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Once upon a time, Venus flowed.
He was oceans and gentleness and slow smiles. A bit aloof, sure; annoyed when others mistook his softness for weakness, when he was called something he wasn't. But that was it.
The world was still quiet, and Venus still had water to cool him.
Not like Earth's now, no, but it was water, nonetheless. Shallow, but oceans all the same. And with water, Venus knew, there was hope for life.
Venus didn't love the water, not at first.
He saw it as decoration. Something borrowed, not his. Something fragile and temporary.
So he didn't care. It was just water.
He only started caring when the Sun lingered longer on his skin. When Mercury peeked from his orbit, curious about the blue tint he'd taken on. When Earth called them "Water Buddies" and finally started talking. When Mars watched his tides with something like envy in his eyes.
Yes, Venus had water. Had softness and gentleness and anger like summer storms instead of forest fires.
And though he never asked to be called soft, he didn’t quite know what to do with it when he was. It never sat right, but it was still his. Familiar, if nothing else.
Until it wasn't.
The air turned heavy. The skies stilled. The oceans hesitated on their shores like they knew something he didn't.
Venus brushed it off. He told himself the skies were just shifting. That the oceans were tired. That the heat would pass.
Then, the burning began.
Slow and insidious, it stripped everything from Venus. His oceans screamed into steam, the bubbling a constant source of noise for centuries. His voice became rougher, the heat scorching his throat and burning his vocal chords into a charred mess. His surface fractured, the heat carving canyons into where calm once lay.
And there, Venus made a choice.
With his hands digging into his face, with the last wheeze his oceans made as they boiled into steam, with the heat curling around him, into him, like an embrace, like a violation, Venus broke his own image into a thousand pieces. Shattered who he’d been, the words they called him still echoing in his ears.
"Soothing," Earth had said. Not gentle like Theia, not unyielding like Gaia. Just Earth, a crude imitation, like skin worn wrong.
"Pretty," Mercury had mumbled, but he was already halfway around the Sun, never brave enough to stay and see what followed.
"Gentle," Mars had stuttered, hands clenched into fists at his sides and head bowed like he was apologizing for just looking.
Venus hated it. Not the softness itself, not really. But what it became. How it soured inside him now, curdled and bitter and out of place.
A vulnerability. A liability. Something the heat could sink its teeth into.
The beauty, the quiet, the calm—felt wrong now. Pointless.
(Not here. Not anymore.)
And the world that he was made of felt it, too. His atmosphere thickened into fog, choking his surface as it rolled across his body. The heat was there, all the time now, seeping into every crack, every fault line.
It never stopped. Always burning, always on the edge of dying.
So he told himself the burning meant he was alive. Because that made it bearable.
His anger came faster now. When it clawed up his throat, when it burned too hard to think, Venus would scratch at himself, anything to feel something else.
He dragged grooves into his arms, pried the cracks apart. It felt like surfacing just long enough to remember he was drowning. Like gasping for air that only choked him further, strangling his throat and scalding his vocal chords.
Still, Venus didn't stop.
He kept burning and breaking, watched the fire scorch him raw. Until there was nothing left to call "soft." Until the words—gentle, soothing, beautiful—didn't fit anymore. Until even a glance left no room for doubt—that there were no shallow oceans and gentle smiles, but only scorched stone and snarls.
Now, when he talked, Mercury flinched away. When he laughed, Earth's smile tilted awkwardly. When he snarled, Mars wilted and cowered.
Finally, Venus thought, they saw him. Not who he used to be—who he made himself into.
Built from rot and pressure, from heat that once scalded now stitched into his skin like armour. It didn't matter that it hurt. No one could save him, so he had saved himself.
He'd won, hadn't he? Made them see it. His strength, his rage, his truth. But even victory left shadows behind.
Venus could still feel the hollowness where oceans used to be.
Sometimes, he dreamed of water. And in those dreams, he wasn't burning. Only remembering how it felt. Murmuring across his surface, soothing the heat inside his core.
In those dreams, Venus could feel the way his tides rushed and ebbed across the shore. Even heard distant laughter in his own voice.
But dreams were soft. They had ways of ensnaring you, whispering false comfort into your ears, weaving beautiful lies to keep you in place. So Venus opened his eyes before they could fool him. He had no room for softness, not anymore
And he told himself, again and again, that this was better. That burning was better than being ignored.
Let the oceans stay gone. He didn't need them.
Because as long as he burned, no one dared to say otherwise.
That had to be enough.