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 Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2025 9:38 pm
Lex wasn't sure how long he'd stood there in silence, staring at Lilitu's note and Mauritz's urn. It could have only been a few minutes, it could have been hours--his sense of time was bad anyway, and the storm of emotions in his chest made any kind of objective measurement difficult.
The note, fair enough--especially if Lilitu had been contemplating the urn he'd found against the wall. But it was the urn itself that was making things incredibly emotionally complicated.
Honestly, part of Lex wanted to hurl it through a window and never see it again. But that wasn't fair--Mauritz had been Lilitu's....lover, though Lex suspected the relationship had been about as good as his with Eithian, all things considered. And every time he laid eyes on the damned urn, every time he was reminded that Lilitu had carried the weight of that arrogant, deceitful, hateful b*****d for so many centuries, it made him want to break things. The urn specifically, if he was entirely honest.
That wasn't his choice to make, though. It had to be Lilitu's.
Finally, with an unhappy sigh, he pulled himself away fromt he urn and dropped into a salvaged armchair, setting the note aside. Lilitu would be home soon, he hoped. And then they could talk about all of this, if Lilitu was ready.
Maybe leaving the urn out meant that he was, in some way. Lex hoped so. It wa,s in his opinion, far beyond time to be done with the damned thing.
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Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2025 10:09 pm
Heading back home from the quick little patrol he’d gone on, Arcalís didn’t know what to expect. He stayed powered up longer than he usually did, mostly because he had no idea whether Lex would’ve found the note yet, or where he’d be, and oh, dammit, Lilitu had left the urn just……sitting out like that, hadn’t he? Right where Lex could easily find it. And part of him wanted to hope that Lex hadn’t found it. Maybe he’d been busy with something else, and he hadn’t found the urn, and they wouldn’t need to deal with the stupid thing or what it meant or any of it.
But as Arcalís stopped in an alley a few blocks away from the house to power down—he couldn’t go all the way home powered up and risk leading someone back there—part of him felt like………would that really have been so bad?
What was the worst that could happen from Lex finding Mauritz’s urn out like that, Lilitu wondered, adjusting the scarf he’d found in one of the dumpsters near a secondhand store uptown. It was an oddly colored thing, heavy and knit or crocheted together, with thread that seemed in some lights blue, in others green, and in still others violet. Aside from it keeping him warm as the weather turned cold, Lilitu appreciated the craftsmanship. Someone had made this by hand, he felt quite certain, and brought the strangely colored thread into its current shape with care. And no matter what Lex rightfully felt about Mauritz, he would handle any conversation about the urn with similar care.
Lilitu didn’t need to wonder about that much. In all his centuries of life, only his family had truly cared for him in the same way that Lex did.
Once he got back to the house, it didn’t take long to find Lex: sitting in one of the armchairs by the fireplace, the same room where Lilitu had left the urn. So, he’d definitely found it, then. Lex wasn’t unobservant, and he certainly wouldn’t have missed something so significant as Mauritz’s urn. Better, then, for Lilitu to own the situation. To respect Lex in the same way he did Lilitu by not trying to hide anything.
“Hey,” Lilitu said softly, sitting on the armrest of Lex’s chair, with his body angled toward his migadye. He reached out without thinking, then stopped shy of touching Lex’s hair or his ears. That……felt too potentially distracting. Instead, Lilitu let his hand drop and brushed the backs of his fingers down Lex’s shoulder as he asked, “Can we talk……?”
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Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2025 10:20 pm
There was a relief in having Lilitu arrive home. As soon as Lex heard the sounds that would mean his partner was back,h e perked up, sitting up a little in his seat with a small smile. Yes, everything was failry fraught, but...they could talk about it, now, maybe. Better than the uncomfortable avoidance Lex had been engaging in.
He really didn't enjoy that sort of thing. But he'd done his best to spare Lilitu's feelings, since...he suspected whatever had happened with Mauritz weighed heavy, if he was still carrying the urn so long after any reasonable (and several unreasonable, Lex was pretty sure) interpenetration of Arcalian mourning custom said he could have buried it.
"Hi," Lex greeted, and while Lilitu's fingers found he shoulder, he did turn to briefly press his face against Lilitu's arm as a gesture of affectionate greeting. "I think we need to, yeah."
He wanted to ask about how things had gone, if Lilitu was okay, if he'd run into anything--but all of those would be distractions from the big, looming issue.
"I found Mauritz's urn."
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Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2025 11:04 pm
The little kiss from Lex made Lilitu smile, even if that expression almost immediately flickered out into something more somber. More sober. With a deep breath, Lilitu tried to consider his words. What did he want to say, how did he want to say it, what did he need to say—both for Lex and for himself. Even more effort, though, went into fighting the impulse to slip into Lex’s lap.
Even though he might’ve been welcome there, right now, it felt……so distracting. Too much of an excuse to not deal with everything.
“I’ve been trying not to leave it out where you had to see it,” Lilitu said softly, starting with the first thought about the urn that would let him put it into coherent words. His ears drooped, going stiff as they pinned themself back. “But……ever since all of that up on Dagon, and seeing him in the fog……?” He sighed. “Whatever that leviathan did, or more accurately, the Chaos powering it? It—Lex, we were right by the ocean but it smelled like him.” Woody, smokey, spicy. A scent with several loosely associated cousins among the many scents that Earth had to offer, but nothing exactly the same. A scent that had somehow been a home, a nightmare, a refuge, and a prison, all at the same time. “I would’ve sworn I could hear him laughing.”
For all he’d just talked himself out of slipping into Lex’s lap, as the memories of everything up on Dagon’s world flooded back to him, Lilitu shivered and tensed up. Head bowed, his eyes wide and fixed on Lex, Lilitu ignored the part of his mind telling him not to do this. Not to slip off the armrest and closer to Lex. It was all instinctive, an Arcalian stress response that had been with his people for far longer than anyone had ever remembered, and on some level, Lilitu knew that he could have fought it. He could have kept his distance until this important conversation was done. He could have kept his hands to himself, and not started gently worrying them through some of Lex’s hair (even though it was taking a great deal of self-restraint to do this instead of reaching up to groom his ears, which might have been even more distracting, given how sensitive they were).
Lilitu could have resisted all the impulses making him act this way.
But instead, trembling, he leaned into Lex’s chest. Lex was His Favorite Person. Lex was Safe.
Safe on a deep level that nobody else would ever be again. Even if Lilitu’s parents, his grandparents, his aunts and uncles, his siblings and cousins, and his niblings had managed to reincarnate, they wouldn’t be the same people he’d known before. Maybe the people who now had his family’s starseeds would join the ranks of these newfangled Moon Knights and Cybele Knights, gaining magical power that they hadn’t held during the Silver Millennium. That was a nice thought—maybe the Code would bless them with that duty and responsibility, so they could protect themselves against Chaos in ways they hadn’t been able to do before—but they still wouldn’t be the people Lilitu had known.
Lex was the only person who would ever feel like home to Lilitu in this same way.
“……Mauritz was the last survivor aside from me,” he admitted softly, separating a little clump of Lex’s hair from the rest and starting to weave it into a loose braid, easily taken apart. “I failed to save everyone else. They all just…… So many went out into the woods and just never came back. People talked about hearing things? Whispers, first. Then, they’d get stronger. All of our people, I mean……” He gently nudged his head at Lex’s shoulder. “The Madriuans living on Arcalís. Whether they’d been born there or taken there new. Your people who were also mine because they lived here too and they mattered, their lives mattered. But the voices from the Chaos, when they set in, they made some people crazy—paranoid—and I couldn’t be everywhere all the time, I tried, I promise I did, but……”
A tight, squeaking sort of sound escaped Lilitu’s throat. “I couldn’t save our people. I couldn’t save my people. I couldn’t save my family, or anybody else’s. And then, when it’s down to me and that selfish ******** pig, he just—” As Lilitu’s breath hitched, he burrowed more against Lex’s chest. “So many others had to die afraid, and suffering, and completely out of their minds. And his last ******** act was begging me to kill him. To let him die as himself. While I’m begging him to please keep trying.”
He shivered again. “‘Have I not given you everything for which you asked me,’ he said. Right as he’s ignoring that I’m asking him to stay with me. What a ******** joke.”
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Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2025 11:20 pm
Lex was quiet, letting Lilitu talk. It was clear how much this had all built up, how much it weighed on him. and part of Lex was maybe a little thankful for what had happened on Dagon--not that Lilitu, too, had seen his personal monster in the fog, but that it had, at least, brought everything to the surface.
Certainly, he had not tended to Eithian's remains as kindly as Lilitu had tended to Mauritz's, but perhaps it had been easier for him. He'd ended things, and Eithian was directly responsible for ruining Madriu-the-world.
(And Madriu-the-person, Lex sometimes though,t but Lilitu didn't seem to think he was ruined or broken, and Lex would rather see himself the way Lilitu saw him than the way he saw himself.)
"Whatever was in that fog," Lex said, "it wanted us afraid. To dredge up the things we least wished to see." He exhaled, and as Lilitu came into his lap, he gathered his migadye up, and he nuzzled at Lilitu's hair, an offer of comfort that he hoped wouldn't take them too far away from what they were discussing. They could have a serious conversation with Lilitu in Lex's lap; that was absolutely fine with him.
"And you are here now, and he is not." It was a simple statement, gentle but firm.
Lex had to force himself not to growl, when Lilitu described Mauritz's last moments. But he squeezed Lilitu a little tighter, and he let out a tense breath.
"I know you did everything you could. I know you would never do less than that. But Chaos is stronger than any one person. There is a reason Dagon needed so many of us. We could not have...." It was hard for him to believe, to some degree. But he had to accept it. "We couldn't have done any better, migadye. We were fighting something beyond anything we could have handled, apart. Or even together, just the two of us, I think." Maybe it would have been better, if they could have reached each other, but maybe they would just both be dead. It was hard to be sure.
He exhaled between his teeth.
"He never once deserved the loyalty you gave him, Lilitu. His ashes don't, either."
He had held his tongue for too long. It burst out of him. But he would not take that back.
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Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2025 2:02 am
“I know,” Lilitu admitted, softly but not uncertainly. It was the first time he’d said as much out loud about Mauritz. About how Mauritz had treated him. And the sentiment applied to so many of the other things that Lex brought up—about how the Chaos on Dagon had wanted them all to be afraid, about how Lilitu was alive and Mauritz was not, about how Chaos was too powerful for any of them to defeat alone—but Lilitu had primarily meant it about the one specific thing. And so, he went on, “I know he didn’t deserve it. And he doesn’t deserve for me to carry him with me like this now. I just……”
Making a tense, discontented sound, Lilitu paused in fiddling with the little braid and buffed his cheek along Lex’s shoulder and collarbone. Not that doing this actually accomplished what his instincts wanted it to do. Even if Arcalians had ever been capable of scent-marking like that, they certainly hadn’t been by the time Lilitu had been born with their senshi’s starseed. Besides, whom would he even be scent-marking for? How could he know that anyone on Earth could smell the scents that he wasn’t actually laying down, much less interpret them correctly?
But instincts didn’t care about logic. And on that deep, instinctive level, buffing his cheek against Lex like this soothed Lilitu’s nerves. Reminded him not only that Lex was here, but that he was here with Lex, this person who was both his home and a paired soul whom Lilitu would choose again, and again, and again (among other things). Satisfied some deep itch that felt, about Lex, very extremely Mine and disinclined to let anybody else think otherwise.
With that itch scratched, Lilitu untensed somewhat in Lex’s arms. “At first, I was just carrying him around because……that was what we did,” he said, gently picking up where he’d left off with loosely braiding Lex’s hair. “Then, there was so much snow that I couldn’t reach the ground to bury him. Which shouldn’t have been a surprise? I tried, but we hadn’t been able to bury anyone for ages by that point. And I thought about putting his urn somewhere? In one of the places we had to use to store the urns we couldn’t bury? But whenever I took off the chain and tried to leave him behind, it felt like………I don’t know, like?”
He swallowed thickly. “Like some part of him was still with me, and he knew that I wanted him gone, and he couldn’t stand to let me let him go? And I just……held onto him? Until I didn’t know how to let him go anymore? It felt like all of my grandmother’s old ghost stories……the ones about the people who didn’t get the proper rites and came back to terrorize the people who neglected them like that.”
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Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2025 2:16 am
Lex exhaled. There was a sort of relief, in hearing Lilitu agree with him. In knowing that maybe, they could take that step forward, start...letting go. Pry Mauritz's last hold off of Lilitu so that he could truly be free from the past that clung to him.
"Good. I'm glad you know," he said. And he smiled, just a little, feeling Lilitu rub his cheek against his collarbone and shoulder--he knew the gesture, even if it hadn't worked for either of their peoples for many centuries, if ever. He briefly tightened his embrace, a little placed claim of his own, because after so long of wanting and hoping and waiting, and after all of the death and misery they had both endured, they were here.
Together. Alive. Where they belonged.
"Yours," he breathed into Lilitu's hair. A little promise, for the both of them, because Lilitu didn't need to say out loud what he meant for Lex to recognize it.
And while Lilitu continued his explanation, Lex listened, certainly, but he also buried his nose in Lilitu's hair, nuzzling at the soft pastel locks, taking in the scent of him--what there was, which was mostly whatever product he was using that they'd been able to scrounge, but was still Lilitu.
"Mm. But I think anyone could say you've more than given him his proper rites." Lex's ears flicked, briefly, and he made a little thoughtful noise. "....We could find somewhere to bury him," he offered. "There are Saturn Knights in this city. Surely one of the old graveyards will have space for him. He could be laid to rest. Away from you." And away from his home planet, but Lex thought that was appropriate. Mauritz didn't deserve the dignity of "home".
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Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2025 3:59 pm
“Yours too,” Lilitu promised in return.
Maybe it needed to be said, and maybe it didn’t. Regardless of need, though, it made him feel better to affirm that he recognized the feeling of Lex holding him so tightly, and recognized the intent behind Lex nuzzling at him, and Lilitu agreed. After so many centuries apart, after so long forbidden by circumstances and their social positions from saying aloud what they really were to each other, Lilitu didn’t want to waste any more time in not letting Lex know how deeply Lilitu loved him. How Lilitu always had—or at least, he’d loved Lex long enough that he no longer remembered what it was like to live without loving Lex. How Lex would always have a home with him, in the same way that Lex was home to Lilitu.
Lex’s serious suggestions about the problem before them, though…… Lilitu let those wash over him, finally starting to relax against Lex’s chest as he thought about what Lex was saying. He’d always been lucky to have Lex, so much better at coming up with practical steps to help make all of Lilitu’s big ideas happen for real (aside from “storming down to the Arcalian senate while they were in session and using senshi privilege to demand his be allowed to speak,” which Lilitu had often come up with on his own). But as Lilitu’s breathing started to steady and his thoughts started to feel clearer—less tangled up in themselves and cluttered with emotions that weren’t particularly helping him think—Lilitu felt especially aware of how lucky he was to have Lex in his life, as his partner.
Maybe he had wished a better fate for Lex, that he wouldn’t have had to endure a thousand years of solitude and endless struggle against Chaos. But……it had worked out, bringing them back together, in an age where no one could stop them from being open with their love.
“One of the Saturn Knights in the city could be a good source of help,” Lilitu agreed. “And it would be a good compromise.…… I need him gone, and he needs to be buried properly. And……” He sighed softly. “Maybe tomorrow we can start looking for one? Tonight, I think I’d just like to stay here with you?”
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Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2025 4:11 pm
Lex let out a low, rumbly, contented growl, nuzzling at Lilitu's hair some more. Yes. They had found each other, built a home together--there were still some pieces they needed to bring together, but they were in a much better place than they had been before. And even if the house was a little drafty, and they had to avoid what few neighbors there were, and they didn't have all the modern comforts humans were accustomed to--they had each other. That was all Lex could want.
He was content to allow Lilitu a quiet moment to settle and consider his suggestion; it was simple to him, but that did not mean it was simple to his partner. He wasn't the one with centuries of feelings bound up in the urn sitting against the wall.
Well, okay, he did have a lot of feelings about it. But very different ones.
It had to be Lilitu's choice, in the end; Lex wouldn't force him. But he was glad to have the first step of agreement, at least.
"Mm. That sounds like a fine plan to me." They could worry about Mauritz's remains tomorrow. Tonight, they had each other.
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