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Viktor-AU | 3300 ish words
Routine drove decision making in most of his previous lives and Emet-Selch finds he enjoys carrying many of those routines over, even if they are not strictly speaking, necessary. The benefit, however slight, to their current situation is that he does not need to rigorously organize and orchestrate each and every bell of every day to fit his machinations.
He has something shockingly, dangerously close to flexibility. Choice, where there has never really been any besides take the next step forward in whatever plan he has enacted.
Viktor has granted him new life, and if they are successful - however slight that chance may be - he will have the unenviable task of sorting out what to do with that gift. Much as he is tired, and he is so incredibly tired, to undo Meteion's song is not going to be enough. There will be countless decades, centuries even of repairs to be made. The Underworld will need tending with Hydaelyn gone. He cannot trust Sharlayan to maintain it to his exacting standards, which means considering the idea of bringing forth another Emet-Selch. Perhaps in a different title, perhaps multiple to manage and navigate the care of the aetherial sea. It feels borderline heretical to even consider such a thing, but at least he's found these thoughts easier to rationalize. Either he does this, or risks the aetherial sea falling into disrepair, damaging the souls within. An easy enough decision.
This particular vein of plotting is, of course, purely suppositions. It is just as likely they fail, and die horribly and all their efforts were all for nothing, but Viktor makes him think- makes him believe there is another path forward.
So every morning he rises in the morning from a bed with its other occupant still wound up in the covers, dozing, and allows himself the wretched option of choice. Of shaping his own path forward in every sense of the word. For now, the most he's shaping is the room they're in, groggily making his way to the boiler to flick it on and warm the room up however slightly.
He frees the blankets from where one of them had kicked them to the bottom of the bed, tugging them back up over Viktor. Emet-Selch shoves his feet into slippers and trudges up to the bathroom with a fresh set of clothes, cranking the water to just shy of unbearably hot, and strips.
There is comfort in the routine in this, too. Undressing, washing, redressing, never spending overmuch time on the whole process. He had been much more discerning with his bodies initially, when taking on new forms. It took literal centuries to get used to the differences in a new shape, a new body. Moments where he would forget the differences, knock an arm against a desk on the way past, forget the shortened limbs he now worked with, the lack of height. A brief span of years spent as a miqo'te resulted in endless irritation with his tail constantly getting caught in various doors or underneath things; it was the one and only time he ever attempted to take a form that was not strictly speaking, hyur. He had hated it more than anything at that point.
Constant, consistent reminders digging at him that he was other, that his body no longer belonged to him but to their duty and so its shape would change to suit. He'd let that life die out early, eager to dispose of it and its associated baggage, finding a far more suitable form to occupy instead. Hyur, approximately his own former height, malleable enough and weak enough he could subsume the soul within, send it on its way to the aetherial sea, and wrest control for himself.
But that body was not his. It never was.
His own body he had discarded just a century or two in. What would he need it for, he'd reasoned, when he would be taking countless forms to suit his purpose. He could simply remake himself, it would not be so difficult. Azem and Hythlodaeus would assist in the particulars. Emet-Selch had been himself for thousands of years; how could he forget?
And yet he had forgotten. Time had washed away the memories of what was and left only foggy, longing recollections of a time that was, a body he'd possessed, called his. Amaurot was a paradise, but it was not perfect. They were not deliriously, perfectly happy in their time there. There were issues, festering beneath the surface, ones that they had all been perfectly content to overlook until they could not any longer. He could not deny that fact any longer, much as he wished he could.
A time that was perfectly imperfect.
Against his better judgement, he summons a floor to ceiling mirror. Beneath his feet, the loft creaks in protest and Emet-Selch pauses to peer around the corner and see if Viktor's awoken. From the bundled lump in the bed there is no movement but the faintest twitch of an ear and the steady rise and fall of his chest. Back to the mirror, then, scowling at himself.
He knows he is not - exact.
He can feel the discrepancies now that he knows to look for them, even if he cannot sort out what those discrepancies are. Was his hair longer or shorter? He'd allowed it to grow from what he originally created himself with, too lazy to manage the minutia of bodily function when they were focused on preventing further loss from Meteion's song. But had he created it at the appropriate length to begin with? He could not recall, not with perfect clarity.
If he were to go to the summer house in Garlemald where no small number of paintings were set in storage, he knows if he compared the latest portrait of Aepymetes to the gilded ghost that had arisen from Viktor, there would be variances.
Maybe he ought to simply burn them, and have new ones crafted with the benefit of fresh eyes but even that felt a little too like lingering with one foot in the past when the present lie downstairs, tangled in bedsheets.
Was he this tall originally? As he'd aged as Solus, his body failing ilm by ilm he'd gotten used to the slump, the hunched form it forced him to adopt as muscle deteriorated. Part of that had been intentional presentation - it was much harder to be threatened by a man who looked as if a strong wind would blow him over and there was value in being underestimated, in thought of a doddering old man.
Standing upright in front of the mirror now, scowling at himself, he finds he cannot recall his exact height. The length from his shoulders to his fingertips. The proportion of his legs to the trunk of his body. None of these mattered, necessarily, but once he was aware of the discrepancies he could not cease being aware of them, wondering which parts of himself he had gotten wrong when patch working himself together in the wake of Viktor's wresting him from the aetherial sea with the same ease of a fisherman with his catch.
More than that: he spent as little time as possible in his routine paying any sort of attention to his body. As royalty, there was some privacy allowed. He'd made certain to rid civilizations of any barbaric rites like witnesses at the marriage bed or anything equally invasive so he could have his partnerships - his business deals created without prying eyes to know they were not consummated.
When growing old, he'd simply left the form while it was poked and prodded, fed supplements and fussed over by those healers appointed to the emperor. They had chalked up the vacant stare to an old man not paying attention and Emet-Selch had lingered in the void so he need not be present for whatever archaic, absurd health and fitness testing they put his body through.
He is not - was not, in an old form back in the days before the sundering. Young, to early middle age, approximately thirties for an equivalent to hyur here and now, but unaging. Here and now he thinks he's managed a rough approximation. No wrinkles, no fine lines like Solus had in his late forties. The bend to his shoulders and back is not nearly as pronounced.
Emet-Selch really ought to have kept his own corpse. It would not have been any more onerous than any other task he'd taken on to maintain the body, but like so much else from the past he had discarded it among the rubble, deeming it a necessary loss when he would be Emet-Selch and rather than simply himself. Foolish. The empty vessel would have been terribly useful here as a point of comparison.
Until now he had been careful about his general presentation; he was already other in a way that many other travelers and refugees within the Crystarium noted simply by being at the Warrior's side in a way no other was. The glow of his eyes dulled to something just enough it prompted a second look but not so much it would cause doubt with the Warrior's traveling partner choices, careful not to perform any feats which would raise too many questions.
To edit his body is not an overly difficult task, but the preciseness the action requires is. How tedious, to try various shades of gold and yellow and to not be certain which is correct. He over-corrects too far in one direction, reaching for a too-familiar gold, Azem's gold, and changes the color back as soon as he makes the connection. The dim lighting in the bathroom certainly doesn't help. Shifting the color to the roughest approximation he can recall makes the whole of his face seem even more unfamiliar, disgust curdling in his stomach.
So used to the fractured shards and their look over thousands of years that his own looks unfamiliar, looks wrong.
The line of his shoulders, the shape of his hands he keeps, figuring it would add more complexity than it would solve to make revisions. He doesn't remember or particularly care if his hands were larger or smaller; they suit the form for now and he doesn't want to deal with a month of dropping dishes because he forgets the size and scale of himself.
As a rule, he has not spent an overly large amount of time investigating the rest of his body save for the sole purpose of washing it and doing the necessary grooming to keep himself from looking unkempt. He did not have a beard. Solus did, Emet-Selch amused with the novelty of it until the novelty had worn off and the superfluous hair was exceptionally tedious. The blank expanse of skin still feels off in a way he cannot identify, though. Perhaps it is because he is inspecting himself so closely, weighing against the insubstantial smoke of memory.
Wryly, he thinks, if he were to be fully accurate, there would be a gnarled, scarred mass upon his chest from the hole Viktor's Light had carved through him. That memory is not so distant he cannot recall it easily - he can. He remembers with bright, vivid detail the sensation of being kicked in the chest and then the awareness that the next breath he attempted to take failed because at least half of his lungs were gone, cauterized in the wake of the Light.
A finger traces along the line of where Viktor's Light had impacted him, ragged edges blooming like vines in the shape of the damage left. This, at least, is one of the few parts of himself that feels right. A visible manifestation of the mark Aepymetes' soul had left on his own, carved into his very flesh. Whether or not Viktor would see it in a positive light remained to be seen, but then Viktor has only seen bits and pieces of his unclothed form over the last few months, never the full expanse. He would, eventually. The thought sets alight a little frisson of something uncomfortably like anxiety in the pit of his stomach. He is handsome, but whether or not he is attractive is not the concern at hand.
There is a natural conclusion to the little games they have played thus far, the idle but increasingly bold touches, sharing a bed together. He does not feel anything so ridiculous as pushed toward that natural conclusion, not when he has mostly reconciled that as someone with a flesh and blood body it makes sense that he could have wants, desires. Still, it is one thing to understand the natural conclusion academically and something else to facilitate it. To actively pursue it.
Downstairs, the heater kicks on to contend with the mid-morning chill and Emet-Selch strips down the rest of the way before climbing into the bath as it fills. He finds his legs serviceable enough; baths were larger in the past, probably. A moment of doubt catches him and he adds a touch of height, trying to judge whether or not it is more accurate or not. The proportions are not the issue, the issue is he feels as if he fits poorly within the shape he has created for himself. The edges of his skin too tight, too taut where there should be give, like if he moves in the wrong way he will split open along his seams and nothing so lovely as Aepymetes' golden form would spill forth.
The waterline rises ilm by ilm and Emet-Selch scowls at his thighs, the soft weight of his cock between them, the light, fine silver hair scattered across his legs and arms, gathered more densely, darker between his thighs. These, he thinks, were fairly accurate and adequate. Certainly serviceable enough for its intended use, even if it, if he has fallen into something like disrepair. When the water has risen to within ilms of the rim of the tub Emet-Selch sinks back, as far and as low as he can, nudging the faucet off with his foot. He's successful on the second attempt and promptly readjusts his legs, his height back to where it was, and while he does not find reverting back to be any more comfortable, it is certainly not any less.
He ought to have scars- not just the one from being carved open, but the countless attempts on his life over countless lifetimes did sometimes draw blood, even if the occurrence was rare. He thumbs into place a ragged-edged scar along his right side and scowls at the candle melt of flesh through the reflection of the water. It is not wrong, but there is no point to having the mark. He does not even remember the woman's name who had gotten close enough to land the blow. The scar melts away like it never existed, and Emet-Selch tips his head back and stares mulishly at the ceiling instead, listening to the rattle of the boiler contending with the heated water and chilled room simultaneously.
When they had pried through the wreckage fruitlessly searching for bodies, each of them had torn their hands to pieces. Worn down to the dregs of magic after days, they had resorted to attempting to move rubble by hand, and Emet-Selch when trying to recreate them upon his own he finds inexplicably that those marks appear as easily as if it were yesterday, his mind somehow maintaining that memory with near-perfect precision where so much else he'd consider important was discarded. With it comes the smell of destruction - burst sewer lines, fire and smoke, the rancid stench of death. Memories he wishes to maintain are faded, ink on old parchment. Somehow these aren't, no matter how much he wishes to forget.
There, the wide, ragged scar up to his elbow where he'd caught himself on a jagged line of crumpled metal, too exhausted to pay proper care and attention when faced with the desperation of searching beneath rubble. Elidibus, already pale with exhaustion and worn out, had paled further upon seeing the gash and they'd been forced to resort to tearing robes to bandage it when none of them had the energy to attempt to heal.
All that effort for nothing: there weren't any survivors to find.
He had half considered the act of intentionally touching his cock before starting this endeavor, but no amount of guiltily imagining Viktor (who he thinks would be perfectly happy to be imagined in such a way) is going to combat the nausea threading through him. His hands return to their former state, with little extra calluses on the bends of his fingers that ache most when wielding his sword instead of his staff.
The past had left an indelible amount of damage upon his soul; he needn't have it reflected upon his body. He has done enough remembering, living in the worst moments of his life. Washing thoroughly, Emet-Selch steps out and goes right back to studying himself in the mirror while he drips on the floorboards. He adjusts his eyes once again, brighter - clearly, obviously not the same as the other men and half-men around here. The pupils and iris next, blinking when the magic starts to make his eyes itch. When he opens them to peer at himself, he's truthfully not certain if he'd meaningfully adjusted the color from the options prior but this feels irrationally better. More accurate, however incrementally, because they did not look the same as every other set of eyes here.
He retains the scar on his chest after a heartbeat of frowning at the condensation-covered mirror, dragging his hand across it to give himself a better look. The sight of the jagged, raised flesh does not leave him feeling as off kilter as he fears it will; instead, he finds himself feeling marginally more settled in his own skin.
Like himself, for whatever that means now.
Dressing for the day hides everything, of course, but his eyes. He'd conquered these souls, once. Orchestrated their demise in one way or another to suit his ends, and now he finds himself wondering if he's made the wrong choice. Nipping down to the kitchens for the stewed apples Viktor enjoyed and after cajoling from one of the bakers, accepts a loaf of the coffee cake they had pulled out of the oven just as he'd entered. Emet-Selch returns to the bedroom with arms laden full, nudging the stove on to start heating water, the boiler straining in protest.
The lump in the bed sheets hasn't moved despite the door opening and closing and were Emet-Selch a stronger-willed man, he thinks he could resist the allure of warm covers and a warmer body. He is not. Hasn't been, not since Viktor wrested him back from death. With only the faintest bit of fully irrational guilt, nearly a week ago he had returned to the mausoleum, plucked a few of the pieces he'd kept there from their pedestals and brought them to his room to repair with painstaking care. Sugar lies within the sunflower container, no longer cracked and chipped, faded. Whole, with its cracks and chips maintained, threaded through with Aepymetes' gold to mend it whole. He prepares two teacups: one to his own exacting standard's and his suppositions about what Viktor would prefer and he makes his way back to the bed, depositing them on the nightstand. Teacup warmed hands nudge Viktor's arm up from gripping the covers and the viera make a low, sleepy noise as the bed shifts beneath him, Emet-Selch's weight dipping the bed until Viktor groggily crosses the distance, fitting himself against Emet-Selch thoughtlessly with a half-awake noise of question.
"You've still time to rest," Emet-Selch yawns in answer, scooting down a few ilms to settle into the mass of pillows, stroking a hand through bed-mussed curls to untangle them while Viktor shamelessly burrows into the offered warmth and brings the covers with him. Dim sunlight leeches through the curtains, licks across the bed and frames the line of Viktor's jaw, the curve of his lips, the long spread of his lashes against his cheek.
Looking at him with new eyes, Emet-Selch thinks with the faintest bit of amusement, tipping his head back to doze until Viktor wakes properly.
He has something shockingly, dangerously close to flexibility. Choice, where there has never really been any besides take the next step forward in whatever plan he has enacted.
Viktor has granted him new life, and if they are successful - however slight that chance may be - he will have the unenviable task of sorting out what to do with that gift. Much as he is tired, and he is so incredibly tired, to undo Meteion's song is not going to be enough. There will be countless decades, centuries even of repairs to be made. The Underworld will need tending with Hydaelyn gone. He cannot trust Sharlayan to maintain it to his exacting standards, which means considering the idea of bringing forth another Emet-Selch. Perhaps in a different title, perhaps multiple to manage and navigate the care of the aetherial sea. It feels borderline heretical to even consider such a thing, but at least he's found these thoughts easier to rationalize. Either he does this, or risks the aetherial sea falling into disrepair, damaging the souls within. An easy enough decision.
This particular vein of plotting is, of course, purely suppositions. It is just as likely they fail, and die horribly and all their efforts were all for nothing, but Viktor makes him think- makes him believe there is another path forward.
So every morning he rises in the morning from a bed with its other occupant still wound up in the covers, dozing, and allows himself the wretched option of choice. Of shaping his own path forward in every sense of the word. For now, the most he's shaping is the room they're in, groggily making his way to the boiler to flick it on and warm the room up however slightly.
He frees the blankets from where one of them had kicked them to the bottom of the bed, tugging them back up over Viktor. Emet-Selch shoves his feet into slippers and trudges up to the bathroom with a fresh set of clothes, cranking the water to just shy of unbearably hot, and strips.
There is comfort in the routine in this, too. Undressing, washing, redressing, never spending overmuch time on the whole process. He had been much more discerning with his bodies initially, when taking on new forms. It took literal centuries to get used to the differences in a new shape, a new body. Moments where he would forget the differences, knock an arm against a desk on the way past, forget the shortened limbs he now worked with, the lack of height. A brief span of years spent as a miqo'te resulted in endless irritation with his tail constantly getting caught in various doors or underneath things; it was the one and only time he ever attempted to take a form that was not strictly speaking, hyur. He had hated it more than anything at that point.
Constant, consistent reminders digging at him that he was other, that his body no longer belonged to him but to their duty and so its shape would change to suit. He'd let that life die out early, eager to dispose of it and its associated baggage, finding a far more suitable form to occupy instead. Hyur, approximately his own former height, malleable enough and weak enough he could subsume the soul within, send it on its way to the aetherial sea, and wrest control for himself.
But that body was not his. It never was.
His own body he had discarded just a century or two in. What would he need it for, he'd reasoned, when he would be taking countless forms to suit his purpose. He could simply remake himself, it would not be so difficult. Azem and Hythlodaeus would assist in the particulars. Emet-Selch had been himself for thousands of years; how could he forget?
And yet he had forgotten. Time had washed away the memories of what was and left only foggy, longing recollections of a time that was, a body he'd possessed, called his. Amaurot was a paradise, but it was not perfect. They were not deliriously, perfectly happy in their time there. There were issues, festering beneath the surface, ones that they had all been perfectly content to overlook until they could not any longer. He could not deny that fact any longer, much as he wished he could.
A time that was perfectly imperfect.
Against his better judgement, he summons a floor to ceiling mirror. Beneath his feet, the loft creaks in protest and Emet-Selch pauses to peer around the corner and see if Viktor's awoken. From the bundled lump in the bed there is no movement but the faintest twitch of an ear and the steady rise and fall of his chest. Back to the mirror, then, scowling at himself.
He knows he is not - exact.
He can feel the discrepancies now that he knows to look for them, even if he cannot sort out what those discrepancies are. Was his hair longer or shorter? He'd allowed it to grow from what he originally created himself with, too lazy to manage the minutia of bodily function when they were focused on preventing further loss from Meteion's song. But had he created it at the appropriate length to begin with? He could not recall, not with perfect clarity.
If he were to go to the summer house in Garlemald where no small number of paintings were set in storage, he knows if he compared the latest portrait of Aepymetes to the gilded ghost that had arisen from Viktor, there would be variances.
Maybe he ought to simply burn them, and have new ones crafted with the benefit of fresh eyes but even that felt a little too like lingering with one foot in the past when the present lie downstairs, tangled in bedsheets.
Was he this tall originally? As he'd aged as Solus, his body failing ilm by ilm he'd gotten used to the slump, the hunched form it forced him to adopt as muscle deteriorated. Part of that had been intentional presentation - it was much harder to be threatened by a man who looked as if a strong wind would blow him over and there was value in being underestimated, in thought of a doddering old man.
Standing upright in front of the mirror now, scowling at himself, he finds he cannot recall his exact height. The length from his shoulders to his fingertips. The proportion of his legs to the trunk of his body. None of these mattered, necessarily, but once he was aware of the discrepancies he could not cease being aware of them, wondering which parts of himself he had gotten wrong when patch working himself together in the wake of Viktor's wresting him from the aetherial sea with the same ease of a fisherman with his catch.
More than that: he spent as little time as possible in his routine paying any sort of attention to his body. As royalty, there was some privacy allowed. He'd made certain to rid civilizations of any barbaric rites like witnesses at the marriage bed or anything equally invasive so he could have his partnerships - his business deals created without prying eyes to know they were not consummated.
When growing old, he'd simply left the form while it was poked and prodded, fed supplements and fussed over by those healers appointed to the emperor. They had chalked up the vacant stare to an old man not paying attention and Emet-Selch had lingered in the void so he need not be present for whatever archaic, absurd health and fitness testing they put his body through.
He is not - was not, in an old form back in the days before the sundering. Young, to early middle age, approximately thirties for an equivalent to hyur here and now, but unaging. Here and now he thinks he's managed a rough approximation. No wrinkles, no fine lines like Solus had in his late forties. The bend to his shoulders and back is not nearly as pronounced.
Emet-Selch really ought to have kept his own corpse. It would not have been any more onerous than any other task he'd taken on to maintain the body, but like so much else from the past he had discarded it among the rubble, deeming it a necessary loss when he would be Emet-Selch and rather than simply himself. Foolish. The empty vessel would have been terribly useful here as a point of comparison.
Until now he had been careful about his general presentation; he was already other in a way that many other travelers and refugees within the Crystarium noted simply by being at the Warrior's side in a way no other was. The glow of his eyes dulled to something just enough it prompted a second look but not so much it would cause doubt with the Warrior's traveling partner choices, careful not to perform any feats which would raise too many questions.
To edit his body is not an overly difficult task, but the preciseness the action requires is. How tedious, to try various shades of gold and yellow and to not be certain which is correct. He over-corrects too far in one direction, reaching for a too-familiar gold, Azem's gold, and changes the color back as soon as he makes the connection. The dim lighting in the bathroom certainly doesn't help. Shifting the color to the roughest approximation he can recall makes the whole of his face seem even more unfamiliar, disgust curdling in his stomach.
So used to the fractured shards and their look over thousands of years that his own looks unfamiliar, looks wrong.
The line of his shoulders, the shape of his hands he keeps, figuring it would add more complexity than it would solve to make revisions. He doesn't remember or particularly care if his hands were larger or smaller; they suit the form for now and he doesn't want to deal with a month of dropping dishes because he forgets the size and scale of himself.
As a rule, he has not spent an overly large amount of time investigating the rest of his body save for the sole purpose of washing it and doing the necessary grooming to keep himself from looking unkempt. He did not have a beard. Solus did, Emet-Selch amused with the novelty of it until the novelty had worn off and the superfluous hair was exceptionally tedious. The blank expanse of skin still feels off in a way he cannot identify, though. Perhaps it is because he is inspecting himself so closely, weighing against the insubstantial smoke of memory.
Wryly, he thinks, if he were to be fully accurate, there would be a gnarled, scarred mass upon his chest from the hole Viktor's Light had carved through him. That memory is not so distant he cannot recall it easily - he can. He remembers with bright, vivid detail the sensation of being kicked in the chest and then the awareness that the next breath he attempted to take failed because at least half of his lungs were gone, cauterized in the wake of the Light.
A finger traces along the line of where Viktor's Light had impacted him, ragged edges blooming like vines in the shape of the damage left. This, at least, is one of the few parts of himself that feels right. A visible manifestation of the mark Aepymetes' soul had left on his own, carved into his very flesh. Whether or not Viktor would see it in a positive light remained to be seen, but then Viktor has only seen bits and pieces of his unclothed form over the last few months, never the full expanse. He would, eventually. The thought sets alight a little frisson of something uncomfortably like anxiety in the pit of his stomach. He is handsome, but whether or not he is attractive is not the concern at hand.
There is a natural conclusion to the little games they have played thus far, the idle but increasingly bold touches, sharing a bed together. He does not feel anything so ridiculous as pushed toward that natural conclusion, not when he has mostly reconciled that as someone with a flesh and blood body it makes sense that he could have wants, desires. Still, it is one thing to understand the natural conclusion academically and something else to facilitate it. To actively pursue it.
Downstairs, the heater kicks on to contend with the mid-morning chill and Emet-Selch strips down the rest of the way before climbing into the bath as it fills. He finds his legs serviceable enough; baths were larger in the past, probably. A moment of doubt catches him and he adds a touch of height, trying to judge whether or not it is more accurate or not. The proportions are not the issue, the issue is he feels as if he fits poorly within the shape he has created for himself. The edges of his skin too tight, too taut where there should be give, like if he moves in the wrong way he will split open along his seams and nothing so lovely as Aepymetes' golden form would spill forth.
The waterline rises ilm by ilm and Emet-Selch scowls at his thighs, the soft weight of his cock between them, the light, fine silver hair scattered across his legs and arms, gathered more densely, darker between his thighs. These, he thinks, were fairly accurate and adequate. Certainly serviceable enough for its intended use, even if it, if he has fallen into something like disrepair. When the water has risen to within ilms of the rim of the tub Emet-Selch sinks back, as far and as low as he can, nudging the faucet off with his foot. He's successful on the second attempt and promptly readjusts his legs, his height back to where it was, and while he does not find reverting back to be any more comfortable, it is certainly not any less.
He ought to have scars- not just the one from being carved open, but the countless attempts on his life over countless lifetimes did sometimes draw blood, even if the occurrence was rare. He thumbs into place a ragged-edged scar along his right side and scowls at the candle melt of flesh through the reflection of the water. It is not wrong, but there is no point to having the mark. He does not even remember the woman's name who had gotten close enough to land the blow. The scar melts away like it never existed, and Emet-Selch tips his head back and stares mulishly at the ceiling instead, listening to the rattle of the boiler contending with the heated water and chilled room simultaneously.
When they had pried through the wreckage fruitlessly searching for bodies, each of them had torn their hands to pieces. Worn down to the dregs of magic after days, they had resorted to attempting to move rubble by hand, and Emet-Selch when trying to recreate them upon his own he finds inexplicably that those marks appear as easily as if it were yesterday, his mind somehow maintaining that memory with near-perfect precision where so much else he'd consider important was discarded. With it comes the smell of destruction - burst sewer lines, fire and smoke, the rancid stench of death. Memories he wishes to maintain are faded, ink on old parchment. Somehow these aren't, no matter how much he wishes to forget.
There, the wide, ragged scar up to his elbow where he'd caught himself on a jagged line of crumpled metal, too exhausted to pay proper care and attention when faced with the desperation of searching beneath rubble. Elidibus, already pale with exhaustion and worn out, had paled further upon seeing the gash and they'd been forced to resort to tearing robes to bandage it when none of them had the energy to attempt to heal.
All that effort for nothing: there weren't any survivors to find.
He had half considered the act of intentionally touching his cock before starting this endeavor, but no amount of guiltily imagining Viktor (who he thinks would be perfectly happy to be imagined in such a way) is going to combat the nausea threading through him. His hands return to their former state, with little extra calluses on the bends of his fingers that ache most when wielding his sword instead of his staff.
The past had left an indelible amount of damage upon his soul; he needn't have it reflected upon his body. He has done enough remembering, living in the worst moments of his life. Washing thoroughly, Emet-Selch steps out and goes right back to studying himself in the mirror while he drips on the floorboards. He adjusts his eyes once again, brighter - clearly, obviously not the same as the other men and half-men around here. The pupils and iris next, blinking when the magic starts to make his eyes itch. When he opens them to peer at himself, he's truthfully not certain if he'd meaningfully adjusted the color from the options prior but this feels irrationally better. More accurate, however incrementally, because they did not look the same as every other set of eyes here.
He retains the scar on his chest after a heartbeat of frowning at the condensation-covered mirror, dragging his hand across it to give himself a better look. The sight of the jagged, raised flesh does not leave him feeling as off kilter as he fears it will; instead, he finds himself feeling marginally more settled in his own skin.
Like himself, for whatever that means now.
Dressing for the day hides everything, of course, but his eyes. He'd conquered these souls, once. Orchestrated their demise in one way or another to suit his ends, and now he finds himself wondering if he's made the wrong choice. Nipping down to the kitchens for the stewed apples Viktor enjoyed and after cajoling from one of the bakers, accepts a loaf of the coffee cake they had pulled out of the oven just as he'd entered. Emet-Selch returns to the bedroom with arms laden full, nudging the stove on to start heating water, the boiler straining in protest.
The lump in the bed sheets hasn't moved despite the door opening and closing and were Emet-Selch a stronger-willed man, he thinks he could resist the allure of warm covers and a warmer body. He is not. Hasn't been, not since Viktor wrested him back from death. With only the faintest bit of fully irrational guilt, nearly a week ago he had returned to the mausoleum, plucked a few of the pieces he'd kept there from their pedestals and brought them to his room to repair with painstaking care. Sugar lies within the sunflower container, no longer cracked and chipped, faded. Whole, with its cracks and chips maintained, threaded through with Aepymetes' gold to mend it whole. He prepares two teacups: one to his own exacting standard's and his suppositions about what Viktor would prefer and he makes his way back to the bed, depositing them on the nightstand. Teacup warmed hands nudge Viktor's arm up from gripping the covers and the viera make a low, sleepy noise as the bed shifts beneath him, Emet-Selch's weight dipping the bed until Viktor groggily crosses the distance, fitting himself against Emet-Selch thoughtlessly with a half-awake noise of question.
"You've still time to rest," Emet-Selch yawns in answer, scooting down a few ilms to settle into the mass of pillows, stroking a hand through bed-mussed curls to untangle them while Viktor shamelessly burrows into the offered warmth and brings the covers with him. Dim sunlight leeches through the curtains, licks across the bed and frames the line of Viktor's jaw, the curve of his lips, the long spread of his lashes against his cheek.
Looking at him with new eyes, Emet-Selch thinks with the faintest bit of amusement, tipping his head back to doze until Viktor wakes properly.