Notes: Based on and inspired by one of Ionia's lines in the game. It reads, "The heart of the person who pulls the Needles will be passed onto the Dark Dragon. And then something big will happen... Something big enough to recreate the entire world." I took this literally. Accompanying art made by the wonderful and incredibly talented Ems (homebiscuitskillet at tumblr). Thank you again for this beautiful gift!

Fandom: MOTHER3

Characters: Lucas

Warnings: spoilers, speculation, violence.

Disclaimer: I do not own MOTHER3, nor do I seek to profit from this story in any form. All mistakes are my own.

In the aftermath, he kneels and holds the Masked Man close.

What strikes him most is how very heavy it is. In his memories, his brother's body is a support, familiar and comforting; the Masked Man's corpse is like an anchor, its deadweight threatening to pull him down with it. Were it not for the unmistakably familiar scent underlying the acrid stench of sizzling flesh and short-circuited machinery, he could not believe that the alien weight in his arms belonged to his twin.

He stares into Claus's human eye, its pupil blown wide and beginning to cloud over. He does not cry at the sight; he has been incapable of it since the night of the funeral.

There is a hand on his shoulder, and he does not know how long it has been there. It shakes him gently. "Lucas," Flint says. His voice sounds like it's been broken open. "Lucas, let go. You have to let go."

His arms, dripping with blood, quiver violently with the effort. Still, he will not let go; he cannot. What comes after this is something he cannot even begin to comprehend. He wants to experience nothing beyond the weight in his arms and the stench in his nostrils, wants to hold it all close long enough to internalize them. The pounding in his skull is disconnected from his perceptions, and the ache of his wounds is too distant to be anything but unreal. The body in his arms is an anchor; letting go means being set adrift.

The hand shakes him more urgently. "Lucas. Let your brother go, son."

He does not respond, and Claus is taken from him.

He holds on as long as he can, his arms leaving wet, dark streaks of blood on the Masked Man's blackened jacket when he wraps them around his torso. Flint outlasts him though, and he watches as his father hobbles away and sets Claus down on the ground, gently. The man kneels and rests a hand on his eldest child's chest, his head bare and bowed in prayer.

Time contracts. Bereft of his anchor, Lucas's senses begin to expand outward. There is a sharp pain in his right shoulder - a stab wound that was partially cauterized shut by the intense heat of the lightning blade - and blood, warm and thick, runs down his arm in rivulets from the puckered, open edges of the injury. He can feel what's left of his PSI prickling weakly underneath the wound in an attempt to knit flesh and severed nerves back together. It crackles along his chest as well, where a plasma cannon shot burned his skin black. The duller pains of scrapes and cuts remain ignored, his PSI already stretched thin as it is.

There is blood splattered across the dusty earth; its sharply metallic odor subsuming the smells of both Claus's and his own burnt flesh. The once comforting scent is now overwhelming, and Lucas's body contorts and bends inward. He dry heaves onto the ground, eyes burning without any moisture.

Kumatora's familiar touch presses at his back, her grip firm yet uncharacteristically hesitant. The warm rush of her PSI spreads through his body from her palm, mingling with his own and accomplishing what it alone could not. Under her guidance, pale tendrils of skin begin transversing his wounds, the dead flesh peeling off like snakeskin. Duster's calloused palm comes to rest softly on his uninjured shoulder. "Breathe, buddy," Duster says, his voice hoarse. He rubs soothing, concentric circles into his skin. "Just concentrate on your breathing."

He does what he is told and takes a deep breath of the heavy air. The pain worsens, spiking through his abdomen, and the air he had collected leaves him in a hiss. Somewhere behind him, Boney whines.

"He's got broken ribs," Kumatora says. Her PSI trickles from his chest and along his ribcage to trace the fractured bones. "Two of 'em."

Lucas's head feels heavy, and his glassy eyes dazedly look out into the distance. The darkness of the catacombs would be absolute were it not for the Needle. Its hazy, violet fluorescence is the only source of light, the light fixtures the Pigmasks installed as they dug burned out by the Commander's lightning PSI. His eyes latch onto the Needle and run along its length, his mind weighed down by a dense fog.

"Shit," Kumatora mutters. The influx of her PSI begins to stutter. "I'm runnin' out."

Duster's grip on his shoulder tightens. "Did you...?"

"No," she says. The warmth of her presence ebbs and retreats. "He's still pretty torn up." She pauses and then slams her fist into the ground. "Shit. If only I hadn't let that - shit."

But he is not alarmed. Staring at the Needle, he remembers why they're here. Slowly, his body relaxes, his breathing calms. His eyes find his father, his huddled form almost wholly consumed by the darkness. Beside him, Claus lies on the ground, silent and unmoving. He feels feverish and sluggish, but he knows what he has to do.

He moves his body to stand up, gritting his teeth against the fresh waves of pain, but Duster holds him down. "Lucas, hey, no. Stay still. You're hurt. I'll find some magic gelatin or something and Kuma - Kuma'll..."

And it's true; Lucas is hurt. His arms are still trembling, hanging limply at his sides. He can move his left arm but can't feel much of anything in his right, let alone move it. The burn on his chest is only partially healed, and there's a gash in his left calf that Kumatora couldn't reach. He tries to get up again, but his legs seize up under the weight of his own body. He falls forward onto his hands, which scrape against the grit of the earth. Boney is at his side in an instant, pressing his snout into his side.

Duster bends down to his level in front of him, blocking his view of the Needle. He puts both his hands on Lucas's sides and shakes him just hard enough to make his eyes stop looking through him and focus. The thief's face looks years older, his eyes bagged and forehead creased with worry. His clothes are singed, and his skin smells of burnt ozone.

He shakes Lucas again, softer this time. "Lucas, please... let us help you."

And Lucas understands; he can see it on Duster's face, hear it in his voice, feel it in the way the fingers of his large hands twitch against his sides. The worry, the fear, the guilt. Lucas can feel those things inside of himself too, biting away at the corners of his resolve. They would have him lie in the ancient catacombs and let the world persist. He fought so hard and did so much only to have his hopes crushed in the end. His grief beckons, and he wants so badly to indulge in it - Claus is dead, and he couldn't save him... He deserves a moment of respite, doesn't he?

Lucas lets his heavy eyelids droop for a moment. He is weary, but so is the rest of the world. The planet is exhausted, completely barren and devoid of life beyond the shores of the islands. Disease has set in here as well: the mutilated chimeras, the displaced, brainwashed people who would serve and kill without question, the scorched earth of Sunshine Forest that would never heal.

Like Claus, he thinks.

Opening his eyes, Lucas meets Duster's and smiles tiredly. "I..." It hurts to speak, but he forces himself to pass the words along his leaden tongue. "I have... to do this, D-Duster."

Duster pauses for a moment, his lips parted and brown eyes wide. He shakes his head weakly. "No," he says. His hands grasp at his blood-and-dirt caked shirt as if to hold on to him, and Lucas can feel the warmth of his palms through it all. "You don't have to do this right now. Not if you can't; not if you don't want to."

He shakes his head, his lips curved stubbornly. "I... do want to..."

"But -"

"Ya don't know when to give to give up, huh?" Kumatora says.

She limps into Lucas's line of sight and stares at him, hard. Her blue eyes seem to search for something in his own for a long moment.

Duster looks up at her too. "What do you mean?"

Her eyes harden, and then she looks away. "Lucas's gotta pull the last Needle and wake up the Dragon," Kumatora says. Her voice bristles with determination, and Lucas is reminded of the first time he met her: pinned down by two tanks and still fighting, her arms weaving waves of flames that swept through the Pigmasks' ranks. "This's what we came here to do."

The thief turns his head to look down at the space between their bodies, his eyes lost in uncertainty.

"Lucas is right." The four of them turn their gazes onto Flint, who stares at Lucas levelly. "You've made it here. You've made it this far. You'll be alright."

A moment of silence passes between the five of them, though Lucas feels like it belongs solely to him and his father.

Though hooded by the cave's darkness, Lucas can make out something glimmering in Flint's eyes. "Both Hinawa and Claus have entrusted you with this task," Father says. "Now we... we have to do the same."

Flint nods at him, and Lucas nods back.

"Well, let's not waste anymore time," Kumatora says gruffly, moving to stand at Lucas's right side. She kneels and wraps an arm around his middle. "C'mon, ya big lummox. Let's make sure he makes it over there."

Silently, Duster moves to his left side and does the same, gingerly bracing his hand below his right shoulder. Boney whines, and Lucas runs a quivering hand along his muzzle to reassure him before the others begin to lift.

Carefully and ever so slowly, Kumatora and Duster help Lucas onto his feet.

"Thank you..." Lucas says once he is standing. "I -"

"Shut up, blondie," Kumatora interrupts. "Save your strength for the Needle pullin'." Her voice is wet, and Lucas understands. He nods in acknowledgement, though Kumatora is staring resolutely ahead.

Lucas focuses his eyes on the light of the Needle. He takes his first step; Duster, Kumatora, and even Boney step forward with him.

In those last moments, there are so many things Lucas feels he must say to them. They are the first individuals to believe in him so wholeheartedly, to follow where he leads and remind him of what he is capable. He wants to thank them, hug them, tell them how much he cherishes them. What matters most at this moment, however, is that their presence is warm and welcome beside his own. He's sure they know that too.

They have saved his life countless times over; now it's his turn to save everyone.

The four draw nearer to the Needle with each arduous step, until they are finally standing in front of it. Lucas untangles his left arm from Duster's hold and slowly extends it to touch the Needle. His fingers brush against it first, and a warm, distantly familiar feeling spreads through his body. Lucas grasps its gleaming hilt in his hand, and tugs...

A blue light shines faintly, and then the Needle shoots upward in a brilliant surge that is trailed by thick, hissing plumes of dark, choking smoke. Their ears are overwhelmed by a heavy beat, and the world seems to contort headily with it, almost as if it were all simply a piece of a single, massive organ.

The beating lulls to a stop, and Lucas closes his eyes.

Around them, the cave collapses.

— . . . —

Brightness and warmth shine onto his skin. Sunlight blooms underneath his shut eyelids in oranges and reds. The colors gently dispel the blankness of unconsciousness slowly, their manner so gradual that he forgets he was ever asleep.

Curious, he cracks open his eyelids to stare directly at the sun. His body flinches away instinctively before he realizes, belatedly, that there is no glare. He stares up at it in awe for a few moments to drink in its novelty. Memories of daredevil contests of "who-can-look-at-the-sun-longest" with Claus and Fuel - as well as the spots that plagued his sight for hours in their wake - return to him. After a short while of staring and remembering, he pushes his awareness to expand through his body and towards his surroundings.

He is laying face-up in the field of sunflowers, his body whole and unblemished. He tries to move his right arm again, and his fingers twitch against the grass. He runs his index finger along a particularly long and upright blade, his eyelids fluttering shut to rely solely on feeling. Once he's sure that the grass feels right, he lets his eyes open again. A light breeze blows around him, moving his hair in tandem with the leaning stalks that surround him. The flowers, ringed by yellow petals, face sunward. In the distance, he hears the faint song of a bird, the trill of cicadas and crickets.

His head is being cushioned on something; he can feel soft fabric against the back of his ears and the nape of his neck. He tilts his head backward onto the surface to look up, and finds Hinawa looking down at him. Mother and son stare at each other, Lucas's eyes wide with shock. Hinawa's lips are curved into a grin, the teasing quirk at the corners of her lips achingly familiar.

Lucas holds his breath. Tentatively, he reaches upward. His fingers brush against chestnut hair that gleams brightly in the sunlight, along the arch of a shoulder and the hollow of a throat. She allows his soft search, remaining still throughout. When his hesitant fingers ghost along her chin to cup her sun warmed cheek, her grin deepens into a smile.

After a time, he finds his voice. "Mom...?"

Her hand comes to rest on his own cheek in a loving caress. "Well, Mr. Sleepyhead Lucas," she replies, "are you just going to sit there like a bump on a log?"

His arms wrap around her and pull him upward, allowing him to bury his face into the curve between shoulder and neck. He can feel steady throb of her pulse, the warmth of her skin. Her smell fills his nostrils, familiar and comforting and real, not see-through and fleeting like the last time. Lucas closes his stinging eyes, his voice breaking on a sob he is barely able to choke back. "I-i-it's r-really - "

Hinawa shushes him softly, and his breath hitches. "It's alright now," she says. "You were so brave." She squeezes him close. "I'm so proud of you, Lucas."

Something within him breaks loose at the sound of her words, and he sobs in earnest. The stinging in his eyes gives way to hot tears, and for the first time in three years, Lucas cries.

His mother holds him throughout, her arms keeping him steady as he allows himself to be weak again. "I know," she says. "It's alright now."

The tears subside eventually. Though reluctant to let go, he pulls back from the damp patch on her sundress, painlessly supporting his own weight with his limbs as he settles, cross-legged, in the grass.

His puffy, swollen eyes make his gaze honest, and he realizes then how awkward their positions must have been. His body has grown since she last held him like this; hers has not. Her frame is as petite as it had been three years ago.

Thirteen-years-old and still crying in his mother's arms; how is that brave at all? He feels his cheeks flush bright with shame.

Hinawa only smiles knowingly. "You're never too big to fit in your mother's embrace, Lucas, even if you crush her a little. Maybe it takes you becoming big enough for me to fit in yours, but..." She trails off and cards her fingers through his hair.

Her words calm him, if only a little. He wonders if it would be okay to remain like this - just the two of them and the sunflowers - for just a little while longer. And they do, for a time that feels like both an eternity and an ephemeral moment.

After, Hinawa rises to her feet, dusts off her red sundress, and extends her arm to help him up. "Come for a walk with me, Lucas," she says.

Lucas nods and takes her hand in his own.

— . . . —

They walk in silence for a while, Hinawa pausing occasionally to skim the fingertips of her free hand along the crown of a particularly impressive flower.

Lucas holds onto her other hand. He feels like a child again, toddling after his mother and holding onto her hand for guidance and protection. It does not bother him as much as it did before. For a time, he is wholly at peace. He breathes in the fresh air and lets his eyes roam over everything, his mind blank.

This place had been a constant destination in his dreams following his fall through the sky. After Tanetane, the lines between dream and nightmare became blurred so that their settings shifted. The mutilated drago, wreathed in flames, chased him through purple woods littered with red mailboxes, their horrors peeking out at him through the slots. No matter how hard and fast he would run, the drago always caught up to him in the end. Whether he tripped over a gnarled root or Claus's and Father's outstretched legs, the monster would bear down on his chest with gleaming fangs.

Yet whenever he opened his eyes, the sunflower fields rose up to greet him. Dazedly, he would get to his feet and look around. A flash of red on the very periphery of his vision invariably caught his attention, and Lucas would thus become the pursuer of his mother's ephemeral presence. The dreams always ended the same way they had the first time: Mother, haloed by clouds and sunlight, opening her arms in a hug that Lucas would lunge to receive... only to plummet like a rock...

Despite the fact that he never did get to feel her arms around him, the fields had become something of a respite for him after the nightmares that plagued him.

Now, buoyed by the real feeling of Hinawa's touch, he feels safe. For a time, he wants for nothing but this.

But soon other concerns begin to weigh on him. Thoughts of his companions come to the forefront of his mind. He remembers a tremor strong enough to rend the earth making the cave collapse, the roar of the maw. Did they manage to make it out okay? Were they safe? And what of Fuel and Wess and Grandpa Alec and everyone else? Had pulling the Needles worked? Did the Dragon wake up and bring life to the dead world again?

He looks at the endless sunflower fields and his mother with new, guilt-ridden eyes. Lucas stops walking; it's all as if it were out of a dream.

"Mom?"

"Yes, Lucas?" Hinawa replies, turning her head to look at him over her shoulder.

He swallows hard and forces himself to meet her eyes. "Is everyone okay?"

She smiles, her gaze reassuringly warm. "Yes, sweetheart. Everyone is fine."

Lucas sighs in relief, feeling like a huge load has been taken from his shoulders. "A-and the Dragon?" he adds. "Did it wake up?"

Hinawa pauses, considering. "Not quite yet," she says after a short while, her eyes intent on his own.

He falters. "B-but... but I..." He trails off, his head hung in wordless despair. It feels like his heart has lodged itself at the top of his throat, beating hard against his tonsils.

His mother's fingers squeeze his hand lightly, her index and middle fingers pressing against the pulse point in his wrist. A few seconds pass before he feels her tug at his hand. Lucas looks up to meet her gaze, which beckons him, wordlessly, to continue onward.

"Only a few steps more," she says. "We're almost there."

Eventually, he trusts her because he has nothing else left.

As promised, the walk is a short one. The sunflowers cleave to the cliffside a few meters in front of them, the fields giving way to a cloudless expanse of sky. Along the throat of the cliff, a thick mist swells upward.

Lucas feels a shiver arc along his spine at the sight. Unbidden, his legs lead him two steps forward.

Behind him now, Hinawa speaks. "When I boarded the ship that brought us here, I didn't believe that these islands existed. No matter how much some of the villagers tried to convince me otherwise, I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea of it. The world was devastated by war. Nothing had grown for a long time where I lived; I was lucky to be alive myself." She pauses, and then she says, "Everyone was."

Something brushes softly against the edge of his mind, and he can see it: that wasteland, the lifeless seas, the depravity most people sunk to - killing and eating anyone they came across to survive. Then, the white expanse of the ship's unfurled sails, a young man with his hand outstretched - and he can feel the gratitude at being accepted, the hope blossoming inside of his chest when the islands came into view, the fury and despair when he was told he would have to give everything up, that he would have to forget him-

Just as quickly, the presence retreats.

"M-mom..."

"We chose to give everything up," she says. "It wasn't because we wanted to, though a lot of the villagers didn't mind forgetting what the world was like. We were told that we had to by the strange beings that lived here. You've even crossed paths with them yourself, Lucas."

"The Magypsies..."

"Yes, the Magypsies." Something sharp insinuates itself into her voice. "They said that if what had happened to the rest of the world happened here, all hope would be lost. Because we wanted to live, we allowed the people we had been to die."

There is a lump in his throat that Lucas can't swallow away. "You were... like me."

"That's right," she agrees. He can hear the smile in her words when she says, "You and your brother had to get it from somewhere."

Lucas turns around to face her. "But if you could use PSI, why didn't you use it when..."

But Hinawa shakes her head. "My PSI was something I had to give up along with my memories," she tells him. "Only the Magypsies themselves could undo the seal, so my PSI slept within me until now." She trails off and allows silence to settle between them again.

In the wake of these revelations, Lucas is more calm than anything else. Something within him whispers that he should be shocked, perhaps even furious at the Magypsies for what they had done to his mother, but he knows better. What happened when the Pigmasks arrived was proof enough that they were right to take their old memories away.

"Though they took away our memories and my PSI," says Hinawa, capturing his attention once more, "there was one thing they couldn't quite tear away."

He looks into her eyes and finds that they are twinkling. "What was it?"

Hinawa closes her eyes. "The love your father and I shared; the love that brought you and your brother into this world." The wind blows through her hair, and she hooks it around the curve of her ears before continuing. "It may have just been coincidence that it was our sons that could reach inside of themselves and call upon that power, Lucas, but I'd like to believe that their failure to take that immutable love from us is the cause."

"But you said the Dragon didn't wake up." He feels his cheeks grow hot and his nostrils sting bitterly. He shakes his head, and the reality of his failure rattles against the inside of his skull. "I couldn't do it after all."

"Now wait just a minute," she says, moving forward to cup his cheek. Patiently, she waits until he looks up to meet her eyes. "I said that the Dragon hasn't woken up yet, Lucas."

His eyes snap alertly. "What do I have to do to make it wake up?"

Hinawa's gaze turns thoughtful. "You have to make a choice," she says.

"A choice?"

She nods, then tilts her head forwards. He follows her gaze over his shoulder, and finds himself staring at the cliff again. His heartbeat announces itself, thudding strong against his ribcage, blood vessels throbbing in time along his clavicles. His body follows his gaze in a belated motion. He takes another two steps forward, his gaze cut short by the mist the ripples at his feet.

"To wake it from its sleep," his mother says slowly, "you would have to allow the Dark Dragon to inherit your heart."

And for a moment, Lucas does not know what this means. This is what they have been telling him from the beginning, after all. Hasn't he done this already?

The mist swells once more to nip at his ankles, then thins away to reveal the plunging curvature of the fall. His eyes settle on a violet light, refracted by the mist, in the distance, and he understands. His hand has come to rest on his chest, and his heart presses back against it, steady and healthy.

"In so doing," Hinawa goes on, "you would give up your life as a human being."

"Would that bring the world back?" he asks. "All of it?"

"Yes," his mother says. "As the Dragon, you would be able to do that." She waits a moment before adding, "Remember that you have a choice. You don't have to; it's a lot to ask of anyone. Too much for most people. Don't feel ashamed to make the decision that's in your heart. If you choose not to go through with it, you would wake up back on the Islands with everything the way it was before you pulled the Needle."

But the way it was before is intolerable, broken. They both know that. His eyelids flutter shut, and he feels the weight of the world settle upon his chest. It does not crush him. Lucas's heart has always been a few sizes too large for a little boy; now he finally knows why. He's strong enough for this, strong enough to make it so that life covers every inch of the world once more.

Lucas wets his lips, says, "Could I... could I bring back Claus? The way he was - before?"

"That would be within your power, yes."

Breathlessly, he asks another hopeful question. "What about... what about you?"

"I think you already know the answer to that question, sweetheart."

And he does: it's been too long. He does not feel regret though; he knows that she doesn't either.

His mother always had the uncanny ability to know things just as he decided them. 'Mommy senses,' she'd called them when he and Claus had expressed their amazement at her precognitive abilities. When he feels her fingers in his hair, he knows that she knows already too.

Wordlessly, she cards her fingers through his hair, combing it.

Lucas closes his eyes and revels in the feeling for as long as it lasts. "It's okay, Mom," he says softly.

"I just want to get it the way you like it," she says, her voice thick. "I know how much you worry about your hair being just right." She stops though, her arms wrapping around his chest in an embrace.

She doesn't speak, at least not with words. Her PSI is warm against his own, and he shuts his eyes to receive what she gives him. It is from afterwards this time; the eyes he looks through are the ones of the woman he knew as his mother.

They are looking down at himself and Claus as infants, wrapped in a shared blanket and cradled in their arms. Boney dozes on the floor, his head resting on their bare foot. Claus reaches up, waving a tiny fist in the air. Beside him, Lucas yawns, mouth wide, and blinks up at them. At the kitchen table, Flint looks up from his work to smile at them. They smile back.

I would give it up all over again, they think, if it meant having you.

The memory fades, and Lucas finds himself blinking back tears that are not wholly his own.

"No matter what," Hinawa says, fiercely, "you will always be my son. I will always be with you, Lucas."

He nods, thinks, reaches for his PSI, and pushes a memory of his own toward her. It is one of his earliest, fuzzy around the edges but warm with the safety of sleeping in a parent's arms. Together, they blink up at her smiling face as she brushes their hair behind an ear, sings that old song she never quite stopped singing to them no matter how much Claus protested that he was too old for it. "Please don't take my sunshine away," she finishes, and they clap their little hands in delight.

Hinawa's breath hitches as the memory dissolves, but she unwraps her arms from around him all the same.

"Thank you," Lucas whispers.

"Now go," she says.

Lucas takes a deep breath and thinks of his friends and his father, his companions and his brother.

He sets off at a run.

Once he reaches the edge of the cliff, he leaps - and falls into what he was born to become.

— . . . —

His skin peels away, but he expands. Simultaneously shedding and bursting, his being replete with feeling.

He thinks of the weight of his brother, and he is there in his hand, underneath the snowy mountain. He visualizes Kumatora, Duster, Boney, and Flint, the villagers and even the people displaced by the Pig King, and they are safe, their lives sheltered and preserved by his PSI.

All around his body, the Nowhere Islands collapse. Muscles that had not been used for millennia stir, his scales twitching and stretching to accommodate movement. Ice and magma overflow onto his hands as he pulls them up and out from beneath the Snowcap and Fire Mountains; the twitching of his feet simultaneously rends Tanetane Island in two and destroys the Chupichupyoi Temple. Finally, he lifts his head, and the city of cardboard is strewn into pieces, its remnants falling into the magma that is pushed up through the crust of the earth along with his movements.

Freed from its slumber, the Dark Dragon turns his sight to the sky and roars. Spreading his wings, he takes to the sky, the air thinning away into a vacuum as he ascends into the void of space.

He looks upon the earth and knows it. In the blink of an eye, its story reveals itself to him, from beginning to end. The lifeless rock touched by dissipating PSI, prayer, and a mother's love, all three coalescing in the oceans to birth the Dragon; the expanding, bloated sun that ends it all, millennia from now. He sees Hinawa as a young girl, crouching to pick up the abandoned infant with a shock of pink hair; the boy from the theater and his friends, laughing and eating pizza; that same boy, pinned down by a machine and breathing his last breath; an ancient warrior, her PSI glistening as she battles an otherworldly invader; a boy named Lucas crying by his mother's grave; a woman holding a strange creature and singing it to sleep as a mother would; Duster screaming as his leg is torn open; a baby, your baby, getting its first sight of the world; another boy that holds a pretty blonde girl's hand and dances, their movements inexpertly carrying them around the room; Boney as he chases sheep and barks joyously; a boy named Lucas scaling a tower and coming face to face with his lost brother; Dr. Andonuts staring at a baby with a head shaped like his own; Flint, his eyes hooded, desperately searching the plateau for any sign of his lost son; the Masked Man, attempting to analyze the blond boy that reflected its lightning PSI back at it; Locria grudgingly cutting off a piece of his banana to offer to a mouse; a prince calling stars down from the heavens to protect his homeland from invaders that would do his people harm; an old woman, any old woman, going where everyone goes when they die; Fuel holding Angie and Angie holding Fuel as both a young boy and girl and an old man and woman; Porky Minch both before he was king and afterward, his existence eternal within his capsule; a boy named Lucas holding his dying brother tight and wishing to know nothing but the comfort of his scent.

Earth is gray before him, clouds covering most of its surface. The Dragon can see the frozen wastelands underneath the blanket; he can see into the deepest of oceans and perceive the vast nothingness. Within his chest, the heart of a boy beats steady, and the Dragon opens its left hand to look down at the boy's brother. Claus is dwarfed by the enormity of his paw, but the Dragon knows him too. He knows that this body is too heavy to be the boy's twin brother. He is still warm, the remnants of life not quite wiped from his body.

Lucas's PSI crackles along the Dragon's scales, the blue and red of PK Love melding with the Dragon's violet. It arcs along its paws and down onto the planet, lancing through the clouds and piercing the deadened earth. Thousands upon thousands of Needles descend upon Earth, and the Dragon allows himself to be pulled along with them, his body stretching like a snake's.

He wraps himself around the world, the long coils of his body sublimating into PSI that rushes through the planet's atmosphere to trace its crust. He can feel the Earth's life as surely as the could feel his companions' when he healed them; it beats against his PSI, weak but unmistakably present. Under his guidance, his PSI weaves itself into trillions upon trillions of blades of grass, thickens into billions of majestic trees and saplings alike, coalesces into fish and birds and sheep, horses and elephants and dogs. The ruins of humanity's devastated cities are overgrown by plants and flowers, the concrete breaking apart beneath his will.

Lucas sows the seeds of new life, and the Dragon brings them to fruition.

Life spreads, and the Dark Dragon fades. Its consciousness is melting into Earth, but Lucas remembers. He opens his hand once more and lets his PSI rush into his brother's body. The machine rusts and crumbles away, surrendering to the growth of an arm, an eye, new skin sewing the holes where wings had been grafted onto shut. In his chest, a human heart reforms and contracts.

The boy looks upon his brother through the Dark Dragon's eyes. Perhaps it will seem like a mere dream, but he presses a thought to Claus's mind anyway. It's Claus's turn to be strong now after all. The boy can only hope that this new life brings him more happiness than the last three years had for him.

There is nothing left but the Dragon's upper body now, but Lucas knows what to do with it. With what's left of their energy, he approaches the ruins of the Nowhere Islands and plunges into it. Sunshine Forest springs to life, and the Drago Plateau reforms itself. All throughout the islands, life is reborn: Tanetane Island knits itself back together, every stone of Osohe Castle is put back in place, the Snowcap and Fire Mountains rise, their snowy and fiery peaks jutting proudly into the sky.

As he sinks into the Islands, Lucas can feel everyone waking up. He watches them look around Tazmily, hears them breathe and shout and celebrate, feels their feet digging into the earth. He sees Flint searching the crowd for someone and Kumatora sobbing, Duster embracing his father and Boney running about and barking. Claus stirs where he set him down. Dazed, he blinks up at the sun, still caught between dream and reality.

Finally, the boy named Lucas falls into a deep slumber, his Dragon's heart beating strong underneath a newborn field of sunflowers.

I would do it all over again, he thinks sleepily, if it means having this.

He shuts his eyes - and dreams.

A/N: Also known as, "In which Kuruk is a terrible person and kicks at already hurt feels in the name of conceptual exploration and his own satisfaction." In retrospect, it seems like some of the headcanon I'd developed for another fic leaked into this one. This is my way of hinting that there will be more fics after this one, though this one in particular won't focus on the twins (unlike all of the things I've written thus far).

I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read this fic! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. Feedback is always welcome and appreciated, so I hope you'll take the time to leave me a review, if you're so inclined.

Thank you again!