The room was almost silent, the only noise the sound of echoing footsteps as they approached. Light streamed in through a few high up windows, dust dancing through the beams.
Pictures of every kind plastered the walls; incredibly detailed oil paintings to barest pencil sketches, childish drawings in multi-coloured crayon and pieces that looked like they belonged in the hallways of Swordhaven castle and not gathering dust in a back room, so well done were they.
A solitary figure stood looking up at them, eyes flickering over each of the ones in front of him, and occasionally to the ones to his right, separated from the rest by a bright yellow line, almost luminescent in the lighting of the room.
The footsteps stopped and the figure glanced over to his companion. The newcomer paid him no mind, instead looking up at the many faces smiling out at him from his side of the wall, arms hanging loosely by his side.
The first found his eyes wandering to a few that stood out against the others, the situations depicted in them so different from any they knew today.
"What were they like?" he found himself asking, against his better judgement.
The other replied with an inquisitive tilt of the head, hair still falling into and covering his eyes, but now facing the first and not the wall.
"Your…friends," he said, waving somewhat helplessly at the few drawings that looked as though they had been taken straight from life itself and floundering for the right word to describe the individuals shown "From…before,"
This was not a subject they discussed often. The first was loathe to bring it up, to dredge up bad memories for the one beside him, given his fair share of them himself, and so the subject was never discussed unless the other himself brought it up; situations few and far between, usually along the lines of reminiscing.
(What could it be like? Warlic would sometimes wonder, on those rare occasions when Cysero would talk about life before the Reset To see the world spiral so close to destruction that reality itself needed reset? To go into that knowing things would be different and yet have to live with having survived it? To see friends and enemies alike so different from how you knew them, for them to not know you when you know them?
They were questions he never asked, and answers he would likely never get.)
"Different," Cysero replied, voice oddly soft for the usually manic weaponsmith. "but the same, in ways,"
And that was that. The tone was enough for Warlic to know he wouldn't be getting any more along those lines from his roommate.
His eyes once more drifted to the portraits that he knew could depict nothing other than people the mad magical weaponsmith must have known before. There were a few he recognised in passing, but three that truly held his attention.
One of these was a face that was unmistakably his own. It looked older, somehow, sterner and he had much more hair than he could remember ever having had here, but it was impossible not to recognise his own face.
(What was I like? He has wanted to ask, for as long as he has known that Cysero must have known his pre-Reset self.)
Another was a dark skinned individual, with goggles obscuring the top half of his face and a shock of wild blonde hair. He had never spoken his suspicions aloud, had never asked for confirmation, but somehow Warlic knew that that had been Cysero himself.
(Was your name the same as it is now? Did you change it to fit it? What were you like? He will never ask these questions, just like he will never ask the others.)
The third was who he found himself focusing on the most. The clothing was different, odd, just like it was for all of the pre-Reset depictions, and the metal figure shown in the background was foreign, but the face itself, the expression on it, was all too familiar. Cysero seemed to look at that one a lot, and Warlic found himself wondering how Cysero managed to stay his roommate, to stay in Falconreach, to do any of the things he did.
(Because if he had know Warlic pre-Reset, had known the hero pre-Reset, had known any of them before, how did he manage to spend time among them without going insane with grief for those he had lost yet still walked around him?
But perhaps he had not. He would find himself thinking, when the subject came to mind. Perhaps it was grief and not the Reset itself that made him how he is today)
"Does it ever get any easier?" the words left his mouth, and Cysero almost seemed to start in surprise.
"You're asking me?"
Warlic gave him A Look and what his reply would be is conveyed without either having to say or hear it.
(If the Reset restarted reality, and you survived it, you are older than I am)
Cysero sighed, and there was a melancholy air around him that would lead anyone who knew him to wondering if this was really the same man.
(Warlic has seen this before though, and does not question it. He suspects that these few moments wherein the manic smile fades and the behaviour begins running along a line parallel to 'normal' may be the few moments where Cysero is able to be who he was before. And Warlic will not point out the 'oddity' of this behaviour and steal that from him)
"Not really," Cysero said, eyes flickering over drawing after painting after drawing. "You get used to it after a while, I guess,"
Warlic nodded, and returned to looking at those of his own.
"Oh, I almost forgot why I came in here in the first place!" Cysero snapped his fingers as he said it, but the energy is a bare shadow of what is his norm.
"There was a bit of an accident with a plant and a plate of magical beans, and it's kind of rampaging around the tower right now,"
(It says something about both our lives that that is not a strange sentence Warlic muses, and it is something of a welcome break from the sadness of his thoughts as of late)
The Blue Mage could have gone tearing out of the room at that statement, but he didn't. The 'accident' could be dealt with in a while, for now he was content to stay in his reminiscing.
Given the lack of movement, the Mad Magical Weaponsmith agreed.
When they left this room, they would return to their usual interactions, but for now both were content to spend some time in silence with their common ground.
This fic was based off of a tumblr post about imagining an immortal character with a room full of pictures of loved ones that they've outlived. Then I remembered the reset and the story ran away with me.