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The first thing that came back to him was pain.
And it was everywhere: his back, his arms, his legs, pulsing through every inch of his body until he wanted to squeeze his eyes shut and forget that he existed in the first place. It was in his shoulders, his hands, his forehead. It made the stars smear when he opened his eyes and tried to look around.
His head pulsed three times in a row.
Ow, he thought with each pulse, his thoughts as smeared as the stars in his vision. Ow. Ow.
Trying to hold off the painful headache that pulsed with every breath he took, he closed his eyes and immediately regretted it. Without the distraction of vision, somehow the pain only increased until he had to wrench them open, chest heaving in agonized, heavy breaths.
Ow. Ow. Stop it. Stop it. Please.
It was unmoved by his pleas.
He finally sucked in another breath and tried to refocus on what was in front of him, watching the stars slowly settle back into single points dotted endlessly in his field of vision. Far in the distance was one much, much closer and bigger… still somewhat of a dot to him, but more.
The Sun, he thought, Sol.
Frankly, he had no idea where that came from, but it felt right.
Staring at the Sun left his eyes stinging until he wrenched them away and curled into a tighter ball, distantly aware of something heavy on his back, of his own gravity swirling around him, of his fingers curling in towards his palms and his hands shifting briefly against his chest in a tiny movement that nonetheless sent a bolt of lightning up his spine.
“Nhhh-ooo,” he whined mindlessly. “St—op.”
It didn’t help, which left him stilling as much as he could to breathe through another wave of pain, all the while helplessly questioning everything. Why wouldn’t it stop? Why had he woken up like this? And—
Who in all of the stars was he?
———————————
By the time he felt another source of gravity brush against his own, he had finally managed to settle into a sort of equilibrium with the pain.
A sort because it was mostly him bracing through it.
“Ura! I’m back,” an unfamiliar voice chirped. Even with the total blackhole of nonrecognition poisoning his mind, he felt something settle deep in his core. Something… relaxed? He relaxed. “What should I do this time? That last game of throw-the-asteroid was super fun, right?! Even if you didn’t—”
An upside down face popped up in front of him.
He would have screamed in shock if not for the fact that he didn’t have the strength for it—so instead he settled for jerking backwards with a pained whine, fingers clawing against his chest. The moment he moved, the other boy backed up, mouth open wide and eyes just as wide. “You’re awake!”
Can I not be?
“Ura, you’re awake!” The startled look on the other’s face morphed into an eager grin so brilliant and shiny it could have outshone the Sun himself. “I knew you’d wake up! Well, I didn’t know, and I was a little worried, but I thought so! And my thoughts are usually right.” He nodded, all official-like.
His eye twitched.
“Are you okay?! Let me see!”
The other darted forward without warning, and abruptly all he could see was blue—blue strands of hair hanging down, blue eyes locked onto him, blue fabric on the shoulders covered in curls of the same blue hair.
He instinctively flinched back a second time, stomach sucking in.
The other paused. “Ura?”
Was that his name? Ah, hell, he’d figure it out.
“Who are you?” he managed to croak, ignoring the pervasive feeling of rightness that settled over his core as the other’s gravity interacted and tugged on his own where he’d closed it tight around himself. “Who—Where—?” He coughed on a tickle in his throat, shoulders hiking up just barely.
The only response he got was a laugh. “Ah-ha-ha, that’s a funny joke!”
“Joke?”
“Trying to act like you don’t remember me!” The other poked him, and he expected pain… and got none, the poke just light enough. “Silly Ura, it’s Neptune! Your best friend. See?” He grinned brilliantly a second time, teeth flashing white in the darkness all around.
Ura—because unless, uh… Neptune? was just calling him some random name, that was his—blinked at him, wetting his lips. “Neptune?”
Neptune’s smile faded a little bit. “Neptune! That’s me!”
“And you’re… my best friend?”
Ura tested the label and knew it was true just from how right it felt; but the way he said it seemed to make something jog for Neptune, his brilliant grin dying completely as he leaned forward.
“You don’t remember me?”
He shook his head slowly, cringing when it made his head light up.
“Oh.” Neptune lifted one hand to his mouth and started chewing on his nails as Ura stared and watched, absently spotting that he had to have been doing that for a long while based on how red and irritated his fingers were. “Oh.”
He sounded lost.
Lost and sad and completely crushed, all in one.
Ura mindlessly went to reach for him and barely managed to lift his arm halfway before it felt like something in his shoulder snapped, enough to send pulsing agony up and down the entirety of his arm, a level of pain he’d managed to avoid since the moment he’d woken up.
“Uranus!”
Comforting gravity closed tighter around him until he was frozen in place, a force so much stronger than his own that he couldn’t have moved even if he wanted to. (Which he didn’t.) “It’s okay, you don’t have to move! Stay where you are, I’ll… I’ll figure something out! Maybe one of those—”
“Don’t leave,” he gritted out, through clenched teeth. “Please.”
Neptune floated back into his vision, but this time he didn’t look brilliantly cheerful. He looked as lost as he had before, and it made something deep in his core clench tight and refuse to let go. “You don’t want me to leave? Okay! Okay! I’ll stay. Promise.” He folded down onto his knees and stared, and as the pain faded Ura took him in fully, this time noticing more than he had before.
His clothes were ruined and torn on the bottom, the sleeves uneven and torn as well.
And his eyes… still looked somewhat cheerful, but now he was able to spot dark smudges underneath, the tension in his shoulders and hooked-together fingers. “It’s been a while since I heard your voice,” he finally said a moment later, cheer drained from his voice. “I like how you word.”
Uranus blinked. “How I word?”
“Your voice! You say things funny. One time you called me a cobber. And you say no like naur!” At the end of his sentence he was smiling again, a smile that faltered the longer the silence between them stretched. “It’s been a bit. A long, long bit.”
“How long’s a bit?” Ura was understanding nothing, and he was still in pain, and it was bloody endless and bloody annoying and bloody—
“A long one.”
Oh, yeah, because that bloody helped.
But Ura didn’t say that aloud, because he really didn’t want to be mean and make this Neptune sadder than he already looked. That rang wrong in his head no matter how he looked at it.
“What happened?” he croaked out. “Who a—”
“I’m Neptune!”
“—am I?”
That made Neptune’s brow wrinkle. “Who are you?” he parroted. “What do you mean? You’re Uranus! You’re my best friend, just like I’m yours. We’re Neptune and Uranus!”
His brows went up. “Say that again?”
Neptune blinked. “You’re my best friend?”
“What? No, mate, my name,” he said, frustrated. “It’s what?”
“Uranus!” He lit up. “And you still said the funny words!”
His name was Uranus? Something deep in his core curled up and died at that thought, unwelcome shame that he couldn’t name a source for and had no idea how to stop pouring into his chest. “That’s my name? Uranus? Ur-anus?”
Oh, great.
He’s in pain and his name is bloody Uranus.
“Yepperoni.” Neptune tipped his head to the side, staring at him in confusion. “Why? You still don’t like it? Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t… know,” he fumbled for an explanation and found none. “I don’t like it. Isn’t there another one? Couldn’t I have a different name?” Maybe Neptune was lying to him, or playing a trick on him, or—or something, and that was why it felt so bad to him. “Please, mate?”
But he didn’t seem the type, did he?
“Yuhr-uh-ness,” Neptune said, frowning at him. “Yuhr-anus. I like it! It’s your name. Why would you want a different one?”
Because that one feels bad.
But he couldn’t explain it, and being unable to explain it meant that he didn’t really have much of an argument for changing. “You didn’t like it the first time we met, either,” Neptune added a moment later, pouting. “I don’t get it. I like Uranus, however I say it. I think it fits you.”
“You think Uranus fits me?”
Stars.
Neptune’s head bobbled with the force of his nodding. “Yes! Uranus is you, and you’re Uranus! My best friend, Uranus.” He blinked one eye at a time. “Do you remember yet? Now that you know your name?” He leaned forward eagerly, deflating visibly the moment Uranus silently stared at him without answer.
(Which was an answer.)
“Here!” Neptune lit up. “I have an idea.” He stuck his hand out, fingers wiggling. “I’m Neptune! It’s nice to meet you.”
Uranus stared at his hand. “Uh, mate… I don’t think…”
“Ooh, that’s right,” he said, grimacing briefly. “That’s okay! What’s your name?”
He blinked, wet his lips, and then gave in.
“Uranus,” he said, eyes flicking away. “It’s Uranus.”
“Well, I don’t see anything wrong with that! Do you wanna be friends?”
When he forced himself to look back at Neptune, his grin wasn’t quite right. It felt more pasted-on than anything, but acknowledging that probably wouldn’t get him anything more than excuses or the like of being fine, so…
“Okay,” he said, the words coming to him easily. “We can be friends.”
“Yay!” Neptune did an abrupt spin, lurching to the side once he’d completed the turn—and Uranus would have smiled at that if not for the fact that he twitched in just the wrong way and found himself in another world of pain, endless and pulsing just right in his skull to wash over his vision with white.
Ow, he managed once.
The rest of his thoughts went away with the pain until it was all swept away in a cool, comforting wave of cold that slid through his entire body. His eyes flickered open—he wasn’t even aware he’d closed them—and he found Neptune hovering right in front of him, arm outstretched and the tips of his fingers pressed against his forehead.
“What—happened…?” Uranus managed to choke out.
“I think you moved wrong,” Neptune said, frowning. “I’m sorry, Ura. I wish I could do more.” He dragged the last word out and folded back on his heels. “But all I can do is push it back a little.” Uranus watched as he picked at his fingers, irritating the already-cracked skin a little more.
“No,” he said, already not wanting to see Neptune hurt himself like that. “I mean what happened? Why am I like this, mate? Why can’t I bloody move without it hurting like—like—like…” He struggled to come up with a comparison and finally gave up. “Like a lot?”
“Like an asteroid to the face?” Neptune chirped. “You hit me with one once, remember? You apologized sooooo much.”
“…No, mate, sorry,” he admitted. “I don’t remember that.”
“Oh, that’s okay! I’ll just let you hit me with another one,” Neptune said, making a determined face. “Maybe that’ll make it come back.”
Uranus blinked. “I don’t think so.”
“Never know until you try! Here, I’ll go—”
“No!” That time he moved, ignoring every pain signal pulsing through him to maneuver up onto one elbow. “What happened, Neptune? Tell me.”
Neptune ducked his head.
“You were in an accident,” he said, voice smaller than usual. “At least I think so. I didn’t see it. I just heard you. And found you… really hurt. Really, really hurt.”
Uranus tried to ignore just how much his core clenched at the terrified look on Neptune’s face, instead focusing on what his entire body felt.
(Aka… pain.)
The weirdest part was that it felt like something was laying on top of him, a heavy weight on his back where he layed stretched out on his side. It took a minute or so before he gave up trying to puzzle it out by feel alone, and instead turned to Neptune.
“What’s on my back?”
“What?” Neptune’s eyes darted to him. “Whatd’ya mean?”
“What’s on my back, mate?” he asked again, frustrated. “There’s something there, and I can’t bloody well tell!” His shoulders twitched just a tad and made him squeeze his eyes shut, fingers curling into his palms as he strangled back a pained noise. “Pl—lease.”
“They’re… wings,” Neptune finally said, clearly hesitating. “You have those.”
“I have what?!”
It took a bit of prodding, but Uranus made Neptune describe them in the end, because there was no other way to know what-with him not being able to move more than a few bloody inches at a time.
Neptune fought him about it for a while and then folded up cross-legged in front of him with his hands stuffed into his sleeves. "They’re a shiny blue-green," he said. "Like your eyes. With little speckles. And when the light came at them right they'd go all—" He waggled his fingers. "Sparkly. Sparkly like ice, not like a star."
"How big?"
"Big!"
"How big?"
Neptune stretched both arms out as far as they would go, then leaned sideways and stretched further, then gave up and let them drop. "Bigger than that."
"And now?"
Neptune's mouth worked for a second.
"The right one's worse," he said finally. "There's a bit along the front edge that kinda broke in a lot of pieces, and then all the pieces healed on top of each other, so it's sort of—ridged. Like a really bad-looking asteroid. And there's places where the feathers don't lie flat anymore and a couple of spots where there aren't any." He was picking at his thumbnail again while he talked and didn't appear to know it. "But I put them back in order as best I could!”
Uranus’s core twisted in his chest. "You touched them?"
"You let me," Neptune said, ducking his head with a wrinkled nose. "Before! You used to let me. I'd sort them out when they got messy and you'd complain the whole time even if I know you and I know you never meant a word of it, you had to go all—" He shook his head hard, curls flying. “—all Uranus about it!”
“All Uranus about it?” he repeated, a little amused.
“All Uranus about it!” Neptune’s eyes crinkled from the force of his smile. “Don’t worry, there’s things I get all Neptune about. Like my asteroids!” He gasped theatrically. “I can show you the new asteroids I found! There’s this one I found that—” Uranus listened to him chatter on about asteroid shapes and all that, inwardly too focused on the never-gone pain in his limbs and his chest and his back and his… wings, apparently.
How injured were they? How injured was he?
“—and I showed you this one before, this one shaped like a square!” Neptune triumphantly held aloft a single asteroid… that was remarkably shaped like a square, he had to admit.
But Uranus was too focused on something else to really take it in.
"I don't remember it."
Neptune’s expression twisted. "Ura…"
"I don't remember any of it." His voice cracked even as he tried his best to ignore how much he wanted to break down. "There's nothing up there, mate. I've been trying the whole time you've been talking. There’s bloody nothing.”
Neptune also looked like he was seconds from bursting into tears, his eyes shiny. “Re-eally?” His voice cracked. “You can’t?”
Uranus mustered up the strength to nod his head, voice not working.
“Oh.” Neptune turned away for a moment, hand at his mouth—but then he whipped around with a wavery smile, and said, “That’s okay! Now I can show you my asteroids all over again! And—And we can do everything all over again.” His voice wavered as much as his smile did. “I d-don’t mind, Uranus! I like having fun with you, and this just means double the fun.”
He opened his mouth to deny that, to say that he wasn’t sure it was the best idea—and then his eyes darted around to the quiet emptiness surrounding them on all sides, and his mind reminded him just how comfortable it felt within the radius of Neptune’s gravity, that they were apparently supposed to be best friends, and so he shut his mouth completely and just nodded.
“You will?!” Neptune lit up. “Really? I have just the idea to start, and you don’t even have to move!” He pushed to his feet and wobbled back and forth on his heels. “I’ll go grab some of my asteroids, and I’ll show them off, and you can just relax! And heal. And all that good stuff.”
“Okay,” Uranus said, holding back a sigh. “Sounds good, mate.”
Neptune hummed a high tune and darted off towards what Uranus recognized was the Kuiper Belt, the sound fading out the further he got.
Uranus just… thought.
Sure, staring at asteroids for a while didn’t sound amazingly fun, but what else did he have? And did the prospect really sound that bad?
No. No, it didn’t.
(And he couldn’t stand the idea of hurting Neptune, who he couldn’t remember a single thing about and yet innately knew… was someone he cared about.
Someone he cared about very, very much.)