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Zam doesn’t know why he’s surprised to see Vitalasy. It’s Subz’s grave; of course Vitalasy would want to visit. He’s surprised anyway. Vitalasy stops flying abruptly, self-consciously, when he sees Zam, so at least the surprise goes both ways. There’s no sound except for the soft thud of his landing; everyone else is asleep. The half moon lights up the left side of Vitalasy’s face, like he’s got half a halo. Vitalasy doesn’t move, just looks at Zam, and then away, like he knows he isn’t supposed to be staring but doesn’t have anything else to stare at.
Zam’s the first to break the silence. “Here to see Subz?”
“Yeah.” Vitalasy looks over at the grave. He’s holding a bouquet of flowers. Zam can’t tell, in the dark, if they’re cornflowers.
“Don’t let me stop you,” Zam says. He’s probably staring at Vitalasy too. That’s weird, right? He’s not supposed to be staring? He looks at the moon. It seems less fraught than the grave. (Does he deserve to look at the moon? Maybe he should look at the grave after all. He turns again to look at it. Fuck, Vitalasy’s there, now he’s staring again, oh God.) Vitalasy doesn’t seem to notice his internal dilemma, at least, thank God. He puts his flowers next to the cornflowers Zam put there; in the dark, they blur into a single mass.
“I’m sorry he didn’t come back yet. I know—I know you wanted him to.” Vitalasy’s being gentle with him and Zam doesn’t understand it, has never understood it. All he understands is that he misses Subz, that Subz would make everything okay again. That they tried to bring him back and that he doesn’t want to come back. Which—okay, Zam can relate to that much.
“It’s alright.” It’s not, really. He doesn’t say that out loud, that would be bad even for him. Vitalasy knows it’s not alright for Subz to not be here, which is why he’s here, putting flowers on Subz’s grave. “It’s—it’s not your fault,” he tries again.
Vitalasy’s tail swishes. “It kind of is.”
“Well, yeah, but not more than—I mean, it’s my fault too.”
Vitalasy doesn’t deny it, just looks at Zam, eyes glowing in the dark. When he speaks, he chooses his words carefully, one at a time: “I don’t think Subz would want us to blame ourselves.”
Zam sighs, long and hard. “Yeah, he wouldn’t.” He wishes he had something to do with his hands. He’s not good at sitting still but it doesn’t feel polite to parkour; he contents himself with picking at the hem of his shirt. “It was still kind of our fault, though.”
“Yeah.”
Vitalasy sits on the ground at the edge of the island, dangles his feet over the edge. Zam joins him, grateful for something to do. They aren’t quite close enough to touch. He’s paralyzingly aware of the distance between them. They’re sitting closer together now than they would have been with Subz between them, but it doesn’t feel like it. He wishes Subz were here.
“This, uh—this used to be your grave.” Zam’s not sure why he says it, other than that it’s something to say, and it’s true.
Vitalasy turns to look him in the eye and blinks at him. Zam squirms a little. “You made me a grave?”
“I— Yeah? I mean—of course I made you a grave?”
“I thought you hated me.” Vitalasy’s eyes are still looking at him, full intensity.
“No! I didn’t hate you.” Zam pauses. “Well, okay, I guess I hated you a little bit. But I didn’t—I still cared about you. Even when I hated you I still cared about you. I thought about, uh, putting myself in bedrock, while you were gone—”
Vitalasy’s eyes narrow. “Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t! I didn’t. I’m here, aren’t I? But I, uh, yeah, I mean, I—I missed you, man.”
Vitalasy’s legs kick. He turns his face to look back at the moon. In the dark, shadowed by his hood, his expression is unreadable. “Huh.”
“Yeah.” Zam leans back a little to look up. “Yours was, uh, I made it out of bedrock? And at first I just changed the signs, you know, I thought it'd be—good? I guess? For it to be eternal? But then someone—I think it was Ashswag—changed it with world edit, and I thought about changing it back, but I figured—I don’t know. It felt too weird for it to stay the same grave, and it was already—it was already changed. It couldn't really go back to how it was before. Does that make sense? That probably doesn’t make sense.”
“Not—really.”
“Yeah, I’m—I’m realizing that didn’t make much sense. It, uh, it made sense when I was doing it.”
“A lot of things,” Vitalasy says, “made sense when you were doing them.”
Zam winces and Vitalasy opens his mouth again to apologize. Zam cuts him off before he’s able to: “No, no, it’s fine. You’re—you’re right.”
“I usually am,” Vitalasy says, smile twitching onto his face. The moment passes; the smile falls. “I do—I wish you had been right about Subz. That he would come back.”
Zam pulls his legs up off the edge to hug them to his chest. “I don’t know why he won’t. I don’t—I don’t get it. I got the recovery compass, I made the beacon, I—I made up with all my enemies—I don’t know what else is left for me to do.”
“He said he’d come back when we needed him. We don’t need him yet. He’ll come back when he’s ready, not when you’ve finished your checklist.” Vitalasy’s voice is calm, reasonable, patient. It makes Zam want to flinch again, or maybe to yell, or to fight someone. He doesn’t do any of those things.
“I do, though,” he says instead, and means it more than he should. It’s a confession, a little bit. He thinks he might be being too loud—Vitalasy’s ear flicks, and he leans away, just a little—but he can’t make his voice be quieter. “I do need him. I don’t—I don’t know how much longer I can do this without him. I miss him.”
“You lived without me while I was gone,” Vitalasy says, still too-gentle. “You can live without him, too.”
“Gone.” Zam turns the word over in his mouth. “Dead. You mean dead. He’s dead. You were dead. …What was it like?”
“Quiet,” Vitalasy says. “It was—it was nice at first. But it got lonely after a while.”
“At least Subz knows he can come back when he wants to. So he won’t—get as lonely. It’s just like—just taking a break.”
Vitalasy hums. “I—wouldn’t recommend it.”
“What, it’s good enough for Subz but—not for me?” Zam pulls a string on the edge of his tunic as hard as he can. “Just do me a favor and don’t bother with a grave. Keep—keep replacing the cornflowers here, for Subz. He needs it more than I do.”
“I’ll make a beacon,” Vitalasy says. He scoots towards Zam, deliberately, carefully, still not quite enough to touch. “So you’ll know you can come back if you want to.”
“I don’t deserve it.”
“Zam. Look at me.” Vitalasy’s eyes are so bright, they leave a lime afterimage when he blinks. Zam looks in them anyway. “Did either of us deserve Subz?”
“Not really.”
“Exactly.” Point made, Vitalasy looks back at the moon.
Zam follows suit. “Huh. I—I guess that makes sense.” Slowly, he closes the rest of the distance between them, leaning his head on Vitalasy’s shoulder. It’s warm, beneath the cloak and the fur. “...Do you think he can see us?”
“I hope so,” Vitalasy says, and takes Zam’s hand.