Work Text:
Pry open the door to the past with bloodied fingers. In it is a darkness, a mystery, an enigma of a story slowly turning sour. Grip the hands of the clock tight and force them back. Second by second, minute by minute. Undo the detonation. Recover the reputation. Put the pieces back together, one by one, until the picture is complete and content and whole.
Realize it changes nothing. The path is set. All rivers feed into this bitter finale-- this rising crescendo of sorrow and regret-- wrought in destruction and death. It is etched into stone and bone alike, drawn into the earth with blood from the open vein.
They were dead, or so everyone thought. Twenty years undone in a revelation of an underbelly stained black. A limb so infected that the toxins had long since spread into the bloodstream. Amputation was no longer an option: only euthanization remained.
They were friends once (partners, allies, coworkers, soldiers) but any evidence is: 1. unrecoverable, 2. irredeemable, 3. impossible. A past together now scattered like ashes into wind. They are old and they are scarred and they are tired. They are not two sides of a coin; they are worlds apart, staring across a gulf that cannot be crossed. Not with blood on his hands and the world on the cusp of chaos renewed, not when the foundation of all he ever worked for was cracked down to the crucible.
Once upon a time, before the monikers, before the rift, before the heroics-- things were different. Once upon a time, there was still room for could have beens.
No more.