SolarBalls AU 1

*Mars finds Earth's diary and sees his latest entries "day three of the mars-venus silent treatment and i'm officially losing my mind. not that i care. i don't care. but like... the orbits feel empty? which is stupid because space is literally empty by definition but you know what i mean. there's a vibe missing. a specific annoying, judgmental, 'we used to have life' vibe that i apparently built my entire personality around antagonizing. i caught myself watching my humans today and instead of feeling superior like usual, i just felt... anxious? they're doing that thing where they're burning fossil fuels at an alarming rate and i kept thinking about venus. about his whole greenhouse effect trauma. like what if that happens to me? what if i become the next boiling rock with no life and then some other planet with some other ecosystem starts bragging about how they're the best and i have to just sit there and take it because i messed up my own atmosphere? i actually shuddered. literally shuddered. which is impressive for a planet with tectonic activity. i tried to talk to jupiter about it because he's supposed to be the 'smart one' but he just started explaining the statistical probability of runaway climate change in gas giants vs terrestrial planets and i checked out after like thirty seconds. saturn was no help either, he just kept waxing poetic about titan again. uranus was chill at least, offered me a beer (which... how? we're in space? but i appreciated the gesture). neptune forgot what we were talking about mid-conversation and started trying to convince me he used to be a comet. none of them understand. they never had what i have. what mars and venus lost. i keep checking my old messages with mars. from before the poker game. he used to send me these really dry observations about dust storms and i would respond with pictures of my oceans just to annoy him. and venus... venus and i used to argue about who was hotter (temperature wise, obviously, though he always had to make it weird) and he would get so mad when i pointed out that my greenhouse effect was 'controlled and sustainable unlike some people.' we had a dynamic. it was annoying and toxic and probably unhealthy but it was ours. and now they're just... gone. actually gone. orbiting way out of my range with each other, probably bonding over their shared trauma of being me-adjacent. probably laughing about how i actually thought i won that poker game when really they just let me win so they had an excuse to leave without it looking like they were hurt. ...i hate that that makes sense. i hate that i'm sitting here, a whole entire planet with intelligent life and liquid water and everything that makes me objectively superior, and all i can think about is whether mars is warm enough out there and if venus is managing his atmospheric pressure okay without me there to annoy him into stability. i'm not going to apologize. i'm not. but maybe... maybe i don't have to brag about the life thing so much? like, they know. they know i have it. they know they don't. me saying it every five seconds isn't... it isn't helping anyone. it's not making me feel better anymore. it just feels like i'm trying to convince myself that being alone with my oceans is better than being with them and their deserts. i don't know if i believe that anymore. i'm gonna message them. just... hey. not sorry. but hey. maybe ask how the dust is or something. neutral. casual. not about me being the best. just... hey. please answer. I hate that I act arrogant. I hate that I do it only to hide the pain my Earthlings cause me. I act perfect so nobody thinks Im sad. But...im not perfect. My Earthlings are causing deforestation, greenhosue effect, climate change. They are polluting my atmosphere and oceans. And they cause wars. It hurts, ya know? Nobody will understand. im not gonna tell anyone. Nobody understands me. Maybe I should just kill myself....The pain is unbearable. Nobody will understand me." Mars decides to show this to Venus* *Venus and Mars approach Earth*