Chapter Text
Saps wakes up to an empty land. Empty, just like the hallway, yet there’s still dirty ground under the palm of his hands, there are still naked trees staring at him, there are still clouds, distant sounds, and the smell of life ending. He looks up to a merciless sky.
Saps rises again, slowly, for the fifth time. The hundredth time. Like the phoenix he’s supposed to be — the one Flux feared, often.
The wind tousles his hair. He’s so far away from Luminara’s warm rustling and Westhelm’s colorful lights. Far away from his home. He can almost picture it, the gentle intimacy of his vacation home. He can see Rotation and Snowbird arguing over something stupid, Thomas trailing behind Flux's side. He can see Flux, made of beautiful marble, sitting quietly by the counter, wrinkling his nose at the blueprints of the home — the one he designed for Saps— His friends. His…
He places a hand on his beating heart, as if to make sure it’s still there. Saps has never felt lonelier before. The memories and the longing burn inside him, fill him up, make his whole body ache in such a tender way. And then he breathes, slowly, unsure. He lets the smell of death and the cold breeze in his lungs and realizes — grimacing — why it has been following him since the beginning. The vast redness and every universe he traversed was contaminated by the scent of this single, last world. Like the rabbit unknowingly hopping towards the hunter’s trap, he followed the thick, putrid smell without even noticing what it meant or where they both would go.
He walks, careless and exhausted. He pursues what look like remnants of a long-forgotten path. Even though there are crows laughing at him, from time to time, he can’t catch any signs of life around, not on the bare trees and not on the arid ground.
At a crossroad, he turns left. His mind briefly goes back to Ish’s last words and to that smile threatening to fall. He shakes his head. There’s no point in overthinking what happened. He needs to find the door first and break the loop right after. Figure out what’s going on with Ish, too, ideally, but several months of misery have taught Saps that not every question or prayer can be answered, no matter how hard one tries or waits.
No matter how many nights he’d spent agonizing over where Flux went, or how many days he’d wait in his home, Flux never came. Despite Saps’s tears. Despite his prayers.
He unconsciously twists a piece of his hair in his fingers. Beyond a broken fence, and not too far away from his feet, lies the cadaver of a church. Beautiful, imposing building now reduced to a broken mess. Even from a distance, Saps can tell the stained glass is gone, and so is the roof. Still, he walks forward, because even in its demise, even past its end, it gives off the faint glow of a sign. Like a butterfly guiding him to the truth.
He strolls through the ruins, eyes lazily wandering from one corner to another, from the scraps of bible the wind pushes around to the bricks lying in disarray on the floor. There’s a huge hole lacerating one of the few walls still standing. Sap’s gaze runs all over the church one last time, as if to say goodbye, before leaving through the gap. Behind the building, he sees a garden, green and alive, filled with long forgotten graves.
And as he approaches them, slowly, he thinks back to the funeral no one bothered to come to.
—
“When I die,” he exhaled, suddenly, “Will I see you at my funeral?”
Flux looked up, furrowing his brows. “You’ll be dead. You won’t be able to see me, or anyone else.”
“My ghost will be there,” Saps shrugged.
“Ghosts don’t exist,” Flux sighed, pen tapping against his lips. “Why should I come to your funeral, anyway?”
“To say goodbye, obviously,” voice casual and light, as if they were discussing the weather outside. “You could also burst into tears and beg to be buried with me. You know, just to give Thomas an aneurysm.”
Flux seemed to carefully consider the idea for a moment, “Sounds tempting, but what happens to Thomas doesn’t really concern me.”
“Does that mean you won’t come, then?”
In the intimacy of his half-built home, Saps’s hopeful eyes burned like bitter coffee tasted too soon.
“Why do you want my goodbye?”
“Because,” Saps shrugged, again, playing with his hair, “I think it would make you happy.”
Flux’s gaze sharpened. “Coming to your funeral would make me… happy?”
“Yes,” he nodded, the gold of his stare crushing and resolute. “You’d be able to make sure I’m really dead. That I’m not coming back. Then you wouldn’t have to wait for me to appear here every time you visit, or stay up late for my— what did you call them? ‘aggravating’ late-night messages.”
Saps laughed, “Nice and proper, like every ending should be.”
“If only it were that easy…” the ghost of Flux’s sister flashed in his eyes. Even if miles away, a heartbeat Flux thought long dead carried on without him. He shook his head, harshly.
“So will you come?” Saps asked again, softly, a shy smile painted on his lips. He avoided the deep, deep purple of his gaze, this time.
“I will,” Flux said, then, voice low and fragile. “But I would have done it anyway, even without your invite or your absurd motivations.”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you before?” he laughed, his cheeks glowing pink. “When you act like this… It’s so, so easy to misunderstand your intentions.”
Flux closed his eyes for a bit. “Misunderstand me all you want, then. But the same applies to you….”
Afterward, the atmosphere in his home held onto its own warmth. Saps organizing his chests and humming a familiar jingle. Those tender, domestic fragments of time somehow always made Flux’s heart beat harder than — almost — anything else in his life. Kissing Saps being a notable exception. Killing him, or attempting (and failing) to do so, another relevant anomaly.
“Hey,” he called, suddenly.
“Hey,” Saps beamed back.
“When I die, can you promise me you’ll come?” Flux tried to stare at his soul. “Come to my funeral, I mean.”
Saps blinked. Then, gentle smile blooming once again, “Sure, I promise. I’ll cry, too, and tell everyone I want to be buried with you.”
“Just to give Thomas an aneurysm.”
“Just for that.”
—
But Saps didn’t go. He didn’t, because Flux didn’t simply die — he disappeared. Completely. And no one, aside from Saps, seemed to care about him enough to even wonder whether or not hosting a funeral would be necessary, or opportune. Or fair. No one, aside from Saps, seemed to wish for a last goodbye. So there was no funeral. He didn’t have to buy a new suit, and he couldn’t cry his heart out on a bunch of mud. Or bring him flowers. Or move on.
And while kneeling down in front of the graves, old and ruined by time, Saps finds himself wondering if anyone comforted Flux when he thought his sister died and if he even made a grave for her for one last goodbye, during those days when the thought of disappearing from everyone’s consciousness seemed much more real. And scarier.
He looks at the withered daisies by a grave without a name. He thinks about the beginning, about the nightmare where Ish abruptly told him the world was ending, falling, crashing, and that Flux’s existence could have changed things, somehow. An anomaly to take care of, so the universe would go back to its regular beating and breathing.
Holding a bouquet of dead flowers in his fingers, he recalls the fear rushing in his veins, at first harsh and exhausting. Then the relief that came right after, the air filling his lungs at the thought of Flux — his Flux — still alive, still himself, maybe still mocking Saps from somewhere, too.
He lets the daisies go and walks to the next nameless grave, this one not as ruined as the others. His head keeps drowning in memories he didn’t even realize were put aside, like all those old pictures discarded — hidden — in the bottom drawer of his desk.
Saps thinks back to the way he ran to Ish as soon as he woke up, like a madman, a fool, only to find himself stuck in the vast redness, instead, with Ish’s corrosive eyes on him. Always on him. And the more graves he passes by, the more memories bloom inside, all these puzzle pieces coming together to give him an answer, to give sense to this story he has been forced to live. Over and over.
He stops. There’s a grave with his name.
“Here lies Saparata Theria, the patient I couldn’t save,” he reads, voice faltering. No one brought him flowers.
He stumbles forward, his legs growing weaker. There, on his side, “here lies Saps Saparata, my dearest friend” — some dried blood right under the epitaph.
“Here lies Silas A.P. Saparata, my partner in crime,” his voice reads again, distant and lost, when his feet lead him to the center. This one is full of cracks.
Ish’s laugh echoes in his ears. Suddenly, the image of the latter offering him a contract becomes loud and clear.
“Here lies Saps,” another stone says, and it’s the only thing written. Saps’s thoughts engulf him like violent waves in a storm.
“I did this,” he exhales, sweating cold. “The contract. I agreed to stay in the loop as long as I…”
His eyes gravitate to one last grave.
“... could find the real Fluixon Aculon,” he whispers, knees collapsing to the ground.
Here lies Fluixon Aculon,
unloved and forgotten
“No…” Saps breathes out, scrambling to the only black grave in that sea of gray, resting at the very end of the garden of his failures. “No, no, no…”
He’s on a cliff, his mind half-realizes, the ocean pushing and screaming downstairs.
“You can’t,” he gasps for air, his eyes burning. “You can’t do this to me. Flux. You’re supposed to be here! To call me a fucking idiot, to laugh at me! Flux.”
Sap’s heart is filled with a pain he has never felt before. Not when people looked at him as if he were society’s greatest traitor, not when Flux betrayed him. No. It’s a totally annihilating pain. It laughs at him and spits in his face. It’s something so strong and real that the mask he’s built, can’t even fight it. Can’t even hide him.
“... I looked for you. Looked for you everywhere. In my memories, in every universe,” Saps tells a ghost who he’s not even sure is listening, while tears turn his face into an ugly, pitiable mess. “I died, and died, and died again, because I had to find you. I had to…”
He pulls a single wilted hyacinth out of his pocket. He stares at it for a brief moment, only a second, before throwing it against the grave, feelings making everything — his fingers, his legs, his eyes — quiver and fall.
“I held onto this as if my entire fucking life depended on it, but you’re what? Dead? Why? Because it’s fair? Because that’s how things should go?”
Saps shoves his face in his hands, grabs his hair tight. “For once. Just once. Couldn’t we be unfair to the world?”
The leaders would be so disappointed in him, he thinks. They’d probably believe he lost his mind — or worse, that he was deceiving them the whole time.
But taking care of the world’s sins does things to a person. Heroes don’t live for themselves. They’re the universe, and then their own irrelevant happiness. That was Sap’s greatest belief. Even now, with his fingers digging deep into the ground, that’s the one thing Saps doesn’t doubt. But part of him, the man screaming and crying above the ocean, still wishes he could break the rules, for once. That he could embrace the gray, forget about how apparently everyone thinks there is only black and white, and how he can’t — isn’t allowed to — touch and do anything less than pristine.
He just wants Flux back. Just wants to hug him tight, drown in the scent of cedar. He wants Flux to scold him for being such an idiot, for agreeing to such a risky contract. For letting someone play with his feelings, that way only Flux was allowed to do, because he indulged him. Saps indulged him. Over and over.
“Oh, God. You’re doing this again.”
And then, Saps’s world comes to a sudden halt, for what feels like both the first and hundredth time in a day.
“Aren’t you here earlier than usual? Whatever…” the voice says, careless, almost bored. “So? What will it be, this time? Tears? Screams? A fist fight?”
The voice laughs bitterly. Saps doesn’t look up from the ground. There’s a shadow standing next to him, his eyes tell him.
“Though I would prefer to avoid the latter. It’s quite hard to dodge your cheap tricks when you’re the only one with a sword, you know.”
And the man laughs again, and he sounds tired, and Saps thinks Flux was so, so wrong, because ghosts are real and one is standing by his side. The waves rage.
He finally looks up, after what feels like a very long time. Flux is staring at him, dazzling and imposing, the gentlest smile on his lips — beautiful, beautiful, exhausting, like the phoenix he never realized to be, the one Saps always saw in his nightmares and dreams.
“Hey,” Flux says, at last. There’s a vague, sad twinkle in his gaze.
“Hey,” Saps says back, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“You’re here.”
“Of course I’m here,” he sniffles. “Are you a ghost?”
Flux’s eyes widen for a moment. He bursts into the loudest laugh Saps has heard in a while. “A ghost? God, no, no— I wish.”
Saps doesn’t seem convinced. “Are you a delusion, then?”
“If the little wound you gave me last time proves anything, then no, I’m not a delusion,” he sighs, slightly pulling the hem of his shirt up to reveal a sore cut. It must still burn.
“Then…” Saps’s eyes frantically dart around for a moment, lost and confused. “Then are you another—”
“Stop. I know what you’re going to say. I’m the real Flux.”
“But you’re dead!” Saps scrambles to his feet, feeling insane. “We’re literally standing next to your grave!”
“And we’re in the middle of your very own cemetery. So?” he replies, sharp.
Saps doesn’t understand. His head is fracturing into pieces. He can’t understand.
“Saps,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “First, how much do you remember?”
His tears dissipate slowly, and let him notice the withered sunflowers Flux is holding. “Ish told me the world was dying.”
“And then?”
“He said… I was the only one who could save it, but that required finding you first. The real you,” Saps shivers.
“And then…?” Again, those fierce, unwavering eyes focused on him.
“He told me you could be anywhere, that I had to— I had to traverse all of these worlds, all by myself, and that it would hurt so, so much, but I…”
“And then, Saps?” one last time.
“I didn’t care. I just wanted to…” Saps looks at him for a moment, shaking. “He said I’d be stuck in a loop until I could find the real you. It was the only way my mind could manage the pain.”
Flux closes his eyes and lets out an incredibly frustrated groan. “He said finding me was enough to break the loop?”
“Yes,” Saps blinks. “Yes, I think.”
“Oh, that lying piece of shit.”
“What?” he gasps, unconsciously taking a step forward.
“Saps. Listen to me,” Flux’s gaze is heavy. Suffocating. “You’re missing the most important detail: you’ve been here before. Here, in front of this grave. Not once, not twice. A hundred times, at least. I’ve seen that look on you so much, by now, that it’s honestly nauseating.”
“What…? But that’s…”
“Impossible? Yes. You said the same thing, like fifty loops ago. But you didn’t remember the contract this clearly, back then, so I guess there’s something to celebrate,” Flux snorts, low and bitter. “You have never been back this soon, though. That could be the reason.”
Saps shakes his head. He lets Flux’s words brew inside him for a moment, carefully going over every new piece of information, the small details he first ignored due to the shock, the stares, the sadness. The thick, thick sadness.
“If you’re not lying,” he whispers, all soul and vulnerability, “if you’re not dead, then why are you here?”
“That’s what you want to know the most?” Flux chuckles, incredulous. “I just told you someone has been fucking with you for who knows how long, that you’re trapped in a never-ending time loop, but you’re asking about me, instead?”
No, Saps wishes he could say. No, what I want to know the most is if you’ve been well. If you ever wanted to see me. If you’ve missed me just as much as I’ve missed you, to the point you wished you were really, truly dead.
“Yeah?” he shrugs instead, as if his heart weren’t yelling in his chest. “It’s a simple question.”
“A simple question,” Flux repeats blankly. “Right. I don’t know why I’m here. I’m alive, of that I’m sure. Do you remember a golden door?”
Saps nods, quiet.
“After the battle at Infernus,” he continues, “I woke up in a sea of red. You mentioned the same thing, some loops ago, but I’ve never seen the countless black doors of your stories. Only one. Only the golden one.”
“Did you talk to Ish?”
“... Yes and no,” Flux gives him an uncertain look, carefully playing with the answers in his head. “I talked to someone. Something.”
“What did he say?”
Saps stares at him, a kind of weird, hopeful twinkle in his eyes. He stares, keeps staring, as Flux gives him a little shrug instead of an answer, and turns to the garden of gray stones. He walks to the only grave with a short, impersonal epitaph. That’s where he lets the withered sunflowers rest. That’s when his gaze softens.
“Everything in this place dies so quickly,” he whispers, sounding so far away. “I can never find a bunch of fresh flowers. It’s unpleasant, to say the least.”
Flux’s shoulders look more fragile and tired than what Saps’s memories tell him. And then he notices, all of a sudden, like roses being violently pushed in his face: there are bouquets decorating most graves, dead, cold, alone. Alone.
While Saps was running through realities, every loop cleansing the pain away from his mind, Flux collected parched flowers for a man who would probably never truly remember him again. All alone. There. Watching Saps die and come back to life a hundred times. So he shakes his head, gulps every bad thought down, and rushes to embrace the one person he has been looking, longing, for this entire time — the soft, soft scent of cedar.
“I’m sorry,” Saps cries against his shoulder, wrapping an arm around his waist, roughly grabbing the back of his hair. “I’m sorry for being late.”
Flux is quiet for a while, but his heart is loud instead. He hesitates, and hesitates, and hesitates, until his fingers stop listening to reason and fall into Sap's hair, brushing, soothing. “It’s okay,” he whispers, as if telling him a secret. “I thought you’d want me to wait, so I did. I hope you don’t mind.”
“When did you start caring about what I want?” Saps laughs, burning.
“I wonder too…” Flux says, but his voice feels so, so far away, again. They collapse to the ground, eventually, the weight of fate too heavy on their shoulders. They don’t let go of each other. In the distance, the sea still roars.
“You’ll go back soon, you know,” Flux whispers in his ear, after a while. “It always goes the same way. You reach this place, the grand finale, realize you’re stuck in a loop, and then disappear into thin air. As if you never existed. Sometimes I tell you the big secret a bit earlier. Only when it seems you’ve gone through too much.”
Then he frowns for a moment. “Though I suppose this time there will be a different trigger, given the circumstances.”
“No. No going back,” Saps looks at him, stars in his eyes. “I know how to break the loop. You told me.”
Flux raises an eyebrow. “I did?”
“Yes, in another reality.”
He rolls his eyes. “And how can you be sure I didn’t lie? Ish can see what you do in those worlds, you know. He’s aware. Maybe he could even manipulate those versions of myself you met. Think harder.”
Saps blinks. “Did I tell you that? Or was it… Ish? I mean, how can you know so much?”
“You have no idea how much more than you I know,” he says, suddenly cold. It turns Saps’s whole body into a violent mess of shivers. It makes him gasp. It makes him afraid.
“Then tell me,” he breathes out, grabbing his shoulders. “Tell me what you know. What’s this place? What happened? Flux, tell me.”
But Flux looks at him, just looks, with the sharpest eyes, the saddest eyes. So Saps cups his face, instead, their lips so close they could simply kiss everything away, if they wanted. Every moment of pain. Every crumble of happiness.
“Please, Flux… help me break the loop.”
“This graveyard is yours,” he says, letting his eyelids fall. “It’s connected to every version of yourself that has ever lived, and will ever live. It’s the very first thing Ish told me.”
“Mine?” Saps pales.
“Yes. Which is also why this land is filled with graves: every version you became, every role you played, is resting here. You’re quite literally rising from their ashes like a fucking phoenix,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Of course you would.”
Saps thinks about the violent ringing. Every time it screamed through his ears, he would picture himself on the verge of death, lost and afraid.
“But your grave…” he shakes his head. “If what you’re saying is true, then why is your grave also here?”
Flux pauses for a moment. A long moment. Then, looking away: “ … Because I could either live here within you, or risk dying outside.”
“You’re joking.”
“You think I would ever be this fucking lame?” he groans, hiding his burning face against Saps’s neck. “After Infernus, I honestly didn’t care about living, or even dying. I didn’t care about anything, I was just tired. And I thought I could rest, you know— I thought I could close my eyes, for once, and let my life turn to ashes. My rage. Cyn’s blood. You. You. But instead of pure, overwhelming darkness, I saw red. Limitless red.”
Saps brushes his hair and listens quietly. He leaves a gentle kiss on his head.
“I felt insane,” Flux continues, embracing him. Holding onto him. “I thought I was finally going to scrub myself off the Earth’s surface. But then this thing, this entity, Ish, told me I wasn’t quite dead, just in the middle.”
Ish lets his chin rest on his long fingers. “This is a realm between life and death, reality and illusion. A place not many can access — but you have the key with you, don’t you?”
“And he gave me a choice. He showed me a golden door and claimed it led to you, your memories, your lives. My greatest tragedy, my most beloved sin,” he says, stealing Saps’s breath. “He said it was the only place in this world, in this entire fucking universe, that would ever let me stay. That would keep me alive, somehow. That, or I could go back to reality and bet on whether or not my body would survive Fate’s will. I honestly wanted to shoot myself right in front of his eyes.”
Saps chuckles, and so does Flux, now drowning in his arms. There is nothing funny about it. Nothing. Yet they laugh, because there comes a point where life becomes too tragic and surreal to be taken seriously.
“You chose me? I’m surprised.”
“I thought I’d give it a try. I was picturing a cozy place— some place resembling your home, or maybe even your shitty barn we never made. Anything warm. So imagine my surprise when Saparata Theria’s heart turned out to be the most miserable graveyard I’ve ever seen in my life,” he snorts, brushing his lips against Sap’s neck. “I totally felt scammed, you know.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he shivers at the touch. “My lover betrayed me, and I had to live on the run, so I couldn’t really solve my issues before your stay. Sorry.”
“God, you’re an idiot,” Flux laughs. He kisses his jaw.
“I know,” Saps breathes out, holding him tighter. “Were you afraid of dying? Is that why you stayed here, all alone?”
“It’s not like I was always alone. You started appearing a bit later than me. I almost hit you with a brick, the first time. I was convinced you were an illusion, but then you began blabbering about different realities, a contract you couldn’t quite remember, all these versions of myself you met that were either ‘beautifully sad’ or ‘too happy to be the real thing’, and it felt unnerving. Soon, you disappeared. Your ashes were in my hands.”
“The second time must have been crazy.”
“Yes. That time I did hit you — with a small rock, not a brick. You were crying like a baby.”
“And then?”
“And then you disappeared again. And again. And again. The sixth time, you mentioned the possibility of a time loop, something I was already considering. Even back then, you claimed — Ish claimed — finding me was all you had to do in order to break the cycle, which was obviously a huge fucking lie,” he groans, furrowing his brows. “Then, mentioning the time loop itself became a trigger. Every time we tried coming up with a plan or even spewing some theories, you would quickly vanish. Time had nothing to do with it, it was the topic. I know, because I did my own little experiments.”
“One time you disappeared exactly five minutes later.”
“Eventually, I just gave up,” Flux mutters, rising from the ground and pulling Saps up with him. They stumble into each other for a moment. “I thought— no, I still think this is my punishment.”
Saps lets himself be gently dragged back to the church, gaze never leaving Flux’s back. The waves sound softer behind them. Like children soothed by their mothers.
“Your punishment?”
“Watching you lose your memories, over and over again. Watching you struggle in this prison of time. Watching you cry and scream at my grave, sometimes enraged, sometimes so sad I have to push you away from that cliff with all my remaining strength, because you won’t even trust my voice — watching the hope in your eyes shine again at my sight, knowing it will disappear, just like your body, just like your consciousness.”
Flux leads him through the huge hole in the wall. They step on Bible leftovers and dust.
“But that’s all about me, isn’t it? How could that be your punishment?”
And then he turns back for a moment, turns to a Saps that suddenly feels weak and unsure, crushed by heavy, heavy red.
“How could it not be? Even in death, it seems you’re the only thing I still care about, after all.”
Flux makes it sound so easy to say. So natural. A raw vulnerability that Saps never gave him before, not even once. There were jokes, sure. Small confessions. Even stolen kisses in the darkest, dirtiest corners. There was all that, and there were unsaid feelings resting massive on their shoulders, like burning sins, like bricks that felt they weren’t ever allowed to put down. There was everything between their lips and hearts, except that kind of unconcealed truth. The warm truth. The kind that Saps didn’t even give him when Flux, eyes stinging, faded in front of him the first time. He gulps, again. He gulps everything down, every single regret. And the waves rage once more.
“This is the longest conversation we’ve had since… the first loop, I think,” Flux says, distractedly, reaching a bench to sit down. “It’s intriguing. I thought pouring the truth on you in such a crude, direct manner would trigger your disappearance. That you’d just go, again, and I’d be left alone with my own thoughts.”
Saps stands in front of him. “No going back. I told you.”
Flux’s gaze sharpens. “Something is very, very wrong. What did you do, Saps?”
“Nothing?” he shrugs. “I just asked a bunch of questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Like…” he brings a finger to his lips, deep in thought. “How long had I been in the vast redness. How many versions of you have I already met? If we could make out on his desk. Nothing, really.”
“In a different situation, I’d point a sword at your heart,” Flux says, finger pushing deep into Saps’s chest. “But in this case, I think I would be delighted to traumatize Ish a little bit.”
Saps exhales. A deep, deep breath. He ungraciously falls on the bench, enough distance between them to grant him a morsel of sanity — something he wasn’t sure he could still afford, considering the state of his fractured mind.
They slump into a comfortable silence, their eyes lost in the intricacies of the damaged church, in the speckles of dust, in the broken glass all over. Even from there, even in that apparently safe space, they both can still see the garden of failures, staring back at them through the huge hole. The sea is roaring, somewhere. Flux tells him there have never been calm waters before. That the waves violently die against the cliff day and night, relentless, in the same way Saps used to fight back. He says he thinks they’re supposed to be his rage, the one he so rarely shows, and Saps hums in response. His heart and mind seem a complicated mess, they both agree. Then Saps himself asks Flux about the church, about his thoughts — not because he’s interested in the answer, actually. It’s just been too long since their usual talks.
But Flux shrugs. “Your dead beliefs, maybe,” he says, playing with his hair. And Saps doesn’t need to investigate any further, because not only does he know that’s the right answer, he knows when it all started. When the church took its final breath. He can almost see it, glass exploding and bricks falling, the moment Flux, the same man kissing his forehead, now, betrayed him. The moment Saps admitted to himself the right thing wasn’t necessarily what he always wanted to fight for, not in that case.
His thoughts go back to him, back to that scene. Like every time. Like the past several months. As if he were running in circles, constantly, while everyone he knew walked forward, with a courage he felt missing. Saps was just a cadaver stuck in the middle.
“He said the answer was inside myself,” he whispers, leaning in. “The other Flux. I explained what was happening as if it were a game, another enigma to solve. I told him he was the one traversing through realities, and that in all of them, his other self wished to tell his enemy something very, very important, right before passing out. He just couldn’t remember what it was.”
“Enemy,” Flux snorts.
Saps wraps an arm around his shoulders. “And Flux— well, you told me that if our feelings were a constant, if yours never changed, no matter the universe, then the answer would also have been inside you the whole time. You just had to dig it out. I had to dig it out.”
Flux kisses his fingers. He doesn’t flinch.
“I have this feeling, though, that you already know the truth. The urgent thing I really wanted to tell you in every universe…” Saps looks at him, desperate hope pouring out of his eyes. “Do you know what it is?”
Flux stares back for a long while, deep in thought. Perhaps unsure. He grabs Saps’s chin, then, and kisses the corner of his lips, in that tender way he would only give him from time to time.
“Flux…”
“When I first arrived, my name was already the only anomaly in your sea of regrets. Isn’t it obvious what you wanted to say?”
There’s no ringing this time. No unbearable pain that would make him pray for a swift death. It’s more of a soft, gentle buzzing. And then Saps feels warm, the warmest in a while, but he can’t tell if it’s because of Flux’s desperate lips on his own, or if it’s just due to his body slowly turning into sparkles, his legs disappearing, the arm around Flux’s shoulders, his chest, his heart.
“Don’t forget me,” he hears Flux say. “I’ll wait, so don’t forget me. Let’s go back together.”
And then his smile, too, turns into dust.