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One, two, three.
Pantalone presses a finger to the Doctor's broken wrist. Counts the heartbeats. Slowed, but still somewhat human.
Somewhat.
Outside, a blizzard rages.
One-two-three, one-two-three.
“Wake up,” chides Pantalone, looking over at the body limp on the bed. “What am I to do if you die?”
He is falling. His heart is plummeting, down, down into oblivion, from the events of today.
The Descender, upon them both. The metallic clang of a dull blade.
Mora spilling, followed by blood, snaking across the floor, a crimson serpent of Liyue's folktales. Then a stifled scream, and a figure in black carrying one in white, running for the first time in many moons. Running away from the Traveler, and from reality.
Now the Regrator restlessly paces the room. He spits curses at anyone who dares approach him, and slams the door in his colleagues' faces. Even with imminent danger threatening to cut his fragile heart open, he needs the Doctor for himself, and himself only.
Marks of insomnia form under glaring golden eyes, a testimony to his undiminishing hope, his determination, his need to have the limp figure wake. He discards his rings, slips off his gloves, revealing callused but manicured hands, and for the first time in years, begins to bite at them.
The Doctor continues to lie there in silence. His bandaged wounds, his stitched skin, his expression– almost as if wounded– are painful to behold.
“Wake up,” hisses Pantalone, agitatedly picking at his half-destroyed nails. “Remember whose hands you are obliged to die by. Or have you forgotten the contract we formed? Lest you forget…your heartbeat is mine to take.”
He swings between his fingers a brass pocket watch, ticking like the beat of the Doctor's heart. His amber gaze darts between the timepiece and the body, gambling away his time on the slightest bit of hope that he will hear that smoothly annoying voice again.
Pantalone is a fool to think that Celestia would allow him the luxury of any form of reply.
His breathing quickens. He numbers every pump of the bleeding heart to soothe himself, but it only brings him fear.
One, two, three.
The beating of an inhuman heart, growing ever slower.
A hand tenderly lifts the glass earring, sloshing with fluorescent liquid. It is fingered gently, then let go of, falling back down to rest on the pillow. None of this does anything to quell the anxiety swamping Pantalone's weary mind. He decides that he does not like it. Fits of rage swarm him and plant seeds of hatred in his heart.
The pocket watch is dropped to the floor. Glass splinters, the watch face ruined, but it ticks on, steadily, like nothing is wrong.
“I can't save you," he hicccups. "Asshole."
He tacks that on. Just because.
Had it been Pantalone in his place, he would have been revived by the Second's medical expertise.
His chest clenches with hollow helplessness.
He has nothing to offer but Mora.
But what use is gold, when it cannot appease Death?
His hand clenches into a fist, his face contorting into an unreadable expression as his fingers splay out.
Each beating of the heart is a pocket watch, ticking until the battery dies. Until divine wrath catches up to the two of them, and his Doctor is swept away into a place of dead sinners, and the Regrator is left to rot alive.
The operations have been done. The wounds have been closed as best as the surgeons can.
He dares not cry. He does not deserve to.
And yet.
How it hurts, to see the lively scientist so silent and pasty, bleeding to death when he should be striding through the palace halls and mocking everyone in sight.
Pantalone leans, raven hair draping close to the pale, scarred cheek. Dark strands stroke the still face in a form of comfort that will never be felt. Hands sift through teal-colored locks.
It is only because of him that Dottore is in this state.
It should be him, then, perhaps. Lying unconscious on this bed instead, awaiting a death well deserved.
He stills, pressing an ear to the Harbinger's chest. The rise and fall of it should have been a comfort.
So why does his heart shrink by the second?
Still he waits. Still he clings onto hope.
One. Two. Three.
A rarely seen forlorn expression settles on his face. He despises it, the way he feels utterly helpless.
All the Mora in the world, and still with no purpose.
A trembling palm is placed in a still one. A ring, emblazoned with the mark of heresy, is picked up, and in a deft, gentle movement placed on the unmoving hand. A mark of what belongs to the greedy banker. Of what is his, and that which he cannot bear to be taken from him.
Wake up. Come back. I—
How embarrassing.
—need you to.
I don’t know what to do without you.
And he shudders at every half-breath he hears, shallow and gasping. He hovers over every gash and touches those eyelids with care, praying, praying to gods that will never answer, praying that he will be able to see ruby-red eyes open themselves again.
What he would not give, to witness that signature smirk and annoying little laugh once more, for the motionless near-corpse to wake and mock him for worrying.
“Don’t be stupid. I could never die,” he would scoff.
Pantalone can almost hear it.
This is Dottore. But not the right one.
The right Dottore has a mischievous glint in his eyes and cold skin that is somehow warm at the same time. He has a surprisingly smooth voice that turns dulcet, soft when he sees that which he holds affection towards.
The body before him, suspended in dreamless slumber, is not his Dottore.
One…two…three…
The ticking of the timepiece is hypnotic. It lulls the banker into a trance, where he rests his face against the frail shoulder of the Doctor, whispering empty comforts. The snow outside blows heavy and cold, wind rattling the panes of the windows.
Then erratic gasps, sounds of choking, a struggle against Death.
For a split second, Dottore’s eyes fly open, hazy and unfocused.
When he sees the Regrator, crimson irises fix onto him. A smile plays at the corners of his mouth.
He does not have the chance to say a word. He is far too sick, too tired. A hand, threaded through with veins, lifts itself with much struggle–
Then falls to his side.
One…
Two–
The clock grinds to a halt. A jagged sense of panic expands in the Regrator's chest, sharp and cold and chilling him to the core.
Between a god amongst men and a mere mortal... how ironic it is, in this twisted turn of events, that the human now outlives the deity.
No.
His silence juxtaposes the screaming in his mind. He feels that thin hand, now icier than the snow that gathers on the windowsill, and touches the symbol of heresy on the ring, whispering, whispering endlessly into the dying lights of a setting winter sun.
And Heaven will not listen to a sinner. So there he remains, kneeling by the bedside, alone once more.
“I’m…”
It’s not like him to express remorse, but he does.
”…sorry. That I failed you.”
A light caress is offered, down a face he has many a time stared at until it is fully ingrained into his memory.
The faint touch of lips against each other for one first, and last time, a pact of their devotion to each other that they never dared speak of. Arms wrap themselves, with scarcely-seen affection, around stiffened shoulders and a choked sob escapes quivering lips.
Eyelids are closed, covering bloodred irises, and when he looks up, his own eyes are red-rimmed.
He waits for a snort of contempt, a sarcastic remark.
“Stop crying.” the Doctor would shake his head and scorn him. “Your red and blotchy face is an awful sight to behold.”
And then he would take him for a walk through the streets of the city.
And all would be well.
Come morning, the Jester enters the room to find a head of black hair slumped against a corpse, shivering despite the heavy coat he wears.
When the banker wakes, his eyes hold tears.
He reaches into his coat and slips out a tiny brass pocket watch, an object of little value, yet precious to him all the same. A parting gift granted from an evening stroll through a Snezhnayan village.
He clutches the chain and holds the watch to his ear. A familiar sound rings a melody in his frozen heart, a requiem of days long gone.
One, two, three…
…one,
two,
three—