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Their foundation was built on lies.
They lied to those around them, they lied to each other, they lied to themselves.
A friendship intertwined with insincerity, a friendship that couldn't break apart no matter what stood before it, a friendship that neither men wanted.
To Fyodor, Nikolai was an inconvenience. He kept everybody, anybody, at an arm's length, finding safety in solitude. To have somebody cross that barrier of his — well, it couldn't mean anything good.
To Nikolai, Fyodor was an imprisonment. Yet another chain to add to his many. He might as well have been collecting them, for he had so many types they were nearly admirable. Chains around his brain; morals and guilt. Chains around his neck and limbs; a plan he was following towards the world's destruction — and his own. Chains snaking past his ribcage, under and over his bones, squeezing right around his heart; his best friend, his only friend.
When Nikolai smiled, putting on a show for Fyodor, his cheeks would ache, and his lips would split. He was not being sincere.
When Fyodor would hold Nikolai in his arms, stroking his hair after the man’s manic episodes overridden with guilt and hallucinations, neither his voice nor his skin would hold any sign of warmth. He was not being sincere.
Nikolai remembered that day. The day before the Rats’ grand plan would kickstart into action, followed by that of the Angels’. The last day he would have to see his best friend (in the whole wide world). As he caught sight of Fyodor, he felt tearing across the surface of his heart, rips resounding in his mind. He didn’t show it. He continued to joke, he continued to tease, he continued to laugh. Whilst he pretended to enjoy himself, his mind tormented him. (Not an uncommon feeling. Yet, heartache was a different flavour of pain than that of being strangled by the chilly touch of imaginary metal chains.) He wanted to clutch Fyodor; so tightly that the breath would escape from his lips, and he’d press his cool hands against Nikolai’s cheek to warn him of his shortness of breath. Nikolai felt his happiest when being held by Fyodor. Fyodor knew that, but he pretended he did not.
Fyodor remembered that day as well. He recalled the annoyance that crackled in his chest as he was interrupted just as he was mentally reviewing his plans one last time. (Of course, someone such as him had no real need for such things as reviewing. He remembered what the plan was down to its finest details even after he’d only just plotted it. He remembered everything. There was nothing he could forget — even if he wanted to.) He recalled stamping it down and trading it in place for a grin; like this, he looked less unsightly. As Nikolai joked about how much he would miss him the following days, Fyodor returned the sentiment. He would miss him, he said. It was a lie. He would not.
Nikolai had laid on his bed, kicking his legs behind him, face resting on two hands. Fyodor wanted to reach out and stroke his cheek. Nikolai had a chub to his face that Fyodor did not have, praise to his sickly body for thinning him into the next best replacement for a skeleton. Nikolai was the opposite; though in exquisite shape, Fyodor had learned from experience that there was not a single inch of Nikolai that wasn’t soft; his face, his hips, his arms, his thighs — to Fyodor, he was a talking pillow. Fyodor was most comfortable when holding Nikolai, a cushion for his bony figure. Nikolai knew that, but he pretended he did not.
Before Nikolai had left that day, Fyodor had wished him luck. It was insincere. He was glad that Nikolai would die — not only because it would give Nikolai a chance to spread his wings (something that he’d come to crave for Nikolai perhaps even more than the man craved for himself), but because Fyodor had long wished to be rid of Nikolai. He did not mind indulgences, but he detested distractions.
Nikolai had laughed it off. He had thanked Fyodor and bid him goodbye. He had left that day with a small smile on his lips and a sad look in his eyes. He was not afraid to die. What he did not show was that he didn't want to die alone.
Everybody else was as good as nothing to him.
He wished to have his friend by his side at the time of his death, a reaper to guide him to his end, to wave goodbye to him as he leapt from his cage and steadied his wings, up, up, and away.
Still, he reigned in the emotions on his face and skipped away, his steps almost floating as they bounced away from the concrete, echoing.
The day of his execution, he lived.
He had told told himself he was ready for death, but that day, the moment he looked it in the eyes, he turned tail and ran. As he tripped in mania and fell, as he heard it catch up, as he felt its grip snake around his wrist, the panic he'd felt had given way to madness. It was then that his vision had been the clearest it'd ever been. It was almost as if sanity were lenses blocking out the truths of the world — the moment he'd taken them off, he'd discovered the one answer he'd been seeking all his life. It had been right in front of him, and he'd failed to realize it. The tears he’d shed cleansed his eyes, and through them, he saw the simple truth: he would never obtain a key to open his cage with, but he had found a lockpick that could do the job just as well.
He would kill Fyodor; kill him, and be free of the emotions that he plagued him with. In the back of his head, a voice whispered to him, even the ones you pretend you don't have. He ignored it. After all, what could it have been talking about? He had no idea.
He had wrestled free from death's grip, and surprisingly, it had let him go. Perhaps it was surprised by the invigorated determination that Nikolai carried his feet with, perhaps it was because it knew Nikolai was ready to come to brutal blows if need be. Perhaps it was because it had learned of what he plotted, and desired the life of the demon far more than the life of the fallen angel.
He had learned that the pain of heartache and strangulation by chains were one and the same.
Days later, when Fyodor caught sight of Nikolai's face against the backdrop of harsh, white led lights, he was conflicted. He had considered the possibility of Nikolai surviving Sunday's tragedy, he had considered the possibility of Nikolai dying on Sunday's tragedy. Both scenarios made his chest swell uncomfortably, and in both cases, he forced his chest flat.
His mask of neutrality had promptly shattered as soon as Nikolai flew towards him and enveloped his hands in his, its shards disintegrating into grains as Nikolai purposefully gushed out affections that were never supposed to escape his lips.
Their foundation was built on lies, and it was starting to crumble.
Cold encircled his thin hands as Nikolai let them go from his embrace, the warmth of his presence leaving with him as he stepped away to explain the rules of the game he'd prepared. History was repeating itself over and over and over, and Fyodor refused to learn its lesson. Ever the stubborn student, he never acknowledged the dulling chill that forced his hands into yanking his ushanka down further, pulling his cloak around him tighter, whenever he was alone. He tried to befriend it once, the loneliness, an irony that tasted bitter on his tongue, but was pulled away from it again and again when he met a certain man, who brought warmth into his life that it simply couldn't survive in.
Nikolai had created a splendid game. A specially-designed hand-wrapped gift, one all centred around Fyodor. He almost felt pride. No, he didn’t.
However, somewhere throughout the course of his plan, Nikolai had made a fatal mistake. A miscalculation. He had sat on the edge of a table, laughing so heartily that he had failed to notice it slowly turning around and around, until it was too late for him to get on his knees and crawl back to the right side, hands grabbing onto his feet and pulling him down, into the unknown.
With a turn of events, In his left hand, Fyodor held a glass vial filled with liquid, one purloined from a coat that no longer rested around Nikolai's shoulders. In his right hand, Fyodor held a gun, aimed directly at his friend's heart, fired not two moments before. (The echo of the gunshot was ringing so loudly in his ears that he failed to hear the thump of the other man dropping to his knees.)
Nikolai's body trembled as he looked downwards, right where a hole punctured his heart, a perfect metaphor. In his right hand, his fingers loosely held an empty gun. His figure, bloodied by a story so far untold, welcomed the spreading blood with its already drying counterpart. Like this, he was perfectly matching his best friend, who, he hazily thought, looked stunning in the colour.
He understood how it had come to this. After all, Fyodor had been backed into a corner in the final moments of the jailbreak. He'd lost his biggest trump card, the vampire he'd dragged along into the prison, and with time ticking away in the back of both of their minds, Fyodor had been left with no choice but to play dirty. It was not an unfamiliar path to take. The both of them had played dirty, dirtier, and dirtiest in order to achieve their goals many times in a past now distant.
Without the antidote to his poison, he would die. If he died, he would never achieve his grand goal of cleansing the world. As long as he lived, Nikolai would want him dead, and therefore, the only option he had left was to kill Nikolai and steal the antidote.
Fyodor knew him best. He had always known of all his biggest flaws, exploiting and protecting them in turn. As much as Nikolai could pretend he knew Fyodor just as deeply as Fyodor knew him, Fyodor was an enigma and Nikolai was not a genius. As such, he could not predict the chain of events that had been coming for him, and now that they had enslaved him, he had no choice but to submit. He giggled breathlessly, the pain in his chest a combined form of two — heartache and wounded flesh merging alike.
Fyodor stood stiffly in place, gun unmoving. "I'm sorry, Nikolai," He whispered, his voice filtering any emotions he might've been concealing, coming out blank.
"It's alright," Nikolai rasped out. "I get it, ha.”
“…Don’t say that. Do you not understand? I have betrayed you.”
“It’s only fair,” Nikolai murmured between gasps, “I tried to kill ya first.”
“This is far from the same.”
“I still can’t be mad at you.”
Fyodor’s eye twitched. Crumbling.
“…Why?”
Maybe it was because he wasn’t thinking properly. Maybe it was the rush of adrenaline. Maybe it was something he’d never known he wanted to confess. Maybe there was no one reason as to why he said it. “Cause I love ya, duh." His sleepy eyes flew open as soon as he’d said it. It was a slip of the tongue.
But he couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t relieved at admitting it.
Fyodor's arm slowly lowered to his side after a pause, his steps growing closer to Nikolai, whose vision was blurring, fast. At first, Nikolai thought he was angry. He couldn't tilt his head back far enough to see his face anymore.
And then Fyodor was kneeling in front of him, replacing the heavy gun in his hand for Nikolai's bloodied cheek. At the sight of his ruby eyes, Nikolai felt his own watering.
Nikolai meant nothing to him, Fyodor had told himself many times before. He had never meant anything to him. He had never been more than a chess piece. He was killing Nikolai in cold blood. He was glad he would die. He wouldn’t miss him.
“Go to sleep, Kolya,” Fyodor murmured, stroking his cheek. “I love you, as well.”
Their foundation was built on lies, and it had crumbled long ago.
And, as Nikolai’s consciousness slipped, his final thought was that he wished that, just this one last time, they could've been lying again.