Archive of Our Own ^beta

For Dedue, this is how the story starts:

A picked lock, seven mugs violently smashed against the marble floor, and these words, smeared in bright red hate upon the bar counter:

This is no place for the dead!

Go back to the graveyard!

As he wipes away the words with a soapy rag, Dedue considers reporting the break-in to the East Clock Town gate guard. A brief thought, and no more. He knows well that the guard will take a single look at him, and come to the vandal’s same conclusion: it doesn’t matter that his family fled their ancestral home four generations ago, long before the forbidden temple’s curse ravaged the land, turning the people into stalfos and gibdos and poes. It doesn’t matter that he has lived most of his life on a peaceful ranch nestled between Woodfall and Great Bay. It doesn’t matter that he speaks Hylian as fluently as he does Ikanan.

They only see his skin, brown as the stone of Ikana’s canyons, as the sand of its deserts, and conclude he is a dark omen, an imminent disaster lurking in their midst.

Sometimes, Dedue wishes that were true.

He is careful—and yet, some of the broken glass slices into his fingers when he picks them off the floor. His lips thin with pain as he throws them into the back alley’s trash. He blames the sting for the angry wet burn of his eyes, but he knows better, and so will his sister, Daya, when she comes that night to drop off the weekly shipment of milk. It has only been a month. He can survive, has already survived, far more than this. For her sake, Dedue tilts up his head, forcing the tears away. He won’t let her worry, won’t let them fall.

Somewhere close, Dedue hears sniffling that isn’t his own. He stiffens. It is long past midnight, the sky graying with the coming dawn. No one should be awake.

Slowly, he follows the sound. Across the way is the back alley of the Stock Pot Inn. There a boy cries alone in the dark, hidden in the shadow of a wall, his fingers laced tightly together, as if in prayer. The boy’s hands are a ruin of red ridges seared into pale skin. Burn scars. Numerous, and gnarled, and terrible. At once, Dedue knows he is the innkeeper’s adopted son, and that his name is Ashe, for the same reasons the entire town surely knows his own: gossip, rumors, whispers.

But it’s not the scars or even the stories that make Dedue unable to look away.

It is how Ashe’s tears glow with ivory light. How they are not wet streaks down his freckled cheeks, but dewdrops of gleaming crystal clinging to his lower lashes. Solid. Shining. Silver as the messy strands of his hair. With every blink, the crystals fall, shattering as they hit the concrete. The jagged shards glimmer like fallen stars, as if the night sky itself lies broken before the boy’s bloody feet, cut by the stray edges of his own sorrow.

Dedue wants to reach out, place a hand on those quivering shoulders. Instead, his arm falls back to his side. He can only stare, astonished, because despite all the wonder below him, Ashe sees none of it. Ashe doesn’t see him. His eyes are always looking up, lost in the sky, in something no else seems to see.

Always. From that day, until the last.

It is how Dedue will remember the shape of Ashe’s grief, five long harvests away, when Ashe learns that Lonato and Christophe have died at sea, and he begs the stars for deliverance.

How Dedue will remember Ashe’s fear, the very day after, when the moon begins to fall, and he pleads to the stars for forgiveness.

How Dedue will remember Ashe, when he disappears, and the stars never once spoke back.

In three days the world is supposed to end, crushed by the moon on the eve of the Carnival of Time, but all Dedue cares about is that Ashe has been missing for twenty-eight days, fourteen hours, and thirty-three minutes.

In the beginning, Dedue organized search parties and put up posters. He asked every person he passed if they had seen a man with silver hair and green eyes, freckles and scars (if they had seen the boy who broke time, the boy who burned). Dedue and Dimitri scoured through every alley in town. Annette and her blacksmith father, Gilbert, hunted the heights of the snowy mountains. Sylvain and Felix combed the coasts near the abandoned Gautier manor. The witches, the Gonerils, flew over the forests and swamps. Mercedes and her eccentric brother, Emile, sought him among the undead of the canyons. But weeks went by, and they found nothing.

Ashe was gone.

Seemingly vanished from this world, just as sudden and mysterious as he’d entered it.

Over half of Clock Town has already evacuated, trying to escape the impending calamity. But Dedue remains. He kneels inside the belly of the clock tower. Below he can hear the waterwheel churn, and above, the rhythmic clicking of gears. In each cardinal direction, he lights a candle to honor the four guardian saints. He calls their names, one by one: Saint Macuil, of the north; Saint Indech, of the east; Saint Cichol, of the south; Saint Cethleann, of the west. The golden candle flames cast long shadows on the ancient moss-covered walls. Fireflies flicker, in and out, in the dark.

If Dedue can’t find Ashe by human means, he has no choice but to call upon the divine.

“Please, saints of Termina…” Dedue whispers, “hear my prayer.”

The waterwheel churns, the shadows dance.

“If this is truly the end…” Dedue takes a deep breath, and bows his body, his long hair falling around him, his forehead touching the cold ground. “Let me die while looking upon his face. Let me die without so much regret. Please...give me one last chance.”

Dedue closes his eyes, and he prays, and he prays.

The clock gears click. The minutes pass. Dedue’s back aches, his knees bruise, but he doesn’t move. He stays still for so long, a firefly lands on his arm, glowing a heartbreakingly familiar shade of green.

Cethleann’s candle suddenly flares, becoming a gentle emerald hue.

The clock tower door bangs open. When Dedue turns to look, Ingrid is standing in the doorway, chest heaving, her blue postwoman’s hat askew, and a single letter held in her hand.

“There you are! Dimitri was right, thank the saints...it’s for you,” Ingrid pants, “from Ashe.”

Dedue shoots to his feet. He takes the letter and steps outside, holding it up to the daylight. Dedue Molinaro is written across smooth parchment in a messy, lopsided cursive. That handwriting—he would recognize it anywhere. It is unmistakable, undeniable, and the kindling in Dedue’s heart, long cold, ignites once more with hope. When the relief comes, it is so powerful he nearly staggers. Ashe is alive. He’s alive, and not only that, he is surely nearby, hiding somewhere close, somewhere safe, all this time. There must be a reason.

There must.

He glances back into the clock tower, at Cethleann’s green flame, still shining. Dedue dips his head in thanks, and all at once, the four candles snuff out, leaving behind only serpentine tendrils of smoke, rising and curling in the air.

Dedue’s heart beats fast. He opens the letter, willing his hands to be steady.

This is all it says:

The morning after, come to the promised place. What is left is for you.

The morning after. As if there will still be a tomorrow beyond the moon’s fall. As if Ashe is certain there will be—and that he, himself, will not see it.

Dedue crumples the letter.

“Which postbox did you find this in?” he asks.

“South Clock Town, by the steps to the laundry pool.” Ingrid pauses, thoughtfully, a finger to her chin. “It’s strange Ashe would put it there. Almost nobody uses that one, except for...”

Dedue and Ingrid look at each other. The only thing of note in the laundry pool is the backdoor to the Curiosity Shop. The realization hits them at the same time; Ingrid’s eyes flash with fury, and Dedue shuts his own, pained. She hisses as he groans,

“Sylvain.”

For Ashe, this is how the story starts:

At the Carnival of Time, as he watches ruby and amethyst fireworks in dazzling bursts overhead, enjoying the rainbow of masks and merriment on the faces all around him, there is a sudden hand on his shoulder, a low voice in his ear:

“You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?”

Ashe’s blood chills, and he turns around.

Behind him is a short man with orange hair, standing much too close, his body bent from carrying a massive bag on his back, heavy with a dangling assortment of masks. His large ears are as pointed as the toes of his shoes, and a bright purple robe hangs from his hunched and narrow frame. Despite having lived sixteen harvests in Clock Town, Ashe has never seen the man before. He takes a wary step back, glancing around. Not for the first time, he wishes Christophe hadn’t left, but his brother is off somewhere in the crowd, dancing with Holst, the warlock from the southern swamp that recently moved into town.

There is only Ashe, and this stranger.

“Now, don’t think me rude, but I have been watching you, for some time...I couldn’t help but hear the stories,” the man says, clasping his hands together, eager.

Ashe’s heart sinks. Of course. Why else would anyone ever want to speak to him? Subconsciously, he slips his arms behind his back, blocking his scarred hands from view. But the strange man’s eyes never leave his face.

“I would offer to sell you a mask,” the man continues, “except…I don’t have one powerful enough to change your fate. But, yes...you’ll find a way. I see you have a heart kinder and stronger than most. And if not?” He shrugs, the masks over his shoulders clacking together as he moves. “There are far, far worse purgatories.”

Ashe feels sweat drip, sudden and cold, down the back of his neck.

“H-how...how did you know?”

The mask salesman grins like a jack o’ lantern: fake, and frozen, and far, far too wide.

“This world bears the name Termina, does it not?” the man says, “A fine place for endings.”

Ashe is lost. Trapped in memory, in visions of a city pristine as pearl, fabric soft as moonlight held against his cheek, the cold floor of a cell, even colder chains, and an all-consuming fire, flames white as the moon, as the bone beneath his own melting flesh. Every hideous scar on his hands sears with phantom pain and heat and heat and heat and—

Ashe flees.

Runs into the reveling crowds, pushing through bodies, uncaring of the curses and cries that follow in his wake, aware only of the rapid thumps of his own heart and the click clatter of masks, fading further and further away.

He stops only when he reaches the familiar painted door of the Stock Pot Inn. Leans his forehead against the old wood, careful of the makeshift horns on his mask, and catches his breath. For a moment, Ashe longs to go inside. To hide in his room, and curl up on his bed, and spend the rest of the night reading legends, instead of living one.

But behind him he hears the cheery notes of Deku pipes and a mandolin, the people clapping and laughing in tune. He smells the sweet spices of pumpkin pie and buttered apple crisps in the air, still tastes spiced cider on his lips. He pictures Lonato’s concerned eyes. Christophe’s worried frown.

Ashe thinks of all the masks people made to honor the four guardian saints, worn on only this night. He knows how hard he worked on his own, a mask of Saint Macuil. How he nicked his fingers while carving wood for his horns. How he gathered cucco feathers from the coop all year, painstakingly painting each one golden brown to adorn the mask’s griffin-like face. Feathers long enough to cover the silver of his hair, to hide who he is, if only for one night.

He thought he’d succeeded, until a few hours into the carnival, when Ashe stumbled upon a lost little girl. Her face red and blotchy from sobbing, tiny fingers sticky with caramel as she clung, trembling, to his shirt. When he found her parents, with one glance, they snatched her out of his arms like his very touch could burn. He still smiled at them, genuinely glad their daughter was safe, that they were reunited. But they didn’t smile back. In the end, he was only ever fooling himself. The people of Clock Town all know, instinctively, this isn’t where he belongs. And they never let him forget.

Ashe breathes in, breathes out. He reminds himself: every emotion is to be cherished. Every single one. Even fear, even loneliness, even pain.

He won’t let them stop him from enjoying his favorite night of the year.

As he steps away from the door, determined, Ashe’s eye catches on something glittering in the torchlight. Another mask. The most wondrous mask he’s seen during the carnival. A dragon head in honor of Saint Cichol, the guardian of Woodfall, lovingly sculpted in clay dyed vivid emerald, the horns long stalks of grass woven together, his bearded maw made with real green zinnias. Ashe’s mouth gapes at the sight.

It is worn by a boy standing in front of Latte, the milk bar across the street, that reopened two months or so ago. Because of his pure white hair and dark skin, Ashe knows at once he’s the owner, that he’s from Ikana—and hates knowing it. No one deserves this town’s gossip; he understands that better than anyone. Ashe wishes he knew his name, that they had ever spoken, but they rarely cross paths. Latte is open most of the night, and its owner is falling asleep right as Ashe wakes to help with chores for the inn.

But…there’s no time like the present to make a change, right?

Ashe approaches him and tries not to have second thoughts, gulping nervously at the way the other boy completely dwarfs his smaller frame. Latte’s owner says nothing. He stares Ashe down, silently, and from the depths of his mask, Ashe glimpses his eyes. They are deep and serene. A gorgeous shade, somewhere between green and blue, the exact same as the shards of sea glass kept lovingly in a jar on the Gaspard’s fireplace mantle (the broken pieces of a Zora cowry shell, the treasure of Ashe’s mother, who had found them one summer, strewn along the Great Bay shore).

When the boy clears his throat, Ashe realizes his rudeness, flushing crimson.

“Oh! Um. I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare. We’re neighbors, and I haven’t even introduced myself.” He extends his hand. “My name is Ashe. Welcome to Clock Town!”

For a moment, the boy remains still, and Ashe’s heart aches for the second time that night. He bites his lip, hard, to stop it quivering. He’s used to this, after all. Few people want to touch someone with such disgusting burns. Even a newcomer to town has probably heard every rumor about Ashe by now; he will keep his distance, like all the others. Ashe deflates, starts to lower his arm—

Then a hand, large and incredibly gentle, reaches out to shake his own.

“Pleased to meet you. Call me Dedue.”

“Dedue,” repeats Ashe, the syllables hitting his tongue like two soft drops of rain. He likes the sound. “I’ve never seen such a well made mask. It’s beautiful!”

Dedue’s eyes widen. He pauses, glances around, as if confused that Ashe is still standing there, making conversation. Like he’s waiting for a trick, or the other Deku nut to drop. Ashe feels a pang of sympathy; he makes sure to stay right where he is. And when nothing worse happens than Ashe’s continued gaze, curious and friendly, at last, Dedue’s posture softens.

“Thank you,” Dedue says, “The feathers of your own are quite striking.”

Ashe touches one, the paint stiff and peeling. “Ah, they’re really nothing much...but yours, look at how you used real plants! Those flowers are lovely.”

“I grew them myself. They are native to Ikana.”

“Really?” Ashe brightens. “I’d love to know more. About Ikana, and gardening, too. Would you teach me?” When his own words catch up to him, he blushes again, and glances away. “If, um...if that’s okay.”

Dedue’s answering smile is like an ember; small and mesmerizing and so, so warm, Ashe feels it from his head to his toes.

From that day on, Ashe wakes hours before dawn, and Dedue sleeps long after the bar’s doors are closed, the two making time for each other like the sun glimpsing the moon as they pass in the sky. They take turns lighting candles for the saints, kneeling side by side during morning prayer. Dedue teaches Ashe how to grow herbs and flowers, how to mold wet clay in his hands. Ashe shares the best places in town to buy paints and knives, how to haggle down any price. Together, they weave masks as well as memories.

And as smile upon smile grows between them, well...maybe more than a garden has started to bloom.

Truly, the laundry pool was the first place Dedue checked, the day Ashe disappeared.

As Dedue heads there now, his encounter with Ingrid and Ashe’s letter fresh in his mind, the memories rush in, unbidden. The laundry pool has always been one of Ashe’s favorite places in Clock Town. Even as a child, when he used to read nothing but fairy tales under the tree, scribbling chalk drawings of monstrous boars and golden-haired princesses and heroes clad in green on the walls. But Ashe sought refuge there even more after the death of Lonato and Christophe. He came often to sit on the wooden bench in the corner, fingers idly stroking the petals of the red and yellow wildflowers, listening to frogsong, and the lap of water against stone. It was secluded. Quiet.

And the only place, in all the town, where not a single clock can be heard.

(A week before Ashe went missing, Dedue had found him there, in the rain. He had been sitting on that very bench, a long-sleeved turtleneck clinging to his soaked body. His hair dripped down his face, head heavy in his hands.

“Dedue,” Ashe murmured, so quietly he could barely be heard over the downpour. “If a prisoner once lived in the world outside...but still loved their cell more.” He laughed, a fragile, jagged sound. “That would be pretty pathetic, wouldn’t it?”

“Then I, too, am pathetic.”

Ashe’s head whipped up, surprised.

“I once found Clock Town abhorrent,” Dedue said. “In some ways, I still do. It was a hell I must endure, for my sister’s sake, and the ranch. I wanted nothing more than to leave.”

“....And now?” Ashe whispered.

The rain kept falling. Dedue sat beside Ashe, lifting his umbrella above them both. Safe under their shared shelter, in the dark of a summer storm, lightning skittering where their sides touched, Dedue felt brave. He dared to do what he once only dreamt, and tucked that stubborn silver strand behind Ashe’s ear.

“Now, I have too many reasons to stay.”)

Now, Dedue wishes he had dared so much more.

It is sunset, and the moon stares ominously down, consuming the sky. The laundry pool is abandoned, as Dedue suspected it would be. Across a small bridge, hidden in a corner on the other side of the pool, is a tightly shut door that leads to the Curiosity Shop’s backroom. At the bridge’s feet is a wooden post, and from it hangs a small bell. Dedue rings it. Twice, then a pause, once, pause, and then three times fast. A code Sylvain had come up with, so he’d know if it was a friend or paramour come to call, and respond accordingly.

But it’s not Sylvain who opens the door.

The person who does is shorter, slighter, covered head to foot by a hooded black cloak so long, not even a sliver of skin peeks out. Dedue isn’t sure it is Ashe, at first. Sylvain may have only been hiding his latest lover. But when the person’s head turns his way and immediately freezes, Dedue is certain. It couldn’t be anyone else.

No one else has reason to run from him, to dart right back in and slam the door.

No one else could wound him so deep.

With heavy steps, Dedue moves to stand closer.

“Ashe.”

He doesn’t reply, the door firmly shut. Dedue leans his forehead against it, helplessly, and rests his palm upon the wood.

“Please, Ashe,” Dedue says, softly. Ashe keeps his silence. But Dedue can tell from the spill of light and shadow from beneath the door that he hasn’t left. Imagines Ashe leaning his own head against the wood, his own hand pressed to his, just on the other side.

Dedue knows his strength. He could easily break the door down. He could take away Ashe’s last refuge, demand answers, force them out. Perhaps, after this past nightmare of a month, after all the searching and sleepless nights, he even deserves to. But he won’t. Dedue can’t hold onto his anger. He can’t expect bravery and honesty from Ashe, not when he, too, has spent so long running, being untrue to his own heart. Even now, he doesn’t know how to take that first step. How to rebuild the bridge they’ve burned between them.

Still, Dedue tries.

“I am glad you are safe. Grateful that Sylvain sheltered you, that you haven’t been alone, even if I don’t understand why. I feared the worst. We all did.” Dedue has to swallow around the lump growing in his throat. “I...still fear...that I am to blame…”

The shadow shifts fretfully beneath the door.

“But an apology means nothing. Not if I cannot look in your eyes to do it.” He steps back. “Until you are ready. Even if you never are. I will not leave your side.”

Dedue sinks to the ground, resting his back against the wall, and settles in for the night. He can hear the frog singing in the grass near the lone tree, the faint splash of a fish eating a bug on the pool’s surface. Solid dirt is a familiar comfort beneath his legs. Termina’s stars are coming out, one by one, giving the moon’s menacing light a wide, fearful berth.

Beside him, the shadow of Ashe’s feet does not leave.

Dedue tenderly presses his hand against that cool darkness. “Did I ever tell you the story of Majora, the ancient tribe’s cursed mask?”

He tells the tale, then another, and another, long into the night. Dedue doesn’t even realize it when he eventually falls asleep, lulled by starlight and cricketsong, the happiness of Ashe’s always present shadow. When he wakes, a blanket has been draped snugly around his body, and a new note has been placed in his hand.

This is all it reads:

Do you remember the tale of the thief and the moon?

Every word is true.

The third time Ashe gets hurt for Dedue’s sake, he’s there to see it. He watches as Ashe—his soft-spoken, sweet, recklessly brave Ashe—lands a powerful left hook against the jaw of a man twice his size. Ashe doesn’t dodge a swing in time, the man’s fist striking his upper cheek. Dedue’s vision hardens with worry and rage. He leaps in to break up the fight before things go too far, and pulls Ashe away, still struggling in his arms. The two men flee, spitting swears over their shoulders. As Dedue drags Ashe behind the safety of Latte’s triple-locked door, he is relieved; he never wants to see Ashe on his doorstep with a black eye and bruises, the fight already over, powerless to stop it, ever again.

Dedue never wants to see Ashe hurt, but especially not for him.

He guides Ashe down the steps, sits him down on a stool, and grabs a first aid kit he keeps under the bar counter. In the low violet light, a dark bruise is already forming on Ashe’s cheek, an angry cloud eclipsing the stars of his freckles. Ashe cradles his left hand close to his chest. His knuckles are bloody, rapidly swelling. He can’t meet Dedue’s eyes, but his shoulders are rigid, torn between pride and shame. Dedue wishes he didn’t feel the same way.

Dedue reaches for Ashe’s hand. Ashe lets him take it, calm and trusting. As carefully as Dedue can manage, he cleans the wound, then rubs in disinfectant. Though he tries not to, Ashe still winces.

“Promise me,” Dedue says, as he slowly wraps a bandage around Ashe’s knuckles, “you won’t do this again. Knowing you care is more than enough.”

“Someone has to, Dedue. I want to. Those men, they—”

“I saw. I was there.”

Ashe shakes his head, frowning, insistent. “But the awful things they said—”

“I heard them.”

Dedue’s lips thin to a hard line. Oh, has he heard them.

Two harvests after he and Ashe became friends, the Stock Pot Inn was struggling. Once, a broken shell cradled in his palm, voice hushed and heavy with grief, Ashe told Dedue what he remembered of Olivia Gaspard. Her hair like sunset falling down her back, eyes blue as the seas of her abandoned home, every room filled with her smoky voice singing loudly out of tune. It was Olivia’s recipes and culinary skills that had given the inn its popularity. She would leave a basket of fresh-baked sweets on each bed, and every morning, she offered a complimentary breakfast. Beans and sausage, mushrooms and eggs, toast and butter and jams, in secret combinations so delicious and unforgettable, the reservations kept coming and coming. Lonato and Christophe were terrible cooks, and Ashe was too young to pick up more than the basics. So when Olivia died in an autumn riptide on the Great Bay shore, hunting for glints of Zora sea glass under the waves, she left behind no recipes, no way to pass on her skills: only a dying business, the fragments of a seashell kept in a jar, and three broken hearts.

That same harvest, Latte was also in danger of closing down. Everyone who walked through the bar’s door praised the delicious beverages, the impeccable service, and the quirky decor (which Dedue found a little gaudy—the black and white patterned counters, the metal cow heads on the walls—but hadn’t the heart to change too much of his father’s designs). However, too many still believed Ikanan milk was contaminated. That it would curse all who dared let the liquid touch their lips, turn them into the gibdos and poes that haunted children’s nightmares until Clock Town became as desolate a wasteland as the canyons of the east.

In one way, the wary were correct: the milk of Ikanan cows is magical. A single sip will help a person recall, with perfect vivid clarity, their most cherished memories.

Dedue is the one who came up with the plan to save Latte and the Stock Pot Inn. Remembers, even now, the wry quirk of his own lips, the delightful smirk upon Ashe’s, as Dedue revealed his plan. Dedue would teach Ashe the best sweets and breakfast recipes he knew, so Ashe could carry on his late mother’s legacy, and return the inn’s sterling reputation and success. In return, with Lonato’s blessing, the inn would start serving Ikanan milk alongside every meal as a limited time only special. Being the best inn in all of Clock Town, countless people were bound to drink it. They would fall in love with the rich, sweet taste, addicted to the flood of comforting memories in every drink. Then, when they inevitably asked what caused it, where they could still get their fix, even when the inn no longer served this delicacy.

Ashe would point them across the street to Latte.

Now, business is booming. Despite the hefty price of an entire silver rupee, glass bottles of Chateau Molinaro fly off the shelves. The stage, once empty, has dedicated performers filling the bar with song and soul each week. Latte can afford to be a members-only establishment, just as Dedue’s father once dreamed, a little Ikanan cow bobblehead, proof of membership, proudly sitting on over half the town’s counters (he wouldn’t admit to it if asked, but Felix Fraldarius was the first, the little trinket bobbing with every swing of the sword at his dojo in West Clock Town).

Dedue and Daya will never have to fear losing Molinaro Ranch again. When he wakes each sunset, the first thing Dedue does is kneel and press his forehead to the floor, sending prayers of gratitude to the saints.

But some people can’t stand an Ikanan’s success, and so they talk, then talk even louder.

Let them, Dedue thinks, as he finishes wrapping the bandage, better me than Ashe.

Ashe gapes at his placid expression.

“Why aren’t you angry? How...how can you be so…”

“Do not misunderstand my silence. I am furious. But vile people like that are not worth my breath. And they are not worth yours. Seeing you in pain is far worse than anything they could say.” Dedue covers Ashe’s uninjured hand with his. “Every day, you endure abuse of your own. Trust that I am strong enough to do the same.”

“That’s different.” Ashe glances away, and whispers, “Most of mine are true.”

Dedue falls silent; he can’t deny it. He’s heard the entire tale from Christophe himself, who once sat across from Dedue at this very bar. Christophe’s grip tight on his milk glass, voice low, as he recounted tales of a broken clock tower, a blanket woven with moonlight. Of a child who once spoke and felt nothing, a perfect silver doll, until emotions suddenly poured out of him and wouldn’t stop, like the inevitable shatter of crystal tears, sliding through fingers too tiny to hold them all. But there is so much more to Ashe. Tales only Dedue knows, of a compassionate heart, bigger than the Zora’s boundless ocean. Of jade eyes, so lovely and luminous, they outshine the auroras of the Goron’s northern mountain.

He cannot deny it, at all.

“Perhaps,” Dedue says, “but that does not mean you deserve it.”

Those aurora green eyes meet his, soft and sure.

“Thank you, Dedue. That means a lot to me. If it’s what you want, I promise to stay out of trouble.” Ashe holds Dedue’s gaze. “But I don’t regret defending you.”

Dedue tenderly strokes the back of Ashe’s hand with his thumb, once, twice, across the raised edges of his scars. “I know.”

“Ah, if you don’t mind…could you spare some Chateau Molinaro?” asks Ashe, sheepish, a light flush barely peeking out beneath the growing darkness of his bruise. “Just a sip! I know how expensive it is. I honestly have no regrets, but, um...it still hurts pretty bad.”

“Of course. I will grab ice, as well.”

Despite Ashe’s protest, Dedue pours an entire bottle of his finest chateau into a frosted glass, the milk glowing rose-purple under the lights overhead. He knows well how much Ashe loves the creamy, refreshing sweetness. Has witnessed firsthand how Ashe, when he believes no one is looking, will shamelessly dip his finger into the measuring cup as he cooks, eager for one more taste.

Dedue has never asked what memories Ashe sees when he drinks the milk. As a child, Dedue and Daya would make a game of it; they’d lie side by side in the grass, trade sips of a single bottle back and forth, and giggle as they shared whatever happy memory surfaced that time. He’s seen customers laugh, or gasp, or even shoot out of their seats upon their first taste. Ashe, however, is not the same. Whenever he drinks it, a deep tranquility crosses his face, like the still surface of a fairy’s fountain spring (emotionless, Dedue’s traitorous mind whispers).

But as Dedue emerges from beneath the counter, pulling out a bag of ice from the freezer to help the swelling on Ashe’s face, his stomach drops.

Ashe is crying. His head bent, the little crystals of his tears plopping, one by one, into his half-gone milk. This time Dedue doesn’t hesitate. He tips up Ashe’s chin, and rests his hand gently against Ashe’s unhurt cheek, pale beneath his calloused palm.

“Ashe…”

But Ashe only leans further into his touch. “My memories, they’re finally…”

When Ashe smiles, tremulously, Dedue realizes these tears are happy.

“My memories...they’re so warm, Dedue. They’re warm...”

For years, the only happy memories Dedue had were of his family and the ranch. The fields of grass, the white stone barn, the dirt roads. He and Daya chasing each other in the rain, mud squelching noisy and wet between his toes; his father teaching him how to milk a cow, his voice deep as a well, answering every question with patience; his mother whipping up a stew as if every stir was a fight, hair pulled back tight in a bun; sitting together for family dinner once a week, on the night father returned from town, holding each other’s hands as they prayed to the saints, thanking them for the food and their blessings, the air thick with cardamom and cinnamon.

But that is no longer true.

It is no longer true, but he is a man of Ikana—and he cannot let the misfortune that brings cast a shadow over Ashe’s life, too.

This is what Dedue imagines, but doesn’t dare:

He kisses Ashe, softly, lingering, on his forehead. “Lately, all of my warmest memories are with you.”

This is what he does:

He catches a teardrop with his thumb. “Have as much as you like.”

(“....have you ever heard the story of the thief and the moon?”

Nearly three harvests had passed since Dedue met Ashe. They had been stargazing in Termina Field, on the outskirts between the South and East Clock Town gates. A moonless night. Every star in heaven, out in all their glitter and glory. The two of them laid together in the summer warm grass. So near, Dedue could easily reach around Ashe’s shoulders, pull him close, and let him fall asleep on his chest. If only Ashe had asked. If only Dedue had the courage.

There were plenty of shooting stars that night, but that wish went unheard.)

When Dedue leaves the laundry pool, the new note volatile as a bombchu in his pocket, he feels as if he’s in a trance. He barely remembers stopping by Latte before he’s walking out the East Gate, and straight into Termina Field, the memories flooding fast through his mind.

(“I am not familiar with that one.”

“It’s the new moon tonight. The perfect time.”

“My apologies If I am mistaken,” said Dedue, the corner of his lips quirking, “but are you, Ashe Gaspard, about to tell a ghost story?”

Dedue expected a flustered protest, a friendly shove on his shoulder for the teasing. Instead, Ashe gave him a rueful smile.

“Well, ah, not exactly...but something like that.”)

Dedue feels a hollow pang when he realizes: he is walking through the very field where he and Ashe used to stargaze, just past their favorite spot.

The ground suddenly begins to tremor. Dedue doesn’t panic; this has been happening more and more over the past few weeks. He calmly holds onto a nearby tree, watching as the blackbirds startle from their branches, fluttering and cawing anxiously. Within a minute, the shaking stops. Above, the moon still dominates the sky, even in the middle of the day. It descends ever closer.

In less than forty-eight hours, doomsday will arrive.

(Ashe took a deep breath, and released it, slowly.

“Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived on the moon.”

Ashe’s emotional, yet quiet voice was perfect for telling stories. Dedue loved to hear him, loved the life that lit up his face, the soothing cadence. As Ashe began, his eyes never left the heavens.

Dedue’s never left Ashe.

“The moon was a perfect place. Within one of its craters, by the shore of a sea, rose a vast celestial city. Its every surface carved from crystals, the roads paved in pearl. The celestial beings who lived there believed themselves above humanity. There were still divisions of rich and poor, nobles and the common, but everyone knew their place. A society of absolute order. They had no emotions, and so they had no flaws. From the heavens, the celestials saw the world below, full of passion and pain, and turned their eyes away.

But not the boy.”)

Soon, Dedue can see his destination in the distance, sitting atop a hill. The Astral Observatory. It is a lone building shaped like a giant dome, its bright blue walls painted gold with Termina’s constellations. From its top protrudes a giant telescope, pointed, quite conspicuously, at the moon. Dedue easily vaults over the low gated fence surrounding the property and stands before the door.

He slips his hand into his pocket, closing his fingers around what’s hidden there.

This is the place. The place that will prove Ashe’s story.

He knocks, and he waits.

(“He was the servant of a noble lady’s house. But at the end of each day, when his chores were finished, he would sit by the sea and watch the world below. He thought that world was full of wonders. The black waters beside him were motionless and empty; the world beneath had oceans overflowing with all manner of strange plants and creatures, waters that thrashed with angry storms or calm waves. The food in his belly was carefully rationed, and bland, and the same each day; beneath the food was plentiful and diverse, with all kinds of ingredients, tastes, smells. The moon had only its one city, wastelands of white dust, dark seas; beneath were snowy mountains, flowered swamps, rivered canyons, coral reefs, lively towns.

Most of all, the boy wondered what warmth was like. Of how it would feel to sit by an open flame, to wrap his hands around a mug of steaming tea, to stroke a keaton’s fur. He wanted to know what it was like to have someone’s arms around you, and yours around them, what it was that made the people below seem to glow.”

Ashe lifted his hand to the sky.

“He longed for warmth. More than anything, more than his very life.”

Ashe’s hand grasped the air, as if trying, and failing, to catch a star.

“And so, one day, he stole a blanket from his lady, and the boy became a thief.”)

When the door opens, a man with long, dark green hair and a very tired expression answers.

“Ah, you again,” he yawns, rubbing his eyes, “I believe I already said Ashe isn’t here. Unless you have other business?”

“I do,” says Dedue, with a dip of his chin. “Linhardt, if I may, I need to see the lunar rock.”

Linhardt quirks an eyebrow. “How did you come to hear about that?”

“Caspar. At times he comes to drink at my bar when his shift on guard duty ends. He spoke of this rock several days ago, while very drunk. Quite loudly.”

“That sounds like him,” Linhardt sighs, and begins to comb his fingers through his messy hair, tying it back. “Why the sudden interest? I can’t imagine you have time to spare looking at my specimens, with your boyfriend missing, and the end of the world and all.”

Dedue can’t stop the rosy tint to his cheeks.

“Ashe is not—”

Linhardt waves his hand dismissively. “Right, right, still in the obnoxious denial phase, I forgot. Please, carry on. Why look at the rock now?”

“Because of what you call it,” says Dedue, and pulls a shining teardrop from his pocket. He holds out the tiny crystal in his palm, the very one he caught on his thumb, harvests ago, when Ashe cried while drinking Ikanan milk.

“The Moon’s Tear.”

(“The lady had many blankets, far too many to truly need. The thief thought, surely, just one wouldn’t be missed. He had never known a blanket’s touch, sleeping all his life on the servants’ hall floor. That night, the thief hid in the basement food cellar and wrapped the blanket around himself as he slept. To his disappointment, it felt thin and cool as moonlight—nothing at all like warmth, which he imagined must embody the sun.

“When the thief woke…”

Ashe drifted off, as if he’d forgotten the next words, or couldn’t think how to say them. His hands dug into the grass, knuckles white. Dedue patiently waited.

“When the thief woke,” Ashe, eventually, repeated, “a crystal spear was at his throat. His lady loomed above him, told him he was under arrest, and bound his hands with chains. The thief was thrown into a cold prison cell. For seven days and seven nights….”

Ashe swallowed, thickly. “...he was trapped in the darkness, with no other sensation, no food or water or sight, while the Queen of the Moon decided his punishment.”)

Linhardt’s eyes go wide at the sight of Ashe’s crystal tear.

“Intriguing. Very well, come inside.”

Dedue follows him in. The top floor is domed, with an impressive telescope and ceiling like a mystical planetarium, and on a raised dais Dedue can see a huge crystal sparkling from within protective glass, radiating with an ethereal light.

“That’s also a Moon’s Tear, the largest one I’ve found,” Linhardt explains as he walks past it, “but if you’re here to confirm what I believe you are, the smaller specimens will be of far greater help to you.”

Together they head down the spiraling staircase. The room below is a chaotic mess of papers on the floor, a cucco clucking in a hanging cage, various crates and display cases, and even an indoor vegetable garden, complete with a smiling scarecrow watching over it. Linhardt opens one of the glass cases, and reaches down inside, muttering.

“Caspar only knows of the Moon’s Tear upstairs. It’s the most beautiful one I’ve collected thus far, the only one whole and unbroken, and thus most deserving of that prime display. But I’ve been observing these crystals fall from the moon for quite some time now, ever since the moon itself started falling, in fact. About three months ago, give or take. I named them Moon’s Tears because, despite their inhumanly large size, they are all uncannily teardrop-shaped...as if the moon, itself, is weeping. Unfortunately, however...most of the ones I find are already shattered fragments...aha! Here, this one.”

Linhardt pulls out a much smaller crystal, and holds it out to Dedue.

(As Ashe continued to speak, the pauses grew, and his voice began to deaden.

“On the eighth morning, the thief was dragged before the Queen’s throne. He was forced to his knees...to look his Queen in the eye, a blade lifting his chin...as she pronounced her judgment. She declared that the thief had committed not one, but two crimes...not only theft, but emotion.

He was infected….infected with emotions like a disease. From watching the lower world, he had learned longing and envy, disappointment and desire, awe and hope. For that crime...the thief... must be banished to the world below. So he would experience pain and passion firsthand….understand his sins...and never want emotions again. The moment the thief sincerely wished to be free of emotion once more, the moon would hear his cry, and come to bring him home.

As for...the method of reincarnation...and the second crime…”

For a brief moment, Ashe’s entire body tensed, eyes squeezing shut. When his eyes reopened, they were glassy and unfocused, lost far away, somewhere Dedue couldn’t hope to follow.

Empty.

Emotionless.

“In retribution for the stolen blanket… for his attempt to steal warmth...”

Ashe’s voice was so flat, his entire body so still, he was like a doll. The doll from the whispers that still followed in Ashe’s wake, wherever he went, of a time when he never spoke, barely moved, fresh from his cradle of moonlight and ash in the heart of the clock tower.

Dedue couldn’t bear it. He rested his hand over Ashe’s, enveloping it with a reassuring heat. As Dedue brushed his thumb against the raised roughness of long ago burns, hoping the continuous touch would ground Ashe in that moment, he sent a prayer to the saints, pleading for Ashe to come back to him. To hear the passion in his words. To see the aurora shine once more in his eyes.

But they remained lifeless.

“For the crime of stealing warmth,” Ashe continued, his voice barely a whisper, “he was burned alive on a pyre, so he would not want warmth again.”)

As the memory of Ashe’s story replays in Dedue’s mind, again and again and again, he walks slowly over to Linhardt. Dedue remembers how Ashe remained silent for the rest of the night, but was already back to his cheerful, talkative self the next morning. He thought Ashe had simply gotten swept up and carried away by his own tale—it wouldn’t be the first time. What a fool that makes Dedue feel, now. Over and over, Dedue recalls every moment, every word, as he holds out his hand, and they compare Ashe’s tear to the Moon’s Tear, side by side.

The sight makes Dedue’s chest tighten.

One may be broken, and the other may be smaller. But the similarities are indisputable: two clear crystals, solid and silver. Twins naturally shaped like teardrops, glittering in the light. Both emit a mysterious, perpetual ivory glow, sad and strange and beautiful.

Dedue can’t deny it; every word of the tale of the thief and the moon is true. The city of pearl, the people without warmth, the stolen blanket, the dark cell, the punishment, the pyre. He clenches his fist, and Ashe’s teardrop shatters in time with his heart.

He cannot deny it, at all.

Upon his twentieth Carnival of Time, Ashe finally understands the emotion that’s been growing, all along, in the lonely soil beneath his ribs.

An hour left before midnight, Ashe is hidden away in a corner of the laundry pool, helping a frantic Marianne glue on the last pieces of her engagement mask. In the distance they can hear the music and laughter of the carnival, already going strong, the scent of pumpkin and apple reaching them even here. As Ashe holds the mask steady, Marianne’s shaky hands delicately pressing glass against clay, her face rosy with coming joy, for the first time, he realizes: I want this to be me.

Someday, Ashe, too, wants his hands to tremble with excitement while making his own mask of the moon. He wants to climb to the promised place. To the very top of the town’s clock tower, open only once a year during the Carnival of Time. He wants to meet his beloved there, who is holding a mask of the sun, and join them together, receiving the blessings of Termina and all the saints for a happy marriage. He wants to hang their combined couples mask above the fireplace mantle, just like Lonato and Olivia’s, that he’s walked by every day of his life.

When Marianne finishes, she clutches her mask close. She fidgets, suddenly anxious. “Um. How does it look?”

Her mask is a vision of cerulean-colored glass, shattered into dozens upon dozens of pieces, gold peeking through the cracks, the rarest of blue moons. Her hair, usually tied up, cascades around her shoulders, lilies of the valley woven through the wavy locks. She’s come so far from the girl who never used to leave the lottery shop.

Ashe smiles, fond. “You look radiant.”

He expects her to blush, but she doesn’t. Marianne only beams back at him. As she kisses his cheek in thanks, then leaves to join Hilda, to walk hand and hand to the promised place, Ashe is overwhelmed with the sharpness of his longing. He wants to be that happy, too.

He wants, and he wants, and he wants.

Ashe has lived so long, scared of clock chimes and torches, of what awaits in the sky, of a life that will be ripped from his hands one day, as surely as a wisp of a blanket was once violently torn from his grasp, so long ago. He hasn’t allowed himself to plan for the future. He hasn’t dared. But it’s been twenty harvests since, and they haven’t come. They haven’t come, and maybe, they never will. Despite everything, Ashe is still here, and no matter what they claimed, he hasn’t changed; he still wants to feel everything, good and bad, with all his heart. Their punishment didn’t work. Maybe he is a sinner. Maybe he deserves these scars on his skin, the screams and the flames that ruin his every dream.

But Ashe doesn’t want to be anywhere else.

He wants to live, right here. He wants to be part of this world. He wants a future. That mysterious feeling, it grows like vines, curling up and around the empty chambers of his yearning heart, holding fast.

Ashe runs all the way home. His feet feel lighter than ever before, and he can’t help a buoyant grin. He promised to meet Dedue in the East Clock Town square, and he doesn’t want to keep him waiting, but tonight? He wants to take chances. To do what he’s never dared, never allowed himself before.

He knows exactly where to start.

When Ashe emerges from the inn, the first person who sees his carnival mask takes a sharp gasp of breath, scrambling backward. Ashe steels himself. He stands up straighter, keeping his head high, and wills his steps to be steady. As he makes his way towards the square, people part around him, muttering and whispering, angry and afraid. Someone even jeers. Another spits at his feet. As Ashe moves through the crowd, he passes some friends, too: Annette giving him a thumbs up, Felix a respectful nod, while the two dance together; Sylvain’s encouraging catcall, silenced by Ingrid’s sharp elbow. The sight of each of them renews Ashe’s courage.

At last, Ashe reaches Dedue. And when he sees realization creep slowly into Dedue’s eyes, like the sun just beginning to peek over the horizon. When Dedue’s jaw slackens, utterly speechless. Ashe swells with pride, and knows every second was worth it.

“Your...your mask,” Dedue tries, falters. He pushes his own mask—-a wonder of brilliant green glass and forget-me-nots, shaped into the elegant dragon head of Saint Cethleann—to the top of his hair, so he can get a better look.

Despite the town’s negative reaction, Ashe knows he made an amazing mask. He had gathered and polished dark river stones to make the saint’s scaled skin. Carved and smoothed bronzed wood for his three horns, the vibrant red lycoris flowers he had tied around each one creating the illusion of bloody spears piercing the guardian of Ikana’s cursed face. A haunting, striking picture.

“I’ve never seen someone make a mask for Saint Indech,” says Ashe, “Lonato told me people stopped, after...after what happened. That people believe it will bring misfortune. But he deserves to be celebrated! Just like all the other saints. I’m honored to wear it.”

And he is. Ashe had made the mask in secret over the past weeks. But he knew the reception it would get, and hadn’t planned to wear it—he’d promised Dedue to stay out of trouble, a harvest or so ago, and he meant to keep that promise. He only wanted to honor his dear friend’s home.

But Ashe wants so much more for Dedue. He wants a future where Dedue can gladly display his culture, his language, his saint, to anyone and everyone. He wants to see that happen with his own eyes, to leave this world better than he found it.

Ashe wants, and he wants, and he wants.

“I asked Mercedes to take me into the canyon, to her brother’s music box house. It keeps the undead away, so it wasn’t, ah, quite as terrifying as it could have been…” Ashe says, chuckling nervously, “but the stones, the wood, the lycoris...I got all of them straight from Ikana itself.”

“My father...” Dedue strokes one of the lycoris petals with a trembling finger. “He said they were all gone.”

“They came back, Dedue. There was an entire field of lycoris. There’s so much life there, still, after all this time.” Ashe smiles up at him. “One day, maybe the dead will lay to rest, and Ikana will be nothing but red flowers in bloom.”

The wetness in Dedue’s eyes, then, is like a gentle spring rain. His quiet joy waters the soil in the patch between Ashe’s bones, and that feeling grows even further inside, buds appearing on the vines as they fill every space, pressing warm and insistent against his chest, its name on the tip of his tongue.

Behind them, someone suddenly plays an opening note on a fiddle, and the crowd begins to whoop. Midnight is only minutes away, now, and the last dance is about to begin. Ashe moves to stand near the wall, to get out of the way, but is stopped when Dedue slips his hand into his.

Ashe looks up, surprised. Dedue’s gaze is smoldering. His eyes are molten sea glass, all wetness burned away, and Ashe feels an ember come alive in his own stomach, hot and pleasant.

“Would you like to join the last dance?” Dedue asks.

“Are...are you sure?”

Dedue and Ashe have their own traditions for the Carnival of Time. They love to browse the colorful wares of the visiting merchants in the South Clock Town bazaar, making sure to pick up their usuals: several jars of jellyfish jam from the Zora (sweet and sour and delicious on warm toast); a couple vials of Goron rock salt (a pinch of its earthy tang perfectly balances any bitter vegetable); and their very favorite, a giant bag of honey-roasted Deku nuts to share. They always sit on a bench, quiet and out of the way, as the fireworks begin. Laughing at each other with every bite of a Deku nut. Because not only do they release a burst of honey on their tongues, but a flash of light so intense, the glow can be seen through the skin of their cheeks, as if they had swallowed a mouthful of fireflies, or one of the fireworks sparkling above them in the sky.

The shopping, the Deku nuts, the fireworks. Those alone had been enough for harvests now. Dedue has never asked to dance before, has never wanted to draw unnecessary attention to themselves when they’re in public, worried what it would mean for Ashe’s reputation. Always Ashe’s, and never his own.

But now, Dedue’s grip is strong, his gaze sure.

“I am.”

Ashe ducks his head and blushes, despite himself. He feels that ember spread everywhere throughout his body, flushing him with warmth, and he smiles, shyly.

Maybe he isn’t the only one who has been wanting.

“Then absolutely,” Ashe squeezes Dedue’s hand. “I would love to.”

Dedue leads Ashe into the crowd. The band begins to play a joyous tune, slow at first, the sounds of a fiddle, mandolin, ocarina, and Deku pipes soaring over the people’s heads. Soon they spot Annette, excitedly waving them over to join her dance group. She and Mercedes let go of each other’s hands to let Dedue and Ashe join their circle, and immediately, the dance starts. The entire group of eight linked in a ring, moving slowly as one to the left for a full turn, then to the right, before splitting into pairs in the four cardinal directions.

In the beginning, Dedue and Ashe are together. Taking four steps forward, bowing, then four steps back. When they meet again, they snugly link their right arms, and spin gradually around each other, clockwise. They can’t take their eyes off one another, green upon green. Then the music picks up. The crowd claps to the beat. They quicken their pace, until Ashe finds himself spun away, stumbling a bit before Sylvain catches him, smoothly taking his arm in his without missing a beat, twirling him round and round. The music goes even faster, and he’s passed to Dorothea, her every movement graceful and fluid, pulling Ashe into her flow. As they dance, Ashe catches sight of Dedue dancing with Ingrid and isn’t surprised to see him moving flawlessly, following her lead. Their eyes meet, briefly, and Ashe beams. Then Dorothea eases Ashe out again into Felix’s waiting arms, his hold firm but gentle, his steps confident across the cobblestones.

Before Ashe knows it, everyone has come together in a circle again, linked hand in hand, moving all the way around to the left, to the right. Faster, faster. Break apart, bow, arm in arm, spin and spin and spin. Color and sound blend together, the world falling away, until all Ashe knows is the melody in his ears, the sweat on his brow, the pounding of their feet against stone, and the laughter lighting every one of his friends’ faces, bright and breathless.

Suddenly, the music stops. Ashe finds himself back in Dedue’s arms, right where he began. Hearts thundering, breathing heavily. Above the midnight fireworks burst, painting the sky in vivid golds and purples and reds as the clock tower chimes. Just beyond Dedue’s shoulder, Ashe can see the white glow of the moon. But for once, the moon means nothing.

Nothing at all, compared to how safe and right he feels in Dedue’s embrace. Nothing to the sheen of sweat dripping enticingly down Dedue’s neck, making his skin gleam in the torchlight. Nothing to Ashe’s longing to run his hands through Dedue’s hair, shaken loose out of his tie from the dance, falling past his shoulders, and discover if those pure white locks are as thick and lustrous as he’s dreamed. Nothing at all, compared to the adoring glow of Dedue’s smile, how it crinkles the corner of his eyes, so deeply intent on his. Ashe realizes that he could live forever, right here, just like this. That he can’t envision a future without Dedue by his side.

He wants, and he wants, and he wants.

And that feeling, which had been growing all this time? It fully blooms, flowers upon flowers of emotion unfurling from inside all four plots of soil in Ashe’s heart. They break through his ribs, spill out into his blood, soft petals pressing against every part of his body, each bloom basking in the incandescent glow of Dedue’s tender sun. Feeling cherished. So wholly, completely, known.

Love, Ashe realizes, this feeling is love. The warmth he’s longed for, all this time. The warmth he lost his life for, burned to ashes for—it was always love. And it was worth it. The comfort, the peace he feels, knowing this emotion’s name.

Ashe is finally home.

Throughout the week of the carnival, the inn suffers a wave of cancellations, and one of its windows is shattered by a thrown rock. One night, a drunken man staying at the inn, yelling how an Indech mask will bring his wrathful curse of the dead upon their town, smashes a glass bottle against Ashe’s head. His hair stains with crimson, his skin slit by shards. The blow leaves a nasty concussion, and a fresh red scar, dark and bold across his hairline. Even then, laying in a medical bed, his fingers brushing that new tender wound, Ashe has no regrets. He doesn’t lose his smile.

But Dedue does. He doesn’t dance with Ashe again. He keeps his head down around town, and barely speaks, unable to look Ashe in the eye. He widens and widens the distance between them. Stretches his silences. Until one day, when Ashe wakes before dawn to meet Dedue for prayers and breakfast and gardening, as they have for many harvests now—Dedue is no longer there. He never is, again. The falling petals in Ashe’s heart choke his lungs. Thorns pierce between his ribs, bringing him to tears. It hurts. It hurts, but he forces himself to cherish even rejection. He isn’t sorry for trying to honor Indech and Ikana. He will never be sorry for loving Dedue.

And if Dedue won’t love him back, then…

Ashe can’t really blame him. How could anyone truly love a thief, love someone with their sin permanently etched into their hands?

By summer, Lonato and Christophe are dead. They had hoped to take Olivia’s treasure to Zora’s Hall, to see if the Zora could make the broken shell whole again. But their ship was wrecked. Battered against the rocks of the bay in a sudden storm, torn apart by the merciless waves, pulling sea glass and bodies alike into its dark and greedy depths. Every Gaspard lost to the siren song of the Zora’s cowry shell.

When Ingrid delivers the news, Ashe collapses to his knees, numb. His entire family. Gone. Lonato will never recommend another book to him, or sneak one last lemon tart before bed, or finish the half-written letter on his desk. Christophe will never take him fishing in the swamp again, or get to play another note on his ocarina, or lift Ashe right off his feet when they hug. Ashe can no longer remember the sound of Olivia’s voice, the scent of her perfume, if she preferred coffee or tea. Someday, time will steal the memory of Lonato and Christophe, too, and Ashe will truly have nothing. Nothing but this bottomless grief that blackens every bloom remaining inside his chest.

He cannot cherish this.

He sobs so loudly, and so long, even the moon itself could hear.

And, at last, they come.

On the second-to-last night before the end of the world, Dedue sits on a stool at his own bar. Mercedes had been diligently filling bowls with chocolate chip cookies, as she did right before every opening, her favorite shawl spotted with flour, an absent-minded smear of chocolate on her cheek. She takes one look at the slump in Dedue’s shoulders, the shadows under his eyes, and asks no questions. Immediately she pours him a glass of his favorite milk: warm, with a spoon of cinnamon and cream.

“Whenever I’m sad, and praying just isn’t enough,” Mercedes confides, her voice light and soothing, “I make sure to treat myself to something I love, even something small, like eating a muffin or knitting a handkerchief. It may not solve the problem. But there’s nothing wrong with needing a little help to smile again, or being kind to yourself.”

Mercedes holds out the milk glass to him, her expression so sweet, despite the hint of melancholy behind her smile. Dedue can’t find it in himself to refuse. He accepts the offered glass. Gently, she clinks a glass of her own against his.

“To kindness, even now, at the end of everything,” Mercedes says.

“To kindness,” Dedue murmurs.

Together, they share one last drink.

After, as Mercedes refills his glass, Dedue grabs a single cookie from the bowl. When Dedue takes a bite, it is so fresh from the oven, the chocolate chips are melted goo on his tongue. Dedue grimaces. It’s not too hot, but he still gets burned.

Melting chocolate chips were always Ashe’s favorite.

Dedue loses himself. In his memories, in recent revelations. In Ashe. Elbows on the counter, he presses his forehead against his tightly clasped hands, still covered with the ivory dust of a crushed teardrop.

He doesn’t know how to move forward.

He isn’t sure how much time passes as he sits there. The golden milk tanks on the wall are getting low. His own glass is empty. Despite the impending doom, a few regular customers have come into the bar: Catherine and Shamir, drinking in their usual corner, glad to be free of their guard helmets; Lysithea, scribbling furiously in an open book, hoarding an entire cookie bowl to herself; Claude, nursing a single bottle of Chateau Molinaro as he plays with the dartboard. On stage, Dorothea has taken her place in the spotlight, beautiful as ever with a backdrop of violet stained glass windows. She sings her heart out, maybe for the last time. All of them stragglers too stubborn to seek shelter outside town, or with some sentimental reason to stay.

Then a strong, gloved hand pats Dedue on the back.

“Dedue. It is quite rare to see you on this side of the counter.”

Dimitri Blaidydd slides easily onto the stool beside his best friend, his golden hair tied back, a familiar royal blue cloak around his broad shoulders. He orders himself an entire bottle of Chateau Molinaro, the most expensive drink on the menu. The action makes Dedue shake his head, exasperated, and hopelessly fond; Dimitri has always done this. Despite being unable to taste the milk, and by extension, immune to its mysterious power to summon happy memories, Dimitri still orders the chateau every time, in the hope of helping Dedue’s business.

“I must confess, my friend. After the news from Ingrid, I was certain you would be with Ashe, that he would be a permanent fixture to your side. But here you are, alone.” Dimitri frowns, uncertainly, “May I ask what happened?”

Dedue shakes his head, tries to think how to even begin, how to sort the thoughts that have held him paralyzed the past few hours. He imagines himself saying: Ashe did not wish to speak, and then said far too much. I will not force him to see me, and now, I have even more reason to fear why he hides. I have hurt him, endlessly, and I only have myself to blame. He has hurt me, too. We are liars and cowards, the both of us. I am afraid of how he feels. I am afraid of my own feelings, even more.

The moon is coming for him, and there isn’t enough time to fix our mistakes.

The moon is coming for him, and there is nothing I can do.

What Dedue finally says, in a low, resigned voice, is this:

“We are not meant to be.”

For a while, all that can be heard is Dorothea’s swansong voice, lovely and deep. The scratch of Lysithea’s quill, the click of Mercedes’s heels on the floor. Dimitri swirls the milk in his glass, thoughtfully. “Perhaps you aren’t.”

“In a better world, you would have never left the ranch. In a better world, Ashe would have never been abandoned in a clock tower. You weren’t meant to meet, much less be. Truly starcrossed,” Dimitri adds, more gently, “but even the most tangled threads can be unwound, if you both make the effort.”

“Untangled, but not unstained,” says Dedue.

Dimitri’s expression darkens. “No. I know well some things cannot be undone. Actually, that is what I came here to tell you, both of you. Before the next harvest, my uncle will finally be stepping down as mayor. When I take his seat, my first act will be an anti-discrimination law. From now on, any wrongful act of hate, against anyone, will be met with swift punishment. I cannot change the cruelties you have already faced, nor control the actions of the ignorant. I cannot go back and throw the man who hurt Ashe behind bars, where he belongs. But this I can promise.” Dimitri places his hand over his chest as he vows, “You will never again be denied justice.”

A bitter chain that had long choked Dedue’s heart, made of broken glass and Ashe’s blood, at last, starts to loosen.

“That is...good to hear.” Dedue draws a shaky hand across his face. “Once...I told Ashe to trust that I was strong enough to endure prejudice. And when the pain was mine alone, I was. But when Ashe was the one hurt, I could not bear it. Not one moment. I pushed him away, certain it was for his protection, his sake. In the end, I was only protecting myself.”

Dimitri swivels his stool to face his friend. “Tell me, Dedue. Do you think Marianne could bear it, when Hilda’s shoulder was badly bitten by a deku baba, gathering ingredients for potions? Why do you think Felix ran straight out of town, without a word, the moment he found out Annette was testing a new blade for her father on dodongos, all alone? Why would Ashe wear a forbidden mask in front of everyone, knowing well he might pay a price, for anything less than easing the pain in your heart?” A teasing glint twinkles in Dimitri’s eye. “You should not feel ashamed for acting like exactly what you are. A man in love.”

In love. The words aren’t a revelation. Dedue has known, for many harvests, that what he feels for Ashe is love. Perhaps it was planted that very night, when the cuts on his own hands, the wet burn in his own eyes, fell away forgotten when faced with another boy’s tears, cracking on the concrete. His love for Ashe is not a flower just barely bloomed, but a garden. One he has quietly, tenderly, cared for in the private corners of his heart, Ashe’s every word watering its soil, his every smile coloring its blossoms, his every action the sunlight they swallow. The roots buried so deep into Dedue’s heart that they cannot be removed without killing him, too.

Without Ashe, even if the moon doesn’t crush the planet, the night will still end in Dedue’s death.

“It’s too late,” says Dedue.

“Forget about the moon,” counters Dimitri, “forget about the world ending. Everyone says to live as if these days are our last, but I say to the eternal flames with that. If the sun was still going to rise the day after tomorrow, what would you want to say to Ashe? If you still had harvests upon harvests left together, how would you want to spend them? Now is your chance.”

Dimitri places a hand on Dedue’s shoulder and gives it a reassuring squeeze. When he smiles, the hope in it is blinding.

“Don’t think about how to die without regrets, Dedue. But how to live without them.”

Dedue has had many blessings in his life: parents who raised him well, a sister he can share anything with, the cattle thriving and healthy, the luxury of friendships, a roof over his head, a full belly, moon and rain, sun and soil.

But he has never felt more blessed than this moment, standing in the emerald fields of Molinaro Ranch with Ashe close by his side.

When he asked if Ashe would accompany him to the ranch for a vacation, the weekend of his birthday, Dedue feared he would refuse. Worse, Dedue knew he would deserve it. He was the one who had built the wall between them, who had tried to remove himself from Ashe’s life. He hadn’t planned to return. But Ashe’s grief, in the wake of Lonato and Christophe’s deaths, was so powerful it broke through that wall and shook the foundation of Dedue’s very soul. He couldn’t let Ashe bear that weight alone. Hesitantly, carefully, he tried to be there for him, to be a part of Ashe’s life again, little by little, one tentative day at a time. Dedue could not blame him if the past hurt was still too deep.

But Ashe said yes.

He said yes. So they left the inn and the bar in the enthusiastic care of Annette and Mercedes, respectively, who had matching gleams in their eyes, thrilled to see their friends finally take some time off. They borrowed Marianne’s wagon and her horse, Dorte, then rode together all the way to Molinaro Ranch.

When Ashe and Dedue arrived on his sister’s doorstep, coming in unannounced, Daya was so surprised she dropped the entire pan of buttered cucco she was holding. They spent the first evening helping her clean tomato sauce and cucco breast and cilantro and garlic paste from the floor. While Daya scolded and mothered them in turn, washing splatters of onion from her long white braid, Dedue and Ashe were on their hands and knees together, dutifully cleaning up the mess they made with soapy wet dish towels. Dedue sent Ashe an amused glance, and he answered with a secret smile. As if the past eight months, too, were being wiped clean.

The three of them talked long, long into the night, sharing legends and stories, munching on hastily made flatbread wraps stuffed with cucco and hummus and cheese. They talked until their eyes were heavy, their heads drooping. But when it was time to sleep, neither Ashe nor Dedue could agree on who deserved to take Dedue’s bed; Dedue insisted Ashe was the guest, while Ashe countered it was Dedue’s home. They argued back and forth, endlessly. So Daya, rolling her eyes, had chosen for them. She tore the pillow and blankets from the mattress onto the floor, tossed a second set into the room, and demanded they shut up and sleep, banging the door behind her.

And that is why Dedue woke this morning on the hard floor of his childhood bedroom. Ashe wrapped in a blanket, sound asleep beside him. They had begun the night with several feet between their makeshift beds, but Ashe had moved sometime in the night, until his head was nearly pillowed on Dedue’s outstretched arm, so near Dedue could feel his small, even breaths tickling the hairs on his skin. The sun slipped gently through the shutters, painting ribbons of white across Ashe’s body, darkening the endearing brown-sugar freckles on his face. Dust motes danced and sparkled in his hair. Slowly, Dedue tucked a stray silver strand, glowing with light, behind Ashe’s ear, and wondered if he was dreaming.

He wonders still, even with the falling moon in the sky, coming ever closer, threatening disaster. Still wonders, as he watches Ashe close his eyes and press his cheek against the flank of a cow, his expression peaceful. Then Dedue glimpses that new scar, poking out from beneath Ashe’s bangs. He remembers broken glass, and blood, a limp body cradled close. The familiar dark pit of guilt opens wide in his chest.

The dream ends.

Ashe affectionately strokes the cow’s side. “She’s very warm.”

“She is alive, after all,” says Dedue.

When Ashe looks at him then, Dedue doesn’t understand how a smile can feel so sad. He only knows, despite every lie he’s told himself, that he would do anything to take that sadness away.

A breeze begins to blow. It carries the scent of cinnamon and cardamom from the house in the distance as Daya prepares Dedue’s favorite beef stew for his birthday dinner. The grass murmurs and sways. The sun presses hot kisses on the crown of their heads. The cow flicks her tail, twitching an ear. And Ashe, he’s once again looking at the sky. No.

He’s watching the moon fall.

“Ashe.”

But Ashe doesn’t seem to hear. He keeps gazing up, silently. The sight makes something twist uneasily inside of Dedue. A sense of foreboding. As if Ashe will disappear, at any moment, somewhere he’ll never be able to find him. Compulsively, Dedue rests his hand on Ashe’s shoulder.

Ashe startles. “Yes, Dedue?”

Those stunning green eyes are finally, finally, on him, and Dedue’s relief is as overwhelming as it is inexplicable. Reluctantly, he lets go, already missing the comforting feel of Ashe, solid and real, beneath his hand. And if Ashe looks a bit disappointed as he moves away, well...Dedue’s imagination has played far crueler tricks.

While Ashe waits, expectant, Dedue stalls for time by gathering his long hair and tying it into a ponytail, freeing it from the sticky summer sweat on the back of his neck.

“....your own birthday will be here soon,” Dedue eventually settles on saying, “Is there anything in particular you would like?”

“Ah, I don’t know....” Ashe trails off. He walks a few steps away, hands clasped behind his back. When he turns around, his grin is so mischievous, it makes Dedue’s heart skip a beat.

“How about a jeweled branch from the highest peak of Woodfall?” Ashe speaks in Ikanan, the words flowing with the smooth confidence of endless practice. “You know, the one from Ikana’s legends.”

Dedue’s eyes grow wide. He had taught Ashe a handful of basic phrases, back when they first met: hello and goodbye, please and thank you. Gave him a book of Ikanan fairy tales, once, with the original texts and translations side by side. Slipped into his mother tongue at times, when he was tired, upset, or so comfortable he forgot where he was. But Dedue had never thought he would hear the rhythmic, rolling sounds of his own language, flawless in Ashe’s soft, sweet voice.

Maybe he is still dreaming, after all.

“It would look beautiful on the inn's reception desk, wouldn’t it?” Ashe insists, eyes sparkling.

Dedue decides to play along. He straightens his posture, his own hands behind his back, and puts on his most solemn face.

“It would,” he agrees, “if not for the fact Annette will knock it over within a day.”

Ashe barely holds back a snort. “Good point. Let’s see...a Goron’s stone bowl. I could cook enough soup to feed all of Clock Town!”

“Practical, in theory. But much too heavy to lift, nor could you get it through the door.”

“Then...the robe of a garo master? I’ve been needing a new winter coat.”

Dedue’s lips twitch, but his expression doesn’t break.

“It would not suit your skin tone, I’m afraid.”

Ashe laughs, sudden and bright. Infectious. Dedue can’t help but catch his joy, and chuckles, too. It’s been so long since they shared a moment like this, and Dedue holds every second of that precious laughter close.

“You speak Ikanan very well,” Dedue tells him, proud.

Ashe’s immediate blush is charming. Even the tips of his ears are pink. Dedue knows well that Ashe is always bashful about praise, has seen that blush many times over the harvests. He missed exploiting it. He missed Ashe.

“Lonato bought me books on the language soon after we met. I’ve been studying it for years,” Ashe confesses, quietly, and tugs at his unseasonably long sleeves. “After the carnival, I had a lot more free time to learn.”

Dedue flinches. Eight months, lost, all because of him. This is the time, he knows. To apologize, to explain, to beg forgiveness. But the breeze blows back Ashe’s bangs, and that scar is visible again, jagged and dark against pale porcelain. No matter how much Dedue longs for it, there is no fairytale ocarina, no magic song that he can play to turn back time and fix his mistakes. All of it—the glass, and the blood, and the blame—are his. There is so much he needs to say, but the words all die in his throat, charred and unspoken.

His mouth tastes like ashes (but how he longs to know Ashe’s taste, to press his mouth against his lips, his cheeks, his nose, his eyelids. Every scar, every freckle. In a different life, a different world).

Suddenly, Ashe embraces him. Dedue wraps his arms around him in turn, relishing in how right it feels to hold Ashe, the perfect fit of their bodies, his chin resting on Ashe’s soft silvery hair, smelling, as always, of honey and lavender. But Dedue’s contentment turns swiftly to concern when he feels Ashe’s whole body trembling, his face buried against his chest. Hiding.

“Honestly, Dedue…if I could have anything, I…”

Ashe takes a wet, shaky breath. His fists clench the back of Dedue’s shirt, desperately, and doesn’t let go.

“I want more time.”

It is an hour before dawn. The final day before moonfall; the eve of the Carnival of Time. Knowing what he must do, Dedue heads directly to West Clock Town, and into Sylvain’s Curiosity Shop.

When Dedue closes the door behind him, he finds himself in a dimly lit, crowded room. Ancient weapons and cursed masks gleam enticingly upon the walls. All around him are closed crates and display cases, filled with an assortment of oddities: gold dust, Zora eggs, poison mushrooms, all manner of shady potions, the gentle pink glow of bottled faeries, and even captive poes, pressing their ghastly faces against the glass. Sylvain himself stands behind a protective chain-link barrier, glowing faintly with magic. Only a small opening at the bottom allows him to exchange goods or money with his customers.

Dedue tries to imagine Ashe living in the back rooms of this shop for nearly a month and finds it difficult. He has heard one too many unflattering tales from Dimitri, about how half the goods were stolen or gifts from Sylvain’s parade of lovers. He has listened to Ingrid complain, more than once, about having to rescue Sylvain from a close call when violence and vengeance came knocking. He has even lent an ear to Felix, downing his third chateau in a row at the bar, grumbling about the weeks he and Annette spent creating the magic barrier to protect “that damned fool”. Dedue knew well enough to stay away. Until now.

Sylvain is drumming his fingers on the counter, bored, when he finally notices Dedue.

“Are you here to kick my ass, too?” Sylvain asks, grinning, “You might have to come back later, buddy, apparently there’s a line.”

As Dedue draws closer, he sees the dark swelling bruise on Sylvain’s jaw, undoubtedly from Ingrid. He is torn between sympathy and satisfaction, and settles for showing no expression at all.

“That is not why I am here.”

“I’m not gonna let you see Ashe. No visitors. No exceptions.”

“I am aware.”

Sylvain’s hollow smile drops from his face, leaving confusion in its place. He watches Dedue, his eyes dark and wary—the right a light brown, and the left an eerie gold. On the left side of his body, crawling from his shoulder all the way up the side of his neck, is a tattoo-like shadow in the shape of a spider, permanently etched in misfortune and obsidian ink.

Remnants of the Curse of Gautier. Once, or so the story goes, the Gautier family lived wealthy and comfortable lives in the Oceanside Manor on the Great Bay coast. But Mr. Gautier’s hunger was bottomless—never satisfied, he always, always wanted more. He stole a treasure from the Gerudo pirates and was struck with a curse for his greed, turning himself and his entire family into skulltulas. Monstrous spiders, golden and gruesome and grotesque. Dedue doesn’t know what broke the curse; Dimitri refuses to speak of it. All he knows is that Dimitri, Felix, and Ingrid went into the manor, and when they emerged, an entire month later, the only Gautier that returned with them was Sylvain, with a branded neck and a golden eye.

To this day the Gautier manor is abandoned. Every window boarded up. The doors locked. But sometimes, in the right light, the occasional glint of gold can still be seen inside.

At last, Dedue understands. He understands why it was Sylvain that Ashe chose. Why Sylvain was the one he felt safe with, who he trusted to keep his secrets, respect his choices, and not turn him away.

Sylvain knows, all too well, what it’s like to not be human.

Another tremor strikes. The moon, once more descending. The bottles in the crates rattle threateningly, and a box topples over, the strong stench of swamp mushrooms escaping into the air. The little cow bobblehead on the counter, proof that Sylvain is a patron of Latte, swings its neck, wildly, round and round. Neither Dedue nor Sylvain move. They wait for it to end, as they know it will. When it does, Sylvain continues to silently watch Dedue. Waiting.

Dedue bows, deeply, to him.

“First, I want to thank you.”

“Whoa, whoa. Thank me?” Sylvain’s jaw goes slack. “I’ve never heard that before.”

When Dedue lifts his head, he reveals a barely-there smile. “I am grateful to you for being there for Ashe. For taking care of him.”

“Eh, hiding a missing person right under everyone’s nose, lying to all our friends, for a whole month? It was nothing. Honestly, it’s more like the other way around. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so well every day in my life! He’s cute, he’s sweet, he cooks.” Sylvain winks. “Ashe can be my runaway, anytime.”

“Second,” Dedue says, ignoring him, “I need you to pass on a message.”

Sylvain puts his hands behind his head. “I’m listening.”

“Tell Ashe that I will not heed his letter. I will meet him, tonight, at the promised place. And we shall greet the morning...together.”

As he says the words, Dedue feels a wave of peace wash away the tension throughout his body. It is the same feeling he gets when he lights candles for the saints, or waters the flowers in his garden, or feeds hay to the cows straight from his hand. The way he feels each time he catches Ashe singing The Indigo-Go’s most popular songs, soft and happy and terribly off-key, as he does his morning sweep of the inn’s floors. The emotion that envelops Dedue whenever he sits under the laundry pool tree, reading glasses perched on his nose, contemplating the compiled essays of the Deku Butler, and Ashe is curled up beside him, eagerly turning through the pages of the Zora author Bernadetta’s latest fantasy novel—the peace of knowing he would never want to be anywhere else.

Whatever happens, Dedue is certain: he will face tomorrow with Ashe at his side.

Dedue drops his unwavering gaze, releasing Sylvain from where he’s pinned, speechless, behind the counter. He inclines his head and turns to leave. But when he reaches for the doorknob, Sylvain’s voice calls after him.

“He never stopped asking about you.”

Dedue’s hand pauses.

“Well, really, he asked about everyone. How Annette was holding up running the inn alone, if Caspar was still feeding that keaton kit by the north playground. But every day, without fail...he always worried about you the most.”

Saying nothing, Dedue opens the door, and walks out onto the cobbled yellow stairs of West Clock Town. The clock tower chimes six, heralding the morning, as surely as the sun that peeks above the town walls, pouring soothing golden light upon Dedue’s head, his shoulders, his face. The other signs of dawn Dedue so loved—the oven fire crackling in the Stock Pot Inn’s kitchen, standing elbow to elbow with Ashe amidst the smells of baking bread and sizzling bacon and melted butter, their hands caked with flour, playfully nudging Ashe hard with his hip until he stumbles, laughs, and his aurora green eyes, they look up at him and shine and shine and shine—those, Dedue can only imagine. He closes his eyes, and breathes deep.

Twenty-four hours remain.

Before the end, he still has one last thing to do.

For the people of Clock Town, this is how the story starts:

Dedue Molinaro climbs onto the passenger seat of a wagon beside Daya, his expression a careful stoic mask, betrayed by only a lone, shaky breath. The teal scarf around his shoulders is warm with his father’s lingering scent: cardamom and cigar smoke. Behind them, the milk bottles rattle over every bump in the road. Neither sibling says a word as they drive the wagon toward Clock Town. There is nothing that the past due notice left on their kitchen table, or the dirt-stained nails of their tightly clasped hands, fresh from digging their parents’ graves, doesn’t already say.

Dedue looks behind his shoulder as Molinaro Ranch recedes in the distance. He smells the familiar manure of the cows, hears them moo from within the barn, tucked safely away for the coming night. He sees the vast field of grasses sighing in the wind, rich and verdant as each of the Molinaro family’s eyes, as if their very blood was one with the land. His pride. Homesickness trembles beneath Dedue’s skin long before the ranch fades out of view.

A boy like that, the people whisper, was never meant to leave.

Or, perhaps, the story starts even earlier, though no one dares to speak it openly: the harvest the clock tower refused to chime. When only Christophe Gaspard, the innkeeper’s son, was brave enough to enter the tower’s belly, and discover why time itself had stopped.

Inside the tower the air is cool and damp, the shadows so thick Christophe needs a lantern to watch his step. It is silent. Eerie. Not even the waterwheel dares to turn. Deep within, on a broken gear frozen in place, he finds a blanket. It is thin and pale as moonlight, and twice as silver, and in its shallow embrace lays a baby.

The baby doesn’t make a single sound. His eyes green, luminescent as a firefly’s glow, beautiful and bright in the darkness. When Christophe strokes the baby’s cheek in disbelief, he jerks back his hand, his fingers smarting. Ash. Ash, hot and white, clings to the baby’s skin, chokes his lungs, covers every strand of his hair, as if he had been thrown into a roaring fire and, beyond all hope, survived. A baby who shouldn’t even be alive—and yet, still breathes. Christophe falls, helplessly, in love. As helplessly as he knows that quiet ruin of warmth and white is meant to be the baby’s name. Gently, he gathers Ashe into his arms, and takes his brother home.

At once, the clock gears turn again.

A boy like that, the people whisper, was never meant to stay.

Midnight tolls upon the end of the world. The Carnival of Time begins in a shower of ruby and amethyst fireworks. In answer, the spherical stone top of the clock tower lifts high, then higher, and as its weight swings down, the clock face suddenly becomes the tower’s roof, and reveals a hidden passage: the door to the promised place.

An hour later, as Ashe slowly climbs the clock tower’s secret winding stair, resolved to meet his fate, he’s reminded of the funeral pyre.

His beginning, and his end.

Ashe remembers the echo of glass steps beneath his feet as he was dragged to the castle’s highest spire. The unyielding wood at his back. The bite of icy chains. The wisp of moonlight blanket he had stolen tied to his forced open palms. How the Queen of the Moon herself dipped the white torch to its fabric, guaranteeing that the first place the flames devoured would be Ashe’s traitorous, thieving hands. So he would never forget the agony of boiling blood, the stench of burning skin, not the pain nor the heat nor the crime he committed. Not even in Ashe’s new life, where despite being wholly engulfed by that fire, body and soul, the burn scars manifested on his hands alone. Even reborn, he was still swaddled in the very blanket he stole. The one Ashe has wrapped into a bundle, and holds close to his chest, even now, as he ascends to meet his executioner.

A reminder, and a promise.

But it is not the Queen of the Moon who waits atop the clock tower, face calm and still as the moon’s dark seas, even as her subject screamed.

It is Dedue.

Above, the moon has grown so large it swallows nearly every star in the sky, and below, the face of the clock tower quakes every few minutes with dread, not even daring to rotate its ring. The fireworks fall around them. They crackle in their ears, casting red and violet shadows upon the town. But they mean nothing to Ashe. There is only Dedue, standing on the other side of the clock face, holding his own wrapped bundle. Patiently waiting, just as he said he would.

There is no heaven, no time. All else fades away, until it is just the two of them, together, at the place of promise. Something Ashe has wanted, and wanted, and wanted, with all of his heart.

Ashe wonders how joy can feel so much like sorrow.

Hesitantly, Ashe comes to a stop several feet away from Dedue. He forces himself to not look away, to keep his chin up, and stand still, despite how much his legs want to tremble. Without a cloak to hide behind, for the first time, Dedue will see Ashe for what he really, truly is:

Inhuman.

Since the moon began falling, Ashe had gradually been turning back to what he was, before he was killed, and then reincarnated upon Termina. A creature whose true form is made of smooth, glistening crystal. Every inch of his silver body emitting an unnatural ivory glow, the very same as the tears he couldn’t help but shed. A moon skin.

Ashe tried to make it stop. With a hammer, a knife—once, thrusting his feet into the fireplace. But the moon skin didn’t break, cut, or melt; a moon skin could feel nothing at all. Instead, it spread and spread, growing like a rash. When Ashe could no longer hide with long sleeves, or pants, or high collars. When Ashe could no longer deny he wasn’t human. He ran. Fled to Sylvain, who took one look at Ashe, ushered him inside, and locked the door. Sylvain helped him hide for weeks in a dingy backroom, lurking in the dark like the monster he was, flinching at every glimpse of the moon. Ashe couldn’t bear for anyone to see him that way. To know, once and for all, that he truly never belonged. That every dark whisper in his own heart was right.

He is a thief, and nothing more.

But Dedue sees him, all of him, right now. And though Ashe braces himself for the inevitable recoil, the disgusted grimace, there is nothing worse than a slight parting of the lips, a startled widening of the eyes. There and gone. Dedue doesn’t leave. He doesn’t step back.

He steps closer.

“Ashe.”

And his name, that single syllable, held so gently in Dedue’s low and loving voice, reaches across the space between them. It sounds so much like hope. Like the flash of light breaking through the edge of a storm, the promise of arms waiting and willing to catch you, that Ashe feels safe enough to fall.

So he does.

“I’m so sorry, Dedue. I should have told you. I shouldn’t have left, I-I just...I wanted you to remember me how I was, and…” He pushes past the thickness in his throat, and whispers, “I didn’t know how to say goodbye.”

Another firework blooms purple above them, deepening the shadows under Dedue’s eyes.

“I am sorry, as well. It was wrong of me to push you away. I have been afraid, have done nothing but run from my feelings, run from you. No more.”

Dedue unwraps the cloth in the crook of his arm. Within is a handcrafted mask. Simple, yet lovely. Its smiling face made of amber glazed clay, the edges surrounded in a glorious mane of gladiolus, their golden petals layered over and over one another to create an illusion of light rays. A sun mask.

Ashe can’t find his breath. His heartbeat lost somewhere on the clock tower stairs. With unsteady hands, he unwraps the blanket, revealing a handcrafted mask of his own. Just as simple, just as lovely. A smiling face like painted pearl, the cracks in the old clay filled with silver dust, the darkness of its eyes and mouth outlined with the lush purple petals of violets. A moon mask.

The engagement masks of the sun and the moon, meant to be joined as one and blessed by the saints, here at the promised place.

Dedue and Ashe look incredulously at each other’s masks, and then their eyes meet. Ashe laughs, suddenly. Buoyant and giddy. He feels like he’s dreaming. At any moment, he’ll wake up to the dark ceiling of the Curiosity Shop backroom, the stink of swamp mushrooms, and realize the day has started over.

But Dedue’s smile is honey sweet and dizzyingly real.

“You feel the same. You...you really feel the same.” Another disbelieving laugh bubbles out of Ashe. Despite the moon skin stealing his senses, he still feels such happiness, reviving the flowers long dormant in the chambers of his heart, seeking their first glimpse of sun after months and months of rain.

“Sorry! It’s just. This doesn’t feel real. I sent you the letter because I meant to leave the mask behind...I wanted you to know how I felt, even if I couldn’t stay. I never once thought you would make your own.”

“My apologies. I did not intend to adore you,” Dedue says, teasing and fond, “But I do, Ashe. Since that very first harvest we met, when you were the only one who looked my way, who made me feel human.” His grip tightens around his mask. “The moon may take you. The world may end. But if I live beyond this night, I need you to know—you are the only one I want beside me when the sun rises. This morning, and every morning after. I want your forever, but...not like this.”

And then Dedue smashes his sun mask against the floor.

Time, which until then felt frozen, begins to speed. Ashe cries out. He reaches to catch it. But it’s too late. He can only watch as pieces of amber clay scatter across the clock face, flower petals adrift in the air. A ruby firework colors the scene in shades of ominous red. The tower shakes. The moon so near Ashe can feel its presence squeeze inside his chest, pushing upon his shoulders, weighing down his head.

“Dedue, why…” Ashe fights the moon’s pull, wills his body to move with all his strength. “I don’t—”

But when Ashe can finally look up, the world seems to tilt. The mask is destroyed, the saints will never give their blessing, and Dedue—

Dedue is still smiling.

“We have hurt and hid from each other,” Dedue says, “and there is much we still need to mend. That mask was merely my promise: I mean to marry you. Not because the moon is falling, or there may be no more time. But when it feels right.”

Once more, Dedue steps closer.

“I want to grow a garden behind the inn, so you never have to live a day without violets. I want Daya to share every embarrassing story she knows of me. To hear you call each other family in Ikanan. I want to take you out on a real date, hold your hand as we walk around town, and kiss you in front of everyone, proud and unafraid.”

“I’d like that,” Ashe says, softly, “we could picnic in North Clock Town, with champagne and cherry pie. I...I want to tell you the legends of the moon. Everything about my life. How to sing the names of every star...and hear you sing mine, the name no one knows. I want you to teach me how to milk the cows on your ranch. How to make your mother’s recipes just right, so I can cook all of your childhood favorites, and you’ll know, every day, you’re really home.”

Ashe never knew until that moment: when Dedue’s grin is big enough, his cheeks dimple adorably.

“I want to take you to Snow Mountain,” Dedue adds, a mischievous gleam in his eye, “so I can prove your eyes are more beautiful than the northern lights.”

Even beneath his moon skin, Ashe knows his crystal face is burning, glowing with a rosy pink sheen.

“W-well, um, then...then we have to visit Zora’s Hall, too. I want to ask them for a sea glass cowry shell. So I can lift it up to your eyes, and then give it right back, because I’ve known the truth all along.” Though he tries for a light and playful tone, Ashe’s voice comes out too sincere when he says, “The only treasure I need is you.”

The color of Dedue’s face now perfectly matches his own. They are standing so near. Ashe could take one, two steps more, and wrap his arms around him, press his face against Dedue’s chest, and listen to the precious melody of his heart. But behind Dedue’s head, the moon still looms. It calls to Ashe’s crystal blood. The back of his neck prickles, as if the Queen herself stands behind his shoulder, listening to his every word. The pressure in his chest is so intense, he feels like he might break.

Ashe shakes his head and clutches his own mask close.

“But...that’s just a dream. There won’t be a someday, Dedue.”

“There will,” Dedue insists, “Once, I wished I could rewind time. I wanted to erase all of my mistakes as if they never were. But second chances are a choice. Not a wish. We have to fight for them. If we are willing to do the work, we can always start again.”

Dedue takes one more step. He reaches out his hand and cradles Ashe’s smooth crystal cheek. Ashe can no longer feel the warmth of his palm, but he imagines it, leaning into the phantom memory of his touch.

“I love you, Ashe.” Dedue says, “Do you want to start over?”

The pressure screams inside. It reverberates throughout Ashe’s entire body, threatens to pull him down, bring him to his knees. The eerie bone whiteness of the moon blots out his vision. He can sense the pierce of the Queen’s cold eyes.

But Dedue’s gentle hand is an anchor. Instead of a pyre, or a dark cell, or a spear at his throat, Ashe remembers the warmth of Dedue’s every smile, his every touch. The warmth of freshly brewed mint tea, of a keaton kit purring under his hands, of dancing together at the carnival with Annette and Sylvain and all their friends. Instead of endless white dust, or pearl towers, or black seas, he remembers the salty taste of tears. The sting of bloodied knuckles, the chills of a winter fever, the sight of Christophe’s and Lonato’s and Olivia’s graves, and that helpless, hollow ache in his heart as time steals even their memory away.

Ashe thinks of Termina. All the people he’s met, the emotions he’s felt.

There is nothing he doesn’t cherish.

“I do,” Ashe says, and at long last, he returns Dedue’s smile. “I don’t know if someone like me...if I deserve so much happiness. But I want to start again. I want to fall in love with you, over and over. Relive every joy. Every heartache. I love you, so much, Dedue.”

Ashe steps back, the moonlit blanket falling from his scarred hands, and smashes his own mask against the clock tower floor.

A thunderous crack resounds through the sky. The pressure on Ashe's chest lifts, the tremors end, and the fireworks, too, fade and still, as if they know the saints lie in wait, watching in silence, the glint of their golden eyes hidden among the stars, the slits of their pupils concealed in the infinite darkness between.

Then, the moon weeps.

Huge crystal tears pelt the world of Termina in a monstrous deluge. A hailstorm so heavy it hides the very moon, plunging everything into black. The tears break as they hit the earth in explosions of ivory light, spraying fragments across every surface. When the first tear strikes Ashe’s shoulder, he gasps, flinching back from the pain. Then he realizes. Pain. He’s feeling pain. Where the teardrop hit his moon skin, a fracture appeared. As the hail continues to pour, he gets hit by another drop, and another and another. More and more cracks splinter his skin, and beneath, Ashe can see pale human flesh peeking through.

Suddenly, the moon skin upon the back of Ashe’s hand shatters, the shards joining the sea of them below. Eyes wide with awe, Ashe reaches out toward Dedue. Dedue reaches back, and their hands touch, fingers lace. Both of them warm. Both alive. So magically, wondrously, alive.

Before Ashe knows it, Dedue is sweeping him up into his arms, lifting him high. The teardrops are leaving puddles of bruises against his newly exposed skin, but he doesn’t care at all. Dedue is laughing, deep and true from his belly. Ashe loves the sound. He laughs, too, and wraps his arms around Dedue’s neck, and then Dedue is spinning them, round and round. The world blurs in a whirl of black and white. With every new drop of hail, Ashe’s moon skin breaks a little more, revealing his cheek, his arm, his neck. It hurts. It hurts so much, like an essential part of Ashe is being viciously torn away, but all he can do is breathlessly hope for more.

Ashe wonders how sorrow can feel so much like joy.

When the moon skin falls completely away from Ashe’s head, he tenderly places a hand on either side of Dedue’s face. Feels the stubble rough under his palms, the heat of Dedue’s blush on his fingertips. Those beloved sea glass eyes, ever on his, guiding him safely home. Ashe leans down. Dedue tips back his head. Their lips meet, and they kiss, slow and sweet and sure. Again, and again, addicted to the sensation of the other’s smile against their own, how happiness, it turns out, tastes a lot like cinnamon and cream.

The moon weeps, and the sun doesn’t rise, and they are in love at the end of the world. So Ashe and Dedue kiss in the darkness. They steal their second chances between the crack and burst of each broken crystal ringing in their ears. They become numb to the bruises, the pain. Each other is all they know. The shards of tears glow like fallen stars before their feet, beautiful and white and shimmering all around them, as if they were in the middle of a meteor shower. The two of them alone the center of their own private galaxy, born anew.

They love, and they love, and they love.

And never, not once, does Ashe look up at the sky.

In truth, this is how the story starts:

An empty blue sky. A thousand crystals, glimmering like a rainbow sea in the morning light. A clock, chiming in the distance.

A quartet of dragons, singing from every horizon, golden eyes bright as the candles lit upon their altar, each sable claw stained with dust white as the moon.

A mask salesman, gluing the clay fragments of a broken promise, eager to add a new mask to his bag of wares, already clattering and heavy with stories.

And a pair of lovers, descending from the heavens, hand in hand, to greet the dawn of a new day.