Warnings for mentions of character death (off-screen/in the past) and some serious existential robo-angst.
Written based on two lovely prompts asking for Jade/Kanaya space adventures and Jadebot/Aradiabot, this certainly got away from me and took up a lot more of my time than I was intending it to!
Now I did the best I could in terms of the basics, but take this as sci-fi by and for the science fictionally challenged. Come on, the canon includes asteroids that maintain a breathable atmosphere and are also called meteors for some reason, what do you want me to do? And when it comes to the robots, just...go with it. It's what I've got. All resemblance to the single episode of Firefly I've seen in my life is mostly coincidental.
Theme song is "I Prefer the Sky" by the Queenstons and I don't even regret telling you that.
"You certainly spend a good deal of your time fussing over trivial matters, particularly for one who claims such intense intellectual superiority."
"A loose button is in no way trivial." She skillfully pulls the needle in and out, the thread looping up against itself to hold the carved marble stone close to the girl's embroidered vest. "And either way I don't really see how these two categories of interest have to be mutually exclusive."
The subject of her attention makes a noncommittal sound, lips pressed gently together. "Then please, do me the honor of explaining the cerebral intricacies of button-sewing."
She pulls the thread taut, knotting it delicately behind the button's gleaming surface. "I've always been of the opinion that clothing holds power."
"Oh?"
"Absolutely. It conveys status, whether or imagined or genuine, and invites the universe to make assumptions about your worldview." She pulls herself off her knees to the balls of her feet, smoothing down the vest at the girl's hip bones. "And to introduce fashion to some far-off colony is to introduce society, commerce, a common culture…because of course though the designs may be originally from some central place of power they will slowly change to suit the convenience and whims of the local inhabitants, stressing their own independence and separate goals and achievements. Not that this would be the only dividing factor, of course, but in some cases –"
The girl cups Kanaya's chin in her hands, pulling her gaze gently upwards until their eyes meet. She smiles, lips still decidedly closed, and Kanaya grins sheepishly back.
"So talkative, Ms. Maryam."
Kanaya stands and wraps one arm around the violet-clad waist, feeling lace trim press up against her calloused fingers.
Later on she surprises herself by forgetting whether or not they were dancing when white light screamed through the windows and the world went to sound.
x
Ms. Kanaya Maryam refers to herself as a tailor, though the term is in most ways misleading. She creates custom clothing and does alterations on the side, attracting the business of mostly the rich and famous (rich and victorious) of Alternia: those who can afford to spend precious hours thinking about color combinations and the imposing flare of their capes. However, given the deplorable state of fashion on the home world and its surrounding tributaries, even this isn't enough to support her and her scandalous appetite for rare books of paranormal lore. So she engages in the occasional extrasolar trading venture, selling cutting-edge fabric samplers and avant-garde designs beyond the reaches of the troll empire.
At the very least, this is what her travel papers imply.
Currently she is surrounded by trunks' worth of wares, piled upon one another in ridiculous leaning towers that are meant to take up as little space in the terminal as possible but really only succeed in making other cramped hopefuls look even more nervous than they already were. She wears her own patented Ring Boots (designed for comfortable travel on any terrain!) and a full green bustle in back that opens to sleek practical leggings in the front, where she clutches her mesh handbag too tightly.
The civilian-access terminal, small and overcrowded but meticulously white-clean, is populated by a handful of small ships, mostly scouts and traders. Some are guarded by a troll dressed for travel, clipboard in hand and hawking destinations like storefront goodies, while others are left unattended. Beyond the tall steel doors to the right, the space corps reserves lie in wait.
The glances of her fellow travelers are quick and hungry, taking in the sleek forms of empty ships as they shove past each other to peruse them. They size up sharp-toothed captains warily, measuring the risk as their hands tighten on their trunks, likely as not containing material that would prove to be embarrassing upon inspection: state-of-the-art Alternian weaponry, or perhaps illicit sopor for the interplanetary market.
No one claimed the business of the terminal was as clean as the walls.
Kanaya adjusts the feather on her hat, because the damn thing hasn't sat right since the dust storm yesterday and also she desperately needs something to do with her hands right now. She needs the rumors to be true. It's today or never again, and she can't afford –
"Skaia system!"
Her vascular organ leaps into her throat.
"Skaia system, right here! We go straight to Prospit, no stops, full stop!" The voice, bright and brave and sent from heaven, rings into her like a full bell choir.
She breathes again, relief smacking her into motion, and pushes forward through the crowd to see the captain. "Oh, that's very good, I–"
She notices the dark, charged tone of the trolls' mutterings, the way they draw back from the two of them, around the same time she sees the captain.
"Hi!" the young woman says, bright and brave and sent from somewhere, and Kanaya says "hello" like she's crash landed from some nonsense asteroid where that is an even minimally proper reaction.
"I'm Captain Jade Harley of the Earth Special Spatial Regiment, and I am at your service!" She pulls a floppy-wristed salute, and Kanaya manages to shut her mouth before "but you're a human!" spews all over the girl and her lurid lime uniform. "Name please," she says, cheerfully shoving a clipboard up at Kanaya's face.
x
Captain Jade Harley of the Earth Special Spatial Regiment is as foreign as she is chipper. She breezes through customs like someone who has the right to, and treats incredulous troll officials as if they were human (she certainly does not act as if she were a troll). She wears her long, human-flaccid hair down and hastily-combed, and it sticks and flips around her uniform like a flattened but affectionate long-haired mountain bovine. Kanaya mostly follows behind her in bewilderment, helping to move her own overflowing luggage into the ship (a scout: small, white, and pointed, with "E.S.S. Space Crevice" emblazoned in proud shining gold on the side. Kanaya has to look twice).
Once they're aboard and Kanaya's handed over the first half of her transport fee, Captain Harley insists on a tour, though there isn't much to see on such a small vessel. A cockpit, the living quarters (bunkbeds, Harley explains with excitement), the storage bay, and the gun deck, which besides holding the compact laser station for rear fire seems to serve as the armory. The variety of weaponry is astounding, clean, and a little bit unnerving.
"And…this is a scouting ship?" she asks, peering at the well-worn laser controls.
Captain Harley idly twists the chair back and forth. Well-oiled. "Yep! Though I do a lot of work around the Skaia system, so sometimes…well, you know how it is right now. From what I hear there hasn't even been a ship between there and Alternia in awhile now."
Kanaya knows very well; she's calculated the risk of travel time and again, and were she to tell Harley everything she would never be able to stress enough how desperate she had been to find someone, ianyone/i bound for Skaia.
"And I'm stationed so far from Earth that I tend to be a bit…freelance…Oh, but don't worry, I'll keep you safe, Ms. Maryam!" She looks up earnestly through slightly clouded glasses and Kanaya feels the urge to take a rag to the lenses. "I take on passengers all the time. 'Specially now that I'm down a travel partner; it gets kind of lonely sometimes."
"Why is that?" she asks bluntly, following the captain up the ladder to the dim central passageway.
"Why is it lonely?" Harley looks back over her shoulder in surprise, and her mess of hair sways with her.
"Oh, no, I meant…why are you missing a partner? Not that I'm…mistrustful of your capabilities as a leader, I'm sure you are…were fantastic – "
Harley laughs, an abrupt, barking sound that doesn't suit her gullible smile. "Don't worry about offending me, I wasn't even the leader, technically! My brother and I were partners." She swings herself back into the cockpit, and Kanaya stoops to follow. "But he decided to go pirate," she says with a rough sigh, blowing her bangs away from her eyes.
"What, just like that?" Kanaya feels herself becoming intrusive (a terrible habit of hers) but Harley seems to welcome it.
"Yep! Said he couldn't do any more good on this little clunker than he could being 'Captain Hook with lasers.' But between you and me," she says frankly, plopping down in the pilot's chair, "I think it had a lot to do with a very pretty pirate lady he met outside Lolar." She pats the copilot's seat in invitation, and Kanaya sits down, grateful for the rest. Harley surveys her with open curiosity now, eyes sweeping across her fashionable clothes and taking in the shape of her horns. Kanaya shifts in her seat, uncomfortably certain that humans don't really understand what could constitute flirting in troll culture. The captain's eyes are green, dimmer than her own but with a more intriguing shape to them than most of the humans she's seen before, mainly in news bulletins or on the streets of Prospit (or in a cathedral, a long time ago and far away).
"Captain Harley, if you pardon my curiosity," she starts hesitantly.
"I do."
"What are you doing so far from…I realize Earth is politically neutral in the Skaian war –"
"Like I said," she shrugs, "I can get away with freelance, even if no one wants to get involved militarily." She flicks a few switches, and a faint vibration runs through the metallic floor. Kanaya can't quite wrap her head around how openly the woman implies a disregard for her planet and its diplomacy, to a total stranger, no less.
"And…you can afford to interact freely with Alternians? I may be behind on my politics but I've head our respective governments are not on the best of terms."
Harley moves a few more levers and presses some buttons, and Kanaya feels an engine thrumming to life as belts suddenly snake around her, pulling her tight to her seat. "I was visiting an old friend," she says cheerfully, raising her voice over the sound, though her pink human lips tug into a mischievous expression. Familiarity jolts Kanaya with as much strength as the sudden roar of the rockets (humans and their mysteries, soft and gloating).
"And here we gooooooooo!" The captain pushes a lever forward with all the drama of an action film. Kanaya's stomach drops away as they climb, the small vessel shuddering with the force of it. With an alarming knocking sound the left wing bumps against the high opening roof, and Harley laughs as they spin twenty degrees to the north. "Pchooooo!"
Kanaya grips her armrest tightly. "Your brother wasn't, by any chance, the pilot?" she shouts.
"How did you know?" Harley replies, grinning full-toothed like adventure incarnate.
x
She comes right on time, as always.
Jadebot is halfway between point a and point b on her transport route; the city's golden gleam is stronger in the glow of her high beams but dark around the edges, golden spires inserting themselves into her vision above the gold-paved streets. Something ungolden pings against her sensors and she darts off the golden main road, straining every function to search for a familiar, ungolden pulse.
The foreign body moves quickly and furtively, building to golden building, and Jadebot turns down her own ocular lights to minimum, so that no one is exposed against her will.
She comes once every eleven nights this time of year, and she is very pretty. Her chrome body is impractical for hiding, because everything that surrounds her is shinier (golden) and because her rockets are old and emit a quiet rumble as she speeds through the streets. Jadebot doesn't think she's hiding, though; the girl wants to avoid attention but not enough to hinder her movement. She speeds, as she always does, towards the official Prospitian armory. No one stops her, so neither does Jadebot. But she feels, as always, the bizarre irregularity of her radio output, the way it expands and contracts until the steep in-out of its existence is as much of a signal as the wave itself.
Dot-dot-hold, dot-dot-hold. Thumping like something's alive in there.
x
"So about three Earth weeks to the Skaia system, I think," Harley says the next morning – or what approximates as "morning" on Kanaya's personal clock. She also says, "Call me Jade."
Kanaya wakes up slowly without the sun to warm her, with nothing but the low florescent lights on the ceiling to drag her from her bed. Jade hands her a breakfast packet once she gets herself upright. Kanaya assumes (prays) that the ship is being run on auto-pilot.
"You don't have to adjust your schedule to meet mind, you know! I know you guys sleep at daytime-"
"Thank you," she says, taking the pack. It's emblazoned with "EGGS" in bright red letters; Kanaya would have liked to contest this notion. "But I keep an unusual schedule, for an Alternian."
Jade shrugs and takes it in stride. "There's really no difference out here anyway. I just sleep whenever. Not that I don't miss the sun…my sun, that is." She smiles with a ready softness that Kanaya is unused to. She has met trolls, of course, with such gentleness in their bodies, but they betray it only warily, so completely on-pain-of-death that everything is tainted by the time it reaches the surface. Jade has no such reservations. She plops down in a worn metal chair and folds a table out from the wall in front of her. She gestures to the seat across, and Kanaya reads "we do things different here" into her every motion.
She returns a smile cautiously, taking a step towards her personal bag. "My hair is usually a mess upon waking."
"It looks great," Jade says. She crosses an ankle over a knee, resting her leg against the arm of her chair. "Let's get to know each other," she adds, and something in her grin shifts slightly towards the authoritative, just enough to make Kanaya reluctantly abandon her quest for a hairbrush and take a seat.
"What would you like to know?" she asks, conscientiously crossing her ankles. She wills herself not to play with her fingers.
"Just…about you! You said you're a tailor; what kind of clothes do you make? Why do you sell all the way in Prospit? I've only been to a few places on Alternia, but where are you from?"
Oh heavens, Kanaya thinks, two more weeks. She has worried about this, because she is a terrible liar. She shifts back in her seat, trying to appease the guilty twist of her insides. "It's not that I don't find you to be interesting as a travel partner, Captain –"
"Jade."
"…Jade. And I am sure that we will have many an interesting conversation on our way to Prospit, preferably with significant contributions from each party (possibly leading to a much-increased understanding between our two cultures), but at the moment there are certain factors that I would rather not discuss." She tugs at the EGGS, fingers slipping nervously against the wrapping. "I don't mean to say that you are, of course, untrustworthy, but we have only just met, and perhaps –"
Jade waves her hand dismissively – vigorously so. So insistently does she shake it that Kanaya at first worries that she's having some kind of seizure. "No no, that's fine! Oh I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to pry, I just like talking to people, and I thought that maybe we…I, um…"
She grins, then jumps to her feet, chair clattering. The movements are so sudden and inelegant that Kanaya startles, and the packet of EGGS rips down the middle, spilling pasty EGG substitute over the table.
Jade apologizes just as frenetically, smiling sheepishly and talking loudly about cloths, and Kanaya realizes that space travel must be incredibly lonely.
She stands up in the awkward, half-apologetic manner of someone who has made a mess of another person's house. Jade finds a cloth and wipes the table down, chattering about how she's been sure the artificial gravity is just the slightest bit off, and if she has time she'll get right to fixing it, because she's good with her hands, yaknow, and if Kanaya ever wants to see how a gravity simulator works she should come right down to the engine room with her sometime.
"How long has your partner been absent?" Kanaya asks, tone delicate.
"About an Earth year and a half now," she says, just as chipper, glancing up at Kanaya through her dark bangs. "I've had other company, though. When we get to Prospit I'm going to get her back."
"Her?"
"My new partner," she says, picking off the last bits of EGG. "If I…if she wants to come back."
They dispose of the rag – a hole in the wall sucks it right up – and Kanaya turns down a new packet. Jade smiles at her (does she ever stop?) with the same bright softness, quickly shaking off…whatever this was. The quick darting eyes behind the glasses don't hover for long anymore. Kanaya feels dreadfully like she's insulted her host, and that her host is trying to make her feel at home again and it's just mixing things up worse than ever. Kanaya doesn't even know what they've been trying not to mix.
"So...three more weeks until sunlight," she says.
"Yep!" Jade replies. "Um." They stand quietly for a moment. "How about that gravity simulator?"
"I'd love to see it," Kanaya says, nodding vigorously. Her stomach unknots slightly.
By the time they've finished going over every inch of the engine room, Jade looking earnestly back at her from each mechanic's nook and cranny as she describes the function of the machines, she feels much lighter. The Captain is an easy talker, and Kanaya doesn't tell her about the streak of grease across her cheek until she grabs Jade's hand to pull her out from the work pit below the simulator. She looks good that way, competent and professional and ready to take on any challenge, and Kanaya sees in the jaunty spring of her elbows as she monkeys with her wrenches that she feels it, too.
x
Eleven nights later, she hasn't come.
Prospitian days are very quick (.434 Earth days, Jadebot knows unquestionably). The world spins frantically on its little axis as the people brace themselves for every assault, sending endless waves of soldiers to the bloodbath on Skaia's surface and leaving ever fewer carapaces to work the home planet. Jadebot has a solid job helping to pick up that slack. She thinks this is probably because she can fly and also she is very friendly and helpful. "A pretty competent drone," the commissioner called her just the other day!
Jadebot is definitely a helper. She's helping both the Prospitian people, who are so nice and sunny, and also the Real Jade, who is back having adventures on her spaceship. Jadebot liked the spaceship, but Prospit is definitely great, too.
But it's eleven nights later, and the mysterious robot lady hasn't come. This is backwards from how things are supposed to be. For as long as Jadebot has been on Prospit, the foreign body has arrived one day earlier for every three arrivals. She always shows up at the same time of night, and seems to be gone by morning. Jadebot doesn't want to think about it too hard, but she's pretty sure she's worried.
She continues along her transport route, distracted enough to nearly collide head-on with an armored ship filled with genetic soldiers. She apologizes, but she doesn't have the heart to pay attention while she does it. She knows she has to keep working; Real Jade is counting on her to make money! Real Jade doesn't know that Jadebot has been working very hard day and night, just to give her that extra bit of cash by the time Real Jade swings by to pick it up.
But she can't help but be distracted. She's been looking forward to seeing the lady, if only because she can usually predict exactly when and where she will appear. They cross routes directly, or at least they're supposed to.
Jadebot finishes her route and comes back to the place she was supposed to see the woman four hours ago. There isn't much option of where to go when the commissioner can't find her anything else to do for awhile. She doesn't need to sleep or eat, and her creator did such a good job that she rarely needs repairs. Sometimes if she's feeling particularly vain she'll stop by for a quick coat of paint, brightening the Prospitian gold color that she's adopted quite willingly for her chassis.
She sits on the ground underneath a bus station canopy (it's important to always leave the bench open for those less able!) and switches to hibernate mode, letting her mind wander across Prospit through maps and diagrams and information she's pulled from public databases.
The light of Skaia is starting to streak the western sky when she sees her. The robot moves erratically this time, her rocket catching and sputtering, red eyes straining to stay lit. Every clunking piece of her seems to lean forward, stretching towards the armory four blocks away, but by now her trajectory is more down than straight across, tripping over the air until she's falling headfirst towards the golden pavement.
Jadebot barely has time to rocket straight back through active mode into Hero Mode, sights fixating on the plummeting body as she reroutes all power to primary functions and zooms to the rescue!
She catches her three feet from the ground, the speed slamming the silver body against her chest as the two of them rocket towards the other side of the street and the hard glittering wall of the fire station. Jadebot activates her emergency stopping mechanism, jets firing to life down her front and blazing across the woman's chassis. It works, but the angle of her body in flight is absolutely terrible for this and her lower body flips up from under her, sending the two of them careening into the ground.
She loses hold of the lady, flipping onto her back with a resounding clash. A slightly louder one follows and a silver arm flops over her chest. The sound echoes down the empty street.
"Ouch," she says mildly, because she's been programmed to give damage reports despite not having nerve endings. Then, "Are you okay?"
The arm is removed. Jadebot sits up in time to see the woman's retreating back.
"Wait, don't go!" She catches up with her easily; the stranger has abandoned her rockets entirely, reduced to three auxiliary wheels at the base of her metal skirt. As she bumps along the road her arms hang loose in a disturbingly lifeless manner; one shoulder is cut deeply, straight to the sparking wiring within.
"You're hurt!" She gingerly touches the base of the cut and the woman recoils, nearly setting her off-balance entirely.
"Impossible," she says. The voice is unnaturally serene under a coating of tinny distortion and what sounds like radio interference. "Machines can't be hurt."
"You know what I mean!" Jadebot says. "There are repair shops around here; let me help you."
The woman slowly turns her head, the joint between neck and shoulders creaking uncomfortably. She refuses to stop moving forward, but Jadebot feels the red light of her scan; she returns the courtesy and analyzes the very limited data that comes up.
MODEL: Aradia
DESIGNATION: Dreambot
That…is nothing like what this information is supposed to look like! Jadebot knows that her own stats are filled with travel logs and primary functions and numbers for a name.
"You're really interesting," she says enthusiastically. "Can I help you?"
Aradiabot – is that what she likes to be called? – turns away, continuing to bounce wordlessly down the street. Her chassis gleams in the light of a steadily-rising Skaia, reflecting the burn of countless glowing buildings.
"Wait a second," Jadebot calls again, a bit exasperated now, "at least let me –"
A shout jolts through her and she's halfway out of her bunk before she's figured out why she's awake, legs dangling off the side, one hand fumbling for her glasses and the other for her pistol and she has to get to the gun deck now –
Jade Harley hears a quiet moan from the bed beneath her.
She stops to breathe.
Kanaya shifts on her mattress, making quiet sounds of discomfort. If Jade thinks about it hard enough she can trace the sudden noise that woke her to that same voice, raised in a pain that, while evidently not harmless, is a helluva lot better than the ship being under fire. She remembers her brother slamming the door open, shouting "all hands on deck" as if that really meant something on a two-person craft that is definitely not a boat, John, and making a frantic run for the cockpit. Her own corresponding motions are more delicately crafted into her muscles than she would care to admit to a passenger.
They're still quite a ways out from any of the conflict, but you never know.
She listens in silence, feet dangling, until it becomes clear that Kanaya's sleep isn't going to get any better. She's muttering something, but Jade is learning a little something about the privacy of dreams and she doesn't try very hard to figure out what she's saying. She thinks she hears an unfamiliar girl's name.
Maybe a month ago she would have shaken her awake and demanded to know what was bothering her, because really she doesn't like hearing her friends in pain and would do anything she could to fix it!
Now when she tries to think of her own dreams all she can remember is golden spires and "dot-dot-hold" and the rattle of rusty wheels on pavement. Why hadn't she noticed, while asleep, how badly worn the robot's wheels were? She hates when things get all rusty, they look unloved. Why hadn't she noticed?
But Kanaya is still murmuring and Jade's heart hurts for it, so she leaps to the floor and lands with as loud of a "thud" as possible. Kanaya jumps and stirs, blinking blearily awake.
"Oh my gosh I'm so sorry, did I wake you up?" Jade asks, over-loud. "I think I'll be awake for now, but feel free to get right back to sleep."
Kanaya rubs at her eyes, and Jade is struck by how incredibly precious that looks. Kanaya is awfully precious. She's also very pretty, even with her hair all messy and sticking to her cheeks. It's only been a week and Jade already feels incredibly fond of her guest. She made Kanaya tea once and she looked so poised and elegant drinking it that now she has the desire to make Kanaya tea pretty much all the time.
"No, I think I'll join you," she says, voice groggy, and Jade checks to make sure the circles under her eyes aren't too dark. It's hard getting used to the complete lack of reasonable timekeeping aboard a space vessel.
"Don't rush yourself," she says, and she feels wisps of something warm and familiar in the pit of her stomach when she says, "I'll make you some tea."