Chapter Text
They hadn’t built the cell with the idea that one of them would have to be in it.
“At least I won’t have to wear the shackles to sleep,” Oscar said, trying for lightness.
“You’re saying that like you actually sleep when you have them on,” Zolf grumbled.
“I’m a busy man.”
“Not for the next week you’re not.” Zolf hesitated at the bars, raised a hand. “Look, at least let me heal you…”
“No. It could be passed magically. You don’t do anything to endanger yourself.”
“You could have healed it yourself before we came down here!”
Oscar clenched his jaw, the skin around his wound pulling unpleasantly. He’d reached for magic, instinctively, after the fight, but something had held him back. Perhaps he was just out of practice, since the shackles, since Grizzop had…
“Just get me something to clean it up with. I’ll manage.”
“It’s gonna scar,” Zolf said, and Oscar didn’t wince.
“Good. It’ll remind me not to be so stupid next time.”
“You couldn’t have…”
Oscar shook his head. “We’ve got seven days, Zolf. It’s going to get extremely tiresome down here if the only conversation you want to have with me is about how you don’t think I was completely and utterly stupid. Especially since you’d be wrong. ”
“He was your friend.”
“No.” Oscar shut his eyes and saw soft ginger hair falling over the bluest eyes Oscar had ever seen, as blue as the web of veins under his skin, glassy, dead and gone . He opened them again, focusing instead on Zolf, looking at him. Zolf’s eyes were green, offset by the now bright white of his hair. Zolf’s face was familiar and safe and more importantly, Oscar knew him . “He was dead before I stabbed him, you know that as well as I do.”
Zolf swallowed. “Yeah but you didn’t know that,” he said. “When he made contact.”
“I should have suspected. At the very least.”
Zolf’s nostrils flared and Oscar cocked an eyebrow at him, daring him to keep talking. “You’re allowed to grieve, Wilde,” Zolf said, finally, voice rough.
Oscar drew in a breath, upset to hear it shake. “Well. I suppose I’ll have the time.” Zolf looked like he was going to say something else, something to try to comfort him, something… pithy and shaped like a platitude. Oscar could appreciate him trying, but words were Oscar’s specialty, not Zolf’s. “Go get me something for this,” he waved at his face. “I’ll be fine here on my own for a minute or two, you don’t have to fuss over me like I’m a child.”
Zolf hesitated but Oscar just looked at him until he turned to go.
There was a single chair in the cell, and a cot. They’d kept it clean, at least. Oscar sat on the cot, ashamed at how little strength he had in his limbs. The brief burst of adrenalin, up in the inn, was wearing off, and when he looked down at his hands, they were shaking.
When Zolf came back down he had water, a mirror, needle and thread, and a bottle of sake. “Have you ever stitched a wound before?” he asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“On yourself or someone else?”
Oscar’s jaw worked. “My sister,” he said.
Zolf looked surprised at that. “Didn’t know you had family.”
Oscar reached a hand out the slot in the bars that was meant for food. “Had,” he said, then tilted his head at the look on Zolf’s face. “She didn’t die because of how bad a job I did, if that’s what you’re asking. Another boy threw a rock at her face. Our mother was… not available. So I did what needed to be done.” Zolf did not look entirely reassured, and Oscar made an impatient sound and snatched the bottle out of his hand. Zolf put the rest through the slot more carefully as Oscar uncorked the bottle and took a long swig.
“You’re meant to wash the wound with that, not drink it.”
“I’m aware,” Oscar took another swig before sitting back on the cot. He dipped a cloth in the water and began to gently wash out the wound. Zolf just stood there. “Gods," Oscar said, "sit down, Zolf, I know the legs don’t work properly here.”
“I’m sorry,” Zolf said then.
“For what?”
“Bringing up the past?”
“She died nearly twenty years ago,” Oscar said, now wetting the second cloth with the sake. “Fever. Caught it on the trip over from Ireland.” Oscar could remember the thinness of her arms, the smell of the sickness on her breath, the desperate, wheezing breaths she took close to the end. “She was ten,” he said. Was this how it started? Did the disease pull up memories so it could digest them? Feed off them? File them away for use against the people Oscar cared about?
Could he be sure, really, that the face he saw in his mind's eye was really Isola's?
“Like I said. I’m sorry.”
“And like I said, it was a long time ago,” Oscar said, then winced at the sting of the alcohol.
“You never talked about your family before,” Zolf said, and Oscar could hear him making his stiff, clunky way to the only other chair in the basement. He looked up to see Zolf lowering himself down and letting out a small sigh of relief. Without magic, the legs weren’t exactly useless, but they weren’t exactly good, either.
“Families are complicated and usually tiresome,” Oscar said, then picked up the needle. Zolf had threaded it for him, he noticed, and was grateful. He wasn’t quite able to hide the shake in his hands as he raised the mirror up and had a good look at what Alfred had done to him before Oscar stabbed him through the heart.
It was ugly. There was no denying it. A slash that cut down his cheek and nearly clipped his lip (no wonder talking had hurt), lightly curved. Alfred had struck before Oscar could react, but he hadn’t been fast enough and in the end Alfred was dead before the first drops of Oscar’s blood had hit the floor.
Without his magic he’d been forced to learn other ways of dealing with threats.
“Wilde?” Zolf’s voice was hesitant. “You okay?”
He swallowed. “I’m fine,” he said, then positioned the mirror between two of the bars so he could work with his hands free. “I need more light though.”
He heard Zolf get up again and cursed under his breath for making him do more walking. Oscar should have realised he’d need light as well as the other materials, it was Oscar’s job to realise these things, to hold the threads in his hands and see the whole picture. It was Oscar’s job to not trust at first sight, to not be so pathetically grateful to see a friendly face, to feel the warmth of a human connection from before the horribleness had begun…
This was a waste of time any way. He might as well just let the wound fester. He wasn’t going to live out the week.
He sat back down on the cot again, hard.
When would it start? Would he even notice when he stopped being himself? How could he even know?
“Wilde?” Again. Zolf’s voice. How many times had he said Oscar’s name? He was standing at the bars, a lantern in his hand. Oscar blinked. Stood. Took the lantern, careful not to touch Zolf’s hand as he did so.
Zolf noticed the care and frowned, but Oscar wasn’t going to start that argument again. He set the lantern on the cot, close enough to give enough light, then moved back to the mirror, needle and thread in hands that had stopped shaking, now.
He didn’t need to look into his eyes while he worked, and that helped.
When he was done he held up the lantern to inspect the work. He’d downed a good deal of the sake after the first few stitches - the prick of the needle and pull of the thread through his skin had gotten too much more quickly than he would have liked. The final stitches were less than perfect, most certainly because Oscar’s hands were now unsteady from drink rather than nerves.
Zolf had watched the entire process from the chair, hands clasped tightly in his lap. Oscar could feel his disapproval, his worry, the entire time.
“You did okay,” Zolf said, coming to look while Oscar examined his face critically.
Oscar shrugged and tried for a smile, wincing when the line of stitches pulled and warped. “What can I say, I’m good with my hands.”
Zolf rolled his eyes. “Nice to see some things never change.”
“One cannot improve on perfection.”
Zolf let out a small groan. “Well one could give it a go when one’s had some sleep,” he said.
Oscar swallowed. He didn’t want to sleep. While he was in no danger from the malicious dreams down here there were still the regular kind. And on top of that now he had the glooming spectre of the passage of time.
If he slept, would he wake up the same?
“Wilde?”
“I’m fine,” Oscar snapped. Stop asking.
He felt a sharp, deep stab of grief in his chest.
“No you’re not,” Zolf said, gently.
It was a simple enough phrase. Not meant to be comforting, but offered out of kindness. You're not fine. Azu had said that, on the mountain, and then she'd gone. If you continue like this you're just going to die, Grizzop had said, in the temple, while Oscar sat naked and vulnerable and exhausted, and then he'd gone.
Stop asking if you already know the damned answer, Zolf Smith.
"Allow a man the dignity of pretense," Oscar said, and his voice didn't crack and he didn't slump on the cot and bury his head in his hands and he still remembered Isola's face.
Zolf pursed his lips. "You don't have to pretend with me," he said, and maybe that was enough, to tip him over the edge, or maybe he'd fallen a long time ago, because that was when he turned away from the quiet appraisal of the dwarf on the other side of the bars and rested his head on the cool stone of the cell, and that was when the tears began to fall.