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“You’re right. I look hideous,” Regent laughed, face clearly agonized beneath the bandages and restraints. “Thanks for not bullshitting me, Bri.”
“It’s just Grue now,” the other man replied stoically, squeezing Regent’s hand underneath a cloud of darkness. “I don’t think I get to claim that name. Not anymore.”
The Wardens had been careful to avoid letting Regent spend too much time with any individual person while he was still convalescing from being under Valkyrie’s influence. Even the Undersiders were kept under close watch during their visits, lest they try any “funny business with him” (as Dragon had so eloquently put it).
“Who’s gonna stop you, mon chéri?” said Regent, doing his best to curl his fingers around Grue’s hand underneath the restraints. “The government? Do we even have that anymore?”
“I think so, unfortunately,” Grue replied. “Tattletale won’t rest until a semblance of order has been reestablished in the City.”
“Oh, that’s somehow worse,” Regent said dreamily, still high from the opioids they’d pumped him full of. “You’d think she’d stop at ruining one Earth. Now she’s gonna do this one as well?”
“She’s the only reason any of us are still alive,” Grue pointed out coolly. “If it hadn’t been for her and Victoria, we might not have survived Valkyrie turning into a Titan.”
Regent’s light blue eyes went wide with recognition. “Taber-fuckin’-nak, Grue! Don’t tell me the Undersiders owe a blood debt to Glory Hole too!”
“‘Fraid so,” he said, “A lot of shit has happened since we died, darling. It’s going to take a while ‘till we catch up.”
Grue bent down to kiss Regent’s cheek, but he violently flinched away before he could, mashing his face into the pillow so that Grue couldn’t see.
“Don’t kiss me, Grue,” Regent said, voice childish. “My body is ruined. I am too scarred and ugly for you now.”
“Do you think I care about how you look?” Grue replied, in that familiar and gentlemanly way.
“Of course, you don’t!” Regent cried. “You dated Taylor Hebert—the fugliest bachelorette in the Undersiders, after all.”
“I wouldn’t dispute that,” Grue said. “I am attracted to people for their own sake. Not their outward appearance."
Regent snapped his head back towards Grue. “So, you admit that you don’t find me attractive anymore!
Grue’s cloud of darkness began to dissipate around his face, until Regent could see the impossibly soft brown eyes and sad smile underneath. How handsome he looked in Regent’s eyes, even with the white skull imprint which marred his face.
“Regent, after Gold Morning, I was lost and terrified, unsure of who or what I was. Cozen was dead, and Taylor gone. If I hadn’t found you in Valkyrie’s Flock, I’m not sure I would have survived with my sanity intact,” the ghost of Brian Laborn said, looking like he meant every word sincerely. “I will always love you, Regent. No matter what you looked like.”
Grue tried to kneel at Regent’s bed side, but Regent forced him to stand with his power. Even through the nullifying darkness, he still could control Grue’s body well enough that he wouldn’t have to see the mess that Regent had become.
“I know I’m just a replacement for them,” the ghost of Alec Vasil laughed softly. “A new model of curly-haired twink for you to fawn over, Grue. Don’t pretend like this is something it isn’t. Please.”
All of a sudden, the darkness began to dissolve entirely, leaving them alone in the plain white hospital room. Regent had fuller control of his power now, but he chose not to push it and let Grue kneel at his side, kissing the scar-tissue on his arm.
Even under the blankets, Regent could feel how being crushed by Behemoth and Valkyrie had ruined his appearance. A ghostly crown now jutted permanently from his skull, unable to be fully removed even by a healer like Panacea’s power. His face was ruined and mangled: the nose off-kilter, the eyes misaligned and lacking color, and (worst of all!) his winning smile ruined by fractured teeth.
“Aisha hates me. I broke her heart, in more ways than one,” Regent said, miserably. “So do my siblings, who hate me for all the grief I’ve caused her.”
“They just need some time to adjust,” the other man said, causing electric shocks to go down Regent’s body every time he touched his bare skin. “We all do.”
“There’s no adjusting for me though,” Regent said, looking up at the blankness of the ceiling. “I am beyond broken.”
“Oh, Regent,” Grue said, pushing away a sweat-soaked strand of hair from Regent’s forehead to kiss it. “If only you could see yourself like the Undersiders do. Like I do.”
“And what is that?”
Grue smiled. “No longer a Regent, but a beautiful and noble king. One who bears proudly the scars of a long and troubled life.”
And Alec Vasil, who had spent so much of his life desperately wishing to be in anyone’s body but his own, let himself weep openly and loudly into his lover’s strong arms, until a blanket of darkness curled over them yet again.