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“Tell me again,” Magnus said.
If Avi had a heart, one that actually worked like it was supposed to, he would say no. He wouldn’t be here at all, tucked away in his temporary quarters on Chrysothemis with Magnus’s big warm body taking up most of his bed. He would have pushed Magnus firmly away when he’d cornered Avi in the hallway and kissed him in his honest and shy and all-consuming way.
It had been strangely familiar, because in this version of reality, Magnus had never actually worked up the courage to go for it with Avi. But he still remembered kissing Magnus in the garden, right before Avi won, and lost, and fucked up so badly that Magnus couldn’t bear it; that Kyr of all people decided things were broken beyond repair and it was time to try again.
But apparently in any universe, Avi just couldn’t help himself. Big surprise. So here he was, Magnus looking straight into his eyes, waiting for Avi to hurt him.
It was funny: Magnus was one of Earth’s finest creations, a big hulking warbreed who’d shrug off any blow. But actually he bruised incredibly easily, just not in a way anyone could see. Meanwhile, Avi was pathetic on the outside, but he knew how to take any kind of punch. Most things had stopped hurting him around age twelve. He’d tried to let Magnus in on the joke once, but he hadn’t laughed.
Avi traced a path from Magnus’s temple to the curve of his ear. In another world Magnus had watched him with a really impressive look of despair on his face and blown half his head off, right where Avi was touching him now. Humans were a uniquely hardy species, warbreeds even more so, but even they were really fucking fragile when you got right down to it.
Magnus turned his head away from Avi’s kiss, refusing to be distracted. He said, “I’m serious.”
“Well,” Avi said, “I was standing there like a gloating idiot, and you took my gun.”
The first time Avi told this story—the first time Magnus asked him, about fifteen minutes ago, really ruining the afterglow—Magnus hadn’t looked at him. Avi had hated that, but he actually hated this more, the way Magnus was watching him, artificially calm. Avi always prided himself on being able to see through the veneer of cheerful competent brute Magnus put up for the rest of Gaea Station, but right now he kind of wished he believed it.
“Okay, no, that’s getting ahead of myself. First I won the war.” He shouldn’t say it like that. He wouldn’t say it like that to Kyr, knowing the way her mouth would turn down in disgust, because she hated nothing more than being reminded of all her own faults. But the memories Yiso had so kindly returned to him weren’t all bad. There’d been triumph too. The look on Kyr’s face had been kind of funny, and also—he won. For all of humanity, and for himself. Avi liked to win, even if it was horrible. Who didn’t? That was as human as anything.
“And I just watched you do it,” Magnus said. Still so calm, calm as one of the pretty artificial lakes Raingold was full of.
He’d tried to skim over this part the first time. Kind of stupid, because how was this worse than and then you blew your brains out? But somehow it was. The way Magnus had said no, and then done nothing about it—Avi didn’t want to tell him that.
But fuck it. Maybe this would finally get the point across. “You said you were never going to stand up to me.” This time he felt Magnus flinch across the small space between them. “That was after you took the gun. It was actually really quick.”
“Comforting,” said Magnus, not really landing the joke. He wasn’t very good at the whole gallows humor thing.
“Kyr caught you.”
“I think you’re skipping a few steps.” Like the blood, and the sound, and how quickly a person went from looking like a person to looking like a corpse. You didn’t have to deal with any of that through a screen. Avi always knew he wasn’t the type who liked getting his hands dirty.
He sat up. “I’m sorry,” Avi said. He had no idea what for, or if he meant it. “I really don’t want to do this, actually.”
Magnus sat up too. He said, still so fucking stupidly calm, “Too bad.”
Avi started to laugh. “Hey, is this why you still wanted to fuck me even after Kyr told you what a nightmare I am?” he asked. “I thought maybe you were just stressed. Master manipulator Magnus. Classic move. I fucked a guy here for rent money, you know. Well, I guess I actually didn’t fuck him. But I kind of did, right? Just as much as you shot yourself.”
No dice: Magnus didn’t storm out, or slap Avi across the face. “I just want you to tell me what happened.”
“Well, I already did, and it actually sucked for both of us, and also, why don’t you ask your sister? She was very notably there.”
Magnus shrugged. “She already told me everything she’s going to tell me.”
“And what, I’m a better target? Maybe I’ve told you everything I’m going to tell you too.”
Magnus reached out. He had big hands, which Avi had always been fond of. His fingers were gentle on Avi’s chin when he tilted it up, so he had to look Magnus in the eyes as he said, “I think you’re capable of anything, under the right circumstances.”
Well, hey. He wasn’t wrong.
Avi jerked out of his grip. He pulled up his knees and put his head in between them, like a kid who was going to get his ass kicked by his mess real soon, and he really thought about it. He thought about winning the war and making Magnus kill himself and saying to Kyr, not even the worst thing I’ve done today. And it wasn’t. Hurting Magnus was never going to be the worst thing Avi did, but for some reason it was always the thing that stung.
“I planned for you being—upset, is the thing. Biggest fucking possible understatement. But I thought, well, Magnus would never hurt me, and he’d probably stop Kyr from hurting me too.” He laughed. “And I guess maybe you would have if you weren’t dead by then! My hero. But I never thought.” He shrugged jerkily, and looked up, and great, now Magnus’s facade had broken, now he looked fucking sad. “I actually didn’t think I’d lose you. I still would have done it, don’t get me wrong. But I really didn’t know.”
“Well, thanks,” Magnus said. “I’m so glad I was an—unintended side effect. What else?”
“What do you want me to say? How you looked? Your sister got a better view, and I’m a coward and I didn’t want to look, so I didn’t.” He had, for as long as he really had the time. Not out of choice: it was just too hard to look away.
“The thing is,” said Magnus, “part of me wants to know what happened. The way you do, like you were there. And part of me doesn’t. And I can’t decide and it’s driving me fucking crazy, so I’m asking you instead.” He snorted. "I guess I still trust you. I'm not very good at not doing that, huh?"
It was like getting a bucket of cold water dumped over his head. “No. You are not going to remember.”
“That’s what Vallie said,” Magnus said, the closest he’d come in this whole awful conversation to smiling. “But it’s not actually her decision. Or yours.”
“Do I look like I’m loving this? You want this? No. Don’t be an idiot, Magnus.”
“Didn’t you ask for it?”
“Sure I asked for it, because I’m a terminally nosy little shit and it kills me not to know things, but you are nothing like me.”
“I know,” Magnus said, instead of arguing like he might have once. “But—I just can’t stop thinking about it.”
Well, neither could Avi. Sometimes Avi woke up and forgot who he was, forgot which one of him was real, and when he remembered he was so fucking angry. Kyr won, and her victory was better, but it was still hers. She’d stolen it from Avi. She’d cheated.
He really missed the agoge, for a lot of reasons, but the biggest one was that he wanted to run that world again. It wouldn’t even take that many tweaks to really win this time. He’d figure out how it could have worked. Just to know. Just in case. Avi knew it was fucked but it was the way he was built: he always had to know, he always had to have a plan, he could talk himself into or out of anything given enough time to run the numbers and measure the costs, and it was the worst thing about him but without it who would he be?
“I can’t tell you anything that matters. I can’t tell you how it felt.” People had never been Avi’s speciality. How could he know what that look on Magnus’s face really felt like? Avi’s despair had always been different. He took it out on everyone, anyone else.
“How did it feel for you?”
“What, dying?
“No,” Magnus said. “Watching me die.”
It had felt like when Avi screwed up a scenario in the agoge, even when he had all the information. Like making a stupid avoidable mistake. Those always made Avi furious and queasy, because he knew he was better than that.
Avi smiled at him, but it felt more like baring his teeth. “Tired of poking at your own wounds? Guess you might as well start in on mine.”
“Sure,” Magnus said, a little bitterly. “Why not.”
“You’re pissed at me for something I didn’t do.”
“I’m pissed because everyone treats me like I’m fragile for something I didn’t even do,” Magnus snapped.
Avi turned to face him then, swinging a leg over to settle into his lap. He took Magnus’s face in both his hands and said, “You want to know how it felt? Bad! It was fucking bad! I killed twenty billion people. You couldn’t live with that, or yourself, or me. You put a gun to your head and you pulled the trigger and it was my fault. You died, and so did I, and your sister is a bitch but she fixed it. There’s nothing else to tell, there’s nothing else to know. If that majo touches you I’ll strangle them myself. This world is real, and the Wisdom is gone, and if I break your heart I want it to have actually happened.”
Magnus tilted his head back in Avi’s grip. Avi’s thumbs were digging in hard at his cheeks, but who fucking cared? Magnus just said he wasn’t fragile. “But it did happen, didn’t it?”
Avi thought about Magnus dead on the floor, half his face gone. The agoge was always real, even when it wasn’t. Magnus was right: it would always be true that Avi had killed him. Even unstoppable bullheaded Kyr couldn’t change that.
“It did,” Avi said. His whisper came out cracked. “So do me a favor and let me stop fucking thinking about it.”
He kissed him, and this time Magnus let him. He was warm and real and very much alive; he wrapped his arms around Avi the way you clung to a life vest when you knew how much it sucked to drown. It was hard to say which of them was holding the other hostage: Magnus’s big arms were comforting, and also a very effective cage. And Avi had always been able to keep Magnus looking at him and wanting him, even when he knew he shouldn’t.
It was nice. It was always nice, with Magnus, in a really simple way that nothing else in the world was. Nice like a garden hidden in a machine made for making war. Even though kissing him wasn’t simple, obviously, based on the conversation they’d just been having: but the trick was Magnus made you think things could be. Just a guy with big hands and the ability to keep himself from getting all twisted up no matter what you did to him. He was so unwavering it had killed him. If Avi was a different person, he could have become really stupid about Magnus. But he was who he was, so instead it was like this, the same as it always had been: Avi finding his way into places he shouldn’t be.
He tucked his face in close to Magnus’s throat. He spoke against the skin there. “Magnus.”
“Hmm?” A rumble against his lips.
There were plenty of things he could say. Avi always had plenty to say. A few good candidates: let’s never do any of this again, or, please tell me that it wasn’t your first time just now even though I absolutely know it was, or, please, please shut me up.
He said, “Next time I decide to do something—insane, criminal, whatever, pick an adjective of choice—next time, I need you to tell me no.”
“Okay, Avi,” said Magnus, in the tone that meant he was just humoring him. He thought Avi was fixed. He thought he’d learned some kind of cosmic lesson, the way brave stupid Kyr had, because even Magnus and his secret vein of cynicism saw the good in people.
Avi could have pulled away, could have put his hands back on either side of his face and looked him in the eye and made him understand that he was serious, really serious, and it wasn’t even about any of the things it should be—it wasn’t about killing twenty billion sentient aliens, it wasn’t about war crimes or justice or being afraid of what he was capable of. It was about the look on Magnus’s face, on a day that never happened in a place that no longer existed: broken open, bleak, unable to imagine a future. Miserable with no way out, miserable in a way even Gaea hadn’t made him, and knowing exactly where his misery had come from. Looking straight at it, straight at the worst thing in the universe, straight at Avi as he died.
Avi could outsmart anyone; certainly Magnus and certainly Kyr. But at the end of the day, in a physical fight, Magnus could stop him from doing anything. He could break Avi’s neck even easier than Kyr could, and wouldn’t that be a nicer way to go? If he really wanted, he could tell Magnus that. He could make himself very clear. He could put Magnus’s hands around his neck and tell him, hey, we can have some fun and practice at the same time. Just like a drill.
But he didn’t actually want to die, and he didn’t actually want anyone to stop him, ever, and he really didn’t want Magnus to know him that well, to understand what kind of viper he was holding so close to his heart. So he stayed where he was, and watched the beat of Magnus’s pulse in his neck.