— frightening, but unlike before, there was no going back. All he could do was take hold tight of the future he'd made and move forward.

'You should have just let Gopher Wood devour you.'

Mercifully, fatigue eventually won him over in the form of a dreamless sleep, and the room fell still at last.

— There was no point in digging a bigger hole. In attempting to save the one he loved, he'd worked to destroy everything around him instead. He wouldn't risk hurting him any more than he had already.

Lowering his head and taking in the scent of expensive perfume, everything felt uncertain and

— of the pocket watch grated along every nerve, whispering temptations, sugar-sweet.

'You still have one shot, and you've already ruined this one. You know what to do now, so why not? Clear the board again.'

The Stellaron boiled in his chest.

Caelus ignored it all.

He couldn't. He wouldn't. —

— after all. The desperate thought of "What was I supposed to do? What else could I have done?" gave way to a slew of criticism that peppered him in the quiet.

He'd never wanted to hurt him, but that was exactly what he'd done, and the guilt of it forced his eyes closed.

The gentle whirring—

While Aventurine slept, Caelus's mind did everything he could to prevent his own. Out of all the responses he could have gotten, perhaps the disbelief would have almost been preferable. The more he thought about it, the more it appeared that every decision he'd made felt like the wrong one —

— With his heart full of uncertainty more than anything else in that moment, Caelus let the silence wash over them and hoped he'd done the right thing.

— and Aventurine had been tucked beneath Caelus's chin that the Trailblazer, unsure if he'd be lucky enough to get a wink of sleep either, finally took a slow, deep breath.

He didn't say anything; he feared that cutting the silence would disturb any chance of peace Aventurine could get, if any. —

— "Of course.. Of course we can. C'mere." It helped that they were already in bed, making the act of following him under the covers an easy enough task. Arms came up to draw the blonde in close- safe and tight, but not overly so.

It wasn't until their shuffling about under the blankets settled —

"Okay," Caelus said initially in response to Aventurine expressing the end of his rope as clearly as he could, then peppered further affirmations when the other man kept going. "O-okay, sure.. sure.." He nodded, shoving any lingering anxieties or remnants akin to the back of his mind. —

—
"I love you more than anything." That hand was held, the pocket watch forgotten. Even if this *was* just a dream, he wouldn't ever squander that chance. Tears trekked down his cheeks, but his eyes were the brightest they'd been in a small age. "That's never going to stop."

— That lingering quiet settled over them once more, with the only sound being the gentle ticking of the watch's mechanisms. Courage lured him forwards again, and he gently settled his fingers against a gloved hand. —

— fiddling with the pocket watch in his hands.

"But you did. No matter how things differed with every run through this place, you always looked my way, and me..?" The corners of his lips twitch upwards weakly. "No matter what happened, that feeling never went away. Ever." —

— even know who I was, and we were strangers meeting for the first time again. I started worrying that there'd come an attempt where you didn't end up liking me. I told myself that as long as you were alive, then I'd be happy with that, even if we never..." He trailed off, idly —

— he could only settle on one answer. Whether or not Kakavasha accepted it, Caelus only hoped he'd hear his honesty. "When you were gone, I missed you so badly I felt like I couldn't breathe. It wasn't any easier when I eventually jumped back to the point that you didn't —

— why he'd tried to hide it. What a spectacular mess he'd made of that.

Caelus spoke with a softness; a sureness. There was so much he could answer with- that he'd failed him, that he'd promised to leave Penacony with him, that he'd sworn to keep his luck from running out. All that and more, but —

—
'I don't want this'

Caelus's lips parted a little, then pressed back into a line, firm but a little shaky. That response wasn't any less believable either, Caelus thought numbly. He'd realized early into his entrapment that to succeed meant bearing a terrible truth, and that was half the reason —

— the moment was a limited amount.

Still, a shift had him reaching a careful hand out with the desire to settle it upon his partner's shoulder, or arm- anywhere that would provide contact in the hope to soothe if even a little bit.

It stopped short however, having hesitated just shy of him. —

— being anticipated to some degree. It was one of the things he feared most asides from any disbelief: how Aventurine would take it. He would have had to have been a fool to think the other would have taken it in stride, so the only result was something difficult like this, and all he could do in —

Only that silence answered him at first, only lasting perhaps a beat or three whilst to Caelus it felt far longer. He'd watched the other process, uncertain if he should have pulled him into his arms or let him sort out his thoughts without disruption.

But the sight of him was painful despite —

— from his hand and onto the bed.

"It only goes backwards, never forwards." Caelus rubbed at his face; his eyes, wanting nothing more than to curl up somewhere quiet.. but it was still too early for that. "It took what it needed from my Stellaron in exchange."

— even that much.. glittering along the skin of his chest and peeking through his clothes, but he'd become rather adept at using the device by then, and it took more than simply fiddling with it to throw him back. His touch eased, and the light diminished entirely once he let the watch drop —

— His thumb pressed firmly against the middle, seemingly triggering some kind of mechanism. The glow grew, traveling up his arm in slow tendrils of light like roots stretching up towards the sunlight, aimed right for his chest.

The Stellaron burned beneath his ribs as if to spite him for doing —

— to already know about me. Maybe from the commotion at the studio, or maybe he'd always known and was just.. I dunno," Caelus ran his thumb over the smooth dial in a way he'd done so many times before. A nervous gesture panning against star-speckled blue stone. "Playing his part." —

— The cover was popped open, activating the dial of numbers encircling the outer edge; an unusual amount of 99 numbers intricately carved, but only the number "1" carried a prominent glow while the rest lay darkened.

"He'd... told me that it needed something strong enough to power it. He seemed —

— and the unusual pocket watch that had suddenly replaced his old one, curling his fingers around the cold weight of its gold chain and pulling it close. His place at the Stoneheart's side was renewed, but by then he'd more-or-less resolved himself to *try* and steady himself a little more. —

— He didn't like that, or how it tempted something far more anxious to crawl up the back of his thoughts, so he took the query as a necessary distraction. He couldn't fall back into the "what if" loop again.

With care, he drifted from that warm touch if only to close the distance between himself —

It was surreal.

In the past, it had been laughed off, dismissed as a trick of the Dreamscape, or merely a "bad joke" by others so often that hearing Aventurine not only confirm his belief but encourage Caelus to continue very nearly made the entire thing, ironically enough, feel like a dream. —

— When he forced himself to look at him again, the grief the gambler recognized was staring him in the face.

"I'm sorry, Vasha... I was so, so stupid."

— Shimmering azure glittered in his peripheral again.

"He handed me a pocket watch. He said it was the Watchmaker's once; that it would let me "go back and fix it". He said it was my only shot."

His voice failed him briefly, leaving implications to hang brilliantly overhead, awful as they were. —

— to burn at him a little more. Surely the monster who had once sat at the heart of Penacony would have been delighted to know that..

"Everything he said about you hurt me, but-" Finally, the weight of his own shame dragged his eyes low, unfocused.

"He was so gentle. He said he wanted to help." —