Work Text:
SkekGra scratches lists in the dust on one of the long-disused tables in the Tomb of Relics, diagrams, numbers, names, wipes the dust away with his sleeve and begins again on another dusty section of the tabletop. He hums and mewls, anxious, high-pitched, occasionally shifting uncannily by several octaves and timbres into a sort of low snarl that must have emanated from the Conqueror of old.
“You’re obsessing,” points out urGoh, not altogether convincingly. If he can’t convince himself, he certainly won’t convince skekGra. The urRu has become accustomed to mitigating his Skeksis’ neuroses, but, on the other hand, this particular neurotic behavior is probably needful, now. Neurotic, or strategic?
“Of course I’m bloody obsessing, urGoh, look at what’s at stake! I need to practice all of this information, commit it to memory, a record as faithful as what we engraved in Lore. Military intelligence! Tactical knowledge! I can’t possibly travel with hard copies on me. I need to have it all down, by memory. Can’t set it to paper until I get to Sog.”
UrGoh sighs heavily under his breath. The idea of skekGra running loose about the land, potentially being apprehended outside of the desert to which the Skeksis exiled him, is alarming. They could both die, apart from each other and likely prolonged, if skekGra is caught. But it would be worse still, both for themselves and for Gelfling, they’ve concurred, if skekGra were to be caught bearing reams of information–intelligence about Skeksis behavior and traditions and history, about the layout of the Castle, bearing it to the Resistance where it has hunkered down in the relative security of Sog’s saturated substrate and the tangled embrace of the apeknot trees.
“You have practiced it dozens of times.” UrGoh isn’t used to being the more anxious party. He would have preferred to go with skekGra, but, as the latter had not unfairly pointed out, that would slow them down. For trine upon trine, the Mystic has encouraged his Skeksis self to peek past the veil of his penitence, to reclaim some of the more begin and useful “Skeksis” behaviors that the Heretic had dropped like hot coals along the path to their exile. Now that skekGra, needled by the loss of urVa and by urLii’s news of the battles and the draining, is actually reassuming some mantle of self-assurance and a steadier hand with a weapon, urGoh has found himself fretting for his companion in a different way than he’s been used to.
“You’re right, you’re right,” skekGra grumbles abstractedly, still working on another diagram of the catacombs etched with a talon through the dust. “I’ll sleep on it. Practice it a bit more tomorrow, before I set off.”
UrGoh’s stomach lurches unpleasantly. SkekGra has never been the one to leave. It was always urGoh, making their supply runs, who had needed to leave skekGra alone and fretful at the Circle of the Suns. Now he begins to understand more viscerally, the fear of staying behind, of not knowing what will happen to themself while his self is abroad.
“And tonight–?” the Mystic prompts.
The Skeksis wipes his work away again with his sleeve–happily, not white anymore, a color which would be ruined with all the dust he’s been fiddling with. He’s fashioned himself something less flowing and less likely to snag on anything, darker, in drab greenish-brown hues to blend in with stem and leaf and mud. “Yes, tonight, I’ll have done.” The stern expression that urGoh recalls from so long ago, when he used to run into the Conqueror on their respective wanderings, visits skekGra’s jagged profile as he looks at nothing in particular, surveys the content of his own mind, then immediately falls away when he turns to face urGoh. “There is no one but you tonight, my heart.”
– –
Their room, provided by a distracted urLii upon their bedraggled emergence from the Breath of Thra, is a storage space for storage items. Empty boxes and cloths and hollow dowels, standing by for the reception of artifacts to be bestowed within the Tomb of Relics, obscure all the walls of the small space. A Grottan boy called Amri, evidently a bit sore that his maudra had left him behind to assist urLii, had perfunctorily delivered what meagre bedding could be scrounged up the first evening of their arrival.
The small, high space is lit only by some bioluminescent bugs just emerged from their cocoons, sung awake by urGoh the same as he had sung them awake to light the unfurnished cave when he and skekGra first arrived at the Circle of the Suns. That was a long time ago, long time, two-thirds of their lifetime. UrGoh had been ridiculously besotted and simultaneously exasperated by his Skeksis half that day, although the more emotive skekGra would never have guessed at the extent of his conflicting sentiments, and the glowing bugs floating up in silent spirals had calmed them both. They had been careful with each other than, unsure of the ramifications of touching each other in any mildly sensual way. They are not careful, now, tails twining tightly together, indulging in each other like fizzgig in heat, as though it may be their last chance (which it may be, if skekGra’s mission goes awry). For all that skekGra has been steeling and schooling himself, prodding some parts of the Conqueror awake to aide what he sees as a new task added to the roll of his obligation to Thra, he is no different here than he’s ever been since they decided that going and fucking themselves was a legitimate option, offering his throat to urGoh, vocal, nearly frantic, exultant and vaguely sad.
– –
UrGoh fiddles idly with his hair with one set of hands, skekGra’s grey downy ruff with the other. He finds himself attempting to braid two stands of his hair with a section of the down rolled smooth between his fingers.
“That won’t work,” the Heretic murmurs idly.
“We have done many things that weren’t supposed to…work.”
“We have, haven’t we?” SkekGra tilts his head back, either to ponder something on the ceiling or to give urGoh easier access to the strand in question, looking for that moment utterly content in the midst of the dark night.
UrGoh feels a surge of affection so strong he doesn’t know what to do with it, which has never really changed. So he does what he sometimes does, which is to needle his counterpart. “Might work better if you brushed this mess out more.”
“Why would I brush it, four-arms? It’s not hair.”
“It’s fluffy.”
The Skeksis glances sidelong at the urRu, both recalling the first time urGoh had referred to skekGra as “fluffy.” How irate the newly-named Heretic had been in his near-stupor, still barely coherent from the head trauma, and also how–the precise opposite of irate. It is a mutual favorite memory, one that has borne many re-tellings.
“Fine, then brush it.”
UrGoh wonders why this particular conversation has never happened in all their hundreds of trine together. By Thra, it should have occurred to him to brush skekGra long time ago. His whole neck and shoulders are always such a frazzled mess. Grumbling acquiescence, urGoh rummages among the few items he’s unpacked and placed on one of the low shelves near their bed, finds the brush, and starts the brushing under the Skeksis’ chin.
“Mmmh,” skekGra ascents. “That’s really rather nice. Hmm–ouch!”
“Don’t be a wimp. It’s full of tangles. And thistles. Burrs. Is that a crawlie leg?”
“Might be. I’m helping urLii with the infestation.”
“Always eager to help if it involves eating.”
“I’ll eat you if you don’t stop snarking me.”
“Please do.”
“I just did.”
“Do so again, Birdling.”
“Not now, urGoh, you’re brushing my abysmal mane, remember?”
“Right.” Melancholy leaches into the urRu’s mood as he continues the brushing. “Should have done this a long time ago. And now, maybe…”
SkekGra is not always predictable, even now. UrGoh half expects him to squawk, “Don’t talk about it!” but instead the Heretic turns to look full at him, “Now maybe I’ll only get one brushing, eh? You know, if the worst happens, of course I’ll think of you and nothing but you right up til the end.”
UrGoh stops brushing. Maybe he’d have preferred a Don’t talk about it! He feels his hands quivering. SkekGra takes the brush from him and pulls them together, wrapping all their arms together, even the little auxiliary ones the Skeksis has limited use of. “Not that I’m predicting that outcome, mind. I’m clever, I know the lay of the land, I did a little espionage back in my day, no one will catch me.” He starts to say what they’re both thinking, “I wish it needn’t–” then stops himself. “Our duty to Thra and Thra-kind come before our own life though. We can’t sit back and watch while this horror and madness consumes everything, while the land becomes barren, lifeless. If it continues, it’ll eventually find us and root us out anyway.”
“Of course,” murmurs urGoh, a bit more acquiescent than usual.
SkekGra’s reaction to learning from urLii what the Skeksis had been doing to Gelfling is fresh and terrible in the urRu’s mind. SkekGra had often decried Skeksis as vicious, self-serving, duplicitous, but the news of the draining had caught even him off guard. After the Heretic had stopped screaming obscenities and throwing things, he’d asked in a deathly calm voice for a weapon from the Tomb, if any could be spared. Then he’d done the new paint he’d been pondering shortly before Lore brought the Gelfling and the Podling in for their puppet show. No red, still white, instead of a red a deep blue-green. No blunt angles, but arcing swirls, the color of dusk sky and clouds. The young Conqueror had had deep blue and red paint, elongated lines vaguely inscribing two sides of curvilinear triangles. The colors and the shapes on skekGra’s face have danced in a triangular formation, one color leaving, another leaving, another one returning. It makes him look very different, which of course is the point. The long age of their waiting is over.
If the Skeksis see skekGra’s new fashion statement– Spirals, like a fucking Mystic, what a scandal, what a slap in the Emperor’s face! UrGoh smirks vaguely at the thought, despite his worry.
“UrGoh, this is serious business.” The Heretic feigns indignation, but seems relieved that the dreary talk has been got out of the way. “What’s so funny?”
“Skeksis would be so pissed off about your paint.”
SkekGra cackles. “Aha! Yes, yes they would, yes they would. They would shit themselves. Part of my reasoning, I’ll admit–bit of defiance. But mostly, I did it because…” He grows serious again, his eyes bright. “You. Because I am you. You are me. You’ve changed me. I wanted to–to paint it.”
UrGoh nuzzles the side of his Skeksis’ face, which does have a few almost urRu-like swirls now occurring naturally in the rough aging skin. Neither are quite sure when they formed there. “It’s beautiful.”