End of All

By Kay

Disclaimer: I don't own The Neverending Story. If anyone is willing to sell it to me, I would give my left kidney. Not much use, but very pretty.

Author's Notes: Bookverse, Bastien x Atreyu implications. Just a simple drabble. I hope you enjoy! Thanks for reading!

Bastien tries to explain happy endings to Atreyu, just the once.

They're pressed thigh to thigh together, warmed more by their shared body heat than by the fire in front of them that laps greedily at the sky. Bastien, who has never known companionship like this—close, shared whispers in the dark, stifled laughter, attentive nodding that shifts olive-black shadows across Atreyu's face—is hardly ready to give any of it up. So he entices Atreyu from his sleep with stories of home. At first, Bastien makes them more fantastical than they are, to compete with the wondrous world around him. But soon he realizes that Atreyu finds the simplest, dullest fact to be the most fascinating. This releases something inside of him. He lets a piece of himself, his true self, fall through his fingers.

At one point, Bastien jokingly adds, "And they all lived happily ever after, the end." Atreyu cocks his head; like his horse, really.

"The end?"

"Yes. That is the end of the story."

"Well, that can't make it very happy, now can it?" Atreyu says, not unkindly. Bastien flushes and tries to find a way to explain.

He does his best—first describing the literal traditions of storytelling back at home, to Atreyu's bewildered face. Then, when Atreyu asks, Bastien tells him that everyone wants a happy ending, really. For things to magically be all right for the rest of their lives. What Bastien doesn't say, though he feels it burn in his heart, is that he's looking for his own and may have found it, somewhere lurking in Fantasia.

"But it is the nature of things," Atreyu says. "We move forward. There is no end, only the beginning of another story. Connections… we are ashes spread in dirt, I suppose, always blending in with other colors. No, Bastien. I don't understand why you would want this happily ever after."

"Some people," Bastien tells him, "don't mind a rest. Sometimes, don't you just want to stop? So you can always feel good inside?"

Atreyu smiles faintly. In the firelight, his eyes are amber. "I would hope, instead… That there will be more good inside, another time."

Bastien can't imagine toiling forward forever like that, searching elusively for happiness. He can't fathom the exhaustive concept, so he turns away and moves so that his leg isn't gathering warmth from Atreyu's anymore. "If I could," he murmurs, "I would stop Fantasia here. Just now."

Atreyu says nothing.

Bastien can hear Falcor fidget around in the clearing beyond them, his great underbelly sliding in the leaves. Then Atreyu's fingertips are at his shoulder, gentle-like, restrained; they are a warrior's hands, even so young. Bastien fumbles with his breath until he can catch it and then twists around to see Atreyu's face. He has to see Atreyu's face. There is something like wisdom in it, most times, and Bastien knows his compass for right and wrong is set there, delicately placed in the shape of Atreyu's mouth.

Atreyu is smiling, albeit worriedly.

"The Nothing wanted to stop Fantasia," he says.

Bastien's cheeks would have flushed red, but he's no longer that Bastien, in that body. He shakes his head. "Yes. No. You're right, I spoke wrong. I don't want to stop Fantasia, I want to stop you."

"But then," Atreyu tells him, "I would not do this."

He squeezes Bastien's wrist, thumb to flitting pulse, and doesn't let go. And Bastien, for all the wishes he'd made to AURYN thus far, can think of nothing more to want than that.