Chapter Text
Lyfrassir Edda had been alone for a long time. (He'd lost count somewhere along the third decade and never bothered trying to figure it out again. All he had to do was concentrate, really.)
Most days, he just stared out of the windows of the Ymir, the small vessel he'd commandeered to flee the Yggdrasil system, looking at the stars and ignoring the rainbow in his veins hissing destruction and saccharine promises.
(At first, he'd thought the Bifrost's Mark was purely physical. Then he'd died the first time and woken up again to find the engine, whose explosion had killed him in the first place, repaired with gold and bismuth.)
(He'd spent the next five years going from one panic attack to the next and more bottles of alcohol than he ever wanted to admit to.)
Sometimes, Lyf would go planetside and stock up on booze and nonperishable foods. Books, if he was feeling extremely bored.
Violin strings, if he'd run out.
His first decade had been spent documenting as much about the Yggdrasil System as he could remember, between bottles of whiskey and mead and fits of mourning.
At some point, however, after he'd gotten sick of his own voice, he'd remembered the sound of a violin. (It was accompanied by an old sense of annoyance his old life felt lifetimes away, now along with the vague memory of a prison cell, but Lyfrassir took annoyance over the apathy that had started to wear on him, by that point.)
So, he'd bought (well, stolen) one at his next stop planet-side.
Lyf had gotten pretty decent at playing it, he thought. (He'd also amassed a veritable hoard of violins, which was funny for a reason Lyf couldn't didn't want to recall.)
(He knew he'd repressed most if not almost his entire memories, quite on purpose, when the grief got too much after twenty years and more suicide attempts than he cared to admit to.)
Today should have been another of those normal days.
Should have been, then Lyf saw the woman floating outside. She was clutching a rusted piece of metal he couldn't identify, flaking apart as it was.
He blinked (void)black eyes, startled. "... what the Hel...?" Lyf's voice rang out into the Ymir for the first time in a week.
It was then he noticed that she was still alive. The woman had shivered for just a moment, clutching the sheet of metal infinitesimally closer before stilling again, probably freezing to death.
This cycle repeated twice over before Lyf finally snapped out of his shocked daze and managed to get the stranger inside his ship.
He laid the unfamiliar woman on his (rarely used, though when he did, he slept for days at a time) cot, gently pried the sheet of metal (some sort of ship hull, maybe?) from her frozen stiff fingers, leaning it against a free bit of wall and then went to get a bottle of whiskey.
Lyf had a feeling he was going to need it.
Nastya woke up on a cot.
This was unexpected, seeing how she'd been drifting through the dark depth of the void, for around a hundred years now.
(She'd honestly thought her Mechanism would fail, after a while. Given Brian's stint in a sun, maybe that had been too much to hope for.)
With a small sigh, the (ex-)Engineer pulled her faintly aching body into a sitting position and forced her eyes open, taking in the ship she had found herself in.
The first thing Nastya noticed was that it was significantly smaller than the Aurora.
The entire starship was also coated in a faint rainbow shimmer. It kind of reminded the Cyberian of Yggdrasil - the last System the Mechanisms had visited before her departure. (She'd slipped away while the others were all setting up for the first brainstorming session to a new album based on the incident in question. It was only Jonny on his way there that had seen Nastya. He hadn't had the words to stop her.)
Right now, she seemed to be in a sort of common room-slash-med bay, if the eclectic mix of medical supplies and the pillow fort next to the pile of violins was any indication.
The second thing Nastya noticed was the man lying on the pillow fort, well on his way through a bottle of whiskey and not the first, given how many of them are strewn around. He was staring at her with void black eyes, looking quietly surprised to see her awake.
Rainbow tattoos twisted across every inch of his skin she could see, apart from his face. They almost seemed to be moving, in the strange lighting of the ship. (Nastya was also sensing a bit of a theme, there.) The stranger's hair went to his waist, starting starlight silver and fading to a soft purple about halfway through. A few small braids adorned it, but they were messy and the dark green ribbons woven into them were faded with age.
"... you're awake," he said in a voice that sounded far too similar to Jonny's. A good bit deeper, probably what her brother first mate would have sounded like had he ever finished puberty instead of getting mechanised at age 17.
"Regrettably," slipped out of Nastya's mouth before her brain-to-mouth filter could engage.
"Yeah, that did look like a solid suicide attempt," the stranger chuckled, words faintly slurred. "Those don't tend to stick, on this ship. How long have you been immortal, then?"
Nastya blinked. Wait... is he?
"A few thousand years, I think. Lost count."
The stranger drained the last of his bottle. "Damn," he finally sat up and turned to face her. "I mean, my species is sort of long-lived with 250 years, an' I was... 120 when the immortality happened... Think m'300 or thereabout. Baby immortal," he snorted, clearly the effects of the alcohol rather than any genuine amusement. "Name's Lyfrassir Edda, last and only survivor an' Marked by the great rainbow bastard."
Well, shit.
Nastya was, unfortunately, familiar with the naming conventions of Midgard. She hadn't realised anyone had managed to get out of the System. "Yggdrasil System, right? I... visited, once. Recognise the accent. Nastya Rasputina, the last Cyberian."
Life on the Ymir (as the vessel was apparently called) quickly settled into a new normal.
Nastya found out Lyf had forcefully repressed most of his memories and didn't really remember his life on Midgard (hadn't even remembered he was Midgardian until Nastya had asked), Lyf learned whatever bits and pieces of Nastya's past she was willing to share (not much, admittedly, though he learned a few things about Cyberia), and when both of them got stir-crazy they went planetside and wreaked havoc.
Sometimes, however, they played the violin together. These jam sessions were usually rather calm and quiet, so it came as quite a surprise when Lyf suddenly shot Nastya's violin out of her arms.
"Hey, what the hell -"
"Where did you hear that song," Lyf demanded, looking angry and scared and confused, a particular combo of emotions that only happened when something reminded him of the past he forcefully forgot.
... but why would Tales To Be Told trigger that kind of response?
"... I helped write it," Nastya decided to answer honestly, and Lyf stumbled back in shock.
"You know - there's more of you?!"
Nastya's brain chose that moment to remind her that Ivy, Marius and Raphaella had spent a not insubstantial amount of time in prison. (Finding out Lyf used to be police had been quite the shock and the source of no little teasing aboard the Ymir.)
(And Marius had been moping about a mortal inspector, when she'd left, hadn't he?)
"... you met the Mechanisms."
Lyf threw his hands up in a cross of despair and exasperation. "If that's what you lunatics call yourselves! Then yes! I did!"
"... Ivy, Raphaella and Marius, right? They got themselves thrown in prison and you... you're the 'Inspector' von Raum was getting all mopey over."
"... wait, Von Raum was what?"
Nastya can't help but chuckle. "I didn't hang around with the others too much, but from what I heard, he was rather fond of you."
"Fond of annoying me, maybe - wait, how many of you are there?"
She blinked, a bit surprised despite herself. "You want me to tell you about the Mechanisms?"
"As long as you don't start singing that bloody song. Von Raum played it every time I visited," Lyf shuddered.
"Alright, alright," Nastya held up her hands placatingly. "No singing - for now. I guess I'll start with myself. Nastya Rasputina, violinist and... ex-engineer of the Mechanisms. Unlike everyone else on the Aurora, I'm monogamous."
"... that explains a few things," Lyf muttered under his breath, though she had the feeling it wasn't a comment directed at her. "Continue?"
"Sure," Nastya shrugged and took a seat on the pillow-covered floor (so they both liked it cosy, sue them), Lyf following suit. "So, the ones you met are Marius, the 'doctor', plays mandolin, violin and does vocals if we need someone... angry, most of the time."
"Angry, really? I don't think I ever saw him angry," Lyf mused.
"You'd be surprised. Ivy's our archivist and plays flute, recorder, things like that. Raphaella is our pianist and sings more often than not, too."
"... huh. It suits them, somehow... who else is there?"
"Well, there's our pilot and drummer, Brian, the quartermaster and bassist Ashes O'Reilley, the master at arms Tim plays the guitar and does a lot of vocal work as well, as does the Toy Soldier... whatever it actually is."
"Sorry, the what?"
"Yeah, we don't know either. And last but not least," Nastya's voice shifts a bit in tone, "Jonny D'Ville, harmonica and narrator, as well as our go-to for crazy old men. He's our first mate, but nobody outside of the crew's allowed to call him that - outsiders either call him Captain or he gets. Shooty."
Lyf seemed to be processing all this for a moment. "... good lord, there's nine of you lunatics. I'm beginning to think I was lucky to only find three of you in that cell."
"Probably," Nastya chuckled, not even noticing that Lyf automatically included her with the Mechs - or that she hadn't protested the notion.
Lyf, however, did. "... you miss them, don't you?"
The former inspector's void black eyes cut right through any lies Nastya had been trying to tell herself for the past... well. Ever since she'd opened that airlock, really. It had just become harder to ignore, these past 8 years living with the young immortal Midgardian. "... I do."
"... I know why I repressed all these memories now, you know?" Her friend suddenly seemed to change topics entirely, looking up at the shimmering rainbow roof of the Ymir.
"Oh?" Nastya hadn't even registered that Lyf had finally gotten all his memories back, caught up in the nostalgia talking about her family crew had woken in her.
"Because I started missing those three, and I couldn't handle grieving for them and the friendship I never got to have, on top of everything else. It was the final straw."
"... oh."
"Yep," Lyf nodded glibly like he hadn't shot Nastya's violin because she had reminded him of Marius, not ten minutes ago.
"... what are you saying, Lyf?"
"I'm saying we find them, Nastya, and give them one hell of a surprise. Could you teach me some of you guys' songs? I want to give von Raum a heart attack."
Nastya laughed.