Chapter Text
“Wake up.”
He shakes his head, he has no desire to wake up but he opens his eyes slowly. The caterpillar is there on his ear, he has become used to the weight of it now, the feel of its body curled against him. There is no light coming through the bars above his head which means it must be night, and he strains his ears for the sound of the guards, hears nothing but a distant cough and the slight scrape of armour on stone.
“What do you want?”
“Your time is coming Viren, you need to be ready.”
He sits himself up slowly, would choke out a laugh, but there is no mirth in him, the fading ache of fever is still somewhere in his bones.
“I think you severely overestimate the position that I’m in. The only thing coming for me is death.”
“You’re too fatalistic. You will soon be free, there is no stopping it now. Don’t think that I haven’t considered every aspect of human desire, all the many weaknesses that men possess.”
Viren shifts, he is uncomfortably aware that perhaps Aaravos is something so far beyond his comprehension, an otherworldly being who is so mighty and powerful, that there is no way for him to control whatever he has unleashed. That it is merely his own weaknesses that have been exposed and now he is just a pawn to someone else’s will, captive, helpless.
Yet isn’t that how he has spent his whole life? Always at the margins of someone greater, always working, fighting, scrambling to emerge from the shade they cast over him. Why should this be any different?
Still, there is a place in his heart longs for it to be so. There are so many things he has given up just to try and feel in control, to free a part of himself that he was born with, the part of him that is weak. To emerge the way he sees the sunray monarch’s emerge from their chrysalis, wings shimmering with the light of some ethereal and unknowable power.
He wants to believe that power could now belong to him, but all he can see are the walls of the dungeon, damp and cold, the bars that imprison him, the chains that have always filled his nightmares, now bound tight around his wrists.
“I’ve committed crimes against the kingdom. The only way out of that is the hangman’s noose.”
“One person’s crime is just another person’s rational choice. Don’t think that I don’t know the difference. I’ve had more years than you can imagine to ruminate on those distinctions.”
For a moment he almost forgets he is talking to an insect, sees instead the elf from the mirror, the odd unreadable expression he has that seems to veer between sorrow and arrogance, the beguiling tilt of his mouth, the glimmer in his eyes. Viren rubs his own, the image fades.
“I don’t think our High Cleric will view it in quite the same way as you.”
The caterpillar lets out a low chuckle, it is a little unnerving to hear the deep bass notes emerge from a creature so small.
“This is merely an inconvenience Viren, when you’ve waited as long as I have for your freedom you can see these things for what they are.”
For a moment he pauses, perhaps the elf simply doesn’t understand the enormity of his situation, there are the crimes Opeli knows of, the attack on the guards, the treason, others that he can only hope she will never learn, but still it is enough, enough to be the death of him. A fine reward for the years he has given Katolis, for the slice it has taken from his soul. Yet here where he has no freedom he finds a blank simplicity in it. He has no choice in this matter and it is easier that way.
“How long have you waited?”
“Years that turned into decades. Decades that turned into centuries.” There is an odd brittle bite to the elf’s voice and he feels the caterpillar shift as if something has disturbed him.
“Alone?”
The caterpillar moves along the shell of his ear, he feels the brush of it against his hair.
“Alone. Don’t you think that’s a cruel punishment? Wouldn’t death be preferable?”
He reaches up slowly, takes the caterpillar between his fingers and places it in the palms of his bound hands. They stare at one another.
“Yes. Yes, I think it would be.”
“Of course it is. They could sit back and congratulate themselves, call it mercy. Some sweet mercy to leave me like an animal, to build a cage around me with bars so strong, to fuse them together so they could never be broken. What sort of mercy is that? To leave my soul to rot away to nothing? To let the years and the loneliness eat away at it piece by piece…”
The caterpillar almost seems to shudder, there is an odd raw edge to the voice that is normally so composed.
“Who did this to you?”
“Oh Viren, the world did this to me, I saw the inequalities in it, the same ones you know and I thought, oh, I thought in my wisdom why should it be so? There are other ways to live, not trodden into the dirt, there are ways to reach for the stars. People reached for me and I answered.”
There is a pitch to his voice, Viren hears the crack in it, and then it grows softer.
“Perhaps this world was not ready for me then. I’ll make sure it is now. You are the first person I have spoken to in so many years. I can’t even tell you how they passed, my heart has known such strange despair, such longing. There were times I thought it would break me. There are things you long for too. I know it.”
The caterpillar arches itself onto its back, and Viren takes one finger and traces the ridges there, they are soft and for a moment its peculiar diamond markings glow with an iridescent light. It is hard to believe how fragile it is, he could crush it between his fingers, he has crushed things far greater than this on many occasions, and yet he knows that he will not. There is a particular compassion he can feel for that sort of loneliness, the sort that has a wedge driven into it that splits and splinters everything.
“Do you know me then?” He doesn’t know why he is even asking the question.
“Yes…” The voice is soft, the caterpillar’s four strange horns move minutely back and forth as if he is somehow picking up the vibrations of him from the very air itself. “I know you.” And Viren feels an odd shiver run down his spine and he isn’t really sure if it is fear, or longing, or something else.
“I’m not sure I know myself now.”
“Oh, but you do Viren, you’ve always known yourself, deep inside. History requires people of vision sometimes, those who can do the things that need to be done, however difficult they are. I have vision. Do you?”
He stares at the caterpillar’s small white eyes.
Harrow had been the one with visions and dreams, he had been happy to stand at his shoulder, to enable him to achieve them. He had been happy to be the shadow of him.
Once.
Then that had changed. Somehow it had shifted, the more he gave the more he wanted something in return, some recognition, or equality, something he didn’t even know quite how to express. What were the things he had been willing to give for that? Yet he can still hear the bitter ring of Harrow’s words. A servant. He feels the helpless shudder of it deep in his heart. A servant. Harrow could have taken his sword and cleaved him in half and it would have been no worse than that. No less of a blow. The words twist in him, turn to pitch.
He feels the nudge of the caterpillar’s head against his finger and he nods slowly.
“Yes. I believe I have vision.”
“Good.” He lets the caterpillar crawl onto his finger, the cool weight of his body against his skin. “There’s just one more thing we need to do to prepare you, now lie down.”
He lies back on the hard wood of the bench and shuts his eyes, he can feel the strange caress of the caterpillar’s legs as he moves over him, the brush of minute claws against skin. He is almost past the nightmare of it all, it feels a though the creature is almost a part of him, Aaravos is almost a part of him, some side of himself he has kept hidden for so long.
There is a pause, the weight of the insect is on his eyelid, he takes a breath and then it starts to stitch, sticky and slow, across his eye.