nuclear rebirth

by bloo_cloud

Summary:

“We’re here,” someone says, despite the fact that his words were definitely unintelligible, and it sounds like they’re on the verge of tears. “We’re all here, Foolish. We’re alive.”

Or: Foolish, being a totem, sacrifices himself to revive everyone after the nuke. His team returns the favor.

Notes:

wrote this before q!Foolish actually got back to the island so I suppose it's canon divergent now lmao
enjoy nonetheless :D

Throughout these two weeks of hellish purgatory, Foolish’s deteriorating vision has become frustratingly apparent, just as the rest of the changes in his body have.

His skin has split into a dozen cracks, deep and painful, slicing through his right eye and turning it cloudy. Moss and mud and grime grow on him like he’s their only life source, and in this hellhole of a place, it’s an entirely plausible thought. Everything here reeks of death—it makes sense that the earth would cling to the only beacon of life around.

Not that there’s much life left in him, after today—because Foolish is a totem.

Foolish is a totem, and if there’s one thing totems do, it’s dying, splintering to pieces and bursting to rush life back into the veins of the near-dead.

The boat is gone—he knows this, if nothing else. Through his blurry memory, he recalls reaching the beach with that pearl, relief settling in his chest as he glimpsed Roier and Phil and Charlie atop the ship with Mouse’s enderpearl landing beside them—and he recalls the swiftly mounting dread as the boat shot off, desperation pumping the motors and sending waves back toward the shore.

He recalls standing on the sand, breathing heavily, watching his one hope disappear from sight.

And, then, he remembers something much worse.

He remembers the explosion, the end of the world, and then he remembers agony—there is no better word for it. Completely and utterly breaking, like the buildup of cracks throughout the last two weeks had been no more than a warning to a true finale, one of fireworks and green sparks and golden blood splattering onto the shore.

He had come undone—and with that, everyone else had come back alive.

Something warm brushes against his cheek, familiar, and he tries uselessly to lean into it. His head barely twitches, but the warmth lingers, and he knows it, knows it more than he knows anything, knows it like love and loss and family.

Wherever he is, now, in the aftermath of the end of the world—he is loved.

And, maybe, he thinks that being dead wouldn’t be so bad. Not if it means he gets this. Not if it means that, after months and months of a slow-burning death—a poison born from lack of warmth, a knife that wedged a little further in his stomach every day he waited—he is finally loved.

Oh, how he has been so starved of it.

Through gas-induced hallucinations, Foolish had seen him. Every few days, when the pink and purple cloud of unbreathable glory had rolled over, he had seen Vegetta. He had taken off his gas mask with a painful haste just to press his lips against his lover’s, sinking into the feeling of being held, of being kissed, of being near. It had been a feast during a famine, and he had drinken in the taste of his boyfriend’s unreal, ghostly form, savoring each breath shared—and, inevitably, the gas would pass over and he would be forced to gasp in the bitter taste of reality again with lungs too burnt to breathe.

That, perhaps, was the worst part of it all.

And then there was Leo.

Leo, his hija perfecta, his daughter, his world. Leo, who loves purple and silly hats and looking pretty. Leo, who has more pets than he can count and more photos than all his albums combined and more creativity than he could ever dream of having. Leo, who loves dog sock puppets and adventuring across the world and running her tostaditas shop. Leo, who hates and loves his miserable bedtime stories, who beams at him starry-eyed whenever she wins at fishing contests, who builds with such finesse and talent that it's no wonder who her parents are. Leo, who became his baby the moment he watched her drift off to sleep on the very day they got her.

Leo, who’s been missing for two months, dirtied and cracked and missing her dads.

Leo, who was trapped just beneath their noses, who pounded against the invisible walls separating her from him, who had tears streaming down her muddy face as the world caved in around them and buried her.

“...guys, look…he…don’t know…”

“...let me…crying?...”

The warmth presses against his face, again, wiping a peculiar wetness from his skin. He’s barely conscious, but even then, he can’t feel anything. It’s like his body’s gone numb, suppressing everything to keep the pain at bay, killing the whole system to annihilate the poison.

…Is he alive?

For whatever reason, crushed under the weight of losing his daughter all over again and just barely missing his one hope of escape, the thought of living through it had never crossed his mind. He’s never thought of himself as a particularly negative person—but, at the same time, he knows fully well that he’s just masterfully good at slathering layer after layer of optimism over a deep-rooted depression that he’ll never dare let show.

“...lish…Foolish, wake…”

Familiar.

Somehow, in some impossible way, Foolish opens his eyes.

The first thing he registers is, predictably, how hard it is to see. His vision was already worsened by the hundreds of blindness-inducing scythes splitting apart his skin, and his recent cracking hasn’t helped matters. His right eye is nearly full blind. He’s surprised he can still see through it at all, even if blurrily.

Then, he glimpses the sky—or, rather, the lack thereof. He sees gray and green, and it takes no more than a millisecond to know he’s in a cave. After two weeks of living beneath the earth, buried under layers of mud and grime in the hopes of avoiding the scalding red sky that never ends, he’s grown pretty used to these stone walls. They’re comforting, in a twisted, awful way, just like the stench of rotting corpses and bloodbaths, just like campfires covered in gore and bones, just like family found in the midst of apocalypse.

And it’s then that Foolish remembers Bolas, and the dozen other people that, just like him, didn’t make it to the boat.

“Jaiden,” he tries to choke out through a mouth that won’t work, that feels dead with how numb it is, that slurs every sound until it sounds like gibberish. “Cellbit. Baghera. Mouse. Etoiles.”

“We’re here,” someone says, despite the fact that his words were definitely unintelligible, and it sounds like they’re on the verge of tears. “We’re all here, Foolish. We’re alive.”

He can’t feel his body, and maybe that should scare him, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t, because that means that he fell apart to sew their bloody pieces together, and that’s well worth the sacrifice.

There’s a wing covering his stomach, blue and black and purple. It’s ruined, missing an unnerving amount of feathers, all burnt and blistered and ashy—but it’s Jaiden’s.

Fuck, he’s missed her. One week of her being asleep was like hell for all of them. Every sunset, after the hellish events of the day were over, he’d settle down by her unconscious side and keep her company throughout the night. She’s awake, now—she’s alive, and she’s awake, and that’s all Foolish could’ve hoped for.

And Cellbit—oh. That’s what the warmth on his cheeks are. Those are his son-in-law’s hands.

It’s almost funny to think that after months of one-sided tension based off of a betrayal that didn’t really exist, they’re finally on the same side again. They’re finally aware that they’re both human, not fish. They’re finally family once more.

If nothing else, at least purgatory did that—it gave so many hurting, bleeding people a family to rely on. It gave them warmth in the end of the world. It gave them comfort in death.

It gave Foolish Cellbit, and it gave Cellbit Foolish.

“You’ll be okay,” his son-in-law whispers to him, and his voice sounds so shaky, in a way he hasn’t heard it since the eggs first went missing. “You better be okay.”

I will, Foolish wishes he could say, because it’s true. He’s done this before. He’s lost everything and given all of himself up for the last remainders of what he cares about, and he’s healed from it. I never die, he wishes he could tease, because it wouldn’t be a joke.

Someone sets their hands on his back, pushes him up so he can sit against the wall. His head whirls, but he’s still grateful for the change in positioning, if only so he can get a better look at his company. They’re only blurry figures—but he can see their colors, can hear their voices, and that’s enough to know that everyone who didn’t make it is right here with him.

“Drink this,” someone urges—Baghera, that’s Baghera—as she lifts a potion to his lips, and Foolish can immediately tell that something’s off. It’s a healing potion, sure—but the core foundation of it, blaze powder, is entirely absent, likely replaced with whatever they could find here that was similar enough. Still, it works in some regard, restoring feeling to his face, his feet, the tips of his fingers. His throat is still numb as all hell, though, and he can’t help but wonder how much he’d been screaming.

Judging by the stunt he’d pulled to bring everyone else back from the taunting precipice of death, maybe it’s better that he can’t feel much of anything. He’d gladly take this over that mindsplitting agony.

“Did that help?” another person pipes up worriedly—Mouse.

A green blob that is decidedly Etoiles peers over him. “I think so.”

Oh. They really are all here.

He parts his dry lips, inhales the thick stench of blood, summons up his strength. “You guys okay?” he croaks out, voice barely audible.

They all stare at him, perhaps struck silent by shock. Cellbit is the first to break, grabbing his hand and squeezing it tight enough for his fingers to almost go numb again. “Are you fucking serious?!” he snaps, teary-eyed. “You nearly kill yourself to save the rest of us, and you’re worried if we’re okay?”

Despite it all, Foolish can’t help but crack the smallest of smiles.

“We’re all fine,” Jaiden answers, and despite how her voice trembles, she’s smiling back at him. “Well, maybe not fine, but…we’re alive. We’re all alive.”

Relief washes over Foolish like a tidal wave, slipping his eyes shut as he exhales, slumping further against the wall. Everyone’s okay. He helped. He helped, just like he always said he would.

He’s not one to break a promise.

“You really gave us a heart attack, though,” Baghera sighs, running a hand through her muddied hair.

“Fucking hell, man,” Cellbit swears shakily, leaning forward and hugging Foolish like his life depends on it. “Don’t you dare pull that shit again.”

“Hey, it- it turned out alright,” Foolish tries to laugh, albeit weakly, no more than a chuckle. “I wasn’t just gonna- gonna let you guys die. Kelp will- will help, right?”

Cellbit doesn’t respond. He holds him tighter, burying his face in Foolish’s shoulder, and the totem hesitates.

“I, uh…don’t think I can- can hug you back,” he says awkwardly.

“Don’t care.”

After a moment, his son-in-law’s shoulders shake, and then his whole body is trembling with sobs—and, oh, maybe Foolish should’ve picked up on that a bit quicker. To be fair, he’s barely conscious, so he gets a pass this time around.

“Hey, it- it’s okay!” he forces out feebly, fingers twitching uselessly at his side.

“It’s not okay, Foolish,” Baghera denies, shaking her head, eyes wet and hollow. “None of this is okay.”

Oh.

Oh, Leo.

Foolish’s breath hitches, and before he knows it, his eyes are burning. He purses his lips, swallows down his breath, tries with all his might to suppress it, but-

“Foolish,” Jaiden says softly, and it’s been months since he’s heard her this tired. Her burnt, tattered wings raise, sheltering him, blanketing him.

And for whatever reason, something as simple as his name—uttered with such painfully deep understanding and sympathy from the mouth of his best friend, of his most trusted partner, of the person who knows him better than everyone in the world—that, of all things, is what breaks him.

Foolish, who, despite all odds, has not let a single tear slip since the day he stepped foot on this island—finally lets go.

And he cries.

It is not a pretty thing—far from it. It is loud, ragged and painful and jostling injuries both new and old. It streams down his cheeks, drips through his cracks, makes puddles on the floor. It is nearly five months spent loveless and over two months spent lonely and an entire eight months facing ridicule and accusation and torture. It is pain, ugly and raw.

And he is…held for it.

Cellbit doesn’t let go, and Jaiden doesn’t back off, either. If anything, they only hold him tighter, like they’re trying to keep him from cracking even more apart. Baghera nestles closer, frayed wings spreading. Mouse’s tail winds around his ankle. Etoiles sets down his scythe to get nearer. Foolish can barely feel their touch, but somehow, he can still feel the warmth—and in a hellish place like this, that’s practically heaven. 

The sound of sobbing slowly grows until it’s no longer just him and Cellbit—they’re all crying, but they’re all crying together, letting their pain be shared and soothed by the tightly-knit company they’re huddled with. They are all fucked up, all scarred beyond belief, all hurt and bleeding and crushed beneath the weight of their inescapable, hopeless situation—but they are together.

They are together, and that is enough.

At some point during the mess of it all, Jaiden finds her voice, still whisper-quiet yet stark and unforgettable. “You know,” she says, like she’s read Foolish’s mind, like she can tell exactly what’s going through his head, like they’re both sharing a heart and taking turns on each beat, “you revived everyone that went down during the explosion.”

Foolish heaves for air, swallows thickly, blinks. “Everyone?”

“Blue team are all fine,” Jaiden laughs bitterly, then softens. “So…even if the eggs did die during all that, you brought them back, too.”

“...Oh.” A laugh slips past his lips, strained, and maybe he sounds absolutely psychotic—but he’s Bolas, they’re Bolas, so they’re all crazy anyway. “Oh, fuck, I hope that’s true.”

“It is,” Etoiles hums, and given his almost unworldly power and spark and connection to the glittering stars above, Foolish is inclined to trust his word.

“We’re all gonna survive this,” Mouse agrees ferociously. “And that starts with making you a shit ton of those potions.”

Foolish can’t help but grin. “Thank- thank you. All of you.”

“We’re Bolas,” Baghera says reassuringly, giving him a smile. “We’re family.”

Family.

It’s something that had come so easily to Foolish, back on Quesadilla Island, back when things were so much simpler. He had found love, both in a partner and in a child, and they had been such a perfect family.

Then, they weren’t perfect anymore.

He’s not an idiot. He’s heard, day after day, the way his teammates refer to each other. How they all call Phil “dad,” how they all throw themselves into their nest at the end of the day even though not all of them are avians, how they call themselves friends and flock and family.

And Foolish has been scared—still is, really—because if he ever agreed, if he ever accepted that truth, if he ever did more than simply dip his toes in the water and hesitate above the surface, then that would mean he’d be truly, irrevocably, attached.

He’s already lost so much. He can’t bear losing any more—can’t bear losing another family.

But, after all this—after two weeks of bonding over agony, finding comfort in the midst of torture, scraping up an insane little family during the end of the world, after facing total annihilation, after losing everything and gaining it back—Foolish thinks that, maybe, it’s worth loving something that’s destined to leave.

“Yeah,” he laughs, and it comes so easily, accepting it like that, like his mouth had always known the truth before his head did. “Yeah, we are.”

All of them, battered and bruised and barely alive, grin like they’re not living in the aftermath of armageddon. They grin, and they huddle close to each other, and they drink up their shared warmth like ravished wolves.

And they are loved. They are loved, because they are a boiler and the logs that heat it. They are a matchbox, and they are oxygen and fuel and heat. They are gory campfires powered by the hearts ripped from between their lungs, pumping blood and warmth until the flames turn scarlet and smell like death. They are their own system, dangerously dependent on each other, with love swelling the pipes and giving air to their punctured lungs.

They are loved. Foolish is loved.

And, maybe, that’s the key to healing after falling apart.