Work Text:
You get these, sometimes. Dreams that aren’t quite dreams. Dreams that have one foot in a past memory. Dreams that only allow you reprieve if you jerk upright into reality, sweating under the cover.
This one isn’t new.
The floor gives out beneath him first.
“Are you alright…?”
The gasp from his friends floods him, you, and drains away just as quick under the sheer pressure. Every inch of light overpowers his senses, seeping out of his pores.
“Hawu…?! Say something!”
He lets out a groan, a hand glued to his face as the pain swarms him. You feel it from your brain to your fingers, threatening to claw its way outside of your ribcage. Pain burrowing into muscles and living there.
“Twelve forfend,” he hears Y’shtola speak up then, submerged sound like he’s chained underwater with no surface in sight. “He cannot contain the light... He’s beginning to turn!”
His hearing seems to overwrite itself, giving away to a high-pitched ringing that grows only stronger the more light that escapes him. The sky turns. His heart breaks.
The Exarch comes to your rescue, your detriment, and your rescue again. You know this part. You squeeze your eyes and manage to miss a few lines.
“Worry not. Whatever should become of me, I will be happy and free, safe in the knowledge that I have played my part.”
The crystal beneath the cloak seems to encroach, an aspect he’s never noticed before.
An exhaust of power spreads throughout the area, a horizontal slice of extraction magicks that rush through him and give him a brief feeling of relent. Through that, the Exarch’s hood is blown off in a flurry, revealing that same shock of red hair he had thought about ever since stepping foot in the Crystal Tower, in the first. His eyes are sad, his smile heartfelt.
“Thank you. For fighting for this world. For believing.”
Hawu lets out what he thinks is a sob, over the roar of the Light expulsion, shaking pupils trying their best to glue themselves to the Exarch. To G’raha.
“Fare you well, my friend—my inspiration.”
And then, in a classic turn of events, he gets shot. You know this part, too—you relive this so often.
Emet-Selch—Hades—approaches Hawu with a look of sheer disdain. He steps past G’raha’s body, and tilts his head.
“What a disappointment you turned out to be.”
His voice is quiet, lost of its usual theatrics.
“I placed my faith in you. Let myself believe that you could contain the Light.”
“But look at you now,” he says, as Hawu convulses before him. “Halfway to becoming a monster. You are unworthy of my patronage.”
A flash of light from inside his vessel makes something shatter, that familiar crunch of crystal, and he spits out smatterings of Light at Emet-Selch’s feet.
“Hm…” Emet-Selch approaches then, slinking forward and crouching down to come face to face with Hawu. A hand reaches forth, and cups his chin with a devastating gentleness. “You have all but become a sin eater.”
He smears the Light matter at the corner of your lips with a thumb.
“…But I have overstayed my welcome. I look forward to you bringing the world to its knees, hero.”
When he rises up, he studies Hawu with an unwavering eye, and leaves with words of finality.
“I pity you. I do. When you grow tired of this farce, find me at my abode in the depths of the Tempest. There you can live out your days with even a mere shred of dignity.”
They vanish. You collapse, properly this time, Light oozing out of you. You wake up next, fists clenched in the sheets and that choking lingering still.