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Gen was not a man of theory, that would be certain someone else. But if he were to be asked how’d he ended up like this, Gen had a theory.
They spent too much time playing God. It didn’t help when knowledge ignited arrogance, remelting and reshaping holy wings from wax felt like child's play. Blissfully oblivious to the consequence once the blessing stopped and the pairs of wings were reduced to nothingness, the horror to be at the complete mercy of gravity and death herself.
He did secretly hope that as they were plummeting, head-first to the ground, Senku would grab him into one last kiss. Demise sounded less unbearable at the thought.
It had always been that until Senku decided he’s done sculpting wings, he’s making a god-damn rocket and fucking off to the moon, leaving Gen utterly devastated, flightless and falling. To be left almost-but-yet-a-wreckage; with Senku’s lips on his, gently sucking the delicate, inner side of flesh by the row of his teeth, whispering under his breath and pleading that Gen needed to be happy and alright-
-like in mere hours Senku wasn't going to rip his heart through the gap of his ribs and ran off with it to the moon for God-knows-how-long.
Didn’t he promise Gen the place by his side when the civilization was renewed?
Were they not supposed to fall into hell together? Why did it end up with Senku letting his hand go when they weren’t even halfway through their shiny grand goal?
‘Til Death Do Us Part,’ yet death had never managed to separate them. Senku did.
He found himself screaming into his pillow for the millionth time, cries bounced in his skull for the three-hundred-and-forty-billionth-
(Had Senku ever fucking heard?)
It was rather destructive to keep questioning that while he was plunging through the stratosphere with no way of getting out whole, but Gen always had been terrible about making self-destructive decisions so it was barely something new. He wouldn’t be stopped even when his skull gave its first gentle kiss to the hard ground of Earth anyway.
If Senku would only continue to stare into his eyes with that burning red frustration, trimmed with equally strong burning endearment, “cut the crap, mentalist.”
But Senku won't because he was leaving and Gen will be alone.
One of the occasional plays inside his head was him smashing metal poles into that enormous piece of machine. Pounding into the console, or perhaps the engines that were far beyond his capability to understand (wouldn’t be left behind if he did,) smashed them broken just to extend Senku’s stay for a few months at best. Just like how the audience loved twists at the end of the show, however, the broken ones were always his hands instead.
Succeeding would mean the dreading preparation for being left behind all over again, though. That would be truly unbearable.
Now, thinking was just suffocating. It pained him more than when he was choking through the lungs-pierced bullets while lacing Senku’s cold fingers with his own. How heavenly would it be to completely stop? With simply hours away before the execution, a hundred years of sleep really didn’t sound too bad. He wondered if he could humbly request it for himself.
Oh, sing him to sleep. Spare him from the daily excruciating morning he was fated to face upon the realization of the vast hollowness beside his body. Hell, he could cry and smeared his snots into Senku’s pillow and Senku wouldn’t even be conscious to guess that he did.
(Gen failed to crumble as Senku’s kisses glued his pieces together into the shape of a broken man. But living humans worked slightly different from the petrified ones, he will remain permanently mutilated, eternally marked by the cracks of loss.)
He supposed he could resent Senku for this. He could even howl with tears streaming down, embodying the persona of the selfish man he had always pretended to be, begging the supposed-love-of-his-life please don’t go.
Instead, because even if Senku was done playing God, Gen wasn’t done playing a martyr, he said-
“Goodbye, Senku-chan. I’ll be okay, don’t worry about me.”
-with a smile that cried like dead stars, leaving only the ghost of their once breathing self.
Dead stars, dying promises.
“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be happ-“
(Would he? Would he ever?)
(He couldn’t imagine.)