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Civil dreams often.
Disjointed dreams of the world he has only ever heard tales of, dreams of the elders and their expectations of him, of the sensory deprivation tank they often put him in—
Of being placed on a shelf in his jar, the world reflected murkily through the alchemic preservation fluid he bathed in, fingers tapping the surface of the glass as if he were a fish in a bowl.
Wake up, Lord Sabaramond. Wake up. Wake up.
He does wake. Cold and sweating, Civil stares up at the dark ceiling above him. He isn’t in that jar or the tank.
That’s right. He’s in the Corpse God’s building. He reaches to his right, but his hand finds only empty air as it slips over the edge of the fold-out chair that Corpse God loaned him. Civil reaches not his hand but his senses; Lulu is in the room she and Arahabaki had been given, her Elemental in the same state of relaxed calm that it's been in since the fight ended.
Where Lulu is, so Arahabaki goes. They’re close by. They’re safe.
Even so, Civil wishes he were closer. They had been separated under the mistaken assumption that Civil is wholly a man, and thus the girls should have their own space; Civil hadn’t been in the mood to correct the assumption. Maybe he should have.
Civil closes his eyes. He lets his hand lay limply over the edge of the sofa, knowing he’s unlikely to fall back asleep.
Then, in the distance, he can hear a hushed conversation. That makes him open his eyes again, lolling his head to the side to stare in the direction of the apartment balcony. In the darkness he sees them bathed in the dim light of the moon: the Corpse God and his Emperor.
Their heads are bowed together as they speak, so close that their hair touches, the Emperor’s ghostly fingers touching the necromancer’s wrist.
The sight makes something resentful ache in his chest.
Such love, such devotion, both of which they give to one another with ease.
Civil knows love and he knows devotion, but not like that. The love and devotion he is intimately familiar with is not meant for him; it’s meant for the idea of the man he was intended to be. It is fervent and unrelentingly stifling.
You are a vessel. A shell. The existence of your personality is an anomaly; you are a placeholder.
These are fundamental truths he has been told since he awoke in his jar and the elders realized he was not who they had been waiting for. To deny them always, without fail, resulted in confinement to the tank until his memory became muddled and his mind more malleable.
He won’t go back. Not him, not Arahabaki, and definitely not Lulu. With the Byandy Empire’s fourth-ranked Sorcerer and the ghost of the Emperor Framrodia himself willing to help, Civil allows himself some measure of reassurance.
He still isn’t entirely certain. The Corpse God had been sincere, he knows. That isn’t the issue. Civil simply can’t be sure that he’s capable of happiness and fulfillment, whether it’s in this world or the one he’s dreamed of for decades.
The balcony door slides open. The humid air of the summer night slips in alongside the Corpse God, who meets Civil’s gaze with a startled and apologetic expression, his Emperor’s ghost hovering with his arms wrapped around the Corpse God’s bony shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Civil. Did we wake you?” Corpse God asks, his voice a barely audible whisper.
Yes, Civil wants to say, the antagonistic lie ready on his tongue. He swallows it back, shaking his head as he sits up, the thin cotton sheet he’d been laying under slipping to pool around his waist.
“No,” he says honestly instead, his voice more sullen than he’d intended. “I woke up on my own. Are you usually up this late?”
“...More often than I should be,” Corpse God admits after a moment spent deciding whether to allow Civil to shift the topic from himself. “My body gets tired but my mind is unused to sleeping.”
He throws a smile in his Emperor’s direction, then, his tone becoming fond.
“So Fram and I decided to catch up a bit.”
Bitterness sits in the back of Civil’s throat as the Emperor returns his smile, expression tender as he presses his cheek into Corpse God’s hair.
“We have over a century to catch up on, after all,” he says. His eyes are soft and warm, not cold the way they are when they focus on Civil.
Civil’s sullen quiet doesn’t go unnoticed. Corpse God is polite, though, the smile he’d given his Emperor becoming somewhat awkward as he looks back towards his guest.
“I’ll leave you alone now. Sorry to trouble you—if you can’t sleep, there’s tea and such in the kitchen if you’d like.”
The offer is as generous as everything else Corpse God has done for Civil and his companions so far—a roof over their heads, protection from the organization, and formal training in sorcery. Just as with the other acts of kindness, it leaves Civil feeling irrational anger and hostility.
Something must show in his expression because the Corpse God does not offer any other words as he turns to walk away, though his Emperor’s cold gaze burns through Civil for one more long, lingering moment before he follows his necromancer.
A question is caught in Civil’s throat. Wait, he wants to say, because as angry as he is, there is something he doesn’t dare to ask in front of Lulu and Arahabaki and the Corpse God’s mortal friends.
Still, the Corpse God stops several paces away, turning with a curious face.
“Yes?” He asks and Civil realizes he had spoken aloud. His tongue feels like lead in his mouth, dread and self-directed horror crawling up his throat from his stomach.
“It’s about Arius,” the Emperor says, tone uncomfortably knowing. His stare pierces through Civil like a frigid icicle.
Corpse God looks startled, glancing between them both.
“Lord Arius…? Is there something you wanted to know about him?” Corpse God asks. It’s a laughable question.
“What don’t I,” Civil mutters in an aggrieved manner as he finds his voice. He pushes his hair back as it slips over his shoulders and makes his throat itch. “But there is…something specific, yes.”
Corpse God steps closer once more, sitting in the stiff metal chair that Kuruya Takumi had left out earlier in the evening. His hands fold into his lap, the picture of polite patience as his Emperor remains clinging to his shoulders, disembodied beneath his torso.
“I’ll answer what I can,” Corpse God promises, “Though I was not acquainted with him on a very personal level.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Civil sighs. “First, your Evil Eye…it lets you…” here he hesitates, because as much as he wants to know the answer, he also very much doesn’t.
Corpse God waits. He and his Emperor both watch him with expectation as Civil wets his dry lips and stifles the fear in him.
“You can see the souls of the living as well as the dead, can’t you?” He finally asks. Corpse God blinks, clearly bemused.
“I can,” he answers. He doesn’t say or ask anything else, but there’s an odd expression overtaking the Emperor’s cold look.
Not knowing how to ask what he really wants to know, Civil shifts in the lounge chair and instead asks, “What did his look like?”
“It’s a bit difficult to explain in words,” Corpse God says after mulling over the question, a furrow in his brow. Civil barely holds himself back from an irritable, snappish response.
“...Warm,” is what Corpse God settles upon. “Like a well-stoked fireplace. Hues of red and gold and orange, bright with vitality and comforting to be near.”
Civil almost scoffs in his disbelief. He knows that Corpse God isn’t lying to him, but he still finds it difficult to trust those words—how could the man responsible for his wretched existence be someone kind? Someone whose very soul is soothing to be near?
He doesn’t voice this.
“And mine?” He asks instead, his words more terse than he had intended. Corpse God folds his arms against his knees as he makes a thoughtful sound. Behind him, the Emperor’s expression shifts too close to realization for Civil to be comfortable with.
“The colors are similar,” Corpse God answers slowly. “But different. You’re more like…a midsummer sunrise.”
Civil doesn’t even have the time to be furious at the color similarity before being stunned by how specific and incredibly different ‘a well-stoked fireplace’ and ‘a midsummer sunrise’ are, at least in terms of the emotions they evoke.
At Civil’s baffled expression, Corpse God lifts his hands in a helpless gesture.
“Like…you know, when you go outside just as the sun is beginning to rise, and the air is cool and damp from the dew, but the sky is hopeful, gentle and warm…?”
“I don’t feel like that,” Civil says. He doesn’t. Hopeful and warm? He feels like the opposite of how Corpse God had described Arius—a dead fireplace with just a few sputtering embers left clinging stubbornly onto life.
Yet, regardless of the doubt he feels at Corpse God’s words, there is an undeniable relief that washes over him as well. He has a soul and it is similar, but different. It is wholly his own. He is himself.
Civil exists. He exists and is real and is his own self.
This is the affirmation he has desired for years, for decades. And yet beneath that shallow wave of relief…he hardly feels a thing.
“You do,” Corpse God is saying. “To me, at least. Is it such a bad thing?”
It isn’t. A hopeful sunrise is a warm and positive thing to be and yet Civil can’t imagine it for himself.
A dead fireplace. A sputtering piece of wood. The last coal left in the furnace, still desperately burning. That’s all he is.
The Emperor is looking at him. His cold, distrustful gaze has softened into an expression of pity.
“Civil,” he says, leaning over Corpse God’s shoulder. His hand has settled on the Corpse God’s arm, bracing the necromancer—for what? What would he have to brace for?
Civil meets that pitying stare, swallowing his fury at the sight of it.
“They told you that you were empty,” the Emperor says. It isn’t a question, even if he tacks on a, “Didn’t they?”
Corpse God is still under his Emperor’s touch. He, too, looks at Civil—not pityingly but with something Civil can’t name.
Civil licks his dry lips, regretting this entire conversation, even though he would have had to talk about this eventually. If he’s going to work with Corpse God, he would have had to discuss the details at some point, but he hadn’t wanted to do so this soon.
“The method of my creation,” he starts slowly. “You said it’s meant for…to pass on techniques, magic. To have an heir. A child for those who can’t or won’t conceive their own, whose abilities are reliant on an inherent disposition.”
“That is the case,” Corpse God answers. His voice sounds odd.
“It wasn’t for me,” Civil mutters, closing his eyes briefly. “I was not made to be a person, only a vessel for…him to inhabit. That I awoke with a consciousness of my own was unplanned. My existence is an aberration.”
The sound of the metal chair skidding back as Corpse God stands causes Civil to open his eyes, surprised. Corpse God isn’t looking at him, though; he’s turned away, shoulders hunched, his posture tense. His Emperor’s hand rests at his back in comfort and unlike Corpse God, he is looking at Civil.
“If that is the case, then I did not know my First-Ranked as well as I thought I might have,” his voice is as tense as Corpse God’s spine. Civil stares at them, bewildered.
He’s not sure how he feels about the idea of Arius being the sort of person who others perceive as being incapable of doing such a thing. Was he a good man, outside of what he had done in creating Civil? He doubts it, given how the Bastard Children spoke of him with such fervent worship; no man who stands above people who would do what they had done could be a good man.
Civil has to be a man, has to dress and act as such even when he feels more like a woman or like something else entirely, because Lord Sabaramond was a man. He has to be refined because Lord Sabaramond was refined. He has to be strong because Lord Sabaramond was strong.
But Civil isn’t Arius Sabaramond, so he can’t be too strong, too wilful; he can’t want more than what is given to him, he can’t want independence or give orders; he can be Civil, but only in a way that satisfies the desire his organization has for a pale shadow of the man they are waiting for.
“Civil,” Corpse God says, his voice tight. When the necromancer turns to face him at last, his expression has smoothed over, but the anger is still visible. “Civil, they lied to you. You aren’t empty.”
Civil knows. He’s always known, even if doubt had wormed its way into his mind and heart alike thanks to nearly a century of being told otherwise, but it’s different hearing it from Corpse God. Civil doesn’t know what to make of the way Corpse God sounds desperate for him to believe his words or the way his face had twisted with anger on Civil’s behalf.
He doesn’t know what to do with the way the Emperor looks at him now, the cold of his eyes thawing away. He’s not looking at Civil with barely restrained hostility any longer.
“You have a soul,” Corpse God is telling him, his desperate voice going strangely soft, the aborted motion of his hands giving the impression that he wants to reach out. “It’s warm and it’s beautiful and it’s yours.”
For the first time in at least ninety years, Civil feels small. He feels like a child. Under Corpse God’s intense gaze and the Emperor’s pity, he feels the way he had in his first days outside of his jar: tiny, uncertain, confused.
Something itches in Civil’s throat, his eyes traitorously warm. He hasn’t cried since he’d last been put in the sensory deprivation tank, twenty-something years ago, and he isn’t going to let himself do so in front of another now.
Civil swallows thickly.
“...I appreciate you indulging me so late,” he finally says when he’s certain his voice won’t betray him. It comes out gentler than he wanted it to, rather than begrudging, the gratitude in his tone much too obvious. Something in Corpse God’s face softens, but his eyes are still too knowing. “You’ve done a lot for us already, but we’ll undoubtedly impose on you further.”
“You’re so formal all of a sudden,” Corpse God’s mouth pulls back into a smile, his voice kind. “But I know. I knew that from the moment I decided to help you, so don’t worry about it, okay? I hope…”
Corpse God hesitates then; his Emperor’s hand on his elbow seems to squeeze.
“I hope you can see us as friends and not just allies, someday,” Corpse God finally says. He sounds almost embarrassed.
Friends. That’s a surprise to hear; the only friends Civil has ever had are Lulu and Arahabaki, and he isn’t confident they count. It’s different with them. Lulu loves him because Civil had taken her from her locked room and promised her freedom; before him, she could count on one hand the amount of times she’d been allowed outside.
And then there’s Arahabaki. Everything about his relationship with her is complicated; she was shaped into a monster to keep him safe. She should hate him. Instead, even though she calls him Boss, she says it without mockery. It always sounds like an inside joke when she calls him that, but one that they’re both in on. She’s never looked at him as if she blames him for what she was forced into becoming.
And now, Corpse God: someone he had threatened repeatedly now telling him that he hopes they can become friends.
Civil looks at the Emperor, who laughs.
“Don’t look at me like that. This is just how Riz has always been. I mean, he’s friends with me after all!”
“Why do you make it sound like I shouldn’t be? I’m the one who killed you, Fram—”
“Anyway,” the Emperor says to Civil over Corpse God’s own voice, prompting a sulky expression from the necromancer, “Things will work out now that you’re here with us.”
“That’s right,” Corpse God affirms immediately, focusing on Civil again. “I did promise, after all.”
“And I’m trusting you to keep your word,” Civil responds. He’s putting a lot of trust in them, really, what with Lulu and Arahabaki also being at risk.
“There’s a lot I want to talk with you about, tomorrow,” he adds. “Regarding our whole…situation.”
“Ah, I understand. There’s going to be a lot to go over,” Corpse God grimaces slightly. It’s going to be a long conversation; Civil has a century of cult politics to update him on, not to mention Corpse God’s own information about the other side of the sky. “We should both get some sleep, huh?”
“Or at least try, yes,” Civil agrees. He doubts he’ll sleep much if at all, but he does want to be alone again, uncomfortable with the lingering sense of vulnerability he feels under Corpse God’s stare.
“I hope you can get some rest,” Corpse God tells him earnestly. “I’m glad we could talk, though.”
He looks as if he wants to say more. Civil is grateful that he doesn’t try.
“Go to sleep, Corpse God,” is all he can bring himself to say, twisting his fingers in his loose sheet. “And you, Your Highness.”
“Goodnight,” Corpse God relents, finally stepping back once more. “We’ll see you in the morning, then.”
“Goodnight, Civil,” the Emperor echoes. It’s the first time he’s addressed Civil by name, throwing him off-center; he’s still collecting himself when Corpse God pauses in the doorway.
“I’d like it if you called me Riz,” he says so softly that Civil nearly doesn’t hear. “Or at least Polka.”
And then he’s gone, his ghostly Emperor vanishing after him, though something lingers like a slant of moonlight in his place.
Civil turns. Slowly, he pushes aside the sheet and stands. The concrete is chilly beneath his feet, as is the tile of the kitchen. The shorts he had borrowed from Kuruya are too loose on his hips, as he’d expected they would be; he should have ignored the Heilei boy’s glaring and accepted the Shinoyama girl’s clothes instead.
The old L’arc en Ciel shirt is fine, at least, even if it’s a bit too broad at the shoulders. Civil wishes he could change now instead of later, if only because he had sweat through the fabric so thoroughly; the chill of it drying on his skin only hits him now, as he stands in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil.
Alone, he allows himself to shiver and rub at his arms before he searches for a clean mug, the tea leaves, the strainer. The Shinoyama girl or her Heilei assassin must have brought most of the teas because Civil has to root out the cheaper stuff from the back; he’s not going to risk ruining Gyokuro tea at this time of night, no matter how rich the Shinoyama’s are.
Civil brews his tea. He drinks it back on the sofa, staring out the clear balcony doors, wishing. Wishing he had his phone, wishing he was with Lulu and Arahabaki instead of alone and yet grateful that they aren’t here, that they hadn’t seen his conversation.
Not three hours later, the sun begins to rise and Civil, still sleepless, rises with it. He steps out onto the balcony, the morning air sticky in his lungs, more humid than what he’s used to.
Civil watches the sun rise over the Shinjuku skyline. It isn’t midsummer, not yet, but it’s warm.
A midsummer sunrise, Corpse God had said. Civil stares as the sky bleeds orange-pink and reflects off the glossy buildings that fill the city. The brightness is what makes his eyes water, or perhaps the fact he can’t bring himself to blink. That’s surely all it is.
He places a hand to his sternum. Through the worn cotton he can feel the rhythm of his heart.
It belongs to him. Him and nobody else. His own heart, his own soul.
Civil sucks in a breath. He blinks away the dampness clinging to his lashes, twists his fingers into his shirt, and feels as though he’s truly alive for the very first time.