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His steps were barely audible on the polished marble floor.
He had that habit of being quiet when he didn’t speak. His body was calm, his steps light, almost invisible when he wanted to be.
It was usually The Doctor who made the most noise. Loud and obnoxious; with those horrible, horrible boots he wore that made his steps sound ten times louder, and belts making a clink-clank sound when he walked.
Pantalone had offered multiple times to help him find a new outfit alternative for his main segment, even if it was just the shoes. So he could be quieter, add stealth to his presence. But the man had refused.
He had said something about grand entrances that Pantalone had rolled his eyes to with an annoyed frown. He wasn’t really paying attention then, he had a business deal to close, down in Northland bank. He wasn’t in the mood to travel all the way to Liyue, especially with that horrible heat they had in the summer.
He vaguely remembered that Dottore was saying something –Oh god what was it? Why couldn’t he remember? Was he already forgetting his voice?
He picked up his pace without noticing. He never did that. He always walked slow and methodically unlike Dottore who–
The heat. The heat in Liyue. That’s what he was thinking about. He was right of course; it had indeed been terrible. Those useless people at the bank couldn’t do their jobs properly, Liyue wasn’t and the most advanced city in terms of not getting his expensive clothing dirty (a kid tripped and fell of him, for moras sake!) and he had a few not so pleasant encounters with old acquaintances.
It wasn’t half as bad as Natlan or Sumeru but still…. No. Not Sumeru, Don't think about Sumeru.
His hand fumbled with the doorknob as he entered his room. Everything was tidy and clean, he knew it, he made sure the cleaners didn’t leave a speck of dust, not now, not ever. Only there were some clothes scattered across the floor and devices abandoned at his desk. Ugh, and he told him to not leave his stuff whenever.
“I’ll pick it up later.” The asshole had said. Where was he now? He always got away with that stuff, leaving Pantalone to sit and scoff at his mess. The Doctor never cared. Maybe he didn’t even mention cleaning later. Maybe Regrator’s memory was twisting itself. Maybe he was just so desperate to listen to–
“I have always carried this repulsive need to be something more than human, you know.”
He let a scoff escape him out loud as he took off his coat, that smelled of ash. Ridiculous. Dottore couldn’t be considered a human being, never. No matter how mortal he truly was, deep down, that man had given up on his humanity ages ago. It’s too late now. Too many experiments, too many segments.
The only human thing that wrenched man had ever done was him. Care for him. Provide him with everything he needed to live, even life itself.
Oh, Zandik, did he truly think he wouldn’t come to him?
It was obvious, of course. He wasn’t sad. Not in the slightest. It wasn’t that Dottore meant anything more than a simple coworker to him. He knew it wouldn’t work out. Dottore dreamed and dreamed but he couldn’t make them a reality.
“From the very beginning I never thought you could win this game” Pantalone had said with an eerie calm in his voice, the one he always had. He didn’t mean a single word. The lies that left his mouth were criminal.
Because he did. When Dottore told him that he’ll become a God, a true one, the kind that Pantalone despised, loathed, he nodded. When Dottore told him that he’ll make a new world, a better world, a world for them, he nodded, and asked him to plant the world in his garden. And Dottore promised him. He told him he’ll be the God to judge his sins. And Pantalone believed him.
He had nothing to lose. He was born among the other filthy humans, whose blood would one day be spilled in the name of the Archons. What would happen on the day he stood before whatever had deemed him worthy of existence within the universe, and he was forced to justify the space he had occupied? Violence against violence —that was the law of beasts and Gods alike. Pantalone knew it. Dottore enforced it.
The ruins of humanity are gathered neither by angels nor restored by God. Every version of history ends in slaughter. They never fit into this world, not with their sins, one worst than the other, clawing at them, claiming them.
“But still you came, contract in hand, to honor our agreement.”
Every piece of flesh rots. One day, when the Elixir is gone and his skin is torn open, he too will begin to decay. Fragments of that rot will remain behind, cursing him. They will curse him —and he will chase him still, descending all the way to his nonexistent grave.
He will pray to gods he does not support, begging them for enough mercy to let him draw his final breath there. He’ll pray to him.
His stomach tightened, almost painfully. That image had not been merely vulgar –it had been blasphemous. As though The Doctor had been created to challenge every notion of purity: an angel torn from heaven and cast down here to stain the world deliberately, with things that should never have been beautiful, and yet were. A dangerously cunning angel —he knew it. The man had allowed him to know it, had allowed himself to be seen. He wasn’t standing alone in the darkness of hell, he was standing with him.
“Because I am a reputable partner.”
The tree was burning. That damned tree, it was engulfed in flames, and it was beautiful. It was vile and destructive and vicious, but it was beautiful. The world was nothing if it wasn’t a beautiful world.
And in that moment, in that fleeting moment he mistakenly let his eyes open and wander, he realized that Zandik was horrifyingly beautiful.
And that he was in love with him.
What terrible luck.
Perhaps devotion was doomed to be painful. Perhaps it had always been a form of eternal punishment rather than peace.
To want. To desire.
Desire is ugly. Relentless. It takes the shape of two hands tightened around a throat. It takes the shape of a body broken against the ground.
Pantalone wanted so much he felt like he would die alongside him.
“Yes now… The experiment has officially drawn to a close.”
I know he wanted to say.
I know because the only days he ever truly lived were the ones when his mouth was full of his name. He knew because the curve of his neck and the curve of his palm had been carved to fit his face. He knew because he knew he was not as insignificant as the Archons made him feel. He knew because he desired him, perhaps, enough to destroy him.
Was he hanging from the leash of his own longing? His need was beginning to grow teeth. He believed in nothing except the way he held his name between his teeth at his last moments.
“Goodbye Feofan.”
He is not foolish —neither of them is. They do not imagine halos above each other’s heads; they know that the sharp winds of the past, those that twist endlessly with no escape, cannot touch them, and yet, neither accepts the other as a saint.
What blasphemy that would be.
At first, it had been a matter of survival. The world spun endlessly with an absurd kind of speed, and he was like water slipping across its surface. Always out of step with time, trapped in a constant delay. Too insignificant to serve as any kind of counterweight. Hurled through space by the sheer force of inertia.
Survival. The Elixir.
He practically slammed himself into a desk, his hands and legs shaking, the exhaustion of everything catching up to him finally. With trembling limbs, he pulled out the small shining vial as he gulped it down with a breath. It stung. Dottore promised he’ll fix the taste someday.
He said he had time. He said they had time.
“This time, that’s what it truly is.”
Was this not love? Was this not ludus, or eros, or perhaps mania? So many words for something so painfully human, and yet none of them fit as perfectly as his soul against the other man’s.
“Living and dying together, has a way of binding two parties together rather closely.”
Was it not codependency?
The way Zandik’s eyes softened whenever he played the piano, the way his own opened to look at him. The way a segment would always be around him, annoying him endlessly with whatever, wasting his endless money away in stupid, useless experiments. The way Pantalone was nothing if only rich, and Dottore went up to the Tsaritsa and told her to make him the Harbinger. The way he lived through each of his deaths. Zandik, the segments, him, always him, and the unbearable pain that came after, that he masked with that calm smile and closed eyes. He didn’t dare open them and see. Only when he was with him.
They come together within their shared struggle. When he stands alone, he stands with him. Always.
“And don’t I know it…” Feofan whispered in the painfully empty room. He really wanted a cigarette, but maybe he’d have to watch his health from now on.
The Doctor’s office was empty, after all.