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The new world is nothing, at first. No matter how long Kei and Yoko walk, they never find anything; he isn’t sure he would’ve noticed if they had, but he’s fairly certain Yoko would’ve pointed it out if something had been born in their new world. It isn’t a particularly big bother for him, too caught up in talking to the only person that he feels real around, the one person he can speak to with no filter and not have to fear what she says in kind. He thinks that she feels the same, and given how tightly she holds onto his hand (nearly as tightly as he holds onto hers), he thinks that he might be right.
That’s how they spend the first few eternities as the world holds its breath, hand in hand and talking as they traverse the abyss. They learn in the first few aeons that the old world is a sore subject for both of them, memories too sweet to recall and pain too rooted to ever forget and yet they talk of it anyways. Kei tells her of neglect and recitals, nicks on his scalp from cutting his own hair, the stories he threw himself in to try and ignore his reality, how his first and only friend before Da'at was Yuzuru Atsuta and how he watched him die. Yoko tells him of orphans and magic, sweet words that belied a venomous envy that tried to poison her every accomplishment, of a god that resented her very existence, how she had to betray the best friend she had ever made and how she doesn’t think she could ever be certain if she made the right choice.
Until finally, they feel as the universe lets loose the breath it was holding. The concept of space is created first, and they quickly get to work creating home . Not a house, not a dorm to live in to get away from prying eyes and stinging words, but a home . He doesn’t realize he’s just recreating his dorm from Jouin until she urges him to follow what he wants instead of what he knows. What he wants is to never leave her side, and so they make a tiny apartment with a single bed and a single bath. She teases him for creating a bookshelf that never seems to run out of new stories, just as he teases her for creating a permanent sunset to look out on. Neither of them need to sleep, or eat, or drink, or really do anything that a human would, but they do it all the same. The novelty of enjoying a simple life helps them both far more than they could ever admit.
Not long after space, time comes into being. They were timeless even before they destroyed the world but at least now they can see a future that finally exists, the simple fact that life will come into fruition eventually is enough to satiate Kei. Yoko tries to peer even further, to see how humans will treat each other, how the new Gods they create with their thoughts will handle their worship, how the pantheons will war and cooperate without the oversight of a Creator; she only stops when he tells her off for trying to spoil the fate of the entire universe. She tries to laugh at him for comparing all of reality to a simple story, to tell him that they could simply travel to that time and experience it for themselves if he’s so worried about it. She stops herself when she remembers she still holds his hand; a tradition older than time itself.
From there, they begin to keep track of time. After nearly twenty thousand eternities, there’s a great explosion as everything is created. They watch the Big Bang from the window of their apartment. Twelve kalpas later, the first star is formed from hydrogen, helium, and their dreams and hopes for the world. It lives for a day, every millisecond of its life burned into both of their minds before it burns brighter and darker than anything that ever was. A million, seven hundred and fifty one thousand millennia later, the first planet is made. Its surface is hot to the touch and is covered in storms that tear apart anything that dares to get near it. They dance upon it to music that their world could never know.
The birth of the first planet brings change across the universe. Where there once was only the abyss, now there are countless star systems to burn into their vision, countless possibilities for life, limitless potential for the worst thing that ever had to be done. As the universe grows, so do they.
It begins during a self imposed night, when for the first time in this new world Yoko’s hand leaves his. Kei wakes in an instant, following her out to a balcony overlooking that first planet, fragmented and shattered beyond repair. They stand there, watching as the pieces drift further and further from each other, sent out into the cold vacuum of space where the only sound is Yoko’s words. She speaks of insecurities, of how she hates herself for being unable to accept the joy he and Tao had given her in the old world. She speaks of being so close to accepting that change through Creation was possible until her truest self came to be and what says about herself. She speaks of venom and hatred in her soul, strong enough to seep through time and how she fears she poisoned him.
The planet is no more, the chunks beginning to form a sparse asteroid belt around a star that will implode millennia from now, a mere blink of the eye. When Kei speaks, it is of uncertainty and fear. He speaks of understanding Tao’s sentiment and wanting to prove her right, but being afraid of what he would become, that the Knowledge of the Horned God lies inside him and how if it chose oppression once, it could do so again. He speaks of being afraid of death, but more than that, of leaving the Throne empty for another to take, to leave the world with a ruler he could not trust. He speaks of knowing that the burden of destruction would go against nearly everything he wanted, of how that is a price he was willing to pay if it meant giving the world that never showed him any kindness a chance.
Their hands are linked together once more as they watch the star collapse in on itself, a black hole forming and dragging in the last remnants of the first planet. The only trace of it that remains is in their minds, in the feeling of their feet dancing across its surface, of the thunder that accentuated the beats of the music as they grew closer and closer before painfully moving away from each other.
This time, they don’t.
The birth of space and time did nothing to ease their hearts, nor did the Big Bang. Watching as the first star lived and died in an instant didn’t tell them that they chose the right path. Watching the first planet form only to be destroyed by the star that gave it being did not heal their wounds.
A single kiss doesn’t either. Nor does the second, or the third, or the fiftieth, or the one that marks a world that’s seen more love than it has stars. But as they lay in bed, they give themselves the hope to think that someday, it might.