Chapter Text
Tango was born from the heat of a star. This was something his mother had whispered to a brother inside the small cave they were raised in. He was sitting outside, listening to the bubbling lava lake a few feet away with his head raised to the sky. The air was muggy with heat and ash as explosions echoed from far away.
His brother had been confused. He’d asked how his own kin could possibly be born from something that burned brighter than the fires of their homeworld. His mother had laughed then, a loud and crackly sound, as she told him she had not meant literally. Tango had not actually been born from the center of a star, delivered to them by the outreaching tendrils of flames. He had only been born with a heart that ached and called for something they could not see nor understand.
Privately, Tango wondered if he himself understood what his heart called for. His eyes traced the familiar constellations of his homeworld. He had heard once, from a traveler who had not stayed long and had eyed the warfront with equal parts wariness and pity, that each planet had its own constellations and stories for each one. Tango had not accepted the man’s pity, his people were not a weak kind, but he had dug his greedy hands into every constellation the man would share with him. He had memorized each one so that the outlines would become deep grooves in his mind. Even now, he could trace the edges of constellations from worlds he had not seen.
His tail curled over his bare feet as he pulled his knees to his chest. The netherrack was pleasantly warm in the nighttime and smooth from years of feet walking the path into their home. Tango knew they’d be leaving soon, what with the warfront getting closer and closer everyday. His heart ached for those they’d lost and those they’d continue to lose; the inevitable loss of his childhood home etched into his heart like a symbol of everything they’d never get back.
So, he looked to the stars instead.
He always looked to the stars when things hurt like this. His mother said that he’d cried endlessly after his birth until she’d taken him outside. One look at the starry night sky and he’d been silent for the first time. She said she knew he saw things different than her that night because she’d never looked to the stars and felt peace.
The sky was covered by dust now; the impact of a war fought by two netherborn species. He couldn’t see the constellations anymore but he could guess where they would be. He closed his eyes and remembered where his stars were. Tango stayed outside until his mother called him in to sleep.
—
Tango didn’t regret taking the first ship that would accept his shabby engineering skills as payment but he did regret not getting to say goodbye to his mother.
It had all happened too fast, is what he told himself as his planet got smaller and smaller. He’d been at the market trying to make some quick money by repairing things for people when he’d caught the eye of a ship captain. The offer had followed right after and he hadn’t really been given much time to think it over.
He hoped his mom would forgive him for not coming home, or saying goodbye. Before he left, he made sure to have one of their family friends deliver the news. Even gave them all his coins to make sure it’d get back to his mother that he hadn’t been killed and left in some ditch or pool of lava. Leaving her hurt, but leaving her thinking he was dead hurt worse. Tango liked to think she wouldn’t be mad when she found out he left. His mother had always understood his need to leave in a way no one else had.
—
“Woah, woah, okay, that’s not—” Tango let out a little shriek as he lurched forward to grab his bag. His claws cradled the bag and he looked quickly to see if he’d ripped it again, but luckily there were no new tears. “This really isn’t necessary, hey !”
He dodged the hand attempting to shove him further down the ramp. The uneven slope left his feet trying desperately to stop himself from tumbling down into the dirt below. Above him, he could hear the angry grumblings of the crew and a few curses that made his ears pull further against his head.
“Get out of here, kid,” The captain snarled at him as he puffed up his chest and made himself bigger. Tango would like to say he wasn’t intimidated, but that would be a lie, so he took a tiny step back. Just a tiny one.
“Really?” His voice pitched upwards at the end as he looked between the crew that he’d been working with for months. “But I—”
“Kid,” The captain’s eyes were a stormy, dark color that made Tango’s instincts shiver and screech to get away. He hated that he was still young enough to have flight instincts that called for a protector. “You don’t want me to say it again.”
“I can be good, like really really good! I won’t talk, or get in anyone’s way. I’ll just do my job and fix things, I promise!” He rambled desperately and inched forward only to be stopped by a growl. This time, he couldn’t dodge the hands coming for him. He cried out as the world spun wildly around him. The breath left his body as he made contact with the ground and he whined at the pain of a smashed tail.
“I should have never taken a chance on you,” The captain then turned and ordered the ramp to be lifted. With a spark of dread, Tango realized they were going to leave him here. He scrambled to get up and plead some more. He could be good. He could be quiet and still and good .
His eyes met one of the other engineers they’d picked up recently. She was small, like him, and her eyes seemed to glow in the rapidly dimming light. Her mouth was turned down into a frown as she twisted her fingers into her ratty old jacket. Some of the patches on it Tango had sewn himself. He looked into her eyes and knew, if it hadn’t been him, it would have been her. In the not so distant future, it probably will be her.
He looked into her eyes and swore the stars reflected back, burning and desperate to live.
Tango slumped back down to the ground as dust kicked up and the ship took off. He could hear the whirring of its engines as it broke through the atmosphere and left him stranded on this gods-forsaken planet. The sun was setting and bathed the sky in some strange green-purple color that made him feel like he’d had one too many endorian chorus fruits so he turned to his bag and picked it up.
It was half-destroyed and covered in more patches than original fabrics. Some had small designs on them, intricate little patterns and cut off logos. There were pieces of t-shirts, and blankets, and whatever else he could get his hands on. Some of the crew used to joke that the bag would outlive them but still be nothing like it was originally. Theseus’s ship , he mused to himself as he brushed off his clothes and hefted the bag over his shoulder, is something forever changing still what it was originally, or is it too different?
He smelled smoke in the air and saw light shining up through the trees off to his right. If he was lucky, it would be some kind of civilization that could offer him food and shelter. If he was unlucky, well, Tango grew up on a planet at war.
Hopefully, he’d be able to get off this planet soon. He’d only been here for a few minutes at most, and already his entire being itched to be off the ground. Sure, he’d just been abandoned by his crew, left the only home he’d ever known, and had no idea where he was, but Tango wasn’t one to give up easily and his blood sang to be among the stars.
—
Despite what his mother said, Tango was a dumbass. This was something his siblings had made clear to him from an early age and bullies had cemented into him with more than enough beat downs on the netherrack paths of his childhood.
Despite what his mother would like, Tango was stubborn. He remembered every lecture she gave him while she wiped blood from his face. Every soft plea for him to stop when she bandaged another hand scraped raw from pushing himself off the netherrack. Behind every whisper and light brush against his skin, he felt what his mother really wanted; for him to stop fighting. Silently, she begged him to give up, to let the bullies win, to not bite back at every remark his siblings made, to stay on their planet even if it killed him.
Tango had stopped looking his mother in the eyes long before he’d left for good.
Now though, that idiocy and stubbornness might just get him killed. A high-pitched shriek made him clamp down on his ears before he snapped out of it and continued climbing forward. At this point, he was crawling through the ship’s ventilation systems and praying they didn’t get any smaller than this.
He may be a small guy, but even he had his limits.
Tango flattened himself to the floor of the ventilation shaft as footsteps echoed down the hallway below. He couldn’t understand the language, but the rage in their voices was universal. In all, Tango’s summary of the situation is this:
If these guys catch him, he is fucked.
His chest began to ache from holding his breath as they continued their conversation below. The metal was cold beneath his forehead as he leaned against it and prayed for them to either finish up or continue the conversation while walking—preferably away from him. Now, Tango wouldn’t say he was religious, the closest he ever got to it was his brief obsession with old Terran gods, but he swore he could be as they quickly walked away from him.
Tango’s loud breathing echoed around the narrow tube as he choked on the sterile air. That was another thing he had to get used to once he left; how clean the air was. He took a second to center his breathing and himself before continuing down the shaft. His memory of this area of the vents was foggy at most, but he would be willing to bet a cup of pudding that it should be opening up around here.
(He ignored how he doesn’t really have any sort of plan. The original one was to not let these guys know there was a stowaway aboard, but that was obviously a bust, so he was onto Plan B. He still has no idea what Plan B is and was cussing out his past self for putting off making it.)
He breathed a sigh of relief as the vent opened up into a more general area and he wasn’t suffering from claustrophobia. Growing up in an almost barren wasteland tended to make a person anxious about small spaces. Him being an engineer was a little funny, even he had to admit.
The vent cover beside him popped off and all he could do was screech as a large hand (like holy shit, how was it that big ) wrapped around his leg and pulled him. He kicked repeatedly at the hand and tried to dig his claws into the metal of the vent, but neither of these attempts were successful as he was dumped to the floor of the ship. Tango wheezed and wrapped an arm around his ribs that ached from the fall. Truly, no consideration for his well-being.
A feeble hiss turned to a yelp as he was kicked. He rolled to his side and peered up at the aliens. They were bigger than him, much bigger, and the instincts he had yet to kick wanted to curl up in surrender. His tail lashed beside him as he bared his teeth and snarled. Another kick to the stomach had him pulling his legs up to protect himself. He hissed.
The aliens spoke to each other in fast, clipped words and even faster hand motions. A few of the swiping motions were too similar to violent gestures from his homeworld and he pushed himself against the wall. He glanced up at where he’d come from and wondered if he could make it back to the vent before they caught him.
A hand grabbed him by the shoulder and began to march him down the hallway. It would be marching if he was standing, but he hadn’t been given the chance to get up, so really he was just being dragged. If he had dignity, it would be dead right about now. Luckily, he didn’t, so he whined and hissed and cussed in every single language he’d picked up over the past three years.
When they reached the shuttle bay, Tango knew his earlier analysis was correct—he was fucked. He wriggled a bit in his captor’s grip, but that only got him a sharp hit to his back. One bonus of fire hair is that a lot of people didn’t try to hit him upside the head.
The escape pod was open when they got there and all hope of not going out the airlock left as he was shoved in. Enter Tango’s favorite stage of just-got-caught-grief: bargaining. It didn’t really work, seeing as they couldn’t understand him, but it was worth a shot. One shoved the other aside and for a second, he was hopeful it had actually worked. Then a ratty old backpack hit him in the face.
He groaned in pain as the capsule door shut and locked him inside his tin can of death. Before he could reopen his eyes, which still stung from the backpack, the pod was launched into space. With his eyes closed, you would think he wouldn’t be able to tell he’d been released, but the feeling of an escape pod exiting a ship had become so familiar it was barely scary anymore—-mostly, it was uncomfortable.
The air inside the pod felt pressurized, like someone had thrown him head first into a noise-canceling room. His ears refused to pop and the space behind his eyes felt like an ever expanding balloon. His chest tightened in anxiety when the safety belts secured him to his seat and his head flew forward with the pure force of ejection. Up from down became impossible to tell as his nausea spiked and his breathing became frantic. His fingers clutched to the bag like it was the only thing tethering him to gravity. In those split seconds where he believed something had failed and he had died, he did not think of his mother and he did not pray to gods he didn’t believe in, but he did think of the stars.
He thought of childhood stories and late nights, he thought of travelers who spared their words and time for a scrappy kid with a curious mind, and he thought of every moment spent sitting in front of viewing windows just for a glimpse of the stars—just for a glimpse of feeling like he belonged somewhere. And then the escape pod stabilized and he opened his eyes to the endless abyss. Tango was getting tired of being thrown out the airlock.