Archive of Our Own

In 300 years, this is what you will remember.

There isn't long left, to find them. The room pulses with an unusual stillness, filling only with the sound of your own breath as your eyes stalk its every shadow - again, again - and come up empty handed.

You could use fire. They would have no defence from you, then. Nowhere to escape to, then.

"I will find you," you call out, voice as low and gritty as you can bear it to go.

There's no movement. They're not here.

You're sure.

"If you give up now, I will show you mercy," you continue as you step outside, a breeze of red dust coasting over your feet. "But I will not rest until I find you."

A thin rim of light is burning the sky into a long dusk, and your eyes strain in the dying glow.

There isn't long left. You are being called back.

The earth is one colour. The rocks all the same.

There's no time.

You go to reach for a flaming torch on the wall.

There.

Behind the rocks on the far left.

They are running.

It's a race now, to catch them - two tiny, scurrying ro'okshosas scrambling on all fours over the rocks away from you, tails stiff with fright, trying desperately to disappear into the cracks of a boulder. But you are faster. You snatch up the smaller one first - its camouflage not as accurate, wriggling in your hands until it's impossible to keep up the game any longer under your tickling fingers, and soon enough the thing is a giggling girl in your arms, cheeks flushed and eyes wrinkled shut in the purest form of joy, squealing "Aksha, let me go!"

"Never!" you growl, playfully scooping her up onto your shoulder.

Somewhere off, M'yri'ah is calling you home.

"K'hym, enough," you call into the dark, knowing your hands are too large to scoop her from between the rocks, wherever she's gone. "Mir'al says it's time to go in."

But your eldest is stubborn, and T'ania is still clambering over your upper body, laughing. You narrow your eyes at her. "Can we find your sister, hmm? Can you tell me where she is?"

She tilts her head in a no, but her grin gives her away. Your daughters have always been terrible at keeping secrets. She comes close, and cups her hands around your ear, and her lips brush over your skin as she starts to tell you.

"Aksha, that's cheating!" you hear your eldest whine, already transformed back into her natural self by the time you turn your head, and T'ania bashfully buries her face in your shoulder to hide from her sister.

"It's alright," you assure her as she runs to you. "You're just so good at hiding, K'hym, I couldn't find you by myself."

The answer seems to satisfy her. "Aksha, look," she says. She jogs over to the torch on the wall, her eyes blazing with reflected light, and transforms her left hand until it is thick with scales. Holds it to the fire. Watches the scales unpeel themselves in a wave, back to her elbow, the skin beneath green and bright and unmarked.

Your next breath is something between a laugh and a sigh, anxiously proud of the person she's growing into far too quickly. "You're getting too good at this," you chuckle, rubbing your free hand over her shoulder as T'ania clings to you. "I don't know how I'll ever keep my eye on you. Now come, it's time for sleep. Say goodnight to the moons."

Both your girls lift their smiles to the sky and call their farewells, until the next night, when they will predictably insist on repeating their tradition like they have every night since they could talk.

K'hym's hand comes to tug at your coat. "If I keep practicing disguises, can I be a Manhunter with you when I'm bigger?" 

The thought of it blooms in your chest, and you pick her up until you have two thirds of your world in your arms. "Maybe, little one," you tease her with a nuzzle to her head as you march them inside. "But Manhunters go to bed on time."

It's storming, the first night you feel it.

Sand lashes the windows in stripes, in wailing clouds, and your girls flee from the yard to climb up their mother's body in one rush, whimpering at the swirls of dust snatching at their feet, only softening in her arms when she carries them inside and tells them, "It's alright, little ones, it's only sand", as many times as they need to hear it, a girl's head pressed to each of her temples so they can sense her calm.

Still, they refuse to sleep alone. You and your wife settle them in K'hym's bed, their foreheads pressed together so that they can play in their dreams, where the sky is clear.

You kiss their heads after they finally close their eyes, but all at once M'yri'ah is standing, she is leaving the room, and whether she intends it or not, her mind is somehow both crying for you and pulling from you, clawing at itself, screaming to everyone and no one. 

You follow her out to where she is standing at the windows, her back to you, watching the sky ripple in reds and greys and blacks.  

"So'heil," you murmur to her. My love.

Her eyes close, her body shrinking in on itself almost unnoticeably. But you know her.

So'heil, you try again, in your mind now. May I feel you?

It takes a moment, but she reaches a hand behind her, waiting for yours, using only a trembling whisper of a touch to pull you close until you're standing behind her, anchoring her to your chest, your head tilted so that your temple brushes against hers.

Her mind bonds to yours the way a door flings open so hard the walls flinch. From the inside, she is as wild as the storm.

Kit-sumna'a, she says then, releasing into your mind the name of her brother's city, on the other side of the Xan'Xie Mountains, where the storm is almost certainly worse. Something's not right.

You hold her close as her body trembles into your chest, giving in to the masculine strength cradling her. I'm sure the storm will pass soon.

No, she insists. The word drags you deeper into the fringes of her mind, past the razor sharp boundary beyond which she keeps the things she's most afraid of. A shuddering breath vibrates against your jaw, when she says, I can't hear him.

Then, with her mind as a conduit, you begin to sense it too. It's unlike anything you've ever felt before, how you seem unbearably crowded in a room that's empty but for the two of you - the world all panic, all breathlessness, all urgency. For a full minute, neither of you breathe. And then, like lights being switched off in a house, one after the other, it starts to quiet.  

It quiets until you feel nothing at all.

In 300 years, you will be unsure of exactly when this happened.

K'hym is sitting in bed, practicing de-transforming the tips of her fingers against the flame of a lamp. Her sister has gone to sleep already, but she refuses to follow, sulking when you blow the light out.

"I can't sleep."

"Try for me, princess. Like your sister."

"Give me a story to dream about, Aksha," she mumbles into your side.

"I can tell you one of Al-Aksha's stories from the temple? The one about the two brothers?"

"No, not telling," she insists. "Show me."

The words unlock a deadbolt on your ribs. How you want to. How you would love to share memories with your daughter – showing her planets she's never travelled to, letting her fall asleep to the peppering of rain against her window, lighting her mind with colours she's never seen.

"Princess, you know I can't," you sigh reluctantly. "You're not of age to share minds with a grown-up."

"No, I'm big enough!"

You chuckle a little, smoothing a hand over her head. "Not yet, little one. Soon enough."

You tell her the story of the two brothers, twice, before she settles.

"Aksha?"

"Hmm?"

"Have you been to the moons?"

"Yes. With Al-Aksha and Al-Mir'al, a long time ago."

"Which one?"

"Both."

"Can we go?"

"Maybe one day."

She yawns, snuggling further into her bed as her eyes drift closed. "When I'm big, can you give me a dream about the moons?"

You promise, and kiss her head.

You will never give her this dream.

In the first few days, people begin calling it a war - but the word is entirely unfitting.  Wars require some level of evenness, some retaliation, some engagement from the other side.

You can't call what happened at Kit-sumna'a - or the Xan'Xie villages, or the Gallo province - a war. It was a slaughter. A massacre.

You have never seen M'yri'ah like this. Not when her mother died. Not when she was bearing your children.

She is all agony and no connection, tearing through the cupboards of every room, looking for clothes, food, weapons, medicines. Anything that might be useful.

Your daughters are sleeping, but you block their minds from it anyway.

M'yri'ah, you call to her, but she is miles from you, deep in the abyss of her own mind, deafened by the throbbing lull of her brother's silence.

We have to get them out, she finally says, shoving one of T'ania's cloaks into a bag.

The words swipe at your throat. Yes, yes, of course, you can't stay - not when your mind is pulled taught in all directions, feeling tensions from what seems like every corner of the planet. Then, like strings snapping, each city falling.

You both sense it - that it won't be long before it is simply your turn.

But where in the world would be safe for your girls? It feels like every city is in panic, and your father is still on pilgrimage, you have to find him -

There's no time, she insists, sensing your hesitation.

My father -

There's no time, J'onn. We have to leave. We have to get the girls off-world.

The words hum between you for a full beat, in the eye of her tornado.

I know, you concede, and somehow your body is moving of its own accord to gather a box of weapons from a locked drawer in your bedroom, but your hands shake, and you're torn in two, and nothing about this is right or real or sane, and every thought in your brain is going from a silence to a caterwaul, a whimper to a scream. You will have to avoid the main channels. If you leave now, you may be able to avoid the mass panic. I can sneak the three of you to the Manhunter base, I can get you a ship –

J'onn.

When you turn to her, you can't tell if she wants to collapse to the ground or slit your throat. Her breath hitches, and she shakes. Why are you talking like this?

M'yri'ah, you have to take the girls. As far and as fast as you can. The world isn't safe anymore, for any of you -

But you have to come with us.

I can't.

You have to.

I can't.

You turn your face away, focusing on blocking both of your energies from the children, careful not to wake them, continuing to sort supplies into bags, but there is a hand around your collar, grasping at you like you're the last particle of oxygen in a burning room.

J'onn, don't make me do this.

M'yri'ah -

Don't make me leave you here. Don't make me tear our girls away from you.

I can't just leave. I have to find our relatives, as many as I can. I have to help the Manhunters form a resistance, to defend Mars -

Mars is gone.

Deep in your chest, your heart curls into a fist.

It's lost, she cries, and her whole body is shuddering now, hardened and breaking. Look at what they've conquered in a matter of days. They will not stop. Not until every son and daughter of Mars is dead. 

You see it in your mind, the moment she imagines it, across the bond. Your blackened house. The smell of your own body burning.

There is nothing you can say. You tug her close, your face tensed in pain, and rest your forehead against hers, breathing into her mind the most tender of your affections.

I will find you, you swear to her. If I have to travel to the nearest moon or past the farthest star, I will find you.

The words pierce your side, as if you've swallowed the broken glass of your own promise, and she is turning from you to hide her face, going to sit on the edge of your bed.

Her single sob sounds through your home the way a cave shrinks in the echo of a falling rock. It strikes you that you've never seen her look so old - hunched over like the sick on the bed where you conceived your children, steeled in the feverish pre-trembling before she truly falls apart, eyes lined and dark in the shadow of the war.

Your relationship is unrecognisable to you, now that there's a fracture of this size running down the centre of it.

Your whole life, it has felt like tomorrow is simply promised to you, even when it never has been, and never will be - just a mirage upon the desert of your world. The truth is, there is nothing else to say, and nothing to be done for her, and the future you built together is entirely made of salt.

Sinking to your knees, your body tilts forward without permission, until you are both trembling, forehead to forehead, cheeks in each other's palms. She breathes all the love she can into you, and it fills up your blood, the same way you felt the sun rise on every horizon of your mind the first time you kissed.

J'onn, she weeps, hooking herself deeper inside your mind, a second home to her after all these years, and refusing to let go. Don't make me live out the rest of this life away from you. Everyone we know will be lost before we can get to them. And if we fail, if the end comes... I want us all to be together.

M'yri'ah -

J'onn, if you make me do this without you I will never forgive you, she sobs. Please. For our girls. J'onn, they'll be so scared. Don't make me have to tell them why they can't feel you anymore. Please. Please...

Whatever hope you had left in your heart flickers and dies with every breath between you. You grasp at her, leaning into her warmth and the give of her skin, not trusting your body to support itself without her.

Finally you ask, Where would we take them?

Her body releases a wave of tension, her relief easing into your bones from the inside out. Earth is closest.

What do we tell the girls?

She releases a shaky breath. Nothing.

You can only nod.

They have always been terrible at keeping secrets.

You don't wait for morning.

The plan is decided. Density shift through the ground to the tunnels below the street. Smuggle the girls to the Manhunter base. Take a ship, gather weapons, and run.

No one can know where you are. No one can have the chance to sell a Manhunter's life to the Whites for a chance at mercy.

You cut your original load of supplies in half as M'yri'ah goes to wake the girls. T'ania trots out first, rubbing her eyes as she notices the bags. "Where are we going, Aksha?"

"Just on a trip."

"Far away?"

"Yes."

"As far as the moons?"

You force yourself to smile gently, blocking her from sensing your fear. "Not that far, princess. Just to see Al-Aksha at the temple. You can sleep on the way. I'll wake you when we get there."

For once, she's too tired to ask more questions. You go through the supplies again. It occurs to you that you may need another lamp.

"Aksha, look," you hear behind you.

"What is it?"

"The sky -" she starts, but her voice is crushed - a gust of screams rising over the sound of every window breaking.

In 300 years, you will only remember fragments.

There is smoke in your eyes. There is smoke in your throat. You press your forehead to the cool surface of the ground, listening for your children, but the only sound is one wailing tone. The thoughts of your neighbours cave in on you all at once. You cannot tell your family's among them, your brain imploding under the weight of attempted connections. Your own voice screams and you hear it. When the smoke clears, you find you have been crawling in circles.

T'ania is in your arms. Her neck is rubber. She blinks, limp in your grasp, breathing in shallow gasps. "Aksha," she mumbles. Coughs up a wet smear of ash. "Aksha, I can't see". You wave a hand before her face. Her eyes are two dead planets.

You are running. M'yri'ah is holding T'ania. You are telling K'hym to lift her shirt over her mouth. You are telling her to close her eyes. You trample over bodies, misshapen on the road. A thunderous smattering of desperate footfalls. Ahead of you, the tallest tower in the city buckles at the knee, writhing as it falls.

Your father cannot hear you. He is screaming. He cannot hear you. You see him alone, on his knees, still a day away from the house of his god. Bracing himself against the side of a mountain millennia older than himself. Eyes shut, palms to his temples, skull like a door knocking incessantly at the hinges, battered by a howling landslide of prayers. He feels the whole world dying, but the mountain never flinches.

You have not eaten for two days and a night. The sun bares its teeth. K'hym's eyes are glassy, her sweaty brow cooling in the shadow of your chest. Opposite you, a White tears meat from a ta'a'mul bone. Watches you. Chews. Tilts his head back, eyes rolling up, black and gelatinous and hungry. Opens his mouth wide, to show you it is gone.

The elders are walking too slowly. They are not worth the weight they carry. The Whites pick them out of the line, and your girls' faces are hot against your shoulders, and there's nothing left to do but abandon your custom. You cross the line. Through it all, you fill your daughters' minds with moons, with their favourite animals, with their grandmother's singing, blinding their eyes so they see none of why the air suddenly smells of rust, why their backs are suddenly splattered wet, why the ground shakes with the thuds of a tossed corpses, why the world around them screams and screams and screams.

M'yri'ah is weeping as much as her body will allow, humming a song into T'ania's skin. Her lips are cracked. You send her a memory of your girls, eyes bright, lighting lanterns with their cousins on Life Day, the first time they were allowed to stay up for the midnight service. She leans into the memory, into the promise of your breath. Takes your hand and squeezes tight. 

A woman is caught trying to mindwipe her son. Her head is torn from her body in one crunching twist. You and your wife look to each other, the same thought a livewire of dread between you: from now on, your daughters will have to watch.

You do not know how many days you have walked. In the distance, a camp. It will be alright, you tell your wife, bracing yourself for the labour ahead. If they wanted to kill us, they would have done it already.

The gates of the camp are higher than you can bring yourself to lift your head. K'hym's arms loll around your neck, her head sunken into your jutting collarbone. Beside you, M'yri'ah's mind is a black hole.

The only light in the sky is fire. The rest darkened in thick plumes of the dead. Through the back fence, the Tour'ok Valley is so littered with bodies that from a distance, the ground is more green than red.

K'hym asks you if it rains here.

It's inevitable now. You see yourself becoming a part of that heap. Head torn from your shoulders, blood drained like wine, flesh torn and burned, before the bugs crawl from beneath the sand to devour the last of your flesh into a wasted carcass. A pile of bone and ash in the belly of a valley, at the end of the world.

Your wife feels it too. She sends you a memory, across the bond. Another. Another. Your wedding. The first time you bonded. Her giggling against a doorframe, one night when your first daughter was very small, pulling you close and asking when you wanted to get started making the next one. Your girls learning to walk by bracing themselves against your legs.

You barely hear any of it, over the sound of your daughters crying for you. For their Aksha.

You both cling to your daughters, hard, as if clinging could save them. You cough the corpses from your tongue. Wipe the dust from your palms, too colourless to be dirt, and wonder how many children are under your fingernails.

In 300 years, this is what you can never forget.

The way your hands splay over her back. Her voice hot and wet against your throat - a keening too unnatural to be a scream. Her nails scratching at you until they draw blood.

Invading your daughters' minds to fill them with beautiful things, only to find your wife already singing to them, as loud as her voice can go.

The hard punch of the ground. The gravel coming up to smack you between the eyes.

Your children are screaming. M'yri'ah is screaming.

M'yri'ah.

They are taking M'yri'ah.

The last person you will ever give your daughters smiles.

Stop.

The blows are so loud, striking your body.

Let them go.

The blows are so loud, cracking your ribs.

Please.

Dust is in your mouth.

Please.

Blood is in your mouth.

Let me go.

The smog climbs down your throat.

Let me go with them. Let me burn with my wife.

A cry of Aksha stings behind your eyes in a white heat.

My babies.

Aksha.

Girls?

Aksha.

It's OK. You're alright. Think of the moons, princess. Look at the moons.

A clutch of sobs make it back to you.

My'ri'ah.

J'onn.

Your fingernails are splitting.

I will find you. I will get you out.

J'onn.

The blows are so loud.

J'onn, you have to run.

Not without you.

The door is so loud in your wife's mind.

She is being pushed.

You are being pushed.

J'onn, don't watch this.

I will find you.

Get out.

We will survive.

The door is closing.

Aksha

We'll go past the moons, princess -

Aksha

- to a new planet, with oceans and birds and clouds -

Your skin is hot.

- where the ground is green, my girls, my beautiful girls -

You can't breathe.

I'll hold you in the sea

Unmarked, but splitting in three.

I'll carry you through fields of flowers

Not alight, but burning.

I'll build a house out of wood where the fruit is sweet

Screaming into a radio tuned to a dead channel.

and watch the rain fall until the sky turns bright

You can't breathe.

I will take you

You can't breathe.

I promise

You can't breathe.

I will find you

You can't breathe.

on the nearest moon or past the farthest star, I will find you.