Work Text:
Of all his creations, that which now meant the most to him was that which encircled his neck. The lines and frame and single jewel now shield his nape from the outside world, and hide the deformity which he cannot rid himself of.
Once, it had aided him in initial recovery from his grievous injuries at the hands of that half-breed. It had supported his neck as the Regenex took its slowed time knitting back together the faculties that once had given him his fine and famed control of speech.
The collar was not, however, what saved him from certain death: it was blue life, that new ambrosia, that had knit together the shredded tendons, veins, arteries, larynx, vertebrae, muscles from where they had hung in strings. An entire half-moon had been missing when it was done.
The liquid poured on the gaping, gushing wound had not stung, in and of itself. Instead, it was that it gave back the unnamable pain that had ceased, once the sharp canine teeth had left his neck, back in full force, a sensation like none he had experienced in his score-thousand years. On reflection, he almost wished for that sensation again: he had not felt so much, so strongly, in all but his earliest memories. He would give much to be able to sheerly feel so much again. But ripping off a limb on a whim was too uncouth and unprofitable to be indulged in on a regular basis, and would have lost its novelty quite quickly. It was the chance, the shock, the jolt of momentary confusion that had given the sensation its edge.
The gross anatomy was easy to repair, and near-instantaneous. As the mongrel was removed from the room, his neck appeared whole once again, though a mockery of its former purity. The veins, the arteries, the skin, the shards of bone, repaired at the touch of a drop—but it took months to be little more than a framework of biomatter. The collar he first had was a simple sheet of flexible tubing, constantly fed with Regenex into the affected area. Once the mid-level tissues had regenerated, a more aesthetically pleasing framework could be substituted.
As the mid-level tissues regrew, and the court case dragged on, he designed and crafted his new collar.
Angular lines, like circuitry guiding electrical impulses, to carry out the bidding of the user.
Swirls and eddies, like the surface of his once most beloved planet, the planet that made him think of her every time he saw it now.
The sigil, at the center front, over his reforming larynx. He has never able to decide if it was Yin or Yang, as the people of Earth knew the concept--perhaps it is both. What is necessary is that lacks the other half, the other part that makes it a shape whole.
Garnet, to keep back the nightmares. To perhaps provide prophylaxis from future misfortune. To feel her lips upon his neck, the one time and one time only that she deigned to touch him so. To remember her blood as it spurted from beneath his fingernails, at the end.
Gold, to provide permanence. The one metal that never tarnishes, yet accepts all conduction, unchanging yet flexible, adapting to the demands of situation.
Bronze, interwoven with all the rest. The metal of the first weapons, in each and every culture seeded for harvest. The metal of art, of life, of their foretold programmed demise. The first tool of technology.
When he was done, it was resplendent. When he closed the clasps about his neck, he felt more whole than he had since his fingers had left her neck. Some small part of her was woven within it. Her arms were again around him. He felt her hand about his throat.
How sorry she would be to see his swan-like neck now ruined.
(It was what she had first seen as beautiful about him, when she had first found him in this recurrence, when he had been little but a street urchin, huddled in filth and ignominy.)
His once unblemished neck is now studded with twin arches of stellate scars, networks of too-thick collagen mesh.
He does not know if he will ever regain his mellifluous tenor.
For now, he is left with muffled murmurs and strident howls.
(He will, again, finally, feel so strongly again: when he first touches her skin. The beautiful, the uncanny, the sacred abomination, the recurrence that should never have been. Not so soon, not so true.)