Work Text:
Pantalone had known Dottore for twenty years. In that era, less than a century after the great cataclysm, that amounted to half an ordinary person’s life.
Of those twenty years, they had been colleagues for eighteen, friends for fifteen, and lovers for ten. The development of their relationship had been so smooth and natural that at times Pantalone forgot how it had all begun.
But he knew exactly how it was all bound to end. Dottore probably didn’t have much of a grasp on such aspects of human life, but Pantalone himself had been carrying bracelets and rings with him constantly for the past five years, so that he could propose at the most opportune moment.
A moment that kept getting put off again and again. It wasn’t that he was unsure of his choice, or whether the kind doctor, who was endlessly patient with him, would turn him down. No. Rather, he wondered whether it was really necessary.
When he first thought about it, he was well into his thirties. An age when most men in the country already have several children. And Pantalone himself had only just realised that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to formalise his relationship.
And ever since then, the question had continued to trouble him. Somewhere out there, far away, in the very depths of his mind, buried beneath figures, plans and business matters.
Then again, it all came down to practicality. It wouldn’t change anything for them. Just some extra paperwork in their offices, nothing more. After all, they were the Harbingers, the highest-ranking officials in the country. If they wanted something, no one would stop them.
And what a silly thing it was to even think about. Pantalone didn’t need to ask permission to enter the Dottore’s operating theatre when the doctor was literally just a segment away from him. Dottore didn’t need to ask permission to enter Pantalone’s ward because he was the one treating him.
It all boiled down to the fact that this idea wasn’t worth pondering for more than five minutes. And yet, here he was, sitting there, unable to shake it off, like some sentimental, romantic fool.
After all, unlike some of their colleagues, they were both mortal. Or rather, he was mortal. He didn’t know what would become of the lifespans of the other segments, but the real Zandik had, for the time being, decided to grow old like an ordinary person.
Based on simple mathematical and statistical calculations, they had ten years left to live together. Twenty at best, and if the great doctor worked another miracle, thirty. Having already lived for forty years, that seemed ridiculously short.
And that’s without taking into account the possibility that he might once again trip over the corner of a new carpet from Sumeru, fall and bang his head against the corner of the table. If help doesn’t arrive in time, he could die at any moment. And then it would all be over before his complex dilemma is resolved.
Although Dottore had thought of this twenty years ago and had given him a button for just such occasions, but again, it had come out of the blue.
And so he carried on walking round and round in circles, unable to find a proper solution to the current situation. What a disgrace for such a competent banker as himself.
In those moments, Pantalone reminded himself of a young schoolgirl from a small coastal village, plucking petals from a flower as she tried to work out whether the boy loved her or not.
He took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew out a ring of smoke. Get married. Then another. Don’t get married. A third. Get married. A fourth—
“Well, well, at least pretend in front of me that you’re looking after your internal organs.”
His cigarette was ruthlessly snatched away and stubbed out in the ashtray. Pantalone gazed at it wistfully and said with a sense of humility:
“Couldn’t you have waited for the fifth one?”
Zandik returned to playing the piano.
“Why? Is that another local superstition? Something like how you mustn’t give an even number of flowers, but only exhale an even number of puffs of smoke?”
“Yeah, an odd number of rings for a long-lasting relationship.”
For a few seconds, the piece he was playing paused, as if his words had taken him by surprise. Then, after striking a new chord, the melody shifted to something calmer, as if to soothe him.
It was one of Pantalone’s favourite pieces.
“Can there really be any sense in something so unscientific?”
And once again, the conversation returned to their usual track of discussions about science. Normally he wouldn’t have minded, but right now he fancied something different.
“It’s not so much about the light-hearted fortune-telling itself as what I think about it. About us. I’d like to spend more time together and enjoy all the results of our productive collaboration.” He gazed intently at the back of Zandik’s head, who was still playing his instrument. “Don’t you feel the same way?”
In reply, he heard a muffled mooing in time with the music. Pantalone felt a slight pang of annoyance.
It was hard to say at that moment which of the two was the scientist.
“Sometimes just thinking isn’t enough, my dear partner.” What on earth did that mean? “Empty thoughts without any results or ideas to put into practice aren’t for me. And wouldn’t it be a good idea to set a specific goal? Hmm? What do you think about that?”
Pantalone was in desperate need of a new cigarette right now. Or better still, several at once. He couldn’t understand what Zandik wanted from this conversation or where he was steering it. He merely had a vague premonition that something was about to happen that would multiply the value of their relationship many times over.
His intuition rarely let him down. At least, not since the moment he’d been sold out.
He leaned back in his chair and said dreamily:
“I’d like to live to be eighty with you. By then, the aftermath of the cataclysm will have been almost completely cleared up, and we’ll be able to go on holiday to the south, rather than travelling on business. At first I thought of the nice round figure of a hundred years, but I’ll be such a shrivelled and frail old man, probably unable even to move about on my own, that I don’t even want to think about it.”
Pantalone smiled and turned his gaze to Zandik, just as he was about to talk about his plans for producing perfume, when he noticed the strange expression on his face and the way he was looking at him. It was that look he gets when he’s trying to appear as emotionless and calm as possible, but deep down he’s dissatisfied with something and thinks the person he’s talking to is talking nonsense.
The smile faded from his face. Had he said something wrong? Could it really be that Zandik was upset because he’d get travel sick on the journey?
“You—”
“I never would have thought you’d have such mundane plans,” Zandik interrupted him. “For someone who currently controls Snezhnaya’s fortune and will one day become the richest man in Teyvat, you’re surprisingly modest.”
Pantalone shook his head in disbelief, beginning to chuckle quietly at the remark. To praise his ambitions, to give them their due, whilst at the same time reminding him that he still thought on a small scale when it came to his own happiness.
It wasn’t exactly a pleasant thing to hear, but he knew Zandik didn’t mean any harm. Quite the opposite, in fact. Only someone like him could claim that eighty years was a mere trifle. As if, even in the best of times, very few people had ever lived to that age.
He decided to play along a little and find out what it was all about. He had a vague hunch, but it was so absurd that he decided not to think about it and to confirm it for certain.
“Oh? And what is my dearest partner and no less ambitious scientist thinking about?”
“About eternity. Although, I suppose, in our world, absolute eternity doesn’t exist given the presence of erosion. But I’d like to test how long an ordinary person can live without something as unreliable as the curse of immortality.”
Pantalone didn’t like the way that sounded.
“Do you want to turn me into another experiment?” Again, there was a pause.
“No. I—” Zandik tried to find the right words, but nothing came out. Instead, he stood up and walked over to the cupboard. “I wanted to do this in a more suitable setting, but now that the subject has come up, what difference does it make?”
Firstly, he opened a drawer and took out a cylindrical glass vial filled with something turquoise. Pantalone looked with interest at the strange liquid, which he’d seen before.
Sometimes he’d visit Dottore’s laboratory and see him working on some sort of experiment. Whenever he asked what it was, he’d get a reply along the lines of ‘a side project, I’ll tell you later’ and that was it. No discussions or stories about how the idea came about or who the end recipient was.
And most importantly, who was funding it and who had approved it. Because whatever it was, it clearly hadn’t gone through his hands.
The second object struck him far more and knocked the wind out of his lungs. Pantalone, or rather, Feofan, recognised this thing at first glance.
“How?”
How did you preserve this? Why do you have it in your hands? Why am I only seeing this now?
“It wasn’t that difficult to recreate artificially what has been happening naturally in this world for centuries and millennia.”
With these words, Zandik placed a flower on the table, a broken Sumeru Rose, covered in layers of ice and encased in a sphere. Next to it, he placed that very same turquoise liquid which he had been preparing for a long time. Then, sitting down opposite him, he began to speak slowly and deliberately.
“I’ve been thinking about this ever since that trip. You remember it, don’t you, Feofan?”
It was a rhetorical question. Pantalone gazed impassively at the flower, whose delicate violet petals were torn in places and crumpled in others. The stem was bent and leaning sharply to one side. It looked as though someone had trampled on and crushed this rose, but that was not the case.
No one had touched it until the moment they saw it. It grew high up in the mountains, and the only thing that could have damaged it was nature itself. Only external circumstances and what people call fate, things entirely beyond its own control.
It was that very Sumeru Rose which Feofan had spotted on his first mission with Dottore. Exactly one year had passed since his life had been sold and bought. He, having become a subordinate of the Second Harbinger, was taken along to Sumeru, where certain matters relating to experiments and the Archon awaited them.
At that time, Feofan was going through the motions and was so detached from the world that he could remember very little now. He was only just beginning to get used to Dottore and his strange manner of communication and behaviour, thinking of nothing but how he needed to get out of this situation and somehow improve his circumstances.
He hated Dottore, who was dragging him through the mountains of Sumeru’s stifling and unbearable climate simply because he himself was unable to use any means of transport. Or perhaps it was his situation and status that he hated. Or maybe it was the circumstances themselves and the constant feeling of being on the verge of fainting. In any case, the problem was clearly not with his lungs, whatever his companion might say.
He was certain that no one else had ventured this high apart from them. What other fools would climb the mountains at sunset, when the energy of the Abyss was roaming and raging across the world? Only the great Zandik could have come up with such a thing.
So when he sat down on the grass and saw a crushed rose three metres away from him, he was very surprised. He’d heard rumours that the Qingxin flowers in the Liyue mountains remained in perfect condition under any circumstances. So why wasn’t that the case in Sumeru?
Feofan gazed at the flower, bathed in the rays of the pink sunset, unable to tear his eyes away. Dottore, sitting beside him, noticing his interest, decided to speak up.
“A lovely scent, isn’t it? If we had some wine here, we’d be straight out of a classic novel.”
“Isn’t it just an ingredient for food and perfume? And not even the best quality, at that. If it were on the market, nobody would choose it.”
Dottore leaned in closer to examine the rose thoughtfully.
“No, it’s more than that. Art isn’t particularly valued in this country at the moment, and few people take an interest in fiction, but roses have been mentioned frequently in poetry of late. Perhaps in a few hundred years’ time, they’ll become cultural symbols. In that case, what difference will it make to anyone what they actually look like? What matters is the place it occupies in people’s minds.”
At that moment, Feofan looked at Dottore and, for the first time, saw in him someone other than his superior and the man who had bought him. Zandik, who was wearing a mask, met his gaze and tilted his head, as if asking what was the matter.
Nothing in particular. It was just that Feofan felt that something in his life had changed again. In recent years, this had been happening with surprising frequency.
Pantalone remembered clearly that they’d left that mountain without the flower. Which raises a new question.
“Did you send anyone after it afterwards?”
Dottore smiled mockingly, as if he’d said something funny.
“And risk damaging the very thing that led me to one of the most important ideas of my life? Of course I went myself.”
He wanted to ask when he’d managed to climb those mountains again, given that they were almost always together. He could find that out later; right now there were other important matters.
“And what exactly is this idea?”
Zandik gently ran his fingertips over the ice, but his gaze never left it. Out of the corner of his eye, Pantalone noticed that the ice wasn’t melting and no condensation was forming. He’d seen this a couple of times before and could guess who had frozen the rose.
Amazing things were happening behind his back.
“As you can see, the plant has retained its original appearance. Even if we were to melt the ice right now and take it out, it would continue to live as if we’d picked it yesterday. Even though decades have passed.” Zandik continued to look him in the eye, and Pantalone felt as though he were drowning in crimson quicksand. “But a human being is not a plant. If you freeze them and periodically thaw them out, it renders the experiment pointless. What’s the point of an hour’s conversation once a year? There needs to be something more reliable. Something that will achieve the same effect without depriving the subject of mobility and their normal life.”
Somewhere outside the window, snow fell from the roofs, but neither of them turned to look, too absorbed in the moment and their conversation.
“I began to look into this matter. I carried out experiments and tried to act in time, before it was too late to halt all the ageing processes in the body. To preserve the object in its very best condition.”
Pantalone shifted his gaze from the rose to the strange turquoise liquid. By this point, he already knew what it was. Whatever Zandik might have called the result of his experiments, the conclusion was the same.
By drinking this liquid, or introducing it into his body in some other way, he would become like a flower in ice, forever preserving the appearance it had at the moment of being frozen.
This was not something he could so easily and quickly understand and come to terms with. It was unlike any of the deals he’d ever struck before.
What on earth could he offer in exchange for eternal life?
What did Zandik want?
“Congratulations on yet another scientific breakthrough. We’d better have a cake and a cup of tea ready by the time Ronova comes knocking on our door.”
Zandik tapped his fingers on the table, keeping time and thinking about something. Having weighed up all the arguments, he spoke slowly.
“I’ve tried to look into this matter. There are currently a few mortals in the world who, in one way or another, evade death. The Heavenly Principles isn’t going to be disrupted over such trifles. And even if that were the case, so what?” The scientist grinned and added, “I’d come up with something anyway. Do you really think I wouldn’t find a way to divert Ronova’s attention away from you, Feofan?”
Pantalone closed his eyes and sighed. Those were very bold words for anyone to utter, but he wanted to believe that Zandik could achieve even the impossible. After all, how many people are capable of inventing an elixir of immortality?
“What do you want?”
You know my rules. My principles. What do you want in return?
“When my experiments draw to a close, be by my side and witness the results.”
“That’s all?”
Zandik shook his head in disbelief.
“It’s more than it seems at first glance. It’s impossible to say exactly how long it will take or what the circumstances will be. You could come to harm if something goes wrong.”
Pantalone smiled, as if he’d heard some absurd joke.
“My dear, I’m just as much a Harbinger as you are. I can cope with the trauma, especially given your medical skills.”
Zandik met his gaze and looked away, refusing to answer.
Ah.
At that moment, Pantalone realised what was hidden in that safe beneath the false bottom.
He wants me to be by his side on his deathbed.
Before this conversation, Pantalone had believed that he would be the one to die first. Love is love, science is science, but everything has its limits. Now Zandik was telling him outright that he had shattered all limits, all boundaries of what was permissible, and made him immortal, but the price of this was that he would have to outlive the one he loved.
It was both a blessing and a curse.
Were centuries really worth those few years he would have to spend alone?
He knew it had been an incredibly favourable deal for him. Come to think of it, it had been the same for Zandik too. He could die in peace, knowing that all his affairs would be taken care of in the best possible way.
Everything was working out as well as possible for both of them.
And yet he couldn’t shake a nasty feeling, as if, amidst a barrel of honey, he’d managed to scoop up a spoonful of tar.
“Why didn’t you ask me for money for the experiments? Where on earth did you get the resources for this?”
Zandik smiled and replied pointedly.
“I’m just as much a Harbinger as you are. I have enough money for my personal needs and interests. I have to surprise you at least once in a while, don’t I?”
“As if every time I come to your office, you aren’t inventing something impossible for the organisation and the country.”
The smile faded from Zandik’s face, revealing the expression he wore when discussing business.
“Those are two different things. This has been prepared especially for you.”
Pantalone blinked, then blinked again. Was he imagining things?
“This isn’t for mass production and creating an immortal army?”
“Of course not. It took me over ten years to create a bespoke sample. It’s all down to the uniqueness of each organism. What works for one won’t work for another.” He narrowed his eyes as he looked at the elixir. “Well, I suppose I could create a universal version later on, but I have no such plans at the moment.”
He felt his heart beat faster. So Zandik had used his own money to produce an elixir of immortality just for him, and had kept it all a secret for nearly twenty years, ever since they’d first met?
His chest felt strangely constricted. It felt as though he were simultaneously suffocating and breathing more freely than ever before. He tried to take as deep a breath as possible.
Could it be that all the good fortune of his first twenty years had been traded simply for the chance that, at some point, his path would cross with Zandik’s?
If so, he wasn’t complaining. He was prepared to go through it all again and again for the sake of this very second.
Zandik tapped the table in front of him.
“Feofan, why have you had a panic attack? How many cigarettes have you smoked today?”
He placed his hand on Zandik’s and laughed hoarsely. His voice trembled slightly from the overwhelming surge of emotion that was making it hard to breathe.
“That’s not it. It’s just that I’ve never felt this confident about the future. It feels as though all my worries were for nothing and everything is going too smoothly. That doesn’t happen, you see?”
Zandik intertwined their fingers and squeezed them tightly.
“It’s just euphoria. And I wouldn’t say it’s all too easy or going too well. We’re both ordinary people and we’ve achieved everything through our own efforts. I just don’t want you to regret this decision later.”
“I’ll think about that later, when the time comes. But for now, come here and don’t spoil the moment. We’ve got a lot to talk about, because I’m really curious to know what this thing’s made of and how you invented it.”
Zandik’s solemn and sincere smile was worth more to Feofan than all the money in the country’s state treasury.