FMO snippets - Hurt/Comfort

#Lotár + altruistic Summoner: “Just listen to the sound of my voice.” + “I’m not only doing it for you. It’s much more fun if you’re not in pain.” + “Look at you. You’re shivering.”

Aside from the infighting, poisoning attempts, and the ever-present threat of beheading, the court’s antics often become puerile to the point of embarrassment. 

You know that full well by now, yet when you find yourself locked in a cellar, your initial reaction is genuine bewilderment. You even laugh a bit under your breath, but as soon as you remember what punishment awaits those who are late to the assembly, a shiver of pure terror runs down your spine.

It’s not difficult to guess why you were detained, but the ‘by whom’ question is harder to answer. In the three months since your appointment to an official position in the court, you have made more enemies than you used to have during your entire first life. And all it took was Mastravisch’s interest in you. Or, rather, in your powers. 

As a result, you were singled out, and lacking Mirren’s or Lotár’s authority, you’re left to reap the ‘rewards’ that your special status grants you. And one of them, as it turns out, is being the butt of a schoolyard prank. Only that this time, it’s not your grades that will roll, but your head. 

The reminder of Mastravisch’s cruelty twists your gut upside down, but you push through the wave of nausea to fiddle with the door. If it were made of wood, you would simply burn it down to a crisp. Unfortunately, as foolish as the courtiers might be, they are not this foolish. 

The small room is like a coffin - not that you’d know for certain, as you’ve never been buried, but the claustrophobic closeness of the walls that seem to close in around you brings to mind images and events that lead your brain and body to believe that your demise is imminent. 

The location of your confinement was chosen with great care, deep enough underground so that no servants will think to look for you here, with no airflow, no light, merely the choking stench of soil and mold that shortly envelops you like a second skin.

When you try to summon a candle, you discover that the area is protected by sigils, just like Mastravisch’s treasury. Each use of Chaos depletes your resources of it, and had you not been already dead, the counterspell would have sapped you dry.

And so, you stay in darkness, in near-perfect silence, interrupted only by the sporadic drip-drip-drip of sewage. With the moisture steadily seeping into the fabric of your robes, you can’t help but remember that Notre died just like this, after starving for days, with no strength to lift herself, until she drowned in a shallow pool of water.

How long will it take for you to die here? How many times will you die, over and over again, in an immortal, never-ending torment? Until you go crazy? That’s assuming you haven’t already. But it’s not even the fear so much as pure hopelessness that has you hunching into yourself on the cold stone floor, making you start to consider death not as a punishment, but salvation. One that you’ve been denied before. 

Every second feels like an hour, and just as you give up all hope, you hear a rasp of the old, rusty hinges. Then, like a near-death mirage, comes a voice, the derisive, languid hiss that has never sounded so sweet, so welcome.

“Hasss your brain ssstopped working, darling? I know you can create a sssmall fire, even with the blockage in place.”

You open your mouth to respond, but when no sound, not even a groan, slithers out, Lotár is prompted to make a move. After using his/her large, cage-like lantern as a doorstop, he/she enters the cellar, painting it with streaks of luminescent orange and red. When the light finally flows into every corner of the room, Lotár makes a quick, as if startled, cooing noise, halted in the depth of his/her throat.

“Look at you,” he/she scoffs, looking at you like one would at an alley rat. “You’re ssshivering.”

Warmth is the last thing you expect, especially from Lotár, and yet it’s his/her jacket, fur-lined and thick, that lands over you like the warmest of blankets. For some reason, this gesture makes you feel worse than his/her retort, but you don’t have the strength to challenge either.

“Did I interrupt your nap?” Lotár snarks when all the reply he/she gets is silence. “Ssshould I give you five more minutesss and return with breakfassst?”

Usually, you’d meet his/her snide comments tit-for-tat, but you can barely muster a grimace. Your mellowness doesn’t deter him/her, however, and he/she simply amuses himself/herself with a monologue that your exhausted brain can hardly follow, let alone comprehend. Until Mastravisch’s name rings out, that is. Then, you start to listen acutely. 

Lotár makes a sound. A curse. It takes you a moment to realize because your body started to tremble. You’re hyperventilating, which is rather amusing, for a ghost. But you’re not laughing, and neither is Lotár. He/She is saying something again, but all you can hear is—

“Just listen to me!” His/Her hands shake you by the shoulders like a rag doll, but the desperation in his/her tone sobers you up enough for your eyes to flick upward to meet his/hers in a hint of recognition. “Yesss. That’sss it. Jussst lisssten to the sssound of my voice.” 

His/Her slurred speech is hypnotic, but his/her movements are clumsy, like a toddler petting a dog, too light and uncoordinated. He/She pats your head, your back, your face until your limbs unwind, your chest goes loose.

He/She, too, relaxes, slumping against the opposite wall, which, given the lack of space, places him/her right in front of you anyway. 

“How many timesss do I have to repeat myssself for you to underssstand, hm? You need to be more viciousss, darling. They will eat you up otherwissse,” he/she sighs, running a trembling hand over his/her face. “You have to report thisss, at the very leassst. The wretchesss interrupted the resssearch Massstravisssch entrusssted you with. That’sss treassson.”

“They’d die,” you protest, just now noticing how dry and raw your throat feels, as though you’ve been screaming for hours and hours. You don’t remember that. Perhaps for the best.

“Don’t they dessserve it?” Lotár counters, sighing at whatever expression crosses your face. “Then I’ll sssay you’ve been running an errand for me. No one, not even Massstravisssch can fault you for thisss.”

That’s... true. It’s not a secret that Lotár’s bond with Mastravisch is unique and not entirely subservient. Only that, or because of that, his/her aid doesn’t come for free. 

“Why are you doing this?” you ask, watching him/her helplessly. He/She seems so calm now, as though his/her earlier pity was merely a hallucination on your part. “Helping me.”

“Helping you?” Lotár tsks, displeased by the notion. “Let’sss make one thing clear. I’m not only doing it for you, I’m doing it for myssself,” he/she declares, pushing himself/herself to a stand. “It’sss much more fun if you’re not in pain.” 

“What is?” you wonder as you try to follow, pausing when you notice his/her outstretched hand. With the light shining behind him/her, you can’t discern his/her expression, but you can see his/her placid, serpentine eyes fixed on you. 

“Playing with you, of courssse,” Lotár says, sounding amused that you even had to ask. Frustrated at your inaction, he/she then yanks you upwards, letting you go just as abruptly, leaving you to sway on unsteady legs. “Don’t flatter yourssself thinking I meant anything more,” he/she sneers.

“I wouldn’t dare,” you respond, resting a hand against the wall for support. You’re not that naïve.

#Mirren + altruistic Summoner: “Sit down. Now. You’re in no condition to go anywhere.” + “Why aren’t you taking care of yourself?”

Though it took you long, arduous months, you finally settled into your new role in court, doing your best under Mastravisch’s ‘employ.’ 

Having finally attained a position of a courtier, not only valuable for their innate skill, but also actively needed, you spend your days as close to leisure as anyone can in this damned palace. As long as you provide a sweet enough promise with a monthly report to back it up, no one bats an eye at what you choose to do in your spare time.

The other courtiers, at large, learned to leave you be, and aside from the occasional mishap, you can enjoy the privileges and gifts allotted to Mastravisch’s favorite little puppets, such as a group of dedicated maids, a personal wing, and a library. The only thing you lack is peace of mind, but that, too, can be manufactured, and you’re something of an expert at getting yourself through.

You pour yourself into each research with zeal, because when you work, you don’t have a chance to think and ruminate on bygone days or on your many resentments and regrets. No matter how tough your life might be, taking it one day— one minute at a time made it infinitely easier to carry on.

But there are downsides to your diligence. 

The smaller ones, such as hunger or thirst, are easily brushed aside. Exhaustion is a pest, though it’s only when you truly push your body past its limits that you feel the heat of your decisions. Literally.

The vial explodes in your hands, sending the glass and its contents spilling all over the desk. The wood positively melts into a sludge, ruining your furniture and the carpet underneath. Belatedly, you try to save your notes, but they, too, fall victim to your sloppiness.

“Damn it all, I’ll have to rewrite everything,” you mutter under your breath, words slurring into a sleepy, incoherent grumble. 

It’s been two... three days since you slept, but you’re chasing a deadline. Besides, any excuse to skip a meeting is a valid one, and you’d rather swallow air than look Mastravisch in the face longer than necessary.

Thus, you reach for a clean journal, only to notice blisters on your hands and arms. They barely hurt, and with a quick healing spell, there are no traces of them left. Your clothes, however, are a different matter.

Grunting whatever profanities come to mind, you enter the adjoined room in search of a spare robe. You don’t bother with a bath - a hasty wipe down does its job well enough, and you re-dress yourself in a hurry, foregoing the last few buttons to save a few precious seconds.

You do detect the new smell that reaches your nose, if only because it makes your stomach grumble, but you only make conscious notice of it when you’re already back in your study. Your eyes find its source at once, which turns out to be a silver tray set on the couch that Mirren uses in place of a table. When your gazes meet, you both freeze, though it’s hard to say which of you is more startled.

Mirren recovers first. Drawing his/her hands behind his/her back, he/she straightens his/her posture, looking now less like a thief caught in the act, and more like a servant doing his/her part. Only that he/she’s not a servant, and bringing you food is definitely not the part he/she is supposed to play in court.

“What happened to your desk?” he/she asks, voice dull and even, prompting you to frown. You’re the one who should be asking questions right now. And so that’s what you do.

“What are you doing here?”

Mirren’s not shy. He/She has never been, and yet the way he/she avoids your gaze doesn’t exactly spell out ‘confidence.’ 

“Did our Lord/Lady send you?” you try again, and though this time, he/she doesn’t respond either, his/her arms twitch in a shrug. “Good job, then,” you huff, moving past him/her. “You may go now.”

“No.” Of all moments to retrieve his/her voice, he/she chooses this one. It’s like he/she can’t live if he/she’s not starting an argument. 

“Excuse me?” you spit out, spinning around to level him/her with a glare. It’s not your best idea, in hindsight, and the too-fast motion sends your body tilting dangerously close to a fall. 

Mirren reaches out to steady you, holding you by the elbow even as you try to dislodge him/her. “When was the last time you slept?”

“What’s it to you?” Your retort is mild, all things considered, but it works as intended. Mirren’s lips purse as if in dismay. You love this expression. It makes him/her seem like he/she cares. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” you joke, just to see his/her eyebrows furrow. The deeper the crease between his/brow, the higher your heart soars. “Just tell our Lord/Lady you did—”

“Sit down.” 

You don’t. Not because you’re set on opposing him/her, not this time, but because you’re startled. Your mind is a bit foggy as well, and you don’t really process the order until it’s too late.

With a heavy, nasal sigh, Mirren pulls you back towards the couch, but you catch yourself before he/she can sit you on it. 

“I know where the dining hall is,” you argue, yanking your arm back. He/She lets you, but continues to stand his/her ground. “I’ll go there—”

“Sit down. Now,” Mirren repeats as if you haven’t spoken. For a moment, you simply glare at each other, but contrary to him/her, your eyelids have an issue with staying fully open. Mirren wins the match, and he/she speaks first as well, before you can get a word edgewise and throw him/her out of your room. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere.”

“And you’re in no condition to tell me what to do.” Except he/she does. His/Her word is only second to Mastravisch’s.

Mirren takes a step forward, and you take one back. You wish you could say it’s because you’re scared of him/her, but the opposite applies. You’re worried that if he/she opened his/her arms, you’d make a fool out of yourself and run into them. Having lost too much pride to him/her, you want to hold on to what’s left. 

You sit down, but Mirren doesn’t leave. “What else do you want?” you ask, but he/she doesn’t divulge.

Instead, he/she comes closer. His/Her shadow looms over you, close enough to touch. “Why aren’t you taking care of yourself?” You shrug. You don’t feel like lying to him/her. You don’t feel like speaking at all. “Take care of yourself.”

“Or?”

“Or I’ll do it.”

You snort. Does he/she think this is a threat? If it is, you’d gladly welcome it, but you’d rather swallow your tongue than admit it out loud.

“Go away,” you mumble, and it comes so close to a plea that it makes you wince. You can’t look Mirren in the eye. You feel like you’ve lost again. “Go.”

“I will,” he/she promises. “Just eat.”

You pick up the spoon. He/She does as he/she said he/she would.

Rez + self-serving Summoner: “Stop pretending you’re fine.” + “Stop fighting me.”

You were numb to death and carnage long before Mastravisch sent you with his/her army, and you killed people before one of them killed you. When your mortal body perished, something had died within you permanently. Either that, or you rebuilt yourself wrong, lacking.

You rebuilt yourself angry. Or it came to you later. Or that piece of shit woke it up where it lied dormant. You were scared, at first, wretched, but now, only rage remains. Perhaps that’s why you were deployed with the general instead of being left with the other practitioners at the keep. 

Either way, you’re back at the Crossroads. Back where it all started. 

Contrary to your previous life, it feels natural when you let the swords rain on the pathetic conscripts the Beyond calls ‘knights,’ or when you pummel one of them to a pulp with their own blade. It feels good. It feels just. But it also makes you reckless. 

The knight’s viscera are thick and slippery, yet you only notice that your grip has faltered when you feel the sting across your palm. 

“Shit.” 

Throwing the weapon to the side, you look down to inspect your wound, finding it deep and ragged. The blood rises to the surface, but you repress it with a healing spell. You’re not well-versed enough to heal it completely, though it’s better than leaving it to fester.

Thankfully, the surprise attack was thwarted early, with only a few of the assassins penetrating the camp. You hunted down most of them yourself. They were only human. Not much of a challenge. 

They did leave a mess behind - a few torched shelters, cadavers. You hand off the cleaning to the varlets, heading to your tent. The soldiers give you a wide berth as you pass. Good. They finally learned their place.

When you set out, they thought you were a glorified warehouse on legs, but now, they call you vicious. ‘Vicious’? This is nothing. You kill for the same man/woman, under the same banner, and they pretend to have the higher moral ground just because they feel guilty about it? No wonder Mastravisch hands out promotions sparingly. You wouldn’t elevate a weakling, either.

Rez seems to have returned as well. Always the worst timing. He/She stands by the entrance with his/her arms crossed, coated in blood and soil, and yet he/she has the guts to comment on the state of your clothes.

You push past him/her without deigning him/her with a response. The less you interact with him/her or his/her twin, the better. You can’t stand that face on either of them.

Uncaring about the blood, you flop on your bedroll, groaning when your spine hits the solid ground. You were stabbed there earlier, and the ligaments will take a while to knit back together. ‘This is nothing,’ you remind yourself. You’ve been through worse.

Your body, though recreated with Chaos, not pure flesh, is still as inconvenient, reminding you of the basest needs. Unfulfilled, they won’t kill you any more than you’re already dead, but damn do they get on your nerves. 

Since a large portion of Mastravisch’s army is made up of demons and humans, the sparse rations go to them. Which leaves you almost permanently ravenous. Or, would, if you gave a fuck about the rest of your so-called squad. 

Right before the fight started, you managed to stuff yourself full of a stale loaf of bread you pickpocketed off a recruit. You belatedly - as in, right now - recall the other reason for the ration sorting. Not all food can be digested by ghosts. You just keep forgetting that you’re one of them.

Naturally, Rez picks this exact moment to make a nuisance out of himself/herself, entering the tent just as you start to cough yourself hoarse.

“Did you start drinking without me?” he/she jokes, but even a dimwit like him/her quickly notices that something is amiss. “Hey? You good?”

You attempt to deliver a response, nothing too kind, of course, but instead of the first part of ‘fuck off,’ a guttural cough tears through your throat. 

“That doesn’t sound good,” Rez notes, voice resounding louder as he/she comes closer. He/She squats down, reaching for your back to give you a slap, but you reflectively shove him/her back with far too much strength, as it happens. “The fuck is wrong with you?” he/she snaps as he/she falls straight down on his/her ass. 

You can’t even appreciate the visual as another wave of dry heaving has half-bent over your bedroll. The change in positions sends the undigested, barely chewed contents of your stomach upwards, but it gets stuck in your gullet. 

It feels like you’re slowly suffocating, and you have to look pretty bad, too, because Rez’s face twists with genuine fright. He/She wraps an arm around you, but the weight of it and the scent of metal remind you of Mirren so much that your body acts on its own, and you end up pushing him/her away once more. 

He/She’s not so easily deterred, however. “Stop fighting me. I just want to help!” he/she snarls, wrestling you to the ground. “Let me help, you damned freak!”

“I— Cough! Don’t need your— Cough!”

“I’m not my brother/sister! I’m not Mirren, you hear? Look— Stop fucking fighting me!”

You try to. You actually do, but you can’t control the spasm of your body, as the pain keeps you wiggling like a worm underneath him/her. But Rez doesn’t give up on you. Grabbing you by the scruff of your neck, he/she shoves two fingers down your throat, forcing the obstruction out. 

In an old reflex, you suck in a deep, deep breath, letting yourself collapse onto the bedroll face first, limbs akimbo. 

Rez observes you for a moment, wiping his/her hands on his/her already soiled pants. Then, he/she pushes himself/herself back to his/her feet. “You good? Be honest.”

Though you deeply want to show him/her your middle finger, you’re not that ill-mannered. You show him/her a thumbs-up instead. 

“Still like shit? Look even worse,” he/she jokes, but his/her tone still carries out the worry he/she now tries to disguise. “Hold on, I’ll get a healer.” When you don’t immediately argue, he/she takes it as an assent, rushing towards the entrance. Before he/she can leave, he/she pauses just long enough to say, “Scared the shit out of me. Stop pretending you’re fine when you’re not.”

“Don’t... tell me what to do.”

“Asshole.”

“Takes one to know one.” The only reply you hear this time is the swish of the fabric as the tent’s entrance is pushed to the side. “Thanks,” you rasp out to what you think is an empty space. A quick shuffle of shoes on the sand proves you otherwise.

“Uh.” Rez clears his/her throat, “’s whatever,” he/she mumbles, then quickly scurries out, this time for good.