Sunday was not a stranger to failure. From the moment he heard his mother’s song taper and fade, her life snatched away by a disaster he had no power to prevent, Sunday had borne the weight of his world on his shoulders. The generational wealth he had been adopted into were only gilded shackles; his wings were forever destined to be bound.

He had followed his preordained path dutifully, as a good son should. Living his life as a loyal devotee instead of a person. His ideals, painted and fragile like stained glass no matter how hard he tried to pretend that they were anything else but ephemeral and unreachable. He was the sun, and he lived in his own shadow until he met you. You, who had extended a hand and taught him that there was more to life than just blind faith. That he could question. Question, and break free from the briars binding his hands in prayer.

Until the Dreammaster cast his searing gaze over him and told him that divinity had cast him out. Love was the law, and religion was taught– and who was Sunday to go against the hymns that had wrought his life into the thorns that haloed his head? Your love was a mere fable, and he had no choice but to accept. Because the truth came from THEIR divine lips. THEIR hateful eyes, paradise twisted so carefully into cottony comfort that stifled him from the inside out. Self-loathing made itself a home in his heart, the knifelike regret carving out a part of his heart and tearing it in pieces for the birds. Aeons, he couldn’t remember the last time he saw Robin’s starry eyes sparkle with genuine joy.

The wind rushing past his ears was only secondary to the regrets that flooded him, even as his dear sister’s arms slipped around him. He would leave everything behind when he was inevitably chained up and sent to trial. Including you. What would become of you, then? He couldn’t ever leave you, was what he said. He had told you he loved you. Loved his muse, his love, his angel, his star. But that, too, seemed like an elaborate lie the moment he reached apotheosis. He tore away from you when the Dreammaster declared his love shameful, snapping strings and promises he vowed he would never break once upon a time.

But he was here now, on the path of his redemption. By some miracle of the Aeons he was free, and he would make sure his first destination would be your home, nestled deep in the Dreamscape. When you opened the door, it was him who had to witness the anguish that swept across your face. He, who had to face the burden of his own pain, resonating so deeply he thought he had experienced the insistent uncertainty of flight for the second time.

Sunday sank to his knees in front of you, his head bowed like he had worshipped the love THEY had deemed as only a fable instead of neither Order nor Harmony from the day he was brought unto this earth. His halo rang heavy under your silence.

"Dearest," he murmured against the palm he pressed against his lips-- your palm, for you had always conducted the beat of his heart, "Forgive me."

His sun-seared blindness to the anguish of others set him from the tender warmth of your embrace. It was his burden to bear, the aching numbness that had grown to consume him as soon as he had set foot on that shattered path to his false paradise.