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“Please,” Asra begs. “Run away with me. We’ll go somewhere safe, somewhere the plague can’t get us.”
In response, you only sigh in frustration and grit your teeth, pacing the floor of the shared shop. This isn’t the first time you’ve had this discussion. Or the second. Or the tenth. “You know I can’t do that, Asra.”
His frustrated sigh echoes your own. “The only thing left in Vesuvia is the plague! If we leave, we’ll be together, safe!”
“There are too many people here who need my help. Doctor Devorak and I are getting close to a cure, I can feel it!”
“You’ve been saying that for weeks,” Asra reminds you. “And you can’t help anyone if you get the plague and die!”
You stop your pacing, surprised by the desperation in his normally calm voice. In all the times you’ve had this argument, neither of you has ever so explicitly brought up the inevitable. Nonetheless, your eyes narrow. He should know this by now. “And I could never live with myself if I left them to die.”
Asra groans, desperation reaching a fever pitch. “People have been searching for a cure for months—all they’ve gotten is death! That’s all that’s left for us here! Death! Is that what you want?” His voice is almost to the point of yelling; in the six years you’ve known each other, you’ve never heard him yell.
Despite your shock, your own voice rises to meet his. “Of course I don’t want to die, Asra! I don’t want anyone to die! That’s why I can’t go! I’d rather die trying to save Vesuvia than run and leave them to die, like a coward!”
Asra flinches as if he’s been struck; pain flashes in his eyes.
Your stomach sinks. “Asra—” you step toward him, ready to apologize, to tell him you didn’t mean it—but before you can say anything else, his face becomes a blank mask, perfectly neutral and cold.
“So that’s how it is, then.” His voice is ice.
“Asra, wait, I didn’t—” your eyes begin to blur with tears. Why can’t he just understand?
“If that’s your choice,” he deadpans, “I’m going to go be a coward and save myself. If you want to send yourself to an early grave, I suppose it’s none of my business.”
You choke on a sob as the tears begin to fall freely. “You... you don’t mean that, Asra, just wait—“
“I’m done waiting. Every day I wait is a day closer to one of our deaths.” He grabs his traveling cloak and hat from the coat rack by the door, winding his scarf around his face. “If you change your mind, you know how to find me.”
“Asra don’t you dare—“ you sob as he opens the door and takes a step out into the street.
He looks back at you, the ice melting for only a second as he says, “I love you.” And then he’s gone, the early morning mist swallowing him up like the fog of memory.
You sink to your knees with a heavy, heart-wrenching sob. The hurt and anger pulses out of your aura in waves, drenching the shop in heartbreak.
The second he leaves the shop, Asra is overcome with a wave of regret. But he knows his anger—if he doesn’t go cool off, he’ll say or do something even worse. So he continues walking the empty streets, heart and feet heavy with the myriad emotions he needs to work through.
He’ll find another way to convince you. He has to. If you died... he can’t even think about that. If only you could be just a little bit selfish. Just once.
But if you could, you wouldn’t be the person he loves.
---
It’s six days later when Asra returns to the shop, apology ready. The first thing he feels as he crosses the threshold is the residue of your magic, echoes of pain that almost knock him to the ground. This is how you felt when he left.
The regret and heartbreak returns tenfold, and his eyes prickle with the beginnings of tears.
He spots a note left on the counter by the door, in your neat handwriting. It reads:
Asra—I’ve decided to stay at the palace to work on the cure with Doctor Devorak full time. If you need to find me, that’s where I’ll be. I love you.
He skims the note quickly before shoving it in his bag, turning around to rush back out the door he just came through. It’ll take him all day to get to the palace.
He only hopes you’ll forgive him when he gets there.
It’s nightfall when he reaches the towering gates. The sparkling palace beyond seems to mock the pain in his heart as he walks the long bridge to the cyclopean doors, pushing them open without paying any mind to the servants who greet him. He doesn’t have much of a clue as to where your workplace might be, but he spots someone in a doctor’s uniform walking down the hall ahead of him, and calls out. “Excuse me, doctor?”
The woman turns to him, and he can see worry and stress in every line of her face. “Can I help you?” She asks, though he can tell by her tone that she has other matters to attend to.
“I’m looking for my... friend,” he says, cursing himself inwardly for not having a better word to describe you at the moment. Somehow, he didn’t think it was a good idea to say ‘I’m looking for the love of my life who may or may not hate me right now because I left them to, presumably, abandon this city.’ “They’ve been working with Doctor Devorak on finding the plague cure.”
Recognition crosses the doctor’s face, and Asra’s spirits lift. Then, recognition is replaced by sadness. Pity.
Asra’s heart stops in his chest. No, surely he was imagining it.
The doctor speaks. “I’m... so very sorry to tell you this,”
No, no, no, no.
“but they were taken to the Lazaret just this morning. They’ve... contracted the plague.”
The world falls apart beneath Asra’s feet, and he plunges into the darkness. No, it’s not possible, it’s a mistake.
His pulse is racing.
Or, wait. His feet are racing, too.
Asra is tearing through the streets, though it’s the middle of the night, tearing down, down, down toward the docks—the gateway to the Isle of Death. The cobblestone steps are a blur beneath his pounding feet, his body numb to each jolting step.
He must run for hours, but he feels no time pass, and no exhaustion slows his heavy limbs. In the darkness, he has no clue what hour it is when he reaches the docks, but there are no boats in sight.
No, there’s one. Moored to one of the docks. Someone’s private gondola.
He doesn’t think twice before jumping in, his magic whipping about him, frantically untying the ropes, sending the boat lurching forward on a rapid current and tearing toward the black island in the distance. Even from here, Asra can see the horrible smoke.
He’s not sure when he began to cry, but flooding tears make salty tracks down his cheeks as he sails forward, the lazaret looming closer and closer as his thoughts race with the worst possible thoughts.
The gondola strikes the black sand of the island, and Asra leaps out, blindly tearing through the night (or is it morning?) on legs he can’t even feel. At the iron gates, he’s stopped by a doctor in a beaked mask, stark white with red eyes, stinking of fragrant herbs.
“Stop, you can’t be here,” the beaked doctor says. It barely reaches Asra through the haze over his mind, and tears are still falling. “I have to see them,” he chokes. “Where are they?”
He can feel the doctor’s pity, reaching out to him in waves of empathy and grief. He hates it.
The doctor takes out a journal, turning to a page near the end. Each page he rifles past is filled with names. Dates. “When did they arrive here?” He asks.
“Today, this morning, I think, or yesterday, I don’t know,” Asra can’t control the words as they tumble from his lips, stuttering your name. “Please, take me to them, I have to apologize, I have to—”
The doctor cuts him off as he finds the name on one of the pages. He traces his gloved finger across the page, and says carefully, “they were staying in sickbay 13, but—”
Asra is already gone, tearing into the black stone building and down the darkened halls.
He pushes open the door to the room and stumbles over the threshold. His eyes scan back and forth across the cots lining the walls, searching for your face, your magic—but all he feels is the heat of the crematorium, just a room away. A new sob breaks free of his chest.
A doctor is preparing a few of the cots in the corner, but he looks up as Asra enters, looking as if he’d just run all the way here. “Can I help you?” He asks.
The only thing Asra can say is your name.
As soon as the word falls from his lips, the doctor’s already pained aura takes on a new shade of grief.
No.
No, no.
“Where,” he chokes, “where are they?”
The doctor leads him sadly through the room, past an empty bed, toward the door that leads to the crematorium.
Asra crosses the threshold in a daze.
The doctor leads him on, through a back door, onto the black beach. Small mounds of sand dot the ground as far as Asra can see. The doctor leads him down the water’s edge, on and on and Asra can’t feel a thing. The first rays of morning light are filtering down, but they hold no warmth on the island of black stone.
Asra doesn’t realize when the doctor stops, and he nearly collides with the beaked man. They’ve stopped at one of the mounds of sand.
Early workers are digging new holes in the beach several rows down.
Asra sinks to his knees, disbelief plain on his face. He shakes his head. There are still tears flowing down his cheeks, salty streaks that drop onto the dark sand, mingling with the ash and stone.
No.
It can’t be.
This has to be a nightmare.
You were there, only days ago, in the kitchen. You had taken his hands in your own, you had held him, your body warm and soft. And then you had fought, your words alive and angry—but you had been there—
The doctor puts a gloved hand on Asra’s shoulder, and the spell is suddenly, violently, broken.
Asra’s hands find the mound of sand and ash, and he digs. The doctor is saying something, but it falls upon deaf, ringing ears. Asra digs and digs, widening and deepening the hole—he can’t see for all the tears in his eyes, but still he digs.
He digs with unfeeling fingers, though he knows, even through the haze, that his skin is broken, bleeding into the sand. There is no pain, no fatigue, that can pierce the veil of desperation possessing Asra’s body, piloting him with single minded purpose.
Finally, finally, his fingers close around something hard. Shaking, sobbing, he lifts the object to his face.
Bone. Charred, scorched, yours.
The wail that escapes his chest can barely be described as human, sending birds flying from their morning perches. A wave of desperation, grief, pain, bursts outward from his core, so deep and profound that every living being for miles around can feel it—it drenches the beach, the crematorium, the whole of the island in heartbreak.
All Asra feels is pain.
All he knows are the sobs that tear loose from his throat as he cradles what’s left of the one he loves next to his heart.
He doesn’t know time, and he has no idea how long he stays there, bent over your grave, letting his tears mingle with your ashes, his grief creating a physical barrier around him that the gathered doctors can’t cross.
When no more tears can fall, when no more sobs can heave themselves free of his heart, Asra’s vision goes black.
---
There are tears falling from both of your eyes when you pull away, hands still resting on either side of Asra’s face. Though dulled by the years since your death (and subsequent resurrection), his grief is still raw and painful in his memories, and he heaves a shaking sob as he opens his eyes again.
“Asra,” you whisper, thumbs stroking the droplets from his cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
Despite his tears, your apology startles him into a laugh, though his voice is still shaking as he meets your eyes. “All these years, I’ve been waiting to be able to apologize to you, and you beat me to it.”
You sniffle in return, giving a small laugh to match his. These memories, these moments... they’re not something you’re ever going to be able to remember for yourself. You won’t ever know exactly when you caught the plague, or if your research with Julian would have ever yielded fruit—though, knowing what you know now about the cause of the plague, you suppose your death was the catalyst that led to Lucio’s defeat. In a strange way, Asra’s heartbreak was the only thing that could have saved Vesuvia... but he shouldn’t have had to go through it. Neither of you should have.
With another sob, you pull Asra to you tightly, and he returns your embrace, tucking his head against your neck, tears falling onto your shoulder. His voice is muffled as he chokes out, “I shouldn’t have left you. I should have been there. I’m so sorry.”
You hug him tighter, grounding the both of you. “If you hadn’t left, neither of us would be here right now.”
He shudders, and there you remain, rubbing soothing circles on his back as the flickering candles burn lower and lower, the room you share slipping into twilit darkness, until the emotions brought on by the painful memories finally begin to ebb.
Asra is here. You are here. And nothing is going to part the two of you again—not in any way that matters.
Eventually, his breathing evens out, and the gentle familiarity of his heartbeat echoes reassuringly in your chest. You move to run your fingers through the fluffy shock of his hair. “Thank you Asra,” you murmur. Showing you those memories... you know it wasn’t easy for him. It wasn’t easy for you, either. But you needed to see them. To understand. To feel what he felt.
When he pulls away, it’s only to look you in the eyes—his amethyst gaze, always full of the fiercest devotion, made even more intense by the grief you now share. “I love you, so much,” he whispers into the dying light. And you know with certainty that the love in your eyes matches his; just as you know by the magic that connects your hearts that there is no force stronger than this: than the two of you, together.
As the last candle burns out, you hold each other close—and as sleep finally finds you, it finds you together.