Then you must understand that I would still trust you at my back no matter what.
[ Remembering is hard, but for Mydeimos it's an amorphous mass of memories on the worst days, recorded by Cyrene in the hopes that someone would save them. Phainon lived every cycle, passing on his memories to every new version of himself. ]
[ Phainon remembers. He went through it all. Time and time again, he ripped the lives of his friends away and left them dead, bleeding out, ripped away from their hopes and dreams. He cannot see any reason to be forgiven for that. ]
[ Phainon is currently laying on his bed, wrapped under the heavy duvet he had invested in. When he hears the door open, his eyes widen, cheeks damp; he's obviously been crying, or is still partway through it, and he stares before he breathes out a shuddering noise. ]
[ He says it simply, like it's an obvious statement. So painfully Mydeimos through and through as he steps over to the bed, Fig Stew hopping up to start digging at the duvet.
Mydei reaches out to grasp Phainon by the shoulder, kneeling on the bed. ]
I cannot begin to understand what you went through. But I know that in every cycle you gave me a glorious battle, and that it is because of you that the entire world is not yet obliterated to atoms and data.
You have seen me doubt myself countless times. The one thing I have never doubted, even when we were sworn enemies, was you. Even if I had to endure thirty three million more cycles, I would entrust my weakness to you every time.
[ The grasp to his shoulder ought to hurt, but it is the words that do more. Phainon doesn't want to hear them, can't bear the burden of trust and tenderness that comes hand in hand with the revelation of all that he had done. If he had known that both Mydei and Cipher had been aware since their arrival, he might have acted different, he might have withheld more, been less himself.
His eyes are too wet as he's grabbed, and he shakes his head. ]
Please, don't. The number of times I have stolen your life, used your weakness against you... That cannot be so easily forgiven!
Did you do any of those things because you wanted to?
[ In the end stopping Era Nova was the only way to stop the cycle from completing. He knows if Phainon had any other route he would have chosen it instead. That a person as gentle as him was driven to this says everything. ]
My forgiveness is not something you can dictate the terms of. No matter if you spurn it, it is still yours.
[ He leans forward so he can look at Phainon - tears and all. ]
I had hoped that there would be some other way... I tried so many things.
[ One hundred and thirty-three cycles where he tried to avoid harming those most dear to him. He can remember fractions of those years, the edge of madness that dug into him as he fought, and he fought, and he fought. He can remember how it felt for his mind to splinter, and the grief and hurt to drive him to the point of insanity.
I'll remember this world through anger. As long as I burn, they'll never truly leave me.
Anger is all he had, and now without it there is a yawning portal. It is filled with his guilt, and his regret, and his wish for it all to be done and over. The knowledge that his wish here might come true is all that fuels him, and his hand shakes as he breathes out sharply.
Phainon - Khaslana - can remember each time he saw himself, each time he came face to face with the monster he'd become. The hatred, the loathing, the vile sickness that settled in his gut.
[ Two words that don't encapsulate everything. The cycles where Phainon tried not to hurt them and had to kill Mydeimos after he fell to the Black Tide's corruption, the same as Nikador. Cycles where chance killed Mydeimos before anyone else could, often protecting others at the final cost of his own life.
Some of the cycles are crystalline clear in memory. Others are muddied, mixed with others, contradictory information his mind swears is true. He remembers the promise he made in his last cycle with Phainon, one that he'd made before: in the next life, they would spend time together in the library.
The last cycle where he broke his soul into pieces, Okhema had felt hollow. He spent ages gazing at Kephale's statue, not understanding why he was drawn to it until his memories were returned again. ]
I cannot ask you to forgive yourself, Khaslana of Aedes Elysiae. Neither will you convince me that I should hate you. I felt your absence in this last cycle as surely as I had lost a limb.
[ He shifts his hands, cupping Phainon's face. It's not gentle, as if with a lover, but a familiar gesture. It's a surprise he doesn't shake Phainon's head to insist he's foolish. ]
If my wish is granted, you will no longer have to fight anymore.
[ Phainon shakes his head, the bitterness rising inside of him like bile, like the Black Tide itself has found somewhere in his stomach and lungs to settle. It is akin to drowning, and when Mydei's hands cup his cheeks, he lifts his own to hold onto his wrists - a lifeline, an anchor, something to keep him whole. If he didn't have this, he might break.
With Cipher, they had danced around it enough that it had hurt, but it hadn't been an open wound. In this, with Mydei, the dearest of friends in so many lifetimes, it is harder to be so distant from his own feelings, especially when he hears that name fall from his lips.
The tears come harder.
Phainon does not remember the last time he wept for the losses of his friends. The fires of rage and the burn of Coreflames inside him had vaporised those, so many years ago now.
Do you still remember them, Khaslana, the one who won't reach the dawn?
He bows his head, openly weeping, now. ]
You called me pathetic, once, for my tenderness. "In the next life, I shall once again block your path." Each and every cycle, you rose up and fought, but I knew your weakness. My blade found it, thirty-three million times.
[ Phainon's voice is hoarse, and desperately broken. ]
I don't understand. How can you miss a monster that stole your life that many times? With a body more ash than man?
[ Mydeimos may want a better way for his people, but in the end he is the prince of Castrum Kremnos. Hesitation for sentiment's sake is no better than an insult to them, as hypocritical as that statement is for how he desired to save Phainon before he even thought of Irontomb's destruction.
Phainon openly weeps and Mydeimos interrupts the flow of tears with his thumbs, smearing them cross pale cheeks. This is good. If Phainon tried to keep up the facade of indifference for this, he'd be even more infuriating than he already is. ]
What you had to do was monstrous, but that doesn't make you a monster. You fought until you had nothing left and kept fighting, Phainon. There would be no Amphoreus without you.
If you are nothing more than ash, then I will take you home and lay you to rest in the wheat fields.
There would be no Amphoreus without Cyrene. The Trailblazer. I wasn’t able to be the hero our world needed, and I failed the name you gave me. I was no Deliverer, only a murderer instead.
[ Mydei’s hands are gentle against his skin, and he feels himself shuddering from the weight of his emotions. It’s impossible to stop crying, and he feels the roll of it in his stomach, something akin to nausea. His limbs feel heavy and all Phainon wants to do is collapse forward and stop.
He wants to sleep. He’s so tired.
No one here knows. They meet Phainon and see part of who he is, the man who’d once been his whole, a bright hero who wanted to save his world. Inside, Khaslana rebels, and Phainon shatters. He feels Fig Stew nosing at his leg and is simply overwhelmed. He hasn’t broken like this since…
He doesn’t remember.
Voice hoarse, he swallows. ]
All I was able to do was raise my blade and fight to Nanook. I wished to show him Destruction, my anger, the rage of our losses. But I was… Mydeimos, my lifetimes are nothing but an endless tale of failures.
[ Maybe Mydeimos is tired of crouching over, or perhaps the desperate grasp of Phainon's hands finally compels him. He keeps his hold on Phainon's face but sits down, tugging at Phainon as he lies back. He'll aim to guide him to rest on his chest, but he'll take him curled up against his side as well if that's all he can manage. ]
Your role was no less important, Phainon. Do you consider the messenger a failure for not fighting in the war?
[ It's an oversimplification, he's aware, but he's trying to make a point. ]
You spent even your life after your last breath fighting Irontomb. Because of you, Amphoreus has received allies from beyond the sky. What you did was not in vain. You're not less than for being unable to strike down a god.
[ He's not even aware that what Phainon did do - scratching Nanook from a universe away - was apparently so rare that the blood he spilled was used as a bargaining chip. ]
[ It feels too easy to be drawn down, to sink against the warm bulk of his friend, even as the tears come.
It also feels like he doesn't deserve it, even now.
Ash, and fire, and rage. Aching pain, agony, years and years of it. Thirty-three million lifetimes of blood and death, and Mydeimos shrugs it off, not as if it is nothing but as if it is worth forgiving. He can't see the other side of that right now, emotions bottled up finally exploding, and all he can do is breathe as he shakes in the other man's arms, trying to grip himself, to keep himself together.
[ One hand finally relents its hold to start brushing through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. The other curls around Phainon's back, supporting him since it feels as if Phainon's strings have been cut.
It was not nothing, what Phainon went through. He knows his words will not assuage in one hour the eons that they live through. His forgiveness is unconditional, though, and he will give it to Phainon always. ]
I wish we could have walked into Era Nova together, but your efforts bore fruit, I promise you.
[ Phainon's voice is small, soft from his tears, gripping at Mydeimos as if afraid he will disappear. His voice is so quiet, so hoarse, that he thinks that it sounds as if he is barely speaking at all. The words come all the same, and he shudders through it, clinging to Mydei as if he is the only thing keeping the feeling of drowning at bay.
He can't stop crying.
The memories are too much. ]
Two thousand, six hundred and ninety-one. I wished to see Era Nova with you.
[ The memory is deeply buried within the recollection of his returned ones. It's not hard to find, though; the first of one of a very few times they reached the end together. The realization after Khaslana showed up that they could not do so, for to do so would be to doom the outside world. ]
But we had to reset it instead.
[ His voice is even, but soft. Soft in a way that might seem unlike Mydeimos, but Phainon is well used to the hidden gentleness he contains. ]
So we promised that we would meet again, in the next cycle.
[ There are some cycles he remembers better than others.
Unique ones, with his dearest friends at his side. The first after his mind had changed, when he had spilled golden blood and lacked the capacity to weep. Blips on his radar, in thousands upon thousands of lifetimes, all blurring together at times, tangled up in an endless web.
We'll raise our cups where the West winds end.
Mydeimos had been so determined, so sure, so strong...
And then Khaslana had come. He had come.
Tucking his face into his friend's neck, he sniffles. ]
We met. Millions of times, we met, and you had the same name for me. The same kindness. You never lost that.
[ He wants to remind Phainon that he had the luxury of forgetting the previous cycles each time it happened. Phainon was not afforded that, and had to live through each one, as Khaslana or the Reaver. That Phainon was still never intentionally cruel, that he made their deaths swift.
He has had enough of talking of death. Let Phainon cry for all the lost heirs on his chest. ]
I was able to be kind because of you. You were the one who showed me my people could walk another path, when you welcomed us to Okhema.
[ Phainon can remember being small, can remember dreaming of Castrum Kremnos, of the tales of warriors and the heroics that came with it. He remembers being a soldier, and the idle daydreams.
He remembers seeing Mydeimos, and laughing, thinking him a shirtless idiot.
How much things change.
Curled around him now, he doesn't want to let go, afraid that he will lose him forever, another cycle gone. ]
They walked with me, too. When you died... I don't remember when. I wore your red, and we marched against the Tide. We mourned together, your people and I.
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@deliver
How much do you remember?
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[ Wait. ]
Were you not aware?
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Do you remember what the last thing I told you was?
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But I would never forget those words.
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[ Remembering is hard, but for Mydeimos it's an amorphous mass of memories on the worst days, recorded by Cyrene in the hopes that someone would save them. Phainon lived every cycle, passing on his memories to every new version of himself. ]
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[ Phainon remembers. He went through it all. Time and time again, he ripped the lives of his friends away and left them dead, bleeding out, ripped away from their hopes and dreams. He cannot see any reason to be forgiven for that. ]
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[ Before he can even figure out if he should put on real clothes to look for Phainon, he hears Fig Stew pawing at the other man's door and roaring.
Whether the door is locked or not (sorry about his door if it was), Mydeimos will let himself in. He scans the room looking for Phainon. ]
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Mydeimos...?
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[ He says it simply, like it's an obvious statement. So painfully Mydeimos through and through as he steps over to the bed, Fig Stew hopping up to start digging at the duvet.
Mydei reaches out to grasp Phainon by the shoulder, kneeling on the bed. ]
I cannot begin to understand what you went through. But I know that in every cycle you gave me a glorious battle, and that it is because of you that the entire world is not yet obliterated to atoms and data.
You have seen me doubt myself countless times. The one thing I have never doubted, even when we were sworn enemies, was you. Even if I had to endure thirty three million more cycles, I would entrust my weakness to you every time.
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[ The grasp to his shoulder ought to hurt, but it is the words that do more. Phainon doesn't want to hear them, can't bear the burden of trust and tenderness that comes hand in hand with the revelation of all that he had done. If he had known that both Mydei and Cipher had been aware since their arrival, he might have acted different, he might have withheld more, been less himself.
His eyes are too wet as he's grabbed, and he shakes his head. ]
Please, don't. The number of times I have stolen your life, used your weakness against you... That cannot be so easily forgiven!
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[ In the end stopping Era Nova was the only way to stop the cycle from completing. He knows if Phainon had any other route he would have chosen it instead. That a person as gentle as him was driven to this says everything. ]
My forgiveness is not something you can dictate the terms of. No matter if you spurn it, it is still yours.
[ He leans forward so he can look at Phainon - tears and all. ]
Or will you reject me?
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[ One hundred and thirty-three cycles where he tried to avoid harming those most dear to him. He can remember fractions of those years, the edge of madness that dug into him as he fought, and he fought, and he fought. He can remember how it felt for his mind to splinter, and the grief and hurt to drive him to the point of insanity.
I'll remember this world through anger. As long as I burn, they'll never truly leave me.
Anger is all he had, and now without it there is a yawning portal. It is filled with his guilt, and his regret, and his wish for it all to be done and over. The knowledge that his wish here might come true is all that fuels him, and his hand shakes as he breathes out sharply.
Phainon - Khaslana - can remember each time he saw himself, each time he came face to face with the monster he'd become. The hatred, the loathing, the vile sickness that settled in his gut.
How can Mydeimos be blind to it? Cipher? ]
I am not rejecting you.
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[ Two words that don't encapsulate everything. The cycles where Phainon tried not to hurt them and had to kill Mydeimos after he fell to the Black Tide's corruption, the same as Nikador. Cycles where chance killed Mydeimos before anyone else could, often protecting others at the final cost of his own life.
Some of the cycles are crystalline clear in memory. Others are muddied, mixed with others, contradictory information his mind swears is true. He remembers the promise he made in his last cycle with Phainon, one that he'd made before: in the next life, they would spend time together in the library.
The last cycle where he broke his soul into pieces, Okhema had felt hollow. He spent ages gazing at Kephale's statue, not understanding why he was drawn to it until his memories were returned again. ]
I cannot ask you to forgive yourself, Khaslana of Aedes Elysiae. Neither will you convince me that I should hate you. I felt your absence in this last cycle as surely as I had lost a limb.
[ He shifts his hands, cupping Phainon's face. It's not gentle, as if with a lover, but a familiar gesture. It's a surprise he doesn't shake Phainon's head to insist he's foolish. ]
If my wish is granted, you will no longer have to fight anymore.
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With Cipher, they had danced around it enough that it had hurt, but it hadn't been an open wound. In this, with Mydei, the dearest of friends in so many lifetimes, it is harder to be so distant from his own feelings, especially when he hears that name fall from his lips.
The tears come harder.
Phainon does not remember the last time he wept for the losses of his friends. The fires of rage and the burn of Coreflames inside him had vaporised those, so many years ago now.
Do you still remember them, Khaslana, the one who won't reach the dawn?
He bows his head, openly weeping, now. ]
You called me pathetic, once, for my tenderness. "In the next life, I shall once again block your path." Each and every cycle, you rose up and fought, but I knew your weakness. My blade found it, thirty-three million times.
[ Phainon's voice is hoarse, and desperately broken. ]
I don't understand. How can you miss a monster that stole your life that many times? With a body more ash than man?
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[ Mydeimos may want a better way for his people, but in the end he is the prince of Castrum Kremnos. Hesitation for sentiment's sake is no better than an insult to them, as hypocritical as that statement is for how he desired to save Phainon before he even thought of Irontomb's destruction.
Phainon openly weeps and Mydeimos interrupts the flow of tears with his thumbs, smearing them cross pale cheeks. This is good. If Phainon tried to keep up the facade of indifference for this, he'd be even more infuriating than he already is. ]
What you had to do was monstrous, but that doesn't make you a monster. You fought until you had nothing left and kept fighting, Phainon. There would be no Amphoreus without you.
If you are nothing more than ash, then I will take you home and lay you to rest in the wheat fields.
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[ Mydei’s hands are gentle against his skin, and he feels himself shuddering from the weight of his emotions. It’s impossible to stop crying, and he feels the roll of it in his stomach, something akin to nausea. His limbs feel heavy and all Phainon wants to do is collapse forward and stop.
He wants to sleep. He’s so tired.
No one here knows. They meet Phainon and see part of who he is, the man who’d once been his whole, a bright hero who wanted to save his world. Inside, Khaslana rebels, and Phainon shatters. He feels Fig Stew nosing at his leg and is simply overwhelmed. He hasn’t broken like this since…
He doesn’t remember.
Voice hoarse, he swallows. ]
All I was able to do was raise my blade and fight to Nanook. I wished to show him Destruction, my anger, the rage of our losses. But I was… Mydeimos, my lifetimes are nothing but an endless tale of failures.
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Your role was no less important, Phainon. Do you consider the messenger a failure for not fighting in the war?
[ It's an oversimplification, he's aware, but he's trying to make a point. ]
You spent even your life after your last breath fighting Irontomb. Because of you, Amphoreus has received allies from beyond the sky. What you did was not in vain. You're not less than for being unable to strike down a god.
[ He's not even aware that what Phainon did do - scratching Nanook from a universe away - was apparently so rare that the blood he spilled was used as a bargaining chip. ]
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It also feels like he doesn't deserve it, even now.
Ash, and fire, and rage. Aching pain, agony, years and years of it. Thirty-three million lifetimes of blood and death, and Mydeimos shrugs it off, not as if it is nothing but as if it is worth forgiving. He can't see the other side of that right now, emotions bottled up finally exploding, and all he can do is breathe as he shakes in the other man's arms, trying to grip himself, to keep himself together.
It's impossibly hard. ]
All I wanted... Was to save you all.
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[ One hand finally relents its hold to start brushing through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. The other curls around Phainon's back, supporting him since it feels as if Phainon's strings have been cut.
It was not nothing, what Phainon went through. He knows his words will not assuage in one hour the eons that they live through. His forgiveness is unconditional, though, and he will give it to Phainon always. ]
I wish we could have walked into Era Nova together, but your efforts bore fruit, I promise you.
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[ Phainon's voice is small, soft from his tears, gripping at Mydeimos as if afraid he will disappear. His voice is so quiet, so hoarse, that he thinks that it sounds as if he is barely speaking at all. The words come all the same, and he shudders through it, clinging to Mydei as if he is the only thing keeping the feeling of drowning at bay.
He can't stop crying.
The memories are too much. ]
Two thousand, six hundred and ninety-one. I wished to see Era Nova with you.
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But we had to reset it instead.
[ His voice is even, but soft. Soft in a way that might seem unlike Mydeimos, but Phainon is well used to the hidden gentleness he contains. ]
So we promised that we would meet again, in the next cycle.
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Unique ones, with his dearest friends at his side. The first after his mind had changed, when he had spilled golden blood and lacked the capacity to weep. Blips on his radar, in thousands upon thousands of lifetimes, all blurring together at times, tangled up in an endless web.
We'll raise our cups where the West winds end.
Mydeimos had been so determined, so sure, so strong...
And then Khaslana had come. He had come.
Tucking his face into his friend's neck, he sniffles. ]
We met. Millions of times, we met, and you had the same name for me. The same kindness. You never lost that.
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He has had enough of talking of death. Let Phainon cry for all the lost heirs on his chest. ]
I was able to be kind because of you. You were the one who showed me my people could walk another path, when you welcomed us to Okhema.
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[ Phainon can remember being small, can remember dreaming of Castrum Kremnos, of the tales of warriors and the heroics that came with it. He remembers being a soldier, and the idle daydreams.
He remembers seeing Mydeimos, and laughing, thinking him a shirtless idiot.
How much things change.
Curled around him now, he doesn't want to let go, afraid that he will lose him forever, another cycle gone. ]
They walked with me, too. When you died... I don't remember when. I wore your red, and we marched against the Tide. We mourned together, your people and I.
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