Work Text:
It was almost done. Weeks of studies, months of pain.
His joints never cooperated anymore.
Trembling, he inhaled and exhaled slow as a single grain of sand through an hourglass before gliding the thin brush over the canvas. The brush jittered, as it always did, and he cursed in old Sumerian as he tried to scrap off the excess with his knife, leaving a scar on your dress.
The lighting that day had been perfect. Deep red satin shining in the afternoon. A perfect, shining gem coveted for its luster and cut.
His days were numbered. So many patients said they felt their body failing them. Feofan had confessed as such over the decades.
His hands had always been so steady, so capable. Surgery was nothing more than child’s play. Fine motor work that was second nature, honed and refined in long hours few ever bothered with. Painting was your forte, your second love, but you’d taught him with patience that almost outpaced his own.
How did someone barely in their third decade be so willing to wait? At that age, he was only patient when it mattered, but you?
You felt at ease in this world. He didn’t so much envy you as he did long to capture it, understand it, so he too could feel it, one day.
Zandik stepped back from the canvas, brow furrowed as he forced his bad eye to focus. Depth perception was difficult and his heart sank.
Nothing but a shadow. Colors stood too sharp against one another, his fingers having been too sore for longer blending periods. It was obvious he’d had more energy for your face, the finest part of the entire masterpiece. Ten years ago, this would have been so easy.
Useless.
Old.
Decrepit.
Why did you bother with him, he wondered. This was meant to be your birthday present, the way he saw you and what you meant to him.
Would you feel compelled to fix it? Straighten the lines, smooth the colors, make quick work of his shaky splatters?
He couldn’t hold a wrench anymore, nor were his eyes good for small mechanisms. With all of the major projects outsourced to the better and more capable parts of himself, this was all he had left. How else did one capture their world visually?
He sat down, palette knife in hand, contemplating just slashing the thing to pieces.
“Zandik?”
Your voice, a melody.
One he didn’t deserve, not right now. The sentiment must have shown or you would not have hesitated as you said, “I can come back.”
He held out a hand, dropping the knife and beckoning you. You took it upon reaching him, fingers finding the sore joints you always worked. So warm, like morning sun on dewed grass.
Your appraising silence was a strange comfort to the voice in his head.
“You are unhappy with it, I take it?” you asked, nestling onto his leg, skirts rustling as you pulled the palette knife from his other hand.
“I can’t do anything anymore,” Zandik whispered. “What good am I, when parts of me are so much more efficient, quicker witted, not prone to failure? What do you see in me?”
You pressed a hand to his cheek and he turned to look at you, still barely halfway through life and full of vigor. Eyes that spoke far beyond their years. Those were always his favorite part of you, so expressive, vibrant.
“I see a man determined,” you started. “Who sacrifices himself in hopes of breaking a wheel he may not be around to see shatter.”
You picked up a brush and without breaking your thought, mixed colors nearby.
“Who looks at the world and understands he still has much to learn, even now.”
Skilled hands filled in the space above your shoulder, painting hands, a jacket, red eyes.
“Who looks at me as if I am a marvel despite having experienced every cruelty this world has to offer. Who has let me chip away at the rational transactional walls that stood between us for many years and given me a treasure unimaginable.”
His eyes stung but through a fog, he saw a soft expression, watched as you turned your pose from a stoic mirror into a dynamic, private moment. Your pose originally involved looking off to the side, away from the viewer, but now you looked at the new figure.
Him.
Two styles, not quite clashing but not blending together, either. Faces the only parts in focus.
“I see a man who loves me, Zandik. And that has always been enough.”
He pulled you closer once you put the tools aside, burrowing his head against you. Other parts might say he grew sentimental in his old age despite ripping apart his soul. Perhaps he had. What else was there for the world to teach him?
It was a lesson he was grateful to have finally learned.