#¤zenith

[syxhenry]

exit wounds.

sorta @syxyihan

when henry eventually returns to his room, because he can’t find the damn priest anywhere, his eyes immediately notice the unusual shape of the thing displayed on his bed. a quick closer inspection reveals that it’s definitely not his - he doesn’t own any damn knives, he’s not a cook - and so it instantly raises his shackles as he wonders where its origins may lie.

but as his fingers curl around its hilt, a coldness grips his heart and suddenly there is an immense fear inside of him. he’s done everything short of going into yihan’s quarters, because he figured they were not on such bad terms that the priest wouldn’t give a sign of life upon hearing henry’s knock, but now that is exactly what he does.

his feet take him to yihan’s quarters more swiftly than he’s ever run anywhere, hands fumbling with the controls to open the door. the second it does so without question, his heart already sinks to his stomach, and when the room is revealed to be empty - not of furniture, but of nearly everything that made it so very yihan’s - he grows cold entirely.

the only thing remaining is a hint of the scent he’s come to love so much, hitting him in the face like a painful reminder of everything that’s now gone.

gone.

his throat tightens even more, causing him to start having trouble breathing. his chest tightens as well until his lungs feel like they might explode, but no matter how he tries to catch a proper breath, the feeling doesn’t relent.

and then he’s moving again. with the dagger still tightly clasped in his hand, it’s back to his own room, where he gathers the small metal box from under his bed and throws it into a bag along with every single stash of credits he’s got lying around and a selection of food that will take him through the next five months if he rations properly.

there’s no more time for goodbyes, like for letting audrey know he’s leaving, or for telling mina or minsu or anyone he might have wanted to still reach out to. instead of the last goodbye he even planned on giving his precious baby, the ship itself, his feet now carry him through her hallways at a speed he hasn’t used before and he soon launches himself out of the cargo hold onto vallurian soil, not even pausing at the feeling of hot sand beneath his feet.

and off he goes, to find yihan, so he can tell him everything that has been waiting at the base of his tongue, ready to be spoken aloud but never being given the chance to.

in hopes that it’s not too late, that the priest hasn’t yet found a way off the planet and out of his life for the verse knows how long - perhaps even forever.

(spoiler alert: it is.)

[fin.]

[syxhenry]

hey brother

[ title & solo inspiration ]

kinda @syjaewon​

hey, brother, there’s an endless road to re-discover hey, brother, know the water's sweet but blood is thicker

henry kneels in the desert sands of a planet as void of water as its inhabitants are void of feeling. breathing in dry air scorching his lungs, filling his insides with dust and sand.

he hardly notices. his eyes are on jaewon. his captain. his brother.

he doesn’t know what to say, but at the same time there is nothing to say. no words will ever bridge the depths of the loss he knows the younger man has experienced. no words will ever come even close to becoming some sort of salve for the gaping wounds that are left after having the lifeline of his existence ripped away like that.

henry looks at the threads of his own existence; frayed, faltering, a lot of them already cut short in bloody or burned endings. he thinks of all the ways life comes to an end, thinks of all the things he could attempt to make it better. nothing is ever good enough.

hey, brother, do you still believe in one another hey, brother, do you still believe in love, i wonder

he thinks of the very thread between him and the man whose back is turned to him, white clothing wrapping up almost every patch of skin that could be seen from his kneeling position. he thinks of how he’s planning to stretch it out as far as it will go. he thinks of how little he believes it’ll probably matter to the captain; hard like a rock, solid as a mountain.

he thinks of everything they’ve been through, everything he has seen jaewon go through. he thinks of all the low points, thinks of that moment in time so many years ago by now when they’d almost parted with bad blood. he thinks of all those moments when words were spoken that could have potentially ended anything between them, and how they’d always sorted through it somehow.

he thinks of the woman who brought them together, gave them to each other as if knowing the tie that would form, as if knowing how much they would come to belong together as much as they both belonged to the ship. as if she knew all that life would bring them both and prepared them for it by giving them each other.

and henry doesn’t kid himself, there is an entire array of old serenity members he’s huddled in the middle of, it’s not just jaewon and him, but he still feels like in this very moment, somehow they’re there for each other, to support each other. no words, no attempt to make something like that known, but they’re there, and it’s all that matters. all that really needs to be known.

and the pire burns.

what if I'm far from home? oh, brother, i will hear you call

he stands, feet digging into sand, watching the entire scene unfold in front of them, jaewon taking up his responsibility. it makes sense, there is no one else better to take her ashes, to carry her off to the next stage of whatever the universe has in store for them after they die. henry never tried to speculate what exactly that is, but he’s confident that whatever it is - even if it’s nothing - vera will step into it with head held high and take over the reigns from whoever is in charge in a matter of moments.

he’s also confident that jaewon will be able to perform his duties flawlessly, and that he will buckle under the weight of them when no one is around to see.

the man may have no emotion left to show his crew members; henry knows that every spark of vulnerability that has ever been carved from jaewon’s bones was there because of his predecessor. vera was a remarkable woman, after all, her hands did not just coax the most out of the ship she captained, but also out of its crew members. and more so out of the boy she saved from the dusts of a burning planet.

his eyes follow jaewon as he is taken away, watching the dust trail left behind, feeling the ache in his chest tighten, as if he might implode with the depth of it soon. he stands in silence, not noticing the way the other crew members disperse, the way the funeral space is cleared and people go back to their own ships.

what if i lose it all? oh, brother, i will help you out 

he is a pillar in the desert, a beacon for jaewon to return to, as if the ship at his side is not ten times as big as him, one of his hands resting on her hull to signify he’s looking after her in jaewon’s absence. to signify there is nothing jaewon had to worry about while being gone. his eyes find the spot on the horizon the moment it becomes visible to him, and he watches the man, tall like a mountain, unrelenting in the face of even the worst of storms.

he doesn’t move as jaewon nears, doesn’t relinquish his position, but merely stands and watches the way the younger male’s frame steadily closes in on him. his eyes follow the way jaewon steps aboard the ship, to head straight for the helm, probably, tell them to get out of there that very instant.

only when jaewon is out of sight does he take his hand off serenity’s hull. only then does he slowly relax the set of his shoulders and release the tension in his chest, that has been there ever since he started standing watch for his friend.

his brother.

oh, if the sky comes falling down for you there’s nothing in this world i wouldn’t do

[syxhenry]

yue lao’s date, gorramit

@syxyihan

“you’re spending tonight with me.”

it’s an undeniable statement, clearly. there’s a heavy wrench in his hand, pointed straight at the other male’s face, although there’s still a good arm’s length between the metal tool and the delicate features. a more than determined expression is gracing his features, eyebrows furrowed lightly as he stares straight at the other man.

how did this come to pass? well...

henry has heard of the comet cluster, of course. the stories of old mechanics about the vividly coloured space rocks are much different from the romantic legends and myths, however. there is little to nothing about red strings, fate or the love of one’s life and much more about the dangers of the floating debris hurling at anything within range and doing major damage to any ships deciding to fly too close.

so it’s no surprise that in the days leading to the event, henry makes extra sure to educate the pilots in appropriate flying distances and what definitely not to do the moment the comet cluster’s beautiful tail will probably bring everyone to a state of mindless awe. - and he doesn’t even care that yihan and him are only recently on slight speaking terms again. (yes, he’s counting the one conversation about kids as them being on speaking terms. he’s desperate after all.)

luckily the heartfelt but perhaps a little too plentiful warnings don’t turn either of the pilots against him in anger, which at least puts him at ease enough to allow them at the handles the very evening it all happens. (not that he has much of a say in it, in reality, but if he would fear either of them might fuck up, he would have gone to jaewon with his heaviest wrench if necessary to get his point across.)

most of the hours leading up to the appearance are spent checking and double-checking all of serenity’s machinery, as well as the fail-safes he’s put in place just in case, but eventually henry is out of a job and can only move to a room with a view to enjoy the once-in-a-lifetime event as everyone else will be doing.

which is exactly the thing he has dreaded doing the entire day. it’s not that he doesn’t want to watch the beautifully coloured comet cluster, he just doesn’t want to watch it alone. he wants to watch it with a very specific someone, even.

and that is where his heaviest wrench comes into play again.

he’s not sure what yihan will think of his plans to kidnap said pilot and make sure the both of them spend the time of this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle together somewhere they can’t be disturbed, after all. he might be needing some blunt force or a solid threat to convince the priest that going with henry is the best idea. he’s also not sure where he’s supposed to find said tall priest at this very moment in time.

which is why he ends up roaming the hallways of serenity with his heaviest wrench slung over his shoulder like it’s an everyday thing for him to do.

a quick visit to the helm lets him know that kinam’s on duty for the time being. he double checks first that the other beaumondian knows to stay far away enough from the comet cluster (and how far ‘far away enough’ really is), before asking about the second pilot. ‘off duty’ he is informed, which automatically sends him to the places yihan might frequent outside of the helm. there aren’t many left that henry knows of, considering both the engine room and his own quarters no longer make the list, so it’s not very long before he arrives at yihan’s very own private space.

it hasn’t been all that long since he was last in that very same room, with his arms almost protectively - or possessively - wrapped around the other male, covered by a warm blanket and enveloped in the mixture of scents that have easily become the most relaxing concoction to him, mainly identified as being ‘yihan.’ the mere memory of that moment makes every fibre of his being yearn to go back to it, to the warmth, the safety.

he doesn’t bother with knocking, just tries to open the door, then comes to the discovery that it is locked. yihan doesn’t lock his quarters often, so it is an indication of something being the matter. still, he’s not sure the priest is actually inside until the tones of his voice filter through the door, informing henry that ‘no you can’t come in, the door is locked for a reason, sorry’ and if he ‘would be so kind as to come back later’ all in that same, polite way yihan uses with almost everyone on almost every occasion. henry’s pretty sure he’s one of the few people aboard the ship who have ever heard yihan speak any differently. or maybe that’s just what he’d like to believe. that the priest only reveals this different side of himself to the engineer and no one else.

it no longer matters if that’s true, considering it hasn’t happened in weeks anyway.

which only strengthens his resolve to spend the time of the event together at the very least - and preferably much longer than that. so he doesn’t want to speak, doesn’t want to reveal it’s him, lest yihan tries to get away upon realising who’s at the door. instead he merely leans down to put the wrench temporarily on the floor and pull a few of his other tools from his belt. it doesn’t take very long for him to be halfway through the panel that controls the door’s locking device - though he really shouldn’t be showing off his actual breaking and entering skills to the world but he can’t help it.

he works silently but effectively, tripping the lock in a matter of minutes and listening to the small beeping sound of his success. the tools  easily glide back into his belt and then he quickly leans down to pick the wrench back up. this all needs to happen fast, he doesn’t know how good yihan’s reflexes are, after all, or whether the priest has a fight or flight instinct. he also doesn’t know how opposed yihan will be to this clear intrusion of privacy, regardless of any reflexes or instincts.

he takes a deep breath, steadying his nerves and strengthening his resolve, before putting a hand on the door and pushing it open. he crosses the distance in a few quick, long strides, brings the wrench up to eye level and places himself square across from the priest who is ... curled up into the fetal position on the bed? it pauses him in his movements for a split second, before he takes another step, clearing his throat.

which is how the entire scene has come into existence.

he stares at the pilot down the crooked line of his wrench for a few moments longer - paralysed, in part, by the reality of actually speaking face to face again without either of them being drunk or otherwise incapable of proper thinking - before squaring his shoulders and hardening his gaze some more.

“you can’t back out of this, i’m commandeering your person for the duration of the comet cluster and we are going to watch it together.” the strain on his voice could possibly sound like anger, but he’s pretty sure they both know it’s the effort he has to put in to not sounding like he might cry any moment now. not because he feels sad, but because just seeing yihan this close to him (and in such a truly vulnerable position) is enough to make him so gorram emotional. which he definitely doesn’t want to be, so he clears his throat again.

“we’re making it a date. i’m taking you somewhere nice...” his gaze flickers around the room in a split second, landing on the skylight that enables them to look outside from yihan’s very bed. “...here. i’m taking you here and we’re having a date.” he concludes easily, looking back at the pilot with that same hard gaze for a few more seconds before he turns back around and quickly strides over to the door again. it takes hardly any time to close it and then smash his wrench on the locking panel the second it has locked, thereby making anyone unable to enter through it in the same manner he has done just moments before.

“there,” is all he declares as he turns around, slinging the heavy wrench back over his shoulder. “i am abducting you. you can’t say no.”

he knows it sounds kind of ridiculous what he’s saying, but then on the other hand he has just completely destroyed the lock panels of yihan’s door, meaning no one will be getting in or out anytime soon unless he or audrey are put to the task. and considering everyone will be too busy looking at the pretty lights in a mere few moments more, he figures they’re good for the night.

[syxhenry]

endlessly

he’s no longer angry. anger requires effort, requires him to keep it ablaze every so often, and he’s done wasting effort on something as futile as being angry at that useless guy. there are better things to be angry at. like the blue sun corporation, who murdered his entire family, or the gorram piece of metal he’s working on that doesn’t seem to want to bend the way he needs it to to be able to enhance their accelerator.

he thinks of the people he’s come in contact with since it all happened. ephraim, who continued to provide him with food despite the strange times at which he’d come looking for it. audrey, who is giving him sour looks again as if they’ve gone a few years back in time. (as if she’s the only person allowed to act bitchy). jaewon, who probably is real happy knowing his engineer is hard at work again. as if he hasn’t done a proper job all along, yihan or no yihan. and that’s the end of the list, really. somehow he has managed to avoid pretty much everyone aside from these two. 

he’s done avoiding now, however. he’s done with pretty much everything.

rather than throwing the piece of metal away like he would have done over the past couple of weeks, henry finds himself slowly lowering his hands and just staring at it for a while. it’s not cooperating. nothing in his life seems to go the way he wants it to. it started with the revolution going sideways and it hasn’t stopped since. getting stuck on a slave trader, his crew’s mutiny, people burning his rescuer alive. now even serenity - the refuge he thought he’d finally found - feels like it’s falling apart beneath his fingers.

he’s alone, he’s always alone, and it hurts so bad, somewhere in the middle of his chest, just beneath his rib cage. somewhere he’s got a hard time breathing and it feels like he’s trapped under several layers of heavy weight, only inches away from crushing him entirely. but not even working the metal brings him an escape from it anymore, not even the thing that has always given him comfort, that has always managed to make him feel slightly better, works for him anymore now.

heaving a deep sigh, he lowers his head into his hands, covering his face with his palms and standing like that for a solid few minutes.

he’s tired. he’s so gorram tired of it all. he doesn’t understand how just weeks ago he could be thinking of going off to some quiet planet to live out the rest of his days in comfort and quiet. not taking the revenge that has been keeping him on his feet for years, not spending any more time trying to find people to fill the void inside of him, not caring about the rest of the verse.

he still doesn’t care about the rest of the verse, but he doesn’t care for the quiet planet dream anymore either.

he doesn’t care about anything anymore.

like a rock afloat out in the black, just tumbling around the great nothingness with no goal in mind, nowhere to turn, no way to change course. continuously floating on the stream of the stars.

mindlessly. aimlessly. endlessly.

he sinks down until he’s seated on the cold, metal floor of the engine room, back resting against the whirring machine that’s keeping the entire ship afloat in the great beyond. the rhythmical thrumming only causes the devastating emptiness inside of him to expand, until it feels like it’s all-encompassing.

and he wants out of it.

[syxhenry]

tossing and turning

it’s quiet. it’s so gorram quiet. he can hear his own heart beating. he doesn’t want to. he doesn’t want to hear anything, doesn’t want to have to feel anything. he wants to work on something but after two or three full days and nights in the engine room audrey sent him away to get some proper rest. something about him not being capable of doing his job properly if he’s not well-rested. he doesn’t know what she’s on about because he always does his job properly and it’s not like sending him to his quarters has helped him get any proper sleep so far. (and he’s already four hours into tossing and turning, it’s starting to get a little repetitive now.)

but what are his options, is the question. it’s already been three or four meal times where he’d come in extra early or late so he could avoid the tall pilot and one evening where he just didn’t go at all because yihan had been waiting at the engine room door and henry had seen no other way than closing it in the priest’s face again the second it opened, not wanting to face him just yet. it’s not that he’s still angry with yihan, the anger dissipated about an hour into doing a full check up of all serenity’s parts the evening of the events itself, but he just doesn’t think he can face the other male yet without making this an even bigger issue than it already is.

besides, he still can’t understand why yihan would make vows over something as stupid as jaewon calling him out on ‘maybe not being dependable anymore.’ jaewon’s a fucking ass and says and does shit like that all the time, so for yihan to think it so important that he needs to make a vow over it - a vow, something so gorram binding and serious, especially to the priest - is simple insanity. and a downright disrespect to henry’s entire person, considering his life gets affected by it as well but his opinion has never been asked. because apparently whatever that buttface of a captain says or thinks is more important than the way henry feels about it all. if yihan truly feels that way, then the pilot should just date the damn captain and leave him the fuck out of—

okay so maybe he still is a bit angry.

just a bit.

and it doesn’t help that yihan hasn’t come to apologise for his words yet, even though so much time has passed since it happened. ‘you didn’t give him a chance to say anything you just keep avoiding him’ some sort of annoyingly reasonable part of his mind is countering those words, but henry doesn’t want to listen to it. not in the middle of the night while he’s trying his utter best to fall asleep yet continues to fail miserably because his mind just keeps being too busy to settle down and allow him some sleep.

which, on its own, is already pretty strange considering henry is usually capable of falling asleep at any moment anywhere in the ship.

so basically he’s feeling like shit.

and he blames the priest.

definitely yihan’s fault.

maybe he should throw some robes over jaewon’s metal likeness and pretend it’s yihan, at least that way he might be able to let off some steam and lose some of his irritation. but he can’t hardly do that in the middle of the night, can he?

it takes all of five seconds for henry to decide, throw the blanket off himself and get out of bed to throw a random towel over the metal face’s shoulders. it’s more of a yihan-jaewon combo now, but that’s even better. now he can hit two birds with one stone. or in the more appropriate terms: two gorram crew members who should just go date each other with several pillows and whatever other ammunition he can find.

fuck them.

[syxhenry]

replacement therapy

@syjaewon

it’s the middle of the night by the time henry finishes the complete check-up he’s done of the ship. it was supposed to be audrey’s night shift and henry was supposed to go spend the night cuddled into yihan’s arms, but obviously that’s not happening anymore now. if the pilot still wants any type of affection from him now, he’s going to have to come ask for it.

maybe even beg a little.

then again, henry doesn’t think he could hold out long enough to wait for yihan to beg. he’s more likely to die of old age first.

grumbling some not-so-nice superlatives at the pilot’s address, henry makes his way over to where jaewon said he was currently spending time. the captain’s always up at weird hours, that doesn’t surprise him anymore. the captain’s also always up to weird things, none of them a surprise anymore either.

in fact, the only thing that would still surprise henry coming from jaewon was a friendly smile and arms opening wide for a hug. - if that ever happens he’ll shoot the fucker in the face cause it definitely won’t be the real jaewon.

he steps into the room jaewon’s in and throws the small, soot black engine piece on the table near to the captain. “our baby’s all good, she could just do with a new accelerator. the replacement parts i’ve been putting into this one to keep her going keep breaking faster and faster.”

not caring about his grease-streaked hands or the lines of soot that run clear over his face, henry wipes his palms on the sides of his pants as he keeps his gaze on jaewon’s features.

“in a couple of months we’re also going to have to start thinking of giving her a new proper oiling. it’ll put us aground for at least a week, so whenever you can plan it in, that’d be great.”

his expression doesn’t reveal anything of the emotional turmoil inside of himself, but jaewon has known him long enough to know that if henry’s doing a full check-up of the ship without any obvious faults having shown; something’s definitely not going right for the engineer.

“you hungry? cause i sure am.” 

and with that, henry and his grease-streaked hands are off to the nearest wall panel, screwdriver magically appearing in his hand to get it loose so he can reach yet another part of his stash.

[syxhenry]

existential

@syxsonmi​ continued from here: 

‘do you want to live?’

it’s the question henry asked her, not expecting her to take such a long time to answer. not expecting all of those things to flicker over her features. ever so quietly, but he still saw it. he has no idea what it all means, no idea what in the world the ghosts in those eyes mean, or the clenching of that jaw, the lines in her face. 

all he knows is that it’s heavy. the kind of heavy he’s felt in his own bones. the kind of heavy that pulls a person down until they’re pressed with their face to the floor begging for it to end.

she’s not begging. much like he never had.

but she’s empty. and he knows, because she tells him her reply and it’s the same he’s kept lodged in his chest between his ribs where his heart’s supposed to be. it’s tiny yet heavy, the stepping stone for a world of hurt that lies just beneath the surface. ready to be dug up but always, always merely shoved further down in an attempt to forego having to face reality.

‘no,’ she says, and he feels it in his very soul, the way the world had come to an end, the way everything became meaningless, useless, without reason. the way life had ended in the crooks of an untold story, in the remnants of blood dripping from his sister’s fingers to the ground.

‘but i will,’ she says next and henry nods is head. like he did. without reason, without hope. without sense or meaning or purpose. just lived, step by step. survived, more so. one day. then the next. and the next. and so on, all the way up till this point where he is aboard a ship of people he’d give his life for. people who have made him smile, made him laugh, made him remember what it means to live. wholly and fully.

to love.

to move on.

his hand quietly strokes her hair a few times, fingers cradling her chin for a moment as he sends her a sad smile. understanding, maybe, reassurance. “maybe one day you’ll want to again too.” he breathes out a light sigh, then lets go of her again.

“you’ll figure it out, kid.”