Work Text:
Sethos lay in a field of unfamiliar purple grass. The edges of his vision were blurry. Disorienting as it was, he remembered why he was here.
It had started with an argument.
~
“It wouldn’t be like this if you’d just let me in!” Sethos remembered shouting.
A mix of emotion swirled on the Wanderer’s face.
“If you know the whole truth, you’ll leave too,” he said. There was pain in his voice. Sethos wanted to punch him. He wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him around. That wasn’t true. It would never be true. He wanted so desperately for the Wanderer to just take him for his word.
“Fine,” Sethos swallowed, preparing his next words. “Tell me or I’ll leave anyway.”
The Wanderer gasped, eyes going wide, expression filled with hurt.
Sethos hurt too. He regretted his words as soon as he had said them, but he couldn’t take them back.
The Wanderer yanked off his vision and thrust it into Sethos’s hand. Sethos noticed a single tear streak its way down the Wanderer’s cheek. The Wanderer grabbed onto either side of Sethos’s head, though it wasn’t like the other times he had done so. There was no sweet embrace or tender kiss to follow. The Wanderer stared into Sethos’s eyes until Sethos felt his vision blur.
There was a flash of blue light, the wind roared in his ears, and then he was here.
The Wanderer was gone, or so he thought. Laying in the purple grass, several paces away, was the Wanderer. He didn’t have his hat and was wearing different clothes; purple and white. They appeared to be made from the highest quality fabrics.
The scene changed. The purple Wanderer was in a house. There was a burly man standing behind him, watching his actions. He was teaching him how to forge weapons. The Wanderer’s eyes were wide with innocent fascination.
The scene changed again, it was warm and happy. A man with a bandana was now showing the purple Wanderer how to write. A montage of events flashed. The Wanderer was smiling in most of them. Eating meals together with these people, forging weapons, even dancing.
The next scene was drastically different. The people he had been smiling and dancing with, gone. The Wanderer was left alone, despair written all over his delicate features. The house he had shared meals with, abandoned. The music gone. Blood stained the ground all around him.
Everything went black and the blood faded. The sun rose again, and the Wanderer wasn’t alone, there was another boy. Like the men from before, the Wanderer smiled a lot. He nurtured this child, used the skills he learned from his previous family.
However, despite his efforts, the boy grew weaker and weaker. Sethos watched the Wanderer try with all of his might to keep his family this time. He tended to him day and night. He brought food and water and tried his best to keep the boy safe and dry.
The boy didn’t make it and the Wanderer raged. He burned the house he previously worked so hard to repair. He sat inside the fire. Sethos could feel the heat. Again, the Wanderer was alone.
After that, he became a true Wanderer. Millions of seconds passed. The Wanderer no longer smiled. He murdered and went on a ramage. He wandered to new places and met new people. None of the other people had faces. Until a new figure appeared. A tall man with white hair and a mask covering part of his face. He brought the Wanderer in, and introduced him to others.
There was briefly a lady with white hair. Another man with blue hair. This blue haired man poked and prodded the Wanderer. The scenes grew fuzzy, but Sethos could hear the Wanderer cry out in pain. There was a man with orange hair, briefly.
Finally, there was a blond-haired person Sethos recognized. The traveler. This part of the story Sethos knew. It was different watching it play out. The desperation in the traveler’s eyes as they battled seemingly endlessly.
He thought it was over, but then the scene grew light again. The Wanderer was sitting up in a tree somewhere in Sumeru city. Sethos saw himself. He remembered this. The memory Sethos turned and looked up, locking eyes with the Wanderer.
There was another bright blue light and the memories stopped.
Sethos opened his eyes and he was back in reality - in the present day. The Wanderer was crying.
“Now you can see me for the monster I am,” the Wanderer choked out.
Sethos blinked a few times, trying to process everything. He just witnessed hundreds of years. He saw the ugly sides of the Wanderer, but he also saw so much more than that.
“You’re not a monster,” Sethos said, reaching out for the Wanderer’s hand. He was pushed away.
The Wanderer frowned, tears still falling from his eyes. He laughed bitterly, “Then what? Something even worse?”
Sethos lunged forward and pulled the Wanderer into an embrace. He squeezed tightly around his middle. “You’ve done your best,” he continued, “thank you for showing me.”
The Wanderer tensed in his arms, unmoving until slowly he wrapped his own arms around Sethos too. “I don’t understand,” the Wanderer managed in a whisper.
Sethos pulled back from the hug so he could look the Wanderer in the eyes. Sethos reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair back behind the Wanderer’s ear.
“It doesn’t matter to me who you were. It matters who you are now.”
A tear fell down the Wanderer’s cheek, Sethos wiped it away.
Sethos pulled the Wanderer close again and placed his lips on the latter’s forehead, letting them linger.
“You’re not leaving?” the Wanderer mumbled. It sounded like a question, though it wasn’t phrased as one. Sethos pulled back to meet his eye once again.
“I made a promise, my love. Don’t leave him. I won’t break it,” Sethos said. “I don’t mean to.”
The Wanderer pulled Sethos in again in a tight embrace. Sethos returned the gesture. He would keep the Wanderer here in his arms for as long as the Wanderer allowed him to.