Sailor Bacchus couldn’t claim to enjoy most of the music the humans were playing to celebrate this festival. This “Christmas.” Singing about impossibilities upon impossibilities. The religion so many of them seemed so enthusiastic about. He shook his head with a scowl. The only cosmic force he could know was the unfeeling Galaxy Cauldron. Swallowing and regurgitating souls while doing nothing to ensure that they had homes to return to. Letting life shrink by the day until only pinpricks of light were left in that screaming expanse. No. There could be no claims of benevolence. But from everything he’d been told about humans, everything he remembered of Tuath and Aurent religions, screaming that truth in their faces would get him nothing but another broken nose.

Too many believed in all of this while Chaos gnawed at the soul of their world. Sang about how wonderful it would be once they finally died. Let that make them feel comfortable, happy even, to let their home decay. He shook his head as though that would clear it of centuries of fury. Something so far beyond disillusionment that it felt as though it had carved out parts of his mind. And here he stood, seething at their complacency while he waited for his helpers to kick in. He’d indulged in less since that inconvenient night and day in that sterile room. A little bit less. Enough to keep him out of there.

Seeking a distraction, his hand wandered idly to his pocket, to the strange little bone that had caught his attention when his homeworld had last nagged him to return. The energy he sensed from it didn’t match the disgusting aura of Chaos that cloaked his planet. His. ******** stupid to say that. It didn’t belong to him or anyone living. ******** thing. But this odd appendage of some unknown…thing had somehow survived untainted. Whatever it was. Examination had done nothing to reveal its mysteries. Stubborn b*****d.

Bacchus couldn’t say when the music shifted, carrying with it a strange sensation. Failing to evoke the rage that its earlier counterparts had. Somehow nostalgic, despite its unfamiliarity. It bore no resemblance to any music he’d ever heard but still drawing forth a sense of longing. An unfathomable loss in which he would forever be alone. Sinking to the ground he leaned against a brick wall, long fingers pressing into his eyes.

“Where is your pride, Finvara?”

A voice in the dark, sharp but not entirely unloving. His own impossibility as he raised his eyes to meet the undeniable form of his mother. Fire and ice flashed across his skin as he met her gaze, failed to hold it for more than a moment before returning it to the ground.

“Look at me when I’m speaking to you, boy. You know better. You know better than all of this.”

“You know I don’t. You know.” Forearms shielding his face from her stare, clutching at his dark hair, hiding from the grief that threatened to shred him from within.

A hand, impossibly strong for a hallucination grabbed his collar, hauling him to his feet and forcing him to meet her eyes.

“Are you some cowering herd animal? Wallowing in your pain? Or are you the final scion of Clan Eladan? Has it been so long that your duty means nothing? That our duty means nothing?”

Bacchus’ shame threatened to immolate him where he stood.

“I can’t. I-“

“I will hear none of that. You know who you are. You know who we are. Act like it.”

With a desperate lunge forward, Bacchus attempted to claim one final embrace. The last shreds of comfort to be found, but as the song ended he found his arms empty. A painful, racking sob shuddered through his lanky frame as he sank back to the ground. Nothing for it. <******** it.

Maybe the magic in that stupid ******** bone was…something. Something that could resist the Chaos. <******** it.

With a sigh he extracted it from his ******** it.

As he closed his eyes, the bone snapped in half with the pressure of his grasp. Nothing.

Eyes opening, he found himself startled by the presence of a strange purple mist. Blind instinct alone drove him to inhale it. Whatever magic it possessed, it had to be that, right?

Right. <********.

That was stupid.

That was really ******** stupid.

Blinding pain streaked through his left arm, feeling as though it might shoot out his fingers to claim a place in this world. He couldn’t say if his own distant screams were from pain or terror. Maybe both. Probably both.

He’d made it worse. Centuries later he’d found a way to make it worse. Maybe he’d lose it entirely this time. The horrific shifting beneath his skin all but confirmed it. Maybe the bones would shed his skin, erupt forth, and scuttle off into the night like one of those ******** up things on Dagon.

Then a shift. Subtle at first. Then the collapse as the pain subsided.

Several terrified minutes passed before Bacchus could muster the courage to examine the limb. His breath hitched in his chest as his gaze crossed his arm. The long-struggling hand. Cautiously flexing his fingers, disbelief bloomed within him as he realized that for the first time in a millennium he felt no stiffness. No throbbing ache within the too-short arm he’d rebroken and clumsily set himself all those centuries ago.

A series of short, sharp sobs escaped him as tears rolled uncontrollably down his face, his inexplicably healed fingers woven into his hair.