Work Text:
Caelus shivered, drawing his arms tighter around himself, trying to stave off at least a bit of the harsh chill that seemed to seep down into his very bone marrow. From where he walked in front of him, Dan Heng was entirely unaffected by the brutal cold, seeming as if he were only bothered by the heavy snow, and the fact that they had been separated from March 7th during the initial fight.
Caelus… struggled to remember what happened in exact detail, too preoccupied with attempting to keep himself warm, but there had been a fight when they had landed on the planet, and March had gotten separated from them near the tail end of it.
Then the three of them had been swept away in the blizzard, leaving Dan Heng and Caelus to scramble around in search for March.
Caelus was worried for her, of course he was, but the frigid air took precedent in his mind, as bad as it sounded even to himself.
He swallowed, throat clicking with it, and shoved his fingers back beneath his underarms, where he had been trying to warm them up ever since they had grown numb with the cold.
Fingerless gloves were a poor, poor design choice for a planet like this.
He shuddered again and looked up, eyes trailing over the way Dan Heng strode in front of him, breaking the thick snow enough for Caelus to be able to follow behind him, despite his toes having long since gone numb and cold and his feet feeling as heavy as lead.
Perhaps it was something about the Stellaron inside him, something that made him inferior to Dan Heng and the others. There weren’t many other explanations that his newly dulled mind could come up with as to why Caelus struggled so severely when Dan Heng didn’t.
Caelus blinked, the snowflakes that had gotten caught on his eyelashes clumping up for a brief moment before falling off.
“Dan Heng,” he murmured, voice sticking inside his throat a bit before he fully forced it out. Another rush of shudders ran through him, and his skin prickled, hair raising on his arms. He didn’t know what he wanted, not at all, but he knew that they had to stop soon, Dan Heng must be cold too, right? “Dan Heng-“ he repeated, more insistent this time, his body unable to coax out a startle when the other man snapped out a response.
”What, Caelus? We have to find March, please tell me this is serious.” Dan Heng hadn’t turned around as he spoke, still trudging through the horrible, horrible snow, and Caelus blinked.
There was a frantic edge to his voice that Caelus hadn’t heard before.
Ah, he’d forgotten that Dan Heng and March had been friends for a long while.
He exhaled, a huff of heated air puffing out in front of him for the briefest of moments before being whisked away by the wind. He inhaled again, sharper, drawing in air that was cold enough it felt as if his lungs were freezing from the inside-out. It wasn’t serious, not as serious as March still being lost, if Caelus thought about it.
“It’s nothing,” he rasped, hardly hearing the grunt that the other man sent him in response.
Caelus simply grit his teeth, and followed behind the other man, praying to whatever gods existed that his extremities would warm and his head would feel less… numb.
✩
Dan Heng could not tamp down the panic that threatened to overwhelm him no matter how hard he tried.
Logically, he knew that March could handle herself. He knew that she was capable and more than able to be by herself for a little while as they tried to find her, but the lack of her presence set him on edge and he could not help the panic that held his chest in a vice and choked him.
He could only be happy, be relieved that Caelus was with him, following his lead. Dan Heng did not want to even begin to consider how much worse it would be if he were the one by himself out here.
As embarrassing as it was to admit to himself (let alone admit out loud, which would never happen, if he had any choice on the matter), he valued March as a friend, and could already see Caelus becoming a meaningful person to him.
He wanted this nightmare to be over.
He wanted to be out of this damned snow.
It was irritating enough to force his way through the snow and even more irritating to blink the new snowflakes from his eyelashes. The storm had been consistent, at the absolute very least, and Dan Heng was able to feel the smallest bit relieved at that, but compared to everything else, it counted for little.
Caelus trailed behind him, and Dan Heng allowed himself to take comfort in his silent presence.
He would have to apologize for his shortness later. The man hadn’t deserved that from him, it had been rude.
Dan Heng had no idea how long the two of them had been walking for. March was slippery out here, and he could only hope that she hadn’t been buried in a mound of snow somewhere. He exhaled, sharp, before drawing in another breath, listening closely, trying to hear past the shrilling wind.
(In the future, Dan Heng would be so, painfully, relieved at the fact that he had been listening to his surroundings as close as he had.)
From behind him, there was a noise, terrifyingly quiet in the grand scheme of things.
It sounded as if something had fallen into the snow.
Dan Heng faltered, pausing for a small moment, waiting for Caelus to say something, to tell him that he had heard it as well. When there was utter silence save for the shrieking winds, Dan Heng turned to try and catch Caelus's gaze.
When he saw the other man's crumpled form in the snow, new flurries already coating his dark jacket, Dan Heng stopped breathing. It took him a moment to figure out just what he was looking at because there was no way-
The instant his mind came back to him, he ran, knees weak and trembling as he fell to Caelus's side. The snow crunched beneath him as he settled into it, the sound already an intimately familiar one, and he reached his hands out to the other man's shoulders, trying to shake him back to awareness. He looked small like this, face-down in the snow, clothes growing lighter as more snow covered him further. "Caelus," he rasped, voice catching in his throat, trying to figure out what had even happened.
Had he been hurt earlier, during the initial fight? Had something happened after that that Dan Heng hadn't seen?
Had Caelus been trying to warn him of it earlier?
Dan Heng swallowed, feeling rubbed raw, and he shook himself. Caelus wasn't moving from where he was trying to rouse him, but, thankfully, Dan Heng could see him breathe. He drew in another breath, this one shuddering and threatening to get caught in his lungs, and began the process of turning Caelus over onto his back so he could get a good look at him.
The other man wasn't heavy, but wasn't exactly light either. The adrenaline coursing through him made quick work of it though, and Dan Heng allowed himself to feel the smallest bit grateful at that.
When Caelus had finally been shifted onto his back, Dan Heng took catalogue of everything he could see.
His face was tense, lines of stress between his brows and his lips drawn into a thin line. His eyes were shut, Dan Heng able to see the way they moved beneath his eyelids, something stressing him even in his unconscious state. There was no blood, no broken bones that he could see, and he was confused.
And then, he looked closer at the man, at the way the tips of his fingers and backs of his knuckles had gone a raw pink, the way his cheeks and nose had turned similarly bright, the faint blue hue of his lips.
Caelus had stopped shivering, and even taking Dan Heng's stupidity into consideration, he knew that that was bad.
The cold was affecting him. It was affecting him severely if Dan Heng's knowledge on hypothermia could be considered passable. He swore under his breath, heart pounding in his chest, his hands shaking with it as he tried to calm himself down. "Okay," he rasped, again, caught in his throat. He would have to take care of Caelus, have to find somewhere where he could be warmed up and made alright again.
If only March were here, she'd always been better at this sort of thing than Dan Heng.
It made no sense, none at all. But Dan Heng refused to think more on that as he shifted, pulling his own jacket off, suddenly grateful at the way the cold hardly affected him.
Why Caelus was so different, Dan Heng had no idea.
He sat the man up, ignored the way his head lolled to the side, unconscious, and wrapped his jacket around him, overtop Caelus’s own one, hoping to warm him up even a little bit. Dan Heng had no idea what the next step was after this, the initial plan to find March had clearly been derailed.
March… March could handle herself. She was stronger and far more clever than she seemed. Dan Heng knew that she would be alright.
Caelus on the other hand, looked as if he were fading fast.
Dan Heng closed his eyes, and made his choice.
He heaved Caelus up, onto his back, careful to tuck his jacket around the man, making absolutely certain it wouldn’t fall off before setting off in the same direction he had been earlier.
Maybe they could find some sort of settlement, maybe even a city, on this planet. If not that, then at least a cave or somewhere small to hole up in until Caelus woke up again.
Dan Heng braced himself, adjusted his grip on Caelus, relief flowing through him at the soft puffs of air that Caelus huffed out against his neck where his head rested.
He would be able to do this, he had to do this, he had little choice in the matter, because Caelus simply was not going to die here.
✩
The utter drudgery of walking while carrying a full grown man on his back was something that Dan Heng had not prepared himself for.
He had no idea how long he had been walking for, only able to calculate the passage of time by how his arms burned and his thighs ached, by how his breath increasingly got caught in his chest and he had to cough to clear it. Caelus wasn’t overly heavy, but he was a man, and Dan Heng had never been one for lifting weights in his spare time.
The only thing keeping him going was the way he could feel Caelus inhale and exhale against his back, feeling the way the man’s chest expanded as he continued living.
His breaths had slowed down since they had begun, and it made Dan Heng feel ill.
He did not want to have to carry a dead man.
The space around them was a wasteland. Tall craggy rock faces filed the area, heavy fields of snow surrounding them, and Dan Heng had had little luck trying to pick out any caves for them to recoup in.
He huffed out a breath, watching it billow out in front of him, eyes burning.
Snowfall had picked up again, nothing as severe as it had been before Caelus' collapse, but far heavier than it had been mere moments ago. He could not help the despair that nipped at his ankles when he saw it, something in his chest squeezing and pulling taut at the sight of the darkening clouds overtaking the sky again.
Caelus had hardly lasted this long and it hadn’t been snowing nearly as bad as it had been when they had first landed. If the snowfall became heavier again, Dan Heng wasn’t sure if he would make it through another round of storm weather.
If they both made it through this alive, every one of them on the Astral Express would need to learn of this, a situation like this could never, ever happen again in the future, Dan Heng wasn’t sure if he would be able to bear going through this again.
A sharp wind buffeted at his hair, blowing it into his eyes, and he grimaced, readjusting his grip and ignoring the sharp burn that jolted up his forearms.
The sky was rapidly darkening, casting a shadow across the ice-white snow. Panic thrummed inside him, making him sick, the saliva souring in his mouth with the taste of fear.
“Shit,” he swore, having to focus on the sensation of Caelus breathing to keep from completely falling into panic.
”March!” He called out, desperate, voice cracking halfway through the name, his cry loud enough that he could hear it echo through the sharp cliff faces. Dan Heng had not felt so useless in years. “March!” He had no idea what March could even do at this point, even if they did find each other, but she would come up with something, she had always been better in situations that required a delicate touch than Dan Heng had been.
Caelus had not shivered in a long, long while, not since before Dan Heng had even picked him up, and he was intimately aware of the fact that a lack of shivering was bad.
The snowfall grew thicker in front of him, blotting out his vision, and he felt ill with fear.
He shifted the direction they were headed in, moving towards one of the closest rock walls. It was one of the dozens he’d seen that went straight upwards, and even if it wasn’t ideal, it would hopefully put them in a better position to survive than being lost in the middle of a tundra-like clearing would.
Dan Heng’s entire body burned from overuse as he stumbled forward, forcing himself to keep a tight grip on Caelus.
He only stopped at the sight of a section of the wall that held a small overhang. It wasn’t grand, was hardly big enough for one of them, let alone two, but Dan Heng had few other options. It would have to do and it would have to last them until the storm stopped.
He exhaled, again, another rush of foggy air billowing from his lungs and this time his throat ached at the next icy inhale. When he swallowed, it felt raw against the irritated skin.
Adjusting Caelus, he shifted them until his own back was facing the wall, the cold of the rock seeping through the fabric of his shirt as he pulled Caelus’s front against his own. The other man was still unable to stand by himself, so Dan Heng was careful to hold him upright as he sank to the ground, pulling Caelus with him.
Caelus was an utter deadweight, but Dan Heng was still painstakingly careful as he moved him. He let the man sink into his chest, using the palm of his hand to direct Caelus’s face into his neck, pressing their chests together, and then bringing Caelus’s legs up over his own in an attempt to bring them as close to each other as possible. “Hands in here,” Dan Heng murmured, resisting the urge to sink down into the snow and let his body finally rest as he pulled Caelus’s arms in between them, not wanting his fingers to grow colder.
As he held Caelus’s hands in his own, he stared, his sluggish mind struggling to comprehend what he was looking at.
On one of his own hands was a dark glove, an old relic of which March had a matching pair. It had been repurposed long ago by someone far smarter than him.
It had been special-made for their travels. The adjustments to the old, near unusable relics had been small tweaks that worked off of their inane abilities to stave off the worst of the cold and heat that afflicted some of the planets they had visited.
And Caelus also had gloves, yes, but… but they were entirely normal.
They were not repurposed old relics, they were normal, fabric gloves.
Dan Heng had never felt so stupid in his entire existence.
”Aeons,” he breathed, the realization of the fact that Caelus had gone out here in clothes that were more or less normal sank in and Dan Heng could not even begin to comprehend how this had slipped past them.
At least now he knew why the weather affected him so heavily, though the information was useless now that they were stuck in the situation.
He looked, then, at the face of the man who had followed them out here. He could see now the way that frostnip bit at his face, the way his eyelashes had almost frozen together with the half-melted snowflakes clumping them up. Dan Hen swallowed, and brought one of his hands up to Caelus’s hair, shaking out the chunks of snow that clung to it in mats.
He didn’t want him to die out here, not from a mistake that everyone on the Astral Express had made in regards to preparing him for actually facing the wilderness.
Dan Heng brought his other hand back down, and used it to slip his glove off of his hand.
The instant the fabric left his skin, the cold hit.
It felt as if he had been struck by lightning, the tundra so cold it felt hot.
He couldn’t even gasp, he couldn’t even breathe, his body just went tight.
Was this truly what Caelus had been experiencing the entire time he had been on this planet?
Dan Heng had to use all of his restraint, the last dregs of his energy, and his desire to see Caelus survive another day in order to force his stiff muscles to grab for Caelus’s hand and slip the old relic onto it.
He shuddered again, and wrapped his arms around Caelus’s back, pulling the other man in closer before closing his eyes and forcing himself to endure.
✩
Caelus blinked, bleary-eyed, thoughts sluggish and slow.
He felt warm, he was laying on something soft, and there were even fuzzy sheets atop him.
He tried to wake up, still slow and muddled, staring dumbly at the ceiling above him as he tried to recall what happened.
There had been Dan Heng, and snow, and then… nothing.
Movement in the corner of his eyes drew his attention and he looked over, March 7th’s face peering back at him and he startled, a slow smile drawing across his face as she squealed. “Caelus!” Her voice was bright, a bit choked and teary, but still bright, and Caelus let himself be drawn into a tight hug, the woman’s fingers clutching at the back of his coat as she gripped at him.
“Hey,” he said, his voice a mere rasp, and March huffed out a thick laugh against his neck.
“Hey yourself,” she sniffed, pulling back to look at him. Caelus did not like the way there were tears in her eyes, but he kept quiet on them, knowing that little good would come if he pointed them out, even if he was curious. “I’m so sorry Caelus, we had no idea that you didn’t have anything to repel the cold.”
What?
Caelus blinked, trying to process what she said, but March carried on, her voice just as heavy as it had been before. “Dan Heng is fine, don’t worry, but it took Natasha a little longer to make sure you were okay, especially after you’d been out there for so long and-“ he moved his hand enough to touch at her arm, quieting her, March blinking at him for a moment before her face melted into another expression of relief.
“What happened to Dan Heng?” Was the first question to leave him, and March’s expression faltered, upset crossing her face as she answered.
“He,” she paused, clearing picking her words carefully, and Caelus didn’t like that. “He gave you his artifact in order to help you out there, you were in a really bad spot. He’s still sleeping, he should be up soon though. Neither of you guys had any sort of permanent damage, the hypothermia you had wasn’t too much for Natasha to help along.”
Caelus still had no idea who Natasha was, but he could guess that that was knowledge for later. He settled on nodding again, thinking back, trying his best to remember the exact events that happened.
There was a terrifyingly blank spot in his mind, and as if March knew exactly what he was thinking about, she spoke. “Don’t worry if you can’t remember much, apparently memory loss is a symptom.” Oh, alright. Caelus… didn’t like that, but it wasn’t as if he could change it.
“Where is he?” He asked, March tilting her head over to the sheet of fabric that stood a few feet away from him.
“Over on the other side of that. He’s still sleeping but when you feel better we can go sit over there, okay?” There was an edge to March’s voice, something pleading in it, as if she were asking Caelus not to disagree with her on this.
He did not want to even think about what she had dealt with, her memory clearly still intact after everything. “Okay,” he said, simple, and the relief in her face at the fact that he had easily agreed made it clear that he’d made the right choice.
Caelus settled in to wait, March doing the same, and when she rested a hand against his arm, squeezing every few minutes as if to check that he was still okay, he didn’t mention it.
✩
“Hey,” a soft, familiar voice roused him, and Dan Heng blinked himself awake. It took effort, far more than it should have, but when his vision finally cleared and he was able to look Caelus in the eyes, he found that it was worth it.
There was little he could remember, but what he did involved Caelus, and he didn’t like the way recalling it made him feel.
Seeing March 7th by his side was even better, the woman giving him a sad little smile, so entirely unlike how she normally looked that Dan Heng couldn’t help but frown.
“Hi,” he settled on answering. A hand wrapped around his own, and when he looked down, it belonged to Caelus.
“Dan Heng,” March said, her voice choking on his name, the woman struggling to hid her tears, and Dan Heng could only hold onto Caelus’s hand, regret making his heart ache. “Don’t ever do anything like that again, okay? Neither of you two every do that, alright?” He nodded, as best as he could, Caelus doing the same.
Dan Heng squeezed at Caelus’s hand, Caelus squeezing him back, and when he brushed his thumb against the inside of his wrist, he heard the other man laugh, light and airy.
“Well,” March sighed, hands on her hips, and Dan Heng’s attention was drawn back to her. “I suppose we should tell you about-“
There was a loud knocking from the door to the room (an infirmary, if he were to guess), Dan Heng looking up, and when the door opened unannounced, he grimaced.
“I see you both are finally awake,” the man who had opened it said, his voice… posh, if Dan Heng had to describe it. He was blond, in glittery armor that burned at his retinas, and in the corner of his eye, he could see Caelus bracing himself for something. “My name is Gepard, and I feel as if this conversation has been long overdue.”
From the way March held herself, and the way Caelus, even in his apparent confusion, braced himself, Dan Heng could imagine that this was going to go poorly.