Work Text:
Vik has grown to hate the color green. Hates the coruscating shade of it against dark obsidian walls.
It makes him heave in such an intense way that it makes his chest and throat ache. It rips open a chasm in his gut, leaving enough room for disgust to woefully clot in its place beside his organs.
The first time he died, he woke up to darkness, thick, suffocating, and ever-present like he had been submerged underwater. He’s there for what feels like decades before he feels his neck snap backward from the momentum of — what he soon finds out—rebirth, impossibly white light pouring in from a crack above as if the sky was opening up.
It feels like annihilation.
Revival is so violent for something so wondrous, the blessing of being able to meet with a loved one in the flesh when their time has passed.
It’s a miracle, it should be celebrated.
That’s what Vik thinks at least, laying on the freezing ground, too scared to move, terrified that his body will crumble and turn to dust even if he flexes so much as a finger. Shadows above him dance and flicker, pages turning seamlessly.
“That was two days should we increase the..”
A miracle.
Vik repeats internally, his soul still thrumming, struggling to become something from nothing.
—-
Purple is also a part of his avoid-at-all-cost-colors, when he gets home he’s—
When.
When he and Lazar.
He’s made a plan to disenchant his pieces of netherite armor and throw the damned things out. Intrinsically, it’s something a child would do. Destroying an item that had no part in his suffering.
But Vik feels as though it will help him. Somehow.
—-
He cradles Lazar’s head gently, ripped out strands of brown hair clinging to the dried blood on his hands from previous times before. Brain matter seeps through the crevices of his grip.
This is all he does nowadays, Vik holds him and brushes the molted white-brown hair from his forehead. Sometimes on good days, Lazar’s eyes shine with acknowledgment and he hums. A wretched little noise.
Today wasn’t a good day.
It’s fulfilling, Vik tells himself, holding someone that is. As a child, he’s always hated the heat of it, touch, flesh holding flesh. He’d scurry out of the way from his mother’s kisses. It followed him well into his adult years.
Lazar was always the opposite, side hugs, hand clasping shoulders, attached to the hip. Heat heat heat.
Vik understands it now even if he still feels ill at the thought of holding hands with someone. Gently he hugs what’s left of Lazar’s head close to his chest, his corpse twists at an odd angle. Holding, heat, hands.
Dream is analytically mean as they come, clinical. Fingertips on a crossbow, burning parchment paper, checking pulses. Nothing lingering but still leaving bruises.
Vik wonders if Dream has ever been held in such a way. To be treated gently.
Is it selfish to want to be treated gently?
Is it selfless to treat others gently?
He isn’t able to answer, the sound of footsteps dragging him out of his reverie.
—-
The first time Lazar died, he’d almost seemed unaffected if it weren’t for the manner in which he came back.
Vik came quietly, wind over water. Delicate. He lay like a broken doll.
Lazar was undecidedly unlike his counterpart, fever-pitched and tearing through existence with transcendental but very carnal hands.
“This-this whole thing is about Tommy isn’t it?”
Were his first words, vocal cords strained but a ringing overtone still followed all the more.
Dream looked surprised then. Thumbing through pages with language and sigils Lazar has never seen.
“Quick one you are.” He hums, there’s an odd satisfaction in it.
“You don’t make an effort to hide it,” Lazar replied waspishly. He pressed forward, “Why us? Why not literally anyone else?” He placed his hands against his glass enclosure, leaving red smudges that Dream will make Punz clean later.
“You won’t be missed.” Dream says, his words a creeping lull. He turns to face him, “Don’t look so scared you’re helping me create history. Feel honored.”
“You’re fucked in the head!”
Dream let out a hissing, “tsssk” and slammed the book shut, thunderous and violent, “You’re fucked in general.” His pearl-colored mask tilted to the side.
—-
Their hair has gone almost completely white, during the down times when Dream was done for the day and fucked off, Vik gazes at himself in the glistening stone, trying to convince himself that he is still the same and will always be.
“Now we really look the part.” He had whispered to a catatonic Lazar. “Like actual grandpas.” Then he exhaled lightly because laughing hurts. His rib cage has been obliterated more times than he can count.
Lazar didn’t move.
Lazar doesn’t move that often anymore like he’s been nailed to the ground. The weight of oblivion and resurrection heavy on his body.
“Don’t worry.” Vik whispers, voice all hushed and quivery. “I’ll get us out of here.” He takes up his usual job of cradling him, this time carding slender fingers through Lazar’s hair.
Lazar blinks, clear.
That’s another difference between the two of them: Lazar's eyes still work while Vik’s has gone blind from one eye caused by a firework at point-blank range.
“Don’t worry.” He repeats. This is the hundredth time Vik has made this promise or at least feels like it and it’s the hundredth time he’s going to break it.