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The Wanderer's life is the simplest it’s ever been.
He writes essays about international politics in between running errands for the God of Wisdom, and then spends his nights making sure she gets to sleep on time instead of reading until the sun comes up because “Even gods need rest, Buer. I’ve already given you five more minutes. I said no—”
He spends sleepless nights — hypocritical, but nobody’s ever claimed him to have integrity — in the House of Daena, reading books he thinks a certain curly-haired desert dweller would like, and other books he’s been recommended, before penning traitorously poetic letters to send to a remote location in the Great Red Sand, alone besides the blue-haired girl who never seems to leave that place.
And then, in the mornings, he watches the sunrise like he knows someone else is, talking to himself like there’s a busy little bee laughing beside him.
He smiles more nowadays too.
Buer prides herself on the fact that she sees him smiling the most, and for some reason, he doesn’t have the heart to tell her that it’s not true.
Sometimes, when he’s at the house Buer calls his home, he’ll practice making other things, cooking food he won’t eat, teaching himself how to use spices he’s learned to taste, gleaning recipes from the Tavern owner that seems to style himself some sort of surrogate father-in-law.
He’s sure he’s perfected shawarma by now, but that old man still won’t admit the truth.
Usually, his life is slow.
Meandering but not tedious.
He likes it that way.
But sometimes, other things happen, and he gets to dust off his Vision for something a little more… labor-intensive than flying.
Today’s been that kind of day.
The General Mahamatra bursting into the Sanctuary of Surathsana to recruit the Wanderer in a no-mercy decimation of Abyssal forces advancing a little too close to Sumeru City interrupts the river-flow of his life, and he enjoys every moment of getting to blow off a little steam dismembering creatures of the Abyss.
The General Mahamatra looks at him a little oddly after that, but he invites him back to his place for a game of Genius Invocation TCG anyway. The Wanderer knows it's an invitation of friendship, and it’s not like he’s not good, so he agrees, smirking at the competitive light in the other man’s red eyes.
As usual, the conversation strays to green eyes and bright smiles after a couple rounds, and the Wanderer finds himself comfortable in the General Mahamatra’s company.
He’ll take the jokes that got a chuckle out of him to his theoretical grave.
Eventually, he finds his way back to the Sanctuary, back to Buer’s concerned eyes before she speaks words that ruin a pretty good day.
“We need to check you over,” she says, approaching him with a slowness that reminds him of a brown and gray ponytail swaying in the wind as it’s owner tries to get close a small animal.
The Wanderer clicks his tongue with a roll of his eyes. “For what? I’m fine. You think I’m that weak?”
“Of course not, Hat Guy,” Buer shakes her head, her little white ponytail bobbing with the action. “But you’ve been in contact with the Abyss—”
“I’ve been through worse with them, Buer. You, of everybody, should know that.”
Buer pauses. “I do. But you’re made from Irminsul, Wanderer. In this current form, you might be more sensitive to the Abyss than you realize. Tolerance can fade.”
Every line of her chubby-cheeked face is one of a pragmatic concern, and even though everything in him wants to simply ignore her, for her peace of mind, he agrees.
She gives him a quiet, proud smile, and before he knows it, he’s laid on his back in her little workshop, staring into a soft light as she prepares to do a full-scale check up for Abyssal corruption, however small.
This position is familiar somehow.
Multiple faces of the same person appear in his mind’s eye, looming over him with different intensities of the same sick grin.
He shakes the thought from his mind.
A memory from a time he wants forgotten.
His chest plates separate with a hiss as he lets Buer inside, and her little hands brush over the surface of his ribs—
“Oh, Scaramouche…”
“I’ll make you perfect…”
“Where she failed you, I’ll succeed…”
“Be good and quiet for us, won’t you? There’s a good lad…”
The light is florescent.
Omega’s gloved hands are frigid, as they always are, his grin the widest as the others watch on.
“Look at him tick. You’re scaring the boy, Omega.”
“Boy, Zandik? This is a work of art…”
Breath he doesn’t need gets lodged in his throat as their fingers graze his internal mechanisms too gently.
Roughly, a segment tugs on something, and he winces.
He wants them gone.
He wants them out.
“Zandik, what— what are they doing to me?”
His voice is far away, small and soft like it hasn’t been for hundreds of years.
“Helping you, my boy. Making you better…”
“But… you said I was perfect?”
Perfect.
Perfect.
“Even perfection can be improved, lad. Know that…”
“And here we are, improving you, and you’re being ungrateful. You know what happens to those who are ungrateful…”
He does know.
He’s always known.
Well… Not always.
There was a time before…
And, he remembers, as his chestplate slides closed and his eyes open, there’s a time after.
He’s not in Dottore’s lab, he’s home in Nahida’s workshop, soft green light cascading over the softness of her features, her broad, flat nose, her round eyes, and her soft smile.
“All clear. There was a couple things awry, but nothing major and no causes for extended concern—”
Her little voice fades into static as ice-cold handprints stick to his body, so Snezhnayan in their inclemency that the Wanderer has always wondered how they were born elsewhere.
He swallows.
“Wanderer?”
“Buer, I—” he starts, and she puts a soft hand over his as he sits up, looking into his eyes with concern in her wide green eyes.
It’s not the green he needs.
“Are you okay? You don’t look well…” He can hear the guilt beginning to tinge at her voice, and he shakes his head, the movements jerky in his fervor.
“You didn’t do anything,” the words leave him with an inhibited roughness and almost on autopilot, he slides his clothes back on, zipping up his bodysuit with a single hand. He can’t meet her eyes as she tries to help. “You— I need some air.”
“Okay… Be safe out there…”
He nods jauntily, and the next thing he knows, he’s flying over the wall of Samiel, the sun freshly risen as it climbs to noon.
He blinks and he’s landing in the Temple of Silence’s Solarium, walking straight to it's Leader’s office.
He needs—
He needs Sethos.
He needs to be cleansed, baptized in the fire of his Bee’s effervescent heat, and the slide of rock on rock opens his redemption to him.
The door opening reveals his Bee to him, bathed in the noontime sun that casts a halo on his curls, glinting off of the clinking charms at the end of his braids. They chime together prettily as he writes, harmonizing with the scratch of quill on parchment.
He wants to call out for him, to say his name and beg to be touched, to be submerged in the sanctification that is the heat of Sethos’s brown skin and calloused palms. He wants to get on his knees for him, put his head on his Bee’s soft thighs and bask in his warmth.
He wants, but he can’t.
He can’t move, the icy coldness of a now-stranger’s hands holding him back, frigid fingers in the seams of his newly crafted personhood.
So he just stands in the open door, and waits to be noticed.
“One second, Auntie!” Sethos calls behind him, stretching out the words as he finishes whatever he was writing, before his pen meets the wood of his desk with a soft click. He turns, and all the charms in his hair and trinkets that adorn him jingle sweetly, like the musicality of windchimes. “Sorry I had to— Shoshen?”
Sethos says his name, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise, before he’s out of his seat and making his way across the room, meeting the Wanderer in the doorway.
“My Lotus,” Sethos whispers the only words of his language the Wanderer understands as he gets close, concern in the furrow of his brow as he studies the Wanderer’s face. He continues in Sumeran, his voice rising with concern disguised as curiosity. “What’s up? You said you wouldn’t be here until next week. And you look… tired.”
The Wanderer averts his eyes from the prettiest green he thinks he’ll ever see, his body tense as it struggles to cooperate with his wants.
And suddenly, he is redeemed.
Sethos’s hand comes up to caress his cheek, and he melts into it, the warmth of his touch a consecration. His body sags, and he lands in his Bee’s strong arms, bundled into a hug as a wave of fatigue overtakes him.
“Shoshen,” Sethos murmurs, “Did you miss me that much?”
There’s a teasing edge to the silk of his voice, but the Wanderer can’t find it in himself to argue, nodding into his Bee’s shoulder.
He nuzzles in closer, wrapping his arms around Sethos’s waist as he presses them flush, ducking his head so half his face is nestled in the crook of his neck.
Sethos cards his hand through the Wanderer’s hair, murmuring Tulaytullan in his ear, the language a caress to his brain, immediately calming.
He is nowhere but here.
“C’mon, Shoshen,” Sethos lifts himself a little on his tip-toes to plant a soft kiss on the Wanderer’s head, a soft, compassionate smile on his face. He opens his mouth in a yawn both of them are surprised by, a chuckle on the curve of his plush lips. “Let’s take a nap. Guess I’m more tired than I thought.”
The Wanderer doesn’t like to sleep.
He puts it off as long as possible.
He doesn’t dread the nothingness of his brain turned off, but the disappointment that comes with waking, that his shutdown wasn’t permanent, that his life still stretches on endlessly, more than enough time to make even bigger mistakes than he had done before.
But Sethos yawns again, smacking his lips before his eyes turn to crescents with the force of his giggle, and he finds himself being lead to bed.
The room they enter always surprises him. It’s small, decorated in ways that both match and clash with the Sethos the Wanderer knows now, lush perfumes in unopened bottles on the dresser next to failed weaving experiments, and a faded scarf of purple silk in the doorway.
But it’s Sethos himself that makes the room comfortable, and he stretches his arms up, muscle cording deliciously up the length of them, before dropping them with a sigh, shrugging off his scarf and untying his sash, unclipping it from the clasp at the back of his shirt.
He turns to the Wanderer, a quiet smile on his face, approaching him to slowly slide his kimono off his shoulders, his touch lingering so delectably that the Wanderer thinks he might cry if he stops. His pale shoulders expose themselves to the redeeming heat of his lover and warm hands run from his deltoids to his elbows — deliverance.
Finally, he’s freed.
Dottore’s touch doesn’t linger on his skin anymore, burned away by the conflagration that is Sethos’s light, and the moment he has control of his body back, he’s sliding his arms out of his sleeves, ignoring the way the fabric drops heavily to the floor, to grasp his Bee’s face. He presses their lips together and kisses Sethos’s mouth open, pulling him into an embrace like it’ll seal his touch into the Wanderer’s body permanently, like a single kiss could have his lips warm until the day he dies or the world ends, whichever comes first.
They kiss until Sethos yawns into his mouth, pulling away with an embarrassed giggle.
Cute, is all the Wanderer can think.
“C’mon, Shoshen,” Sethos yawns again, tugging him towards a bed he’s always surprised two grown men manage to fit into. “If we’re gonna nap, lets do it now, cuz I do have some stuff left to do.”
The Wanderer nods, settling on top of the man he loves, relishing the stupid little grin on the Bee’s face that only he gets the honor of seeing.
“Do you wanna hear about my day or—”
The Wanderer doesn’t yawn.
“Did you just… yawn?”
Or… at least he never used to.
But it comes out of him with a surprising force and he finds himself unwilling to fight against it, nuzzling into his Bee’s chest and enjoying the smell of insense and spiced perfume, and the natural musk of him that reminds the Wanderer of old books.
He presses his head to Sethos’s chest, listening to the steady thud-thud of a beautifully human heart, knowing that this is the closest he’ll get to having one of his own.
To him, a heart is the symbol of what it means to be human. What it means to be an organic being with a spirit and a soul, and it was always so far out of reach, even when he did have one beating in his own chest.
But Sethos makes him human in other ways.
Sethos makes him… himself.
Sethos lets him be tired, happy, sad, and the most afraid he’s been in his life.
And as long as he has that steady, solid thud-thud under his ear, he’ll be fine.
Dottore thought of him as a creation, an advanced machine with a foul mouth and an even fouler personality, something that could be molded into his ugly, crooked image if he tinkered enough.
Sethos sees the wreckage left behind and sees a person.
He yawns again, and sleepily, Sethos cards his hands through his hair, humming a lullaby the Wanderer recognizes as his own.
It’s from Tatarasuna, the first lullaby anyone ever sang to him.
Sethos’s voice makes it beautiful, even through the seam of his pretty lips.
The lullaby peters out into soft snoring, and the Wanderer lets out a sigh, peeking his eyes open to look at the calm softness of his Bee’s sleeping face.
He presses a kiss first to his head, then the bulb of his nose, and then to his lips. “I love you, Bee. Rest well.”
And with that, sleep finally takes him for the first time in a while, Sethos’s hum a ghost in his mind’s eye.
The Wanderer’s life is the simplest it’s ever been.
Simple comforts, and simple days, and a simple soft safety in the arms of Sethos — his love, his light, his Bee.