kit!" 

At the sound of his name, Kit stops and turns to look at Kolya. His breathing is heavy, and he's half covered in Honey's blood. 

Honey remains as still as he was before, distant from himself, but despite the distance still finds himself curious about how the situation will evolve with someone with an existing relationship with Kit added to the equation.

"Kit, Honey doesn't want to fight you, and stabbing him more isn't going to help." 

A pause in which Kit gestures with the hand holding the knife, presumably accompanied by some kind of facial expression. 

"I know, I know. He's new, he doesn't know these things yet." Kolya briefly glances over at Honey. "For future reference, Honey, if he growls at you that usually means go away."

Honey nods, and begins processing the previous moments over again, in light of this new information. There is the regret.

Kit growls again, pointedly, a short, sharp little snarl without much energy behind it. 

Correctly interpreting it this time, Honey proceeds to turn around and start walking back down the hall. Back to just meandering, he supposes. Maybe spend some time formulating a new vector for approaching Kit.

He wanders the empty hallways for a while, past storerooms full of junk and dining rooms bare of food. 

One passage off to the side ends in a blocked-off door. Mismatched planks and wooden boards have been haphazardly nailed across it. They don't look like they'd hold up if someone was determined to get in, especially if that someone was Honey. 

Honey briefly entertains the thought of pulling off the boards and snooping around wherever’s hidden behind them, but decides against it. He’s not confident in his ability to nail the boards back in place afterwards, and he gets the feeling that leaving it open would be an error of a similar kind as he just recently made. Instead, he just keeps wandering.

He encounters nothing interesting for a while. At some point, he wanders away from the more populated areas, leaving footprints in the dust as he treks through unused corridors. 

If he investigates the rooms he passes, some of them will turn out to be disused cabins, with bunks attached to the walls. 

Huh. Cots. He’ll try and remember the way out here the next time he starts feeling tired.

Honestly he’s feeling kind of drained already, with the work with Kolya earlier and then healing up after fumbling the interacting with Kit.

Heads into one of the unused bunk rooms, dusts off a bunk, and lays down for a nap.

His sleep is undisturbed. 

Honey wishes something that would let him keep track of time had survived the Prospero’s final moments. He wonders how long he’s been here.

Shaking off the thought, he gets back and starts walking, albeit with a destination in mind. Specifically, the viewport he slammed into initially, or at least a viewport. He has no real idea where other than ‘towards the outer edge of the ship,’ but he’ll get there eventually.

Before he finds a viewport, Kolya finds him. 

"Hey. You alright?" 

Honey quickly checks over himself to make sure there aren’t any wounds he didn’t notice. Aside from his shirt now being cut up in addition to being a bit scorched, he’s fully recovered. “Yeah.”

"...good. That's good."

Kolya seems unsure of how to proceed. "Did you uh. Have any questions about the thing with Kit." 

Honey considers that for a moment. “Is there anything I can do to help Kit in the future?”

Kolya nods slowly. 

"Okay, so. Let me explain what to do next time he gets in one of—those moods." He makes a vague hand gesture, presumably meant to indicate 'that thing he was doing yesterday'.

"The most important thing to know is that if he leaves, you don't follow. Unless he's obviously inviting you, I guess. But if you're not sure, don't follow, and if he meant you to follow then he'll come back. Make sense?" 

Honey nods. “Are there cases other than him leaving?”

"You mean, situations where he doesn't leave but you should still be careful?" He hums thoughtfully.

"Well, like I said yesterday, if he growls it means stop what you're doing, back off. If you don't think you were doing anything, it means go away."  

Honey nods with a modicum of resolve. “So there is nothing.”

"...there are things that can help? But they take time to learn, and I think for you, for now, the best thing you can do is give him space when he needs it." 

Honey nods, without resolve. Internally, he starts preparing himself to be on the lookout for Kit, and to be ready to drop whatever he’s doing if he does.

"...he's not angry with you," Kolya ventures.

"What you did wasn't helpful, but you didn't know that. You'll do better next time." 

“By not being there.” He confirms.

"...actually," Kolya says slowly. "There is something else you can do in those situations." 

He leans forward. "If you're the only one there, you go and find someone. Preferably me or Martin, but any of us will do. Tell them what happened, where you last saw Kit, how he was acting. Aurora can help if you're not sure where to look. Think you can do that?" 

Honey nods. That seems like a sensible way to handle things, even if he’s not entirely sure it qualifies as him doing anything. “Alright.”

Aaaand Kolya has run out of stamina for talking about emotions.

"So. All good?" 

Honey nods again. Honestly, he’s not sure why Kolya seems worried about him, when it is Kit who is apparently going through some turmoil?

"Great! I'll just leave you to...whatever you were doing." 

Honey proceeds on his way to whatever viewport he ends up at first, doing his best to not pay attention to the strange and unnamed feeling the conversation left him with.

From the viewport, he can see the distant stars gliding slowly past, tiny glimmers set in the deep black of empty space. If Honey cranes his neck at the right angle, other parts of the ship come into view, although it's hard to get a clear idea of the overall structure. Otherwise, there is nothing to disturb the empty vastness. 

Night and day aren't entirely real out in space, but staying up at night and looking at the stars always used to help him think, and this is a reasonable approximation.

Going to Kit is obviously not an option, there are simply too few ways for that to turn out positively. Kolya isn't a strong choice either, as Honey suspects that he will only distract him from his work until the recent events have lost their emotional salience. Ivy might have more questions for him, but it felt like they'd reached and surpassed the point of diminishing returns regarding anything he knew about. Martin would...probably be doing something that Honey could technically contribute to, but the robot (or, full-conversion cyborg he supposes) didn't seem to want help the last time he asked. The only option left would seem to be the other person he'd seen in the mess...Ashes, he thinks? Their first encounter did seem to leave a positive impression, even if it was minor. Good enough to start with.

He heads back out of the viewport and returns to wandering the ship, now with the vague intent of following any leads that he thinks might point him towards the quartermaster.

With all the wandering he's been doing, Honey is starting to get a sense of the ship's layout, or at least some areas of the ship. It doesn't take him all that long to find his way back to the more well-trafficked parts. 

Most of the doors he passes are open, some are closed, and a few are locked. 

As he passes by the storage bays, he hears someone singing in a pleasant, husky voice. The song is unfamiliar, but the singer is recognisable as Ashes. 

Honey zeroes in on the singing with quick but deliberate movement.

Ashes is in one of the storage bays, looking through the contents of a crate.

They continue singing to themself as Honey approaches. The tune is gentle and lilting, but the lyrics, once he's close enough to make them out, are a little grim. He catches something about bones screaming and blood freezing.  

It might actually not be the most gruesome thing he's heard sung. Some of the rebels liked to get really creative with singing about what they were going to do with King Cole if they got their hands on him.

Regardless, Honey isn't perturbed. He approaches quietly but not stealthily, and waits for a break in the lyrics to greet Ashes.

At the end of a verse, they finish whatever they were doing with the box and look up. 

"Oh, hey. Didn't see you there. Honey, right?" 

Honey nods. "Yeah. I was just wandering looking for something to do. Need any help with anything?"

"Sure, I could do with an extra pair of hands lifting some of these crates. That suit you?" 

Honey nods. Lifting and carrying things is honestly probably close to the top of list when it comes to stuff he prefers to do. People don't usually expect him to make decisions when he's carrying a big stack of boxes or whatever.

Indeed. Ashes is happy to direct him on where to place each box and even happier to give him the heaviest crates once they've had a chance to see how strong he is. Other than that, they don't talk much. 

"Careful with that one, it's got breakables," they say after a few minutes of silent working, as Honey is about to pick up one particular container. 

Honey takes the crate in question gingerly, as well as he's able to. Whatever's inside does feel rather precarious, just from how tricky the thing's inertia is.

Once the crate is safely in its new position, Ashes comes over to check inside it. 

"Yeah, knew there was some cool shit in here. Wanna see?" 

Honey nods. “Sure.” Looking inside boxes is another favorite.

What Ashes pulls out is a series of delicate blown-glass sculptures. Most of them are just abstract shapes: twisting around each other like tongues of fire or bubbling up in eggshell-thin clouds. There are also a few stylised animals, pretty simple but still recognisably meant to be something. 

"This one's my favourite." They hold up a little blobby dog, curled up like it's asleep. 

Honey nods, filing the bit of information away. He doesn’t know much about Ashes (or anyone) yet, but it may be key in the future. He considers if he has a favorite out of any of them, and finds that he doesn’t.

"Maybe I should pick up glassblowing again," Ashes says while packing the sculptures back in their protective wrappings. 

"You wanna learn?" they offer. "Takes a lot of breath control." 

“Sure.” Honey figured he is going to have a lot of time on his hands, judging from the last couple days, and while glass-blowing doesn’t seem like an urgently needed skill it could still be useful.

Ashes nods. "We better finish sorting this lot first."

And then they're pointing out the next box that needs moving, and it's back to work. 

Honey gets back to work promptly.

With the two of them working, it doesn't take long before Ashes steps back and sighs with satisfaction. 

"Much better," they say, looking around at the neatly organised storage bay. "Thanks for the help." 

“Happy to be of service.” Honey replies without really thinking.

"So, glassblowing? We'll have to find my old kit, first, but I've got time now if you want." 

Honey nods. “Sounds good to me.”

"C'mon, I think I left most of the stuff in my room so Kit wouldn't steal it." 

They lead Honey to a door a couple of corridors over, then tells him to wait outside while they disappear into the room to fetch the glassblowing equipment. The room, what can be seen of it from the hall, looks like someone built a blanket fort in a crowded antique shop. Every inch of the walls is in use for picture frames and shelves of ornaments, and every inch of floor space is covered with cushions and blankets. 

Honey nods. The room is interesting. Not terribly similar to any place he's stayed, but he supposes that isn't saying much, and the longer he looks at the more the underlying logic of the space starts to show through. If Ashes doesn't find the equipment too quickly, he might ask, "Where's this stuff from?"

"Oh, all over. I try to pick up something from every planet," is the distracted answer as Ashes reaches under a cabinet. "Sometimes it's a souvenir, sometimes it's a new art technique—aha!" 

They emerge triumphantly brandishing a pair of blowpipes, each of which is about a foot and a half in length. "Knew they were in here somewhere." 

Honey files the answer away, with the feeling that it will be important later. "So, where to next?"

"Now we need sand to put in the furnace, which...could take a while," Ashes says with a chagrined expression.

"We have sandbags, but they're all scattered around the ship as fire suppressants, and there aren't any extras in storage," they explain. "I've been meaning to resupply, but we haven't run into many peaceful systems recently, and warzones tend to be using all their sandbags themselves." 

Hm. "If you give me an idea of where they're stashed away, I could go grab them while you start up the furnace?"

"I don't think I even know where most of them are," they say with a laugh.

"Oh—but I bet Aurora does." Stepping out of the room, they lock the door behind them one-handed in a manoeuvre that looks automatic. "Hey, Aurora? You listening?" 

A panel on the wall slides away to uncover a screen. 

It briefly displays the word [Always] before shifting to show a map, presumably of the ship, with several dozen locations marked in green. 

Honey inspects the map intently for a moment, finding their current location (as well as that of the furnace), and of the nearest sandbags, and puts together model of the path he'll take. He nods. "I'll be off then. See you at the furnace."

Honey takes a stance, somewhere between like he's about to start sprinting and like he's climbing the floor like a rock wall. Then he flings himself down the corridor, sailing through the air and landing at a junction which he turns down. He proceeds to the various sandbag locations in this way, gathering up a half dozen before heading to the forge at a similar pace.

"That was fast," Ashes greets him. By the look of things, they've just finished lighting the furnace. 

"And you didn't get lost; I'm impressed." 

"I've been getting a better idea of the ship lately, and if I go fast, I don't have time to forget the map." He hoists the bags. "Let me know when to pour, I guess."

"Alright. This is the boring bit." 

It takes a while for the furnace to heat up enough that they can melt the sand. Ashes seems happy enough to sit and watch it, explaining the basics of glassblowing to Honey while they wait.

Honey gets into position to pour, and after a minute or two remembers to turn his face at least a bit in Ashes' direction to indicate that he's listening, but otherwise he's still, and maybe a little tense if you look closely.

Awww, he's so focused. That's adorable. 

"This bit doesn't need that much precision," Ashes says casually. "Not like actually shaping the glass. As long as the sand goes in at some point, it's all good." 

Honey nods, with just a hint of sheepishness, and relaxes a bit, though he’s still going to hold the first bag at the ready until Ashes tells him to do something else.

It turns out Ashes' method of testing whether the furnace is hot enough is to stick their hand in. 

"Yeah, think it's ready. Pour away." 

Honey pours, and asks a question at the same time. “I understand I’m not exactly unique in terms of toughness, but does that not still hurt?”

Shrugging, they blow on their hand to cool it. 

"Eh. I've had worse." 

Huh. He almost feels a little sad that he’s not the only one who was apparently tortured, though it’s not a deeply felt thing. He nods.

"It's actually a pretty cool story, although it's best when we do the whole song," Ashes comments.

"Oh—and that's probably enough sand." 

Honey promptly stops pouring. “Song?”

"Yeah, we wrote a song about how I ended up on the crew," they explain, reaching for an actual rod to poke the sand with. "A couple of us have done it, actually. D'you remember the song I was singing when you found me earlier? That one's about Martin." 

Honey mostly just remembers that they had been singing, not what. He nods. Privately, he strangles the tiny inkling of envy that he can feel trying to exist.

"You wanna hear them sometime? I'd have to rope in one or two of the others for most of them. Or I guess if you're around for our next concert you'll get the whole show." 

The sand is properly heating up now, although it'll still be a little while before it's melted. "Oh, speaking of which—anyone asked if you play an instrument yet?" 

Concert? “No, I don’t think so. I don’t play any either.”

"Pity. Do you sing?" 

“No better than any other sailor.”

Ashes shrugs. "Most sailors I've met could carry a tune pretty well. But if it's not your thing, that's fine."

He shrugs reflectively. "It's not. Sorry." He turns to face the furnace. "How's it doing?"

"It's getting there. Told you this was the boring bit." 

They poke the melting sand with the rod again. "It needs to be glowing orange. See this bit here? We're waiting for more of it to look like that." 

Honey nods. He briefly considers if there's any way he could get the furnace to burn hotter, but nothing obvious comes to mind, and he's not certain that increasing the temperature would necessarily work, or if it could be done without damaging the furnace.

There really isn't much to do but wait. Ashes finishes explaining the basic principles of glassblowing, and then pokes the glass and declares it 'good enough'. 

They demonstrate how to get a globule of molten glass on the end of the blowpipe and blow until it forms a hollow bubble.

"You wanna give it a go?" 

"Sure."

Honey proceeds to give it a try, though he's uncertain how hard he should blow, and in order to avoid any potential mess, probably ends up blowing a bit too weakly.

Ashes patiently corrects his technique, talking him through creating a very simple bubble shape. 

Honey gets there, eventually. His first product lopsided, thin-walled, and fragile on account of having cooled too quickly, but it exists

"Hey, not bad for a first effort! I think my first...six...all collapsed when I was just starting," Ashes tells him. "I was trying to make them too big. This one seems like it's holding together. Wanna have another go?" 

"Sure." Honey says with another nod. He does his best to replicate the initial bubble-forming process as Ashes instructed, but, it doesn't work quite as well, or at least he doesn't think so. He probably hands it back to them after trying another couple times, even if it might seem like he aborted those attempts before it could really be concluded that they failed.

Ashes accepts the blowpipe back without comment. They create a few little blobby shapes—a fat bird with the suggestion of a beak and wings, another little dog, a couple of abstract swirls. 

As Ashes is putting the finishing touches on an abstract piece, Kit appears in the doorway and stops to watch. He seems to be in a much better mood than when Honey last sa\w him, even giving Honey a little wave and a smile. 

Honey watches Ashes crafting intently, but ultimately without a great deal of thought. The reappearance of Kit brings him back to reality, albeit into a body which has suddenly gone tense. Honey doesn't manage a smile, but wave back.

Ignoring Honey, Kit wanders over to examine the finished glass pieces left cooling on the side. He doesn't touch them, but he does snag a spare rod and poke the molten glass in the furnace. 

"Don't touch that," Ashes says calmly. They hold out a hand for the rod. 

He flips it over in his metal hand, so he's holding the rod by the hot end and offering Ashes the handle. 

"Not gonna let me have a go?" 

Smirking, Ashes accepts it. "Not after what happened last time."

Honey makes an attempt to not look curious.

"You spray someone with molten glass once," Kit tells Honey conspiratorially, rolling his eyes, but there's a smile on his face. 

"Once was enough," Ashes counters as they pull another ball of molten glass out of the furnace.

"That jacket was never the same again." 

Honey doesn't think that he should try and add anything to this conversation, and frankly isn't sure what he would even if he thought he should. So he remains quiet.

There's a bit more banter, and then Kit says, "Hey, are both of you okay with me borrowing Honey for a bit?"

(Ashes makes an assenting noise.) 

Honey thinks back to his conversation with Kolya. This seems like an obvious invitation, but Honey is still going to try and be more cautious. He nods, and if Kit leads him anywhere he'll follow.

They don't go far, just down the corridor a little—close enough that Honey can hear Ashes singing again.

Kit plops himself down to sit leaning against a wall, gesturing for Honey to do the same.

He does so promptly, sitting with one foot kept flat on the ground and leg upright, the other leg bent to pass under.

Kit is sitting in a fairly similar position.

"So. Kolya says he talked to you about, uh. Yesterday." 

Honey nods. "He did."

Kit starts to speak and cuts himself off a couple of times, struggling to figure out how to word something. 

"I—look, I'm not—I don't do apologies. But I—" He runs his hands through his hair, tugging hard.

"You weren't the one who fucked up there. That was—my head's fucked up, okay? I—overreact, and lash out, and. Shit happens. Fuck I hate talking about this." 

Honey ponders what to say for a while. Really thinks about it.

Thinking doesn't really help without any, like, actual thoughts, though, so in the end Honey falls back on an old standby. "No harm, no foul."

"...yeah, Sure. Let's go with that." Shrug. "Just, you don't have to—walk on eggshells around me, or whatever. It's not—it doesn't happen that often. Probably won't happen again this week, you might not meet me in one of those moods again this year." 

Honey nods, though Kit can probably notice that Honey is no less tense.

He has noticed, and he's trying to work out what to do about it. 

"...Do you like fighting?" he asks after a short pause. 

Honey shrugs. "Depends on why I'm fighting."

That's...not an unpromising answer. 

"Would you do it for fun?" 

Honey pauses for another long think. What does he do for fun? It feels good to be useful, but he's not sure that it is fun per se. Would it be useful to anyone here to fight 'for fun'? Maybe. It seems like Kit might prefer a 'yes' to a 'no', at least.

He thinks back to when he was a kid, back home. He had fun then, sometimes. It usually involved...his parents being happy, and being strong. Would fighting for fun benefit from his strength? Probably, though he would need to be careful not damage anything.

Overall, the result seems positive. "I could give it a try."

"Great! How about right now?" 

He cracks a real smile. "Sure." He throws himself up onto his feet as he speaks.

Kit grins back, and moves. Pushing off from the wall, he uncurls from his seated position like tension releasing in a spring. He lets the momentum carry him forward to throw a punch directly at Honey's head. 

Honey's response is quick and acrobatic, launching himself upwards and forwards, over Kit in a somersault through the air. That characterizes his overall fighting style as well. He is as likely, if not more, to go upwards as downwards, taking advantage of a large space of movement options to find odd places to throw powerful strikes from.

Kit laughs. 

His fighting style turns out to be somewhat similar in its unpredictability, although he's maybe spending a little more of his time dodging than Honey. Once he gets a feel for Honey's style, he sticks low to the ground, ducking and rolling. That metal arm has a powerful punch, but Kit seems to prefer using his legs, mostly trying to trip Honey or throw him off-balance rather than doing damage. 

The fight moves around, ranging through corridors and into an unoccupied room where they have more space to manoeuvre. Kit is still grinning, laughing like a wild thing. 

Honey isn't exactly smiling anymore, his expression is fairly neutral if Kit's watching it. His energy is just the same, though, high-pitched and focused on the spar. In response to Kit starting to fill the lower space, he lowers his jumping closer to the ground and increases his lateral speed, pouncing more than leaping now. That does make him more vulnerable to Kit's trip, which probably send him tumbling into the walls at a decent clip at least once, though he hurls himself back into action without a pause.

Then they can have some fun throwing each other into walls!

Rather than trying to match him in a contest of strength, Kit seems to be using Honey's own momentum against him. He starts dodging high as well as low, once rolling right over Honey's back and coming up laughing harder than ever. 

Kit has figured out Honey's weakness pretty much exactly. Honey ups the speed of his pounces, marginally, but can only go so fast before he starts risking splattering against and/or damaging the walls when he collides with them, and while Honey isn't clumsy per se, he is less than trained in dealing with an acrobatic opponent.

Honey does his best to keep up, but it probably doesn't take long for it to become clear that Kit's got the best of him.

And eventually, a pounce-and-trip manoeuvre ends with Honey on the floor and Kit on top of him. 

Honey lets out another short, sharp laugh. He's a little out of breath, maybe a little hungry too, but he's happy to be right about using his body being fun. "You're good."

"You're better than I expected, for a grunt," Kit replies cheerfully. He steps back, offering his metal hand to help Honey up.

"That was fun; we should do it again sometime." 

Honey takes the hand up with less but still noticeable cheer. "Yeah. Give me a tag whenever you're in the mood." He looks to head back to where Ashes was, if only to check if they're still there. "See you around."

"Sure." He walks off, whistling a bouncy tune. 

Ashes is where Honey left them, still playing with glass. 

"Hey. How'd it go?" 

"Better than I expected." He looks at any sculptures Ashes's has set to cool while he was sparring. "How's the glass?"

"About as good as I remembered. Think I'm done for now, though." They show Honey a row of little sculptures. 

"Want another go?" 

"Yeah."

His next attempt is probably still rather lopsided, but it's a little easier for him to be delicate now that he's worn himself out a bit. He even tries, cautiously, to shape the glass orb a bit once he's blown it some, though it can't really be said to look like anything in particular.

Ashes helps and offers advice, and is generally enthusiastic about Honey's attempts at art. 

Honey probably tried his hand two or three more times, producing glass globules with steadily increasing levels of intent to their shape. After a while he starts to have some trouble drumming up the modicum of creativity needed to make something other than just various oblate spheroids, and gets a bit unfocused in general.

“Thanks for the help.”

"It's cool. Thanks for joining me."

Honey gives a real smile as he gets up. He’s on a roll! He’s also pretty hungry, it’s been a while since that meal...yesterday? And even if he didn’t get sliced to ribbons this time it still got him peckish. As he leaves, he offers, “I’m going to go look for a meal.”

Ashes is busy packing up their tiny sculptures to take them somewhere. "Cool. See you around." 

They're quite a distance from the kitchen, and Honey has done a fair bit of wandering since the last time he was there. 

Honey got a pretty good look at the map earlier. Not enough to remember where exactly the kitchen is from here, but at least to tell if he's going in the right direction. He'll just head in that direction until he smells something like food, or else encounters someone.

Here's someone shambling down the corridor like a sleepwalker. Judging by his worn, stained clothes and matted hair, it doesn't look like he's bathed in some time. 

When he notices Honey, he snaps into wide-eyed alertness. His left hand, made of dull grey metal, is holding a pistol that wasn't there a second ago. 

Honey is, frankly, not especially bothered by the gun. "Hey, I'm Honey. I'm new. Could you point—"

At the words 'I'm new', the stranger's eyes widen even further.

His arm twitches up, and he fires. The bullet hits Honey straight in the chest. 

Honey winces a little, as much from the sound as the bullet embedding itself in his sternum, before digging it out with his thumb and forefinger, then pinching the wound closed until it stops weeping. "Sorry if I gave you a fright—"

The man started backing away when Honey didn't immediately drop dead.

When Honey starts speaking, he abandons caution and simply turns and runs. 

Honey sighs but is too hungry to bother giving chase. He just continues wandering vaguely in the direction of hopefully-food.

After some more wandering, he makes it back into the better-trafficked area around the kitchen. It's currently empty of other people, but the cupboards are stocked with an eclectic mix of food. Some of it is even recognisable, at least by category: meat is meat even if the specific animal can't be identified, for example. 

Honey isn't anything resembling a chef, but he's had to cook for himself plenty of times and knows how to put together something edible. Following his nose, he ends up pan-frying some of the meat, then cooking down the closest thing to onions he can find, before plating it up and eating it there in the kitchen.

Just as meat is meat, there are not all that many ways to design a stovetop. Honey can figure out how to fry things without much difficulty. 

His meal is undisturbed. 

He just hangs out in the kitchen for a bit, washing up after himself and letting himself digest, before deciding to go on a circuitous jog around the ship. He's starting to get the itch to try and be useful again, so if he hears anything that sounds like somebody in need of help, he'll definitely head towards it.

As Honey jogs along, he hears a rhythmic clash of metal on metal, coming from a side room. The door is closed and unlabelled. 

Honey isn't entirely sure what that sounds like, but it could be someone who'd like some help, so he'll take it. He opens the door a bit and peeks inside.

Martin looks up in surprise when the door opens. The noise stops, and it's not immediately clear what was causing it. 

"What—ah. Honey. Hello." He's mostly facing away from the door, but it's possible to see that Martin's waistcoat and shirt are undone to the waist.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm good. Just jogging by and heard a beat. Need help with anything?"

"Ah—no, I don't think so." 

He shifts a little, the movement letting Honey glimpse his exposed chest. It's the same shining brass as Martin's face—and presumably the rest of him—with a strange protruding plate in the centre that doesn't show through his clothes. From this angle, the front of the plate isn't visible. 

Fair enough. Honey finds himself curious, though, so rather than running off, he probes further. "Alright. Can I ask what you were up to?"

"Well, I—I was doing some maintenance, and I thought I'd—try something out at the same time."

Martin fiddles with a small screwdriver in one hand; his gloves are off, revealing more gleaming brass and delicate metal joints. He hesitates before continuing.

"Would you mind coming in, and closing the door?" 

Honey does as instructed, before returning his inquisitive gaze to Martin.

Martin, in turn, shifts on his chair to face Honey. 

The protruding plate turns out to not quite be in the middle of his chest, but instead a little to the left, over where his heart...apparently still sits, and can be seen pumping away through a clear window.

He sits very still, watching Honey for a reaction. 

If he's honest, Honey wasn't expecting that, but at the same time, this doesn't really seem to change anything. He had already been figuring that Martin was flesh on the inside somewhere, he just hadn't really bother to think on where. He quirks an eyebrow. "So, what were you trying?"

"I've had this body—" he taps his chest, making a sound like a bell— "for hundreds of years, but I still don't fully understand how it works. I don't think any of us do, really; I don't know if it bothers me more because I'm younger than most of them, or because more of me was replaced, but the older ones seem...at peace with it, for the most part." 

He runs his fingers lightly over the dials and gears on his chest, not quite touching, until he finds the one he was looking for. "Every so often, I...try something. Turn a dial, flip a switch, and see what happens. And today—" he twists something, presses in, and the rhythmic clanging starts up again. 

Now that Honey's watching, he can see that it's in time with the beat of Martin's heart. 

The idea that Honey is maybe butting into something rather personal finally catches up to him, and he visibly retreats into himself a bit. He's still curious, though, and also he gets the feeling that just splitting immediately would be worse somehow, so he follows up. "What did that...do?"

"I'm not sure." Martin picks up the screwdriver again, turns it over in his hand.

"I'd like to open up my chest, so I can see what's going on behind the plating, but I can't see what I'm doing very well at that angle, and I've...always been wary of doing it on my own, in case I take apart something that isn't meant to come apart." 

Target acquired. "Could I help with that?"

"Only if you're sure you're up to it. Opening up someone's chest can be a little disturbing, and I imagine that's still true even if the person in question is mostly made of metal." 

This is not the first time Honey has seen someone's chest be opened up. It's not even the hundredth. "I'll be fine. Can you tell me what to do?" He approaches Martin cautiously.

"Of course."

Martin talks Honey through it, and together they open up the panels that form the front of Martin's torso to reveal the cogs and gears and pistons beneath. It doesn't look very much like a human chest, other than the heart which...seems to be pumping something through the copper tubing that's wound around everywhere. It's anyone's guess whether it's actually blood. 

They end up propping the main chest plate on a chair, shiny side facing out, so Martin can use it as a mirror. Through it all, the steady beat continues, although it's sped up a little since they started. 

Honey is a steady and consistent pair of hands. More so than when he was glassblowing. There's less room for doubt when he's got guidance.

A steady and consistent pair of hands is a good thing to have, especially when they accidentally uncouple something that shouldn't have been uncoupled and Martin stops being able to move his right arm.

"Well. That wasn't meant to happen. Could you just reconnect that—"

Honey does so with a smooth, quick motion.

"Thank you." Martin flashes him a quick smile. "It's much easier having a second pair of hands for this." 

That's good! Honey cracks another smile. He could get used to smiling more. "I'm happy to help."

"Glad to hear it." 

With Honey helping, they manage to find what's producing the noise and figure out how it's all connected up. The beat does turn out to be keyed to the pump of Martin's heart, and there seems to be a sort of metronome he can use to change the speed, making his heart beat faster or slower. The rhythm changes to match. 

"I...have no idea why this is here." 

"Do you know...who put it there?" Honey asks, hoping it may help lead to answer but not really if this is even the right thing to ask?

"—yes? I thought Kolya...nevermind. Apparently not." Martin shakes his head. 

"All of our mechanisms were made by a scientist called Doctor Celestine. ...I would suggest not mentioning that name around the others, especially Kit." 

Honey nods, careful to not let the motion cause him to deviate. With a similar uncertain tone, he asks Martin another question. "Can you imagine why Doctor Celestine would put it there?"

"Of that, I am less certain. I suspect they thought it would be ironic somehow." 

Now that they've found the source of the noise, Martin turns it off and they start putting everything back in place. 

Honey follows along with equal precision as before. A part of him wonders what this Doctor Celestine was like, but it is a small part. After Martin's all put back together, Honey asks a different question. "I ran into a guy earlier, while I was getting something to eat. Jumpy, shot me and ran without so much as a hello. Is he's familiar to you, or have you got a stowaway?"

"Hmm? Oh, that could have been Mac. Dark hair, metal arm, looked like he hadn't slept or bathed in the last year?" 

He nods again. "Sounds like the guy. Any idea what I did to set him off?"

"Not r—" Martin frowns. "Did you say he shot you?" 

"Yup." He pulls one side of his loose rag of a shirt-remnant to indicate the healed but still bloodstained spot on his chest, before pulling the shirt back closed. "Got about half a sentence out of my mouth before he did."

"In that case...oh dear." Martin's mechanical face creases with worry. 

"It's likely that he thinks you're a new Mechanism." 

Honey ponders that for a moment, a sense of unease growing on him. "Should I try and let him know that's not the case?"

"Probably best not, although someone else should pass it on," Martin says as he stands up. 

"Though they'll have to find him first; I suspect he'll have gone to ground in the maintenance tunnels." He sighs. "Again." 

Honey nods. "Anything else you might use my help with?"

"Not at present, no—oh, have you eaten recently?" 

"Ah, yeah, I just made something for myself a little while ago. I hope that's alright?"

"Absolutely fine! I just worry if I don't see people at mealtimes, you know." 

He heads for the door. "I'll send someone to find Mac and let him know not to panic. Was there anything else?" 

"No, I think that's all." With that, Honey bows out and continues his wandering, though given his good mood he's aiming to encounter someone who sounds like they could use help again. Maybe Kolya? Engineering work is always abundant. Just need to track him down...

Where, oh where, could Kolya be? He's not in the kitchen. He's not in the cabin marked CHIEF ENGINEER that's probably his if it's anyone's. He's not in any of the recreation rooms around the kitchen and dining hall, and neither is anyone else. 

Maybe he's down on the engineering levels, like last time? 

Honey recalls that Kolya apparently tends to overwork himself, so engineering levels does make sense. Destination set.

The air down here is still warmer than on the higher decks.

The octokittens seem to like it, judging by how Honey hasn't seen a single one on the upper deck but can't go ten feet down here without nearly tripping over one. Most of them are mottled various shades of grey and brown, which blend in surprisingly well with their surroundings. Sometimes all that's visible at first is two—or sometimes three—glowing eyes. 

Honey pays the octokittens their toll of some small attention, but doesn't let himself get bogged down. Given their numbers, and the relative scarcity of humans on this ship, he figures they're probably not especially prone to asking for help with anything.