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Heaven’s Fall forces people to witness their red threads cut short. Martian and Terran souls, it does not matter as death snips the red threads efficiently.
Kaizuka Inaho does not believe in soulmates, much less in a bond that is bound by a single red string.
Slaine Troyard believes in another soul who can truly understand him, more so when he can see it.
When Inaho is six years old and can finally see the red string around his tiny finger, Inaho takes a pair of scissors and tries to cut it. Yuki screams at him that he can’t do that, but Inaho is determined. The string is frayed at the edges.
When Slaine is seven years old, he sees his string thicken on his finger and gathers the red threads of fate around him. His father shakes his head when he asks when he’ll meet his soulmate. Unlike most, Slaine can see other people’s strings. His father’s is torn apart.
When Inko asks Inaho why he doesn’t believe in soulmates, he explains that he finds the bond illogical. He doesn’t have a choice.
Slaine is asked by no one why he believes in soulmates, but he would have told them that the idea of soulmates is comforting to him. He is not alone, and it gives him the will to live. There is someone, and he will gladly always choose them.
Inaho ignores the red thread around his finger. It does not disappear, so he chooses to disregard it.
Slaine holds the thread close to him. He doesn’t want it to ever disappear. He takes in the cold words of Terran scum gladly if it means living another day for a chance to find his soulmate.
The hatred for Terrans is embedded in their souls, even as they realize what was taken away due to careless errors. The children cry for their lost soulmates but as they get older, the Martians let resentment consume them.
The hatred for Martians festers in their souls, even as many Terran soldiers are forced to see their red strings torn apart every time they salute. The children do not understand what was lost, just as they don’t truly know what a moon should look like.
When Slaine meets Asseylum for the first time, he is saddened that she can’t see her red string. She just smiles sadly and reassures him cheerfully that her soulmate will surely find her one day.
(Her soulmate does find her. Asseylum never tells him of angered amethyst eyes and the sound of her red thread being cut by her soulmate as she weeps for her father. Her half-sister laughs coldly at her and mockingly waves the finger that Asseylum knows is empty. Her sister defies fate. Lemrina holds her once soulmate’s face as she flushes and looks away after the war is over. Asseylum closes her eyes and her heart as well.)
When Inaho meets Asseylum, he decides that she is a part of him now. He does not care if they are not soulmates, only that she will be guarded and has a place in his heart like his sister and his friends do.
(Asseylum smiles sadly and shakes her head when his eye burns in order to reunite with her. She believed in soulmates, and she asks-)
“Are you-”
“Not now, Bat.”
His soulmate tries again after the battle with Hellas is over. He’s looking for the princess, and Inaho must make a choice.
“Orange!”
Slaine is overjoyed because he’s here, he’s here, he’s here-
“Are you my so-”
He falls, and he hear the words that nearly cut his thread apart. It succeeds in shattering his soul though, but what difference is there…?
“You are my enemy.”
His thread is thinner now, but still there.
Inaho watches the birds with Asseylum and does not question anything as he feels warmth when he sees her smile.
If his sister knew, she would be horrified.
He considers the time he broke a bully’s arm and doesn’t think much of it. By some strange phenomenon, the thread is still there.
The war rages on. He is tortured and he came back not quite right, but even in the future he is not sure if it was Count Cruhteo’s inhumanity or Orange’s four simple words. He finds understanding from Count Saazbaum when he is rescued, and a baffled look that is seared into his mind when he tells him of his rejection.
“I can see the strings,” he says. “Your thread is not destroyed.”
Slaine looks away because he can’t bear this.
He is a fool with a withered rose. He should have grown a columbine instead.
Inaho sees Bat again.
“I am not obligated to return whatever you feel for me.”
It’s illogical and Inaho lifts his gun.
Inaho loses an eye, but he does not lose the thread that binds them together.
“Step away from the princess.” Please.
Orange points the gun at him, and Slaine’s mind thinks so be it.
Orange has clearly made his decision. Here is his own choice.
(His heart cries and wonders why.)
Days later, he sees that thread is still there. Count Saazbaum tells him what he already knows.
Slaine did not kill his soulmate.
They clash many more times after.
Inaho holds up Slaine Troyard’s pendant when he is alone and sees the red thread slowly thicken around his finger. After the war, he must deal with this. He must mend the errors he made but the princess and ensuring his friends are safe is his main priority.
Slaine Troyard is still his enemy, but now Inaho is unsure as he sees the dead eyes of his soulmate reflected through the screen.
They clash many more times after.
He does not speak when he sees Kaizuka Inaho for the very first time.
He does not speak unless it is necessary.
Lemrina pities him.
“Sing a song for me, little bird,” she croons mockingly when she is furious about him hiding Asseylum’s awakening. He deserves her scorn. “He is going to come for her, you know.”
“Not all birds sing well,” he reminds her. “I am just saving myself for a swan song.”
He remembers the souls he reaped at Trident base and the threads he cut like a callous child with scissors.
His thread still remains. Where is the justice in that?
A female guard tells him that the flowers he asked for are here.
Save him from the chains of misery. That is what Asseylum asked.
“I’m not doing it for you.”
They meet on the battlefield. Slaine cuts his hold on him to save him as a last favor.
See Princess Lemrina? Isn’t this what a dying swan sounds like-
Kaizuka Inaho reaches out for him and does not pull the trigger.
The ocean sings a song of scorn and hatred. He taps his head a few more times but nothing happens.
He hates him, but hatred is tiring and he feels nothing now.
They blame him for the war and that is fine.
Kaizuka Inaho is in charge of his imprisonment and that is not fine.
One of the guards can see the strings and snickers when Kaizuka visits.
“Serves you right.”
It’s the only time he ever attacks a guard.
“Your Majesty,” Slaine murmurs to Asseylum when she finds the strength to look at him. He would be disgusted at what became of him too.
“Slaine…”
Just this once, he wants to get what he deserves. He wants those pretty green eyes to look at him in disgust. Not like those red eyes whose face gently ask him to eat like a lab rat. “Princess Asseylum had a thread.”
You don’t, is left unsaid.
There is no satisfaction as her face twists in pain and the hurt that she should feel is his own because he immediately wants to apologize for ruining her like this, that’s all he is ever good for, just like he hurt the one he promised to himself he’d protect-
They put him on suicide watch after another one of his violent episodes and he wonders what the point is. He just wants to know where the knives are.
It’s still there.
Inaho wants to understand him.
His thread thickens as days pass by. Inaho tries anything to get the other man to react.
Slaine is tired of trying to understand him.
His thread becomes impossibly thin, just like his stomach. He has to try all his options.
All of them.
He remembers the guard’s words and smiles.
Life slowly begins to bleed back into Slaine’s eyes as months pass by. It is the little things that get to him, like the flowers with no thorns he is allowed to grow or the chess matches that Slaine wins occasionally. Columbines are his preferred flower for some reason that Inaho has yet to learn why, but he feels he will eventually. He smiles once and Inaho feels a lightness in his chest.
The thread is still thin, but Inaho watches it nonetheless. When he sees that it has grown slightly, he feels something he does not recognize until later.
Relief.
Slaine fingers the flowers he cares for. Inaho had learned about the poisonous part of these flowers and only gave him safe ones to cultivate. Slaine didn’t want to kill himself.
He stopped trying a long time ago.
One day, Inaho goes to visit Slaine. He nods to the guards and one of them tells him that Slaine is most anxious to see him. He feels his chest thump quietly and lets a female guard escort him. She opens the door and waits patiently. Inaho smells something strange and he quickens his pace.
Inaho’s blood freezes as he sees Slaine’s nails draw blood from his wrists.
He turns to shout to the guards until sees Slaine’s fingers.
The red thread is torn to pieces at Slaine’s side.
Slaine smiles. Inaho sees his own red thread fall apart.
“I am not obligated to return whatever you feel for me.”