## Preface

Born() // Castles of Ice and Steel
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/1833916.

Rating:
  Teen And Up Audiences
Archive Warning:
  Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category:
  Gen
Fandom:
  Transistor (Video Game)
Characters:
  Royce Bracket, Asher Kendrell, Grant Kendrell, Sybil Reisz
Additional Tags:
  TW: Suicide
Language:
  English
Series:
  Part 7 of Become()
Stats:
  Published: 2014-06-23 Words: 1,006 Chapters: 1/1

# Born() // Castles of Ice and Steel

by _digital cairn (Schemilix)

Summary

> It is a misconception that engineers build to last. (A what-if fic for another way the game could have ended. That speaks for itself.)

## Born() // Castles of Ice and Steel

Royce opens his eyes. Gone is the yellow sun, the blue-eye-blue-skies. He blinks away the memory of the naked anger in the Red woman’s eyes as he stands, dusting the Transistor off, and then himself. The dust from his scuffle in that soul place is absent from the fabric of his trousers, he notices.
His proverbial hat must go off to her. Royce couldn’t have retained his composure seeing his dreams slipping away like hers must have.
Hopefully he wouldn’t have begged… He’d like to think himself above that.
Deep breath, deep breath. Royce sets the Transistor against his shoulder in the familiar place and strides away.

For a long time the Transistor does not speak to him, and as the first week crawls past Royce does not notice the knot of worry in his gut until Grant’s voice resonates through his mind as if nothing had happened,
“Sorry about that.”
“No, no. I don’t think I’d be much up for… conversation and so on, either. In your position, I mean, if that’s not too forward of me. Welcome back.”
He lifts the Transistor with that, tilting its red eye to look out over the vista he had just been scrutinising.
Grant says, “That’s new? Well done you.”
“Yes, entirely. Bracket Towers. Home! Rise and shine, Cloudbank. My project for the week, one might say. Quite a lot of work. A lot of work.”

At first he sleeps in beds indoors, out of habit. He calls up a rain to batter the windows and lies on his back, one finger resting against the hilt of the Transistor. Is it that contact that has him dream of fields precious as gold, or something else?
“Do you sleep in - there, do you need to?” he murmurs, half-awake.
“Sure we do. More than you. Lights out, Royce.”
He smiles fondly and withdraws his hand to fold them both over his chest. Grant speaks for the three of them, mostly. Two and a half voices would be too much, even though Sybil speaks as little as she can with her broken-processed voice.

By the end of the first month he sleeps out of doors. Nobody is there to harm him. By the second, he prefers to type to them rather than go through the bother of speaking. Some habits remain, however - shaving is one of them. By the time he finishes, will the face looking back at him from the mirror have changed?
Royce rubs the towel over his face with a thoughtful frown.

< ! — i have to tell you, here, i have power like a god here and yet there is little i would not do, very little, to have someone cook me something. is that not a little odd of me? royce— !>
“Royce - you are odd, are odd - argh!”
Royce looks up from the terminal sharply. “Good to hear you, Sybil. You’re starting to sound like me, like me - ah, there I go.” Royce finds himself patting the Transistor fondly, as he never would have cared to touch their real shoulders.

Years. Still no sign of the Process. Royce, carrying the Transistor braced against his neck, looks up to the cloudy-grey of the sky. He tilts his head aside to see it - he didn’t recall changing it intentionally from the dull red of yesterday. Years in tandem with a godlike artefact. Does it respond to his mood? What is his mood, anyway?
Royce taps the mirror with a fingernail as he shaves. Right there - by the left temple. Well, if his father was any indication, he’ll be salt-and-pepper within a year, and stay that way until Grant’s (now permanent) age - past that he hasn’t much of a clue.
Has it really been that long? He wraps the greying lock around his finger as he looks at the razor. No point cutting it off, is there? It’ll just come back. The future suddenly looms at Royce, making him turn from the mirror before the thought consumes him.
“Getting like you, Kendrell, I think.”
He hears Grant laugh. “A wise man I happen to know rather well said ‘some men are like a fine wine’, make of that what you will. Asher, is that a blush? Don’t hide your face -“
Royce leans the Transistor against the counter and watches the sky go by in silence. The skyline is nearly complete, but the excitement is as distant as the clouds.

Done. Sybil says the grey in his hair makes him look distinguished just as it dawns on him, like the synthetic cerulean sky. By design it is his last perch on Fairview that he reassembles, pulling it from whiteness and void to the ascetic beauty of its prime. As above, so below.
He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. What? What is this- why - what -
“You okay up there, lad?”
3.1415926535 - what comes next, eight, nine? no no no no no no
Royce sets the Transistor down and walks away until they cannot hear him. Everything is perfect, he made it that way. Exactly as needed, pure, constant, flawless. Little data-flowers brush against his ankles and fade to nothing as he passes, walking for its own sake, as if it might shake this burgeoning thing out of him. Why is the sky blue as the Country, when he never asked?
Royce settles by the Cradle, crossed legged like a child. This was where his heart stopped - or was this where Red had stood?
“No - I, you can’t, you can’t,” put this thing in me and let me have it. Not like this. The thought prickles at him and he makes his way through the paths of blue and black, the perfectly recalled artworks untouched as crystals, until his circuit leads him back to a propped up sword from another world, alien in this imagined place.
Royce takes hold of the cool metal of the Transistor’s grip.

"What is it, Royce? Tell us?"
“Everything I… ever wanted.”
“At last! Wait - wait - what are you doing?”
“- Royce stop - “
“Royce please —- “
“Royce!”

## Afterword

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