Work Text:
“That I should lose again… How disappointing.”
The Warrior collapses at last, a short ways away from him. That their long-awaited battle should have such a… known result. It hollows Zenos more than he ever thought possible. Despite that, the moments they shared were… unforgettable. To be pushed to the very limits, to burn the candle of his life to its end… what bliss. If nothing else, Zenos can take satisfaction in the heaviness of his body.
The Warrior’s lingering hex is potent, and makes his body even heavier. Zenos can feel the magic working beneath his skin still, setting his nerves aflame. He wants to sink, deeper and deeper, beyond this yawning dawn-lit plane and into the empty quiet. But he is in no hurry. There is no home for Zenos to return to, if ever there was, and none whom he would seek succor from, either. All he needs lies but a few malms away. So he shall tarry, for as long as the Warrior sees fit to linger here. Zenos continues to speak, the long-awaited balm of acceptance loosening his tongue.
“Never have I understood those around me. Understood their obsessions. Besieged by their banality, the world was a mire of tedium and trivialities.”
Perhaps to the Warrior, Zenos himself has become one such tedious trifle. It would be warranted. Twice challenged, twice bested, there is little now that he could offer as a foe. But Zenos would have persisted nonetheless. There is naught else that he seeks, save for what he finds solely with the Warrior.
“But in these fleeting moments, there is...a spark.”
He can recall it, still.
When he had first seen the true extent of the Warrior’s promise, and been bested. That first moment of joy so radiant, the days thereon could never compare. So he opened his throat to let his lifesblood flower among the blossoms below, and slipped into the quiet with a smile. It was utterly blissful.
Now, it is… empty.
“Blinding, brilliant… gone...too soon…”
That he should be ripped from the wonder of his first death, only for his second to lose all savor. Zenos would laugh at the irony, if it weren’t so utterly mundane. Even now as his blood cools, that moment of joy grows further and further away.
Is it the same for him?
“What of you, my mirror? Born into this world, bestowed name, bid to seek out strife and adventure…”
He lifts a hand towards the Warrior. As if to challenge him, as Zenos has done time and time again in the past. Reaching, as always, for that ephemeral spark.
“Was this life a gift...or a burden? Did you find...fulfillment?”
Zenos hesitates on the word. He had to search for it. Scavenging for its traces in the dark recesses of his mind, as he has always done. Something in him wishes that it comes easier to the Warrior. The impossibility of it is almost too much for Zenos to bear. He seeks refuge in the dark of his own eyelids. Let the quiet come, and take from him this impossible hope.
“I…”
The Warrior drags himself up onto his side, his breaths hitching on what must be a broken rib. He stretches out a hand towards Zenos, and lifts the curse he’d laid. The sparking in his nerves begins to fade. As if that was not strange enough, he casts another charm, cool starlight shining before Zenos’s eyes. Something begins to lift from his chest. Blood dribbles from a split lip as the Warrior speaks.
“It was a gift. And it was a burden. I wish you could have seen it, Zenos.”
The Warrior drags himself closer, smearing blood across stardust. The sight defies imagination, and all that Zenos once understood about him. He turns away from the Warrior, yet still he comes closer, ilm by crushing ilm. He cannot spend himself like this. This cannot be.
The device lands in time to knock his hand away before he can touch him. It chirps once, twice, and before the Warrior can reach for him once more, it whisks him away. But not before the Warrior damns him with one last cry.
“Even here past the edge of fate, you do not deserve to be alone, Zenos!”
And he is gone. Returned to the world where he is hailed as a hero. Accepted, and loved.
And Zenos is alone. Graced only by starlight.
He finds it in himself to breathe one last sigh of relief.
He slips into the quiet easily.