tags: slowburn, angst (lots of it), fluff (somewhat), heavy topics are discussed (see tws), reader is Pantalone’s big sis.
tws: severe chronic illness (not determined one, but reader is chronically in physical pain), emotional distress, poverty and starvation (mentioned), codependency, mention of opiate use (laudanum), dubious medical ethics, (kind of) spoiler-ish, the timeline is messy, reader is from Snezhnaya.
(If you find some more, please let me know.)
As usual, thank you all, my dear sweethearts, for your support!
Spring (you're here) - Summer (WIP) - Autumn - Winter
NOT SUITED FOR MINORS. Not proofread. Author does not endorse nor condone any of the actions depicted in real life. Also, English is not the author's first language, so there might be some mistakes.
Please remember that you are responsible for your own media consumption.
HOYO-MIX - Threefold Falsehood
On the chilly spring afternoon when your brother brings yet another doctor home, you sit propped against a fortress of pillows and watch the snow erase the city.
It should be warmer right now, you think. Somewhere, in gentler nations, the earth is softening, so girls can step into streets in lighter dresses, lifting their faces to the rain, laughing because the world is thawing.
Here, in Snezhnaya, the sky remains a hard sheet of iron, and you watch the eternal white burying the streets. It covers the chimneys first, then the roofs, then the crooked railings along the pathway. It erases footsteps almost as soon as people leave them.
You have often thought that Snezhnaya is merciful in that one respect: it knows how to cover evidence. Poverty, blood, shame, sickness, all of it can be made briefly beautiful beneath fresh snow.
Your room, however, refuses to be transformed. Illness has made it too intimate for beauty. The curtains are clean, the blankets are warm, and the grate is full of black coal. There are glass bottles on the small table by your bed, brown and green and clear, with labels written in many different hands. There are also a spoon darkened by tinctures, a folded cloth smelling faintly of vinegar, and a book of Snezhnayan fairy tales with the spine broken from being held open for too long.
Everything is cared for and paid for, albeit useless.
Same with doctors who come here to cure you, unfortunately. From Snezhnaya to Fontaine, from provincial bone setters to court-trained men with rings on their hands, every physician has stood beside your bed and failed you with politeness. Recently, you’d started dismissing them before they could unload their useless comforts upon you, waving a tired hand and turning your face to the wall. It was better to be alone with the truth than to be smothered in a weak promise of a false spring.
Still, even given your condition, you’ve continued living with the stubbornness of a weed between stones.
Stubbornness, yes. It’s the right word, more spiteful than hope. The latter had left you some time ago, probably during the first winter when you had to be carried from the bed to the chair and back again like a broken doll.
So stubborn it was.
And love.
If you were alone, perhaps you could’ve slipped away easily. You might’ve closed your eyes and thought, "Enough”. If no one would come home smelling of snow, ink, and other people’s money, only to pause outside your door and gather himself before entering, you would’ve drawn your final breath long ago.
But your little brother is still here, and you’ve always protected him to the best of your ability, even if from your own demise.
In childhood, when the roof leaked and the food ran out, you gave him your share and told him you’d already eaten. Other children could be comforted by these lies, but not your brother. Even then, he looked at you with those clever eyes of his and chewed on black bread reluctantly, while you turned your face away.
Now he’s a completely different person, your Feofan. Mr. Veksel, a rising financier with a smile that unnerves the most. He disappears for days, sometimes weeks, swallowed by ledgers, negotiations, bank halls, and private meetings. Yet when he comes to your bedside, he’s still your little brother, who believes, with a child’s hope toward fate, that if he pays enough, something in the world must yield and allow you to step out of this house in a beautiful spring dress.
You hate to fail him every time.
That afternoon, before he arrives, you’re dreaming about the Korolevskiy Troupe’s performances.
It comes to you suddenly, with no respect for the lateness of the hour. You see softest seats, gilded balconies, candlelight trembling on painted ceilings. You see the Snow Maiden stepping into spring, doomed and radiant with a loving warmth that will destroy her.
When you were younger, Feofan promised you that one day he would take you to the theater, wearing velvet. You would sit in a box like aristocrats and watch the Snow Maiden melt away from her burning love. Afterwards, you would eat honey cakes until you were sick, and for one night, your body would be ordinary. A body that could sit upright without pain, laugh without coughing, and graciously walk down a staircase with one hand on the rail.
It was a ridiculous dream. Bright, theatrical, vulgar with hope, but you have treasured it more than all the sensible things people offered you.
You are still watching the imaginary play when the door opens.
Feofan enters without his usual pause. He doesn’t give himself that small moment in the corridor to become composed, and that somewhat alarms you. Snow clings to his coat and melts in dark flecks across the wool. His hat is in his hand, his hair is wind-tossed, and his cheeks are flushed from the cold, but there is no life in the colour. His mouth is set in a line so tight it looks painful. His eyes are fixed on you with such fierce intensity that for a moment you feel sixteen again, feverish in a leaking room, listening to him swear that he will become rich enough to buy winter itself and melt it inside a chimney so you can breathe normally.
He crosses the room in three strides.
"I’ve found someone," he says. His gloved hands close around yours. The leather is cold, and beneath it, his fingers tremble.
"Another one?" you ask, and your voice is hardly a sound. It comes out dry and faint, like dry leaves crushed in an old book. You want to tell him that it is enough, and he has done more than any brother should’ve been asked to, and that he doesn’t need to keep dragging strangers to your bed as if presenting tribute to some wasting goddess.
You want to set him free of yourself, and because you love him, you know he would never forgive you for it.
“He can help.” The words come out raw, scraped from some deep place inside him. He’s already bargaining with fate, your clever brother, and you love him so fiercely in that moment that dismissing him becomes impossible. “Trust me, please. Just this once more. He has access to technologies beyond ordinary medicine. He has agreed to examine you.”
"Agreed," you repeat, rolling the word in your mouth. "What a gracious man."
Your brother doesn’t smile, and that frightens you once more. Feofan has always hated showing fear, but he has never been able to hide desperation from you. It shines through him now, raw and indecent. You see it in the terrible hope he is trying to dress as certainty.
Because hope, in a dying room, is the cruelest guest.
Your brother steps aside, still silent, and the man behind him enters the lamplight.
He is not old, although something about him refuses youth. His face has the preserved quality of a thing kept away from weather and human tenderness, completely devoid of any wrinkles. The hair falling around it is pale blue, the colour of the sky in that cold hour before dawn. His eyes are red, deep, so terribly clever. They squint a bit when they fall upon you.
Then you see the cloak and suddenly, the room seems to contract around the man himself. The fire gives a nervous crackle. Even the snow outside appears to fall more carefully.
A Harbinger.
You turn your eyes to Feofan, sweat welling up on your hairline, but his face has become unreadable. He stands very straight beside your bed, elegant and pale, with the expression of a man who has led a plague itself into the house.
"What did you promise him for coming here?" you ask, suddenly humorless.
Feofan’s eyes flick away, and you feel the room grow colder.
"Feofan–"
Il Dottore steps closer.
"She is worse than you described," the Doctor says in Snezhnayan. And, despite the meaning of his words and the whole situation unfolding, you find his accent unnecessarily soothing.
"The muscular atrophy is advanced," the Doctor continues. "There are signs of neurological degradation, irregular respiration, and probable cardiac involvement. How long has she been bedbound?"
"Three years," Feofan says.
"Two years and seven months," you correct, making both men look at you. “And when His Lordship is done, Feofan, you and I are going to speak very seriously about your friends.”
For the first time, the Doctor’s gaze truly catches on your face. Something shifts behind his eyes. A recalculation, perhaps. His head inclines by a fraction, almost avian in its precision. The corner of his mouth changes, not enough to become a smirk, but just enough to make you suspect one.
Good, you think darkly. There aren’t many pleasures left to you, and stunning the Second Harbinger remains one of them.
“She’s lucid,” the Doctor murmurs to himself. “Remarkable, given the extent of systemic collapse.”
“I’m still very much present, Doctor,” you whisper, a thread of wry defiance lingering in your fading voice. “Most physicians at least feign some semblance of bedside manner.”
“And I am not most physicians.” With ritualistic movements, he peels off his gloves. His hands are long-fingered, aristocratic – the hands of a master surgeon, a virtuoso pianist. You briefly wonder if he could wrap them around your neck to strangle you.
He places his gloves neatly beside your laudanum bottle and the dog-eared collection of Snezhnayan tales that have been your solitary companion through countless sleepless nights. The objects look suddenly provincial beside him, a bit pathetic in their domesticity.
The Harbinger takes your wrist. The contact is so clean and impersonal that at first, you feel nothing but the shock of temperature. Then you feel his full attention.
"Don't perform stoicism for me," he says.
"Excuse me?" you frown.
"Pain is useful. Concealing it is inconvenient. When something hurts, you will say so. When you feel numbness, pressure, dizziness, heat, cold, or any change in sensation, you will describe it as precisely as you can. If you attempt to impress your brother with your unnecessary stoicism, you will waste my time."
Feofan’s face darkens when you lean back against the pillows, bracing yourself when your lungs are beginning to burn. The room swims at the edges, firelight smearing gold across the ceiling. Yet some wicked thread of amusement moves through you.
"I won’t lie to you," you say. "But please, Lord Harbinger, pay me back with an honesty of your own. I’m tired of being comforted by cowards."
“Understandable. Most people lie to the dying,” he replies, his garnet eyes locking with yours in the dim light, “because they can’t endure the sight of their own inevitable end mirrored in another. You, however… don’t seem afraid of your own fate.”
“I’ve been dying for many days,” you answer, offering that same crooked smile that had once calmed your little brother during the cruelest winters. “Fear is a luxury I can no longer afford. I prefer… spite.”
There it is again. That almost-smirk. Small, sharp, and gone at once.
Then, the brutal examination begins. The Harbinger listens to your lungs for a long time, his head bent close enough that you can see the fine shadow of his lashes on his cheeks. The metal of the instrument bites your skin. You inhale when he tells you to. The breath catches halfway down and breaks into coughing so violent that your eyes fill with tears.
Feofan takes a step forward, but the Doctor raises one hand without looking at him. He presses along the wasted muscles of your legs until sparks of pain leap white behind your eyes, while he asks when the weakness began, and many more similar questions.
When you whimper yet another time, Feofan turns his face toward the window with rigid shoulders. In the glass, you see his reflection, pale and furious, his hands locked behind his back as if he distrusts them. Your brother can’t bear to watch you suffer, yet he can’t bear to leave the room.
After that, the whole world narrows to touch, breath, pain, and even more questions. Outside, snow darkens the window. The lamp on the table throws the Doctor’s shadow across your coverlet, long and distorted, reaching over your bed like some shadow monster. His face is close enough that you can see how unnatural his stillness is. You briefly wonder what he has done to become so free of human hesitation.
By the end of the examination, you are shaking beneath the blankets. Your hair is damp at the temples. Every nerve seems to have been lifted from your body, inspected, and put back in the wrong place. Feofan comes to you at once with a glass of water, but your hands are too weak to hold it. He supports your head while you drink.
"I will require further tests," The Doctor says, pulling his gloves back on. "A complete neurological assessment. Every record from every physician who has examined her. Dates, treatments, dosages, failures, changes in symptoms. If anything has been discarded, recover it."
"There are crates," Feofan says. His voice has gone hard again, businesslike from necessity. "I’ll have them sent to your laboratory."
And then the Harbinger is gone, the door clicking shut behind him with a soft sound, and the room seems suddenly emptier, as if he’s taken all the air with him.
Feofan sinks into the chair beside your bed, and then, as if all the strength had drained out of him at once, he buries his face in his hands. You look at the top of his bent head, at the dark hair still tousled from the storm, at the proud line of his shoulders curved in supplication, and you feel an exhausted pity open inside you.
Pity and a faint unease, like the first sound of ice cracking far beneath one’s feet.
“He is surely…” Feofan whispers at last, his voice muffled by his palms. He stops, breathes once, and when he continues, there is an odd strain in the words. “Quite an unusual one, is he not?”
“Yes,” you say, and your voice is softer than you intended, almost a caress. “But I like him.”
The words fall between you with a delicacy that makes them worse.
Feofan lowers his hands and raises his eyes then. His gaze drops to your hands, where they lie helpless atop the blanket, then to your throat, where the pulse flutters too visibly, then back to your face. He looks at you as he did in childhood when a neighbour’s boy once offered to carry your pail from the well — with gratitude in his manners and murder, small and ridiculous and childish, in his eyes.
“I’m glad,” he says and reaches out to take your hand. His thumb moves across your knuckles in slow, rhythmic circles. The gesture is gentle. He lifts your hand to his mouth. His lips brush your knuckles, dry and warm. When he pulls back, you see the faint shine of moisture on your skin.
“Feofan,” you murmur.
At the sound of his name, something in him gives way again. Still holding your hand, he leans forward until the upper half of his body comes to rest upon the edge of your bed. It’s an awkward position, undignified and childish: his knees still bent beneath him, his coat falling in dark folds around his wide back, his cheek turned toward the blanket near your ribcage. He exhales there, and the breath warms the wool over your skin.
“Just a moment,” he begs, though you haven’t denied him anything. “I've been awake since yesterday.”
Feofan presses closer by imperceptible degrees, as if even in exhaustion his body remembers the old law: where you are, there is warmth. His breathing slows against the blanket. One of his hands remains wrapped around yours, but the other, empty and restless, curls into the sheet near your shoulder. His fingers flex once, then still, as though they have found the hem of a dream.
Slowly, because your arm aches and your hand obeys you poorly, you lift your fingers to his hair. At first, you only touch the crown of his head, lightly enough that he wouldn’t wake even if he weren't so exhausted.
His hair is messy, so you smooth it back from his brow. Feofan shifts under your hand, and a faint sound escapes him, low and broken. Then he settles more heavily against the bed, his face turning instinctively toward you, toward the warmth.
After a while, his breathing deepens.
“There,” you whisper, though he can’t hear you. “Sleep.”
You sit there for a long time, stroking his hair with the last of your strength.
Outside, the snow continues to fall.
By morning, the harbour will be completely hidden.
The Doctor gives you years.
Not a cure, “because the illness is too old”, he says, “woven into the marrow of you and can’t be unmade without unmaking the whole.”
He explains this on a moody afternoon, in your room that still smells of the lavender water the maid sprinkles on the sheets, while the snow outside has finally begun to melt into a thousand silver trickles. The light through the window is thin and watery, and it catches the pale blue of his hair.
“How long do I have?” you ask, and your voice is steadier than you expected.
“With treatment, I can’t say. The variables are numerous.” He pauses, and then his gaze lifts to meet yours. “Without treatment, you would’ve been dead within the year.” He says it as if he is discussing crop yields, and somehow that is more comforting than any gentle lie could ever be.
“So you aren’t giving up,” you ask, still cautious of refusal.
“No,” he replies, and there is irritation in his voice – how dare you not believe in his capabilities, how dare you lump him with the smaller-minded physicians who came before – and that flicker of egotistical pride makes you trust his garnet eyes more than you’ve ever trusted anything. “Giving up is for those with considerably less intellect.”
And you, against all odds and all expectations, begin to improve.
It isn’t easy. There are days when the treatments leave you so weak you can’t lift your head from the pillow, your limbs heavy as stone, your thoughts drifting in a fog of painkillers and exhaustion. There are nights when the pain is so bad you bite through your lip to keep from screaming, and the taste of iron fills your mouth, and you stare at the ceiling and count the cracks in it until dawn bleeds grey through the curtains.
The Doctor, Zandik, comes once a week, then twice, then thrice. You learn the rhythm of his footsteps in the corridor and the scent he brings with him: clean and chemical, with an undertone of fragrant wood, old paper, and the elusive warmth of baked pastries.
Then, one morning, eight months into your treatment, you wake up and realise you can feel your toes. Not the muffled echo you’ve grown accustomed to over the years, but a real sensation. You wiggle them beneath the blankets, and you can feel the slide of the linen against your skin, the flex of muscle and tendon that you’d thought lost forever.
It’s such an ordinary thing, something a healthy person would never even notice, and yet it breaks you open like a dam. You weep with great heaving sobs tearing out of your chest, and when the maid rushes in, her face white with alarm, you can’t explain to her what has happened. You just keep weeping, tears streaming down your cheeks, your whole body shaking with the force of a joy so vast it has nowhere else to go.
Zandik isn’t impressed when you tell him about this. He’s in the middle of checking your vital signs, his garnet eyes fixed on the barely-working veins that trace intricate paths beneath your skin. The window is open a crack, and a breeze stirs the tendrils of his pale hair, and you watch the way the light catches the sharp line of his cheekbone.
“The neurological regeneration is proceeding as expected,” he says, without looking up. “I noted last week that the nerve conductivity in your lower extremities had improved.”
“It feels like a miracle,” you say, and your voice is still thick with the aftermath of tears.
“You are very sentimental.” He doesn’t meet your eyes when he says it, and you think that you hear a lilt of satisfaction in his voice. You don’t mention it. You’ve learned, over the months, that the Doctor doesn’t respond well to being observed too directly. He is like a wild animal in that way: if you look at him too openly, he’ll retreat into the safety of his clinical manner, and you’ll lose the small glimpses of the man beneath the Harbinger’s mask.
But you notice, all the same.
Yet another handmade miracle happens on an ordinary Tuesday, in the watery light of early evening. The room smells of the first spring air drifting through the crack in the sash, damp and alive, mingling with the familiar notes of that sharp scent that always clings to Zandik’s coat. He’s there, watching from the corner of the room with his arms crossed over his chest and his expression deliberately blank.
Luckily, Feofan is absent. Urgent matters at the bank chained him to his desk, and the only thing you feel about it is a quiet relief. His protective gaze would’ve weighed upon this fragile moment. Alone with the Doctor, you may surrender to the experience without shielding your little brother from the sight of your struggle.
After all, you’ve been working toward this moment for a year, a long and aching year of small victories and bitter setbacks, and now, with your heart fluttering like a caged bird against your ribs, you push yourself upright.
Your legs tremble like a newborn foal’s, watery and strange beneath you after years of stillness. Your arms shake with the effort of holding yourself steady against the carved oak bedpost, the wood worn smooth by years of your own desperate gripping.
The world tilts and swims, the faded floral wallpaper blurring into a wash of colour, and for one moment, you think that gravity will reclaim you as it always has. But then you stand on your own two feet, the soles pressed flat against the cold wooden floor, and you can hear the erratic beating of your heart, so alive that it almost hurts.
You manage three miraculous steps before your knees buckle like wet paper, but Zandik is already there. He moves faster than you’ve ever seen him move, crossing the space between you in a fluid motion. His hands are on your shoulders, steady and sure, and your body is pressed against his. The world steadies around you, anchored by the solid reality of him. Your cheek falls against the blue of his dress shirt.
The moment stretches, fragile as spun glass, and you find yourself counting the beats of his heart, matching them to your own. Then, very slowly, as if reluctant to break the spell, The Doctor helps you back to bed. His arm slides around your waist, supporting your weight with an ease that speaks of hidden strength, and he lowers you onto the mattress.
“You overexerted yourself,” he says accusingly, while busying himself with adjusting the pillows behind your head, his long fingers smoothing the linen.
You lean back against the mountain of softness, your breath coming in ragged gasps. The pain is already beginning to bloom in your joints, but you don’t care. Despite the exhaustion, a wide and foolish grin pulls at the corners of your lips.
“Well,” you say, still breathless, still shaking, “now I can visit Her Majesty’s ball.”
For a moment, Zandik doesn’t seem to understand what you have said, which is remarkable given the vast machinery of his intellect. His brow furrows, his garnet eyes narrow, and the confusion on his face is so genuine that you feel a startling rush of laughter bubbling up in your throat. For one fleeting instant, the mask of cold detachment slips.
“Ball,” he repeats, flatly, as if tasting the absurdity of the word.
“Of course! I’ve been practicing my curtsey for years. Lying down, mostly, but the spirit was there.” You gesture weakly at your trembling legs, still grinning. “It’d be a shame to waste all that effort. I may need a slightly sturdier partner, but I’m certain Her Majesty the Tsaritsa won’t mind if I sit out the faster dances.”
Zandik stills there at your bedside, his hands hanging at his sides. The firelight flickers across his face, casting shifting shadows in the hollows beneath his cheekbones, painting his pale hair in shades of amber and gold.
“You are utterly ridiculous,” he says at last, but his voice has lost its sharp edge.
“I stood for the first time in years,” you reply, and your grin softens. “I’m entitled to be a little ridiculous!”
Outside the window, birds are singing the first song of the year, and the snow continues its quiet melt. In the warmth of the room, with the scent of spring and him still clinging to your skin, you let yourself believe, just for a moment, that the future might be something more than a child’s gaudy dream.
Within eighteen months, you are walking. Slowly, painfully, with frequent rests, but walking nonetheless. You can even walk down the corridor to Feofan’s study, leaning heavily on your cane.
The first time you do that, your brother tears up. He tries to hide it, of course, standing up, turning away, and pretending to examine a tasteless painting on the wall while clearing his throat and making some gruff comment about the dust, but you know him too well. You’ve known him since he was a red-faced infant, squealing in your arms, when the vast coldness of your motherland bit him too hard on his small nose.
Now your little brother is a person with a big dream. A frightening one in its vastness, sure, a dream with blood hidden very neatly beneath signatures. But it’s his dream, and so you support him with what remains of your strength.
“Don’t cry,” you murmur, easing yourself into a chair with a sigh of relief. Your legs are aching from the walk, but it’s a good ache, the ache of muscles that are working again after too long asleep. “It’s unseemly for a future Harbinger. What would the Tsaritsa say?”
“She would say nothing.” He turns back to you, his eyes red-rimmed. “She–” He stops, swallows, and his voice cracks when he speaks again. “You gave me the strength to become what I am. I’ll never forget that. I’ll repay you tenfold. Whatever you want, whatever you need, just ask and I–”
“Feofan.” You hold out your hand, and he takes it, kneeling beside your chair. His hands are still trembling, and you hold them tightly, feeling the calluses on his fingers from years of writing. “You don’t owe me anything. I protected you because I…” The pause makes his hands tremble in your hold. “I love you. And now look at you, ready to serve under Her Majesty’s rule.”
His gaze moves to the cane beside your chair, and then to your legs, and then to the open door through which you entered.
“You must be tired,” he concludes, gulping down the bile in his throat. “You shouldn’t have come so far.”
“I wanted to see you,” you murmur back at him with a weakened voice, tilting your head to rest against the chair’s back.
Feofan, as always, understands your exhaustion. He presses his forehead to your hand, and for a moment, he isn’t the cold-eyed banker who moves money like Morax himself. He’s just your little brother, and you’re just his sister, and the years fall away like snow melting into spring.
The day they move you to the Zapolyarny Palace, the sun is shining. The sky is an aching blue, and the sunlight falls across the snow-covered streets in golden slabs, turning the ice on the rooftops to dripping diamonds.
Feofan has been planning it for weeks, ever since the Tsaritsa placed the Harbinger's cloak upon his shoulders and he became, officially, The Regrator.
"It's a good omen," he says, standing at the window of your room, watching the sunlight glitter on the harbour. He is dressed in his new uniform – the heavy black coat, the silver rings, the fur trim that frames his clever face – and he looks like a prince from one of the old fairy tales. "The weather. It's a sign that things will be better now."
"You don't believe in signs, Feofan," you remind him from your chair by the fire. You are wrapped in your warmest shawl, a thick woollen thing the colour of winter berries, and your cane is leaning against the arm of the chair. You feel tired today, the excitement of the move has been building for days, and your body is already protesting the coming exertion, but you are also, despite yourself, excited.
"I don't," Feofan admits, turning from the window with a sheepish smile. "But today, I want to believe in some kind of divine intervention".
You smile back at him, and you don’t say what you are both thinking: that there have been no divine interventions in your life so far. There has only been luck – the bad luck of your broken body, and the good luck of your clever brother, who is now a Harbinger and still worries about whether you’ll be warm enough on the train.
The carriage that takes you to the station is black and gleaming, its wheels crunching over the packed snow with a sound like grinding bones. Feofan helps you inside, his hand steady on your elbow, his other hovering at your back as though you might shatter at any moment.
The interior smells of leather and the faint scent of the alchemical heating device hidden beneath the seat. The windows are frosted at the edges, framing the snowy streets like a painting, and as the carriage lurches into motion, you watch the house that has been your prison and your sanctuary for years recede into the distance, until it’s just another snow-covered rooftop among hundreds.
Il Dottore is already at the station when you arrive. He’s standing on the platform, a solitary figure in silver against the grey stone and the glittering snow. A small cluster of Fatui agents hovers nearby, subordinates by the look of them, their faces obscured by masks. The Second is speaking in a low voice, gesturing with one gloved hand, but when he sees your carriage approaching, he stops. The agents are dismissed with a curt wave, barely acknowledged, and he turns to watch as Feofan helps you down onto the platform.
He wears some kind of bird-like mask, you notice. That makes you smile, because under it, due to his striking profile with an aquiline nose, he indeed looks like a carnivorous bird from warmer lands.
Which, of course, only adds to his overall attractiveness.
“The patient is travelling well?” he asks, falling into step beside you as you make your way toward the train. There is weariness in his voice, faint but persistent, and you wonder, idly, if he has been sleeping.
“The patient is fine,” you say, before Feofan can answer for you. “The patient also reminds you that she has a name and is capable of speaking for herself.”
“I am aware. I simply don’t trust you to give an accurate assessment of your own condition. You tend toward understatement.” He pauses, and the corner of his mouth twitches. “And spite.”
You laugh breathlessly, and the sound turns into a cough halfway through. Feofan’s hand tightens on your elbow, but you wave him off with your free hand. “I’m fine, really. It’s just the cold air. Let’s get on the train before I freeze to death and make you both look bad in front of your subordinates.”
“An unlikely outcome,” Zandik says, but he gestures toward the carriage door with a brisk motion.
The private carriage is beautiful. You didn’t expect anything less because Feofan has never done anything by halves, and his new position has only amplified his natural tendency toward excess.
The walls are panelled in dark wood, polished to a liquid gleam, and the seats are upholstered in blue velvet that matches the Snezhnayan sky outside. The fabric is soft beneath your fingers, plush and yielding, and you sink into it with an almost physical gratitude. There is a small table between the seats, set with a silver tea service that gleams in the amber lamplight, and a plate of foreign pastries. The windows are large and spotlessly clean, and as the train pulls away from the station, you watch the landscapes slide past.
You are seated opposite Zandik, with Feofan beside you. It’s a strategic arrangement, you suspect – Feofan wants to be close enough to help you if you need it, and the Doctor, across the table, can observe you without being too obvious about it. Not that Zandik is ever obvious about anything.
He’s drinking a deep brown brew that he pours from a separate pot, its fragrance sweeter and more complex than the black tea Feofan has ordered for you. With it, The Doctor eats honey-soaked pastries studded with pistachio and rose petals. He offers you one, wordlessly, pushing the box across the table with a single finger, and when you shake your head, he pulls it back just as silently.
The train rocks gently as it picks up speed, and the tea in your cup shivers. Feofan and Zandik begin discussing a dispute between two minor noble houses. Their voices wash over you in a gentle murmur, and you let your eyes drift half-closed, lulled by the warmth of the carriage and the soft vibration of the train.
Beneath the warmth, your body is reaching its limit. Your lungs are beginning their familiar burn, the fluid shifting inside them like an uneasy tide, and your heart is skipping enough to make the world tilt at the corners.
But you’re so tired of being the one who always needs to stop and rest. Today, you want to be normal, even if only for a few hours, so you say nothing. You curl your fingers around your teacup, feeling the warmth seep into your cold hands. You listen to Feofan explain the intricacies of Snezhnayan trade law, and you try to ignore the creeping exhaustion that is spreading through your limbs like ice forming on a winter pond.
The first hour passes without incident. The second hour is harder. By the third, you’re struggling to keep your eyes open, and the teacup in your hands is trembling so badly that you have to set it down before you spill it. Your breath comes in shallow sips, and your chest feels tight, as though someone has wrapped a band of iron around your ribs and is slowly turning a screw.
You lean forward, just slightly, hunching over your lap as though you’re simply adjusting your position. Your eyelids are heavy, and the world blurs at the edges, and somewhere, very far away, you can hear Feofan’s voice, still talking, and Zandik’s voice, still answering, and neither of them has noticed—
The brakes engage with a sighing hiss, and the carriage lurches. Under any other circumstances, you would’ve barely noticed it. But you are already leaning, and the lurch is enough.
You pitch forward, colliding with something solid and warm. Hands catch you, quick and sure, gripping your upper arms with startling strength. There’s a dizzying moment of disorientation, a blur of pale blue and garnet red, and then your cheek is pressed against a heartbeat that is steady.
The world snaps back into focus, and you realize, with a humiliating flush, what has happened. You have fallen onto Zandik across the narrow space of the compartment, directly into his lap, your hands clutching weakly at the front of his coat. The box of Sumerian sweets has toppled over, scattering pastries across the table in a shower of honey and pistachio, and Feofan is already on his feet, his face pale with alarm.
“Sister!” His voice cracks on the word, and you hear in it the echo of every dawn when he woke and was scared to look at your face, afraid that this time, you wouldn’t open your eyes. “What happened? Is she–”
“Quiet.” Zandik’s voice is flat, but there is a sharpness that cuts through Feofan’s panic like a scalpel. “Your fussing isn’t helpful.”
The Doctor shifts his grip and eases you back onto the seat beside him. You try to explain that you are fine, really, just a little tired, but your voice comes out as nothing more than a weak rasp.
“Lie down,” Zandik says, and his hand presses gently but firmly against your shoulder, guiding you down until your head comes to rest on something warm and solid.
Feofan hovers at the edge of your vision, his hands clenched at his sides, his jaw tight with worry. “What is it? Is it her lungs? Her heart? Should we–”
“It’s exhaustion.” Zandik’s fingers are pressed against the inside of your wrist, checking your pulse. He counts the beats, his lips moving silently, and then he shifts his grip to your forehead, pressing the back of his hand against your skin to gauge your temperature. His touch lingers. “Her pulse is rapid but steady. The shivering indicates a drop in core temperature, likely exacerbated by the stress of travel.”
He pauses, and then, very quietly, adds: “She’s tired. That’s all.”
Feofan is already reaching for his heavy black overcoat, but Zandik is faster. Without a word, he reaches up and unfastens the clasp at his throat. His Harbinger’s coat slides from his shoulders in a rustle of wool and silver. Before you can comprehend what is happening, he has draped it over you, tucking the edges around your trembling body.
The said coat is enormous, and it envelops you completely. The fur lining is soft against your cheek, and the fabric still holds the warmth that seeps into your frozen bones like a balm. You inhale, his scent fills your lungs, and some of the tension in your chest begins to ease.
Feofan stops, his own coat half-off, and stares. For a moment, the compartment is silent, save for the hiss of the wind outside and the mournful whistle of the train. His expression is unreadable, caught somewhere between surprise and recognition.
“You will carry her to her chambers yourself when we arrive,” Zandik says, without looking at Feofan. “I’m not a porter.”
A classic Zandik maneuver – retreating into the safety of his own inscrutability. But his hand comes to rest on your hair. His long fingers brush against your temple, smoothing back a strand of hair that has fallen across your forehead. Then he draws his hand away, quick and sharp, as though he’s been burned, and he clasps it together with the other in his lap.
You want to thank him, or tease him, but your eyes are already closing. You feel the last of your strength drain away, and you let it go without a fight.
“Rest,” Zandik says at the edge of your consciousness, “I will wake you when we arrive.”
Feofan observes this small exchange with an unnerving stillness.
.
Likes, comments and reblogs are appreciated!
Well, Zandik’s end truly broke my heart. It happened right before a very important exam, and I genuinely couldn’t concentrate, so this fic was born from that sheer emotional damage. There will be 4 parts.
Genuinely why r there no cute fics of dio that doesnt contain an egregious amount of smut warnings kms☹️GIVE ME CUTE YOUNG DIO HCSSS ARGHHHHH idgaf about ooc
(no updates cuz i’m forcing myself to finish golden wind after 3 years of dropping it)
Cannot even goon properly to Geto Suguru x reader because i have done NOTHING great in my life to deserve that amazing beautiful kind empathetic astonishing sassy princess
Basically Gojo and one of his fifth years/graduated students (the reader) were put in an arranged marriage and they had no choice but to go through the engagement process and i remember the reader being close with Maki. I just reallllly enjoyed the way the author was slow paced and wrote gojo so accurately. It was on Ao3
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