As for the way funerals typically go, _his_ had better be near indistinguishable from the ordinary.

This is the first thought Viktor has when he returns to his body from the arcane astral realm. He finds himself back among the floating, glowing tethers of his orbital commune coccoon, moments after the arcane was so very kind to show him the future of how he dies a second time.

Viktor’s physical senses return to him one by one, and he hears the distant gentle hum of commune activities. He can only be sorry for his people out there, who look up to him so kindly for guidance.

If he is really going to die again by…Jayce’s…hammer, how cruel would it be to also leave his own body dead on the floor of this cocoon, without so much as a final procession or period of mourning for his people to grieve?

He had _saved_ them, after all.

It was not impractical to make himself a coffin in advance. It’s what his past self wanted in the end. It was not selfish, nor conniving, but rather a gesture of respect for himself. He never expected a ceremony as a human. It was not the typical zaunite privelage.

But if the arcane taught him anything, it was that _you are perfect now, making you more than deserving. _

The motivation causes Viktor to slowly untether himself with a graceful landing of his perfect bare feet onto the ground. He weilds his staff, and steps out into the sunlight to go make a special visit to the commmunity’s best carpenter.

“Herald,” says the chorus of murmurs around him. His people are moving skillfully from one stall to the next, but pause what they are doing to greet him as he passes. He meets their familiar faces eye to eye. Fine workers, craftspeople, innovators. All expertly _capable_ to create for themselves now that they are free from the shackles of their ills.

He nods to each one of them silently, making his way further down the path that leads to the lower orchards. It is never fully quiet, down here in the evolved undercity fissure, but he notices the calm atmosphere today. It almost makes him _feel_ something, and _that_ is near enough to tempt him to stay out of the astral realm for longer stretches. Be more present within the community.

Yet Viktor turns around with a slow drag of his staff, to look back up the sloping hill at his coccoon. How easy it would be to return to the tethers of astral meditation, to remain forever enveloped by the embrace of the arcane.

It was like the experience of a warm hug, now that he vaguely recalls the feeling.

_Hm._

A sensation very foreign to him now, but the ghost of it triggers a memory of a tumultuous time.

Someone.

No matter. Viktor ends up at the bottom of the hill where fresh, clear water trickles in little canals. A small gaggle of waveriders swims through one of the waterways where he crosses. He carefully wades through them, and they swim off.

He remembers to focus priorities on the people and the animals he is housing, here and now.

That in mind, he would be glad to have a skilled carpenter build a series of small bridges. Then, perhaps the waveriders can wade the waters in peace instead of dodging the commune’s bipedal feet.

Someone else in his company will need to fulfill that project in the future. The one he has in mind today will be too busy with the task of building his coffin.

He’s fortunate he doesn’t need shoes. His bare feet are sensitive enough to the movement of the commune that he knows exactly where the orchard path leads to the wood shop, even if he closed his eyes. Great big saws are vibrating through the wood of trees, and he senses it beneath his feet. It is a wonder how capable the trees are of growing here in such abundance. He doesn’t have a very far walk to go by the time he sees the small dome-roofed shop and smells the smoke of its furnace, surrounded by felled trees and also new ones planted in their place.

Ironically, metals were always going to be the unpreferred choice of building material for his commune. Wood and natural things were the most resourceful, regenerative, and healthier for the fissure air. Viktor’s physical form, corrupted but better in all the ways he ever wanted, was the outlier. Skin blended haphazardly with metal, his bones attaching to alloys in ways that surpassed common sense.

Shoelaces would just be a nuisance.

The most unnatural thing about Viktor, he muses, is not his anomaly of a body, but the fact that he is now more willing to ask for help. That, in itself, is character growth.

He approaches the carpenter, 6 feet something tall, a scruffy beard and dark mop of hair, like he’s about to greet an old friend. The man’s frame is silhouetted by the blaze of a forge.

When Viktor had saved him, the man had been stricken by a fever, near starved and unable to sleep. The man now moves purposefully, strong and invigorated, absorbed in transferring large planks from one end of the shop to the other.

Viktor has entered his space, silently observing. But when the man swings a plank around, Viktor startles. The end of the plank faces straight towards him, and a flash of the vision he was given rears its ugly head. Expecting an exploding sensation to bloom across his chest, it does not occur. It is only the whir of his mechanical heart that thrums louder in his ears.

“Herald!” the carpenter is surprised too, having nearly hit Viktor square in the chest. He steps back and sets the plank down onto the workbench with a great big _thunk_.

Viktor sees no point in delaying the reason he is here. “I am going to die in a few days.”

The carpenter nods tentatively, then asks, “When will we expect to greet you again, Herald?”

It is not an “if” but “when.” Viktor made the right choice of carpenter. The man asks the practical questions.

“Uncertain, though the latter may be inevitable, because—“

“The arcane works in mysterious ways, or something to that effect,” the man laughs, wiping his hands clean on his apron. He pointedly gestures to his own forehead, to the five life-giving fingerprints upon it. The night that Viktor had done it, the carpenter had been thrashing around, inconsolable on a makeshift stretcher in an unknown alley. It was too dim to see his face, only Viktor knew that the man was about to die seeing shadows. As were many others caught in that grim outbreak. What is his name, again?

“Solas,” yes, “it is why I must do this. I trust you to give our people the means of a procession after I am gone. I will call upon some of you to write a vigil. And you will build for me an open faced casket.”

The better for his people to see, when he is laid to rest, that his body is not entirely metal, but partially mortal flesh.

The crucial bit was the impact of such a sight: it will remain an incentive for anybody and everybody to _keep_ him in that casket, no matter the decomposition process. No matter if the arcane preserves him or leaves him. If they all see him smiling into the bliss of endless oblivion, he will remain the face of a community he cherished and loved, but he will be left entirely alone to revel in it.

Because if someone ever decides to bring him back, again…

Viktor knows he can very well feel things, still. Most things. It isn’t something he particularly wants to admit, now that the arcane has all but bled his faculties dry. But he still understands the sensations of the flesh, the way heartbreak tastes like salt. The way memories come flooding in at horrible times in the night, when the arcane’s grip loosens, ebbs, and flows. Perfection does not equal stupidity. The ghosts of warm touches and hushed voices and silent tears haunt him every day. By the hells, he’d arisen in a bed of arcane soup to the soft sound of Jayce’s snoring. And, by Janna, was that was the most unfair feeling he had ever experienced. Because…

Solas picks up a chisel reverently. “Do you want a plaque with your name on it, as well, Herald?” He seemed to understand the finality of Viktor’s request. Or perhaps due to the easy fact that Viktor’s thoughts transmit directly to him. Either way, the man is smart. Proactive.

It would certainly be a fitting addition.

“Yes, thank you,” Viktor really means it when he says it, because he could have thought it, and Solas would have understood. But it means so much more to say it aloud —human connection, and such things. Words said with breath, in a beautiful culmination of kinetic heat and energy and life into a musical sound, if only Viktor could still take one.

See, the arcane was cruel for diluting the sensation of breath. But that is more reason, when he meets Jayce again —as Jayce is going to shoot —that he will die remembering the sound of Jayce’s breathing and know he was lucky to have ever felt it closely. The commune will know what to do with Jayce, afterwards.