Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Titan wakes with a scream in his throat and a burning in his core. Images flash across his mind, too bright, too blurry for him to properly grasp. He squeezes his eyes shut. It doesn’t help.

He can feel himself floating in space; he can feel the hammering of his pulse; he can feel his teeth biting into his lip, but something is screaming at him—wrong, wrong, wrong, something is wrong, something—

And then everything clicks into place. Like a puzzle piece fitting perfectly into its slot, it all makes sense all at once.

Oh.

He’s dead.

At least, he should be dead. He certainly doesn’t feel dead, not with the adrenaline pumping through him, not with the pain wrenching through his body.

Those images are clearer now. He remembers… He remembers an asteroid. One that Ganymede threw, he thinks. He remembers spinning through space uncontrollably, his yells and those of the others moons swirling together in his head. He remembers Earth’s Moon—Luna?—screaming at everyone to get out of the way, and he remembers—

He remembers Earth. The burning sensation as they pierced each other’s atmospheres. The crunch of crust splitting. The hiss of water evaporating. The white-hot pain as Titan felt his own surface burst, felt the liquid underneath begin to boil from the sheer force of the impact.

He remembers the sound of screams. The screams of billions upon billions of Earthlings, the ones who the Earth had just praised as though they were stars, not tiny, mortal lifeforms who apparently could barely live past a century. The ones who had made Titan stand down and change his mind. The ones that they wanted to kill.

Titan doubles over, phantom pain overwhelming his senses. His breathing is erratic, even more so than when he first woke up. He knows he needs to figure out where he is and what exactly is going on, but he just… can’t. His body refuses to do anything but shake and gasp for air.

He’s not sure how long he sits there. It must be a fairly long time because once he regains the ability to move, his muscles are stiff, and he strains to stand. Finally, once he regains his balance, he dares to open his eyes. He’s…

He’s in the asteroid belt. A fairly dense section of it, based on the number of asteroids that block his view, but still unmistakably the asteroid belt.

It’s not the hideout that they used during the Revolution: he may not be the best at directions, but he knows that he’d be able to tell if it was. Still, something about the area seemed familiar.

He slowly moves forward towards where he assumes the edge of the belt would be. He bats an asteroid out of his way, cranes his head upwards, and…

No fucking way.

That was the Earth. The Earth, who, just like him, is supposed to be dead right now. Extremely dead. Space-debris-destined-to-fly-into-the-Sun type of dead.

Titan can’t help but let out a giggle. The giggle quickly turns into a laugh. A moment later, the laughter turns to sobs.

He sinks down and pulls his knees to his chest. He rubs his eyes, but new tears replenish his old ones the second they’re wiped away.

This- This isn’t real. It can’t be. He must have finally lost it. He’s hallucinating. Either that or he’s dead and this is some sort of afterlife for celestial bodies.

He shakes his head rapidly, trying to gain control of his thoughts. Feelings can wait for later, once he understands what’s going on.

Focus. He needs to focus.

He quickly composes himself, wiping the remaining liquid off of his face. He sits up and peers through a gap in the asteroids. Now, sitting like this, he remembers what this place is: this is where he used to watch Earth the rocky planets from. He would always come here whenever he needed a break from Saturn and the rest of the moons. It’s almost nostalgic in a way, being here again, even though it hasn’t been long since his last visit to this place. After all, this was where he was just before he met the Eart—

Oh. He’s getting distracted again. (He ignores how that memory still makes him feel sick. He forgave Earth, didn’t he? Before they…)

Shaking the thoughts out of his head, he looks towards the rocky planets.

Earth’s there, obviously, in the Goldilocks Zone. He looks… fine. Normal, even. Not a wound in sight; not a single scratch or bruise.

He spots Earth’s Moon—Luna, he really has to get used to that—floating just above Earth’s shoulder. He’s talking with the Earth, smiling and laughing along with whatever he’s saying. No physical injuries. Nothing to suggest that he’d just fought off hundreds of moons, that he just watched his planet die—

Titan turns his attention elsewhere. He didn’t notice at first, but Mars is nearby too: a bit closer to the belt than Earth, but far enough to Titan’s left that it makes observing him a bit tricky.

From what he can see, Mars looks… fine? When Europa and Ganymede claimed that they and the other moons had beaten Mars and Venus in a fight, Titan had expected more… damage. But, looking at Mars, Titan can’t even see a scrape, much less the asteroid-sized welts and bruises that he was expecting.

… Just like with Earth.

Titan swallows and directs his gaze elsewhere. He sees two tiny specks floating near Mars’ head. Are those Phobos and Deimos? He assumes so, but he can’t be sure of it from here. He also can’t confirm whether or not they have any injuries (were they injured during the fight in the first place…? If so, he should really apologize to them), so he moves on to the analysis.

As far as he can tell, the Earth, Luna (ha! He got it right!), and Mars are all completely unharmed, despite them being injured during the Revolution. If he moved out of the asteroid belt, perhaps he could take a peek at Venus and check on him as well, but the thought of leaving the cover of the belt made his core squirm. He doesn’t want them to see him. Not until he’s ready.

They’re all fine. Perfect condition. They’re all healed, like nothing ever happened. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make any sense—

Deep breaths. In and out. In. Out. Just like Rhea taught you. You’re fine. Everything’s fine.

He feels the panic that was beginning to build in his gut slowly recede. He continues breathing for another minute, until the stress boiling inside of him was reduced to a small simmer.

He needs to think rationally. He needs a plan. Panicking without a plan is never a good idea.

First step of the plan: figure out what exactly’s going on.

Did he dream up the revolution somehow? It seems unlikely, but it’s also the only thing that makes sense. There’s no way that Mars and Earth would be healed already. Hell, there’s a decent chance that Earth should be dead right now, or at least very, very injured. He shouldn’t have any life left on his surface, that’s for sure. But maybe-

“Titan! Where have you been?!” a familiar voice calls out behind him. He whirls around at the sound, eyes wide.

Saturn. He hasn’t seen him since…

His brain goes on autopilot. Somehow, he knows just what to say, even though Titan could barely hear Saturn’s question over the ringing in his ears.

“Hey, Saturn. J-Just gazing at the stars.”

Saturn frowns at that, and Titan fears that he did something wrong (why is this so familiar?) until Saturn pouts in the way Titan knew was reserved for him and him alone.

No matter how much he hates being the favorite, he can’t deny how helpful it is in some situations. He knows that Saturn won’t get truly angry with him, regardless of how many times he disappears from his orbit and goes to hide relax in the asteroid belt. He doesn’t think any of the others would dare to do that—to just leave their orbit for no discernible reason, especially not without telling Saturn (though, honestly, he doubts that Saturn would notice if anyone other than him left).

He turns his attention back to Saturn, who’s anxiously playing with his hair. The sight does nothing to relieve Titan’s own nerves.

“C’mon now!” he says. “I’m gathering all my eighty-three moons. There’s… something I need to discuss with all of you.”

That voice, that expression, those words. It’s so familiar. Titan feels like he’s in a daze. Without thinking, he follows Saturn.

He feels numb as he floats over to where all the other moons are waiting. He ignores the dirty looks from some and the envious ones from the others. Usually, he’d pretend not to be affected but still meet each of their gazes and commit their faces and angry expressions to memory. Right now, though, he doesn’t even have the fortitude to look up at them as he floats by.

His mind is still reeling. He’s almost there; he can feel it. Just one more clue, a little push in the right direction, and he’ll figure out what’s wrong; he knows he will.

He looks up, startled out of his thoughts by the sound of Saturn clearing his throat. So, he’s going to give some sort of speech: not an unheard-of occurrence, but definitely an unusual one. Something big must’ve happened, then.

Saturn is- well, something’s clearly off about Saturn. Moreso than usual. He’s more timid: not scared, necessarily, but… anxious. He doesn’t seem as happy or flamboyant as usual, either. Instead, he’s a touch more… grounded, perhaps? Remorseful, maybe?

Titan’s never been the best at reading Saturn. He doesn’t know why. Maybe they’re just so vastly different that they’ll never truly understand each other.

Still, the expression that Saturn wears fills him with dread, because he knows that look from somewhere. He’s seen it before. If his brain wasn’t so cloudy, if he could just think a little more clearly…

“Okay! Everyone is here… I’m Saturn—”

A chorus of voices interrupts. “We know who you are,” they all said in unison, tones ranging from hostile to annoyed to bored.

Wait...

Titan feels a chill go down his spine.

No.

“R-Right. So, this is awkward, but I just found out—”

No. No, No, No, No, No, No, No-

“—that my beautiful rings were made from—”

This is not happening. There is no way that this is happening.

“—the corpses of old moons…”

A series of gasps rings out. Titan can’t breathe. He knows this. He’s already done this. This- This doesn’t make any sense—

“Is he serious?” someone says. He’s supposed to say something; he did the first time, but he can’t breathe. When he finally does take a breath in, it’s too shallow and too fast, he knows, but he can’t make himself stop. His mind is on overdrive, filled with panic and a single question on repeat: What’s going on?

His palms are clammy. He extends his hands and watches as his fingers tremble. Not good. He tries, at the very least, to keep his breathing quiet, but he’s not sure how well he succeeds: he can barely hear anything over his own racing pulse.

Saturn is saying something. He should listen. He’s supposed- He’s supposed to interrupt the other moons, forgive Saturn for them, but...

His eyes dart around, barely taking in the mix of terrified and furious faces that surround him. He needs to get out of here. He needs to go.

He half-floats, half-stumbles away from the other moons before darting back towards the asteroid belt. He tries not to draw attention to himself, but he knows it’s practically impossible to escape completely unnoticed, especially for him. He can faintly make out some of the moons beginning to raise their voices behind him, but none of it seems to be directed at him, so he keeps moving.

The second Titan crosses the border into the asteroid belt, he collapses. His breath had somewhat returned during his mad dash. He just floats there, soaking in the silence, trying his best to ignore the now-overwhelming sense of wrongness that’s enveloped everything ever since he came here- no, ever since he came back.

Time travel. There was no other explanation. Of all things, it was time travel. It sounds like the plot to some shitty Earthlings book series.

Oh, he is so fucked.

Chapter Text

All things considered, Titan likes to think that he’s managing the situation quite well. It’s not every day that you wake up after thinking that you died in a horrific accident only to realize that you most likely did die in said horrific accident and were somehow transported to the past, just barely a full Earth day before the event that eventually led to the aforementioned horrific accident in the first place.

Yes, he did the math: in less than one of Earth’s rotations, Titan’s supposed to meet him for the first time, triggering the events that eventually lead to the emergence of a full-scale violent revolution against planets and causing the death of at least one (probably two) celestial bodies.

… Now that he’s thinking about it, he should probably avoid meeting the Earth, right?

He nods to himself, writing it down in the ever-growing list of ‘Important Things to Remember so I Don’t Die Again.’ Admittedly, the name is a work in progress, but it’s not like anyone besides Titan will ever read it, so…

He continues to brainstorm, thinking back and taking note of any important events he could remember from the past (the future?). By this point, his paper is covered in scribbled words and phrases that would seem like complete nonsense to anyone but himself.

He taps his pen against the paper, scouring his mind for any other ounce of information. When he finds nothing, he decides to take a quick break from writing. He stretches his arms and looks down at the list, going over everything that he’s already written.

It’s not very organized. At all. If he weren’t still in a bit of a panicked frenzy, Titan knows he would cringe at the chicken scratch handwriting that’s spread across the page in no discernible order. It’s legible (if only barely), and that’s all that really matters in the end.

He reads through the items again: meeting Luna, meeting the Earth, the Astrodude incident, beginning to plan a strike, meeting Ganymede and Europa…

Meeting Ganymede and Europa. That’s where it all really started, isn’t it? If they’d never come across him in the asteroid belt, the revolution never would’ve happened: he would’ve continued his plan to go on a strike, to just try to talk to the planets peacefully.

So… was that it? If he just avoided those two, could he- could he fix everything?

“It’s worth a shot,” Titan mutters to himself.

But… How can he do that? He worries at his lower lip, deep in thought. He doesn’t even know why they were in the asteroid belt in the first place. He vaguely remembers Ganymede and Europa talking about some sort of ‘adventure.’ And, looking back on it now, it’s a little strange how the Galilean moons decided to split up into two groups and go in opposite directions while in the middle of the asteroid belt. It’s almost like they were… looking for something.

Was that it, then? They were looking for him? Why?

He furrows his brows. Why would they all be out in the asteroid belt looking for a moon of Saturn that they hadn’t even met before? The Galileans, except for maybe Io, don’t seem like the most caring or selfless moons in the solar system, especially not towards total strangers.

He glances back towards where he instinctively knows Saturn is, an idea sparking in his mind. He was away from his orbit for a pretty long time last time. He wasn’t in his usual place in the asteroid belt either. He remembers moving to a different area specifically so he couldn’t see the Earth from his hideout. That new ‘hideout’ quickly became the home base of the Moon Revolution, but that’s besides the point.

Could it be that Saturn got worried about him? Worried enough that he told Jupiter about it? From there, those four could’ve either overheard their planet’s conversation or talked to some of Saturn’s moons, figured out what was going on and that he usually hung out in the asteroid belt, and decided to look for him themselves.

It seems feasible at the very least. He doesn’t understand why they would decide to do that, but it’s his best guess, so he’s going to have to make do with it.

He taps his pen against the paper as he thinks. In that case, can he avoid the whole revolution by just going back to his orbit before the Galilean moons come to look for him? If that’s the case, it seems almost too easy.

He’d heard Jupiter use the phrase “never look a gift horse in the mouth” before. He’s pretty sure that it applies to this situation. He doesn’t really know what a ‘horse’ is, though, so he could be wrong.

He frowns, another thought occurring to him. If he wanted to keep everything the same, up until he’s supposed to meet Ganymede and Europe, does that mean he needs to have that conversation with the Earth again…? He winces at just the thought.

On one hand, having an experience like that could help sell some of the other, more skeptical moons on the idea of his strike, which could be helpful. On the other hand, he really doesn’t want to have to deal with it again. He knows that Earth changes in the future—well, he changed in Titan’s future—but right now he’s still the same arrogant, narcissistic asshole he was before.

Titan forgave him for what he said. To face that Earth again, the one who looked straight at Titan and told him that he needed to ‘know his place’… Not only would it hurt, but it’d feel like a betrayal to the Earth of the future. The one who wanted to earn the moons’ forgiveness and, because of it, because of him, was met only with ruin and death.

Actually, without the Moon Revolution, would Earth even change? He’d been so different at the end, in the asteroid belt, and Titan has no clue what made any of that even happen in the first place. He’s guessing that Luna was involved somehow, based on the Earth’s final speech, but other than that assumption, it’s a total mystery. Titan never even got the opportunity to ask.

He supposes that the Earth not changing is a risk he needs to take. At the very least, he knows that the Earth is capable of change. There’s a non-zero probability, and Titan has no choice but to gamble with those odds.

Still, talking to the Earth… probably isn't worth it. At least not now. Maybe later, once his plan is fully laid out, but not yet.

He can still feel the heat of the impact underneath his surface. He wonders if it’ll ever cool down.

Talking to Luna, on the other hand, is necessary. He knows that he needs all the help he can get to pull off his plan. Even though they weren’t exactly friends the first time, they were acquaintances at the very least. Titan likes to think that they were on the cusp of a full-fledged friendship at the beginning. If they’d just had a bit more time before… well, before everything.

Now, Titan has the time that he needs. That’s the gift he’s been given: more time. Hopefully, it’ll be enough.

Okay. Titan thinks, tentatively, that he has a plan. He goes over it once more, step by step.

Step One: Talk to Luna, as well as Phobos and Deimos. He needs to make sure he establishes a connection with the inner moons. That way, if any sort of conflict breaks out involving the Earth, one of them will be able to let him know. It also serves as a way for him to keep tabs on the Earth, to see if any change in his behavior occurs naturally without the revolution.

Step Two: Get back to Saturn before the Galilean moons begin looking for him. That way he can hopefully prevent Europa and Ganymede from triggering any sort of revolution in the first place.

Step Three: Slowly introduce the idea of a strike to more and more moons. He’ll probably start with Luna, Phobos, and Deimos, then recruit them to help spread the message to the others. Maybe he should talk to Jupiter’s moons last? After all, if enough people are on board with a peaceful protest by the time Ganymede and Europa learn about it, they’ll have a much harder time turning things violent.

And… that’s it.

It’s a plan: a shoddily made plan, he knows, but it’s a fairly solid starting point at the very least.

Titan takes a deep breath. He can do this.

Time for step one.

He sees Luna in the same place he always is: floating next to Earth. Earth is distracted, playing some sort of card game with Mars. Titan takes a deep breath before gliding closer.

“Hey!” he whisper-yells, just loud enough to be heard.

Luna startles and turns to look at him, his expression shifting from surprise to confusion and annoyance in a split second. He raises an eyebrow.

“Do I know you?” he asks. “Wh- Are you that crazy planet that lives in the asteroid belt?”

Titan just stares for a moment, as though he completely forgot that you have to talk back in order to have a conversation.

It’s just… this is Luna. Titan hasn’t had a real conversation with him since before the revolution started- no, since before he’d made Astrodude search for life under his surface.

He shakes his head minutely, clearing away those thoughts. What did Luna ask again? Something about a planet in the asteroi- oh! They had this conversation the first time too! That makes Titan’s job a little easier, then.

“No,” he replies, moving past the asteroid belt. “My name’s Titan: I’m one of Saturn’s moons. It’s, uh, it’s nice to meet you…?”

Luna ignores his hesitant introduction. Instead, his eyes widen as he studies Titan more closely.

“You’re a moon? Ha! No way!” he says.

Titan raises an eyebrow in faux confusion. They’re steadily getting closer to each other, so Titan is able to respond at his normal volume. “What do you mean?”

Luna smiles. Titan can’t believe he forgot how infectious it is. “Well, you look pretty big to be a moon. I mean, you’re way bigger than Pluto; you might even be bigger than Mercury!”

Titan flushes, unused to the sudden genuine praise. It’s one thing to hear stuff like that from Saturn, but it’s something else entirely to hear it from Luna.

He rubs the back of his neck and glances away. “W- Well, I don’t know about all of that. I mean-“

Suddenly, Luna’s right in front of him. He’s so close that Titan can feel his warm breath brush against him while he talks. A chill runs down his spine at the feeling.

“Hold on: is that an atmosphere?! Oh, I’d kill for one of those!” he says, voice brimming with almost-manic glee. A closed-lip smile stretches across his face.

Titan should find this threatening. He did the first time, he remembers. Instead, a foreign warmth fills his core. He averts his gaze and swallows the lump in his throat.

“H- Hey, could you maybe—?”

Luna snaps out of whatever trance he was in, immediately backing away when he realizes the distance—or lack thereof—between them. Titan shifts nervously, hoping that the heat he feels in his cheeks isn’t visible.

“Yes. Sorry. Too much,” Luna apologizes. At the very least, he seems genuinely embarrassed and a bit guilty for his behavior. Titan allows a small smile to grace his lips.

After a moment, Luna turns to Titan again, a questioning look in his eyes. “So, why are you here?” he asks.

Titan’s eyes widen slightly. He can’t use the same reason as last time: he has no desire to meet the Earth now. With an intake of breath, he quickly steels his nerves.

Okay: improv time.

He smiles and gives a small shrug. “I just wanted to meet you, I guess.”

Luna frowns almost imperceptibly. “Oh. Are you… interested in the Earth, then?”

Titan tries his best to not flinch at the question. Instead he shakes his head.

“Not really. I mean, he’s… cool, I guess, but I just wanted to meet some other moons,” he says. He carefully watches Luna’s expression before continuing. “There are only three moons in the inner solar system. None of us outer moons ever get the chance to talk to you guys, so… I wanted to be the first to get to know you, I guess.”

Luna stares at him, an indiscernible emotion in his eyes.

“… Really?” he says. His voice is so soft that Titan has to strain to hear him.

Internally, Titan panics. Had he upset him somehow? He wills himself to not let his anxiety show, instead just nodding slightly, albeit a bit awkwardly.

“Uh, y-yes?” he stutters. “I- I mean yes. Definitely. I’d like to get to know you better. If you wanted to, I could even try to introduce you to some of the other outer moons? I mean, I don’t know much about ice giants’ moons, but I- I could definitely—”

And then Luna smiles, so bright that it puts the Sun to shame. Titan’s words die in his throat as he watches the radiant sight before him.

“Thank you,” Luna says. “I think I’ll take you up on that offer.”

Titan blinks, dumbfounded. He feels heat return to his face in full force.

“Don’t mention it,” he squeaks. “That’s what friends do, right?”

Luna’s face contorts into a lopsided grin. “That’s what friends do,” he parrots.

Titan moves back slightly, now subconscious of how close they’d been to each other throughout their conversation. He nods, clearing his throat with a cough, before responding.

“Yup! That’s what friends do! I, uh, probably have to get back to my orbit soon, but, uh, do you wanna meet here again tomorrow? Same place, same time? We can- er, we can do whatever else friends do, I guess…?” Titan says, chuckling nervously.

The rapid thrumming in his core almost reminds him of his panic from yesterday, but this time it’s… softer? It’s not as dreadful, instead paired with a warm, gooey feeling that leaves him feeling as exhilarated as he does anxious. It’s enough to leave him dizzy.

Luna smiles again. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then, Titan.”

Titan nods politely as he turns to leave, briskly making his way back through the asteroid belt and towards Saturn’s orbit.

While he’s leaving, he calls out over his shoulder. “Bye, Luna! I’ll see you tomorrow!”

Luna freezes, his shoulder tensing. For a moment, he can’t move. Then, whips around, but Titan is already gone. Still, the question floats off his tongue and into the void of space with no one there to hear it:

“How do you know that name…?”

Chapter Text

Titan can’t wipe the smile off his face as he heads back to his orbit. His conversation with Luna was a success. Now, he just has to stick to his plan and get Luna to support the strike.

If he gets Luna on his side, the strike will have a much greater impact on the planets: at least, it’ll definitely affect the Earth. Titan knows that Earth needs Luna in order to stabilize his axis. Without his moon, the Earth can’t support life. It’ll only be a matter of time before Earth is forced to plead for his moon to return in order to prevent his Earthlings’ extinction. He won’t be able to look down on the moons if he realizes that one of them is the very key to what makes him so special in the first place.

A sinister, vindictive thought sprouts in his head like a weed. A part of him hopes that the Earth begs Luna to come back and Luna refuses. He’d deserve it.

Titan’s not an idiot. He saw how shocked Luna had been when Titan said that he wanted to know him, not the Earth, and how happy he was when Titan said that he wanted to be friends. That can’t be normal.

It’s not fair that the Earth can treat him like a tool, not a friend, not even a person, and Luna would still defend him with his life. He fought against an army, all for Earth. Titan knows that the Earth appreciated it in the end, that, somehow, he had changed, but that’s the future, not now. Does he appreciate Luna now? Does his care go deeper than the surface-level fact that the Earth wouldn’t be special without the moon?

Some dark corner of his mind would love for Luna to be selfish for once, to put his own needs above his planet’s. Titan pushes it away.

He doesn’t want to water that ugly weed, but he also hesitates to pull it out by the roots. After all, he’s not wrong. That’s what the strike is about in the first place. A situation like Luna’s would never happen in a world where planets and moons are regarded as equals.

He wants all of the moons in the solar system to be happy. He wants Luna to be happy. And he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make that dream a reality.

Titan blinks and looks around. Empty space surrounds him. He’d zoned out during his journey back to Saturn. Instinctively, he knows that this is where he’s supposed to be; this is where his orbit is, but where…?

He squints into the distance. He spots… something moving, so he hesitantly begins to approach it. As he inches closer, he’s able to see what that something actually is: it’s Saturn's other moons, all huddled near each other, talking in hushed tones.

Something is wrong. This didn’t happen the last time. Last time, after he met Luna, he came back to his orbit like normal and didn’t leave until the next day. His instincts scream at him to be cautious, that something’s wrong. Something changed. He swallows, continuing his approach.

He hesitates to make his presence known. But, before he can say anything, Dione meets his gaze. Momentarily, her eyes widen before she schools her expression back into her usual bored eyes and vaguely annoyed frown.

“Oh… hey, Titan. Back already?” she says, crossing her arms. As she speaks, the other moons all turn towards him. Titan feels like he could be crushed under the weight of their eyes.

He clears his throat. “Yeah, I’m back... Uh, what’s going on here, exactly?”

Dione raises an eyebrow. “What does it look like?”

Titan pauses, unsure of how to answer. “Well… you’re all here, talking. Are you… playing a game? Planning something? A-And where’s Saturn?”

The moment the final question left his mouth, Titan knew he had made a mistake. He watches Dione’s expression darken with anger, opening her mouth—

“Saturn left,” Iapetus butts in, shooting Dione a look that Titan couldn’t quite decipher. “I presume that he’s near Jupiter’s orbit if you need him for anything.”

Titan feels his heart drop. He stammers, struggling to find his words.

“But that- that wasn’t… I- I mean, what happened?”

What changed? He must’ve done something, but what…

It’s silent. He squeezes his eyes shut momentarily as a wave of shame and embarrassment floods through his body, mixing with his panic to create a terrible, all-consuming feeling of despair. He can feel their glares on him, looking down on him with hatred, with fear, with disgust, with indifference—

The apathetic silence continues as he desperately tries to control the emotions begging to be spilt like blood from an open wound.

To Titan, it seems like a constant fact of life: whenever he is near, he drowns in their silence, but as soon as he leaves, he can’t drown out the sound of their whispers behind his back.

Rhea finally breaks the silence. Titan opens his eyes when he hears her quiet voice.

“When Saturn told us about his rings, he expected us to forgive him. I think he was… upset when he didn’t.”

Dione rolls her eyes and scoffs. “Well, what did he expect us to do? He admitted to murdering his former moons!”

Whispers erupt from the crowd, their attention turning away from Titan for a moment. Titan can’t enjoy this respite, however, because he just realized something.

This is his fault.

This is because he left. He left without forgiving Saturn, without temporarily resolving the conflict. He changed it without meaning to. If such a small decision had changed so much…

“Titan,” someone says. His eyes snap towards the source of the voice. It’s Dione, an odd look on her face.

“Yes?” he replies, perhaps a bit too quickly, if the deepening of Dione’s frown is anything to go by.

She hesitates. “Are you- Where did you go? During Saturn’s speech, I mean.”

“…The asteroid belt?” he replies. He feels the weight of their stares returning to him once more.

“But when Saturn left, some of us looked for you in your usual place. You weren’t there,” she says.

For a moment, Titan’s surprised at the fact that some of the other moons actually went to look for him, but he quickly brushes it away.

“I went into the inner solar system for a bit, too,” he says. He watches as Dione’s eyes narrow.

“Why?” she asks. There’s something clearly accusatory about her tone, and Titan feels his panic and frustration rise to the surface once more.

“Why does it matter?” he says, petulantly refusing to give her an answer.

Dione practically snarls at that, her cold composure shattering like the ice on her surface.

“Because—” and as quickly as it came, that anger is gone, or at least hidden. “It doesn’t matter, I guess. Do whatever you want.”

And with that, she turns back to the group of moons who float behind her quietly, who watched the scene unfold.

Titan stares back at the eyes in front of him. He turns sharply, gritting his teeth. He spins around and begins to float back to the asteroid belt.

He knows that they watch him as he flees like a coward. He can’t bring him care. He doesn’t care, he tells himself.

Now, he has to figure out how to keep everything on the right track. He has to make sure he doesn’t change so much that it’s unrecognizable from the first time. If he changes too much, he won’t be able to know what comes next, and then all of his effort will be wasted, and all of his planning will be worthless.

To keep this time as similar as possible to the last time, at least until the revolution, he should take the same actions, right? He should only change things that he plans to change; otherwise, he must act the same way that he did the first time.

He knows what that means.

He has to meet the Earth.

A few hours later, enough time for him to pull himself together within the asteroid belt, he heads out to meet Luna.

He watches as Mars and the Earth play their card game, the same position that they were in yesterday.

… Did Mars ever even leave, or have they been playing for a whole day straight?

Dismissing that train of thought, he turns his attention to Luna, who floats near the Earth, but further away than he was yesterday. Luna scans the asteroid belt, barely paying attention to the planets beside him.

Is Luna waiting for him? That’s almost… cute.

He shakes his head, urging himself to focus on the task at hand.

He has a plan. He saw how happy Luna was when he said that he didn’t want to meet the Earth yesterday, and doesn’t dare to risk his budding friendship by telling him that he actually does want to meet him now. He can’t bear the thought of Luna believing that Titan only talked to him in order to get closer to the Earth.

He ignores the sinking feeling in his gut when he realizes that that’s exactly what he did the first time.

So, instead of actively trying to talk to the Earth, Titan will keep hanging out with Luna until Earth notices that he’s gone. That way, a conversation can start more naturally and hopefully have the same results.

He nods to himself, schooling his expression into a smile as Luna finally notices him in the distance. Titan waves and then gestures for Luna to come over to him. Luna glances back at his planet for a moment. He sighs and floats over to Titan.

“Hey, Titan,” Luna says, before suddenly stopping. He moves a little closer, eyes sharpening as he studies Titan’s face.

“What are you doing—?” Titan cuts himself off as Luna’s thumb brushes across his cheek, just underneath his right eye. For a moment, Titan forgets how to breathe.

Luna frowns. “Were you… crying?”

Oh. So that’s what he noticed.

Titan takes a step back, nodding sheepishly and rubbing the back of his neck.

“Yeah, well, I- I guess I was,” Titan says awkwardly. His face burns with embarrassment. Someone who has known him for just a day, who has only ever talked to him once, has already seen his tears.

”Uh… okay,” Luna says hesitantly. “Do you want to talk about it, or…?”

Titan shrugs. “Not much to talk about. Just got into a little… disagreement with some of Saturn’s other moons. It’ll be fine.”

Luna slowly nods. He seems more on guard than he did during their first conversation yesterday. Titan wonders why.

“So, what exactly do you want to do?” Luna asks, staring at Titan as though he’s searching for something.

Titan shrugs again, a carefully crafted, carefree smile on his lips. “Whatever you want, I guess. I just wanna get to know you better.”

Luna watches him closely as he talks. It’s almost unnerving; it feels like he’s being judged, interrogated with just his eyes. He doesn’t mind it as much as he does with the other moons of Saturn, though.

Luna chooses his words carefully as he replies. “I want to know more about you, too. So, Titan, tell me about yourself.”

He hesitates, thinking about what to say. “Oh. Uh, okay… Well, I’m Titan, and, uh, I’m the largest moon of Saturn. Actually, I’m also the second largest moon in the solar system. I have a pretty dense atmosphere made up of—”

“No.” Luna cuts him off. “I mean, tell me about you. Like, what do you like to do? What’s your… I don’t know; what’s your favorite color?”

Titan lets out a small laugh at that. “My favorite color?”

Luna huffs, but Titan can tell he finds it a little funny too. “You know what I mean!” Luna says.

Titan does know what he means, so he starts to think. He smiles as he starts to answer.

“My favorite color is—”

“Moon! Where are you?” a voice calls. Titan watches as Luna’s smile falls almost imperceptibly.

“Stay right here,” Luna says. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

”No, I- I’ll come with you,” Titan says, ignoring the anticipation in his core.

Luna gives him a curious look but he doesn’t disagree. Together, they float back from the edge of the asteroid belt towards the Earth.

As they approach, Earth spots them. He doesn’t even look happy to see Luna, just annoyed. It makes a dark feeling swirl in Titan’s core.

“Moon! There you are! Mars wants to go back to his orbit because he’s a sore loser—”

“I literally won,” Mars interrupts, only to be ignored.

“—so you have to come back to your orbit now, okay?”

He smiles, satisfied, as Luna nods. Only then does he turn his attention to Titan, scrutinizing him with one eyebrow raised.

Titan stutters. “U- Uh, hello, Mister Earth. It’s nice to meet—”

“Are you a new planet or something?” Earth interrupts, and this feels so familiar that it hurts.

“Uh- no. I’m Titan. I’m one of Saturn’s moons.”

Earth just stares at him. Titan swallows, avoiding eye contact. Finally, Mars breaks the silence.

“Hey, I think I’ve seen you from afar. You’re Saturn’s favorite moon, right?”

Titan flinches at that. Neither of the planets seem to notice, but Luna does, based on the concerned glance he gives Titan from the corner of his eye.

“What does he call you?” Mars continues. “His ‘Middle Earth’?”

Ah. There it is.

Suddenly, the Earth looks much more interested in the conversation, swiveling towards Mars.

“Wait, what? What’s up with that name?!” he says.

Titan has already heard all of this. He’s already done all of this. He doesn’t want to do this again. He doesn’t want to be here again.

He can feel himself start to slip away, zone out. He can still hear Mars and Earth’s conversation—well, it’s more like a one-sided argument, not a conversation—but it’s more background noise than anything else.

It’s a familiar feeling: an almost comforting blanket of numbness that shields him from the outside world. He knows that he does this sometimes when he’s in his orbit, too exhausted to stay awake but still unable to sleep after those especially long, bad days.

He’s suddenly brought back into the moment when Luna elbows him.

Luna opens his mouth, speaking in a whisper. “Are you okay—?”

“Stop! Don’t say it!” the Earth suddenly screams at Mars. Titan thinks that it might be the second loudest thing he’s ever heard (after his own collision, of course).

“He’s just a moon, okay?! We’re nothing alike,” the Earth continues.

Mars furrows his brows. “C’mon, don’t be rude—”

Earth cuts him off again. “No! Moons should know their place! Keep saying silly things like this and you’ll make them think that they can become planets like us!”

It doesn’t hurt as much as Titan had expected it to. In fact, he feels strangely detached at the moment. His thoughts are all jumbled together, too knotted to even begin untangling them. Only one rings out above the others: he followed the plan. He did what he was supposed to. Now he can leave.

Not even waiting for Earth to turn back to him, Titan begins to head back to the asteroid belt. Every time he blinks, every time he closes his eyes for what feels like just a moment, he’s suddenly closer and closer than he was the last time. It’s as if time is moving both too slow and too fast at once.

He blinks again, and he’s in the asteroid belt. A different area, further away from the Earth’s orbit. He glances around, unable to see anyone or anything nearby except for the seemingly infinite amount of asteroids floating around him, shielding him from the world outside.

Only then does Titan begin to cry.

Chapter Text

Titan doesn’t know how long he stays in the asteroid belt. It could’ve been seconds. It could’ve been hours. It could’ve been days. What he does know is that, by the time he comes to, his tears have stopped.

He reaches a hand up to wipe his eyes. He feels… better, he thinks. Not good, definitely not good, but better. He’s glad that he left before he started crying. That would’ve been embarrassing.

He racks his brain for what he’s supposed to do next. The first time, after meeting the Earth, he… he went to the asteroid belt and… oh! Astrodude!

He can’t believe that he forgot about that. That was important. He curses his foggy mind for not thinking properly.

So, he needs to find Astrodude again then. He’d resolved to not change anything unless absolutely necessary in order to prevent the violence of the revolution. Astrodude’s mission to his surface didn’t have any horrible consequences for anyone, right? If anything, it just strengthened his argument for equality: Astrodude had proved that moons could be equal to planets, that moons are capable of just as much greatness as them, that they can cradle life, just like the Earth. Surely that isn’t something worth changing.

Still, the thought of forcing him to do it again made a pit form in Titan’s core. Not necessarily for Astrodude’s sake, but for Luna’s: that was their first real argument, after all. If he had never made Astrodude drill under his surface, maybe he and Luna would’ve been friends. Real friends.

So, what’s more valuable? What’s more important in order to keep everyone safe: a truth that could unite the moons, or Luna’s support, something he didn’t have the first time?

Now that he thinks about it, did he ever tell anyone besides that he had life…? Besides Luna, Phobos, and Deimos, who were there when he found out, did he actually…?

… Huh. He can’t seem to remember ever mentioning it. Talk about an oversight…

So, then, is the mission not necessary? Maybe just conversing with Astrodude, just getting him to say that it’s possible for moons to have life, would be enough?

No. No, no, no. He can’t keep doing this.

Why is he so hesitant? He’s already changed his plan once; he doesn’t need to do it again. He’s so- so unfocused, so scared, and for what?! Because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings? The first time, Mars and Venus were beaten. The first time, he died. The first time, he killed the Earth.

It’s not like anything worse could happen this time! If he’d just stop being so- so—

“Hey, Titan.”

He whips around, a self-loathing anger burning from deep within his core. That dark feeling melts into surprise as he sees who’s there.

“Luna? What- why are you here?”

Luna flinches back at the address, eyes widening before narrowing slightly. Titan would usually notice, would usually question the action, but he can’t focus on anything besides the rage and horror that bubbles up within him.

Luna isn’t supposed to be here. Not yet. Titan is supposed to meet Astrodude, and then Luna comes. Titan changed something. Again. But what? Was he inside of his own head for that long? Did he go to a different place within the asteroid belt? Did he somehow make Luna chase after him sooner?

Titan doesn’t have a choice now: there’s no way he’ll be able to make Astrodude do it, not without Luna seeing him. And even if he does it later, once Luna leaves, who knows what that would change.

Shit.

“I was looking for you,” Luna says after a moment of hesitation. He seems more nervous than he did the first time. Another change, Titan’s mind screams.

Titan squeezes his eyes shut before opening them again, trying to get himself to focus. “Uh… oh, because of the whole…”

Luna sighs. “Yeah, the whole mess… Look, I just- are you okay?”

Titan arches his eyebrows. Last time, Luna didn’t ask that. He started with his apology for the Earth‘s behavior immediately.

Another difference. Another mistake.

“Am I… okay?” he repeats, dumbfounded.

Luna clasps his hands together, fidgeting with his fingers. “I haven’t known you for very long, but you seem pretty anxious and, well, sad.”

Titan swallows. He doesn’t like the way that Luna’s eyes bore into him, as though he’s seeing through him into a place deeper than Titan can even comprehend. He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything.

After a beat of silence, Luna continues. “I know we haven’t been friends for long, but you seem to care for me, so I want to take care of you, too. If you need to get anything off your chest… I’ll be there to listen.”

Against his will, moisture returns to his eyes. He blinks it away quickly, avoiding Luna’s gaze. He nods sharply and then clears his throat before he responds.

“Luna, I—”

Luna cuts him off. “That’s the one thing I don’t understand: why do you call me that?”

Titan knits his brows. “What do you mean?”

“You keep calling me Luna,” he begins slowly, carefully. “Not Earth’s Moon, not just Moon, but Luna.”

Titan blinks, trying to find the issue with his words. “But… that’s your name.”

Luna looks at him, his eyes filled with a mixture of confusion, frustration, and suspicion. He let out a little groan, then continued.

“I know that! Of course I know my name! But no one- no one else calls me that. Not anymore, at least.”

Oh. Oh Titan, you dumbass.

He forgot that Luna hasn’t told him his name yet. Hell, he never even ‘told’ him his name in the future; Earth just called him Luna back during his big apology speech.

“So how do you know it?” Luna presses. “Why do you keep calling me that?”

Titan stumbles over his words. He can’t think of any explanations, at least not any that wouldn’t sound absolutely insane.

Suddenly, there’s a noise behind Luna. The sound of crashing asteroids echoes, getting louder and louder, as someone, as something, approaches. They both tense, Luna turning to look into the dark expanse of space where the sounds originate from.

“Who’s there?!” he yells.

“Do you- Do you think it’s Ceres?” whispers Titan. There’s no sign that Luna heard him except for the way that his shoulders tense further, ready to fight or flee.

Suddenly, the noises stop. Then…

“There you are!” a voice calls out as two small objects fly out of the void. Titan’s eyes widen.

“Phobos? Deimos?”

The two moons stop next to him and Luna. Deimos waves at them.

“Hi, Earth’s Moon! Hi, Titan!” he says before Phobos cuts him off with a not-so-subtle elbow to the side.

Luna crosses his arms, glancing between the three. “Have you guys met?”

Phobos shakes his head. “Nope! We’ve seen him before, though. Like when you guys were talking to Earth and Mars! And when you were hanging out yesterday!”

Luna turns to look at Titan, one eyebrow raised. “How do you know who they are, then?”

A lie slips out from his lips before he even considers telling the truth. “Well- I told you yesterday that I wanted to get to know the rocky planet's moons, right? That includes the Martian moons, so of course I know of them.”

Luna hums, obviously not fully accepting that answer but not calling him out on it yet, for which Titan is grateful. Deimos, on the other hand, looks absolutely ecstatic at his words.

“You wanna be friends with us?” he asks. Titan can’t stop the grin that blooms on his face.

“Of course I do. You guys seem pretty cool,” he says with a smile. He swears he sees stars light up in Deimos’ eyes.

“Did you hear that, Phobos? He called us cool!”

Phobos nods, a twin expression of joy on his face. “I heard him, Deimos!”

A bittersweet feeling fills Titan’s core. He’d missed these two so much. He hadn’t realized how much until just now. He was fond of them, almost unbearably so, and he hadn’t seen their faces, their infectious smiles, in so long. Even before his death, their smiles felt like a distant memory.

He remembers the last time he’d seen them happy: before they’d heard of Ganymede and Europa’s attack on Mars and Venus. From then on, their smiles were replaced by frowns: Phobos’ tinged with anxiety and Deimos’ soaked in grief.

Titan hadn’t done anything to comfort them, to reassure them. He was blind to it all, too busy chasing an impossible dream that was barely even his in the first place.

Then, when he took Luna hostage, they were- they’d looked so scared when he told them to send that message to the Earth. Scared of him. He wouldn’t let that happen again.

(He wonders, when he died, were they still scared of him? Did they hate him for what he had done?

Deep down, he’s glad that he doesn’t know the answer.)

He sneaks a glance towards Luna, only to find him staring back at him. The wariness of his expression burns, and he averts eye contact as soon as their gazes meet.

Luna clears his throat, turning his attention to the two little ones. “Why are you guys here?”

”We saw you guys leave, and we followed!” Deimos responds, still looking up at Titan, practically in awe.

“Mars was mad,” Phobos adds on. “We didn’t want to watch them argue anymore.”

Titan assumes that by ‘them,’ Phobos means ‘Mars and Earth.’ Did Mars get into a fight with the Earth for his sake? For the rest of the moons?

At least not all of the planets are bullies, then. Granted, he already knew from last time that Mars was fairly nice (if Phobos and Deimos’ stories were accurate, at least), but it’s good to have a reminder.

Seeming unsurprised by this, Luna nods. “Okay. That makes sense.”

He turns back to Titan, his face hardening. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you. Now, explain.”

Titan laughs nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. “Explain what?”

Deimos mimics the motion and parrots his words. “Yeah, Earth’s Moon, explain what?”

He watches Luna’s frown deepen. “Explain how you know my name.”

Phobos tilts his head. “Everyone knows your name: it’s Earth’s Moon!” he says.

Deimos nods. “Yeah. It’s, like, really easy to remember.”

Luna grits his teeth, ignoring them and turning to face Titan completely. “Do you have an answer for me?”

Titan can’t tell him the truth. That could ruin everything. If he says he’s from the future, they’d demand to know what happens in the future, and he can’t tell them that. He can barely control his own actions, much less predict the effects that another person would have on everything!

He clenches his jaw. “I… can’t tell you. I’m sorry, Luna.”

Luna stares back at him. Everything’s quiet for a moment.

“Who’s Luna?” Deimos asks Phobos in a whisper so bad Titan can’t tell if he’s being serious or not.

“I am!” Luna explodes, spinning back around towards Phobos and Deimos. “That’s my name!”

For a beat, Phobos and Deimos stare at him. Then, they turn towards each other. Then, they look back towards Luna.

“Ohhhh,” Phobos says. “That makes sense. How did Titan know that?”

Luna groans. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out!”

“I can’t tell you,” he repeats, but it sounds weak even to his ears.

“Oh, can we guess, then?” Phobos asks. Titan starts to reply, but Deimos cuts him off.

“Good idea, Phobos!” he says. “Titan, are you… uh, spying on us?”

Titan frowns. “No,” he says.

“Are you a mind reader?” Phobos guesses.

Titan shakes his head. “No.”

“We were all friends, but we got hit in the head by asteroids, and now we have amnesia, and you’re the only one who remembers us!” Deimos chirps.

“What-? No.”

“Oh! I got it!” Phobos exclaims. “You can see the future!”

And for a split second, Titan hesitates.

“Ha! I knew it! You can see the future!” Phobos turns to Deimos excitedly. “See, Deimos! I did it!”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Titan says. “I never said that that’s true.”

“But is it?” Deimos asks innocently. Titan hesitates once more.

Actually, now that he’s thinking about it, that’s probably the best answer he can give in this situation. That way, he can provide knowledge about future events without being held accountable for the actions he takes- he took in that future. That… actually might work! He just has to be careful about what information he gives them.

Putting on his most important performance yet, he sighs in resignation and turns towards Phobos and Deimos, both of whom are still practically vibrating with energy. “You got me. I… I can see the future.”

Luna practically scoffs at him. “No way that’s true.”

Deimos turns towards Luna, seemingly offended on Titan’s behalf. “Why not?” he asks.

“Because it doesn’t make any sense!” Luna says exasperatedly.

”We’re talking moons who can leave our orbits whenever we want,” Phobos says using the same tone one would use to speak to a particularly stubborn child. Titan can’t help but wonder if Mars uses that voice on them. “Logic doesn’t really apply to us most of the time.”

“That- That doesn’t mean that Titan is a prophet!” Luna sputters.

“Yes, it does!” Deimos says.

He turns to Titan. “Then prove it.”

“What?” he responds.

Luna gives him a look. “Tell me something that you know from the future. Something that you wouldn’t be able to know normally.”

Titan racks his brain for anything he might be able to use as evidence. The only thing that he really shouldn’t know about Luna is, well, that his name’s Luna. He knows if he takes too long, Luna will never believe him. Then, suddenly, a lightbulb goes off in his head.

“The Dark Side of the Moon!” Titan says. “I know about him.”

Luna freezes. All of the confidence drains from his body, replaced by confusion and disbelief. “How do you… How do you know them?”

“Titan’s a prophet!” Phobos says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Deimos nods so rapidly that Titan's worried he might hurt himself. “Yeah, what Phobos said!”

Titan looks Luna in the eyes. “I know about them because, in the future, we’re supposed to meet.”

Luna furrows his eyebrows. “Dark- Dark doesn’t meet anyone.”

“He threatens me,” Titan says.

“Oh. I guess that makes more sense,” Luna says, unease still obvious in his voice. He clears his throat. “If you really can see the future… why? How?”

Titan shrugs. “I’m not sure. What I do know is that I need your help.” He turns to look at Phobos and Deimos. “All of your help.”

Deimos’ eyes widen. “Did you hear that, Phobos?! Titan wants our help!”

Phobos grins. “I heard him, Deimos!”

Titan smiles affectionately at them. Luna raises an eyebrow.

“What exactly do you need our help with?” he asks.

Titan sighs. “Something… bad is supposed to happen in the future. I need your help to stop that from happening.”

“Whatever you say, Boss!” Deimos exclaims. Despite himself, Titan flinches back slightly at the familiar nickname.

“You- You don’t have to call me that if you don’t want to,” Titan says unsteadily.

“Well, we want to, Boss!” Phobos says.

Titan smiles. “Oh. Okay then.”

“What happens in the future that’s so bad?” Luna interjects. It’s clear that he doesn’t really believe Titan, but he doesn’t seem like he’s going to leave either. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Titan can’t tell.

“Death,” he says bluntly. He doesn’t know what else to say.

Luna startles. Even Phobos and Deimos glance at each other nervously.

“I can change it, though. We can change it.” He doesn’t know if he’s trying to convince them or himself.

“How?” Luna asks.

Titan glances between the three and then looks around them, into the vast expanse of space and asteroids surrounding them. This isn’t the right place to do this. He wants… he wants it to be at the old base, the one he used for the revolution, where they planned their strike the first time; whether out of a desire to keep things at least similar to the first time or due to the nostalgic warmth that buzzes in his core, he’s not sure.

“I know another place in the asteroid belt, one that’s more… more secure than here. We can talk there, okay?”

“Okay, Boss!” Phobos and Deimos respond in tandem. Luna looks at him with an eyebrow raised, still distrustful. That’s okay, Titan convinces himself. He can earn Luna’s trust.

Titan begins to move forward, towards where he remembers that clearing being. Phobos and Deimos follow behind him dutifully, but Luna stays where he is. Titan turns and looks at him questioningly.

Luna glances between Titan and a spot of empty space to his left, where he knows that the rocky planets are, where the Earth is. “I… I can’t leave my orbit for long.”

“We won’t be gone for long, I promise. The Earth will be okay without you for a few hours or so,” Titan says.

Luna lets out a deep breath, somewhere between a groan and a sigh. “If you’re sure…”

“I am,” Titan responds with conviction. He gives Luna a lopsided grin, one that he returns with a hesitant and slightly forced smile of his own.

Well, it’s the thought that counts. He starts moving towards the base, followed by his first three allies, his first three friends.

It’s a familiar feeling, but still so different than before. He still doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

He hopes it is.

Chapter Text

Boredom is something that Luna is used to. It’s normal for Luna to be stuck waiting in the wings, circling the Earth with neither entertainment nor rest. He is used to it, has been used to it for millions, billions, of years.

Luna quells his boredom by watching. He watches Earth’s card games, watches the planets move through their orbits, watches over the Earthlings who sleep under his guard.

The day everything changes, he is watching, like usual. Earth and Mars are playing their game: ‘Space Poker’ is what they call it. Luna had been lost in thought until—

“Hey!” a voice calls out. Luna spins towards the sound’s origin—the asteroid belt?—and, after a moment of searching, spots the source.

A celestial body, one Luna’s never seen before, stares back at him, a small smile on his face. He’s big; definitely bigger than Luna, but smaller than Mars. A new planet, maybe? Or a dwarf planet?

“Do I know you?” he asks. Then his eyes widen. A dwarf planet from the asteroid belt? Could it be—?

“Wh- Are you that crazy planet that lives in the asteroid belt?” He’s heard Mars talk about them before and would rather not become acquainted with Ceres or their asteroids, thank you very much.

The figure just stares at Luna for a moment before shaking his head and floating closer, leaving the asteroid belt. “No. My name’s Titan: I’m one of Saturn’s moons. It’s, uh, nice to meet you…?”

Luna’s eyes widen even further at that. A moon? But he’s so- so huge.

He voices his surprise to the newcomer—Titan, he reminds himself. “You’re a moon? Ha! No way!”

Titan raises an eyebrow, but the action seems a bit… forced. “What do you mean?” he asks.

Luna smiles at him before answering. “Well, you look pretty big to be a moon. I mean, you’re way bigger than Pluto; you might even be bigger than Mercury!”

Titan’s cheeks redden at the praise. Internally, Luna laughs at his expense, a strange, almost euphoric feeling buzzing through him. It’s so odd, meeting a new person after being surrounded by the same familiar faces for so long. As entertaining as the rocky planets can be, it gets dull after a while, repeating the same motions over and over and over again. It’s fun to observe something new.

Titan rubs the back of his neck—a nervous habit, he supposes—and avoids eye contact. “W- Well, I don’t know about all of that. I mean-”

And then, Luna notices it. The thick orange clouds that surround him, that swirl over his surface in a beautiful hypnotic pattern. “Hold on; is that an atmosphere?! Oh, I’d kill for one of those!”

It’s just so pretty, the way the gases spiral across Titan’s surface, how the cloudy regions glimmer under the Sun’s rays, how opaque it is. It may be even denser than Earth’s, which Luna didn’t even know was possible—

“H- Hey, could you maybe—?” Titan squeaks, and Luna looks up to meet his eyes, only to find that they’re close. So close that they’re practically touching, so close that he can see the way Titan’s eyes dilate and—

He shoots backwards, the heat of embarrassment curling within him. “Yes. Sorry. Too much,” he says, mentally cursing himself for being so weird around the first new person he’s met in the past, like, two billion years.

He looks back up at Titan, who gives him a small smile. Huh. Maybe he didn’t completely blow his shot at making a new friend, then?

“So, why are you here?” Luna asks. Titan gapes at him for a moment as though he completely lost his train of thought, before breathing in and smiling once more.

He shrugs. “I just wanted to meet you, I guess.”

Luna tries not to be disappointed, but he feels his smile wilt regardless.

“Oh,” he says. “Are you… interested in the Earth, then?”

Luna thinks he already knows the answer, but then Titan frowns and shakes his head. Pure, unfiltered shock pours through him like the heat of a solar flare.

He watches, practically in awe, as Titan speaks. “Not really. I mean, he’s… cool, I guess, but I just wanted to meet some other moons. There are only three moons in the inner solar system. None of us outer moons ever get the chance to talk to you guys, so… I wanted to be the first to get to know you, I guess.”

He’s speechless. Completely, utterly speechless. Is this what it feels like to be in the spotlight? To be on stage with the cast, not in the audience? To be watched instead of being the watcher?

It’s an addicting feeling. No wonder Earth likes it so much.

“Really?” he whispers, but he can barely hear his own voice over the deafening pounding of his core.

He can see panic well in Titan’s eyes, an anxious flush returning to his cheeks as he awkwardly nods.

“Uh, y-yes? I- I mean yes. Definitely. I’d like to get to know you better. If you wanted to, I could even try to introduce you to some of the other outer moons? I mean, I don’t know much about the ice giants’ moons, but I- I could definitely—”

And with each word he says, the new spark that had ignited itself in Luna’s core burns hotter and hotter, brighter and brighter, that foreign emotion growing and growing until it overflows and Luna can’t help but grin.

“Thank you. I think I’ll take you up on that offer,” he says, and he almost laughs aloud at the look on Titan’s face, a mix of confusion and awe with a hint of something that Luna can’t quite place. It’s a face that Luna will commit to memory, he knows.

Titan blinks once, then responds. “Don’t mention it. That’s what friends do, right?”

That feeling ignites again, revealing itself once more in the form of a smile. Friends, Titan had called them. Friends.

“That’s what friends do,” he repeats back, the phrase feeling good on his tongue, feeling right.

Titan takes a small step back, and Luna mourns the lack of space separating them. Titan coughs into his arm, then speaks once more.

“Yup! That’s what friends do! I, uh, probably have to get back to my orbit soon,” he starts, “but, uh, do you wanna meet here again tomorrow? Same place, same time? We can- er, we can do whatever else friends do, I guess…?”

Luna can’t help the pang of disappointment he feels when Titan says he has to leave, but he perks up once more at the idea of Titan coming back tomorrow. Luna doesn’t see anyone except Earth for days, sometimes weeks, when the Sun is being extra strict about their orbits, but Titan’s offering to come back tomorrow? Just to see him?

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then, Titan,” he says with a smile.

Titan smiles back at him and turns to leave. Luna begins to head back to his orbit, already practically counting the seconds until Titan would be back. Then he hears Titan call something from behind him.

“Bye, Luna! I’ll see you tomorrow!”

Luna tenses, freezing as if ice had been poured into his core. A split second later, he turns around, a burning question on his lips, spilling out like lava from Earth’s mantle.

“How do you know that name?” he asks, but no one is there to answer.

When Luna’s stressed, no one seems to notice. Mars doesn’t notice, Venus doesn’t notice, Earth certainly doesn’t notice, and sometimes Mercury gives him brief glances of concern or sympathy, but he never actually says anything.

The only one who ever notices is, well, him.

He senses Dark start to stir before he even begins to feel the pressure in his head. It’s a feeling that he’s come to know well, one of the first indications of the other consciousness that shares his core stirring, shaking themself out of their sleep and into the waking world.

“What are you freaking out about now, Luna?” he grumbles in the back of Luna’s- of their shared mind.

“Nothing. Go back to sleep,” Luna responds, but he knows that he’s fighting a losing battle. Dark doesn’t just go to sleep when Luna wants them to. Usually, he wakes up about once a month, around the time Luna reflects the most light, when he’s in his ‘full moon’ phase. Occasionally, though, they’ll wake up if Luna’s too stressed, focused, or ‘awake’, as Dark puts it.

(“Most of the time, you’re awake enough for the both of us,” he remembers Dark joking once. If they didn’t share a body, Luna would’ve hit him.)

Dark grumbles unintelligibly once more, and the pressure in his head increases tenfold. Ugh, he already dreads the migraine he’ll have in a few hours.

“It’s not nothing, Luna. If it was, you wouldn’t be worried enough to wake me up.”

Luna sighs. He knows Dark is right, but figuring out how to put his concerns into words is difficult.

He sucks in a breath, then begins. “So, I met this moon—”

“Ew, did you wake me up just to talk about your love life?”

Luna feels his cheeks redden as he sputters. “W- What?! No! It’s- It’s nothing like that!”

He can feel Dark roll their eyes. “Sure, sure, whatever you say. Continue, please. The sooner you calm down, the sooner I can go to sleep.”

Luna clears his throat. “So, anyway, I met this moon named Titan. I felt like something was a bit off with him, but I ignored it because, well, y’know…”

Dark hums in confirmation that, yes, he does understand. Luna doesn’t elaborate further.

“… So then we were hanging out, and it was nice, but then, when he left, he called me…”

“What, he called you ‘Earth’s Moon’ or something and it hurt your feelings?” He can’t tell if Dark is being sarcastic or genuinely asking. Either way, he lets out an annoyed noise.

“No, he said my name. He called me Luna.”

He feels them still as they process his words. After another moment of silence and internal reasoning, they exhale loudly.

“Huh,” Dark says. Simple and straightforward, as is his specialty. “That’s… odd.”

“I know, right?! I mean, I haven’t heard anyone except you call me that since- since—”

“Since that big-ass meteor killed the Earth’s favorite lizards, I know,” Dark finishes Luna’s thought with a sigh of annoyance.

“Don’t disrespect the dinosaurs like that,” Luna says. “I really liked them.”

Dark clicks their tongue. “Trust me, I know. You made me stay up forever trying to comfort you after the last saurolophi died out. Personally, though, I liked those weird mushroom-trees that came afterwards more than the overgrown geckos.”

Luna raises an eyebrow. “First of all, the plural of saurolophus isn’t saurolophi; it’s saurolophuses. Also, are you talking about prototaxites? They weren’t trees or mushrooms, and they went extinct, like, 300 million years before the dinosaurs did!”

Dark coughs, though Luna has a sneaking suspicion that it’s a laugh in disguise. “Jeez, sorry Mister Know-It-All. It’s not my fault I don’t spend all of my time spying on the Earthlings.”

Luna can picture Dark’s face; his dark eyes alight with mischief, a smirk tugging the corners of their mouth. Just the thought infuriates him to no end.

“We’re getting off topic,” he says. “The point is that he knows my name. How?”

“Well, Saturn’s moons are old, aren’t they?” Dark says. “It’s pretty likely that this Titan of yours was around before we were formed, so he could just remember you being called Luna in the past.”

“But that doesn’t make sense!” Luna whines says with the maturity of the 4.5 billion-year-old celestial body that he is. “No one else calls me Luna. All the planets are older than me, but they don’t remember my name.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Dark says.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“You don’t know for sure that no one else calls you Luna. It’s not like you really interact with any of the Jovian moons. Maybe Titan called you Luna because the other moons know your name too.”

Something close to hope sparks in his core. Could that really be true? It was possible, he supposes.

Luna feels himself smile. “Thank you, Dark.”

They roll their eyes again. “All I’m saying is that not everyone has an ulterior motive all the time, Luna. Give him the benefit of the doubt, but if he’s still acting suspicious, I give you permission to wake me up and let me handle it.”

Now it’s Luna’s turn to roll his eyes. “I think I’ll manage just fine on my own, thank you very much.”

“Whatever,” they say. “I’m gonna go back to sleep. Have fun with your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my—” Luna starts, but the effort is fruitless, as he already feels Dark’s consciousness begin to fade into the back of his mind.

Luna winces. Shit, he did get a headache from that, after all.

And so the next day, he waits, and he watches. He ignores the planets next to him entirely, instead tracing his eyes back and forth across the stretch of the asteroid belt where Titan had emerged from the previous day.

He still doesn’t know what he’s going to do; whether he’ll confront Titan about knowing his name or not. He wants to take Dark’s advice to heart, though, and give Titan the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. Maybe the other moons know that he’s more than an object to be owned.

Then, he sees him. Titan smiles brightly as he floats out of the darkness. He waves, then gestures for Luna to come closer.

There’s a moment of hesitation, a primal fear of leaving his orbit, leaving Earth, rooting him in his place. Then, he looks back at his planet, who hasn’t spoken to him since Mars came to hang out and play that silly card game.

Does he even know I’m here, or does he only care that I exist when he has no one else to talk to?

He sighs, forcibly expelling the thought from his head, and makes his way over to Titan.

“Hey, Titan,” Luna says as he approaches. Then, all of a sudden, he notices it: Titan’s red-rimmed eyes, the slight bags underneath them that are just a shade darker than the rest of his surface, the faint tear stains that cascade down his cheeks, as thought they had dried there and he hadn’t bother to wipe them off.

Was he like this yesterday? Luna doesn’t think so, but he can’t be sure. He moves closer, tenderly bringing his left hand up to Titan’s face. He hovers for a moment before Luna cups Titan’s face with his hand and gently, ever so gently, brushes his thumb beneath his eye. His fingertip passes over the tear tracks—still slightly wet, he notes—and the eye bags which seem to be getting bigger the longer he looks at them, though Luna knows that it’s probably his imagination.

He feels Titan shudder at his touch, a noise of protest almost immediately turning to a soft exhale. He leans into Luna’s touch, seemingly subconsciously.

He feels his frown deepen. What happened?

“Were you… crying?” Luna asks, though they both already know the answer to that.

Titan’s eyes focus again, back from wherever he’d gone while he was basking in Luna’s touch. He takes a small step backwards, giving him a nervous nod and rubbing his neck, just like he did yesterday.

“Yeah, well, I- I guess I was,” he says. He’d been nervous yesterday, Luna remembers, but something about this seems different. Wrong.

“Uh… okay,” he replies, because what is he supposed to say? “Do you want to talk about it, or…?”

In a split second, Titan’s serene mask—and it must be a mask, because the only person he’s ever seen change their emotions that fast is Earth, and Luna knows that he isn’t always honest about his feelings, not even with himself—is once again fastened tightly around his face.

He shrugs and Luna can see how his shoulders are a bit too tense, his arms are a bit too stiff for it to be a natural motion. It’s a close thing, an act so realistic that it’s scary, but it’s still an act, nonetheless.

“Not much to talk about,” Titan says. “Just got into a little… disagreement with some of Saturn’s other moons. It’ll be fine.”

Luna nods slowly in response. That feels like the truth, but Titan’s definitely omitting some of the details.

“So, what exactly do you want to do?” he asks Titan, searching for answers in the depths of his eyes.

Titan shrugs again, an action Luna’s coming to despise. His smile is somehow worse, too bright and fake. It looks just like Earth’s.

“Whatever you want, I guess. I just wanna get to know you better,” he says.

Luna can practically see the gears spinning in Titan’s head, the way that he calculates every single word he says before it leaves his mouth. It would be impressive, were it not so unnerving.

Luna doesn’t remember it being this bad yesterday. Sure, he noticed that his actions were a bit forced, like, two times, but he had chalked that up to nerves. There must be some he’s missing…

Luna responds to Titan slowly, methodically. “I want to know more about you, too,” he says. “So, Titan, tell me about yourself.”

Because Luna still wanted to know him. He wants to peel back that mask and see what’s underneath, whether it be an ugly truth or the most beautiful thing in the entire universe.

Titan freezes. “Oh. Uh, okay,” he says, hesitating for a moment before he decides on his next script. “Well, I’m Titan, and, uh, I’m the largest moon of Saturn. Actually, I’m also the second largest moon in the solar system. I have a pretty dense atmosphere made up of—”

Luna’s frustration bubbles to the surface. He doesn’t even let Titan finish, cutting him off with a harsh, “No.”

Quickly, he backtracks. “I mean, tell me about you, like, what do you like to do? What’s your… I don’t know; what’s your favorite color?”

Titan giggles at that, lips quirking up into a smile. “My favorite color?”

Luna rolls his eyes, a mixture of embarrassment and amusement filling his core. “I know what I mean!” he says.

Titan’s smile widens further, and Luna can’t help but think that this one is genuine. “My favorite color is—”

“Moon! Where are you?” Earth’s voice yells. Titan’s mouth closes with an audible clack, and Luna watches as another emotion—dread? Apprehension? Something along those lines, he thinks—swells in his eyes.

“Stay right here. I’ll be back in a minute,” Luna offers, but Titan immediately shakes his head.

“No, I- I’ll come with you,” he says. Luna can’t ignore the way that Titan’s words shake at the end of his sentence.

He looks at Titan once more, then begins to head back to his orbit. Titan follows behind him.

The moment Earth sees Luna coming, he rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. Oh. He isn’t in a good mood, then. Before Luna can dwell on that at all, Earth begins to speak.

“Moon! There you are!” he says. Something tugs at Luna’s core. Somehow, he’d let himself get used to being called Luna: he’d almost forgotten that, as far as he knows, Titan’s the only one that still remembers that name.

“Mars wants to go back to his orbit because he’s a sore loser—”

Mars scoffs. “I literally won,” he interrupts, but Earth pays him no mind.

“—so you have to come back to your orbit now, okay?”

Luna can’t bring himself to speak. He only manages to give him a quick nod. Earth smiles and, either oblivious or willfully ignorant of Luna’s internal struggle, turns to appraise Titan, whom he hadn’t so much as glanced at up to that point.

Titan’s expression shifts from completely blank to sheer terror in a split second, then finds a middle ground of nervousness somewhere between the two. It’s so quick that Luna almost thinks that he imagined it.

“U- Uh, hello, Mister Earth,” he says “It’s nice to meet—”

“Are you a new planet or something?” Earth asks, and Luna watches as Titan winces, concern and confusion only growing.

“Uh- no. I’m Titan. I’m one of Saturn’s moons,” Titan says, avoiding eye contact. He looks like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world, but there’s also a strange spark of determination in his eyes that makes Luna want to look closer.

There’s an awkward silence before Mars butts in.

“Hey, I think I’ve seen you from afar. You’re Saturn’s favorite moon, right?”

Titan flinches back. Luna’s eyes narrow. His mind reels, has been reeling this whole damn time, because he just doesn’t get it. Is it something to do with being the ‘favorite’? With Saturn? With planets in general?

He wouldn’t call himself a control freak by any means, but he likes to know what’s going on. He likes to understand things. He likes to know what others are thinking, or at least what they’re feeling, but Luna can’t read Titan and he hates it.

Mars continues talking, apparently not paying any attention to Titan’s body language. “What does he call you? His ‘Middle Earth’?”

Oh. Shit.

Luna quickly looks towards Earth, fast enough to see the array of emotions blooming on his face. Luna can’t quite read them—sometimes, Earth’s an enigma to him in the same way that Titan is—but he knows that none of them are particularly good.

“Wait, what?” Earth squawks. “What’s up with that name?!”

Mars keeps talking, none the wiser to the building tension. “Oh, it’s because Titan’s mountains are named after famous mountains from the ‘Lord of the Rings’ books.”

Earth visibly relaxes at that. “Oh. For a moment I thought that you were implying he was—”

“But,” Mars interrupts, “it’s also because you’re both made of rock, have atmospheres, volcanoes—”

“Wh- Volcanoes?” Earth says, interrupting Mars again (Luna rolls his eyes. Seriously, can neither of them let the other talk for more than five seconds at a time?). “Isn’t he, like, very cold?”

“Ice volcanoes,” Mars says. Luna perks up at that.

“Oh, that sounds way cooler!” he exclaims without thinking, only to be met with Earth’s near-murderous glare. Luna immediately averts eye contact, looking to the right, only to see Titan looking…

Well, Luna’s not sure. His expression is vacant, eyes staring out into nothingness, clearly not processing the two planets who stand in front of him. He’s completely still except for his shallow breaths and his hands, which are tapping against his legs rapidly.

Luna panics and, more on an impulse than anything, elbows him in the arm. Titan snaps to face him, eyes slightly unfocused but filled with a sad sort of resignation. Luna almost prefers the numbness to whatever this is.

Luna whispers. “Are you okay—?”

“Stop! Don’t say it!” Earth yells right in Mars’ face. Luna watches the way Mars’ expression contorts into a frown, and he feels his own grimace pulling on his lips.

“He’s just a moon, okay?! We’re nothing alike.”

… What?

Mars knits his brows. “C’mon, don’t be rude—”

“No!” Earth yells again. “Moons should know their place! Keep saying silly things like this and you’ll make them think that they can become planets like us!”

Luna can’t hear anything except his own pulse in his ears. He blinks once, twice, and then suddenly finds himself wishing that he’d been asleep.

He doesn’t know what to feel. His mind is whirling because what the fuck? Earth thinks that Luna’s lesser than him. Because he’s- what, because he’s a moon? That’s so… that doesn’t make any sense.

Surely Earth was just upset. It was in the heat of the moment; he didn’t mean it, and in a second he’ll realize what he said and apologize to him and Titan immediately.

Luna risks a glance at Earth. The anger and obvious aggression has faded from his expression, leaving him looking… happy? Something like that, he thinks.

Luna feels sick.

He turns to Titan, only to find him… gone? He squints at the asteroid belt and barely, just barely, catches a glimpse of a familiar orange-and-blue moon retreating inside.

His body is following after Titan before he even processes that information.

“Moon!” Earth yells, making Luna freeze in his tracks. “Where are you going?!”

Luna can’t find the words to express the creeping feeling of wrong that’s been slowly consuming him from the inside out over the past two days, nor the way Earth’s words had buried ice in his core and now he fears that maybe it’ll never thaw, that he’ll never again be without the chill that invades his brain, the ringing ‘know their place’ echoing over and over and reverberating through his very being.

Instead, he settles on a simple, “I’ll be back soon.”

With that, he heads for the asteroid belt.

He’s glad that Dark was awake only yesterday and likely drained all of his energy for a while. He doesn’t think that he could deal with the headache, both figuratively and literally, right now.

When Luna first breached the asteroid belt, he took a moment to stop and process what exactly had happened. That did him good, Luna thinks: he’s more aware of his surroundings now, not driven by his overwhelming emotions.

And it's because of his clear mind that he even finds Titan at all. He wouldn’t have spotted him, tucked away between asteroids like he was, if he was still on that emotional rampage that overtook him not an hour ago.

“Hey, Titan,” he says, trying his hardest not to startle him. It doesn’t work, if Titan’s full body flinch and rapid spin to face him are anything to go by.

“Luna?” Titan gapes. “What- why are you here?”

He flinches despite himself, the mystery of Titan knowing his name brought back to the forefront of his mind.

He chooses his next words carefully. Simplest is usually best, right? “I was looking for you,” he says, immediately regretting it as Titan blinks incredulously, as though trying to wake himself from a particularly odd dream.

“Uh… oh, because of the whole…”

Luna sighs and continues where Titan trailed off. “Yeah, the whole mess… Look, I just- are you okay?” he asks.

If anything, Titan looks even more confused. “Am I… okay?” he repeats. Luna would be embarrassed if not for the swirling frustration and concern inside of him that makes it difficult to feel anything else.

Luna clasps his hands together, absentmindedly fiddling with his fingers as he speaks. “I haven’t known you for very long, but you seem pretty anxious and, well, sad.”

Titan doesn’t say anything.

After a too-long pause, Luna continues. “I know we haven’t been friends for long, but you seem to care for me, so I want to take care of you, too. If you need to get anything off your chest… I’ll be there to listen.

He can’t help but feel guilty about his words. Even if it isn't quite a lie–he will take care of Titan if he wants him to, and he still genuinely wants to be his friend–it feels like one. He’s pretending to be the better person, to be a good person, when really he’s here mainly out of selfish curiosity and misplaced guilt.

That feeling intensives when he meets Titan’s eyes, only to find that he’s on the brink of tears.

Titan opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it once more. “Luna, I–”

Ah, there it is: an opportunity.

“That’s the one thing I don't understand,” Luna says. “Why do you call me that?”

Titan’s eyebrows furrow. “What do you mean?” he asks.

“You keep calling me Luna,” he says. “Not Earth’s Moon, not just Moon, but Luna.”

Titan cocks his head to the side in confusion. That, along with his pouty lips and furrowed brows, serves to make Titan look quite… adorable, for lack of a better word.

“But… that’s your name,” he says, though it sounds more like a question than a statement.

Luna groans, though at the same time, a spark of hope grows within him. Could Dark have been right? Do the others really remember his name? Is that why Titan sees no issue with it?

He refuses to get his hopes up yet.

“I know that! Of course I know my name! But no one- no one else calls me that. Not anymore, at least. So how do you know it? Why do you keep calling me that?”

Titan’s eyes fill with a mix of shock and panic. He only hesitates for a moment, but to Luna it feels as though a millennium passed in those few seconds.

Crash!

There’s a loud sound coming from behind Luna. He whips around on instinct, peering into the dark expanse before him.

“Who’s there?!” he yells. There’s no response, not that he was expecting one.

“Do you- Do you think it’s Ceres?” Titan whispers. Luna would question how he even knows about their existence in the first place, but he ignores that in favor of getting into a more athletic position, ready to run away or fight off whatever’s lurking out there at a moment’s notice.

Everything is quiet for a second. A shrill voice breaks that silence. “There you are!” it yells.

“Phobos? Deimos?” he hears Titan call from behind him. Deimos waves enthusiastically at them.

“Hi, Earth’s Moon! Hi, Titan!” he says. Luna raises an eyebrow at that, crossing his arms.

“Have you guys met?”

Phobos shakes his head no. “Nope!” he says, popping the ‘p’. “We’ve seen him before, though. Like when you guys were talking to Earth and Mars! And when you were hanging out yesterday!”

He turns his attention to Titan. “How do you know who they are, then?”

“Well- I told you yesterday that I wanted to get to know the rocky planet’s moons, right? That includes the Martian moons, so of course I know of them,” Titan says.

… Huh. That was sound enough logic, he supposes.

“You wanna be friends with us?” Deimos says. Luna feels a pang of sympathy for the two moons. At least they have each other...

He’s taken by surprise once again when Titan grins back at Deimos, his smile shining like the Sun himself.

“Of course I do,” he says, and Luna can’t detect any lie on his lips. “You guys seem pretty cool.”

Deimos looks like he might start hyperventilating. Luna really hopes that he doesn’t.

“Did you hear that, Phobos? He called us cool!”

Phobos nods happily. “I heard him, Deimos!”

Luna takes the opportunity to look at Titan again. He’s still smiling, but there’s something melancholy, wistful about it now. What could possibly warrant such a reaction to two kids being happy that you want to be their friend?

Titan turns to face him, their eyes meeting for only a moment. Luna immediately looks away, face burning at the feeling of being caught staring.

Luna clears his throat. “Why are you guys here?” he asks Deimos and Phobos.

“We saw you guys leave, and we followed!” Deimos says, eyes not leaving Titan.

Phobos shifts his gaze to Luna as he speaks. “Mars was mad. We didn’t want to watch them argue anymore.”

Luna winces in sympathy. He hates sticking around when Earth is arguing with other planets, too, especially when it’s with Venus or Mars. If he’s being honest, Earth and Mars’ arguments may be worse than Earth and Venus’, if only because Mars and Earth are the same type of stubborn. When Venus fights, it’s more insults than valid points, and if he knows he’s losing, he gives up after just a few more expletives. When Mars fights, it’s a competition, one that neither side is willing to lose, lest they bruise their egos.

“Okay. That makes sense,” he says before turning back to Titan. “Now, explain.”

Titan laughs nervously, inching away from Luna as he rubs his neck. “Explain what?”

Deimos puts a hand on the back of his neck, just like Titan, and repeats the same words. “Yeah, Earth’s Moon, explain what?” It would be sort of cute if it were any other situation, but right now Luna wants answers more than anything else.

“Explain how you know my name.” He watches Titan shift uncomfortably under his gaze.

Phobos tilts his head in confusion. “Everyone knows your name: it’s Earth’s Moon!”

“Yeah. It’s, like, really easy to remember,” Deimos says, nodding.

Luna grits his teeth as he forcefully turns away from them, putting his full attention on Titan. “Do you have an answer for me?"

He watches Titan weigh his options before coming to some sort of conclusion. Then, he shakes his head with a clenched jaw. “I… can’t tell you. I’m sorry, Luna.”

Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? All of that, and Titan won’t even tell him? Are you serious?

He’s taken out of his thoughts by Deimos’ rather pathetic excuse for a whisper. “Who’s Luna?” he asks.

That’s the final straw. “I am!” he yells. “That’s my name!”

Phobos and Deimos look up at him with wide eyes and suddenly Luna feels guilty for taking his anger out on them. He opens his mouth to apologize, but Phobos is already talking again.

“Ohhhh. That makes sense. How did Titan know that?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out!” Luna groans.

“I can’t tell you,” Titan repeats, though Luna can tell from his voice alone that his resolve is cracking.

“Oh, can we guess then?” Phobos asks, eager to play a game as always. It seems like Titan is going to say no, but Deimos cuts him off before he can deny.

“Good idea, Phobos!” he says. “Titan, are you… uh, spying on us?”

Titan frowns and denies his guess. Deimos pouts in response.

“Are you a mind reader?” Phobos guesses next, but once again Titan denies it.

At this point, Luna has to admit that he zoned out a bit, but in his defense he’s tired; not necessarily sleepy, though that is certainly a part of it, but just… tired.

It’s not like he missed anything very important, either, because he starts paying attention to the conversation again during Phobos’ last guess.

“You can see the future!” he says. Titan twitches, but this time he doesn’t deny it immediately. That moment of hesitation is basically the same thing as a confession to the Martian moons.

“Ha! I knew it!” Phobos yells. “You can see the future! See, Deimos! I did it!”

“Wait, wait, wait, I never said that that’s true,” Titan interjects, but it’s too little too late.

“But is it?” Deimos asks, looking up at Titan with big puppy dog eyes.

Titan bites his lip. Then, he sighs. “You got me. I… I can see the future.”

Luna rolls his eyes, laughing disbelievingly. “No way that’s true.”

Deimos turns to him, hands on his hips. “Why not?” he asks.

“Because it doesn’t make any sense!” he responds.

“We’re talking moons who can leave our orbits whenever we want. Logic doesn’t really apply to us most of the time,” Phobos says in a placating and somewhat condescending tone.

He sputters, searching for the words to explain how idiotic they’re being.

“That- That doesn’t mean Titan is a prophet!”

“Yes, it does!” Deimos yells back, like that’s a valid argument. He knows this is going nowhere, so he redirects his focus.

“Then prove it,” he says to Titan.

“What?” Titan asks and Luna swears that if these people keep asking stupid questions, he’s going to–

Deep breaths, Luna. Violence is Dark’s job; don’t steal their thing.

He pushes back his vaguely murderous thoughts in favor of looking at Titan like he’s an idiot. Hopefully that’ll get the point across.

“Tell me something that you know from the future,” he says. “Something that you wouldn’t be able to know normally.”

He watches Titan’s eyebrows scrunch up, his hand absentmindedly coming up to his mouth. He’s actually thinking about it. That’s… weird. Luna thought that he’d give up the whole seer charade once he got called out on it, that it was just to appease Phobos and Deimos’ imaginations, but it looks like he’s taking it pretty seriously…

Then, Titan’s eyes widen, sparkling with something akin to excitement.

“The Dark Side of the Moon!” he says. “I know about him.”

And Luna’s entire world shifts.

His throat’s suddenly dry, hands clammy as he tries to make sense of everything. His mind swirls with confusion, disbelief clouding his senses. He forces himself to get a grip.

“How do you… How do you know them?” he asks, forcing his voice not to waver.

“Titan’s a prophet!” one of the little moons says, the other quickly concurring. Luna pays them no mind, his eyes never leaving Titan.

Titan meets his gaze. “I know about them because, in the future, we’re supposed to meet.”

“Dark doesn’t meet anyone,” Luna says because it’s true: as long as he can remember, it’s been him that deals with the socializing. Heck, even Earth himself hasn’t spoken to Dark. That’s the system that works best for them, how it's always been.

“He threatens me,” Titan says plainly.

“Oh,” he says. “I guess that makes more sense.” After all, Luna’s only known Titan for a day and Dark has already threatened to ‘handle’ him.

Wait, why is he accepting this whole seeing the future thing so easily? He has more questions, more investigation to do before he even considers believing Titan.

Suddenly, one pops into his head. “If you really can see the future… why? How?”

“I’m not sure. What I do know is that I need your help,” Titan says before looking over at Phobos and Deimos. “All of your help.”

Phobos and Deimos both chitter happily at that, glad to assist him, but Luna is wary. It seems like Titan knows just what buttons to push, just what to say to get people on his side. Is that what he is, then? A manipulator?

But then he looks at Titan and he sees his smile. Full of fondness, colored with pride and affection and tenderness, all directed at two moons who he shouldn’t have been able to meet before. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful smile simply because of how real it is. Surely no one could fake something like that.

“What exactly do you need our help with?” Luna asks, regretting it immediately as Titan’s smile fades into a more pensive look.

Titan sighs, rubbing his arm as he speaks. “Something… bad is supposed to happen in the future. I need your help to stop that from happening.”

“Whatever you say, Boss!” Deimos yells. Luna almost rolls his eyes, but stops short when he sees Titan flinch. Is it because of the volume or the nickname?

“You- You don’t have to call me that if you don’t want to,” Titan responds, strangely uneasy.

Definitely the nickname, then.

Phobos chimes in. “Well, we want to, Boss!”

Titan smiles, though not as bright as before. “Oh. Okay then.”

“What happens in the future that’s so bad?” Luna asks.

Titan’s expression falls again and suddenly Luna feels like he’s looking at someone ancient, someone who’s seen everything that the universe has to offer, someone who’s seen too much.

“Death,” he says bluntly. Everything goes quiet.

“I can change it, though,” Titan continues, and the light returns to his eyes, chasing away the darkness and bringing back that spark of youth, of life.

“We can change it.”

Luna finds himself wanting to believe him.

“How?” he asks.

Titan looks at all of them, then glances around the area, as though taking in the darkness that surrounds him for the first time.

“I know another place in the asteroid belt, one that’s more… more secure than here. We can talk there, okay?” There’s something fragile in Titan’s voice that he can’t quite place.

“Okay, Boss!” Phobos and Deimos say as one. Luna raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything.

Titan begins moving, the two little ones following behind, and Luna’s struck by the realization that they’re expecting him to follow them. He’s already been out of his orbit for a while, and if he leaves Earth alone for too long… he doesn’t want to hurt his planet or the Earthlings (and he’d prefer to not get in trouble, either).

Titan, as if sensing his hesitation, turns around, looking into his eyes questioningly.

Luna immediately breaks eye contact, shifting his gaze between Titan and the spot where he feels his orbit pulling him, where he’s supposed to be, orbiting Earth and keeping the Earthlings safe.

“I… I can’t leave my orbit for long,” he says, and Titan looks at him like he understands.

“We won’t be gone for long, I promise. The Earth will be only without you for a few hours or so,” he says.

Well, what’s the worst that can happen? Luna, albeit reluctantly, nods. “If you’re sure…”

“I am,” Titan says, smiling at him brightly.

Luna blinks, then hesitantly smiles back. Titan turns away, Phobos and Deimos at either side, leaving Luna to trail behind them.

He shouldn’t follow them. He should be more concerned, more cautious. He hasn’t asked enough questions. Titan has been vague at best, deceitful at worst.

Does he really trust Titan?

… Not really, no. But that doesn’t stop him from wanting to.

It’s completely illogical, downright stupid, but Luna wants to believe Titan. He wants to give him a chance to prove himself. He wants to understand him. He wants to hear what he claims to be the future, see what he plans to do to stop it.

“Death,” Titan had said. He said that the future is death.

If that’s the case, if there’s even a possibility of that being true, then Luna will see this through.

After all, seeing is believing.

Chapter Text

“Now, where should I start?” Titan mutters to himself.

“Maybe at the beginning?” Luna responds. Titan shoots a half-hearted glare his way.

They’d made it to a fairly large clearing in the asteroid belt, one that Titan’s intimately familiar with. Now, he wonders if it was a good idea to come back here. Every time his eyes linger on his surroundings for a moment too long, he suppresses a shudder, feeling the burden of time that rests on his shoulders grow heavier and heavier. It’s like he can feel the ghosts haunting this place, even though no one has died here (yet). It’s a hideaway, untouched by the outside world and unblemished by war and pain and suffering, that stands as a reminder of just how much Titan stands to lose. Just how much he’s lost.

He lets out a long sigh, tearing his eyes away from the clutter of asteroids surrounding them and towards the three that stand before him. Luna stands stock-still, a hand on his hip, looking at Titan expectantly, probably waiting for his explanation.

Meanwhile, both Phobos and Deimos seem… twitchy, for lack of a better word. Whether out of nerves or excitement or some mix of the two, Titan can’t tell. Their eyes wander, taking in the drab scenery, and Titan wonders if today is the first time they’ve ever been in the asteroid belt. Is this the first time they’ve ever left their orbits? His brain immediately tells him that, no, that can't be true, nor is it even remotely plausible, but the uncomfortable thought still lingers against his will.

He shakes his head and forces himself to focus on his response, his explanation. How should he do this…? He regrets not planning out what to say ahead of time, even if just a vague outline.

Well, it’s not like he ever planned to tell anyone in the first place.

“Start at the beginning, huh?” he says, mostly to himself. What’s the beginning? When he met Ganymede and Europa in this very spot? When Astrodude told him he had life? When he met the Earth? Billions of years before that, when he was newly formed and Saturn silently decided that he was the only one who mattered?

“Yes, the beginning,” Luna repeats, a tired sort of exasperation coating his voice. “You said that the future is death. I think we’d all appreciate a bit more context.”

Well, he might as well rip the band-aid off, right? There’s no use in ‘context’ if you don’t know what it’s context for, after all.

“In the future I saw,” he breathes out, “I die, along with the Earth. We collide. I didn’t- I wasn’t able to see anything beyond that, but I’d reckon that we weren’t the only ones who…” he trails off, suddenly guilty and horrified at his words all over again. He thought about it before, sure, but saying it out loud feels different.

(It still doesn’t feel real.)

They all gape at him wordlessly.

“B- But how?” Phobos asks with a shaky voice. “You and Earth don’t orbit near each other.”

Titan bites his lip, willing himself to continue. He can do this. He needs to do this.

“Before I- we-…” Titan takes a breath, then starts again. “Before that, there was a bit of a… conflict.”

“A conflict? What do you mean?” Deimos asks.

Titan crosses his arms, curling in on himself slightly. He worries his lip between his teeth, pausing the motion to take a deep breath before speaking again.

“A revolution,” he says. “Some of the moons—well, almost all of the moons, really—decided they were fed up with how they were treated by their planets, so they tried to do something about it.”

No one speaks, and the silence is suffocating. There’s a silent question in the air, one that no one is brave enough to ask, one that Titan is too scared to answer.

They deserve to know, he tells himself. They deserve to know what you did. They deserve to know the monster that you are.

“It was my fault,” he chokes out, the burning sting in his eyes serving to ground him, to distract him from the pain in his core. “I- It was all my fault.”

Phobos and Deimos hover anxiously, looking as though they want to reach out and comfort him but are too scared to do so.

Scared. Scared, just like they were when Mars—

He shifts his gaze, desperate to look anywhere but at their faces, and accidentally glances towards Luna. Luna, who hasn’t said anything since he started explaining, who doesn’t trust him, whose planet he started a revolution against, whose planet he killed, whose- oh Sun—

He’s suddenly on his knees. He doesn’t know how that happened. He doesn’t know much of anything right now because he can’t think. He’s too busy listening to the rapid pounding in his core and the screams: the distorted sound of his screams and the Earth’s screams and the screams of billions of tiny defenseless beings who he wanted to kill just to prove a point- he wanted to kill them, and then he didn’t want to, and they still died- he still killed them–

They didn’t deserve that. They didn’t deserve to die because of his stupid, selfish, naïve plan, one that didn’t help anyone, just caused more hurt. What if it happens again? What if that’s his destiny: to make everyone around him suffer because of how much he fucking sucks at being a leader? Will he do it again? Will he murder them again? Will he destroy the Earth again through his selfishness, his naivety, his—

Something grabs onto his wrists, pinning them together in front of him. He flinches away violently, trying to tug away from whatever was holding him down.

“Hey, hey, hey,” a soothing, panicked, painfully familiar voice says, “It’s okay; it’s- uh, shit. Uh, can you- can you try to breathe with me?”

Through sobs, Titan shakes his head. His breathing is too fast, too shallow; he knows that, but he can’t stop; he can’t control it. It’s just like that first day, when he’d first come back, and he couldn’t quell the panic that swelled and swelled and swelled until it burst. He ran away back then (was it really only two days ago? It feels like a lifetime). He ran away from Saturn and the other moons, and he hid like the coward that he is. He ran away, and he changed everything, and now everything’s wrong; it’s all wrong, and it’s his fault; he broke everything—

The pressure on his wrists increases, not enough to be painful, but enough to ground him. He almost wishes that it would hurt.

His eyes snap up. Luna is perched in front of him, squeezing his hands like a lifeline. He looks- He looks horrified.

“Breathe with me,” he says, and it’s not a question. He takes a deep breath in for about four seconds, holds the breath for seven, then exhales for eight. He repeats the motion over and over, exaggerating his motions each time. Titan finds himself mimicking the pattern, though his breaths are interrupted by hiccups and sobs. Luna’s eyes never leave his own.

Eventually, Luna must deem him to be suitably calm, because he gently releases Titan’s wrists, though stays kneeling in front of him.

Titan looks down at his arms, startled by the raised scratch marks that litter across them, like someone had raked their nails—

Oh. So that’s why Luna grabbed his hands like that.

“Sorry,” he breathes out, and somehow Luna’s frown deepens even further.

“I sent Phobos and Deimos away,” Luna starts. “I figured you wouldn’t want them to see you like that.”

Titan sighs, running a hand through his hair. “… Thank you,” he says.

It’s quiet again, balancing on the thin border between comforting and awkward. Titan feels his mind start to drift again.

“Titan,” Luna’s voice cuts through the silence. “Stay here, okay?”

Titan blinks, some of the dense fog clearing from his head. He hums in confusion. “But… I am here? I’m not leaving anytime soon.” He doesn’t think he’s capable of moving right now, even if he wanted to. His body feels heavy, like how Saturn’s gravity tugs him back to his orbit, only this pull wants him to go down.

Luna looks at him strangely, in a way Titan can’t decipher, then sighs in defeat and shakes his head. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

Titan would respond, but before he can, Luna has opened his mouth again; wisely, Titan keeps his shut.

“I,” Luna starts, then cuts himself off with a sigh. He clears his throat before speaking again. “I believe you, Titan.”

Titan perks up slightly. Luna must be amused by the mixture of surprise and disbelief in his expression as his mouth upturns into a small smirk before he continues.

“I didn’t at first. I kind of thought you were crazy, honestly. But I don’t think anyone could fake something like that. I just want you to know that… I’m here for you, okay? I’ll help out with your crazy plan to save the universe,” he says, and Titan is enraptured by the smile on his lips, his expression that should be filled with worry or solemnity but is instead coated in something soft and warm, something that glitters like those faraway stars that dot the space that surrounds them.

Titan smiles in turn, but he knows that there’s no way that his own matches the beauty of Luna’s.

“Thank you,” Titan says. “I promise that I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

Luna lets out a little breathless laugh. “I’ll hold you to that.”

Titan forces himself to focus, temporarily pushing away that giddy feeling that threatens to overtake his senses. “Let’s go get Phobos and Deimos. Once we’re all together, you guys can ask me whatever else you want to know, and I can tell you my plan. We can flesh out the details after that.”

Luna’s brows furrow, and he looks up at Titan with something like concern. “Are you sure you’re okay with answering questions again? You don’t want to wait for a bit, or…?”

That warm feeling swells inside of his core again, and if Titan didn’t know any better, he’d say that his oceans were boiling or something. He pushes the feeling down, down, down, focusing instead on his response.

“It’s okay, really,” he says. “We’re all allies; it wouldn’t be fair to you if you didn’t get all the information you need just because I can’t handle it. Besides, we should really leave the asteroid belt soon, just to be safe. I don’t want to slow us down at all.”

Luna’s eyes sharpen, and he raises an eyebrow. “Y’know, you don’t have to be so cryptic all the time. Like, I know you’re a ‘prophet‘ or whatever, but...”

Titan sighs. “Sorry, bad habit. Uh, so, in the prophecy—is that what we’re calling it now?—Ganymede and Europa, two of Jupiter’s moons, meet us in the asteroid belt and kind of… make a mess of everything. I don't know if or when they’ll show up this time, but I don’t really want to find out. I’m going to try to avoid them as long as possible, which means we should leave the belt soon and find a new place to set up base.”

Luna doesn’t look quite satisfied with that answer, but he doesn’t push either. He sucks in a breath. “Okay. We’ll leave soon, then. But you’re going to sit here for at least another ten minutes before we go get Phobos and Deimos.”

Titan opens his mouth to protest, but Luna cuts him off. “No buts! I can see your legs shaking, and you're not even putting pressure on them. If you got up now, you’d trip over an asteroid and- and fall to your death!”

Titan snorts. “Fall to my death?”

Luna flushes, letting out a little whine, a mix between frustration and embarrassment. “You know what I mean!”

Titan can’t help but laugh. Luna sighs again, then proceeds to sit right next to Titan. He gently touches Titan’s head, pushing it down so that he’s resting on Luna’s shoulder. The angle is a bit strange because of the height difference between them, but Titan must admit that it’s strangely comfortable.

“Just… rest for a minute, okay?” Luna says, voice much softer than a moment ago.

Titan hums in response, agreeing without words.

Titan leans on Luna and sighs, smiling slightly. Despite everything, this might be the best moment he’s had since he came back.

Chapter Text

Eventually, Luna deems him fit enough to move forward with the plan. They stand together, walking side by side towards the clearing where Luna says that Phobos and Deimos are waiting.

Deimos spots Titan first, standing and immediately bolting over to him. Phobos notices a moment later, chasing right after his brother.

“Titan! Are you okay?” Phobos asks, an anxious edge to his voice. It makes Titan’s core ache to know that he's the one who caused them so much worry. Instead of dwelling on that feeling, Titan smiles reassuringly.

“I’m okay, guys,” he says.

Deimos frowns. “Are you sure?”

Titan nods, forcing his smile not to wilt. “Yes, I’m sure. I’m fine now.”

The two look at each other, somehow communicating without words. They turn back to Titan in sync.

“Pinky promise us then. So that we know you really mean it,” Deimos says, his brother nodding along with him.

He can practically feel Luna roll his eyes next to him, but Titan ignores it. He drops down to a squat so that he’s eye level with the two brothers. Then, he holds out both of his hands, one for each of them, and extends both of his pinkies.

“I pinky promise that I’m okay,” he swears.

Phobos and Deimos glance towards each other again. They both extend one of their own hands and link their pinkies with Titan’s.

Something about the action makes Titan feel childish: not that he remembers ever making a pinky promise in his childhood (or the first couple million years of his life in general, really). It leaves him with an enthusiastic, almost giddy feeling that immediately fades into a dull ache in his core. It's almost like phantom pain: something should be there, but it isn't, and that lack makes it hurt. Titan pushes those confusing emotions to the back of his mind, making sure to focus on the two moons in front of him.

“You’re not allowed to break a pinky promise,” Deimos says.

Titan nods seriously. “I know. I won’t.”

“We believe you, Titan!” Deimos responds as he drops his hand back to his side.

“And if you’re lying, we’ll break your pinkies!” Phobos adds, far too cheerful about the threat of bodily harm.

Titan nods again, forcing himself to keep a straight face. It's always been easy for him to entertain them, to indulge in their little games. “That sounds fair,” he responds.

Phobos’ whole face lights up at his response. It would be funny if Titan’s brain didn’t start nagging him about how it’s sad, really, that Phobos is so happy about being taken seriously. He tries to push the unwanted thought away, but he can’t help the frown that etches itself across his face.

He can change that, Titan reminds himself. That’s his job: to change things. To make everything better.

The first time, he tried to make sure all of them were respected. This time, he will succeed.

Luna clears his throat. “So… are you ready? To tell us about this 'prophecy'?”

Titan takes a deep breath before nodding. “I'm ready whenever you guys are.”

Phobos and Deimos share another look between themselves. Luna, meanwhile, doesn’t take his eyes off of Titan. When he finally does start to speak, Titan braces himself for the question.

“You said that there was a revolution,” Luna says. “How did that… were we involved in it?”

Titan tenses but stiffly nods. Honestly, there were worse questions that could've been asked. He promised Luna that he’d tell them everything, even the things that he… rather wouldn’t. He's going to keep his promise, no matter what he has to confess.

“All of us were, at least at the beginning. When things got more… extreme, you left, but Phobos, Deimos, and I stayed.”

Luna sucks in a breath. “What do you mean by 'extreme'?”

“…The revolution was originally supposed to be a strike. A peaceful one,” Titan says, biting his lip. “Then, more people joined, and our ideas got… tilted a bit. We were desperate, and… and we took things too far.”

Luna crosses his arms. “Titan, that doesn’t answer my question.”

A beat of silence. Titan inhales. Then:

“The plan was to destroy all life on Earth.”

For a moment, everything in the entire universe is frozen. Luna gapes at him, wide eyes filled with shock and horror and fear, just like when—

No, now’s not the time for that. Not again. He has to stay focused.

“What…?” Luna asks. His voice is small and unsure, so unlike the Luna that Titan knows. It's almost enough to make him want to start crying again.

Instead, he pushes forward.

“We thought that if we could take down the golden boy—” Titan cuts himself off, those words burning his throat like bile. He swallows, trying again. “If we got rid of what made the most important planet special, it would take him down a peg and force them to listen to us. To treat us like equals.”

Phobos speaks up, his voice uncharacteristically meek. “Titan?” he asks.

Titan turns to look at him. “Yes, Phobos?”

And the smaller moon stands there for a moment, as if weighing his options. Finally, though, he opens his mouth to speak.

“Why do you keep saying ‘we’?”

Titan tilts his head. “What do you mean?”

Phobos wrings his hands together, shifting his weight back and forth as he begins to explain. “I know you said that you—that all of us—are a part of that revolution in the future. But… when you talk about what that revolution did in your vision, you say ‘we,’ like you were involved in all of it: not just the actual, um, fighting and whatever. It sounds like you were leading it."

Titan feels his core drop. His mouth goes dry. He wants to scream, to cry, to run away.

He can't, though. He can't run away again. He keeps just running away, and it keeps just making everything worse.

He forces himself to remain still. He bites his lip and, after another moment of hesitation, gives Phobos a single decisive nod.

“That- That’s right. I was one of the leaders of the revolution.”

Phobos’ eyes widen, like he hadn’t expected Titan to give that answer. To his side, Deimos gasps. 

Titan sucks in a breath, preparing to- well, he doesn’t really know what. Apologize? Try to justify his actions? Convince them that it wasn’t his fault? That he didn’t want to hurt anyone? That he didn’t kill anyone?

All of that would be a lie. A dirty, ugly lie that he would never dare utter.

Before he can decide what to do, what to say, he’s thrown off balance by a sudden tug of gravity. He stumbles forward, right into—

Luna. Or… not.

Titan swallows back his fear, staring into the inky black eyes that glare at him, gleaming with pure, unfiltered rage.

“What the fuck are you going to do?” sneers the Dark Side of the Moon—or is it just Dark? That’s what Luna called them earlier- this really isn’t the time to think about this, is it?

“U- Uh,” he stutters dumbly, lost for words. “I really don't mean to—"

“Bullshit,” Dark growls. "Tell us the truth."

“I didn’t mean to,” he says again, and this time he must sound genuine enough—pathetic enough, more like—that Dark hesitates for a moment, their face going eerily blank. He stares at Titan with those void-like eyes, cocking his head at a slight angle, almost as though they’re trying to listen to something far away.

Then, without warning, Dark lets his tense shoulders drop. They slump forward into a more relaxed—but no less guarded—pose, no longer looking like a predator about to pounce. Sheer relief pours through Titan's body, temporarily drowning out all of his previous anxiety. For a moment he was afraid that Dark would follow through with their promise from the first time around. Titan doesn't think that he could handle another collision right now.

“Fine, fine, I won’t do anything," Dark says, rolling his eyes. "You're so annoying sometimes, you know that?”

For a moment, Titan thinks that he's talking to him. He opens his mouth to respond, but before he can get anything out, there’s a… shift. Dark closes their eyes, muttering something indiscernible under their breath.

After a moment his eyes flutter open once again, only this time their sclerae are back to their usual white hue.

Huh. So that's how that works. Titan's never seen them 'switch' before, at least not from this close. Granted, he only ever met Dark once, so that wasn't much of an opportunity to watch it happen, but still…

Luna sucks in an audible breath, flexing his fingers as though he’s getting used to having a body again, which is a weird thought to have, but Titan supposes that it's accurate enough to the situation.

“Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to let them have control like that. I was just…” Luna says before trailing off.

“Overwhelmed?” Titan guesses.

Luna sends him an unreadable look but nods his head curtly. “Yeah. That.”

There's a brief, awkward pause. Luna purses his lips and sighs, as though he's finally decided on something. Or maybe he's just fighting with Dark in his head. It could be either, honestly.

"I want you to tell us everything. Everything that's supposed to happen in the future that you saw. We won't interrupt you until you're done. Right, guys?" he asks, giving Phobos and Deimos a pointed glance.

Phobos nods quickly, but Deimos gives Luna a curious look.

"So… was that 'Dark'?"

Luna groans, rubbing a hand over his face. "Yes. Yes, it was. But we can talk about them after Titan finishes his story."

Deimos makes a noise of protest, but is immediately cut off by his brother's hand over his mouth. He tries, unsuccessfully, to shove Phobos off of him. Meanwhile, Phobos smiles brightly at Titan, giving him a thumbs up with his free hand.

"It's your turn, Boss! We won't interrupt you again, promise!"

Titan nods. He can do this. He can do this. Short and simple, but without leaving any important information out.

He takes a deep breath in, a deep breath out, and then he starts to speak, making sure to keep his voice level and calm.

"Like I said before, there was a revolution. I… sort of started it."

Titan braces himself for a response, but no one says anything. Granted, that may be because Phobos' hand is still firmly planted over his brother's mouth. He takes the lack of screaming as a sign to continue.

"It- I really didn't mean for it to get so out of hand. After my… conversation with the Earth, I went to the asteroid belt. Luna followed me later, and, with Astrodude's… uh, help, we discovered life in the ocean beneath my surface."

Luna opens his mouth, but before he actually says anything, he must think better of it, as it closes a moment later with an audible clack.

"I wanted to change things, so I started planning a strike. I wanted to make the planets see that we're all equal, and I figured the best way to do it would be to just… leave. Temporarily, of course. That way, they would realize that they need us, that moons are just as important as planets are. You three agreed to help."

Titan bites his lip.

"Not long after that, I met Ganymede and Europa, two of Jupiter's moons. Ganymede- he convinced me that it would be more effective to… to use violence to teach the Earth a lesson. So, we- we planned to destroy Earth's surface with asteroids in order to… to kill off the Earthlings…"

Stars, it sounds even worse when he says it aloud.

Luna visibly tenses at that, even more than before, and looks at Titan, as though he's searching for something. At some point, Deimos and Phobos had gotten themselves together, now watching Titan as he explains. They're wary due to the revelation, that much is obvious, but they're also not as affected as Luna. Which makes sense, considering that they're not moons of the planet he had been aiming to destroy—

If Titan stops now, if he starts to think now, he doesn't know if he'll be able to continue. He forces his mouth to keep moving, to keep talking, to keep telling them what they deserve to know.

"That's when Luna left: he didn't want to be a part of it, any of it, so he… left. We—me and the Galilean moons, I mean—split up to try to recruit other moons to the Revolution. Callisto and Io went to Neptune, Ganymede and Europa went to Saturn, and I went-…"

The words 'to Uranus' die on the tip of his tongue because…

… because the Uranian moons are definitely still out there, hiding from their planet, aren't they? Titan hadn't even thought about Titania or the others. How could he let something so important slip his mind? He should've—

Nope. Think about it later: he doesn't have any time to waste. Not here, not now.

He looks up, and his eyes meet Luna's, who stares at him with an eyebrow raised.

Titan laughs nervously.

"So, uh, yeah, I went to Uranus."

Titan pointedly ignores the snickers coming from two particular moons. Instead of saying anything, he clears his throat.

"Anyways, we all gathered in the asteroid belt. Apparently, while Callisto, Io, and I were gone, Europa and Ganymede tried to recruit Venus and Mars to the revolution. It didn't go well, and they ended up… battling, I guess."

"What?!" Phobos shrieks, shattering the uneasy silence in the air.

"What happened? Was Mars okay?!" Deimos asks in that same high-pitched tone.

"Yes, yes, he was fine!" Titan says, even though he's… not certain that that's the case, to be honest. He thinks the other moons would've said something if they actually destroyed two of the planets, but he can't be sure. Of course, he's not going to tell Phobos and Deimos that.

"Luna came back and tried to convince me to stop, but… I didn't. He left again, and this time you two, along with Callisto, Io, and Triton—one of Neptune's moons—went with him. Um… then, Earth came back and apologized."

Luna's carefully neutral visage shifts to one of incredulity. "Really?"

Titan nods. "Yeah. He seemed genuine, too. So, I accepted the apology and tried to get everyone else to stand down, but Ganymede and Europa convinced all the other moons to attack. I blocked an asteroid that was headed for Earth, then I fought with Ganymede. He… he hit me with another asteroid, and it sent me flying backwards. I couldn't stop in time, so I…"

He can't finish the sentence. His body is jittery and alive and wrong. He can still hear the ringing in his ears: maybe it never stopped. Maybe he's cursed to always hear the explosion, the impact, in the back of his mind. Maybe it'll continue eternally. Maybe it'll stop when he dies—and stays dead—in this timeline.

It still doesn't make sense; why he's here, why he's not still dead—

Everyone is quiet. Luna looks at him with sad, almost guilty eyes. Titan can't even begin to imagine what he'd be guilty over.

"Titan…" he says slowly, calmly, like he's not talking to a murderer.

Not yet, a little voice in the back of his head reminds him. He's not a murderer yet.

But does it make a difference whether or not the Earth is alive now?

Titan still killed him a lifetime ago. Three days ago.

Maybe this Earth is alive, but that Earth, the one who admitted that it was his fault to begin with, who earnestly apologized for his mistakes, who loved those feeble, weak, defenseless Earthlings… is he still dead? Floating in the void of space, his crust blending in with the other debris within the asteroid belt, his mantle cracked open, bleeding out lava for all to see? Is Titan's body there too, mixed with Earth's remains, the chunks of rock and ice so entangled with each other that they can't be told apart?

In the end, there's no difference between moons and planets: they're all just collections of gas and rock and ice and stardust. Perhaps, in a way, Titan ended up becoming a perfect example of the ideology that defined him, that killed him.

Titan and Earth, moon and planet: antitheses in life, indistinguishable in death. It's rather poetic, from a certain point of view.

He can't tell if the thought is comforting or not.

"Titan," Luna says again, and for a moment, Titan is somewhere else: the same place, a different time. A time when Luna didn't speak his name so softly. No, it was harsh and loud and angry, rightfully so. Titan was shocked back then, not at the tone, but at the fact that Earth's Moon was even alive. And isn't that a terrible thought?

He blinks the image away and smiles. "Yeah, Luna?"

Luna hesitates for a moment before speaking. "That's it? That's all you saw?"

Titan nods in confirmation. "Yup, that's it. Sorry if it's not much…"

Luna shakes his head. "It's fine. Trust me, that was plenty of information."

Titan wonders why now Luna seems to buy the whole 'prophet' act. If he's only pretending to trust Titan, then Luna's a much better actor than he gave him credit for.

"Yeah, Boss!" Deimos says. "Besides, without you, we wouldn't know anything! I'd rather know some of the future than none at all!"

Titan bites his lip. "The only thing is… I don't know how accurate any of that will be anymore."

"What do you mean, Boss?" Phobos asks.

He rubs the back of his neck. "Just… I had this vision three days ago now, but so much has already changed from what was supposed to happen that I'm not sure how accurate the rest of it will be."

"What's changed so far?" Luna asks.

"Well, I guess the biggest chance is Saturn," Titan says.

"Saturn?" Phobos asks.

"In the future- the future that I saw, the thing that got me to go and meet the Earth in the first place was Saturn. He gathered all of his moons together and told us that his rings are kinda… made from old, crushed moons?"

Luna blanches. "He- What?"

Titan sighs. If there's one thing that he really doesn't want to add to his list of anxieties right now, it's the ring situation. He'd mostly pushed it to the back of his mind, but… yeah, it's really messed up, isn't it?

"The other moons were meant to get angry, and I was the one who was supposed to calm everything down temporarily, but… I didn't do anything. Instead, I just left. When I came back, after talking to you, Luna, Saturn was gone, which definitely didn't happen the first time."

Luna gives him yet another of his borderline-judgmental, analytical looks—if he didn't know better, Titan would assume that Luna's psychoanalyzing him right now—but says nothing.

Deimos smiles up at him. "Well, it's okay! That probably won't change everything: we still have an idea of what's gonna happen, at least!"

Titan smiles back at him. "You're right, Deimos. I shouldn't worry so much."

"What should we do now?" Luna cuts in. "Do you have a plan?"

Titan straightens. Finally, finally, he's back in his element. "Right now, my plan is for us to try to recruit moons for a peaceful protest, like my original idea for a strike. If we can get people on board before anyone has the idea to use violence, we can hopefully prevent any actual violence from taking place in the future."

Luna nods. "That makes sense. How are we going to do that?"

Titan's eyes widen. "You- you're on board? Just like that?"

Luna smiles at him, small but as bright as always. "Is there a reason I shouldn't be?"

Heat floods Titan's cheeks as he rapidly shakes his head. "N- No! Not at all! I just… didn't expect you to trust me so quickly, I guess."

Something in Luna's eyes softens, warms. "I promised you that I believed you, Titan. I don't break my promises."

(Next to them, Deimos excitedly whispers something about "ships.". Phobos promptly tells him to shut up.)

Titan looks away. He can't take the look in Luna's eyes. It's too captivating, addicting, almost. Titan feels like he could get lost in there forever, like he could drown in it.

"We should take a break, I think," Luna says. "My head hurts from all of this 'seeing the future' stuff."

Titan regains his composure and nods.

"That's fine by me. Is that okay with you two?" he asks Phobos and Deimos.

Deimos nods rapidly, a suspiciously mischievous glint in his eyes. "Sure! Me and Phobos are gonna go explore! We'll be back in a little bit!"

Before Titan can even blink, Deimos has already pulled his brother away, who looks begrudgingly acceptant of his situation. They're gone in seconds, leaving Titan and Luna alone in the clearing.

Luna turns to him. "… They were being weird, right? Well, weirder than normal."

Titan sighs. "Just let them be kids, Luna. They're not hurting anyone."

Luna rolls his eyes. "Sure, but they were being weird, right?"

Titan sighs again. Then, after a long pause, he nods. "Yes, fine, they were acting weird."

Luna nods, satisfied with his answer. "I'm glad you agree."

Titan can't help the smile that blooms on his lips, even as he pretends to be annoyed. "Whatever."

Luna laughs, light and airy and completely devoid of any darkness lingering from the prior conversation. That light, airy feeling fills Titan's chest, as though he's the one that's laughing.

For the first time since he came back—perhaps for a while before that—Titan feels like maybe, just maybe, everything will be okay.