#main plot arc

"I've got you." - cholericchimera

Send “I’ve got you” to help my muse clean blood off themselves. 

Rezo has been unnaturally still since he cornered Riksfalto outside of Philionel’s bedchambers, and demanded she abide by a warrior’s honor code of temporary retreat.  Retreat, that the mourning might bury their dead. 

What was left of him.

The Sage has silently endured incessant personal and professional stress for many months now.  But it’s a struggle too great even for him to conceal his anguish.  Not only because Phil had become a close personal friend, but also....

Zelgadis enters the room--and fuck, fuck, of course, right now, when he cannot shield a soul from his pain, it has to be the one person for whom Rezo has tried to be flawless, in abject terror of falling back into dangerous old habits.  The Red Priest curses the gods who do not, do not, DO NOT have his trust.  And he does so audibly, a hiss of “shit” between his teeth, lips tightening into a thin line. He jolts even then, sampling something disgustingly ferrous on his lips. 

It dawns on him then, he hasn’t changed his garments. He hasn’t even washed his hands.  He’s still sitting at his desk, in his bloodied night clothes.  Blood . . . is there blood on his face?  How savage must he look, a healer baptized by the viscera of the person he could not save.  

    “I’m sor . . . !”   He can’t even get those three syllables out before his voice breaks, and he must swallow, and wait for the weakness to pass.  

Zelgadis cuts across him and simply says, “I’ve got you,” and he feels roughened stone hands take his own and quietly, diligently, kindly scrub off the blood of the man who would have been his grandson’s father-in-law, and it is too much, it is too much, too much, for Rezo, that they are here, at this juncture in both their lives, when his child would be burdened by this grief, because Rezo once again was weak, or stupid, or slow. 

I n s u f f i c i e n t , WORTHLESS old man! 

For the first time since he came to Seyruun, Rezo weeps in front of Zelgadis. Not a little bit. Not a tear or two.  A broken, rib-crushing, cannot-breathe-between-the-sobs kind of weeping.  He covers his mouth with a closed fist, and he cries some more, while a vein presses out against his pale forehead, while tears and snot run in an ugly torrent down his face.  He has never been less dignified, or more human.  

      “I . . . . w-wanted, I wanted . . . ! So MUCH  . . . . to be of USE to you, I . . . .wanted to save him for you, f-for HER, but especially for you, I . . . . please . . . believe me, I tried, I TRIED . . . . to save him!  You had a proper parent, you finally . . . . !  I’m sorry, I’m . . . SO sorry, I’m sorry . . . !” 

Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up SHUT UP--!!!! 

Rezo bites down on his closed fist, and shivers once, violently, and shuts the fuck up, like he ought to.  The hand that Zelgadis has already cleaned scrubs down his face, as though to literally erase visible evidence of his devastation.  His features are blank again.

     “That was . . . inconvenient for you, forgive me.”  

His voice is dead. 

    “I’m sure Amelia needs you more right now.”