go easy on me.
Aratron was many things, and all of them were terrible. It was not an opinion on whether not he was born this way or if he turned into this terrible beast for as long as his memory could let him, he always existed - a terrible burden on the living and dead and anything in between. There was a reason why people cowered in his presence, why they spoke his name in horrified reverence. He scarred the earth wherever he treaded, Bonechiller they called him, Prince of Sorrows they sang. Good reason, he thought. They have good reason to keep me here, he muses. There is a heavy chain around his neck, a heavier burden on his shoulders. Underneath brick and mortar, he heard the clerics and their priest raise their voices in song, and something inside him churns. He once existed outside of this place, this prison but day by day, month by month, year by year - he lingers in the square room and his existence wanes and wavers until he is certain he is not Aratron, nor Bonechiller nor the Prince of Sorrows. He is merely this, this room with four walls and one door, this chain, this circle of salt and holy prayer that keeps him from breaking the bones of anyone that comes near him.
He hungers - such is the nature of demons. He hungers for a lot of things - many things he didn’t think that he could starve from. He thinks of his garden, no doubt overgrown with weeds, moss and lichen - a testament to his patience that seems to wane and waver with every cycle. They feed him in the most basic sense - mortals, he thinks - when they send him the living bodies, criminals and those decorated in horns and scales and flames, people who are guilty of crimes but not of his. The priests smile, raise their arms in cheer as every kill he marks up another sign of righteousness and retributions. The zealots pat themselves on the back when He kills - their god favors the humans and curse everything else. To be anything else is to be evil and he laments in a foreign way when another one dies by his claws. He grows weary, he grows scarred. They taunt him with whips and chains and radiant fire that mar his skin and he thinks for a moment, every moment that he might die. He’s heard of death before, experienced it second hand every time he flails skin from bone but there comes a harsh truth with torture - that just because he is ageless does not make him immortal. They send in another, expecting him to kill and he watches the other prisoner with a world weary gaze. She does not sit back in fear, or cry or plead. She merely stares. There’s a foreign fire burning in her gaze and it takes a moment for Aratron to recognize it - hope.
One day, they go too far. Perhaps they are irritated that he hasn’t killed the girl. He can’t not yet - she provides too much amusement, and although he wouldn’t admit it - hope. Desire. Emotions he thought he would not experience. She tries to dig her way out, she plans in the dirt and wood. Every time they try to beat her down, she fights back twice as hard. He sees the cracks though in her facade, as the time in between every beating and her eventual rise grows longer and longer. He wonders when she will break. He wonders if he will crumble with her. He is punished for this - they speak their holy spells and hold her down from interfering with swords and chains as they cut into his back and he watches her look at them with spite, with bravery and he finds himself doing the same - hoping, spiting, and they cut into his face. Something howls in pain and it takes a moment as the hot blood runs down his chin, that it’s him. They leave and he can’t even bring his bruised hands and wrists to deal with his broken face. He’s filled with hatred, overwhelming, the sort of emotion he could drown in and then nothing. A touch, hesitant and foreign because it’s not harsh or radiant but merely soft. He opens his eyes, pulls back his head as she pulls back her hand. She waits, like she’s ready for punishment and he waits, waiting for punishment and something clicks. That they are the same. That they are both overwhelmingly, exhaustively mortal. She reaches out her hand and he finds he’s moving subconsciously, yearning for this feather-light touch and he places his head in her hands as she cleans the wound and blood. They stay like this awhile, perhaps even longer. "Aconite." She says, some of the first words ever spoken in this place. "My name is Aconite." He blinks as she wipes away the last of skin and blood. "Aratron." He answers after a few minutes. There is no title, no last name. "Aratron." She tries his name on her tongue for a moment, and Aratron, foolishly, wants to hear his name on her lips again. And Again. And Again. But he doesn't ask to. He merely waits until she carefully removes her hands from her head and settles into her corner of the room. Leaving Aratron to his rushing thoughts and feelings that he had left behind in another life.
Late at night, Aratron finds his hand would find his hand hovering over her back, scared to touch as if he were an infection. As if all the terrible, horrible things that made Aratron would carry over into Aconite. He doesn’t sleep, he just hovers - tries to see how long he can go without touch. Aratron has always reached for something he wanted, hands hungry and devouring - he takes simply because he can, because he could. But at night, he finds himself rolling over to take in the simple form and he just stills. His hands reach out and then he stops himself. He traces the air between them before he pulls back and rolls over again. What is he tempted by? What is he yearning for?
Aratron has never been suited for feelings, and these ones - the ones that curl in his stomach are foreign. He feels infested.
One night, he finds that he breaks it. He touches the small of her back and they both freeze, he can feel the stutter of her breathing before she tries to steady it. He finds his hands tracing bones of her spine, jutting out against tight skin, they trace burns and scars where they have ripped the scales from her skin. She rolls over suddenly and he is unable to pull his hands away fast enough, they hang in the air limp before they retreat back to his side in which case they both roll over, away from one another.
They remain this way, hovering, orbiting around one another. She includes him in the escape plans, he has lost track of how many she has had, how many of them are the same. He tries to teach her magic, cups her hands together so that he can light the flame that is eldritch blast and when the sparking blast appears in the palms of her hands - she emits a laughing gasp, her lips turned up in a smile. Even when it falters and stutters away, she still has that grin - conniving, charismatic.
They put bars between them - unable to understand why they haven’t killed each other yet and room they shared is split into two. At night, they lay with their backs against the bars and in the morning, they have rolled over to face one another. Kindred spirits, Aratron thinks, that’s the word he is looking for. Not Friend, not an ally, not soulmate. Kindred spirit he says and the lie fits well enough that he doesn’t have to squirm when it’s brought up why they remain - orbiting one another. They bond over freedom, magic and plants - at night, they stay awake and he traces the sigils of his kind and when he looks over, he finds her listening - eyes ochre and smoldering.
How long have you been in here, she asks one day as they practice combat forms against the floor. They have nothing to practice with but it makes them both feel better, to weld imaginary swords and pretend they are killing the zealots above. A long time, he answers, unable to look at her in that moment. He has lost count of the days, the moons and the suns that have passed over head. There are no windows, nothing to keep track of the waning days except for the scars that heal and break on his skin. She doesn’t say anything but when he teaches her how to parry, she throws her body into it and every step after.
The torture wanes, they go days without company of the priests. It’s the brightest and darkest of days. They remain in the corners of their room, starving, stomachs growling and caving in but they cover it with conversation as Aconite asks questions and he delivers answers, as they communicate in secret plans and dreams of church slaughtering and what they plan to do with their upcoming freedom. Some days, with her company next to his - knees brushing one another through the space in between - it doesn’t seem so far away.
One day though, one day he explodes.
He can’t even remember why, or what but with this feelings of newfound hope and something else, something kinder something sickly sweet burning in his chest, there ignites some old emotions, bitter and hot. There is no one here to hurt so he turns on her, his only companion. As if she has anything left to give when Aconite herself is a not even a dead man walking, she’s hollow bones and hollow heart, her hair pulled into a bun because it’ll fall out into the wooden floor if she didn’t. Eyes heavy with sleep that never comes, and the scars of scales that the priests pried from her body, of the scars that the priests gave her and then had the audacity to condemn her for them.
Aratron is angry, he’s the wind behind a blizzard, with the kind of ice that cuts into your skin and sticks, a tempest and he spins around on Aconite with words meant to hurt because that’s what Aratron is good at - hurting - and Aconite. Aconite just takes it. She stares up at him as he roars against the sigils on the floor, unable to cut against them without hurting himself so he paces like an animal in a cage. He turns on her, and just throws centuries of torture and fear onto her and she doesn’t even flinch. She takes and takes. Like she’s supposed to. She doesn’t get angry, she doesn’t get sad - those golden eyes just follow Aratron’s movement, her already weathered body taking every single blow, every single word that Aratron is slewing and just taking it, just taking it and fuck, why doesn’t he feel better? Why is the feeling not going away, why is it getting worse. Aratron can’t stand to see her standing there and that’s how the argument ends, Aratron breathing heavily, hands wet with blood - fists so heavy-handed that his own claws have pierced the skin and Aconite, reaching through the bars of their combined cage to hold his broken, bloody hand. “I’m sorry.” Aconite whispers as if its her fault, as if her fault that the holy men chewed them up and spat them out all bones, as if it’s her fault and not his that she is stuck in the dark, hollow place. Wasting away, “I’m sorry” She says, as if Aratron was a person worth apologizing too, as if he was a person worth saving , and his grip on her tightens.
When the priests come back, they come back with a fervor. They are lying down when they burst in - radiant flames burning and they grab her. This time is different than the others, there’s a rage unprecedented in other tortures there is no calm devoutness in their actions. A new emotion rises in Aratron’s lungs and as they grab at his chains, burning him with radiant words - driving the wedge between he has a name for it - panic. He watches mute, like he always does when they begin the torture. They avoid the satisfaction of giving them screams, and Aconite has always snarled, hissed - like a snake caught in weaver’s trap. But this time - this time it’s different. And there’s this layer of panic, and utter fear underneath the bright, the burning hands of the clerics. Aratron, who has forgotten that time exists, suddenly remembers it as he experiences it in slow motion - as he watches sweat drop in dead time, eyes widening, his own hands breaking from the radiant chains and claws gouging into the floor as he tries to raise his broken, burnt body off the floor. He’s too late - he can only watch as they dig their hands into her skin and when she fights back, they raise their knives and dig her eye right out of her skull. She screams, and the first second of it rips Aratron apart, it hurts more than any holy blade, any sun ray. It seems to last forever, echoing over and over in his head. In reality, it doesn’t last long, he can’t hear it any longer than a second because he’s howling over her - but it’s not pain, it’s pure rage, the kind he’s been stewing in for the last few centuries - it’s loud, and dark and animalistic. He isn’t even aware of what he’s done, what he’s doing until he has her in his arms and he’s retreating back to the corner of his room. She isn’t sobbing, she’s just quiet - there’s smoke, and burning flesh and the smell of rust in the air and he realizes he is the cause of all of it. The flesh is falling off of his bones, and it hurts as he realizes he managed to reach past the circle of salt and divine words to grab her. There’s a body, broken on the floor from where his claws had reached into his soft belly and plucked the life right out of him. They leave them there, holding onto one another - breathing heavy in a room dense with the smell of decay. “We can’t survive here much longer.” She says, and Aratron doesn’t look down - doesn’t want to see the mangled face he couldn’t protect, doesn’t want to see the sadness in that one eye. He just holds her closer. “I know.” He replies, and there is a gravity to their words, to their situation that neither wanted to admit.
"I want to go home." Aconite says softly into the hollow of his neck. There is something in the word home - the word is simple, four letters and yet, something lingers on the word. Perhaps it's because there is no home to return to, the home is his arms, holding her against his chest. The home is Aconite's hands, curling softly around his claws. "I know." He answers, bringing his chin to rest on her head.
It is hard to think that anywhere else exists, when they have been staring at the four corners of this room for so long. "I want to go home." He says, repeating her words when the silence becomes too heavy again and he feels her hand curl tight around his bicep. "I know." She says softly.