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“We all have regrets,” Azu says. It echoes through the cellar where they’re all sitting, cramped and drunk and already so very tired of the seven-day quarantine that they’re only one day into.
We all have things we’re not proud of, he’d said earlier, and Zolf speaks up before he can stop himself. He doesn’t know if he should stop himself, really. He’s trying--trying to be more open. This is a part of that.
“Look, here--here’s a thing I ain’t ever told anyone,” he says. “The reason I joined the Navy is ‘cause I killed my brother.”
He says it like it’s just a fact. And it is, for him. Everyone else doesn’t seem to think so.
“Okay, buddy, that is quite a thing,” Cel says, as Azu asks if it was an accident. All Hamid says is “Zolf,” catching Zolf’s gaze from across the cellar.
He looks away. He’s done a lot of talking tonight, and he’s going to do some more, but… if he’s going to talk about something he hasn’t said out loud in years, that he’s only told to a total number of people he can count on the fingers of one hand--
No. He doesn’t think he can look anyone in the eye while telling this story.
Especially not Hamid. He knows what it’s like, to lose a sibling.
“It’s--I didn’t lose my legs as a kid, you know.” Zolf bends down a bit, knocks on one of his shins. It makes a metallic clonk against his knuckles.
Hamid nods, Zolf can see from the corner of his eye. Across the room, Carter is already passed out, but Barnes edges a few steps closer from where he’s lounging on the stairs. Zolf never talks about his legs, beyond what they need to know if something goes wrong. Rarely talks about his past, never talks about the loved ones he’s lost.
Never talks about the soulmates he’s lost.
“His name was Feryn. My brother,” Zolf says. Was. Past tense. It’s been decades, now, and he’s still not used to that. “We marked each other as kids, ‘course, like most--like most siblings do.”
He’s almost proud of how his voice doesn’t wobble. He can’t say the same for his heart, beating its way out of his chest.
Zolf takes another swig of beer, keeps going.
“His mark was on my leg. Counted myself lucky for a while, it wasn’t the leg I lost serving in the Navy.” He hears a sharp intake of breath. He doesn’t look up. “It was--it’d already gone grey by then, though.”
He doesn’t give anyone the chance to interrupt, just keeps going.
“We were--we were miners, my family, always had been. ‘Least I always thought we had been, you know? And Feryn, his mark was dark brown, right along the side of my leg. Took up a whole swathe of skin. That’s not--size doesn’t really matter. All the kids at school, they made fun of it, his color, ‘cause they thought it was boring.”
He takes a breath. It only shakes a little bit on the way out.
“And he--he kind of was? He actually liked mining, always wanted to be a miner, and I hated it. I thought--I thought his color just reflected that. He was happy to have a simple life. And I--I wasn’t.”
His bottle is empty. Zolf doesn’t remember finishing it.
The room is quiet, but he’s not alone. Zolf knows that. He just has to remember it.
“Dad wanted him to be part of the family business, and I didn’t. Mining sucks, it’s so boring--”
“And it’s underground,” Azu interjects.
“Yeah,” Zolf nods her way, still looking down. Voice still steady as he can make it, which isn’t very much, between the topic and the alcohol. “But I was--I was down there, and I was working with Feryn, and then I was bored and I kicked a, you know, post, and…”
“That was--that’s an accident!” Hamid says, the edge of tears in his voice like he knows what it is to blame yourself for something like this.
But does he? “Ah--But,” Zolf says out loud, waving his empty bottle to fend off the empty words coming his way. “But I didn’t need--look--mines are dangerous, and they’re dangerous places. And I didn’t follow the rules, so someone got killed. Someone with my mark got killed, and it was my fault.
“You can’t--you can’t undo that,” he continues, before anyone tries to jump in again. “That mark was--it was all I had left of him. The ring, it’s--it was my father’s, and it shoulda been Feryn’s, but… it isn’t, and even though it was grey, the mark was still him, you know?”
Zolf’s chest creaks as he takes a deep breath. He’s not going to cry. He’s--these people might be his team, or becoming it, but he’s not ready for some of them to see him hit rock bottom. Especially not when morale’s all too low already.
“It was all I had left, and then in Paris, it was… he was gone. I didn’t get to say goodbye to him, and I didn’t get to keep his mark, either. Like--” And here he laughs, but even to him it sounds awful. “Like the universe itself was telling me it was time to let him go.”
Zolf rocks back and looks up from the floor as a warm halfing barrels into him, head first.
“Oh, gods, Zolf--I’m--I’m sorry, I didn’t--” Hamid sobs into Zolf’s chest. His arms are too short to encircle Zolf’s body all the way round, but Hamid seems to be doing his best to smother Zolf in a hug for all he’s worth.
Zolf looks down into a dark head of hair, a bit messy from a day in the anti-magic cell. He remembers another dark-haired man, this one with lighter skin, who was never as short as Hamid is.
His voice sounds distant when he says, “It’s--it wasn’t your fault, Hamid. Sometimes we… we just don’t get to keep people.”
The arms around him tighten. Hamid’s quiet, but Zolf can feel his shirt grow damp.
“Sometimes we don’t even get to keep their memories,” he says. Belatedly, he brings his arms up to hug Hamid back. “But we--we have to keep going anyways.”
Looking down the way he is, he can see the edges of the marks on his hands. Just a few weeks ago, both of them were grey. He’s got Hamid’s bronze-purple back--even with the heady warmth of someone alive in his arms, he can barely believe it.
The mark on his other hand is still grey. Zolf remembers the moment when Hamid’s mark came back. It burns a little still, even inside the anti-magic cell.
Zolf’s grip on Hamid tightens, just a bit. He’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and ask for more than what he’s already gotten. He can’t help thinking about it, though. He’s gone from miner to sailor to pirate to mercenary to Harlequin, and he’s lost so many of his people along the way.
Zolf has enough grey on his body to last him a lifetime, even discounting the missing marks on his legs. And he’s come to terms with that, he has, and he’s kept going, but…
He looks up from where he’s hugging Hamid, across the room towards Cel and Azu, their marks still fresh on his skin. Zolf might not have that much control over what happens next, but he can channel what power he does have into doing his best for the colors--the soulmates--that he has left.
It would kill him to do anything less.