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When the door creaks open again, it's nearly dawn.

The lookout shows her in after a bit of argument, and even from her spot with her head down Jadebot can tell who it is based on the pattern of her shadow.

Real Jade – human Jade, maybe that's better – moves silently across the floor until she's squatting with her, across from Aradiabot's body. She's bright and pink and warm as Jadebot always remembered, and when she grabs Aradiabot's hand in her human one the juxtaposition is striking in some ways and not at all in others. Jadebot could sing, because Jade is strong and competent and just what everybody needs, probably.

"I brought some tools," she murmurs, glancing cautiously towards the door. "I can do a little bit here, but we need to get her back to a real mechanic."

Jadebot nods vigorously until her neck plates scrape. "Maybe that big man on Alternia can do it," she says, and then repeats it in a whisper after Jade shushes her.

For a few minutes Jade works in silence, tweaking parts that Sollux didn't have practical expertise in. Then she looks up, moonlight dusting her human features, and with a slight smile she whispers, "Hi, by the way!" and Jadebot giggles with the sheer weirdness of it all.

They wait there, and Aradiabot keeps quiet (she seems so reluctant to talk to people who are not Jadebot). Jade is a quick and efficient worker, trained by necessity and the inner workings of her own ship.

Eventually other people start moving, hauling in bulky, oddly colorful boxes towards the arms stockpile. They swarm around each pink hatbox and each container decorated by demure green bows, buzzing excitedly about advanced Alternian weaponry and what they've all been waiting for and hope, maybe hope, maybe.

A very pretty troll lady directs these proceedings, and sometimes she and Jade catch each other's eyes and smile in a very secret, very tired, very glad way.

"Do you want to come with me?" Jade asks, after they've gotten Aradiabot upright and moving towards her ship, which is not exactly hidden well enough to stay for long. Jade tells her that Earth is politically neutral, so getting into the planet wasn't impossible, but moving all of the "dresses" from the storage bay is harder.

"I think I do!" she says, suddenly a little bit happier than she was a few moments ago. "As long as Aradiabot is coming with us." The robot is wheeling away through the back exit (it can't hurt to be too cautious), arm still hanging in decimation, but closer to safety than she's been in a long time.

"For a little while at least, yep," Jade responds with a big grin. Jadebot likes it when Jade grins, it's so toothy and bright and calm. "So you wanna be my pilot again?"

"Yessir!"

"Good! Haha, I think we've got a lot of catching up to do. I'm…sorry I left you alone for so long! I didn't –"

Jadebot reaches out to touch her on the shoulder, and she jumps slightly at the contact. Maybe the metal is cold.

Jade stares her straight in the oculars, through into the machinery and the mind, and then her smile comes back full force. "Anyway, let's see if they need our help unpacking any more stuff."

They don't ever get to see, because then a sudden blast rocks the foundations of the warehouse and sends Jade tumbling off her feet.

Jadebot panics, flying up towards the roof before realizing that isn't any safer and instead heading to the door; she nearly collides headfirst with Feferi as she stumbles inside, shouting commands like a queen.

Jade and Kanaya have their weapons drawn, and they move towards the door like they're ready for a fight, so Jadebot stays away from the door too. Suddenly the small carapace man, appearing from nowhere, is standing in front of Kanaya, arms spread.

"You have to go!" he says, and Kanaya tries to move around him to get a good shot at whatever's going on outside. Jadebot hears laser fire and sees flashes of light through the cracks in the walls. "Listen to me!" he says, small voice rising. "If you don't leave, we'll lose our contact with Alternia. We need you to go, before they close the borders!"

"But –"

"We can handle this!" Feferi shouts, her back to the wall next to the doorframe. "We've got everything we need now, so we need you to get the shell out of here! Use the cellar exit!" She dives around the corner, firing rapidly.

Kanaya looks pained. Her trigger finger traces the lines of her gun as she takes another forward step.

"Let's go," Jade says suddenly, grabbing her by the arm and spinning her in the other direction, and then she comes willingly enough. Jadebot follows, leaving her corner only when she's certain no one can hit her with stray laser fire from this angle. War is scary scary scary, and it's all she can do to keep her sensors out of the emergency self-preservation setting ("self-" being the key; she does not want to accidentally hurt the blood-and-bone people in this cramped little space).

Jade dives first down the derelict cellar passage, and Kanaya tries to follow – with a flash, some heavy form of fire blasts a gaping hole in the wall and she goes flying over her target, slamming against the ground and showered with purple-painted wood. Jadebot gasps, halfway to safety, and flies to grab her, wrapping her arms under hers and pulling her down the hole. When she drops her on the floor, at first Kanaya's legs give out beneath her; Jade catches her and holds her upright until she's found a sort of balance favoring her right leg.

"I'm fine," she gasps. "Keep moving."

"They'll be okay," Jade says as runs to brace herself against a shelf full of dusty bottles, pushing hard. It sounds like a question, and she catches Kanaya's eyes imploringly.

"Yes. I know these people. They'll be fine."

The shelf moves until they can see a triangular crevice in the wall, just big enough to fit Kanaya stooping. They duck inside, one after the other, and Jadebot turns on her high beams. It's dark and dank and claustrophobic, and every now and then Kanaya stumbles a little bit as she moves, but Jadebot can see the way Jade clutches her hand from in front of her and she's pretty sure she's going to be alright.

x

They pile into the cockpit, and Jade immediately starts thrusting everything into gear. Sensors that Kanaya doesn't understand ping frantically, registering bright red dots moving in careful patterns across their screens.

"They've mobilizing a border guard," Jade says, and curses loudly. The viewport flickers to life and Kanaya watches a purple drone streak across the morning sky. She allows the restraints to snake around her body at the same time as the thrusters roar to life beneath them, thrumming through her body like they did three and a half weeks ago at the beginning of this swooping, exhausting, exhilarating trip.

"We'll have a window," Jade shouts over the engines, focused entirely on the monitors. "It'll be quick, and once we're off the ground we can't stop until we're out of orbit."

Kanaya nods. "I trust you," she says as loudly as she dares.

"Three, two –"

Jadebot's head suddenly swivels on its neck joint. "Did Aradiabot make it? Is she here?"

Before she's even finished, the ship is rising off the ground with a lurch that sends Kanaya's stomach to her knees (she'll never get over that initial feeling of flight), and they're rising past the curious silver trees as fast as the ship will take them, like barreling towards a glass ceiling at smashing speed.

"Where is she?" Jadebot yells, her amplifiers carrying her voice unnaturally over the sounds of liftoff. "She needs to be here, I won't leave without – oh!"

Kanaya follows her gaze to the rear monitors. They watch Aradiabot rise above the trees behind them, rockets carrying her as fast as she can go. She is moving more smoothly than Kanaya would have thought possible, only her mangled arm flopping unnaturally against her side. It's hard to tell from this angle, but part of her skirt may be newly smashed in.

"She's gaining," Jadebot says in awe.

"Fuck!" Jade yells, and throws a lever. Jadebot tries to leave the cockpit, but the weight of ascension makes even her movement sluggish. "Just wait a minute!" Jade yells, barely audible above the rush, and grits her teeth. She's maneuvering the control panel in patterns Kanaya has never seen before, searching for every burst of speed she can find. She is positive she can feel the ship shuddering to pieces beneath them as they race against time and the small, blinking dot of a drone coming in from the west.

And Aradiabot continues to climb below them, little pieces of metal dropping off behind her.

Kanaya shuts her eyes tight as they rise to the patrol's level, only praying that the drone isn't close enough to detect them –

And then they've broken free, into atmosphere so thin it's outer space already. Jade lets out a wild whoop and shifts some sort of gear, and with an undignified lurch the ship is moving forward and away again, their breath seizing in the sudden dearth of sound from the change in thrust.

"Oh my god," Kanaya says, and presses her head back into the seat.

"Yeah," Jade responds with the biggest grin she has ever seen.

Kanaya starts laughing first, ugly, whooping guffaws that she can't be bothered to school into something a bit more dignified, hunched over herself in her chair as she clutches at her stomach. Then Jade is joining her, tearing her eyes from the viewport to match their gazes for a moment, her barking laughter like some sort of ridiculous angel chorus in the pseudo-nighttime that presses down at them from the viewport. They sit there and laugh for a moment, drinking in each other's faces, as the ship speeds away from the dark planet along the border of the Veil.

"Go with Jadebot," the captain says next, and Kanaya notices that their third companion has already left the pit. The seat releases her and she swings herself up into the dark hallway, limping her way to the airlock. Jadebot is pressing herself against the thick door between the interior of the ship and the small antechamber where Jade had showed Kanaya, weeks ago, how to step seamlessly out of the ship and into a void. The airlock chamber is cramped and square, visible through a small window of reinforced glass.

"She'll reach us any minute," Jadebot says excitedly, and presses her metal face against the screen.

Sure enough, a green light flares to life at the side of the door, and Jadebot punches a code into the keypad so frantically that she has to redo it twice.

They watch the outer door slide open. Aradiabot's head is lolling strangely as she pushes against the ship's own forward momentum to rocket into the chamber. As the door closes behind her Jadebot tries to open her side immediately, slamming her thumb into the button again and again. Finally, when the air pressure has equalized, the door obeys her, and instead of waiting for her friend to step out Jadebot jets into the chamber and tackles her with a hug.

"Careful," Aradiabot says. Kanaya can see that one of her metallic horns is dangling off the side of her head.

"We're going to be okay!" Jadebot says, exhilarated, and pulls back to see her friend's face. Kanaya is struck by the similar body language to Jade (if she had had more time to think and process back on Derse, she might have found it strange sooner), but at the same time the energy is not quite the same. She moves frantically and without logic, and when Aradiabot responds with a cautious nod she grabs her by the shoulders and spins them around in a sort of happy midair dance, suspended by rocketry, disregarding the way she's almost certainly making Aradiabot's state worse.

"If you'd like to step out here – " Kanaya tries, but Aradiabot interrupts.

"I'd like to stay with you," she says, suddenly and firmly. Jadebot stops instantly with a sound resembling a gasp. She continues: "I don't know why you run the way you do; it could be a glitch in your system somewhere or just a result of some bizarre whim of your programmer. Whatever it is, it makes you act like you're really alive." She tilts her head, just so, and suddenly Kanaya feels that she's intruding on a very special moment. She tries stepping back further, but there isn't a lot of hallway for her to cover this way.

Aradiabot hovers lower, bringing Jadebot down with her. "And what's weirder, you act like everyone around you is really alive, too."

Jadebot doesn't seem to have a response for that, so she reaches out to pat Aradiabot's head.

"I don't know if I am alive," Aradiabot says, and Kanaya listens harder despite herself. "But I want to see what you think about it."

Jadebot pulls the two of them back up near the top of the chamber, heads above the doorframe out of view; Aradiabot's rockets are stuttering now, pushed to their limits.

Suddenly Kanaya is thrown against the wall as the entire ships shudders, rocked by a blast from the outside. The red warning lights begin to flash as an alarm wails; the airlock slams shut with the robots inside.

Kanaya struggles to stand, head throbbing; she can just barely see the outer door sliding open through the small window and a flash of chrome and gold before she's thrown again, down the hall this time. Then Jade is there, pulling her roughly to her feet.

"They've found us," she says, loud and brave. "Get Jadebot to pilot the ship." Then she's taking off down the hallway, sprinting towards the gun deck with loose hair flying out behind her like a cape.

"Wait!" Kanaya yells, and Jade skids to a stop. "She's gone!"

The airlock chamber is empty now, the door closed firmly against the stars.

"Then you pilot us!" Jade shouts back, turning to run again as the ship gives another light shudder.

"I can't, I don't know how!"

"I think we've established," Jade's voice bounces down the red flashing passageway, "that no one here knows how to fly the ship!"

Kanaya swallows, hard, and presses a hand to the wall. She stares down at where Jade's head has disappeared to the lower level deck, and decides that the captain is absolutely right on this point. She takes off to the cockpit, stumbling on her injured leg as the ship is hit with another barrage. By the time she's thrown herself into the pilot's chair, the rear monitor shows that Jade is sitting snugly at the laser turret, gripping her joysticks until her knuckles are white. She rapid-fires at the advancing ships (scouts, all of them, more compact than their own), slowly swiveling in the chair to attack from all sides. The point ship takes heavy damage to the left flank and peels away, leaving only a whole lot more.

" –need to lose them in the Veil," she hears Jade over the intercom, fuzzy and distorted by laser fire. Another wing of a ship is ripped off at its weakest point, sparking, and their pursuer goes down. Jade may not be a pilot, but she is a ridiculously good shot with the turret.

Kanaya pulls against a lever she often sees Jade using, and the ship lurches. She quickly pushes it back.

"I hope you're aware," she says, voice rising in the wake of pressure, "that we're in some terrifically deep shit."

Jade doesn't answer for a second, focusing on her targets. Then, "To port! Left!"

Kanaya pulls hard against something she's fairly certain is related to direction, and the ship spirals, tipping them into a barrel roll. They avoid most of the fire this way, but it takes another minute for Kanaya to regain her sense of direction and make sure they're facing directly towards the Veil.

"Oh my god," she says, and she thinks she can hear Jade laughing through the intercom.

There are just so many of them; Kanaya isn't sure how to work the various sensors but she's pretty certain that the sea of red dots slowly encroaching on their central white spot is a bad sign. She can see the Veil perfectly from here, but distance is distorted without a horizon.

A burst of red firepower explodes from somewhere above them – its roaring would be thunderous had there been air to carry the sound – and the next leading ship is engulfed.

x

You can't do this! Jadebot shoots through the radio band, willing her friend to stop and turn around so they can duck back into the ship together and hide until everything is over. There are so many of them, and you're hurt!

Aradiabot keeps pace with the ship, firing the biggest lasers she has left, and Jadebot realizes that she had no idea what kind of damage this resistance-born machine is capable of. She takes time between each blast of her remaining ocular, transferring all energy into one specific point and doling it out to devastating effect, searing the pursuers' ships in combination with Jade's turret shots and the guns that have popped out of her shoulders oh god. Aradiabot is a weapon, deadly and accurate and so, so injured.

Stop, she pleads.

Aradiabot responds, with perfect clarity, I need to do this.

No, you don't! Jadebot signals, pressing close under their ship's wing, trying to stay out of firing range. You're your own person, remember? You're not just some tool for them to use to –

I know, she says, and the words buzz with an energy Jadebot has never sensed from her before. I'm doing this because I want to protect you.

They speed through space backwards and suspended in eerie silence, Aradiabot moving slow circles around enemy fire. Jadebot doesn't understand how she can keep fighting, no matter how hurt she is, and she remembers a chrome body entirely out of place in the midst of Prospit gold, straining for the armory even as she fell to the ground.

Aradiabot takes a blast to the shoulder, and suddenly she's tumbling back with the propulsion, turning lopsided spins over their ship's top. Jadebot feels her core surging to life, and without a thought she's in Hero Mode, blasting to catch her before she tumbles too far, letting Aradiabot's body slam against her own.

The decimated arm finally snaps away, spinning into darkness.

Are you alright? she asks, but Aradiabot is already fighting again, a strange roar on her normally placid face that reveals what looks like hundreds of sharp metal teeth. She blasts their pursuers, again and again, taking down entire ships on her own. She is so hurt.

It isn't fair, Jadebot realizes. It isn't fair to let Aradiabot fight for her while she hovers here, just keeping pace, stiff and afraid and war is so scary.

Hero Mode makes the power sizzle through her channels like the meaning of life.

Then she's roaring too, in her head and through the radio waves, a battle cry trapped between a void and their own furious, frantically processing, circuiting, living minds.

She fires, again and again. Her lasers are not as strong as Aradiabot's, but they cut across ships in just the right places because she's lived on one and skipped in and out of the mainframe and she knows how to fight them. She knows how to fight.

When they pass the first asteroids of the Veil, they are side by side, roaring.

x

Kanaya cannot fly a spaceship. This is abundantly apparent. She smashes against small asteroids, spinning almost out of control.

"Almost home free!" says Jade's fuzzy intercom voice. "You can do it!"

"Do what?" she shouts back, taking in the viewport full of very dangerous-looking space rocks surrounding them, constantly peppered by laser fire. Kanaya Maryam is not a being prone to panic, but even at her most collected she wouldn't be able to keep this up for long. Though sometimes a pursuing ship will go down in a blaze of silent fire, they're gaining. Various alarms are blinking red all over the cockpit, and Kanaya is positive that every single one of them means something very bad for the state of the ship.

They graze against yet another asteroid, narrowly avoiding actual collision, and spin off course. She doesn't even know where they are anymore, and suddenly she's at a right angle with the pursuers. She can see them straight out the viewport as they approach at what feels like ramming speed; she pictures Jade's face and wonders if she will ever see it again, or if her last memories will be of her voice rising from some nondescript speaker as they fall, glorious blazing wreckage dragging them down to die on an alien landscape –

A barrage of laser fire assaults their enemies from behind. They break formation in confusion, scattering amidst the rocks for some kind of cover.

As a particularly large asteroid drifts upwards out of her vision, Kanaya can make out a small army of Dersians, dressed in low-atmosphere garb that she recognizes, standing on what looks like a fortress wall.

They fire on their pursuers, driving them to complete chaos as they move to escape the ambush; then the entire hidden population of another asteroid colony opens fire. She sees a flag waving on the ramparts, white streaked with lavender. Whatever it is, it is not a flag of Derse. As the Space Crevice jets past them, suddenly unmolested, Kanaya imagines she sees a sea of raised hands waving her on.

Now is not the time. She cannot afford this.

(She thinks she feels tears in her eyes.)

The Crevice speeds away, limping along like playing hide-and-seek with Armageddon. Gradually she slows it down, so as to better maneuver around the rocks. No one comes, and Kanaya is free to let ragged breaths burst through her body, driven by a muddled mess of emotions she doesn't have the time to sort.

Utter silence surrounds them, and Jade and the robots have stopped firing. She can hardly believe that it's over, but the sensors are clear; the red dots drift slowly further away until finally they are alone, a single white light in the middle of the screen.

Kanaya breathes very deeply and drops her head to the controls, not even caring as the metal smacks painfully against her forehead.

Maybe today, as little as she can afford it, is an excellent day.

She jumps when a minute later a hand touches her shoulder. Jade giggles a bit breathlessly.

"Hey!" she says, and plops into the co-pilot's chair. She is flushed from the heat of battle, bangs sticking to her forehead and eyes bright with exertion behind her dirty glasses. It's likely that she's never looked more beautiful.

"Hi," Kanaya responds. "That wasn't very polite."

"What, leaving you with the controls?"

"Well it's not like there's any way that decision wouldn't end in absolute, bitter failure. Do you have any idea how many asteroids I've grazed in the past five minutes?"

"Six," Jade says cheerfully, and pulls her into a deep kiss.

They are sweaty and exhausted, and when Kanaya clutches Jade's wrist she can feel the aftermath of the adrenaline rush shaking through her veins. Then their hands move on their own accord, almost, and Kanaya sees absolutely nothing wrong with Jade's decision to hoist herself onto Kanaya's lap, pushing her back against the headrest with the force of her kiss, pinning her wrists back over her head so that her fingers drape over the chair top, arching her spine.

"You weren't that bad," Jade murmurs, lifting her lips just barely; the words vibrate against Kanaya's own skin and she answers with a low hum, moving slowly underneath Jade's hips.

"And you were a good shot," she manages to reply before pulling away to kiss the spot between ear and neck, lips open against Jade's pulse.

"We should do this for…a living," Jade says, voice tilting low and breathy by the end. Kanaya squirms, pressing the two of them closer together, bodies and warmth and they are still alive.

Then the ship grazes an asteroid, flinging Jade's chin against Kanaya's head before she falls off the chair entirely.

"Okay, oww."

Then it's all she can do not to laugh.

x

It's a long trip back to Alternia, even excluding any stops at Prospit for repairs, which are looking less likely as they move further out through the Veil.

"So I can finally say I've had the privilege of traveling in a ship that's probably going to be appearing in Dersian files marked as 'hostile' for years to come. I'm honestly overwhelmed." Kanaya takes a sip of tea, hot and mellow against her dry throat. Jade added honey this time.

"You can't say it wasn't exciting, though," Jade says, leaning her elbow against their little fold-out table, and Kanaya has to agree.

Jadebot is an infinitely better pilot than Jade, and everyone is pretty relived when she returns to take the helm. Now she and Aradiabot stay in the cockpit. The way they stand so close together feels infinitely significant to Kanaya, and as they left to make their tea, she saw the two of them lean in to rest their foreheads together; half of Aradiabot's face is blown clean away and she still looks calm like that.

She brushes her knees against Jade's under the table, and Jade hooks her foot around Kanaya's (uninjured) ankle.

"So...I suppose you'll be dropping me off when we get to Alternia," Kanaya begins. She watches Jade's face closely, but by this time all of that lonely worry has dissolved completely.

"ERRRR! Wrong!" The captain sets her own cup down firmly, sloshing some tea over the edges. The gravity seems to work just fine. "You're going to stay on with Jadebot and me!"

"Oh?" Kanaya says, even as she feels a rush of warmth spreading from her ribcage and directly behind her eyes. "And what if I were to say no? I have a business to maintain."

Jade shrugs. "Do it out here, you've managed so far. We'll figure it out. All I know is that I want you to be here, and you want to be here, so you should stay."

"Simple as that?" Kanaya asks, hands wrapped gently around her tea. Jade cups her trollish grey hands with her pink human ones.

"Simple as that," she says.

Jade Harley has a smile like adventure incarnate. She is stronger than a thousand hoofbeasts and more shocking than a kick in the teeth. But when she leans in to plant a kiss on the corner of Kanaya's mouth, all that matters is that she makes fantastic honeyed tea.

x

"I'm not sure where to go from here," Aradiabot admits. She sits, half-propped, in the copilot's chair, watching as Jadebot maneuvers carefully between asteroids.

"I dunno either, actually," Jadebot says with a giggle. "I guess I'll help Jade for awhile, and then who knows? We don't really…need a directive, I think."

Aradiabot gives her another one of her quiet stares, then faces the viewport. The stars are bright between the rocks, and the ship pushes through inky blackness like it's nothing more than space.

"We might be unique," she says finally. "New specimens of a new species."

"We might be able to convince the mechanic to give us a new paintjob, if we're nice enough."

Aradiabot laughs. It's a quiet, unsure sound, synthesized from the prerecorded clips of someone else's voice, but it's real and it makes Jadebot lighter inside. She reaches to put her hand over Aradiabot's, and clutches her fingers tightly.

"I guess we'll find out soon," Aradiabot says, and Jadebot doesn't ask her to clarify which thing she's talking about.

The ship leaves the Skaia system as a tiny dot against a lonely, infinite sky.

Inside, the air is warm.