Work Text:
Essek is sixteen years old and wants nothing more in the world than to punch Vieros Mirimm in his smirking, perfect mouth.
It had been easier before Kellas left. She had been born to a member of Den Kryn, and already wore the influence it brought her with a distant, serene grace. Essek has wasted many nights in front of the mirror, trying to replicate the soft, natural coolness that is hers by birthright. Dismissive, disinterested, but sweetly so. Not her fault, for being born so high above, but the rest of the world’s, for being so far below. One look from Kellas was enough to shut Vieros up for days.
She had left the year previous to complete her anamnesis with a fellow umavi. Essek’s mother had been pleased when he told her. Had cupped his face in her hands and praised him, as though this newly auspicious connection was his doing, rather than an accident of timing and birth. Essek had swallowed down sadness when the room where they take their lessons was rearranged to have two desks instead of three, and spent too many days afterwards touching his cheek.
Anyway, none of that matters. Kellas has been away close to 11 months and has not been in touch. And Essek is every day in greater danger of bringing shame to Den Thelyss via a schoolroom fistfight he’s not even sure he would win. Among Vieros’ many infuriating qualities, he is five inches taller than Essek, who has not yet undergone his promised growth spurt.
His father has tried to tell him that his body is taking a more considered approach to growing up. Sometimes, when he has had too much wine with dinner he’ll joke instead that it’ Essek’s mind that is the problem, siphoning off energy from his bones. Neither option is a comfort.
There are many attributes which mark Vieros out for punching. Essek has made quite a thorough catalogue. In addition to his persistent tallness, he has lately shown an aptitude for gravitational magic. In their lessons last week, Vieros had slowed the fall of a rock until it drifted lazily as a feather. Essek’s first attempt had left a small chip in the classroom floor.
Also, sometimes when they are studying, Essek has caught Vieros watching him over the top of his school books. When this happens, he does not even have the sense to look embarrassed at his violation of social norms. Instead he smirks.
Essek has not tried this smirk on for himself in his bedroom mirror. And even if he had, there would hardly be useful findings to report.
He knows he is smarter than Vieros. This is not overconfidence. His grasp of the theory of dunamas is remarkably strong for someone who has not yet begun his anamnesis. More than once, his tutors have whispered names of archmages recently deceased behind their hands, poring over their most famed idiosyncrasies and ticks for clues as to who he might become.
Where other people see tools and weapons, Essek sees mathematical theory, patterns upon patterns, a web of connections that could bend and bow in different ways, to different effects, if only the correct stimuli were applied.
All of which helps him not at all when Vieros is cheerfully juggling several scrolls and their classroom globes of Catha and Ruidus with his magic, while Essek is still struggling to slow the fall of a fucking rock.
“Have you tried saying it differently?” Vieros asks him. For reasons passing Essek’s understanding, Vieros has begun walking him back to Den Thelyss at the end of each tutoring session, even though Den Mirimm prefers to house its members in a slightly less fashionable district on the opposite side of Firmaments.
“Of course I have tried saying it differently.” Honestly, it is as though he wants Essek to punch him.
“Perhaps a private lesson would help?” Vieros says. His expression is one of perfect innocence — head slightly inclined, dark grey eyes round and wide, lips pulled into a gentle, sympathetic smile. It is unfair. If he is going to mock him, the least he can do is own up to it.
Essek quickens his pace, for all the good it does. It hardly takes Vieros a moment to catch up and then surpass him, trying to block his forward progress with his body. He ducks to the left, and Vieros goes with him again, walking in front of Essek with his back to oncoming traffic, trusting the crowd to part for a favoured son. It does, of course, for him.
“I meant, perhaps I could help you.”
“I do not require your help.”
“Why are you always so stubborn, Thelyss—”
There is a mushroom cart left unattended in the road. Essek imagines steering him into it, seeing Vieros’ long white hair and fine clothes covered in nightsoil.
Discretion wins out slightly later than it should. When Essek grabs his wrist and pulls him out of the way they both go off balance, stumbling sideways. He trips on a flagstone and of course it’s Vieros who catches him, Vieros who sets them to rights. “Easy there.”
The anger singing through his veins makes everything white hot and blurred at the edges. It is surprisingly easy work for Essek to manhandle him into the nearest alley way and shove him against a wall. “Why are you such a — you just — I swear I could—”
He does not know how to punch someone. They do not cover the mechanics in his books.
“Come here, Thelyss,” Vieros says, rolling his eyes as though Essek is an unruly child or a disobedient pup. His hands find Essek’s hip and the back of his neck, rearranging him with the same easy surety he’d had in the street. And Essek is burning hot and shot through with cold and dizzy with adrenaline and—
He still does not know where to put his hands. He’s never kissed anyone either.
“You’re ridiculous,” Vieros say, thumb stroking gentle, maddening circles just below Essek’s ear. He’s smirking again. His mouth is exactly the same amounts of perfect and stupid and punchable it’s always been. Essek kisses him for quite some time.
When Vieros begins his anamnesis, it takes Den Mirimm several weeks to confirm his past identity. A minor general, consecuted for a great deed several lives past and as yet unrepeated. Essek’s mother does not suggest he preserve the friendship, and arranges for private tutors.
It’s another year before anyone admits that Essek will never be more than himself.
Essek is sixty-five years old, and wants nothing more in the world than another drink. Someone within Den Thelyss has taken to matching the liquor selections at these functions to their guests of honour, likely for the novelty. The imperial regiments in Bazzoxan favour a kind of fortified rice wine that can withstand rough journeys through the wastelands. It tastes like sweetened perfume and goes straight to Essek’s head. The third glass had been an intentional mistake, as had the fourth and fifth. He has no reason to expect the sixth to be better, and is counting on it.
He hates coming to these things. The military inspection had been bad enough — precious hours of study wasted watching from a distance as someone else looks at uniforms — but the parties are always worse. At least since he started floating there is something to talk about, and no one asks him to dance.
There seem to be more and more parties lately. Even at the conservatory there are rumblings. Empire scouts in the Ashkeeper peaks. Clashes on the Western border. A few of Essek’s classmates have complained there’s hardly a nightlife to be had in Rosohna these days, with all the troops leaving the capital.
“You could try to pretend to have a good time,” Teph says, appearing at Essek’s elbow with two more glasses of thick, slightly amber wine. “Drink?”
“Thank you.” He does not let himself take a sip immediately, lest he drain the glass. The Echo Knight dress uniform is all stark black and trim, angular tailoring, with only a few silver bars on its high collar to denote rank. On Essek’s father, the effect is aging and somewhat grim. On his young lieutenant it is… something else. Teph’s hair is pulled into a neat, military-issue bun, and there is just enough space between his collar and jawline for a truly determined person to find skin to kiss.
Essek has been having useless thoughts like these for weeks now. Yet another reason he hates these parties.
Treph is denless. Grew up closer to the Ghostlands than the Bastion. Had enlisted in the Dynasty’s armies as a simple foot soldier and risen fast. Essek’s father has provided rather a lot of background detail during their last few weekly dinners. It is the sort of sentimental tale that pleases him these days, though Essek imagines this has more to do with the outsized importance he places on his own influence than true pride at the deeds of one under his watch.
Essek wonders, sometimes, if this is why his own accomplishments do not seem to offer him the same thrill.
“Have you had any news about your next assignment?” Essek asks, as though they both do not know that he would likely hear of any change first.
“Still stuck in the sand,” Treph downs most of his own glass in one go. Essek takes it as permission to do the same. “You should give my thanks to your father, for being less eager than the rest of our generals to get started on this war.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that along.” The sixth glass is just as much of a mistake as expected. He can feel himself smile wider than he means to, blood pounding hot in his ears and cheeks.
“You know,” he angles himself towards Essek, bending their heads together with an easy familiarity that would be entirely insulting to someone who cared. “Your people usually hurry the rank and file out of here after an hour or two, before we can drink all the alcohol. If you would be interested in a change of scenery…”
It’s a stunningly bad idea. Essek is already stretching patience by failing to mingle, by getting visibly drunk, by having little more to pay back Den Thelyss’ time and investments than good grades and a reputation amongst his classmates for declining invitations to supper.
“I shouldn’t,” he says.
Treph smiles. It widens when he notices Essek staring at his mouth. “Shouldn’t, or won’t?”
He hops a balcony into the gardens when no one is looking. It’s easier than going out the front door. Between the flotation spell and the alcohol, it hardly makes a difference that he doesn’t land it particularly well.
They go to a series of terrible bars. The Black Roq. The Morbounder and Pennywhistle. A basement where the only sign on the door says ‘EXIT.’ Essek loses nearly all of the gold he’s carrying betting on pit fights, drinks several ill-advised shots and learns how to open the hidden fastenings in a uniform jacket by touch alone in full view of nearly half his father's regiment. He is, it turns out, right about the neckline. There is just enough room left for kissing, if one is determined.
There is no punishment for it. That would be crude. There are only reminders. A wing of the Marble Tomes that now requires letters of recommendation for him to enter. Invitations to social functions that do not come. Letters from his father, postponing dinner, that are addressed simply to Essek.
There is no birthright in a first life. On that, Den Thelyss is always unfailingly clear.
The promising young lieutenant continues his rise uninterrupted. Some years later, Essek will hear he has been given command of the Ashguard Garrison.
Essek is ninety years old and wants nothing more in the world than that which he can get for himself.
It is far easier to acquire than he expects.
Essek is one hundred and seventeen years old and wants nothing more in the world than... well. It’s a complicated question. Certainly, there is very little he deserves. And yet the wanting remains.
Essek wants to have made other decisions. To have avoided being caught. To get out of this alive. To be someone better than he is, or perhaps someone else entirely. To finally receive answers to lifelong questions. To have been less trusting, on several conflicting fronts. To see the sunrise. To run. To know whether Caleb Widogast, perhaps the most talented arcanist of his human generation, knows that teleportation spells do not require hand holding. To know he will be forgiven. To be deserving of that forgiveness. To have avoided the need for it entirely, in whatever way that might have once been possible.
To find it within himself to be really, truly sorry.
He has been keeping a running tally in his head these last two months, since he first met the Mighty Nein. One mark for every time Caleb Widogast has looked at him. Essek wants nothing more in the world than to never add to it again. To add to it immediately, constantly.
He had thought Caleb might understand him in this. Though not—
“You listen to me. I know what you are talking about. I know. And the difference between you and I is thinner than a razor.”
Not this way.
A gifted mage with interests in time and fate and with the will to bend both. An Empire wizard with no great love for his betters and few ties to the Dynasty. A smile that crinkled the edges of his pale blue eyes, sometimes, when he looked Essek's way.
Essek has let himself imagine telling him the truth so many times.
Sometimes he chooses the night of the Nein’s dinner party as a setting. It is easy enough in his head to chase Beauregard away. To return Caleb’s bright, untroubled smile. To invite him inside. To explain what he had held back from the others. The secrets he had carefully spoken around. His theories, his plans, the research underway.
“Would you like to join me?” Essek has imagined himself saying, all the mysteries of time and fate that Caleb loves arrayed before him. On very good nights, he has let himself consider what else there is hidden in the question that Caleb might agree to.
Though, there have not been many good nights as of late.
His less pleasant thoughts have not had quite the shape of this night either. An immediate message to the Bright Queen. A fireball to the face. Those had seemed plausible. Perhaps a minute’s head start, if the Nein remembered what he has given. What he is owed.
This — the crowd of them, here in this tiny floating room on the sea, watching him with open faces and weapons sheathed — Caleb on his knees, his hands gentle on Essek's face and his words like fire in his throat — he had not thought to imagine any of this.
“You were not born with venom in your veins. You learned it. You learned it.”
A talented wizard with an interest in time and fate. Loyalties uncertain. Speaking in sincere half truths and lies of omission.
All this time Essek has believed that Caleb reflected the best of him. It had not occurred to him that the truth might be in the reverse: That Essek is the all the worst parts of a person.
There is a kiss placed on his forehead. An impossible offer. Essek hears his own voice come from a distance.
“You weren’t part of the plan. And you’re all in terrible danger for the things you know.”
“So be it,” Caleb whispers.
Essek is one hundred and seventeen years old and wants nothing more in the world than to believe that could be true.
But he is old enough to know better now.