Epilogue

[lesmodsalouette]

EPILOGUE

Your stopped time has restarted. Whether you were in the grassy field or fighting for your life on the castle grounds, you'll suddenly find yourself in an untouched area of the gardens. Ish is back, and so are the items, and the dead.

You return to Chateau Ambregris with the certain knowledge that come Monday, you will greet a new week, in a home of your own choosing. No longer will the chime of the clocks hunt you down, no longer will the oppressive scent of roses haunt your senses, no longer will you be forced to watch the death of those you've come to love and hate.

Parting is such a bittersweet sorrow, isn't it?

Make merry one last time, in this castle of illusions. Ironically, your memories of this stolen time that never existed are the one thing that will truly remain to you.

END NOTES

🔮 All dead are revived as tsukumogami! Congrats on your immortality(?)
🔮 Any other contracts made with Ish will be honored
🔮 Characters may choose to leave for any world they desire.
🔮 Time has not passed while you were stuck in this loop!
🔮 There will be no cross-dimensional world travel, except for on Samhain (Witches New Year October 31st/November 1st). On these dates, Ish will enable everyone to visit each other's world freely.
🔮 Universal Communication will be possible, courtesy of Manba and Ish. Everyone who wants one will be given a small fox that can communicate with other foxes through voice and video; the foxes can talk and are fairly simple creatures, enjoy them and give them fried tofu once in a while.
🔮 Powers are on for the finale, but Ish will step in and yeet anyone who gets too out of hand back to their homeworld, so play nice! (or relatively nice. )

[OOC: Welcome to your epilogue! The timeloop is ended, the evil has been defeated, and you have some time to catch your breath in the castle before the rest of your life begins! ]

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[diel]

[ oh, is that how it is? he’s being pulled up this time instead of down down down down. there isn’t much difference, he’s just as breathless in either scenario. the sky seems to swallow him and there’s only one person who plays - no, had played with him in this manner. ]

Hwylryn.

[ soft as he holds back all feelings from the name.

he eyes hwylryn, head tilted curiously - and cautiously. he’s happy to see hwylryn, though he doesn’t want to be. they should be curled together, two creatures, in the air as they had in the water. this is the trap he’d allowed himself to fall into, letting hwylryn claim him only to find himself unwanted after all.

a great shock, a great wound, and yet he had expected it to happen eventually. it was just so much sooner than he’d predicted.

but he had accepted the reality of it in death. so what’s this? ]

Why? What did?

[coldseep]

( What a question. Hwylryn reconsiders his resolve not to drop Yoru, but Yoru remains aloft.

He instead begins to drift around Yoru in a circle, his heart full of ache.

He wonders if Yoru knows how hard it is for him to hold back his tears, how much he wishes to just throw himself at him and hold him so tight that he may as well crush Yoru into dust again. But - so long as Yoru seems to gaze at him like they're somewhat strangers, he can't. And that hurts him, too. )

... You don't think there's anything that's happened recently that could have hurt me? Anything at all?

[diel]

[ the empty lull between dying and living again. for yoru, it was just a blink of interrupted awareness.

he did not see hwylryn’s reaction to his death, to his ashes, to the bracelet he returned. if he had… then there was a chance his heart wouldn’t so readily accept being disowned. a seed of doubt would have sprouted - that maybe ish was wrong after all, or he’d confused hwylryn’s intentions.

but all yoru saw at the trial was hwylryn’s grief for people who weren’t him. that’s what he understands now. ]

G’raha and Sariel then? [ though there could be a million things, hwylryn’s a sensitive creature who makes his own misery. yoru is so fond of him and he wishes he wasn’t. ] Right, I did watch the carnival.

[ he stands and waits for the point. when hwylryn circles behind him, yoru doesn’t turn his head. he looks up and lets out a silent breath. the pang is still there after all. ]

[coldseep]

( To Hwylryn, it feels almost spiteful. Or maybe it is? It's Yoru. He's not afraid to get the knife under skin and push. Ish had told Hwylryn that Yoru had been unhappy about something in specific, and that was one thing - but this? This, Yoru? After how they'd spoken, the things they'd said and peeled open - raw and bleeding, and surely not without meaning. He would look back on all that and presume, No, I'd say nothing happened; nothing comes to mind at all?

The breeze brushes cold against Yoru's cheek. Though the air is not yet wet, there is a sort of water in it - a prelude to a storm. The wind picks up. The clouds slowly roll.

It's still sunny. It's still fine.

At least, right now.

But Hwylryn is frustrated, with this person he cares for so deeply. In his mind - in his selfish view (and we must concede, as counterbalance, that this heliocentric perspective is what just had two people brutalized and killed) - the thing that has up until now made clear to Yoru has not changed at all. Maybe in name, but not in nature. And even if Yoru were upset by this, then - does it change what they are? Does the name have so much weight?

(And this is selfish of Hwylryn to assume, too. And it was selfish of Hwylryn not to speak to Yoru of this; to assume that it was not so weighty because it was not a word Yoru granted uniquely.)

But these are all mistakes they have made. And drifted behind Yoru, come to a slow halt as he has, he chooses to remain there, out of sight. )

You do not think I mourned for you?

( His tone is flat, with a little more formality than he usually utilizes. )

You do not think that when Ish named you as fallen, I did not stumble out into the gardens, my heart split in two?

( He didn't even know the dead would return with certainty, then. And even if he did know, it would change nothing about how he felt then, and changed nothing about how he mourned after knowing - had driven him to a maximum capacity of despair, such that the dam had broken, when he had pursued Sariel and G'raha.

He doesn't blame Yoru for not knowing. But for Yoru to not think it? To not wonder it? To not hope? )

Do you think nothing of me at all?

Yoru.

[diel]

[ the seconds get heavier with his feelings. weighed down, the ground so far below him, relying only on hwylryn to stay afloat. all that’s missing is the water, though that seems to be coming. his hair shifts in the ominous wind. ]

Of course… I thought about you. When I’d decided to do what I did, the days leading up to it, during my last moments. Then, after I died. You slipped into my conversations.

[ and that, at least, is warm because thoughts of people important to him have always been warm. he cannot speak of them without a compulsion to love them as they are. everyone in their own category, their actions unjudged.

but he’s very aware, after hwylryn, that no matter how he claims people, he has no power to actually keep them. what can he do when someone decides his words aren’t important, as though that isn’t all he has to offer in exchange for everything?

his memories he keeps with him, but his words… he can say them with care, with meaning. ]

I love you.

[ even now.

he was hoping it would stop when his heart broke, strange that it would still struggling to keep loving anything after that. he can’t be sure now if hwylryn understands how little yoru loves. a handful of people seems a lot for a group of thirty-odd, but yoru would kill every single human in his world without remorse. ]

But what? Your heart split in two? For me? Why would it?

[ he laughs low and tired. he drops then, into a sitting position. though the weight drags him down again, until he’s curled up onto his side, away from hwylryn as though he were a dream too sweet when the reality was a lie. jin had also believed and been lied to once. ]

“If I am yours, then you are mine in that equal way. And I won't have that change,” you said. Hwylryn, liar.

[ what else does hwylryn want to lie about? what else does he want to take away to make himself happy? what else can yoru give him that he can’t get from countless others when he loves so much so many? he has ish; he has junior; he has primrose. he doesn’t need or want a yoru.

yoru can only give his thoughts with the mouth he borrows.

take them and drop him. ]

Do you suddenly want to claim me again now that you’ve severed G’raha or Sariel?

[coldseep]

( The clouds roll with the wind, growing darker with their passage. The wind is not so calm, but it is not violent. The air is cool, and distant (how distant can it be, in a space like this?) thunder breaks as if to punctuate Yoru's question.

Hwylryn squeezes his eyes shut, telling himself not to cry, not to lose himself to upset, the way Gwawlyn often would. (Gwawlyn, his eternal ball and chain - hanging heavy from his neck, every time his feelings grow tempestuous.) And because he does this, there does finally come the light falling of rain. High up as they are, it hits the body unbearably cold - colder than it would, if they were still back down against earth.

He could not pick a single thing Yoru said that did not cut his heart like a knife. )

... What has changed between us, ( he swallows, gazing at Yoru's fallen back, ) except that you now consider us strangers?

( He wants to touch him, but he doesn't know how. To force Yoru to look, now? To take him by the neck? To bite him? To throw him higher, or below?

He doesn't know. So he doesn't. And there may as well be a dry valley between them. )

You love me. ( Though it seems you wish you didn't! Which hurts a lot to think! ) And I love you. We have not set aside our history, our habits. What has changed? The name of it? So would I also be a stranger to you now, if we said these things things that we said, but I told you that, from today, my name is not Hwylryn?

( He feels like he's coming closer to understanding why Yoru is upset, but it frustrates him, because he doesn't know if Yoru is trying to understand Hwylryn, himself. It seems Yoru has gone and settled this of his own accord, without Hwylryn's knowing. And, you know what? How dare he! When he loves you, when he— )

Ish is as Ish to me. He is my paramour, my duet. You have been to me, Yoru, my dearest friend, my most comfortable confidant - do you think my heart is so shallow that both cannot have depth? Do you think so little of me that you think I cannot be vast?

( He understands losing yourself to grief! Boy, does he! But he's so frustrated because he thought— he thought— )

—I always thought that, of everyone here, at least you would try to understand me. How many do you think do? How many do you think can even bear to speak with me, right now?

( And apparently this number excludes Yoru in a way he didn't expect!!!!

No— he fails, in the end. Tears well in his eyes. The rain comes down harder. And, though he feels he does in his heart, Hwylryn does not soak through. )

[diel]

[ here’s the rain, then. filling hwylryn’s pond the sky. cold, but yoru has always been cold, too. a corpse reanimate that somehow continued to age and think and feel. and now he just lives forever. ]

Ish.

[ he says the name as though it means nothing. he and ish are strangers, too, for all their talks. he’d always liked the little witch more. ]

To me, this has nothing to do with Ish, except that you said we would be unchanged and then you took that and gave it only to him. [ anyone could have been in ish’s place. ] You are only his and he is only yours. That is your truth. How, then, is that being each other’s in an equal way for anyone other than you two?

[ when yoru had no say, no knowledge. hwylryn had felt that it was fine to make the choice without him, yoru’s existence a non-factor. he might as well have been ash then. ]

If there was no difference, if the term wasn’t important, then why take it away?

[ why gift it like the most precious treasure? ]

Give it back to me then. [ but yoru knows: ] You can’t.

[ the rain comes harder and yoru is quickly soaked through, washed upon the shore like driftwood. he doesn’t want to see hwylryn’s tears, but he’s forced to feel them all the same. ]

And you seem to think that I mind Ish, that I begrudge your relationship. I don’t. I want you to be happy, I want you to live. I never minded when you had Primrose, did I? I don’t think… your heart is shallow at all.

It’s so deep, deeper than anything. You will always want more than both. You will always want as much as you can fit. I’ve always understood that.

[ and you don’t stop to remember that the things you squeeze into yourself are being crushed by the sheer amount others you have in you. ]

[coldseep]

( ...

He exhales, shakily. Coming to understand. Wishing he didn't.

Wishing he could cut, like Yoru. That he wanted to. With glass and knives and rails and ribs, he could, but with his heart, with his words;

He doesn't want to.

...

He is quiet, for a time. There is only the sound of wind and rain; not loud, but not gentle. In the air, Yoru can't hear Hwylryn come down on his knees, and sit; but when his voice comes, it comes softer, and from an elevation slightly lower: )

I'm sorry.

( For all the ways he failed to understand how much it mattered to Yoru; for all the good saying this does now. But it feels wrong not to say it. It hurts his heart, even as he does. )

... But I don't want us to become this.

( Whatever this is now. A bone near-broken, with just a milimetre left before it snaps. He's clingy, to his own detriment - he can't let go, even as this hurts him, near as much as it had when he'd stepped into the gardens and found Yoru's ash. )

I accept losing Primrose, and I accept losing my other friends here. But I can't accept losing you.

( ... But maybe it is what Yoru wants.

And if that's how it is, what else can he do?

As always. )

cw: implied!! suicidal ideation!!

[diel]

[ yoru doesn’t say he tried to lose hwylryn in the only way he knew how because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to give up hwylryn at all. (or… … …) his heart had fought him by wearing the bracelet until the end. by leaving that ring even though he hadn’t meant to.

he had meant to leave nothing but memories. just memories and words. ]

You won’t let me become a memory?

[ rivulets of rain run from his hair to his mouth, which twists unhappily upwards. damp lashes blink droplets that trail into each other, becoming something sideways and undeserved. they fall past him. ]

… I don’t know how to fix this.

[ instead of ‘i don’t want to fix us.’ both true and untrue. it’s better to hate and love hwylryn than to be loved and unequal.

when he’d only ever wanted to be important as yoru, as important as yoru could be.

but he had watched hwylryn from afar as an earring. he had rolled around with the intent to find him, learning to awkwardly maneuver a new body that wasn’t his -

he knows it means something. it’s better to love and hate him, but he’d never hated him at all. only hated the hurt, the sinking surprise that hwylryn was a liar like his sister. hated that hwylryn hadn’t remembered that yoru came from violence and so he had no heart to start. that what he’d made into one was from words torn from the experiences of others, glued together by hwylryn’s teeth and tears into a paper mache mimic.

no wonder it shattered so easily. a couple short weeks, that’s it. ]

Do you?

[coldseep]

( One of the few times he's tried to fix something was Balthazar's death, and that had ended with Balthazar turning from him. Balthazar did not want it fixed. He did not want to return.

But Yoru... at least, is listening.

He's quiet, for a time. )

... I don't want to let you turn to ash in my hands. More than your eyes, or your voice, or the cut of your teeth, it's you I'd miss, most of all.

( He understands you want to go, but he can't let go, so long as there's still something to hold onto. )

So let's begin again. Let's come to know each other as Hwylryn, and Yoru. And then...

( He inhales, tears in his eyes, feeling like he's still letting go of something, even if he isn't sure what, and it hurts him. He holds his breath, and swallows, and he has himself proceed: )

... And then... I want... to find a name for us that's only for us. Not a name you give anyone else - not a name I give anyone else. ( Would that he knew dearer terms for friends. ) I want to come to know a part of you that only Hwylryn can know. And I want you to come to find a part of me that only Yoru can know. And... I want us to take our time.

( He wants Yoru to last a long, long time.

In some sense, they had something like this, but - he doesn't know. It got messy, along the way. Yoru is right; it became something he had to barter with, as his relationships became more complicated, in depth, expanding - and then, suddenly and by his own hand, contracting into nothing.

Hwylryn isn't learned at all in having more than one vibrant connection at a time, and he's still learning, even now.

But he feels he doesn't have the time to learn, either. He feels like Yoru may as well disappear into the rain if he can't find the right words. )

... Please.

[diel]

[ ‘i want us to take our time.’

yoru uncurls and rolls over onto his back to breathe in the rain and wind and let the rain dot his face so the grief is lost in the mess.

they don’t have time to relearn each other. he doesn’t have to ask to know they are not going to the same place. jin would have asked but he believes in family with the innocence of a child, a little hope and a little kindness. ]

And until then, we will be strangers who love each other?

[ and everything that happened between them here, buried under wet sand. constantly aware that it is there - it exists, it once existed with vibrancy - because it gives just so under each step, though covered now until further notice.

he hates it. to always be there, but not addressed. to exist as a secret.

but… a little hope and a little kindness might have taken root in him, too, because he finds himself considering between wet breaths: a ‘please’ that sounds like it would forgive him anything.

(so? do you see? yoru had to go or else he would have hoped. look how easily it happens. he has to go or love and hope will make him want. but hwylryn traps him.)

maybe what they’re burying now is a time capsule to discover again later, when they relearn… everything. would yoru feel loved enough to completely forgive by then? implying that he already… even though the hurt aches in his bones. ]

… You really never stopped…? Wanting me?

[ his hand opens up to the sky, a space waiting to be filled. an answer to hwylryn’s please. ]

… Don’t lie again.

[coldseep]

( He should wait until Yoru is ready to look at him, but ... he can't help it. He can't always be perfectly demure. He is a dragon, in the end.

He shifts from where he sits and onto his side, a little more on his legs, drifting closer - until he appears, welcome or not, in Yoru's vision. His smile is sad, still a little wet, but kind. He takes Yoru's hand in his, palm to palm, fingers curling over the back - loosely. )

Never.

( His voice is gentle - not so much to soften himself for Yoru, but because he speaks from the heart. Though their relationship had been fraught with teeth, Hwylryn's fondness for him takes this tone, this shape.

He doesn't want to be strangers. How that coexists with the idea of starting over, it seems unclear - but Hwylryn speaks as if it were doable; as if it were so. )

Wasn't it exciting to get to know me? How often can two do it a second time?

( It was exciting for him to learn Yoru - and, perhaps, selfishly, he'd made this suggestion because it brought joy to him. In the same way Hwylryn likes to give gifts, things that he likes that he wants to share with others, this, too, is that. )

Yoru; my old and new friend, and dear insomniac... I'm sorry... I wasn't careful with your heart. If you'd have me split my chest now for you to see the truth of my answer, I would. I think that's only fair to you.

cw: self-mutilation/gore

[diel]

[ hwylryn’s gentleness and emotional fragility had been what had drawn jin to him, what his young heart had thought was like calling to like and he’d stumble over like fawn to doe.

but it is hwylryn’s wild nature, his savage vivacity that had lured yoru out and kept him. it had been exciting to learn him through teeth and touch, walking where they would on a whim, running forward breathlessly into delight and danger.

hwylryn has always been distinctly inhuman, playful and - as yoru came to learn - cruelly careless; yoru is just playful cruelty trapped in a human-then-maga body. a combination of just enough the same that the friction in which they met each other was satisfying, an itch scratched.

and there’s hwylryn now, above him, soft in sorrow. a great creature condensed into this small form, just to sit by yoru in the rain. once he’s in yoru’s vision, he’s the sky. does he see himself reflected in yoru dark, tired eyes - soft in sorrow, soft with love? ]

Can you heal?

[ well, yoru supposes it doesn’t matter. there are options nows; and he’s tired of what’s allowed and what’s not when before… they felt limitless as whatever they were, though they both could not breathe underwater then. ]

I’ll show you mine.

[ it doesn’t hurt much to do what he does next; he hadn’t thought he would miss it, but he does. every injury had been thoroughly felt.

his free hand digs through fabric and flesh, sliding under the protective cage of his ribs to find his heart. his body yields as easily as a sigh, as though longing to give up the thing that still beats and loves so fiercely for no reason at all. it’s red and ugly and so soft in his hand.

he holds it up to hwylryn, bloody hand and all. ]

This is a part of me that only you can know. It’s not the one the grew to love you. It was made into existence already doing so.