Spring 21, 511 AV
The severity of Victor’s fatigue had really not occurred to Seven until the Ravokian spent an entire week in his bed. He barely moved, waking only when Seven prodded him to eat. And he would eat; bites of softened fruit for its sugar and mashed lentils and beans slathered over thick slices of fresh and hearty rye bread and slowly but surely the dark-haired man’s ribs would release their tight hold on his skin. If he was too weak to force his hands – that were little more than dead things on the ends of his arms for so long – Seven would assist him, holding mashed food to his tired lips and wiping away water that would dribble down his chin if Seven became too eager and tipped the bowl too far.
And while he fed his companion, he would talk. He would speak so that Victor felt no need to, and so that there was little silence to accompany the darkness that enveloped him and made his dark almond eyes blind and sensitive to the outside world. Rambling stories of his childhood, of his journey across The Unforgiving, the Symenestra, anything that came to mind – often Victor would drift out of consciousness again before Seven had finished but he was a patient man and held nothing against him – it was all laid out, and whether Victor retained it or not was of little concern as long as there was noise between them and some semblance of humanity clung to the faceless walls around them.
This was it. This tiny world of darkness where only they existed and between fleeting, obscure dreams they communicated through whisper and touch and while they very well could have forgotten the color of their eyes, the shape of their lips, many nights were spent wrapped in each others’ blind arms and they memorized curves of soft flesh and the lingering smell of sweat. They were not above the undeniable draw of their mutual attraction and Seven had made this clear, often praising Victor for what strength was regained and what fat accumulated on his body with fleeting kisses placed delicately across a span of skin that had grown bleached from the absence of sun. For the most part, the exploratory touching and kissing would remain innocent. There would be no sex, no tangle of moaning, lust-driven bodies; Seven would argue that it was counterproductive to the rest Victor so badly needed – though he would never admit that it pained him to deny such a request, if there ever was one - besides, there was no hurry. The first morning had come and gone and Victor hadn’t melted away into oblivion and there was no admission of drunken regret.
When the anniversary of the second week neared, Victor had begun to leave the darkness of the apartment. There were times that Seven would return to his humble hole in the belly of the citadel to find his companion gone, likely becoming accustomed to his own legs again. And while he felt joy for the man with the name of a songbird who had become strong enough to leave his cage, Seven found his empty apartment unnerving and would never stay long in Victor’s absence. He dedicated his only map of Syliras in Victor’s name, and the human would find it one evening set purposefully and delicately across the top of his trunk with his name written across the top.
Seven would soon find he was seeing less of Victor as the days went on, although he attributed this to the man’s obvious appreciation for exploration and would not comment or complain about it so long as his day ended with a familiar hand lingering at his bare stomach, a warm chest pressed against his back and the muffled chatter of their short conversations that would end in one or the other giving in to Nysel’s influence first. And every morning, Seven would stir first, a hand reaching over to his companion as if to ensure that he was still there, living flesh and blood that he was permitted to touch for the sake of touching. This particular morning, thin white fingers groped at nothing but a linen sheet left cold by a body that had abandoned it long ago.
He wasn’t there.
Rolling over onto his back, half-conscious, Seven relished in the space he was awarded in Victor’s absence. Not that he enjoyed being alone – in fact he feared it – but he had on more than one occasion playfully cursed the cramped narrowness of his bed. A light seared his closed eyelids. A light unlike any light he’d ever known so deep in the citadel and a hand shot up to shield his face from what could only be Syna herself gracing his tiny apartment. A disgruntled moan escaped his sleep-dried lips and he rolled back over onto his side and forced his crimson eyes open a crack, pupils tiny, to examine this radiant invader from between his fingers.