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Uneasy, prickling heat crept over Feofan’s body as he drifted in and out of consciousness. This room was far too warm, even by Zandik’s standards. He knew that the other felt the cold more sharply, and had grown accustomed to doing business in Sumerian heat over the years, but this was entirely too much.
“Zandik?” His voice came out far quieter than he intended, followed by a painful cough. Fortunately, he didn't need to say anything more, as that distinctive shade of turquoise he'd learnt to associate with his partner appeared in his periphery. Trying to focus, to turn the blur into the face he knew, only made his eyes hurt more.
“Feofan. How are you feeling?”
That voice was…wrong. Slightly stronger, less raspy, than it should be. For a moment, Feofan felt like he had stepped back in time. But the thought was washed away in a second, and he was back to the same confusion that he awoke with.
“It's too warm. Hurts. Why-” his voice was cut off again, coughs rattling through his chest, and Zandik disappeared for a second before he heard a glass placed down and felt a weight next to him. Two cold hands held him upright, one stopping him from curling into himself while the other gently rubbed his back. Waiting. When the first gasping breaths entered his lungs again, he felt the glass pressed to his lips.
“Drink.”
That tone, the flat, pragmatic worry that he knew nobody else got to hear. That was his Zandik.
He drank.
The cold water was a relief. The colder arm around him, even more so. When the glass was empty, both sensations retreated, and he heard the rustling of pillows being rearranged behind him before those hands returned to ease him back.
The confusion in his expression was apparently evident enough, because Zandik spoke before Feofan had to. “You're warm because you have a fever, and the pain is a chest infection that would have developed into pneumonia if the fever hadn't gotten in the way of your work first.”
“...Oh.” He took stock of his surroundings: the dim lighting, the soft bedsheets, the subtle smell of antiseptic, tobacco, and lavender that would cause most to either wrinkle their noses or stiffen in automatic fear. The evenly-spaced darkness of his windows, one of which smarted his eyes with a cold breeze when he faced it. The white-tan-turquoise-crimson that he could never associate with anyone else, still and expectant.
Had Zandik said something?
A shock of fear fizzled at the edge of his mind. Feofan didn't like when he couldn't hear everything.
The silence lingered.
“Did you hear what I asked?”
“...no.”
“I said, how long have you been experiencing these symptoms?”
“I…I don't know?” He ended it almost like a question, wracking his mind for context. None made itself clear. He was adrift in this time, in this space, with nothing but the information Zandik had given him and his own faulty senses. Where were his glasses?
“You don't know?” Something was sharper in Zandik’s voice. “Do you have a general timeframe at all?”
“I don't. Why don't I…” He didn't know when this started. He didn't know what the sharpness meant. He usually knew so much, his mind was his weapon, why didn't he know? A second, different pain settled in his chest, pushing past his aching lungs and into his heart. He could hear it beating. Was it getting louder? What if it stopped him from hearing something going wrong? What if it drowned out Zandik? Where were his glasses?
Something different touched his lips, and he jerked back so hard that his head almost crashed into the headboard. Almost, because that cold hand was there again, faster than he could think, bracing the impact like second nature. The fingers dug into his scalp, on the edge between holding and grabbing, and that sharp voice made it through again.
“Feofan? Feofan. It's a thermometer. I must have not said it out loud the first time. It's alright. Just a thermometer…” The thermometer, now identified, made it into his mouth, but he still spoke around it.
“Where are my glasses?”
“I put them in the drawer. You shouldn't be awake long enough to need them.”
“I need them.”
“You need to keep your mouth closed so I can get an accurate reading.”
“I need to see you, Zandik. You sound wrong.”
Zandik stiffened. He was silent for a minute, waiting to take the thermometer again before he spoke.
“I'll get your glasses in a moment, I just need to ask you…some questions, first. To check how the fever is affecting you.” His voice wasn't sharp anymore, but it was something else. Like the moment before the rain started falling, where you could feel it in the air but could never explain how.
“Firstly, where are we?”
“My quarters, in Zapolyarny.” He knew that much.
“Next, what is your name, or names?”
“Feofan. Regrator.” It had taken him some time to grow used to being called his title far more than his name, but it had grown into his soul until there was nearly no difference between the two.
“And what is mine?”
“Zandik.”
That stiffness, again. He felt it, the tiniest disturbance next to him.
“Finally…how old are you? Chronologically?”
It took a moment for him to tally the years. His body had stopped reflecting them accurately some time back.
“Sixty-five.”
“...oh.”
“Did I say something wrong? What's wrong?”
He heard his heartbeat increasing again. Something was definitely wrong, and he didn't know what, and he didn't know why, and something told him that if he could just see what was barely in front of him, see Zandik’s face, he would know. He would know, and he would fix it, and Zandik would stop sounding sharp and strange and distant.
“Nothing…nothing you need to worry about, but your fever, it's high. High enough to explain any confusion you may be feeling.” Zandik shifted, moving his hands away. “I need to go get you something, I'll be right-”
Feofan reached out. Feofan grabbed his cold wrist. Feofan felt for the scars, the lattice of marks left by a thousand tests and trials.
He found nothing but smooth skin, and something clicked in his mind, as quiet as a pin dropping.
“You're not Zandik.”
Omega took a deep breath, saying nothing, as if his silence could keep this moment safe forever.
It couldn't.
The silence broke, and the rain fell with it.
He felt it fall. A deluge. The kind of rain that sinks deep through your clothes, into your bones, until you wonder if you'll ever know comfort or warmth again.
He was so cold. He was too warm. The dampness on his face felt too hot for rain, and his eyes blurred twice-over, and his breath caught in his throat like sandpaper, and he desperately wished that Zandik was here.
Zandik had been dead for years. He knew that now, saw the memory like a single beacon through the fog. He had entered the office for a “work meeting”, with a handful of imported lavender sweets that he knew Zandik loved shoved in his pockets, and happened across the scene. A sea of turquoise, like the peaks of the warm waves of Sumeru. A body on the operating table, long hair poking out under the fabric draped over it.
Turquoise. The very same.
Feofan wished that that was all he had seen, sometimes. The youngest had whispered to him, small, cold, hand in his own, that he wasn't missing much.
(“He's just sleeping with his eyes open.” he said, voice so matter-of-fact. “We all did that before he woke us up. It's just the other way round, this time.”)
And yet, his curiosity, his need to know everything he could, had gotten the best of him. He had lifted the shroud, drawing his face closer, closer, until he was close enough to feel the absence of breath. Only this close could he see more than a blur. It took him a moment to recognise the expression, as it was one his love had rarely worn.
Zandik looked scared.
He had pressed a final, rouge-stained kiss to Zandik’s forehead, and let his ever-bright hair be dampened by the tear that fell with it. It had been quiet. Dignified. Elegant, like everything else he did. The youngest had taken his hand again, leading him to all the important documents that one needed to find after a death, and Feofan had ruffled his hair and handed him a lavender sweet.
He had maintained that quiet elegance throughout the process. A solemn speaker at the sparse funeral, a stoic executor of his wishes, a still-sharp negotiator in the face of Omega’s ambitious new projects. He had been proud of himself, in a way, for meeting the emotionless, hooked mask of the segment with a composed mask of his own. Wore it so close to his skin that he almost convinced himself that there was no mask at all. He was immortal, after all, and such trivial emotions were unbecoming of one destined for far greater.
The way he felt now, the all-consuming feeling in every harsh, choking sob that burnt like a wildfire in his lungs, was proof that immortality had never made him less human. The pain mixed with it all, enhancing instead of diluting, a paradoxical fire in the rainstorm. He couldn't breathe. He wished that he could be still like the true immortals among them, as unmoving as their First. But his foolish human body still needed air. Immortal does not equal invulnerable, Zandik would always say, especially not in your case.
Maybe this was it. Maybe he had beckoned the reaper close one too many times. And despite what that would mean, despite the fact that Death’s embrace was the only place Zandik's pointed voice would lecture him again, Feofan was terrified. He wasn't ready. He had built his entire life on the principle of not being ready. The gods would never forgive him. They'd- he would-
A wiry, freezing, trembling pair of arms wrapped tightly around him, and Feofan snapped back into his body.
“Please breathe. Please just breathe again.” Omega’s voice vibrated through him, felt more than heard. “I don't know how to fix this. I can't just knock you out, I don't know why but I can't, Feofan, Feofan, please, I'm not made for this…”
The surface he was pressed against was warm. Something inside it was whirring.
He needed to know why.
The air that rushed in felt like a million needles, but was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted. Even as it scratched his throat again, leading into a loop of wheezing gasps and weak coughs, the relief was palpable.
The noise in Omega’s chest, the harsh clunk of some vital mechanical part stopping and starting all over again, was the closest Feofan had ever heard a segment get to tears.
“It's okay. It's alright.” Omega repeated the reassurances with an unpractised, foreign tone, like he'd never quite heard them before in that order. “I can make this…you- hurt less. I can fix that part. I just need to-”
Feofan wasn't sure what noise came out of his mouth, but it was apparently enough to make Omega reconsider letting go. Those arms tightened around him again, completely filling his vision with the dark blue fabric of a rough linen shirt. All he could hear were Omega’s inner mechanisms and his own, the near-silent symphony of ticks and whirs contrasting with the intrusive, noticeable rasp of his breath.
“I'm not leaving this room. You will be able to see me the entire time.” Omega said quietly. A hand rustled in a pocket, and reached in to gently perch wire frames on Feofan’s face. They felt…unfamiliar. Lighter than usual.
“These aren't your usual pair, but they're the same prescription. You bent the other pair out of shape when you took them off and then fell asleep on your desk. Iota will have them fixed tomorrow.” As he went through the explanation, Omega slowly loosened his hold until he could get up, becoming a vague but distinctive blur. Feofan watched him silently as he walked over to a darker shape on his desk, rummaging through the (leathery, loud, muffled clinks and rustles) medical bag.
“Iota thinks he's some authority on lenses of all kinds, just because he was the first of us made with organic eyes. Not even good ones. He has done excellent work on dissecting the ruin graders and their lasers, though. He has this project that definitely has promise, but he keeps on getting distracted by minute tasks…”
At some point, Feofan stopped listening to what Omega was saying, and instead listened to how he said it. Unlike the high peaks and low drawls of his usual, melodramatic voice, his ramble was almost monotone. He knew from the youngest segment, and from being there for all of their early years, that this was how every form of Dottore sounded at first. The voices they built themselves, from Iota’s clipped tones to Omega’s deliberately antagonising performance, were just as much masks as the ones they wore on their faces.
Although he had hidden it, that had been Zandik’s voice, too. When he had dropped the performance in private for good, and let Feofan hear him truly, he had been surprised by the warmth of the smile on his partner's face.
(“When you're like this, I know you mean everything you say.” he had murmured, holding Zandik’s face with a gloved hand. “That means more than a mimicry of what you think I want ever could.”)
In this calm moment, the moment after the storm, he realised Omega had dropped that mask around him years ago.
Glass vials clinked together to the side of the bed, and he opened his eyes (when had he closed them?) to see Omega arranging his paraphernalia, unscrewing and screwing containers in turn. Each one was tapped absently with his nails, the sounds differing ever so slightly in pitch.
“This for the fever, this for the cough, this for your sleep, these for the nutrients you're missing. This for the pain, and it happens to help with sleep as well. This for the infection…” The narration and the tapping blended into a soothing song in Feofan’s mind, and he almost drifted away again before the same glass from before glanced against his hand.
“I have…three pills for you right now, to be taken with water, and cough syrup for afterwards. The others can wait until later. Do you think you could take them yourself, or shall I give them to you?”
Feofan willed his arms to move, or his mouth to speak, but neither seemed to be in the mood to listen.
“I'll give them to you.”
Despite the certainty in his statement, Omega still kept his eyes on Feofan’s reaction, waiting for the subtlest nod before proceeding. The pills went down with the ease of experience, and the sickly-sweet cough syrup finally coated his throat with a pleasing numbness. His glasses were once again removed from his face (and placed on the corner of the bedside table with a click and quiet narration), and Feofan let the world blur before his eyes again.
“Those will take effect soon.” Omega’s hand, steady again, came to rest on his forehead. “And if they don't, I have more options available.” As Omega began to let go, Feofan reached up to grab his wrist. This time, the smooth, cold surface didn't shock him.
“Stay?”
Omega was silent for a moment. When he spoke, the tension-before-the-rain was in his voice again.
“...why? You know I'm not Zandik.”
“I know, Omega.” And even though his head was swimming, even though he felt barely a minute away from drifting to sleep again, Feofan tried to pour all the meaning he could into his next words.
He knew the segments loved him in their own ways. He knew Omega, who had slipped into his creator's role like the perfect understudy he was made to be, felt his differences the clearest. No matter what he did, no matter how many memories he had, how many other people he could fool, how many decades passed, he could never be Zandik. Never be Feofan’s Zandik.
He knew Omega had never told the truth about Zandik’s death. He also knew that, for someone to be willing to let the first part of their own soul die, to feel that horror rattle through their shared connection, more than sheer malice had to be at play.
He didn't know how to help a man who could rip himself apart to commit suicide a thousand times. He didn't know if he was a fool for continuing to love him.
But he knew what Omega wanted, and had wanted for years, and he thought that he wanted it too.
“Stay. As yourself.”
The hand on his forehead twitched. The whirring, ever so quiet, started up again.
“As you wish, Feofan.”
Both disappeared for a moment, replaced by the sound of boots being tugged off of weary feet, before the other side of his bed dipped under his weight. Ever so carefully, like he was worried something would shatter if he moved too fast, Omega drew closer to his side.
Feofan, who had no such qualms, closed the distance to rest his head on Omega’s chest.
It wasn't like Zandik. Where his first love’s heart had beat a constant rhythm, Omega’s systems provided a constant, mechanical reminder of his differences. Where Zandik’s hands had been languid and eased, Omega’s were light and hesitant.
It wasn't the same.
Perhaps, it didn't have to be.