Delayed Gifts

When a tree is growing, sometimes you have to cut away branches so it doesn't choke itself to death with overgrowth.

It was supposed to be a voluntary process. Something they took to be closer to her. To show the outside of their connection. It was supposed to be something that happened gradually, over time. Kennedy could feel it in the middle of the night. The remains of the old moon sparkling far away from the earth, just in front of the new one that had been put in the old's place.

Immediately, his phone started going off.

His front door slammed open two minutes later, and Kennedy was in the streets wearing pajama pants and the team's jacket. In one hand was the emergency bag he had for one of the kids in blittle league having a bad reaction, and in the other he was calling Nagomi.

She flails for a moment before collecting the phone and asking "Who th' hell is callin' this late?"

"Nags, you still have shell, right? It's not going crazy right now is it?"

Nagomi shakes her head to get some of the cobwebs out, and then touches her claw. Still the same spines, still the same muscle hidden beneath chitin. "No, Ken. Are you okay? Is anyone hurt?" The tone of his voice told her that someone had been, and she's already half out of bed like somehow she can magic her way from Hawaii to Baltimore fast enough to help.

"No, and yes, but stay. We don't know if it's just from coming back or if something's wrong. Get on the horn to everyone else outside the city limits and have them stay out there until we know what's up." He clumsily hits the red 'end call' on the glass after the third try, and drops his phone into the bag as he walks faster. Pedro was the closest, hopefully Luis was still with him. Otherwise he'd have to get Forrest first to pick the lock on that new shell.

When he arrives at the park where Pedro had utilities hooked up, Kennedy could tell it was bad. People in night clothes stand outside their trailers and mumble as they point flashlights. Kennedy storms past them, ignoring the feeling of striding across gravel as he makes his way to the heart of the disturbance, where it looks like a ball of metal was shaking ominously.

Moving right up, Kennedy pounds his fist against the nearest available surface just gets a mechanically projected wail. "Open up, Pedro! Can't help you through all this shell!" There's little reaction at first, before the outside LEDs flicker from red to pink for a moment, and the outer seals crack open like a molt.

Kennedy didn't have time to give thanks, he's grabbing access rungs and hauling himself upwards and inwards. The inside of his shell was as warm as flesh, and reminded Kennedy of the school guided trips into the bowels of the Crabitat. A hiss of steam, the tingle of touching a metal panel that's been poorly grounded, and Kennedy descends deeper.

The farther in he goes though, the more he finds chitin clinging to the surface of metal. He finds himself cursing the choice to just let everyone go. They should have stayed together. They had protected each other up there and then just let their fucking guards down. Ten Years and they just tried to pretend like things would work normally.

Blood runs from Kennedy's hands and knees and arms and legs as he crawls into deeply layered metal and chitin and sharp edges and spines. The sign that he's found the center is a solid layer of black shell. And beyond it, the sound of sobs. "Pedro! I'm here! I'll get you out soon, just keep breathing!"

Air was the first worry. Anyone else would have grown out, probably. Maybe. But Pedro was so cooped up in this damn thing that it had nowhere to go. Kennedy opens up his bag of tricks and pulls out the big guns. Normally he'd use a chisel, or a drill if it looked like it might work. It didn't. They call it a Captive Bolt Gun. Basically meant for stunning big animals before killing them. Kennedy sets the barrel against his friend's overgrown shell and pulls the trigger.

There's the crack of a blank .25 caliber round. A 3 inch tungsten bolt fires out of the end, slamming to a stop after shattering the black shell. The sound Pedro makes is like Kennedy just tried to kill him, but there's no time for that. The bolt is thrown back in the bag and Kennedy's hands start tearing at the shattered edges keeping his friend trapped.

Thin muscle, sharp edges, Kennedy tears through it all. The worry now was that if he didn't get the way clear, Pedro's new air hole might end up drowning him. The entire mechanical shell he's built around himself starts shuddering and shaking now as Pedro thrashes. Faster. Kennedy looks like he works at a slaughterhouse, and the only solace he has is it's his friend this time and not a scared kid.

The Great Mother wasn't perfect. Just as close as she could be.

A hand thrusts out of the hole Kennedy's been breaking open, and grabs hold of him like it was the only chance for life. Kennedy grabs hold hard in return, fingers locking together even slick with gore, before he braces and hauls backwards. Pedro emerges with a wracking breath and immediately chokes on spittle and gore, hanging half out of the shell like a partially-born bird.

Kennedy allows himself a few deep breaths. He was tired. Too fucking tired to be doing this. Ten years or twenty or however long they had been trapped in that fucking place, and he should have quit as soon as he got back.

And then that was enough. He reaches down, grabs his bag, and starts climbing back out of Pedro's shell. There were more Crabs out there. He needed to make sure the team was safe, and only then can he finally collapse and wish for death.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Later, Pedro will realize the letters posted in his control chamber have been dyed red in his own blood. He can't tell what they read now, and he struggles to remember what was written there in the first place.  How can it be so much harder that than a dead language last spoken in earnest thousands of years ago?

Trying to remember something you've seen out of the corner of your eye every day for a decade. The words should be there. They should be easy. But instead it's just a black smear on red paper. Half a word every three are legible, chaining together like a chant so something even more primal than the ancients. He could just ask Val. But then he would have to talk to him. He would have to admit what happened in that decade. How he tried to hang on at first, but how reading the letters hurt so much after a while he couldn't bring himself to actually read them. How instead he had them posted like talismans. Can he bring himself to do that? To go back to that sun scoured place, if even long enough to talk to the man he loved?

From a monitor buried deep inside the control station, a dull pink form bites their lip. They could feel the terror running through him. They wondered if violating the sanctity of his shell was forgivable, even if to save his life. They could recite the letters by heart, a memory of ages married to computational storage, but even seeing him frantically tracing the letters and mumbling under his breath, they stay quiet. They hate themself for it. But there was too much they didn't know now in this place. And like this, he was here. He was home.

Time could stop and they'd be here together, forever.