Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

One-tenth of a Martian Sol later...

The space around him was filled with a guilty sort of silence.

Mars tilted slowly - to him - on his axis, still struggling to grasp the immensity of it all.

Not the numbers; those he understood just fine. 225.3 million kilometers away is the Sun; Mercury is 196.6 million kilometers away... Jupiter's almost a thousand million kilometers, Venus 227 million...

And his own best friend was almost 360 million kilometers away. I'd never seen him so scared.

He'd never have thought the Sun could get this angry, not-

Not since the Collision, really. But then, the configuration then had been unstable, a bad arrangement of Proto's orbit.

... Maybe they really had been inevitable. If only that could make Mars stop blaming himself for having helped...

Did we ever really mourn them? Proto and Theia? ... Any of us?

Uncomfortable thoughts like these were slow to go away, now that his moons had gone silent.

(He hadn't been able to be mad at them for long, as much as it'd been the moons' own request for their own orbits back that left them all like this.)

If there was one thing about them he hadn't expected to treasure, it was how the two were the 'loudest and most annoying' moons in the solar system. For a little while just now, they'd been trying to make echoes happen in space, but the depth of their failure had shaken them.

Even so, Mars couldn't count himself truly alone, and that meant he was better off than-

397 thousand kilometers.

No wonder Earth couldn't stand to be alone; Mars shuddered.

Still, by that logic, the outer giants couldn't be that worse off, not with all of their moons, and so many of them so close.

... Not that it would be a happy arrangement; the moons hadn't known what the Sun would do, in comparison to what they had thought their planets would do, but it was still their fault.

That, so far as he knew, was the outer solar system; he didn't know Neptune well enough to imagine how the ice giant would handle keeping watch over the Kuiper Belt again. But I guess that means we won't see Pluto or the other dwarf planets around here...

All their orbits were so long. Up to or exceeding thousands of years to complete one orbit...

But again, it wasn't the numbers that he struggled with. It was understanding why.

He's our Sun. And sure, we're his planets, he doesn't want us crashing into each other, but we're ALIVE! We think, we talk, we want to interact with each other...

His rotation brought him a brief, brighter view; a reflection of light whose intensity was like a star, just about. Venus. But then, he never shines that bright normally. Must be his atmosphere-

The atmosphere which he hid. Internally, Mars winced; Venus' temper counted as volcanic on a good day - now, it was probably a vast understatement.

Maybe Mercury, after all this time, had a plan. But then, that brought him back to one of the other things Mars hadn't wanted to think about.

"We wouldn't want you pulling another 'going to the Sun' stunt, huh?"

Could any of them really trust Mercury, after he'd said that? Heck - Mars had heard it, Venus had, Luna... even the Sun had probably heard him, and they'd all said nothing.

We're all to blame for what happened, Mars thought, cold suffusing him in more than just the usual ways.

Maybe... maybe we do deserve this, at least a little.

He couldn't stop worrying, though. Or thinking.

At least, for now, there was still sound in space...

Chapter Text

Click. Click. Clickclickclickclick...

Luna blearily blinked himself awake. It didn't matter what part of 'day' he was in; sunlight reflecting off of water was still blinding.

And then there was that noise; electromagnetic whirring - one never considered how loud near-Earth space was until they only had satellites to listen to.

But. None of them clicked. Something about the sound made him mentally sit up and take notice-

Oh. Oh, no. Dark Side, wake up; I- I think the Earth is losing language!

His - their - planet wasn't facing them, which made it harder to tell. And he wasn't shouting (they had done that on and off for the first few hours; Luna trying to talk him down from panicking, to do something other than contemplate the vast immensities of space and scream), which made it harder still.

Surprised it took him this long.

Luna did - would have done - an about-face. Say what? What the-

Face it, Luna; our planet is as bound by the need to socialize as his Earthlings. Compared to him, we're pretty solitary.

Luna sighed; something about still didn't sound fair, though. You say that, Dark, when you're the one facing away from him all the time. That's just... how you are, I guess.

Tch. You mean how we are. Just because you wanted to belong with the planets, doesn't mean we're inherently like them.

Now wait just a second-!

Dark didn't respond; Luna returned his focus to figuring out how his - their, damnit, the two of them had talked about this - planet was doing.

How bad things had gotten, in such a short time. We knew it was going to be bad, Luna told theirself.

Mercury knows the Sun better than all of us - when it comes to reading him, Mercury's usually right. And he knew this was going to be really bad.

... On the bright side for him, Venus was far enough away that the larger rocky planet couldn't pick on him so easily any more. But that being the case, why does Mercury still act like he has a stake in this? Even the Sun isn't talking to anyone, not even him!

Maybe that was-

Luna gulped. Maybe that's why no one really wanted to exile Ganymede and Europa. Why Jupiter felt so guilty about what happened to X, despite how he treated everyone when he returned.

The reality of space wasn't just dangerous, wasn't 'just' scary - it was simply impossibly vast. More than any one mind could comprehend.

E-even the Sun doesn't want to be alone. He knows what it's like to be intimidated by someone's size-

But he still did this, Luna, Dark replied again.

Luna gritted their teeth. Whose side are you ON, Dark?!

Ours. Because someone has to be.

Dark made a vague gesture Luna could only interpret through their shared mental space, indicating Earth.

We - well, in this case, you - got so caught up in being accepted by the planets, in showing the moons things could improve - that we stopped being on our planet's side. Looking out for him. And in that way, looking out for ourselves. And look what happened: he went out to the Kuiper Belt, nearly got all his Life killed - especially if we hadn't fought Ceres off long enough - and now that we're all 'back to normal'...

Luna fell silent, shutting their eyes. He ignored the tears pressing against them.

click click clickclickclick

Maybe it was one of those code languages the humans used - or something aquatic, repurposed for space - but as Earth rotated, and the Moon opened and narrowed their eyes for better vision, Luna felt his core sink as their planet's face registered.

It was barely there at all. And the expression... it was like Earth's vision had grayed out, and that the grayness had spread to the rest of him, dimming their planet's own light.

It was the Earthlings' pollution, of course, that left his surface and oceans in such a state. That didn't make it better.

And worst of all: their planet wasn't communicating. Making noise, like an animal trapped in a room in restraints and with the lights off - but not trying to talk.

Luna didn't know how much longer this would go on - if the past couple of years were anything to go by, something was going to happen to disrupt the Sun's attempt at a status quo, no matter what - but they feared the worst had already happened.

They feared Earth really wouldn't recover, this time.

Who knew it'd be survival, and not another mass extinction event, that would drive their planet out of his mind?

Chapter Text

Anger (Fear)
As terrible as the Sun could be - as crazy as the Sun was - Terra-Earth had to force himself to be rational.

Okay, fine, he's mad at us for- for leaving, for just going around wherever we want, when we want. That doesn't mean NOT LETTING US MOVE ANYMORE is okay!

Except that wasn't quite true: time trudged forward at one second per second, his rotation at - reduction, reduction, dang fractions- less than half a kilometer a second, but he was moving in his orbit at... okay, 29.8 kilometers per second.

As far as his Earthlings were concerned, that was fast. Dizzyingly fast. But I'm not moving!

He couldn't control anything about his physics, not like this. Not now that the Sun had-

He held his eyes, his mind, shut against the flare of anger. He couldn't take it or sustain it, not now. Not when all there was around him was the vastness of space and not-

His friends. His Moon.

Luna looked so lonely; when he could see them, anyway. As large as they were for a moon, it was easy to forget just how small they really were.

I... I'm sorry Luna.

It didn't matter to him whether he 'should' be apologizing; he was scared for his Moon, not just himself. Therefore, he should apologize.

He should - he needed to calm down.

Why was he crying?

Denial
Getting to spend time on his Earthlings was, frankly, a mixed bag.

On the one side of the terminator line, they were all his kids and of course he loved them, no matter what. It'd taken so long for Life to take root, and there'd been so many dangers he'd had to... condition... them all to come back from. Nothing had wiped them out completely til now (knock on wood), and they were strangely durable for all the shenanigans he'd dragged them through recently.

But if there was nothing to pay attention to in space, then that meant... waiting.

Listening to them, feeling them, make the same mistakes, over and over again. Running away from their problems, or each other. Wars and suffering...

Any small thing - to him - usually upset his Earthlings every which way. Earthquakes here, a hurricane or three there, forest fires and floodwaters, the occasional volcanic eruption.

If it wasn't one problem, it was another. It was exhausting.

But it's never boring. I can just... stay here with them and watch over them, right?

Right?

Bargaining
The hallucinations were back.

They'd been bad enough the first time. Calling out to Luna hadn't helped - if anything, Luna seemed to hear them too-

Unless he was hallucinating even his Moon's own reaction.

"Gearing up to commit another 'stunt', Earth? Oh right, you CAN'T!"

Mercury wouldn't... he hadn't meant that, had he? Oh, stars, how would he know?

"Hey. As long as you have your Earthlings, you're not alone, right? And- and if you were right about Theia, and not just making it up, she wanted us to move on and be happy. If I have to do that, then you can too!"

... That was right, he had talked to Theia, and Proto-Earth. His parents.

Or had that even happened? Maybe... maybe he had gone crazy, and he was still in the Kuiper Belt?

"Aw, Terra, cheer up! You're back where you should be, nice and warm!"

... How had Neptune known to call him that? Stars, he'd grown so used to thinking of them as equivalent, but what did he really want to be called?

(Terra seemed more like an Earthling name than a planet name, though. Just another way his names were the odd ones out.)

"Mate, at least YOU don't have to rotate on your SIDE. Forget the names thing and get over yourself!"

Terra-Earth glared at nothing after that one, shivering like something unsavory was crawling on his surface.

"Terra? I- I'm sorry, Earth, I didn't remember. We'll... we'll try harder though, all right? If that's what you want."

They weren't here, they weren't here, why were his hallucinations trying to comfort him-

"E-earth? Terra? ... I'm sorry. This is all my fault."

"It's. It's not, Jupiter. Don't blame yourself.... b-because you were scared, okay?"

"Buddy, look out!"

Terra-Earth flinched as an asteroid - at first it looked ginormous, but it quickly turned out just to be another speck of a space rock, nothing to fear - came right across his atmosphere.

"Bad time to play asteroid dodgeball, pal. Stay safe during all this, you hear?"

He wished that was actually Mars speaking to him. None of this was right-

At a distance, he saw a cluster of small rounded objects moving. Moons?

No- dwarf planets. (Or were they really there?)

"HEY!" he shouted, though his voice felt raspy all of a sudden. "Be- Be careful, the Sun might get you too! He-"

"Might what, Earth? Talk to yourself all you want, but DON'T try to tell the rest of MY planets what to do!"

Terra-Earth froze. Time passed, one second per second; oxygen cycled into carbon dioxide; water cycled into ice, into water, into-

"Oh, don't give me THAT look! You know what you did, Earth! This is where you're SUPPOSED to be! Protecting yourself from hitting any other planets - or being hit by other moons - and keeping your Life safe! You want to keep your Life safe, correct?"

Terra-Earth was having a hard time finding his voice. "I - I- I mean, yes, I-"

"Then what's a little FREEDOM in the face of that! When I said you should be more considerate of others' feelings, Earth, this is exactly the sort of thing I mean!"

"B- but, Sun, i-it hurts, I-"

"Oh, so you're in pain now, is that it? From following your orbit? Your rotational speed? Your axis? Or is it your Earthlings again, that's another old classic. Don't try and lie to me, Earth."

"I CAN'T MOVE MYSELF," he screamed, no longer paying attention to whether the hallucinations were 'real' or not. "I can't TAKE this, Sun, I really can't! Please, just, just let me- I'll do anything!"

"Tsk, tsk, Earth! Allll this time, I've rarely asked you all for ANYTHING, and the one time I lay down the rules, you can't take it? What a poor excuse for a planet you are!"

He didn't bother to hide any more that he was crying. "Then- then I am a bad planet! I'm sorry, Sun, I'll try to be better, please, please, please-!"

The Sun turned away. Time burned.

Depression
Tick. Tick. Tick.

There wasn't so much a chronometer Terra-Earth followed, as it was he just knew how much time had passed.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

It was quiet, he supposed. Only, it wasn't; not so long as he could still feel his Earthlings, or hear the universal background radiation, or-

Tick. Tick. Tick.

What was he thinking about? ... The passage of time, right.

Luna was still there - halfway through his own day/night cycle - but the distance was still enough that talking seemed pointless. Terra-Earth didn't have the energy to shout anymore.

tick. tick. tick. tick. tick. tick.

Maybe if he just... went to sleep, he wouldn't feel time dragging so much. Only, what he could hear was too loud.

If. If he just had someone to talk to.

But his friends weren't here. None of them could help.

(Astrodude was still missing.)

He looked around at all the NEOs his Earthlings' had tagged over the course of their running various space agencies. And, of course, the artificial satellites they'd launched.

I guess... these are my friends, now.

It was a hollow thought.

tick.

Acceptance
Okay, one cool thing he wouldn't have discovered on his own: he didn't know he was a robot! That made figuring out what his friends were doing a lot easier!

He could even make them move, though he was loath to do that; things were where they were for a reason, and he couldn't start messing with things like that, right?

Ping! Ping! Ping!

So cute. Listening to their chatter was a way to pass time. He even tried pinging Luna, though he was pretty sure that had scared his Moon.

Oh well; he could try again later. Or maybe one of the littler moons would say something! For all that some of them reminded him of Phobos and Deimos, they seemed pretty shy.

Or... or...

"Now, now, Earth; don't make me enforce the rule of sound not traveling well in space! You wouldn't like that now, would you?

"No! No, no, I'll, I'll be good, please don't Sun, no-"

"Gooood. There's a good planet."

"Th-th-thank you, Sun."

Or, nevermind! As long as he remembered and didn't move too fast, and didn't talk, everything would be fine! Him, his Moon, his Earthlings, and-

tick.