Work Text:
Samothes wakes late today, to the brush of afternoon sun across his face. He opens his eyes and looks to where it spills through the windows of his chambers. He does not rise, but merely stares at the puddles of light on his floor. There is a feeling deep within him, and he knows, without even wondering why, that this day is wrong somehow.
Nevertheless, there is work to be done, and so he lifts himself from the safe confines of his bed. Across the chair of his desk are laid robes in white and gold. These are not the colours he would have chosen. He does not recall having chosen them at all. He dons them anyway. There is a strangeness in the way they sit on his skin, as though he is wearing caricatures of clothing rather than the clothes themselves. He catches the hem between his fingers and rubs at it. It has a silky texture. A normal texture.
Samothes frowns. His face feels stiff. There is a mirror that hangs by his wardrobe, above the basin where he shaves. He looks into it, searching for signs of injury or illness, though he is rarely injured and never ill. His own face stares back at him. It is the same face he has always had, brown and stubbled and gently weathered, greying at the temples and furrowed at the brow. He touches his cheek, watching the motion in the mirror. The movement is the same. Samothes relaxes slightly and runs a hand through his hair. His mirror self does the same, and in the reflection, he sees a flash of gold.
He falls back, landing hard against the floor. He feels his pulse racing. He scrambles back to his feet and presses his hands to the mirror. His fingers search it for cracks or imperfections. It is an old mirror, after all, and could have warped over the years. It was made long ago, for Samot, and he remembers his father’s smile when he received it…
No. Not his father. It was a gift for Samot, and it stayed here when Samot left. His father had nothing to do with it.
He touches his face, and the mirror. He runs his hand through his hair again, searching for gold in the dark brown. There is none. His mind is playing tricks on him, or he is ill. That is all. He exhales slowly, resting his forehead on the cool glass of the mirror. His breath paints fog on its surface.
“Um, Lord Samothes?” says a small voice from behind him. He tenses. “Is everything okay?” His eyes dart to the reflection of the door, where he sees a small cobbin standing, her glasses sliding down her snout.
“Aubrey,” he says, relaxing and turning to face her. Friend, he thinks. She is a friend of his, from when…from when…
His skull throbs suddenly. He curls sharply in on himself, wrapping his hands around his skull as he does. His ears ring. Aubrey darts over, hands flying up. She presses one to his forehead without stopping to ask, then tilts his head so she can look into his eyes. She mutters something under her breath. It sounds like “oh no,” which does not make him feel better.
“What do you mean, oh no?” he asks, and Aubrey’s expression of worry complicates.
“Um,” she says. Her hands drop and twist together. “We were worried because, well, because of the day being what it is, that you wouldn’t be feeling very good, that’s all.”
Samothes frowns. “What’s wrong with today?”
Aubrey twists her hands even tighter. “It’s the funeral. You remember, for…” her voice trails off.
“Oh. Yes. Of course.” Samothes shakes his head. “The funeral. How could I have forgotten?” He smiles.
Aubrey’s hands relax, but her face remains worried. “It’s starting soon, and I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” She shuffles in place. “You are okay, right?”
Samothes chuckles. “Of course I’m okay, Aubrey. There’s no reason for you to worry, although I appreciate it.”
The concern still doesn’t leave Aubrey’s expression, but she nods at him. “I’m going to be down with the rest of them, to meet the procession, but if you need any of us, for anything at all, tell one of the pala-din. They’ll come find me or Samot and we’ll help.”
“Certainly, I…” Samothes trails off. Samot is here? He shakes his head. Of course he’s here, he’s here for the funeral. Samothes knew that. Samot is supposed to be here. It is only right for him to be here to witness the burial. Only…
Only, he cannot remember who is being buried.
He clears his throat. “I had better not keep you, Aubrey. Please, give everyone my best.” He turns and she has already left. How long has he been standing here? Had she been there at all? He has the urge to look into the mirror again and fights it back. The ghost of ringing pain dances its fingers across his temples, and another look would no doubt send him crumpling to the floor again. There will be time to study it later, and it is almost time for the funeral.
There is a drumming beat in his bones as he walks to the balcony. Sharp and crisp as a battlefield march, it pulls him into the pooling sunlight. Below him sprawls Marielda in all its glowing glory. His city. This place which, above all, he protects. The jumble of unmappable, reconfigured streets, the dangerous water, the beaches, the forest, all of it below, is his. It speaks to him, not just in the voice of its citizens’ prayers, but in that voice of cities which is so easy to miss if you don't know how to listen. It speaks to him in the creaking of boards and the echoes of alleyways, in the patter of thieves’ footsteps and the ringing of sermons, in soft exhalations and in shrieking gasps. The cacophonous symphony of the life of the city is a constant upon which he has depended for generations.
But now, as he steps onto the balcony, it is quiet. He frowns, unsure for a moment if he just isn’t listening properly. He focuses. Nothing. The bricks, the stones, the component parts of the city which grind against each other daily in merry dissonance are all still and silent. The only sound on the air is the rush of his robes in the wind, and in that moment Samothes is sure he is the only moving being in Marielda.
The drumming in his bones stops suddenly, and so does he, at the edge of the balcony, looking out. In the sunlight, the city is washed gold. For a moment, the world is completely, perfectly still.
Then, in the distance, the beat of the drum is taken up. It is only barely audible through the golden silence at first, a gentle, steady pulse like a heartbeat. Then another beat joins it, then another, until the sound rolls instead. There is no unifying rhythm, but the patterns fall into each other, crashing together in a flurry of sound and then breaking like waves. Samothes is suddenly ever so slightly dizzy. He grips the railing of the balcony to steady himself. The drums roll closer, their rush bound in only by the funnels and channels of the streets. A horn joins the wash of sounds, then another, and another, bright and golden as the sun, weeping just the same. The floodwaters of sound rise and break through the still gold of the day, and now there are thousands of instruments playing, strings and brass and others that he has no name for. There are voices too, thousands of voices, singing and shrieking, human, weaver, cobbin, as well as sounds that could never have come from a living throat, all pouring together into the city, filling it up with grief. Samothes’ knuckles whiten on the railing as he holds himself upright. His head is spinning now, awash with sound and confusion. He clutches tighter
And then the procession rounds the corner.
And his eyes fall on the golden casket, inscribed with the image of the sun, open and empty.
And the image of his own dying face rips through his mind.
And with a thousand voices, Marielda wails.
Samothes falls back, gasping and clutching his hands to his head. The shrieking, grating cry of the city in mourning resounds through his skull, impossibly loud. The crash of brass and drum and mortal voice combined with the shattering howl of stone and glass and metal all keening together overwhelms him and drags him under its thundering tide. He shuts his eyes tight and curls in to keep out the salt-wave of sound, but all that does is give clarity to the image of his own face that paints itself across his vision. His face, twisted with death, going slack, melting away and reshaping, again and again, changing between his father’s and his son’s, his face and his face. He shoves the heels of his hands against his eyes and presses, trying to rub out the image of his father’s dying face and his own dying face and…and…
He is dimly aware of a pair of slight, cool hands against his face and a voice as soft as rustle of pages in the wind saying something he cannot make out. He feels his breath begin to slow and the shuddering of his chest begin to ease. A memory slips unbidden through the raging torrent of his mind, of being small and held by these hands and soothed by this voice, and though it is his memory, it does not belong in this body. The edges of him ache.
“Shhhhhh, shhhhhh,” the voice breathes. “Let the storm pass.”
The voice can be trusted. Samothes knows this. He forces his mind to wrest itself from the maelstrom of whirling faces and stabbing grief and the resounding pain of the city that swirls within it. Slowly, slowly, his heart steadies. He pries his eyes open.
Above him, Samot’s face is illuminated from behind by the final dying rays of the sun. He holds Samothes’ head on his lap, and when his gaze meets Samothes’, he smiles. His eyes are rimmed with red, and there are lines at the edges that Samothes both does and does not remember.
Samothes takes a heavy, aching breath. “What’s wrong with me?”
Samot shakes his head. “We don’t know, sweet boy. This is an unprecedented situation. We had no way of predicting that anything like this would happen.”
Samothes shuts his eyes, and for a moment he sees his own face, caught between shades of black and gold. “Why can’t I remember? Why can’t I remember who I’ve been?”
“It must be difficult to hold two lifetimes within, even for a god. Perhaps with time they will reconcile, or you’ll build barriers between them so they cannot war with each other. I can only hope it will get easier.”
Samothes takes another long, slow, shuddering breath, and the part of him that remembers being young and golden and unafraid screams for the comfort of his father, and for once the other part does not reach out and strike it. “I’m afraid.”
Samot’s face cracks and tears begin to spill down his cheeks. He gathers Samothes to his chest and holds him, rocking them both back and forth. “I’m so sorry, my sun, my sun, my son.”
They stay like that as the sun and the howling of the city both fade around them, leaving them in darkness and quiet as the cool of night begins to seep into the room. And though the two faces behind his eyes still clash and melt into each other, though the maelstrom of conflicting thoughts still rages above his mind, Samothes begins to steady himself. Regardless of who he has been, he is Samothes now.
And there is work to be done.