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It’s hard to describe the sensation of oblivion. Perhaps it would be a tad cynical to describe it as the afterlife. An empty slate that stretches on and on for an eternity that you yourself do not occupy because, well, you yourself do not exist. You are no longer. It is just that. Empty. Nothing.
Peaceful.
Or perhaps it would be far too naive to believe that oblivion is the end. There is still life, beyond the beyond. Life, born of arrogance and regret, or perhaps rather, born simply of the stubborn will to survive.
He thinks that feels a bit more accurate.
He thinks. It’s such an odd concept, to be able to think and philosophize at the end of time, where nothing and everything exists all at once.
Two halves, slowly merging into one.
He can’t say he’s particularly joyful about the sensation. In fact, he’d much rather return to oblivion, or what he’d known to be oblivion.
A blank slate. Isn’t that what he needed after all?
There is a pull, and he realizes it’s the reason why he’s been woken up in the first place. It’s incessant, like a buzzing fly hovering around his head, and he’s tempted to swat it away.
He does just that. The prodding recedes, and he feels himself begin to sink again.
His thoughts fall apart like their foundations were built on nothing but sand, and at last, he feels the relief wash over him as he too falls apart. It finally returns.
Oblivion.
Why is it that you desire this state of being while others chase it away?
Fueled by a sense of self-hatred? Perhaps. But even the voices belonging to such people have reached me.
I must admit I am curious. Limited, though I may be, I have found you.
Ah, humanity. Always a fickle thing. I don’t wish to force you, but my doors are open. Please, come.
The fly is incessant. Why is it here?
Ah! It speaks.
He’s not supposed to be. How did it find him?
You of all people should understand the simple pull of curiosity, oh one who has born life, so I hope you won’t mind indulging me, one last time.
The force suddenly wraps around him, it molds him, pulls his mind free with a tug so forceful it forces a gasp from his lips.
Klaus opens his eyes to an amphitheatre.
He blinks once, twice, as the grand stage before him swims into view. Curtains cascade alongside the walls in brilliant velvet, and luxurious stairs wind their way to the center floor. He twists his head, a foreign feeling, and thousands upon thousands of plush seats surround the area. They all sit empty.
A pit sinks its way into his stomach, and Klaus feels his expression twist into a glower.
“Do you like it?” A voice asks him, and he turns. Red eyes pierce his own as a man who had not been there before tilts his head and studies him. White hair frames the man’s broken face and drapes to the floor, perfectly trimmed locks just barely brushing against the soft-looking carpet.
“A little lavish, for my taste,” Klaus says slowly. He takes his time studying the strange being in front of him. Fractures split the man's face as hairline cracks spread from his mouth to his brow. A purple substance shifts beneath the cracked skin. Ether, Klaus surmises as the man’s lips twist into a coy smirk. It doesn’t look natural. A monster wearing human skin.
“Fascinating,” the creature says. “To whom am I speaking to?”
An interesting question that Klaus doesn’t quite know the answer to himself. He isn’t sure if he wants to know.
“Why am I here?” Klaus asks instead. His voice is curt, cold. He doesn’t want this thing knowing anything more about himself than it already does.
“You aren’t. Not yet, anyway,” the creature tilts its head again. Klaus feels not unlike a mole being eyed by a hungry serpent. “But I can make it happen.”
“How did you find me?” The question rushes out from Klaus before he can dwell on that particular statement for too long. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
The creature sighs. “Traces of you still remain within this world. The data I have stored within me, I collected and compiled what it told me,” It leans forward, ever so slightly. “And it led me right to you.”
Silence befalls them, and Klaus wouldn’t be surprised if he could hear a pin drop from across the theatre.
“Why do you run?”
“Run?” Klaus echoes. “I’m dead.”
That is true enough. He feels no heartbeat in his chest. No breath leaves his lips as his body remains as still and unnatural as the air around him.
“True,” the creature concedes, and it leans back. Its clothes brush against the chair, and yet there is no sound. It should send a chill up Klaus’s spine, but it doesn’t. He isn’t the only one in the room who should be weary of the monster sitting across from him.
Then again, he supposes, he is dead.
“Why do you run from life?”
“Why do you keep asking me that?” Klaus grounds out. “What’s the point?
“Of all the people I have met,” the creature continues undeterred as though Klaus hadn’t spoken at all. “Those who still reside within this world of mine, they cry for life.” It leans forward, and Klaus hates the look he finds in its eyes. “They desperately scrabble for whatever they can get, digging their heels and sinking their nails into every last second, stretching and prying a single moment into eternity. How far, I have wondered, is such a being willing to go for just a little more time?”
“Time,” Klaus says slowly through grit teeth, “Is overrated.”
The creature stares. “Is that what you truly believe?”
Time, countless, to thrive without fear of death for eternity. A temptation held out on a stick to dangle above his head, its sheen glinting with a golden yet false allure that crumbles between fingers like dust. A life immemorial.
Klaus had held such power in the palms of his hands once, and he’d reached his conclusion a long time ago.
“...You are not like the others I have borne witness to,” it says once the silence between them has stretched for too long. “You say time is meaningless, and yet I see in your eyes you have lived longer than most. The flame that still flickers on, yearning, even in death…” Klaus tries not to shift in his seat as its red eyes continue to pierce through him. “...A part of you fights for it.” The creature’s eyes flash, twin infinite serpents swallowing their tails ripple within them. “You speak the truth, and yet, you are still no different from the masses.” A grin splits the creature's face. “You fascinate me.”
The serpents fade, and Klaus peels his gaze away and turns to the stage. A screen sits empty between the curtains, though the occasional flicker of light rolls its way up from the bottom.
“...Why did you look for me?” Klaus asks again, though this time his voice lacks the spitfire from before. A familiar weight settles under his eyes as exhaustion sets in.
“Curiosity is just as natural a state to mankind as desire, is it not?”
Klaus raises a brow at that, and he tosses a skeptical glance towards the creature. “So you were bored,” he says.
“I simply wished to meet the one who pulls against the tide. The ones who have cast their anchors beyond a predetermined future, their voices speak the loudest to me.”
Klaus sneers. Oh, the irony. “And what makes you believe I would be one of those people?” He turns fully towards the creature, who hasn’t stopped watching him. The fire returns. “What are you?” Klaus spits out.
The creature’s smile stretches wider, and it pulls at the cracks along its broken skin. “Call me an old friend,” it says, and Klaus decides he would rather do anything than that.
“So?”
Klaus glares at it. “So what?”
“So what is your answer? Why do you shun yourself from the light of life, despite all that you are?”
Klaus crosses his arms. “If this is the reason why you brought me back, then it is a wasteful one,” he says. “I have lived my life already. I’ve made my decisions, witnessed the consequences my actions bore. I see no reason for me to be here.”
“...And the other half?”
“What about it?” Klaus drawls. “I don’t see how it changes the outcome.”
“Hm.” The creature leans back into its chair and steeples its fingers on its lap, and its brow furrows as though it is in deep thought. “I see.”
“So that’s it?” Klaus asks. “Happy that you’ve got your answers? Ready to toss me back into the stream now that you’ve had your fun?”
It turns back to him, and from somewhere above them, the sound of a rolling tape begins to whirr. “Not quite. I seem to have found myself stuck in a dilemma, see, and I believe you can help me.”
A grassy hill flickers to life on the stage. An endless blue sky surrounds it, and it reminds Klaus of a place he’d once called home. The path forks near the end, disappearing over the hill and vanishing into an unknown fate, out of sight.
“...What is this?” Klaus deadpans more than asks. If this truly is the afterlife, he is frankly unimpressed.
“A choice,” the creature says. “Not one you need to pursue, of course, but it is something I have been ruminating over for some time.” Their eyes lock. “Now then…” the creature seems to hesitate, its gaze jumping between Klaus’s eyes before settling. It nods, as though it has come to some sort of conclusion. “...Klaus. Creator, one who has found a way to stem the flow of his own time. I pose you a simple query.”
“A query.”
“Humor me, for just a moment,” the creature says. Broken lips curl into a facsimile of a grin. “If, say, you had the chance to redo it all, would you?”
Klaus scrutinizes the creature before him. “...How so?”
The grin falls. “Simply what I said. Would you?”
The creature is studying him as it waits for his answer. Klaus bites back his retort. His answer is so obvious a blind man could see it, and yet, something in those red eyes gives him pause. Without those magenta serpents flickering below the surface, Klaus sees his own reflection within them among many. An old feeling, foreign and yet familiar all at once stills his tongue as he turns away. He glances down at his hands, his right scarred and battered, and his left as untouched and youthful as the day he’d first pressed that button.
Klaus breathes out slowly, but with nothing left in his lungs, it does nothing to disperse the still air. “...I had a friend once, a long time ago.”
The theatre is silent save for the faint clicking from the rolling tape above. Klaus feels a million eyes drilling into the side of his head as he counts the scars on his hands one by one.
“Some might have called our relationship an odd one, but she still considered me a friend nonetheless.” Klaus pauses. “...There was an accident. I made a mistake, and lost her. Forever.”
“Would you take it back?” They ask. A thousand voices as one.
“...The past cannot be rewritten.” Klaus says slowly. “I did the only thing I could do.”
When he turns back to face the creature, the one who spoke for the world moved on from him, something finally slides into place. Perhaps it came from his brief time as a professor, or his life spent dedicated to science, or even from his existence as a god, but Klaus understands, and that sliver of his soul that might still be considered somewhat human aches for them.
“I’m sorry,” the apology comes suddenly and unbidden from Klaus’s lips. It’s escaped him before he can even comprehend what he is apologizing for, and he seals his mouth before the side of him that objects to the apology can vocalise it too.
The creature’s brow furrows, but it says nothing.
The grass on the hill flows in time with the projection’s flickers, and Klaus brings his attention back to it. A winding path that splits down the middle with no clear destination in sight. What would he choose indeed.
“Perhaps you are asking yourself the wrong question,” Klaus says eventually, after he’s had a moment to ruminate.
“How so?”
“What awaits us at the end of our chosen path, we don’t know for certain. You asked me why I run from life, why I don’t fear death.” The cushions beneath him shift with his weight as Klaus reclines in his seat, gaze cast heavenward. “I don’t. And I’m sure there are many who feel the same.” He slides his gaze towards the creature, whose mouth thins into a line in silent confirmation. “It’s the uncertainty of it all, isn’t it? That the endless road is in fact finite, and whether its destination brings you to a future of wanton destruction or harmonious peace is outside of your hands. That’s your dilemma, correct?”
“...And what is your answer?” The creature asks.
Klaus barks a single, humorless laugh. He doesn’t need to see the creature to know it won’t be pleased with him. “What do you think?”
“Hmph. I should have known that a man such as yourself would be drawn towards a path with such imminent destruction, and find contentment in oblivion.” The creature says despondently. “I suppose I’ve found all I needed from you.”
“And let me guess, you won’t be taking a lick of consideration towards my answer?” Klaus drawls as a mote of golden light dances towards the towering ceiling. He watches it until it vanishes into the void above him, and then watches the next as one by one, they slowly trickle up from his fading hands. He smiles.
“I suppose I still have yet to be convinced. Besides, the entertainment is only just beginning.”
Klaus meets the creature’s eyes one more time as the golden motes begin to coalesce into a swirling constellation above him. The feeling of the chair against his back and the weight of the air around him washes away as Klaus finds himself drifting away once more. “If you’re looking for something here,” Klaus says before his voice is taken away too, “you won’t find it. I’ve been waiting for this.” He looks to the golden motes above and closes his eyes. “I hope you find what you need,” he says. With that, Klaus breathes out–
–and he lets go.
The last golden mote fades into the sky as he makes his way down the amphitheatre’s isle. By the time he stops at Z’s side, the other’s presence has faded completely.
“You’re late,” Z says, his gaze still fixed to the chair across from him.
“You looked occupied, and so I deigned to give you space.” A faint spark of curiosity rises as he steals a glance at the empty chair. “Another failure?”
When he turns back to Z, he finds that his red eyes are already boring into him.
“Not necessarily,” Z says. “Though it would be wise of you to curb that growing ego of yours, N.”
N exhales slowly, and reins in his temptation to snap back. He shifts gears to distract himself. “Of course. The report on the mobilization has come back from the Aetia region. Seems like it was a recent Kevesi battalion shift by Consul B, and he simply neglected to inform us.”
Z waved a hand. “Then see to it that he does not make that mistake again.”
N nods and turns on his heel, planning on doing just that when he’s stopped by a sudden call from Z. “N.”
“Yes?”
“...Be sure to inspect the Kevesi queen while you are here. Make sure she is still… debilitated.”
N finds the request a strange one, but he bites his tongue. It wasn’t as though he could go against Z’s orders. He grunts a confirmation and leaves, not wishing to dwell in the theatre any longer than he must. He catches a glimpse of the once occupied seat as he passes it by, and he furrows his brow. Not many people went against Z’s offer of becoming Moebius. He wondered who they were.
N shakes his head. “Nothing more than a fool,” he says under his breath as he pushes the doors open and exits the theatre.
Nothing more than a fool indeed.