As excuses went, it was weak, but he didn’t have other options.
“Look anyway,” Sasha urged, guiding them a few steps forward. “You won’t regret it.”
Vanya turned his face.
Ice as far as he could see. They stood in the shadow of it. A giant cliff of ice towering above them. It would be imposing enough if it were made of rock, but somehow the ice made it seem more so. This wasn’t a permanent thing, but a temporary feature. Vanya had very little grasp on where in the world, exactly, Sasha had brought him, but they might be the only humans ever to see this.
Still, it was cold. Vast and beautiful but cold.
“Not to your tastes, then?”
“No,” Vanya admitted with a sigh. “I mean, it is beautiful. Thank you for showing it to me. But it’s so bleak. And I think I’ve had my fill of ice for one lifetime.”
Sasha laughed, low and lovely. “I suppose that’s fair. Next time, I’ll take you somewhere warm.”
Vanya smiled—only, if they went somewhere warm, he would have no excuse to drape himself over Sasha quite so shamelessly. Though, if it were warm enough, maybe Sasha would strip down to his shirt so Vanya would be able to see the play of the muscles in his arms when he pressed close.
The thought of it was enough to make him flush under the layers, which at least warmed him up.
“I don’t believe such a place exists,” he said, hoping Sasha would take the challenge. Sasha only squeezed him a little tighter. “You might show me a place with more colour, though.”
“I will,” Sasha agreed. “I don’t know how you survived in a castle in the snow.”
“Poorly. I wasn’t built for this environment.”
“No? Then it’s a good job you found someone to remove you from it. Come home, Vanya.”
Vanya’s stomach fluttered a little at the word home. He tried not to think of Sasha’s house that way; he really did. But he wanted to.
“Okay. Let’s go home.”
Vanya let Sasha turn him, point him back to the space where the door would appear once they reached it. He unwillingly pulled away to step forward, all the better to be home sooner.
That was when he heard the boom.
Maybe boom wasn’t the word for it. Maybe it was better expressed by the twist of wrongness and dread in Vanya’s stomach. As though he hadn’t realised how still and quiet the world had been until that noise sounded. As though something primal in him was screaming at him to either bolt or hold very still and pray that nothing noticed him.
Something shifted.
“Vanya,” Sasha said. “Run.”
Vanya didn’t need to be told twice.
He was strong after his time with Sasha, and he’d always been fast—it was easy to follow their trails back through the snow. Years of dodging brothers as they walked made him nimble, and for the first time, he was grateful for them.
Behind him, he heard Sasha. He didn’t dare to turn. There was another sound. Like something coming free.
He forced his head down. His feet skidded in the snow, but he kept his body moving forward. Kept the force of his momentum carrying him until, suddenly, there was the door.
He crashed into the frame, then stopped and turned back to look.
Sasha was behind him. And the cliff of ice was moving. Not all of it or even most of it. Only a little of it, but moving. Sliding. Breaking free. A portion of it crashed just left of the door, and Vanya jumped, gripped to the wood. The door was magical, protected. He couldn’t be hurt there.
Sasha wasn’t there yet.
He was running, but he wasn’t as used to it as Vanya. Not to the snow either. He was fast, but his feet didn’t know how to cope with the ice like Vanya’s did.
Vanya called his name.
Another block of ice fell. It crashed directly into Sasha’s head, and Vanya pulled back, screaming. Sasha crumpled to the ground. Folded over like a rag and lay there—only little more than an arm’s length from Vanya. Lay in the snow slowly turning red with his blood.
A sob tore itself from Vanya. He pulled back, pressing himself against the doorway.
Sasha was dead.
Half of his head was caved in. It was terrible. Vanya couldn’t look too closely; his eyes fixated on the blood instead. So much blood.
Sasha maybe couldn’t die, but surely he couldn’t survive this either. Surely this was too much.
Vanya’s stomach heaved. He crouched in the snow, back against the doorway, and shoved his head between his legs. Another block crashed down, farther away, but Vanya still screamed. Still jumped a little and, in the wake of it, found himself shuddering.
Sasha was dead.
He didn’t know what to do.
The pool of blood was still growing. He didn’t know a body could have so much blood.
In the end, he forced his eyes closed. He sat on his hands to hide the shaking, tried to count his breaths. They were short and shaky, but they were still there. He was still there. He was still breathing. He pressed back against the door and focused on that. On the feel of the wood against his spine. The roughness of it.
His breath slowed. No matter how terrible the situation, his body couldn’t panic forever.
He opened his eyes.
Everything was still again. Quiet. Peaceful.
Sasha was dead.
He bit his lip to stop the scream that was trying to form. Instead, he pushed himself to his feet. Ran his hand over the doorframe. Looked at that. It was coarse from this side, like a cheap door. Just a frame. Nothing like the great oak door he had come through from the other side.
If he could still get through, with Sasha dead.
He didn’t even know how to open it. Maybe this was it. Maybe all it would ever open on again was this place. This desert of ice. He didn’t even know which direction to start walking to find help.
He was going to die.
A noise behind him.
Vanya spun, then had to turn away again quickly, covering his mouth.
Sasha was moving. Twitching. His hand. Not his poor ruined head, but his hand. Twitching.
He had lived.
Vanya didn’t understand how someone could live, not after that, but Sasha had lived anyway.
Vanya forced himself to turn back. He forced himself to forsake the safety of the rough wooden doorframe to step forward into the snow and ice. To creep back over to where Sasha was twitching on the ground.
Closer, he could see that, as horrific as the wound was, it already seemed to be healing. Sasha’s body rebuilding itself.
Vanya was shaking again. He dropped to his knees in the snow. Pressed his hands into the cold ground and waited.
It was some time before Sasha made a sound. A choked whine of protest. When he did, Vanya reached over and took his hand, squeezed it, and Sasha fell silent again.
Vanya didn’t dare let go of his hand. Didn’t dare move. Didn’t dare think.
It was some time before Sasha sat up. Vanya leant forward to help him, putting his arm around Sasha’s shoulder.
Sasha’s head was still a mess.
Slowly, together, they climbed to their feet. Vanya held Sasha up, eyes fixed firmly on their feet, and led them through the door.
SASHA SLEPT.
Vanya spent the first few hours sat nervously on the edge of Sasha's bed, and watched the rise and fall of Sasha’s chest. Watched as skin knit itself together over bone. Watched and prayed and waited. A part of him felt like an intruder in the room, but he couldn’t tear himself away.
Sasha had died.
Vanya knew, logically, that he could. That the death just couldn’t take. But there was a difference between thinking about death and seeing it. He’d visualised it as a clean thing somehow, not the mess it had been. The splatter of blood. The fragments of bone. Just thinking about it again made his hands tremble and his stomach tighten.
He wasn’t going to be able to kill Sasha. He just wasn’t.
Magic and destiny and everything aside, he couldn’t kill a p
erson. He didn’t think he’d have been able to kill Sasha if he’d been truly evil. But he certainly couldn’t kill him after everything that had happened between them.
He didn’t even feel bad about it, now that the decision was made.
After a few hours, Sasha’s breath settled into something more steady and even. More like sleep. It was only then that Vanya dared to move.
He went back to his room and took the box of paints—dragged them back to Sasha’s room. Sasha didn’t even stir, which was a little worrying, but his body was rebuilding.
Vanya had used all the windows in his own room, but he hadn’t used Sasha’s windows. He picked out the one at the end of Sasha’s bed and took the net curtain down. Maybe Sasha would be cross at him for this, but if he spent however long this took sat on Sasha’s bed watching him breathe, he’d surely go mad.
He started to paint the field of ice. The cliff. He drew the lines for them, but even the lines on the blank wall seemed too harsh. Seemed wrong. He didn’t want Sasha to wake up to that every day.
So he changed it.
He made the cliffs into mountains. Small ones with white peaks. He surrounded them with meadows that spent most of their time snowed under or as wet marshes—full of tiny, hardy plants and worn tracks. He drew the sky, heavy with clouds. He drew home.
He worked through the night, trying to remember each detail, every speck of that scenery he’d looked over so many times, waiting for someone to come and rescue him. He stopped only for the food and drink that the house magic so helpfully supplied, and to check on Sasha who slept right through.
As the first traces of the dawn began to creep into the room from wherever they came, Vanya set his brush down. He sat back on his heels to look at it.
He didn’t miss it, but it was part of him. He was glad he’d brought it there.
“It’s beautiful.”
Vanya spun and fell off his heels and onto his bottom. Sasha had apparently lifted himself in bed by then. He looked a little pale, still, but whole. He was staring at Vanya’s painting.
“Is it home?”
“No,” Vanya said, flushing. “This is home. That’s just where I come from.”
“Vanya…”
Vanya pushed himself up off the floor. He’d been thinking and thinking and thinking for weeks, but not about anything important. About duty and rules but none of that existed here. He was so far gone from his father’s castle that it might as well be a dream.
He was done thinking. Now was the time to act.
Sasha’s bed creaked as Vanya crawled onto it. He didn’t dare look Sasha in the eye as he came closer. Instead, he focused on the pattern of the blanket. If he didn’t think about it, the sane part of his mind couldn’t step in and stop him doing it.
And then he was there.
Then Sasha was right there, raising an eyebrow.
And Vanya kissed him.
He’d never done this before, not in a way that counted. Pecks on the cheeks of cousins and a few maids who’d accosted him in hallways and offered themselves up to the royal pleasure, but nothing like this.
For a moment, Sasha was still under him. Then he raised his hands. Slowly he cupped Vanya’s face, tilted it. Brought them closer together and moved his lips, and oh!
Everything Vanya had been taught about kissing was wrong.
This was like nothing he had ever done before.
He found himself melting against Sasha. It felt like a stupid thing to say, but he swore in that moment that he liquefied. He felt as though his entire form had shifted to fit better against Sasha. To fit into Sasha’s arms and be home there.
And then Sasha was pulling back. He trailed soft kisses over Vanya’s lips as he went, as though in apology, but he still pulled back, using a hand on Vanya’s chest to create distance between them.
“Sasha?”
“You don’t have to.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I don’t know. You’re upset. You aren’t thinking about who I am.”
“I know who you are.” Vanya reached out, running his fingers through the strands of Sasha’s hair. The place where he hadn’t had a skull not so long before. “I know exactly who you are.”
“But the things I’ve done. If you knew…”
“I love you.”
That, at least, seemed to reach through. Sasha blinked at him for a second before changing the hand holding him away to a fist pulling him in. Vanya went readily, swinging up to straddle Sasha’s lap.
“I love you,” he whispered again and again, kissing it into the lobe of an ear, his chest, a thigh. I love you I love you I love you.
VANYA WOKE WARM and content. Sunlight was streaming down on him, probably because he hadn’t thought to close the curtains when stumbling into Sasha’s bed. He wasn’t quite sure yet how magical light responded to curtains, but he was willing to accept it.
Besides, he intended to have quite a lot of time to work it out.
He stretched a little, making himself comfortable under the sheets, then rolled over. Sasha was still sleeping. He lay on his back, arms spread invitingly. Vanya smiled and shimmied closer.
Then he noticed it.
On a gold cord around Sasha’s neck. He must logically have seen it the night before, but it hadn’t registered as important. Not then.
A key.
The key. It had to be. The one to the door. The one he had to open to kill Sasha. To fulfil his destiny.
He shook his head, smiled, then scooted closer again. Leant in to lay his head on Sasha’s chest.
Screw destiny.
He let his eyes fall closed. Let himself be carried by the rhythm of the rise and fall of Sasha’s chest. He drifted for a while, enjoyed the contact. It was better than he’d thought it could be, in a lot of ways. Dreaming was fine for the night, but it was nothing compared to the reality of it. To the feeling of an actual body under him.
It was even better when Sasha started to wake. When Vanya got to feel it. Got to look up and watch as Sasha blinked into awareness, then leaned up and pressed kisses to Sasha’s neck and chin until Sasha was awake enough to return them.
It was more than he could have dreamt of.
When Sasha seemed more fully awake, Vanya sat up and turned around. Leant in to press a more convincing kiss to Sasha’s lips.
When he pulled back, Sasha looked surprised. Puzzled.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning,” Sasha said. Vanya was delighted to learn that his voice was deeper in the morning. “I didn’t think you’d still be here.”
“Where would I be?” Vanya frowned. Maybe he should have gone to get breakfast? But he had the sense that Sasha would probably disapprove of them eating in bed.
“I thought…” Sasha trailed off, but his hand strayed to his neck. To the key. His fingers brushed it and Vanya froze.
Sasha had thought.
After everything, Sasha had thought that he’d take the key. Sasha had thought Vanya would kill him. Sasha hadn’t been expecting to wake up this morning. He’d taken Vanya into his bed thinking that Vanya intended to kill him.
Vanya must have looked stricken as Sasha reached out to pull him into his arms.
“You thought I’d kill you?”
“No. I suppose I didn’t,” Sasha said. “I suppose I only hoped…”
“You hoped…” Vanya pulled away. He didn’t understand this. None of this. “You wanted me to. Is that the only reason you slept with me?” If it was, Vanya didn’t know what he was going to do. It’d leave him no more equipped to actually kill the man he loved. He’d just know what it felt like to have what he wanted and then never be able to have it again.
“No,” Sasha said. “No, not only for that.”
“But a little for that?”
“Is it so bad to want to die?”
This was very much not the conversation Vanya wanted to be having. He stood up and began searching for his clothes. As soon as he looked, a new
set, freshly laundered, appeared on a chair next to Sasha’s bed. Vanya grabbed them and dressed.
“Vanya,” Sasha said softly. “I didn’t mean it as a bad thing. You have to understand, though. I’ve lived for so long. For hundreds of years. I’ve seen so many people die, but I can’t die myself.”
“You can. You could just open the stupid chest yourself.”
“I can’t,” Sasha said. And he sounded so worried, so lost, that Vanya slowed. Half-dressed, he turned to look at Sasha.
“You can’t?”
“The magic, the deal I made—I can’t open the chest. But you can.”
“And you think I will.”
“Not really, I suppose. You’re too good. Too full of life. You can’t really think about death. Sometimes, Vanya, when I’m with you, I don’t think about it either.”
“But then…”
“But this might be my only chance.” Sasha nodded. He rose from the bed and straightened, and in a second, he was dressed. He tugged at the gold string and held it out. Vanya stepped back.
“I don’t want it.”
“Please, Vanya. I’ve waited for so long for this.”
“Then why didn’t you give the key to Vasilisa? She would have done it, I think.”
“That’s not how the story works.”
Of course, it wasn’t. And everything had to be about how the story works. Sasha tried to hand him the key again, but Vanya crossed his arms and stepped back. He didn’t even have to touch it. Sasha sighed and set it on the bedside table.
“You have to see, Vanya, this was the only way it could ever end. I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll make it easy. When you break the egg, my soul will come back to me and the old age I’d been avoiding will find me. It’ll be quick. Painless.”
“Sasha,” Vanya started, but Sasha was already walking towards the door. Vanya grabbed his shirt and pulled it on, then followed a few steps behind. It was only when Sasha was headed for the door that he had some idea about what the other man planned to do.
“You’re being stupid,” Vanya yelled. “I won’t do it.”
“You will. It’s how the story works.”
“I won’t,” Vanya said, though it sounded unconvincing even to himself.
Once Upon the Rainbow, Volume Two Page 10