Author's Note: This was written for bighead98, for the prompt of Kouta and a pregnant Mai on planet Helheim. There is some mention of sex in this—nothing graphic, nothing I would think merits a higher than PG-13 because it's pretty much just all emotion with little description of the physicality, but I figure fair warning is always good.
The Worlds We Build
Let there be life.
They say the words in unison, and Kouta doesn't know if it is his idea or Mai's. His hand is linked with hers, his thoughts skimming through hers as hers skim through his, and it could be either. It could be both. It could be neither of them, instead something that bubbles out of the white-red-gold power burning through them both, and he shivers violently as he tries to pull his thoughts away from from that searing flame.
The world is dark.
Darker than he has ever seen, darker than he could ever have imagined a world could be. Darker than the darkest new-moon night, because there is no moon and no sun on this world he has chosen for their exile.
"Let there be life." He whispers the words through lips that appear human, even though they are the farthest thing from it. He whispers them as the Inves that he and Mai ripped from Zawame City begin dying, unsuited to the cold and the dark and the atmospheric composition of this world.
He chose poorly. He chose in a moment of rashness, his new god-senses telling him everything and nothing. He chose desperately and quickly, knowing that if he waited too long on Earth, spent too much time adjusting, it would be that much harder to ignore the Snake and the words he would inevitably whisper.
Stay, the beast would hiss at him.
Claim your victory, he would demand as Kaitou's blood was still warm on Kouta's hands.
Don't abandon them to sorrow and loss, and that is the real reason Kouta had to end it quickly.
He cannot stay on Earth. Mai cannot stay on Earth. The forest, the creeping, insidious threat, is now a part of them, a shard of their core, and there is no returning to humanity.
"Let them breathe." Mai's hands are on his cheeks, her voice a warm whisper in his ear. "They're ours, Kouta, and we have to let them breathe."
How? He almost asks the question, but the answer is there in his mind before he can form the words.
They are a part of Helheim now, he and Mai, but they are more than that. They are life, pure, unadulterated life, the ultimate of all invasive species. And everything that belonged to Helheim, everything that they brought with them, belongs to them.
Can be shaped by them.
Can be changed by them.
"Breathe with me, Kouta." Mai's words are a desperate whisper, a half-sob. "Breathe with me and help me."
And though it would be easier—far, far easier—to sit still and quiet while the nightmare that they dragged to this world dies, Kouta does as Mai asks.
He breathes, dragging in oxygen-poor, methane-rich air.
He wills his body to change, to process the air, to live.
And he wills that change to flow along to all those he is connected to, a chain of life.
He can feel Mai doing the same, her breathing synchronizing with his, her will tied in an unbreakable knot with his.
And he can feel the Inves respond.
He can feel the trees respond.
He can feel the world come alive under them, the Helheim-tainted bacteria and viruses and tardigrades all eagerly accepting the alterations that he instinctively knows how to make.
He breathes in, and a world that was dead and suffocating breathes in with him.
He breathes out, and Mai breathes out with him, a sob of sorrow mixed with elation. "We did it. Kouta, we did it!"
"We saved the world." He tries to smile, but there are tears welling in his eyes again.
"We've made a new world." Her thumbs stroke along his cheeks, and her voice is gentle, but there are tears building in her eyes. Tears rolling from her lashes, freezing and thawing as the temperature fluctuates wildly around them.
"You've sacrificed everything." He brushes at the tears, feels them wet the blood that has dried and frozen on his hands.
She leans forward, her forehead resting against his. "So have you."
"But we have a planet." The ragged breath he draws should burn his lungs, but such a thing is not allowed now. He is a god; this is his world; it will not hurt him.
"We have a people." Mai's shoulders shake with tears.
"We have each other." Wrapping his arms around her shoulders, Kouta pulls Mai tight against him.
"We'll be okay." Mai's last word is swallowed in wracking sobs, her body shuddering against his.
"We'll be okay." Kouta's words aren't intelligible at all, but Mai is touching him. She can feel the steel in his soul as well as the grief that turns his own breath to wracking gasps.
They are together, and they will be okay.
What other choice is there, really, for gods of destruction who refuse to kill?
XXX
They cry until they are spent, and then they turn once more to the world around them.
There is so much to do, so much that he both does-and-doesn't understand. An instinctual knowledge of all that is and all that could be life dwells in him now—in them, in Mai as well—and they use it.
They shape their creatures to a world without light. They find alternative sources of energy—photosynthesis based on other types of radiation.
They shape their world so that the wild temperature fluctuations cease, urging the bacteria that are a part of Helheim to grow, change, and change the world. Not to produce oxygen, not to make a world like Earth—they cannot have Earth, will never have Earth—but to make of this world someplace that can sustain life.
They shape the forest, twisting the trees so that they still produce what the Inves need from a substrate that is very different.
They shape the Inves, finding substitutions and alterations that will allow them to survive.
He doesn't know how long they work.
"Six days?" Mai whispers the word as she leans against them. They are perched on a hill, staring down at a collection of Inves who prowl slowly through a patch of days.
"No day or night here." He has his arms wrapped around Mai, holding her tight. They will not freeze—he doesn't know if they can actually die anymore—but the touch, the reminder of what they were born as, is comforting. "Does it matter if it's six days or six hours or six months?"
"No." Mai watches as a small Inves sneaks past a bigger one, reaching for a fruit. "Just that we did it. Just that we saved them."
As he couldn't save Hasse. As he couldn't save Kaitou. As he couldn't save so many people back home, and his arms tighten around Mai as he buries his nose in her hair.
"This isn't the end, Kouta." Her fingers find his hand, stroke and caress. "This is just the start. Survival is always just the start."
"Just the start..." He draws in a breath, smelling her hair and the atmosphere that they have made. "Then where do we go from here?"
"Now we rest." She twists in his arms, turning to study him with her mismatched, grave eyes. "Now we mourn and we rest, because we just made a world. Made one and saved another, and even for a god that's a pretty good piece of work, right?"
He is tired, weary to the bottom of his soul in a way that he wouldn't have been able to imagine a year ago. "I think.. resting sounds good."
Leaning forward, again resting her forehead against his, Mai squeezes his hands tight. "We rest and we heal, so that when we're ready... when we're ready we can make something absolutely beautiful out of this mess we've been handed."
Closing his eyes, Kouta focuses on the feel of Mai's skin against his, the feel of her fingers on his. Are they real, these feelings? Or are they memories, given form and substance by these new powers they have?
Her lips brush against his forehead, a caress so gentle he almost can't feel it. "This is real. Even if it's different, even if it's strange, it's us, and it's real, and it's all right. Now rest, Kouta. The world can wait until we're ready now."
XXX
He wanders the world for he doesn't know how long before he finds Mai with the dead creature that is almost a dog.
He never goes far from her in his wandering. He doesn't really want to be alone; he just doesn't know what to say when in her company, what to say in his own company, and it is easier to walk among the Inves. The creatures are simple, desiring little other than to eat, sleep, and reproduce. There is little violence—how can there be violence when they are all part of the same organism, after all? It isn't like he is ever truly separate from Mai, anyway—they are both gods here, holders and wielders of the power that flows through all of Helheim.
Which is why he stops in his tracks, his eyes unable to quite understand what he is seeing as he stares across a dark meadow through eyes that see everything even in the darkness of this world and watches her pet a dead thing's head.
She looks up at him, her eyes glowing with the power that should be locked deep inside. Her voice trembles on the word that she speaks, a word that cuts through his daze and straight into his heart with how small and lost it sounds. "Kouta...?"
"Mai." He runs across the meadow, not trusting himself to use the power that is shining inside him. Dropping to his knees beside her, he examines the beast that she holds. There is no fur, but armor plating pencil-fine looks almost like fur, and the shape is definitely dog-like. It is not a creature he has seen before. He can't tell how it died, either, the tiny body intact, no sign of trauma. "What happened?"
"I just wanted a dog." The words come out as a whispered sob. "I miss home so m-much, and I just... wanted... a dog..."
Her words are joked off by gasping breaths, though no tears block the shine of power in her eyes. Eyes that plead with him to understand, to tell her that what has happened is all right, but he still doesn't know...
Except he can, as his hand brushes hers. He can see it, as clearly as if he had been there, as if he had done it. See the Inves either hiding or ignoring her, and himself, wandering lost in his own grief, and all that shining power living inside her...
It wasn't a large dog. Ten, fifteen kilograms at the most, and not quite right—built off Inves body plans, twisted to a canine form, rather than the true Earth equivalent—but it leapt so happily at her side and licked her skin and wasn't afraid or guilty or grieving—
"I made a dog." Mai closes her eyes, and her hand shivers under his.
The Inves that it attacks had been a child once, though there is little if no human memory left in it. The Inves is small, half the size of the others, but growing. Living, breathing, one of the ones that she saved—that Kouta saved—and she hadn't even considered that the dog might attack it.
Didn't think, when she made the dog, to make it something other than a predator.
She didn't mean to scream at the dog.
She didn't mean to throw her power out along with the order to stop, and every fiber of the creature had responded to the command made by the voice that built it.
She didn't mean to hesitate, so scared and lost at the manifestation of her own power, and by the time she realized what she'd done and what she could do to fix it the little beast's soul was long gone.
"Oh, Mai." Kouta throws his arms across her shoulders, pulling her tight. "It was an accident. I'm so sorry it happened, but it wasn't—"
"It was me." Mai's right hand balls his cloak into a fist; her left hovers away from him, refusing to take the comfort he so desperately wants to give. "I made it; I killed it. What am I, Kouta? What are we? Why are we here?"
"We're us." It is what she needs to hear—he can feel that, in the same way that he saw what she needed to show him—but it is also what he believes, if he digs down through his own loss and selfishness. Moving his hands so that he is holding her head firmly, he meets her eyes. "We're Kouta and Mai. We're human. We were born on Earth and we love Earth and we saved it and... and..."
"And now we're gods." Her lips tremble. "I can make and unmake life with a word. Bend space with a gesture. We both can."
"But we're still Kouta and Mai. We're still human. Humans with more power than we know what to do with, and we'll make mistakes—look at my choice of planet." His small self-mockery earns a twist of her lips in a tentative smile, and he likes seeing her smile. Thinks he hasn't seen it in far too long, and it's past time he stopped wandering. "But we're going to be okay. We're together and we're going to be okay."
After a brief hesitation Mai nods, leaning forward so that her forehead presses against his again. Her voice is a trembling whisper, but the tremor is more determination than doubt, he thinks. "We're still Kouta and Mai, and we're going to be okay."
"That's right. That's all you need to know." Loosening his hold, he strokes one hand over her gold-blond hair.
"Kouta..." Both her hands are balled into his clothes now, holding him in place, but her eyes aren't glowing quite so stridenly. "I still... I still want a dog. But I'm afraid... it's so easy to just put in things you don't think about, like dogs being predators..."
"We've got a world to populate, Mai." This time it is he who kisses her forehead, and it feels so human, so intimate and human. "Together, I'm sure we can come up with all kinds of amazing things. And if we make mistakes... we'll try to fix them. Because that's what people do. What humans do."
Mai's smile is beautific as her fingers trail down one of his cheeks. "Thank you, Kouta."
"Don't thank me." Rising to his feet, he holds out a hand. "Come help me make our world better."
Setting the body of the little dog aside, Mai takes his hand. "Gladly."
He realizes once they're both standing that he has no idea where they should go, and gives her a sheepish shrug. "Suggestions on the proper locale for remaking the world?"
For the first time since they changed Mai laughs, and the sound makes Kouta feel like everything might really be all right after all.
XXX
They kneel on the cold, barren ground, their fingers locked together, arms forming a circle that contains a glowing furnace.
It's almost too easy, really. They are the creators of life and growth here. They can see down to the sub-atomic level how everything is made. They can change it, with a word or a gesture.
They don't understand it all, still. There are parts that his mind, still set in patterns made by a human body, simply cannot comprehend.
But they can build with it, and together they can make wonders.
He watches the creatures spill out of the light, his eyes glowing as brightly as Mai's. Viruses, at first, little snippets of DNA and RNA; prions, little pieces of protein to fold and refold; bacteria; tardigrades; other creatures too small to see with human eyes but perfectly visible to his god-sight. Then bigger things—fungi, moss, plants, and they are nothing like the plants of Earth and they are not quite like the plants of Helheim but they will survive here. They will drink radiation from the stars and they will craft an even better atmosphere and they will live, just like the creatures that follow them—insects, lizards, mice, birds, so much emerging from the glowing ring that he and Mai hold together with trembling fingers and he can see it all, he can see how everything will fit together, he can see where he needs to change it to get what they want—
"What are you doing?" The Snake doesn't hiss the words out. He speaks calmly, with a light, almost bouncy tone, but Kouta can feel the worry in the creature.
The Snake is his, too, after all—his and Mai's, the creature that crafted them into these beings who can hold the foundations of a world between their linked arms.
"We're doing what you wanted." Mai smiles, her golden hair blown back as though by a wind. "We're making the world."
"This is not what I wanted." The Snake steps aside as a creature with no legs and a sinuous body hurls itself from the light and slithers off. "This is..."
Kouta can feel the moment that the Snake understands. He can feel the fear that lances through the creature as it gestures for the not-snake that Kouta and Mai made to come to him and it fails to respond. He can feel the horror in the Snake as it stares at him with eyes that see just as well as Kouta's, hear disbelief in the whisper that follows. "What have you done?"
"You told me, once, that if the game wasn't winnable, then you had to change the rules." Kouta's fingers tremble, a human reaction to the exhausted ache that is starting to build within him.
"And we've done that." Mai doesn't look at the Snake; she watches Kouta, instead, still smiling, so sure that they have chosen correctly, and her surety is enough to erase any doubts that Kouta has. "We've changed the rules once already by coming here."
"And now we've changed them again." Close—they are so close to finishing what they set out to do, and Kouta clenches his hands tight, refusing to stop. If they stop, if he lets Mai's fingers go, he will lose sight of the pattern that they are following. "You aren't ever going to do to anyone else what you did to us. To Earth."
"Because what you are isn't evolution." Mai's eyes snap away from Kouta, and he can feel the venom of hurt that still lives inside her, the frustration she feels at having been used, again and again. "Any child could tell you that. Evolution doesn't think. It doesn't choose."
"It's a force of competition, nothing more and nothing less. Not good or bad, not directed... just a truth, really, that some things will survive and others will not. Physically, at least." Because there is more than the physical present in the world—he has seen Kaitou's soul, bound into the tree that defined so much of the man's life, and the knowledge that there is something out there beyond what even this god-body can touch brings Kouta comfort. "What you do, what you force, that isn't evolution."
"It's destruction. It's pain and sorrow." Mai's hate for the Snake frays away in the golden light that they continue to build with, following the pattern. "And sure, evolution could come from that, but it doesn't have to. The radiation from an atom bomb can create new life, but usually all it does is shred the fabric of the old, from DNA on up."
The Snake looks between them, his eyes narrowed, and Kouta can still feel the pounding of fear in the creature's veins though its body is deathly still. "What does that have to do with me—with Helheim... with what you've done?"
"You lost sight of what it means to be placed under pressure yourself." Kouta's breath becomes ragged, his words slurring together as the power sluicing between he and Mai builds and builds. "You're used to being the apex predator. To not just consuming but encompassing everything else biological."
"You're like the ultimate prion disease, the epitome of a virus—you rewrite all that existed to create a new piece of Helheim." Mai's breath is panting gasps, too, but her fingers just hold tighter to his, refusing to give up. "You don't understand evolution because you've forgotten what it means to experience it. You've forgotten what it really means to be afraid, to be helpless, to be surrounded by creatures that are not you."
As everything pouring out from between their arms is not of Helheim, has been twisted and tweaked so that it can eat the fruits of Helheim and scratch itself on her thorns and never be turned and changed by it.
Never be controlled and ordered about by Kouta and Mai, granted freedom and free will by the human-gods who made them, and he hopes that the pattern they made is a good one. He hopes that their human eyes overlaying a god's understanding were able to make something approximating what they wanted.
He hopes they have made things better, not worse.
The dogs crawl out of the light last, a pair, one with pale white scale-fur, the other dark as night. They run as soon as their scrambling legs touch the soil, as all the others have run, and Kouta feels his fingers part from Mai's, the light dying between them.
It is done.
"You've brought war here." The Snake looks between them, his eyes glinting from the depths of his cloak. "You've brought death and destruction to this world that you created, as surely as if you had left Helheim on Earth."
"No." Mai shakes her head, standing to face the Snake. "We've brought change, that's all. The creatures we made aren't predators—they won't destroy the Inves. But they aren't mine and Kouta's to control, either, and if Helheim pushes them to develop defenses..."
"Because there is no ultimate winner in evolution. No true pinnacle. Just the creatures that are best suited to the environment that they are in at the time. But if it's a stable environment, a peaceful environment..." Kouta takes Mai's hand in his, twining their fingers together again. "There can be peace here. I want there to be peace here. But I also want there to be more than Helheim."
Mai squeezes his hand in turn. "More than gods."
"More than us." Kouta pulls Mai to him, wrapping his arms around her. "I want there to be change and growth and life. And... I think you do, too, no matter what else you may say, Snake."
The Snake just continues to stare at him, dark eyes in a dark cloak, but Kouta thinks he can hear a smile in the grunt that the creature gives as it turns away.
Whether there is or there isn't, whether this is the change in rules that the Snake wanted—the erasure of gods, the ending of supremacy—it is all Kouta and Mai could offer to Helheim.
Hopefully it will be enough to build a world from.
XXX
They are not human after their work of world-building is done, but they are closer to it than they have been in a long time. In the place where the gold-white fire burns, where their control of Helheim lurks, there are only ashen embers. In time, they will flare again into vivid life. In time, they will be able to form new patterns, make new life if they wish, try to trouble-shoot this new world that they have attempted to create.
In time, but for a brief, glorious moment they are almost, almost Kouta and Mai again.
Kouta doesn't know who starts kissing who first. Perhaps it was him—a kiss to Mai's forehead, a brush of his hands through her hair as a poor thanks for all that she has done.
Perhaps it is her, her hands clasped tight around his back, her head resting against his shoulder, her mouth gentle against the pulse that still beats in his throat.
They are not quite human, still. He does not have to ask her if she wants him; she does not have to ask him if he wants her. They can feel it, a thrumming resonance through both their bodies, both their minds, and he is undoing the belt to her tunic as she thrusts aside his cloak.
There is a speed to both their movements, a desperate, driving need.
A need to have this done soon, while they are still like this, still almost-not-quite-human and it can be what it should have been, would have been, in a world where they aged and grew and changed along with their world.
A need to touch the other, to be reminded by physical contact that they are still real, still more than the god-fire burning inside, still more than the thoughts that tangle sluggishly.
A need to be clean, for her to wash away the blood on his hands, the blood he can still feel, the blood of sorrow and betrayal and broken wasted lives.
A need to be whole, to be a woman who dances and chooses and breathes, not a prize to be won, a silent doll to be promised impossible dreams and crushed beneath the weight of disappointments.
A need to be human, and it burns in both of them, a yearning for home and for family and for friends that they will never have again, and even if the touch of the other is glorious, even if the friendship that binds them is deep and tested and true, it cannot cover over the gaping holes that have been left by everything else.
(They are not human, they know as the bodies that they still wear out of habit complete the ritual that Earth has seen over and over again for millions of years. They are not human anymore and never can be, their thoughts twined together more truly than their bodies ever could manage, but they will not give up their humanity, and right now that humanity need this.)
He strokes her hair back from her face, as the god-fire embers flicker to life. Vines twine up around their body, shift at the brush of a thought from vine into white fabric, leaving them clothed once again. "I love you, Mai."
She smiles up at him with her mismatched god-eyes. "I love you too, Kouta."
And though the words are only codes for the emotion burning bright within both of them—for the needs which they cannot give up; for the respect, so deep on both sides; for the hopes, tentative and fragile, that both have for the future—they are human words, and right then, for a few minutes, they are enough.
XXX
He learns that Mai is pregnant moments after she learns it for herself.
"Kouta." She raises her eyes to meet his, and the god-fire burns within, but there is something far more recognizable—far more scared—in front of it. "Kouta, can you feel that? Is that..."
Life, blazing inside the fire that is Mai, and now that Mai has drawn his attention to it Kouta can't help but wonder how it took them so long to notice. It has been almost a month since they played at being human still. A month during which the tiny life has come into being, grown, become integrally attached to the physical form that Mai wears because she still loves it and—
"Oh god." Panic colors the words, whips out around Mai in swirling bursts of gold that cause tendrils to writhe across the ground, flowers to burst into bloom and then close again. "Oh god oh god oh god—"
"Mai, it's okay." Kouta grabs her, presses her tightly to him, his own uncertainty buried beneath the need to comfort her, to make her feel safe and whole and all right again. "I'm right here, and you're fine, it's fine, everything's all right."
"It is not all right!" Mai doesn't push away from him, though, instead nuzzling tight against his neck, her arms flung around him and holding him tight. "I'm pregnant! We're gods of an alien forest on a planet with no sun and I'm pregnant!"
"...Yes." Kouta can't really argue with any of her logic, so he just holds her closer. "And everything's going to be all right."
"How?" Mai pulls back, glaring up at him as though this is his fault.
Which it is, partly, but only partly. Saying that will likely not help the situation, though. "We approach this the way we have all our other problems."
Mai narrows her eyes. "Neither panic nor plucky determination seems like it will help much in this case."
"It's helping already. We've moved from panic straight into determination, see?" He smiles tentatively, raising a hand to cup her cheek. "Now we just have to move from determination into victory. Easy three-step process."
Mai leans into his touch, the last of her panic fading away, though Kouta still doesn't like the haunted look in her eyes. "How are we defining victory here?"
Drawing a deep breath, Kouta shakes his head. "I... don't know. I guess that's the first thing we do. Do you... do you want to be pregnant?"
They could probably abort the child. He doesn't actually say the words, but they hang in the air anyway. They are lords of life and death for all Helheim, have pitch-perfect control of their bodies. If Mai doesn't wish to be pregnant anymore, Kouta is quite sure they can find a way to make it happen.
And if that is what she chooses... Mai is more important, to him, than anything else on this world.
"How can we have a child here?" Mai bites hard on her lip. "A human child wouldn't live."
"No, it wouldn't." Kouta presses a kiss to her forehead. "But who's to say it would be human?"
Mai swallows. "An Inves?"
"Or something new. Something different." Kouta draws a deep breath. "Something almost-human, that could survive here but would be safe from Helheim's touch."
Mai's left hand lowers, hovering over the tiny spark that has gone from negligible to devouring both their attentions with the simple knowledge of what it is. "Shape it? Like we shaped our other creatures?"
Like they made the dogs that come to Mai's side now, and the birds that dance and play among the Inves—like they made a world, and though not everything has turned out perfect it is at least good enough. "Shape it just enough. If you want. If you don't want to... to abort it instead."
"A child. Our child. On our world." Biting so hard on her bottom lip she draws blood, Mai shakes her head, left hand coming to rest against her stomach. "Could we, Kouta? Would it be fair? Would it be right?"
"I... don't think either decision is right or wrong here." Kouta kisses the blood away from her mouth, one hand on her head, one covering Mai's where it rests above her belly. "It's what we think we can handle. It's us doing the best we can, just like we made the world the best we can."
"It wouldn't be selfish of us?" Mai kisses him in return, her lips warm against his, the god-fire a spark between their hands. "It wouldn't be wrong?"
"No." Excitement starts to build in Kouta as he considers what the future could be. "No more wrong than making everything else we have was."
"Even though it could go so wrong..." Mai rests her head on his shoulder again. "Would you try with me? Would you help me?"
Kouta pulls her tight to him, whispering his answer in her ear. "Always. With whatever you need."
He has never meant any words more in his life.
XXX
They only alter the child once, and they only change what they need to in order to allow it to survive.
They don't know what being a child of gods—what growing within Mai's body, only as human as she can make it—will do the baby. There is nothing they can do to change or affect that, though, so Kouta wills himself not to worry about it.
He wills himself not to worry about a lot of things, actually. Like the way the Inves start taking more of an interest in Mai, coming up to her in small groups and studying her as though she is something special. Which she is—she is Mai, and she is a god here—and it's not as though they've done anything threatening, but he still feels... uncomfortable with it.
Or the way that he worries about Mai when she dances to the music that she hums. She is a god, and she has danced for years, and there is no reason that he should worry, but he does, and it's silly.
Or the way he worries that the Helheim fruit they eat will somehow change the child, though they made the same modifications to the baby that they did to the other creatures they made and—
A fruit bounces off his head, and Kouta looks up to see Mai scowling at him, her mismatched eyes pulled together in anger that is, he hopes, mostly feigned. "You're mother-henning again."
"I am not!" Kouta raises his hands in objection. "I haven't said anything!"
"Well, stop thinking so loud." Mai comes and places a hand on each of his shoulders, facing him squarely. "I'm fine, Kouta, and so is the baby."
His hands creep forward, almost of their own volition, stroking where Mai's flat belly has begun to bulge out noticeably. How long will it take a child of this dark planet to mature? Nine months, like the human it might once have been, if they weren't its parents? Shorter? Longer? Should he be able to see the signs of the pregnancy in Mai's body already?
"Kouta..." Mai sighs, shaking her head and rolling her eyes. "You can feel that I'm healthy. I can feel that I'm healthy. Please stop worrying."
Kouta gives a sigh of his own. "I'll try. That's all I can promise, all right?"
Mai pats his cheek, smiling happily at him. "Given how good you are at trying, I'll accept that promise easily."
Feeling as though he's somehow lost a game he didn't even know they were playing, Kouta follows Mai as she smiles and skips down into the forest.
XXX
He dreams that he goes to Akira for advice.
They don't need to sleep anymore, but they both still do. It helps them stay human—helps them keep to the thought patterns that shaped them, instead of giving in to the shimmering god-fire that wants to create and build and change in wild abandon.
It isn't the first time he's dreamed of people from Earth. He dreams of Takatora, sometimes, the man slowly inching his way towards recovery, dragging Micchy along with him. He dreams of Zack, often, the other man dancing on legs that don't quite work like they used to but are finally strong enough to hold him. He dreams of Kaitou, a spirit drinking in peace that he never knew existed in his short life, learning patience and the long arc of the universe from the tree that now shelters him.
And he dreams of Akira, healing, slowly, from all that she's seen.
The waves break gently on the shore, and he rests against her, his head cradled in her lap as her fingers weave their way through his hair.
"What's wrong, Kouta?" She asks the question easily, gently, just like she would have when he was really on Earth, when he could really talk to her like this.
"I'm going to be a father." Kouta sighs deeply. "And my child is going to inherit a world without a sun."
"A father?" Akira's yelp of joy is not the response that Kouta had been expecting, and he finds himself dumped unceremoniously on the sand. "I'm going to be an aunt?"
Kouta blinks. "I... guess so. Yeah."
"Kouta!" Akira tackles him into the sand in a fierce hug. "That's fantastic! You'll have to bring them to see me—or me to see them—or..." Akira trails off. "But you're not excited, are you?"
"I am." Kouta smiles at his sister, finding his own eagerness again in her clear joy at the news. "But I'm also kind of absolutely terrified. Mai and I are having a baby that's not human on a world full of Inves and things we made at the far reaches of the galaxy. It's... kind of a lot to imagine."
Akira smiles, helping him to sit up and brushing sand from his clothes—clothes like he once wore, like he loves, jeans and a flannel shirt, but the forest prefers to dress him as a god and he gave up fighting it. "Of course you're scared. You'd be an idiot to not be scared. But you'll do just fine."
"You... heard the list of problems, right?"
"I did." Akira puts her arm around his shoulders, hugging him tight. "But you're my baby brother. You're the best man I know. You saved this world and you made another, and from everything you've said it's absolutely amazing. So go ahead and be nervous, but me? I think you're going to be an absolutely amazing father, and Mai will be an amazing mother, and no matter where your strange little planet is, no matter how far away my little niece or nephew is, you better let them know that they've got a beautiful aunt here on Earth who loves them."
Kouta finds himself smiling as he allows Akira to keep him in a tight embrace. "Thanks, sis. Hearing you say all that means a lot to me."
"Good. Because it's all true. Now..." Akira gives his forehead a little flick. "Tell me all about everything else that's been happening."
When he wakes from the dream Kouta is smiling, and he finds that he doesn't worry quite as much as he did before.
XXX
"I want ice cream."
Mai mumbles the words into Kouta's wrist. They are both lying on the ground, a bed of green Helheim growth soft beneath them, contouring itself to their forms. Kouta has his arms wrapped around Mai, one grasped by both her hands and held to her lips, the other resting just above her massively swollen abdomen. "I would get you all the ice cream in the world if you asked."
"Not too hard, since there's no ice cream on this world." Mai smiles, a curve of her lips against Kouta's wrist. "I also want curry. The kind that Akira used to make when Micchy and I were over for dinner."
"All the curry in the world is yours, too." Kouta strokes his hand along Mai's stomach, from between her breasts down the curve of her body to her hips.
"I wish I was home." Mai bites down on his wrist, gently, her teeth barely indenting the skin. "I wish I was home and that I had Akira and Rat and..."
Kouta listens as Mai sobs out the names of their loved ones, because that is all he can do besides promising the impossible. Mai knows that—he knows that she knows that, because they've had these conversations before. He thinks he liked the previous symptom of her pregnancy more, when she would jump on him at the strangest times, desperate for his touch and, sometimes, the pretense at human sex.
Not that he begrudges her either the physicality or the emotional outbursts, and if he could he would take the needing and the wanting and the hurting away, take her home and make her human and make this everything that she dreams it should have been.
But he cannot, not with all the rule-changing at his disposal. So he holds her, he uses the god-fire in him to make sure that their bed is soft and comfortable, and he listens.
Eventually tears give way to quiet acquiescence, and Mai shifts, her body pressing harder against his. "My back hurts."
"Where?" Kouta presses gently at a spot just below her ribs.
"Lower." Mai squirms again, this time away from him, giving him better access.
"Here?" Kouta continues to press gently until Mai murmurs out an acquiescence. Then he massages, gentle circles, loosening muscles that are pulled tense and taut by the life growing ever-brighter inside Mai.
When he is done Mai rolls onto her back. Taking his hand in hers, she lays it on her stomach and closes her eyes.
He closes his, too, waiting to feel what she wants him to feel.
The kick is fierce, nothing he can mistake for anything else, and Mai giggles even as she winces. "Our child. Ready to fight even before it's born."
"Our child." Kouta kisses her forehead, the softest brush of his lips. "And we've tried to make a world where they won't have to fight."
"No such thing." Mai raises one hand to touch Kouta's cheek, her other still holding his palm against her abdomen. "Every breath is a fight against entropy. Living is a fight against death. But I think... I think we haven't been so bad, so far as gods go. I think we've made a pretty decent world here."
Kouta opens his eyes, studying the stars above their bed. He can hear the creatures that they made—the not-bats and the not-birds and the not-mice—scurrying about amongst the Inves. "Not such a bad world after all, no."
They fall asleep like that, curled together, cradled on the branches of the world that they have built from the ashes of a stolen past and a sacrificed future.
XXX
The birth is surprisingly easy.
It shouldn't surprise him, really. God-fire burns in Mai as surely as it does in him, and people have given birth for millenia without the added comfort and ease that being what they are provides.
He still can't quite believe it when mere hours after her contractions starts Mai places a tiny not-human in his hands.
The baby is both male and female, its lungs processing the air of its new world beautifully as it cries its distress at being born out to the stars. Its body is armored, like the Inves, but with a longer, lankier, more humanoid appearance.
It is nothing like what Kouta imagined it would look like.
But it is absolutely beautiful.
"Hoshiko." Mai whispers the name to the wailing child, her bloody fingers trailing down its cheek. "What do you think, Kouta? As a name?"
"I think it's beautiful." Kouta kisses first Mai and then the child—Hoshiko, star-child, a human name for an inhuman child on an inhuman world. "Just like you."
Mai smiles as she curls in around them both, completing their family.
And even if the stars are not his stars, even if the world is colder and darker than Earth, Kouta finds that he is happy.
XXX
Hoshiko grows fast, learns fast, and before Kouta knows quite what has happened their child is the man-god that Kouta and Mai cannot be.
Hoshiko is Prometheus, bringing fire to the Inves and all the other creatures of their world.
Hoshiko is Terpsichore, muse of the dance, singing in the registers that the Inves can hear as he flings his body about in ways that Kouta can almost but not quite imitate.
Hoshiko is Ares, god of bloody war, and Kouta cries while Mai chastises the child for bringing death back into their world.
The Snake comes to him then, the first time that the creature has visited him since he and Mai changed the world. "That's the trouble with giving freedom—with sacrificing control. You can't stop even the things you want to stop."
"But you can." Kouta brushes away his tears—glad to feel them, to have been able to cry them, to still be that human despite all that has happened. "We are, Mai and I. We're explaining to him why what he did was wrong. Teaching him not to do it again. And doesn't that mean more, in the long run, than all the enforced obedience in the world? Being right enough to convince others to follow your morals, rather than demanding?"
"Perhaps." The Snake's eyes crinkle, an expression somewhat akin to a smile. "I wouldn't know. I'm just the Snake, after all, not a god like you."
"I am what you made me." Kouta meets the Snake's eyes evenly. "Everything you told me I could be, and everything I promised you I would be—protection for Earth, fairness when I can manage it, kindness when I can see that path."
"And I am what I said I was. The snake in the garden. The prize that will cost more than the journey pays." The Snake inclines his head. "I am also beholden to you—tied now to this world, to this environment that I no longer control. And I hope, Kouta, that your child will be as... human as you are."
Mai's voice answers, calm and sure. "He will be."
Kouta stands, reaching out to take her hand, and they face the Snake together. Mirroring Mai's certainty, Kouta repeats her words. "He will be."
The Snake bows to Mai, though his eyes stay locked on her and Kouta. "I trust to you, then, lords of Helheim, and hope that the trust is not in vain."
XXX
It isn't.
Kouta knows it, even as his heart bleeds for Hoshiko as Hoshiko learns the same lessons that Kouta once learned. Even if the playing field is different, even if there is no sun in the sky, it is still love and family and kindness and consequence that his child must learn.
That his child does learn, and when he and Mai are sitting together on a hill, looking down on Hoshiko dancing in front of a pale blue fire while the Inves watch...
It is not the life he dreamed of once.
It is not the life that he wanted, that Akira wanted for him, that Kouta would ever have imagined.
But it is a life, an existence with more moments of beauty than horror, with Mai at his side and his child learning the universe.
It is, all things told—when combined with the survival of Earth, of Akira and Micchy and Zack and Takatora and all the others—not such a bad ending for the boy who was once just Kazuraba Kouta, and it is far more than the god-fire burning within him could ever have hoped for.