Work Text:
It was a blur getting to the marsh, like he’d just been plucked from the fire in front of his factory placed there by an unseen hand, but the disorientation passed quickly. He scanned the landscape. The figures in the swamp, standing still and facing the steppe, arrested his attention. Something about the image had dread dripping cold down his spine. He approached them.
He spoke to Dankovsky first, finding the Capital man standing at the very back of the group. The discussion was…unsettling. Dankovsky lacked any of the sharpness he’d held in the brief time Artemy had known him, sounding even emptier than he had during their last conversation in the Shelter. He stared right through Artemy, his expression hollow like a burnt-out log. He couldn’t even remember himself.
As Dankovsky stared out over the Steppe, his eyes unfocused, he explained that they were leaving. “This town is no longer mine,” he said. It looked like a profound effort to even arrange his thoughts that much. “No longer human. No longer rational. It doesn't...accept the likes of me anymore.”
“But it does!” Artemy countered. “It accepts all kinds of people.”
Dankovsky was not swayed.
So Artemy left him there, with the marsh sucking at his worn city boots. He knew, somewhere deep down, that most of the townspeople would be lost; that by burning Aglaya’s orders, he was signing their death warrants. It would be kinder to keep his goodbyes simple, to let them go gently into that good night. He knew that. He did.
But.
Of course Dankovsky couldn’t stay—he was an outsider and far too stubbornly trapped in his ways—but there were others closer to Earth (and closer to him). Artemy craned his head, looking for familiar silhouettes. The first he saw was Rubin towering above the others. He ran to him, ignoring the way water flooded into his ragged boots. “Stakh!” he called. “Hey, Stakh!”
His old friend didn’t react, not until Artemy had grabbed his arm and turned him around as best he could to face him. “What does it all mean,” he said, looking right through Artemy. “For us all?” Like Dankovsky, he seemed…empty. Vacant. Like he was already gone.
He leaned against Stakh just a bit. “I don't know. I only know I did this.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “It's all my fault.”
“No.”
Artemy almost expected an additional rebuff for his arrogance—Really, Burakh, you think you’re that important?—but Stakh said nothing else, just looked up at the silvery moon. Artemy almost wished he would blame him, lash out and hurt him the way he had hurt them, but maybe that was selfish.
Artemy put his hand on Stakh’s jaw, directing his gaze back toward him. He was so thin now. So very tired. “Do you remember me?”
Stakh’s brow furrowed in vague confusion or concentration as he tried to make sense of Artemy’s features. “I think I do...” he started slowly and Artemy felt a little spark of hope, bright and bubbling. “You were a courier. Right? You brought in deliveries?” He must have noticed the way Artemy’s face fell because he continued on with a bit of an apology in his tone. “...Maybe not. I'm sorry. But your face does seem familiar...”
Artemy cupped Stakh’s face in his hands. That in and of itself was proof enough that he wasn’t himself anymore: Rubin never would have allowed such an open display of intimacy if he was. “It’s me,” a pleading note entered his voice, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be embarrassed. “It’s Artemy. Your Cub.”
“Artemy…?” It looked for a while like he really was trying to place him, but he eventually gave up. “No, sorry. I don't remember the name.”
Artemy’s throat closed for a moment. He swallowed hard and shut his eyes. He let himself hold Stakh for a minute longer, taking in his warmth and the shape of him for the last time. Things were so bad between them when he came home. He had hoped that with time, they could repair their relationship, make it the way it was before, but, well, they didn’t really have time anymore, did they? Maybe it was for the best that he didn’t remember him: he wouldn’t remember that he’d left him. “You should have gone with the Army,” he said. “You could have done your tour, come back when you’d gotten some distance. We could have tried it again.”
Rubin wasn’t looking at him anymore. Artemy followed his gaze, out over the endless sea of grass. “Where are you going?”
“Ahead.”
“Just ahead?” Toward his death, alone under uncaring Sky.
He scoffed, barely more than an exhale. “As if there was any other direction to go. Are you suggesting I return to my childhood?”
Artemy winced at the memory of a rebuff from what felt like a lifetime ago: Rubin sneering as he told him it was time to grow up. “No, but…You could stay here. The Town needs you, Stakh. I need you.”
“No.” The word hit with the heaviness of a punch to his gut. Stakh wouldn’t look at him, but he did let Artemy grasp at his robes and lean his forehead against his. “Will you come with us?” he finally asked. “The path ahead is long and hard. The more who go, the better our chances.”
It felt like an olive branch, ridiculous as the notion was. Artemy couldn’t help but try to take it. “I will,” he said, and the lie tasted bitter on his tongue. “I…I have to talk to the others. Will you wait for me?”
“I will.”
Artemy walked through the crowd of townspeople, past the Saburovs, still holding each other, and the Kains and the Stamatins and all the others he’d chosen to sacrifice. But there might still be someone he could save. If not Stakh, who loathed the Kin, then maybe someone else…
He came to a stop in front of Bad Grief. The ex-thief stood quietly, sedate almost, examining his hands like he couldn’t believe that they were really attached to him.
“Looking for strings?” he asked. He tried to give a smile but only managing a slight grimace.
Grief blinked, but otherwise remained impassive. “Strings…Like you read my mind.”
“I know you very well,” Artemy said, then, more hopefully than he should, “…Do you know me?
“No, I don't. Who are you?”
Artemy flinched. The immediacy of his denial jabbed straight into his heart like a lockpick. “I’m Artemy. Cub. We’ve known each other since we were little.”
Grief shrugged. “ Doesn't ring a bell.”
“Please try to remember.”
Grief gave him a blank stare: no recognition, no emotion even. If he wasn’t standing, Artemy might have thought he was already dead. Maybe he was. Then he opened his mouth, took a breath. “Are you coming with us?”
Artemy hesitated, shifting on his feet. “When we were kids,” he started, taking Grief’s gloved hands in his own and holding them against his chest. “We tried to walk across the steppe, following the Gorkhon. Do you remember? We only walked for a few days before we got bored and came back.” Artemy ran his thumb over Grief’s knuckles, then slid his hands up to the join of his shoulders and his neck. He rubbed circles on the fabric of his jacket with his thumbs. “You don’t have to go, you know. You were the one talking about defying fate. You could just stay. Here. With me. We’ll just…figure out the rest from there, alright?”
Greif sighed and shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“It’s better there,” he said simply.
It wouldn’t be better. Artemy briefly considered just throwing him over his shoulder and locking him down in the lair until he found a way to fix this, but he knew deep down that it would do more harm than good. If there was anything that he’d learned over the past twelve days, it was that sometimes, the best thing to do was ease the pain of the dying.
He blinked hard against the tears threatening at the corners of his eyes. “Just—Stay here, okay? Wait for me.”
Grief didn’t respond, just returned his gaze to the horizon.
Artemy pulled him into an embrace and gave him a kiss on the cheek, then took off through the marsh again. Then Grief, too was a lost cause, but still, there might be one last chance…
The night was cold, nipping at his face, but Lara didn’t seem to feel it as he trotted up to her. Her arms were crossed loosely across her chest, her shawl slipping from her shoulder. He touched her shoulder. She didn’t react.
“Gravel?” He held her shoulder tighter and moved into her path. “Lara, it’s me.” Artemy studied her face. She had the same blank look as the others. His heart sank. “Tell me you recognize me.”
She was unresponsive for a moment, then the corner of her mouth lifted just a bit. Her expression became a touch placating, almost patronizing, like a mother indulging her child. “Of course I recognize you.”
Artemy couldn’t help the wave of relief that washed over him. It made him feel drunk, dizzy, like twyrine on an empty stomach. He grinned and pulled her into a tight hug. “I knew it! I knew you wouldn’t forget me—not you!” If she remembered him, if she remembered herself, there was some hope. She wasn’t lost to him. He could fix this.
Artemy pulled away from her a bit, breathing a sigh and blinking away tears of relief. “For a moment there, I thought…” He brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes, letting his hand linger against her cool cheek. “You had a bizarre look. Sorry for doubting you.”
“You’re Matvei Shiroky.”
Artemy’s stomach dropped out. A thick, oily feeling of dread rose in his throat along with a buzzing in his head, loud and disorienting. “That’s not funny.”
She continued on like she hadn’t heard him. “We haven’t seen each other for what…four years now?”
“Enough. Not another word.”
“You’ve changed a lot...Barely recognizable.”
Desperation peaked. He grabbed her shoulders. “Shut up, Gravel! Just shut up! This isn’t a fucking joke! Snap out of it!”
That got a reaction out of her, however slight. Her eyes widened, her face went pale, and she stared up at him with a veneer of terror under the deadening layer of her slipping mind.
“I’m so sorry,” he said quickly, immediately letting her go. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t want…” He hid his face in his hands. “…Oh, fuck.”
Lara eyed him warily, then sighed. She reached up and ran a hand over his cheek, following the cut of his cheekbone. “Of course not. You’re my friend.”
Artemy leaned into her hand, fighting hard not to cry. She was the same temperature as the air. “Please stay,” he said. “Just stay here. I can’t do this alone.”
“You won’t be. We’re all going together.” Lara’s hand drifted down to loosely fiddle with the collar of his sweater. The one that she had knit for him so long ago. Artemy wanted to throw himself down into the mud, prostrate himself, do any degrading thing she needed if at least one of the people he cared for more than anyone else would just stay. Then her hand dropped away to swing loosely at her side. “Are you with us?”
“We’ll protect each other. And we’ll try to survive. Yes?”
“Of course.”
There was an acute pain in his heart, like he was dying. He wondered, for just a moment, if that would be so bad. But no: he had children, he had the Kin, he had what was left of the Town. He had made his choice. He would live with it. What else could he do?
Artemy pulled her shawl up, better covering her shoulder, then bent and kissed her forehead. “I will always be with you.” And the lie stung, but he took her hand and led her to Stakh and Grief. He slung his arms over Lara and Grief’s shoulders and took Stakh’s sturdy hand in his.
“I won’t abandon you,” he said, holding them closer. “Not any of you. I promise.”
“I knew you were a friend,” Lara said quietly, while Grief leaned a little more into his shoulder.
And the four of departed together, one last adventure into the Steppe.
Artemy followed until he couldn’t anymore, until his bad knee finally failed him and he collapsed to the Earth. He sat there on the ground for hours, watching the three of them shrink into the distance along with the rest of the group until they were swallowed up by the horizon. And when he was utterly alone under the cold expanse of the night sky, Artemy laid down and wept.
***
A year passed.
There wasn’t much time to grieve in the weeks after the epidemic. There was so much to be done: getting everyone settled, raising his children, trying desperately to prepare for winter. Honestly, he hardly had time to think about anything beyond his duties. Still, even though it was the hardest one he could remember, they survived the winter, and as the spring wore on, things almost fell into a routine. The wounds from the plague scabbed over, scarred if they couldn’t heal neatly.
It was a beautiful thing, watching Sticky and Murky embrace the Kin. Both of them took to this new world like duck to water. His other surviving wards were also acclimating well, and soon the young Mistresses would begin coming into their power. Earth was growing stronger with every passing day. Artemy himself did a great deal of growing and, with Sahba’s help, he began to live up to the title of menkhu. He loved it all, as difficult as it was (and as much as he didn’t like the word): the magic and the miracles and his people’s culture. He knew in his heart that this was the right choice.
But.
He was fine. Should be fine. He had dealt with the grief the same way he dealt with the knee he’d reinjured: he kept it to himself and learned to work while enduring it if he could avoid aggravating it altogether. Besides, a year was a long time, it should have been enough to make peace with his losses, to embrace the joys of his new life and with them smother the agony of the old, but when the August wind started to bring with it the heady scent of twyre, he felt the ache in his heart like it had been torn open.
One day, as September came around again, Artemy left the village. He wouldn’t be gone long, no more than a week at most, and in the meantime, the Kin and his children would be left in Sahba’s more than capable hands. He wasn’t sure of the direction, wasn’t sure even of what he wanted to find, but he could feel his Lines pulling him and it would serve him well to follow.
It was two days before he found his destination: a non-descript patch of herbs beside a boulder: black and brown and blood twyre, a bit of swevery. He knew immediately that he had found a grave. Their grave.
He knelt in the grass, pressing his hands into the black soil. It was warm, despite the cool afternoon. He felt like that should be a comfort.
Artemy opened the bottle of twyrine he’d brought with him in the hope of dreaming, drinking it and chewing on a strip of jerky while he watched the sun set behind the hills. When he was done and night had properly settled, Artemy laid down, his back to Earth, and let himself drift off.
When he opened his eyes again, he was standing. The sky was darker than he’s seen it since just after the pandemic, dotted through with stars. A fire burned in front of him, illuminating their old place by the Basket and the pale faces of his three dearest friends as they sat around it.
For a long time, no one said anything, just watched each other over the fire. He wanted to ask how exactly they met their ends. Was it peaceful? Did it hurt? Were they afraid? He didn’t, though: somehow it felt inappropriate, much too personal (and could he even stand to know what exactly he had done to them if their demises had been messy?).
When he couldn’t take it anymore, Artemy finally broke the silence. “I suppose you’re angry with me.” Asinine, obvious, but at least it was something.
Grief shrugged, picking up a stick to poke aimlessly at the fire until the tip caught alight and he threw the whole thing on the blaze. “Not really. Hard to feel much of anything when you’re dead.”
Lara made a noise of agreement. “It’s…strange. Not what I thought. Closest thing to peace that we could hope for, probably.”
Another pause. The fire popped loudly.
“Was it worth it, at least?” Stakh was watching him carefully, his stare flaying him right to his soul.
Artemy opened his mouth. Yes, he thought. It was. He had chosen miracles for that reason, and the choice itself confirmed their worthiness, but face to face with the three of them, the words stuck in his throat.
They understood anyway.
“I suppose it’s alright to die for something,” Lara said, pulling her shawl higher up over her shoulder. “Just wish I had a choice.”
Stakh was staring moodily at the fire now. “It doesn’t matter. There was nothing left for me there or anywhere.”
Grief shrugged. “I guess it was fate, to be subject to other’s whims right up until the end. Though don’t blame yourself for that, Cub: if it wasn’t you tightening the noose, it would have been someone else.”
“I didn’t want this to happen,” Artemy said. It felt like an excuse leaving his lips.
The corner of Lara’s mouth twitched up. “We know, Cub. You tried so hard for us. You would have kept us all if you could.”
His mouth twisted. “Maybe I could have. If I had been better, faster, something, we all could have made it.”
“Maybe,” Stakh conceded.
“But you saved something,” Lara interjected before he could say something more rightfully damning. “Not even Clara or Dankovsky managed that.”
Artemy kicks a twig into the fire. “Sometimes I wonder if it was enough.” Another lapse. Artemy realized with a pang that he was the only one breathing, although maybe that should’ve been obvious. He looked at them again, studied their faces. They looked different somehow. A part of him wondered if it was just a dream or if he had simply forgotten what they looked like. Guilt twisted his stomach into a tight knot.
“Can you forgive me?” Artemy asked, his voice just barely carrying over the sound of the fire.
Stakh’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly: an assessment, not necessarily derision. “Do you forgive yourself?”
Artemy rubbed the back of his neck, trying hard to blink back the sting in his eyes. “I don’t know.” His voice trembled, and he hated himself for it. “I don’t think I know how.”
Grief stood up, holding his arms open and gesturing for him to come closer. Artemy did, stepping into his embrace. “Just live, Cub,” he said. His cheek was cool against Artemy’s neck. “You’re a clever kid; you’ll figure it out.”
Artemy gripped Grief’s coat, painfully aware that this would be the last time. Stupid. So stupid for him to be the one being comforted when the three of them were dead and it’s his fault. He couldn’t stop himself, though, just leaned into Bad Grief and nearly broke down when Stakh and Lara joined in the embrace.
“I miss you,” he sniffed. “So, so much.”
“…Miss you too,” Stakh mumbled, rubbing small circles into his back.
“You’re taking care of each other?” Artemy asked. He shifted his arms to hold the three of them as best as he could. “You’re doing okay?”
Grief patted his chest, shooting him a shit-eating grin. “Sure. Pushin’ up twyre to pass the time.”
Lara pressed her face into Artemy’s shoulder, simultaneously swatting at Grief’s arm. “We’ll be alright. We’re together, at least.”
“And one day,” Stakh said. “We all will be again.”
Lara raised her head sharply. “Just don’t you dare think of joining us early!”
A shuddering laugh escaped Artemy. “I won’t. I promise.” He would live. What else could he do?
The four of them held each other for a while longer, taking comfort in the warmth of each other’s bodies. Eventually, they laid down together on the earth, their limbs still tangled together. A heart beat through them, steady and slow, and it wasn’t long before they were lulled to sleep.
Artemy woke up sobbing under the empty sky. An ache settled in his chest like someone had pried out his heart while he slept, but when he clutched at his chest, he could feel it was unbroken.
Slowly, Artemy’s composure returned to him, the sobs subsiding into hiccups. Morning dew seeped in through his clothes, leaving him shivering in the grass and a slight headache, no doubt a hangover, pulsed at the back of his head. He sat up carefully, easing out the aches in his joints, and wiped his face clean on his sleeve.
The twyre waved in the morning breeze, filling the air with the buzzing and rattling of herbs. As he watched sway, a conversation with Murky came back to him. He remembered her leading him through the grass, telling him which herbs to pick to talk to the dead. It was silly, he knew that, just a desperate little girl missing her parents.
But.
Artemy removed a small knife from his pocket and cut one stalk of each kind of twyre and a piece of swevery. He made sure that the chosen herbs were supple enough to bend, then set about knotting them into a small charm.
The finished result was a bit ugly; he was never much good at making charms. Still, when he held it in his hand closed his eyes and wanted, he thought he could feel the ghosts of hands on his shoulders.
He strung the charm on a length of cord from his pocket and looped it around his neck. He rose unsteadily to his feet, brushing the dirt from his back and shins, then with one final look over his shoulder at his friends’ resting place, he started making his way back home.