Work Text:
"Darrow?" His name is said so softly, so gently, that Darrow thinks he might already be in a dream. But he is only halfway on his journey to sleep, and so he turns back and opens his eyes.
The last record they’d put on had ended a while ago, and now the air between them is filled with the near-silent buzzing of amplified dust. Laying across the opposite couch, partially obscured by a few emptied wine bottles, Roque matches his gaze. A few moments ago (or had it been hours?) his face had been flush with drink and happiness, lost in his one-man performance of the latest that Aegean theater had to offer. All for Darrow's benefit, of course. If he didn't agree to join his friends for the opera, then Roque would bring the opera to him.
Darrow had very few complaints about the arrangement. At the end of each day, his body would be spent, his mind fried, under the tutelage of Lorn au Arcos. Roque's passion was infectious, and listening to his delight and despair at the woe of Orpheus was a balm on his frayed nerves. They would drink and speak long into the night, hours after Mustang would bid them farewell and leave them reclined in Roque's room. It lightened the burden on Darrow's heavy shoulders to steal some of his friend's happiness for himself.
But now, laying on his side and curled up like a child, Roque's face was serious and almost sober.
"Yes?" Darrow says, his voice weighed down into a rasping whisper by the sleep still threatening to tug him down.
"What would you do if it was me?"
"Hm?"
Roque shifts and tilts his shoulders.
"If I was Eurydice, would you look back?"
“What?” Darrow laughs softly, but the sudden question has dislodged something frail in his chest. The truth was that Darrow tried not to think about it. It , of course, was the obvious end to all this, as he didn’t often spend his time comparing his friend to tragic Greek mythological figures. He tries to focus as much on the present and immediate future as he can. But it creeps up on him sometimes, like now, this reminder that Roque is his enemy. One day, all will be revealed between them, and it will break their hearts to know each other. Darrow will choose his people, and though there will be no actual choice offered, he'll make it all the same.
Roque will die. Maybe a million miles away, or maybe by Darrow's own hand. But no matter the intimate details, it sits there at the end of Darrow's dreaming thoughts like an inevitability. Across from him, on the opposite couch, is a corpse that has not died. Like Eurydice to Orpheus, Roque exists in Darrow's heart, already mourned but still seen. He breathes, he drinks, he laughs, and he has firm opinions on Etruscan poetry. He dances at the edge of the Underworld's mouth.
"Odd question." Darrow mumbles.
"Answer it anyway."
Darrow closes his eyes and thinks for one moment and then another. Time ticks on around him, and the fizzing silence of the record player threatens to send him to sleep. He imagines the Underworld, the stones under his feet, the cavern walls stretching up and around him, and the whispered wailing of the dead. In his mind's eye, he sees Lykos. Roque walks behind him, silent but following, maybe, probably, hopefully. They march to the future, to progress, change, and bloodshed. Darrow purposefully, Roque unknowingly. The poet marches onward, trusting in the man leading him—it's all that keeps him moving.
If he looks back, the illusion is broken, and the pedestal shatters. The truth is shown red and bloodied and Red between them, and Roque is spirited away, back to his Golden Elysian fields. Dead once more—inevitable, as it has always been since they’d met.
The pull of Orpheus's tragedy in its repetition is the prevailing hope that this time, this time, he will succeed. This time, Eurydice will walk upon the earth again. This time, gentle love will conquer noble death.
But it is impossible. Love, no matter its form or purity, cannot undo something so immutable and complete. Eurydice will not live again. Eo will not live again. Whether Orpheus looked backwards or not changed nothing. The only thing Darrow can do is stare forward and walk.
"No," he says.
"No?" The corpse of Roque au Fabii whispers back.
"No, I wouldn't look back." Darrow says, locking their golden eyes together once more. "I'd save you, Roque."
They stare into each other a moment longer before Roque silently closes his eyes and turns away.
Darrow knows, in the deepest part of his heart, where all his love and knowable truths lie, that he has given the wrong answer.