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The Usurper had the prowling, measured gait of a predator. Walking tall with shoulders back and head held high, gaze leveling down to meet his unflinchingly. "Wolf", the floating botfly would come to call her, in that teasing and affectionate way that made his hackles raise in a disgustingly familiar envy.
The irony of her name did not escape his notice. Zariel. A name reminiscent of the Exarchs of Sol and Lua, but not one he recognized. When he’d asked about it in passing at one point, she’d gotten this gleam of amusement in her eyes as she’d shrugged and said that she’d gotten it from a book in 1999. She didn’t elaborate further, and Roathe had the distinct feeling he was out of the loop of some inside joke. Better to leave it be, he’d thought. For now.
But there was little point in it. They’d already done this before. He’d find himself asking the same questions soon enough.
She was sociable and friendly enough in person, chatting away regularly with Marie and even Lyon once he relented in his endless brooding. But he’d attended enough soirees on Nitokh’s behalf to immediately recognize it for what it was; a diplomatic mask. Once, as he was watching her leave, something that Marie had said in Gaullique made Zariel burst out into genuine laughter. In the candlelit gloom of the cathédrale he caught a passing glimpse of pronounced canines, wickedly sharp.
He got a proper look at them in one of their many ceaseless descents through the Dark Refractory. At the way she bared them into a triumphant grin, gleaming with her own blood in the flickering light of the surrounding inferno as she overpowered him.
He imagined those same teeth at his throat while alone, every night that followed. As he knew he’d done before.
When they conversed in private she was much the same – at first. The mask began to shift ever so subtly as she began to both humor his own stories about the Orokin Elite, as well as field her own questions on the matter. They grew to be so specific and targeted that he’d grown suspicious. Doubly so, with the familiarity they carried with them. Upon confronting her about it she’d merely done that shrug again. “Lost my chance to be a part of it, so I’ve wondered at times what I’d missed out on. Was for the best though, of course.” She once again did not elaborate. Roathe knew it was the same answer she’d given before. Fury simmered in him.
It became a dance for them. Woven in words and blood, and cloaked in pointlessness. In the late night talks bathed in candlelight, and choking on the smoke and ash of his personal Hell. An endless repeating cycle. Retracing their own steps.
It was soon enough that Zariel began making stops to the cathédrale just to speak with him. Not the zealots, not the denizens of the Sanctum, and least of all the defective Sentient Mimic. Him. Beyond her own desires to reunite the butler with his family upstairs – which had already happened – he could not conceive why she was bothering with it all. What else was there to speak of, that they’d already covered before? Once again, he’d demanded answers. “Because I enjoy spending time with you.” She’d said in response. There was a heaviness behind her words, reflected in the way she looked at him. Both then, and every time he brought up his fury with the nagging familiarity of what they were doing.
If he didn’t know any better, he’d thought her interest genuine. But it was foolish to assume such.
It was not something he deserved.
Why else had she’d made him forget?
And yet.
It was impossible to not fall into the same steps. Especially with someone Roathe felt like he already knew so well, even in the absence of memory. His body remembered her touch, the way she’d trace her fingertips and claws along the glowing vents upon the twisted half of his body. At the way both they, and her teeth felt, digging in to the parts of him remade and remaining whole.
But it grew to be too much. True to the truth that he always chose to run from.
Coward.
He came to her, same as he always did, with his plea. Even as the dull ache of knowing what he would be losing, in doing so, began to consume him. Had lost, willingly, before.
Coward.
He was a fractured island in his grief and self loathing – turning his back to the light approaching his shores bearing succor.
Coward.
They stood together in an isolated part of the Sanctum, looking out over the vast sandy expanse of the invading Void. There was no surprise or dismay in her eyes at his request, only weary acceptance. She gripped the railing before them.
“You know it won’t solve the problem.” She said quietly. “It never has.” She paused. “… And it never will.”
The fury came again, colliding with his grief and spilling it over. “So why.” He snarled as he turned to her, the ambient heat that always surrounded the Uriel-changed parts of his body flaring to a scorching fever pitch. “Stop avoiding the matter and tell me, why are you doing this?!”
Zariel turned and seized him by one of the protruding edges of his armor, yanking him in closer even as the superheated gold bit hungrily into her skin. “Because I fucking love you, Roathe!” She met his intensity with her own shout, dark eyes burning with grief and voidfire.
“It’s the same answer I’ve given you before when you’ve asked, and I will keep giving it.” This was too raw to be a repeat. A breaking point for us both. Her grip grew tighter even as her skin began to audibly sizzle. Tears threatened to spill over, even as their combined heat evaporated them in an instant. Her next words were softer, her voice cracking ever so slightly.
“Even if you never believe me.”
Roathe stared at her in silence, for once at a loss for words. The Uriel parts of him responded in kind, their ravenous heat abruptly fading to almost nothing. Zariel’s hand shook as she maintained her grip, even as he could see her fingers beginning to blister and peel. The sight of it broke something inside of him, his throat growing tight.
“… How many has it been, my love?” It was not something he’d ever asked of her before. He knew his past selves had rejected all knowledge of it. He could see the wound it caused in her for him to ask it now. As she closed her eyes and took an unsteady breath.
“This is the one hundred and twenty-first time we’ve had this conversation.”
If he thought himself broken before, the pieces only scattered further with her words. A pit of grief yawned in his breast as his hands began to tremor with the desire to disembowel himself to be free of it. “I am not deserving of this devotion.” His voice was terribly small and feeble. “To have asked this much of you-”
With her uninjured hand Zariel reached out and cradled his cheek, unfaltering even as he flinched at the touch. “I’ll do it again. As many as it will take.” The words burned far more than even the serum.
“Because I refuse to give up on you.”
Throughout the conversation he’d felt like the calving face of an iceberg, those words rending the final cracks that sent the whole of its face crashing down. Her arms were around him in the instant he began to buckle, holding him up as his own feebly grasped for purchase, his claws tearing into her clothes as he clung on to her for dear life.
Though his memories of childhood were long lost to him now, he knew that it’d been since his time in the Orokin Academy when he’d last cried. And it’d never been like this. This was an exorcism, rending him open and spilling forth centuries of pain. Through it all Zariel held him tightly, both hands tracing soothing circles over his shaking back.
How long it took to abate, he did not know. But it felt like another century had passed as he gathered himself enough to lift his head from Zariel’s shoulder, his eyes burning and his head pounding in time with his racing heart. He kept his weak grip upon his Drifter as she cradled his face once more, her own eyes swollen and face streaked with tears. He managed an unsteady sighing breath.
“I’m through with running.”