And life moves on, in a way.
In a way.
Feliciano still talks to Anneliese and Erzsébet and Adelheid, but he really misses Ludwig a lot (they told the rest of the workshop that he'd had to move out to Copperbell on the downs on short notice to work for their newspaper), and oh, Ewald—
—Ewald looks so old and so tired, all the time, and Feliciano has taken to staying long nights at the workshop because otherwise Ewald might not even go home at all, and he stays until Feliciano comes to him and tells him—low voice, always a low voice in the nearly empty workshop, raising his voice seems wrong somehow—that the late tram is almost there, he can work more on the star tomorrow.
The star. Ewald is working on one, solo project, and when he speaks to Feliciano (he does that less, now, he's not really talking much anymore) he won't let Feliciano work on it either even though Feliciano can tell his eyes aren't what they used to be.
I have to make it, he says. Myself.
Ewald does finish the star, in the end.
Excerpt from the Saint Stanislav Herald, 6th of the 1st month, 1685:
"Ewald Beilschmidt, aged 79, died in his home on Lucy Street off of Old Smithy on the 3rd of this month from old age.
He was born in Snow's Rock in 1605, 2nd of the 8th month, to Odoacer and Luetgard Beilschmidt and moved to Saint Stanislav in 1636, becoming a member of Theoderic Beike's star-making workshop. He never married or had children, but adopted two grandsons, Gilbert and Ludwig Beilschmidt (now living in Ivyton and Copperbell, respectively), neither of whom could be reached by the Herald at the time of publication.
His passing will be mourned by the remaining members of Theoderic's workshop."
The funeral is quiet and small, at the little chapel off of Chiswell, and it's all people from the workshop. Basch gives the eulogy, and everyone files past the coffin (wrong, Ewald looks wrong like that, too small, too cold) and then follows it out to the churchyard.
Everyone stands around afterwards at the patch of brown earth surrounded by off-white snow, quiet. Adelheid is sniffling, and Erzsébet's and Anneliese's faces look drawn, and Dieuwer just stares at the ground, and—and Feliciano feels awful because he's not crying, he can't, the grief is there but it won't come.
"We should—" Basch mutters eventually. "We should send up the star. It's what he'd have wanted."
And so they quietly make their way through the slush to catch a tram—half-empty at this time of day—and as they sit and the bumps in the road jostle them and the cold air comes in through the chinks in the sides, Feliciano still can't cry.
The star goes up quite quickly, and when Feliciano gets back home he sits by his window for hours watching for it—should be between Thunderer Gate and Wixon Street, so it'll be a little hard to see out of the window, a little far south—and when it shows up, that is when he buries his face in the itchy wool blanket and cries.
The men who follow him have come back, now that Ludwig is gone, now that Feliciano walks everywhere slowly.
Where's your pet? They ask him sometimes, yell across the street. Where's your pet, shop traitor?
Finally, one day, they try to go after him again.
And Feliciano is sick of being the one they go after, and he picks up his pace as well as he can through the slush, and then the man in front grabs him by the shoulder and hauls him backwards, and—
—and Feliciano remembers Ludwig telling him about this, and he stamps down on the man's foot with the heel of his half-soaked boots as hard as he can and pulls forward, elbowing him in the gut, and breaks into a run.
He doesn't get far, and it's still four against one, but Feliciano is still so damn sick of them, and he wants to hit someone and they're the closest and it takes the greengrocer by Sooty Bridge to break them up.
Katyusha nearly panics when she sees Feliciano that night, sees the bruises and the limp, and she fusses over him and gives him tea out of a samovar, and Anneliese looks at him worriedly the next day at the workshop.
But—but the four don't go after him anymore after that. Maybe it's not worth getting bit and kicked.
Things get better. Maybe. Feliciano sees posters on walls advertising "Lotte Marchal van de Velde's NEW IMAGE THEATER" and Adelheid says they're great but if he thinks about them he remembers breath fogging in the air and how does that work and a warm, if lumpy, scarf and then he sighs and says "Maybe I'll go some other time."
And he passes the door on the floor below him (now someone else lives there, Mikkel his name is) and sees the stars at night and it feels like a weight all along his shoulders.
And sometimes, in his rooms, eating small meals alone at the small but too-large table, he just misses everything—Ewald and Ludwig and Gilbert and Carlino and Lovino and Nonno—so much he doesn't even finish dinner.
"You're getting skinny," Katyusha tells him.
"Your work's getting slower," Dieuwer tells him.
"The rent's due in a week," Braginsky tells him.
"I know," Feliciano tells them.
And then, sometime in the late winter when the snow is a dirty layer on the rooftops, Feliciano sits up all night staring at the stars.
He runs his hand along the edge of the faded red curtain, watches, through the gathering clouds, a star—probably Capet workshop—and another—not sure whose, off north over Shandy Gate—a third and a fourth and a fifth—and at some point, he's not sure when, he just—
—please I don't want to be alone anymore—
—and he rests his head on his knees.
There's a smell, cold and sharp for a second.
Sound—
—stops
When sound returns, it brings a sharp bang with it, as of something landing heavily on the fire escape. Feliciano hurries out, uncaring of the cold metal on his bare feet, and sees someone still glowing faintly, curled up clutching their head. They unfold a little, looking around confusedly, and then light blue eyes meet Feliciano's and there's a flash of recognition in them and Feliciano clumsily kneels down and pulls Ludwig into a hug, shaking—the tears spill over, this time, quietly—and he can't think of anything to say.
Ludwig clutches at him, face pressed to the side of Feliciano's head, and Feliciano holds him and the familiar warmth close.
They stay the rest of the night talking, Ludwig saw Ewald go but he still asks Feliciano about it anyway.
"Do you know—" Ludwig mumbles, around six in the morning. "Do you know, I think it might have been one of Grandfather's stars that—that did this."
Feliciano buries his face in Ludwig's neck.
They visit Ewald's grave a day later, Feliciano leaving crocuses and Ludwig leaving a small necklace, and Ludwig cries a little afterwards.
Feliciano knows Ludwig didn't hear it, but as he had knelt down to lay the crocuses he'd said "Thank you so, so much. F-for everything.".
And meant it.
On Lucy Street just off Old Smithy in Saint Stanislav, near to the slow river that ices around the edges in the winter and floods in the late spring and smells in the summer and fall, there is a tenement. The rain gutters and fire escapes have left streaks of rust down the walls, and floods from years long past have left watermarks on the ground floor, and a sign in the window in careful lettering reads "ROOMS TO RENT- ask for Braginsky". On the top story, four up from the peeling door, there is a tiny window, cleaner than most, with new red calico curtains done half in large, careful stitches and half in small, slightly crooked ones.
In this garret room, there is a bed that is probably too narrow, and a table that is probably too small, and a well-used stove and a very full bookshelf, and on the nightstand there are pictures, dug up, perhaps, from a small box somewhere: one of an old man with flyaway hair, grinning widely, arms around three boys, one scowling halfheartedly in a brand-new uniform, one beaming so hard the corners of his eyes are lost to his cheeks, and one caught mid-fidget; and one of an old man with long hair in a bun and two boys, one grinning with bared teeth and the other ducking his head. There are two ticket stubs from Journey to Space, and there is a faint glow to the corners of the rooms.
The occupants of the garret room with this window are Ludwig Beilschmidt and Feliciano Vargas. Feliciano Vargas once had a family, and he had lost them, and then he had had another family for a very short time, and he had lost them too. Now he has Ludwig, and he has Anneliese and Erzsébet, and he has Adelheid and Basch and Dieuwer and Heinrich, and sometimes he has Alfred. Feliciano has Ludwig, and Feliciano works at Theoderic Beike's star-making workshop and Ludwig works at Timothy Hendriks and Kiku Honda's printing press, and neither of them are alone, and some nights they spend sitting on the too-narrow bed by the window and looking at the stars.
Names of the workshops: Palatine Hill is the spot where Rome was founded, Theoderic was a famous king of the Ostrogoths, Melammu Ummani is reconstructed Sumerian that hopefully means "radiant workers", Saqqara is the necropolis outside of Memphis in Egypt, Capet was the name of the first post-Charlemagne French dynasty. Marce, Atilia, and Thiphilnia are all Etruscan (the pre-Roman/Latin culture in Italy) names, and Renata is Renaissance Italy. Her husband may be the Vatican, but then again, he may not. Odoacer and Luetgard are ancient Germanic names. Also the setting for this AU has been in my head for years and it's quite nice to get to use it.