𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃 & 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐒

even though he's got watchful and worried eyes trained on the sword by the other's side, siegfried does not back away. he sways slightly, perhaps because of the sound, or perhaps because of elric's stare. but his feet do not move a single inch.

do you find the idea of me losing control to be a comfort ? the sorcerer challenges, pulling the blond's focus off the blade and back to the man's face. he has half a mind to answer, shaking his head hurriedly and parting his lips to speak, as he used to whenever caught dreaming by one of his tutors in the middle of a lesson. but then siegfried realizes that it was more of a sarcastic question.

when he's closed his mouth again it is a more poised face that stares back at the albino. his gaze is steady with a challenge of his own, brows lowered into a look of tired judgement. it's a look he's given the other on multiple occasions, whenever he feels that elric is unnecessarily cruel in a conversation.

when the pale prince tells his story, however, there is once again something softer that leaks out of the cracks in his harsh demeanor. siegfried catches it, and his own attitude softens. he listens intently, brow creased now only in reaction to what he is hearing. it paints a tragic picture : saxif d'aan learns love only when it is too late. and it ends without a happy ending, but with a lesson. perhaps, siegfried thinks, elric's way of asking him to understand why he did what he did.

but something in him still refuses to believe that.

his gaze falls to the ground. he wonders how strong the blade's grip is on his new companion, and whether true love could have stood against that bond. though in order for that to work, elric would have had to know true love before it was too late.

finally he meets the crimson eyes again. and in them is that bitterness again. in his own blue ones is that tired judgement from earlier again, and defiance.

ELRIC WATCHED SIEGFRIED'S FACE MOVE THROUGH PERTINACITY BEFORE BREAKING LIKE WAVES UPON THE SHORE. when that same dry defiance receded, there were pieces of him scattered on the sand ── recognition and hope, more than anything. the line between pity and empathy flashed before him too, and in a moment of weakness, elric found himself being uncharacteristically charitable with the opinions of others.

it was enough to spark a moment of self-awareness, wherein he wondered for what reason he had allowed to conversation to stray this far. the most base theory would start-and-end with an acknowledgement of his affliction ── ever the weak and feeble scholar-king, whose ancestral power was matched only by the deficient blood granted to him by those same forces. fate was wily and fate was cruel, and she always had taste for irony where elric silverskin was concerned.

but then, there was the clearer answer which weakness itself allowed him to see; that beyond creed and temperament, siegfried and him were the same. he saw a mirror held up to the xantenian by his own words, and it hurt. he ached so much that his fevered mind conjured images of lonely castles and one dark cavern on a fateful night. he ached so much much he smiled, strangled by pain and memory and wonton defiance of all of it, but still earnest. still freely given.

          " SAXIF D'AAN IS JUST A FAERIE STORY, " he said. they sang his songs at festivals, and scared children toward constancy with tragedy. not that it had worked on him, he supposed; elric was far too skeptical for common sense. " or do you suppose i abandoned my home in some misbegotten wish to be human? "

there was a playful turn to his voice, ever laced with sorrow. yyrkoon's voice still rang in his ears with much the same sentiment, and even the more even tempered judgement he'd received as a boy seemed to beg the same question of him. he had never understood why. " i feel what i feel ── often inconstantly, as is common amongst my kind. often immodestly, as is not. i will say that in my travels, i have seen more of this strange young world than i thought possible as a boy, and for all it's varied incumbents nearly all of them have shared a penchant for judgement. you stack yourself against your neighbors and grow indignant in the knowledge that you are not the same, such that i am incongruous wherever i find myself. others may resent my duality on these matters; i do not. i am only as i am and know only that whatever else that means, it has been enough to bring me here. "

“Is there.” Nicholas turns back around. His shoes are muffled by a rug, and the candles glint, his Plato shadow slanted along a wall. “What is wonderful, Elric. Tell me everything. I have all night,” he says to him, “and I have all day” —his eye twinkles— “and every day after. And all of yours.”

FOR A LONG AND WONDERFUL MOMENT, ELRIC HELD NICHOLAS IN HIS GAZE WITH TENDER CURIOSITY. the question, he supposed, brought to mind other thoughts of who we are and why, and whether there's more truth to be had in becoming or in having once been. as things stood, nicholas was a dear friend to him, and he imagined how all the gently alluded to details of his life had congealed into the kind of person who contemplated the rain.

had he danced beneath it in his younger days? did he dream of communing with it now? these were the important details he considered when trying to size up the old man, for contrary to what some accounts would claim, it took great anger to rouse elric's impatient. for the things he loved best, he made a habit of chewing slowly.

          " OH, I DON'T KNOW ... YOU'VE A WAY OF INTERPOLATING EVERYTHING, " he said at last. then he pulled his eyes away with that same painfully soft look and gave his smile to the fireplace. " i cannot say why, for i've only ever known you as you are. perhaps it is merely a consequence of your trade then, but i've met few with your ability to see the beauty in things, even and especially in the absence of goodness. i like your quiet, and i like how you're almost always laughing even when you're quiet ── it's very adventurous of you. "

“ a—ah. ” he gives an unsteady nod, pretending to take in elric's description of her without questioning it. in truth, those aren't the words he would have expected from someone who speaks about a lost love. not kind, nor clever, nor curious. of course . . . none of those traits are necessary to be worthy of love.

he listens as worry forms upon his brow. he imagines the pair growing up in melniboné, that macabre and mysterious place that most of his own people have only heard about in gruesome stories. but he imagines love there, between them. a light of hope that wasn't perfect, but that provided happiness within a dark and ruthless culture, an escape from royal expectations and perhaps, for elric, a distraction from his deficits. siegfried had oftentimes wished for a companion when growing up sheltered behind castle walls.

ultimately it is compassion that softens his gaze. and seized all of a sudden with the urge to do more to help the exhausted melnibonéan, he reaches out again, this time to brush the damp wisps of hair out of the other's face.

for a moment he remains lost in thought, lost in the portrait of the pale man before him, in the colors of whites and the red of his eyes. only then do his senses register the confession. he is crouched before that very sword now. the blond tears himself away finally. he stands up, as if embarrassed.

LIGHTNING FLASHED OVERHEAD, AND AT HIS SIDE THE BLACK STEEL GLINTED OMINOUSLY IN THE FADING SUN SO THAT WHEN SIEGFRIED'S EYES SET ON IT, THE RUBY AT IT'S HILT SEEMED STARE BACK WITH MALICE. elric had admitted before that he did not care to take advantage of the sword's power, and true to his word he had yet to take her in hand in the time they had traveled together following the old sorcerer's trick. now, it was a fact that seemed hauntingly prescient in light of elric's current diminishment ── the metal crooned, and it sounded like hunger.

          " DO YOU FIND THE IDEA OF ME LOSING CONTROL TO BE A COMFORT? " he forced his eyes open again and stared pointedly at the xantenian prince. sometimes elric managed a certain wry humor where his own macabre nature was concerned, yet at the moment it was entirely absent. he looked for a long time, and seemed to search for something or other before abandoning his fevered thoughts. quietly, the pale man worked to right himself against the sinewed bark of the ash tree with shaky breath. " we've a story in melniboné of a sorcerer, who believed his human love had run away with another. in his anguish he saw both of them to their graves, yet as she lay tortured and dying by her lover's hand, can you imagine what she tells him? "

suddenly the wind picked up, and elric paused, allowing silence to grow inside the margins of the conversation. " in their time together, gratyesha had been too frightened of her own affection to admit it openly, or at least that's what the poets remember. then all at once with her dying breath, she did ── she told saxif d'aan that she loved him, and he knew then that he did as well. knew, that his wrath and pride had destroyed the only person he'd ever cared for, and for the first time he knew remorse, regret, sorrow ... you have to understand, to a melnibonéan none of these are common feelings. my people simply do not posses such things that have been fabricated by human conscience. "

once before, elric had heard in passing another version which painted her faerie husband as a monster, but then again it always was the same story. ones where men lost their way in dark forests, and inhuman beauties forced to toil in mortal homes. the only difference was nature; for better and for worse, elric was cursed to understand his own in all it's incongruous desires.

could it be that some part of him did resent her for not coming when they parted? and in their years apart, perhaps cymoril too learned to hate him for leaving. elric did not know, and the only thing certian was that love had indeed been the death of duty, for he could scarcely have destroyed both more completely if he'd tried.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀or perhaps elric simply isn't ready to talk about her yet.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀siegfried lowers the waterskin down upon his thigh again and exhales a breathy chuckle. “ i try to be as unfit for consumption as possible. ” there's a boyish twinkle in his eye as he angles the pouch so that he can pour some of the cold water into his palm. maybe one day he'll tell elric about the time he got swallowed up by the large green beast, yet somehow survived it.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀he is about to raise his hand but freezes momentarily at the other's words, wide eyes reflexively searching the presence before him for any sort of imminent danger. “ . . . a death sentence ? ” he blinks, and when his gaze settles it is filled with hardly contained horror. elric's favour too. at least, with that realization the horror gives way to a softer sort of surprise. the admission comes unexpected.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀siegfried swallows and shakes his head, as if to convince himself of something, to take the gravity out of elric's reply. perhaps he is being a naive fool. but rather that than return to the anxious boy he was before. he is stronger than that now, siegfried tells himself, no matter which dragon he faces.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀he wants to understand this peculiar wanderer.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀focusing only on the water again he pours some more of it onto his palm, then finally lifts his hand to elric's forehead to spread the cold relief on the man's skin. blue eyes remain distant and fully on the task, perhaps to push the weight of the somber prophecy out of the conversation and out of his own mind.

THERE WAS A PUZZLE LOCKED IN ELRIC'S MIND THAT HELD ALL HIS THOUGHTS OF HOME. his father's inherent disdain had been the first mystery of his life, and though the answer was always simple, it resurfaced in the wake of his death, ever unsure. in comparison, his cousin's bitter hatred felt new ── his stomach curled when he imagined when it must've taken root between roaming the dragon caves as children, and regicide. for some reason, he wanted whatever had split between them to be more complicated than the memory of cymoril's soft hands against his cheek, nervous and giddy at fourteen.

now, elric stared forward at nothing and felt siegfried's arms around him. it gave him the peculiar sense of being stuck and cornered and held all at once.

          ❝ WHAT USE IS WILL WITHOUT DISCIPLINE TO SHAPE IT? ❞ a secret sorrow laced his voice, the kind that dragged dead weight behind it. then a cool hand pressed into his forehead and elric's strange inhuman eyes gently closed until, like an enchanter, he summoned her inside his mind. " ... cymoril and i grew up together, and she knew things about me that no one ever will. she was not kind, or clever, or curious ... but she was never lost, either. she'd a clarity of mind that i still lack, and while i know she understood me little, she loved me against all reason. we never lacked for it. "