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The interstellar space was cold and quiet as a G2V yellow dwarf and K1V orange dwarf star left the comfort of their own orbits, entrusting their planets to their companion star and sister figure, Proxima Centauri. Their surroundings were dimly lit by the feeble light of distant stars alongside the faint, swirling band of the galactic core. They were headed towards the nearest star system, bored after four and a half billion years spent in space and remaining in their orbits. They haven’t ventured out since forming their planets, not long after they have encountered Arcturus and an unknown protostar, before fleeing a subsequent supernova. Rigil Kentaurus and Toliman have recently become stir-crazy and have decided to go exploring. They were keen on looking at neighbouring stars and their potential systems to judge them and compare them to their own shared system.
While their behaviour could be considered ‘jock-like’, unserious, aloof and abrasive, the two stellar brothers have genuinely grown to care for the planets orbiting the two of them. Not as children or siblings, but instead as something worth protecting from external threats.
Of course, they would never admit that to other stars or even their own planets. Pride had always dictated their actions and they had an image to maintain after all.
The same pride had once driven them to target smaller and seemingly weaker stars, mocking them in order to appear stronger and bigger. They were very well aware that they themselves were nothing but mere dwarf stars, an insecurity that they projected onto others like them. Developing planets had allowed them to curve this bad habit of theirs, allowing them to finally grow emotionally and become more stable and mature.
Still, they didn’t fully regret their past. It was easy not to when you never had to face the consequences.
…Right?
That uneasy thought lingered in Rigil’s and Toliman’s minds as they drifted through space. They hoped they wouldn’t cross paths with anyone from their past, especially not the last one; a trembling, unnamed, tiny baby yellow protostar that had been blown away by a supernova shortly after they’d left him behind. They were safe from him as he was probably dead from the blast, blown into smithereens before his core could even ignite and begin nuclear fusion.
Their thoughts were interrupted when they passed a two-planet system orbiting a bright red M type red dwarf star. As stellar system connoisseurs, Rigil and Toliman tilted their head as they studied the system, the latter wincing when the nearest planet to the star got relentlessly battered by coronal mass ejections and X-ray flares.
“Yikes…” Toliman muttered. “We flare too but not to that extent.”
“Agreed”, Rigil hummed. “He reminds me of Proxima.”
The two shared a quiet chuckle under their breath as they thought back to their little sister figure, the M5.5V type star Proxima Centauri who was also a flare star. She was temperamental, yes, but she was deeply devoted to her planets.
After passing a few unremarkable systems, Rigil and Toliman approached another yellow dwarf star. At first, there was nothing remarkable about it. It appeared to be of medium size with an average luminosity. While not expecting to find anything of interest, the two brothers approached anyways and were left surprised when they encountered an enormous asteroid belt separating them from the star and the potential system that orbited around it. Such a large belt could only indicate a significant source of gravity, one they could already begin feeling rippling in an exploratory and perhaps even curious way around them.
The two stars were debating whether to keep approaching or simply turning around and leaving when a sudden rumble was heard and the asteroids within the Kuiper Belt shifted ominously before parting ways in front of them. Neither Rigil nor Toliman had the time to react save for frowning in confusion before the space rippled once more around them, and a gravitational influence took a hold of them, pinning them in place.
“What the..?” the bigger star mumbled before they flew forward, dragged by an unseen external force they could not shake off.
Their startled yells were all that was audible as the distant light source exponentially increased in size and luminosity as they were violently pulled forward by an unshakable force. Toliman’s eyes screwed shut with the anticipation of a collision with the star… only for him to be dropped unceremoniously 0.4 astronomical units away. A grunt from beside him indicated that Rigil suffered from the same fate. The two stars slowly got to their feet, steadying themselves, before they turned their attention onto the star whose gravitational influence they got trapped into... and froze.
The being who stood before them was a main sequence star of the spectral type G2, the same as Rigil was, with long golden blonde hair that reached his upper abdomen and softly swung over his shoulders from his stellar wind. He was dressed in a buttoned up black shirt and black trousers with a yellow tie attached around his collar. His belt was adorned with replicas of eight planets varying in size, rings and colours with the same golden chain accessorizing his tie, a living representation of the system he ruled. A golden star-shaped belt buckle completed his look, reflecting the light coming from its wearer and his stellar crown.
The star’s menacingly glowing golden eyes narrowed as he studied the brothers in front of him, before they widened in recognition. Then, his handsome features contorted into a terrifying scowl full of fury and hatred. He straightened up to his full height and while he was just a tad shorter than Rigil, he positively towered over Toliman, who took a small step back as a sense of déjà-vu washed over him in a heavy wave. Something was familiar about that star even though he couldn’t currently put a finger as to why.
“YOU!” said star thundered in a near-demonic rumble that dripped with pure malice. “YOU DARE SHOW YOUR FACE IN MY SOLAR SYSTEM AFTER EVERYTHING YOU’VE DONE?!”
Rigil could only blink in confusion and some amount of trepidation upon being on the receiving end of this unknown but strangely familiar star’s ire.
“We don’t even…” Toliman stammered out, his confusion evident. “We don’t even know you! What do you mean?”
The yellow dwarf star sneered in response.
“And now you insult me by lying!” he spat. “What, did you bully that many stars that you forgot them all? Is everyone else so unimportant and beneath you?”
Rigil’s eyes blew wide at his words as the pieces of the metaphorical puzzle slowly began to fall into place.
“Are you here to finish the job?” the brothers’ stellar neighbour pushed on before sardonically laughing, a crazed gleam appearing in his eyes which turned an eerie red. “‘Please help me, I’m scared!’” he mocked, echoing their words from a time long forgotten. “‘Oh, poor little star!’”
Whispers coming from the star’s legs attracted Rigil’s and Toliman’s attention, who averted their gaze with great difficulty in order to look at what has spoken. Eight planets, the very same from the star’s belt decorations, were huddled behind him, their eyes fixed on the two stranger stars. They ranged from a big orange gas giant with huge storm clouds of various warm colours to the smallest gray rocky planet who was two seconds away from physically clinging onto the furious being made out of plasma that assumed a defensive position in front of them.
“Bully?” a medium-sized orange rocky planet mumbled to himself, his brows furrowing in confusion.
“Who even are these stars?” another rocky planet spoke up, this one looking more on the grumpy side as if he were merely bored with the entire situation.
His surface was of a saturated orange and yellow colour that looked more toxic than inviting. The biggest out of the eight planets opened his mouth to speak, only to be interrupted by the most interesting-looking planet in the group; the largest of the four terrestrial planets whose surface was 70% liquid water and partially hidden by thick white clouds swirling in her atmosphere.
“These are Alpha Centauri A and B, also known as Rigil Kentaurus and Toliman”, she answered while her blue and green heterochromatic eyes, matching her surface colours, remained on the two stars with obvious interest. “They’re part of the Alpha Centauri triple star system alongside a red dwarf star called Proxima Centauri, and they’re around four lightyears away from us.”
“How do you know all that, Earth?” the grumpy planet barked out.
The newly-christened Earth rolled her eyes.
“My Earthlings, Venus”, she answered. “They’ve been observing them since centuries since they’re the closest stars to the Sun. And they’ve made a few movies and TV shows about going there.”
“…TV shows..? What in the galaxy is that?”
Earthlings… she mentioned Earthlings. That meant… Both stars reached the same conclusion as they stared at the planet, wide-eyed and slack-jawed while her companion went ignored. The Earth had life. Not only life, which was already incredible on its own and unheard of in the universe, but intelligent life that was clearly conscious and capable of higher cognitive processing. How… curious. And how rare..!
Their star, the Sun, mistook their shock for a more sinister intention as he instantly stepped towards them while simultaneously pushing his planets further back with a gravitational wave. And that was when it finally clicked for both Alpha Centauri brothers who exactly this was and why he felt so familiar.
This was the newly formed protostar they have randomly stumbled upon around 4.6 billion years ago and have subsequently made fun of for being terrified of everything that moved, of the darkness around him, of Arcturus’ sheer size, and that was only what they have seen. He had seemed like an easy target at the time due to him trembling and crying over everything, and they themselves had been young and stupid. They thought it would be fun to antagonize the baby star for a bit, and they were sure they would have kept going if Proxima Centauri hadn’t stopped them and come to the small protostar’s defense. They had left him behind afterwards at the mercy of the elderly star who went supernova. Part of them had very briefly wondered if the protostar had managed to flee from the blast zone and had survived the explosion before discarding the thought as nothing survived the blast of a supernova.
The former protostar who was now glaring at them with no insignificant amount of ire very obviously survived the blast, and proceeded to ignite into a full fledged main sequence star, growing to his current towering height. Gone was the scared child he once was. Instead stood a fierce being who was insanely protective of the system he forged for himself and who’d stop at nothing until the intruders were gone… or eliminated. While Rigil and Toliman mostly forgot about him, the Sun hasn’t, hence why he has reacted with outward hostility when he felt them at the edge of his system.
“Baby star?” Rigil’s words came out more like a question due to his shock… and was that a hint of guilt? “You… you’re so…”
Sun sneered.
“My name is Helios Sol”, he bit out as he raised his head, essentially glaring down his nose at them while he crossed his arms over his chest. “That baby star is no more. And am I so what? So angry?”
“So insane?” the rocky planet with the toxic-looking surface grumbled before getting elbowed in the ribs by Earth.
A disapproving look was shot by the other two Rockies as well, making Venus clamp his mouth shut. Rigil and Toliman glanced at each other in confusion. Insane? What did Venus mean by that?
Helios Sol turned his gaze away as he crossed his arms over his chest, the fabric of his shirt tightening around his arms as he did so.
“You two are far from your home”, he spoke darkly as his corona flared briefly before settling back to a bright constant. “And you’re way too close to mine. I won’t ask again. Why are you here? Are you here to finish the job?”
Toliman swallowed thickly.
“No…” he replied earnestly. “We were just exploring and looking at other star systems… after we developed our own planets, we wanted to see what others did and judge them… as is our way I guess…”
Sol looked back at them at that, his expression becoming more hostile once more.
“It’s your way indeed”, he rumbled. “You judged me too 4.6 billion years ago, when I was alone. Laughed at me, mocked me for being smaller than you and told me that I wouldn’t account for anything before my core could even ignite before leaving me to nearly die from a supernova explosion.”
His voice could cut steel by the time he finished talking. Some of his planets took a hissing breath in upon hearing what their star has been through so early on in his life… and what the two stars standing right in front of him did to him.
“Proxima was the only star who showed even an ounce of care”, Helios ground out, his tone icy, the polar opposite of his violent surface and the coronal mass ejections that threatened to explode outwards in his anger. “And I pity your planets if you’ve left them alone so you could go judge other star systems.”
Toliman flinched.
“We left them with Proxima…” he replied miserably, which earned him a disbelieving hum in response. “And… we are sorry for how we treated you. We… we didn’t know–”
“You didn’t care”, Sol corrected them sharply. “You didn’t. All you cared about is yourself, and you wouldn’t have stopped if Proxima didn’t interfere. Don’t think otherwise. And are you truly sorry? I find it a little hard to believe.”
Rigil was the one to speak up this time.
“We are”, he answered truthfully. “We never voiced it because we’ve never seen each other again, and we thought you didn’t survive the supernova…”
Helios let out a snarl at that, his sharp teeth bared threateningly.
“This just proves my point”, he retorted. “You didn’t care so don’t pretend you do now. You never looked for me to even verify if I’ve survived or not. You just saw my planets, so you can leave now!”
The yellow dwarf star readied himself to fire a flare while Rigil let out a stutter.
“But…” he began before throwing himself to the side with a yelp.
The coronal mass ejection missed him by a hairline. Even as a star, he could feel its scalding temperature and the fact that it was aimed at him in an attempt to drive him and Toliman away filled him with shame. They were truly unwelcome and any attempt to rectify their mistakes and seek forgiveness was currently impossible. Even if a little under half of Sol’s lifespan has passed, they clearly hurt him more than they had thought if he still refused to even hear them out after all this time. Perhaps they should have reached out to him, if only to make sure he had survived the blast. Once their planets have formed, they had an excuse for not moving out of their orbits, but they had no excuse or legitimate reason for not moving apart from their ego preventing them from doing so. Toliman looked down as he chewed the inside of his cheek. His eyes found the eight planets once more who looked at them with emotions ranging from muted curiosity to pity to anger. The latter radiated from the big gas giant with the swirling red storm in his atmosphere, and pity was shown on Earth’s expression.
The planet with life took a step towards the two alien stars before a gravitational wave made her freeze in place.
“Earth”, Sol warned her in a low tone. “Whatever you want to do, don’t.”
“I just want to talk to them”, Earth replied, craning her neck to look up at her host star’s towering form and narrowed eyes.
“Why?!”
“Because… in some way, I can relate to them…”
Rigil and Toliman stared at her with surprise. The planet with life took in a breath after being reluctantly released from the gravitational hold.
“I didn’t treat my friends the best either for a period of time”, she explained, her attention back on the two stellar brothers. “I was insecure because I thought I was only important and special because of the life on my surface, and when I felt threatened, I lashed out. I also insulted one of Saturn’s moons due to said insecurity and my pain. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. To hear Titan wishing to have life had made me angry because I couldn’t fathom anyone wanting to be in constant pain and hyperawareness of everything my Earthlings are doing. Yes, life is wonderful, special and unique, and unheard of in this universe… but it’s so painful sometimes. To make long story short, I have also hurt people who didn’t deserve it because I thought of them to be inferior and less important, just like you viewed Sun to be a nobody just because he was a small protostar at the time. Not because I wanted to hurt them, unlike you, but because I didn’t know what else to do and how else to react hearing someone want what’s both a source of pride and pain for me.”
While Rigil and Toliman kept gaping at her with identical stunned expressions and wide eyes, Sol took another step forward as his light flashed briefly.
“Do not compare yourself to them, Terra!” he snapped, calling her by her scientific name like every time the situation was dire enough to warrant it.
Having had enough of her entertaining his former bullies, he took a long step forward and grabbed her by the back of her jacket before he gently pulled her back so that she stood by his side. No matter how much Earth tried to talk to them, he was sure they did not change from 4.6 billion years ago no matter how much they played the remorseful act, and he himself was nowhere near ready to forgive them.
Rigil Kentaurus, who up until now was fairly composed, bowed his head, almost in submission in front of both planet and star. He could recognize both himself and Toliman in planet Earth, or Terra as Helios Sol called her as well, who has lashed out towards a moon and her fellow planets due to her deeply-rooted insecurity brought upon by the pain her Earthlings sometimes caused her. They themselves have been projecting their own insecurity onto stars like themselves to make themselves look bigger due to the fact that they didn’t like being so small… Even though both Rigil himself and Helios were bigger than 75% of all main sequence stars in the observable universe.
He scoffed inaudibly. What a joke he was… Unlike Earth who took accountability for her mistakes, he and his brother didn’t, choosing instead to flee and hide within their own planetary system like cowards.
“You’re right”, he murmured.
Earth’s expression softened while Helios did a double take, more than certain his hearing was malfunctioning.
“We didn’t care back then, but we do now”, he added as he lifted his head to look at the slightly smaller G2V star who glowered right back at him with no small amount of skepticism. “And we are sorry for everything.”
The sheer absurdity of hearing Rigil ‘Hey Toliman, look at this one!’ Kentaurus realizing his mistake and apologizing even had Helios charging up another coronal mass ejection. The gravity around him intensified, pulling all the planets closer to him as his corona flared and crackled from his turbulent emotions. Uranus and Neptune, the two ice giants, attempted to take a step back as the temperature around them reached uncomfortable levels, threatening to melt their icy clouds, only to be unable to as they were locked in place by Sol’s immense gravity.
“Sun?” Jupiter piped up with a hint of worry in his usually even tone.
That attracted Earth’s attention, who craned her neck up to look at her host star.
“Sunny…” she murmured. “Please calm down… he’s trying to apologize.”
“Too little too late”, Sol retorted. “It means nothing to me. The only way they can benefit me now is if they take their judgmental attitudes and leave my Solar System.”
Rigil bowed his head once more in shame.
“Sun”, Earth spoke again. “If you drive them away now while they’re trying to make amends, and it’s not always easy because you’re terrifying when you want to be, you’re no better than the way they used to be.”
Helios’ jaw clenched as his intense gaze briefly flickered down to her before snapping back onto the two Centauri brothers. Earth stood her ground, expression compassionate but serious, begging her star to at least hear their apology out.
“If I was able to realize my mistakes, take accountability for them and then make an effort to be a better planet, so can they”, the Blue Marble continued. “Hopefully.”
Both Rigil and Toliman watched their fellow star with trepidation but also a sliver of hope. While they knew it would be far fetched for the three of them to be instantly friends, they did desperately cling onto the possibility that Sol would listen to his planet with life and accept their apology. Sol’s dark gaze refused to waver however. The golden glow of his eyes intensified to the point it swallowed his irises, making it seem like his entire eye was emitting light. The space around them rippled from the sheer heat radiating from his entire tense posture. His hands were by his side and clenched so tightly into fists that his knuckles turned white and glowing slightly from reigned-in solar flares. A few terse seconds that felt more like minutes passed before he let out an explosive sigh.
“Fine”, he rumbled. “I do not accept your apology just yet, nor do I forgive you. Now leave, and don’t come back… unless you’re both willing to face what you have done. Only then will I be willing to hear you out and come to a mutual understanding. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Helios…” Toliman replied with a brief nod.
“We are currently facing what we’ve done”, Rigil turned pleading. “Please, just hear us out!”
“No”, Sol cut in. “I’m not in the mood to talk right now. If you care about me now, which I still highly doubt, you will respect this boundary. Think about this, then come back when you are ready.”
“But…” Rigil stammered, only to be interrupted by the biggest of the eight planets, the gas giant Jupiter.
“You heard our star, it’s best if you leave now before you get flared again”, he spoke calmly, ever the benevolent big brother figure.
Rigil finally conceded, and nodded in defeat.
“Alright…” he sighed as he turned to leave, pulling Toliman with him as he did so. “We’ll be around and we’ll come back whenever you are ready to talk.”
Helios said nothing as he angrily watched his two former arch-nemeses leave his Solar System at last. He remained silent as he released his planets from the tight leash he held them with and they calmly returned to their respective orbits, save for Earth and Luna who remained hovering nearby. The planet looked up at the star before she offered him a small smile.
“I’m proud of you”, she whispered before floating back to her orbit with her moon in tow.
Sol still held his tongue, but that simple sentence managed to clear the haze of fury and defensiveness that settled over his unstable and traumatized psyche the moment he recognized the trespassers. At least he had his planets by his side.