fear not the setting sun.

he can feel the way the dark god envelopes him in darkness-- like a lover’s embrace. he’d know a thing or two about such an embrace, where z o d i a r k cannot. the void is an aimless place, an ever shifting landscape. he is not enthralled; he is blessed. he need only remember as such whenever he is hopelessly lonely. 

his will cannot be sundered. he cannot be taken. 

thus does the dark god learn of his very human heart. he is tainted, to be certain, but weyland is still largely weyland, despite the god’s best efforts to smother him as his vessel. zodiark does not do it callously. he is, after all, a result of many things. desperation, despair.

death. 

his yearning for people, for two souls out of billions, is beyond comprehension. foreign. zodiark does not understand. but he does not suffocate. he allows this man to keep his human heart, if only because it will bring him comfort in the eternity they are to be bound. 

zodiark does not know love. 

but weyland does. 

deathless. 

hearing that phrase come from his lips is odd.

luc has–had?–a family. he had a life. weyland had nothing like that. and yet the man before him was so convinced, UTTERLY convinced, that he was the most worthless waste of space to have ever existed. or maybe, in luc’s mind, he does not exist at all. the riddle puzzles at him more than it should. more than it should? why should he stop caring? simply because he isn’t there any more? it doesn’t feel right. 

he wonders if the man can still feel his presence.

someone must, yes?

in this bottomless void, is he still a person? why does he have to watch his loved ones suffer so? does luc think this because he could not save one man? weyland couldn’t even begin to understand, nor zodiark. but zodiark does not love. zodiark feels nothing at all. no contempt. no hate. no loneliness. no. those feelings were all his. did he hate them for leaving him to this fate? no. they haven’t left him at all. he watches the figure before him’s shoulders sag, deflated, agonized. small. 

he always made himself feel small and unimportant when something vexed him. 

does your absence truly vex them so?

he does not respond.

it must. 

❛ you understand nothing, ❜ weyland hisses aloud, to the divinity that shares his body. ❛ nothing at all. ❜ he watches, worlds and streams apart. watches as someone he loves whisper their nothingness like a mantra. all because he couldn’t save one man. 

to love is to know only suffering. have you not taught me?

❛ …! ❜ the pained intake of breath echoes in nothingness. hands clutch at his sides as he slowly sinks to his knees. he hears luc utter the phrase again. he weeps his bitter tears, and feels aether brush against his mind like a lover runs their hands through his hair. 

nothing grandeur. nothing incredible. weyland had had to build himself from the ground up. the only possession in his life had been a pendant from a woman he never really knew, and his blades, of which he’d been taught to forge himself. a necklace and two swords. that was all he had to his name. 

but things shifted, and suddenly, he had what he’d never thought he would: a family. people who loved him. people who cared for him. two people more than most. 

his room reflected that. 

where it had been barren, there had been changes. slowly, he started to collect little things. trinkets from his adventures-- little figurines from small children thankful for a rescue. plants he’d grown in little pots on the window sill, the seeds of which had been lovingly cultivated by his own hand, to prove to himself that he could grow things. that his hands weren’t only good for killing. scattered leaflets of parchment, all scrawled with his own writing, evidence of him learning slowly. books he’d been gifted by the scions to encourage him. journals he intended to fill. 

on his desk lay quills and ink, letters and notes half-made, barely legible, but with care. just in case. 

paintings and portraits, drawings of places and things and people he didn’t want to forget littered the walls. some gifts. supplies for artistry lie strewn across several surfaces, as if his artistic process was controlled chaos. 

it was a room lived in.

some days, they expected to still find him there. in the corner, near his blades and knives and other weapons, sharpening them away into the night, humming a ghostly, lonely melody, plucked from ul’dah. on his bed, a single candle lit, hunched over a book, scribbling down words, brows furrowed in a hard concentration, teaching himself to write and read. or strewn on the covers, asleep, eyes moving behind the lids in a dreamlike state, a sense of rest that beguiled his still half aware senses. 

paused. 

his room was encased in time, with none willing to move it forward. they dusted. cleaned when necessary. kept it pristine. but kept it as he left it. and so time stilled. life stopped. and his room remains the same. 

deathless.

it’s an odd question, isn’t it?

weyland has no past. weyland isn’t even his name– it was the name of many before him. every other weyland had their own past, their own history, and forsook it all. but he wasn’t like that. all he’d known, all he had ever known, were the ways of death. and every night spent in agony under the moon. in his mind’s eye, he remembers a time where dalamud hung low, red with purpose. 

such was his fate to fall, too.

his real name–true name?–was lost to the annals of time. a voice whispered to him, telling him it could speak it if he wished, but he never did. whoever that man would’ve been is long dead, buried next to a mother he never knew in a land that was not hers. he couldn’t even remember her face. the master never spoke her name. all he had was a pendant, his only possession, the only thing he could really call his. his name had belonged to many before him, all who had names of their own. why didn’t he want to know?

why wasn’t he attached to this body, this person that was himself?

weyland had no answers. 

he did not want to leave estinien. 

a terrible thing, want. it leaves one yearning, the heart unseamed and raw and bleeding. it leaves the soul vulnerable, weak to suggestions, to desertion of duties that were far greater than just one man. he loved estinien. loved him so much it hurt. is there truly no love without pain? without this agony, this suffering? 

still such a child, weyland.

to love is to know only suffering.

        ❛ i… ❜ bitter are the tears, wept alone in the void. the memory fades into nonexistence as he collapses in on himself, clutching his sides. estinien’s face fades into nothingness as he remains in perpetual night. 

                                       ❛ i’m sorry. please, forgive me. ❜

he looks back on his time spent walking amongst mortals and it hangs on his tongue, heavy, unbidden, bitter. the void separates him from what makes him human, makes him more than human, makes him less. makes him unwhole. 

almost. 

he was almost a hero. could’ve been a hero in another time, another place. could’ve been a saviour too if that had been his allotted path, had any other plucked him from the streets of ul’dah, starving, frightened, alone. could have been something more to the people he knew. not just a blade in the dark, but one in the sun. 

almost. 

he was almost good enough. just at the cusp of deserving kindness, of love and sweet words whispered wholly unwound from the heart. worthy of care and concern and to be doted upon, cradled with affection like silks drape the frame. nearly able to say “i love you” without it feeling like his tongue had fallen to ash. like it wasn’t a blade to his heart, a sweet poison that grants a blissful death. 

love is the death of all things.

almost. 

he was almost human.