Sun found herself bouncing a peach core off a wall, chucking it with her feet and catching it with her hands. Peach cores weren’t very elastic, as balls went, but you worked with what you had.

And she had Gerard. Reading, as he always seemed to be. Nice enough, but he didn’t seem the talking type. And there was his toad Gerard Jr., looking as though its greatest ambition in life was to sit still and stare flatly ahead.

“I’m bored,” she said at the air. And then she closed her eyes and held up her arms, as though the Multiverse would drop a cure straight into her waiting hands.

“…”

No such luck. She puffed out her cheeks in annoyance.

They were waiting for Dorian to finish up one last scouting trip before they went off, and she didn’t know what to do with her hands. Or her feet! There was this tingling hollow in her belly, this itchy dryness at the back of her throat. They were stuck in that awful purgatory of time, the Heist just far off enough she couldn’t do shit about it, just close enough she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

She rolled around on the ground. She had a thought. What if she was a slug? Slugs had no worries. She folded her arms on her sides, squeezed shut her eyes, and started too ooze about as best her limbs allowed.

I am a slug. Slug Sun. That is I.

It sort of helped.

Then her head hit something hard. She blinked. “Ow…”

Slugs still had to respect walls, sadly.

There was a sigh, a flutter of pages flapping shut. Gerard eyed her over his reading glasses. As far as she was aware he had perfect vision, but he didn’t need to swing his arms as he walked or leave up his pinky when he drank tea either. He seemed to do a lot of things just to do them, this Gerard.

“Are you alright?” said Gerard.

“I am a slug,” she informed him.

“Oh, dear.” He set the book down. “Are you feeling feverish? Should I seek help?”

“No. I’m bored.”

“Ah.”

She picked at her nose. They looked at each other.

“I will go out on a rather short limb,” said Gerard. “And assume you would not like to hear about the life cycle of the ginkgo tree.”

“What’s that? Can I eat it?”

“…”

“…So!” said Sun, fishing desperately for a topic. “How’s this thing between you and Dorian work? You’ve got to do everything he says?”

“Sort of.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I’m bound to him by soul contract. But every three thousand years or so he offers to release me from it.” Gerard shrugged. “I’ve never taken him up on it. Perhaps one day. But it has been three terms, and I’ve been pleased with my time so far.”

“Huh.”

“After a few millennia tending the same gardens, the same estate, you get used to it. There is a pleasing routine to it.” A ghost of a smile on Gerard’s face. “I enjoy the structure. The sense of purpose.”

“So you choose to take orders from someone. And do their chores.” She munched thoughtfully on her carrot. “Can’t say I get it, but hey! I’m glad it makes you happy, mister Gerard.”

“I prefer to think of my role more as a caretaker.” Gerard patted Gerard Jr.’s head fondly. “You see—Dorian is like Gerard Jr. Though less cute, and significantly more troublesome. On his own, in the wild, he would simply perish.”

“Eh?”

“Dorian is a very itchy creature. Not particularly stable. He must be in constant motion, at all times—running, as it were…” Gerard shrugged. “In a way he is similar to me. If I am left without a routine, without a structure, I tend to… unravel. I tend to start breaking things. We ground each other quite nicely.”

“Ah.” Most of this was going over Sun’s head. She got him—as in she got what he was saying—but she sensed she was lacking a few millennia’s worth of life experience to get get him. Still she nodded, since Gerard was getting that wistful faraway look in his eyes old folk sometimes get, and she knew she was up for a ramble. Rambling for old folk was like taking a big dump. They always seemed to come out happier at the end.

“I enjoy the slow hard work of caring.” That ghost of a smile again. “I like who I am better as Gerard the butler than… the creature I was before. Until I met Dorian I was no more than a rabid brute. It is at his estate, and with his help, that I learned to mend things rather than break them, you see. For that I owe him my life.”

“Wait. That dingus taught you to mend things?”

“Surprising, isn’t it? Dorian was not always the way he is. There was a time he was…” He frowned. “A little like you.”

This was possibly the most horrifying thing Gerard could’ve said at that moment.

“What happened?!” gasped Sun. “Did someone stick a long stick in his ear and wriggle it around really hard?”

“Nothing like that. Just time. Time, and perspective.” Gerard tickled Gerard Jr. behind the ear and the toad purred in a very not-toad-like way. “The passing of the ages teaches some Gods to value the things they own, the connections they make.” His hand receded.

“For others it teaches them not to care. Lives, so vanishingly short, grow weightless, meaningless…what else is there to do than to make something to do, something to care about? Something like starting over, again and again, making your own purpose—a time to beat—to stave off the unbearable lightness? All in hopes of recapturing some zest for life you once had.”

He shook his head. “Put another way—Dorian is in the midst of a most severe midlife crisis, miss Wukong. And his midlife crisis conveniently leaves his estate empty for thousands of years, where I am free to care for my gardens and tend to my libraries. I provide a home for him to return to when he needs it. I support him when he needs it. And he charges me no rent. It’s worked out nicely for the both of us, I think.”

Sun chewed on all that for a few seconds.

“Makes sense. But why are you here now? Isn’t it all—err—sorry—isn’t it all gone?”

“Gone…” Gerard pursed his lips. There was a the twitch at the corner of his mouth, like he knew a secret Sun didn’t. “Old Man Fate stretched a very thin line of Fate between this plane and the Unstuck Space to pull me out. A very obscure, treacherous line, nigh impossible-to-follow line to be sure… but who’s to say? That Estate—our home—may not be fully lost.”

***

Dorian soon returned.

“There’s Empyreans at the door,” he whistled. “A row of them. They’ve ratcheted up security since I was last at one of these.”

“How many?” said Gerard.

“Two dozen.”

“That amounts to nearly all the Empyreans Ur has in reserve. How odd.”

“Yea. But it is Ur’s signature event of the year. It’s not so surprising they want it well-manned. All it means is we’ll need to take a little more care!” He was feeling that giddy rush of energy now, tingling at his fingertips, making ever step a little hop. He grinned. “Are we ready?”

Two nods, one curt, the other jittery.

“Right then!”

But just before they were about to set off, Sun put a hand on his arm. She looked up at him with big moonlike eyes.

“You will make it through!” she said earnestly. “It’s just a phase. I believe in you!”

“…What?”

Behind her Gerard pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Ignore her, sir.”

And they were off.

***

They stood on the rooftop of the hotel, overlooking a canal which wound lazily up a street. It stopped at the Royal Palace. And on this canal was a barge of impressive girth, manned by a score of shuffling guards waving pointy spears. Crates were stacked along its length.

“This is it.” Dorian looked Sun in the eye. “In your transformed state, with cloaking, you should be able to sneak on with little trouble. Take the vampiric drug once you’re on the boat. It’s extremely potent distilled—it should go quick.”

Sun saluted them with a grin. She looked not the slightest bit nervous, which was reassuring. “I’ll contact you by conch. See you on the other side!”

And then she was a beetle, and then she was gone.

***

They had a very brief window. The notes Sun had gathered made that clear. The auction went on a tight schedule. Goods came in. The auction took place three hours later. That three-hour gap was what they counted on.

With luck they’d get in and get out before the officials were any the wiser.

Dorian and Gerard now stood in a short line before the palace, dressed in identical suits, masks fitted tight to their faces. Auctiongoers waited behind and in front, sagging with gold, wafting tufts of silk, velvet trains slinking across the polished cobbles. Trills of genteel conversation drifted about.

It was the guards that captured half Dorian’s mind. They stood around the outer fencing in full suits of armor, each blasting Empyrean auras. Nearly glowering. Most seemed vaguely humanoid. Most held spears with lightning blue spasming at the tip.

They seemed less like they were keeping watch, and more like they were expecting an attack.

Maybe it was Dorian’s overactive mind. Maybe he conjured ghosts from shadows. It was perfectly understandable to be on high alert on such a high profile night! Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling something wasn’t quite right here…

Ahead, the auctiongoers were waved through one by one by a particularly large guard with a feathered helm. Less than a dozen more, and it would be their turn.

He turned to Gerard with a frown. The barge had been waved through more than half an hour ago. “What’s taking her so long?”