Chapter Text
>>
It's almost time now.
Time for what? Does she even know? Silly question, of course she does. It’s always almost time. That’s why she makes the pie. That’s why it has to be ready, and that’s why it’s always ready in time.
It's also why she picks the berries. Red-berries, blueberries, blackberries and rasp-berries. She knows the feel of them, even without her glasses, even when the day turns to night and back again in an instant. Plump and unbroken berries are good. Berries burst and staining her fingers are good. They all go in the basket. There’s always time for them.
But not those that aren’t ripe yet, no no. Those always need more time. So she leaves those berries to grow in the forest, where the critters will chirp and the wind will blow.
Oh, how funny. There’s wind. That’s not usual, or it isn’t anymore, or it’s too early to be. The hairs on her arms stand up on end, like a lightning bolt is about to strike. Or has already struck. The air fizzes all around her, burning white-hot just in the clearing between two lines of oaken trees.
Razz can feel it. Or will feel it, like a door that you get the sense is going to open. Sparks of lightning stab madly at the branches and the leaves and the grass like an ice pick, desperate to get a grip in the here and now.
But not from before. From after. Razz does not know what comes from after.
Razz exchanges her basket for dear old Broom, ready to razzle-dazzle in defence of herself. In that self-same moment the white-hot turns to red-hot, sizzling into a rumbling boom as a ball of fire careens right past her, beelining straight for—
CRASH. Slotting right in the entranceway of Razz’ cottage, is a frozen chunk of metal with a license plate on the back. It simply reads ‘DOLORES’.
In it’s wake, running right up to the door, are two parallel tracks of flame.
>>>30 YEARS LATER>>>
The time is ticking everywhere they go.
Literally. There’s clocks all over the castle. Hazardously hammered into every stone wall from floor to ceiling, and maybe even mounted on the parapets are all kinds of timepieces, analog and digital and diversely stupid. One of them is built into a portrait of a cat, its tongue forming all three hands. Like, what the hell.
But also sure, why not. It’s not surprising at all — compared to the Doc’s other hyper-fixations, it’s par for the course — but what is really sticking out is the noise. The clocks all flick from ‘7:57’ to ‘7:58’ in the same moment, like the thunk of a pachinko machine. They’re ticking all in perfect sync. And it’s really getting on their nerves.
Enough that they wanna do something about it.
They flick the switch on the side of the amplifier. They snap the jack up off the floor like a whip to click it into its socket, the cable now snaking out of it into the bottom of their red-white electric guitar. They turn up the dial, loop the loose strap over their head.
They take one big step back.
The speaker is maybe the size of an open tunnel before them and it whirs to life with an oomph. The strings haven’t even been tapped and there’s already a thrum, already reverberating through to the tip of their tail, already drowning out the ticking. It sounds like a railgun ready to fire, like the moment before a thunderclap where the air turns to static. Their fur stands on end.
They’ve still got time. Doc’s not here to tell them no. The amp rumbles like it’s an electric earthquake and oh. Finn’s just gotta try it out.
They face the speaker, raise their glinting claw over the strings.
One-Two-Three-Four—
They strum, and a twang of lightning rockets them into the air.
>>
The podium flashes up beneath her feet. Green.
A strand of her white, petal-specked hair is always down in front of her visor, so she tucks it away behind her ear this time. Her tracker pad clenches her wrist, so she loosens the strap. She flexes her tail and her stinger coils high over her head. She’s always ready, and she’s always first.
Second is Glint, the pink heart on his chest glowing in unison with his pink hair. Skipper and his stupid bandanna are third, thumbing away with a lighter and fourth is Spears, holding his spear. He stumbles onto the fourth podium, balancing himself on the hilt. He rubs his eyes.
“You took my spot.” He growls, glaring past Skipper. Or trying to.
“Dunno what you’re talking about,” Glint replies, all coy.
“My eyes sting.”
“Then blink next time.”
“Cadets,” The hologram calls, and all them face front to meet her glitching blue form. "Your attention, please.”
The squad straightens up. All except Flora. On the far side of her, the fifth and final podium stands empty.
“Where’s—“ she starts, but the hologram’s already begun the briefing. She huffs.
Not again.
>>
Finn's not standing anymore. Probably because they got launched away fast enough to break the sound barrier.
They did land in the Doc’s luxurious plum-leather rococo couch, but the impact tipped the couch all the way back onto the floor. And then the couch knocked the shelf against the wall. Finn blinks out of their daze, looking up to see the top shelf, creaking forwards and emptied out. Boxes of recently unassorted spare parts are heavy, it turns out.
They sit up and take in the sight of the amplifier, framed between their hanging feet. It’s taken up smoking.
“Woah,” Finn winces, among the still-ticking clocks and the buzzing central console, informing them that they can still hear. "Rock n’ roll."
Wait, hang on. The console’s buzzing.
Crap. Finn forgets everything else and bounds across the room on all fours, brushing their hair out of their eyes as they land in front of the screen. They press down on one of the biggest buttons, brace themselves—
“FINNY!” The console screams as it bursts to life. “I called you!”
Finn jumps at the sight of a bug-eyed welding mask, tilting up to reveal a pale face of familiar madness, with two gray-pink ponytails snaking out behind them.
“Hey, Doc,” Finn chuckles, forcing cool and casual over the line. “Where are you?”
“Working!” Doc answers. A bright light flashes over their face and something kabooms. They keep fierce eye contact down the lens. They don't even flinch. “I have a job for you!”
“Doing what?”
“Doing SCIENCE!” they beam, their crimson eyes reflecting another krak of an explosion. “Listen, meet me at the Twin Pies Mall at one fifteen!”
“Uh, in the morning?”
“IN THE MORNING!”
“Sure, Doc, but where’s Emily?” Finn asks, ears twitching. They have way more questions than that but one at a time. "I looked all over the castle three times already."
They looked around the Crypto Castle twice, actually, but if the ticking was annoying then avoiding the traps was so much worse. The robot is Finn’s main concern, being the Doc’s housesitter and all, and all they found was the pet-feeding contraption still dumping scrap into Emily's food bowl, or into the oily mountain submerging it. Finn doesn't understand exactly how robots need to eat food, but the important thing is that Doc’s not been home in days.
And they're a recluse. And they almost never leave the lab. So it's only a bit concerning.
“LEFT, GIRL! LEFT!” Doc yells, ducking as a piece of shrapnel cuts through the air in the wake of a third flash. “Yeah, Emily’s fine. But that reminds me, Finny!”
“What is it?”
"Don’t hook up to the amplifier! If the volume goes to maximum it might damage your sensitive hybrid hearing!”
Finn blanches, their body shifting to block the hole burning out of the speaker and what remains of the dust cover, hanging like it committed musical hara-kiri.
“I won't,” They gulp, resisting the urge to thumb their eardrums. Oh, crap, they definitely popped.
“Good! And don’t forget, Finny!” Doc says, tapping their nose with a gray-pink finger made of autonomous hair. “Twin Pies Mall! One fifteen!”
Finn’s about to roll their eyes, about say they won’t forget. They forgot about the ticking. All of the clocks in the room, all over the castle, chime at once. Cuckoos and buzzers and sirens and klaxons scream out an alarming cacophony of sound, and all of them have tick-tocked down to the exact same hour, minute, and second. Finn clamps their hands over their ears, burning like the whole world is talking about them.
“What time is it?!” Doc yells, their voice painfully high. Finn reads one clock face, then another, then the one in the cat portrait.
“Eight o’clock?” they answer. They're all the same. Doc’s permanently wide eyes seem to get even wider as they giddily shake their hands.
“They’re all exactly twenty-five minutes slow!”
Finn blinks. Twenty-five minutes? That's basically half past the hour.
That would mean—
The alarms all cut out at once, leaving the room to an unfamiliar, deafening silence.
Oh no.
“Oh, crap.”
“What is it, Finny?” Doc asks, then gasps. “Your first scientific breakthrough!?”
Finn hammers the hang-up button.
They're late for school.
>>
The bug-faced creature slams into the ground, positively knocked for six.
"One down!" Flora yells, shaking the electricity out of her fist. Its furry black-and-yellow body blends well with the hexagonal hive floor, curling at her feet. However, she looks up, and as she starts counting the pairs of wings on the rest of the Bzzantines fluttering high up in the air, armed and scowling and furious, she summarily loses count.
“Bugger,” Flora lets out. Woops, that might be offensive. The Bzzantines aim their laser stingers, but before they can fire Flora's body hits the ground, the air spun out of her. The laser fire rains against the honeycomb wall that forms her new cover. She looks up at her savior, an exasperated pirate boy, straddling her torso and thumbing a lighter against a rag in a bottle.
“Skipper, get off!”
“Nary a moment!” Skipper retorts as the rag catches alight. He lobs the bottle over the wall and a shrill, distant scream roars out among the licking light from the flames. “For score!”
"Less celebrating, more fighting!" Flora yells, shoving him off and rising into a crouch behind the wall. She peeks her stinger over the top, and from it she launches arcs of red lightning to oppose the stinging barrage of green, nailing several targets with one bolt. Skipper hugs his knees, yelping as the lighter slips out of his hand and he scrambles to pick it back up.
Flora has no eyes on the others, but as she looks ahead, she sees the target. Rolling through the slick walls of the hive, flying in from the vacuum of space is one hell of a big Bzzantine, the size of a trash transport if it suddenly grew legs. The Queen lumbers beneath a twitchy head, adorned with a golden crown, and she doesn't need it to tell you who she is.
Flora aims her stinger and fires, but the massive bee screeches demonically as the red arcs of lightning fizzle out over her carapace. The Queen roars, defiant, unstoppable.
But not for long. In the corner of Flora's eye is Spears, stepping out into the clearing and reversing his spear in his hand. The other Bzzantines level their lasers and shoot, but Glint rushes to grab his shoulder, turning the pair into pink glowing ghosts. The lasers blow right through their bodies, like they aren't even there.
"Take this!" Spears yells, and throws his mighty weapon. Everyone watches it launch through the air, flexing slightly, flying until it lands with a heavy thud—
Into the far wall of the hive. Glint lets go of his shoulder to point, and laugh. Spears reddens.
"Shut up."
“I can't believe you missed.”
“My aim's off!"
“If that's the case, Spears, maybe don't throw your spear?”
“I dunno, maybe don't blind me out the gate next time?”
“Uh, skill issue?”
“Guys!” Flora yells. Too late. Like a firing squad, the Bzzantines line up and shoot the brothers down like magi-fish in a barrel.
“NOOOOO!” Skipper wails, really loud and right next to her, as the pair collapse in a haze of pale smoke and green laser beams. “I will not forsake you, my fallen comrades!”
Flora watches as Skipper brings the flaming rag of a bottle to a string sticking out of a — a cannonball?
“Skipper—”
“VENGEANCE!” he screams. And then he’s over the top of the wall. Flora holds her head in her hands and resorts herself to hearing exactly how that pans out.
Not even a moment later does a small, glowing yellow ball drop into her cover, rolling right between her feet.
Flora braces herself. She’s honestly just so done.
>>
Finn fails to pronounce ‘Eternia’ three times in a row.
Mostly, they’re trying very hard not to dry heave at the doors to the academy. It’s not their fault the Doc’s teleporter node makes their stomach turn upside down, but it was the best chance of making it to class on time. Or in Finn’s case, a little less late.
Gods, they are so totally screwed. On the fourth try the castle finally recognises the password and when the gates finally open and the ramp drops, Finn zips down the sheer crystal corridors and past the waterfalls, ignoring the holographic hall monitor popping up to greet them until the door to the projection chamber is directly ahead. Finn’s foot-claws grip their hoverboard, its engine blasting them down the hall so fast their ears flap inside out.
So fast that there’s no way they’re too late. Anything but being too late. They’ll get there. They’re gonna make it.
“I’m gonna make it!” Finn says, like that alone will do the trick. Something ahead of them powers down.
“Simulation over.”
“What?!”
Finn hunches, ducking through the sliding doors as they open and as they swerve to a halt, their heart sinks. The simulation chamber glitches out of whatever scenario it was imitating, flickering into infinite darkness before lighting up again.
Lying all over the floor are their squadmates, their training chest-plates all marked with red crosses. Spears and Glint are on their backs, their hair and clothes scuffed to hell, groaning like flipped turtles. Skipper turns to Finn with a white-toothed grin in an otherwise soot-covered face, like a black powder bomb went off right in front of his eyes.
The last squadmate to see Finn, positively drenched in some kind of golden syrup, her eyes glaring hotly like they’ll burn a hole in Finn’s chest and leave a bald patch in their fur, is someone they sincerely hope isn’t too mad at them.
“Hey, Flora,” Finn waves at her. The hoverboard dies from inactivity and hits the floor, causing them to half-stumble. “What, uh, happened to you?”
“Honeybomb,” Flora growls, shaking her stinger. A glob of honey droops off of the tip. “We failed.”
“I-It ain’t my fault this time,” Finn says, ears flattening. “Doc set their clocks twenty-five minutes slow and I—”
Sharp fingers grasp the scruff of their neck. They hiss instinctively, shirking out of the grab to face their new attacker, claws coming out lightning fast.
“‘Doc’?” The man asks, covered in blue fur and bulking out of his tweed suit. “Am I to understand that you are still hanging out with Princess Entrapta?”
Finn simply gulps, because crap. The Principal sighs and reaches into his jacket pocket to tear out a piece of paper. Finn’s amassed enough gray tardy slips over the last month, but now he’s handing Finn a brown one.
“They’re so much worse than the gray kind,” The Principal says, reading Finn's thoughts. Finn snatches the slip a huff. That’s tonight in detention at the least, and they’re really not looking forward to explaining that. “Let me give you some advice, cadet,” The Principal growls, his jaundiced eyes narrowing as he pokes Finn's chest. “That so-called Princess is a nutcase. You hang around with them, you’re gonna end up in more trouble than you're worth.”
“Yes-sir,” Finn says, mocking a salute. They don’t care for what they say about the Doc, not at all, but they make their face a statue. That only gets the principal to pull them round, getting in their face while the room watches, stunned to silence.
“You have a problem with your attitude, Finn.” He snarls, using their name like it's a curse as Finn sighs. “You’re what we call a slacker. You remind me of your mother, you know. She was a slacker, too.”
“Can I go to class now?” Finn almost wants to ask which mother, but they bite their tongue.
“Why bother if you always turn up late?” The Principal asks back, grasping the collar of their jacket. “Look around you. Your poor time management has let down your entire squad. The mission was to enter the asteroid and take down the queen, to limit the spread of the Bzzantium hive. You’re lucky it's only a simulation program, because if they were actually on mission, isolated out in space, they’d be buzzer food by now.”
Four sets of eyes beam into the back of Finn’s head. They don’t move their features an inch.
“You can’t help them anymore than you can help yourself,” The Principal drones on, hissing as he goes. If he had much of a nose, it would have tapped Finn’s, he is that alarmingly close. “You’re too much like your parents. You don’t stand a chance alone, and unlike them, you won't amount to anything in this whole damn universe.”
Fish breath. This man is just an assault on all of Finn's senses right now. They dig their claws into their palms. The Principal's an idiot and an asshole and Finn shouldn’t care what he has to say, but they do because he’s categorically wrong. They open their mouth, close it, open—
“You can’t talk to Finny like that.”
Flora waddles up to Finn’s side, but that doesn’t stop them from seeing the rosy scorpion girl from their dreams. She’s got the most gorgeous white hair, flecked with pink flower petals. She's also glazed in weird simulated alien honey, sure, but when she takes off the visors, at least it's not dripping in her eyes. Finn glances into them as she stares down the Principal, a bare hint of brown in her black pupils. They briefly consider the L word.
“Finny was late, and they let the team down, but you’ve already punished them,” Flora explains, squeezing a hand on Finny’s free shoulder. It’s a little sticky but the sentiment is there. “Respectfully, sir? Lay off.”
“Of course, Princess,” the Principal glowers, gritting his spiky yellow teeth as he scoffs that last word. “But I wouldn’t get too attached. Your little love interest here won’t amount to anything in the whole history of Etheria.”
“Yeah, well,” Finn stands between him and Flora, sending her a look that they hope means it’s not worth it. Flora chitters, but she steps back all the same.
“Maybe history’s about to change.”
>>
History has not yet changed. Finn's main evidence for this is the screaming Horde Soldier, flying through the air for the fifth time. Finn eagerly scribbles in their sketchbook as the armored man comes crashing down in the shallow water, as more soldiers dodge around him without offering to help him up. Rude.
“Rewind,” Finn says aloud, and after the room glitches the Horde Soldier flies back up into the air for the sixth action replay, pausing shortly after hitting the water. He sinks like a brick, like he always does, and as Finn flicks through their pages they find that the flip-drawing captures the moment to perfection.
“Would you like another rewind, descendant of She-Ra?” The flat voice of the hall monitor asks. She’s standing in the space too, but considering her transparent form has two states — mouth open, and mouth closed — she isn’t particularly animated about it.
“No thanks, Hope.” Finn’s done the drawing, so what the hell, might as well. “Let the memory play.”
“FOR THE HORDE!” One lizard-soldier cheers as she charges through Finn’s body, causing their fur to shudder a little. They hate it when that happens.
She’s raising her stun baton beneath a sky of dense clouds, rumbling red lightning and darkening the world around the protective shield of the palace. Bright Moon. The magic dome cracks under the roaring bombardment from the Horde tanks on the far ridge, the sound of the artillery dampened by the recording. The soldier Finn had spent the last hour drawing finally sputters out of the water, ripping off his helmet to show the face of a moth man beneath, clutching his ears like he needs to rip them off too.
He's screaming, and he's not alone. His Horde comrades come down all around him, wailing in terror as they hit the water like raindrops. These troopers' helmets come off their heads too, sinking and bubbling around them as their bearers surface, Etherians and lizard folk and other hybrids, faces of all kinds once obscured under the gray buckets with the green visors, now revealed. It's difficult to tell from how soaked they are, but they half look like they're crying.
Finn wades through the impression of water like a ghost, tail waving low as they get close. Finn studies their features, their hand idly sketching as they do. All of them look so young and so tired and so thin beneath the bulk of their armor, like they forgot to eat their dinner or something.
All of them yelp at a sudden burst of light in the distance. A familiar gold.
Finn’s ears perk up as their eyes hone in on a set of blue identical to their own, a warrior in golden armor bearing a massive, sapphire-gold sword. Behind her the Moonstone, Bright Moon’s jewel, shines like a star.
But the warrior princess glows brighter. Together with her companions, the other princesses and members of the Alliance, magic radiates off of them like the throes of a rainbow campfire, unleash furious magic upon the line of tanks. They're glowing so much they hurt Finn’s eyes. The sky of dark and red starts to clear, and it all starts from them.
From her. Finn could recognise She-Ra anywhere. From the look on the Horde Soldiers’ faces, knees and elbows submerged, they do, too. And judging from Finn’s knowledge of history, this battle only ends one way.
“Get up.”
The voice growls, low and angry and behind them. It’s raspy, guttural, and all the troopers flinch like electricity is lancing through the water. Some whimper, too. Finn turns to look for the source of it.
“What’s wrong with all of you? Get up!”
The voice hisses command after command but Finn can’t see who's speaking. Their surroundings flicker to moments of static, getting in their way. The voice is distorted, almost like it’s playing over a radio as Finn strains to hear, still scribbling in their notebook, still somehow catching the hate fused into every word.
That voice— It almost sounds—
The scene stutters away completely this time, and the voice cuts out. Finn’s ears pivot toward the scream of another Horde Soldier, a few dozen feet up in the air and coming down into water and—
The seventh action replay. Finn looks down at the pencil in their grip. Their claws have cut into the wood, and the tip has snapped.
“You know, even if you turned up on time, you’d still stay back this long.”
Finn chirps and slams the notebook shut, tucking it away in their jacket. They did not hear the doors slide open, they were a bit distracted, but the familiar scent of mint and lavender causes them to relax, as does the sound of deceptively heavy footfalls, that don't sound quite as sticky.
“You alright?” The scorpion girl asks. Out of her academy-issue top and slacks, she’s wearing her favorite black waistcoat with stencilled pink roses over a white shirt, and green high-waisted jeans flaring out over her boots. She shakes her damp hair as her tail twitches, creaking slightly. Finn knows exactly how sharp her stinger is — don’t ask them why — and is grateful that it’s tucked snugly into itself.
"Detention got you down?"
“It's over now," Finn shrugs, pocketing their hands. Cool and casual. "Thought you’d be mad at me.”
“Wildcat,” Flora says, flatly but with a smirk. “I had to go through all of today's classes with sticky hair.”
“Oh.”
“It took me so long to wash out I'm here after detention. I had to use lemon juice. It got in my eye.”
"Yikes."
"So I am very mad at you."
"Sorry."
“But Drill Sergeant Principal back there was a dick,” Flora adds, spitting the last word, “and I'm not. I bet he actually served in the Horde.”
"We don't talk about the war," Finn warns, in a mocking voice. It's only half funny. "I am sorry, though."
"I heard you, Finny." Flora sidles up alongside them, bumping their shoulder. She’s a lot taller, so it’s with her elbow. "You are forgiven for your every transgression."
"Great!" Finn feels their shoulders relax at the confirmation, looking up at Flora. Then they smirk.
"I won't apologise for this, though."
"Apologise for wh—" Flora tries to say, interrupted by a tail bapping her in the face.
“You can shut down now, Hope!” Finn yells back, as they dash out of the darkening simulation room. Flora recovers, but she can laugh and sputter her protests all she likes. It won’t help her catch up.
>>
“You keep going back like it's an ex you're still hung up on,” Flora continues, stepping out of the transport once it hits her stop. “You're the only person I know who loves detention.”
“I do not!” Finn growls, picking up their hoverboard and following her as the doors close and the transport veers away. It'd be more accurate to say they don't hate it. They could be stuck at a desk in Mystacor, carving magic runes into the wood and driving themself crazy. They could be knee-deep in dirt and grime, digging up fossils and artefacts older than Grunkle George searching for a dusty old history degree.
Yeah, hard pass on both of those. The Crystal Academy’s way closer to home than the cloud city, or any dig site. It can literally simulate a dig site before it became a dig site. It’s the foremost, state-of-the-art learning institution on all of Etheria, and everyone keeps telling Finn to be grateful, and maybe they shouldn’t take that for granted, but it's a little difficult when your DNA code is basically the master key to the entire complex. Even the IT nerds in the school faculty couldn't scrub out She-Ra's admin privileges.
“It just runs in the family,” They decide to say, instead of all that. Finn dashes ahead of and faces Flora, stepping backwards in time with her pace. “And I gotta behave a little if I wanna explore the universe one day, y'know.”
“You won’t even get out of the atmosphere if you don’t turn up on time,” Flora deadpans. Finn grunts, spinning around to walk ahead when their tail twitches annoyance.
“I told you the Doc set their clocks wrong,” They groan. Literally all of them were wrong. “I didn’t plan to screw us over.”
“Finny, it’s one combat assessment," Flora says, and Finn can feel her rolling her eyes. "It’s not the end of the world.”
"It would be if it was real." Finn says, staring down at the sidewalk, planting their steps to avoid the cracks in the paving. “What if the principal’s right?”
"Finny—"
“What if I turn up and mess things up worse?”
“Finny.“
“What if come graduation they say ‘get outta here, kid, you got no future in the stars?’”
“Finny!”
Finn looks back. Flora’s plonked down on a bench. It's their bench, a browning seat of wood at the entrance of the small park, just on the corner of a t-junction. Flora crosses the road to get to her home, and Finn goes through the park to get to theirs.
It's where their paths diverge. Flora taps the empty side, and Finn trills.
“How long d’you got?”
“Until she turns up,” the scorpion girl says, simply. Finn takes the invitation, flopping dramatically onto the bench.
“I just don’t think I can handle that kind of rejection,” Finn finishes. Flora bumps their shoulder.
“Hey, come on. What would Doc say about school?”
“Nothing sane.” They answer. ‘If you put your mind to it, nothing is impossible’, before flipping down a new pair of safety goggles to stare directly into the beam of a laser light. To test them out.
“You take charge of the team better than I can,” Flora tries. “The guys are like toddlers. You’re really good at corralling toddlers, Finny.”
"They're not that bad."
"They're suicide machines," Flora groans, leaning closer. "I mean, you're worse when you don't turn up, but at least I can actually trust you not to get yourself killed."
“Yeah but of course you’ll say that when we’re—“ Finn’s throat seizes itself.
What the hell are you doing?!
“When we’re what?” Flora asks, her eyes wide open, rosy cheeks even rosier than normal. Her lips twist into a nervous smile, her hand inching closer to where Finn’s is planted on the bench.
Crap and crap and crap. They haven’t put a label on things. Have they put a label on things? Finn’s barely avoiding thinking of the L word as is. They kissed at the academy talent show after Finn's band was disqualified for being too loud, but they can't remember if that was before they went on stage or after the judges screamed for them to stop.
Oh gods, they don’t even know if their feelings are reciprocated. Finn lifts their hand to cough in it. They’re totally unprepared. But they gotta say something.
Holy hell, Finn realises. Are they really doing something here?
“Hey, um,” Finn croaks, already starting to biff it, and flattens their voice and their tail into some kind of neutral. Here goes. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
Flora's eyes blow out. In the dark, they're like looking at a tinted window, totally unreadable despite the years they've known her.
“You sound like your mom,” Flora laughs. Something in Finn's chest dies, because what?
"I mean, you're all tensed up and speaking like a robot," she clarifies, after a snort. "Like your mom."
"You barely know my mom.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“Uh, your mom. She’s all weird whenever they’re around each other.”
“They are,” Flora gasps after considering it. “What, d’you think they used to date?”
Finn hugs their skiffboard against their face and makes a gagging sound. This is the worst line of conversation possible right now.
“I didn't want to talk about our moms, Flora."
“You can’t just ask about tomorrow night and then not tell.”
“It’s nothing crazy,” they answer quickly, looking up. Fly up to the closest of the twelve moons. Gaze down at Etheria. Imagine how it would have looked years before, back in the emptiness of Despondos, a lonely planet with a void sky. A universe just for them.
They look back and Flora rolls her eyes, but it’s in that fond way where she can’t help but smile. It's still a nervous smile. Finn realises what they’re not saying as their gaze flutters between Flora’s eyes. The back of their neck itches something furious until they claw at it.
“I mean, maybe something. But I gotta ask my parents to borrow their ship before I make any promises.”
“Woah.” Flora’s eyes widen. “You can fly Darla?”
“I can drive my hoverboard,” they say, inflecting a serious tone. Flora scoffs hard enough to throw her head back. "She's got an autopilot. It'll be fine."
“Won’t 'Dora say no?”
“I’ll just tell her I’m like, jamming with The Wild Hearts or something,” Finn waves their hand vaguely. The band disbanded after the talent show. Really, way too much stuff happened that night. “She’ll believe me.”
“What about your mom?”
They know which mom Flora means from the intonation of her voice alone, and mom would freak out if she found out who Finn was going out with. They’d get the standard lecture of how she never went anywhere, or did anything, and especially didn’t hang out with princesses at Finn’s age. Or ever, if she had the choice.
"Don't worry about her." Finn grunts. "I honestly think she was born a nun."
"My ma's kinda the same," Finn registers Flora saying, half-whisper quiet. She takes their hand in hers. "They're just looking out for us, is all."
“They are doing a terrible job at it.”
“Guess so.” Flora agrees. Her deep dark brown eyes dart down, then up.
KISS HER, Finn’s heart decides to scream into Finn’s brain. They feel their ears swivelling toward her, their own cheeks hotting up, made all the hotter beneath their fur. The chittering from the crickets and the low hum of the city fill the silence, and there's no walls to break down, no bridge to cross. Just Finn, and Flora, and their bench.
“SAVE THE STONE!” A scrawny voice yells over their shoulder and Finn and Flora jump as a horn-headed satyr saunters by, holding out one of a few dozen flyers, shaking a donation box. “Re-elect Mayor Kyle! Invest in the Future of the Scorpion Zone with the best mayor we've ever had!”
She shoves a piece of paper into Finn’s chest, less gently and more like she’s flattening it against a wall. When Finn responds with a quick hiss, she speed-walks away, whistling as casual as can be.
“Who hands out flyers past 6pm?” Finn asks, taking the flyer and looking at it. For an adult, the depiction of Mayor Kyle has always been way too scrawny. "What the hell was that about?"
“The building where the Scorpion Zone's runestone is housed,” Flora answers, holding out her finger until Finn follows where it’s pointing. The Scorpion Zone is more forest than city, a land of metal subsumed with plantlife. Probably more than the Whispering Woods these days. The thick body of the treeline surrounds the old sky-towers that rise up out of the thick foliage, vines snaking up even the tallest of them. Flora points to one of the tallest, the open rooftop revealing a massive black-red jewel.
Finn instantly recognises the Black Garnet. It's what was causing the dark red clouds during the Battle of Bright Moon. The Evil Horde activated their captured runestone, and used it's power to freeze over the Whispering Woods and carve a path directly to the Rebellion stronghold, where the fiercest battle of the war was fought. The years have taken its toll, and the Whispering Woods never fully recovered.
"I think the mayor's office wants to renovate the building. The Black Garnet used to power the entirety of the Scorpion Zone for years, even after the Horde took control of it," Flora explains, "but ever since the Battle Of Bright Moon and even after my ma reconnected with it, nobody's been able to hook it up since."
Oh yeah, Finn remembers, that's a sobering reminder of the fact that Flora’s ma was a Horde soldier. She was a princess, it was her runestone, she was born into it, but still. She was in on it. Finn's not supposed to know that, but it's kind of an open secret. Once they are certain the satyr has moved on with the rest of their rounds, and that no other pedestrian is walking their pet chibbit in the park behind them, Finn stuffs the flyer in their jacket pocket until the next time they empty it out.
“I can’t imagine what it was like for your mom, growing up in this place,” Finn says, idly. Flora pouts, turning to face them.
“I thought we weren’t talking about moms anymore.”
“You never did answer my question.”
“I was going to,” Flora says, her hand flying up to brush Finn’s golden hair out of their face. She looks awestruck by what she finds beneath, so Finn's pupils must be blown out. The distance between their faces has somehow closed most of the way, snatching Finn's attention completely. They can hear the murmur of a heartbeat. Probably their own. Maybe Flora's? Oh, this sucks.
"We have to retake the assessment tomorrow," Flora says, in a hushed breath. "at the same time."
"Oh." Finn swallows. "Do you want me there, like, on time or—"
"Depends," Flora snorts, voice quieter with every word. "How important is tomorrow night?"
“Flossy!”
They snap apart. Yelling from across the road and already here far too early is a massive scorpion woman, waving one pincer while the other holds up a briefcase. Her white hair is cropped mighty short, but her grin matches Flora’s own and still looks weird when observed on someone else's face. Flora’s not grinning, though. She looks like she wants to kill something. Finn snickers.
"Time's up, 'Flossy.'"
"Do not," Flora snarls, her irritated expression turning hopeful as her face inches back to where it was. “And don't you dare be late tomorrow because if I get honeybombed and have to deal with the boys on my own again, then I’ll actually be mad at you.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a dick,” Finn says. The brush of Flora's lips say something else entirely, pressed up against their own, like the weight of the whole world.
An unquanitifable amount of time later she's across the street, walking in step with her ma. The mother in question is waving back at Finn, while Flora tells her to stop, and Finn giddily waves back before they remember how to not do that, that's stupid. Their arm moves like a marionette's, but too late, they've already done it.
Oh gods, Finn thinks, leaping atop their hoverboard and zooming through the park and the trees once Flora is gone. There’s the L word again.
Tomorrow night cannot not come soon enough.
<<<30 YEARS EARLIER<<<
It's not tomorrow night. That much is just about all they know right now.
They took off the second glove when the first stuck to Dolores' frozen chassis, so they can see exactly how hard their claws are clenching the wheel. Their chest rises and falls, fast beneath their constricting chestplate, but they can't take anything else off.
They're driving and they can't stop. They can't, or simply won't, read the digital readout on the dashboard showing off a bunch of numbers that they really don't want to think about. They know the way home, so they are going home. Simple. Easy as pie.
Though not so easy to get away from the pie lady. They should feel terrible about the little cottage, but even with the helmet on they would have landed themself a concussion if they stuck around. Her broom must've been made of rebar. At least she still has the other hut.
Wait, old lady hermits lived in huts during their time, didn't they? She was shouting about pies, those are a modern invention, right?
Right?
Oh, hell, they really hope it's still tomorrow. Because if it isn't, then they'd better be dreaming instead. They're so in their head they don't even notice when Dolores starts slowing down, when the headlights blink out, when the power steering locks up.
When the transport starts barrelling toward a tree. They blink.
"Shit!"
They stamp on the brakes and rip at the wheel, spinning Dolores round and round, tires screeching over the gravelly ground until she's dug in and grinds to a silencing halt.
The engine ticks, cooling off. The wing door comes up, and they leap out, their tail lashing free. They're on the edge of the Whispering Woods, a great wall of trees to their front, right where their neighborhood should be. Exactly where home should be.
It isn't, and their heart sinks further. They turn around. The land between the woods and the Zone is dead, like the plants shrivelled and died and turned to dust in the last twenty minutes, stetching out into the familiar glow of the Scorpion Zone.
But it's not familiar at all. The horizon glows an unholy red, the metal jungle removed of its jungle and no, please no, it can't be. Finn looks up at the black sky, desperate for something, for any evidence to the contrary.
There is none. Just like there aren't any stars.
==