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Night falls and Sunday lays down on his back with his hands folded over his stomach like a saint entombed. He closes his eyes to the blank canvas above him. His breaths shift his clothes but not his posture, not the weight in his chest.
Slowly, methodically, he lets his flight wings extend behind his back, thrumming and pulsing as though filled with tempestuous waters. They grow beyond the edges of the bench, drooping towards the soft soil. Every pinion sifts through the breeze sent by the distant horizon. He watched them for a while, those summer storms that never reach, the lightning cracking against the lovely orange of sundown. No more. He watches them no more.
Sunday left a spoon on the counter today. He picked it up from the drawers in gloved fingers, placed it onto the wooden surface. Crooked, its handle not aligned with the countertop’s edge. 16 degrees turned. Perhaps 17. He stared at it then and stares at it now, in his memory, willing it to move. It will itch in the back of his mind. It will coat his thoughts. It will summon those storms into calm skies. Will the world truly end if that spoon stays where it is? Will the counter break and the kitchen with it, the very wheels of the train and the dust of the stars?
Sunday takes a deep breath and his wings follow his body, a gentle up and down. He drags the ocean closer, an insistent tug. The waves move in rhythms he can count.
“Why the storms?” a voice asks as footsteps approach. Sunday weaves them a secure path to walk on, cobblestone, supporting them easily as they approach. The bridge is not burned. He builds it thought by thought.
“Pay it no mind, it will cause you no harm,” Sunday says. “I will make sure of it.”
He sits up, steadying himself on the bench. Presentable or close to it. Hands folded in his lap, legs closed, back straight.
Dr. Ratio’s discerning gaze weighs heavily on him. The doctor is not a cruel man, not in any way that matters. The crease in his brow is concern.
“Please, sit,” Sunday says softly and tugs on his piercing. “Unless you prefer not to.”
He dreams a seat into being, comfortable and soft. Only after another moment of hesitation does the doctor acquiesce. When he settles down it leaves them a few paces apart. Sunday stays on his bench, the storm in the distance, starry void below his polished boots.
“Do you know why I’m here?” Dr. Ratio asks.
Sunday nods quickly as though wishing for a good grade. Then again, slower, as shame creeps down the back of his neck.
“I do.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“If they consider it prudent, I will not disagree with their assessment,” Sunday replies even as his skin crawls. “I will comply, no matter how unnecessary it may seem to me.”
“Very agreeable.”
“I owe the Express that much and more.”
“Hm.”
“How do you feel about it, doctor?” Sunday asks and rubs his wrist. “Are you unhappy with this assignment?”
The purple lightning strikes behind Dr. Ratio’s head. It stays paralyzed, electric branches frozen onto the ocean’s surface.
“Why do you presume I would be?” Dr. Ratio asks.
Sunday clears his throat.
“We did not meet under the best circumstances. I showed you a cruel and unkind side of me and treated one of your colleagues horrendously. I can apologize and I would like to, as well, but I am not sure how much words can make right.”
The look Dr. Ratio gives him is not anger or indifference. There is pity in it and regret, a sorrow that looks out of place on his stoic features.
“Was that the last time we met, then, Mr. Sunday?”
“Yes?” Sunday asks and blinks. His heart sinks and it keeps sinking, dead weight to the ocean floor. The lightning breaks, branch by branch, without a sound.
“Wasn’t it?” he asks, timid and tentative.
Dr. Ratio sighs.
“No, but if you don’t remember then there is no point in trying to force the memory. This is, after all, a realm of your making and destabilizing it through strain isn’t going to help either of us.”
“But I-“
“You and I are not on bad terms. That is all you need to focus on right now.”
“I- I see.”
“Given these new circumstances let me also tell you the same I did the very first time we met after your exile from Penacony,” Dr. Ratio continues with a stiffness that isn’t formality, only its grudging mimicry. “I apologize for the deception and congratulate you on deciding to turn your path away from the planet of festivities.”
Thunder rolls over the dreamscape loud enough for Sunday to flinch away from a strike that never comes. Up above him, in the void, a red line has torn the firmament in two. A gash no longer bleeding, the blood congealed.
“It was all business, wasn’t it?”
“For me, yes. I was asked to participate in a reckless scheme by a colleague and agreed. But as far as you were concerned it was your entire life about to be ended by your own hand and now uprooted.”
“I wouldn’t call it-“
“Others would,” Dr. Ratio says, unperturbed. “What is an eagerness to sacrifice your life other than an equal willingness to end it?”
Sunday does not reply.
I’m just tired.
I was just tired.
It was the right thing.
I had to. No one else would.
If not me, then who?
I’m just tired, so tired, so tired, so tired. What difference is there? I am not making plans. I merely would not cushion my fall.
“Hey,” March says as she steps over a fallen tree branch, settling down in the dew-kissed grass between bright mushrooms.
Sunday smiles at her, the politest smile he has. March does not seem to appreciate it, her face falling immediately before she catches herself.
“Hello, Miss March,” Sunday tries again. “I apologize if this place is not to your liking. If there is anything you would like me to adjust, please inform me of it.”
It only steers the dismay in her gaze deeper into sorrow. For a moment she stays still, caught mid-motion and the she sits with an ‘oof’ amidst the mushrooms. She chuckles halfheartedly.
“It’s all good, don’t worry about it. Tough girls like me don’t care about a little rain or mud.”
Sunday dares to look around, to the dream and its boundaries. The clearing sits atop the clouds, high in the heavens, and the sun shines only from below. The rays of light, pink with the dawn, move as seagrass would in gentle currents.
“What can I do for you?” he asks.
March chews on the inside of her cheek before replying.
“I just came to talk, really. I heard you got a visit from Ratio and he’s always a handful. I wanted to make sure you were holding up alright.”
“The learned doctor was very kind to me,” Sunday says and inclines his head. “Although your concern is appreciated.”
“Then why did you kick him out?”
“Hm?”
“You kicked the doctor out,” March repeats, her voice softer. “If he was so kind and everything is alright, then why’d you do that?”
Sunday ate two slices of toast this morning. One too many. One more than he is owed. Greedy. Gluttonous. If his stomach ached with hunger it was fitting, it always was a moral failing made flesh. Sinful. Unsightly. If he had eaten less would the world still turn? If he had known to only take his share, would the sun be in the sky?
“I could not bear what he said to me,” Sunday admits, smile unshaken. “It was no fault of his.”
March shakes her head.
“I’d tell you not to lie to me but you probably actually believe that.”
“I-“
“Can I hug you?”
Her lip wobbles and her eyes grow misty but she holds back the tears. The spoon that is crooked and the extra slice and if he had not sinned so horribly would March 7th have a more peaceful life? Would the world be kinder to her?
“You need not force yourself,” Sunday says carefully. “But if that is your wish, if it could bring you-“
She wraps her arms around him and tugs him close with surprising strength and certainty. Something aches in his chest. When sobs shake him he doesn’t know why. Why does it hurt so bad?
“We miss you,” March manages to say through gritted teeth, trying so badly to hold it together that it rings clear as a bell in the man trapped in Penacony that never quite escaped. “A lot.”
Sunday bites his tongue.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t think it’s right to tell you. The others say you have to remember it for yourself. But- but this place is safe, right? And we can all come visit you. It’ll be okay.”
Sunday’s heart flutters in his chest, a frantic drumbeat pounding against his ribcage from within. It too may think itself a caged bird and tear him open viciously, leave him hollow and no sicker than he already is.
“Please come visit,” Sunday whimpers because it aches more than he hates his own weakness. Aches more than he hates himself, this rotten shell salvaged from the rubble once and then a dreamless grave.
He blinks, tears hot on his cheeks.
What grave?
I fell.
I fell and then I woke up. There was no grave. There was no grief, not the right one, not the twisted selfish cowardly kind.
I didn’t die. I didn’t die.
When Welt Yang arrives it is raining in the wine cellars of a castle long fallen to ruin. The purple-stained banners line the moss-covered walls. It is rotting, this place.
“Hello,” Sunday says, perusing a bookshelf full of empty pages. The dust clings to his gloves. They are rotting, too.
Gopher Wood insisted to be faced, to be respected with eye contact and a confident posture. One look was enough to let Sunday know that something was not in order. There were few words of scorn, a subtler torture. Subtle enough for Sunday’s heart to think it was not that bad or shifting the blame means not taking responsibility. He was an adult after all, when the dream of Order almost took flight. He was not in shackles. The small voice that cries but he altered you, still, to make these choices can be nothing but entitlement, cowardice, ignorance.
Welt Yang does not demand respect be shown in rituals.
“Hello,” he greets from somewhere in the hallways behind Sunday, the winding withering maze.
Sunday can’t turn to face him. Surely this is a last chance wasted, a chip carelessly gambled away. Brittle trust, rusted until it left no trace of itself.
“You made it quite difficult to find this corner,” Welt says. “Is there a specific reason for that? March said you two agreed it would be best if you had people visiting you.”
Sunday presses his palm to an empty page as though expecting it to be preserved there. Perhaps as leaves, as flower petals, as dried blood.
“I… yes. It would be best.”
“If it’s my presence in particular you’d rather avoid-“
Ungrateful. Entitled.
“No, I-“ Sunday starts, his back still turned, his shoulders slumping. “I just-“
And his sentence does not find itself any easier in this needlessly convoluted place. He does feel a bird in a cage, clawing and fluttering at invisible bars.
Welt gives him a long while before he speaks up again.
“What is the last thing you remember?”
Sunday takes a shuddering breath. The framework of what he is, of what is real, of what drives every gear into action, shakes. There is no keeping it up, no pulling himself together. There is nothing to pull.
“You accepted my request to travel with the Express,” Sunday says. “I spent a few days on the train. I-“
-left a window uncleaned.
A stain, left by nothing but a few crumbs of dirt. A potted plant, pristine, close by. Sunday watched the spot that clouded the stars, barely more than a fingertip’s stretch of glass desecrated. He couldn’t tear his eyes away, his skin crawling, too small for him, choked by his own existence. If he had cleaned it, would Mr. Yang’s disappointment sting less? If he had done his job, would that modicum of respect still remain?
“So a while back,” Welt says. “You’re missing quite a bit. It’ll come back in time.”
Sunday quivers.
“What makes you so certain?”
Welt laughs softly.
“We’re working on it. It’s only a matter of time. And, knowing how determined you are, maybe we won’t even need to wait that long. Until then we’ll just have to keep you company as much as we’re able.”
And his tone is so assured, so wonderfully absolving, that the noose of anxiety around Sunday’s throat lessens. It’ll be okay. It can be okay. If he turns nothing bad will happen. He will not be met with scorn.
Sunday places the book down. On the pages there are ciphers, there are shapes. Gopher Wood insisted on respect, on obedience, on perfection. Mr. Yang will greet Sunday with a smile. He will. He must. He will.
Sunday turns.
There is an order to things. Not within Order, not outside of it, but an order inherent to all that is real and present.
The order is not clear. The order is only clear to me.
I was cured of it. Once and for all.
I was cured of it.
Robin steps over ocean waves gracefully but chuckles as the foam reaches her regardless. Up where the sky should be another sea beckons, savage and violent, brewing restless.
She makes it to shore, of course, to wave at him with a smile on her lips that never betrays her burden. Gopher Wood asked different masks of them, perhaps, but he asked nonetheless.
Sunday wishes he could cry here, too, freely and inevitably.
He should feel joy at seeing her and he does, oh he does, somewhere below the miserable weight of shame. This pathetic fraying world, this dreadful place representing him and his ugly failure of a self- she shouldn’t have to see it. Always disappointing, always dragging her down as though he himself had twisted into the shackles caging the bird. And she would hate it, hate it, hate it, would beg him not to speak of himself that way, and Sunday would only think you fooled her too. Then, invevitably, do you really think so little of her? That she is blind and stupid and naïve? That she is forever a child, helpless and hapless? There is no winning, not with every thought looping back to the rotten heart of himself, the inherent worthlessness even in pride, the sole path his life can ever follow. The waves always return to shore, ocean or sky.
Sunday did not lock his room three times today. He only did two, two revolutions and stopping the key with trembling fingers. It too looms like a storm. That lock will bring misfortune. That lock will be the end of the world. He should have turned it one more time. It would have been so easy to.
Robin sits down wordlessly, her hands folded in her lap.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Sunday looks up. Those thoughts and their spiraling path down through the clouds stay frozen, suddenly caught and wrapped too tight to squirm. It must show on his face, that blankness, that loss.
“Whatever for?” he croaks, songbird no more.
“It’s partly my fault you are here, brother. I was told you don’t remember but it is no less true.”
Brother, always, because ‘Sunday’ is just approximation. Harmony flows in them both and their names always were melodies first.
“Whatever happened,” Sunday says and steadies his voice. “Know that I will not blame you.”
Robin sighs.
“I wish you would.”
“What?”
“If it is my fault, then you can blame me.”
“I-“
“I hurt you,” Robin says firmly. “Not intentionally, not out of cruelty, but I did. It does not make me a horrible person but it also does not mean you need to justify it. Especially if you don’t even remember what it was that I did.”
And the whisper of the wind ruffles their feathers the same way. Cut from the same cloth, spun from the same silk. Sunday nods, weary.
“And yet I still feel at fault.”
“’Feel’, not ‘are’?”
And a bout of laughter bubbles up in his chest, something graceless and childish and unfettered.
“I think so.”
Robin shuffles closer until their shoulders brush and then she wraps her arms around him like she did the day she left Penacony, squeezing him tight while he smiled and smiled because she deserved a happy farewell on a long journey. She must have been sadder for it, not seeing it mirrored. Cast out by her brother who did not bother to shed a tear for her departure.
“Robin,” Sunday says and his voice almost fails him. “I’m not- I’m not dead, am I?”
Robin shakes her head, her wings tensing so much they barely move with the motion.
“No. Thankfully not.”
So I can- so there is still time to-
But Sunday does not manage the words yet. It has been truth for too long, that Robin would be safer happier more successful without the burden of his association. They are family, yes, they always will be, but something treacherous in the back of his mind yet whispers that family needs to protect each other at all cost. Wishing to be present in her life is selfish, after all, they are no longer children. He needs to be responsible, realistic, taking up only the space that he should. After all, how else will there be room for everyone else?
Sunday exhales a long breath. If not the words then this. He huddles close to Robin like a bird on a wire. She can’t stay long. No one can.
If all that is me is rotten and defiled then where do I begin to excise it? At the core of myself until I am hollow? The shell, the skin, peeled off? Where do I start?
Aventurine grimaces as he steps into a puddle of rainwater. It clings like tar, translucent, crystal clear. Many such puddles line the old road. Concrete has cracked open and signs were torn down but the road itself is where it should be, between a desert and a river wide enough to lose itself in the horizon.
“Quite the scenery you dreamed up for me, angel,” Aventurine says and crosses the street in quick strides. “Can you spare an umbrella as well?”
The way he hurries closer is not cautious at all. A spring in his step. Sunday watches him, terrified of such certainty. It must show on his face because Aventurine slows. Some of that unguardedness, that luster, fades from this peacock’s plumage.
“You really don’t remember, do you?”
“Not all I am supposed to, no,” Sunday says. “But some things, yes.”
“What things?”
An execution. Glee and spite and malice at putting you in your place. It turned ugly and bitter and heavy so quickly, did you know? It was a thorn in my throat, suffocating.
“Our encounter in Penacony,” he simply says. “Seeing the aftermath of your grand performance. That is the last thing I remember.”
Aventurine’s smile turns sardonic. Sunday isn’t sure why that hurts, why he knows that it means Aventurine is hurting, too.
“Hah. That was the most memorable thing about me, hm?”
Biting and barbed and Sunday winces away from it even through an intrinsic knowledge that Aventurine will not reach out to strike him. That isn’t what this pain is- slighted, it feels like. Not on bad terms, Ratio said.
“I’m sorry I don’t remember more,” Sunday says. “I would like to.”
Aventurine’s eye twitches. For a second there is more again, a depth of emotion that is so unlike the cool indifference of his calculated charm. Something not unlike the-
And Sunday’s mind grasps for something that is not there. It feels like falling, like taking a step on a staircase that already ended. He shivers. The road shivers with him.
Aventurine drops onto the bench next to him with a sigh.
“I’m not as selfless as the others, you know,” he says and crosses one leg over the other elegantly.
Sunday blinks.
“What do you mean?”
“I want you to remember everything about me,” Aventurine says and stares, his beautiful eyes shimmering with an almost manic intensity. “Not a single moment lost.”
He does not back down. He never has. So fervent in his hunt- for information, leverage, or… this. Sunday shifts on the bench, chest burning with something he can’t even place. Robbed of it, of whatever emotion he is meant to match this with.
“Then will you tell me some of it?” Sunday asks and swallows around the lump in his throat. “However ill-advised that is.”
The cracks in the road deepen as Aventurine laughs. Splinters in the concrete, the blood of the earth boiling over.
“We’ve been married for thirty years,” Aventurine drawls. “We have six kids and ten dogs.”
Sunday sees the tremor in his hand, watches those slender fingers shake until Aventurine stuffs them into his pockets.
“You prefer cats,” Sunday says softly. “Right?”
The road splinters, at the edge of his vision, without making a sound. It breaks wide open.
Aventurine deflates, molding to the back of the bench. After a long moment he pulls his right leg onto the seat, rests his chin on his knee.
“A good guess?”
“A hunch, moreso.”
“Hm.”
“It sounds like something good I’ve lost,” Sunday says tentatively. “I truly wish I knew.”
Aventurine meets his eyes again, inscrutable but no longer smiling. Somehow Sunday knows that is progress.
“I believe you,” Aventurine says.
Doesn’t make it suck any less, remains unspoken.
Sunday slept in beyond his alarm today. Slothful, slovenly. He was not injured or sick, had no excuse. Pathetic, to lay curled up into a ball until he felt ready to be alive. Nothing was wrong. Nothing was even wrong. If he had gotten up, easy a task as it is, would Aventurine be happier? Would his smile skew soft and carefree, relax those handsome features instead of adding more lines of worry? If he had gotten up in time would Aventurine want to spend time here, spring in his step, giddy in his presence?
The touch startles Sunday so much he jumps. A hand on his arm, so light, so careful. Still Sunday jumps. Still Sunday shies away. Aventurine’s expression turns to stone and it hurts more than any bullet ever could.
“I’m sorry,” Sunday croaks.
Aventurine’s jaw hardens. Then, he takes a long breath in through his nose.
“You don’t even know what you’re feeling guilty for,” he says and the barbs have made way for exhaustion. “You silly bird.”
The river lays stagnant across the road and yet Sunday knows it is a river. Vast and endless and inexorably what it started as. He pulls his legs onto the bench as well, misses a touch he doesn’t remember.
What becomes of love that was granted but then forgotten? Does it remain where it was, does it warm me still? Does it decay or fester?
“We met again on the Herta Space Station,” Sunday says with his eyes closed. “For… research purposes?”
“Not quite.”
“Not leisure either, I presume.”
“No.”
“Was it another psychological evaluation?”
“Close enough,” Ratio relents. “Your fellow Nameless were concerned about your eating and sleeping habits as well as some of the unexplained bruises.”
The memory unfurls in Sunday’s mind. A crimson flower giving way. Is this Nihility brooking no quarter?
On that day, that faraway day, he went into the doctor’s space expecting to be ridiculed. To be taunted and prodded and tortured, be expected to endure it all the same. Instead, the doctor’s tone changed after Sunday’s responses to the questionnaires came frequent and steady.
“I would like help,” Sunday admitted, joints aching from cracking his fingers too much. “I think I need help.”
Now, in the whirlwind of a silent thunderstorm, Sunday blinks.
“I was your patient.”
“You still are,” Ratio replies and clicks his tongue. “You had made significant progress, even, in taking care of yourself and breaking those vicious cycles of negative thought. The last prescription was showing promising results, too, your sleep was starting to improve.”
“And then…?”
“And then something interrupted the process, of course, and now we find ourselves here.”
“I’m sorry,” Sunday says.
“So am I,” Ratio replies, unfazed. “You are not here through any fault of your own. Whatever previous mistakes you are caught on, they had no bearing on this.”
The tone strikes Sunday as strange. He mistook it for disdain much too easily before, dogged insistence on his intellectual superiority, but it is beginning to sound more like desperation now. A writhing nauseating conclusion.
“Doctor, were you partially responsible for my… accident?” Sunday asks without opening his eyes.
The silence is deafening. Answer enough. How curious.
“Is that the case for everyone who manages to visit me?”
The ocean waves slosh against artificial, even stone.
“You are correct in both assumptions,” Ratio replies. “That is why, despite wanting to, you have not been receiving visits from your other companions.”
It eases some of the gnawing worry. Himeko and Dan Heng wanted to make it but couldn’t- not because they are dead and he killed them and no one had the heart to let him know. Not for any other panicked reason he dreamed up. Sunday relaxes.
“I see. Are they well?”
“You will have to ask that of someone else. I do not frequent the Express.”
“And yet-“
“And yet I was involved, yes.”
“But you still can’t provide me with more hints,” Sunday sighs. “Of course. I apologize, I do understand the stipulations.”
He opens his eyes and sits up on the bench by the oceanside in the midst of a thunderstorm. His wings only ache here, in this place. Spectral and vast.
Ratio takes a seat on the spot Sunday dreamed up for him the last time.
“It is understandably frustrating to be missing so much and constantly be told you can’t be given the truth.”
“I do appreciate the help, regardless of my own inability to recall all I should.”
“It,” Ratio starts and pinches the bridge of his nose, “is not your fault, Sunday.”
But how can it not be? How could you all have thrown me into this chasm if I did not deserve it?
Sunday idly tugs on the feathers that should have been pulled loose a while ago. Then on those whose time has not yet come. It stings but the pain is penance.
“Did you put me here for my own safety?” he asks.
Ratio only shakes his head. Narrowed down. An unpleasant truth remains before the ocean’s lonely waves. Sunday lets his wings ache with his unkind touch.
“I put myself in here?”
“I trust your judgment, doctor. And if it proves too much for me you will be able to provide assistance, yes?”
“Oh, that is a really nice color,” March says and leans closer. “I wasn’t sure it would look good but you were right.”
Sunday carefully applies the next layer of polish to her nails. A deep green, not quite matching the meadows and grass around them. Perhaps deep below this floating island slumbers a forest not unlike it.
“I’m glad you like it. And thank you for humoring me even though you had your doubts.”
“Oh, I’ve-“
March stops herself.
“You’ve bestowed much stranger colors upon me?” Sunday asks and the thought sits warm and homely in his mind. “So this is something we have done more than once.”
“Yes! Whew, I’m glad you figured that out yourself. There I went again, blurting out more than I should have.”
Sunday smiles. It feels less practiced, less stiff.
“It is a very smart plan, to recreate things that actually happened to stir my memories.”
“Aw,” March says. “I mean, yeah, it was a genius plan by yours truly. But good to see it worked.”
There is an ease to being in her presence. She fills the silence with many a word and story and listening isn’t the same as it was cramped into a confessional wishing he could carry the weight of the world. March chats for the sake of chatting, for connection, to receive answers in turn.
Ratio is an acquaintance, well-meaning but distant, Sunday felt in every feather. March is… closer. He thinks of Robin and is only swamped with guilt. Replacing a sister with someone you hurt? They’d be disgusted, the both of them.
March does not look disgusted at all. She plopped down in the middle of the meadow and mushrooms as she did the first time, brought a full bag of supplies into this dreamscape. Sunday pauses over her right thumb. Only one person could have helped with that. He continues painting.
“So, we regularly do things like this,” he muses. “The other items suggest that includes… baking and perhaps art of some kind. Have I picked up painting again?”
“Yep,” March says. “We’re both still pretty bad at it but that’s part of the fun.”
Sunday blinks.
“I see.”
“What’s up?”
Feathers bloodied from tearing plucking harming them. Never left undisturbed.
“I assumed my… disposition would make that difficult for me to stomach.”
March sighs.
“Not sure I should answer that.”
“That’s alright. I will remember in time, I’m sure.”
“Yeah! Yeah, you will.”
Sunday finishes the last strokes of paint, making sure not to smudge anything by accident. The light below the floating island changes colors every few minutes. It still passes them by, them and this meadow.
“The doctor confirmed something for me,” he says and folds his hands so they stay still. “That… perhaps only those who were involved with my ‘accident’ can visit me now. If that is true, what did I do to-“
March says something, a hurried protest, but the words become a knife to Sunday’s mind. It cuts and blinds with pain and when he comes to the lights below have gone out. March has scooted closer, holding his hand in a tight grip. The paint smudges.
“Sorry,” she says and shakes her head vehemently. “Shouldn’t have said that. You have to remember on your own. But you didn’t make me do anything. It was an accident but it was our fault, not yours.”
The same urge to protest rests in his own heart. I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s what happened.
“With you by my side, Miss March, I doubt I ever have anything to fear.”
“I admit, this is much nicer than the last time,” Welt comments and sits on an ornate red chair. “Much drier than the cellars, too.”
Sunday nods. The castle’s banquet halls are empty save for them, no grand feast spread out on the oaken table. Only two cups of tea. Sunday pushes his around, back and forth six times, before picking it up.
“I remember we had tea together quite often,” Sunday says. “A ritual, of sorts. You were plagued by insomnia.”
Welt smiles. He hesitates as he picks up the cup but takes a tentative sip.
“That’s true.”
“Is it not the right kind?”
“No,” Welt laughs softly. “But it’s good you remember more already, Sunday. The rest will come in time.”
It begins to grate on his nerves. Always patience, always another day. Sunday reaches for his piercings but falters. Welt’s sorrow would pain him more than the doctor’s. Are you a mentor? A friend? A parent? Is that too much to ask? Is that strange to want?
“I’ve been informed that everyone who can visit me was involved in the circumstances that brought me here,” Sunday says.
Welt nods slowly.
“The doctor did let us know you came to that conclusion. So did March.”
The tea tastes like nothing, Sunday realizes. He takes another sip and does not remember it after.
“Would you say that isn’t the right conclusion to come to, then?” he asks. “Because I admit I find it difficult to believe I was as innocent as they have claimed.”
“I’m not certain that is something I can answer so easily or that either answer would bring you closer to the truth.”
“Was it my fault?”
Welt’s expression softens immediately. He sighs and keeps his gloved hands around his cup as though chasing the warmth. Sunday isn’t sure he remembered to dream up temperature.
“I think,” Welt says carefully, “that regardless of whether or not it was actually your fault, you do blame yourself. So perhaps assuaging that guilt brings you further from reality. But no, Sunday, it wasn’t.”
There is more to follow, more that Welt wishes to fill the blanks with. Sunday can feel it, the things unsaid, the meaning between lines he is so desperately trying to read.
“Okay,” Sunday replies, toneless, and slumps onto his chair until it rains inside the castle once more. There are few words left on his mind. The fog in his brain only grows denser, the exhaustion only deepens. No sleep in a dream. No sleep for him, just as his paradise demanded.
Welt goes to leave, eventually, his comforting words ringing in Sunday’s ears. He turns his back and Sunday suddenly, violently, stumbles after him and hugs him.
Welt falls quiet and still. Gopher Wood’s scorn never quite suited him but perhaps gentler disapproval will, perhaps his punishments for acting out and childish and annoying will be-
“You’re doing well,” Welt tells him, keeping a palm on Sunday’s back. “I wish I could do more to help.”
It does not stir any memories, this comforting touch. Is this new, then? Have I overstepped? Misunderstood? Categorized wrong?
“No, you haven’t, I don’t think,” Welt chuckles. “We are family, as far as I am concerned. You just-“
Didn’t make it easy. Didn’t know what to say. Didn’t ask for the help you need.
“Didn’t get around to it,” Sunday croaks. “To ascertaining that.”
“I won’t let you down, Mr. Yang!”
“I didn’t realize how much I was broadcasting,” Sunday mumbles, his head leaning onto Robin’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright. You didn’t intend to.”
“I should be able to control it. I am not certain why it keeps happening.”
Too weak too pathetic too greedy for comfort absolution lenience you don’t deserve-
Robin flicks one of his headwings with hers.
“No one is allowed to talk about my brother like that.”
It is all that is left. Anger and frustration, then guilt and shame and sorrow. It comes and goes with the tides, both of them, the ocean before them and its crooked twin in the sky. Sunday has nothing but apologies, grievances, tears to spill. He sighs.
“I ask myself: if I am the one who put me here for my own safety, why can I not dispel this dream?”
Robin hesitates long enough. Sunday closes his eyes.
“I had a feeling that was your transgression,” he mutters. “No one else could have brought objects or people in here. You guided them. Thank you.”
“You should be angry first.”
“If I had to guess, something unforeseen and terrible occurred and you helped guide me to this realm to spare me some suffering.”
“It is the same-“
“It is reversible,” Sunday interrupts, firmly. “Isn’t it? I will remember on my own. This is not the cage you fear it is.”
Robin deflates, leaning on him in turn.
“When you saw me, dying, did you think of the bird as well?” she asks and laughs, unhappy. “I… would have. And I would have remembered how the one supposed to protect us never cared to, ushered us so smugly into learning morality. How early he saw where his thorns could take root.”
Did you resent me for it? For falling for it? For resisting but only halfway? For claiming it was kindness, something to be grateful for, something more than I deserve and should settle for and-
“When I was too young to understand, maybe,” Robin answers because those wretched thoughts circle him like crows, bleed from an open wound. “We were children. I was jealous I wasn’t chosen, perhaps, in some ways. Before I knew what that meant. It isn’t as though I didn’t have my fair share of realizations later about how I was treated.”
I’m sorry, Sunday wishes to say, because he is. Because he always is. Sorry his sacrifice never did grant her the peace he wishes for it to. Sorry that no matter how much pressure he took on more than enough was always left for Robin. Sorry that, in the end, none of these were his choices to make in her stead.
“I let you protect me this time,” Sunday says and can’t help the noise wrenching itself from his throat. “Oh, Robin, that doesn’t make it your fault. I would and should do so again, no matter how it went.”
Her iridescent flight wings wrap around them both. A memory, clear and immutable. Two children, fished from a disaster still ringing in their ears, sticking close together because there was no one else, there was nothing else.
“Please make it stop."
“Our first meeting?” Aventurine muses and picks a dried flower from its stem where it bloomed already dead. “It was a romantic affair, of course. Head over heels. We immediately made out in the dingy bathroom of a gas station on some desert highway. That’s why you conjured this up, I assume.”
Sunday follows him on the old road. The river to the left and the desert to the right. All or nothing. He can’t decide which is which.
“So it was not romantic,” he follows their brand of memory recovery. “And in a familiar place. The Express?”
“Mhm. Full marks.”
“And I assume that also means it did not go all that smoothly.”
“Also correct.”
“I’m sorry.”
Aventurine snorts.
“Give me some credit. I have plenty of potential to ruin social situations as well.”
And there is warmth in Sunday’s heart, inexplicably.
“You are very defensive of me,” he says and can’t help the awe. “Despite it all.”
There is no way to soften the blow, any of them. Aventurine takes it in stride, as he does all things, but Sunday wishes he could coax out that weightless carefree joy once more, the bright-eyed happiness of someone meeting the person they cherish so. Knowing it exists only worsens its absence.
“Yeah,” Aventurine says, keeping his back turned and his hands stuffed into his pockets. “You’re too harsh on yourself and too kind to others.”
“Too kind to you?”
Aventurine flinches. He looks small standing by the riverside, forlorn, lost. Sunday chases him against all better judgment. His arms know how to hold Aventurine, how to hug him from behind and stroke up and down his sides.
“Don’t force yourself, angel,” Aventurine says quietly. “If you don’t remember, you don’t remember.”
The wind crosses over the road, past them and towards one of two horizons. Sunday shakes his head, face buried against Aventurine’s shoulder.
“You like cats and old movies and games,” he mumbles. “You make me so happy, I know you do.”
My heart remembers loving you.
Aventurine sinks to the ground by the roadside. Sunday follows, feverish with the wish to soothe. He curls around Aventurine as best he can. They kneel in the dust surrounded by dried flowers.
Aventurine relaxes into the hold, turning his face so his cheek presses against Sunday’s hair.
“I just,” he starts and there’s no hiding his sorrow, “miss you.”
Sunday nods, breathing in so he may commit the scent of familiar perfume to memory.
“I’m still here.”
“I told you, I’m more selfish than that,” Aventurine huffs. “And tragically not shallow enough to be content with a pretty face.”
But I’m still here I’m still me I’m trying my best I’m sorry
A hand rests on Sunday’s arm, tracing up and down. Aventurine must feel the fluttering frantic staccato of his heart.
“Easy there, songbird.”
“But I’m not, am I?”
“You-“
“Don’t force yourself. You said so. Have I let you believe that? In the time I don’t remember? That I’d need to force myself? That I don’t-“
“Sunday,” Aventurine says and nuzzles him. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
And it is followed by guilt and nausea immediately. To take this grief from Aventurine, the space to mourn, the opportunity to voice his issues, to take up more than Sunday deserves, to-
“I’ve done this before,” he croaks, suddenly, truer than any intrusive thought. “Haven’t I?”
Aventurine huffs, so soft, so achingly soft.
“We both have had our fair share of breakdowns in each other’s arms, yes.”
“It has been years? Since we met again?”
“Mhm.”
“I-“
“You know that me being here means I was involved in what happened to you,” Aventurine whispers. “Why are you apologizing?”
The rain drizzles on them both until Sunday dreams up an umbrella. Its fabric is dappled with painted cat paws and the way Aventurine laughs can only mean this is memory, not fantasy.
“You feel guilty enough,” Sunday mumbles.
Aventurine taps his nose, brushes his thumb under Sunday’s eye.
“Exactly.”
“I promise I’ll be home in time, Churin.”
Sunday wakes in his bed aboard the Express with a headache. The ceiling is where it should be and it does not rain inside and as he shifts on starry bedsheets the fabric crinkles audibly.
Sunday rubs his temples and gets up. Vertigo and nausea follow him as he pads over familiar carpets, past large windows cradling the cosmos. He staggers into the lounge and is met with a loud yelp.
“Apologies, conductor,” Sunday says to the crumpled ball of fluff on the floor that he knocked over, quickly kneeling to help them. “I did not hear you approach-“
“Mr. Sunday!” Pom-Pom shouts, wrapping their arms around his waist. “You’re alive! You’re awake! Oh, it’s a miracle!”
They fuss over him so much he can barely get a word out. Sunday is ushered to one of the plush red seats, given a blanket and water and painkillers. Pom-Pom makes sure he is laying down and bundled up before declaring they have to make a few calls.
“I must inform everyone you are doing better,” they say. “Passengers Himeko and Dan Heng especially have been worried sick. Please rest until then.”
Sunday nods sheepishly. His head still thrums unpleasantly and he settles onto the seat in a manner most ungainly. It doesn’t matter. He dozes off as the medicine brings reprieve only to be stirred by a hand on his shoulder.
“Sunday?” Dan Heng asks and then smiles wider than Sunday has ever seen. “You really are back.”
Sunday finds himself enveloped in another hug. Then a second as Himeko makes it over as well.
“You were comatose for two weeks,” she tells him as Dan Heng gets tea and snacks to shove into his hands, insisting he focus on regaining his strength. “What do you remember?”
It is a simple simple simple task. Ratio is sure of it, has peered into the chasm himself.
There are no dangers, they assure him.
They have faith in him. March cheers him on.
They send him into danger without knowing it. They send him into danger. Welt promises what he can’t fulfill.
Then there is only agony, a virus eating thought by thought until he is crying and sobbing and wailing like a child because torture does not bring truth, only loss.
They can’t reach him, locked where he is. Only Robin’s song that takes the part of his mind from him that hurts.
The virus runs its course but he does not return.
Aventurine tries to break into the space, clawing at the edges until his fingers bleed, but it only seals the entrance shut tighter. They have to pry him away.
The roaming consciousness beckons, fractured but not gone.
Aventurine is the first to burst through the Express’ doors. Disheveled, day clothes rumpled and worn. There is no carefree bounce to his movements, no levity, but he sprints over to the seat within an instant.
“Do you-“ he starts and does not get through the sentence before Sunday nods, so fast, so fast. Aventurine kneels before him, not praying at his altar for a safe return but needing worship, affirmation.
Sunday finds himself peppered with kisses, held tightly, caressed.
“Your companions don’t have to put up with me pacing their train and drinking all their coffee anymore,” Aventurine mumbles. “Now I’ll just be hovering near your room constantly to nurse you back to health.”
Sunday curls up against him.
“Good.”
“I missed you.”
“I missed knowing you. So much.”
March and Welt arrive next, slower because they did not have inordinate amounts of credits to throw at a driver to ignore all speed limits. Aventurine does not go far but gives some space for March to tackle Sunday. The hesitation is gone now because it has been gone for months- because March is family and Welt is family and Sunday will still trust them with his life the next time.
“I’m making those blueberry pancakes you love tomorrow,” March tells him. “Or no, wait, I can make them right now. Yeah, yeah, you don’t blame us so we don’t have to make up for anything. Take it as a welcome back gift!”
“You didn’t even let me protest,” Sunday says and laughs as she ruffles his feathers. “I- I shall see it as that.”
Ratio calls briefly, expressing his happiness in certain but reserved terms. He schedules an appointment at the earliest convenience.
“To make sure no lingering effects remain,” he says. “Bring someone to pick you up, as well, just in case.”
Welt hugs Sunday later, while peppermint tea steeps on the counter. He squeezes Sunday an extra time. He will not lose another child, will not risk grief again.
“Thank you for bringing me here, Mr. Yang,” Sunday says against his shoulder. “For working so tirelessly to bring me back.”
Welt laughs.
“And yet you did the work yourself, didn’t you? Blazing a trail back home.”
Aventurine stays the night, as expected, reluctantly dragged into a movie night with March and Dan Heng. He falls asleep with his head on Sunday’s lap before the opening credits are even done.
“It will take a while to get used to it again,” Dan Heng says softly, his spectral tail thumping the bed. “You were gone so suddenly. You will have to excuse all of us for checking in on you quite often.”
The horrific unkind thoughts don’t orbit him anymore but Sunday still feels them itch, the chorus of undeserving and unsightly. But the world is in order, here, in all its chaotic and unpredictable beauty.
Sunday smiles.
“I will excuse it.”
Robin arrives last, early in the morning. A universe away but the sea of stars is easier to cross than a stormy ocean. She greets everyone else, in passing, before her wings wrap around Sunday.
“You did keep me safe,” he tells her and hugs her back. “Thank you.”
“For a while. Then it was time to wake up.”
It gets a laugh out of him. A dream ended. What’s one more?
“I’m sorry you had to travel so far.”
“We thought you were gone,” Robin says and her wings flap, both sets gently admonishing. “I thought you were gone. Again. Of course I will hurry.”
Welcome home, they say in every gesture. Thank the stars you’re alive. You would be missed so terribly.
Sunday sleeps in until noon. Everyone else, snoring up a storm, does the same. The movies lasted to the early morning after all- his tongue was leaden from chatting so much. He itches to get up, to be useful, but the weight on his lap and shoulder and side reassure. Sunday sleeps another hour and the world doesn’t end.
He doesn’t lock his room after he gets up- there are still people in there. It makes no sense to. The world doesn’t end.
On his walk towards the front of the train he notices the stain on the window. Sunday reaches for it, rubbing away it with a tissue. It is no dirt, he realizes, it is a mark left by an encounter long ago. A memento. He stops, in awe, uncertain which adventure may lie hidden behind this scar. He moves on and the world does not end.
Pom-Pom has left fresh berries with his toast. Himeko placed a mix for hot chocolate next to a cup. Welt saved an extra pancake. Sunday eats in secret, their loving offerings, but the world does not end.
As he goes to leave, to rejoin them all, to busy himself and find normalcy again, he notices a fork on the counter askew. Sunday watches it, brow furrowed. With a sigh he returns, sorts it away after cleaning it. It doesn’t keep the world turning but his heart is at ease.
A voice calls for him from within the Express.
“Be right there!” Sunday answers- and so he will be.