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He and Hroptatyr have always been different people. This is a fact that no shortage of people have taken it upon themselves to point out to the two of them; Professor Mimameith brings this up again when she crosses paths with them in the garden, and Hroptatyr laughs and makes some kind of joke about opposites attracting. The professor arches her brow and shoots them a look Eftirvit finds difficult to decipher. 

He can’t deny the truth of that statement. Anyone with an ear and half a brain would describe Hroptatyr as the more sociable of the two, and it came as no surprise to everybody when it took under a year of his time at the Universitas to become one of the most (for lack of a better word) popular members among the mages. 

Still, they’ve never had trouble seeing eye-to-eye, which is perhaps why they had been simultaneously appointed as president and vice-president of the Universitas. For as much as Eftirvit had wanted the position of president for himself, he finds that he doesn’t quite mind that Hroptatyr was the one to attain the role instead. There is no one he can think of who is more deserving of it—a common sentiment, given the sheer number of people who have approached them over the past few days to offer a word of congratulations.

When he’d first gotten to know Hroptatyr, and when their first interactions gradually winded themselves into seminars under sloping trees and lunches in mid-afternoon light, the comparisons between them had always unsettled him. It wasn’t that he disliked being different from the scholar, not really, but it had been apparent even from their earliest years at the Universitat that Hroptatyr’s genius far exceeded anyone else’s, including his own, and try as he might, he’d always found himself one step behind. 

Amusingly enough, the one to toss that seed of doubt aside had been Hroptatyr himself. “Of course we’re different,” he’d replied, once, when someone else had brought it up. He had said it easily, Eftirvit remembers, in that way of his that Eftirvit’s always found impossible to replicate. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Hanging around myself all the time would be awfully boring.”

“Did you really mean that?” Eftirvit had asked after, when they were enough of a distance away to be out of earshot, and Hroptatyr had laughed hard. 

“People like making friends because they’re different from them, don’t they?” Hroptatyr had replied with a shrug. “If everyone just wanted others to think and act like them, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to just be alone for all your life? Our conversations are always interesting because we think differently. I like that.”

Differently, he’d said. Not because he thought more deeply, or more intensively, or knew things that Eftirvit didn’t, or vice versa. They were just different, plain and simple. Eftirvit can’t remember when he’d first considered Hroptatyr a friend, but it must have been around then, he thinks. Somewhere after that, they simply became a pair people expected to find together.

“Zoning out again?” Hroptatyr teases, his shoulder bumping Eftirvit’s, and Eftirvit blinks his way back into the present. They bid a quick farewell to the waving Professor, and begin walking towards the set of benches that are usually vacant at this time of the day. “You need to lighten up, or you’re going to scare people off, looking all angry like that.”

“I am not angry,” he answers reflexively, although Hroptatyr already knows this. “Would you rather I act like you all the time?”

Hroptatyr takes a seat along the far edge of a bench, folding a leg over the other. “No, I like you better like this,” he says, and really, Eftirvit should be used to this by now, but there’s something disarming about how carelessly—truthfully—Hroptatyr says things like these. “Though others might prefer if you did.”

“That matters little to me,” he responds automatically. “On the contrary, it might do you some good to stop being so casual around every person you meet. Someone might take offence some day, with the way you act even around strangers.”

“It’s better than being too serious, isn’t it?” Hroptatyr retorts in return, pulling a small notebook from his pocket and beginning to write—observations on Professor Mimameith’s condition, Eftirvit knows; her health has taken a turn for the worse in recent years. “This is why I’m your only friend, you know.”

The cure, he watches Hroptatyr scribble, the ink of his quill bleeding against the paper and punctuating the end of the sentence with a comma. A story yet to be finished. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

Hroptaty’s fingers stutter against the surface of his notebook briefly, surprised. “That’s because you don’t know what it’s like to have more than one friend.”

“That’s not true.” He’s made his fair share of acquaintances, maybe friends, in all of his years of growing up and then becoming a mage, although he’d lost contact with a good few after they’d gone on to become soldiers or businessmen and he’d accepted an invite into the Universitas Magistrorum. “It is simply easier this way. That is all.”

You’re easier to talk to, he nearly says, but he does not. This is something he learned about Hroptatyr a while ago, a mystery that he has accepted the conclusion to without ever parsing the hypothesis. Hroptatyr makes things easy. The world makes more sense with him around, somehow, even when they’re not sitting under the waning light discussing the way it all works.

“Well,” Hroptatyr responds with a soft laugh, “I’m honoured to hear it, then. But you know, Eftirvit, it’s not good to place too much significance on your relationship with just one person.”

He blinks then, confused. “Are you implying that I’m—” He’d heard this rhetoric repeated several times throughout his life: most of the time by frustrated parents to their overgrown children, or whispered in complaint by other scholars to their friends when the topic of their romantic partners comes up in conversation. Still… “Do you find me clingy, Hroptatyr?”

Hroptatyr laughs so hard that the bird nesting in the tree above them startles and takes flight.

It is only much later that Eftirvit thinks that maybe this was the first warning sign that he missed, right here in their sanctuary under the tree.

When Hroptatyr first begins to grow distant, Eftirvit thinks little of it. He is busy, understandably so—it hadn’t been too long since his appointment as president of the Universitas, and with Eftirvit serving as his vice-president, he (of all people) is well aware of the sheer magnitude of work that Hroptatyr wrangles with each day. This is, of course, on top of the research they have been putting into finding a cure for Professor Mimameith’s condition, which Eftirvit is certain takes up whatever little time Hroptatyr still has left at the end of his work day.

So when their meet-ups reduce themselves to a few miserable minutes of exchanging documents and discussing plans and approvals in either of their offices, and when their conversations in the garden become more of run-ins than meetings, Eftirvit tries not to make mention of it. He has no reason to be upset by it, after all—he’s never been entitled to Hroptatyr’s time, the same way Hroptatyr has never expected him to carve time out of his day for him. 

Still, the next time that he catches a glimpse of Hroptatyr, he finds his legs moving toward him of their own accord. It’s a rainy day, and most of the members of the Universitas are huddled indoors or away on research excursions, which makes the mage’s solitary figure under the eaves even more prominent. “Hroptatyr,” Eftirvit calls, quickening his pace in an attempt to catch up. Hroptatyr doesn’t stop, and he reaches out before he can convince himself that it is a bad idea.

His fingers close around Hroptatyr’s palm by accident, along the skin right above his wrist where the colours of the veins begin to fade, and he feels his friend’s pulse spike under the brush of his thumb. “Hroptatyr,” he says again, louder this time, and mercifully Hroptatyr stops and turns to face him. “Have you been avoiding me? You’ve lost weight.”

Hroptatyr’s smile looks uneven on his face, and his skin has lost some of its usual pallour. He still looks the same, mostly, but not to Eftirvit. Not to someone who’s seen him almost every day, in the mid-morning light and in the dim glow of the midnight lamps. “Eftirvit,” he greets, his voice almost drowned out by the splatter of rain, “I apologise. I didn’t mean to. I’ve just been busy, that’s all.”

“I understand,” Eftirvit replies, and really, he does. They’ve all been busy. “I was not under the impression that you were avoiding me on purpose. It was just…”

Hroptatyr tilts his head to the side, and the slight movement is enough to make Eftirvit aware of the fact that he is still holding onto the president’s hand. He lowers his own with haste. “We’ve seen a lot less of each other than we’re used to, haven’t we? Those stuffy meetings with all the other mages and professors don’t count.” Technically they do, but Eftirvit is inclined to agree. There is something far less appealing about sorting out budget allocations as compared to sitting hunched in a shaded room and theorising about principles beyond the ancient world. “Hey, Eftirvit. Did you miss me?”

The question is so sudden that Eftirvit flounders, almost. “... I’m sorry?”

Hroptatyr smiles, endeared at his obvious confusion, and this time it is his turn to close his fingers around Eftirvit’s wrist and pull him away. Eftirvit follows. They’re heading to the rooftop near each of their offices, Eftirvit recognises, one of the few places where no one else really comes by. He watches as Hroptatyr halts by the door, his other hand hovering over the handle, and says, “I don’t mind the rain.”

Hroptatyr pushes the door open with a chuckle. “It seems you can read my mind now.” 

“You sound—” He follows Hroptatyr out into the open area, not minding the droplets that land in his coat and seep through to his skin. It is slowing to a drizzle by now; nothing more than a mild nuisance, and far better than the sticky heat that summer always brings. Hroptatyr waits for him, and he searches somewhat futilely for the right word to use. “—sad.”

It’s not what he means, not really, but it’s the closest thing he can use to explain what he means. He’s not seen Hroptatyr like this often. He’s always been so self-assured, so unstoppable, and yet so effortlessly amiable to the people around him. Standing here before him now, with his shoulders sloped and bags deep under his eyes, Hroptatyr feels… different.

Eftirvit doesn’t admit aloud that it scares him a little. It doesn’t help that comforting others (or attempting to) has always been more of Hroptatyr’s forte than his own, which means that the best he can offer is a somewhat stiff, “you know you can talk to me, if you need.”

“I know,” Hroptatyr answers with a little smile. When Eftirvit looks at him, he’s leaning slightly over the railing, looking down. There is a good view of a section of the Universitas from here, of the winding corridors that leads to one of the smaller gates and of the low-hanging trees in the garden, leaves dampened with rain. He looks a little less sad now, like the familiarity of the sight is enough to put him at ease.

Eftirvit agrees.

“What do you think you would do, Eftirvit?” Hroptatyr asks, out of the blue. He’s still looking out at the garden. The wind tosses some hair from his shoulder, smatters it against Eftirvit’s cheek instead. He doesn’t mind. “If we didn’t have to do—you know, all this. If we really find a way to make this work, and if everyone gets to someday live in a world where things are better… what would you do?”

Somehow, it’s not a question that has crossed his mind before. He’s never found it necessary to think too much about the untenable and the impossible, and he finds little point in considering the future of a world he can hardly imagine, so he doesn’t. He differs from Hroptatyr in this regard, too. 

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I’d still be here, maybe. But maybe I’d just do research into whatever interests me, or I’d spend all my time catching up on all the books and scrolls I wasn’t able to before.” It’s something he doesn’t expect Hroptatyr to understand, not really. He isn’t sure whether Hroptatyr was ever interested in a life like many of their peers, dedicating their days to the knowledge contained in ancient scrolls and endless books, mainly out of self-interest and only partially due to their duty to the kingdom. No, Hroptatyr has always had a mind that far surpassed that of those around him, and he doesn’t think Hroptatyr has ever viewed himself as incapable of reaching for unimaginable heights. Becoming president of the Universitas is no easy feat, and Eftirvit knows him well enough to know that this is only the beginning for him.

Hroptatyr lets out a quiet hum, tracing patterns in the scattered rain. “Even if you had infinite time? Even if we don’t have to rebel—fight—for survival anymore?”

He thinks for a moment. “Who knows? Maybe I’d become a professor and start teaching, too. Or maybe I’ll end up working with you again. You can tell me about all the new discoveries you’ve made, and I can read through them before you send them out for publishing.”

He isn’t interested in saving all of the world, not really, just what he can. He’ll leave the rest to Hroptatyr.

Hroptatyr laughs at his response, and Eftirvit looks over at him again, surprised. There is a crease by Hroptatyr’s eyes, and his features have melted into something gentler, more tender; almost fond. “I’m there?” he asks. “Even in a different world from this one?”

This makes Eftirvit pause again. He can imagine it clearer now, like the fog in the garden lifting after the rain: he’s in a house further from the main city, away from the patrolling soldiers and the din of ever-active machinery. The Professor comes over for tea sometimes, bringing over old faces from the Universitas who are half-acquaintances, not-quite-friends. They will stay for a while, and Eftirvit will enjoy the company, and maybe the Professor won’t say he needs to loosen up any more. And then Hroptatyr will burst through the door at nightfall, his robes smelling of foreign lands and sea salt, with the key that he leaves wedged between his glove and the skin of his palm.

“Yes,” Eftirvit replies, plain and simple, “you’re there.”

There’s an odd look on Hroptatyr’s face. He’s smiling, although it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but Eftirvit doesn’t think he looks quite as sad anymore. “Thank you,” he says eventually, his tone soft and sober. “That means a lot to me, you know.”

What about me? Eftirvit is almost tempted to ask. Am I there too, in your world?

For some reason, he finds himself afraid of the answer. Afraid of what a no might mean, and afraid of the delight a yes might bring him. So he doesn’t ask.

He doesn’t say anything at all. 

They stay like that until the drizzle clears, and the railing is turning cold against his skin. “I should get back to my office,” Hroptatyr says, and there’s that inflection to his voice again, that little something that Eftirvit can’t quite decipher. If this were anyone else, he’d merely dismiss it as them being unwilling to get back to work, but this is Hroptatyr. He’s never complained about his work, and he wouldn’t complain about the role he’d vied for. 

“Fine,” he acquiesces. “You remember what I said, don’t you? That you can tell me if there’s anything troubling you.”

“Of course I do,” Hroptatyr returns, and just as Eftirvit makes to walk back to the half-opened door, Hroptatyr’s hand catches him on the shoulder and holds him in place. “Wait. You didn’t answer my question.”

Eftirvit’s brows furrow. “What?”

Hroptatyr leans in, and he’s so close now that it’s hard to see anything beyond that strange, rare look in his eyes, that golden glint in an abyss of red. There’s a sort of hunger that Eftirvit cannot place, a sickening want, like Hroptatyr is looking past him, into him, and seeing something just out of reach from him. And then Hroptatyr blinks, and just like that, it’s gone and everything is normal again. “Did you miss me?” he repeats. The question from earlier that had caught Eftirvit off guard. His eyes are soft, lidded, and Eftirvit watches as a stray raindrop slips loose from a lash and slips down the side of his cheek. His breath is warmth against the cool of the rain on Eftirvit’s lips. 

Eftirvit’s head spins a little at the proximity. Hroptatyr remains like this, looking at him, waiting for his response. “Yes,” he answers at last, and he means what he says.

“Really?” Hroptatyr muses, his smile brightening a fraction. “I didn’t think I’d ever hear you say that.”

He steps back, and Eftirvit begins to move toward the door again. Hroptatyr falls into step easily beside him. “Why not?” Eftirvit asks. “I’m usually honest.”

“Yeah,” Hroptatyr replies, not bothering to mask the amusement colouring his tone, “and the most serious guy I know. Who mostly only talks about work.”

“Fair,” Eftirvit concedes, pushing the door open a little wider so that both of them can fit through. “I meant what I said, though.”

He misses the way Hroptatyr lingers half a footstep behind, his gaze softening over the tall slope of Eftirvit’s back. “I know.”

He should have known, here—couldn’t have known—that this will be the best of it. 

The first time that Hroptatyr grew distant from him, Eftirvit chalked it up to their busy schedules. The second time that it happens, he feels the distance more acutely than before. Spending his days in his office and walking down the corridors alone, and exchanging words with Hroptatyr only when duty forces them into a room together, feels… wrong.

A part of him considers that this is normal. He’d grown apart from all the friends he had made in earlier stages of his life, after all, after each of them grew occupied with their own lives and occupations and could no longer make time for one another. Somehow, though, the idea of Hroptatyr no longer making time for him—the idea of him occupying less of a space in Hroptatyr’s world—sits at odds with him.

“Hroptatyr,” he calls at the end of one of the meetings. The rest of the people present are gracious enough to exit with haste, likely under the assumption that the two of them will be discussing matters related to the Universitas Magistrorum that are outside of their purview to listen in on. “Could we speak for a moment?”

Hroptatyr’s eyebrows knit together, and he nods, if only barely. Eftirvit waits before the last person leaves before he closes the door, shutting all outside noise out. Hroptatyr speaks before he can.

“Listen, Eftirvit,” he starts. “If this is about my promotion as president, or the work we’ve been doing so far—”

“It’s not that,” Eftirvit cuts off. “But is that what this is?”

It makes sense, and he thinks that perhaps he is at fault for not considering this before. Hroptatyr had tried to bring up matters of his promotion before, but Eftirvit vaguely remembers dismissing it, preferring instead to focus on the more pressing concern of the Professor’s waning health. “Have you been avoiding me because you think I’m upset or jealous that you got the role over me?” he asks, a frown slipping onto his face. 

“I’ve—” For a moment, Hroptatyr sounds like he is about to deny this, but then he shrugs. “I’ve heard others mentioning that.”

“And you never thought to ask me directly?” Eftirvit clicks his tongue, moving closer and resting his palms against one of the desks. Hroptatyr is still standing at his seat at the head of the table, documents arranged in a neat pile in front of him. “Surely you know how ridiculous the notion is. Yes, I wanted the role, but you deserved it just as much as I did. Maybe even more—”

“Don’t say that. That isn’t true,” Hroptatyr cuts in automatically.

Eftirvit shakes his head. “My point is that however much I may have wanted the role, or however much I may be envious of you, Hroptatyr, I would never—could never—resent you for it. So if that is the reason that you’ve been eluding me, then I think it is a foolish act on your part.”

For one of the few times in his life, Hroptatyr looks genuinely floored. Eftirvit watches as his lips part and then close, and this repeats about another two times before he finally regains his composure. “I’m sorry,” he tells Eftirvit. “I didn’t mean to avoid you. Not on purpose, at least, but I can see why it has come off that way.” And then he cracks a smile, cracks a joke like he always does. It lands only halfway. “I hope my absence has given you the opportunity to make some new friends, though. Unless you’ve scared them all away?”

“I’ve spoken with others, but I don’t find it particularly enjoyable when topics stray beyond work,” Eftirvit says plainly. “They’re not you. And—”

Did you miss me, Eftirvit?

“—I miss you, Hroptatyr.”

Hroptatyr’s eyes go wide, and he visibly sputters. And then he lets out a long sigh, combing a hand through his hair. “You can’t just say that, Eftirvit.”

“Why not?” Eftirvit challenges, confounded. “You were the one who posed this question to me. Twice, if you recall. Why is it an issue if I am the one to bring it up?”

“For someone so incredibly intelligent, you really can be dense sometimes,” Hroptatyr murmurs, a chuckle finding its way into his words. Eftirvit isn’t sure of when he’d crossed the room to him, but now Hroptatyr’s hands have found their way onto his shoulders, giving his body a little shake. He lets him. “Because—”

He doesn’t finish his sentence. He lets the word hang as it is between the two of them, and Eftirvit’s chest seizes with a slow burning ache as Hroptatyr leans in closer. His eyes are bright under this light, like they were every time he shouted Eftirvit’s name from across the courtyard, and his hands on Eftirvit’s shoulders feel warm and steady the way they always did, under that tree in the garden. He misses that, Eftirvit thinks. He misses this.

Saying this aloud is far too close to begging, so Eftirvit does not. He lets himself stare a little longer, at Hroptatyr’s hair that’s gotten a little messier, at the deep amber of the gaze searching his, at the curve of Hroptatyr’s lips as it forms into the faintest curve of a smile.

I could kiss him, Eftirvit thinks unprovoked, and the suddenness of the thought is enough for him to react viscerally, his body jerking backwards and away from Hroptatyr. The small of his back collides painfully against a desk, and the sound of something heavy—probably a stamp—thudding against the ground echoes along the walls of the enclosed room.

Hroptatyr looks as startled as he feels, all rounded eyes and stiffened limbs as he takes in the sight before him. “... Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Eftirvit says, even though he feels anything but. His back will probably bruise, but the faint sting it leaves behind is easily masked by the appall that shocks through his veins. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to look Hroptatyr in the eye. “Um. What were we saying before this?”

He’s surprised when he hears Hroptatyr laugh. It’s a genuine laugh, loud and crystalline, much like the way he used to laugh whenever he cracked a joke and Eftirvit made a disgruntled expression in response. “I don’t know what I’d do without you sometimes, Eftirvit.”

Hroptatyr moves closer to him again, standing directly before him, and despite being a slight few centimetres taller Eftirvit cannot help but feel as though he is the one smaller, being cornered. Still, he does not feel the will in his legs to run, to flee from the situation he has found himself in, to move away from the pull of Hroptatyr’s orbit.

“Eftirvit,” Hroptatyr says his name like it’s made of gold, and Eftirvit startles lightly under his touch, against the cool of his palm that comes to rest against his cheek. He can’t feel Hroptatyr’s pulse like this but he can feel his own, spiking in his chest like a sun bursting into summer. “Can I kiss you?”

Briefly, Eftirvit wonders if he is dreaming. He finds himself nodding before he is able to formulate the right words to say aloud, and the smile that Hroptatyr sends up at him is so fond, so raw, so him that Eftirvit thinks that his heart might bleed out between his teeth and into Hroptatyr’s mouth. 

The kiss is slow and unhurried. Eftirvit’s hand finds Hroptatyr’s hair and tangles itself in it for a second, and then, not knowing what to do, he drops it away. He can hear the quiet giggle that Hroptatyr lets out against his lips, and then Hroptatyr is brushing over his knuckles, slipping his fingers between Eftirvit’s own. The room is silent, and somewhere in the back of his mind Eftirvit is aware that there is something they are meant to do—some form of document that is supposed to be submitted—by sundown, but he cannot find it within himself to care in the moment.

And it lasts only a moment, but for that singular moment everything feels surreal, like walking into a long-forgotten dream. Like he might live in a small cabin in the outskirts, with familiar faces that come over for lunch and a lover who has the key to his home etched like a heart into the lines of his palm. Eftirvit commits this moment to memory as best as he can, because for this singular moment suspended in time Hroptatyr is his and everything feels right again. And he can pretend, he thinks, that his life will always look like this.

A part of him thinks that he knew, even then, that it would not. And he knows that Hroptatyr must feel this way too, because he watches as Hroptatyr’s face falls a little when the kiss ends and he steps back, limbs feeling only half under his control, cheeks flushed under the wash of the lights. They’re out of place, out of time. Both of them have a duty to the Universitas, to the kingdom of Khaenri’ah, to their nation’s eternal rebellion against the gods. Maybe if things were different, things could be different between them. Maybe if they lived in a world where they lived forever, without worry and without responsibility hanging like twin spears above their heads, they could be normal. Do whatever they want. 

But duty stands in the way for now, Eftirvit thinks. There are so many things they must accomplish, within all the limited time that they have. Luxuries like relationships and luxuries like defining relationships are things they must do after. “It’ll be alright,” he finds himself telling Hroptatyr, and Hroptatyr’s fingers press harder against his own. “We have all the time in the world. We’re so close to figuring it out now, aren’t we?”

The smile that Hroptatyr sends him is shaky. “You’re right,” he says, barely above a whisper. “We have all the time in the world.”

Professor Mimameith is dead and Hroptatyr is leaving.

He doesn’t understand it at all. They’d been so close to figuring it all out, to saving Professor Mimameith, and then Hroptatyr had said it was wrong. That he was wrong, mistaken about the theory. That he would find another way. And then he’d walked away, even when Eftirvit tried to stop him.

Eftirvit hated how serious he sounded then. That was supposed to be his job, supposed to be him who was too serious all the time. Hroptatyr wasn’t supposed to doubt himself, wasn’t ever wrong about his work, wasn’t someone to so easily discard something he had spent painstaking years researching.

This is all—wrong.

Hroptatyr is standing over the Professor’s grave when he visits. The sun is setting by now, and there has been a steady stream of members of the Universitas who had dropped by from early morning to pay their respects. Now, though, it is just the two of them; Eftirvit assumes it is to do with the rapidly-darkening sky and the chill picking up in the wind. No matter. He prefers it this way, anyway, with less people around. He sees the Professor’s name etched against the stone and swallows down the bright, hot burn of self-resentment and blame.

He should have done something. He knew, all this while, that there had been something wrong; that Hroptatyr hadn’t been acting like he always did. He should have known, should have probed further, should have figured everything—something—out, somehow. He knows Hroptatyr, he tells himself, tries to convince himself late at night when he’s staring at a shattered reflection of himself in the mirror. 

He still knows him, Eftirvit tells himself. Knows him well enough that, if he looks hard enough, he can still make out the barest flicker of grief dancing in Hroptatyr’s eyes, even with his face half-shadowed by the umbrella he holds over his head. Knows him well enough that, even before he begins to move, he knows that Hroptatyr isn’t intending to stay.

“It’s going to rain,” Hroptatyr says. Eftirvit does not mind the rain, but he doesn’t say this aloud. Hroptatyr knows this about him, too. Eftirvit keeps his gaze down, bows his head low in respect to the grave. Listens as Hroptatyr’s footsteps begin to fade from him and don’t stop.

“Wait,” he calls out, voice raw. “Don’t go.”

He knows Hroptatyr. He knows that he will go, somewhere Eftirvit cannot follow. He knows that there is something in Hroptatyr that has changed, some sort of massive shift that he was not privy to. A section of Hroptatyr’s world he was never—will never be—permitted to enter. But—

“You’ll come back,” Eftirvit says. It’s not a question, but it sounds hollow even to his ears. Still, the sound of Hroptatyr’s footsteps have finally stopped. He’s halted a distance away from the grave, under one of those large, low-hanging trees, the umbrella still perched over his shoulder. When Eftirvit makes his way over, Hroptatyr does not run from him. He remains where he is, half within Eftirvit’s orbit and half outside of it, half-known and half a stranger in the skin of a man Eftirvit thinks he might love. He’s grasping onto Hroptatyr’s hand before he knows it, reaching for the thin pulse beneath the pale of his skin. “You’ll come back.”

Hroptatyr doesn’t say a word, but Eftirvit knows him. He knows this part of Hroptatyr too, the part of him that was there before everything changed, the part of him that Eftirvit thinks—knows—is still there. Hroptatyr, who was always going to save everyone. Hroptatyr, president of the Universitas Magistrorum, the genius who was going to live forever. Hroptatyr, his friend for half of his life, trusted coworker for some part of it. Lover for the rest of it if he’d let him, Eftirvit thinks before he can stop himself, and he bites down on his lip almost hard enough to draw blood. 

“You’ll come back,” he repeats, softer now, and for a moment he really believes this. Eftirvit knows Hroptatyr the same way he knows the exact layout of the Universitas’s corridors, the pattern of the sun through the trees at mid-morning, the shape of a sage’s lips against his. Eftirvit knows him. “Promise me?”

Hroptatyr looks back at him at last, and when he meets his eyes, Eftirvit thinks he finally understands what Hroptotyr meant all those months ago, when he said it wasn’t good to place too much significance on your relationship with just one person. Back then, he’d chalked it up to Hroptatyr’s natural affinity with people, and how he thought it was better to maintain connections with as many people as possible. 

Now, though, he knows: why Hroptatyr told him that. Why he’s been pulling away. Why he looked like he might cry every time that they kissed. It is because every person you grow to love is a person you must walk away from, and Hroptatyr is going down a road where he cannot follow. 

Stop, he wants to scream, watching as Hroptatyr turns away. His wrist slips from Eftirvit’s grasp and Eftirvit’s fingers close meaninglessly around empty air. No, stop, he wants to scream, but his mouth does not allow him. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. You’re the one who’s supposed to care. You’re the one who’s supposed to save the world.

And then, in a smaller voice, in a scream trapped somewhere between his lungs and his festering heart: what about me? Are you going to leave me behind, too?

The question dies before it reaches his lips. “Hroptatyr,” is all he can say instead, and this is the closest he has ever come to begging.

Later, he hears the news: Hroptatyr has stolen what he should not have, and now bears the title of one of the Five Sinners of Khaenri’ah.

The Cataclysm comes and goes. Eftirvit watches as his nation burns to the ground and men scream and try to die.

Hroptatyr never comes home.

He is not sure how long passes after that, how many years—decades, centuries—it takes before he learns to be alright with it again. He moves to a place where the water is always frozen and the sun that shines through the trees is silver-gold but never warm, watches as gods rise and gods fall. He outlives them, and outlives most of the people he works with, too. 

He is accustomed to this. He must be. It is the curse of being immortal, of never dying, of living in a world filled with ghosts that will haunt you forever. It is the curse of memory, of the thing that extends beyond his bones and seeps into every organ like a living, breathing being, of the thing that will never let him forget even when the rest of his memories comes in bits and pieces: a blurred face of a name he once knew in the Universitas, the kindly smile of a Professor he’d wept over, the sound of his old name in ancient tongues he only half-recognises now. 

But Hroptatyr does not let him forget. Sometimes, he sees him again in his sleep, in his dreams and nightmares and everything in between. He sees him through burning eyelids, dreams of the tender brush of his mouth against his, dreams of his palm cupping his cheek and stroking the tears from his eyes. He dreams of a time where he is young again and his home is still whole, and sunlight is threading through the trees and Hroptatyr is writing in a notebook on the bench, lips faintly downturned with quiet drowsiness. He dreams of purple hair and eyes turned gold in the summer, of a heartbeat connecting to his, of an umbrella extended over his head in the rain. 

Did you miss me, Eftirvit?

He dreams and dreams and wakes up, heart pounding in his chest and embarrassingly disoriented for a man of his age and status, with his fingers closing around invisible wrists. He looks forward into the mirror in the dark and sees glimpses of himself, his hair whiter now, one-half of his face hidden away and semi-forgotten even to himself. He looks at himself, watches as the hair turns to black, watches as his bedroom morphs into an office, listens as the murmur of Snezhnayan soldiers starting their day grows into the sound of a man shouting his name from across the courtyard. He looks at his reflection in the mirror and realises, his heart quieting into something dull and forgotten, that he will never see Hroptatyr looking back at him again.

When the Traveler makes mention of Hroptatyr, five hundred years after the Cataclysm, Pierro thinks he could laugh. Of course. He would not be surprised in the slightest to find that his fondest memories have always held Hroptatyr, and a part of him is grateful that these are mostly limited to memories of when Hroptatyr had first become president, back before everything had changed. Memories of their more intimate moments have become too painful now to be considered his strongest and happiest memories; time that he keeps stubbornly buried beneath everything else, memories that he refuses to dredge up until they’re forcefully brought back to the forefront of his mind late at night.

His hands remain mercifully still, and his voice measured as he lays out the plan to the remaining few Harbingers. This, too, is not something he is unaccustomed to—he has seen many come and go in his time by the Tsaritsa’s side. Another reminder of the mortal world that he will live in forever.

And then, just like that, everyone agrees. They will gain access to the notebook that has been carefully sealed away for hundreds of years, the notebook that Hroptatyr had left for him in his office for him to find. As if he already knew that no one else would enter the room, or if they did, they would leave immediately upon not finding him there, thinking that he was merely gone for the time being. That no one else but Eftirvit would stand in that room, fingers going white around the last piece of Hroptatyr that he had been allowed to hold onto. And he would stay that way for a long time, until someone else knocked on the office door to find him slumped in Hroptatyr’s chair, as if he had come into the office in search of something before his legs lost all power in them. 

He had proposed to meet the Traveler after a day to allow himself time to gather the Harbingers for the meeting—this is what he told the Traveler then, and while true, it was also to afford himself the time to compose himself. To remain unshaken, regardless of what kind of memories he might be forced to revisit at this very moment. It is instances like this that he remembers the kind of emotions that still dwell deep within him, despite his efforts to do away with them; the insistent, intermittent reminders that he is still… infallible. Imperfect. Human. As human as he was the day before he lived forever, when he was still a man who looked out at the view over the trees and dreamed of a world bursting with life and never burning.

What do you think you would do, Eftirvit?

It makes him laugh, almost. He wonders how Hroptatyr would react if he saw him now, Director of the Fatui, a presidency of sorts he had somehow found himself in over the years. Maybe Hroptatyr would congratulate him. Or maybe he’d still tell him to be a little friendlier, lest his subordinates work under him in fear.

It is odd looking at Hroptatyr’s writing again, faded slightly with age. It is handwriting he can recognise anywhere, even after all this time, and when he holds the notebook up to the light he notices the faint tremor of his own hands. Thankfully, no one else points it out.

Hroptatyr’s writing is as gently cruel as he is. He writes about seminars under the tree, the days he spent in the Universitas, makes mention of empty rooms and winding corridors that only Pierro will truly understand the weight of. And then, like he is merely writing about changes in the weather or a passing illness, he mentions his decision to leave. That he will walk away from Teyvat forever, and leave Pierro here, in a world that no longer recognises his name. At the end of his writing he makes mention of leaving his humanity behind in Teyvat, in this fragmented way of his, leaving the last piece of him with Pierro. 

The Wise’s trust is a flawed thing, bitter and beautiful.

“It is no blessing at all,” he reads aloud, and his voice is steadier than he feels. “Immortality of this kind offers only endless pain and suffering. Even leaving Professor to die would be a kinder fate.” And then he stops, presses his lips into a thin line. If the Professor were here, she’d chuckle at his expression, tell him that there’s no need for him to look all that serious. 

Hroptatyr was right, he thinks. Of course he was. He stares at the scratched out word, the ink heavy over it as though Hroptatyr had been trying to overwrite reality, blessing in neat handwriting marked over with a tired, frustrated curse of immortality. Because that’s what this is, isn’t it?

But, he wants to scream, even though he knows that Hroptatyr isn’t listening, not anymore, you made me like this.

And then the photograph slips free from the page in the notebook, and Pierro hears the thud of his heartbeat in his ears grate to a halt. 

It’s him—him when he was much younger, before the Fatui and before Snezhnaya and before everything burned to the ground—and he’s facing the camera, mouth pressed into a thin line and brows knotted. Hroptatyr is standing slightly closer to the camera than him, a gloved hand propped onto his hip, his features softened into that characteristic smile that melted its way through the hearts of most members of the Universitas. 

He remembers taking this picture. It had been shortly after Hroptatyr’s appointment as president and his own as vice-president, and the other members of the Universitas’s board had insisted on taking a photograph to commemorate the occasion. The photographer had ended up with this as a test shot before the actual photograph, which was framed and displayed on a wall in the Universitas somewhere. Hroptatyr had volunteered to keep the photograph, and his delight had been palpable.

It’s just a photograph. We see each other every day. Pierro thinks he would have said something like this to Hroptatyr back then. And Hroptatyr would probably have made some joke about not forgetting his face if they were to ever be separated one day, and then he would look away when he thought Eftirvit wasn’t looking, let his face fall into that forlorn look like he already knew the end was coming.

The Traveler shouts a word of warning, something about Abyssal energy coming from the picture. The others tense up immediately, and he thinks he hears someone shouting at him to get away, but he pays them no mind. It is Abyssal energy indeed, something he is intimately familiar—to no delight of his own—with, and it is growing increasingly stronger by the second, but directly beneath that there is something even more familiar. A thread that winds itself around his lungs and pulls, drags him to the very centre of its orbit, and he does not resist. 

Hroptatyr—sinner, almost-lover, friend—beckons and he follows. For a moment he cannot breathe, cannot see, but he can feel. Cool hands against his cheek, knuckles brushing his, a drizzle damp against his clothes and the warmth of a breath ghosting his lips. The thread tugs him forward, stumbling blindly in the dark, until the air returns to his lungs and he opens his eyes and the entire world is flooded with gold.

This is the Universitas as he remembers it, more than five hundred years into Teyvat’s past. Back before he watched the world be set on fire, and back before he knew of the curse of living forever.

This, Pierro recognises, was the very best and very worst time of his life.

He finds Hroptatyr again in the garden under the trees, and it is like slipping into a long, long dream.

His old friend’s gaze is slightly clouded, but he is lucid, and the smile on his face is so bright it’s almost easy for Pierro to pretend that he really is standing there again, before everything. Back when he was still just Eftirvit and Hroptatyr was still just Hroptatyr. Back before Pierro and the white-haired god and the destruction of the land he once called home. Back before he learned, for the first and last time of his life, that love and hatred were two sides of the same coin after all.

“You’re here,” Hroptatyr greets, rising from the bench. He’s looking at Pierro like he’s looking into him. And then he presses his palm into Pierro’s, past into future, his heart beating across two different places in two different times. Pierro thinks that he could cry, maybe, if only this body still allowed him. “It’s not like you to be late, you know. I’ve been waiting for you.”

He swallows the burn in his throat and attempts a smile. It falls short, the way it always did when he tried forcing a smile he didn’t mean. “Yeah,” he says, staring at Hroptatyr, “I’m here now.”

He doesn’t know what to feel. What he’s supposed to feel. This version of Hroptatyr is too young, too untainted. This is the version of Hroptatyr who sat among the trees, who wrote in his notebook until he fell asleep against Eftirvit’s shoulder, who cried earnestly when the Professor’s health first began to decline. This is the version of Hroptatyr who will eventually leave and never return, a saviour turned deserter. This is the version of Hroptatyr Eftirvit still found himself looking for, against all odds, when the god cast her eye over their doomed nation and watched it fall. 

He should hate him, Eftirvit thinks. A small part of him does, he thinks, the same part of him that was cursed to live forever in a world without him. You should have been there, he wants to accuse, but Hroptatyr—the Hroptatyr in front of him—wouldn’t understand. How could you let our nation suffer like that?

And, in a smaller voice, in some part of his soul he’s kept carefully locked away for the past five hundred years: how could you leave me behind?

“You…” Hroptatyr’s brows furrow, looking over at him. “You seem like you don’t really want to be here.”

You’re right, he wants to say. You’re the last person I want to see right now. He says it, nearly, but he doesn’t. 

Somehow, he can’t bring himself to lash out. Not when Hroptatyr’s pulse is steady against his skin, heavy and so sickeningly real, and the sun in the garden kisses his skin as though he has always been allowed to stay.

“Did you—” He pauses, searching Hroptatyr’s face. He looks the same as he remembers, purple hair spilling over his shoulder and skin still unblemished with shadow. “Did you wait a long time?” he asks, eventually. 

“What a stupid question,” Hroptatyr says, and something in Pierro’s gut lurches. This Hroptatyr is cruel in his own way, with his palm in Pierro’s and his eyes thrumming with life. Hroptatyr had left Pierro with the most honest version of himself, and every word he utters makes Pierro feel sick to the stomach. “I would have waited forever for you.”

At Pierro’s silence, he tilts his head, amusement lighting up the gold in his gaze. “Cat got your tongue, Eftirvit? Is that really that surprising to hear from me?”

Yes, he wants to say, and the grief that floods him is so white-hot it is almost blinding. I wish you did. He can’t say any of it aloud. Can’t bring himself to.

“That’s a rare expression for you to wear, Eftirvit,” Hroptatyr muses. “How are you doing in the future? It seems like you’re having a really tough time.”

So he’s already noticed. Eftirvit cannot say he is surprised by this; of course he has. Still, Eftirvit wonders what Hroptatyr was thinking when he left this version of him behind. Did he know that Eftirvit would only open the notebook when left with no other choice? Did he think that Eftirvit might have opened it immediately after his disappearance, searching desperately for any hint of him? 

Privately, he thinks that it might have been easier if he had been met with the version of Hroptatyr that was leaving him. That it would be easier to fight it out, poison between his teeth, scream and shout until the rain starts to pour. Maybe he would feel less awful about this all, because standing here like this, it is almost easy—almost too tempting—to forget. To pretend that this is it, that he is back in this world again. That nothing is evil and Hroptatyr never left and the world never burned to ash.

And that is the sickness of love, Pierro thinks, that’s the sickness of devotion. Because he thinks that if Hroptatyr just called his name from across the courtyard again, soft on his lips, the iron in his blood might turn to water and he might sink to his knees in the soft of the garden’s dirt, a beggar for the touch of the forsaken.

Hroptatyr has always been his weakness. This is something he has been acutely aware of since Hroptatyr had first come into his life, all those years ago when they were still young and in the Universitas Magistrorum. But to think that he would still be able to crumble through Pierro’s defences so easily, even more than five centuries on, is something as amusing as it is devastating. Living forever is a double-edged sword, Pierro understands now, because there are some things that only die when you let them. 

“If you don’t have any more questions for me,” Hroptatyr speaks again, breaking him out of his reverie, “can I ask you a few, then?”

He nods, barely. 

“Can you tell me what the world is like in the future?” 

Hroptatyr’s voice is quiet, earnest, and Pierro knows him well enough to know what he is asking: am I there?

It is a dark place, he wants to say, thinking back to everything he has seen over the past five hundred years. Thinking back to the day Hroptatyr left and never came back, and to the place neither of them can ever call home again. 

But Hroptatyr would not understand, and it is easier this way, not having to explain.

So he says nothing at all.

“What kind of person am I in your time?” Hroptatyr continues; soft, hopeful.

Am I yours?

Eftirvit presses his teeth onto his tongue until he tastes blood. 

“Yes,” he lies, and if Hroptatyr hears the crack in his voice he does not comment on it. He thinks back to a man looking back at him—half a friend, never quite a lover, almost a stranger—and then turning away once and forevermore. “The world is… alright now.”

Hroptatyr tilts his head to the side. “And I’m there, too? Does I look older? Did you age more gracefully than I did?”

Eftirvit knows, too, what he wants to know here: do we live forever, Eftirvit?

No, he can’t bring himself to say. I don’t know how you look anymore.

“No,” he says instead. “You’ve always looked better than I have.”

Hroptatyr laughs, loud and bright and clear. “I can’t deny that! I would ask you more questions, but I assume that there is a reason you have come to me now, yes?”

And just like that, Pierro is once again reminded of who he is, of the time he is standing in. Hroptatyr’s pulse throbs beneath his, and the feeling in the pits of his stomach coils further. “You’re right,” he admits. This is when he brings up the Delusion project, watches as Hroptatyr’s eyes narrow in thought. The expression is still familiar to him after all these years, and the thought sickens him to the core.

“Here,” Hroptatyr says, pulling out a notebook; the same one he often writes in in this garden, and the same one he had entrusted to Pierro following his departure. This version, Pierro recognises, is still far from complete. The beginning of the end as he knows it. “With a structure like this, you could use the remaining authorities of the Crimson Moon as a conductor to provide an instant burst of power, dealing a true finishing blow.”

He considers it, running a finger over Hroptatyr’s hastily-scribbled work. “... It might work. I did not expect you to gain such a thorough grasp of the material in so short a time,” he admits. He gets a quiet chuckle back in response.

“I’ve researched this in my spare time before,” Hroptatyr points out. He’s smiling, and something in Pierro’s gut twists further. So the change had already begun by this point, the coming apart of the man under the tree. “I hope that this will all be of use to you somehow, Eftirvit, but even if it wasn’t, I’m glad I got to see you again.”

“Yes,” Pierro agrees, ignoring the burning in his lungs. “I need to go now, Hroptatyr.”

Hroptatyr smiles like this is already something that he saw coming. “Farewell for now, then,” he responds. “But Eftirvit, can I ask you one more question?”

Despite his better judgement, he finds himself agreeing.

“You’ll come back, won’t you?”

Hroptatyr says this like he knows him, like he knows he will. Pierro draws a sharp breath, reminds himself that he isn’t Eftirvit anymore—not Hroptatyr’s Eftirvit—but he is.

“We’ll see,” is all he comes up with, voice weak and distorted. He is fading from this realm of Hroptatyr’s consciousness, and every passing second feels like skin being torn from his limbs.

Hroptatyr watches him go.

He isn’t surprised when the rest of the Harbingers relay their experiences with Hroptatyr, and most of them only have good things to say about him; he could have predicted as much, given that everyone had met this version of Hroptatyr. Sandrone is the only one to voice that he had been a little too friendly to strangers, and Pierro could chuckle, almost.

I know, he wants to say, but they wouldn’t understand. 

It does not take long for Pierro to find that Hroptatyr was right, again, because he does come back. He comes back almost every day leading up to their plan to confront Ronova. Hroptatyr receives him the same every time, smiling, asking him about his day even though nothing has really changed. Even though everything has changed since then. And he’ll lie, and he’ll imagine a world that Hroptatyr might like, and he’ll talk about a world that they might both have loved to live in, until the grief chokes him whole and he pretends he’s run out of things to say.

He speaks about his research, too, about what he’ll use to defeat Ronova. Even when speaking in vague terms, Hroptatyr understands all of the mechanics behind his theories; of course he does. Pierro cannot remember when he last spoke about his work at length to anyone like this. Maybe he never really did, not after Hroptatyr’s leaving. He even brings Dainsleif to visit him once, even though the young captain looks a little thrown-off at the version of Hroptatyr that he finds in the garden. 

It is almost amusing, watching the rage on Dainsleif’s face fade to confusion and then a weary kind of fondness as Hroptatyr welcomes him with open arms and begins to recount old stories of their king. This version of Hroptatyr has the same effect on everyone, it seems, turning all their hatred to ash. He is too pure here, too innocent, too much like the version of him that Pierro carries closest to his heart. Dainsleif does not come back after the first time, but when he next mentions Hroptatyr’s name, it doesn’t harbour that same kind of resentment that it usually does.

“I understand how you feel,” he says, when Dainsleif brings Hroptatyr up and then trails off as if no longer knowing what to say. 

Dainsleif shakes his head, a frown tugging at his lips, like he’s trying to convince himself otherwise. “He fled Teyvat like a complete coward. There are many things I still have to say to him.”

“I know,” Pierro replies. Hroptatyr’s handwriting stares back up at them from the pages of the notebook, neat and unchanging. 

Dainsleif meets his gaze. “Do you?” There is a note of challenge to his voice, and Pierro knows what he means. It was no secret to anybody that Hroptatyr was his closest friend, and he likes to think that he was Hroptatyr’s, too. 

Still, he knows that Dainsleif doesn’t hate Hroptatyr, not really, the same way he doesn’t. He knows that resentment is really just the grief of a man who could not save his home, and by I hate him what both of them really mean is: this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. 

So he says, softly, “I think I do.” 

When he steps onto the battlefield against Ronova, standing alongside Dainsleif and the Eye of the Fatui in his palm, Hroptatyr is not there alongside them. This time, though, it does not matter. 

Pierro understands, now, that this is his world to save. And so he does, and watches as the Ruler of Death crumbles and the sky falls around her. For a moment everything is red again, and the soldiers around him are all screaming, and the stars are flooding his eyes and turning the blood in his veins to an eternal river of life. And then he blinks, and Dainsleif’s hand is on his shoulder, and around him people are beginning to wake up.

Pierro looks over at Dainsleif, present into past and past into future, and the world begins again. The Tsaritsa grants them an audience shortly after, and the villagers and soldiers work together to restore Rankova Zorya back to how it was before the fight. The Tsaritsa grants him several days off to rest and recover, and offers to send a doctor his way, but he refuses.

He’s always preferred to be alone for the most part, anyway, and he doubts a doctor will be able to perform miracles against the damage that using the Eye wrecked against his body. Dainsleif does not stick around for long after the audience with Her Majesty either, and seeing the clear discomfort written on his face upon receiving thanks for his involvement had been amusing to Pierro. They are quite similar in that regard, although he would say he is far more accustomed to handling affairs with others now; Hroptatyr must have been frustrated to no end in the past, being forced to take charge of social situations around them.

So for a while it’s just him in his room, penning down details of the fight against Ronova—lest he forget—and thumbing through the pages of Hroptatyr’s notebook, staring at the parts that have been erased and then the little notes left by the mage. He can’t remember how many times he reads the book front to back, stares at the photograph smiling back up at him. The time that he’s been given to recover has given him plenty of time to think, but he isn’t sure what to think. Hroptatyr has always tended to have that kind of effect on him.

It is late by the time he finally decides to return to the garden, nine days and nine nights after he had first spoken to Hroptatyr again. Here, however, it is always mid-morning, stuck somewhere between spring and summer, when the flowers have already bloomed and have yet to burn. 

Hroptatyr waves, even from a distance. “You’re here!” Today, he sounds more excited than usual, although Pierro thinks he might just be imagining it.

He smiles. It comes more naturally, this time. “Did you miss me, Hroptatyr?”

“What do you think?” Hroptatyr retorts, bumping his shoulder against Eftirvit’s as he lowers himself into the spot on the bench next to Hroptatyr. “Of course I did. I always miss you.”

Eftirvit swallows, bringing his gaze to the trees. The view is as spectacular as it always was, and a part of him wishes—really wishes—that he could stay like this forever. He knows, though—he’s known this for a while now—that this is nothing more than a little dream, a little kindness that Hroptatyr had left for him in his last moments. That this will never be Hroptatyr, not really, but it’s just enough to feel enough.

Because this version of Hroptatyr had already begun writing in the notebook, here in this world, even if he hadn’t yet reached the conclusion that he someday would. The cogs had already begun to turn here; the first night and day under the tree, and the unmaking of the hanged man. This version of Hroptatyr already knew, even if only in pieces, even if only as a faint instinct, that this is not how life would be. That this fragile moment will be the best of it.

“You… You knew I was lying.” The words fall softly between them, not as an accusation. “You wouldn’t have thought of living forever as a good thing. Not when you knew of the kind of sacrifice it would demand.” 

“No,” Hroptatyr agrees readily. He is watching the sun through the trees too, a world forever draped in gold. “Not the kind of immortality we would have achieved, at least. Not by the methods I’ve been researching. And there wouldn’t have been any need for you to come to find me, would there? If I was already there by your side.”

He draws in a sharp breath, his knuckles going pale from where his hands have curled to fists against his lap. “Why didn’t you tell me? If you knew?”

“What’s the rush?” Hroptatyr asks, and Eftirvit falls silent, stunned. “We have all the time in the world here, don’t we? You can tell me about the world you live in any time that you want. And about all the worlds you want to live in, too.”

“Don’t tempt me like that,” he murmurs, and he means it. “Or I’ll stay here forever just to chat with you.”

This makes Hroptatyr laugh, the corners of his eyes crinkling with delight. “That’s not like you, Eftirvit.”

His face softens, and he thinks back to the Tsaritsa, to the Harbingers, to the soldiers who have sworn their lives down for Snezhnaya. Hroptatyr’s right. There’s still too much for him to do, too much left to atone for. 

“Tell me, then,” Hroptatyr says, “what the world looks like in the future.”

“You’re—not there.” The truth feels strangely freeing, and they fall from his lips like rain into stained soil. Maybe he is burying a part of himself here in this garden, the part of him that still believes—believed—in a world that had enough mercy to open its doors to both him and Hroptatyr. Hroptatyr does not look surprised at this revelation. “But… it’s not so bad.”

He tells Hroptatyr, in brief detail, about the Teyvat of today: the grassy plains of Mondstadt, where he had recruited the Crimson Witch of Flame almost four hundred years ago now; the rebellion against Inazuma’s Shogunate, and the genius heretic he pulled from the ranks of the Sumeru Akademiya. The arrival of Surtalogi’s pupil from distant lands, and here he bites his tongue, doesn’t tell Hroptatyr that he almost considered finding her, almost considered asking where she had come from, whether she could bring him somewhere closer to Hroptatyr. 

And then he tells Hroptatyr about the nation he lives in now, the establishment of the Fatui, the bitter cold and the white waters of Port Belovodye. He tells Hroptatyr more about the people he’d met once, the first time that they’d all spoken to him—the descendant of the Crimson Moon Dynasty, the traveler from afar, the puppeteer who had scoffed at his informality. Hroptatyr huffs a little at this, amused.

“Snezhnaya, huh. A place where it’s winter all year round.” Hroptatyr squints, like he’s trying to imagine it. “Well, you always did hate the summer.” 

“Yeah,” Eftirvit exhales, “yeah, I suppose I did.”

What he really means is: it wasn’t so bad with you there.

“The kind of person I am in your time,” Hroptatyr says, and he’s looking up at the tree now. There’s a squirrel running along one of the branches, turned olive in the morning light. “I must not have been a very good person, was I?”

Eftirvit’s lips part, but no words fall out. He remembers what he had wanted to call Hroptatyr once, how he’d wanted to brand him the scum of the earth, before his heart betrayed him before his mouth could. “You… left.” He speaks slowly, and it’s the first time he’s ever spoken this truth aloud. “There was a certain power that you came across, and you took it and left Teyvat. And when Khaenri’ah was destroyed, you—you weren’t there.”

He looks to the side, catches the exact moment Hroptatyr’s expression crumbles a little, when he realises what kind of person he will become in the future. What kind of person he already is. “I’m sorry,” he says. There’s nothing more he can say.

“It’s not your fault.” 

Maybe it was.

“I don’t know where you are now,” Eftirvit murmurs. He’s looking down at the shadows cast on the ground, a floor of fallen leaves. Hroptatyr—the real Hroptatyr—is someplace else, far from him. Maybe he is in a place where time flows differently from here, and maybe it has been hundreds of millennia in the corner of the world that he is in. Maybe his time in Khaenri’ah, in the Universitas, was nothing more than the faintest speck of dust, easily folded over by the next chapters of an unending life. Maybe he’s already forgotten Eftirvit.

Or maybe they’re not as different as he thought. Maybe Hroptatyr is still around here somewhere, hovering just out of his orbit, holding onto memory like a key pressed into his palm. “I haven’t known for a long time.”

The sadness is back in Hroptatyr’s eyes, and Eftirvit knows he understands now, exactly what he had become. Eftirvit is almost tempted to pry, to ask what had made him choose that path, but he does not. There is no point in knowing now. They are in different places in different times, walking toward different futures. It has been this way for a long time now. 

Still, he cannot help but ask, because Hroptatyr has always been one step ahead of him, has always known the answer somehow—

“Do you think there’s a place out there that we’ll both get to live in someday?” He is looking at Hroptatyr, and Hroptatyr is looking right back at him, and Eftirvit does not know who he is anymore. “Do you think there’s a place where we didn’t—where you weren’t—”

He thinks back to office rooftops and falling rain, and Hroptatyr’s gaze over the empty courtyard of the Universitas. He thinks back to empty rooms and the first time that Hroptatyr kissed him, back when he thought that life was a finite thing and dreamed of living forever. Back when he thought they were still good, when he thought they could still be good.

“Where I wasn’t so awful?” Hroptatyr asks, finishing his question for him. Eftirvit blinks, and his vision blurs with the shadow of the hanging tree, and he turns away and sets his jaw. He thought his body had long forgotten to cry. “I’m sorry, Eftirvit. I wish it didn’t have to turn out like this.”

He says it with a kind of finality, like he has already seen into every future, tested the weight of them all like endless branches on an eternal tree. He says it like it had to be this way, like it was always going to happen like this, and somehow Eftirvit understands.

“That’s alright,” he says. He thinks a part of him always knew that it would come to this: because this is what it really is, isn’t it? He is five hundred years into the future, and the world as he knows it now is gardens steeped with snow, a city that will never know summer, a land that was never made for the two of them. “We don’t have to talk about that anymore.” 

“You’re right,” Hroptatyr agrees easily, resting his head on Eftirvit’s shoulder. His hair tickles the skin on Eftirvit’s neck and Eftirvit feels the uptick of his own heartbeat; reaches out and presses his palm to Hroptatyr’s wrist. Holds him there like that for a moment. It feels right. “Why don’t you tell me about that role of yours? Director, was it? Or you said you travelled to Mondstadt long ago. What was it like? Did their gardens look different from ours?”

Eftirvit swallows the lump that burns in his throat and chuckles instead. “Sure,” he finds himself replying. Hroptatyr’s pulse is a steady drum under his skin. “Sure. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

Hroptatyr lets out a contented sigh. The squirrel on the tree pauses, tips its head, disappears among the leaves. “Then I’d love to hear it. But you know, for what it’s worth, Eftirvit—”

Eftirvit looks down at him. Hroptatyr is smiling, that small, private smile of his that he’s always reserved for empty rooms and meetings in rainy gardens. “I don’t think it would have been so bad,” he says, laughing a little, like they’re young again and home is still a place they can return to, “to have lived forever with you.”