Chapter 46: The First Goodbye
Lucien had spent fourteen billion years unknowingly running from a child.
He found this realization profoundly irritating.
Not because it was untrue.
But because it was.
He stood before the second door while the entire universe waited.
Again.
At this point, Lucien had begun to suspect that existence itself had very little to do beyond observing his increasingly complicated emotional development.
The sentence upon the door remained unchanged.
«Open this only when you're ready to forgive yourself.»
He had read those words thirty-nine times.
Thirty-eight times, he had apologized.
Thirty-eight times, he had turned away.
Interesting.
Apparently, every version of himself possessed exactly the same amount of courage.
Not enough.
"You're thinking again."
Lucien glanced toward Tomorrow.
"I've been informed that this is problematic."
"It usually is."
"Reasonable."
The child sitting on the bed smiled faintly.
"We always stall before difficult things."
"That seems like a healthy response."
"It isn't."
Fair.
Lucien looked back toward the door.
Beyond it, the rain continued falling.
Soft.
Gentle.
And beneath it, he could still hear laughter.
His laughter.
A child's laughter.
The sound hurt in ways he did not entirely understand.
Dangerous.
Everything was dangerous.
"If I open it..."
"You'll remember."
"And if I don't?"
Tomorrow's expression softened.
"You'll still be you."
Silence.
"You'll still save people."
The lantern brightened beside the window.
"You'll still stop for lonely things."
The stars beyond the house shimmered quietly.
"And you'll still find your way back here eventually."
Lucien remained silent.
The answer should have comforted him.
Instead, it somehow made the decision more difficult.
"Then why open it at all?"
No one answered immediately.
Eventually, it was the child beneath the blanket who spoke.
"Because we're tired."
The room fell silent.
Lucien slowly turned toward him.
"What?"
The child looked down at his hands.
"I'm tired of remembering this alone."
Something inside Lucien stopped.
"Oh."
"There it is."
He ignored them.
"How long?"
The child laughed softly.
"You know the answer."
"Humor me."
"Fourteen billion years."
Silence.
The child smiled, though there was something unbearably fragile about it.
"That's a very long time to be sad by yourself."
Lucien found that he suddenly hated time.
This was a new development.
"You should have told someone."
"We did."
"No, I mean someone else."
"Oh."
"There it is again."
The child pointed at him.
"You were the someone else."
Fair.
That was unfortunately fair.
Lucien closed his eyes.
He had spent his entire existence carrying the burdens of others.
And somehow, impossibly...
He had never noticed the child carrying his.
That realization hurt more than it should have.
The Dragon King's voice rumbled softly from somewhere beyond the room.
"You were always very good at seeing everyone except yourself."
"That seems inaccurate."
"It isn't."
"You once spent two hundred years helping a star learn how to sing," Orion added helpfully.
"That sounds fabricated."
"It isn't."
"The star was terrible at singing," Astrael said.
"It improved."
Lucien had many questions.
He chose to ignore all of them.
Instead, he placed one hand against the second door.
Warm.
The wood felt warm.
Like sunlight.
Like home.
Like a hand resting atop his head after a very long day.
Interesting.
That was deeply suspicious.
The moment his fingers touched the surface, the door opened.
Not dramatically.
No light exploded outward.
No heavens trembled.
It simply opened.
Quietly.
Patiently.
As though it had always known he would eventually find the courage.
Beyond it was a field.
A simple field beneath a gray sky.
Rain fell softly across endless grass.
And at the center of it stood a child.
Him.
No older than eight.
Smiling.
Lucien stopped breathing.
The child was soaked from the rain.
There was blood on his hands.
On his clothes.
Yet somehow...
He was smiling.
"No."
The child looked up.
"Oh."
"There it is."
Lucien remained frozen.
The child laughed.
"You still say it."
The field stretched endlessly around them.
There were no stars.
No mountains.
No dragons.
Only rain.
"What is this place?"
The child tilted his head.
"The end."
Silence.
"The first one, anyway."
Lucien slowly walked forward.
The rain did not touch him.
Interesting.
"I died here."
"Yes."
"Why am I smiling?"
The child looked genuinely surprised.
"Because we won."
The answer struck him harder than expected.
"What?"
The child pointed toward the horizon.
Lucien followed his gaze.
And there, standing beneath the rain, were countless figures.
Tomorrow.
Younger.
Crying.
A small dragon no larger than a horse.
An Architect with silver hair.
And behind them...
Thousands.
Safe.
Alive.
Waiting.
"They lived."
The child's voice was impossibly gentle.
"We made sure they lived."
Lucien found himself unable to breathe.
"And us?"
The child smiled.
"Oh."
"There it is again."
"Stop that."
"No."
Fair.
"We were always going to die."
Silence.
"What?"
"We knew."
The rain continued falling around them.
"We just didn't tell anyone."
The simplicity of the statement felt cruel.
"Why?"
The child looked at him as though the answer were obvious.
"Because they would've tried to stop us."
Something broke.
Small.
Human.
Dangerous.
"That's not your decision to make."
"No."
"Then why—"
"Because they were smiling."
The child pointed once more toward the horizon.
"They hadn't smiled before."
Lucien followed his gaze.
He saw Astrael laughing for the first time.
Tomorrow staring at the sky in wonder.
The silver-haired Architect teaching a dragon how to play cards.
Life.
He saw life.
And at the center of it all...
A small child standing in the rain.
Smiling because everyone else could.
"You chose them."
"Yes."
The answer came without hesitation.
"Every time."
Silence.
Lucien felt tears on his face.
Interesting.
He had not realized he was crying.
The child noticed immediately.
"Oh."
"Do not."
"There it is again."
Lucien ignored him.
"Were you afraid?"
For the first time, the child's smile faltered.
"Yes."
The honesty in that answer hurt.
"Very."
The rain grew heavier.
"I didn't want to die."
The field fell silent.
"I didn't want to leave."
The child's voice trembled.
"I didn't want Tomorrow to cry."
Lucien couldn't move.
"But..." The child smiled again, small and fragile and impossibly brave. "Someone had to stay behind."
The words echoed through the rain.
And suddenly, Lucien understood.
The child who remembered every goodbye.
The lantern.
The waiting.
The promises.
They had all begun here.
With a child too young to understand death.
And kind enough to choose it anyway.
The child took a step forward.
"Do you know what the last thing we said was?"
Lucien couldn't answer.
The child reached up and gently wiped away a tear from his face.
"We said..."
The field vanished.
The rain stopped.
And across fourteen billion years of memory, Lucien finally heard the last words he had spoken in his first life.
«"Please don't be sad. I'll come back before you miss me too much."»
Silence.
Absolute silence.
The child smiled one final time.
"You know..."
His form had begun to fade now, dissolving into starlight beneath the rain.
"We really believed that."
And for the first time in all his lives...
Lucien forgave the child who couldn't keep his promise.