Chapter Text
Chondrodite can’t breathe.
They haven’t been able to breathe for the whole day.
It’s like…it’s like the Vessel, no, the Sun Station all over again. There’s a weight pressing down on their chest that’s crushing their lungs, memories and fantasies and nightmares all rushing to fill the void in their head.
They’d all gone there, they’d all found Kaepora. Arete had already been in space when they found the note, so they were the one to pick them up, and the first thing they’d asked Kaepora when they’d landed was where Heliolite was, their throat and vocal cords stumbling over the Owlk’s guttural tongue.
“Helio-Heli-Helioli-lite”, the voice had croaked , sounding fry and dusty like the ancient papers in Hornfels’ oldest archives. Then, something unintelligible…and Arete’s eyes had shot wide.
“D-dead?!” Arete had gasped.
Chondrodite had stepped forwards so quickly they felt their ankles click. “They-they can’t be-you’re-“
With a groan of effort, the Owlk raised the vision staff they had carried with them, impossibly alive, projecting a stream of thought that caught all of the buddies as they pulled closer in a river of memory.
Dark. Green fire. Hands. HANDS. Living hands. Hands that could move.
Artifact in hands. Look up from Artifact. Someone’s in here with them. Someone they’ve met in the simulation.
Heliolite.
The Hearthian just stands there with a soft, sad smile.
…their body crumbles and collapses into dust.
The artifact lands with a final thud on the ground.
And as Kaepora falls into Arete’s arms, Chondrodite feels themselves lock up.
They can’t be dead…they can’t be dead, they’re Heliolite, Heliolite doesn’t just die…they can’t be dead, they can’t be dead! They always pull through!
Kimberlite falls onto the ground behind them, clutching at the dirt. A faint hum of ghostly fluctuations rings from them as they start to cry.
Scree’s face has become a blank, impassive mask, and they have started to breathe very slowly and steadily as they tend to do in awful situations like this. Chondrodite can hear Amber choke out “wh-why?...”
They want to…they don’t know what they want to do. They want…to scream? Burst into tears? Hug someone? Their body isn’t responding, and Arete in front of them is like a statue and they won’t say anything, and the others are breaking down, and they feel…They don’t know what to feel. It’s like their mind is a dark, dark void, the numbness of a blackout…it’s like they’re looking at themselves through another person. Like they’re watching someone else.
They don’t know…they don’t know how they feel. They just…are.
Arete suddenly turns around, facing Kimberlite, Amber, and Scree.
“Get Rutile. Get Kae to a bed. I’m going to the Stranger.” Their voice is taut like RIebeck’s banjo strings. “Don’t tell Feldspar. For Hearth’s sake, do NOT tell Feldspar.”
And then, before the others can respond, a large, unconscious Owlk is being supported by the other Hearthians, and Chondrodite just catches a whisper of something unintelligible; Owlk language, maybe-and then a quick, barely felt squeeze on their shoulder. They think they hear them tell them something to them, but it feels like a fluttering leaf caught in a strong gust of wind. If it reaches their ears, their mind doesn’t comprehend it.
Then, like the skyshutter on the horizon, they’re gone, sprinting at full tilt towards the ship.
Chondrodite doesn’t try to stop them. They don’t think they could if they wanted to. They don’t know how to want right now.
There they stand, rooted to the spot, their limbs, their body, as still as the statues on Giant’s Deep.
Are the others asking them for help? Is that them they can see in the corner of their eye, carrying Kaepora to the elevator? They think so. It’s kind of hard to tell. And their body just doesn’t seem to be responding…
They think they feel someone grab at them. They don’t resist, they just go with it, and all of a sudden, there’s something in their hands, and someone else is pushing the Elevator down, and they hear some wheezing breathing, and they’re at the bottom of the tower and Slate and Hornfels and Gossan and Feldspar are there, they’re all there, and is that Rutile behind them? And maybe Porphy too, they think they recognise them, but…it’s all so…fuzzy.
Amber is saying something, and now the founders are putting Kaepora on Slate’s Sleeping bag…they look really cute, next to that fire…
Someone grabs them. Feldspar. Chondrodite still…doesn’t know what to say. What to feel.
Crumbling into dust, like the last embers of the dying universe. No coming back, only a quiet, gentle end.
Feldspar’s saying something to them. At last, their ears are catching up to them, and they can make out some of the words.
“-and they were supposed to be here, where are they? Where’s Helio, Chondrodite, and where’s Arete gone? Chondrodite?”
Chondrodite just…stares at them. They should say something, but…they don’t know what to say. Their mouth just isn’t working.
They just…walk away. Their feet move without their input.
Someone’s calling out to them, but it’s like their body’s moving without them. They’re going…somewhere. Their cabin, probably, their little room in the cabin. Yes, that kind of feels like where they should go, or…maybe not. But there isn’t really anything they can do to stop it….it really feels…empty. The hand that opens the door to the cabin doesn’t feel like theirs. It feels…wrong. Like it’s missing something or someone.
They numbly wander into their bedroom and just sit on their rickety bed. The mattress has been patched up and re-stuffed so many times, but the smell is familiar. As they sit down, the wooden table they have under the window is cluttered with notes on everything they’ve found-notes about the Nomai, their language, their people, their culture…
And their eyes rest upon a photograph, right at the edge of the desk. The last memory of a life they can barely remember anymore. Before the Supernova…before the Eye…
The bright colours and sharp focus of the camera that would become Kimberlite’s polaroid show five…no, six hatchlings, one after another. In the front row are the shortest…Kimberlite. Chondrodite. Amber. All beaming and exuberant. Then, in the back…the mischievous grin of Scree. The soft, nervous smile of Arete.
And Heliolite’s barely perceptible, tired, but determined smirk.
And that’s when everything catches up with them and Chondrodite remembers what feeling things is like, and when the other hatchlings finally arrive at the cabin, they don’t need to open the door to hear how hard they’re crying.
It’s three hours before they can scrounge up the courage to leave their room. By that time, the whole village is huddled near the observatory. Spinel turns to them to ask them for some dirt, but recoiled under the glare that Chondrodite shot them. They’re not going to talk right now. They hope that Spinel can’t see that underneath the glare they’re closer to cracking than a planet with a bramble seed embedded in it.
Chondrodite no longer feels numb the way they had in the first ten minutes after the news had broken. They wished they still were. At least then they wouldn’t be feeling like they should let the sands in Ember Twin swallow them whole.
Heliolite was their friend. They cared for each other, but Heliolite especially, though they might have had trouble showing it, cared for them all perhaps more deeply than they could know. Heliolite was the best pilot they had, and had flown them backwards from the screeching mouth of five anglerfish. Heliolite would listen, and listen, as the rest of them let their worries spill out, and for all their recklessness and dry sarcasm, Chondrodite knew that they were glad to fly with them. And, in a bitter irony, the person they seemed to deprecate the most…was themselves.
They’d always tried to distance themselves from the others, and it had taken a long time to bring them to the point where they trusted them enough to let them be the supporting shoulders…Heliolite thought so little of themselves, and Chondrodite was hoping that they could all have given them something good, something that would help them feel alive. They deserved it.
They were mischievous. They were touch-averse. They were stubborn. They were brave. And now they’re gone.
Chondrodite bites their lip, trying not to collapse in on themselves again.
When they enter the observatory, Gossan’s arguing with Feldspar again. Kimberlite, Scree and Amber are nowhere to be seen.
“I need to know what’s happened to them, Hornfels!” Feldpsar gesticulates vaguely outside, unconsciously pointing to Chondrodite where they were walking. “They’re…they’re my friend, and if anyone knows them-“
“I’ll stop you there,” Hornfels says icily. “One, you do NOT know them better than anyone else given that you were gone for four years because you never told anyone you were going to Dark Bramble and got yourself stranded, and two, I already have an astronaut up there who took a ship without authorization, and while I don’t LIKE Arete treating protocol like it’s an inconvenient obstacle, they at least will find SOMETHING we can work with, and THREE, we do NOT have a ship for you right now, so even IF I wanted you up there, I can’t get you there.”
Feldspar spots Chondrodite, and gestures them over. “’Dite, back me up here, there has to be some way I can go up and help-“
Chondrodite doesn’t know what they could say. They’re trying to keep the feelings bottled up, because they’re pretty sure if they just say things then they won’t hold themselves together. They stop Feldspar mid-sentence with a raised hand.
“Please, just…leave me alone.”
They shouldn’t have come here. They start moving towards the observatory entrance again, but Feldspar scurries over and lays a hand on their shoulder.
“Please, ‘Dite, there’s gotta be something I can-“
‘I said, leave me alone!” Chondrodite bites down hard on their cheeks to try to hold back the breakdown that’s worming its way up their throat again.
Dust and ashes, shaped like their friend, crumbling away to the floor…
They storm out of the observatory, their cheeks burning with a mixture of rage and pain, angry that they can’t face Hornfels, angry they can’t talk to Feldspar, angry they can’t find the others. They’re just…so…angry. Heliolite is dead, and there’s no bringing them back, there’s no flame in the artifact so they’re probably not even in the hearth-damned simulation, they’re gone, and they just…they didn’t know what to say, they didn’t want to say anything.
And Feldspar shouldn’t see that, they don’t want them to see what they have they’d doted on Heliolite and Heliolite had missed them like the Founders had once they had gone, and now it’s the other way around and Heliolite is gone trying to bring back a three-hundred-thousand year old alien-
They feel a clawed hand on their back, and they yelp with alarm, flashes of dark passageways and ghostly figures charging out of the shadows as they snap their head around.
Kaepora looms over them, looking at them with those big black eyes of theirs. Realising that they’ve startled them, they take a step back, and give an apologetic hoot.
Chondrodite lowers the hand that they’ve unconsciously clamped to their chest, lips tight, and nodded. They notice that Kaepora has their vision staff. It’s down at their side, at a lazy angle, and the Owlk obviously sees their eyes flick towards it, as they look down at it and an unintelligible stream of noises comes from their throat, like the gurgling of a river.
It’s so hard to say something. They really should, but just like before, their mouth doesn’t want to make any sounds. They just…stare.
What does Kaepora think of this? Had Heliolite asked them if they wanted to be brought back before they’d done it? Did they have any idea what the plan had been before it happened? Going off what they had shown them, they don’t think so.
Kaepora continues to stand, mumbling something in their language. Chondrodite can pick out an occasional snatch of a word here and there, but nothing close to enough to form a coherent narrative.
What did Helilolite see, in those round, dark eyes, when they crumbled to ash and dust? What did Kaepora think, as their flesh returned to their body and they breathed the stale air of their dead world?
Chondrodite doesn’t know. Chondrodite is afraid to know.
They look over in Kaepora’s direction, and they realise that the ancient being’s eyes are wet and shimmering. Tears roll down from their eyelids, and the feathers around them, scraggly and dry, become matted and damp.
It’s then that Chondrodite realizes that they’re crying too.
Without thinking, they pull the Prisoner into a hug. “I’m sorry,” they whisper, “I’m sorry,” without knowing why. They just need to say something.
Kae drapes their neck over Chondrodite’s shoulder, and the Hearthian can feel the body rack and heave with suppressed sobs.
They want them back. Stars above, they just want Heliolite back…
They linger there, at the lip of the crater, for some time.
Until all at once, with a roar that casts their eyes to the stars, a fire of atmospheric reentry lights up in the sky.
There’s a whoosh of rocket engines from the sky, and in a cloud of vapour, their ship, Traveler 5, bursts through the atmosphere and lands on the launch pad. Chondrodite sees Arete drop quickly out of the hatch, and leap over the crater in a jetpack assisted boost. Kae chirps, inquisitively, as they land in a spray of dust kicked up by rocket jets and heavy boots.
Chondrodite doesn’t have to turn to hear the familiar footsteps of the other buddies coming up the hill, and Kimberlite’s faint quantum hum has never quite left them even after…the Eye thing. But they’re not really focusing on that. They’re focusing on Arete, who is frantically gesturing to Kaepora’s vision staff.
With a warble, Kaepora hands it to them. Immediately, Arete holds it in front of them, not saying a word, just…a stream of green light flowing from the staff.
Everyone steps in. There’s no agreed plan. There are no words. At times like this, the buddies don’t need to say anything to each other. Chondrodite couldn’t say anything if they tried. They just…kind of merge together...
Darkness, green fire. They’re in the Bell. There are two artefacts on the ground, both look empty.
Arete’s hand (it’s so familiar) picks up one of the artefacts, and sleeps.
Black.
The blackness lifts slightly. Fire. An empty niche where the vault should be.
A figure, in front of the stairs. They turn around, and the light catches their face.
Scaled stripes stretch from their lower right to their upper left eyes. Their eyes are narrow, slanted.
The person with the lantern runs over, and through their eyes, Chondrodite can see who it is they are now dragging into a furious, instinctual hug.
Heliolite.
Heliolite is alive.
They all fall out of the vision, and Chondrodite gasps, they don’t know whether to cry, what to say, they just feel their lips moving but it’s not planned. ‘They-they’re, they’re still-‘
Behind them, Kaepora bugles skywards, and Kimberlite and Amber are sobbing into each other’s shoulders with joy. Scree is…they can’t hear them, but Scree is like that. No one knows what Scree thinks except for Scree.
But Chondrodite, they’re…it’s, it’s relief, and grief, and joy, and pain, and they can’t stop themselves from crying, as it all comes spilling out.
Arete’s taken off their helmet, they’re hugging them, the feel their thick spacesuit arms, they’re crying too…
“They’re still alive,” they whisper, “I promised they’d still be alive. We’ll bring them back. I promise.”
Chondrodite is still crying, and they don’t try to stop it. They can feel again. They feel a feathered neck drape over their shoulders, and thin, scaly arms wrap around all of them as Kaepora brings them all into a hug.
And Chondrodite, being the closest right now, whispers back, their voice tinged with relief, “I know you will…”