Ekkehardt is still in what could be generously described as a mood, and so it takes him a little while to respond. He's viciously clearing out a particularly persistent patch of unwanted weeds with nothing but a shovel and tenacity, despite his ability to decay anything he doesn't want to be there. He seems to find it satisfying.
"This is enough for now." His tone is chilly. He doesn't look at Avery. "It should be enough to occupy us both without getting in each other's way, at the bare minimum."
"Do you think anger just goes away instantly?" It's more of a grumble than a snap, which is at least a sign that while his mood might not exactly be improving, he's making an effort to smooth things out. "It's not something I can let go of so quickly."
His eyes are bright in the darkness, his voice brittle and pained. It might be sad if there wasn't a humming undercurrent of reined-in anger, a terseness that speaks to how much he's holding in. The scrape of the knife on the whetstone, as he sharpens it, is harsh and vicious.
"Are you sure you want to get this close? You had best not forget that there's little love lost, between us."
Avery sighs, shoulders slumping as he gives a dramatic roll of the eyes. "Really? I thought we were at least starting to bury the hatchet. You know, at least partially."
He knows he should just leave Ekkehardt alone when he's like this, give him space, keep to himself, but he can't. It's extraordinarily selfish of him, he knows that as well, but lately the thought of being alone just doesn't set right with him.
The other man is clingier than he expected. He understands, and he hates that he understands, because it makes it harder to push away and ignore, as he would anyone else.
"You killed me, and then went on to kill a person who meant a great deal to me," he says, still sharpening the knife. Every whine of the steel against the whetstone is a discordant reminder. His shoulders are raised, his body tense. "I feel as if you should already understand that I might harbour a great deal of ill feeling about the whole affair, especially since my first act upon resurrection was to bury his remains."
He'd given instructions, for what to do if he was killed. He had been foresighted, in that small way. It had helped, a little, to have something to do upon the realisation of his death, and he wonders still if that was a future kindness as well.
He can't ask. How could he ask? Even if he traversed the entire underworld to find him, it would be selfish beyond measure to burden him with the concerns of the living once again.
He had asked to be let go. Ekkehardt finds letting go of him is a painful, dreary process, and grief makes the hours long and lonely.
Avery flinches, guilt that he has been trying to deny rising up far, far easier than he would like.
It's because he understands now. He may not fully get what Ekkehardt went through, but he understands well enough to wish he hadn't killed the dark lord in the end.
Maybe it's best to be honest.
"Look, I... I'm not going to say I didn't mean to, because I did but..." How in the world does he put something like this? Avery runs his hand through his bangs, other hand on his hip. "When I killed you, I didn't mean to do it. I just got so angry and then the next thing I knew, I'd put a sword through you."
He continues before Ekkehardt can say anything, knowing well enough that a retort will be on the tip of the man's tongue. "It was... satisfying. In a way I wasn't comfortable with. So I thought... you know... maybe if I go all the way with it, it'd mean something. I didn't just kill just to kill. I guess."
He wonders if he should apologize as well. He's not sure Ekkehardt would accept it. It's so hard to get out, he decides that in the end it doesn't matter.
There's a long silence. Ekkehardt puts the knife aside and starts on another, grinding it viciously for a while before he answers.
"Do you think that makes me feel better? That you killed me on accident, and tried to make it mean something by killing the master I'd sworn loyalty to? That you did it to make yourself feel better?"
His shoulders shake in a bitter little sound that can't decide whether it wants to be a laugh or something veering perilously close to a sob.
"Spare me any more explanations. It gives me far more insight into you than I wanted."
He hates that he understands that Avery is just trying to make him feel better, wants him to know his death had a meaning, was for a reason, that he wasn't cut down mindlessly. But it only rubs salt in the wound; his death was a gateway to another's. His weakness resulted in this.
He hates that he still can't hate him, for all that.
It went about as well as he figured it was going to.
He's silent, but he doesn't leave, an idea bubbling up in his head that he doesn't particularly like, but feels the need to offer up anyway: "Do you want to kill me?"
His chest tightens, and even the creature inside him writhes about as if it's trying to impress upon Avery just how terrible an idea it is. "I mean... I won't die. You said it yourself. You'd get the revenge you want, too."
He forces a laugh, wearing a grin that looks more like a grimace. "As long as it's quick, it'll be just fine, right?"
The reaction happens at shocking speed. Ekkehardt is on him in an instant, that furious, pulsing heat boiling the air around him; it distorts him like some unreal thing, a nightmare made manifest.
The knife is a painful line against Avery's throat. His fingers grind into the other man's shoulder as he pins him down one-handed. His eyes are bright and hot and smoking with fury.
He stays there for a long, precarious moment that feels like forever. When it comes, his voice is a hiss.
"I don't take another's life for something as petty as my own satisfaction. Nothing I can do will bring things back to the way they were. Your death would solve nothing at all."
He lifts the knife from Avery's throat, leaving behind a shallow cut that begins to well with blood now that pressure is no longer on it.
Avery doesn't move to get up, his breathing quick and shallow as he stares up at the ceiling.
He'd said he'd be fine with it, had even meant it to a certain degree. And yet once again, once he's faced with the possibility of his own death, that horrible, awful, aching fear grips at the very center of his being.
He can fully understand why Ekkehardt hates him.
Finally, Avery laughs, a small noise that grows louder and louder by the second, until his cackling practically echoes through the room. "To... To hear that from you of all people!"
He can't stop laughing.
It hurts.
He pushes himself up into a sitting position. "What if I attack you, huh? Get out a sword and go for your throat?" Another bark of a laugh. "Man, getting decapitated would suck, wouldn't it? But I'd get a GREAT prop for a soliloquy!"
"You'd find it far harder to kill me than the last time you did." In comparison to that wild laughter, Ekkehardt is much calmer, though he's far more visibly irritated now.
"Don't be such a fool." How could the man who killed him, killed his master, be this stupid and reckless and so unabashedly careless about his own life? "If you wanted to experience death so badly, you should have asked me to leave you back there where I found you."
"I don't have any control over you," he growls. Pity twists violently, sickeningly, in his chest; the creature there constricts insistently in his ribcage, the only heartbeat he now has. "Do what you like."
Always, always weakness. The hero had pierced him with a sword to kill him, and that scar, seemingly, still remains in his heart, seared into his bones.
He relents. Despite himself, despite Avery's provoking, despite everything.
(Grief is lonely, weary, making the world grey and dismal. At least when someone else is here - when he is here - the world seems to regain a little of its colour.)
"No," he says, at last, stiff and irritated and uncomfortable. "I don't want you to leave. But I'll hardly force you to stay, if you're truly unable to bear the thought of my grudge against you."
"It's not the grudge," Avery growls out in frustration, but doesn't elaborate. He gets it. He understands the grudge. He does. But that's not the only thing there and it's so maddening, trying to understand all of that and himself and everything else in a world that's flipped upside down and seems determined to make him question everything about who he's supposed to be in it.
He's not a hero though. More and more, he's certain he never has been.
He doesn't feel like thinking about this anymore.
"Hey," he says after a moment, wiping away the bleeding cut on his throat with the back of his sleeve. "You ever consider gardening?"
Edited (forgot the closing html again) 2020-08-04 05:16 (UTC)
The question catches him so off-guard that he answers completely normally.
"No. I can't say I have." A pause. "Did you want to make one? I suppose there's plenty of space for it, if you do."
He can't say he really objects to the idea. He might own this ruin, technically, but there's no end to the amount of space he's left alone to do as it pleases, with mixed results.
Avery shrugs. "Might as well. Makes it easier to have different types of food on hand, I'd think. And weeding would take care of that hunger of yours quite handily."
"Very well." He still sounds stiff, displeased, but he's not exactly angry any more. Sort of. Maybe. "It's not an objectionable idea, I suppose."
Ekkehardt sighs, pulling out another clump of weeds. They wither almost instantly in his hands; he wonders, vaguely, if it's because surging emotions have made the creature inside more active.
He wasn't this hungry before Avery came here. Then again, it's not as if hunger was much of a priority for him regardless. He'd been good at tempering it, a sort of ruthless management to prove...something. That he could still control some part of himself, even as his emotions spiralled out of his grasp.
"Just be patient," he says, and it's almost an apology. "It's not as if I'm going to throw you out, so you don't need to fret about that."
Avery leans against the shovel handle, resting his chin on top of his hands. "You could at least pretend," he almost says, but immediately realizes that he'd like that even less.
"Never been good at being patient," he admits with an almost childish pout.
"This is abundantly obvious," he retorts, the response almost immediate. He has to bite back a laugh at Avery's pout, annoyed at the fact he can even laugh about much of anything these days.
Avery amuses him. Lightens the heavy burden he was responsible for putting onto him in the first place, and he finds that cosmically unfair in some hard-to-define way.
"You've never had to wait for anything in your life, have you?"
He slips a hand free from is prison beneath his chin and tilts it from side to side. "Yes and no. Mother tried, of course, but I've always been the sort to take matters into my own hands if I needed to." He chuckles.
"What an unusual hero," he says, after a moment, and leaves it at that. After a moment, he goes back to rearranging the garden plot to his satisfaction, the tension in his body language lessening somewhat as he works. He seems to take to it well, despite not having though about it before.
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"This is enough for now." His tone is chilly. He doesn't look at Avery. "It should be enough to occupy us both without getting in each other's way, at the bare minimum."
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This whole endeavor had been suggested as a peace offering that he agreed to and he's still acting like this?
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His eyes are bright in the darkness, his voice brittle and pained. It might be sad if there wasn't a humming undercurrent of reined-in anger, a terseness that speaks to how much he's holding in. The scrape of the knife on the whetstone, as he sharpens it, is harsh and vicious.
"Are you sure you want to get this close? You had best not forget that there's little love lost, between us."
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He knows he should just leave Ekkehardt alone when he's like this, give him space, keep to himself, but he can't. It's extraordinarily selfish of him, he knows that as well, but lately the thought of being alone just doesn't set right with him.
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"You killed me, and then went on to kill a person who meant a great deal to me," he says, still sharpening the knife. Every whine of the steel against the whetstone is a discordant reminder. His shoulders are raised, his body tense. "I feel as if you should already understand that I might harbour a great deal of ill feeling about the whole affair, especially since my first act upon resurrection was to bury his remains."
He'd given instructions, for what to do if he was killed. He had been foresighted, in that small way. It had helped, a little, to have something to do upon the realisation of his death, and he wonders still if that was a future kindness as well.
He can't ask. How could he ask? Even if he traversed the entire underworld to find him, it would be selfish beyond measure to burden him with the concerns of the living once again.
He had asked to be let go. Ekkehardt finds letting go of him is a painful, dreary process, and grief makes the hours long and lonely.
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It's because he understands now. He may not fully get what Ekkehardt went through, but he understands well enough to wish he hadn't killed the dark lord in the end.
Maybe it's best to be honest.
"Look, I... I'm not going to say I didn't mean to, because I did but..." How in the world does he put something like this? Avery runs his hand through his bangs, other hand on his hip. "When I killed you, I didn't mean to do it. I just got so angry and then the next thing I knew, I'd put a sword through you."
He continues before Ekkehardt can say anything, knowing well enough that a retort will be on the tip of the man's tongue. "It was... satisfying. In a way I wasn't comfortable with. So I thought... you know... maybe if I go all the way with it, it'd mean something. I didn't just kill just to kill. I guess."
He wonders if he should apologize as well. He's not sure Ekkehardt would accept it. It's so hard to get out, he decides that in the end it doesn't matter.
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"Do you think that makes me feel better? That you killed me on accident, and tried to make it mean something by killing the master I'd sworn loyalty to? That you did it to make yourself feel better?"
His shoulders shake in a bitter little sound that can't decide whether it wants to be a laugh or something veering perilously close to a sob.
"Spare me any more explanations. It gives me far more insight into you than I wanted."
He hates that he understands that Avery is just trying to make him feel better, wants him to know his death had a meaning, was for a reason, that he wasn't cut down mindlessly. But it only rubs salt in the wound; his death was a gateway to another's. His weakness resulted in this.
He hates that he still can't hate him, for all that.
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He's silent, but he doesn't leave, an idea bubbling up in his head that he doesn't particularly like, but feels the need to offer up anyway: "Do you want to kill me?"
His chest tightens, and even the creature inside him writhes about as if it's trying to impress upon Avery just how terrible an idea it is. "I mean... I won't die. You said it yourself. You'd get the revenge you want, too."
He forces a laugh, wearing a grin that looks more like a grimace. "As long as it's quick, it'll be just fine, right?"
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The knife is a painful line against Avery's throat. His fingers grind into the other man's shoulder as he pins him down one-handed. His eyes are bright and hot and smoking with fury.
He stays there for a long, precarious moment that feels like forever. When it comes, his voice is a hiss.
"I don't take another's life for something as petty as my own satisfaction. Nothing I can do will bring things back to the way they were. Your death would solve nothing at all."
He lifts the knife from Avery's throat, leaving behind a shallow cut that begins to well with blood now that pressure is no longer on it.
no subject
He'd said he'd be fine with it, had even meant it to a certain degree. And yet once again, once he's faced with the possibility of his own death, that horrible, awful, aching fear grips at the very center of his being.
He can fully understand why Ekkehardt hates him.
Finally, Avery laughs, a small noise that grows louder and louder by the second, until his cackling practically echoes through the room. "To... To hear that from you of all people!"
He can't stop laughing.
It hurts.
He pushes himself up into a sitting position. "What if I attack you, huh? Get out a sword and go for your throat?" Another bark of a laugh. "Man, getting decapitated would suck, wouldn't it? But I'd get a GREAT prop for a soliloquy!"
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"Don't be such a fool." How could the man who killed him, killed his master, be this stupid and reckless and so unabashedly careless about his own life? "If you wanted to experience death so badly, you should have asked me to leave you back there where I found you."
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"Do you want me to leave?" he asks, voice muffled. He does his best to keep it steady.
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Always, always weakness. The hero had pierced him with a sword to kill him, and that scar, seemingly, still remains in his heart, seared into his bones.
He relents. Despite himself, despite Avery's provoking, despite everything.
(Grief is lonely, weary, making the world grey and dismal. At least when someone else is here - when he is here - the world seems to regain a little of its colour.)
"No," he says, at last, stiff and irritated and uncomfortable. "I don't want you to leave. But I'll hardly force you to stay, if you're truly unable to bear the thought of my grudge against you."
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He's not a hero though. More and more, he's certain he never has been.
He doesn't feel like thinking about this anymore.
"Hey," he says after a moment, wiping away the bleeding cut on his throat with the back of his sleeve. "You ever consider gardening?"
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"No. I can't say I have." A pause. "Did you want to make one? I suppose there's plenty of space for it, if you do."
He can't say he really objects to the idea. He might own this ruin, technically, but there's no end to the amount of space he's left alone to do as it pleases, with mixed results.
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Ekkehardt sighs, pulling out another clump of weeds. They wither almost instantly in his hands; he wonders, vaguely, if it's because surging emotions have made the creature inside more active.
He wasn't this hungry before Avery came here. Then again, it's not as if hunger was much of a priority for him regardless. He'd been good at tempering it, a sort of ruthless management to prove...something. That he could still control some part of himself, even as his emotions spiralled out of his grasp.
"Just be patient," he says, and it's almost an apology. "It's not as if I'm going to throw you out, so you don't need to fret about that."
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"Never been good at being patient," he admits with an almost childish pout.
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Avery amuses him. Lightens the heavy burden he was responsible for putting onto him in the first place, and he finds that cosmically unfair in some hard-to-define way.
"You've never had to wait for anything in your life, have you?"
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"Always worth the punishment afterwards though."
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