Chapter Text
It had been hours of misery.
As he watched the sun depart the sky, Viren felt the sadness lay into him like a cold ache as if death had already come for him.
He tried to curl himself up to cling to the little bit of warmth and hope that had not already left his body with the sun, or chased away by cold dread.
Viren heard the echo of Aaravos’s voice one last time as he laid himself down to rest. “The sun will rise. And you will not.”
This was to be his last night. And he would die alone, stonily resolute, on a bereft beach. His memories, years of mistakes, flashing before his eyes like a taunt. The last moon he would ever see, waning rapidly like his own health.
Aaravos’s flicker faded away from his vision, and yet.
He needed something. From this elf, for some reason. A companion, if he was to have anyone. Viren cleared his throat.
“Wait.”
There is a strange pause.
Then Aaravos flickers back into existence, smirking as if he’s won.
“You’ve changed your mind?”
He elegantly gestures to the dagger and the startouched homonculus, hunched on its haunches further down the sandy beach. The offer was still open.
Viren scowls. “No. I am still not doing dark magic. Never again.”
Aaravos’s expression relaxes, expectant. nonplussed.
“I just thought..”
Viren swallowed. What was he doing?
His heart twinges. It feels empty. He shivers and sits up.
“If I am going to die alone tonight..”
He forces the words out, jumbled and vulnerable and wrong.
“Can you…stay?”
Aaravos’s face, it’s still quizzical. He raises an eyebrow, maybe chuckling a little bit. He had expected Viren to be circumventing a fear of death, but not one of loneliness.
Asshole. What had Viren expected?
“My apologies. It was a foolish idea.”
The words come out heated and clipped.
Viren lies down again and curls into himself, blocking him out.
He sees out of the corner of his eye that Aaravos is still there, though. He’s kind of unreadable, just standing there with his hands behind his back, watching Viren.
There’s something a little softer to Aaravos’s face now. Pity, maybe. Maybe an elf like him, sentenced to prison for life, knew what it was like to die alone. Maybe that pity outweighed his irritation earlier. Not enough to make conversation, but enough to grant him this last request.
They said nothing, a silent mutual understanding between them. A lavender shadow illusion of a beautiful being from the stars themselves and a sad old man who was a shadow of his former self, side by side. Watching the moon rise.
Viren’s breathing evens out. Maybe he will be able to sleep tonight after all, never to wake again.
But maybe, just maybe, he will be fine with it.