Takes place following the New Year's Event
Word Count: 2113
Everything was white. He felt heavy and numb. He thought he could hear people talking. Shouting? Frantic, but so far away. He thought he caught a glimpse of his brother, blue eyes icy and determined, but about what?
Where was Paris? He needed to see her. Was she okay? Was someone with her? He tried to move but couldn’t. Something was holding him down. Across his arms and chest, and his legs as well. A stretcher?
He couldn’t speak, but his heart pounded. He couldn’t breathe. He needed to find her. He needed to make sure she was okay. That she was alive. But they wouldn’t let him. The voices were shouting again, something was pulled over his nose and mouth. Then he could breathe a little easier, but his heart was still pounding madly in his chest.
Everything went foggy. Not simply his vision, but over his consciousness as well a heavy fog set in. He could not see past an arms’ length, and no matter where he turned, he kept stumbling. The ground was uneven and it was difficult to maintain his balance. He tried calling out for Paris, but there was no response. The only thing he could hear was the rapid beating of his own heart.
The beating of many hearts.
Through the fog, tiny blips of light pulsed all around him. Shades of pinks and purples, blues and greens, golds and white. He was taken with awe at the sight. Fireflies? But fireflies did not beat like hearts. The colorful lights began to rise slowly, beautiful and haunting. He looked down to the lights that rose up through the fog and into his field of limited, clear vision.
They weren’t just lights, he realized. They were like little crystals that pulsed with life. Starseeds? But how were there so many? Why were they floating, bodiless? Were these the starseeds of those who had died? He had no desire to touch one, despite his curiosity. There was no need to disturb them if they were making their way to the next life.
He stumbled again as he turned, but his attention was drawn towards the starseeds instead of whatever might have tripped him up. As he watched, the starseeds floating in front of him began to darken in color. Eventually, they cracked. His eyes widened in horror. He reached out then, desperate to try and help it, to keep it from breaking. But he never got the chance. The starseed continued to darken until it turned black. Then burst into dust before his eyes.
Slowly, one by one, the others followed.
He moved to the next one and tried again. But this time he tripped and fell to his hands and knees. The fog began to clear then, revealing the true horror around him. Below each rising starseed was a body, broken and bloody. His heart pounded, crippled with grief.
All around him were faces he recognized, all of them unmoving. It was their starseeds that rose and darkened, ready to break. He couldn’t watch, but instead searched the faces for any sign of life.
Oberon and Sessrumnir; Alexandria, Themiscrya, Naica, Maia, Chaldene, Acrucis, Zia… Pasiphae, Europa, Camelot, Tsui, Athene, Callisto, Babylon, Thraen. But it didn’t stop there. There were the faces of Remarque and Wolframite; Zircon, Azurite, Persephone, Cyllene, Benitoite… countless others stood out, but he couldn’t reach them in time. He couldn’t reach any of them. His eyes fell on a woman with long blonde hair. Her eyes were open and lifeless, a look of pain and anguish embedded in the blue-green.
Everything seemed to die inside of him. His hands reached out again. He pulled himself across the unmoving bodies of his family and friends to get to her. She was cold to the touch, her skin pale where it wasn’t discolored from bruising. He couldn’t imagine what her last thoughts would have been to prompt such a terrified, heart broken expression.
Carefully he lifted her up into his arms, one hand going to her neck just in case there was the slightest chance she was still alive. He knew the answer before he was willing to admit there was no pulse. He held her lifeless body against him as tears filled his eyes and rolled down his face. He cried out but still had no voice, sobbed like he never had before, because it was not only Ganymede, but so many others gone, pointlessly slaughtered.
But mostly it was Ganymede, whom he loved with all his heart. He clung to her and felt like a child, helpless and alone as he cried, burying his face against her blood matted hair and kissing her temple, desperate and pleading, as if that act alone would spare him some of his pain.
Who had done this? Was it his fault? Had he been too weak to stop this? The lives of so many good people were gone, with no chance of being reborn again. He felt sadness like he never felt before. It was beyond any anger or hate, just an overwhelming sense of misery.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, holding Ganymede’s body to him, before he realized he wasn’t alone. He thought it was the fog setting in again, for there was something soft and white at the edge of his vision. His eyes were too blurred with tears to make out any distinguishing features, but it appeared to be a woman in white with long pale hair. She walked slowly, reverently among the dead. He couldn’t see for certain, but somehow he could tell she was crying too — silent tears of sorrow, one for each life lost.
She knelt down to those she walked among, gently closing any eyes that had been left open, or pausing to wipe the dried blood from their faces, taking her time with each of them. It was strange to him, watching someone show such gentle kindness to those who could no longer be helped. Something felt so familiar, like he had seen her before. Like he knew her in his heart, but it wasn’t until she approached him that he remembered.
Slowly she made her way through the bodies until she came to a stop in front of him. His grip on Ganymede tightened, as if he expected her to be taken from him. He didn’t want to let her go even though he knew it was too late. The woman knelt down, her hands reaching out to touch Ganymede, but he pulled her away. Where had she been? She, with the power to save all of them, had been noticeably absent. What was her purpose if she did nothing but watch people die? People she could have saved as she had before, but this time… this time she didn’t. He didn’t know if he could forgive her for that.
The look she gave him then made him freeze, for it was filled with such sadness and understanding that he didn’t even know how to react. Tears streaked her face and she looked so exhausted, but there was also a fierce determination that he rarely saw.
This time, instead of reaching for Ganymede, she lifted her hands up to his face, her fingers gently brushing away his tears. More spilled from his eyes to take their place. He didn’t understand how she could look so sad, yet so unrelenting. She reminded him of Ganymede — refusing to give up. And yet, here Ganymede was… dead in his arms. If he didn’t know better, he might have recognized a little bit of hope in her eyes, eyes so deep he felt like he was drowning in the secrets and truths she kept there… But how could she be hopeful with so much death around them?
Just as gently as she touched his face, she rose up to place a kiss against his forehead. It was maternal in nature, but he didn’t understand the familiarity he felt towards her. He wanted to hate her for everything she had not done, and yet all he could do was stare as she pulled away from him, her hands not reaching for Ganymede but for his own hand. She pulled it away from where it clung to Ganymede, gently raising his hand with hers to Ganymede’s face. She allowed him to be the one to close her eyes, his hand brushing the loose strands of hair from his wife’s face. She rested peacefully now.
As he continued to hold her, he watched as the woman lifted her hand to her chest, perhaps in silent prayer, just as he’d seen her do with all of the others. In his grief laden mind, he thought he saw her hand glow faintly, and when she so softly touched her hand to Ganymede’s chest, he thought he could feel a warmth flowing into her lifeless body. And when she leaned down to place a soft kiss against Ganymede’s forehead, he thought he saw then golden glow of a heart that ended with a bolt of light.
And then everything was white again.
His ears were ringing. No… beeping? There was something beeping, its pace quicker than he thought it should be. He stared up at bright lights shining down on him, dulled pain coming back to him. Chris drew in a breath, surprised by how easily the air was able to fill his lungs, but realized it was because of something hard and plastic over his mouth and nose. An oxygen mask?
Chris turned his head to the side to try and figure out where he was. He saw a machine that seemed to be beeping erratically, and Peter with his eyes wide, staring at him. It would have been comical in any other situation, seeing his brother look like a deer in the headlights, apparently having just stood up to investigate why the machine suddenly started reacting to his now erratic heartbeat.
Where is Paris?? he wanted to ask as he drew in quick breaths and made to push himself up. His head spun with the effort, and Peter didn’t look like he knew what to do aside from try and calm him down. He couldn’t be calm. He didn’t see Paris. Had she not been rescued?? His hands were bandaged. Bolts of pain shot through his body as he put pressure on them, likewise from his side when he managed to sit up.
“H-hey,” he heard his brother say, but it was muffled, like he still hadn’t turned up the volume completely. “It’s okay, mom’ll be back soon. She went to get tea… uh… Paris is fine, she’s just down the hall,” he tried, glancing almost desperately towards the door for someone else to come in.
Down the hall?
There were too many wires and cords and strange things everywhere. He couldn’t get up like this. He pulled off his mask and ripped the tape off his arm that held his IV in place before pulling that out as well. The rest of the cords used to monitor him were removed next. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Peter watch in horror as the monitor began to flatline, another trope that would have been comical in any other situation, but there was only one thing on his mind.
He needed to see her. He somehow managed to stumble out of bed and onto the floor before Peter or anyone else had time to stop him. He wasn’t sure how he got onto his feet, but he grabbed hold of the wall for support when he did, his face determined. His breathing was quick and shallow. His heart raced, but he managed to get the door and out into the hall before the nurses were alerted to what was going on.
At least three sets of hands had to stop him, and he collapsed in the hall when they stuck something into his arm. Their hasty success in sedating him was probably for the best, as he would later realize that all he’d been wearing was a hospital gown. Anyone curiously poking their head out of their room to see what the commotion was about probably got a good view of a full moon.
They got him back into his bed where he fitfully slept off the drug.
Surprisingly his dreams were no longer filled with images of the dead, but of his family and friends, and Ganymede, waiting there to greet him. Out of the horrors they’d all faced. Out of the darkness and into the light.
Safe at last.
