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In South Africa, the sun is too hot, too bright, and the taste of bronze hangs heavy and bitter off the tip of Miro's tongue. They win their last game, but it's too late, too little - only scabs over the painful sting of defeat left by their elusive chase for gold.
Thomas sidles up to him after. He'd scored the first goal of the match when the ball had rebounded off the goalie's hands straight into his waiting foot, though he doesn't look as happy as Miro thought he would. And Miro has to remind himself that he's young, still only twenty, and everything feels momentous at that age - especially disappointment. There's an odd downwards quirk to his mouth that Miro knows all too intimately as frustration when he tugs sullenly at his collar.
"I was thinking -" Thomas begins, and Miro casts his eyes upwards because nothing good ever happens when those words come out of Thomas's mouth. "If you had the chance, any chance really, to do everything over again - would you?"
"Do what?"
"I dunno. This - " Thomas motions at the field. "The World Cup. Everything."
Miro raises an eyebrow. "For what?
"I mean, I guess what I was trying to ask is if you believe in fate. If you had a second chance to go back and redo it, do you believe it would turn out differently?"
"Does it matter?" Miro says wearily - absolutely ready to head back home after several long weeks under the African sun. "There's no use worrying about what might or might not have happened. "
"But what if you had the choice to turn back time?" Thomas persists, ignoring the curious look Miro fixes on him.
Miro shrugs. He thinks about all the could've beens, would've beens, and should've beens. There's too many to name, and South Africa just adds one more to the list. But he's too old to chase prophetic dreams - not now when has both feet steady on the ground and the sure knowledge that the disappointment of this, too, will eventually fade. "I say let things be. You never know how much worse it could have turned out. If things happened again, who knows, I might not even be a football player. There's nothing wrong with the present. Besides, there's always the next World Cup."
"Well, I guess you're not wrong. You won't be too old to play by then, will you? I suppose we can bring out the walker and everything -" Thomas scratches his head and dodges the flick aimed at his ear, though his expression brightens as he lopes an around Miro's shoulders. "I knew I liked you for a reason. Although what would you have done if you hadn't become a football player?"
Miro has to think about it for a second before answering. "A carpenter." It seems like such a distant dream now, yet he wouldn't trade what he had now for anything in the world.
Thomas blinks incredulously. "You were going to be a carpenter?" He pauses for a second, tilting his head in deep contemplation, before grinning wolfishly. "Well I guess can't judge. I wanted to be a horse when I was younger."
And because it's Thomas, Miro can't entirely tell whether he's joking or not.
---
In hindsight, Miro thinks he should have known something was up. Especially when he remembers exactly how nimbly Thomas had dodged the spray of water with a well-practiced sidestep as Lukas tripped and sent the water cooler tumbling to the ground earlier that day. Or how before that, Thomas had coincidentally taken the door without the reporters clustered behind - as if he somehow impossibly knew. Or even the whole chicken in the locker room fiasco last year in Munich. And Miro's sure that if he thinks harder, he can name many other occurrences where Thomas had just barely missed the breath of disaster by some chance prediction.
At the time, Miro chalked it up to luck - the same Müller-specific brand of uncanniness that would turn an awkward deflection into a fumbling goal, now carried off the pitch - and just shook his head. After all, some things were best left unknown, despite the vague vestiges of déjà vu they may carry.
One year later, he leaves for Italy and forgets it all together.
---
It takes him eight years after to figure it out - and that's only after the world ends and Thomas of all people shows up on his doorstep.
"You know, on this day five years ago, we won the World Cup," he says as a greeting.
"Did you come find me just to get all sentimental about football when the world is ending?" Miro asks drily. But he begrudgingly lets Thomas in regardless, because civilization is in shambles outside; end of the world or not, he still has a proper sense of manners even if others evidently don't. It's dangerous outside, and despite Thomas's mile-wide streak for luck, Miro's pretty sure the same doesn't apply for himself - he'd hate to catch a stray bullet to the face.
"Oh, don't tell me you don't miss football too," Thomas replies breezily. He flops down on the couch and helps himself to a tin of biscuits. "How was coaching by the way?"
It's been over a year since Miro's last seen Thomas in person, though he looks the exact same - albeit a little rougher around the edges. Which is to be expected, Miro supposes, when you don't have electricity or running water anymore.
"You were coaching, weren't you?" Thomas probes, mouth full. "It's a real shame, the apocalypse happened. I think you would have been good at it."
Miro snorts, because isn't that an understatement. "How did you find me here?"
"You know, it's almost like you're not happy to see me -" Thomas clasps a hand to his chest, feigning outrage. "Anyways, I asked around. Not everyone has forgotten you - even when the world is in a state like this. It seems like football always finds a way to survive - "
Miro lets Thomas ramble about the idiosyncrasies of football and how much he misses Bayern, and the fans, and the arena, all while dodging the exact reason for his unannounced visit. And to some extent, Miro understands the wistful undertone in his ceaseless chatter.
He didn't love Bayern. Not the way Thomas did. Not the way Philipp did. With blood-burning fervor and endless loyalty. But he grew to like it gradually in the same way he grew to like Thomas with his crooked smiles and blathering small talk - enough so that afterwards, when he returned to Germany to train for the World Cup and the reporters asked, he could safely tell them yes, it's nice being back.
Thomas was right. It really was a shame that the world ended when it did.
---
Later, when Thomas finally quiets down, Miro cuts in with a "Thomas, why are you really here?"
Thomas falls silent, running his hand through his hair before settling his chin on the palm of his hand. "I can turn back time, you know," he says instead- finding some way to simultaneously answer the question and disregard it entirely at the same time.
Miro's brain stutters to a stop. "What?"
Thomas shrugs casually like he'd just revealed his shoe size instead of his acquisition of a metaphysical power that can rewind time. "Yeah, guess I never told you, huh. Never for long intervals though," he nods sagely. "I wouldn't do more than a couple days at a time. Although I've done it in small increments before. Actually I just did it. For example, you're going to drop the glass you're holding and then a piece of shrapnel is going to fly through that wall."
"No I'm not," Miro tells him. But his palm becomes sweaty at the thought and the glass of water he's been holding slips out of his hand and crashes to the floor. "Just a coincidence," he says defensively at the smug look on Thomas's face, but Thomas just tilts his head.
Ten seconds later, an ear-splitting boom rips through the air and the ground shakes underneath them. When Miro looks at the wall behind him, there's a giant chunk of metal lodged in it and he finally admits defeat.
"Wait," Miro shakes his head, thoughts fuzzy with disbelief. For a moment he thinks of everything that could be accomplished with that power. Then he thinks of what Thomas would actually do with that power. "Then Brazil - "
"Nah, wasn’t me," Thomas crinkles his nose. "I don't think I could have thought of that score line even if I tried. Seven to one, hah. Besides, not knowing is half of the fun. There's no use trying to redo something when it might end up worse than what you started with. Or not even change at all. I found that one out in South Africa. Though there was that one time against Wolfsburg -"
Miro snorts. Trust Thomas to be blessed with some sort of divine time-manipulation power and use it on football. Even when it's the damn apocalypse outside and - oh.
"Wait, so now what?" he asks. "You said you've done this before. Like you've turned back time. Why can't you do that now?"
Thomas looks at him, satisfied, as if he's been waiting for Miro to ask all along. "Who said I can't?" He taps his fingers idly against the table, then leans back in his chair and crosses his arms behind his head, humming a small tune. "I've done this almost one hundred times already. I've spent more days than I've wanted with Fips. Mats too. And Mario. But I figured I wanted to come see you one last time before I permanently turned back time, you know? Because then everything will be different - and who says everything will happen the same way this time? Though hopefully the governments will get their shit together this time and avoid total war."
"How much longer?"
Thomas looks down at his watch. "Oh, in about one minute." Miro's heart drops, but Thomas laughs quietly, almost like he's laughing at his own bad joke, more subdued than before, laden with the rare solemnity Miro's seen Thomas reserve only for penalty kicks and the occasional lapse into surprising perceptiveness. "I was going to set it earlier, but I wanted one last chance to say goodbye. Any last words before the end of our world?"
"You say you've been through this almost one hundred times already. But this is only the first time you've come and found me?" He's not sure if he's offended or not. Hell, even Mario got a visit.
This time, when Thomas looks at him, all bravado gone, something in Miro's throat catches. A wild expression flickers across his face. Like he'd like nothing better than to ruin and be ruined. Miro suddenly remembers Brazil, where under the hot, sticky, air, Thomas had pulled him close, all loose-limbed, eyes bright with the burn of victory, and looked at him with something close to this. Then the expression gone, and Thomas offers him a wry grin. "Who says I haven't?"
Miro opens his mouth to reply, feeling very much like something important had slipped just out of his reach in those few seconds, but Thomas glances down at his watch. "Thirty seconds now."
And Miro doesn't have a reply to that. Instead, he closes his eyes and tries to remember as the world blurs around him. A sense of urgency creeps up his throat as he tries to cling onto the present. There's too much to lose, too much he wants to keep in that selfish way of his.
He sucks in a breath.
His name -
is Miroslav Klose. He plays soccer - or rather he did - first for Bayern, then for Lazio. He's pretty darn good at it too, likes to do a flip when he scores and the fans scream his name. They call him Salto-Klose when they win. Less flattering names when they lose. There's nothing better than the thrill of the crowd cheering loud enough to shake the stadium and the feeling of the turf underneath his feet, steady and firm. He never truly hangs up his cleats, not when he can still run and kick the ball, so after, he goes into coaching -
"Miro," Thomas says hoarsely, fingers reaching out to grasp at his shirt at the last second, warm and steady. "I missed you, you know? But I think it's been a good run." And Miro hopes he remembers this too, throat dry, eyes blinking furiously. He lets Thomas pulls him into bone-crushing hug and breathes in sharply.
The world resets around them.
---
They're into the last ten minutes of their game against Hamburg when Miro sees the substitution board go up. Besides it, a boy is warming up, face flickering with an expression caught somewhere nervous and determined. The back of his shirt reads Müller, and Miro faintly remembers him from training. Thomas Müller. He's good, Miro recalls. He has to be, to make it to Bayern. But there's something else about him that he just can't quite place his finger on - that lingers between the fresh-faced enthusiasm and gangly limbs of a boy on the verge of greatness - that can only be called coincidence when Thomas inevitably finds his way into a chance empty space or angles his thigh just right so that the ball glances off of it into the goal and laughs like he'd known what was going to happen all along.
Miro nods at him on his way off the field and receives a cheeky grin in return. The familiarity of it is so disarming that he momentarily stills, something vaguely like anticipation rushing through his veins, before jerking his head in a short shake and jogging off. And as they pass each other on the pitch, he feels a faint tug in his stomach and looks up. The sky has never been more blue.