Shattering
Lukel had broken him. He'd shattered the man he loved. It hadn't been an outcome he'd prepared for, so confident in himself that he hadn't stopped to think that this could happen. It was worse than anything he could have imagined. So much worse.
”Just promise me, when you get up off that table, you'll tell me you still love me.” Vael had promised, kissing him softly before they’d begun.
And there had just been horrible, empty silence when it was over.
Every shred of Vael was gone. He didn't look at Lukel like he loved him, didn't touch him, didn't have the same joy in his eyes that he'd had for months now. It was just…empty. Emotionless. Blank.
And Lukel hated himself for it. More than he'd ever hated anything before. He couldn't look in the mirror because all he would see - all he feared seeing - was his father staring back out at him. The man who had broken his son repeatedly, joyfully. Who hadn't stopped when his heart did, who had simply waited for him to come around, born back into the pain he'd briefly escaped from.
He'd done that to Vaelsnipe. Unintentionally, but he had broken his soul into pieces, and now there was nothing there when he looked into his eyes. So he stopped looking at him. He stopped eating. He stopped caring about sleep. He just sat and stared at the empty hearth while that silence that had descended upon their once happy home ate him alive. He'd ruined it. He'd ruined him.
And he didn't know how to make it right.
Staring at his own reflection, there wasn't even something there. There was, in fact, nothing. Vaelsnipe could recall the pure agonizing pain that felt like it might never end. How it violently shattered his soul and not at all metaphorically. A storm had broke itself apart under its own force deep within him leaving nothing but mere fragments floating about within the typhoon.
He could remember their voices within his core, both of them crying out to one another, raw and frightened, till it all suddenly stopped. And then there was nothing.
When Vael woke, there was no pain. No fear. No relief. Only the intense numbing absence.
His memories remained intact. He knew who he was. He knew who Lukel was. He knew that he loved him, married him and had chosen this path. But the feelings that had brought him to it were now... gone. Love reduced to knowledge without any weight. He understood that this should have terrified him somewhere within. Instead, he simply observed it as he was merely observing how Lukel was reacting to it.
"Don't apologize." He had said in a tone of voice he used to use back when they first met. When he was masking his emotions from him entirely but this time, it wasn't a mask. It just... was devoid any weight at all. "I asked for this."
What remained of his soul drifted in fragments through an endless dark, pieces of himself buried within them and unreachable at first. He moved through the days calm and functional, an echo of the man he had been. When Lukel looked at him, Vael could see the devastation there in his face, recognize it as something important that he should seek to fix and still he did not know how to reach back.
Though he did not feel wounded, this was a wound that was going to take time to recover and piece back together. Work, which was slow and extremely taxing on a heart that was shattered and all Vael could do was watch it shatter more as he remained at his side. Exhaustion set in as Vael watched Lukel unravel beneath the strain. He saw the signs with the shaking hands, the scared silence, the way the house emptied itself of warmth. He knew something was wrong. He knew he should act. Without emotion, intent had stalled and that failure unsettles him more still deep within to this day than the pain ever did.
In that emptiness, Vaelsnipe learned what he was without feeling. Efficient. Controlled. Unburdened. The world became quieter, simpler. He understood then why some sought that state deliberately. Looking back, he now knew why it was a lie to call it peace. Yet what he endured was pale compared to what Lukel had survived in repetition throughout his lifespan.
Watching Lukel break, Vael finally understood literally what it meant to have a soul shattered and rebuilt again and again until something else emerged from the wreckage. While he had been spared something emerging from his own, he understood Lukel and the shattered parts of him on an intimate level now more than ever. And yet even fractured, something in him still reacted, to him.
He could not feel love, but he knew it was there. And the knowledge of Lukel’s suffering disturbed him deeply like an imbalance. As something wrong that demanded correction. So he worked tirelessly to find himself again.
It was strange to not just know but to live with the fact that he no longer needed sleep. No longer felt hunger. So it made his work more achievable at a faster rate than he was certain it took Lukel when he'd done this alone.
When his emotions returned, they did not do so gently. They came back all at once nearly overwhelming him. And with them came the full weight of what Lukel had endured alone while Vael stood beside him unable to respond as a husband should. He understood why he still couldn't look at himself in the mirror, and that his "I still love you." was too little, too late. It is a heavy weight he carries still.
He didn't regret his choice, nor would he ever he'd vowed. He'd knew what it cost them, and how it had nearly broke them both. But he was determined to find a way to help him look in the mirror and see the elf he saw despite it all, however long it was going to take. Now… he had all the time in the world to see it through.
(Written by @lukel-sunshadow and myself from both our character's perspectives. Thank you my friend for your time and writing as we embark on their new story arc together wherever it might lead them. Artwork by @artofwinterleigh - who beatuifully captured this heartbreaking chapter in their story. Thank you Lei, your work continues to awe us both.)