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Clarity.
Suppose, Feofan thinks, he has enough clarity on the status of his relationship with Zandik.
They are partners.
A patient and his doctor.
A scientist and his funder.
The Second and the Ninth.
A man and his lover, perchance. (Zandik would laugh at him, no doubt. Even Feofan laughs at himself for even bemusing upon such a line of thought)
It is quiet.
Feofan sits upon the plush armchair. He shifts, switching the leg that crosses over the other, and he blows upon the tea in his cup.
There is a piano across the room. The piano is silent.
Feofan notes the light streaming in from the windows. Today is the week’s end, and it is a rare moment when he is not drowning in work at his office. It is a quiet day.
It is so, so quiet.
Feofan does not know if he has said anything to himself for the last few hours or so. It should not have to be this quiet, he dislikes it.
And it is cold.
He forgets his coat.
Feofan forgets to change out of his sleepwear when he left his chambers a while ago, when the skies outside were still dark. He looks down; he isn’t even wearing his shoes. It is just the pair of slippers he means to use only in his rooms. When did he neglect to remember such simple things?
Feofan lets out a soft sigh, faintly disappointed in himself.
If Zandik were here, he would laugh at him. Would think him ridiculous for wandering out of his bed and holing himself up in this parlor since last night. Feofan scoffs at his own thoughts as he finally takes a sip of the tea.
It has long since gone cold. A complete waste.
Feofan only takes that one sip before he sets the cup down. It lands with a faint clink on the table in front of him. Then he stands.
It is quiet, he thinks to himself. If only someone would play the piano there and fill in the silence of the parlor. If only someone—
A tragedy, Feofan huffs, to let the piano collect dust. So he lets his feet guide him to the instrument. It hasn’t been touched in a few months; already there is a thin layer of dust and frost over it. Seems that not even the walls of Zapolyarny Palace can keep Cryo out.
Feofan pulls the bench out, slowly lowering himself on it. Then he lifts the fallboard.
There are the keys, white and black. In a way, they are similar to chess pieces. Now, when it comes to chess, Feofan knows how to play. He knows the strategies to use and which pieces to move on the board.
But this…
He is at a loss. Devastating, he knows.
There is an echo that follows after he presses one key. He doesn’t know what key it is, only that it is in the center and it is white. He doesn’t know what to do.
Feofan likes to think himself brilliant in when it comes to the likes of business and politics. It is because of him that Snezhnaya’s economic policies is what it is today. It is his machinations that built the Northland Bank that fuels the beating heart of this nation. It is his mind that has amassed him such a fortune.
But he is not brilliant in this.
In something as simple as music and melodies.
It is something he took for granted. For he has all the wealth in the world to hire the best of musicians. Beyond that, he always had—Feofan takes a sharp inhale of his breath. His thinking stutters for a second as he recall a second pair of hands on this piano, dutifully pressing upon the keys without having to second guess themselves.
Those pair of hands were the real brilliance. Slender fingers, steady grip. They could play the piano with all the ease in the world, and at the same time, those very hands are the reason he could still remain alive to this day.
Feofan looks down at the piano keys once more. He presses another one, but he does not know its name. He does not know what other key to press in order to create the harmonious music that he knows Zandik can make.
Could make.
Zandik is not here to press the keys. Not anymore.
Feofan closes the fallboard, and he rests his hands on it. He inexplicably finds his own head lowering out of instinct. Feofan does not like the silence that fills in the parlor.
It is suffocating.
It is strange, Feofan thinks, to feel the hollowness in his chest.
His heart beats, his mind thinks, his hands move as he continues to sift through the paperwork on his desk.
His office is quiet. He hates the silence.
The start of the week brings in work for the Northland Bank, as schedule dictates. In the sanctuary of his office, Regrator finds himself with the same old task of reading through contracts and reports, whether it is of Project Stuzha or of various investments conducted under both his and the Fatui name all around Teyvat.
There is one particular type of paperwork that has remain absent from his desk for the last few months. He dislikes the lack of it.
There should be someone asking—demanding—for funding. Snezhnaya’s technology did not advance from foolish and fickle minds, of course. Science is an art form of the future, and Regrator is responsible for overseeing its funding to ensure the technology can be developed accordingly.
But there needs to be someone to make the funding request.
Zandik Dottore is not here to make those requests.
The Ninth Harbinger, Pantalone, is relieved over the lack of interruptions. Feofan, however, is anguished.
For just a few minutes, Feofan sets his pen down.
What follows next are his glasses, as he lowers them from his eyes. They hang heavy against his chest, and Feofan rubs a gloved hand against his face. He does not know when last he had a full night’s rest. He dislikes it very much, this lethargy that seems to follow him like a dark shadow.
For a man with as great of a fortune as he, one would think that Regrator surrounds himself only with decadence and debauchery.
(Well, actually, he partakes in the latter only when Zandik is—)
Ah, there goes his wretched mind again, wandering without any sense. It has been happening far too many times, as of late, and Feofan is seriously getting on his own nerves. How silly.
Nevertheless, there is a point to be made; such is given by the bowl of porridge oats sitting at his desk. It has been sitting there for the better half of the evening.
He really should eat.
Alas, Feofan can find neither the desire nor strength within himself to move away from the windowsill. He has been sitting here for a while now, and with the window cracked open, at that. It is bold of him, especially when the weather forecast has been showing that this week’s winters are to be of the biting and fiercer sort.
But the cold is no worthy foe against the frost in his crippling heart, or whatever remains of it.
Instead of the oats, he has decided to have cigarettes as his dinner. (Zandik would certainly start his endless tirade of scoldings; of how the useless sticks that Feofan indulges in are nothing more than useless tools to worsen one’s health—!)
But Zandik is not here to reprimand him.
Zandik should be here to scold him. To remind Feofan that his precious life is wasted if he continues to smoke. Alas, Feofan thinks, as he blows the smoke into the air—he cannot tell the difference between the smoke and the puffs of his breath from the cold—Zandik is not here.
Perhaps the cigarettes are the closest thing Feofan has to get closer to wherever Zandik is.
If there even is such a place.
If Zandik even is.
Grief is a strange thing, Feofan thinks.
He is lying in bed after another long day at work. The sheets are cool, but then again everything in Snezhnaya is cold. The only light in the room comes from the mantlepiece; and thus there is the faint sounds of the fire crackling. Anything to rid the room of silence.
The silence that Feofan hates so.
He shifts slightly, resting a hand against his abdomen. Then he feels the weight of his ring.
It is heavy. Which makes no sense considering he has been wearing it for the last few centuries. The weight should not have changed.
But it has, most unfortunately; and for a second time in his life, actually.
Grief is a strange thing. The human mind more so. Zandik did a study on this, once. Feofan does not entirely recall it—his own mind is better suited for matters related to economical numbers and the likes—but he remembers bits pertaining grief.
A sense of grief is inevitable when parting with something you've long grown accustomed to having around.
The last time it happened to Feofan, it was when Zandik died.
The old Zandik.
The Zandik who started all of this. The doctor to whom Feofan owes his life to, in all technicality.
That old man was the one who gave Feofan the ring on his right hand. When he died, he left a great many things behind. Though Feofan grieved for the man, it was not as if he wasn’t still present, if in the form of the many segments.
Feofan had come to understand that these very segments were the closest thing he could have of Zandik. So he conceded.
(Still, he could not forget the faint horror upon discovering those segments had been the one to cut open Zandik’s own body. It took him some time before he could truly acknowledge them as parts of the man he held dear to his heart)
Suppose the only difference now is that Feofan is well and truly alone.
How strange it is for him to lose the other half of his soul.
(He would not call Zandik his better half—not even he is blind enough to disregard the obvious truth, as terrible his own eyesight may be)
What does it mean, when you lose the person who understood you best? Who knows so much of you, and you of them?
When they parted for the last time—back in Sumeru; as Irmirsul burned ahead of them—Zandik had remarked something about his absence meaning that Feofan would no longer have the elixir of immortality besides whatever supply remained. As if Feofan could desire to live in a world in which Zandik is not there beside him.
Feofan shifts in his bed, turning to his side. It is empty. He has been tossing around for a long while now, and there is the faintest light coming from the windows. Feofan does not sleep with the curtains closed. If Zandik were here, he’d scoff and get up just to draw them close.
Zandik always did prefer the dark. (Did he? Feofan’s heart cannot recall; it is a failure of his, he believes)
Zandik would also probably roll his eyes at Feofan’s insistence to have the mantlepiece lit. He’d say that the lights are invented for a reason, and that it would lessen the fire hazard.
But Zandik is no longer here. There will no longer be any scoldings for Feofan to stop smoking and start eating properly; any sharp remarks regarding whatever thought crosses his mind; any requests for funding whatever bizarre project he has.
Feofan is alone. He is cold.
Perhaps the cruelest thing Zandik has done to Feofan is to leave him alone in his grief.
Suppose he’ll stop taking the elixirs, Feofan decides. Once the Tsaritsa succeed in her goals on defeating the Heavenly Principals—if she succeeds; now that is a thought. Whether the Tsaritsa does or does not, Feofan already knows what he will do. He will join Zandik, wherever that damned doctor may be.
A sense of grief is inevitable when parting with something you've long grown accustomed to having around.
Feofan doesn’t think he wants to grow accustomed to such a feeling. How dare Zandik leave him, when they have spent more centuries together than years apart. The crevice in his chest is a carving left behind by the mad doctor.
He wants the feeling to stop.