Work Text:
Veritas Ratio.
Exceptional.
His calloused fingers- moving deftly over the piece posed beneath his chisel, leaving flecks of rock coating the ground like a marble snow.
Maverick.
His visage- handsome, sharp, reflected in his statue's bust. Eyes keen like an eagle's and so very smart, captured perfectly in polished stone.
Luminary.
His fastidiousness- every flick of the wrist meticulous and exact, leaving him poring over a picture-perfect impression of his own face.
But a genius?
His steady hand- guiding the chisel between the lush grooves of his lips, dislodging crumbled grains of excess marble and revealing the smooth finish beneath; perfect teeth, the very facsimile of its equally perfect sculptor.
He is not a genius.
He pulls himself away from his work, setting his chisel of choice aside with the rest and pushing himself to his feet to stretch for the first time in a long while. His joints ache, heavy with the weight of prolonged labor and heavier still with the weight of prolonged immobility.
This hobby he indulges in is stimulating both physically, and, what he considers more importantly, mentally. Though, perhaps stimulating isn't the word. He quite prefers taxing, for it is no menial task to be both still and at peace with one's own thoughts.
Thought. What a fickle thing, what a loose concept. What weight does thought hold to a man like him, so aware of his own mind he can guide it like a tool, like a chisel? What is thought but a block of marble, untapped potential, to be shaped by his hand and guided into the very shape of ingenuity?
But if it is his tool to flaunt, to use, to wield, why does it affect him so? Here, alone in his study, left to his own devices, why does thought plague him like night terrors plague dreamers, like uncertainty pervades every sense, why does he doubt?
How could it not?
He is not a genius, he can never be a genius, he has toiled and pushed and dedicated himself to knowledge for knowledge's sake, and still Nous has not so much as glanced his way. Has he not been enough? Has he not been prominent enough, intelligent enough, dedicated enough? His efforts, his achievements, have they all been in vain? He is not a genius, a title he is not worthy of, in spite of everything, the only desire he recognizes as truly his own, his dreams, dashed from just beneath him, why? It kills him to doubt as he does. Slowly, excruciatingly, it takes root in his heart like an inky, foul mold until it overtakes him completely and he aches.
He is not ruthless, either.
Ruthless, like a genius, self serving, like a genius, in possession of a blatant disregard for human life, like a genius. All of these things, he is not. He wishes, for one dishonest moment, that he was. What is the point of carving his reflection into stone if he can hardly bear to look in a mirror? What is the point of this superficial act if not a plea for Nous to only grace him with THEIR gaze? A hall of statuettes, a hall of achievement, a hall of shame, a museum made not for its curator but for an audience of none, a museum deemed a failure before anyone has even stepped through the door.
Nous has not found what THEY are looking for in him.
A thirst for knowledge above all else, knowledge over life, knowledge over sacrifice, knowledge over innocence, knowledge over love. When given the choice between sordid, simple humanity and ingenuity, deep down he knows he'd choose the former. Every. Single. Time.
Better. Smarter. More than the common rabble.
A genius.
He is not a genius.
Deliberate as he is in his action, his presentation, his speech; his crafting of this persona, this Dr. Ratio, emissary of truths and scourge upon falsehoods, egomaniac extraordinaire, he knows there is no fooling an Aeon.
Nous cares little for human morality.
Veritas cares too much.