Chapter Text
The operations room was lit only by the dim, flickering light overhead, letting the man’s shadow fall to the ground and engulf the bloodstained bed in front of him. Merlin was packing his tools away, neatly sliding a cloth over every blade to ensure there was no blood on them to cause rust. He placed them perfectly into their respective sleeves, having remembered the exact way they were put in after buying them. The pros of his memory, of course.
But there were always consequences.
“Why must you continue to march your fruitless work, physicist? Your worthless journey is such great symbolism of the true struggle of the mind, but even i must admit, it’s getting pathetic.” A woeful, melodramatic voice spoke from behind him, the shadow of the idealist standing with his hands clasped behind his back, looking at Merlin with the sides of his mouth pinched down.
“Nonsense. The true answer to transcendentality doesn’t only take a few tries. You must keep yourself quiet whilst i work.”
The idealist huffed at Merlin’s answer, his shadow blending into the foreground behind him, before he reappears beside Merlin, watching him as he cleaned a blade so contently.
“But where’s the fun in that? The literacy club and i have decided that the ending is far too pleasurable for you to continue doing the same thing over and over. Experiment with it all!”
Merlin turns to the side, cutting through the idealist and placing the blade into its sleeve through his stomach. The idealist’s nose wrinkles, before he disappears, only reappearing to a side of the room that Merlin wouldn’t attempt to cross to. Merlin responds in a similar deadpan tone to his usual one, those emotions of his truly being lacklustre.
“I mustn’t stop my search here simply because you and a bunch of ‘looneys’ decided that i wasn’t doing it right. I have a far higher success rate continuing my studies in this specific manner than you ever can through your literacy discussions.”
The idealist folds his arms over his chest, speaking in a more peeved tone to Merlin.
“Don’t be so ridiculous. You and i both know that achieving transcendentality wont just come from one stupid procedure. All you’re doing is instilling fear on the prison mates.”
“Your foolish dream of all endings becoming pleasurable is pathetic, fool. I kindly ask that you leave me alone and rather attend to more important manners. Aleph will not tolerate your stupidity any more than i will.”
The idealist grumbles under his breath, incoherent murmurs that only irked Merlin more.
Of course, what truly were the two but recreations of people only made to answer the questions aleph couldn’t phrase himself? The idealist, social and confident, an optimist with the ability to see the ideal ending in everything. Merlin, an antisocial doctor whose only true goal is to complete Aleph’s truest desire. To find true transcendenality. He’s a no shit, hard worker, but simply cannot communicate with the crowds. The idealist’s infinite search through the labyrinth of their collective mind hadn’t brought them any closer to their goal than Merlin’s procedures had, yet they all couldn’t fathom getting along.
…
“May you two please find better things to talk about? I mustn’t intervene often, but i cannot see the use between you two arguing so constantly.”
Both Merlin and the idealist look up from their places, turning to see Aleph standing at the doorway, arms folded neatly over his chest. His unruly hair spiralled down his back and shoulders, his mask hiding his face as all of them had. Despite his face not seen, there was evidence of his irked expression in his tone. The idealist stuck his tongue out at Merlin like some immature child, whilst Merlin stayed completely still, before going back to cleaning his blades.
“I find it unfair that you scold us both when i was simply minding my own business when this pathetic whelp decided to pester me.”
“Hey! You haven’t any reason to speak to me so rude!”
Aleph grumbles, before running a hand over his mask and speaking in a more annoyed tone, picking himself up off the wall and walking towards the two.
“I don’t care who annoys who, it is simply infuriating that i must listen to it all.”
Aleph walks through Merlin, who melts into the shadows of the floor, the tool in his hand clattering to the floor. Aleph picks it up, sighing and placing it where it belongs, before looking at the idealist, who in turn also shrinks into the shadows. Despite their disappearance, Aleph could still hear the idealist grumbling in the back of his mind, the two of them having sprung a headache on Aleph.
“Your nonsensical yarning has caused us all pain now, idealist. You insufferable idiot.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that! The true ideal situation is for your useless search to end!”
“My search is far from useless. It is the only true meaning we have, you fool. If you believe your pathetic, waste of time ‘literacy club’ is something you ought to be proud of, i believe you’ll have to rethink your entire existence. You are simply the most expendable of us all.”
Aleph hears his mind finally go quiet, and he sighs in relief, rubbing his temples, before pushing Merlin’s medical tray to the corner and exiting the operations room, walking down the dimly lit halls of the panopticon and attempting to make his way to his room, at the very centre of the prison. The idealist spoke up in a quieter tone, mumbling half hearted insults at Merlin.
“The only expendable one here is you.. you’re just a… a waste of skill!”
“Oh please, if anything, you’re wasting your potential on some pathetic prisoners instead of actually intelligent arcanists. Everyone here is mad, and believing that some gathering can cure them is pathetic.”
Aleph makes it to his room, ignoring the bickering from the two, and opens his door to find a neatly sealed envelope on his desk, the familiar handwriting immediately catching his attention. Recoleta had written to him again. He sat down at his desk, where both of his two alters sprung from the shadows. Merlin faced the idealist, crossing his arms over his chest with his hat tilted low over his mask, and the idealist gritting his teeth and shaking a wary fist at Merlin.
The echo of Aleph’s ink scratching pen on paper was only drowned out by the pair’s continued bickering.
“You’re a self centred prick, is what you are, Merlin! You don’t care of the prisoners, only of what they offer intellectually!”
“And why should i worry of anything else from them? We won’t achieve anything by sitting around having tea parties.”
“In an ideal world, *everyone* is treated correct! These arcanists, thrown aside by society for simply existing, they deserve a space in the ideal world as well!”
“They deserve nothing of the sorts. They have all been driven mad by the tear of comala, and are of no use to the outside world anymore. This has nothing to do with arcania and everything to do with how dangerous they are for society. I will not tolerate your emotional drive over factual evidence.”
the idealist looked overworked, gritting his teeth and holding back from punching Merlin in the face. The only sound that broke the idealist’s stunned silence was the constant scratching of Aleph’s pen, of which he had completely disassociated from the pair, as per usual. But the idealist didn’t want that. He wanted backup. Somebody to recognise that he was important, even if it truly was as Merlin said. If not for the bandages covering his upper face, Merlin would be able to see the tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, a feeling he had long since lost to time, though the fleeting memory remained.
The idealist continued to hesitate, trying to come up with a response to Merlin, but nothing came out. Instead, he raised his leg backwards and launched a brutal kick at his crotch. Aleph’s head jerked up and looked over his shoulder at the sound of impact, and the hissing Merlin let out, doubling over in agony. The idealist spun around and marched off, melting into the shadow of Aleph’s room, leaving the dumbfounded man watching his alter ego hunched in pain, before crumbling to the floor, the sound of his tool belt hitting the cold concrete flooring echoing through the empty room.
“You forget, he is the manifestation of our human emotion, he is made to be able to communicate with the maddened arcanists. Provoking him like that is unwise. Surely you know this, Merlin.”
Merlin hissed back through what sounded like gritted teeth, kneeled on the floor in pain, clutching at his crotch in agony.
“I am well aware, *Aleph*, but he mustn’t get ahead of himself..!”
“You are the one getting ahead of yourself, Merlin. You are both of equal importance within this prison and i need you to stop fighting so much. It only causes more complications, complications i cannot constantly be fixing for you two.”
Merlin simply mutters back, still in enough pain to render him unable to get up from the floor.
“…I mustn’t promise anything.”
“Hmph. Leave me be, please. I am trying to write to Recoleta.”
Merlin looks up at Aleph, giving him a sense of distaste, before disappearing into a shadow again, still wincing a little in Aleph’s mind before going silent.
Finally. Peace. Aleph sat at his desk and let himself write freely to Recoleta without interruption. No more bickering. No more complaining. Just… what on earth was this? Recoleta was romanticising her childish ideas again, even after he had written to her about it. Nonetheless, he was the answer to all questions. He had to figure this out for her.
In his left hand, he picked up the die of Babylon, created from the tears of comala.
He let it fall to his desk, a dull thud echoing through the silenced room.