Daily Ancestors

As much as they’ll try, it’s not going to be possible. It’s a fact he’s accepted, even if he doesn’t like it, even as he fights against it, but not one he brings up to the others. They need this. He knows they do. He can’t take that from them. Not yet, at least.

One night, he’ll tell them. He’ll figure something out. Talk it out. That’s what he does best, right? Talk?

It scares him.

Not just the fact that he’s almost certainly going to die - though that does horrify him more than he would like to admit. No, the idea that he would leave them alone. The idea that they’d have to live with the aftermath of him.

Di would be pusherbroken. Distraught, lost, angry, stubborn. His own pusher twists and pulls inside his rib-cage just thinking about it. She’s strong, though - stronger than he’s ever been. He knows, without a doubt, she could survive this. He just doesn’t know if she would want to.

Watching her here, tangled up with Psii, their quadmate, he can’t bring himself to imagine her living alone again. Living without him being there to watch these moments. Doesn’t want to imagine the hurt he’d cause her simply by not being there.

Doesn’t want to imagine the impact it would have on Psii, either.

He loves them both, so far beyond the quadrants they’re told to be bound to.

Psii would be furious.

He knows that much. At the world, at himself, at him, for not saying anything sooner. He would spit and crackle and fizz with the electricity only Alternia’s strongest psion could conduct, and strike down anything in his way. He would get reckless, lost and hurting.

Kankri can’t let himself imagine what would happen were he to let that electricity fade, if just for a second. What would happen were his beyond-the-quadsmate were to allow himself a second to mourn.

But that’s alright. His clade would never let anything happen to him. Would never allow for atrocities to happen under their watch. He trusts them that much. Knows them that much.

He doesn’t want to linger on the visions he knows they both wake up from, twin breaths heaving. Images of a future they don’t want to see.

They both just avoid it, for now.

His mother doesn’t talk a lot about her life before him. Not that there was, arguably, much to talk about. The caverns were stuck in a routine, and she broke from it. He suspects there’s more behind that, though. Parts she doesn’t want to tell him. Broken shards she refuses to acknowledge, even if she can’t fit them back in place.

They’re all bleeding out, just slowly.

The idea of leaving her behind, without him - his throat closes up at just the idea of it. She’d feel unbearingly guilty if she knew, but he’s obligated to her. Feels as though he needs to be there for her. Feels like, some nights, he’s the only reason she’s still around.

As if somehow cosmically aware of his thoughts, she turns over in her sleep - always so fitful - body facing him. He lets the flames warm his face for a moment more, then goes and crawls back into her arms carefully.

He’s allowed this, right?

To have this?

To have them?

There’s a faint yellow glow as her eyes flutter open lazily, and she watches him for a long moment. Takes in the strain on his face, the tension in his body. Lays her hand on his cheek, closing her eyes and just laying her forehead against his. Chirring softly. Like he’d never grown to his adult molt. Like he’s still a child that needs comforting.

He can’t help but admit that it is.

Comforting.

He loves them all so deeply, he feels it drive into his bones, rush through his body with every beat of his pusher, flow through his very blood into every aspect of his being.

Whatever the future may or may not hold, at least he has this.