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✧ ── 𓉸 ── ⟡ ── 𓉸 ── ✧
Moonlight claims the fae’s midnight hair, turning it to silver as though the night itself has reached down to touch him, each strand catching the pale glow while he works in the silence of the Final Night Cemetery.
The shovel bites into the earth again.
The metal edge sinks with a little resistance through packed soil and stone, before Flins leans his weight against the handle and lifts the spade upwards, turning his wrists in a practiced motion that sends the dirt spilling behind him.
The sound is soft and rhythmic, almost meditative in the way it fills the silence.
Shunk.
Chunt.
Shunk.
Chunt.
The gravel and soil scatter across the growing pile beside the hole, the sound of stone and soil meshing with the whisper of the ocean wind that drifts across the island. It nearly drowns out the sound of the waves crashing against the shore.
Flins pauses only long enough to draw a slow breath through his nose, before driving the shovel into the ground once more.
Seven centuries of existence have taught him many things, though one of the more practical lessons is that graves are rarely finished quickly, no matter how many one digs in their life.
The shovel sinks into the dirt again.
Shunk.
Chunt.
Each motion carries the same calmness, the slow and steady repetition of a task that has been performed countless times beneath the quiet watch of the lighthouse standing behind him like a sentinel.
The hole has already grown deep enough that the world feels distant when he stands inside it.
The rim of earth rises nearly to his shoulders, narrowing the view of the horizon until the sky above him resembles a painting framed by the dark dirt that surrounds him. The moon’s reflection barely reaches him.
Flins plants the shovel into the ground and rests his hands atop the worn wooden handle. The wood is smooth beneath his palms, warm from the heat of his body.
How many times have his hands held onto this same shovel, digging the same size hole for someone else?
Golden eyes lift slowly toward the sky.
The stars are clear tonight, scattered across the midnight sky in quiet clusters, and for a moment Flins simply studies them.
The night sky above the cemetery has always resembled a painting to him. Perhaps that is why he chose this place all those years ago, when he laid into the earth and slumbered for centuries.
He exhales quietly, then slowly climbs out from the grave.
His boots crunch softly against the gravel that has gathered beside the pit over the course of the evening. He lifts the shovel once more, then drives its blade into the pile, scooping the stones in slow measured heaps before tossing them into the hole below.
The gravel scatters as it lands, the sound echoing faintly off the uneven dirt walls.
Each shovelful settles against the packed soil floor, forming the beginnings of a rough bed of stone that will work to keep him dry. It’s something small that he learned from the last time he did this. Flins has always believed that small comforts matter, even at the end of things.
He continues working, filling the bottom of the grave with an even layer of stone. His movement of the shovel grows slower as the moon rises higher in the sky, not from fatigue but from the gradual quieting of the restless thoughts, anxieties and sadness that has long since settled into the core of his being.
It’s the constant, endless whisper of exhaustion that has followed him not only throughout the lighthouse but also between the silent rows of gravestones while he reads through names that no one among the living remembers.
Each shovel of gravel feels like a small act of order among the chaos in his mind. Each falling stone brings him closer to the quiet and sweet serenity that awaits him beneath the earth.
For centuries, he has protected and stood as a guardian for the dead as they lay in their eternal rest, but tonight he prepares to join them.
He pauses again and leans on the shovel, eyes looking at the sky once more. The stars above shimmer faintly, and he studies them as a soft smile spreads across his lips.
The night sky is peaceful tonight, with not a single cloud in sight. He wouldn’t mind it if the last thing he ever sees is this brilliant view.
Then, among the familiar quiet, Flins hears it.
A rhythm—measured and unhurried.
Footsteps.
Distant at first, following the dirt path that winds through the cemetery toward the lighthouse and its solitary keeper.
Flins doesn’t look up.
He doesn’t need to.
He already knows who walks that path.
Each step lands with the quiet authority of a man who has led soldiers through battle and lived to return. They are heavy with each stride, certain in their path. The sound carries across the graves like a promise of either a victory or a reckoning.
Grand Master Varka.
Flins exhales slowly and lifts another shovel of gravel.
“You are early,” he says without turning to face him. “I was not expecting you until the morning.”
The footsteps stop, and silence settles across the cemetery like snowfall.
Flins drops the gravel into the grave and brushes a bit of dust from his sleeve before finally lifting his gaze.
Varka stands at the edge of the pit. Moonlight traces the edges of his coat and shoulders while his shadow spills across the open grave like dark water slowly filling a hollow.
He stares down into the hole. The knight doesn’t speak or move. He simply stands there as his blue eyes flit between the shovel in Flins’ hands and the pit at his feet.
Flins tilts his head slightly, noticing that the the knight’s expression doesn’t feel right.
Varka is rarely this quiet when he greets the light keeper, especially when he has sought out his company so many times during his long absence from Mondstadt.
Tonight, the fierce and boisterous man looks as though someone has struck him in the chest.
Flins rests his hands atop the shovel again, but doesn’t look at the man. “Something troubles you, Varka.”
Varka opens his mouth, but then closes it. His gaze drifts once more toward the grave, then back to Flins.
When he finally speaks his voice is hoarse in a way that does not belong to a knight.
“What,” he asks slowly, “is this.”
He doesn’t say it like a question. After all, any knight knows the shape of a grave.
Flins glances down at the hole before him.
“It is precisely what it appears to be,” he replies, his voice monotone. “I trust you do not require me to explain common burial customs.”
The knight doesn’t laugh at that. Instead, he steps forward, boot catching against the loose gravel mound beside the pit. He stumbles slightly before catching his balance, a rare clumsiness that earns a faint lift of Flins’ brow.
The curse that slips under Varka’s breath is one Flins pretends not to hear.
The knight is not watching his footing. How could he, when his vision is fixed onto the hole that Flins is actively digging.
“Is this a joke?” Varka demands.
Flins tilts his head. “I do not make jokes about graves.”
Varka’s breathing grows uneven. His gaze drifts to the pit again.
“You’re digging one.”
“Yes.”
“For who?”
Flins pauses.
“For myself.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
Varka recoils as though the words have struck him physically.
“No.”
The word leaves him immediately, but is filled with an emotion that Flins can’t place.
The fae blinks slowly. “Varka—”
“No!” The knight steps back from the grave, fists clenched at his sides. “You don’t get to say such a thing as easily as if you were describing the weather.”
Flins folds his hands over the shovel handle once more.
“The weather is unpredictable,” he says quietly. “This is not.”
The explanation only seems to make things worse. Varka drags a hand across his face and laughs once in strained disbelief.
“You dug a grave,” he says slowly, “and you did not think to mention it to me. And now you’re here trying to tell me that this is okay? That this is normal?”
Flins’ gaze flickers toward the lighthouse behind them, its light vigilant and absolute..
“I did not wish to burden you,” Flins replies, the words gentle and chosen carefully.
Varka’s composure shatters.
“Burden me?” he asks in disbelief, his voice nothing but a whisper. “Flins, I would carry you through fire if it meant keeping you alive.”
The shovel slips slightly in Flins’ grip, and the knight’s breath stutters as he stares down into the grave once more.
“You think your disappearing quietly would spare me?”
Flins lowers his eyes. “It is not as simple as disappearing.”
“What would you call it?” Varka counters.
“Rest.”
The word hangs softly between them as Varka drops to one knee beside the grave. His hand presses into the soil as though steadying himself.
“Don’t make this sound peaceful,” he says after a moment. “There’s nothing peaceful about this.”
Flins lifts his gaze. “For seven centuries I have guided the dead through silence,” he says quietly. “I know its nature well. If I say that it is peaceful, then please trust that my assertion is correct.”
Varka watches him, unblinking. His gaze remains fixed on the open grave as though he is still trying to understand how the earth itself could have rearranged into such a terrible shape.
Flins lifts another shovelful of gravel and drops it gently into the bottom of the pit. The stones scatter softly echoing faintly against the packed walls.
For a moment neither of them speaks, but the silence is not empty.
No, it’s heavy–filled with the words that neither of them can say.
Flins studies the grave thoughtfully before pushing the shovel into the mound of dirt beside it, the spade cutting into the earth deep enough so the worn handle stays upright.
Then the light keeper steps toward the edge causing Varka’s head to jerk upward slightly.
“Flins,” he says, the name leaving him like a warning that has no bite.
The fae pauses only briefly before swinging one leg over the edge of the grave and lowering himself carefully into the empty space he has carved into the earth.
The gravel shifts beneath his boots as he descends, and the world narrows again around him. From inside the grave the sky appears impossibly far away, framed by dark soil and the faint silhouette of the knight standing above.
Flins looks up.
Moonlight catches the edge of Varka’s shoulders and casts his shadow into the pit.
“It is a pleasant view from here,” Flins says quietly.
Varka’s breathing becomes sharp. “You climbed into it while I’m right here? Are you serious?”
Flins brushes a bit of dirt from his sleeve. “Yes.”
The light keeper’s tone is calm enough to be mistaken for indifference if one doesn’t know him well.
But that’s the problem.
Varka knows him well.
Too well.
The knight’s hands curl slowly back into fists at his sides. “You dug your own grave,” he says, voice tight, “and now you’re standing inside it like this is some kind normal, evening stroll.”
Flins considers the statement for a moment, fingertips touching his chin. “I suppose it is not so different from an evening stroll, no.”
Varka makes a strangled sound. “Not so different? You can’t be serious.”
Flins tilts his head slightly and glances upward again.
The stars burn bright above them, a thousand distant lights scattered across the darkness of the sky in clusters of constellations that seem to watch them from above.
“I have spent centuries tending graves,” Flins says softly, his gaze lingering on the sky. “It seems only proper that I should prepare my own.”
“Proper?” Varka laughs once, the sound harsh and broken.
“You are talking about burying yourself alive and you are worried about being proper?”
Flins doesn’t look at him.
Instead he slowly lowers himself down onto the gravel bed he has prepared, bending his knees and easing himself onto his back at the bottom of the pit as though settling down in a bed at the end of a long day.
The stones shift beneath him, and Varka’s entire body goes rigid.
“Flins.”
The name is sharper now, a command that the fae ignores. He lifts one hand, and traces a slow line through the air with his finger, following a constellation in the sky.
“Look,” he says softly. When Varka doesn’t move, Flins gestures towards the sky one more. “The stars.”
The knight’s gaze flickers reluctantly towards the end of the light keeper’s finger.
“I see them, Flins. They’re just stars, there’s nothing special about ‘em.”
Flins’ expression softens slightly. “That is not true, I believe that they look different from here.”
“How so? It looks the same to me, Flins. The sky doesn’t just change ‘cause you think it does.”
Flins’ finger continues to drift lazily through the air, pointing toward the scattered constellations.
“It is like lying beneath a painting,” he says quietly. “As though someone has taken a brush and scattered light across the canvas of the night.”
Varka stares down at him, eyes narrowing in frustration. “You’re lying in a grave, and you’re talkin’ about the sky as if it’s a painting? I think we have more important matters to discuss, Kyryll.”
Flins’ lips curve faintly. “I am appreciating the view.”
The knight’s breathing becomes uneven again. “You can’t be serious.”
“It is peaceful here,” he observes, golden eyes meeting sapphire.
“Stop,” Varka’s voice cracks. “Stop talking about it like that. Like this is supposed to be something beautiful.”
Then the knight’s jaw tightens. It’s not the controlled tension of a Knight preparing for a fight.
No.
This is something quieter, and far more dangerous. Flins notices the way Varka’s breathing stutters first, how the knight inhales sharply through his nose as though he has forgotten how lungs work. His chest rises too fast, too shallow, and the sound of it reaches the bottom of the grave in uneven pulls of air.
Varka presses the heel of his hand over his mouth, though it hardly does anything–his fingers trembling.
Flins studies him with the same calm curiosity he has used to observe storms rolling in from the sea. There is a strange fascination in watching a force of nature realize it cannot stop what is happening to it.
“You are upset,” Flins says in observation.
That is the wrong thing to say.
Varka drops his hand from his face and laughs. It is not the loud, booming laugh that usually follows him like thunder. This one is thin and sharp, like ice cracking under pressure.
“Upset?” he repeats breathlessly.
Flins tilts his head slightly from where he lies on the gravel, twilight hair spread around him like spilled ink turned silver beneath the moon.
“I would consider it an appropriate emotional response,” he replies. “This is not an easy thing to witness.”
The knight stares down at him, and something inside that piercing gaze fractures.
Flins doesn’t miss it.
He’s watched people grieve before, hundreds, if not thousands of times. He knows the moment when disbelief turns into something heavier.
Varka’s shoulders begin to shake.
At first it is subtle enough that someone less observant might miss it. A faint tremor running through the massive frame of the man who has fought The Wild Hunt and dangerous beasts without hesitation.
But Flins, being ever-so-observant, notices. He notices everything.
“You cannot be serious,” Varka whispers, the words falling apart halfway through the sentence.
Flins’ golden eyes narrow faintly as he studies him. “That statement appears redundant,” the fae replies quietly. “You have repeated it several—”
“Kyryll.”
The name cracks through the cemetery like a whip. It’s not shouted, nor it is loud, but the sound of it carries a desperation that seems to stop everything that surrounds them.
Flins falls silent.
Varka drags both hands down his face, fingers digging into his hair as though he can physically hold his thoughts together if he presses hard enough, though it doesn’t work.
“You’re lying in a grave, Flins,” Varka says hoarsely, staring down at him. “You’re lying in a grave that you dug for yourself.”
Flins glances around the dirt walls as if confirming the statement. “Yes… Varka, you have made that observation several times–”
The knight makes another broken noise, and Flins watches as the blonde drops heavily to both knees at the edge of the hole. The impact sends a small cascade of dirt sliding down the inner wall of the grave, but Varka doesn’t seem to notice.
His hands press into the soil beside the opening, fingers digging into the earth so tightly that dirt packs beneath his nails.
“You said you didn’t want to burden me,” he says, voice trembling. “You said you thought disappearing would make it easier.”
“That was my intention, yes,” Flins answers.
The knight’s head drops, and for a long moment he doesn’t move. Flins wonders for a brief moment if he should check on him, but then he hears it.
A soft sound–one that Flins has never heard from the knight.
A wet drop lands on the dirt beside Flins’ temple.
It can’t possibly be raining.
Not when the sky looks this clear, so why—Flins blinks.
It takes him a moment to realize what he is seeing.
Varka is crying.
It’s not quiet, nor the restrained tears of a knight mourning his fallen comrades. Varka is shaking. His shoulders heave as the first sob forces its way out of his chest like something clawing free of a cage.
Flins stares up at him in bewilderment. He has seen so much grief in his centuries walking the surface of Teyvat; fallen comrades of those who fought against The Wild Hunt, widows mourning their husbands after the Cataclysm over five hundred years ago, or parents clawing at the dirt of the grave when their child passed away.
Flins thought he’d seen it all, but somehow, this is different.
This is Varka, The Knight of Boreas and the Grandmaster of the Knights of Favonius.
Varka who’s laugh is like that of thunder, and who’s tolerance for alcohol is like that of an immortal being. Varka, who fights as though he, himself is a god. The same man who once wrestled a ruin guard bare-handed just to prove he could.
And now that same man is kneeling at the edge of a grave with tears pouring down his face.
“You idiot,” Varka chokes.
Flins blinks again.
The knight scrubs his eyes furiously with the back of his hand, but the tears keep coming.
“You absolute fucking idiot,” he repeats, voice breaking.
Flins tilts his head.
“That assessment seems unnecessarily harsh.”
“Harsh?” Varka laughs again, the sound turning into another sob. “You’re lying in a grave in the ground and telling me it’s peaceful.”
Flins folds his hands over his stomach.
“It is.”
Varka’s composure finally shatters. “No it isn’t!” he roars.
The sound echoes across the Final Night Cemetery. Birds from the nearby ruins are startled into flight, and Varka’s hands slam against the dirt at the edge of the grave.
“You think this is peaceful?” he demands, voice raw. “You think watching you bury yourself is peaceful?”
Flins studies him and for a brief moment, he almost sits up. Instead, he remains where he is, staring up at the knight’s tear-streaked face.
“You are experiencing distress,” Flins says quietly.
“That’s because you’re talking about–and are in the process of–killing yourself!”
“I am simply resting.”
“Flins!” the knight’s voice breaks completely as another tear falls.
This one lands directly on Flins’ cheek. He lifts a hand slowly and touches the spot, fingers brushing across the moisture before he lowers his hand again. The tear is warm, and it surprises him.
“Archons,” he whispers, noticing the light keeper’s motion. His expression falls as his hands clutch the edge of the grave so tightly the dirt crumbles under his grip. “You’re really going to do it, aren’t you?”
Flins watches him carefully before taking a silent breath. “I had hoped you would not arrive until morning.”
That does it.
The knight makes a sound that is somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
“You planned it,” he says, choking on his words. “You planned it so that I wouldn’t even get to fucking say goodbye to you.”
Flins doesn’t answer, but the silence that falls between them is enough.
“You thought I’d come here and just find an empty lighthouse, without wondering where you’d gone? You thought that I wouldn’t start searching for you?” Varka asks, shaking his head slowly as he gasps for breath.
Flins looks back at the stars. “That seemed kinder.”
The knight inhales sharply and his next words are barely audible. “You really thought I wouldn’t come looking?
Flins doesn’t respond, because the answer is devastatingly obvious. Of course Varka would come looking, and that’s exactly why Flins had hoped to be long buried in the earth before dawn.
The knight’s shoulders begin shaking harder now and Flins watches the emotions cycle through his face.
Grief.
Fear.
Devastation.
And… love?
All of it crashes together behind sapphire eyes that have seen too much loss for his years.
Finally Varka wipes his face roughly with both hands. He takes a long, slow breath before managing another.
When he speaks again, his voice is hoarse. “You keep talking about the stars in the sky. Do you want to know what I see from here?” he asks.
Flins looks up at him as Varka gestures down at the grave with a shaking hand. “I see the man I love lying in the ground like he’s already dead. As if he truly believes that no one would miss him when he’s gone.”
The words hang in the air like a guillotine. For the first time since Varka arrived, Flins goes completely still. The lighthouse beam sweeps across them again and the waves crash against the rocks along the island.
At the bottom of the grave, the fae stares up at the knight with wide golden eyes.
The knight bows forward, shoulders collapsing as another sob tears out of his chest, tears falling freely into the grave below like rain.
The confession lingers in the air like the fragrance from a frost lamp flower.
The man I love.
Flins lies still at the bottom of the grave, twilight hair spread across the gravel like spilled moonlight, golden eyes fixed on the knight above him as though he has just been presented with a puzzle he has never encountered before.
For what seems like an eternity, Varka doesn’t move. He simply kneels there, his chest rising and falling sharply with each breath. When he exhales for the last time, it sounds dangerously close to a sob.
The light keeper sees the moment the man makes his decision.
Varka plants one boot against the edge of the grave, and jumps down into it. The movement is abrupt and clumsy in a way that feels wrong from a man who usually moves with the swiftness of the wind. The impact sends gravel shifting across the floor.
The confined space suddenly feels far smaller, but Varka doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, he simply turns around to face Flins and drops to his knees.
The stones crunch beneath him as his weight settles on the narrow strip of ground, his knees on either side of Flins’ legs. For a moment he just stays there, towering over him.
The sky behind Varka turns his shoulders into a dark silhouette. If it were anyone else, Flins would feel caged or threatened. But with Varka, he doesn’t feel that way. Strangely, he feels almost… safer.
His eyes catch the rotating beam of light from the lighthouse, before meeting those red-rimmed eyes once more. When Varka’s hands move, they come down slowly and cautiously, pressing into the gravel on either side of Flins’ head.
The stones undoubtedly dig into the skin of his palms as he braces himself there, elbows locked. His shoulders round forward slightly as though he could lose his strength at any moment, relying on the earth itself to keep him upright.
Flins blinks up at him. From this angle the knight fills nearly his entire field of vision. When the moonlight catches the tear tracks on Varka’s face, they shimmer like silver.
“You don’t get to leave,” Varka whispers, his voice bordering on foreign. “Not like this. Not here. Not now.”
Flins studies him calmly. “That is not your decision, Varka,” Flins says softly. The words barely leave his mouth before the knight’s composure fractures again.
Varka’s head bows forward, shoulders trembling as he draws another shaky breath. Fingers dig into the stones beside Flins’ head as though he needs something solid to anchor himself.
“You think this is mercy,” he says hoarsely as a tear falls, landing on Flins’ cheekbone. “You think burying yourself is the answer, when you have others that you could rely on to help you carry the weight that you refuse to.”
Flins opens his mouth to reply, but Varka shakes his head violently.
“Don’t,” he breathes.
The knight lifts his head again, eyes piercing into Flins’. The grief within those ocean eyes is so raw it almost looks like pain.
“I have fought the Wild Hunt,” he says quietly. “And I have stood in front of monsters that could tear me in half.”
His voice trembles when he speaks the next words. “But nothing in this world scares me more than the thought of losing you.”
Flins’ expression shifts almost imperceptibly as Varka’s shoulders shake with another sob. The knight leans forward until his face is only inches above the fae’s, his breath warm and uneven against the light keeper’s skin.
“I love you,” he says firmly. “I love you because you see the world the same way I do. You find the beauty in the parts that people don’t normally. You care for the smallest of things, and you put yourself before others.”
He takes a breath as his hands tighten around the stones. “You walk this island every day, surrounded by ghosts, ruins and forgotten names… and somehow you still believe that the dead deserve kindness.”
Another tear slips free, landing on Flins’ temple this time.
“You listen to my stories of my expeditions, or my time back home in Mondstadt,” Varka continues softly, voice shaking. “You argue with me about the smallest things when you know I’m wrong. You drink with me at the Flagship–or wherever we deem fit really, and you are there when I need someone to talk to. You pretend that the Dandelion Wine I bring you tastes good, when I know that you’d rather I brought you a barrel of Fire Water.”
The knight laughs weakly through his tears. “And you think none of that matters?”
His head dips lower, touching their foreheads together. “You are the only place in this world where I can stop being the Knight of Boreas, and the Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius. When I’m here with you, I’m just a man sitting with someone who understands him.”
His voice cracks again, lip quivering. “So no,” he mutters. “You don’t get to just disappear and pretend it won’t destroy me.”
The knight’s shoulders tremble harder, and for a moment, if it weren’t for his arms bracing beside Flins’ head and his knees planted at the his thighs, he looks as though he might collapse completely.
Swallowing hard, for the first time since Varka arrived, Flins feels something inside his chest begin to unravel. For a long moment he says nothing.
You are the only place in this world where I can stop being the Knight of Boreas, and the Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius. When I’m here with you, I’m just a man sitting with someone who understands him.
The sentence lodges somewhere deep inside his chest. For centuries Flins has stood beside graves and watched others collapse into their grief. He knows the sounds of mourning better than he knows his own reflection.
But this time the grief is not above the grave… it’s kneeling directly over him, broken and afraid.
“I can’t lose you,” the knight whispers as another tear falls onto the fae’s cheek.
Flins sniffles when the weight that has been sitting behind his ribs for years finally shifts. His breath stutters for a moment as the first tear slips from the corner of his molten eyes before he realizes what’s happening.
Flins blinks slowly, and another follows. The stars above him blur as his eyes fill with tears.
Varka notices immediately, his expression shifting from devastation to alarm. “Kyryll–”
The fae inhales sharply, wavering dangerously close to a sob as he exhales. His hand rises between the pair instinctively to cover his mouth as though he can force the emotion back down, but it doesn’t listen, and another sob escapes him.
His shoulders shake against the gravel, and he watches Varka freeze above him.
Of course.
Flins has always been composed and measured, even when speaking of sorrow. He’s always worn his emotions as if they are distant memories.
But now the fae trembles beneath the knight, tears sliding freely from the corners of his eyes and into his hair.
“I am tired,” Flins chokes, the words barely a whisper. “So very… tired.” His fingers curl helplessly into the fabric on his chest, tugging at it as if it threatens to suffocate him. “For seven centuries I have watched everyone leave,” he whispers. “Everyone fades eventually. Everyone dies. I thought it would be easier if I left first.”
The silence that follows is unbearable.
Varka’s brows furrow together. “You’re an idiot… you and your way of thinking will be the death of me.”
Despite Varka’s words, there’s no anger in them. Only love… and heartbreak.
Flins lets out another uneven breath, tears still falling from his eyes. “I did not want to hurt you,” he says quietly. “I simply wanted to make the inevitable… easier for everyone. I thought that disappearing would be the best way to go.”
The knight stares down at him, ruination written across his tired features. “You disappearing would destroy me,” he says.
Flins had imagined anger, resentment, or perhaps a quiet grief that would dull with time, like the tide wears a jagged stone smooth. He’d expected everything but this. He didn’t anticipate the raw sadness and grief in Varka’s voice.
The words settle into Flins’ chest with a strange, burning weight, like a flame pressed beneath his ribs that refuses to ignite yet refuses to fade.
Kindness, Flins had told himself. He’d convinced himself that disappearing would be kinder.
If disappearing were kinder… why does the man above him look so broken and devastated?
Perhaps… it really was something he’d decided would only be kinder to himself.
The grave suddenly feels much smaller than before, and for a moment neither of them move. Flins can hear Varka’s rough and uneven breathing. Like a knight who has run too far and refuses to stop.
Then Flins lifts his head, just slightly.
Varka’s expression shifts in confusion as the fae reaches for him. Lithe fingers slide into thick blonde hair before the knight can pull away, curling tightly into the locks as though he fears that the moment isn’t real.
Flins needs this. He wants this, and he can’t deny it any longer.
He wants Varka.
The warmth of him, the reality of him… the feeling of him.
Flins wants it all.
The decision happens before he can stop himself.
The light keeper pulls Varka down until their lips meet in a kiss that is clumsy and desperate.
Varka inhales sharply in surprise, the sound catching between them as their noses bump and their teeth nearly collide. For half a heartbeat, Flins wonders if he has made a mistake that he’ll regret, but he doesn’t let go.
His fingers tighten in Varka’s hair as though he’s afraid that the moment isn’t real–as if he needs to remind himself that Varka is living and warm. He needs to touch something that is above the cold and damp earth that waits beneath him.
As the knight trembles beneath his touch, the truth settles into Flins with terrible clarity.
If he disappears, Varka will not simply grieve him.
No.
The Knight of Boreas wouldn’t just grieve the loss in solitude or crushing silence.
He will follow Flins, even if it means that he would die.
With that realization, Flins’ shoulders shake with a sob against the knight’s mouth.
“I love you too,” he breathes when they finally break apart.
The words fall between them like something sacred, and Varka stares at him, eyes blown wide in bewilderment. For the first time since Flins has known the man, the Knight of Boreas looks utterly speechless.
Flins’ voice trembles. “I realized a long time ago, that I have loved you for far longer than I allowed myself to. I was too ashamed, too worried that you may not feel the same… and selfishly… I could not put myself into a position where I had to watch the man I love age and die before I do.”
His hand remains tangled in the knight’s hair. “I convinced myself that my life was too small and insignificant to matter to someone like you.”
Varka’s expression turns to hurt and confusion. “Too small?” he repeats hoarsely. The knight cups Flins’ face with a calloused hand, thumbing at the tear that pools below his golden eye. “You stubborn fae,” he whispers. “You are the brightest thing in my world.”
For a moment they simply look at each other in silence, their breaths mingling as their lips brush against one another.
Then Varka exhales slowly. “Come on,” he mutters.
Flins blinks at him, brows knit together.
Varka stands first, pushing himself up inside the grave before offering his hand. The gesture is steady and certain. Flins looks at it for only a moment before taking it, allowing the knight to pull him gently to his feet.
Together, they climb out of the grave.
The dirt shifts beneath their boots as they step back onto solid ground, the open pit nothing but a painful memory behind them.
Neither of them look back.
Instead Varka pulls Flins into his arms again, holding him tightly as the fae rests his head against the knight’s chest. Flins hears the strong, steady rhythm of his heart beneath the surface, and feels the the warmth of his body.
The waves continue to crash against the rocks along the shoreline. The wind sweeps gently across the grass, between the gravestones, and through the flowerbeds.
The names on the headstones will forever erode away, until even time forgets.
Everything eventually ages.
Perhaps, for the first time, Flins can let time pass without fearing it.
“I am sorry…” Flins whispers.
Varka squeezes him gently. “Don’t be. Strength isn’t something that stays with a person all the time. It ebbs and flows like the tide. So when your tide is low, I’ll pick up the slack for you. I’ve got big shoulders, I can handle it.”
“And if you cannot?”
“I’ll find a way. I always do, don’t I?” Varka replies, pressing a gentle kiss to the fae’s hair.
“Yes…” Flins murmurs, his voice softening into the wind. “You do.”
“Come,” Varka says at last, pulling away as he reaches for the shovel. “Let’s take care of this.”
Flins’ eyes widen as the shovel bites into the mound of soil.
Shunk.
Chunt.
Shunk.
Chunt.
For the first time in nearly seven centuries, the earth returns to an empty grave.
✧ ── 𓉸 ── ⟡ ── 𓉸 ── ✧