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Bam doesn’t know why he’s returned back here.
Scratch that, he knows exactly why he came back, even though everything is already prepared for the inevitable battle. There are essentially no more errands or meetings left for him to arrange and he tires of being stared at like a dead man walking. It’s difficult to look at his friends and allies in the eyes when they treat him as though they’re already mourning his ghost.
And it ramps up his own niggling fears and racketing anxieties about the entire endeavor of having to slay the King of the Tower. He’s only human, despite the contrary image set up for him above a golden pedestal as a prophesied boy-turned-god, and he’s terrified of what awaits him at the final wave.
Death, surely, but the question of his own mortality remains hanging in the air. He wonders what it says about him when his thoughts before dying fall first to a certain person, and reckons he might as well cease denying himself of his final wishes.
Final wishes. Does it mean, then, that he’s accepted the inexorable truth of the end? Not that it matters; as long as he’s done what he’s meant to do and saved the people who matter to him, all else are trivialities.
But maybe except for one thing. Let me have this one thing, he thinks, begs silently.
The Floor of Death has no visible changes from the last he’s seen it, which had been years and decades since then. A long time ago yet the memories are fresh in his mind, clear as a glass lake. The sky bleeds red and an even deeper crimson, blood and its coagulation, and the entire floor breathes with the same rhythm of his pulsing heart, welcoming him home.
Bam walks around with an aimless route, unsure where to begin looking. It’s not as if he’s planned this exact moment, after all - meeting the only person who can understand the burden he’s carrying on his shoulders. Carries the same weight, even. The land is empty of inhabitants, long gone and escaped while they had the chance to do so. The battlefield isn’t here, but it might as well have been for the certain tension that hangs in the air, the noose growing tight with each passing second.
But he doesn’t have to wait for long.
Enryu finds him. Not the other way around.
“You look like a lost little lamb,” a voice says behind him and, despite the near-irresistible impulse, Bam refrains from turning around, his heart racing a fraction faster than its normal rhythm. It’s as if he’s appeared out of nowhere, just a slight shift of the wind and the darkening of the red sea above them.
“Not lost, not little, not a lamb,” Bam counters, his own voice just shy of a waver. The snark is a reflex and the shake involuntary. He doesn’t know what, exactly, is it about Enryu that makes him feel like he’s back at the cave - a lost child, a little boy, a sacrificial lamb. A quiet, indulgent hum is the only reply to his words and Bam is almost afraid that the man will go away to wherever he disappears to when he’s needed the most.
Bam draws a deep breath and figures that he’ll have to go through whatever mad reason he’s decided on by coming here. “Why - why do all the paths lead to this? Destruction and death, the opposite of what I’m fighting for when this began? Isn’t preventing that what I’m meant to do?” He doesn’t mean to sound bitter, but the dark tang of it leaves a foul taste on his tongue. “The prophesied savior slaying the big, bad king.”
Nothing is as simple as that and the story is more complex than what it looks like on the outside. Reality compared to the supposed fairytale that was woven in advance for him. Like a tapestry with golden threads running through the cloth. Turn it over and the ugly parts of it are revealed, dull colors with bright red and pitch black stains.
Enryu walks past him, still clad in the clothes he’s appeared in decades ago when everything seemed hopeless and they were losing their people one by one. He looked like a hero then, a knight in shining armor. Except that he decimated half of the enemy rankers in lesser time.
It registers to Bam where they are, standing above a cliff that leads to spilling darkness in the crevice below. He doesn’t remember how he arrived here, but it doesn’t matter now that he’s been found.
"The world doesn’t always sound right when it is first explained," Enryu says. "You were a strange boy in a strange world."
Bam looks at him, can't stop looking at the blood-red curls tickling the skin of his nape. Fire, Bam realizes with a quiet epiphany, like the clues have always been there but he has only just begun to see them. Enryu is fire and Bam is the moth who flies straight towards the flames. "And I was naive enough to think that I could save everybody."
Enryu's back is turned to him, but he can imagine the ghost of a smile on his lips. Bam aches with a strange desire to catch sight of it. The sky lightens, from deep sangria to thorn red. "You were better than me in that regard. I had thought that nobody was worth saving before."
"But you saved me," Bam points out and then, with a sudden swoop in the pit of his stomach, feels distinctly unsettled as though he's revealed something he's not supposed to.
"Because by saving you," Enryu says with a low voice, a reluctant confession and a discomfiting truth, and he swivels around to face Bam, embers sparking in his eyes, "I also saved myself."
“I don’t understand.” Understatement of the millennia. Bam finally sees the smile he’s been searching for, and it sweeps the ground from underneath him.
“You don’t have to.” Enryu shrugs, and the action is so - normal, a plebian gesture that it looks strange to see on a man who has the power to ruin an entire floor. “It is what it is.” The irregular steps forward, his features smoothing into a blankness that fits more to his character, until he’s an arm’s length away from Bam.
Bam can just reach out, extend his hand, touch him with the tips of his fingers - and then what? The desire to find out is an unstoppable tide in him and he doesn’t realize he’s doing it until he can feel the startling softness of the beige coat, the pads of his fingers smoothing out the non-existent creases.
“What are you doing here, Twenty-Fifth Bam?” Enryu asks the question that Bam doesn’t have the answer to.
“Bam,” he says. Insists, really. “Just call me Bam.” He risks another step. “And I don’t think I know how to answer that.” His heart is making an attempt to escape from the cage of his ribs and it’s bordering on pain, the sweet lance of agony shrouding every single beat.
“You want to know that you’re not alone,” Enryu says for him, confessing the tiny shard of secret that Bam has been hiding this whole time. He lifts his hand and cold fingers land on Bam’s cheek, featherlight and breathtakingly delicate. “You’ve been lonely for so long, haven’t you?”
And Bam can almost cry from it - the truth exposed in the empty space between them, a weakness shared and understood.
“You had your friends and allies on the same side, but nobody had the same responsibility as you, and nobody else will because you’ve been carrying it for their sake so they don’t have to suffer the same fate as you.” It’s cruel, the way Enryu says it, as if it isn’t a big deal, as if it’s not shameful to admit such a childish notion.
Bam hasn’t been a child in many, many years. It’s useless to start entertaining thoughts about wanting the sheer simplicity of life in the eyes of someone who hasn’t gone through whatever he had experienced. He clenches his fists at his side, eyes belying the hint of desperation he can feel thrumming within him.
“I haven’t had friends before, people I cared about. It wasn’t something I wanted to bother with when I knew it wasn’t going to last anyway,” Enryu admits. It’s not self-deprecating; merely a statement of fact. “But that’s the difference between us, isn’t it? You were always so ready to offer your heart to those who gave theirs to you. Bordering on martyrdom, or foolishness, depending on how you look at it. And yet, a contradiction.”
A cold finger grazes his fringes, tucking a strand in the back of his ear. “You were selfish, too, and you only cared about those who truly mattered. Everyone else, a casualty. Collateral damage. When you learned that you couldn’t save everyone, you resigned yourself to keeping what you wanted to remain.”
“It shouldn’t have been my responsibility,” Bam rasps out. “Deciding who lives or dies.”
“It should be no one else’s responsibility,” Enryu agrees. “But destiny does not take too well to those who are powerful enough to defy it.”
A pause. Bam closes his eyes and nudges his head against Enryu’s palm. “I’m going to die.” The slide of glacial skin on his face is grounding, a freezing shock of sensation that allows his world to stay spinning on its axis.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Enryu’s tone holds something Bam can’t define. “You may die today or tomorrow or in a thousand years. Death is a subject you are all too familiar with and a stranger all at once.”
“Is that you saying I shouldn’t think about it too hard?” The atmosphere lightens a fraction and Bam permits a small smile to creep on his mouth. He opens his eyes, watches Enryu watching him and something like understanding passes between them.
“Death is both inconsequential and not in the long run. A new era is upon us, no matter who wins or loses.” Enryu’s gaze flickers down to the lower half of his face and Bam’s heart stutters at the considering glint in his eyes, red and powerful and looking all too much like he wants what Bam wants, too. “It’s time for things to change, from the rubble of the earth to the highest points of the sky.”
Bam wants to risk it. For once in his life, he wants to have this for himself, out of pure selfishness, out of merely needing somebody on his side that won’t leave him too easily. “And maybe this can change.” He tries not to phrase it like a question but it still comes out as a half plea and half request.
“Perhaps a token of good luck, then, before the battle,” Enryu murmurs, “or a promise, if you shall want it.”
Bam knows what will happen before it does. Enryu leans down - and it’s strange and relieving all at once, to not be the tall one this time, to have somebody else tip Bam’s chin upwards - and their noses bump softly, testing the waters. Bam can almost taste his breath, ozone and thunder and flames, and all the oxygen in his lungs bubbles to nothing.
Their lips meet and Bam shudders at the tenderness of it, the antithesis to the world crumbling to rubble around them. The entire universe grounds to a halt, tilts on its axis, spins wildly to the left. It ends just as soon as it began. For some reason, it leaves Bam strangely hopeful, instead of disappointed.
He inhales as their lips part and finds breathing suddenly easy. A weight dusted off his shoulders. Another thing to look forward to after this. If there is anything after this.
“Nobody is good at keeping promises,” Bam says. “But I think I want it. If it’s you.” He surrenders to the urge, curling his fingers through the soft strands of blazing red hair. He doesn’t dare lean in for another kiss again. It’ll be hard enough to leave.
However, as always, Enryu somehow knows what he needs without even him being aware of it.
“I believe I’m a man of my word,” Enryu replies, a twitch on the corner of his mouth, and steps away from Bam. The air between them runs hot and cold. Bam likes to think he’s brave enough to tug him closer, feel the heat of his body and the coldness of his fingers, but he’s got a war to win.
Enryu walks away and for the first time since they’ve met, he looks back. “I wish you luck, Twenty-Fifth Bam, and do try not to die this time. I still have a promise to keep.”