mx vin

Hamid fired too close. The world goes white as the flame erupts, heat searing across his skin, and Wilde sees Zolf turn away, sees skeletons coming at him from his right-

Pain flares in his stomach, and spikes as the weapon is pulled out. Wilde’s vision comes back to a skeleton in front of him, blue flowers in its eyes as it tilts its head at him, holding the weapon, and then it erupts into flame.

Wilde stumbles back, away from the fire that’s suddenly devouring the rest of the zombies. His hand goes to his stomach, where pain throbs and flares white-hot, and his hand is immediately soaked in blood. He feels dizzy, the world blurring into red flame and blue flowers.

“Wilde,” says someone, distantly, and there’s a hand on his arm. Wilde tries to form a response, his mouth opening, but all that comes out is a pained sob.

The hand is now pushing on his arm, and Wilde realizes his knees have given out, and now there’s two hands trying to hold him up. Something’s glowing. His name is repeated, again, and Wilde’s vision has narrowed into a blur of fire several feet in front of him.

The red dances, swirls into orange, into gold, into red again…

“Wilde- Wilde,” Zolf repeats, desperately. The man goes limp in his arms, eyes closing, and there’s far too much blood streaming from between his fingers. “Fuck- Wilde-“

Zolf looks up. The skeletons are being devoured by flame and sliced by Azu’s axe and exploded by Cel’s bombs. They’ve seen Wilde go down, and Zolf catch him, and they surround him in a protective circle.

Zolf turns back to Wilde and starts casting every healing spell he can think of.

He hopes desperately, his hands glowing as he holds them over Wilde. “Come on, Wilde,” he whispers, “get up, get up, you’re not allowed to die on me again, that’s not how this works-“

He stays limp. Zolf ignores Azu breaking the circle and focuses on Wilde. Wilde, limp in his arms, blood streaming from his stomach. Wilde, the bastard of a man that Zolf cares about.

Wilde, taking a deep breath, Zolf feeling his last healing spell go through, and the blood flow stops.

Zolf carefully takes Wilde’s hand away from his stomach, seeing the wound barely knitted together. He feels a breath escape him that’s shakier than he’d ever admit, and presses his fingers against Wilde’s throat to feel the pulse there. Light, quick, but there. Still there.

He looks up, ready to enter the fight again-

Cel’s voice. “Zolf-“

The zombie a foot away moves, skipping through the space until it’s right in front of Zolf, and he barely gets a hand up before there’s a sword stabbing into his chest.

Something hits the zombie’s head, as Zolf’s vision narrows, and then it explodes against it. The sword comes out in a flare of pain, and Zolf’s vision goes dark.

Wilde wakes up to silence.

The first thing he does is see the sky. The second thing he does is try to sit up, and that’s when dull pain flares through his stomach and he gives a cry out before leaning on his elbows.

The third thing Wilde notices is that his right hand is wet.

He looks down, and there’s blood pooled around his hand, and he follows the trail up to white hair, up to-

“Zolf?” Wilde asks, and he hasn’t had that tone of helpless, lost confusion since he was young.

“Wilde…” Cel says, somewhere off to the right of his head, before they turn around to meet another of the few remaining zombies. Wilde ignores them and sits up, the pain in his stomach nothing compared to the stone dropping in it, the way his heart sinks.

He shakes Zolf, uncaring about the blood soaking one hand getting on him. “Zolf, no, no, this- no, you can’t-“

His words end in a sob he didn’t realize was building, and suddenly Wilde is fighting tears. He presses two bloody fingers to Zolf’s throat frantically, even as his breaths come quicker and something inside him starts to break.

Silence. Zolf’s skin is cold, Wilde thinks abruptly, hysterically, and then his words come back.

“Zolf- Zolf, no, you can’t be- that’s not how this works- we were supposed to go- we were supposed to go on holiday together, we were- we were so close, Zolf, we won-“

Wilde’s voice breaks into another sob, and then another, and then he starts singing.

His magic flutters to life, spreads through him, and his song echoes around the area. Wilde thinks of Zolf, of bringing him back. He wants him to take a deep breath, to open his eyes and ask what Wilde’s been so worried about, say that he’s never seen him cry and that it’s not a good look on him (it’s not, not like this). He wants him to sit up and wince, wants to put his arm around his shoulder and lift him up. Maybe carry him too, though Wilde thinks Zolf would sooner stab him than let him carry him. Even if he does have a- a wound that might have killed him. Might. Maybe.

Wilde keeps singing.

He knows it’s too late. He can feel Zolf’s skin, still cold against the fingers he has against his neck, blood pooled around his body and sticking in his hair. His braids have come a little undone, and he has dirt and blood on his face, and his clothes are torn, and Wilde thinks he would only look better if he were alive.

He wants Zolf to live.

(the fire of their love burned bright,

and unturned came the heavy night,

and then, while he could still believe

his desperate stream of words did weave)

Wilde sings, and sings, and in one of the songs he curses Zolf out for being such a selfless idiot, and in another he declares that he loves him, and in a third he describes what their life would’ve been.

It doesn’t heal him. Zolf doesn’t take a breath in, doesn’t sit up, the story doesn’t end happy.

Instead, flowers grow.

Wilde sees morning glories, in the corner of his eyes. Affection, he thinks suddenly. Morning glory means affection, and it grows near Zolf’s hair, through the blood, around his ankles, near his elbow.

The blue is complemented by red. Declaration of love, Wilde thinks at the red tulips climbing from the ground, his magic wrapping gold around the flowers. The tulips grow around Zolf’s feet, curl around his hand and wrist, trace the line of his neck and jaw.

Wilde sings, and tears run down his face, and he thinks desperately that they’re ruining his makeup. He worked hard on that, not having many opportunities for it in the field. It had lasted since the Svalbard castle.

Hyssop grows next, and it means sacrifice, in lavender purple . Wilde laughs, something bitter and sad and half hysterical through the tears. He’s missing so many notes by now, but he’s sung enough to keep his magic going, and he goes quiet with a soft hitch of broken breath, sitting on his knees by Zolf’s body and letting the spells play out.

Green carnations. Wilde set a trend for that, wearing it to show he loved men. It stuck, and here it grows, around Zolf’s other metallic ankle and up around his knees, beside his hip. It springs up by his shoulder, over near his heart.

Blue springs up next, forget-me-nots between Zolf’s legs and all up his side, around his other shoulder and by his head. Eternal love was the meaning taught to Wilde for that flower, and he watches sprigs of it curl with the green carnations, circling Zolf’s shoulder and left arm, next to his heart.

Wilde thinks he’s holding his breath, and he lets it out in a small, soft exhale. The flowers have stopped, now, and he thinks it’s over.

It’s over. Zolf is gone.

He lays almost peacefully, surrounded by flowers. Wilde stares at him, something numb and cold inside him now, the tears dried on his face and his songs dull now. There’s a strange color to Zolf’s cheeks, and he’s not actively looking more… well, dead. Wilde reaches over and pulls his arms up. He curls Zolf’s hands around his glaive, sets them crossed over his chest. It’s a warrior’s funeral - fitting for Zolf. Selfless idiot, Wilde thinks, because he’s nothing if not sarcastic and petty and in the face of losing Zolf, he will curse him out for his selflessness. There’s nothing else he can do except mourn, and really, he’s already ruined his makeup once today.

Farewell, says the sweetpea, growing pink up between the rest of the flowers, filling in the spots, forming a perfect, flowery, deceptively bright outline around Zolf.

(a memory traced in flower blue,

on burning hills of brightest hue,

where towering stems in silence stand,

the product of a once-held hand)

Wilde stares, and then he notices it’s become eerily silent.

There’s one heavy footstep, the soft shift of metal. “Wilde?” Azu asks, gently from behind him.

He exhales. He imprints the sight of Zolf’s body surrounded by flowers in his mind, peaceful and at rest, and stands up. When he turns to Azu, his mind is clear in a way it only gets when he’s compartmentalizing hard.

It won’t last. Not for something like this, but Wilde can at least make it back to the inn, or somewhere else, before he makes some bad decisions.

(and there beneath the weeping trees,

a golden tear, a sunbeam gleams

where the lover’s crown still grows,

above a skull that bears no woes

for liquid gold the air did weep,

through sweetest songs his death did keep)

Wilde meets Azu’s eyes. He ignores the shifting of her stance, recognizing what he’s doing as he looks at her, entirely steady, not acknowledging moments ago when he was singing desperately through tears, when he sung enough to make flowers grow around Zolf’s body.

Her head tilts, her mouth tilting down, a sort of sad disappointment. “Wilde-“

“We have to go back,” he interrupts. He’s Oscar Wilde, their handler. They’re in the middle of a war zone (they’re standing next to Zolf’s corpse), they need to go back (they need to leave him alone). It’s safer (less painful), anywhere but here.

Azu stares at him. Wilde doesn’t break his gaze, and then she gives a soft sigh. “Alright.”

Wilde nods and straightens, professional and brisk. “Right. Let’s go.”

He starts walking, and ignores the eyes of Azu, Hamid, and Cel behind him, concerned. He doesn’t have time for this, doesn’t have time to think about the injury in his stomach that should’ve killed him, doesn’t have time to think about Zolf’s body surrounded by flowers.

He walks, and it’s silent, and Wilde tries not to cry.

one year later

Wilde hates and loves the song in equal measures.

It’s accurate, and it hurts, and it’s a reminder of what happened. He blames the pain on the song, as if he doesn’t think about what happened every day, as if he doesn’t remind himself enough. Earhart had even warned him against spiraling like she did, in the months after.

As far as he knows, he’s the only one to visit Zolf’s body that isn’t anyone on the airship. People wrote a song about him and don’t bother to visit his body. Zolf and he have become a tale to tell, the story of two lovers, a classical tragedy.

Wilde gives a bitter laugh. They weren’t even lovers, really, not in the romantic sense. He’s fond of the word anyway, even if it was simply a platonic connection, even if they didn’t need romance to be connected to each other like they were. It’s the only word that can really encompass the connection.

Wilde stands and stares, at Zolf’s preserved body, at his gold magic shimmering in the light if Wilde tilts his head just so. It’s appropriate that Wilde managed to preserve him, that his corpse won’t rot, will stay surrounded by flowers for eternity.

Wilde opens his mouth, and sings the song, softly, like a lullaby.

the fire of their love burned bright,

and unturned came the heavy night,

and then, while he could still believe

his desperate stream of words did weave

a memory traced in flower blue,

on burning hills of brightest hue,

where towering stems in silence stand,

the product of a once-held hand

and there beneath the weeping trees,

a golden tear, a sunbeam gleams

where the lover’s crown still grows,

above a skull that bears no woes

for liquid gold the air did weep,

through sweetest songs his death did keep

His voice fades away. Zolf doesn’t respond, and the flowers wave gently in the wind. They do well too, a product directly of Wilde’s magic and emotions. They’ll never die.

Wilde sighs and tilts his head back to look at the sky. He closes his eyes.

The world is mostly healed by now, at least physically. Society is still rebuilding, and the trauma hasn’t magically healed itself for most of the world, but it’s getting better. People are being elected as leaders. The meritocrats have been overthrown, their corruption exposed, and the religious temples are all rebuilding.

And Zolf lays here through it all, and he looks like he’s sleeping, peaceful as ever. Grass has grown over the area where the zombies died, where blood stained the ground. It’s a plain field, preserved using Hamid’s influence. They saved the world, and Hamid had enough influence and money of his own to do this for Wilde. The fact that it was a war zone stained by blood and the last fight of the infection helped matters in convincing people not to build on it.

A small field of bright green grass, and in the center, the corpse of a dwarf, hands crossed over his glaive on his chest, bright flowers surrounding him.

Wilde takes two steps forward. He sits down, and toys idly with the ends of Zolf’s hair, and he starts to sing.

It’s a nice night when Zolf steps outside. The air is cool and clean, so unlike the thick air in London or the dusty air in Cairo. The stars are clear, highlighted in shining white against the dark black of the sky. It reminds Zolf of the way the stars look on the sea - clear and bright, the entire galaxy and the gods looking down on you.

Maybe not the gods, anymore. Not for him, but he has his own gods now - one in shining pink armor, and one that had so many daggers, and one in obnoxious clothing, one with elf ears and potions on their belt. Even one with dragon fire at his fingertips. He disagrees with Hamid, but… the fact that he’s with him, fighting to save the world, is still hope enough, no matter the fights they have.

He picks a spot on the grass, clear of most trees, and leans against the side of a building, staring up at the sky. He counts three constellations, tracks the position of the moon and catalogues the direction and force of the wind that blows his hair to the left. He thinks of how he’d navigate a ship in weather like this.

He thinks of a ship crashing, of blood staining snow and a fur coat and brown hair, and starts tracing the constellations again. He stops thinking about ships.

“Can’t sleep?” comes a voice to his right, about ten minutes after he’s sat there. He’s tracked the moon’s position in the sky.

Zolf looks over to see Wilde standing there, hands in the pockets of his coat. There’s an affection rising in him, a fondness at seeing him alive and healthy, white hair glowing in the moonlight, blue eyes bright. He lets himself feel it, and then he pushes it down. He can’t do that. Not until they’re safe.

He answers with a noncommittal grunt and looks back up at the sky, and hopes Wilde doesn’t come closer, hopes he doesn’t make Zolf’s chest feel warm and something unexplainable rise in his throat, begging to be let out.

Wilde comes closer. He takes four long strides, putting himself next to Zolf, and slides down to sit next to him.

“What constellations do you see?” he asks, staring up at the sky. Something traitorous flutters in Zolf’s chest.

“Wilde.”

He feels Wilde’s gaze turn to him. “What, Zolf?”

Zolf wishes he could hate the way Wilde says his name, voice curling soft over the syllables, warm and open. He wishes he didn’t want to sit here and explain every constellation he sees, wishes he didn’t imagine a life with Wilde after all of this is over, a lifetime of his smile and laugh and bad puns.

It might never happen. He can’t let himself hope for that, can’t let it get out of control. He can hope that this ends, that they’ll get out of this alive, but he can’t hope for Wilde, can’t let himself enjoy this. It would devastate him.

“Not like this,” he says after a long pause, and moves to get up. Wilde’s eyes follow him confusedly. Zolf resolutely doesn’t look at him.

The stars seem a little dimmer as he walks back to his room, and his heart aches.

The Garden hums around them, alive and thrumming as they walk through it. The voices echo around them, and the rope tied around Zolf’s waist shifts with every movement.

It’s oddly peaceful. Beautiful, too, in a way, though he knows as well as the rest of the party the feeling of dread hanging over them, the chill that turns a bit too sharp, the way they can feel themselves get closer to the blight. It’s peaceful and tense, a juxtaposition that has them all on edge.

Zolf’s eyes flick to the right, and there’s Wilde, somehow drifted closer to him in the time he’s been thinking. He takes another step closer, another-

His hand brushes ever so slightly against Zolf, silently. Thin fingers trail down his wrist, the back of his hand feather-light against Zolf’s, and yet Zolf feels every area of contact sharply.

He tenses, and shoves down the urge to brush back in the silent gesture of affection. He can’t be this with Wilde. Not until he knows they’re safe. Not until he knows Wilde won’t die before his eyes again, at any moment.

He can hope. He can hope hard enough to make fire light on his hands. He can’t let himself enjoy this, can’t grow complacent.

He lets out a breath. “Not like this, Wilde,” he exhales with it, softly, and takes a small step to the left, enough to break the brand of contact of Wilde’s skin against his.

It’s silent. Zolf thinks he can feel the confusion and hurt radiating off of Wilde, pushes down the urge to apologize.

Wilde gives a small nod, barely visible out of the corner of Zolf’s eye, and takes his own step to the right.

Zolf keeps walking.

Wilde knows Zolf’s protecting himself.

He’s not a stranger to it; he’s had his own opportunities aplenty to close himself off, to push away the people he cares about in a futile attempt not to be broken when they are hurt.

He did it with the party, after all, and here he is, traitorous heart in his throat every time he sends them on a mission, every time they enter somewhere dangerous, every time they leave his sight. He mourns them day after day, and rejoices when they prove to live again, and mourns them again days later.

It’s exhausting.

He understands it, but that doesn’t mean he can’t think it’s unfair for Zolf to do this to him. To say he needed him, to have him wake up alive, with a sense of peace for once, peace he hasn’t known for years, and then to take that away from him.

It’s almost spiteful, almost like blaming the furniture for stubbing your toe on it and purposely giving it a hit that only hurts yourself in the end, that he finds Zolf in a morning at Barrett’s and wakes him, walks over to his side of the bed.

It’s almost spiteful when, minutes later, as Zolf sits up on the side of the bed, Wilde reaches out and toys with the ends of his beard. “I know a good braid for this, you know,” he says, flicking his eyes up to Zolf. The fingers of his one hand are already idly separating the hair into messy sections, mentally imagining which one he’d do and how-

Zolf sighs. Spiteful, Wilde thinks, and fights the bitter smile threatening to twist his lips. “Not like this,” he says, soft as a breath.

Blaming the furniture for hurting you, giving it a hit back that only hurts yourself in the end.

Wilde flicks his hand in Zolf’s hair, gives a short nod, stands up, and leaves the room without another word.

Wilde knows how to protect himself. He never said he was good at it.

Zolf comes sprinting out of the Svalbard castle, dressed in only a cold metal breastplate and trousers and with uncountable monsters racing behind him and the party. Wilde’s mind flicks through several concerns, settles on the world, and deals with that. The world falls away around him, pieces itself back together in London, and his fur coat is too warm for him now.

The others end up leaving the room, and it’s him and Zolf and the things left unsaid between them.

Wilde shrugs off his coat and wordlessly offers it to Zolf.

He sees Zolf’s eyes flick to it, track down the coat and to Wilde’s hand curled around the material, sees a light flicker in his eyes.

The light dims. “No, Wilde.”

Wilde’s hand drops. “Not like this,” he finishes, softly and with all the bitterness he can put into the words.

Zolf’s eyes meet his, once, apologetic and defensive and conflicted, and then he turns and leaves. Wilde watches him go.

He puts the coat back on, thinks of what he has to do next, and leaves the room as Oscar Wilde, his party’s handler. Saver of the world. Ex-meritocratic agent.

He knows how to protect himself.

Wilde wakes up, and sunlight shines through the windows of his and Zolf’s house, and he relishes the soft warmth curled around him of the blankets. He takes a moment to appreciate that he’s not in danger; he does that often, these days. Every day he wakes up, every day he goes outside and does some mundane errand and wonders how he ever took normalcy for granted.

He then takes several minutes to part with the blankets, instead wrapping himself in just as warm clothes, and goes to find Zolf.

More accurately, he follows the smell of bacon, two turns out of their room and into their kitchen. Their house. Their life.

The sun shines through the kitchen window on Zolf’s hair, falling down the short, messy spikes, tracing down the curve of his arm and the hair there, glinting off the metal of his legs, covered only by his underclothes. Wilde takes a minute to admire it, leaning against the doorframe and listening to Zolf hum a sea shanty under his breath as the pan sizzles.

He walks forward and presses himself behind Zolf, draping his arms over his shoulder and clasping his hands beneath his neck. Zolf gives a soft grunt, but doesn’t break his stride in flipping the bacon and slipping it off the spatula onto the plate.

Wilde hasn’t tried this since the Svalbard dungeon, mere weeks ago. They’ve slept together and that’s been all. It’s only been days that they’ve been together, in a healing city, and it’s both natural and unnatural to slip into routine with the other.

“Morning,” Zolf says when Wilde doesn’t.

Wilde doesn’t respond, watching Zolf’s hands as he cooks the last pieces of bacon and finishes the eggs, and it’s not until the burner is off that Zolf sets the spatula down and turns to look quizzically at Wilde.

Wilde looks down at him, sees the strange new gravity of the situation settle in his gaze, and asks softly, “Like this?”

Zolf stares at him for a long moment, and then he settles into Wilde’s arms around his shoulders. “Exactly like this, Wilde.”

Wilde smiles, feels that peace fall over him, and he lets go of Zolf. He turns to the dining room table, and takes a seat, and when he looks up Zolf is setting the plates of eggs and bacon on the table, spreading out their two dishes and serving spoons and their own silverware, and takes a seat to the right of Wilde.

It feels natural, now, with a peace and contentment settled over the both of them. Wilde picks up the spatula, scoops up some bacon and slides it onto his plate, and Zolf sits beside him. His beard isn’t braided yet, but Wilde knows Zolf will tease him about what new braiding style he’s learned this time, and he hasn’t shown Wilde all the constellations he knows, but they have all the time in the world and Wilde thinks Zolf could get a boat, now, if he wanted. They could spend nights on the boat, and Zolf could point out constellations and Wilde could make fireworks light in the sky with a flick of his fingers.

Exactly like this.