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Among the Stars

Chapter Seventeen

By Roofles

Time was meaningless here.

Not that it mattered.

For a day together, it already felt like a lifetime. “Why not make that our reality?” Isaac wouldn’t know what it would be like not to have him there. For him, Isaac had never had to deal with a time, a day, where Typhon, Cyclone wasn’t there. That was something he was beginning to learn, to understand in this endlessness that they were within.

A place without limits only constrained by ones our concept of time passing.

“This space is beyond time.” Cyclone had sat next to Isaac on the first, third, tenth, fiftieth day that he was there. Looking at the same shifting sea, at the same drifting clouds above and towards a sunset that would never vanish over the horizon. “It exists for us. To us,” Cyclone fussed with the rocks underneath his ass, trying to get comfortable. “To us,” he began again louder. “This is real. This is what we feel and perceive, thus it’s real…”

“To us.” Isaac chuckle softly, giving a simple nod of his head. Scooting closer, he rested against the naked Saberwolf sitting there next to him. As he had done so many times before and would go onto do so many times in the future. “Cyclone?” It was like they were back there on Saber, on that rocky cliffside looking upwards towards the stars above.

“Yes, Isaac?”

“Are you happy?”

“I’ve never been happier.” Cyclone wagged his tail, smiling like an idiot and Isaac let him have another day.

It was a routine. Waking up in the morning, showering and having breakfast. They would talk about anything that came to mind or sit there in comfortable silence. For when you were with someone you trusted with your very heart and soul, words weren’t always needed. Sometimes, the silence was just as comforting.

Isaac would sit near the window, listening to the dark sea just outside. Hear the sound of the waves crashing against the rocky shoreline. Listen as it retreated and pulled back, to repeat the process endlessly. It was as if the very waves were trying to erode this place, this island, away. A futile effort that it would never give up on.

“That’s the void sea?” Isaac sipped his coffee, looking out the window. The sea was black with a tint of purple along the surface. The shifting waves in the sunlight looked almost alive. Isaac knew that wasn’t the case.

The void sea wasn’t alive as he were. It was something else entirely. It both existed and didn’t exist. A cosmic force that he could spend eternity researching and not even begin to scrap the surface of. That was how strange and unnerving it was. Something he knew, inside, that he would never begin to understand or comprehend.

It was hauntingly beautiful.

“It is.” Cyclone didn’t bother looking out the window as he lapped at the coffee he held delicately with both his large hands around the ceramic mug. It was blue. Made of some sort of clay that had been fired and glazed.

The detail of the cup was strange, as, it stood out amongst this place. Certain objects, like that mug, stood out in contrast to the rest of the island. It had a sharper contrast to it, more define edges. It was brighter… more real. Isaac would think of these objects, like himself, as “real” compared to the fantasy that Cyclone wanted them to live within.

Memories or, rather, anchors. Anchors that kept this island from being swept away into the void sea. Things that kept this place solid and formed. Objects that represented some sort of deeper meaning or connection for Cyclone to have. Pieces of a greater puzzle that, even without the rest, still would show enough of the grand picture of things that Isaac could grasp some kind of meaning and understanding behind it.

These fragmented memories were warm to the touch. Isaac held that mug in his hands, feeling the warmth of it. His mug was red. And as he held the memory, he felt it echo throughout him.

“… go to the… then the commander… it was hilarious!” Words spoken, memories once shared and experienced by Cyclone contained in each of these objects. From times that Isaac wouldn’t ever know or remember.

Times where Cyclone was and wasn’t with him. Where it had been Typhon before he became Cyclone. Memories of lifetimes or alternate timelines that converged all together to this point. Outside time itself.

“These pieces are things that Zarvarsh The Time Devourer wasn’t able to… eat.” Isaac carefully placed it, the mug, back down, glancing towards the hourglass that sat nearby. An ominous presence that was and wasn’t always there.

Since they had come here, it had remained quiet. Still. In a slumbering state, waiting. Isaac knew what it was waiting for. It seemed to know all futures and possibilities. Leading him here? Guiding him along times stream? It knew that this, all of this, wasn’t real. This delusion or fabrication that Cyclone had manifested wouldn’t be able to last.

At least, not in the way it could comprehend. For time was meaningless here but, in turn, it was meaningless to a omniscient being that could see throughout time. A creature that wasn’t effected by times flow and would see a day, an hour, or a lifetime as the same thing.

Even it was all doomed to end, Isaac could live countless lifetimes here…

It didn’t mean that Isaac couldn’t enjoy it as he had originally planned to do on Raphael’s yacht. Enjoy a respite from it all, a vacation, a break from reality itself. He had all the time in the universe after all. Isaac was in no rush as he sipped the coffee.

Another day passed, another breakfast shared and another long walk on the beach was done.

“We see it as a sea, but it isn’t a sea, is it?” Isaac asked, stopping at the shoreline and looking out over it. It was endless. That was what Isaac first noticed. Just how vast it was, stretching far beyond the horizon. Purple waves that stilled and grew silent, calm in the distance where nothing was. The void sea.

It wasn’t that, that triggered a thalassophobia response from him.

It was the knowledge that, within that dark purple sea, there was no bottom. It was endlessly deep. The depth, the pressure underneath those waves would only increase. The further down you went, the deeper into the abyss you’d find yourself. Crushed underneath that pressure? Suffocating beneath the shifting waters?

“Or…”

“It’s like a black hole with no center.” Cyclone closed his eyes, not wanting to talk about it, yet, when you had an endless amount of time, you tend to talk about things you’d normally never would bring up or mention in a lifetime. “It is… oblivion. Nothingness. The Void Sea doesn’t grow. It doesn’t hunger as people claim. It is a force that has always existed, beyond our vision. Death? The afterlife? Whatever you want to call it… it is the inevitable fate of all living things.”

“The only way to truly live, is to sometimes, someday, die, huh? If you don’t die, are you truly alive?” Isaac turned away from it as he walked along the shoreline with bare feet. He looked at the rocks, the grass and continued to wonder, to ponder, and, above all that, to plan for the next step.

He had all the time in the universe, after all. He was in no rush as he worked things out.

One step at a time, Isaac paused long enough for Cyclone to catch up to him.

“You really are something else,” Isaac chuckled softly, smiling at the Saberwolf.

“What?” Cyclone’s ear flicked as he pulled his lingering gaze away from the foreboding void sea and towards the man he had kidnapped here. Just as he had done on The Stellar Drift the first time they met.

“You’re the same, in so many ways. Since we first met.”

“On the ship?” Cyclone’s ear flicked, head tilting to one side.

“No, our first time meeting.” Isaac smiled and it brought warmth to his chest and tears to his eyes remembering the day.

Back at The Academy, where it all started.

Since the very first day the Saberwolf accidentally bumped into the academy student running on the track. Searching for him. Sniffing for him after going back, the first time, to see him. Isaac had been pushing himself after nearly failing another test. Pushing himself to his limits, to the point his body threatened to break apart.

He was sweating so much. His bones ached, his muscles screamed. It felt like claws were tearing at his lungs as he panted and gasped for breath, still forcing himself to run. To move. To be better.

“It feels like a lifetime ago since then.”

“In some ways, it is.” Cyclone offered back.

“Do you remember?” Isaac lifted up his arm, looking down at the wristband. The silver bangle hanging lifelessly from it. Strangely, Isaac noted, since Cyclone had appeared this silver band had been acting up. “No, never mind.” He chuckled, not wanting to give away his hand.

He needed every ace he could collect during this for the final event.

“You alright?” Cyclone would make sure to ask. To check in on Isaac mental health. “Being in this place can have prolong effects on the psyche. I’ve been here far longer than you have and have… adapted, changed because of it.” He looked down at his hand. For a split second, the fingers had stuck together by a black oozy substance that resembled the void sea.

Concentrating, Cyclone opened his fingers. The tar like substance came apart in threads as he wiggled his fingers. His ears perked as he looked up to see Isaac watching him.

“I…” Cyclone opened his mouth, unsure what to say to explain that.

“You look as handsome as the day I met you,” Isaac responded first, offering him a warm smile. “You’re as radiant as a star. It’s hard to look away from you, even if… the longer I look at you, the more blinded by it I become.”

“Heh, those are my words.” Cyclone shuddered, feeling himself grounded by Isaac words and presence. An anchor. That was what Isaac was for Cyclone. An anchor that kept the Saberwolf from dissolving away in the void sea, this island itself, able to remain here thanks to him. If he lingered in this place, he might end up slipping back into the void sea. Becoming an infinitesimal part of it. “I should be saying that about you.”

“Right,” Isaac rolled his eyes. “Hey,” he said, and Cyclone’s ears perked again, bouncing to the top of his head. “Race you back.” Isaac finished with a dead sprint, running back towards the cabin. Laughing the entire way as Cyclone chased after him.

“You little!” Cyclone snarled, practically pouncing on Isaac as he finally caught up. The two fell over, rolling in the grass with Cyclone on top of Isaac. Snarling down at him. “Why do you keep doing that?”

“I like it when you chase me?” Isaac offered and, before Cyclone could find a retort for such a claim, Isaac kissed him.

Somedays felt longer than others as the two kissed on the grassy hillside overlooking the sea. Their legs entwined, their arms wrapping around each other as their lips crashed against each other like the waves against the rocky shoreline. Passionate heat flared between the two as Cyclone grinded his full sheath between Isaac legs, letting out soft whimpering aching moans of pleasure and need.

Wants and desires that were threatening to drown in.

Isaac wouldn’t stop him. Letting Cyclone let out all these built-up desires the Saberwolf had been holding in for who knows how long. A touch, a breath, a kiss? It was all he needed at times to become fully erect. Grinding himself against Isaac’s rising length. Rubbing their hot sex against one another as Cyclone reached down a hesitant hand, wanting to wrap it around the two of them and jerk off until they climax in a glorious finish of the day.

The best way to finish another day, together.

He would hesitate, waiting for Isaac permission to continue. Moments like these were rare and few, yet Isaac enjoyed them all the same. When they happened? It reminded Isaac of the Typhon he once knew and would gladly take control of the situation, focusing on giving Cyclone the maximum drawn out pleasure before letting him finish.

Taking control of their ship, their relationship and life, and guiding them to the best destination.

A stroke of a finger, a tug of flesh? It was all that was needed during days like this. Isaac would be careful to tease him, to elongate these sexual moments of pleasure shared between the two. Letting it build up inside Cyclone. Watching as he tilted his muzzle upwards towards the heavens, breath hitching in his throat as Isaac rubbed that one spot on his throbbing shaft, just underneath his knot. A sweet spot the Terran had long ago found and enjoyed toying with.

The shaft glistened in the light, the tip bouncing up and down in need as it dribbled and slickened it’s length. Isaac gladly used the pre provided to stroke and rub over Cyclone’s body, loving how such a stronger, larger man became nothing more than a needy puppy in his hands. Cyclone so open and vulnerable during these moments the two were together.

It made Cyclone whimper, body shuddering again. Clawing the ground, he arched his back, throwing back his shoulders as his head tilted towards the sky above threatening to howl. Legs open, Cyclone let Isaac have all the fun he wanted with his body as he pinned the smaller male beneath him with his lower half. Griding and rubbing and slickening Isaac’s front with his dripping length.

A kiss would follow a touch. Warm, full lips pressed against Cyclone’s throbbing, dripping length. A hot breath made him shiver, before a wet tongue made the Saberwolf grit his teeth, holding it back. Holding it in. Isaac could see Cyclone’s balls tighten in their furry hanging sheath. Feel the pressure building up in the Saberwolf’s thighs as heat filled his lower belly and built in his groin, running hot through his veins as Cyclone’s claws dug into the ground trying to hold back.

Trying to make this moment last forever.

Never wanting this day to end.

A perfect day that could, somehow, last forever.

“Isaac,” Cyclone breathed out the word as if it were the more sacred of things. Warm lips found his dripping tip in turn and Cyclone let it out. A breath, a sigh, the stress melting away as his nuts painfully clung to his body and his cock jumped with every spurt of cool warmth it unleashed into Isaac’s waiting open mouth.

White ribbons decorated the grass around them. It draped over one of Isaac’s shoulders and the right side of his face as Cyclone stood over him on all fours. Proud and majestic in this light as he came all over his lovers body in sticky white bliss.

A kiss was shared, a laugh exchanged as the two cuddled there underneath a sun that would never fully set in the mess they had made together. Enjoying the warmth and comfort of each other as another day ticked by.

Isaac didn’t need to count the days; he didn’t need to make a tally mark on the wall or keep a secret log to keep himself sane. For he knew that was already taken care of. He would enjoy these days, these moments, with Cyclone for as long as they lasted.

For the path Isaac chose had already been set for him. Had already been done. All he needed to do was enjoy the ride for as long as it lasted.

Another day, another breakfast, another laugh shared at a dumb joke they found themselves on the beach, yet again, a shoreline that spoke more than either were wanting to talk about. A manifestation of what lay beyond. On the edge.

Limbo.

Not that mattered right now as Isaac took Cyclone again.

With Cyclone pressed against one of the rocky walls of the shoreline, around a curve in the rocky surface where the waves couldn’t reach. Pressed against the black stone as Isaac crouched down behind him. Spreading his shabby gray furred, plump ass cheeks apart, Isaac devoured him. Licking and tasting the Saberwolf’s tight tailhole. Dragging his tongue over the sensitive flesh and probing deeply with his tongue inside to feel his cool warmth.

Cyclone would stutter, trying to growl at Isaac to ease up as he left claw marks on the wall.

Isaac would just tell him to be quiet. “What if someone hears us?” Even knowing it was only them here, the thought was arousing in itself. The secretiveness of it, keeping hidden and out of sight as the two fooled around.

One pleasurable thing after another as Isaac reached around to feel Cyclone up. Squishing the sheath’s opening around the engorged tip threatening to spill from it’s tightening lips. Teasing it with the center of a thumb before dragging those fingers down around it, feeling it, stroking along Cyclone’s hardening length to grope and feel the forming knot at the base within that musky, tight fleshy container.

Isaac had plenty of time to learn every spot to touch, to feel and grope. Where to apply ample pressure to or where it was better to brush a finger against, teasing the sensitive flesh with the thrill of touch but never fully giving into it.

Something only true lovers would know about each other. Time and time again, they had done this and time and time again Isaac would learn more about Cyclone’s wants and needs, pleasurable erogenous zones that he could use to stimulate the Saberwolf to higher forms of bliss. To bring him to heaven as many times as he could get the Saberwolf off with.

Cyclone could finish several times in one session and Isaac liked to try and rub at least one more out at the end much to Cyclone’s dismayed struggles, futile trying to fight Isaac off as the Terran stroked his flaccid length until he was sure Cyclone was done.

This time wasn’t any different, yet no less special as Isaac felt Cyclone’s ass cheeks squeeze around his face in protest as his hunger.

“Isaac,” Cyclone growled loudly, pressed against the wall as he shoved his ass back into Isaac’s face. Protesting against it, yet his body clearly wanting more and more of it.

Isaac would only smile, enjoying these moments that, in turn, he wished could last forever.

All while he ate Cyclone’s ass out. Licking and sucking noisily as drool ran down his chin as he didn’t hold back. He slickened it with his tongue, that sweet, tight hole. Licking over and around it, drooling against it before pressing his lips to it in a deep, loving kiss… before shoving his tongue deeper inside as he took hold of Cyclone’s erect member with one hand and jerked him off until he blew against the wall Isaac had shoved him up against.

Panting, the two exchanged an exhausted look before breaking out into another fit of giggles. Laughter that turned into a deep kiss as they held each other until it was time to head inside.

“How do you do it?” Cyclone asked as Isaac got the covers ready for them to watch their shows to bed. A ritual in itself that they had, would, and done several, countless times before. A ritual Isaac had no desire to break. “This place has no time. No sunset. No sunrise. People on planets are lucky. They have a natural clock to carry themselves by with the star they circle and the planet that spins. Here? Well… it remains still.”

“It’s like being in space,” Isaac shrugged as he scooted over, patting the spot that Cyclone always took. Directly behind him as they watched their shows. During the night, after the TV was turned off, Cyclone would turn around and Isaac would be his little big spoon. Snuggling up close with him and holding him until they’d wake up the next morning to continue doing it all over again.

“Those in space have a galactic clock for a reason,” Cyclone snorted with a roll of his eyes. “I just think you’re crazy.”

“Yeah.” Isaac grinned. “Crazy in love.”

“Stop!” Cyclone grumbled as he crawled into the bed, pulling the furry covers back before sliding in behind Isaac who turned on his side. They had repeated this so many times, it had become a natural reflex for the two. Cyclone saddling in behind Isaac, sliding his sheath between the Terran’s ass cheeks before settling a heavy arm over his side.

The TV had been pulled close the very night Isaac had arrived. Neither of the two had bothered to move the thing and, like the mug, it had a more define appearance than the rest of the place did. It stood out and the shows or movies it played were directly from memories that Cyclone had experienced.

It was a connector to what or who Cyclone had been. All his memories of the times of the two together, of his other lives, of his memories that both contained and didn’t contain Isaac. It was an outlet for his very soul, if Isaac believed in such a thing.

“It’s impressive you were able to keep so much. These memories.” Isaac noted as they watched reruns together. At times, it would play music for them to listen to. Other times, the TV would project broken, fragmented images of Cyclone’s memories.

Isaac never mentioned it. Never pointed these things out. Just enjoying it… while it could last.

Cyclone had that cool warmth to him again. When the lights went out and the blinds closed themselves, Isaac could swear the very cabin they were in was breathing. A pulse, a heartbeat, underneath his finger tips and every footstep he took to the bathroom during the mockery of night.

“Oh, you realized what these are?” Cyclone said, talking about the shows they were watching. “Yeah, going back in time really kind of fucks with the mind. That bastard would often take precious things from me... I began hoarding them away in a small collection, a spot that it couldn’t reach. The most precious of memories, in order to keep myself… sane.” Cyclone chuckled darkly with a shake of his head.

“A place outside time’s reach.” Isaac nodded, pretending to understand how something like that could work. “Such as this island? You said it’s the place we went to after our journey. Our home. The place you buried me…” Isaac shuddered at the thought and Cyclone held him closer.

Isaac felt Cyclone’s body yield against him, softening at his touch before feeling that cool warmth spilled out around him. It ran over his sides and down his legs. It clung to his arms and circled his neck like a tight, latex shirt. Isaac resisted the urge to shiver from the strange, creepy feeling of it as Cyclone pressed closer behind him. Pressing Isaac into his front as he spilled out around him, hugging him closer than Isaac ever thought possible.

When Isaac looked back, that feeling was gone, and Cyclone was whole once more. A solid form that Isaac knew was just an appearance the Saberwolf was taking for him. Anchored by Isaac’s presence and those of the memories around them, keeping this shade of who or what Cyclone had once been… real.

“It’ll always be a special place for me. For us. It’s the place you… That we had a life together. I hoarded all my riches away on this unnamed planet, lost in a sea of stars. No one knew about it. Only me… I made sure of that,” Cyclone chuckled, and the dark tone told Isaac more than Cyclone ever would.

What lengths Cyclone had gone to keep such a secret.

“I began collecting things. A lot of things,” Cyclone muttered without focusing on anything in particular. “So many treasures. Tokens, really. Memories of places and people. Things I could bring back here. Bring back to your… grave…” Cyclone went silent for a moment. Closing his eyes, he continued. “I could bring you memories to share my experiences with you, that way. To let you relive them with me, there. Talking for countless hours. Long after the sun set.”

A tear ran down his face.

“It was the hardest thing for me. Not losing you, heh. I thought that would’ve been the hardest… it was trying to live without you.” Cyclone’s voice choked. “I thought about ending it so many times. To see you but… I couldn’t. Every time I tried? I’d hear your voice, feel you stopping me. Telling me to go on another adventure. Like you did… did the last night we were together.”

Isaac could only imagine the cruelty that must’ve been for the Saberwolf. He couldn’t imagine a single day without Cyclone in his life. To think of an entire lifetime apart? It was too hard, too much and Isaac felt Cyclone’s pain at the very thought of it.

Let alone living through it.

“I gathered as much as I could. All the things. The ship itself! Hah, I stole The Stellar Drift from the Emperor-King himself! What a heist that was…” Cyclone trailed off, clearly it didn’t mean as much as it should’ve.

For without Isaac, there really was no point in any of it. Cyclone had just been living his life, one day at a time, like a drone. Alive, yet not living.

“It makes sense, this place. You had a safehouse, basically, away from it all. From everyone hunting us. By using the memory of it, you managed to keep others out… how did you bring me here?” Isaac asked, resting on his back as he looked at Cyclone laying there next to him.

Underneath the covers, he could feel Cyclone’s legs melding and molding to his own. The thick substance that comprised his body forming around Isaac like a mold, clinging to him. It made goosebumps form on his thighs as that cool moving liquid ran over them, between his legs and underneath, around his body. Holding him in a way Isaac figured was Cyclone’s way of keeping him securely there with him.

Afraid to let him go.

“From the beginning, it felt like Zarvarsh had already picked you as his next host. In a way, he had. Knowing the future? He must’ve known you were next in line… Using me, in a way, to get to you. So,” Cyclone sneered, trying to hold back a harsh laugh. “I just made sure to set a trap for when he tried to pull the dirty trick. When you got to a certain point in time, you’d end up here instead of elsewhere. It worked better than I thought… no matter how long I waited, it was worth it. To see you again.”

Isaac could only presume what he meant by that.

How many decades had Cyclone sat on this shoreline, waiting for Isaac to wash up on The Beach.

“I see…” Isaac rested back on the pillow that shifted and moved underneath him. Like the bed and covers, they clung to his body during the night. Holding him so tightly that, if they had the strength, might’ve hurt.

Clinging. That was the word Isaac thought of. Cyclone was still desperately clinging to him. At what would’ve been nighttime, Cyclone’s insecurities would begin to show. He would follow Isaac around the house. Never leaving his side. The very structure would react to his presence and Isaac felt every step he took with an additional pressure meeting it in turn. Cyclone pressing back against him like an anxious canine worried it’s master was about to leave again.

A form of extreme separation anxiety.

“Here I thought I was the smart one,” Isaac laughed as he tried to relax into the strange feel of Cyclone touch. Closing his eyes, Isaac tried to imagine it was like sleeping on a warm water bed. That moved and shifted on its own accord. A living water bed that would form and contort to Isaac’s every move.

Isaac would be lying if he didn’t experiment with the sensation. Letting Cyclone settle in next to him as he soaked in the feel of the anamorphous substance that clung to his lower body. Isaac recalled seeing something similar in an old action movie about a symbiote that needed a host to survive.

Void creatures seemed to be similar in nature, or lack of nature rather. Needing something real, tangible to anchor them to reality, let alone their own sanity.

The liquid like substance clung to him. It should’ve been sticky like a spiders web, yet it was more like congealed slime. Ooze that didn’t leave a mark or substance behind after retreating away from his touch. A gelatinous entity that had no true form and could become anything in the light of day.

At night, it was formless.

“Cyclone,” Isaac panted, and the substance stilled at his voice. With his eyes closed, Isaac reached down and felt it run between his fingers as if Cyclone was taking his hand in his own. “Don’t pull away,” he swallowed nervously as it remained. “Touch me,” and it did. Running over his hand and between his fingers. “I want you to touch me everywhere,” the bed shifted under him. “I won’t open m-my eyes, I just want to feel… you. I need you, Cyclone, I need you so, so much. I can’t live without you, either…”

There was no reply. No words as the walls shifted and a shaky breath rumbled out of them. From Isaac’s hand, he felt the liquid substance drip down between his legs. It landed with a wet splat and Isaac shuddered from the feel, squirming as it ran down his inner thighs. Like a hot tongue licking over them, tasting him.

“More,” Isaac pressed, and it oozed up under him. It ran between his ass cheeks, against his hole and between his legs across his taint. The cool substance felt like thick water. Cool warmth washing over his lower body as if Isaac had submerged it into a warm tub of gelatin. Isaac reached down to touch himself. “M-my balls,” and it washed over them. A tongue that lapped at his sack as the Terran groaned loudly, covering his eyes with his other arm. Twisting and turning, Isaac looked away from what was happening to him. Unable to believe he was trying to do this. “More. More, please, give me more.”

Cyclone did.

It slid over his legs, between them and against his opening. As Isaac had ate out Cyclone on the beach, the Saberwolf licked away at his hole. Returning the favor. Pressure pressing between his cheeks before it slid inside him. Into him. It was so cool that Isaac shivered from the feel, arching his back as he lifted his ass off the moving bed.

Reaching his hand back down, he began to jerk off as his balls were lick and his ass was filled. Hands held his sides, running up and down them as the bed pushed up against Isaac’s back. The world shifted at his words and every aching pleasure he could desire was relieved for him.

Cyclone rubbed his feet, he nipped at his chest with his front teeth, while somehow also nosing under an arm. Another nose pressed under Isaac’s sack, and he felt a cool breath wash over it the next second as it breathed him in. His smell, his taste, every touch and feel. It wasn’t one pleasure or one stimulant, but several. Dozens, hundreds as Cyclone covered him. Cyclone panting down at him as the sound of a heartbeat increased around them. It filled the air as Isaac groaned, stroking faster and faster as Cyclone didn’t stop teasing him. Didn’t stop sniffing him. Didn’t stop tasting him.

It wasn’t just that, it was the feel, the texture and pressure that Cyclone applied to his arms and legs and body.

It was like countless hands touching him. All of them Cyclone’s. Hands that rubbed and kneaded over his body, petting and stroking and touching him. They held his thighs open; they kept his arms up. Hands that reached out from the darkness that kept Isaac a captive prisoner here as he was violated in all the right ways.

Adored, loved, taken care of. Every pleasure Isaac could imagine was given to him.

Isaac didn’t even feel as if he were in a bed any longer. With his eyes closed, he floated there in the feel of it, of Cyclone, being molested by the one person he trusted most. Tongues licked at his flesh; noses inhaled his aroma. Drool covered parts of his body. Fingers groped his muscles and Cyclone continued to slide in and out of Isaac’s rear as a pressure pushed against Isaac’s back as if it were Cyclone’s chest.

A mouth formed, or maybe it was always there, appearing before Isaac’s open, spread legs to lick him over. A snout, a face that rose from the darkness as if stepping out of a pool. A hungry fanged maw with lust filled eyes and folded ears, staring at what it wanted. A tongue that drooled from a hungry mouth as it licked up his rock-hard length to the tip and down over the entire thing, easily taking Isaac in all the way to the back of it’s throat.

Bobbing up and down over Isaac’s groin, the pressure constraining him didn’t ease up. It held his arms, binding them together with that strange, cool substance. Hands held Isaac’s legs open, lifted slightly to allow better access for Cyclone’s thrusting motion from behind.

It made Isaac moan; it made him beg for more and he loved every second of being taken advantage of. He asked for this and got exactly what he wanted.

A strong body held him from behind as Cyclone let Isaac rest against his front. Easing him back against the cradle of Cyclone’s body within this nothingness. For he would be his support, when there was nothing left. Easily supporting Isaac’s weight as Cyclone humped into him from behind. His full knot pressing needily against Isaac’s rear end, spreading his cheeks as it tried to force it’s way inside him. Wanting to knot him and bind them together forever.

“Cyclone,” Isaac groaned loudly as a mouth continued to devour his cock. The heat of that tongue, the drool dripping down his balls was almost too much to take, and, despite his efforts, he couldn’t squirm being held so tightly. “I want you. I need you inside me. Fill me up, Cyclone.”

“As you wish,” Cyclone nuzzled the side of Isaac’s face with his own and held him close. The bindings constraining Isaac’s wrists became one of Cyclone’s hands as his full weight was supported now by the Saberwolf. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“Such a good boy,” Isaac couldn’t help but tease. “Waiting for permission,” then he grunted. “Oh. Oh… fuck…” He felt Cyclone coming inside him. It happened the second he asked for it and still surprised by the feel. A cool warmth that was building in pressure that flowed into him, through him, becoming a part of him. A deep endless well that spilled forth as his body sank back into Cyclone’s front. “Cyclone…”

Isaac’s shoulders vanished into Cyclone’s chest. Black ooze clinging to his skin, crawling over it as it pulled him closer, pulled him inside it, his, body.

“Shh…” Cyclone nuzzled him. “Soon. Soon we’ll be one. Together, forever.” Cyclone didn’t even feel Isaac resist him and that, in itself, warmed the dripping hole in the Saberwolf’s empty chest. “Together forever, my starlight. I’ll be your black hole that devours you away, to keep you with me… no one else. No one else can ever have you. I’ll always protect you, my star. My only star…”

“Promise?” Isaac didn’t need to open his eyes to know that Cyclone was staring at him. Watching him, even now. Unable to tear his gaze away from the man he hunted beyond the stars.

“I promise, Isaac. I never once ever stopped thinking of you… looking for you.” Cyclone felt Isaac slipping deeper inside him. Felt the ooze cover almost all of the Terran’s body as he filled him. As he took him. As Isaac came and it became a part of Cyclone’s body. His legs draped over Isaac’s, his chest consuming the Terran’s as they became one. “No more pain. No more sorrow or loss… you’ll never have to fear anything or anyone. I’m all you need. We’ll never be apart, I promise.”

There was a flash of light in the darkness. A comet that soared through the empty night sky.

“You’ll always be with me, Cyclone.” Isaac finally opened his eyes, meeting Cyclone’s finally. “No matter what.”

“Exactly,” Cyclone turned his muzzle down to kiss Isaac’s lips as he began pushing the Terran further inside the endless pit within him, planning to fill that emptiness with Isaac. A hand that pressed over Isaac’s chest and slowly shoved him past the resistance of his body to the core of his very being. “Fill me as I filled you.”

“I love you,” Isaac told him.

“I love you too.” Cyclone smiled as another flash of light crackled somewhere around them.

“It won’t work,” Isaac said, looking at Cyclone as the ooze ran over his chest and up his neck. He tilted his chin upwards to continue to breathe before it could suffocate him.

“What…?” Cyclone asked as another flash of light crossed the sky. Cracks forming as the darkness was pierced by the light that lit it up. The night sky, filled with stars.

“I didn’t want it to end,” Isaac let out a weak laugh.

Cyclone’s eyes began to drift upwards, to look at it. At the lights filling this pocketed space where no light should be able to reach.

“But it can’t work.” Isaac apologized with a cracking laugh as hot tears ran down his face. “Because this isn’t how things go… You know that.”

“What do you mean-,” a brilliant flash of blue light flashed overhead, and thunder came crashing down illuminating the world that had lost all it’s color around them.

Where there was nothing, the island now returned to the way it was in black and white. Without color, without motion. Without time. It was frozen there. A small floating mass of land in the dark sea that threatened to sweep it away.

Energy crackled, electricity bounced off the ground as, from the crater, another Saberwolf stood up from where he’d come crashing down like a meteor.

With glowing blue fur, Typhon faced towards the two.

“You have something that doesn’t belong to you.” Typhon said the words, anger making his hackles rise and teeth flash as that blue lightning crackle from his fur.

“You!” Cyclone pressed Isaac closer, trying to absorb him fully now. “I won’t let you take-,” Isaac took a deep breath as his head became submerged by the substance. No matter how much he tried to surface, he couldn’t break free.

“I warned you.” Typhon pointed a finger at him, then down towards the squirming bulge within the liquefied Saberwolf’s body. “Not to hurt him.”

“Hah… Hah! There is nothing you can do, failure. You are a mistake! A failed product of a doomed society! You are no hero, you are no commander! You can’t accomplish anything.” Cyclone spat the words out as if they were weapons looking to wound or harm Typhon somehow by saying them.

Cyclone took a step back, turning the bulging side of his body away from the other Saberwolf. Trying to keep him from reaching Isaac before he could finish the process of turning him into a void creature, just like him.

Typhon didn’t even bat an ear as he crouched down in a runner’s position.

“Now then,” Typhon let out a breath, looking up at them and, in a flash of blinding blue light, was gone.

It was like lightning falling. A flash so fast that the eye couldn’t follow it. One second it wasn’t there, the next it was.

Cyclone felt it more than saw it as the lightning struck him. Typhon moved so fast that Cyclone couldn’t even react as half of his side was ripped apart. There was no blood, no shreds of what had been. Only a gaping empty hole where his side had been, and where Isaac had been dragged inside him.

All Cyclone felt, was emptiness.

Cyclone coughed black tinted blood as he turned around, holding his empty side with a hand. Behind him stood Typhon. His fur was still sparking as he held Isaac in his arms, cradling him safely away.

“H-hey,” Isaac coughed, wiping his mouth off. “What took you so long?” He tried to smile, but it still hurt to do so.

Like knowing an ending to a book or movie, Isaac knew what was to come. Yet, it still didn’t make it hurt any less. For he knew, from the start, how things were to go… because they had already done all this before.

Typhon’s ears flicked as he let out a soft laugh. “D-don’t… not right now. Don’t do that.” Typhon took a shaking breath. “I thought…” Then a hand touched his face, and he opened his eyes to see Isaac staring at him. “I thought I lost you.”

“It’s alright. I never doubted you would come… that you would find me.” Isaac said as he patted his chest. Typhon reluctantly set him back down on the ground. “I’ve been waiting.” He stood on shaking legs. He could still feel Cyclone all around him, inside him.

Yet, at the same time, it felt so distant now… as if it had happened a lifetime ago.

“Acting like you know everything still I see.” Typhon let out another breath, sighing as he shook his head. He was shaking slightly and Isaac touched his hand, to reassure Typhon that, indeed, he was still there with him.

“I would never leave you.” Isaac said the lie easily, for it was how he felt. Even if he knew the universe was cruel and life wasn’t kind. That the two were, forever destined, to be apart… someday.

That day just wasn’t today.

“Do you have any idea how worried I was?” Typhon practically shouted at Isaac. “I was, and you were, then I was… alone.” Typhon clung to himself, shivering. “I thought, I feared… I don’t even know. I don’t even know!” He howled, bending over as he held himself. Shivering uncontrollably as the lingering echoes of memories, of a distant cold future, whispered dark tidings for them.

“It’s fine. I’m here now… You’re here now,” Isaac touched Typhon’s shoulder, rubbing it. Petting him. Showing the Saberwolf that, for now, he was here. “I learned what I needed to know. It’s okay now.” Isaac shrugged as if it wasn’t that big of a deal.

He felt as tired as he looked, and Typhon noticed that. Living far longer than any human was ever meant to.

“Isaac…” Typhon reached out a hand. Then a harsh laugh stopped him. Turning, the two faced towards Cyclone who was standing there with a gaping hole where his side should’ve been.

“D-did you plan this? Did you!” Cyclone wasn’t looking at Typhon. He was staring at Isaac. His eyes were filled with a mixture of amusement and hatred, a betrayal so deep that it cut worse than Typhon felt. “When? From the very start?” Cyclone let out a hysterical laughter as his side continued to drip.

“Oh, Cyclone.” Isaac said, looking at him now. “Do you really believe that?” The Terran asked with nothing but pity in his eyes. “After everything we’ve been through?”

“W-what? How couldn’t I after all of this!” Cyclone coughed violently, needing to stabilize himself by placing a foot in front of the other. He was half keeled over, holding his side. “You… I loved you.”

“I know.” Isaac said with nothing but love in his eyes. “And I care for you, deeply, I do. Sometimes…” Isaac couldn’t even say the words. They were too painful to admit, to say that he had to let him go.

For Cyclone had never let him go. Despite it all. After everything.

“Liar!” Cyclone shouted. “How am I any different from that man!” He pointed at Typhon with a shaking hand. It was hard to tell if it was out of sheer hatred or something else that made him shake. His form shifted and Cyclone hugged himself to try and keep his shape, to keep it all contained. “I gave you everything… I was your everything… I-,”

“A reflection.” Isaac said suddenly and both the Saberwolves ears twitched. “Do you know what the Monolith is, Cyclone? The thing that destroyed Terra 2? The Hourglass, this place? You… you aren’t the only void creature out there. The Monolith is an ancient artifact that wiped out the solar system… My home system. I know full well what it is capable of… it’s how I died, remember?”

“Wait, what?” Typhon’s ears jumped up at that. Neither of the two explained it to the clueless Saberwolf.

Cyclone snarled, black ooze dripping from his teeth.

“No.” Cyclone said before Isaac could finish. “Don’t you dare claim so! I am not. I am NOT that!” Cyclone huffed and panted, wincing now as ooze dripped from the hole in his side. It couldn’t reform the damage Typhon had done to him.

“I’m sorry, Cyclone. There is a reason why you’ve always been so… unnaturally obsessed with me. Why I did all this? Why you did all this…” Isaac stopped to look at Typhon. Cyclone glared at the other Saberwolf.

“No. No, no, no! I am… I am the real one! He’s a fake.” Cyclone grimaced, wincing from the pain flaring up in his side as the blue energy crackled and ate away at his side, keeping him from reforming. “Do not dare claim that this fool, this…. This imposter is me!”

“Cyclone.” Isaac said. Waiting for the Saberwolf to look at him. “The Monolith, or The Blackened Mirror, is a structure that reflects whatever looks into it infinitely… from those reflections, images are formed and created. Like a copy machine. Scanning over what it sees…”

“Don’t.” Cyclone snarled now, growling low and dangerous as his hackles rose.

“From within those countless images, there is a… me.” Isaac looked down at his left hand. “It took my hand when I touched the mirror. When I touched the Monolith that day. That dark day… Bai’Tai tricked me into touching it… I trusted him and… and my image, my reflection, stole my arm… and my eye.” Isaac looked up at Cyclone.

Isaac’s arm was missing, his eye was gone as the dreamlike world Cyclone had created began to dissolve away and break apart as the void sea crashed against it’s shores.

“I am not…” Cyclone body convulsed, and he held his sides tightly, trying to keep it all inside. “I am NOT a copy!”

“You met him. After all, you’re the one who defeated the other me. The one who silenced him, before he could tell me who and what you are…” Isaac felt nothing but sympathy as he looked at Cyclone. “It’s not your fault, Cyclone.”

“Shut up!” Cyclone covered his ears, taking a step back. “Don’t say it. Don’t say it! I am real. I am!”

“You are Typhon’s Doppelganger.” Isaac said the word and the other Saberwolf suddenly went unnaturally still as if he’d frozen like the rest of this place had. “That was why you were so obsessed with me. Why you hated Typhon. Why you knew so much about us… you are another Typhon, a dark reflection, created or birthed by The Monolith that day… when I died.”

“What?” Typhon turned to look at him. “B-But you’re right here! I’m not following any of this!” He pulled on his ears, whining loudly. “Someone tell me what the actual fuck is happening!”

“I am alive, because of him. Because of you.” Isaac didn’t take his eyes of Cyclone who stared at nothing. “You must’ve run into the Monolith during your search for a means to save me. It captured your reflection like a photograph, a picture, a memory… that would one day create the man we see before us now. A memory planted in the void sea and would later be birthed by it. A false life...”

“Is that why he wanted to steal you away? Because I… I would too.” Typhon said, beginning to grasp some kind of understanding what was going on. “He wanted you so bad because… I do too. I would do anything for you…”

“I know,” Isaac finally touched Typhon’s hand. Feeling the cool warmth from the Saberwolf. It was so similar to Cyclone’s, because, in a way, it was exactly the same. A reflection of the other. “He pretended to be you,” Isaac shrugged a shoulder. “I’m sorry…”

“No,” Typhon said with a shake of his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t fully understand… well, any of this… but it sounds like I had a part to play in it all. I’m just glad your back. If you had to uh, end up with someone, I’m glad it was me. Or, uh, a copy of me?”

“I’m-,” Isaac opened his mouth but the ground beneath them shook, and a rumbling laughter filled the air from no clear source.

“Glad? Glad you are back? As if I’d just… just roll over and die? That I’d disappear and accept my fate? My cruel, pitiful, ugly fate?” Cyclone looked up at Typhon with dead eyes that dripped black tears. “You. It’s always been you. Always in my way. No matter what I tried, no matter what lengths I went to. You always got in my way. Even when I killed you,” that made the other two tense. “You still somehow managed to ruin everything. Time and time again, you were always the source of all my suffering. Heh, heh… I understand. I finally understand, Isaac. It’s not me. It’s not my fault… it’s him. It’s always been him. The one to get in our way of being together. He’s the fake. He’s the fake. He’s the FAKE!” Cyclone turned away from them. “I’ll show you. I’ll show you…”

“Where the hell do you think you’re going!” Typhon’s fur sparked but Isaac caught his arm.

“Don’t,” Isaac said as Cyclone fell into the ground as if it were made of water. Disappearing before them. “That wasn’t his real body. It… It never was. Like a body of water, it was just a reflection of who it wanted to be.”

“Uh, what?” Typhon blinked several times as the dark waves around them grew unnaturally still and silent.

“This entire place,” Isaac clung to Typhon’s arm as the ground shifted beneath them. Small hills rolling into mountains as the path stretched out into a road, into a highway and the cabin broke apart into rubble. Everything dripped with black ooze that stained every surface. “The entire Island is under his control!”

“Oh, that’s not good.” Typhon’s ears perked and before Isaac even saw it coming, the Saberwolf had him in his arms dodging the attack.

Jumping to the side, Isaac saw a spear made from the rocky shoreline where Cyclone and him had been together skewer where Typhon had been seconds before. It pierced deep into the ground where it sunk into it like quicksand, reforming together. Molding together as Typhon distanced themselves from the spot that rose once more.

“So, what’s the plan.” Typhon asked as his feet sparked against the strange substance the island was made out of. His Celestial energy repelling the substance and protecting him in the process.

The two forces of nature at complete odds with each other, rejecting the other.

“None of this is, technically, his body. It’s just a part of him.” Isaac said as Typhon jumped out of the way from a pair of jaws biting from the ground. A muzzle that ripped from the ground, opening wide with snapping jaws, threatening to consume the two before Typhon dodged it.

Leaping into the air, Typhon’s fur sparked with energy and the two remained floating as if in low gravity as he generated his own field around himself.

“It is and isn’t him? How does that work!” Typhon snarled as he glared down at a form taking shape on the ground beneath them. A mound of the island rose and formed back into Cyclone. Where there was one, there were three more. Then a dozen. Numbers that grew like weeds sprouting forth.

“Uh….” Typhon wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle all of them.

“Relax. He doesn’t have the Saber tech that drains the energy from your core,” Isaac explained. Typhon gave him a look. “Trust me. I’ve been here for a… while. A long, long while. I looked all around the island multiple times for anything that I could use.”

“There’s nothing here?” Typhon quirked an eyebrow.

“Well, no.” Isaac thought about it as they began to slowly descend to the ground. The numerous weeds of Cyclone waiting for them silently with dead stares. “Well…” Isaac squinted, thinking about it. “There are a few things that really stood out.”

“Like?” Typhon took a deep breath then released it in a mighty roar that echoed and boomed like thunder, crashing down on the ground beneath them and crushed everything under it as it left an indentation in the ooze covered floor.

Cyclones splatted like bursting pustules making the two gag at the sight.

Clearing an area, Typhon landed on the spot. Turning, the Saberwolf aimed for where Isaac directed. In a flash, he shot forth like a bolt of lightning. Zig zagging through the Cyclone’s towards the cabin. Coming to a crashing halt, Typhon’s fur fell back down as the energy was dispersed around them. In the rubble of the cabin, he set Isaac down to search as he turned towards the bodies beginning to swarm them.

They moved without legs. Drifting over the ground they were a part of. They took the appearance of Cyclone but weren’t him. If they ever were.

“No matter how many I pop, more keep appearing!” Typhon shout out as he struck the first one. A fist punctured the nearest Cyclone’s chest. A chest made of thick ooze that held no resistance against Typhon’s attack. His hand vanished inside it, tendrils of the ooze clinging, crawling up his arm before Typhon snorted. “Yeah, not happening,” and a bolt of energy erupted from Typhon’s claws.

Energy filled the void Cyclone, and it erupted, exploding outwards into nothingness. Leaving not a trace behind as the blue lightning tore it apart.

The energy jumped from one Cyclone to the next, chaining between them endlessly as they were all connected. Like electricity being put into a body of water, it spread and dispersed throughout it until it ran out of juice and became harmless.

Typhon was already panting heavily as the bodies burst into black ooze, seeped back into the ground to reform again. Typhon knew these were different parts of the same whole. All the damage he had done was being tucked away as new parts were brought in to replace them.

It was draining him. This very place was dispersing his very life source. Drop a live battery into an ocean and it’d die. A lightning bolt hitting the ocean would barely effect the surface it struck. Even with the electrical shock he’d given Cyclone, with the ground bubbling and popping through the strange chemical reaction of electrolysis throughout the wet, void substance… it wasn’t nearly enough to leave any lasting impact.

“This is disgusting.” Typhon shook his hand off.

“Found it,” Isaac called back to him as he moved a slab of wood out of the way. Eyes appeared on the board and turned to look at him. Isaac poked one of them and they all closed. “Stop being such a creep,” Isaac said as he motioned Typhon over.

The Saberwolf took one step towards him before the ground itself erupted around him. Flowing like molten lava, the ground circled around Typhon. Trapping him in a ball of inky black dark substance. A blue light flashed inside as Isaac turned back to what he had found.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Isaac knew this all would happen. Yet, he still needed to make sure it went the way it was supposed to. Cyclone had spent his existence trying to stop what was, what had happened while Isaac was desperately trying to keep things exactly the same. “Just need to find the right damn channel,” Isaac said turning the nob.

It was the TV. It, like the coffee mug, had a different outline than the rest of the place here and stood out like a sore thumb.

Exploring the island, talking to Cyclone and going along with it all had been Isaac backwards way of getting to know the doppelganger better. To know who and what he was. A copy of Typhon, sure, but also something else. Something with its own memories that it had made after being created by The Monolith.

After the moment it was born, or created, Cyclone had became his own person. Even if he couldn’t see that. Creating new memories together. Experiencing new things. These things were new to him and foreign to Typhon, the original. Despite being a copy, he still was his own person.

It had feelings for Isaac, because Typhon had feelings for Isaac. A dark reflection of the man he loved. That, in a sickening way, loved him as well. Memories of a past, of their lives together. That helped shape who Cyclone was but didn’t define his future.

For the future was forever to remain unwritten. No one could dictate that. If only Cyclone could see towards the future instead of dwelling, living in the past.

Isaac could never bring himself to hate Cyclone, because he could never bring himself to hate Typhon. It was and wasn’t him. The man Isaac had met through time was Cyclone, but this thing that found him wasn’t him.

At least, not any longer.

It was the thing Typhon that would become Cyclone would eventually, inevitably become this void beast trying to fight the universe itself. Just like every other aspect of those from the void, denying the reality they so desperately claimed to covet and love.

“Like all void monsters. He lost himself to the dark sea. Becoming some kind of underwater monster that feeds on the memories of others,” Isaac touched the TV with his hand. “Living off the memories as Zarvarsh The Time Devourer does. To sustain itself? To keep itself real? To continue living in this… delusional reality?” Isaac looked around him at the broken structure of the cabin by the shore. “Needing an anchor to protect itself from being swept away by the void sea itself…”

He was sure it was a perfect copy of the one that the real Typhon and him had built together. This place. This cabin by the shore. A place to call home. A place for them in their final hours together. A place where Isaac would eventually pass away from the crystallization of Raiju inside him, not being a Celestial as Typhon was. The place that would plant the seed inside Typhon that would eventually grow to become who Cyclone the Space Pirate captain was that, in turn, plant the seed that would birth and create the void doppelganger that would call itself Cyclone.

The TV suddenly turned on, replaying a show the two of them had watched together.

“…taking a break from all your worries…” The theme song played. “Wouldn’t you like… to get… away…”

“I know,” Isaac said to the TV, touching it’s surface how he had touched Cyclone’s cheek. Petting it, touching him, holding him and giving him the security he so desperately craved and wanted and needed. “But that’s just a rerun…” Isaac forced a smile to his tired face as he pet over the screen. The screen continued to play the theme song. “I know… I know, Cyclone. It’s not your fault,” Isaac felt his hand slip inside the TV. Through the screen that gave way. Isaac forced himself deeper inside those memories that sustained Cyclone’s mockery of existence. “I know we loved those shows together. The feeling of seeing them for the first time. Able to binge watch them together after our sessions of lovemaking.”

The TV screen cracked, and Isaac pressed harder. Forcing himself inside. Through the bond he had with Cyclone, through the part of Cyclone he took inside himself, Isaac tricked the very memory he was trying to force his way into to accept him. To allow him in.

“But those things existed in a time long since gone. The past. You can’t return to the past, Cyclone. You can’t just keep reliving them! No matter how much we want to or try to. We can only ever move forward in time… that’s why I never tried to change a single thing that happened... Why I made sure, in fact, that everything went exactly as it had before. I didn’t try to rewrite the future… because, our future, it had already been written, it had already been done. This? All of this, Cyclone? Is just repeating itself… its not new, it’s not… real. It’s a rerun. A memory of the past… it’s over. It ended, a long, long time ago…”

The TV crackled as the spiderweb cracks spread over its surface, expanding in size as the TV box began to shake.

“You can fight the flow of time as much as you want. The only thing we can do is change the future, not the past. Not what has already happened. After all,” Isaac leaned closer to whisper the words. “I wouldn’t change a single thing in my past. If I did? I’d never have met you. I love you, no matter what.” Isaac said, placing his forehead against the glass screen. “I wouldn’t change those memories. The good? The bad? The ugly and sad? I’d never change them or try to replace them with only happy, fake, ones. For every heartache, every pain… made it real. With you.”

Then the TV shattered like glass and Isaac was falling.

Falling into a black pit where nothing existed and yet there were things here. The coffee mug, a cracked TV screen, a pair of movie tickets. Film screens playing of memories, of distant times and places that Isaac both knew and didn’t know of. Radios that would play music they had listen together while they drove along the beachside.

He hadn’t been wrong. Cyclone had been collecting things endlessly. Pieces and objects of memories that Cyclone had hoarded away and gathered here. Everything that he had done to try and fill the gaping black hole inside that was left when Isaac was stolen away from him.

“Emptiness.”

That was what Cyclone’s true name was.

“The embodiment of what was lost. The pit that remains. A hole that can never be filled, no matter what we try and shove into it. We can steal these things, try and create new memories, lose ourselves in high blissful drugs… but… in the end,” Isaac reached out for the coffee mug floating there in the mess of random oddities. He took hold of it, turning it to the side to read the name Isaac printed on it in gold letters. “They’re just that. Memories. A picture taken that can’t be changed. Sure, we can try to alter it. To remember it differently but… that isn’t how it went, did it, Cyclone?”

Isaac turned to face the emptiness in front of him. A blackness that spread endlessly around him. He wasn’t in the void sea; the void sea was in Cyclone. A part of him. It always had been. A part of everything and everyone. It didn’t try to devour Isaac; it didn’t try and stop him.

It never needed to. Because, in the end, Isaac would eventually meet the same fate as even the stars in the night sky one day will. To end. Be it today or a thousand years from now, even the universe itself would fall into the void sea and disappear.

A journey’s end.

“I enjoyed it.” Isaac said, holding the mug in his hands. “Every day, every step we took. Even the rainy days… good or bad, it was always better when it was with you.”

“How did you know?” A voice asked as Isaac landed on something solid he couldn’t see. He walked towards the source of that voice. “How did you know that idiot would come?”

“Because he already had. Or would,” Isaac said. “Time.” He explained with a laugh. “We can’t… we can’t alter time, Cyclone. At least, not in the past. If all of this?” Isaac motioned around them. “Has already happened? Then there is nothing we can do. Just go along for the ride. Float down the river of time and try to enjoy ourselves. It’s like watching a movie that was already made. You can sit in your seat, boo at the screen, or even try to leave. It won’t change the movie. It won’t change the ending…”

“It’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair… but that doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful. The finite of life is what makes it so wonderous and amazing, don’t you think?” Isaac came to a stop in front of the mug that he had left behind. He didn’t bother looking back, knowing he had found what it was he was looking for. Reaching out, he took the other mug in hand. Keeping the two mugs together.

It was warm and the color of it was blue, instead of red. In golden letters, the name Typhon was written on it’s surface.

“What’s the point of living if you are only doomed to die?” Cyclone snarled. “It would have been better if we never met!” He howled in pain, in fury, in anguish. A howl that broke into a pitiful whimpering cry. “It would have been better to never have known this pain. This loss…”

“It’s better to have loved and lost, right?” Isaac chuckled softly as he turned the mug around to look at. “You know, I think my favorite time of day was waking up next to you. To wake up knowing you were there.”

Only silence met his words.

“To know we had a … a routine to follow. To get up, shower and dress, then get breakfast… breakfast was my favorite time.” Isaac wasn’t the one to say the words, but Cyclone. “Drinking from the same coffee mug every single morning, looking at my husband across from me and to know, to enjoy the time we had together.”

“Was it worth it? Is all this risk and pain and suffering worth it…? Knowing The End of our story, of the movie, or… life itself? Is it worth bothering knowing how futile it all is? How meaningless it is in the grand scheme of things?”

“That’s something everyone has to learn on their own… I think, and this is just my personal opinion,” Isaac turned the mug around to read the name Typhon printed on it in golden letters, tracing it with a finger. “I think that because life is brief and fleeting, that things don’t last forever? That… that is what makes them beautiful. That we can truly learn to appreciate and love them because they won’t last forever. Friends? Family? Even works of art or lost civilizations…? Our time on the beach together? Was perfect because it had to, one day, come to an end.”

“Did it?” Cyclone asked the words, pleading to know if they truly had to come to an end. Even a fantasy had to end, from every dream you eventually wake from until the void sea takes you into its cold, numbing embrace.

“Yes, it did. It does. Like everything. As you do. As I do. As even the universe itself will one day do…” Isaac held the mug close to his chest. He could feel it. Finally feel the source of that heartbeat, pulsing from the mug itself. The memory of a man that had lost everything. “We all end. Doesn’t mean we can’t live it up until then.”

“How pointless.” Cyclone was there behind the mug, in front of Isaac, but his appearance was distorted, and Isaac knew it was because what was Cyclone was nothing more than the reflection of the man he loved in a mirror looking back at him.

“Was it?” Isaac asked him as he held the mug in his hands. “Pointless? Our time together?”

“Heh,” Cyclone smirked down at him. “No. I guess not. I loved every second of it. Being with you. Even if it was someone else’s feelings… in the beginning, they were real to me. At the end, they were my feelings, not his.” Cyclone sneered. “That was all me.”

“You were always real, Cyclone.” Isaac said looking at him. “At least, to me, you were real.”

“You don’t have to lie to me.” Cyclone rolled his eyes. “I’m a big boy and can handle the fucked-up nature of my birth.”

“Heh,” Isaac chuckled. Then he laughed and the two broke into laughter that slowly began to die and fade around them until they stood there in that comfortable silence.

“This is the end for me, isn’t it?” Cyclone sighed, looking down at his hand. “I wonder when I became a void beast. I don’t even recall… I was slowly falling apart. Fuck, you’ve seen me. A metal monstrosity trying to keep my balls from falling off. I just… don’t recall becoming this. Those memories? Are long gone.”

“My freaky Frankenstein,” Isaac teased, smiling at him. “It both is and isn’t the end,” Isaac strained his arm, applying pressure to the ceramic mug the two of them had dug the clay out of the ground together. The mug the two had shaped it together, jokingly reenacting a movie they’d seen together to make it. Shaping it into a coffee mug before firing it, painting it, glazing it, firing it all over again and then to share it.

Every morning, of every day together. Sharing a drink of coffee before starting their day together.

With that thought, a crack, and enough force… it broke apart into two. The ceramic mug breaking apart into pieces of void and disappearing leaving only the source, Cyclone’s core, behind. There, in the middle of the cracks, was a dull black shard of crystal.

The shard that had once been in Isaac’s chest.

“You kept this, huh?” Isaac took hold of the shard with his hand. His fingers went numb touching the thing. “The very shard that ended up killing me... created you.”

“It was, in a way, my beginning. It started the road Typhon, myself, would take and become, this.” Cyclone motioned down at himself. With another sigh, he shook his head. “Go ahead. Destroy it. It’s for the best. I can barely keep my shape or form… my thoughts are distorted. Without you? Without my anchor… I’ll be adrift at sea, again…”

“I enjoyed it, you know.” Isaac said and Cyclone looked at him. “Our time together here. Meeting you again.”

“Even if…?” Cyclone held up a hand and it was more sludge than hand, dripping down.

“Oh, Cyclone.” Isaac smiled then. “You have no idea what I’m going to do with this shard, do you.” He held it up.

“No…” Cyclone admitted. “I’ve never known what you would do. In some timelines you outright reject me. In others, you embrace me leaving that idiot behind. Yet… no matter how many times I succeeded; the ending never changed…” Cyclone closed his eyes. “Each and every time, you continued to surprise me. Maybe that’s why, at the end, I love you… why I loved you so much. You were the change I so desperately needed from the past.”

“I know, and I am sorry for that… for what you’ve been through.” Isaac turned the shard around. “You want to come with me?”

“Huh?” Cyclone’s ears perked up, eyes opening. His left eye was missing. Just like Isaac. Isaac had always wondered if the Saberwolf before him had done that to himself, to stop looking so much like Typhon… but to also look more like Isaac.

As if, in the end, Cyclone didn’t want to be a reflection of Typhon so much as he wanted to be a reflection of Isaac.

“To see what I plan to do with this?” Isaac held up the shard in one hand, then the hourglass in the other.

“When did you…” Cyclone shook his head. “Right, right. You’ve done this already before, so you are going to end up doing it again no matter what. What a pain in the ass. I hate time travel. I hate it so damn much!” He fussed up his hair, growling loudly. “Gives me such a freaking headache.”

“Me too.” Isaac offered a hand and Cyclone hesitantly reached for it. “You might want to get a bit closer, Cyclone.” And he did.

His form eased and the sludge of his arm ran up Isaac’s own, over his shoulder and around his back. Forming over his body. Cyclone clung to Isaac. Refusing to let him go.

“Cyclone,” Isaac said and the wolf’s muzzle formed on his shoulder. Black ooze that took shape of the wolf’s head. “Make sure to stay very close…”

“I will,” Cyclone promised and the two bumped noses as Isaac turned the hourglass. “One last journey together, huh?”

“Nah, this is a start of one. Not the end.” Isaac let the hourglass fall…

….

….

The sun beat down on the Terran running laps around the track. Sweat poured from his sunburned forehead as he tried to do one more lap. Just one more lap as he pushed himself to the point his legs gave out and he fell flat on his face.

“Fuck!” Isaac cursed, straining to breathe as he rolled over looking up at the sun above them. There were small dark shadows all around the burning light above him. The Terran Fleet had began creating massive solar panels around their sun, trying to harvest its energy to help fuel it’s space fleets. Needing the vast energy source to maintain their dominance in this sector of space.

Isaac Mayhew was no more than nineteen years old as he laid there, utterly exhausted from pushing himself.

Studying? Working out? Training sessions? It was never enough. No matter what he did, it was never enough to be in the top hundred students that would be hand picked to join the Fleet. He’d be stuck here, on this planet, for the rest of his damn life.

After meeting the foreign exchange alien students Bai’Tai and Raphael, he had even bigger hopes and dreams of flying through the stars. Being a space captain of his own ship? What a dream that would be! He wanted so badly to taste it, taste what it was like to have such freedom. To sprout wings and fly away from this place.

For so long he felt unnerved here. As if it were some dark omen about something to come, that would change everything. End it all.

Raphael had begun talking with Bai’Tai a lot lately. The two weren’t close and never really considered each other friends, yet now couldn’t be separated from each other. Isaac knew they weren’t, like dating, yet he couldn’t help but wonder.

Wonder… “What it would be like to have someone so close? To be with someone that was always there. Through the good times and bad.” Isaac covered his eyes with a sweaty arm, trying to catch his breath. No one would come out here to check on him.

He was son of the Commander Mayhew and was a giant disappointment. The Academy had only accepted him because of his father’s prestigious lineage and achievements. They assumed that Isaac, like his two brothers, would follow in his footsteps and create and even bigger, better reputation for their academy!

He had not.

Isaac wasn’t failing his classes, no, he just wasn’t achieving record breaking things as they had expected from someone of the Mayhew name.

“It’s not that your failing, you just… aren’t meeting our expectations.” The principle had called Isaac into their room to talk with him about. “Your brothers were already winning awards by your age! In sports or academics.”

“Sorry, sir. I’ll try harder.” Isaac stood there, arms folding behind his back. One hand holding the others wrist so tightly that it hurt. “I’ll do better.”

“We expect big things from you, Isaac. The Academy has invested heavily in you.” The principle poured herself a drink. “We can’t let those… others,” she said the word and Isaac knew she was talking about Bai’Tai and Raphael, “achieve things where we,” Terrans, “should be.”

“Yes, sir.” Isaac said as he’d been taught by his strict military raised father. “I will do better, next time.”

“Right.” She doubted him. He doubted himself. After losing his mother, he had no one to support him. “I, we, expect more from you. You aren’t in trouble,” she lied. “We just, need to make sure you are doing better…” She slid a paper across the desk and turned away to face towards the window.

Isaac took a single step forward to look down at the paper.

“Ma’am-,” Isaac voice broke seeing the papers. The procedure being offered on the paper. Cybernetic implants, replacement parts, “Fixes” it said on it over and over again.

“You said you were willing to do anything to be better.” She didn’t face towards him and Isaac still stood to attention at her woods, standing there as stiff as a board.

“Yes, sir!” He said loudly. “I-I will make sure to look into… into bettering myself.” Isaac took the paper from the desk.

“I look forward to seeing your improvements.” She said and Isaac left to his dorm room to throw up in the bathroom for the next thirty minutes, emptying out his lunch from that day at what she, what The Academy, was asking him to do.

“Heh, and here I thought I had it rough…” Cyclone said as Isaac watched his past self out there, on the track, trying to improve himself. Pushing to the limits, but never able to push past them.

“No matter what TV show you watch or anime or book you read… there is no way to push past your limits. They are your limits, for a reason. You can improve your records, sure, but those aren’t your limits are they…?” Isaac sighed, shaking his head as he rested against the tree as he, himself, cried on the ground of the track not even twenty yards away. “I tried so damn hard.”

“I know,” Cyclone nuzzled against him.

“I tried so god damn fucking hard… no one gave a shit. I wasn’t a genius, I wasn’t some sports god like my brothers were… I was human. I was good. I passed all my classes. I was never near the bottom… but also not near the top.” Isaac closed his eyes, letting out a breath. “Forgot about most of this. Suppressed these cold memories… No matter how I much I tried, I could never be what they wanted me to be. Never give them what they asked of me.”

“I know what that’s like.” Cyclone said knowingly from Typhon’s life. “The expectations they put on you. They expected me, expected Typhon to become a commander. A commander in the Endless War. To fight against an undefeatable ending…”

“That’s why you did that to yourself, huh? Kidnap yourself to save yourself from such a cruel fate.” Isaac chuckled.

“What?” Cyclone asked why he was laughing.

“Nothing, just, we’re a lot more alike than you might think.” Isaac grabbed hold of Cyclone.

“H-hey, what are you doing?” Cyclone asked as Isaac stretched him out like taffy before putting him on, over his head, like a hood.

“I told you Cyclone, I’ll show you what I did.” Isaac said as he walked towards himself, dressed like a mix between Cyclone and himself. “I’ll show you how I set things in motion.”

“Heh, next time I’ll show you.” Cyclone sneered, his eyes glancing down at Isaac’s face as the Terran approached himself.

It didn’t matter what was said. All that mattered was what was done as the void draped Isaac took off the silver bangle from his arm, able to pull it off with it deactivated like this. He offered it to himself, so many, many years ago.

Giving him the first domino piece to be set, to be placed for the events to occur.

“You want to past the final test, don’t you?” Isaac asked himself, offering him the bangle as he, himself, had experienced so many, many years ago. “This is an artifact that will do that for you. To help you achieve your dreams.”

“You mean…” Isaac said back, reaching for the device without taking it yet.

“Your dreams,” Isaac said again, to himself. Slightly louder this time, with a knowing smirk on his face. “This device,” Isaac held it up and he, himself, lifted up his right hand. “Will help you achieve your dreams…”

“O-okay… Okay.” Isaac said back as he, himself, put the device on his arm. It slid on so easily, even being oversized. Their electromagnetic signatures identical, after all, being the same.

Pressing the opals on it, Isaac activated the band and took a step back before it could react to Cyclone’s presence.

“Keep them safe for me, okay?” Isaac asked himself, turning away before his past self could even begin to grasp what was happening. Exhausted as he was, dehydrated and tired. Pushing himself to the point he puked blood… his past self wouldn’t fully remember any of this.

“Who are you?” Isaac called after him.

“A friend,” Isaac waved back as Cyclone’s eyes on the hoodie glanced back at the Terran. “Make sure to get those wings of yours! He’s waiting for you to do so,” Isaac kept the last part to himself, in no more than a whisper, as he chuckled. Tucking his hands away into his pockets, Isaac felt the hourglass once more. “It’s time.”

“Time… for goodbyes?” Cyclone asked him, glancing down.

“Goodbye?” Isaac laughed at that as he pulled out the dark shard, holding it up for the sunlight to hit. It didn’t gleam, it didn’t reflect any of the sun’s warm light falling down from overhead. “Not at all. Cyclone?”

“Yes, Isaac?”

“You promised to stay with me, forever, right?” Isaac held the shard up above him, looking at it.

“Forever.” Cyclone promised. And, with a knowing smile, Isaac opened up his mouth, dropped the shard inside and swallowed it. Wincing, Isaac wished he had some water as he hit his chest with a closed fist several times. “What were you expecting swallow, basically, broken glass?”

“S-shut up,” Isaac gagged before forcing it down. “Fuck…”

“Isaac,” Cyclone said, glancing down at him. “You didn’t have to do that… now you won’t be able to get rid of me.” Isaac winced against, holding his chest.

“Eh, like I’d be able to get rid of my creepy stalker to begin with.” Isaac grimaced as he felt the shard burying into the spot next to his heart, where the original shard had been. “Do you mind?”

“Just getting comfortable,” Cyclone closed his eyes, feeling the beat of Isaac heart against the shard. “There. Right next to each other, where we belong… we’re like a true symbiote now.”

“More like a parasite.” Isaac chuckled.

“You love it. You love me!” Cyclone laughed. “Act all tough as much as you want, make all the silly dumb jokes about it… but it doesn’t change the fact that you did this. You chose this. You… picked me.” Cyclone voice softened at the end. “You picked me. Not that fool.”

“Well…” Isaac grinned guilty.

“No, don’t tell me.” Cyclone wanted to howl. “I do NOT want to watch the two of you getting it on.”

“Hey, you chose me.” Isaac shrugged… “Hey, Cyclone?”

“Yes, Isaac?” Cyclone sighed as he pouted about the situation he found himself in.

“Forever?”

“Forever, Isaac. Forever.” Cyclone opened his eyes again. “Where to next?”

“Does it matter?”

“No… no not really.” Cyclone chuckled, teeth forming on the side of the hoodie as the once Saberwolf smirked. “As long as we’re together.” Isaac stuffed his hands into the jacket that was Cyclone and picked up his pace.

“As long as we’re together, Cyclone.” Isaac agreed as the two headed off to finish things once and for all. Together. “Together until The End.”