#reupload of an old birthday gift for my darling alexis kissy kiss

[trappolia]

── MY SWEET VILLAIN, MY DARLING GOD

nanook. your aeon lover begrudgingly celebrates the day of your creation.

Nanook's birth was a fiery thing; a light piercing through the clouds like golden death, scorching the world once known as Adlivun. Their birth preceded the collapse of an entire universe, one that had somehow persevered through the Emperor's war and was strengthening their defenses against the coming of the Swarm's march. The old towers of this already dying world had crumbled as the sun rose for the very last time in Adlivun, marking the coming of Destruction incarnate.

But for all the chaos and death their birth brought upon, the day they came into being is of no real importance to Nanook. They do not remember the constellations shining upon their home when they first ignited, nor do they recall whether or not the heat remained or if the cold dark was the first thing they felt, for Adlivun was long gone by the time their golden irises illuminated what was left of the world.

It is a curious thing; for all they have discarded and forgotten of their birth, they remember yours.

What is a god? Certainly not immortal, that is for sure. Pantheons have collapsed with the passage of time, forgotten in the seas of lost religions. Aeons are just as susceptible to death and collapse as the universes they traverse and conquer. On the same spectrum, the birth of a being as powerful as an Aeon is an anomaly felt by the entire universe, a single ripple that results in the violent waves of a turning tide. Such concepts are merely specks of dust for them. What use do they have for such worries, when their lives are mysteries in the known worlds, tipping the balance of the scales simply by existing?

Nanook’s fascination with you could be dismissed as another consequence of the butterfly effect. They should have nothing else on their mind beside righting the worlds’ wrongs, ridding the universe of the cancer that emerges from the boundless stars to taint civilisations. War. Death. Destruction. Finality. Nanook is a jagged puzzle made up of the gods and mortals they had killed, universes scorched from existence like a supernova; and yet, you fit into their life like you were meant to be there all along.

“My sweet villain,” you whisper into their ear, saccharine sweet and painfully loving in all the ways they do not deserve. “My darling god.”

No, they want to say. They are a villain, yes — your sweet villain, if you continue to insist — but a darling god? No, that mantle has always rightfully belonged to you. For a being whose existence has been dictated by their status as Avatar of Entropy since birth, Nanook finds that everything seems to come together when you press your lips against theirs, your taste sweeter than ambrosia.

You are their most infuriating distraction, they think as you sit together amongst the stars of a universe that has yet to die, clinging onto their last rays of sun and hope before Nanook ends it all. it is their sweetest punishment, to have to sit here with you in their arms, so easily drawing their thoughts away from their duties and ideals— and for what? Looking at the stars together? How pathetic.

Pathetic, in the way they recognise these stars, these constellations. It is rare to come across any two galaxies that have the same formation of stars, as likely as to find a needle in a haystack, as mortals say. But here they are, their eyes dragging over the stars glimmering in the abyss. They know these patterns. They know their stories.

They remember the day.

“It is your birthday,” they murmur. Even in this soft tone that Nanook only ever reserves for you, their voice is a booming bass that reverberates throughout the galaxy. Somewhere, another star dies out.

“Hm?” you say cluelessly, looking up at them with eyes that shine brighter than the golden ichor that drips down their arms.

“A mortal custom,” Nanook replies gruffly, feigning nonchalance even as a shiver runs down their spine at the touch of your fingers upon their skin. “The stars are the same as they were the day you came into being.”

“Ah. So they are,” you say when you finally look at the constellations.

It is a strange thing— a humiliating thing; the way Nanook can barely breathe when you are near, and how the air grows stale when you aren’t. It’s as if the Aeon of Destruction is utterly dependent on your attention, your love. How pathetic. How miserable.

how true.

The aeon may have only ascended recently, the youngest of all known paths, but they have made their mark on the universe already; whether it is with the presence of the Antimatter Legion, or the existential crisis brought upon by Nanook’s very life. With their birth, one could no longer deny that destruction is the inescapable destiny of all the known universes; expansion, fusion, and then annihilation. It is the same for Aeons; the survival of the fittest, to destroy or be destroyed, to absorb or be absorbed. For as long as people still walk on the path of destruction, Nanook will continue to aim for the complete devastation of this tainted universe. They alone are the sole being who truly understands what a mistake the birth of this universe was. Each ship and planet may follow a different path, but what civilisation does not speak the common tongue of war? What universe does not know death, pain, destruction?

“What universe does not know love?” you would ask them in response to that. Your hands come up to cup their cheeks in your palm, and Nanook is undone. “Even you know love, my violent delight. Why else would you have remembered the position of the stars the day I was born?”

Would you like your death day to be on the same day as your birth?” Nanook questions you without any real malice, their voice breathless as you drag your thumb over their bottom lip.

You laugh, and Nanook hears the stars sing with you.

Why is it that mortals bother in the struggle of survival? they think. Nothing lasts forever, not even the great Aeons themselves. Civilisations rise and fall, galaxies materialise and collapse. For a new beginning, the book must end. It is simply the way of things. Nanook knows this. Nanook has always known this.

And yet, in these moments with you, they cannot help but cling onto your immortality. They cradle you close, because if the Aeon of Destruction — of all things lost to violence and death — cannot kill you, then what can? If Lan of the Hunt shuns Yaoshi of the Abundance for loving the living too much to the point of cursing them with immortality when it is too heavy of a burden to hear, then it is only a matter of time until they realise that Nanook is a threat to the balance as well. What is life without you? Merely the act of existing, rather than living— chasing a goal, without ever stopping to see the stars and consider the stories behind them.

in death, Nanook will be remembered as many things, and the Antimatter Legion will carry out their legacy just as all the previous Aeons’ factions do in the present day. Even if they must continue Nanook’s ideals in the shadows, the Aeon of Destruction will shadow the known universe for all of eternity— for what civilisation exists without the pain of violence and death? Destruction is a concept as sure as life and death; immortal, even if its Aeon has long since passed. That is Nanook’s goal, their sole purpose of living.

But on this day, Nanook allows themself a singular moment to hope that when they die, the universe will know them not only for the destruction they had reigned upon the universe, but for the fact that they did it in your name— for they had loved you above all else.

© trappolia 2024