Archive of Our Own

Jonny is dead when it happens. In hindsight, he can’t even remember why he’s lying in the rec room with blood crusting his cheek - maybe Ivy found out about that book he burnt, or Ashes was just having a particularly shitty day, but when he finally wakes the ship is quiet. 

And that’s what really makes him bolt upright, hand reaching for his sixgun. 

As a general rule, the Aurora is never quiet, and if it is it’s usually the quiet of several someone's trying very hard not to be found - and even then you can usually hear the cursing of whoever was pissed off trying to hunt the offender down. This silence has teeth. This silence means that something has gone really, really fucking wrong. 

Jonny wastes no time in jumping to his feet and stalking out the room, every sense stretched taunt. He wants to yell for another mechanism and demand an actual explanation, but something tells him that that would be a spectacularly bad idea, so instead he settles for brittle silence, the hateful tick tick tick of his heart growing louder and louder and louder and -

“Jonny!” 

The first mate snaps his head up at the voice, eyes landing on the Drumbot and utterly ignoring Brian’s expression of dread. 

“Brian? What the hell is going on?”

“Jonny, you really shouldn’t be here-”

If there was one thing you didn’t tell Jonny D’Ville, was that he was not allowed to do something, clearly something that Brian had forgotten as Jonny elbows his way past the man. Brass connects with his skin as the pilot shoves him back.

“I’m serious, Jonny. Don’t make me kill you.” 

Something in his tone makes Jonny actually sit up and take notice, if only to heft his sixgun halfheartedly in Brian’s direction. The cool brass hand tightens on his wrist as a thought occurs to him. Oh. Oh no.

“The Doc isn’t…” The words trail off into nothing at Brain’s steady gaze and a white-hot anger sears through Jonny, “What the fuck. What the fuck! She promised not to! She fucking promised!”

Another mechanisation, Carmilla has gotten her hands on another poor half-dead bastard and was going to make another one of them. Something that she’d promised to stop after he saw what she’d done to Ivy, what she’d done to Ivy’s brain. 

Jonny’s practically vibrating with fury, but that’s good, the steady hum of violence is something he’s deeply familiar with, something that he can use. It steadies his mind, even as his breathing starts to go a little ragged. With a snarl, he rips his wrist free of Brian. 

“ Show me,” he demands. Jonny doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he finds the Doc but it’s probably going to be something incredibly stupid and involving a good amount of bullets. Brian’s face has closed off again and Jonny knows he’s about to either refuse or just straight up kill him depending on the setting he’s on, when Ashes turns the corner ahead of them. 

Their jaw is set in a grimace and their eyes widen as they see Jonny, but that’s not what his gaze focuses on. The goggles clenched in their fist are half melted and crusted in dried blood and distinctly Tim’s. 

It feels like the whole world has been ripped out from under him.

“No,” Jonny’s voice is strangled and he fucking despises it, “she can’t-”

God, he’s so fucking stupid. If he’d been less of an asshole then maybe he wouldn’t have been killed over something so petty earlier and maybe he’d have been alive enough to prevent the Doc getting her hands on Tim.

“Aurora picked up a lifepod a few hours ago,” Brian’s voice is soft, responding to whatever devastated expression is currently plastered across Jonny’s face. He needs to pull himself together, but - fuck, Tim. “It had been barely keeping this soldier alive and the Doctor just swooped in and took him to her lab. His eyes… It was bad.”

“Of course it was fucking bad. They were burnt out by a fucking lunar cannon!” Jonny tries to inject as much venom as possible into the words, but they mostly just come out as broken. Three years. That’s how long ago the Moon war was. That’s how long the lifepod had been keeping Tim alive for. Jonny hadn’t grieved exactly, but he had accepted that Tim was dead, was lost somewhere in space and now suddenly he was here. 

And being mechanised. 

Jonny remembers his own, clear as day, and now Tim’s going through that torture. With a numb kind of detachment, Jonny realises that he’s bitten right through his cheek, mouth filling with blood. As if in response, the steady ticking in his own chest grows louder, enough to block out whatever Brain, and now Ashes, are saying. 

Jonny can hardly think beyond the fire in his chest, but screaming is so far beyond him now. His throat is raw and he thinks maybe he’s been screaming for days, but the thought slips right out of his mind the moment that he feels something shudder to life his chest. Disgust and nausea momentarily overwhelm the agony. That’s not right. It’s not right! The thing inside him is cold and sharp and heavy and someone’s sewing it into his chest. Jonny wants to beg and struggle, but can only cry, sobbing like a child. 

He doesn’t deserve this, he tries to say, but another stitch shoves the hateful object further into his body and Jonny gasps, choking on blood and tears. Through the haze of pain, he’s vaguely aware of a woman leaning over him, and for one blessed moment she wipes away the tears on his cheek and her fingers are cool and steady against his boiling skin. 

“You’re perfect,” she says and Jonny knows she’s not talking to him. 

And then the agony in his body begins anew and Jonny finds it in himself to scream again. 

Someone’s holding him firmly against their chest and the steady thump, thump, thump of a human heart resounds through his bones. Jonny curls his fingers into the soft fabric pressed against his face. It smells clean and new and…

Huh. When did he get on the floor?

Someone is speaking in his ear in a calm, slow voice and Jonny blinks, trying to piece together what’s actually going on. Oh, right. Tim. The anger is still there, boiling away just below the surface, but it’s colder now, more alert. He can fix this. He’s going to fix this.

“Are you back with us?” The voice in his ear is still steady, calming, and it takes Jonny a hot minute to untangle his brain enough to answer. 

“Yeah.”

“Good. Really good. Can you sit up?” 

Was he not already? Apparently not. Jonny is currently sprawled across the corridor, head in Brian’s lap and Ashes hand carding through his hair. Well this is embarrassing. He feels his face flush as he hurriedly sits, pulling away from both of them and fingers once again seeking out his pistol. Breathing comes a little easier when he has it in his hands. 

It’s one thing to have a breakdown in the privacy of his room and a whole other thing to do it right in the corridors where everyone can see him. It’s everything Jonny can do not to shoot himself in the head out of pure embarrassment, but he feels like it won’t be taken well, not with Brain and Ashes staring at him like he's dangerously fragile. Maybe he is. But they don’t have to know that.

Tim is still at the forefront of Jonny’s mind, though. And the Doc. By the look on Brian’s face, he’s still not going to let Jonny anywhere near the lab, especially since apparently he’s just having breakdowns over the mere thought of being mechanised. Goddamnit.

“Sorry,” Jonny mutters as he pushes himself to his feet, the panic has receded into a dull throb and everything in his body wants to go back to being curled up with the two and let himself be taken care of, but he’s Jonny fucking D’Ville and has a reputation to maintain. And besides, he can’t afford himself that kind of weakness when Tim still needs him. So instead, Jonny shakes his head. 

“Sorry,” he says again.

“Want to talk about it? Or fight it out or something?” Ashes asks, and boy is it tempting to release all this excess panic in a really good bit of violence with Ashes, but Jonny forces himself to shake his head. 

“I’m fine. Sorry.”

They’re owed a better explanation, Jonny knows this, but Tim is far more pressing.

“You don’t need to be sorry, Jonny. We’re here if you need us.”

“Good. Yes. Right. Okay, well I’m off. To, uh, sleep.”

And with that, he’s sprinting away in the opposite direction. God, he’s so fucking good at lying.

When ten minutes pass and Jonny is sure that no one is coming to check on him, he slides into a vent. The vents are Nastya’s territory, but when the Doc is on the warpath she tends to retreat deeper to the engine rooms, so he manages to just about squeeze through them without meeting anyone. It takes him far longer than he’d like, but eventually Jonny drops down into the corridor outside the Doc’s lab. 

His boots ring out sharply against the metal as he lands and Jonny cringes, sucking in a breath as he waits for the doctor to come and investigate, but the whole area has that eerie silence that coated the ship when Jonny first woke up. 

He can’t tell if he’s relieved or not. 

It’s now or never though, either before his nerves snap or the Doc discovers him. With a breath that is definitely not shaking, thank you very much, Jonny pushes open the door to the lab. 

It’s empty, save for the soldier in the centre, someone who Jonny thought he’d lost all those years ago.

Jonny would’ve never before described Gunpowder Tim as helpless. But staring at the figure laying on the surgical table, plugged into a million whirring machines and looking so small, so painfully mortal, the first mate can’t help but think of the word. It’s just so wrong . Even before Bertie’s death, Tim was always vibrating with a kind of manic energy that he funnelled into songs and laughter and never truly left him, even when he slept. To see him so still and pale and fucking helpless - 

Jonny is going to fucking fix it. 

He doesn’t bother with caution as he approaches, though the calm, cool anger that pools through him warns him otherwise. This anger isn’t the comforting, familiar blind rage that he so loves, but it sharpens his mind, gets the job done. Even so, he still can’t look too hard at the surgical tools, the spare gears and brass laying next to Tim’s body, without feeling that spiralling panic begin again. 

He keeps it together. 

“Tim?” He hisses at the figure on the table, but there’s no response. A morbid kind of jealousy fills him at that, the fact that Tim is so lucky to be unconscious for his mechanisation when Jonny had to endure the agony awake - he shoves that impulse down, below the anger. This is not the time. 

Brian was right though, Tim’s face is really bad. The beginnings of the mechanisation are still there, sure, glimmers of metal embedded into ruined flesh, but the band where his eyes used to be is utterly gone, melted skin and blood and burnt bone all blended together. 

“ Tim ,” he says again, and still Tim just lays there, breathing shallowly. Jonny gives himself exactly five seconds to grieve, to let the guilt and pain and rage flood him in a moment so intense he’s honestly still surprised that he’s still standing when it passes. 

“I’m sorry,” Jonny whispers, “I am. But you don’t want this life. It’s better this way.”

He can feel the words weigh heavily on his bones as turns to find the fastest way to end the life of his former friend. 

Jonny comes back to himself with a gasp and a laugh. Fucking gas. Dying to it was worse than the microwave attacks, at least those killed you quickly. It’s about then when Jonny feels eyes upon him and turns. Tim. Oh.

“What the fuck?” Tim asks, voice borderline hysterical, sounding a little like he’s losing his mind, “you fucking died. I watched you die!”

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Jonny mutters back, stretching out his legs. They’re in a foxhole that’s absolutely not big enough for the two of them and still Tim has managed to shove himself as far away from Jonny as he can get. If Jonny’s honest, he doesn’t know the guy super well, and the few conversations they’ve had before this is absolutely not enough to prepare Tim for being crammed in a ditch together with a not-so-dead-man.

“I did say I was immortal,” Jonny points out, fairly responsibly in his eyes. 

“Yeah, you fucking did. I didn’t think you were telling the truth though!” Tim’s voice still hasn’t lost that manic edge and Jonny winces, feeling a regeneration headache coming on. There’s a few moments of silence, punctuated by gunfire and Tim’s ragged breathing. And then-

“How?”

Jonny’s laugh is humourless, “why? Want to become immortal? It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

It was a joke, and a poor one at that, but still Jonny can tell Tim is genuinely considering the question. Something explodes nearby, shaking their little hole and showering them with dirt, so loud that Jonny almost misses Tim’s quiet words.

“No, I think I’d hate it.”

The bullet slams through Jonny’s shoulder, snapping him out of his memories with a violent curse. He’s already ripped a few random IVs and tubes out of Tim’s body, but with his shoulder burning in agony, he knows he won’t be doing any more, and that the sabotage he has completed isn’t nearly enough to make sure Tim stays dead.

Fuck it.

Jonny turns to Carmilla, whose face is a mask of rage, the gun in her fingers still smoking.

“Jonathan. What are you doing?” Her voice is deadly calm, a tone Jonny knows means only pain. Vaguely, he wonders if he should run. 

“Exactly what it looks like.”

She takes a breath. “I see. And any particular reason for this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I thought that forcing immortality onto random people without consent was a bit fucked up.”

“And yet you have no problem with the others I’ve mechanised.”

Does she really believe that? Even after the screaming match they had after Ivy was mechanised when Jonny had helped her learn to walk again with her new clockwork brain.

“God, you really don’t fucking care, do you?” Jonny’s voice is rising and he doesn’t care. Carmilla blinks. 

“Of course I care. Why do you think I mechanised you in the first place? I couldn’t stand to be alone.”

“Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare turn this around on me!”

Carmilla just sighs, “there’s no need to take that tone with me.”

And Jonny throws his head back and laughs, a manic, unhinged thing, “oh fuck off .”

And then he turns to pull yet another IV out of Tim. The next bullet finds his brain. 

~*~

Jonny wakes strapped to a surgical table, the thick leather restraints not allowing him to move an inch. He’s been here many times before, but that doesn’t stop the panic that roars through his blood. Carmilla’s already standing over him, scalpel in hand. Dully, Jonny wonders which body part she’s going to start with this time. 

“You need to have a think about your behaviour,” she says to him, more like an annoyed parent than someone who just shot a man. For one crazed moment, Jonny laughs at that, at this whole fucking situation. 

And then Carmilla presses the blade into his stomach and it’s all he can do but scream. 

~*~

The door to the lab slams shut behind him and it’s all Jonny can do to avoid straight up collapsing to the floor. It’s only the knowledge that if Carmilla finds him passed out outside her lab, she’ll just drag him right back in there for another week, that keeps him upright. At least, he thinks it’s been a week. Time always gets really weird during their sessions. 

The world tilts and whirls as Jonny staggers down the corridor before him. He has the vaguest memory of thrashing around so much that he actually broke through one of the restraints and that’s probably when she gave him the drugs. Enough to slow his erratic movements, but not to mask the pain. And, of course, specially engineered so they don’t wear off when he dies. 

Jonny resigns himself to a miserable few hours as they work their way out of his system. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s ever had a bad trip. It really doesn’t help that he’s positively drenched in blood, most of it dried, but some still oozing from the wounds in his stomach. He wonders if his liver has grown back yet, but that’s not really the most pressing concern right now. That would be Tim. 

He didn’t see the sharpshooter as he was shoved out the lab, meaning that Tim’s probably on the Aurora somewhere. That makes Jonny feel a little better. The others will be taking care of him. The mechanisms might be the biggest bastards this side of the Yggdrasil System, but they’ll give it a month or two before actively fucking with a new member. 

But then, of course, if Jonny had been faster, if he had played nice with Carmilla, he could’ve brought himself some time. Made sure Tim was dead. He might not have been the one to actually mechanise Tim, but he sure as hell didn’t save him from that fate. 

Deep within his chest, his metal heart ticks away, mocking him. 

God, he’s so tired. 

There’s someone shaking his shoulder now, and Jonny blearily looks up from where he’s slumped against a wall. He doesn’t recognise where he is on the ship, which might have been more worrying if he wasn’t so out of it. As it stands though, he can just about focus on Brain’s face, if he squints. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” Jonny tries, though the joke falls flat as soon as it passes his lips. 

“Oh Jonny.” Brain’s voice is soft, sad and Jonny frowns. Shit, he’s made Brain upset, “are you alright with touching?” 

It takes a moment, but Jonny nods. 

“Okay, let’s get you sorted out.” Strong arms wrap around his back and legs and Jonny lets himself be picked up. If he was any less exhausted or any less doped up, he’d probably be spitting and swearing right now, but he can’t lie that it’s comforting. 

“How long?” Jonny mumbles into Brain’s shoulder. 

“You were in there for about two weeks.” 

“Oh.” 

That doesn’t check out with Jonny’s memories, but he can’t lie that between the systematic dissection and the drugs, he might have lost a few days here and there. It’s not like there's a clock in the lab anyway. 

“Tim,” he says instead, shoving down the images of his own bloody body. 

“He’s fine.” Something in the way Brain says those words makes Jonny think that Tim’s distinctly not fine, but he doesn’t push it. “He’s mechanised.” 

There’s not much else that Jonny can bring himself to say. Instead, he rests his head on Brian’s chest and closes his eyes, letting the steady thumping of his heart and the rocking to lull him to sleep. 

He’s only semi-conscious when Brian runs a hand through his hair.

“Wake up Jonny, we’ve got to get you clean before you can sleep.” 

Jonny thinks about complaining, or even just flat out refusing, but he can’t deny that dried blood is really itchy. And besides, they’re already in a bathroom now, with a full bath smelling faintly of lavender.

“Fine.” 

Brian hums as he gently strips Jonny’s clothes off him, avoiding the wounds on his stomach that still haven’t fully healed. It doesn’t take long, partly because most of the fabric has been shredded so thoroughly by Carmilla who didn’t really care that it was his favourite shirt before she started hacking into him. Carefully, Brain lowers Jonny into the water and the first mate closes his eyes again. 

The world fades away into warmth as Jonny just floats there, letting Brian wash away the blood that coats him like a second skin. He even thinks he whimpers a little as the pilot starts rubbing shampoo into his hair, but that’s for him to know and Brian to take to his grave.

Jonny doesn’t know if the bath was also Brian’s sneaky way of making sure he relaxes, but by the way he is so completely and utterly boneless by the time Brian finishes, he’d say it was a pretty strong side effect. He’s only vaguely aware of Brain picking him up and gently drying him off, but sometime later the sensation of being placed on a bed much softer than his own wakes him a little.

“I fucking hate her.” 

Out of heavy lidded eyes, Jonny watches as Brian starts, as if surprised that Jonny was still awake. 

“I hate her so much… but I also think I love her. She's like my mother.” Jonny can feel tears prick at the corner of his eyes, but doesn’t care. He can always blame the vulnerability on the drugs when he wakes up. Instead, he laughs wetly.

“Fucking pathetic, isn’t it. She tears me apart and mutilates my friends and I still love her.” 

Brain finishes tucking him into bed and strokes Jonny’s hair out of his eyes, clearly considering his next words very carefully. 

“I think you were given a pretty shit deal of it all, Jonny. I think you made the best you could out of the situation. I don’t think that’s pathetic.”

“Yeah, well, I should’ve at least killed Tim when I had the chance.”

Brian is silent for a moment, “so that’s why the Doctor…”

“Yeah.” 

“I’m sorry Jonny, I should’ve-”

Clumsily, Jonny reaches out and pats the golden brass of Brian’s chest.

“Nah. You couldn’t have done anything. That’s why I went through the vents in the first place. Didn’t want you getting in the way. Still failed though.”

Brain doesn’t respond to that one, instead choosing to card his hand through Jonny’s hair and the first mate melts almost immediately against his touch. He knows he’s going to wake up the next morning and be absolutely mortified, but for now he can ignore the creeping embarrassment.

“Go to sleep.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Jonny mutters back, but his eyes slip closed anyway. 

~*~

Jonny was right about one thing. The utter embarrassment is the first thing that hits him when he wakes. He’s in Brian’s bed, the pilot himself asleep on the floor, and - oh Christ - did he really let Brain put him to bed? Like a child ? He wonders if Carmilla did that on purpose, turning him out into the starship still half off his head with those drugs, but that sees a bit too low, even for her 

First things first though, he really needs to get out of here, then find Tim, then raid the ship’s kitchen. Unfortunately for Jonny, none of those things go to plan as the moment he climbs out of bed and places a single foot on the floor, Brain wakes. 

“Where are you going?”

Jonny’s entire face burns crimson at the memories of last night.

“Out.”

“Hm. What to talk about it?” 

“Fuck off, Drumbot.”

Brain waits. And then -

“Yeah.”

It’s a shame that between here and the Doc’s lab Jonny seems to have lost his sixgun because the urge to shoot Brain and leg it is really strong. As it stands though, he just sits there as Brain climbs onto the bed next to him. 

“You don’t have to leave just yet - if you’re not ready.”

Jonny flashes a sharp toothed grin in Brain’s direction. “I’m Jonny fucking D’Ville. I’m always ready for anything.”

“Jonny.”

The grin slips a little at Brain’s tone. He knows full well the absolute state he was in last night, and he also knows that it usually takes him a good few weeks to get over Carmilla’s little experiments. Usually. Right now he has Tim to worry about and focus on, though he’s sure that the nightmares and anxiety are going to come right back when that’s out of the way. 

Whatever. Not an issue right now. 

It costs Jonny a good bit of his pride to unwind himself enough to say, “thank you. For last night. And the time before that.”

Brain just shrugs, “don’t worry about it. God knows you’ve helped us out enough times after we’ve been in the lab.”

That’s true enough at least. Jonny’s lost count of the amount of times he’s wiped blood from Ashes’ throat, or held Ivy after a particularly bad set of nightmares. It’s a side to himself that he only really wants to show late at night to half delirious crew mates. It always makes it much easier to escape in the morning. He didn’t realise how utterly mortifying it is to be looked after like that himself. 

“Don’t know what you’re on about,” Jonny mutters, suddenly finding his boot the most interesting thing in the world. Brian hums. 

“I wish she’d just fucking stop.” The words are barely breathed and Jonny doesn’t know why he says them without the excuse of pain or exhaustion to cover up the vulnerability. Maybe it’s the steadying presence of Brain, or just that fact that he needs to say something to fill the silence, but the words are out now. 

Almost hesitantly, Brain wraps an arm around Jonny’s shoulders - the first mate doesn’t reciprocate, but neither does he wriggle out. 

“I don’t know why she carries on. It’s so clear we all fucking hate it, hate her, and it’s not like she’s still trying to perfect it or anything. And now she’s got her hands on fucking Tim- ” Jonny’s voice breaks and he presses his palms into his eyes, focusing on breathing. It’s the third breakdown he’s had recently and doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream. Maybe both. 

Brain’s hand is rubbing slow circles on his back and Jonny leans into it a little. God, he needs some really good violence, it’s been so long since he’s just let loose. Maybe on the next planet over there’ll be a war or something he can join for a few decades. The thought steadies him and he continues. 

“And now she’s got her hands on Tim and apparently I wasn’t enough to stop her. I’m immortal, for fuck sake, I should at least be able to protect my crew!”

“She’s ruthless, Jonny. And so are you, but in a different way. Stopping her when she’s put her mind to something is impossible.” 

“I should’ve tried harder then.”

Brain sighs, “you tried as hard as you could and she still ended up pulling you apart.”

The image of his own abdomen, empty and bleeding fills Jonny’s mind and he jerks.

“Fuck off, I’m not talking about that.”

“That’s okay.”

Jonny bites his tongue, but stays leaning against Brain for a few more seconds. 

“Right, piss off Drumbot, I’m going to find Tim.”

“This is my room.”

“Fine. I’ll piss off then.”

And he does exactly that. 

It doesn’t take long to find Tim, the sharpshooter is exactly where Jonny expects him to be - the shooting range. Jonny hasn’t been in this room in decades; if he wants to shoot something he’ll either hunt down Ashes or randomly attack various surfaces until Nastya throws a spanner at him. Still, the smell of gunpowder is comforting as he enters to find Tim blasting away at some target, holding what looks to be a modified grenade launcher. 

“Tim!” He yells over the gunfire, and the man turns to him. Jonny gives a quick, assessing glance to the state of his face before being satisfied that Carmilla has done a decent enough job. Metal spreads across the band of Tim’s face where the lunar cannon caught him, and the eyes that are set into it have that same coppery glint as Brian’s skin. The irises whir and spin like camera lenses, focusing on him. 

“Jonny?” Tim’s voice is raw, like he’s been screaming for hours and Jonny honestly wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case. God knows he didn’t take his own mechanisation well. Jonny’s answering smile is slightly too sharp to be comforting.

“Welcome to the Mechanisms!”

Tim just blinks at him, and Jonny tries again, spreading his arms wide. 

“The band of pirates roving across the skies, having fun-” 

“I know what the fucking Mechanisms are Jonny. Carmilla gave me a run down.”

Jonny’s eyes sharpen, “don’t call her Carmilla. It’s Doc or Doctor, but not just Carmilla. She’ll drag you down to her lab for that.” 

“Sure.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know. We’re fucking immortals now though. Apparently.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t bleed.”

“Sure,” Tim says again and fires blindly at the target once more. The two are quiet for a moment.

“I didn’t think it would hurt so much.”

Jonny shrugs, “at least you were passed out for most of it.”

“How do you - how do you know that?” Tim’s metal eyes widen, as if a thought has just occurred to him. “Were you fucking helping her?” 

“No! Fuck no!” The idea is so abhorrent that Jonny can only splutter out denials. By the way Tim shifts the massive gun towards Jonny’s heart, he’s not being particularly convincing. Jonny eyes up the barrel of the gun. It’s going to be a fucking pain to regenerate if he takes a hit from that. 

“Oh, really? So, how do you know ?”

“Because I was going to to fucking kill you, before Doc could fully mess with your eyes!”

That, at least, seems to bring Tim up short. 

“Oh. You didn’t manage it then?”

“ Clearly .”

Looking only slightly embarrassed, Tim swings the gun away from Jonny, setting it down with a kind of reverence that Jonny remembers from the war. Some things never change, he supposes. 

“I… Thank you for trying.”

“Yeah. Worth it to piss Doc off at the very least. Sorry I wasn’t quick enough.” 

“Some things just aren’t meant to be, I guess. If I’d closed the visor on the lifepod a little quicker, I also wouldn’t be here.” 

Jonny shrugs, trying to pretend that Tim’s words don’t ease something in him. 

“Want to go shoot some shit?”

Tim’s expression brightens, and he turns, scrounging for one of the many guns lying behind him. 

“ Absolutely.” 

~*~

The airlock door shuts before him with a faint hiss as Jonny just stares at Carmilla’s shocked and painfully betrayed face floating away from him, deeper and deeper into the unrelenting blackness of space. Her arm reaches out towards him and her mouth opens as if to beg, or plead, or curse. 

Jonny turns and walks away before the words can form. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t . And she will not have the satisfaction of last words. 

Gunpowder Tim will be the last person she hurts. 

And it’s with that thought in his mind that Jonny calmly asks Aurora to speed up.