Chapter Text
It’s winter.
Snow dusts the metal of the armor he’d taken off some fallen warrior and the layers keep his core warm. For a moment, he can forget the strange ache in his chest, like his heart is missing. It probably is, after so long.
“You aren’t cold?”
Bengi, standing beside him, shakes his head. “I’m okay. Take care of yourself first, Sanghyeok.”
The name still feels wrong, a layer of skin too loose or too tight in all the wrong places and he huddles further into the cloak Bengi had draped over him. Metal scrapes against itself softly with the movement.
He isn’t sure if the sound is from him or the armor.
“Don’t call me that.”
“It’s your name.”
Mutely, he shakes his head.
Bengi should understand this, shouldn’t he?
Whoever they had been—they’re gone.
“It’s still you,” Bengi says softly. “Even if you don’t believe it.”
He turns away, watching the trees pass as he walks forward.
No longer are they dead and skeletal apple trees, ready to claw their way back to life at the first hint of spring but evergreen pines.
For a moment, there is nothing but the sound of snow crunching underfoot.
Then, Bengi says, “Is ‘Faker’ better then? That’s…also you. Part of you, but still you.”
And he stops, considering. “Must I have a name?”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” Bengi smiles sadly.
“Aren’t I?”
Bengi steps closer and with hands cold as ice, even through the sleeves, presses down on his wrists gently. “You have a pulse,” he says. “You’re here and you’re still breathing. You are alive.”
He has to look down, just a little, to meet those eyes. Still kind, somehow, despite everything he’s witnessed.
“Okay,” Faker says, twisting his hands around to brush Bengi’s wrists. He frowns. “Your hands are cold.”
Bengi blinks and tilts his head, almost inquisitively. “I know.”
“Don’t you have gauntlets?” Faker’s hands are bare too, but they’re far warmer than Bengi’s. His fingers leave behind streaks of red and he hurriedly steps back. Rust or—no. It doesn’t matter. Bengi looks at him, something terribly sad still in his eyes.
“I’m okay,” he repeats. “Worry about yourself first. You’ll get frostbite.”
Faker glances down, slowly curling his fingers into fists, feeling his skin ache.
The pain isn’t so bad, the sensations dull and somehow far away. It’s better than feeling nothing. It’s better than running the risk of having the metal meld back to his hands, creeping up his arms until he’s frozen again, here in this forest of evergreen pines—
Bengi touches one of his hands and he startles. “You don’t have to put the gauntlets on if you don’t want to. There are gloves inside the pack.”
“I…”
“S—Faker, please?” When he doesn’t respond, Bengi continues, “Mortal bodies are fragile. You have to take care of yourself.” He pauses for a moment. “Even if it’s just for me.”
And Faker considers him. Bengi, who’d come for him even when he shouldn’t have, who—
What had happened again?
All he remembers is snow, dead apple trees, blood on his hands, and hands, tugging him up while someone said, “Come on, Sanghyeok, we have to go, you can’t stay here—”
He shakes his head.
Bengi looks at him expectantly.
Instead of a real answer, he says, “You came for me.”
“Of course I did.” Something flashes across his face. “I’m sorry I left you alone for so long.”
He hesitates for a moment more but kneels, snow crunching with the movement, swinging the pack around. Pulling out the thick pair of gloves he finds inside, he whispers, “Okay.”
Bengi kneels as well. “Thank you,” he says.
Faker meets his eyes. “But only if you do it too.”
Some part of him expects Bengi to laugh and maybe say something like ah, you don’t need to take care of me but he just smiles, motion almost pained. “Sure.”
“How…long has it been?”
Bengi tilts his head. “Since we descended? Or ascended?”
“The first.”
“Almost two hundred years.”
Faker’s hands still and across the crackling campfire, Bengi straightens, worry crossing his face. “Is that a long time?”
“I think it is,” Bengi says carefully.
Faker frowns. “We were gods for much longer than two hundred years.”
“That doesn’t mean two hundred isn’t long.” Firelight flickers in Bengi’s eyes, embers like flyaway stars. “A lot can happen in two hundred years.”
“A lot can happen in a day,” Faker says, shifting his gaze to the dancing flames. “That doesn’t mean it’s long.”
“Isn’t it? Isn’t a day long for a mayfly? Or a child?” Bengi hums. “I think what you do with time is more important than how long you have, don’t you think?”
Faker doesn’t respond, staring into the fire. The breeze shifts, blowing smoke into his face, but no matter how his eyes start to sting, he doesn’t look away.
He doesn’t realize Bengi moves until he’s turning Faker’s head away from the fire with hands still cold as ice. His fingers ghost over Faker’s cheeks, brushing away instinctive tears he hadn’t even realized had fallen.
“I didn’t do anything with my time,” Faker says quietly.
“That’s okay. It’s not like those two hundred years were your fault anyway. You have time now.”
He doesn’t think he finds any lie in Bengi’s eyes.
But he doesn’t know.
Isn’t two hundred years a long time?
Even his metal shell had changed over that time, smooth steel turning corroding, the rust still lingering on his skin.
Don’t mortals change much faster?
His hands come up to grip Bengi’s wrists. “Do I know you?”
Bengi draws back a little, settling down onto his heels. “Of course you do. I’m still me. You’re still you.” He shoots Faker that bright familiar smile, soft edges made softer by firelight. “You don’t need to think about it for too long. Go to sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
“Where are we going?” Bengi, standing at the bottom of the rockfall, startles and looks up. Faker repeats, “Where are we going?”
A steady breeze stirs Faker’s hair as he picks his way down the slope. Bengi turns away, watching the leaves of the forest below rustle. “Home,” he says simply.
“Home is gone.” Faker knows this too well.
Home is gone, left behind and destroyed in countless ways he can barely remember now.
“I don’t think so,” Bengi says, already climbing down the next stretch of cliff with surprising ease. “I think home is wherever you make it.”
Faker frowns. “That sounds like something out of a child’s story.”
“And childrens’ stories can be right,” Bengi says with a shrug. “Besides, aren’t we different people now? New people, new home.”
“You’re the one who says we’re the same.”
Bengi shrugs again, reaching up to steady Faker when he slips on a patch of ice. “Careful,” he says, tugging Faker over the last of the rocks. “I’m still Seongwoong. I think you’re still Sanghyeok. But we’re also not the same as Seongwoong and Sanghyeok from all the way back then. Does that make sense?”
Faker falls silent, frown deepening.
And maybe this is something he did from Before, because Bengi just nods. Neither of them speak the rest of the way down.
One of Bengi’s bracers isn’t from the same set of armor he wears, Faker realizes belatedly, sitting at the edge of the fire.
His armor is well kept but it is far plainer than Faker thinks it should be. The right bracer, however, is uncannily bright, clean as though it had come out of the forge only mere moments earlier.
Intricate gold details spark in the light. There’s a line of suns, moons, and stars pressed into the metal covering his forearm, and Bengi idly traces the edges of each one.
It stands out and it feels important, but Faker can’t figure out why. He doesn’t think he’s allowed to ask.
So, instead, “Who is…home?”
Bengi shifts, crossing his legs. “What do you remember?”
“You,” Faker replies truthfully. “And…”
Ash and blood and bone, death in the air, and beyond that, the briefest flash of sunlight and bright skies.
He shakes his head, movement more of a sharp jerk than anything else. The hazy memories dissipate. “Not a lot,” he admits. The firelight is gold, and he’s…maybe he’s glad for it, because he can’t mistake the light playing over his fingers for anything else than fire. He risks a glance at Bengi. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Bengi says, and there is a part of him, a dead thing clawing at the base of his neck, that revolts at the ever-present gentleness in his tone. “I was like you at first. I didn’t remember much either.” He pauses. “There should be a new journal and a pen in your backpack. Writing things helped me, I think it might help you too.”
Faker turns, fishing the two items out, and he thumbs through the empty pages.
Some part of him, gentler than the hissing divinity, twinges. It misses this, he realizes, misses the long nights of scratching runes onto a page, misses the crackle of magic at his fingertips.
It must show on his face, because Bengi says, “We’ll get you a proper spellbook once we get back. But in the meantime…do you want me to help you with your memories?”
The phantom spark of the arcane over his fingers morphs to the burn of flames and when he stretches a hand toward the campfire, he almost expects rose petals to trail behind him. Laughter echoes in his ears.
“I don’t know if I want to remember,” he confesses.
And like the night before, he moves around the campfire.
His hands are still cold. “I promise you,” Bengi says, “there are more happy memories than you realize. It’ll be okay.”
“There should be a town around half a day’s walk from here,” Bengi says. He points down the path, the first sign of civilization Faker has seen in centuries, and turns to hold a branch out of the way while Faker ducks out of the underbrush.
He can feel the weight of Bengi’s eyes on him while he brushes the leaves off his armor.
Then, “What would you do if I was dead?”
Faker’s head shoots up. “You’re not leaving.”
Bengi sighs. “It’s just—”
“You’re not leaving.”
And it’s Bengi who looks away first.
Faker can tell something is off the moment they walk into the town.
People turn and stare and something hisses, laughing in his ear, little cleric.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers to Bengi, who looks the most uncomfortable Faker has seen him since they were mortals together.
Bengi frowns. “What for?” A woman pulls her child out of the street and away from them, and someone holds out a holy symbol when they pass by. Their hands shake, and the divine part of him scoffs at it.
As if any god so young could have defeated him.
Bengi watches him carefully and understanding flickers across his face. “Oh,” he says. “They’re not staring at you.”
Faker considers his words. “Why would they stare at you then?”
“Can’t you see?”
“See what?”
Bengi takes a step back, out of the shadow of the building and into the dull, cloud filtered sunlight. “Look at me, Faker,” he says. “Look.”
“It’s just you,” Faker replies, puzzled. “You’re you.” The dead god laughs again. You’re mine.
He’s suddenly too aware of where they stand.
Sunlight and shadow. Something good and something that never will be.
He turns away.
“Faker,” Bengi calls after him, almost a plea.
“There is nothing left here for us,” Faker says, the crowd parting silently before him. He doesn’t bother looking back.
Bengi will follow, just as he always has. Every part of him agrees.
He wonders if that divine cruelty was really so surprising.
The first time sparks trail from Faker’s fingers, it just feels right. Normal. No hint of whether this was good or bad, no bloom of excitement or pride and no sinking dread or panic.
Just normal. Almost apathetic.
There’s a daisy by his feet, soft petals swaying in the gentle breeze.
He plucks it, rolling the stem in his fingers and the flower bursts into flames. The fire burns a deep red and the dead god laughs.
Faker hurriedly drops the daisy, watching those petals wilt and crumble.
Ahead, Bengi stops and turns. “Faker?” His eyes land on the burning flower and unexpectedly, he lights up. “Was this you?” He turns to stare intently at Faker, as if determined to catch any movement.
The fire starts to spread, catching the grass, wet with morning dew. “Yes.”
Bengi stares at him for another moment, then nods and he crouches to watch the ruby flames eat away at the grass. “I’ve missed your magic,” he says, taking off a gauntlet to snap off a blade of grass, holding it until the fire threatens to lick at his skin.
Faker slashes his hand through the air and everything stops burning.
Bengi drops the blade of grass and for just a moment, the sunlight catches on his hand. A faint lattice of scars stretches over his fingers and disappears beneath the rest of his armor and something roars in Faker’s ears.
Faker’s hand snaps out, quick as a viper, and clamps down on Bengi’s wrist. “Who?”
It wasn’t him.
That’s the only reassurance he gets.
It wasn’t him, because if it was, that dead cruel god wouldn’t be hissing ours, someone hurt what was ours.
Bengi looks at him, wide-eyed. “What?” His gaze darts to his hand. “Oh. It was an accident,” he says, tugging his hand out of Faker’s grip. “And it was a long time ago. It doesn’t hurt.”
“Answer my question.”
And for the first time since Faker had been freed from that prison of crumbling stone, metal, and apple trees, Bengi’s face shutters. “It was another god, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve forgiven him already,” he says shortly. He pulls his gauntlet back on and reaches forward.
His expression is still carefully blank, emotionless. Faker flinches back. Bengi stops.
Faker can mark the exact moment he opens back up, eyes softening, even as he draws back. “Let’s keep moving,” Bengi says, hand dropping back down to his side.
Faker wakes up once, in the middle of the night. Nothing stirs, not even the barely glowing fire, and nothing sounds in the night.
Nothing, but Bengi’s low voice.
He’s humming a tune, a simple one that Faker remembers from somewhere. He reaches for the memory, already used to the way it tries to slip away like the pale curl of smoke rising from the fire.
And he’s greeted with something that looks like summer.
He twists his fingers into his blanket harder. Evergreen pines, he reminds himself, not apple trees.
How long ago was that?
Does he still live, that little half-elf with his lute?
Faker hopes so, distantly noting the way the song loops seamlessly. Bengi must have cared about him, to still remember his song.
“You still haven’t told me,” Faker says, stepping up onto the dead tree trunk stretched across the stream.
“Told you what?” Bengi frowns at him from the forest across the bridge.
“Who’s home?”
Bengi stretches his hand out, and Faker takes it, hopping down with a clatter of steel on steel. Armor, not him, he’s free of it now.
“Where do you want me to start?”
Faker’s head whirls with names and it’s with a feeling like a pit in his stomach, he realizes that he had missed out on an entire life in those two hundred years.
Bengi doesn’t seem to notice the way the divinity hisses and howls and screams for Faker to steal him, to keep him away because he was theirs.
He doesn’t seem to notice the way Faker’s hands spark whenever he nears.
Ours, the god rages. Mine.
Faker knows if he listens, this wouldn’t be the first person he’d ruined.
But Bengi doesn’t let him distance himself, taking a step forward for every step Faker takes back.
“You won’t hurt me,” he promises as if this was a thing he could promise.
“I don’t think you should take me home,” Faker says, palms pointed away lest the divinity sitting just beneath his skin rips free in the form of fire and thorns.
Bengi shakes his head. “They’ll take care of you. It’ll be okay.”
The dead god snarls.
“I don’t need them, I just need you.”
“That’s not how it works,” Bengi says, that strange sadness in his eyes again. “It can’t always be me.”
Stubbornly, Faker replies, “Why not?”
“I just—look at me, Faker. Look.”
“It’s just you.”
Faker doesn’t flinch when Bengi makes a frustrated noise. “Faker, please, just look. You can’t keep doing this,” he steps close enough to cup Faker’s face, forcing Faker to keep staring at him. His hands are still cold. “Look,” he pleads, “just look, or let me speak. Please.”
Faker presses a hand to Bengi’s chest. “I am looking. It’s still you,” he says. “Just you. It’s always been you.”
Bengi tears himself away, fast as if he’d been burned, and he looks almost angry. His brows are drawn together, mouth downturned, but his eyes shine.
The dead god purrs at the sight. Faker just goes cold.
Bengi takes another step back. “Why can’t you see?”
”You have to let go, Faker.”
The sea breeze whips his hair into his face when he turns, and Bengi looks almost shocked. Almost as if he hadn’t expected the words to come out of his mouth.
Then he shakes his head and repeats, “You have to let go.”
“Of what?”
Bengi just looks at him silently.
Faker’s hand clenches tighter around the strap of the pack. “But you came for me.”
Don’t leave me.
“But I’m not—I don’t want to, but—”
“Then stay.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
Bengi doesn’t meet his eyes. “Because you won’t let me,” he replies. There’s no judgment in his tone.
“I want you to tell me,” Faker tries.
The waves crash steadily below, beating against the limestone cliffs. He counts—one, two, three dull roars before Bengi answers. “You have to mean it. Or you can just look.”
“I am looking,” Faker says, sparks jumping erratically between his fingers, dancing over his knuckles. “I’m looking, but I don’t know what you want me to see.”
Bengi just shakes his head, turning away.
They end up hiding in a cave when a snowstorm suddenly roars to life around them.
Faker sits against the wall, cupping a flame in his palm, throwing golden light across the rough rock.
Instead of joining him in the small corner of warmth, Bengi sits by the bend, snow settling around him.
Hesitantly, Faker asks, “Aren’t you cold?”
Bengi opens his mouth but closes it, tilting his head. He draws his knees up to his chest, crossing his arms on top of them. “You already know.”
The fire flares red, irritation bleeding into his magic and Faker takes a breath. Control, something whispers, and it’s kinder than the divinity at least.
“I don’t.”
“I think you do,” Bengi says, eyes flicking down to watch the flames dance. “I think you just don’t want to believe it. You don’t want to let go.”
This time, the fire stays steady.
“But you came for me.”
“I know,” Bengi says, so terribly gently. “I know. But I’m not real.”
The storm dies down around dawn, and the rising sun reflects off the new snow and ice, turning the smothered hills to something made of diamond.
They travel in silence.
Something claws at him, heavy and mortal in a way the god would call weak.
He thinks what’s left of the human, almost buried, would just call it mortal.
Faker waits until the cave they’d sheltered in is out of sight to stop.
Behind him, Bengi stops too. “Faker?”
He turns.
“Oh,” he breathes, and Bengi gives him that sad smile again.
“Now,” he says, stepping closer until he’s face to face with Faker, “you see me.”
Faker closes his eyes.
Waits a moment.
Opens them.
Bengi is still there, standing before him.
And pressed into the fresh snow, snaking over and around the hill, that single lonely trail of footprints is too.