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Erebus was feeling quite satisfied with himself.
Everything had gone perfectly. Well. Mostly perfectly, give or take a situation or two.
He shoved aside the memory of the asteroids streaking towards him, of Jupiter saving him, and instead narrowed his eyes, staring at all of the moons collected around him. There were more than he thought there were initially, and it was grating. The constant sensation of almost a hundred smaller bodies’ gravity pulling on him was impossible to ignore, leaving him vaguely unsettled no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.
What grated on him even more was that it had never seemed to impact Jupiter this way.
Sure. Jupiter was… far bigger than he was, and thus had far more of a gravitational pull.
But still.
Erebus shifted in place, curling his lip as he dug his nails into his thighs.
It was horrible. What made it somehow worse was the fact that most of the moons didn’t seem to give a damn about him; most of the smaller ones just kept asking where Jupiter had gone, leaving Erebus to stare at them in silence until one of the Galilean moons swept them up and out of his way. Not that Erebus honestly cared where they went.
Why should he entertain stupid questions like that?
He’d already half-considered just letting most of the moons drift away (stars forbid Jupiter return, at least he certainly wouldn’t return to complete normality), but then the idea of having to deal with the other moons shouting at him made him roll his eyes and shove the idea away. He didn’t care about their reactions, per se.
He just didn’t want to deal with them.
Erebus didn’t want to deal with a lot.
Not with Saturn, whose seeming cowardice at revealing his own part in his ejection (and why was Erebus still keeping that fact quiet? Just for blackmail? How much use could he even get out of it before Saturn finally gained the strength to reveal it himself?) annoyed Erebus far more than he wanted to acknowledge. Not with Neptune, who… was supposed to be on his side. And wasn’t. Not even with Uranus (or… Caelus, he supposed), who was so eager to finally be seen as someone who mattered that it almost tugged straight at something in Erebus’s core.
He’d wanted Jupiter and Saturn to see him. It was why he’d gone to visit with them instead of the other ice giants. And where had that led him?
Erebus clenched his jaw.
Certainly not anywhere he wanted to be.
But forget that.
Erebus threw a glance around the Solar System. He couldn’t hear anything of importance, just inane, overlapping chattering that he didn’t care enough to decipher, and so he stood up, pulling his jacket tighter around him despite the warmth of Ju-of his new orbit. He’d worn the jacket for so long that he could barely imagine taking it off, no matter how warm it got. The Sun could be right next to him, and he wouldn’t. Well, Erebus corrected, in his thoughts. He had been right next to the Sun, and he hadn’t taken it off.
He tugged the hood over his head and stepped away from the moons, his pace slow—he wasn’t even sure where he was going, only that he needed to get away, that something in his core was tugging him somewhere. It already felt like it’d been far too long, though in actuality Erebus had no idea how long it’d been since Jupiter had been banished. It’s not like he’d needed to keep track of time in the emptiness of his prior orbit; the only thing that mattered to him was that it’d been billions of years, not the intimate millennia and decades.
For all he knew, it could have been a single revolution around the Sun. Or maybe several?
Erebus shrugged. It wasn’t like he… cared. Not at all.
He passed through Saturn’s orbit without much fanfare—he was on the other end of the Solar System, after all; he always seemed to be these days. Was he avoiding him?
The thought tore a satisfied smile from him, and Erebus huffed a humorless laugh. Of course Saturn was avoiding him. He did so hate dealing with the consequences of his own actions.
After all, wasn’t he the one who’d told Jupiter that it was all in the past? Erebus dug his teeth into his bottom lip until it stung, and only then did he relax, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets.
It—he certainly wasn’t stuck in the past. He’d managed to come back and enact the plan he’d been building for… only the stars knew how long. Erebus certainly didn’t. And he wouldn’t let himself be ejected again, thrown back into the total isolation beyond the Kuiper Belt. Not anymore. He knew the feeling far too well to let it happen. Even the mere thought of it made the icy claws of fear curl around his core, and Erebus pressed his lips together, swallowing hard. He was fine.
…So why was he heading straight for the Kuiper Belt?
Erebus kept striding forward despite the war in his thoughts; half of him wanted to turn right back around and return to his orbit, and the other half wanted to see what had so clearly called him away from his orbit. After all… something in his core had tugged him in this direction.
So what was it?
Fuck.
No.
He was not dealing with this.
Erebus’s eye twitched as his eyes readjusted to the darkness beyond the Kuiper Belt, the unfamiliar (and yet familiar) tug of Jupiter’s gravity on him only making him more incensed. Stars above, what was he doing?
He was never listening to his own core again. Apparently even it wanted to betray him.
But even as he tried to force himself to turn around and return to his own orbit, Erebus found himself striding forward, the unending curiosity burning in his thoughts. What was Jupiter even doing, this far out? For the first… long while, all Erebus had done was sob. He’d cried so much the tear tracks had almost felt etched into his face.
Erebus gave his head a violent shake.
That time was long gone. No use in thinking about it.
Jupiter was practically collapsed in upon himself, half-curled up, his face tilted towards the Sun like he’d gone to sleep trying to soak up the few rays of sunlight that reached this far.
…Erebus had done that before himself, when he’d been stuck here, and the horrible reminder made his eyes burn. He could only stare down at Jupiter, his jaw clenched so tight it hurt. Until finally he took another step forward, nudging Jupiter’s hand with one foot.
What was he doing? He had no idea.
“This is your fault,” he managed to say after several moments of silence, his voice hoarser than he’d expected it to be. “Entirely your fault.”
Jupiter’s eyes shot open, like he hadn’t even been asleep, and Erebus took several steps back, his eyes wide, his core constricting. “Erebus,” he said, suddenly, the name spoken in such a way, soft around the edges, that Erebus only froze, even his breath caught in his throat. What? Erebus had been careful to keep his name close to his chest—only he deserved the distinction of knowing it. There was… how in all of the stars above had Jupiter remembered it?
“I haven’t seen you in—”
Jupiter reached out as if to touch him, and Erebus managed to unfreeze, pacing several steps backward even as Jupiter’s gravity tugged on him, the reminder bringing back the icy claws of fear to curl tight around his core. His voice cut off a moment later, and Jupiter just stared at him, his eyes no longer the electric blue Erebus had seen before; now they were dim, more of blue-gray than the electric shade they’d held previously.
…Not that Erebus cared.
“Erebus?”
“Don’t call me that,” he snapped. “You don’t deserve to call me that. It’s X.”
He never should have told Jupiter and Saturn his real name. He never should have.
“X.” Jupiter repeated the letter like it physically hurt him to say. “You’ve never said that to me before.” He smiled, weakly, huffing a strained laugh before his chin dropped against his chest. “I suppose it was time for my mind to offer new hallucination material.”
Hallucination?
“I’m—”
“I know, I know.” Jupiter’s weak smile remained as he picked his head up and their eyes met. “You’re not a hallucination. This is my fault. I deserve it. I should’ve gone after you long ago. You’re only repeating stuff I’ve told myself before, Er—X.” Erebus’s lips parted, his brow furrowing in surprise. What in the hell? “Though I suppose that makes equal sense. If you’re nothing but a hallucination from my own thoughts, of course you’d know exactly what to tell me.”
“I—” Erebus tried to speak again, but Jupiter’s smile flickered away entirely, replaced by an expression so exhausted it tore all of his words away.
“I am sorry. I know it doesn’t matter.” He rubbed one finger underneath his eye, drawing Erebus’s attention to the glitter of tears against his cheek. “My actions matter more than my words ever will. I did this to myself.”
“This is your fault,” Erebus repeated, the words tiny, breathless-and nevertheless creeping into the air between them. Jupiter wasn’t—Jupiter was—Jupiter.
“It is.” Jupiter’s exhaustion only seemed to grow more; he stared down at something beside him, an asteroid that Erebus couldn’t quite see fully. “It is my fault.” He sighed; and when he looked up, the weak smile had returned, entirely untruthful, the sight of it making Erebus’s core constrict so tightly it almost hurt. “But I suppose this is what you wanted, X, isn’t it? And it’s what I deserve.”
No. The thought tore from him, and despite everything Erebus knew it was true.
No. Not like this.
His hands clenched so hard his nails tore into his palms, the warmth of blood spilling between his fingertips. Again, he felt caught in a war between his own wants; part of him felt bad, screaming at him that this wasn’t right; and the other half of him was preening in satisfaction, mesmerized by the sight of Jupiter so affected by what he’d dealt with for billions of years.
But it wasn’t the exact same, was it?
Erebus had barely had time to get used to having others around him—he’d gotten viciously attached to Jupiter and Saturn and paid the price for it, but he’d never quite known attachment and love, not the way Jupiter had.
He’d never had something to lose. Just the start of something.
But Jupiter had plenty to lose. And he’d lost it.
Erebus had made sure of that.
Jupiter stared at him in silence for several moments, and Erebus could only stare back, drifting over the exhaustion clear in every line of his body; the abject acceptance in his expression—and then Jupiter closed his eyes, and sighed. “I’m sorry, X. Can you… come back and shout at me later? I’d like to get at least some sleep.”
Erebus knit his brow. Was Jupiter seriously telling his hallucination to come back later?
Not that he was a hallucination.
…Right?
Erebus pinched himself and then gave his head a violent shake.
Stars above, of course he wasn’t a hallucination. What kind of effect was Jupiter having on him?
Jupiter collapsed back into his previous pose, tilted towards the distant ball of light that was the Sun; and Erebus continued staring at him, worrying hard at his bottom lip and ignoring the sting of pain that followed. He shuddered once, arms wrapping tighter around him, and something in Erebus snapped.
“Damn you, Jupiter,” he gritted out, through clenched teeth—and then before he could stop himself, he tore his jacket off, shuddering once as the bitter cold pressed in upon him. He paced several steps forward and stared down at Jupiter’s exhausted face, at the intermittent shiver running through him; and then he set his jacket atop Jupiter and whirled around, his shoulders hiked up, his eyes locked onto the distant glow of the Sun far in the distance.
He shut out the sound of Jupiter’s unintelligible murmuring. He ignored the unpleasant feeling of the cold settling around him. He ignored the burgeoning urge deep inside to turn around.
He needed to get back to his orbit.
And away from Jupiter.
His earlier satisfaction had wiped away completely... replaced with nothing but a horrible unease.