Work Text:
Those ten years trapped in your own creation were the loneliest ten years of your life.
For a while, it was terrifying. It was dark. You feared for a moment you had gone blind. You couldn’t hear the sound of your own voice even though you were certain you were screaming. You couldn’t even feel the strain the scream made in the back of your throat.
For a while, you felt nothing. And it was absolutely terrifying.
You had to teach yourself how to sense the world all over again, before you could call for help. What was the point in calling for help if you couldn’t hear a response?
The first thing that came back was sound. It wasn’t overwhelming, but a gentle thing that surrounded you like a soap bubble. You couldn’t hear blood rushing in your ears, or the beating of a heart, since you didn’t have one for the time being. Instead you heard faint sounds from outside of the Umbrastaff. Later, when you could project yourself out of it, you could hear the sound of water dripping through the cave, or the sounds of bats and mice scurrying and squeaking in conversation.
But there were sounds from before that you longed to hear again.
The sound of water running steadily through a brook, the sound of a bird announcing the arrival of dawn long before the sun even teased its appearance, the sound of a piano and a violin, the sound of singing and talking.
You missed the sound of your brother’s laughter. Even before you started called yourself Lup and your voices still sounded similar, your laughter was always distinct from one another. Perhaps it was a gift. His laughter was a sound that always brightened your darkest days, or one you would try to make happen when he was stuck in the gloom. It was a sound you tried, and failed, to replicate during that lonely decade.
You missed the sound of Barry’s voice. It was rough, but also soothing to the soul. You missed listening to him talk to you, even just listening to the sound of his voice rather than paying attention to the actual words forming. You missed the whispers in your ear late at night, when everyone else was sound asleep and the two of you were restless. Sometimes you imagined you could hear his voice deep in the cave.
The second sense to come back was sight. It wasn’t sudden, which you were grateful for. Rather, it was light, then shape, and then color. You saw the inner chamber of the Umbrastaff for the first time, beholding it as a small square room lined with thick velvet curtains the same color as the staff’s exterior. Once you could project yourself outside the staff, you could see the space where you had lost your corporeal body, and the door to the vault just close by. You could also see your own corpse, though it had mostly rotted to bone once you were able to see anything at all. It was unsettling.
There were so many sights that you missed.
You missed the warming of the sky at sunrise, in all the shapes and forms you found it in during your travels across reality. You missed the grassy fields where fireflies would emerge from after dark, creating a second set of stars you could actually hold in your hands.
You missed your brother’s smile. His genuine one, that put creases in the eyes and opened his mouth wide enough to show off his teeth. You missed seeing your brother, and while the two of you still looked so similar, you could always tell each other apart. You had to remind yourself of these differences after not seeing him for ten years.
You missed the way Barry would look at you. Even years after coming to terms with how you felt for one another, he would still look at you with such awe and reverence, like you were the most sacred thing to him. You’d be damned if you didn’t look at him in the same way. After such a long time, you had to remind yourself what he looked like, too.
Next, sensation of touch returned. You could touch the curtains in that chamber, feel the smoothness of the floor, and even touch your own lich form. You still had no pulse, but that was to be expected, and that didn’t scare you. You could touch things outside of the Umbrastaff, too, once you were able to project yourself out of it. You felt the cold, smooth rocks. You felt the mice that ran through your hands, the texture of their fur and the humming of their hearts.
But you missed the feel of other things, too.
You missed the feeling of a seashell in your hands, the texture gentle but still intricate. You missed the contrasting sensation of cold water against your skin against the heat of arid summer. You missed the spark of your spells in your fingertips, and the texture of the earth against your bare feet.
You missed the feeling of your brother’s fingers combing through your hair. It was a thing you always did for one another when you were stressed or scared. He’d comb through it and sometimes braid it, though he wouldn’t tie it back. Combing through your own hair with your own fingers doesn’t quite feel the same, even if it’s all you have.
You missed Barry’s arms around you, and the warmth of his presence in bed beside you, where you spent several hours doing a lot of things without talking though not necessarily staying silent. Feelings that you remember leaving electricity coursing through your nerves, and something you know is impossible to replicate now without him here. It’s not the same without him here.
After that, your sense of smell came back and taste followed not long after. It smelled slightly musky inside the chamber, though you grew accustomed to it quickly and before long it smelled like nothing again. Outside, you could smell the metal of the rocks and the faint remainder of the decay of your old body. The remaining blood smeared on the wall behind you has long since dried as a stain on the wall, but you could swear you can still detect the distinct scent of iron.
There were smells and tastes you missed terribly, even though you had no need to eat in your lich form.
You missed the smell of dew-dampened flowers, and the smell of spring and summer showers. You missed the smoky smell of fire as it burned in a hearth or even in the palm of your hand. You missed the taste of a dry mouth, the taste of spring water, and the taste of slightly burnt food.
You missed the food you and your brother made together, out of the dozens of recipes you learned from your aunt. The sweets your brother prepared were always your favorite, even though he prefered to make main course meals of the savory variety, and you still enjoyed those of course. You miss his meals more than ever, at the time when you can’t even partake of them.
You missed the smell and taste of Barry. You can’t describe what exactly the smells were, but they just accumulated into one thing that smelled of home. You missed the taste of his mouth against your own, or perhaps the sensation of that electricity it left coursing through you that made you hunger for more. Now, you longed for it more than ever.
Those were all things you would have to wait for.
And when your dear beloved brother finally entered that cave with his friends in tow and picked up the Umbrastaff, you couldn’t wait to experience all of those things all over again.
You would never take any of those things for granted ever again.