Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Brother Dusk did not attend dinner the evening of Anacreon and Thespis’ destruction. He did not feel a need to explain his absence; he had recently been finding himself too fatigued to attend dinner after particularly taxing days, another mark of his steadily advancing age, and today had been one of the most taxing in decades. His brothers would notice his absence and understand, and Day would surely understand a little too well. Dusk hoped that his nonattendance would speak louder volumes than anything he could have said himself.

He paced up and down his bedchamber restlessly, for surprisingly he was in fact not particularly tired after the day’s events. A servant entered and Dusk eyeballed him coolly. The man gestured, and it was only then that Dusk noticed the platter of food that he held.

“Brother Day sends his regards, Empire, and regrets your absence at dinner. He trusts that your affliction is merely temporary, and that you will be well enough to return to normal duties tomorrow morning.” The servant’s tones stayed deliberately mild, but Dusk could hear the steely tone of his brother’s voice underlying the words. Dusk dismissed the man wordlessly, and wished for a moment that he could dismiss Day as easily.

On inspection the platter was hot, straight from the banquet table, laden with vegetables and spices and hand-carved peacock sliced so thinly and expertly that it was translucent. After a moment’s deliberation he summoned another servant and had it sent away, then requested a small meal instead be brought directly from the kitchen. Day would hear of the snub, of course, but it was the principle of the thing that mattered.

Galactic politics were one thing; familial politics were quite another. The latter did not go away when one shed the elaborate gold torc and exchanged ageless formality for personal vulnerability. Not for the first time, Dusk wondered what it would be like to grow up not needing to monitor and overanalyse every move of those around him, where a single gesture could carry any number of coded meanings, and one must always step perfectly in sync. He wondered what the brothers must seem like to their servants; the entire staff had been sworn to secrecy and discretion on pain of death (their own and their family’s), but no human could fully restrain their rebellious thoughts and gut reactions, no matter how hard they tried. Were that possible, he would be sitting round the dinner table with Day and Dawn as though nothing had happened that afternoon. 

Gods, he thought as he stared at the elaborately painted wall in a state of deep depression, here I am - refusing to attend a peacock banquet out of spite, pitying my position as I recline amongst marble and gold, while on Thespis - !

His order from the kitchen arrived, distracting him from his gloomy thoughts, but the first bite tasted like ash. The sights and sounds and smells of the Scar plagued him still, caked his mouth and lungs, sent him oscillating between frigid shock and incandescent rage. The idea that Empire had today wrought worse upon two helpless planets with a flick of its gilded wrist was - it was unconscionable. 

I should have brought Day to the Scar, he thought, no longer seeing the plate before him; he would understand then that it is nothing to be emulated, that there is nothing righteous in the taste of charred metal and flesh, the desperate faces and the cries for help -

Nothing would have made him listen to me, he rebuked himself dully, and pushed his barely touched meal away. 

Was that his failure or Day’s?

When Dusk had occupied the middle throne, his predecessor - Cleon the Tenth - had been judicious in the role of Dusk, slow and soft spoken, a figure of iron - cruel with his words at times, but a pillar of certainty and wisdom that Dusk had been able to fall back on when the weight of Empire became too much. They had had their disagreements, but on his Ascension his predecessor had kissed him on the cheek with warm pride and gone serenely into the light, comfortable in the knowledge that he had done well. Dusk had always assumed that his own Ascension ceremony would be a perfect replication of that day, as intended, but tonight he measured himself against the treasured memory of his predecessor and found himself hopelessly lacking.

He retired early to bed but found himself staring at the ceiling, simultaneously agitated and weary, images of the day before still flickering through his mind’s eye. Surely his other two brothers were lying awake in similar torment - but perhaps not. Dawn would likely be able to rebound with the lightness and vigour of youth, and who knew what Day thought any more? For the first time, Dusk could not guess at his clone brother’s thoughts, could not even begin to fathom the mind that would think such a cosmic punishment appropriate. For the first time in his seven long decades, Dusk found himself detached and adrift from his brothers. It was a terrible sensation. 

The sense of crushing isolation that had consumed him that afternoon claimed him again. He rolled onto his side and tried to watch the subtle shifting of the chroma on the wall, but the intricate artwork that had brought him so much joy to paint now reminded him of swirling smoke and demolished masonry. Watching the destruction from the ship, cloistered behind glass while his brothers stood among their subjects, had been an oddly alienating experience - but surely witnessing it in person would have been worse. What a miserable, toothless aberration from the Cleonic mould he was!

He sat up sharply and did what he always did when he could not sleep - he grabbed a sketchbook and some pastels and searched for something to draw. The lamplight was searing when he switched it on and he quickly dimmed it to the lowest setting. Tonight was not a night that he wished to be disturbed, or for his restlessness to be noted. 

He ventured out onto the balcony and sat in the mild spring air, his paper glowing softly in the lamplight as he gazed down upon the intricate colours and shapes of the Imperial Gardens. After a moment of quiet contemplation he set stick to paper and let the colour crumble across the page. Soft media soothed him - chalks, charcoals, his beloved chroma - and he tried to let go of his anxieties and lose himself in the bruised purples and blues of the nighttime scene before him. 

The black skeleton of the orbital platform passed overhead in its macabre orbit. He saluted it unwillingly with a harsh scrape of charcoal in the upper corner of the page. It set him to wondering what the Imperial destroyers had looked like to the inhabitants of the planets they had wiped out today; had they loomed starkly overhead, proud and menacing, or had they been a mere glimmer in the heavens like tiny deadly stars? A pastel stick snapped suddenly in his tensed grip. He threw it to the floor with a huff and selected another. 

Anacreon in particular was a technologically weak planet, he knew, poor in resources and drained by centuries of conflict with its neighbour. Most there would never even see an Imperial ship, never mind board one and witness the splendour of Trantor. And yet they had been wiped out viciously for the sins of the few, for the destruction of a city they would never lay eyes on -

A stroke of colour landed several inches off-target, ruining the clean lines of the garden path. He ground his teeth in frustration. Damn shakes, damn infirmity, damn powerlessness, damn those who had sent the Star Bridge crashing, flaming, screaming -

He wrenched the page from the pad with a shout and sent the pastel box crashing to the floor with a backwards sweep of the hand. He watched, breathing heavily, as clouds of coloured dust rose and a few sticks tumbled off the balcony to the gardens below. The ruined drawing sat crumpled in his trembling, clenched fist; he balled it up even tighter and pitched it into the darkness with all the meagre strength he could muster. Oh, the things he would say to Day, if only he had the spine!

His flare of anger ebbed quickly, as it always did. Once his breathing had settled he dragged himself back into his room, but found that he could not bear to sit or lie down with only his thoughts for company. Perhaps a couple of rounds of the palace would help to sufficiently tire him?

Dusk changed into soft slippers and set to roaming the corridors with muffled footsteps. He kept close to the walls and flitted between pools of candlelight when possible. Tonight he did not wish to be seen, felt an odd sense of shame for his weakness. When he passed Day’s chamber he found himself creeping along all the more quietly. 

No, he did not fear Day; his emotions towards his clone were strange and bitter and shameful, but he could never be fearful of the man he had raised as his son. However much Day had gesticulated and flexed and bellowed while handing out the sentences, Dusk had never for a moment feared for his own safety. The sky itself would sooner fall in before a member of the Genetic Dynasty turned his hand upon another in anger. No, he feared for the billions in the direct path of today's attacks, for the repercussions that would be felt for who knew how many centuries, for the more subtle damage to the Empire that had been dealt today. If the dynasty could not bend and show grace today, then when?

He turned a corner and found the hall ahead slightly illuminated by light spilling from a doorway; it took him a moment to reconstruct his mental map of the dark palace, but he soon realised where he was. "Dawn," he breathed. Was the child also too burdened by the day's events to sleep? He crept to his brother's chamber and knocked lightly on the door, ready to bolt if he found himself unwelcome. 

Dawn was sitting up in bed calmly - Dusk inhaled with relief - and reading by lamplight with none of Dusk's secrecy or shame. The boy looked up, met his brother's eyes, and smiled very slightly. "Are you feeling better?”

Dusk scanned the statement for irony, but found none; no reproach, no hidden message, no hook he need search for lest it spear him later, just childlike sincerity and concern. He leaned against the doorframe, folding his arms, attempting to summon a sliver of nonchalant energy. "I am, a little. I should be fit for breakfast tomorrow."

Dawn nodded. "I'm glad."

How are you feeling?, Dusk wished to ask, but he found his coward lips rearranging the words as they came. "What are you reading?"

"Just a story. The one about the land of youth."

"It's been a while since I read that," Dusk admitted. "Is that the one with the warrior who becomes immortal?" 

“After he meets the magic lady.” The boy nodded again, then looked a little shy. "Will you read the rest to me?"

Dusk couldn't help but smile slightly. He strode into the room and took the book from Dawn's outstretched hand, then drew up a chair and settled himself. "That’s something we haven’t done in a while. What page were you on?"

"Doesn't matter." Dawn made himself comfortable. "I just want a story."

Dusk paused in his perusal of the book and threw Dawn a searching look. The boy did look a little pale, he thought. The bedtime stories had stopped over two years before, when Dawn became a more fluent reader and decided that he preferred to read at his own pace. Returning to this childish habit today felt significant. "Can you not sleep?" Dusk asked softly. 

Dawn returned his gaze innocently, but his youthful attempt at Day's style of aloof diplomacy was paper-thin. They stared at each other for a moment longer until Dusk broke it with a heavy sigh. "I could not sleep either. It is nothing to be ashamed of." He thumbed through the well-loved pages of the book, taking in the illustrations that had so captivated him as a child. "It is good that you understand what we did today."

"We punished the barbarian kingdoms for the attack on the Star Bridge." Dawn said the words like a grammatical recitation, not an admission of culpability in world-ending genocide, and Dusk felt a pang of despair. Why had he let the boy spend dinner alone with Day, allowed Day to poison his tender worldview further with jingoistic folly?

His misery must have shown on his face, for Dawn reached out his arms to him a trifle uncertainly. Dusk accepted the small hug, feeling utterly wretched. "I should not have come here," he breathed. "You should not be burdened by an old man's worries. I am sorry."

The arms around his neck merely tightened. "We killed two worlds," whispered Dawn.

Dusk hugged him tighter in response. He didn't trust his voice. 

When Dawn spoke again, the whisper was so quiet Dusk barely caught it. "Will you please read to me?" A pause. "I can still hear them all hanging. I don't want to hear it any more."

Dusk froze, but kept his emotions clamped down for once. He slowly pulled back from the hug, keeping his eyes fixed on Dawn's, and reached for the book with suddenly numb fingers. The boy could not have failed to detect the choked tremble in his voice as he read, nor his surreptitious attempts to wipe his cheek when the time came to turn a page, but he knew enough of diplomacy to mention nothing of it. 

Dusk read until he was certain that Dawn was sleeping soundly, and read some more to be sure, and then read some more to keep his own mind quiet. He did not remember his eyes growing heavy, nor the book slipping from his grasp.

Brother Day found them first.

The heavy tincture he had taken to help him sleep had worn off earlier than anticipated, allowing him to wake in time to groggily witness a blood-red sunrise bathing the walls of his bedroom. He smiled, but there was no humour in it. 

After making himself presentable he set off for Dusk's quarters, for the elder clone's absence from dinner and his brazen rejection of the food platter had made Day thoughtful. The old man was certainly in an erratic decline, just as his predecessor had been before him, but Day still valued his experience and his measured (if frequently ill-conceived) opinions. Perhaps a day of leisure, a morning spent hunting with nothing but cool mist and hunting jackets buttoned well up to the chin and the smell of plasma shotgun blasts to keep them company, would help to repair their increasingly fraught bond. 

Dusk was absent from his quarters. The guard on duty reported that she had not seen him since her shift began six hours previous. A sketchbook with several ripped pages and a pile of cracked chalk on the floor suggested that Dusk’s artistic temperament, as Day euphemistically referred to it, had briefly reared its snarling head. At least the old man had not been entirely broken by recent events. 

A vague feeling of unease settled within him nonetheless, and he found himself seeking out Dawn's quarters. It was impossible that the palace could somehow have been breached and his brothers taken from him in the dead of night, but it had also seemed impossible that the Star Bridge could fall - his pulse quickened as he saw that the door to Dawn's bedchamber was ajar -

He swept into the room and couldn't stifle his gasp of relief. Dawn was a tightly curled ball beneath the covers with only a tuft of dark hair emerging from the sheets to mark his presence. Dusk had fallen asleep by the bedside with a book in his lap, his chest rising and falling with slumber and his brow uncharacteristically free of worry. Day sagged to his knees and waited for the wave of terrified adrenaline to pass. Fool, he tried to chasten himself, you are becoming as irrational as Dusk, but the jibe was half-hearted. Anything, any terrible thing, seemed possible these days, and he would need to remain vigilant. Everything he had done, he had done for the Empire, for his family, for those who maintained the Emperor’s peace. Perhaps one day his brothers would appreciate that. 

Once he regained control he stood, composed himself, and left the room. He quietly closed the door behind him without so much as a click and cancelled his brothers’ engagements for the day. There would be more difficult times ahead, where they would again be forced to shoulder the weight of Empire as a trio and balance an entire galaxy’s worth of lives in their hands - but today would not be that day. As an afterthought he informed the servants that his brothers were resting and not to be disturbed. He was more than capable of carrying the Empire alone for a while.