Chapter Text
THREE YEARS AFTER THE KINGDOM ROSE FROM THE SEA
“Yaad,” called a thin voice.
It was a familiar voice, and focused as he was on setting the dining tray while balancing dishes and cutlery in his other hand, Yaad did not think twice before answering to his name.
“Yes?”
And then he stopped. A spoon slipped from his grasp and clattered to the floor. His heart rose in his throat and cut off his breath with a wheeze. Yaad was old, incomparably old and tired and worn away, but when he turned to meet Thistle’s eyes he felt again like the stupid, scared boy he thought he’d outgrown centuries ago.
Thistle knew. How did he know?
“I’m—I’m no—,” Yaad choked out in horror. He set the clutter in his hands down on the side table, panicking. “I—”
Thistle was sitting upright in his bed. He stared straight at Yaad, eyes focused, head held up by his own power instead of limply propped against a mountain of pillows to give the illusion of liveliness. It was a beautiful day in early summer and that morning the caretakers had told Yaad that they’d opened the bedside window to let in some warm air. The sun sinking from its zenith lit Thistle from behind and cast his face into shadow. Yaad couldn’t make out Thistle’s expression, not entirely, but there was an unmistakable presence in his gaze which had been missing since the demon clawed him open.
Apprehension skittered like a spider down his back.
One moment of inattention and the whole lie crumbled away. Yaad felt dizzy with fear—not entirely for his sake, but for what Thistle might do to himself knowing that Delgal had never come home. Would never come home.
He took a shaky step forward. He had to fix this somehow. Set it right. Thistle had been improving so much lately, he was clinging to life with a tenacity no one had expected, he was awake more often than not and those horrifying fits of undirected rage that’d overtake him had lessened in frequency and intensity, he’d learned his new care schedule and taken over some of the easier tasks himself, he’d even expressed a preference the other day at mealtime, Yaad couldn’t let this careless blunder cause a regression, or worse, cause Thistle to hurt himself again—
“I already knew. I figured it out months ago.”
Yaad’s head spun.
“That…that I am not Delgal?” he asked. It felt like a second betrayal to say it, like he could’ve taken the truth back as long as he did not speak it out aloud.
“Yes,” Thistle said. He closed his eyes and sunk into the pillows. “I didn’t know for a long time. But I kept waking each morning. I began remembering more. I would watch you…I couldn’t believe Delgal was back. It was a miracle. I was so, so happy.”
His voice was clipped and flat, as if verbalizing his thoughts physically exhausted him. He paused for a moment. Thistle was looking at Yaad when he spoke again.
“I was happy. It felt wrong. Not the happiness. You did. Delgal was home, but—I didn’t understand. Something was off. It looked like Delgal. It had his voice and his face and the same old calluses on his fingers.
Thistle’s tone became singsongy: “It had his voice, but it didn’t say the words he would say. It had his face, but it didn’t use it the way he should.”
Yaad caught himself raising his hand over his mouth. He had an overwhelming urge to hide his expression. Truthfully, he’d begun considering this body his own. He no longer flinched when suddenly faced with his reflection, and all of the body’s borrowed aches and pains had grown familiar. It was jarring to be reminded that Delgal’s body was something he’d put on like a hand-me-down shirt, this flesh which felt more like his own than the boy he’d been trapped as for a thousand years. And despite all the care they’d taken to perpetuate the lie, Yaad had never tried acting like anyone except himself. He could only recall Delgal at his worst—a disheveled man half-mad with guilt and the burden of unwanted years—and nobody who remembered Delgal in his prime was alive, no one except Thistle who hadn’t reacted negatively to Yaad’s presence, who barely had the awareness to understand where or who he was. There’d be no point imitating Delgal beyond using the name like he was bribing a child into obedience with a favorite toy, or so he’d thought. Thistle had been watching him carefully from beneath his half-closed eyes.
“I shouldn’t have let it continue for so long,” Yaad said.
Thistle blinked slowly. Yaad couldn’t read what the elf was feeling or if he was feeling anything at all.
Thistle had known for months and said nothing.
“Why bring it up today?” Yaad asked.
Thistle hummed. “I think I just got tired of everyone pretending.”
Yaad’s chest hurt. Tired. Yes. They were all tired, weren’t they? Dark hollows still stained the space beneath Thistle’s eyes. He would lie unconscious in a restless slumber for the greater part of each day and evidence of his exhaustion remained no matter how long he slept.
Three years ago, the kingdom had risen from the ocean. It had begun with a deep rumble in the earth which Yaad had felt as a third heartbeat alongside his own and Thistle’s, and it escalated as a tremor rippling through the trees around and above them, roots and trunks groaning as they shifted with the motion. He’d clutched Thistle tight and huddled over him, afraid that a falling branch would strike the elf’s unmoving body. He had watched the ocean churn with more violence than the darkest storm could provoke as once-golden towers crested higher than the waves they were piercing during their upward climb, inertia made obsolete by the force of Thistle’s spell unraveling. The long buried castle’s slow reveal had awed Yaad at the same time as it had frightened him.
He hadn’t escaped! His prison had followed him straight through the waves!
And his jailer still lived. Yaad didn’t wish Thistle had died, but he hadn’t expected that either of them would live past their first week on the surface and he hadn’t considered what it would mean if he lived, let alone if Thistle continued drawing breath.
He’d stayed with him during the feast, a sense of shared mortality and responsibility compelling him to keep Thistle comfortable during his last moments. He had held Thistle in his arms and spent hours urging him to swallow a few spoonfuls of soup while the sounds of celebration drifted towards them through the trees. Thistle had lived through that night, and the next week, and the next month, and it had dawned on Yaad that this little white lie he’d created during a moment of pity for a dying soul had become more permanent than he’d intended.
How could he possibly explain it? He didn’t want to look Thistle in the eye and tell him that they’d all lied about the most cherished person in his life for what they decided was his own good, but he had no other excuse.
“I’m sorry, Thistle. I did it for you. You thought I was him, I told you I was him, and for so long you would only react if I were the one speaking to you. We thought it was the only thing keeping you alive. Do you recall during the first month on the surface how you would only eat if I were the one asking? I planned on telling you, of course I did, but only once you were better.”
Yaad reached for every justification he’d repeated to himself over the years and when they all slipped out it felt ugly and insufficient. He dropped into the chair at Thistle’s bedside, exhausted. “I wanted you to get better.”
“You want me. To get better.”
“Yes, we all do! Everyone from the kingdom old and new—well, every new citizen who is permitted to know you are alive. They’re all doing what they can to help you recover. King Laios—he is our king now, do you remember, we watched the coronation from the balcony—he’s very invested in your wellbeing, he set up this room for you and arranged all the servants who visit and he asks me daily if you—”
“Yaad,” Thistle said. He spoke softly but an old, forceful tone shaded his voice and Yaad fell back into learned obedience and shut himself up.
He shivered and wanted to scowl but that didn’t feel safe. Not here, not with Thistle right in front of him where he would witness any discontent. Yaad knew in his mind that he was safe, but his heart hadn’t learned it yet. He felt lighter outside of the dungeon, he was happier than he’d ever been before, and yet panicked reactions would randomly override his rationality: a spike in his heartbeat when someone stood behind him and spoke, sudden dread when an innocent bird cast its shadow over him as it flew from its nest, or this frustrating trained response when Thistle spoke to him in a certain way, it seemed.
Thistle wasn’t looking at him anymore, but Yaad could make out his face now that he was seated at his side. He watched Thistle’s sparse brows furrow as he struggled to find words. His hands fiddled with the bandages wrapped around his fingers and forearms.
“Why now? Where was all this concern before?”
“We were scared, Thistle. People who opposed you disappeared. They’d turn up dead.”
“So you are concerned only if it is convenient.”
“That’s not fair—”
“No! You don’t get to say that. I’ll tell you what’s not fair,” Thistle said through gritted teeth. “I was protecting everyone. It wasn’t easy, it was really hard, and everyone still hated me for it.”
“Thistle—”
“Delgal begged for me to be killed. Those were his last words, that’s what that elf told me. Did Delgal hate me so much? Is being so…repulsive and frightening just how I am, how I’ve always been, and he was enduring it until he couldn’t? And then I had to be killed? What am I still doing here?”
Thistle’s voice had risen to a shout by the end of his speech and he’d begun scratching at his bandages. Red lines bloomed underneath his frantic nails.
Yaad, already agitated, couldn’t endure any of this continuing. He lunged and took Thistle’s hands in his own. Thistle turned, eyes wide, but didn’t try to pull away. He never resists. He’d have flayed you alive if you’d tried this before, a grim thought whispered. Yaad shook it away and concentrated on how to calm Thistle down so that he could calm down.
“I’m sorry, Thistle. I’m sorry.”
Thistle kept shaking his head. His hair, already messy from resting on a pillow all day, was disheveled further by the force of this insistent rejection.
“Listen to me. Delgal did not hate you,” Yaad tried.
“You’re lying,” Thistle whined. It was remarkably childish and Yaad would’ve been thrilled by how expressive and talkative Thistle was being if the circumstances weren’t what they were.
“Listen, please! He blamed himself. He never blamed you!”
“You’re a liar, how would you know, you liar, you traitor, you filth, you helped those usurpers ruin everything! I had it—I had it all under control—I’d nearly cleaned up the mess they’d caused—I had Delgal’s trail, I’d nearly found him—”
Like a tree struck by lightning, split and charred, Thistle’s face had warped into something wretched by the intense flash of feeling forced into him. Yaad couldn’t meet those red-rimmed, burning eyes. He squeezed Thistle’s limp hands, heart racing, and interrupted him.
“Thistle! Delgal was already dead. You wouldn’t have found him. You know this. Remember? You told me that you know this.”
The silence which fell was punctuated with Thistle’s rasping breaths. He was leaning away from Yaad, their hands still connected but his entire body turned as if he wanted to flee but couldn’t figure out how to make himself take the next step.
“Delgal is dead,” Thistle said. His breathing was shallow and his voice faint.
“I can leave. You wouldn’t have to see me again,” Yaad offered.
That was all he had left to give. He half-wished Thistle would take it and banish Yaad from his presence. His life would become much simpler if they went their separate ways. There’d be no more interruptions during meetings with the still-endless stream of foreign dignitaries because Thistle had refused every attempt at being fed and now his caretakers were worried he’d starve again, could ‘Delgal’ please try coaxing him into taking a bite? Released of responsibility, Yaad would be able to go through his day—a whole day, from morning to night!—without being reminded that this person, newly dependent on him, had held him captive for an unimaginable stretch of time. Entirely forgetting the dungeon was an impossible dream—he could navigate the lion-carved halls of this haunting castle with his eyes closed. Yaad’s memories remained vivid. But maybe, without Thistle…
“Why would you leave?” Thistle asked instead and a dozen half-realized fantasies dispersed from Yaad’s mind. He was confused. Did Thistle want him to admit what he’d done again?
“Because I lied. Because I am using his body. You don’t want to see—”
“Everything has been taken from me except for this,” Thistle said dully. “Will you take Delgal away too?”
Yaad winced. It kept happening; within a few sentences Thistle would remember the truth and then regress. It felt hopeless. He felt trapped.
“I’m not Delgal,” Yaad wearily reminded him.
“No. You aren’t. I know,” Thistle said. One of his hands slipped from Yaad’s grasp and rose to brush against his face. Coarse, gauze-wrapped knuckles traced from his jaw to his temple. He smoothed Yaad’s hair back behind his ear.
“That’s still Delgal’s face. His hair. His body. All of it is his.”
Yaad’s eyes burned. He shouldn’t have been, but he was unexpectedly very hurt.
“It’s not yours,” Thistle hissed. He threw his hand down and rolled away to face the open window.
While they’d been speaking, the shadows cast from the setting sun had grown throughout the room until the entire space was covered, and the window which had previously framed the sun-lit castle grounds now stood as a thin portal surrounding a moonless, dark night.
Yaad was so very tired.
“Thistle,” he pleaded. Be reasonable, he didn’t say. What’s wrong with you, he also kept to himself. Yaad didn’t want to be here just as much as he felt compelled to stay.
“See you tomorrow,” Thistle mumbled. He was already falling into sleep and would be impossible to rouse in a few heartbeats. One small, clammy hand remained in Yaad’s grasp. He let it go and placed the hand gently beside its partner laying curled beneath Thistle’s chin.
The chair creaked as Yaad rested his full weight on it and threw his head back. He took a deep breath and forced down every emotion that’d risen during that conversation until he felt like he could think without bursting into tears. Calm, peaceful, empty. He rolled his head to the side and caught sight of the dining tray he’d abandoned on the side table earlier and sighed. The soup had grown cold and congealed into a remarkably unappetizing sludge. He’d meant to feed it to Thistle, but there’d be no convincing him to eat now. Yaad hoped he would have an appetite in the morning and resolved he’d stop by—it wasn’t his responsibility, but he knew Thistle was more likely to respond when it was ‘Delgal’ urging him to take another bite…
But Thistle had known it’d been Yaad urging him these past few months.
He shivered. Learning that Thistle had been aware of Yaad’s identity for that long put his memory of those moments into another light. The frame had not changed, nor had the scenery, but the sun’s movement formed new shadows in the landscape and revealed details previously nestled in the dark.
He didn’t want Thistle erased from his life no matter how many times frustration, sorrow, or fear provoked him into thinking otherwise. Yaad just wished being around him would hurt less. A childish wish nestled in an old man’s heart.