This world...it was so vital. So alive. And the people on it had been welcoming and kind. Bellatrix had given him space in her home. Julienne had made sure he was safe and well equipped and properly glamored. He had even managed to find a job, at a small mechanic's shop that specifically catered to what the owner, a portly man in his sixties named George, called "classic cars". George had been pleased with his skill and his sense for mechanics--a vintage Earth car wasn't all that different from Daedalan machines, once you really got down to it, and he was used to taking things apart and putting things back together. Cars might run on gasoline rather than steam, but many of the principles were the same.
(George liked to grumble about modern machines and all their unnecessary electronics, but Soren had never had the chance to see the guts of a car newer than 1989, so it wasn't as if he had the experience to commiserate. Maybe they were over-engineered, he didn't know.)
It wasn't a bad life, really, even if he'd only had it for a little while. And as Daedalus, he'd met Murikabushi, met Fang, met Farbauti.
Found Merak again, even though he was Langite now.
But it had loomed over his shoulder, the knowledge that he hadn't returned to his world.
When he'd fallen into his stasis-slumber, it had still been alive. Struggling, yes. Made worse for Chaos's poison. But alive. But everything he'd heard said that other worlds had not managed to live while poisoned. Fang was the last of his people. Murikabushi said that there were others like him, and they were likely the last of theirs. And all of that meant that if the pattern held true, Daedalus was likely the last of his.
The thought made him feel ill. His world had been messy, yes, and full of hypocrisy and grasping that he despised. He'd hated so many of the people in the upper class, the ones that eagerly drove their world towards ruin chasing profit. The ones who made their vast, obscene fortunes on the backs of people who could barely afford to eat. Daedalus hated them, with everything in him.
But there were good people, too. His friends in the resistance. The other union organizers he'd gotten to know so well. The older folks in the factories who did their best to make sure that the children working in them were safe and well-fed, the peopel who gave even if they ought not to have anything to give at all. The ones that chose to make the world better, despite the world working against them. And, truth be told, even those that Daedalus despised the most--the ones that had tried to personally exploit him, to leverage his title as the Senshi into favors for themselves?
They didn't deserve to die. No one deserved what Chaos did to people, or to worlds. And however it had killed them, it had done it too soon. Evey single person on his world deserved a full life, deserved to see the universe that he had known. And that had been taken from them.
But maybe it wasn't true. Maybe, somehow, improbably, he wasn't alone.
And maybe if he went back, he would find the answers he sought.
Julienne had told him how. Just take the fancy phone she'd given him, and press the correct button, and focus.
So he did. He closed his eyes, and thought of home.
And when he opened them, he was there.
And his heart dropped to his feet.
The first thing he noticed was that it was silent. The silence that could only come from a total absence of life. There were no people shouting, none of the ever-present hum of factories, not even the sound of creatures scurrying on the cobblestones. Not even a breeze, which just made the air feel worse and more oppressive.
When his eyes drifted up, he saw that the sky was still the same as it had been when he went under. Ominous and dark, as if a storm threatened, but refused to properly break.
(Though storms certainly had broken, and they had been practically toxic. Acidic rain, choking, smoggy clouds.)
He looked down. Under his feet, the cobblestones of the street were broken and decayed and crumbling. It was clear that they had been neglected for--years? Decades? Centuries?
And the more he looked, the more apparent that neglect was. It had been a very, very long time since anyone had been here.
He knew where he was. It was a great square in the poorer district of of the capitol city, built around a brass fountain topped with a statue of some ancient Sailor Daedalus or other, rendered with great draconic wings to make him look even more impressive than he actually was. He predated Soren's tenure as the Senshi by millennia; the fountain was old, and had once been well cared for, but now it was tarnished, pockmarked, rusted in parts, and abandoned. Water no logner splashed through it to accompany the sounds of people, bright and alive and filling this place.
Once, this square had been a lively market, full of people hawking their wares, children running about, guards hovering at just the right distance to be appropriately threatening to anyone that wanted to disturb the peace. Once, this had been somewhere Soren spent hours, talking to people, seeing their wares, learning about their lives. He'd hauled friends from all over the universe to this market, over the ones in the wealthier districts, because nothing beat Eiriel's pies or Markus's leatherwork or Freidricka's shawls. Once, this had been part of Soren's home, a vibrant center of the community he loved, a place that exemplified the best of his world and his people.
Now, it was empty. There were the crumbled remains of wooden stalls, clearly abandoned to rot, and when he moved towards the one he'd known as the place to get some of the best street food in the city, the cloth draped over it nearly went to dust under his touch.
It wasn't a market anymore.
It was a grave.
That set heavy in Soren's chest.
He hadn't wanted to believe it, he realized. Hadn't wanted to think that he could have been asleep for centuries, that his world might have ended without him there. It had seemed so impossible. So unfair. How could a world be lost like that? A whole planet, so many people--and they were supposed to have...what? Simply withered and died?
It felt wrong. It felt so unlike the fierce fighters that he knew, who struggled against their world and against its cruel rulers, and who fought to have something better. To suggest that they would simply die off--
It had seemed so unreal.
But here before him was the evidence.
An empty, dead city, with nary the slightest of hints of human activity.
Daedalus came over to the fountain, and, beneath the shadow of his many times former self, he collapsed into miserable, heartbroken tears.
Merak was dead, reincarnated as someone who no longer knew who he was. Murikabushi was dead, and his new self was trapped by Chaos. So many of his friends--all gone.
And so, too, was his entire world.
While he had slept in his own coffin, his world died. His people must have struggled, he was sure. They would not simply have laid down and let Chaos take them, Senshi or no Senshi. But they had clearly lost, and now, all that was left was a Senshi who had tried so hard to save his world, who had given up his entire life to it--had given up the man he loved--and who had, in the end, failed.
He was a pathetic excuse for a Senshi, honestly. He'd tried so hard, for so many years, and he'd barely moved the needle. They'd won a battle here or there, held a strike or a riot that won some small victories, but in the end, as far as anyone knew--
As far as anyone knew, he'd been murdered, and his starseed had never reincarnated.
Had they lived long enough to know? Had they waited for seven years, hoping that they would get a new Senshi? Or had they given up long before that? It was impossible for Daedalus to know.
When he felt cried out, when he was sure his heart could take no more, he pulled his phone back out. There was nothing else he could do here, sitting on his dead world and mourning. Not now. Perhaps, if he had some time, he would be able to come back and face it again--but for the moment, he just wanted to back to Earth. To be reminded that there was somewhere in the universe that was still alive.
[wc: 1,546]
