Support System

Support System
(Atticus / Kirby)

He holds a sword of gold in his hand, facing outwards. In front of him, a familiar face. A grin in their teeth and laughter in their eyes, they ask him if he knows what he wants. They are struck down.

He holds a sword of gold in his hand, facing upwards. Above, a monster decorated in stars, bearing the crown of a tyrant. Once, they were a friend. Now, they hold no thought at all. They are struck down.

He holds a sword of gold in his hand, facing downwards. Behind him, a father, torn apart and melted back together an amalgamation of metal. He, already struck down, lies in wait for a blow that will not come.

He holds a sword of gold deep inside of himself, a bastion within. The enemy is all-pervasive and all-consuming, eyes the color of blood looking up, down, behind, by side, friend turned foe across all time and space. They rise up out of the ashes and rip him asunder, and he holds with the weight of eons.

He holds a sword of gold, and its point reflects where his blood will be drawn, and each time the victim is different, and each time the victim is the same. They are monsters, slavering and bloodthirsty. They are stars, turned to black holes. They are people, eyes wet and screaming in their mouths.

They look at him. Every single one. Each time, they are struck, and another star is born, and his heart mends and breaks into a billion shattered pieces of glass, embedded somewhere he can never reach.

By one sword, by his own, all are turned to dust. Always his fault. Always his doing. Always a warrior. Never a savior.

He holds a sword of gold in his hand, and it burns, from the inside out. Unworthy, it says.

Eventually, everything and everyone else does too.

-------------------------------------------------------

He wakes. A gasp in his lungs and a scream in his throat, swallowed and drowned before it has a chance to shake the foundations of the universe and everyone in it.

Kirby stares up at the ceiling and feels sweat cling to his brow, his vision fuzzy at the edges until he can take a deep breath and let it out and trust that he won’t destroy the world. He pants, his hands fisted into the blankets underneath him. It’s dark, and for a fool moment he wonders if he’s still in the cave, still in space, still in--

But. No.

He’s home.

Kirby’s body buzzes with adrenaline, in every vein, every muscle, stiff and ready for a fight. His heart threatens with something, to explode, to burst into fire. It won’t keep still, and Kirby has to grit his teeth and hold the sheets tight and count himself down.

He’s panicking, he knows distantly. That hasn’t happened from a nightmare in some time.

But, then. He hasn’t had a nightmare like that in some time, either.

How long he lays there, just feeling the sheets and counting numbers to himself, he doesn’t know. Eternity, it feels like, but he knows from experience it’s only been a few minutes.

When he does eventually get up, he does so slowly. Everything feels—weighted, like lead, like stone sunk down to the bottom of a river. His wings drag, and he knows the feathers need preening.

Kirby can’t lay in bed. Shattered as he feels, the nerves still buzz. He can’t be vulnerable now. He can’t sleep and isn’t going to the rest of the night.

He looks out at the contents of his bedroom. Each nook and cranny, each shelf and each souvenir, brought from all over the universe.

He loves this place. He loves his home, some half-mad part of his mind thinks. What is he doing.

(Something is going to get him. Here, where it’s safest, his own room, where nobody has ever been. It isn’t safe. Nowhere is.)

. . .

(Where. Is Galaxia.)

Kirby swallows and takes one deep breath, squeezing his fists like an anchor despite everything. When he lets go and opens his eyes again, everything feels. Just a little clearer.

This. Can’t keep happening.

Kirby is familiar with nightmares. By now, intimately so. He knows how to deal with them, he thinks, or thought. They never happened often, and hardly ever as a child, but--

The dream is burnt behind his eyelids. Everything and everyone, coming to get him, accusing him no matter what he did. The villainous and the innocent, burnt and torn alike.

He’s a monster, they say as they’re struck down. He’s a beast, and a warrior. Not a savior.

Kirby moves. Paces his room as the adrenaline ramps back up with no outlet, trying to keep his mind from slipping back into that dark, dark place.

They’re getting worse. Worse in quantity, worse in quality. He could handle one a month. He could handle dreams about the occasional death god and come out no worse for wear.

But every week?

Every day?

He can’t sleep. He can’t think. People are noticing, he thinks, or if not, they’re going to, and he can’t. Can’t do that.

He’s a Star Warrior. He’s the Star Warrior. The prophesied, one, the savior. What kind of savior would break down? What kind of savior would be weak? Not him.

(What kind of savior befriends greedy, selfish monsters? What kind of savior lets innocent people, lets his family, get hurt because he’s too nice to ever see the evil in people?)

He needs to get out of here. He needs to move, to get some space, but it’s dark out and monsters are most active in shadow. He needs--

Something stirs, brushing against his mind, and automatically do his thoughts clamp, shields slamming and emotions locking down.

No. Not Gooey. He doesn’t need this, not after what happened.

Kirby aches at the thought, unbidden, of his brother. Gooey, his closest ally, his Guardian given new form, lost and found and held so much tighter for it. He’s seen the looks Gooey gives him, when he’s tired and his mental shields are down, and the ache shows on his face. He feels it in the questions, wordlessly thrown his way.

Gooey was his brother, and his other half, and what in Nova would Gooey think if he ever found Kirby had had nightmares of killing him? Of seeing Gooey in the shape of some monster, killing Kirby himself?

It would ruin him. And Kirby was so much better than that.

His parents are lucky, he thinks. They aren’t like him. His father is a warrior, but he has no universal weight on his shoulders. His parents have each other when things get tough. They’re retired and raising a child and don’t need to worry.

And he’d never bother them after they’ve been through so much, after they’ve survived and managed to find light at the end of the tunnel. His burdens are his own. He is the Star Warrior.

(And he’s too weak to ever see the look in their eyes when he tells them just how broken he is.)

Kirby glances around at the room again, at the window that looms darker than the shadows that hang from the walls inside. At the walls, the sheets.

He feels like a bird in a cage.

The phone at the wall doesn’t draw his notice, at first. Miniscule against the demons gnashing their teeth, it sits within the shadows that claw for his heart. When he does finally see it, it takes a good moment for some rational thought to click in his animal mind that it isn’t anything but an object of plastic and metal.

Deep within, a terrible idea whispers.

It’s stupid. It’s idiotic. It’s the result of days, weeks of interrupted sleep and self-loathing that forbids him speaking any one word to the people close by that he should be protecting. And in all manner, it should be the same across the stars, as well. Distance means nothing to a world-conquering god.

But here, in this moment, it feels like a temptation. A forbidden fruit, and such a good idea for someone already so weak that he has no thought of carrying himself forward, of reaching out blankly and putting the receiver up to his ear.

He’s already broken on the ground, says a teasing voice that sounds like an old friend who never was. He can’t break himself much further.

The number he presses is a familiar one, muscle memory directing his movement where he can’t see. His mind is going at a bombshell rate, or maybe it isn’t going at all. His room is reality and its mirror, himself on a knife’s edge between both.

It rings. Once. Twice.

(It’s dawn there, a logic piece of him whispers. It’s too early. Let it go. Stop indulging. You don’t deserve it.)

It picks up. Kirby’s breath catches and the world freezes.

“Kirby…?”

Atticus has been a thought long from Kirby’s mind since the last time they spoke. They’re adults; Atticus is working, and Kirby is, well, Kirby. They both had lives, and while they’d always spoken when they could as children, things happened as adults. Time went elsewhere.

Hearing Atticus, so familiar, so calm and steady if at least a bit confused, brings a rush of familiarity into his heart and head. Familiarity, and a dose of cold reality that makes him exhale, hard.

Atticus hears it. “If I remember right,” He starts, and his voice is calm, but careful, “It’s about midnight on Pop Star, isn’t it?”

The question sits there between the lines, heavy without needing said.

What is he doing, he thinks. The cold burns, leaves his hands shaking. He’s not supposed to do this. He’s the Star Warrior. He’s not supposed to drag people into his messes, and now what.

What in Nova does he say that can possibly fix this?

Nothing, is the truth. Atticus is too smart. Atticus knows things. Atticus will know, and that will be another person he’s failed.

“Kirby?”

Kirby grits his teeth and forces a smile into his voice like the armor he’s worn since he was ten.

He laughs. It sounds fake. “Heh. You’re right. Sorry for waking you – were you awake? Nevermind. It’s just early where you’re at, and I—”

The words threaten to leave him, and he forces them forward in chains.

“Couldn’t sleep. That’s all. Figured I might give you a call, it’s been awhile! But you probably need to get back to sleep. I can let you go, sorry about that—”

“I’m awake. I’ve been awake, actually.” Atticus says, and Kirby swallows at the tone. “We can talk if you would like to. I’ve got plenty of time.”

He lets out a long, slow breath. It sounds far too tremulous for his own liking, especially over the receiver where he knows Atticus has heard it.

Kirby asks, at first, about Atticus himself, and of their cousins. Something to fill the air, but moreso something to give him time to find the words to express what he’s held onto for so long, and to grapple with the consequences of this choice.

Atticus follows his lead, and for that he is grateful. The shop is booming, he says with a note of pride. Lots of orders to fill, lots of agricultural conservation projects for endangered plant species certainly keeping him busy. The parents are fine, and not one word is said more of them.

The cousins have been up to a lot, as it turns out. Tula off in South Nova with Rupion for a few weeks and Cellic busy as usual dropping off cargo in some town or other.

Mindlessly, does Kirby listen in. Letting his head sink into the familiarity and the safety of family and their voice, a bastion against the room that surrounds him. He misses them all, he thinks with a heart aching at each little detail. They’ve been up to so much, and he hasn’t been able to see any of it.

(Maybe you don’t deserve to.)

Kirby talks as well, when Atticus asks. About Tulok, so much stronger than he was at birth and getting stronger every day. About his parents. The new restaurant that Gooey and Kirby have been eating at nearly every day. A buffet they were banned from for eating nearly their entire stock.

Simple things. Safe things. Avoiding, each time, the pit in his stomach and the demons in his mind. Because if he doesn’t, he will not ever be able to go back.

By the time he trails off into silence, the tremor in his voice has faded into a near nonexistence. He feels, for once, comfortable, and thinks maybe that just speaking to Atticus at all is all he’d needed to do.

It’s fine, he tells himself. Nobody will get hurt, and neither will he break further.

But there’s something expectant in the silence that hangs over them, in the minutes after Kirby has fallen quiet. Atticus shuffles on the other side, the clink of a glass that tells him he’s taken a sip of tea, and the silence keeps going.

“I’m happy, to hear you’re alright.” Is what Atticus finally says, when the silence turns from expectant to a weight that sits like stone on Kirby’s shoulders. “And that everyone else is too. It’s a shame that we don’t talk more often.”

Kirby stares at nothing. Something in him screams behind a wall.

“We should talk again soon. Alright?”

Kirby’s mouth is glued shut.

“…Alright. Well, please have a good night, Kirby. I’m here if you need me.”

“Wait.”

There is the sound of something, of shuffling that freezes in place, Atticus with his hand frozen on the phone, probably not far from the receiver. Kirby knows how it sounds, is intimately familiar with it.

Fear bleeds like a sieve. He can’t stop it. The wall is cracked, the fruit almost bitten, the armor warping against his shoulders. He’s going to pay for it. Him and everyone else, for that hubris.

He can’t. He can’t.

“Kirby? Are you—”

“I just wanted to talk!” He says, laughter in his voice, and he sounds half-hysterical, pain and relief and the mania of over ten years of retribution tearing through the receiver sharp enough to burn. “You—I. You didn’t tell me that much! When are you going to visit, huh?”

“Kirby—”

“What are you going to be doing today? Any special plants on the backend? I’m no gardener but we’ve got some here that can murder—”

“Kirby.”

Kirby goes quiet.

“Kirby, what’s wrong.”

Atticus.

Sounds so much like their grandfather.

“You know you can tell me anything, right?”

There’s a crackle as Atticus lets out a great sigh on the other end of the receiver. “I had. Hoped you might tell me on your own, of course. I did not want to push. But. This…”

He can’t.

He’ll get them all killed.

“Kirby. If something is wrong. If something has happened. You know you can talk to me. Yes?”

He’s better than that.

“You are my cousin, Kirby. But more than that, you are my friend. And I’d do anything for you, if I could. Do you understand?”

He doesn’t deserve it.

“You might be a grand hero,” Atticus says, and there is the tiniest note of gentle, familiar laughter in his voice that makes Kirby want to wail. “but even grand heroes like yourself need an ear to listen, no? And I will always listen.”

Kirby takes one, long, deep breath.

“Okay?”

And the armor blows apart.

-------------------------------------------------------

Time is an immaterial thing.

It flows according to however anyone perceives it, relative to themselves. Fast or slow, it continues on nevertheless, because nothing would ever change in the universe if it didn’t.

For some, it doesn’t flow at all. Kirby knows many for who time holds no meaning, places that hold no concept of either time or space.

Kirby has never once considered himself a creature of such magnitude or emptiness. He is the Star Warrior, but he is still mortal.

But sometimes, he wonders if he’s ever been given even the benefit of knowing that.

When he eventually comes back to himself, slowly, piece by piece, this is the thought that enters his head. Because despite the absolute wreck that he is, body, mind, soul, it doesn’t feel like anything has happened.

The shadows still linger. The darkness still presses against the window, shapeless eyes staring through with eager mouths.

But, there are differences, he finds, eventually.

He’s sitting now. His back to the wall, his wings a terrible mess crumpled against the floor. His voice feels hoarse, like cracked sandstone, rough and broken. Eyes strain from more than just sleep deprivation, and something in them burns terribly.

There is an ache in each limb that feels like he’s just run a gauntlet against every being in the universe. He’s shaking, faintly.

He feels.

Feels.

“Kirby?”

The receiver is in his hand. The hand hovers near his ear. Atticus’ voice is gentle, and soft, and a warm presence, and slowly, finally, do memories trickle back to him piece by piece.

He’d told Atticus everything, he realizes with a sense of numb finality. Everything. From the monsters to the bloodshed of both guilty and innocent, to the countless gods that fell to his blade for their attempts on the universe.

The friends who had never been friends at all, and his own self-loathing for letting them in and the silly, silly belief that he could ever keep believing the best in the worst of people.

He is not and never had been a grand hero, he remembers telling Atticus distantly. Just a monster who kills other monsters.

Kirby shouldn’t have done this. He never should have let himself go, never should have bled and exposed his broken pieces to one person, however distant they are from his home. Because now someone knows.

And that changes everything.

“I’m sorry.”

It’s all he can say, in the end. Sorry for venting, for putting Atticus in danger, for showing him just who his cousin is and so, so much more. Sorry.

“It’s alright.” Atticus’ voice is as steady as their grandfather’s with its warmth. “I’m glad you felt like you could speak to someone about this. It must have taken a lot of effort.”

“Nobody knows.”

“Oh, I imagine that. It’s alright; you know I wouldn’t tell a soul.”

Kirby knows.

And then what, he thinks finally. Now what, now that he’s spilled his guts and shown himself.

“Kirby…” And Atticus pauses, deliberating. “I am always here for you. Whether you consider yourself a warrior, or a…a monster—” And he sounds like he doesn’t believe that for one second— “You will always be my cousin. You will always be my friend, and I will always love you.

“Whenever you need me, you need only call. Anytime, anywhere. The entire way until you’re ready. I’m here. I promise.”

And Atticus doesn’t make a habit of breaking promises.

Kirby doesn’t know how to feel. The familiar part, the defensive, the Warrior, it rails. Don’t break. Don’t expose. It will only make it worse. It digs in and screams like a beast.

But there is something else now, too. Something that warms, minuscule as it is. He’s too afraid to name it just yet, to define it in any clear way. But it’s there, deep in his core.

It is this part that opens his mouth, after some moments calm, slow silence. “Tomorrow?”

Atticus knows what he’s asking.

“As I said. Anytime, anywhere. Let me give you the number to my shop…”

Kirby feels himself smile. He doesn’t know if he means to, or if he should. But it’s there anyway, and he could not stop it if he wanted to.

He feels. A lot.

But he thinks he’s glad too. For this.

He doesn’t quite feel so alone anymore.

-The End-

Artist Comment:

September 28, 2023

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This is a VERY old piece I've been wanting to post for quite awhile. I just hadn't the time to really get to it. But I finally buckled down and got the illustration completed this week. The literature written by my friend, Dogblog (I'm sure you know her already since I hire her for many of my emotional pieces) has been long finished for...maybe well over a year? I'll have to double check. It's time for me to catch up with my work~! ;v;

Anyways~! Let's talk about this story. About Kirby, and the relationship he shares with Atticus.

Time changes a person. Atticus, who was a very timid and soft spoken as a child, has really flourished and matured as a young adult. Due to the upbringing and guidance of his parents. (Arthur, so-so ) But most importantly, it was all thanks to his late Grandfather Bate. Without Bate, Atticus wouldn't be the person he is now. He is now a born leader. Very calm, and wise. And a very good listener.

He is the eldest of the cousins, and the others look up to him for support or guidance. Even though Atticus is very busy with his job- (He's taken over his mother's flower shop, and is the head of the conservation of endangered plants.) Atticus still makes sure to take proper time to spend time with his family in Kalmari. It can be difficult to connect with his relatives who live on Pop Star since they live in a completely different timezone. So sadly, he and Kirby have not had the pleasure to chat much. (Kirby busy protecting the world, and Atticus with his projects and conservation efforts)

This particular night is different. Kirby reaches out to the only person he knows he can talk to when the world on his shoulders begin to take hold. I mentioned before that Kirby struggles with insomnia and severe anxiety after years of battling, killing, protecting, and being seen as the Grand Hero everyone wants him to be. (Mentioned in the description here)

Being basically the last Star Warrior, and the prophecy child who'll bring piece to the universe will put anyone on the brink of insanity. Kirby has shouldered so much over the years, always defending the planet from near destruction, and putting a smile on his face to the citizens of Pop Star. But inside, deep down- Kirby is drowning in a pool of guilt, self-doubt, and hatred. Kirby has done his best to hide his demons, but as time went on, it's become too unbearable- seeping through the cracks and affecting his everyday life.

He didn't want to burden his parents (Who are raising their newborn, Tulok), nor does he want to burden Gooey about it during his recovery. (It takes places after the Sub-Zero incident) Atticus- his older cousin, and the person he greatly looks up to, is the only person he can think of to reach out to.

Atticus knows something was up, but wanted to let Kirby be the one to tell him. It wasn't until Atticus was about to hang up did he finally ask Kirby what was wrong. He reassures him, and tells him even a Grand Hero like himself needs someone to listen. Eventually, the walls Kirby put around himself start to break down, and he pours his feelings and emotions to Atticus. Atticus listens for as long as Kirby needs, and will continue to be for him anytime he needs an ear to listen to.

Kirby knows he can always rely on Atticus, and the pair still continue to talk daily, sometimes weekly. Anytime Kirby needs someone. His older cousin will always be there for him.

(I wonder, are you able to recognize the enemies he faced off in the beginning of the story?)

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The literature written for this illustration was commissioned by my good friend, Dogblog. (dA- Shadowrealmprincess) ^v^