Work Text:
mea culpa
/ˌmeɪ.ə ˈkʊl.pə/
exclamation • noun
Definition:
- an acknowledgment of one’s fault or error; an admission of guilt.
Origin:
Latin, literally meaning “through my fault.”
"I'm sorry."
When he returns, there’s a small skeleton in the room, a child hunched at his brother’s side, shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.
The voice is thin. High. It scrapes along Sol’s skull like a dull blade, wrong in a way that makes his eye twitch.
He shouldn’t have left Lune alone.
Sol had only stepped away to fetch water, clean cloth, something proper for the mess he’d made. He could have sent a servant. He should have. But there had been something… indulgent in doing it himself. Something warm, almost tender, in the thought of tending to him by hand. Domestic. Intimate.
"I'm sorry. I didn’t know this would happen. I just wanted to protect you."
The grief in it curdles the air. It sours everything.
"Buzz off," Sol says lightly, smiling as if indulging himself. "You don’t belong here."
Lune’s head shifts at the sound of his voice. Slow. Unsteady. His eyelights are dimmed to a blur, unfocused, like he’s looking through Sol rather than at him. His mouth parts, a dry, broken sound scraping out, but no words follow. Either he’s conserving what little strength he has left, or there’s simply nothing there to give.
"Shh," Sol murmurs, tone softening instantly, attention folding back around him. "Don’t strain yourself."
Then, brighter, sharper, to the thing hovering just out of sight—
"Won't you shut up already? He can’t hear you."
Lune’s gaze drifts, catching on Sol with a faint, confused tension, like he’s trying to follow a conversation that doesn’t quite exist. But this isn’t new. It never is. Sol doesn’t bother explaining. Its unnecessary.
The specter doesn’t leave.
Instead, the child steps closer.
It wears his face.
Smaller. Softer. Untouched. Those wide, earnest sockets twisted now into something hard and unfamiliar—anger, clean and simple, cutting straight through the innocence and trust that used to live there.
Sol ignores him, pointedly and purposefully.
"I’ve brought back bandages for you," he murmurs, voice dropping into something syrup-sweet as he returns his attention where it belongs. To his beloved brother.
The child dares to open its mouth again."For injuries you caused." The accusation lands sharp and small, like a thrown stone.
Sol hums, unbothered.
"He should know better than to fight me," he replies, almost conversational. "Wouldn’t you agree, little brother?"
His thumb presses gently beneath Lune’s jaw, coaxing his face up just enough to meet him. Close. Warm.
"Did you learn your lesson?"
Silence. Lune only stares at him, sockets tired and unblinking.
But Sol smiles anyway, pleased.
Its not a denial.
The cloth drags slow across bone and ruined magic, wiping away what’s begun to thicken, to set. The smell is sharp, metallic-sweet, clinging. He works with care, with something almost reverent in the way his hands move, even as the damage beneath them tells a different story entirely.
Lune won’t be walking for a while. Not after this.
The thought settles warmly in his chest.
Good. That just means he’ll stay where he belongs.
Lune flinches when Sol’s hand settles against him, a sharp, instinctive recoil that runs through his whole body before he can stop it. The chain at his ankle answers for him—magic metal scraping, a brief, ugly rattle that echoes too loudly in the quiet.
Sol ignores it.
"Easy," he hums, voice low and sweet, as if the reaction hadn’t happened at all. His long phalangi steady him, firm where they shouldn’t be, guiding, positioning. "Let big brother get you cleaned up, okay~?"
He doesn’t pull away this time. Just stiffens beneath him, a shiver passing through like something he can’t quite keep down.
"I'm sorry."
The voice threads through the room again.
At his side, the child lingers—small, dim, wearing that same little star brooch, the faint circlet resting against his skull like something fragile. His hands clutch at the sheets, knuckles tight with effort, but they slip straight through the fabric like smoke. Nothing catches. Nothing holds.
He isn’t real.
Sol glances at him, something like amusement curling low in his chest.
Pathetic.
He would never allow himself to be that again.
For a moment—his brother, dead, dead, dead—
No. That wasn’t how it ended. He had fixed it, made sure it could never happen again. He wouldn’t allow it. He wasn’t weak. He would never be that child again. He was perfect now.
"Please," the boy whispers, and it breaks halfway through, splintering into something raw. "Please forgive me, little brother. I shouldn’t have left you. I shouldn’t have eaten them—I’ve become something—"
His voice collapses into itself.
Monstrous.
The word hangs there, unfinished and unspoken, and unavoidable.
The child leans in, pressing his face into Lune’s side as if he could still touch him, still be felt. As if any of this could reach.
It doesn’t.
Lune doesn’t react. Doesn’t turn. Doesn’t even seem to notice the extra weight that isn’t there.
Sol does.
And he smiles.
"He can’t hear you," he says lightly, almost kindly, as he wipes another slow line clean, as he adjusts the bandage just a little tighter than necessary. "You’re wasting your breath."
"I'm sorry," the boy insists anyway, smaller now, unraveling at the edges. "I’m so sorry."
Sol hums under his breath, content, smoothing everything into place.
"I'm so sorry..."
Such a grating sound.