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Worm
Fandom: Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Characters: Micaiah/Sothe/Pelleas
Word count: ~6k
Warnings: Dysfunctional relationship, gnarly dark magic, gnarly dark magic symptoms resembling a terminal neurological disease?
Notes: The Sothe/Pelleas arm of this mess gets the most attention but it's definitely within a context of "They Both Love Micaiah So Much (Perhaps Unfortunately?)" This was for![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
queenlua for Press Start VII!
I.
One fine summer morning, Pelleas begins to die.
He's been prone to headaches since he was a child, and this one began as they generally do. A thunderstorm approached, and he became clumsy and confused, dropping things, forgetting what he meant to say. He had until the storm broke to make excuses and scuttle away to a dark room. When the rain came it unfolded, this blue-white thing inside his skull, and he didn't know anything anymore. Thus far, all as normal.
But the storm was three days ago. He should be recovered - indeed, it barely even hurts now. Yet he finds himself in rooms not knowing how he got there, or for what purpose. He's in the records room, and can't recall what records, if any, he was looking for. He only has a deep and pathetic sense that he was trying to be useful. Light and birdsong float down from the high windows, and it isn't as stifling in here as it will be later, and it's one of the few times of day when he isn't obliged to talk to anyone. He should make something of this time. He should make something of every moment Micaiah was kind enough to give back to him. And he is standing motionless in the center of the rug, and his mind is empty. He can't feel his fingertips - how long has that been the case, without his noticing?
In any case he takes down a ledger and opens it, hoping it will jog his memory. It's probably not what he came here for, but if he can be sure it isn't, he'll at least be sure of something.
He finds instead that he can't read. He can only catch the letters in his periphery; in the center of his vision there opens a big parchment-colored hole. The figures he can see are just shapes to him, abstract scrawlings, meaning nothing. When he tries to look at them directly, of course, they vanish.
"You're up early," says a voice, and Pelleas claps the book shut with a start. It's Sothe. Sothe whose trust he will never earn; Sothe whose cool dislike of him has never been altered by their sharing of the Queen's bed. If he had to choose who would discover him in this state, Sothe would be not be a first choice.
"I thought" - Pelleas's own voice sounds distant and strange to him. He clears his throat. "I thought there'd be..." It doesn't seem to have been any help. "Fewer people."
It occurs to him this was a rude thing to say. This had implications. He looks at Sothe worriedly, apologetically - but he cannot gauge Sothe's reaction. Sothe is historically a self-contained person, besides which, there is a blank spot in Pelleas's vision, covering most of Sothe's left eye.
"F...forgive me," he says. "I must be... overtired."
"In that case, most people would have just stayed in bed."
"Oh?" Pelleas says, stupidly. He can't quite make sense of the way this conversation is going. He is aware one statement logically follows another, but can't make the connection himself.
There's a long pause. Sothe says dubiously: "I have a message for you from Micaiah, but I think it can wait. If you're still sick..."
Pelleas pulls himself together - the expression feels literal in this case, as if he's scraping up the scattered and windblown fragments of his mind and trying to force them back into a coherent shape. "I'm well enough, thank you. There's no need for her to wait." Pause. Belatedly: "Or you. I mean..." He puts a hand to his head. He hasn't misspoken this badly or this consistently since the days when he was king. "I'm sorry. Please give me the message." Better this than risk getting it in writing later.
Sothe is quiet. Pelleas still can't see most of his face, but his posture shifts a little, and the sense of being appraised intensifies. He always has this sense, around Sothe. It has never gotten more comfortable.
Sothe reaches some kind of decision. He steps in close, and when Pelleas startles away he steps closer still, and backs him up against a shelf. "Pay attention," Sothe says, "because I don't want to repeat myself." There is a flutter of anxiety in Pelleas's guts. One of the shelves is pressing against the base of his skull, and the spine of an oddly sized book that didn't quite lie flush is wedged against his shoulderblade. And then Sothe is kissing him.
He's not sure if the teeth are part of the message. He finds it hard to believe Micaiah would dictate that part - has never known her anything but gentle with him - but then again, who is he to guess what passes between Sothe and Micaiah when he's not there? Maybe, absent any interlopers in their bed, Micaiah is in the habit of biting Sothe's lip in exactly this way. Maybe Micaiah's hand skims down over the muscles of Sothe's midsection - although Sothe's hands are larger, and under his clothes Pelleas's stomach is fish-pale and unexciting - and then lower, and maybe Micaiah gives Sothe an experimental squeeze through his trousers, and - Pelleas groans into Sothe's mouth -
And Sothe steps back. Pelleas reels backward and catches himself on the shelf. Through force of habit his first thought is I must've misread this situation, and he hears himself stammering out apologies. This is, after a moment's consideration, absurd. What is there to misinterpret about being backed into a corner and groped a little? If he isn't supposed to be aroused and confused, what other possible intent could there be?
"She'd like you to join us again soon," says Sothe. "Once you're feeling better."
"And you?" says Pelleas, still shaky. "I think you'd prefer I didn't."
Sothe shrugs one shoulder. "Didn't like it when Yune was there. At least you're easier to intimidate."
Setting aside, with difficulty, the questions of when and in what way Yune was there - it's an unusually frank answer. Pelleas feels something tighten in his chest, then release. He thinks about being equally honest. He thinks about saying, I'd love to, but the bill seems to be coming due for yet another of my bad decisions and I'm frightened. He thinks that if Sothe was ever going to soften toward him it would be now, first thing in the morning, after the first time they kissed without Micaiah in the room.
But Micaiah is in every room. Each of them has a piece of her in his mind wherever he goes.
And all he says is, "Well. I'd be happy to." He tears his gaze away from the blank space where Sothe's face ought to be, and then it's easier to make himself smile.
He leaves Nevassa that afternoon.
II.
It gets to the point, earlier in the day than usual, where Sothe has to turn the petitioners away. He already had to argue Micaiah down from one day a week to one a month, and she rarely thanks him for advising her when to stop. She can't help herself - she's going to heal Daein, and regret there isn't more of her left to burn up. One day a month she goes to the marketplace and lays her hands on her people's injuries, and Sothe watches closely for the moment he's learned to recognize. It's a short window, where the pain gets bad enough that she'll consider stopping, but the stubbornness hasn't kicked in yet that lets her muscle through.
Bet she'd listen if Pelleas asked her. She trusts Sothe with her life, sure, but she trusts Pelleas to keep Daein in mind the way she does. If he says the people can get along fine without her passing out on the way home from these things, Micaiah will believe he doesn't have an ulterior motive. Because a partnership of so many years is an ulterior motive, and Pelleas's cloying mix of hero worship and calf love somehow isn't, but whatever.
"Micaiah," he says, and she tenses, already knowing what he's going to say and already annoyed by it.
"One more," she says in an undertone only he can hear.
"One more," he agrees, grudgingly. If there's only one more, she'll pick the most desperate case. Really make it count.
She scans the crowd; the ornaments in her hair sway and click together as she turns her head. She likes to dress, on these appearances, like the fortune-teller she used to be. She says it helps people find her less threatening - and she's the mind-reader, so Sothe can't dispute it, though he's skeptical that's her real reason.
"I can assist one more person," she says, finally. "The rest of you will be compensated for missed work and may be admitted to the royal hospital for treatment if you choose. Would anyone prefer that option?"
Some people always do. There's a woman in the back of the crowd who's shown up four of the last six months, and always keeps herself near the back of the queue, and never discloses what her trouble is, and always bags herself a hospital stay instead. He nudges Micaiah's elbow with his own. She follows his gaze - to the woman now volunteering herself once again to take up a hospital bed she probably didn't even need - and only frowns slightly and shakes her head.
"I sense no ill intent from her," she said, last time.
"No ill intent except a scam?"
"On such a small scale, I can afford to be scammed. How would it look if I turned her away?" Her mouth quirked ironically. "You're very virtuous, for having broken into so many houses." She put her hand over his. "Thank you for looking out for me."
She's not supposed to thank him. He can't help taking it as a rebuke.
The people sort themselves out. Still in the queue is a laborer - something on his left shoulder that looks like a Brand, warped and partially overlaid with scar tissue. The fingers of his right hand are curled in toward his palm and have been immovable for three days. Injuries like this, with no obvious cause or visible wound, are always the toughest. So Micaiah waves him over. A challenge, a poor Branded citizen restored to his livelihood - what else can she do? Sothe almost doesn't have it in him - almost - to keep feigning annoyance while she takes the damaged hand in hers and the familiar faint light leaks out between her fingertips. He's proud of her. Proud of the simple awe she attracts from people, that's even now spreading over the Branded man's face as he withdraws his now perfectly functional hand. Sothe is proud, even if he worries, of how quickly Micaiah clamps down on the spasm of pain that crosses her face and returns a gracious smile.
"Time to go," he says, and she nods. She makes a pretty little speech about peace and balance and a free hot meal, and then lets him escort her out. In the shade of a crumbling warehouse where they've arranged to meet back up with her royal guard, Sothe massages the palm of her right hand. It's gone tight and cramped in imitation of the worker she healed. He presses his thumb into the pad of muscle at the base of hers, working in circles. She sighs and her eyes flutter closed.
And then there are footsteps slapping on the dusty cobbles, and a messenger draws up short before them, sketching a bow. Micaiah starts to pull her hand from Sothe's grip, but he doesn't let go.
"Majesty," the messenger says, "it's Minister Pelleas -"
"Has he taken ill again?" says Micaiah. Sothe already dreads the confrontation that will follow, if so. Micaiah will try to heal Pelleas, even though she's already worn herself out today; Pelleas will try to refuse; Micaiah will try to convince him he's worth it; it's a scene Sothe has seen often enough to give twenty-five percent odds Pelleas will cry. They're always getting into these dumb standoffs about who can cut more pieces off themselves. Sothe always has to rein them both in, and always resents it.
"All due respect, no," says the messenger. "It's - you had better come and see."
Micaiah grips Sothe's hand. Her face is bloodless. She's already seen - plucked the image from the messenger's mind, where it floats close to the surface. Whatever it is, it's a horror Sothe can't share. In an appalled whisper she says, "Take us there."
The body bears no obvious wounds. There's no blood. She wears the robes of a clerk of the court - no, by the badge pinned to her collar, still a trainee. The uniform looks moth-eaten around the sleeves and skirts.
Micaiah kneels down and takes the dead woman's hand. When she pushes the sleeve aside, the corpse's wrist looks much the same: moth-eaten. There are holes in the flesh, pinpricks and short squiggling lines. They don't bleed, and Sothe doesn't see any of the underlying muscle or tendon. No - he can see clean through to the floor.
Micaiah pushes the sleeve up further and flexes the corpse's elbow. "Look," she says. One of the holes develops into a furrow, traveling up the woman's inner arm, disappearing toward her heart.
Sothe doesn't spit on the floor or spin in a circle or fall back on any of those other street-kid superstitions, but it's a close thing.
"Pelleas wouldn't do this," Micaiah says, calmly, and puts the body back as it was - or a little straighter - neatening up the fall of the robe, brushing a hand over the blank eyes to close them. She's very steady around corpses. Has been as long as he's known her.
"No one else practices the dark arts here," says the guard captain (whom Sothe saw discreetly turn around widdershins before showing them the body).
Sothe folds his arms. "No. He couldn't do this. He surrendered all his tomes to Micaiah after the war." He doesn't know where they're kept, and he'd be denied access even if he found them. Pelleas dictated those terms himself, when Micaiah invited him to stay. First negotiation that kid ever managed not to screw up. "Either someone else found those books, or someone's smuggled a fresh copy of Worm into the city. Micaiah?"
She stands up. She hasn't changed out of her fortune-teller clothes, but she speaks like a general and a queen. "Captain, one of the clerks will give you a list of magic shops and dealers in oddities. Please work with your counterpart in the city guard to identify suspicious shipments into or out of these locations. Sothe, will you check -?"
"Of course," he says, and she gives him a strained smile of gratitude.
"I won't have it said that we concealed this woman's death or wouldn't release her body to her family." She closes her eyes. "But we do have time. If we don't have any better information by tomorrow evening, we tell her kin the truth as we now understand it." Her eyes open again, and they have that hard lifeless look they had in the war. "She suffered a sudden collapse after her heart failed. That's all." And she steps over the body, making purposeful strides in the direction of her chambers, probably to change back into clothing more suited for the rest of today's business. "And -" She pauses, though she doesn't turn. "Do it as gently as you can, but bring Pelleas to me."
Micaiah put Sothe in charge of securing the books - her exact words were "put a lock on them even you can't break," and he kissed her and said "no such thing." But he was thorough, and he does wish, now, that he'd made things a little less inconvenient for himself. Before you turn the key, you have to rotate the lock itself and manipulate a couple of hidden levers, or a hidden compartment in the top of the chest is punctured and the contents get doused in a very combustible oil. Open the chest, air rushes in, books burn. Tormod talked him into it. Tormod really wants to know if anybody messes it up and can he have the ashes if so.
But nobody's been in here; the chest opens like it's supposed to, and the books are all there, and all intact.
It makes his skin crawl, but he promised he'd be thorough. He opens the battered spellbook at the top of the stack, and - stops.
Whatever script they write dark magic in, he's never made it his business. Rows of squarish characters wind across the page - it's customary to write every other line backwards, Pelleas explained once, and Micaiah nodded as if that was not a completely insane thing to do - and before Sothe's eyes they are unwinding. The black ink bleeds into a red halo around each letter, and they squirm as if trying to peel off the paper, shift back into their natural order -
Actually, fuck this. He slams the book shut, whips off his belt, and wraps that around it twice, buckling it so tight the covers crease. He slams the chest shut on the other tomes so they don't get any ideas.
Micaiah doesn't know what it means, either, when he brings it to her. She opens the book, and the letters peel an inch off the page, coiling into spirals in the air. Sothe knocks her aside and pierces the book cover to cover with the knife Yune blessed.
The book doesn't try anything, after that. But he doesn't like to think he owes Yune that gratitude.
Four days later Pelleas has not been found, and the best guess Micaiah has is "the spell cast itself." The crown is, of course, paying for that woman's funeral.
Sothe writes to Tormod, who writes to Calill, who writes back to Sothe that she doesn't touch spirit charming with a nine-foot pole but yes, theoretically, if a spirit were starving...
Micaiah rips the letter out of Sothe's hands and reads it twice. Her mouth compresses to a line. She throws the pages down on her desk. "Of course," she says acidly. "Of course he's sacrificing himself again."
"What do you mean?"
"If Calill has this right, using dark magic to kill others reduces the need for the spirit to feed on its host. It consumes life force, but it accepts substitutions."
"So when he gave up the books -"
"The spirit started eating him faster."
There are two obvious questions. Did he kill that woman? Or, Is he already dead?
There was a storm. Pelleas was ill. Then Sothe brought him a message in the records room, and they haven't seen him since.
But looking back - even before the storm, Pelleas was acting strange, in a way that Sothe did not care to recognize. He recognizes it now. There's a third question he could ask Micaiah, although this is the cruelest.
Do you get it now? he could ask. What it was like?
How do you like being the one left behind?
Micaiah doesn't ask him to go, and he doesn't promise anything. Why would he? All he does is drag people back.
Sothe goes into the desert alone this time. He has an eye out for corpses; Pelleas is alone this time, too, and Pelleas is a city boy. Sothe doesn't like his odds.
It occurs to him for the first time, trekking through the scrubland under a too-wide sky, that they have that in common. City kids. Orphans. Both of them elevated out of the dirt to heights they didn't ask for.
He doesn't like to think there are any experiences they share. Just Micaiah. But he wonders now if there was something behind all Pelleas's friendly overtures these past few years, all the ones Sothe shut down.
Too late now. He'll try diplomacy first, and if that doesn't work - if he really sticks his foot in his mouth, or if Pelleas proves too stubborn, or the spirit or the sun has already killed him, Sothe will just have to tie him up.
It's the same ruin where this all started, because of course it is. Pelleas is like that - he thinks in terms of stories. Maybe it's not his fault, since Izuka drafted him to play a part in one - or maybe he was already like that, and it made him easier pickings. Regardless, Sothe has walked through the night to find this, the remains of a town starved out by drought and eaten by the encroaching desert before Daein was ever Daein. More recently this is where Sothe and Micaiah met the callow idiot they were supposed to install as king.
Sothe huffs out a breath. He has to try to think about it more charitably than that. Micaiah said bring him in gently.
The sun's coming up. He can see drag marks in the sand, and a streak of soot on the wall above a gaping window - where did Pelleas find anything to burn out here? and doesn't he know about chimneys?
He decides to make his approach obvious. Breaks off crumbling fragments of old mud brick and throws them one by one toward the entrance of Pelleas's shelter. They sail through the opening and thump into a drift of sand an inch deep, which isn't the resounding warning he hoped for, so he throws a few at the wall.
"Pelleas," he says, loudly. "We have to talk."
He has to repeat this a couple of times as he walks closer. Finally he sees something moving in the ruins. Finally a cracked voice says, "Sothe. Is she...?"
"Of course not," he snaps, "I'm not stupid." So much for diplomatic.
Pelleas comes to the opening, slowly, moving like it pains him. But in the shadows it's hard to see if he looks any more weak or sickly or raddled with sinister magic than usual. All he says is, "That's good."
It's silent in the ruins. Sothe realizes Pelleas is looking not at but past him. He takes a step to one side, then two steps to the other, and Pelleas doesn't track the movement.
"How bad is it?" he says, without thinking.
"Bad enough I wanted to spare you." Pelleas fusses at his sleeves. His clothes are dirty and torn. The cuffs are worm-eaten.
"That's what you think you're doing?" Sothe says, and can't keep the scorn out of his voice. "Sparing us?"
In the growing light, Pelleas gives him a wan smile. "Well, I asked Micaiah to kill me once, if you recall. It was a mistake I won't repeat."
Sothe is out of patience. "I'm coming inside," he announces. "We're patching you up, and you're coming back to Nevassa tonight."
"I'm sorry. I must refuse."
Sothe closes the distance between them and grabs Pelleas by the wrist. His skin is clammy, and it feels like there's something buzzing under the surface. "You don't get to refuse. You abandoned your queen, and either you or your passenger killed someone. You'll answer for both."
Pelleas's face goes blank. "Killed...?" His resistance crumbles. He staggers back into the ruin and collapses, unceremoniously, into a dry-rotting chair.
Sothe follows him in. "That's what I thought."
This solves the mystery of what Pelleas was using for fuel, anyway - this is the same building he was holed up in all those years ago with Almedha and Izuka, and at night he's burning up rugs and furniture, all the little comforts Almedha must've had sent out here for her darling boy.
Nobody's seen Almedha since the Tower, and personally Sothe is happy for it.
"I seem to function the best at dawn and dusk," Pelleas is saying, subdued. "In between, there are... blank spaces. It matters less out here. Where there's no one who can be hurt."
"Had you hurt anyone else?" Sothe asks. "Before you decided to leave?" Which is to say: Is there a magic number? Did we finally hit the threshold for the most deaths you can cause before you'll leave Micaiah alone?
"None I know of, I swear to you." Pelleas is almost out of water, and tried to offer Sothe some of his dwindling supply. What was his plan, anyway? Walk out into the desert with enough provisions for a couple of days, and then what? Wait around to die of dark magic, die of thirst instead? So Sothe forced a skin of water on him, and now has to watch him fidget with it and look miserable. "I - I thought I had left in time. The spirit spoke to me in my dreams, but - it had been doing that since I gave up the books. I was keeping it at bay." He bites his lip. "Apparently... with less success than I thought. That poor girl."
Sothe says nothing.
Pelleas gives a weird, half-hysterical laugh. "This has become a pattern, hasn't it? I sign agreements I don't understand, and my countrymen pay the price. I'm pathetic."
"Yeah, well," says Sothe. "That's not a secret."
Pelleas hangs his head. His hands are shaking. Water splashes onto the packed-earth floor.
"Micaiah wants you back," Sothe says. "She wrote you a letter." She didn't ask Sothe to go, and he didn't say he would, but she handed him a letter the morning of his departure. It needed no discussion. He doesn't know what it says. He wouldn't care what it said, except that he watched her writing it.
He holds that letter out, now, but Pelleas doesn't reach for it. Pelleas speaks to the floor: "I can't read."
"Then I'll read it to you," Sothe says, although he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to be inside this thing that Micaiah and Pelleas have. But she was up late over this letter, one night, and he saw her wavering between fury and despair and probably writing down not even a tenth part of it. That can't go to waste.
"I think it's better if I don't know," says Pelleas. "Don't you? Now that I'm a danger to others I certainly can't go back. But I wouldn't anyway. After everything I've put her through, I can't subject her to watching me die."
"You could've let her heal you. Before it came to this."
Pelleas shakes his head. "Do we know how the power of Sacrifice works, really? Does the injury pass from the other party into her, or does a piece of her go into them?"
"I don't know. Why does it matter?"
"It's not an academic question," Pelleas says, suddenly heated. "Her power isn't like ordinary healing magic. If she tries to fix a wound that comes from a malign spirit eating pieces of my soul, do we know that a part of that spirit won't be transferred to her? Is that a risk you're comfortable with? Do you think Daein - do you think the world can afford anything of the kind? Sothe - I know you don't think much of me. I know I've done irreparable harm. But can you please believe that I... I thought this through. I left for a reason. I don't see any better way."
Maybe he's right. He was wrong the last time he tried to die for the greater good, but you can't fault him with a lack of resolve. And maybe he's right this time. Maybe there are no other options.
Sothe gets up. "So I'll just tell her you said no?" he says. "That's the idea? You're a big help." He'll find a different ruin to sleep through the heat of the day. Leave this evening. There's nothing left here.
And yet at dusk he finds himself going back. He enters the ruined hall, picks his way through the heaped sand – wonders how Pelleas managed to bust up the furniture that thoroughly, weak as he is -
Pelleas is curled up in a corner, but he's not asleep. Sothe stands over him for several entire breaths before, suddenly, he notices, and then scrambles upright with a squeak of alarm. That's just like him.
"The Galdr of Rebirth," says Sothe. "It undid some of Izuka's projects. Could it shake this thing off you?"
The sun is low and red, and a faint breeze is starting to cut through the brutal heat. Pelleas is staring at the place where he assumes Sothe to be. He's looking in the wrong direction, which takes doing, at this distance. "It's never been tried."
Sothe says, "It's not far to Hatari from here."
Pelleas sighs, shaking his head. "I can't cross the mountains. I won't last long enough for help to come. It's kind of you -"
"It's not me," says Sothe, "and it's not kind. If Rafiel comes here, it'll be as a favor to Micaiah. Then whether to save you is up to him."
"If it's possible."
"If it's possible." Sothe walks to the window, thinking. He looks out at the orange dunes and wonders if he's really going to do this. Then he turns, swinging his traveling bag to the front for easier access, and says, "All right. I have a proposal."
He pulls out two objects, and returns to set the first in front of Pelleas.
"I can't see what you're doing," says Pelleas.
"I'm leaving you a knife. When I go back to Micaiah, you have the option to end this yourself. I'm not doing it for you."
Pelleas stiffens. He swallows hard. He says, "I understand," and his voice is almost level.
Sothe holds out the second object, and Pelleas reels like he's been struck. Pelleas is shuddering, instantly, between longing and repulsion. Sothe says, "You can see this, can't you?"
Pelleas chokes. "Why did you bring that here?"
Sothe throws the book down at his feet. Worm. "It missed you." Sothe had a pretty good idea he was headed in the right direction, but he brought this damn thing along to make sure. If the spirit that's got a hold on Pelleas could cast the spell from five rooms away, he figured, there must be a connection here. When he opened the book he could feel it straining – thankfully weaker since he stabbed it, but he doubts it can be killed – in the direction he was already going. Leading him right here. The place where this has to end.
Pelleas stares at it, hands twitching like it's taking all his willpower not to reach out. The shadows around the book seem to deepen in response. Sothe says, "The way it was explained to me, the spirit wants you using its gift. You use magic, it takes a bite out of you, but it takes a bigger bite out of whoever you're pointing it at. You stop using magic, and you're its only food source." Pelleas is shaking even harder now. Sothe watches dispassionately. Is he trying to move away? Does he actually want to, or does he just think that'd be the virtuous thing to want? "So that's your other option," Sothe says, "find something else to destroy. Get creative. Maybe you'll die a little slower. If there's enough of you left when Rafiel gets here, tell him how much you love Micaiah, and how much she loved you, and maybe..." He shrugs.
Pelleas is hyperventilating. The ruins smell like ozone. Holes are opening in the air, black spots popping in and out of Sothe's vision.
"Sothe," Pelleas says, with a huge effort. "What are you trying to accomplish?"
"If I go home without you, she's not going to forgive me. I want you to understand your other options."
Pelleas stands upright. He scrubs a trembling hand over his face. In a low voice he says, "She was never going to forgive either of us. You have to know that."
"What?"
"We're beorc, you and I. And more than that, we're just regular, fragile people. She was always going to outlast me, and she'll outlast you, and a part of her is going to hate that frailty. Always."
Sothe says, "Who are you to explain Micaiah to me? How long have you been there for her?" Do you have any clue how hard I had to fight her before she'd let me back in? Did she tell you any of this shit? What business do you have, knowing things she won't even talk to me about?
The smell of black magic is fading away. The holes in the air are knitting shut. Pelleas says, "Leave me the knife and the book. Tell her I killed that woman willfully. Do what you need - drag my name through all the mud you can find, if it'll help. I can't come back from this, so it doesn't matter." And then his shoulders slump, and then he sounds more like his usual, pitiful self: "I'm truly sorry. It shouldn't have come to this. I never thought anyone would look for me."
"Then you don't know either of us," Sothe says flatly. And tries to be satisfied with that thought.
"Perhaps not." Pelleas sighs. "Perhaps I never did." He looks Sothe in the face for the first time all day, like his vision is starting to clear. Like the book on the floor is a light source he can see by. He begins to move, slowly, in Sothe's direction. "I'm afraid this is going to be ugly," he says, his voice wavering. "You should go," he says, even as he's closing the distance. Sothe holds still, wary. Pelleas is shaking, and his breathing is harsh, and there is the look on his face of something that wants to live. And the room is getting darker. And then Pelleas's mouth is on his.
They're both dying, a bit at a time. They're both nobodies except where their lives touch hers, and still, neither of them is quite enough. Pelleas bears down on him like he's trying to grind their very bones together, and Sothe, for once, is at perfect liberty to leave bruises. It doesn't matter. It will never matter again.
"Message for Micaiah?" says Sothe, panting.
"No. That was yours." Pelleas's face is averted but his whole weight, what little there is, is pressing Sothe to the broken wall. If he has a pulse at all, Sothe can't feel it, only that vibration from before, that buzzing, like there's something totally alien under his skin.
"I've always hated you," says Sothe.
"Good." Pelleas raises himself up to kiss him again, viciously.
The sun has set by now. Maybe it's not Pelleas at all - how did he put it? There are "blank spaces." Is it an evil spirit driving Pelleas's bitten-down fingernails into Sothe's shoulder? Or has Pelleas been capable of this anger all along?
It's not important. Sothe's never had anyone who was entirely his. He's had to share Micaiah with Yune, with Pelleas, with the whole damn populace of Nevassa, with this insane ideal Daein that lives in her head - and even Pelleas can't be his to take apart.
I hope Rafiel heals you, he thinks. I hope you make it out of here alive and finally get to be your own man, and I hope, for all the time you have left, that you're miserable.
They don't speak again. He's later setting out than he means to be, and he turns back once, to see smoke rising into the air. So Pelleas will live at least another night, burning up the memories of when he was king. Beyond that - well.
He didn't even read your letter, he might tell Micaiah, when he's back home. He might say nothing at all.
Characters: Micaiah/Sothe/Pelleas
Word count: ~6k
Warnings: Dysfunctional relationship, gnarly dark magic, gnarly dark magic symptoms resembling a terminal neurological disease?
Notes: The Sothe/Pelleas arm of this mess gets the most attention but it's definitely within a context of "They Both Love Micaiah So Much (Perhaps Unfortunately?)" This was for
I.
One fine summer morning, Pelleas begins to die.
He's been prone to headaches since he was a child, and this one began as they generally do. A thunderstorm approached, and he became clumsy and confused, dropping things, forgetting what he meant to say. He had until the storm broke to make excuses and scuttle away to a dark room. When the rain came it unfolded, this blue-white thing inside his skull, and he didn't know anything anymore. Thus far, all as normal.
But the storm was three days ago. He should be recovered - indeed, it barely even hurts now. Yet he finds himself in rooms not knowing how he got there, or for what purpose. He's in the records room, and can't recall what records, if any, he was looking for. He only has a deep and pathetic sense that he was trying to be useful. Light and birdsong float down from the high windows, and it isn't as stifling in here as it will be later, and it's one of the few times of day when he isn't obliged to talk to anyone. He should make something of this time. He should make something of every moment Micaiah was kind enough to give back to him. And he is standing motionless in the center of the rug, and his mind is empty. He can't feel his fingertips - how long has that been the case, without his noticing?
In any case he takes down a ledger and opens it, hoping it will jog his memory. It's probably not what he came here for, but if he can be sure it isn't, he'll at least be sure of something.
He finds instead that he can't read. He can only catch the letters in his periphery; in the center of his vision there opens a big parchment-colored hole. The figures he can see are just shapes to him, abstract scrawlings, meaning nothing. When he tries to look at them directly, of course, they vanish.
"You're up early," says a voice, and Pelleas claps the book shut with a start. It's Sothe. Sothe whose trust he will never earn; Sothe whose cool dislike of him has never been altered by their sharing of the Queen's bed. If he had to choose who would discover him in this state, Sothe would be not be a first choice.
"I thought" - Pelleas's own voice sounds distant and strange to him. He clears his throat. "I thought there'd be..." It doesn't seem to have been any help. "Fewer people."
It occurs to him this was a rude thing to say. This had implications. He looks at Sothe worriedly, apologetically - but he cannot gauge Sothe's reaction. Sothe is historically a self-contained person, besides which, there is a blank spot in Pelleas's vision, covering most of Sothe's left eye.
"F...forgive me," he says. "I must be... overtired."
"In that case, most people would have just stayed in bed."
"Oh?" Pelleas says, stupidly. He can't quite make sense of the way this conversation is going. He is aware one statement logically follows another, but can't make the connection himself.
There's a long pause. Sothe says dubiously: "I have a message for you from Micaiah, but I think it can wait. If you're still sick..."
Pelleas pulls himself together - the expression feels literal in this case, as if he's scraping up the scattered and windblown fragments of his mind and trying to force them back into a coherent shape. "I'm well enough, thank you. There's no need for her to wait." Pause. Belatedly: "Or you. I mean..." He puts a hand to his head. He hasn't misspoken this badly or this consistently since the days when he was king. "I'm sorry. Please give me the message." Better this than risk getting it in writing later.
Sothe is quiet. Pelleas still can't see most of his face, but his posture shifts a little, and the sense of being appraised intensifies. He always has this sense, around Sothe. It has never gotten more comfortable.
Sothe reaches some kind of decision. He steps in close, and when Pelleas startles away he steps closer still, and backs him up against a shelf. "Pay attention," Sothe says, "because I don't want to repeat myself." There is a flutter of anxiety in Pelleas's guts. One of the shelves is pressing against the base of his skull, and the spine of an oddly sized book that didn't quite lie flush is wedged against his shoulderblade. And then Sothe is kissing him.
He's not sure if the teeth are part of the message. He finds it hard to believe Micaiah would dictate that part - has never known her anything but gentle with him - but then again, who is he to guess what passes between Sothe and Micaiah when he's not there? Maybe, absent any interlopers in their bed, Micaiah is in the habit of biting Sothe's lip in exactly this way. Maybe Micaiah's hand skims down over the muscles of Sothe's midsection - although Sothe's hands are larger, and under his clothes Pelleas's stomach is fish-pale and unexciting - and then lower, and maybe Micaiah gives Sothe an experimental squeeze through his trousers, and - Pelleas groans into Sothe's mouth -
And Sothe steps back. Pelleas reels backward and catches himself on the shelf. Through force of habit his first thought is I must've misread this situation, and he hears himself stammering out apologies. This is, after a moment's consideration, absurd. What is there to misinterpret about being backed into a corner and groped a little? If he isn't supposed to be aroused and confused, what other possible intent could there be?
"She'd like you to join us again soon," says Sothe. "Once you're feeling better."
"And you?" says Pelleas, still shaky. "I think you'd prefer I didn't."
Sothe shrugs one shoulder. "Didn't like it when Yune was there. At least you're easier to intimidate."
Setting aside, with difficulty, the questions of when and in what way Yune was there - it's an unusually frank answer. Pelleas feels something tighten in his chest, then release. He thinks about being equally honest. He thinks about saying, I'd love to, but the bill seems to be coming due for yet another of my bad decisions and I'm frightened. He thinks that if Sothe was ever going to soften toward him it would be now, first thing in the morning, after the first time they kissed without Micaiah in the room.
But Micaiah is in every room. Each of them has a piece of her in his mind wherever he goes.
And all he says is, "Well. I'd be happy to." He tears his gaze away from the blank space where Sothe's face ought to be, and then it's easier to make himself smile.
He leaves Nevassa that afternoon.
II.
It gets to the point, earlier in the day than usual, where Sothe has to turn the petitioners away. He already had to argue Micaiah down from one day a week to one a month, and she rarely thanks him for advising her when to stop. She can't help herself - she's going to heal Daein, and regret there isn't more of her left to burn up. One day a month she goes to the marketplace and lays her hands on her people's injuries, and Sothe watches closely for the moment he's learned to recognize. It's a short window, where the pain gets bad enough that she'll consider stopping, but the stubbornness hasn't kicked in yet that lets her muscle through.
Bet she'd listen if Pelleas asked her. She trusts Sothe with her life, sure, but she trusts Pelleas to keep Daein in mind the way she does. If he says the people can get along fine without her passing out on the way home from these things, Micaiah will believe he doesn't have an ulterior motive. Because a partnership of so many years is an ulterior motive, and Pelleas's cloying mix of hero worship and calf love somehow isn't, but whatever.
"Micaiah," he says, and she tenses, already knowing what he's going to say and already annoyed by it.
"One more," she says in an undertone only he can hear.
"One more," he agrees, grudgingly. If there's only one more, she'll pick the most desperate case. Really make it count.
She scans the crowd; the ornaments in her hair sway and click together as she turns her head. She likes to dress, on these appearances, like the fortune-teller she used to be. She says it helps people find her less threatening - and she's the mind-reader, so Sothe can't dispute it, though he's skeptical that's her real reason.
"I can assist one more person," she says, finally. "The rest of you will be compensated for missed work and may be admitted to the royal hospital for treatment if you choose. Would anyone prefer that option?"
Some people always do. There's a woman in the back of the crowd who's shown up four of the last six months, and always keeps herself near the back of the queue, and never discloses what her trouble is, and always bags herself a hospital stay instead. He nudges Micaiah's elbow with his own. She follows his gaze - to the woman now volunteering herself once again to take up a hospital bed she probably didn't even need - and only frowns slightly and shakes her head.
"I sense no ill intent from her," she said, last time.
"No ill intent except a scam?"
"On such a small scale, I can afford to be scammed. How would it look if I turned her away?" Her mouth quirked ironically. "You're very virtuous, for having broken into so many houses." She put her hand over his. "Thank you for looking out for me."
She's not supposed to thank him. He can't help taking it as a rebuke.
The people sort themselves out. Still in the queue is a laborer - something on his left shoulder that looks like a Brand, warped and partially overlaid with scar tissue. The fingers of his right hand are curled in toward his palm and have been immovable for three days. Injuries like this, with no obvious cause or visible wound, are always the toughest. So Micaiah waves him over. A challenge, a poor Branded citizen restored to his livelihood - what else can she do? Sothe almost doesn't have it in him - almost - to keep feigning annoyance while she takes the damaged hand in hers and the familiar faint light leaks out between her fingertips. He's proud of her. Proud of the simple awe she attracts from people, that's even now spreading over the Branded man's face as he withdraws his now perfectly functional hand. Sothe is proud, even if he worries, of how quickly Micaiah clamps down on the spasm of pain that crosses her face and returns a gracious smile.
"Time to go," he says, and she nods. She makes a pretty little speech about peace and balance and a free hot meal, and then lets him escort her out. In the shade of a crumbling warehouse where they've arranged to meet back up with her royal guard, Sothe massages the palm of her right hand. It's gone tight and cramped in imitation of the worker she healed. He presses his thumb into the pad of muscle at the base of hers, working in circles. She sighs and her eyes flutter closed.
And then there are footsteps slapping on the dusty cobbles, and a messenger draws up short before them, sketching a bow. Micaiah starts to pull her hand from Sothe's grip, but he doesn't let go.
"Majesty," the messenger says, "it's Minister Pelleas -"
"Has he taken ill again?" says Micaiah. Sothe already dreads the confrontation that will follow, if so. Micaiah will try to heal Pelleas, even though she's already worn herself out today; Pelleas will try to refuse; Micaiah will try to convince him he's worth it; it's a scene Sothe has seen often enough to give twenty-five percent odds Pelleas will cry. They're always getting into these dumb standoffs about who can cut more pieces off themselves. Sothe always has to rein them both in, and always resents it.
"All due respect, no," says the messenger. "It's - you had better come and see."
Micaiah grips Sothe's hand. Her face is bloodless. She's already seen - plucked the image from the messenger's mind, where it floats close to the surface. Whatever it is, it's a horror Sothe can't share. In an appalled whisper she says, "Take us there."
The body bears no obvious wounds. There's no blood. She wears the robes of a clerk of the court - no, by the badge pinned to her collar, still a trainee. The uniform looks moth-eaten around the sleeves and skirts.
Micaiah kneels down and takes the dead woman's hand. When she pushes the sleeve aside, the corpse's wrist looks much the same: moth-eaten. There are holes in the flesh, pinpricks and short squiggling lines. They don't bleed, and Sothe doesn't see any of the underlying muscle or tendon. No - he can see clean through to the floor.
Micaiah pushes the sleeve up further and flexes the corpse's elbow. "Look," she says. One of the holes develops into a furrow, traveling up the woman's inner arm, disappearing toward her heart.
Sothe doesn't spit on the floor or spin in a circle or fall back on any of those other street-kid superstitions, but it's a close thing.
"Pelleas wouldn't do this," Micaiah says, calmly, and puts the body back as it was - or a little straighter - neatening up the fall of the robe, brushing a hand over the blank eyes to close them. She's very steady around corpses. Has been as long as he's known her.
"No one else practices the dark arts here," says the guard captain (whom Sothe saw discreetly turn around widdershins before showing them the body).
Sothe folds his arms. "No. He couldn't do this. He surrendered all his tomes to Micaiah after the war." He doesn't know where they're kept, and he'd be denied access even if he found them. Pelleas dictated those terms himself, when Micaiah invited him to stay. First negotiation that kid ever managed not to screw up. "Either someone else found those books, or someone's smuggled a fresh copy of Worm into the city. Micaiah?"
She stands up. She hasn't changed out of her fortune-teller clothes, but she speaks like a general and a queen. "Captain, one of the clerks will give you a list of magic shops and dealers in oddities. Please work with your counterpart in the city guard to identify suspicious shipments into or out of these locations. Sothe, will you check -?"
"Of course," he says, and she gives him a strained smile of gratitude.
"I won't have it said that we concealed this woman's death or wouldn't release her body to her family." She closes her eyes. "But we do have time. If we don't have any better information by tomorrow evening, we tell her kin the truth as we now understand it." Her eyes open again, and they have that hard lifeless look they had in the war. "She suffered a sudden collapse after her heart failed. That's all." And she steps over the body, making purposeful strides in the direction of her chambers, probably to change back into clothing more suited for the rest of today's business. "And -" She pauses, though she doesn't turn. "Do it as gently as you can, but bring Pelleas to me."
Micaiah put Sothe in charge of securing the books - her exact words were "put a lock on them even you can't break," and he kissed her and said "no such thing." But he was thorough, and he does wish, now, that he'd made things a little less inconvenient for himself. Before you turn the key, you have to rotate the lock itself and manipulate a couple of hidden levers, or a hidden compartment in the top of the chest is punctured and the contents get doused in a very combustible oil. Open the chest, air rushes in, books burn. Tormod talked him into it. Tormod really wants to know if anybody messes it up and can he have the ashes if so.
But nobody's been in here; the chest opens like it's supposed to, and the books are all there, and all intact.
It makes his skin crawl, but he promised he'd be thorough. He opens the battered spellbook at the top of the stack, and - stops.
Whatever script they write dark magic in, he's never made it his business. Rows of squarish characters wind across the page - it's customary to write every other line backwards, Pelleas explained once, and Micaiah nodded as if that was not a completely insane thing to do - and before Sothe's eyes they are unwinding. The black ink bleeds into a red halo around each letter, and they squirm as if trying to peel off the paper, shift back into their natural order -
Actually, fuck this. He slams the book shut, whips off his belt, and wraps that around it twice, buckling it so tight the covers crease. He slams the chest shut on the other tomes so they don't get any ideas.
Micaiah doesn't know what it means, either, when he brings it to her. She opens the book, and the letters peel an inch off the page, coiling into spirals in the air. Sothe knocks her aside and pierces the book cover to cover with the knife Yune blessed.
The book doesn't try anything, after that. But he doesn't like to think he owes Yune that gratitude.
Four days later Pelleas has not been found, and the best guess Micaiah has is "the spell cast itself." The crown is, of course, paying for that woman's funeral.
Sothe writes to Tormod, who writes to Calill, who writes back to Sothe that she doesn't touch spirit charming with a nine-foot pole but yes, theoretically, if a spirit were starving...
Micaiah rips the letter out of Sothe's hands and reads it twice. Her mouth compresses to a line. She throws the pages down on her desk. "Of course," she says acidly. "Of course he's sacrificing himself again."
"What do you mean?"
"If Calill has this right, using dark magic to kill others reduces the need for the spirit to feed on its host. It consumes life force, but it accepts substitutions."
"So when he gave up the books -"
"The spirit started eating him faster."
There are two obvious questions. Did he kill that woman? Or, Is he already dead?
There was a storm. Pelleas was ill. Then Sothe brought him a message in the records room, and they haven't seen him since.
But looking back - even before the storm, Pelleas was acting strange, in a way that Sothe did not care to recognize. He recognizes it now. There's a third question he could ask Micaiah, although this is the cruelest.
Do you get it now? he could ask. What it was like?
How do you like being the one left behind?
Micaiah doesn't ask him to go, and he doesn't promise anything. Why would he? All he does is drag people back.
Sothe goes into the desert alone this time. He has an eye out for corpses; Pelleas is alone this time, too, and Pelleas is a city boy. Sothe doesn't like his odds.
It occurs to him for the first time, trekking through the scrubland under a too-wide sky, that they have that in common. City kids. Orphans. Both of them elevated out of the dirt to heights they didn't ask for.
He doesn't like to think there are any experiences they share. Just Micaiah. But he wonders now if there was something behind all Pelleas's friendly overtures these past few years, all the ones Sothe shut down.
Too late now. He'll try diplomacy first, and if that doesn't work - if he really sticks his foot in his mouth, or if Pelleas proves too stubborn, or the spirit or the sun has already killed him, Sothe will just have to tie him up.
It's the same ruin where this all started, because of course it is. Pelleas is like that - he thinks in terms of stories. Maybe it's not his fault, since Izuka drafted him to play a part in one - or maybe he was already like that, and it made him easier pickings. Regardless, Sothe has walked through the night to find this, the remains of a town starved out by drought and eaten by the encroaching desert before Daein was ever Daein. More recently this is where Sothe and Micaiah met the callow idiot they were supposed to install as king.
Sothe huffs out a breath. He has to try to think about it more charitably than that. Micaiah said bring him in gently.
The sun's coming up. He can see drag marks in the sand, and a streak of soot on the wall above a gaping window - where did Pelleas find anything to burn out here? and doesn't he know about chimneys?
He decides to make his approach obvious. Breaks off crumbling fragments of old mud brick and throws them one by one toward the entrance of Pelleas's shelter. They sail through the opening and thump into a drift of sand an inch deep, which isn't the resounding warning he hoped for, so he throws a few at the wall.
"Pelleas," he says, loudly. "We have to talk."
He has to repeat this a couple of times as he walks closer. Finally he sees something moving in the ruins. Finally a cracked voice says, "Sothe. Is she...?"
"Of course not," he snaps, "I'm not stupid." So much for diplomatic.
Pelleas comes to the opening, slowly, moving like it pains him. But in the shadows it's hard to see if he looks any more weak or sickly or raddled with sinister magic than usual. All he says is, "That's good."
It's silent in the ruins. Sothe realizes Pelleas is looking not at but past him. He takes a step to one side, then two steps to the other, and Pelleas doesn't track the movement.
"How bad is it?" he says, without thinking.
"Bad enough I wanted to spare you." Pelleas fusses at his sleeves. His clothes are dirty and torn. The cuffs are worm-eaten.
"That's what you think you're doing?" Sothe says, and can't keep the scorn out of his voice. "Sparing us?"
In the growing light, Pelleas gives him a wan smile. "Well, I asked Micaiah to kill me once, if you recall. It was a mistake I won't repeat."
Sothe is out of patience. "I'm coming inside," he announces. "We're patching you up, and you're coming back to Nevassa tonight."
"I'm sorry. I must refuse."
Sothe closes the distance between them and grabs Pelleas by the wrist. His skin is clammy, and it feels like there's something buzzing under the surface. "You don't get to refuse. You abandoned your queen, and either you or your passenger killed someone. You'll answer for both."
Pelleas's face goes blank. "Killed...?" His resistance crumbles. He staggers back into the ruin and collapses, unceremoniously, into a dry-rotting chair.
Sothe follows him in. "That's what I thought."
This solves the mystery of what Pelleas was using for fuel, anyway - this is the same building he was holed up in all those years ago with Almedha and Izuka, and at night he's burning up rugs and furniture, all the little comforts Almedha must've had sent out here for her darling boy.
Nobody's seen Almedha since the Tower, and personally Sothe is happy for it.
"I seem to function the best at dawn and dusk," Pelleas is saying, subdued. "In between, there are... blank spaces. It matters less out here. Where there's no one who can be hurt."
"Had you hurt anyone else?" Sothe asks. "Before you decided to leave?" Which is to say: Is there a magic number? Did we finally hit the threshold for the most deaths you can cause before you'll leave Micaiah alone?
"None I know of, I swear to you." Pelleas is almost out of water, and tried to offer Sothe some of his dwindling supply. What was his plan, anyway? Walk out into the desert with enough provisions for a couple of days, and then what? Wait around to die of dark magic, die of thirst instead? So Sothe forced a skin of water on him, and now has to watch him fidget with it and look miserable. "I - I thought I had left in time. The spirit spoke to me in my dreams, but - it had been doing that since I gave up the books. I was keeping it at bay." He bites his lip. "Apparently... with less success than I thought. That poor girl."
Sothe says nothing.
Pelleas gives a weird, half-hysterical laugh. "This has become a pattern, hasn't it? I sign agreements I don't understand, and my countrymen pay the price. I'm pathetic."
"Yeah, well," says Sothe. "That's not a secret."
Pelleas hangs his head. His hands are shaking. Water splashes onto the packed-earth floor.
"Micaiah wants you back," Sothe says. "She wrote you a letter." She didn't ask Sothe to go, and he didn't say he would, but she handed him a letter the morning of his departure. It needed no discussion. He doesn't know what it says. He wouldn't care what it said, except that he watched her writing it.
He holds that letter out, now, but Pelleas doesn't reach for it. Pelleas speaks to the floor: "I can't read."
"Then I'll read it to you," Sothe says, although he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to be inside this thing that Micaiah and Pelleas have. But she was up late over this letter, one night, and he saw her wavering between fury and despair and probably writing down not even a tenth part of it. That can't go to waste.
"I think it's better if I don't know," says Pelleas. "Don't you? Now that I'm a danger to others I certainly can't go back. But I wouldn't anyway. After everything I've put her through, I can't subject her to watching me die."
"You could've let her heal you. Before it came to this."
Pelleas shakes his head. "Do we know how the power of Sacrifice works, really? Does the injury pass from the other party into her, or does a piece of her go into them?"
"I don't know. Why does it matter?"
"It's not an academic question," Pelleas says, suddenly heated. "Her power isn't like ordinary healing magic. If she tries to fix a wound that comes from a malign spirit eating pieces of my soul, do we know that a part of that spirit won't be transferred to her? Is that a risk you're comfortable with? Do you think Daein - do you think the world can afford anything of the kind? Sothe - I know you don't think much of me. I know I've done irreparable harm. But can you please believe that I... I thought this through. I left for a reason. I don't see any better way."
Maybe he's right. He was wrong the last time he tried to die for the greater good, but you can't fault him with a lack of resolve. And maybe he's right this time. Maybe there are no other options.
Sothe gets up. "So I'll just tell her you said no?" he says. "That's the idea? You're a big help." He'll find a different ruin to sleep through the heat of the day. Leave this evening. There's nothing left here.
And yet at dusk he finds himself going back. He enters the ruined hall, picks his way through the heaped sand – wonders how Pelleas managed to bust up the furniture that thoroughly, weak as he is -
Pelleas is curled up in a corner, but he's not asleep. Sothe stands over him for several entire breaths before, suddenly, he notices, and then scrambles upright with a squeak of alarm. That's just like him.
"The Galdr of Rebirth," says Sothe. "It undid some of Izuka's projects. Could it shake this thing off you?"
The sun is low and red, and a faint breeze is starting to cut through the brutal heat. Pelleas is staring at the place where he assumes Sothe to be. He's looking in the wrong direction, which takes doing, at this distance. "It's never been tried."
Sothe says, "It's not far to Hatari from here."
Pelleas sighs, shaking his head. "I can't cross the mountains. I won't last long enough for help to come. It's kind of you -"
"It's not me," says Sothe, "and it's not kind. If Rafiel comes here, it'll be as a favor to Micaiah. Then whether to save you is up to him."
"If it's possible."
"If it's possible." Sothe walks to the window, thinking. He looks out at the orange dunes and wonders if he's really going to do this. Then he turns, swinging his traveling bag to the front for easier access, and says, "All right. I have a proposal."
He pulls out two objects, and returns to set the first in front of Pelleas.
"I can't see what you're doing," says Pelleas.
"I'm leaving you a knife. When I go back to Micaiah, you have the option to end this yourself. I'm not doing it for you."
Pelleas stiffens. He swallows hard. He says, "I understand," and his voice is almost level.
Sothe holds out the second object, and Pelleas reels like he's been struck. Pelleas is shuddering, instantly, between longing and repulsion. Sothe says, "You can see this, can't you?"
Pelleas chokes. "Why did you bring that here?"
Sothe throws the book down at his feet. Worm. "It missed you." Sothe had a pretty good idea he was headed in the right direction, but he brought this damn thing along to make sure. If the spirit that's got a hold on Pelleas could cast the spell from five rooms away, he figured, there must be a connection here. When he opened the book he could feel it straining – thankfully weaker since he stabbed it, but he doubts it can be killed – in the direction he was already going. Leading him right here. The place where this has to end.
Pelleas stares at it, hands twitching like it's taking all his willpower not to reach out. The shadows around the book seem to deepen in response. Sothe says, "The way it was explained to me, the spirit wants you using its gift. You use magic, it takes a bite out of you, but it takes a bigger bite out of whoever you're pointing it at. You stop using magic, and you're its only food source." Pelleas is shaking even harder now. Sothe watches dispassionately. Is he trying to move away? Does he actually want to, or does he just think that'd be the virtuous thing to want? "So that's your other option," Sothe says, "find something else to destroy. Get creative. Maybe you'll die a little slower. If there's enough of you left when Rafiel gets here, tell him how much you love Micaiah, and how much she loved you, and maybe..." He shrugs.
Pelleas is hyperventilating. The ruins smell like ozone. Holes are opening in the air, black spots popping in and out of Sothe's vision.
"Sothe," Pelleas says, with a huge effort. "What are you trying to accomplish?"
"If I go home without you, she's not going to forgive me. I want you to understand your other options."
Pelleas stands upright. He scrubs a trembling hand over his face. In a low voice he says, "She was never going to forgive either of us. You have to know that."
"What?"
"We're beorc, you and I. And more than that, we're just regular, fragile people. She was always going to outlast me, and she'll outlast you, and a part of her is going to hate that frailty. Always."
Sothe says, "Who are you to explain Micaiah to me? How long have you been there for her?" Do you have any clue how hard I had to fight her before she'd let me back in? Did she tell you any of this shit? What business do you have, knowing things she won't even talk to me about?
The smell of black magic is fading away. The holes in the air are knitting shut. Pelleas says, "Leave me the knife and the book. Tell her I killed that woman willfully. Do what you need - drag my name through all the mud you can find, if it'll help. I can't come back from this, so it doesn't matter." And then his shoulders slump, and then he sounds more like his usual, pitiful self: "I'm truly sorry. It shouldn't have come to this. I never thought anyone would look for me."
"Then you don't know either of us," Sothe says flatly. And tries to be satisfied with that thought.
"Perhaps not." Pelleas sighs. "Perhaps I never did." He looks Sothe in the face for the first time all day, like his vision is starting to clear. Like the book on the floor is a light source he can see by. He begins to move, slowly, in Sothe's direction. "I'm afraid this is going to be ugly," he says, his voice wavering. "You should go," he says, even as he's closing the distance. Sothe holds still, wary. Pelleas is shaking, and his breathing is harsh, and there is the look on his face of something that wants to live. And the room is getting darker. And then Pelleas's mouth is on his.
They're both dying, a bit at a time. They're both nobodies except where their lives touch hers, and still, neither of them is quite enough. Pelleas bears down on him like he's trying to grind their very bones together, and Sothe, for once, is at perfect liberty to leave bruises. It doesn't matter. It will never matter again.
"Message for Micaiah?" says Sothe, panting.
"No. That was yours." Pelleas's face is averted but his whole weight, what little there is, is pressing Sothe to the broken wall. If he has a pulse at all, Sothe can't feel it, only that vibration from before, that buzzing, like there's something totally alien under his skin.
"I've always hated you," says Sothe.
"Good." Pelleas raises himself up to kiss him again, viciously.
The sun has set by now. Maybe it's not Pelleas at all - how did he put it? There are "blank spaces." Is it an evil spirit driving Pelleas's bitten-down fingernails into Sothe's shoulder? Or has Pelleas been capable of this anger all along?
It's not important. Sothe's never had anyone who was entirely his. He's had to share Micaiah with Yune, with Pelleas, with the whole damn populace of Nevassa, with this insane ideal Daein that lives in her head - and even Pelleas can't be his to take apart.
I hope Rafiel heals you, he thinks. I hope you make it out of here alive and finally get to be your own man, and I hope, for all the time you have left, that you're miserable.
They don't speak again. He's later setting out than he means to be, and he turns back once, to see smoke rising into the air. So Pelleas will live at least another night, burning up the memories of when he was king. Beyond that - well.
He didn't even read your letter, he might tell Micaiah, when he's back home. He might say nothing at all.
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