It has not been quiet when it was alive, and it remained unquiet even now that it was, for all intents and purposes, dead. The magnetic storms that cut it off from the rest of the universe crackled in the sky, their ominous sound eternal background noise. Clouds roiled, promising rain that would never come—that hadn’t come for….so long that Lex had long since lost count. Centuries, probably.
Time stopped having meaning when you were the only one counting.
The lonely hours, days, years—they stretched on and on forever. Often, Lex wished he could just curl up somewhere and sleep forever, but that release seemed denied him; his body woke him with hunger pangs, or with a flare up of pain from some old injuring or another, or on the worst days—
On the worst days he woke screaming, still, expecting hands around his throat and a familiar leering face inches from his own.
The days when his memory chose to linger on the people he’d lost were bad enough. He thought of Chrysanthos most often—of his soft smile, of his determination, of how hard he had worked to help Lex, to befriend him, to ensure that in his miserable imprisonment on Arcalís, he wasn’t alone. He thought of quiet, stolen moments for just the two of them, fo things that could never be louder than a whisper, of what they could have had and could have been.
But all of that was lost, now.
He hoped that Chrysanthos was dead—that he wasn’t suffering these same empty, lonely centuries. He hoped that Chrysanthos had been reborn, and that whoever had the starseed of Arcalís now was happy and free, and that things had changed on that world after Madriu’s collapse
It was too much to hope for, all at once, Lex supposed. But thinking of Chrysanthos was a comfort—a memory of someone who loved him.
Memories of Eithien…..those were much less welcome. Those were the ones that hand him waking screaming, expecting a new round of violence. And inevitably, thinking too hard about his former lover led to one place.
Led to a monster, a darkness, a fight—a knife slipped between Eithien’s ribs, and then pulled out and stabbed in again again again—as if doing it over and over might pay back years of bruised and broken bones and bitter humiliation, as if killing him dead enough might begin to extract restitution for the poison he brought to Madriu.
As if anything could equalize Eithien taking his battered little feelings, his wounded ******** pride becuase Lex had finally tired of fearing the person who claimed to love him (a lie, Lex had known all along; he was no beloved to Eithien, just a pretty possession, a point of ego) and bargained with some ancient Chaos entity—and brought that thing to Lex’s world. Offered it a feast of people Eithien considered lesser. Offered it the chance to start with Lex.
It was his fault, really. If he’d just shut up and kept enduring—he was the Senshi, for ******** sake. But he’d gotten precious about not wanting to be miserable, and he’d left Eithien, and the end result—perhaps he couldn’t have predicted how far Eithien would go, but surely he could have guessed that there would be consequences. For himself, if no one else.
Or maybe he’d gone wrong in being foolish enough to let Eithien into his life at all. He should have known—an Arcalian noble could never have had use for the ratty Senshi of Madriu, except as a trophy piece. A beast on a leash to be shown off, to be used for as long as he was amusing, and nothing more. Not a partner. Not a lover. And he’d been a fool to think otherwise, even for a second.
Wherever the fault lie, whatever decision was the most wrong, the point was—the state of Madriu was, at the heart of it, Lex’s fault. Eithien never would have done any of this if not for him.
Perhaps that was why he was still alive—perhaps this perpetual, endless loneliness as the last of his people, the misery of watching them die, the agony of realizing that he would spend gods only knew how long alone… Perhaps it was all a punishment for his failures. For the crime of bringing destruction down on his world, of being an idiot who let himself get dragged along by a monster wearing a man’s handsome face, of being too prideful and selfish to shut up and endure, the way he’d shut up and endured so many things, for so many years—
And now there was nothing left to shut up and endure, except the crushing loneliness of being the only loving being on a world that was crumbling to dust.
When Madriu finally died, when Chaos finally killed it, Lex supposed that he might finally die too. He wanted to believe that he could hope, that he could wrest his planet back from the poison that controlled it, but not alone, not like this. Not with his strength reduced, not with his magic barely responding to his calls.
Not with him too weak to do it.
It had been a few days since he’d last managed to scrounge up something edible; anything to keep him alive was getting further and further between. He wondered if one day, it would all just stop—if his planet truly ran out of resources, would it let him die? Or would he continue to carry on, in this half-alive state, stumbling and staggering and struggling against an enemy he would never be able to defeat? Sphere or no, there was only so much he could do.
He felt…dizzy. Confused. Tired.
Slowly, he sagged back against a tree, and began to sink down to the ground. He was just….too tired to keep foraging. Ready, almost, to curl up at the base of that tree and sleep forever.
It would be a kind release, he thought. A chance for his soul to be reborn. To find Anthy again—or whoever he was now. To not be alone anymore.
And then, in the distance—
A light.
A call.
Hope.
Madriu reached for it, and let it carry him away.
[wc: 1,061 words]
