## Preface

Hold()
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/1907046.

Rating:
  Teen And Up Audiences
Archive Warning:
  Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category:
  M/M
Fandom:
  Transistor (Video Game)
Relationship:
  Asher Kendrell/Grant Kendrell
Characters:
  Asher Kendrell, Grant Kendrell, Red, Royce Bracket
Language:
  English
Series:
  Part 6 of Become()
Stats:
  Published: 2014-07-06 Words: 1,192 Chapters: 1/1

# Hold()

by _digital cairn (Schemilix)

Summary

> "I'm supposed to be the stronger one. / You always seem to prove that theory wrong." Grant has enough with Royce's recklessness. // Red learns what strength there is in forgiveness... the hard way.

Notes

See the end of the work for notes

## Hold()

Don't()

"You can’t go back out there," Grant says, coolly. They’ve scarcely caught their breath after their charge through Cloudbank and there Royce stands in the shadows with his hands behind his back, shifting back and forth on his heels with anticipation.
“By ‘can’t’ I suppose that’s your way of saying… ‘shouldn’t’, that’s what you really mean. But I can and I, uh, I will,” he says. At least he turns around to look at them. That’s a start. Still, Grant shakes his head before he looks between Asher and Royce with a deep frown.
“You saw what happened to Sybil, that was with all four of us! Saw it with your own damn eyes!”
Royce’s smile is distorted by his cigarette when he says, “And - you can tell her where I’ve gone when she comes back, from wherever she went when we lost, track of her.” His cold blue eyes say ‘dead’. Grant brings his hand across like a guillotine as if to cut the head from the conversation.
“I forbid it.”
Royce breathes smoke out through his nose and replies as quietly as ever, “Try me.”
When Royce glares and turns his back to walk away, Grant pinches the bridge of his nose enough to hurt. As if that was anything but an incentive. Even now, stubborn as an ox!
“It’s going to be just fine. I have - a plan, you see,” Royce says. His hands move as if he might say more, but instead he just smiles thinly and walks away with his odd long-legged stride.
"A plan," Asher parrots flatly, too late to say goodbye.

"He’ll be lucky if he only dies out there," Grant mutters in return, before stepping out under the latticing by the exit to shout after him. "Royce, it’s over! It - is - over!"
The last three words he emphasises one by one with a knock of his fist against the wall, but there is no response other than the sliding shut of the lift cabin door. Not even a goodbye, so very assured, so very detached - so, well, Royce. Knowing this may - no, will - be the last time they see each other, and off he goes…
Grant draws his hand back from the wall to rub the other over it with a deep sigh. Just as he shakes it out as if he might go back to punching the wall he feels two cool hands on his own, that fold over the wounded skin of his knuckles gently.
“Don’t,” Asher says. He can meet Grant’s eyes for only a moment before he looks down again. “It’s in our hands now.”
Grant looks at those hands, noticing that his own are shaking almost as much as Asher’s. “This is how it ends, Asher. One by one.”

----------

Absolve()

Red finds Asher standing in her way, trying and failing to make something threatening out of his narrow silhouette. Still, the sight makes her pause as she tilts her head to look past him at the tall and muscular man behind.
“You’ll move if you know what’s good for you,” she says.
Softly, Asher replies, “No.”
Red raises an eyebrow and meets his eyes for a long moment. While she blinks slowly, she notes in her periphery the way his fist curls with discomfort, the way his shoulders angle ever-so-slightly away.
“No, Asher. Go on,” Grant interrupts them, quietly. His voice, which such a short time before had resonated in his chest at even the simplest of words, is deflated and he speaks almost entirely from his throat without power. “You deserve… a lot more than answers and apologies from me, Red. Do as you will.”
When Grant speaks Asher can only look down to the floor, unable to contradict that statement. Grant stands with his arms folded and waiting - not making himself appear larger but rather, smaller, subtly drawing his broad shoulders closer in. He meets Red’s eyes only from the corner of his.
At the sight Red sighs through her nose. The Process has dwindled innocents to less, why is it that a murderer stands here, bathed in sunlight she never thought could be so warm?
She says,
“My mama always told me, love is harder than hate. Forgive and forget… but then we rarely agreed.” Red glares for a moment before sighing. “But… we’ve all suffered enough.”
To her surprise, Grant chuckles. “So you do know the greatest price to pay is forgiveness.”
Red blinks slowly and deliberately. “What?”
“Had you harmed me - killed me, if that’s possible - even, or taken your harshest words to me I would be in some way absolved. I am first and foremost a judge, that you know. Often it is guilt that is the harshest sentence. Compassion that we do not deserve is very… difficult for a just man to bear,” Grant explains. His eyes flick to Asher momentarily, before returning to Red. When he looks at her straight on Red can see in the creases of his face - laughter. Kindness, in a sense. It puzzles her.
“Just, huh?” she says, with a twist of her lip. “Tell that to our ‘Mr. Nobody’. Or Farrah, Olmarq, Wave, Preston —”
Red is leaning forward with a deepening frown when a familiar voice cuts across her, almost blithely.
“That is - a very good question, don’t you think? You know - ‘can we die in here’? If I - took - a rock or… whatever we might find here and took it to one of you, would - you die? Stay dead?” The speaker pauses and taps his forefingers together with a thoughtful frown. “I know none of you asked directly but…”
“Royce, please. Is now really the time?” Grant mutters.
The engineer drops his hands to his thighs and looks up at the sky, around at the hills and fields before shrugging.
“Is there ever? A time, I mean.”
“And if there were you are the last man to judge that time,” Grant says, not unkindly. “Trust me when I say that is a question for another day.”
All three of the men assembled look up with surprise when Red replies, with a finger on her chin,
“Y’know. I’ve been wondering that myself.”
Her smile is thin but not entirely feigned when she looks up to see Royce looking to the vexed Grant with an expression of triumph. And from the corner of her field of view -
“You have a nice smile, Asher,” Red says, making the writer look away sharply. “Anyway. I can only tolerate you guys for so long so… tell Sybil, when she gets better, that I’m - we’re - gonna try to forgive you. No promises. Just know that if you ever, ever pull something like that again, you touch him again, I will find each of you and I will put your cold, dead bodies in the ground myself.”
"And if - we get back up?" Royce asks, unperturbed.
Red folds her arms. “Well you’d better hope you don’t make me need to answer that.”
“Understood,” Grant says, with a fragment of his older strength. He steps forward as if to shake Red’s hand, but she only tips her head and walks quickly away.

## Afterword

End Notes

> Description's from a wonderful song called Honeythief, by Halou.

> As for some other notes - this is my first fic with Red in it, hope I got her down okay. Her mix of fiery and 'strong enough to accept softness' fascinates me. I also wanted to write Grant losing his temper/composure for once and Royce's harder, more callous side in response. The guy seems gentle enough, but I don't know, he's cold.

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