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It’s all pointless. Worthless. Completely and utterly futile.
The flower on his windowsill is a blur of color, a beacon of light in the darkness that surrounds his vision. Its white petals shift slightly with the air movements, tremble under Recluse’s breath, so delicate and fragile, just like the bond it represents.
He slumps in his chair, forehead pressed against cold wood, his hand finding the pot, tracing the stem of the white lily with trembling fingers. It’s all so, so fragile. Fragile like the bonds he’d built up, like the past. Fragile like the trust his friends had put in him once. It’s all long gone now, he knows it. He knows there is no forgiveness, no salvation. This is his punishment, the constant agony of solitude, the bile eating him out from the inside. The rot in his thoughts consuming him whole.
In a way, it’s not much different from before. Before the incident, before he learned the ugly Truth of this world. He had always hated himself, what he stood for. The little white lies that would spill from his lips in a futile attempt to comfort, to soothe, to bring peace. What he is now, it’s better. It’s better because he’s not lying to himself anymore, he doesn’t hide behind a mask of false composure, doesn’t pretend everything is fine when it’s not. This is liberation. This is punishment. This is catharsis in its purest form.
Recluse stands, stepping away, the lily swaying from his motions, the large arc his cloak swings in as he turns, marching towards the rudimentary bathroom. He closes the door out of habit, one that hasn’t left him despite the thousands of years he’s been alone. The blade in his hand is heavy, but familiar. The handle is of a beautiful engraved wood, one that he feels with his thumb, sitting in silence.
It’s not that he wants to die. He never did. Or at least he pretends he didn’t. Back when it first started, when the first drop of jam fell down to the floor, when he’d nicked himself accidentally and just… Continued. He never intended to die. Too many cookies needed him. Too many cookies would be lost without him, or at least the facade he created. They hung off his every word, every gesture. They loved him unconditionally, even despite his mistakes. There was never punishment. Punishment he knew he deserved.
Punishment that grew into relief. The pain is distracting. It makes your mind grind to a halt, your thoughts stop running wild. It makes your body go into overdrive, trying to keep you alive. That will to live, that instinct, it’s a saving grace for someone on their last leg, on the edge of the abyss. An abyss they try their hardest not to stare into, to ignore the tightrope they’re walking on in favor of the distant land ahead.
Out of all the things that stuck around, he supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised that it was this. Recluse traces the blade over his arm, feeling the way it bounces slightly on the jagged scars. He’d long since stopped bothering to heal them. There was simply no point, no one was around to care anyway. No one was around for a long time, forever, even, an impossible timeline for any moral cookie to comprehend.
His age scares him, sometimes. The realization that everything he’d known, everything he’d learned and taught has changed. The architecture, the food, the magic. He is a survivor of a bygone era, clinging onto the past and trying to ruin it at the same time. He creates graveyards for it, books upon books of forbidden knowledge hidden in the basement of his home. And he burns bridges, destroys evidence, shadows the Vanilla Kingdom and its story in as much darkness as possible. Oh, how hard it is to be old. How hard it is to know, to comprehend. To be faced with the consequences of his actions, time and time again with no escape.
The blade breaks skin. Enough to hurt, enough for a droplet of jam to escape, but not enough to leave a permanent mark. He always starts out like this. Slow, methodical. Trying to descend carefully into the waters, taking a final breath before he drowns.
His existence feels that way quite often. Like he’s in the middle of a lake, trying and failing to stay afloat, water burning his lungs and yet he stubbornly refuses to reach for the shore. Every time the tips of his toes find surface, he pushes himself away from it, returns to the deep end, tells himself that the ground is more dangerous, that there are worms and unknown parasites hidden within the soil. He convinces himself that it’s his fault anyway, for going so deep. That there is nothing to save at this point and he might as well let the waves swallow him whole.
He shifts his grip on the blade, holds it tighter, like a scalpel, precise. There is no room for error, not even when indulging in the most vile parts of his psyche. There is never room for error, not for him, not since he’d earned the piece of rock others called a blessing.
That’s when he notices something new on the wood. A pattern standing out amid the soft, delicate design. Dots arranged in a familiar pattern as he traces his finger over them absentmindedly, turning the blade to read them properly, eyes closed as he focuses on the feeling.
“Not today” it says, a few dots slightly misaligned, all made of a different material than the handle. He cannot quite pinpoint what it is, but he can feel the residue of glue, a blemish on the otherwise perfect antique knife.
There is no debate as to who put them there. Only one cookie besides Recluse himself is allowed into the house freely, no matter the consent of its owner. Sometimes he feels like the home itself has gotten accustomed to the presence, the door never quite locking itself all the way, the wards he puts up faltering at the mere presence of the cookie with flowing, soft hair, glittering like the starlit sky.
Still, the hermit is convinced Sage has never caught him in the act. Or caught the aftermath for that matter. He doesn’t remember rolling up his sleeves either, and if he did, the scars would have all been healed by that point. There would be no reason for anyone to assume this specific blade is for anything other than the occasional dubiously safe shave.
And yet the words are there anyway, standing strong under his finger. He sighs, shaky, hands trembling as he puts the blade down next to the sink. That cookie is going to be the death of him. That cookie will be the reason he finally crumbles one day, not from a self-inflicted fatal wound, but from the sheer amount of joy that his body can no longer handle.
He dimly notices his hands flying up to his face, rubbing at his eyes as he hunches over, trying to stop the flow of tears that suddenly threatens to spill. It’s all so stupid. So pointless. So utterly futile. This, too, will end one day. He will be plunged into darkness once more, alone and more broken than he had ever been. There is a flash of anger at the notion. How dare Sage bring light back into his life. How dare he leave reminders of his love, how dare he create things for Recluse to mourn over later.
The emotional turmoil forces him to stand before he even has a chance to process it. His tired legs carry him outside, into the windy darkness, the ground cold underneath his feet as he heads towards the backyard of the shack he calls a home. There lies a circle of runes, filled with ancient magic. A waypoint of sorts, a way for him to travel to different known destinations when his mana reserves are expendable enough. Sometimes he envied his companion. The ease with which he seemed to use teleportation spells. He’d offered to teach Truthless numerous times, but he always refused.
This method works well enough. And he’d hate to let his ancient manuscripts go to waste.
Sage’s room is an organized mess. Books, seemingly scattered haphazardly, were actually in a complex system of their own, stacked against the walls, all arranged in some puzzle Recluse is yet to crack. All he knows is that the pattern shifted at some point, the stacks no longer a maze, but a guiding path, after the hermit had knocked too many of them down in his blind wading through the house. Now, the floor is mostly clean, free of any interruptions, even the coffee table that used to rest in the very centre is now pushed aside, forgotten in favor of serving as another space to rest artefacts upon.
The loud snoring is what guides Recluse towards the bed. He stops when his thigh hits the soft mattress, directing his gaze at Sage’s face as he leans forward, squinting to try and chase away the perpetual fog clouding the picture in front of him. Through it, he can barely make out a line of drool falling from the other’s lips, his hair sprawled all over the bed in a tangled mess, blankets pulled high over his neck, a dark spot forming where the spit meets the fabric.
What a pitiful sight.
Sometimes Recluse finds himself wanting to drive a knife through his chest. To carve him open and put an end to the constant mental torment the other puts him through. Sometimes he wants to choke him until every last breath leaves his lungs, until the other’s eyes roll back into his skull and he lays limp. Maybe then the familiar guilt would overshadow the sorrow.
He takes off his robes, throwing them onto the floor to lie like a writing black abyss. His staff is set carefully against the wall, leaning on the bedside table. Both hands reach out slowly to peel the covers off of the bed as he gets in with a heavy sigh of defeat.
The peaceful moment is immediately broken by the scholar shooting up with a scream, thrashing around as he tries to get the covers off of himself and face whatever threat has just visited him in his sleep. How he’s still alive remains a mystery to the hermit as he simply forces the other back down, wrapping him up into a secure hug.
“Recluse!” Sage exclaims into the fabric of his undergarments, when clarity finally returns to him. Tension immediately leaves his frame, arms wrapping around the unexpected visitor “By the Witches, you scared me! What-” a hand is pressed against his mouth when Truthless pulls away, just enough to glance down at him with a stern gaze.
“Shut it.” is the only thing he says, with far too much fondness lacing his tone. Fondness that Sage seems to pick up on immediately as he giggles, prying the hand away from his mouth, placing a soft kiss on Truthless’ jaw, proceeding to trail down soft, chaste pecks all the way down to his collarbone.
This cookie will be the death of him. The scholar will kill him one day. Either with the overwhelming grief of loss, or the sweetness injected straight into his veins. Recluse hates him, sometimes. For making him even believe in another day, for dragging him into the warm embrace of love, forcing him to depend on Sage the same way he depends on air to survive.
Soon enough the kisses stop. Instead, Sage cuddles up closer to him, arms wrapped around Recluse’s midriff, lips resting on his neck, hot breath tickling the sensitive skin. After a few more moments, the snoring starts up again and he knows the other is back in the land of peaceful slumber.
Sleep doesn’t come to Recluse, it likely won’t come for the rest of the night. There are too many thoughts that plague him, too many urges. To tear, to destroy, to flee and never come back again. But he’d miss this. He knows he would. He would miss the warm body in his arms, he would miss the annoying snores filling the otherwise quiet room. He would miss the gentle words scattered all around his house, reminders that he’s no longer alone.
As Truthless Recluse closes his eyes, basking in the warmth of the moment, he knows there will one day come a breaking point. This won’t last. Either by his own fault, or another’s.
But not today.