Work Text:
This is how the smithy meets Allan Kranch.
The Forge is hot and oppressive, all fire and hammers and nails. It is not a comfortable space, and it isn’t one that anyone is supposed to visit. Sometimes players come through, holding out a pair of socks or a helmet or a bat, and the smithy gently takes it from their hands and does what they can to mend it.
Some offer tips or try to enlighten the smithy as to how things work and what they need – but the smithy doesn’t need to know that, and either ignores them or sends them to wait outside if they get too pushy. It is a contemplative work, unfolding an object and letting it tell its own secrets; it’s the kind of thing they don’t want interrupted.
So the smithy doesn’t need to know names or faces. The smithy doesn’t need to recognize the people that walk through the door, only the broken items held in their hands. But when Allan Kranch walks in, the smithy knows they have never seen anyone like this before.
Allan Kranch is a human in form, if not strictly in construction. His skin is the water of an impressionist’s painting, whites and blues that shift and crash into each other beneath a haze of green moss and lilies. Eyes as purple as ocean at sunset, and hair that shifts and reworks itself in and out of braids with every passing second.
In the haze of smoke and burning wood and fire itself, somehow, the smithy still smells the musty, living decay of lakewater.
Allan doesn’t offer the smithy anything to fix at first, and the smithy is out of practice in the art of introductory meetings; so they, the both of them, stand in silence for just a beat too long, eyes locked on one another.
And then something flickers in the firelight, and the smithy spots it. A ring. Bent out of shape and hanging on a necklace around Allan’s neck, glimmering dark metal with an aura of something the smithy hasn’t seen yet.
The smithy has always enjoyed puzzles. They hold out a hand and wait expectantly, and when Allan doesn’t move to hand it over, they sigh.
“I know you think you know what you’re doing,” the smithy says, with all the patience they can muster, “but I am the person appointed to fix this kind of thing. Will you let me try?”
To their surprise, it works. Allan removes the chain from his neck and hands the ring over, and he sits where he’s told while the smithy does the work. This should be a shining example of how the protocol works, of what it is that they do; an item comes in, the smithy fixes it, and the player is back on the field in the blink of an eye.
That’s not what happens. Despite the smithy’s best efforts, nothing they do sticks; the ring rejects the heat and will not bend, saws do not cut it, and hammers bounce right off. They keep trying, and trying, and trying, to absolutely no avail.
It takes ages for the smithy to notice, in their frustration, the sound of bubbling water. And then Allan Kranch is reaching over their arm to take the ring back, apparently unbothered by the heat of the Forge or the smithy’s own active intensity.
“You can’t fix it,” Allan says, and his voice is the whisper of rushing water, the sound of wind moving through the reeds.
The smithy sighs hard enough to blow a long, sweaty strand of hair from their brow. “I can fix everything. It’s what I do.”
“I’m in the Shadows.” The smithy does not know Allan, not yet, but they can tell he’s laughing at them. “You can’t fix it.”
“Well,” the smithy says, pushing away from the workbench and the ungodly, unholy ring that will not mend. “You could have told me that.”
“It seemed like I should let you try figuring it out.”
The door of the workshop flies open. Someone else is here, and the smithy has a job to do, and it was ridiculous to spend so much time on something that would never work out when there are a million other tasks at hand. The smithy sighs again, steps away from Allan, and goes to meet whoever it is that needs help now.
--
The smithy doesn’t leave, traditionally. Not that there’s much of a tradition to stick to; they’re a relatively recent addition to the ballpark, to the team. But they know the rules and they know the door stays closed, so they don’t leave.
Which means that, most days, Allan comes to see them.
It’s a surprise the first time. And the second, and the third, and the fourth. It’s a surprise to turn around to find him standing in the doorway with his ring still hanging broken on the chain, and it’s a surprise every time the smithy tries and fails to fix it.
And then, sometime around the seventh time – or maybe it’s the eighth, or the twelfth, or the twentieth – it stops being surprising. It’s normal, or at least unremarkable, for Allan to come and sit on the floor with his back against the smithy’s workbench, water seeping into the hardwood. He doesn’t talk much on his own, but he’ll answer questions sometimes, if the smithy asks.
The smithy has to remind themself how to do that part, asking questions. But they’re getting better, they think. They know now that Allan wasn’t always like this, that the water and the plants came after he started playing the game. They know that Allan has a sibling out in Los Angeles, that he studied urban planning and explored abandoned buildings.
They know he likes the water, too; that part, to hear him tell it, isn’t any different now than it was before. He works in filtration for the Core, monitoring for contamination and chemicals in the water supply for everyone else. It’s quiet work, but then, Allan is a quiet man.
The smithy’s world is loud. It’s full of the clang of metal, the roar of a fire, the demands of a rotating cast of blaseball players who think they have nothing left to learn. The smithy could use a little quiet here and there.
--
The smithy doesn’t leave the Forge. So it’s a surprise, then, when Allan walks through the door with a bag over his shoulder and a very determined look – or what might count as a look, if the smithy is reading him right.
“I’m going to show you something,” Allan says, taking hold of the smithy’s hand. The water of his skin washes away the soot and grime from their palm; it feels like dipping their hand in a stream. “You have to come with me.”
“What?”
But Allan is already pulling them along before they can stop it, out the door and into the halls of the Core. The smithy has been here before, but it feels like it was ages ago; the cramped, tiny halls are a mystery to them, just like the people walking past.
Allan, well. Allan moves as easy as an ocean current, slipping between residents of the Core without hesitation. The smithy lets themself be pulled along and tries not to get lost in it, the bright lights that line the walls and the sound of footsteps against the metal floor.
It’s been forever since the smithy set foot in a library. But the smell of dust and aging paper is familiar even now, and now, standing in the doorway and looking out over the seemingly endless shelves of books, they come to a stop so quickly that it nearly forces Allan off-balance.
“What… is this,” they ask. The words are barely more than a whisper, but it feels like they echo, like anyone within a mile might hear.
Allan is ever-changing. The water of his skin is in constant motion, bubbling up to the surface and retreating, flashes of underwater flora and glimpses of scales in the light. But now he’s still as the surface of a pond in the early morning, nearly silver, nearly reflective.
“This is Adelaide’s place,” Allan says, by way of explanation. “She offered to let you use it sometimes, when you need somewhere quiet to go.”
“Oh,” the smithy breathes. They take a step forward, and then pause. A step back. “I’m not supposed to go anywhere. I shouldn’t… be here.”
Allan shrugs. It sends whitecaps rolling over his shoulders, up his neck. “It’s siesta, Smith. You can go wherever you want.”
The smithy doesn’t know when that happened. When Allan decided to give them a name. They aren’t supposed to have one of those, either. But Allan calls them Smith, and leads them down one of the aisles, and hands them a leather-bound book from a shelf too high for them to reach. No lightning shoots down from the sky to smite them, and no earthquake tears the earth in two under their feet.
It is the smithy, and it is Allan Kranch, standing in the silent library together. Everything is as simple as that.
--
This is how the smithy meets Jebediah Kranch.
She storms through the doors during the postseason, when things are quieter but there is preparation still to do for the upcoming year. The smithy has new items to create – Lootcrates sent a whole list of things to try, new modifications and tricks of the trade.
But Jebediah doesn’t care; she zips in, a flash of neon purples and greens and pinks. The colors dart and jump and braid their way through her hair like fireflies and they leave a trail of light behind her as she walks. When she looks at the smithy for the first time, her eyes are kaleidoscopes, even in the overwhelming orange of the Forge’s fire.
“You are a universal constant,” Jebediah says. “Somehow, in every slice of Los Angeli, there’s you.”
She enunciates every letter and the smithy watches as the electricity sparks from behind her teeth, the tip of her tongue. They wonder if she and Allan can touch, or if it sets off some kind of reaction. But then they push those thoughts down, away; it’s not really any of their business, either way.
“Is that good?” the smithy asks. Compared to Jebediah, they are a slow, cautious thing.
“That depends.” Jebediah hops onto the table and kicks her winged shoes against the leg, a steady thump, thump, thump. “If I like you, then it’s allowed. But I don’t know if I like you yet.”
“Universal constants are rare,” Allan offers.
“Universal constants I can tolerate are rarer,” Jebediah retorts. “So Smith had better try hard.”
He, as always, is seated on the floor in one corner. The smithy doesn’t know when their Forge became an open door for the Kranch family, but they find they don’t mind it. The company is a nice break in the monotony, when it comes. And Allan has been coming more and more often, lately.
“Are you a universal constant?” the smithy asks.
“Me? No, I’m one of a kind.”
As if to prove a point, Jebediah wrinkles her nose. She shifts, then, from the small girl that she is, to an old man with gray hair, a squirrel, a snake. And then she’s back, shaking her head as if to clear water from her ears.
The smithy has never been to Los Angeli. Looking at Jebediah, at her shifting hair and the freckles that move across her skin like stars drifting in the night sky, they think maybe they’re better off that way. It seems overwhelming, being able to see into eternity, across dimensional divides.
“And Allan?” the smithy asks.
Jebediah shrugs. “Sort of. Allan is there, but Allan isn’t always Allan. Sometimes, he doesn’t even know you, which is weird, because he never shuts up about you here.”
The smithy feels their face go hot. They’d like to blame it on the smoke of the Forge, the metal bending under their hands. But no one calls them on it; no explanation is necessary. So they keep their eyes trained on their work, and they don’t say anything at all.
“You are the only person who has ever criticized me for talking too much, Jeb,” Allan counters. Almost idly, he places one watery hand on the coals of the fire, sending up a cloud of steam.
Jebediah snorts. With it, the lines of her body seem to spark and shift and change like the static of a radio. “Maybe I’m the only one who knows you.”
In some small, quiet part of the smithy’s chest, they find it in themself to hope that isn’t true.
--
There are many things the smithy learns about the Core. For example, there is a pool in the Core, and it belongs to PolkaDot Patterson in the same way Adelaide owns the library, in the same way the smithy owns the Forge. It is open to others, but Dottie is the one who lives in it, leaps off the diving boards with perfect form and slips into the water with barely a ripple.
Allan checks the pool for sanitation. He steps into it and the feelers of his lily pads spread out through the water like roadways on a map, and when he pulls them back in he knows what filter needs replaced, what chemicals need to be added, and whether it needs to be cleaned.
There is a sauna in the core, and Cannonball uses it almost every day after practice. Sometimes, Allan will join her; sometimes, Allan will go there alone, spilling parts of himself over the hot rocks to feel the sensation of turning to steam, of coalescing as condensation on the window of the door and coming back to himself.
There are fish tanks in Eve’s old lab, too, full of former experiments and specimens, and Allan tends to these, too. Allan walks among the glass enclosures and sprinkles food, reaches one finger in to check acidity and oxygen levels, and he changes whatever needs to be changed to make sure everything is happy and comfortable.
There are many, many things the smithy learns about in the Core, and Allan is a part of all of them. He is a piece of the network, a cog in the machine. He brings the smithy through every nook and cranny and teaches them the way back to the Forge.
The Core was not always Allan’s home, but it very clearly is now. Dottie has her pool, and Adelaide has her library, and the smithy has their forge. But the Core, the whole of it, is Allan’s, now. Allan takes to it like a fish to water. The smithy allows themself to be pulled along, too.
--
“You still haven’t seen the field,” Allan says.
“What?”
“The blaseball field,” he repeats, slower this time. One hand taps idly on the wood of the smithy’s table. “We call them the Pillars. You can see everything for miles, out there.”
“Out,” the smithy says.
Allan smiles. Or the smithy thinks he does, at least. “Yes, Smith. Out.”
Out is somewhere they haven’t ventured yet. For all that Allan has shown them the Core, all of its enclosed spaces, the smithy hasn’t set foot outside since they arrived in their Forge. But now, here’s Allan Kranch, standing up and taking the smithy’s hand in his own. Once again, the water washes away the dirt and grime and soot; it’s a familiar sensation now, comforting. It almost makes up for the way the smithy’s heart is pounding in their chest at the concept of leaving.
“We shouldn’t,” the smithy starts, but Allan is already moving, tugging them gently toward the exit.
“It’s the last day of siesta,” Allan says, and his voice is quiet, the barest whisper of rainfall. “I could go into active play at any time, Smith. Come with me to the outside, just this once, and help me face my fate.”
The smithy doesn’t know much about active play; they’ve never seen it, and they’d rather keep it that way. But they know it isn’t a pleasant place, and so they allow Allan to lead them out the door and down the winding halls of the Core. Now, people stop to greet them as they pass. Now, they are not a leaf being pulled along by the current of the river but a fish swimming with it, a part of the ecosystem.
It’s worth it, going to the Pillars. The field itself is suspended atop marble, and the sky spreads out above them in an endless, overwhelming mass. The rhythm of the Core shakes and shudders the ground beneath them.
Allan takes a deep breath and lets it out as a sigh, air bubbling to the surface of his skin. He cuts a glance over at the smithy, and the smithy looks back despite the way the stars of the night sky pull their gaze upward.
“A favor, Smith?” Allan asks, leaning in close. When his shoulder bumps into theirs, the water seeps into the fabric of their shirt; they don’t mind.
The smithy doesn’t say anything in response, but they offer a nod, bump Allan’s shoulder back.
“When I get pulled into active play, I could use a functional ring.”
If anyone were to ask, the smithy couldn’t say what it is that prompted them to reach out. But reach out, they do, slipping their fingers around the chain that still rests against Allan’s collarbone.
Kissing Allan Kranch is like diving into the deep end of a swimming pool. It is cold, bracing, and gentle, and the water seeps from his fingers into the smithy’s hair, from his palm into their shirt. There is nothing quite like it, and the smithy does not want it to end. But it does, and when they pull away, Allan is smiling again.
“Is that a yes?”
The smithy sighs. It comes out more like a laugh. “I’ll fix your ring. I’d make you a new one, if you asked.”
Traditionally, the smithy does not leave their Forge. But they spend that evening sitting on the grass of a field with Allan Kranch, watching the stars pass by overhead. It is enough.