Work Text:
When he woke up and saw the ceiling of the Dol-Makjar tenement he’d lived in for the last eight numb years, Casimir thought: Right. There’s an afterlife, it’s shit, moving on. And he rolled over and went back to sleep.
It’s not the afterlife.
---
Thjazi Fang dies in nineteen days. He gets to the city and Casimir hears he’s around, and when the Tachonis come with their promises he accepts them. He never feels good about it, but he thinks it’s a sure bet and he’s tired of being crushed under the weight of the world, bitter enough to want his own piece to step on. He remembers making some quip about the execution, but in the end he hadn’t even attended.
Now, five days before Thjazi even gets back to the city after doing whatever he did to doom himself, Casimir flounders.
He stays in bed for the entire first day, in and out of dreaming until he can’t tell if he’s asleep or not. Motes of dust drift on the air, lit by the weak morning sun—Thimble saws through his neck with hate in her eyes—the mildew-smell that never goes away sits in the back of his mouth—Teor and Kattigan are fighting his knights through the rain—an argument in the alley goes on for too long, the noise barely muffled by his shutters—Cyd is screaming at him with tears in his eyes as the crowd at the bar looks on.
Distantly, Casimir remembers that he’s a marked man, that they want him to pay for all he’s stolen. The Crow Keepers feel so small-time now. They’d stop him if he tried to run, but other than that he’s got until the new moon to settle his debt. He probably won’t live that long.
He’d thought they all deserved it, back at Castle Sloak, and maybe they did. But he hadn’t won the fight. He’d died on the rain-slick stone of a ruined castle, and all of it was for nothing.
On the second day, he drinks until he’s sick. That’s what convinces him he’s alive, in the end. Everything else could be an illusion or a death-dream, but the all-consuming hangover that steals the third morning from him has to be real. His memories of the day are spotty—he’d quit his job, or tried to, and someone on his crew had sat with him for a long time and talked very reasonably about how he had so many options. People think he’s spiraling because of the debt. He had, the first time around.
At dusk on the third day, an Arcane Marshal passes him on the street. It’s rare for one to be so far from the upper-class districts, there must be five or six tails on him right now, but Casimir’s nerves don’t go sharp because it’s just the kid. The kid, the kid has a name... he’d had a birthday during the Rebellion that Casimir scraped together a cake for, when Thjazi asked. They’d thrown a sad little party to pass the time between fights.
He can’t stop thinking about Thjazi. What the fuck drove him to piss off the Tachonis so personally—they’re bad enemies to make, not that that ever made a difference to Thjazi. There was a time when the whole world was made of his enemies. For Casimir, that’s never changed.
---
Casimir’s walking through the city—just walking aimlessly through familiar gutters and streets, passing the time and trying to think about next moves—when a whistle cuts the air, sweet and painful and familiar. It’s the signal they’d used for ambushes in the first days of the war, before small skirmishes over baggage trains turned to pitched battles. Casimir turns and sees him at the mouth of the alley and understands everything the old poets said about the gods.
He’s early. Thjazi’s a whole day early, Thimble nowhere to be seen—this isn’t how it happened. The clouds part for just a second, sending one glittering ray of sun down to shine against the broad line of his shoulders, to light the tips of his hair with an undeniable glow.
“You’re not easy to find,” he says, like he’s tried to look before.
Casimir is frozen, staring. All the years of resentment and hate don’t vanish, not really, but there’s the terrible sense of something clicking into place when he sees Thjazi alive once more. This is how it should be.
The hero of the story—what? Thjazi ambles closer, and Casimir doesn’t run. The sounds of the city are distant. The slow steps approaching him are loud. Thjazi puts a warm arm around his right shoulder and fits his hand to the back of Casimir’s neck like it belongs there, bare and hot against his skin. Smart, to pin his sword arm down.
“I hate you,” Casimir mutters, leaning against him. His own weight will be an obstacle if Thjazi goes to draw the Liar’s Blade. He’ll feel the shift.
“I left you,” Thjazi grants, his voice awful and warm and understanding. He’s only talking like this because he knows it’ll drive Casimir insane. His grip on the back of Casimir’s neck is deceptively gentle—with a flex of his fingers, he could do some real damage. He hasn’t ruled it out just yet.
The threat of the gesture makes Casimir’s blood sing in his veins. “I killed you,” he counters, and he’s rewarded with the sound of Thjazi’s quiet laughter hanging in the air of the scummy Dol-Makjar alley.
“Let’s call it even,” the revolutionary croons, running his thumb over the spot where spine meets skull. “Seems like it didn’t work out for you, anyway.”
And Casimir’s seen the end of this story already, seen where it gets him: carved to pieces after hunting Cyd down, claiming a ruin for a handful of hours before he dies. You can’t win when you play with the Sundered Houses, even if you think you’re on the same side. They’ll always grind you back down into the mud.
“Hey,” Thjazi says, squeezing just a little. He’s so alive, everything about him in motion—Casimir can feel his chest rise and fall as he breathes. Death would have stilled that. It’s impossible to imagine him as a corpse. “Do you still hear it?”
“Every fucking day,” Casimir admits through gritted teeth, because he can’t drown out the scream of the falcons no matter how many oaths he breaks.
His smile is terrible—it hasn’t changed, not in twelve years. Thjazi Fang still grins like he can tear the world down to its foundations, like he can build something righteous from the wreck. His hand is so, so warm. “Then you’re still mine,” he says with pure confidence, unearned but undeniable, and when he says, “Let’s get the fuck out of this city,” Casimir says, “Yeah.”
---
Nobody stops them from walking out of Dol-Makjar, though Casimir’s reluctant creditors definitely know they’re going. He sees a flash of a feathered cape in his periphery half a dozen times, but each time Thjazi shakes his head in a tight gesture, his jaw visibly clenched, and there’s no confrontation at the gates.
Once they’re past the treeline, splitting off from the main road onto a more winding forest trail, Thjazi’s pace slows. His posture opens up like a flower, like an invitation—like a pretty, shiny bear trap, ready to take off a limb. Casimir trudges along at his side, for lack of anything better to do.
Thjazi doesn’t ask why he did it. He might not even care why, but it’s more likely that he’s decided he already knows the reason. He’s always doing that, and even when he’s wrong he’s able to talk people into agreeing with him.
He does ask, “You kill Thimble?”
One of Casimir’s eyes stings. “No. She got me, actually.”
Thjazi laughs, sounding free. “That sounds like her. You wouldn’t believe what she can do with a kitchen knife.”
“Where is she, anyway?” If Thimble knew, if she came back...
“We met somebody on the road,” Thjazi explains in the way he always does, not revealing anything of note. “They get along well. Something’s going down at Dvalmar Pass, she and her new friend are going to check it out for me.”
“The mountains? There’s nothing there but inns and travelers. You sent Thimble off to spy on courier routes?”
“‘Ness didn’t come see me in my cell,” Thjazi says, “but Royce was supposed to be in the city soon. They’d take the pass.”
Casimir doesn’t feel stupid enough to ask about House Royce’s business, or Thjazi’s ongoing knowledge of it. That’s been a closed topic for as long as they’ve known each other. Instead, he starts, “How did we—”
“No fucking clue,” Thjazi admits freely. “I mean, I have ideas, but magic this big... It’s never been my specialty. And I couldn’t tell Thimble about any of it, because she’d kill you before I finished the sentence.” He gives Casimir a dark-eyed smile, and he doesn’t have a problem imagining Casimir dead, not if he can look at him with this ruinous optimism. Casimir can practically see Castle Sloak reflected in Thjazi’s eyes, his own corpse resting sweetly in the pupils.
“Does this count as abduction?” There are bird calls at the edge of his hearing and light comes through the tree canopy in pretty, dappled patches. Thjazi had enough pull in the city to just walk out with Casimir in tow, and he’d done it without hesitating. What does that even mean?
“Think of it as me stealing you away, you'll like that better.”
Casimir stops dead—he can tell Thjazi is surprised, his footsteps not quite smooth enough when he pivots on the path. He’s shifted, something going hard behind his eyes, but there’s this idiotic smirk on his lips that tells Casimir he’d expected that line to work.
“Stealing me away?” he demands, the absurdity of it almost making him laugh. “Who the fuck have you been hanging out with, pretty young things who should know better?”
Thjazi does a funny half-bow, mimes the dramatic sweep of a cape he doesn't have. Casimir is struck almost violently with a memory of the old days: the ragged group of them huddled around a shitty, smoking campfire of too-green branches as Thjazi read scenes from his brother's new play. Entire scenes, four characters to juggle, just him slipping between each part without hesitation. He was the king and the dowager and the jester and the lady, each distinct and clear.
Of course, this particular performance is to hide the dagger in his other hand. The blade is pleasant and cool when it comes to rest against Casimir's neck.
“Is this the part where I tell you I'll scream?” He mocks with a breathy little sigh. “Oh, Sir Fang, you ruffian—be serious.” There's a dagger of his own pressed to Thjazi's side, right at the gap between leather pieces. He never did learn to guard his left side properly, and there's no Pridesire or Vale to throw himself into the gap, to cover it with a sacrifice.
“Is it an abduction?” Thjazi asks, pressing Casimir against a tree. The forest quiets when he speaks. The whole world leans in to hear him.
“You could have left me back in the city.”
Thjazi rolls his eyes. “I'm not letting you kill me again, Caz. Need you where I can see you.”
This fucking guy. Sets the stars on new courses every time he talks, but it takes forever for him to just say what he means. Casimir stows his dagger and leans back fully against the tree, just waiting. Thjazi hates letting things go. He would've killed Casimir in the alley if he really wanted him gone—no, not in the alley; he would've done it while Casimir slept, sent in some loyal idiot who owed him to stab his betrayer in the heart.
After a long moment, Thjazi pulls away. “Come on,” he orders in a strange tone, and Casimir follows. It’s kind of awful that he can wipe years away just by showing up. It’s torture to be in his company again. But when he looks at Casimir like that, like he’s already considered killing him and discarded the idea, what else can he do?
---
Something funny happens on the trail, some kind of transportation magic maybe, because when they reach the clearing where the little cabin sits, all the plants have changed. Even Casimir, more comfortable with cobblestones than anything else beneath his feet, can recognize that the forest around the city doesn’t have glowing flowers and sighing trees.
Thjazi had explained his plan, after a few hours of walking. He wants to wait it out past the original date of his death—and maybe Casimir’s, but he seems more undecided on that—and there’s an old Royce cabin he still has access to.
Casimir tries not to think about why. Casimir tries not to think about Aranessa Royce at all, just as a general rule. He hasn't ever met Thjazi's wife. He doesn't want to, even though everybody in the Banner knew they were still sneaking around during the war. People thought it was romantic, and it was—just not as romantic as it was stupid. The vulnerability was what let that idiot Davinos catch him, after all.
The cabin is cozy but clean enough that there must be magic involved, since they don’t have to evict any raccoons or other vermin. There’s this tiny little painting hanging over the fireplace, done by an amateur hand—Casimir’s smuggled enough art over the years to know. It’s simple, a falcon’s feather and a green fern curled around it.
He tries not to think about Lady Royce, but at this moment he hates her. And he hates Thjazi, has for years, but it's worse because he loved him, believed in him, for all the years before that.
They’ll be here for more than a week, if Thjazi keeps to his plan. And this cabin clearly isn’t meant for living in—there’s a little table and two chairs, but no real stove, and no food storage unless there’s a very well-hidden cellar. A large bed, the frame carved to look like living branches, takes up almost half of the space. Casimir stares at the green-and-gold quilt, the two pillows side by side at the head, and does not think about Aranessa Royce.
He thinks about the war instead. He thinks about the kid whose name he still can’t remember and how they had tried to keep him from the worst of it, at least at the start. He thinks about being back to back with Vale in unfriendly manor houses, killing officers in their fancy bedrooms. He thinks about sneaking poison into the barrels of wine headed for camps of poor bastards stuck fighting for the Sundered Houses, knowing that it would eventually get the vintners killed. And sure, the leaders of the Torn Banner made those decisions together, but Thjazi came out of the tent and convinced them all to do things, whatever it took, and came back here to fuck some faceless noblewoman in a huge soft bed. In this bed.
Casimir brings his forearm to his mouth and bites, hard enough to bruise through the sleeve, and the dull throbbing pain is enough to keep him grounded while Thjazi shows him around the edge of the clearing, where the plants part for him and don’t react at all when Casimir nears them.
---
They don’t make it three hours.
Night is falling, the sky above the cabin painted blue and purple as the stars poke through. Thjazi sits beside him at the water pump and sighs.
“Don’t start,” Casimir warns, already tired.
But Thjazi never stops. He’d forgotten how relentless the man is—always moving, always thinking, always spinning up the next world in his mind. When he talks he can make it seem so reasonable that he’s kidnapped Casimir to the secret getaway that’s clearly covered by Sundered House wards, buying himself time to decide what to do. Thjazi always acts like he’s some cynic, like the world has worn him down. It hasn’t; it loves him.
“Caz,” he whines, almost pouting.
“Don’t fucking call me that,” Casimir says, his voice flat. He’s the cynic, the idiot, the still-lingering believer in the dead god that is Thjazi Fang. He should have stabbed Thjazi in the alley, just to get it over with. This could have all been avoided. “Especially not here. This fucking place—what is this, your wedding gift from the old Royce? A just reward from a worthy lord?” Sneering, he turns his eyes to the waning moon as it makes its slow ascent.
There’s a sharp, indrawn breath beside him. Did he sound like that on the hangman’s platform? Thjazi stands, puts a hand on his shoulder for just a second. “You and I both know,” he says, low and intimate like they’re still on the same level, “there’s no such thing as a worthy lord.” And he walks away.
Casimir stares at the heavens. He would have died in Dol-Makjar this time around, without the payout from Thimble’s hideout and the money from House Tachonis. Instead, he’s here. In the distance he hears an unfamiliar bird call, a seeking cry. Fuck it.
When he comes inside he finds Thjazi sitting on the bed, the covers already pulled down. He’s taken off his boots, the overconfident bastard, and his eyes are vast and dark.
“You can think of it as getting one over on me, or—no, that didn't do it for you. Didn't do it the first time either, did it. Okay. Is it more that you still... Oh. I get it. Casimir, we're still us. Still the same people we've always been. We're both good, and we never stopped being good, and the falcons keep crying. Yeah? Yeah, there you are. Should have known you'd prefer it like this.” Hells and devils, he talks too much.
Casimir takes his own shirt off in one moment and tips Thjazi backward in the next, barely a push. He goes down easy. “Don't talk sweet, Fang, I'm not your fucking wife.”
Thjazi groans when Casimir gets a hand around him, laughs—he probably laughed when they put the noose around his neck.
Casimir hates him, hates him, licks the sweat from his skin like it's a divine fucking blessing, hates him, rolls him over and presses him into the give of the plush mattress, and tries not to say The whole world died when you did, it just took me a minute to notice.
“I've, hah, got you,” Thjazi groans. “Mine, mine, Casimir. You're still mine.”
And Casimir hates him, will until the sun goes out and the moon breaks apart, because he's right.