Feliciano notices that his rooms, just in the corners, have little flecks of light like the gold on the altarpieces in the churches and in the folds of the icons' robes, flashing almost out of his sight. It must be casing-dust, tracked in on his shoes and the seams of his jacket.
His fingers are no longer scrubbed red-raw from soap, but instead are beginning to develop small calluses on the fingers, faint flashes at the end of the day sparking off from his fingers, and he remembers how after working nights Nonno's hands would seem almost to glow.
And he's made more friends, with Adelheid who works in a millinery store but visits after hours to check on Basch (who Feliciano isn't quite friends with because he's scary) and with Anneliese and Erzsébet and Dieuwer even though they look at him funny sometimes.
The workshop has folded around him, let him in, and it's probably partly because Ewald's been working here for so long that nobody really questions his judgment and partly because since Palatine is closed they're not worried he'll run off and start his own workshop with what they taught him. Ewald's let him off of full-time training, too, so he can just come in during normal work hours.
The workshop has let him in, and there actually is a problem with that.
The men who follow him.
They haven't tried anything yet, because he walks home with Ludwig and Ludwig is very mild and tries not to be scary but he's big, but they might because around half of them used to work for Palatine.
He knows the things they say about him, about how he should have at least tried to keep them in their jobs instead of letting the workshop close, about how he's a coward and a lot worse for joining Theoderic's, and they're honestly the same ones who used to chase him home from grammar school and make Lovino threaten to headbutt them, and—
—and Feliciano is tired of that.
So one day while he and Ludwig are walking along Froster Avenue, just as they pass the pawn shop, Feliciano says "Do you know anything about fighting?"
"Basch and Gi—Gilbert—"—he can say it now, two months later, and Feliciano wants to hold his hand when he sees the momentary flicker on Ludwig's face—"—taught me a little," Ludwig answers. "Why?"
"I was wondering if you could teach me any?"
Ludwig nods. "I could, probably."
It's a little easier to see the stars in fall, sometimes, the air sharpens up but the factories still run.
But now when Feliciano stares out the window, it's not someday. It's soon.
Ludwig is actually very good at giving fighting lessons, which he does whenever there's spare time after work, clearing a little space in the middle of Feliciano's rooms and showing him how to land and block punches.
After, they eat dinner with Ewald around the still-too-big table, and it's almost…family.
Feliciano's had no family but letters for two years, and the change is strangely unstartling until it's already happened.
One day there aren't lessons, though, instead Ludwig had said to please come to the presses after work, and Feliciano hangs around outside and listens to the thud-thud-thud of the presses shaking the street, watching the university tram clank up the street and his breath curling in the air. Ludwig hurries out after a few minutes, holding a package under one arm, and smiles at him. There's ink on his hands, just plain black this time.
"I thought we might be able to go to Speaker's Park?" He says in a rush, not really meeting Feliciano's eyes. "A-and pick up something to eat on the way back?"
Feliciano grins and nods, sliding an arm through Ludwig's.
They trot down Kingsmarch towards Speaker's Park, and make small talk about the run of pamphlets that Ludwig and Yao just finished and the story Erzsébet told Feliciano about the time she and Anneliese had traveled from Snow's Rock all the way down the coast to Saint Dobry, and they sit on the slightly damp grass behind a copse of faintly anemic birches in the park and Feliciano leans on Ludwig's shoulder.
"What's in the package?"
He can almost feel Ludwig's face flush suddenly, warm skin going hot and red, and Ludwig mutters "It's for you," handing it to Feliciano.
"It" turns out to be a scarf, dark blue and kind of lumpy, and a book—oh, the book—
The book is a book of reproductions of famous artworks, and it's all in color, and Feliciano stares at it in silence for a good few seconds before flinging his arms around Ludwig, trying not to hit him in the back of the head with the book, and hugging him so hard before he does a few hasty internal calculations and a wave of guilt washes over him because this book—on a printer's wages—
—"I'd b-been saving up for it," Ludwig mumbles. "For a while. And I made the scarf for you too, because you look cold a lot of the time."
Feliciano is still staring at the book, and he leafs through a few pages and realizes the smile on his face is absolutely huge, and then—and then Ludwig clears his throat a little and slowly, a little shakily, wraps the scarf loosely around Feliciano's neck.
Remembering his manners just in time, Feliciano squeaks "Thank you!" and gives Ludwig another hug, relaxing into his warmth. "I should get you something too, it's only fair…"
"It's fine," Ludwig says quickly.
When Feliciano pulls back Ludwig's face has gone completely red and he can't help but laugh; and when eventually they get up to buy food from a pushcart (it's a little greasy and a little suspect but it's warm and cheap and really the first two are unavoidable and it's not bad) Feliciano tucks the book under his jacket to keep it safe from the autumn mud.
Feliciano's not sure if Ewald would like this.
Ludwig is a star, after all, and Ewald had said not even the others at the workshop knew, and he's already lost Gilbert so he'd want to keep Ludwig close, and Feliciano doesn't know how to ask.
He turns to Ewald one day in the workshop as he climbs off his stepstool and says "So. U-um. M-me and Ludwig—"
"You and Ludwig," Ewald replies, and it sounds a bit like acceptance.
They leave it at that.
Ludwig and Feliciano go for walks at night, sometimes, and the nights are closing in, and in them Ludwig almost glows, faintly, like a streetlamp a long way off through dense fog. They're mostly for talking, these walks, and they never go much of anywhere in particular, and other times they just sit on the fire escape of the tenement and listen to the night sounds of Saint Stanislav and stare at the stars.
This night, they went for a walk, and Feliciano has pulled the blue scarf almost up to his nose, and Ludwig has pulled his hat down over his ears, and then they hear voices outside a bar and there's a light.
It's a strange thing, what they see, some sort of thing like the little machines they have sometimes at carnivals where for ten cents you put your eyes up to a little box and turned a crank and there would be a little picture of a man riding a horse or throwing a hat that would move when you did that, but this isn't the same, it's a woman turning the crank on a box and then there're pictures on a sheet tacked to the wall of the bar.
They move.
Feliciano hurries over, Ludwig hot on his heels, and there's already a little crowd of people watching.
"What is that?" Ludwig murmurs next to him, and Feliciano shrugs.
The woman, short with her hair held back with a ribbon, hands him a flyer.
"Lotte Marchal van de Velde's Image Projector: UNLIKE ANYTHING YOU HAVE SEEN BEFORE." Feliciano reads. "Exciting Adaptations of Plays and Novellas in COMPLETE MOTION. 638 Leveller Street off of Basket."
Ludwig whistles lowly. On the sheet, a boy steps on a gardener's hose and cuts off the water.
"That's…wow!" Feliciano's not entirely paying attention to the action on the screen, but "How do they do that?"
"It's a lot of small pictures going fast?"
"You'd have to draw them all in, and it'd take forever—is it photographs?" Feliciano turns to the woman, who straightens up from the box.
"Yeah. You take a lot of photographs, really small, and then you glue them all together don't touch them the film's unstable. New compound." She grins, almost catlike, and turns to the gathering crowd. "I've got more, anyone want to see another?"
Then she puts another roll of the little tiny pictures into the box and starts turning the crank again, and Ludwig and Feliciano stand in the crowd, breaths fogging, and watch.
When Ludwig and Feliciano return to Old Smithy, they go up the fire escape so as not to bother the Braginskys, and outside the door to Ludwig's and Ewald's rooms—Ludwig opens his mouth, closes it, takes a deep breath, and kisses Feliciano so quickly he's not really sure if it happened.
"I," Ludwig stammers, and "uh," and then finally "good night."
Feliciano catches his hand before he can rush inside, and smiles gently, and kisses him on each cheek.
And the days get even shorter, and the stars shine clear-cold through the fog and snow and smoke, and then.
Feliciano has to remember again what it is stars do.
They go up.
He's known, of course he's known, how could he not have known, but he's made himself not remember because to remember would be to accept that his first real friend, the man who taught him how to fight, the man who smiles at him and always talks to him, has to go.
And he has to remember this because Ewald starts seeing the signs first, and his face becomes drawn and weary and his hair is all white, and then because one night there's a knocking on the fire escape door.
It's Ludwig.
Oh, no—
"In the morning," Ludwig says, throat catching on something. "I've got to—go."
And he does, the faint glow isn't so faint anymore and the snow-acid smell of magic hangs about him, and Feliciano pulls him inside and hugs him close.
"I don't want to," Ludwig half-whispers. "I don't want to leave—"
"I know," Feliciano murmurs back, holding down the tears. "I know. B-but you'll—you can see Gilbert—"
"Can't," Ludwig replies, voice heavy. "He's—two weeks ago, there was—he's been wished on—" And the tears spill over, and Feliciano can't do anything but shush him and try not to yell that it isn't fair.
Half an hour before dawn, Ludwig has to go back downstairs to talk to Ewald.
Feliciano kisses him before he leaves, and says in a voice so close to breaking, "I'll—I'll watch for you, all right?"
That night, the stars have never seemed so far away.