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i.
the first time you see the ocean is when you land in it head first.
(your mother asks you why you did it, the day after it comes out that you signed up for a bloodsport. you spit out, in bitter words, that it shouldn't matter with the world ending anyway, but you're not sure if you truly know why you did.
she thinks you're running away from your fate. you think you're running towards it. an argument you'll never settle, now.)
someone will come along who actually knows this life, eventually. for now, it's just you.
ii.
the first thing you do when you land, pounding head and hand over aching bleeding heart, is stumble to your knees onto too-hot sand.
for the first time in over five decades, you're home. for real, too.
(the black hole, for you, was a story of consummation. an act of devouring, devotion in the form of surrender. it was the ending to your greatest story– a culmination of your life's work wrapped in one bright bow, a suspended moment in time for you to lose yourself in.
in a more honest world, you’d admit you lost yourself long before that. no more.)
iii.
more than anything, you dream.
(unknowable hours, days, months, years spent in the cocoon of space, broad strokes of desert sky and the taste of smoke and ash on your tongue. you were already gone before that, though, gone before you lost every letter in your name, gone since the first time you dove into silky immateria trying to save anything you could.)
you've always entrenched yourself in memories–you are a dedication to it in your barest form–one foot in the past like it could ground you.
there's no past to go back to anymore. no one to save but yourself.
iv.
twenty-five years in a certain kind of stasis, who knows how long in a different kind entirely. you've wasted your life away in more ways than one.
it's not that you wished for a grandiose future, just one that wasn't the same monotony day in and day out. of course you got more than you wished for.
haruta looks at you like another one of xir subjects, like if xe analyzes you enough, xe’ll get an answer.
when you tell xem why you joined, xe scoffs.
(tired, grief-filled eyes, furrowed brow. you wonder if one day you'll see xem smile.)
v.
mags, kindly, makes you want to scream. aside from making you feel positively ancient with every word out of their mouth, they're hanging off your shoulder without even trying. it's almost flattering, really.
(you spend long days in the observatory in an effort to avoid it, and to avoid plenty more. the scorchmarks on the field, for one– sand burned into fragile glass, and the absence abound, for another.
what is a home, without people? can this still be home when you've been gone so long, lost so much? you don't know, and you don't know if you ever will.)
vi.
your head, you discover, is far too quiet. the static, up till now, has been ever-present, a fact of your life just as much as the taste of smoke on your tongue. its absence is not one you’re particularly keen to fill, either.
(you ask edric how to deal with it, right at the beginning. but he had twenty years without it before the time, and another three decades after; for you, the dispatch was the first thing you ever heard. try as he may, he can’t help here.)
solitude is a struggle, but it’s what you need right now.
vii.
you watch slowly, calmly, as justice takes the blindfold off her face and burns it, flames reflecting off the marble.
(you don’t know the significance of it, but you see the way her shoulders drop as it turns to ash, and you can’t help but think it’s a good thing.)
haruta and justice argue incessantly in whispered shouts, like parents trying to keep their disagreements from the children. you still gather bits of it: duty, honour, dessacration. you realize, not for the first time, just how little you know about this world you’ve found yourself in.
it’s time to learn.
viii.
you've known of justice spoon for years, but for all you can recall, this is your first time face to bloody face.
(she is everything you're not; stoic, patient, tinted in martyrdom. more importantly, she might not know you, but she knows what you've done.
it's a miracle you don't come to blows, really.)
she, in many ways, has been in this game far longer than you, and despite their fawning, it's her judgement mags follows. but this is your home, before her, before this. it's your home to look after; you're not about to give it up this easily.
ix.
you’ve heard of mx byrd for years before you actually met, whispers of brilliance and passion and experiments you can't agree with. the person you meet is deeply, deeply broken, grief radiating off of xem, and arguably still brilliant.
you don’t know what to make of xem.
(xe seems confronted by your very presence, the space you command, and the air that surrounds you. it’s protectiveness, at its core; you can sense the reflection of yourself in the way xir shoulders slope. maybe, you think, you’re both just as broken as the other. maybe, what you need is an understanding.)
x.
so, it’s a little out of place. you’re a little out of place. but there’s possibility here, now that the inertia has slowed. possibility for a future you can build yourself, unmoored from the past.
things settle, the longer you’re all there, like waves steady against the tide. after enough thunder, a storm has to dissipate.
(it’s not perfect. you’re still unsure, unsteady, clinging onto whatever can keep you afloat. but it’s the best you’ve felt in years, away from the snow and mountaintops and infinite abyss. here, you can just be, and you’re excited to see who that’ll be.)
xi.
at some point, deep in the heat of summer, you finally have the courage to visit your parents graves.
you cry.
they were both gone by the time you got subsumed, but the world was ending, and there was no time. now, there is nothing but time.
(you're beginning to realize you and justice are reflections of each other; shattered mirrors, seven years of bad luck. when you get past the apprehension, you can almost see a friendship brewing.)
there's ren, sometimes, and hank too. but mostly you're just building yourself back up, piece by piece and brick by brick.
xii.
so you spend a year, learning how to hear again, to sift past the lack of white noise and city echoes.
it's hard, harder than you ever thought.
at the end of it all, haruta invites the both of you to the observatory, and you can't help but shake the sense you're entering xir sanctuary. you can almost imagine the stories xe has told, xem knee-high and getting underfoot. when xe says xe grew up here, it is not an exaggeration.
you reach out for xir hand, take it in yours:
“thank you.”
the words echo. you'll both be okay.