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a warrior lays in the grass, his armor cold and still amidst a swaying sea of green and yellow and red. he is motionless as a stone, his body smeared with war. flowers stretch up towards the sky around him, desperate, drinking in all of that warm golden sunlight. there is silence aside from the wind and the cicadas.
seonghwa knows it; nectar and a bed of poppies for a tired knight.
he’ll paint it if the gods ever let him.
“you can’t sit with him forever.” jongho says. “you’ll scare him. his soul will stay put if you do.”
“let it.” seonghwa responds, knees pulled to his chest. “let him rest a little while longer.”
“you’re not very good at being death.” jongho observes. he’s not there, but his presence is. his voice. it wraps around seonghwa and ruffles his hair in the way that wind does. the way jongho does, because he is wind.
seonghwa doesn’t bristle. he lets the soft breeze kiss his skin, lets the cerulean sky settle on him. “so i’ve been told.” he says. his voice is quiet and gentle in the way that good deaths are. this boy, this knight, was never made for war. seonghwa can see it in the air that surrounds him, the shimmer of energy. he reaches forward, brushes his fingertips across the knight’s armet, and then he tugs it upwards.
he is beautiful in his expiration. high cheekbones and thick eyelashes– rows of them that lay against his paling skin. he would look like he was sleeping if it were not for the unnatural blue color of his lips. an uncomfortable feeling tugs at seonghwa’s chest, right where his heart would be if he had one.
“i did not want to take you at first,” seonghwa tells him, armet cradled in his lap, “but i think your heart is too good for war, and war gave me little choice.”
the knight’s hair shifts, falling delicately across his eyes, and seonghwa can almost see it– the faint apparition of jongho as he ruffles his fingers through the brunette tresses. jongho always does that to things he is fond of.
“let him go.” jongho says.
seonghwa shakes his head. this heart, which is pure and rare and precious, has known very little peace in its life. seonghwa will let him lie until his soul is ready to go on its own.
it takes several hours for it to happen. the sun has dipped beneath the horizon, and the last of the light has given way to moondark. but he shimmers, blue and beautiful and made up of all the good things, all the pretty things. he is there but he is not, dressed up in a tunic and slacks, and seonghwa knows that this version of him never saw battle.
“i did not think death would be patient.” he says, and his voice is gentle. soft. too good, seonghwa selfishly thinks, for life.
death extends a hand. “come, hongjoong.” he says, “let me take you home.”
hongjoong’s fingers are warm when they brush seonghwa’s. his ghost is warm as it was in life, and his skin returns slowly to its natural pallor, the blue fading away beneath the light of the moon. “i want to say goodbye.”
it never gets easier seeing someone bid their body farewell. hongjoong doesn’t let go of seonghwa’s hand as he ponders it, the breeze in his hair, the preternatural stillness of his diaphragm. “i thought i would feel scared, but…”
“death has no hold on those who can not know it.” seonghwa responds.
hongjoong bows his head in reverence to his body, the very home of his soul for the past twenty six years of his life, and he thanks it. i am grateful for you, and i am sorry for not loving you more, he says, though seonghwa pretends not to hear it.
they stay a while, and then hongjoong turns and he looks death in the eye. “I’m ready.”
the afterlife welcomes hongjoong, gates flung wide, and there is celebration.
“why are they celebrating?” he asks, tentative as a thousand or more souls reach for him. “i didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
“you were a good soldier.” seonghwa responds.
the confusion in his voice is tangible. “i never killed anyone.”
seonghwa just smiles at him.