Taekook Oneshots

In Tenderness We Fall

(A/n: possible tw: existential dread, references to the possible consequences of climate change, main character death x 4, main humanity death, severe angst at the end, and some badly written sci-fi stuff. Enjoy? I think? Don't read right before you go to sleep though. Don't do that to yourself. Please.)

Legends say that we should never wish on a falling star. That there is so much at stake, so much that could go wrong. And yes, it's possible that there are people out there who still bother to consider themselves superstitious. Those who look out the windows of their spaceships, and find a hope out there in the darkness, amongst the countless stars and galaxies that exist out here. 

But of course, there are always moments where it feels like everything has slotted into place: from the days when a captain or crew member spotted a planet on the horizon, and began to wonder if it was habitable. The hope that goes up throughout the ship, the stories of Earth, it all comes back as if everything was always perfect. As if this is the first chance, the first time they've ever come across a planet since leaving the Solar System behind and stepping out into the unknown. 

Every time, they send out the sensors, try and figure out if it's something that could possibly sustain life. If it's something that can replicate the perfect conditions that Earth offered them, then it's perfect. 

But it never is. Nothing will replace the perfection of Earth, nothing will come close to the suitability it offered them. And every single time, there's a sense of disappointment, and then the ship moves on, carries on coasting through the cosmos without any sense of slowing down, without any sense of accepting the reality of the situation. The inevitability of it. When the solar winds stop, when the engines die down, then they will be left to drift for eternity. 

Then, slowly, the power systems will shut down, and humanity's final adventurers will be lost in the blank nothingness of the universe, forgotten in the great expanse of it all. Life isn't necessarily rare, it's just hard to find, and harder to recognise when you're only looking for one specific type of life. 

Days don't really have the same meaning out here, in space, because there is no such thing as a day in the darkness of space. But somehow, there is meaning in the madness. The lights switch on and off, timed by a computer somewhere deep within the processing unit. It uses the old understanding of hours, running on the body clocks of all the workers on board the ship: several generations after the entire world lifted off into the unknown, it's hard to know if it's the same as it was when they left. But nobody has the experience to check. 

And what would it help? It would just send fear spreading through the entire crew, all the passengers. Everyone would be lost to the madness of the knowledge of their own insignificance, their own distance from their past identity. 

On one of the viewing decks, two old friends are sat, watching the steady progression of stars across the sky. They've seen this same view their entire lives, watched as the only home they've ever known develops and builds itself throughout the trip. Every morning, or whatever morning is on this ship, they come out here to stare at the beauty of space for an hour or so. 

In Earth years, they're only in their early twenties. But years mean nothing, when there is no rotation around a star. Months lose meaning if there is no moon in orbit. Just as the minutes, hours, days, weeks, have drifted into confusion, so have their comprehension of age. With the improvements in medicine over the last few hundred years, it doesn't seem to matter that much anyway. Age is a number that cannot be affixed, a value that becomes arbitrary once adulthood arrives. 

"Do you ever wonder what it was like?" one asks. His soft brown eyes are wide with curiosity, his hair dyed a natural light brown. His skin is a deep gold, and he's dressed simply: in jeans and a hoodie, all made of synthetic fabric printed onboard the ship from waste materials.