Kell walks.
He walks because it's the right things to do. It's respectful and polite, and what has been requested.
He walks because he fears the earth beneath his feet will pin him into place again if he stops.
He walks, and then he stops because this isn't right after all. Death comes for all, fight as they may, but this isn't right.
He lingers on the spot, looking at the stump mere feet away, looking at the trees that line up into a border. A little further, they seem to say, and there will be no one left.
The thought sinks deep into him, lonely und uncomfortable. A few more steps lie before him, a just a few steps he can't take, so he turns.
Holland is a dark silhouette against the backdrop of faded greys and whites, and yet so much a part of it all, almost as if the groove has claimed him as its own. Perhaps, with his eyes closed, his face greeting the sky, he can feel it, the embrace of fallen nature. There is sadness in the cracks of his mask, and peace, and Kell swallows.
This is his cue to leave, to fulfil a request of a dying man. It's time. His hands dig deep into his pockets until, finally, his fingers close around a coin.
He sets the lin onto the stump. He turns to go, already searching for a second coin that would open him a pathway home. There, there it is—
He can feel it, a caress, a whisper. The almost words are too foreign for his ears—or, perhaps, for his heart. But he feels the current, so unlike anything he's ever sensed in this world. Too light, too much like life, and he turns to see if Holland feels it too, if, perhaps, this place hold some last remnants of a long lost power after all. If, by some miracle…
He finds the other antari on the ground, his back so comfortably against a truck as if the tree had been waiting for him. No. No, Holland must he felt that too. Can't death wait another second, another breath?
He finds himself moving, and what pulls him is no longer only the thought that no one should be left to die alone. No, he saw what Holland did for this world with the help of Osaron's power. He saw the sadness the loss of life brought to those green eyes, he knew what Holland wanted, what he must have wanted all along. Magic was here now, a mere trickle, but alive, not Osaron's this time. The world's.
He draws blood and "As hasari" slips from his lips before his mind can even remind him there is nothing to be done. The essence of Holland's being has been ripped out of him—this is hardly a wound Kell can heal, but Holland's chest is still rising and falling, slowly, so slowly, his heart still beating, and if only he would open his eyes and see.
"Holland," he says, and louder, "Holland!"
Eyelashes brush against pale skin and Holland's eyelids flutter, but they remain shut.
Something tightens in Kells chest, a ball of panic and loss and regrets (perhaps if Holland stayed at the palace just a few more minutes, he would have lasted a little longer, would have felt what occurred only a little later), before he swallows and pushes down on it.
"It's not dead," he says, letting his gaze trail down the man's arm so he can pretend the strand around his neck aren't white. He follows the bend of Hollan's elbow, the forearm, the wrist, scarred and so vulnerable on the ground, and there, at his fingertips—
It can't be.
The smallest speck of green, a leaf of grass barely having pierced the soil. How? There is nothing but dirt anywhere else he looks, noting but bare ground and leafless trees. And then, a speck of black, a bird in the sky,
A slow, slow breath drags itself through Holland's chest, pulling Kell's gaze back towards the earth. Another droplet of colour catches his eye. He blinks, just to make sure. Right by the first speck of green appears another. Again, just to make sure, he presses two fingers against Holland's wrist. The skin is cold to the touch, the pulse barely still there. Leaving, beating its goodbye from a distance.
He feels the trickle swell, hears the wood whisper again, not in one voice, but in a myriad. King, it seems to say, and more, words he can't make out. Then everything goes still. Cold skin lies beneath his fingertips.
And then he feels the world breathe in, and he understands. A smile brushes his lips and a knot tightens in his throat. He doesn't move. The world keeps breathing around him, carefully, as if it needs to test its lungs after a long rest, but every inhale is larger, every exhale reaches further, spreading out from the centre, and it washes over him and sooths the invisible wound inside him. Some say this was the place where magic died, Holland said before. He knows better now. It's the place where magic is born.
He wants to tell Holland, wants him to see. His London, returning to life. And then the thinks why not, why not, and he says, "I can feel it breathing." Perhaps it was Osaron's fall, perhaps Holland's death, perhaps both—the sacrifice, everything given up for this world. So much Kell doesn't even know.
"It's coming back," he says. His fingers move, wrap around Holland's hand. It's coming back despite everything, because of everything.
He doesn't know where everything begins. With the Dane twins, with a stone, with a shadow king. Choices upon choices, so many that, perhaps, they've never had a beginning. But he knows how it ends. Here, in the wood, breathing in and out with the world, next to the man who saved his world.
Kell stays on his knees for a long, long time, but nobody comes. Nobody will come because there is nobody else who would mourn. Because nobody knows.
But he does, and he is free to walk the worlds. And he remembers the foreign words he heard once long ago, words he's nearly forgotten.
One story comes to an end, another is born.
On vis och.
A fresh start. A good end.
A/N: I was really sad because of Holland dying, so I wet and wrote ... about Holland dying. Makes perfect sense. I accidentally made myself cry, and if that happened to somebody else, of-the-wild-fire (on tumblr) has a Crying over Holland TM club that has a tissue supply. I hope it's okay for me to scout new members.
(Honestly, his death was beautifully written, but it bugged me that White London would come back to life when somebody else would have the throne, and no one would even know that Holland died in the Silver Wood without a grave or anyone at least show their respect if not mourn.)
Please let me know what you thought.
~shades
P. s.: If you spot any mistakes, please let me know.