redforce | inbox ▣ saltburnt

Since the invitations went out.

I do not know what to think. We were not supposed to meet again.

Never? Have you spoken with her already?

No. I am to set right the disorder I caused between life and death, and then I am to serve Ra aboard her barque for all eternity. She rules Egypt, until her son ascends and takes the throne he won from me.

Define "speak". We both have terrible tempers, worse when placed together.

[ this might be the most he's actually said to anyone about his own history, in his year-and-change of being at saltburnt ]

( he reads the first half of set's messages, then again, and again. of all the things he could have imagined set would say, that — wasn't one of them. and it feels precious, to know this. like set has handed him some gleaming treasure without a second thought to its worth. and yet, equally, that treasure weighs on his mind, rousing the guardian emperor from its slumber, if only for a moment —

to serve ra ...

... for all eternity.

— despite knowing there's nothing he can do. no way for him to intervene. set's fate is what it is. still, there's a possessiveness that grips shanks' heart, that wants to keep set close and give him everything his fate would never allow. (or is that a worse punishment? to have everything and and to lose it?) )

There are tales of your battles against the creature "Apep." Is that ... what awaits you?

( he's read all the stories by now, familiar with the ennead as they exist within the pages of scholarly texts, but they've never really ... discussed it. set's family, his punishment, his future. all of that seemed so far beyond this, never felt relevant or particularly pertinent to their relationship, that shanks had never bothered to ask. they're the same, in that respect. why would he voluntarily offer information he wasn't asked for?

he'll come back to her son, though. he has a feeling there's a larger conversation to be had there. )

You're being pedantic. You know what I mean. Should I be worried, Set?

( about you, about us, about everything we've built? )

Eh? ꜥꜣpp? Who's that?

[ What is that?

It feels familiar and distant all the same, a piece of a puzzle that does not quite fit amongst the portrait painted before him. A sense of déjà vu that he recognizes, associated with people he knows he knew/will come to know — matters entrenched in the whole of his existence, even though he is not yet living them. He is all he will be, but time is nonlinear to him. He is incomplete, vagrant. The name is

familiar. ( It feels like the blood, leaking steadily from his nose. The ache building between his brows, white-hot and painful. ) ]

[ He responds again.

It's hours later. Nothing is wrong. ]

I spoke with her briefly, before the reception. She may hate me but I know my sister — she would not make you or what we share the target of her ire.

I know you can see the future, husband-mine. Turn it off, you need not look any further than us, here and now.

I thought you would know.

( only set leaves him on read — which isn't that unusual, really. if he has something to say, he'll say it. and sometimes he gets distracted with one thing or another, and shanks knows he'll eventually come back to the conversation or find him, if he has something more to add. silence doesn't bother shanks, between them. it's in those silences their relationship was forged. )

You know it doesn't work like that.

( he wishes he could turn it off. but he's never been given a choice. still: )

As long as she doesn't pose a significant threat to you, there won't be anything to see but us, here and now. You'll have to introduce us properly sometime, you know. We could invite her for dinner.

( did he read "she may hate me"? yes. and? who hasn't dined with an enemy/sibling? )

[ Know what? Weird. A moment's discomfort churns low in his belly, overlooked in favor of Shanks's sweetness, Shanks's simmering violence waiting to be sprung upon someone who has vexed him thoroughly — that lovely, wild-eyed protective streak of his that radiates outward, entwined strongly with his haki. ]

Though I stand you at my side with great pride, you may have to introduce yourself to her if you so choose. She and I hate one another, and I am cautious about bringing those who would choose me over her near. The geas I bear as result of my sentence might

interpret such a decision as an act of rebellion. An act that would erase me from existence. [ It makes him nervous, to have allies and friends and a worshiper and a husband that would defend him, name him companion, admit to loving him — especially because he is not to threaten Isis or Horus. ]

You are always welcome to independence, though. I would never curtail your wishes. Dinner might just be ill-advised, until I know why she is here, and where she and I stand.

Do you hate her? Or are things just complicated?

( complicated like things are between him and shamrock? who is no more a product of circumstance than shanks is? only shamrock stayed — in the holy land, with the man who has never been shanks' father, serving the same government who had his real father executed, who were surely responsible for the two of them being torn apart in the first place — and shanks won't ever forgive him for that when he gave his brother the opportunity to finally be free.

come away with me, pleaded the brother who grew up with nothing. (who always knew he was loved.)

stay here with me, urged the brother who grew up with everything. (who never knew he was loved.)

perhaps being gods makes it different, but — )

I know what it is to have betrayed a sibling. In their eyes, anyway. Your existence is far more important to me than family dinner. I'll make her acquaintance myself.

[ Sometimes, writing things out cannot convey the sentiment. Even though Set is a very evocative writer, there are times where he simply cannot contain the need to speak aloud: ] Some days, I do. I hate her very much, because I still love her very much.

[ It's rarely that he uses that word: love. It's a dangerous word, that has never protected him from anything or conquered all that fell upon him, predatory and hungry. ]

But, I love all of my siblings. [ Sigh, guiltily: ] Even Osiris, because the memories of who they were before I ruined everything about us embodied all that I wanted. As gods, we do not get to want things very often. We are made perfectly and to want is to find lacking in our lives — to seize what we want is to threaten the order of the world we were created to uphold.

You wanted your father to acknowledge you, and love you. I wanted my family to do much the same.

[ Being a god of Set's generation is, at the heart of it, being a human being with great power and an alien mindset, that still juggles deep, unfettered emotions and desires. The four of them were not meant to exist, in Ra's mind. They straddled a dangerous line, and the upheaval they brought into the world was nigh-irreversible. A quartet of apocalypses, but not for humankind: they were an apocalypse for the divine. ]

Thank you, Shanks. I truly hope you like her, and that she remains here and is able to get to know you. You are a very wonderful man.

( shanks and his brother had only been together for a single year of their lives before they were split for another twenty-some. he doesn't even have memories of that time on god valley, or his mother, or how he ended up in that treasure chest. all of these things he learned from the people who were there: dragon, who rescued him; roger, who adopted him. his first and only impression of his brother, then, was in the holy land. in a place shanks despised, inhabited by the worst of the worst of the celestial dragons.

shamrock had been kind to him, though, unexpectedly. worried over his injury. as if sharing the same face, the same blood, gave shanks an advantage over everyone else his brother never extended the same kindness to. maybe if they'd grown up together, things would be different. or maybe shamrock was always meant to oppose him, in the end, regardless of what happened in the middle. which is, perhaps, the reason why he bristles at the way set speaks of osiris — as if that betrayal of brotherhood was in any way set's fault and not entirely manufactured by osiris himself.

but he holds his tongue, to let set finish, to try to better understand the way of the gods as set explains it. after a moment of consideration and a conscious effort to reign in his haki from the mere thought of osiris — )

Well, if she's anything like you, I'm sure I'll love her.

( then, because he can't let this go: )

Even my brother was kind to me, once, you know. The only time I ever visited the Holy Land. But that doesn't make him a kind person. ( with a weary sigh: ) I thought I could change him. Convince him to disavow our blood for the good of the world. He would have rather kept me in a cell than let me return to my crew. Thought that would have been doing me a favor, because that way he could protect me. Take care of me. He blamed me for being poisoned by pirates. Tried to convince me it was my fault when he stabbed me in his attempt to make me to stay. ( a beat, heavy with melancholy and bitterness.) Men like him — like Osiris — they ruin. They break and betray and they'll bleed you dry for what they want. That's not your fault, Set. It's never been your fault.

[ What never ceases to surprise him, is how he and Shanks always find a way to deepen their understanding of one another; his husband draws the words and emotions and concerns from him without truly asking — his patience like gravity, tugging soft and incessant at the burdens Set has long since heaped upon his own shoulders until he's made to tuck them into Shanks's palm and let him look upon them. To fear, every time, some manner of judgment that will shatter him anew or flay his heart open.

They talk of their brothers, this time. Similar in some ways, and different in others. ( Truly, Set believes Osiris's kindness had to have been real. That his presence had induced some sort of madness in him, that he had been greedy beyond his right and Osiris's desire to placate and please him had been twisted. / Truly, Set believes all of Osiris's kindness was a calculated method of isolating him, of making him smaller and more dependent by patiently, arduously sowing the seeds of doubt among those who also loved him. )

He wishes,

so much,

that someone, anyone, had questioned it. Had chosen him. Had saved him. Had the faith in him, to look at the wreckage of his body and mind after that night and said: It wasn't your fault, because so much would have been different. ( He wishes, sometimes, that things had been different. Even if his fate was to become what he had. ) Swallowing hard, he cradles his phone in both hands. Digesting what Shanks had told him, had shared with him. The things he's always shared with him. He wants to be sick, he wants to die — even as his small, shaking voice says: ] He was so easy to love. Everyone thought it was incredible to receive even the slightest bit of attention from him, and he doted on me. All the time! The other goes used to ask me what it was like, being so close to the King of Gods. Do you know what I told them? I don't know. It is my brother's side I stand at — I was so fxcking proud of it! And he used to, he always used to make these warm petitions on my behalf: Forgive Set, it's in his nature to be difficult, or my brother's passions often get away from him, do not take what he says to heart. And so —!

Nobody! Not a single soul, not even my own mother who saw what he did to me —! Nobody asked me!

[ Anything. Not what happened, not why it happened. Not anything. ]

Do you still love your brother? Even after all he did and all he is and all he would still do to you?

inbox ▣ saltburnt

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

1/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

TEXT → VOICE

no subject

no subject