Chapter Text
There’s a certain type of weariness that cements itself in a man’s bones when he hasn’t slept in twenty days. It’s that same sort of exhaustion that leaves a dry mouth behind gritting, gnashing teeth that elongate into wicked fangs in the night-time… that sort of weight on a man’s shoulders that leaves him second-guessing every decision that he’s been tasked by Fate to make.
Coen’s… tired.
He’s tired, but there’s no time to rest– he’s not even sure if he can anymore, if sleep is something that he’ll ever experience again, or if he’s been cursed by this half-unlife to perpetually linger in that space between for the rest of his time, walking amongst men.
He’s running out of time. Ten days; he has ten days left, and if he fails, he’s yet again responsible for the deaths of his loved ones, as if Alin wasn’t enough, and yes, he’d known that the ice was too thin, but their father had been yelling, and Alin had seemed so sad and Mom was slipping and, and it all fell to Coen to fix it and he tried, he did, he swears he tried but it was too fast, but why didn’t he just–
“No.”
A slow, steady exhale. Coen knows he’s running out of time. He feels it slipping through his fingers like the sand within the hourglass, and no amount of grasping keeps it there. There’s nothing to do but keep going, but he knows, oh he knows well how a weary mind can’t be trusted to make decisions… and these decisions are far too important to fuck up.
Just west of Oghasti is a small lake, and a pier runs out into the water, just far enough for a fisherman to sit and rest as he works to bring home the day’s catch. He’s passed by it a few times, never paying it much mind, because a pier isn’t going to save Lunka, brave as she is, from the clutches of monsters, or young Mirto, with his whole life ahead of him, who doesn’t understand that it’s not Mom’s fault that she is the way she is.
Today’s different.
Coen sits on the edge of the pier, his boots off and to the side. Toes just barely touch the water, and heterochromic eyes, one matching the water and one of the sun, stare out over the lake. The wind blows softly, just enough that baby waves slosh around, caressing the wood of the pier.
The sun’s already begun her descent, intent on getting her rest for the night, but Coen… Coen’s still here. His responsibilities are too important, and he finds himself envious of the way that even the Heavens find a way to rest.
By his side, his hand twitches, a nervous tic that’d been left over from his time as a child, when his mother had first started to slip, when his father had first shown him how cruel life could be, having been his first heartbreak. He digs his fingers into the soft wood beneath him to steady himself. It crumbles, and maybe it’s because the wood had gone all soggy and rotted from the water and lack of upkeep from the plague, or maybe, it’s because Coen doesn’t know himself anymore. He doesn’t remember how to be gentle, when harshness is the only thing that gets him closer to redemption.
“Coen? You’re running out of time.”
His eyes close, and he exhales, a sharp thing that forces all of the air from his aching lungs. “I know, Ambrus,” he murmurs, “I know.”
“Then why are we still here?”
Swallowing hard, his throat bobs. It feels like something’s caught there, like he’s choking on everything that he needs and wants to say, everything that’s been rattling around in his mind but he’s been too afraid to acknowledge, because if he says it all out loud… what does that make him? Who does he become?
Coen of Laslea, the faithful and dutiful son… the mask falls.
“Sometimes,” he starts, and the words already feel like sandpaper from how dry his throat is, “I want to… I want to let the clock run out.”
The mask shatters, and the shards choke him. They get caught in his windpipe, jabbing into the flesh in an act of vicious exsanguination, as all of the words he never said, wouldn’t even allow himself to think, for fear that doubts would taint him as the plague had tainted Lunka, as he’d ran with her in his arms, desperately hoping to save her because nobody else would. Blood fills his lungs, and guilt mists his eyes.
“I hated her, you know,” he forces out, “for so long, I hated her for leaving me to do everything. ‘Coen,’ she’d say, ‘come chop the vegetables. Coen, go make firewood. Coen, mend these clothes.’ Until, one day, she stopped asking. It stopped being me helping her, and I hadn’t even noticed the switch, and became her helping me. I took over all that she’d done, and then I took over all that my father was meant to do, because he lost himself when she did.”
“I know it’s not right to be ungrateful, to besmirch my responsibilities to my family, but I wish– I–”
“...Coen.” Ambrus’ voice is smooth, as golden as his hair had been, and it cuts through the hazy guilt like a hot knife through butter. “They didn’t deserve you.”
Fuck, he knows that! He thinks about it every time he sees a mother in the streets of Svartrau holding the hands of her brood, as she leads them along as their father pays for trinkets for them. Every time he sees a family doing their best to find a semblance of normalcy, a shred of joy or hope or happiness under the bleakness of Vrakhiri rule, he feels nothing but a thick, oily black resentment that tastes more vile than a kobold’s blood.
What sort of fairness was there in being his siblings’ mother, and their father, since he himself had been a child, who couldn’t yet comprehend what it meant to fill those roles? He’d raised all of them!
“It doesn’t matter. They need me, and I have to do this, but I’m tired, Ambrus. Ever since the swamp, with Lacra and the wisps, having to dig all of this vicious shit up and having to choke on it because it just won’t pass–”
“If you want to let the hourglass empty itself, do it. Brencis will still be there. You’ll still get your revenge, and nobody will know you tarried just enough to slip the cuffs. You dealt with me so efficiently, didn’t you? So quickly, even though you cheated with poison.”
Coen scoffs. “You make it sound so easy.”
“It sounds easy because it’s not what you want. Not truly. You’d curse yourself for years if you let them all die, even if you felt like it’d be freeing yourself. But Coen, you know well as I; freedom is an illusion. There’s always a boot on our necks, whether we allow it there or not. You free yourself of the shackles of your family, and find yourself chained by contrition.”
Silence lingers between them, as poignant as the fog beginning to roll in over the water. The setting sun leaves behind a beautiful painting before the dawnwalker and his guest, an array of purples, oranges, and reds reflecting off of the surface of the lake. Even the clouds are mirrored in the clear water– a backdrop for Coen’s worn-down face. Scarred and textured, imperfections marring the visage that’d grown along with him… he finds it’s harder to recognize himself now, and not just because of the color of his eyes.
“When’s the last time that you’d watched the sun set, Ambrus? Properly watched it?”
When he looks at his own reflection in the water like this, he wonders if Ambrus can pretend he’s seeing Coen face-to-face… if it makes him feel less like a voice in his head, and more like a person.
Ambrus doesn’t answer.
“My father used to take us to Parlita. There was a spot in the woods beyond the town. We’d all sit together in front of a fire, on this log that he’d found felled in the forest and had shifted over to the edge of the cliff, while we ate treats he’d had just enough coin for. We’d watch the sun go down, and then we’d watch the stars, until we all fell asleep. Morning would come, and we’d head back home… like ducks in a row.”
It feels bittersweet now. There’d been no more moments like that after their mother had slipped– none that he hadn’t been the facilitator of. Those things tended to lose their magic as maturity and responsibility set in.
“I went back there recently, you know. To that spot. I’d met one of Dad’s old friends– Volk, his name was,” Coen says, talking as though Ambrus hadn’t been in his head for all of it, as if Ambrus hadn’t seen it all, offering comments on Volk and how Coen had been wasting himself there. “The last time I’d come by, I intended to leave him with some denari. It’s not like I don’t have enough from my travels by now, but he hadn’t been there. Just a scene of carnage out front, and a lone note. I spoke with a corpse in the garden, and the rotted thing told me that the old man had intended to sell me out for coin, but changed his mind because I’d spent so much time helping him. Guilt got him in the end, I suppose.”
“He was my father’s friend… and I am my father’s son, and just as Volk almost sold me out– here I am, contemplating letting them all go. Selling them out to Brencis, in a sense. He alleviates my burden, and I grant him a few more days to live.”
Ridiculous. Coen shakes his head, closing his eyes for a heavy moment before glancing back out at the sunset.
“Time’s a commodity. I know that better than most, and I might never forget the value of it after all of this. But here– here and now, let’s let time slip through our grasp, Ambrus. Just for now… I want to rest my bones, to remember what it’s like to be a human free of the world’s demands. Free of doubt and the poisonous resentment that sneaks in when I think of my family, love them as I do; I want a moment of peace.”
The sun sets, and together, they watch. Even as Coen’s claws elongate, growing sharp and leaving wicked grooves in the wooden pier, and as his fangs burst through his gums and leave behind a sharp, metallic tang, they watch, until the horizon’s gone clear of any color but the inky blackness of night.
He glances back down at his reflection; his eyes glow in the night, now. Two white orbs, encircled by rings of vivid color. The sun, and the moon, living in the very windows of his soul.
“Never,” Ambrus says to him, as Coen moves to stand. “What purpose did it serve? By the time I found myself caring for it, it was too late.”
Coen pauses, watching himself a moment longer. “Then we’ll do it more,” he promises, “and for what it’s worth, Ambrus… I regret the poison. It’d been a dying man’s last wish to rid himself of this world and take you alongside him, and I hadn’t the heart to rob him of the only meaningful choice that he’d ever made. And I was so angry. Angry at all of you. At you, because you’d thrown my father back from my mother when he helped her up the stairs of that perversion of a mass, and then you’d grabbed her neck, thrown her down the stairs. Had you all left her alone, none of this would have happened. I didn’t meet you with honor, because you hadn’t met us with it. It doesn’t make it right, but– at the time, I thought you deserved it.”
“We live, and we learn, Coen. Most of us, that is. Don’t dwell on it. Now, ready yourself to get moving– you’re running out of time.”