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There's blood on his hands. It isn't his.
He's not breathing, and he's not sure if "he" in this case is himself or him. Only one of them is laying unmoving on the ground. Only one of them still needs the air.
"No," he hears himself say, except his voice doesn't sound like his own. It's far too panicked. "No, breathe, you have to breathe. Caelus, you have to."
His pleas don't suddenly make the body on the ground start moving, though. They don't return the blood to its veins. No, that's still all over Dan Heng's hands from where he carried Caelus from the burning train car, over his clothes where he held as tight as he could, over the ground when his own injuries from the crash finally became too much to ignore and he'd had to resort to dragging his best friend's body instead of carrying it.
Dan Heng doesn't even know what to do anymore. His whole reputation is built around being one of the most knowledgeable people on the Express. March has called him a walking encyclopedia at least three times in recent memory. After his last disastrous attempt, he'd even gone out of his way to learn proper CPR.
There's too much blood for CPR to be useful here, though.
He picks up Caelus's hand, instantly realizing it's already lacking the warmth he'd grown so accustomed to. Thumbs run across familiar calluses, the lines of his palm, the swirls of his fingerprints, all things Dan Heng had hoped more than anything to familiarize himself with until he knew them just as well as his own.
"I'm sorry," he chokes out. "Caelus, I'm sorry I-"
A footstep breaks the relative silence, and he freezes.
Not now. Please, not now, not when-
When he turns around, it's him, standing there, and when he looks back down it's still him lying dead on the ground in his own blood. One Caelus, the foreign Caelus, standing behind him in the rubble, face gone pale as he looks at the sight before him. One Caelus, the familiar Caelus, on the ground, gone.
Slowly, Dan Heng finds himself standing back up.
"Are you from the past or the future?"
Not-Caelus seems confused. "Me?"
"Are you his past or are you his future?"
Those golden eyes are still fixed on the body, unanswering.
"Caelus," he says, taking a step closer. There's a sudden surge of unfamiliar anger in his chest, one that he doesn't have the emotional energy to dismiss right now. If he thinks too hard about the way he feels he doesn't even know what will happen. Wide eyes snap to him. He takes another step closer. "I need you to answer the question."
If he'd taken that second to think he may have realized the way he looks right now: covered in blood, slowly stalking closer, unarmed at the moment but likely subconsciously flexing his fingers in the same way he does when preparing for a fight. He's not thinking, though. Logic flew out the window the moment he heard the first bone break.
The Caelus in front of him takes a step back. "Who are you? How do you know my name?"
That's what finally gets him to pause. Dan Heng is struck with a sudden sense of wrong. In all these visits, this version of Caelus has never not recognized him. He's always been far too familiar, from the very beginning, all those years ago in that dark cell from behind bars.
A moment from years ago flashes into his mind.
"Oh man, Dan Heng, if you knew how we'd first met! I can't tell you that one, though. That would be spoilers." Caelus had winked at him in that way he usually did, when he was trying for a distraction, and as always it worked.
Dan Heng just sighed and rolled his eyes. "I'll assume it was something just as ridiculous as the rest of the stories you tell."
"They… sent me to my death. I-" Caelus swallows. "All of this and they just sent me to watch myself die."
The fight drains out of Dan Heng all over again. This isn't the usual Caelus he meets, the cocky, far too sure of himself, showoff of a man who would never miss a chance to poke fun at Dan Heng for being too serious. This isn't someone that knows him at all.
He finds himself sitting back down next to his Caelus's body again, watching the slowing blood droplets continue their trails against his skin. The other Caelus joins him after a second, hesitant, avoiding the puddle. Dan Heng's not surprised. As little as Caelus usually seems to care about that sort of thing, it has to be unnerving knowing it's all your own.
"You knew him?" starts Caelus. "Me, I guess? You knew me?"
"…You can say that," says Dan Heng quietly. "I knew him. I knew you. He died in my arms. We shared a bed last night before the trip. He knocked me down in training two days ago. I never told him I still had the bruise."
"You loved him." It's so matter of fact, Dan Heng wouldnt have expected it to come from Caelus of all people.
"I-" The words won't come out of his mouth, sticking in his throat like the blood won't leave his hands. He thinks, even once he washes it off, it'll still be there, clinging to the molecules that make up his cells. There's a part of him that likes the idea of Caelus never leaving him like that.
Instead of talking, he just nods. It's the closest he'll ever come to a true confession.
They sit in silence. It feels far too foreign; Caelus is never this quiet. Caelus is the life of every room he's in. Caelus is always talking, always moving, always bringing the smallest hint of a smile to Dan Heng's lips against his will, always sweeping him off his feet into Caelus's next adventure. He's not meant to be sitting on the stones in silence. He's not meant to be dead.
Not for the first time, Dan Heng curses that he can't do more. If he could reach into the core of his being and pull out the smallest shred of healing magic he'd do it faster than a heartbeat, but there's nothing there to grab, and he's already tried. The essence of destruction alone would cause irreparable damage, because that's all Dan Heng is. Everything he touches breaks eventually. It's only a matter of time.
"You never told me your name," says Caelus. "You were the only one here and you knew me. I don't know you."
"My name is Dan Heng," he says, turning back toward the living Caelus. "It's nice to meet you."