Chapter 25 #2
It was irrational, but a part of him couldn’t understand why Ares had allowed him to go this whole time thinking he and Zar were literal brothers.
It would have been a simple thing to correct, and while he wasn’t jealous in the sense that he didn’t for a second believe there was anything even remotely sexual or romantic between the two… Eden was still pissed off.
The plan was to make a quick stop at his office, then head straight to Castle Black, where Ares should already be. The Black Hart didn’t have classes today and had informed Eden at breakfast that he planned on staying home and drawing.
But there was someone in his office waiting when he arrived.
“Zar?” Eden stepped into the room and froze when he spotted the Black Hart sitting in the leather chair across from his desk.
Balthazar glanced at him over his shoulder. “Professor Starling.”
He frowned and slowly shut the door behind himself. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
“And…how did you know I was coming?”
“I saw it,” he said casually, turning back around to pick at his cuticles. “We made eye contact in class earlier.”
Eden went to his desk and placed his briefcase down, hesitating before taking his seat. “That’s all it takes? You just look at a person, and you can see their future?”
“It’s not their future,” he corrected. “It’s potential branches.”
“Right.”
“You were going to come here and then go find Creation. I decided to intercept you for the sake of all of us.”
“That makes it sound like Ares and I are about to fight.” Eden was angry, sure, but it wasn’t to the extent he planned on going full scorched earth or anything.
It would also be out of character for Ares to take things to that level.
Aside from that time he’d gotten snappy at Eden his first day here, the Black Hart never lost his cool around him. “Are you trying to cause trouble?”
Zar leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach.
“My little brother—because that’s what he is, whether something as inconsequential as society sees it that way or not—can’t tell you the answers you want to hear.
For all his talk about it, he doesn’t believe in reality, at least, not as a cohesive whole. ”
“Phrase things in a way I can make sense of it,” Eden said.
“He’s the only thing that’s constant throughout time and space. Past lives, alternate universes, and the like may contain versions of him, but they aren’t inherently him.”
“You think differently?”
“Me?” The corner of Zar’s mouth tipped up, but it looked fake, like he was trying to make Eden comfortable out of a learned habit, more so than any humor or good feeling he may have been feeling.
“Reality is the only thing that exists. I’m merely a byproduct of it.
Threads and loose components strung together, bound by flesh and bone and blood in this particular plane of existence. ”
“Right.”
“You’re not surprised.”
“I already knew you were both crazy.”
“We can see things no one else can. Tears between dimensions are all around us. It’s not our fault we’re aware of them while the rest of you are forced to remain in the dark.
You don’t believe it? Take the thousands of years of spectral sightings.
Ghosts have a rich lore and history that spans across the entire universe. ”
“You’re telling me ghosts are real?”
“Energy is never destroyed completely. It transfers and transforms. Some ghost sightings are glimpses through the veil separating this world from another. Though there are many separate realities—branches—all taking place at the same time, overlapping.”
“And in one of them, you’re the God of Reality.”
“I was.” Zar’s gaze shifted, settling on the window behind Eden. “Some days, that life feels more real to me than this one. It feels like this world is a dream, and I’m trapped in a perpetual nightmare wherein it’s impossible to wake.”
“Why is that?” What about this other reality could have been so appealing to make him think this way?
“I had family there,” he explained. “Friends. Purpose. Everything here is tasteless and dull. Bland and uneventful.”
“Well, sort of seems like something that would come with the territory when you can foresee what’s going to happen next.
” They could sit here and unpack all of Zar’s beliefs and experiences for days, but as fascinating as it was, Eden only really cared about one thing.
“Tell me about your relationship with Ares in this other life.”
“At the dawn of time, Light touched Darkness, and together they formed the first beings—Planets. These planets existed alone for eons before the first finally began to decay. It died, and from its core sprung new life. The first of the Gods of Light. This was Reality.”
Eden had heard about an ancient species, more myth than fact nowadays, that were born from dying planets or stars. The energy leftover, sensing the path to annihilation, fought back by reforming and creating something new.
“Novus Ordo.” They weren’t called gods in any of the stories he’d heard, but given a distinct name all their own.
“The word god didn’t exist at the dawn of time,” Zar said. “We weren’t superior beings. We were the only beings.”
“We?”
“Reality formed the first branch, the first existing timeline, because he sought order in all things. But he lacked vision. He only knew what he’d personally experienced,” this time Zar’s smirk seemed more natural, though pointed, with an edge of mockery, “and that was darkness and the pinprick of light nearby, cast by his nearest neighbor. That planet died next, and from it Creation was born. Together, with Light’s guidance, they made the universe as we know it now. ”
“Including the multiverse?”
“Creation had too many ideas to fit into one timeline, and later, when living beings were given free will and the ability to form conscious thoughts of their own, their choices often didn’t align with what we expected.
Things got out of hand. We lost control.
Ultimately, we were reduced to dust, just as the planets we’d birthed from had been.
” He pursed his lips. “Have you heard of the Rein?”
“The species that supposedly have seven lives?”
“They can transfer their energy just before death and inhabit a new host body, making it their own,” Zar clarified.
“My little brother created them. It was a rebellion of sorts. He didn’t like how quick I was to snuff out a being's reality. He’s not so different now, don’t you think?
Ares doesn’t enjoy torture, but he’ll prolong the end when necessary. ”
“You won’t?”
“If I don’t want someone in my reality, I send them to the next.”
“You murder them, you mean.”
“Semantics.”
“I don’t know,” Eden drawled. “It sounds an awful lot like delusions of grandeur and a way to excuse your murderous tendencies.”
Zar seemed to consider his words and then offered, “In one of your potential branches, I saw you masturbating in the bathroom. Did that happen?”
He snorted. “Everyone does that in the shower.”
“The dildo was red. You looked…frustrated.”
His eyes narrowed. “Did Ares show you the footage?”
“He filmed it?” Zar grunted. “Controlling idiot.”
Controlling soon-to-be-dead idiot, if that was the case. Eden didn’t mind Ares filming those videos for himself, but to share them…Absolutely no.
“A black sylar,” Zar quipped.
“What?”
“In several of your branches, you come across one.”
“There’s no such thing.” Sylars were a feline animal with antlers and webbed wings. They were also all various shades of white.
“When you see it, you’ll have to believe me.”
Whatever. This was getting him nowhere. Eden had no interest in the gods, what he cared about was Ares.
“You said you both see cracks in dimensions. Does that mean whenever he sees your parents, they’re really here? You also said they weren’t ghosts before.”
“It’s difficult to say with certainty. What he could be seeing are energy prints from a parallel reality. A glimpse at a different universe where Father and Mother are still alive. Or it could be a view into the past, from a branch before. There’s no way of knowing. Time is—”
“A concept, yeah, I’ve heard all about that.” He nibbled on his lower lip, breaking skin. “How can you be so sure what he’s seeing is even real then? What if he needs help?” They both needed help, but that was beside the point.
“He’s not psychotic.”
“Okay, but how do you know?”
“Because he’s described dimensions he’s never been to before,” Zar said.
“Ones that I’ve seen. I can confirm that much, at least. What he sees is very real, but whether or not it’s current to our timeline, or if those versions of Mother and Father can return his gaze… I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”
“Why not?”
“Because the dead should stay dead. This reality,” he stated, “my reality, is for the living.”
“Is that what Ares wants?”
“Ares wants you. Just you.”
Eden held his gaze for a moment and then dared ask, “He said a friend suggested he find Ransom…?”
“It wasn’t me.”
“That your final answer?”
Zar shrugged. “I may have set our fellow Black Hart Camren on the right path.”
“Because?”
“Because in several branches, you heal him. Do you know what it’s like to live day by day in a world you don’t believe in?
It’s torture. As a species, we seek answers to all things, find comfort in the knowing.
Mother’s work has been destroyed. Father’s notes turned to ash.
They treat us like gods here, but the majority still think we’re traumatized or making it up.
Even you’re finding it hard to believe.”
“I’m the type of person who needs to experience something firsthand.” He shrugged, but then considered Zar’s first statement. Eden was getting pretty good at reading between the lines. “And in the branches I don’t heal him? I’m guessing I make him worse.”
“There’s a chance you’ll break him completely, and leave him more damaged than you found him, yes.”
“Is this the part where you threaten me?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t need to. In every single one of those branches, you end up just as miserable as he does.”
That gave him pause. “We can be happy together, or miserable apart? Is that what you want me to believe?”
“In some of those branches, you’re miserable together.
” Zar stood, making it clear he was done with this conversation.
“Believe what you wish, Starling. Creation will do his best to achieve the reality he desires. Word of advice? There’s only so much fighting against the current one can manage before they ultimately drown. ”
It might not have been a direct threat.
But it certainly sounded like one.
“And the experiments?” Eden stopped him at the door.
Zar sighed. “NDE. Our parents stopped our hearts on the daily and recorded brain activity before bringing us back. They were trying to prove the existence of an afterlife at first. Creation’s mother died in a car accident.
She was pronounced dead at the scene but was briefly revived in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Father was there. She described the cliché tunnel leading to white light, mumbled something about wanting to go back there, and died for good. He never recovered.”
So he’d used his kid as a guinea pig due to trauma caused by his dead wife? That was fucked up on so many levels.
“Creation doesn’t want to talk to you about it because he’s afraid he’ll lose you if you learn the extent of what we’ve been through,” Zar continued.
“Normal people don’t come away from something like that fully intact, and he’s so desperate for you to believe that he’s not clinically insane, he won’t risk unloading the past on you.
He’s afraid you’ll lose faith in his ability to provide and keep you safe if you end up pitying him. ”
“Ares isn’t afraid of anything,” Eden said, only for Zar to snort at him.
“People don’t lose that instinct overnight.
Ever stop to wonder why he doesn’t seem to have any fears?
It’s because all his monsters have already been confronted and dealt with.
I killed them myself. But of course he’s afraid.
You’ve brought it out in him. What if talking about it, reliving it, shoves him back to that dark place?
What if he fractures and this time it’s so bad not even you can bring him back?
He’s finally close to solidifying his reality.
Don’t let your curiosity take that from him. From you both.”
On the one hand, Eden understood what he was getting at. Did he really need all the sordid details about the experiments? Knowing they’d happened at all was enough to understand why Ares was the way he was.
Why Ares might actually need him after all.
“No one else has been able to stabilize him?” Eden questioned, allowing himself to be vulnerable for a moment.
“He’s been more like his old self these past weeks with you than he has for years.”
That aligned with what Nyoka had mentioned, didn’t it? Truthfully, Eden had noticed. Ares seemed…vibrant.
“He didn’t hate you for murdering his dad?” Eden asked the final thing weighing on him.
“He thanked me,” he stated. “With a smile on his face. Don’t believe me? Think of your own situation, Starling. Were you angry when he shot Galen Stone? Or when he snuffed out Zonnie Dephik? Sedos? Will you weep when he puts a bullet through Professor Inzer’s skull?”
“Of course not,” he replied. “But none of those men were my father.”
“Father was our jailor, our doctor, and our abuser,” Zar spelled out for him.
“He hurt us. I stopped him. Making him pay the price, knowing he was gone and no longer existed in our same reality, was cathartic for the both of us. It’s because of his personal experience with revenge that Creation offered you this deal in the first place.
He thinks he can heal you, just like how you’ve been healing him. ”
Eden swallowed the sudden lump in his throat, feeling a swirl of anger and sadness for the younger version of Lucifer. Both grateful and irrationally jealous that he’d had Zar to protect him and lean on.
“Can he?” he forced himself to ask just as Zar opened the door.
The Black Hart paused and then, without turning back, said emotionlessly, “That’s not for me to decide.”