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Rivendell‘s king is a patchwork of everything he can remember, and many things he never will.
He wasn’t always Scott, but the name his parents gave him always felt distinctly foreign to him, like he was holding it for a person who could never exist, the name of the character he played in the grand story of the universe rather than one his soul recognised.
Sleep was usually dreamless, or so it seemed, perhaps his brain was simply protecting him from the worst of it. Misery always followed on his heels back to the waking world.
But when he ignored the oft impenetrable fog that kept memories he should never have access to at bay, sometimes it would recede a little, giving him yet another fragment of one of the pictures that never existed.
One of those fragments gifted him a name. Several revealed his name, different every time. But only one revealed it with such an adoring voice, like he’d hung the moon and the stars in the sky. In another image he hadn’t quite been corporeal, a fallen fragment of a sentient star, so maybe they weren't far off. Other images showed him siblings he’d never had, and many possibilities in between.
He wasn’t Scott, and yet of every image he had slowly, painstakingly constructed from the broken fragments being fed to him bit by bit, being Scott felt more honest than the name given to him by his parents.
Death trailed on the heels of every painting. When he’d been starlight, his body had simply given up, it had exploded into a maelstrom of light. Colour too, probably. It had hurt more than he ever wanted to experience for himself. Many times, his life was lost on a battlefield, literal and metaphorical and everything in between. Phantom pains were incomparable to the innate knowledge of how much each death would hurt to experience, and for that mercy, he was forever grateful.
An overactive imagination, Scott assumed, but he was still fascinated by what he sometimes knew and put all the pieces he was gifted together with care.
At least until that gods-damned book, an old story he’d never read in the library but knew too many pieces of. His own notebook and the supposed fable laid out beside each other it was hard to deny the similarities, and the pieces slot together.
Every single picture he’d been painting was another lifetime he’d experienced.
And Xornoth had been his brother once. Yet never had been. Because he was Scott far more than he was the elven king and far more the elven king than he was Alinar.
Yet something deep inside Scott, his soul if he wanted to be poetic, cried out as it always did when Xornoth was mentioned, that tone that painted his memories of a brother, tinged with despair at their loss, an incompleteness, an ache that had followed him for lifetimes, that nothing would ever fill.
Knowing that Xornoth was still the same person as when Scott had been their brother, whereas Scott had left that identity behind lifetimes ago because Scott was a name that belonged to him for always and fit him more than any other, it stung sharper than any knife wound.
Perhaps, next time his brother came to stare, Scott would greet the demon, perhaps talk about what he remembered of it, apologize for not recognising them sooner.
He did recognise them; he always recognises the people around him. But he hadn’t had any way to know. Are they the same souls, or other ones that shine a similar colour, new paint for this lifetime’s canvas.
In all honesty, answering that question was just as impossible now that he knew. The only certainty he had gained from this revelation was that Xornoth was the same person who had once been Alinar’s brother and Scott had held his love for them through lifetimes.
He’d held a lot of love through many lifetimes, each new person to care about burrowing a fresh hole into his soul that he never found a way to fill, that would never truly heal, simply ache with a loss Scott may never remember.
Scott is a patchwork of every life he can remember, and many more he never will. He is all of them and none of them and the name his parents gave him never fit. In many ways, he is not the Scott he took his name from, and never will be. In other ways he is that Scott and will continue to be long after he breathes this lifetime’s final breath. He will always be Scott, even in lifetimes without any memories. But the Scott he remembers being never existed either, a patchwork of all that came before him.
He is himself, but it’s hard to know what that means when he’s sat atop his fine bedsheets, surrounded by notebooks recounting every detail they could of barely remembered paintings of lifetimes long past.
He wants his brother to help him, the only person he knows for certain is the same as the one written in these books.
He yearns for so much, always has, but before the discovery, it was easier to ignore. Poetry written this life for a barely remembered love he felt in one of the paintings seemed silly and inconsequential when he was convinced it was nothing but a story his mind had made up, but proof of the reality makes the loss of a husband he has never known (and will never know) taste all the more bitter.
The patchwork of lifetimes that chose to call himself Scott hates the gods, every single one, more and more with each passing second, because what kind of god would leave peoples souls so full of gaps. And worse, what kind of caring gods would allow him to remember. There’s too much and not enough all at once.
In this moment he is filled with so much hate and loss and confusion and all he wants is to turn back the clock to before he found that book.
In the final battle against Xornoth, Scott says, quite clearly, that it’s Xornoth’s fault their parents are gone. But he’s fighting, he can’t stop to write that down, and he doesn’t remember losing his parents to Xornoth. It came out of nowhere. Xornoth seems surprised he knows to say that. He wants to stop, explain exactly what he’s going through to a brother he misses dearly, but how can he?
Xornoth, or the crystal that houses him, feels warm. It thrums with energy that so uniquely belongs to Scott’s brother who isn’t his brother and yet has been his brother for longer than Scott has lived this life. He holds it close because the only thing that can fill the hole Xornoth left in Scott’s heart is Xornoth themself, and their remains are better than nothing.
It seems that it doesn’t matter how many months pass, Scott is still just as lost and just as resentful of the gods.
His friends think he seems happier, like a weight has been lifted. Really, the promise of another life after this one, a life where he remembers none of this world or any other, it teases him with the possibility and it’s hard not to want that, but the idea of dying a final death is something he knows will bring nothing but pain to himself and everyone around him.
He murmurs his complaints to the crystal forever kept on a necklace, sharing all his woes with the closest thing he will ever have to Xornoth. He narrates his life to them, hoping their consciousness is not awake and aware despite himself. Because Xornoth can never follow him to another lifetime so long as he’s bound like this, which is simultaneously a relief and something that fills Scott with despair.
Scott is not always happy, but he can be, and this world is one of billions, and this life is the first time he can remember understanding that. His decisions hold weight, are important to hundreds of people within his borders, but he’s allowed to do things for himself too.
Jimmy’s colours are familiar, weaving cleanly into the tapestry that Scott’s heart is made up of. So, Scott reads his notebooks again, looking for something, anything. And he finds parallels he isn’t expecting in some extremely soft poetry.
He wonders if Jimmy knows, wonders if he should ask. He wonders if Jimmy is even the same person, but the patchwork of lives that make up Scott has no doubt that many of the pieces of him are built upon things he hasn’t remembered so he can afford to have a little hope.
Scott is a patchwork of little pieces from the lives that came before, from everything he loves to everything he fears to even his name, and being the king of Rivendell is yet another patch. He plans to live this life to its fullest but embrace the next with open arms when it arrives.
In the end, Scott is himself, which is enough.