V M Musings of a Dead Man

[Ezrihel]

The lights of the medical bay were dimmed, dark to simulate a more soothing sleeping experience for the wounded. Raphael had been trapped there for over a week, forced to listen to the weeping cries of the battered and war-torn as he poured over his desk. He was a hunched shadow, lit only by the single rugged work light on the table top. Everything was cluttered, disorganized; paperwork strewn across his work area. He sat, pinching his brow at the chaos of it all, mindlessly dragging his pen across his notepad.

There was a sort of peaceful apathy that came from the war, from fighting. As a medic it was ingrained into him, second nature to have something to do, some constant distraction. Instead, here he was, wasting away in his own little purgatory. During the war silence had been his only sanctuary, now it was maddening. He brushed his fingers past his thick eyebrows and thumbed his temples. The only thing that helped him stay calm was the constant droning murmurs of the various life support machines hooked to the walls and infirmary pods, and the scratch scratch scratch of his idle scribbling.

He was working his teeth over his bottom lip, lost in thought when the quiet swoosh of the med-bay door opening pulled him back into reality. He sat up straight in his chair, adjusting his dress down shirt in the same motion. More than likely it was Commander Meng, here to do her weekly walk through and check up on things. He appreciated the routine and scheduled system she maintained on her ship, and he respected her want to check up on things in person.

She was certainly better than other systemic trash that got thrown through the old military before the civil war, even including her incredible youth. Then again, the Forsaken ones were eager to promote, and there was no lack of mobility with constant death. He held himself back from scoffing at the ridiculousness of the war.

“Good week to you, Commander Meng.” Came his formal, rigid response. “How are things in the world outside of my little purgatory?”

She gave a nod of acknowledgement, “Doctor. ... We have left the system behind. It will be another few weeks until we meet a properly populated, non hostile planet, but it is unlikely we will make any real contact with it. Depending on the extent of pursuit, I expect that we will pass over the next few civilized planets as well. The decision ultimately falls upon Captain Stratos, however.”

She paused for a moment to glance at the patients. “How fares the infirmary? Are there any problems that I can attend to?”

He had remained motionless as she gave her overview, his neatly groomed chin braced against his hand as he stroked his short goatee. He had no doubt that they would be pursued into intergalactic space and then even further still. They were already dangerously close to the edge of the Andromeda galaxy, and the council had long twisted memories that refused to die. They might be chased until the end of their days, caught, interrogated and thrown into some deep dark pit for their defiance. He’d heard the stories while attending over a rebellious noble caught in the middle of this whole thing. The Althaus master had been drug in, battered and half crazed at best, sobbing about the endless void and begging Kashan’ti not to do some horrible thing.

The poor man spent a week staring at the med-bay ceiling and begging his attendees to kill him so he could be free of his sins. On the fifth refusal he’d fallen silent, grabbed an IV stand, broke the top of it off and impaled himself in the stomach. Of course, the wound wasn’t fatal, and he was heavily restrained and kept sedated after surgery.

Raphael felt the bile rise in his throat. Twenty thousand years in a dark hole would do that to even the strongest people. Twenty thousand years only ended by a massive civil war. Twenty thousand years of life and thought needlessly wasted with a beyond archaic form of punishment. That amount of time made his head spin and his soul cringe in fear. What would it be like, to spend two hundred centuries trapped with nothing but your memories and your regrets? To have that much time, stuck self analyzing your every action and inaction, painfully ripping yourself apart at the seams because you can’t change those mistakes?

He shuddered visibly at the thought but didn’t give an excuse to his onlooker. The Sok’ma-tal was needlessly and unjustifiably cruel to political dissidents. Greedy old tyrants to the very cores of their withered grey bones, eating up everything in their path and smashing interesting new ideas because they ‘might pose a threat’ to some preconceived malformed ideal of their perfect unchanging society. A safe society where everyone stays in their own lane and never grows or does something new. A pristinely dead society where a child’s life is preordained, from conception to passing, and they can never escape.

Meng’s eyes flicked towards the ill and wounded, and she asked if the Doctor needed help. He gave a soft scoff- one could easily mistake it for a short lived, dry chuckle, “I’ve put them into a medically induced trance state to speed their healing and keep their anxiety levels as low as possible. It keeps their noises of pain at a minimum, thankfully. Maybe a charismatic speech from the brave young commander would help to boost their morale. ... That wasn’t sarcasm, just so we’re clear.”

Normally he didn’t feel the need to explain himself. Normally though, he was sarcastic- scathingly so- but he respected Meng well enough to try to not be a condescending prick for once. “Morale can be an important tool for healing, surprisingly enough. The medical council of Nev’arei laughed my suggestion down when I first hypothesized it several centuries ago. Of course, there wasn’t a war in progress at the time.”

He gestured to his shamefully messy desk, drawing attention to the still organized stacks of data discs, “I had spent at least a century on researching it when Lucipher decided to plunge us all into chaos. Pity that-”

A groan interrupted Raph’s tangent, and he gave a pained smile. “Ah, it seems I’ve prattled on pointlessly for long enough. Our soldiers must be getting antsy with the anticipation of getting to talk to you face-to-face. They adore you and chatter about your deeds often enough. Honestly it’s quite amusing. I will speak with you later, when our schedules permit, I’m certain.”

~ * * * ~​

They say that in the end the pain fades away to inky blackness. They say the pain and euphoria evaporate into blissful nothingness, filling your form with the ambient warmth of all your teachings and learnings. They always said it was peaceful, casual and intimate, that no one and nothing was able to stop it, or understand your unique experiences with it.

They said that the time spent in the in-between allowed you to reflect on your mistakes and become better. ‘To build yourself anew’ they’d always said. Reformation was a must, life was a precious ideal, and time an opportune tool to carve away the wickedness and correct mistakes. Mistakes, after all, could always be corrected with enough of this time and repentance, they should be corrected, rehabilitated, understood.

That is, after all, what They always said.

What They practiced, on the other hand, was much different.

They sentenced with glinting gleeful eyes, the crooked corners of their courtly lips curled upwards at the delightful prospect of correction. Lithe and frantic fingers gripped their opulent pens with disgustingly enthused energy, signing away lives for the achievement of the idyllic status quo. They cared little for the context of an action, instead applying their time sharpened knife of justice indifferently. They understood, They assured, that there was always a good reason while simultaneously excluding themselves from the system.

There was a good reason for their twisted smiles and cloaked goals. There was a good reason for the secrets and restrictions. There was a good reason for the disruptively lazy way They handled any attempt at internal investigation. There was always a good reason.

After all, in order to join them, one must be of a certain fine breeding. Any lesser and the applicant just wouldn’t understand the glamorous end goals or pathetic desires that They held. They snobbishly selected those that wouldn’t oppose them and violently repressed dissenters that questioned their judgements. With a corrupt hand They snatched the assets of rebellious thinkers and tossed their critics away like refuse and litter.

Disenfranchised, desperate fists banged on closed palatial doors, all the while They lounged on thrones of gilded skulls and broken backs, taking confidence in their complacent allies. It wasn’t long before the oppressed formed an underground movement, but where chaos thrives the evil aren’t known to be far away.

With honey-sweet words He whispered and cloyed his way to the top, kissing the lips of the worn while giving the wicked the most opulent dagger. His very presence spelled the end of an honest objective.

Ezrihel’s fingers slowed, crawling to a stop as his face pulled into a deep grimace. Emerald eyes stared past the screen. One of his hearts fluttered with a twinge of anxiety; he shifted uncomfortably and swallowed with a dry raspy whine. Trembling jaws idly chewed his purple tongue, his head falling back with eyes squeezed tightly shut. The Andromedan threw his arm over his face, as if to hide his agonized expression.

The screen came to life with a series of distorted flickers.

I can’t get the thoughts out of my head I can’t get the thoughts out of my head I can’tgetthethoughtsoutofmyhead ican’tgetthethoughtsoutofmyheadican’tgetthethoughtsout I need help I can’t get help I don’t understand I need help I can’t get help they won’t understand I need help I can’t get help no one understands I’m suffocating stop it stop itstopit stopit I can’t forget oh gods I can’t forget it help me helpmehelpmeIneedhelp

“You are panicking again, Master.” He gasped in a rugged breath, surprised at the crisp voice cutting through his panic. “Your bio-metrics are presently unstable. Should I alert the chief medical officer again?”

“... N-no,” he stammered. “I... don’t need to bother Isra any more than I have.” He gave a pained chuckle, “he hates me enough as is.”

“You are in an altered state of mind. It is illogical to assume that you can take care of yourself currently. I have taken the liberty of alerting Isra either way.”

Ez sat up, staring at the AI’s avatar on the holographic monitor with annoyance. “Why? Why did I even program you.”

“Because you needed assistance, obviously.”

“You... Don’t answer my rhetoric! Ugh, do you even comprehend the idea of embarrassment?” He let his head drop back onto the pillow and let his aggravation drag its way past his teeth in a clenched sigh.

“You programmed me to understand the concept. You never programmed me to care about it.”

He growled and threw his hand across the screen, closing it and muting the AI just as the doors to his room slid open. In walked a neatly groomed dark haired man. His steely eyes gave no quarter as they flicked around the room, studying the sparse details of the living area before raking across the noble. His pressed uniform shirt was pushed up at the sleeves to reveal strong but lithe forearms. His black tie was neatly pinned to the front of the white button up, medals and ribbons decorated his left breast, glinting in the sterile light.

“Althaus,” came the greeting. “P’thaeyl alerted me to an emergency. I see you haven’t hung yourself from the doorknob yet so I take it this is less than imminently life threatening.” Isra pulled up a stool next to the bed and sat down, glancing over a small hand held medical device. After a few seconds he cocked an eyebrow and impatiently glanced between the device and Ez.

“What?”

“Pleasant as always. Do you need a therapist?” The cool, off-handed way that Israphael spoke to him was unsettling.

“A therapist? Are you insinuating that I’m mental?” The assumption made him squirm, or maybe it was the way doc seemed to be analyzing him, like he was some sort of insect at the end of a pair of biceps. Isra moved very little, a painstaking control exuded over each movement. Everything was always decisive, nothing was careless, not a single breath wasted. Clinical to the nth degree.

The very corners of the medic’s lips twitched, Ez wasn’t sure if it was a wry smirk, and in an instant it was gone. He was certain that the doc had heard the offense in his tone. “Hm, no. Post traumatic stress disorders, depression and anxiety are fairly common amongst active combatants.”

“So what? Are you going to psychoanalyze me now? I’d rather wait on that until I can drag myself from this bed. It’d make this room feel like less of a prison.” The noble snorted, staring at the medic as he shifted onto his elbow.

“That’s not really a call the patient can make at the moment. You are high risk still, you do realize that, right? We can’t just have you trying to impale yourself again- by the way, why don’t you tell me about what happened to put you in this sort of... head-space.” The doc crossed one leg over the other, withdrawing a pen from his pocket. He tapped it against the screen of his device and looked at the blond once more.

Ezrihel grimaced, “I’d rather not-”

“You can’t really expect to get better if you refuse to cooperate with the medical staff on board,” Isra interrupted bluntly. “Commander Meng mentioned that we’ll be passing by a neutral system here in a few days, hopefully we’ll be able to land and resupply, perhaps even begin to rebuild if we’re no longer being followed. Don’t you want to be cleared when that time comes?”

Israphael’s azure gaze pinned him in place, like a trapped rabbit. He was backed into a corner now, his expression souring into a sneer of contempt. “Of course I want to be cleared! It feels like you are obsessed with crawling into my head, like a maniacal little devil bent on controlling everything he sees! You always, always do this!” His words quickened and his pupils dilated, but the doc didn’t even bother flinching.

“Is that so? What about me makes you feel this way, hm?” The brunette’s gaze had yet to falter or shift, instead it took on a sharp, gleeful glint.

“Oh, I don’t know, should I start at the top and work down the list or pick the most offensive parts? Don’t- Don’t answer that you semantic pedant. I can’t stand your lack of style nor your lack of social wit, but I guess you don’t care about those things a single bit, do you.”

“No, not at all. My uniforms are crisp and my medals for valor shine, I am well groomed. I hardly need the effects of loud showboating for people to care.” Measured and bitingly calm. The stylus scribbled away on the medical device’s screen, it’s steady rhythm betraying no emotion.

The noble breathed out a growl, bordering on a snarl, through his teeth and threw his hand across his face. “Get. Out. Get out of my room. Now. That’s an order.”

“Under medical surveillance, the chief medical officer always outranks his patients when it comes to issues pertaining to betterment and health. So, no. I will not ‘Get. Out’ and no, that’s not a valid order. Now, tell me-”

Ezrihel interrupted, voice breathy and tired, “gods above and below, why are you intent on torturing me Israphael?”

“Because regardless of our relationship as comrades, and regardless of your personal comfort levels, this is something that needs to be done. Direly. I’m not a fool enough to let you sit here and sulk and kill yourself in my medical ward, obviously. You tried to stab yourself to death with my medical equipment two weeks ago. Do you think the other infirmed enjoyed hearing or seeing that? A grown adult screeching for a taste of death after this war? Their mental conditions are fragile at best and that my wonderful, wise war hero, is why you’ve been on watch since you got back. That is why I’m ‘obsessed’ with getting through that stubborn thick skull of yours and figuring out what in the name of the gods is wrong with you.” He snorted, “I’d hardly compare that to be torture considering what you’ve been through.”

Ez’s cheeks stung, hot with embarrassment. Why should he have to care about what others needed or wanted from him. His whole life he’d been put in a box made of expectations and commanded to fulfill them perfectly. As if many others could begin to understand that feeling, of having freedom- but not really. He gritted his teeth and let out a tense sigh of indignation.

“I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to feel. I just want to return to something vaguely resembling happiness or contentedness or something, anything, from before the war and that hole I was kept in. I want my spouse back, I want to see my child.” The weight of his words seemed to choke him, leaving his mouth and sitting on his chest to crush the air from his lungs.

The doc didn’t respond at first, sitting in contemplative silence for a moment before responding, “If you can work with me on becoming more stable, I see no reason to not allow Eliza to visit you-”

The blond stirred to life, casting a surprised look over Isra. “They’re here? Eliza is here?” His hands clutched the bedspread tightly. “Where are they? Where’s Lilith? Is Eliza with them?”

Isra pursed his lips, “Eliza is here, yes, but Matron was unable to find Lilith. Your child is with Matron.”

The sudden joy drained from the noble’s face, leaving a shocked and shaken husk of an expression behind. He licked his dry lips, “do we... Do we know anything about where Lilith could be?”

“Not that I’m aware of, no. Lilith is resourceful and...” The medic’s words faded into the backdrop humdrum of the room’s electronics. Everything hurt. Everything. His head, his mind, his soul, his wounds. They all screamed their little symphonies of rich, aching pains. His mind shifted restlessly, yet lethargically, unable to stay focused on much but unable to pry his thoughts away from the sickening grief he felt for his Lilith.

His thought-scape slid down into the darkness, wailing murmurs asked where she was over and over again, obsessive and cyclical, they demanded an answer he could not give. They pressed continuously, raking his soul with their desperate little claws and pulling him deeper down into that darkness. From the inky depths snippets of nightmares were pulled to the surface, her face contorted into inconceivable anguish, tears and black war paint leaving silky lines across her visage. A sadistic laugh echoed across the warped landscape of his mind.

All he could remember was screaming and explosive, brilliantly white pain behind his eyes. Something was coiled around him, squeezing the light from his soul, twisting up underneath his skin and burrowing the searing pain into all his organs. It rolled, seizing his muscles and puppeting him to its will.

The feeling continued, for how long, he didn’t know. He had no idea how long he had prayed for a saviour, begging for the pain to stop, or how long he had been trapped inside of himself, within that darkness time stopped mattering. He had nothing he could measure the passage of time against, not even his own heartbeat. Eventually, he worked up the strength to think. Why?

Silence.

He was filled with desperation. He needed to understand why. He needed to understand the reasoning behind his pain and why this thing, whatever it was, was ripping him apart. The resounding silence was his only answer and he squirmed under its burden. He sucked in a sharp gasping breath and violently ripped his mind from the mire.

His emerald eyes snapped up to meet the doctor’s azure gaze. “Please, I’ll do whatever you want, just let me see my Eliza.”

~ * * * ~​

The looming redhead stared at him cynically, ready to spring to action and snatch the small child away to safety at a moment’s notice. Matron had always been... Pleasant in that way, the noble figured. She was cold and calculating, indescribably strong and composed- that was why he trusted her to look after his heir.

“Hello baby~” came his sweet, soft coo. A casual black button down hid his bandaged stomach from view as he picked the bouncy ginger toddler up, holding her on his leg. She gnawed sloppily on a rubbery teething ring, drool smeared all over her face and pudgy hands.

“Oh my goodness, you’ve gotten sooo big since I last saw you Ellie~ You’re gonna grow to be such a strong, smart little devil, aren’t you~?” He glanced up at Matron, “tell daddy, have you given miss Matwon a hard time?”

The soldier-turned-nanny rolled her eyes, but Eliza giggled and nodded eagerly, fighting to keep the ring in her little mouth. “And tell daddy, has miss Matwon been good and nice to you?”

She popped the ring out of her mouth, staring at him with such big green eyes, “yes daddy, I lub mwis matwon!” Her shrill peels of bubbly giggling filled the room and seeped straight into Ezrihel’s soul. His hearts fluttered and felt like they were going to explode in his chest; his throat tightened as he struggled to fight back tears- he couldn’t be asked to hide the huge grin that stretched across his face. She’d spoken! She called him dad! Her little voice was delicate and beautiful, like the pure and unfettered notes of a piano.

He looked up at the ceiling, blinking away stubborn tears before kissing her on the top of her forehead. The last time he’d seen her was months- nearly a year- ago, in the middle of the civil war. All she could do was cry, sleep and eat when he’d handed his family off into Matron’s capable hands. His soul wrenched, tugged in a thousand different directions by a thousand thoughts and feelings. His stomach twisted and rolled sickeningly at the mere notion of ever being separated from her again, no, he couldn’t allow that to happen ever again.

“Althaus, let’s start with something simple. What was the last engagement that you have clear memories of participating in?”

“The last battle I remember was Hevoria IIa-13540.”

“A Pyrrhic victory. Do you remember anything strange or unusual? Anyone or anything suspicious that you think may have attributed to your blackout period or nightmares?”

Ez pulled Eliza close to his chest and looked at Isra. The doctor was busy noting things down and studying him keenly. “Can you even imagine this feeling Isra? Do you know what it’s like to love someone so much that words can’t even begin to come close? That raw, visceral feeling, the primal desire to protect at all costs?”

The doc shifted in his seat, taking a second to ponder his answer. He let out a long, low sigh before starting, “No. I don’t suppose I have ever felt that way towards something other than my research. I’ve contemplated it before, but I don’t happen to be all too impressed by the notion of romance, most people are dreadfully boring or needlessly distracting.”

“What a pity. You could learn something from being a parent. I can’t imagine being alone for all of my life, that would be misery incarnate.” Ez chided, tsking softly while Eliza pulled the electronic bracelet off his wrist.

“Does this have anything to do with the question I asked, Aza?”

The blond visibly flinched at the use of that name, as if he’d been whipped across the back or stabbed in the gums with a needle. “Don’t call me that.”

“Would you like to tell me why you dislike being called that? You used to prefer it.” He leaned forward in his chair a bit. The doctor had a hunch.

Ez was quiet for several moments, lips pursed into a thin line as he focused on the floor. The air in the room suddenly felt tense, as if charged with electricity and waiting for an atom to bump against another and kick-start a lightning bolt. “I have bad memories with that name.”

“Am I going to have to fight you tooth and nail in this therapy session?” Ezrihel would’ve noticed the snark if he wasn’t slowly slipping into the darkness. “If you’re not going to discuss this, then I need to end the visitation.”

Isra went motionless, a cold, piercing stare shot right at the noble. His grip on the stylus tightened ever so slightly as his jaw clenched and unclenched several times. A sharp pain pushed its way behind his eyes and into the center of his brain, smothering and heavy, suffocating with misery and dangerously bitter. It felt like wet wool dragging across raw skin, notes of souring agony blossomed in his mouth like a rotten fruit. It took most of his willpower to not heave on the spot, in fact he might have, had he been able to move in the first place.

All he could focus on was the sickening feeling of impending doom, anxiety dripping into his stomach like the sand of an hourglass. The wet wool squirmed under his skin, even though he knew there was none, he could clearly see that there was no wool or water. There was nothing physically on his skin, and yet his very essence writhed.

Ez was surprised he wasn’t screaming yet.

“You know, you look like your father when you get, hm, how did he usually put it? Displeased?” The aristocrat’s gaze failed to pan up from the floor. “I remember him mentioning how badly he wanted to see you settle down and have a family. Too bad your mom won’t see it either, what with the disinheritance and forsaken reputation and all that wonderful stuff.”

Isra’s knuckles were clenched white when the poor stylus splintered, shattering into several fragments. Green eyes snapped up to look at the medic but the moment had already passed, he was standing now, adjusting his shirt with a politely plastic smile.

“Funny, they don’t make those stylus like they used to. How pathetic. Matron,” Isra gestured to Eliza, “I think it’s time for daddy dearest here to get his beauty sleep.”

Hate as a concept wasn’t strong enough to describe the look Ez shot the doctor as he drew his daughter close to his chest. To have her taken away again, so soon? He felt like he needed to vomit. His mouth crinkled into a sneer as the soldier’s shadow loomed over him, her hands outstretched in request- though her stoic stare made it more of a command that dared him to try disobeying.

He’d honestly prefer to suffer a million years in that soul crushing prison than hand his baby girl over and be separated again, but it was a necessity. What else was he going to do, rampage through the ship hurting everyone in his path because he couldn’t contain his stupid obnoxious emotions? How disgusting and unfashionable.

He’d be able to visit with Eliza again, as long as he played nice with Isra, he rationalized. He had to get better, he had to heal, he had to get his head straight, he had to take command again, he had to be the best leader for his suffering people, he rationalized. His emotions were volatile and unstable like a rabid wild animal just under the surface. He had to contain them, it was unsightly to lose composure. Emotions were messy and confusing and entirely irrational, they couldn’t be planned with or around. They were dangerous things to reckon with because of that, so he pushed the searing breathtaking pain down, deep deep down. There was no rational reason to lose composure and be punished with more restrictions.

The expression drained from his face as he quietly handed Eliza over to the soldier, his eyes sliding away from their faces and to the corner of the nightstand, then to the floor. The floor was safe as long as he didn’t spontaneously develop the ability to fire lasers with his gaze.

At this point, it kind of felt like he might just manage to do so.

The hissing clack of the hydraulic door sliding shut was a sickeningly upsetting revelation of his isolation.

~ * * * ~​

Schickt

The hissing clack of the hydraulic door sliding shut was a welcome revelation of isolation.

Israphael’s azure eyes cut across the small space of his personal office with a dangerous focus. His jaw worked, tensing several times as his teeth ground against each other with enough force to dent metal. He sat in his desk chair, body rigid and visibly tense, raising a hand to his well groomed mouth.

Who.

The.

HELL.

Did that bratty noble. Think he was?

The sound of his breath was uneven and harsh in the cramped space, the jagged noise seeming to add a violent and heavy presence along the barren grey walls.

Did he even understand what he’d done? How far out of line he’d been in his actions? Could he even begin to fathom how much fire wretched inside his soul? How violated he felt?

The doctor let out a cruel growl, his hands slamming down into his desk with savage speed before flinging everything on it to the floor in a single dramatic sweep. The clatter of files hitting the ground was sharp as a knife in his ears and did little to quiet his mind. Instead he stared wide-eyed at his hands. His stomach rolled, silence hanging by a delicate thread in the aftermath. The corners of his mouth pulled into an abyssal frown, lips pursed in a defiant pout of contempt.

’You look like your father.’

His chest swelled with a bitter anguish. He was nothing like his father. Nothing like that absent, cold figure that left him alone for days at a time. He was nothing like that apathetic, awful man. Could that damn aristocrat even begin to understand what it was like to be given a laundry list of astronomical expectations to fulfill before being abandoned and neglected?

Dhirlous and Rilo guide my soul.

He’d felt him, under his skin and inside his skull. He felt fragile and violated, his one sanctuary, his most private and sacred space was brutally forced open and left ransacked as the Althaus sociopath barreled through his thoughts. Little regard was given to the Doctor’s consent with the intrusion, very little pity or respect was afforded to him by the War “Hero” everyone loved and adored.

At least, Raph thought, he’d been able to block him out of the most intimate and painful thoughts that haunted the dusty cobwebbed recesses of his mindscape. He supposed he should feel a small bit of relief over that minimal comfort, though that didn’t stop the anger from fading into shivering anxiety and shock. He could barely shamble together a coherent iota of an idea, he was so strung out. If he was yarn he’d be unraveling into fibers.

Tears sprung to his eyes. He couldn’t get the sensation out of his mind.

He’d get over it, he told himself. He’d get over it and push it down like everything else, every other abuse and annoyance and unique thought he had. He had to be an infallible, hyper intelligent medical professional. Clinical and controlled at all times and always bearing the burdens and stresses that came with seeing people torn apart by cruel weaponry. He had to, no he needed to be perfect.

He grimaced as his stomach turned. Emotions where useless, pointless things. Tears dripped down his face, saline drops splashing on his cold hard knuckles. Why did he have to feel this awful yanking in the seat of his soul? Tense tickling lingered in the bones of his fingers as he swallowed down what would’ve been an audible sob. No one would ever hear or see him cry and live to recount the tale if he had anything to say about it.

Ugh, if anyone saw him like this then he’d be the one impaling himself on medical equipment, though he mused that he’d go for his eyes or something actually fatal and terribly hard and inconvenient to fix. Maybe a fall from one of the hospital’s interior balconies onto a bed of medical drills that would bore through his body with plasma bits, or, he was certain he had saved the blueprint of a decapitation device at some point, he’d just need to find where it was tucked away.

That would be nice and lovely, really. Just for once silence from his idiot brain and all it’s moronic issues regarding self image. The notion of his brain’s incessant bickering and perfectionism being permanently silenced was starting to sound more and more tempting by the second. He could linger on the impossibly sugary ideal of it for several days, running the different scenarios through his mind in the same way a trained butcher could skillfully run their blade over a whetstone, sharpening it to do its job damn well.

Dhirlous only knew what was wrong with his broken mind, truly. Was it some sort of sick and ironic joke that he was a doctor with a curiosity addicted to the concept of death? Who or what had he pissed off in a past life to deserve this? He rolled his eyes, wiping his face dry.

The sadness had turned to cynical irony and he couldn’t help but smile and laugh. How absurd all of this was. He was crying in his office like a weak, stupid little kid. He sneered. How disgusting and unsightly of him to be so unprofessional. His feelings didn’t matter, he had a job to do, and it was imperative that he did every aspect of it consistently perfect.

After all, if he didn’t have his reputation, what was left? Certainly, he assured himself, not his personality. Others squirmed around him, and he couldn’t help but fumble and feel like some weird awkward menacing stone wall around others in casual social settings. He was positive that his peers noticed his strained, forced smiles and hated him for the introversion and aloofness he displayed. He wasn’t really the type to emanate pure flowing charisma like Althaus, he’d been raised to be book-smart, everything else was unimportant.

With a long sigh Raphael turned in his chair and plucked a stylus from the floor. He had reports to do.

~ * * * ~​

“What in the name of Vaidehi and her seven holy realms have you done, Althaus?”

Matron had put Eliza to sleep and returned to give Ezrihel an ear full, much to his chagrin. Her steel grey armor meshed into the dreadful apathy of his room. His eyes slid over her form, focusing neither here nor there but certainly avoiding her face. The weight of her stare was a destroyer class star-ship pushing down on his chest.

“Not only do you cause yourself harm, you refuse- against better judgement- to cooperate with the medical personnel- No, you actively put them in the path of harm. What were you thinking, doing that to Isra? Over a question? Don’t you realize he’s trying to help you?”

He scoffed.

“Althaus,” she threatened.

He smirked. It was a mistake that was soon wiped clean off his face when Matron picked him up by the neck, yanking him off the bed and slamming him into the wall. He winced, growling as he tried to pry her steely hand off his throat. His feet kicked, dangling a good foot or two off the tile floor.

“You seem to forget, Althaus, that my only directive is to preserve the honor and line of your house.”

“Let me go then.” He spat, face flushed.

She tightened her grip, expression as stoic as ever. “If you’re going to ruin your family name then I will not hesitate to remove you from the equation, war hero or not, sire or not. All that matters is your heir. You,” she jabbed a digit into his chest hard enough to wind him, “are disposable and replaceable. Do I make myself clear?”

He sneered and his lack of compliance was rewarded with being slammed into the wall again.

“... Fine...” He croaked, stars and black spots dancing faintly in his vision.

“What was that?”

“I said fine. Let me go before you kill me you big brutish heathen!”

She wasn’t delicate nor gentle when she dropped him like a hot ember. The aristocrat rubbed his neck and coughed, wiping purple ichor from his lips. He was little more than a wounded animal when he glared up at her.

“When Isra comes around again, and you know he will, you need to apologize if you want any hope of getting out of this ward.” She turned away from him, clasping her hands on the small of her back in parade rest. The soldier cast her gaze back over her shoulder, eyeing him without moving, “I expected better from you, Althaus.”

The corners of his mouth dug into his face, pulling his flawless skin down into the expression of scorn as he stared at the blood on the back of his hand. Another temporary crease formed between his brows, threatening to mar his vanity.

“If I’m such a disappointment to you, why don’t you just kill me then. Get it over with already, clean my apparent mess,” he nearly hissed, “from your hands, if I’m such a bothersome hassle for you to put up with.”

Her blue eyes studied him for a long, dreadfully silent moment; his assertion and desire to die was strong enough to be its own feral, ink-black creature. She rested her hand on the door’s control panel, commanding it to open. It was only then that she decided to humor him with a frigid response.

“Suicide is nothing more than the act of a coward who refuses to live with the weight of their sins.”

For the first time in a long time the bratty aristocrat found himself at an utter loss for words, so much so that he hardly noticed the near-silent hydraulic wheeze of the door sliding shut behind his antagonistic ‘keeper’.

 

[Ezrihel]

Ezrihel growled. Thick purple ichor oozed from the wicked wound gouged into his upper arm. He panted as he leaned heavily against the wall, catching his breath in the chaos of the dark hallway. The cacophony of pounding, rushed footsteps created a haphazard backing choir to the emergency siren’s shrill screeching. He sucked in a sharp breath as P’thaeyl worked to override the busted lockdown protocols. Plasma burns ate nasty pockmarks into the alloy walls of the corridor, devouring the metal like acid on skin.

Red guide-lights flashed to life on either side of the walkway, illuminating bodies and near faceless forms alike in brief flickers of crimson. Seconds felt like hours grinding away. “P’thaeyl-”

“I’m working on it.”

“Work faster, damnit!” Came his tart response, hissed through his teeth in impatience.

An intruder rounded the corner, their visor casting an eerie lime green light across the chest and shoulders of their powered armor. The aristocrat ground his jaw, no doubt the shock troop had noticed him plastered against the outside wall of the armory. His suspicions were confirmed when the newcomer pressed the uplink on the side of their helmet. “Althaus located.”

It was improbable that the soldier would allow him to get inside and retrieve his own armaments for a ‘fair fight’. As if the council even knew what a fair fight was.

Not that it mattered as the troop lifted their weapon and aimed at Ezrihel’s chest. No time! He dove across the hallway, narrowly dodging a searing plasma blast from the gun. His landing was muted by the cushion of a comrade’s fallen body. Frantically he worked to liberate the corpse of its worldly possessions. His lithe fingers were quick to find and loot a cartridge of ammo. Great, came his only thought as the soldier stepped forward. Unknown viscera squelched in wet protest under plated boots. What was he going to do with only ammo? Push the bullets into his foe manually? His green eyes darted around, trying to figure out any possible foothold he could get against his enemy.

“P’thaeyl, any time now would be just great!”

He chucked the cartridge of plasma bolts right at the shock trooper’s visor with the desperation of a soon-to-be-dead man, and rolled into a shallow alcove on his right. For just a brief instant the enemy’s aim faltered off the blond, a snap choice made to ensure the cartridge was not a grenade. That instant was all Ez needed; he closed his eyes and with nothing more than a bird-like dip of his chin the outside of the ammo crinkled with a metallic shriek.

Schwi-BOOM!

A brilliant flash of scorching white lit up the hallway and the fair aristocrat seized his chance, kicking off the wall and tackling his blinded opponent to the ground. A sharp static hiss rung in his ears as he locked himself into the struggle for dominance. The Trooper was fast, but he was slightly faster and managed to clamber on top before they could regather their wits. He grabbed them by the neck, savagely slamming their helmed cranium against the ground once- twice- nearly thrice before a heavy elbow smashed into his beautiful face and sent him reeling back on his haunches. Tears welled up in his eyes as he wrenched the back of his hand across his mouth.

Ezrihel’s nose was broken, no doubt; it gushed hot violet-blue blood down his face like a busted faucet. The noble sneered, letting out an uncharacteristically feral snarl before diving back atop his foe. No one would get away with damaging his flawless visage scot free, and he still had this bastard infiltrator pinned under his hips. The guide lights flashed to life again, the contrasting red glare framed the burnt and flickering green visor screen, and painted the aristocrat’s face with nightmarish shadows. In the fray of tangled limbs fighting desperately, he was consumed by a sour, bitter rage- or was that just the taste of his own blood running down the back of his throat?

The premise of his reality was brought back into exquisite focus as the barrel of a pistol shoved against his side. For all his reflexes and speed, he still found himself unable to react fast enough. His eyes tightened and his midsection spasmed violently, a wretched cough forcing him to spit up blood. He gripped at his side, what was left of it at least- and was bucked free of his domineering perch. Ez tumbled backwards to the floor, landing on his back amongst a couple of his fellows’ corpses, his shallow rapid panting came in pained hisses as he steeled himself for what was to come.

The soldier rose to their feet with a staggered effort and shook their head like a wet dog. They bent to pick their plasma rifle from the floor with one hand, touching the back of their head with the other to check for blood. In dead silence they turned to face him, visor still strobing like some sort of shitty 1980’s TV signal. The beaten aristocrat seemed to wince with the thud of each step that closed the distance. The cold, uncaring sole of their boot greeted Ez’s chest, pinning him to the floor.

“They-ey worked’d us up big time-ime for this, but you’re’re pathetic-c Alt-t-hauss.”

In the grand scheme of his life, his total time of existence, he seldom found himself staring down the literal barrel of a gun. Let alone the gun of a warbling, damaged toaster of a shock trooper. He’d be lying to himself to not admit that things had really been failing to go according to plan around here in recent times. He groaned as they bore down on his chest with more of their weight, and gritted his teeth. He had to do something- anything! He couldn’t wait around for P’thaeyl anymore, they’d had enough time to fanaggle the overrides, and now it seemed like his time was up.

“W-what? No last words for the war general?” He rasped out, a slight smirk hidden behind the inky gore that covered his face.

“N-n-n-oh,” suddenly the soldier tensed up, their entire body seeming to go ridgid. Slowly their gun was lifted, a visible shuddering racking through their arms. Ezrihel glared up at them, watching intently as they struggled.

“It seems the council still didn’t teach you respect with all that training.”

The pressure on his chest lightened as the trooper fruitlessly tried to stumble away. They jerked their head back and forth in rapid, nearly rabid motions, still struggling against their own hands. Ez pushed their boot away and weakly sat up against one of the metal struts supporting the wall. He clutched his gaping side despite the fact that a jagged splinter of bone had sliced the palm of his hand open. He grimaced, though in pain or disgust it was hard to say.

“You know what I do to disrespectful curs trying to punch above their station and rank?” The deadly end of the firearm was now fully turned against his opponent. Their finger curled around the trigger-

THWACK

The noble blinked as his foe crumpled to the floor, P’thaeyl stood behind them stoically, the butt of their gun still raised from the clobbering they’d just doled out. If he was surprised he certainly didn’t show it.

“What in the name of Vaidehi took you so long?! You know I hate having to resort to-”

“Such tactics. Yes I know. The ship was not secured. I had to lay waste to a few particularly ambitious AI attempting to infiltrate our systems.” The AI construct paused for a moment, scanning up and down the hallway. No doubt it was tallying the casualty count. “How injured are you, Master? Can you stand, or do you require assistance? I am obligated to remind you that it is imperative that you do not allow your pride to color your answer.”

“You could start by getting me my damned gun.”

 

[Ezrihel]

Forty-eight hours.

That’s how long it took for him to recover. Forty-eight hours sitting buck naked in a pod filled to the brim with a thick goopy slime known to his people as Ma’kohv.

Ezrihel never missed a chance to tell Isra just how much he hated the sensation of Ma’kohv. Sometimes the Doctor wondered idly how difficult it would be to get away with ‘accidentally’ disconnecting the aristocrat’s healing pod, just how much trouble he’d get into if he was caught. He’d certainly be thrown into the brig, and have his ability to practice stripped, along with all his clearances getting revoked.

Then again, the aristocrat had gotten a massive hole blown in his side. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too unbelievable that the wounds and blood loss where too much for the noble to bear and survive.

Israphiel sighed as he carefully logged the full extent of Althaus’ stay in his medical wards, filing the information away into the Andromedan’s patient entry. The dark haired doctor could only hope that the aristocrat would be able to work out all his fury and bitching in the interrogation room. He was certain torture would set the inquisitor’s mind at ease for once in the past three cycles (roughly thirty-six thousand hours, or just over four-point-one-something in terran solar years).

The medic punctuated his own thoughts with the sharp click of entry submission. He would really hate to be that prisoner right now.

~ * * * ~​

The polished black heels of Ezrihel’s boots clacked softly against the metal plated flooring of the holding cell. His appearance was flawless, an exquisite defiance of the savagery inflicted upon his beautiful form by the squirming little black-clad worm in front of him. His perfect nose was righted and his hair pulled back into his signature high ponytail. A fringe of pale ashen blond bangs cascaded playfully over his forehead as he rested his chin in his palm and leaned back into his stiff bolted-down metal chair.

This is certainly not comfortable at all.

It had taken him several moments to compose himself before even entering the cell. A smug smirk danced its way across his mouth, playing pretend for the tumultuous sea of anger that welled within his bosom.

The shock trooper had been taken care of to the most basic extent; all their gear stripped away and forced to wear rough hewn black robes, with their hands bound to the chair by military grade stasis cuffs. Ezrihel had made it expressly clear that he didn’t want the prisoner being nourished in any way whatsoever. They were to be kept alive and tightly secured. Incompetents were warned to stay away from the brig unless they wanted to get very well acquainted with the airlock ejection system.

The noble’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “I hope they trained you well, and I hope you read their file on me before taking this suicide mission. In fact, I’ll be pretty damn offended if you haven’t, so don’t bother lying and answering no... That would be very bad for you.”

The prisoner stared through him, their blue eyes focused on some point unspeakably far behind him. He swallowed a growl growing in his chest. “I wonder how they convinced you to take this quest on, hm~? Did they offer to pay you in vast sums of comforts, provided by priests of Vuelia? What about a promise of epiphany bestowed on your brow by one of the night-deities? Hn, no, you don’t seem the studious type... much more of a ‘follow orders unflinchingly and without thought’ type, yes~?” His snark was punctuated by a sneering chuckle.

“Or- let me guess! Are you an ex-heretic like they branded me? Did they steal you away and lock you in unfathomable darkness until you agreed to bend to their will?”

Again silence and an unwavering focus on that distant point. Ezrihel sat up in his chair and leaned forward. A theatrical sadness adorned his expression as he studied his would-be assassin’s sharp, tanned face.

“Ah, I see. What is this, their stonewalling technique? It doesn’t matter. I will enjoy thoroughly breaking you in every aspect, just like they tore me apart. ... So I will ask you this just once, bullet-fodder: are you willing to die for your council?”

“I am.”

“Ha, so this nameless soldier can talk! Well you are certainly not making this easy for me now, are you~? That’s okay. I’ll make it fun for me darling, don’t you worry one bit.” Ez uncrossed his legs and folded his hands neatly in his lap.

He knew it would be a needlessly lengthy and pointlessly fruitless endeavor to use physical means to bend the prisoner to his perspective. No, he knew they’d had too much training for that to be effective. He would have to trend where he normally despised going- but today he was willing to make the moral and ethical sacrifice, oh, more than willing to, he’d admit.

The mental probing started relatively gently with a jab here or there to needle his foe’s defenses. He took his time to fully encircle the rival mind-space with his own, to completely inundate them until there was nowhere left to escape as he continued his inquiry. He pushed harder with his mind, seeking to crack through and pull them wide open. Methodically the aristocrat continued his machinations, but there was a bitter seed deep inside of his soul that had taken firm root. This cretin in front of him was nothing more than a filthy worm, a disgusting larva of the decaying Empire.

He was tired of being subject to the whims of such a disgraceful collective of destructive and oppressive status-quo warriors.

The captive’s face twitched.

Ezrihel was tired of being their prisoner. He was tired of being a pawn, an object to be used and tossed away. He was sick and tired of his life being ripped apart by those persistent bastards.

The prisoner’s head jerked, the veins and sinew of their neck bulging. Blood began to drip from one of their nostrils.

The noble clenched his jaw. They would not make his precious little Eliza von Althaus a war orphan. The vision of her tiny face smudged with desperate heartbroken tears was the final push- seething rage welled up inside of him, just a trickle at first before the dam of his soul broke. He rode the veritable tsunami of emotion, directing it straight down into the mental defenses of his captive like a cruel deity, punishing the wicked. The steely walls of his well trained prisoner crumpled under the onslaught and he rushed in, flooding the poor sod’s mind. The color drained away from their face and they let out a long terrible cry of agony.

The inquisitor couldn’t help but lick his lips in vengeful anticipation.

Make them scream, make them suffer Ezrihel, it is your duty.

He followed the command with little hesitation. He would get what he needed, even if it left his prisoner nothing more than a broken husk. He batted away several attempts to force him out, as if they were only obnoxious vines before a machete, and forced them into rigid compliance. Raw unfiltered emotions of panic, terror, and pain washed over him and he paid them little heed except to feel pleased with himself.

First, he would steal from them their name and identity. He rifled through adolescent memories, memories of love and family and internalized self-monologues. They had called themselves Jaoel, and were an ardent worshipper of Matroness Vaidehi. They prayed whenever they ran across struggle or strife, and had been honor-bound into joining the Imperial army at a youthful age. Jaoel had trained for centuries to hone themself both mentally and physically, and took great pride in having been promoted into the Deep Corps. This was their tenth classified operative mission with the Corps, and their squad had been given just under fifty days to prepare and arrive in the theatre of war.

Jaoel’s mindscape was marked by the countless imprints of their deepest love, an old flame who’d grown apart from them once they ended up on near indefinite military duty due to the so-called “War of the Forsaken”. They hated Ezrihel with such deep seated conviction and malice that his psyche couldn’t help but sting. They personally blamed the aristocrat for their romantic embers turning to nothing more than ashes. The Council saw him as nothing more than a villainous archetype, a selfish agenda pusher with no real moral leg to stand on and an envious spiteful noble who wanted nothing more than power.

Deeply entrenched visions of state propaganda flashed into awareness. Jaoel thought the slave species fit to remain in their place and felt retching disgust about the idea of personally mingling with such lowly creatures. Jaoel thought the inquisitor a remarkably filthy sort of slave-lover- after all how could such a man be good if the Council had imprisoned him for so long? Longer ago than when even Jaoel had first been born? It was nonsense to believe any other narrative. The noble was nothing more than an antagonistic force seeking to destabilize the Empire and Council. Things were good because they had followed eons of tradition, not because they constantly sought to reinvent the wheel and turn society and economy on its head.

Ezrihel hadn’t noticed the hateful scowl etching itself into his expression as he concentrated. Personal offense was deeply taken, and the darkness dwelling in his soul whispered subliminally in his mind. It whispered how relieving and pleasurable it would be to squeeze the life from their body, to crush their throats so they could never speak their harsh words into reality- as if by speaking the idea aloud they were casting a curse on his very existence. It would feel so sublime to punish them for daring to drag his name, daring to purposefully misconstrue his morality, as if it were some sort of alien idea up for debate. Ezrihel was doing nothing more than following Vaidehi’s teachings to their logical conclusion, and the logical and rational conclusion was that all life could possess an inherent value, sacred to the divines.

Ezrihel had given the slaves relatively common knowledge to his people. He had not given them any sort of divine armory, no instead he’d shown them how to work metal ore extracted from the earth into a moldable form in the influence of his god Fityx. Knowing that they ran the risk of using the knowledge against each other, he also taught them how to forge shields for defending themselves. To women of the slave race, he taught the blessing of Anva, of beauty as an enticement to love and flattery as a wise and witty tool of politics; he taught them how to paint their eyelids and lips all shades of the divine rainbow, and how to preen before their reflections. A tool for a tool, tit for tat to help balance out the growing cultural disadvantages each faced.

He had not thought those things important enough to earn himself the disdainful title of Heretical Zealot. Ezrihel raked through the next set of memories ruthlessly in cruel retribution. Jaoel had been sent to snuff out his and his daughter’s lives. The Althaus family had been deemed tragically unfashionable, and simply had to be cut from the catalogue of living Andromedan soul-lines. There was no other way for Imperial society to rest at ease again because as far as most polite high society thought, Ezrihel was the spark of spiritual decay among their people.

But he knew all that. He’d lived through all of that.

Finally he closed on the ultimate goal of this interrogation: military locations, distance, and possible insights on their tactics post-fracture. These memories he tore from Jaoel’s mind, uncaring to just how much it would damage the captive. Each instance sent them into a screaming fit, as if their very flesh was being stripped away from the bone. Purple blood from Jaoel’s ears, eyes and nose had long since formed a shallow puddle on the floor under their chair. They shuddered and quivered, their muscles twitching to an unknown rhythm.

Having taken everything he needed from the assassin, Ezrihel withdrew from Jaoel’s mind, dusted his lap off (as if dust could even settle on him in such a clean ship) and stood. His captive had gone completely limp without him dwelling internally, their head hanging low enough for their chin to rest on their breastbone.

The noble lifted Jaoel’s chin with a single black-gloved hand. “Do you still wish to die for your Empire?”

Their half-lidded eyes only managed a hazey, fuzzy focus, but Ezrihel could still feel the bitter ember of hate held close in their soul. In a final act of defiance, the captive spat a hock of half-congealed indigo blood right in the inquisitor’s face.

He didn’t even flinch, in fact his expression of outwards indifference melted away into a misplaced grin. The aristocrat’s hand slid from Jaoel’s chin down to their bare neck. “Die for them, then.” Came his harshly hissed whisper, and he squeezed with all his strength until he both felt and heard that awful popping crunch.

 

[Ezrihel]

An eerie harmony echoed across the vast, empty place that Ezrihel found himself, and seemed to thrum through the air. A soft steady ticking-snap sounded in the empty, melding into the sombre vibrato. His entire soul resonated in the melody with a gut wrenching accuracy, his emotions coming in violent crashing waves of colors and impression.

His darling Lily, memories of her face were nothing but warped images and twisted anguish. A thousand infinite lives stretched before him and a thousand compounded sorrows threatened to overthrow his fragile composure at a moment’s notice. Every inch of him was uncomfortably hot and cold at the same time, every fiber restlessly anxious and lifelessly rigid with tension, he wanted to sprint as fast as the wind but found his legs made from begrudging lead.

Stuck. Frozen. Helpless.

He was powerless to stop himself from crumpling to his knees when her agonized crying tore through his mindscape and left him ravaged by it’s terrible misery. Her wails shook him to his very core and left him nothing short of sickened.

He screamed her name out into the nothing. He screamed and cried out for her until his throat was just as raw and ragged as his wilted soul, and he stumbled aimlessly through the dark in search of her. Her voice was always just too far, the scent of her perfume faint and going stale, the shadow of her form barely flitting past the corners of his eyes.

He screamed until he found himself being roughly shaken into consciousness. Israphael was standing over him, hands on the noble’s collarbones and a monochrome medical tablet pinned to his side. Ezrihel flinched, recoiling from the medic to sit up against the frigid metal wall.

“You were screaming, Althaus.” Isra answered, keen to notice the growing look of apprehension and discomfort on the aristocrat’s face. His tone was even, flat, sterile.

A frown deepened on the corners of the blond’s mouth, his eyes sharpened into slits as he looked at the doctor. “So what. These rooms are sound proof. You’re not the type to bother over a nightmare. You are an incredibly far cry from any sort of therapist, Isra. Don’t you have nurses for that.”

The blue eyed man sighed, exasperation and exhaustion plainly obvious in his body language as he sat in the observation chair. “Yes, and I am your doctor. We’ve gone over this a thousand times, I have direct orders to observe you and make sure you recover. I needed to make sure you weren’t screaming bloody murder because you’d torn any of your internal stitching.”

“And they couldn’t have picked anyone else,” came the grumbled response.

“You know, for a so-called charismatic noble you have some of the worst manners I’ve dealt with this side of the war.”

“Well you have an awful bedside manner as a doctor, Israphael.”

“I’m here to heal your flesh and body- not hold your hand, Aristocrat.”

Ezrihel snorted dismissively, turning his head away with the grace of an offended feline. He supposed some people would always be sour fruits.

The doctor tapped on his tablet. “You know I’m the best medic you have this side of the divide, Althaus. You’d be an absolute fool to not want me on your side.” He paused for a second to glance up from his device and study his patient before continuing, “now, would you like to cooperate with me and make this easy for both of us, or do you really feel like fighting me fang and claw every single time you see me?”

“We can start with the fact that I despise you for using Eliza as leverage against me.”

Isra blinked slowly and raised his thick dark eyebrows incredulously, as if to snidely condescend to the Andromedan. “Uh-huh...”

“That and the fact that you’re totally uncouth in terms of socializing. I’ve never seen someone so... sterile before.”

“Althaus-” The doctor interrupted in vain.

“You’re like watching some sort of half-sentient alien attempt communication. It’s sad really, you should honestly just stop trying-”

“Althaus! That is enough.” The tone bordered on a threat. Something lurched inside of Ezrihel, tempting him with the morbid curiosity of seeing just what exactly Isra would look like when he lost his composure. He’d nearly seen it once before, when he’d needled the poor man about his home-life, about his family. The noble knew it was a low blow, knew the doctor was nearly as proud as he was and just as absorbed by his self-image.

“I’m sorry,” Ez remarked sardonically while delicately laying a hand on his chest, “I thought this was supposed to be a therapy session for this poor broken soldier to get it all off his chest.”

For once Israphael visibly sneered, scrunching his nose in contempt. He rested his tablet in his lap and folded his hands together perfectly. “I have done nothing but help you, Ezrihel. I alone have put you back together with my own hands twice now just in the time we’ve been evading the armada. I administer your medicines, I give you the cure to your agonies and yet you act no better than a feral animal. I do not appreciate your needling, I do not think you are funny or charming or clever. I think you’re no better than an inconsiderate asshole to the people under you. I think you’re a gods-damned idiot who’s lashing out at everyone around you because you don’t have control over your situation.”

The aristocrat sat motionless as Isra read him for the filth he was as if the man were casually marking off his daily to-do list. Each word was a scalpel to Ezrihel’s ego, a wicked cleaver to his selfish vanities. “You think you’re owed some sort of grand debt because you do your job as a military medic?” The petulant noble let out a cynical laugh, “I’m not going to grovel to you because you’re doing the basic duties of your job.”

“Lilith would be disgusted by your lack of basic consideration.”

Ezrihel growled, lunging forward in barely contained anger, “and what do you possibly know about my spouse? What the hell could you possibly know or understand about our relationship?! You’re alone, you’re cold and stiff and dead. You are boring. What could you possibly ever understand about being soul-bound or in love- you barren field.”

“I understand all I need to understand about it! And what do you know of me, huh great general?” Isra rolled his eyes and snorted when Ez fell deathly silent. “You know nothing about me, Althaus, because you can’t read my mind like an open book like you do to all the other people on this cursed boat. Your charisma is as brittle as cheap glass, and just as pretentious. That’s why you hate me so much, I see through your gilded smile to the raw and hurt little creature that you really are.”

The nobleman shook quietly as he withdrew back towards the wall. A thin layer of cold sweat covered his bare skin and kissed the cold filtered air blowing in through the ceiling vent. Isra was right, he felt uniquely mad, taunted endlessly by visions of his missing wife, by the memories and imprints of her pain that echoed in the chambers of his immortal soul.

He was powerless.

Absolutely powerless, shuddering like a helpless child in his spiritual pain.

He would give nearly anything in the universe to be able to touch her again, hold her again.

He hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to her.

He hadn’t been able to tell her that he loved her no matter what.

He wished he had kissed her one last time. Every time he laid in bed he wept at the gaping hole her disappearance had ripped into his heart of hearts. He longed for the gentle, rich hum of her voice as she read a novel she was working on to him. He saw her in everything, and noticed her absence everywhere. Above all else he craved and missed physical intimacy with her, craved her embrace, her warmth and weight next to him on this cold, hard bunk. He languished without the feeling of her consciousness pressed up against his own to soothe his racing mind.

He needed her to tell him that everything was alright, that everything was going to work out in the end.

But she wasn’t here.

Lilith was long gone, probably marooned and in hiding on some backwater planet- or as his nightmares lead him to fear, she was a captive of the Council. His stomach rolled at the thought, he could feel the little bit of color left in his face drain away. They would torture her endlessly for her prized information, spouse of Ezrihel, the most forsaken and misguided servant of the gods. They would subject her to the horrors he had faced, the horrors that had reshaped his entire psyche and broke him down into what felt like a finely-ground spiritual dust.

Or even worse, he feared that they would reduce her soul to nothing when they were done with her. A terrible wheezing sob rattled from his throat in what felt like infinite anguish before he could manage to choke it back down. His family had been marked for eradication for his treachery against the status quo. If she was captured her annihilation was totally inevitable as far as he was concerned.

There was no possible way for him to reach her, no real practical plan to retrieve her- hell they couldn’t even reliably tell if she was even captured or not. He pulled his bland white blanket around his shoulders and clutched his knees to his chest, squeezing his eyes shut as tight as he could as he buried his face into the crook of his elbow. He desperately wanted to avoid a full-blown sloppy-crying session in front of Isra of all people. He couldn’t stomach the idea of trying to live that down, and besides, he figured that Isra certainly hated him enough to gossip about how miserable he was.

The nobleman was wrong, however. Israphael would have never resorted to such principle breaking nonsense. The doctor didn’t even really particularly like the majority of his fellow shipmates, he just didn’t find himself outright hating them for the most part. In fact the medic often found himself only mildly tolerating extended contact with many of them while quickly guiding them out of his personal space.

“Ezrihel...” His voice was softer now, almost starting to sound slightly warm. “I am a doctor because I enjoy helping people, not hurting them. Stop biting me, and for the love of the gods above, make both our lives easier and cooperate with me somehow. You don’t like being treated like a caged animal, right? So stop acting like one.”

Israphael stood, quick to adjust his crisp uniform. “Have P’thaeyl contact me once you relax. I’ll be sending an assistant to bring you your medications. ... Think about what I said, Althaus, and don’t make some stupid, rash and emotional choice.”

~ * * * ~​