Work Text:
A follower- The Follower stands sentinel in the center of a massive field. The sun has dipped down into its nightly grave deep in the earth, leaving only the stars and the moon to witness the land under the sky.
The Follower always finds itself returning to this clearing, once its tasks for the day have been completed and its Master has dismissed it. It returns to this place.
In the center, a tree grows up, up, up, as if reaching for the stars painted across the sky above it.
As if trying to pull something back to where it belongs.
The Follower always dismisses these thoughts, they get in the way of its mission, its purpose. It is here simply to rest.
There is no significance to this field.
The grave under the tree bears no name it recognizes.
It bears no name at all.
-
It takes weeks before the whispers start.
Weeks of standing silent and guarding over an unmarked grave. Weeks of staring off across the field, letting its pitiful thoughts wander away from its purpose.
It starts as many things used to, with near-silent giggles, carried over the wind wafting through the field like a secret.
The Follower does not recognize the sound.
It can't, anymore.
The giggles are soft, achingly so, flowing around like water in a babbling brook. They never get too close to the Follower.
It tries not to be disappointed.
-
The giggles morph, sometimes, into something more. Something bigger, more meaningful. Half forgotten words on a tongue that doesn't remember how to speak, barely recognizable names from a mind that can't remember the faces that belonged to them.
The Follower listens. It never interrupts. It is never meant to speak, not unless spoken to, and the punishment for doing so is terrible. That was one of its first lessons, when it was still naive and kind and stupid.
The half-words and the giggles get closer, slow as a glacier and certain as sand falling through an hourglass.
The stars seem to glow brighter, almost proud, the closer the voice gets.
The Follower knows, somewhere deep and primal, that the stars’ pride isn't meant for it.
The thought is gone as quick as it appeared. The Follower dismisses it like a troublesome fly. Of course the pride of those celestial bodies isn't for it, it is a tool. One doesn't feel proud of the pen that writes the poem, or the sword that cuts down its enemies.
One does not feel pride for a tool.
And the Follower is just that. A tool.
-
The voice cuts through, closer than it's ever been, echoed in the way that lost things usually are.
“Hello.”
Smooth, without a trace of rasp.
Why does it expect there to be gravel in this voice?
“Who goes there?”
The Follower lifts its sword from its position. The voice may be familiar, but this place is sacred in ways the Follower cannot remember, cannot comprehend. If the voice wishes to harm the peace present here, then the Follower will put a stop to that.
“Oh, no need to be rude! I've been here for a while now, and I haven't even done anything!” The voice giggles, familiar in ways that cause the Follower's chest to tighten.
“My friends said to talk to you, you know! They say you're protecting something very important here!”
The Follower lowers its blade.
“Your friends are correct. The place is holy, sacred.” Even more than its Master's temples, more than its Master, himself. These thoughts are sacrilege, blasphemy, but that cannot be ripped from it.
“What is it?” The voice asks, curious. Innocent.
“I… I do not recall.” The truth. The Follower cannot lie. It learned that lies are dirty, unholy things.
The voice laughs, louder than before, it's like starlight, like moonbeams falling over the Follower perfectly.
It's a beautiful sound.
“Well, if you don't remember, how do you know it's so holy?”
The Follower does not, can not, answer. None would be the truth.
-
The voice returns to it, again and again and again.
Eventually, the sound becomes as certain as the stars, as certain as the moon phases. The Follower will keep its vigil over this place, and the voice will come to speak to it.
“You know, I still don't know your name, friend.” At some point in the continued visits, the voice started insisting they were friends. As if one could be friends with a tool like it.
“I do not have one.” The truth, or most of it. The things it doesn't remember fight against this truth like blood swelling to its lips. It had a name, once, but that was taken long ago.
“Everyone has a name! I… don't remember mine, my friends say that it was unimportant,” The voice sounds uncharacteristically sad, like this loss was something to mourn, “... they've given me a new one, though!”
The Follower tilts its head in the approximate direction of the voice.
“What is it?”
It asks, almost hesitant. Like it fears the answer. Like the name the voice will say will be one it recognizes.
Like the name will be the same as the one behind it, etched into stone but crossed from its mind as easy as breathing.
“Stargazer.” The voice, no, Stargazer sounds like they are smiling. Though, if the Follower lets itself try, it might hear the desperate sadness underneath that unseen smile.
It does not.
-
Stargazer never seems to be far from this place. The Follower asked, once, why it never seemed to leave. Even as it sheathed its blade to return to its Master, Stargazer remained in this quiet place.
“When I leave, I see people that want something from me.”
Quieter, “You never do.”
Stargazer sounds thoughtful, almost scared, like that admittance would suddenly cause the Follower to expect something from them.
“I see.”
A sound like relief comes from beside it, carried away by the night time breeze as if it never even left the lips of the creature that made it.
“They want me to be someone. They call me a name I don't know, take me to places I've never seen. They expect me to remember someone I'm not sure ever even existed.”
Something like pain takes hold in the Follower's heart at the tone Stargazer uses. The sound of sadness, dripping into their voice like certainty, is monumentally wrong. Something in the Follower protests the very idea of allowing this being to be sad. Something deep, buried by its Master.
“I am sorry to hear that, Stargazer.” It is not a comfort, comfort is not a feeling something built and trained to kill at the wave of a hand can give.
It is close enough.
-
One night, on the Follower's return to the field, it sees a demon. The demon, unaware, sits in front of the grave, deep blue suit and silvery mask sparkling in the starlight. If the Follower gave itself time to think, to consider, it would see how the sky and the earth seemed to bend to accommodate the man, like reality twisting around something that shouldn't exist. If the Follower gave itself time to think, it would see that the man clearly belongs here.
It does not.
Its sword is in its grasp faster than the mind can process, it lunges for the man with the desperation only a guardian can have.
It will not let this place be intruded upon.
The sword slams through the thick fabric of the suit, though there is no resistance after the cloth. No flesh underneath, no blood to seep out.
The man laughs.
“I finally decided to show you what I look like and you try to stab me, friend?”
It's Stargazer.
The Follower drops its sword like it's been burned, shame cuddling deep in its stomach like a curse.
“Worry not, there's nothing left there for you to hurt.” The demon, Stargazer, removes the sword from what should be their chest, laying the weapon down with more care than it deserves.
Through the hole in the suit and shirt underneath, the Follower catches sight of swirling Stardust in an empty void. In the center of that darkness is a single, bright star, plucked from the sky and beating like a heart. The attack was aimed more left, where a demon's heart would lay. It missed that glowing brightness by hairs.
“I apologize. I did not recognize you.” The words tumble from its mouth faster than the Follower can truly consider them. They don't feel enough. They feel empty, like the chest of the being in front of it.
It also, horribly, feels like a lie. It does recognize them, somewhere, like a long-forgotten prayer. Like a memory well loved by far off, like the fading voice of someone it loved more than life itself.
It recognizes them like one recognizes an explosion, like one recognizes sound itself. It feels… almost wrong, on something as quiet as Stargazer.
-
It starts slow, slower than even the beginning. Slower than the drifting giggles on the wind, than the half-words and vague names. Slower than the inevitable crawl of time.
The Follower sees someone else in Stargazer's place, sometimes. Like a shadow, like an afterimage overlayed and blurred together.
It sees another inphernal, terribly similar to Stargazer but different in all the ways that matter.
Loud, where Stargazer is quiet.
Harsh, where Stargazer is soft.
It doesn't affect their interactions, at first.
They continue as they had, breaking the silence with gentle, quiet conversations. They speak of the field, of the places outside. Of the Follower's mission, of its Master and its purpose.
Of Stargazer's loneliness. Of their isolation, of their missing pieces and what replaced them.
Of the stars, of unity.
And then, the first break.
The Follower doesn't even remember the half-spoken name that falls from its lips like poison. It can't. It isn't allowed to.
But Stargazer catches it, in the space between moments as stars collide and fuse and break apart.
The Follower, if it let itself consider, let itself think, might've seen the flash of something akin to fear make its way across Stargazer's face.
It does not.
-
The next night, Stargazer is quiet. Quieter than normal, like the breath just before a supernova. Charged and fearful, terrified.
The Follower does not let itself notice.
Their conversation is stilted, where normally words flow as easily as breathing. There's moments of hesitation from Stargazer that add up, through the night, until there is more silence than sound in the space between them.
When the Follower looks at them, it sees someone who isn't there, not anymore.
Another break, this time in the form of a story.
The Follower hadn't even realized what it was saying, it wouldn't have been able to speak the words if it had, they would be punched from its lungs before ever making their way into the open air. It would have been a mercy.
It tells a story as if both of them were part of it, as if both would remember the hidden jokes and inconsequential losses.
Only one could, even if it doesn't let itself.
The other however, gets crushed by the expectation that they should remember this. That the Follower thinks they should know where the story goes, where it flows and ebbs and ends.
Stargazer crumbles in on itself, just slightly. Unnoticed. Always, terribly, unnoticed.
-
The Follower notes, for the first time in many, many weeks, absence. No laughter, no hushed voice, no demon sitting in the grass.
It waits, and waits, and waits, for Stargazer to show up, to sing the praises of their friends in the sky, or wax poetic about the wind over the grass.
No sound comes.
Just the horrible weight of the sky itself bearing down on it.
It feels like disappointment.
It feels like a warning.
-
Stargazer does return to its, after near a week of waiting in the silence left behind, they appear as if they never left.
They pretend they never left. The hesitance from before is carefully ironed out, carefully removed by their own hands, for once.
They just want to keep this one thing. They just want this one thing to stay good and true. They just want one more chance, before their friends step in and make it all go away.
So, they do what they do best: pretend.
The Follower pretends, too, that the week of silence wasn't real. That Stargazer never left, that the creeping loneliness never set in.
A game of pretend can only last so long before it crumbles, like dust in the wind.
-
They dance around it like professionals, like a swordfight, like a ballroom dance. The temporary absence is ignored, pushed aside, the conversations return.
The Follower keeps careful attention to what it says, mindful that the reason for its… friend's disappearance must've been something it said. It combs the words it says, carefully and quickly, before they leave its lips. Before they even make it to its vocal cords.
It cannot make a mistake again, and it cannot make a mistake if it is careful in the way. It cannot hold expectations if it isn't allowed to remember them.
Stargazer dances around topics, but unlike before, where they would bring up anything and everything under the starlit sky, now they carefully choose their topics.
Nothing that might remind the Follower of the places others have brought them to, nothing that could bring that terrible name to the surface. Light things, like the fireflies in the grass, the ways the stars crash into each other, forming something new and destroying what once was.
It's a delicate balance, it's the only thing keeping them together, keeping them afloat on this raft of friendship that's already sinking.
It's exhausting.
It cannot keep up.
-
The final break comes like terror. Like a crashing wave, like falling into a riptide. An inevitability. An impossibility.
It comes not from the Follower, directly, but from a question, seemingly benign, from Stargazer.
“Why did you join him?”
Why did you become his, his tool, his servant, his obedient pet.
And the Follower cannot lie.
“To save someone. To save the person I loved more than life itself.”
A gasp, a breath, a silence between two broken things.
“To save Rocket.”
It's a flurry of movement that takes the Follower by surprise. Stargazer stands, abruptly, from the grass, horror overtakes their features, clear as daylight despite the mask secured to their face.
They back up, slow, like a predator is watching them.
The Follower stands, too. Approaches its friend, asks what's wrong.
“Th- that name. You… you became like this to save him?” Another question, spoken like they hoped it was lying, that it was making a cruel, terrible joke. Their body shakes apart like autumn leaves in the wind.
The stars overhead seem to rattle, move across the sky in ways that make the Follower's head hurt in the lights. A threat.
But it cannot lie.
Not to itself, not to Stargazer.
“Yes.”
The blue demon freezes, a terrifying stillness compared to the tremors just before.
And then, they're gone. Like mist dissipating, cut through by the harsh light of the sun.
Like they were never even there to begin with.
And the Follower is left, alone.
Wondering.
-
The Follower stands sentinel in the center of a massive field. The sun has dipped down into its nightly grave deep in the earth, leaving only the stars and the moon to witness the land under the sky.
Here, in this silent field, it remembers a friendship that sprouted and grew from giggles in the wind.
A friendship that crumbled to dust under the weight of memory.
It never sees that starborn demon again, not truly. Not in the same way.
No, the Stargazer does appear to it once more. But they look at it like something new, like the memories of what they shared were burned away under the harsh touch of the stars.
They never say hello.
The conversations never restart.
The giggles that once drifted over the wind are silenced, gone for good.
And yet, the Follower still stands its vigil in the field.
The sacred, holy place.
It's all it has left.