(Shorekeeper's POV)
Black sands trace footsteps of someone who is soon to depart this Solaris and only to return to it with its salvation. Each breath of the salt laced air from the tides hits his nose. He looks determined. The mask he wears of one without regret- no- remorse. Like what he's done and what he's about to do, he knows in the end that it was for the greater good.
The saying goes that great men can do what good men cannot. Because a good man cannot stomach the thought of hurting another for the sake of the benefit of all around him, he sees the importance of individuality, how one person's suffering is much more than just a response from the brain, that misery is more than a fickle reaction to stimuli. A great man though? He can disregard that. After all, if all it takes is one person's pain to end all agony, why bother with the morals or ethics? That isn't to say great men are evil men. No, a man is evil when he seeks to proliferate that torment whether it was for a good reason or not.
These same men though have all one things in common. Regret looms like an awaiting hug, whether it's from their actions or inactions. They cannot sleep with themselves knowing what they've done. We were not born to be isolated. Each one of us is made to be a symphony in harmonizing discord and a man with regrets is one who feels he is off script. Then what better way is there to reintroduce one's self to the song of humanity then start from the very top.
But I know this course of action of yours, Commandant, is more than just to resolve regrets. It is in your design that we can provide humanity's salvation. But even despite being a program, a tool. I can sense your regret. Tell me, and her esteemed Astral Modulator, if you wish, you may choose to be a good man or a great man before going through the final stages of our overture.
The black clothed individual standing in the room of endless logical white stares longingly. They hadn't even realized they finally made the destination. The shock comes quick and passes by just fast. Being replaced with swift and sharp heartbreak. Their crimson eyes bulging in what they're about to do.
The limit to what any individual can see or learn is not boundless. Not even you,and Lord Arbiter. The mind is a cage that traps us all. We may have the ability to reach stars, conquer worlds, and even grasp the very worldly laws with our bare hands. But our conscience stops us in the end. In the end, we are born as good men. It takes the heart to strangle and suffocate itself to make us great men.
Commandant, I give the final say in your hands. Its deadline and what you will do before and after it. Do note, I recommend not going through without completing any unfinished business you may have with any individuals. You may choose to disregard them if the situation grows dire enough. My calculations cannot predict if that will be the case. It is up to those who witness it to judge as such.
The necessary preparations to finally save humanity from the Lament is set as you've so carefully crafted though. Any further time could push the slightest piece out of line. And you and Lord Arbiter are having more arguments like a married couple who's about to divorce on how to proceed as the days go by. I mean this in no way to pressure you. Because paradoxically I think it would also be best to take some extra time to clear up some loose ends that you may have before this. Calculations conclude in cleaner execution of our objective. The outcome is nearly the same. The weight it bears on you differs though. Make of it as you will.
- COMMANDANT
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(PHROLOVA'S POV)
I'm lost in my own thoughts. You wouldn't expect that but I've simply grown so boringly accustomed to this piece my hands just move on reflex to every 2/4 and 6/8 patterns that my eyes and ears have tasted so many times over, I almost vomit for this performance. I practiced so hard for this..no.. for every performance that followed our first meeting. I put heart and soul into it, revised so many sheets, and rehearsed just as much, all for you. Yet you chose to come now. When I'm at my lowest, the point where I'm withering to my stem- you chose to be here now?
I feel like prey drawn to its limit. I'm so frantic. My facade of confidence infront of you is crumbling while you watch with great interest and almost mirf behind your eyes. What's so enjoyable to you? My hardwork or my desperation, or perhaps to us both- they are one in the same.
Like this isn't the first time I've been taken advantage of. But why do I feel so different about it when it's you? I should be ridiculing you right now, showing how I've grown into my own without your care or your sweet comforting words. That this grief doesn't need to be understood for me to live. But apart of me is yearning so..so so badly for your counsel.
I don't even know anymore if what we had — what we keep circling back to — counts as comfort or just another kind of wound. Sometimes I think about it like a trap: the kind hunters leave half-buried under leaves. One you built. One I stepped into. One I stayed in, even after the pain bloomed.
And I can see you even now in my head, crossing the distance with that worried look stitched across your face like a borrowed coat. You'd never meant to hurt me not like this. I was just collateral damage in whatever hunt you were on. Yet you kneel anyway, fingers trembling as you try to free me. The irony is almost funny: the trapper freeing the caught animal.
I could have gotten out on my own. God knows I could have. But you were so disarming, so genuine when you looked at me. For a moment I forgot whose fault it was. Who am I kidding? I wouldn't have run no matter what. It wasn't my leg caught in the steel, it was this sad, beating heart.
Later, you take me "home" — though it's nothing but two velvety concert seats under the flickering exit sign. You sit me down, patch me up with clumsy hands. The bandage is crooked, too loose. You're better at hurting than healing. And yet I let you. You give me warmth, a promise of fresh clothes and food after your next hunt. You smile a small, tired smile; I wave you goodbye like a fool, telling myself you won't leave me here to rot with a wound you wrapped yourself.
It's naive. I know. But you've been the only one to give me an answer I'd been waiting on for years. Why wouldn't you also stay? Why wouldn't you at least watch?
So I sit by the window — our "window," the gap between those two seats — staring out at the endless green beyond. Sometimes dawn rolls in and dew beads on the bushes. Sometimes night falls and something rustles just out of sight. Most people would hide under the covers, whisper about monsters.
I don't. I lean forward, heart in my throat, hoping it's you. Hoping, for one second, the sound belongs to the person who left me bandaged and waiting. Only to exhale and watch a possum or a squirrel slip back into the brush.
And every time, that tiny disappointment carves another little notch into me.
The night presses in like a wet sheet. My clothes are stiff with dirt and ash, the fire has long since died, and the wind keeps sneaking down the back of my collar, cold fingers on my spine. My stomach twists with hunger. I lie on my side staring at the bandage you wrapped around me — once a small proof that somebody cared. Now it looks like a joke. Crooked. Half-loosened. A badge of your half-hearted mercy.
I felt like a stranger in the rain. You walk by and out of the twistedness of your heart, you gave your umbrella to me. I take it with joy and thanks, thinking this is something special. But apart now feels like you didn't do that for me. You did it for yourself. Like every spatful heathen, your kindness is a tool not a gift. When you got what you wanted, you ran out the door, never looking back and maybe even searching for your next victim.
You couldn't be like them though.. you wanted me.. right? You went to my concerts, heard my songs, listened to my story. Because it was me.
RIGHT?
The thought fractures with a sharp clap and applause. Reality jolts back into my skin. I nearly topple from the stool, blinking hard, the stage lights hot on my face. My performance is over. All I can hear is the crowd: the same applause, the same leering eyes, the same detached hearts who only ever taste the surface of my work but never what it costs me.
The noise is deafening and hollow at once. Worthless compliments. Empty squeals. And yet, because I'm cursed with being this sensitive, I catch a note in it that's different. Something softer in the swell of sound. It pricks at me. For a heartbeat it fills me with the same small pride I had playing for Triss and Granny Leah in that dusty parlor years ago. Not because there's a prize waiting, but because somewhere in this sea of noise, I imagine you.
Your hands. Your smile. Those beautiful crimson eyes that used to sparkle like they were part of the music. I'm so childish to let that thought lift me. And because of that, I feel the old frustration rise too — at you, at me, at the trap we built together.
I let the bow of my instrument lower, my fingers trembling as I hold the final note in my head a second longer than necessary. My chest is a storm of hunger and grief, but my face stays composed under the lights. The curtain closes.
Inside, I'm still reaching toward you in the dark.
You offer your hand, and before I even think, I grab it and pull you in a hug with a strength I didn't know I still had—the same desperate strength I once used to save my violin when it nearly slipped into the village well. You stumble forward, surprised, but you don't pull away. Whether you're choosing to accept me or just shocked by the force of it hardly matters. In that second, I have what I need.
I wrap my arms around you and hold on tight, so tight it almost hurts. My fingers clutch at your back, nails pressing through the fabric. Part of me wants you to feel a fraction of what I've felt. But just as quickly, another part of me can't let go. You don't resist, don't even flinch—like you already knew this moment would come. Like you're letting me pour out everything I've been holding in, even if it's messy, even if it's selfish.
My chest shakes against yours. The air in my throat feels thick, as if all the years of silence and waiting have gathered there. I press my forehead to your shoulder. You smell like rain and travel and something faintly metallic, and it makes my heart ache. This pain, this weight you gave it to me, and yet somehow you're also the only one who can take it away.
I want to give it back to you, all of it, folded into every note of every concert you've missed. I want you to finally hear it, to understand it, to stay this time. Because even through my anger, even through the claw marks of my grief, I know what I'm really doing.
You are everything I've been asking for.
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(JEFF'S POV)
The sound of static hits my head after that final reminder. My heads lolls forwards into the shoulder of a grieving maestra in front of me. Her reaction is as I expected but I hadn't known it would be this extreme. That still wrong of me to say. It comes as if I didn't value what short time we had together. I did, I cherished it but with how far along I am, I've simply lost the will to hold tk it much longer before I simply can't look back.
Through streams of hot tears and wailing octaves, your single vermillion eye looks at mine.
"I'm- I'm complete aren't I?"
You manage to whimper out whilst your fingers dig through the back of my clothes and I feel as if I'll almost bleed with how hard you dig your nails in. I suppose you truly took to heart what I meant by that I'd only come back when this piece was complete.
It isn't yet-
But I'm not leaving you unfinished with it.
...
We were trapped in our own worlds for so long, we hadn't even minded the previously cheering audience had kept their eyes on us or more especially you- with their jaws agape to what they were seeing. The ever expressionless, confident, respectable Phrolova- breaking down right after a performance without even bothering to do so in private. Some take out their cameras and snap a photo before bolting it to the Concert Exit whilst murmuring with fellow audience members of what just transpired here.
I wanna chase after them, I hold nothing personally but the fact they wish to use this as a way to achieve fame through your misfortune is something I'll keep one eye open at night cause of. At the very same time, I could never live with myself if I pushed you off just to seek justice you never even asked for. What you want isn't to protect your image, what you want right now is to be seen, to be heard, to be known.
I grab your hand. "A place with seclusion and some sunshine would be better for you, wouldn't it?" I say before carrying you off. We took the other exit, most chose the one to the left because it was closer to the news station to sell off whatever misinterpretation of your character they come up with. You wrap around my neck and can only bother to stare in forlorn affection, one you carried for so long as if it was the very thing keeping you going. Perhaps it was, someone like me by this point is so pushed beyond the boundaries of human feelings that I can't see you're weakly trying to pull yourself up to whisper something to me.
We've made it outside and you're still struggling to hoist yourself whilst I'm too busy trying to find a place where we can settle ourselves before the calm of the storm wears off and you finally get the chance to collect yourself and say what you want to say to me. Eventually, out of frustration, you squeeze my shoulder in an attempt to catch my attention. "Take- Take a right and then take a detour through the street there. There's a quiet place at the edge of town if privacy is what you want.."
"You say that if you don't want privacy."
"I don't care for meaningless peoples' even more meaningless accusations..."
Harsh of her to say but.. she isn't wrong. In the end, she knows she's strong enough to brush off whatever comes her way. Plus, she did always seem like the headstrong type to get what she wants. Maybe it's just that she didn't know what she wanted or at least how to get it when we first met. Now, she has a look behind all that sadness where she looks almost fulfilled.
Soon, we reach the edge of town where I only see boundless trees of green and jagged rocks peering out on the horizon.
"There isn't somewhere to calmly or comfortably talk around here-"
You tug at the collar of my shirt before pointing to a passage between the trees. I walk with you in my arms- trying not to bang your head or legs against passing obstacles before we make it to where you seem to have intended. It's a breathtaking site of a field full of flowers. A small pond sitting in the middle. The grass here seems to fade into an almost violet color. I almost hesitate and think that this place is tainted by the Lament before you insist to put you down. Your heels touch the flora below and you calmly walk to the small body of water where the moonlight reflects your moody visage.
You take a seat at the edge of it. You don't even bother to look back, but something says you want me to sit with you as you place your hand to the flower bed below. No less, it would be awkward if I just stood here and watched you stare onto the nightly curtain's reflection before you. I wouldn't mind simply admiring your figure at seeming peace though. You look as if what happened earlier didn't even happen yet of course the swollen redness of your eye tells otherwise.
I take a seat, contemplating if I should look at the sky, the flowers, your reflection, or you.
The silence hangs without even a breeze to pass by to knock us back into reality. We're both lost in our respective daydreams. Eventually I decided to snap out of my own volition and look at you and see you were looking right back at me.
"...Took you long enough to finally return my gaze."
"I couldn't help but be caught up in the scenery. It's not like I can't admire the moment."
"If you admire it so much, then why don't you stick around longer before getting up and leaving without a word again?"
"You're really never letting that down are you?"
"It's rude to answer questions with questions. But yes I will, until for however long we stay together."
"Which is?"
"AN ETERNITY."
"You know that's not possible."
"..Does that mean you're going to leave me again?"
I feel like she just twisted a knife I dug into myself. I tried to play it off maturely but the fact she took as if I'd just up and abandoned her after just reconnecting shows just how badly she took my disappearance. I can't blame her. I didn't bother to reconsider her situation and what that one conversation must've meant to her. I couldn't have read her mind, I won't fault myself for not making the exact decision she wanted but that doesn't mean I'm willing to concede any deniability that I'm completely at fault.
Right now though... I think I just need to make amends with you and give you the answer I think is best for both of us.
"While we both might be here to walk Solaris in undying bodies. I can't have promised you I'd stay at your side for every single moment."
"Then why bother making any promises to me at all?"
"Because I knew I could keep this one. The real question is can you hold up the end of your agreement."
"What do you mean? Wasn't it perfect? The piece is complete-"
"It's not."
"Then why are you here now?"
"Because I'm here to help you before this me you know leaves without hearing it when it is."
"...What do you mean?"
"To start over, I can't look back, not even at you. But you are a special case. One I can't sit idly by and leave unsaid to what I agreed to."
"..I take it you're no musician though?"
"I can play the piano and some string instruments like guitar but that's nowhere near enough to your level, I can simply just see the meaning behind music."
"I know the latter part as much. I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe in it."
"Then are you willing to believe in me again?"
"That what? That you can complete my piece for me?"
"No, that will always be you to do so. But I want you to believe that I can give you the support you need to see our promise to the end."
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(PHROLOVA'S POV)
The audacity. The absolute audacity to appear now after all this time and claim that what I played was incomplete.
Centuries of grief had bled into every note, every trembling chord, every pause that lingered too long in silence. I had poured them into it. Them. You. My losses, my longing, my fury every fragment of my soul scattered and sewn into that piece until there was barely anything left of me. And still… still he says it isn't enough.
My nails press so hard into my palms I half expect to draw blood. My chest burns like a pond scalded into steam. I glare at him, the weight of years thick in my throat.
"You can't just step in here, after everything, and tell me it's missing something." My voice shakes, low and sharp, dangerously close to breaking. "After all I've lost. After everything I've given."
He doesn't answer. Just looks at me—like the silence itself is an answer, like I'm supposed to understand.
His silence infuriates me. After these years, you can't say what you have to say to me-
The quiet stretches, unbearable. My rage and resentment coils tighter, thrashing against my ribs until I can't hold it back anymore.
"…What's missing?" I spat the words with undisguised contempt, breath hitching, but he says nothing.
That silence feels like a knife twisting in me.
"I asked," I say again, louder this time, each syllable hitting like hammer strikes, "What. Is. Missing?"
It's then finally that he moves. Slowly, and deliberately, as though he's making peace with a decision too heavy to take lightly. He turns toward me, and before I can protest, his hand closes over mine, fingers threading through my trembling ones.
The touch is grounding. Infuriatingly grounding.
His voice, when it comes, is quiet but steady.
"…A sense of direction."
I stare at him, disbelieving, my breath snagging in my throat.
"…You are my sense of direction," I whisper, almost a plea. "Isn't that enough?"
He only shakes his head, slow and deliberate, eyes dark with something I can't name.
"Not at all," he says softly. "Who's to say I won't point you in the wrong direction someday?"
My chest tightens. "Then I've long since accepted you're not perfect," I shoot back, a crack of defiance trying to keep me upright. "I just have to tolerate it."
His lips press into a thin line. "That doesn't sound healthy either," he murmurs. "Who's to say tolerating it would fix anything?"
My mouth opens but nothing comes out. The words dissolve before they form. I feel cornered, trapped in a conversation I can't win. "…I…"
"Even if you did," he continues, his voice rough now, "this version of me isn't long for the world. Especially with what I've planned to ensure the salvation of it."
The words hit me like a physical blow. My stomach drops. "…Then why?" My voice cracks. "Why come back at all if you're just going to break my heart again?"
His eyes flicker, a flash of pain behind them. "So that when my time comes," he says, barely above a whisper, "I can sleep at night in the next life—"
I rip my hand out of his before he can finish. The sound of skin separating from skin is louder than it should be. My arms hang at my sides, trembling.
I want to run. My legs almost move on their own. I can't believe I was right his kindness isn't for me. It's for himself. All this time, I gave him my heart, my hours, my one chance to bring them all back, and this is what I'm left with: an ending he can live with, not one I can.
I open my mouth to scream, but the exhaustion drags my voice down into something colder, and harsher. A whisper with teeth.
"If that's it…" my lips barely move, "then you can stay sleepless."
I turn my face away. I can't indulge his self-pity anymore. I won't. But even now, his face god, his face looks like he's about to say something that might still undo me. Against my will, a part of me leans toward him, desperate for one last chance, though I know how many chances I've already given.
Finally, he speaks. His voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts like garden shears through dead leaves, clean and final.
His voice carried that rare tremor I'd only ever heard when he was at his most bare.
"When I got the notice… that I'd have to start over, I thought I could handle it. I told myself I was ready. I was running out of time; our plan could fall apart any second, years of work gone in an instant. Yet I still chose to risk it. Choosing you meant risking humanity's solution to the Lament. But I took that risk at every turn—just so I could hear that piece, complete, for once."
I stared at him. My chest tightened with a guilt that felt like it might crush my ribs. I couldn't believe it. All this time I had thought I was the one abandoned, but here he was, standing in front of me, having gambled everything for a sound only we could hear.
My thoughts tumbled over themselves. Someone like me destroyed lives for a selfish wish to be at peace with everything I lost in a world I never understood. And yet here he stands with the answer, holding it out to me.
I wanted to surrender, to collapse into the warmth of what he offered, but the weight of what he'd done—what we'd both done—sat between us. Forgiveness wasn't a switch I could flick. The silence stretched so long that I had to speak, my voice low but steady.
"…You really are sincere with your words." My gaze slid to the side before I met his eyes again. "But promise me one thing."
His head tilted, a question in his eyes.
"In the next life…" I swallowed. "Live with the heartache. Don't erase it—cherish it. Because that ache after all."
"...It's what drew you to me in the first place."
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Author's note:
Hello everyone, feel free to leave your collections, powers, reviews, and comments as you see fit. I want to give Phrolova a better but still bittersweet conclusion this side story will still continue in the upcoming chapters ahead and It won't just focus on the past I will focus on the distant future too. That's all; thank you for reading this fanfic, and I hope you have a good day.