Chapter Text
“What if...I was in a time loop, and I could bring you along. Would you want to be in it as well?”
Your best friend on the planet, in the solar system, in the whole entire universe, is currently all geared up and ready to go to space—somehow having gotten the launch codes from Hornfels without you noticing—and yet, they’re still on the ground, leaning on the little outcrop of dirt just outside the museum, next to you, speaking to you.
“Where in the universe would you even get yourself into such a situation?” You snort. “Don’t answer that. Of course you’d manage it, somehow.”
“Hey!” They shove you, lightly.
You lean back into their hand. “’Hey’ yourself. Would you want me to bail you out of your hypothetical time travel problems, too?”
“Since when do you ‘bail me out’ of anything? I’m usually the one bailing you out.”
“Yeah, and who was it that had to distract Mica the last time you got their model ship stuck in a tree?”
“And that was so nice of you to do, Hal.” They blink pleadingly at you.
But it’s rare that you get even close to having the upper hand in your little bouts of bantering. “I am so nice.”
“The nicest.” They tilt their head at you.
You rub the back of your neck. This is a fun change of pace, but you’re a little too unused to it. “What do you want?”
“What?”
“I mean, why are you still here? You could be...anywhere. Trying out the translator. Finally finding out what the Nomai have to say…”
Their ears twitch. “I wanted to find out if you’d want to get stuck in the same time loop as me.”
“You could ask me that any time though.” You turn to look them in the face, but they avoid your gaze. “You’re...not nervous about finally heading to space, are you?”
“No!” They cover up their sudden exclamation with a breezy laugh. “Done it a hundred times before.” They wink at you, and you roll your eyes at their obvious fib.
“Sure, sure, if you say so…” You sigh. “And...yeah, of course I’d want to be in the same time loop as you. I couldn’t figure that out without your help.” You nod at the translator. “How could you get out of some time loop without mine?”
They beam brightly at your response, but just as quickly, their ears droop and their grin disappears. “Hal, would you really want to be?”
You’d thought they were talking about some hypothetical situation before, but the lightness in their tone is entirely gone now. You don’t laugh as you answer in kind: “I really would.”
They sigh, and pat you on the shoulder once, heavily. “Good. That’s good to hear. Thank you, Hal.” Just as you’re about to ask them what’s going on, they smile again, the solemnity lifted. “So, I’ve been thinking of heading to Giant’s Deep and checking out those statues...”
It’s useless to try to pry things out of them before they’re ready to talk. So, you match their response, say something about the statues, about the one in the museum—you offer to go get Hornfels so you three could have a proper discussion, but your friend declines, says they just wanted to spend some time with you. You circle around the topic of their first launch a few times, but neither of you quite touch upon it.
And then, out of nowhere, so casually that at first you don’t parse the meaning of the words, they say, “Oh, and the sun’s going to go supernova in about five minutes.”
“Okay,” You say at first, and then it hits you. “Wait, what?”
“The sun,” your friend says patiently. “It’s going to explode. Supernova.”
You frown at them. They’re studying you with a careful sort of nonchalance—a little too careful.
Is this really a joke? You risk squinting directly at the sun with your lower eyes.
Wasn’t the sun once smaller? Was it always so red, so dim, with only its core glowing luminous white? Weren’t the stars once fainter during the day?
A sentence from the museum’s exhibit on a star’s life cycle drifts through your mind: the sun’s core has contracted, and its outer layers expanded. It’s a red giant now. Ultimately, it will collapse under its own gravity…
The exhibit feels inappropriately glib now.
“The sun looks...different.” You venture cautiously. This isn’t a prank. Right? No way. You rub at your eyes—it still looks the same. And that “same” is different than it’s looked for all your life. You think.
“Yep. So. Are you sure you’d wanna hop in on this time loop with me?”
You stare at them, stricken. “This is...real? You’re saying...in less than five minutes, we’ll all be…”
“...Yeah. But, time loop, remember. You’re not really dying.”
You lean heavily against the outcrop of dirt behind you, and slide down to the ground. Your friend joins you, squatting by your side.
You want to sink into silence, but...five minutes? Less than that? This couldn’t be a prank. It isn’t a prank. Your friend wouldn’t be looking at you with such a grave expression if that were the case. “Why…” You whisper. “Why is it happening? Why now? It’s your first launch day. We only just finished the translator...what about the Nomai?! How could we not have seen the sun starting to...”
“Oh, the sun exploding is because of them, I think! The supernova powers the technology they set up to create these time loops.”
“Wait—what? Why?!”
“It’s...a long story. And we have a lot less than five minutes now.”
Without you noticing, the sun has set, and night fallen with it.
“I’ll tell you everything once you’re in the loop with me—or! If you don’t want to join, I’ll tell you as much as I can now—or promise to tell you next loop—“
“I’m joining you,” You say firmly.
Your friend’s eyes gleam—with joy, with sorrow. “I didn’t know if you’d believe me,” They say hoarsely.
“Well, if you say it’s true...then I guess it is.” You respond. “Something...seems a little off with you, anyway.” From the minute they’d pulled you outside, actually, but you didn’t want to admit it. You look away and scuff at the ground with your shoe.
Your friend breathes out shortly. “That obvious, huh?” Their grin falls, their ears droop. “I don’t know how to stop the loop, how to stop the sun from exploding. I keep focusing on just...different things I don’t know...I keep reaching dead ends. There’s so much I’ve translated, so much I want to show you...I wish I could. I wish you could remember. And…” They inhale. “...And I miss you, Hal.”
You sniff. “I miss you too.”
Their laugh is watery. “From your point of view, you saw me just yesterday.”
“Sure, but...hearing the way you talk about it...I wish I could be there.”
“Well...I’ve got something new to focus on. Soon enough, you will be here with me.”
“Yeah...yeah.”
The trees and houses below the path from launch tower to museum are suddenly engulfed in pitch darkness, the kind you’ve never seen before. Rooms are this dark. Caves are this dark. Outside is never, never this dark, to the point where you can’t distinguish the horizon from the black of space. Only the little lanterns throughout Timber Hearth provide any light.
“It’s happening,” your friend says quietly, and you inhale. “It’ll be ok. It’s...the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
You swallow, throat thick, and hold tight to their arm, watching the place where the horizon should be.
You swear you hear something—an impossibly dense, impossibly loud, ever-so-faint whump. A current of faint blue ripples past you, through the sky, and some distant burning begins to flare, coming closer and closer. Your scales feel dry—or is it only your anticipation of some intense heat?
Then you see it, the foam of some blue-white fire, spraying up like a glowing geyser, followed by the entrails of the only sun you’ve ever known.
Sparks of blue light streak past you. Everything ahead is silhouetted and consumed in turn by that light. Your friend was right—it is beautiful, but you cry out and hold your friend close as it swells towards you. Your eyes water and smart.
“ARE YOU SURE?!” Your friend shouts to be heard above the roar of your dying sun.
The ground rumbles beneath your feet, from the force of a star’s death. “YES!” You pull them towards you, hug them tight, shouting again into the side of their helmet, and in response, your friend’s arms come up and wrap tight around your burning body as your world ends.