NEO

A butterfly fluttered out of his hands, shaped by smokey regret. Flames licked upon the darkness, swallowed by the black hole underneath him, all around him. Metallic rust filled his nostrils with the taste of blood when he bit his tongue for silence. His fingers dug into the incomplete, shattered stars of probability and potential.

'Neo! Neo, you have to close your eyes! You have to reset this!' Nova screamed across the boiling expanse, and her voice faded across the universe. 'It'll stop! I can still fix this!'

Stop? Stop? Neo sank into his shoulders when paneling tore to release the vacuum and the thing which tried to assimilate them — the last remnant of the D.S Butterfly and every life upon it. I can't close my eyes to what I've started. Waves lapped at his knees, with the dead stars scattering into explosive supernova. Over and over. At what point did I realise what I had become? Smoke clogged his senses and spun the world with the explosion of the reactor, with Nova falling out of sight — but he was long gone to the abyss below. Bones cracked in his ears, but he reached his hand out to the debris which would kill her in an instant. Hot pain rocked across his spine with the clunk of metal against his skin, but it dissipated into the black hole. Another piece of the clock, the flutter of the wing.

Bubbles of space popped around him. Teeth grew out of the shining expanse. Hazy images molded around him. Numbness swept through his entire body with the soft droplets of water and Nova's strangled cry of pain. It came in and out of focus in double vision. One half of him, overlooking the desolation — his sense of confusion when Nova left him for the fake below.

He willed her to return, but instead he found himself in death's embrace, his fingers tangled in hers for the twist of time. A lifeline in the intense current.

Every time I pulled, she drowned with me. I shouldn't have closed my eyes. I should've let go.

Neo sighed, then twisted his head to the outside of their cave at the quiet chirps outside their camp. On his elbows, he winced at the flaming pain setting his skin alight across his entire body. At the back of the cave, Thuni and Ulin slept, no longer haunted by his mistakes scattered across time — of the branching path of his own fragmented being. Outside, Izerva sat along the starlit grass, their tail whooshed through the stalks and sent the universe in motion. Hand against his brow, he sat up further and checked on the person closest to him.

Nova.

She laid on her side with her back to him, curled underneath blankets as she shuddered against the waves of space-time. Neo bit on his tongue for another taste of blood before hauling himself to his feet. Soreness slammed through his spine, and he rubbed it. I can't sleep and she's having nightmares... He pressed all ten of his fingertips together, trying to find a point of perfect, stimulating reflection. Repeated movement swept the tension out of his arms and his mind, but he failed for mental reprieve when Nova shifted in pain he left her in.

His chest tightened, and he rested a hand over his heart at the spread of a sting, up to his collarbone and throat. One blink. Morning came as Thuni and Ulin's shadows shuffled past him and joined Izerva outside. He curled his knees closer to his chest, and jolted when Nova asked, "Did you get any sleep?"

Neo shook his head and kept his attention trapped on the rock, the sea of stars ahead. Unable to stop her from pushing him out of the way of his own self-inflicted mistakes. He rubbed his hand against the rock. Electricity wrapped around his wrists at the puzzle of the world — all the universe. Yes, I asked... but the answer? It wasn't worth the answer I got — wasn't worth... In the middle of a dias, the endless tolls of a starry bell as tall figures stepped through the veil of wormholes. Each one, a carrier of the nebulae within their gaze. Time unseen. He pressed his palm into his brow, memories picked apart through white noise. What did I get but...?

His thoughts spiralled into the black hole when Nova stumbled to rejoin the others.

All she got was a fragment of what she wanted, the better half of me. Not this mess. He shoved his hands in his lap and swayed with the wind. I'm just...

Thuni and Izerva nodded at something Nova said, and Ulin held out the georegistrar before the three disappeared and left Nova on the edge of happiness and despair. Neo tucked against the rock and the lance of time raised above his head, aimed straight at his eyes. Universal energy poured into the inertia, and it fell. Closer.

"Neo?"

No, I'm not the one you wanted. Hypnotized by the synchronization of his own hands, he rested his cheek against the stone. I just need to figure this out. Figure it out how I can see back into it — make it right... but maybe not. Maybe I'll make it worse. Tension cracked along his lungs as his foggy memories failed. Maybe he's gone already and I'm all that's left. The broken, useless mask.

"Neo! Neo!" someone screamed out his name over and over within the void. Distant. Bubbly. Too far for a reply.

"Neo?" Nova knelt in front of him. "Can we talk?"

It fell silent in the timeless void. "Yes."

"And I mean talk talk," Nova insisted. "Not this... dancing around the subject.

"Yes."

Nova hooked the registrar on her belt which beeped with the other three's placement in space. "They've gone to find a route to the power source Ulin picked up."

"The coordinates."

"Is that where the coordinates pointed?" Nova questioned. "The power source on this planet?"

"...Yes." Neo tasted smoke and blood. "I said it was a way out, didn't I? I said so..." Was it moments ago? Or ages?

"Yes, now we're out and we just have to go home," Nova said through pained, cautious optimism. Atmospheric pressure crushed his ribcage as the breeze howled against the cliffs. He tugged his hands down his face for the tug of embers, and he flinched when she sighed. "I can tell something's bothering you, Neo. You know you can tell me." Nova grasped his shaking fingers. "I won't judge you. I'll listen."

You're too much.

"I don't think I'm the one who needs to talk about what's on their mind." Venom from the monster born of his heart filled his nose. "You seem to still think you have something to lose." He tested the words as hurt scrunched her brow. "You said so yourself. We're not in the loop anymore, but is that really a better..." Another test of his luck, and he lost the word which fit the context. "Result?"

"What?" Nova asked. "What other result is there?"

Ah, wrong word. He drew his hand out of hers. "A more... consistent alternative," he forced out his own thoughts through a sudden impulse. "You don't trust the result in front of you, so you're trying to find a different hypothesis to what you're seeing. Anything to explain what you can't accept." Confusion washed into her hurt, but he continued on the wings of time. "You didn't have to push me out of the way of that plant. It was only acting defensively, not aggressively." He drowned in the embers and breathed out the grey nebula past his lips. "I'm sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear." He raised a finger and prodded the air in front of him. "It ends with a gunshot..." Echoed three times. Three large waves.

Nova sat there. "This is the most you've talked since you woke up."

His ears rang and popped and he raked himself through the coals for the obsession. "You throw yourself in front of the consequences of my mistakes — you stood in the way of me when I..." Her terror rocked across his memories with his focus on the broken fragment stabbed through the chest. "You shouldn't protect me from my mistakes — from what I bring upon myself." His heart tore with the prickled fire as he hauled himself off the ground and rushed out of the cave. Her hurried footsteps followed him out, but he pressed against the crags for a different answer.

"We don't know anything about this planet, Neo. What if the reaction was worse?"

"What if it wasn't?"

"But what if it did?" Nova bounced right back.

"I thought you were the one who deals in absolutes," Neo snapped. "You think I don't ask myself those questions? What if something goes horribly wrong? What if it's me? I'm wrong. What if everyone and everything I ever knew is wrong?" Thoughts collapsed in his mind. "What if I can't account for certain things — exact measurements? Is that not what happened on the Supernova? What if I make one, split second, impulsive choice?" he dragged out his words. "One second following my stupid impulse and I fuck up everything? My career, my relationships, my life? You don't know how hard it is on that little slip, wondering if this will be it. If this will be the one to systematically destroy everything with my own self-sabotage."

Nova crushed her hands together. "You say I deal in absolutes. I realized dealing in absolutes didn't answer so many questions I should've asked before," she said with a soft sob. "Didn't answer why you... you always looked so far away in class, even as you smiled at people. Now that I've seen it, that the loop gave me an answer." Nova came closer to him. "How long was I there and I didn't see it before? Those questions kept bouncing in my head during the loop. Why couldn't I seem to save you?"

"Because you can't save me from my own stupidity, Nova," Neo pointed out. "Look at where it got us. What it did to the people around me. I made a mistake. I pushed away the possibility that as it often goes, my mistakes always hurt other people. Ruins any relationships I have. You want to know the reason Jin hates me?" Neo took a step for her. "Because I'm such a mess of an older brother, that I've forgotten and practically dismissed every one of his achievements." Neo breathed deep. "So, the answer to your question is simple. You couldn't save me... because that's what my mistakes do."

Nova shook her head. "Neo, those mistakes didn't kill you."

"All the more reason not to keep doing what you're doing, Nova, I have seen this slippery slope before. What does this accomplish? I've already killed so many from one impulsive mistake," Neo said. "I don't want to watch you do the same thing to yourself." He longed for a truth, the desperate one the anomaly refused to give him. Why did she have to suffer with me? Was it simply because I asked one too many questions and it deigned to answer them all?

Nova whispered, "I can't tell you what it accomplishes when my best friend is suicidal and I have to ask for how long."

Neo stopped, then drew into his shoulders. He glared at the crags when it touched the expanse of the cloudy sky. It buzzed in his ears and refused to shut up. He pressed his soles into the grass with a small bounce on his legs. "I don't know what you want me to say," he rasped with a stifled sob. "I didn't want to burden people." He sank into the grass. "In those moments when I was that... ghost of a black hole, it was like watching a bad joke of a comedy show. Even when I knew the amalgamation, the moment I saw myself in the mirror..." He drove his teeth into his lips. "I remembered why I was even in this situation in the first place, and if I removed myself this wouldn't have happened at all." Images fluttered around him when he stepped into the shadows of the medbay, with Nova placed in a cage for his audacious questions and fatal curiosity.

Nova knelt in front of him. "I don't think that's true."

So many things I do remember. It all happened in a single moment. She killed me, and then I— Neo sucked in his lips and drove his fingers into his temples. "I never wanted you to see that," he mumbled to the past and tried to brush his tears aside, to not be too much at risk of causing his relationships to explode into a billion atoms.

Nova trembled, then whispered, "I'm sorry I brought that up when you're not ready to talk about it."

"Why don't you hate me?" he rasped before she left him behind. One last question for the Neo everyone else loved.

Nova frowned. "Why would I?"

Because it was me. It was me. I'm the reason it happened. I'm the reason you felt so helpless as he—I—I just wanted to breathe.

"I don't hate you," she finished. "Do you hate me?"

"No."

Weariness folded her brow. Neo sniffed and wiped his other cheek of the crushing guilt collapsing the black hole in his heart.

"Do you hate the others?"

"No."

He stiffened when Nova tugged him into an embrace. "I can't tell you why that happened," she whispered and her fingers dug into his coat. "I hate the things I had to do in those loops, to other people and to you. I hate what I was forced to do, but stars, Neo, I'd do it all over again if it meant you believed me when I say I don't hate you. I just want both of us to go home."

Waves of cold wrapped around his limbs as he sat there and held her as she cried, but he ran out of tears.

I can't do anything else. I can't find an answer. When I do... what's the cost of asking?