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Parties were never his thing. Loud and frivolous displays of foolishness, drinks being passed around and housed down without regrets so long as the night never ended. Once the morning came, those drinks and laughs shifted into groans and regrets; that was always how parties ended, and how they would always end. Parties in that nature would never change; and yet, he had recently forced himself to tolerate them.
Here he was; trapped in something that might be close to hell, or limbo. Some sort of punishment for all the wrong he’d done in a life he tried to fill with justice. The only thing that kept some of them sane were the parties that Cole would throw in a desperate attempt to pretend like everything was just the same as it was before they’d ended up here. For the moments they were celebrating nothing, it felt like it was just another day; and that tomorrow, when they woke with hangovers and last night’s regrets still potent on their tongues, they would go back to their lives. He’d go back to the courtroom, discuss with Builderman over the phone about his next orders, sort through and sign off on an endless pile of files; that was supposed to be the way it went. But as far as he was concerned, he wasn’t making it out of here to sigh at the sight of a stack of papers nearly as tall as him. He wouldn’t be seeing the courtroom for a long time, probably ever, now that he was in this situation.
With more free time than ever, not by choice, he forced himself to try and find some sort of comfort or solace with attending these parties, but always found himself leaving early, or sitting lonesome in a corner with sparse conversations here and there that neither he nor the other person would ever remember come tomorrow. At some point, he’d tried to stop attending, tired of playing the corner guy at these get-togethers; but in came a curious astronaut, asking him to follow him into these events, and always leaving with him, with just as much energy as he had when he went in. A nonsensical fool full of jokes and a sense of joy he himself couldn’t quite understand, someone he would never entertain the ideas of in any other scenario; yet he always found himself following him right into those crowded rooms without nearly as much tension in his shoulders.
Of course, having a companion at parties didn’t fix all of his problems with them. That’s why he was currently dragging himself out of a room, letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding as he went out, the lobby’s concrete structure casting shadows upon his figure as he walked towards the bridge. The long, collapsed roads which were barely hanging on by a thread were now, unfortunately, one of the best places to view the stars. In the dead of night, prior to their situation now, he would often find himself moving out of his office and staring into the night sky for solace; a privilege he was not aware he would lose one day. He didn’t think it would ever get to a point where it would be hard for him to catch a glimpse of the moon, or the graced in its light.
The Bridge’s openness, its lack of a roof, was now the closest he had to a good sight of the moon. It would have to do as a good substitute to his balcony, where he could lean over the rails and find himself lost in counting the specks of light that decorated the sky, an impossible task he always quickly gave up in favor of going back to his work. He shook those memories back as he found himself regretting not holding onto those railings a little longer; there was no use in cursing out his past self. He didn’t realize this would happen, and he would simply have to live with it for the rest of his time here. As he made his way over pieces of rubble, metal jutting out like spikes from the ground, threatening to stab into him if he didn’t watch where he was going, he found himself in an empty section.
No cars flipped over, no piles of oil to stain his coat, no lampposts toppled over with exposed wires threatening to fry him to ash. Just him, his hammer held on his back by straps attached to his armor, and the glittering speckles that decorated the sky hanging above him. Like salt spilled upon a black countertop, they subtly shifted with the movement of the world, the planet spinning on without his presence as he found a comfortable sitting position underneath a dead bulb. The moon hung high, full as always, now barely even a spectacle to witness with the way it was almost stuck in that phase, like time had stopped the moon’s shifting as well. A part of him, knowing the corruption and the void’s unpredictable rhythm, could almost believe it was true. But for the same reason Cole threw parties to keep himself and others sane, he decided to push the idea far back where he could no longer even consider it. In the silence, he found himself back in a familiar position; alone.
Him, the stars, and Astro flying through the air above– wait. His head shot straight up as he realized who was now barreling down towards the ground, crashing a section away from him as he forced himself to stand again, grabbing his hammer’s handle out of pure instinct before he forced himself to let it go and lower his guard at the sight of Astro scrambling to get up, clearing the dust that he kicked up with that landing with his hands.
“There you are,” he could hear the way he was almost a bit breathless, “I almost thought something happened to you! I got worried when I realized you weren’t at the party anymore, so I tried to think about where you’d go.” Was he really so predictable? A scowl must have settled onto his face, because Astro finally reached his side with a shift into a more casual pose as Judge corrected his expression to some neutral, unreadable.
“I meant to tell you I was leaving,” Judge shrugged off his concern as he shook his head, glancing the opposite direction of him, “though, I also thought you saw me leave.”
“Might have been too distracted trying to get Cole’s face out of another cup of coffee,” Astro admitted sheepishly, the other having to hold back a snort at the image in his brain; far too believable, unfortunately. A moment of quiet fell back between them, comfortable, but slowly becoming stale as they stood side by side, staring into the night.
“The stars are really nice tonight,” Astro continued the conversation for them, “I figured you’d probably go somewhere quiet after you left, but I wasn’t sure where. So, I had to go around a few places before I finally figured, ‘hey, Judge might like a good view, too.’” A finger hidden underneath a large glove pointed upwards, the other raising an eyebrow in near amusement at that assumption about him; did he really seem like the type? It wasn’t anywhere near untrue of course, but he simply didn’t expect such an assumption to be made about ‘cold’ types like him.
“You got lucky with your location guessing,” he commented.
“I could probably win a bet against Odds now because of it,” a loose attempt at a joke, half considering the idea of rolling dice against the gambler swirling through his head as Judge couldn’t help the way he rolled his eyes at that. Once again, the quiet accompanied them as they silently gazed into the abyss, and its eyes known as stars stared right back. Silently, like a tear rolling down someone’s face, a star streaked the sky, making its presence known by the way light followed it, and flickered out behind it, like a trail of smoke dissipating after a plane flew above. Another tear in the sky came and went, then a second streak, before it began to paint the skies with a rain of light.
A meteor shower, or at least the mirage of one, was performed before them. Like an orchestra plucking its strings with careful precision, changing pages so fast that a blind eye could not perceive them if they weren’t paying careful enough attention to the way hands moved from page to bow, then right back into playing. Meteors disguised as nothing but another one of night’s splendors zipped past in a display of beauty, illuminating the darkening blue of the sky back into a rich, near royal color with its paint.
Sure, Judge had seen plenty of stars, plenty of meteor showers on public display, from behind a screen while he worked; but he had never found himself the time, nor found himself lucky enough, to witness something like this for himself, face to face with it. His jaw was near hanging open by the time he realized what was happening, but he forced it shut, starlight sparking behind his red gaze as it passed him by in an endless array. Eventually, he tore his eyes away from the show, and found himself staring at Astro. The way the glass of his helmet reflected the light was dazzling in of itself, and maybe if he squinted hard enough, within the streaks, he could make out Astro’s expression underneath.
“You know,” those words snapped him back to focus on Astro, “the stars we see at night? Most of them are already pretty much gone by the time we get to see them. They just don’t reach us in time by the time they’ve died; only years after they’ve already passed do we finally catch even a glimpse of them.” That was, to say the least, not a sentence he expected from Astro, of all people. As far as he was aware, Astro was one of the more positive survivors in this hellscape; even when face to face with corruption, he’d always find something good in the abyss. It was admirable in the same way that it was foolish of him to do; but it was in that way, all the same, that Judge found himself relaxing his own shoulders around Astro. He could see the way the astronaut’s shoulders slumped after he stated his fact, and stared at the moon. Even through all the streaking comets, whirring past in a crowd, its glory could be seen.
“I’m never going to space, am I?” The beat that followed after those words was no longer comfortable, but tension was not the right definition for it. Those words that slipped from him, almost accidental in nature, almost held the same air as words shared at a funeral, the type of words you would whisper into the deceased’s casket as a final goodbye. The last words that would reach their ears before the worms living within the dirt would claim those memories, and then forget them just as quickly as they ate them. A slow blink, and Judge found himself staring at Astro, and the way he was staring up at the moon like just gazing into it would take him there, to that impossible goal of his that was just barely out of reach before he was snatched away from everything he knew and loved.
And for a moment, Judge realized that as much as Astro knew about him and the way his name was revered and feared, he did not know much about him, and what he had stripped away from him when he so unexpectedly appeared. The star show continued, but it was now the least of his concerns as he tried to find the answer to that question. This was the part where somebody else would go wide-eyed, assure him otherwise and tell him he’d reach the stars long before any of them would even have dreams of launching themselves past the ozone layer. But that was not him; and for a moment, he realized why Astro asked him that, based on the way he turned his helmet to him, waiting for him to answer a question he probably knew.
“No,” he was looking for honesty, and a Judge was just the person he could get that from. Unbiased, fair, coming from a heart hidden deep under long thorns. As Astro stared at him, he couldn’t tell if he was sad, happy, angry; he couldn’t read his expression under the dark glass as he nodded, and turned back to the show that was now being ignored by the judge, because he was staring at him.
Him, the fool who made jokes after every run they were forced into, because maybe that was his way of keeping sane. The same way Cole threw parties, the same way that Doctor sought information, the same way he left to see made-up stars; to keep sane.
“The moon is pretty tonight, isn’t it?” It was a question he was supposed to answer, but again, he couldn’t tear his eyes away as he found himself stuck on Astro, staring into him and searching for something, anything. But when he found nothing, he found it in himself to respond.
“Sure,” and once more they fell quiet, this time without someone to break the ice between them as the wind blew past them.