Work Text:
i.
you, in all your endless years, have not loved much.
your first and greatest love has always been the stars. second was your child, fashioned from them and burned just as quick. third was your husband, forgotten and erased, and fourth was bright, despite your effort to avoid it.
this is what you know: to open your heart is to be vulnerable, and vulnerability is what gets one hurt. you're not in the business of allowing that as a possibility, but on rare occasions it happens whether you want it or not.
you'll pay for it. you always do.
ii.
you sign an opening contract for the hades tigers. you are a founding member of the philly pies. these are simultaneously as true as they are not, and you straddle the line of existing in two places at once.
it is inevitable, then, that you pay a price for your unfettered greed. you have always had a penchant for flying too close to the sun; you, with wings made of wax, you, with insurmountable ambition, you, here, now.
james does not remember you. when the timelines condense, you were never married, and so you carry the weight of those memories alone.
iii.
your second punishment for glancing at the stars too closely is a curse– no matter how hard you try, words always tumble out of your mouth in latin, so you're in a new (old) city with not a word of mutual understanding.
(punishment is to imply a crime greater than trying to steal a star out of the sky, but perhaps that's the greatest crime of all. you do believe, though, that one day you'll hold one in your hands, burningly blazingly bright. you are sisyphus; the ball will always roll no matter how you try.
you always try.)
iv.
if you could hold a star in your hands, bright would be one. one day, she’s going to burn up the both of you, but she loves fiercer and furiouser than anyone you’ve ever known, which is a lot to say, but few other people would learn latin to speak to you.
cedric gets incinerated– she nearly fights the umpire and this is what you know: that temper of hers is going to get herself killed one day. you can hope you might restrain her enough–(you won’t)–and that she’ll grow out of it before it ends her.
(she won’t.)
v.
the city hates the both of you in equal measure; the team a little less so.
you care not at all for appeal or kindness in the eyes of others, and you’ve certainly spent most of your life squandering away what goodwill you’ve managed to cultivate. bright, however, has not learned that lesson yet, so you’ll take the brunt of it when possible, because she protects you in her own way. you see the hushed reprimands she thinks you don’t, the glares she gives at anyone who dares to scorn you.
you’ve never had a daughter, but she’s mighty close.
vi.
you fashion frogs out of fabric and hearts out of heliostatic fragments. strings from strands of time; it all comes with a cost, you know this. but a worthy one, at that, and it is with pride you send your first(/fifth/infinite) son off into the world, to make their mark just as you’ve done.
when frasier appears on the tigers’ roster, your heart swells at the thought that they made their way home. when they die, it burns you worse than few things have before, even losing james a lifetime or two ago.
sometimes, you think you’ll never learn.
vii.
the only path you can see forward is further seclusion. it’s not much of a choice, really, in the end– the loss of the pies’ star batter to an angry god and growing distance between the team and their third ring has left the fans absolutely parched for blood and it comes to a head at the end of season eight as they nearly burn the stadium down after bright fumbles the playoff run.
the following season, your necks are on the chopping block, figuratively and not; you’re left grasping for an inch of control wherever you can.
never again.
viii.
siesta comes and you spend a decade and some back home, hours upon hours in the dark of your workshop as you lose track of the years without seasons to regulate you. when you emerge at the end of it all–several half-completed experiments in your wake–it’s to a bright you don’t know. the sweet girl you met has been replaced by an adult with a bitter biting tongue, and she reminds you so deeply of yourself it terrifies you. terrifies you for what you’ve both lost, and what she’ll become.
they force her out, and you’re finally going back home.
ix.
life in hades as a player is both simultaneously different and similar to that of a resident. the streets you know well, and the river knows your names. it's interesting to see the ways philly has tarnished you, though, because you absolutely return expecting an exile and receive a homecoming instead.
it's strange, being surrounded by teammates that enjoy your presence instead of just one. (that, you haven't felt since before mickey died.) stranger still, to play every game, but you adjust.
it's all, you remind yourself, a series of cheques and balances. this is proving to be no exception.
x.
your third punishment is a chunk out of your side. the fourth, ego; you stick to the base when the waves try to push you off, getting heavier even still. they send you off to canada and then hawai˙i– it is as if you’re chasing ghosts.
there is nostalgia and you are drowning in it; stuck in the shadows with instability in your veins after a whirlwind of a decade. you don’t realize how tired you’ve become until you stop moving.
spears would be a comfort if they actually remembered you, but you don’t have the luck for that.
xi.
bright cries when you get pulled into the opposing dugout, harder than you’ve ever seen her do before. she cups your face like it's the sole thing tethering her to reality, like if she touches, it’ll be real.
a whispered breath: “i thought i’d never see you again.
“i'm right here, nata.”
the rest of your new teammates are staring, but she doesn't care.
“stay with me?”
she's opening her house to you, but you hear the underlying meaning in her words: don't leave me again. don't leave me alone.
a promise you can't keep: “of course.”
xii.
an artificial star hangs in the sky, calling to you despite its artifice, and you know–this you truly know–it will be your ending.
you, nicholas mora, for all of your faults, have always been charmed by beautiful things and unfettered hubris. it has been your downfall, time and time again, and this is no different; there is beauty in it’s grotesqueness, in its looming presence.
to your credit, you nearly make it the whole game, it’s just not enough, the siren call too strong. the price isn’t worth the gain, but you’ll still pay.
you reach out a hand, and the world burns.