Archive of Our Own

Venus, half-bodied, terribly distracted, bends forward over Neptune. "--Are you okay?" she asks, her voice ragged, changing, new. There are things she wants to say, more than that, things she couldn't dream of saying before, but for now, all that comes out is what she always says.

"I don't know. God," Neptune spits black, "I--I don't know."

She's curled up on the cabin's dirty floor. Her body won't come apart. She's been trying for minutes, and the cracks in her skin attest to that, trickles of black running from every pore and every orifice, staining her clothes, staining everything.

Jupiter watches them both from a distance, almost paralysed. Her breath fogs up the room, red; her panic is becoming visible, manifest. She's still scratching where the first of her new arms came out.

"Neptune," she says, voice almost lost in the rising sirens, "let us help." It sounds like she was almost going to say something else.

"Yeah," Venus says too. Her voice rasps--it is changing--but there is the same concern in it. "Here, let me--"

"I can do it myself!" Neptune swats away her hand. She rocks back and forth, clutching her stomach. "Ugh--gah--" She's choking. "Don't t-touch me," she still says.

There's a ripping sound from Jupiter. She gasps. Venus looks up at her, but she has already covered herself up, three hands hiding her face and torso.

"You both... this isn't working." Venus has barely started, herself, but she's totally focused on the other two. Light and feathers cascade from the gap where her arm used to be as she stands, awkward and off-balance. "Um. I... Jupiter, hold on."

She goes over and puts her other hand on Jupiter's elbow, pushing it gently down, then pulling it back. "It's... it's okay. Here, your fingers are trapped, pull it out this way..."

"Th-thanks," Jupiter gasps. "That was. Bad. Sorry. I'm--"

Venus kisses her shyly, right on top of her head. She shuts up.

"Sorry. I've, um, always wanted to do that," Venus says. It still feels wrong. The wrong lips. The wrong, heavy part of her. But... somehow, also not.

Her face feels fuzzy. Itchy. She reaches up and worries at it, instinctively, and it splits open.

Neptune, eyes bleary with gunk, watches in awe as the light spills out, as the lights spill in. "What- how. How are you doing that so easily."

Venus touches the space where her head used to be. "Um. I." Her voice feels half-there, distant. "I don't know, I've always wanted to do that, too? I can't--I can't see, though, uh, like, not much..."

"Wait, you can't?" Jupiter panics, and shoots to her feet, and something else rips. She stumbles, tangled up in her own limbs, bracing against the walls, all of them at once. "Ah--holy shit. Wow. That hurt, like, a lot."

She's everywhere, suddenly, pressing against everything at once. She giggles, and the air foams warm red. "What is this? I'm. Sorry. Uh, are you all okay?"

She pulls back, but she can't get as small as she used to be. "Shit. Shit. Where is it. Where are you."

But Neptune is there. She parts Jupiter's arms as easily as curtains, just wide enough to show her face. "We're fine. Just hold still."

She bends over in another coughing fit, though. Jupiter can't hold still. She rushes in around Neptune, cradling her with a thousand fingers, staining herself all in black and clouding Neptune all in red with the hot, too-much fog of her breath. "Neptune? Neptune, I'm... I'm--" this is wrong, she feels it's wrong, she knows it's wrong, but she can't stop this time.

"Hey, did someone lose a hairband?" Venus asks, distant, out of nowhere.

"Y-yeah, where is it?"

"Give it to me," Neptune says. She looks... annoyed, still, more than anything. "I hate how you keep--" she breaks into another coughing fit. "--how you--ugh--"

"I don't like it a whole lot either," Venus confesses. "I think, maybe, I can hold onto it for now? If that's okay..."

"Yeah," Neptune grunts, "you know how fucking annoying it is when you snap that thing? Cut it out. We both know why, and you don't need it any more."

She offers her arm to Jupiter again. "Here. You want something to do with your hands? Help me out."

But Jupiter isn't sure how. She hovers, millimetres distant, and the sirens ring louder and louder in her ears. Where are her ears, where is she? She's all just one horrible enormous touch. She's everywhere she shouldn't be, too much.

Neptune sinks back down to the floor again, out of energy for speaking.

Jupiter reaches vaguely for Venus, blindly. How can she tell where things are when she can't touch anything, she can't let herself touch anything?

"Um--found you, I think?"

Venus is there, suddenly, one arm awkwardly wrapped around her waist. Jupiter relaxes without realising it, leaning her weight on her. "...Thanks."

Venus isn't sure what to do, but she remembers something. "Jupiter, you said I was... safe, right?"

"What? Um, I don't know about that, uh..." Not any more, at least.

But Venus has already taken one of her hands, soft yet firm. "...Feel."

And then Neptune, at the same time, wordless, wrapping her arm around Jupiter's arm--

"It's okay. You can... touch us. You can do that. We want it, and it's okay."

Venus' touch is tender. Gentle. Just a little bit rough. Jupiter feels the little hairs on her arm and the texture of her fingerprints and everything without even meaning to and she recoils except she doesn't, she can't.

"I'm sorry," she tries to say. "This is taking so--you shouldn't have to--not for me--"

"It's okay," Venus promises again. Neptune presses her face to Jupiter's palm and mouths something into it.

Jupiter lets out a breath and it's like a dam breaking loose.

The cabin doesn't stand a chance. Not the dark closet and its musty walls, not the bathroom with the gurgling sink that barely works, not the charm on the outside of the door, not the rotting rafters. It's like Samson times a thousand, the pressure of Jupiter pushing out through skin and bone and wood and dead air and finally, finally touching.

"The stars," says Venus, "are kind of pretty?"

Jupiter laughs out loud. There's a new thunder crackling in her throat, and it's all she can do, for a bit--just laugh.

"This feels right," she says, almost shouts. She pulls Neptune up, pulls them both in, into an embrace like nothing they've ever had. "This feels right," she whispers.

"Ease off there," Neptune hisses, pinned against her chest, but then as soon as she can move, she kisses Jupiter's neck. In this storm of hands, it's like no one can see, or more like they already have, and it doesn't matter. She can leave a black stain there and it doesn't matter.

It hurts, though. She breaks down into another coughing fit. It's getting repetitive.

Jupiter holding her and rubbing her back gently makes it a little bit better.

Venus busies herself, self-conscious. She helps peel away the last clinging shreds of Jupiter's old skin; there's no protest. "...Are you okay, Neptune?" she asks eventually, again.

"Yeah. Fine. Better, at least."

"...Do you want help now?"

"Fuck you." Neptune sighs, and that almost turns into another coughing fit. "Dont--ugh--know if you can help me. Just want to..."

Venus comes around to her. Jupiter lets her down carefully, clearing out a place in the rubble.

Neptune reluctantly sits down, but it's not comfortable. Nothing is. Her insides churn.

"You're, um, stuck?" Venus ventures, lightly running her knuckles along Neptune's forehead. Loops of light, like little solar flares, peer curiously out of the hole of her neck. "Stuck together, I mean. The outside, it won't come apart."

"You don't think I know that? I've been stuck my whole life. I don't--know how to get out of it." Neptune knows she should probably be as worried as the other two are. People are coming. They're running out of time. But instead, she's just full of the same bitterness. She refuses to be afraid of them.

"Not now, though," Jupiter says. She's not sure how to say anything, but she has to try. She wants to try. "I... we'll make it different after this. I don't know how, yet. We'll be okay, and you won't have to--do everything you did, any more."

Her new body is much like her old body, Neptune thinks. Breath of lightning, a heartbeat like thunder--it's always, always felt like that to touch her.

Neptune wishes all her thoughts could be tender, but they're not.

"Why is all this stuff inside me," she groans. "Why am I full of it. Why do I have to be the one who's muddied and poisoned and full of bile and not--not you, or them--"

Ugh, here it comes. She's going to spit it up. She's going to drive them away. She doesn't have anything nice in her.

But Jupiter and Venus share a look and take each of her hands in one of theirs. They're kneeling on each side of her and suddenly she has flashbacks to baptism and it makes her feel even worse.

"I hate you," she spits it out. "Sometimes, a lot of the time, even when I love you I hate you. I remember every single time someone was trying to walk over me and you watched and you didn't help me, Venus," she spits, "and afterwards I thought, God I guess you know I deserve it, and I guess no one's really going to be my friend when I'm like this, and I guess because I'm angry and loud everyone's going to think I can't be sad and scared at the same time, and I guess no one is EVER going to care about me even when I care about them, and I remember when we met your dad, Jupiter, and I was like, did he have to grab my arm like that, and you were just like, he does that to everyone--you're always so worried about being good, just now you were going to drag us back to the captain with you, you knew how cruel it was but you almost did it anyway--"

And it's all coming up, a black torrent of every single terrible thought she's had and every way she's ever been hurt, and it pours out thick and sticky and choking on the ground. She coughs, she gags, she keeps going.

Until Venus steadying her shoulder and Jupiter clutching her head and torso are basically the only things keeping her from collapsing. Until she's sure it's never going to stop. It's oozing out of her nose and her mouth and there's so much of it that it's running through the damp grass down towards the river, like volcanic ash, like tar.

"Never again," says Venus.

"It'll never happen again," says Jupiter. "Swear on the devil."

"Fuck you," is all Neptune can say. "Why do you even care. No matter what you do, you'd never be as bad as anyone else, never as bad as me, I'll always, always love you, Jupiter. Why do you care."

"Y-you think..." Jupiter still struggles to get the words out. Her hands fumble at her throat, and fumble at Neptune's hair, stroking it out of her eyes so it doesn't get stained. "You think I don't want you to be free of this? Don't you know... everything about me, already, don't you know that every second thought I have is about you?"

"We're all as bad as each other, now," Venus puts in, hesitant. She's picking at the clogged bits of Neptune's skin, trying to widen the gaps.

Neptune knows how to deflect viciously. She knows how to make fun of people for being vulnerable around her. She knows how to care without caring, to shut herself off and yet still burst with anger. But not like this. Not now.

"If you think about me," she spits, another torrent of black strangling her breath. "If you get me. Then why did it take this long. Why is it only now. Why weren't you listening to me, ages ago, when I said--when I was--fuck." She rubs at her face, at her whole face, at her eyes. "Of course you didn't listen, I was just always like this. I don't shine, like you, Venus. Who'd want to be like me."

She coughs and even more comes up. "I hate. This body. There's nothing I can do with it except get angry and make a mess and then you people, you don't deserve it, you have to clean up--"

Jupiter presses body to body, hand to hand; lacing fingers with fingers.

Her face is so close and the look in her eyes is so tender and suddenly Neptune is crying.

"I'll mess you up," she sobs, and coughs some more. "I'll--get away from me."

"Never. You're the one who told me to get close."

Venus has got hold of something, at last. She peels it away and it flakes and there is something runny flowing through from under the black.

"Does this hurt?" she asks. "You have to tell me if it's hurting."

"Everything hurts," Neptune says, and then, "Keep going."

But Venus stops and then, more gently, more carefully, grabs something wedged in there, and works it slowly out. It comes loose with a sticky sound and Neptune's whole arm is suddenly loose, wobbly, like a baby tooth moments from falling out.

Neptune shivers at the sensation, and then she breaks down and just starts wailing. There's stuff pouring out of her face, her eyes and mouth, as Jupiter rocks her back and forth, and there's stuff pouring out of the stump of her arm, and it's all black still but it's much runnier now--it's flowing smoothly. Venus, curious, dips her fingers in the flow and lets it stain her. A dark clot catches between her thumb and forefinger, and she feels it dissolve in the current.

"...You'll be okay, I think?" she murmurs. "Let me..." And she reaches out again.

It's much easier from there. Like dismantling an old toy. Neptune can't say anything any more, not for a while. She's letting it all out. There's something deeper than speech in that flow.

There's more, and more, and more of it. So much you'd never believe. Venus and Jupiter get their knees wet, they wade into it; and Neptune, or the body she once had--it crumbles and erodes away, the glue and the bile dissolving, until it is not there.

The water is deep, and it doesn't stop being dark, not under that night sky. But it is clear, and it is true.

Neptune looks up into Jupiter's eyes. And they kiss each other's lips, without hesitation.

"I'm not forgetting a single thing," Neptune warns her. "So don't you ever pretend I made you do this. You meant it, now and forever."

Jupiter helps her stand up. "Yeah, I'll remember that." And kisses her again. "And I'll remember this."

"Whoops, your head's all swollen." Neptune tangles dripping fingers in Jupiter's hair. "God. I love it."

Jupiter laughs like thunder. It's so cute. She could get lost in the sound of it.

Venus has wandered away from the two of them, towards the dark path. From the rubble of the house, under the water and inside the storm, the broken radio is singing. She thinks, oh, this is it. This is the future. This is finally enough.

Any moment now, she'll see it. The place where she belongs.

Right now, though, she can't see anything. She's forgotten she's half, still stuck in her body, still headless. Her one hand, still rough and a little too big and a little wrong, gropes vaguely at the air, as if she can grab one of those stars up there.

"Hey."

She can't puzzle it out. The name of the devil, the face of the devil, the thing she really wants. Did she just want to be like them, Jupiter and Neptune? That seems as impossible as ever. Besides, it's not quite true. It frustrates her.

"Hey!"

The scouts are coming. She thinks maybe she can see their torches out there in the distance, and hear the wary humming of their radios. Like something ending. Maybe it will end, all of them, just like this, in a few moments, and she still won't ever have figured it out? That would be so unbelievably frustrating.

She wishes she could see.

"Venus!"

Jupiter's reach is long and she knows that, but she's still startled when fingers hook in her collar and pull her back, away from the path.

"S-sorry," she mutters, distant. "I was, um... lost? In thought?"

"What are you talking about? We're not finished with you." Neptune sounds exasperated. Her voice is clear again, right next to Venus, strident as ever. "Okay, let's have a look at you. Jupiter, help me out here."

Venus squirms involuntarily when Neptune touches her. "Wait--don't. Hold on. Aren't we done?"

"With you like this? You've got to be kidding." The grip of Neptune's fingers is firm, intent, fixating. Chilling, in the summer heat. "Look. You don't have to hide it any more."

"We know," Jupiter adds, her fingers running lightly up Venus' spine and around the ragged hole of her neck. "Like... it took a while, but we get it, okay? I think I can see you in there."

Venus feels guilty, like an instinct, a reflex. "It's okay, you don't have to," she protests weakly. Her voice is changing but it still hasn't changed enough and she thinks maybe it never will. "You don't... have to be so nice to me, I'm not..."

But maybe she's not talking loud enough for them to listen. Maybe the song is drowning her out.

Jupiter finds a spot on her shoulder that's weaker than the rest, where the light is peeking through. She prises it apart and a whole wing comes out, and suddenly, suddenly, the rest of Venus comes out as well. She slips free so easily she's ashamed of it, yolk and white and everything all at once through the holes she's already made in her body, as if there was nothing weighing her down at all, ever, like there was for Jupiter and Neptune.

The husk of her body crumples to the ground and she floats up there, overwhelmed by the sight of everything, radiant in the night, pulsing like a heart, before settling gently down and curling up. "Sorry. Sorry sorry."

"It's okay, You can't hide from us any more. You shouldn't." Jupiter kneels down next to her, a hand on the grass by her leg, and a hand in the air by her hand, and a hand gently touching her cheek as if waiting to wipe away tears. "Um. You're... beautiful."

"How?" Venus doesn't meant to ask that. She doesn't mean to sound so sharp. "I mean. I don't get it. How am I... this?"

She huddles down and wraps herself in a cocoon of her wings, wings with many eyes, as if she could see without being seen, as if she could hide from Jupiter's touch.

"Oh I am so sick of you playing dumb," Neptune groans from her other side. "You know that better than any of us, you've been dropping little hints at us for what, months? As if you were hoping we'd figure it out even though you couldn't tell us, and we did figure it out, but you're still doing this. Why?"

She rubs one of Venus' wings with her fingers, right above one of her new eyes, so that she squints and wriggles. "It's who you are. And... I love you for it. So I'm not letting you hide from us any more."

"We're right here," says Jupiter, "right outside."

Venus is quiet for a little while.

"Okay," she says in the end, and she can't keep the smile from her voice. She can't keep pretending she isn't happy. Why is she so happy?

She unfolds her wings and stands up to show them and the last of the lights fly into her eyes from all around, and she is beautiful after all.

It's not, somehow, that her new body is very different from her old body. It just doesn't sit on her like ill-fitting clothing, or like an old transparent chrysalis with the bug still trapped and squirming inside. Instead it's just... her. As if there's no difference between the beating of her heart, and the twitching of her many eyes, and the inner light that turns golden as it filters through her skin. As if every part of her is alive.

She combs distractedly at her hair and grins at them. "So. Look at me." Her voice is so right. It resonates, deep in her chest.

"Oh, I'm looking." Neptune rolls her eyes, but the water swirls calm and welcoming across the distance between them. "You are so smug. Come here."

"Wait, what for--" Venus starts, but Jupiter is already crashing into her with the biggest bear hug in the universe. "Uh! Okay. Okay."

They stagger and fall over. Neptune catches them with a splash and a long-suffering sigh, and then wraps her arms around them both as well.

"You look so much better this way," Jupiter laughs into Venus' hair. "Wow. I think I'm in love."

"You can't just say that??"

But Jupiter just holds her as tight as she can.

"You don't have to try that hard to embarrass her, you know," Neptune comments. "Listen, it's been... confusing. But you've always been special, and... you know, maybe we've both been thinking about it already? Maybe it only made sense now? I know Jupiter had some kind of thing for you, for certain."

Jupiter puts a finger to Neptune's lips. "Hey, um, it's not too much, is it? I didn't guess wrong? Listen, I wasn't... telling the truth, back then. Or I didn't get it, not yet. You're not harmless at all, you're... yeah. Special. Like, touching you makes me happy, that kind of special."

Venus' wings are already folding around them both, light and firm as the sky.

"I'm... I'm glad I wasn't just jealous," she mumbles. "I'm glad I really, really was in love. With... with you, Jupiter, and you, Neptune. I love you."

"Are we in a Hallmark movie or something," Neptune says flatly.

"No, I mean--"

"Listen to me. You don't just say it like that. You dance around it for years and years and then you do something once in a dark closet when you're both drunk and you don't say anything during it, and then you never speak of it again."

Venus blinks in confusion. It's quite a sight.

"That sounds... not great...?" she ventures.

"Yeah, it sucks. I like this better."

Neptune joins hands with Venus, and she tightens her grip on Jupiter's hand which has never really let go of hers.

"This is good," Jupiter quietly agrees, after a while.

"I think it's the worst," Neptune deadpans.

"...Oh, I get it," Venus says. "Worst, as in... like, we're the opposite of good, but we're good in a different way?"

"I have literally no idea. Shut up."

"I like that," Jupiter says. "We're all... the worst. The worst girls since, um... since Eve."

"Sure. Whatever. Put that on a T-shirt." Neptune smiles. Her face is pressed against Venus' cheek, so they can both feel it. "Speaking of which. Are we ready for the scouts?"

Jupiter bolts upright, messing up the pile. She pulls them both with her. "Wait, right. What do we do?"

Venus looks at Jupiter on her left, Neptune on her right. Somehow, she doesn't feel afraid at all.

"I guess... we do what we just did? It felt right. Like it'd work on anything. Like, whoever it is, they'll have the devil in them too, and all it takes is one moment."

Neptune sighs. "Okay, you two I love, but what if it's. I dunno. Group South? Like hell am I giving them a pep talk on gay repression or whatever when they're trying to kill us."

"Yeah," Venus says, entirely serious. "Like hell."

"You are kidding."

Jupiter stares into the distance. "...I. Think we could do it," she says eventually. "Together. Because, like, it's the only way, right? And they deserve it, like we did."

"You can't still be on about this," Neptune sighs. She's disgusted. "Look, if it's the best way, I'll do it. I'll help. But you don't owe them shit, and if you act like you do, they're probably gonna win this."

Jupiter bites her lip. "...Yeah. Okay." Then, "Thanks. I'll try to remember."

Venus kisses Neptune on the cheek, mostly because it's easiest to reach. "...So, we're ready, right? To... show them. To love each other, and ourselves, so much they can't ignore it."

"Yeah."

"Yeah, I'm ready."

So altogether, hand in hand in hand, light above water and beneath storm, they go to greet the messengers of god.

There is a song that follows them, growing louder and louder.