Shakily, Fiesi lifts an unsteady hand, raking it through his hair, though it does little to erase the chill left in the wake of Nathan's touch. He reels, grit gathering under his nails as they scrape stone. Perhaps he should pretend he didn't hear. Perhaps all the false screams could've made him deaf. Stars, he wishes he could laugh at his own stupid, roundabout thoughts, still persevering in whizzing their circles as if there might be some easy escape, some snap of the fingers that summons the end. His energy must be drained in fuelling them, for he can't move.

"Kill him!" Nathan calls from behind, and Fiesi flinches into the ground. His friend's voice has never sounded less like his own. It slithers, flicked out in hissing syllables, catching on sharp teeth and adorned with flecks of venom. "Now, Fiesi," he adds, sneer gliding through the name. "Do not bore me."

Eyes wide, Sarielle jolts to her feet. A protective arm flies out to shield her father. Some kindling of offence sparks deep in Fiesi's chest, a twinge of hurt that keeps him from meeting her gaze. Does she really think that little of him? He must look like such a pathetic, desperate wreck. His flame snaps to the surface, skipping between fingertips, lending him his last sliver of strength as he pulls one leg underneath him, balancing on one knee. He keeps his eyes on his blood-splattered hands.

"No," he says, voice quiet but there, crackling in his throat. "I won't."

Nathan's sigh prods at his senses, drifting nearer. "If you insist."

A knife latches under his chin, the flat of its obsidian-flame blade flush against his skin. It burns. Teeth clenched, he forces himself to remain still, a scream bundled up at the back of his jaw. The blade's edge cuts a stinging line. He fights not to swallow, holds his breath, arms trembling with the effort of keeping him suspended in this position.

Metal grates against metal. His gaze flicks up to catch Sarielle yank her sword free of its hilt, the curved blade cutting an arc through the air as she hefts it aloft. The way it tips in her grip is clumsier than usual, though that lessens as she adjusts, and her gaze is lit with focus. "Nathan," she snaps, "I know you're in there, but if hurting you is what it takes to get you out, then I will not hesitate. Get the knife away from Fiesi."

Nathan's scoff trails into a laugh, less triumphant and more sprawling, disbelieving humour. He grabs a clump of Fiesi's hair, edging his neck a little further into the blade. His lungs are starting to throb. He cautiously hisses a inhale, wincing.

"I mean no offence," Nathan says, tone swaying side to side, "but I highly doubt you could hurt me with that metal fang of yours. My fangs are much, much sharper." He leans forward, flashing his teeth in demonstration, then moves so close that his head hovers over Fiesi's shoulder. "I asked you to choose, did I not? One or the other."

Sarielle points her sword at him, arm stretched out straight and shaking. Her mouth opens and closes. The powerlessness is written all over her face, and Fiesi can't help but wish he'd found a way to toss her away from all of this before it happened. She's brave as can be, but she has no place here. The burns on her arm are shining proof of that. This world of fire and magic she was supposed to live without is going to kill her, and it's his fault for dragging her into it. He stares until she meets his gaze, and gathers all the apology he can scrape up, hoping she can see it in his eyes.

This was always my burden to bear, and mine alone. An odd sense of calm flits through him with that simple thought, loosening the strings tying his lungs, slowing the race of his heart. That's what being the hero always was. Save the world, and save it alone, so that no-one else has to suffer its pain. Rigel convinced him that heroicness was one of grand desire, a wish to have all eyes turned his way, but it never began that way. All he wanted was to find a way to stop running. To make his suffering worth something, and to take the pain, to divert it, to protect those who'd never failed as he had and deserved better.

"You won't kill me," he says, keeping the words as tight as possible to lessen the chilling sting of the knife. "Not for good. You said so. You'll bring me back."

Nathan chuckles, face sliding into view, black scales glinting in the corner of his eye. "Over and over and over. I am so glad you are learning."

"So do it."

The knife flinches. It mirrors the jerk of surprise that passes over his expression, lowering the corners of his mouth. A frown nestles into place.

"Do it," Fiesi repeats. He forces himself to hold Nathan's gaze, distantly feeling for Rigel's absent thread, clinging to his flame to remain anchored. Not that staying in the present particularly matters right now. These words can be for any version of Shaula's projection, any scrap of the persistent darkness he's been haunted with in so many dreams and sleepless nights. They've all held him prisoner for far, far too long. "I don't care," he says, the growl grating between his teeth, spiky in his throat. "I can take it."

Nathan raises an eyebrow, lips quirking. "Can you?"

Of course not. Everything about this is a lie. His insides are a tangled mess, all dizzying corkscrews and weeping aches and pooled ashes, his stomach a hard, hollow lump. He's cold all over and desperately afraid. But liar is one step up from coward, and it's all he has left. This is the only way.

"Yes." He narrows his eyes. "I'll take anything if you leave the Cormé alone."

The statement has the texture of an icicle, hanging in the air between them, dripping down his spine as its muted echo steadily melts away. He doesn't shiver. A smile is a burden of its own, balancing awkwardly on his lips as he tugs it on, shaky and crooked, but he refuses to let it slip. Failure can have a bright side, too. At least this way, the attention is on him and not the rest of the world.

"I see." Nathan flicks his knife back towards him, and it splits into flailing strands of fire, circling the finger that thoughtfully taps his chin. "Oh, you are cute." With the titter of his laugh, Fiesi's surety crumples. "I suppose we are due a change of pace. Keeps me on my toes. Thank you, Fiesi."

With a final tap to Fiesi's nose, he rises from his crouch. His fingers are alight and wriggle with tremoring anticipation at his sides. He steps towards Reuben and Sarielle, hand stretching out in invitation, and realisation plunges dread into Fiesi's gut. He struggles to get his feet under him and fails, gasping in serrated breaths he suddenly realises he's starved of. He clamps a hand to his bleeding neck. I'm an idiot, he thinks dully.

A similar panic whirls into Sarielle's movements. She throws out her arms, blocking Nathan's path to her father. "No," she snaps. "You've done enough."

Nathan gives an amused snort. "To think that this is enough. How simple you are." Seizing her injured arm, he tosses her to the side. Her scream is wrought with pain. Panic leaps in waves, pushing Fiesi to scramble with frantic haste, finally stumbling to his feet. He swallows hard, stomach rolling like he's caught at sea.

Yet Nathan ignores them both, perfectly content as he drops to one knee in front of Reuben, lifts the man's chin, examines his torn nobleman clothing and the cuts and bruises that poke through. Reuben's face contorts in a stretched-out wince, jaw set and eyes screwed. He hardly looks like himself at all with deep grey circles carved beneath his bleak eyes and a solemn silence clogging his expression where stupid, senseless, hopeful cheer should reside.

Jittery flame pops and crackles at Fiesi's skin, jarring enough in its contrast to the endlessly cold air to sear his fingertips as it breaks free. He sways as he steps forward. "Stop." He curls his fists. "I said you could have me."

Nathan lets out a long, heavy sigh. "Your cooperation is no fun at all." He twists to flash a knowing grin over his shoulder, inviting Fiesi to approach, goading him to play whatever sadistic game has sparked the twinkle in his starless eyes, then returns to probing Reuben's face with the serenity of a child and his doll. "Empathy." The word rolls with a foreign lilt, each syllable tasted with care and popping out detached and slow. "That old human weakness."

"Let go." Sarielle's voice rumbles, a mess of fear and fury. She gets only one foot flat on the ground before the lurking shadow of a soldier puts a boot down on her burned hand. A grimace screws her expression, her lips trembling, her glare dampened but still fighting to remain.

Fiesi wants to simply shout at her to flee while she still might have a chance, but the words die in his throat. There's no point. That much is clear in her eyes.

Stringy black lines fracture Reuben's chin. They weave a web over his throat, thin as blades, their biting presence slitting the ice in the air. His mouth cracks open, flinching into what looks like a scream. It's deadly silent.

"Please," Sarielle whispers.

"How much pain can a magicless human body endure?" Nathan jerks his hands back, using one to drum on his folded knee in apparent thought. The other still dances with flame, twisting it in awful patterns. Fiery rods twine, just gradually, to ensnare Reuben's arms, drawing them in to be pinned behind his back. "Perhaps a lot? This one does seem to have been tough to crack. I wonder how far those limits stretch before he breaks for good?"

Reuben's arm is jerked sharply inward by a coil of flame. A bone snaps. He seems to be gasping without result, drowning in nothing.

Fiesi takes another step, floor boring into his bare feet like he balances on stilts. Mind and room spinning, he catches Sarielle's eye. Her gaze says the same as her voice. Please. His head is full of pleas. They tug at him with the persistence of many, many tiny hands, fingers clammy against his skin, weighing down his limbs. He sucks in a slow breath, grants himself a moment of closed eyes, buries his internal grasp in scooping up the ashen dregs of his flame, though in truth it's none of that which finally forces him to move. It's the unheard scream that finds his core, dark in Reuben's eyes and riding outward in a wave of that bitter, deathly flame.

Panic is potent as alcohol when it's like this. It heaves through him, but it has its use. He's there before he knows it, clawing at the silver-stained edge of Nathan's cloak to wrench him away and shoving himself in front of Reuben. Nathan's laughter tickles his ears from behind. He sinks to his knees. His heart thunders and his skin tingles, muscles taut as wires, yet Nathan makes no attempt to pull him away. All he feels is the spearing sensation of being watched, probing amusement hooking shame to the surface. Even with his flame whirling around him, stretched in a desperate shield, is no meaningful threat. It's all still just a game he's playing into.

Reuben's pain remains cold and bright, too. It wraps Fiesi in a shivering blanket, strong enough to have a taste. When he touches a shaking hand to Reuben's chest, counting the beats of the erratic pulse he finds, Reuben doesn't even flinch. His eyes are unfocused and hardly dredge up recognition at the sight of him. The pearly white of a bone sticks out at his elbow. It's untouched by the web of darkness that now clambers over his bound wrist, creeping slower and slower, each jagged crack deeper than the last.

Fiesi's hands jerk this way and that, fretting, aimless. He can't fix this. How can he fix any of this? His flame is struggling to fasten stitches over his own wounds. And healing a Cormé -- or another person at all -- is both impossible and wrong. It can't be done.

That pain belongs to him. No-one else should have to suffer, but the world is deaf to that demand.

The room wheels again, and he keels forward, panting, palms slapping against the floor, fingers pressing tight into the stone to keep him awake. His gaze's focus is dizzying in itself. It darts to each of Reuben's wounds, craving control and knowing it is far, far out of reach. Bile burns the back of his throat. Maybe unconsciousness would be a respite.

Respite. If he can't fix it, he can deliver respite.

He swallows hard, lifts his head and shoulders up with the strain of hefting a ton of bricks, and presses a hand to Reuben's chest. His fingers wade through folds of cloth, traversing the lapel, knocking against a line of buttons, before he finds the pulse again. The heart, thumping on with a faith and determination no other part of the body can spare. It's still fighting, even as Reuben's breath gains a rasp, laboured and heavy. Still raw and armoured and very much alive.

Conscious of his own stumbling heartbeat, Fiesi grits his teeth and calls to his core's warmth. It whines as it obeys. He feels the heat rush through his arm and drip out at his fingertips, is painfully aware of what it saps from his chest. He's beginning to doubt his flame will ever warm him again. His body is a drenching cascade of shivers.

Calm laces the warmth. Carefully, steadily, Reuben's breathing starts to even.

Then it jolts.

Crying out, Fiesi flinches back, cradling his hand against his chest. An electric shock skips in the centre of his palm and jars horribly through him. All of it passes in a momentary flash, but he sees it, and the shock of it lingers: doused in searing darkness, flesh sliced into from all angles, frost and unbearable heat and crushing aches mauling both muscle and bone. A rod of lightning pain drags over the underside of his ribs before the connection cuts off. He stares, breathless, thoughts shattered.

"You cannot interfere," Nathan says, sliding into view at the side. He sits down cross-legged, toying with his flame, an empty grin on his face. "You are not strong enough to stop me. Why not watch a little longer? Is there really no part of you that enjoys his sweet suffering?"

Reuben trembles. The barren agony in his eyes now has a familiarity to it; Fiesi's taste was a mere second, and he still reels from its echo. It's far too much for a Cormé. Too much for anyone, really, to bear.

Absently, his head shakes in response to Nathan's question. "You..." He inhales sharply, gathering his splintered voice. "You're sick."

"I am all-powerful." Chin cupped in his hands, Nathan leans forward, playful twinkle in his eyes warped just enough to suggest the feelings churning beneath. "I have existed since the beginning of time. What burns within me is a fundamental strand of this world, one that always deserved to rule."

"You don't deserve anything, Shaula," Fiesi snaps, though anger is as difficult to hold as flowing sand.

Hooked fangs pierce Nathan's lower lip as he snarls. "My right is to everything. The ancestors of yourself and this boy were claimed for our own use, good, obedient tools, but the rest? The Cormé, as you call them? Their birthright is nothing. You are foolish to wish anything for them but destruction. They cause it themselves anyway, do they not? I have observed them from afar for centuries. Do you not tire of their wars, their lust for one another's blood, their unearned self-righteousness and disdain upon the different?" He scoffs. "Parasites."

Fiesi can feel Sarielle's eyes on him. Her nostrils flare in the corner of his vision, her jaw clenching and eyes ablaze. She struggles unsuccessfully against her captor's grip. He hopes it's possible for her to lend him her glare, to direct it for himself at the monster who dares to voice the beliefs of the Tía, to twist them in such a way to highlight their deep-set wrongness. His gut twists, guilt thick enough to swim in his stomach.

To hear his own echo in the monologue of his lifelong monster, his worst enemy. There must be some laughable irony in that, surely?

He takes time picking out his argument, though even that has a guilty tang; the longer this drags on, the more Reuben suffers. "The Cormé are people," he says. "They're flawed, but so am I. They're violent, but so are you. Don't try to pretend there's anything moral about your destruction."

Nathan shrugs, indifferent. "Believe whatever you wish."

Another of Reuben's bones snaps. Fire winds a noose around his chest, constricting.

Fiesi's chest tightens in a far less violent way, much as it still aches. "I don't believe. I know." His voice cracks. "Now stop hurting him. I'll... I'm warning you."

A snorted laugh, one Nathan muffles with a fist. He doesn't bother to reply. His raised eyebrows are enough. His gaze is persistent, flat and endlessly void-like, flickering with carefree mockery swirled with malice, and Fiesi loses the strength to hold their mutual stare. The dim cavern is closing in from all sides, collapsing his resolve. Screams pack into his eardrums. Smoke devours the air in his lungs and scratches his throat.

Good, obedient tools. A tool is useless when broken, after all. A tool can't hold itself together.

A hand knocks against his.

Startled, he looks down to see it belongs to Reuben. His fingers weakly haul themselves up, lacing their hands together. He gives the faintest squeeze. Unable to move, Fiesi reluctantly meets his eyes, bones heavy and weighing him down. There's an earnestness to Reuben's gaze, a small crack amongst all else bleak and hollow within them, a shaky smile too heavy to lift but its light winking to life nevertheless. He dips his chin in a careful, deliberate nod.

His voice creaks as it stutters into words. "It's alright, son."

A lump swells in Fiesi's throat. Tears refuse to come -- they've long since run dry -- but his eyes ache. He can't breathe. His lips crack open to formulate a response, an argument or denial, but choke on nothing.

At least this way, the pain ends.

His thoughts feel stiff, his body not quite his own, but still he delves for the flame. It sparks azure at his fingers and grows, casting a harsh, soft-edged glow over Reuben's face. The dark crimson of his wound swallows it, dripping shadow across his forehead. Biting down on his tongue until it screams, Fiesi thrusts all the shaky willpower he can drag up into his string of flame, hardening it, giving it a point, a handle which slots into his palm like the welcoming curve of an anchor. The memories that flood with it are his very worst, yet oddly comforting, like a pain felt for so long it becomes a friend. He knows this knife better than he knows himself. It's only right it does its job now.

"Fiesi!"

Sarielle's voice, wild, stormy. There's noise he doesn't process in time, and then her hand is tearing at his arm, pushing, toppling him.

The knife collapses. He rolls sideways, movements too sluggish to properly fight her. She grips a fistful of his shirt, dragging him down and forcing him onto his back. Her knee lands on his wounded stomach. Night falls behind his eyelids, flashing in and out, drowning his senses in sludge. He gasps for air and does all he can to persuade himself to keep seeing, not to fall. Just a little longer, he has to stay awake. That's the burden now: feeling it all when some soft, kind part of the darkness offers to smother it.

There's something feral in Sarielle's expression, embellished by the messy state of her curls, the way they frame her face in rough, frothy blonde waves. Damp trails shine on her cheeks. "Don't you dare," she grinds out, though a sob lurks just behind. That continued please.

I have to, he wants to say. I'm sorry. It's the right thing to do, I think. I'm sorry. He'd apologise over and over if his voice would let him, play it on repeat until the apology's waves blurred with the air and painted themselves onto his skin. Instead he reaches up and yanks on her burned arm.

Her yelp pounds in his head fiercely enough to ache. The dry, waxy texture of the injury sticks to his fingers even when he lets go, leering at him in jagged waves of resentment. He tackles her, pins her down, fumbles for that spot over her heart. It almost feels good to lend her his last ashes of warmth, to hollow himself out until the very air prickles with frost. The betrayal that flashes over her face before unconsciousness claims her surely earns him a lifetime of malicious, numbing cold.

He allows himself only a couple of seconds to watch her eyes close, to check her breathing is even and her limbs slack, before he stands. It's somehow less of a chore now. A ghostly mist claims the feeling of his feet against stone and his breath scraping in and out and the beastly, gnawing throb in his middle. He feels perfectly, however, when the knife returns to his hand. Its wispy tip flutters with his heart.

One knee hits the ground, and Reuben is right before him. He stares emptily, serene, waiting. At peace. It reminds Fiesi of someone else, and that thought carries more pain than anything else ever could.

Those painted words finally choke their way out in a whisper, rough on his tongue. "I'm sorry."

Perhaps Rigel would be proud of how quick the blade is to pierce Reuben's heart.

Its thud slows, its fight dying out within the instant, coaxed into stillness. Steady heat fans out to gently suffocate every other organ. Fiesi hopes it doesn't burn too much, or at least that the pain is short-lived. He knows exactly when Reuben exhales his last breath, is aware of the eking life as if it is an axe's blade forced into his stomach. Only when he's sure the man has faded entirely, eyes glassy and unseeing and tinged pale sapphire in his fire's light, does he give his knife a swift yank to remove it. The flaming weapon is already nothing but wisps, swaying listlessly in rings around his fingers before their sparks wink out and the cavern dims again.

Reuben slips sideways. His body hits the ground with a dull thud. Fiesi stares, blood roaring in his ears, silence crashing down hard all around him. His hands are sticky.

The sound of applause ruptures deafening quiet.

"Very good." Nathan's voice glides far too close to his ear, slinking around his throat like it strangles him. "You do have the strength after all."

A bony hand rests on his shoulder. His insides twist, glass shards shifting in his chest. There's grit everywhere: nestled in the nooks and crannies of his bones, mixed with his icy blood, grating over his skin and his nerves and piled in his stomach. It swirls storms. His vision slides out of focus, senses numb and indistinct.

The hand curls, digs in. A growl tears from his throat. He snatches Nathan's wrist and wrenches, twists, until his back slams into the ground and Fiesi is on top of him. He fists Nathan's black collar, knuckles pressed into his throat. Nathan's stomach is crushed beneath his knees. A breathless giggle shakes it, fuelled by Nathan's wide, blank smile.

Fiesi pants, shaky breaths heaving in and out. Exhaustion drags at his muscles. He grits his teeth. Awareness floats lazily in and out, sealing away the rest of the cavern. There's only him and the blood on his hands and the dark eyes he glares into.

Unfazed, Nathan sways his head to the side. "Blame me as much as you wish to, Fiesi. You killed him." He laughs again, like this is all some joke, like time can be reversed and death can be undone without a care. "How does it feel to be a killer? To be like me?"

Anger crackles in Fiesi's chest. He shoves his fist downward, pushing hard enough to choke out that awful laughter. "Don't."

"You wish I would not use that word?"

Of course not, but that word is everywhere. His head is too heavy to properly lift. His flame bites at his insides, stifling, aching. The cold doesn't hurt quite so much. He wants it to hurt. He wants to scream.

"Killer," Nathan sings, the tone of a child discovering a word he's been told not to repeat. "Killer, killer, killer." Over and over. Fiesi's thoughts snatch the sound and bounce it off the walls of his skull in warped echoes until he can hardly make out the real voice. They all crowd around him, every twirling syllable, so incredibly large in comparison to his dying protest.

He barely notices Nathan's hand curl around his wrist, gently teasing his fingers from their grip on his collar. He sits half-upright, propped on an elbow. His touch is soft now, feather-light.

"I hear you are disgraced already," he whispers. "I wonder how much more they will hate you now?"

Fiesi's next breath drowns him. He slips sideways, then falls entirely, mind quieting and pain gliding away. The darkness that soaks him shouldn't feel so relieving.

───── ⋆⋅♛⋅⋆ ─────

I love it when Fiesi T^T

I've been awaiting this scene for a long time.  It kind of did its own thing in the end but I'm glad it came through. Fun huh :D

- Pup