Chapter Text
His day started when theirs ended. A never ending vigil over a perpetually empty sky, night after night, year after year, millennia after millennia. Sebastian, God of the Moon, was older than all of the other gods upon the surface, the gods of all the menial, human things. He was so much older, in fact, that they were all but inconsequential to him now. At one point, the gods of the earth had worshiped him too, just like their disciples across the dimpled and pockmarked land beneath him. But their worship was unwelcome, corrupted and disappointing at its core.
They heralded his arrival with yawns and the closing of shops, with disappointment that the stars behind him had been blurred out, with wide eyes darting to their watches and hurried footsteps into their homes, where his meager, reflected light could not reach them. They rejoiced when he did not show his face at all, calling it the new moon and declaring it to be the start of a new cycle that, in reality, simply represented his powers at their weakest. The new moon came on the days that Sebastian could scarcely drag himself up and into the sky, on the darkest and coldest of his nights.
It was a time of isolation and depression, not that of a fresh start. But, of course, no one cared to know Sebastian well enough to learn it.
Or maybe he just didn't let anyone try.
The other celestial gods did not know nor care of his struggles. Not his long lost family, gods of their own planets and stars that were now little more than pinpricks of light in the distance: Sebastian watched the brightest star of them all — his sister, Maru — with a mixture of apathy and agonizing, crushing devastation. He'd been dislodged from their orbit, cast out and thrown into empty space against his will, even though he knew he'd never really belonged there with them. Who knew if they even noticed he'd gone after he'd been sent hurtling towards the earth, careening off in a collision course that should have killed him.
Sometimes, he almost wished it had.
But instead, he had been forcibly reshaped, remolded, reforged. Crammed into a new shape and a new orbit and a new normal that hadn't once felt natural. He did not belong in this solar system, he knew that at the very core of his being. He was an amalgamation of foreign pieces of the earth and shattered pieces of his old self, all crushed together into a fragile shell. But, there was nothing he could do about it.
So he did his duty: stay in line, don't rock the delicate balance. One shift too far out, and he'd be lost to the deepest black depths of space — and he knew he wouldn't be so lucky as to find a planet a second time. One shift too far in, and he'd get sucked right back into the earth, destroyed and destroying again.
But, life as the God of the Moon was not all darkness and gloom.
He'd never been able to orbit quite fast enough, unable to keep up with the silent, unrelenting movement and pull of the planets around him, with the ancient gods that had long since gone silent. He was just off cycle, just out of step. Sometimes, he couldn't make himself get across the sky fast enough, getting caught in the warm glow of the rising sun at the boundaries of the day.
Truth be told, though, Sebastian dragged his feet on purpose from time to time. The hazy delirium and headaches that came with being stuck out in the day were worth it when the prize was seeing the sun.
The God of the Sun was the most glorious sight that Sebastian had ever laid his eyes on. Better than the arms of the Milky Way, better than the delicate, looping rings of Saturn. He wore a blinding smile for Sebastian every time their paths crossed, even if just for those brief moments: those smiles were enough to light Sebastian for the rest of the day, warming him from the inside out. Even when he was not directly in his line of sight, when their paths did not cross, Sebastian still absorbed his warmth. His voice was an ethereal beauty, floating out over the cosmos to promise company and attention, if only one would open their arms.
Sebastian did not produce his own light, like the rest of his family. Always the odd man out, the most he'd ever been capable of was staying out of the way, reflecting back the light he was given. Not truly a star. Not significant enough to influence anything else in any marketable way with his gravity. Dull, drab, blending into the black.
But Sam's light was different.
It did not shine off of him like an expectation, like a job he had to do. His light was a gift, an offer of camaraderie and companionship. An inside joke, a shared meal. A hand extended across the expanse of cold darkness, one that lingered long after they parted ways.
Sebastian didn't know where Sam had come from — they never had enough time together to get that far into a conversation. All Sebastian knew was that Sam's smile was enough to light the entire solar system, and that Sam seemed to smile quite a lot when Sebastian was around.