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He’s on the edge of forever. That place where the world ends.
And he is listening to the final wailing song of the wind brush past his ears with a head full of nothingness and everything, wanting to remember things that taste so sweet when they brush against his consciousness—
— or his sub consciousness. Mostly.
Where he’s running in the middle of the night with these memories that taste as sweet as poison tipped honey, where he awakens and the soft doe eyes stare back into his own. Where there’s blond hair and laughter and something akin to regret that haunts him like his own shadow in his waking moments; regret over something too monumental that has passed away on a sigh. Shuffling decks of cards that tumble and topple over with a gentle puff of air, his emotions clamour atop one another and collapse. The sound of a heartbreak echoes in his head, and he remembers things he shouldn’t.
Things confined to dreams that boast cotton candy clouds and chasing butterflies in meadows and the last of the summer’s sunflowers blossoming and blooming with stalks as thick as bamboo. Or even further, dipping naked feet into pools and pulling each other’s hair and laughter that runs away with the pull of the stream. Adventures along riverbanks and balancing on slippery rocks and that name.
Always that name.
Something of a rhyme that sets fire to his lungs, to his heart. In his dreams it flows from his mouth and the skies sing praises and laughter and everything in between but right here, right now, he stutters. Syllables collide within his mouth, cannot collect themselves at the edge of his mouth or on his tongue and instead jumble about and it feels like he’s deciphering a curse of some sort. At-su-mu. It stumbles from his mouth in a haphazard manner that cannot align with the sun that is ever present in his mind, nor with the fluency with which he shouts it within his own mind.
Makes Echo’s* own voice hoarse with the echoings of his own speech, trying again and again and again to pronounce such words that won’t make sense. Can’t make sense. Repetition breeds confusion.
He’s there and he’s not and he’s trying to pronounce this word. This name that brands his life with some sort of unfiltered happiness from another time.
From so many other times.
Atsumu. ‘Tsumu. Mya. Miya. Atsumu Miya? Miya Atsumu. Something of a sweet song, a lasting rhyme, a swansong?
He remembers briefly the taste of sunshine against his tongue and strawberries and the ocean’s air. Blossoming flowers and blooming laughter and freckles against Atsumu’s nose. Mocking insults, teasing solidarity that pricked some form of ire against his soul.
“Omi-kun, c’mere!” He beckons from his memory, guides him down rocky bays and when he finds himself hesitating Atsumu grabs ahold of his wrist and drags him.
When the footsteps end, and there’s nothing to see sans for the glisten of the sun dancing against the ripples of the waves and the way the walls of the coves frame the picture as though posing for a photograph. Some traces of untouched beauty that sit against the water, lacksaidically pieced together with such delicate carelessness that when the rain flashes by he cannot tear his eyes.
“Where’d you find this, then?” He manages to raise an eyebrow.
“Huh? We’ve been here before, Omi-kun. Don’t you remember? We found it together.”
But he cannot remember.
He does not remember. Even though the strokes of memories press against the walls of his mind and there’s still nothingness. Even there he feels the spit of envy that turns the seascape murkier, clouds of pollution choke the sea of its glisten and plant seeds of darkness that spread across the horizon. Turning around, he doesn’t stop to answer Atsumu.
It’s a mockery of sorts, the way he whines and insists. They’ve known each other for years, Atsumu insists- and there’s an inclination within his soul that twists to believe him but he only met him a while ago. Perhaps a year or two ago. Dreams cannot hold up to reality, even as they paint the picture that Atsumu wills to portray in his mind and spill over into reality.
Kiyoomi pulls the curtain closed. Blocks off the memories.
“And my name isn’t ‘Omi-kun’,”
Atsumu turns to ash and dust in his mind.
He’s back to where he was. Standing. At the edge of some ending of the world, where there’s darkness that clings to the surfaces of everything he touches and it swirls and turns and sucks him in. Persuades him to join, and perhaps it’s all he’s ever been destined to. Even as his mind fights it, pushes him away, and he’s balancing. Walking across some sort of tightrope headed for destruction as the rope loosens and weakens underneath his weight and he’s never been one for balancing.
Even as he remembers, filters of sunlight finally coming to fight against the clouds and the nothingness and the numbness that’s begun to turn his heart to stone. Freeze his blood in his body as he stands and stares at the destruction of the night and the jealousy that turns everything horrific and wrong. Everything is wrong. Helios*'s chariot couldn’t rage against the power of Nyx*.
Even Zeus feared Nyx.
Other times spring to mind, still, and there he is again. The golden sunlight that casts shadows long and welcome against the blasted heat. Under the shade of the tree, he observes the blond once more. Though this time, there’s a bottle of water that accompanies him instead of the streams and the riverbank, and there’s the faint squeak of trainers against a gymnasium’s floor and the distant yellings of ‘don’t mind!’. Atsumu is lying beside him, though sunlight covers his figure as though he’s cringing away from even the thought of a slight shade.
Darkness always repulsed him, some tendril whispers to Sakusa. He bats it away. Continues to stare.
“So then ‘Samu said— oi, Omi-kun, are you listenin’? Break’s nearly over y’know. We can’t go back to practice when you’re actin like you’ve just crossed several universes.”
“Maybe I just don’t want to listen to you,” he snorts, bringing his knees up to his chest and laying his chin upon them.
It’s August. Somewhere, somehow, he knows this. It’s August, and the cicadas are singing songs and he’s twenty one and they’re taking a break. It all floods back to him, and he stares at Atsumu for a little while longer.
“And people say I’m rude—!”
“You are. I’d never seen anyone eat like a pig until I met you.” Kiyoomi takes a gulp of his water bottle, and though he can’t control his words there’s something within his soul that wants to. Wants to pull against the insults, teasing as they may be, and tell him to be quiet.
Be quiet be quiet be quiet.
Atsumu glares at him.
“Shut up, Omi-kun,”
And there it is again. That name. Another place, another time, same person, same name. Same stupid tufts of blond hair that flick up from his forehead nowadays. Somewhere, Kiyoomi remembers watching him when his hair fell against his face, against his forehead, and he’d wear that stupid smirk of his and tease him and he knows not where these times are from. Knows nothing, yet he understands everything and knows everything.
As though his entire life— his entire existence has been around this boy, and he shudders at the thought.
“Why do you call me that?”
“I like to annoy you, it’s funny.” Atsumu smiles that ridiculous smile, and the conversation dies.
He flickers between there and here. Back again. Same edge, another time, this time. Present. Waiting for the black flames to consume him as they lick buildings and turn everything below him to ash. Now it is just a waiting game. Some ridiculous race against the clock that beckons him over the edge again. But there’s another force this time, something behind him that is hot and claws against his back and there’s pain.
So much pain.
A white pain that sears through his muscles, slices through them as though they were nothing at all, and he knows not what it is yet. Just that there’s thorns enveloping him and embracing him, and perhaps it is just the welcoming of death itself. Of darkness and destruction, where his soul goes to perish and the flames will never return.
All the while, his mind crumbles. Crashes. Two walls reduce themselves to dust and there’s so much. So much to unpack and he wants to view everything but there’s nothing at the same time. Everything passes by in a breeze and the only thing he’s aware of is that thin coat of sunshine that blankets the memories.
There’s always the sun in these other times, but now the sun has left. Depleted. Exhausted its fire on the edge of the galaxies, and he knows not whether the stars will be able to make up the envious glimmer of the sun that has vanished somewhere beyond the world’s edge. Where galaxies collide with the moon and blackholes and there’s nothing and something and there’s always Atsumu in all these places.
But not here. At the edge of the world. Beckoning him to join in the thrall of nothingness that excites the world below him. Catches upon the wind like a lachrymose lamentation that begs his presence. Though there is no light where this darkness leads, catching onto buildings around it and causing them to crumble inwards. Towards him. The lack of the sun guides the world towards some imminent destruction and he has to escape.
He has to find the sun. Revive it.
He wants to try. Try again. Again and again and again and hunt down the whispers of sunlight that have to exist.
The universe cannot just fall apart like that. Even as this darkness uncoils within himself and there’s nothingness and destruction and his mouth still stutters on that person’s name, and he wants to close his eyes so bad. To embrace this overwhelming calm that muffles out the wail of the wind and the weeping of the rain as each droplets shout a name that cannot come to save them.
Atsumu.
At-su-mu.
Slits of sunlight die down once more, and Kiyoomi feels that remorse pool within him. Consumed by the darkness, the night that glows within him, combats the taste of sweetness against his memories and poisons that honey upon his lips. Confuses the language of his desired words. It’s as though suddenly, cacophony and dissonance have never sounded so pleasant as he stares down. Such a thing belongs to him; the choice to fall asleep or into the vice of death itself. Chimes of a lullaby reach his ears, and he knows what to do as he steps once.
Twice.
Thrice.
Over the threshold, into the darkness and the abyss and the nothingness that sits beyond darkness and he says it.
Atsumu,
“Atsumu.”
At-su-mu. A flow of syllables, delicate and lovely despite the numbness within him. Everything is so, so numb except that word of sparks and light and ire belonging to fire and sharpness. Sunlight and fire and rage and nothingness collide, some sort of grand explosion unaccompanied by any noise sans for a white noise that overtakes now. But briefly, he remembers the bad jokes and cheap hair dye and the tip of the tongue where the word jumps off. Where it dies in the air; halts. A swansong.
His swansong?
And nothing remains.
For not even the ruler of the gods could fight against Nyx.
What chance did Helios have, even when Nyx wished to retreat with every bone and fibre? Darkness stronger than Nyx takes over, and nothing can ever remain. Nothing shall ever remain.