Work Text:
In the endless black, his mind fades into itself. Being alone is a way of life, the one he’s lived for eons. In solitude, the mind creates its own space, its own actors, voices, a stage to play. It’s the only way to keep sanity from slipping beyond event horizon of the dark, into the dark, where light shines no more.
Osiris stirs in his cocoon. Suspended, bound like Prometheus, punished and stripped away from his fire. Something gnaws at his sides, at his feet. He has learned to ignore it. It’s been hours, it’s been days. Weeks and months. Perhaps years and centuries. Perhaps this is where he has always been and the rest has always been a stage.
Slipping. Osiris breathes in but feels no breath. He’s used to it. The action centers his mind. Once upon a time, he learned that lacking actions living beings need to live will convince the brain that it is dead.
But he is not dead. Not yet.
He is dreaming.
In his dream, he is surrounded by so many of them. The Ghosts swarm him to aid him. One is particularly relentless. She is both familiar and not. He likes her. She promises to give him what he’s lost.
The depth of his pain takes hold in his chest, where his heart used to be. Something feasted on it in the shade of an Angular Thing. Where he used to have eyes, there are now holes filled with rot. Through the rot, he watches the arguing, the yelling, the echo of despair. He has long stopped trying to reach out through the canopy of dead flesh. He only knows the deep.
Slipping.
Osiris centers himself again. He imagines an outcome. He knows how to split his mind. Let it wander through potential and unlikely timelines. If this had truly happened, if he had argued with Saint, they would’ve smoothed things out. Saint would’ve approached him at a later date, stubborn as he is. They would’ve talked. Confided. Touched. Hugged. So that is what he sees when his mind starts slipping. A fantasy to stay grounded. To stave off the creeping rot. To know he is not dead.
But what if he is and this is what all the Thanatonauts in the world could not achieve? What if this is what waited in death? Fantasies that torture the mind, then fantasies to soothe it. Infinitely looping. Like Sisyphus, he rolls his burdens up the hill made of corpses and before he reaches the top, his burdens crumble his shoulders.
Slipping.
It starts happening more often. His mind slips away and his burdens bury him under a mountain of shame.
Osiris thinks of her, his shining Little Light. Her luminous glow piercing through the shadows. She would raise him up. Back from death. From despair. From pain.
For a moment, he can almost feel her. She wouldn’t want him to give up. He never gives up.
Except when he did. His shoulders crumble once again. The burden of Saint’s death is heavier than the sky he is forced to hold. Like an infinite spiral, he feels the wrongs he did, over and over, across centuries. And no matter how many times he centers himself, Osiris ultimately always sinks.
The depth is limitless. The ground does not exist in this prison and there is only one direction: down.
His mind is worn. By focus, by death, by centering himself, by time. And in the brief moments in between, he sees a world that could’ve been.
Every action that She defiled, he has tried to fix. To play it out as he would. Every conversation She held in his stead, he rewrote. Letter by letter, carved into stone with his fingers until enough blood was spilled to make ink.
It’s how it feels, at least. In truth, he cannot move. He is trapped in a tomb, cold and bleak. The only thing he has left is his mind. Against the wear and tear of pain and time, he defies Her truths with his lies. The things She’s done weigh less that way.
And out there, where She lies, his mind holds the truth.
In the distant darkness, he sees points of light.
He hears a growl.
Swift footsteps followed by a howl.
Just a little more. Until freedom. Until death. Until he could breathe again.
A great muzzle filled with teeth bites into his prison. Somehow he feels no fear. All of his fears have manifested as he observed the gruesome lies through the rot covering his eyes. No, this time he feels relief. And when the pain of the monster’s teeth does not come, he raises his head.
Worn with time, same as him; wounded belly, same as him; infinite burdens on its back; same as him.
There stands a wolf.
Osiris is not ||done yet|| afraid. The howl soothes his wounds to ||make you stronger|| center his mind. There are ||sharp|| things in the dark, but ||your skin cannot be broken|| he can endure them for a while longer. So many lies pass across his lips as She ||taints my children, defiles my work|| uses his image to play Her own game on the stage ||of my making||.
The wolf sits by his feet and the gnawing stops. Perhaps another trick of his mind. He didn’t know how many of those he had left, but with ||me, it’s me, the one you seek|| the wolf at his side, the burden suddenly got smaller and his mind less worn by the cruellest of creatures: time.
Osiris draws real breath and finally reaches the ground. [Fly away my little bird]