Worshipping Antarcphos

from @thormanick 's awesome prompt about phos and antarc's reunion, posted again separately. happy end of hiatus!!

_

"You're as beautiful as the day I lost you."

"Phos-" Antarcticite manages, but the rest of their name drops through their mouth like moon dust tumbling between teeth. And- they swallow back the strangeness, force themself to meet the eyes of what remains from a winter many centuries ago -

And what?

Euclase was right. Euclase, Antarcticite thinks, has always been right in one way or another; it bleeds through in the way they carry their lace-dripped shoulders, in the way they approach that redhead who always lingers by the balconies on ballroom nights, in the way they choose their words carefully so that the recipient will neither think them for the worse nor take hasty action.

Actions like charting a course to an off-limits planet on a night that the other Lunar-lustrous are preoccupied with Thirty-three's little flower cookies.

Antarcticite never liked parties, anyways.

You will not like what you find, Euclase's soft words echo like a moon bell in the back of Antarcticite's mind. Correct.

You will regret it. Wrong.

I will never regret Phosphophyllite. That had been their response. Short and hot-tempered in a way that they'd never dared when their body was all liquid cold and brittle loneliness, biased and stubborn in conviction that once had only been sworn to the man-once-machine that now chatted the days by with Aechmea.

"Not what you-ah-expected, was it." Phosphophyllite's voice cracks over simple syllables. They prop themself up at a weak angle on the beach, breathing harshly through lungs that Antarcticite suspects - with great ache - are beginning to tear their way into being.

"That is not a bad thing."

Their sigh comes out guttural and wheezing like the chimes that tinkle beside Rutile's office door. "It may well be.

"Antarcticite," Phos says slowly, like their name is bitter ash in their mouth. "Why are you here?"

It is simple. "Because you are here."

Somewhere on that human face, they think they see a furrow of the brow. "It is lonely here."

"Yes."

"You will not have the silks they drape on the moon." Phos raises a trembling, dripping silver hand to their bulbous eye. "I was there, once. It is beautiful."

A small smile. "You are more, though."

It is Antarcticite's turn to ask a question. "Why do you insist that I am beautiful?"

All of the Lustrous were beautiful. It was why the Lunarians supposedly sought them, after all- for their flesh that bled light, because the glare of their moon was not enough for their blank vanity. But Antarcticite is not Lustrous anymore. Beauty made them prey, but, the way Phos says it makes them wonder-

"What is beautiful to you?"

"To me?" The mass of mercury and gold slumps back to the ground, faded blue eyes fixing themselves on Antarcticite's gleaming hair. "Do you remember the ice floes?"

"The ice floes?" Of course Antarcticite remembers their enemy of centuries, the beast of the lost depths, the place where-

They freeze.

The place where Phos lost their arms.

"So you remember that day, too." Phosphophyllite chuckles. "Did you know the ice spoke to me?"

"I did." And Antarcticite can never forgive themself for brushing it aside, for their careless words towards Phos' body, for thinking arrogantly and selfishly that if they could be fine in the cold, then so could this creature the color of warm spring and fresh mint.

"At the last moment, I hesitated." Phos looks out over the lapping tides. "I tripped, actually- clumsy to the end."

"Do you remember the walk there?"

Antarcticite grimaces. "Phos, are you purposefully evoking memories of my guilt?"

"Eh? No." Phosphophyllite giggles, the sound quiet but effortlessly reminiscent of bright teal eyes in the winter sun. "I promise I have a point, ah.

"It was dawn. I saw you, there, atop the mountain of snow. Your hair floated around your head like strands of Shinsha's mercury, Antarcticite; I wanted so bad to touch it but I knew you'd never forgive me."

I would have, Antarcticite thinks now, old with regret and sorrow. I would have let you a thousand times over.

"You stood there, because you were doing your winter duties-" Phosphophyllite murmurs aloud, voice fragile and soft. "-but you looked back at me, and you told me to walk. Your eyes didn't catch the sunlight- I swear, the sunlight was trapped by the glitter of your pupils, Antarcticite, you were all white and pale and glowing in the sunrise-

"And I walked." They breathe, blue eyes vivid and wide upon Antarcticite. "Because you were beautiful like the colors in the north sky at night, and distant like the glitter of sun on the ocean- and I thought that if I could just walk further, and run faster, and reach out-"

They gasp to a stop, metallic hands clenching at thin air between the two of them.

Phosphophyllite closes their eyes, and finishes in barely a whisper-

"-I thought that I could touch you."

Beautiful. The way Phosphophyllite mouths it makes the word feel like something older than Yellow's pain or Sensei's life. Something unspeakably aching, unimaginably longing - unerringly human.

Oh, Phosphophyllite. What happened?

They must have stood there silently for a while, because Phosphophyllite turns their metal-flecked eyelashes down to the sand covering their ankles. "You should go, Antarcticite. The moon misses you."

"They miss me." Antarcticite agrees. "But I miss you."

And they don't, goes unsaid but understood all the same.

Phosphophyllite looks up, blue eyes cast in green under the sunlight. "Antarcticite. I'm not Lustrous anymore. I'm not one of you."

"Neither am I," Antarcticite says softly, and their sleeves ripple in the breeze.

"You're making a mistake." Blue-green eyes flinty like the winter reflection, fragile like the ice beneath. "Why would-" They stop. "-just. Why?"

"I miss you." Antarcticite's heels sink into the sand when they crouch down. They look at their hands, once stolen by the Lunarians, now one of what they used to hate. "The winter was my duty. Sensei worried that I felt lonely; I told him I was not.

"I did not realize I was lying until I met you." Pale, translucent hands take dripping metal fingers in their unorthodox grasp. One feels too faint to hold anything. The other feels too heavy to do anything but drown. "You were earnest, loyal, vulnerable. Leaping down the ice floes didn't feel so empty when I knew someone else was awake. The snow didn't feel so heavy when I knew you were there shivering too. When you fell-"

They take a deep breath. Phosphophyllite no longer stares at the ground; they trace Antarcticite's hands in muted wonder, once upon a time.

"-when you fell. Into the water, I-I was afraid." It burns to admit, but in a good way. Antarcticite thinks it might feel like the drinks Cairngorm insisted they try on the moon. "I didn't know how much I cared for you until you were almost gone, and I have always been ashamed of that."

"I was petulant." Phosphophyllite counters, though their voice is weak. "Childish."

"You were." Antarcticite agrees. "But over time, it became a petulance that made me smile. Childishness that made me want to tease you back. I never did. I was too scared.

"You endeared yourself to me, Phosphophyllite." They trace the side of Phosphosphophyllite's gleaming cheek. "I lost you that day, too, when I was taken away. I care too much to go through that again."

"It's lonely here." Phosphophyllite crosses their arms. It's so reminiscent of the mint-eyed gem that fell through snow that Antarcticite can't resist a smile. "The Admirabilis hardly come by, when they do. There are no parties. No silks. No comfortable beds. No drinks."

"I do not care much about the Admirabilis." Antarcticite nudges Phosphophyllite gently, looking them in the eyes. "I do not like parties. I do not want silks or drinks. I do not want luxurious beds. And I will never be lonely as long as I'm with you."

"There are no more Lustrous." Phosphophyllite whispers. Their final defense wavers in the air.

Had it been centuries ago, both of them fresh-faced in the snow, Antarcticite might have left it at that. They probably wouldn't even have had the self-awareness to carry the conversation as it is now.

But that was then. And even the sturdiest of gems can wear away by the tides of the moon.

"There are no more Lustrous." Antarcticite agrees. "So let us set it beside in the past, Phos. We are not Lustrous anymore. Our duties are over. Our work is done.

"And," they take Phosphophyllite's face in both their hands, and Antarcticite stares back at the wells of green and blue for all the centuries they had nothing to look at, "when the new Lustrous crawl from the shores of the beach and the cracks of the cliff sides, they will have us to show them a life without duty."

Phosphophyllite takes an impossibly small breath. Their eyes are wide and glimmering. "You promise?"

"I swear it." Antarcticite says firmly.

Phosphophyllite closes their silvery eyelids and chuckles, the genuine smile cracking through centuries of burden and wear. When they open them, Antarcticite thinks that they look just a bit closer to the color of the sunrise.

"You know," Phosphophyllite says conversationally, "I heard a tale about humans while on the moon."

"Is that so?"

"Yes." Phosphophyllite sprawls back where the grass melts into sand, casting their eyes back to Antarcticite. "Apparently, when humans wanted to seal a promise, they had a ritual."

"Which was?"

"Something," Phosphophyllite pauses, tilting their head, "called a kiss."

Antarcticite sighs. "I have seen Cairngorm and Aechmea. I know what a kiss is."

"So that's a no-"

"I didn't say I didn't want to," Antarcticite snaps so quickly, too quickly, and then they feel a sudden heat blaze across their cheeks. Phosphophyllite cackles and lays back further on the grass.

"Are you sure?" They tease, and the sunlight glitters back across their eyelashes. "Isn't it unbecoming of the frigid Antarcticite, most dutiful of the Lustrous, to give in to such worldly pleasures?"

Antarcticite sighs again.

If this is how life will be with Phos, well...they can't say they don't like it.