Chapter Text
Canach recognizes him by his robes. Those damned bright purple robes, the color of a stuffy noble’s lipstick, with those gold accents shining like fire in the sun.
“No wonder the Forged can spot you from a mile away,” he’d said just the other day as Cillian wiped some soot from his arms after a skirmish. “You’re practically a beacon. A bright purple butterfly yelling ‘pick me, pick me!’”
Cillian had just smirked, nudging his shoulder with an elbow. “And would you?”
Canach frowned. “Would I what?”
“Pick me?”
Yes, he should have said. He would. He would have. But it isn’t the gold stitching on those robes glinting like embers in the light, it’s actual embers, still red-hot, still burning, charring the dusty ground beneath him.
Behind him on the airship bridge he hears Kasmeer gasp. Before anyone else, Rytlock leaps across the gap and bounds towards the commander’s limp body. Kas steps past him and rushes forward too.
But he can’t. He can’t move, he can’t—
“Commander!” Rytlock yells, kicking dust over the coals. The charr grabs his shoulders and hauls him out of the scorched dirt, those sparkling boots dragging coals under heel. Cillian’s head slumps to the side like a bag of flour, lifeless, heavy. There is blood coming out of his nose, pooling in his cupid’s bow.
Kasmeer screams. “They’ve got Aurene!” She points somewhere out into the riverlands, and it’s finally enough to spur Canach into moving. He runs in the direction she’s pointing, runs and runs and jumps and lets his glider guide him on the wind. He vaguely hears the others yelling after him but can’t make out anything besides the rush of wind, and the pounding of the blood in his head.
He lands with a heavy thud and takes off sprinting. His heartbeat rings in time with his footsteps, and every step reminds him of his heavy armor weighing him down. He rips off his helmet, tosses it aside, goes to work on his arm braces. He doesn’t notice the chain wrapping around his chest until it’s too late.
Rytlock calls out to him, calls out something , but Canach still can’t hear, can’t think, can’t feel the burning chain biting into his side. He swings blindly with his sword at the chain. Metal sparks on metal and he swings again, again, again until the links shatter. The Forged rears backwards to strike and Canach lunges, jabbing it in the gut and yanking upwards, cleaving the thing in two.
Then he keeps running.
Three, four more Forged charge at him, but he’d dealt with more, he’d dealt with worse . He bashes two aside with his shield, slices the head off another, outright shoves the last one. But then there are more, more, pouring over the hills like lava, until all he can see is red. He keeps slashing and swinging until his arms feel leaden, felling one after another, though there are always two more to take their place.
“Canach,” Rytlock growls, pulling him back with a massive paw on his shoulder. “We can’t save her. We’re outnumbered. We have to go back!”
“Fine! Run! If you don’t want to fight then you don’t sodding have to!”
He tries to turn back to where the Forged are waiting, a solid line of defense blocking any view of where the fallen god might have gone. He grits his teeth and tries to charge, but—
“I’ve got him, Kas! Get us out of here!” Rytlock holds tight around his torso, his stupid heaving mass holding him stronger than any Forged chains.
“Let me go you overgrown furball, let me fucking go! ”
But then it’s butterflies. All light pink and white, nothing like Cillian’s. His always left the air smelling like cedar and lilac, these are all vanilla and bergamot. Nothing alike. Nothing like him at all.
The minute Kas drops the portal, he wheels to the edge of the spire again, dry heaving as the exhaustion overtakes him. Gasping, he glares out at the horizon to see any tracks, any specific burning path... but the wetlands are all aflame. In the waters below he can make out skimmers and riders putting out the fires, ferrying people to safety. In the chaos of the inferno as far as the eye can see, there is no hope of tracking Balthazar. Though with the Brandstorm flaring and spitting in the distance, it is not impossible to guess his destination.
“He’s not breathing,” Kasmeer whispers, so quick it takes Canach a moment to fall to his knees.
“Check again, then!” Rytlock grunts, still kicking dirt around to put out some of the fires closer to their unconscious commander.
“Nothing, Rytlock, I’m looking, I’m trying, I—”
“Then. Check! AGAIN !” the charr roars, and Kasmeer bursts into tears. Her powder white robes are stained with black and red and brown, and she smears the commander’s blood across her face as she wipes at her eyes.
She hiccups. “I-I can’t,” another hiccup, “feel his heartbeat.”
“Out of the way,” Rytlock commands, and Kasmeer skitters backwards gladly. She pulls her knees up to her chest and hiccups down a sob. Only when he finds the will to stand, to take a few steps closer, can Canach hear her praying to Lyssa, beseeching her for some duplicitous mesmer miracle.
His legs are shaking dangerously, and his arms too, like twigs in a hurricane. He’s breathing hard, almost hyperventilating, and he can’t stop looking at him. His lips a pale purple, the same shade as the nasty scar across his right brow and cheek.
“Come on, cub,” Rytlock says, voice low. “I’m the only one who’s supposed to have a story about going to the Mists. You’re too young for that. You’re too young.” He’s got Cillian laying across his lap, wiping some of the blood off his face with the most delicate touch Canach has ever seen from the charr.
“Guys?”
Fuck .
“Guys, what’s happening?” Taimi’s voice through the communicator is tinny, terrified. “What’s going on?”
Kasmeer sniffles and hiccups again. “The c-commander, he’s not...he’s not—”
“He’s dead,” Rytlock announces.
The wind howls so loudly on the spire that Taimi’s soft little “what?” is almost lost entirely.
“He’s dead.”
Canach turns away again, stomach churning. Dead.
“N-no, no, no that can’t be possible. That—have you tried healing him? Maybe Kas’s mesmer magic might work, or, hang on, I have some notes on human anatomy here somewhere—”
Rytlock lets out a long sigh. “He’s dead , Taimi.”
“CPR!” she announces, as though not having heard him. “CPR, duh, that might help, you know, with whatever’s—”
“Taimi,” Canach says. His voice is hoarse, and he’s surprised at how it sounds like he’s pleading. He doesn’t say anything else.
With the silence hanging between them all, heavy as a funeral shroud, Canach walks over to where Caladbolg lies, flung almost off the edge of the spire. A single leaf still smolders upon it, and he licks his fingers to pinch out the flame.
He picks it up slowly, expecting it to weigh more than it does. He tests a swing and staggers. He’s never used a greatsword before. A tiny, horrible thought reminds him he’ll have just a little bit of time to try. Just a little bit, before the world burns.
He shifts his grip upon the hilt, gliding his fingers over the flat of the blade like he’s seen Cillian do a thousand times before. Tentatively, he lifts the sword to his nose and breathes in. Having channeled so much of his magic, surely...yes. There. The faintest hint of cedar, of lilac, of him , hanging in the folded bark and leaves. He breathes it in again, and again, and once more still, until his reverie is broken by Kasmeer’s shaky whisper.
“What do we do now?”
No one says anything.
She hiccups in the silence. “I-I don’t know Lyssa’s funerary practices, though I’m sure I could find them out.”
“I could help,” Taimi adds with a sniffle. She’s been crying this whole time, soft little sobs in their earpieces, but Canach didn’t hear it until now.
Caladbolg in hand, he starts walking back to the airship.
“Did he have any...family?” Taimi asks. “You know...aside from...us?”
Canach freezes. He doesn’t know. He has no idea. He only just found out that Cillian was adopted, but whether or not he still had that family? He never asked. This whole time, and he never asked, never—
“Get back!”
“Commander!”
Canach spins around so fast he loses his balance and stumbles a step forward. Rytlock and Kasmeer have both backed away from Cillian’s limp corpse, which is now hovering ever so gently above the ground. There’s a surge of wind, of magic , of something so powerful it glows an aching, hopeful blue above Cillian’s chest.
“Is that…?” Canach hardly registers the words leaving his mouth, the desperate prayer caught in his throat.
“Wait, what’s going on there? You all said the commander was dead?”
Whatever power it is, it lifts him onto his feet, then just as quickly disappears from around them. Cillian sways and collapses onto his knees. “I…” he starts, only to lead into a hacking cough. He spits some blood onto the ground. “I was dead, Taimi. But now I’m back.”
“Yeah, but that’s not how ‘dead’ works!” Taimi sounds hurried, and there’s distinct sounds of typing as she clearly records whatever is going on.
Canach frowns. There’s no room for hope in times like these, with gods and dragons on the loose. “She makes a good point. We all checked, Commander, and you were very much…” his voice catches again. He swallows it down. “No longer with us.”
“And he’s still not. This is a trick!” Rytlock growls, moving his hand to Sohothin.
“Kas, is this one of yours?” Canach asks, deadpan. He can’t hope. He can’t .
“It’s not an illusion,” she says. She sounds awed, and scared.
“Not me. I’m alive. I’m still the commander.”
His voice is honey, the sweetest sound he’s ever heard. Every single damned thorn on him wants to rush forward and hold him, touch him, make sure he’s there, he’s real. Instead, Canach plants Caladbolg’s blade into the soil and steadies himself. Waits.
“Poke him. If he’s squishy, he’s a mummy; if he’s leathery, he’s Awakened; and if he’s nothing, he’s a ghost!”
Rytlock snorts. “We’re not going to poke the commander, Taimi.” At this point, Canach knows the charr well enough to tell that that toothy snarl is a grin.
“Listen,” Cillian says, standing slowly. He rubs at his neck, at his shoulders. There’s already a deep bruise forming. “Balthazar has Aurene.”
Kas glances briefly at Canach before speaking. “We know. He was taking her south toward Kralkatorrik when we arrived. We tried to stop him, but there were too many Forged.”
Canach rolls his eyes. Leave it to Kas to couch her words carefully. “And I hate being the bearer of bad news, but it appears that Balthazar has managed to build up quite a formidable army of Forged,” he adds. He's surprised at how stoic he's managed to sound, and feels a rush of gratitude towards every casino he's ever stepped foot in for teaching him how to control his tells.
“He does seem to make ‘em faster than we can break ‘em,” Rytlock adds with a growl.
Despite everything, Cillian smirks. “That’s why we need an army of our own. And I met someone in the Domain of the Lost who told me where I can borrow one.”
Rytlock crosses his arms and barks out a laugh. “‘Borrow?’ An army?” he asks, right as Canach quietly says, “‘Domain of the Lost?’”
Cillian meets his eye with a look that says I’ll tell you later .
“Yay, we have a plan!” Taimi buzzes through their communicators. She’s still typing, too.
“Kas, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Cillian asks, taking a second to tear his eyes away from Canach. “How about an illusion?”
“I don’t know of any illusion that will make the four of us look like an army,” she says.
“It doesn’t have to. It just needs to disguise us as someone else...I just have to finish securing our cover story.”
“Okay,” Kas nods. “I’ll be standing by, then.” She smiles weakly, wiping at her face again.
Canach can’t help but chuckle. “And I’ll be at the casino in Amnoon. If you can come back from the dead, I want to double my wager on you.”
When Cillian smiles at him, so broad and so genuine, Canach wants to wilt . “Fine. I’ll be heading there myself, too. I need some more information to set this all up...and maybe a bath. But I’ll get word to you all when the time is right.” He rolls his shoulders with a groan and makes it one step towards the airship before Kasmeer charges in with a hug.
Canach takes the opportunity to board the ship first, and makes his way to the bow. He can hear Kasmeer hurry into the cockpit, telling the shocked navigator to take them back to Amnoon. And he can hear Rytlock murmur something to Cillian that makes him laugh out loud and say, “It’s good to be back, buddy.”
And then Rytlock is back on board the ship, and it’s all silence again. It occurs to him that he is still holding Caladbolg.
He doesn’t want to turn around, doesn’t want to face him. How do you tell someone you gave up on them that quickly? Someone like him, who defies everything that’s ever faced him? How can you tell someone so magical, so good, so damned purposeful and necessary to the world that death itself spat him back out, that you can’t bear to lose him again? That someone like you wants him ?
“Thanks for holding onto Caladbolg for me,” Cillian says simply. He’s standing next to him now, close, but not too close. As always, giving him enough space to back out, to run.
Canach hands over the greatsword a little too quickly. “Of course,” he says. He opens his mouth to say something else, something witty and smarmy, but nothing comes out.
“Of course,” he repeats, stupidly.
Cillian just smiles, straps the blade in place onto its home on his back. He reaches out and pats Canach briefly on the shoulder, like he’s consoling him . And that’s it. He turns around, he makes to leave.
Without thinking, Canach snatches the man’s wrist and stops him. The moment Cillian’s turned around, Canach grabs ahold of his steep, stately collar and pulls him close.
“Don’t you dare die on me again,” he growls, so close he’s sure that Cillian can feel his breath on his face.
Cillian snorts. It seems like he can’t help it. They do have that devil-may-care charm in common. “I’m certainly not planning on it,” he says with a shaky smile.
Canach can tell that he’s using that smile to cover something, everything , up. He pulled the same shit when Trahearne died and when Braham left. Cillian Broderick can’t do heartache with a frown, only with a smile. But Canach can see the tearstains left in the dirt on his face, the crust of the blood that settled on his lips, and he knows that, inside, something’s broken.
When Canach doesn’t let go, Cillian puts his hands up in surrender. “I promise?” he adds, raising an eyebrow in confusion. It’s clear he doesn’t know, or can’t tell, what Canach wants him to say. And Canach isn’t sure either.
All he can keep doing is tracing every feature on that face over and over, and when he moves his hand off of Cillian’s collar and onto his neck, he can feel his heart racing. He can see the confusion in those gentle violet eyes, those eyes as soft and kind as fresh sprung lavender. Those eyes made of second chances and wishes and magic. Something churns in Canach’s stomach; he could swear it’s butterflies.
“Canach?” Cillian says softly. “Wanna let me go?”
He shakes his head. “Not particularly,” he all but whispers. He doesn’t think. He surges forward.
Canach crushes his mouth to Cillian’s and savors every fleeting, hypnotizing moment of surprise. He doesn’t care that he tastes like blood and salt and ash and dirt, that all he stinks of is death— his death—and not of cedar and lilacs. He doesn’t feel how cold he still is, how it takes him a moment to register what’s happening and respond. There’s nothing else there but the blinding, almost painful euphoria of when he starts to kiss him back, when he smiles against his lips and hums with contentment, when he nips gently at his bottom lip and cups his face in his hands, his fingers so softly settling everywhere there aren’t spines, as though he’s waited for this, prepared for it, even. The sheer joy of it crashes so suddenly into the despair he’d been holding onto that, all at once, he stops. He pulls away, and it takes Cillian a second to stop trying to chase him.
“Hey,” Cillian says, suddenly sober. “You alright?”
Canach snorts out a laugh and wobbles a little as the airship whirrs loudly and sets off towards Amnoon.
“Am I alright?” he repeats. “You died .”
“Oh. Yeah, that.”
Canach laughs again and shakes his head before pulling Cillian into a tight hug. “If you die on me again,” he hisses in his ear, “I’ll kill you myself.”
Cillian hums. “Noted.”
But he doesn’t let go. They stand on the bow of the ship, wind whipping at them, reminding them with its sting that they are, together, alive.
Behind the glass of the airship’s cockpit, Rytlock snorts. “Finally. Took ‘em long enough.”