Mictlāntēcutli - Prettiest Thing

by Wet_Floor

Summary:

The moment that Kozlowski trades faces with Bjorn in the burning boat, as alluded to in chapter 84 of the podcast.

A study of the intimacy of sharing faces. Followed by a little Arthur and Kozlowski moment to lighten things in Ch2.

Title inspired by Mictlāntēcutli by the Republic of Wolves.

Chapter 1: They Ever Wrote

“How does it feel to die?” Kozlowski asks the body underneath him, scalpel finding a familiar scar, a bump forever indicating where to make his first cut.

“Odd.” The body replies, fist knotted in Kozlowski’s tunic. The anxious fingers of a person moments away from new life. He coughs through a mouthful of the smoke billowing around them. “I thought it would hurt.”

“You’re on far too many drugs to feel anything right now.” Kozlowski says, pain sizzling off his knife as he continues to pull it through his skin. He could have numbed it. He could have found something to localize the numbing so it wouldn’t meddle with his mental acuity. But where was the fun in that? The ritualistic pain of change, of rebirth, he wouldn’t dare miss it. He puts his hand over the one pulling at his shirt, thumb sliding into and over knuckles.

Bjorn relaxes under the touch, reminded that he wasn’t floating off into nothingness, but rather into newness, into life. Good, Kozlowski thinks, it is much easier to take a face off of a calm body. Bjorn would get to experience the pain later. In healing. After the scalpel and stitches have their way with him, after the drugs fade out of his system. Then, he will feel the intense burn, a phoenix rising from the ashes of death. Or, of a burnt boat in their case.

“Are you ready?” He asks as he cleans his knife. He always kept just enough skin intact so the men under him wouldn’t look at a face carved open and scream.

“I suppose I must be.” Bjorn winces, staring at the smoke whistling into the sky.

“You are.” Kozlowski brushes a thumb over Bjorn’s forehead, debating where to make his first incision. “Don’t worry.” He kisses the bottom left of his cheek before slipping the knife into his skin. “You are going to feel so beautiful when I am done with you.”

Bjorn holds back a bout of laughter, the intrusion in his face a confusing feeling of fullness. The drugs were doing their job. Hiding the knife and the fire licking small burns up his skin. The redness it leaves would turn into a gentle white scar. The kind that became a short story in the full text of someone’s skin. Kozlowski lets it happen. Not too much so as to incriminate his future self. Just enough to make him new.

Kozlowski savors the time it takes to pull a face off of a body. In silence, he stares and appreciates every curve as the skin pulls away from it. He gets acquainted with the look of it, a face he would soon wear as his own. It is stronger than he was used to. More Nordic, hard, but soft eyebrows that betray a writer's soul.

The face he wore now was much gentler. Dainty, pretty, it would suit Bjorn like a love story, a quill to ink and a blank page to poetry. It’s why it had to be him. Despite Arthur’s protests and sad little eyes, there was no face in the Viking legions he’d want to give to Bjorn.

“Good job, Bjorn” Kozlowski coos as he makes his last cut, slipping the face flat onto the boat. Bjorn’s fist slacks into an open palm, twitching onto Kozlowski’s stomach.

Kozlowski finishes his own face and washes it out before fixing it to the curves in the face he studied just moments before. The true puzzle of this sort of work was figuring out how to tweak and compliment the structures of the man. If he had more time, he would spend hours stressing and situating little details until he thought it was perfect. Instead, he begins fusing the face together in just thirty minutes. It still looks effortless, beautiful, a face that Kozlowski can't help but smile at.

“You are born anew.” Kozlowski says, as he starts on his own facial transition. Bjorn’s hand flew to his face, feeling it as though it wouldn’t be there. “Gentle, you're bound to be sensitive like this.”

“I wasn’t sure I’d ever blink again.” Bjorn says, eyes closed tightly. A streak of a tear falls down the new face, followed by many as he cries for the first time in his new life.

“Yes, like that.” Kozlowski compliments. He knew the feeling very well. The kind of kicked in gut that followed any dramatic surgery. As though someone had just taken something so deeply entwined in your being from you. He decides to lay next to Bjorn, to let him feel another body breathing and moving. He found that this often helped remind clients that although they have died, they are not actually dead.

Bjorn shakes next to him, rattled with more tears. He truly is a sensitive one. Who knows how he survived so long being a viking. Writing will suit him much better.

“Look at me.” Kozlowski says as he finishes the last stitch, tying his face together once again. Bjorn complies and stares back into Kozlowski’s eyes.

“Oh.” More tears slipping down his skin. His hand meets with Kozlowski’s cheek, his old face.

Kozlowski always liked the look of his old face imprinted on someone new. It made him realize just how people saw him. He wanted to kiss it. To mark it. To see it living, talking, breathing, alive outside of him.

Maybe it was something sick in him. He thinks as Bjorn continues to cry, grasping onto the back of Kozlowski’s head, hand reaching out to grasp his tunic once again.

“Well what have you done to the poor man, Snorri?”

“Artour, you are just in time.” He says, snapping out of his haze.

“Yes it seems like it,” Arthur comments, always a little improperly concerned. “I’m not sure this boat will be afloat by the time I make it back to you.”

It isn’t until he says it that Kozlowski realizes the water rising into the boat, mixing with ash.

“Be fast then. I will not try to swim ashore.”

“Right, well, help him for me will you.” Arthur says, putting out the fire on the side of the boat. Kozlowski hoists Bjorn up and guides him to step into Arthur’s canoe. Bjorn stares holes into Kozlowski’s face, a sad look that says ‘I wish I could hold onto this’. Kozlowski knows it all too well. He too doesn’t want to part ways with the man for fear of never seeing this face again.

“Oh lord,” Arthur jumps, “oh no.”

“What?” He always had a way of taking Kozlowski out of his thoughts.

“No, nothing, being supportive, great godfrey.” Arthur mumbles, avoiding either Bjorn or Kozlowski's face. “Well, I’ll be back in a tiffy”

“You will learn to like it, only if I survive.” Kozlowski jokes, water creeping up his back.

“Yes, yes, paddling fast.” Arthur calls back. Kozlowski can’t help but laugh at his antics, how he never seems to change. He feels his limbs slacken into the decaying remains of the boat, flames extinguished turning into smoke he can't help but breathe.

Chapter 2: I've Ever Seen

His first night with this new face. It is poetic, isn’t it? Fire and smoke, death and life, change and discomfort. He wonders if Bjorn would ever write about it. It was an impactful moment, wasn’t it? To look into your own eyes after rebirth. Only special clients could receive such a gift. Perhaps this sort of beauty was more Kozlowski’s thing than anyone else’s. He thinks about it until his eyes grow heavy with CO2 ingestion, until all he can think is about how drowning would feel and if it would botch his face job.

“I’ve made it.” The sound of Arthur’s poor paddling covers that of the waves. Kozlowski can only look at him, body too heavy to move. “Well, get out of the boat Snorri, the Vikings are asleep now I promise you.”

“I hate that name.” Kozlowski pouts, head full of smoke and not much else.

“We can give you a new one when we get out of this place, up!” Arthur attempts to get him to move again. Kozlowski turns his head, eyes rolling of their own accord. Water starts filling the boat faster. “Oh heaven’s, Snorri, I mean, friend, please, I cannot carry you over without capsizing both of us.”

“You should let me have your face.” Kozlowski says as he sits up only to brush a hand under Arthur’s chin. Arthur catches his hand while in motion and holds it.

“Right there, now, get up!” He insists, meeting dead eyes, lost of their playfulness. “You crazy thing you.” Arthur tuts, holding onto his forearm like a lifeline. “Friend, I will let you say all the insane things you want all night if you climb into this boat, hmm?”

“You won’t give me your face?”

“No.” Arthur cannot stand the man's pouting, though it is endearing, it is absolutely the worst time. “You’d get bored of me if I didn’t have this face.”

“Hmm…” Kozlowski trails off in thought. Arthur uses the time to pull on his arm as if it would get him to budge. “I do like waking up to your face, yes.”

“You’re sinking!” Arthur breaks, pulling harder, then scrambling to usher water out of the boat. Nothing he does works, the boat continues to fill faster and faster until Kozlowski is waist deep, still unmoving. So, he does what seems like the most logical move and shoves his nails into his skin.

“Artour!” Kozlowski says in his usual long and hurt way, as though snapped out of a trance.

“I'd feel sorry if I didn't know you like that sort of thing. Get up!”

“Yes, yes.” He climbs over the ashen boat, limbs following slowly behind his mind. He settles into the canoe as swiftly as he can, legs bent too close to be comfortable. He notices Arthur staring. “Eyes on the sea, Artour.”

“Of course.” Arthur says, more serious than expected. He begins paddling silently off in the opposite direction of how they came. Kozlowski basks in the silence before it becomes choking, ash falling out of his mouth as he coughs.

They both remain quiet. Listening to the waves and the paddle cutting through water, the occasional bursts of coughs and rain of ash over the side of the boat.

“You had a moment with him.” Arthur says, the lilt in his voice replaced with that painful tone he uses when he tries to be serious.

“A moment?”

“I want you to tell me about it.”

“What? About how I cut off his face?” Kozlowski asks incredulously.

“No, please not that.” Arthur says, “about the rest though, the uh… crying, staring, I want to understand why you like this.”

Kozlowski stares off at the stars now specking the sky. He wonders briefly about how his own body would become ash one day, perhaps faster than that of the boat he was on.

“I only take faces of those I want to understand.”

“I see.” Arthur says, remaining painfully quiet otherwise. He wants Kozlowski to talk.

“It feels as though you have lost something, something so great and huge that words do not encompass it. That perhaps you’ve died in someone’s arms. Then, it feels like being born again. Experiencing the world for the first time.”

“And the other person.” Arthur starts, “They feel the same?”

“I would not know, Artour.” Kozlowski decides he is done with their chat. His eyes sink closed and refuse to open again.

“I will never understand your side of this job, will I?” Arthur asks with a small laugh; he looks back to see Kozlowski nearly asleep. It's cute for a second, his giant body scrunched up in the little canoe. “You’re going to make me carry you, aren’t you?” He realizes, receiving a slight head nod from the body behind him. “Mother of a martyr, you’ll be the death of me.”