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Wilde is getting real tired of the color blue.
It surrounded them, glowing in the flowers and the zombies, spreading through unnatural veins. Zolf is beside him on his right, glaive aflame and out defensively, and Hamid is on his left, hands sparking with dragon fire, hovering some feet above his head. Wilde is singing beneath his breath, feeling his magic course through him, feeling the presence of the party around him as he supports them.
He spreads his hands, changing tune, and calls to the world an illusion - something big, distracting. It’s off to the right of the zombies around them, and his hands twitch and jerk, directing the illusion. He turns his head and sees a dozen zombies following it, chasing after the warp in reality.
They’re going to win this, Wilde thinks. Flame erupts in the center of the zombies from Hamid above him, and Zolf slices and strikes with his glaive. Azu and Cel are somewhere behind him, and Wilde can hear the howl of Azu’s axe as she strikes out at the zombies.
There aren’t many left. There’s an explosion and the sound of screeching - Cel’s bombs, Wilde thinks automatically, and then the flash of fire in front of him.
Hamid fired too close. The world goes white as the flame erupts, heat searing across his skin, and Wilde sees Zolf turn away, sees skeletons coming at him from his right-
Pain flares in his stomach, and spikes as the weapon is pulled out. Wilde’s vision comes back to a skeleton in front of him, blue flowers in its eyes as it tilts its head at him, holding the weapon, and then it erupts into flame.
Wilde stumbles back, away from the fire that’s suddenly devouring the rest of the zombies. His hand goes to his stomach, where pain throbs and flares white-hot, and his hand is immediately soaked in blood. He feels dizzy, the world blurring into red flame and blue flowers.
“Wilde,” says someone, distantly, and there’s a hand on his arm. Wilde tries to form a response, his mouth opening, but all that comes out is a pained sob.
The hand is now pushing on his arm, and Wilde realizes his knees have given out, and now there’s two hands trying to hold him up. Something’s glowing. His name is repeated, again, and Wilde’s vision has narrowed into a blur of fire several feet in front of him.
The red dances, swirls into orange, into gold, into red again…
-0-0-0-
“Wilde- Wilde,” Zolf repeats, desperately. The man goes limp in his arms, eyes closing, and there’s far too much blood streaming from between his fingers. “Fuck- Wilde-“
Zolf looks up. The skeletons are being devoured by flame and sliced by Azu’s axe and exploded by Cel’s bombs. They’ve seen Wilde go down, and Zolf catch him, and they surround him in a protective circle.
Zolf turns back to Wilde and starts casting every healing spell he can think of.
He hopes desperately, his hands glowing as he holds them over Wilde. “Come on, Wilde,” he whispers, “get up, get up, you’re not allowed to die on me again, that’s not how this works-“
He stays limp. Zolf ignores Azu breaking the circle and focuses on Wilde. Wilde, limp in his arms, blood streaming from his stomach. Wilde, the bastard of a man that Zolf cares about.
Wilde, taking a deep breath, Zolf feeling his last healing spell go through, and the blood flow stops.
Zolf carefully takes Wilde’s hand away from his stomach, seeing the wound barely knitted together. He feels a breath escape him that’s shakier than he’d ever admit, and presses his fingers against Wilde’s throat to feel the pulse there. Light, quick, but there. Still there.
He looks up, ready to enter the fight again-
Cel’s voice. “Zolf-“
The zombie a foot away moves, skipping through the space until it’s right in front of Zolf, and he barely gets a hand up before there’s a sword stabbing into his chest.
Something hits the zombie’s head, as Zolf’s vision narrows, and then it explodes against it. The sword comes out in a flare of pain, and Zolf’s vision goes dark.
-0-0-0-
Wilde wakes up to silence.
The first thing he does is see the sky. The second thing he does is try to sit up, and that’s when dull pain flares through his stomach and he gives a cry out before leaning on his elbows.
The third thing Wilde notices is that his right hand is wet.
He looks down, and there’s blood pooled around his hand, and he follows the trail up to white hair, up to-
“Zolf?” Wilde asks, and he hasn’t had that tone of helpless, lost confusion since he was young.
“Wilde…” Cel says, somewhere off to the right of his head, before they turn around to meet another of the few remaining zombies. Wilde ignores them and sits up, the pain in his stomach nothing compared to the stone dropping in it, the way his heart sinks.
He shakes Zolf, uncaring about the blood soaking one hand getting on him. “Zolf, no, no, this- no, you can’t-“
His words end in a sob he didn’t realize was building, and suddenly Wilde is fighting tears. He presses two bloody fingers to Zolf’s throat frantically, even as his breaths come quicker and something inside him starts to break.
Silence. Zolf’s skin is cold, Wilde thinks abruptly, hysterically, and then his words come back.
“Zolf- Zolf, no, you can’t be- that’s not how this works- we were supposed to go- we were supposed to go on holiday together, we were- we were so close, Zolf, we won-“
Wilde’s voice breaks into another sob, and then another, and then he starts singing.
His magic flutters to life, spreads through him, and his song echoes around the area. Wilde thinks of Zolf, of bringing him back. He wants him to take a deep breath, to open his eyes and ask what Wilde’s been so worried about, say that he’s never seen him cry and that it’s not a good look on him (it’s not, not like this). He wants him to sit up and wince, wants to put his arm around his shoulder and lift him up. Maybe carry him too, though Wilde thinks Zolf would sooner stab him than let him carry him. Even if he does have a- a wound that might have killed him. Might. Maybe.
Wilde keeps singing.
He knows it’s too late. He can feel Zolf’s skin, still cold against the fingers he has against his neck, blood pooled around his body and sticking in his hair. His braids have come a little undone, and he has dirt and blood on his face, and his clothes are torn, and Wilde thinks he would only look better if he were alive.
He wants Zolf to live.
( the fire of their love burned bright,
and unturned came the heavy night,
and then, while he could still believe
his desperate stream of words did weave)
Wilde sings, and sings, and in one of the songs he curses Zolf out for being such a selfless idiot, and in another he declares that he loves him, and in a third he describes what their life would’ve been.
It doesn’t heal him. Zolf doesn’t take a breath in, doesn’t sit up, the story doesn’t end happy.
Instead, flowers grow.
Wilde sees morning glories, in the corner of his eyes. Affection, he thinks suddenly. Morning glory means affection, and it grows near Zolf’s hair, through the blood, around his ankles, near his elbow.
The blue is complemented by red. Declaration of love, Wilde thinks at the red tulips climbing from the ground, his magic wrapping gold around the flowers. The tulips grow around Zolf’s feet, curl around his hand and wrist, trace the line of his neck and jaw.
Wilde sings, and tears run down his face, and he thinks desperately that they’re ruining his makeup. He worked hard on that, not having many opportunities for it in the field. It had lasted since the Svalbard castle.
Hyssop grows next, and it means sacrifice, in lavender purple . Wilde laughs, something bitter and sad and half hysterical through the tears. He’s missing so many notes by now, but he’s sung enough to keep his magic going, and he goes quiet with a soft hitch of broken breath, sitting on his knees by Zolf’s body and letting the spells play out.
Green carnations. Wilde set a trend for that, wearing it to show he loved men. It stuck, and here it grows, around Zolf’s other metallic ankle and up around his knees, beside his hip. It springs up by his shoulder, over near his heart.
Blue springs up next, forget-me-nots between Zolf’s legs and all up his side, around his other shoulder and by his head. Eternal love was the meaning taught to Wilde for that flower, and he watches sprigs of it curl with the green carnations, circling Zolf’s shoulder and left arm, next to his heart.
Wilde thinks he’s holding his breath, and he lets it out in a small, soft exhale. The flowers have stopped, now, and he thinks it’s over.
It’s over. Zolf is gone.
He lays almost peacefully, surrounded by flowers. Wilde stares at him, something numb and cold inside him now, the tears dried on his face and his songs dull now. There’s a strange color to Zolf’s cheeks, and he’s not actively looking more… well, dead. Wilde reaches over and pulls his arms up. He curls Zolf’s hands around his glaive, sets them crossed over his chest. It’s a warrior’s funeral - fitting for Zolf. Selfless idiot , Wilde thinks, because he’s nothing if not sarcastic and petty and in the face of losing Zolf, he will curse him out for his selflessness. There’s nothing else he can do except mourn, and really, he’s already ruined his makeup once today.
Farewell, says the sweetpea, growing pink up between the rest of the flowers, filling in the spots, forming a perfect, flowery, deceptively bright outline around Zolf.
( a memory traced in flower blue,
on burning hills of brightest hue,
where towering stems in silence stand,
the product of a once-held hand)
Wilde stares, and then he notices it’s become eerily silent.
There’s one heavy footstep, the soft shift of metal. “Wilde?” Azu asks, gently from behind him.
He exhales. He imprints the sight of Zolf’s body surrounded by flowers in his mind, peaceful and at rest, and stands up. When he turns to Azu, his mind is clear in a way it only gets when he’s compartmentalizing hard.
It won’t last. Not for something like this, but Wilde can at least make it back to the inn, or somewhere else, before he makes some bad decisions.
( and there beneath the weeping trees,
a golden tear, a sunbeam gleams
where the lover’s crown still grows,
above a skull that bears no woes
for liquid gold the air did weep,
through sweetest songs his death did keep)
Wilde meets Azu’s eyes. He ignores the shifting of her stance, recognizing what he’s doing as he looks at her, entirely steady, not acknowledging moments ago when he was singing desperately through tears, when he sung enough to make flowers grow around Zolf’s body.
Her head tilts, her mouth tilting down, a sort of sad disappointment. “Wilde-“
“We have to go back,” he interrupts. He’s Oscar Wilde, their handler. They’re in the middle of a war zone (they’re standing next to Zolf’s corpse), they need to go back (they need to leave him alone). It’s safer (less painful), anywhere but here.
Azu stares at him. Wilde doesn’t break his gaze, and then she gives a soft sigh. “Alright.”
Wilde nods and straightens, professional and brisk. “Right. Let’s go.”
He starts walking, and ignores the eyes of Azu, Hamid, and Cel behind him, concerned. He doesn’t have time for this, doesn’t have time to think about the injury in his stomach that should’ve killed him, doesn’t have time to think about Zolf’s body surrounded by flowers.
He walks, and it’s silent, and Wilde tries not to cry.
-0-0-0-
one year later
Wilde hates and loves the song in equal measures.
It’s accurate, and it hurts, and it’s a reminder of what happened. He blames the pain on the song, as if he doesn’t think about what happened every day, as if he doesn’t remind himself enough. Earhart had even warned him against spiraling like she did, in the months after.
As far as he knows, he’s the only one to visit Zolf’s body that isn’t anyone on the airship. People wrote a song about him and don’t bother to visit his body. Zolf and he have become a tale to tell, the story of two lovers, a classical tragedy.
Wilde gives a bitter laugh. They weren’t even lovers, really, not in the romantic sense. He’s fond of the word anyway, even if it was simply a platonic connection, even if they didn’t need romance to be connected to each other like they were. It’s the only word that can really encompass the connection.
Wilde stands and stares, at Zolf’s preserved body, at his gold magic shimmering in the light if Wilde tilts his head just so. It’s appropriate that Wilde managed to preserve him, that his corpse won’t rot, will stay surrounded by flowers for eternity.
Wilde opens his mouth, and sings the song, softly, like a lullaby.
the fire of their love burned bright,
and unturned came the heavy night,
and then, while he could still believe
his desperate stream of words did weave
a memory traced in flower blue,
on burning hills of brightest hue,
where towering stems in silence stand,
the product of a once-held hand
and there beneath the weeping trees,
a golden tear, a sunbeam gleams
where the lover’s crown still grows,
above a skull that bears no woes
for liquid gold the air did weep,
through sweetest songs his death did keep
His voice fades away. Zolf doesn’t respond, and the flowers wave gently in the wind. They do well too, a product directly of Wilde’s magic and emotions. They’ll never die.
Wilde sighs and tilts his head back to look at the sky. He closes his eyes.
The world is mostly healed by now, at least physically. Society is still rebuilding, and the trauma hasn’t magically healed itself for most of the world, but it’s getting better. People are being elected as leaders. The meritocrats have been overthrown, their corruption exposed, and the religious temples are all rebuilding.
And Zolf lays here through it all, and he looks like he’s sleeping, peaceful as ever. Grass has grown over the area where the zombies died, where blood stained the ground. It’s a plain field, preserved using Hamid’s influence. They saved the world, and Hamid had enough influence and money of his own to do this for Wilde. The fact that it was a war zone stained by blood and the last fight of the infection helped matters in convincing people not to build on it.
A small field of bright green grass, and in the center, the corpse of a dwarf, hands crossed over his glaive on his chest, bright flowers surrounding him.
Wilde takes two steps forward. He sits down, and toys idly with the ends of Zolf’s hair, and he starts to sing.