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The Gnosis pulses in his hand, cold as the stone that used to watch him, perched atop its pedestal.
Pantalone weighs it carefully before he holds it between his fingers and brings it up to his eye. The gold glows rhythmically as if the Gnosis had a steady heartbeat of its own.
“I’m warning you. This is too dangerous. You know how complex the design I made for the Balladeer’s body to hold a Gnosis is. You can’t possibly—”
“Dottore, it’ll be okay.”
Dottore shoots him a skeptical look from where he sits across the desk.
“I doubt that. There are other ways to do this, I promise. Just give me time; time is all I need for you to take in that Gnosis without harm.”
“We don’t have time.”
We have never had enough time, goes unspoken.
Pantalone sets the geo Gnosis on the corner of his desk. “It’s quite alright. I’ll only use it in the worst-case scenario.”
“What is the worst-case scenario for you?”
“Besides, I am sure I can handle it,” he continues, utterly ignoring Dottore’s question.
“You aren’t sure. You haven’t tested it.”
But Pantalone is already sweeping out of his office. He only stops at the door to look back at Dottore one final time. Under his breath, he murmurs something that Dottore would not have caught were it not for his rapt attention.
“I can almost believe you care.”
Then the door clicks shut and it snaps Dottore out of the helpless daze he’d been put in.
Hah. “Care.” What a flimsy concept. I care for you but only because losing you would be a waste of capable hands.
But he knows it would not just be a loss of an asset.
Dottore cannot help but turn his gaze back to the heart of a god sitting so innocuously on the corner of Pantalone’s desk. He knows what happens to those who absorb a god’s power unprepared. He has witnessed it firsthand.
Truly, his Regrator’s ambition would be his downfall.
There is no stopping that man, though. He knows how stubborn Pantalone is and he has an inkling of an idea as to what he plans on using the Gnosis for.
There is a war coming.
For the first time in a long time, he has much to lose.
Through the bustling of the soldiers readying themselves for a war they have been long prepared to fight in, an argument, increasing in volume with every word, can be barely heard.
“You are the Tsaritsa’s Doctor. Is it not in your capabilities to implant a Gnosis into a human body?”
“I won’t do it.”
Pantalone’s voice is taunting when he continues. “You can enhance a god’s creation but you can’t—”
Dottore can’t hold back the simmering frustration and throws the Delusion he’d been repairing to the floor. It shatters with a painful sound. Neither of them bother to look at the mess it makes.
“I am completely capable of implanting the Gnosis!”
“Then why won’t you do it for me?” Pantalone snaps back, gripping the pulsing piece in his hand tighter. He advances on Dottore and puts the Gnosis in his hands despite the scientist’s protests.
It’s warm.
It beats.
It feels as though Pantalone has just handed him his heart.
“What happened to the worst-case scenario you spoke of? It’s too early for that. Whatever it is, it clearly hasn’t happened yet. What are you thinking ?”
“I’ve decided I don’t want to reach the worst-case scenario. I want to be able to protect— protect myself before that.” Pantalone twists a ring on his finger, worrying. Thoughtful. When he speaks again, his voice is determined. “Fine. If you won’t do it, I’ll do it myself. I don’t need your surgery; I can force it into myself.”
“Regrator, don’t make foolish decisions now—”
“You’re one to talk about foolish decisions.”
Dottore strides forward and shoves the Gnosis back into Pantalone’s hands with more force than necessary, and bites back the bubbling emotion that isn’t quite anger. He doesn’t succeed.
“I can live with anyone’s blood on my hands but yours .”
“You can—”
He squeezes Pantalone’s hands tightly, too tightly, as he pushes the Gnosis into his palm. “My foolish decision would be to force myself to live with that!”
There is a moment where Pantalone is a little too quiet and Dottore worries he said too much.
He backs away quickly to avoid the look on Pantalone’s face.
But he can see Pantalone’s eyes glisten as he turns away, crossing his arms. Silence stretches between them, Dottore already regretting his outburst and Pantalone contemplating his next choice of words.
“Then rest assured. My blood will be on my own hands.”
Those are the last words Dottore hears before Pantalone sets out to meet his fate. Perhaps, Dottore thinks helplessly, despite all his efforts, Pantalone was never meant to be anything else but a tragic ending.
He just wishes he would have said what was on his mind as Pantalone disappears into the foggy cloud of destiny.
I would rather your blood not be spilled at all.
But chaos reigns and divine wrath falls upon them.
The Gnosis weighs heavy in Pantalone’s closed palm, calling to him in a beckoning whisper that he tries his best to ignore. The worst-case scenario has not happened, so he has no need to use it. He repeats this to himself even as the gods’ spleen batters down on him and crushes his feeble human body under the weight of it.
In the distance, he sees blood splatter on dusty rubble, and a cry of vulnerability he had dreaded hearing.
He cannot tear his eyes away from the figure crumpling over. Wind whips his loose hair into his face as he stares in shock, disbelief, horror, any word to describe the sinking feeling in his stomach.
Casualties were to come from this war, and Pantalone had expected nothing but doom for both of them. They were never meant to last, after all, but the sickening grief is unavoidable regardless.
The Gnosis burns in his hand.
Then, it burns in his chest as he forces it in with much difficulty, gasping for air. Air comes in the form of acrid smoke and dust. The Gnosis sits next to his heart, taking up a space that should have been left vacant. Pantalone chokes on debris and on tears that refuse to come out, at least until he is somewhere he can allow himself a minimal amount of vulnerability.
Feeling like every nerve is on fire, Pantalone determinedly makes his way through the battlefield like an immovable pillar, untouchable, the Gnosis feeding into the power of his Delusion.
He has always lived life with a clock hanging over him threateningly and ticking away, a reminder of his ineluctable end.
But, now, with the Gnosis eating away at his limbs and at his soul, Pantalone knows the end is near. It was always lurking just around the corner; it was only a matter of when .
And The End is now.
Gold mixes with red in a gruesome painting that pools to the floor as Pantalone collapses onto Dottore, grasping for his face with crumbling hands. When the Doctor smiles that terrible crooked smile at him, Pantalone knows he wishes to scold him for making what Pantalone had deemed his necessary sacrifice.
He knows Dottore wishes to call him a fool, so he speaks first before he has to face that the worst-case scenario has occurred, and that he is holding it right in between his two hands.
“I can’t believe I am going to die in your arms. This is miserable.”
Dottore shoots back his snarky comment, and Pantalone laughs, dry and hoarse.
He has lost feeling in his hands that Dottore soon smears with his blood. Pantalone knows the blood is supposed to be warm and yearns to feel it, but to want such a thing is as futile as it is to deny that he has sealed his own fate. However, he can’t help but think that, if sealing his fate allowed him this final awful moment, he doesn’t mind.
They exchange what he knows to be their final words and cannot stop the feeling of his heart beating faster despite the knowledge and certainty that it is slowing for its own finale.
The erosion has reached Pantalone’s face, but he’s said and done all he wants to.
“I hate you. I hate you so much, Zandik.”
Pantalone sees the words form on Dottore’s bloodied lips, even as the golden dust crumbles his face into nothingness. He sees the hand reach back up to cup his face. He sees the moon mock them in the reflection of red eyes.
In the end, he sees that his sacrifice was unnecessary, but it was inevitable. And it was what he desired most of all.
I hate you, too.
The last speck of dust is carried away with the memory of two sinners.