Chapter Text
“Life is a grand gamble, and I’ll always be the final victor.”
Aventurine finally lets the good doctor pull away, the gun clattering to the ground between them. The poor man is trying to hide how much he’s shaking, immediately whipping his hand back to cradle it against his chest. His alabaster bust materializes to conceal his face. It does a very poor job of concealing his emotions.
It’s always giddying when Aventurine can turn the tables on someone who underestimates him.
Dr. Ratio clears his throat in a transparent attempt to regain his composure. “I—I fail to see what you were trying to prove with such a foolishly risky stunt.”
“You know what they say, Doc.” Aventurine shrugs. “High stakes, high rewards.”
“What possible rewards could come of this farce?”
“Well,” Aventurine says with an impish smirk. “I’m all about securing long term investments. I don’t mind waiting a while for the payoff.”
Ratio shakes his head vigorously, as if to dislodge a particularly troubling thought. “Cease this nonsense. I will take my leave, and secure a different strategic partner. One with even the barest conceptual understanding of risk management.” He turns his back and stalks towards the exit.
“Suit yourself,” Aventurine calls after him. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
The door slams closed with a loud thud.
There’s a satisfying silence. Aventurine leans down to retrieve the gun, chuckling darkly to himself. He pops open the chamber, and yep, the next round would have been live.
“Hmm. How lucky,” he says to himself. A hint of mirth, a hint of bitterness.
“Aventurine.”
Aventurine blinks. Ratio had just left, hadn’t he? The door to the office remains shut, just as it had been moments prior. And yet, when he spins around, the man is standing there, staring right at him. He’s now somehow dressed in his usual scholar’s robes instead of the embroidered suit.
“I implore you to reconsider.”
Reconsider what? Huh?
Aventurine shoves down his confusion and plasters the smile back on his face. “Wow, that was a quick change of heart. I guess my methods might be more effective than—”
He cuts himself off with a flash of panic as a hand closes around his wrist. He tries to pull away, but Ratio’s grip is firm. There’s a strange desperation in the way the doctor holds him, as if he’s anchoring them in the midst of a maelstrom. As if he’s the only thing keeping Aventurine from being swept away.
“You have a choice,” Ratio continues. “You always have a choice. It’s not over.”
Aventurine doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He opens his mouth to ask, but it’s as if his ears have suddenly been stuffed with cotton. His voice echoes, amplified and silenced at the same time. They’re not standing in the stuffy meeting room anymore, but he’s unsure where they are or how they got here. The void stretches on forever, looping in on itself in an endless spiral. Cold water soaks his ankles.
He’s swimming in confusion. Ratio’s form is wavering along the edges, blurring into dizzying nothingness. Or maybe that’s Aventurine himself ceasing to exist. He doesn’t understand what’s happening.
A black hole is emerging over the horizon. It expands, slowly at first and then sweeping forwards to swallow them both.
“Please, you don’t have to endure forever. Dormancy is not the end.”
What does that mean? It doesn’t matter, because there’s nothing Aventurine can do about it anyways.
“Idiotic,” Ratio hisses, “rash, foolhardy, myopic, feckless—”
“Aw, now that one was just uncalled for,” Aventurine interjects with a pout. “How much I fuck has nothing to do with my performance on this mission. I bring plenty of other talents to the table.”
“That’s not—” Ratio pauses to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “If nothing else, you have a great talent for causing me headaches.”
Aventurine is surprised and honestly glad that his winning personality hasn’t been enough to chase the doctor off by now. The man is quite fun to tease. If he’s constantly berating Aventurine for being a crazed maniac, well, it’s not like he’s wrong.
They’re debriefing after a particularly grueling mission, if “debriefing” is code for drinking poor quality coffee while Ratio complains about their performance. They accomplished the objective, so as far as Aventurine is concerned, the matter is settled and Ratio doesn’t need to direct any more attention to any life threatening gambles that may or may not have occurred during the process.
“Damn gambler, get your feet off my desk.” Ratio swats at his shoes with a stack of papers. “At least pretend that you’ll try to do better next time.”
Aventurine allows his feet to fall, and instead tips his chair backwards on two legs. “Doctor, surely we’ve worked together enough that you can’t deny the effectiveness of my methods. No need to fix what isn’t broken.”
Ratio rolls his eyes. “Isn’t broken, he says. Nevermind the myriad of situations in which your gambles have left me scrambling to cover for you.”
“But you always do.”
“My migraine medication would like to have a word with you.”
“Ha!” Aventurine raises his paper cup in a parody of a toast. “Here’s to causing you headaches for countless missions to come, then.”
“Are you planning to attend more missions after Penacony?”
Aventurine nearly overbalances on his chair before steadying himself with both hands on the desk. He…hasn’t told Ratio about Penacony yet. No, he isn’t procrastinating, there just hasn’t been an opportunity.
“Seems the good Doctor is already in the loop,” he says liltingly, to hide the moment of uncertainty.
Ratio’s expression has gone from light exasperation to piercing seriousness. “You didn’t tell me. Did you think I was going to talk you out of it?”
“Talk me out of the biggest work opportunity I’ve ever had? Now, why would you do that?”
His left hand is trembling.
“At this point in time I suppose you had already decided that failing to return from Penacony would be an acceptable outcome,” Ratio says. His expression falls. “I wonder if I would have been able to change your mind, had I pushed the issue back then.”
This isn’t right. That wasn’t how it happened—or was it? It’s hard to remember. Aventurine blinks, and he’s sitting at his desk in the Strategic Investment office, listening to Opal rant about something or another in a group call. He blinks again, and he’s watching a drunk Topaz bury her face in Numby’s fur. One more time, and he’s huddled on the floor of his bathroom, desperately willing his stomach to stop heaving from the phantom scent of blood under his fingernails.
“I wanted you to come back,” Ratio’s voice says. “I still do.”
Aventurine’s chest hurts. He can feel something thick and wet dripping down his front, but when he looks down there’s nothing there.
Is this real? This can’t be real. Ratio’s expression is achingly sincere, a look that he’s never seen before. Surely the professor wouldn’t be caught directing such feelings at Aventurine of all people.
And yet, the man leans over the desk to gently brace his palms against the sides of Aventurine’s face. Aventurine realizes that he can’t feel the chair underneath him, or the scratch of fur trim against his neck, or the wood grain under his fingers—Ratio’s warm touch is the only thing that feels real.
“There are people waiting for you, Aventurine. I don’t know if that thought brings you comfort, but it is the truth.”
He blinks again, and he’s standing in the sea of Nihility.
There’s nothing here. No Kakavasha, no Acheron, and certainly no Veritas Ratio. Just the endless emptiness and the black hole churning in the distance.
Well. If Aventurine is to spend the rest of eternity reliving memories in this empty void, he’d appreciate it if they continue to be relatively happy ones. After the hell that the Order’s bullshit had put him through, he’s most certainly not up for any more suffering.
Honestly, even this empty nothingness is far preferable to painful memories. He doesn’t feel happy, but he also doesn’t feel sad. There’s no hunger, thirst, fatigue, or pain no matter how long he stays here. In between the memories, there’s nothing to do except keep walking, and walking, and walking.
He could stop walking, too. Every time he pauses for too long, the waves start to swell behind him, crashing harder into his knees. It’s easy to imagine letting them build and build until they knock him off his feet, carrying his body limply forwards. The waves would steadily sweep him closer and closer to the black hole on the horizon, until they pushed him close enough to be consumed entirely.
He’s tired. Not his body, but his mind. It would be easy.
”You have a choice. There are people waiting for you.”
“Just tell me if you can’t hold on any longer.”
He keeps walking.
“Hold still.”
Aventurine is watching with morbid curiosity as Ratio stitches up a long gash on his upper thigh. Ratio had likely been expecting him to flinch, judging by the heavy arm he’s laid across his hips to hold him still. Unneeded, as Aventurine has pretty much lost the ability to feel pain from anything smaller than a gunshot wound, but at least he gets to enjoy the warm weight. The doctor’s forearms are as handsomely muscled as the rest of him.
As if sensing his less savory thoughts, Ratio pulls the next suture through with more force than strictly necessary. Aventurine still doesn’t flinch.
“Wow, you seem even angrier with me than usual,” he remarks, gaze fixated on Ratio’s steady hand. “I thought you’d appreciate the opportunity to keep your suturing skills sharp. Heh. Sharp, get it?”
“I would much rather not,” Ratio says tersely.
Oof. Definitely angry, then, if he’s not even joining in with the usual banter.
They sit in silence for a little while as Ratio finishes off the neat line of stitches. Aventurine is handed the gauze to finish bandaging the wound himself, and he fights down the pang of disappointment as Ratio draws back to dispose of his tools.
“It wasn’t that bad, Doc,” Aventurine says, trying to break the tension. “I’ve had worse.”
Ratio whips back around to level him with a glare. “Have you.”
“It’s not even bleeding anymore.”
“One inch further inwards and it would have severed your femoral artery. You would have exsanguinated within minutes.”
“But I didn’t, so you can stop worrying.”
“I’m not—”
Ratio blinks halfway through the sentence, his demeanor abruptly changing. His standoffish posture softens slightly before tensing back up in apparent fear. “Aventurine.”
The room is flickering again. The pain of his leg wound fades out, as does the softness of the gauze. The room is suddenly dim, the fluorescent overhead lights seemingly hazing over with fog.
The desperate expression in Ratio’s eyes is back. He lunges forwards to seize Aventurine’s hand.
“I can only hope you can hear me.”
And Aventurine can’t move, can’t say anything when Ratio brings their joined hands up to his lips.
“It’s been so many missions of worrying after you. Trying to keep you safe.”
The Nihility is encroaching on the scene, black water filtering in from the edges of the room. Aventurine holds Ratio’s gaze and tries not to drown in the waves of emotion radiating from warm eyes. It’s so much, too much—Aventurine can’t possibly hold all of what he’s being given, but neither can he bear to see it dissipate back into the abyss.
Ratio’s body is wavering again. The warmth coming from him surges once, flowing from their joined hands up to Aventurine’s core. Aventurine clings, trying to capture that heat with the little willpower he has left.
“This mission is the hardest, because I can no longer do so. I can only trust you to save yourself.”
The waves are getting stronger.
“Wake up. Please.”
The Sea of Nihility stretches ever onwards, the rippling waters forming a mirage of his apartment, his office, the lobby of the Reverie, Sunday’s ostentatious mansion. Memories bleed in and out of focus. Scenes superimpose on each other in a recursive spiral of sensations, stacked so heavily that it’s all indecipherable noise.
His chest still feels warm.
He treasures it, the only sensation that isn’t being leeched away by the void.
It’s getting harder and harder to remember why he’s still going. His fingers have long since gone numb. His limbs don’t quite move like he tells them to, dragging his feet along like cinder blocks. Every few steps his brain seems to disconnect from his body, and he has to focus on the warmth to find his way back.
The memories are flitting away, scattering like wisps of smoke. There’s something important there, he thinks. He shouldn’t let them escape.
Acheron inclining her head to him as she walks away, wishing him good fortune. Topaz rolling her eyes and bumping shoulders with him, hiding her smile behind a whiskey glass. Madame Jade smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles on his coat before his first public appearance as a Stoneheart. Ratio desperately gripping his hand, pleading for him to wake up.
”I can only hope you can hear me."
“I can only trust you to save yourself."
His sister’s face. His mother’s voice. His father’s woody scent, left behind on Kakavasha’s torn shirt. They’re waiting for him somewhere.
He’s the only one who still remembers them.
”Do stay alive. I wish you the best of luck."
Ah.
He wants to wake up.
He touches a hand to his chest, feeling the warmth. He keeps walking.