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There is a wale, and there is a boy. Below, chaos. Below, the world.
There is a cliff. There is the edge of it, and below, the universe unfolds, wild and angry and insatiable. The universe is full of scorchingly hot stars and discordant gravitational pulls and black holes that devour thoughtlessly, infinitely.
There is a wraith. It stands at the very edge of the world, teetering between life and whatever lies beyond. It’s wholly white, yet something crimson is pooling at its feet.
It can’t be blood. Wraiths don’t bleed. Boys don’t die. This boy isn’t supposed to die. He can’t die. He can’t die because he is already dead; he can’t die because the world is too vast, too cruel, and if he dies—
There is a boy. He’s sitting close, too close, so close that it’s clear he’s shivering. His face is thin, bony and pale; his tangled hair is ravelling in the wintry gale, occasionally obscuring his eyes. Every time they’re out of view, he’s gone. In and out of life he goes, until he’s falling backwards, away and away and—
Gone.
He’s dead.
He can’t be dead.
Yet he is.
Then he hits the water, and it’s unyielding and cold.
So very cold.
Altan awoke to the sound of his own laboured breathing and a draught of cold air coming through the window.
A snowstorm was raging outside, the wind bellowing through the cracks of the Night Castle’s battered walls and dilapidated window frames. Occasionally, the gusts were so strong they shook the entire structure where it stood precariously at the edge of the cliff.
The edge. Altan stood up hurriedly and rushed to push the window shut, as if the castle was one blast away from falling apart. The handle was frozen in his grip, which felt warmer than usual despite the low temperatures. The window panes were hazy from the humidity and cold, and he had to wipe it off with his sleeve to see the snow piling up outside, the mountains that he knew were there but couldn’t really see in the mist, the white, thick clouds that covered the sky.
In this world, Chaghan Suren was alive, bandaged up, drugged and asleep in his bed a couple of doors down the hall. In a world across, in Altan’s terrible, troubled dreams, he died, again and again and again, every night. And every night Altan watched him teeter just above the ocean, his face empty of expression save for the feeble shadow of a sudden shock, before—
If it weren’t for the crimson at the very spot where he’d been standing, Altan would’ve thought he’d dreamt him. Perhaps this entire past year he’d spent with the Cike had been partially a hallucination, and it flickered off in a mere moment. Chaghan had showed up in his life with the unexpected ferocity and audacity of an ill-timed downpour, only to quickly melt into Altan’s life as if he’d always meant to be there. It wasn’t that they always got along or agreed on everything since those first weeks at the Night Castle, and it wasn’t as if their relationship wasn’t as tumultuous as it was convoluted, but it worked, and Altan had gotten used to it. He knew Chaghan was there, he existed and he was around and whenever Altan needed him he could depend on him, and then—
And then the bastard had the audacity to fall. He fell and fell until he hit the churning sea below, and then Altan saw nothing but blood and the air was salty and terrible and Chaghan was gone—
Enki was still awake when Altan stumbled into his office; despite the late hour, he was still bent over his sink, washing his tools. The sound of the running water didn’t cover the door’s creaking, and Enki’s weary eyes found him in a moment, as if he’d been expecting him.
The drugs were in his hand and then his system before he could really register where he was, what was happening, what he was doing. The dosage was estimated with Enki’s usual surgical precision, and it hit Altan as fast and as hard as it needed to shock him back to relative clear-mindedness, and he let himself stumble to a cot until the room stabilised itself a little bit.
He hadn’t even realised the Phoenix had been screaming at him to just burn the entire world down and get it over with already until the voice subsided, until it became the familiar, drug-induced buzz at the back of his head that it normally was.
“How’s Chaghan?” he asked coarsely.
Enki’s sympathetic, almost pitiful look said he knew precisely how much the matter rattled Altan, even if he was aiming for as casual a question as he could master when his brain felt like pulp. “He will be okay,” said simply.
“Elaborate,” Altan demanded.
“Can’t say much. He hasn’t lost any limbs, his head is mostly intact, no vital organ has undergone any critical damage. He’ll live, and he’ll be fine. He just needs rest. I’m taking care of him.” A pause. “You know I’m doing all I can.”
It echoed in Altan’s brain—the closest thing to guilt he remembered experiencing in his life. “I know,” he managed.
Enki watched him for a long moment, his gaze inscrutable and yet, somehow, still kind. At last, he said, “Go to sleep, Altan. Worrying yourself to death over Chaghan won’t heal him.”
“I’m not worried.”
It wasn’t worry, truly: it was deep, sincere fear. He wasn’t concerned about Chaghan making it; he was profoundly fucking terrified that he wouldn’t.
And then Altan would be alone.
The corridor was dark, a few sparse candles that had survived the howling winds still trembling under their currents. It was as if the entire edifice was fighting to keep itself whole and standing; it was far too old to not leak from its countless crevices. Altan could feel it wafting from underneath the door before him. This handle, too, was cold to the touch, but at least his own hand wasn’t unbearably warm anymore.
Altan stood before the door, feeling the wind on his ankles. He told himself he would only check if the window was open, close it, and then retreat back to his own room and go the fuck to sleep. That was all. Nothing, nothing else.
The door gave way with a soft click, and Altan stepped into the dark room. It was as awfully familiar as always, and yet for once he felt like he was stepping into a mortuary. His memories of Shiro’s lab swam in his mind, but thanks to the drugs it was all too foggy to paralyse him. The wind had pushed the window at the other end of the room almost ajar, and—
And there, on the cot right beneath the window, wrapped in so many blankets he was barely visible and huddled too close to the wall, was Chaghan. A few pale strands of hair and his closed eyes were, really, the only proof that he was actually there, that Altan wasn’t imagining the body underneath the blankets. It was hard to tell if he was fast asleep or simply too exhausted to even open his eyes.
Altan stood at the door, hand still on the handle, and watched the other boy sleep. He’d seen him asleep before, as he’d seen people lay dead on stretchers before. The similarity disturbed him like nothing had in a very long time.
He told himself he had to close the window because Chaghan wouldn’t survive if he got sick now; he walked across the room, pushed the window shut, tested the handle to make sure it was firmly secured, and all the while he told himself the Cike couldn’t afford to lose their Seer, let alone their best archer in the collateral damage. He wasn’t afraid, he wasn’t worried, he was simply looking out for his entire division that had suffered more than enough losses during this last mission; they couldn’t afford any more.
That was it. That was all.
Chaghan looked far too small in his bed.
It didn’t make sense. Chaghan was generally small, physically, but it was barely noticeable when he had such a large presence in every room or company he found himself in. He was always demanding and authoritative and, frankly, quite the asshole, and when he spoke he left so little room for argument he sounded louder than he actually was. Everything about him radiated with the determination of someone who was dedicated to getting their own way at any cost, to being heard and fully, resolutely understood. He acted as if he loved nothing more than disagreeing with everyone, and Altan was genuinely convinced he thought himself as the only person in the world capable of being right about anything.
It would’ve been so, so easy, if that was all that there was to him. Unfortunately, Altan had grown to know better. To him, Chaghan was the only person who’d ever taken no for an answer. He was the only person who’d ever looked at Altan like that—not as if he wanted to use him, but as if he wished to be the one used. He had a gentle hand and his touch was always careful. He was unnervingly watchful, and it all came with the cost of Altan being known and—and loved, regardless.
Was it love? He wasn’t sure. Was either of them, with all the load they had to carry as they moved through life, even capable of love? Altan doubted it, and he knew not to mistake the glimpse in Chaghan’s eyes when he looked at him for affection. It was pure fear and they both knew it.
Yet, as he stared down at the sleeping (dying?) boy in the cot, he thought for the first time that there might be something, anyway. Something beyond fear (not love, not quite; but something close enough to make the sight before him hurt; to take the prospect of Chaghan dying and turn it from a generic inconvenience to an unimaginably terrifying, plausible eventuality).
His knees almost buckled under the unexpected weight of it all.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, all of his usual internal struggles meddling with new ones and cutting fresh wounds anywhere there wasn’t already crusted blood. He only short-circuited back to life when Chaghan moved under the covers, suddenly shivering conspicuously.
Altan wasn’t sure what prompted him to move; he wasn’t sure why he slowly lowered himself on the cot next to Chaghan, slipping beneath the covers until his body was just not touching the other’s. He reached out and saw his hand trembling; his fingers gingerly found a loose wisp of hair and tucked it away from Chaghan’s eyes.
He wasn’t sure why he was doing any of it; he also wasn’t entirely sure why he wasn’t breathing all of a sudden. Then Chaghan’s eyelids fluttered open, and Altan almost flinched.
Outside, the snow and wind continued to bluster—yet the room remained silent and unmoving. Chaghan’s eyes were barely open, yet his gaze found Altan’s and held it steadily, as if it was Altan who had almost gotten himself killed.
Chaghan could hardly move, let alone make a sound, yet Altan was fairly certain he heard his name being spoken, a faint whisper in the dimness of the room and the chaos unraveling just outside of it. If it wasn’t for his desperation for any confirmation that Chaghan was well enough, he would’ve been convinced it was a trick of his mind.
Yet Chaghan’s eyes were open, searching.
Altan reached out again. This time, his fingers traced Chaghan’s face with the care of someone handling a dying bird. There were small gashes everywhere across his face, a few stitched up by Enki just a few days ago. A large scar was forming across his brow; his upper lip had bruised around a deep cut that, Altan remembered vividly, had bled excessively.
And all of that was not accounting for the sheer number of bones he’d broken, or the internal bleeding Enki had spent hours trying to contain.
The night of the ambush was vague in Altan’s memory, but he knew the Cike had suffered the most devastating loss of their history as a division that night. They’d been on a ship, and Chaghan had been somewhere near the edge of the upper deck, and he wasn’t supposed to fucking be there, and then—
He’d been unconscious when he fell into the rough sea, which was precisely why Altan didn’t think it through in the slightest when he leapt behind him as if the entire world depended on him. He simply dove, landed painfully and felt very, very cold in the tempestuous waters, but he had a hunch that it wasn’t just the sea that froze his bones so deeply.
No. The more he looked at Chaghan now, the more certain he was that it’d mostly been fear. Altan had been afraid, terrified, that Chaghan was dead.
Except he wasn’t. He was alive and looking at Altan like his presence meant something.
Do I love you? Altan thought, because asking aloud would be both pointless and too terrifying. He already knew the answer (love and fear aren’t compatible, and you’re terrified of me); that didn’t mean he could bear to hear it.
And yet he couldn’t help but wonder. Did he love Chaghan? Did Chaghan love him? Did it matter when, at the end of the day, they were so fragile, so human, so easily breakable?
Somehow, the utter pointlessness of it all didn’t stop him from cupping Chaghan’s face in his hand. He ran a thumb across the tired creases beneath his eye, softly, as if he feared he might break him.
There it was; something in his hands that he didn’t want to burn. Something, some one , he wanted to take care of, despite not knowing how.
He watched Chaghan as if memorising every last detail of his face might be enough to keep him alive forever. Everything else he tuned out: the howling wind outside, the Phoenix screeching somewhere at the far back of his head, his own pulse in his ears.
There had been a sea once, cold and rough and unrelenting. He’d plunged into it regardless, because there was someone he very nearly loved sinking to the seafloor, and for once Altan saw someone he cared about bleed out and realised he could do something to stop it. Let that something be a suicidal dive in freezingly cold waters—he would take it. He was willing to take it if it meant Chaghan would survive.
Chaghan’s lips moved; the words struggled to come out, a product of not uttering them in a while. When he eventually managed to speak, all that came out was a whisper, small and hoarse and so very scared.
“It hurts.”
That was one thing Altan understood too well.
He knew Chaghan healed remarkably fast. He knew, despite the extent and severity of his injuries, that he’d be okay relatively soon. He knew that, eventually, this would all cease to matter at all.
Right now, though; at that very moment, Chaghan hurt. And it mattered a lot more than Altan had ever expected it to.
He moved closer, pressed his lips against Chaghan’s forehead. He wasn’t sure he meant it when he said, “It’s alright,” but he hoped it to be true.
Things would be alright. They kind of had to.
Chaghan was still for another moment; but then he moved, slowly, more than he’d moved since regaining consciousness after his fall. He moved, dragging himself just a few painful millimetres nearer, until his body was pressed close to Altan’s; he exhaled, and his breath was shaky with the effort of it all—but he was close enough to hold, and for once Altan thought he maybe wasn’t so cruel after all, because he could at least do this.
So he held him, and it was quiet, and it was strange, but it didn’t hurt. It was rare that something didn’t hurt.
It was a moment, as fleeting and brief as they come. Yet it was quiet, and it was painless, and if it maybe meant Chaghan hurt a little less for a while, then Altan could let him have this.
Small as it was; it was all he could do.