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“So is Harmony supposed to do that?”
Aventurin says that out of nowhere, a bit startled by the sound of his own voice. They sit at a hotel balcony on an Aeon forsaken planet, the sun is about to rise, and if it weren't the former Oak family head in front of him, he’d probably regret opening his mouth the second the words came out of it. Not out of caution — Aventurine was never careful, it’s just that he’s never careless either. When having a conversation it is good to stick to neutral topics, like money, religion, politics or weird sex preferences, and avoid more personal matters like your interlocutor torturing you not long prior to said conversation.
However, it is Sunday in front of him, and Aventurine simply doesn’t care. With his wings clipped and his power taken away from him he’s pathetic enough to be harmless, and vice versa. It’s pitiful, really: the man who made him speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth trough torture and weird bird powers is now so irrelevant to the world that Aventurine’s blunt as it is.
Besides, one could say that after five or six times randomly bumping into each other on different planets and accidentally taking each other back to a hotel room he’s grown acquainted with Sunday’s weird sex preferences.
“Is Harmony supposed to do what exactly? But it probably is”, Sunday says, leaning onto the guardrail and avoiding eye contact. He doesn’t like to look at Aventurine right after they’ve fucked. First couple of times he’d make a joke about it, about his hair being a mess, or Sunday being afraid the Stoneheart would turn to actual stone under his all-revealing gaze, or some other nonsense like that. Now he is kind of used to it. He still doesn’t know (or care for that matter) if Sunday considers them having sex sinful or lustful or whatever language he liked to use when talking about pleasure.
”Is it supposed to make you see… Stuff?”
”Were you not seeing stuff before I used Harmony on you?” Sunday asks with a straight face, and because Aventurine doesn’t answer right away, explains the joke into the air before him: “See, because you were being vague about what exactly it made you see, so I had to assume that…”
”I saw a kid”
”That seems harmless”
Sunday hides his face with his wings, realizing how it sounded, but Aventurine goes on:
”A kid with the eyes of an Avgin and a happy Avgin family somewhere and a heart fucking full of whimsy ”, Sunday turnes his had and looks at him with a glimpse of guilt and surprise in his eyes so Aventurine wants to choke him to death, “It was me”, he clarifies very unnecessarily.
The IPC corporate mandated therapist used to yap a lot about vulnerability until Aventurine paid him off. Now Aventurine can affirmatively say that he wasn’t worth the money and didn’t know what he’s talking about. If Aventurine’s doing vulnerability now then vulnerability’s awful.
Sunday, for a man who used to take confessions for a living, doesn’t take this one too well.
“It is pretty common, yes” he says, not grasping the guardrail and not reeking of guilt, “Was he… unkind to you?”
”What the fuck is wrong with you, Sunday?” Aventurine says, trying to sound both tired and considerate. “What kind of question is-“
”My past selves were mostly unkind”
Surely Sunday had to experience his fair share of harmonious torture while growing up in their cult of a fraction, he realizes.
“Oh, I can’t imagine that”, Aventurine mumbles, collecting himself, “You? Unkind? And to whom…”
”I take it your past self was unkind as well”
“What? No, he was fine-“ and that is the moment Aventurine regrets starting the conversation. Sunday may be pathetic, but is there really a need for Aventurine to be? It was not his intention to discuss whether he was kind or not as a kid. A hallucination. An alternative past… A kid? He still didn’t know what it was that he saw.
“I have to apologize again”, Sunday says, making Aventurine want to either throw up or throw him off the balcony. “Please forgive me. I am so deeply-“
”Oh fuck off”
”All right then”
They stay quiet for a long while. The edge of the unfamiliar sun shows above the horizon, and Aventurine notices a stray cat sitting on a garbage can across the street, carefully cleaning its paws.
”The only reason I did that to you”, Sunday says, eyes straight ahead, “Was because I thought my sister was dead”
”Can’t imagine how that feels”, Aventurine replies so quickly he doesn’t have time to think.
Sunday turns his head again, now looking almost terrified:
“My sincerest condolences”
”That sounded extremely sincere” Aventurine mocks him. ”Wasn’t it kind of your job to make people feel better back home?”
“For a while, yes. I wasn’t as good at it as I’d like to admit”
“No kidding”
Aventurine would know if Sunday was kidding, because up to that moment every joke was carefully explained. But he doesn’t say that, for he’s not in the mood to flirt. Aventurine’s rarely not in the mood to flirt, but there is something about this most attractive man on Penacony that ruins every attempt at doing so. It was fun at first, to watch him blush, to hear carefully selected, awkward sarcastic replies. But right now Aventurine is cold, confused and severely sleep deprived. There will be plenty of time to flirt when they accidentally bump into each other and fuck for the seventh time.
“This is going to sound… strange” Sunday says, and knowing him he’s probably right, “But I somewhat believed that you might see your family. I thought that then you… would perhaps be willing to help me search for the person who took mine away from me”
Aventurine looks at him with his eyes widely open, too stunned to be angry. He somewhat believed that as well, he was waiting for it from the moment he saw Kakavasha. It was hope and terror, both fear and longing. He used to think that he’d give anything that he owned for seeing his sister once again. The irony was that he didn’t own anything at the time, quite the opposite — someone else owned him, and by the time he had gained so many things, all so wonderful and expensive and pretty, he had stopped thinking about her. What use is it thinking about the past? It’s always there anyway. Crawling inside of him, trying to turn him into that kid again. What use is it letting yourself be that child, blessed and cursed with his unwavering luck, who witnessed his entire family die and then was sold off and owned like property — what use is it being that when he could be literally anything else?
He didn’t see his mama, papa or big sis while under the effects of Sunday’s Harmony, and he’s lucky he didn’t.
“Well, I didn’t see them,” he says, trying to sound frivolous.
And Sunday, curse his intrusive halovian empathy, doesn’t buy it.
“Do you wish that you did?”
Aeons, does he have to pay Sunday off too? One more question like that and they’ll see if those clipped wings can hold his weight. Aventurine thinks all of that in his head, and out loud he says:
”I don’t think they would have liked me very much”
He is certainly going to have to kill Sunday right after this conversation. How did he manage to get Aventurine to say that? Maybe the IPC should fire the vulnerability guy and hire this stupid bird. He is better at turning people inside out, and looks better, too.
”Wouldn’t you want to see them still?”
If Aventurine didn’t feel so fucked up right now, he’d understand the deeply personal motives behind this interrogation, but instead he tries to hurt Sunday back:
“You don’t seem too eager to talk to your sister, too”
“It is very different. My sister is well”
Sunday thinks that his compulsive knocks on the wooden guardrail are discreet, Aventurin lets him think that.
“And so is mine” he says, almost sing-songy, “Safe and sound two feet underground”.
It even rhymes, that’s how chill about it he is.
“That seems like a shallow grave”, says Sunday, and Aventurine is impressed and almost awed by that cold-heartedness. Sunday is either extremely cruel, or just severely socially awkward, and it’s so entertaining to watch while trying not to shatter into pieces like his cornerstone did.
”I wasn’t much of a grave digger at twelve years old, and the lands of Sygonia are cold, dry and dead”.
And then he sent the IPC there, and they probably dug her up mining for resources he lied to them about. They probably dug all of them up, everybody he used to know.
He still doesn’t know why he did what he did back then.
“I’m so-“ Sunday starts.
”Please don’t”
Not even ‘fuck off’, not a proud gesture — a plea, because Aventurine couldn’t brush off another half-hearted condolences, and even less so from that former silver-tongued preacher who gave them out like candy.
“There is a reason why I wasn’t good as a Bronze Melodia,” Sunday continues stubbornly, “I don’t do well with suffering. There’s little solace that can be found in religion, or reason, or distraction…”
‘Or destruction’, Aventurine thinks, remembering how Sunday asked if he hated and wished to destroy this world with his own two hands out of mere curiosity. Suddenly it seems so amusing, the questions, the answers, the rhymes, the cat still cleaning itself with its tongue across the street.
“I was supposed to create a paradise and I failed. But I hoped, I did hope, that in that paradise you would find peace that I knew you were seeking. I know that you don’t care much for condolences, and it’s not that. It’s much simpler and worse: I have failed you, and for that I am sorry”
Sunday looks at him as if everything that is happening isn’t fucking hilarious, as if both of them aren’t pathetic, as if this conversation matters and Aventurine matters and everything that has happened to him in his life was real. The rain on his birthday every year, the fire that took his home, the blood and dirt on his shirt that didn’t come off anymore, his hand in his sister’s dead hand. The chains, the coercion, the terror of making it out alive every time; all or nothing — the dream come true that he didn’t actually dream of, and the motto that wasn’t actually his.
Sunday takes his hand and strokes his hair as if his body is real too.
Aventurine shakes his head, smiles with the most blissful, most heavenly smile, and says:
“Peace is excruciatingly boring, angel. I’m not seeking anything, especially peace, are you kidding?”.
The sun has risen, playing in Sunday’s halo and feathers as if everything was in its place. Aventurine gently frees his hand, adjusts his collar and steps back inside.