Clearing my throat, I swallowed down on the palpable silence in the room. That, along with a hefty helping of pancake and eggs that had me struggling to chew properly. That, plus the weight of the stares of eleven Guardians, twenty-two separate eyes, split me between two paths of action: to laugh out loud or to cry awkwardly. I chose the former, promptly coughing and almost choking on the half-eaten food in my mouth. I felt Kris’s hand on my shoulder, Suho’s passing me a glass of water.

I laughed again, despite the mystified expressions they all gave me.

It was as though they were watching me with bated breath. Like I was a marvel to behold. A marble statue of some ancient heroine. A circus oddity to the reality they knew to be true. A question, waiting to be answered.

“So, are you Cera,” Sehun began, impatient as always, cocking a skeptical eyebrow as he twirled his fork in his hand, “or what?” Before anyone else could speak up in defense of him, or rather, in order to dispel his straight-forward inquiry, I answered him, thoroughly charmed by his natural personality – as always.

“Cera doesn’t take kindly to your rude manner of speaking.” I turned to Suho, taking the water he offered me while mumbling a low word of thanks, gulping down a mouthful in order to steady the grip of Kris, whose hand on my shoulder teetered precariously between nervous twitching and worried tensing, and then finished with a smile, “Though, to be honest, I rather like it.”

A self-gratifying smile splayed itself across Sehun’s lips from across the table as he leaned back in his seat, going right back to eating, taking my answer as just that. However, while Sehun didn’t need any more elaboration on the topic of my current, conscious identity, or rather any at all, Chanyeol, among many others, required some sense of affirmation. Confirmation, so to speak, that I was me, again. That this wasn’t some act or clever ploy. That it was real, and not odd in the least.

“Why did you come back, your highness?” Chanyeol asked, saying more immediately afterwards as though simply that wasn’t enough, “What prompted your return after so long? Why did you leave in the first place? What have you been doing all this while? Just, why?” He was left face flushed, oxygen deprived, as he got out all of his words in one go. All of his questions in one shot. All of everyone’s quizzical musings, just like that.

I didn’t exactly want our first breakfast together, with me being physically there and in control, to turn into my own, personal interrogation session, but I expected it. I couldn’t exactly pretend nothing happened. I was gone for the sum of three months. Almost half of the time I’ve spent with all of them was spent while I was someone else entirely. Now, over seven months since Kai first found me, I was here again. They all found me for the second time. And, for the second time, they needed to meet me all over again.

To hear my side of the story.

Slightly filtered, for my own sake.

“Well, where should I even begin?” I hummed to myself, putting the pieces together, forming my alibi right then and there, “I slept most of the time. Okay, don’t even start with me, Kris. I have peripheral vision, you know? I can see the face you’re making right now. And the ability to read minds, yes, that helps as well.” I laughed, feeling Kris’s hand on my shoulder go soft on its grip, his worried mind softening up along with it, “I left because I remembered my parents. Their names. Their personalities. Their faces. Their smiles. I remembered everything in all its vivid, awful, melancholic beauty. And I mean ‘awe full’ when I use that word.”

I let my eyes rest on Kai’s, his expression impassive, and I knew well enough the reason why, “But memories are not only full of sunshine and rainbows. I remembered the bad along with the good. The awful along with the ‘awe full.’ The tragedies along with the comedies. I’ve learned a lot about the utilization of diction while Cera busied herself with reading book after book after book of old literature. I’m a fan of Samuel Johnson myself now, though, I suppose that’s a topic for another day.”

I had seen the look Baekhyun was giving me, no matter how entertaining he may have found my ramblings, and understood him without having to read his mind in the slightest – and it’s nice to know I still maintained the ability to do so, no matter how long I may have been gone. It was about time I got to the point in all of this. To the core of my slight fabrication.

“It leaves a bittersweet feeling behind, remembering it all. In the beginning, however, I wasn’t able to face it. The reaffirmation that my parents are gone, that my aunt joined them wherever they are now, that I was alone, left to face the reality of my loss on my own, had me running scared. I hid away, because I didn’t want to remember the bad things. I was naïve and I needed to face the hibernating beast of my past somewhere away from the hungry beast of my present. That’s why I left along with what I was doing in my absence, physically away from all of you. Cera was able to knock some sense into me, thankfully, and I made the last push to bare myself to my problems.”

I turned to Chen, who couldn’t have looked more smug. As though he knew all along. As though he was the one with the mind-reading powers. As though he couldn’t have been more amazing to me. Because he was all of that and more – discounting the second of the three as it’s the only one-up I have on him.

“And, just like that,” I snapped my fingers, and Chen stifled a laugh behind his lips, “I came back.” I turned to Xiumin at his left, throwing him a sideways glance as I jested, “And I’m up for having a heart-to-heart anytime you’re willing,” then to Lay in-between them, “though the doctor suggests at least three more days of rest,” to which the ever-polite Guardian smiled, bowing his head respectfully.

I pointed a finger at him, dragging it over as I whipped my head around to the other side of the table comically, letting my extended fingertip stop right on Chanyeol – who looked, arguably, much better than he did just earlier. “All clear on the questions?”

He nodded, pursing his lips as he held back that smile I could see itching to curve across his face, his expression twitching in delight, “For now.”

“Wait,” Baekhyun called out in the middle of parting his lips to chime into the creation of the more pleasant kind of memories, remembering a fact that he seemingly wished was anything but, “what about the meeting with the Council? Wasn’t it scheduled for this afternoon? Will you be able to go?”

“Right,” I lifted my still suspended finger, pointing upwards, “Luhan?”

And right on cue, one of his translucent spheres disobeyed the laws of matter and physics for the umpteenth time, floating down through the ceiling before coming to rest in the middle of all of us, Luhan’s voice echoing outwards, “Taking into consideration the fact that she wishes for neither us nor herself to waste our time with questioning the Council when we know so little regarding the Board’s goals as well as the Council’s own in Sector E, her highness has cancelled the meeting under the guise of taking ill.”

“And there you have it,” I concluded, not finding the need to say more as Luhan had summed it up as effectively as always.

“They must have not taken such a last minute cancellation with the most gracious of humors,” Lay commented to himself, though with a volume that made his words audible to even the most oblivious corners of the room.  

Sehun flicked his fork into the air, scoffing, “To hell with them. Who cares if they’re angry or not?”

Lay nodded firmly in solemn agreement, “True.”

“Then, we have you to ourselves for a good, long while, your highness?” Suho brightened up on my right, dismissing the conversation regarding the Council to point out yet another fact regarding our present situation. Though, perhaps, judging from the fake gags at his cheesiness and the snorts of amusement at his childish naivety coming out now of all times, he was a bit too happy to be true.

Though, to be honest, I have nothing against feeling something too much – especially happiness.

I raked my eyes from one Guardian to the next, from Suho to Kris, from the Sun to the Moon, never realizing how much I missed this, this moment of complete, simply, completeness, until now, when I was basking in it all once more. With a simply reply of, “That’s right,” nothing seemed righter in the world than my tiny twist on reality.

And I grinned just slightly as I took another sip of my water, conversation flowing from one side of the table to the other, smiles flying this way and that, and laughter bouncing from one wall to the next as though I had never left in the first place.

Just slightly.

“Question.”

“Yes?”

“Baking soda and sugar. What’s the difference exactly?”

“One label says ‘baking soda’ and the other says ‘sugar,’ your highness.’”

I gasped, turning towards D.O with wide eyes that I’m sure had the ability to rival his own, “Did you just use sarcasm?”

He rose an eyebrow, his eyes on the red bowl in front of him, his hand effortlessly stirring a whisk in the batter inside, “Did I?”

I placed the bag of sugar back down where I had picked it up from on the counter, leaning beside it with my elbow right after, the sight of D.O preparing yet another heavenly batch of chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies right before my eyes too familiar, reminiscent, and melancholy inducing to miss. So, when he had announced he’d be making them after lunch today, I persuaded Lay into helping me go to the kitchen to watch him – what I was promptly doing at this very point in time.

According to Lay, I was supposed to be regulating between sitting and standing, walking and lying down, at regular intervals over the next three days in order to get used to using my own two legs again anyway. Believe it or not, three months of not walking and the mind forgets how to do it all together. Did my left foot lead first? Or, was it my right? The act of them shifting past one another or even managing to maintain my balance while standing still amazed me now. Like, wow, look what my body can do!

But, also, wow, look what my body can’t do for long periods of time right now!

Yet another reason I leaned over onto the counter at D.O’s side.

“Someone’s happy today,” I commented out loud, watching him. Just watching him. Just like when we first met. Just watching. Quietly. Contently. Achingly. Longingly. The latter two were feelings I hadn’t felt the first time we met. The latter two were those I couldn’t push down no matter how hard I tried. Not when I was already missing him as I stood there, just watching him.

He disapprovingly shook his head, though he didn’t verbally deny my statement in the least, “The use of sarcasm equals happiness? You’re train of thought is abnormal, your highness.”

“I’m not going to deny it.” I replied a few seconds later, almost forgetting to speak for a moment, almost getting lost between the accumulating layers of his tone that wavered from joking to troubled and the bedrock of his very basic intonations. Like a heavy weight that was his utterance of my title had laid itself upon my chest, I forgot to breath, let alone speak at all.

And then, he had to go and make it worse with those thoughts of his. So simple. So innocent. So affectionate. So, D.O.

It is wrong to think the thing I disliked about Cera the most is that when she stared at me, it was never her highness’s eyes which did so?

“I would hope not.” I answered, not caring about our long since established rule that I wouldn’t read his thoughts – one I had broken on more than just this occasion. Did that make it wrong? Or, was that rule simply made to be broken? Because why else would he turn his head to me and not even make a single move to speak?

And I realized something then. I realized D.O had became braver in my absence. More straight-forward. More honest. More likely to seize the moment while we still had it within our grasp.

Promise me you’ll be here for breakfast.

“When?” I asked.

He didn’t reply. Not in words or in thoughts. And it didn’t take a genius or the mind of the great and all-seeing Cera to figure out what he meant. He was asking me to stay. Every morning. Every day. Everything I couldn’t promise.

And yet, I did anyway. With the excuse that I would if I could, that it was the effort I made in the end that mattered, that my agreement was the means to an end instead of the end to a means, I said, “Okay.”

“Okay?” He questioned, unsatisfied with such an open-ended, uncommitted response.

I laughed, raising my right hand in front of me, “I swear, that my name is,” I paused, waiting for him to fill the silence, all in order to with the calling of my real name, to which he ended up saying without even blinking twice, resolutely taking me by my promise. So, I continued unabated, uninterrupted, “I will be here for breakfast every morning of every day of every year,” he furrowed his brows, disgruntled still, causing me to add, “on and on into eternity.”

And that was enough for him to smile and turn back to baking with his Tree of Life-given cooking skills. For me to return to watching him and for him to be embarrassed and yet “okay” with it at the same time. For him to keep back the tears he wanted to cry as soon as I woke up this morning as me – tears that would have caused a flood of my own to fall.

All I had to do was promise eternity.

Another promise made to be broken.

“Baekhyun?”

He hummed in recognition, his slender forefinger scanning one of the many shelves in the library of the Hall of the Guardians. He was looking for anything by Samuel Johnson, the author I said I had grown to like during my less-than-here state of mind. He claimed that if I liked him, he had a feeling he would too. And if he didn’t, that was fine too.

“Your highness?” He repeated back at me without turning back, enamored with his task to the point where nothing could dissuade him from it.

“If you can’t find Johnson, you can try Pope, Dryden, the ever satirical Swift, or even the meticulous Boswell, depending on how much time you have to read a thousand page book about the nuances of everyday life.”

“Nothing you say will stop me from finding him.” He saw through my ruse to cover up Johnson with the mention of other authors – notably a difficult task – easily, moving onto the next shelf of books. I was only thankful Lay had never set his mind to alphabetizing the books, lest Baekhyun’s search have ended all the more quickly.

“D.O’s cookies should be finished baking by now.” I commented out loud, pretending to talk to myself, only to see him spare a glance over his shoulder, squinted eyes judging me from afar on my position sprawled out on the couch, laying down with layer upon layer of blankets covering me to keep me warm, as per Doctor Lay’s orders.

“You know what goes best with cookies?” He questioned, though he didn’t wait for whatever answer I was going to reflexively say from out between my parted lips, “A good book.” He turned back to the bookshelves lining the walls, “Now, where are you hiding, Johnson?”

It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to read Johnson. I simply didn’t want him to read Johnson. It’s a contradiction in itself, I know, but, Rasselas, his ramblers, and his Life by Boswell were what I read through Cera for the months that I was gone. His works are, in part, a reminder of my conflicted feelings towards the complication that was my memories. The content of the works themselves weren’t so much a reflection of my psyche that they represented the very roots of my being. No, nothing like that. Nothing so deep and tangible as that.

Instead, they represented this kind of invisible storage box wrapped up by page upon page of black inked, Johnsonian words and phrases. A box where I kept pieces of my weak-willed, uncertain, hesitant self. A box I had closed when I woke up to my current reality.

A box I didn’t want to open again.

Thus, I felt scared, just slightly.

Scared that if Baekhyun read Johnson, the keeper of my secrets, he’d catch me in my own lie.

He’d figure me out.

And I wasn’t ready for that. I’d never be ready for that. Pushing forward was what I chose to focus on. Beating that hibernating bear was the battle I chose to fight, even if it was on my own. I wasn’t ready to indulge him in my knowledge, not when there was so much more to figure out, to piece together so that it all made sense. He wasn’t ready yet.

So, it wasn’t that I didn’t want him to read Johnson, I simply didn’t want him to read the me in Johnson.

“Baekhyun.” I called him, my tone different from the one I had used to call out to him previously. His attention turned to me almost immediately, his ability to differentiate between the underlying contexts of my calls making me smile reflexively. To which he smiled back, giving up on his forgotten search for Johnson as he approached me, taking a seat by my feet, laying a comforting hand upon my legs whose touch I couldn’t feel beneath all of the blankets that separated his skin from mine.

“Do you want me to read to you?”

An absurd proposition on his part; the kind of absurd I adored.

I nodded and he got up to retrieve a book to read, deciding upon a world of gods and goddesses enraptured in supernatural warfare in the end, claiming he had read it twice when he was younger. Once because he liked it. Again because he liked it so much he thought he could change the ending if he did.

He wanted it to be more open-ended, he said. All of the loose ends had tied up too nicely for his taste, he admitted. He thought maybe, this time, through reading it to me until I fell asleep that night, wrapped up in the smell of paper and ink, a dying medium on our planet, he might be able to change the ending for good.

To keep the adventure going even after the text had long since stopped on the page.

But, even if he didn’t, that was fine too.

“Good morning, your highness.” Suho greeted as I stirred in my bed, awoken by the sound of porcelain colliding against wood. A sound that sounded like a thunderclap to my still sleeping mind when, in reality, it was merely a small click as Sehun set down a fresh vase of fragrant, dried flowers on my nightstand.

I grumbled the greeting back to him, burrowing my face in my pillow as the sun attacked my unsuspecting irises, Sehun apparently not caring in the least about my preferences to the amount of light that was shining into my room as he flung the window curtain open.

“Stop being lazy and get your out of bed.” Sehun brought his palm down upon my bed, shaking my entire world, mimicking Luhan as he added, in a voice demanding authority and respect, “Post haste!”

“I have to agree with him on that one, your highness. Though I don’t think D.O would take kindly to his word choice, you’ve been in bed long enough for me to warrant the use of the greeting ‘Good Afternoon,’ rather than, ‘Good Morning.’”

I felt Suho’s hand smooth out the folds of my blanket, peeling it back slowly but surely. The cold air flowing through the air conditioning blasted at my legs and I became one with the animal that is the hermit crab, going into the fetal position as goosebumps traveled from one patch of skin to the next.

“But,” Suho’s hands clenched around my ankles, dragging my feet away from where they were securely pulled to my chest, extending them himself because he very well knew I wasn’t exactly used to utilizing them on my own quite yet, “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt if you’re up and about in ten minutes.”

“Five.” Sehun corrected.

“Ten,” Suho spoke again, preparing a lecture on the difference between males and females in his head with which to educate Sehun with later on.

“Five,” Sehun persisted, “D.O postponed lunch for until her highness woke up. So, the sooner, the better.”

I heard silence above me as I felt around myself for the blanket again, attempting to sink back into the embrace of sweet Slumber while the two were preoccupied in their debacle, only to have it yanked from my grasp as soon as my fingertips wrapped around its edge.

“Unfortunately,” I heard Suho sigh over me, “I agree with him on that point as well, your highness.”

Safe to say, under the both attentive and pressuring eyes of Sehun and Suho, I was out of bed with my teeth brushed and my hair combed in under five minutes.

“Where are you going?”

Chanyeol turned at my question, his hand falling from the handle of the door leading out of the living room.

“Because I’m currently unable to pry into your business by secretly following you, I’ve decided I’d be openly nosy instead,” I supplied as reasoning behind my question, flashing him one of the biggest, most innocent smiles I could muster. After helping me all the way here, to the soft, cushiony, three-seater couch in front of the fireplace and the coffee table where Xiumin and Chen were currently engaged in a heated game of chess – and it’s almost unnecessary to note that Xiumin was winning –, he was abruptly heading out.

Leaving me, something I couldn’t stand, or rather, sit, quietly for right now.

“The rooftop,” he replied, pointing upwards as he smiled back, his smile always and forever bigger and more innocent than my own.

“And I assume there’s a lot of stairs.” I frowned, supplying him with a reason for his departure without me in tow.

“That about sums it up.” He nodded, closing his parted lips, tucking away his pearly whites, as he proceeded to stand there, affixed to his spot, not moving an inch more.

“But, you want to take me with you?” I guessed, without reading his mind, mind you.

He nodded again.

I leaned over the back of the couch, this tingly feeling spreading from my stomach both upwards to my face, making my lips curve and the world appear flowery right before my eyes, and downwards to my numb legs, sending sparks that felt like pleasant pins and needles prickling at my toes, “It’s the thought that counts.”

Chen gagged from behind me, “Get a room, you two.”

“Checkmate.” Xiumin spoke up suddenly, causing his attention to return to their game, his eyes wide. Xiumin leaned back on his palms, utterly satisfied with himself as his eyes scanned the chessboard, “Distractions will be your downfall.”

Chen rolled his eyes, “Agreeing to play with you in the first place was my downfall.”

And thus began the end to the game between the two.

And, on our own end, Chanyeol ended up taking me to rooftop of the People’s Court that same night, the two of us stumbling over each and every step of the emergency stairwell on the way there. We sat at the edge of the white building, side by side, and watched the empty skyline that extended on into forever. I don’t remember what we talked about. I don’t think he does either.

“Hello there, stranger.” I greeted Kai brightly, as bright as I could manage as I practically felt like a penguin taking its first, unaided steps across slick ice. He didn’t move to help me, though I never expected him to. It’s almost funny how aptly my nickname for him then suited him. Him and our relationship.

Cera’s Kai and my own were the same person, of that I’m sure. But, selfish Kai, honest Kai, easy-to-read Kai is one I wasn’t used to seeing, to interacting with. Cera could read him like a book and me? I could only struggle to sneak a peek at the cover from afar. Even now, I had no idea what he was thinking.

Something about Cera. Something about the Council. Something about my family photo. Something about being patient. With what? With who? I had no idea.

Even if I asked him and he provided me the answer sheet that would draw me a clear map of his complex-thinking brain, I still don’t think I’d have any idea what Kai was thinking. I could guess. I could interpret. I was usually right. But, was I filling in the blanks of the puzzle with my own pieces? Was I seeing what I wanted? Was I making blind guesses that coincidentally turned out to be right all this time? With the couple, with his view on the idea of family, with our relationship, was I just an awkward penguin struggling to walk?

Was Cera’s Kai mine all along?

Or, were we really just strangers after all this time?

I’m exaggerating.

At least, I’d like to think I am.

His eyes scanned me from the top of my head to the tip of my toes, his raw, early morning voice making the conclusion of, “And Lay said you wouldn’t be able to walk on your own until tomorrow. Congrats on your first steps, your highness.”

Not exactly my first. I snuck into Tao’s room the night I came back, two days ago. I hadn’t realized my own, frail weakness until after I let my body relax beside his. The whiplash of being practically inactive for so long hit me all at once and I needed Tao’s subpar, as it was the injured leading the injured, though duly appreciated help to get back to my room before Lay found out I had gone – he had fallen asleep at my bedside then. Luckily, Luhan, even if he saw, chose not to say a single word.

But, I saw no reason to divulge our meeting to Kai.

Mostly because it was one of those good memories. One of the ones I cherished. Being with Tao again after so long felt so right I didn’t feel like being told we were in the wrong. I didn’t want my memory to be stained by guilt.

So, I replied vaguely, having enough of lies for a good, long while now.

“Lay sorely underestimates me.”

“That he does.” He gestured briefly to my upright body, smiling from ear to ear, “Just look at you.”

“Just look at you.”

I had said it without thinking first, I admit that. But, that doesn’t mean it didn’t deserve to be said at all. I may have not been able to read into his actions, but I could, at the very least, tell the difference between a fake smile and a real one. Between the Kai I knew, the Kai Cera knew, and the one currently here, right before my very eyes.

“Just look at what, your highness?” He questioned, crossing his arms against his chest, the planet-wide symbol for defense against those other than himself. Against me, more specifically. Feigning innocence in the face of my appearance might help him forget. Pretending there’s no other part of him that acts differently might help him forget. And while I don’t think I could ever do the same, I won’t deny him the right to try.

“Your face.” I answered with a teasing smile.

His arms fell from in front of him, brown eyes looking upwards as he tried to surmise exactly what I meant, “My face? Last time I checked, I look immaculate. Unless that’s exactly what you’re referring to?”

I faked a large, extravagant bow, clenching my teeth as my legs sung out in an awkward, off-pitch symphony of pain, “Your arrogance proceeds you.”

He laughed, “You sorely underestimate exactly how arrogant I can be.”

He overestimates exactly how self-centered he can be. Why else would he put up such a brave front? Why else would he attempt to forget? Why else would I feel guilty for my impulsivity?

“I’m going to miss you, Kai.” I said, because I felt like, for the second time, telling him wouldn’t accomplish anything. He wouldn’t do anything to stop me. He’d accept it, because he had other things to be dedicating his mind to forgetting anyway.

Kai perceptively responded with, “How long will you be gone?”

I’d be gone for however long it took. However long it took to get to the bottom of the battle of words and arms occurring between the Boards and the Council. As Luhan had said, confronting the Council would most likely throw us all for a loop, more questions than answers plaguing our minds in the end – something we both agreed on. So then, I decided to take to Sector E and find out what I could from the other side of the argument. A plan I enumerated to the eleven Guardians still in the dark regarding said plan of mine – surmised by both Luhan and I in the hours before I went scurrying off to Tao’s room two nights ago.

And, as I said then, as all of their expressions changed from those of confusion and outright rejection to understanding, whether they agreed with me or not on this new course of action, “The Guardians who will be accompanying me are those whose powers hail from the Moon.”

Because I knew what would happen in the future, of the impending separation between night and day, because I cried at the very notion of it, because I felt too right to be wrong.

Because I sorely underestimated the reign my feelings had on my actions. 

A/N: 

Thus begins the era of EXO-M domination! The Guardians of the Moon and our OC will be at the forefront of the plot! There won't be a lot of EXO-K in the following chapters from here on out. Just for a bit, mind you, so don't worry about them disappearing forever. I know it doesn't seem like it what with the sudden turn the plot has taken, but this is my (late) Christmas and (early) New Year's present to you all. (The reason I'm updating so fast (comparatively anyway).) I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you on the next update. 

Merry (late) Christmas & Happy (early) New Year!