Chapter Text
==> Present Sollux: Awaken.
You're already awake. You're in your recuperacoon, and it's the crack of dusk (odd, being awake right then, not so much earlier or later) and you don't remember sleeping - no, you do, you saw Astris, like always, and -
And it makes you suddenly breathless to feel the ongoing rhythm of starship noise in the back of your mind, not on the frequency bands of the dying, because you remember what was about to begin, and you're tight-chested and glad and sorry - you remember everything.
Your ablutions are cursory and by the time you're done Trollian is already dinging. You take a deep breath and look.
-- apocalypseArisen [AA] began trolling twinArmageddons --
AA: s0llux
AA: what did y0u d0 t0 the timeline
TA: ii don’t know, aa, are you 2tiill a collectiion of robot2?
AA: n0
TA: what do you remember?
AA: i remember things that didnt happen
AA: like being a c0llection of r0b0ts
TA: yeah me two.
AA: n0 i think i remember m0re than the rest 0f y0u.
AA: i remember things that didnt happen even when 0ther things that didnt happen happened
TA: what doe2 that even MEAN.
AA: its hard t0 explain
AA: i kn0w i was supp0sed t0 tell y0u i was s0rry
AA: 0nce
AA: but i d0nt kn0w what i meant by that n0w
TA: no, don't even 2tart that 2hiit, ii thiink we have e2tablii2hed that you are not even allowed two be 2orry for anythiing untiil ii have been apologiizing for longer than eiither of u2 could normally be aliive.
AA: that w0rd
TA: what word?
AA: n0rmal. was it supp0sed to be
AA: a funny j0ke
TA: ...no, ii don't thiink 2o.
AA: 0k
AA: i remember that y0u like it when i laugh
AA: s0 i am trying t0 remember t0 d0 that
You sit there for a moment so completely stunned that you can’t think of what to say, frozen in place until a tear falls into the keyboard of your husktop and you jerk back, irritably, swiping at the keys so the sensitive hardware won’t gum up.
TA: aa, you don’t have two do that.
you type, wishing desperately that she’ll respond, react, argue with you, insist - that somewhere in that strange placid collection of impressions and memories and voices you’ll strike a mark, find a stray ornery feeling, but:
AA: 0kay
You're not sure what to say to that, so you just open up another tab.
-- twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling cuttlefishCuller --
TA: hey feferii.
CC: You )(ardly ever call me by name! 38D
TA: 2o you remember me, then, that'2 good.
TA: what el2e do you remember?
CC: EV--ERYFIN! I t)(ink.
CC: And Eridan remembers me breaking up wit)( )(im, at any rate. )(e's trying to get me to )(ake )(im back. 38C
CC: Wow, t)(is is reely complicated. Your matesprit... is alive now, again?
TA: ye2.
And the memories you're integrating are all starting to fold in on you, to coalesce at some gravitational center that you didn't know you possessed; that you didn't possess, yestereve, in this timeline. You're going to need to speak up, you're going to need to act; it's taking shape in your mind, outside your mind. Of all the stupid pivot points for the fate of the world, a Trollian chat seems the most ridiculous, but you can feel the probabilities winding about you and Feferi, pulling heavy and tight.
This is going to be the most impossible thing you've asked of anyone, ever. And you still don't feel worthy of demanding the respect it will require to be at the center of this. But at the same time, there's no one else who can start this off and see it through, and you feel more certain of that with each passing moment.
You take a deep breath and type:
TA: feferii, do you tru2t me?
TA: no, wrong que2tiion, what ii need to a2k ii2 how MUCH do you tru2t me?
CC: I said I would bereef you, and I did; does t)(at answer your question?
TA: maybe.
TA: if ii told you we would need two change the world, what would you 2ay?
The chat window is dead for what you know is less than half a minute, but it feels like sweeps pass while you wait for her answer.
CC: I would say I've known t)(at was true for a long time!
CC: But you manta t)(at more t)(an abstractly, didn't you?
TA: ye2.
TA: and thii2 ii2 goiing two requiire you front and center, ii thiink you know why.
CC: I'll follow your lead w)(et)(er or not you still )(ave romantic feelings for me, Sollux.
CC: And gudgeon some sense into you w)(enever you need me to. 38D
TA: ii have a lot of feeliing2 about you, ff.
TA: ii don't know how two cla22iify them riight now becau2e of everythiing that never happened.
TA: ii mean iin thii2 tiimeliine we techniically haven't kii22ed yet, but that doe2n't mean ii don't remember kii22iing you, ii do, and ii want you iin my liife and iin my quadrant2, and not iin a caliigiinou2 quadrant, but out2iide of that, everythiing ii2 compliicated.
CC: It sure as S)(-ELL is!
CC: But you're s)(rimportant to me and you minnow your s)(it.
CC: Yea)(, we need to do somefin. T)(e question is w)(at. I've t)(oug)(t aboat t)(is before and I don't want to sea our friends )(urt for nofin. 38C
TA: ii wa2 thiinkiing that way two, but now ii'm realiiziing they have 2kiin iin the game them2elve2.
You double-check your proxy settings before going on, even though you're not using words that should trip a surveillance bot.
TA: efiin iif any iindiiviidual troll among them could 2urviive a2cen2iion, a2 a whole... ii know two many of theiir 2ecret2 now two thiink they could all make iit.
TA: two many mutatiion2 and iidiio2yncra2iie2.
TA: ii mean a2iide from the problem of kk'2 blood, or what'2 goiing two happen two me by majoriity, iif ii don't cull my2elf fiir2t, whiich we can all agree ii2 ju2t...
TA: well... ii thiink ii have a 2liightly 2maller a22load of nope for culliing my2elf but we don't need two 2pliit haiir2, eiither way we are up two our nook2 iin metriic a22load2 of nope.
CC: You alwaves )(ave suc)( lovely mental images, Sollux!
TA: ii aiim two plea2e.
TA: anywave2...
TA: wow, iit feel2 weiird u2iing your oceaniic pun2, liike ii've been doiing iit for nearly a periigee, and at the 2ame tiime ii know ii've never done iit before.
TA: iit'2 liike we've...doubled back.
TA:
CC: 38D
Three more alerts are going off at the same time. You open up the chats all at once, squinting at your screen, as if that would somehow shield your eyes from the unknown contents.
-- gallowsCalibrator [GC] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA] --
GC: 1S 1T JUST M3 OR D1D MR V4N1LL4 M1LKSH4K3 T4ST3 L3SS OBNOX1OUS 1N TH1S T1M3L1N3 >:P
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA] --
CG: SO I GUESS THAT WAS ALL YOUR FAULT.
-- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA] --
GA: What The Fuck Should I Do About Vriska
GA: She Thinks We Have Yet To Play The Game
GA: Which Is Technically True Only Im Pretty Sure We Will Not Be Doing That Anymore
GA: She Doesnt Remember Anything
You copy-paste the same line into all three windows.
TA: how the fuck 2hould ii know, ii'm only the 2oftware engiineer.
==> Sollux: Deal with these trolls later. Get back to FF.
TA: let'2 meet up a2 2oon a2 we can, ii don't want thii2 two waiit.
~~~
==> Reader: Wait a minute here. The game isn't going to happen in this timestream, right? So why am I getting these command prompts?
Ah, yes. You have waited so patiently; what am I to do but resume my expository function for you? I was telling you about CANCELLED SESSIONS, and now you have the background knowledge to understand the implications. Very well, then. I shall continue.
A CANCELLED SESSION results when a player makes a decision in the course of play which restores their universe to a pre-Reckoning state and removes gameplay from the timeline.
However, due to TIME SHENANIGANS, events which happen within the game are always necessary antecedents for events which have happened prior to the Reckoning, including but not limited to ectobiological loops and interventions of First Guardians. Like the original White Text Guy, who has now never existed.
==> Then how did all the...
That’s where I come in. Or rather, came in at the beginning of the universe, in this iteration. You may call me Tiresias.
The template that gave rise to Doc Scratch, AKA Mr. Vanilla Milkshake, AKA White Text Guy, in the previous iteration of the universe, birthed me instead in this one. Call it the stray whim of a universe never to be born. The private joke of a fertile imagination so interwoven with the Horrorterrors that its tendency toward obscure references has carried through into timelines that preceded it; timelines it would not otherwise ever touch.
But leaving aside the significance of my moniker: in a CANCELLED SESSION, the game elements which are retroactively necessary to the universe remain in place - or more accurately, are substituted with elements of identical function.
Or mostly-identical function. Despite the sterling quality of my sinister machinations and near-omniscience, I am an utterly terrible host. And I am not shepherding the universe toward apocalypse. Rather, I deal in the dangling and resolution of loose ends; I supply alternate beginnings and endings to devices within the framework of the game that would otherwise be at a loss.
==> So do you really have, you know...
The context here is a planet full of hermaphroditic aliens. My gender presentation is the most irrelevant thing we could possibly drag into this meta-narrative sideline.
But I have inherited my predecessor's infinite supply of command prompts. Take as many as you please.
~~~
==> Sollux: await and plan.
Even with all possible security measures, you think it's prudent to wait to meet in a physical location before laying out plans in their entirety. So you've arranged to see Feferi first, have her check whether your nascent ideas seem sound, and then…
Then you're going to involve everyone else. One at a time, mostly. Somewhere where communications aren't recorded, which feels threatening to you even though it's for your own protection.
But right now: right now you're hearing that shift in the back of your mind, the distinct sensation of attention that you feel when a part of his consciousness peels away from the ship, restless, searching, scanning - alert, maybe, to the difference in your own mind - and you switch off the speakers on your husktop and close your eyes, breathing, bringing into focus - feeling the sudden vertigo of reorienting, in dream you're standing, and he's -
You throw yourself into Astris’ arms while the dreamspace is still half-raveled, shaking and clinging even though you’re being too abrupt and he is startled, still getting his bearings, phasing in and out of solidity. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” you’re saying, the words coming out your mouth faster than you can actually think them through. “I - I think I chose the wrong way, I didn’t know what he was saying, what he was offering me, and I’m too selfish, I’m always too selfish -”
With the final flicker he gathers you in but it’s automatic, it isn’t really comforting, he doesn’t know. “Sollux, d -” He stops, his face half-buried in your hair. You hold your breath - “Your memory” - but he only pulls you in tighter - “What happened to your memory?”
“I haven’t, I haven’t lost anything, I remember too much,” you stammer, “I don’t know if I can explain everything -” and for once you’re the one being judicious, the one holding back floods of information, scared that the wrong thing let slip might devastate.
But what you are not being now is tenuous. Frightened and exhilarated, giddy with relief soured all over with guilt but you know what you know and the only way to go is forward. You don’t know if you can tell him the right things, or if he’ll believe you, but that matters less because there are other secrets now, and other reserves against doubt.
“Too much -” he echoes - “Too much - it’s blurred - planets -” - his hold shifts, measuring - “You’ve changed, your... shoulders are - no -” His hands grapple frantically at the back of your head, rush down your spine, and you have to tell him.
“It’s okay, I - I’m still real,” you blurt out and it’s only when you do that you realize one of the things that’s changed for you: that you’re more sure of him than you ever have been before, you’ve completely discarded the last shreds of doubt that cast him as a projection of your own mind. Both your hands still brace on his ribcage, as you draw back just enough to look him in the eye - “The timeline changed. It - there were things that were going to happen in the next half-sweep, to the - the machinery of the universe. Things that did happen. I lived through it all and I remember - and I’m not the only one who remembers -”
You’re trying every tactic you know to dim or dull the memories he shouldn't hear, but there’s one that in your rush of apology you couldn’t help but let slip - that crawls bare and readable across your mental screen every time you hear him speak -
“Your voices,” he whispers, and brushes fingertips across your temple as if that would help him draw the memory out, as if just listening to him hadn’t turned your thinkpan into a broken wireless tower broadcasting echoes of old grief. “You never told me.”
And then he pulls you back in and presses his cheek to yours and just listens and you know what he’s listening for but can’t tell what he’s finding until - “But you don’t hear me anymore.”
“I never told you because that never happened. It happened and then it never happened. I would have started hearing you just days from now - but now I won’t, now I -”
It catches in your throat, a swallowed sob, and the words break into pieces on it, this roiling mess of emotions so violently felt and so contradictory that they push and shove at each other and make a hot blur of distress, the selfish grief that gnawed at you and the profound relief of knowing he finally had peace, would never be hurt again, and now both of them are over and all you can say is “I’m sorry,” again, “I’m sorry.”
“Sollux, my own,” quiet and close in to your ear and how can Astris be so calm, reaching up to rub near enough to one of your horns to comfort (but you don’t want to be comforted, don’t even -) but not so close as to stifle - “I... gave up that right for you. Perigees ago.” Until that point you could keep the tears in, but you choke and shut your eyes hard and they still come spilling out and he keeps saying these things while you try to get a breath to speak, to protest - “I still wish for my life to end, but... I have no right to leave you. Or to mourn that I am still here and... yours.” Quiet, even calm - but so close in he can’t hide that his voice goes hoarse, can only keep you from seeing what the dampness on your neck is.
"No!" You're almost shouting, volume too loud for the proximity but if you try to control your voice now you won't be able to speak at all. "No, no, don't, I'm not worth that, not what they do to you, don't tell me I am, I don't think anyone is -"
He has to bend you down a little, now, to press a kiss to the crown of your head, and your mind rebels against the tenderness even as your body leans into it and he murmurs into your hair, "You say that you were offered my life and did not have the strength to refuse it. Sollux, if I were offered death, I would have no right to accept - and yet I have no doubt that I would embrace it. Even though you... are worth so many millennia of pain to me that this ship would grind into dust before I could serve such a sentence."
You are bristling, still, your arms braced against him even as you cry helplessly into his collarbones. The discord drags a purr out of your throat, involuntary, loud anxious precarious balanced in that space between resisting and seeking comfort - but when he says I would embrace it the tension starts to ebb out of you and you go quiet and still and soft and press into the warmth, breathing out hard. Your mind still blazes with guilt, but only for right now, not for everything that happened before or will happen after this, and your voice is small and hushed. “I didn’t even know what I was choosing, only that we were leaving behind the game,” you confess miserably. “But on some level I think I did. You got to die, before - you got to die and I fucked it up.”
And Astris grasps at words, at your back through your shirt, mouths no but doesn't say it as a shiver runs through him, warm breaths into your hair – "So weak for all our power, you and I..." he mumbles half-audibly to himself, and for what seems like a very long time he just looks at you as you drift and let tears fall. When he speaks, you force your watery eyes to focus and his cheeks and chin are just as sheened-over and blotchy as yours are. "I believe you. And I forgive you, always, as many times as you need me to. As many times as I hope you will forgive me, in the end."
"In some ways I have already," you tell him softly, remembering echoes of his voice.
And for a moment he freezes tense against you as if you've shocked him, eyes teary and lowered and watching your mouth as you speak – gaze slipping down to the dingy green carpet, and in a rush, "I pity you so much, I want - to feel everything you lived through, while - " And he gives up and just kisses you, then, slick and urgent and tasting of salt.
You kiss him hungrily, half-disbelieving, still, distressed and comforted, purring and crying at once, guilty even somehow for how hard you’re pulling him to you, as if it wasn’t a manipulation of fate but the sheer force of your wanting that turned the clock back and dragged the wretched world back into being - you ready yourself to open your mind, and then realize -
“I can’t,” you tell him, “I’m sorry, I - some of it, yes. But not all of it. Because it’s connected - it’s connected to something I can’t share.” You breathe in deep and shaky, try to compose yourself, hands tight on his shoulders - “I’m going to make you a promise now and it’s very large and I’m at the very beginning of it. I won’t leave you this way forever, Astris, I swear to you.”
His mind is so close against the edges of yours, stretching for nearly-given snapped-shut memories, that perception swims with a marbling of his emotions and yours when you make your promise, colors and edges and gratitude and guilt –
- an almost-audible roar of something like angry helplessness, new or old you can't be sure -
And his mind goes dark and detaches and you're separate again, all in less than an eye's blink, and he hasn't stopped crying, didn't even while he kissed you; says, resonant to reverberating in your chest, "Then forgive me now, my love –" He's standing to his full height, for once, not echoing your habitual slouch – hands on your shoulders, slow-blinking searching you – "Because I do not have it in me to unconditionally say no. I believe that you mean this, and this is not the first time I have told you that if anyone could find a way through an impossibility, it would be you; and – oh, I can see how this might be that way too–" It flickers through your mind, the fragile hope of avoiding conscription, at the surface again now that the world is no longer ending - And he stops, eyes luminous, on the edge of things forbidden, where you can only trust him to step back, and he does. "Just know in every moment of this what it would be for me if you sacrificed yourself in it and failed. That is what I ask in return. Don't condemn me to that lightly, please, my light –"
He watches for your answer as much as listens, all pent-in light and shared thirst for knowing and claws digging in where they rest, collarbones and shoulderblades –
“I won’t act rashly, nor lightly,” you say, a bare whisper, “I swear that, I -”
You can’t tell him that you already have the fragile stretching roots of a plan, a plan that if it kills you will kill him first. You’re going to need his help, and he might guess it in time from what you ask of him, but it will be in fragments, so that the pieces can’t be put together easily - and you’ve closed your thoughts and memories to him before but never so completely as this, building a blank wall in your mind where your strategies live, perfectly sealed and textureless, a wall he could break through if he tried, with his superior strength and amplification, but if he knows where it is he won’t trammel over it by accident -
So much has to go behind that wall, Feferi’s identity and her face, and in a way you never felt guilty for your flushed dalliance you already feel guilty for having to hide her away - to pare away parts of the story, to edit it down to what you can safely tell. But then, he’s always needed to keep back certain things, and you’ve never held it against him, even when it’s caused you anguish.
“You wanted to know everything,” you say finally. “I can’t - too much of it is tied in. I’m not alone in this, though, I can tell you that - I have - a highly placed friend, more than a friend, and I know you’ve said I should seek pity in the waking world, but I won’t blame you if you’re jealous -”
"Not jealous," he says, careful, word by word, but his hold on your shoulders stays just this side of too tight – "Concerned. If that's all you can tell me... that's a lot to hide. You – you aren't just with them for your plan. For me. They're good to you."
“I can tell you more than that, I just can’t show you, can’t go that deep into it -” You breathe in and out, trying to discern where to start, where to go with it - “She’s - I wound up with her as much by accident as anything else, but I trust her with my life. She’s made good on that trust more than once. I," and the words catch in your mouth, this is the difficult part, "I trust her enough that I told her about us.” The fact that you’ve pailed Feferi seems small and incidental by comparison.
"You don't know how much I wanted that for you," he says in a lit-up relieved rush, his smile genuine but visibly blinking back tears again; beneath it, you know, is wanted to be that for you, equally true but not dulling the relief, and there's no hesitancy when he slides his palms off your shoulders and clasps both of your hands in his. "But – If you ever look at me and see only the burden of the immense promise you just made, don't hide it from me. Anyone could tell that you've changed, you've become more than you were, and if that makes you realize how much I'm static and limited – I would be happy just knowing that you have someone out there to rely on –"
“No, oh, Astris, I just -” His hands are your lifeline, and his eyes something you never want to lose again, and you feel peeled open looking into them, but with an effort you don’t drop your gaze - “We haven’t quite settled out a quadrant yet, exactly, sometimes flushed and sometimes pale, it’s still in that nebulous kind of place, even counting things that haven’t technically happened - though I think it might be more pale, I - but that’s not the point, not what matters; she’ll never replace Aradia either, she’s a different person; and the trust I have with her is founded on - on the fact that I could tell her about you, that she’s willing to understand -” Language caves in on you, then, and a beat passes in silence. “How deep this goes,” you finally say. “Willing to see that and accept it, for some reason I don’t entirely understand.”
He shudders all over at how deep this goes, his hands trembling in yours. But he's crookedly almost-smiling when he says, "Then she's either very kind or very crazy – it took us long enough to accept this, and the unreal is sort of our purview..." And then, squeezing your hands tight, "But I still want you to show me what you can of what happened inside the code you made – unless it's too painful, I – want to feel like I lived it all through you, even if it was difficult and strange. Because it's – something outside of this – but also because it's yours, and I want to understand –" He gets more forceful, more certain as he speaks, but then he breaks off, leans in and softly kisses your forehead – "And after, there's something I've wanted to do for you, and I think now is the time."
And his mind opens to yours, more tentative this time, less insistent, but the hunger for experience is still raw and close to the surface and he lifts his mouth from your forehead slowing into motionless waiting, careful as a held breath.
"Okay," you say, "I'll try," and you begin to sift through the memories, bringing them to the surface one by one -
Aradia’s ghost appearing outside your window - you wake on Prospit, and wander in visions - the moment when his voice joins the dying choir of Alternia, and you struggle to seek the dreamspace but cannot arrive there -
- wake, suddenly, to urgent messages - guide Feferi through her journey, manipulate the strange opulence of her seadweller hive - the back of your mind crying out for your love, that last narrow contact - but you know he wants -
wants you to live, to save the life in front of you -
You know how to work through great pain, it is easy and practiced; was, somewhat, before he ever entered your mind, just from your own difficulties, so when the sound that isn’t a sound begins to build in your mind, a resonant frequency gradually shattering you to pieces, you
just
keep
going.
Astris takes you into his arms as you relive his death and your own, curls you up against him on the couch, your head under his chin and his whole body unnaturally still - only once failing to suppress a thin, tiny whine that you know is loss for a thing that never happened -
Then waking -
The view of her face carefully excised, leaving only the sound of her voice, the transferred-in structure of your hive, the creatures - the planet - doing battle, back to back - (and Astris relaxes around you, content to settle into your narration) -
- but you haven't been careful enough, something about her silhouette as you follow her up the stairs of your hivestem, her hair, her horns -
“Wait, stop -” His claws hard against your arms - “I’m just going to assume for a minute that you can give me some alternate explanation for what I just saw. Because if that girl is - if you just showed me who I think you did, I think you know exactly what I am going to say. So - tell me I’m wrong.”
"Damn.” You let out your breath softly, rueful, chagrined - as much by your failure to realize where the tight lock should be set as by his outrage. “Audacious plans require audacious allies,” you tell him, by way of explanation. “And apparently better secrecy than I'm accustomed to keeping around you."
Walls ascending in his mind where before he was drinking in memory thrown-open yearning, and his eyes snap bright controlled from throwing off sparks but barely, lips retracting from his fangs but holding the snarl back from his voice when he speaks, low and almost-level and grasping at reason – “You’ve spent all this time marveling at how much we are alike - you’ve reevaluated everything about yourself again and again in light of me, I haven’t been able to stop that in you - you of all the trolls on Alternia should be most aware of the extent of what is passed down and unchangeable, or have you forgotten what your own moods can do to you? And yet you are about to gamble everything on the prospect of her descendant being somehow different. Laws of nature don’t just stop working because you hope hard enough, or because you find Heiress beautiful, or because she saw fit to have a high-leveled psionic by her side to keep her from danger and was kind to you - we know what she is made of, and that should be enough. Do I even need to mention what else you may have inherited from me: the capacity to fall into the thrall of a young fanatic and follow them to your doom? And this is who you have chosen to ally yourself to? I do not know which of her powers are stolen and which are hers by birth, but if this Heiress has swayed your mind through that means -”
"You spend so much time worrying that you’ll change me. That you have. And it's true." It's true in ways you don't mind him knowing, and other ways you're not so comfortable talking about, but the principle is there. "I'm conceding that because I want to remind you. FF is the same age as me. If I'm malleable, Feferi is, too. I don't know what... she was like at that age. A lot less doomed, I'd guess, and a lot more isolated, but ... I'm analyzing at a great distance. Still. I wonder, did she have any checks on her power? Do you think she grew into it with anyone at her side who was unafraid to challenge her? To tell her when hoofbeastshit was hoofbeastshit? - before she became the kind of troll who’d never be able to hear it?" You’ve seen just enough of the Condesce through his eyes to cast about at these guesses, and you're aware you're treading precarious ground -
"No, I never thought that I would change your basic nature, but that I would bring the worst of it to the forefront. We are malleable... within limitations that we inherit. You and I saw when we dabbled with the polarity in your thinkpan what disaster you can court if you try to alter what is written into your flesh. What you're saying is that you think you can heal the Heiress with your pity and others' friendship. But even then – she faces the boredom and loneliness of an interminable lifespan and the grief of seeing everyone she cares for die, including you. She faces the avarice of having everything she wishes for the taking. Do you not wonder that she went murderously mad with it? Do you not think the worst in your Heiress' nature will reemerge? I just – I thought you had escaped the part of my nature that compelled me to hang my fate on my belief in one troll, and what I thought I could do for him," he says, burned-through bitter, "I'm in no position to hide from you how deeply it pains me that I was wrong."
You're treading in dangerous territory now, you know you'll need him to hide from himself or even overwrite the things you're saying next, but enough of these words are obvious that he could guess them if you didn't speak them aloud - "Don't forget, I will only die before her if we succeed. If we fail - if we fail, Feferi will be dead, I will be conscripted, and the rulership will remain as it has for centuries, as I don't need to remind you - If we don't try - the same. Even if I saved myself - the rest would stay the same. She'd never have the chance to go mad," you point out. "Just as none of the others of her line have had that chance, unless they're in hiding at the bottom of the sea, would you really this rather -"
"I don't have answers," he whispers, "Not anymore. I'm only throwing myself against the bars of this. I don't have enough information to be of that kind of help to you and I can't be, you're right, it isn't safe –" Responding to unsaid things, watching your thoughts – "I just don't want that to be you, any sooner than it has to be. Maybe neither of us can know about the whole of this, but her wrath is also tiny when she wants it to be, it's personal, are you watching for it? If she tried to hurt you –"
You catch at his hand, squeeze it instinctively, your bloodpusher still racing hard with the anger that you don't feel any longer; whisper his name, spread an arm across his shoulders - You can't help but admire him, paradoxically, for managing to be sharp-tongued enough that it knocks you out of remembering how fragile he is, even as your chest fills with a surge of pity and queasy regret - and your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth, pressing up against things you can't begin to know how to speak aloud.
"She could snap me like a twig," you finally say, tired and honest and close enough to speak very softly. "And I'm drawn to that, and maybe I'm sick for it. And you can keep these words, when you lock the rest of it away - it's only a secret of the heart. With everything that happened in the game, exhausted and communications breaking down and surviving at each other's backs, I told her even that - and she went to remarkable lengths to live up to my trust. Maybe she's a monster, but she's made sure to be the safest possible monster, even when I - handed myself to her on a platter, like I wanted - That's her identity," you say finally. "And it must be why she accepts this, too -"
"That... really isn't making me any less worried, love." Astris rubs at the back of your hand with his thumb, feeling new callouses – "I understand wanting... to let your watch down in pity, there's always an acceptance of danger in it – maybe moreso for us, our stakes are just higher, maybe that's how it has to be – It's just who you – But by comparison to what you're used to, at least you found a monster who for the moment has herself in hand..." He shakes his head, rolls his shoulders under your arm, and you're tightening your grip around him trying for comfort. "I'm sorry, I keep sounding jealous and I'm not, I'm –" His mind says helpless, but his mouth isn't ready to form the word; he speaks around it tight and quiet – "You try not to remind me of the more painful impossibilities, but sometimes I still find myself choosing to feel them."
His words make you want to promise things you can’t promise, or ask for - “No, I don’t think you understand, I -” You feed him more images, more memories from the game, knowing he’ll have to censor them away but at least showing him, first, the way he wanted - “Don’t you see, I was being rash at the outset, I flung myself at her because part of me wanted destruction, I - If she’d wanted to break me to her use, it would have been all too easy. I was already -” lost, bleeding inside - “She could have taken me apart and I’d have been grateful for it, but instead she nudged me into caring a little more about whether I lived or died, because I wasn’t doing a great job of it. I was half mad from barely sleeping and from dealing with all the mayhem, and more than that from losing you -” Your voice cracks and you just press your forehead into the crook of his neck, closed-eyed, warmth and darkness.
He makes that little escaped keening noise again and wraps you in gentle weight and warmth like a distant breath, pressing you to him more like a shared blanket than like holding arms. "Oh, I – I'm here now but I know that doesn't fix what you lost – I wish I could make you unhear the voices, I wish I could erase it all for you, the way I'm going to forget about your Heiress, I wish –"
“Don’t wish that, I - it’s probably good that I lived through that, for more reasons than one.” There’s more than one way your promise could go, but - you know you need to be strong, to be prepared for - to be willing to survive his absence, again in this new timeline, if you must.
And a part of his mind speaks directly to you that doesn't quite settle with the rest of what you know of him: all illogic and yearnings, and I wish I could promise to stay for you, I do want to, when you're in my arms I want to, I know exactly what I would say – I want to but I can't – But what he says, finally, is, "Holding us back from destroying ourselves is a thankless, endless work. I think I understand now, as much as I ever will."