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After all this time, I’ve noticed there are a few things either voidfish can’t seem to erase. Little things, like muscle memory. Taako sleeps on one side of a bed as if leaving room for another. Magnus likes reading out loud on the quad, as if things there were listening. Merle’s a particularly good writer, and I take credit for that one. Davenport, however, seems to be the perfect case study, as tragic as that is - though if I were to compile all the little things left in his memory, it would take me all day - but sometimes I wonder whether it was the voidfish letting things slip or him somehow relearning things under my nose.
“Davenport~!”
It took longer, this time, but Davenport came walking in, as he usually did; Lucretia was getting used to calling on him for help, by then; but she hadn’t done so while flying the ship before, and the time he took worried her.
“Oh, thank goodness; I thought you got lost for a moment there.” She smiled, and looked back briefly to confirm the pitter-patter of his footsteps. “Could you get me a bottle of water? This is a bit more exhausting than I prepared for…”
“…”
“Davenport?”
“…”
It was then that she fully turned around from the controls - letting it go slightly off-course as she set it to orbit - and took a good look at his face. He seemed - deep in thought, maybe? or confused - but it wasn’t natural, and as she ran to him she cursed herself under her breath, realizing what she did only in hindsight. “Davenport, are you alright?”
He blinked as she waved her hand in front of his face, yet didn’t respond until she tapped him on the shoulder, jumping a bit in shock.
“Oh - I’m sorry if I scared you!” She couldn’t help but laugh in relief as he looked up at her, any surprise quickly disappearing off of his face. “It’s okay, I don’t need help anymore - I can get it myself. Let’s go, okay?”
She took his hand, and turned around, and took a step; and then he let go, and stayed right where he was standing, refusing to follow.
And she stopped too, and looked at him, and thought for a bit, and then asked “You want to stay, don’t you?”
And he nodded, so she left. And once she did, after a moment of taking it all in, he started to explore. He walked around the room, feeling the walls, then plopped down in the chair, and started spinning in it, and she came back, and stopped his chair with a laugh - a real one, this time - and she sat down and he sat on her lap, and she started flying the ship again, and he stared through the windows, looked at all the buttons in awe and then tapped her on the shoulder, and she stopped flying it and looked down at him and said “What is it?”
And he thought for a bit. And thought some more.
So she waited for a minute, and then said “Can you show me what you want?”
He thought about that, for a bit, and then nodded, and leaned over the controls, and thought about that too, closing his eyes and feeling over the buttons until he found the one he wanted. And then he turned to the center of the controls, and thought about the route she was taking, and punched some numbers in, and then the ship turned around, auto-piloting itself to where she needed to go.
And it was her who didn’t have any words this time, and he laughed at that, and she shook her head and got up with him in her arms and hugged him really tight, and said “Thank you,” and when she put him down he thought about that, like he was trying to say a word again, and then asked “H-help?”
As the tears ran down her face, she nodded. “Of course you did.”
~
He found the wand less than a year after that, while spring cleaning. It was after that day she had realized he knew more than he let on; she let him fly the ship, but she’d wake up from a night of writing to find her grammar and spelling mistakes marked in thin pencil, with no little messages on the margins like she was used to but it was his old editing nonetheless, or she’d agonize over something breaking in the ship only to find it fixed later, and one time she found him wrapped up in that old soap opera that he and the twins used to watch over and over. But when he found the wand a little voice inside him told him to keep it a secret, as if Lucretia wouldn’t trust him with it, and so he did, spending the many days she was away thinking about what he could do with it. He knew it was a wand - he vaguely remembered Lucretia using one to cure a headache of his before she got her staff, and he figured her staff was also like a very big version of a wand - but he had only seen it do little things, like heal or clean up messes or make those big shield bubbles she made around him when she thought bad people were coming. But for some reason he got the feeling that wands were not really meant to do that. Wands, for him, made fireworks or big monsters, or made things disappear, or made things quiet when things got loud.
So that’s what he tried to do. When she was gone the first time after that, he went through the library and found some books, and read about some things he didn’t quite understand. And the second time she was gone, he went on the deck and waved the wand around and watched it glow and spark, and at first it scared him, and then it delighted him, and then he got tired of it, because he wanted to make something.
So he thought about what he liked. Took his time to search through his drawers. But he didn’t really find anything, so he kept testing the wand, seeing if it would help him, but it didn’t, and then Lucretia came back again.
A couple months after those two trips away, Lucretia left for a long while. She went to the labs, like she always did, and while Davenport normally came with her - he liked to tinker around with the machinery - this time she said that she’d rather him watch the ship, because she was going to spend a couple weeks working on something. And while he was confused - they never normally spent more than a day in the lab - he took it happily at first, knowing he had the wand to keep him busy. And so he spent the first few days waving it around as he always did, and getting nothing, and the next day getting frustrated, and when he couldn’t sleep that night he realized just how much he missed Lucretia, because normally he’d call her and she’d tell him stories filled with static -
And then it clicked, and he grabbed his wand, and waved it, and let the sound of static fill the room.
~
When Lucretia came back a week after Davenport had made a lot of sounds with the wand. He made static at night and the sound of the bond engine coming to life during the day and birds chirping and the sound of pen on paper and water hitting the sides of the ship. And she came back with a gift for him - a small ship in a bottle - and he put it up on his desk and memorized every detail and when she left again he made it appear next to him while he sat in the cockpit and as he made water appear inside it and move he smiled and waved his wand again, but in his excitement he hit his other hand and instead of backfiring he found himself wearing a red jacket with a small patch of static on his chest and a wooden ring on his left hand, but as he tried to take them off, they phased right through his hand and disappeared, exploding in a shower of light.
He worked on little things for a long while after that. He liked making his suit change colors, or making a toy train and getting it to move on its own, or making little animals to run around the ship; sometimes, they’d be the bunnies or squirrels he saw running around in the forests outside, but sometimes he’d make things he couldn’t recall seeing before, and wonders what would be so nice about having a jellyfish on the boat. And then one time, when he wanted to practice a new knot for his bowtie, he made himself, and watched himself do it. And another time, when Lucretia parked the ship in a busy city and he couldn’t sleep, he waved his wand hoping to make enough static to block it out and instead made the whole room quiet, not being able to hear his own footsteps on the floor.
And when Lucretia told him about the moon base and went up there without him to work on it again, and he couldn’t express how much he wanted to go, he tried making a mini-moon and then felt the whole world around him turn into space, and he found himself walking on the moon, looking at the stars as if he belonged among them. And the next day he found himself traversing through mountains and grassy hills and walking quietly on the beach, but the night before Lucretia came back from the moon he spent his time on the ocean in a bed-sized boat, and he fell asleep staring at the stars, and it was only then, as Lucretia walked into his room looking for him, that she saw the wand in his hand. She laughed, and the illusion broke, and he woke with a start -
And as he looked at her, still half asleep, she said “If you wanted to park the ship on the ocean, you should have just asked!”
At that, his eyes turned hopeful, and he asked “N-next time?”
And she shook her head, and said “Next time, I’m taking you with me.”