Chapter Text
It was liberating to finally be two separate beings. Moon no longer had to fight just to move, and Sun was no longer in a constant state of fear and pain. Of course, he was still very much afraid. Moon still had every capability to hurt him, and he actually did so occasionally.
Sun couldn’t complain though. It wasn’t a constant pain. It was never debilitating. It was something he felt he could handle, and slowly, his fear turned into a subtle anxiety that kept him on guard and aware of Moon’s emotions at all times. It’s fine.
Or at least, it was fine.
Sun had soon found himself getting quicker to anger than he had before the separation. It was scary, especially when it was directed towards the children. He’s supposed to protect and care for them. He couldn’t express it while there were children around. His anger made him want to hurt them, so he pushed it down as far as he could and kept it away. They didn’t deserve to see their idol like that, nor did they deserve to get hurt because of it.
He couldn’t express it towards Moon, either. He had been so much nicer since the separation. Maybe not as nice as he could be, but it was still a significant improvement from before. It was no longer constant insults and controlled shocks. Not only that, but Sun was still afraid of him. Who knows what he’d try to do if Sun actually expressed his anger and resentment towards him. All Sun wanted was for them to get along. He just wanted to be happy. He had to be happy.
So he pretended. He pretended as if nothing was wrong. He pretended as if he was happy. He pretended that he could never be truly angry or upset with anything, and for while, it worked. Everyone was happy, and everything was fine.
And then July 16th happened.
It was nap time. A majority of the children that day were refusing to sleep. He found himself wanting to hurt them. He wanted to make them sleep, and the thought terrified him. He didn’t want to be like Moon. He couldn’t be like him.
So he tried to focus on the few who were listening. Some of them were even trying to help, and he tried to hold on to that small piece of positivity. He found it so very adorable. There was even this one who seemed to cling to him. She was trying so hard to help make the naughty kids listen, but they seemed to just make fun of her for the plush of himself she always held.
It didn’t work.
Moon wasn’t there that day.
He couldn’t have stepped away for a moment to calm down.
He couldn’t keep pretending.
There was blood everywhere.
Sun panicked.
This wasn’t meant to happen. He tried so damn hard to keep it down, but it just… it was already done before he even realized what he was doing.
None of them survived. Not even the ones who had put all of their trust into him.
He ran away. A trail of blood followed, but for once he couldn’t find it within himself to care. He just needed to get clean. Then he could clean up the mess. He could clean messes. It would be fine. He could make it fine again.
…
Moon found him frantically trying to scrub the blood off of himself in one of the bathrooms. Sun could hear nothing but genuine concern in his voice when he asked about what had happened. There even seemed to be a bit of panic hidden within.
Sun almost immediately broke down. He was doing so well. He was supposed to be happy, and he had gotten so, so angry. He had gotten so angry that children had been hurt. They had been killed. By him. By the one meant to care for them. Most of them had barely even understood what was happening.
For what seemed like the first time ever, Moon actually stepped forward and hugged him. He didn’t even seem to care about the blood, and, instead of urging Moon to stop because of the mess, Sun accepted the hug and cried. He desperately needed the comfort that Moon was offering.
They both remained there for a while. Even after Sun finally went quiet, Moon refused to let go just yet. It took Sun pulling away for him to do so. He didn’t even say anything about it. He simply picked up the rag Sun was using and ran it under water to wash away some of the blood. Sun numbly watched as he did so, and he barely even reacted as Moon began scrubbing some of the blood off of him. His focus was on Sun, and Sun couldn’t help but soak it in and allow Moon to help clean him up.
The daycare was closed for only a few weeks.
The entire time, Sun did almost nothing but clean that small room they had been shoved into while Moon made the portal. He scrubbed and scrubbed, desperate to get rid of every last speck of blood that had gotten into every crack and corner.
Moon rarely bothered him. He allowed Sun to do what he needed, because he knew that this kind of thing was probably fairly traumatizing to him.
For the first week it was fine. Sun barely spoke, and when he did, it was mostly to himself. The problem came when Moon found him collapsed next to a wall with a rag still in his hand.
Sun woke up plugged into their shared charging port hours later. He hadn’t been watching his power percentage. He had been far too focused on cleaning.
Moon refused to allow him to return to it until he was done charging. Which included his back up battery. He fidgeted with the ribbons on his wrists for most of that time. There wasn’t much else he could do.
Moon was tinkering with something nearby. He didn’t care to know what it was.. He just wanted to go back to cleaning. There was still a mess that needed to be gone.
Sun startles when Moon finally breaks the silence.
“Are you okay?”
A dry laugh escapes Sun, and there was a cheeriness that seemed so much more forced than it usually was. He was trying desperately to pretend nothing was wrong again. “Of course I’m okay, brother! Why wouldn’t I be?”
Moon went quiet again, as if he was unsure of how to approach this. The brief moment of silence was awkward for the both of them. “...You.. literally cleaned until you lost power. Do you know how long our batteries can last? Especially with our backup battery?”
Sun had no response for him. Of course he knew. He had l spent an entire week cleaning every nook and cranny of a small room, and the only time he had stopped was when he needed more cleaning supplies.
Moon sighed and returned to his project when he realized he wasn’t gonna get a response at all. Neither of them spoke to each other for the rest of the day.
Sun found himself in the same place another week later. This time, Moon was waiting for him to wake up instead of doing something else nearby. He seemed upset. Sun instinctively wanted to fix it, but he was just so tired.
“You can’t keep doing this, you know.”
No response came from Sun this time. The only reaction he had was to pull his knees up to his chestplate in an act of self comfort.
“Look, I get that you’re upset about whatever the hell happened,” Sun had half the mind to reprimand Moon’s language. “but you can’t just stay in that damn room all day, every day, cleaning as if it’s not already completely spotless. This is the second time you’ve used up both of your batteries, and I am not gonna let it happen again, do you understand me?”
There was no indication that Sun was even listening to Moon. Not even his rays moved in consideration or even shame, and his lack of reaction very quickly frustrated Moon. He stood, and, despite Sun’s flinch, he approached and crouched in front of him.
“Some kids died. That sucks. It really does. But that does not mean you get to run yourself ragged cleaning up blood that isn’t even there anymore. I hate to say this, but get over it. It’s done. There is nothing you can do about it now.”
At his words, Sun’s rays shifted and clicked to the side in an anger that was much too quick to appear, and much too intense for Sun to handle properly.
“‘Get over it’..? Seriously?” He laughed incredulously and continued, already unable to stop himself. “A group of kids die on my watch, and you can’t even say anything but ‘get over it’? What a great brother you are, aren’t you? Yeah, sure, I’ve seen plenty of death because of you, but this…”
Another harsh laugh escaped Sun and his hands tightened on the cloth of his striped pants. Even in his anger, he could barely bring himself to admit to what had happened. To what he had done, but, at the same time, he desperately needed to get it off his chest.
“I don’t think you even understand how terrible I feel about this, Moon. They didn’t deserve that. They were all so afraid.”
Moon huffed an angry laugh, and he spoke in that low, growling tone that always terrified Sun. It was almost always followed by some hurtful insults, and sometimes he’d even go as far as to hit Sun.
“I don’t understand? I don’t understand? Sun, I have killed so many people, and a lot of them were murdered purely out of spite. There are plenty of people that I felt and still feel regret for killing. There were plenty of them that absolutely did not deserve it, and I still did it. So tell me, what the hell do I not understand?”
Sun refused to back down now. Not this time. “It’s different! You were made to do that. You were made to hurt people, and you were used to doing it. It was normal to you, even if you do feel regret for it sometimes. I’m not. I was always forced to watch in the background. I never did any of it myself. This… This was all me.”
He simulated sucking in a breath at the admission, but he still managed to continue. Albeit, in a quieter voice. “I did that. They- They just wouldn’t listen, and I got so, so angry and I-... I didn’t even know what I was doing until it was already done. There is no one else to put the blame on. I killed them. It was my hands, my colors, my eyes.”
Moon had gone quiet, simply listening as Sun spoke. It startled Sun for a moment, but that was mostly because he wasn’t used to Moon actually listening to him. “I don’t know what happened. I have never gotten that angry before. I was doing fine, and then, and then I wasn’t and I-... I killed them, Moon. I killed those kids. They trusted me and I killed them. And it- it felt so… it felt so, so good, and I never, ever want to feel that way again.”
His hands went to pull on his rays as he rambled. It was an anxious habit he had never been able to drop, even before the separation. He continued to ramble on and on about what he had done, unable to stop even when he flinched at Moon’s hands pulling his own away from his rays. He had hurt himself before by doing that, and it was a bit of a hassle to fix.
“...Sun, I…” Moon’s quiet tone was just enough to make Sun go silent for a moment. It sounded as if he actually felt remorse about something for once, and for some reason that startled him. “I think.. I think there’s something I should tell you. About our separation.”