Work Text:
Your brother is in the hospital.
There were no hospitals in Valisthea, but there apparently were in other parts of the world. They came to Valisthea not long after the sky fell, though you admittedly had taken a brief leave of absence after that. You should not fault yourself for being unaware of the advent of “modern medicine,” for they could have done nothing for him then that you could not do yourself, but you find yourself fixating on the itch of it in the free moments, as you wait in the space between his last breath and his first.
He has always been sickly. The Phoenix’s flames were too powerful. They burned him away, thinking his own essence an illness that left him vulnerable to the next. Though you have been successful, though mankind flourishes without the need for Eikons, your brother’s soul yet bears those injuries. As far as you are aware (and though you feel guilty turning your gaze from the rest of the star, you are as aware of your brother now as you were then), this illness is much the same. His body believes itself an illness that it must purge.
As when you were small, when he first held your hand from his crib, the sickness awoke in him young. This time, he did not have the flames of the Phoenix to mend his hurts.
(You try and force yourself not to regret what you have done, even if his blood stains your hands.)
Though it awoke young, it seemed to be relatively well managed. You have promised not to meddle in the affairs of mortals, but you cannot help but make an exception to nudge the most competent doctors into the right place to take care of him. You are not fattening a lamb for slaughter (you are not abandoning the world to its death for the sake of something better off dead), so you justify it well enough. His family knows what he needs.
Despite the management, stress of any sort can exacerbate a problem. Your brother was always ill; sometimes, he is yet a victim of rotten luck. You watched as the fever took him, and as your parents pulled him to a hospital late in the night. It has been three days since then. He is curled up in a bed, clutching a stuffed bird, while your parents speak in the hallway. It is a conversation that you have been privy to for a few lifetimes, in truth. Sometimes, the stress of his illness drives them apart. They worry about care and the specific details. This time, at least, they are kind enough to do it where your brother cannot hear. You lurk in the air near his bed, in the empty space where a chair could sit.
He is mere days shy of ten years old. His hair sits in a messy golden halo across the pillow. You do not need to touch him to feel the heat radiating off of him, just a few degrees shy of the Phoenix. You can’t remember the last time that he seemed so small. You had seen him across countless lifetimes, but this is the closest that he’s ever been to your brother, to the fledgling that has haunted you for your own natural life. He is not thin and wiry, he is not a man grown, he is a sick little boy who is stirring from the throes of a nightmare.
Guilty, you wonder if your old friend may have been able to treat him faster than this. The Hideaway didn’t have much, but it had enough, and they were able to do what they needed without the input of anyone else. If it could save a life, it was worth it. Your brother’s breath has the telltale wheeze of a familiar illness.
You want to fix it, but when you wonder at how, all you can picture is the bloody crater that sat upon his breast.
His blue eyes open with a very brief startle. You halfway expect him to call for your parents, but instead, he looks around. There’s a haze in him that he can’t seem to shake off. His eyes land on where your gaze is, but slips past; though he seems to want to focus on him, the aether around you won’t let him. This should be a good thing. You can’t worry him this way.
The lack of contact upsets him, though. You recognize the furrow in his brow and the energy with which he turns to look, again and again. He’s alone, so he has every right to be scared, and you brace yourself to back away to let your parents into your empty space.
“Clive!”
You freeze in your tracks.
Your brother has not called you by your name in centuries. Now, he sounds as frantic as he did when he was so young, when he called for you and you tore him apart. He begs for help, on the verge of tears, and almost begins to drag himself up and out of bed to hunt for the connection.
“Clive. Clive!”
Your name was the first thing that he ever said.
You can’t help yourself. The aether dissipates as you come forward, not quite close enough to touch him, to the end of the bed. You are fifteen years old, and you are set to achieve your sole purpose in life.
“I’m right here, Joshua,” you say. You haven’t used your own voice in centuries, for lack of anyone to talk to, but the words flow naturally. It is pure instinct to care for him. “I’m right here.”
Joshua almost immediately calms down when you make eye contact. His eyes are still glassy, though, and he shoves himself towards the edge of his bed so that he can reach out for you. You don’t initiate the touch, as undeserving as you are to touch divinity, but you do not protest when his hands brush against you. His touch is just as warm against your arm as it always was. “Did you do it?” he asks, groggy, as he crawls into your lap. You compensate by moving properly to the bed to settle him against you. “Did you kill it?”
Your mind drifts to Ultima. How much does he know? You were to spare him the dread of knowing, the horror of something beyond him, of something tearing itself out of his chest and leaving him on the ground. You do not hold your composure very well, after so long without practice, so you briefly stammer as you lay yourself against the bed, partly sitting up in a sort of lounge. “Kill what?”
“The… the thing. With the horns,” Joshua says. He tips his cheek against your chest, listening to a heartbeat that you have to actively mimic. “The monster at the castle. It was going to eat me.”
Hot ashes rumble in your chest to nestle around your shame.
Of all things, why does his mind return to Phoenix Gate? You are centuries removed from the moment, were nearly two decades off by your last check regardless. Joshua had lived lifetime and lifetime over again without the weight of godhood upon his shoulders. You resist the urge to chase the question down. No matter what he is thinking, he is unwell. The comfort is more important than any of it. His flesh is warm, and you talk yourself into raising a hand to settle in honeyed golden hair.
“Of course,” you lie. “I had to keep you safe.”
Joshua relaxes into your touch and closes his eyes. “That’s good,” he says, his voice hardly a sigh. “I thought that that was what was keeping you away. You were trying to do something else. I was worried that it ate you.”
Despite his apparent exhaustion, his breathing seems clearer. He seems less on the verge of hurtling away. You squeeze him closer and do not indulge in his closeness. (Do wings shroud him, through the aether? Does your tail curl around? You ignore it. You are a boy, with hands and a heart, and you are holding your brother.) “I always would have come back to you. What sort of Shield would I be if I couldn’t return to your side?”
He cracks open an eye to peer up at you. Though the haze remains, though he still sees you, he seems slightly more aware of himself. “You are here now, aren’t you? Now, I really can get better.” His hair falls into his face. You lift an arm to brush it away, hoping that your hands feel like flesh and not the gust of wind (or talons) that you know they are.
“I’m here for as long as you need me.” It comes out as a croak. “And I’ll leave you something, for when I have to leave. My blanket. Would you like that?”
A brief upset furrows onto Joshua’s face. He doesn’t look at you, but he does consider. “...What do you mean, when you have to leave?” he asks. You haven’t heard his distress so young in so long. As a man, he kept his emotions close until they boiled over into something sharp. Now, there’s no hint of his blade, his sorrow instead a bludgeon in your heart. “Aren’t you staying? What if-- What if the monster comes back?”
Tears well in his eyes. You have ever been weak for your brother.
“I won’t go anywhere,” you say, very quickly glancing at the door in hopes that his sorrow is unnoticed. “The monster won’t come back. I’ll beat it, if it does.”
Your words don’t seem to comfort him, though. He shakes his head and properly reaches around you. You’re solid enough that he has something to hold to, though you pray that you feel as you should. “It’s going to eat me,” he says. “Or it’ll eat you. And I’ll never see you again!”
Your mouth is dry, but you shake your head. Joshua won’t remember this when he’s well. “I won’t leave you alone,” you say. A half truth is better than a proper lie, but it still doesn’t sit well in your mouth. “I promise. I’ll always be with you, Joshua.”
“Did I do something wrong?” The question seems to surprise you both, given how both of Joshua’s eyes snap open after he asks. He looks up at you almost carefully. He furrows his brow again in distress; a memory, you know, is just out of reach. He continues, carefully. “You’ve… you’ve been away. I’m sorry if I’ve done something wrong. Please don’t leave again.”
“You-- you haven’t done anything,” you say. You shift properly into his line of sight in an effort to get the conversation back on track. “You’ve done nothing wrong. I just haven’t wanted to get you sick. I’m sorry.”
Joshua shakes his head, the thought still sitting on the tip of his tongue. “I haven’t seen you since…” Since Phoenix Gate. Since Caer Norvent. Drake’s Head. Origin? “Since the monster,” he settles, though he doesn’t seem satisfied. One hand presses gently against his chest, where a birthmark and a crater both would be at home. “Forever. Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” you try, but he continues as if you aren’t there.
“Were you scared? Did you think that you would get hurt, if you were close?”
“I’m more worried about you getting hurt, Joshua.” You squeeze him tightly. (You do not allow yourself to savor the moment.) “Nothing that you’ve done. The last time you were sick, I…” Allowed him to throw himself towards his own demise. Tore him apart with your own teeth. Your breath rattles as you try to steady yourself. “I think that I gave you something. A sickness of my own. I didn’t want that to happen again.”
Joshua stares at you, but the energy very subtly seems to leave him. He closes his eyes and relaxes against you, shaking his head. “You didn’t hurt me. You couldn’t have done anything.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” you say, but he shakes his head.
“You couldn’t hurt me, anyway. I’m a phoenix, aren’t I?”
You lose your grasp on your breath and your heart, but Joshua seems to not be paying attention anymore. A phoenix, he said. How much does he remember? It remains on your family crest, but the Phoenix Itself is within you. Is this a coincidence? You lick your lips and hoarsely respond, “So you would just come back?”
Joshua yawns and curls a little into you. The emotion seems to have exhausted him. “My flames my flicker, but they’ll never die,” he says, sleepily. “I’ll get better and come home. You don’t need to worry about anything. Just lay with me.”
“I’m already laying down,” you say. Joshua doesn’t respond, but he does curl into your chest with familiar, even breathing. You know the rattle in his lungs as well as you know yourself, but it evens out as long as you sit with him. With a soft sigh, you close your eyes, and sit there until you know that Joshua is asleep and that his fever is properly broken.
You linger in the touch for a moment longer than you need to.