for Essek (dunamagic)

[ausgebrannt]

[Caleb Widogast had given up on the idea of a soulmate. He hadn't wanted to, but his life had taken turns that something so precious as love with the person his soul was fated to complete, he couldn't possibly deserve it. And whatever poor soul had been matched to his, they didn't deserve the mess that he was. Wherever they were, he hoped that somehow they'd found another, even if he knew that wasn't how these things worked. But he did know the silence and that locked away space was empty. So empty.

It hadn't always been.

When he had been young, when he had been Bren, his soulmate had always been there, a familiar shadow he could meet in his mind, in dreams that weren't really dreams, visions that came when he was waking. There was comfort in his soulmate's presence, even if he was only a soft violet shape. He remembers that voice, soft and lilting. A constant presence in his life. They shared each other's distress, and times like that slipping into that shared space to offer what comfort he could, to take what comfort his shadowy soulmate offers, it's the safest he'd ever felt.

Then his entire life had shattered. He'd been drawn into the web of the vicious, plotting spider that was Trent Ikithon and fell apart in his final test of devotion. His psyche and his sanity had shattered. A decade passed before he surfaced once more, fleeing out into the night in desperation.

It's not long before he feels the ache of the lack of his soulmate, and he rties to find that mental space. It's hard, and he can't find his way in easily, and when he finally manages it, it's empty. Worse than empty. It's cold and vacant, like no one has set foot there for years. Ages. But why would they? He's been broken, gone. Hells, he's still broken.

So he concentrates on surviving, not sure if his soulmate is even still alive, and eventually is so swept up in the trouble that the Mighty Nein has stumbled across that he doesn't have much time to think about that ache. The friends he's made help, finding people who genuinely care for him, who he genuinely cares about. He starts living rather than simply surviving, broken though he may be. He starts to think he can make a difference perhaps, and is so caught up in everything that is going on that it nearly knocks him off his feet when all at once, that long-forgotten link lights up with the sudden burst of utter distress.

The fact that it happens as he's standing in the middle of the Bright Queen's palace, holding the Luxon Beacon aloft and offering it back to the Dynasty that it was stolen from. For a moment he forgets to breathe, reaches desperately for that mind space and is denied it once more. No. If the link is still there, then that means. Oh gods that means.

Caleb only hopes that the people around him think the near stupefied expression on his face has to do with the weight of what is going on around them, as the Mighty Nein are released from being held and are welcomed as heroes rather than prisoners.]

Comments

[ausgebrannt]

[Caleb doesn't mind the proximity, which should be strange too, really. He's a skittish thing at the best of times -- though that has gotten better, marginally, as he's traveled with the Nein -- but something about Essek being close feels natural. Later he may think back on this and see the signs he's missed, that he should have seen coming.

But for now, he nods along with what Essek has to say.]

I see... [How very like the Beacon, yes. He leans over to glance at the page, to watch those precise, elegant fingers move along the page.

It's then that he makes his mistake. Or maybe fate itself intervenes. He reaches over to point at a spot in what Essek has written to inquire about it, and it's the slightest brush of their fingers, barely a touch at all.

But still a touch.

Caleb's breath catches, eyes going wide and the world falls away.]

[dunamagic]

[It was as if all the air left his lungs, as if punched from him as gravity fails him and he falls.

He falls and falls, long after his body has crumpled to the ground, as if the world is gone from under his feet and he plunges until he hits water. And the time slows, the weight of his body fully gone from him, his mind hazy as he feels the way his soul slowly crashes through forgotten locked and barred doors.

Then he's blinking up at a disused and cracked ceiling, cobwebs and dust hang on the proverbial air -- there is no air here, no real walls or ceiling, but he could never forget the way the stars they once imagined up there, the constellations they invented together when his flame was in pain.

Why was he here? He can feel the panic rising in him - the lighting in the room pulsed with his unease. His mind races to try and remember what happened - he had been showing Widogast a spell, they were too close, had brushed fingers--

Sitting up, he sees Caleb only an arm's length away from him, the man stirring. His mind couldn't comprehend what he was seeing or feeling, too drowned in disbelief.]

How..

[ausgebrannt]

[Caleb opens his eyes to a world that he thought he'd never see again, a secret place behind a door that had remained locked to him despite his desperate pleading at it to open. He looks up at the dusty ceiling, the faded stars in the sky. His voice catches in his throat, a sob of sound that he can't hold back. Relief, memory, pain. All of it is too much to contain and it rises in his eyes in the form of tears that are threatening to brim over.

For a long moment he doesn't move, simply staring up at the disused sky, trying and failing to contain his tears and failing. But he's here. He made it here, past that broken door. And he isn't alone.

He sits up then all at once, and his gaze swings immediately, expecting to see his shadow, and finding himself looking into those impossibly deep amethyst eyes of Essek Thelyss.]

It's you. [Breathless but certain, realization that sweeps through him like a tsunami off the ocean, dragging him under and turning him about until gravity means nothing.] You're here.

[dunamagic]

[At first, Essek feels like he's having some kind of flashback nightmare, that his mind is so lonely he's superimposing the first person he's had any interested in other than his soulmate. As if his mind refuses to believe in something like this happening to him, that everything he's suffered cannot have been for nothing. Because then why--

But Caleb is crying - those deep oceans spilling over - and he feels it as if he's feeling his own. His hand coming up to brush his own cheek as he hears Caleb's words, the certainty behind them..

Essek's hand comes away wet, his own tears falling either because of or in tandem with Caleb's. His hand tremors as he stares at Caleb before hiding his eyes behind tightly closes lids, shaking his head.]

How.. how are you here? My soulmate.. my flame is dead-- [His voice catches and his breathing picks up as tears will not dam behind his lids. It's agony, he's in agony and the light of the room pulses with his distress. What should have been a happy reunion is only met with his fear of this being fake, a lie..

Of being abandoned again.]

[ausgebrannt]

[The pain in Essek reverberates through Caleb, an echo that grows louder rather than quieter, building and building until it threatens to steal the last shred of air from Caleb's lungs. Seeing this other man -- his soulmate, still here, still alive -- suffering so shakes him.

He reaches out, hesitating but pushing through, fingers touching gently along his shoulder, soft and careful, like one might touch the wind of a butterfly, something fragile and precious that he isn't certain he has any right to really touch.

The words land like arrows.]

Not dead... just lost. For a very long time. [A pang of his own panic at the memory of that lost time.] I am so sorry, when I finally found myself again, I have been trying to find my way back, but the door was barred. I couldn't reach you. I thought you were gone.

[And he'd thought that was what he deserved.]

[dunamagic]

[Lost, not gone. Just lost. There were no phantom pains, they were real pains his soul mate was actually suffering but for whatever reason wasn't able to come to their space, this space that is cold and unwelcoming in its disuse. The touch grounds him as he tires to fight through this moment in time, to be present with his soulmate, yet it all feels like a nightmare, like a fever that is fogging his mind and making him feel crazy.

Still, his eyes open again to look at his flame, to look upon this handsome man and he wants to ask why but he felt the pang of panic that wasn't his, even in his own panic he can feel his soul mates. It seems that to ask "why" right now would only further ruin this moment even if he wants to know -- wants to demand to know.]

You never came here.. I was told by clerics that the distress I was feeling were Phantom pains, that you were dead, that-- [That he was clinging to a ghost and hurting himself.]

I.. [He reaches out a careful hand to touch the side of Caleb's face, so gentle and hesitant, like he was an illusion that would shatter, like he expected Caleb to vanish.]

[ausgebrannt]

[The other man's distress is not lost on Caleb. How could it be? His soulmate, his beautiful, beloved shadow made flesh right in front of him. Alive and well and so, so much more than he deserved. The words strike like knives. 'You never came here.' Oh it ached, made his throat close tight as tears threatened his eyes.

It was the touch of those hand that set them to falling from his eyes. Even if he knew he couldn't possibly deserve it, that he had no right to the comfort of it, he turned towards that touch, leaned into it.]

I am so sorry. I cannot ask you to forgive me, but I... [There is no stopping the tears now as they track their way down his cheeks.] ...I am happy to know your face.

[dunamagic]

[Essek's thumb brushes at one of the tears, his own tears dripping like starlight down his cheeks. Caleb was beautiful, his tears like rivers from beautiful oceans, yet Essek wanted nothing more than to stop those tears, so see a smile on that face like he deserves.]

There... there is nothing to forgive-- from the sounds of it, you did not intentionally abandon me, yes? [Again, his thumb wipes ever so carefully over the man's cheek, chasing tears.]

Else you would not be so shocked that I barred our room for my own.. sanity.

[No, if anyone abandoned the other, it was him who abandoned Caleb, he was the one at fault, he should have had more faith.] I believe it is I who should ask for forgiveness.