Daedalus did not want to return to his planet.
It was a hard thing, to even think that. His planet was his home, and no matter how he had felt about the politics there in the past, he loved the world itself. It had always felt good to return there after a long trip away, to settle back into familiar places and find familiar people. Whatever else it was, however much he resented the worst parts of it, more than anything, Daedalus was home.
But none of those things were there anymore. None of the sights and smells and sounds that had welcomed him back. None of the people waiting to greet him. He would never again walk into the Frier Square market and find all of his friends there, waiting. Would never have one of one of Eiriel's pies shoved into his hands while they fretted at him, concerned because he was just too skinny and working too hard. Would never have Rengar slapping his shoulder and asking if he'd thought to bring anyone cute home, Soren wasn't the only one that got to kiss hot offworld babes, he ought to bring some back for his friends like Rengar didn't have Keth making eyes at him from across the market, wishing that he would look a little closer to home for what he wanted. Would never again get to greet one of Frederika and Markus's children, and tease both of them about still being nauseatingly affectionate two dozen years and eight little ones into their marriage.
All of those people were gone. All of those lives were snuffed out. There was nothing that could be done for them, except hoping that if they'd reincarnated, their new lives were much more peaceful. That the Cauldron would grant them a chance to be something new, and be happy. That the chances they'd missed in the last life, they got in this one. That maybe, just maybe, even if Daedalus the world was lost, the people in some way weren't.
And, a little bit, that perhaps the world was saveable. That somehow, Daedalus could find a way to remove the poison from his planet and free it from the clinging, sticky influence of Chaos, and that even if his friends were long lost, their planet might not be. Even if he could save it, of course, it would never be the same, but....well, a man could dream, couldn't he? That there might be something, someday, that he could do, to reverse the fate of the world that he had been born and raised on. That he could make up for his failures a thousand years ago. That somehow, some way, it didn't all have to be over. That Daedalus could be something more than a husk of a world.
None of that was happening any time soon, though, and the fact remained: Daedalus did not want to return to his world.
The problem was, he was fairly certain he had to, if he wanted to help Procyon.
It was an inescapable fact, really; he could not build an entire prosthetic arm from scratch. He was simply not that talented, or at least not talented in that specific way, and he didn't have access to the kind of parts he needed. You couldn't exactly buy precision-welded joints at a hardware store. He knew; he'd looked.
But people on his planet had needed prosthetics. He even knew someone who had made them; replacements for limbs lost in accidents or to disease, for which there was ever a massive demand on Daedalus. The factories were dangerous, sometimes deadly, and there were simply too many crushing machines to get an arm pulled into or horrible falls to shatter a leg. And if he had an arm, Daedalus was fairly certain he could fix it.
That was the way it seemed to work--he had a sense for machines, and a well-designed prosthetic was a machine. So if he could get his hands on one, even a broken one.....he might not be able to build it by hand, but he could certainly fix it. And Procyon deserved the use of his hand back. Perhaps a Daedalan prosthetic wouldn't be as good as what a Mauvian could make, but it would still be something that would help him, and Daedalus was not about to go back on his promise to find a way to help his friend. Help a fellow displaced Senshi, a fellow last survivor of a dead world.
And if he wanted to get his hands on one, he would have to go back to Daedalus. Which circled back to the worst part of all of this: that he did not want to go back to Daedalus. He did not want to walk among the homes of his people, now turned into empty graves. Did not want to sift through their things like a rat sifting throguh garbage and hope that he could find something that would help. Did not want to desecrate his world that way. His people, Daedalus thought, deserved better than that from him--but he could not give them better. He could only give them what he had. And unfortunately, as dedicated as he was to the memory of his world, he could not sacrifice the good of a living friend for his desire to honor the dead. That simply wasn't how it worked, and Daedalus was not about to let himself start prioritizing the dead over the living. Once he did that, all might as well have been lost.
And, in truth, he knew that it would have been what his friend wanted. Dammen was the giving kind--if someone couldn't afford one of his prosthetics, he'd find a way to help them afford it. If Daedalus came to him with Procyon's story, he'd have gladly made a limb for him, on Daedalus's word and nothing else. So to even think of not helping would have shamed every one of the people Daedalus was pretending to honor.
They would not have wanted him to let his grief stop his life, and they certainly would not have wanted him to use his grief as an excuse to be derelict in a promise. He had to remember that. And he had to remember that this was not for him. This was for Procyon, and, in the end, it was for his people.
If he could make their legacy live on in this small way, perhaps that was a way to make all of this matter.
So he took a deep breath. Steeled himself.
He did not want to do this, did not want to face a vibrant world reduced to an empty graveyard, did not want to--
But he had to.
He pulled out his Senshi phone, opened the app that would take him to his world, and let it carry him there.
He landed in Frier Square again, in the shadow of that ancient Sailor Daedalus. A glance up at the statue put steel back in his spine--this particular ancestral holder of his starseed had been known for his fierce advocacy for the Lower City, which was why there was a fountain built there in his name, and why a market had sprung up around it. His was the type of example Soren had always wanted to live up to, as a Senshi; he knew he hardly came close, in the end, but maybe he could do something about it now.
These streets were incredibly familiar. He'd grown up on them, run throguh them as a hellion child and slept on them after his parents died. Every home was a memory--Marnie and her wife Elenore and their newborn, crammed into a tiny top floor apartment and full of love; Rengar's place with Keth's right next door; a building that had been a union meeting-house once--and he knew the route from Frier Square to Dammen's metalworks by heart. He hadn't thought he went there often, but perhaps he'd spent more time there than he remembered--speaking to factory workers that had just lost limbs, promising them that it wasn't the end and he would make sure their families were provided for. Promising the parents of a child who'd had a horrible accident that he would see the responsible party brought to justice, and that the rich b*****d would pay for the prosthetic whether he wanted to or not. A thousand reaosns, a thousand lives he'd had a chance to touch there.
He found it right where he expected, and was struck again by the wrongness of it all. This place should be loud, full of the song of the hammer and forge, of Dammen chatting away with his apprentices and of clockwork being assembled into something new. But just like the rest of the world, it was rendered silent by the curse of a thousand years of degradation and decay.
The knowledge of it made Soren feel sick.
This place, these people--maybe they wouldn't have lived this long. Maybe they--and Soren himself, as well, if things had taken their natural course--would be centuries dead anyway by now. But it wasn't right, that their lives had been cut unnaturally short.
As he stood, and pondered, there was a shot of pain in his chest, and Soren doubled over, coughing hard. He was prepared to just ride it out--he'd ridden out coughing fits for years, after all--but this one went longer than he'd ever expected. And unlike most of his coughs, this was....wet. Productive.
With an awful hack, something came up from his abused, miserable lungs--a disgusting, vile black phlegm, and, to his horror, specks of bright red blood. And the coughing did not stop, not for several more minutes, not until it had stolen his breath so badly that he had to elan against the doorframe of Dammen's house and desperately try to gasp for a better, fuller breath. It took a minute more before he felt like his lungs were full again, and that made his chest clench tighter even than the coughs had managed.
It was getting worse again. He'd hoped that he had longer--that his ravaged lungs weren't as bad as they seemed. But apparently, he had hoped in vain. He knew, deep down, that his illness had been getting worse again, and here, in front of him, was the proof that it was worse than it had ever been.
He shuddered, full body, and forced himself to stand up and take several deep breaths. He couldn't just take this. Couldn't just.....give up. He didn't have time to worry about his declining health, not when he was here on a mission.
So he pushed through. Stepped into Dammen's workshop. Moved through it to the back, where he knew Dammen stored his projects.
And there, among half-finished work and projects in pieces, was exactly what Daedalus was looking for. An arm, lying on the desk--complete, but damaged, and looking for someone to fix it up. He scooped it up, slinging it over his shoulder, and turned to leave.
He heard it as he headed for the door--a strange, eerie skittering on the cobblestones outside.
The very sound of it froze his heart in his chest.
Nothing was alive on Daedalus. He knew that. His world had been cleansed by Chaos.
But when he stepped out of Dammen's workshop, there was something moving. It was like some kind of living shadow, skittering around on four pointed legs, with a strange, crablike body and no visible head. It was small, and Daedalus only saw one, but the distant sound of more little feet-claws made him more than certain that it was only alone for now.
"s**t," he said, softly, and he stood still, praying it wouldn't notice him--that whatever senses it had might be attuned to motion, or similar. That if he was slow enough about producing his Senshi phone, he could teleport out and be none worse for the wear.
Right as he opened the app to leave, it turned towards him.
He did not stay to find out what would happen if it caught him.
[wc: 2,047 words]
