Chapter Text
Mortals never learn
Again and again they test my patience…
And my darling Wriothesley,
You have struck my final nerve.
You crave the unknowable with a vigor unlike any other ive met in all my centuries.
And so I grant you this one wish
For my most loyal servant
A piece of my heart, to have and to own
For the rest of eternity
Until the heavens strike me down so be it true
That as I age, where your body would rot
My heart binds your soul to this earth
you may never truly die, this is no gift
but a curse.
You know it not.
Thirty years can pass in a blink. One day you’re strolling green pastures, getting dinner made by your mother and collecting bugs to show your sister. Then you wake up.
You’re walking to work, it’s a day like no other. Tommorow is your thirtieth birthday, you have a few friends over, and if you’re lucky maybe that funny girl from the tailors shop will come as well.
Wriothesley will not wake up tomorrow. The reason why is staring him in the face, with deep silvery eyes that catch light even in the dark plane of Wriothesley’s mind.
“How many times will this one be, Wriothesley?” She stares, unblinking. Uncaring to maintain a human persona.
He takes a brief moment to collect himself, “At least a hundred now.” Wriothesley is dying, perhaps he is already dead as they speak. “Which way am I dying this time, stabbing?”
Egeria laughs, all uppity, “If I told you, then you might become paranoid the next go around, and that would be damaging for the psyche darling.”
“No more damaging than it already is,” Wriothesley musters, “most people don’t know their exact date of death, darling.”
“Don’t be so childish, its not as if you know the whole time. Just the last few days.” Egeria speaks in a grating matter of fact tone. ”I provide you the courtesy to prepare a will, most young people don’t have those after all.”
Wriothesley is sick of these games. After all these centuries spent with Egeria’s backwards sense of humor and backhanded gifts Wriothesley has almost nearly forgotten that its all his own fault. With all the separate lives he has lived, Wriothesley doesn’t even associate himself with the person who made that idiotic deal nearly five hundred years ago.
“This is the price of immortality,” Egeria hums, “you wanted it so bad, and now all you do is complain.”
Wriothesley sighs, playing into their thirty year routine banter , “I never asked for this.”
~+===+~
Laying on the corner of the Iudex’s desk is a newspaper, the same newspaper that Sedene brings every morning. Neuvillette usually skims these as he takes his first glass of water, not caring an awful lot about the content within. Today, something feels off.
Neuvillette thumbs through the pages, scanning for something that he doesn’t know yet. Columns dedicated to the latest and greatest overshadow much of the small news articles. Those describe more menial things, and are targeted toward the general civilians, not someone like the mighty Iudex. Down near the end of the third page is a small memoir, dedicated to the life of a loved Garde. A death date exactly thirty years on the dot to the birthdate, a sad but eye catching snippet.
Neuvillette sets down the paper, feeling unwell.
As if a tiny bit of his heart just tore in two.