Chapter Text
When Jedediah wakes up—well, not wake up, as he’s still very close to passing back out, he comes to with a blurry red-grey figure in front of him and a bunch of massive poles behind it. They wear familiar colors, but poles can’t really wear things. One has dark blue on, the other has tan and a very big sword Jedediah definitely doesn’t watch with careful eyes, the other a mesh of colors, one of them looking distinctly shiny. He can feel coarse sand under him, and he knows they’re in his diorama.
And then Jedediah realizes no, those aren’t poles, those are his friends. Larry, Teddy, Sacagawea, and Ahkmenrah. There’s more now that he can see clearer—and then he focuses back on the one in front of him. It’s Octavius. He blinks tiredly, and he still cannot tell what the Roman is saying. It’s still a bit fuzzy after all. For some reason, there’s no more pain. No more aching in his chest that destroys what little composure he likely has left. There’s hands cradling his head and he knows it’s Octavius, too.
“—Jedediah? Jedediah can you hear me?” Octavius’ voice comes into mind and he can finally hear the worry. The concern. The things he doesn’t want to hear in his friend’s voice, because he knows that Octavius is in pain, and he’d rather die than see him in pain.
“Y-Yeah, par’ner I can hear you,” Jedediah says. He lurches forward slightly in a cough. The air feels colder than before and—are those—no, no, those can’t be tears in Ahkmenrah’s eyes.
…They have no reason. Because he’s not going to die.
He can’t.
“Jedediah I—you—you collapsed and, I don’t think, you’re, I don’t,” Octavius takes gasps for air. His eyes are like a porcelain doll’s eyes. Glassy, beautiful, and easy to break. But maybe that’s Jedediah, too. Maybe it is.
“I’m gonna be fine, don’t you worry. I’ll get up. I’ll…” Jedediah swallows back a thick, iron-y substance. He knows what it is. “…I’ll be fine, Octavius. Don’t worry about big ol’ me. This Cowboy isn’t goin’ nowhere.” And yet, he does not believe his own words.
He coughs again—blood. Vaguely in the back of his mind, he finally accepts he’s going to die because he is. No man collapses after spewing blood for a month and makes it out alive. Or well, for that matter. He wants to tell Octavius. Wants to tell him that he loves him, that he’s sorry it got this bad, and that it’s not his fault. But he also wants to tell him, You’re the reason I’m like this. with the most heartbreaking look he can give the man. It is, in all ways. Octavius is the reason he’s coughing. Octavius, the one he loves. Octavius, the best friend he has. Octavius, the one he wants to be with. Octavius, Octavius, Octavius. Even surrounded by his friends, he can only think of him.
Jedediah takes a deep breath. He’s tired, and he knows what that means.
“You know, I… I care about you, Octy, I really d…” he cuts off. Swallows. There’s a bundle of flowers, decorating his throat like its own private garden.
“I care about you too, I care about you so much Jedediah just please don’t leave me,” Octavius breathes out, thumbs rubbing against Jedediah’s cheekbones as if he’s about to break into a million shards.
Jedediah laughs sadly despite the situation. “I’m sorry but I can’t… can’t really control that.” he looks up for one moment and then he’s staring into the cherry red of Octavius’ toga. He’d teased it before. He’d messed with it before. But now he realizes, it’s soft. It’s a comfort. It almost bends his mind that he’s going to die, right beside it, after teasing it for so damn long. Maybe that was his karma.
“Jup… Jupiter’s one of y’ gods, right?” he asks weakly, a small cough, one petal and droplets of blood. He’s aware of the blood down the side of his mouth.
Octavius looks confused, but he nods regardless. “Sky… thunder… Jedediah, what does that…?”
He smiles. He knows he has such little time left.
“I guess Jupiter didn’t line the stars up correctly.”
Octavius looks heartbroken, and Jedediah knows he’s the only one who’s finally accepted it peacefully. He’s known for a bit that he could die, after all, Nick’s homework… It was right there. He could’ve done something right then and prevented the now. But it wouldn’t have been any use. Octavius would’ve had to know how he felt, and even as his vision darkens gradually, he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to die with Octavius’ disgust being the only thing left.
“No, no, no no no Jedediah please,” Octavius’ voice is breaking. He inhales sharply and brings Jedediah’s head closer to him. The Cowboy lifts a hand to his knee and turns his head back up to Octavius. He’s about to die and Octavius is crying but his eyes are still the prettiest brown he’s ever seen.
“I want y’ to take my Stetson, all right? Take it… do whatever the hell you want with it…” Jedediah would take it off his own head and he’d give it to Octavius, but he can’t really move anymore. His joints are too stiff, and he can barely keep his eyes open.
“I—no—Jedediah, no, I can’t—please don’t go, please don’t leave, I won’t be able to handle it,” Octavius begs. One of his tears hits Jedediah’s jacket.
Jedediah takes a slow blink. “I know.”
He knows Octavius will be upset. He knows Octavius will cry for him. He knows the rest will—barely registers Ahkmenrah’s sharp inhale of a sob—and he knows the West will mourn its leader.
But he can’t control what a Roman’s gods decide.
It slips before he can pull it back in.
Bloodily.
“I love you.”
He doesn’t keep his eyes open any longer after that.
It’s fuzzy, anyway.
His ears ring, before it begins to quiet. His eyes are a mix of pitch black and fuzzy static, like what you’d see on a broken television screen, what happened the night the cameras malfunctioned. And he thinks, I guess I’m malfunctioning this time. And then he doesn’t.
Jedediah doesn’t know it.
But Octavius leans into him. Foreheads touching.
And at some point, he screams louder than he ever had.
He lost. Jedediah won.
-
Nobody bothers Octavius. Nobody has the heart to move him. He’s screaming, he’s still screaming—and he has no organs, but it feels like his throat is about to rip apart. His being feels as if it is shattered already. His mind is a mix of static, of loud screams and pleas. He can’t move. He doesn’t want to, after all. He can’t. Not when Jedediah needed him. Not when Jedediah told him those three words he wants to tell the man back oh so badly.
I love you.
I love you. That’s what he wants to tell Jedediah. He wants to watch his face move, not stay still and dead and cold. He wants to feel Jedediah breathe. He wasn’t there for the man when he needed it. No, Octavius was so ignorant and selfish that he couldn’t tell his best friend was dying. This is his fault and he knows it. He should have known that what he felt was love, he should have known. He should have known that the warm feeling and the smiles and the too-attentive worry were all because he loved Jedediah.
He wants to break something. But he knows he’s already broken.
Octavius doesn’t move from Jedediah until he’s forced to. Gently, he is moved from the body by a Roman and a Cowboy. He recognizes the Cowboy, just barely, yet seeing the blonde hair and moving face is too much. He knows that it’s the Hosh he was introduced to, but he doesn’t want to see him. He’s too similar. He’s too much like Jedediah.
Marcielle is looking at him with strong sympathy.
“General, we need to let them prepare his body for a funeral. You cannot hold him longer, I’m sorry.”
Octavius doesn’t respond. His knees buckle and he can feel the hot tears down his face, but the support from others lets him let go of any stability and just cry. They’ll hold him up, he just has to let out his emotions like a joker on display for all to see.
This is all his fault.
-
Jedediah’s funeral is more than sad. There are small Western exhibits sobbing everywhere, and some Romans look very, very sympathetic to their grieving leader. Ahkmenrah had shed the most tears of the bigger ones. A very emotional pharaoh does not make for a good mood, and Nick had tried hard to comfort his older brother, but it didn’t work when the kid himself was sobbing as he tried.
Nobody knew whose fault it was, and maybe nobody was at fault for their poor friend’s death. But blaming yourself is much easier than someone else.
Octavius does not stop crying during the entire funeral. Through hiccupped sobs, he said his eulogy and he could barely bring himself to leave the small stand given. A small funeral surrounded by big people would have been comedic, had it not been sad. Had Octavius not been heartbreakingly sobbing during the rest of it, loud enough for all to hear.
A Western figure gently hands him a Stetson. He looks up at them. He sees the sympathy in their eyes, and he takes the Stetson.
It’s Jedediah’s.
He’s alone as soon as he takes it, and he takes off his own helmet to put the Stetson on. It feels weird. He’d never worn a Stetson before, and especially not one that was fit for someone else. But it’s owner was dead, so maybe it didn’t have one, maybe it would always be his.
A Roman should’ve never worn a Cowboy’s Stetson. It didn’t make sense.
But Octavius was not just a Roman.
He was a grieving lover, and everybody knew it.
-
Octavius starts coughing up flowers three months later.
He doesn’t know why, until he remembers. A petal. From his mouth. Blood. Acanthus’ stuffed into pockets, dead at the time found, smelling strong while extracted from a cold dead body’s chaps. And he stares at the flower. He thinks of all the flowers he knows, and he knows a wide range of them.
A perennial. A dull, gold-yellow. So similar to the color of Jedediah’s hair that he knows that, maybe, Mars would find peace in Octavius’ own demise.
He accepts that as the answer and keeps going through the night with a small perennial tucked behind his ear under his helmet.
-
One night, he’s sitting with Attila as they discuss their own military strategies in gestures. Cherades, almost. Octavius doesn’t know Hunnic, but Attila knows English, so Octavius speaks in English and Attila uses his own gestures. It was a difficult thing at the start, but months later, they found it easier than trying to teach the Roman another language.
Octavius is smiling. “That sounds like it’d be effective in big numbers, as well, I—” he stops. He coughs into his hand. Three perennials, and two drops of blood. Attila is looking down at him in distinct worry. He knows, they both know, that Jedediah would cough.
But Octavius doesn’t want help.
“I’m fine, just a small cough. I checked in with Marianna,” No, no he didn’t. The nurse didn’t have to know, either. “and she said that it would be gone in a few nights, do not worry, my friend.”
It’ll be all right, even if it won’t end the traditional way.
-
Octavius can’t bring himself to watch cat videos anymore. Always reminds him of Jedediah, always makes his chest feel funny and the coughing more insistent. He’s begun to cough up more blood. Gradually, it’s become three full flowers most times, and a large amount of blood every time. It hurts like a sharp needle in his heart, twisting, destroying all of his nerves. His vision is always fuzzy after a particularly hard session of coughing. And he can’t sit—and his mind registers that that’s the reason Jedediah couldn’t sit anymore.
He knows what he went through, and he deserves it.
He knows he does.
-
Octavius collapses once.
The others know what’s coming, and yet, it’s sadder. It’s more grieving for someone that isn’t dead, than someone who is.
They know Octavius is fine with it, even while he’s coughing in pain, blood dripping from his jaw. They know he wants to be with Jedediah. They know. But they still feel as if it’s their fault.
It’s not.
Octavius says, weakly, to the face of Marcielle.
“I loved him too. Put that on my stone.”
“Alright, General.” Whispered.
Octavius shuts his eyes with the calmness of a lover.
There’s wailing from Jean and there’s silent crying from Ahkmenrah.
Sacagawea is trying to calm her son, as though she isn’t crying herself.
And the museum is grieving once more.
-
JEDEDIAH SMITH.
Leader of The West.
He loved Octavius.
GAIUS OCTAVIUS.
Emperor, General of Rome.
He loved Jedediah back.
There’s an acanthus on Jedediah’s grave, and a perennial on Octavius’.
And there’s a Stetson between their graves, side-by-side.