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“Chief Katzon.”
Colin winced as the title fell out of his mouth. He watched as his old friend tensed, shoulders squaring as if preparing for battle, before turning to greet him.
The years had treated Delissandro well. When Colin last saw him, he'd already carried the wild, dangerous appeal of the Meatlands. That part of him seemed to have only grown greater - a scar cutting into his top lip, new lines across his arms and bared chest. He'd drawn Colin's attention immediately, even through the frosted bar window, not only for his Meatlander clothes, but his large, imposing figure, instantly recognizable even after all this time.
“Colin,” he said, eye wide as he took in the sight of his old companion. Colin didn’t really know how he looked, but seeing Deli here, in his grand furs and well-groomed hair, the shine in his golden eyepatch, he suddenly felt ashamed. He half-regretted calling out to him, dirty and covered in sweat as he always was after a job. Still, who knew how long Deli planned to stay here? Better to have called out to him after all.
“Colin,” Delissandro repeated, as if convincing himself that Colin was indeed there. “Or- Sir Provolone?”
“I abandoned that title years ago,” he said, “just as I abandoned the title ‘skald’.”
Deli flinched at the reminder, but Colin pretended not to see.
“So, I’m just Colin.”
“I also abandoned my title, as chief,” Delissandro admitted quietly. “After… everything. I knew I couldn’t lead. And I needed… I needed to not be fighting. For once.” He let out a chuckle like a sigh. “So, I’m just Delissandro, too.”
Colin swallowed around nothing and tilted his head at the seat next to Deli, to which the man gestured immediately for him to sit down.
As the bartender collected his order, Deli interjected, “Put his drinks on my tab.” Colin opened his mouth to protest, but with a single look from his old thane, he stood down.
A mug of cold beer was placed in front of him, and the two waited to speak until the bartender was out of earshot.
Even now, a decade since they last saw each other, they fell into step so easily.
“I heard,” Colin started, tracing his finger along the mug, “that you left your clan. Became an outlander. No one knew if you were living a quiet, peaceful life out there, or if you were dead.”
“You called me chief.”
“You called me sir.”
Deli stared at him, then cracked a small smile before drinking from his own mug, already half-empty.
“Titles… they keep it simpler between us, don’t they?”
Colin thought back to the cave, after Karna’s death, facing Deus Pa’Zuul, and Delissandro looking at him with absolute faith in his eyes, calling him “skald”, knowing he'd listen. He remembered that strange mix of pride, grief, fear, and trust. Always the utmost trust in his thane.
“Yeah,” he agreed weakly, before chugging the entire mug of beer.
“Jesus, Colin!” Deli exclaimed, pulling the now-empty tankard from him.
“Hm, what? My bad.”
“Another beer,” Delissandro exasperatedly called to the bartender.
They drank quietly. Deli was usually the one to initiate their conversations, but he seemed to not have it in him. The silence slithered like a gummy snake around his throat, constricting around it and not letting words out. He drank more to try to loosen the feeling.
Colin closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the bar. Allowing the alcohol to flow through him, he used it to push out the question that had circled in his throat since he first saw that broad back through the frosted bar window.
“Why are you here?”
“What?” Deli asked in feigned ignorance. He looked down at Colin just as Colin turned to face him.
“Why are you here?” he asked again. “You wanted peace. You wanted escape. You ran from your home, from us,” he gestured in the vague direction of Fructera, “to get that. And you disappeared. So why are you here?”
Deli blinked slowly at him, face twisting. Colin almost feared he might cry.
“It’s been ten years,” he said heavily. “Since they died.”
Raphaniel, Colin’s closest… friend? Companion? Teacher? Raphaniel, dogged in his pursuit of some greater purpose, who’d been slowly fading in all the time Colin had known him, who still took the time to show him kindness. And Karna, who’d only just become fully grown, who had so much left to do, to fight for. Who would have done anything to stay by Delissandro’s side, might’ve even been able to convince him to not just walk away. They were consumed and shredded so quickly, faded into nothingness by Deus Pa’Zuul. Colin had slowly forgotten their faces.
Ten years sat heavily on their shoulders.
Deli continued, “I thought I would have joined them by now. It was with that intention that I gave up being chief and wandered north. But despite everything, I lived. I watched the bulbrise every single day, and the bulbset every single night.” He paused to take a deep breath, and Colin watched him carefully, hand hovering around Deli’s arm but never touching.
“It should’ve been me,” Delissandro finally said.
“Don’t say that,” Colin sighed.
“It’s true. If anyone should have died-”
“No one should have died. But it was Karna and Raphaniel who did. And you know they-… they wouldn’t have wanted you to live in regret like that.”
“I know,” Deli whispered. He finished off his beer, and stole a swig from Colin’s for good measure. “That’s why I’m here. I spent ten years grieving, waiting for the Bulb or the Hungry One to take me, but it didn’t happen, so… I decided I’m gonna stop punishing myself for being alive.”
Colin took a sip of his beer as well, trying not to think about how Delissandro’s lips had just rested there, on the same edge that Colin now covered with his own.
“That still doesn’t explain why you’re here.”
“To see you,” Deli said calmly. He stared into Colin’s eyes, flicking between them as if searching for something. “To see if you missed me the way I missed you.”
Delissandro’s passionate gaze felt like fire on his skin, and Colin had to resist the urge to run from it.
To see if you missed me. The thought of it almost made Colin laugh. How could Deli possibly think, in all his bull-headed strength and charming tongue, his inflated ego and sense of self-worth, that Colin could ever not miss him?
“I mean, I guess,” Colin muttered into his drink, trying to pretend as if he hadn’t spent the last ten years, and five years before that, feeling Deli’s absence like a physical wound in his chest. “I might’ve missed you. Sometimes.”
“I miss you all the time,” Delissandro confessed earnestly. “Every time I see a longsword, or I’m in a battle and I could use someone at my six, or just… when the Bulb is setting, and it’s quiet, and I feel so. Completely. Alone.”
“Someone could misconstrue this as a love confession,” Colin laughed, awkwardness settling heavily in his chest.
“I think… it might be,” Deli murmured. “It’s, like, okay if you don’t want to-… We only just met after ten whole years. It’s fine if you… Oh, Bulb above, have you found somebody?”
“Oh, no no, I just, you know, devoted my whole life to destroying the Sanctus Putris, trying to, uh, wipe them out of Calorum, and all that. So… not really, uh, taking the time to, ‘find somebody’.”
“Oh, okay. Good.”
They both paused to drink.
“You… think it might be a love confession?”
“Well, I mean, I don’t have that good of a track record with romance. My first love was my aunt who also turned out to be a member of the secret society that was trying to bring rot to all of Calorum-”
“Wait, what?”
“-and she didn’t really love me, she was just using me for her own gain, and my second love after I found out about all the cultist bullshit Arianna was doing died like a few minutes after, and I don’t even know if I was in love with her or if I thought I might because she was in love with me.”
“So we’re just skipping over the ‘aunt’ bit?”
“So I just don’t know, what being in love is supposed to feel like. But, I think I've loved you, for a while, maybe. Because, even when Karna was by my side, sometimes I’d call out for my ‘skald’ and expect you there.”
Colin felt the air freeze in his lungs, like time stopped in disbelief with him.
“Oh.”
“And I know I didn't do a good job of really, asking. You to be there. I just kind of expected it. But, every day I spend alone as an Outlander, I missed you. And every day, I spent thinking of where you were, what you were doing.”
Colin asked, “How did you know I was in Ceresia anyway?” both as a diversion and from genuine curiosity. Delissandro grinned, taking the bait easily.
“I asked Lady Amangeaux.”
“Spymaster,” Colin hissed in faux-bitterness.
He’d stayed in contact with Lady Amangeaux over the years through annual letters, updating each other broadly about their lives. Though the correspondence was pleasant, their primary purpose was less about the content and more about their continued presence, a confirmation of “yes, I’m alive, and though our paths divulged long ago, there is someone else out there with whom you can share your secrets.”
The letters started after Delissandro’s disappearance. Every year, Colin asked if there was any word on him, if he was sighted anywhere or confirmed dead. Every year, the answer was no.
“She was easier to find,” Deli explained sheepishly. “Otherwise, I would have gone to you first.”
“She’s a spymaster, her entire job is staying hidden.”
“Her job is information. I knew she was with the Emperor, so I made my way to Comida, where I announced my presence as loudly as I could. She came to find me within a day.”
“Impressive,” Colin said. Deli smiled proudly, and it felt like the Bulb rising.
“Thank you.”
They drank in silence after, Deli having called over the bartender for another drink instead of continuing to steal from Colin’s. It felt comfortable, right, like back in the early days of the war, when camaraderie came more easily to them.
Colin watched as Deli took a large swig, barrel-chest pushing out as he tilted his tankard far back.
Delissandro was always attractive, in a larger-than-life, untouchable kind of way. And as Colin got to know him better – his kindness, his easy laughter, his trusting heart – he simultaneously grew more attractive and more untouchable.
In the end, what pushed Colin away was his ambition, great as it was. Colin would have lived as skald to his thane forever, attached to the only leader in his life who treated him as if he was more than a mere servant, like he was a life worth protecting. But Delissandro would not rest until the Meatlands were united, and by his doing, no matter who he had to cut down to achieve that goal. Colin had lived for so long surrounded by that ruthlessness, he couldn’t bear to see Delissandro grow to become more of the same.
That ambition was lost, now. The Meatlands were united under Basha Myaso, the lady he did it for dead, his title as chief forfeited as he decided to wander off away from his clan to try to find peace. That fire that burned for more power had extinguished with the fanner of the flame, his eternal devotee Karna, who would have seen him at the top of the world.
Who was Delissandro Katzon, without that ambition?
Bored and lonely, romanticizing the last time he felt unburdened and seeking out the only companion he had left from that time. Nowhere to channel the energy that had driven him forward for so many years.
Eager for a new passion, maybe? A new goal to direct himself towards?
The Sanctus Putris hadn’t been fully eradicated, even with the falling of Archbishop Camille Colliflour, one of their major leaders, and the failure of the release of the spores. He’d devoted himself to this task, feeling the echoes of Raphaniel’s zeal in his work. However, though Colin wouldn’t go as far as to say he had had no effect on them, it was a difficult job to do all alone, especially since there were so many things he couldn’t share, so many secrets to be kept.
It would be nice, to have someone with him who held the same secrets. Someone who Colin had never been able to convince his heart to stop trusting.
Someone he'd never been able to convince his heart to stop loving.
“You missed me,” Colin said slowly. Deli turned to look at him with red cheeks, though it was anyone’s guess as to whether it was from embarrassment or his drink.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I did.”
“Are you… planning on sticking around?”
Delissandro straightened in his seat, the beginnings of a smile stretching his lips.
“If you’d allow me to, yes.”
“You know… You know what I’m doing here, right? What my purpose is?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You know it’s a lot of fighting. A lot of… hunting people down, taking them out. No mercy.”
“I know.”
Colin looked in Delissandro’s eyes, and saw nothing but the deepest conviction there.
“I want this,” Deli whispered, reaching out slowly to cover Colin’s hand with his. “I know- I did a lot of bad shit. Got good people killed. And violence seems to be all I’m good for.” He huffed a humorless laugh. “Might as well use it to help instead of destroy.”
“I don’t think you’re a bad person,” Colin said.
Delissandro smiled sardonically, “Thanks.” Then he let out a shaky sigh.
“I’ve wanted this for a while. I was scared, and I’m sorry. But I'm here, now.”
“There’s a lot we still need to talk about,” Colin said lowly. “We never… The night that-… when I stopped being your skald, the first time. We still haven’t talked about it. And after Karna and Raphaniel… we didn’t talk then, either.”
“Then let’s talk right now.”
“When you’re sober.”
Delissandro huffed, like a child not getting its way.
“Then where are you staying?”
“Why are you asking?”
“I’m going with you.”
Colin looked at him, and he didn’t know what showed on his face, but Delissandro grew defensive.
“I don’t have a place to go to, tonight. I just got here.”
Deli was tapping his fingers against his thigh. An insult to Colin’s intelligence, as if his lies weren’t obvious to someone who had devoted themselves to him for two whole years. (Nevermind that that time was fifteen years removed from them. Nevermind that, for fifteen years, Colin clung to the bits of Deli he had left.)
“You’re drunk,” Colin thought out loud. “It’d be dangerous to let you find your way alone.”
“You’re worried about me?” Deli asked dopily.
“Worried you’ll get arrested, yeah.” Colin sighed, then got up.
“Come on, we’re leaving. Close out your tab and let’s skedaddle.”
“‘Skedaddle’,” Deli chuckled under his breath as he paid his tab.
“I will leave you,” Colin threatened, already making his way out. Deli followed hot on his heels.
“You wouldn’t,” Deli scoffed, but he walked close to Colin, tense as if ready to start sprinting if Colin made a run for it.
“I wouldn’t,” he assured him, and Deli beamed at him, relaxing into a looser gait.
They walked in companiable silence the rest of the way to Karna’s safehouse, where Colin had been camping out for the past couple of days. She’d left an extensive list of properties, in every major city of each of the nations, paid for by various identities that Amangeaux took up the mantle of. She could have simply stopped paying for them, but in a letter, she’d informed Colin of the various hideouts all across Calorum, and suggested their use instead of other, more public hotels. She didn't say it, but Colin knew her worry. Though the FDA wasn't as powerful as it used to be, the chosen were still chosen for a reason. If, for any reason, they were able to track him down, find out where he slept... So Colin readily accepted her offer.
“This is…” Delissandro started, but he stopped himself, brow furrowed.
“It was Karna’s,” Colin confirmed, “passed on to Amangeaux, and now, it’s ours.”
Deli took a deep breath, staring at the discrete doors like they might open on their own, a Carolina Reaper standing on the other side.
Colin quickly opened it, ushered Deli inside, and closed the door shut as imperceptibly as possible. There was a faint click, and then the room was bathed in a faint yellow light, revealing a mostly empty space, with Colin’s bedroll and personal bag placed on the floor off to the side.
“Let’s get to bed. I don’t know if- Do you have-?”
“I brought nothing with me,” Deli said, “but her safehouses are fully outfitted with bedding, toiletries, anything you could want if you needed to lay low for a week or two.”
He walked confidently over to one of the walls, pressing into it with his hands until a secret compartment revealed itself, popping open and presenting a drawer containing a spare bedroll and toiletries, just as he’d described.
As he carried the bedroll over, he murmured, “It’s the same in every safehouse.” He set it down on the floor and unfurled it, just a few feet away from Colin’s. “She- Karna told me, if I ever needed anything…”
“She was a good friend,” Colin said, hoping to comfort. Instead, Deli sighed heavily, laying down with a dull thud.
“Yeah. Yeah, she was.”
Colin lit the lamp that he kept close to his bed, now placed in between the two bedrolls, and then turned off the room light. He slowly lowered his sore body onto the thin, unforgiving padding.
He wrapped himself in his blanket, tight enough to almost be rendered immobile by them. He couldn’t quite believe the turn the evening had taken, had to stop himself from running away. He’d been aiming to get to the hideout before the Bulb set, rest early to head to Greenhold before the Bulb rose tomorrow. He’d planned to eat dinner alone, walk alone, and go to sleep alone. Instead, he felt the presence of Delissandro like both a balm to a long-untreated wound and cruel fingers digging into an open one, a distinct warmth at his side.
“Colin,” said man called out hesitantly. Colin bit his lip and shifted.
“Yeah?” he called back, his awkwardly high voice echoing slightly in the room.
“You won’t leave tomorrow morning, right? You’ll stay, and we can talk, about everything, and then we can be together again?”
Colin closed his eyes and thought. He thought about waiting for news of Deli’s continued existence, never forthcoming. He thought about waking up in the middle of the night, in a tent just outside of Pangranos, and rushing outside just to watch Deli's silhouette disappear over the horizon. He thought about escaping the cave, celebrating with Amangeaux, and then turning around to find Delissandro dead on the ground, the panicky feeling of I have to be able to help you, all I’ve ever wanted is to help you, please, not you too, I can’t lose you too. He thought about the look in Deli’s eye as he called to him for the first time in five years, “Skald”, the spark of life there that had been stifled under duty and loss. He thought about Karna’s secret looks in his direction. He thought about the constriction in his chest when Deli first introduced Karna as his skald. He thought about five years following Raphaniel, hoping his new purpose as Bulbian knight would somehow wash away the time he spent with Deli. He thought about that night, after Queen Pamelia’s assassination, the words that echoed in his ears ever since, “I don’t need you. I'm better without you.” He thought about two years at Deli’s side, being his sword, his ever-devoted skald. He thought about the first time he ever thought he could be anything more than a criminal’s son. He thought about Deli’s mother. He thought about bulbrises and bulbsets, spent either with Deli or thinking about Deli. He thought about silent smiles shared across rooms, fighting side by side, eating, laughing, even on one occasion shitting together.
“You can leave, if you want,” Deli said sadly. When Colin looked at him, he found Deli already staring. “I won’t stop you. I’m just saying, I don’t want you to.”
“I won’t leave,” Colin swore, “if you won’t leave.”
Deli smiled, pleased.
“That’s that, then. We won’t leave.”
And when Colin opened his eyes the next morning, Deli was there. Awake, and grumbling about hangovers and saying, “Bulb, I’ll never drink again,” but he was there.
“Do you even remember last night?” Colin asked, half-joking.
“Of course I do,” Deli grumbled, but with a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
“Okay then,” Colin said, finally sitting up, “let’s talk.”