My Shoes Are Too Tight
Sep. 29th, 2024 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eatthepenMisc mecha short story originally written for Cohost for the prompt 'Mech Pilot who would teach you to dance but isn’t sure if they even remember.'
My Shoes Are Too Tight
The light was almost like the sun, and only the smoke haze made it bearable. Jentz coughed. Probably the air would become unbreathable before the slowly-rising heat did for them. Around the shattered torso of If Hate And Want Were One, the shrapnel-scarred muck was a drab grey, etched ever harder with shadows as the distant novasphere grew.
Yunis looked up as Jentz reached what passed for the floor. The young gunner's legs were covered by a blanket, hiding their awful injuries from view, and someone had placed his variolute in his lap. His eyes were wide with pharmaceutical effects and his fingers sounded drunken and sluggish on the quiet, unpowered strings, but the results were still recognisably music, brighter than it had any right to be.
Next to him sat Eever, her left cheek reddened by the burns that had claimed half her extravagant hair. The remains, hacked short, tufted copper from the crown of her head. The look she gave Jentz, face slack, one eyebrow raised, suggested his face had already given her the news.
Still standing, palms stinging from gripping the torn metal he'd just descended, Jentz grunted. "Weren't wrong. Whole sky's alight."
Eever nodded, looked sideways at Yunis. Opposite them, where the light was a little stronger, Fanin stirred. Ze looked untouched by the fighting, youthful skin smooth, eyes bright and watering. You would have had to have looked very close, at the Geiger readout on the technician's chest insignia, to see the truth of zir condition. With no help forthcoming from the retreating fleet, the novasphere was probably a mercy.
Probably a mercy for them all, Jentz told himself inwardly, as he started to sit down and his whiplashed spine screamed. He straightened again. The soft notes of Yunis' tune tumbled over themselves, whispering back from the walls.
"How long?" Fanin asked.
Jentz took a breath, tasting smoke and oil and death. "Air's charring. A few hours 'fore we black out, maybe."
Fanin pushed zirself slowly to zir feet, wincing through the movement. That was probably more the bruises and sprains than the radiation poisoning, the dose hadn't been enough for quick fatality. Standing, ze towered over Jentz by a head or more, though ze probably still weighed less. The hand ze lifted as ze took a few steps closer trembled, the long, fine fingers pale. Ze'd shucked most of zir jewellery, but kept a single gold signet on zir middle finger.
Jentz looked at zir quizzically.
"Do you remember, captain?" Fanin's voice was thinner than zir figure, which kept it sharp enough to cut through the music. "You promised me a dance."
"Huh." He did remember. When the tech had first been assigned to If Hate, ze had tried all sorts of things to bring the crew together, to little avail. Zir attempt to organise a dance in the mess hall aboard the Titan's parent carrier had been the most painful failure, ignored outright until Jentz had had to go down and tell zir to give it up.
Well, the All Blood Is Rot, All Rot Blood was a glowing ember now, if not already swallowed by the firestorm of the encroaching stellar superweapon, and good riddance. Jentz hoped the admiral had done the decent thing and died with her, but he doubted it. He took Fanin's hand, feeling like he might crush it if he was careless. "Well, then. What shall we dance?"
Fanin glanced down and away, a hint of colour rising to zir cheeks. Sheepishly, ze said, "I… um, I was hoping you could teach me, sir. You were an officer before the war started, right?"
Which meant that ze'd worked out that Jentz, long ago, must have gone through etiquette training. Fanin, a victim of one of the late, futile rounds of conscription, would have enjoyed no such luxury even if ze'd ever received a commission. Jentz shut his eyes, shook his head a little, painfully. "Long time ago. Canna remember much."
The young technician faltered a step closer. "Please, sir. I know I don't… we don't have long."
Jentz nodded, which hurt worse than the shaking. "Not turning you down. Just, thinkin'." The 'floor' was the smoothly curved, sloping inner surface of If Hate's armour, riddled with treacherous damage. There was no chance of anything resembling footwork.
Yunis' playing brightened a touch. Jentz reached forward, took Fanin's other hand and placed it on his own shoulder, then took the technician's waist. It was weird staring up into zir face, another uncomfortable angle for his stiffened neck, but he did his best. Slowly, shuffling, he started to turn them around, swaying his weight gently from foot to foot. Fanin followed. There was little resembling a pulse or rhythm to Yunis' playing, nothing to keep time to.
It wasn't much, but it was dancing.
My Shoes Are Too Tight
The light was almost like the sun, and only the smoke haze made it bearable. Jentz coughed. Probably the air would become unbreathable before the slowly-rising heat did for them. Around the shattered torso of If Hate And Want Were One, the shrapnel-scarred muck was a drab grey, etched ever harder with shadows as the distant novasphere grew.
Feeling the grinding movement of every too-old joint, Jentz climbed back down the makeshift ladder into the shade provided by the upthrusting arc of If Hate's right flank plate. It was the better part of fifty feet down to where the other surviving crew huddled as they had now for thirty-six hours. The blow that had finished them off in the now-concluded battle had hollowed out a space alongside the crew quarters before it lodged fatally in the titan's spine. It gave them a common space of sorts, dry and dark and forlorn.
Yunis looked up as Jentz reached what passed for the floor. The young gunner's legs were covered by a blanket, hiding their awful injuries from view, and someone had placed his variolute in his lap. His eyes were wide with pharmaceutical effects and his fingers sounded drunken and sluggish on the quiet, unpowered strings, but the results were still recognisably music, brighter than it had any right to be.
Next to him sat Eever, her left cheek reddened by the burns that had claimed half her extravagant hair. The remains, hacked short, tufted copper from the crown of her head. The look she gave Jentz, face slack, one eyebrow raised, suggested his face had already given her the news.
Still standing, palms stinging from gripping the torn metal he'd just descended, Jentz grunted. "Weren't wrong. Whole sky's alight."
Eever nodded, looked sideways at Yunis. Opposite them, where the light was a little stronger, Fanin stirred. Ze looked untouched by the fighting, youthful skin smooth, eyes bright and watering. You would have had to have looked very close, at the Geiger readout on the technician's chest insignia, to see the truth of zir condition. With no help forthcoming from the retreating fleet, the novasphere was probably a mercy.
Probably a mercy for them all, Jentz told himself inwardly, as he started to sit down and his whiplashed spine screamed. He straightened again. The soft notes of Yunis' tune tumbled over themselves, whispering back from the walls.
"How long?" Fanin asked.
Jentz took a breath, tasting smoke and oil and death. "Air's charring. A few hours 'fore we black out, maybe."
Fanin pushed zirself slowly to zir feet, wincing through the movement. That was probably more the bruises and sprains than the radiation poisoning, the dose hadn't been enough for quick fatality. Standing, ze towered over Jentz by a head or more, though ze probably still weighed less. The hand ze lifted as ze took a few steps closer trembled, the long, fine fingers pale. Ze'd shucked most of zir jewellery, but kept a single gold signet on zir middle finger.
Jentz looked at zir quizzically.
"Do you remember, captain?" Fanin's voice was thinner than zir figure, which kept it sharp enough to cut through the music. "You promised me a dance."
"Huh." He did remember. When the tech had first been assigned to If Hate, ze had tried all sorts of things to bring the crew together, to little avail. Zir attempt to organise a dance in the mess hall aboard the Titan's parent carrier had been the most painful failure, ignored outright until Jentz had had to go down and tell zir to give it up.
Well, the All Blood Is Rot, All Rot Blood was a glowing ember now, if not already swallowed by the firestorm of the encroaching stellar superweapon, and good riddance. Jentz hoped the admiral had done the decent thing and died with her, but he doubted it. He took Fanin's hand, feeling like he might crush it if he was careless. "Well, then. What shall we dance?"
Fanin glanced down and away, a hint of colour rising to zir cheeks. Sheepishly, ze said, "I… um, I was hoping you could teach me, sir. You were an officer before the war started, right?"
Which meant that ze'd worked out that Jentz, long ago, must have gone through etiquette training. Fanin, a victim of one of the late, futile rounds of conscription, would have enjoyed no such luxury even if ze'd ever received a commission. Jentz shut his eyes, shook his head a little, painfully. "Long time ago. Canna remember much."
The young technician faltered a step closer. "Please, sir. I know I don't… we don't have long."
Jentz nodded, which hurt worse than the shaking. "Not turning you down. Just, thinkin'." The 'floor' was the smoothly curved, sloping inner surface of If Hate's armour, riddled with treacherous damage. There was no chance of anything resembling footwork.
Yunis' playing brightened a touch. Jentz reached forward, took Fanin's other hand and placed it on his own shoulder, then took the technician's waist. It was weird staring up into zir face, another uncomfortable angle for his stiffened neck, but he did his best. Slowly, shuffling, he started to turn them around, swaying his weight gently from foot to foot. Fanin followed. There was little resembling a pulse or rhythm to Yunis' playing, nothing to keep time to.
It wasn't much, but it was dancing.