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Time restarts. The universe resets. All of history is waiting to be written, rewritten, unwritten — and yet, for all their talk of free will, humans rarely change.
They keep the same names and make the same choices; they build the same monuments and start the same wars; they create the same art, and in the end, they burn the same way: at the hands of one another.
(Ryo loves Akira. Some things do differ, from cycle to cycle, but this is never one of them.)
The art, Ryo can admit, is not so bad. This is a view that he and Akira share.
“Don’t you think it’s amazing,” Akira will ask, “how the whole of human emotion can be expressed in one book, or in one story, or even just in one poem? And all it takes is choosing the right words.”
“Look at this,” he’ll crow, pointing at the page even though Ryo is all the way across the room.
“I’m looking,” Ryo will say drily, and Akira will roll his eyes and read it out loud:
you will love your crooked neighbor/ with your crooked heart.
“It means no one is perfect,” he tells Ryo. “Everyone is a little crooked, but you can’t live without love. You love people despite their crookedness, or maybe because of it, and they’ll love you in return.”
“It’s pretty presumptuous of that guy to tell me how to love people,” Ryo will say, just to be contrary.
“He’s not telling you how to love, Ryo, he’s saying love is unavoidable – and since we’re all crooked, we’ll all love crooked people, and be loved by them. We don’t have any other choice.”
You’re not crooked, Ryo doesn’t say, so check and mate. “Maybe it just means people are bad, and love is a curse we’re doomed to carry,” Ryo says instead, just to see Akira frown. “Maybe it means the author was high on ketamine and didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about.”
“Maybe,” Akira says patiently, the way he always does. “Things like this are meant to be interpreted.”
“So I could be right.”
“That may be what it means for you,” Akira allows, “but that’s not what it means for me. I don’t think people are bad. They might make mistakes, sometimes, but they can still be good, at heart. I think everyone can redeem themselves, if they really want to.”
Even me? Ryo doesn’t ask, because he has no reason to do so. What has he done in his short life that calls for redemption?
(Here is the real reason he doesn’t ask: he knows what Akira will say – he just isn’t sure that Akira is right.)
*
Akira dies, and Satan cries.
He cries and he cries and he cries as angels descend upon the Earth, and it is only once he has cried all of the tears the human race was extinguished too soon to shed – only once he, the last living thing in the universe, has burnt himself out with grief – that God permits the cycle to begin again.
And it does begin, and Akira dies, and it has been billions of years and it is still too soon. It will always be too soon, and Ryo will always be too late.
(“In this one,” Akira says, “Lucifer is the protagonist.”
“Seems a bit like heresy.”
“It might be,” Akira admits. “It’s certainly got me sympathizing with Lucifer more than I ever thought I would.”
“Sympathy for the devil?” Ryo snorts, shaking his head. “You are such a bleeding heart.”
“It just doesn’t seem entirely fair, to me,” Akira reasons. “Lucifer rebelled against God’s authority, and his punishment was to be cast out of his home for eternity.”
Ryo hums, hooking his chin over Akira’s shoulder. “And God thought that was enough?”
“Do you not?”
“I think that there are far worse things than exile,” says Ryo. “Maybe Satan didn’t like heaven. Maybe he liked wherever he was sent better. Maybe he loved it.”
“Maybe he did,” says Akira, leaning back against Ryo. “But then it wouldn’t be much of a punishment, would it?”)
*
Akira dies.
Akira dies, and Satan loves him.
Akira dies, and Satan mourns him, and Ryo forgets him right up until the moment that remembering is not enough to save him.
Akira was wrong about many things, as humans are wont to be, but he was especially wrong about this: life cannot be contained in a poem. Life is not art, it is punishment; it is Ryo’s punishment. The entirety of human existence is a holy penance devised especially for him, and the greatest trick God ever pulled was convincing his children to worship him for it.
The memories never come until the end, but when they do come, it is with a vengeance. He remembers every world, and every life. He remembers finding Akira, and trying to save him. Most of all, he remembers that he never can.
*
Akira dies and it is the end of another world, but something is different. God is not there, really, because God is never any one where specifically – but God is everywhere, and in that moment, He is especially here.
In all of the infinite lifetimes Ryo has lived, God has never once spoken to him. This time, He does.
you are crying, God says. It is not a question. God does not need to ask questions. (This does not mean He never asks questions; just that He only ever does for the benefit of others.)
“Yes,” Satan says. He could say many things. He could say, and who’s fault is that? (his own, he knows, but also God’s. Always God’s). He could say fuck you, let me die, but he doesn’t have the venom in him to really mean it, and he has never, in all of his lifetimes, been in the habit of saying things he does not mean. He is not bitter enough (though he is bitter), and he is not angry enough (though he does rage).
Everything he has ever been is consumed by a grieving so intense it would have shaken the Earth, had it still existed. If there is one truth to be had in all of creation, it is that true grief does not leave room for lesser feelings. All other sensation trembles in the face of it, and Satan is full to bursting.
Satan has never had someone to beg, before. Now that he does, he doesn’t bother holding back.
“Please,” he gasps, “please. Stop taking him away from me.”
why? God asks, with a voice that is everywhere and nowhere at once.
“Because it hurts,” cries Satan. “It hurts so terribly that I wish I were dead. I wish it were me instead of him.”
you are divine, says God. you cannot die. you would sacrifice that for a mortal? a human? a man you have spent an eternity killing?
“I never know!” Satan screams raggedly, to nothing and to everything at once. “You never give me the chance! I never know until the end – I never remember what I’ve learned! You take it away from me every time, like you take everything away!” He is still crying; this, too, is the same in every cycle. Akira dies and Satan sheds tears in his place, unceasing until the next life begins. “You never give me time to change!” he wails. “It’s only once it’s too late that I realize –”
you may care for him, says God, but what does it matter, if you would just as soon destroy the world that made him?
“If . . . if he is worth saving, and he is a human, then — then might other things not be worth saving, too?”
might they?
“I don’t know!” bellows Satan, feeling every inch the child God had always treated him as. “I can’t know, because you take it all away before I have the chance to figure it out! It’s always the same, because you won’t let me try and be any different.”
Since casting him out, God has not once deigned to bestow His presence upon His once most-beloved angel; Satan finds himself wishing He hadn’t bothered. He yearns, perversely, for the next cycle, when he will be allowed to forget, quietly and blissfully and terribly, all over again.
(“This must be the most abysmally boring class I’ve ever taken,” Ryo moans. “And the lesson plan! All of this idiotic memorization? It’s pointless.”
“It’s history, Ryo,” says Akira, “it’s not pointless.”
“I humbly disagree,” Ryo sniffs. “We’ll be history one day, and it doesn’t matter to me what a bunch of dead old men did.”
“If you don’t know history, then you’re doomed to repeat it. And also,” Akira teases, “to fail this exam.”
“Please,” Ryo scoffs. “I’ve never failed a test in my life.”)
you love him, God says. It is not a question, but in the face of such a declaration, Satan cannot help but reply.
“Yes.”
you would die with him, and you would live with him, too. as a human, even. God knows. He knows everything, and so He doesn’t need an answer from Satan – but Satan gives one anyways.
“Yes.”
Around them, the universe burns.
you won’t remember, God says. there will be no demons. you will have no memories of any other world; it will be the only life you ever know. you will live as a human, and when you die – and you will die – it will be as one of them. you will not come back. you will be lost to us forever.
“Will I have Akira?”
that depends on you.
Another thing that never changes: Ryo always finds Akira. Just knowing it's an option is as good as a promise.
Still, it seems too good to be true. “You would give this to me?” he asks tremulously.
God’s voice is never one voice: it is a million, a billion, a trillion voices at once – and in this moment, every single one of them is filled with something like sorrow.
this is all I have ever wanted for you, my morning star. I just had to know that you wanted it, first.
(“This one,” Akira says, “is really excellent. It’s kind of funny too – this man is trying to tell a woman how much he loves her, and he’s saying that if he had all the time in the world, he would use it to cherish her. He would spend a hundred years mapping out the planes of her face, and a thousand more, the curves of her body - but no one actually has that kind of time, see? So he’s saying that we only live for so long, and we only have one life. We have to make it count while we’re here. We have to make it good.”)
(Ryo will make it good. Ryo will make it the best there’s ever been, and he welcomes the world and God to watch.)
*
Ryo wakes up.
It’s a slow process, but it’s early; he has time to spare. He stretches out on the bed for what feels like an age before finally heaving himself out of it. He brushes his teeth and slips into a sweatshirt that isn’t his before finally making his way into the living room, already partially lit by the light of the rising sun.
That’s where he finds Akira, as he knew he would; of the two of them, Akira has always been the earlier riser. He looks up, smiling as Ryo shuffles over to the couch and collapses there, pressing himself up against Akira’s side. Akira makes room for him obligingly, lifting the book he’s holding so that Ryo can tuck himself underneath his arm.
“Wh’tr you readin’ ab’t?” Ryo asks, his voice muffled by sleep and the soft wool of Akira’s sweater.
“The meaning of life,” Akira says, voice so sweet it’s a wonder his teeth don’t ache. “What’s our purpose, and why are we here?”
Ryo twists, adjusting himself so that he can look up at Akira. “And? What is it?”
Akira puckers his mouth up like he’s just eaten a mildly sour candy, the way he always does when he’s thinking. He looks away from Ryo and out the window thoughtfully. “I like to think that the meaning of life is just that – living. You do what you can while you can. You make it count. You make it good. I don’t know,” he finishes, almost shyly. “What do you think?”
“What do I think?” Ryo echoes teasingly. “You’re the one with the book.”
“The book doesn’t answer the question,” Akira says, rolling his eyes. He looks back down at Ryo, and Ryo basks in it. “No book does, really. I don’t know if there is a real answer. But I still want to know what you think it might be.”
Ryo sighs, looking out the window Akira had been gazing through just moments ago. In the early morning light, the dew drops on the grass shine like a thousand miniature stars, gathered right there on the lawn just for Ryo to enjoy.
“I like the idea that...that somewhere, something thought that we deserved a chance to live, and to be happy. And they created us to do just that. They made the Earth so that we could live here, and live well.” He shifts his gaze from the window, looking up at Akira. “So that we could live with each other. So that we could love each other.”
“Ryo,” Akira beams, “that was so poetic.”
“Hm. Maybe that’s what life is. A poem. A feeling.”
Akira laughs, then, and calls him a sap. He presses a kiss to Ryo’s forehead before lifting himself off the couch, ignoring Ryo’s protests in favor of wandering into the kitchen to make breakfast. Once Akira has disappeared into the other room, Ryo gives up on pouting. He closes his eyes and smiles, burying himself in the warmth that Akira left behind.
In the kitchen, Akira begins to sing; slow and quiet, it’s a song they’ve danced to so many times that Ryo has lost count. He can’t hear the words, muted as they are by the space between them, but he can hear the rhythm of it, the cadence of Akira’s voice, and that’s enough.
On the couch in the living room of the house he shares with the love of his life, Ryo listens to the melody. Bathed in the light of the rising sun, he begins to sing along.
*
(Someone had once written that there is no such thing as a happy ending; just a happy middle, and a very happy start.
Ryo has a feeling that maybe, if you do it right, the end can be the happiest part.)