cw: alcoholism, suicidal ideation
“Ero,” his laughter was warm. “I think you’d yell at me for this.”
Perhaps he would. Perhaps he wouldn’t. He could almost hear the scolding in his mind as much as he could hear the opposite, he could hear a frustrated ring of Dor as much as he could hear him singing at a bar, laughing right before he picked up his shillelagh and swung it at someone’s head. Perhaps there would be a well-deserved fight with blood dripping down their knuckles and teeth while Dorian sighed heavily and Ero asked what was truly wrong with it. Perhaps there would be a good story and an echo of cheers while everyone around the table spun themselves into delirium, not realizing what they were encouraging, not quite realizing what they were doing, not realizing what the result would be.
The result was truly irreverence. The result was truly irrelevance.
Perhaps, in the end, none of it mattered, did it?
Dorian’s eyes drifted back to what he held, his fingers tight around the bottleneck. How long had this bottle been sitting in reserve? What day was it? What cycle was it? When was the last time it actually mattered to keep track of anything at all other than the fact that, somehow, for yet another day, he was still breathing despite there being no nourishment, not physical, not mental, not emotional, not spiritual?
He snorted.
It had been a long time since anything at all.
It had been a long time since anything mattered. It had been a long time since he heard laughter from anyone, saw a smile on a face, heard a story, song, or poem. It had been a longer time still since he smelled a fresh flower, whether from his head or another. It had been an even longer time yet again since he saw much but a few twinkles in the sky that echoed to nothing, and resounded nothing back to him. It felt like it had been an eternity since he heard a voice in his ear, felt a touch fluttering on his skin, and felt someone breathing the same air as him.
He swirled the drink in the bottle he held.
“Ero,” he found himself murmuring, glancing up to the sky above him, “don’t think you’d open your eyes for this.”
He was certain that he wouldn’t open his eyes to any of this. He was pretty sure his body had long returned to the waves of a chaotic sea that would not calm in its anger at the state of the planet. He was pretty sure that his body had long been ravaged by the passage of time that Dorian couldn’t quite get himself to join. It was not, quite, by an unwillingness to make that jump. It was not, quite, by a lack of an attempt.
It was by a cruel joke of reality that loved to watch his heart twist itself into knots as he walked along a dead path with dead plants and only dried, decrepit soils.
“When you are unable, I will be there on the other side.”
“I doubt it,” murmured Dorian, pressing his finger to the edge of the cork. When was the last time the brewers wandered the planet? He knew them well. Dorian had laughed with them, sampled with them, crafted with them, breathed with them, learned with them – and then, one by one, they weren’t there to do any of those things with, anymore. He couldn’t capture their breaths with his own, he couldn’t provide them an elixir to heal, and he couldn’t desperately press his magic into their veins and let it keep running them. There had been less and less in his own reserves until he had to just start letting them go.
One.
After another.
After another.
And then still, another, until there were only dozens. Then a dozen. Then two.
Then one.
Dorian pressed his finger against the cork harder until it popped, the sizzle he heard afterward a sign of just how ancient the elixir was. Perhaps it was older than he was. Perhaps it didn’t matter.
Perhaps nothing at all ******** mattered.
He took a deep breath of the nectar, letting the sense of what he smelled from its depths roll through his arteries and veins. There was a familiarity to it. It was a familiarity he had long started to embrace, eons after he had left it behind him for the sake of someone else important to him. For his sake. Having these liquids of pleasure and ecstatic delirium so close to him was a siren’s call that his husband had been unable to resist. And could Dorian blame him?
At this point, could he blame him for even a moment?
It felt so much better when he couldn’t think. It felt so much better when he couldn’t help but smile and laugh even when there was no one to smile and laugh in turn. It was easier to let the world pass him by when he didn’t have to conceptualize how much he had lost over the past millennium or ten. How long had it been? How long had it been before the concept of living society had abandoned him to dire wolves that had also long abandoned him, to the moss that had abandoned him, to the fungus that mocked him from the rotting corpses of his fellows and his trees before it too disappeared, missing anything of any meaning to feed on except fermented poisons and leftover debris.
“Ero, please–” Dorian sighed heavily. “This is the fifth time in this cycle you’ve arrived back with bloody teeth and barely able to stand straight. You don’t need that.”
“... Mm. Perhaps I’ve drifted a bit too off-shore, aye?”
“Give me the bottle.”
Perhaps he had drifted too far off-shore, but what did it even matter when the shores were dead and the waters were just as much so? Gathering was useless. Fishing was even moreso.
What was he going to do with the empty void that stared him back?
Holding on to the bottle for dear life, he tilted it back, tilted his head back, and let the warmth and chill all at once rush down his throat. His eyes fluttered closed as he let it filter through his system. He shivered as it shot down his spine and filtered into his fingers and toes. He snorted and just about drowned in his own amusement as he pulled the bottle back from his lips. Was it delicious? Was it poison? Would it actually finish the work that his world apparently was incapable of?
He laughed as he took another gulp, and then another, and then another, before the bottle was mercilessly thrown to the side and shattered against the wall.
Dorian stood up, brushed himself off, and shook his head as he wandered over to where he kept what little things he had recovered over the years upon centuries. Each little thing felt more and less meaningful than the last – carvings from residents, records carrying voices that no longer held any relevance, a recording there, a smile through the piles of pictures there. One in particular caught his attention, as it always had, and he picked it up with some reverence as a laugh bubbled from his lips.
Was there a point in this one? Did it matter?
"Ach, come on, Ero." Dorian's expression softened. "You know that long after I commit your body to the sea, I'll still be watching your recordings to hear your voice and see the twinkle in your eye. Wouldn't you rather I get to see the real you?"
Erolin tilted his glass toward Dorian. "But after that point, am I truly real anymore?" He pulled the glass to his lips. "Or has my reality faded the moment it was put to a recording?"
It remained a lofty philosophical question, and as much as it had baffled him in the days while they desperately tried to figure out how to stave off everyone’s decay, it remained baffling. Was his connection to reality fading? Would he never be real again? Did the fact that he swore he could still hear his voice in his ears and see his face in his eyes invalidate his reality because he was long since gone? Dorian stared at what he held, pondering if it was worth listening to, and pondering even more if it was worth looking at. Was there a point, or would he simply be tearing his own heart out over nothing and everything all at once?
He fingered the item and let out a sigh so heavy he felt it weigh down his body.
Did it matter? Would he even be looking at reality, or would he be looking through a glass that told him nothing but of a fantasy that was impossible to reach and even more unlikely to process? Dorian set it down with the pile of other meaningless and meaningful objects and strut his way over to the shelving where he stored what he kept finding in the cellars of long-abandoned abodes.
Another bottle was picked up. This one had a faint purple glow, he realized, noticing the way it reflected off his hands the way some of his fellows’ eyes would when he stroked their cheeks and told them to hang on, he could heal them, he could–
But could he? What had it done?
What had it done other than result in so many bones, so many cries, so many sobs, so many lost minds and lost souls and lost hopes?
Dorian sighed. He popped the cork, and pondered if there was even another thing like this and if there ever would be again. Perhaps he should leave this one be, unlike the others. Leave this for generations thousands of years later to rediscover and wonder what their ancients did. But why would he do that? He couldn’t draw blood from a stone. He couldn’t draw descendants from seeds that had nowhere to bloom. Why would he care? Why would it matter? It wouldn’t matter because it didn’t matter, and he knew it. Dorian didn’t care. He didn’t care because he couldn’t care, and to reflect on reality was too much to bear. He hadn’t cared for longer than he remembered. Today didn’t exist. Tomorrow didn’t exist. Yesterday didn’t exist.
None of it existed. Perhaps he didn’t exist.
… If only he could be so lucky, that he could join the reams of people who faded from a true reality the moment they were recorded.
He drank that one, too, let his fingers trace along the butterfly-carved groves and the rounded shape of the sides, let his fingers look at the glowing resonances remaining on the glass. For a moment, he felt like he could see the butterflies fly around him, spreading the pollens of once-existing flowers from place to place. He laughed and smiled, and twirled to let himself feel the breezes of their fluttering wings.
The bottle was chucked to join the other pile full of things with a mysterious echo of another life he could no longer hope to reach.
He walked.
Dorian’s steps were still shockingly stable after a third and a fourth. Perhaps it was just years of convincing his body that this was normal behaviour, that this was fine, that this was what people did when they were going to social parties where ghosts would laugh at his elaborate stories about people who had never existed. His legs refused to bow as he made his way to a bench that only still half stood, the other half long consumed by grasses and trees that curled and died just the same. The bench was made of rock, of course, the only thing that seemed to exist uninterrupted and unaltered. Perhaps he would say it was a sign of the strength of the land. Perhaps he would also say it was a sign that nothing but the core of the land remained, and that, too, would sink into the abyss.
As he gazed out to the emptiness in front of him, he could picture those who walked in front and who walked behind. If he took in both ragged and rushed breaths, he could imagine, he could be, he could breathe. He knew who was there and who wasn’t.
In front of him, he could see a man with long blond hair who wore a dress cracking jokes with a shorter man with longer still reddish hair with white streaks, shaking a fighting stick at him. If he concentrated on that imagery and tried to reach out to grasp it, first the blond man disappeared, leaving a man with long white braided hair who mourned a hole in the ground that never quite filled. Then, there was nothing but the crashing of the sea against his feet, and Dorian looked down half-expecting that the angry Sea had come to consume him too, finally.
It had not.
Dorian tilted his bottle to the side.
“Don’t think you even liked this one back when you were too deep, right? Something about it being too fruity.” He sighed, taking another sip. “I’ll let you know, it isn’t too fruity now. Not much of a flavour left other than the burn, to be honest. You liked the burn, didn’t you? Or did you even notice the burn after a while? Just a mode of operation, something you were drawn to and expected yourself to do for a kick or to cancel out what had been done…”
He was staring at the sky above him as if he expected it to have a sassy or witty response to him. It supplied none of those things. He returned to his drink.
“Hard to convince myself I was not part of your problem, do you know that? Perhaps not at that point, but when I’m the only one remaining, who else is there to blame? Who else is there to blame for all this loss?”
He knew the answer was that there were truly no people who could take the blame. His world started to waste away slowly, at first, with more becoming sick than expected in a full life and death-cycle. It was slow enough that no one noticed how quickly people seemed to be taken by no disease and every disease at once. It started with the rot on their heads, trailed upward toward their minds, and became a parasite, feeding on that until there was nothing left.
By the time the medics had found any way to stave off the worse effects, it became more insidious. It adapted. It fought. Whatever the mysterious chaotic infestation was, it spread to other things where it had started once again. It spread to the plants, which the farmers and the gatherers began to notice were wilting. They wilted so quickly it started leading to famine in the bugs that fed from them, and then as those died, the animals that fed on those started to succumb. Dorian had tried to reach out to external sources to no reward, but as the sky lost its brightness, he realized so many of their issues were external. This had to come from another source. There was no explanation for it in their world.
Ibirapitá closed their borders to the interstellar community. Perhaps that had been his mistake. Perhaps that had been their saving grace. Perhaps that was why he remained standing despite how illogical it felt. Perhaps that was why they had all lasted as long as they had.
“How am I still alive despite nothing else, Ero? Do you have the answer to that?”
The moon was quiet, as he expected it to be. He would ask the seas, but the seas were so angry they threatened to swallow him every time he walked to them. Perhaps he should let them. Perhaps, like everything else, it wouldn’t matter what he did, because nothing would meaningfully change at the end. He was still alone.
The only thing to keep him company was the illusions he saw as he drank, “You’re more real to me now than you are in any other way.” Dorian reached out to grasp the cloth he saw draping his husband’s form. “More real to me this way than in recordings or memories.”
Was it the alcohol he was drinking? He didn’t know.
It felt better. It smelled better. He could hear his friends talking stories around a table and the clink of a stein against another mug.
He lost himself to the wild waves again as he imbibed.
… Seven? Eight? He had lost count. The world was beginning to swirl but he truly didn’t process it. He laughed as he stumbled toward the water, letting his toes dig into the beachy sand as he looked out again. The waves framed the sky in a way only possible by the light of the lunar above. To some, this would be pretty, a place to walk with a lover as a prelude to something more intimate. To Dorian, it was a place where he could sit, close to the water’s edge, letting the waves threaten to drown him but never quite doing so, and play pretend at talking to his lost husband.
Or reality?
It was hard to tell anymore, and his mind felt thick with grime and muck.
Perhaps he liked it that way.
“Ero, Ero, listen.” His native words stumbled out in a giggle and a laugh and a slurry of confusion all at once. “Have I ever told you about the way the nearby great forest burned?” When had he not? There were no other stories to tell, just a view of their reality on endless repeat with no ceasing or end. “Just did it on its own one day, without my urging or prompting. Not like I lit a flame to it. And why would I? The landscape was already so dead, so lacking in protection. Didn’t want to make it worse. Apparently, the planet hadn’t already seen enough rot, so it decided to spontaneously create more. A truly helpful action, aye?”
Dorian giggled.
“Why leave anything alive when so little remains? Suppose I could ask the same question about myself, but I believe I have been left here to be tortured for eternity forevermore! Isn’t that wonderful?” He engorged, once again. What else was there to do? What else remained?
Nine.
His balance wobbled where he sat, and he knew that this would repeat the cycle once more. Did his world even have anything left to offer? Did it matter? He needed it.
He needed it like someone else thought he had–
“Dor, where did you put it?”
“Where did I put what?”
“... The rum whiskey, Dor.”
“Doesn’t exist anymore. I drank it.” An offended and theatrical gasp should have backed him away from his words, but it didn’t. “Kept it away from your hands.”
Perhaps he understood now more than ever why it always seemed that his husband needed something he couldn’t understand the logic behind. His husband drank for the fun. He drank for the notoriety. He drank to fit in. He drank for comfort, and he drank to bury the pain.
But now? Now, he wasn’t thinking about that. Now, he was hardly thinking at all. His world was spinning as much as the waves were rocking. He was fairly sure if anyone needed his healing magic at the moment, it was himself. Perhaps he should tap into what little remained of who he was and see if he could give himself a boost.
But did the boost matter? He laughed.
The water was sparkling. It was beautiful in the way it danced and crashed against the beaches. The colours bounced and sparkled in ways that reminded him of the eyes he used to look into. Or were those his own eyes? Perhaps they were his own! At some point, he had ended up flat on the ground, and he saw the way that vivid blue reflected at him like a mirror he didn’t quite need to hold. That was beautiful too, wasn’t it?
That couldn’t quite be it, though. Eyes were small, weren’t they? He squinted at the rainbows as if they would provide an answer. They refused. “Ero,” he laughed, “if you can hear me anywhere at all, it's here. Why is the water singing?”
His fingers danced along the water’s edges when it came to press back toward him. He breathed in unison with the waves. His breaths slowed. They elevated. They hyperventilated. They cooled again.
“Do you hear that song? Do you see the light?”
It felt like the light was coming from within the water as much as it was coming from out of it. It felt like it was reflecting from him as much as it was reflecting from nothing. It felt like it was surrounding him as if threatening to engulf him as much as it felt like a distant fire from a forest he had detailed a thousand times.
It felt like everything was wrong and nothing was wrong all at once. Something felt good. Something felt warm, like it was embracing him, and if he leaned into it, he could imagine what it would be – warm breath, arms around him, a smile, and green eyes. Something felt like it was pulling on him. A hand yanking him to the side, a friend encouraging a chase, a pull for a kiss. It was easy to presume it was the same as every time he fell this deep, and it was so hard to think about everything around his tenuous grip on what little existed of reality that he did not make the connection that something was off.
As he was pulled from his sitting position, he fell forward. As he crashed to the sands, it took a delayed crossfire of his mind before he gasped and absorbed what was around him. His body shook. Dorian glanced up.
Why was the sky as bright as it was? Perhaps that was it, he was destined to be the one to live through the death of a star so he could report it to… no one.
His laughter was, in some ways, uncontrollable.
This was hysterical. This was morbid. This was his luck. Perhaps he should make his way to his feet to greet the inevitable rapture.
He was grasping for the nonexistent seashells and sand rocks as he tried to stand. He fell to his chest.
After he breathed, he tried again. He managed to get one leg underneath him. A second, too, until a wave rushed on land and pushed itself under his feet. He fell to his chest, again. He nearly inhaled the sea.
Dorian gave up on standing and simply gazed at the skies above him.
Something was strange about the supernova above him. It did not quite seem to ring the same way as other incidences of dying stars in the universe had. For one, it pulled at something deep inside him that he oft left behind for its lack of utility in his day-to-day life.
There was no need for magic when there wasn’t anyone who would ever benefit again.
… Especially as his magic had failed so many.
The light drowned his thoughts. The light called out to him in his mire in a way he didn’t quite understand. Was this the end he had been pondering for eons? Was this the out? Was this what his husband had meant when he said that Dorian was meant for more?
“When you are unable, I will be there on the other side. But it's not your time yet.”
“Ero, how in the blazing forests is it not my time? We’re the only ones left breathing in a dead landscape–”
“Aye, I know. Won’t survive it.”
“Ero.”
“You will, though.”
… Would he, though?
He reached for the light, took in a deep breath, and refused to open his eyes. It would make it easier as he sunk to the bottom of a depth he didn’t know the bottom of, wouldn’t it?
As he refused to breathe out, the light took him away.
