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This time, Rogier muses - he really has gotten himself into the thick of it. He’s positioned himself, tucked away from the prying eyes of the other members of the roundtable, atop the balcony overlooking the lower floor of the Hold: a wise decision, he notes, albeit the nature of his self-imposed privacy means it’s difficult for people to find him, and even more difficult for people to bring him news worth sharing. Several times he has hinted for the grace-given tarnished to visit him, to no avail. He can barely fault the guy, though – it is not as though he himself is an exemplar of entertainment, he supposes, between his bouts of feverish muttering, and stale small talk. Every now and then he hears wisps of a conversation with Darian from the other room, and his eyes begin to itch: above all, he’s unwilling to admit to himself that he’s furious, and heartbroken, and frustrated; wants to scream until his throat is hoarse at the fate that the Death-Prince has thrown at him, that he could become something so – repulsive, physically, before he could ever make amends with Darian, but he believes himself helpless; instead he wiles away the hours staring dispassionately at the wall, at the floors, at his legs, the sputtering candelabra, the ceiling.
***
He dreams above the canopy of an ancient tree, of pink rotting flowers and apple cedar rust spiraling toward an unseen centre, like a tornado. Light kaleidoscopes unnaturally around him, and it is almost like he is the saint in a stained glass mirror. When the meteorites start falling, he moves toward the nearest one, reaches out to it like a newborn babe, and spacerock falls away to reveal someone who isn’t D, but it is D, and when Rogier leans down to relieve him of his helmet and to kiss him he can see that his eyes have rotted away into twin curse-marks.
***
Upon the breaking of the next afternoon sun, however, he is jostled out of his daily stupor by a sharp, metallic rap at the doorframe above his head. Light bounces off the armoured figure in the doorway and throws a watery silver onto the floor; a silver knifed with gold, and Rogier glances up in surprise at the figure of Darian standing in the doorway: he hears a muffled sigh escape from underneath’s Darian’s helmet when he can think to do nothing but blink stupidly at his arrival.
“You’re awake, Rogier,” Darian announces, by way of niceties, betraying the keenness with which he was watching his friend from afar, and making Rogier flush self-consciously.
“Ah.” He turns his head away to hide his embarrassment. “I hadn’t expected –- well.” He fiddles with the corner of the blanket while Darian makes no move to console him; instead striding several paces forward to face him, and Rogier wilts slightly under the scrutiny of Darian’s helmet. He gestures detachedly at the blanket hiding his legs – “You should come round more often. I cannot go anywhere, anytime soon,” – and surrenders a wavering smile, making Darian harrumph at the startling cheek of it before he pointedly settles himself at the other end of the bench. Rogier watches with equal parts fondness and fascination as Darian draws a worn wooden box from under his arm, and places it down reverentially between the two.
“Chess?” he murmurs. Darian chooses not to respond, instead pulling out little pieces in their descending orders, and Rogier feels like he is trespassing on the intimacy of a private ritual just like when he first surrendered this little piece of him all of those years ago: the chessmen kept with a pedantic maintenance; the white rook with a small chip in the paint forecasting their numerous tussles, the letter D carefully etched into the base of the white Queen that betrays Darian’s preferred side. Each of the thirty-two pieces are inspected and placed on their respective squares in complete silence, until the formalities are finished and Darian withdraws once again to his side of the bench. Fitfully, Rogier wants nothing more than to reach out -- to lay a hand on his arm, his leg; instead, in silent truce, he pinches the top of a black pawn and moves it forward. A hum of approval from Darian as he mirrors him: the sound rings pleasantly in Rogier’s ears; a dark honey that cushions the prick of thorns curling at his ankles.
“Well, I can’t fault that,” he encourages quietly. The face of Darian’s helmet reflects nothing. “Perfect. Textbook.” It is only two moves later that Darian begins to warm up to him once more; as he moves a bishop to capture one of Rogier’s pawns, and Rogier taps his thigh in delight. “Ah. You will regret that,” he jests – and Darian, bless his heart, rises to the bait: when he mistakenly surrenders his bishop to Rogier’s queen a few minutes later he crosses his legs impatiently, nestles his chin roughly into his hand. After all, he was equally as unpracticed as Rogier, although he was loathe to admit; he’d simply refused to share these games with anyone else once their paths had diverged. He’d packed the memories away until Rogier’s sorry image was too much to bear: but contrary to his expectations, facing his old friend again had felt like a wave of sea-water warmed by the sun; his familiar jocularity a heady wind against humid shores. A warm hand on his chest. He thinks of penance, commands his pieces as though he were floating through a dream, bathed in sunlight.
Queen to E7. Knight to C3. C6. Bishop to G5. B5. Unconsciously he begins drumming his fingers against his helmet, watches Rogier under the guise of analysis. Rook to D7. Rook to D7. Rook to D1. Queen to E6.
“There is something on your mind,” Rogier proffers, quietly. Bishop to D7. Darian does not have the heart to rebuke it; instead draws out the silence after his statement. He imagines thumbing at the pale knuckles of Rogier’s tired hand, bringing them to his cheek. Instead he moves his knight, and the dust-motes swirl, arrested in mid-air around them; the frame of an inconsequential afternoon neither are willing to let go of, just yet.
He’s plucked from his thoughts by the movement of Rogier’s queen to his edge of the board. Confidently he swoops in to deftly capture it with one of his knights, until he hears a whoop from the other side of the bench as Rogier zips his rook across the board, right next to his King, and – “checkmate!” -- Rogier crows, and D wrings his hands, groans despairingly, casts a leg over the back side of the bench and faces Rogier fully, fiddles with the fraying edge of his cape before he begrudgingly concedes.
“Well.” Darian bites out, his soreness evaporating before the warmth that radiates from Rogier’s easy smile. “Still got it, I see,” and that makes Rogier laugh, truly laugh; a startled croak that even catches Darian by surprise. “I have plenty of time to think, these days,” Rogier chuckles, which makes Darian turn his head to the side: it is partly an admission of guilt; a stoic acknowledgement of the singular role he’d played in Rogier’s despairing loneliness before now. Slowly a companionable silence falls; Darian is picking at the pieces of their game, turning over in his mind each move and strategy while Rogier watches him fondly; twinned gauntlet hovering over each chessman of his, alloyed metal throwing stars against his eyelids in the flickering candlelight of the Hold. He could, reasonably, reach out his hand to catch him. He imagines the helmet coming off, a glimpse of the sea-blue skin underneath. Hallowbrands circling the sockets, millipede legs trailing down the cheekbones, like charcoaled tears. An opened-mouth kiss that tastes like oversweet ale.
It is the last time that Darian visits; the next day, he finds Rogier in a slumber he never returns from.
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