Chapter Text
After the end of the world and the birth of a new, the first thing Phainon does is take a bath. He kind of deserves it after saving the planet, okay.
...The second thing he does is visit a library.
Phainon walks through the halls of Castrum Kremnos, catches sight of a crowd of faces filled for once with hope, renewal. The citizens of Kremnos are starting to rebuild, shoving rubble aside and beginning anew.
Phainon smiles, Mydei would love to see this sight. All the last king of Kremnos ever wanted for his people was to give them a fresh start. Perhaps Phainon will have to convey the success of such wishes when next he sees Mydeimos. He is the Deliverer, after all. It'll be nice to be the bearer of something good, something kind, for once.
After asking a local or two for directions, he finally finds himself at two large stone front doors. This marks Phainon’s first time in the famous Garbaniphoro Grand Library of Castrum Kremnos.
As he wanders in, Phainon notes with a wistful sigh that it, too, is in disarray and debris. It's not yet been restored to what he’d imagined to be its former glory after bearing witness to the end of the world, and almost all shelves remain barren or covered in tattered and torn pages.
Phainon treads carefully through the lined aisles, hand tracing along the shelf banisters. Dust lines his finger, but he doesn't wipe it off.
He turns each corner unhurriedly. After all, now, he has all the time in the world.
After a few minutes’ search, Phainon finds what he seeks, lips lifting and eyes settling at the corners.
There, in a nook hidden away between towering bookshelves, sits a man, with blond hair and red scars. A tome is balanced in his lap, and a pair of horn-rimmed reading glasses adorn his nose.
I found you, his heart whispers.
For a moment, Phainon just stares, standing, frozen. After all this time, after all of the deaths and battles and losses and victories. After all of their sacrifices. There he is.
Mydei sits on a chair, calm and peaceful, and Phainon feels his heart strangling his throat.
There's so much he wants to say.
Stayed alive after all, Guardian?
It's been a while, hasn't it?
Your reading glasses make you look like a nerd.
I thought I'd never see you again.
...I missed you.
Phainon says,
“Not quite the next life, but here I am, visiting your library. So, will you teach me that language of yours?"
At his words, Mydei looks up, focus shifting to the source of the sound.
Most people didn't know this about Mydei, but, despite all his war cries and speeches fit for kings, he is actually a quiet man by nature. Prone to bouts of peace whenever he could borrow a moment to himself. Something in Phainon's chest settles to see that hasn't changed, that the black tide hasn't left Mydei a man morphed beyond recognition.
Mydei sets the tome on an adjacent table. There's nothing loud about his reaction, and yet—
“...HKS, we haven't seen each other since I left to fight the black tide, and that's the first drivel that comes out of your mouth?”
…the sound detonates in Phainon's heart, all the same.
Mydei's voice has that same roughness and rasp that he remembers, perhaps made moreso with disuse. Phainon's eyes fill with tears threatening to overflow.
…He's missed Mydei so fucking much.
“...Well, will you? I'm still waiting to know if your language has more than a couple words at all, really,” he says, going for teasing in his tone, but missing a step, landing on soft, sincere. He approaches Mydei with slow steps.
Mydei rises from his chair, rolls his eyes. “Fine, Deliverer.” With the same lethal speed he uses to dispatch his enemies, Mydei wraps his arms around Phainon’s back and squeezes him tight. The tears Phainon's been valiantly holding back start to fall and fall and fall.
He cries for a while, and Mydei just holds him closer, rubbing reassuring circles into his back and shoulders. Phainon clutches him back with all he has.
“... I'm glad you're alive,” Mydei says, quiet, steady. He's always been strong like that.
Phainon buries his face further into Mydei's embrace, whispers into his shoulder, “And I, you.”
In comparison to 10 days and 10 nights, this moment is likely child's play, a whisp on the fabric of time. Still, it feels like it stretches on forever, and time slows to a standstill where the only thing Phainon can hear is the sound of both of their hearts, beating, alive.
Then, after a good while has passed and all tears have run dry, Phainon is hit by a wave of embarrassment.
He steps back. “So ah… um, haha,” Phainon brings his right hand to rub the back of his neck, “That was awkward of me, huh?”
Mydei just raises an eyebrow as if to say when are you not?
Phainon generously ignores this slight and says, looking Mydei’s form up and down for injuries, “How have you been, Mydei?”
“Dying a few thousand times or so. You know, that sort of thing,” Mydei says, deadpan.
Phainon stares at Mydei for a moment, eyes wide as it hits him, really hits him, that Mydei is here and real in his arms. Then, he bursts into laughter. Anyone who doesn't think Mydei has a sense of humor clearly hasn't spent enough time getting to know him.
The corners of Mydei's mouth lift into a grin, letting out a chuckle. He shifts his arm to curl around Phainon’s shoulders, bumping their sides together, playful, kind. “There's that laugh I know so well.”
Phainon sobers, aftereffects of laughter still shaking his sides.
He loves this stupid man so fucking much.
Phainon uses their linked arms to bump Mydei back as they walk towards the library’s exit together. “Right back at you.”
The sun is shining bright and warm through the library windows, and perhaps everything will be alright.
—
“...And then, his dramatic ass decided not to meet me at the entrance gates to Castrum Kremnos, like a good host would, oh no , he has to sit in his decrepit old library looking all smug and waiting for me to find him!” Phainon complains, smashing his ale cup to the pub table, liquid sloshing out the edges.
Castorice sighs, “We know, Phainon. This is the third time you've told us this story already.”
Phainon plants his face into the table, groaning in defeat. “He really made me worried that something happened to him, but he was just taunting me the whole time!”
Mydei just sits with his arms crossed, looking pleased with himself. “Aw, you were worried about me, Deliverer?”
Phainon, face still kissing the tabletop, raises one hand in the air and swats it back and forth as if to smack Mydei, “Shut up, HKS.”
“...HKS?” Anaxa starts, head tilted in confusion. He has no drink of his own, but he's fooling no one sneaking more than a few sips of Aglaea’s.
“It's one of the very few words in the Kremnoan language, probably,” Phainon pouts, “means something like dumbass or weak or something.” His face is still glued to the table but Mydei can hear that pout in his voice.
“You know Kremnoan, Phainon?” Aglaea says in mild surprise, setting down her wine delicately, on the side opposite where Anaxa sits to her right.
“No I don't , because he won't teach meeeee,” Phainon whines into the table.
“...You were serious about learning it?” Mydei asks, voice soft for a beat. Then, tauntingly, “I thought you were just trying to play it cool for our reunion, MKN. Not that it worked, since you sobbed all over my shoulder right after.”
“Mekae- what?” Phainon says, confused, still planted into the tabletop and graciously ignoring the second part of what Mydei said.
For the first time that night, a faint blush starts to trace Mydei's cheeks. He huffs and looks away. “Nothing. It means you're a loser.”
“Is the Kremnoan language only made up of insults??” Phainon laments despairingly.
Tribbe says gleefully, “I don't know what that word Mydei said means, but I don't think it means what he said!”
“Shut up and drink your grape juice,” Mydei grumbles.
Hyacine giggles, hiding her mirth beneath her palm. It's really lovely to get to share this time with everyone again, without the threat of the end of the world on their shoulders.
—
Night now once again sets properly in Okhema, and it lasts until the Waking Hour. It's still dark out when Phainon jolts awake to an increasingly loud banging on his door.
“...What the hell?” he mumbles, staggering to the entrance.
“Open up, Deliverer!” Mydei commands from the other side of the door. Once a king, always a king, Phainon smiles to himself.
Phainon yanks open the door, “Someone better be fucking dying if you're waking me up this early,” he grumbles.
If his heart is singing in his chest and his eyes are softened at the edges at the sight of Mydei—who happens to be carrying a stack of books almost as tall as he is for some reason—the new sky-dark and her shadows will keep his secret.
Mydei shoves Phainon aside, striding in confidently into his home.
“...And to what do I owe this lovely crack of dawn visit?” Phainon drawls, rolling his eyes fondly and shutting the door behind him.
Mydei looks at him as if he should already know the answer, shrugging his bookstack up and down for emphasis. Then, he sets down his dusty tower of tomes on Phainon's dining table with a satisfied expression.
When Phainon remains bemusedly befuddled, Mydei says gruffly, “These are books on the Kremnoan language.”
Phainon's eyes widen, “Wait, you mean…”
Mydei crosses his arms, looks off to the side. If Phainon didn't know better, he'd say he looks slightly embarrassed. “You wanted to learn, didn't you?”
“That doesn't mean I want to study before the Waking Hour!!” Phainon complains, sitting down easily across from Mydei's bookstack from hell.
Mydei smirks back, pulling out his chair and settling into it. “Kremnoan warriors start their training before the Waking Hour is up. To learn our language properly, you should do the same.”
Phainon sighs, picking up the first book in the pile. He reads its title: A Dictionary and History of Insults in the Kremnoan Language.
“You just wanted to see me suffer, didn't you.”
Mydei raises an eyebrow and all too gleefully repeats Phainon's last words before he left for the war on the black tide. “Who knows?”
Phainon glares at him, but turns to the first page without further complaint.
Mydei watches him expectantly. Not sure what said Mydei expects him to do, Phainon starts to read the first words in the dictionary and their translation to the common tongue.
He reads about three increasingly colorful insults before he says, “...Is this really how you're going to teach me the language? Having me read the tomes you brought while you watch on silently?”
Mydei seems confused, unsure for a second. The expression is almost comical on a man of his dignity and stature, but Phainon valiantly reigns in his chuckle.
“... I'm not sure,” he starts, serious, thoughtful, “I've never taught anyone my native tongue before. I'm a bit new to this.”
Phainon's heart does not melt into a puddle of goo, okay. His pulse is a very normal speed and he is very normal about this! “...You've really never tried to teach anyone else before?”
At this, Mydei crosses and then uncrosses his arms, before finally resting his clasped hands on the table. His gaze shifts down to his hands and then to the mountain of books he's brought to Phainon's home, before casting aside to the shadows. “...No one's ever wanted to learn before.”
Phainon drops the dictionary in his grip and reaches across the table to grasp Mydei's hands in his own. Not one day in his life will he allow Mydei to believe that his birth culture and way of life will destine him to be alone and shunned. His anger goes out to the people of Okhema, anyone who has told Mydei the words of his homeland are too coarse, too simple and blunt and brutal.
His heart hurts at how eager Mydei was to start their lessons once Phainon confirmed his desire to learn. He thinks about how Mydei barged into his house not more than six hours after they left the pub, as if he needed to show up before Phainon could be fully awake enough to change his mind.
“...Mydei,” he says, carefully, slowly, waiting until Mydei’s gaze meets his own again. “I want to learn your language because I want to learn more about you. Your life, your homeland, everything that you are willing to share with me.”
Phainon squeezes Mydei's hands in his own. “Do you understand?”
Mydei nods, “I do.”
Phainon sits back in his seat, a small smile fitting his features. He hesitates over whether to pull his hands back—he's worried he's perhaps shown a bit too much of the heart on his sleeve. But ultimately, Phainon of Aedes Elysiae is a selfish man, and so he lets Mydei be the one to decide when to retract their hands.
…Though, Mydei does nothing of the sort? The only motion he makes is to start stroking his battle-calloused thumb up and down the back of Phainon's left hand.
He says, “Thank you, Phainon. I am no great teacher, but I will do my best.”
Phainon’s heart might actually beat out of his chest, squeezes his rib cage and leaves him breathless. “And I eagerly await your tutelage!” If his hands were not pre-occupied at the moment, Phainon would rub his right hand at the back of his neck. As it is, he makes do with a sheepish smile. “...Just, let's do it at normal waking hours, okay?”
“Okay,” Mydei smiles in return, and that's that.