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The sky is bright when he wakes. Brighter than he's ever seen it, even, and thankfully far different than it was in Myriad's plane - he must have been out for a few hours, because by the looks of it, it's sunset. The clouds are dark red, fitting the smell of blood still in the air. Coming from him, probably. The sun is forcing the sky to bleed into various shades of orange and yellow and pink, casting soft, pale light over the fallen city of London. It glints off the metal of his legs, his knee being pulled up just enough for it to shine into his eyes, and through it all is an arrow of near-black smoke, raising front where they are and mingling with the clouds.
Right. Best get going, then.
Zolf pushes himself up, leaning heavily on a piece of debris beside him for support when his vision goes cloudy, and pushes himself up so his legs can move into a standing position.
And then they don't.
Zolf pauses. Tries again, tries using the blessed prosthetics he's gotten so used to, tries to stand -
Nothing.
"Oh, bloody hell," he mutters to himself, and summons a disk to climb onto.
Or, at least, he tries to.
It isn't a spell failure - he knows that feeling well enough, from his early days with Poseidon; the feeling of gripping at the divine power and the very same power ripping itself away, unused to the touch. That isn't the feeling he gets now.
The hope is there, and yet the magic isn't.
Shit.
The sky is fading into shades of violet, the color of the clouds cooling out of the wine red color, and he can see stars beginning to peek through the darkness. It feels like Myriad is taunting him.
Not much he can do about that now, though, is there?
He sighs. "Little help here, anyone?" His voice is scratchy, unlike it was in Myriad's - probably the smoke, since, considering the dimming sky and the stiffness in his joints, it's probably safe to assume he's been laying there for a while. "Bloody legs're broken."
He hears Wilde before he sees him, hears the quiet click of those damned heeled boots he always wears and somehow manages to survive in - he and Hamid nearly give him heart attacks every time he sees them run - and turns his head over to look at him.
Wilde is...huh. He's not a bad sight, he's incapable of that half the time, but he is an odd sight, all the glamour and illusions abandoned, freckles and eyebags and slightly crooked teeth visible to anyone looking close enough, and Zolf can't stop the dread that forms in his stomach at that. The idea that maybe it isn't just his problem makes his heart feel heavy.
The way they're facing means that Wilde is covering his few of the sunset - and those damned stars, thank the gods - and causing the light to settle onto him, reflecting off of his hair and almost making him glow without a drop of magic needed. The man kneels down next to him, head still blocking the bright glare of the sun, and Zolf hates just how worried he looks when it seems like they've finally won.
"Heya," he says, and he tries to keep his voice casual, but it's hard with wide brown eyes staring at him, almost gold in this lighting. "Well. Think we did it."
Wilde sucks in a breath, and the light shifts around him. "Is this one of those times where I should be ecstatic and you're just...you know, keeping it back? Or is this one of those things where there's an enormous and terrifying but?"
Zolf's never heard his voice so flat before. It's not the voice he'd use during quarantine, when he shut himself off and his voice was filled with nothing, just emptiness where the words should be - no, it's a new tone, and Zolf finds himself making Campbell proud with the thought that he wants to hear all the sounds and voices and harmonies that Wilde can make. His voice is flat and pressing down on so much hope that Zolf should be able to feel from him, should be able to see it radiating from him.
"No, I - I think we did it. My legs are...off? Broken. Can't use 'em. So that's - great, erm - oh, come -"
Wilde is holding tightly onto him before Zolf even registers that he moved, and Zolf pats his back and holds him tighter as he feels the bard's shoulders shaking with his sobs. He's never seen him cry before, not even in the worst of moments, and he pushes away the wonder of how long it's been since he really, truly cried.
He's still warm. He's still so, so warm, warmer than any human should be without magical means, and he can feel that, for now at least, their magic is gone, but Wilde is warm and that fact is a glimmer of hope in a world both filled and deeply deprived of it. Maybe their magic will never return, or maybe it will, and maybe right now it doesn't really matter, because the two of them are here, miraculously alive, miraculously together, and the pain of everything else is something they can deal with later. The world will wake up but the two of them can have this, the two of them can take this moment for themselves and hold it as close as possible until inevitably Carter drags Barnes along to turn their embrace into a group hug. It's just them right now, and for now, that is all they need.
"Guess we did have it, eh?"
Wilde let out a watery breath of a laugh, burying his face in the crook of his neck. "I suppose we did."
"The hell were you doing back there anyway?" Zolf tried to put some bite into his voice, but he's not sure it worked. "Almost thought you were about to die a third bloody time." Wilde doesn't look up, but Zolf can hear the smile in his voice despite the occasional sniffle.
"I was killing my old boss. I'm afraid it didn't seem like you were doing a very good job of it."
There was a long, long pause before Zolf processed what that meant.
"You were what?"
Still not lifting his face, Wilde gestured somewhere with his arm, and Zolf's gaze traveled that direction to find a mess of a creature almost unrecognizable as a dragon, ship still stuck in its body, crumpled and dead on the ground, its tail not too far from where Zolf is guessing Wilde woke up.
"Sound Burst," Wilde said, his voice still managing to be smug around the thick emotion, "is not the strongest of spells, but the resistance of a dragon is in the scales, darling."
"You killed a dragon."
"A good use for my last spell, I think. Poet's Corner isn't too far; I believe that made it stronger."
He sighed, resting his head back on Wilde's shoulder. Despite the pain of his burns still stinging, the man's warmth was more comforting than words could express.
"What the bloody hell do we do now?"
The answer should be rebuild. The answer should be keep working, keep going, because the last two years may have been hell but there's still more to do.
Instead, Wilde shifts his position, meets his eyes, and flashes him a grin, tear tracks smeared across that stupid, lovely face. "I believe you owe me a holiday."