Work Text:
Claude had been traveling the new world for a long time now. And he's finally met a small party who were willing to take him in! They are his age, and a pair of twins, too. Just like himself and his brother, they also have white and blond hair, although it could be said that they both have white and blond hair at the same time. He thinks it's very beautiful anyway, and is slowly convincing Nathaniel to let him brush and braid it so he can see how pretty it looks when the colors intertwine as such.
“Where are you from, by the way?” Nathaniel questions one night as they sit around the fire that Ithaqua keeps going, his mask placed on his lap.
“I'm from France.” Claude answers, nibbling on a cracker. It's surprising that he hadn't already told them all about his countryside home with how he tends to ramble. He did already ramble, didn't he? “Do you guys know where we are?”
Ithaqua hums and digs an X on the ground with the tip of his axe. “Still in Europe, I imagine. Maybe around… hm, where did you get those?”
Both twins perk up at the realization that for some reason, their new companion is holding in his hands a bag of salted crackers. Not that it's something he's not allowed to have, but rather, something that should be impossible to have at all. It's not even made by him, still in clumsily opened plastic wrappers with a brand name plastered in bright colors about it, completely untouched by the decade of catastrophe that had all but wiped out such conveniences.
“Mm? Oh, sorry, I forgot to share! So sorry…” Claude quickly splits the remaining crackers between the two, profusely apologizing in his soft voice as he painfully drops a few crumbs all over everyone's clothes. “Aah, that was really rude of me!”
Nathaniel turns the treat around in disbelief. Ithaqua immediately takes a bite before stopping in his tracks and taking his time to smell and savor something that once was completely plain but now one of the luxuries he had taken for granted. Even if it is a brand that he didn't like back then, now it melts on his tongue like nothing else and brings back the memory of something long lost to time. Ithaqua lounging on the couch while Nathaniel shouts at him to clean up his room before leaving…
“No, Claude, how did you get this? From a store?” Nathaniel's voice rises. He might become a little angry. Claude shrinks back to his own seat, raising his hands up in a show of his innocence, whereas Nathaniel stands up to inspect the bag he had been carrying. “Where did you come from, and don't say France again!”
“Ahh- m- my brother gave it to me-”
“Huh?! This bag is…” Baby blue in color, and just as brand new if not for the various nature remains on the fabric from the owner's clumsiness. Contrary to what the twins had been carrying, long since torn and patched several times, reinforced with the odd wood they've found in their travels. Nathaniel shakes it in confusion. “Do you think I'm stupid?! If your brother can give you all this in this situation, then why isn't he here right now, spoiling you with, oh, I don't know, something like a car?”
Claude bites his lower lip. “Because I get carsick… a- and he's always with me! Here!” Nathaniel raises an eyebrow as the boy points towards the night sky. He exchanges a glance with his twin brother, who's on his second cracker whilst nearly drooling. Ithaqua shrugs. Over the crunch and the fire, he heard nothing. With a groan, Nathaniel decides that he must deal with this on his own. Claude is pretty weak anyway, as well as quite useless for anything involving technical skills, and in terms of intelligence, it seems Nathaniel is the only person who paid attention in school back then.
“Well, I won't believe you until I see him and how he finds these things. And since I don't trust you, Ithaqua and I will be leaving you!”
His little heart almost breaks. He'd been getting along so well with them! Claude nods in understanding, and runs a little distance to stop while facing the sky where the moon is scarce whilst the stars are brighter than ever. “Big brother… um, I want…” He looks to Nathaniel for help, who rolls his eyes and points at Ithaqua, who seems to be falling asleep. “Sleeping bags for my new friends!”
Thankfully, as usual, the night sky parts. The first time he wished for his brother’s company or help at night, he was a little scared to see the darkness splitting around the middle to reveal whiteness, but he quickly realized it was simply his wish granted; like now, when the massive arm he’s learned to associate with his family and the happiness he shared with them stretches out from the cosmic gash between the stars and extends all the way down to the grassy plains. Claude hops over, jumping up to climb onto the pad of his index finger as he’s accustomed to. The first time, it was a little difficult, since his body was still weak and sleepy from being alive again, but now it’s nearly second nature.
Once he’s made it up, he makes sure to hug the tip of his finger. “I missed you… When will you be able to come down with me?”
Worry not, my angel.
“Okay, yay! I can’t wait.” Although his brother’s hand is not as soft as he remembers, he still loves him and craves his attention and hugs; it’s closer to marble, but retains a hint of softness. Once, Claude had spent a night in his palm, and woke up still guarded by his fingers. It’s always warm enough to rest without fear of catching a cold. But even if he loves his brother, he doesn’t want to always use up one hand (even if… perhaps, he can have as many hands as he wants, being something like a God, maybe) when he must be so busy with much higher affairs.
He trots to his palm and finds two sleeping bags, red and blue, similar in size and comfort. “Natha, Itha, come here!” Picking both up into his arms, Claude thinks they’ll catch them if he throws it from the slight elevation. But, upon cheerfully turning to face his friends, believing that he has regained Nathaniel’s trust, he only sees that they’re both staring at him in utter terror, eyes wide, Nathaniel’s jaw hanging from his face and Ithaqua as pale as a ghost. “Guys…?”
Nathaniel inadvertently faints.
…
(He fainted again, upon returning to consciousness no thanks to Claude shaking his arm in a panic, crying all over his face, because he saw the marble hand still there, the sky still holding a white scar. The second time he woke up, Ithaqua flicked his forehead and told him to get a grip, so with a huff and pout, he shakingly got up to his feet and kept his eyes on Claude determinedly, very much avoiding the inescapable white glow at the corner of his eyes.
“Here’s the sleeping bags… I’m sorry, I didn’t know you would be scared!”
He wants to yell at Claude about how any sane person would react the same way if they’d seen what he’d just seen, but then he thinks about Claude’s affection towards what can only be the Almighty Hand of the Heavenly Father, and decides better. He had retained his virtue and his disciplines all his life, and just barely did he cling on during the past few years wondering where God was that He’d left all his followers to be massacred through these apocalypses and horrific monsters emerging from everywhere, and he’s not about to forsake his claim to heaven when he’s just found proof.
Ithaqua, who is only attuned to his twin-telepathy at the worst of moments, pulls Nathaniel back from his shoulders as soon as he sees his head turning to the hand. “Don’t try it. It’s not your time yet.” He wisely reminds– true, he had almost fallen to pride and entitlement! “Or whatever.” He adds, to his disappointment.
Teary-eyed, Claude plays with his pale hands that too have gotten a little worn from his exploration while looking down in shame. “Are we friends again?”
Nathaniel tries to turn around, and Ithaqua pushes his head back to face forward. “Yes,” he answers firmly, “and I would like to ask your brother a few questions.”
Brother. What does that make this bumbling creature who lights up and hugs him to his entire body burning in what might be eternal damnation or utter humiliation? The brother of God? There was never a brother… There might be a son. Is this the second coming? But, Claude is clearly white. Nathaniel tilts his head to the side, watching as Claude runs back to the Heavenly hand and falls off the first excited time he tries to climb back on. Upon success, he holds conversation looking upwards, receiving no response, or none that Nathaniel can hear.
And then, the hand closes around Claude. Nathaniel nearly passes out for the third time while Ithaqua confusedly reaches for his axe.
However, when it opens, the boy is still fully intact, not a bruise on him. The fingers taller and wider than his entire small body brush against his back and pet the top of his head lightly, almost ruffling his white hair. Nathaniel rubs his eyes. It looks like a video he saw back then of a hamster being gently squished by its owner. It is here the suspicion that this might not perhaps be the God, for He would never play favorites with His children, yet this strange deity is clearly lavishing too much attention as well as a direct prayer line to this admittedly pure but rather stupid young man.)
…
Claude knows that his brother made a great sacrifice and got hurt very badly in order to become something like this. He did something that was very bad, and a lot of people got hurt too. But as he rests his head on the bottom of his wrist, he knows that it was because of himself.
No. You are innocent.
“Joseph, it’s okay. If I had been less selfish, you wouldn’t have been so sad.” And before he can argue back, he presses his lips to his palm. And it brings back the loveliest of memories. When Claude was freshly revived, he remembered nothing– he awoke in a decrepit land, subsequently he recalled that before his death, mushrooms had started eating everything and they ate his mother, father, and at last, him, leaving only the eldest son to survive the catastrophe.
Then what happened? Then… he wasn’t there. But he knows, in brief flashes, his brother had been working very hard. So hard, that sometimes the remains of his body was able to record and retain the memory of him pacing around a room full of computers and science-y things, always doing something, reading, writing, cutting and stitching, after which he’d almost completely devolved to sitting at the largest screen, entranced by something. His golden hair fell out of the neatness he managed to maintain through the few years of red skies, sprawling out over his thinning figure. But every day, even at that time, Joseph would come and see him, whatever Claude was, maybe a quarter of his body in a test tube, and tell him nice things.
Mycelium found their way inside one day, of course. Claude didn’t see them, but he felt the overwhelming pressure.
They are coming from something underneath us, Claude. Something that us humans could have never stopped even if we’d tried our hardest. The faintest memories, blinking in Claude’s mind. Perhaps, Joseph is showing them clearly now because he had been seeing what Claude looked like then, he’d known everything about absolutely everything at that time to his little brother and now he is capable of everything– not that Claude ever believed differently. I’m going to destroy it… I will rip it apart if it’s the last thing I do. For you, my dear angel. I promise.
His brother used to be a fencer. That time feels so far away now; blue skies, fresh air, confetti as Joseph lifted his sword to the heavens, triumphant as he received his nth trophy and Claude applauded from the window he was confined to. He’d run up the stairs, his cheeks still flushed red from his hard work, and he’d tackle Claude into his sickbed, showering his fevered face in kisses. Thank you, Claude, I win every time because I know you’re watching me.
Joseph must have won and brought back the blue skies because of Claude. Really, he is nothing, he was nothing but a doll closed up in a closet where he would be safest if anything went awry, hooked up to something that gave his dead body air. Nevertheless, he saw, through the crack in the only thing that could provide him shelter anymore, which disappeared and gave way to an endless darkness. The computer screen began to flicker then, just as Claude started to breathe, just as he started to access those memories his corpse had dutifully been recording. They all blinked in rapid panic, then all lit up– something appeared on them. What was it? Something like… initiating… the path to… something.
Do you like it?
Claude laughs weakly through his throat thick with tears and gazes upwards. If he looks hard enough, he can almost see his face.
“I like everything you give me, big brother. I wish you could be here in the amazing world you gave everyone else too.” To Claude, it’s wonderful, anyway. “I’m just… a little sad, that I can’t always hold your hand anymore.”
Joseph’s thumb caresses his back without words. He wishes that he could always hold Claude too.
When Claude rests in his palm again that night, while his friends whisper in their sleeping bags, he dreams of the night sky– only, there are no stars, the blinking lights a million miles away are all mushroom heads, growing and growing, threatening to swallow the world whole. They arrive from far, far away, seeking to eat up another planet. But ‘he’ raises his hand, a pale one, even bonier than before, curved around his keyboard, and all of those swaying white heads turn into glowing screens. Where mycelium had been traveling through the deepest layers of the earth’s soil, becoming its new veins, they all rupture and are replaced by rubber and copper wires stretching straight and uniform.
And then, the ‘him’ in Claude’s dream clasps ‘his’ pale hands in prayer.
Emerald grassy valleys sprout to life. The sky is blue, the sun is golden. Trees overflow, flowers blossom. And all the while, the hands that Claude watch from the eyes of ‘him’ become flawlessly white and marble-like in texture, before the green grass also fades into the corner of his vision. In his dream, he can see every inch of the world at once. Everywhere, as survivors trek through the impossible fantasy, he even sees Ithaqua and Nathaniel emerge from a grove of trees that crushed a feeble shelter in the woods, wide-eyed and tired, yet hopeful as they find birds in the branches.
He sees himself, his white hair grown out of control over his shoulders, tangling his limbs that have returned fully, slowly opening bleary eyes with white eyelashes to witness the first day. Overwhelmed with an emotion that he will never be able to describe, Claude reaches ‘his’ hand to himself, palm full of the little things a human needs. Food, clothes, little trinkets that a mind like Joseph’s remembers in utter detail. He even sees their childhood home in astonishing clarity, but decides against it. After all, the rest of Claude’s family is long gone, buried in the old earth of calamity, and his twin brother scattered into every fragment of this new world’s colorful projection.
…
“Good morning, Claude. Are you planning on sleeping through the afternoon as well?”
Nathaniel is standing a good distance away from his bed on his brother’s hand. Claude rubs his eyes full of tears. “Ah… huh, sorry! I’ll be with you guys in a second!” He then turns to his brother, wondering what sort of dream he had that had made his head so heavy and his sleeves wet with tears. “Sorry for bothering you again, big brother… you can go now!”
The sky mends itself when the hand retreats into the gash of light. And Claude packs up his bags and follows behind his new companions.