' whenever, however, this ends, i want you to know that right now, i love you forever. ' ( kaishu @ phainon, platonically. cycle 3,654,294. )
he's never known how to wish for himself. he's known how to rage, to feel hatred, to feel painful, all sundering love for others but not himself - but wishing slipped through his fingers long ago. with each cycle, he burns a bit more. with each cycle, the sun dies a little bit more to buy time. with each cycle, his hands once shaking and trembling with golden blood, or struggle to pick up a dropped dawnmaker with spasming fingers; now simply tighten his grip on his soaked blade. he has no right to mourn them but move forward.
khaslana's anger and memory of their wishes, their feelings, their hopes, keep that single flickering bit of humanity in him still alive, even three million cycles later. against the rot of the black tide consuming his body. against the way his flesh tears, cracks and seeps until he can no longer fully cover his body as he ought to. eons before ' flame reaver ' is born but ages after ' phainon ' has died.
ironic isn't it ? phainon wasn't even his real name. a nickname, something fond and cherished by those he's killed. those he had in a twisted fate where the only way to save them is to trod over their bodies, to burn until his cold, blazing light extingushes inevitably.
and kaishu remains at his side; and he remembers in the flickering, dark, almost emptied out cavern of his exhausted mind desperately clinging to that candle of his humanity, the love that went beyond the anger of keeping his friends wishes with him, khaslana hesitates.
he hasn't hesitated in a long, long time. much less has he used declining vocal chords rasping with fire licking him from within from billions of coreflames to answer someone that...wait.
hasn't khaslana always considered her a friend ? why is that...so dulled now ? there is a flicker of a foreign warmth he can barely remember but it still persists. it isn't the flaming solar flare that is his body as a sun for tomorrow, but something softer. almost entirely forgotten but subconsciously never had they ever been.
there's a long pause; washed out eyes and features shrouded in what meager clothing he could find settle on her face. she persists, and he wishes she wouldn't.
they are both so tired. he can recognize that, despite the encroaching numbness that registers a moment of fear to lose it in the first place. to lose his emotions to nothing. he can't.
he just can't. even if his humanity is a flicker, even if his love is subconscious and his wishes forgotten save for everyone else's . . he cannot allow himself to forget.
the words do something to him. something enough that makes a boot halt, almost twisting in the dirt as he doesn't remove his hood, but white hair still pokes out in pale tufts as he cants his head, something in his chest hurting, but the worst pain one could conjure is a familiar resting place for him. in his heart, his ribs, his veins from the coreflames consuming him. the fires of hatred, the wishes of the dead and loved. even if...the last part is hard to remember how it feels more than the sensation of an ache that it is still there.
she's...a friend. she didn't abandon him. she should abandon him. she must be exhausted. his slowed mind, long obsessed with the goal and fruition of buying time and halting the black tide, halting irontomb, stealing coreflames from friends like family - makes his breath hitch.
it isn't a pretty sound. more like a cracking rasp, as if a match was slowly burning his throat from the inside out and seeping out his mouth.
she still loves her friend - and khaslana isn't sure he even exists anymore save in the flickering humanity he still can reveal to her from time to time, and even that, he cannot remember.
" kaishu . " it's rasped out, monotonous, but there's an ache there, almost a plead to somehow still be seen in the funeral pyre that is 'him'.
my wish? my wish is to fulfill everyone else's wishes !
" i'm . . sorry . " how many times has he told them that ? his precious friend, or in his memories she was - still is, even if barely anything registers now. an anchor to keep his humanity flickering. even if she was able to escape the eternal recurrence, he'd still keep her in his memories as one, even if he lost that too. something keeps him even by a few percents, human. but maybe only she sees that. she's the only one left to see that, not that his existence matters. not that he ever mattered.
" . . . i. . . " a cough, sounding more like a sickening battle for clean air and not ash. " i. . . am sorry that i can't find a way to get you out of this hell. i . . . " he forgot how to smile. to show emotion. there's only a brief flicker of his long protected humanity, however faint, seeping into his dead blue eyes.
" i still . . . think of you as . . a friend . . . somehow i . . somewhere . . " his speech patterns are less coherent, less frequent; so obsessed and frantic to stall for time, so desperate to obtain the coreflames as efficiently as possible, subconsciously wishing to put everyone out of their misery if this nightmare is going to continue.
"but i couldn't . . " another hideous excuse of a cough. " couldn't get you back home, or elsewhere. i couldn't - " and you still say you love me. you still treat me as a friend when you're just as frayed as i am.
he turns to her, khaslana's once unmarred countenance layered with multitudes of bloody, golden cracks on his skin; some from his neck curling up in jagged claws to his jawline.
he is the epitome of someone just existing to be hurting.
" i want to. " it's still that dull tone, still an exhaustion no one could ever know, against the unbearable pain he feels that love seep into him. it burns and maybe khaslana can't even recognize it anymore, but for a moment his chest does not burn as badly.
( it's a different kind of hurt. )
" hey . . . " a croaked rasp.
" kai . . shu . . .while i have the chance . . . want. . to ask . . . " broken, fragmented sentences with an echo of something with too much pain and suffering to name. something longing but only in slivers. slivers are all he's allowed now.
" . . . . what is . . . your wish . . . ? i know everyone's . . . but yours . "
before this sun is set to die entirely, before it lights the way in its pyre for a single dawn over amphoreus . . . he knows he'd like to hear what she wants.
it's his unspoken, quiet way of saying, that even as he's all but burnt away, all but ashes - that he loves her too.
maybe he's forgotten how love feels, but it's there, like a pulse in his decaying lungs. he hopes before he loses his voice entirely, that he can, with poor semblance thank her. for everything. and plead to gods that have long abandoned their creations that she won't burn with him. that's what a 'good friend' would wish.
if only we met in another life. surely we'd have . . . i could . . . help fulfill . . . that wish . . .
