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𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐈 𝐨𝐫 ( 𝐜𝐡𝐢 ) 𓏵 ﹟ she · her ㅤ࣭ ㅤׂ. ( 17 ) / viet !
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𝐔𝐏𝐋𝐎𝐀𝐃𝐒 : user ( @ ) 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐒 is a very slow writer, and is better talented in procrastination ─ due to school and life businesses, i will not be posting much, please be patient !
⤷ Satoru, who does little to deny your requests. You, who likes teasing him. 1.3k
based loosely on the manga, Veil, by Kotteri.
Satoru's hair wavered among the cold, shimmering his teeth against the night wind breezing in his face.
“Your laces are untied,” Satoru hummed, his hands in his pocket as his shoulder briefly wavered over yours, eyes locked onto you with amusement.
You blinked, huffing cold air from your mouth as you fleet to your untied laces of a shoe. The brown material of your boot starks against the slight snow on the grounds of the street, laces spilled out in the wetness of the concrete, you tilted your head.
“Are they?”
The snow falls with trepidation, softly brushing the redness of Satoru’s nose, painting the streets a white hymn as it falls sweetly over the huff of the night.
Stray droplets of snowflakes graze the gauze of your hair, Satoru brushes them away from your locks, twirling it around his nimble finger.
Satoru chuckled, unnerving, as a pink hue dusted the white of his cheeks with the coldness lingering in the air.
“Yup,” Satoru messed with your hair, releasing your lock to press his palm over your scalp, ruffling your bed of hair with his gloved hand. “So careless!”
You huffed, swatting him off with displeasure as Satoru wears a dumb grin, your fingers escaping from the warm confinements of your jacket’s pocket, willing your fingertips lower. “I can tie it myself,”
“Too late,” Satoru knelt down in a speed you huff at, his knee touching the wet material of the ground, yet he just absentmindedly hummed – some old, stupid, song from a children's ad – under his breath. You tilted your head from above as his fingers deftly took the laces into the rigidness of his hand. “Already done!”
“You beat me to it..” You murmured, fictitious pout smearing your lips.
Satoru chuckled again, the sound rumbling between the tension of your bodies. You feel his fingers – dexterous as ever, though brittle from the coldness of his fingertips. He ties your shoelaces into bunny ears.
“How could a lady ever have to kneel down, hm?” Satoru crooned, tutting his lips at you.
"Is this you attempting chivalry?"
"Calling this an attempt is harsh. It is chivalry."
You raised an eyebrow, eyeing the way he was still knelt down, hands lingering over the material of your shoes as he looked up to you – doe eyed, and all. His eyes are bright beneath the white of his eyelashes, messy hair framing the sparkle beneath the soles of his eyes.
“How silly.” You breathed out. He smiles, a twitch in the corner of his lips, a crinkle in the right of his eyelid. Laughter rises in the bubble of your throat.
“Utterly, right?”
Without thinking, your fingers find the familiar shape of his snow, white hair. It drifts beneath the tip of your fingers in regard. Your mouth moves in instinct.
“Good boy,” You thrummed, a smile adorning the small of your lips as you placed your hand conveniently on his head, body still knelt down.
Satoru freezed under your touch with a gape in his mouth – like a puppy with a treat, perhaps.
“.. How embarrassing,” He said, yet relents regardless, humming into your touch on his hair, drifting through the locks of his mind. “How could I deny you when you touch me so sweetly?”
“Simple,” You tilted your head. Your fingers still cascading through the silk of his hair. “You don’t deny.”
“How mischievous, my lady!” Proclaimed the man-turned-puppy, abruptly standing up as his feet stalls his larger form over yours, hands finding the curve of your waist, the other finds the hue of your cheek, the brittle of his frigid fingertips smudge the plump of your visage, you yelp.
Giggles filtered out from the recedes of your teeth, the coldness of his fingers dipping into the warmth of your countenance.
You shiver when his fingertips touch your face, poorly attempting to push him away. “Come now– Down, boy!”
“Won’t work,” He grinned, taking your flailing wrists into his hands, pressing them against his chest. Satoru’s voice levels to whine – lips jutting. “Can’t believe this. You waited for me to tie your shoelaces for you, only to call me so sweetly? Must you be so cruel to my fragile heart?”
You laughed against the breath of his mouth, tickling your chin as you tilted your head backwards, laughter bubbling from the thrums of your throat. Satoru leaned ever closer, lips ghosting the crook of your neck as he took in your scent in scarcity.
“What an overly dramatic man, you are.”
Satoru did not deny it. You were right – he never could deny you after all. He simply takes a deeper whiff of the waver of shampoo from your hair, breathing in the scent of vanilla, amalgamated with a hint of lavender. “For you, perhaps.”
The streetlight flickered beneath the throes of your pace, Satoru had a hand situated on your waist, another holding your wrists to his chest so you couldn’t flee from his careful embrace.
(You wouldn’t. Perhaps never would you consider so – he touches you as you touch him, if only to know the frame of each other’s being as if they were the last to exist on earth.)
The corner of Satoru’s eyes crinkled above the threatening giddy smile he adorned, it stretches at your blissful expression. You huffed against the crook of his neck when Satoru dug himself deeper into the mess of your hair.
“Unbelievable,” You stuck your tongue out, Satoru chuckled at your discomfort. “Have some decorum.”
(Softer than the softest materials of the earth – your body fits into his arms. More than the blankets, the silkest of materials adorning the flesh of your arm.)
“The woman who owns my heart telling me to have ‘some decorum’, what tragedy!” Satoru bated – releasing your hair from the qualms of his face at a whim.
Satoru’s hand released your wrists for them to freely travel. You budge your fingertips to tap at his jaw, clicking your tongue.
You raised an eyebrow. “For telling you to not sniff me as if you were a dog on the streets?”
“Yet you called to me as if I were a dog.”
“An instinct.”
“Now you’re being mean.” Satoru pouted – in a way a grown man can utter the expression – placing both of his careful hands on the curve of your waist.
You make a noncommittal noise against his hold, before detaching yourself from him.
Satoru makes a pathetic noise under his breath at the inept loss of contact, fingers moving for your body viscerally.
You barely manage to walk a few feet – before Satoru readily follows you from behind, eyes focused on the back of your hair. You turned your head over your shoulder, a steady smile wreathed on the softness of your features. Biting back a laugh at the way he follows your movement without question, you settle on a cheeky smile.
“What’re you doing? Let’s go home.”
Satoru perked up a sparkle in his eyes, giddy steps as he slid up to your side, offering you an arm which you looped your hand around. Much like a puppy, he answered with glee. "Yes, yes!"
"Settle down, you'll trip."
A pep in his steps, he nudged his shoulder against yours, the bristle air running between you two under the streets of Tokyo.
His fingers interlace against your own, chilled fingertips pressing against each other in convergence. Satoru swung your hand back-and-forth, eyes fleeting against the softness of your hand.
“Look, that star’s Ursa Major.” Satoru pointed absentmindedly above. You squinted your eyes, he hums another stupid tune under his breath, a cheeky grin adorning the curve of his lips.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yeah, I just made it up.”
“How awful!” You huffed, Satoru laughed as the streets emulsified into a blur of yellow-leaded lights, each casting a soft grim of a shadow above your figures.
“If you squint your eyes really hard, it could be!”
“Oh, hardly.”
“Pretend for me, at least!” Satoru puffed his cheeks out – in a manner of that of a hamster, if it were given the form of a grown man. You tilted your head, his breath fanning the curve of your mouth, before you utter a huff into the air.
“Yes, yes. I’ll pretend that definitely-not-ursa-major is definitely ursa major.”
“So you do love me.” Satoru sheepishly grinned, twirling himself into your space with negligence of your quiet, cold protests against the brittle night.
(Love – is a big, unprecedented word. Perhaps he meant love in a sense of inane adoration, perhaps in a way a child loved their pet, or in a way a friend loved their old classmate, perhaps love, simply as a facet of emotion.)
He snakes his cloaked arm around your neck, bringing your face to his chest.
You do not answer his question. Neither do you deny.
You kicked his feet, scraping snow onto his boots with disdain. “Stop acting dense, mister.”
He giggled, bringing his cheek to your face, rubbing himself into you as you lightly protest. “Yes, ma’am!”
(In a sense, such intimacy is inferred among the quietness of a veil.
For those hands which hold one so dearly – all one needs to know – is that they are held.)
- based off of this manga extra strip from the manga veil by Kotteri!! I thought it was super duper cute & yes I like inserting my favorite character into silly little moments sue me
- this is short cuz I wanted to write but I didn’t want to write lol
- I also want to get better at writing implicit intimacy between 2 characters - veil is my FAVORITE 'romance' media and GOSHH i just love emma and aleksander sm
- I might make this like a short unordered series/collection of gojo x f!reader based on Kotteri's manga :p
- the tenses are messed up I KNOW i just DONT GIVE A FUCKKK too much work this is sm bs i made in history class bcs who focuses in history class
- yk i don’t use ai by the inconsistent ass grammatical tenses bye i aint doing ts anymore
❝ you know i'm such a fool for you . . you got me wrapped around your finger ! do you have to let it linger? ❞
𓏵 ( you're my path ! and you're always gonna be my path . )
८ sypnosis. Being Spiderman's object of adoration after promptly saving him on the streets is, by definition, incredulous and delusional to a fault. Given those assumptions, what exactly was Spiderman doing on the comfort of your windowsill? You've ought to watch for spiders in your home, now!
(spiderman!gojo x fem!reader) wc: 8k
@ warnings; no-curses au, spiderman-au, they're in tokyo not nyc im not making a man called satoru gojo white, banter, bad flirting from gojo's side are we surprised, slight canon-typical violence and description, character analysis, down-bad gojo, gojo is stupid, angst if u squint, fluff mainly, a lot of movies mentioned ᝰ.ᐟ
── notes. ok so this started as a drabble bc i love spiderman & spiderman brand new day is coming out & i love gojo and i've been getting back into jjk surprise surprise but i accidentally entered some flow state & wrote too much MY BAD i just really like the idea of spiderman gojo and i wanna write more for spiderman gojo so this is like a test trial or something idk (ㅅ´ ˘ `)
art by @/aliyartss on insta !! god her stsg spiderman au is so good plz check it out
Spiderman!Gojo finds pleasure in your displeasure.
The sounds of palpating rain, dragging across the streets in streaks of liquid. A body strewn under a shed without light, a noise without sound. You shifted the clear umbrella over his figure, letting the rain stop amid.
When your newly appointed residential spiderman didn’t speak, his head hung low, you hummed underneath your breath.
“I know superheroes have this mysterious aura they need to keep up, but I’d feel bad if I let the person who’s protecting my neighborhood get soaked in the rain. You’re staining the street red.”
Your voice filters among the recedes of rain water. He looks up blankly as you knelt down to his level, situating the umbrella over his figure, his mind half in its own head.
He watches, eyes half-lidded, as you dig among your bag for an aid kit. His mind swirls as you wrap a barely adequate bandage over the bleeding part of his mid-section, hands slightly shaking - from the cold, he presumed. His brain is rushed with impeded adrenaline, taking in everything and nothing.
You’d stood up, leaving the umbrella over his head without taking it for yourself. “Thank you, Spiderman.” You’d mouthed, before hastily running off as his eyes followed you in a sense of fanatic wonder - strewn by adrenaline, drawn by reverence.
You’d saved him (save, really, is a strong word. He’d say it’s more like you aided him) from certain clutches of death with an on-hand first aid kit outside the alleyway of some fucked up run-down building – much to his personal delight, and much to your chagrin as you realized that now, you’ve inadvertently placed a spider on your back that refuses to get off.
Spiderman!Gojo was never one to believe in miracle encounters - or placements by fate's design by which he meets another that his soul tethers to. He stopped believing in the goodness of fate once his duty was bound to the city's.
His name is Satoru Gojo - he's was bitten by a radioactive spider, and for only 4 months - he'd been the one and only Spiderman.
You know the rest.
Spiderman!Gojo, who may or may have not taken your grace as something by the fates. His mind half in a delirious state, he takes it upon himself to impede into your life.
After a few days, Spiderman!Gojo finds out where you lived (it’s not creepy! He swears! You don’t believe an inch of his words, though) and is rather determined to ‘pay back his owe’ in interest of your ‘grace-saving action’ for his mental and physical wellbeing, claiming he would succumb if your actions were not returned in earnest.
“I told you, I don’t need the help.” You frown, trying to usher the large (6’3, to be exact) spider out of the comfort of your home, swatting at his chest.
Yet, much to your discontent, Tokyo’s spiderman stays perched on your windowsill, legs planted in a squat as his hands balance him in between. The weight distributed among his muscles, tensing on your window.
Satoru grins under his mask, crooked and all – you can imagine it’s an egoistical sight. Different from his stature under the rain – the Spiderman you are now privy of, is a man of confidence and charisma.
The eyes on the suit crinkles in the corner, prominent testament to his amusement. “What kind of hero would I be if I didn’t provide charity, sweetheart?”
You flush, tempted to push him off from the window as he finds humor in poking fun at your apparent frankly impoverished lifestyle. “There is no need for charity!”
Satoru tilts his head, raising an eyebrow in skepticism. “Your creaking windowsill begs otherwise.”
“That’s because your fat ass is sitting on it.” You scowl. “Besides – I certainly don’t need a superhero to do me any favors. I’m getting by just fine.”
“I’m repaying you,” Hums the said superhero, all smiles and amusement. “And I never let a debt go unpaid.”
You scoff, crossing your arms across your chest, slumping your back as arguments begin to fail you once you realize rejection is not in the hero’s understanding. “You don’t look like you can clean. Or cook. Or housekeeping.”
“Tsk, tsk. Stereotype, much?” He clicks his tongue, hopping uninvited into your home. Feet landing onto your carpet with a thump! – staining bits of the carpet with dirtied mud.
“Hey–!”
You panic, he smiles and lingers around, eyes joyfully taking in your home, lingering on the framed photos on your wall. He whistles as he takes in the plants on your wall, flicking at one of the leaves. “I can fight. You know that, yeah?”
“I don’t need you to fight for me– or whatever it is you think you’re trying to do!” You hurriedly attempt to clamber at him to leave, he doesn’t budge. Not an inch. Not even as you attempt all your strength to grab at his arm and pull him towards the door.
“What? There’s no one pissing you off?” Satoru raises an eyebrow, placing a hand on his hip lazily as he negates your puny endeavor of pushing him away. “No way! Geez, are you trying to be all sunshine and rainbows, sweetheart?”
“You’re such a– okay, number one! Stop with the nicknames.” You huff, defeated as you stand back onto your own two feet, relenting to the hero’s casual trespassing into your home against your legal will.
Spiderman smiles – again, you can’t see it because of his mask, but he does. You could tell by the crinkles of the corner of his eyes.
“Oo, rules. Exciting.” He rubs his chin candidly, irking larger abundances of your indignation.
You interrupt him with a scowl by holding up two fingers to his face. “Number two! If you do something without my knowledge, I’ll kill you.”
“There it is. Threats. That’s hot.” He enunciates the last word with a smug grin. You want to die at whatever implications he believes is supposedly suave.
You are fairly tempted to kick him. Though, you wager it’d be more like kicking a brick wall. “Number three, no fighting anyone.”
He pouts, jutting his lower lip out – under the mask, that is. You can only see the pitiful expression expressed by his eyes from beyond his mask. “But that’s my whole brand..”
“So you don’t know how to do anything other than fight?” You raise an eyebrow, placing two hands on either side of your hips.
“I’m perfectly good at fighting.” Satoru throws up a ‘thumbs up!’ motion – as if it would help his cause. You frown, corners of your mouth pulling at the senselessness in his confident words. Is this really the hero who was protecting your city?
“And nothing else?” You probe.
He hums. “.. Can’t I just repay you through fighting whoever you’re beefing with for you? Listen, I can take down like 10 frat guys in five seconds, light work, no reaction. Look at this!” He emphasizes his point by making a show of flexing his biceps, the muscles bulging in its place.
You try not to gape as you swat his arms down. You’re not as disillusioned as to claim that you haven’t seen his figure. It’s hard not to – especially when he’s towering over your form in your small Tokyo apartment. His presence fills up the majority of the cramped space – yes, he has a great body and an even better build. His body crowds the spandex of his suit, permeating around the seams. You try not to drool, you make it a point not to gawk at jerks – but wow, did Spiderman make it hard.
“I just told you I don’t need you to fight anyone!” You argue with an unfortunate red tinge around your cheeks, chest huffing in irritation.
He theatrically holds a palm to his heart, dramatically swaying in discomfort at your words. “Aww, you’re undermining my efforts here, sweetheart.”
“I just told you to drop the nicknames, spiderman.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Satoru sing-songs, throwing his hands up in exasperation at your adorable reaction.
He can’t help but find it cute, the tiniest discomfort of a scrunch between your furrowed eyebrows, the fire glistening in your irises as you talk to him, the downturn of your soft, tender lips, the slight tousle in your hair as you move about his impeding presence in your space, he smiles in undisguised fascination.
“Since you so insist on repayment, or– Whatever!” You rant, stomping your feet on the ground as you moved about. Satoru’s gaze shamelessly follows you and the curve of your body, tutting his lips. “I’ll let you repay me – and that’s not because I want to be repaid, in case you go twisting this little tale around.”
Your voice tunes out in his brain like a melodic tune on replay cascading from a consonant of a fine instrument. He smiles, not quite listening, leisurely rubbing your floor as he sways back and forth in your space.
He feels it again. It lingers, this time. As if it had clawed into his cells and dug its place into the veins of his being. Like that spider. Yet this time, the bite is less radioactive.
It’s compulsive. It makes him want to rake his nails into flesh and scratch till the bite burns.
He’s might be addicted to you. Satoru ponders to himself with a smile. Perhaps it was your fiery personality, perhaps it was your looks – perhaps both or none. Yet Satoru, for all his cockiness and ego, can’t will his eyes away from you. He hasn’t been able to – not since you gracefully patched his sorry self up in that alleyway with much precision of gentleness in your touch. He feels he’s already become quite addicted.
– Satoru also feels he doesn’t quite mind the addiction in the slightest.
His mouth curves up underneath the veil of his mask in a sickened sense of delight. His chest thrums with anticipation, churning in quiet, humming elation.
“That’s good with me.”
Spiderman!Gojo finds you at your home more often than not – and you begin to think he’s not doing this as a levity for repayment.
By the fifth time that you found him lingering on the couch of your living room (much to your horror, how many could claim the friendly neighborhood spiderman was lounging in their home uninvited?) with his feet staked on the coffee table, disregarding rectitude in the existence of manners, you begin to suspect his goal isn’t repayment.
Spiderman!Gojo is a man with zero manners – he walks around as if the nature of propriety does not exist to someone of his status and capabilities. Humble is not a word present in any version of his dictionary, and diffidence is not a species of spider.
He eats the food in your pantry while lounging on your couch after a long fight, wearing and stretching his legs onto the length of your couch.
He digs for a post-it note of your Netflix password to watch some dumb shows while munching on your celery when you were at work, and leaves a scribbled note of paper which he took from tearing a piece of your calendar on the wall, saying: ‘Word of advice: lock your windows, and change your Netflix password >3< what the hell is password123? Also i ate ur wholeeee celery shelf. I dunno why celery is so good when ur trynna cry to Train to Busan. Oh, that show ur half finished with - the heroine dies at the end :P!!!’
(You want to murder him. You want to strangle Spiderman and have him buy you a supermarket worth of celery supply. You want to kill him even more at his unprompted spoiler – what kinda jerk spoils like that? After desecrating someone’s entire celery stock and trespassing into private property? You crush the paper in your hand, aggressively palming it into a ball to throw at your wall.)
Spiderman!Gojo sometimes stares at you from outside your workplace window from a higher building. It’s not stalking, he promises to his own hero conscience. He’s observing. He’s.. cataloguing. Stalking implies there is intent and desire. Which – he can’t lie, there totally is. But, this is different, he swears again in his head. He does like to see that agitated frown on your face when he shows up at the lobby of your firm, though.
A job as a journalist. Cute. Adorable, actually. His eyes tended themselves to search for your figure when the press showed up after a grueling match on the city’s skies and rooftops – it never is you, though.
Spiderman!Gojo is completely not creepy nor does he ever imply negative insinuations with his actions. He only does that to super-duper-evil villain bad guys!
.. And with the generous exception of those guys that stared at you too long in your work uniform and scribbled down their numbers onto a receipt in hopes of being the recipients of your affection, staring at you as if you were some meat to devour. He wouldn’t fault them on appreciating a view, sure, but he could very well fault them on appreciating his view.
“Hey, guys! Whatcha doing there?” Satoru dangled upside-down, his calloused fingers grip the ledge of his webs, hanging straight down, weight distributed evenly among his shoulders as he hung above the two men with their phones whipped out.
“.. Spiderman?! Oh– oh, this is my lucky day! I’m a huge fan of yours.” Normie #1 said, not bothering to close his phone. Bad idea.
Normie #2 holds a receipt with a number – your number, probably – Satoru immediately notes it in his head for later uses.
“Lucky day? Sure, you could say that,” Satoru hummed, eyes lingering on the man’s open phone. A picture of you staring back at him from the dimmed phone screen. He smiled, the mask stretching with the width of it. “Say, wanna have a chat?”
Safe to say, spiderman could indefinitely expand and entail his reputation anywhere – nobody dares to question the ‘friendly’ neighbourhood spiderman about the disappearance of two middle-aged males. Besides, he didn’t do anything entirely bad that they would completely cease their function in daily life. No one said you can’t talk with a few missing teeth.
He’s told you before – his talent is in beating the crap out of people.
Spiderman!Gojo loves science. Astrophysics. Physics. Astronomy. Space. Astronaut movies in space. You tease him for it. When you found him on your couch (for the nth time, this time, you’re less surprised at his presence in your home, almost expecting it) watching Interstellar with the widest expression on his face which stretched his mask upwards, you rushed to hand your local Spiderman the title of a nerd. He relents, but prefers to think of himself as a hunk - you disagree with a disapproving look.
"Do you even have your own apartment?" You raise an eyebrow, body expecting his presence in your home, this time. He'd make it a point to invite himself in - you stopped freaking out around the 11th time.
Spiderman leans back on the couch - his mask slightly unraveled. Not revealing his face, gosh no. Just enough to see the pink of his glossy lips, munching on a standby of popcorn, manspreading on your couch while mulling over Project Hail Mary on your television which you paid with your bills.
"Uh, obviously?" He shrugs, popping another popcorn into his mouth, before his eyes find the TV again. "Wait! Get over here! Get over here! It's the good part!"
You frown, pointing at him indignantly from the entrance of the doorway. "I haven't even watched it! Don't you dare spoil!"
Spiderman ignores your words, flicking his wrist to produce a web to attach to your waist, pulling his arm back to swing your body to his on the couch.
He grins, and you see the peeks of his white teeth prickling out from his jaw as he wraps an arm around your shoulder, pulling you to his side. "Whoops. Better close ya eyes then, it's the climax."
You punch him in the face.
Spiderman!Gojo is an insatiable man. He discovers, when he finds himself incapable of staying away from you. You’ve found it in yourself to accept that chasing Satoru away is no longer possible (not that it ever was), so you’ve made peace with his presence. Satoru, on the other hand, craves more.
“This is weird. Your suit feels so weird.” You groan, your side pressed firmly against his much broader and harder one, as he languidly draped his arms around your shoulder, head tilted back on your couch without much as a care in the world.
The movie plays in the background, noises slurring into the backdrop soundtrack as he measures the rate of your heartbeat. Each thump! makes him tap his finger against the spandex of his thigh, creating a quiet melody from the rudimentary beats of your being.
Satoru could make a tune out of it, he thinks quietly, fingers tapping in patterns.
Seeing that you are no longer threatening to bite his head off every time he gets so much as 2 meters close to you, he relishes in the touch you allow him to give. Similarly, delighting in every touch you initiate.
(The first time you allowed your shoulder to bump into his own while you two obnoxiously sang to an off-pitch curated version of Britney Spear’s ‘Toxic’ in your messy kitchen, he fell on his way out of your window because he missed his web shot. He then rolled on the ground he fell on with a grin.
Onlookers are far too scared to question their residential spiderman rolling back and forth on the grass.)
“What? D’ya want me naked, or something?” He raises his eyebrow slyly, letting his words settle as he presses himself closer to you. The scent of your shampoo fills his senses euphorically. He hums, lightly sniffing the air around you.
You push his head away from coming closer to the crook of your neck. “Ew, no. I’ve seen enough depravities in my life. Naked means your mask comes off. That’s weird.”
You are past the point in your sad young adult life of miserable housing rents and harrowing job listings where you question things – so you do not question half-cuddling Spiderman, your city’s superhero, on your couch on a fine evening with La La Land playing in the background.
"City of Stars--
You are also past the point in which you question why you’re half buried in the chest of a man whose face and identity you technically do not know.
The only thing you know is that he eats celery raw for some reason, sometimes sniffles under his mask after an ending of a sad dog movie, and spends an awful amount of time lingering in your home while pouring himself the coke that he snipped from your fridge. And you suppose his jokes are funny at times.
Are you shining just for me?
“How is that weird? I’m handsome. Awfully, actually. Are you more scared of my face than my naked body? That hurts.” He pouts in a way that a grown man can make pouting look cute – you huff in delirium as he presses himself closer to you.
“I don’t want to imagine either, thank you very much.” You scoff, eagerly swatting away whatever concoctions your conscious decides to produce.
“You don’t believe me? I’m extremely handsome.” He purses his lips together to garner pity and adoration – you only scowl at him from above. He pouts again. “I’m serious!”
“Yeah? Prove it.” You tilt your head, chin jutting up in a challenge. Spiderman stutters.
“.. Maybe another time. Ugh, just take my word for it!”
You try not to sound disappointed when he sidetracks your challenge. You raise an eyebrow. “I’m just supposed to imagine it?”
City of Stars--
“Yup.” Satoru lifts his head straight, you sigh when the pressure on your collarbone is relieved. “Okay– picture this: six foot three supermodel body–”
“I find that highly unlikely.”
“Shush. Six foot three, extremely pronounced biceps and muscles that ripples with my abs when I take off my shirt to flex at the gym–”
“Ew? Girls don't like it when men do that, you know that, right–”
“Can you wait? Spiderman’s talking, sweetheart.” He obnoxiously places a finger on your mouth to shut you up. You fight the urge to bite it. “Anyway, my hair’s messy but fluffy in the best way– no products, by the way. Just genetics. My long, luscious eyelashes flutter when I blink, and my eyes are blindingly beautiful. You’d get pulled into it, trust me. Oh, and I’m super smart and charismatic and also I read feminist literature.”
There's so much that I can't see.
“Woww, color me stoked, ever heard of the word ‘humble’? You sound like every woman’s wet dream, and I also find that highly improbable. I mean, you eat celery raw.”
He groans, dropping his head back into the crook of your neck indignantly. “Will you stop mentioning that? My gorgeous, perfect body, face and personality quite overtake that slightly unbecoming quality of mine.”
“You raked my whole cabinet! How am I supposed to not mention that in this economy?”
“It’s not my fault your groceries consist of celery and spinach.” Spiderman rolls his eyes, shifting his weight onto you again despite your huff of protest under your breath. “A man gets hungry, sweetheart. And who even likes spinach?”
“You are so annoying.” You grunt, an attempt to push his head off the crook of your neck, to which it only pathetically flops down as you maneuvered.
“Annoyingly mesmerizing and charming?” He blinks a few times, poking your hip in the meanwhile as he utters an amalgamation of pathetic expressions under his mask.
Who knows?
You raise an eyebrow - you sort of believe him, but hell if you’d ever admit that. “Right, so the opposite of that.”
He whines. Digging himself a space in your body without shame. “No mercy. Whatsoever. How cruel!”
“Aren’t you popular?” You hum, a facade of nonchalance as you watch the tv screen - scratch that, watch him out of the corner of your eye. “Ask your fans.”
I felt it from the first embrace, I shared with you.
“Boo,” Spiderman laments and deflates like a popped balloon, indignation in his tone. “They’re boring.”
“Geez, narcissistic much?” You gave him an incredulous look, before a thought popped into your head. “People keep theorizing who you are underneath that mask of yours, did you know people like editing celebrity faces onto your cameo pictures?”
“They what?”
You detach yourself from his body to grab your phone on the coffee table, promptly ignorant to his breathless whine, shuffling through the likes on your profile. He wraps his arms around your waist when you return with your back to the couch as if it’s a normal occurrence – you don’t punch him or swat him away, so he takes the welcoming initiative to firmly press his face onto your shoulder, peering eyes watching your screen.
“Look.”
He squints his eyes at the screen. “.. Is that Tom Holland’s face? He’s not even as tall as me– Andrew Garfield? Really? These are so farfetched– Tobey Maguire? Why am I white?”
You pause. “‘Cause you got a white suit.”
He grumbles into the crook of your neck. “This is why I don’t use social media.”
“No, you’re right. On second thought, Andrew Garfield is way too fine to be someone like you.”
“Excuse me?” Satoru pinches your hip with his fingers, you swat him away with a laugh that derives a grin onto his face. The mask flexes – he almost forgets it’s still there, on his face. It felt as if he was laid atop and stripped of his layers by you.
That now, our dreams--
“You’re soo mean,” He huffs sorely at you, to which you grin. “Come on, you got the real Spiderman here.”
You shut him up immediately when your hand instinctively went to the bed of white hair on his head, fingers lightly tangling through the locks with a hint of a smile which he delights at. “Yeah, suppose so.”
Spiderman starting to find it harder to remind himself there indeed is a mask atop his expressions.
Satoru tries not to remind himself that still, the mask is all you see.
"Oh, it's the divorce arc for Mia and Sebastian."
"-What?!"
They finally come true."
Spiderman!Gojo dabbles in photography. It never really was his thing - not really. He never cared about freezing a moment of joy in time, or creating moments he could come back to because, often times, there was nothing for Spiderman to come back to in the end.
Spiderman supposes he's had a change of heart. While testing out a stupid mechanic camera he'd been experimenting on to input into the model of his suit to conveniently take pictures of criminals on the run, he'd had the brilliant idea of testing the mechanics of his creation on you.
Click!
You pause in your laughter, face turning red as Spiderman, legs crossed on your couch, lowers a budget-looking camera from his face, eyes peering into the picture taken with added wonder.
Satoru hums, reveling in the result. The picture came out sort of blurry, but candid. You mid-laugh about an overdone romance niche, it feels so so personal. The way the corner of your eyes crinkle just the slightest, the way you lips part in giggles.
"–Delete that!" You shuffle, hands frantically reaching for the camera which he took from your line of grasp. "You're such a jerk! Delete that!"
Satoru laughs, holding the camera by a hand as you crawl over his body in a feeble attempt of over-powering a superhero. "No way! Oh my god you laugh like those seals–"
"I'm starting to wish you got hit by that truck last night–"
Satoru raises an eyebrow. "Oh? You watching my news now? Don't tell me.. you're worried about me! Please, you shouldn't have." He drawls out, leaning into your personal space, fingers clasping at your wrist to stop your reach.
"That's– not the point!" You grovel, frowning.
"Don't look so pouty, I won't post it or anything."
"Yeah, right. Who knows what you'll do with it?"
He printed the photograph and placed it into the pocket of his suit, that's what.
Spiderman!Gojo is unfortunately a charming man, against your better knowledge. Because whether consciously or otherwise, you’ve become entwined with whatever the hell Spiderman is doing – which is oftentimes, a lot of bullshit (fighting pigeons on the Tokyo tower? Really?).
Still, you find yourself wondering when he’d come home, when he’d come to you.
You feel like a fool, at times.
“Aren’t you an idiot.” You huff, tightening the bandage around his abdomen, causing spiderman to wince in pain as he tilts his head back on the backrest of your bed.
“Be a little nice to me, sweetheart. I am injured and terribly in pain from saving the city you reside in.” Satoru sulks, eyebrows knitted together in inexplicable pain from his wounds, though he’d vehemently deny such.
“I think not. This feels like charity work.” You mimic his words from your fateful meeting on the windowsill, he frowns.
“You’re so mean. Awful. You’re mean. Is this all you do to repay your savior?” He whines exasperatedly as you tie a knotted bow from his bandages, soothing with the lingering touches of your fingers.
“Savior is a strong word, you know,” You hum, finishing the cleanup on his mess of a body, trying not to grimace at the drying blood on your sheets. “Besides, I don’t even know this so-called savior’s face.”
He winks, shrugging off your idea. “It’s part of the charm, remaining faceless and maintaining that mysterious identity. You know the saying, ‘the chase is better than the reward’, or something?”
You think it’s his deliriousness speaking, because there certainly are no phrases as such. You play along for his sake, lest he spouts more bull. “Sounds like something a fuckboy would say.”
“Hah! Is there something you wanna tell me? You’ve imagined me as a fuckboy? How scandalous, (name). That impeaches on my purity.”
You pinch his wound, he yelps.
“It’s awkward to bandage you up when your face is the only thing covered up.” You approach the topic again, hands wavering in indecisiveness.
Satoru parries your words with ease. “Is it?” He laughs obnoxiously, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s nothing too exciting. Anyway, how about that movie we were finishing? I’ve been thinking about the ending for–”
“You’re deflecting.” You frown, opening the cupboard drawer of your nightstand, avoiding his large, white eyes, which flickers around inches of your room behind his mask. He’s staring at you. Yet, you can’t stare at him back.
“I told you it’s nothing interesting! It’s just a face.”
You slam the drawer close, letting the sound reverberate as your shimmered fury did. “It’s your face.”
Silence draws out. You finally stare back at him, yet you aren’t, at the same time. You’re staring at the mask – you’re staring at Spiderman. You’re not staring at the man who invites himself into your home, the man who integrated himself into your life, drawing your being into the webs of his making.
You’re not quite staring at the man who loudly commentates on horrible romantic comedies he dug out from Book-off, the man who makes it a point to mess up your hair when he sees you, grinning like an idiot when you hit him for it, the man who you might’ve unintentionally fallen in love with.
Oh.
Oh.
You’re still staring at the hero.
Not him.
Fuck, you don’t even know his name.
Spiderman isn’t a name – it never has been. It’s an identity. It’s his identity, but it’s not the identity of the man under the mask.
Spiderman sucks a breath, his voice silently wavering, the mask captures it, placing the imprudent vulnerability back into the qualms of his open mouth.
“.. Does that matter?” His voice goes softer. Less teasing. Less spiderman, more Satoru. The Satoru he never wanted to show you, yet his heart moves a length which he does not follow.
You furrow your eyebrows, biting down on the flesh of your lip. “Are you serious? I’m asking you, so of course it matters.”
“Aren’t you content with this?” Spiderman’s arms shoot up, gesturing to himself boisterously. His voice is sharp, unbecoming of him – you’ve always been unbecoming for him. “What more do you want? You have Spiderman.”
“Okay, have you ever considered that I don’t want Spiderman?” You scoff, straightening yourself. You clench your palms, drawing crescents into skin from the press of your nails.
Satoru stands up within record speed and pries your fingers away from the skin of your palm, the spandex suit over his fingers trail over your pulse, resting on your wrist with an intimacy rivaling that of tenderness. His eyebrows are furrowed again.
“.. Stop that.”
“No– no, no! You stop– whatever this is.” You furiously step back, yanking your hand away from him. His expression is pained – you could imagine in your head. The part that hopes you are something to him. Something personal. “I never pried because something deep down I hoped that you would tell me. I hoped that I could at least chip some of those walls down because– because you’re a good person, and fuck– I’ve barely even scratched any surface!”
“You know why I don’t tell you anything. It’s dangerous–”
“Dangerous?” You could laugh. You tried – stifled laughter bubbled out, heavy in your throat. “Oh please, since when did you care?”
Spiderman straightens up with a displeased frown. “Don’t say that. I’m protecting you. I’m doing the duties of Spiderman. Revealing my identity– do you know what that does? What danger it could bring if you had that knowledge?”
You purse your eyebrows, your voice catching in hoarse shout, ignoring the rationality in his argument in pursuit of pettiness and the overwhelming stimulation of swirling emotions in your head. “I’m not asking you to– what, share your government credentials and social security number. I’m asking you to share something. Something to make it seem like I’m not just some dumb game to you!”
“You aren’t!”
“Oh, right. I’m supposed to believe the guy who I don't even know the name of thinks I’m someone special?” You sneer, Spiderman takes a wavering step towards you – you step back, he steps forward again.
“I know I seem like I’m full of bullshit–”
You scorn under your breath. “Because you are.”
Satoru steps closer to you regardless, his feet bringing him across the mattress of your room as you back up to the wall, him stepping in front of you tentatively even as you glared him down, eyes sparked in anger. Deserved anger towards him. He frowns.
“Right, no, you’re right. I am full of bullshit,” Satoru said slowly, as if he was finding the words as he spoke, his arms finding no place but besides his body, his eyes helplessly stare at the floor. At his feet. At anywhere but your eyes which see nothing more than a mask – your eyes which so heedingly wanting to take his mask off.
Wanting to see him.
He fears that he would allow you, he realizes under the haze of his mind. He fears that he would not stop you had you asked to tear every little layer of his skin until your hands wring him down to his core. He fears what he’d become under the solace of your presence.
Silence stretches out between the two of you as Satoru stares blearily at the floor. As you stare at his stretch of vulnerability with invigoration.
“.. Gojo Satoru.” Satoru breathes out. The words escaping his mouth one syllable at a time, unwilling, impulsion threaded in each tone. He finds it in himself to tear his eyes away from the ground, to meet yours as they widened to his words. “My name. It’s Gojo Satoru.”
You blink, shoulders tensing up as he towered over you. Your words leave in haste as you taste his name in your mouth. “.. Gojo, then.”
Satoru laughs softly, his hand coming up to rub at his neck – was he nervous? Spiderman? (Gojo Satoru, now, you suppose. Not spiderman, you retract.) Nervous? He’s never looked this scared, you surmised. “Call me Satoru. It’s.. personal, right? We’re personal.”
You gape in shock. “What are you–”
Satoru steps closer. Crowding you against the harsh wall behind your back. You thump into it as he takes another step, jaw clenching in action. He’s staring down at you – expression unreadable, like always. Like it always has been. He’s never shown past the facade he wanted you to see, after all.
“I get it. Fuck, I get it. Don’t you think I do? I want it so badly– to show you what’s underneath,” Spiderman stutters out, words spilling in tandem as each vowel jumps over another, prancing in heedless consternation.
You blink, unsure of how to respond to this side of Spiderman.
“But what happens after that? What becomes of us? Of me? Of you? I’m not allowed to be lenient, (name). But you keep making me want to do all these – stupid, idiotic stuff. Like I’m some lovesick idiot that’s been bewitched and–” Satoru prattles, his rambles wavered in each word as he brings a hand up to his face, dragging it downwards as he faces you.
“And I don’t know what to do. You’ve ruined me. You might as well have. With your stupid thirty percent rate of butter in popcorn and dumb movie takes and vanilla scented perfume– you’ve totally irrevocably ruined me. What should I even do? What should Spiderman do? Tell me.”
Oh wow.
Oh wow.
Oh wow.
Oh wow.
If someone had told you Spiderman was going to give the most pathetic confession (was it?) a yearning desperate man could ever make in front of you 2 years ago you would’ve laughed in their face. Present you, however, is unattended in the headspace to comprehend what just transpired.
Why did Spiderman just practically say he was in love with you? Quite pathetically too, you silently note.
Why did you like that? You figured self-discoveries were being made presently, not that it was important.
“.. Why do you keep asking what Spiderman should do?”
“Huh?”
“What about what you want to do?”
“Spiderman doesn’t get that luxury, sweetheart.”
You frown. Hands lightly itching to reach upwards. “But you do, don’t you? Satoru has that luxury.”
“Satoru is Spiderman, and Spiderman takes precedence. It’s.. no offense, but it’s nothing you would get. And that’s for the best, alright?” He murmurs softly, tenderness lacing in his tone as his gaze traveled over you against the wall.
Him towering over you. Still masked, unabiding even as his nerves rupture for closure, burrowing for gaze.
Gaze to him.
Gaze to the man behind the mask.
But Spiderman can’t do that. Life-threatening stakes are familiar to him in his workplace, if he could even call it that. But with ‘great responsibilities comes great power’, right? How could he bare to expose you to that? He swallows loudly, throat closing up in apprehension.
“Just what are you so afraid of?” You bring your hands up to his face, to his mask. Slipping your thumb under the mask falling off on his neck, threatening to tear down every barrier he’s ever built in this sick occupation of his. “What are you so scared I will see?”
His hands come up instinctively to your wrist, holding it in place. Scared that you’ll do it. That you’ll take it off then– then, what?
Run away? Why would you run away?
His head runs in a space he cannot follow, as it always had been.
He suspects, sometimes, that it was the spider running instead of him. He’s merely catching up to the bug that idly sucked on his possession.
“That’s– that’s not it. Don’t you see? I’ve always shown you what’s underneath. Everything. Everything, but this.”
“That’s not fair, Satoru.” His name glides off your tongue with euphonious resonance. You’ve one more barrier to rid of, and greed claws like a parasite leeching. “I want everything. Especially this.”
“This is the one thing I’m not supposed to give you. Ever. I can’t – what do you think I’ve seen, huh?” His voice breaks off shakily, his hold on your wrist tightens as you keep your finger hooked underneath his mask. “Innocent people are used as leverage. Innocent people are used to draw me out. What do you think they’d do with someone I actually care about?"
“You can’t continue to keep someone out and expect them to stay.” You lift his mask up lightly. The slip of his neck is exposed, Satoru’s breath hitches at your contact against his skin. His real skin. Real. This is real, he appalled himself in the shiver of your hold.
“– That’s all I've ever known how to do.”
“Okay,” You hum. Calmer. You lift another inch up again. “Learn. Even spiderman could learn.”
“Pfft. Thought we were past that now. I’m Satoru to you, forget about Spiderman. That guy’s last week’s news.” The corner of his lip quirks up despite himself, his fingers on your wrist softening to a loose hold.
“Oh?” You laugh. “The stains of Spiderman’s blood on my bedsheet are very much not from last week. Something tells me this Spiderman guy will have to do my laundry.”
Another thumb juts another inch upwards. He doesn’t resist – not anymore. Not against this, against everything he’s ever wanted – normalcy – you. You take it as an initiative to drag the spandex of his mask further elevated.
“No need. Satoru here can do aaalll your laundry.”
You’re angry. No, that’s not right. You were angry.
Because he’s reckless, stupid, and he’s been keeping himself locked up in walls cladded with iron. Spiderman – Satoru – you reiterate inside of your head, is still all of those things, and more– yet you can’t find fury to shimmer beneath your veins, for all you find when you dig the vessels out of your skin, is a lenient tenderness.
Perhaps you’re terrified. That must be it. If not anger, you’re terrified. Your thumb juts upwards again, Satoru’s breath hitches against the air as your fingers tenderly review his lips. Pink. A little glossy, upon your surprise. Human.
Him.
“This is weird, huh?” Satoru laughs, and you see his mouth moving. You gape silently, the way his lips move, the way his mouth forms vowels. “I’m gonna start to think you want to kiss me if ‘ya keep staring at my lips like that, sweetheart.”
“Is this okay?” You mutter. Your fingers moving further and further up the top of his head. His fingers finally detach from your wrist, a leniency following his actions, a peace of acquiescence in his mind.
“Yeah,” Satoru’s hands wander around the air, before settling on your waist tentatively. He nods, the mask bunching up. “More than okay.”
“Just to preface,” You purse your lips in wait. Biting down on your bottom lip, before meeting him in the eye – your thumb touching his jaw, the most skin-to-skin you two have ever been. “Regardless of what you look like, I– I'll still–” Love you.
“I’ll still let you eat my celery.” Great improvisation.
But Satoru’s mouth quirks into a boy-ish grin, a toothy smile grazing his lips. “Are you implying there was a chance that if I was ugly, I can’t eat your celery anymore?”
“Okay, I get it! Celery’s an old joke–”
Without giving you much as a moment to react, one of Satoru’s hands detached from your waist – the other bunched up around your shirt – to swiftly tuck his thumb underneath the front of his mask, pulling it swiftly off.
The first thing you noticed was– wow. His eyes are blue. They’re bright – a hint of mischief swirling as the corner of his lips tugged up, eyes curling in satisfaction. His white eyelashes are framed against his eyelid as he drunk the site of you up. As if his eyes didn’t know where to flee, now that they were out in the open. Now that they bore you in their orbiting site.
His white hair caught on the light in your room – ruffled up, strands of hair stuck clinging to his forehead when his mask came off, sticking to a million little places. Ivory under light, snow under flash. For a moment, all you could do in your sensible brain was gape.
“Speechless already? I told you I was handsome, didn’t I?” A grin fixated on his lips, you don’t miss the way his eyes soften almost imperceptibly at the notice of your eyes running over the girdles of his face.
He was. You didn’t think you’d ever admit that – not even in your head. Those Reddit threads hypothesizing on Spiderman’s identity were right. He’s handsome. Intricately so. Your cheeks flush lightly a darker hue.
“.. You’re such a dork.” You finally huff, hands designedly cupping his cheeks, jaw flexing on your palms. He leans into your touch, a smug roll of shoulders escaping him.
“Yeah,” Satoru smiles crescively, his hand dropping the mask on the ground, not caring as he lowered himself to your body against the wall, his hand finding purchase on the curve of your waist once more.
“I guess I am.” He beams, igniting an aura of inconspicuous satisfaction. “I’m your idiot though, right?”
“Yeah, that’s–” You hum, fingers drawing fingers around his jaw. “That’s debatable.”
Satoru laughs, head leaning into your touch as you hold them closer to you. Your face is a mere breath away from touching, bright blue fixated on you, pulling you into its gravitational orbit – you don’t seem to mind, anymore. You hold him closer. Paralleling his orbit with your own.
“.. You’ll stay, right?” Satoru breathes. His voice low.
You looked at him. Without the mask. Without the pretense. The surficial identity. You laugh as if you never considered the possibility of doing otherwise. “Did taking away your mask remove your brain too?”
“Of course I’ll stay.”
He didn’t even have to ask.
You were sucked into the tinsel of his webs since the day you found him bleeding. Since the day he made a point to (against your own understanding, and his own, too) make a home out of your house. You’ve been caught, tangled and wrapped around the silk of his webs since he set his eyes on you–
And you’ve never thought to pry it off.
“Good,” Satoru purrs, his hand digging further into your waist. “That’s good.”
Spiderman!Gojo is an idiot who usually fumbles – but you suppose now, he’s your idiot.
BONUS:
“Take your mask off.”
Satoru rocked back and forth on your bed, his knees drawn together in a criss-cross-apple-sauce seating. “Whaaatttttt?”
“Satoru.”
“Ya want a kiss? Just ask, sweetheart.” Satoru grins, hooking a thumb underneath his mask, pulling up just enough to only reveal his lips, puckering them obnoxiously for you. “Here, mwwwwuaahhh—”
You ignore his obnoxious smacking of lips, and pull the rest of his mask off. Lo and behold – your residential (long-term) neighborhood superhero and (newly appointed) boyfriend with a black eye smearing his face. At the revelation, Satoru shrugs, pleading innocence as he sticks his tongue out.
You exhale. “I knew it! What did you do this time?”
Satoru had the nerve to stick a finger to his chin, pondering your question. “Mm.. my job?”
“That’s not what I–”
“Whateves, whateves. C’mere!” Satoru promptly ignored your worried glance over his injury, drawing his arm around your waist, easily shuffling you atop him, straddling his lap as his other arm braced his figure on the bed. “‘S nothing. You should see the other guy.”
You pinch his arm at the attempt of levity. “Stay here. Let me grab the first aid kit–”
“Noooo, come on. ‘M missing my vitamin k.”
You frown, endeavoring to get up, yet even with one arm, Satoru holds you down to him effortlessly. “Vitamin k? That does not exist.”
His blue eyes flash with a mischievous glint at your skepticism, drawing his face closer to yours. He relishes in the way your breath hitches as his mouth comes a near breath from yours. He brushes a stray strand of hair away from your face, reverence in his touch. “Sure it does.”
“Now you’re just making things up–” You start, but your sentence is yet to be finished before his mouth feathers over the brush of your soft lips, connecting the two of you by a soft, yet equally electrifying in-measure act.
You groan against the plush of his lips, his mouth readily swallowing it up as he deepens the kiss, fingers pressing onto your sides as his arms move to hold you in place, situated over his lap. You try to move away – maintain what little dignity which you have – his head follows suit, lips still pressed firmly against yours as your hands move to his shoulder despite your mind’s slower protests.
Satoru kisses like a man needing water. You think, your breath losing as you attempt to pull away once more, yet his lips refuse to detach, his arms swirling you closer in contact. Yet, you begin to waver, losing the mind to move away, you kiss him back just as feverishly, needing the contact in the marrow of your bones.
You forcibly detach your lips from his when air begins to run out of your lungs, his face a dexterously red hue as he stares at you, eyes half-lidded.
“Told you,” A grin forms onto his face as you pant, swollen lips heaving hot air, a string of saliva connecting your lips together. Satoru’s eyes glints with satisfaction. “Vitamin k. Kisses. I need those. Like, I would've died, you don't understand the severity.”
“You,” Breaths heaving out of your lungs, you send a half-hearted scowl at his smug expression. “Are so insufferable.”
Your hands situate themselves onto his shoulder, bracing your body over his in a manner which he very much appreciates, as the view of your body is one he is not attended to be shy with. “You like it.”
Satoru leans closer again, his lips a breath away, feathering the ghost of your own, swollen lips. You sigh in exasperation, a hand moving up to cup his cheek.
“Debatable.” You hum, feeling the vibrations between your mouths, before pressing down against the creeping of his lips. Hands moving into the cradlings of his hair, tugging on his white locks, to which his hold on your waist tightened.
Spiderman!Gojo finds pleasure in your displeasure – but you can’t say wholeheartedly that you mind, anymore.
- woah JJK listen i havent been in this fandom since the ripe of 2020 & it's weird being back because so many of the fans are illiterate whoops did i say that
- office au gojo fic next oouhh
- sorry for the dumbass jokes idk how to flirt it was lowk unfunny but a girl can try
- this is the opposite to the normal spiderman x reader tropes - which in this version, reader knows spiderman before they know the man beneath the mask, as opposed to finding out the guy you've known is spiderman. Idk i wanted to see where that could lead & what it means for a relationship built up of spiderman
- UGHHH THEY'RE ROUGHLY based off of Peter Parker & Gwen Stacy from the Amazing Spiderman & SORT OF Peter Parker & MJ from Spiderman: Homecoming but this time they're both adults and i wanted to go a lil different route for spiderman
- this is lowk buns but we ball bcs exams r coming up & im DEAD
- next oneshot reader fucking dies (JK!! i wouldn't do that! I don't like angst at all! wink. turns head slowly, hair swaying in the wind.)
- The narrative changing from 'Satoru said' and 'Spiderman said' interchangeably is on purpose - the words that are more vulnerable, Satoru said it. The words that are casual or 'demeaning', Spiderman said it.
- omg i love writing spiderjo FUCK I LOVE SPIDERMAN MY GOAT
- Taking off the mask as an allegory for letting people in, letting people close, and opening yourself = taking your mask off
- Kinda based off of the song City of Stars from La la land but i'm ngl i didn't know what to title it so I just grabbed city of stars from my playlist
- Ryan gosling is the goat & Andrew Garfield is the hottest spiderman i rest my case
❝ is this a start of something wonderful or new? Or one more dream, that I cannot make true? ❞
SYNOPSIS ── The blue spring of their youths—and everything after it ends. Your story told from the perspective of your closest friend since childhood, Shoko Ieiri.
PAIRING. ── gojo satoru x reader
TAGS. canon jjk timeline, (or at least as accurate as possible) coming of age, sorcerer!reader, angst, fluff, slice of life, mutual pining, friends to lovers, nostalgia, hidden inventory timeline, the tokyo five plus you, emotional vulnerability, dreams and nightmares, missing scenes, domestic fluff, megumi and tsumiki / dad!gojo dynamic, we love and adore shoko ieiri on this blog
WARNINGS. ! manga spoilers ! depictions of grief & loss, canon typical violence (described but not in detail), use of cigarettes and smoking, character deaths
WORD COUNT. 13.2k
mae's note. my debut work !! thank u for all the support on 'of love & lesson plans', the first chapter will be out by tomorrow hehee but i wanted to share a project i've been working on for over a year now <3 i also PINKY PROMISE my other fics won't be this sad jsjdjskd but i love u all and i'm so sorry in advanced ... but likes and reposts are much loved mwah mwah mwah
inspired by ♪ from the subway train, vansire 𖤣.𖥧.𖡼.⚘ ── ao3 version. playlist. header art twt/@5booosa. dividers by @cafekitsune
The air in December tastes like endings, bitter like smoke and cold enough to hurt.
Shoko stands alone beneath the harsh fluorescent glow of a streetlamp, cigarette trembling faintly between gloved fingers, the embers burning quietly, steadily, a small star of comfort in between her fingertips. Snow falls in careless spirals, catching in her hair, dusting her eyelashes, melting against her skin.
She watches her breath leave her body, a faint cloud in the chill, and thinks about how strange it is—how terribly quiet the world becomes when there’s nothing left but memory.
She swears it wasn’t always this cold.
i. november, 1989
You were both born in early November, five days apart.
Shoko first—small, silent, blue around the lips. Her mother would later tell her she hadn’t cried, not even once. She just blinked up at the ceiling, like she’d already seen too much of the world. You had come days after—red-faced and furious, shrieking like you’d already been wronged.
Balance, their clanhead called it. One to make, one to unmake.
They grew up in a quiet prefecture, tucked between the mountains, where fog collected on windows in the morning and everything smelled like pine and old rain. Their family was not a traditional jujutsu clan—not in the way the Zenins or the Gojos were—but they still had blood that remembered power, blood that ran strangely cold.
Shoko discovered her technique early—reversed cursed energy, delicate and warm, the ability to stitch together what others could only destroy. It made her quiet, made her thoughtful, made her feel too responsible for things she didn’t understand. You, on the other hand, were all forward motion and fury, manifesting offensive cursed techniques with raw instinct and terrifying precision.
You burned. Shoko cooled. A soldier and a healer.
It wasn't rivalry. It wasn't even contrast, really. It was rhythm—two halves of a heart, orbiting each other, moving through childhood in tandem. You protected her from bullies, from curses, from the dark under the bed. Shoko bandaged your scraped knees, held your hair back with her small hands when you threw up after manifesting your cursed technique for the first time, whispered questions into your shoulder late at night about whether they’d ever be normal.
Neither of you wanted normal. Not really.
So when your mothers had suggested both of you for Jujutsu Tech—you didn’t hesitate. It is the slight chill that Spring of 2005 that Shoko remembers most. Fifteen years old, uniforms they’d taken customized to their liking just a month before—Shoko, with her wide turtleneck and midi skirt. You, in a well-tailored blazer, and much to your mother’s disapproval—a short skirt.
Even after the arguments and bickering, their mothers had cried. Their fathers had barely nodded at them. The train took them away to Tokyo with petals sticking to the window, and their only belongings in duffle bags at their feet. Shoko’s hands were cold where they held yours softly.
She was afraid. You weren’t.
You had always loved the idea of being chosen, and Shoko just didn’t want to be left behind.
And maybe that’s how it all began—not with power, or fate, or bloodlines.
Two girls stepping onto a train together, one chasing strength, the other running away from a world she’d one day have to hold together with her hands.
ii. april, 2005
Jujutsu Tech was nothing like Shoko expected.
She thought it would be colder, older, more like the hospitals she’d passed on the train—tall and sterile and gray. But it was… soft. Vines curling around wooden buildings, laundry strung between windows, the hum of cicadas already testing their voices in the trees. It smelled like dirt and chalk and something faintly sweet, like sakura or summer air caught in the stairwells.
She didn’t talk much those first couple of days. Neither did Suguru Geto.
They met on their first day of class, standing awkwardly apart. Shoko was pressed against the wall, you beside her like a shield, when she noticed him—black hair long just at his shoulder, eyes unreadable, hands folded neatly behind his back like he was waiting for something more important than small talk. He caught her looking, and they didn’t smile, but something passed between them anyway. A kind of shared silence.
Then came Gojo.
She had heard of him before, of course. The honored one, the destined boy of the Gojo Clan. He arrived like a storm—messy white hair, too-tall frame stuffed into the uniform like it didn’t quite belong to him. He talked too much, laughed too loud, tripped over his own shoes, and still managed to radiate something untouchable. He was awkward, undeniably gifted, and absolutely convinced he had nothing to learn from anyone.
Shoko didn’t really like him.
You despised him worse, found him amusing. You would say he was infuriating, sure—but interesting.
“He thinks he’s better than everyone,” you whispered one night, grimacing into your pillow. “But his ears turn red every time I catch him staring.”
Shoko rolled her eyes, gave you a half smile. “He’s insufferable.”
“You're just mad that he said you would look better if you grew out your hair.” you teased.
“That's not true. I like my hair.”
“I like it too.”
“Then why does it matter to me what he thinks?”
But slowly—so slowly it almost escaped her notice—he changed. He started making jokes with them. And regrettably, Shoko would sometimes laugh at something he said. He started sitting with them at lunch. Picked up Suguru’s habit of folding napkins into strange little birds. Borrowed Shoko’s pens and returned them. Awkwardly, with both hands and a muttered thanks.
He began learning them. Their rhythms. Their silences.
It was the end of summer when it started to feel like something real.
Missions were few and far between in those first months. They trained hard, sweat and bruises under the cherry blossoms, sparring on grass that still held morning dew. Shoko hated sparring. She wasn’t built for it—not the way you were, with your reckless cursed technique and even more reckless joy.
But she tried. Because she had to. Because she wouldn’t let herself be the weak link.
And Gojo—he always held back when they fought. Even then, before he understood how to be gentle, he understood that she needed to win sometimes. Needed to prove that she could. He let her land hits, not because she needed help, but because he saw the way she looked at herself compared to the rest of them. She knew that Gojo—the freak of nature he was with those blazing blue eyes—saw her beneath her dry sarcasm and grins and tired eyes.
Suguru, on the other hand, never let her win. But he gave her pointers after. Explained why she slipped, what her stance betrayed. His feedback was quiet, clinical, never cruel. Always gave her a nod and a smile. Shoko trusted him for it.
Those were their blue springs—their youth washed in cloudless skies and laughter and rain-soaked uniforms drying on sun-warmed rocks. Those were the days of early friendships, of discovering who they were becoming.
They took the train into Tokyo for missions, packed into cars half-asleep, heads knocking against windows. You would always take the window seat, with your far too expensive mp3 player and ratty wired earbuds. You’d hum under your breath, fingers tapping a beat on your thigh. Gojo sprawled across two seats, his head inevitably ending up in someone’s lap. Suguru read novels and pretended not to notice you and Gojo’s helpless bickering.
❀
The first storm of the summer comes sudden, like most things that mattered back then. Sheets of water turning the courtyard into a lake, petals plastered to the stones.
Gojo didn’t run for cover. Of course he didn't. He stood in the middle of it all like some idiot, arms outstretched, hair plastered white against his forehead, laughing so loud it made the rain sound shy.
“You'll catch a cold,” Suguru called from the walkway, voice dry as the towel slung around his shoulders.
“Colds are a myth,” Gojo shot back, spinning in a circle, water flying from his sleeves. It wasn't rare back then for Gojo to turn off his infinity, especially for rain storms he used to practically bathe in.
Shoko watched from the step, dry under an awning with a cigarette between her fingers. Smoking was a new habit she’d picked up, in spite of the protests from her friends, in spite of the distaste and the mini interventions and scoldings you’d given her. All these years later, she can’t really remember where it started from.
You had taken the cigarette from her fingers that day and threw it in the rain, leaving her a little frustrated. Then she watched as you tried not to smile, and bolted straight into the storm after Gojo, shoes kicking up water like wings.
The both of you were soaked in seconds—shrieking, colliding, uniforms clinging like second skin. Grinning too bright for the gray sky above them.
❀
They went on their first mission as a full team in late October.
A cursed spirit in a temple in the countryside—nothing particularly dangerous, but big enough to warrant the four of them. The four of you, as it turned out, had garnered somewhat of a reputation in the Jujutsu world by this point, even though it had only been a couple months into your first year. There was Gojo, being who he was, and then there were you and Geto, two special-grade hopefuls, and then Shoko, with her reverse cursed technique. It was hard not to hear the excitement, the chatter from your seniors and teachers and higher-ups and worse, the curses, as they marveled at what potential the four of you possessed.
On their first mission together they took the train, bundled in thin jackets, feet tangled under the seats. You sat next to Gojo this time, your knees knocking occasionally as the train curved through the mountains. You two didn’t talk much, just passed a packet of rice crackers back and forth, you opening them with your teeth and Gojo laughing, soft, like he couldn’t help it.
Suguru fell asleep with his head against the window. Shoko watched the landscape blur, temples and fields dissolving into dusk.
She remembers that October day clearly — because the first time they saw a body together was on a bridge, the river swollen black beneath it, the cold gnawing at their ankles. The mission shouldn’t have had civilian casualties. It wasn’t supposed to be anything. Yet their world didn’t care about supposed to.
Shoko stood back as Suguru exorcised the curse, her hands clenching, heart banging against her ribs like it wanted out. When it was over, the corpse of the victim lay sprawled against the guardrail, mouth full of frozen air. A little girl—her hair so matted in blood Shoko couldn’t tell what color it was anymore.
Gojo tried to crack a joke, to distill the buzzing in the air—something stupid about ghosts haunting bridges—but no one laughed, not even him. You touched Shoko's arm, light as breath, and for the first time Shoko wondered if maybe they weren’t weapons at all. Maybe they were just kids with blood under their nails and no way out.
It's that night she remembers all these years later, coming home from the mission. They stayed up talking until sunrise. They lay on futons in someone’s dorm room, the windows open, moths circling the lights.
“Do you ever think,” you had asked, staring at the ceiling. “That we’re not meant to survive this?”
There's a quiet that fills the room, uncomfortable, like understanding the inevitable.
“Don't say that depressing shit,” Gojo said sharply, but his voice still held a hint of something that could’ve been mistaken for vulnerability.
“I'm serious. We're weapons. Tools. They'll use us until we break.”
“Then we don’t break,” Suguru said quietly.
“Or we break together.” Shoko said, so softly no one answered.
That first year, they were just kids. Cursed kids, sure. But kids.
And even though Shoko knew better—even though she could already see the shape of blood and bodies and burials in the future—she let herself believe in nights like those. The four of them sprawled on the floor, laughing at someone’s expense, playing cards and cheap candy wrappers littered on the floor.
In the way Gojo looked at you when he thought no one else saw.
In the way Suguru never raised his voice, but always listened.
In the way you gave your heart like the world hadn’t hurt you yet.
In the way they all leaned on each other like scaffolding, like maybe if they held tight enough, they wouldn’t fall.
iii. june, 2006
Summer in Tokyo hit different when you were sixteen and almost certain you’d die before twenty.
They weren’t supposed to go out—they had curfews, missions stacked like bones at the start of their second year—curses growing restless, schools asking for protection, strange whispers threading through reports about ancient prisons and shifting power balances. Still, they trained. Still, they laughed. Still, they stole naps on rooftops and dared each other to eat expired convenience store pudding.
Still, they were kids.
Gojo whined until Suguru sighed and gave in, and you had tugged Shoko by the wrist before she could protest.
The festival was a crush of lantern light and smoke, sweet batter curling through the air, fireworks cracking open the dark. You darted ahead, yukata swaying, hair pinned up with something glittering like starlight. Gojo stuck by your side, wolfing down skewers two at a time, Suguru following at a distance with his hands tucked in his sleeves, gaze flicking toward the crowd like a man always counting exits, but still roaring in laughter as Gojo almost chokes on his third kebab.
“Try this,” Gojo said, shoving a stick of candied fruit under Shoko's nose.
“I don’t want your leftovers,” she muttered, unimpressed. But after a bit of nagging she took it anyway, quietly unwrapping it and biting through the sugar shell and pretending it wasn’t good—just to spite him.
Fireworks bloomed overhead—white, then red, then a scatter of gold that turned every face strange and beautiful. For a moment, Shoko saw them like strangers: Suguru haloed in crimson, Gojo’s grin carved bright in the dark, and you tilting your head back to watch the sky like it would never fall.
The boom of the next firework swallowed her thoughts, and she let it.
❀
Shoko always thought the end would come like a firework—loud, blinding, impossible to ignore.
But it hadn’t. It came instead like fog. Slow, creeping, impossible to trace where it started.
By the time they noticed it was already over, the fog of it had already filled the room.
She thinks she can trace every lamentable moment of her life back to that August of 2006.
Gojo, Geto, you and the star plasma vessel mission she hadn’t been a part of. When she thinks back on it, she can’t exactly understand what happened in that week to have changed the course of their entire lives. Was it before Gojo died in a bloody mess? Was it after he came back, blood-stained, eyes dark, buzzing with an energy that she acknowledged—with bated breath—had finally crossed to godhood?
Gojo was stronger. Far stronger. Six eyes sharp as knives, his cursed technique threading into infinity like it had always been waiting for him to catch up. The elders watched him now—not as a student, but as a threat. You noticed it too. Started staying closer to him, stepping between him and the higher-ups during briefings.
“They're grooming him,” you told Shoko once. “Not for leadership. For war.”
Shoko looked at you—at the calluses on your hands, the scar on your jaw you hadn’t let Shoko heal.
“They're grooming all of us.”
You didn’t deny it anymore.
❀
There are softer things that year, where Shoko can’t remember the exact moment things changed.
Only that something had slowed, gone hazy. Like the last layer of frost on a windowpane, melting so gently it almost went unnoticed.
It felt like fall had come early. The leaves on the tech’s old trees went gold and red like they’d been waiting to burn. There were still wounds to be tended to, and there were still things they couldn’t talk about from the end of that summer.
But Gojo had grown taller over the summer, like his body had finally remembered he came from giants. His hair had grown shaggier, uniform didn’t fit right anymore, and he refused to ask for a new one. Shoko watched him adjust his cuffs every morning like it was some kind of ritual, then pretend not to notice when you offered him your spare hair tie for his sleeves. He took it without meeting your eyes, and wore it like armor.
Shoko noticed the shift in the air. Maybe it was the way that you had started lingering after training, towel around your neck, laughter caught in your throat like a secret. Or the way Gojo stood straighter when you walked into a room, blinking too slow, like he hadn’t meant to look. Maybe it was how the two of you had stopped fighting in that way you used to—loud, fast, like lightning cracking open the sky—and started teasing instead. Light, easy, ridiculous. Like you didn’t know how else to be near each other.
Shoko noticed it in the quiet, in the pauses between conversations, and in the way you touched your own wrist absentmindedly whenever Gojo spoke, like grounding yourself. She noticed how Gojo—always so proud of his attention span—started forgetting what he was saying mid-sentence if you laughed too loud.
“You're obvious,” Shoko told you one evening, as you stood in front of her dorm mirror brushing your teeth. It was practically your dorm now, too.
You spat into the sink. “He’s worse.”
“You're both insufferable.”
“He’s insufferable. I'm charming.”
“He told Nanami you punched him in the throat during training.”
“I did, so what? He totally deserved it.”
“I just can’t believe he let you in the first place.” Shoko shook her head, and thought of the infinity around Gojo, the invisible barrier between him and humanity. The thing that put him closer to godliness. A smile curling at her lips despite herself, understanding the implications of Gojo turning it off around you. “And yet you still gave him your last Milkis at lunch.”
“It was strawberry-flavored.” a shrug. “I don't like strawberry.”
Shoko didn’t say anything else. Didn’t point out the way you lingered when Gojo wasn’t around, or how your voice got quieter when you talked about him. Didn’t say that she’d seen Gojo staring out windows when he thought no one was watching, fingers tapping the rhythm of your laugh on his thigh.
There was something sacred about their closeness. Something fragile and half-formed, still soft at the edges. Shoko didn’t want to break it by naming it too soon.
She just watched. Just remembered.
Suguru was the only one who never commented.
He saw it too—of course he did—but he never overtly teased, only gave a knowing smile quietly to Gojo who would glare back, but never really poked at the obvious tension between the two. Maybe because he understood it, or maybe because he was the kind of person who noticed things and let them be.
He grew quieter that fall, but not in a way that worried her yet. It was more like he was watching, gathering. She felt like something was shifting behind his eyes, too slow and too early to name yet. He still joked with Gojo, still helped Haibara with his footwork, still spent long evenings reading next to Shoko in the common room without saying a word.
But he didn’t smile as easily. And sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, he would close his eyes like the world was too loud.
Shoko didn’t ask. She didn’t know how.
Maybe she should have.
❀
It's late November and the mission went fine.
They exorcised the spirit, cleansed the space, burned the remains. But it was what happened after that stuck.
They stayed overnight in a small inn at the base of the mountain, just two rooms—boys in one, girls in the other. The floors were tatami, and the air smelled like cedar and sulfur from the hot springs nearby. it should’ve been peaceful.
But Shoko couldn’t sleep.
You lay on your side, back to Shoko, eyes open in the dark. She listened to the wind outside, the drip of water from a leaky faucet, the quiet hum of something that felt like change.
And then, sometime past midnight, you slipped out of bed.
Shoko didn’t move, just watched the shadow cross the room, slide the door open, and vanish into the hallway.
It wasn't long before Gojo left too.
You weren’t subtle. Maybe you didn’t want to be.
Shoko waited a full minute before getting up. Her feet were cold on the floor. She didn’t know what she expected—to interrupt them, to tease them. She heard echoes in the hallway, but couldn’t make out a word. Just the shuffling of feet, and the wind blowing against the door.
But when she found the two of you — you weren’t touching.
You were standing in the snow-dusted garden outside the inn, facing each other, breathing visible in the cold. Your arms were folded tight across your chest. Gojo's hands were shoved deep into his coat pockets.
You weren’t saying anything, but she felt this air around you two. In your distance, in the heavy breathing and puffs of smoke between your lips, like you had run out of words to say.
Now, you were just looking.
And maybe that was worse. More intimate, somehow.
Shoko didn’t move. She stayed hidden by the shadows, her breath caught somewhere in her throat.
Then you reached forward.
Your hands touching Gojo’s cheek, just barely.
He flinched.
Not away. Not exactly. Just — startled. Like he hadn’t expected you to be real.
Shoko could see it then—how scared he was. Not of you, but of what it meant to want something in a world like theirs.
“You don’t have to say anything,” you said quietly.
Gojo looked at you. “I should.”
“You never say anything you don’t mean.”
“I don’t know how to mean this.”
A pause. Your breath hitched.
“Just don’t look away.”
He didn’t.
And she watched as you leaned in, closing your eyes for your first kiss. How his lashes had brushed against your cheek as he let you pull him in, his hand finding its way to gently hold your waist.
Shoko had left after that — witnessing a moment so intimate she felt shivers just watching it, intruding in it. Or maybe it was the cold that got her. But, she waited to sleep until you went back inside. Waited until you crawled into bed beside her again, colder than before, but smiling softly into the dark.
Neither of you said a word.
Shoko stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about how everything had already started to change.
❀
The next few weeks felt warmer, somehow. Like something had opened in their group that wasn’t there before. Not just between Gojo and you—but all of them.
They trained harder. Laughed more. She wanted to believe they were healing the cracks from that August, that the feeling of finality sinking into her wasn’t real.
Even Suguru seemed lighter again. He stopped frowning at the radio when the news came on. Started humming again while he read. He taught Haibara about a complicated binding technique in the training yard one afternoon and let out a laugh when their junior tried it himself. There was a moment—a brief, impossible moment—where Shoko almost believed in forever.
They sat on the school rooftop one evening, all four of them, sky streaked violet and pink and gold. Someone had brought a speaker, and someone else had brought a bottles of various soda. Music played low. She noticed that you had rested your head on Gojo's shoulder, and he didn’t move, just leaned into it like gravity.
Suguru was telling a story about a curse he saw shaped like a crab. Shoko laughed. The wind was cool and sweet. The world didn’t feel like it was ending yet.
“You ever think we’ll get out of this?” Suguru asked, voice low, cigarette between his lip.
“Out of what?” you asked.
“This. Jujutsu. Destruction and death and chaos—whatever it is.”
Gojo stared at the sky. “No.”
“Maybe,” Shoko took the cigarette from Geto’s lips, and took a puff. “but not whole.”
They sat in silence for a long time after that.
The sun set, and Shoko watched the light disappear behind Gojo’s glasses, behind your smile, behind the quiet curve of Suguru's mouth.
It felt like a beginning.
But all she could think about was how beautiful things always seemed, right before they broke.
iv. march, 2007
It’s cruel to her, how the missions only seemed to get worse after that.
Higher-ranked, more volatile, more death. More nights in strange towns with blood on their hands. They started seeing each other less and less. After last August, in the aftermath of Riko Amani’s death, Gojo had been assigned onto more missions alone—acknowledged for the first time in finality as the strongest. Started carrying all the mission files himself, memorizing them down to the street corners. Shoko started collecting more tools, more supplies, more sutures for the clinic at the tech, where she stayed more often than not now. She stopped wearing earrings because they got in the way of her face mask. You had learned how to kill without hesitation.
And she swore Suguru never complained about the missions he went on alone. But now he flinched when they passed playgrounds. Tensed when civilians asked for help. The curses he swallowed grew sharper, crueler. nastier, he had once told her late one night, the word leaving his tongue like he had coughed up bile.
“Don't let them suffer,” he said once, without blinking. “Fast is better.”
Shoko nodded.
She didn’t ask what he meant.
❀
The last mission they took together was in the early spring of 2007, before the start of their third year.
A cult in Hiraizumi—dark rituals, civilian disappearances, cursed users hiding behind holy symbols and incense. They traveled light, only the four of them. It felt like the early days again, for a moment—suitcases and jokes and Gojo making dumb puns as they checked into a cheap ryokan.
But the mission itself was ugly.
Children locked in closets. Blood on the temple floors. Curses formed from fear and starvation, clinging to walls like rot.
Suguru lost control halfway through.
Not of his technique. Not of his mind. But of his restraint.
He killed too quickly. Didn’t wait for surrender, and didn’t leave the last cursed user breathing long enough to answer questions.
Gojo grabbed him by the collar after.
“What the hell was that?”
“They were killing kids.”
“They were running away.”
“And they would’ve kept going.”
Gojo's hand tightened. his voice dropped. “We follow orders.”
“Do we?”
Suguru's eyes burned—hotter than Shoko had ever seen. “Whose orders, Satoru?”
Shoko watched you step between them. A hand on Gojo's chest. Your voice low. “Not here.”
Gojo dropped his hand, and Suguru had turned and walked away, scoffing.
The two of them didn’t speak again the rest of the trip.
❀
Haibara died not long after.
He had been bright—sun-bright, laughter-bright, too-young-to-fall-bright. He said “good morning” like it mattered. He addressed them all formally even when they told him to stop. He sparred with you like he was dancing, ate lunch with his mouth full, had dreams about being a sorcerer who saved people and meant it.
The mission was supposed to be simple.
Shoko remembers the call. A cursed womb, grade 3, nothing extraordinary. She remembers you saying, “they’re strong. Nanami'll be with him. they’ll be fine.”
They weren’t.
What came back wasn’t a body, not really. It was a mess of limbs and red and something too silent to be the Haibara she had known.
Nanami carried him. Wouldn’t let go, even as his uniform soaked a darker shade from the blood.
Shoko stitched Haibara's body together with shaking hands—not to save him. Just so his mother could recognize his face.
You threw up in the courtyard after the funeral. Gojo didn’t speak. Suguru didn’t cry.
Grief had finally split the group like glass under pressure—fracture lines running between them, invisible until the light hit just right.
Gojo got louder. More obnoxious, more ridiculous. He made jokes during meetings, fell asleep in class, tripped over his own feet just to make you laugh.
And you did laugh. Loud and real and reckless. But there was something sharp underneath it. A glint in your voice. A kind of defiance.
Suguru got even quieter.
Not the peaceful kind of quiet, the kind that meant calm or ease.
This was the kind that clung to him. That narrowed his eyes when he passed civilians on the street. That curled his lip when they reported to elders who hadn’t lifted a hand in battle in years. That made him look at Haibara’s photo like it was a question that would never be answered.
Shoko felt it most at night.
Suguru used to accidentally fall asleep reading in the common room, head tilted back, glasses slipping. Now, he sat up long after everyone else had gone to bed, staring at nothing, fingers curled like he was still gripping a weapon.
She said something once. Tried to, at least.
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly, as they stood in the hall one night. She can’t recall why, or where, but she remembers this moment because there has never been a part of her that hadn’t wished she had pushed back harder.
Suguru looked at her.
His smile was soft, fake. “Yeah.”
By then she knew he was gone.
❀
A couple weeks later, in the midst of an August heatwave — Suguru Geto disappears.
He left a note on the dorm kitchen table and a photo of the four of them.
Just one sentence: I can't do this anymore.
The rest was silence.
Shoko found it first. She read it twice, then sat down at the table and stared at the handwriting until you walked in and asked where everyone was.
Gojo didn’t say anything after meeting with Yaga. Didn’t come out of his room for the rest of the morning.
Though it’s the last time she sees Suguru, she understands this is it.
She had heard, just a little after reading his final note, what he’d done. A town massacred, burned to the ground and cursed residuals that couldn’t have been anyone’s but the man next to her — his own mother and father killed by their only son’s hands.
Yet here he was, lighting her cigarette for her and laughing. At least she could pretend for a moment that this didn’t have to be over.
She gives Gojo a call and waits with Suguru for his best friend to arrive and she wonders if Gojo could change the outcome of this. If Gojo Satoru could save Suguru Geto from himself. But another glance up at him, long hair disheveled, the purpled skin under his eyes deeper than she’s ever seen, and the emptiness behind his smile, that she realizes she doesn’t know the man next to her. Not anymore. Maybe not at all.
So he waves goodbye, and she nods and lets the smoke cloud her lungs.
And she never spoke to him again.
❀
That winter, the sky felt heavier. The air full of ghosts.
You stopped wearing bright colors. Started sleeping in your uniform, like you expected to be called into battle at any second. Gojo trained until his hands bled, and didn’t let Shoko bandage them.
“What if he’s right?” he asked her once. His voice barely audible. “What if we’re just killing things to delay the inevitable?”
Shoko didn’t answer, because she didn’t know. (Because something in her still wanted to believe.)
But by the end of that year she had found herself alone more often.
In the morgue. On the roof. In the silence between patrols. She smoked less, not because she wanted to live longer. Just because it didn’t feel worth the taste anymore.
You had stopped talking about the future.
Gojo stopped calling himself the strongest.
They were eighteen then. Too young to have seen so much. Too old to unsee any of it.
v. 2008
The years felt blurry after.
Like the sky after a firework show, after the beauty of it wears and you are left with the remains. Of the sky billowed in smoke, and the ground covered in ash. Shoko remembers the firework show during the summer festival in their second year, how she had watched the lights change your faces. How when she thinks of Suguru, she remembers him back then, hair in a half bun, wearing a yukata, his profile cast under the red glow of fireworks.
Mission after mission. Report after report. Half-empty dorm rooms. Birthdays that passed unnoticed. Names that became numbers. More curses. More blood. Fewer friends.
By then she had stopped smoking entirely, not because she wanted to live. But because you had always hated the smell.
And for a long time after Suguru left, Shoko couldn’t sleep without dreaming of the morgue.
The lights were always too bright. The steel trays too cold. Her gloves slick with blood that would never dry. In the dream, you always walked in first—whole, alive, laughing. And Shoko would reach for you. Call your name. But you would just smile, step onto the autopsy table, and lie down.
“You're early,” Shoko would whisper.
“I know.” you would say.
Then the door would swing open, and Suguru would walk in next. But his face would be hollowed out, eyes dark like tunnels. He'd sit beside your body, light a cigarette, and say nothing at all.
Shoko always woke up with her hands clenched tight around the sheets, fingers aching.
❀
Gojo never talked about Suguru.
Not once.
Not even on that day all those years ago when he came back from the confrontation in Shinjuku with blood in his nails and grief in his eyes.
He got stronger. Faster. Untouchable.
The elders stopped looking at him like a student and started looking at him like their greatest tool. He didn’t flinch, just started smiling bigger, make louder jokes, wore sunglasses indoors, and flirted and teased and deflected.
Shoko could see it, thought. In the slump of his shoulders, or the way his laugh caught wrong in his throat.
He was grieving like a dam breaking. Slowly and inevitably.
But never where anyone could see.
You stayed close to him after that. Stopped being fire and became gravity. Quiet and steady. The only thing that could bring him back when he started spinning too fast. You were the one who waited outside meetings. The one who kicked open his door and pulled him out of bed on the days he refused to get up, muttering, “If you don’t move, I'll set your curtains on fire.”
He always moved. Shoko thinks that it’s less because he believed in your vague threats, and more because he just believed in you.
Shoko watched it all from the edge.
The way you stopped waiting for him to say how he felt. The way you just stood there—open, unwavering—until he stopped running.
The two of you never made it official. Not with labels. Not with grand declarations or anything, But Gojo started showing up late to meetings because he walked you home.
Shoko didn’t know if it was healing, but for a while, it was peace.
vi. april, 2009
Around this time, the Fushiguro’s arrived.
Megumi. Six years old. Too serious. Too quiet. walked around everyone like he was ready to hit, or be hit. His older sister, Tsumiki. Not older by much, just eight years old, but she was sunshine, warm and motherly beyond her years. Shoko saw that you took to her instantly, buying her hair clips and braiding her hair — showing her how to throw a punch if she ever needed to.
Gojo brought them to the school with a box of takeout and a stubborn glint in his eye. "Don't say anything weird,” he told you and shook. “He already thinks I’m an idiot.”
“He's not wrong,” you smiled, and Gojo pouted at you.
Shoko bent down to meet the boy’s eyes, unsure of what to say. “Hmm. What’s something you like?”
He shrugged, and gave her an unimpressed look. “I like dogs.”
“Me too,” she said. “They’re honest.”
That night, they all sat in the common room eating cold noodles. Gojo told a story about a cursed tanuki that stole his left shoe. Megumi didn’t laugh, but he leaned into his sister when she did. Shoko watched as he leaned by Gojo's side as the lights went out.
You and Gojo had opened your arms and made space for the two of them.
Or maybe you had filled in the spaces left behind.
❀
Gojo cooked more, and wasn't great on his first try, surprisingly. Shoko had to supervise so he didn’t poison anyone, and you would’ve eaten anything Gojo cooked, regardless.
Shoko watched as the four of them fell into something like a rhythm. Not a family. Not quite.
But something softer than she had become used to.
The kids brought color back to the halls when they came to visit. Laughter that didn’t feel borrowed. It wasn't like before—but nothing ever was.
Gojo had bought an apartment for Megumi and Tsumiki, and the two of you stopped by almost everyday that year. You and Gojo made bento boxes. You went on grocery runs. You argued over what show to watch on Saturday nights. When Shoko would come over, Tsumiki would beg to paint Shoko’s nails, and once she had given in with her nails painted badly in rainbow and glitter, and you and Gojo had made fun of her for weeks when Shoko didn’t wipe it off.
You stopped wearing your uniform outside missions. Started wearing sweaters with loose sleeves, earrings again, mismatched socks.
You started reading books and magazines and things that weren’t just mission reports. Bought a plant for their windowsill. Put post-it notes on the fridge.
Shoko found one once that said, “Satoru, if you forget to buy me dorayaki again, I swear to God.”
He forgot anyway, but he came back late that night with flowers.
Shoko watched from the couch as you opened the door, just to see you blinking down at the bouquet like it had grown a second head.
“They didn’t have dorayaki,” he said, sheepish. “But they had these.”
You didn’t speak—just grabbed the collar of his coat and stepped into the apartment hallway with him, shutting the door without looking.
Shoko looked away, and gave them the evening. She hung out with the kids, because they were cooler, and let them sleep on the couch watching movies.
It’s after they had fallen asleep, and you and Gojo were nowhere to be seen, that she sat on the balcony and watched the city lights flicker, listening to the hum of traffic into the night.
For the first time in months, she felt… full.
Not happy. Not yet healed.
But full, like maybe all her pieces had stopped rattling.
Just for now.
❀
She still worked long hours, because the clinic never slept.
New students. New injuries. New names she tried not to memorize.
She stitched and cut and stabilized and cleaned. Practiced her technique until it no longer felt like a gift but a reflex.
She stopped praying, though she had never been good at it anyway.
But every time a body came in, not yet cold, not yet gone, she held her breath.
Please, not them.
❀
They didn’t talk about the past. At least not often.
But sometimes, when you had already fallen asleep and the wind whistled through the hallways, Gojo would sit next to her on the balcony and say things in a tone older than his twenty years.
“He liked soba more than ramen. I never knew that.”
And Shoko would nod.
“He read faster than anyone,” she’d add. “even me.”
“He believed in this more than we did.”
“Yeah.”
Then silence.
Then the night.
Then the world turning, regardless.
❀
Shoko isn’t sure what time it is now, but it feels like a bit past midnight. In here, it’s just the two of you on the couch with the weight of exhaustion like a second blanket. The balcony door is half-open, and the September chill is blowing in softly. There’s a glass of wine balanced precariously on the edge of the coffee table, that she keeps forgetting to drink, and you’ve got your legs tucked underneath you, hair damp from a shower, wearing one of those shirts that’s probably his — though neither of you ever acknowledges it out loud.
Shoko tips her head against the back of the couch, eyes tracing the ceiling like it’ll tell her the future, and mutters, “I feel so old.”
You laugh, soft, incredulous. “We’re twenty-one.”
“Exactly. And yet my back feels like I’m fifty.” You give her a side glance, smiling.
“My back feels perfectly fine, granny.”
“That’s because you have two little minions who give you back massages whenever you ask. And they can’t say no because you house and feed them.”
You nudge her knee with your own, half-amused, half-affectionate. “They’d starve if it wasn’t for us.”
“They’d at least learn how to cook instant ramen properly,” she fires back, though her tone is fond. She knows it as well as you do—how Megumi sometimes falls asleep at the kitchen table with his homework still out, how Tsumiki always insists on washing the dishes even when her fingers are pruned from her bath. How the apartment has begun to feel not just like a place to sleep, but like the kind of home you were never supposed to have.
It makes her chest ache.
She glances at you again, more carefully this time. “You’re happy, right?”
You blink at her, then tilt your head like you don’t quite understand the weight of the question. “Happy?”
“You know what I mean.” Shoko shrugs, too casual. “With all this — and with him.”
There it is. Not accusatory, just curious, like she’s been holding this thought in her mouth for months, letting it turn over until it smoothed into something she could say without breaking it.
You’re quiet for a moment, your gaze lowering to the glass of wine you still haven’t touched. “It’s not simple.”
“Nothing ever is with him.” She huffs a small laugh, but she doesn’t look away from you.
“Sometimes,” you admit, your voice softer, “it feels like we’re still kids, sneaking out after curfew, daring each other to jump rooftops. And then sometimes I look at him and I feel like—” You break off, shaking your head as though it’s too fragile to name.
“Like what?”
You exhale slowly. “Like he already belongs to the world, and I’m just borrowing him for a while.”
That hits Shoko harder than she expects. She shifts on the couch, watching the way your fingers worry at the hem of your sleeve. There’s something unguarded in the way you say it, something that makes her throat tighten.
Shoko leans her head against the couch cushion, her glass dangling loosely from her fingers. “You talk like he’s a library book or something. Checked out, due back in three weeks.”
You laugh, though it’s small and tired. “Maybe that’s all love really is. Borrowing someone for as long as they’ll let you keep them.”
“Morbid.”
“Honest.” You glance at her, and your smile is crooked, fond. “You know him. He’s… a hurricane in human form. Everyone wants a piece of him, and half the time I feel like I’m just holding on, hoping he doesn’t blow past me.”
Shoko hums, noncommittal, but her eyes are sharp. “And yet you’ve been holding on for who knows how long. Most people can’t even last five minutes with him in a room.”
“Don’t remind me,” you mutter, though your lips curve. “He still leaves his socks everywhere. Still eats candy for breakfast if I don’t stop him. And he—” You pause, and the softness of your voice betrays you. “He still looks at me the same way he did when we were sixteen. Like he can’t believe I’m real.”
Shoko conceals her smile, and masks it with a sip of wine. “He’d be an idiot not to.”
“I think about it sometimes,” you admit. “If we hadn’t met so young. If we hadn’t been thrown together in that pressure cooker of a school — would it have still been him? Would he have still found me?”
Shoko stretches her legs out, her gaze slipping toward the ceiling. “I think he was always going to be yours, you know. Some things just… fix themselves in place before you even notice.”
You fall quiet, staring at the wine in your glass, watching the way the light fractures against it. When you speak again, it’s hushed. “I’m scared, Shoko. I– I think I’m scared of losing him. Of the day the world asks for more than he can give, and I have to watch him walk toward it anyway.”
Shoko doesn’t answer right away. She looks at you — really looks — the girl who grew up at her side, who always chose kindness even when it cost you. You, who Gojo has loved since he was growing into his height, awkward and half-feral with grief and brilliance. You, who still look at him like he’s worth the trouble.
Finally, she says, “You know, when we were teenagers, I used to wonder if you’d grow tired of him. If one day you’d realize it was too much.”
You blink at her, startled. “And now?”
Shoko shrugs, her expression softening. “Now I think — if anyone was ever built to love him, it was you. Stubborn, patient, stupidly brave. He’s impossible, but you’ve always made the impossible look easy.”
Your laugh catches in your throat, trembling somewhere between joy and sorrow. “Don’t make me cry, Shoko.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She lifts her glass in a lazy toast. “To you and him. To sixteen and twenty-one, and however long you can keep borrowing each other.”
You tap your glass gently against hers, the sound ringing low and warm. “To growing older.”
Shoko watches the way your face lights up at the thought, and takes a long sip from her glass. She tries for levity, though it comes out a little rough. “Well, if he breaks your heart, I get to kill him. That’s the rule.”
You laugh—really laugh this time, the kind that crinkles your eyes and warms the air between you. “You’d have to fight him first.”
“Please,” she scoffs. “He’s all bark. I’d win.”
“You’re funny, Shoko.” You smile a little sleepily, and lean your head against her shoulder, the way you used to when you were girls hiding from the elders in the back hallways of the clan compound. She doesn’t move, just lets you settle there, the weight of you a reminder that some things never change.
There’s a long stretch of silence, broken only by the city hum outside. Then, almost shyly, Shoko says, “Well, I hope he loves growing old with you as much as I loved growing up with you.”
You still against her, then let out a breath that sounds dangerously close to a sob. She doesn’t look at you, doesn’t push. That’s never been your language. Instead, she reaches for her wine, takes another sip, and adds, almost casually, “And if he doesn’t, then screw him. You’ll still have me.”
You laugh again, watery this time, and lean closer. “Always.”
❀
In the mornings, she drank coffee alone.
In the evenings, she liked to come to your apartment to the sound of laughter, and nonsense on the TV. To the smell of your cooking, which had gotten better than Gojo’s after a couple months. To Tsumiki and her hands that grabbed Shoko’s wrists and led her to the dining table. To Megumi, who Gojo tried so hard to make smile at his awful jokes.
Sometimes, she let herself believe it could last.
Sometimes, she let herself want more.
That was enough.
vii. 1997
When they were seven, you and Shoko built a grave for a bird.
They’d found it after a storm — a small thing, all bones and feathers, collapsed in the mud beneath a persimmon tree in the compound’s garden. You crouched beside it, poked it with a stick. “Is it sleeping?”
“No,” shoko said. “It's dead.”
“How do you know?”
“Its chest isn’t moving.”
“How do you know?”
Shoko didn’t answer. Just knelt down, tiny hands damp with soil, and began to dig.
They buried it beneath a square stone, lined the edges with pebbles. You picked wildflowers and bundled it with twine from the kitchen. Shoko pressed her fingers to the earth and whispered something she didn’t really understand — a wish, maybe, or a prayer.
They sat there until the wind died down, until your mother called them in, until the sky turned the color of ash.
“We should’ve saved it,” you whispered, wiping your nose with your sleeve.
Shoko didn’t say it, but she knew it then: sometimes you’re too late.
❀
january, 2014
The call comes at 2:19 in the afternoon, a higher-up’s voice, clipped and formal.
“She’s been recovered. We’re bringing you the body now.”
The world doesn’t spin, it just stills. Though Shoko sits at her desk for a long time after, the phone silent in her lap, her hands empty.
Shoko doesn’t ask whose, because there’s only one person left.
She's already standing.
Her coat’s already on.
Her tea’s gone cold. The light in the infirmary has gone muddled and slanted, painting long shadows over everything like a warning.
Her hands move automatically. Clipboard.Pen. Gloves.
The air starts to feel static.
The mission was supposed to be easy. “A clean-up.” A second sweep.She repeats, and repeats. Yet how many other times has she thought this?
You weren’t supposed to go alone, but someone backed out last minute, and you were never one to wait around.
Grade one curse. Warehouse District.
Shoko remembers the briefing because she was in the room. Because you had smiled — tilted your head, chewing gum, loose-limbed and tired. “I’ll be home quick.”
❀
Shoko gets a morbid sense of déjà vu when she sees you laid out on the table, covered with a sheet pulled too high.
But when she sees the body, it doesn’t feel like you.
Not you. Born five days apart. The soldier to her healer. Balance, the clanheads had once called them. One to make and unmake.
Not the same girl who used to share her shampoo, or talk in her sleep. Not the girl who burned bright and reckless and kissed Gojo Satoru like it was the only truth left in the world.
The word balance keeps running through her head as she stares at your face. So still.
No, it wasn’t you. This body is cold, and broken in ways Shoko doesn’t have the words for.
Her gloves are on. Her cursed energy thrums at her fingertips.
But it’s all useless.
The wounds are clean. Carved into you like declarations. Chest collapsed, Ribs fractured inward. Shoko's already cataloging the report in her head. Trachea crushed. Internal hemorrhaging. Cursed lacerations across the sternum.
Then she moves.
Like a surgeon. like a healer with something to prove, even if there’s no one left to prove it to.
She doesn’t try to bring you back. Not really. She's seen too many bodies to believe in resurrection.
She stitches muscle back together like it’ll matter. Seals split skin. Brushes blood from your scalp. A ritual, maybe. or penance. And as she runs her fingers through the ends of your hair, she thinks of being five years old when you had taught her how to braid it.
When she feels her vision blur she whispers, “don’t be stupid,” just like you used to.
Her voice doesn’t tremble until the end.
Too late, she thinks, and she sees a dead bird cupped in your small hands. Wildflowers wrapped in twine.
Too late, too late, too late.
She writes the report with mechanical precision.
Her handwriting doesn’t shake.
She signs it, and place it on top of the clipboard.
Then folds your arms across your chest, straightens your uniform collar, uses a towel to wipe a smudge from your chin, and the drawer of the morgue clicks shut with a hollow finality.
And she finally lets herself cry.
Just once.
Quietly.
Like a confession.
❀
Shoko takes the train without really knowing why she’s chosen this route over the school car. After she explained what she was doing, Ijichi had told her he could drive her with a solemn look in his eyes, always so insistent. She had declined, so now she sits by the window, forehead pressed to the cold glass, the tunnel lights strobing against her reflection until her own face starts to look like a stranger’s.
She's still in her work clothes, still smells faintly of antiseptic and smoke, and the folder in her lap feels heavier than it should. She keeps one hand pressed flat to its cover like she’s holding a wound closed.
People filter in and out of the train at each stop, their chatter muted, just faint shapes moving through her periphery.
She doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes. The only thing she lets herself look at is the glass, and the snow on the other side of it—each flake blurring against the motion of the city, small and perfect and already gone.
Yaga had told her, after, that Satoru wasn’t told yet, but she wonders if he already knows. If some part of him—whatever raw, uncanny instinct makes him the strongest—registered it the moment your heart stopped. Maybe he felt it like an earthquake deep in his bones, the sudden, wrong absence in the air. Maybe he was sitting on their couch, turning toward the door without knowing why.
Her mind drifts, unspooling memory:
Summer afternoons, the four of them sitting on the roof with drinks to cool the sweat on them. Your hair tangled from the wind. Gojo leaning back on his palms, his sunglasses pushed to the top of his head so she could clearly see the way his gaze snagged on you like he didn’t even notice he was staring. The quiet shift over months from banter to something slower, gentler, like they’d started speaking a language that Shoko didn’t know but could still recognize in the spaces between words.
A late night after a mission, all of them exhausted, half asleep in the common room. Shoko had woken to see them leaning together on the couch, your head on his shoulder, his hand resting loosely on yours. The kind of touch that wasn’t accidental.
There had been other moments—quieter, private ones she hadn’t meant to see—that told her this was the thing that had changed him. He'd always been brilliant, unbearable, untouchable. but with you, his edges softened. He laughed differently. He listened.
Now she wonders how much of that she’s about to take from him in a single sentence.
The train slows into her stop, brakes screeching. She rises, folder in hand. She doesn’t know why she carries the hardcopy—maybe it makes it feel more real, more final, more like evidence of something she already failed to prevent.
She had stopped by a gas station and bought a pack of cigarettes and a small black lighter for the first time in almost six years. There’s now a cigarette clamped between her teeth, though she hasn’t lit it.
Snow is falling.
It catches in her hair, her sleeves, her lashes.
When she reaches their apartment building, she stops at the bottom of the stairs and thinks about turning around. But she doesn’t. She climbs each step like she’s approaching a grave.
The light’s on under the door.
She raises her hand.
And knocks.
❀
The door opens almost immediately.
And for a second — just one, flickering, incandescent second — Shoko sees the look on his face.
Gojo Satoru opens the door like he expects you to be behind it. Not Shoko. Not grief incarnate. But you. The woman he loves. The only thing in the world that could quiet his mind and hold his entire future in her palms.
He opens the door like someone in love. Like someone relieved. Like someone who still dares to hope.
And then he sees Shoko.
And everything stops.
His face doesn’t fall.
It freezes.
She watches the hope die in his expression. It doesn’t vanish — it dies. Like something physically collapsing inside of him. A structure caving in, silently, under its own weight.
His shoulders lock, and she watches his jaw tense. He doesn’t move aside to let her in, doesn’t say a word.
Just stares.
He looks at her like he had known this would be how it ended all along, but still — still, deep down, some piece of him had been holding on. Had left the light on. Had made her side of the bed. Had waited.
Shoko clears her throat.
The words don’t want to come.
"I’m sorry—she’s gone.”
That's all it takes.
Gojo doesn’t flinch.
But she sees it in the way his hand clenches around the edge of the door. The way his breath leaves him — sharp, shallow, wrong. The way he looks past her, like he’s trying to reframe the hallway, the scene, the moment.
Like maybe he can rewind it.
Undo it.
See you behind her, scolding her for delivering bad news so bluntly.
But Shoko is alone, and the silence is loud.
He steps back, and turns.
Walks into the apartment like everything inside was knocked over.
Shoko follows and shuts the door behind her.
The apartment is dim. Bathed in soft warm light. The heater hums gently in the corner, and there are two mugs on the table, one empty and one half-drunk. Your sweater is still hanging over the back of the couch, sleeves inside out. Your boots are by the door. The windows are covered by sheer white curtains, but the shade of blue that appears just after sunset peeks through, framing the room the same color as melancholy.
Shoko wants to scream.
Instead, she places the folder on the table.
Neither of them look at it.
She taps the folder once, not to push him, but to make its presence undeniable.
“Are you going to read it?”
His back is still to her. She can see the angle of his spine through the thin cotton of his shirt, every muscle tight, like he’s bracing for impact.
With no hesitation, “No.”
Shoko expected that answer, but she still feels something drop in her chest.
“You sure? It’s not… it’s not just medical jargon. I kept it clean. No gore.”
He turns his head just enough for her to see one sharp eye over his shoulder.
“You want me to read the autopsy for the love of my life?”
She pauses, feeling herself hold her breath.
“I want you to know what happened,” she says, voice level. “Exactly what happened. Without the stories you’ll tell yourself later.”
He scoffs—a sound halfway between disbelief and exhaustion—and shakes his head.
“The story I want is that you’re lying.”
Silence.
He pushes away from the counter, crosses to the table. His height makes the space between them smaller without him even trying. He puts a hand on the folder like he might open it—thumb brushing the edge, fingers curling.
And then he just… freezes.
Shoko watches him, and for the first time she sees it—not the usual walls, the sarcasm, the easy dismissal. This is different. This is a man standing at the edge of a cliff, staring down, knowing there’s nothing but rocks and cold water below.
“I can't,” he says finally, and it’s not defiance. It's quiet. almost gentle.
“Why?”
he swallows, eyes still on the folder.
“Because the second I read it, it’s over. She's gone in ink. In numbers. In your handwriting.” he glances up at her, and there’s no shield in his expression now. “If I don't read it, she’s just… late coming home.”
Shoko's throat tightens.
For a moment, she wants to tell him she understands. That she’s done the same—taken certain pages out because the words make her feel sick. But she doesn’t. She just nods, takes the folder back, tucks it under her arm again.
He exhales like he’s been holding his breath the whole time.
He’s not moving.
Not breathing, maybe.
His hand rests on the counter like it’s the only thing keeping him upright and she watches his shoulders shake.
Once.
Then still again.
His face is unreadable.
But his eyes — god, his eyes.
Shoko has known him for more than a decade, has seen him bloodied and laughing and blind with pain and victory. But she has never seen him like this.
Not even after Suguru.
Not even after Toji.
This isn’t rage.
This isn’t despair.
This is something else.
Something jagged. Something bottomless.
He looks at her like she’s the executioner. Like she didn’t just bring the news — but she made it true. But maybe, in some way, he’s right to feel that way.
“You’re sure that she’s—?” he asks, voice quiet. She could’ve mistaken his tone for desperation.
Shoko nods.
That's when it happens.
He laughs.
Short, ugly, and bitter.
An instinct, like flinching.
He runs a hand through his hair. Leans back against the counter.
The quiet settles like dust.
Shoko sits down on the couch. something crackles beneath her — one of your notebooks. She picks it up, flips it open without thinking.
The last page is filled with sketches. a little cartoon version of Gojo, grinning, speech bubble saying “have you seen my honey?”
Her throat tightens.
She doesn’t speak.
“I thought I had more time,” he says. Shoko doesn’t have it in her to speak.
“I wanted to take her to Okinawa again. Not for a mission this time. Just because.”
He closes his eyes.
“She never got to see it in winter. She would’ve liked the cold.”
And she stays the night on their couch. Like old times, except there is no wine and no laughter and your warmth isn’t beside her. Shoko never really registered that she’ll never see you again. Even now, it feels like you’ll call her at any moment and ask her if she wants a drink.
But that first night without you, she doesn’t think she could really fall asleep.
And he doesn’t really cry.
But in the morning, he makes coffee with hands that won’t stop shaking.
She drinks hers cold, and so does he. But she watches him press your mug to his lips and set it down again, like it burned him.
❀
august, 2014
Gojo is twenty four, and he’s older than he was meant to be. More tired than he lets on, and somehow still waiting for something that already ended.
Sometimes, when it’s late, and the city is loud, and the stars don’t show themselves—Shoko catches him leaning against the doorway of his apartment balcony, looking at the buildings and cars and passerbys like he’s trying to remember the shape of your face.
And that, she thinks, is love.
Not flowers.
Not vows.
Not even the waiting.
But the remembering.
The carrying.
The way his world stopped. The way he never quite leaves the doorway, just in case you might still come home to him.
viii. 2015
Grief, when it lingers long enough, becomes routine.
Shoko wakes the same way every morning: early, cold. the city a dull hum outside her window. The kettle clicks on. She measures out coffee. Drinks it black, because that’s how you liked it, and then cooks konnyaku because you hated it.
The irony keeps her company.
The mornings are always quiet now. The kind of quiet that settles into your bones and stays.
And Nanami leaves the Jujutsu world around that time.
Quietly. Respectfully. Without fuss.
He came to her clinic on a Tuesday, knocked once, sat down across from her, and said, "I'm leaving.”
She didn’t ask why, because she felt like she already knew.
He was twenty three and already looked like he’d seen the end of the world twice.
“You'll be good,” she said softly. “Too good for this place.”
Nanami looked away. “I just want to live like a person.”
She envied him for thinking it was still possible.
Before he left, he placed a small paper-wrapped gift on her desk.
Inside was a lighter, clean, silver, unused.
She held it in her palm for a long time that night.
But she didn’t smoke.
Not yet.
❀
She sees Gojo more often these days.
Not because they talk more, and not because they seek each other out. Just because there’s no one else left.
They don’t need to make plans anymore. They just end up in the same places. The clinic. The faculty room. The convenience store on that street with the broken traffic light.
Sometimes he brings her canned coffee. Never says anything when he hands it to her.
She drinks it anyway.
It’s the only thing he offers that she can still take.
And he laughs a little more now, but it’s not the same.
When he does, it’s wrong. Jagged. Like something trying to escape from under his skin. It reminds her that he’s still grieving, even when he tells her “he’s over it.”
The students adore him. Still think he’s invincible, and think the blindfolds and wit and charm are who he really is.
But Shoko knows better.
❀
december, 2017
Suguru's death didn’t come like she expected, though to her, Suguru Geto had died the August they were seventeen.
From the outside, he went out in flame and fury.
But then again, it feels like he went out quietly. Gently. By Gojo’s own hands.
Because, in the end, that was the only way it could’ve happened.
Not in hatred or vengeance, but in recognition of what they’d been. Of what they’d lost. Of the thin line between who you are and who you become when the world stops making sense.
“It was quick,” Gojo told her afterward, his voice steady, eyes blown wide with something far beyond pain.
Shoko believed him. Not because she trusted the words, but because she trusted the silence between them.
❀
She thinks of Suguru now more than she admits.
Remembers how he used to hum under his breath while taking notes. How he’d hand her highlighters during meetings without looking. How he used to let them braid his hair on missions just to make them smile.
Remembers the way he stood the last time she saw him, on the night of the cursed parade—back straight, curses curling around him like smoke, eyes tired in a way that made her want to scream.
He broke long before he died.
Shoko knows this.
She also knows he would’ve been a wonderful teacher.
If the world had been kinder, and if someone had stopped to tell him that softness wasn’t weakness. That wanting to save people didn’t make him naïve.
That watching them die wasn’t his fault.
❀
Gojo comes to dinner sometimes.
Not often or predictably. Sometimes he just knocks, steps inside, doesn’t take his shoes off properly, and drops onto her couch like he owns the place.
She used to yell at him for that, but now she just lets him.
He eats whatever she makes. Doesn’t complain, even when it’s instant ramen or cold rice or nothing at all.
They don’t talk much during those nights.
But sometimes, he falls asleep.
And sometimes, she covers him with the old blanket you used to use when you were over — just because. Just to remember what it felt like to care for someone who was still breathing.
There's one night that she remembers, after a long day of treating a couple injured sorcerers in the midst of a mission, that she finds him already waiting.
In the kitchen, cutting vegetables.
“What are you doing?” she asks, flatly.
“Trying to give you a break,” he says.
“By mutilating my carrots?”
“They fought back.”
She puffs a breath from her nose and smiles.
It’s the closest she’s come to laughing in days.
He makes curry. It's too spicy. The rice is slightly undercooked — but it’s not half bad.
She eats every bite, and doesn’t thank him for showing up.
They’re not close, not in the way people imagine. They don’t tell each other secrets. They don’t hug. They don’t reminisce out loud. Their bond lies in the memory of what it meant to be sixteen and still whole. Of how it felt watching the strongest boy in the room slowly learn how to be gentle. Of seeing him break and build and break again.
Of surviving the wreckage together.
He keeps her from vanishing. She keeps him from shattering.
They exist near each other.
Orbiting.
Keeping each other tethered.
❀
Shoko's the only one who doesn’t have a grave.
Not really.
Haibara's is now marked in a clean Kyoto cemetery. Suguru's ashes were never recovered, but there’s a stone for him outside his old temple. You have a simple plaque under the oak tree they used to study beneath.
Shoko visits them all, but she doesn’t linger.
Because it’s not the places that hold them.
It’s the way she still turns her head when someone says “Geto” in a briefing. It’s the way she keeps chopsticks in her drawer for four, not one. It's the way she wakes from a dream, disoriented and reaching for an image of herself, of when her hair was cut to her chin and she is surrounded by people who were once her home — before she remembers that no one’s coming.
Though, there's a new photo on her desk now.
Four teenagers. Uniforms on and grins wide.
Gojo has his eyes closed. Suguru is pretending to look annoyed. You’re flipping off the camera. Shoko is mid-laugh, mouth open, eyes crinkled.
She doesn’t remember who took it.
Doesn’t remember what they were laughing at.
But she leaves it there.
Next to the medical files and the pills and the list of new students.
It’s a reminder — not of who they were, but that they were. That at one point in time, the four of them had existed together. That at some point, that was all that mattered.
ix. december 24, 2018
The first snow falls unceremoniously. No warning and no wind to carry it.
Just flakes, slow and fat, drifting sideways over the rooftops of Shinjuku like ash from something that’s already burned.
Shoko watches it from the roof.
She doesn’t move.
Not yet.
It's the holidays, and she hates this time of year. There’s too much pretending, too many bright windows, too many mouths grinning like the world hasn’t ended five times already.
This year, the snow comes early.
And with it—him.
She thinks the city is strange under snow. Not soft. Not pretty. Just muffled, hollowed out. Sirens echo longer. Footsteps vanish quicker. The skyline dissolves behind a white veil, lights blurring like bruises.
She walks through it alone. Past vending machines glazed in frost and power lines sagging beneath the weight. There are paper lanterns swaying over shuttered storefronts, their glow smudged and dim.
Her boots crunch the snow like something brittle and alive. She isn’t wearing gloves. She likes the cold biting at her skin. It feels honest.
She finds him in the square.
Tall. Unmovable. Eyes like winter distilled into glass.
He's facing Sukuna, and there’s no backup. No panic. No speeches or horns sounding in the dark. Just two gods standing where no man should be.
She doesn’t call his name or break the silence. Only stands at the edge of it all, smoke slipping from her mouth, her eyes dry as bone.
He knows she’s there.
He doesn’t turn.
But he tilts his chin, barely, like a gesture carved out of stone.
And she understands, like she did all those years ago in August, when Suguru Geto had lit her cigarette. When he smiled and waved and she had turned away, for the last time.
That this is the end.
Not just of him. Not just of this fight.
But of everything that tethered them to a time when living felt possible.
Springtime in Jujutsu Tech. Sunlight tangled in white hair. You, singing too loudly, Suguru sighing like the world rested in his lungs. Sandos split in half. Train cars rattling at dusk. Leaves falling as soft as promises they never kept.
All of it.
Ending here.
Under a sky in a city stripped down to bone.
He burns too bright, even now. Bends space like a god, cuts air like a blade, shoulders the infinite and makes it look like art. And still—Sukuna is cruel. patient. inevitable.
Shoko watches as it begins: sharp, merciless, a brilliance that blinds and dies just as quickly.
She sees him hold and hold and hold—until he doesn’t.
He doesn’t scream.
He just folds.
Quietly.
Finally.
And the moment he hits the ground, the world doesn’t shatter.
But something in her does.
Everything slows.
The air thickens. Her breath fogs in front of her. Her hands are shaking, not from fear, but because she’s remembering. Nostalgia has always had its way of killing her, of creeping up on her and leaving her feeling sick. There is nothing left to reminisce now, as the last remaining part of her youth lies split in half in the show.
❀
The lab smells like steel and antiseptic, like every failure she’s ever catalogued. Fluorescent lights hum above her, sickly and bright, making her want to tear them out of the ceiling. She doesn’t. She just sets the instruments in place, lines up scalpels with the precision of someone who cannot afford to think.
Yuta lies unconscious on the table, his chest rising shallow, his pulse steady under her fingers. Now, she moves over to the drawer, where she placed Satoru’s body after stitching it back together. When she pulls back the sheets, she touches his hair once, brushes it off his forehead the way she remembers you used to when he was too stubborn to sleep.
Now she stands over him, and for the first time in years, her hands shake.
Not from inexperience. Not from fear of failure.
But from knowing that if she succeeds, it won’t really be him. And if she fails, she will have killed the last piece of her friend’s legacy with her own two hands.
Her cursed technique hums, steady, inexorable. Flesh unravels, rewrites. Neurons glimmer under her touch like constellations in a dark sky. She threads them carefully, patient as a weaver, until she feels something spark. Until she feels him.
Not Yuta, not exactly.
But not Satoru either.
Something between.
A gasp, sharp and wet, tears through the air. fingers twitch. The body arches against restraints she swore she wouldn’t use, but had to.
And then—eyes.
Too blue. Too familiar.
Her knees nearly buckle.
Because for an instant it feels like the dorms again and being a teenager. Then for an instant, she is twenty two again, and she watches Gojo lean down to talk to Tsumiki and Megumi, to give them reassurance, to protect their youth.
But then the boy blinks, coughs, chokes on his first words, staring at his hands. and Yuta is suddenly speaking to her, from Satoru Gojo’s lips.
And it’s not him.
It’s not him.
She forces her hands steady, swallows down the tremor in her throat. “Well, it worked.” She says, clinical, detached. Like she didn’t just carve open time and stitch it into something monstrous.
The snow keeps falling outside.
❀
Later, they ask her what happened. after transferring Yuta back to his own body, after dismantling Satoru, pieces lying on a table in her clinic — while Yuta walks, unscathed.
She gives them the facts. stripped bare, like bone. No softness. No poetry.
“Gojo fought. He fell. He's dead.”
Nothing more, because she refuses to let them dress it in glory, refuses to let them write a hymn where there was only silence.
He was tired.
He died.
And there’s nothing beautiful about that.
❀
She cremates him herself. In the same furnace that once took you. Her gloves are soaked by the end of it, dark and slick, but she doesn’t take them off. Doesn’t cry either. Not this time.
x. 青春
Tokyo feels different after. Like the city is holding its breath, waiting for something that will never come.
That evening, she stops beneath a streetlamp outside the school. Cigarette trembling faintly between gloved fingers. Snow catching in her hair, turning her into something ghostlike. Embers glow like memories in the dark.
For the first time in forever, she speaks. Not to anyone. Just to the cold, to the shadows that linger in her bones.
“You win.” she whispers.
The lamp above her flickers once, then dies.
And Shoko stands alone in the dark. Utterly. Finally. Completely.
Yet that night, she finds herself dreaming in color that she thought had left her vision over a decade ago now.
Dreams not of blood. Not of battle, or of bodies in a morgue, or the harsh December air.
But of summer. The old apartment bathed in sunlight. Then, you’re next to her, seated cross-legged, fingers deftly braiding Tsumiki’s hair. Gojo at the table, laughing, trying to pry the cap off a bottle of soda with his teeth while Suguru shakes his head, pretending not to smile at him. Somewhere on your balcony, Haibara’s voice rings out, bright with Nanami’s deeper murmur tucked inside it.
Shoko feels a weight in her hands, and forces herself to look down for just a moment just to see that she is holding a camera. She lifts it. Frames them in her viewfinder — her whole heart in one room. Click.
A still life. A stolen moment that no one else notices.
They’re too busy being alive.
(終わり) END.
When August comes, I don’t count the days
Transitory views from the subway train
How strange, when life unfolds this way
In the drift less zone, sky’s prone to stay off-gray
Clouds are omens too, fading at the rate
That most pleasant memories do
mae's note. first chapter of "of love & lesson plans" out tomorrow, and i pinky promise it won't be this sad </3 likes + reposts are appreciated, thank you soso much for reading
❝ — SHALL I FOREVER MOLD YOU TO THE TETHERED SUN. ❞
𓏵 ( despite everything , it's still you ! )
८ sypnosis. When one bears their faithful eyes to the sun, they tend to look away, unable to take the blazing rays of the daylight - yet, that boy whom lies in wheat and bathe in love, his eyes revel in the dances of the sunlight ─ alternatively, when Phainon loses his heart, there are no limit to his impeding fixation.
(phainon x fem!reader) wc: 21.4k (it's worth it i promise stay w me now)
@ warnings; gory descriptions, childhood friends to (kind of) lovers, time travel trope, a LOT of angst, some comfort, no beta we die like Cyrene and the chrysos heirs, a lot of descriptive violence and blood, not for the weak of hearts im afraid, ANGST no comfort but also kind of comfort but i lowkey rip that away after, morally debatable phainon, obssesion, heavy angst, grief, depression, body horror, Phainon is just mad insane ngl ᝰ.ᐟ
── notes. this is my LONGEST fic yet, and i put in a lot of work into this. I actually had this planned and executed since May of this year, but only finished it now because of how many times I got burnt out and lost motivation. This will be one of the few things i'll post because IB will get to me and I'll have significantly less time to write, much less complete a writing. This fic may have costed me the most agony, time, and crashouts. Anyway, have a fun ride. More notes will be at the end of the fic (◞‸ ◟)
O, muse, sing for the ballads of Amphoreus – the eternal land, partitioned by the wholly of one’s sinful adamant inclinations, and purity of one’s preponderance fleet-footed harmony. O, muse, forgive this sin of covetousness – forebode by the deliverer of this world.
Dawn is forthcoming, but will not emerge without first the settlement of dusk – and when that dawn arises with trepidation, a figure is torn apart – shredded unto the most deepest of the body, cleaved into the dawn. For to be the sun, one must first, burn like it.
You, are not an heir cladded with golden ichor amalgamated into the essence of your soul. Rather, you are but a single mortal, a normal – unprecedented one. Not intertwined with the fates of the heroes of Amphoreus, the strings have not once touched the nerves of your skin.
You are not a part of this cycle of ruinous sequence.
At least, that is how it was before.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“Ne, (name), don’t you have a penchant for romantic epics?”
You turn to the pink haired girl – hair dancing softly in the wind as she smiles, the bark of the tree she seated adjacent swayed with the wind’s dance, leaves fell gently to the wheat below your feet, her hands held cards – tarot cards, you surmise. She was always one for those divination crafts.
“I do. But isn't it boring if it’s just romance?” You question, Cyrene turns her head up, eyes crinkling in the corner as she takes in your expression.
“My my, dear (name),” She clicks her tongue playfully, feet flopping against the wheat-like grass, Kephale’s dawn falling gently on her face.
“Love, is the credential of everything! You see, every one of us,” Cyrene gestures to herself, then to you. “..is born of love and desire.”
“Love is pretty complicated.” You purse your lips together, her words a confusing riddle – you were just children, what does love have to do with a soul young as you?
Cyrene sings a whine at your words. “Ne~ Romance doesn’t always mean love, it can be a tragic story, or – or a thrilling fight scene!”
You could not hold back a purse in your lips at that, a small smile blooms on your face, reverent as it comes. “So Cyrene likes all stories?”
She nods with glee, shuffling through her card deck. “Each of them.”
She lays down the card deck in front of you, and against your doubts, you sit in front of the girl cladded in a dress much familiar to her stature. The loquacious girl grins, drawing a card like it’s as easy as shifting through bundles of hay – and she brings it to your face, obscuring your vision of her for a second, then popping her head out from the side.
“Here, your card.”
You still for a moment, taking the card from her hands. The image depicts 2 – naked figures, a woman and man, reaching for something unseeable, a figure – an androgynous divine entity, held sacred above them both, wings spread anew, as if it’s gathering protection.
“The lovers?” You tilt your head at the card.
She giggles at your reaction. “The lovers. It’s fitting, isn’t it?”
You raise a brow at her words, she likes to speak in riddles from time to time, it seems. You give the card back to her, and she takes it gracefully, fingers dancing over the shiny material of the card that reflects against the light, brazen with colors.
“.. I don’t see it.”
“Not yet.” Cyrene smiles all the same, it appeared as if the appeasing smile could not leave her lips.
You frown at that. Slightly, the grass shifting underneath your feet. “Am I really that ‘lovey-dovey’?”
“It’s not that,” She hums, lifting her finger to lightly press on your forehead. “Hehe, you look cute confused.”
“Then–”
“(name). You are the essence of ‘love’ itself.” Cyrene smiles – but this one doesn’t reach her eyes. She withdrew her hand away, eyes fleeting to the dawn device on Kephale’s shoulder.
“Deliverance is inevitable,” She continues, you stay quiet, in this sense. “.. I wish.. this torn-like world didn't need a deliverer, not now, not ever.”
She means █████ — .. Phainon. You could see it on her face before she could even utter your friend’s name.
Her eyes are lightly casted with a darker glint, as if – sadness? You couldn’t quite tell in time, because it was gone only seconds later.
“Cyrene?”
“Mm, but that’s not to worry, (name)! Come on, Phai’s gonna start crying for us if we leave him wandering with the faeries – memlings.” Cyrene smiles with a burgeoning of urgency, eyes lighting up again in an instant, as she gathers the card deck back into her pocket.
“Cyrene, what do you mean?” You repeat the question that danced around your head, and Cyrene stills for a moment, hands still situating the cards – she does not answer right away.
Rather, she looks up to you, a smile impeded on her lips, “Questioning a girl like this! (name), you truly are cruel ~ ♪ ”
You – despite yourself – do not push it further, only nudge into the pink-haired girl’s shoulder. “Fine.” Cyrene wouldn’t keep things from you if she wasn’t doing it for your own good, you figured.
“But you will tell me later!” You urge the taller girl, tugging at the hem of her dress from below.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 1.
Phainon awoke to a dawn – the yellow wheat lightly shuffled below his body, his tousled snow-white hair shambling across the surface of something soft, cyan-like eyes adjusting to the weight of Kephale’s protection. It smells faint of cinnamon and baked bread – the piquancy of a welcoming arm to his awaken.
“You’re awake.” A voice ushered him woke, gentle and soft-spoken. IT whispered above his face, akin to a likening of breeze that embraced him gently, the forbearing resonance only threatened to lull the young boy asleep yet again.
Phainon stuttered open – his face a blaze of pink hue as he gathered himself, pushing his own body from your lap.
He chastised himself quietly, Don't creep her out, he chided inside his head. This is chill. You're just some friend that happened to sleep on her lap. No biggie!
His eyes locked into yours hesitantly, the silky-white tunic that adorned your body ruffled in protest as he lifted his head from it – he felt himself heating up again.
“How- how long was I asleep for?” The boy stammered upon his words, whereas you laughed at his embarrassment – the distant wind swaying ever softly beneath the bark of a leaning orange-leaved tree, the wheat-like grass flowing beneath the ground, again – almost in a rhythmic timed pattern, they swayed.
“Not long,” You shook your head, urging the white-haired boy to calm down.
“You fell asleep while I was reading the book.” You continued.
“Huh?!” Phainon stammered, sitting up to face you, your legs were folded, as his were splattered – one propped up while the other sat flat upon the fair yellowed field. “No way!”
You chuckled softly at his absolutely devastated state, you truly didn’t mind, but it would be fun to tease him so. “Were my stories that boring?”
“No!” Phainon replied in an utter panic, his hands waving around like it’d signify his innocence. “No! They’re not boring! Not at all!”
“Then why’d you fall asleep, hmm?”
“I didn’t – I mean–” he floundered, you laughed.
“I’m just teasing you.” You finally say, saving him from further embarrassment, Phainon looked quite close to pleading the fifth, or start begging for your forgiveness on his knees (like he would, he would never stoop that low, not even for you! Right?).
Phainon heaved a sigh of relief, settling himself down with an ‘oomf’ on the grassy patch next to you under the tree, body leaning over to yours, eyes not at all subtly peering at the book, you smiled at his curiosity.
“It’s a heroic story.” You whispered to him, as if unveiling a deep secret.
Phainon beamed at that – heroic epic compositions were nothing short of his favorite. He leaned in closer, cerulean cheerful eyes peeping at the book you held. “Really?!”
You nodded, a distant whirlwind pried in your words, hearing them as well. “Do you want me to read it to you?”
The boy nodded with vigor, head bumping up and down as he secured his body with 2 arms hovered over the grass, body situated to you – eager.
“So! This story,” You gestured with your hands, standing up to appear more dramatic. “Is about a hero, a soft musician.. who traverses Thanatos’ domain in a reverent search for his beloved.”
Settling the opened book onto your lap with a soft thud, the air whiffed through Aedes Elysiae gently, though ephemeral, the lasting zephyr flies past, casting its wind with a mellow stature on the two innocent figures on the yellow wheated land.
Phainon tilted his head at your summary, figure shooting up to stand. “That isn’t a hero! He doesn’t fight monsters!”
“He so is! How would you know?” You huffed at his already impatient claims, to which Phainon was only sparked by your rhetorical question.
His tone is bright, almost defensive. “A hero shines in the spotlight! He fights–” He swings his right arm in a mock-fighting motion indignantly. “–like his life depends on it!”
You laughed at that, seeing his theatrics. “Will you be a hero?”
“Yeah, obviously a hero.” He grinned, now leaning back onto the bark of the tree, propping himself up with one arm as if the very thought of saving someone didn’t weigh on him.
His white hair cascaded like a shimmering waterfall, the silver strands almost blending into the clouds above. He seemed so carefree, like the world’s concerns were just a speck on the horizon.
“.. Sounds boring.”
“It isn’t!”
“So is. ‘S just some sword swinging and a few rescuing.”
The sun – Kephale’s reverend dawn – seemed to highlight his youthful features, bringing a glow to his cheeks and a playfulness to the lines of his face.
It was almost unfair how the sun had swooned to him like a chosen one.
“So not!” Phainon piqued, his hand dashing out to reach at the sky – mock-holding Kephale’s dawn device into his thumb and index, as if he alone is holding the sun. “Cyrene told me that heroes weren’t chosen, but made. So – that path, I’ll carve it with my own hands.”
A breeze of silence fell over you both, Phainon’s promise lingering in the air like a sacred prayer for Oronyx’s benediction, one those Janus oracles would acclaim. But this is not a prophecy – nor is it a prayer, but a promise of a young boy from Aedes Elysiae.
A shudder befell your spine for some reason.
“.. You’re such an overachiever!” You laughed – the very sound reverberating around the fields of Aedes Elysiae.
You don’t think twice before leaning down to the bark of the tree as well, propping yourself next to him – the shade of the tree embracing your figures in protection.
“Whatever!” Phainon narked – bumping his shoulder into yours, delighting a yelp from you, before his attention is yet again – for some odd reason – drawn to Kephale’s dawn. “.. but I still like it better in this village.”
You blinked at his words. “Aedes Elysiae? Isn’t it kind of boring here?”
“‘S not! There’s big sis Cyrene – ma and pa, Andreas, Iraklis, Livia, everyone.” He huffed at you, finding your question utterly ridiculous. “Most importantly, there’s you!”
You try to still your face before it heats up at the last sentence – it’s a hopeless cause, you settle with the easy way of simply avoiding his gaze, looking up to Kephale’s world bearing stature, but you feel queasy looking at it as well.
“..Well, Aedes Elysiae is so isolated, though. No way you can be a hero here, you’d have to leave to – Castrum Kremnos, or something!”
Phainon paused, scratching his chin in thought. You were right. If he wanted to be a hero, no sane person would stay in a village that smirkished so far away from the large capital city-states – the polis of Kremnos is known to breed soldiers far powerful and it would definitely mold him into a strong and vigorous hero as he’d hope, or the holy city of Okhema – it would grant him the popularity that he needs, provided with a sanctuary that would safeguard him with each wants he pursues.
But leaving Aedes Elysiae seemed like a thought so far away from him.
Leaving you?
.. No.
He couldn’t fathom that.
You were just about to change the topic, nervous at his uncharacteristic silence as Phainon simply stared out into what seemed like nowhere when –
“I just won’t be a hero then!” He proudly proclaimed after a few long and arduous moments of pondering.
“Huh?!”
Phainon only shrugged at the shock on your face as you abruptly turned to face him yet again, he rested his arms beneath his head lazily, the next words drawled out in a nonchalant manner. “Well, if I had to leave Aedes Elysiae to be a hero, I don’t want to do it.”
You could only deadpan at his ironic behavior – what an oxymoron of himself, he is. “Isn’t it your dream?”
“My backup dream.” He pronounced. “My foremost dream is to just live in this village. The epics are cool and all but.. I dunno, I like the tranquility here more. I have everything I want, why would I leave?”
That gives you pause – he had a point, you supposed. A strange one, but a point nevertheless.
“You’re weird.”
“Hey!” Phainon bumped his shoulder into yours at that.
You laughed. “What? I’m just saying!”
“What’s so weird ‘bout just staying here?” Phainon pouted, looking at the ridges of golden reeds painting across Aedes Elysiae.
People busied about, carrying buckets of milk, or stacks of hay into their arms, cows, or horses followed suite – it’s idyllic, even with the bustling of the streets.
“.. I like it home the most.” Phainon smiled to himself.
You go silent at his melancholic words – he speaks as if he’s leaving, as if he’s gone, but he’s not.
“.. I guess so. But compared to being a hero, wouldn’t like.. Say, managing a farm be plenty mundane?”
“Well, the chickens are similar enough to the vigorous titankins in the hymns, right?” Phainon snickered, recounting the multitude of embarrassing ways he had to chase his father’s hoard of chicken down the wheat field. “Oh! And you’re like the final boss that chases me down the–”
You quickly smack the back of his head at the underhand jab. “I do not.”
“Ow! See? Just like a hero being beat up by his archnemesis.” He whined, holding his head in a theatrical manner.
“I am not an archnemesis!”
“Really? What role do you propose, then?”
You hummed, a finger dusting your chin in thought, before announcing: “Ah.. oh, I got it – the antihero!”
.. okay, yeah, that was kind of stupid. You turn to Phainon as he only stared at you with an incredulous look on his face at your proclamation. An ‘anti-hero’?! That was literally just another way of saying ‘anti-phainon’!
“What?!” Phainon yelped, pressing himself closer to you by anchoring himself with both arms on the grass, face sticking into your personal space. “That’s like – the total opposite of my role!”
“I mean! Isn’t antihero a cool title?” You quickly try to explain to the mortified male in front of you. “Cyrene told me about it.”
“But.. but – that’s so different from a hero! Don’t you want to be like a .. damsel in distress? Or, or.. sidekick? Or–”
“No way!” You pouted, and Phainon immediately sulked at your answer. “Damsel in distress is so boring, why can’t I just save myself? Sidekick is kinda generic.”
You paused, before relaxing your shoulders against the bark of the tree, whilst Phainon looked all but relaxed, your gaze swims to the cerulean sky.
“But.. What I like about the antihero is that they’re really ambiguous. Like, I don’t wanna be a hero, it’s too much responsibility. But villains are mean guys, so they’re inherently bad – but they also do things for a reason. So an anti-hero is something in between that line of good and bad, they’re neither morally righteous or immoral.” You paused. Your words are strange to your voice, it’s strangely mature. Your gaze lifts from the sky back to Phainon.
“But they’re.. not conventionally heroic. For that reason I like it, it’s flawed – it’s really human.”
At your philosophical soliloquy, Phainon only whined, throwing an arm over your shoulder in a manner of boredom – your words go in one ear and out the other for the white-haired boy, it seemed. “You’re starting to sound wayyy too smart! Stop hanging out with Cyrene so much!”
“What, jealous?” You teased, feeling his arm around your shoulder drawing you closer to him. “Cyrene likes me more, after all.”
“No way! Cyrene’s been my friend longer – she obviously likes me more!” He pinched your arm cheekily.
You yelped, quickly pinching him back. “By theory, sure, but Cyrene likes me a teensy winsey more. She told me!”
“Did not.”
You scoffed at his words. “Did too.”
He punches – playfully so, there is no strength, as if he could not hurt even a bit of you – your shoulder lightly aches again, whereas you punch him back, then he pinches your cheek, you dart to pinch his (much harder).
This devolves into him kicking your feet with his, and your kicking his stomach – Phainon flew to tackle you onto the ground, his form casting a shadow over yours, his hands darting to your wrist to pin them above your head.
“Ha! The hero always wins, didn’t the epics teach ya that, (name)?” He grinned, white teeth and all.
You scoffed, squirming and kicking. “You’re not even a hero – you’re a bully!”
Phainon lets out a scandalized gasp, his hold on your hands loosening at the offensive remark. “No way! I’m –”
You take the opportunity to yank your hand out of his hold, and fingers itch a rapid line to tickle at his waist – to which the white haired boy immediately starts squirming, trying, and failing, to swat you away.
“Haha–! (name)! Stop, I can’t–!” He wheezed, your fingers flying around his waist, Phainon looks no less than the textbook definition of pathetic rather than a so-called hero.
“Yield.” Your fingers do not attempt to stop their assault.
“Yield! Yield! I yield!”
You, in your merciful inclination, released your fingers from his sides, satisfied at his beseeching of a failure.
You grin to yourself as Phainon catches his breath – having looked like he had undergone a traumatic event.
“.. You really are an anti-phainon.”
“What was that?”
“You heard that, don’t even pretend!”
You laughed, stomach riling with your senses.
The sky fights back, casting now a saffron hue over your figures, the two of you dancing in a frolic of your own.
The book in your hands prior rests unnoticed now – but the pages are flipped through by the soft caress of wind, shifting through its pages, as if a story was woven out into the air right then.
You and Phainon’s innocent aligned figures sat atop the hill, near that familiar bark of a tree that hung over your stature.
Cyrene watches from a distance with a smile, before turning her gaze away from your childish menageries, huffing a giggle into her open hand that rested over her mouth, a stack of hay situated in her arms as she maneuvered around with the graze of a butterfly.
…
The stone slate features two figures. Erected onto a capacious wall – inscribed with cracks of gold. The slate is rough, grazing one’s hand would sure to injure.
Ἀεὶ κολοιὸς παρὰ κολοιῷ ἱζάνει.
The large transcriptions read –
"A jackdaw is always found near a jackdaw". What a strange title.
The large stone slate depicts this: one a hero, plastered onto rock transcriptions roughly – prominently, ichor flowing with resplendent aureate of veins – amalgamated with the Titan’s own cycles of eternal punishment – of sins incipient by sheep born of cattle, by flames of humanity reaved by the seeker of truth, the figure is nothing short of divine.
Small hoards of sheep gather near the scintillating figure.
.. The sheep is sat at 42° angle clockwise.
The other a mortal, a nebulous existence in contrary to the other of gleaming epics – one of hazy transcriptions, barely indented onto the plastered rocks of time, not once has their ichor touched a hint of chrysos, not once, has their soul drifted to the light, crawling out of the darkness through volition of their own – it is a weak soul.
A crow – or a jackdaw lingers near the brotós, mortal.
The jackdaw loiters at a 13° angle counter-clockwise.
–Weak, as the mortal may appear, the soul of the divine will always be fallible to the coalition of the human soul – no matter how hard, how insistent the divine is, the holy holds no sway over the human soul. For humans wield what the beatific and holiest cannot, for that is the finity of life in itself.
But mark my words, O mortal born of folly. For the divinity will stain the cleaves of your hands as do a pomegranate, stick to the roof of your teeth as the seeds pop, the holy will take your soul and cleave it into something burgundy and substandard.
For this, you will refuse anything but the greed to reach your anthropoid fingers to it again, greedy human instincts to attempt clutch at even the holy. But the divine shall crawl its way beneath your crimson-aligned veins and fuel you into itself, and the divine will never leave quietly, especially when you, foolish one, ask for it.
It is like fire. He is like fire.
And you? You will burn as incendiary martyrs will.
The two of you laugh, Phainon’s face beaming at the story’s content, face puffing the slightest larger as you guide your way through the story, expressions painting each scene as you laugh along to the far-chronicle.
The flames of your souls dance along – perhaps too eagerly interlaced.
.. ah. ‘A jackdaw is always found near a jackdaw’ – that is true, for ‘birds of a feather will flock together’, would they not?
(.. certain letters at the top were crossed out in a rush. It looks messy, had it not been for small little hearts, sun, and star constellations that were drawn deftly across the brown-stained paper.)
My dear (name),
Forgive my awful handwriting – though in cruelly I wish nothing but the best for your eyes to ponder. I hope.. Pray, to hand you these letters myself s̶o̶m̶e̶ one day, and this will be the starting mark of it! You told me prior to today, sitting under that same flaxen tree behind my grandparent’s quite candidly rotting house that you liked handwritten letters, your face lightly brazen with the intricacies of the daybreak and that saccharine dawn-kissed smile i̶ ̶w̶i̶s̶h̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶o̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶i̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶K̶e̶p̶h̶a̶l̶e̶'̶s̶ ̶d̶a̶w̶n̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ on your face prompted me an idea I could not push down as I do the rest. So, these letters will be my stalemates to you, dear (name).
Now, sitting under the horribly lit oil lamp of my room, the light is frightfully flicking with trepidation in my face – surely I will get rid of this soon. Nevertheless, the point is that I am not sure where to start, for you have too much traits that I could ponder to myself over this crooked bedside table about for eternity and not get bored. It’s weird – my mind conjures all these thoughts when my eyes meet each curve of your face, happy or sad – sleepy or awake, but now, sitting here like this, it’s much harder to form the adequate words I believe you deserve. Nevermind that, I’m sure I could tell you this in person later, or in another letter, frankly, whichever you prefer, I’d do it.
But foremost, my first letter shall be a profound of a love letter. Yes, cliche, isn’t it? Oh, I’m sure you’d bend over your stomach laughing your pretty face out had you heard me utter such uncharacteristic words – but yes, if my first letter for you is about something, let it be about love that drew us woven.
(... Cyrene’s postscript note stays intact in the middle of the torn letter, the rest are burnt, crippling into darker edges on the sides – taunting. You do not know what the rest say.)
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
The fields of Aedes Elysiae were unchanging – for that was the one prominence that Phainon loved most in his home.
Unchanging, undeterred. The fields mewed a soft zephyr, the breeze grazed one’s forehead the same as do outsiders or homeward citizens, the distinction in power hierarchy doesn’t touch the people of his village, no.
There are no kings – ones closer to that role were the village chiefs, but the power they wield weren’t all-powerful, nor was it overwhelming, it was safe. Secured, and sure, they’d grab Phainon by the scruff of his shirt sometimes with stolen cabbages in his arms, but the village chief – the old man, with legs that worked for only farming and eyes that need not open fully – would only scoff, before roughly ruffling the bands of his snow white hair and urged him off with a scowl, arms still cladded with the (stolen – given, now, he supposed) cabbages.
There are no lows – when neighbors struggled with harsh weather, or crops refused to grow so, people would gather support, handing them a portion of the season’s harvest with a smile, or gather a fire pit into the town’s center, and everyone – most of all the adults, in the least – would clink glasses and tell mythical stories to the children that sat abide like passing the hay to the horses to eat, it’s simple as love among everyone equally that brewed him his own.
There are no arguments – at least ones that lasted, or escalated. Disputes in the village happen – of course they do, they are foremost emotions. Despite that, Phainon found that while sadness, anger, bitterness is always consciously present here, it is temporary as it comes, because when a fight would break out, the village chief would intervene with the same bored look old people tended to have and shake each party’s hands into a peace treaty somehow, then it’d go back to normal – happy, content. Anger never lasted, for it was only the storm that followed suite with a rainbow gaze.
There are no conflicts – no war, no battle royals to the death like Castrum Kremnos, within constant isolation like Aidonia, accoutred with rogues as Dolos, complicated in reason as the Grove of Epiphany, or large and garbed with a population larger than Phainon could comprehend like Okhema city resided – Aedes Elysiae is gentle, it is soft – unfettered by events that did not garner them, unaffected by the state of the larger polis, it was small, and it was all Phainon needed.
Really, Aedes Elysiae was the only place he ever fettered to, he ever wanted to be in.
The birds chirp with a cheery tune loudly here, they’re happily singing, diving through the flaxen fields with practical ease. His work is easy, gathering crops, harvesting rice plant panicles, red soil feeds, or even chasing those pesky chickens down the fields again – his work is facile, and Phainon likes it as it is.
Aedes Elysiae has Cyrene – his older friend, who looked like she held the world in her hands. She wasn’t much older, no, but Cyrene looked, talked, and seemed as if she held all knowledge more mature than adults of the village, her voice shimmered with a calm radiance, her pink hair fluttered with the wind’s bygones, and she knew everything–!
Cards, divination, books of high caliber, theatre plays with complicated vocabularies, all of it! She’d nod along to him on her lap going off about heroes, read stories to you and him for long as the two of you had begged for, sneaked the two of you snacks when she wasn’t supposed to, she was the bestest of best.
Aedes Elysiae was home to his parents, who meticulously built that roof to place him under – they were the best! They’d adore him with all that they could, pamper him with the best porridges, dishes and love, usher him into their bed when he’d cried over a scary, large monster encapsulating the village and drawing large body of crimson rivers – they’d wiped away the tears on his cheeks and buried him between their arms under the blanket, stuffy hot as the weather was, the warmth of their embrace was all that felt right. His father, Hieronymus was the strongest to Phainon, with arms that could lift both him and Cyrene up with ease, arms that carried him and you out of the kindergarten crying about nonsensical monsters. His father was strong. He could carry the heaviest boulders – Phainon wonders if one day, he could too.
His mother – Audata, was the kindest, most amazing woman he ever knew. She’d greet him gently, ruffle his hair while stuffing his mouth with nothing but delicacies. She’d embrace him after each school-day, carding her fingers around his snow-flaked hair with a soft, delicate, humming as he fell asleep.
She’d force him down and cut his hair when it grew too long for comfort, even as his hair flailed onto the floor like specks of snow, his mother would clean it up without complaint, and usher him another smile. His mother never complained. She was the most gentle woman ever.
And most importantly – most significantly, Aedes Elysiae has you.
You, with the soft smile, you, with the gentle jabs, you, with that sweet, gods – sweet, saccharine-like voice.
He’d always been the type to like sugar, sweets encircled with sugar made him jump with joy (and later with sugar rush) – you were just like sugar. Rough around the edges – you’ve chased him down more than he can count – but sweet to the core.
He could imagine himself standing in Aedes Elysiae, but he couldn’t imagine it happy without you.
The softest laugh, the kindest eyes, the most burrowed of gentleness that clawed into his chest and dug itself a space in the hollow of his heart, and him, who sewed it closed so the gentleness would not leave. You were constant – unchanging, almost like an immovable object.
He’d wake up, jog to your house and climb through your window with it purposefully left unlocked by courtesy of your doing, wake you up with a grin, to which you’d throw a pillow straight to his face, and the two of you would spend the rest of the day with tasks smaller than the world would know.
You were perpetual, you didn’t change, didn’t move, didn’t – grow, in a way.
He could walk through the most horrid of hells, and turn to his side and you’d be the constant with him.
He liked that the most. Liked how you wouldn’t leave, even if you two fought, either he or you would come to the other with teary eyes.
Even if you two didn’t agree – you’d bicker for a few minutes, then he’d nudge closer to you and say that he liked whatever you liked, your face would flush the cute red he liked, and smack him in the face.
The gentle you, the quiet you, the loud you – each of it was unchanging. Sweet, beautiful you, who’d gaze at the stars and pry, shake his arms for him to look, even if the stars – far away as they were – were in human form in front of him.
So in touch, so prominent, so .. real.
He could hide from everything, from everyone – duck under a tree, beneath the bed or hide from himself, but he could not, would not hide from you.
Real, touchable, tangible, immovable – his other half.
“Psst, what are you exploding your mind thinking about?” A cold sensation to his cheek made him jerk back – to see you, holding a can of drink to his face, a teasing smile on your own as you threw the drink to him.
He caught the can with one hand mindlessly, flicking it open with a playful scoff at your arrival. “Nothing. And even if I was, I’ll have you know, it’s a genius mind in action.”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure.” You hummed sarcastically, standing next to him, flicking open your own can of drink, the fizzy sound reverberates. “No really, what are you thinking about? You look perpetually deep in thought, it’s creeping me out.”
“Is it so weird that I’m deep in thought?”
“Yeah, you’re never thinking.”
He kicked your leg from the back of your knee, to which you only stumble forward with a laugh.
“.. I’m thinking about Aedes Elysiae,” He answered after a moment of silence, you sipping your drink in expectation, a brow raised, urging him to continue. “Of.. home, I guess. Is that weird?”
–Of course, Phainon tells you anyway, it’s not like he can deny you.
He can try to tell himself he won’t tell you but he turns out to either way – his thoughts are yours, it’s a routine simple as breathing.
You quirked an eyebrow at his words. “Kind of. What, you planning on leaving?”
“No! No, no – I mean, I’m just.. Rethinking a lot of things, to be honest.” His hands sheepishly caught the back of his neck, scratching it thoughtlessly, his free hand fidgets with the can in his hand. “I have this weird urge to.”
Phainon’s said weird too much by this point – he is kind of weird with all of this, where did it even come from, this urge?
A bile rises up from his trachea, blocking his airways, and consecutively extends to his thoughts. “Am I weird?”
You paused, looking at your drink – mouth just a slight away from the opening of the can. You turn to him, an unreadable look in your face. “.. Sure. But so what? Everybody’s weird.”
He narrowed his eyes at your words – it’s not really comforting. “You know that’s not what I meant.” He pouted against the mouth of his drink, lips pursing against each other.
If he’s weird, you’d leave, you’d run away, claw yourself out of his chest through the weaves he sewed and flee with a tail between your leg from his weird –
“I like you being weird,” Your hand is on his head now, fingers in the middle of the snowy landscape of his hair – Phainon stills, like a dog would. “Say it over and over. Your weird thoughts, your weird food cravings, random weird melancholic homesickness even if you’re at home.”
He unconsciously leaned into your touch, eyes lidding close, the drink almost forgotten as he focused on the hand – your hand, uncalloused, soft on his head. “.. doesn’t that make you weird?”
“I never said I wasn’t.”
Phainon laughed a hitch at that, a low sound from his chest, it almost made you shiver. “So we’re both weirdos?”
You smiled at him, one that sang what couldn’t from your throat, one that spoke of utter reassurance, one that he wanted to staple onto you for eternity – one that held his heart, one that he handed his heart to.
“We are.” You’d retracted your hand from his head, and he could feel himself sulking over the loss of contact, fingers twitching to grab your wrist himself and card your fingers back into his hair by force.
Phainon moved closer to you, and without a word, rested his head on your shoulder thoughtlessly, his hair tickling your neck. “.. I miss home.”
“Yeah?” You two were home. What a weird thing to say.. How sweetly sorrowful – this weird, aching feeling that derived from your stomach when he said it, as if you felt it as well.
You two were weird.
Like .. an even odd, a wise fool, a brawling love, a loving hate, that waking sleep that burns teeth into the cravings of inedible flesh, that fire that lights at water – aching for the pain, relishing in being relinquished. That heavy lightness, that pungent bitter sweetness –
How weird you were.
How weird he was.
How weird, that even with that – you hold him still.
How weird, that he looks at you like you were meant to stay, fire in his eyes that gleamed when you left, even if it’s to go home for the night – fire in his eyes when you’d stayed, and the weird, burning desire that cascaded in him, buried into his instincts to make you stay, keep staying, and always stay.
It burns at him, not the burn that was bad, not the burns that radiated to his epidermis and blisters a harsh red when he stuck his hand in the fire recklessly, no – it’s the burn that made him crave for it. The burn that fired in his heart, then his skin, tickling it with utmost sincerity, it makes him want to reach his greedy fingers out and scratch it – the burn.
How weird.
“.. Stay, (name).”
It’s not a request, doesn’t sound like one. More like a demand, it’s finalized in Phainon’s words.
You blinked at his words, the drinks you brought for the both of you forgotten, his voice muffled into your neck, arms around your waist tightly as you held him.
He’d said it so quietly, almost like he didn’t want you to hear it, almost like you were privy to a thought he’d let run through his fingers and slip through his mouth.
You hear it anyways, and you answer – you always will, you could not bear to not answer him.
“I’m not leaving.”
How weird – it almost felt like you were lying to him.
“.. Hey, (name)?”
“Hm?”
“.. Those birds, salt and pepper.” Phainon started, mouth moving against your neck.
You huffed at the old memory. “You mean the birds that we tried to save?”
“Yeah,” He said, a melancholic tone noted in his voice. “Do you think–”
Salt and Pepper – much strange names they were, real creative of the two of you – were two birds that you and Phainon found lying desecrated on the ground, both huffing for life, fighting for what remains of the fire in their small bird heart.
Even something so small has to fight, not always because they want to – far from it, but because fate orders them to.
You two tried – as much as two little kids could, anyway – to save them, but as do all wild animals that had been hunted down, it was to an extent, of no avail.
Salt was a white bird with textured fringes, as the name suggested. It was an active bird, no doubt.
Pepper was a stygian, much smaller bird – quieter, and the first one to die.
You had been there the whole time, while Salt flew around in joyous momentum, its wings bandaged by scraps of gauzes that Phainon could dig out, Pepper’s wings only fluttered a weak beat, its peck unmoving, not a single sound was drawn out of the black bird – its wings, which should be so open, free – only drooped further down, the edges frayed and ragged.
Phainon had offered Pepper some worms – hands dirtied as he nudged the worms to Pepper’s mouth, following a fruitless action.
When Pepper no longer responded, when its breathing was no longer viable, not even once as you poked its wings, not even once as Phainon blew some air into it – the bird didn’t move, its wings spread open as it took its last breath in your hand.
Salt, the white bird, seeing this – seemed like it didn’t understand, and instead flocked its wings around Pepper’s dead body, as if waiting for the black bird to rise up again, fluttering around with quickened activity.
The two of you had cried with the bird alternating between your hands and Phainon’s until late that evening, where Cyrene came home with obvious shock on her face as she took in the sight of your snot-covered faces and a dead bird on your palm.
She’d have calmed the two of you down, and pried the bird–Pepper’s stygian body away to bury in the soil of Phainon’s front yard – whereas the white bird, Salt, was released back into the wild, with you and Phainon waving it a happy goodbye.
Pepper was laid to an early death – you can’t help thinking that it could’ve survived, but pushed the thought down. Salt was free, it’d live through the worst and flung its wings to bare the sky with glee–
– A few days later, you’d found Salt lying a defaced mess, no doubt hunted by an apex predator in the same yard that Pepper laid buried – you didn’t tell Phainon this.
How could you bear to? To tell him that the one bird that sought freedom fell to the same fate as if it had just given up – to tell him the white bird, who’d made it out alive, had been treated not an ounce kinder when it touched freedom – you couldn’t say that.
So instead, you quietly buried Salt’s white, desecrated body near Pepper’s own grave in Phainon’s front yard – Cyrene looked at you with slight pity in her eyes as you dug a grave for the white bird.
. . .
“.. Do you think that Pepper could have made it out?” You finished the thought for Phainon, to which he doesn’t respond for a heartbeat.
You take his silence as a nudge to continue. “.. Would it have been better for Pepper to make it out?”
You think back to Salt’s dead, cold body, though its eyes were glazed with freedom, baring its wings to the sky, only to be victim to a glass wall of a matter of equality in cycles.
Everything was in this strange triangular hierarchy, you noticed.
“It would’ve been, right?” Phainon replied, eyes a darker shade – fear, almost. “(name), it would’ve been, right?”
You flinched at his words, your eyes flickering away from his to find a semblance of guilt in the yellow reeds in front of you. “Maybe for Pepper.. It was better for it to – die first.”
“What?” You could feel Phainon’s stare as he lifted his head from the crook of your neck, his arms around your waist loosening as if he couldn’t believe your words – not a bit of it.
How was it better to die? How was it easier to kill yourself instead of fight–
“It looked peaceful, didn’t it?” You recalled the black bird with its wings open, its last breath taken on your palm.
Dead, and defiled as it looked, when your eyes wandered to its tiny face, all you could find was a serene expression – peace, fleeting as it was.
You felt your spine grow cold at the thought.
“That’s not true.” Replied the white-haired boy, hands moving from your waist to grasp at your shoulder, almost adamant to make you believe. “That isn’t true. It can’t be easier to die than live.”
You clasped a hand over his. “Sometimes,” Your voice is quieter, serene-like, the voice like a mother would. “It’s harder to live than to just die.”
Maybe that’s how Pepper felt, you bitterly thought.
For Salt – the pallid bird who freed itself with wings spread ajar, freedom at the touch of its feathers – even that burning scalding freedom got it nowhere but a route’s dead end.
But for Pepper – that dusk colored bird whom seeked none but a death of their own, you can’t help but think–
A better fate was it, to die on one’s own volition than even fight to live and die as fate intends.
“Don’t say that.” Phainon’s voice is clipped when he shakes you back to reality. “Don’t say it like you’re considering it too.”
“What?” You couldn’t help but huff a small laughter. “I’m not, don’t be silly.”
“You sound like you are.”
Did you? You didn’t notice yourself.
“You’re worrying too much,” You lead his face back into the crook of your neck by a steady hand behind his head, breath shimmering down your collarbone deftly – lest he finds it in himself to overthink another matter. “Just a comparison. Besides, we’re all gonna die of old age in a village separated as this, what are you worrying for?”
“.. I guess you’re right.” Phainon muttered into your neck, the sound a low vibration as he felt your heart beneath the aching of his chest, your bodies fitted – ovetailed against one another with seamless difficulty, it felt like he was trying to consume your body into his own.
Your heart beats – a thump – another thump.
Repetitive.
The same sound again and again – so human, so alive. Phainon pressed himself further onto you.
“Phainon.”
“Don’t leave, (name).”
The words were whispered as though they were worship of prayers hidden among depths of simply skin and skin over and over again – among the ichor, crimson or gold – he tore the words out of his chest like a voiceless prayer.
You responded to him in kind. “.. I won’t leave.”
“Say it again.”
“I won’t leave.”
“Again.”
“I won’t leave.”
“One more time–”
You grasped his head with two hands cupping his cheek, forcing him to look you in the eyes. “Phainon. I told you, I’m not leaving.”
“Swear it. Swear it the way we always do.”
Phainon nudged you with a tightened grip of your shoulder – he means the silly method of promise the two of you made every time you swore to each other something.
Nothing ceremonious, or grandiose – just a routine that was so painfully, utterly yours and his.
“Cross my heart,” You withdrew your hands from his face, drawing a line from the right of your shoulder to your left, crossing the line over the bridge of your heart, thumping insistently in your chest. “And be torn into the sunrise,”
‘And be torn into the sunrise’ – an extra verse the two of you had made and added yourself – it was a running joke, since Kephale’s dawn was always up, so prominent from the fields of Aedes Elysiae, it meant everyday, each minute, was sunrise.
Therefore, (in Phainon’s words, anyway) anything that is sworn within the oath will always be true, torn into the skies themselves, forever.
You continued, looking into his eyes. “I’ll stay with you. Swear it.”
You will. For as long as he allowed you to.
“.. Swear it.”
He needed you to.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 4.
Dear my beloved (name),
These letters are starting to feel more like journaling than letters, but that’s fine. It just means I have a lot to tell you! That’s besides the point – (name), I’ve been wracking my brain over just what ‘love’ means. I asked Cyrene, and she said love is gentle – like the stories of heroes, or the wracking tragedy of a love fallen or just a cool fight scene, not that it made sense to me at that time. How can love be ‘something’ like ‘gentle’ and ‘tragic’? Love is simply romantic, right? Like those.. Kissing stuff, I tried to pry Cyrene for more ‘words of wisdom’ but she only peered me away and told me that I’d get it someday – I doubt that. So I asked my Ma and Pa, where they said love is strong – do people’s definition of love just get more confusing as I keep asking along? How is love even strong? I bet I can beat it in an arm wrestling battle – it’s just a feeling, isn’t it? Ahh, I’m being all weird again with these questions, but the reason I asked was because I couldn’t define what love meant to me, to us. Is it weird? (Sorry, I keep asking that nowadays) Is it weird to not understand love when I see it each day?
I think, to me, love is the way your eyes light against the dawn of the sky when you turn to me, your hair subsequently darts against the softest zephyr that was sent to greet you, the way your voice shimmers, a clearer emergence in seas of discordant sounds and endless stars in which you, yet again, still shine the brightest – like you were born for it.
Maybe it’s okay if I don’t have a definition of love – no one technically has to, right?
Sometimes I suspect you were made from the same core as stars were, hahah. I only ever memorized one constellation (much to Cyrene’s dislike, you know she kept trying to teach me?), and it was because it reminded me so vertuably of you. It’s called the Lyra! Something-something falling hawk (or eagle, actually - was that the same thing?), but that’s besides the point. It has this star named Vega inside, and it’s one of the brightest stars ever to map the night sky – I think that’s just like you. The brightest of souls, the most resplendent and shining of hearts in a map of stars.
Also, it has a lyre, kind of like the lullabies you often sang to me, so it’s just like you! Hence why I like the constellation so much. Imagine how much I could learn if all the studies were done about you!
(name), you say such philosophical things all that time that I can’t help but wonder – if I, and only I, could take a peek inside that brain of yours and see for myself how you think – would that bear us closer? If you’d let me look inside of you?
Oh, I’ve got it!
My definition of love: is you!
I still don’t really get it, but when adults speak of those thumping in your chest, the weird stomach worms wiggling around, or when your head gets all fuzzy and weird – that’s supposed to be love, right?
Weird, though, I think it feels just like when I start to get sick or overloaded on sugar – is that reallllyyy love?
But I guess, the difference is that the strange impeccable feeling from love brings me more joy than I can simply put to words – and this strange feeling only derives from you. So, in a short, easy, Phainon definition, love is you, (name)!
Still kind of confused, but I think with this definition, I won’t have to pry Cyrene any longer than I already have.
Anyway! I hope you won’t find this letter specifically, I think it’s a little embarrassing since this is all just me needlessly ranting about how much I see you in even maps of stars in the sky or the strange strange pit inside of my stomach that seems to scream for you – please don’t tease me later!!
Forever yours, Phainon ~
(This letter remains uninjured and undeterred by ragged edges as do the other letters, it’s full and crisp – like a new letter written just minutes ago. If not for the circumstances, you could laugh at the doodles he had placed – how sweet.)
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
The dawn of Kephale shimmers beneath the touch of your eyes, you close them, appalled by the brightness of it – the reeds fight against the weight of your back above the golden field, your arms reach out, trying, and failing, to block the blazing light of the dawn.
Your arm falls back impatiently to your side, the brightness unrelenting against your closed eyelids.
Here, under this stupid, same tree – you could pretend time stilled for even a moment of your own interest. You could heave your breath in and believe that the world stays as it is.
You could pretend you weren’t growing up.
The reeds move again with the deliverance of the soft zephyr, mocking your own thoughts. You scoff at it.
Time was a monster.
A monster who would swallow up his children – or raise the heavens against humanity, or impede the nature of mortality.
Time was unfair.
An unfair reality that – even if you wish, even if you beg, even if you try and try to grab it into your palms – things will change.
You could claw at it with your might, scream till your throat was hoarse and beg for a time reimburse, but in its unfair nature, time will not respond.
Time hitches, time stutters, time challenges, time –
Does not wait.
What are you searching for?
You give pause, and you’re almost keen on saying ‘only time will tell’, but Oronyx, Time, remains quiet against you, what cruel titan.
Everything runs out of time. IT is what fate precedes – it is predetermined. This, cruel, but real knowledge makes your inside squirm in relentless questioning.
The walls of your house wear down, sticking with scratches that pierces into the deeper layers, chipping away at the paint. Even something upstanding as your home runs on borrowed time.
The trees around Aedes Elysiae don't stand forever. It was planted – rooted to live, but is cut down in favor of materials for casting fire. The crops – the reeds, golden, bright, as they are, they get cut off, harvested, they end.
The animals, too. The farms in Aedes Elysiae nurture the pigs, feed the chickens and foster the horses, but when time arrives, the grown-ups carry their near-dead bodies and take them for harvest, as food. Animals have an end – like those stygian and pallid birds.
The scarecrows come to ruin by time as well. They too, aren’t spared from the blizzards of the wind, nor the harsh storms of the titans’ sorrows. The mannequin wears down by little, the clothes dirty and the birds chip away at the ‘human-like protector’. You wince.
Everything is preceded, predetermined, planned – everything has a clear beginning, a clear, fated end that befits their stature.
You know things end. You know it too well. Your mother who’d claw at your skin, begging to live, shaking your shoulder as if you were the fates that ordained her ill nature.
She’d flung the medicine to the floor, clenched her nails into the pillow hard enough for it to gain scratch marks – and lacerated you when the life last left her, and all that flung out of her mouth weren’t a sentimental last word but string of curses – at the gods, at you.
Your mother was a good woman.
Then, she’d left with a declaration that took the last of her strength with her: ‘Let this child be cursed – for time takes all!’
Unstable, unkind to you – but good. You want to believe so.
The world had been unkind to her, and she needed something to be unkind to.
So what if that was you?
Could you blame her?
Once twitching, once yelling, her kind, good body, fell limp in the total silence of your breath.
You stared at her body on the bed for hours.
You feel an itching need to be unkind to someone else. Something. Anything.
You feel an itching need to throw your fist into flesh, draw your nails into skin until it drives blood–
Until a familiar figure pressed his palm into your shoulder. The touch is grounding.
Until those azure eyes flew with concern over your tear-stricken face, and pressed you into the crook of his shoulder wordlessly, allowing himself to sink onto the floor as well you, sobs wrecking into the material of his blue tunic.
Time takes all.
Time is unkind.
But you don’t want it to take him.
And you will not allow it to be unkind to him.
Your hands braced behind his shoulder, as if you needed to plant him closer to you, until each atom in your bodies were magnetized to the other, until he was woefully you, as you were him.
Sobs had wrack through your chest, then, and he didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. His hands just held you tighter to him.
Time takes all.
But you pray, if there’s a single titan out there that listens – be it Mnestia or the unanswering Oronyx – let him be the sole thing not be taken by time.
You would beg if need be.
They don’t need to answer, you don’t want to hear them. They just needed to keep him alive, that’s all you ever cared for.
His long, calloused fingers – probably dirtied by the mud from busying the horses into the den – carded through your hair, softly wracking its way through your unruly, unkempt locks.
You claw at his clothes again, your fingers raked into the cotton of his shirt roughly.
"Look at me". He had whispered, his mud fingers moving to your face, turning it to him. "Look only at me."
It’s not as if you could bear to look at anything but him. His eyes burn into yours, so clear, even with tears blurring at your eyelids. The flecks of gold in his blue eyes shined brighter when he was so close.
Time takes all.
You wished it would not take this moment from you, even if your body was rotten into the soils of the earth, becoming one with the planted seeds of the dirt. You wished he would stay forever, whether in memories or otherwise.
You wish, wish, and wish.
But time blurs all, even memories.
“Hey, wake up.”
You awake blearily to a grinning face, Phainon’s figure above you blocking the sun.
You glared at his cheshire cat-like smirk, all content with waking you up from your comforting nap under the flaxen tree. He moves to stumble himself down beside you before you could kick him where the sun doesn’t shine.
“What’re you dreaming about?” Phainon observed as you sat up, stretching your arms over your head at the strain of lying under the tree, you huffed at his arrival.
“My ma. The past.”
His eyes narrowed at your response. “-- Well stop thinking ‘bout your Ma. I didn’t even like ‘er, totally sucked.”
“Hey!”
“What? It’s the truth! She was mean to you.”
You rolled your eyes at his words. “She wasn’t ‘mean’, she was tired and sick.”
“Yeah? Well when I’m sick, I don’t throw plates at you.”
“She had anger issues.”
“She had a lot of issues.”
You punch Phainon square in the shoulder, he only yelped, rubbing against the spot where you had aggressively offended him. “She was my Ma.”
“My Ma doesn’t act like yours,” He recalled – the vast difference between your family and his. “Moms are supposed to love and adore their kids in any circumstance, not scream and try to fist fight them. And no, being sick isn’t a valid excuse.”
You scoffed at him again, crossing your arms deftly over your chest. “.. Whatever! She –” Your mind races for an excuse, a justification – nothing comes up but her distraught face, the words ‘time takes all’ swimming around.
“You don’t owe her anything.” Phainon, as if sensing your discomfort, draws an arm around your shoulder, pulling your body to him. “She was a jerk, simple as that. Even if she was your Ma.”
His words give you pause – you couldn't deny the truth in it, not really. Instead, you question. “Then why is love so labeled with hate?”
Phainon doesn’t know how to answer that. The hand that was subconsciously drawing circles on your shoulder stiffened in place. “.. Because it’s human nature.”
Did your mom hate you because it was in her nature? Did she yell at you because in her love, hate was the only way she could persist the knowledge that you were physically there? Was hate her love? Your head hurts.
Suddenly, a strong arm pulls you into his chest, positions now switched as you feel your head pushed down to listen to the beat of his heart. His chin on your head, fingers gently unfurling your hair.
“You don’t owe her your defense, your justifications, (name), she doesn’t deserve it. She may have loved you in a cruel way, but you do not owe her a love bigger than what she gave you.”
You don’t respond. Instead, you breathe him in, his scent lingering around the depths of your head, making it fuzzy with something akin to adoration, or devotion.
You inhale once more through his chest, letting the musky scent, marked with something so uniquely his, as if you could take out his heart and crawl your way into a quiet little spot and stay there forever.
So that when his time ran out, you would rot with him.
“I guess I don’t.” You murmured into him, to which he didn’t respond, only tightening his hold around you.
A beat of silence, before he turned your head upwards to look at him again. “Which means you owe me a love as big as the universe!”
You smiled – despite yourself – at his attempt at levity. “That implies you give me a love bigger than the universe.”
“Course I do.” He grinned, all boyish-like and soft. “You might run away if you realize just how big it is.”
Time takes all.
He will be no exception.
Your mouth moves before your brain does, it runs with your heart. “Show me.”
. . . .
.. You can’t help but want to know more – and more, and more and more until nothing is left of you but the knowledge and the burning, scalding desire to know.
The knowledge flows out of you. It takes the form of a black goo.
It burns at the tips of your fingers but you scoop it up and fill it into your mouth until you choke on the desecrating thick liquid.
Your fingers reach for more, greedy as they are.
You want to know why time is so cruel.
You want to know if your mother had ever loved you – if there were a single atom in her body that spared a thought for you that didn’t contain anger.
You want to know what you are made of – why the gods, Kephale, had sculpted you like this. Flesh among flesh.
You want to know Phainon.
You want to know what he likes, the weather he prefers, the things he scrunches his nose up at, the things he jumps up in glee at – what specific spot on the curve of his neck that made his breath hitch, the small birthmarks near his temple, to which you trace – the shape of his lips, sometimes chapped, other times smooth.
You want to know what constellations he had traced on your skin – if it had meaning. You want to know why he looked at you as if you hung the brightest stars in the sky even though he was the spatial mass that held the stars together.
Perhaps this is love – the need and burning craving to know.
. . _
“Show you?” He tilted his head slightly, you nod.
_ _
Time takes all.
You are a coward. You realize in Phainon’s embrace.
“Show me your love. How big it is.” Your hands move from bracing against his chest to meet his face, hands gently smoothing the pad under his eyes with a reverent manner.
Your body was slotted between his thighs, a position that would scare any other kid – never you two.
“.. Okay.”
. _
You are all talk, but no action. You question this, question that – raise doubts at this, peer into books for hours on end like that, but what do you do for these doubts of yours?
Nothing.
You know time takes all. You know everything is predetermined. You thought you’d have a breakthrough, and fight against fate, will yourself up and fight against the preordained nature of destiny, if you were brave enough to question the will and order of the world, weren’t you brave enough to challenge it?
_ .
“Is this enough of a declaration, (name)?”
You cannot think.
Not clearly, because your back was now pressed to the reeds, his arms are by the sides of your head, his body lingering over you on top.
From this angle, he looked more like your Phainon, blushing, nervous and boyish, unlike the hero Cyrene told you he’d someday be.
You’re splayed out on the grass, hair fluttering senselessly against the grass as each strand fills out the gap in the dirt, consumed by the tension.
You swallow a bile from your throat, your voice yet again sounds your desire without your will. “.. More.”
. .
Time takes all.
You allow it, allow the predetermined fate to overtake you, everyone, because you, in your brave camaraderies, your large, imprudent words—
You are inherently selfish, pathetic, and most of all, a coward, who only knew to question but not to challenge.
The knowledge can flow out of you forever, you could know everything – but if you couldn’t trial anything, what worth does the knowledge that buries into your head – flowing out of your trachea, have?
_
“You’re so adorable.” Phainon murmured, all soft and lingering.
His hands move along the curves of your sides, tracing your body as he moves up, up, up – each trace burns with a brazen fire as his fingers move, he stares at his hand as he mapped your body.
Your breath all but hitches. “You’re flattering me.”
“No, I mean it,” He moved his gaze from his lingering hand to your eyes, you searched his eyes for deception as soon as he looked at you, but you found nothing but determination. “You’re so..”
He laced his fingers around your hand, gently bringing it to his lips, pressing a kiss with a devotion that could only be named as worship to your knuckles, it burned your hand.
He softly parts his lips from your hand after a moment, and you feel an ache you don’t acknowledge from the absence of his lips on you.
“.. adorably divine.” And adorably his – Phainon smiled.
_ . _ _
Time takes all.
You feel empty, even in Phainon’s embrace.
Your heart feels abhorrently hollow, like you needed him to fill it up for you. It felt suffocating.
Like there was a spot in your soul – made to fit Phainon’s body, to fit his big stature and it is empty. You needed him to fill it.
“Your hands are so small.” Phainon whispered, devout and all.
His much larger hand lacing back into yours, fitting tightly – he hums in approval. It felt as if you were made to fit him like a puzzle would.
“It was larger than yours when we were younger.”
Phainon tutted, bringing your hand to eye-level, he appraised it quietly. “Well I’m grown now, aren’t I?”
“Barely. You’re like a child sometimes still.”
“Yeah?” He hummed – so soft, so uncharacteristically different.
You find yourself blushing at the way he said it before you could curse your mind to stop.
“.. Yeah.”
“I’ve been getting a lot bigger, though. See?” He lets go of your hand, if only to stretch out his arms and flex the bicep that had been growing – which is quite large, if you’ll be honest.
You blink – and you take in a good look at Phainon once more.
He’s growing. Larger, shoulders broader, chest more lifted, the lopsided grin on his face is still not misplaced but it’s wider, hair fluffier and longer, not unruly like it was before, and he’s—
Being worn down by time.
This is just the peak of the mountain. If it continues, he’ll be worn down. He’ll decay. Fruits are ripe first before they are rotted – he’s just another specimen of time–
“.. I’ll bet the horses are heavy lifting.” You swallowed the thought down, letting it settle in your stomach.
“Pfft – totally are! Y’know, I nearly got assaulted by another this morning. I swear, there’s some personal grudge, it’s not like I poisoned their hay or anything!”
You laughed softly as his hands fell back, bracing themselves to both sides of your face. “What about me? Have I grown?”
Phainon stilled – like, frozen in place kind of still. Like how still a child would be in front of a feral dog still. You see his eyes rake over you, and you also, freeze. For a reason different than his. You feel his eyes wander on your body from bottom to top, and his expression is unreadable at best.
His hands move to take a strand of hair into his fingers, appraising it. “You did. Your hair’s different.”
“Just my hair? Surely there’s more..” You pursed your lips into a slight pout.
Was your hair the only thing that’s changed? Weren’t you, give or take, taller by even a few inches? Prettier?
Phainon shook his head gently with a smooth laugh stitched to that smile he always wore. Tender. “No, not just your hair.”
“.. You’re going to send us both down the reeds if you hold me so tightly.” You said – though the words do not match your inner conviction.
You want him to keep holding you. You want him to squeeze you as tight as he could. Even if his fingernails had dug into your veins and clawed out your blood. Even if it sent the two of you down the yellow hill. You don’t care.
Phainon only chuckled. Not releasing his hold on you in the slightest. It’s firm – but not enough to hurt. He would never hurt you.
He ignores your warning and cards his fingers along your body again. “Your face is different.”
“.. Where?”
He moved his fingers to your jaw, drawing his fingertips along it – it feels ticklish on your skin, but not unwelcoming. “Here. Your face’s a bit wider in your cheeks than it was before.”
You blinked. You did not know that. Was that a bad thing? Were you ran down by time—
“Here as well. Your collarbones are more pronounced.” His fingers moved again.
They never ceased to move, you realized. He always seemed to fidget something, the hem of his sleeve, his shirt.
This time, his fingers linger on the depth of your collarbone.
“I didn’t.. I didn’t notice.”
“I do.” Responded Phainon, the words a casual mask that made you heat up inside. His eyes trail from your collarbone back to your eyes.
You paused, the words piling up in your throat.
“.. Where else?” You pushed him.
He stilled for a beat, before his fingers moved again. You find your heart at a rapid speed as his fingers deftly move lower. “Here.”
“.. And here, and–” Phainon guided his fingers down the valley of your breasts like it was something so casual – your face heats up, a warm emergence – his hands continued down to your stomach, trailing it through the fabric of your tunic, before he stops with a hitch of a breath below your belly.
He abruptly pulls his fingers off of you before it could move on its own accord, hands now back on the grass to brace himself over you, his eyes completely avoided your gaze, but you see the growing hue of pink on his face even from the side – which would be an adept opportunity for you to tease him, had your face not been a bright red as well.
.. what was the burning desire that begged him to continue? Your hands almost move on reflex to grab at his wrist and trace his fingers back lower.
– What a disgusting desire. It’s abhorrent. It’s greedy. You swallow the bile in your throat once more.
Phainon cleared his throat loudly, eyes finally finding yours again. You feel that greedy desire creeping up below your skin.
“.. Ahem! Point is, we’re both pretty grown up, huh?” Phainon coughed out, turning his face back to you in the most schooled-phaidon-expression he could mutter.
The grin on his face would’ve been convincing, if his pink hue of a blush wasn’t so prominent to you.
“I guess so. You’re nearly the tallest kid in our class now.” You smiled, your face – the traitorous nerves that hid beneath your skin they were – was a beet red spectacle as well.
The two of you stared at each other.
Unspeaking – just.. Stared. As if the world had unraveled around the both of you.
As if the very act of looking, seeing could convert you closer into one mass or nothing at all.
Before you both broke out in fits of laughter. The noise jovial among you.
“Your face is so red!” Phainon said, his laugh unceasing as he finally let his arms down, falling next to you on the patch of grass.
You kicked him in retaliation, he laughed harder. “And yours isn’t? You look like those apples on the trees behind your house!”
“Ouch. Low blow, comparing me to apples? Why not something more grandiose?”
“Mm, that’s assuming you deserve such title.”
“Hey!”
A pause or two, and the two of you fall back into a comforting laugh.
.. If you’d ignored the burning, scorching heat that bubbled below when his touch went lower.
The trail his fingers left indented your stomach, you could almost feel it. You could almost yearn for it.
Time takes all.
But you’ll make sure it takes you first.
You are selfish. Heedlessly so.
But then again, you were only human.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
The engravings on the walls mark a pair. This engraving on this stone slate is smooth – unlike the slate prior.
This one felt as if it had been redone over and over again until it perceived the texture less carved of stones more insinuations of polished reflections of glass.
A hand smooths over the engravings, it does not fight back.
Νίψον ἀνομήματα μὴ μόναν ὄψιν.
The transcriptions had screamed. A billowing sound – ‘Wash the sins, not only the face’ – sins?
Depictions of the slate are smooth, and it carves out the two figures yet again. Mortal, and divine hero.
The carefully chiseled hero is slumped – of what seems to be rivers of liquid-like substance flowing from each crack on the hero’s body – be it ichor or tears.
Etched near, are fire – a nebulous incision marking every visible gap of the stone slate – the fire spins in a meaningless pattern, chiseled with carelessness yet is the smoothest of all distinct engravings.
Despite that, they still look divine.. If not for the human act they were perceiving.
For the hero holds the mortal in their arms in the middle of the large slate.
The position of the two sends an alarming shiver over █████’s body. Despite that, █████ only smiles in anticipation, an abhorrent twisted grin – though it derives not much more than a neutral grinning expression.
The mortal’s limbs are twisted wrongly – their arms flailed like they were trying to spread it oh so open, but it only looks as if they were painfully twisted. Arms twisting in contrasting directions, fingers unrecognizable as a living being.
Their neck is horribly, sickeningly twisted. To what was supposed to be facing the hero, the cervical vertebrae only twists their head to eye the ground, inhumane.
To what is seen, their skin is pale, much nauseatingly so – costal cartilages of the rib cage peeks out of the skin, diving through their own flesh with little care, it’s hard to believe such bones and flesh were one before.
Everytime one looks away from the mortal’s abhorrently decaying body – a new wound is sustained on the slate the moment their eyes flee back.
The femur is cracked, legs an aberrant revulsion of state.
The temporal skull debauched, mountains of liquid flailing out in agony.
The sternum damaged.
The patella unrecognizable.
Each bone broken.
Muscles a fatuos mess.
The clavicle contorted—
Again, and again.
More, and more, and so much more—until nothing was discernible.
Until the mortal’s body was nothing but a mush of flesh and sin that fought to remain, only for neither to sustain in the end.
The hero remains unchanging in place, however.
The hero’s arms remain steadfast each time – every time a new wound, new bone was sustained a broken menagerie, the hero doesn’t change his footing, he just gathers them closer, and closer to his chest until nothing of the mortal was left – until he was embracing nothing but flesh and the abhorrent hope that he tried so desperately to bury into that mortal.
The slate twists with each glance away and back.
…
O, imprudent one – such folly behaviors that you pertain! You divine have swollen up their buds until nothing of them was left, you and your brash, immodest fire have pried so deep into their souls that you rooted your beatific sins into their pure veins – did you know?
They reek of sin. They reek of sin not of their roots but of the seeds that you clawed deep into their flesh.
. . _
But you seek what they cannot give you! Divine, you seek their life to be infinitive – just as yours do.
Cease your yearning, divinity.
Your life will repeat again, and again if you bear this so adamant, but much like infinity – like a snake finding its own tail, biting down and never letting go – you will only create this paradox for yourself, a cycle of unforgiving consequences as you tie them further to your depraved self.
_ .
The divine will have faults, and your faults – bringer of destruction – is the remaining notion that you will never disappear. You may change forms, switch out parts insubstantial..
But you will forever remain in that eternal cycle of destruction, and thus, re-creation.
You do not deserve them.
Perhaps the divine are more foolish than even the mortals – why would you dare to seek creation in what can only be defined as your destruction embodied?
You do not deserve them.
.. Pathetic.
Behead your fate and yearn for the gods’ answers – clean your sins on this mortal you bound so.
You do not deserve them.
Whether in hope, or negligence in vain – prisoner, do not mistake your standing.
You do not deserve them.
‘Wash the sins, not only the face’, ravager.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Phainon has always considered himself to be somewhat of a ‘ball of fire’. It’s cliche, sure – but he thinks it’s what everyone means when they call him deliverer.
A fiery wheel.
Spinning in constant notion, that solar coronation halo that crowned him a state higher than the cards that the other kids in Aedes Elysiae got. Phainon was a fire concoction of woeful emotions.
Whereas the kids would get ‘drunkard’ or.. ‘villager’, Phainon received the deliverance – he was that fiery wheel, wasn’t he?
He was crowned that wheel.
He spins like a ball of fire, his teacher, Pythias would say.
Standing up to answer a question with absolute confidence. Completing his exams with a handwriting sprawled like it owed him something, as if his words could save embroidery in history. His words sprung like fire. It was refreshing, his teacher remarked.
He fights like a ball of fire, his friends complimented.
They swung their wooden swords all day in the flaxen fields – Andreas would scoff a compliment, Livia would exclaim with joy, Iraklis would pat him on the shoulder. He was made for the sword, they praised. Like a spinning fire that didn’t douse, they repeated. He’d be an amazing savior, they chanted as he freed a chimera from a bush that knew only to trap.
He lived like a ball of fire, his parents opined, their voices rang clear bells like the one in front of his home.
His mother said he grew like a ball of fire, his father said he ate like a consuming ball of fire. They say he grew like fire did – lively and active. So vigorous, they breathed. So thoughtful, they hummed as he saved bits of leftover food for the animals in the field.
He had the determination like a ball of fire, his trusted friend and part-time consultant, Cyrene would mention.
Her eyes glimmered with mischief as she flicked his forehead. He had motivation unceasing like fire, she whispered. It was like the act of deliverance, and time would tell, her maturity waged with her words.
He smiled like a ball of fire, his other half, most beloved one, had said to him.
You said he smiled like a ball of fire, with the dawn sliding down the sides of your face and stray leaves carded in your hair, his breath hitched then.
It’s different from what other people have told him. Smiling? That’s hardly anything compared to fighting like a ball of fire!
Smiling is too.. Intimate, perhaps.
He doesn’t find himself liking your definition.
(Besides, in his opinion, your smile outweighs any fire, star that burns – even the mass of a star that is the sun.)
The fire flowed endlessly through his veins, burning at each carnasses in him.
It fought to grasp each nerve that raptured him, it sought to clench that ardor of his so – that fire, that fire that was him, that fire that was solely his psyche – threatened to clutch at him.
–
Now, that fire burnt through Aedes Elysiae.
Each breath that Phainon took had his lungs protesting – it clawed its trajectory up Phainon’s throat as he slashed through what he could of monsters emerging from the black tide.
His grip on the sword only tightens, and Phainon’s circulatory system pulses with yellow trickling blood.
And everything hurts. His body is slammed to the ground once more, he stands up, the stupid makeshift sword still in hand.
Because Aedes Elysiae is burning.
He tries to turn away, flees his eyes on something else. Phainon looks back in hopes the scenery is back to the home he loves so – but it doesn’t.
When he looks away, all he sees are burgeoning fire, when he turns – hoping for the sight of the calm village he knew – he sees only more of those fires that persisted.
He could look back and forth as much as he pleases – it would never change the scenery.
He doesn’t want to keep fighting, no.
If it were up to him, he would lie back down onto the reeds of his home – albeit slightly stricken with newfound blood – but he would let his golden blood rain down as he sighed a hint of relief.
But he doesn’t get that relief, not him, not the deliverer.
Because it was his Aedes Elysiae that was burning.
His Aedes Elysiae that had the chiefs that wrung through the children with life lessons – he caught them screaming in stricken agony not long ago as the blade of a monster pulled through the flesh of the old man that used to carry him away from the fields.
Now, the village chief’s body is wrung through the ground, spilling organs onto the grass.
He wanted to puke.
His Aedes Elysiae that had no conflicts – nothing like this. It was peaceful. His peaceful home that harbored no conflict. J
ust the day earlier, he was hanging out the old, wrinkly port of the village – now that very wooden port was desecrated into the waters.
He needed to puke.
His Aedes Elysiae that had his family – gods, his mother, and father. Where were they?
He couldn’t tell the burning houses apart. Not with the fire, the gas that swelled so abhorrent against his senses. He disliked this – iron smell of fire, he decided.
His arms moved again, the sword piercing through another monster. His leg dragged behind him – he believed it was broken, but he did not want to look back, for he would be too afraid to move forward if he looked back.
His Aedes Elysiae that held home to his parents – who carried a roof above his head, nurtured him with love they could and wrapped him in arms of warmth when all became too cold.
Who rooted in him the desire to protect. Who rooted in him the need to save – who laid beneath the dirty rubble of his once-home, now only a defiled mess of wreckage.
His arms outstretch, his fingers reach for something – anything. A hand to hold. A body to embrace. A face to caress. A home to return. He thinks of your face, and his fingers move quicker, reaching higher, only to close around nothing.
He was all alone, after all.
His Aedes Elysiae that had Cyrene, who carried those divination cards. He thought back to the deliverance fate he was given, and mourned the village that was burning up in front of his eyes. No hero turns a blind eye to this –
Do not look back.
His leg is twisted, he could almost feel the pain, but he ignores it all the while.
DO NOT LOOK BACK.
Whatever you do — do not look back.
Your heart will scream for it. Your mind will yearn for it. Your leg will abide by it. Your body will turn to it. Your mouth will beg for it.
Despite that,
DO
NOT
LOOK–
“Phainon..”
He looked back.
As soon as he heard the soft whimper that cascaded like rivers out of your mouth, his mind didn't care for anything but the thought that he had to look back.
Phainon had whipped his head back so hard it pained him agonizingly to do so.
His neck twisted as his body followed in due, but something burned in his soul – something that scorched so greatly it overtook all the pain in his other nerves and pushed him to look.
He looked back, in theory and in action.
He could taste the metallic tang of blood on his tongue, as well as the shredded bloodied clothing edges that clung against his sweaty skin, gods – it hurted. Phainon groaned against the pain as he abruptly turned his body back, but he did not hesitate to keep turning.
Because most of all–
His Aedes Elysiae had you.
You. You. You. You. You. You. You.
You, in every sense of the world.
You could simply whisper his name and he’d come crawling to you if his legs were smashed.
You, where were you?
His leg dragged against the ground, creating a river of golden ichor that followed his steps, the tip of his sword dragged against the dirt, his shoulders slumped.
Phainon feels a dread – the kind of dread that grew hands and dug its nails into the flesh of his heart.
The hand drawled its traces from his heart up to his throat, threatening to make him puke. Phainon’s hand quickly shot up to cover his mouth as he dragged his right leg across the fields to you.
Your voice sounded far away – like that pitch of dread that delighted him, like a mist that only he got the privilege of being ensnarled under.
DO NOT LOOK BACK–
Screw that!
Phainon’s knees buckled down onto the floor, his legs that were twisted in a revolting manner dragged against the blood-soaked ground of the village, he crawled.
He digs his fingers into the dirt, feels the grime in his nails – he only uses it as a matter of transport, as he hurls his body forward by all means.
DO NOT LOOK BACK, YOU FOOL.
Shut up.
Phainon tries to stand upright, chanting your name underneath his breath like a prayer – perhaps to Oronyx, perhaps to Kephale, perhaps to just you that seeks his voice like that dying prayer of a man fallen.
He falls again onto the blood-soaked soot.
HOW PATHETIC. TO LOOK BACK IS TO CARE. DO YOU?
I do. So what?
His snowy white hair fell back against the dirt. He pushes himself up again – like a cycle of repetition.
But he doesn’t mind the tattered clothes, he doesn’t mind the dirtied hand that stuck with grime, he doesn’t mind his shaking hands which could barely hold properly the sword, he doesn’t mind the smashed leg that he keeps dragging against the floor, protesting against his very move.
Because if he stopped – it meant he would be leaving you behind.
He never once considered that.
YOUR HEART HARBORS WRATH. DO NOT LOOK BACK.
Wrath isn’t all that it harbors.
Phainon screamed – so loud some monsters had backed up. The sound was raw and aching from the back of his throat.
He bellowed, his throat scratching and his trachea blocking his anger – but that scream, ear-piercing and wrath filled as it was – derived quickly into rapid sobs.
Tears mixed with cinders of ashes as it racked against his cheeks.
Still, he keeps going.
YOU YEARN TO DESTROY EVERYTHING. YOU DO NOT CARE. DO NOT LOOK BACK.
I yearn to create. I yearn to love. I yearn for her. Do not tell me what I yearn for.
He repeated your name like a mantra, a madman, if you will.
He stands up yet again, leg aching. He is able to achieve a few meters before he falls back onto the ground. Your name leaves his lips achingly as he moves.
Phainon still doesn’t see you – and something horrible, something sickenly terrifying starts to harbor in his stomach.
The bile rises like boiling water once more. It blocks his airways. It rakes on his throat, it digs its nails into the skin of his neck from inside.
IR█TO█ IS YOUR N█ME – STOP LOOKING BACK.
My name is Phainon.
YOUR NAME IS IR█TO█ – TURN AWAY. DO NOT LOOK BACK. YOU–
Stop telling me –
“What to do already!” Phainon huffed, his legs carrying him in desperation as he clawed his way to that tree he remembers so well.
These loud thoughts – they feel invasive, like a bug instilled into his brain, buzzing unprecedentedly.
“(name).” A breathy whisper left him, as he finally found a strength in his legs to stand – forcing himself upright as his hands impatiently reached for something in the air – a glimpse, or just one blink of you, perhaps.
Phainon gasped, seeing that tree in his line of sight.
He needed you – he needed you to be alive. He needed the world to stop burning, for his home to be his once more.
He needed for the fire to cease and the soft radiance of dawnlight to shine on his village once more.
But when his eyes catch onto you – he wishes he had not looked for you in the first place.
In the burning sea of flaxen reeds, in the corrupted, blackened sea of wheat laid you.
Phainon’s breath desperately caught in his throat, and every sin that Phainon had eaten rises up onto his throat unforgivingly like a sickened bile, threatening its claws to make him vomit and clean his body dry of substance.
Your body was horribly beaten – as it seemed.
A river of crimson blood flown carelessly out of the gash of your stomach, your head resting against the bark of the tree as if offered some semblance of reverence.
Your eyes were closed, your head tilted back.
You were dead. You were dead and this is it.
This is the end – he could now only hold your body into his lap and believe that you were just sleeping.
His legs move before his mind comprehends, his arms reach out and fingers outstretched as he takes your body into his arms, cradling it with the most gentleness he could utter, throwing the wooden makeshift sword somewhere no violence could reach you.
Terror and dread fills each corner of his veins, and his eyes are wide in terrified panic. “No, no, no..” Phainon murmured, looking over each spot of your body desperately. “Please, please–”
“Phainon.. ?”
A blink of relief – small as it was – overcame him. Hope showered his form as his eyes flew open to the weak sound that came out of your mouth, soft and weak, but alive.
You were alive. You’re alive. He can save you.
“(name). (name), you’re okay. We’re okay. I can fix this, I can.” His face is pale as a ghost as he cradled you, eyes roaming over your body with fear.
“.. Phainon–”
“No, no, no, no.. no – no, I can fix this, okay? You won’t be dying here.” His voice was trembling when he spoke, his voice barely above a hoarse whisper, ragged and broken.
He rips a fabric from the hem of his dirtied tunic, it came out small, insufficient.
Nevertheless, he wrapped what he could over your injured stomach, tightening it into a makeshift tourniquet, his breaths ragged and uneven as his shaking hands tried their best to place pressure on your stomach, to which you winced.
His eyes are wild, face pale with worry. His breathing is heavy, as if he’d had just ran a marathon and couldn’t seem to chase the air into his lungs. “I’m sorry – gods, I’m so sorry, (name). I’m so sorry, I’m late – so late.
But.. but I don’t know what to do, I don’t!”
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“Look, Phai! This one’s paired together.” You smiled, holding in your hand a bud of two conjoined flowers, stem tangled together, petals mixed in trepidation.
Phainon, piqued at your words, ran from his own spot on the vast flower fields and to you with swift legs.
Not wasting a moment before the flowers he had held in his hands – a sunflower, it was – fell to the ground as he ran to you.
He knelt down, eyes sparkling with the vigor much of a kid’s.
“No way, let me see!”
You maneuvered the conjoined flower to his peering eye, to which you could feel the childishness reigning from his motions.
“Hmm, do you think.. It’s because they didn’t wanna leave each other?” You posed, a small thought under your breath.
Phainon murmured under his breath, scratching his chin in thought. “Well, maybe it’s because they’re fated to be linked! Look, see? It’s like they were made like this. Made together.”
“Mm.. but what if they wanna go to different places?”
“Then they’ll go together!”
“But what if they have different goals?”
“Can’t they achieve both of their goals at different times together?”
“But what if they yearn for something else other than the other? Isn’t it a little.. I dunno, stuffed with the same flower all the time?”
THEN THEY WILL CLAW INTO THE OTHER’S STEM, DIGGING THEIR EARTHLY SOUL WITH APRICITY AND SOIL THEMSELF UNTIL THEY CAN’T PART.
“Mm, is it?” Phainon tilted his head, chin in his fingers.
“.. Should we separate them?” You thrummed in thought, twirling the pistil of the flowers around.
–
“No!” With a surprising speed, Phainon’s hand curled around the stem of the flowers, bringing them to his chest in a gesture that could only be described as protective – possessive.
His eyes sharpen, and his words are clipped. “Don’t separate them.”
You blinked, lightly shocked. His eyes were wide, scared, almost – for a pair of flowers he had only seen for a few seconds. It makes you shiver, this look in his eyes. The desperation. “Why?”
WHY, ARE YOU SO PROTECTIVE OF THOSE? OF THEM. OF THE NEEDINESS OF THE FLOWERS. OF THE POSSESSION. OF THE COALESCE THE FLOWERS ENVOKED?
“Because.. Because they need each other! See? If you separate them, the other’s petals would rip as well. You can’t separate them without hurting the other!” Phainon holds the flowers to your eye. He’s right. They’re conjoined, but almost disgustingly so.
DISGUTING. NASTY. THROW UP. CRAWL THAT BILE OUT OF YOUR THROAT AND SPLATTER IT AS IF IT IS NOTHING BUT A DECLARATION OF A LIFE.
The white petals are fused with one another, almost inorganic, it looked. The stem tangled around each other in a deferential dance that lasted to only them.
It looks unnatural.
It looks lab grown and bred through means of inert, man-made mechanics.
It looks disgusting – like it hurted the flowers to be fused.
But it exists because the other does, so if one flower were to be blemished, broken –
The other would not survive for long.
.. So you nod, and place your hand over his grip on the pair of flowers. “Okay. They’ll stay together then.”
They’ll never be separated – even if it kills them.
Maybe one was made for the other, manufactured just for them to be paired up, petals fused in an unorthodox conduct.
They’ll never be separated – so when they die, it’ll be their bodies that merge together.
It’ll be the other flower’s face that it sees before either dies, it’ll be with the same flower that it rots from.
The rot would take over the petals, the stems, and the bulbs.
ROTPR-OOR0E–CONSUMEE19203LONEIIKKKWN293–
“.. This never happened.”
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“Phainon.” You squeaked out, voice weak, feeble and debilitated as you raise your bloodied, torn-off hands to his face – he whimpered as if the pain it took you to even speak his name hurted him as it did you, and grabs your reaching hand to press it into his cheek.
He gaped, the sound weak and pathetic.
He does not speak. Does not want to. He does not wish to pollute your voice with the sound of his own pathetic whimpers, for this may be the last of your voice he ever hears.
He wishes he could claw out his voicebox and dig it into you, so you would say a few more than a mess spluttered with bloodied lips and a dying rasp.
Phainon, who never hesitates, found himself hesitating to even answer, just to preserve your face a moment more.
He reluctantly whispered, as low as possible. “.. Yes?”
“.. –Do me.. a favor, please.” Rasped your voice. Lowly, weakly, it declared so.
“.. Anything. Anything you want. I’ll give you everything.”
“Okay.”
Your fingers trail to the wooden sword he had thrown – when did you get your hands on that?
He’d thrown it where violence couldn’t find your breath, where cruelty wouldn’t seek your name – and now you bring it back into his palm.
“Kill me.. Please kill me – please.”
He lets out a pathetic, strangled cry. Flinching backwards as if he’d been slapped. His expression is mortified – you’ve never seen that look on his face before. It was similar, you premised, to the face he’d have when he just had a nightmare.
“No – I can’t .. I can’t do that. I won’t. Please don’t ask that of me. Anything else, anything! I’ll do anything but that!”
You smiled, gentle and all, and he nearly cried out in agony.
You situate the sword above your chest, lightly caressing his hand that held the wooden stake.
“Phainon,” You whispered, gazing up at his eyes which were filled with tears. The harsh sobs wracked through him as it fell on you with drops, fusing into the bleeding, spread like a delicate flower.
The world goes white, his eyes, his ears – they fuss endlessly, buzzing with trepidation.
His heart drops, and it settles in his stomach. A terrible, squeezing pressure.
His eyes didn’t know where to settle. It rakes from the yellow tree that held your body under its shade, the wheat crushed under the weight of your flesh, the red crimson fading with yellow.
It forms a sickening orange – not like the dawn Kephale always held under you and Phainon’s naive form, but an orange that sung curses and strangled sin into mortals.
All he ended up doing was cry. Not bawling, but a quiet, chest-chokes.
He doesn’t know when his arms started to raise the wooden sword.
A swell of helplessness came over him, a drowning sensation, as if he had been toppled overboard and swept away by the stupid river waves near his home, where he’d sit and stare at you for hours.
And the wooden sword came down before he knew it.
The woods beside him rang with the rasp of his screams as wood met flesh, maggots met organs and rot met tissues.
The sun over Kephale’s shoulder doesn’t move lower or higher, it remains in one spot for hours.
But for the white haired boy with eyes that fleeted the sky, the sun never rose again.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“And.. that’s it!” You huffed, closing the storybook with a dramatic finale gesture.
“That can’t be it! Orpheus looked back just like that! Why would he do that?” Phainon exclaimed deliriously, flailing his hands as he pried the book from your palm.
You laughed as he fleeted his eyes through the book, looking through the story himself to confirm if the story you told was accurate, it was, much to his mire. “Well, Orpheus cared a whole lot about Eurydice.” Suggested your voice.
“But if he had just not looked, they’d both have made it out alive!” Phainon groaned in exasperation, dropping the book, letting the pages be whizzed through by the zephyr before he thumped down on the wheat field. “If it were me, I’d have made it out, easy and all.”
You pursed your eyebrows.
Your finger rose to flick his forehead in response to the bold claim, taking your seat near his whining form on the field. He yelped in protest, and pulled a hand up to rub the spot you offended him in.
Settling your knees to your chest, drawing your arms around your leg – you let your eyes take in the sight you’ve seen millions of times before: Kephale stood before you, dawn ever desiring, a mumble falling out from beneath your arm. “‘Cause he loves her.”
LOVE.
Phainon raised an eyebrow at your words. “But.. he could’ve loved her more had they made it out of the underworld.”
“You idiot,” You sulked, jutting your lips. “To love someone is to look back.”
Phainon stayed silent, putting his hands beneath his head. Eyes momentarily drifting to you. He almost shudders.
You continued, voice all melancholic. “If I was Eurydice, and you were Orpheus.. You’d look back, right?”
Phainon pursed his lips at the thought. He couldn’t imagine it, not really. Having to crawl through the nether realm and clawing at Thanatos’ divine authority to steal you back so warm life could embrace you instead of the deafening coldness of death – something in his heart jerks at the thought.
Hesitantly, words leave his mouth. “.. I’d try not to, so I could bring you back.”
“But if I fall or .. or if you don’t hear me, you’d look back.”
He couldn’t resist looking at you.
“Yeah. I probably.. Wouldn’t last long.”
You chuckled at that, his heart skips another traitorous beat at the sound. “I know.” You smiled, releasing your knee from the wrap of your arms, letting it settle onto the grass below, fleshed out and all.
FATE.
“.. But if I failed.. I’d go back again. I’d find you and then I’d bring you out. If I look back again, I’ll just go back each time.”
Taken aback, your mouth went dry before you laughed softly. “You’d do all that?” Your head tilted as Phainon’s eyes met yours.
Nothing less than determination sized in his eyes. His ambition felt larger than yourself. Phainon nodded without a beat. “Why wouldn’t I?”
OVERTURN.
“.. Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, hm?” Your body fell next to him, released from the sitting position to sprawl on the bed of the field, he smiled as the heat of your closed on him.
“Yeah, that’d save me the trouble.” Phainon offered you a grin, bumping your shoulder with his.
STILL, DOES ONE REMAIN THE SAME, EVEN IF ALL OF THEIR ORIGINAL COMPONENTS HAVE BEEN REPLACED OVER TIME?
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 24.
I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you–
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
He slammed the mire with his fists until the wheat stalks were mixed with golden and crimson blood alike, and for those first hours without you, he didn’t deliver any words but wails and cries.
His hands flew to his throat, digging into the skin as he attempted to tear out his voicebox for reasons unknown even to him. It felt like it was karma he needed to endure, for being the force that drove that wooden stake into your stomach.
It must’ve hurted. The sword was dull. It must’ve been agonizing. The wooden sword could barely kill an animal, yet he had pierced it through you and allowed the porous surface to dig through your tissues.
He puked.
FATE REALIZED.
ETERNAL OCCURENCE 1: SUCCESS.
A stone slate begins to form with 2 figures.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 2526.
To my beloved of all,
I miss you. Wholly do I speak of this pain that settles beneath me, for it clings to you still. You are missing from me, and I do not know what to make of this pitiful void that I’ve seen one time, another, and millions of times by now.
How many times has it been? How many times have I seen your body grow cold under my palms and limp against my chest for your blood spreads as flowers may throughout the fields in the springtime – I do not know why I have to endure this, of all things. I can endure a lot, (name). I can. I have endured a lot.
Truth is, it has been 165 cycles. . I pray under your corpse each night after you die in each reoccurrence, I curse my breath each time I see your face again because it meant it was another time you would die below the sinking breath of my hands again and I truly, selfishly wish that even despite how many times your blood is spilt over me that even so, even holding this disgusting monster in your arms, that you could find it in yourself to still love me.
Dawn is forthcoming in Okhema, I feel you would’ve liked this town, for all its bright nature. Only once, decades ago where I stood with their people, now I stand against them. You would’ve stopped me. Called my name and whispered it in the darkness and prayed on your knees to all the titans because that’s who you were, and who I had snuffed away in darkness and fear.
Still, I imagine this town would’ve been much to your liking.
I miss you.
I miss the life you breathed into me. I miss the stories you used to tell me under the shade of our naivety, and I miss the you who should’ve been receiving these letters that trace the diary of a madman.
I will keep writing. A dead body won’t receive these letters, a lifeless corpse won’t answer my pleas and heed my calls even if I wrung myself dry and pour litres of golden ichor, but I will still write these letters to a future you’re in. Where we can simply lie against the grass again, and there, we can talk about nothing and everything at once.
It also means I can pretend there will be a ‘you’ that receives this record of insanity. Written by a lunatic with too much love to fill, and not a body of life to fill in.
I ████ you, and that, perhaps, is the root of this insanity.
From your Phainon.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 2.
Phainon awoke to a dawn – the yellow wheat lightly shuffled below his body, his tousled snow-white hair shambling across the surface of something soft, cyan-like eyes adjusting to the weight of Kephale’s protection. It smells faint of cinnamon and baked bread – the piquancy of a welcoming arm to his awaken.
“You’re awake.” A voice ushered him woke, gentle and soft-spoken. YOU whispered above his face, akin to a likening of breeze that embraced him gently, the forbearing resonance only threatened to lull the young boy asleep yet again.
Phainon stuttered open – shock crazed his face, fear overturned his demeanor as he met your eyes. He nearly pukes when he meets the fond look you retain.
“(name). Is this real.. ? You’re–” Phainon whispered, the words spoken low, as if he was afraid had his voice been any louder, you would’ve disappeared from his sight once more. His arms are tightly wrapped around you before you could comprehend his words filled with shock and glimpse of fear.
He’s breathing in breaths that sounded like it hurted, almost like he’s struggling to even see himself.
He desperately pressed his ear to your heart, feeling your chest rise up, down, up, down, fingers clawing into the material of your tunic, pathetically clinging to your body as he seated between your legs.
Your fingers reach behind his neck, craning him with soothing circles, but he doesn’t calm as he does when you do it.
Your voice is quiet when you attempt to shake him out of the fear that seemed to choke the bile in his trachea.
“Phainon? What’s..”
“You’re real. You’re alive. This is real. You’re back.” Phainon stared into nothing and everything. Grass beneath him. The same tree you always sat under. The same cliff you two swore to the stars below.
He’s back, and you’re alive once more.
Phainon looked at your face, really looked at you. He stared at the eyes that stared back with fondness and affection, and carved into his mind the shape of your lips, the upturn of your smile, the faint hue of your skin near the pad of your ear. He notes the hollow of your neck, the prominence of your collarbone, and he wants to drown himself in the you he missed so dearly.
You’re alive.
This time, he won’t let you–
ETERNAL OCCURENCE FAILURE.
FATE DECIDED.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Your lifeless body hung beneath his feet again, crimson blood filing through the wheat. His wooden sword is through the tissue of your abdomen, and tears are bleeding through his eyelids again, voice hoarse as he begs and begs and begs.
Again.
“One more time– ! Give her to me once more!” Screamed the white haired boy, swearing to the skies, tribulation to the warring of his psyche, terror of his heart, and the aching emptiness in his body.
Once again, he tore off his sun from the sky.
Once again, the cycle restarts, as his legs move to the eternal city of Okhema.
FATE REALIZED.
ETERNAL OCCURENCE 2: SUCCESS.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Orpheus, why do you look back so?
LOOP 149.
When Phainon faced Lygus – the antikythera robot who spoke in riddles and proposed neutrality, his eyes were full of anger. Seething and rage is the only thing that represents how he feels, fire and vexation smolders beneath his skin.
The vortex of genesis swirled around the two figures, the coreflames screamed beneath his lungs, digging from below his vein, the hemoglobin boiled, too, testament of his anger, monument to his fury as his eye met with red, mechanical ones.
“Lygus.”
“Lord Phainon, here heeds your final step. Complete the Era Nova, drop that worldbearing coreflame, and as a nameless hero, tread the unknown.” Lygus smiled, a hand adhering Phainon to the spirit basin, ushering his call.
“Cut the crap,” Whispered Phainon, a hoarse call, as his hand tightened the grip on the hilt of dawnmaker. “Answer me this, and answer me truthfully. Who are you?”
To Phainon’s chagrin, the antikythera took him time to answer, with the added nerve to wander around, a flare of hand waving for no other reason but to tick the nerves already at limit in Phainon.
“You seek truth, and truth you may. You see, we are but prisoners in a cave, locked in and bided to the shadows. But you and I alone, lord Phainon, are the sole wanderers of the cave, carved away our chains and set alight to the real world. We are witnesses of the real world, of ‘truth’.”
“Stop speaking in riddles.” Phainon scowled, jaw ticked with impatience. Lygus does not appear phased, nor does his eyes waver in ambition, but he simply continued his tale at the same pace.
“So, as we are witnesses of the truth, and you, the savior of Amphoreus, shall you burn this truth onto your people, and allow them to bathe in the light of your absolute? You step pride into daylight, lord Phainon, you may bring the prisoners of Amphoreus their truth of Era Nova–”
“I said stop speaking so much.”
“.. Deliever of all worlds, there is a sun that burns in you,” Smiled the antikytheran, to which Phainon tensed noticeably. “I have vaguely witnessed that sun you bear so close. Fascinating, it is. An infatuation so absolute that it leaves a sun into the heart of the prophesied deliverer.”
“Stop it–”
“The sun is shaped out of a woman. (name), isn’t it? What tragic fate she bears, but a prisoner’s fate will always be the chained one.”
Orpheus, carry your body away, for you have left your soul in the underworld.
One second, the head of the robot is intact, shaped with electrical currents, and the other –
Phainon has slung Lygus’ head to the ground, dawnmaker a prophesied weapon.
His voice had a low timbre when he spoke next. “Don’t talk about her.”
The decapitated head – much to Phainon’s irk – laughed, a mirthful, bright, laugh, though more sadistic than it seemed. “Marvelous! How enticing – your character module is changing! Your fury factor arises a statistically significant soar when her name is so much as mentioned. So this is it – the final relationship factor, the null hypothesis was inaccurate, it truly was deliberation!”
“This ends now! Stop talking! I’ll ignite the dawn with my light, and awaken Era Nova, where she can finally–”
“Era Nova is but a lie, lord Phainon. Naivety gets you nowhere, surely you understand even that.”
“What?”
“You may shatter that woeful effigy, hero – but understand this: your wish to bring her back will never work.”
Phainon delivered a swift kick to Lygus’ head, making the mechanical body part roll elsewhere, lolling among the floor of the vortex of genesis, smile still unceasing. Phainon sucked a heavy breath, lingering and shaky.
“– You’re beaten, Lycurgus. A mere prisoner like yourself with the delusion of a witness should never raise their voice in meaningless prattle.” Seethed Phainon, his eyes racked with fury – fury packed with the hundreds of regressions before him, fury packed with the regressions to come.
The white haired boy of Aedes Elysiae now, carries the furies of his past, present, and future.
“.. And yet a hollow man like yourself continues to speak? Tell me, what is it that drives you forward, lord Phainon? For that rage, that fury you contain – is eerily close to the love you pertain,” Lygus recovered, lacerating at a subject that would sure to set Phainon off.
“Let me allow you in on something: the girl with the bright eyes whom you look for? You will never find her. Not in the new Era Nova, and even if she returns – her code is broken in thousands. Her ‘self’ is ordained by an unchanging fate of recurring death, that is the fate she must realize.”
“Then I will see it through. You say there are codes of her broken in thousands? Fine. Be it however long, I will find all of them, and piece her together. Her fate is ordained? No matter. I will transcend fate. You mistake one thing, Lycurgus. You mistake fury for love: but a prisoner like you could never gauge at emotions this sincere. Fury, you fated prisoner, is the outcome of a love misplaced.”
O, Orpheus, you hopeless fool. How the muses sing in pity of your tale, how their stares bide into your secretion. Melpomene denotes the tragedy with a flick of her elegant dagger.
“Anger? Wrath? Fine, define me so. But never believe that I may, even for a second, give up. You have patience? Test this hypothesis, then: I’ll make sure your sick abhorrence of an experiment bears no fruits.”
IDEOGRAPHIC. QUALITATIVE. REALITY. TRUTH–
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 198,372.
There are some things in the world that one must always pair together for the function to work.
For example, purines and pyrimidines, nitrogenous bases in DNA, research and evidence, kidneys, ovaries–
And Phainon simply cannot exist without his pair, for he would not function ideally.
Therefore, he does what any madman does, and more. He dug through cycles and cycles of deaths, recurring lifetimes of stolen warmth and laughter, and built you from the genesis of your creation.
He piled up first the DNA modules. The genetic information, the pieces of you that lingered in structures of double helix, that deoxyribonucleic acid were the easiest to find, for you shed yourself to him countlessly, all he had to do now, was to pick up those scattered fragments, however small.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 1650.
I will fix you. I swear on it, and I will carve my blood onto this oath for life if I have to will myself to.
Until then, wait for me, (name).
I will fix you, I swear of it.
I met a girl who looked like you, her eyes were mirrors of the brightness that your irises touched, and her hair were at a length near yours. She was young, much like you, back in Aedes Elysiae. Her eyes knew not of anger, emotions knew not a touch of fear, but she flinched when I approached her.
I fear I am losing my humanity.
I have gone rigid, my arms move in a motion that makes it hard for me to even write as of now, yet my brain refuses for my hands to stop moving.
The girl who looked like you, her name was Antigone. She looked at me like I was a ghost, and perhaps I was. I stared at her because she was the mirror of a ghost I chased after.
That was the only time which I felt myself feel warm instead of rigid coldness that seemed to cling to me as of late.
The girl spoke in quiet mutters, much like you would’ve. She hummed her favorite songs later, and I waved goodbye to her with a most horrible ache in my chest.
So, I drew my sword.
I will fix you. I swear of it.
.. From Phainon, hope fully, still yours.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 1,932,387.
The next he found were the skeletons.
The spinal cord, the frontal lobe, the pelvic girdle, the femur, humerus and even the ilium – all of it had to be found. So, Phainon’s hand dug through layers of skin and blood once more, until all 206 bones were found.
He digs through thousands more of cycles. It was hard to find bones that fitted in place, but perseverance, as appeared, was his strong suit.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 4041.
I won’t forget you, and I’ll never forget you.
I’ve witnessed once, this singular cycle where I did save you, kept you alive, and I thought it was the one – in it, you fell in love with someone else.
In it, you lived, but no longer for me, and no longer do you hand your heart over to the soles of my palms.
I refuse that probability. I refuse that the only world where you live – the only world in which you are happy is the one where I am not the one you love.
Am I the curse bestowed upon you?
.. regardless of your answer, I remain steadfast in my objective.
I have not yet forgotten you, and I don’t think I ever can.
From Phainon.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 3,749,203.
The next he found were the skin.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 6494.
Why .. Did you leave me?
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 5,932,657.
After that, was the prime mover of life. The thing he needed to make you again, the thing he needed for this piled up mess of organs, skin, and DNA sequences to become a human.
He mulled over the primer for years. Going through cycles, venturing through his options – before he stumbled upon it.
The dawn of Kephale.
Phainon’s hand gently outreached to the scorching of the dawn, tearing away a piece of it, chipping a light that was meant to be fractured onto the cities, and took it into his palm and shoved it into the vacant place where your heart should be, instead – there’s a part of the sun.
His eyes narrow – there was something missing.
He didn’t know what, but there was something that was missing from you.
So, dawnmaker sliced through the thickness of his black wing, and once more, wrapped it into the confines of the vacant space of your heart wordlessly.
He was missing from you.
Now–
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“Stop.”
“Hmn? Don’t like the story?” Cyrene perks up, face all smiles and teasing.
“.. It’s cruel. Don't you think it's cruel? How could someone do this? All of this?”
“I do agree, it is! That Lygus guy is a total jerk, isn’t he? I wish I could punt him myself! But.. a cruel story, too, can have a good ending.” Her pink hair flows with the wind, the curve of her lips move in a captivating manner as does herself.
“.. Cyrene, this is horrible. What – what kind of story is this? It’s needlessly cruel. It’s not real, right?”
She’s quiet for a moment, as if mulling it over as her eyes roam around your expression, before she beams. “It’s not!”
You breathe a sigh of relief, but catch it as she speaks once more.
“But does it matter if the story is real or not? The emotions are real, right?”
“What does that mean?”
Cyrene smiles. “Love is cruel, love is unbinding, and love is obsession. Didn’t you notice that throughout the story, (name)?”
You purse your lips. Of course you did. It was hard not to, anyway. “Yeah.”
“So, I’ll ask you this again,” She flails her body seated on the swing below the shade of the tree, her finger pointing to you. “Do you like romance stories?”
“.. Yes.”
Cyrene laughs, a giggle escaping from her youthful demeanor. “I knew it. You really are the essence of love.”
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
There was a myth in Amphoreus – no one knew where it came from, just that it was common knowledge among the inhabitants. No matter if one were Kremnoan, Aidonian, or Dolosian, this myth was treated as a generational story, history could not, would not, forget it.
There was once a figure – Phaethon, whom upon curiosity stumbled upon the chariot which drew the sun that arose in the sky. He was the sky’s blood and flesh, and the chariot was his partner.
Amphoreus then had no dawn, nor any sun. No light to gaze upon them, no eyes to see them through.
When his hand traveled around the reins of the golden chariot, he was appalled by desire, taken by greed. Despite fervent warnings and dissuasion attempted by the neireids and nymphs that rested by, Phaethon shook his head vehemently.
“The sun is meant to rise. Does it matter who drives it?” Phaethon argued, his words drowning in the heedless pleas of the nymphs.
That said, the son undaunted the reins, then smote the winged courser’s sides as they bounded forth on the void and cavernous vault of air.
‘Drive the sun toward tomorrow, dear son.’ Whispered the sky. ‘Deliver the rays, turn thy chariot.’
The first part is steep, one that the cavalries found hard to mount – in mid-heaven is it the highest, where a fleet of a glance down to the bottomless sea and land would cause friction in the son’s heart, adrenaline as Phaethon paws himself nearer to the chariot’s edge.
The sky rushes endlessly, spinning and carrying the distant stars in a swift, circular path. Phaethon moves against this flow, and the momentum does not waver him as do the force of the wind, riding opposite to the heaven’s rapid motion.
Imagine one is given this chariot: what would you do?
Could you resist the turning of celestial poles so that the speed of the vast sky does not yet sweep thy away?
Perhaps you picture groves, cities upon opulence, temples filled with rich offerings.
Yet this path is full of dangers. Phaethon weaves the reins of the mythical beasts of the chariot around his wrist, tightening it. The proud horses themselves are much a challenge.
But Phaethon did not steer awry, for he had to face the unending gates of Janus, the scales that upended his hold on the mythical power from Tantalon, cruel Oronyx’s time undoings, preserving Georios and the earth’s crash, drowning ocean of Phagousa, completed with drunken revelries.
Among that, what stood in his way were too, was the sky he attempted to mount, Aquila’s domain unfaithful and relentless. The branches that overturned under his feet, blessing of Cerces - the cruel Mnestia’s butterfly wings, raging Nikador and lion’s jaw, peaceful Thanatos but cruel death, and schemes of trickery woven by Zagreus’ giggly bubbles.
And in the end, he too, had to face himself.
For long as he had his hands on the reins of the chariot, he was pulled over by an impending force that lulled him sideways, upwards, and below, until the reins had snapped out of his mortal grip and the horses carrying the chariot went askew, panic seeped in their eyes as they kicked and trawled in the sky.
He lost control of the reins, and sent the horses too high, too low, and finally out of the grip of his hands.
Then, the son who born to shine crashed the sun into the ground, wrapped in the embrace of the merciful Georios.
“I failed.” Whispered the son as he fell, eyes glued to the chariot now without a driver. “Forgive me, chariot – for even the brilliance of I cannot contain thy.”
But he refused to give up. Amphoreus needed sun to overturn these darker nights, so Phaethon drove his hands up, and created something: freedom.
So, in Phaethon’s last wishes, did the chariot transform into a figure.
“Though greatly he failed,” Spoke the chariot. “More greatly he dared.”
Kephale then, was borne from the remains of Phaethon, and the chariot merged together with him – marking the sun device that is carried on Kephale’s shoulder.
– Citizens of Okhema notice that during the 7th month, the month of Freedom, the dawn burned brighter, and something, among the shape of a figure, had slightly indented onto the east side of the dawn device.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 33,550,336.
Phainon awoke to a dawn – the yellow wheat lightly shuffled below his body, his tousled snow-white hair shambling across the surface of something soft, cyan-like eyes adjusting to the weight of Kephale’s protection. It smells faint of cinnamon and baked bread – the piquancy of a welcoming arm to his awaken.
“You’re awake.” A voice ushered him woke, gentle and soft-spoken. You whispered above his face, akin to a likening of breeze that embraced him gently, the forbearing resonance only threatened to lull the young boy asleep yet again.
Phainon smiled, nuzzling his head deeper into your lap. “I am.”
You giggled at his childishness, sleep still clinging to the crevices of his newly awakened state as you pepper kisses on his forehead. “Wake up, silly. You’ve been sleeping for so long, my leg’s gone numb.”
Phainon all but offered a crooked grin, laughing softly as your lips met his face. “5 more minutes, I don’t think I wanna get up yet.”
“The things you demand,” You huffed, poking the top of his head. “I’ll forgive it this once.”
Kephale’s dawn now burned even brighter.
A█NOMA█LY DETEC█ED – COMMENCING … .. ..
THE TRAIL█BLAZER R R S — UNSPECI█FIED DATA , , , , . . . WAR█NIGN !!!! DESTRUCTI–
- this is very badly written, hats off to you if you noticed that! By the end of the fic, there were several plot holes and paradoxes, as well a recurring ideas in the beginning that didn't make a comeback - that's because of how burnt out i was, and honestly i was sick of trying to keep writing, nevertheless, i didn't want to gatekeep this idea so i hope you still liked it for all its flaws.
- the basic idea of this fic was that love grows teeth and is like sin. I had a LOTT of usage for grief and mourning, and how that genuinely ruins a person from the inside out. Added on to that, I wanted to convey that love, as pure and unbinding, is also harsh and aggressive.
- I described in an excerpt that Phainon was like a 'wheel of fire' - this motif specifically is used as a reference to Ixion, a greek figure. It's a dramatical device applied to a protagonist a tragedy (i.e. a hero) and aims to provoke catharsis and sympathy from the audience when the hero falls from grace.
- Orpheus and Eurydice are a tragic greek couple, an amazing myth, by the way, there's a whole musical for it (which you should definitely check out called Hadestown :)) Basically, they symbolize themes of love, loss, trust, and the limits of human power against imitable death - much like what i tried to convey with the myth at the end! It's the fact that when mortals try to wield divine power, they fail despite all.
- There was this equilibrium I tried to create between humanity and divinity, and I marked them both with flaws and strengths. This is based off of the Ancient Greek's own beliefs and views of the greek gods and how they worshipped them, but I also HAD to emphasize that even without the existence of the divine, humanity would still prevail because we're fundamentally human.
- The morse code in the middle of the dialogue (which was used as a commentary break and literary polysyndeton and verisimilitude) meant 'HUMANITY', highlighted by reader's character that I tried to shape into the concept of finite, and Phainon's character as infinity. I potrayed the lost of humanity as divine, as you aren't really human once you lose the core of what makes you 'human', then you are a substandard category that falls to either monster or divine - phainon is both.
- In the first stone slate, I mentioned the 'divine/hero' (phainon) as a figure with sheeps (aka lambs of gods, a sacrificial animal, and also white purity - yang) paired with the number 42 which represents 'Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything' - while the 'mortal' (reader) is seen with crows (symbolism for death and transformation, black puddles, yin) and the number 13, which is a bad omen, but also is a good sign of transformation so it is ambiguous (much like reader's 'anti-hero' stature)
- I tried to juxtaposition good memories with bad ones, as well as confuse yall by mixing memories that contradicted to represent the human mind in processing memories, and especially one unstable and mourning - such as Phainon.
- There are a few psychology concepts implemented in several parts (from a fellow psych student), such as from Lygus, who is the researcher - he has researcher bias, which means he interprets the outcome based on his own hypothesis (which is irontomb emergence) and Phainon and the whole amphoreus to him, is simply a case study. The independent variable is those close to Phainon and reoccurring cycles, and the dependent variable is his levels of sanity after said cycles. These terms are qualitative and idiographic if you were curious
- want to read more notes? (because this took FOREVER TO WRITE) check this out: NOTES
❝ it's never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter. it's never over - she is the tear that hangs inside my soul forever. ❞
notes for SHALL I FOREVER MOLD YOU TO THE TETHERED SUN !!!
Notes continue:
- this was inspired by The Things they Carried by Tim O'brien, the Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, the Iliad by Homer, Phaethon by Euripides, Plato's Timaeus, Metamorphoses by Ovid, Animal Farm by George Owell, White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Lover, you should have come over song by Jeff Buckley, Phaethon's myth, Little shop of horrors, Hadestown etc.. I forgot but theres def more LMAO
- and of course, the letters!! Letter '4' means death if that wasn't obvious.
- Letter '24' represents a sacred, powerful, and auspicious number, like the 24 rhapsodies of the Iliad.
- Letter 2526 is 25 and 26 together, 25 means simply 'to love', and 26 means a selfless, benevolent love and affection (agape), so it's the mix between mortal & divine love.
- Letter 1650 means conviction
- Letter 4041 is 40 & 41, 40 means holy transformation, 41 means 'the dawn of a new day'.
- Letter 6494 is a mix between 6, 9, and 4 - 6 means love (number of Aphrodite), 9 means humanity, and 4 means stability, which is a paradox of a letter, referencing the contents LMAO
- The two birds (salt & pepper) is obviously direct reference to reader & Phainon with the colors of black and white as yin and yang symbolism, it was literally just foreshadowing of their fates yes i love foreshadowing.
- omg the comparison between being sick and in love because the line is so small and indistinguishable yes
- Plato allegory of the cave metaphor obviously because Lygus loves spamming that. No i didn't add that because of 3.5 i've BEEN a plato fan get on my level lycurgus.
- 'Time' is a reference to Chronos (not the one who ate his children), the personification of time.
- Phainon's harmatia is his naivety - he was the personification of creation, but succumbed in the end to destruction, the juxtaposition of creation.
- Reader is described as 'sugar' - this is because it's sweet, but too much (fixation) of sugar will make you sick - much like how Phainon destroyed himself to find her.
- If you couldn't tell, reader and Phainon are walking contradictory foils for each other. They are oxymorons of each other. 'Bittersweet', 'wise fool', 'loving hate', 'finite infinity', they are the same as they are different, much like a cognitive of the human mind (see what i did there)
- There is a reoccurring theme of fate vs. free will and you will see that both is presented in Phainon and reader - reader consciously advocates for free will but subconsciously succumbs to fate. Phainon consciously advocates for fate, but later after reader's death turns to free will above all.
- There is also self vs. self conflict between Phainon and himself, I wanted to addd another version - aka flame reaver but didn't have time to.
- There are small paradigm shifts in this story, though not an abundance of it.
- SHIP OF THESEUS REFERENCE yes i uphold the belief that Phainon is a walking ship of theseus paradox - if you don't know what it means, basically: it's a self philosophical paradox questioning whether an object that has had all of its original components replaced remains the same object over time, basically challenges identity and in the context of Phainon: even after all those cycles, millions of coreflames replaced and new ones produced, is the Phainon from the 33,550,336 cycle still the original Phainon from the first cycle?
- The muses: i used the muse of arts in the start to highlight how the story would be like the opening of a myth, it's supposed to reference the beginning line of the Iliad
- I mentioned the name 'Melpomene' - she is the muse of tragedy, hence why i placed her in a tragic scene to emphasize the great deal of it.
- A girl who 'looked like reader' is Antigone - theatre nerds would know her but basically Antigone is a tragic greek play, and developed from the play itself came something called 'Antigone syndrom', aka the trauma of survivors who were unable to honour their dead, who were unable to act on the reality of death - Phainon.
- The reason why Lygus was in this fic in the first place was that he was a walking reference to the antikytheran mechanism from the late 2nd century BC - an ancient Greek hand-powered orrery (model of the Solar System). It is the oldest known example of an analogue computer. It could be used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses decades in advance. He 'predicted' the outcome of his case study, and became the computer that looked over each cycles
- 'Wash the sins, not only the face’ is a greek palindrome, (ΝΙΨΟΝΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑΜΗΜΟΝΑΝΟΨΙΝ) - it's a religious saying connected to the holy water, divine
- 'A jackdaw is always found near a jackdaw' is an ancient proverb, basically just means birds of a feather flock together.
- I tried (much as my motivation could, anyway) to incorporate the ideology of the human body and stars. (Le corps humain et les astres dans la littérature latine impériale) - into like reader being the constellation 'Lyra', Phainon being the constellation Phaenon (yes that is an existing star)
that's all that i remember LMAO thanks for reading yall
❝ — SHALL I FOREVER MOLD YOU TO THE TETHERED SUN. ❞
𓏵 ( despite everything , it's still you ! )
८ sypnosis. When one bears their faithful eyes to the sun, they tend to look away, unable to take the blazing rays of the daylight - yet, that boy whom lies in wheat and bathe in love, his eyes revel in the dances of the sunlight ─ alternatively, when Phainon loses his heart, there are no limit to his impeding fixation.
(phainon x fem!reader) wc: 21.4k (it's worth it i promise stay w me now)
@ warnings; gory descriptions, childhood friends to (kind of) lovers, time travel trope, a LOT of angst, some comfort, no beta we die like Cyrene and the chrysos heirs, a lot of descriptive violence and blood, not for the weak of hearts im afraid, ANGST no comfort but also kind of comfort but i lowkey rip that away after, morally debatable phainon, obssesion, heavy angst, grief, depression, body horror, Phainon is just mad insane ngl ᝰ.ᐟ
── notes. this is my LONGEST fic yet, and i put in a lot of work into this. I actually had this planned and executed since May of this year, but only finished it now because of how many times I got burnt out and lost motivation. This will be one of the few things i'll post because IB will get to me and I'll have significantly less time to write, much less complete a writing. This fic may have costed me the most agony, time, and crashouts. Anyway, have a fun ride. More notes will be at the end of the fic (◞‸ ◟)
O, muse, sing for the ballads of Amphoreus – the eternal land, partitioned by the wholly of one’s sinful adamant inclinations, and purity of one’s preponderance fleet-footed harmony. O, muse, forgive this sin of covetousness – forebode by the deliverer of this world.
Dawn is forthcoming, but will not emerge without first the settlement of dusk – and when that dawn arises with trepidation, a figure is torn apart – shredded unto the most deepest of the body, cleaved into the dawn. For to be the sun, one must first, burn like it.
You, are not an heir cladded with golden ichor amalgamated into the essence of your soul. Rather, you are but a single mortal, a normal – unprecedented one. Not intertwined with the fates of the heroes of Amphoreus, the strings have not once touched the nerves of your skin.
You are not a part of this cycle of ruinous sequence.
At least, that is how it was before.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“Ne, (name), don’t you have a penchant for romantic epics?”
You turn to the pink haired girl – hair dancing softly in the wind as she smiles, the bark of the tree she seated adjacent swayed with the wind’s dance, leaves fell gently to the wheat below your feet, her hands held cards – tarot cards, you surmise. She was always one for those divination crafts.
“I do. But isn't it boring if it’s just romance?” You question, Cyrene turns her head up, eyes crinkling in the corner as she takes in your expression.
“My my, dear (name),” She clicks her tongue playfully, feet flopping against the wheat-like grass, Kephale’s dawn falling gently on her face.
“Love, is the credential of everything! You see, every one of us,” Cyrene gestures to herself, then to you. “..is born of love and desire.”
“Love is pretty complicated.” You purse your lips together, her words a confusing riddle – you were just children, what does love have to do with a soul young as you?
Cyrene sings a whine at your words. “Ne~ Romance doesn’t always mean love, it can be a tragic story, or – or a thrilling fight scene!”
You could not hold back a purse in your lips at that, a small smile blooms on your face, reverent as it comes. “So Cyrene likes all stories?”
She nods with glee, shuffling through her card deck. “Each of them.”
She lays down the card deck in front of you, and against your doubts, you sit in front of the girl cladded in a dress much familiar to her stature. The loquacious girl grins, drawing a card like it’s as easy as shifting through bundles of hay – and she brings it to your face, obscuring your vision of her for a second, then popping her head out from the side.
“Here, your card.”
You still for a moment, taking the card from her hands. The image depicts 2 – naked figures, a woman and man, reaching for something unseeable, a figure – an androgynous divine entity, held sacred above them both, wings spread anew, as if it’s gathering protection.
“The lovers?” You tilt your head at the card.
She giggles at your reaction. “The lovers. It’s fitting, isn’t it?”
You raise a brow at her words, she likes to speak in riddles from time to time, it seems. You give the card back to her, and she takes it gracefully, fingers dancing over the shiny material of the card that reflects against the light, brazen with colors.
“.. I don’t see it.”
“Not yet.” Cyrene smiles all the same, it appeared as if the appeasing smile could not leave her lips.
You frown at that. Slightly, the grass shifting underneath your feet. “Am I really that ‘lovey-dovey’?”
“It’s not that,” She hums, lifting her finger to lightly press on your forehead. “Hehe, you look cute confused.”
“Then–”
“(name). You are the essence of ‘love’ itself.” Cyrene smiles – but this one doesn’t reach her eyes. She withdrew her hand away, eyes fleeting to the dawn device on Kephale’s shoulder.
“Deliverance is inevitable,” She continues, you stay quiet, in this sense. “.. I wish.. this torn-like world didn't need a deliverer, not now, not ever.”
She means █████ — .. Phainon. You could see it on her face before she could even utter your friend’s name.
Her eyes are lightly casted with a darker glint, as if – sadness? You couldn’t quite tell in time, because it was gone only seconds later.
“Cyrene?”
“Mm, but that’s not to worry, (name)! Come on, Phai’s gonna start crying for us if we leave him wandering with the faeries – memlings.” Cyrene smiles with a burgeoning of urgency, eyes lighting up again in an instant, as she gathers the card deck back into her pocket.
“Cyrene, what do you mean?” You repeat the question that danced around your head, and Cyrene stills for a moment, hands still situating the cards – she does not answer right away.
Rather, she looks up to you, a smile impeded on her lips, “Questioning a girl like this! (name), you truly are cruel ~ ♪ ”
You – despite yourself – do not push it further, only nudge into the pink-haired girl’s shoulder. “Fine.” Cyrene wouldn’t keep things from you if she wasn’t doing it for your own good, you figured.
“But you will tell me later!” You urge the taller girl, tugging at the hem of her dress from below.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 1.
Phainon awoke to a dawn – the yellow wheat lightly shuffled below his body, his tousled snow-white hair shambling across the surface of something soft, cyan-like eyes adjusting to the weight of Kephale’s protection. It smells faint of cinnamon and baked bread – the piquancy of a welcoming arm to his awaken.
“You’re awake.” A voice ushered him woke, gentle and soft-spoken. IT whispered above his face, akin to a likening of breeze that embraced him gently, the forbearing resonance only threatened to lull the young boy asleep yet again.
Phainon stuttered open – his face a blaze of pink hue as he gathered himself, pushing his own body from your lap.
He chastised himself quietly, Don't creep her out, he chided inside his head. This is chill. You're just some friend that happened to sleep on her lap. No biggie!
His eyes locked into yours hesitantly, the silky-white tunic that adorned your body ruffled in protest as he lifted his head from it – he felt himself heating up again.
“How- how long was I asleep for?” The boy stammered upon his words, whereas you laughed at his embarrassment – the distant wind swaying ever softly beneath the bark of a leaning orange-leaved tree, the wheat-like grass flowing beneath the ground, again – almost in a rhythmic timed pattern, they swayed.
“Not long,” You shook your head, urging the white-haired boy to calm down.
“You fell asleep while I was reading the book.” You continued.
“Huh?!” Phainon stammered, sitting up to face you, your legs were folded, as his were splattered – one propped up while the other sat flat upon the fair yellowed field. “No way!”
You chuckled softly at his absolutely devastated state, you truly didn’t mind, but it would be fun to tease him so. “Were my stories that boring?”
“No!” Phainon replied in an utter panic, his hands waving around like it’d signify his innocence. “No! They’re not boring! Not at all!”
“Then why’d you fall asleep, hmm?”
“I didn’t – I mean–” he floundered, you laughed.
“I’m just teasing you.” You finally say, saving him from further embarrassment, Phainon looked quite close to pleading the fifth, or start begging for your forgiveness on his knees (like he would, he would never stoop that low, not even for you! Right?).
Phainon heaved a sigh of relief, settling himself down with an ‘oomf’ on the grassy patch next to you under the tree, body leaning over to yours, eyes not at all subtly peering at the book, you smiled at his curiosity.
“It’s a heroic story.” You whispered to him, as if unveiling a deep secret.
Phainon beamed at that – heroic epic compositions were nothing short of his favorite. He leaned in closer, cerulean cheerful eyes peeping at the book you held. “Really?!”
You nodded, a distant whirlwind pried in your words, hearing them as well. “Do you want me to read it to you?”
The boy nodded with vigor, head bumping up and down as he secured his body with 2 arms hovered over the grass, body situated to you – eager.
“So! This story,” You gestured with your hands, standing up to appear more dramatic. “Is about a hero, a soft musician.. who traverses Thanatos’ domain in a reverent search for his beloved.”
Settling the opened book onto your lap with a soft thud, the air whiffed through Aedes Elysiae gently, though ephemeral, the lasting zephyr flies past, casting its wind with a mellow stature on the two innocent figures on the yellow wheated land.
Phainon tilted his head at your summary, figure shooting up to stand. “That isn’t a hero! He doesn’t fight monsters!”
“He so is! How would you know?” You huffed at his already impatient claims, to which Phainon was only sparked by your rhetorical question.
His tone is bright, almost defensive. “A hero shines in the spotlight! He fights–” He swings his right arm in a mock-fighting motion indignantly. “–like his life depends on it!”
You laughed at that, seeing his theatrics. “Will you be a hero?”
“Yeah, obviously a hero.” He grinned, now leaning back onto the bark of the tree, propping himself up with one arm as if the very thought of saving someone didn’t weigh on him.
His white hair cascaded like a shimmering waterfall, the silver strands almost blending into the clouds above. He seemed so carefree, like the world’s concerns were just a speck on the horizon.
“.. Sounds boring.”
“It isn’t!”
“So is. ‘S just some sword swinging and a few rescuing.”
The sun – Kephale’s reverend dawn – seemed to highlight his youthful features, bringing a glow to his cheeks and a playfulness to the lines of his face.
It was almost unfair how the sun had swooned to him like a chosen one.
“So not!” Phainon piqued, his hand dashing out to reach at the sky – mock-holding Kephale’s dawn device into his thumb and index, as if he alone is holding the sun. “Cyrene told me that heroes weren’t chosen, but made. So – that path, I’ll carve it with my own hands.”
A breeze of silence fell over you both, Phainon’s promise lingering in the air like a sacred prayer for Oronyx’s benediction, one those Janus oracles would acclaim. But this is not a prophecy – nor is it a prayer, but a promise of a young boy from Aedes Elysiae.
A shudder befell your spine for some reason.
“.. You’re such an overachiever!” You laughed – the very sound reverberating around the fields of Aedes Elysiae.
You don’t think twice before leaning down to the bark of the tree as well, propping yourself next to him – the shade of the tree embracing your figures in protection.
“Whatever!” Phainon narked – bumping his shoulder into yours, delighting a yelp from you, before his attention is yet again – for some odd reason – drawn to Kephale’s dawn. “.. but I still like it better in this village.”
You blinked at his words. “Aedes Elysiae? Isn’t it kind of boring here?”
“‘S not! There’s big sis Cyrene – ma and pa, Andreas, Iraklis, Livia, everyone.” He huffed at you, finding your question utterly ridiculous. “Most importantly, there’s you!”
You try to still your face before it heats up at the last sentence – it’s a hopeless cause, you settle with the easy way of simply avoiding his gaze, looking up to Kephale’s world bearing stature, but you feel queasy looking at it as well.
“..Well, Aedes Elysiae is so isolated, though. No way you can be a hero here, you’d have to leave to – Castrum Kremnos, or something!”
Phainon paused, scratching his chin in thought. You were right. If he wanted to be a hero, no sane person would stay in a village that smirkished so far away from the large capital city-states – the polis of Kremnos is known to breed soldiers far powerful and it would definitely mold him into a strong and vigorous hero as he’d hope, or the holy city of Okhema – it would grant him the popularity that he needs, provided with a sanctuary that would safeguard him with each wants he pursues.
But leaving Aedes Elysiae seemed like a thought so far away from him.
Leaving you?
.. No.
He couldn’t fathom that.
You were just about to change the topic, nervous at his uncharacteristic silence as Phainon simply stared out into what seemed like nowhere when –
“I just won’t be a hero then!” He proudly proclaimed after a few long and arduous moments of pondering.
“Huh?!”
Phainon only shrugged at the shock on your face as you abruptly turned to face him yet again, he rested his arms beneath his head lazily, the next words drawled out in a nonchalant manner. “Well, if I had to leave Aedes Elysiae to be a hero, I don’t want to do it.”
You could only deadpan at his ironic behavior – what an oxymoron of himself, he is. “Isn’t it your dream?”
“My backup dream.” He pronounced. “My foremost dream is to just live in this village. The epics are cool and all but.. I dunno, I like the tranquility here more. I have everything I want, why would I leave?”
That gives you pause – he had a point, you supposed. A strange one, but a point nevertheless.
“You’re weird.”
“Hey!” Phainon bumped his shoulder into yours at that.
You laughed. “What? I’m just saying!”
“What’s so weird ‘bout just staying here?” Phainon pouted, looking at the ridges of golden reeds painting across Aedes Elysiae.
People busied about, carrying buckets of milk, or stacks of hay into their arms, cows, or horses followed suite – it’s idyllic, even with the bustling of the streets.
“.. I like it home the most.” Phainon smiled to himself.
You go silent at his melancholic words – he speaks as if he’s leaving, as if he’s gone, but he’s not.
“.. I guess so. But compared to being a hero, wouldn’t like.. Say, managing a farm be plenty mundane?”
“Well, the chickens are similar enough to the vigorous titankins in the hymns, right?” Phainon snickered, recounting the multitude of embarrassing ways he had to chase his father’s hoard of chicken down the wheat field. “Oh! And you’re like the final boss that chases me down the–”
You quickly smack the back of his head at the underhand jab. “I do not.”
“Ow! See? Just like a hero being beat up by his archnemesis.” He whined, holding his head in a theatrical manner.
“I am not an archnemesis!”
“Really? What role do you propose, then?”
You hummed, a finger dusting your chin in thought, before announcing: “Ah.. oh, I got it – the antihero!”
.. okay, yeah, that was kind of stupid. You turn to Phainon as he only stared at you with an incredulous look on his face at your proclamation. An ‘anti-hero’?! That was literally just another way of saying ‘anti-phainon’!
“What?!” Phainon yelped, pressing himself closer to you by anchoring himself with both arms on the grass, face sticking into your personal space. “That’s like – the total opposite of my role!”
“I mean! Isn’t antihero a cool title?” You quickly try to explain to the mortified male in front of you. “Cyrene told me about it.”
“But.. but – that’s so different from a hero! Don’t you want to be like a .. damsel in distress? Or, or.. sidekick? Or–”
“No way!” You pouted, and Phainon immediately sulked at your answer. “Damsel in distress is so boring, why can’t I just save myself? Sidekick is kinda generic.”
You paused, before relaxing your shoulders against the bark of the tree, whilst Phainon looked all but relaxed, your gaze swims to the cerulean sky.
“But.. What I like about the antihero is that they’re really ambiguous. Like, I don’t wanna be a hero, it’s too much responsibility. But villains are mean guys, so they’re inherently bad – but they also do things for a reason. So an anti-hero is something in between that line of good and bad, they’re neither morally righteous or immoral.” You paused. Your words are strange to your voice, it’s strangely mature. Your gaze lifts from the sky back to Phainon.
“But they’re.. not conventionally heroic. For that reason I like it, it’s flawed – it’s really human.”
At your philosophical soliloquy, Phainon only whined, throwing an arm over your shoulder in a manner of boredom – your words go in one ear and out the other for the white-haired boy, it seemed. “You’re starting to sound wayyy too smart! Stop hanging out with Cyrene so much!”
“What, jealous?” You teased, feeling his arm around your shoulder drawing you closer to him. “Cyrene likes me more, after all.”
“No way! Cyrene’s been my friend longer – she obviously likes me more!” He pinched your arm cheekily.
You yelped, quickly pinching him back. “By theory, sure, but Cyrene likes me a teensy winsey more. She told me!”
“Did not.”
You scoffed at his words. “Did too.”
He punches – playfully so, there is no strength, as if he could not hurt even a bit of you – your shoulder lightly aches again, whereas you punch him back, then he pinches your cheek, you dart to pinch his (much harder).
This devolves into him kicking your feet with his, and your kicking his stomach – Phainon flew to tackle you onto the ground, his form casting a shadow over yours, his hands darting to your wrist to pin them above your head.
“Ha! The hero always wins, didn’t the epics teach ya that, (name)?” He grinned, white teeth and all.
You scoffed, squirming and kicking. “You’re not even a hero – you’re a bully!”
Phainon lets out a scandalized gasp, his hold on your hands loosening at the offensive remark. “No way! I’m –”
You take the opportunity to yank your hand out of his hold, and fingers itch a rapid line to tickle at his waist – to which the white haired boy immediately starts squirming, trying, and failing, to swat you away.
“Haha–! (name)! Stop, I can’t–!” He wheezed, your fingers flying around his waist, Phainon looks no less than the textbook definition of pathetic rather than a so-called hero.
“Yield.” Your fingers do not attempt to stop their assault.
“Yield! Yield! I yield!”
You, in your merciful inclination, released your fingers from his sides, satisfied at his beseeching of a failure.
You grin to yourself as Phainon catches his breath – having looked like he had undergone a traumatic event.
“.. You really are an anti-phainon.”
“What was that?”
“You heard that, don’t even pretend!”
You laughed, stomach riling with your senses.
The sky fights back, casting now a saffron hue over your figures, the two of you dancing in a frolic of your own.
The book in your hands prior rests unnoticed now – but the pages are flipped through by the soft caress of wind, shifting through its pages, as if a story was woven out into the air right then.
You and Phainon’s innocent aligned figures sat atop the hill, near that familiar bark of a tree that hung over your stature.
Cyrene watches from a distance with a smile, before turning her gaze away from your childish menageries, huffing a giggle into her open hand that rested over her mouth, a stack of hay situated in her arms as she maneuvered around with the graze of a butterfly.
…
The stone slate features two figures. Erected onto a capacious wall – inscribed with cracks of gold. The slate is rough, grazing one’s hand would sure to injure.
Ἀεὶ κολοιὸς παρὰ κολοιῷ ἱζάνει.
The large transcriptions read –
"A jackdaw is always found near a jackdaw". What a strange title.
The large stone slate depicts this: one a hero, plastered onto rock transcriptions roughly – prominently, ichor flowing with resplendent aureate of veins – amalgamated with the Titan’s own cycles of eternal punishment – of sins incipient by sheep born of cattle, by flames of humanity reaved by the seeker of truth, the figure is nothing short of divine.
Small hoards of sheep gather near the scintillating figure.
.. The sheep is sat at 42° angle clockwise.
The other a mortal, a nebulous existence in contrary to the other of gleaming epics – one of hazy transcriptions, barely indented onto the plastered rocks of time, not once has their ichor touched a hint of chrysos, not once, has their soul drifted to the light, crawling out of the darkness through volition of their own – it is a weak soul.
A crow – or a jackdaw lingers near the brotós, mortal.
The jackdaw loiters at a 13° angle counter-clockwise.
–Weak, as the mortal may appear, the soul of the divine will always be fallible to the coalition of the human soul – no matter how hard, how insistent the divine is, the holy holds no sway over the human soul. For humans wield what the beatific and holiest cannot, for that is the finity of life in itself.
But mark my words, O mortal born of folly. For the divinity will stain the cleaves of your hands as do a pomegranate, stick to the roof of your teeth as the seeds pop, the holy will take your soul and cleave it into something burgundy and substandard.
For this, you will refuse anything but the greed to reach your anthropoid fingers to it again, greedy human instincts to attempt clutch at even the holy. But the divine shall crawl its way beneath your crimson-aligned veins and fuel you into itself, and the divine will never leave quietly, especially when you, foolish one, ask for it.
It is like fire. He is like fire.
And you? You will burn as incendiary martyrs will.
The two of you laugh, Phainon’s face beaming at the story’s content, face puffing the slightest larger as you guide your way through the story, expressions painting each scene as you laugh along to the far-chronicle.
The flames of your souls dance along – perhaps too eagerly interlaced.
.. ah. ‘A jackdaw is always found near a jackdaw’ – that is true, for ‘birds of a feather will flock together’, would they not?
(.. certain letters at the top were crossed out in a rush. It looks messy, had it not been for small little hearts, sun, and star constellations that were drawn deftly across the brown-stained paper.)
My dear (name),
Forgive my awful handwriting – though in cruelly I wish nothing but the best for your eyes to ponder. I hope.. Pray, to hand you these letters myself s̶o̶m̶e̶ one day, and this will be the starting mark of it! You told me prior to today, sitting under that same flaxen tree behind my grandparent’s quite candidly rotting house that you liked handwritten letters, your face lightly brazen with the intricacies of the daybreak and that saccharine dawn-kissed smile i̶ ̶w̶i̶s̶h̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶o̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶i̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶K̶e̶p̶h̶a̶l̶e̶'̶s̶ ̶d̶a̶w̶n̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ on your face prompted me an idea I could not push down as I do the rest. So, these letters will be my stalemates to you, dear (name).
Now, sitting under the horribly lit oil lamp of my room, the light is frightfully flicking with trepidation in my face – surely I will get rid of this soon. Nevertheless, the point is that I am not sure where to start, for you have too much traits that I could ponder to myself over this crooked bedside table about for eternity and not get bored. It’s weird – my mind conjures all these thoughts when my eyes meet each curve of your face, happy or sad – sleepy or awake, but now, sitting here like this, it’s much harder to form the adequate words I believe you deserve. Nevermind that, I’m sure I could tell you this in person later, or in another letter, frankly, whichever you prefer, I’d do it.
But foremost, my first letter shall be a profound of a love letter. Yes, cliche, isn’t it? Oh, I’m sure you’d bend over your stomach laughing your pretty face out had you heard me utter such uncharacteristic words – but yes, if my first letter for you is about something, let it be about love that drew us woven.
(... Cyrene’s postscript note stays intact in the middle of the torn letter, the rest are burnt, crippling into darker edges on the sides – taunting. You do not know what the rest say.)
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
The fields of Aedes Elysiae were unchanging – for that was the one prominence that Phainon loved most in his home.
Unchanging, undeterred. The fields mewed a soft zephyr, the breeze grazed one’s forehead the same as do outsiders or homeward citizens, the distinction in power hierarchy doesn’t touch the people of his village, no.
There are no kings – ones closer to that role were the village chiefs, but the power they wield weren’t all-powerful, nor was it overwhelming, it was safe. Secured, and sure, they’d grab Phainon by the scruff of his shirt sometimes with stolen cabbages in his arms, but the village chief – the old man, with legs that worked for only farming and eyes that need not open fully – would only scoff, before roughly ruffling the bands of his snow white hair and urged him off with a scowl, arms still cladded with the (stolen – given, now, he supposed) cabbages.
There are no lows – when neighbors struggled with harsh weather, or crops refused to grow so, people would gather support, handing them a portion of the season’s harvest with a smile, or gather a fire pit into the town’s center, and everyone – most of all the adults, in the least – would clink glasses and tell mythical stories to the children that sat abide like passing the hay to the horses to eat, it’s simple as love among everyone equally that brewed him his own.
There are no arguments – at least ones that lasted, or escalated. Disputes in the village happen – of course they do, they are foremost emotions. Despite that, Phainon found that while sadness, anger, bitterness is always consciously present here, it is temporary as it comes, because when a fight would break out, the village chief would intervene with the same bored look old people tended to have and shake each party’s hands into a peace treaty somehow, then it’d go back to normal – happy, content. Anger never lasted, for it was only the storm that followed suite with a rainbow gaze.
There are no conflicts – no war, no battle royals to the death like Castrum Kremnos, within constant isolation like Aidonia, accoutred with rogues as Dolos, complicated in reason as the Grove of Epiphany, or large and garbed with a population larger than Phainon could comprehend like Okhema city resided – Aedes Elysiae is gentle, it is soft – unfettered by events that did not garner them, unaffected by the state of the larger polis, it was small, and it was all Phainon needed.
Really, Aedes Elysiae was the only place he ever fettered to, he ever wanted to be in.
The birds chirp with a cheery tune loudly here, they’re happily singing, diving through the flaxen fields with practical ease. His work is easy, gathering crops, harvesting rice plant panicles, red soil feeds, or even chasing those pesky chickens down the fields again – his work is facile, and Phainon likes it as it is.
Aedes Elysiae has Cyrene – his older friend, who looked like she held the world in her hands. She wasn’t much older, no, but Cyrene looked, talked, and seemed as if she held all knowledge more mature than adults of the village, her voice shimmered with a calm radiance, her pink hair fluttered with the wind’s bygones, and she knew everything–!
Cards, divination, books of high caliber, theatre plays with complicated vocabularies, all of it! She’d nod along to him on her lap going off about heroes, read stories to you and him for long as the two of you had begged for, sneaked the two of you snacks when she wasn’t supposed to, she was the bestest of best.
Aedes Elysiae was home to his parents, who meticulously built that roof to place him under – they were the best! They’d adore him with all that they could, pamper him with the best porridges, dishes and love, usher him into their bed when he’d cried over a scary, large monster encapsulating the village and drawing large body of crimson rivers – they’d wiped away the tears on his cheeks and buried him between their arms under the blanket, stuffy hot as the weather was, the warmth of their embrace was all that felt right. His father, Hieronymus was the strongest to Phainon, with arms that could lift both him and Cyrene up with ease, arms that carried him and you out of the kindergarten crying about nonsensical monsters. His father was strong. He could carry the heaviest boulders – Phainon wonders if one day, he could too.
His mother – Audata, was the kindest, most amazing woman he ever knew. She’d greet him gently, ruffle his hair while stuffing his mouth with nothing but delicacies. She’d embrace him after each school-day, carding her fingers around his snow-flaked hair with a soft, delicate, humming as he fell asleep.
She’d force him down and cut his hair when it grew too long for comfort, even as his hair flailed onto the floor like specks of snow, his mother would clean it up without complaint, and usher him another smile. His mother never complained. She was the most gentle woman ever.
And most importantly – most significantly, Aedes Elysiae has you.
You, with the soft smile, you, with the gentle jabs, you, with that sweet, gods – sweet, saccharine-like voice.
He’d always been the type to like sugar, sweets encircled with sugar made him jump with joy (and later with sugar rush) – you were just like sugar. Rough around the edges – you’ve chased him down more than he can count – but sweet to the core.
He could imagine himself standing in Aedes Elysiae, but he couldn’t imagine it happy without you.
The softest laugh, the kindest eyes, the most burrowed of gentleness that clawed into his chest and dug itself a space in the hollow of his heart, and him, who sewed it closed so the gentleness would not leave. You were constant – unchanging, almost like an immovable object.
He’d wake up, jog to your house and climb through your window with it purposefully left unlocked by courtesy of your doing, wake you up with a grin, to which you’d throw a pillow straight to his face, and the two of you would spend the rest of the day with tasks smaller than the world would know.
You were perpetual, you didn’t change, didn’t move, didn’t – grow, in a way.
He could walk through the most horrid of hells, and turn to his side and you’d be the constant with him.
He liked that the most. Liked how you wouldn’t leave, even if you two fought, either he or you would come to the other with teary eyes.
Even if you two didn’t agree – you’d bicker for a few minutes, then he’d nudge closer to you and say that he liked whatever you liked, your face would flush the cute red he liked, and smack him in the face.
The gentle you, the quiet you, the loud you – each of it was unchanging. Sweet, beautiful you, who’d gaze at the stars and pry, shake his arms for him to look, even if the stars – far away as they were – were in human form in front of him.
So in touch, so prominent, so .. real.
He could hide from everything, from everyone – duck under a tree, beneath the bed or hide from himself, but he could not, would not hide from you.
Real, touchable, tangible, immovable – his other half.
“Psst, what are you exploding your mind thinking about?” A cold sensation to his cheek made him jerk back – to see you, holding a can of drink to his face, a teasing smile on your own as you threw the drink to him.
He caught the can with one hand mindlessly, flicking it open with a playful scoff at your arrival. “Nothing. And even if I was, I’ll have you know, it’s a genius mind in action.”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure.” You hummed sarcastically, standing next to him, flicking open your own can of drink, the fizzy sound reverberates. “No really, what are you thinking about? You look perpetually deep in thought, it’s creeping me out.”
“Is it so weird that I’m deep in thought?”
“Yeah, you’re never thinking.”
He kicked your leg from the back of your knee, to which you only stumble forward with a laugh.
“.. I’m thinking about Aedes Elysiae,” He answered after a moment of silence, you sipping your drink in expectation, a brow raised, urging him to continue. “Of.. home, I guess. Is that weird?”
–Of course, Phainon tells you anyway, it’s not like he can deny you.
He can try to tell himself he won’t tell you but he turns out to either way – his thoughts are yours, it’s a routine simple as breathing.
You quirked an eyebrow at his words. “Kind of. What, you planning on leaving?”
“No! No, no – I mean, I’m just.. Rethinking a lot of things, to be honest.” His hands sheepishly caught the back of his neck, scratching it thoughtlessly, his free hand fidgets with the can in his hand. “I have this weird urge to.”
Phainon’s said weird too much by this point – he is kind of weird with all of this, where did it even come from, this urge?
A bile rises up from his trachea, blocking his airways, and consecutively extends to his thoughts. “Am I weird?”
You paused, looking at your drink – mouth just a slight away from the opening of the can. You turn to him, an unreadable look in your face. “.. Sure. But so what? Everybody’s weird.”
He narrowed his eyes at your words – it’s not really comforting. “You know that’s not what I meant.” He pouted against the mouth of his drink, lips pursing against each other.
If he’s weird, you’d leave, you’d run away, claw yourself out of his chest through the weaves he sewed and flee with a tail between your leg from his weird –
“I like you being weird,” Your hand is on his head now, fingers in the middle of the snowy landscape of his hair – Phainon stills, like a dog would. “Say it over and over. Your weird thoughts, your weird food cravings, random weird melancholic homesickness even if you’re at home.”
He unconsciously leaned into your touch, eyes lidding close, the drink almost forgotten as he focused on the hand – your hand, uncalloused, soft on his head. “.. doesn’t that make you weird?”
“I never said I wasn’t.”
Phainon laughed a hitch at that, a low sound from his chest, it almost made you shiver. “So we’re both weirdos?”
You smiled at him, one that sang what couldn’t from your throat, one that spoke of utter reassurance, one that he wanted to staple onto you for eternity – one that held his heart, one that he handed his heart to.
“We are.” You’d retracted your hand from his head, and he could feel himself sulking over the loss of contact, fingers twitching to grab your wrist himself and card your fingers back into his hair by force.
Phainon moved closer to you, and without a word, rested his head on your shoulder thoughtlessly, his hair tickling your neck. “.. I miss home.”
“Yeah?” You two were home. What a weird thing to say.. How sweetly sorrowful – this weird, aching feeling that derived from your stomach when he said it, as if you felt it as well.
You two were weird.
Like .. an even odd, a wise fool, a brawling love, a loving hate, that waking sleep that burns teeth into the cravings of inedible flesh, that fire that lights at water – aching for the pain, relishing in being relinquished. That heavy lightness, that pungent bitter sweetness –
How weird you were.
How weird he was.
How weird, that even with that – you hold him still.
How weird, that he looks at you like you were meant to stay, fire in his eyes that gleamed when you left, even if it’s to go home for the night – fire in his eyes when you’d stayed, and the weird, burning desire that cascaded in him, buried into his instincts to make you stay, keep staying, and always stay.
It burns at him, not the burn that was bad, not the burns that radiated to his epidermis and blisters a harsh red when he stuck his hand in the fire recklessly, no – it’s the burn that made him crave for it. The burn that fired in his heart, then his skin, tickling it with utmost sincerity, it makes him want to reach his greedy fingers out and scratch it – the burn.
How weird.
“.. Stay, (name).”
It’s not a request, doesn’t sound like one. More like a demand, it’s finalized in Phainon’s words.
You blinked at his words, the drinks you brought for the both of you forgotten, his voice muffled into your neck, arms around your waist tightly as you held him.
He’d said it so quietly, almost like he didn’t want you to hear it, almost like you were privy to a thought he’d let run through his fingers and slip through his mouth.
You hear it anyways, and you answer – you always will, you could not bear to not answer him.
“I’m not leaving.”
How weird – it almost felt like you were lying to him.
“.. Hey, (name)?”
“Hm?”
“.. Those birds, salt and pepper.” Phainon started, mouth moving against your neck.
You huffed at the old memory. “You mean the birds that we tried to save?”
“Yeah,” He said, a melancholic tone noted in his voice. “Do you think–”
Salt and Pepper – much strange names they were, real creative of the two of you – were two birds that you and Phainon found lying desecrated on the ground, both huffing for life, fighting for what remains of the fire in their small bird heart.
Even something so small has to fight, not always because they want to – far from it, but because fate orders them to.
You two tried – as much as two little kids could, anyway – to save them, but as do all wild animals that had been hunted down, it was to an extent, of no avail.
Salt was a white bird with textured fringes, as the name suggested. It was an active bird, no doubt.
Pepper was a stygian, much smaller bird – quieter, and the first one to die.
You had been there the whole time, while Salt flew around in joyous momentum, its wings bandaged by scraps of gauzes that Phainon could dig out, Pepper’s wings only fluttered a weak beat, its peck unmoving, not a single sound was drawn out of the black bird – its wings, which should be so open, free – only drooped further down, the edges frayed and ragged.
Phainon had offered Pepper some worms – hands dirtied as he nudged the worms to Pepper’s mouth, following a fruitless action.
When Pepper no longer responded, when its breathing was no longer viable, not even once as you poked its wings, not even once as Phainon blew some air into it – the bird didn’t move, its wings spread open as it took its last breath in your hand.
Salt, the white bird, seeing this – seemed like it didn’t understand, and instead flocked its wings around Pepper’s dead body, as if waiting for the black bird to rise up again, fluttering around with quickened activity.
The two of you had cried with the bird alternating between your hands and Phainon’s until late that evening, where Cyrene came home with obvious shock on her face as she took in the sight of your snot-covered faces and a dead bird on your palm.
She’d have calmed the two of you down, and pried the bird–Pepper’s stygian body away to bury in the soil of Phainon’s front yard – whereas the white bird, Salt, was released back into the wild, with you and Phainon waving it a happy goodbye.
Pepper was laid to an early death – you can’t help thinking that it could’ve survived, but pushed the thought down. Salt was free, it’d live through the worst and flung its wings to bare the sky with glee–
– A few days later, you’d found Salt lying a defaced mess, no doubt hunted by an apex predator in the same yard that Pepper laid buried – you didn’t tell Phainon this.
How could you bear to? To tell him that the one bird that sought freedom fell to the same fate as if it had just given up – to tell him the white bird, who’d made it out alive, had been treated not an ounce kinder when it touched freedom – you couldn’t say that.
So instead, you quietly buried Salt’s white, desecrated body near Pepper’s own grave in Phainon’s front yard – Cyrene looked at you with slight pity in her eyes as you dug a grave for the white bird.
. . .
“.. Do you think that Pepper could have made it out?” You finished the thought for Phainon, to which he doesn’t respond for a heartbeat.
You take his silence as a nudge to continue. “.. Would it have been better for Pepper to make it out?”
You think back to Salt’s dead, cold body, though its eyes were glazed with freedom, baring its wings to the sky, only to be victim to a glass wall of a matter of equality in cycles.
Everything was in this strange triangular hierarchy, you noticed.
“It would’ve been, right?” Phainon replied, eyes a darker shade – fear, almost. “(name), it would’ve been, right?”
You flinched at his words, your eyes flickering away from his to find a semblance of guilt in the yellow reeds in front of you. “Maybe for Pepper.. It was better for it to – die first.”
“What?” You could feel Phainon’s stare as he lifted his head from the crook of your neck, his arms around your waist loosening as if he couldn’t believe your words – not a bit of it.
How was it better to die? How was it easier to kill yourself instead of fight–
“It looked peaceful, didn’t it?” You recalled the black bird with its wings open, its last breath taken on your palm.
Dead, and defiled as it looked, when your eyes wandered to its tiny face, all you could find was a serene expression – peace, fleeting as it was.
You felt your spine grow cold at the thought.
“That’s not true.” Replied the white-haired boy, hands moving from your waist to grasp at your shoulder, almost adamant to make you believe. “That isn’t true. It can’t be easier to die than live.”
You clasped a hand over his. “Sometimes,” Your voice is quieter, serene-like, the voice like a mother would. “It’s harder to live than to just die.”
Maybe that’s how Pepper felt, you bitterly thought.
For Salt – the pallid bird who freed itself with wings spread ajar, freedom at the touch of its feathers – even that burning scalding freedom got it nowhere but a route’s dead end.
But for Pepper – that dusk colored bird whom seeked none but a death of their own, you can’t help but think–
A better fate was it, to die on one’s own volition than even fight to live and die as fate intends.
“Don’t say that.” Phainon’s voice is clipped when he shakes you back to reality. “Don’t say it like you’re considering it too.”
“What?” You couldn’t help but huff a small laughter. “I’m not, don’t be silly.”
“You sound like you are.”
Did you? You didn’t notice yourself.
“You’re worrying too much,” You lead his face back into the crook of your neck by a steady hand behind his head, breath shimmering down your collarbone deftly – lest he finds it in himself to overthink another matter. “Just a comparison. Besides, we’re all gonna die of old age in a village separated as this, what are you worrying for?”
“.. I guess you’re right.” Phainon muttered into your neck, the sound a low vibration as he felt your heart beneath the aching of his chest, your bodies fitted – ovetailed against one another with seamless difficulty, it felt like he was trying to consume your body into his own.
Your heart beats – a thump – another thump.
Repetitive.
The same sound again and again – so human, so alive. Phainon pressed himself further onto you.
“Phainon.”
“Don’t leave, (name).”
The words were whispered as though they were worship of prayers hidden among depths of simply skin and skin over and over again – among the ichor, crimson or gold – he tore the words out of his chest like a voiceless prayer.
You responded to him in kind. “.. I won’t leave.”
“Say it again.”
“I won’t leave.”
“Again.”
“I won’t leave.”
“One more time–”
You grasped his head with two hands cupping his cheek, forcing him to look you in the eyes. “Phainon. I told you, I’m not leaving.”
“Swear it. Swear it the way we always do.”
Phainon nudged you with a tightened grip of your shoulder – he means the silly method of promise the two of you made every time you swore to each other something.
Nothing ceremonious, or grandiose – just a routine that was so painfully, utterly yours and his.
“Cross my heart,” You withdrew your hands from his face, drawing a line from the right of your shoulder to your left, crossing the line over the bridge of your heart, thumping insistently in your chest. “And be torn into the sunrise,”
‘And be torn into the sunrise’ – an extra verse the two of you had made and added yourself – it was a running joke, since Kephale’s dawn was always up, so prominent from the fields of Aedes Elysiae, it meant everyday, each minute, was sunrise.
Therefore, (in Phainon’s words, anyway) anything that is sworn within the oath will always be true, torn into the skies themselves, forever.
You continued, looking into his eyes. “I’ll stay with you. Swear it.”
You will. For as long as he allowed you to.
“.. Swear it.”
He needed you to.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 4.
Dear my beloved (name),
These letters are starting to feel more like journaling than letters, but that’s fine. It just means I have a lot to tell you! That’s besides the point – (name), I’ve been wracking my brain over just what ‘love’ means. I asked Cyrene, and she said love is gentle – like the stories of heroes, or the wracking tragedy of a love fallen or just a cool fight scene, not that it made sense to me at that time. How can love be ‘something’ like ‘gentle’ and ‘tragic’? Love is simply romantic, right? Like those.. Kissing stuff, I tried to pry Cyrene for more ‘words of wisdom’ but she only peered me away and told me that I’d get it someday – I doubt that. So I asked my Ma and Pa, where they said love is strong – do people’s definition of love just get more confusing as I keep asking along? How is love even strong? I bet I can beat it in an arm wrestling battle – it’s just a feeling, isn’t it? Ahh, I’m being all weird again with these questions, but the reason I asked was because I couldn’t define what love meant to me, to us. Is it weird? (Sorry, I keep asking that nowadays) Is it weird to not understand love when I see it each day?
I think, to me, love is the way your eyes light against the dawn of the sky when you turn to me, your hair subsequently darts against the softest zephyr that was sent to greet you, the way your voice shimmers, a clearer emergence in seas of discordant sounds and endless stars in which you, yet again, still shine the brightest – like you were born for it.
Maybe it’s okay if I don’t have a definition of love – no one technically has to, right?
Sometimes I suspect you were made from the same core as stars were, hahah. I only ever memorized one constellation (much to Cyrene’s dislike, you know she kept trying to teach me?), and it was because it reminded me so vertuably of you. It’s called the Lyra! Something-something falling hawk (or eagle, actually - was that the same thing?), but that’s besides the point. It has this star named Vega inside, and it’s one of the brightest stars ever to map the night sky – I think that’s just like you. The brightest of souls, the most resplendent and shining of hearts in a map of stars.
Also, it has a lyre, kind of like the lullabies you often sang to me, so it’s just like you! Hence why I like the constellation so much. Imagine how much I could learn if all the studies were done about you!
(name), you say such philosophical things all that time that I can’t help but wonder – if I, and only I, could take a peek inside that brain of yours and see for myself how you think – would that bear us closer? If you’d let me look inside of you?
Oh, I’ve got it!
My definition of love: is you!
I still don’t really get it, but when adults speak of those thumping in your chest, the weird stomach worms wiggling around, or when your head gets all fuzzy and weird – that’s supposed to be love, right?
Weird, though, I think it feels just like when I start to get sick or overloaded on sugar – is that reallllyyy love?
But I guess, the difference is that the strange impeccable feeling from love brings me more joy than I can simply put to words – and this strange feeling only derives from you. So, in a short, easy, Phainon definition, love is you, (name)!
Still kind of confused, but I think with this definition, I won’t have to pry Cyrene any longer than I already have.
Anyway! I hope you won’t find this letter specifically, I think it’s a little embarrassing since this is all just me needlessly ranting about how much I see you in even maps of stars in the sky or the strange strange pit inside of my stomach that seems to scream for you – please don’t tease me later!!
Forever yours, Phainon ~
(This letter remains uninjured and undeterred by ragged edges as do the other letters, it’s full and crisp – like a new letter written just minutes ago. If not for the circumstances, you could laugh at the doodles he had placed – how sweet.)
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
The dawn of Kephale shimmers beneath the touch of your eyes, you close them, appalled by the brightness of it – the reeds fight against the weight of your back above the golden field, your arms reach out, trying, and failing, to block the blazing light of the dawn.
Your arm falls back impatiently to your side, the brightness unrelenting against your closed eyelids.
Here, under this stupid, same tree – you could pretend time stilled for even a moment of your own interest. You could heave your breath in and believe that the world stays as it is.
You could pretend you weren’t growing up.
The reeds move again with the deliverance of the soft zephyr, mocking your own thoughts. You scoff at it.
Time was a monster.
A monster who would swallow up his children – or raise the heavens against humanity, or impede the nature of mortality.
Time was unfair.
An unfair reality that – even if you wish, even if you beg, even if you try and try to grab it into your palms – things will change.
You could claw at it with your might, scream till your throat was hoarse and beg for a time reimburse, but in its unfair nature, time will not respond.
Time hitches, time stutters, time challenges, time –
Does not wait.
What are you searching for?
You give pause, and you’re almost keen on saying ‘only time will tell’, but Oronyx, Time, remains quiet against you, what cruel titan.
Everything runs out of time. IT is what fate precedes – it is predetermined. This, cruel, but real knowledge makes your inside squirm in relentless questioning.
The walls of your house wear down, sticking with scratches that pierces into the deeper layers, chipping away at the paint. Even something upstanding as your home runs on borrowed time.
The trees around Aedes Elysiae don't stand forever. It was planted – rooted to live, but is cut down in favor of materials for casting fire. The crops – the reeds, golden, bright, as they are, they get cut off, harvested, they end.
The animals, too. The farms in Aedes Elysiae nurture the pigs, feed the chickens and foster the horses, but when time arrives, the grown-ups carry their near-dead bodies and take them for harvest, as food. Animals have an end – like those stygian and pallid birds.
The scarecrows come to ruin by time as well. They too, aren’t spared from the blizzards of the wind, nor the harsh storms of the titans’ sorrows. The mannequin wears down by little, the clothes dirty and the birds chip away at the ‘human-like protector’. You wince.
Everything is preceded, predetermined, planned – everything has a clear beginning, a clear, fated end that befits their stature.
You know things end. You know it too well. Your mother who’d claw at your skin, begging to live, shaking your shoulder as if you were the fates that ordained her ill nature.
She’d flung the medicine to the floor, clenched her nails into the pillow hard enough for it to gain scratch marks – and lacerated you when the life last left her, and all that flung out of her mouth weren’t a sentimental last word but string of curses – at the gods, at you.
Your mother was a good woman.
Then, she’d left with a declaration that took the last of her strength with her: ‘Let this child be cursed – for time takes all!’
Unstable, unkind to you – but good. You want to believe so.
The world had been unkind to her, and she needed something to be unkind to.
So what if that was you?
Could you blame her?
Once twitching, once yelling, her kind, good body, fell limp in the total silence of your breath.
You stared at her body on the bed for hours.
You feel an itching need to be unkind to someone else. Something. Anything.
You feel an itching need to throw your fist into flesh, draw your nails into skin until it drives blood–
Until a familiar figure pressed his palm into your shoulder. The touch is grounding.
Until those azure eyes flew with concern over your tear-stricken face, and pressed you into the crook of his shoulder wordlessly, allowing himself to sink onto the floor as well you, sobs wrecking into the material of his blue tunic.
Time takes all.
Time is unkind.
But you don’t want it to take him.
And you will not allow it to be unkind to him.
Your hands braced behind his shoulder, as if you needed to plant him closer to you, until each atom in your bodies were magnetized to the other, until he was woefully you, as you were him.
Sobs had wrack through your chest, then, and he didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. His hands just held you tighter to him.
Time takes all.
But you pray, if there’s a single titan out there that listens – be it Mnestia or the unanswering Oronyx – let him be the sole thing not be taken by time.
You would beg if need be.
They don’t need to answer, you don’t want to hear them. They just needed to keep him alive, that’s all you ever cared for.
His long, calloused fingers – probably dirtied by the mud from busying the horses into the den – carded through your hair, softly wracking its way through your unruly, unkempt locks.
You claw at his clothes again, your fingers raked into the cotton of his shirt roughly.
"Look at me". He had whispered, his mud fingers moving to your face, turning it to him. "Look only at me."
It’s not as if you could bear to look at anything but him. His eyes burn into yours, so clear, even with tears blurring at your eyelids. The flecks of gold in his blue eyes shined brighter when he was so close.
Time takes all.
You wished it would not take this moment from you, even if your body was rotten into the soils of the earth, becoming one with the planted seeds of the dirt. You wished he would stay forever, whether in memories or otherwise.
You wish, wish, and wish.
But time blurs all, even memories.
“Hey, wake up.”
You awake blearily to a grinning face, Phainon’s figure above you blocking the sun.
You glared at his cheshire cat-like smirk, all content with waking you up from your comforting nap under the flaxen tree. He moves to stumble himself down beside you before you could kick him where the sun doesn’t shine.
“What’re you dreaming about?” Phainon observed as you sat up, stretching your arms over your head at the strain of lying under the tree, you huffed at his arrival.
“My ma. The past.”
His eyes narrowed at your response. “-- Well stop thinking ‘bout your Ma. I didn’t even like ‘er, totally sucked.”
“Hey!”
“What? It’s the truth! She was mean to you.”
You rolled your eyes at his words. “She wasn’t ‘mean’, she was tired and sick.”
“Yeah? Well when I’m sick, I don’t throw plates at you.”
“She had anger issues.”
“She had a lot of issues.”
You punch Phainon square in the shoulder, he only yelped, rubbing against the spot where you had aggressively offended him. “She was my Ma.”
“My Ma doesn’t act like yours,” He recalled – the vast difference between your family and his. “Moms are supposed to love and adore their kids in any circumstance, not scream and try to fist fight them. And no, being sick isn’t a valid excuse.”
You scoffed at him again, crossing your arms deftly over your chest. “.. Whatever! She –” Your mind races for an excuse, a justification – nothing comes up but her distraught face, the words ‘time takes all’ swimming around.
“You don’t owe her anything.” Phainon, as if sensing your discomfort, draws an arm around your shoulder, pulling your body to him. “She was a jerk, simple as that. Even if she was your Ma.”
His words give you pause – you couldn't deny the truth in it, not really. Instead, you question. “Then why is love so labeled with hate?”
Phainon doesn’t know how to answer that. The hand that was subconsciously drawing circles on your shoulder stiffened in place. “.. Because it’s human nature.”
Did your mom hate you because it was in her nature? Did she yell at you because in her love, hate was the only way she could persist the knowledge that you were physically there? Was hate her love? Your head hurts.
Suddenly, a strong arm pulls you into his chest, positions now switched as you feel your head pushed down to listen to the beat of his heart. His chin on your head, fingers gently unfurling your hair.
“You don’t owe her your defense, your justifications, (name), she doesn’t deserve it. She may have loved you in a cruel way, but you do not owe her a love bigger than what she gave you.”
You don’t respond. Instead, you breathe him in, his scent lingering around the depths of your head, making it fuzzy with something akin to adoration, or devotion.
You inhale once more through his chest, letting the musky scent, marked with something so uniquely his, as if you could take out his heart and crawl your way into a quiet little spot and stay there forever.
So that when his time ran out, you would rot with him.
“I guess I don’t.” You murmured into him, to which he didn’t respond, only tightening his hold around you.
A beat of silence, before he turned your head upwards to look at him again. “Which means you owe me a love as big as the universe!”
You smiled – despite yourself – at his attempt at levity. “That implies you give me a love bigger than the universe.”
“Course I do.” He grinned, all boyish-like and soft. “You might run away if you realize just how big it is.”
Time takes all.
He will be no exception.
Your mouth moves before your brain does, it runs with your heart. “Show me.”
. . . .
.. You can’t help but want to know more – and more, and more and more until nothing is left of you but the knowledge and the burning, scalding desire to know.
The knowledge flows out of you. It takes the form of a black goo.
It burns at the tips of your fingers but you scoop it up and fill it into your mouth until you choke on the desecrating thick liquid.
Your fingers reach for more, greedy as they are.
You want to know why time is so cruel.
You want to know if your mother had ever loved you – if there were a single atom in her body that spared a thought for you that didn’t contain anger.
You want to know what you are made of – why the gods, Kephale, had sculpted you like this. Flesh among flesh.
You want to know Phainon.
You want to know what he likes, the weather he prefers, the things he scrunches his nose up at, the things he jumps up in glee at – what specific spot on the curve of his neck that made his breath hitch, the small birthmarks near his temple, to which you trace – the shape of his lips, sometimes chapped, other times smooth.
You want to know what constellations he had traced on your skin – if it had meaning. You want to know why he looked at you as if you hung the brightest stars in the sky even though he was the spatial mass that held the stars together.
Perhaps this is love – the need and burning craving to know.
. . _
“Show you?” He tilted his head slightly, you nod.
_ _
Time takes all.
You are a coward. You realize in Phainon’s embrace.
“Show me your love. How big it is.” Your hands move from bracing against his chest to meet his face, hands gently smoothing the pad under his eyes with a reverent manner.
Your body was slotted between his thighs, a position that would scare any other kid – never you two.
“.. Okay.”
. _
You are all talk, but no action. You question this, question that – raise doubts at this, peer into books for hours on end like that, but what do you do for these doubts of yours?
Nothing.
You know time takes all. You know everything is predetermined. You thought you’d have a breakthrough, and fight against fate, will yourself up and fight against the preordained nature of destiny, if you were brave enough to question the will and order of the world, weren’t you brave enough to challenge it?
_ .
“Is this enough of a declaration, (name)?”
You cannot think.
Not clearly, because your back was now pressed to the reeds, his arms are by the sides of your head, his body lingering over you on top.
From this angle, he looked more like your Phainon, blushing, nervous and boyish, unlike the hero Cyrene told you he’d someday be.
You’re splayed out on the grass, hair fluttering senselessly against the grass as each strand fills out the gap in the dirt, consumed by the tension.
You swallow a bile from your throat, your voice yet again sounds your desire without your will. “.. More.”
. .
Time takes all.
You allow it, allow the predetermined fate to overtake you, everyone, because you, in your brave camaraderies, your large, imprudent words—
You are inherently selfish, pathetic, and most of all, a coward, who only knew to question but not to challenge.
The knowledge can flow out of you forever, you could know everything – but if you couldn’t trial anything, what worth does the knowledge that buries into your head – flowing out of your trachea, have?
_
“You’re so adorable.” Phainon murmured, all soft and lingering.
His hands move along the curves of your sides, tracing your body as he moves up, up, up – each trace burns with a brazen fire as his fingers move, he stares at his hand as he mapped your body.
Your breath all but hitches. “You’re flattering me.”
“No, I mean it,” He moved his gaze from his lingering hand to your eyes, you searched his eyes for deception as soon as he looked at you, but you found nothing but determination. “You’re so..”
He laced his fingers around your hand, gently bringing it to his lips, pressing a kiss with a devotion that could only be named as worship to your knuckles, it burned your hand.
He softly parts his lips from your hand after a moment, and you feel an ache you don’t acknowledge from the absence of his lips on you.
“.. adorably divine.” And adorably his – Phainon smiled.
_ . _ _
Time takes all.
You feel empty, even in Phainon’s embrace.
Your heart feels abhorrently hollow, like you needed him to fill it up for you. It felt suffocating.
Like there was a spot in your soul – made to fit Phainon’s body, to fit his big stature and it is empty. You needed him to fill it.
“Your hands are so small.” Phainon whispered, devout and all.
His much larger hand lacing back into yours, fitting tightly – he hums in approval. It felt as if you were made to fit him like a puzzle would.
“It was larger than yours when we were younger.”
Phainon tutted, bringing your hand to eye-level, he appraised it quietly. “Well I’m grown now, aren’t I?”
“Barely. You’re like a child sometimes still.”
“Yeah?” He hummed – so soft, so uncharacteristically different.
You find yourself blushing at the way he said it before you could curse your mind to stop.
“.. Yeah.”
“I’ve been getting a lot bigger, though. See?” He lets go of your hand, if only to stretch out his arms and flex the bicep that had been growing – which is quite large, if you’ll be honest.
You blink – and you take in a good look at Phainon once more.
He’s growing. Larger, shoulders broader, chest more lifted, the lopsided grin on his face is still not misplaced but it’s wider, hair fluffier and longer, not unruly like it was before, and he’s—
Being worn down by time.
This is just the peak of the mountain. If it continues, he’ll be worn down. He’ll decay. Fruits are ripe first before they are rotted – he’s just another specimen of time–
“.. I’ll bet the horses are heavy lifting.” You swallowed the thought down, letting it settle in your stomach.
“Pfft – totally are! Y’know, I nearly got assaulted by another this morning. I swear, there’s some personal grudge, it’s not like I poisoned their hay or anything!”
You laughed softly as his hands fell back, bracing themselves to both sides of your face. “What about me? Have I grown?”
Phainon stilled – like, frozen in place kind of still. Like how still a child would be in front of a feral dog still. You see his eyes rake over you, and you also, freeze. For a reason different than his. You feel his eyes wander on your body from bottom to top, and his expression is unreadable at best.
His hands move to take a strand of hair into his fingers, appraising it. “You did. Your hair’s different.”
“Just my hair? Surely there’s more..” You pursed your lips into a slight pout.
Was your hair the only thing that’s changed? Weren’t you, give or take, taller by even a few inches? Prettier?
Phainon shook his head gently with a smooth laugh stitched to that smile he always wore. Tender. “No, not just your hair.”
“.. You’re going to send us both down the reeds if you hold me so tightly.” You said – though the words do not match your inner conviction.
You want him to keep holding you. You want him to squeeze you as tight as he could. Even if his fingernails had dug into your veins and clawed out your blood. Even if it sent the two of you down the yellow hill. You don’t care.
Phainon only chuckled. Not releasing his hold on you in the slightest. It’s firm – but not enough to hurt. He would never hurt you.
He ignores your warning and cards his fingers along your body again. “Your face is different.”
“.. Where?”
He moved his fingers to your jaw, drawing his fingertips along it – it feels ticklish on your skin, but not unwelcoming. “Here. Your face’s a bit wider in your cheeks than it was before.”
You blinked. You did not know that. Was that a bad thing? Were you ran down by time—
“Here as well. Your collarbones are more pronounced.” His fingers moved again.
They never ceased to move, you realized. He always seemed to fidget something, the hem of his sleeve, his shirt.
This time, his fingers linger on the depth of your collarbone.
“I didn’t.. I didn’t notice.”
“I do.” Responded Phainon, the words a casual mask that made you heat up inside. His eyes trail from your collarbone back to your eyes.
You paused, the words piling up in your throat.
“.. Where else?” You pushed him.
He stilled for a beat, before his fingers moved again. You find your heart at a rapid speed as his fingers deftly move lower. “Here.”
“.. And here, and–” Phainon guided his fingers down the valley of your breasts like it was something so casual – your face heats up, a warm emergence – his hands continued down to your stomach, trailing it through the fabric of your tunic, before he stops with a hitch of a breath below your belly.
He abruptly pulls his fingers off of you before it could move on its own accord, hands now back on the grass to brace himself over you, his eyes completely avoided your gaze, but you see the growing hue of pink on his face even from the side – which would be an adept opportunity for you to tease him, had your face not been a bright red as well.
.. what was the burning desire that begged him to continue? Your hands almost move on reflex to grab at his wrist and trace his fingers back lower.
– What a disgusting desire. It’s abhorrent. It’s greedy. You swallow the bile in your throat once more.
Phainon cleared his throat loudly, eyes finally finding yours again. You feel that greedy desire creeping up below your skin.
“.. Ahem! Point is, we’re both pretty grown up, huh?” Phainon coughed out, turning his face back to you in the most schooled-phaidon-expression he could mutter.
The grin on his face would’ve been convincing, if his pink hue of a blush wasn’t so prominent to you.
“I guess so. You’re nearly the tallest kid in our class now.” You smiled, your face – the traitorous nerves that hid beneath your skin they were – was a beet red spectacle as well.
The two of you stared at each other.
Unspeaking – just.. Stared. As if the world had unraveled around the both of you.
As if the very act of looking, seeing could convert you closer into one mass or nothing at all.
Before you both broke out in fits of laughter. The noise jovial among you.
“Your face is so red!” Phainon said, his laugh unceasing as he finally let his arms down, falling next to you on the patch of grass.
You kicked him in retaliation, he laughed harder. “And yours isn’t? You look like those apples on the trees behind your house!”
“Ouch. Low blow, comparing me to apples? Why not something more grandiose?”
“Mm, that’s assuming you deserve such title.”
“Hey!”
A pause or two, and the two of you fall back into a comforting laugh.
.. If you’d ignored the burning, scorching heat that bubbled below when his touch went lower.
The trail his fingers left indented your stomach, you could almost feel it. You could almost yearn for it.
Time takes all.
But you’ll make sure it takes you first.
You are selfish. Heedlessly so.
But then again, you were only human.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
The engravings on the walls mark a pair. This engraving on this stone slate is smooth – unlike the slate prior.
This one felt as if it had been redone over and over again until it perceived the texture less carved of stones more insinuations of polished reflections of glass.
A hand smooths over the engravings, it does not fight back.
Νίψον ἀνομήματα μὴ μόναν ὄψιν.
The transcriptions had screamed. A billowing sound – ‘Wash the sins, not only the face’ – sins?
Depictions of the slate are smooth, and it carves out the two figures yet again. Mortal, and divine hero.
The carefully chiseled hero is slumped – of what seems to be rivers of liquid-like substance flowing from each crack on the hero’s body – be it ichor or tears.
Etched near, are fire – a nebulous incision marking every visible gap of the stone slate – the fire spins in a meaningless pattern, chiseled with carelessness yet is the smoothest of all distinct engravings.
Despite that, they still look divine.. If not for the human act they were perceiving.
For the hero holds the mortal in their arms in the middle of the large slate.
The position of the two sends an alarming shiver over █████’s body. Despite that, █████ only smiles in anticipation, an abhorrent twisted grin – though it derives not much more than a neutral grinning expression.
The mortal’s limbs are twisted wrongly – their arms flailed like they were trying to spread it oh so open, but it only looks as if they were painfully twisted. Arms twisting in contrasting directions, fingers unrecognizable as a living being.
Their neck is horribly, sickeningly twisted. To what was supposed to be facing the hero, the cervical vertebrae only twists their head to eye the ground, inhumane.
To what is seen, their skin is pale, much nauseatingly so – costal cartilages of the rib cage peeks out of the skin, diving through their own flesh with little care, it’s hard to believe such bones and flesh were one before.
Everytime one looks away from the mortal’s abhorrently decaying body – a new wound is sustained on the slate the moment their eyes flee back.
The femur is cracked, legs an aberrant revulsion of state.
The temporal skull debauched, mountains of liquid flailing out in agony.
The sternum damaged.
The patella unrecognizable.
Each bone broken.
Muscles a fatuos mess.
The clavicle contorted—
Again, and again.
More, and more, and so much more—until nothing was discernible.
Until the mortal’s body was nothing but a mush of flesh and sin that fought to remain, only for neither to sustain in the end.
The hero remains unchanging in place, however.
The hero’s arms remain steadfast each time – every time a new wound, new bone was sustained a broken menagerie, the hero doesn’t change his footing, he just gathers them closer, and closer to his chest until nothing of the mortal was left – until he was embracing nothing but flesh and the abhorrent hope that he tried so desperately to bury into that mortal.
The slate twists with each glance away and back.
…
O, imprudent one – such folly behaviors that you pertain! You divine have swollen up their buds until nothing of them was left, you and your brash, immodest fire have pried so deep into their souls that you rooted your beatific sins into their pure veins – did you know?
They reek of sin. They reek of sin not of their roots but of the seeds that you clawed deep into their flesh.
. . _
But you seek what they cannot give you! Divine, you seek their life to be infinitive – just as yours do.
Cease your yearning, divinity.
Your life will repeat again, and again if you bear this so adamant, but much like infinity – like a snake finding its own tail, biting down and never letting go – you will only create this paradox for yourself, a cycle of unforgiving consequences as you tie them further to your depraved self.
_ .
The divine will have faults, and your faults – bringer of destruction – is the remaining notion that you will never disappear. You may change forms, switch out parts insubstantial..
But you will forever remain in that eternal cycle of destruction, and thus, re-creation.
You do not deserve them.
Perhaps the divine are more foolish than even the mortals – why would you dare to seek creation in what can only be defined as your destruction embodied?
You do not deserve them.
.. Pathetic.
Behead your fate and yearn for the gods’ answers – clean your sins on this mortal you bound so.
You do not deserve them.
Whether in hope, or negligence in vain – prisoner, do not mistake your standing.
You do not deserve them.
‘Wash the sins, not only the face’, ravager.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Phainon has always considered himself to be somewhat of a ‘ball of fire’. It’s cliche, sure – but he thinks it’s what everyone means when they call him deliverer.
A fiery wheel.
Spinning in constant notion, that solar coronation halo that crowned him a state higher than the cards that the other kids in Aedes Elysiae got. Phainon was a fire concoction of woeful emotions.
Whereas the kids would get ‘drunkard’ or.. ‘villager’, Phainon received the deliverance – he was that fiery wheel, wasn’t he?
He was crowned that wheel.
He spins like a ball of fire, his teacher, Pythias would say.
Standing up to answer a question with absolute confidence. Completing his exams with a handwriting sprawled like it owed him something, as if his words could save embroidery in history. His words sprung like fire. It was refreshing, his teacher remarked.
He fights like a ball of fire, his friends complimented.
They swung their wooden swords all day in the flaxen fields – Andreas would scoff a compliment, Livia would exclaim with joy, Iraklis would pat him on the shoulder. He was made for the sword, they praised. Like a spinning fire that didn’t douse, they repeated. He’d be an amazing savior, they chanted as he freed a chimera from a bush that knew only to trap.
He lived like a ball of fire, his parents opined, their voices rang clear bells like the one in front of his home.
His mother said he grew like a ball of fire, his father said he ate like a consuming ball of fire. They say he grew like fire did – lively and active. So vigorous, they breathed. So thoughtful, they hummed as he saved bits of leftover food for the animals in the field.
He had the determination like a ball of fire, his trusted friend and part-time consultant, Cyrene would mention.
Her eyes glimmered with mischief as she flicked his forehead. He had motivation unceasing like fire, she whispered. It was like the act of deliverance, and time would tell, her maturity waged with her words.
He smiled like a ball of fire, his other half, most beloved one, had said to him.
You said he smiled like a ball of fire, with the dawn sliding down the sides of your face and stray leaves carded in your hair, his breath hitched then.
It’s different from what other people have told him. Smiling? That’s hardly anything compared to fighting like a ball of fire!
Smiling is too.. Intimate, perhaps.
He doesn’t find himself liking your definition.
(Besides, in his opinion, your smile outweighs any fire, star that burns – even the mass of a star that is the sun.)
The fire flowed endlessly through his veins, burning at each carnasses in him.
It fought to grasp each nerve that raptured him, it sought to clench that ardor of his so – that fire, that fire that was him, that fire that was solely his psyche – threatened to clutch at him.
–
Now, that fire burnt through Aedes Elysiae.
Each breath that Phainon took had his lungs protesting – it clawed its trajectory up Phainon’s throat as he slashed through what he could of monsters emerging from the black tide.
His grip on the sword only tightens, and Phainon’s circulatory system pulses with yellow trickling blood.
And everything hurts. His body is slammed to the ground once more, he stands up, the stupid makeshift sword still in hand.
Because Aedes Elysiae is burning.
He tries to turn away, flees his eyes on something else. Phainon looks back in hopes the scenery is back to the home he loves so – but it doesn’t.
When he looks away, all he sees are burgeoning fire, when he turns – hoping for the sight of the calm village he knew – he sees only more of those fires that persisted.
He could look back and forth as much as he pleases – it would never change the scenery.
He doesn’t want to keep fighting, no.
If it were up to him, he would lie back down onto the reeds of his home – albeit slightly stricken with newfound blood – but he would let his golden blood rain down as he sighed a hint of relief.
But he doesn’t get that relief, not him, not the deliverer.
Because it was his Aedes Elysiae that was burning.
His Aedes Elysiae that had the chiefs that wrung through the children with life lessons – he caught them screaming in stricken agony not long ago as the blade of a monster pulled through the flesh of the old man that used to carry him away from the fields.
Now, the village chief’s body is wrung through the ground, spilling organs onto the grass.
He wanted to puke.
His Aedes Elysiae that had no conflicts – nothing like this. It was peaceful. His peaceful home that harbored no conflict. J
ust the day earlier, he was hanging out the old, wrinkly port of the village – now that very wooden port was desecrated into the waters.
He needed to puke.
His Aedes Elysiae that had his family – gods, his mother, and father. Where were they?
He couldn’t tell the burning houses apart. Not with the fire, the gas that swelled so abhorrent against his senses. He disliked this – iron smell of fire, he decided.
His arms moved again, the sword piercing through another monster. His leg dragged behind him – he believed it was broken, but he did not want to look back, for he would be too afraid to move forward if he looked back.
His Aedes Elysiae that held home to his parents – who carried a roof above his head, nurtured him with love they could and wrapped him in arms of warmth when all became too cold.
Who rooted in him the desire to protect. Who rooted in him the need to save – who laid beneath the dirty rubble of his once-home, now only a defiled mess of wreckage.
His arms outstretch, his fingers reach for something – anything. A hand to hold. A body to embrace. A face to caress. A home to return. He thinks of your face, and his fingers move quicker, reaching higher, only to close around nothing.
He was all alone, after all.
His Aedes Elysiae that had Cyrene, who carried those divination cards. He thought back to the deliverance fate he was given, and mourned the village that was burning up in front of his eyes. No hero turns a blind eye to this –
Do not look back.
His leg is twisted, he could almost feel the pain, but he ignores it all the while.
DO NOT LOOK BACK.
Whatever you do — do not look back.
Your heart will scream for it. Your mind will yearn for it. Your leg will abide by it. Your body will turn to it. Your mouth will beg for it.
Despite that,
DO
NOT
LOOK–
“Phainon..”
He looked back.
As soon as he heard the soft whimper that cascaded like rivers out of your mouth, his mind didn't care for anything but the thought that he had to look back.
Phainon had whipped his head back so hard it pained him agonizingly to do so.
His neck twisted as his body followed in due, but something burned in his soul – something that scorched so greatly it overtook all the pain in his other nerves and pushed him to look.
He looked back, in theory and in action.
He could taste the metallic tang of blood on his tongue, as well as the shredded bloodied clothing edges that clung against his sweaty skin, gods – it hurted. Phainon groaned against the pain as he abruptly turned his body back, but he did not hesitate to keep turning.
Because most of all–
His Aedes Elysiae had you.
You. You. You. You. You. You. You.
You, in every sense of the world.
You could simply whisper his name and he’d come crawling to you if his legs were smashed.
You, where were you?
His leg dragged against the ground, creating a river of golden ichor that followed his steps, the tip of his sword dragged against the dirt, his shoulders slumped.
Phainon feels a dread – the kind of dread that grew hands and dug its nails into the flesh of his heart.
The hand drawled its traces from his heart up to his throat, threatening to make him puke. Phainon’s hand quickly shot up to cover his mouth as he dragged his right leg across the fields to you.
Your voice sounded far away – like that pitch of dread that delighted him, like a mist that only he got the privilege of being ensnarled under.
DO NOT LOOK BACK–
Screw that!
Phainon’s knees buckled down onto the floor, his legs that were twisted in a revolting manner dragged against the blood-soaked ground of the village, he crawled.
He digs his fingers into the dirt, feels the grime in his nails – he only uses it as a matter of transport, as he hurls his body forward by all means.
DO NOT LOOK BACK, YOU FOOL.
Shut up.
Phainon tries to stand upright, chanting your name underneath his breath like a prayer – perhaps to Oronyx, perhaps to Kephale, perhaps to just you that seeks his voice like that dying prayer of a man fallen.
He falls again onto the blood-soaked soot.
HOW PATHETIC. TO LOOK BACK IS TO CARE. DO YOU?
I do. So what?
His snowy white hair fell back against the dirt. He pushes himself up again – like a cycle of repetition.
But he doesn’t mind the tattered clothes, he doesn’t mind the dirtied hand that stuck with grime, he doesn’t mind his shaking hands which could barely hold properly the sword, he doesn’t mind the smashed leg that he keeps dragging against the floor, protesting against his very move.
Because if he stopped – it meant he would be leaving you behind.
He never once considered that.
YOUR HEART HARBORS WRATH. DO NOT LOOK BACK.
Wrath isn’t all that it harbors.
Phainon screamed – so loud some monsters had backed up. The sound was raw and aching from the back of his throat.
He bellowed, his throat scratching and his trachea blocking his anger – but that scream, ear-piercing and wrath filled as it was – derived quickly into rapid sobs.
Tears mixed with cinders of ashes as it racked against his cheeks.
Still, he keeps going.
YOU YEARN TO DESTROY EVERYTHING. YOU DO NOT CARE. DO NOT LOOK BACK.
I yearn to create. I yearn to love. I yearn for her. Do not tell me what I yearn for.
He repeated your name like a mantra, a madman, if you will.
He stands up yet again, leg aching. He is able to achieve a few meters before he falls back onto the ground. Your name leaves his lips achingly as he moves.
Phainon still doesn’t see you – and something horrible, something sickenly terrifying starts to harbor in his stomach.
The bile rises like boiling water once more. It blocks his airways. It rakes on his throat, it digs its nails into the skin of his neck from inside.
IR█TO█ IS YOUR N█ME – STOP LOOKING BACK.
My name is Phainon.
YOUR NAME IS IR█TO█ – TURN AWAY. DO NOT LOOK BACK. YOU–
Stop telling me –
“What to do already!” Phainon huffed, his legs carrying him in desperation as he clawed his way to that tree he remembers so well.
These loud thoughts – they feel invasive, like a bug instilled into his brain, buzzing unprecedentedly.
“(name).” A breathy whisper left him, as he finally found a strength in his legs to stand – forcing himself upright as his hands impatiently reached for something in the air – a glimpse, or just one blink of you, perhaps.
Phainon gasped, seeing that tree in his line of sight.
He needed you – he needed you to be alive. He needed the world to stop burning, for his home to be his once more.
He needed for the fire to cease and the soft radiance of dawnlight to shine on his village once more.
But when his eyes catch onto you – he wishes he had not looked for you in the first place.
In the burning sea of flaxen reeds, in the corrupted, blackened sea of wheat laid you.
Phainon’s breath desperately caught in his throat, and every sin that Phainon had eaten rises up onto his throat unforgivingly like a sickened bile, threatening its claws to make him vomit and clean his body dry of substance.
Your body was horribly beaten – as it seemed.
A river of crimson blood flown carelessly out of the gash of your stomach, your head resting against the bark of the tree as if offered some semblance of reverence.
Your eyes were closed, your head tilted back.
You were dead. You were dead and this is it.
This is the end – he could now only hold your body into his lap and believe that you were just sleeping.
His legs move before his mind comprehends, his arms reach out and fingers outstretched as he takes your body into his arms, cradling it with the most gentleness he could utter, throwing the wooden makeshift sword somewhere no violence could reach you.
Terror and dread fills each corner of his veins, and his eyes are wide in terrified panic. “No, no, no..” Phainon murmured, looking over each spot of your body desperately. “Please, please–”
“Phainon.. ?”
A blink of relief – small as it was – overcame him. Hope showered his form as his eyes flew open to the weak sound that came out of your mouth, soft and weak, but alive.
You were alive. You’re alive. He can save you.
“(name). (name), you’re okay. We’re okay. I can fix this, I can.” His face is pale as a ghost as he cradled you, eyes roaming over your body with fear.
“.. Phainon–”
“No, no, no, no.. no – no, I can fix this, okay? You won’t be dying here.” His voice was trembling when he spoke, his voice barely above a hoarse whisper, ragged and broken.
He rips a fabric from the hem of his dirtied tunic, it came out small, insufficient.
Nevertheless, he wrapped what he could over your injured stomach, tightening it into a makeshift tourniquet, his breaths ragged and uneven as his shaking hands tried their best to place pressure on your stomach, to which you winced.
His eyes are wild, face pale with worry. His breathing is heavy, as if he’d had just ran a marathon and couldn’t seem to chase the air into his lungs. “I’m sorry – gods, I’m so sorry, (name). I’m so sorry, I’m late – so late.
But.. but I don’t know what to do, I don’t!”
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“Look, Phai! This one’s paired together.” You smiled, holding in your hand a bud of two conjoined flowers, stem tangled together, petals mixed in trepidation.
Phainon, piqued at your words, ran from his own spot on the vast flower fields and to you with swift legs.
Not wasting a moment before the flowers he had held in his hands – a sunflower, it was – fell to the ground as he ran to you.
He knelt down, eyes sparkling with the vigor much of a kid’s.
“No way, let me see!”
You maneuvered the conjoined flower to his peering eye, to which you could feel the childishness reigning from his motions.
“Hmm, do you think.. It’s because they didn’t wanna leave each other?” You posed, a small thought under your breath.
Phainon murmured under his breath, scratching his chin in thought. “Well, maybe it’s because they’re fated to be linked! Look, see? It’s like they were made like this. Made together.”
“Mm.. but what if they wanna go to different places?”
“Then they’ll go together!”
“But what if they have different goals?”
“Can’t they achieve both of their goals at different times together?”
“But what if they yearn for something else other than the other? Isn’t it a little.. I dunno, stuffed with the same flower all the time?”
THEN THEY WILL CLAW INTO THE OTHER’S STEM, DIGGING THEIR EARTHLY SOUL WITH APRICITY AND SOIL THEMSELF UNTIL THEY CAN’T PART.
“Mm, is it?” Phainon tilted his head, chin in his fingers.
“.. Should we separate them?” You thrummed in thought, twirling the pistil of the flowers around.
–
“No!” With a surprising speed, Phainon’s hand curled around the stem of the flowers, bringing them to his chest in a gesture that could only be described as protective – possessive.
His eyes sharpen, and his words are clipped. “Don’t separate them.”
You blinked, lightly shocked. His eyes were wide, scared, almost – for a pair of flowers he had only seen for a few seconds. It makes you shiver, this look in his eyes. The desperation. “Why?”
WHY, ARE YOU SO PROTECTIVE OF THOSE? OF THEM. OF THE NEEDINESS OF THE FLOWERS. OF THE POSSESSION. OF THE COALESCE THE FLOWERS ENVOKED?
“Because.. Because they need each other! See? If you separate them, the other’s petals would rip as well. You can’t separate them without hurting the other!” Phainon holds the flowers to your eye. He’s right. They’re conjoined, but almost disgustingly so.
DISGUTING. NASTY. THROW UP. CRAWL THAT BILE OUT OF YOUR THROAT AND SPLATTER IT AS IF IT IS NOTHING BUT A DECLARATION OF A LIFE.
The white petals are fused with one another, almost inorganic, it looked. The stem tangled around each other in a deferential dance that lasted to only them.
It looks unnatural.
It looks lab grown and bred through means of inert, man-made mechanics.
It looks disgusting – like it hurted the flowers to be fused.
But it exists because the other does, so if one flower were to be blemished, broken –
The other would not survive for long.
.. So you nod, and place your hand over his grip on the pair of flowers. “Okay. They’ll stay together then.”
They’ll never be separated – even if it kills them.
Maybe one was made for the other, manufactured just for them to be paired up, petals fused in an unorthodox conduct.
They’ll never be separated – so when they die, it’ll be their bodies that merge together.
It’ll be the other flower’s face that it sees before either dies, it’ll be with the same flower that it rots from.
The rot would take over the petals, the stems, and the bulbs.
ROTPR-OOR0E–CONSUMEE19203LONEIIKKKWN293–
“.. This never happened.”
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“Phainon.” You squeaked out, voice weak, feeble and debilitated as you raise your bloodied, torn-off hands to his face – he whimpered as if the pain it took you to even speak his name hurted him as it did you, and grabs your reaching hand to press it into his cheek.
He gaped, the sound weak and pathetic.
He does not speak. Does not want to. He does not wish to pollute your voice with the sound of his own pathetic whimpers, for this may be the last of your voice he ever hears.
He wishes he could claw out his voicebox and dig it into you, so you would say a few more than a mess spluttered with bloodied lips and a dying rasp.
Phainon, who never hesitates, found himself hesitating to even answer, just to preserve your face a moment more.
He reluctantly whispered, as low as possible. “.. Yes?”
“.. –Do me.. a favor, please.” Rasped your voice. Lowly, weakly, it declared so.
“.. Anything. Anything you want. I’ll give you everything.”
“Okay.”
Your fingers trail to the wooden sword he had thrown – when did you get your hands on that?
He’d thrown it where violence couldn’t find your breath, where cruelty wouldn’t seek your name – and now you bring it back into his palm.
“Kill me.. Please kill me – please.”
He lets out a pathetic, strangled cry. Flinching backwards as if he’d been slapped. His expression is mortified – you’ve never seen that look on his face before. It was similar, you premised, to the face he’d have when he just had a nightmare.
“No – I can’t .. I can’t do that. I won’t. Please don’t ask that of me. Anything else, anything! I’ll do anything but that!”
You smiled, gentle and all, and he nearly cried out in agony.
You situate the sword above your chest, lightly caressing his hand that held the wooden stake.
“Phainon,” You whispered, gazing up at his eyes which were filled with tears. The harsh sobs wracked through him as it fell on you with drops, fusing into the bleeding, spread like a delicate flower.
The world goes white, his eyes, his ears – they fuss endlessly, buzzing with trepidation.
His heart drops, and it settles in his stomach. A terrible, squeezing pressure.
His eyes didn’t know where to settle. It rakes from the yellow tree that held your body under its shade, the wheat crushed under the weight of your flesh, the red crimson fading with yellow.
It forms a sickening orange – not like the dawn Kephale always held under you and Phainon’s naive form, but an orange that sung curses and strangled sin into mortals.
All he ended up doing was cry. Not bawling, but a quiet, chest-chokes.
He doesn’t know when his arms started to raise the wooden sword.
A swell of helplessness came over him, a drowning sensation, as if he had been toppled overboard and swept away by the stupid river waves near his home, where he’d sit and stare at you for hours.
And the wooden sword came down before he knew it.
The woods beside him rang with the rasp of his screams as wood met flesh, maggots met organs and rot met tissues.
The sun over Kephale’s shoulder doesn’t move lower or higher, it remains in one spot for hours.
But for the white haired boy with eyes that fleeted the sky, the sun never rose again.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“And.. that’s it!” You huffed, closing the storybook with a dramatic finale gesture.
“That can’t be it! Orpheus looked back just like that! Why would he do that?” Phainon exclaimed deliriously, flailing his hands as he pried the book from your palm.
You laughed as he fleeted his eyes through the book, looking through the story himself to confirm if the story you told was accurate, it was, much to his mire. “Well, Orpheus cared a whole lot about Eurydice.” Suggested your voice.
“But if he had just not looked, they’d both have made it out alive!” Phainon groaned in exasperation, dropping the book, letting the pages be whizzed through by the zephyr before he thumped down on the wheat field. “If it were me, I’d have made it out, easy and all.”
You pursed your eyebrows.
Your finger rose to flick his forehead in response to the bold claim, taking your seat near his whining form on the field. He yelped in protest, and pulled a hand up to rub the spot you offended him in.
Settling your knees to your chest, drawing your arms around your leg – you let your eyes take in the sight you’ve seen millions of times before: Kephale stood before you, dawn ever desiring, a mumble falling out from beneath your arm. “‘Cause he loves her.”
LOVE.
Phainon raised an eyebrow at your words. “But.. he could’ve loved her more had they made it out of the underworld.”
“You idiot,” You sulked, jutting your lips. “To love someone is to look back.”
Phainon stayed silent, putting his hands beneath his head. Eyes momentarily drifting to you. He almost shudders.
You continued, voice all melancholic. “If I was Eurydice, and you were Orpheus.. You’d look back, right?”
Phainon pursed his lips at the thought. He couldn’t imagine it, not really. Having to crawl through the nether realm and clawing at Thanatos’ divine authority to steal you back so warm life could embrace you instead of the deafening coldness of death – something in his heart jerks at the thought.
Hesitantly, words leave his mouth. “.. I’d try not to, so I could bring you back.”
“But if I fall or .. or if you don’t hear me, you’d look back.”
He couldn’t resist looking at you.
“Yeah. I probably.. Wouldn’t last long.”
You chuckled at that, his heart skips another traitorous beat at the sound. “I know.” You smiled, releasing your knee from the wrap of your arms, letting it settle onto the grass below, fleshed out and all.
FATE.
“.. But if I failed.. I’d go back again. I’d find you and then I’d bring you out. If I look back again, I’ll just go back each time.”
Taken aback, your mouth went dry before you laughed softly. “You’d do all that?” Your head tilted as Phainon’s eyes met yours.
Nothing less than determination sized in his eyes. His ambition felt larger than yourself. Phainon nodded without a beat. “Why wouldn’t I?”
OVERTURN.
“.. Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, hm?” Your body fell next to him, released from the sitting position to sprawl on the bed of the field, he smiled as the heat of your closed on him.
“Yeah, that’d save me the trouble.” Phainon offered you a grin, bumping your shoulder with his.
STILL, DOES ONE REMAIN THE SAME, EVEN IF ALL OF THEIR ORIGINAL COMPONENTS HAVE BEEN REPLACED OVER TIME?
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 24.
I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you–
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
He slammed the mire with his fists until the wheat stalks were mixed with golden and crimson blood alike, and for those first hours without you, he didn’t deliver any words but wails and cries.
His hands flew to his throat, digging into the skin as he attempted to tear out his voicebox for reasons unknown even to him. It felt like it was karma he needed to endure, for being the force that drove that wooden stake into your stomach.
It must’ve hurted. The sword was dull. It must’ve been agonizing. The wooden sword could barely kill an animal, yet he had pierced it through you and allowed the porous surface to dig through your tissues.
He puked.
FATE REALIZED.
ETERNAL OCCURENCE 1: SUCCESS.
A stone slate begins to form with 2 figures.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 2526.
To my beloved of all,
I miss you. Wholly do I speak of this pain that settles beneath me, for it clings to you still. You are missing from me, and I do not know what to make of this pitiful void that I’ve seen one time, another, and millions of times by now.
How many times has it been? How many times have I seen your body grow cold under my palms and limp against my chest for your blood spreads as flowers may throughout the fields in the springtime – I do not know why I have to endure this, of all things. I can endure a lot, (name). I can. I have endured a lot.
Truth is, it has been 165 cycles. . I pray under your corpse each night after you die in each reoccurrence, I curse my breath each time I see your face again because it meant it was another time you would die below the sinking breath of my hands again and I truly, selfishly wish that even despite how many times your blood is spilt over me that even so, even holding this disgusting monster in your arms, that you could find it in yourself to still love me.
Dawn is forthcoming in Okhema, I feel you would’ve liked this town, for all its bright nature. Only once, decades ago where I stood with their people, now I stand against them. You would’ve stopped me. Called my name and whispered it in the darkness and prayed on your knees to all the titans because that’s who you were, and who I had snuffed away in darkness and fear.
Still, I imagine this town would’ve been much to your liking.
I miss you.
I miss the life you breathed into me. I miss the stories you used to tell me under the shade of our naivety, and I miss the you who should’ve been receiving these letters that trace the diary of a madman.
I will keep writing. A dead body won’t receive these letters, a lifeless corpse won’t answer my pleas and heed my calls even if I wrung myself dry and pour litres of golden ichor, but I will still write these letters to a future you’re in. Where we can simply lie against the grass again, and there, we can talk about nothing and everything at once.
It also means I can pretend there will be a ‘you’ that receives this record of insanity. Written by a lunatic with too much love to fill, and not a body of life to fill in.
I ████ you, and that, perhaps, is the root of this insanity.
From your Phainon.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 2.
Phainon awoke to a dawn – the yellow wheat lightly shuffled below his body, his tousled snow-white hair shambling across the surface of something soft, cyan-like eyes adjusting to the weight of Kephale’s protection. It smells faint of cinnamon and baked bread – the piquancy of a welcoming arm to his awaken.
“You’re awake.” A voice ushered him woke, gentle and soft-spoken. YOU whispered above his face, akin to a likening of breeze that embraced him gently, the forbearing resonance only threatened to lull the young boy asleep yet again.
Phainon stuttered open – shock crazed his face, fear overturned his demeanor as he met your eyes. He nearly pukes when he meets the fond look you retain.
“(name). Is this real.. ? You’re–” Phainon whispered, the words spoken low, as if he was afraid had his voice been any louder, you would’ve disappeared from his sight once more. His arms are tightly wrapped around you before you could comprehend his words filled with shock and glimpse of fear.
He’s breathing in breaths that sounded like it hurted, almost like he’s struggling to even see himself.
He desperately pressed his ear to your heart, feeling your chest rise up, down, up, down, fingers clawing into the material of your tunic, pathetically clinging to your body as he seated between your legs.
Your fingers reach behind his neck, craning him with soothing circles, but he doesn’t calm as he does when you do it.
Your voice is quiet when you attempt to shake him out of the fear that seemed to choke the bile in his trachea.
“Phainon? What’s..”
“You’re real. You’re alive. This is real. You’re back.” Phainon stared into nothing and everything. Grass beneath him. The same tree you always sat under. The same cliff you two swore to the stars below.
He’s back, and you’re alive once more.
Phainon looked at your face, really looked at you. He stared at the eyes that stared back with fondness and affection, and carved into his mind the shape of your lips, the upturn of your smile, the faint hue of your skin near the pad of your ear. He notes the hollow of your neck, the prominence of your collarbone, and he wants to drown himself in the you he missed so dearly.
You’re alive.
This time, he won’t let you–
ETERNAL OCCURENCE FAILURE.
FATE DECIDED.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Your lifeless body hung beneath his feet again, crimson blood filing through the wheat. His wooden sword is through the tissue of your abdomen, and tears are bleeding through his eyelids again, voice hoarse as he begs and begs and begs.
Again.
“One more time– ! Give her to me once more!” Screamed the white haired boy, swearing to the skies, tribulation to the warring of his psyche, terror of his heart, and the aching emptiness in his body.
Once again, he tore off his sun from the sky.
Once again, the cycle restarts, as his legs move to the eternal city of Okhema.
FATE REALIZED.
ETERNAL OCCURENCE 2: SUCCESS.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Orpheus, why do you look back so?
LOOP 149.
When Phainon faced Lygus – the antikythera robot who spoke in riddles and proposed neutrality, his eyes were full of anger. Seething and rage is the only thing that represents how he feels, fire and vexation smolders beneath his skin.
The vortex of genesis swirled around the two figures, the coreflames screamed beneath his lungs, digging from below his vein, the hemoglobin boiled, too, testament of his anger, monument to his fury as his eye met with red, mechanical ones.
“Lygus.”
“Lord Phainon, here heeds your final step. Complete the Era Nova, drop that worldbearing coreflame, and as a nameless hero, tread the unknown.” Lygus smiled, a hand adhering Phainon to the spirit basin, ushering his call.
“Cut the crap,” Whispered Phainon, a hoarse call, as his hand tightened the grip on the hilt of dawnmaker. “Answer me this, and answer me truthfully. Who are you?”
To Phainon’s chagrin, the antikythera took him time to answer, with the added nerve to wander around, a flare of hand waving for no other reason but to tick the nerves already at limit in Phainon.
“You seek truth, and truth you may. You see, we are but prisoners in a cave, locked in and bided to the shadows. But you and I alone, lord Phainon, are the sole wanderers of the cave, carved away our chains and set alight to the real world. We are witnesses of the real world, of ‘truth’.”
“Stop speaking in riddles.” Phainon scowled, jaw ticked with impatience. Lygus does not appear phased, nor does his eyes waver in ambition, but he simply continued his tale at the same pace.
“So, as we are witnesses of the truth, and you, the savior of Amphoreus, shall you burn this truth onto your people, and allow them to bathe in the light of your absolute? You step pride into daylight, lord Phainon, you may bring the prisoners of Amphoreus their truth of Era Nova–”
“I said stop speaking so much.”
“.. Deliever of all worlds, there is a sun that burns in you,” Smiled the antikytheran, to which Phainon tensed noticeably. “I have vaguely witnessed that sun you bear so close. Fascinating, it is. An infatuation so absolute that it leaves a sun into the heart of the prophesied deliverer.”
“Stop it–”
“The sun is shaped out of a woman. (name), isn’t it? What tragic fate she bears, but a prisoner’s fate will always be the chained one.”
Orpheus, carry your body away, for you have left your soul in the underworld.
One second, the head of the robot is intact, shaped with electrical currents, and the other –
Phainon has slung Lygus’ head to the ground, dawnmaker a prophesied weapon.
His voice had a low timbre when he spoke next. “Don’t talk about her.”
The decapitated head – much to Phainon’s irk – laughed, a mirthful, bright, laugh, though more sadistic than it seemed. “Marvelous! How enticing – your character module is changing! Your fury factor arises a statistically significant soar when her name is so much as mentioned. So this is it – the final relationship factor, the null hypothesis was inaccurate, it truly was deliberation!”
“This ends now! Stop talking! I’ll ignite the dawn with my light, and awaken Era Nova, where she can finally–”
“Era Nova is but a lie, lord Phainon. Naivety gets you nowhere, surely you understand even that.”
“What?”
“You may shatter that woeful effigy, hero – but understand this: your wish to bring her back will never work.”
Phainon delivered a swift kick to Lygus’ head, making the mechanical body part roll elsewhere, lolling among the floor of the vortex of genesis, smile still unceasing. Phainon sucked a heavy breath, lingering and shaky.
“– You’re beaten, Lycurgus. A mere prisoner like yourself with the delusion of a witness should never raise their voice in meaningless prattle.” Seethed Phainon, his eyes racked with fury – fury packed with the hundreds of regressions before him, fury packed with the regressions to come.
The white haired boy of Aedes Elysiae now, carries the furies of his past, present, and future.
“.. And yet a hollow man like yourself continues to speak? Tell me, what is it that drives you forward, lord Phainon? For that rage, that fury you contain – is eerily close to the love you pertain,” Lygus recovered, lacerating at a subject that would sure to set Phainon off.
“Let me allow you in on something: the girl with the bright eyes whom you look for? You will never find her. Not in the new Era Nova, and even if she returns – her code is broken in thousands. Her ‘self’ is ordained by an unchanging fate of recurring death, that is the fate she must realize.”
“Then I will see it through. You say there are codes of her broken in thousands? Fine. Be it however long, I will find all of them, and piece her together. Her fate is ordained? No matter. I will transcend fate. You mistake one thing, Lycurgus. You mistake fury for love: but a prisoner like you could never gauge at emotions this sincere. Fury, you fated prisoner, is the outcome of a love misplaced.”
O, Orpheus, you hopeless fool. How the muses sing in pity of your tale, how their stares bide into your secretion. Melpomene denotes the tragedy with a flick of her elegant dagger.
“Anger? Wrath? Fine, define me so. But never believe that I may, even for a second, give up. You have patience? Test this hypothesis, then: I’ll make sure your sick abhorrence of an experiment bears no fruits.”
IDEOGRAPHIC. QUALITATIVE. REALITY. TRUTH–
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 198,372.
There are some things in the world that one must always pair together for the function to work.
For example, purines and pyrimidines, nitrogenous bases in DNA, research and evidence, kidneys, ovaries–
And Phainon simply cannot exist without his pair, for he would not function ideally.
Therefore, he does what any madman does, and more. He dug through cycles and cycles of deaths, recurring lifetimes of stolen warmth and laughter, and built you from the genesis of your creation.
He piled up first the DNA modules. The genetic information, the pieces of you that lingered in structures of double helix, that deoxyribonucleic acid were the easiest to find, for you shed yourself to him countlessly, all he had to do now, was to pick up those scattered fragments, however small.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 1650.
I will fix you. I swear on it, and I will carve my blood onto this oath for life if I have to will myself to.
Until then, wait for me, (name).
I will fix you, I swear of it.
I met a girl who looked like you, her eyes were mirrors of the brightness that your irises touched, and her hair were at a length near yours. She was young, much like you, back in Aedes Elysiae. Her eyes knew not of anger, emotions knew not a touch of fear, but she flinched when I approached her.
I fear I am losing my humanity.
I have gone rigid, my arms move in a motion that makes it hard for me to even write as of now, yet my brain refuses for my hands to stop moving.
The girl who looked like you, her name was Antigone. She looked at me like I was a ghost, and perhaps I was. I stared at her because she was the mirror of a ghost I chased after.
That was the only time which I felt myself feel warm instead of rigid coldness that seemed to cling to me as of late.
The girl spoke in quiet mutters, much like you would’ve. She hummed her favorite songs later, and I waved goodbye to her with a most horrible ache in my chest.
So, I drew my sword.
I will fix you. I swear of it.
.. From Phainon, hope fully, still yours.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 1,932,387.
The next he found were the skeletons.
The spinal cord, the frontal lobe, the pelvic girdle, the femur, humerus and even the ilium – all of it had to be found. So, Phainon’s hand dug through layers of skin and blood once more, until all 206 bones were found.
He digs through thousands more of cycles. It was hard to find bones that fitted in place, but perseverance, as appeared, was his strong suit.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 4041.
I won’t forget you, and I’ll never forget you.
I’ve witnessed once, this singular cycle where I did save you, kept you alive, and I thought it was the one – in it, you fell in love with someone else.
In it, you lived, but no longer for me, and no longer do you hand your heart over to the soles of my palms.
I refuse that probability. I refuse that the only world where you live – the only world in which you are happy is the one where I am not the one you love.
Am I the curse bestowed upon you?
.. regardless of your answer, I remain steadfast in my objective.
I have not yet forgotten you, and I don’t think I ever can.
From Phainon.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 3,749,203.
The next he found were the skin.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 6494.
Why .. Did you leave me?
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 5,932,657.
After that, was the prime mover of life. The thing he needed to make you again, the thing he needed for this piled up mess of organs, skin, and DNA sequences to become a human.
He mulled over the primer for years. Going through cycles, venturing through his options – before he stumbled upon it.
The dawn of Kephale.
Phainon’s hand gently outreached to the scorching of the dawn, tearing away a piece of it, chipping a light that was meant to be fractured onto the cities, and took it into his palm and shoved it into the vacant place where your heart should be, instead – there’s a part of the sun.
His eyes narrow – there was something missing.
He didn’t know what, but there was something that was missing from you.
So, dawnmaker sliced through the thickness of his black wing, and once more, wrapped it into the confines of the vacant space of your heart wordlessly.
He was missing from you.
Now–
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“Stop.”
“Hmn? Don’t like the story?” Cyrene perks up, face all smiles and teasing.
“.. It’s cruel. Don't you think it's cruel? How could someone do this? All of this?”
“I do agree, it is! That Lygus guy is a total jerk, isn’t he? I wish I could punt him myself! But.. a cruel story, too, can have a good ending.” Her pink hair flows with the wind, the curve of her lips move in a captivating manner as does herself.
“.. Cyrene, this is horrible. What – what kind of story is this? It’s needlessly cruel. It’s not real, right?”
She’s quiet for a moment, as if mulling it over as her eyes roam around your expression, before she beams. “It’s not!”
You breathe a sigh of relief, but catch it as she speaks once more.
“But does it matter if the story is real or not? The emotions are real, right?”
“What does that mean?”
Cyrene smiles. “Love is cruel, love is unbinding, and love is obsession. Didn’t you notice that throughout the story, (name)?”
You purse your lips. Of course you did. It was hard not to, anyway. “Yeah.”
“So, I’ll ask you this again,” She flails her body seated on the swing below the shade of the tree, her finger pointing to you. “Do you like romance stories?”
“.. Yes.”
Cyrene laughs, a giggle escaping from her youthful demeanor. “I knew it. You really are the essence of love.”
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
There was a myth in Amphoreus – no one knew where it came from, just that it was common knowledge among the inhabitants. No matter if one were Kremnoan, Aidonian, or Dolosian, this myth was treated as a generational story, history could not, would not, forget it.
There was once a figure – Phaethon, whom upon curiosity stumbled upon the chariot which drew the sun that arose in the sky. He was the sky’s blood and flesh, and the chariot was his partner.
Amphoreus then had no dawn, nor any sun. No light to gaze upon them, no eyes to see them through.
When his hand traveled around the reins of the golden chariot, he was appalled by desire, taken by greed. Despite fervent warnings and dissuasion attempted by the neireids and nymphs that rested by, Phaethon shook his head vehemently.
“The sun is meant to rise. Does it matter who drives it?” Phaethon argued, his words drowning in the heedless pleas of the nymphs.
That said, the son undaunted the reins, then smote the winged courser’s sides as they bounded forth on the void and cavernous vault of air.
‘Drive the sun toward tomorrow, dear son.’ Whispered the sky. ‘Deliver the rays, turn thy chariot.’
The first part is steep, one that the cavalries found hard to mount – in mid-heaven is it the highest, where a fleet of a glance down to the bottomless sea and land would cause friction in the son’s heart, adrenaline as Phaethon paws himself nearer to the chariot’s edge.
The sky rushes endlessly, spinning and carrying the distant stars in a swift, circular path. Phaethon moves against this flow, and the momentum does not waver him as do the force of the wind, riding opposite to the heaven’s rapid motion.
Imagine one is given this chariot: what would you do?
Could you resist the turning of celestial poles so that the speed of the vast sky does not yet sweep thy away?
Perhaps you picture groves, cities upon opulence, temples filled with rich offerings.
Yet this path is full of dangers. Phaethon weaves the reins of the mythical beasts of the chariot around his wrist, tightening it. The proud horses themselves are much a challenge.
But Phaethon did not steer awry, for he had to face the unending gates of Janus, the scales that upended his hold on the mythical power from Tantalon, cruel Oronyx’s time undoings, preserving Georios and the earth’s crash, drowning ocean of Phagousa, completed with drunken revelries.
Among that, what stood in his way were too, was the sky he attempted to mount, Aquila’s domain unfaithful and relentless. The branches that overturned under his feet, blessing of Cerces - the cruel Mnestia’s butterfly wings, raging Nikador and lion’s jaw, peaceful Thanatos but cruel death, and schemes of trickery woven by Zagreus’ giggly bubbles.
And in the end, he too, had to face himself.
For long as he had his hands on the reins of the chariot, he was pulled over by an impending force that lulled him sideways, upwards, and below, until the reins had snapped out of his mortal grip and the horses carrying the chariot went askew, panic seeped in their eyes as they kicked and trawled in the sky.
He lost control of the reins, and sent the horses too high, too low, and finally out of the grip of his hands.
Then, the son who born to shine crashed the sun into the ground, wrapped in the embrace of the merciful Georios.
“I failed.” Whispered the son as he fell, eyes glued to the chariot now without a driver. “Forgive me, chariot – for even the brilliance of I cannot contain thy.”
But he refused to give up. Amphoreus needed sun to overturn these darker nights, so Phaethon drove his hands up, and created something: freedom.
So, in Phaethon’s last wishes, did the chariot transform into a figure.
“Though greatly he failed,” Spoke the chariot. “More greatly he dared.”
Kephale then, was borne from the remains of Phaethon, and the chariot merged together with him – marking the sun device that is carried on Kephale’s shoulder.
– Citizens of Okhema notice that during the 7th month, the month of Freedom, the dawn burned brighter, and something, among the shape of a figure, had slightly indented onto the east side of the dawn device.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 33,550,336.
Phainon awoke to a dawn – the yellow wheat lightly shuffled below his body, his tousled snow-white hair shambling across the surface of something soft, cyan-like eyes adjusting to the weight of Kephale’s protection. It smells faint of cinnamon and baked bread – the piquancy of a welcoming arm to his awaken.
“You’re awake.” A voice ushered him woke, gentle and soft-spoken. You whispered above his face, akin to a likening of breeze that embraced him gently, the forbearing resonance only threatened to lull the young boy asleep yet again.
Phainon smiled, nuzzling his head deeper into your lap. “I am.”
You giggled at his childishness, sleep still clinging to the crevices of his newly awakened state as you pepper kisses on his forehead. “Wake up, silly. You’ve been sleeping for so long, my leg’s gone numb.”
Phainon all but offered a crooked grin, laughing softly as your lips met his face. “5 more minutes, I don’t think I wanna get up yet.”
“The things you demand,” You huffed, poking the top of his head. “I’ll forgive it this once.”
Kephale’s dawn now burned even brighter.
A█NOMA█LY DETEC█ED – COMMENCING … .. ..
THE TRAIL█BLAZER R R S — UNSPECI█FIED DATA , , , , . . . WAR█NIGN !!!! DESTRUCTI–
- this is very badly written, hats off to you if you noticed that! By the end of the fic, there were several plot holes and paradoxes, as well a recurring ideas in the beginning that didn't make a comeback - that's because of how burnt out i was, and honestly i was sick of trying to keep writing, nevertheless, i didn't want to gatekeep this idea so i hope you still liked it for all its flaws.
- the basic idea of this fic was that love grows teeth and is like sin. I had a LOTT of usage for grief and mourning, and how that genuinely ruins a person from the inside out. Added on to that, I wanted to convey that love, as pure and unbinding, is also harsh and aggressive.
- I described in an excerpt that Phainon was like a 'wheel of fire' - this motif specifically is used as a reference to Ixion, a greek figure. It's a dramatical device applied to a protagonist a tragedy (i.e. a hero) and aims to provoke catharsis and sympathy from the audience when the hero falls from grace.
- Orpheus and Eurydice are a tragic greek couple, an amazing myth, by the way, there's a whole musical for it (which you should definitely check out called Hadestown :)) Basically, they symbolize themes of love, loss, trust, and the limits of human power against imitable death - much like what i tried to convey with the myth at the end! It's the fact that when mortals try to wield divine power, they fail despite all.
- There was this equilibrium I tried to create between humanity and divinity, and I marked them both with flaws and strengths. This is based off of the Ancient Greek's own beliefs and views of the greek gods and how they worshipped them, but I also HAD to emphasize that even without the existence of the divine, humanity would still prevail because we're fundamentally human.
- The morse code in the middle of the dialogue (which was used as a commentary break and literary polysyndeton and verisimilitude) meant 'HUMANITY', highlighted by reader's character that I tried to shape into the concept of finite, and Phainon's character as infinity. I potrayed the lost of humanity as divine, as you aren't really human once you lose the core of what makes you 'human', then you are a substandard category that falls to either monster or divine - phainon is both.
- In the first stone slate, I mentioned the 'divine/hero' (phainon) as a figure with sheeps (aka lambs of gods, a sacrificial animal, and also white purity - yang) paired with the number 42 which represents 'Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything' - while the 'mortal' (reader) is seen with crows (symbolism for death and transformation, black puddles, yin) and the number 13, which is a bad omen, but also is a good sign of transformation so it is ambiguous (much like reader's 'anti-hero' stature)
- I tried to juxtaposition good memories with bad ones, as well as confuse yall by mixing memories that contradicted to represent the human mind in processing memories, and especially one unstable and mourning - such as Phainon.
- There are a few psychology concepts implemented in several parts (from a fellow psych student), such as from Lygus, who is the researcher - he has researcher bias, which means he interprets the outcome based on his own hypothesis (which is irontomb emergence) and Phainon and the whole amphoreus to him, is simply a case study. The independent variable is those close to Phainon and reoccurring cycles, and the dependent variable is his levels of sanity after said cycles. These terms are qualitative and idiographic if you were curious
- want to read more notes? (because this took FOREVER TO WRITE) check this out: NOTES
❝ it's never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter. it's never over - she is the tear that hangs inside my soul forever. ❞
𓏵 ( societal conformations shan't hearken to your voice, my dearest. )
८ sypnosis. FANATASY / ROYAL AU - societal roles are placed, words whisper. Soldiers wield a sword, heavy alighting for their own conscience - poets wield a tongue sharp enough to pierce the deepest of consonants, and kings wield a crown, barking the orders of ones' commandments, ruling with jovial. But to you, who observes, these roles appear much darker than appealed by the town's constant rumors.
(phainon, anaxa, and mydei x gn!reader separately) - wc: ~3.9k
@ warnings; nothing really , exploring character tropes and personalities through poetry and literary composition, ALL fluff !! Some darker connotations in Phainon's and small canon - typical violence ᝰ.ᐟ
── notes. based off of the song 'soldier, poet, king' obv, i had an awakening of this idea on the bus while watching a tiktok and after a multitude of procrastination and Macbeth essays I deliver this !! This is probably my favorite work yet, meanings & symbolism will be explained at the end (˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧ !
ᝰ.ᐟ PHAINON — there will come a soldier, who carries a might sword, he will tear your city down.
⟡ Phainon is a captain of the royal guards, a knight, he proposed his title to you with a sheepish grin. You did little to refute him, smiling in turn as his hand rested on the hilt of his sword, sheathed on his waist as he chatted your ear off in the town’s center.
⟡ But the sword he carries is far too heavy for his own conscience to maneuver, it’s thick with the blood, smeared with a discordant amalgamate of ichor, the iron taints at his hands as Phainon can only look down at it with tired eyes, his shoulders slacked, the sword, mighty – tall, but tainted, once again, he pivoted his gaze away, sure he was going to get sick, had he stared at the blood any longer.
⟡ Phainon could only bear one thing ascertained, he almost feels his knees buckle under him despite nothing pulling his soul down, his shoulders slacked – but he does not waver, no. Not ever. Not when he has the world on his shoulders. Makes him chuckle breathlessly, and humorlessly. Bitter.
⟡ Was it the world that was heavy on his shoulder, or the people’s hearts that was?
⟡ He will bear it in tow. Phainon doesn’t question what – how, he knows he will endure his duties of his own gains, but – he couldn’t help but wonder, really, why is it him that endures? The soldier that has the sword tightly gripped around the rough calloused coil of the cleave of his hand, the very same hand that held you so tenderly that he wished he hadn’t done it at all.
⟡ Right – you. The soft you, the naive you, the innocent you that wanted so desperately to help him as you stared at his drained eyes, your hand gently holding his. He paused, as if turning behind to gaze at the world on his shoulders, his shaking knees and eyes with tire prevalence, and he only shook his head. Phainon places a hand on your shoulder, a smile returns to his face as he tells you to ‘not worry’, he is fine, though even he does not believe his own words.
⟡ But gods, he wanted so hopelessly to cry into the crook of your neck. About the wretched sound that he so abhorred when his sword met the flesh of his enemies. It’s necessary. He rationalized, though it did little to ease his guilt. He wanted to cry about the innocents that he could’ve saved had he come a little faster – if he had been better, if his iron infused tainted sword had swung at the head of the enemy at a briskier speed.
⟡ Maybe then, their families’ dining table wouldn’t bear an empty chair. Maybe then, he’d sleep easier at night.
⟡ Phainon realizes that he cannot confide in you with this. He drags his palm across his face at night when you’re sleeping soundly beside him – your face peaceful in the night light as a streak of moonlight caressed your fond skin, the tender brush of gleam made him smile, forget the sword he carried, the world he bared, even for just a second.
⟡ After all, you were just a citizen, you’re not a hero, and he wishes to keep it that way. Phainon isn’t sure if he could handle it had he not been able to wake up without you on his side, without the warmth of your body embellishing into the bedsheets.
⚡︎ ───────────
⟡ Phainon first met you when you were hunched over the pillar, hair tousled, clothes rugged with dried blood clinging onto your chiton, your face heavy – he saved you, as any hero would’ve, but you felt – different, from the others he saved the same day, was it the look in your eyes? He hadn’t known, but he soon found himself clinging to you when you were oh so adamant on repaying him back as a favor for saving you, you’d repeatedly bombard him with fruits, flowers, Phainon would say he tried to get you to stop, but that would be lying – because he didn’t. He loved your attention, even if your gifts began to pile up, he’d stash them onto his desk with a giddy smile as your visits became more frequent, and he began to seek you out more.
⟡ Phainon is a soldier. A hero – the divinity that courses through the very embed of his soul is but one he cannot deny, he hears the people’s praises, the children’s hopes, the ballads – he hears it all. Phainon only sheepishly grins, rubbing his neck, waving his hand around with a weak rebuttal, claiming that they are ‘flattering him’, but in that moment, he meets eyes with the relatives of the people he couldn’t save, and Phainon could do little to attenuate the guilt he beheld.
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⟡ Phainon is really like your knight in shining armor – a soldier befitting the title of protector or hero. The titankin appeared to just get faster, if that was even possible, one name hurriedly slipped from your lips, and before you knew it, a firm hand was on your waste, his white hair tousled against the wind as his sword did quick work on the titankin, reducing it to a matter of dust, he looks at you.
⟡ “You came.” You looked up to the white-haired male, your breaths heaving.
⟡ Phainon looked at you like you just said the most ridiculous thing, “You called.” He replied, his words betraying nothing of his expression.
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⟡ He stares at you like he is looking at the sun. He could not help it – he knows, as his role, he shouldn’t get close to you – Phainon knows it well, and he knows it even more when he holds you in his arms, even with the blood tainted, you only nudge closer to him, and all he can feel is uneasiness at your comfortable form against his tense one. But god forbid, even if you were the sun, capable of burning him, he’d adamant on gladly becoming Icarus*, he’d – without reluctance – fly towards the sun if it meant he could spare even a look at you.
⟡ Phainon would laugh if he fell from your arms, his heart wild in its systolic beats, because even fleeting – he saw you. Profusely, that was enough for him. He wasn’t a soldier when he held you in his arms, he didn’t hold a sword that carried lives, he didn’t carry the world upon his shoulders, no – he was him. He was Phainon.
⟡ “Phainon, are you okay? You’re spacing out.” His name slipped out of your mouth in tenderness, a slight elicited from his lips as he focused his gaze on you, the sun hitting your face in bliss, your slightly furrowed brow worried over him, he couldn’t help but smile.
⟡ “I couldn’t be better.” Phainon gazes at you.
⟡ So screw it, if he had to shoulder the world’s burdens, if he was to be bloodied and injured for the nth time, his wants, his needs be damned – by Mnestia’s soft glimmer betrothed upon his ruptured stature, for you, Phainon would do everything a thousands time over – if the sun refused to kiss the planet that is Amphoreus, he wouldn’t care if you were still there, laughing carelessly as you held his face in your soft hands.
⟡ No. He thinks, the corner of his eyes crinkling as he stares at you, your soft lips, parted as you hopelessly talk about another book you just read, and he can’t help the upturn in his own lips. No matter, I will protect you. Phainon never regrets you, how could he regret being kissed by the sun itself, after all?
ᝰ.ᐟ ANAXA — there will come a poet, whose weapon is his word, he will slay you with his tongue.
⟡ Anaxa is only a poet who writes as if he was running out of time, and by granted, he has been sending you wishful letters that by Mnestia’s warm embrace had shrouded you like no other, you hadn’t known words alone could be this impactful, surely.
⟡ Every word is an art, every word carries that of meaning. Anaxa is the personification of the words that shape the very being of expression – when actions cannot convey enough, it is only words that bring forth the tension that underlies in one’s fingertips.
⟡ A poet is free, a poet rarely holds his tongue in his mouth, letting it free as it wishes once a time. Sing – O muse, of the ballads that which you hold for thine dearest of melody, Anaxa – never runs out of words, no. He would never, could never. His mind runs in a state that his body cannot follow, the truth is existential to his very being. His words are a testament to his very soul, he is the truth, after all. When comes down, his most powerful weapon is not of his gun, but rather his words, the truth can be biting, and he is the very epitome of truth.
⟡ But his words never hit quite like weapons do to you - rather, they’re ballads of a far-away humming choir, the birds seemed to chirp at his every word, as he laid his heart bare, his voice a melody that evoked even the simplest of action to be the largest.
⟡ And Anaxa, despite the words he may sing, is afraid that the faith he has is no longer, it hasn’t been in him, he is not enough, for his words are but one declared in a quiet whisper, how could he make his truth be loud? He thinks, and he never quite found the answer. The soldiers are strong - they command and bark their words with ease, the king never quite runs out of attention nor orders to spare, and yet he, just one of a poet whose words are his only access, is not one with value.
⟡ But you, oh he’ll sing just about any word to you. He’d sit by you under the moonlight ranting about the philosophical understanding that, everything is everything, the world is a paradox - everything is composed of something infinitely smaller (and you are made with each part of him that he tore down piece to piece to embed in you.)
⟡ He turns to you, his eyes half expecting you to wander your gaze where else, disinterested - but you only stare back at him, your eyes sparkling an endless notion of astral charts against the soft gleam of the moon, as you urged him to continue, perhaps that was when he fell.
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⟡ He doesn’t tell you this, but he couldn’t help but to sit down at his desk, quill in his hands as he addressed poems to you, the ink running along the lines as his words slur with the thoughts of you, because it has always been you.
⟡ “Had I been able to press you upon the ground, and woven the simplest of love onto our mouths– too cliche.” He scoffs, scrunching the silk of paper up and throwing it elsewhere, placing a new one as he hunches over the desk. It had been late into the night, the sun almost akin to rise but Anaxa could care less, he started a new poem.
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⟡ Anaxa watches as you dip your hands into the river, he sits near, tucked under the shade of the tree, you called out to him with the softest glimmer of tone that was far sweeter than the strum of any lyre as the water splashed around you.
⟡ You maneuver the cool sensation of the water to splash into Anaxa’s direction as you turn to him, a smile adorned your face, your eyes squinted in the corners – heavenly. You looked absolutely heavenly, Anaxa decided.
⟡ “Anaxa! Come on, join me!” You smiled blissfully, the sun kissing your cheeks as you scoop a handful of water from the river in the cleaves of your hand, and he could not help but feel jealous of the sun that could kiss you so adoringly.
⟡ “I’m–” He hesitated, for a moment, considered joining you, to gaze at you up close, but he only stopped his words, “I’m good here, don’t get too soaked.” He decided to say, because had he joined you, he’d miss the euphoric trance of seeing you hold his heart in your palms from afar.
⟡ Anaxa found that he preferred to sit back and stared at you. It was enough to watch you hand stride the woods, a smile appeasing as you lightly twirl a flower in your hand. It was enough to watch as you pointed to the skies, showing off your astrology skills, if you were wrong, he could care less. Hell, he would rewrite history to make whatever you said right. You were enough, far than enough.
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⟡ An old poet used to tell him, “love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature. Each of us, then, is a 'matching half' of a human whole…and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him, Anaxa, you must remember to find the half of your soul.”
⟡ Anaxa only raised his eyebrow in question, his mouth a frown. “Why must we? Surely one can function with their soul only, what need is there?”
⟡ The poet smiled, then lightly ruffled the young boy’s head, “Maybe so, but you have to see that love for yourself. You’ll know it when your eyes meet, because your soul has always been meant to orbit the other. It is Eros that brings you together.”
⟡ “Eros?”
⟡ “The purest.”
⟡ Anaxa only understood the poet’s words clearly when his eyes locked with yours for the first time – it hadn’t been anything different, that day. He lounged near the town’s busy center, the crowd bustled towards him and something–someone, bumped into his chest.
⟡ He looked down, you looked up–and Anaxa stared at you as if he had known you his whole life.
⟡ Because he has. He hadn’t known you physically, hadn’t known you through his eyes, but his soul has long known you as you touched for the first time, your souls embracing the other like a light finding the other in the vast darkness of the world.
⟡ It wasn’t love at first sight–it was a knowing feeling, like he had held you countless times before, like he had murmured your name in a soft eliciting tone as he tugged you closer to him, the world forgotten. Your mouth parted, an attempt of words.
⟡ “I’m so sorry–!” You had muttered to him, he looked at you, and through touch alone, he knew you.
ᝰ.ᐟ MYDEI — there will come a ruler, whose brow is laid in thorn, smeared with oil like david’s boy.
⟡ Mydei is a ruler, he has always been destined to be one, since birth, the servants lightly smeared him with Pomegranate juice across the flesh of his forehead, their voices a cheerful radiance as his mother held him into her arms, the ceiling, embellished with gold and trinkets alike came to his vision.
⟡ Mydei was a prince.
⟡ His throne has long been laid in thorn, embedded into the fuse of his blood as his mother combed her hands through his hair with a hum, she smiles. The shackles had long amalgamated with the wrists of his calloused hands, for the heir was just a boy whose destiny was tethered too soon.
⟡ “You are a crowned prince,” his mother murmured, a soft sound beneath the breeze of the opened window, his blonde hair sat a tangled mess in his mother’s fingers “but before that, you are my Mydei. Be it as you want to, but let that be enough.”
⟡ He had wondered what his mother meant, then. Obviously, he was Mydeimos – or Mydei, as his mother preferred to call him*. Why would he be anything other than himself? It’s only when he saw the people, whose words are disgustingly sweet as their mouths stretch a grotesque amount upwards, forcing their laughter at any word that came out of his mouth, hoping to get his favor that he realizes – they don’t see him for Mydei, no, to them, he is only the king.
⟡ Mydei doesn’t realize when he lived his life in a constant blur of advocacies in mindless matter – archery course, music course, martial arts course, sword fighting course, meetings where the blonde male is seated in the center, despite himself being 10 – knowing little of the political advances, military and financial magistracies.
⟡ He does not wish for this life, he quickly realizes, when he sees other boys his age fighting, laughing as their wooden swords clang against one another's and they run around with glee – he realizes that he much prefers to live like that, free.
⟡ His life as a crowned heir to the throne was as mundane as anything could possibly be, the occasion where his mother sang him lullabies to bed was his favorite, “Your hands are so strong, Mydei.” Gorgo smiles, her son’s smaller, yet calloused hand grasped around hers, “I’ve got such a strong boy, hm? Tell you what, ma thinks your hands have carried far too much already. I'll wish for a day where these strong hands are used for love.”
⟡ Or, when his father escorting him into town, greeted by the nice old ladies and their baskets full of assortments in desserts, he couldn’t help but offer payment for some, but his father quickly pulled him back, a stern voice followed;
⟡ “Mydeimos. It is unbecoming to the royal bloodline for you to convulse in such intricacies.”, and he could only nod in turn, the face of his father left little room for arguments.
⟡ “Yes, father.” Were the only words he uttered as of late.
⚡︎ ───────────
⟡ When he met you – it was by pure coincidence, the male found himself wandering the later nights – away from his duties, away from a crowned heir’s place. He snuck out of the palace under Krateros’ nose, as his blonde-haired were snuffed out by a black cloak he allocated softly over his figure.
⟡ The skies – the trees – the townspeople laughing around, Mydei felt free, for the first time, he felt as if no royal restraint could tie him down, not anymore. As the soles of his feet danced around akin to the freedom of a bird, his eyes fled over an abnormal crowd peering around a stage, his curiosity quipped.
⟡ The hair stood on his neck as he watched a bard sing a melody so pure it resonated the very essence of him – he looked to the performer, and he found a kid not far from his age. Your hair fell in a pleasing manner, your fingers softly strumming the lyres, a smile on your face, and Mydei found that he could not look away.
⟡ Your music was free – a chorus that followed no patterns in set, a harmony that hadn't been allocated to other matters, it was a diction crafted by your intricate of hands, it was a language fettered by little.
⟡ Of the music that your fingers had strung, the soft singing tune that left the plush of your lips, though delicate and grazed him – could not compare to your face, he stared, forgetting about his duties for a second. When he looked at you then, he was just a curious boy.
⚡︎ ───────────
⟡ “What are you playing for?” The male’s voice staggered beneath the moonlight hue, your body, hunched over as you delicately strung the lyre effortlessly, the very melody attuning to the soft whispers of nature around you two.
⟡ You hummed, glancing behind your shoulder with a smile, “Do I need a reason?”
⟡ His eyebrow raised in skepticism, but he only sat down next to you, a knee propped up, “People usually do.”
⟡ “Maybe,” you turned to him, Mydei tried (he swore he did) to avert your gaze, but he could not pull away, it seemed, “But you seeked me after my performance to ask that, crowned prince?”
⟡ “How did you–”
⟡ You laughed, a soft reverberating sound in the stillness of the night, “I won’t tell, promise.” a smile grazed your face, as if you knew him already. He stilled, as well – perhaps stiller than the night, too.
⟡ “What’s it like?” He breathed, forcing himself to look up at the starlit sky, “Being free like that, I mean.”
⟡ “It’s nice,” You hummed, again, looking at the stars as well. You recognized one to be Andromeda*. “You should try it too, prince. Humans were not made to be chained to a place.”
⟡ The prince offered you no response other than silence, your lyre still rested in your hands, a quiet strum between the soundless night. “.. perhaps I should.”
⟡ “(name). I hope I can write songs in your favor, prince.”
⟡ “(name).” He repeated, your name rolled off his tongue with a soft rasp of tone, his voice softer for a supposed prince, “.. Mydei, just call me that.”
⚡︎ ───────────
⟡ You were right, it appeared. Mydei was better free – so much better, and especially around you. Without fault, the male would don a black cloak over his head each night to watch your performances, afterwards, sit in the starry patch of grass as you two allocated each starry constellations – it went on for months, it was a surprise he hadn’t gotten caught, you thought.
⟡ You were honest, refreshingly so. You were keen towards the people you disliked, but Mydei found your honesty an embrace he hadn’t known he missed. You didn’t look at him with forced affinity or wretch a grotesque smile for his pleasure, no – you did things as you wished. You didn’t feel the need to ‘warm up’ to him, didn’t appease him because he was the prince. You were the one free thing in his life.
⟡ The throne that awaited his seat seemed so ever far off when he was near you, the heavy crown wasn’t weighing on his head. Nothing was – just you, and the light strums of the lyre from your moon-adorned face, lit by the accentuated smile of the youthful moon that nurtured you in her palms.*
⟡ The two of you talked about this, and this and this – it felt natural as the words flew out of your mouth, and his reply as quick. Sometimes, you'd race, or pry Mydei to play the lyre (often to no avail, but it was terribly fun seeing him try), he'd press the wooden sword into your palms before taken an offensive stance with his own, the two of you laughed, brightly – where only the moon could gaze, tumbling down to the grass as the wooden swords were long forgotten, your lyre lying far away, for once.
⟡ You felt like gods on top of the highest hills.
⚡︎ ───────────
⟡ In a reluctant fleet, Mydei opened the door to his mother's room, suspecting his father was away, his palms lightly grazed the door open with a sheepish expression.
⟡ “Ma.”
⟡ Gorgo smiles, beckoning her son in, and sat by the edge of the bed. "Mydei?"
⟡ "Ma.. I think I like someone." A boyish smile was appeased on his face, the queen was taken aback, not expecting her son to be so upfront – she grins.
⟡ "And?"
⟡ Mydei looked away, a small tint of pink on his face as his lips pursed together the words that buried beneath him, "I want them."
⟡ The queen neared her son, a smile, soft – unjudging from her face, she takes his blonde tresses onto her fingers, threading the soft hair as she did when he was a kid, “Won’t you introduce me, Mydei?”
⟡ A hesitancy crept up, but the prince swallowed it, turning to his mom. He nodded.
⟡ “(name),” His eyes peered into hers, betraying little of his inner turmoil. "I like (name)."
⟡ His mom smiles, “And who’re they to you?”
⟡ He absentmindedly turned to the opened window, the constellations that the two of you had memorized together in his eyes – the constellation of Perseus and Andromeda* stared back.
⟡ Quietly, he continued – “Philtatos.” φίλτατος – Most beloved.
⟡ Gorgo hums in approval, continuing to tread the kindly fingers through his blonde locks. Thus, disregarding her initial intention of telling him that she had witnessed him and you a few days ago, but dared not to interrupt.
- Phainon's allusion to Icarus is because Icarus is the boy who flew too close to the sun in the adrenaline of hubris when he adorned waxed wings, his longing for the sky became Icarus' downfall
- I said 'kissed by the sun' because in some myths, people proposed that the sun (apollo, though the embodiment is helios) was in love with Icarus when he saw him flying so free.
- Anaxa's poem was an allusion to Sappho's poem, a woman poet in the island of Lesbos, the tenth muse. Please check out her works, they are WONDERFUL !!
- The old poet in Anaxa's is actually Plato LOL the quote is from his book 'the symposium', where his ideology is that humans were originally 4 legged and 2 headed - where zeus, fearing of their power, divided them into two and sentenced them to looking for the other half for lifetimes, hence the term soulmates
- Anaxa's philosophy of 'everything is everything but infinitely smaller' is actually the real greek philosopher - Anaxagoras' philosophy !
- Eros is the greek god of love, similarly, 'eros' expresses the romantic love. He is not the purest but he is the most romantic of love
- I wanted to believe Mydei's mother called him Mydei in preference to Mydeimos (in contrary to the game) because 'deimos' meant fear/terror in greek, I don't believe Gorgo wanted to see her son as the embodiment of fear, so 'Mydei' would be a better, gentler alternative, while Eurypon called him Mydeimos still.
- The constellation Andromeda is a reference to a greek princess chained to a rock as a sacrifice before Perseus saved her, which is why I followed the dialogue with "Humans were not made to be chained to a place"
- the 'youthful moon that nurtured you in her palms' is a reference to the goddess Artemis, who's depicted with the moon (though selene is the embodiment), and a guardian of maidens/young girls.
- The constellation 'Perseus' and 'Andromeda' together presented love - the two stars often appearing together side by side.
- Philtatos is a small reference to the song of Achilles, it is a word to symbolize the most dearest of love, meaning 'dearest' or 'most beloved', and while the feminine version is Philtate, this is gender neutral so I used the more known one.
- SO fun to write this!! I am working on a band au for mydei next sooo keep an eye out <3
८ sypnosis. the blasphemous scholar, in opposed to the priest of the titans — hadn't you two made it clear that you loathed one another? If so, just why is the Fates so keen on entwining the intricate threads of you in conjunction? Anaxa swears, the Fates really don't play nice. ( anaxa x gn!reader) - wc: 1.9k
@ warnings; angst if u squint .. not much though!! Slight mentions of blood and canon-typical violence, generally, mainly crack? Just exploring anaxa's character & tropes with this one.. ᝰ.ᐟ
── notes. just kind of rivals to lovers-ish but in the sense of like 'hatred is an easier word than love', basically: two idiots refusing to entangle with one another yet find themselves always in that position. I wrote this to try and experiment with Anaxa's character cause he's definitely the hardest one to write. I hate this but i need to get SOMETHING out for anaxa (ᴗ_ᴗ)
You hated ANAXAGORAS, no – even hate was a bleak word to express just how deep your disdain for the green-haired male go. You despised him, and in turn, he loathed you just as much, such was obvious to every single Chrysos Heirs even 3 meters close to either of the two of you. Aglaea shares a similar abhor towards Anaxa, but even she admits not to that extent.
Every time either of you laid eyes on one another, the expression on you and Anaxa’s face goes consecutively sour. A frown framing both of your faces, as Anaxa ushered Hyacine to quickly leave the proximity of your presence, as you quickly (a safe distance away) conducted Castorice to leave, fearing that if you saw his despicable of a face again, you’d most likely throw up. Castorice eyes you weirdly when you claimed that, hesitantly taking a step away from you.
Needless to say, the two of you were polar opposites, ‘opposites attract’ be damned, because you certainly weren’t attracted to the likes of him! He may be smart, a little attractive, with exemplary argumentative statements and intelligence, and he may be good with younger kids, and good at cooking – but he’s not all that.
Not to mention, the two of you just had to both be professors in the Grove of epiphany! Seriously, there’s barely anyone primarily teaching, why couldn’t you just avoid this man? For titan's sake, he ruins your day just by passing by the field of your vision, your heart thumping and your cheeks flushing. Due to hate, of course, what else?
Anaxa despised the gods, a blasphemous existence he ran, the very acknowledgement of their overseeing presence irked him to no end, the fates, the destiny they imposed upon the mortals they so play with like entertainment puppets on their endless strings. He loathed it – you, on the other hand, were ever so obedient and bending to the wills of the gods, going on about, oh the gods believe ‘this’, the gods believe ‘that’, whenever you enter his classroom, Hyacine has to stop the two of you from engaging in an infinite verbal arguments in front of all his students.
You, a priest under Tribbie, a Chrysos Heir, adhering to the wills of the citizens, claiming prayer, singing praises for the divine above as if the gods ever cared even the slightest about any of them. Anaxa narrows his eyes at any act you perform for the gods, he almost feels sickened by it. Thus, when you first met – led to him ‘accidentally’ spilling a cup of coffee on you, the sarcastic display of an apology he gave, which then accelerated to the hatred you both held now. (PS; it really was an accident, and he did feel bad about it, but due to Anaxa’s pride, he would rather kill himself than say sorry to you)
“Your logic is flawed, your argument proves no pivotal point, insinuations towards your essential research query has not of any evidence nor extensive knowledge, is this what you are feeding to your students?” Anaxa dismissed you with a scoff, as he ‘happened’ to pass by your lecture – with the two of you both being professors at the Grove, somehow, someway – the universe seemed to love placing you together when both wanted nothing but to be as far away from one another as possible.
“No one asked you, professor Anaxa.”
“It’s Anaxagoras.” He scowled, his eyebrows pinching against each other.
“That’s my bad, Anaxa.”
“G-guys!” Hyacine stammered, waving her hand frantically to stop the eye contest the two of you shared in the room full of confused students, neither of you ever backed down, though.
This pattern of verbal arguments seemed to never cease. This, quickly became a nightmare for anyone in both of your proximations.
“I’m pretty sure your ideology towards this is incorrect.” Anaxa noted, eyes peering onto your board.
“I’m pretty sure I’m going to bash your head into the wall.” You glared back at him, your words of attempted threats did little to faze his stoic demeanor.
“Maybe when you get the right idea.”
“You little–!”
“Can you two please focus on the Chrysos Heirs meeting?” Aglaea sighed, her voice a stammer of annoyance or resignation at your childish camaraderies, urging you two to take your respective seats before another verbal debate happened to commence, and possibly delaying the progression of her plans further.
“You just seem to have all the answers in the world, don’t you?” You scoffed at the brazen display of knowledge that he bloated to - well, everyone.
“Someone has to be the voice of truth, of knowledge. Clearly, you aren’t that voice.” Anaxa hummed, not even lifting his head from his book. However, you didn’t fail to notice that he lifted his eye up to goad at your reaction.
“Gods I wish some external forces were to dissipate you.”
“Creative, but I don’t believe in the gods.”
“I swear to Kephale–” You scowled, his nonchalant facade seemed to fuel your competitive side as well.
“Still don’t place belief in the titans either.”
“Okay that’s it.”
"U-uh, we think this overview can end here..!" Tribbie suggested, her bright red hair stuck between the glare you and Anaxa shared, as Trianne and Trinnon allocated a glance at each other, then you two.
“(name), are you sure you really hate Anaxa? You talk about him so much even I think–” Aglaea started, hesitant to interrupt your thirty-first ranting session that week about Anaxa and all his apparent flaws, somehow, you always come up with new ones each time.
“I do not like him!”
Castorice and Aglaea paused, turning to share a glance, a small smile creeped onto Castorice’s lips.
“I didn’t ask whether you liked him or not.” Aglaea only offered a smile, to which you quickly avoided, spouting out the best rebuttal possible.
“Well, either way, I do not, do not like him!”
“But (name), I think it’s fine if you do, he seems to like you.” Castorice softly smiled, you knew she had no ill intent, but you were close to leaping off a ledge. Though, you couldn’t help but get slightly curious at her words.
“Yeah I don’t know where you got that from but he hates me, and fair, because I hate him too!”
The two paused, a glance shared with each other, then both turned their gaze to you, before Aglaea casted her hand on your shoulder with a reassuring glance??
“It’s okay, (name), rejection is–”
“I do not like him!”
What the two wished to say drowned in the moment, because both Castorice and Aglaea shared a quiet agreement that the words should properly come from Anaxa himself. Perhaps, you were simply blinded by hate, because despite the disdain, Anaxa’s eyes are always on you. No matter how far away.
It seems like the black tide was just as relentless as it sounded, because you, hunched over your stomach with a hand obscuring the iron-scented blood that stained your hand a disturbing bright red color wasn’t a good sight.
The grove of epiphany had been, for a lack of better words, evaded, by monsters drawn in by the black tide, along with a tall male-like figure dressed in a black cloak, the sword they held an abysmal of stars, which, you would’ve been mesmerized by, had it not struck you.
You weren’t a fighter. More of a priest – scholar, than anything, so just why did you stick behind in the grove of epiphany in an attempt to ‘protect’ your home from being ravaged by said beasts? It’s not a reason you’d ever admit out loud, no, not even if you were held at gunpoint, but you ultimately chose to stay because of Anaxa.
You quietly cursed yourself in your mind, a fumble of thoughts circling that made the wound too apparent, a burning sear traveled up your sides in an annoyed fury.
“(name), that’s enough.” Anaxa cursed, limping to your sides. You looked up, meeting his gaze, and hell, you really thought that you were already dead, because Anaxa looked like he was going to cry. Or, maybe it’s your own tears obscuring your vision, you really can’t tell.
He really couldn’t garner a bit of you. At all. Had you just left with the rest of the scholars like any dignified and reasonable person - you would’ve been fine! He wouldn’t have to look at you injured and feel that weird tugging at his heart like he’s the one injured, nor the clog of his throat that forced his words down as he stared at you.
Anaxa told you to leave the Grove of Epiphany behind, his hand had grasped your arm as he tried to reason with your obscene of an idea, he wanted you to be safe for - logic’s sake! The fighting hadn’t receded, as the monsters still towed across the soft hums of the trees in the Grove as he held you in his arms.
One of his hands rested on your shoulder, to steady you, the other – hovered over your injured form, afraid. But what was he afraid of? Had you asked Anaxa that, he might’ve chased you down before you could hear his answer.
“Why couldn’t you just have left?” He bitterly recounted, trying to calm his own mind. His body wasn’t looking any greater, either. His words were sharp, but lacked the usual bite as it would when he talked to you.
He couldn’t help it – he softened his voice unconsciously, with you so vulnerable. A soft breeze of the wind reminded him of the presence of a titan that loomed over his shoulder, gazing at his pathetic display of an emotional vulnerability, but he paid it no mind, not this time.
He didn't wait for you to talk, not that you could muster up much, the injuries rendering you quiet, to the point where he found a weird distaste towards your unusual lack of a rebuttal, shouldn't he be happy? The thought left a weird taste in his mouth.
He turned to Cerces, the reason titan. A resounding gaze in his eyes that didn’t offer any betrayal of emotions.
“You have to protect them. Please.”
He didn’t believe in gods, nor the titans - of their virtuous and welfare deeds they claimed and whatnot, but if that belief would protect you at this very moment, he’ll pray thousands of times over to secure you alive again. Even if you wanted to hit him in the face, even if you offered the dumbest of arguments, even if your presence annoyed him.
Cerces nodded, her gaze almost sorrowful, pitying the likes of him. Maybe she knew what it was like. A loved one, but Anaxa could care less about anything other than your state, because the fates just had to make him care about you, didn’t they?
He truly was a puppet to the strings of fate, as much as he tried to deny so, even in this sense. After all, Anaxa couldn’t help but care for you.
“Sorry, Anaxa..” You weakly peer up, your consciousness slipping out of your head, Anaxa looked down, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear softly, his hand hovering closer to your face, if you were just a bit more conscious, you might’ve seen the upturn of his lips.
Anaxa shakes his head softly. “Don’t be foolish, just rest.. You know you can’t possibly offend me.”
NOTES:
- OUH I HATE THIS SM. This took half my brain out i seriously DESPISE this. Anaxa's character is so interesting but so HARDDDD to incorporate when I want to vro
- small notes i'd like to say: i really really like Anaxa's annotations to his real life excerpt: the greek philosopher Anaxagoras hahah, it's quite interesting because the said philosopher actually came up with the philosophy of nous !! And the greek mythology reference he could be based on is so annoying to think about because i can't find a good hero or god to base him off of, it's a work in progress though TT
- I'm sorry if the dialogue were buttcheeks i can't write dialogue for the life of me. I just don't socialize man how am i supposed to know how to write people talking if I aint even talk??
— ❝ THROUGH A TOUGH DEMEANOR – LAID A FLEET FRAGILITY ❞ ⋆˙⟡
८ sypnosis. afflicted with strife ─ embodiment of chaos and violence, would he, o great warrior, whom cast upon the massacre of murders relish in the comfort of another once more? (mydei x gn!reader) - wc: 0.6k
@ warnings; none ! fluff & however SOME mentions of blood & gruesome imagery, some insight upon Mydei's backstory, but not thoroughly delved ( ˶°ㅁ°)
── notes. so i found myself with a CRAZY hyperfixation over greek mythology, and i think it's kind of obvious in some stanzas of this fic LMAO. This is really short cause i got lazy but technically i just finished Song Of Achilles (AMAZINGGG book by the way, pls read it), and inspiration struck me (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)
The gold embedded, roughed exterior of hand that teared through enemies, masses of blood trickling down the unforgiving palm of the Castrum Kremnos’s warrior – his home bathed in blood, as the red-headed male himself stood unrelenting in the battlefield, shrouded with the chaos and strife.
Mydei was only known for such. Words among the living sang praises, others shouted castigates. Feared – apprehends, for this Chrysos heir bears only the trait to the calamity of life itself, discord and wrangling conflict brewed, and the crowned prince was testament of that.
His rough hands – if he could even call them that, they were more like metal-instilled.. claws. The enemy he tore down, the people, hometown that he couldn’t save, the spear that Mydei had wielded, the very tip pointing at his own father. A discordant cacophony of voices apprehended him, as far as immortal Mydei was, alas, he was still that of a human, though a traitor – a warrior who’s only destiny is to bathe the battlefield into rivers of blood, sparing no life around him. He was only made for that of brutality—
“I don’t think you’re that scary.” You hummed, allowing yourself to sink into his hold further. Wait, that’s wrong. That isn’t – that’s .. not right. Only then did Mydei pause, seeing the position he was in. You – you and your sickening sweet smile, sickening locks of hair – sickening face, all of which makes his heart involuntarily beat faster than he wished, lied on his chest, your back snuggled into the comfort of his grasp.
Worse of all, he was holding you with the fragility of an infant, as if afraid he’d hurt you. But that’s not right, he’s a warrior – rinsed in bloodshed, not – some lovesick idiot holding the love of his life in the most gentle of embrace that made him fear that had he held you any tighter, you’d crumbled under the cleave of his palms.
“You’re mistaken.” His hoarse voice replied, indifference sewn onto the tone of his words, he did not, however, release you. Instead, he only gently pulled you closer to him. He. . felt human, he felt whole.
“Mydeimos.” My-dei-mos, you sounded out his name like it belonged on your tongue, full - tender, not stricken with fear, neither with sweet talk or disdain, but adoring. Mydei felt a shiver run down his spine as you leaned your head back to stare at him, a smile on your face.
You reached your hands up to cup his cheek into yours – your palms were soft, miraculously blazen with a comfort that he has long reached for since he had been apart from his mother – a soft scent of apples whiffed from your palm, the same hand lotion he always saw you use. You pulled his face down, closer to yours.
“I’ll never regret loving you.” You smiled, but Mydei felt as if he had seen the sun itself kiss him tenderly. He leaned into your touch, the soles of your hand cupping his face, your body on his, and each skin that caressed one another felt – right, perfect. Mydei felt that if he were to let go of the fond embrace that you embellish him with, he would fall back into chaos.
Mydei was made for war – the fastest, strongest, best of all – whereas everyone saw him as a killing machine, you saw him as a boy who grew up with too little to embrace, so you’ll settle with embracing him a slight more.
And that was okay. For under that exterior, he was but your Mydeimos. Not the crowned prince of Castrum Kremnos, not the traitor that killed his father, not the core-flame bearer of Nikador, not the killing machine – but the boy whom you’d clasp to your heart for as long as he lets you.
- clear inspiration from song of achilles haha.. guys am i delusional to think that mydei could be a LITTLE bit based off of Achilles?? He was thrown into the river of souls - Achilles was dipped into the river styx (or, river of souls), they're both great warriors too HELLOO (ok but achilles is kind of a horrible person, pls don't be clouded by tsoa)
- (name)'s hands has the smell of apples because apples represent love. In most cultures, the fruit depict that of desire, love, and abundance. In greek mythology specifically (where amphoreus is based on), the fruit serves as a symbol of courtship!
- "My-dei-mos" is a reference to song of achilles, where achilles always sounds out patroclus's name, full, where everyone speaks patroclus's name quickly like something eager to take off their tongue, Achilles sounds it out, holds it. I wanted to convey that in this too because as great as a warrior Mydei is, i don't think he's that well loved, his name holds fear, but when someone speaks it like it's tendered and loved, it's so different DO YOU GET ME.
- i don't love this and didn't proofread it that much but its ok i js wanted to clear it out of my docs LOL
❝ i will fall in love with you over and over again. ❞
── notes. this valentines, i deliver this to you (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶) , originally, i planned to have much more characters than mydei & phainon, but there are so many things happening that i couldn't do that — enjoy, nevertheless! I hope you all had a good valentine's day yesterday ♡
ᝰ.ᐟ PHAINON — cooking date.. ?
(wc : 997)
⟡ "(name)! I've decided—we should cook together for valentines!" Phainon proposes. Your face utterly falls at his word is absolute and full horror at the thought. Oh no. If there was one thing you should know about being Phainon's lover, is that he is horrid at cooking, unfortunately, you had to learn this the hard way. (e.g, your house coming close to catch fire if you hadn't stopped his myriad of senseless trouble)
⟡ "Are you sure? I mean—what if we just.. go to a café or—"
⟡ "No way! I wanna make cookies with you!" Phainon only implored further at your admittedly weak rebuttal, his demeanor akin to that of a beaming light (or a beaming puppy), you could only make an effort to avoid his eager gaze as he awaited your reply.
⟡ After a beat of hesitance and silence, Phainon pretty much tackled you onto the couch, one arm wrapped around your waist, the other rested on your forearm, pulling you impossibly closer to his own body, lowering his chin to rest comfortably on your shoulder with a huff, the cheeky grin still ever present on his lips as you tried to wrestle yourself out of his hold, muttering weak protests, which proved impossible in a matter of a second when you realized his muscles weren't just for show. "C'mon, can't my lovely partner and valentines indulge in my well-versed fantasy of baking together~?"
⟡ Thus, led you two to where you were now. Valentine's day was supposed to be cutesy, right? Maybe sharing a sundae, kissing under the sunset sky that boarded the horizons with a soft tint—instead of the intricate (admittedly, delusional) scenarios that you were conjuring just days prior, now, you are subjected to cooking with Phainon.
⟡ "(name)! Is the sugar supposed to be this flaky? And it's a little salty." Phainon exclaimed, remnants of 'sugar' on his fingers as he test-tasted them in his mouth, you looked over in horror.
⟡ "That's salt! You don't add that much salt to cookies?!" You shrieked. Things were going so well!! How were you supposed to know Phainon couldn't differentiate sugar from salt? As you tried to scoop out the salt from the mixture of butter, eggs, and vanilla extract, you spared a glance to see Phainon looking at you expectedly, his eyes were that of a puppy, and you knew him well enough to know that he was sulking, and you couldn't bare it in your heart to scold him (you did it anyways).
⟡ Your boyfriend was a basketball player, a real good one, sure—you didn't know that would affect his baking skills, though. Phainon (read: attempted) to throw the egg into the mixture, stance that of a basketball throw, only for the egg to splatter onto the ground. One ominous call of his name from you, got the white-haired male quickly begging for mercy, splutters of "I'm sorry! (name)! H-hey, please put down that knife!" cascaded from his hurried begs.
⟡ "Hand me the flour." You noted, feeling a bag soon resting in your hand, however—as you poured, you decided to spare a glance at the bag. You inwardly sigh to yourself, catching Phainon's back collar to turn his face around, forcing him to take a good look at the bag. "This is baking soda!" Unfortunately, Phainon only offered a sheepish grin before hastily freeing himself out of your hold, in fear, probably.
⟡ You'd love to say his misfit of troubles stopped there, but it definitely didn't. You almost curse your whole ascenstor's family tree when Phainon called again. "(name)...? Uh, is the microwave supposed to be glowing?" You looked back hesitantly. Yes, the microwave was glowing. With a metal bowl inside of it. I love my boyfriend. I love my boyfriend. I love my boyfrie—
⟡ "How much longer?" Phainon was then exempt from further participation in the baking, sulking, he attached himself to your back, subjected to only being able to watch you bake, due to his tendencies to cause a mess in the kitchen. "Wait a bit, you really are impatient." His arms wrapped around your waist, your back met his chest, and he lowered his head to rest on your shoulder as you mixed the bowl of ingredients with a practiced technique. You could almost feel his sullen pout despite not looking at him.
⟡ When you pulled the cookies out of the oven, Phainon was quick on his feet behind you, shuffling to get a closer look (and, hand sticking out to try and grab one but was quickly dismissed by your own hand grabbing his to cease his quick-witted endeavor). The cookies were chocolate flavored, something Phainon insisted, saying it's 'valentine' coded, and sprinkled with specks of pink sprinkles, in Phainon's eyes—they look like heaven sent offerings from the goddess that you embodied.. maybe an exaggeration.
⟡ "Say ahh." You held a cookie to his face, to which he immediately beamed, opening his mouth as he awaited the dessert to be delivered to his mouth, when it did, he instantly smiled—if Phainon did have a tail, you imagine it'd be wagging right then.
⟡ In a moment of unfocused haze, Phainon cupped your cheeks into his much larger palm, pressing his (chocolate infused) lips onto yours, in turn, making you nearly shriek in surprise. You tasted a faint chocolate savor against his unexpectedly soft lips, you're only left still dumbfounded when he pulled away.
⟡ "C'mon, yer gonna watch me eat, or will you eat your own phenomenal cooking, too?" Phainon grinned, a boyish smile overcame his features as he slid a hand through the tufts of his white hair.
⟡ ".. Yeah yeah, alright." Perhaps this valentine wasn't actually that bad, you hummed to yourself, tasting a cookie, relishing in your boyfriend's cheerful expressions. The cookies tasted saltier than they should, but you found yourself not minding.
⟡ Still.. you make a mental note to keep Phainon out of the kitchen.
ᝰ.ᐟ MYDEI — arcade date !!
(wc: 1174)
⟡ "Try to beat me." Mydei grinned, a competitive look rose in his eyes, you almost scoffed, your hand tightening on the console handle.
⟡ Currently, the two of you were situated at an arcade. Now, you’re not sure what Mydei’s idea of a fun valentine’s day is, but apparently to him, it was a competition. For goodness’s sake, doesn’t he get enough competition in his basketball matches? But despite all odds, you were still swooned by the competitive man, and you really can’t lie because Mydei being competitive also makes you competitive in turn.
⟡ “Please, indulge me, o strongest of all.” You beamed back, a combative shine coating both of your eyes, neither of you broke eye contact. Only when the game’s ‘ancient’-like machine erupted a small, distorted, “game start!”, did you and Mydei consecutively locked in, eyes fixed on each’s little pixelated character.
⟡ The valentines date, turned out to be one big, competitive game to you both—and to no one’s surprise, Mydei kept tally of each wins he got. “I win. (name), it almost feels as if you’re letting me win on purpose, don’t go easy on this boyfriend of yours!” Mydei grinned, his arm slung over your shoulder casually, a shit-eating smirk painted over his face as he made absolutely no effort to conceal the pleasure he attained. You could only stare at the ‘GAME OVER!” words on your own arcade machine (indubitably, a bit pouty).
⟡ However, once he noticed your sullen mood, Mydei quickly panicked, a rushed ‘oh shit’ nearly escaped his mouth, but he was quick to shut it, he mentally scolded himself inside of his head, before ushering you for one more game, this time, he wanted to raise your mood, rather than anything, as fun as it was winning for him, it was much better when he sees you smile.
⟡ When you do win, you swiftly whirled to Mydei with the brightest smile on your face, finger pointing at the screen that showed Mydei’s pixelated character in a defeated position, while yours did some tacky emote dance with 90’s music singing from the machine. He smiled, ruffling your hair in leisure, ignoring your slight protests of “don’t mess up my hair?!”
⟡ “C’mon,” Mydei held up the arcade card between his pointer and middle finger with a smirk visible on his face, bringing his gaze to the other arcade game machines, ”You wanna miss t’day and all the money I spent on you, or you wanna play more?” He leaned closer—leaving your heart stubbornly speeding up.
⟡ Thus, the two of you spent your valentines in the arcade game spot for around 5 hours at best—creating pompous feuds and rivalry for the sake of it, but for some reason, you couldn’t help but notice Mydei lost more times than you’d think he would, I mean, no offense, but he play games like anytime he’s free, surely he should’ve won each feuds easily? Before you could rack your mind on his foreign behavior, the air hockey immediately slotted itself into your goal as you let your mind wander, causing you to lose a point, much to your horror. “Hey! My eyes are up here! Ya losin’ already, (name)?”
⟡ You sent a glare to his direction, picking up the hockey from your goal to immediately fling to his direction with your mallet, only for the hockey to (somehow??) fly up and hit Mydei square in the face, so, you technically did achieve a headshot, just not in the goal.
⟡ “Holy shit—I’m sorry! So sorry! Mydei, are you okay?!” You spluttered, hand hovering in all directions over his face as he rubbed his palm on the area where the hockey quite literally pounded him, Mydei raised a hand to stop your stuttering, a grin broke out of his (pathetically) kind of painstrucken face, obviously, it was bound to hurt.
⟡ Putting aside the rough. . encounter, Mydei only brushes you off, “It’s okay,” he’d said, before adding, “but I don’t know . . a kiss might make it even better?” good to know that Mydei’s brain, on the contrary, hasn’t changed. You thought.
⟡ The rest of the day went on without any further casualties, basketball games (to no one’s surprise, Mydei surpassed the original highest score, earning himself a spot in the leaderboard), racing games (you somehow won this one, where you immediately hopped up and down with Mydei’s hand in yours, you didn’t look back then, but if you did, the sickly love struck face on Mydei’s face looking at you fondly would’ve probably imploded you from the inside out), dancing games (Mydei slipped and nearly fell on you–but with his muscular stature, he caught himself and you from falling in public, thank god no one was there to witness), and . . claw machines, which personally, agitated you.
⟡ “.. Move over, let me try.” Mydei groaned, weary of watching you fail time and time again to get a pink-ish red cat from the claw machine that just kept bouncing further away from the blissful exit everytime you moved the claw, to the point where you were one touch closer to crashing out in public, given your.. shortcoming.
⟡ For some sicken reason–as if the gods were taunting you, Mydei was able to grab the cat plush toy on his first try, your mouth agape as it jeeringly falls into the exit slot, where Mydei took it into his hand to dangle the plush in front of your face with a shit-eating grin, a look of triumphant curled on the tips of his attempted nonchalance.
⟡ “I hate you.” Grumbling, you still took the plushie into your arms.
⟡ “Say that all you want, darlin’, I know you love me.”
⟡ ... as the two of you left the arcade, hand held in each other's, intertwined, some imaginative cupid floating around bow in hand, as a small (delusional) cacophony of choir song hummed, an unexpected popped from behind a counter.
⟡ “See, Aggy, they do get along well!” Tribbie’s cheerful voice rang, as they hid behind a counter–not in a conspicuous location at all, Castorice nodded, hopeful for her friend.
⟡ “.. I suppose I was worried for naught. (name) is in good hands, then.” Aglaea smiled, despite the 3 girls still being hunched under a counter. Without context, they looked more like stalkers, than friends ‘passing by’ and deciding to spy.
⟡ “Mydei is. . strange. But I believe he really does like (name).” Castorice hummed, her voice, soft and delicate, in contrast to Tribbie’s cheerful tone, and Aglaea’s calming timbre.
⟡ “Well, since we’re here already, Aggy, Cas, let’s go play some games!”
⟡ (PS. word has it that you gave Mydei handmade chocolate earlier during the day?! Also, Mydei was practically shaking, the tips of his ears a burning red when he received the chocolate you so delicately made and packaged in a red-tinted heart box. Don’t tell anyone–but I heard from a little bird that this same man giggled to himself after the arcade date ( ꈍ◡ꈍ) !)
- 43 rmb chinese yuan - $5, or wtv currency you have
- kevin kaslana sucks at cooking (read: made kitchen appliances run for their life), therefore, phainon fucking sucks at cooking, no debates you take what you can get.
- it is REALLY hard to write Mydei in modern au, considering like literally what would this guy be agitated about? But i consider him to be someone that yearns for the normalcy, rather than the chaos he shrouds himself in, similarly to kalpas from hi3. I think of Mydei as someone who is more suited for a modern life, no fights, violence, just peace - but he is always destined to end back at the aggression of the battlefield. haha!!
- Phainon is so stupid i love him he's like a kicked puppy LMAO
❝ i blinked, and suddenly i have a valentine . . ? ❞
for as the stars burn bright, your name alone will be one i bear to light.
pairing. aventurine x gn!reader
summary. love is stupid, and fundamentally unforgiving to those which suffer the hands of it. To which, Aventurine included is no exception to the inexorable truth of it all, no matter how lucky he may be.
warnings. major character death, angst no comfort, angst, hey angst, some mentions of gore and blood.
genre. angst
notes. did i cook chat?? dividers by @/cafekitsune <3
basically just word vomit
Aventurine stared, and stared, and stared. His eyelids felt heavy, his shoulders felt more shackling than normal, his hands felt numb resting on either sides of him, his legs didn't make an effort to move.
Aventurine kept staring longer, is that all he ever knows to do nowadays? He could hear you berating him in the back of his mind, telling him to get on his feet and such.
Oh but wait.
you can't anymore.
you're gone. Gone as you had came, and gone as the wind had passed through the freckles of the sky, dazed over like a small speck of dust had gone. You were gone. And he had to accept that, it feels like a small sentence, yet it feels so much more for him.
In truth, Aventurine doesn't know how long he's stared into the picture of you and him placed vacantly on the table, there used to be 2 cups side by side, usually your side of the coffee left unfinished half-way, and his already emptied.
Now, there's only one cup, sitting alone, a despondent being. Yet, not far from it, your cup had laid, broken on the floor. Aventurine doesn't dare to pick it up, it's not fully broken, but he's scared that had he picked it up, he'd somehow damage it further.
So, he leaves it be. Aventurine was never one for remorse, or grieving. The loss in his life came and went as fast as the night had passed before him, so the blonde didn't feel much. That was what he'd thought.
Even so, he can't ignore the aching pool in his stomach, a void you once filled to the brim with warmth yet now left empty when you left. Perhaps it is his fault, everything leading up, was his fault alone.
He shouldn't have met you at all. You shouldn’t have influenced yourself with the likes of him, look where that got you. He’s considered lucky, as people would whisper praises to him, honey toned and sweet with nothing but admiration.
But what good is that luck if he couldn’t save the one he loves most? What good is he if all people he had loved seemed to disappear before him? What ‘good’ luck does he possibly have for the gods to take you away from him?
Aventurine has many questions, many left unanswered. Some for you, some for the universe, many for the questioning of the fate bestowed upon him. But Aventurine knows better.
He knows staring at the stuff you left wouldn’t do him any good, he knows pouring two cups of coffee each morning would only deepen the hole in his chest, he knows calling out an “I’m home” would get no response.
He knows recalling your bloodied body in his arms would only make his head pang endlessly, as his breathing became abnormal, and his mouth parted in panic. He blinked again, and again. A futile attempt at blinking away to rising ache of his throat—tears.
Aventurine doesn’t cry. He won’t. When his home was on fire, when he was enslaved, he’d bite his tounge to stop any flowing tears. It was a weakness, nothing more than a vulnerability to be used against him.
But you came, you held him close to your chest, fingers combing through the soft locks of his hair with a hum, smile on your face as the sunset accentuated your being, as if you couldn’t look more ethereal to him.
“you can cry, Kakavasha.” He remember you’d say, softly as you whispered the words like a mantra, words lulling him at the times which he needed most, “you’re human.” You repeated to him, genuine filled your words only as you spoke.
So Aventurine—no, so Kakavasha, perhaps just this once, will cry. Cry for your sake, cry for you knowing no more would he wake up in the warm embrace of your body, cry knowing no more would he be met with a ringing laughter.
But one thing he knows for sure, for as long as the stars shine, your name alone shall be the one he bares to light. Forever and after, in the soft light of the galaxy, would your name be sung.
Maybe then, can he properly say ‘I love you’ again.
(notes. so uh i wrote this last night at 12 barely awake, weirdly motivational and now that i'm sober and definitely wake, I genuinely have no idea where i was going with this?? i just omitted words after words man. )
summary : your boyfriend loves the sweet and sugary taste of your honeyed tinted lips. (HAIKYUU CHARACTERS)
warnings: cigarettes, making out in the car, kissing mwah mwah yk that shit, literally all fluff.
extra: divider by @/cafekitsune <3
The faint smell of cigarette was dawning the car, as you were seated beside your boyfriend, a box of strawberry fixed on your lap as you ate the pieces with a slight hum of contentment.
The slight sour and juicy interior of the strawberries left slight tender savor in your mouth, as you relished in the taste. Your boyfriend, on the other hand, had a cigarette rested between in middle and pointer finger, his gazed fixed outside the window.
The two of you sat in a comfortable relishing silence, watching the view that was presented upon you both, before you felt a cold hand grab your chin in a gentle manner, turning your head back.
Looking back, you saw the ridiculous smirk that taunted the surface of your boyfriend's face, before moments later where he lets his lips crash against your own.
One of his hand was rested on your face, cupping your cheek as the other wandered on your waist, pulling you closer to him, the only thing separating you two being the center console that extends between the driver's and passenger's seat.
The kiss was tentative, and tender. The feeling of his plush and soft lips against your own was a feeling that you could never be bored of. You felt his larger hand angling your face so he could further deepen the kiss, leaning closer to you.
You felt breathless, and were, arguably, breathless. But you couldn't stop. You wanted more, you needed more of him.
Yet during that feathery moment, you tasted something different - a bitter and metallic taste was rested on his lips as you deepened the kiss. It felt acidic, yet addictive as it drew you in even more.
He tasted like the cigarette he had just abandoned a moment earlier, the one sticking between his middle and pointer finger, yet now discarded with no attention.
Whilst on his end, you smelt, and tasted sweet. So sweet. With a sour mixed in the flavor of your plump lips, god, he wanted more of you. He needed all of you.
You were all he needed, no cigarettes were comparable to the taste of your lips.
You tasted so sweet.
And he tasted so bitter, yet, weirdly sweet at the same time.
Pulling away hesitantly so you both could catch a breath, he panted slightly, the taste of your lips still lingering on his own as if he had memorized it from top to bottom, but seriously, he'd make out with you all day long if he could.
The taste that your lips had relished to him was one of the feelings that he deeply cherish, one that he couldn't get rid of.
He was a mess, you were a mess. His eyes peered to you and your swollen lips from kissing him, taking in your appearance of slightly disheveled hair and ragged breath.
"You taste like strawberries." He whispered, letting his arms pull you closer as he breathed in your scent. He looked at you, his eyes swirling with desire and need as you chuckled slightly at his observation.
"And you taste like cigarettes." You grinned, melting into his touch.
"That so?" He smirked, a sly expression coating his features as he moved his hand from your waist to the box of strawberries, grabbing a handful before shoving them in his mouth.
Like a kid, he feverishly chewed the strawberries in his mouth with quick pace in his tracks, before grabbing your wrist, smashing his lips against yours again.
This time, he tasted sweet, mixed with the slight sour taste of strawberries lingering on his lips.
The kiss this time, was quick and gentle, before he quickly pulled away, a big grin on his face as he smiled at you as if he had accomplished something big.
"Now we both taste like strawberries!"
☁︎ ── ATSUMU, osamu, KUROO, hinata, bokuto, oikawa, AND your favs
❝𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐩𝐬, 𝐢'𝐦 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐞❞
A/N: New look for blog how we feeling gang 😮💨 ok ok i KNOWW they're professional athletes and won't smoke but just for the sake of this sweet scenario pretend that they do ONCE
this is a repost from my other acc - rainndailies lolol, expect a BIG rebranding of the blog tmr 🫡
~ if you like: goyuu (gojo x yuji, ew?), tojigo, gogumi (or whatever the slop is called), gojohime (sloppp idgaf), kaeluc, mizitill, phairene. I rlly just hate ur ships & u this is purely personal
~ pro-israel, zionist, anti abortion, right-wing, MAGA, anti-immigration, trump supporter in any capacity
~ If I found you to be on the DNI list, you WILL be blocked. If u match any criteria above u are annoying and frankly i just dont wanna interact with u - my blog my rules
