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Zach has to limp away from the healer’s home. He’s making a mess, and he’s painfully aware of it, but this is no time to be resting. His attempt to erase the healer’s memory was crude, and Zorian would do it so much better, but he’s not here and Zach needs to find him as soon as possible. He can only hope, just try to keep aflame his hope, that Zorian will be okay and that he’ll remedy everything, and Zach really just wants Zorian to be beside him, because not knowing whether he's okay is making him go crazy, it’s like he can’t breathe—
He stops, and tries to calm himself again. He should send a simulacrum, or a few, actually, to keep Red Robe in line, but…
No, the most important thing right now is to check if Zorian's okay. Maybe he’d been hurt while escaping, and he’s currently vulnerable and stuck in his home. If that’s the case, Zach needs to be in top form to protect him. He doesn’t think Red Robe or Silverlake will make it a priority to target Zorian or his family, especially since teleporting to Cirin is a lot more mana expensive than to teleport to the Noveda mansion, but they will attack at some point and he and Zorian need to be ready for it.
Zach feels his ribs protesting his every breath, and there’s a gash across his left leg that makes every step a torture, but he has to keep going. Zorian could— he could be bedridden, like that time their souls got harmed by Quatach-Ichl, and it’d be trivially easy for Silverlake to pay him a visit and—
Zach shakes his head, causing his already existing headache to worsen, and tells himself to focus. He needs to get there first. He needs to see Zorian first, to make a plan. Zorian will know what to do. He always does.
By the time he finds some secluded space to teleport to Cirin, the sun is already high up. He's wasted so much time healing himself from Red Robe’s assault, he should’ve come here earlier. There was plenty of time for something to happen, and as he looks at the front door of the Kazinski house he can’t help but be terrified of opening it and finding a massacre.
He swallows down his fear and knocks. He really hopes Zorian is here and that he’s not in the Noveda mansion, looking for Zach like Zach’s looking for him. But no, Zorian wouldn’t leave his family unprotected. He’d at least leave a simulacrum in the area.
After a moment, he hears steps, and he silently thanks the gods that the household is still alive. Then the door opens, and he’s face-to-face with Zorian.
He lets out an audible sigh of relief, and he has to hold himself back from flinging himself to the other boy. He wants nothing more than to hug the lights out of him, but Zorian would hate to lose more time than they’ve already lost.
“Zach? What happened to you?” Zorian asks, frowning at the bandages covering Zach’s chest and head.
“I got attacked this morning, but I already got healed, don’t worry.” Well, he might not be completely healed, but Zorian can figure that out on his own.
Zorian raises an eyebrow at that, but moves on rather quickly. “Why are you here? Are you searching for Miss Zileti? Because she just left.”
“I— What?”
“No? Then what are you doing in Cirin? It’s a rather long trip from Cyoria, and classes start in two days.”
What?
Was he—
No.
“If this is a prank, Zorian, I’m going to punch you again.” It’s a lie, though. His hands are shaking too much for him to throw a decent punch. He feels his heart about to jump from his throat, and he’s not breathing right. His breathing is all over the place, actually, and he can’t seem to remember how he was supposed to release it for some reason.
“What are you talking about?” And Zach can’t read his surface thoughts without an incantation, but some part of him is sure he wouldn’t find the Zorian he knows underneath this person.
Fuck.
He opens his mouth to say something, he doesn’t know what yet, but his lips tremble and he shuts it again. Zorian’s face is blurry, and he really hopes he’s not crying because he’s still outside the front door of the house and he hates crying in public.
“Are you alright, Zach?” He can’t see the expression Zorian’s making because everything is still too blurry, but he thinks it’s something he’d rather not see anyway.
Zach shakes his head, since he can’t find his own voice yet, and brings shaking hands to his face. He is, in fact, crying. Gods damn it.
Zorian’s hand is on his arm after a minute, and he feels the other boy pulling him inside the house.
“The house’s empty. My mother and sister are out, at the moment, so feel free to stay here if you need to calm down.” His voice sounds gentle in a way it shouldn’t be, and the pity underneath it angers him. Zorian— his Zorian, that is, wouldn’t pity him. But Zorian is— Zorian is—
Visions of a body falling through the air, chest pierced with a spike and a trail of blood behind him, flash before Zach’s eyes. He saw Zorian’s soul separating from his body and going towards the exit, he’s sure, but what if—
No. It’s not a what if. The answer is right here in front of him, looking at him with panicked and painfully confused eyes. Zorian didn’t make it.
Did he die inside the passage? If he made it outside, he’d at least get to be sent to the afterlife, but…
A sob tears itself out of his throat. Zorian’s gone. Zach is completely alone, and he never managed to stop the invasion by himself, and he sure won’t be able to with Silverlake and Red Robe on the opposing side while he‘s on his own. He’d follow Zorian in less than a month, whether he liked it or not.
I can’t do this without you...
He really hopes Zorian made it outside, at least that way when he dies he’ll get to be lectured by the other boy for his incompetence.
“What’s going on?” not-Zorian asks softly, as if Zach’s some small animal he doesn’t want to scare away. He notices the other boy crouching to look at him in the eyes and wonders when he fell to the floor.
Zorian’s got a hand on his shoulder, awkwardly, as if in a half-hearted attempt to console him. Zach tries to reign in his tears but he wishes so, so much that it were his Zorian in front of him, giving him that small grimace. The kindness behind his eyes is still the same he saw every day in his best friend’s eyes and gods, he can’t help but love him so much even though this person barely knows him. He loves —loved— Zorian but—
He never told Zorian he loved him.
It’s like life drains right out of him. When a few moments ago he couldn’t get enough air now he doesn’t know how to breathe at all. He never told Zorian he loved him. This isn’t his Zorian. His Zorian is gone forever.
Not-Zorian-but-still-Zorian seems to take his sudden silence as Zach calming down, when in reality he just feels so much worse than before.
“Are you in trouble? Why did you come here?” Not-his-Zorian asks him.
“I’m sorry,” he says. I’m sorry for not being able to save you. I’m sorry our efforts weren’t enough. I’m sorry you’re gone, he wants to add.
“I— well, I can’t say I’m a fan of you dropping here out of nowhere and causing a scene, but what happened?” Zorian’s eyes are wonderful. Really, he’s got the prettiest eyes, framed by the prettiest glasses, and will he ever see him smile at him again? Zorian used to give him a special smile, one that always reached his eyes and spoke of mutual understanding, and Zach only has one month to live but he’d give anything to see that smile again.
But he’s too tired. He’s too tired to come up with an excuse to explain his actions for this Zorian, he’s too tired to pretend he’s not breaking apart, he’s just— he just wants to give up already.
So he just stares at Zorian, because even though it’s not his Zorian their faces are the same, and it’s all he has. Soft cheeks painted with freckles, brown hair that he knows from experience is much fluffier than it looks, ears that turn bright red whenever Zach says the right things, lips that hold the most beautiful smiles he’s ever seen—
“Zach? Are you okay?” Zorian asks, and Zach’s probably freaking him out, isn’t he? He probably is, yes, but does that matter? Nothing makes sense anymore, not when Zorian’s gone. Silverlake and Red Robe are probably off doing who-knows-what while he’s here, and he would send a simulacrum, at least as a token effort, if he didn’t think the most important thing was being with Zorian. His simulacrums would surely agree with him, and telling them to go back to Cyoria would only cause them to rebel against him and then there’d just be a ton of Zachs fighting over this Zorian who doesn’t belong to any of them.
“No,” he says, because it’s the truth.