Chapter Text
You woke up one loop with a plan.
Not a particularly well thought out plan, or one you have any real faith in, but it was most certainly something, and something is better than whatever you had decided to do before.
But you would get to that. You had time- all the time in the world, really, if you ignored the quite obvious physical constraint on your life. Whatever that plan would turn out to be, you had time to think about the before, first.
Prior to this concept, the idea that gripped you so fully you were sure that you had to figure out how to do it or (probably and ) die trying, your concept of what next was flimsy at best.
Figure out everything , you would say first. Try to find the pieces that the Nomai left behind when they died, through their writings. Try to explore every nook and cranny of every little planet until you could recognize the exact location of the planet in orbit from a shift in the wind. Try to figure out why the timeloops started, why now, why you.
But there was only so much to figure out in a solar system by yourself, with a timer as remarkable as the sun itself. So then, after you could consider everything and everywhere you could reach by ship fully explored, you went to your next idea of how to spend the rest of your loops.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Gabbro had suggested it, a while ago, when you mentioned to them that you didn’t know where to go next. You didn’t bring up the Ash Twin Project, or the warp core that would fit just perfectly into the Vessel, or the coordinates burned into your brain of where you would go. They didn’t either.
“You know, you don’t have to do anything . I’ve been doing nothing this whole time,” Gabbro tilted their head to look at the cyclones blasting past them, “And I’ve been just fine.”
“Isn’t it boring, though? It just feels so pointless to hang around doing nothing all the time.” You let out an agitated breath, then winced, and went to amend your claim, “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t think what you’ve been doing is pointless.”
“I don’t mind. It is pointless, in a lot of ways. Most ways, actually, I think doing nothing has functionally no point, because in order for something to have a point, it’s gotta be done for a reason. You can just be pointless, and then that can be your reason. So then it’s not really pointless, is it?”
“You lost me.”
“Okay, okay, think of it like this.” They turned to look at you, their gaze steady and pressing. It was always kind of strange, talking to Gabbro when they weren’t wearing their helmet. Their eyes were uncharacteristically sharp, and you felt a little never under just an undivided gaze. “It’s only pointless if you make it pointless. And something being pointless only matters if there’s something else more worth doing.”
You ignored the coordinates to the Eye of the Universe again, and thought on that.
“Huh.” You said simply, “I guess that makes sense.”
And so, you started doing nothing.
You started with going over to Giant’s Deep to meditate with Gabbro for the loop, and then you would just go to your ship and sit in the cockpit, watching the sun expand and then crumble, and then you would just stay in your sleeping back next to the campfire, and stare up. Doing nothing.
You couldn’t be sure how long you stayed with that plan, if it could be called a plan at all, because you couldn’t be sure how long you did anything in the grand scheme of things, but long enough. You had spent enough time on it that you could come up with an accurate assumption on which direction the Orbital Probe Canon would fire at the start of each loop, or how likely it was for Slate to notice you very obviously not asleep and attempting to start a conversation. Certainly long enough to realize that you absolutely despised doing nothing.
“That’s because you’re doing it wrong.” Gabbro had tried to explain, “If you’re thinking about how miserable it is, you’re doing too much thinking already, and you’re gonna be miserable no matter what.”
“But I have to think at some point! Because if I don’t, then…” You trailed off. That was the problem, wasn’t it? You could just do nothing for the rest of forever, and it would change nothing. You wished you could break something. Break something real , something that made an impact.
The Ash Twin Project. You could break that. You could smash that Warp Core to bits and then fly it into the sun. You could leave this universe for damned and let everyone you love die for good. You wouldn’t, of course, but you could.
“You don’t have to do anything, right now. You could be free from all responsibilities of what you should do.”
“Free from responsibilities, sure, but also free from ever doing anything important.” You muttered, and Gabbro did not respond. You were being unfair, probably, they were only trying to help.
A cyclone passed through the island, rocketing it out into orbit. You made a grab for the hammock, and Gabbro did the same, as was the pattern for these conversations. Outside, the sun was red, at this point, a dark, rich red, like it was made of boiling blood. Not much longer until the restart.
“I should turn off the Ash Twin Project.” You finally said, when you both landed back down into the water. The thought filled your stomach with unease.
“If you think so.” Gabbro’s expression was utterly unreadable, “I guess we can’t do nothing forever.”
You weren’t sure. You thought that they would find a way, if they wanted to.
The next loop, you woke up to the Orbital Probe Canon firing overhead, and you made a decision. This was going to be the loop where you did it, where you stopped the time loops for good. You made it to the Ash Twin Project with as much time as you could to spare, walking tersely across to the other side, and opening up the Warp Core to view. Next, the Artificial Gravity Control went out, and then you were just left with the task of grabbing it.
And, well, everything else that came afterwards you were not looking forward to. But the next thing, the grabbing of the Core itself, that was the biggest hurdle. Everything before that you could walk away unscathed, but once you had the core out, it was over, all or nothing.
You pushed yourself up towards the center, hands nervously held just before contact. Just one more grab. One single touch, and then the loops would be over, and you would be free.
Free to be nothing, and do nothing, and you would never have to wake up in that same starry clearing, or learn that conversations you had merely minutes ago had never happened in the first place, or watch that boiling red sun fold in on itself and burn your home away to a crisp.
Or, well, that last one you might have to live through one last time. Depending on how fast you could move, that is.
You let your hand fall onto the Core, not nearly with enough force to even nudge it, let alone remove it.
It was warm , even through the gloves, almost on the verge of being uncomfortably so, buzzing with energy and potential. So full of life you could feel how powerful it was.
It felt so strange, that something so small, in the grand scheme of things, could be responsible for everything that happened to you. How was it fair, that something so little, something that seemed so inconsequential, could mean so much? To you, to the Nomai, to the very Eye of the Universe itself.
The Eye. The coordinates filled your brain again, measuring every stroke of each mark as carefully as you could with every second that passed in that room, every moment of uncertainty that occupied the time. The time which you were now suddenly aware you were wasting, and oh god you had to start moving or the time would run out and then the sun would go and you wouldn’t be able to do it you had to grab it .
Instead, you moved away with a jerk, the subtle pull of the planet’s core threatening to pull you in again. No, no, you couldn’t take the Warp Core, not yet. Not when you had already wasted so much time admiring it (being afraid of it), and when you had a universe that depended on you doing this right.
Which wasn’t really the truth, of course, because removing the Warp Core wouldn’t save anyone. If anything, it had to be the opposite, because ending the loop meant demolishing that sacred possibility that was written into the world that everything would be fine. A stupid possibility, one that could never really amount to anything, as you learned, so, so many loops ago. That hope was pointless, and it belonged to no one but yourself. Maybe Gabbro, some loops, but they rarely deluded themself into thinking they could do anything to stop the sun from dying.
But that hope, the precious fluttering thing it was, was not something that could be killed easily. Even if you had seen the rot it shook from its wings so many times, had watched it turn good people into desperate fools, clamoring for something they could never get, it was still so hard to make the move. To extinguish something like that, well, then maybe that was the real point of no return.
So you couldn’t help anyone by staying in the loops, or by doing nothing, or by ending them all together. You could only watch, and learn, and die.
Why you? Why, out of every Hearthian in the Village, did it have to be you? Selfish question, you knew, but you couldn’t help but think about it.
If one of the others- Gossan, maybe, or Feldspar, or Hornfels, or someone a little bit better at being a person- had seen that statue, at that moment, then maybe they would find a way to save everyone. Or maybe it really was impossible, and then at least when you died, it would be a short death.
Quiet. With family. Blissfully ignorant.
You looked back at the Warp Core, though, and knew that you wouldn’t like that. No, you were far too lost in the search for knowledge to ever accept ignorance.
Like the Nomai, in some ways. You wished you could meet them, all of them, when they were still alive. You were sure they would be able to find some solution for this problem, given the time. But time would always march on, and there was no technology anyone could make that changed that fact. Not even-
Wait a moment.
That wasn’t. True.
The Nomai had found a way to make time stop marching on, and the fact you were still there, and alive, was the living, breathing proof of it.
You looked up at the Warp Core, a half-filled idea somewhere in the back of your brain, and then the sun exploded, and the Ash Twin Project burst to life.
A winged creature beat itself against the cage of your heart.
Back to the present. See, you hadn’t forgotten about that claim you made, about that plan, you just got sidetracked for a bit recounting the past. It was easy to do that, when there was no one there to ground you in reality.
It couldn’t work, though, could it? If the Nomai couldn’t do it, how could you?
This was very different from what the Nomai were trying to do, you reminded yourself, and even if you didn’t have the time, or the people, you had their research. And you had the Warp Core.
With that, you started thinking up a plan to, in perhaps a vaguely ironic way, do the exact opposite thing to what the Nomai wanted to do.
You had all the time in the universe, after all.
It was more difficult than you had thought it would be, having to do all your research in chunks of 22 minutes, and having just you to do literally everything in terms of building.
You could ask Gabbro to help, if you really needed to, and you were sure they would if you did, but well. It wasn’t like they had a ship that they could really use to get there on their own, and they weren’t much of an engineer, anyway. Maybe you could take a trip with them at some point before your plan was brought into motion, just to spend some time together. As much as they weren’t really an adventure type of person, you couldn’t help but think they must enjoy some facets of exploration, or they wouldn’t have become an astronaut in the first place.
A trip sounded nice. Something low stakes.
Well. The point was that construction of this plan- you really needed a better name at this point- was difficult at best.
The Ash Twin Project was hard to really study when it was active, but it wasn’t like you could turn it off, for obvious reasons. And any amount of dismantling you did was in fear that it could break the device and ruin your chances of helping anyone. And, well, you would most definitely die somewhere in there too.
The Sun Station was perhaps a little more helpful, but the time limit there was even shorter, and it definitely had its fair share of confusing electrical systems that the Nomai seemed to have no need to explain anywhere . Not to mention there was a fair bit of translation error with what you did find.
There seemed to be one main issue at the core of your plan, and that was power.
Because the Ash Twin Project was powered by the supernova, it meant that in order for your plan to work, to stop the sun in time before it exploded, then it needed some other power source.
It was almost funny, how close that your problem was to the very same one that the Nomai had had all those years ago. Conceptually sound, but with no power source.
Except you’d hardly call your plan conceptually sound, but it was either this, or give up, and you wanted to at least make the attempt before giving up completely.
It was nice having a project to throw yourself into again. It had been a long time since you finished discovering everything you could about the solar system, and having a mystery, one where solving didn’t mean ending the loops. At least, it didn’t mean ending them yet.
You were trying not to think about what happened when the loops did end- Because they had to at some point.
Either your plan worked, and that was how, or it didn’t, and you would go find the Eye. That was what you had decided. And maybe both of those plans would fail in new and horrible ways you weren’t expecting, but maybe they wouldn’t, and everything would be just fine.
Maybe, even, if you were lucky enough, you could rescue everyone in the Village, and then everything would be fine, and you would be able to relax for the first time in so long .
Sounded like a dream.