He makes a noise when she calls him lucky, a choking sound that snags in his throat. A laugh, a cry, a scream – the beginning of all three, maybe, and swallowing it back down nearly makes his eyes well up. He hates it, the intensity of his emotions. Had they always been so strong? Or is this like a man who lived too long in darkness finally walking out into the sun, trying vainly to shield his eyes against the brightness of day?
“I don’t know,” he says, “being dead was easier.”
To his credit, he doesn’t say better. Because even with such rawness about his emotions, can he really say death was better? After all, he remembers none of it, only the frigid peace of dying, but not death itself. For all he knew, he’d been in hell or something like it, burned and tortured. There’d certainly been times when he’d felt he deserved such a fate.
She gives her name, tells him more of her power. He shudders a little at the idea of it – he is haunted enough with his own private ghosts, the idea of mobs of them is frankly horrifying.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “that’s terrible.”
He wonders if that’s rude, to reinforce to her how awful her torment is. His social skills had been dead for quite a while, too.
“I was magic,” he tells her, because he isn’t sure what else to say, “before I died. But now, nothing works. It might be dead, too.”
Maybe she can see the ghost of that, too – the magic he had used to save a lover, to create impossible children, to carry his own daughter. The magic he swears he can feel, somewhere deep inside him, but as soon as he goes looking the sensation is gone and he is left to wonder if it’s merely a phantom pain.
“Do you think a magician could fix you?” he asks, curious. He dreams of saving her from the torment – of breathing purpose into his resurrection. Never mind that he is functionally useless – he wants to dream. Just for a moment.
you ask me about love and I tell you about violence
@Narya