#parnis

His gaze, aqua and glowing, stared through the amber courage poured into clear glass, sloshing up along the side every time he turned it gently. His thoughts weren't with it, however. He couldn't really remember the last time he had been. Maybe he hadn't ever been. Drinking had just been a way to numb himself to thought. To feeling. To memory. To circumstance. Losing himself in a bottomless pit that it felt like he couldn't claw his way out of.

He had fallen so far down. No sunlight to find him. And Soryk had, he could admit, just resigned himself to that. Stopped trying. Stopped giving much of a fuck, really. A man who had nothing more to lose became the most dangerous kind of man. There wasn't some kind of moral compass to keep him in check. No ounce of self-preservation. Wasn't going to matter if he died on a job. He wouldn't, but even if he had, he would have made so little impact.

Had he ever really been capable of feeling anything outside of resignation? As he stared past his drink at a fire whose flames had gradually died down, he wondered if even he had in days when Ei'riya had been ever so gently at his side. She had been all gentle and sweet things. He had been sharp and serrated, cold and unwelcoming. An amusing and yet, necessary contrast. He had been just the same with Ahtay. She had been neither gentle nor sweet. Sharp in her own way. High maintenance, he would have called her, though he didn't see that as a bad thing, really. She'd known what she wanted and she'd known exactly what buttons to push to get there.

His tongue swept along his bottom lip, picking traces of scotch that left a subtle burning impression, infinite. Like the memories that left a hole in his person.

Did he ever want to be a different person? He didn't think so. He was, perhaps, the result of his circumstances, which sounded like some lazy excuse for being a bad, self-interested man, but there was an undeniable truth in it. With a different mother, with a present father, with a different background, there was no doubting that he would been Parnis instead of Soryk.

His face twisted up. No. He didn't miss that either. Parnis. He hated that name. Sounded like way more than who and what he actually was. Flowed too nicely from the tongue. If he'd ever had grace, and perhaps once he had, it was long gone, replaced by whatever he'd become.

Whoever he'd become.

Shaking his head, he sat back a little, gaze finally focusing on his glass. What was it he wanted? Was it the same thing as what he deserved? Did he know what he deserved? Death was probably too lenient for a man like him. Death was a convenient way out. Surely that was how he'd survived so long. He couldn't say he tried to go out of his way to expose himself, but it wasn't for his life that he kept others beyond an arm's length of him.

What was he even doing anyway?

Licking flames told him nothing. Just the crackle and pop and soft roar that he couldn't hear over the intensity of his thoughts, of disembodied voices belonging to a past that he couldn't claim to be his. Just ghosts of a bygone era that haunted him. Pursing his lips, he drew in a breath, realised he desired for nothing he was worthy of, and abruptly drained his glass.

He'd need a few more of those before the night was over. Just like so many other nights when he was left to his own devices.