Work Text:
Whenever they had a collaboration coming up, Aventurine always awoke to a few texts from Ratio. Usually simple things, mostly just nagging him to ensure he had gotten everything ready, but they were a constant for the handful of days leading up to their next task. Aventurine couldn’t help but look forward to them. They opened up a wonderful opportunity to push Ratio’s buttons.
Tomorrow, they would depart for Insumousu. Aventurine was to help broker a deal between the Thalassans and the Xianzhou Alliance, while Ratio was supposed to assist in planning an excavation of the crashed Hexafleet ship. It was going to be a tricky mission, and not even in a fun way. No chance for ridiculous risks or gambles, just the tightrope-walk of navigating politics.
(At least he could take out his boredom by bothering Ratio.)
There was… just one problem. Aventurine hadn’t received a single text from Ratio this entire time. Not one.
What didn’t help was that his phone had glitched and deleted a handful of contacts, one of which of course included Ratio’s. Aventurine cursed himself for never bothering to memorize anyone’s phone IDs, because now he couldn’t for the life of him find the doctor’s contact information to fix things. He had no choice but to wait for Ratio to text him first, which was seemingly not going to happen.
He cursed under his breath as he glared at his phone. While in the midst of getting ready for bed – the night before they’re set to leave, mind you – his patience had finally snapped, and he decided enough was enough. He was going to find out what had happened to his disappearing act of a business partner.
So, he called the one person he was certain would know exactly where Ratio was and how to get in touch with him: Jade. Why her? Well, because she knew everything.
He set down his phone on the sink after dialing her number, idly brushing his teeth as the phone sing-songed to note that it was still waiting to connect. He had just enough time to rinse out his mouth before he heard the call go through, with Jade’s voice sliding through the device.
“Aventurine? What brings you to call me at this hour?” Her tone was the same as always — smug, confident, and a little condescending. “A lady needs her beauty sleep, you know.”
“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of keeping you held up for long.” He toweled off his face, taking with it excess product from his skin routine. “I was just wondering if you could send me the doctor’s contact info. He ghosted me at the eleventh hour!”
Jade was silent on the other line for a few moments. “You’ll have to be a bit more specific. Which doctor are you talking about?”
Aventurine paused. “Uh… who else? You know, Ratio?”
“Who is ‘Ratio’ supposed to be, exactly?”
The toothbrush clattered as it fell into the sink, slipping entirely from Aventurine’s grasp.
That was when he knew something was wrong.
All of Ratio’s classes at Veritas Prime were now being taught by other professors. Every research paper he had ever published was either gone or attributed to someone else. The patents for his inventions were just vaguely attributed to the IPC. It wasn’t as if Ratio was suddenly wiped from memory – it was like he never existed at all.
To say that Aventurine had panicked at this realization would be an understatement. He had to trust his own memory, but in the face of so much evidence, could he? His myriad of poorly-managed neuroses had, as far as he knew, never included anything along the lines of hallucinations, but what if he just hadn’t realized it until now? What if ‘Veritas Ratio’ truly was a figment of his imagination?
There was only one thing that kept him sane. One tiny thing that held his composure together.
Do stay alive. I wish you the best of luck.
The note. The ‘doctor’s prescription’ that had saved his life at its lowest point, still remained where it belonged in his coat pocket. Nobody in his life would have given him such a thing besides Ratio.
He had to be real.
Aventurine concluded that after so many incidents of getting himself into trouble, now it was Ratio’s turn to need rescue. It must have been some kind of experiment gone wrong that broke something in space-time. Aventurine couldn’t claim to understand a damn thing about Ratio’s research, but the idea that he may have been flying a bit too close to the sun with his quantum experiments felt like it was possible.
Yet the IPC never rested. Aventurine still had work to do, all while having to pretend he isn’t losing his mind.
The debate on Insumousu was heated from the moment it started. The poor Intelligentsia Guild schmuck that had replaced Ratio was helpless when trying to give her presentation, unable to finish presenting the facts of the Daiyu’s scientific significance before fighting broke out between the delegates.
The Thalassan ambassador flared his gills furiously, slamming his fist on the table. “Damaging any part of the palace from our sea will wreak havoc on the ecosystem!”
“It is not your ‘palace’,” the Xianzhou ambassador countered. “It is one of our great ships, one that many of our soldiers died fighting for, and that vault contains precious treasures that cannot be replaced.”
Aventurine forced himself not to sigh audibly, leaning back in his seat. The room they were in was like a giant, inside-out fish bowl – a pocket of air, held in place among a wild, untamed seascape. Its beauty didn’t save it from being entirely disorienting. As if dealing with an argument about a thousand-year-old locked room wasn’t bad enough, not only was a man erased from reality, he had to be stuck in an aquarium while he dealt with everything.
Oh, what he wouldn’t give to not be here right now.
“Er, the guild –” The researcher timidly cut between the debate. “T-The guild has several proposals for methods we can utilize to open the vault without damaging the reef.”
The Thalassan cocked a scaly brow. “Really? And how so?” Skepticism oozed from every word.
With a shaky breath, she steadied herself and clicked a button on her remote, changing her slideshow to the next page. “We can remove the coral growth piece-by-piece, suspending each one in an artificial environment so it can survive long enough to be replanted elsewhere.”
Another Thalassan cut in. “The inside of the vault has been cut off from the greater ocean for over a thousand years. With its size, it is entirely possible that the water inside has been fostering its own unique micro-ecosystem the entire time. How will that be preserved?” She adjusted her goggles, the saline solution inside sloshing against her round, frog-like eyes. “And what if those unique organisms are deadly to our home at large?”
The Xianzhou ambassador scoffed. “There are so many ‘what-ifs’ in what you’re saying. Is that all we’re going to do? Trade hypotheticals back and forth?” He crossed his arms with an indignant huff, before turning his attention to Aventurine. “What’s your input, IPC delegate?”
‘Frankly,’ Aventurine managed not to say aloud, ‘I think you’re all idiots for being so obsessed with a decaying shipwreck.’
Instead, he smiled casually. “I think the concerns are valid,” he leaned forward on the table as he spoke, “but that’s why we should focus on solutions. Just stating the problems gets us nowhere. Perhaps this is where the guild’s resources could come in handy once again?”
He had intended to help the guild representative by throwing her a bone, but instead, he watched as she cowered under the attention. “W-Well, er… I’ll need to speak to my supervisors…”
Aventurine’s smile didn’t twitch, but internally, he was swearing up a storm. ‘Was Ratio really the only vaguely capable person in the entire guild?’ He felt a vein in his head throb. ‘Just what is Director Yabuli wasting all of our money on!?’
Well, if he didn’t already have every reason in the world to find the doctor, he did now.
His original plan for this trip had been to sightsee between attending monotonous meetings, but it was clear now that was not going to happen. Every moment he spent away from that fishbowl bubble of circular arguments was spent holed up in his hotel suite, leeching off the complimentary internet connection to do as much research as he could.
Admittedly, he wasn’t the most tech-savvy person in the universe. Growing up on an isolated desert planet tended to have that effect. He had never considered it a problem before, but now he was absolutely kicking himself for not remedying the issue – why was searching the internet so difficult? How was he supposed to find anything worthwhile amidst a sea of spam and advertisements?
At least he could add another mark to the infinitely-long list of ‘reasons to hate the Marketing Development Department’. All this trash had their sticky fingerprints all over it.
Eventually, after nearly tearing his hair out for hours, he found something: a scientific journal of somewhat dodgy reputation discussing the idea of parallel universes and pocket dimensions. All of the jargon about quantum mechanics went over his head, but he could piece together enough to understand a few key features. Mostly that, in this particular field of science, slipping between dimensions is a risk all researchers knowingly take on.
He couldn’t find any reliable information about what happened in the aftermath of researchers hopping between worlds. Most studies seemed to be focused on what the dimension-travelers themselves experienced, not what mess their disappearances left in the aftermath. So, nothing about whether it could cause a person to be forgotten entirely.
… Yet wouldn’t that lend credence to his theory? If no one recorded what happened in the wake of these disappearances, it could be because they didn’t remember. The idea was a long shot, but Aventurine didn’t have any better answers.
So, he had to work with that idea for now, at least. It was better than nothing, and he absolutely needed something – because if he was the only one who remembered Ratio, who else could save him?
It was nearly three in the morning when Aventurine was startled out of his research by a dull knocking at the door. The sound almost seemed like it was muffled through deep water, but that couldn’t be the case, right? The hotel he was staying in was entirely above the sea, designed for land-dwellers to live comfortably.
Yet he felt the weight of the ocean pulling at him as he sluggishly hauled himself over to the door, prying it open with a slow creak.
Nothing. No-one. The hallway was empty.
He had definitely heard someone at the door, but maybe they… left? Or maybe, maybe –
Maybe he was just losing his mind.
“We have records stating that important documents related to the Hunt are inside that vault,” one of the Xianzhou ambassadors snapped, interrupting some long-winded spiel about coral reefs from a Thalassan scientist. “Have you forgotten the Xianzhou is constantly at war? This information could be the difference between soldiers coming back whole or in pieces!”
“With all due respect,” the Thalassan adjusted her water-filled goggles, “the Xianzhou boasts a respectable intelligence network that is united across the entire fleet, kept constantly updated through the use of your unique Jade technology. Who’s to say there’s anything in that vault that isn’t backed up on the other ships?”
Aventurine tuned them out once again, sinking into his seat. He really couldn’t care less about the alliance’s cultural history or the ecology of coral reefs, especially not now. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to have the power to tell everyone in this room to quit arguing and let a coin flip decide instead.
Sadly, if he did that, he would never hear the end of it from the other Stonehearts.
“Gambler?”
Aventurine felt a jolt shoot up his spine. Ratio. That voice, that nickname – that was how Ratio referred to him. His head swiveled around in a panic, trying to find the source of the voice, when the guild representative timidly cleared her throat.
“Mister Aventurine?”
He snapped his head to look at her, nearly giving himself whiplash. Had she been the one that called for him? No, he was certain it was Ratio, but Ratio wasn’t here, and now everyone was looking at him with confused, expectant looks, and–
“Sorry,” he said with a laugh, “I may have spaced out for a moment. Could you repeat the question?”
Her question was, unsurprisingly, something stupid that he didn’t even bother committing to memory. The entire meeting was like that, honestly. Just stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid babbling that paled in comparison to what really mattered, which was –
Which was –
Aventurine’s head throbbed. He ended up having to excuse himself from the meeting early, because his vision wouldn’t stop swimming, and the last thing he needed was to be seasick inside of a giant fishbowl.
(He had a fish tank in his office back at Pier Point. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to look at it without getting nauseous after this mission.)
Aventurine couldn’t pretend he only wanted Ratio back for practical reasons. No, his reasons were deeply personal and selfish.
He realized he cared for Dr. Ratio far more than he should when he held that note in his hands, a single beacon of light in the darkness of the Nihility. He read it over and over as he trudged through the slime, the weight if it dragging down his legs as it grew deeper and deeper – almost deep enough to swim. All the while he told himself that he couldn’t give in to the despairful nothingness that bore down upon him because someone wanted him to live.
And so, he had to live. IX’s ruin ran through his veins but he had to live.
Aventurine had never been great at recognizing or processing his own emotions, but even he had to accept that was not something a person did for a work colleague. The devotion he felt which had been his guiding light, it was something burning and powerful he was afraid to put a name to.
Now, his blood was running colder with each moment as he realized he was forgetting pieces of Ratio. His voice was long gone, leaving only the muffled echoes of ‘gambler’ to cling to. His face was becoming smudged, losing details as it became a mosaic of pale skin and violet hair. His eyes – Aventurine knew he could liken them to a sunset, but how so? A sunset bore so many colors, and he could no longer remember which one could be seen in the doctor’s eyes.
Time was running out. Fueled by desperation and caffeine, he researched more on the topic of alternate universes and pocket dimensions. He didn’t care if he was a shambling husk for tomorrow’s meeting; the Thalassans and Xianzhou natives could go to hell for all he cared.
Ratio was the only thing that mattered to him right now.
Yet, as if mocking him, a knock at the door pulled him from his research.
He ignored it. Whoever wanted to get in touch with him could not possibly be more important than finding Ratio. But the knock continued, increasing in intensity as if the person behind it were acting in a panic.
“Fine!” Aventurine shouted to the empty room, his words clipped with irritation. He slammed his laptop shut and stormed over to the door. “This had better be important – !”
His words were cut off as the door swung open with more intensity than he had put into opening it. A deluge of water pressed up against the other side, shoving roughly through the gap and throwing him backwards under the swell. His mouth and nose were filled with it as he struggled to breathe, but where he expected to taste seawater and dying fish, he instead was met with fragrant bath salts and familiar shampoo.
The torrent filled his hotel room, stirring up the furniture as if held in a tornado. He scrambled to keep himself upright, his lungs burning as he struggled to find air. The warm bath water surrounded him on all sides, suffocating him and
“Mister Aventurine?” The Xianzhou diplomat’s voice was as grating as ever. The fish-bowl surrounded him on all sides. Every eye was on him with some kind of expectation.
He was going insane, he had to be. Or – Or maybe everyone else was going insane.
One moment, he had been drowning in his room, and the next, he was back here. His hair was still dripping with the slowly-cooling water. His clothes were soaked completely slick against his skin.
He opened his mouth to speak and only water came out as he coughed and gasped for air.
Nobody said a word about his condition. They just continued on discussing their stupid vault and their stupid ship as if Aventurine wasn’t sitting there, wheezing like a drowned rat, and like the doctor wasn’t –
The
The doctor.
Aventurine doesn’t
remember
his name.
He sprang up from his seat and ran, bursting through the door leading to the long, glassy tunnel that led back up to shore. The ocean swam around him in streaks of mottled blue and purple – like his clothes, like his hair – and he just kept running.
The tunnel – it wasn’t this long before. How had it gotten longer? Where was he? Why was he going down instead of up?
Doctor, are you listening? Please help m
The Thalassan ambassador flared his gills furiously, slamming his fist on the table. “Damaging any part of the palace from our sea will wreak havoc on the ecosystem!”
“It is not your ‘palace’,” the Xianzhou ambassador countered. “It is one of our great ships, one that many of our soldiers died fighting for, and that vault contains precious treasures that cannot be replaced.”
Aventurine was back in that damned seat. The ambassadors continued a cyclical debate, repeating the same arguments over and over again until each word devolved into meaningless noise. His lungs and legs ached from running, but there was nowhere to run. The door he had fled into before was gone.
The fish bowl was sinking into the ocean, falling deeper and deeper, with no way to find the surface.
Why was he here, again?
Water spilled out of the guild representative’s mouth as she spoke, reducing her words to foamy garble that Aventurine couldn’t understand. How strange. He knew he had worked with the same guild representative so many times, why did she seem like a stranger?
What was her name?
He could feel his phone ringing from inside his pocket. Strange – had it not been ruined in the flood? He reached into his pocket to pull it out, but his fingers wrapped around something much smaller instead. Something cylindrical, with ornate designs on either end.
Curiously, he pulled it out, squinting to see its details as the bowl descended further into the darkest levels of the ocean. It was a tiny scroll case, designed with the pretty motif of an owl. How quaint. He was sure he would remember how he got this, but despite the odd tingling in the back of his brain, he couldn’t piece anything together.
Slowly, with the last fragments of light disappearing from the glass bowl, he pulled out the tiny slip of paper contained within. His eyes just barely managed to catch the small printed letters before his vision was consumed completely by the abyss.
Do stay alive. I wish you the best of luck.
Aventurine felt weightless. The endless debating of the ambassadors faded into soft, muffled echoes, blending in with the ambience of the ocean. The note and the case drifted out of his hands, floating away into the water.
The sharp sea filled his nose and mouth, stealing the air from his lungs. He surrendered to the burn of suffocation.
He was going to die. He was dying.
He was already dead.
Do stay alive. Do stay alive. Do stay alive.
Those words rattled around in his chest as it caved in on itself. Who was it that had cared about his life so profoundly that they would leave him that note? It must not be meant for him. There was no one
No
If there was no one, why did his heart scream otherwise? Why did those words feel so close to his soul?
Why did he, a man who had never known the feeling, love those words so deeply?
The impossible in the Dreamscape is not ‘Death’,
He was going to die.
but rather, ‘Dormancy’.
He was dying.
Do stay alive.
He was already
I wish you the best of luck.
dreaming.
Aventurine had woken up from more nightmares than he could possibly count. That was somewhat of a given, considering how often he had nightmares to begin with.
But this was different. This felt less like waking up, and more like being ripped out of his own skin. The somnolent fluid clung to his body as if it were barbed, each hook digging further in as he pulled against it. It was agony, burning as the dream tried to drag him back in, but he refused.
Still blind to the waking world, he pushed forward, crying out with the sheer effort of fighting back as he stumbled forward, choking on the fluid in his throat as his chest hit the ground – hard.
“ – gambler!” The voice that reached him, tense with panic as it was, settled into his very core like warm honey. “Calm down – you cannot afford to injure yourself any further.”
The rest of his senses returned to him piece-by-piece until finally, he could see the face he’d been searching for so desperately.
Eyes the color of the rising sun gazed down at him, alight with an anger that was fueled only by concern. Aventurine was lying on the floor, his clothes wet from liquid memoria, and Ratio was there. He was there, and despite the hazard of touching him when he still bore so much of the fluid on him, he had his hands on Aventurine’s shoulders, helping him sit up with a touch that was so achingly gentle it made him want to scream.
“Deep breaths,” Ratio advised, his tone soft as his previous ire subsided. “Your body is still adjusting to the real world.”
There were a million questions that Aventurine should have asked. ‘What happened?’ would have been a good start. Maybe even ‘how did I get here?’ if he felt so inclined.
He asked none of them. Instead, he threw his arms around Ratio’s shoulders and hugged him so close, no power in the universe could ever pry them apart again.
A week. Aventurine had been dreaming for a week. It was an amount of time that simultaneously felt so long and not nearly long enough for everything he had experienced.
Apparently, before the mission to Thalassa, Aventurine had gone to visit the guild to check on one of their projects he had been funding. He didn’t know much about the project, only that Ratio’s team was behind it, and that was all he needed to know in order to throw as many credits at it as they needed.
But, it was something to do with Memoria, and it just-so-happened to explode out of its round, glass tank just as they went to show off their progress to Aventurine. Ratio hadn’t been there at the time, but when he returned to find his colleague in a Memoria-induced coma, he had been furious.
The scientists responsible fully expected Aventurine to cut their funding, perhaps even demand they be fired or press charges. He didn’t. Accidents happen, and frankly, he didn’t care about any of that now that he had escaped his nightmare.
Ratio felt responsible for the whole incident, even if it had been due to factors that weren’t at all his fault, and, thus, had hovered over Aventurine like an anxious mother hen throughout his treatment. That level of Memoria poisoning was highly toxic, apparently. It was a miracle he had survived it with so few complications.
(The psychological complications were more than enough for him, honestly.)
Throughout every treatment, Ratio’s presence could still be felt. Whether it was his name signed at the bottom of some form, or a nurse mentioning his suggestions, he was always present.
More often than not, his presence could be felt because the man was literally there.
“If it’s not too forward to ask,” Ratio spoke up, breaking the awkward silence that had fallen while Aventurine waited out the slow process of having his medicine dripped through an IV, “what did you dream about, while you were comatose?”
Aventurine fell silent. What could he say? Was it worth the risk of telling the truth? In his mind, he rolled a handful of dice.
Snake eyes. Every single one of them.
He told the truth anyway.
“It was our next mission,” he murmured, not quite ready to look Ratio in the eye, “except you weren’t there. Like the world had forgotten you existed.”
Ratio was quiet for a few moments. Aventurine couldn’t bear to look up and see his expression. Would it be pity? Confusion? Discomfort?
“Was that… frightening to you?” When he did reply, Ratio’s voice was soft and hard to read.
Aventurine laughed, bitter and humorless. “It was the worst nightmare I’ve ever had.”
When he finally could bring himself to look up, he found that Ratio was looking at him with a face that could only be read as utter heartbreak.
“Am I…” he swallowed, “truly so important to you?”
Aventurine’s hand shook as he gripped the blanket on his lap. “To me? You’re…” He hesitated, biting his lip. “... irreplaceable.”
The silence that followed was heavy, hanging over him like a sword left dangling by a horse’s hair. He waited for it to fall, for rejection to be his execution, but instead –
He felt a hand cup his cheek – gently, so gently – and his lips, dry and chapped from the dry hospital air, were pressed up against a pair so much softer than his own.
He didn’t even have the chance to feel shocked that Ratio was kissing him. His longing took over too quickly for that, and he melted into the doctor’s touch, returning the display with his own warmth.
When the kiss finally broke, Aventurine could barely breathe. Ratio barely pulled away an inch, as if refusing to be truly apart from him.
“You are irreplaceable to me as well,” Ratio murmured, “so I beg of you, never frighten me like that again.”
Aventurine smiled. A real smile, one that he truly felt down to his very core. “Just for you, I’ll do my best.”
(Just to seal the promise, Aventurine kissed him again. And again. And the next day, too. As many times as he wanted, he would do it again.)
Even with the bliss he now felt, sleeping nearly every night in Ratio’s arms, the lingering fear of his dream did not release its hold on him so easily. Months later, he could still feel it, creeping up his neck and worming into his mind.
This night was no different.
Despite how thoroughly Ratio had worn him out before bed, he still couldn’t sleep. His partner dozed peacefully beside him, and all Aventurine could do was wrap his arms around him and pray that the voices in his mind would grow quiet enough to allow him rest.
Yet the question on his mind refused to let him go.
His constant fidgeting must’ve disturbed Ratio at some point, because in the early hours of the morning, he began to stir. He yawned, turning over to face Aventurine with bleary eyes. “Can’t sleep?” he mumbled groggily.
“Sorry,” Aventurine kissed his forehead, “did I wake you?”
Ratio blinked slowly, yawning again as he slowly grew more awake. “Do not apologize. If you’re struggling, I would rather know about it than not.”
A dismissive answer of ‘I’m fine’ sat ready on Aventurine’s lips, but as if sensing it, Ratio raised a skeptical brow. “... I’m stressing myself out, thinking about stupid things,” he admitted, realizing he wasn’t about to get away with pretending otherwise.
“I see.” Ratio hummed thoughtfully. “Tell me what’s on your mind. Perhaps I can ease your worries.”
Aventurine sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “How… How do I know this isn’t another dream?”
Ratio’s expression softened. “I can assure you that it isn’t.”
“I appreciate that, but,” Aventurine offered a wry smirk, “you’d say that even if it was a dream.”
“I suppose you have a point.” Ratio closed his eyes, clearly thinking through his next words. “I suppose the truth is… that you cannot be certain at all.”
“... How comforting.”
Ratio placed a hand on Aventurine’s shoulder, gently rubbing the skin with his thumb. “But that does not mean you must surrender to despair. It is true that you cannot determine what is a dream until its structure fails and it reveals itself, but that simply means that you must live in this moment as if it is real until proven otherwise. Do not allow hypotheticals to steal your joy.”
“And if it is a dream?” Aventurine presses further. “If tomorrow, it falls apart and I wake up again, what will happen then?”
“In that case, I’ll be waiting for you beyond that dream as well.” Ratio pulled him a little closer. “And the next, if it comes to that.”
Aventurine couldn’t help but scoff quietly. “If this is my dream, of course you’d say that.”
“You are an intelligent man,” Ratio countered, “as well as one who is far too cynical for shallow wish fulfillment. If you truly constructed a dream in which I cherish you enough to stay by your side, then there must be evidence of that fact in the real world.”
When Aventurine didn’t respond, he continued, softer now. “Of course, that will not matter, because you are awake, my dear gambler.” The once-mocking nickname was now drenched in affection. “Please. Do not dread your worst fears. Live in the moment with me, if you will.”
“You’re too good for me,” Aventurine said with a sigh, settling in against Ratio’s chest. “Thank you. I swear, I’m done having a crisis, you can go back to sleep now.”
“I’d stay up with you all night if I had to.”
Aventurine smiled to himself. “I know. But then you’d be whiny and tired tomorrow.”
He couldn’t see Ratio’s face, but he could practically feel his frown. “I do not whine.”
“Yes you do.”
“Get some sleep, gambler,” he huffed, the familiar playful irritation returning to the old nickname. “I will be right here when you wake.”
Aventurine closed his eyes. “Alright, alright… goodnight, Veritas.”
“Goodnight, Kakavasha.”
(A fish moved from a bowl to an aquarium was still just as trapped, but if that fish believes itself to have been set free into the ocean, whose right is it to break that illusion?)
(If Aventurine truly is still dreaming, then at least his mind had the mercy to make it a sweet dream.)