[Hector and Isaac stare at one another, both tense and poised to spring. Isaac goads him on, but Hector's tongue feels too sluggish and dry to croak out a protest.
Then Isaac turns suddenly, leaping toward some unseen threat, and Hector follows. His eyes cannot reconcile what they see.
Isaac, snarling as he tackles...himself. Twin forms claw at one another in the dirt, tearing at identically tattooed flesh. They sneer and curse at one another, and Hector knows deep within his bones that Isaac will kill himself if Hector doesn't intervene.
He dives into the fray, determined to save the other Forgemaster from himself.]
[He's shaky and nauseous, unmoored. Gasping like he's drowning. From somewhere far away, Hector is hurtling towards him. But he never hears it, going boneless when their bodies crash together - knife flying from his hand - and the world tilts sharply in his vision. He drops to the dirt, a fresh surge of adrenaline slamming into him. Blood thunders in his ears and in the hollows of his skull, his nerves spitting fire. There isn't a part of him that doesn't ache, spent by his own ferocity, his own violent, whiplashing movements, but the instinct to fight back is still there - is all he has left. Dizzied, he shoots an arm out for his dagger and snatches it, crying out as he swings at his side, a broad, sloppy arc. Not knowing what he's slashing at or if it's there at all.]
[Hector reaches with his power to summon his fairy as he struggles against Isaac. He isn't sure which one he tackled, the smoke-tinged, curse-mad Isaac or the bleeding, vulnerable one who wanted to spare his sister and who ventured into danger trusting Hector's words. Maybe there is no difference between the two.
They roll against one another, bucking and thrashing. Hector tries to get his arms around the flailing limbs, to pin Isaac down until he can heal his wounds and calm his rage.
The blade of Isaac's knife carves a line across his chest, ripping fabric and flesh both. It's a blind attack, not nearly as destructive a move as Isaac could make if he actually aimed, this close within Hector's defenses.
Hector cannot block the attack and keep his hold, and something within him cries out not to let go. He has to protect someone. He has to save someone. He has already failed one lover; to let another die is worse than death itself. As long as he keeps Isaac here, in his grasp, that other dark Isaac cannot destroy him.
His fairy's glow -- bright like flame, like a funeral pyre -- appears behind Hector's head, casting the writhing man below him in Hector's shadow.
Heal him he orders his devil, even as the knife comes back around for another stab. He tries to shush Isaac, to sooth him, but the next slice of the blade has him gasping back a ragged sob of breath. His vision, already so strange and blurred, unfocuses.]
[The ground feels like it's shifting under him, opening to swallow him whole - and through a fog of fury and dread and terror, his body twisting and struggling on its own, he realizes that enough of him has already made its peace with letting the enemy wrestle him down and kill him. Or not kill him. It makes no difference what it wants; the sad joke is on it, with nothing left of him to rattle, to break.
His knife jerks free, dripping. And as it readies for another thrust, Isaac waits for release, hopes for it, like a sick, rotting brain waits for a bullet. But it drives back into his attacker instead, and it breaks the hold the other has on him long enough for Isaac to wrench himself out from under its weight. Panting raggedly, he rolls around to face it, his eyes raw and wet. He squints against the glow of what he recognizes as Hector's fairy. Hector is there too, just behind it. Dark blots of blood spreading through his tunic.]
Murderer! [Isaac screams, unhinged, his arms high over his head as he lurches for him like a mindless living corpse before slamming his dagger down on any part of Hector he can reach, all his weight, his futile rage, behind it.] You let her die!
[Shuddering, he deflates, his body crumpling over the knife still tight in both his hands.]
[Isaac writhes like a worm, squirming his way out of Hector's hold when it is weakened from the slashing wounds he's taken.
He tries to regain the upper hand, reaching out to seize Isaac's wrists to stop him from attacking.
Murderer! Isaac hisses. His face shifts and warps, until Hector is staring at his own face. You let her die!]
I....
[There is no denying the accusation. Hector brought Rosaly's death, with his love, his selfish love that prioritized his happiness over her safety. She would still live, had he not loved her.
Hector stops struggling, and lets the knife strike land.]
if this doesn't work for any reason, I'm happy to change it, just lemme know
[His head is swimmy, pounding so hard his vision jitters. He breathes and breathes, the bile in his throat not going down without a fight. The image of Julia's mangled body has burned itself into the insides of his eyelids. There's no escaping it. Or the screams that knife through his mind, echoes on echoes.
He's accepted pain as an inevitability of being alive, and learned to make room for it, always working to tamp down and pack older memories away if he couldn't twist them into something useful. But there's no room left, this time. He can't any more -- he can't.
The last dim spot of light has gone out in his world and he knows he doesn't deserve to go with it, to have the luxury to die on his own terms. But he doesn't deserve to live, either, if she can't. If her final, terrifying moments are in any way Hector's fault, than he knows it's his own, just as much, for standing there and doing nothing. For being like any leering, soulless monster. The humans can't be all wrong, he decides, seeing what they see in him.
His dagger squelches loose from Hector's leg, slimy with blood. And after a long moment, Isaac lifts his head with it, staring through him as he makes to put that same blade to his own throat and jerk it across.]
[The knife blade punches in and out of Hector's leg, and the shadowed portion of his soul welcomes the pain. It is right, that he should be ripped apart for his crimes, for the very stain of darkness that has shrouded him since birth.
The bloody blade forces him to look up, and Hector sees Isaac once more, despairing and lost. Fitting, that they should die together, two sides of the same warped coin.
'Hector, don't curse yourself.' Rosaly's voice echoes from far away and long ago. 'I don't know your pain or your past...but they aren't important. Don't be a captive to them.'
Rosaly would forgive what he does not, can not. And if Rosaly could find goodness worth nurturing in one forgemaster, surely she would in the other. Hector has to find it, cultivate it, because Rosaly is no longer able to.
Hector's vision is swimming as the blood drains freely from his wounds, but he takes decisive action, reaching out and seizing Isaac's wrist to stay his hand. The fairy at his shoulder glows brighter, focusing its healing magic on Isaac. It takes more power than Hector anticipates, and his knees buckle.]
[The fairy's work can't touch his brokenness but it gives him the strength to try and wrest his arm free while he hisses curses, refusing to fail at this too. But when Hector won't let go and his own body has nothing left to give, no power to drive knee or elbow into Hector and win their tug of war, he does the only thing he can do: he angles his blade downwards, towards his chest, and clamps his free hand around Hector's offending arm, straining to force the tip of his knife where it should be. A push is all it took to bring him to the edge of despair, and another would finish him. Quickly, he hopes, if only so the fairy wouldn't knit his unwilling body back together if he survived.
He arches his back and presses himself into the knife, close enough to feel the point dimpling his skin. Close enough to feel the heat of Hector's panting breath and see the slow draining of life and colour from his face. To see a strange powdery residue speckling his skin. It seems fairest that Hector should look him in the eyes when his hand runs the blade through him, willingly or unwillingly.]
Do it! It's what you had wanted!
[Isaac shouts at him, a gob of spit hitting Hector's cheek. His desperate grip squeezes tight around his glove, his body trembly-electric on the inside.]
I killed your woman! I raped you of the only happiness you have ever known and will ever know in your wretched life, and I ran free while her ashes scattered to the wind!
[Hector fights to hold on to consciousness. He tightens his hold on Isaac's wrist, a bruising, crushing grip. His free hand goes for the blade to turn it from Isaac's breast. Blood drips from his torn hand onto Isaac.
Through gritted teeth, he growls out.]
And I will have to live with that. WE will have to live with that.
[If Isaac wants punishment, there is none crueler than that. But in it, there is also hope, though Isaac does not know how to see it.
The fairy heals and cleanses, sending a warm, tingling aura over Isaac. Hector's vision swims, and he struggles to dig his fingers into a pressure point to force Isaac to drop his weapon before he slumps over.]
And what gets high... must come down. Something like that.
[Hector's thumb grinds into a nerve cluster and weakens his stubborn grip, little by little, until Isaac is forced to let go, hissing. He wants to grab Hector by the collars and shake him senseless for thinking it's his place to choose and to judge what he does with his own life. But Hector's last few words to him, before he collapses, land like a gut-stab, reminding Isaac that what he deserves isn't and never will be an easy out.
His arms drop and he falls back onto his knees, sagging.
The wind picks up, swirling around them and tugging at his cloak, but not enough of Isaac is there to notice while he throbs with hate, hate for himself and for Hector, and for the howling, furious sobbing he can't bite back.
Hector may have fought and won the battle for Isaac's life, but not the war.
Mid-crying jag, he doubles over with a coughing fit that's just as violent, hacking thick and wet until he brings up a whitish phlegm from the bottom of his lungs. Gulping down deep, shuddering breaths, Isaac dries his face on his arm, his mouth, slowly going cold. His head hurts; his skull is clamped tight around his brain. And for the first time in a long time comes a thought he had as a boy the nights he had huddled in some dark, dusty corner of the library - the only place, it had seemed, where there was some semblance of order: he wants to go home. But home is nowhere. It's just an idea of a warm, comfortable place that never existed.
Shadows and projections shimmer around him, fading. When he knuckles his eyes dry one more time and dares to look around, he realizes both Julia and the demon's remains have disappeared. No trampled, blood-slick grass marking where either corpse had lain. Only Hector is still there - at least for the moment - with more wounds than Isaac remembers inflicting.
He doesn't know when he finds the will to climb to his feet again, and then, finally, to drag Hector over dirt and grass and the ragged cave floor to the fire, for what feels like for hours. Or why, beyond petty tit-for-tat. He feeds the dying embers with a barely-controlled wisp of magic, struggling to push past the aggressive ache in his temples and have Crimson pull a small measure of energy from Hector's fairy and from his own body to pour into Hector's. Crimson's capacity for healing can only pale in comparison to a creature whose sole purpose revolves around treating injury and disease. But what his devil offers is enough to buy some time until it has absorbed and returned with something more.
The glow of the fire draws Isaac's attention to the dust furring Hector's cheek. He thumbs it off him, rubbing it between his fingers. It the same stuff that had smudged off on his glove when he had wiped his own face.
Soon, there'd be wood to gather. But for now he sits himself down, moving only to grudgingly unshoulder his cloak. More dust clouds the air, when he does: a piece of a puzzle slotting into place in his head. He vigorously shakes it out, away from Hector, before tossing it over him.]
[The first thing Hector becomes aware of, when he wakes, is the queasy turning of his stomach. His throat spasms, and he twists into his side so he doesn't chock as he vomits. His insides twitch, and his belly tries to force out more than he has left, wracking his body as he gags on air.
The shuddering passes and he flops back down on his back, letting his face loll to the other side so he can press his feverish cheek against the cold stone.
A cloak tangles around his arms, restricting his movement. Isaac's, not his....
He remembers...Isaac, pinning himself to the ground and driving in his knife... Isaac's face turning into a mirror image of Hector's...the accusation 'Murderer' that he could not deny...
Nightmares. He remembers nightmares, for what else could they be?
Along his chest, on his hand, in the meat of his thigh, he feels the throb of blood beneath scabbed flesh. A nightmare that can inflict wounds...the sort of thing that scared villagers would say resided in the forsaken castle.
He senses no threat now, but there had been danger. Something to do with Isaac.... He can taste the fear in his mouth, as foul and bitter as the aftertaste of his bile. He'd almost lost Isaac.
He peels open his eyes and forces his aching head up from the cool stone to look for him.]
[Isaac stirs, lifting his head from his arms at those spluttering gasps, the first signs of life in what feels like days. Squawking, Crimson leaves its post at Hector's side and pads back to its master, cocking its head slightly when Isaac opens his mouth only to cough again, his body still working to purge what's left of the nastiness colonized in his lungs. A long few hours on his own - time he's had to carve fresh tally marks into his arm and watch the bleeding slow to a stop - have seen a slow draining away of abject fear and hopelessness and the return of rational thought, the truth of his reality breaking through and reaching him, finally, like a ray of sunlight piercing a heavy fog bank.
Julia isn't dead.
She never was, because he can still feel her dimly, far to the east, on the other side of the mountain pass they crossed days ago.
Isaac dries his mouth and slides his gauntlet back on over blood-smeared skin with a stiff tug. He catches Hector's gaze a moment while snapping the buckles on, his own red-rimmed and tired, smouldering with powerless anger towards an enemy with no face, no blood. All Crimson had found, deeper in the woods, was a patch of myconid easily set ablaze. The others sucked themselves back into the dirt.
Hector had sensed something awry, he remembers. Something in the air. But not soon enough.]
[Hector's eyes find Isaac, sitting up of his own power, and seemingly in better shape than Hector (though that doesn't seem hard). Hector lets his head slump back down. He heaves out a long breath.
The pounding of his head is killing him, and his lungs feel heavy, every breath labored.
Closing his eyes, he raises one hand and waves it in the vague direction where he thinks he left the supplies he picked up yesterday.]
...so....breakfast?
[It comes out in a croak. Honestly, all he wants is maybe a gallon of water, to drink or to drown himself in, he's still undecided. But he bought that damned slanina for Isaac, and Isaac will eat it if it kills him.]
[Watching Hector come back to life at a crawl, lazily gesturing around, Isaac feels something approaching relief - if Isaac can, for anything - that Hector is the one to shatter their silence, and more matter-of-factly than expected. Neither of them daring to touch what happened between them. Such is the way it would be for the rest of his life, if he had any choice in it. Some things are better taken to the grave.
Physical and emotional exhaustion have taken their toll and left him without much of an appetite. He hadn't thought to check Hector's pack for the meat he claimed to have brought. Hadn't even remembered it. It feels like a long time ago when Hector found him here, fighting to breathe, fading out.
He scrubs a hand down his face.]
Do I look like your servant?
[He asks, his voice hollow, raw. But he stands eventually, after a moment too long to seem like he will. The slanina smells good when he unwraps it by the fire, preserved between the cooler temperatures and the curing process. He wipes the blood - his and Hector's - off his knife onto his leg and slices off a small piece, stabbing into it and biting it off. The fat itself is smooth and rich in the way nothing he'd eaten lately really has been, the meat soft and the rind pleasantly chewy. He makes more cuts from there, slicing strips before sheathing his dagger into the remaining hunk of meat and letting it rest there, idly sucking the grease off a fingertip.]
[Hector grumbles. He doesn't try to rise yet. Eyes closed, he listens to Isaac eventually get up and rustle through his bag. Hector can't will away his aches, so he keeps still as his body slowly adjusts to consciousness.
Pride worms its way through him as he listens to Isaac bite and chew. It's a primal urge, to act as a provider for one's mate. Isaac is eating food Hector brought him, and through the nausea and throbbing pain, he's pleased at it.]
Eventually, the foul taste in his mouth forces him up, and he rolls over and peels his eyes open again to search for his canteen. Unlike the food that had lain forgotten over the night, he'd keep the canteen nearby as he nursed Isaac's wounds.
He'd ask Isaac to find it and toss it over to him, but it's not worth dealing with the challenge that Isaac would surely take it as.]
[He finishes chewing, not reaching for another piece. His attention lingers on Hector instead, as if he's trying to gauge his will to live while he struggles and considering whether or not to put him out of his misery.]
...All this meat and no wine? [He remarks, sans the sneering twist of his lips that usually accompanies his criticisms. The disappointment is only partly feigned. Something harder is what he needs; something to wash away the taste of sick sticking in the back of his throat and smooth his frayed, battered nerves over. He needs to forget what he saw, the twisted perceptions of reality that had nearly killed them both and still live under his skin and behind his eyelids, keeping him awake.
He digs his nails into his arm, following Hector's line of sight. It's not hard to guess at what he likely wants from what he already has - fire, cloak, food, fairy - and not too long ago, Isaac knows he'd have dangled that canteen, willing him to crawl for it like it was something to be earned. Today, he only has the patience and meanness to grab it from somewhere behind him, tipped over but stopped, and pass it over with a lazy, underhanded throw, a dismissive throw, assuming Hector will catch it - and none too concerned if he doesn't.]
[Hector has to fumble his leaden arms to grab the canteen, and he catches it with a groan.]
...'no wine', he says. There's no pleasing some people.
[He grumbles, but he's already calculating how long he will need to recover before he can venture out to bring Isaac back wine. It's obvious it is not safe for Isaac to do the shopping, and Hector wants to indulge Isaac's cravings.
...at least, the more innocent ones.
...and maybe a few of the not-so-innocent ones.
He uncorks the canteen and takes a long sip. It makes him chock and spit up more phlem, but he can breath a little easier afterwards.]
Any other requests? Sweetmeats, a pie, perhaps? What will it take to please you, Isaac?
[He crosses his arms, but neither shuts Hector out nor conversation down. Instead, he's ready to toss out a scoffing half-joke in turn, surprised how easily he's slipping back into the rhythm of exchanging easy jabs, as though no one is hurting and everything is as fine as it'll ever be. But daring to give it serious consideration yet again, he still isn't sure what, if anything, could ever please him for the long term. Temporary satisfaction, on the other hand, is more attainable - in theory, anyway.]
A warm bed and a warm body.
[He says, to the fire. Nights of half-drunk debauchery, free to do and to be as he will. Fucking until boredom settles into his bones and he seeks something else or someone else, the next body to warm his and to dull the ache of being alive. Until he knows how to see and to let himself slide into open arms, he'll settle for open legs. Infinitely easier for all involved.]
Access to the latter whenever the mood should strike.
[Hector’s easy teasing falters, and his brow furrows.
‘I would be that for you,’ he does not say. Isaac is like a bull, or he was at the castle, from what Hector saw, taking his pick from the herd and rarely returning to a lover once used and discarded.
Hector isn’t like that. He’s the bird who mates for life. The life of one, if not the life of both.
Hector can’t make an offering of himself to Isaac only to be cast aside the next morning.
He pushes himself up and cards a hand through his tangled hair.]
There will be beds soon, when we get back on the road again. The port towns along the coast see travelers from all over; they won’t be so easily spooked by the sight of us as the peasants here.
[A day or two sleeping in a tavern with actual beds will do both of them good, no matter who Isaac chooses to tumble while he’s there.]
[He huffs as much at Hector's marriage to a seafaring life as at the idea that the residents of a port town would be fairly numbed to the presence of unusual-looking strangers, more interested in tourism and money pouring in than who - or what - bought food from their markets and slept in their beds. It's not impossible, for all he knows. But his only other response to it is a disinterested murmur, a low hum in his throat.]
I did not mean soon, Hector. [He says, sternly, a muscle rippling in his jaw. There's no telling what the future holds for him, if he'd make it as far as Hector wants them to, a life that he already seems to be building for them in his dreams; not even Julia with all her visions could know with absolute certainty. Dragging himself from one day to the next, the most Isaac can do is keep breathing, reminding himself on every step forward of how much pain is born of ruined plans and broken expectations.
Isaac makes a point of meeting his gaze, solemn and unblinking. That Hector is barely able to sit himself up doesn't matter; he wouldn't need to to fulfill the purpose Isaac has in mind for him.]
[There isn't the slightest shift in Isaac's expression when Hector turns his attention to one of the many stinging barbs he's left under his skin. It was cruelty for cruelty's sake, to a large extent -- and he makes no effort to suggest it was anything else, to pretend he did Hector a favour punching holes through whatever wishful thought he might have had of them as more than travel companions. They may be forgemasters, but as the hours pass between them, he suspects it's among the few things they share in common. It's one reason why Hector chose the woman, he thinks. And maybe it's just as well. He never knew him like she had. And maybe, it had been the fanciful idea of what and who Hector could be to him and not Hector himself that he had lost sleep and lusted over, wanting him that much more when he was taken away because he was taken away. Like an old toy wrenched from a child's hand.
Isaac isn't sure. But when he looks at Hector with a sudden, fresh awareness, he thinks it may be something Hector is guilty of, too.]
An escape.
[No sly-faced smile, no crude answer rolling off his tongue.]
[Hector considers it for a long moment. The pain and ecstasy and relief they'd given each other on the mountain pass... this kiss he'd pressed against Isaac's lips in the cave... their constant back and forth, hostility and companionship swirling together into a tumultuous current.]
Let me kiss you again, and I'll let you fuck me again.
[For once, Hector is the crude one. He has no illusion that Isaac will be any gentler the second time around, so any tenderness he wants, he will have to bargain for.
He finally takes one of the slices of slanina to nibble on while he waits for his answer. If they end up coupling, Hector doesn't want to be so weak and hungry that he passes out partway through it.]
[Bold of Hector to made demands of his own and expect to negotiate. But not surprising at all. He doesn't resent him for it.
Isaac looks him up and down, coolly, weighing the offer long enough to make it seem as though he has another option to fall back on. But there is nothing better. His choices are either having something or nothing at all; and as hard as it can be to bend, to expose himself as vulnerable and deeply needy, saying no this time is harder still. So he finally spreads his hands, like he's smugly baiting an enemy into attacking him, and not actually inviting someone into his personal space. It feels the same, somehow, either way.]
[Hector has spent enough time with Isaac to expect a certain amount of posturing. He waits while Isaac makes a show of weighing his options, and takes another bite of his meat. Showing annoyance or impatience will only encourage Isaac.
Hector isn’t in the mood for sex; he’s tired and still healing from Isaac’s blade. But he waves his fairy over to receive a little more magical healing from it, then forces himself out of bed.
Dealing with Isaac is like training an animal made stubborn and wary by past abuses. Passing up an opportunity like this will set back whatever progress they’ve made.
Besides, Isaac knows how to press his buttons. His body isn’t craving touch right now, but Hector has faith that it will, very quickly, once he and Isaac begin.]
It would be more comfortable if we waited for real lodgings.
[He points out, even as he slides over into Isaac’s space.
Hector lifts a hand to Isaac’s cheek and tilts his head to the side so they don’t bump noses when he leans in to kiss him.]
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Then Isaac turns suddenly, leaping toward some unseen threat, and Hector follows. His eyes cannot reconcile what they see.
Isaac, snarling as he tackles...himself. Twin forms claw at one another in the dirt, tearing at identically tattooed flesh. They sneer and curse at one another, and Hector knows deep within his bones that Isaac will kill himself if Hector doesn't intervene.
He dives into the fray, determined to save the other Forgemaster from himself.]
Isaac, stop this!
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They roll against one another, bucking and thrashing. Hector tries to get his arms around the flailing limbs, to pin Isaac down until he can heal his wounds and calm his rage.
The blade of Isaac's knife carves a line across his chest, ripping fabric and flesh both. It's a blind attack, not nearly as destructive a move as Isaac could make if he actually aimed, this close within Hector's defenses.
Hector cannot block the attack and keep his hold, and something within him cries out not to let go. He has to protect someone. He has to save someone. He has already failed one lover; to let another die is worse than death itself. As long as he keeps Isaac here, in his grasp, that other dark Isaac cannot destroy him.
His fairy's glow -- bright like flame, like a funeral pyre -- appears behind Hector's head, casting the writhing man below him in Hector's shadow.
Heal him he orders his devil, even as the knife comes back around for another stab. He tries to shush Isaac, to sooth him, but the next slice of the blade has him gasping back a ragged sob of breath. His vision, already so strange and blurred, unfocuses.]
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His knife jerks free, dripping. And as it readies for another thrust, Isaac waits for release, hopes for it, like a sick, rotting brain waits for a bullet. But it drives back into his attacker instead, and it breaks the hold the other has on him long enough for Isaac to wrench himself out from under its weight. Panting raggedly, he rolls around to face it, his eyes raw and wet. He squints against the glow of what he recognizes as Hector's fairy. Hector is there too, just behind it. Dark blots of blood spreading through his tunic.]
Murderer! [Isaac screams, unhinged, his arms high over his head as he lurches for him like a mindless living corpse before slamming his dagger down on any part of Hector he can reach, all his weight, his futile rage, behind it.] You let her die!
[Shuddering, he deflates, his body crumpling over the knife still tight in both his hands.]
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He tries to regain the upper hand, reaching out to seize Isaac's wrists to stop him from attacking.
Murderer! Isaac hisses. His face shifts and warps, until Hector is staring at his own face. You let her die!]
I....
[There is no denying the accusation. Hector brought Rosaly's death, with his love, his selfish love that prioritized his happiness over her safety. She would still live, had he not loved her.
Hector stops struggling, and lets the knife strike land.]
if this doesn't work for any reason, I'm happy to change it, just lemme know
He's accepted pain as an inevitability of being alive, and learned to make room for it, always working to tamp down and pack older memories away if he couldn't twist them into something useful. But there's no room left, this time. He can't any more -- he can't.
The last dim spot of light has gone out in his world and he knows he doesn't deserve to go with it, to have the luxury to die on his own terms. But he doesn't deserve to live, either, if she can't. If her final, terrifying moments are in any way Hector's fault, than he knows it's his own, just as much, for standing there and doing nothing. For being like any leering, soulless monster. The humans can't be all wrong, he decides, seeing what they see in him.
His dagger squelches loose from Hector's leg, slimy with blood. And after a long moment, Isaac lifts his head with it, staring through him as he makes to put that same blade to his own throat and jerk it across.]
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The bloody blade forces him to look up, and Hector sees Isaac once more, despairing and lost. Fitting, that they should die together, two sides of the same warped coin.
'Hector, don't curse yourself.' Rosaly's voice echoes from far away and long ago. 'I don't know your pain or your past...but they aren't important. Don't be a captive to them.'
Rosaly would forgive what he does not, can not. And if Rosaly could find goodness worth nurturing in one forgemaster, surely she would in the other. Hector has to find it, cultivate it, because Rosaly is no longer able to.
Hector's vision is swimming as the blood drains freely from his wounds, but he takes decisive action, reaching out and seizing Isaac's wrist to stay his hand. The fairy at his shoulder glows brighter, focusing its healing magic on Isaac. It takes more power than Hector anticipates, and his knees buckle.]
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He arches his back and presses himself into the knife, close enough to feel the point dimpling his skin. Close enough to feel the heat of Hector's panting breath and see the slow draining of life and colour from his face. To see a strange powdery residue speckling his skin. It seems fairest that Hector should look him in the eyes when his hand runs the blade through him, willingly or unwillingly.]
Do it! It's what you had wanted!
[Isaac shouts at him, a gob of spit hitting Hector's cheek. His desperate grip squeezes tight around his glove, his body trembly-electric on the inside.]
I killed your woman! I raped you of the only happiness you have ever known and will ever know in your wretched life, and I ran free while her ashes scattered to the wind!
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Through gritted teeth, he growls out.]
And I will have to live with that. WE will have to live with that.
[If Isaac wants punishment, there is none crueler than that. But in it, there is also hope, though Isaac does not know how to see it.
The fairy heals and cleanses, sending a warm, tingling aura over Isaac. Hector's vision swims, and he struggles to dig his fingers into a pressure point to force Isaac to drop his weapon before he slumps over.]
And what gets high... must come down. Something like that.
His arms drop and he falls back onto his knees, sagging.
The wind picks up, swirling around them and tugging at his cloak, but not enough of Isaac is there to notice while he throbs with hate, hate for himself and for Hector, and for the howling, furious sobbing he can't bite back.
Hector may have fought and won the battle for Isaac's life, but not the war.
Mid-crying jag, he doubles over with a coughing fit that's just as violent, hacking thick and wet until he brings up a whitish phlegm from the bottom of his lungs. Gulping down deep, shuddering breaths, Isaac dries his face on his arm, his mouth, slowly going cold. His head hurts; his skull is clamped tight around his brain. And for the first time in a long time comes a thought he had as a boy the nights he had huddled in some dark, dusty corner of the library - the only place, it had seemed, where there was some semblance of order: he wants to go home. But home is nowhere. It's just an idea of a warm, comfortable place that never existed.
Shadows and projections shimmer around him, fading. When he knuckles his eyes dry one more time and dares to look around, he realizes both Julia and the demon's remains have disappeared. No trampled, blood-slick grass marking where either corpse had lain. Only Hector is still there - at least for the moment - with more wounds than Isaac remembers inflicting.
He doesn't know when he finds the will to climb to his feet again, and then, finally, to drag Hector over dirt and grass and the ragged cave floor to the fire, for what feels like for hours. Or why, beyond petty tit-for-tat. He feeds the dying embers with a barely-controlled wisp of magic, struggling to push past the aggressive ache in his temples and have Crimson pull a small measure of energy from Hector's fairy and from his own body to pour into Hector's. Crimson's capacity for healing can only pale in comparison to a creature whose sole purpose revolves around treating injury and disease. But what his devil offers is enough to buy some time until it has absorbed and returned with something more.
The glow of the fire draws Isaac's attention to the dust furring Hector's cheek. He thumbs it off him, rubbing it between his fingers. It the same stuff that had smudged off on his glove when he had wiped his own face.
Soon, there'd be wood to gather. But for now he sits himself down, moving only to grudgingly unshoulder his cloak. More dust clouds the air, when he does: a piece of a puzzle slotting into place in his head. He vigorously shakes it out, away from Hector, before tossing it over him.]
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The shuddering passes and he flops back down on his back, letting his face loll to the other side so he can press his feverish cheek against the cold stone.
A cloak tangles around his arms, restricting his movement. Isaac's, not his....
He remembers...Isaac, pinning himself to the ground and driving in his knife... Isaac's face turning into a mirror image of Hector's...the accusation 'Murderer' that he could not deny...
Nightmares. He remembers nightmares, for what else could they be?
Along his chest, on his hand, in the meat of his thigh, he feels the throb of blood beneath scabbed flesh. A nightmare that can inflict wounds...the sort of thing that scared villagers would say resided in the forsaken castle.
He senses no threat now, but there had been danger. Something to do with Isaac.... He can taste the fear in his mouth, as foul and bitter as the aftertaste of his bile. He'd almost lost Isaac.
He peels open his eyes and forces his aching head up from the cool stone to look for him.]
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Julia isn't dead.
She never was, because he can still feel her dimly, far to the east, on the other side of the mountain pass they crossed days ago.
Isaac dries his mouth and slides his gauntlet back on over blood-smeared skin with a stiff tug. He catches Hector's gaze a moment while snapping the buckles on, his own red-rimmed and tired, smouldering with powerless anger towards an enemy with no face, no blood. All Crimson had found, deeper in the woods, was a patch of myconid easily set ablaze. The others sucked themselves back into the dirt.
Hector had sensed something awry, he remembers. Something in the air. But not soon enough.]
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The pounding of his head is killing him, and his lungs feel heavy, every breath labored.
Closing his eyes, he raises one hand and waves it in the vague direction where he thinks he left the supplies he picked up yesterday.]
...so....breakfast?
[It comes out in a croak. Honestly, all he wants is maybe a gallon of water, to drink or to drown himself in, he's still undecided. But he bought that damned slanina for Isaac, and Isaac will eat it if it kills him.]
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Physical and emotional exhaustion have taken their toll and left him without much of an appetite. He hadn't thought to check Hector's pack for the meat he claimed to have brought. Hadn't even remembered it. It feels like a long time ago when Hector found him here, fighting to breathe, fading out.
He scrubs a hand down his face.]
Do I look like your servant?
[He asks, his voice hollow, raw. But he stands eventually, after a moment too long to seem like he will. The slanina smells good when he unwraps it by the fire, preserved between the cooler temperatures and the curing process. He wipes the blood - his and Hector's - off his knife onto his leg and slices off a small piece, stabbing into it and biting it off. The fat itself is smooth and rich in the way nothing he'd eaten lately really has been, the meat soft and the rind pleasantly chewy. He makes more cuts from there, slicing strips before sheathing his dagger into the remaining hunk of meat and letting it rest there, idly sucking the grease off a fingertip.]
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[Hector grumbles. He doesn't try to rise yet. Eyes closed, he listens to Isaac eventually get up and rustle through his bag. Hector can't will away his aches, so he keeps still as his body slowly adjusts to consciousness.
Pride worms its way through him as he listens to Isaac bite and chew. It's a primal urge, to act as a provider for one's mate. Isaac is eating food Hector brought him, and through the nausea and throbbing pain, he's pleased at it.]
Eventually, the foul taste in his mouth forces him up, and he rolls over and peels his eyes open again to search for his canteen. Unlike the food that had lain forgotten over the night, he'd keep the canteen nearby as he nursed Isaac's wounds.
He'd ask Isaac to find it and toss it over to him, but it's not worth dealing with the challenge that Isaac would surely take it as.]
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...All this meat and no wine? [He remarks, sans the sneering twist of his lips that usually accompanies his criticisms. The disappointment is only partly feigned. Something harder is what he needs; something to wash away the taste of sick sticking in the back of his throat and smooth his frayed, battered nerves over. He needs to forget what he saw, the twisted perceptions of reality that had nearly killed them both and still live under his skin and behind his eyelids, keeping him awake.
He digs his nails into his arm, following Hector's line of sight. It's not hard to guess at what he likely wants from what he already has - fire, cloak, food, fairy - and not too long ago, Isaac knows he'd have dangled that canteen, willing him to crawl for it like it was something to be earned. Today, he only has the patience and meanness to grab it from somewhere behind him, tipped over but stopped, and pass it over with a lazy, underhanded throw, a dismissive throw, assuming Hector will catch it - and none too concerned if he doesn't.]
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...'no wine', he says. There's no pleasing some people.
[He grumbles, but he's already calculating how long he will need to recover before he can venture out to bring Isaac back wine. It's obvious it is not safe for Isaac to do the shopping, and Hector wants to indulge Isaac's cravings.
...at least, the more innocent ones.
...and maybe a few of the not-so-innocent ones.
He uncorks the canteen and takes a long sip. It makes him chock and spit up more phlem, but he can breath a little easier afterwards.]
Any other requests? Sweetmeats, a pie, perhaps? What will it take to please you, Isaac?
[It's only part teasing.]
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A warm bed and a warm body.
[He says, to the fire. Nights of half-drunk debauchery, free to do and to be as he will. Fucking until boredom settles into his bones and he seeks something else or someone else, the next body to warm his and to dull the ache of being alive. Until he knows how to see and to let himself slide into open arms, he'll settle for open legs. Infinitely easier for all involved.]
Access to the latter whenever the mood should strike.
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‘I would be that for you,’ he does not say. Isaac is like a bull, or he was at the castle, from what Hector saw, taking his pick from the herd and rarely returning to a lover once used and discarded.
Hector isn’t like that. He’s the bird who mates for life. The life of one, if not the life of both.
Hector can’t make an offering of himself to Isaac only to be cast aside the next morning.
He pushes himself up and cards a hand through his tangled hair.]
There will be beds soon, when we get back on the road again. The port towns along the coast see travelers from all over; they won’t be so easily spooked by the sight of us as the peasants here.
[A day or two sleeping in a tavern with actual beds will do both of them good, no matter who Isaac chooses to tumble while he’s there.]
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I did not mean soon, Hector. [He says, sternly, a muscle rippling in his jaw. There's no telling what the future holds for him, if he'd make it as far as Hector wants them to, a life that he already seems to be building for them in his dreams; not even Julia with all her visions could know with absolute certainty. Dragging himself from one day to the next, the most Isaac can do is keep breathing, reminding himself on every step forward of how much pain is born of ruined plans and broken expectations.
Isaac makes a point of meeting his gaze, solemn and unblinking. That Hector is barely able to sit himself up doesn't matter; he wouldn't need to to fulfill the purpose Isaac has in mind for him.]
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I offered you my companionship before, and you called me clingy and sentimental.
[It's not a 'no'...]
If I grant you your unfettered access, what do you offer in return?
[Hector is prodding to try to establish what it is Isaac wants for the two of them. He wonders if Isaac himself even knows.]
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Isaac isn't sure. But when he looks at Hector with a sudden, fresh awareness, he thinks it may be something Hector is guilty of, too.]
An escape.
[No sly-faced smile, no crude answer rolling off his tongue.]
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Let me kiss you again, and I'll let you fuck me again.
[For once, Hector is the crude one. He has no illusion that Isaac will be any gentler the second time around, so any tenderness he wants, he will have to bargain for.
He finally takes one of the slices of slanina to nibble on while he waits for his answer. If they end up coupling, Hector doesn't want to be so weak and hungry that he passes out partway through it.]
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Isaac looks him up and down, coolly, weighing the offer long enough to make it seem as though he has another option to fall back on. But there is nothing better. His choices are either having something or nothing at all; and as hard as it can be to bend, to expose himself as vulnerable and deeply needy, saying no this time is harder still. So he finally spreads his hands, like he's smugly baiting an enemy into attacking him, and not actually inviting someone into his personal space. It feels the same, somehow, either way.]
I submit. [Comes his wry answer.]
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Hector isn’t in the mood for sex; he’s tired and still healing from Isaac’s blade. But he waves his fairy over to receive a little more magical healing from it, then forces himself out of bed.
Dealing with Isaac is like training an animal made stubborn and wary by past abuses. Passing up an opportunity like this will set back whatever progress they’ve made.
Besides, Isaac knows how to press his buttons. His body isn’t craving touch right now, but Hector has faith that it will, very quickly, once he and Isaac begin.]
It would be more comfortable if we waited for real lodgings.
[He points out, even as he slides over into Isaac’s space.
Hector lifts a hand to Isaac’s cheek and tilts his head to the side so they don’t bump noses when he leans in to kiss him.]
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imma fudge some travel times here so Isaac doesn't have to wait around for days
LOL fucking pumpkin
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no real kids for them is probably for the best, lol
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HOW DARE HECTOR HAVE NEEDS OF HIS OWN
HE’S NOT SAYING IT SHOULD totally absolutely BE HIM
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hope this timeskippery is okay -- let me know if you wanted anything changed
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