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Fluixon is dead.
Saps doesn’t regret what he had to do to get them here – even once the whole world had turned against him, he knows Flux would’ve stopped at nothing until the end, stubborn and resolute even in the face of the impossible.
But the war is over now. All Flux’s allies are gone, and the dust has settled over the remains of Infernus; forever the gravesite of too many nameless soldiers lost to something much larger than themselves. The world is at peace. It’s all Saps ever wanted. It’s over.
Except, it isn’t.
Saparata is alive.
It shouldn’t be a complication, really. In the end, so many leaders and citizens alike had rallied together to keep it that way. But he knows how it feels, now, to have the world turn against you so quickly, and who is he to decide it gets to stay peaceful forever? How can he promise that no further turmoil will follow him, that the hunted feeling ever-present in the back of his mind, lingering since the moment that god forsaken trap went off, doesn’t mean anything anymore?
For as long as Saps may live, the world cannot be at peace.
Still, he can’t exactly go around accusing everyone who so much as thinks of him of betrayals they haven’t committed yet, nor can he bring himself to fully step into the light, embrace the outstretched hand from beyond the veil. So he waits.
Months have passed since their duel, since he watched something far too soft cross Flux’s visage in the instant before the light left his eyes. At peace, in a way he never was in life, even when the world wasn’t yet so volatile.
His Acropolis has been rebuilt bigger and better than ever with the help of neighbouring nations, many of which have since taken to using it as a place to hang out between work and errands within their respective homelands. It’s nice, usually, having the space filled with laughter and friendly faces once again – it isn’t as if he’s around most of the time anyway, at least someone's making use of it.
But some nights, when he decides to stay, he can’t help but feel relieved when it’s empty again. When no one can see him standing before Flux’s grave, gaze fixed squarely on the nameplate as if he expects him to rise from the ground beneath.
He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. Saps killed him with his own sword, felt him collapse completely limp against him, heart still beside his own racing pulse. He knows he's dead; that isn’t his concern, no matter how sly he was.
Even if he were alive, he doesn’t think he’d have it in him to ask every question he left unanswered. They were friends – wholly and without hesitation. Saps had thought they were, at least.
To him, those months spent together had meant something; even now, he can’t help the residual fondness that tries to bloom in his chest at the thought. But had they meant anything to Flux?
He knows that even in the quieter moments, when it was just the two of them and the stars and not even Ish was watching over them, that his walls never truly came down. Foolishly, he’d had faith that in time they would.
Instead, his trust had been used against him, thrown away without a second thought in favour of the world at large, for power and control over much more than just Saps.
But there had been warmth there, somewhere, in stolen glances and playful jeers, in brief brushes of fingers lingering for a little too long.
They’d adventured through the island together, mined together, built together, watched the sunset together – for months, they’d been attached at the hip. Even after he’d become swamped with his work as Luminara's Vice President, he’d still managed to stay by Saps’ side at any moment he could. And Saps is supposed to believe none of it mattered?
Maybe it didn’t. Maybe Saps is still the same fool he was before the war, before he knew scorn and vitriol as he does now.
But the Flux of the past has long since rotted in his mind, leaving behind the vestige of something he can’t bear to look at – a boarded-up door in an abandoned house never to be seen by human eyes again because every version of Flux died with him.
It’s easier to admit that the softer, fuzzier feelings – once nameless and inconvenient, only complicated by the man himself cropping up when he’d least expected it – had been a little more than nothing. Flux never has to know, and with nowhere to go, it will die with him once all is said and done.
Hating him has gotten harder, though.
Flux hurt him more than anyone else ever has – but he’s dead. Saps’ revenge has been enacted; no one will be caught up in his schemes ever again.
It still feels like he’s been cheated, like Flux got the easy way out – yet he’d be lying if he said that didn’t make him feel a little bit guilty, despite his own better judgment.
Now, he must bear the torch, the baggage left behind. He’ll never know what went on in his head, whether he felt nothing more than pity as he gazed unseeing up at Saps one last time. Whether he ever made it to the stars, or if he’s nothing more than a name to die with them all.
But he’d loved him, once. No matter how time may have warped it into something bitter and vengeful, it had started as love.
His betrayal alone should’ve been enough to put out the fire, to let Saps' heart know he’s too soft for a world like this. Yet he also knows himself, knows that no matter the hurt, he’ll always choose forgiveness until his hand is forced.
So he loves him. And he hates him. And he knows that if Flux were to spawn before him – alive and solid and real, he’d kill him again in a heartbeat, if only to beg to have him back a moment later.
But that won’t happen. And now he has to live with the knowledge that he could so easily be swept up like that again, and he wouldn’t know until it's too late. A constant buzzing under his skin never to be dimmed, ready to run, fight, cry – anything, so long as he doesn’t have to stand there and dwell on it.
Nothing's happened yet, but it will. Come morning, someone will turn against him. If not tomorrow, then the day after, or any day after that. There’s no serenity, not really, not in a place like this.
He’s so tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
As if sensing his dilemma, Ish chooses this moment to appear.
It takes him a moment to notice he’s there – an expert at stealth even when he isn’t trying. And even when Saps does notice, he doesn’t startle, more than used to the god's sudden appearance.
He stands on (or more accurately, hovers above) the steps up to the Acropolis, head tilted slightly as he studies Saps, brow furrowed and mouth tilted downwards in a slight frown.
“Hey, Ish.” He says, quiet in the silence of midnight, halfway drowned out by the space between them.
“Hey.” Ish offers a smile, but it doesn’t quite erase the lines of concern pulling at his features as he draws closer, further into the light of the nearest lantern.
Instead of focusing on what state he must be in to cause such visible worry, Saps turns his attention back to the grave, distantly aware of Ish stopping beside him.
This isn’t the first time Ish has caught him here. More nights than not, Saps comes down here, no matter how far he may have strayed, so it’s no surprise he keeps finding him like this. Everyone else is probably asleep.
It’s odd, really, being on such personal terms with a god. Some players (Westhelm citizens specifically, for reasons Saps has never dared ask) don’t think he exists at all. Yet here Saps stands, in not quite comfortable but familiar silence with the man himself.
Whether Ish feels anything towards Flux – as a man who cannot be harmed by the chaos he caused – Saps may never know.
But he does know he’d once stood atop a tower in the inhospitable snowy tundra of Island One, and vowed to that same god that if he must die, he would take Flux with him, or die trying. There had been a fire in his eyes, growing hungrier with each word Saps had spoken – almost too entertained by the show before him.
That fire is gone, sated by the fulfilment of his promise, even if it still feels like a half measure. Ish must feel it too if he keeps trailing after him when he knows he’s at his lowest, when he’s most likely to find his next spark.
Saps isn’t looking for a spark. He knows there was only ever one way to end this truly.
Flux is dead – has been for a while.
One way or another, Saps was supposed to follow him out, forge their collective existence into nothing but a bad memory.
But he supposes he got caught up in the fanfare of a battle well fought, in the rebuilding and the mourning and the bright warm nights spent alight with newfound freedom. It was never his, but he’d relished in it all the same. None of it was supposed to last this long.
Someone will finish the job – if not Flux or his mercenaries, then the next person Saps leaves himself open to.
Was this what Flux was protecting himself from, by dying at Saps’ hand?
It ignites something odd in his chest, coiling around his heart and choking out what little dignity he had left. Because if it truly had meant nothing to Flux, why did it have to be him?
Flux didn't have to accept, yet he’d arrived just as instructed, called them friends and taken to their fight like it was what he’d been made for.
He hadn’t looked worried, composed and sharp as ever, even as their duel had worn on, unafraid of the fate that would befall him. Had he known? Or was he just overconfident in Saps’ soft heart – convinced he’d never truly go through with it?
Was he scared, falling into Saps' arms one last time, as he once had a lifetime ago? Was death kind to him? Did she let him go gently?
Saps loved him once, but never as much as he had in that moment, as he slipped through his fingers so readily.
They should’ve died together, lost in that moment, heaving for breath and numb to the rest of the world – Saps and Flux, Flux and Saps, a centrepiece at the beginning of the universe.
But he hadn’t. Flux lies six feet under, and Saps can only wonder if he ever truly knew him.
“Ish?” Saps' voice falters more than he’d like to admit for one word, harsh in the open air of late autumn. Soon, even some of the warmer parts of Island Two will be rampant with an unpleasant chill – nothing like that of a tower in the snow, but uncomfortable all the same.
There's a hum beside him, attentive despite the hours that ebb away at them.
It isn’t too late. Saps could follow him out – it’s the middle of the night, he has a few errands to run in Tricolour tomorrow, but he isn’t expected anywhere for days – no one would know.
If he told Ish to leave, he would. He never told him what the tower was really for (even if he's sure the man can guess), he’d have no reason to think of it as more than Saps needing a moment alone. Probably.
He’d know – of course he’d know. With no one as his witness, Ish would be the first to feel the shift in the world itself. But it’d be too late by then.
“Am I making a mistake?” He asks, hushed and dripping with shame – a confession, an appeal and a prayer all wrapped in one.
He could go home. Trek up the stairs of the Acropolis and lie face-first on his bed until exhaustion takes him under or he stops thinking about it.
Flux had looked so peaceful when he’d died. Is it too much for Saps to ask for the same?
Life could continue. He could keep wandering the islands, doing as he pleases when he pleases, despite the wariness instilled in his bones. Maybe he could learn to trust again, even if it sounds impossible to a man with nothing left to give. It’s one thing to live half convinced tonight will be the night it happens; it’s another thing entirely to hope for a tomorrow.
Or he could let it all go, have that peace to himself for good.
“Yeah.”
Saps turns his head towards Ish, meeting the tired blue eyes of a man burdened with aeons of wars and deaths kept just out of reach. He smiles – soft and melancholy, but genuine all the same.
He knows – if not of unfulfilled promises and bridges forever burnt, then the longing resigned to his gut, the desire to put it all at ease. Ish can’t fix this. He may be a god, but he can’t dictate the whims of humanity, watching as the world succumbs to its own hubris. Saps would simply be another tragedy, but it wouldn’t make the pain any easier.
It could all be over.
But Ish would know. Nations across the islands would mourn yet another life lost, his Acropolis becoming nothing more than a tomb for a seventh soul (eighth, if he's optimistic about how close Flux has remained).
It’s unfair. It’s his life, it shouldn’t matter.
Yet he can’t find it in himself to ask Ish to leave – to look him in the eye and (inadvertently or not) admit that he’ll never see him again in any way that matters.
Saps sighs, looking away in favour of staring into the infinite night sky – a thousand stars scattered through the darkness, casting soft white light onto the water below, leaving oil-slick patterns in their wake. Not tonight, he decides, if nothing more.
Soon, morning will begin anew. Life will move on, as it has been regardless of how Saps may feel about it, and the days will once more turn to months. The ache in his chest won’t lessen, the world will never seem as boundless as it may have long ago – but in time, he can learn to live with it, to be able to look at the world and see more than an approaching storm.
But tonight, he will live. No more waiting for a knife to appear in his back. No more sleepless nights wondering which warning signs he missed. No more waiting for the dead to wake.
It’ll never truly be that simple, but he has time. Saparata is alive, and that’s all he really needs.