#breathing is hard as a general rule especially WHEN YOUR CHEST BURSTS INTO AGONY WITH EACH BREATH

[onwesterlywinds]

Where Flood Waters Ran

Part of my Godhands series, set roughly in the year 1544 of the Sixth Astral Era - thirty-three years before Hydaelyn’s present-day, and thirteen years before Ala Mhigo’s fall.

GODHANDS IS NOW ON AO3! If you like it, send over some kudos!

Despite all their digging, Ashley and Marco might well have been the last people in the Undercity to learn in full what had happened to Elza. The Blackram Knights had taken her deep into the Iron Maiden for more than a week, mere days after she'd offered her hideout to two teenage boys in need of shelter. The screams had been horrific, or so they'd heard, and the smell of gore and shit had overtaken the Undercity's lower reaches by the end of it. To finish with her, the Knights had welded an old Skallic diving helmet over her head, leaving her with a few slits in the metal through which she might eat or drink or breathe, and only then had they released her from their captivity.

For a dubious mercy, Elza was not yet dead, and yet much of the Undercity seemed to have written her off as such. She had attended no meetings with her fellow sigil-bearers; none of the young ones had taken errands from her. No one spoke to her wellbeing, let alone her whereabouts. She was a living ghost, a memory most had already seen fit to discard.

"We have to go find her," Ashley whispered.

They could speak with some freedom from their present surroundings. It was Flood Day, and a throng of nearly two score shouting children had gathered in one of the great storerooms up a ways from the ancient canals, both to avoid the black water when it surged over its banks and to have a proper vantage for when it did. The littlest ones had settled into some massive game of tag with rules Ashley didn't pretend to understand, except that in such tight quarters, it seemed to mimic the ebb and flow of the river not so very far below them.

Ashley stared out across the room, to where K'tobha and some of the other boys were tearing apart shipping crates apparently for the hells of it. "She helped us at our worst. It isn't fair for her to take the fall for us."

Marco's face was fixed in an uneven scowl; he made no attempt to keep his face pleasant for the children, as he so often did. "If she's keeping her head down, there's nothing we can do for her," he said. "She knew what she was doing when she helped us, and she's got her reasons for staying away now."

"Why can't we go to her?" Marco turned to him as if to tell him off, but he pushed on. "I know she's not stupid enough to still be in her hideout, but she can't be that hard to find, with that thing over her head-"

Ashley cut himself off as a familiar shape sidled up alongside Marco, his face cloaked in shadow until the moment he clapped a hand on Marco's shoulder.

"It's pointless," Hawthorne said by way of introduction. "Overheard Palolo, the little shite, telling a few Blackram Knights all about that 'careful' conversation you had with her ma about Elza's meetup with the Maiden." Then, with one of his signature grins, he added, "You fucking loudmouths."

Marco swung an elbow toward Hawthorne's general direction, albeit without much enthusiasm; the boy dodged the swipe easily and reappeared at Ashley's side. "Anyway, Elza's off to wherever she's off to, and the Knights know you're looking for her now. They were staking out her place when I passed by just now; think they're hoping to find her first to get the jump on you."

Ashley let out a growl of frustration so loud that a few of the nearest children turned to him, momentarily distracted from their play. "How can they just let him do this?!" he fumed. "Any of them!"

"Listen." The voice was low, and he nearly mistook it for Marco's - but it was Hawthorne, deadly serious for perhaps the first time in Ashley's memory. "Marco's got it right. Elza knew what she was getting herself into. You think she'd lose her man, and her boy, and still think Blackram couldn't touch her?"

"No."

"Fuck no," Hawthorne confirmed. "Best thing you can do to repay her now is keep the hells away. She isn't dead - and with a bit of luck and a whole lot of minding your own business, she could stay that way."

With a hearty blow to Ashley's back in farewell, Hawthorne left the chamber, dodging a charging throng of sprats as he did so. For a time, he and Marco stood in witness to the chaos, both of them with their arms crossed tight over their chests. It would not do to leave so soon after an argument - especially not when anyone sparing them a whit of attention might guess what they had fought about - but far more practically, neither of them had anywhere better to be.

"I felt the same way when Sigrid died," Marco said to him at last. "Was so mad I couldn't even grieve her. The other sigil-bearers all knew the bastard had an eye on her, and they did fuck-all to keep him away from her. ...Even Elza."

Ashley mentally thanked him for not saying Blackram's name aloud, as Hawthorne had. "Were the two of you close?" he said, softly. "You and Sigrid."

Marco shook his head in vehement denial. "We didn't ever really talk. But she did a lot for me, 'specially when I was a lad: letting me stay in her territory up by the palace a few times, and always giving me coin for my tips, even when we both knew they were worthless. Probably kept me alive more than once."

"Hells, that's something," said Ashley.

His remaining thoughts scattered as a child careening away from the others tripped into his side; he immediately reached for his pockets to ensure their integrity and, for a blessing, found them uncompromised. Together, he and Marco revisited their familiar silence.

The patterned batiks of a Fist-in-training reemerged through the crowd to lean beside Ashley once more, and Ashley's only indication that this was Gelva and not Hawthorne was the prodigious depth of her scowl from under the hood.

"Since my brother won't shut up-"

Marco gave a little snort of laughter. Gelva's frown deepened, but she did not turn to face him. Whatever reason she had for joining them, it wasn't to start a fight.

"I have no idea where I'd start looking for a deposed lord with no options, who's got the Undercity's worst dogging her steps, and who's already had every last secret beaten out of her. By her own account."

His heart leaped, despite himself. Despite everything. "You're saying-"

"Not a single fucking word out of you, or I'm gone. If I'm saying anything, it's that Dad's been keeping a new shipment in one of our warehouses. I told him it was useless and more trouble than it's worth, and he called me an idiot for it. So there's that."

Ashley could only stare at Gelva's face as he rushed to piece together the implications of her words. "Thank-"

"That's a word," she snapped. She left as quickly as her brother had, albeit in much more of a huff and with less resistance from the crowd around them.

His ears were ringing long after her departure. When he stared over at Marco, he saw some trace of hope on his features as well. Still, Ashley could not concentrate through the noise and cheer around him, and his mind and heart were unable to settle.

"I'm gonna go," he said to Marco at last. "Need some sun."

"'S probably past midnight by now," his friend reminded him.

"Some fresh air, then."

He pushed off the wall and stretched as he waited for an opening in the children's game to make an inconspicuous departure. Before that chance arrived, a cry tore through the tunnel outside the storeroom. Every head turned, almost in unison, to note its origin, and a man in leathers threw himself through the doorway, drenched all over and sporting a deep gash to his bare forearm.

"Marco!" he yelled, then- "Marco's friend! Crusader, in the canal!"

The storeroom settled into an odd calm. As Marco ran for the door, with Ashley following close in his wake, the children seamlessly cleared a path for him.

"Barricade the doors!" Marco shouted over his shoulder. "Big ones up front, little ones in back - you know how it goes!"

The man who'd shouted the warning nodded and staggered in, back toward the ruined crates to lend himself to the defense, while Marco and Ashley slipped past him to meet the danger head-on.

The floodwater was already lapping over the canal's banks, stretching wide across the white stone of the landing station a few ilms deep. On the opposite side of the rush of dark water lay two bodies with a heavy net floating near them; between him and Marco and the current, a towering suit of ancient armor turned.

It was wrought entirely of metal and somehow no less hideous for it. It had no head, let alone any semblance of flesh to speak of - and yet the longer Ashley stared at it, the more clearly he could envision a ghastly face twisted in agony, and a frame racked by the spasm and twitch of rogue muscles, driven by whatever fell magicks compelled the armor to attack.

"AIM FOR ITS CORE!" Marco called - and at those words, Ashley's eyes fell upon a glowing, pulsing crystal, smaller than his own clenched fist, hovering at the center of its two massive pauldrons.

"How the fuck are we supposed to reach-"

The crusader raised a greatsword covered in glowing runes and charged, the ringing of its steps dulled by the floodwater lapping out across the stone hall. Marco feinted to its right and submerged himself in the shadows; the armor's torso pivoted, tracking him with nonexistent eyes.

Ashley ran at it from the side. The core lay in position well above the height of his head: he could perhaps reach it if he extended his arm in full, though doing so would expose nearly the full length of his body to the crusader's blade. Almost as an afterthought, Ashley drew his knife from his waistband and stabbed into the closest available gap between plates of armor, somewhere near where the crusader's thigh would have been. A dark swirl of aether, thick and shimmering like oil, gushed from thin air and a hellish roar burst forth to resonate against the walls, and then the crusader raised its arm-

"ASHLEY!"

A gauntlet collided with his ribs and sent him flying, stunning him even before he landed hard against the wet stone. The whole side of his face seared with pain, his nose and mouth stifled with blood and saltwater. Somewhere from up above came the slosh and clang of the crusader's steps, getting closer and closer - then an otherworldly hum.

A deep purple magick enveloped his arm and subsumed his knife. Ashley braced for some new agony to reach him, only for the magick to fade almost at once - and when it did, his knife's blade dissolved into the water beneath him in a shower of rust.

The crusader took another step closer, and another, and all the while Ashley staggered to his feet in a vain effort to ignore the screaming pain along his side. He had no weapon and could not retreat back to the storeroom without the crusader following him, without it reaching the children.

From dead ahead, Marco loosed a loud cry and leaped onto the crusader's back. He fought the armor's movement with all its strength, straining to hold just one of its arms, and yet the other arm reared back as if preparing to gore him.

At once the pain retreated to a place within Ashley's control. He lunged forward and grabbed the crusader's sword arm in both his own, standing fast even as the flood water surged against his legs and the monster howled in outrage.

He could barely see Marco, covered in sweat, leaning over the crusader's headless shoulders; he watched his friend stab once, then twice, and miss both times. Then the crusader shuddered with some desperate strength, and it was all Ashley could do to continue pulling at the arm with the greatsword, diverting its swing away from Marco at all cost.

He did not see Marco land the finishing blow. He only knew the crusader was defeated when it lost its strength, when its sudden lack of resistance sending him lurching forward. One by one the plates of ancient armor splashed into the water at his feet - and when he turned around to ensure Marco's safety, his friend stood with his chest heaving, holding up his knife, upon which was skewered the crusader's dark and lifeless core.

***

As Ashley returned up to the canal storeroom to try to find something for his face, a handful of Undercity leaders had already arrived to take stock of the crusader's defeat: a Duskwight matriarch, a merchant clad in blue who swept several of the children into his embrace, and the respective keepers of the Laurel and Kalmia Sigils. When the storeroom became too crowded for comfort and the only healing to be found was a grimy rag from a nonetheless well-intentioned little girl, the pair of lords followed Marco and Ashley back down to the canal, where the water had already risen up past their ankles. As Marco helped him splash water onto his scraped cheek, the lords worked in tandem: the Laurel Sigil leader, a conjurer with a halo of dark hair, chanted over the empty armor and scattered consecrated salt in wide but calculated circles; the Kalmia Sigil's keeper, a tall and imposing warrior with a crossbow strapped to their broad shoulders, traced out the crusader's battle in the gouges its sabatons had left upon the stones of the landing.

The warrior glared over at the other side of the canal, to where the bodies of the crusader's two victims lay entwined in their own net. "Idiots," the warrior whispered, then: "That cave-in up by Aster's has closed off the other bank, and there's no chance of crossing the water until the flood subsides. We'll have to let the river take the corpses and pray for the best."

"Mmm," the conjurer responded. "I don't like the chances of them coming back."

"We're talking ghosts at worst, Dagmar. Things don't come out of the river. The only reason that armor did was because those scavengers decided to test their luck on Flood Day." They shrugged. "I'll take it with me, if it makes you feel better."

Dagmar frowned but nodded. The warrior procured a length of rope and set themself to binding the crusader's empty armor into a single tight bundle.

"Wait," said Marco. The warrior did not stop their movements. "Dagmar, Neele. We have to talk."

"Shhh," Neele, the warrior, shook their head. Neither they nor Dagmar looked at him or at Marco; they were pointedly staring up toward the ceiling, or at some intricate tilework along the canal wall. They might have resembled Heart-Seers for their lack of eye contact, were it not for the fact that they were not listening - not to the water, not to the stones, and not to anything the two boys in front of them were saying. "You lads did good work today. That's forty-five children you've saved."

Ashley managed to take a single step forward without his hip giving in to the pain. "What are you-"

"You've every right to hate us," Neele continued, looking down the tunnel where the rush of water disappeared, "for how things have transpired. I'm sorry we weren't there for Elza, and I'm sorry we can't be there for you."

Marco let out a strangled sound that might have been the beginning of a growl of frustration; instead, he spoke only one word. "Why?"

The conjurer, Dagmar, spoke up for the first time. "It's quite the omen," she said. "I, too, have forty-five souls in my care. At least for now. Forty-five souls to cull the Undercity's legions of undead, and that's with the Knights picking us off at a whim. If I cross their master, we'll doubtless pay an even greater price."

"The last time I opposed Blackram at the Quorum," Neele chimed in, "one of my border-fighters went missing the first day. Then two. Then four. We're strapped as it is, but I'd be a liar if I gave you any reason for keeping my hands clean of you save that they're my people, and I'll do whatever I must to keep them alive."

"And this way," Dagmar added, blinking pointedly up at the ceiling, "we never saw you."

Marco shook his head. "Listen," he said, and his voice wavered with a desperation Ashley had never heard from him before. "Ashley won't bring you any trouble."

"Marco," Ashley interjected.

"I don't care if you leave me be, but just give him a chance, and-"

"You're not that daft, lad," said Neele. "Trouble's all he'll bring - Blackram's already seen to that. And the longer you stick with him, it won't matter how many young ones you save: you'll only bring trouble, too."

With that, Neele hoisted the bundle of armor over their shoulder, and they and Dagmar left the canal as one. Marco paced the landing for another minute, until the flood reached up to their knees.

"I can just-" Ashley began.

"Nah," Marco said, albeit without his regular levity. "We'll find somewhere to collapse. Good thing we don't need their permission to watch each other's backs, right?"

[webcricket]

Looking Glass

Chapter 2 - Welcome to Bunkerland

Pairing: CastielXAU!Reader

Word Count: 1643

Summary: A summer hiatus series. The reader is a refugee from the apocalypse AU where angels pursue humans with righteous wrath under the rule of the archangel Michael. Against all odds, the reader awakens in a world where the apocalypse never happened and not everyone is who they seem to be. Does her heart truly long to save her world, or does it belong now to the last person she ever expected to give it to?

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Humming contentment, inhabiting the sluggish middle-ground between sleep and sentience, you loll to one side of the bed. Knees curling to your chest, you nuzzle your chin deeper into the pillow and slide a hand beneath the cushion to cuddle it closer. The cotton fabric is cool and crisp to the touch. The clean floral hint of the dryer sheet with which it tumbled – and recently, judging by the fresh fragrance – tickles your nose. Poised at the brim of awareness, consciousness gently cascading over your somnolent senses, untroubled comfort blankets you for another blissful moment before wakeful alarm courses through your languid frame.

Fighting the reflex to flail off the sheets and flee, balling the pillow in your fists, you force yourself to freeze and formulate a plan. You still the dissenting shudder of your body as your heart sprints and adrenaline floods your veins and urges you contrariwise – every double beat a deafening drum to rise and run in your ears. You drink in a deep calming breath through your nose, reciting the mantra to stop and think over the wail of your pulse. Reaching into your memory to try to figure out what happened, you contort bodily and choke back a scream. Thinking hurts.

Mind a dense haze of smoke, brain a smoldering black coal that flares in a painful fiery burst when you try to recall any detail of the who, what, where, when, why, or how of being here, you default, instead, to basic survival instinct. You have an indistinct sense that wherever this place is, it’s very unlike the last place. You feel that you’re safe; some piece of you, however – a bit of coding programmed into your DNA – knows it’s not safe to trust safe anymore because nowhere is really safe from . . . You gasp at the galvanizing flash of lighting striking down the attempt at thought. Not thinking is hard.

Enough. Your eyelids separate into the slimmest of slits necessary to admit light in order to inventory the immediate surroundings: Bedside lamp, bulb illuminated and radiating a warm glow. Digital red numbers on an alarm clock indicating a time of 5:37PM. Glass of perfectly clear water, three-quarters full. Sheet of paper, thick enough to stand on the folded edge, a message scribbled across in bold black ink.

You clamp your lashes shut and take a slow and measured inhalation. Holding the air in your lungs until they begin to burn, you listen. You perceive only the rapid tinny race of your bounding heart. Identifying no imminent peril, you pop open both eyes and blow out the hot torrent of checked breath, panting afterward in relief. Swinging your legs over the side of the mattress, attention sweeping the bare walls, single wooden door, and beige-brown color palette of the windowless utilitarian room, your focus settles once more on the piece of paper on the nightstand.

You pluck it up to examine the note evidently intended for you as there doesn’t seem to be anyone else here. It reads: Back soon – make yourself at home. It’s a concise welcome, but does nothing whatsoever to clear up the confusion of where you are or how you came to be here. Your temples throb as you tread dangerously near a rising recollection. Rubbing at the ache, you notice ink bleeding through from the other side and flip the sheet: Stay put – don’t break anything. The handwriting is as different as the vaguely threatening sentiment and equally meaningless to you.

Tossing aside the paper, you hop to the floor. You suck in a quick shot of air to shallowly expand your ribcage and peer down at the external state of matters stretching from your neck to toes. It isn’t the oversized fleece-lined sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder, extending well beyond your fingertips and shrouding you to your thighs that shocks you. Nor is it the wide-legged plaid pajama pants rolled up to your ankles that come as a surprise.

You tentatively shift your weight from one leg to the other and jump again. Your bare feet land with a quiet and painless thud on the tile. The pleased smile – small as it is – has no time to brush its subtle curve onto your mouth before a cinch of blazing embers ensnares your skull. Knees buckling, you sink shrieking to the floor as you realize your left leg isn’t the shattered limb you remember. You badly broke the leg when you lost your footing on a rugged mountain pass leading to a camp in Dayton, Ohio and the rumored promise of safety there. Safety. Through the crippling agony, specifics of the incident of failing to outrun a band of angels and your subsequent capture return to you.

When you recover your faculties, tears puddle on the porcelain where your forehead presses to the cold tile. Tongue swiping your lips, you taste the salt streaking your cheeks. Rocking onto your heels, you clasp your fingers around your wrists in turn and run the pads of them over the smooth skin. Like your fractured limb they, too, are unmarked by the tight binds that secured you to the chair in the cabin where . . . You flatten your palms to the floor in front of you to keep from crumpling at the emergent memory of him.

Castiel – the other angels called him Castiel, a seraphim sadist, strangely sentimental. He’s the one who set your brain ablaze. He wanted information about where the refugees were gathering and why. And he especially wanted to know the whereabouts of someone named Jack. He lit brush fires in your mind as if to smoke the information out. You don’t know jack, about any Jack, but you were willing to die before divulging anything to that divine douchebag.

You dare to think, perhaps, you are dead. Sitting upright, you glance around the room with that viewpoint. Imagining yourself in Heaven instills no solace. Heaven is chock full of angels and you’d rather be in Hell. You’ve heard it’s pretty decent digs since the apocalypse went down and all the demons went topside. You don’t expect anyone in power much cares where human souls end up nowadays.

From this vantage point, headache abating, you spot a square of pink in the center of the door you missed before. Standing up, you cross the room and squint at the writing: Kitchen is to the right if you want something to eat. It’s the same friendly scroll as the note bidding you to make yourself at home. Your stomach rumbles with enthusiasm. There’s a second square tucked below the first with a warning: Don’t drink all the beer.

“Seriously?” you snicker aloud. “Somebody’s in a bitchy mood.” You imagine it was quite the row these chuckleheads with warring memos had before they deigned to leave you here alone, wherever the heck here actually is.

Turning the doorknob, you step into the hall to make your way to the kitchen. Your eyes dart to each steady bulb of light illuminating the way. You find it curious there is no loud whirring roar of a generator providing the electricity. Until now, you believed electricity of this sort, available at the whim of a finger flicking a switch, was an extinct species – mere magical fodder for children’s bedtime stories.

You pause before a gaping door and peer into what must be the kitchen based on the stainless steel storage stretching along the walls. This room, you note, like the one you awoke in, is also windowless and tidy in efficiency. Throat itchy with thirst and thinking of the untouched glass of water you left bedside, you swallow dryly and cross over to the sink. Purely for your own amusement, since it also doesn’t exist anymore in a convenient manner, you twist on the hot water tap and cup your hands beneath the spout. Steamy liquid warmth instantly flows over and fills your upturned palms. Snorting a laugh, you dip your head to the basin to splash your skin with the soothing spray.

It’s with your face ducked under the faucet, letting the warmth pour across your foolishly grinning features, fully submerged in this fantasy come to life, fingers clasped to the sink edge to keep from falling in, that you fail to hear the gravelly voice resounding on approach in the hall over the rush of the water.

“Sam! Dean? I’m back. I have good news and bad news. The good news is, I was able to enter Heaven and the other angels didn’t murder me as we anticipated they would. The bad news is, they didn’t murder me because there are only a handful of us left and-” Cas swallows the remainder of his report as he leans over the kitchen threshold to study the peculiar scene.

Although he healed your physical injuries after Dean dragged you through the rift, he hadn’t expected you to wake given the sustained suffering of your mind. Even an angel cannot always undo the work of angels. He’s glad to see he was wrong. Determining his silent stare could be considered rude, he clears his throat, steps into the room, and announces his presence. “Hello?”

Through the blear of water wetting your lashes, you see a figure – a man, judging from the broadness of his shoulders – drifting toward you from the doorway. “Sorry, I-” You recoil from the sink, apologizing out of awkwardness. Slick fingers scrambling to turn off the faucet, you simultaneously grope along the counter for something to wipe your eyes.

“Here.” The raspy word is followed by a cloth laid against your arm.

“Thanks.” You dab the cotton to your face. “I-” When you look up from the towel, the man’s eyes lock on yours, both of them blue. The hue – an unmistakable shade seared into your memory – instills you with horror.

Next: Ch. 3 - The Quote Unquote Situation

[yeoldontknow]

Solar Flare - Mercury

Author: @eradikeats-writes as part of The Heavens - a series of ongoing one shots with @the-porcelain-doll-xo and @rudeboywonho

Creative Content Contributors: @everybodykpops (who is creating exquisite moodboards for the series)

Pairing: Minseok x Reader (oc; female; based off Urania)

Rating: PG

Warnings: mentions of war

Word Count: 2,929

“In the beginning, there was time.”

This is the common misconception of the dawn of the universe, an infinite black held anxiously in wait. Time passing in indeterminate values until there was something to count the hour, something to feel its own heart break at the impossibility of its length.

In the beginning, there was time. This is wrong.

In the beginning, there was potential.

Time came later, after the universe found there was no great relief simply drifting in an endless, eternal darkness. Time came later, only after the breaking apart and rebuilding of the void resulted in a cradle filled with possibility, nestled hopefully in the in between. Crawling forward, it severed the umbilical tether that kept it contained, constricted, and impotent, and marked the end of its dependency on law. For a while, there was no law, merely a great spawning of life and action, an eruption of light so blinding the universe has simply forgotten how to be silent in the onslaught of pain.

Time came later, when there were Nine.

When the black became purple, and blue, and red; when the silence became an endless din of life, and energy, consumed by the magnitude of sound, there were Nine. Happenstance placed them as they were, so close to the Sun, a star - their father, mother, blessing, and curse - and crowned them as kings. Nine perfect children born to Nine perfect houses, brothers in protection, law, and blood. Blessed by stardust, they lived and loved, and, for a time, they were happy.

Millenia passed easily and quickly, whole great worlds born in the palms of their hands. After they started counting time, they decided to meet together, to unite and talk, speak on discoveries and findings. After they started counting time, they decided to stand together and fight, learned to rule together and love together, united in a way that made even the greatest of solar creations bow to their stead.

After they started to count time, things soon became hard.

Standing atop the observatory roof, relishing the way the metal glistens in the midnight sun, Minseok thinks on these things now, letting the way they churn his mind and memory send shivers down his spine. Tonight, the usual red and green of the skies has departed, leaving in their wake a sickly yellow glare of solar discharge.

A solar flare is coming, he has felt it for days in the boiling heat of the Sun, and now he is waiting for the relief. Tension slithers through his muscles, makes his shoulders ache to curve over and his thighs tremble anxiously in stoicism. The silk of his shirt sticks to his chest, the night warm and the wind lackluster at best, his flesh damp with heat and stress.

Vision turned upward to the sky, he counts the stars and waits. He waits and breathes and ruminates on why his brain has selected these thoughts for him this night. Always, he has considered memories to be illusions deemed worth remembering, difficult to bring them back in their full tangibility, yet the body remembers the stain - imprinted with loss, love, fear. Always, he has considered memory to be a complex, impersonal thing, the whole of the universe stretching out in front of, and behind, life in one collective length of rope. The shared involvement with living, each thing gradually moving through its life, means all individual experience is no longer unique, merely it is the implied value that makes the difference.

Yet, tonight, he finds himself troubled by an endless rotation of his brothers, each ghosting over his eyes with clenched fists and wet eyes, vague in their shape and form. Tonight, he is haunted, both by action and inaction, the past and the future. Timelines, he thinks, are converging, and he is caught in the fray. War and rage, like Mars yet too detached, coils within his veins, running just beneath his skin and making his heart race with trepidation. Tonight, he is burdened by the weight of all his choices, both made and unmade, rushing together all at once to dry his tongue.

Tonight, he is remembering.

Most clearly, he remembers Yixing standing beside him. Brilliant always, radiant even in the darkest reaches of the sky, and glowing beautifully now so close to the Sun, Yixing was weeping. Breastplate gleaming with tears, he had come to Minseok seeking all the things he could not find so far removed from the light. He had chose his eldest brother first, possibly for solace, but mostly for advice, begging for his breath to guide and dwarf him in righteousness. The threat was directly intended for Pluto, Minseok reminds himself, not the other brothers and their homes; the Guardian of the Outside and Protector of all within.

Positioned so deliberately at the outer rim of the system, he was the duality of death. Warm, beautiful, hopeful even in the way he welcomed the void and silence, he was lethal and he was hungry. A battalion unto himself, few went to war, drank the agony of misery, and luxuriated in loss as elegantly as he. But always, before the endless gnaw of flesh and clash of metal, he grieved openly, fully.

Letting the memory take its hold, Minseok feels a collapse take place somewhere deep within his ancient heart, confronted now with the hollow eyes of his young brother. Melancholy seemed to suit him that night, and this, he knows, should have been his first warning of things to come.

‘Please,’ Yixing had said simply, refusing to face him and instead letting the closeness of the Sun turn his black eyes gold.

‘I told you we will do what we can.’ Minseok had found it to be a struggle, that night, to be both comforting and faithful to the whim of the universe, especially after he had learned the secrets of the stars. Devastation would happen, swords would be drawn - he simply didn’t know whose would be victorious.

He did not know who would win, and therefore he could not sway the outcome.

‘Would you so willingly dispose of the future in an effort to maintain your honor?’ he seethed, rounding on Minseok with eyes that felt like iron, shocked and awed at his brother’s almost blasé ignorance of the depth of his plight.

Minseok had sighed then, bowing his head in an effort to remain patient. ‘You cannot hold us to our words, because we cannot truly know the consequence -’

‘Then you cannot expect me to give my heart anymore!’ Yixing snapped, pounding his armor with vicious malcontent. ‘Not so generously for those who will not help me!’

He feels the solar flare before he sees or hears it, the rumbles of cosmic energy tearing through the rock to vibrate against his feet before working their way up his legs; waves of tangibility traveling at different speeds. It eases him out of his torment, forces him to forget that his sweet, jovial brother had been turned into something less almost by the palm of his own hand.  It eases him back into reality, and only then, before the flash and storm of the Sun, does he realize you are beside him.

Hands absentmindedly twirling your celestial globe, so too are your eyes poised at the sky. Beneath the Sun’s rays, your embroidered cloak, twinkling purple and blue, becomes a galaxy unto itself, and you are wrapped in all the majesty of space. Hair flowing like hydrogen, combative, powerful, regal, you are impassive and smiling, watching the way the sky births a new prophecy just for you.

Like this, he think, he could fall for you over and over and over again, and he does. Swooning slightly at the sight of you, he reminds himself that you are his, and he is yours, a pair destined beyond the birth of the cosmos - a match of interstellar proportions.

You glance at him then, face soft and eyes dancing. In these moments, he loves you most, just before cosmic burst of purpose, when you seem to glow from the inside out, astronomical and glorious.

‘Take my hand,’ you murmur, closing your eyes to welcome the great wave. ‘I trust only your touch when the sky is like this.’

Glad for the connection, he eagerly entwines his fingers with yours, watching the way your chest settles as you exhale, long and deep. Eager to capture as much of the light as he can, he edges you both close to the ledge of the roof, tipping his head back and exposing himself to the bath like he is delivering himself to providence. So too do you unleash the flesh of your neck and chest, envious of Minseok’s surrender and keen to swallow the flare just as much.

At the first eruption, the first quake of thunder and the opening maw of the Sun, Minseok readies himself for a pleasure that does not come. Solar flares should bathe his skin in light. Solar flares should wash him, cleanse his skin and give new purpose to his tired existence. Always this has been the way and, instead, all he hears is screaming.

Yixing was asking to die. He was begging Baekhyun for it, pleading with wild eyes and a wet tongue, to have him run his sword clean through his chest. Too much had been lost and not enough could ever be regained. Gathering his body in his arms, Baekhyun screamed, loud and horrible, in an effort to protect his brother from more pain, but the damage had been done. Twice, Yixing had been refused, and twice, Yixing had been covered in the blood and dust of things he loved the most.

In the aftermath, Yixing sat silent and still, watching Styx rotate in the deafening silence. Tears were expected, a howl of grief so long and desperate that the ground would open into one great cavernous mouth, consume them whole in a motion almost too clean for the mess of space. Instead, he merely sat, taking in the way his world had ended even though Pluto’s axis continued to spin.

It was then, Minseok knew, that all his love, the heart of his life and soul, had been transfigured into blame.

‘Minseok!’

‘Say a sermon, brother!’ Yixing spit, dark and cold only then for the first time in his life. ‘Say a sermon for all those you let die!’

‘This is no one’s fault!’ Junmyeon replied, vigor and rage coursing through his usual placid tone. ‘This is the natural law of all things!’

‘You were idle and absent!’

‘Minseok, please! Come back to me!’

With eyes wide open, Minseok sees you hovering above him. Briefly, he wonders how he got here, to the ground and without feeling his own fall. Hands, your hands, cup his cheeks, thumbs stroking along the bones, as you press your forehead against his. Still, he is bleary eyed and confused, knowing he is here and with you, but still seeing all the ash of Pluto stained with blood.

Minseok is pulled to his feet, unsteady and heavy, and he rests against you in search of stability and comfort. In the effort to stand, he sees the markings now burned on the flesh of his hands. By virtue of proximity or fate, the symbols of the solar flare, the language of prophecy, are always blazed onto his body as he coats himself in the embers. This time, they are not beautiful in their shape, they are distorted, warped and red and angry; they match the way his soul has started to feel.

‘I can’t read them,’ you whisper, looking at his hands in earnest. ‘I’ve never seen them look like this.’

‘How did you see them?’ he murmurs, voice raspy and tired as he rests his head against your shoulder. Suddenly, he feels groggy, overwhelmed with purpose and meaning, but he knows you could not have seen them so quickly.

‘You’ve been out for a long time.’

Somewhere in the back of his wind, a voice emerges, ethereal and whispering secrets of the oncoming meeting. No, not a meeting - a reunion. The solar system is sick with it, the impending doom and inevitable carnage that will come just by having them in the same space. Together.

Even if lives are not lost, all Nine together is surely an omen.

It makes sense now, all the tension he has carried with him these last thousand years. Soon, he will be meeting with his brothers. Soon, they will be coming together for the first time since Pluto’s collapse. Soon, the past will return to haunt them. With the uneasy solar flare, Minseok is forced to remember the way his ambivalence turned him into the carrier of death, a harbinger of doom against his best wishes.

‘Should we go to the library?’ you ask, softly holding Minseok to you because, surely, you know something is amiss. ‘To see if we can translate them?’

‘There is no need,’ Minseok croaks.

He simply does not want their truth, not tonight.

It is his first time on Earth, and he is glad he is able to see its beauty, all green and blossoming and full. Spring, he heard Jongdae calls it, and he thinks the word is playful. Light and airy in its implication, the word seems fitting for all the things that he sees.

Here, the Sun is far from him, far enough away that the warmth feels soothing rather than erupting and violent, and unable to be controlled. Here, he can bask in the light, and not feel burdened by all it contains. Here, the Sun is a gentle, distant thing, something soft and wholly unlike its true nature.

Barefoot, he lets his feet press harder into the grass and sighs happily at the pleasant feeling, strange for someone so used to hard rock and stone. A breeze moves delicately through his fingers, slides between the strands of his hair, and beneath his outstretched palms. For a moment, he finds it hard not to be jealous of Jongdae. A home like this could make a man keen to laugh, keen to live, keen to love in a way that is both impossibly and naturally simple. This is not the home for him, Minseok knows, but it is nice to imagine.

Around him, the world is jostling. Cars pass by and planes move overhead, gliding on the clouds like metal birds. People pass and this world turns, all of it wonderous in the harmony it creates. When he first arrived, the noise was a painful overstimulation, this world brimming over with life so loudly that the sheer amount of it caused all of his senses to sting. Now, after hours of standing alone, he sees humanity as quiet little animals, animals so blinded by the brief length of their life, they simply cannot do anything more than live unabashedly and completely. If he did not have the promise of eternity, he thinks even this noise would be akin silence, and he cannot believe they would want to limit their cacophonous euphoria.

‘Always the fastest, aren’t you, brother?’

Minseok does not bother to open his eyes for Jongin, does not bother to turn or greet him, simply stretches his fingers a little longer and lets the wind kiss them.

‘My prudence of time has rewarded me,’ he mutters, craning his neck slightly to the side to let the Sun warm his tendons. ‘I’ve enjoyed this atmosphere in solitude.’

He feels Jongin come to stand beside him, the closeness of their bodies causing the hair on his arms to stand on end. It’s easy to crave Jongin, for the body and the heart to want to be around him, enveloped by him, for always. Golden and beautiful, he is the warmest, softest, most affectionate of their family, and he makes the air around him feel like rapture. Naturally, Minseok leans a little closer to him, happy to feel his familial tenderness before the arrival of the others.

‘I dreamt of Pluto last night,’ Jongin says, simply and without any ceremony.

Minseok opens his eyes at this, surprised his eyes feel no pain at the sudden adjustment. ‘Oh?’ he questions, turning to face his brother.

Jongin is darker than usual, full lips pressed into a thin line. These harsh lines are unnatural on him, unsuited for a creature so exquisite, and it makes him release a small whine of frustration.

‘It was less a dream,’ Jongin clarifies with a delicate tongue, ‘and more of a memory.’

‘Of the war?’

‘Yes.’ Jongin turns to face him, hands stuffed into his trouser pockets and eyes grim. Flashes move across his irises, brief moments of the great undoing running through his mind. ‘I think we’re all haunted by it.’

Tearing his eyes from Jongin’s gaze, Minseok regards the markings on his hands and finds himself stricken. There is a reason for all this bloodshed and torment. There is a reason for all these memories to resurface, and it is not merely because they are finally reunited.

He looks up at the Sun and scowls, feeling, for the first time, as though has been abandoned. He has been abandoned by the knowledge of the cosmos, and for a moment he thinks he understands.

It is not merely about a reunion because it feels like vengeance, it feels like retribution. It feels like the tearing and ripping of the cosmos, a great shattering filled only with guilt.

It feels like the end.