Work Text:
The light has barely ever known this place, even before the calamity that befell the dungeons of Hamlet. Here and there something glints in the dark, stirred from the decades-old slumber by their campfire. At least Sarmenti prefers to think it to be this way and not the eerie embers in the gloom emerging to be the many foes of the underground.
In bitterness, he kicks an idly laying cracked weaved basket, that hurried away like a tumbleweed but it satisfies his anger not. He proceeds to treat a busted helmet left to rust the same way, yet it only adds fire to his growing vexation when a sharp sensation spreads up his nerves like lightning.
Jingling loudly as he grasps his sore foot, the jester cusses, not even trying to suppress the raging fire within, “Damn this blasted dungeon-! Damn this stupid expedition-! Damn these..-!”
“Oi!” the arbalest calls out to him, peeking from her tent, “Shut up, will you? All the beasts will come running to your crying, that's for sure!”
Sarmenti growls and stomps his whole foot but quietens nonetheless. “Fine! If my fate disquiets you not, I shall go attract unwanted attention elsewhere!”
“More power to ye,” Missandei murmurs wearily and returns to her place, nestling to rest in the comfort of her sleeping bag.
To the ever loud ting of his bells, the jester storms out of the room they took refuge in. Separated from the rest of the dungeon by a sturdy, heavy door, it constituted a solid safe house. Now, after struggling with the said door and mumbling a few more curses, he barely squeezes himself into the hallway. When he emerges into the far colder and darker territory, the door shuts behind, leaving him to the untouched, virgin dark.
………………….……………………......…………………
Even it doesn't cast shade on the blood visor, shielding his eyes. His gut curls and churns – not because he hasn't had a single positive thought in a day, not because he hasn't eaten in two, and not because he hasn't had a breath of fresh air in three. His insides howl, and his eardrums thrum like old pipes, the blood pushing through his weak mind, spurring it to nothing useful – adding oil not into the engine of a machine but rather spilling it on an open fire. His heart races and aches, and clawing it out seems like a better idea than to cling to the fainting hope of surviving it.
So he walks onwards. As if the dungeon was a dessert and as if the prospect of finding his end was a mirage of an oasis. Darkness has always been soothing to him but now even it can't glow past his, miserable in its futility and aimlessness, anger.
Then, a singular thud in the dark. Sarmenti's senses register it, but not his mind – his heart skips a bit, his foot freezes in the air, hairs on his navel rise and he feels the air cooling underneath his mask.
Something touches his shoulder and once again, Sarmenti’s body reacts before he has the time to do so himself. “S-stay back!” he breathes out, lunging at the figure with an unsheathed blade, his reflexes serving him right and well even now.
A hollow “guh” answers him along a deep groan, strangely human for this place. And when Sarmenti wants to pull the blade out, something grabs his wrist and disallows him from doing so. Only when he notices the faint light of a dropped torch rolling away, fear pumps his heart up and a familiar voice reaches his ear.
“Don't…”
“Baldwin?!” Sarmenti exclaims. “Is that you? Oh gods, did I-?”
“You did,” the leper answers in a voice that betrays no weakness but reflects the sensible injury. “Good hit, but it seems my luck is stronger today than yours…”
“Bah, you giant sad sack! What were you thinking!” Sarmenti shakes his head and hisses, tossing the bells and horns so they hit the other man's defenseless chest and shoulders. “Why would you stalk me? Wanted to finish me yourself, huh?!”
“Not at all.” Baldwin tilts his own head, the edges of his mask reflecting the rare sparks of the suffocating torch.
“Then why?” Sarmenti presses the knife deeper as he leans closer, now the man's blood seeping into his own glove – now hot and sticky.
“You seemed upset and distressed. Desperate men commit desperate things.” He casts his eyes down, at the red hand clenching the handle of the blade inside him. “This, for instance.”
“You, always playing the hero, nay, the saint!” Sarmenti laughs, twisting the blade, summoning a pained moan from the broad chest. “Your majesty wanted to die a king? HA! Then die like mine – from the hand of a fool!”
A cold shiver crawls up the jester's spine when his waist is seized and pulled, forcing him into the warm but hardly soft embrace. At the same time the hold around his wrist strengthens and the realisation that, should the other man desire so, he could fairly easily snap it, shattering all the delicate bones the jester needs to play his precious music, hits him on the head.
“There is little value to my life now, that is true,” the leper husks into the side of Sarmenti's head. “But what little of it remains shan't be cast away like rubbish… shan't be wasted… not by you, not by anyone else.”
“Hr! Why won't you push me away?” Sarmenti giggles and a shiver in his tone splits his words – not from the fear for his life, but the fear of his own past. “Why not seize the blade from my hand and use it against me? Do it! Unlike yours, my life has no meaning left. You have been mourned years ago, me – no one will mourn me even now!”
“Hm,” the leper hums and runs an idle palm up and down the man's back, as if reassuring him but that brought the opposite effect. “What use? I will bleed out and die if I do – and if we stay like this, even I retain a chance to live.”
Sarmenti snickers, weaving the nervous jittering of his voice cords into his quiet laughter, “So calculating… so wise… It's not hard to believe you were an admiral once, messire.”
Baldwin tilts his head and the jester feels his eyes – be they whole or blemished, hollow or blind – squint at him. For the first time, he freezes so that even his bells shut up.
“Why the flattery, Sarmenti,” the man asks him and it's not embarrassing but terrifying to be revealed, stripped of his games. “I know you dislike me.”
“Ha-” the jester barely pulls a laugh and even then his bells don't echo him. “Who said that I do? Anyway, if I were you, I'd hate myself more than I wanted to live.”
The silence in their position is tangible, even when it lasts for a moment longer. “Do you hate me more than you want to live?”
Sarmenti blinks his eyes behind his mask. “I… I don't know…” Another second of thought and he shakes his head again. “Rargh! You and your sweet talk! Get out of my head!”
“Pardon me, I didn't mean to,” the leper apologies, a touch awkwardly dipping his head. “It's not like I had anyone so deep in my bosom for so long either.”
The torch flickers from a stray ghost of the wind wandering through the corridors, as if the depths of the dungeons drew breath. Turning his face at it, Baldwin murmurs, “With it, our last hope shall perish. And we will too, eventually.” He then casts his gaze at the stupefied Sarmenti once more. “If you do want to live more than you hate me, we must crawl out of this mire together. What do you say?”
“I, uh…” the jester swallows thickly, growing stiff in every limb as the blood now taints his sleeves. Hurriedly, he mutters, “I swear I did! I despised you with all my heart and, were I given such a chance, I would have plunged my dirk into your heart before and yet…”
“What stops you now? Why don't you free the blade and chain me down by own blood?”
“I…” and his voice trembles in his throat, and his fingers become slippery from sweat and blood alike, making him jolt not towards, but away from the leper. “Don't hurt me!”
“I won't, Sarmenti,” Baldwin assures him in a calmer voice, grunting a little as he has to contain the man with only one arm. “You can have my word.”
“I don't take it! Even if we escape our grim fate, you will surely end me later, finish me off while I sleep, split me in two when I turn my back to you-”
“Sarmenti,” Baldwin repeats again, now in the jester’s very ear, sending a chilling wave to his very brain that, surprisingly, makes him abandon his attempts in struggle. “I will not hold a grudge, I will not use it against you, I will not harm you. Because I don't want to.”
“You do?” Sarmenti asks breathlessly, feeling how tears sting his scarred cheeks.
“Yes,” the leper answers, nodding his head so that it brushes against the jester's. “I came here because I hate the very thought of any injury or misfortune befalling you. Why would I follow you here otherwise?”
“No! No-” the jester sobs, burying his running nose in the other man's shoulder, its warmth now a comfort, a privilege and a treat even. “You would never do this for someone like… me! You must hate me, yes-!”
Baldwin clutches him closer, even if sloppier than before, the fatigue finally taking its hold on him. “Your fate disquitens me, Sarmenti. I'm sorry you do not trust my words but I beg you, allow me to save us this time for I shall not forgive myself even in the world the Light means for me after I draw my last breath.”
Sarmenti sniffs one more time before answering in a hitched, exhausted voice, “Alright. Let's try.”
“Thank you.” The leper gathers his will and strength, standing a little taller. “I will hold you through this.”
“Uhuh.” Sarmenti nods and his bells chirp shyly as he does.
“I can neither bow nor bend, so you will have to grasp the torch.”
“N-no!” The jester resists. After getting a bemused shielded stare from the other man, he explains himself, his chin to his own chest, “I will probably twist the knife even deeper.”
Baldwin's focused expression, or rather the single feature of it – the strict uneven clamp of his mouth – dissolves into a warm smile. “You already did that. And we both survived it.”
“Right, sorry,” Sarmenti mutters, averting his eyes. “I will try then.”
After getting an affirming nod, he sidesteps towards the barely burning torch, still holding the other firmly, and he follows suit, as in dance. When their beacon is an arm's reach away, the jester glances up and the leper relinquishes him.
The immediate instinct to flee, to finish the man off, to grasp the torch and run, to never look back almost knocks him over. It would be easy to dismiss the leper’s death as an incident, it would be easy to live with one more death on his count. Besides, the notion of crying in front of not only a leper, but a once-king is enough to completely trample his ego into the mud. For a long moment he considers this option – one that he would choose on any other day, the one he knows is the right one for him.
But today he is weak. Left without human warmth again, even if for a moment, he acutely feels how alone he has been. It's been a lifetime since he confided in anyone, embraced and was embraced. Stifling his immediate reaction, he reaches for the torch and returns to their frame.
“Good,” Baldwin rasps, sparking both warmth and worry in the jester's soul. “Let us return to the camp then. But ah, I don't see very well. Take the lead.”
Sarmenti hurriedly nods and wraps his free hand around the leper’s waist, feeling how bandages there are drained in blood too. “Oh, gods above… you are going to-!”
“I'm not,” the man interrupts him, every breath shuddering his entire body. “I said, lead.”
The jester gulps down his apprehension and fear, walking onward with a thrumming heart. The torch's halo is flickering and almost powerless before the darkness but even so, he can tell the outline of the dungeon door they came from. With every step Baldwin leans more and more unto him and it's not the weight pressing onto him that troubles Sarmenti, but that the same weight impaling itself onto his blade deeper. Stroking the man's side, he murmurs the weak reassurance of, “Almost there, just one more step-!”
And with these words, the torch gives out. Black-pitch dark embraces them and for a moment the jester's heart stops. “Oh no…”
“Ah…” Baldwin sighs, his shoulders and chest sinking around the blade inside him. “At least we tried.”
“Nononono, don't speak so!” Sarmenti cries out as he immediately bursts into tears again. “Wait, Baldwin-!”
The man – the once unbending force and unbreakable cliff – grows meek and soft, as if he just fell asleep. The jester has to thank his reflexes once again when, as soon as the leper's knees buckle and he falls to the dungeon floor, they make him do the same.
“Don't blame yourself, Sarmenti,” the leper reassures him, leaning into the embrace. “As you said, I have been mourned already…”
“No!” he shouts, attempting to lift Baldwin but to no avail. “Please, don't leave me!”
“But isn't it what you wanted?” The leper asks, lolling his head to Sarmenti’s shoulder. “Maybe now you will be content?”
“How can you say so?” the jester snivels, his shoulders jumping up and down as he barely manages to breathe. He pulls off his mask and nuzzles against Baldwin’s. “I haven't wept for anyone in years, and here I am – crying like a fool!”
“Don't,” Baldwin huffs, lifting his face and laying his trembling palm on Sarmenti's cheek. “Don't cry. Not for me, not for anything else. Nothing in the world deserves a moment of your grief, a bead of your tears.”
Even in the absolute dark, the jester finds the other's mouth immediately. It swallows his own weeping and Baldwin's shallow breath. To his relief and further sorrow, he feels the leper pulling his face an inch closer and humming faintly into his lips. It's sloppy, from his own tears and anything that was on the other man's face. But he doesn't care and he knows at this moment that it all doesn't matter. How could it, when this moment gave him all the kindness, all the warmth his destiny held for him?
The moment is long, infinitely so. Before a bright, unearthly light breaks past Sarmenti's eyelids and a sharp noise knocks on his eardrums.
“What in the-” the arbalest mutters, still holding the doorhandle.
“Sarmenti? Baldwin?! Oh, Light have mercy!” Junia exclaims, handing over her shining divine mace to the other woman before hurrying to the two. “What happened?”
Sarmenti bawls and explanations and prayers spill from his mouth like vomit. And even if he knows he's supposed to make the situation clearer, the nun only graces him with a look of complete astonishment and concern.
“Right, now help me,” Junia instructs softly but in a tone steady and affirming. “He is still breathing and can be helped, fret not.”
Together they lay Baldwin down and Junia rests her gleaming hands on his injured chest, causing the jester much concern and worry. She lifts her eyes at him and says further, “Now, you will pull the dirk out on my command-”
“But-!” Sarmenti resists, his heartbeat racing so fast he barely hears himself, “Baldwin told me not to!”
“And he was right.” Junia ascends his words. “But I can't make the wound close with the blade still in it.”
Hesitantly, the jester lays his awfully bloodied palms on the handle of his dirk. Anything to save Baldwin was fine with him, but will it save him? “On your command.”
The glow grows stronger, small sparks now distinguishable in this warm aura. “Now!”
The jester extracts the blade with a wide movement of his both arms and blood gushes from Baldwin's chest. Petrified, he watches the light consume the man's upper half and seep into his being through the openings in his bandages. Sarmenti was healed by Junia's blessed hands before and knew it demanded time but now every moment was torturous at this precipice of life and death – not only for Baldwin, but for Sarmenti too.
Finally, the glow fades, dissolving like a cloud and the man's chest rises with a deep breath, making the others breathe out in relief too. In another moment, a pained groan shudders the leper’s frame.
“Baldwin? Baldwin!” Sarmenti calls him, leaning above his face. “Are you alive?”
“Uhum…” the man retorts shallowly, knowing all too well he shouldn't even try to move and yet the corner of his mouth twitches, as if he was trying to smile.
A moment away from lunging at Baldwin's neck and entwining it with his arms, Sarmenti is caught by a hand from behind. “Yes, yes, you may thank your saviour later,” Missandei grunts, holding him by the collar. “You owe us a proper explanation why it's your dirk in Baldwin's chest first.”
“Oh, dear angel of mine,” Junia addresses the woman, making her grip on the jester ease from the tone alone, “they both have been through a lot. Allow them rest.”
“Fine,” the arbalest relinquishes Sarmenti and helps the nun up. “We are to depart soon. I shall bring the supplies to make camp here, so that Baldwin can rest.”
“Thank you, my gentle dove,” the other woman retorts. “Sarmenti-”
“I won't leave him,” the jester snaps back immediately, lying prone on the leper's one side. “Don't even try to ask.”
“Huh? Oh, it's quite the opposite – I wanted you to keep an eye on him,” the vestal explains. After a small pause she adds, smiling discretely to herself, “You seemed to be getting along very well.”
“Don't tell anyone,” the jester growls, even before he realizes what a mistake he made. “Because no one will ever believe you. Because it's not true – what you saw. Actually, you didn't see anything, you were just imagining things, you religious people do it all the time.”
Before he reflects on himself again, the jester and the nun both register the low churn and wheezing that makes their heads turn. It takes them barely a look more to see that it was Baldwin trying to laugh, to the best of his current, very limited capacities.