Chapter Text
A feather lands on Kronii’s cheek.
Kronii’s eyes flutter open, early-morning drowsiness parting under the weight of soft lips against her. Kronii lets out a small groan, eyes burning under the shaft on sunlight shining squarely on her face, and a giggle sounds throughout the room.
Kronii’s head turns to find half-lidded amber eyes fixed on her, mischief a flicker in the golden depths. A faint dusting of red spreads across Mumei’s cheeks as Kronii stares unabashedly at the sight of her haloed in morning light.
“Mornin’ sleepyhead,” she whispers.
Kronii brings a hand from under the folds of her bedsheets up to caress one of Mumei’s cheeks. The skin beneath Kronii’s fingertips feels soft, almost downy, like fresh-preened feathers. One of Mumei’s hands reaches up to cup Kronii’s as she nuzzles into the touch, smile widening. The moment is crystalline, light refracting within them, brightening the darkened corners of Kronii’s heart, gentle and beautiful like so many before—and Kronii hopes like so many after.
“Good morning,” Kronii breathes, her lungs feeling like they are crushed under the weight of the love she holds in this moment. Mumei’s only response is to bring the hand in her grasp up to her lips, laying a gentle kiss on the palm before looking back at Kronii with a beaming smile.
“Well, aren’t you two being all lovey-dovey first thing in the morning?” a voice murmurs from right behind Kronii, heavy with sleep and gentle like the silk-soft sheets beneath them. A blanket of hair tickles at the back of Kronii’s neck, breath rustling against the her shirt.
Fauna lifts herself over Kronii’s shoulder, arm draping over Kronii and reaching for Mumei. The smaller woman acquiesces, burrowing tightly into Kronii’s chest, where Fauna’s hand lands across her waist. Kronii, happily trapped in the center, turns her head to look at Fauna’s golden yellow eyes, dripping with adoration, melting and molding with the warmth and intensity of it.
Kronii’s chest tightens uncomfortably.
Mumei in her arms, Fauna at her back, love suffusing the air around them. Everything Kronii has ever wanted. Eons gone by in a haze, duty preceding happiness, guilt gnawing at her chest, an impossible choice left unmade, all relics of a darker time that seem to crumble into a fine powder under the burden of full hearts and gentle touches.
“I love you,” Mumei sighs into her, words fluttering across her skin, floating upon her heart.
“I love you,” Fauna whispers into Kronii’s ear, wind across grassy plains.
There is so much to lose here. It is everything Kronii has always feared. So much love to be lost to time, again and again. Kronii knows it intimately, fears it endlessly, hates how it taints every moment with poison and rot in her mind. Her eyes dart to a video camera resting atop the dresser behind Mumei, spotting a slow, steady blink of red.
“I love you, too.”
The sounds of pots and pans clattering against each other, the smell of food wafting throughout the apartment. Fauna and Mumei’s voices ringing across the shallow acoustics, laughter and gentle reprimands sounding off in the background as Kronii surveys the video from this morning.
The camera is Kronii’s compromise.
Kronii knows her mind, knows that even in moments of pure bliss she will never be rid of the idea, the pestering reality of the fact that she will lose Fauna and Mumei. But a recording has no such failure. Kronii cannot see the roiling storm in her head, cannot feel the pressure on her lungs. Every moment captured here is pure, untainted. Love—the love Kronii wishes for the three of them—can exist in the world this camera holds within it.
A shriek makes Kronii lift her gaze. Fauna has smeared a streak of jam over Mumei’s face, her cheeks, her lips. Mumei laughs, ticklish, as Fauna holds her head steady, kissing the jam off the smaller woman with a satisfied hum. Kronii’s heart swells and bursts, aching for a place in that golden happiness. Her fingers twitch, the feel of wet jam across her own fingertips. Her cheeks tingle, the ghost of a gentle kiss against her. Her gaze falls to the camera, doubt arcing through her.
Shaking hands gently pry the screen on the camera open. Taking a deep breath, Kronii sets the camera down facing the kitchen, red light flashing away. Kronii forces the storm in her head into a bottle. Paints a smile onto her face, lightens her heart by sheer force of will. Kronii’s idle thoughts have no place in this gem, this moment from which the camera will cut all impurities.
“Hey! Who gave you two permission to make a mess without me?!”
Cloudy, overcast skies drape across the city as commuters make haste to their houses, eager to escape the oncoming downpour. Masses of brown coats and multicolored umbrellas fill the streets to bursting, splashes and ripples of water as puddles are trampled across.
Kronii stares impassively at the bustling crowd from a rooftop. The sight is akin to white noise, edges blending together, eyes staring but not seeing as the smudges of people disappear into buildings and around corners.
As if on cue, a garish abomination of an umbrella steps out from one of the many buildings lining the busy roads. Thin hands grasp at the floral-patterned umbrella, a light coat pulled tight across thin shoulders, ends of her flowing green hair frazzled in the humid air. The woman is a lodestar, a pole that draws Kronii’s gaze like magnetism, like gravity condensing onto a single point.
At the same time, a scuffle of footsteps, the sharp stab of a heel against concrete. Kronii feels more than sees as another Kronii whispers into existence beside her. The pull of time’s threads leads to the invading Kronii, marking her as one from the future. She has no time to question the reasons for her arrival, though. There are more important matters at hand.
Kronii pulls out a camera.
The video camera is old and worn. Scratches line the plastic edges; the wine-red luster of the paint is faded in splotches and scrapes. Careful movements guide the small screen on the side open. A gentle press of a button, a red light shining weakly, battery nearly spent. Kronii takes a deep breath, steadying her hands.
The shot does not pan to follow Fauna. Instead, the video consists of a still shot, a blanket of drab colors and gray skies broken by the vibrant yellow of a lone umbrella wending its way across the dark, luminescent in contrast. There is a poetry to this that both the younger and older Kronii recognize but do not name. Something about the unwillingness to chase, something about stagnation and fear. Perched atop the roof, Kronii stops the recording, gently holding the camera to her chest.
“I’ll lose the camera one day, won’t I?” the younger Kronii says matter-of-factly, breath fogging in the air in front of her. “I’m assuming I will, if you’re here watching her as well, instead of the video.”
The older Kronii hums, rocking on the balls of her feet in an energy that is so starkly reminiscent of Mumei that it seems almost out of character. There are smudges across the existence of this Kronii that speak of everything the younger concept has thought impossible. Her fingertips twitch at those same strings of time, taut against the woman she will become, at the temptation to see for herself what she has made of her heart.
“I wasn’t here to watch Fauna,” the older Kronii replies, ignoring the start it gives her younger self, jostled out of her turbulent thoughts. “I wanted to see you.”
The younger Kronii scoffs, a chuckle forcing its way from her lips. “I know we joke about how we’re so perfect we would date ourselves, but I’m pretty sure we’re both very happily taken, right...?”
The older Kronii either does not pick up on or chooses to ignore the thinly veiled hope in Kronii’s voice as she asks the question.
“Mm, very astute of you my dear Watson,” the older Kronii jeers in a faux posh accent. The joke goes two layers deep and Kronii wishes she didn’t find it funny, especially since it’s not a real answer to her question. “But I’m not here to court you. I’m here to give you some advice.”
A radiant smile, sun peeking behind the clouds. Kronii stares at the image of herself bathed in light and drowning in euphoria. She envies it, feels the pang of it in her heart, fears its unattainability.
“It’s time to stop living in the past, little one,” Older Kronii says, and the younger Kronii’s eyes widen, heart thundering in her ears as the lie she has built for herself threatens to crumble like glass around her. It makes sense, though. Who else would know the troubles of her heart better than herself?
Thunder rumbles, nestled in the darkened clouds overhead. Thick, heavy droplets start falling from above, splotches darkening the sun-bleached concrete of the roof. As the drizzle turns to a downpour, the younger Kronii panics, holding the camera closer to her chest and stopping time around herself.
A million flickering drops of water hang in the air. Beams of light pause, half-reflected between the onslaught of water and dust. Kronii waves at the rain around her, smattering it all on her sleeve before checking on the camera, her actions near-feverish. The older Kronii sighs, caught outside the small sphere of influence Kronii had erected around herself, hair matted to her skin as rain pelts down on her. Her carelessness grates on the younger Kronii’s nerves.
“Case in point.” Older Kronii smirks, looking like the cat that got the cream. Kronii scowls, equal parts confused and enflamed by her other self.
“What, I can’t be protective of my camera now?”
Older Kronii lets out a put-upon sigh. Kronii bristles at the feeling that she is being patronized, languishing in the feeling for all of a second before a gloved finger pushes into her line of sight, water dripping from the digit onto the floor in front of her, dangerously—and purposefully so, if Kronii had to guess—close to the camera.
“You’re too obsessed with everything you’re putting in there,” Older Kronii says, a weight falling upon her brow. Blue eyes roil with the same storm that envelops everything around them. “I bet you didn’t even notice Fauna and Mumei just met up. Mumei forgot her umbrella and was standing in the rain. Fauna is trying to look for towels in her purse.”
Kronii, wide-eyed, rushes to her feet, keeping her camera in its own little bubble of trapped time, and leans over the railing. The other Kronii’s words ring true, down to the details. Kronii spots the way Fauna’s hands fumble around in her bag, searching for the packet of disposable tissues she always keeps on her. Mumei’s hair clings to her skin in long strands of brown as she rests her head on Fauna’s shoulder, and Kronii sees the moment the green-haired woman decides it is simply not worth the trouble to dry Mumei off, covering the both of them with her umbrella, uncaring of the growing wet spot where Mumei’s head is resting.
“You distracted me on purpose,” Kronii growls, turning her head to the older her with a glare. The other Kronii simply shrugs.
“Yeah. But that’s not the point here,” she says, and Kronii wants to scream at the nonchalance. “The point is that you should’ve been down there with them in the first place.”
Kronii hates how the words strike a chord within her, hates how ruthlessly right her other self is, hates how she can’t even lie about it or refute it. Her hands grip at the fabric of her clothes, nails biting into her palms through her skirt where she has bunched it up.
“I’d just ruin it,” Kronii mutters, and she can no longer tell if she’s talking to herself or to... well, herself. “The moment would be wasted on me.”
Her older self’s features twist into something one-third anger, another third sadness, and finally, some unidentifiable, deep dark that seems to raise Kronii’s hackles on pure instinct. The older Kronii tilts her chin tilts imperiously, looking down her nose in that way they always do when they want someone to feel smaller than them. Kronii is equal parts proud and ashamed to admit that it works.
“So, what, you’d rather just not be with them? If every moment is worse with you in it, if the only way you’ll accept what the three of you have is through a rose tint you’re forcing over your lives, why are you even trying to fit yourself in between them?”
The words twist Kronii’s insides. She hates how it’s her own voice saying these things too. Hates how it is some demented, cruel personification of everything that happens in her own head every single day. The older Kronii, she thinks, must be doing this on purpose too.
“It’s because you love them,” Older Kronii whispers, fervent, ragged. “We did this to ourselves because we love them—so much so that we can’t bear the thought of losing them and having anything less than perfect memories to remember them by.”
“If you know that, why are you here trying to stop me?” Kronii asks, gaze fixed on the slow amble of Fauna and Mumei disappearing behind a building. The storm overtakes the sky above, the sparse spotlights of sunlight shining upon newly wet concrete disappearing one by one until the world is nothing but grey once again.
Older Kronii pauses, a pregnant silence falling over them. The hesitation speaks volumes.
Kronii only ever hesitates when she talks to her younger selves if she thinks there are lessons better learned the hard way.
“This isn’t a memory,” Older Kronii says, pointing at the camera on the floor, a perfect circle around it completely dry. “One day in the far future, if you forget them, it can be a substitute. But all you’re doing is denying yourself the chance to make real memories in exchange for a lie you can look back on when you’re lonely.”
“The world hasn’t even ended yet and you’re already saying goodbye.”
Kronii turns her head upwards, spotting the faraway lights of a comet hurtling towards Earth. Because here lies the rub. Here is the reason for her panic, the core of her fear; and how cliché is it, that she would lose Fauna and Mumei to something so stereotypically apocalyptic?
Kronii turns to pick her camera back up from the floor, gently dragging a finger across the scratched edges and fading paint. The pitter-patter of rain thunders in her ears.
“I need this,” Kronii chokes out through the indignation lighting her breast aflame. Her fingers tighten around the camera as Older Kronii takes a deep breath, closing her eyes as she lets it out with a defeated sigh. “In case I never see them again. In case all I’ll have to remember them by is the videos and my memories, I have to make sure at least one of them shows me how happy they were.”
“I’m not saying goodbye,” Kronii says, looking at her older self, tears welling in her eyes. The older concept’s face twists with concern, her eyes hard with reluctant acceptance. No one knows her heart better than herself, after all. No one knows how stubborn she can be better than herself.
“I’m just getting ready to.”
The camera falls to the floor with a deafening clatter of plastic and the subtle crack of glass.
Kronii stares, dumbfounded, at the mess of scattered parts on the Council platform. Stars blink in the distance beyond the invisible floor, shining upon some of the last vestiges of Fauna and Mumei that Kronii has left.
Kronii’s mind is filled with an inscrutable fog, ears deaf to the silence around her as she makes her way to the camera. Her heart beats in her throat, a nauseating feeling that Kronii is sure will make her vomit if she doesn’t keep her lips shut tight as she falls to her knees, dragging the fallen camera over to her, uncaring as it scrapes across the floor.
Kronii wrenches the screen open, frantically pressing the power button to no avail. Her eyes dart to another square of old plastic on the ground—the battery, she realizes. Shaking hands slot the battery into place, foregoing placing the lid back over the compartment in her haste.
The power button clicks under Kronii’s thumb once. Twice. Her thumb mashes the button, breath growing ragged as the screen remains totally blank, a crack spiderwebbing from the corner.
A strange stillness overtakes Kronii. The camera falls once more, this time from Kronii’s limp grip. The sound barely registers in her mind as a thousand different thoughts trudge across her mind.
The camera was useless. A thousand moments recorded in painstaking detail, a thousand memories to keep of the love she has harbored for as many years. All gone.
The older Kronii knew. The timing, the way she seemed to regard Kronii’s feverish worship with so much pity—because that’s what she recognizes that look in her eyes as, now—it was all because she knew that this would happen. She had gone through it herself, after all.
This is unfair. The number of times Kronii had pushed her loved ones away for the chance of sneaking some false memory into a stupid camera was too high to count.
This is hilarious. The irony is palpable. Kronii is time itself, she is capable of weaving and drifting through its limitless embrace, and yet she thought the best way to preserve her memories was to butcher them in favor of recording them? How utterly pathetic. How stupid of her. The laugh she lets out at the thought is sardonic in the extreme and full of enough self-loathing to last her another lifetime.
Most of all, this is... anticlimactic. Kronii spent so much time, so much effort, sacrificed so much, endured so much, labored so much, all for this grand El Dorado of fool’s gold. This camera was supposed to be everything—she had built so much of herself around it, had sheltered herself in the promise of it. But now the walls of her golden world have been turned a sickly, beautiful blue, and all Kronii can do is stare at the shattered remains of it as the cacophony in her mind rises to a screeching crescendo.
And then, it stops.
Kronii’s laugh peters out, breath dying in her throat. She lets herself fall back onto the cool air of the Council platform. Some faraway explosion of solar wind from the solar system’s destabilized Sun envelops Kronii in a familiar warmth from head to toe as she closes her eyes.
Sheets rustling under the weight of three bodies. The groan of old mattress springs as they shift around, finding some way to fit all three of themselves in an embrace. A sigh of laughter, a twinkle of delight.
A feather lands on Kronii’s cheek.
Kronii’s eyes shoot open as her hand shoots to her cheek, pinning the downy feather under her grip, the faraway explosion of plasma having dragged it from its spot tucked behind her ear. Kronii checks to make sure Fauna’s flower is still behind her other ear, and sighs when she feels it securely in place. She holds the feather to her chest, like she might have one day done with Mumei in the bliss of half-wakefulness. She feels a ghost of a touch across the back of her ear, where Fauna may have once pressed her lips in a sleepy morning kiss.
‘I love you,’ the feather sighs.
‘I love you,’ the flower whispers.
Kronii’s heart aches, deep and raw, with grief that she’s sure is at this point long overdue. Her lungs seize for one long, impossible moment, as if the action of crying is one which must be remembered with a tentative touch. A burn settles behind her eyes as tears well in pools of deep blue.
And in the wake of the apocalypse, as the sound of her anguished sobs peter off into soundless oblivion, as her tears crystalize into the infinite, dark cold of the universe; where none can see nor hear her, Ouro Kronii, for the first time in her life, grieves.