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Barok woke up.
For him, waking up in the middle of night was no strange occurrence. He had practically been born a light sleeper and restlessness was his eternal companion. As a boy, he had often been too nervous to sleep and his sensitivity had granted him no sufficient quiet or comfort. As a man, he was always short on rest – work, day in, day out, nocturnal fears and nightmares.
Although the latter had subsided over the years. Less attacks on him had led to less attacks of panic, both night and day. Some of it remained, even late into his retirement; such things did not let go easily.
But he had solace at his side – although he had needed time to accept it – one that he didn't need to run away from. He took Barok at his best, at his worst and at his absolute lowest. He held him and set him math problems to solve whenever Barok's mind went wild and wicked and stole him away from reality to scenes of pain and the past; he let him go whenever Barok pushed him away in blind confusion, whenever terror tricked him to see an enemy in his ally.
However, this time Barok woke up calmly. Almost unnervingly calmly.
The room was dark, the curtains hung heavily in front of the tall windows facing the manor gardens and blocked out most of the moonlight peeking inside. Only a slim strip of brightness crept through the slit where the curtains met, shone onto the pillow beneath him and lost itself inside white curls when it grazed the back of Albert's head.
Barok sighed. Reliable as ever.
The sight of his partner next to him was a common thing, something steady and constant like an unbreaking promise; it was the greatest comfort Barok had ever been blessed with. He listened to Albert's breathing for a moment, gentle and even, traced how his hair flattened, piled and tangled on his pillow and hushed the urge to rest his forehead against the soft mass.
The knowledge that everything seemed in its place, that Albert was alright and at his side, that Barok himself was – after checking his joints for any aches, searching his mind for any troubles, and finding neither – alright and here as well, relieved him.
Barok turned to his rest again but, after short consideration, decided to allow himself some self-indulgence. Surely he would not rip Albert from his dreams if he stroked his hair carefully enough.
So he reached out.
And stopped.
His arm had extended, was now floating in mid-air, outstretched towards Albert. And his arm lay next to his head, resting upon his pillow, on the spot where he had lifted it from.
Barok stared. He rotated his wrist. It turned flawlessly, immediately with his commands. His other? original? nightmare? arm stayed. It was not his right arm, he closed a fist with it under his pillow, it was the left that he had just raised – his second left arm.
He screwed his eyes shut and reopened them. The scenery had not changed. He took a breath and it felt empty.
Shivers rained down his back and he saw that he was trembling as he prepared himself to touch the copy. His nightly phantoms often were strange or magnetically real but never this absurd, never this serene.
Slowly, he lowered his hand, lowered it, lowered it. Lowered it through his skin, into his flesh, into his muscle and bone yet there was no substance, no warmth, no wetness, only a sensation of cold mist.
The noise that escaped him as he stumbled backwards (almost as if something had blown him away, as if he had no more weight than wind) was not far from a cry.
There he was. There lay his body, unmoving.
It was not the first time he found himself like this – looking at himself as if he were another man – though it had mostly happened in mirrors, after combat and wounds he had no choice but to inflict, wounds that he could see but not feel on himself.
A faded, yellowed memory writhed up into his consciousness – his waxwork. The museum had taken it down after his trial, deciding the worth of the sensation was not greater than the worth of the artisan and model. The body in front of him bore a warped resemblance: a fixed pose, on its side, tucked cozily in thick blankets, still features, abnormally still, and yet somewhere inside the dull wax, a life that never was.
... Or had ceased to be.
Not yet …
His chest was heaving, dry and hollow, he was not tasting any air.
Barok tried anew to grab something, any part of his body because that body was his; undeniably, the scars on his forehead and shoulder, the deep creases around his brows, the snow white strands of hair were all his and his alone if he could simply, only get a hold of it, then surely he would find his way back, surely it would end – but he grasped at nothing, only chilling fog.
He did not like to disturb him yet at this moment, even Barok himself deemed it necessary. Albert?
he called out quietly and tore his panicked gaze over to his partner.
Albert was sleeping, undisturbed and at ease behind the blurry veil that seemed to separate Barok from everything that he had ever known.
He sighed – a sound without breath.
Death was no stranger to him and time had cleansed their acquaintance of the blood and servitude it had been built on. Barok had not been afraid of dying: It was inevitable and it had become foreseeable. Death had stopped lurking in the corner of his eye and had instead chosen to wait patiently for him. Until he had settled his departure, decided against his crypt in the Van Zieks's mausoleum and in favor of a companion plot, shared out his possessions between his dear Iris, his beloved Albert, their great-nephews and -nieces and their descendants. Barok had turned ninety-one contentedly and had simply become too old for life.
As if Death had sent an invitation, something inside him had informed him beforehand that his time was drawing near. He had been sinking further and further into more frequent dreamless dozes that wrapped around him, familiar like a warm cloak, and though his mind had begun scattering a few years ago already, it had come more and more undone recently, like a tight knot untangling at last and falling away.
He could not be certain when exactly Death would come knocking on his door, when exactly his body and mind would finally resign from their duties, so he made sure everyone was prepared: Raking the peaks of his eloquence together one last time, he wrote letters to be found by all those who should hear the echo of his farewell.
It was peaceful, so much different than what he had once assumed would be his end. And yet, it was not painless.
Albert …
he said and his voice quivered, filled with the yearning ache that he would never receive an answer again. Barok moved to his partner’s side and cupped his face with shaking ghostly hands.
A face that he had known for more than seventy years, that he had known so well that he would notice whenever another freckle settled on his cheeks in another summer together. A face that he had watched smile and laugh and weep throughout ups and downs in family, success and failure in career. He had watched it redden with sunburn on vacations at the coast, with blush when they were alone and close, he had watched it age, wrinkle and sag. All these years, Barok had watched him with utter adoration.
Albert was still comfortably asleep. His breath went slow, a little sharp through his half-closed mouth. He could not hear him, could not feel his touch.
Barok rested his forehead against Albert’s. There was no way to reach him here, no path back to grant him a goodbye easier than Until tomorrow,
to tell him all that was hidden in his I love you.
All Barok could do was wait.
The night was dark and long. Whispers broke free of the silence that had swallowed the world, the names of lovers, nieces and old friends. Memories rose of funerals, from grim and violent partings, from somber but fulfilled departures, and ebbed away, making space for visions of what lay ahead, who was perhaps waiting for him beyond the path. Now and again, quiet sobbing haunted the air, lingered and vanished. Morning came.
Blue eyes fluttered open and looked through him. Albert groaned as he rubbed them clean of sleep. He turned around, to Barok, and a smile softened his mellow features. He reached out and brushed a stray strand of hair behind Barok’s ear.
However, when he met skin, his fingers recoiled. Confusion spread on his face.
Of course, Barok thought. He had no precise idea when he … when it had ended, but it must have been long enough that his body, all that was not wrapped in blankets, must have cooled.
Barok?
Albert asked, his voice fragile with concern and it sent a pang through Barok's heart. Albert gently shook his shoulder, rocked it harder, Barok,
rattled it when nothing happened.
Barok’s jaw had slightly fallen open. Growing worry sliced Albert’s breath. He inhaled, bit his lip and leaned down to put his ear to Barok’s mouth. Please don’t …,
but Barok’s words went unheard.
Albert flinched away with a gasp. For a moment, he sat frozen, petrified, before he scrambled backwards, grasped for the bell pull at his bedside, missed and at last ripped it down. He whirled around, shook him once more, lightly slapped his cheek, Barok?!
Barok lay a hand on his shoulder.
Receiving no reaction, Albert pushed him onto his back. He sniffed and hiccuped and put his fingers to a pulse that had ceased beating.
He waited, repositioned his fingers, waited, repositioned, waited. No, Barok, not yet …
He pressed his palm to Barok's chest, halted and held his breath. And when a sob emerged from his core, his hand crumpled Barok's pajama shirt and a teardrop landed on his fist, his entire world had stopped as well.
The door opened and hurried footsteps stormed in, the curtains were thrown back and the warm sunrise drenched the room in orange. Albert sat weeping on the bed he had shared with Barok for nearly sixty years, bowed down to his partner, to his head that he had tenderly cradled in his lap. He had brought Barok’s hand to his cheek, so that he might dry his tears one last time.
From behind, Barok wrapped an arm around him and cupped Albert’s hand on his own. Albert …
he muttered. But it was in vain.
His doctor arrived, pronounced him dead – passed on in the night of the 5th to the 6th of October. Sometime later, Iris barged in. She held Albert back when the undertaker came to remove his body; otherwise he wouldn’t have let go. They found Barok’s letters, read them and read them again until their eyes ran dry. And Barok could not be there with them.
All he could do was wait.