Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The smell of wet earth hung heavy in the air, and the faint breeze did not stir the red-horned demon. An unnatural silence pressed against him, something unsettling and unfamiliar. Sword's world had always been alive with laughter and cheer, yet now only the reluctant crunch of his footsteps broke the stillness.

Before him lay the headstone. Its freshly carved letters spelled out a familiar name that blurred through his tears: "Rocket." The name he'd call out everyday.

"Rocket, that's your name right? Nice to meet you! C'mon, let's go out and play!"

"Rocket! Dad told me he was going to be out for a while, so I can hang out at your house for the next week!

"Rocket! Guess what? I picked up some new techniques for that move— want to practice some combos?"

"Rocket, one of these days you're going to get caught if you keep sneaking out to see me!"

"Rocket! "

"…"

Tears fell like blood from an open wound, streaming down his face and then splattering onto the black, downturned wings resting on his head.

Sword had always known this day would come, the day that he would stand over the grave of the one who had always been by his side. Yet, no foresight had braced him for this moment. He failed to savor their moments together, and now the weight of regret pressed upon his heart. Petty arguments that he wished he could take back fought against treasured memories that he held on to like fragile threads.

It was cruel to possess eternal youth, while every friend he had ever made fell victim to time's relentless march. At least when his brother died, Rocket had been there to share his grief, to help guide him through the sorrow. But now, even he was gone.

Sword should have found solace in his father's presence, a constant through each and every painful farewell. Yet he felt contempt instead, his anger aimed at the one who should have known to shield him from the fleeting nature of mortal bonds. His father could have hidden him away, protected him from this relentless suffering.

All that, times he'd pleaded to be allowed just a little more time at Rocket's, and every time, his father would give in, when he'd asked for permission to extend his curfew and share a few more drinks with Medkit—now, he wished those moments had never come to pass.

What use was fleeting happiness when their absence promised only endless agony? Why had he let himself love those doomed to depart? Was the warmth of their companionship worth the icy void they left behind?

"Time heals all wounds," Venomshank had said.

But he felt no comfort in the eternity ahead of him. He had forever to move on, forever to grieve, but forever to endure the ache of what he had lost. 

Their temporary time together would give him permanent misery. His grieving heart, fractured beyond repair, knew no time together could fill the gaping hole left by their loss.

"Sword," A voice, smooth and commanding, called to him. Sword turned sharply to the sound, his face painted red from the force of his grief, tears streaking his cheeks. A flicker of humiliation crept in, being seen in such a state, though he had been expecting this arrival.

Illumina's presence was a motif of despair. The god was known for exploiting demons' lowest moments, preying on the cracks in their hearts. This was not their first encounter; Illumina had long sought to sway him, using the demon's pain and doubt to coax him into joining his celestial army. But forging a bond with Illumina meant severing the one he held with Venomshank— a deal that would betray the loyalty to his father and friends.

Sword had always resisted. Those he loved had faith in him, and the memories that they had shared had made him unwavering. But now, as grief suffocated him, that resolve started to break.

Illumina stood there, radiant and unyielding.

"I have long waited for this moment," Illumina said calmly. "Are you ready to take my hand?"

Sword's instincts shrieked at him to strike at the god and declare his rejection to the offer in defiance. But there was no strength left in him to fight.

Illumina stepped closer. "Power and strength, wings strong enough to carry you above this pain, every trace of your sorrow erased. All you need to do is follow me. What say you, then? Will you lend your strength to our cause?"

The consequences of surrendering oneself to Illumina were dire, demanding relentless loyalty to the deity. His followers were bound by an unbreakable oath to obey every command without question or delay. To become an emotionless shell, to leave their past life behind.

No sane demon would ever agree to such terms.

But that was the very desire of all of Illumina's followers. Their days had seemed filled with unending misery, so to strip themselves of emotion and abandon the life they once led was exactly what they wanted to achieve. It was right to aspire to earn a place in Illumina's painless world.

Indeed, Illumina was merciful. The Inpherno is filled with violence, injustice, and cruelty. She was to forge this mess into a new world.

Sword sank to his knees. His mouth refused to move, and so the only gesture he could make was a silent bow of his head, which Illumina took for a nod. 

For a moment, Illumina just watched, their expression unreadable. Then, he extended his hand. "If that is what you desire," he said, his tone laced with quiet triumph.

Sword hesitated for a moment, his eyes fixed on the hand as if it were both salvation and doom. He reached for it, his fingers trembling as he shook it. In that instant, Illumina's power coursed through him, sharp and unrelenting. Sword screamed as a piercing pain cleaved through his mind, ripping the memories from his soul. He felt them fracture, each one tearing away a piece of himself.

A sudden pang of regret struck his heart. Would erasing them mean losing the only fragments he had left of those he loved? Perhaps immortality was a gift after all—not a curse, but a chance to keep their memory alive, to ensure they were never forgotten. At least, maybe the fact that they were still alive in his heart could be enough. Was it fair to them if he chose to forget?

To forget, to be reborn, would be to erase not just the past, but the very essence of what had shaped him—Sword—into who he was. If it was the memories that made him who he was, who would he be with them gone? 

Illumina knew the answer. Sword would be her disciple, wholly his own design, borrowing only bits of flesh with which the Spawn had used to shape a body. Born of his will alone, bound to him in unwavering loyalty. Demons were made anew when they pledged themselves to her.

It was too late. Blood-coated wings arose from his back, meat and skin tearing to allow the passage as they erupted.

His height grew, casting an imposing shadow across the tombstones. His tears hardened and burned into his skin, leaving etchings of Illumina's sigils on his face. His horns were reshaped, swirling into a soft lilac hue that perfectly mirrored the god's own, and twisted into jagged spires. His once vivid eyes turned pale, glowing with an unnatural luminescence that seemed to pierce the darkness.

Illumina watched the transformation with satisfaction. "Rise, Follower," Illumina commanded, Their voice filled with divine authority. "Together, We shall create our own realm and finally rid of this chaos."

Follower stood, his body now a vessel of immense power, but his heart felt empty. As They ascended together, he cast a final glance at the grave below, catching sight of the name etched in stone. "Rocket."

The name lingered in his mind, faint but persistent. And though he could no longer recall the face nor the voice it belonged to, a single tear fell, carving its way down his etched cheek before vanishing into the wind.

Chapter Text

Long before war touched the world, the stars told their stories in silence. They didn't speak in words, but in light—scattered patterns across the dark, tracing lifetimes too big to hold in memory. They whispered of souls who burned bright and brief, and of the rare few who didn't vanish when they died. The ones who came back.

Rocket had always been one of them, though he had not known it in life.

Rocket had always been different. Not because he was faster, or louder, or more reckless than the others (even though he was all of those things) but because the stars seemed to answer him when he reached for them.

He was born under a sky that never seemed to sleep, stars scattered above him like the exhale of a breath in the air. Rocket lived fast, laughed freely, and loved with the kind of intensity that left an imprint on everyone he touched. He moved through life like a comet flaring too close to Sun: beautiful, brilliant, and bound to die.

He lived fiercely. That was the only word for it. Every emotion was a burst. Every mistake, a crash. 

He loved Sword with all the intensity his soul could hold, as though he'd always known time would never be enough. He never said goodbye softly. Never left things unsaid. As if he feared there wouldn't be a next time.

There shouldn't have been.

And when he died, it was not darkness that greeted him.

It was starlight.

When death came, it came quietly. Sword's hand in his. No final battle. No grand farewell. Only the slow, inevitable fading of a heartbeat. And then stillness.

But Rocket did not fall into shadow. He rose into silence.

What came after was not a place. It had no walls, no time, no direction. Drifting within a breath held by the universe. His memories peeled away like old paint. His body dissolved into something unmade. He should have vanished.

But the stars remembered.

Death, for Rocket, was not an end. It was a suspension. A drift into a space between endings and beginnings.

There, in the hush of nonexistence, he lingered. His essence scattered across the heavens like embers from a dying fire. The stars did not forget him.

In that infinite stillness, light began to stir. Not heat. Not flame. Something quieter. Memory, given form. A single, pulsing rhythm. The stars had watched him. Had marked him. And they refused to let go.

And so, in the vast dark where souls either fade or ascend, something began to stir.

He was not alone.

It was not mercy that found him, nor fate, but an old and inevitable balance. Ghostwalker, the god who moved between the veil of the living and the lost, came upon what remained of Rocket— not as a savior, but as a silent architect of what must return.

Ghostwalker moved through the void like an echo. He did not disturb the stars. Where others would burn in their presence, he existed beside them.

He did not summon Rocket back with words or commands. Instead, he began to gather what had unraveled. Threads of memory, sparks of personality, echoes of laughter, shards of pain: all the pieces of a life, broken but not destroyed.

In the quiet space where time had no shape, Ghostwalker rewove the fallen boy.

Not into the same body, nor the same form. But into something remembered by the cosmos and made from its remnants. The result was not a resurrection in the mortal sense, but a rebirth in the language of the stars, a soul not returned, but transformed.

Piece by piece, Rocket was drawn back.

His new body did not rise from flesh. It manifested in orbit. Skin shaped from aurora. Bone laced with the cold precision of star metal. A gear floated at his back, shimmering slightly. He hovered above the void as though gravity had surrendered to him.

The pain of rebirth was not physical. It was memory, each one rethreaded, each emotion stitched into his new form. 

The stars that return are never made from nothing. They are born from the remnants of what once was— from the shattered fragments of dead stars, from the scattered dust of collapsed light. In the language of the cosmos, destruction is never final. Each supernova leaves behind the seeds of new constellations, new beginnings forged in the wreckage of what came before.

Rocket was no exception. His body as stitched back together from the faint traces of his past self, reconstructed through myth and memory. The gear he would come to weld floated beside him in the stillness, not forged by hands but manifested from celestial will. 

The process was neither gentle nor quick. Rebirth through starlight was a kind of rupture—of what was, what could have been, and what now must be. Pain etched itself into the fibers of Rocket's being, not as punishment, but as proof. His return came at a cost, one he would carry not on his skin, but deep within the architecture of his soul.

No grand pronouncement followed his recreation. No thunder. No applause. Only the quiet of the dark, broken now by the steady rhythm of something new: a heartbeat.

The stars, never silent, now pulsed in time with him.

His form, rebuilt by grace and gravity, drifted back toward the mortal plane. He would return to a world that had moved on. He would walk into a place that no longer had room for him—and carve that space back open. He would find the boy he had loved changed, armored in grief. He would walk again beneath the sky that had borne witness to both his birth and his ending. 

But he would not be the same.

Stars that die do not simply vanish. They collapse, they become, they return.

Rocket had died.

And now, the fragments left of him burned brighter.

He was not a replica. He was not a shadow. He was the second rising of a fallen star, cut from celestial ash and threaded with loss. He had not been resurrected.

He had been reborn.

And rebirth, in the language of the stars, was never without purpose.

He returned not as he was, but as what the world now needed. A being shaped by remembrance. By love. By grief sharp enough to split through divinity. The gods were no longer at peace. Illumina had begun to shift the order of things, so delicately it almost looked like mercy. But beneath the surface, the Inpherno was being hollowed out, its psyche unraveled thread by thread.

A sudden, sharp breath surged through his lungs, as though he were gasping after having forgotten how to breathe. He floated in weightlessness for a moment longer, the quiet hum of the stars still fading from his ears. His body, newly woven and unfamiliar, felt both distant and close—like stepping into a memory that was no longer his own.

He just stares ahead in silence at first, hands limp at his sides, heart thudding somewhere deep beneath his ribs, but it feels as if it doesn't belong to him.

His room is still, dimly lit by a familiar crack of sunlight through half closed blinds. Clothes laid scattered across the floor in a familiar disarray, and mechanical parts spilled from a corner pile, just as he had left them, never returned to their proper place. The same posters clung to the walls, with their corners curled. Even the paint, chipped and fading, matched his memory with unnerving precision.

Was this the afterlife? Why was he back? 

He remembers death. Not like a dream, not like something faded with time—he remembers dying. The way Sword held his hand. The way the air got thinner. The world pulling away from him, piece by piece. He remembers slipping. He remembers the quiet. The nothing.

And yet here he is, sitting in the middle of a moment that shouldn't exist.

"I'm dead," he whispers, just to hear his voice.

He stays still, afraid to move, as if shifting even slightly might cause the whole illusion to shatter around him.

He'd lived a good life. Not perfect. But he'd done the best he could. He made mistakes, but he'd made peace with the end. It had felt final.

It had been final.

So what is this? Some god's idea of mercy?

He rubs his eyes with his hand to try and wake himself up, and his skin feels solid. Real. Too real.

Cautiously, he swung his leg over the side of his bed and lowered his foot to the floor. The wood was cold, its chill biting into his skin. 

By the bedside table, he saw his prosthetics, right where he usually left them. But they weren't the same. The design was different, clearly not Medkit's work. Hesitantly, Rocket slid them on. 

At a glance in the mirror, he appeared the same. But only at a glance. The differences revealed themselves slowly—subtle alterations that were difficult to define. His limbs were slightly leaner. His horns carried a darker hue. The marks once imprinted around his eyes from his goggles had vanished.

And his eyes themselves?

The irises had turned pitch black—voidlike, unsettling. Staring into them felt like gazing into something infinite. He recoils a little. 

"Nope," he mutters. "Ew."

But when he leaned a little closer, he noticed the glimmer of stars embedded deep within: tiny constellations blinking back at him, drifting silently within the darkness. A galaxy nested in each. A literal twinkle in his eye.

He touches his face, presses the heel of his palm to his chest.

Heartbeat. Fast. Erratic. But he noticed something else.

Etched into his skin, faint but unmistakable, was a mark: a scar in the shape of a star. Not a perfect shape, but raw and jagged, as if the cosmos itself had branded him. Five uneven points, like the remnants of something that had exploded inward and refused to heal smooth.

It did not bleed. It glowed.

The scar shimmered faintly each time his heart beat. He placed his fingers over it, feeling the warmth. As if something old and immense stirred just beneath his ribs. The light did not fade. It lived with him now.

Two steps away, the closet door stood half-open. Inside, a suit hung neatly, and pants embroidered with delicate star patterns. He couldn't even recall the last time he'd wore a suit. It felt unnatural, but he still reached for it. Folded carefully beneath the pants was a pair of gloves—midnight black, with faint stitching that shimmered when they caught the light. On the inner doorknob, where his goggles once hung, a mask had been placed instead. Smooth, unfamiliar, and elegant. He held it for a moment, turning it in his hand, then slipped it over his face. 

He looked ridiculous, like he was about to attend a masquerade. But he'd rather have something covering his eyes.

Rocket then approached his door with hesitation, his gloved hand resting against the familiar surface. It looked ordinary, aged slightly, paint peeling at the corners, but something about it pulsed faintly beneath his touch, like it was waiting for him. Before he exited, he summoned his gear, preparing for anything that might come at him. It didn't look different, but it felt noticeably lighter.

He turned the knob and opened the door. Beyond it was not a hallway.

It was the stars.

A vast, endless expanse unfolded before him, silent and infinite. Galaxies swirled like ink in water with constellations drifting above his head. It was space, but not cold or empty. It welcomed him.

There was no floor beneath his feet.

He stumbled forward instinctively then began to fall—or rise—or float—he couldn't tell. Gravity no longer mattered here. 

Alone in the cosmic void, Rocket looked down at himself. His clothes shimmered faintly, the embroidered stars on his pants seeming to glow more brightly now, responding to the expanse.

The cold should have reached him. The vacuum should have crushed him. But neither came.

He looked downward. There, impossibly far below, was the world. Shrouded in mist and cloud, barely visible beyond layers of smoke and storm. The Inpherno. Where he was born and where he belonged.

Rocket began to fall—not with fear, but with purpose. His descent was slow, graceful. The air changed around him, heat replacing the cold touch of starlight. His mask held firm over his face, shielding him from the intensity of reentry. The sky of the Inpherno opened below him, vast and ash-colored.

He was coming home.

The sky split.

The Crossroads lay in its usual haze—its winding streets and fractured plazas bathed in the muted glow of flickering lamps. The chaos had become routine: traders arguing, gears clanking, distant laughter in alleyways stained by smoke. Life persisted.

And above it, the stars began to move.

A glimmer appeared in the sky. Thin at first, barely more than a flicker between the clouds. Then it grew. Rapid. Unrelenting. A streak of piercing light tearing downward through the atmosphere like a blade of fire.

But the clouds swallowed the noise. The city did not look up.

No witnesses, no raised eyes. The stars kept it hidden.

The streak broke through the sky directly above the heart of Crossroads. The impact came swift and sudden.

There was no explosive shockwave, no firestorm. Only a violent pulse of pressure as if the world had inhaled and refused to exhale.

And then stillness.

A crater smoked in the middle of the plaza, no larger than a room, jagged at the edges, glowing faintly with heat. Bits of molten stone lay scattered, hissing quietly against the cold. 

His limbs were a twisted sprawl of stardust and scraped metal, one leg half-bent beneath him, the other sprawled out at an impossible angle. His gear had detached on impact and lay nearby, flickering in its orbit like a broken satellite. Pale steam rose from its fractured edge. His fingers were curled into the scorched stone, knuckles split, nails cracked from the landing.

But he was still alive.

He gasped once. Sharp. Strangled. Then again.

The impact had knocked the breath out of him. His chest ached with the pressure of descent, as though the stars themselves had punched through him. He tried to move—but pain lanced up his spine.

His mask had been jolted askew, one strap snapped, the cracked edge biting into his cheek. He fumbled weakly at it, more from instinct than clarity. He was still trembling. Still stunned.

Slowly, agonizingly, he uncurled his limbs from the wreckage. His right shoulder screamed in protest as he shifted. The star-marked scar over his heart throbbed like something alive. Each movement felt disconnected, like his body hadn't fully remembered how to be his.

Dust clung to him in patches. Ash blackened the edges of his suit. He dragged one knee beneath him and pushed upward—but collapsed halfway, landing hard on his side with a grunt.

His gear hovered faintly nearby, its rotation weak and faltering. When he reached for it, the motion nearly toppled him again. It took everything he had to pull it back into orbit.

Breathing hard, shaking, he forced himself upright. His knees were scraped, one palm sliced open. But he was standing.

He stumbled forward out of the crater. His boots crunched on glass and blackened rock. Behind him, the gear hummed to life once more, steadying.

He inhaled sharply, and for the first time, he felt the weight of being real again.

Crossroads was still there—but not the one he remembered.

He knew this street.

Or at least, he had.

Once, it had been full of color. Lanterns strung across archways. Walls scrawled with graffiti messages in dozens of hands—directions, warnings, jokes. A market stall just to the left had sold spare parts and sweetbread. The air used to hum with voices, with gears ticking in rhythm, with life.

Now, the walls were clean. Too clean. The chalk was gone. The posters he remembered were replaced with stark, lifeless notices bearing the seal of Illumina's temple. The market stall had vanished. In its place stood a sleek metal structure.

He turned down a narrow path. One he had run a hundred times before, usually with Sword at his side, laughing, pushing, always late for something that never really mattered.

But the walls had changed. Taller. Shadowed. The graffiti was gone here too, painted over in muted gray. Even the cracks in the stone—those little breaks he used to trace with his fingertips—were gone. Replaced. Erased.

The chaos was gone. The noise. The clutter. The life.

Rocket slowed, breath catching in his throat. He leaned against a wall and shut his eyes.

This was where Zuka used to walk him home after dark. Where Medkit patched up his arm after a sparring match went wrong. 

No one passed him. No one brushed shoulders or muttered excuses. The city had always been crowded, overflowing—but now it breathed like it had been cleared out.

He kept walking.

Rocket instinctively gripped his gear, fingers poised just above the trigger. These alleyways had always been dangerous—turn a corner, and you might find yourself in the middle of a duel. But there was nothing.

The city is quiet.

Too quiet.

Rocket walks the street he once knew like the back of his hand. Everything's colder now—muted. Clean in a way that feels unnatural. Wrong.

He turns a corner without thinking. Muscle memory, not direction. And something about the curve of the wall, the bend in the alley, the metal pipe still crooked just so—triggers it.

He's here again.

The night crackles with life. Heat rising off pavement, the scent of oil and rust and too many people packed into too little space. Somewhere, music blares from a half busted speaker. Voices echo across the rooftops. Lanterns cast shadows that move like they're alive.

"Rocket, what if this explodes in my hands—"

"It won't explode," Rocket says, slamming a hatch shut on the oversized device balanced across his knees. His fingers are stained with grease, his goggles lopsided, and his prosthetic leg was frozen.

Sword stands across him with his arms crossed, watching Rocket work his usual expression, a perfect mix of exasperation and quiet concern.

"I said what if."

Rocket spins the gear once. It clicks.

"It's gonna fly!"

"It's gonna catch fire!"

"Maybe both."

Sword groans. "Why am I even here."

"Because you like me," Rocket says, flashing a grin and leaning back on his elbows. "And because if it does explode, I need someone to carry me to Medkit."

"I'm leaving," Sword mutters, already walking away.

Rocket's immediately jumps to his feet, laughing, chasing after him with a trail of sparks left behind. He shouts something about a field test. Sword doesn't even flinch anymore. 

The night fades into motion—rooftops, alleyways, makeshift ramps. Rocket leading, wild and half mad with joy, Sword following because someone has to make sure he doesn't actually die. It's not safe, and it's not quiet, and it's definitely not allowed.

A world of gears and gravel and late nights. Laughter and scraped elbows. 

Then, the it's silent again.

Rocket stands still, heart aching, jaw tight. The spot's the same. The alley. The pipe. Even the curve of the bricks where they used to lean while eating half burnt sandwiches.

But it's quiet now.

He keeps going, past the edge of the district, where old buildings give way to new construction. Or what he thinks is new. Something massive looms on the horizon, cutting against the sky like a blade of glass and white light. 

He drifts closer.

A temple.

"What the hell…" Rocket whispers.

Towering, pristine, sharp-edged and luminous—like it had been plucked from the stars themselves and dropped into the center of the Inpherno. The stone is so pale it reflects the sky. At the top, a symbol glows faintly: a blooming sigil, unmistakably divine.

Rocket's breath catches.

He's seen that emblem before.

Illumina?

He walks up, careful, slow, until he can witness the temple's full, overwhelming grandeur.

The gates aren't guarded, but they don't need to be. Something about the place radiates reverence, like it was too holy to even approach.

A temple.

To Illumina.

Something happened while he was gone.

Something that burned everything familiar and left this behind.

He doesn't go in, just yet. Doesn't dare. Just stares, and lets the cold of it sink in.

He doesn't know what happened after he died.

But whatever it was—it started here.

Rocket steps forward, one foot after the other, slow and measured, as if the air itself might shatter beneath him. The temple looms ahead—so tall he has to crane his neck just to see the peaks of its spires, where light twists like burning mist. It doesn't feel like a place meant to be entered. It feels like something meant to be worshipped from afar, like the surface of a star: awe-inspiring, deadly.

And yet… he walks.

The marble under his feet is cold, too clean, polished to an unnatural shine that reflects the sky above like a mirror warped by heat. Pillars rise on either side of him like silent watchers, carved in the likeness of ancient celestial beings—some with faces, others with none at all. Their eyes seem to follow him.

He swallows. Every step is a challenge, like the temple is testing whether he truly belongs. His gear floats just behind him, shifting in silent orbits. The closer he gets to the main threshold, the heavier the air becomes. Like the weight of what he’s doing is pressing down through the fabric of reality.

A massive archway marks the entrance, and across its surface is etched a mural: a god descending from the heavens, arms outstretched, light pouring from his fingers as the Inpherno bows below. Something in Rocket's chest twists.

He steps through.

Instantly, the hum grows louder. He's inside.

The light here is wrong. Too soft. Too sterile. The vast temple chamber stretches endlessly in every direction, a massive labyrinth of corridors and sanctuaries. Somewhere above, music plays—low, resonant tones that make the walls feel like they're breathing.

His breath catches as he takes another step inside, the cold touch of marble beneath his feet. He's never seen a sight like this before. 

Rocket exhales slowly, steadying himself. The silence inside the temple is absolute.

Rocket's footsteps echo faintly as he starts to ascend the staircase at the far end of the chamber. The stairs are wide—too wide for a single person, as if designed for gods instead of mortals. Each step is smooth, seamless, made from the same cold marble as the floor, with faint silver veins running through it.

He climbs slowly at first, unsure of where the stairs will take him, or if they ever truly end.

The further up he goes, the thinner the air feels. It feels like he's climbing out of reality and into something else entirely. Gravity shifts slightly underfoot, the strange sensation blurring his movement.

As he rounds the next curve, a hallway opens up on the left. He slows, glancing down its corridor. Empty. Lined with altars and small shrines, burning with pale purple flames that emit no smoke. The faces carved into the walls are masked and faceless.

He keeps going.

Up and up and up, the stairs wind like a spiral. At one point he stops, pressing a hand to the stone wall beside him, steadying himself. His body isn't tired, but something deeper is beginning to ache. The temple hums around him, not with malice—just with immense, ancient weight.

A faint breeze brushes past him. There's no wind inside, he knows that, but something moves. Something higher. Watching.

His hand instinctively hovers near the gear at his back.

Still, no one appears. No alarms. No guards.

Why is it so quiet?

Why hasn't anyone stopped him?

He quickens his pace now, climbing faster, his bare feet gliding more than stepping. He doesn't know why he's going up—just that he has to. Something is waiting. Something important.

Around the next bend, the stairs widen, flattening into a long platform—a hallway flanked by windows. Not stained glass, but open stone arches that look out onto the Inpherno below. The view is staggering.

Crossroads stretches out in all directions. Roads twist like veins, buildings rising and falling in impossible shapes, nothing quite where he remembers it. The temple is far above it all, built on some floating foundation that keeps it suspended like a fallen star locked in orbit. Rocket realizes, with a strange sort of calm, that he is no longer in any normal place.

This is divine territory.

The hum of the temple thickens in his ears, layered now with something sharper… something heavier.

A pulse. A presence.

He reaches the landing, breath light, eyes scanning the open chamber ahead.

And then—he sees him.

A lone figure stands near the far edge, silhouetted by one of the great windows carved into the temple wall. His back is to Rocket, posture rigid, arms behind his back in perfect stillness. From his back unfurl two enormous, jagged wings—bone white and shimmering faintly. A blade hangs at his side. 

At first Rocket thinks he's just another disciple. Maybe a high ranking one.

But then the figure turns.

And Rocket stops breathing.

His face is different—almost unrecognizably so. Paler, colder, face marred by faint sigils that curl like bruises under his eyes and across his cheek. His horns are sharper now, twisted into pale violet spirals. His visor had been shattered on one side, revealing an eye. And that eye...his eye is wrong. Not bright and warm like they were in memory. They glow softly with pale, divine light. He looks back at Rocket with a blank stare. 

Rocket knows that face.

It's him.

"Sword…?" Rocket breathes, barely louder than a whisper.

The man narrows his eyes. Tilts his head. His hand hovers near his blade.

"Thou speak'st a name I know not," the figure says. His voice is cold, each word polished and distant. "I am Follower. Sworn blade of Illumina. And thou—trespasser—hast no right to be here."

Rocket blinked, heart lurching. That voice…

No. It couldn't be. His voice was deeper now. Older. But still.

He doesn't recognize me?

"I...I didn't mean to trespass," Rocket says quickly, stepping back with his hands slightly raised. "I just—I don't know how I got here. I'm sorry."

"Thou dost trespass," he said, voice echoing. "Name thyself."

"I—" Rocket started. He hesitated. His hand hovered near his mask to take it off. "—It's me. It's Rocket."

The moment the word left his mouth, the armored figure drew his blade.

Rocket stumbled back instinctively. "Wait—" he started, voice cracking.

But Follower didn't hesitate. He moved with terrifying precision. His footsteps echoed with finality.

Rocket raised his arm, panic blooming in his chest. "I'm not here to fight!"

The blade came down.

He didn't scream. He couldn't. The breath had been carved from his lungs the moment the blade pierced him. Follower's sword didn't just slice—it split. It tore. The sound was obscene: the thick, wet grind of steel through cartilage, the dull crack as rib gave way, the high whine of metal vibrating against bone.

Rocket's mouth hung open, breathless, red pouring from the corner of his lips in a thin, shaking stream. His eyes bulged, unfocused, stars swirling in their depths like dying galaxies. His knees buckled. Blood slicked the floor beneath him, hot and endless.

He choked once.

"No, no—stop!" he gasped, staggering back. "Sword—it's me! Rocket—"

"Thy name is unknown to mine ears," Follower said, approaching with slow, relentless steps. "Thy form is false. Thine intrusion, unforgivable."

And then the blade twisted.

It ground through the meat of his chest with a sickening crunch, and Rocket's body convulsed, his hands scrabbling weakly against Follower's armor, twitching fingers trailing bloody smears down violet metal.

The pain was unbearable. And yet it didn't end.

Follower withdrew the sword slowly, as if savoring the sound of tearing muscle. A thick, crimson string followed the blade's edge, snapping as it came free. Rocket collapsed onto all fours, coughing violently, splattering the floor with blood and fragments of teeth. His vision swam.

Another blow.

It crashed down into his shoulder—shattering bone, cleaving muscle. His scream this time was guttural, hoarse, inhuman, strangled beneath the weight of his own blood. He fell sideways, twitching, arm hanging uselessly by threads of skin and sinew.

And still, still—Follower was not done.

The next thrust punched through his lower stomach, right below the ribs. The tip burst out his back with a spray of fluid, catching air and armor both. Rocket spasmed once, twice—then froze. His blood sprayed across the temple wall. The pristine surface was marred, ruined by the sticky, dark liquid that dripped down, a brutal blotch against its sacred stillness. He blinked slowly, eyes wide and unseeing.

His hand twitched toward his mask, half broken on the ground. Fingers found nothing. The blade left him again with a nauseating noise, and he toppled over, head hitting the stone with a sickening wet thud.

His limbs were wrong now—sprawled, limp. His breathing was faint. Shallow.

Then stopped.

Follower stood above him, the edge of his blade dripping with pale, star flecked blood. The body below twitched once more.

And then, silence reigned.

Rocket's eyes fluttered, heavy lids peeling apart. The cold stone beneath him had vanished. Instead, soft light filtered through an unseen window, gentle and warm—like the first caress of morning after a long, endless night.

His breath came ragged at first, shallow and uncertain, then deeper, filling the hollow ache in his chest.

He blinked again, slower this time, struggling to piece together where he was, what had happened.

Pain was there, beneath the haze—a dull throb, a heavy weight pressed just beneath his ribs.

He shot upright, chest heaving, hand flying to the center of his chest.

The old scar was still there, the jagged star he'd woken up with the first time, glowing faintly beneath his ribs. But now there were others.

One at his left shoulder. Another low on his abdomen. And the one over his heart was brighter now.

Rocket stayed hunched for a long moment, arm wrapped tight around his knee, forehead pressed against his shoulders. The glow of the scars flickered dimly through the fabric, little pulses of starlight.

He didn't cry.

He wanted to. It felt like he should. But all he could feel was that wrong kind of stillness again—like he was underwater, like the world had gone quiet just for him.

What if I'm not really alive?

What if he wasn't being saved? What if he was being trapped?

His eyes flicked to the window.

"...Am I in purgatory?" he questioned aloud. His voice cracked.

Some endless loop. Some cosmic punishment. A place between endings, where nothing could move forward.

That's what this felt like. A reality stitched together wrong on purpose, just to make him watch. Just to make him feel it.

And Sword—he hadn't remembered him.

That's what cut deepest. Not the blade. Not his death.

The emptiness in Sword's eyes.

Chapter Text

Follower stood motionless in the center of the sanctum, his sword lowered. Blood that was beginning to cool stained the floor in a thick streak, trailing from the body to falling down the stairs. The body was propped at the foot of a mural, twisted at an angle no living thing could replicate. 

A trespasser, eliminated. There was nothing more to it. He didn't even look at their face. He didn't even need to. The sight unsettled him no more than it should have, which was not at all. This place was meant to be pure, untouched, every surface a reflection of the God who ruled it. What laid at his feet was a tainted mortal, fragile and impure. 

He sheathed his sword and bent down, gloves slick with blood, then grabbed the body beneath the arms. It was strangely light. He ignored the way the head lolled to one side, the slack features a death of his own making. Such things were not meant to linger in his thoughts, not here. 

He carried it toward the purification basin tucked behind the main chamber. The pool shimmered faintly under carved stone arches, a quiet, eternal light waiting to cleanse.

His hands paused. 

He didn't know why he lingered. He didn't know why he felt hesitant to push the body into the pool. It sank slowly, limbs trailing behind like they still wanted to move. Blue vanished beneath the surface last. He stood over the water until it stilled.

Suddenly, the sounds of faint footsteps came to Follower's ears, and his chest tightened. It was not often that he would be graced Her presence.

Illumina's arrival spilled light into every seam of the sanctum, steady and absolute. Follower did not turn. He stood anchored in the glow, blade at his side, shoulders taut.

The pool behind him rippled once, faintly, but Illumina's eyes did not turn toward it. Their gaze was fixed only on Follower. 

The God's silence pressed down upon him, heavy as stone. Follower felt it crawl up his spine, claiming space in his shoulders that had already been tight with tension. He forced himself to stay still, hands clenched on his side, each line of his body rigid with constrained control.

"You hold yourself too rigid," Illumina said at last, cutting through the silence. "You exhibit your imperfection through tension."

A gentle pressure of pure light, sharp and cool, pressed against the underside of the Follower's chin. Illumina tilted his face upward, not too gently and not too harshly, but perfectly so that Follower could not pull away. Another hand rested for just a brief moment on his shoulder, pulling it down lower to adjust the angle of his stance, as a sculptor adjusts the position of a statue.

Follower did not breathe.

"As thou wilt, so will I remain," he said, the words burning sharp in his throat. 

The pressure vanished, leaving only an echo of weight in its absence. Illumina bowed His head in a single measured nod. There was a faint smile resting on Their lips—slight, almost imperceptible, yet it struck Follower with imperceptible weight. It was unbearable to receive anything vaguely resembling compliance or acceptance from Illumina. Even the faintest trace of it seemed too vast a gift, too impossible a grace for him to bear. He stiffened, shoulders locking tighter, heart racing. To be perceived as compliant even in passing felt more pathetic than any command he had ever received.

Illumina turned, already finished with him. Follower stood rooted in place at full attention until the echoes of the departure faded.

He let out a slow breath, too loud in the now empty chamber. His mind spun; he restlessly replayed the way Illumina's gaze lingered for one moment longer than it had to. 

He had he felt small, exposed, shameful. That was not recognition. True acknowledgment from Her was forever beyond reach. 

Days after Rocket's passing repeated with rountinely precision. Sword polished the steps until they gleamed, though no one even would notice. Candles were aligned, offerings checked, and altars swept. His motions were flawless, habitual, unthinking. Each breath measured, each movement exact.

He delivered sermons to the faithful who came to the temple, reciting Illumina’s teachings with perfect cadence, his voice clear, unwavering. Yet behind the words, there was no warmth. They were mere vibrations through the air, performed for compliance, not devotion.

At the edge of the temple, the gardens were neat, ordered, and sterile. Sword walked their paths daily, trimming, watering, rearranging. Every flower was symmetrical, every stone in place. He did not pause to admire it. Admiration was a luxury.

Training was endless. Sword ran the courtyard, struck with his blade against dummies that never fought back, practiced stances until muscle and bone burned. The clang of metal was constant, rhythmic. He did not stop when sweat blinded his eyes. He did not stop when his hands ached.

He had no leisure. No thought beyond the duties dictated.

And yet, devotion shaped his every step. Sword believed himself loyal, believed himself chosen. But when he searched for why, for the moment he had sworn himself to Illumina, there was nothing. No memory of a choice, no recollection of a beginning. Only an emptiness where certainty should be.

A presence, a parting, a plaque. From that day forward, his life belonged to Illumina. Everything before it was irretrievable.

So he told himself that his trust was survival, that rebellion was demise. If he could not explain why he followed, then it was because Illumina willed it so. And if Illumina willed it so, what more reason could he need?

Sometimes, late at night, he stood at the highest balcony, looking out over the Inpherno. He felt no desire to descend, no curiosity. The order of the temple was sufficient. The will of Illumina, complete.

No one visited. No one interfered. No one could reach him.

And so Sword remained, a figure carved from obedience and stillness, moving through days that mirrored each other like reflections in a polished blade. Every motion a repetition. Every breath a continuation.

Nothing intruded, nothing challenged the cycle.

Nothing, until…

Rocket sat there for a long time, hunched over, palms pressed tightly into his thighs. The silence in his room pressed down on him, just as deafening as any scream, just as loud as any cry of pain. 

He dragged a hand down his face and forced himself to sit up. He hated the way his body trembled. He hated how weak he felt. He hated how helpless he felt. He had died. And though he'd thought the worst part of dying would be, well...dying, it wasn't.

It was being forgotten. Sword had not even looked at him—not really. The thought tore at the inside of his chest.

He wanted to punch the walls until they collaped, until the world crumbled and something, or someone, noticed. But instead he only sat there shaking, breaths shuddering in and out.

"Okay," he muttered, the word trembling as it left him. "Okay. If this is how it's got to be." If Sword did not remember him, then he would make him. Even if meant clawing his way back through blood and blade a thousand times. Even if meant standing in front of those cold eyes a thousand times until something... anything would break through.

Because he could not accept this. No, not the emptiness. No, not being nothing in the eyes of the one who once was everything. His chest heaved as he pushed himself up to his foot, leg angling unsteadily beneath him.

The floor swayed, but he did not go down. He wouldn't let himself fall this time. He stared at the door. This time, he promised, he wouldn't falter. Sword was in there, somewhere. Somewhere beneath the sanctity and the God's shadow, Rocket would find him. And when he did, he would make him remember everything. 

If he wanted to break through, he had to be prepared, careful, clever. The inner ring had been hollowed out years ago. Rocket understood that well enough. He had walked past enough vacant streets and stripped storefronts to know what Illumina's order brought to a place, that they wrung it dry and left it pale and dead. But still, part of him hoped. He had to hope. If there was really anything, anything at all left behind—a scrap, or a mark of some kind—maybe it would spark a memory for Sword.

He stayed off the path home for a long time. He didn't want to go home out of fear. Fear of what he would see if he dared to step near the old streets. Fear of whether he would find the wreck of his father's shop. Fear that it would all be gone. But desperation had more weight than fear.

As he roamed through Crossroads, he saw others along the way. Inphernals, their horns painted in a lilac hue, their white robes looked fresh out of the laundry, as if the dirt could not cling to their pure appearances. They walked by him like distant figures, their eyes on the path ahead, their faces blank as mannequins. Rocket felt his chest tighten. He decided to just ignore them and moved on.

And then at long last, he reached the final street.

He slowed. The weight of each step forward felt heavier, as though the ground embraced him, trying to pull him back in. His heart had already prepared him, but that couldn't dull the sting when he saw it at last.

"Oh."

The word fell from his lips without the chance to catch it, fragile and thin. His house was gone.

Not torn down, not empty—gone. The area where it once sat was strangely flat, scoured as if someone had taken a blade of some sort to the ground and sliced the memory away. Neither the foundation stones. Neither rotting beams. Not even ash. Just a light smear of enough dirt spreading its arms wide where his very walls once held him in.

Rocket's legs buckled and he dropped to his knees and pressed his hands against the earth. It was cold, too clean, too empty. He clawed at it anyway, fingers digging down like he might really find something—splinters, a nail, even a piece of glass, anything.

But dirt slipped through his fingers like water. His nails filled with mud. There was nothing. He lowered his forehead to the earth and ragged breaths escaped from him. His first life had been taken, and now, the signs of it, were taken as well. He had been prepared for this, or so he thought.

Illumina's reach had touched this place. It reached to him. No one would remember him. Not even him.

A sound choked itself up in his throat. Why would he have expected anything else? That his home would lay there waiting, untouched, safe? He was an idiot for letting his mind wander like that. 

They had taken his home, taken his father's shop, taken his life. Rocket pushed himself up carefully, his hands muddy, his knees trembling. He looked back one last time at the damaged land. If his home was gone, then there was only one place left that could possibly still know any part of him. Sword's.

He’d glimpsed at towers beyond the inner ring, their stone still carrying faint color, as if Illumina’s influence hadn’t yet drained them pale. If the god’s reach hadn’t spread that far, then maybe Sword’s shelter still stood. And maybe Venomshank would there too.

The deity of the undead. Rocket had heard stories of Venomshank’s rages, of the ruin he left behind when his mind slipped unconscious. If he had discovered what became of Sword, then surely he would have snapped. The quiet of the Inpherno unsettled Rocket—it could mean Venomshank was keeping himself in check, or it could mean he had already been overwhelmed by Illumina.

The thought alone made Rocket’s chest tighten. That house, pressed against the edge of the Crossroads, wasn’t just another building. It was where Sword had lived before Illumina claimed him, before the temple turned his every breath into service. It was a place that might still hold echoes of their shared life, if Illumina’s hand hadn’t cleansed it out. There must have been something waiting for him there. Perhaps...Venomshank too.

It was an easy journey, just a few miles away, but each step all felt drawn out, each footfall was measured in small doses. 
 
Rocket approached the house and drew close to the doorway, stopping to listen. He felt silence pressing against his ears. He called out, just to see if something would have flickered to life inside. 

He pressed gently against the door and turned the doorknob, the door groaning to a close as it revealed the moving specks of dust from the sunlight falling through narrow windows. There was no sound. Nothing but quiet emptiness, devoid of any living matter. Rocket’s shoulders sagged, a quiet weight of disappointment and unease pressing down on him. His spirit lifted just a little when he noticed something small—a frame propped against the bottom of a shelf, half buried in the dust and filled with forgotten memories of the past.

He froze.

Photographs. 

The first one he picked up made his chest tighten and lighten at the same time. It was them—him and Sword, shoulder to shoulder, laughing or gesturing, the world engulfing them bright and free from the polluting hand of Illumina. In one, Sword is staring at him instead of the camera, his gaze tender and steady in a way Rocket had almost forgotten existed. In a third, they were younger, barefoot and dirty, struggling to twist a screw in his father’s store, surrounded by the mess of tools. 

Rocket traced the edges with shaking fingers, quietly laughing despite the knot in his throat. Memories flooded back as he scoured through them. He and Sword working into the evenings to fix blades, mornings of practicing together, and the small, soft warmth of Sword's hand resting against his wrist. Each photo was a little treasure. Proof that they had really been something, that he and Sword had shared something that Illumina could not erase. 

He slid each one into his pockets gingerly, careful not to crease a single corner and risk losing even a scrap of their past. For the first time since coming back, he felt hope in his chest. Here were the parts of their life together, here were pieces he could pick up and take with him, here were little memories to move forward with, small keys that might unlock Sword's evocation. Their past could still breathe in the present if only Rocket would carry it back.

He stood in the middle of the room, letting his eyes wander around the hollow space. The shelves, the empty corners, the wood floors worn away.

Rocket dwelled in that empty house for a long time, wrapped in dust that felt like a fragile cocoon. He brushed the glass of the frame with his thumb again before stowing it away. In that moment, he felt like he was holding Sword's heart in his hands.

A small, authentic smile broke through. He could practically hear Sword's voice in the pictures.

He could see Sword's face when he showed him the photos. Maybe Sword's eyes would soften, maybe recognition would flicker. He held on to that image like a prayer.

After putting the photos away, Rocket finally stood up. He took a deep breath. The world felt heavy against him, but at this moment it felt lighter. For the first time ever, he had something substantial to present Sword with, to show him that their past was alive and breathing, lying in wait, untouchable by Illumina.

Rocket turned away from the stillness of the house and stepped back into the sun, and the air outside felt more fresh than when he arrived, like somehow holding the photographs had shifted the world around him. Rocket pressed a hand to his pocket and felt the ridges of the frames against the fabric.

And then he moved on, holding on to his fragile hope, holding the scraps of their history as if they were seeds he would make sure to plant again.

The road became narrower as it turned into a quiet lane, dust and incense filling the air around him. As he walked by shops, seeing only empty windows, he could sense the chatter of voices somewhere in the distance. He did not break stride, until he reached the church.

Rocket stopped in place. 

Not the bright, joyful voice he remembered, full of warmth and life. No, this was restrained, carrying a steady conviction that echoed off the stone walls of the church.

Sword stood behind the pulpit. 

His form was stark in the pale light. The light filtered through the cracked stained glass, wings half spread. The people were crowded at his feet, heads bowed, listening and carrying on as if every word coming from his lips was salvation. Rocket's heart raced. Sword was preaching? And to all those eyes faced upwards, he was not a stolen man—he was their pastor.

The pictures in his pocket suddenly felt flimsy. Rocket ducked back just before he could be seen, slipping around the drape where the wall extended out just enough to shelter him from being seen. His legs, so sure just a few moments ago, now felt stiff, unwilling to propel him forward. He leaned somewhat, looking past the edge.

Sword stood at the front, posture straight, hands clasped loosely in front. His face was calm, his features shone with seriousness—too serious, and his eyes held a gleam Rocket only faintly remembered. Not warmth, not mischief, conviction. He was preaching words of Illumina, speaking of order, devotion, surrender, all in the low steady cadence Rocket had fallen asleep to on nights they talked too long. Rocket leaned his forehead lightly against the glass, pushing against the pain in his heart. It was him. But it wasn't. It was a pronounced, full voice, rich with the authority that Rocket had somehow never heard before. The voice was not Sword’s normal rhythm, Rocket could tell.

And yet, every word Sword expressed still had a vibrancy that belonged to him. The tone, the power, the way in which he brought people in—Sword. It was still present, under the leash. 

Rocket’s stomach knotted. The congregation was still, but fascinated. They were what looked like Inphernals of every age range standing with eyes pitched up at Sword, smiling like flowers bending toward the light. As if his voice alone might get them saved. 

Not all faces were blank, though, with some looking more distressed or curious. Rocket’s hand brushed his pocket. He could feel the hard edges of the photographs against him, they pressed back at him. The plan had been to walk up, hand them over with a smile, and watch Sword's face hesitate long enough for the truth to slip through. But now, Sword was more than something to reach for—he had risen, sculpted into something elevated, something holy, something untouchable.

Rocket's throat tightened as he tried to swallow. His head flicked back and forth. He considered stepping in front of everyone, tearing through the service, and shouting Sword until something broke. Should he wait for the sermon to finish? Should he charge forward, pull out a photograph and scream out? But he stayed hidden. 

Instead, he curled lower into the shadow, pulled his knees into his gut for a second, collecting himself. But with Sword’s voice ringing out through the church, Rocket had to bite his tongue and keep from yelling out because it felt like every word was a brick that was building a higher wall between them. As he stood, he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye—two figures peeling away from the congregation in front of the pulpit. Two faithful in their plain robes stained white like all of the worshippers in Illumina's flock. 

They were walking towards him quietly. They didn't look menacing, though their faces had the same voidness Rocket had noticed before, with the ring of brightness around their eyes—but with no life, no sound expression in anything other than serene half smiles. 

"Brother," one of them said gently, lending her head. Thou shouldst not be abroad alone. Come, and join with us."

Rocket froze. 

The other reached to take Rocket's arm, not snatching it, but guiding it. "Fear not. Her words shall soothe thy heart. Thou wilt feel lighter when thou hast heard them." Rocket’s pulse quickened as his body stiffened with the touch. 

He forced a smile and stuttered, "I—uh—I—they—I’ve just got somewhere to be."

Neither of them released him. 

They didn’t waver, calmness to the point of inducing paranoia. "There is naught more needful than Their light. All else may bide its time, but His voice may not."

Rocket’s throat was dry, stupid dry. He swallowed and pulled his arm back, gentler than he wanted. "I’ll…I’ll come another time. Promise."

But the hand on his arm lingered, and for that split second Rocket felt like he was only being seen like somebody who needed to be shown the way. 

"Now is the best hour," one whispered to his ear. "If thou comest not now, thou wilt come later. And when thou comest later, it shall be too late."

Rocket's smile faltered and he stepped back, hoping they wouldn't raise their voice. "I'm fine," Rocket said quickly, more snippy than he intended. "I am fine." 

The two believers exchanged a glance, a frown flickering across their otherwise unperturbed faces. For a heartbeat Rocket thought they would try harder. Then, they both bowed their heads slightly, and retreated. 

"His light shall find thee," they whispered, as if it were an invocation. Rocket nodded and turned away. He waited until he heard their footsteps fade before he exhaled and released his shoulders. He found his pocket again and gripped the photos like a lifeline.  

Sword was just behind that door, so close. But Rocket had never felt further away. Rocket stood with his back against the cool stone and listened to the muffled cadence of Sword's voice inside the church. The stone was cold beneath his fingers, his shoes crunched along the loose grit as he crept closer. Every word tugged on him, not because he believed the doctrine, but because it was Sword's voice. Sword's voice, swallowed up in Illumina's words, brimming without the grit or humor Rocket had once known, but still Sword's.  

His throat constricted. He pressed his palms over his face, gagged, and took a breath. If he entered through the front, they would grab him again, pull him to a bench, force him under the sermon until he drowned in the monotones.

He crouched by one of the windows, bringing his body low enough to peer inside. He pulled one of the photos from his pocket, lifted it to the window pane like he was lining Sword's image to the picture. It's brighter, Sword's laugh preserved, his eyes drawn not to the sky, but to Rocket. 

Rocket's hold trembled.

"You used to look at me like this," he whispered through the glass, barely audible even to himself.

Rocket's breath caught. He lowered the photo and pressed it to his chest. His heart raced in a dance of irrational hope and irrational despair, hoping that these moments from their past still meant something. Despairing at the prospect Sword seemed too far buried to even notice. Rocket still remained in the shadows, listening. He was not listening for Illumina’s pitiful rhetoric; he was listening for Sword. Every syllable pierced him, but every second proved that Sword still lived, was here, close enough to touch. That was good enough—for now.

But the remainder of Sword’s comments were foreign. Sword talked about obedience, surrender of will, walking in the light of Illumina.

The crowd murmured simultaneously when prompted, their heads bowed, hands raised. Rocket’s heart raced as the sermon finally began to draw to a close. Worshippers brought a hand to their chest, some rising to hug each other. Rocket listened to the crowd shuffle as they filed out through the front.

Rocket ducked lower, teeth gritted and pulse throbbing in his ribs. His fingers curled around the photographs, now damp from how tightly he held on to them.

Soon, the church quieted, the last of the congregation leaving through a creaky door. The silence afterward was heavier, lonelier, but it was the silence Rocket labored to find.

Inside, Sword migrated to the altar. He set a book down methodically, fingertips running slowly over the title like he never wanted to let it go. For a long moment he remained still, his back turned, shoulders rising and falling at an even pace. Rocket’s mouth felt dry, as if he couldn’t quite catch his breath. Sword was alone. And Rocket was going to be there when he stepped out.

The church's wooden door opened with a creak. 

Rocket's heart raced as Follower stepped out from the fading light. Sitting up slowly, Rocket pulled himself from the shadows. Hand trembling, he pulled the photos from his pocket, edges as worn as his grip on them. He stuttered slightly, his breath caught in his throat, but managed to force his voice out before the silence consumed him. 

"Hey."

His voice came out weakly, a quiver breaking through. Follower stopped mid-step, head tilted slightly, but did not turn to face Rocket. Despite that, Rocket pushed forward, the photos trembling in his fingers.

"Look—" Rocket’s voice crackled, but he continued on. He moved a step closer, just enough to close the space. He held the pictures up to him like some kind of precious offering. "Do you see? It’s us. You and me. Look at your face—look how you smiled and laughed."

Follower’s eyes shifted for the first time, glaring at the photographs. He did not reach out for them, but he allowed Rocket to press one into his hand. His hands, which used to be always rough and smudged in dirt, now looked too glossy for a swordsman. He barely looked down, eyes flickering across the image.

But there was no recognition. "Thou art deceived," he said, his hand outstretched, already offering the photograph back. "This is but dust and shadow, a deceit unto thy heart. Come with us. Join Illumina, and thy aspirations shall find peace."

Rocket felt his heart fall to his stomach. Why did Sword sound like this? As if every remnant of himself had even been scrubbed from his mouth, to be replaced with the emotionless devotion of a marionette. He nudged another photo toward, then another, until their weight was comfortably resting in Follower's hand.

"If thou seekest comfort, stranger, join Illumina’s flock. Naught else shall suffice."

The dismissal was abrupt, but final. Rocket's breath hitched in his chest. He could not let Sword walk away. Not like this. Just before the distance could grow too great, Rocket staggered forward, his hands shaking as he fumbled for another small scrap of paper in his pocket. "Wait," he cried, his voice cracking. He threw his whole weight forward and shoved the photos into Follower's chest. The paper's edges crumpled against the fabric of Follower's armor as Rocket forced them into his grip.

"You hardly even looked. Please don't turn away from me—just look." Rocket begged, his voice hoarse.

Follower stood frozen, surprised by the suddenness of the contact. His hands wrapped around the photos on impulse, and for the briefest moment, his eyes fell completely down.

There they were—the two boys with dirt on their faces, their shoulders pressed together, and smiles big enough to split the world. Another photo, this time with Sword's gaze not on the camera but Rocket's, steady, tender. Another, and the two of them stood in Rocket's father's shop, chaos all around, laughing in the chaos. Rocket held his breath.

"You used to look at me like this," Rocket whispers. His voice wobbled, his desperate hope hanging on each word. "You...you remember, right?"

Follower clenched his jaw. The sharpening of his breath grew steadier, the movement of his hand stopped shaking, and the grip grew on the photo tightened.

And with one swift, violent movement, he ripped it straight down the middle.

Rocket flinched as if the sound was flesh being torn. "No—stop, stop!" Follower ignored him. He took the other photographs Rocket had given him, smiling faces and shared grins, and ripped them up, one by one. Some he stabbed through with the point of his blade, the point driving holes through Rocket's memories. Others he ripped up with his hands, shredding them into strips and tiny pieces until nothing recognizable remained. The scrap paper fell to the ground in pathetic streams, collapsing around them like falling flower petals. 

Rocket sank down, rushing to peel the pieces from the floor, aching to pick them all back up, aching to salvage something from his lost past.  His voice cracked. "Don't you see? That’s you! That’s me! That’s us!" His throat stuck. "Sword—"

The very instant he spoke that name, Follower recoiled. Every part of him went rigid, like the syllables ringing through his ears were toxic. He held his gaze with such rigidity, straightened his shoulders, and spoke with a voice almost desperate.

"Silence." 

Follower's voice was low, a growl pouring from a person who would not crack.

Rocket hesitated. "Sword, it's—"

"Hold thy tongue!"

The order cracked across like thunder, and for the first time, Rocket saw a break in Follower's mask of calm. There was a tremor in his posture, his jaw locked tight as a shadow slipped across his features. He held the hilt with such force his hands turned white, trembling with unrestrained wrath.

"Sword, hang on—"

The words left Rocket's lungs ragged, strained and cracked with pain. Follower's body jerked forward, and he flung himself across the ground before the word could fully settle in the air. Rocket pushed backwards, still clamping down on the ripped photographs.

The Follower's eyes became mere slits, raw hatred twisted the strands of his pale lips downward, like Rocket had licked a red hot razor blade before speaking.

Fear clawed at him, although it was mitigated by the bittersweet, empty knowledge of the second death coming soon, inevitable. He could feel it before the strike landed on him. His heart hammered, not from the fear of surprise, but the pain of déjà vu—and the dreadful certainty that he was slipping into failure once more.

Rocket's stomach lurched as the Follower's hand moved, familiar and stiff, with the blade at his side. Every shift in weight, every tightening of muscles, every tilt of his head—it was the same. He’d seen it before. He knew what was coming.

Follower’s eyes narrowed at the same moment, and Rocket flinched instinctively. He tried to dodge with the vague memory of the first death playing as a guide. He could almost hear the echo of that first strike, feel the brush of the edge against his chest again. 

Rocket gasped, stumbled, falling forward as steel cut through wool, denim, and flesh. He felt the warmth bloom across his chest, blood choking his breath, his eyes wide. He couldn't fight back. He wouldn't let himself. 

Follower did not stop. He struck forward, every stroke disciplined and practiced, not frantic like a madman possessed by grief, but as cold and calculated as a man cleansing the world of falsehoods. Every wedge of his sin struck from Rocket spoke of disciplined repetition of violence through ritualistic movements.

Rocket's knees buckled. Seconds away from death, he only had the instinct to hold tighter to the photographs. His hand trembled and became pale with anxiety. The picture, now torn and unrecognizable, crumpled in his palm. 

"Sword..."

The name escaped barely as an echo of a plea. Follower’s blade shot forward one more time, stopping the word before it could finish.

Rocket fell back, his vision going blurry, the ripped photographs falling from his hand, spilling and scattering on the stone. Half of Sword's face looking up at him from the dirt. Sword's laugh, Sword's stare. He looked so animated, such an impossibly distant memory.

Follower stood over him, his chest rising and falling once, twice, before tranquillity regained hold of him. He didn't stay long in that still moment, hovering over the foolish man on the ground before turning away. His stance transitioned flat and steady again.

Rocket laid within the crumpled, ripped photographs of their past, his vision blurring, the sound of Sword's voice—his Sword, not this one—clearing its way past the edges of his eardrum as everything faded back into silence.

He coughed bits of bile and blood scraping its way out of his throat before they seemed to dissolve in the air into hoarse gasps. His heart throbbed, fingers grazing across his chest along torn fabric, the wound already knitting itself together in some star formation no mortal body should allow.

Darkness swaddled him. No dreams, no visions, only the immense silence of nothing.

Then breath filled his lungs. His body jerked upright, every nerve screaming against his skin. His palms were pulling at his bedsheets as though he had been dragged out of a grave, and he felt like his head was spinning. Rocket’s eyes opened wide to the blaring light in his room.

He let out a shaky breath and rose his palms to his face. Fingers clawed into his skin, fingernails pinching against the tender stretch of his neck. His let his head fell back onto the pillow with a dull thud, burying his face deep into the cushion. It muffled the half-laugh, half-groan that slipped out from his throat. 

"Dammit."

Chapter Text

Rocket had laid back against the wall of his room, breathing shallowly. Sweat clung to his skin, and the atypical star shaped scar on his ribs had begun vibrating. He could still feel a faintly phantom feeling of a blade lodged between his ribs.

He never asked to crawl out of death.

He leaned his head back against the headboard and let his eyes wander up to the cracked ceiling. He caught sight of several stars shining through those cracks, they endlessly existed out there. 

He ground the heel of his palm into his eyes. 

"I didn't want your help."  

His voice was flat and bitter. The stars had nothing to reply.

But any time he stayed silent too long, he realized he was once again looking out the window. There were punctures of light in the dark sky reflecting back down at him.He tried to not look, but every time he fended off the stars in the night sky, it just lingered in his mind even heavier as if they were beckoning to him somehow. 

He remembered when he was a kid lying in the grass next to Sword, tracing constellations with his clumsy fingers, laughter lightly ringing in the night. During that time, the darkness above them felt infinite and timeless, and kind in a way that the world now no longer was. That warmth had drifted far away from him by now. When he looked to the stars, there was no sense of wonder remaining in the reservation of their gaze, only anger. They had become his captors. Each time Sword cast him down, the stars rose him back up again, as if death wasn't enough punishment.

He brushed his fingers over the scar again, his skin humming faintly beneath his touch. "Why won't you even let me die?"

The bitterness settled in, thick and heavy. He couldn't escape them, no matter how hard he screeched curses and scratched against the sky, they had their hooks in him, and would drag him back, until he simply gave up or until Sword miraculously decided to remember.

He leaned his head sideways back against his pillow. 
The Sword Rocket recalled couldn't have done this.

Sword had been everything once, reckless, bright, and impossible to ignore. He laughed too loudly, smiled too broadly. He was warmth itself. The Sword Rocket knew would never tatter their memories apart as if it were scraps of garbage. He would never raise his sword against him. 

And yet… Rocket had watched those hands tear their photographs in half. He had witnessed the resolve in his eyes as if none of it, none of them, meant something. That wasn't the Sword he loved.

So maybe it wasn't Sword at all. Maybe the person standing there in front of him was nothing but a vessel, emptied and filled with Illumina's will. Maybe his Sword was buried a long time ago, consumed whole by obedience. Or worse, possibly this was Sword's choice after all. 

What if he had chosen Illumina instead of being tied to them? What if every learned slash across someone's neck, every sermon, every cold dismissal, had been the real Sword? What if, all along, Rocket had been the one stubbornly holding onto a version that ceased to exist? 

Perhaps Rocket had been mistaken all along. Perhaps the man he loved was gone.

The thought burned worse than the blade that had ripped through him twice now. The Sword he remembered, the Sword who laughed too hard, who leaned on him and dragged him on every reckless impulse. That Sword would never have looked away, never would have silenced Rocket like some intruder. Would that Sword have thrown away his humanity?

And if that were true, then the choice to chase him, to search through the memories, to put together pieces of their life, well, that was only cruel. It was cruel to Sword, who had very obviously chosen another path. It was cruel to Rocket, who continued to die for a hope that continued to crack. 

For the first time since he had popped awake again, Rocket let the thought settle into himself. Maybe it was time to stop.

For a moment, he considered just not starting over at all. 

He understands, with painful clarity, that he just died again, this time by Sword's hand. This is the second time he has been slain. By someone who once loved him. And each time he returns, Sword is no closer to remembering.

He rose up slowly. The world around him, the whatever that constituted a world in this respawn place, looked abnormal. The edges of everything were blurry. Colors bled out to black. The very faint hum that he had always heard in his room was gone. The silence reigned and was complete.

For the first time since returning, Rocket did not want to go back. He had no ambition to scheme, sneak, or scour, he felt heavy, and his mind dulled drifting off into somewhere else. He thought about Sword—not the Sword in the church, but the Sword in the pictures, the Sword with warmth in his eyes—and the two images were impossibly different from one another. He thought about how Sword called him “stranger,” as if he had never been anything else. 

He leaned his head back and turned his face toward the empty sky in the respawn world. “I can’t keep doing this,” he said, breaking slightly. “I can’t keep doing this.” 

He closed his eyes. He stayed stiff for a long time. 

Once, thinking of giving up would cause his chest to tighten, and his throat to burn, as if he were betraying himself, now it was almost private relief, a long held and slow breath finally being let go. 

If Sword really wanted Illumina, if he had made his own choice, Rocket had no right to meddle in. No right to keep thrusting his photographs into his hands, begging him to remember a life he'd already sculpted out of his own choice. That wasn't love. It was selfishness.

And Rocket was tired. Tired of seeing his life end beneath the same hand. Tired of waking up with blood that wasn't supposed to be there, lungs aching and hallow from wounds that had ended his life or worse not. 

If Sword really had disappeared, and worse, if he was just simply not him anymore, Rocket would have to find a way to live without him.

A dry laugh escaped him. There was no cause for it. "Two times, and I'm done. That's all I've got," he said aloud, though to no one. He looked down at his hand, trembling, and brought it back down, pushing it against one knee. It's all a waste anyway. I'm chasing a ghost, one who doesn't want me. Each time I show up, I only push him further and further away.

"I said I would drag you back," he continued in a much quieter voice. "But every time I come back, I give you more reasons to hate me."

So he told himself he would stop pursuing. Stop trying to press memories into the mind that would never be able to remember them. Stop trying to find the Sword that no longer existed.

What'd he do, then? How was he supposed to live, now? A normal life? The words seemed strange in his mind, even funny, after all he had experienced. But what choice did he have? He still had air in his lungs. He still had the mornings to wake to, streets to walk, skies to gaze at. The world was beyond Illumina's temple, maybe—and just maybe—Rocket could change and exist in that world without bleeding for a man who no longer wanted him close.

The decision stung. It felt like he was betraying himself.

He would try to live. Awkwardly, mundanely, unremarkably, just alive. And, eventually, he might learn to mean it.

He sat there with the familiar feeling of walls closing in, he felt the familiar, distant itch in his limbs. He couldn't remain idle forever. Hunger, boredom, the faint cloister of instinct, everything was an invitation to the outside. The longer he remained there, the more forceful the reminder became, he wanted to move. To do something...anything to stay out of the quiet and keep from dissolving completely.

The followers had crafted something of a community from the ashes. They shared food, managed stalls, and swept streets that had once suffocated in dust. A follower didn't starve. A follower didn't sleep alone in the cold. There was always someone to lean on. If you stumbled, there would be ten hands there to catch you.

Happy faces and gentle voices, the streets were full of followers who had everything figured out, or at least pretended to have. They moved together, leaned against each other, shared food and laughter, and even in their stillness he felt a cadence he recognized: belonging. He wanted that, part of him wanted it so badly that it ached, that slight, constant pang of desire every time he saw them huddle together quietly, whispers exchanged, sharing small offerings.

And for the community outside of Crossroads, well, the followers noticed them too. They were always trying to turn others, always trying to share their safety. They noticed the stragglers in the markets or in the alleys or pressed against a wall feigning sleep, and they would come smiling. Gentle. Holding out bread or murmuring a sermon or reaching their open hands like you belonged with them.

Rocket hated it.

He detested the pity in their eyes, the certainty in their voices, the endless buzz resembling words like peace and light, it clawed at him worse than hunger. Each time he crossed a street and saw their robes gathering, hands folded, lips moving in whispers, he ducked away. He slipped into doorways, behind carts, up rooftops, anywhere away to avoid their blank smiles.

He stayed near alleyways hidden by shade, where the followers didn't linger. Life had become brutal for everyone who was not part of Illumina's influence. Resources were scarce, unless you declared your loyalty to the cause, for food, housing, and jobs were usually only provided to the robed.  Anyone outside of this group was left to drift and scrape.

There was nowhere to settle. His father, his friends, everything of his, everything that resembled a life he had grown to understand, was gone. With nothing to his name, he moved through the streets, taking what scraps he could, every day a silent contention with hunger and fatigue.

It wasn't something new. At least, not really. 

Days passed. The first night Rocket squeezed himself in the corner of an empty stairwell, knees pulled up, head down, is when he learned how quickly that old instinct came back. Light sleep, light meals, trusting nobody. Always listen for footsteps. Always plan escape. Same habits that Playground had burned into him, sharp and restless and automatic. 

Because Playground didn't give Rocket a home. It didn't give him a father or safety or a bed. It taught him nothing but survival. A boy who had grown up with an empty stomach, a boy who had to eat scraps stolen straight from another's hands, a boy who ran from the footsteps of whoever, even if they were on your side. You didn't grow there, you endured. You didn't belong, you fought to survive. That is all it taught him. 

And here he was again. The world had once again returned to teach the same lesson for Rocket, like all the years afterward, Sword, Zuka, Medkit, and the warmth that brought him back to life, the reason to keep going, had just been a distraction.

He crouched behind a bakery and waited for the baker to drag a trash bag out to the street. Rocket's stomach twisted with both disgust and hunger as he searched the bag until he found a half decent roll. His fingers were coated with flour and grease as he tore into it, barely even stopping to taste it, just trying to ease the ache in his stomach. That, too, was familiar. You didn't savor treats in Playground. You shoved them all in without another thought, before someone else figured out you had anything.

The difference now was that he remembered what it was like to not be this way. When he was younger, he had no comparison, surviving was life, and life was surviving. Then, after he'd found a home, there were days when food had been shared not taken, and there had been nights he had slept without fear. It was so much harder to swallow that stale bread without feeling it scrape against the ache lodged in his throat.

He kept moving. He never resided in one location for long. One night a stairwell, the next a rooftop, the next the ashy remains of a factory. His body moved the way it did when he was younger, but every step now felt heavier, felt less like forward progress and more like dragging through an endless loop he had been through once before. That's how he'd lived before, and that's how he'd live now. Survival became a craft.

He coerced himself into believing it. Coerced himself into claiming it wasn't any different, no worse. But he did understand it was a falsehood. Back when he was in little, he didn't know any better. Hunger and scraps and running was all he had experienced. He hadn't known what he had been missing. He didn't know what it was like to sleep without fear, to eat because someone wanted to share it with him, his laughter was from joy instead of emptiness.  

Now that those memories were in him, every bite of stale bread hurt much deeper than hunger had ever cut. Every alley he curled into felt less like survival and more like punishment. He'd already escaped this once before. He wasn't supposed to experience this again.  

He repeated to himself not to think that way. That type of thinking was weakness. He had learned better than that. Keep your head down. Don't dwell. Survival is survival. You just take the scraps as they come.  

But the thoughts came all the same. And they kept him awake long past when the city had gone still.

The streets had become harsher, Inphernals unaligned with Illumina diving up into groups that took what Illumina did not. Gangs grew like weeds in the cracks of crumbling stones. Some promised safety, others food, but all were built upon brutality. They raided anyone who wandered by, scavenged from inhabited homes, and turned on one another when supplies dwindled.

Rocket had thought about joining one once. It was not exactly loyalty that drew him in, merely consideration to belong to something, anything, rather than always having to watch his back by himself. But the more he caught sight of them on the streets, the more he understood the truth that stood before him. These were not families. These were packs of wolves killing one another, driven by violence. He had seen one gang's leader cut down their own because they dared to take a higher share, and he had also seen a gang member beat another for hesitating. There was no such thing as honor. No such thing as trust. Just hunger.

He broke off before anyone could see him, settling back into the alley. Better alone, than among beasts.

He avoided people, especially worshippers. They were everywhere now, standing in corners, sitting on the steps, waiting with their hands folded and eyes shining too brightly. They talked about light and peace and ultimately laying down burdens. Softly always softly spoken, always smiling.

Rocket crossed the street when he saw them. Into a doorway or behind carts until they walked by. Their words were like poisoned honey, sweet on the surface but too heavy with Illumina behind them, the same Illumina who had control of Sword's voice, Sword's eyes. He couldn't listen. He couldn't stand it.

Weeks passed. 

The city, once a tangled mess of threats and opportunities, was beginning to feel like a recognizable course he could follow from memory. Each alleyway, each shadow, had its identity mapped into his mind. He could feel hunger gnawing inside him, tiredness weighing him down, though the panic that used to tear through his chest had thinned into something moderate... He had trained himself into being able to move with calculated patience, a predator's precision that he had learned out of necessity.

Finally he spotted a small, horrible shop, sandwiched between two large buildings. The owner was an old man, who could barely see and regularly kept the door unlocked for long periods of time. Rocket had watched the shop for weeks, timing the in and out of people. One evening, after hunger pressed particularly sharp against his ribs, Rocket slipped inside.

It wasn't an audacious theft, it was considerate and quiet. A loaf of bread, a tiny bottle of sugar, a coin taken from the drawer. These were not the kind of things that would arouse the shopkeeper, but enough would get him through one more day. His hands still trembled ever so slightly when he fled the store. 

Weeks of small, almost insignificant victories of thievery fell into a pattern. He discovered which streets were secure, which alleys appears to have a temporary resting place, and which stores had seemed to have products left unattended. Sometimes, he simply bartered a coin for a hot meal or for one night with a roof. Worshippers sometimes walked past him, either not noticing him or choosing not to, and he did the same. He went through the streets with his face obscured and his head lowered, trying not to seek trouble.

Some nights, he would find a bench or a rooftop and look up into the sky. The stars were still there, unchanged, indifferent. He did not linger, did not dream. Rather, he scanned ahead, where to walk the next day, where to get food, how to pass people who might realize he was there. That was now his life. A tiny, careful orbit around food and safety, without warmth, without memory, without anything that might draw him in and keep him from feeling.

Gradually, and an almost unnoticeable beginning, he started to have the slightest twinge of longing for stability, such as a known place to sleep, a more predictable way of scavenging, a street that was his. Not comfort, not happiness, but the most minuscule feeling control over his life. 

After scavenging the same busy street for a week, Rocket noticed a small vendor struggling with their cart one morning. The loose papers and crates kept threatening to blow away in the gusting wind, and the vendor was muttering as they hurried to keep everything from spilling over.

Rocket fell back, muscles tight and eyes on alert. When one of the crates tipped precariously, Rocket instinctively moved forward quickly to catch it with a steady hand.

The vendor looked him over as he did so, noting his cautious posture and wary expression. "You ain't one of them, huh? Looks like you need some work, 'n I need some help." They were blunt. "I can't give much, but if you can keep the cart from falling apart, then we can take it from there."

Rocket hesitated for a moment, unsure. A job didn't come without strings or traps. But he nodded once, slow and deliberate, weighing his options.

It was not glamorous work. Cleaning, re-stacking, and keeping the money box from wobbling off the table would not take high skill. 

He remained vigilant. Every time a passerby brushed too close, every noise, every trace of the worshipers or thugs down the street. They didn't smile, and they didn't thank him much. They didn't linger on him. Neither did that vendor, it definitely wasn't friendship between them. "Tray's over there. Don't drop it." That was it. No heat. No pat on the back. And somehow, that suited Rocket just fine. He wasn't ready for warmth yet. He just wanted a tether that was something other than death.

Every night, he crept back to the same little nook near the shop he had claimed as temporary, and he was just as careful. But now he had a little, framed cadence. Work, walk the streets, save a few coins, and sleep. It wasn't safe, it wasn't easy, but it was steady.

Recalling it for the first time in forever, Rocket could feel the peculiar, quiet relief about…ordinariness.

Rocket reclined against the cart while the vendor sorted coins and goods. The noise became a dull background to the ache of gray street. Rocket just watched the vendor set up for the upcoming sales, a detached curiosity mixed with the faintest flicker of attention.

"You deal with them a lot, huh?" Rocket asks. 

The vendor looked up, one eyebrow raised, "Who? Oh, them followers? Sure. Definitely not my favorite customers, but they pay, so I'm not complaining. Why?" 

"Just curious. Not... personal." 

"Not personal," the vendor repeated with a smirk. "Sure." They leaned over the counter. "They're… weird. They're usually pretty quiet, like they've got it in their heads that they are superior to everyone. They follow the rules, they don't complain. Heck, some of them probably think it is some kind of peace."

Rocket's eyes squinted slightly, "Right... peace."

"Yeah," the vendor said, shrugging. "Or whatever they call it. You ask them about anything that matters to normal people—family, friends, feelings—they'll just tell you it's a distraction. That devotion is all that matters. Funny, huh? They've let go of so much, you'd think they'd be empty. But they're…living of some sort. At least they think they are."

Rocket shifted his weight. “And they all…just started to believe in Illumina?" 

"Well," the vendor said, leaning back against a crate. "Some probably just became followers, because y'know, easier than actually trying to think for themselves. But then, once they've become rebuilt? They really do. They talk about enlightenment, salvation, you know, that sort of shit. Sermons. Chants. You'd hate it." 

Rocket pressed his lips together, stifling the anger or whatever sentiment he was going to feel. 

"Do they… hurt people?" he asked after some time had passed, keeping his voice neutral.

"Some," the vendor replied, shrugging again. "Not all. But yeah. Mostly threats, intimidation. A few actually do dispute with their hands. To 'teach,' I guess. It's weird. Some of them even think killing isn't wrong if it's for the right cause." 

Rocket's hands curled slightly at his sides. He felt a distant memory of how Sword's hands had felt rough and inescapable. And with the deadly certainty with which he had ended his life. He forced himself to breathe evenly. 

"They aren't exactly saints, the winged angels they believe themselves to be," Rocket muttered almost to himself. 

"Saints? Hell no," the vendor said with a half laugh. "Some are scary. Some are sad. Most are just... caught up in something bigger than them. It's easy to spot if you're paying attention. You'll stick around enough to learn which ones are which." 

Rocket's eyes flicked back to the street, gray and heartless.
He leaned back against the edge of the vendor's cart, rubbing the back of his neck. "And…for the rest of us, not the followers, the ones you see on the streets. This is what we're left with. Life really sucks now for us now, y'know. The world is like this because of Illumina. Doesn't it...I don't know...piss you off?"

The vendor simply turned his head and tossed a coin from one hand to the other. "Nah. Not really. Do you think being pissed makes a difference?" They sighed. "I mean… I can't even remember what the Inpherno was like before all this. Hell, maybe it was always like this. You can't tell when you've been living under it so long."

Rocket froze at the words. Under it so long… he blinked, heart momentarily stalling. Just how long had he been dead, anyways? It was a thought heavier than he wanted to let on. He swallowed, and shoved it aside. 

"And you," he pressed, his voice becoming sharper, "You live just fine?"

The vendor leaned back, crossed his arms, had a blank face, but their eyes were wide and alert. "Fine? I just survive here. I keep my head down, and stay out of the way. People like that... they have just lost a lot, their humanity, their freedom. You think you being angry is gonna change how the world spins? Most of them are cowards in some form or something. They gave up and submit, that's it."

Rocket scowled. "How do you know all this? You don't even follow Illumina." 

The vendor shrugged, resting against the counter. "Friends...family, even. They. changed, you know? They told me everything before they split. How it felt like giving everything up that hurt, everything that made life messy. Said it was cleaner that way, easier to breathe." 

Rocket's chest tightened, fists curling at side of him. 

"Hey. Why so many questions? You're thinking of joining them or what?" said the vendor, casual, as if they were teasing Rocket. "They've earned tranquility, y'know?"

Rocket squinted. The vendor offered a shrug. “I'm not going to pretend it doesn't sound nice when they phrase it like that. Quiet, predictable, no surprises. You'd think someone like yourself, always running, always bleeding, would—well—get the appeal.”

"You don't know me," he said harshly, glaring back at the vendor.

His fists clenched on the counter, knuckles white, pulse pounding beneath his chest. Every taunting syllable of the vendor's voice reminded him of aggression he inflicted that was unrelated to fear, longing or hope. Just aggression, pure aggression. 

He was unable to comprehend why they phrased it so simply, as peace, As though you could just give your life over and, boom! It was better! They didn't understand. They didn't understand the blood and the screams and the waiting for someone who's not coming back to their senses. They don't know what it's like to claw yourself out of death just for nothing, or to find people who treat surrender as a prize. And they sit around talking about it like it were a gift, as though it's an option he could ever even take.

No. They were weak. Weak and selfish.

Rocket slammed his hand down on the counter, his anger boiling through his throat. "If you give in— you're giving up. You're—hell, I don't even know why I'm talking to you."

The vendor reclined, a feigned grin spreading across their lips. "Come on—no judgement. Just...don't pretend you wouldn't notice the appeal if it were breathing down your neck."

Rocket made a sudden turn and marched across the room towards the door. The night outside was cold, but it was better than being stuck under one roof with someone that could offer themselves up the way Sword did. He had no desire to relive that aftermath again, and he won't. 

As soon as it was light enough to see, he slipped from the vendor's stall, and made sure they hadn't noticed. No note, no announcement. No small goodbye. Just the quiet dragging of his boots across the stone as he walked into his life with the weight of nothing but his thoughts.

It took effort to walk. Each step felt heavy, and he could not shake the slow, grinding inevitability each step pressed on him. Each breath felt borrowed, each street, yet another dry arid corridor to hover in like a ghost.

He walked past boarded stores and deserted squares, the sky was bleached in grey, the air was brisk and nearly morning. People were getting on with their lives, lives that could be said to be trivial or meaningless or simply real in a way that he didn't know anymore. Rocket thought again of Sword, reminiscing about the man he had been, the man he had loved, and the man he might never again know.

And with that thought came quiet acceptance. He was not running toward anything now. No job, no person, no plan. Just moving, just surviving, just… being.

Months passed.

The night air felt humid on Rocket's skin. He ventured over to the streets that were quieter, with cracked pavement and boarded windows. And then he saw them. 

A solitary demon stepped out from the alley, showing only their tattered hood covering a mostly obscured face. He was slender, perhaps younger than Rocket, and twirling a knife between his fingers, his blade reflecting off the dim light from nearby street lights. But in Rocket's eyes, they hardly seemed threatening. Just the blade of some foolish street rat. Rocket slowed himself, but he did not back off. One demon with a knife is hardly something to fear. Not with everything Rocket had dealt with. 

"Bad night to get in my way," Rocket murmured.

The hooded figure did not speak, tightening his grip even more on their knife instead. Rocket shifted his weight in his feet, prepared to attack the hooded figure as necessary, until something slammed into him from behind.

"WHa—"

Another figured had stepped in behind him, wrapping an arm around his neck. Rocket was able to choke out a curse but felt his body twist violently. The first figure lunged, diving in with the knife. Rocket ducked, using the weight of the second figure against him, slamming his elbow backwards into their ribcage. 

The shock of pain caused them both to stagger back from the impact. He threw the figure off of him, spinning to face both of them. Now he could clearly see there were two working together, completely coordinated.

Part of a gang, no doubt. There were plenty now scattered throughout Crossroads. The other figure, the first one, was back for another attempt. Rocket stepped to the side and drove a fist into his throat, pleased with this small victory as he listened to the sick choke that followed. But they were quick and recovered, scraping the knife along Rocket's ribs, cornering him back against the wall.

Rocket flickered his gear into existence purely on instinct, the familiar weight came to his hand if though it was something he couldn't unlearn. He hit hard and fast, ending the whole ordeal before either of them could balance on their footing. Both bodies crumpled to the floor.  
Then their third came into view.  

Rocket barely caught the flash out of the corner of his eye, another member of the pack burst through the passageway. Bigger, heavier then the others. She held a makeshift weapon made from metal pipe wrapped in wire. This swing came fast.  

Rocket ducked but the pipe struck his shoulder like a taser, sending electricity through his arm. He staggered backward, his breath turning into ragged wheezing. His eyes fell to the floor, only now noticing an injury on his side from the knife. It poured warm blood, steady and slow.

The third member swung again, but Rocket parried it with his rocket, sparks scraping off of points of impact. Rocket jammed the barrel into the their chest and pulled the trigger.

The blast broke thorough stillness in the alley like a clap of thunder. The explosion pushed her back into the alley but it also launched Rocket painfully against the wall, a shock stealing the breath out from him. Once the smoke cleared, Rocket saw that she laid, crumpled, in a heap.

For a moment, Rocket was still, gasping, surrounded by the three bodies cooling on the ground, blood pooling near them.

Rocket steadied, but then the adrenaline stopped.

His legs now trembled. He had propped himself up on the wall of the alley, clutching the wound, trying to halt the pouring blood, it but it didn't matter as all blood merely trickled all around his fingers, oozing from a hole that felt too deep. The world began to tilt, the edges blurred into soft darkness all around him.

He slumped down and hit the alley wall, collapsing beside the fallen bodies he'd just fought. His launcher dissolved slowly from his grip, fading into nothing as his vision blurred.