Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I don’t wish to do this either, but we’re going to have to stick to some hard rules if you’re part of the team.” Vertin’s monotonous voice nurtures a sprout of irritation that Pavia bites back with an exasperated sigh.

And that includes taking responsibility for our own actions—the last thing he remembers before begrudgingly starting the trek up the suitcase. He probably deserves it. He should take his punishment and go. Before things get worse.

(There are worse things that can happen apart from a one-night exile.)

They said his… accessories were hazardous; that his social etiquette left much to be desired (it has been that way ever since he joined Vertin’s ranks) and the last straw was the dirty look they sent him when they thought he wasn't looking.

Pavia has a penchant for noticing these things, you see. His aunt and her friends—they never wanted him around, wanted him dead if it’d mean he’d be gone, and it didn’t become clear to him when she slid the lock of that basement into place, god no, it was clear from the moment their eyes first met.

Pure loathing. Slinking its itchy gaze across his rags, laving its soot-covered tongue against his thin cheeks and dirty knuckles.

Those types of gazes would only multiply unchecked. Feed the hunger in his liver like dry wood to a flame.

So when again he felt the pinpricks of resentment tickling his nape on the day of the Foundation’s monthly ‘check-ups’, he made haste in fracturing a few limbs and called it a day. Too bad Vertin had a different idea—what about preemptive self-defense does she not understand? He briefly considered leaving and not coming back, but if he did surely a fate worse than death awaited him. There was nothing he could do except bite the bullet.

Pavia digs his heels into the dirt, tongue darting out to taste his lip as he recalls the crack pulsing out under his palm—the satisfying pop before a scream rang out and chaos ushered itself in. And he’d been so close, so close like a mere pinkie away from the exit… if only he didn’t stop for a victory laugh and his eyes didn’t fall on the one person who wasn’t on the ground writhing in pain.

Zima.

One of the few people he bothered to learn the name of. Ironically it’s because of how unnoticeable Zima is—in and out of the battlefield—like if Pavia’s eyes drew away for a second he would be dust blown away with the wind. The man supposedly mastered the art of disappearing into thin air just to suit his timid nature. (Now Pavia knows to zero in especially on the minute details—not merely his huge scarf and puffy sleeves—before his figure dissolves like powder snow.)

At the time, Zima had his hands full with parchment. Like a chipmunk with its cheeks stuffed with nuts and berries, on its way to burrow in for the winter. Another all-nighter? Pavia paused and squinted, tried to make out the writing on one of them, and there was even a loud greeting hovering on his tongue. But it was too late.

Reinforcements caught up to him by then.

“Cold as shit out here,” Pavia laments to no one in particular. He’s found a nice spot under a tree and cleared out the snow, though remnants of it clings to his skin as ice water through his clothes. It’s freezing and sticky. The only thing that’s missing is that musty, sour smell that he knows by heart. He could always bring out the wolves, but the thought of chasing after them sounds less than appealing. Instead, his mind wanders to keep himself busy—he’s good at that.

He tries to think of something nice, something verdant.

He thinks of the last time he talked to Zima.

It was during morning linguistics class. Pavia, no matter how hard he tried, couldn’t get the spelling of ‘inappropriate’ down and rightfully threw a fit. He doesn’t understand the need to obsess over his English, the same way he doesn’t understand the need for a certified education—when he’s been fine all along relying on his strength rather than his brains.

“There is a better way to say this,” he grumbled in spite. “This—dumb word.”

Zima, scribbling away next to him, paused to think. “…‘o-offensive’?”

“‘Wrong’.” He sighed at how Zima furrowed his brows. “The better word is ‘wrong’.”

“Oh.”

And Zima, in his wordless manner, took up his pen and did a demonstration.

“But, the word is still useful,” he commented scantly, “for when speaking to those people. They like big words.” Though he added the last part in a whisper.

His writing is always curved at the edges, rounded, soft, like Pavia knows his hair is too—it must be, if not why did that puny bird always find it such a nice spot to take a nap?—and after that they were back to radio silence as always.

It was nice. Nice in the way that soldiers from different fronts know occasionally to rally against a common enemy.

(He knows how to recognise kindness, but less so the kind that asks for nothing in return. In the end, Pavia told himself it’s because they simply haven’t talked long enough for him to get annoyed.)

More than anyone else, Zima… is like him. Like a phantom—drifting in-between the halls until caught inevitably in some unwanted conversation. Herded like a lamb into mission after mission to prove their right to live. They are both lone wolves in their own manner, dreading the day when their shadows snagged on a perceptive passerby.

It just so happens that Pavia doesn’t notice how said phantom decided to slot himself by his side, knees to his chest, until there’s the unmistakable sensation of body heat.

Pavia is nonplussed. ”You got kicked out too?”

He throws his gaze sideways—Zima’s fingers are toying with strands of grass next to his boots; he opens his mouth, and then closes it hesitantly, and isn’t he cold? Pavia raises a brow, drags his eyes down his attire—oh. Right. He’s almost in his element with those robes. Against his baggy clothing, his head looks comically small, like a detachable knob tacked onto dark fur.

“Vertin sent me… t-to check up on you.”

“Go back and tell her—she doesn’t have to bother.”

Pavia scoots away and then stuffs his face into his elbow. There’s a tickle in his nose; a pair of snow finches on a distant branch shoot into the sky as he sneezes (loudly).

“I am not cold,” he adds sharply, sniffling, knowing how it looks.

(A sudden flash in his mind: a small boy, might as well have been orphaned, shivering and curled up in fetal position with the icy dark cold creeping up his ankles—frostbite the only kind of affection he knew.)

He extends his legs until they are flat on the ground; the cold pierces deeper still.

“Okay…” Zima’s fingers reach up to his scarf, like he’s a mere tug away from getting it off. “But do you still want—”

“No.”

Zima slumps. “Okay.”

“Leave.”

“J-just a little longer.”

Minutes tick by. Pavia counts his rings and wagers that you could properly kill someone if you put enough of them in their nose. He tries not to think of his aunt in her fully furnished house. Then Zima takes out his quill and begins writing in midair. Astonishingly, the cold must do things to people, because at some point the quiet man starts asking senseless questions—do you think the animals get cold too—well, if they are, they’ll have no choice but to suck it up like Pavia did.

Like the both of them, right now. (Not everyone is born to warm blankets and hot soup, and not everyone wants to be.)

Pavia replies after a beat, almost grumpily, “they’re used to it.”

Zima stares at him with owlish eyes.

“You are not, are you?” Rustling. Pavia feels a weighted softness on his chest. “At least… take this.”

“I said no.” Pavia pushes it back.

“Please.”

“Do you want me to get angry?”

“But you need it…”

“You need it more.”

“I h-have endured worse.” It lands right back on his chest.

“Whatever.” Pavia purses his lips; he did not take Zima for the pushy type. He unwraps the scarf like it’s an infant’s cradle, and then coils it around himself. His back against the tree bark stings less now.

(He doesn't know that Zima is only pushy when it comes to his favorite things. Like his writing, his animals, his friends—)

It’s warm. Numbing.

Pavia can feel warmth lingering as if permanently ingrained, implanted, into the fabric. Zima continues writing, soft scratching from the words hitting hard paper filling the silence.

They both blink away snowflakes—it’s getting colder, and darker because the sun’s setting soon, but neither of them feel it.

//

A while later, Pavia digs out a piece of wood and begins carving the edge into a spear using one of his knives in his belt. For no particular reason besides to kill boredom.

Zima watches, again, with his unblinking eyes. He tilts his head to the side. ”I thought they confiscated…”

“The big ones. They confiscated the big ones.” Pavia smirks. “But size does not matter when it comes to a blade.”

What matters is the edge that talks business and whether the owner is sharp enough to make apt use of it, though he decides to leave that out. He has a feeling it’d ruin the mood.

Zima nods meaningfully. “I understand your feelings,” he says, “they wanted to take my… writing. They thought that it was ‘dangerous’.”

There’s a better word for that as well, which the Foundation staff just so happened to use themselves: ‘conspiratory’. They probably thought he was hatching a plan to overthrow the head department, paranoid fucks. So now Pavia knows they really do go after anyone who doesn’t tickle their fancy, using whatever bullshit excuse they can. A sickly spat forms in his gut, because an unwanted image surfaces of doe-hearted Zima fumbling to retrieve his creations, after they were rifled through like scrap paper—some of them probably ending up in the same drawer that his knives are now.

“You’d be lucky,” Pavia tells him, “if any of those idiots I beat today were the ones who messed with you.”

“Th-that is not necessary,” Zima says quickly. “Besides… they are meant to be destroyed.”

Pavia only gives him a confused stare, refraining from prodding further. It’s none of his business, but he knows himself well—knows he hates having his own possessions taken.

“If it was me, I will claw and gnash my teeth and do anything to keep it mine.”

“I can s-see that.”

Ah.

Zima is almost done with his writing now—Pavia can tell, instinctively, from the flexing in his wrist. He steals a glance: a splash of pink juts out from the side of Zima’s lip, and his brows are knitted, though mostly he just looks… anxious. Maybe it’s just the way he looks when he’s focused? Maybe the cold is getting to him. Maybe he feels uncomfortable around people like Pavia, who get exiled for being too much. Or maybe it’s—

Pavia clears his throat.

“What is there to write about?” he grunts, and cringes at the way it comes out too harsh. But he has a feeling that even if he spoke softly, it’d make Zima freeze up all the same.

“The cold,” he replies, like he’s processing every word before saying it, “how the snow… falls on branches.”

”Huh?”

Pavia cranes his head up: almost-naked trees—dark brown peppered with sugar; a disharmonious blend of red leaves against creeping white. It reminds him of a crime scene, how stagnant cold robs away the vitality of the forest.

“It is comforting,” Zima continues, lids falling half-closed, “everything goes to sleep. Hi—hibernation.”

Pavia narrows his eyes. His thumb brushes along the wooden rod in his hand, almost catching a splinter. “So they do not die,” he says quietly.

Zima sucks in his bottom lip faintly. “You… have not been paying attention in class.”

Busted. “So what? I do not need to know these things.”

Pavia scoffs as he resumes his handiwork, scraps of bark falling one by one onto the snow. He does it like it’s muscle memory, how the ridges are perfected to latch onto flesh and tear it inside out. Between huffs and sighs of if only we had a match for fire, he glances over to Zima, as if checking if he was still there—and each time he does, he still is.

And his words—flow. Like starlight floating through the air, or like the lights Pavia mistook for starlight when really they were the headlights of cars filtering through the gutter in the basement, bringing with them a pungent smoke that clung to his lungs and made him tear up.

But the words lack for smell, lack for tears. They dance until they are pressed to paper, like birds returning to a nest.

“Done?”

Again, Zima freezes at Pavia’s voice. “Y-yes.”

His flaxen gaze laves the work, lingers on each line, and Pavia watches him listlessly.

Until it’s all crushed. Crumpled.

“Fuck. What are you doing?” he hisses, catching Zima’s wrist.

“I—” Pavia meets his wide-eyed stare with nothing but anger, like he’s actually pissed, like he couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Zima’s writing go to waste.

Besides, they are meant to be destroyed.

Without thinking, Pavia throws the makeshift spear aside, his other hand cupping over Zima’s fist. “Come on. Give it here.”

Zima’s expression warps into that of pain—and panic.

“It is not worth keeping, Pavia.”

“Why not?”

He swallows. “I-I will make more.”

“Then keep this one.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“It’s—” Zima looks away. “Not good. Not perfect.”

“So there is no use for something that is not perfect.” Pavia’s grip loosens and he smiles wryly.

“N-no!” Zima’s face falls. “That is not what I meant…”

Pavia soaks in the twinge sprouting in his chest, staring blankly at Zima, until he sighs. “Just pass it to me,” he mumbles, “I will be the judge of ‘perfect’.”

The syllables are clunky when bred on Pavia’s tongue—as expected. He imagines it softer with a touch of sorrow when produced from Zima’s throat. Not ashen and gravelly and sharpened until a bitter edge. His fingers clutch at the edge of the paper tersely.

“This… is the snow falling on branches?” he inquires hesitantly.

Zima nods.

“It makes me feel…” Pavia pauses, fishing for the word. Not ‘inappropriate’ or ‘wrong’. The right word is— “Calm.”

Without warning, Zima’s face flushes red.

“I am serious,” Pavia emphasises.

“I-it’s silly… isn’t it.”

“It is not,” he sneers. “Listen, I have never seen snow in a biiiig, open field. This—” He jabs a finger on the paper. “Tells me.”

It’s clumsy, but Pavia feels he managed to get the point across. So Zima lets out a resigned little sigh, and Pavia thinks he’s content with that.

Zima’s cheeks are still red.

And it’s the colour of cherries, rose petals, and a far cry from any expression Pavia has elicited from others before (until he almost thinks it’s sincere) and now, he battles an urge to press his fingers—just the pads and not the edge of the sharp, black nails—all lined up side-by-side, against Zima’s cheek. Just to feel exactly how warm the man is, to the point where heat tunnels so utterly deep into his wool scarves that Pavia is still very much aware of how it is wrapped around his body, pulsing, slithering down to his bones.

“Th-thank you very much,” Zima whispers.

Pavia shrugs. “That is my ‘perfect’,” he concludes. “Is it good enough for you?”

“I-I… well, I do not kno—”

“You are keeping it?”

Zima’s shoulders droop; Pavia sighs.

“Fine. If you won’t, I will,” he says, pocketing the precious verses.

Tomorrow when he spends the night back in his tiny room, Pavia will rediscover the tattered script in his jacket pocket, remember their exchange, and press his thumb to the ink as if to reimagine the hovering starlight.

But for now, for that night, he learns a new word. Hibernation. Everything rests so that energy can recharge, is the way Zima explained it. The branches are not dead; just sleeping. The forest brims with life under the surface and though the animals get cold, they find shelter. Asymmetric and imperfect—the way the leaves are covered partially in snow, waiting to be blanketed by the coming winter.

Pavia falls asleep not by his own efforts, with his head to Zima’s shoulder, just shy of pressing into his neck.

And right over their heads, the sky invites a hesitant first snow over autumn foliage.

Chapter Text

“I am not getting a roommate.”

“Pavia. It’s someone you’re familiar with.”

“I don’t need a roommate to wipe my ass, if that is what you are thinking.”

“You need someone to make sure you’re on the right path.”

“You are a little girl—”

“And yet I am widely considered as being more responsible than you.” Vertin shakes her head. “Trust me, it will be good for you.”

He whistles a nameless tune, staring at his fingernails.

She stands up from her chair and walks over, patting his shoulder. “Pavia.”

“What?” he snaps.

She holds out a lollipop.

“If you fail the exams, you will not ever graduate from the Foundation’s lessons. You will be stuck roaming those halls for the foreseeable future, like a wasted ghost,” she says bluntly, “the missions you are sent for will decrease rapidly. You will be stuck. Trapped. Do you want that?”

He doesn’t.

“…what do you want me to do?” he sighs, taking it.

//

It couldn’t matter less, but Pavia hopes his new roommate doesn’t mind the motley jar of toenails and fingernails, nor the golden teeth that were too little to pawn. It’s difficult to part with things that hold such precious memories, especially when you never had much to your name growing up.

“That little thrift shop in Piedmont,” he muses, rubbing his palm against coarse black fur, “we had such a great time with Mr. Colombo’s entrails, didn’t we?”

The wolf under his palm snickers in reply, dripping shadow onto the carpet.

“And that magnifico tooth!” he hollers, clapping his hands, “good thing Leon did not eat it.”

Peter makes a slobbering noise as if to signal an agreement.

“I was wrong. This is good space. Plenty of sunshine.” Pavia smirks at the window, which is rounded at the top, long enough to encompass the full height of his wolves, and even offers an inward perch for him to sit on. “Means plenty of moonlight.”

He rotates his gaze around the cozy room, over the sweet wrappers strewn along the floor, until it lands (most affectionately) over the bar of chocolate—99% cacao, which is a rare find these days—with its packaging half-shredded between the claws of one of his wolves.

“Oh, god. You did not finish it,” he hisses in distaste, to Peter who has now taken a fancy to scrubbing his nose against the carpet, wagging his tail like a malfunctioning metronome. “Finish it!”

Pavia clamps his hand around the animal’s maw, thumb pressing down to pry it open. It snarls and thrashes playfully with its rear raised, mistaking the action for play.

The other two wolves in the corner prick up their ears at the commotion.

”Smettila!”

It was so easy to concede when Pavia was younger. Easy because he was malnourished and had the physical strength of a moth and the wolves were always so big, so eager. But now it’s a matter of willpower—a gnarly battle against man and beast—and another reason why Pavia has never lost an arm wrestling match to a human.

If it were just one, he would win. Two—maybe a struggle. But if they came at him in a pack—

“You always like to pounce! Damned cats,” he groans, falling to the floor under the tremendous weight. Andrea has the sharpest teeth and was taught to use it to her advantage, but of course education never bodes well for the teacher. Now Pavia knows what it is like to have his fingers munched by razors.

“The—chocolate. I am taking it, brats!”

Somehow his head knocks against the bedpost as he continues tussling wildly with the wolves, and it feels like he’s rolling down a hillside with boulders strapped to his body—it feels like home—and Pavia lets out curses between breathless laughter, slobber running down his face, until he notices that the door is cracked open and goes silent.

A familiar face gapes back at him.

Pavia slaps his palm against the side of Tonika’s head, removing the fur blocking his sight. “Oh. It is you.”

His new roommate is Zima.

Giving a shaky nod, Zima with his suitcase in hand looks anywhere but at him (nor the jar on the cabinet, nor the slimy coating his wolves have given the floor as a door gift, nor the sooty hairballs and candy wrappers littering the space).

“You are failing too?” Pavia blinks up at him, buried under the weight of the three creatures. The thought doesn’t seem very unlikely—every time Pavia found it worth attending class on a whim, something told him the writing Zima was always doing on his paper wasn’t from the lecturer’s ramblings.

Zima shakes his head.

“Vertin,” he explains. “She must have thought… w-we were good friends.” After that night, is what he doesn’t add, but they both know.

Pavia thinks back to that day—when he cranked his eyes open to be met with Zima’s chin in his line of vision, his own head cushioned against something too soft to be the ground—and fails to remember the last time he slept next to another person, let alone on their fucking lap, let alone slept at all (it was always ‘pass out’ or nothing).

And his forehead is still sore from how he violently lurched away until he hit a rock.

“I am taking that bed. Near the window,” Pavia informs, mustering the strength to point with his thumb.

“O-okay.” Zima nods. He makes a valiant effort to cross over the bridge of plastic, do a clean turn around the ball of chaos in the room without stepping on Tonika’s tail, until he reaches his own bed. Before he sets down the suitcase, though, he turns back to look at Pavia. And says nothing.

“What?” Pavia pushes out, barely stifling his grunts as he wrenches an arm around Andrea’s neck. He’s so damn close to winning this time. Just needs a few more seconds.

“Nothing!” Zima’s eyes shift to the side. “But… there is chocolate on your head.”

//

The ‘punishment’, as issued by his great boss this time, feels too self-indulgent to be a punishment. Now that Zima is here, Pavia surely won’t need to worry about the dust tickling his nose from empty shelves, nor the state of disrepair and uninhabitability that rooms tend to fall into when you don’t clean them, which is a ripe invitation for herds of rats squeaking noisily at night when he’s trying to sharpen his knives.

But there’s a lot more he needs to worry about that he finds out on the first day—sharing a single table, and herds of rats squeaking noisily at night when he’s trying to sharpen his knives.

“Damn. Your friends are noisy!”

Pavia drops his tie on the bedspread, chucks his shoes in a corner, and crashes to the floor with a shiny new toy.

Zima, sitting at their sole table and looking rather glum, replies, “they have nowhere else to go.”

“I know a place,” Pavia says, patting Maleficent’s belly.

Zima replies with that look he gets once in a while: brows knitted and pupils enlarged in meek horror. It’s a look he is all too used to seeing, but regardless. Expression looks better on him, Pavia thinks.

“Scialla. I was joking,” he says. “But that noise is bad. You are lucky ‘most all my wolves are out—they will want to start the hunt. This one—” He rubs behind Maleficent’s ears. “—is a scaredy cat.”

Zima whispers something into the ear of the bird on his shoulder, and before long the creature takes off. “Your voice… is different,” he remarks softly. “Rough.”

“It is a full moon and I got excited,” Pavia yawns. “You know what wolves do on a full moon.”

Suddenly the bird is hovering in front of his face, wings flapping like a copter, a packet of something clipped in its beak.

“What? You want to be my kebab?”

“That’s Zima. The b-bird.”

“The bird has a name? Your name?”

“He… is like your wolves,” Zima says. Family.

“The rats too?”

“Yes. They are not rats,” he mumbles. “They are mice.”

“Ah.” Pavia throws his knife aside to receive the fragrant bag with his palm, playing with the connected string with his finger. “And this?”

“Herbal. It is good—for your throat.”

Pavia squints at the contents of the bag, kneading the enclosed leaves between his thumbs. “I hate vegetable.”

“Not for eating,” Zima explains hurriedly, standing up. “You have to put in water.”

Arching a brow, Pavia hands him the pouch when he sticks out a palm.

“Wait here.”

Zima pads out the door, leaving him alone with the faint sound of squeaking as rats huddle underneath Zima’s bed, under the desk, near the heater, and presumably somewhere under his own bed too.

Sometimes Pavia is glad for extra sound. Besides the animalistic snarling and whimpering from the wolves, there’s not much that clouds his ears at night, making it easy for his mind to get lost. (And when it gets lost, it is difficult to reel it in.)

Back in his aunt’s home, it was clockwork to hear engines rumbling to life at daybreak right around the time that she dumped leftovers down the chute—like a mother’s wake-up call—and he’d be unlucky to come across anything resembling vegetables. They were always bitter and salty and even the wolves found his arm nicer to chew on.

Zima’s light footsteps are in the hallway. They thud like wing beats, the one thing that he can never seem to conceal, despite everything.

“Drink,” is the only instruction he gives, clutching a mug in his hands. Pavia stares at the steaming, orange-tinted water like it were liquid carrot, which it technically could be.

“It smells—” Medicinal. Sharp. Not like vegetables but something worse. “Disgusting.”

Zima inhales. “Tea.”

“What type?”

His face turns red. “I do not know the name.”

Pavia wants to say that at least the taste is less bad than it smells, but it really… isn’t. At least the temperature feels just nice. Zima nods his head curtly when Pavia complains that his throat feels tingly and not even like a throat anymore. Apparently that means it worked well.

And then it’s back to the regularly scheduled radio silence—accompanied by the muted commotion of the animals that Zima insists aren’t rats but mice, their friendlier cousin, and Pavia thinks: I didn’t sign up for so many fucking roommates.

When he sits on the windowsill to soak in the view of the forest, breath fogging up against the glass, the winter moon feels oddly brighter. Maybe now that he’s moved to the second floor, further from the dirt, there are less intrusions, more moonlight.

So perfect and round, like it could fit in his hands. He places his palm on the window and feels the light rays flicker, but quickly removes it when he remembers (irrationally because they have lamps in the ceiling) that Zima needs the light to write.

But the smell of the no-name tea clings to his fingers—all minty and ‘herbal’—and doesn't go away until morning. How troublesome.

//

Zima writes like a man starved.

He doesn’t sleep, doesn’t drink, hell—Pavia only saw him enter the toilet a single time throughout the whole of the night.

So they are really similar, Pavia guesses, because they both do not know when to quit.

“Why do you look like Andrea bit you?”

Except today, just on the verge of morning, when Pavia comes in to his roommate who is in the same position as he was five hours ago—slumped like a corpse on their desk. (It’s their desk on paper, but Zima’s desk in terms of usage.)

The plastic bag containing tubs of gelato are stuffed into the mini-fridge, meanwhile Zima responds to his innocent and perfectly reasonable question with impeccable silence.

So he doesn’t want to answer. Good on him. That’s fine. He barely says anything as is.

Pavia pulls up a stool next to him.

“What. Don’t tell me you sleep like goldfish.” He peers at Zima’s face attentively—it’s an expression he has never seen before.

Zima’s lips look pinched. His eyes are glossy and empty.

But when Pavia knocks on his forehead, his eyes amazingly go into focus, and his lips crack open like a coffin, mumbling something like a prayer—“No inspiration.”

Oh.

”Well, damn,” Pavia remarks. “Why don’t you go outside.”

Zima smacks his lips inaudibly. Then he shakes his head.

Pavia takes his sunglasses off, sets them down on free space, and wonders—was he always this pale? Maybe the sunlight has a bleaching quality on people’s skin, he wouldn’t know. Pavia’s eyes dart across the stacks of parchment, grown by roughly ten centimeters since he left, and they’re still there—none of them destroyed. Not yet.

“Go outside,” Pavia says.

Again, Zima shakes his head.

“You look bloodless.”

Silence.

“Is there—what is it—a tea to fix this also?”

Zima’s brow lifts. “Not… that I know of.” He closes his eyes. “I need to see new things.”

“You want to see my knives?”

Zima’s eyelid twitches.

”My rings.”

Silence.

Pavia sighs. “My jar.”

Zima’s irises blow open as wide as saucers, and not in a good way. So that’s a no.

“My…” Pavia looks around the desk, and perks up. “Sunglasses?”

Their rosy sheen was something people liked to comment as ironic, though he never figured out why.

“It’s…okay?” Zima asks.

Pavia jerks his chin in a nod.

“W-was it from… someone you…”

An innocent and perfectly reasonable question.

“No. Blood-free,” Pavia shrugs. “Unfortunately.”

Zima looks rather confused when he blinks through the pink sunglasses, pinching the slim frame lightly between his fingers, treating it more gently than Pavia ever has. It’s like he has never worn a pair in his life.

He gets up, turns around, starts towards the window, all while soaking in the hues that Pavia sees on the regular as they wash over the dark blue carpet and the oak furniture and the stray lollipop wrapper that he missed. He sees the forest and the morning sun dyed in pink. He opens his mouth and says—

“Perfect.”

Pavia stares at Zima’s back, the meaning of that word catching up to him belatedly. “You should not use that word easily,” he calls, slowly. He wishes he could see Zima’s face.

“The next one,” Zima nods, “I will use… different ink. New colour.”

È fantastico! Pavia wants to bellow—but the second his lips part, his legs give out their strength in return. Zima whips around and asks something incoherent, just as Pavia manages to crawl into an empty corner where the sunlight doesn’t reach.

Guess it’s about time the exhaustion caught up. Though he lasted much shorter than expected.

The telltale feeling of heaviness clogs up his limbs, cloying, like a tender bruise. When he gets like this, there is no use fighting it. Instead he should be glad that it happened here and not in the middle of a street like last time. He gives a weak whistle; the wolves are by his side in an instant. Engulfing Pavia’s body from the toes to his neck—the first blanket he ever felt the squeezing embrace of, and the only one he ever needed.

Pavia raises his head and, without thinking, calls Zima’s name. “Buona notte.”

He tucks his head into someone’s tail, and blacks out.

//

“Pavia, are you awake?”

Zima waits for a reply. Nothing.

He sets down the featherlight quill. There is a thin stretch of silence, like he is still waiting, or mulling over some words he meant to say but seldom did. The new ink he brought in a while ago accounts for the light thud when he places it on the table, like a companion next to his old one.

“I-I want to say…” he begins, barely audible, “I’m sorry. For, forcing my stay on you.”

If he wanted to be more precise, he should just blame Vertin, Pavia thinks absently.

“It is not easy, living with people. I am sorry if I kept you awake.”

The past few nights, Pavia managed to polish to a fine silver his prized collection—something he has no regrets over.

“I am sorry for my friends too. I know your family… hate the sound.”

He says it like Pavia’s wolves were polite kids, as if they haven’t knocked permanent scratches into Zima’s chair, or left their scraggly fur on his coat purposefully or otherwise (they’re difficult to get out, even with a lint roller).

“And, thank you.”

There’s soft scraping as he fiddles with the edge of paper. Zima inhales shakily.

“The sunglasses… I feel like—I was allowed to see the world in your colour.”

There is a small clink as his nail presumably brushes against the ink bottle. He will probably retract his hand in horror, fearing he woke them up, and settle down only after a few seconds of straining his eyes for movement.

Sighing softly, he repeats, “thank you, Pavia.”

Pavia’s ‘world’—

Nothing but a pinwheel of alternating whites and blacks. Monochrome. Dusty grey if you look at it from a distance. Zima is talking weird dreamer shit again, Pavia knows it, but he can't help the achy feeling. Second time now.

Pavia’s eyes shut tighter, even though he will not fall asleep anymore. Zima has probably found the rats a new home already—nothing but bottomless quiet permeates the room. In the back of his mind, the thoughts drift like boats to sea. He lets them.

He wonders what colour Zima will pick for his new work.

Chapter Text

Cleaning guide for dummies:

Drape the cloth over the counter and dust the shelves. Arrange the books on the desk—those titles Pavia can’t read, lined with gold embroidery spelling out a foreign tongue. Replace the candle in the candleholder. Pat down the cushions. Change the sheets.

Pavia does all of this. Crosses out that imaginary checklist in his head, until he’s left with the chores that he would rather have supervision to do. Zima’s supervision. Like scrubbing the sink. Or scavenging through the dusty cupboard, looking for scraps of left-behind belongings of the previous room owner.

All of this is meant to be Zima’s job, actually. Or rather—chores are his favourite things to do when he wants to stave off anxiety, so it just became his job over time. He’s always worrying, as if there is always a ghost stretching as far as his shadow, waiting for when he stops in his tracks to swallow him whole. So Zima never stops working and writing and doing chores, except today when he’s nowhere to be found…

Pavia lets his limbs dangle, in their lanky manner, over the small and creaky chair that his roommate spends more time in than anywhere else. The room is empty save for his shadowy presence; Zima is nowhere to be found.

“Amazing how his ass does not hurt,” Pavia mutters. Every time he switches his position it makes a cranky squeak, like it’s croaking in a plea for its rightful owner, suffocating under Pavia’s weight and about to implode if Zima doesn’t come back. “Settle down,” he chides as if it were truly alive.

The ticking sound from that small alarm clock by the bed is starting to drive him nuts. There’s empty tubs of ice cream, empty glasses, and the bin is filling up with Zima’s crumpled scrap paper… fuck. If he leaves it there’ll be more food for the rats. Mice. Whatever.

He clears the trash and comes back to the chair. This time he can’t keep his knee from bouncing. The wait—whatever it is for—is excruciating.

Eventually Pavia’s gaze lands on a small note he’d missed, tucked under a book with an unreadable title on the desk. He picks it up, nose wrinkling.

Don’t be late for class, it says.

“Class,” he repeats slowly, dumbly.

//

“Oi!” Pavia hollers to the blonde five rows in front, “where is Zima?”

“As if I would know! You’ve got some nerve to interrupt me when I’m taking notes,” Matilda (though he doesn’t know her name by choice) hisses. “Quiet down now, before I call on the teacher.”

He gives a terse ‘tch’ before settling down on his seat. Loudly. It’s three seconds until he stands up again, the chair scraping against the floor with an otherworldly screech. A vein pops in Mathilda’s forehead. He grins. Three seconds pass until he does it again.

“That’s it! Get out!” the class monitor fumes. “Get out before I make you!”

It's another talent of his. Or maybe it’s a destiny he can never escape, some sort of karma for the dirt on his hands. Always mooning about until he’s inevitably shooed away—you could say it’s a special skill, really, how he always ends up evicted. Like the rodents you don’t want lurking under your floorboards, or the rotten plank you immediately sniff out from the rest, then saw away and discard.

Pavia wanders the halls, a tiny smidge in him protesting, but he doesn't belong in that classroom with its wide-eyed students anyway. These days he hovers along the fence, feeling out of his element. What used to be familiar has been replaced with something foreign, like an intrusion forced into his mouth that tastes off.

A wasted ghost. Do you want that?

Just the memory of Vertin’s words makes agitation swell in his chest. Before he knows it, his foot swings out and slams against the janitor’s bucket. It bounces helplessly for a few tiles, ricocheting against the wall then spinning upside down with a hollow sound.

Pavia walks five steps before stopping in his tracks. He glances surreptitiously towards both ends of the hallway.

He returns to put the bucket upright.

Thank god it was mostly empty, he thinks to himself, and just like that he's angry again. This time at himself. A sad cycle. He curses.

Pavia has no choice but to follow the checkered path charted in front of him. He crosses the halls—beams of sunlight stream through, sending needles of warmth prickling across his skin. He passes by several classrooms, all of which do not contain Zima, and he can almost hear the shrill sound of chalk against a blackboard, and phantom whispering like a secret he is not a part of. He turns a corner, and finds to his frustration and dismay that ‘talking a walk’ is not as helpful as Zima always insisted it was.

At least Pavia can say he tried.

After every long stretch there is a tall, grilleless window. Wispy meadow grass stretches far beyond the ledge. Courtyard; they train here sometimes. He is told to sit out unless Lilya is around. They are always watched by butterflies that teeter along the edges of yellow flower petals, sensitive to every sound and gaze despite being the only ones maintaining the patch of unruly flowers. They scare so easily, like they’d flee if Pavia even breathed in their direction. Silly.

“That is why they don’t live long,” Pavia mumbles under his breath, continuing to walk.

This feels slow, too slow. Usually slow means a drag in bounties, and that means he’ll have to start hunting for his meals instead of bartering and paying for them.

It’s like he forgot he isn’t a mercenary anymore when he hasn’t thought to eat until late noon. The idea of a cafeteria, with its sloppy ‘nutritional’ food and standard serving sizes, makes him think of spoonfeeding and thus he loathes it.

Why should things be easier now, when I’m already grown? When I don’t need it anymore?

It’s unfair.

But still he goes, because, as much as he wants to deny it, a small part of him wonders if he’ll find—

“Zima?” a voice inquires.

The same girl looks even more irritating when she has on a look of pity, though she seems less flustered than the last time they crossed paths in classroom 4A. Pavia wants to growl at her for having the nerve to start a conversation when she was the one who kicked him out. (And also ask where she got that shiny red apple on her tray.)

“Not here,” is all he says, picking at his dry steak. Mathilda makes a move to sit opposite him, but decides against it, luckily.

“Tough luck,” she shrugs. But before she walks away, Mathilda conspicuously slides him a neat file. Stuff he’d missed from today’s class, probably. He’s too prideful to snarl a thank-you.

A sudden, unexplainable thought strikes Pavia, and his fork freezes: maybe tonight he will come back to the room and find all of Zima’s things missing.

Maybe instead of being kicked out, this is another way that karma claws its way towards him.

//

Do small dogs know that they’re small and unintimidating?

The answer to this offhanded question must be a resounding no, because looking at the scene before him now, Pavia is both swept into a relief that he doesn’t wanna admit, as well as the electric pull of amusement.

“Pavia,” Zima greets softly, a glow flickering in his pupils, “you are here.”

The room smells odd and gravelly, like the aftermath of a shootout. Zima—alongside all of his things—is in the room; everything is right where it was left this morning—not missing—but something’s different. His roommate is not alone.

A little girl in red is standing in the middle. Shielding Zima as much as her short stature will allow.

“Miss Mondlicht,” Zima supplies with a shy nod.

‘Miss’ Mondlicht (another name Pavia knows not by choice) has the gall to sneer at Pavia the second she finishes her brief assessment of his appearance.

“You have the eyes of a murderer, and not a just one,” she comments blankly. Pavia dislikes her instantly.

The girl has a wounded left leg, and yellow bandages wrapped around it. Dried blood encrusts their edges, which is a problem that Zima was presumably in the midst of fixing judging by the roll of bandages in his hand. Bullets are strapped to her waist; Pavia thinks the sour smell is coming from her.

He has seen many like her across the years. Children made to hold weapons instead of toys. Shrapnel, not flesh, encompassing their hearts. It is like staring into a pond reflection.

“You have a sharp nose, red little girl.” Pavia responds. “What do you smell with your button nose?” His sneer towers over her. Yet, she meets his gaze evenly, with a glare that seems to cut right through him.

“I smell your malice. It is thick. Like the wolves that invaded my village.” A calm settles over Mondlicht’s expression, as if she has just confirmed something in her head. Then, unfeelingly, she says, “I was raised to hunt the likes of you.”

Punching above her weight.

She is not the type that is looking to respect her elders—in his aunt’s household that rebellion would be quashed, and very quickly at that. “Hunt,” Pavia repeats. “Big words.”

Throughout this curt exchange, Zima has been staring back and forth in silent disbelief, but when Mondlicht moves her hand to the hilt of her axe, panic starts to flash in his eyes. “S-stop." His hands tremble as they debate who to grab hold of. Who would listen. "Please, both of you.”

“Get back, Zima,” Mondlicht doesn't relent. “This man is dangerous.”

“No. He isn’t.” Zima resists her attempt to corral him to the side. “If you two would stop f-fighting…”

“What to do?” Pavia flashes his jagged teeth. "The stray you brought in wants to play."

If Mondlicht thinks she has gotten a good read on Pavia within less than a minute of meeting, then he hopes she'll be happy that he has done the same for her. This is the brazenness of a child; eyes lacking the murkiness of guilt, malice. Only the clarity of an instinct to protect.

Oh. He knows why he dislikes her so much.

“You think it’s just me? Ha. I will tell you, little girl.” Pavia crouches down, leaning in to whisper in a conspiratorial tone, “the staff. The teachers. The kind lady who put needles in your arm. Most everyone here is a murderer.”

Even Zima? a small voice chirps in his head.

There’s no time to think.

“Liar!” Mondlicht lunges without warning, hands aimed at his neck, eyes ablaze with fury.

So does he.

His pupils are hollow, dilated when he catches her arms, muscles constricting until she flinches. “I can show you,” he says. A little tighter and her bones would crack under the pressure.

“Even Zima?” she rasps, between noises of pain.

Pavia falters.

The door erupts into pieces. To him, it sounds like it did. The sound of the door slamming shut bounces in Pavia’s eardrums and throttles into his bones, prompting him to stare; to turn his back to Mondlicht. Zima is already gone. Again. Again? Pavia blinks.

It is too late to catch the glint of the axe as it cuts through the air.

//

“The infirmary.”

Zima refuses to make eye contact as he speaks. He is stiff as a mountain, sitting on the edge of the bed. His nose is pink, the only drop of colour on his ashen face.

“I can’t—they will find out,” Pavia barks. “I am fine.”

They will find out either way, Zima wants to roll his eyes. “You always say that.”

“And I haven’t died, so that means it’s true.”

Pavia’s voice is nasally from how hard he’s pressing down on his nose with the tub of frozen gelato—a makeshift ice pack. Mondlicht is long gone, having extracted her peace. When Zima left to call for their neighbour’s help, they had returned only to see that the fight was already over, with the clear victor standing over Pavia’s unconscious body. There was nothing to be done then except to beg their very disgruntled neighbour not to report this to the dorm staff.

Pavia stretches out and lets the plush mattress mold to his spine, silently fuming. “Stupid little girl.”

“Get out.”

His blood goes cold, thinking he heard wrong. “Huh?” Pavia’s head jerks around, only to be met with a stare.

He knows it all too well—the stare like he’s unwanted. About to be deserted. It's finally here. His stomach drops to the floor.

Zima’s face scrunches up. “G-get—” But his voice cracks before he can finish. His eyes look glossy, like something is about to spill from them.

“Hey hey hey,” Pavia interjects, pretending he didn’t hear anything. “What’s wrong with you?” He really meant to say it nicer, but now he’s panicking too. Panicking a lot.

Zima’s shoulders quiver. “You always don’t know when to—” A silent intake of breath. “—quit.”

“Zima,” Pavia says pointedly, as if Zima of all people should know this very well, “not quitting is how I survive.”

What is there to 'survive' when you are fighting a 10-year-old?! Zima wants to raise his voice. “You did not even give me time to explain.”

“Okay. Fine. Explain.” Explain and get angry. Take it out on me, Pavia thinks. Anything but that stare.

“Miss Mondlicht is… my mentee.”

Pavia guessed so. But hearing it straight makes his stomach twist.

“Well she’s definitely not as good as me,” Pavia says, launching into a tangent about her aim, how it’s so off he could’ve dodged it with his eyes closed, but the thing is—he couldn’t dodge it with both his eyes open.

As efficient as it is to have Pavia’s simple mind, it also means he doesn’t take into account the idea of something he doesn’t give and doesn’t expect. Something like mercy.

“She did not want to kill you,” Zima mumbles. “She knows I—”

Like someone stuffed a cork into his mouth, Zima’s voice disappears.

You what? All words are lost. Pavia’s throat—desert dry.

The rest of Zima’s sentence floats in the void, an unspoken emotion resting heavy in the air like a thick scent. Not like the gunpowder, nor the lavender room mist Pavia accidentally sprayed one too many pumps of this morning.

(What did Mondlicht smell when she saw Pavia, that was different from Zima? Pavia almost yearns to find out. He wants to know what has distorted him into such an irreparable being in her eyes, the insolent child that she is aside. He wants to know the diseased scent that makes everyone treat him like a curse.)

“You thought that she would win?” Pavia asks suddenly.

Zima shakes his head.

“Then. Why did you run?”

(Everyone, except him.)

“I knew you wouldn’t hurt her,” Zima says.

The silence settles, a thick membrane. Pavia revels in the weight of his statement, and how light it makes him feel; how delicate, like he is a butterfly. Something buoys in his chest. Like he feels the trust a butterfly has in the flower when it lands, that the petals will not crumble under its weight.

“Two times now.” Pavia’s laugh dispels the quiet. “You have made me lose twice.”

Zima’s brows furrow, then he chuckles lightly upon realisation. That time during Pavia’s dispute with the Foundation. And now. “I’m… sorry.”

“No need.” Pavia sets down the tub of gelato, not caring that soon it will become an inedible heap of goop. He rubs his sore jaw with his knuckle, as if thinking of what to say, or how to say it. The dust has settled—in their mouths, powdering words, weighing them down. Tongue-tied is where they’ve ended up, after a long evening of heated squabbles.

“So this ‘mentee’…” Pavia starts.

Zima smiles, albeit hesitant to raise the topic of Mondlicht. “She is an orphan.” Like us.

Pavia has no interest in whatever tragic past she has. It is not uncommon here. It feels like just another ticket that the Foundation stamps at the entrance—guaranteeing you a one-way trip to a place akin to limbo, where you can choose to do something inconsequential with your remaining years, or not. Pavia can only guess which side of the spectrum he swings towards now.

He shrugs. “You teach?”

“Just the ropes,” Zima says. “Until she can roam on her own.”

“Why does she need a mentor anyway. Isn’t she too dangerous for you?” Pavia is slightly miffed. Maybe still offended that she labelled him as ‘dangerous’ in front of his own roommate.

“Actually, I’m her mentor for s-something else.”

“What?” (It's hard to pretend he doesn't care.)

Zima's eyes flick away. “The same reason why I am your roommate…”

Oh.

Pavia scratches his head sheepishly, thinking back to his tantrum in the classroom. He thought he was the only one receiving Zima’s ‘peer support’ services. Clearly Vertin has some tactics up her sleeve, judging by the people she pairs Zima up with.

Pavia tries to resurface to the present, and tries to suppress the resurgence of that twisting in his gut that he refuses to admit is jealousy. By the time he snaps out of it, it’s no use. The silence has already returned.

“My mouth… it hurts,” Pavia starts slowly, unable to look Zima in the eye. “Maybe you were right about the infirmary.”

This is a coward’s way of saying sorry.

Zima shakes his head, standing up as if he suddenly regained his spirits. He grabs a red and white box from under his bed. “Let me see,” he insists, and doesn’t flinch like he used to when Pavia hisses at him.

Thank god she didn't aim for his neck, is what Zima is thinking, while he dabs the surgically thin incision in Pavia’s cheek with antiseptic. It wouldn’t have come off as just a scratch and a bruise.

“Where else does it hurt?”

“The entire side," Pavia mumbles.

"Inside? Outside?"

"The entire side."

“Open your mouth.”

Distracted by some stray thought, Pavia doesn’t think twice before obeying. That’s how he almost bites down when he feels a strange intrusion in his mouth—thick digits prodding around for something—and lets out a yelp that’s muffled by Zima’s fingers.

“Whaf ar you donf,” Pavia slurs.

“Checking,” Zima says after a beat. “For jaw injuries,” he tacks on when confusion flashes in Pavia’s eyes.

The cut is not even that deep. This is what he tries to tell Zima, to no avail.

The pads of his index rove over the sharp point of Pavia’s canine, tracing its dip and then trawling towards his molars. “Pavia, wow.” He genuinely looks spellbound.

Pavia feels his ears go red. He thinks Zima is marveling at the sharpness of his teeth, at the only advantage granted to him at birth—a show of his predatory prowess somewhat—but instead Zima’s look morphs into worry—

“Your teeth are in horrible shape.”

“Ah.” He’s right. Kind of. There are large cavities that’ve already been patched up by tar-like fillings, and Pavia doesn’t even want to talk about the spectacular shape of his canines, how difficult they make it to floss despite the dentist’s stern warnings that he absolutely had to—he always ended up cutting himself on his own teeth.

Drool has started pooling at the base of his tongue. “Ger them ouff.”

Zima blinks. “Oh. I’m so sorry…” He does just that.

They both stare at the saliva that coats Zima’s fingers.

“I’m sorry!” Zima cries, as if the gravity of what he’s done has just hit him, then sent him tumbling into a flurry of regret and hysteria. “Sorry, sorry, sorry…”

His cheeks are scarlet with assertion, cold sweat sticking silvery bangs to his forehead. His lashes flutter incessantly like butterfly wings. Now, Pavia thinks, he’s the butterfly. Even a puff of air from Pavia’s mouth could set him off.

“It’s no issue, calm down…” Pavia sighs heftily. Then he frowns deeper. “No. Wrong. I am the one who is sorry.”

And for the first time in a while, his apology is sincere.

//

“I did not think. I am veeeery sorry that my actions have… inconvenienced you.”

After you say it once, it is a never-ending cycle of apologies. It’s with this thought that Pavia grits his teeth. (If only his sour expression and clinical tone matched the content of his apology.)

Mondlicht must know that he doesn’t mean a word he said, because she only clicks her tongue. She strides past Pavia like he's a ghost, towards Zima’s beckoning without so much as a mutual apology for nearly fucking his face up. How disrespectful, Pavia thinks. But tonight there’s someone else who deserves his ire more.

“You kicked me out in winter.”

Vertin’s raised eyebrows read like ‘you’re still not over it?’ so he glares sharply. Pavia heaves himself onto the barstool two spots after hers and begins his idle accusations, soft jazz from that odd talking radio buzzing in the background.

“It was almost winter,” she corrects.

”There was snow. And ice."

”I sent Zima to look after you,” she continues, “and it didn't seem like such a bad thing, from what I saw the morning after.”

“Zima? What can he do.” Rage bubbles within Pavia, mixed with a potent embarrassment, but mostly a refusal to submit to her playful jab. “The foxes could’ve gotten to him. You know the guy… zero survival instinct.”

“For one, he withstood the Russian winter.” She tilts her head inquisitively. “You know what he said, when I expressed the same concern? A night in Ru—”

“A night in Russia,” he recites, “is as good as eternity.”

“Yes. That.” She sounds pleased. “So you do talk.”

“Nonsense,” he grunts, pawing away the shot glass that the bartender has placed in front of him. This is fucking apple juice. “There is nothing in common.”

“Really nothing at all?” Pavia hates that serene, prying tone she always takes on.

Normal people are fine with the knowledge that when Pavia refuses to speak, nothing except the cold fury of hell’s gates may pry his jaws open and elicit his honesty. And even then, they’d have to face his wrath first.

Vertin is not such a normal person.

“Pavia. Do you dislike Zima?”

Over at a distance, next to the still barren spruce tree that has been erected in favour of the nearing festive season, Zima is trying to get Mondlicht to bond with his little bird. There’s a slight tremble in his slender fingers even as he eagerly holds out a palmful of berries for her to take. He needs to hold them higher—Pavia frowns. They’re going to spill over at this point, stupid.

“No.” His mouth moves on its own.

“I see,” Vertin says softly, her gaze falling to the same sight before them, “what a good match.”

Pavia shifts his gaze back to her, and has to blink twice to confirm the miniscule twitch in her lips.

“What? That pipsqueak?” he remarks grouchily, a little louder than what he intended. “You make me laugh.”

“Not Zima and Mondlicht,” she says, and now her smile is obvious. “Zima and you."