Title: Semi-gods
Fandom: Myst
Pairing: Sirrus/Achenar. Or vice versa, depends on whether you consider the mental or physical aspect.
Disclaimer: all Cyan's, Ubi's, and primarily, the Miller brothers.
Rating: G and a tentative R for pt. 2, where some sex does take place.
Summary: the grand canon question: why, my sons, why? Because, Atrus, somebody's been obsessing over boats too much.
Warning: incest. Plus, spoilers for the games, even though the fic wobbles somewhat read: a lot within the canon.
1. Raw materials.
1.1.
"Won't work," comments Achenar, chewing on a straw.
If Sirrus needed any additional stimulus, this is it. The stubborn brass, wood and stone contraption challenges him, as does the relaxed, confident manner of his brother's remark.
"It will not work. Believe me, I know."
It takes Sirrus only a split of a second to map out the possibilities. He's pretty sure about the plan for his new device, but what unnerves him on this fine, sunny day is the sudden certainty Achenar seems to display. He wishes he'd be alone, face to face with his experiment, and without the appointed supervision of the elder sibling. He's grown up enough; this distrust is killing him.
"How do you know?"
Before Achenar bothers to phrase a solid argument, Sirrus does some quick calculation. It's not that difficult: the elder's is sensibility while the younger's is sense. Achenar would take some time forming his emotions into exact words; not that he's that often wrong with his gut feelings, to give him due credit. This time Sirrus wonders where this certain feeling has come from.
There are only two variants: spite or envy. Probably the former is the consequence of the latter. The best Achenar has managed so far is a couple of elementary mechanisms, their structure no more complicated than two, or three the most, puzzling moves. These devices have been robust, that much Sirrus acknowledges, but then, he's never been the one to use brute force. Or is he mistaken and this time his brother has actually discovered a hidden catch that he has overlooked, impossible as it may seem?
"I asked you a question."
"Uh?" Achenar seems busy with all manner of things, like an irregular path of a bird in its flight, the sunray pattern on the leaves, and such.
"How do you know it won't work?"
"Father told me. So it will NOT."
He hasn't included this variant into his plan. And neither has he considered the fact his brother could gain such omniscient advantage without actually doing anything. Sirrus thinks about the notion of fair game and feels thoroughly cheated.
1.2.
Death is always a revelation. They haven't seen it before that close, and never in such direct relation to the world they know. Sirrus looks outside, where the island of Myst is slowly swallowed by evening fog, and feels the chill despite the glow of the fireplace. The pines are reduced to tall shadows, with the path to be guessed between them. He's spent all his short lifetime in this place, and yet he isn't sure he knows it any more.
He listens attentively trying to overhear the conversation between his parents, but the creaking branches and the deep, ever-present rumble of the waves interfere. Words are dissolved in the dusk, and he catches only disjoint bits that explain nothing and only scare him.
"We can't be sure what illness was…"
"Anna…It was in one of my Ages, Atrus…"
"Don't blame yourself, it could happen…"
"We never know what's in there… must be careful…"
"We will. This time, nothing could be done. Don't blame…"
It is a rare case when Atrus, his father, is entirely focused on something other than his studies, and ironically, it is wasted on Catherine, who seems deaf to any reasoning. Sirrus would like to come nearer to his mother, to offer whatever consolation and comfort he could, but he shouldn't and wouldn't dare. When Atrus is beside her, there's no place for anyone else. To think that he himself would need consolation in grieving for his grandmother borders on sacrilege.
Sirrus slides farther back on the bench, trying to become invisible, and realizes there's something else beside the sounds from the outside that has been hindering his concentration.
"Can't you stop champing like that?"
Achenar doesn't look up from his plate, his greased fingers tearing and breaking every morsel of food into pieces that are immediately gulped down in a feverish hurry. His longish brown hair is disarrayed and, to Sirrus' disgust, also greased where the strands have dipped into pools of gravy he has made all around himself.
"You'll eat yourself sick. Stop it!"
Achenar doesn't seem to hear and reaches instead for his brother's untouched plate. Sirrus watches how a slice of fat roasted meat suddenly slips from the fingers he's always known to be so nimble and strong, and then shuts his eyes tight.
1.3.
The island of Myst was written as a safe haven but in fact it wasn't, since Anna - or Ti'ana, the story-teller, as she had come to be known - had enough of insight not to assume her good intentions would override the laws of life. Death has always been here. It is here now, right under the bush in the forest, and it announces its presence by sound as much as by looks.
The dead bird moves when Achenar pokes it with a stick, and upset flies buzz around angrily. Apart from that, the bird looks still as if it were alive, and Achenar pokes at it again, to make sure. He isn't the one who killed it, and he wonders what accident might have caused its death. There are no predators on the island apart from him and his brother, and he's pretty certain neither he nor Sirrus could have done it without leaving marks. To see if there are any, he has to pick the dead bird up.
When he does, fighting a sudden aversion, the creature's wings fall open. Still no marks of violence. Illness and old age, he's heard tales of people dying of old age, which he never understood. You can die if you eat or drink something bad, or if you are wounded and mix blood with dirt – that's what mother always says when he or Sirrus get a nasty scratch and do nothing about it. But this kind of invisible death, coming from nowhere, seems stealthy and unreal. It's almost like a game of make-believe, and he pokes with his stick harder to see if the bird is indeed dead and not faking it.
The stick breaks, and Achenar decides to take the bird with him to his room, where there are sturdy objects good for experimentation. The tiny body in his palm is warm and soft, and it almost seems he'd just need to make some loud noise to wake it up.
Anna, his great-grandmother, looked like that when father, after a long while spent behind the locked door, finally invited them all inside. Everybody was so quiet, and he suddenly got this urge to smash something or to shout as loud as he could, and of course Anna would sit up and look at him with her usual amused patience.
Since that day everybody is still very quiet, and it seems he is alone in the house. He collects his fish-hooks and a few strips of metal Sirrus has forgotten after they toyed with another device that refused to work, and sets about his business.
He is very gentle. He tries very hard to be gentle, but the bird's flesh suddenly gives way, and the hook is buried whole in its neck.
"Achenar? What are you doing?"
He looks up at his mother, and at that moment the bird comes to life, or seems to, the wings flapping in weak spasms as a rivulet of blood worms its way on the floor.
"What ARE you doing?!"
"I…"
He tries to take the hook out, but before that, mother is dangerously near.
"You killed it. What did you do that for? Answer me!"
He wants to, but he can't because he's again expected to express so many things in just a few words. She slaps his face once, and he covers up on instinct, fingers smeared in blood leaving traces on his cheeks as well as on Catherine's hand. He doesn't remember how many times she slaps him then, harder and harder, until she runs out of the room, her own face in tears.
1.4.
"Hello?"
Sirrus' voice echoes in the distance, but nobody answers. The pillar walkway is deserted, and there's only the smell of dry glass and birds' chirrup in the air.
"Where are you?" Sirrus looks around and sighs in grim resolution. "Achenar!"
It all means another day is going to waste. But it was father's request, and since it was the first time he spoke to Sirrus after Anna's death, it was impossible to even think about opting out of the task. His task, for today, is to find his brother and keep him company. As if lately Achenar has been needing any other company than a full bowl of food: Sirrus still cringes at the image of his brother's recent table manners.
There's also been something, something that happened between Achenar and mother. His sibling has managed to do something outstanding to bring such an attitude upon himself: not the usual chiding or a strict rebuke they both are used to, but a sort of cold, unfamiliar detachment. If this day is going to bring him nothing in his plans, he might at least find out what happened.
But he's getting tired of this hide-and-seek game. Achenar knows how to hide when he wants to, but they wouldn't share the same family if Sirrus didn't know where to look. He stops for a moment and thinks.
His brother is precisely where he's concluded him to be: on the stairs facing the sea, sitting on the steps all gruff and grumpy.
"Hello, you've been bad?"
Perhaps it's not the wisest of ways to start a conversation. Sirrus' long tongue has already landed him into various degrees of awkwardness, and now he promptly remembers that his brother is not only in a bad mood but also two years older and stronger. But curiosity has always been too much for him to resist.
"What did you do? Mom's not herself. I think…" Sirrus is about to say something he has just realized. "I think she looks afraid of you."
Achenar interprets it as a bitter praise and stands up, chin raised in solitary arrogance.
"I killed. It was a bird."
This is what Sirrus has never done yet, and for a moment he feels a pang of jealousy and wants to know details. He thinks better of that, though, since doing his assigned task well would mean talking to father again, and Atrus would definitely not like hearing that his sons understood 'keeping each other company' as a discussion of such sorts.
"How did it feel?" Sirrus ventures one last question.
"Uh," Achenar shrugs with an air of a person who'd like to be somebody else. "If was unexpected. And mother got angry."
"I thought it was because you smashed all those models in your room."
"No, that happened later."
Sirrus snorts. Did his brother really think that'd mellow her? From his own experience he knows that talking about your fault brings you more, in the long run, than breaking things in protest or stubbornly sulking alone. Parents somehow like to hear why you do this or that thing; not that it's always easy to explain, of course, and doubly so for Achenar, who often has no idea about his 'whys' himself.
"Well, what do we do now?"
They slowly walk up the clearing to the reflection pool. The sun is high, and there's still the bigger part of the day lying ahead, to be filled with activity unless they want to wallow in depressive slack.
Achenar stops by the pool and gives one of the boats sailing there a lazy push.
"Naval battles?" proposes Sirrus hopefully: he's always liked boats, these toy ones they've had for like forever in the pool, and the huge, sinking one in the bay. Ships have always fascinated him; they mean movement and discovery, and a whole lot of things he's never seen.
"Not interesting," grumbles Achenar, tracing a spiral on the glassy water with his fingers. "They always run in circles in the pool. Not fun."
Sirrus, not long ago having turned nine and lacking in height as compared to his sibling, can still hardly see over the stone rim of the pool and so thinks differently. But if he insists on his wish, his brother might lose whatever interest he still has and leave, and then the day will be ruined by boredom completely.
"Wait. I know where there'll be more space. Take them out."
Brother looks at him questioningly.
"Take them out, I have an idea."
The taller Achenar fishes the two boats one by one out of the pool, and then they both return to the stairs by the quay. The sea utters deep, rumbling sounds like it always does in the end of summer, and far away clouds billow on the horizon.
"You stupid," announces Achenar, eyeing the splashing waves with skepticism. "They'll break, they can't sail over the real sea."
Sirrus watches him, arms crossed over his chest and one foot tapping slightly. He knows his brother too well.
Achenar pauses, estimates the chances, then kneels on the warm planks of the quay and carefully, with the precision unexpected in the hands as harsh as his, launches the boats onto open water.
The toy boats waver and dip and swallow a good deal of the sea into their unprotected holds, then steady as they are caught in the swing of the waves.
"A ship is nothing when there's no sea," says the know-it-all Sirrus, and his brother only squints at him, his attention bound to the struggling vessels.
For a long moment the boats are posed with their bowsprits pointing to the open sea, and Sirrus almost believes they've tuned to the waves and now will press onwards successfully, where the deep water seems calmer. Then another, this time higher wave raises them on its back and crushes them against the mooring posts.
"I told you so," Achenar sighs as the broken flotsam rubs against the wood of the quay pillars in silent reproach. "Father will be mad."