Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

News guy wept and told us, Earth was really dying.

It was like something out of a bad movie, the day they declared Earth was dying.

People were tearful and sobbing, reeling in disbelief, as if this was a surprise. As if scientists and scholars hadn't been trying to warn them for decades.

Just like when the first of the world wars broke out, everyone had aching lungs from the gasps of shock horror.

Not the artists or analysts though. Their lungs ached from being silenced as they tried to get everyone's attention.

Bullet wounds had become rather popular in those days. So had death by assassination.

No, people were amazing at putting their heads under the sand so that they didn't have to notice the crows lining up on the branches outside.

One by one, they lined up. A murder of crows.

People said they didn't notice.

People were fools.

He was a fool for a while.

He would say the world was always going to end, why waste tears on it? Besides, this Earth was barely habitable anymore, children barely survived, and food was becoming scarce. Why waste time trying to elongate suffering when it was inevitable?

Some would call his line of thinking cold. He was just being reasonable.He could better use the time helping those who survived do so with fond memories of their time on Earth - as futile as it was.

Still, he didn't throw himself into hedonism with reckless abandon as some had. No, he had a sense of self-preservation and where he could, he tried to make the Earth a little less dismal. His main avenue available was volunteering wherever he could. Of course, the military was out of the question but medical centres always needed an extra hand as did museums and various archives.

It was a futile attempt to cling onto human history as though there'd be someone after them to remember. There wouldn't be but that was fine. It helped those people feel as though they had a purpose and if that was what let them live, then so be it.

Another small bit of work he did was public readings. Not much of a public left, really. Still, it was an honourable group, trying to remind people that the Earth wasn't dead yet. They would read descriptions from old books and new; about the beauty of the world they lived in. Of what used to be.

You had to be careful what you read of course - the wrong book and it would be a much more gruesome public display, usually ending in the knot of a noose. Reading about 'A host, of golden daffodils' was far greater a risk than it used to be. But it was worth it for the smiles, weak as they were, as well as the stories people shared. Stories about feeling the ground beneath your feet, as the smell of petrichor wafted around, almost a cleansing presence.

He spent his time away from home - no need to be in an empty home, nestled away in the woods. It was lonely, but it was fine.

He knew that the people around him needed more help than he could provide. He knew he couldn't save everyone - and even if he could, what was the point? The world was not a pleasant place to live and so elongating the suffering would be cruel. There were those who harped on about the little pleasures and joys the world had to offer - but what was the point of those in a time where time would soon end.

Yes, it was a lonely life, but it was a proper one. He had seen people clutched by fear, by the never ending cycle of birth, death, birth again - all of it inevitabily leading to rot. He'd seen his mother, widowed at a tender age, who practically wasted away her life on her own, weeping. She had died just like his father, who had a jovial, booming laugh, who grew poppies and chrysanthemums with no difficulty.

Their lives had been different - one short, one long, one filled with joy, the other with sorrow. And yet, his mother would say that her peace had been with him, her short period of happiness. What was the use of it when he lay in the ground, becoming mulch for the very flowers he grew?

Or his sibling, who'd been a guiding force for him, who despite the unhappiness of their life, had found reprieve. Academic accolades, and photos of success lined their walls. They had found love, a wedding day, even children who he'd had the briefest pleasure of meeting. And then there was a blip on a monitor, a scan that came out wrong, a part not functioning as it should. And they reacted with fierce outrage, with love for their children, even as their brain deteriorated and with it the funds. His name was lost from their mind, their love for their children grew into something twisted and confused, their partner struggled to make ends meet.

It was a relief when they died, and he wasn't afraid to admit it. It was better for them to have not lost at all, than to have slowly felt their mind slip away.

The worms found their orifices. Death created peace.

The world ending would be for the best.

People tended to put his nonchalance about these sorts of things to his life. His skepticism must be because of the great loss he had suffered. But really, everyone had stories like his. They just liked to ignore it and keep going.

Ignorance is bliss, as they say.

Once in a while he'd wonder why he stuck around. Suicide was common enough and there really wasn't many who'd miss him, if he were gone.

He could make it tragic and use one of the blades in the museums, polished so they gleam pristinely, make a spectacle of himself.

He could walk out into the waves as they defiantly crashed, the wind bellowing as he slowly slipped away.

He could run into the streets yelling inflammatory content and die by bullet wound as many had before him.

He could go to his little empty house and pop open every pill and tablet he had, swallow them up in one go and die alone.

He could die in many different ways really - humans on their time on Earth had made sure of it. He had more choice in how he chose to die rather than whether he'd die or not.

But there was little to no point really. He wasn't an unkind man, he didn't want to leave these ignorant fools to suffer. As long as he had something to do, as long as he was useful, he would stay.

Children especially liked to listen to the poetry, as though they were comforting fairytales. They might as well be fairy stories with how unlike their own world it seemed.

Children, he supposed (at the risk of sounding sentimental), were one reason he hadn't jumped. They had no choice in the matter being born into such derelict conditions. They were to young to grapple with their own mortality, to think like he did.

They should never have been born but alas, they were. Instead of punishing them for that, he stayed to comfort, to give them some illusion of calm.

Perhaps he was a hypocrite. Humans at their best usually were. He stayed alive for the sake of being alive and alleviating the melancholy others kept in their heart which he for some godforsaken reason couldn't access.

Where others wept, he stared. Where they raged, he murmured. Where they killed, he read.

It was an odd, contradictory existence but that was fine.

He was never planning on playing the hero, anyway.

Chapter Text

Don't cry, we're bound together. Each life runs its course. I'll see you in the next one - next time, I know you'll call

Meeting her had been a reprieve.

She worked in investigative journalism - though one could argue all journalism was investigative in these times. He wasn't trying to meet her, had never read her articles, or thought that it was something worth entertaining. After all, it was common knowledge that the world was corrupt - why waste time trying to figure out which nook and cranny was rotted the most?

Nonetheless, she was there at an event - a birthday party of a friend perhaps. Party was too generous a word - in a town where the streetlights were smashed and the few houses boarded up, a party was impossible. Still, the alcohol was free-flowing and someone had attempted a cake and set up some music.

It's the thought that counts.

She had been in the corner - a practice of secrecy that hadn't died with time. He liked corners and every other one was occupied.

Besides, she was the only one in the room with any sense of poise, her hair carefully coiffed and a semi formal office outfit that was barely acceptable for the frivolities. She even had a smudge of lipstick on. No one really bothered with that sort of thing anymore - not anyone in the circles he operated in anyway. It was a waste of time, better spent on other things.

He disagreed of course, though he had always been a skeptic of nihilists and their ilk, so it came as a surprise to no one. A school friend had once accused him of being contradictory on purpose - far from the truth really.

Yes, he sometimes pushed the limits but it was never arbitrary. He had reasoning - the world was still home, and so might as well take what it has to offer.

Her vanity was a sign she might agree with him, so he chose to approach her. A risk, yes, since you could never be sure who to trust, but he was tired of being paranoid.

So he approached her, two drinks in hand, ignoring his heart stuttering away in his chest.

"Hello, I don't think we've met."

She looked up and raised a curious eyebrow.

"Not formally, no. But I've heard your readings on the streets. Very inspirational."

"Ah, but no one seems inspired. No one who matters, anyway. You're a journalist, yes?"

Soon they were conversing easily, exchanging facts about their (rather bleak) lives. Her family had migrated from what used to be the USA when things became insupportable.

Whenever a mutual friend offered a top up of their drinks, they accepted, ignoring the bawdy jokes and winks sent their way. Really, the world was ending but that didn't mean all decorum had to go.

"I think I should go home now." she said, yawning through a smile, "After all, there's no rest in my work."

He stuttered a little. Blasted alcohol, making much more jittery than he was used to.

"Or, you know, we could end the night on a nice note, maybe dance?"

"Dance?"

Well, he had to roll with it now.

"Well, yes. You wrote that opinion piece didn't you - you told me, about remembering the small joys. Well, this would be a small joy for me."

She hesitated for a moment, before smiling at him.

"You're downright smitten. Come on, then. Let's dance."

It was sappy, frivolous and plain mushy. If it had been anyone else, he would've gagged. It was not a remarkable moment, not one that historians would document, or musicians would have write ballads about - not now, not anymore. But as he leaned in to kiss her, he couldn't think that it was a pity the world would end, because he would have liked to see where this would have gone.

As they parted, she smiled at him.

"You know, from what I've heard about you, I never thought you would be so…"

"Maybe a little contrary considering my opinions?"

"Maybe. I just thought you didn't have a lot of hope left."

He shrugged.

"I don't. But that doesn't mean I would pass up a perfectly reasonable opportunity to enjoy a night with a perfectly lovely person, would I?"

She blushed.

The next time they saw each other, they naturally gravitated towards the other, shy smiles. They made an effort to seek out one another, to take breaks from the world.

He invited her to his home - a modest cabin in the woods of the Lake District. She had ooh-ed and ahh-ed at the nature surrounding them, better preserved than the more populated urban areas.

It wasn't romantic - he was sure of that. It was kinship - a meeting of souls - different but the same. Where he was content with what there was, she wanted to explore and gain more perspectives. It was a balanced way.

She was not always there, nor was he. They had separate lives after all, but were always sure to reunite - either in a hushed social gathering, a bumped meeting in the streets, or a surprise visit to the cabin.

She loved the cabin. Called it her little palace.

"I feel like a princess from the movies with all this nature around me. All I need is a dress and a tiara and I'm all set to wander around this little kingdom."

"Well, your Royal Highness, dinner is ready, so you can wander around on some other day."

That was another thing that had become normal - the domesticity of it all. They spent longer periods of time in the cabin, like the weekend getaways of the past. He would cook for her (she was atrocious in the kitchen) and they'd play card games over dinner. Occasionally, when the mood struck them, they would go outside and dance, the radio playing low from inside the house.

And he began to look forward to it, to go to the cabin more often to see if she had returned. At one point he just started living there, never leaving and instead awaiting her return. That mean there was plenty of time to think.

Think about what they would do once she returned.

What recipes to try with the ingredients they had.

What games to pull from the cupboard.

What radio station to tune into at the night.

What tomorrow would look like.

Should he buy new clothes for her?

Maybe some new games?

Extend the cabin, make it a little bigger?

He wondered what they would do if the future was guaranteed - would they get married? Children? It would be an unconventional marriage for sure - after all, they had never said 'I love you' or called each other by names of affection other than the teasing princess remark. But it was a thought that pestered him. Maybe they would be those people who just lived together, no marriage or children, but a resounding sense of togetherness.

What would she look like with greying hair? Would he get the chance to hold her and feel how the skin got papery with age?

Time alone led to resentment and indignation. It led to open books about astronomy, beliefs about life and death, stability and change, yin and yang.

It led to almost devotional levels of commitment to finding an answer because suddenly he had something - something that didn't feel riddled in hardship, something that could last.

The next time she visited, he didn't notice the way her eyes were pinched with worry, her hands resting on him, not just gently but warily.

"You've…you've been busy, huh?"

He had barely heard her words, preferring to clutch on tightly, because the next time she left, it would be the end of the world.

"I can find an answer - I can make sure death stops hurting people. We- we can properly enjoy our time and not stand at its inevitable door. I can fix this."

She pushed him away, holding him at arms lengh.

"There's nothing to fix - death is normal, like you said, it's always going to happen, even before all of this end of the world stuff. You need to stop - get out and do things. I know they miss you in the city - you were a favourite of the poets-"

He shook her lightly, never hurting her, but needing her to listen, to really understand what he was saying.

"Don't you see? I can't read poetry and comfort the children who come to listen, knowing it's all futile. I need to fix the problem - save them!"

"You need to leave the house, and talk to other people. I just - I never agreed with everything you said before, but I definitely don't agree with you now. I mean, you used to be sensible about it - and I just, I don't know what changed other than you being alone-"

"It was you. You came here, and made everything less lonely, and happy. But I thought, if I'm going to fix an issue, I'll fix it for everyone. No, I can't fix the political turmoil, but I can stop the funerals, the deterioration - give people a chance to live lives with all those little happy moments.

I promise you, I'm giving you everything you don't know you want because it's not this - I can make it better.

And it's because of you, I see that now. You deserve to see the world and grow old and experience everything you want to. I just want to make you happy," he huffed a small, breathless laugh,

"Really, what I ought to say is thank you, Princess. We deserve to have our happily ever after. "

She looked so small in that moment, the sheer size of her influence rendered her speechless. She just stared at him, his broken, stubborn state, knowing she couldn't change his mind.

Whatever chance there was to stop him had long since passed.

"W-we should eat dinner. Maybe play a game. Lighten the mood."

He eagerly took the opportunity for some levity - the last thing he wanted was to argue with his only true companion. And if the food tasted blander and the game ended earlier then that was because of exhaustion. The lack of dancing because of fatigue. And when he hugged her close in his sleep, the jolt was just the sign of a long day. It was fine. He would make it okay.

He set his work station in the basement so as not to invade the homeliness of the cabin. He made it a point never to discuss his work and she did the same with hers. If she showed up less, he pinned it down to a big story looming off the horizon.

He did try to take her advice, going out and breathing in the cold air. He planted poppy seeds and viney plants around the place and occasionally jotted down some poetry. None of it brought him joy, not really, because he still hadn't found a way to make it last - to guarantee he would see the poppies bloom.

His mother had a similar sort of idea, he discovered, when he found a chest full of books - science mainly but also magic. He wasn't the sort of person to place faith in something so flimsy like sorcery but his mother had believed in it zealously, so he would apply it for her sake. Day after day, he scratched runes and mixed chemicals, twisted gears and sketched out plans.

Turns out ripping apart two concepts would mean having those concepts in the room. It was more about belief than hard firm science. Whatever it took, he was willing to do it.

Change and stagnancy were the gods by which humans lived. The assurity of time to complete that which they wanted to complete and the knowledge it could all end before they had a chance to action anything.

Stagnancy would be the best solution. A pause. Time for rest. A long quiet after a time of tumultuous chaos.

He worked himself into a frenzy, wondering how best to capture change, to chain it away as it was.

He crafted an incubator of sorts, something that would prevent change in a being or thing. It would require a death but that was expected. Then on the other end something would have to rot, to capture the essence of change, its sinister underbelly.

He wondered if a plant would be enough.

As he worked, he receded back into old habits of isolation. As such, her visits became more and more infrequent. The few times he did leave out of sheer necessity, he heard the anguish and fear, the knowledge of the end breaking people. He wished he could assure them but he wasn't much of a comforter.

Instead, he worked and worked, writing out every detail he could think of, anxious to make it work.

He almost didn't hear the creak of the basement door. The sound of her body slipping down the stairs, limp like some object, echoed in the basement.

Her work had caught up with her. There was only so long you could poke a sleeping bear until you were attacked.

He could hardly understand what she was saying, her mouth dribbling out blood in thick globs of saliva. Her skin was pallid, the only colour from the actively bleeding wounds.

She had come to him to die. To save herself, she should have admitted herself to a clinic, but she came to him. It was stupid of her. Foolish.

As humans so famously were.

He wasn't sure how long he held her. There was no saving her. Instead of the anguished sobs, the beating of the chest, the heart-wrenching screams that he expected, there was silence. He stared at her as her throat gurgled out phrases, incoherent and distraught. He reached behind him, one arm around her, and placed a kiss to her temple.

In the next second, he brought down a blade to her chest, and stilled her writhing body.

It was quiet now.

One person's breath in an otherwise empty room. She ceased to live.

He couldn't bear to leave her, to bury her with the plants she would never get to see bloom. He didn't want to see a world in which she didn't exist because now he had lost the reason to see it.

Instead, with half-focused eyes, and burning muscles, he dragged her over to the work bench, finger mindlessly clipping wires and patches to her, smoothing back her hair. He didn't shut her eyes. Whether he could see them or not didn't matter - she was lifeless.

If his hands shook, if his breathing altered - if he vomited in the corner of the cabin in disgust at what he had done - all of it was forgotten. He ceased to matter. The only thing left was the world.

How many more of them were there? Humanity was never unique, everything was a repetition of the wonderful, horrible things that had happened before. Who else was planting flowers for a soul who would never get to see them? Planning futures which would never come to pass?

He had to fix it, he had to make it better - if not for him, then someone else. Because there had to be someone else, someone else worth fixing it for, because otherwise there was nothing and-

There was nothing left for him. There was something left for someone else.

She hadn't done any of her investigations for gain. She had never gotten a bonus - oftentimes she wasn't even paid. Therefore, to best remember her, he would do the same.

Perhaps it was selfish but he already knew he wouldn't benefit.

The last moments of his life were spent preparing. He tidied the cabin, got rid of the needless clutter. After all, no one would live there after he was done. He got rid of the board games, the furniture (spare a table), the pots and pans, donating them in the dark of night to the poorer households. Children would like the board games, he thought.

All the while, the cabin smelt of rot, her body decaying slowly in the cold basement. There was an air of grime he couldn't wash away.

The basement itself was systematic. There was an order. A plan.

On one side was the corpse. It wasn't her anymore. Just a thing of flesh and bone, deteriorating.

On the other was the incubation chamber. He knew now what to put in it.

There were runes and sigils, hastily scribbled out poetry which read more like a prayer. Sketches of gods, tubes and vials of blood and chemicals, all with the aim of the physicalisation of a concept. The cabin might not survive a wrenching part of life and death. But humanity would survive. They would live.

He could save them all.

It was with that thought he remained, as he enclosed himself in the incubation chamber, his breath fogging up the glass. He stared at his own reflection for a moment, blank eyes meeting his stare.

There was no life left in them anymore. That was for the best.

He plunged the blade down into his chest.

Everything went dark.

And he died.

Chapter Text

All the things yet to come are the things that have passed, Like the holding of hands, like the breaking of glass

He wasn't him anymore. That didn't matter, he barely existed and so what was the point?

What did exist was the Construct - a man-made containment vessel for two cosmic beings that were formerly one. Stability and stagnation enveloped them safely, the threads robust and strong.

At least they were on the first loop.

He hadn't planned for the repetition of events, of not being privy to his own creation's nature. However, in retrospect, he supposed it made sense because he hadn't created anything. Instead all he'd done is sever a tie that had never been severed before and present the two things as seomthing new, when really it was old, older than he could ever imagine.

By ripping apart change, he ripped time. Just because he had cut open the bag, doesn't mean he had control over what spilled out.

Nonetheless, he did his best. It was all he could do, his only purpose in this wretched half-existence.

It wasn't that he didn't want the world to be saved - in fact, if anything, his resolve strengthened when it first played out. At least he thought it was the first time. There was no confirming until it all ended really.

He didn't remember much of his old life, but it was clear his vessel was made up of fragments of it. Two unconscious beings should have no concept of the path in the woods, of the cabin that stood at the top of a hill, the blade gleaming on the table.

No, the two beings - dubbed by him The Long Quiet and The Shifting Mound - were more akin to being the path themselves, the thing upon which humanity tread carefully or recklessly as they pleased.

The woods were familiar, the smell of petrichor and the dampness of the soil was something of his past. The cabin door, whilst unfamiliar, opened with the creak of one well used.

They were always meant to start on the path in the woods. There was nowhere else for them. Why this was such an irreplaceable fact he couldn't quite remember but it was a fact he wasn't expecting to change.

If it changed, it meant he didn't really have a hold of the place at all, no matter how flimsy the existing grasp might have been.

She was a repulsive creature - a monster. She was all wrong - a princess was too misleading a role but for some reason that was the part of his life that had latched onto this beast. She had too kind a face, too gentle a voice, too desperate a plea for something that deserved to be slayed where she stood.

Still, it wouldn't stand to disagree with the only chance at salvation. The Long Quiet was a more monstrous looking god despite the gentleness of his role, something that irked him but it wasn't important. He didn't think the being had any concept of what he looked like and that was for the best.

Perhaps the most irritating part of his Construct were the voices that resided within The Long Quiet. Brash, heroic, naive, idiotic voices all bleating opinions like lunatics all because what? She was pretty?

It was altogether frustrating that she looked so familiar and yet was the very thing he loathed.

He could have at least ignored the voices if they had just been an irremovable part of The Long Quiet, some strange cosmic quirk to take in his stride. But no. Instead they were all clueless caricatures of him - as if he would ever try to dissuade from the plan he had thought out.

The heroic one was perhaps the most moronic of the lot, changing his opinion based on the events with no steadfast conviction whatsoever. It was so insistent that being a hero meant saving the thing in front of you, unable to conceive of a bigger, greater purpose. It was so sure of the gut feeling being the right one, unable to understand that being a true hero meant doing things that made you sick to the stomach.

It was an idealistic thing with no idea what it was up against.

It was stupid, and reckless, and kind, and noble and-

"You are on a path in the woods."

The Mirror Shattered.

At first he thought that it would all end up well.

After all, The Long Quiet had gone through with it, with limited interference from the snotty-nosed, weak little voices.

The corpse of the princess lay still and unmoving and The Long Quiet believed that it was so and then it was so .

It was simple and formulaic and should've worked.

Instead, the being of stagnation and calm itself rejected eternal bliss, the knowledge of a saved world and decided to stab himself.

It was that awful voice's fault of course. Who else?

Of course, he doesn't remember any of this, that would be too easy, too ridiculous to expect the designer of the place to have any idea of the goings on.

Instead, he learns it all bit by bit as she is welcomed into The Long Quiet, possessing him and conversing with the voices. He hates her forgiving nature, her hope and optimism that she'll be able to leave. Even as a dead thing, she continues to haunt. He hated her with every fibre of the remains of his being.

He didn't hesitate to tell her either.

It was in that awful circumstance (where she had the gall to call him bossy) where Hero tried to insinuate they were something alike.

For that he had a very simple answer.

"You don't need to know what I am. You just need to know that I'm different from you. More important."

The Mirror Shattered.

The smitten, ridiculous, frivolously romantic voice was perhaps the most irritating thing he had ever witnessed in this godforsaken hellhole.

Number one, having his voice was problematic on many levels, but it was also head over heels for the very thing that they were supposed to slay.

That was why the cabin was no longer a cabin but a palace and the damn woods didn't even exist anymore.

And it was hard to even berate The Long Quiet into action - not when he was bound to the table.

Somehow the most deranged, most obsessed voice had won over control, a looming shadow behind the princess. He had never supposed her to be so frail looking, so shakily happily, a mask wavering with nothing pleasant underneath.

He wasn't sure when he started to sympathize.

Was it describing the meal, trying not to cringe at the phantom taste of grease and fat, sickly sweet juice curdling the food already consumed?

Perhaps the games, repetitive and predictable, all skill and technique lost after playing it again and again and again?

Or maybe it was the fear that gripped her every time she was asked of her own happiness. The way she flinched. The torch sputtering. And all the while that damned shadow orchestrating a children's game of joy and domestic bliss as if it was that simple.

The blade hung from her neck. It would be so easy and yet he was just as convinced as the heroic one that stabbing her would be the cowardly way out.

Perhaps most sickening of it all was the familiarity of it. The doe eyes of someone who was so tired, and so scared, looking at you like she was lost in the world.

He knew this princess. He knew her.

But try as he might, he couldn't conjure up a name, or a memory, nothing because it was all gone, he'd ended it, he'd forgotten that fairy tales were fairy tales for a reason, that he'd slammed the blade down upon himself and lost her, lost any concept and memory of her - whoever she was - because that was gone, it was gone, all because of him and his hubris, and it was too late to fix it.

He wasn't surprised when he let them leave with little protest.

He felt tired when the voices questioned his change in tune.

He didn't tell them that he felt like he'd gone wrong somewhere. That he was no better than the deranged Smitten, plagued by nonsensical notions of a happily ever after.

Instead, he felt the painful strands of memory, telling him it was time to go, even as an old song on the radio began crooning in his ear. He hoped there would be dancing.

"I hope it was worth it. Genuinely, I do."

The Mirror Shattered.

One concept ripped into two gods - powerful but not infallible. A construct strong enough to hold cosmic beings, weaved with his very soul. There was no fame in this, no glory, nothing. Just the knowledge that he had saved everyone. If that wasn't worth something, then nothing would be.

God, what a fool he'd been.

Sometimes, in the whispers of the dying world he heard her ask if it was true, if he truly was different from the voices or if he was the very same.

It was a question he preferred to avoid.

There was no pretending that he succeeded. He knew that by now.

It was the end of everything.

He knew The Long Quiet - a manufactured god for all intents and purposes - was deserving of answers. After all, any failure at this point was his own fault. He was supposed to have guided the possible hero to save the world. But with his fractured human side, there was no chance of him being a successful Narrator. He failed in that, just like he failed in saving her, in saving anyone really.

He was no saviour, just an arrogant lunatic of a man who pretended not to care and then cared to the point of obsession, neither leading to the future he wanted to witness.

It was fitting, he supposed, that his final form as it were, was a crow in the shards of a mirror. He knew The Long Quiet supposedly saw one on certain loops. He had never been quite sure what all of that was about. Even with his memories, he was sure there was no mirror when he departed the world.

But really, unlike how no human can be a hero, any reflective surface can be a mirror. The shine of a blade reflecting the wound inflicted upon a loved one. The images in the eye of what it was beholding, even as life dripped away. The fragments of people dancing in the dew drops on the grass, shining in the dawn sunshine.

Your disheveled, pasty face staring down at you from a glass incubator, hair greasy and fingers streaked with red. Your parched lips and bloodshot eyes devoid of the joy you should be feeling. Your calloused hands, bringing a blade down to your own chest, a blade that still had the rust coloured stains from the corpse across from you. The moment of hesitation before metal pierced skin, the choked sob that has no time to escape as life is put on hold.

All of this in the partially foggy glass of a containment vessel that used to hold something alive.

There was no rot. There was no growth. There was not nothingness either.

There was you.

Had he ever looked at himself properly, ever understood what it was he lived for, beyond pompous throwaway phrases that made him feel important or self-sabotaging plans that ruined everything around him?

Had he ever looked at himself until it was too late to back out?

It didn't matter.

He hadn't achieved anything in his life. The world would still end, she would still rot and the two gods he'd cruelly forced into existence were left to grapple with a separation that should never have happened.

He wasn't sure if he could ever find it in himself to apologize. That part of him, the part that was able to feel regret and sorrow seemed to have rotted away the quickest. The human parts of him he supposed.

The people out there matter. He was sure of that. But he wasn't sure if it mattered how long they mattered for. It was out of his hands now.

He idly answered the questions, gave as much explanation as he could hope to.

"I'm an echo, likely one of many. Someone made you, after all, and I'm what's left of him."

The Mirror Shattered.

"Once she's gone, everyone will get to exist exactly as they are. No more fear, no more howling chaos. Just life. Forever."

The Mirror Shattered.

"It's like I said, I'm just an echo. And echoes always fade away."

The Mirror Shattered.

There was nothing left for him to do but die now.

For someone so obsessed with life and its aftermath, he wasn't sure what was waiting for him. He supposed there probably wasn't an arbitrary division of good and bad - if anything he was convinced those two concepts were another example of something intertwined.

He wondered if someone would be there waiting for him.

Memory returned, though not in whole. It was like the tide, lapping at the coast, approaching then receding all too quickly.

A lonely soul living for the memory of a booming laugh that grew chrysanthemums. A caring sibling, who'd grown so quickly yet withered with time, their accolades collecting dust on the walls. A friend, a true companion, who'd reminded him of the little joys, who was his final hope and breaking point in the grand scheme of it all. The moisture on windows, trailing little paths behind them as they dripped to the window sill. The crackle of a radio, tuning in to a little station in some far off unseen place. The cold of winter nipping at your ears, the wind whistling its merry tune. A garden of poppies no one would ever see bloom.

There was little more to life than these things. How he wished he could remember them.

But, all things must come to an end.

The mirror must shatter.

The world must go dark.

And you must die.

THE END