#lukel

𝕐𝕠𝕦'𝕣𝕖 𝕞𝕪 𝕝𝕒𝕤𝕥 𝕕𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕞.

Lukel had broken him. He'd shattered the man he loved. It hadn't been an outcome he'd prepared for, so confident in himself that he hadn't stopped to think that this could happen. It was worse than anything he could have imagined. So much worse.

”Just promise me, when you get up off that table, you'll tell me you still love me.” Vael had promised, kissing him softly before they’d begun.

And there had just been horrible, empty silence when it was over.

Every shred of Vael was gone. He didn't look at Lukel like he loved him, didn't touch him, didn't have the same joy in his eyes that he'd had for months now. It was just…empty. Emotionless. Blank.

And Lukel hated himself for it. More than he'd ever hated anything before. He couldn't look in the mirror because all he would see - all he feared seeing - was his father staring back out at him. The man who had broken his son repeatedly, joyfully. Who hadn't stopped when his heart did, who had simply waited for him to come around, born back into the pain he'd briefly escaped from.

He'd done that to Vaelsnipe. Unintentionally, but he had broken his soul into pieces, and now there was nothing there when he looked into his eyes. So he stopped looking at him. He stopped eating. He stopped caring about sleep. He just sat and stared at the empty hearth while that silence that had descended upon their once happy home ate him alive. He'd ruined it. He'd ruined him.

And he didn't know how to make it right.

Staring at his own reflection, there wasn't even something there. There was, in fact, nothing. Vaelsnipe could recall the pure agonizing pain that felt like it might never end. How it violently shattered his soul and not at all metaphorically. A storm had broke itself apart under its own force deep within him leaving nothing but mere fragments floating about within the typhoon.

He could remember their voices within his core, both of them crying out to one another, raw and frightened, till it all suddenly stopped. And then there was nothing.

When Vael woke, there was no pain. No fear. No relief. Only the intense numbing absence.

His memories remained intact. He knew who he was. He knew who Lukel was. He knew that he loved him, married him and had chosen this path. But the feelings that had brought him to it were now... gone. Love reduced to knowledge without any weight. He understood that this should have terrified him somewhere within. Instead, he simply observed it as he was merely observing how Lukel was reacting to it.

"Don't apologize." He had said in a tone of voice he used to use back when they first met. When he was masking his emotions from him entirely but this time, it wasn't a mask. It just... was devoid any weight at all. "I asked for this."

What remained of his soul drifted in fragments through an endless dark, pieces of himself buried within them and unreachable at first. He moved through the days calm and functional, an echo of the man he had been. When Lukel looked at him, Vael could see the devastation there in his face, recognize it as something important that he should seek to fix and still he did not know how to reach back.

Though he did not feel wounded, this was a wound that was going to take time to recover and piece back together. Work, which was slow and extremely taxing on a heart that was shattered and all Vael could do was watch it shatter more as he remained at his side. Exhaustion set in as Vael watched Lukel unravel beneath the strain. He saw the signs with the shaking hands, the scared silence, the way the house emptied itself of warmth. He knew something was wrong. He knew he should act. Without emotion, intent had stalled and that failure unsettles him more still deep within to this day than the pain ever did.

In that emptiness, Vaelsnipe learned what he was without feeling. Efficient. Controlled. Unburdened. The world became quieter, simpler. He understood then why some sought that state deliberately. Looking back, he now knew why it was a lie to call it peace. Yet what he endured was pale compared to what Lukel had survived in repetition throughout his lifespan.

Watching Lukel break, Vael finally understood literally what it meant to have a soul shattered and rebuilt again and again until something else emerged from the wreckage. While he had been spared something emerging from his own, he understood Lukel and the shattered parts of him on an intimate level now more than ever. And yet even fractured, something in him still reacted, to him.

He could not feel love, but he knew it was there. And the knowledge of Lukel’s suffering disturbed him deeply like an imbalance. As something wrong that demanded correction. So he worked tirelessly to find himself again.

It was strange to not just know but to live with the fact that he no longer needed sleep. No longer felt hunger. So it made his work more achievable at a faster rate than he was certain it took Lukel when he'd done this alone.

When his emotions returned, they did not do so gently. They came back all at once nearly overwhelming him. And with them came the full weight of what Lukel had endured alone while Vael stood beside him unable to respond as a husband should. He understood why he still couldn't look at himself in the mirror, and that his "I still love you." was too little, too late. It is a heavy weight he carries still.

He didn't regret his choice, nor would he ever he'd vowed. He'd knew what it cost them, and how it had nearly broke them both. But he was determined to find a way to help him look in the mirror and see the elf he saw despite it all, however long it was going to take. Now… he had all the time in the world to see it through.

Me: *starts reading Elantris*

fandom: *dead*

fanfiction: *90% in russian*

posts on Lukel: *3*

posts in general: *7*

Giida had brought her kind-of-uncle to her newest most favorite coffee shop in the Dragon Isles. The same place Marik had brought her all those weeks ago - and still, it made her grin excitedly every time she saw the coffee mages at work. She had briefly considered changing her trajectory in life entirely and becoming a coffee mage. They made coffee! With MAGIC! How cool was that?!

But she quickly righted herself, dragging her thoughts away from becoming the most powerful coffee barista in history, and looked across the table at Illyrias. He had more scars on his face than she remembered, and she wasn't used to seeing the tightness around his eyes. That hadn't been there years ago. He'd been more carefree and open - he'd laughed and joked more. When he did now, well…she tasted the lie. 

“Uncle, are you going to drink your coffee?" She asked, nodding to the cold brew she'd recommended. Illyrias glanced up at her, as if lost in his own thoughts, and quickly took a sip. Luckily, it was cold, so the rushed sip didn't scald his throat. “Uhm…you okay? You kind of look like hell. Lovingly! You…lovingly look like hell.”

Illyrias brushed his blonde hair back with a hand, chuckling at her sweet bluntness. He knew she didn't mean it in any ill way - but she was right. He probably did look like hell. “Yeh, I'm aight. Jus’ been tryin’ to uh…get settled back in th’city an’ ain't been easy. Told you ‘bout th’friend who's lettin’ me sleep in th’old clinic tho? So, tha’s been nicer’n the alleys in th’Row.” Much less stabbing occurred. “Still jus’ uh…not used t’being around so many people.”

This she understood on a deep level. It had been overwhelming to come back to a place so teeming with life and people and voices after having been mostly removed from the world for years and years. “So, you're totally going to let me help decorate, right? We can make it so cute! And you don't really get to tell me ‘no’, cause I'm going to help anyways.” She would. She knew her uncle hadn't touched the family vaults - but she had no such qualms using the gold there. Especially when it helped someone she loved.

He let out a little sigh, taking another sip of the - admittedly - very good cold brew. “Yeh, figured I wasn't really gunna get a say in tha’,” he muttered with a little grin, affixing gold and silver eyes on the young lady. “You ain't gunna tell your dad, right’?” 

She knew the tensions between them had only gotten more strained with time and grief, and that their history was one she couldn't untangle alone. She knew it was serious. But she was nothing if not her father's daughter - stubborn to a fault. “I'm not going to tell him yet. I'll give it time before I start talking to him about it, but Uncle…” her voice was gentle and warm, concerned and colored with love. “I don't want it to be like this forever. You didn't used to be…I mean… it wasn't always like this. I remember you two used to talk? And even if it was…a little strained, it wasn't like this. And I don't want it to be like this. You're my uncle and I love you. I don't want you to feel like you can't be my family.”

He didn't know if this had been a move orchestrated by Lukel, or if it was simply fate that had gotten Giida across the table from him. But he couldn't just ignore her plea. Her honesty. And gods, but did she look so much like her aunt Elenria when she spoke with such undiluted compassion.

“Yeh, aight kid. I'mma work on it.” He didn't know how to do that, really. He didn't know how to move past the anger and the grief and the debilitating loneliness that had made its home deep in the marrow of his bones - but he'd try. For her. For the Aunt she'd never known that Illyrias had loved fiercely. 

“Good! Then I'm gunna get some things for your cute new…uhm…apartment? And we're gunna make it feel like home!”

He could only sigh and smile at her softly, shaking his head. “Aight. Jus’ remember - I like pink.” 

@daily-writing-challenge

ɴᴏ ᴍᴀᴛᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅɪꜱᴛᴀɴᴄᴇ, ᴛʜᴇ ꜱᴘᴀᴄᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ʙᴇᴛᴡᴇᴇɴ ᴜꜱ, ɪ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʟᴏᴠᴇᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴀʟʟ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɪ ᴀᴍ.

Art by: Dr Voronin on VGen

She had examined his hands carefully; each callous and faint scar, every mark and nick, the way he held them out to her, the way they didn't shake even when he knew, in part, what she was. There was no fear in him but rather a deep curiosity as she looked each hand over before patting him on the shoulder. He'd done good, she told him, before she left him in the field with Lukel's sheep and disappeared. Leaving him, no doubt, still just as curious as he'd been when she'd appeared.

Her workshop in Tanaris had been dusty when she'd come back to it after a decade of absence and unuse. But within a few days she'd had it cleaned and tidied and ready to begin her work again. But this work would be different from what she usually worked on in here, the pieces and parts of artificial limbs lining the tables and walls. This was special, and something she would take great care in creating.

It had been many years since she worked with Titansteel, but it had always been a familiar metal to her. It was incorruptible and strong. Elementium was more difficult as it was rather indestructible, but her bones had been forged of the same metal, once upon a time. And like always called to like. So she worked tirelessly, for days, remembering the ways to sing to the metal, to combine them, to marry them. It was difficult and strenuous, and it took her many days to remember the songs correctly, but eventually, the metals listened - they obeyed - and they twined around one another in her crucible. Becoming one thing out of two, something new. Something she had never thought to combine before.

Something she would never combine again. Because this was unique, something she would only ever craft once. Because he had asked her to. Because his happiness has radiated like a sun all its own and she could only smile and tell him that she would do her best. 

She poured the metal into the mold, continuing her song of strength and love and purpose - to protect and to uphold. To be unique, the only thing like its kind in the world. Like certainly called to like as the metal cooled and eventually she broke it free of the mold and went to work shaping it. It was hard, beyond anything she'd ever created, but she would not give up, or tire, or stop. The metal was her cousin, and she would guide it along this journey until it was complete. She would love it as she had loved everything else her hands had made. She would love it as she loved the man who had been her enemy and her greatest friend. And her family. She would love it as that man loved his Hunter. And she would ensure that it would last his lifetime. Her own lifetime. 

She crafted the runes that would hold what she'd place within the band, that would not be a prison but an eternal embrace. He'd asked for stars, and stars she could do. Golden light encompassed the band, to hold it carefully while she sang those stars into existence, as she placed them tenderly into the metal. He had asked for stars and she would ensure they shone as brightly this day as they would thousands of years from now. 

Days and days and hours poured into her creation and when it was finished, she placed it into a small box and closed the lid, to let it rest, to let it have quiet to let it know itself. Not that she had made it sentient in any way, but even crafted things bore the mark of their maker, and she wanted it to bear only her affections and her desire for it to be loved by the man it would be given to someday. 

(The one we did get went like this, which is great, but left me craving more:)

Lukel: it's too late for me....save the others....*dies*

Raoden: stop being a drama queen