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It isn't hopelessness that gets its hands on Daniil: hopelessness would be easier to manage. It's pointlessness. The thought slips in between one step and the next, asking why he bothers to move at all. A perfectly reasonable question. He slows until he stops.
The Stone Yard—it makes sense. Nothing, no life springs from stone. He turns his back on the Polyhedron as he unholsters his gun. Better to look on the town he's failed more times than they'll ever remember. Safety off, metal on his tongue; it tastes and smells of oil. He doesn't even bother exhaling before pulling the trigger.
The pattern's well established by now. Sifting darkness from greater darkness, deciding on a course before being set back on his feet for another try.
This goes differently. Holes poked in the dark like stars which widen until they overtake the night entirely. He takes his first new breath in a bright and echoing room. He isn't alone.
He looks down at his body with the very distasteful hole through its head. The picture is obscured in part by Artemy Burakh, who kneels over the second (first? fifth? hundreth?) Daniil with bandages and bottles spilling from his various pouches.
"What are you hoping to achieve?" he asks.
Burakh stills. Daniil can't see his face but he can read the tension in his shoulders.
"Oynon," he says, turning slowly. He doesn't stand.
Daniil kneels. He puts two fingers to the body's neck. The pulse he feels there makes no sense. It's slow, a slowness incompatible with life: a single beat every fifteen seconds, but not, it seems, abating or even weakening.
He takes his own pulse. Standard. Calm, even, considering circumstances.
"Well then," Daniil says aloud, blinking.
"Yes," Burakh says. "You are very bizarre."
"I don't believe I can take full credit, in this case."
Daniil raises his head and listens; a great ticking pervades the building, filling the cathedral's high stone vaults. Every fourteenth tick it falls silent for a single beat.
"It makes time," Burakh says. "Or so they say. I didn't expect—" he gestures to the living Daniil, or at least the one doing better at it for the moment, "—this."
"And what did you need the extra time for?"
Burakh gives him a flat look. Flatter than normal. "A bullet to the head only seems definitive. There are cases of survival."
"You dragged me in here to save me."
"I watched you put a gun in your mouth. Stupid. Very stupid."
"Maybe so," Daniil says. He peers into the ruin of his former head. Not the least or most bizarre thing he's seen of late. Aside from the loose bits of skull and the blood ruining his coat, he could be sleeping. "Not much to look at, am I?"
"You angled the shot," Burakh says. He sounds a bit on edge, but not nearly as perturbed by the situation as he ought to be. "I don't know that you meant to. The bullet appears to have passed through just one lobe. Both lobes is always fatal. One... There is a chance."
"Forgive my inexactness," Daniil drawls, rising out of his crouch. He takes a few steps. Puts the body behind him. Away from all the blood, the cathedral smells like ozone. "My god you're a sturdy fellow, aren't you? Unflappable. I suppose that's your combat medicine at play."
Burakh is light on his feet: his voice is quieter and closer than Daniil expects. "It is always shocking to see a man swallow a bullet, if that's what you mean." His eyes flick up and down Daniil. "I tried to stop you. I called your name. Or didn't you hear?"
Burakh brings the blood stench with him. His hands are covered in it. Daniil unties his cravat. Without allowing himself to consider it further, he takes up Burakh's wide palms and scrubs at them. His mess, after all.
"I didn't," he says. "Hear you."
Burakh is very large and very near. Daniil can practically feel the latent force of him, all that potential energy held in check.
"Does it not disturb you?" Burakh asks. He tips his head toward the body. "Or have you done this before?"
"Not this exactly, no. I've died, or I should have, but what do you call it when I simply continue on afterward?"
"Hell, I think."
He says it so easily Daniil can't help but smile. The blood on Burakh's hands is stubborn. It holds fast to the creases of his skin. "The rumors have been vastly overstated, if that is the case." Daniil folds the ruined silk into a square and pockets it. "I don't think I've done much, there. Sorry. And for your efforts, as well." He waves vaguely in the direction of his latest personal failure.
Burakh flexes his hands. The breath he draws in fills his whole considerable frame. "You appear to me as a man of many possibilities, oynon. But those possibilities, and that man, seem contained in glass. Like a jar, or a bauble. I worry that you are not as endless as you seem."
Daniil scoffs. He gestures expansively. "Even after this? What you've seen?"
"Do you think you lose nothing, when you leave that body behind?"
"I don't have a choice." Daniil's voice is both louder and more brittle than he intends. It fills the gap left by the missing fifteenth tick. He masters himself, continues. "Even if it means crawling forward, or bending my mind until it snaps, or whole trainloads of my own corpse, I will save every worthwhile thing I can. You think I should stop for death? I won't dignify it in that way."
Burakh's slate blue eyes fix on him. "I understand," he says, and Daniil, for some reason, believes him. "I only wonder about the cost. The value of things. Tossing them out behind you as you go." His gaze slides to the side where the body lays. "You have a moment here. Take it."
Daniil lets out a short, agitated breath. If only to humor the man and his misplaced goodwill, he returns to the body. He considers it, or tries to: it keeps abstracting under his gaze. It is colors. Shapes. Spilled ink; a snake; a doll.
He is as he is now. This one counted only as far as it could carry him. He checks its pulse. Still there, that dull single drumbeat.
Burakh appears across from him—better for staring him in the face, Daniil assumes. He's seen what eye contact with Burakh does to others in the town. It seems natural they mistake him for a killer. Daniil, however, in meeting Burakh's gaze, only feels an odd thrill. This man has seen the hole in his head. He has accepted the impossible with equanimity. Daniil would like knowing him, he thinks. In another time.
He steps forward through the puddle of blood to seizes Burakh by the shirtfront. Leaning carefully over his own corpse, Daniil drags him down and kisses him.
Burakh is quick on the uptake, and good with his tongue. Daniil's blood thrills in his veins. Good as any drug or better. Responsive and alive, Burakh is a mystery to him. More interesting by far than the jetsam on the floor.
They kiss to breathlessness then part. Burakh gives him a long, slightly wary look while Daniil adjusts his coat and his gloves.
"Will you do me a favor?" Daniil asks, and Burakh's attention sharpens. "Carry this outside for me, if you would. I don't think it can die here. It may not even exist once you cross the threshold. That, or I won't. Not in this time, anyway."
"If it exists, I will bury it," Burakh says. Daniil only blinks. "It was dear," he says, gentler than Daniil can stand.
Daniil shakes his head shortly but finds himself waylaid, bereft of insult or argument. Burakh still stands there with his posture and bearing like a challenge. Daniil crosses to the cathedral doors.
"I'll see you again," Burakh calls out.
"It may not be the same you," Daniil says. "Or the same me. You may not even remember this."
"If you do, I will."
"You can't promise that."
Burakh only gives him his standard mullish look. He stoops and retrieves the body from the floor with great care. Daniil has one glimpse of his own incomplete head resting on Burakh's shoulder before he turns and flees: the eyes, which he would swear had been closed, appear open.