[Would that such a caress could soothe the rawness inside him and lull him to sleep how his mother’s would when he’d wake wide-eyed in the small hours of the night to the snarls and growling of things. Hungry, vicious things restlessly circling their warded home. Would that it could fit the pieces of him back together and make him feel right and whole and wanted, at least for a little while. But it is what it is and it’s all that it can be. He feels hollower in its wake, a lesser, weaker man.
Dracula had been right - that much he will give him.
He remembers Hector had known love once, and it too had doomed him. And yet sometimes, despite how devastating his loss, Isaac thinks his erstwhile companion has come away richer than he ever will be. How could he not burn with envy? How could he not burn with self-contempt for all he had become and all he could never be?
He blinks his eyes clear and from the corner he acknowledges the elf in a quiet farewell, too spent and dazed to say anything more. Then his hands finally remember to tug the hood of his cloak over his head, casting his sallow, tear-blotched face in deep shadow. The dark of night beckons him as it always has and into it he’ll soon steal away and fade unnoticed while Luceti sleeps, crawling into his glorified hole in the ground where he knows he won't be finding sleep. He could disappear forever and no one else would know, he muses. Dawn would break and the world would keep on turning with cruel indifference, but it’d be alright in the end. He’d be buried deep under a mountain of crumbled stone, at rest and beyond reach of what ifs and if onlys, freer than he had ever been in life. He can’t think of a place he would rather be.
There is no leaving with Zevran and slipping into a warm bed, nor can he go back to his hole. He won’t go back. Time’s slipping away too quickly and a stab of desperation pushes words from his mouth.]
Wait. [The urgency is absent from the hoarse murmur scarcely heard above the sputtering of the dying fire. But there’s a sudden sharpness and insistence to his gaze, some small, daring gleam of expectation, and it’s the most he can to do to regard him steadily.] There is one last thing I ask of you tonight.
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Dracula had been right - that much he will give him.
He remembers Hector had known love once, and it too had doomed him. And yet sometimes, despite how devastating his loss, Isaac thinks his erstwhile companion has come away richer than he ever will be. How could he not burn with envy? How could he not burn with self-contempt for all he had become and all he could never be?
He blinks his eyes clear and from the corner he acknowledges the elf in a quiet farewell, too spent and dazed to say anything more. Then his hands finally remember to tug the hood of his cloak over his head, casting his sallow, tear-blotched face in deep shadow. The dark of night beckons him as it always has and into it he’ll soon steal away and fade unnoticed while Luceti sleeps, crawling into his glorified hole in the ground where he knows he won't be finding sleep. He could disappear forever and no one else would know, he muses. Dawn would break and the world would keep on turning with cruel indifference, but it’d be alright in the end. He’d be buried deep under a mountain of crumbled stone, at rest and beyond reach of what ifs and if onlys, freer than he had ever been in life. He can’t think of a place he would rather be.
There is no leaving with Zevran and slipping into a warm bed, nor can he go back to his hole. He won’t go back. Time’s slipping away too quickly and a stab of desperation pushes words from his mouth.]
Wait. [The urgency is absent from the hoarse murmur scarcely heard above the sputtering of the dying fire. But there’s a sudden sharpness and insistence to his gaze, some small, daring gleam of expectation, and it’s the most he can to do to regard him steadily.] There is one last thing I ask of you tonight.