A/N: The title for this chapter comes from the song 'Bristlecone Pine' by Brenn Hill. It is an anti-war song which was included on his 2013 album Ode to Selway. The album has a number of excellent songs on it that really hit the feels, and is a particular favourite of mine.
I also dedicate this chapter to Riene, for a number of reasons which I am sure she will understand.
She tries to pretend that it is a good sign that Edouard's fever has vanished, tries to pretend it is a good sign that his skin is no longer burning up. But the moment she realised how much his temperature has dipped (it is now firmly a couple of degrees below normal) a chill crept down her spine. It is not, it is never a good sign with peritonitis for a fever to suddenly drop.
He is so pale, so terribly pale, his skin like ash, tinged with grey. And his pulse, when she presses her fingers into his wrist, is thready, barely perceptible.
She could almost cry, could almost cry with the fact that she came here to avoid Konstin, and instead found Edouard in almost as bad a condition.
(Konstin's blood pressure has dropped, has dropped so terribly low it is frightening, but his fever has only spiked, has worsened with his weakness, and Amélie's face was pinched as she whispered all of this, her voice low so that Antoine, sitting beside Konstin, could not hear, could not worry himself even more. He is so weak himself, so exhausted that it must take every fibre of will he has to keep sitting upright. Is he able to sense it, sense the fact that Konstin has only worsened? Sense that he—that he is—that he is slipping away? She hopes not. Oh, she hopes he is oblivious to how ill Konstin has become, how he has worsened in the last few hours. If she could only spare him from knowing that she would. Oh, how she would.)
But she must not cry in front of Edouard, she must not cry. That would only upset him, and it would not do to upset him, not now when he is already so frail.
(Konstin might not survive the night. Even now, even as she sits here, is his heart faltering? Is the terrible, awful strain of his fever causing it to stutter? Have his breaths grown so shallow that they are barely there, only faint occasional gasps? The very thought, the very wondering of it, makes her feel faint.)
As if he senses the fear writhing inside of her, the terrible fear that makes nausea boil in her stomach and shivers wrack her body, Edouard's fingers twitch in the palm of her hand. She squeezes them gently, to let him know she is here, and prays it might be some comfort to him.
He is so terribly ill, too. The sickly sweet stench of rotting flesh lingers in the air, heavy and seeping in spite of the sharp carbolic acid that has cleaned his surgical wound so many times, in spite of the drains leading out of his stomach, in spite of the dressings. She will never be able to get it out of her nose. It will live there forever, imprinted in the scent receptors. The stench of rot.
(The stench of death.)
She should not be sitting here. She does not belong here. She belongs with Konstin, should be sitting beside him and whispering prayers and trying to lower his fever and begging him to live. He has been like a brother to her, has always been like a brother in spite of the fact that he is supposed to be her cousin, in spite of the fact that he is Antoine's lover. (Does he and Antoine being lovers make him a sort of brother-in-law?) It is his hand she should be clinging to now, his hand and not Edouard's, but she cannot bear the sight of Antoine, cannot bear to see him sitting beside Konstin, looking so pale himself, tears trickling silently down his face and his hand wrapped around Konstin's own whispering to him in Persian. She has never been fluent in Persian, only ever managed to pick up a few small phrases, but she knows the sort of things he must be saying, knows the sort of pleas he must be making, and she cannot bear to hear them in any language.
Edouard's eyelids flutter, very slightly, and she holds her breath, willing them to open, willing his eyes to appear so she can see them, just once more. And she leans closer to the bed as if that will make him open them, will make him wake, and in the next moment they do flicker open, and her breath catches in her throat so that she makes a soft whimpering noise at the sight of his wonderful green eyes, dulled now with his illness.
For long moments he simply looks at her, his eyes roving over the planes of her face, and she dare not speak, dare not breathe in case the illusion shatters and it turns out she has dreamed him conscious, has dreamed that he is looking at her when he is really still sleeping, is really still lost to the world.
He swallows, and his lips part, his fingers tightening around her own, their grip so weak, the skin so cold, but tightening nonetheless, and she cannot help the whimper that slips from her throat at the feel of his touch.
"So—so beaut—iful. So beautiful." His voice trembles, the words faint, and she swallows the pang of pain in her heart, swallows the desperation to pull into her arms and hold him, just hold him, and try to force him to cling to life. (He cannot die. It is wrong that he is so weak, wrong that he is so ill. A sin! It is a sin greater than any other that he is suffering like this, a sin greater, a hundred, a thousand times greater than any that Konstin or Antoine may have committed in loving each other. Edouard needs to get well, he needs to, he must pull through.)
His lip twitches, very slightly, and in spite of herself, in spite of every cell in her body screaming at her that it is wrong, that she is not supposed to do such a thing to a patient (but she cannot think of him as a patient, not now, not ever), she leans in and presses her lips, ever so lightly, to his own. He whimpers, and she feels a tear damp against her cheek, though whether it is his or hers she cannot tell, and does it really matter? Does it matter whose tear it is? It is theirs, both of theirs equally. That is all it can be.
She draws back, finds his eyelids have slid shut, and they open again, only half, shining with tears as they regard her. She leans in again, and presses her lips lightly to the corner of his mouth, and this time he sighs, and leans into her.
What can she say? What is there that either of them can say? Nothing. There are no words that fit, no words that could do him justice, that could do justice to the tangled knot of feelings tightening in her chest, so she leans in again, and presses another kiss to the corner of his mouth, to the pale white lips that have reddened now, and one to his cheek, and one to the edge of his eye, his tears salty on her tongue, and one to his forehead. So many kisses, tiny little kisses, and when she is kissing his hair the press of lips to the back of her hand is soft, and she realises, only then, that he is kissing her back.
She feels it, when his grip on her hand slackens, and she pulls back in time to see his eyes roll as the consciousness bleeds from him, and he sinks limply back into the bed. But there are no tears left within her to cry, and her lips are stinging from their kisses. She has never kissed a man before, not like that. Has never peppered a man's face with kisses and her lips are tender from it, sensitive, like the tenderness in her heart.
Slowly, ever so slowly so as not to disturb him, she lays her head down on the pillow next to his. He does not stir, and she tries not to hear the hoarse edge to his breathing as her own eyes flicker closed though she will not sleep, she cannot sleep, not now. And she tries to think of him as he was, as he must have been, before all of this, before these last terrible days, standing tall and proud next to Konstin. Not as tall as Konstin, because it would be difficult to be as tall as Konstin, but tall nonetheless, his green eyes bright and his fingers elegant but strong, and a suppressed smile lurking about the corners of his mouth, dark hair slicked back.
He must have cut an impressive figure.
What she would not give to have seen him, to have known him, before this.
He swallows, and sighs, breaking in on her thoughts as he whispers, his voice so very faint, fainter than it was, "Three days of…lying on this hillside…have left me very stiff." She raises herself to look at his face, to see if he has woken again, but his eyes are still closed, his lips parted only a tiny bit, and he does not stir as she lays a hand on his forehead and smooths back a curl of hair. He does not stir, only breathes softly. He must be asleep, must be dreaming of something.
But even as she tries to tell herself that he is dreaming, his words replay in her mind. Three days of lying on this hillside have left me very stiff.
Three days.
Very stiff.
And she cannot help but wonder, the anxiety writhing afresh in hergut, if he somehow knows that he will never walk again.
The tears trickle from the corners of his eyes, and he does not try to stop them. What does it matter if he is crying? He has every right to be crying. No one has said anything (all trying to spare him in his own delicate condition), but he knows, he knows that there is no good news. He knows there are no signs of improvement in Konstin. He knows it, he does not need them to tell him that. It is plain to see, Konstin's face paler than ever, his breaths weaker, and his pulse beneath Antoine's fingertips flutters too fast. There have been surgeons, and nurses, and Marguerite even looked in what seems a long time ago now, and none of them have said a single damn thing to him, have whispered to each over in their own codes that he cannot make sense of.
…hypotensive…tachycardic…
What are words like that supposed to mean, anyway? He can see Konstin is not getting better, can see that he has only gotten worse. He does not need big words to tell him that.
(There is a part of him, a small part of him, grateful that there is no clock in this room, grateful that his watch is somewhere that is not in his hand. He does not need to hear the soft ticking of clock hands to know that time is growing short, to know that there can only be so many hours left before something changes, one way or the other.)
Konstin has not spoken at all. It has been so long since he has spoken, so long since he murmured something even indistinct. He simply lies there, drawing panting breaths, his good eye open only the barest slit so that all Antoine can see of it is a glimmer of golden iris. (Does he see ghosts with that barely parted eye? Is Erik sitting here even now, keeping a vigil too? Or Nadir, or Darius, or all three of them? Is that why Konstin has called for them so much, when he was speaking, because he can see them? The questions are unbidden, but they keep coming and coming.)
His lips are so pale, now, faintly tinged blue in a shade that pulls at Antoine's heart, and he leans in, and kisses Konstin gently at the corner of those lips, and again, and again, each kiss a promise, each kiss a plea, each kiss a declaration. It does not matter who sees! What does it matter? So help him but if Konstin is dying (and he's not, he can't be, he's not allowed no matter what troubled looks are in the glances passed back and forth between surgeons and nurses), if Konstin is dying he's going to kiss him and let them think what they will! He has seen other men kiss each other, sweet platonic kisses and yes, sometimes there was alcohol involved, but what does that matter? What does anything matter now?
If Konstin is dying, and if it would give him some comfort to be kissed, then so help him but he is going to kiss him. Who could begrudge him a kiss now?
And though his own voice is hoarse, and his own throat is scratchy with all he has spoken, Antoine keeps talking, keeps whispering, even between kisses, the Persian tripping from his tongue to shield the words he needs to say.
"You need to live. You need to hold on, for me, Konstin, for me. I need you. Oh, how I need you. I could not bear it without you, you know that. You've always said I'd fall apart without you and I would! I would. I love you too much to—to—"
And he kisses him again, another kiss light to those lips, and one to his cheek and it comes to him, vaguely, a story he heard years ago (a story Konstin told him years ago, as they lay folded in each other's arms) of the British Admiral Nelson at his death, asking Captain Hardy to kiss him.
Kiss me, Hardy.
("I think I should quite like to be kissed like that if I were coming to the end." "Don't talk about such things, Konstin." "Antoine—" "I don't wish to think about it.")
Kiss me.
Christine is not certain what it is that draws her up to his room. The need to be close to him, perhaps. (Though if it were truly the need to be close to him, she would go to the Rue de Rivoli. He always spent more time there, as a child and after, and his room here, in this house, is one which he has only ever infrequently visited, though it is where he stayed when he was last home on leave. It feels too strange to go to—to the other place, he whispered, a faint lingering sadness in his eyes.) Whatever the reason, it is to his room she finds herself wandering, the room where he has spent infrequent visits, the room where he lived in between terms at Saint-Cyr, and where he spent two days in bed after he finally, finally returned from Persia.
(Nadir told her it was the exhaustion that kept him in bed, insisted that Konstin was merely weary from travelling, but there was that cast to his eyes as he said it, that wariness, and she knew, she knew he was keeping something from her, some secret that would worry her, but she tried to tell herself it was only because of his own conflicted feelings about his home country.)
(It was opium. It was the fact of Konstin's opium issue while he was out there, the one that Antoine had been powerless to help him with and which Konstin only confessed to her months later, when she finally told him about Erik's morphine addiction. It made everything easier to bear, he whispered, his voice hoarse, and all she could do was pull him into her arms, and try not to think of how much he sounded like his father. It helps to keep the nightmares at bay, whispered to her so long ago, followed by a half-apologetic twist of his lips. I need it, Christine, I need it. She is only thankful that she never had to see her son drugged with those fumes, thankful that Antoine, eventually, managed to break him of it before they came home.)
She stands before the door for long stretching minutes, willing herself to open it, willing herself to step back in and see it as he left it, on the day he returned to the Front. She has not been in here since the night before he left, when she sat on the edge of his bed and held his hand as if he were a boy again and not an army officer, not a Commandant, and he promised, his voice faint, that he would come back. I swear I will come back, Mamma. I swear it.
(And she sat with him, and kissed his hand, and kissed his forehead, and stayed there softly telling him the same stories of his father that she whispered to him when he was small, until he drifted into sleep, his breathing evening out, and it was then and only then that she permitted the tears to slip from her eyes.)
She draws a deep breath to steady herself, and pushes the memory away. There are enough ghosts already without her making more.
The door opens easily beneath her touch, but she does not find the room empty as she expected. Instead she finds Émile, sitting on the edge of the bed, cradling a book in his hands. He raises his eyes when he hears the creaking of the door, and they are red-rimmed and puffy, his face washed out under the light.
"Mamma," he whispers, the tears shining wet on his cheeks, and it is all she needs to hear, all she needs before she is sitting beside him on the edge of the bed, and drawing him into her arms. And though he is taller than her (only a shade) he leans into her chest as if he were a small boy again, and she rocks him, the tears trickling from her own eyes. "He can't die, Mamma," he whispers, his voice thick and muffled, "he can't die."
And though she aches to tell him he won't die, aches to tell him Konstin will live, the words all catch in her throat so that she cannot speak them, and she can only rock him, can only rock him, her heart twisting tight, so tight it is hard to breathe, and pray that somewhere, faraway, Konstin is still breathing.
Whispers in the dark and he cannot hear the words, only a soft shush. He strains his ears, tries to snag the trail of one voice, the most precious voice in the world, but it slips from his fingers, his grasp too weak to hold it. That voice. He would do so many things for that voice. Walk into a hail of bullets if he thought he would protect that voice.
The breath of it is as soft as silk on his lips.
There is light in the distance, faint light glowing softly, and if he tries to reach for it the pain eases. So much pain, and he cannot tell where—which part of him it is in. He is a mass of dull throbbing pain.
A hand squeezes his, the fingers cool and gentle threaded between his own. The voice that goes with that touch he can understand, hears it as clear as ever as it whispers, "The choice is yours, my dear boy. The choice is yours." And there is the impression of tears shining in golden eyes softly lit.
Choice? What choice? What is there for him to choose? To lie here, the pain constantly eating at him? To follow that vague light, and if he looks it it shifts away so that he needs to look again, chase it, and hope that it takes the pain with it?
Mumbled words, faint, the most precious voice in the world breathed against his throat. "I need you" and he tries to answer back, tries to collect the words together, I need you too, but the darkness is too heavy, and it pulls him under again, the light fading from the distance.
"I love you so much, Konstin, so much…"
With his head lying on the pillow next to Konstin's, Antoine whispers the words straight into his ear, and prays, silently, that he is able to hear them, able to cling to them.
f he thought his words of love could tether Konstin to life, he would whisper every word of love he has stored within him for sixteen years and more, every single one of them, and let them be in French if it would keep him alive. What would it matter, if they all understood? He loves him, he loves him, he loves him, and if that fact alone could keep Konstin alive, then surely nothing else could matter. But his words are not enough, and so much more is needed than any word from the depths of his heart.
He presses his face closer to Konstin's, so that his lips are brushing his cheek, and his thumb is slow rubbing circles into the back of his hand. "I need you. I need you."
Marguerite does not know his name. She feels like she should, as if she is doing him some sort of terrible injustice by not knowing it. She knows his rank (Capitaine, like Edouard, and her heart twists painfully at the thought of Edouard but she had to leave him, there were casualties coming in, she had to), knows his wounds (bullet to the left shoulder which travelled down into his chest tearing several blood vessels before lodging in his spine. They plugged the entry wound at the dressing station and sent him immediately on to here, and all the time he was still bleeding inside, growing weaker and weaker), knows he was in a great deal of pain before the first dose of morphine (to be expected), knows he is going to die.
But she does not know his name. And she should know his name. It is only right that she know his name.
She cannot take her hands off him to read it off his chart. One hand is supporting him, keeping him lying on his right side (his own request, hoarsely rasped) and her other hand is rubbing his chest (he murmured that it helped to ease the lingering pain that the morphine was unable to take away), knuckles digging into his breastbone each time his breath falters, reminding him to draw another one. (Why is she reminding him? Dumas has already attended him, given him Extreme Unction. He will slip away in the next minutes, an hour, maybe. His is a hopeless case. Carrière confirmed it with the grave set of his jaw as he examined the x-rays before looking at her with his lips pursed and murmuring, "Nothing to be done. Keep him comfortable.")
Nothing to be done.
Keep him comfortable.
(Will those words be about Konstin next? About Edouard? The loss of even the slightest glimmer of hope? Her heart twists painfully. Please, God, don't let them be about either of them. Please.)
"Is—" The word is so faint she leans closer to hear him, his breath a whisper as he gasps again, "Isa—belle. Isa—"
"Ssshhh." She is shushing him before she ever thinks about it, bringing her lips close to his ear to be sure he can hear her (will he be able to make sense of her after all of the morphine? The blood loss? The pain?), so close a curl of his hair (dark brown, almost black) brushes her cheek. "Don't try to speak. You'll only waste your strength." And you have little enough of it already, she thinks, privately, and swallows the thought.
He moans, trembling beneath her hands, and in the light from the oil lamp she sees a tear glisten on his cheek. "No. No. Tell—tell her I—I'm sorry. Ssss—sor—ry." The air whistles in his throat, and Marguerite has to blink back stinging tears, a lump tight in her throat.
"You can tell her yourself when—when they invalid you home." Her words are soft though the lie is a blatant one, bitter on her lips. It is always better not to tell the patient they are dying. Sometimes they lose hope, and stop fighting, and when they stop fighting—she cannot bear it when they stop fighting.
"T—too kind." His voice is fainter than a moment before, and is she imagining it? Or can she hear a faint trace of a smile? She must be imagining it, she must be. "Far…too kind." He coughs, a terrible wet cough that makes him shake against her and she can hear the blood gurgling in his throat. With the hand supporting him she rubs circles into his back, trying to ease his breathing as he coughs and splutters, and she pulls back, enough to see the trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.
The coughing and retching stretches on, and Marguerite cannot think when she is trying to help him breathe, trying to force his spasming lungs to expand properly. Coughing and choking and choking and coughing and more blood trickling until at last he swallows and lies limp, gasping weakly. "K—kiss me." The request is barely more than a breath, and before Marguerite has time to question it she is leaning in, pressing her lips gently, infinitely gently, to his cheek. He whimpers, his throat working convulsively and she sees a tear shining in the corner of his eye before he whispers, "H—hold me."
Who is she to deny the request of a dying man? What gives her that right? Would it bring him more comfort, for her to wrap her arms around him and hold him, than if she were to keep trying to force him to breathe?
Yes. The voice in her head is resolute, and she nods to himself though he cannot see her, and lowers herself carefully, fully onto the bed. Pressing herself to his back, she wraps her arms around him, one hand splayed over his heart, feeling the fluttering of it within his chest as one heavy-lidded grey eye rolls to regard her.
"Tha—ank you." His eyes slip closed, and he sighs, a fresh trail of blood running from the corner of his mouth that she wipes away gently with a damp cloth.
"You're welcome," she murmurs, and he swallows, gasping once, twice, three times. The silence stretches on, and he does not draw another breath, and it is a mere minute later when the fluttering in his chest ceases.
Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Marguerite moves her hand, presses her fingers into his throat, but try as she may, shift her fingers as she may, she cannot feel the flickering of a pulse. Tears trickle down her cheeks as she leans in, and kisses his cheek gently, one more time. "I'm sorry," she whispers, and the words are not enough, cannot begin to capture the aching heavy in her chest, for him, and for the Isabelle that he so softly asked for, and for Edouard and all of the kisses she gave him earlier. "I'm sorry."
The hand is soft on his shoulder, shaking him awake. "Commandant. Commandant." Is it Thibault, calling him, ready with the latest news from the line? No. Not Thibault. A woman's voice. A woman's?
His eyes flicker open, and his vision is blurred. It takes a moment for the room to swim into view, and he finds himself with a painful cramp in his back, tight down at the end of his spine. He does not see any woman, sees only the length of a pale arm, his hand curled around someone else's. Someone else's hand. Who—
Konstin.
Konstin. It all comes back to him in a rush. Konstin's blood pressure had dropped so low, his pulse was so faint, each breath so shallow, and the looks passing between the surgeon and the nurse were grave, and his fever would not go down and—and—
Did he die? Is he dead? Is that why she's waking him now, telling him the awful news? Konstin died while he slept. He let himself doze off and Konstin died because of it. He can't be dead. He can't be. He can't.
The nurse is saying something, words that reach his ears in snatches even as his stomach churns but there is nothing in it to bring up, the muscles all clenching painfully, and he hunches over, groaning, but not because of the pain, not because of the burning pain.
Konstin can't be dead. He is not allowed to be dead. If Konstin dies then he, Antoine, he is supposed to go with him, supposed to follow him. He cannot live without him, cannot bear to live without him, the very thought makes him ill and besides, Konstin can't be trusted anywhere on his own, not for very long and not even after death. He'll hurt himself or something will go wrong or—or—
Keening reaches his ears, distant keening and his throat is so tight it's difficult to breathe but why does he need to breathe if Konstin is not? What is the point in breathing without Konstin?
The nurse is shushing him, her hands wrapped his arms trying to steady him, but he does not want to be steadied, does not want to. Let him shake here forever, until his own heart stutters to a stop! It has no right to beat if Konstin's is not, no right-
He needs to see him. He needs to see his face, just once more. They'll try to pull him away, they'll cover him up so that he cannot see him, but he needs to see him, needs to see him and kiss him and— and he raises his head, swallows down the bile that burns his throat, and his eyes fall to Konstin's face, Konstin's white dead face—
And finds a trace of colour in his cheeks, finds his lips a little less blue than they were, than they should be. He is dead. Dead! Why is there colour in his face?
Antoine's breath catches in his throat and his fingers scrabble at Konstin's wrist, bury themselves in that vein that runs from beneath his thumb (radial artery, a whisper of Konstin's voice corrects him), expecting to find nothing, expecting only stillness, expecting—
Not expecting to find the fluttering of a pulse. But it is there, definitely there, stronger than it was before and he sets Konstin's wrist down, raises his hand and presses his fingers into Konstin's throat, shifting them ever so slightly and—and there it is again, the same pulse. The same real, pounding pulse.
Tears sting his eyes and he gasps, blinks them away and it is now, only now that he is able to see the stir of the chains around Konstin's neck, able to see the rise and fall of the Saint Anthony and the wedding band where they lie on his chest in time with his breaths, and the nurse's words reach him at last.
"…all right, Commandant, all right. He's all right. His fever broke while you slept. He's rallied.." Fever broke. And Antoine can see the faint sheen of sweat on Konstin's forehead, the soft, slow movement of his good eye beneath the lid.
He is alive. Konstin is alive.
Barely has he time to register the thought, when the room spins, and grey spots dance in front of his vision, and he is falling, falling, falling.
"Oh, Christine." Cool lips pressed lightly, hesitantly to her own, fingers brushing over her cheek. She sighs and leans into that touch, feels the lips come again, gentle on her forehead. "Oh, my poor darling Christine. How I've missed you so much. How I've regretted that I could not be there for you, to help you."
He falls silent, and though she cannot see him in the darkness she reaches out, and her fingers brush the soft silk of a shirt. He always wore silk, always insisted that he look his finest and silk suited him so well, his shirts tailored to perfection.
A cool hand curls around her own, dwarfing it, cradling it. "Our poor boy will be well now, I promise. He's had such a difficult time, but he fought so bravely." Arms wrap around her, pull her close, and she does not resist, feels the pumping of a heart beneath her ear that she has not felt in so long.
He nuzzles into her hair. "I am so proud of him, Christine. So proud, of him and of you and—and even of de Chagny, for taking such good care of you both, and for being there when I could not. I love you, so much. And I've always loved you. Rest well now, my darling." And with a sigh, a soft lingering sigh, she feels the arms slip away, and though her heart aches to take them, to cling to them and keep him here, she cannot reach out to find him.
A/N; I know. It's a big difficult chapter to deal with. But I hope you did not find it too painful!
Another bit of historical context! Though homosexuality was seen as highly immoral as discussed at the end of the last chapter, it was not uncommon for men to kiss each other in moments of high emotion, and Antoine kissing Konstin in this chapter was inspired by a scene in the film Wings from 1927, exemplifying how not-unusual it would be to kiss your best friend as he is dying.
"Kiss me, Hardy" are of course, as mentioned, the words spoken by the real Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson as he lay dying after being wounded at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and were addressed to Captain Hardy. Hardy kissed him on the cheek, and then on the forehead.
The wounds of the unnamed Capitaine that Marguerite attends to were inspired by those sustained by Nelson at Trafalgar. The Death of Lord Nelson by William Beatty, M.D. was my primary source for that section. Nelson, too, was shot in the left shoulder with the musket ball travelling into his chest, doing a great deal of damage there before tearing through his spine (between the 6th and 7th vertebrae) and lodging in under his right shoulder. He lived for approximately 3 hours and 15 minutes afterwards, and I've been somewhat fascinated by him this week so paid homage to him in this chapter.
Up next: No spoilers for the next chapter either