Nuju had locked himself in one of the test chambers. That had been the assumption, at least; that was what he had done in the Knowledge Towers, as the universe was on the brink of dimming forevermore, slamming the door behind himself without a single word.
But despite storming off in the same manner, he wasn't familiar enough with these mechanisms to repeat that stunt.
Whenua found him in a matter of minutes.
He watched on in silence as the Turaga of Ice paced restlessly, hitting the ground hard with his ice pick, legs shaking as if he were on the cusp of falling over. If he did notice the Earth being, he didn't make a point of letting him know: he just kept moving, desperately, gaze unfocused and sharp all the same.
Kopaka had done his best to keep them from prying eyes when he'd asked his keeper for a moment in private. It still had not gone unnoticed how he'd kneeled before him and pressed the mouth of his mask to the Matatu's forehead - a blessing to keep one safe (the Turaga had given one to him too, quick, impassionate, when he had declared he would meet his siblings at the Kini Nui) - nor how Nuju had grasped onto his wrists with all his might, trembling, as if to scream at him: don't go, you are mine. Don't go. Don't go. You are mine. Don't go. Don't leave me. Don't leave me. You are mine. Mine. Don't go.
But he had gone, like the rest of them. He'd held onto the grey mask as hard as he could, as though he'd never let go; but he had gone.
And Nuju had hidden away.
"While I understand the need for privacy, you'll have to agree that planning is a lot easier when you're in the same room as us."
The familiar voice snapped him out of his pacing, but his glare did not meet Whenua's eyes.
It was still lost somewhere else, in another time.
"Nuju," his friend called.
"I wish he'd died," the Ko-Turaga hissed.
He knew the other wouldn't understand him, not fully; it was the whole point. He didn't need pity while he let his frustrations loose.
"He should have died and stayed dead. There's brighter stars in wider skies. I wouldn't have missed them."
Maybe he would think differently if that had been the case. Maybe he would despair over the barren dark heavens above him and bemoan enraged a lack of sacrifice, but he couldn't believe it, he wouldn't believe it. Destiny had showed him already that there were other ways, there always were, there always could be - even in the face of a whole universe's death there would have been another way, and he would have followed through it just as he had followed the end of his world twice by now.
But instead, instead... Instead - just this once, this once! Just this once, instead of blazing red...!
Wrath replaced his sight with the endless white of a blizzard.
Something he thought he'd left behind lurched from his neck.
"He was mine!" and his hands turned to claws as he raised them towards his chest as if to rip his shawl to pieces, possessive and snarling, eyes shining darkly like a beast threatened: "My friend! My aide, my voice, half my mind! What right did he have? What right did the Great Spirit have, to sever him from my arm like that?"
Before he could at last rip the right words from his stubborn shut-off throat and place them in his hand?
The solitude that had been his solace now pounded at his temples.
He felt himself stretched thin, caught by faraway edges growing ever distant with each second: a part of his soul stuck in the corner of a door he couldn't bear to close, and now another half dragged by a sharp hook into a pitch black future his eyes couldn't pierce through. In the middle was he, ill-omened creature twisting and writhing, spreading its wings wide and shrieking into the night, talons glinting as they scrambled to grab onto the pieces of his rotten nest falling apart beneath him.
Mine!, his body screamed at his silent audience, Mine! And his hands shook, grasping at nothing and no one still, reaching out too late, too little, not far enough.
Never far enough.
Whenua walked into his snarling claws. He pulled them away from his chest, took their place in the core of his anguish, and lifted his head as best as his hunched back would let him: his Ruru scraped gently against the Matatu's chin.
He could feel the other's lungs push the heaving chest into his own with each desperate breath.
Nuju stiltedly closed his grip around him.
"He was mine," he warbled softly as though it could have changed anything, throat creaking through the knot within it. "He was mine."
His soul frayed at the seams.
A heavy grip anchored him to the empty room.
"Kopaka will come back to you," Whenua promised.
Had he understood him at all?
Had he misinterpreted his plight?
Rough digits pulled carefully at the tangled guts crying out of Nuju's core, fidgeting in deliberate motions: little by little, with the method and precision of an archivist, they were all slotted back where they were supposed to go, and just like a moon after the passing of a cloud too thick he found himself breathing again.
He met pale green eyes.
"But to be there to meet him you must walk in the present."
It was like letting go of those infinite limits. Like slumping onto the ground, onto what remained of his pitiful nest, with his shoulders hurting and his spine almost cut in half.
Nuju took a moment.
He lowered his head, letting their foreheads meet while his grip refused to relent nor was asked to do so.
Some part of him was still stuck there, on the edges of time, reaching for the pieces of his heart and mind that had never truly belonged to him as they dripped from his hands like melted snow; so he gripped the earth beneath him, the steady pulse of an aging world he had once found so pointless to dig through, forcing as much of himself to converge upon the glow blinking his way through the night.
They needed him, out there, in the future. They needed him and he would go and meet them, and bring the ferocity that had gotten him chosen alongside with himself. But not now, please, not yet. Not yet. He wasn't in his right mind yet. He just needed a moment to ground himself, to dig icy roots into the now.
He leaned into Whenua and let the present stretch around them.
Just for a little longer.
Just a little longer.
