Title: Interesting Acquaintances
Author: Cyprith
Pairing: Fathis Aren/Aldos Othran
Rating: pg-13
Summary: Anything to keep those goddamned Necromancers from breaking into his Tel.
Author's Note: And the worst part is, it almost works. xD
Things to know before you start:
The crates outside of Ancotar's crumbling tower actually belong to Fathis when you look them up in the creation wizard.
Noveni Othran is the Necromancer who speaks to you in Welspring Cave during the Mages' Guild quest. As the Necromancers have only been acting up lately and supposedly (though not in this fic) Aldos' wife has only been dead a month, it makes sense.
There are a number of rather shady Othrans in Morrowind. One's a thief, one's a smuggler cooking skooma and another is a mage in one of the old strongholds. So Aldos had a pretty legit reason for fearing the guards—they know his cousins.
Because there are so many Othrans in Morrowind, Aldos is now from Morrowind, thus speaks like a proper Dunmer rather than squeaky Secheler who I nevertheless love. xD
*
Times like this, Fathis wished he'd listened to his father. Not really, of course. His father would have loved nothing better than to see Fathis on a spit over a pit of his own fire atronach—he was Telvanni, after all, and Fathis may have… relocated a few of his prized artifacts—but he'd given him a few gems of wisdom over the years. Namely that being best at everything was the only way to intimidate everyone.
Fathis really wished he'd listened. But corpse puppetry was an inelegant waste of time and magic—never mind the mess—and why anyone would play with maggots and old flesh when deadric beauty was so close at hand baffled him. Still, he thought, looking down at the latest Necromancer to invade his Tel, it would have been nice to send this idiot child dancing back to his master caked in explosive void salt. The s'wit had killed his favorite Xivilai.
Well, killed was a bit of an exaggeration. Whatever daedric god his Xivilai served would have him back on his feet in no time and Fathis knew the creature'd be waiting at the portal like a lost puppy in the morning. It was the principal of the thing though. Apprentices were a dime a dozen. Thick like lizards in Black Marsh. They practically swarmed Bravil. Hell, the Arcane University—of which he was an honorary member and how that worked when he'd never signed up was anyone's guess—practically threw the idiots his way.
So why did these fetching Necromancers persist in slaughtering his damn daedra?
Fathis sighed and crossed the room to the gong—Sixth House and very well made—that would summon him a small army of apprentices. It was bad enough these fetchers kept showing up. He certainly wasn't going to be the one to strip the corpse.
*
Mannimarco seemed to be losing sway with his followers, Fathis decided, picking through the Necromancer's remains, everything sorted neatly into piles of importance on his long desk. Tragic, really. The mer had lived through the Dragon Break and now he couldn't even keep his legions of puppeteers in line. Mages' Guild breathing down their neck, looking to rid the world of this dark plague, huzzah and those idiots kept ending up here. Honestly, if he wanted an army of his own fallen, he could have simply sent a letter. Fathis was an obliging sort. He'd be more than happy to help—
Ah. A letter.
Easing down into the nearby chair, Fathis removed the parchment from the late idiot's inner pocket and began to read.
And then read it again.
Slowly, Fathis set the letter down on his desk and leaned back, fiddling idly with the Necromancer's enchanted dagger. A magical corpse for our Master. This was certainly an interesting development. Obviously, whoever Noveni Othran was, she had not actually spoken to Mannimarco about this magnificent plan. Had she, she'd have found that he and Mannimarco were on quite friendly terms—both of them rather amused by the Mages' Guild's antics. A threat to Necromancy? Hardly. They ran about like children chasing dragons through the tall grass.
Othran, though. Othran. The name was familiar.
This called for a visit.
*
"Still abed at this hour? I'm astounded you get any work done at all."
Someone was talking to him, Ancotar realized in a hazy sort of way. Probably another of those idiot villagers. Your magic made my sheep brown! You turned our corn to peaches! Never occurring to them that perhaps the sheep was dirty and that their corn had never actually grown on a tree.
"And look at this place. Covered in dirt and is that ectoplasm on your ceiling? Yes, I rather think it is."
Except the villagers usually weren't so particular about his house keeping.
"No apprentices, no maid, not even a lumbering example of your handiwork. Really, Ancotar, have you done anything at all since you ran off with my crockery shipment?"
And neither did they have Azura's Coast accents.
Eyes flying open, Ancotar vaulted out of bed and across what was left of the archer wall—not knowing where the hell he was going but hoping to get there in one piece, even half dressed. As it was, he made it about halfway before slamming into a moody, recently resurrected Xivilai as he rounded the corner.
Fathis only smiled at him with that welcoming, charmer's grin that spoke of horrible things once you got to know the bastard and cocked an eyebrow.
"Going somewhere?" he asked. "I wouldn't recommend it really. We had another idiot Necromancer last night and Medrike came out rather worse for the wear. He's a bit testy right now. Separation anxiety. You know how it is."
Ancotar did. Or rather, he knew deadra found cold-hearted Telvanni inexplicably attractive and that Fathis, of all the Tels he'd known, had an army of smitten daedra following him around at any given time. .. apprentices too, come to think of it. Probably part of the reason he'd left.
With a sigh, he let the Xivilai hoist him up and carry him back to the bed where they stood together, Ancotar with his feet dangling a few inches from the ground and Medrike making eyes at Fathis over his head.
"What do you want?" he asked, resigned.
Fathis smiled again—that damned shit-eating grin—and leaned back against the desk.
"What do you know about a woman named Noveni Othran?"
*
Cheydinhal. Fathis rather liked Cheydinhal. Full to the brim with corruption, it almost reminded him of home. Of course, Tels didn't grow so well in Cyrodiilian soil and so the architecture was sorely lacking the beauty of home, but the people—people were the same wherever you went, if you knew where to go.
"Shouldn't be too hard to find," Ancotar had said. "Last I heard, the man was a raving drunk."
Which was interesting really. Aldos Othran—poor, lost widower driven to drink ever since his darling bride had been murdered by a roving pack of bandits. Except to Fathis it rather looked like his darling bride had been rescued by her roving pack of lovers whereupon they had pranced off into the sunset with their corpses and idiot plans to kill him for Mannimarco.
"Cliffracers flyyyyy—flyin' so hiiiigh… high as a—hic—high as a… as a cliffracer flies."
Ah. Well. Fathis smiled to himself and turned in the direction of the bridge, Medrike close at his heels and eyeing the nearby guard with a look that said resurrection had left him hungry.
Ancotar hadn't been lying after all.
*
Aldos woke with a headache, staring at a strange ceiling. This wasn't unusual. He woke up with headaches in strange places all the time. Had been since… well… had been ever sense Then. And seeing as how he didn't like to think about Then very much and the thought had already occurred to him, it was not looking to be a very bright day.
Or rather, it was a very bright day. Too bright. As in, the sun had decided he was its very worst enemy and that it was going to gouge a hole in his brain with some sort of mystical pain-beam suns shouldn't have.
Aldos groaned, rolled over and promptly wished he hadn't, the movement sending his stomach rattling behind his ribs.
"Probably not the best idea," a voice said from some distance off. "I'd lie very still and quietly wish I were dead, if I were you."
Fetcher, Aldos thought, but didn't quite wish he were dead at the moment and so wisely kept the thought to himself. The man had a very official tone about him, an accent that most definitely hailed from Morrowind and if the Ordinators had finally caught up with him, well, there was really no reason to hasten the beating. The sun was doing a fine job all on its own.
"Where am I?" he asked instead and even his own voice made him sick.
"My Tel," the man said, and Aldos could just crack his eyes against the sun enough to see a Dunmer silhouetted against what looked to be a Xivilai and an alchemy set. "It's not really a Tel, of course. It's otherwise useless old stonework—Imperials never build anything that lasts, but the tunnels are sound enough."
Tunnels. Aldos wished he were in the tunnels. If he were in the tunnels, the sun wouldn't be attempting to detach his head through his eyeballs.
"We, sir," he announced with as much decorum as he could manage, "are not underground."
And so saying, introduced the meager contents of his stomach to the floor.
*
When Aldos woke again he was rather pleased to discover he was indeed underground and that his head didn't hurt nearly so much as it had. Of course, his head was also clearer than it had been in months, paving the way with golden stonework for any hundred thoughts about Then.
Slowly, he closed his eyes and tried desperately to think of something else.
The man would do. The Telvanni. At least, he'd mentioned a Tel, so Aldos assumed he was Telvanni. Odd to find a Telvanni here in Cyrodiil. The tended to like the finer things in life and one of the finer things seemed to be mocking Outlanders. Pretty hard to mock Outlanders, in his opinion, if you were living with them. Although, all things considered, if there was any one who could be the only Telvanni in a nation filled with people and still consider them all Outlanders, this particular Telvanni was probably it. He'd seemed only too delighted to summon a half dozen robe-bedecked maids to clean his mess and take him down below.
He hadn't even used the Xivilai.
Nice of him, really. Though they tended not to use Xivilai in Morrowind. Or perhaps he'd only missed the change. Dremora Lords had been in fashion when he'd been avoiding anyone official like the plague—with Noveni, but don't think of that—but that'd been years ago—think about the Telvanni—and styles like that often changed. For all he knew, they could be sleeping with winged twilights and golden saints by now. Which, hell, they probably always were.
Aldos curled up in a ball in his surprisingly comfortable bed and quietly longed for a drink. It was easier not to think of anything when there was some sort of liquor to be had. Or at least the problem of acquiring more liquor. He didn't know what the hell this strange Telvanni wanted with him, but he doubted he'd be sharing any flin. Which was a shame, really. He hadn't had flin since… well, since.
Maybe, he decided carefully, easing himself back down into the pillows, he'd better just go back to sleep.
*
The Telvanni was there when he woke, smiling in a cheerful sort of way. And Aldos had done his best to avoid Telvanni when he'd been in Morrowind—bastards would sell you out in a second—but he recognized that smile meant something very, very bad.
"Wha… what do you want?" he managed around a tongue that felt like it'd been replaced with a wad of cotton a guar had shat out.
"Drink this," the man said, and despite the wicked cheerfulness, Aldos couldn't help noticing he was rather attractive.
"What is it?" and then, realizing that'd probably warrant an answer that didn't make sense to anyone who hadn't absorbed a mage or eight, "Why?"
The mer only shrugged and set the potion down on the table near his head.
"If you'd rather be hung-over for the next week, so be it."
That, Aldos was just sober enough to notice, was not an answer. That was one of those tricky, side-step-the-actual-matter-at-hand-and-hope-no-one-will-notice type things. And Aldos was an incompetent, blundering fool who couldn't save his wife—don't think of that; look at his eyes—and a drunk besides, but he was not an idiot.
"What do you want with me?" he snapped and sat up, ignoring the way his head threatened to fall off. "And why have you brought me here? Hell, where is here?"
But the mer only looked at him and laughed—actually fetching laughed—and Aldos wanted to throttle him for it before realizing in a belated, wondering sort of way he hadn't had the motivation to throttle anyone in a long time.
"You've got some spark in you, after all," he said, looking smug and in absolutely no way attractive to anyone—certainly not Aldos. "Good. Maybe you're not just a raving, useless drunk."
"Yes, well, maybe I was happy being a raving, useless drunk," Aldos snarled and stood, forgetting his nakedness and the fact he was arguing with a mage in his own damn basement. "Maybe there are worse things in this world than—than fetching potions and who's buggering their dremora!"
And he realized it was very, very unwise to be initiating an argument with his very Telvanni host—especially as Telvanni often proved their point by killing their opponent—but even as the thought occurred to him, he realized something.
He was tired of mentioning his wife.
When he drank, when he didn't—he always mentioned his wife. Or, at the very least, always mentioned Then. Told anyone who'd listen about it again and again. Always the same goddamned story. And he hadn't thought of it until just now but he was really sick of it. It wasn't his fault. He'd been fetching unconscious through most of it—bastards had snuck up behind him. There was nothing he could have done. And there'd been no body when he woke, so it was possible she was still roaming around somewhere. They'd not been on good terms, really. He'd been tired of running from place to place so the officials wouldn't notice she had a thing for carrying off the dead. And that Ordinator—she'd known better. So she hadn't killed him. That didn't mean anything. To raise him again and walk him through Vivec? To say he'd been the one to do it when they caught her? Yes, perhaps they would have killed her had she not said it, but to throw him in their path like meat before an Ogrim?
Aldos blinked and sat down abruptly.
He'd been furious with himself, with her, with her helplessness—guilt ridden like it was his fault she couldn't stand on her own damn feet for so long that now…
What happened now?
"I'm sorry," he murmured , looking up to find the Telvanni staring on in bemusement. "I don't suppose it's you I'm actually angry with."
The mer looked at him, a secretive sort of smirk playing at the corner of his lips and said, "She's not dead, you know."
Aldos froze.
"She?"
"Your wife. Noveni. She's not dead." And then, slipping out of the room as if he hadn't said anything at all of importance, "Drink your potion."
Aldos launched across the room, but the door had already shut, locking him inside. For a moment, he considered throwing himself at the door, busting it down and demanding answers. But he was tired, still naked and his head throbbed like something was gnawing on his brain. He wanted to lay down somewhere cool and dark—oh look, here he was—and forget the world existed for awhile.
Noveni wasn't dead.
For months he'd told himself he'd killed her. That his inaction, his inability to act had been what killed her. For months, he'd been a murderer. He'd believed—he'd really, truly believed—he may as well have been the one to kill his wife.
But he'd woken up to find only blood in the sand. Not Noveni. And her dress was torn and lying nearby, but that didn't mean a damned thing, really. Any idiot could tear a bit of cloth. And she'd been hinting in the weeks before—hinting that perhaps this marriage wasn't what she'd been expected when she'd said her vows. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was her way of getting out. She'd failed at getting the Ordinators to kill him so now she'd pretend to have been killed herself—leaving him with half a dozen angry institutions still knocking at his door.
Aldos stared at his hands, at the potion on the bedside table.
He'd always known that, really. That she wasn't dead. He'd told anyone who'd listen she was, but it was only to avoid the matter at hand. It had all been too convenient. And he didn't remember much of what had happened directly before the bastard had snuck up on him with a rock—concussions could do that, he'd been told—but he remembered enough to know she'd been anxious that day and it hadn't been from arguing.
And Aldos found he really, really didn't have the energy to care. The facts were still there. Everything he'd been avoiding for months was just the way he'd left it, all of it neatly wrapped in so much guilt and denial it was hard to see the truth for all the things she'd wanted him to believe. But there it was. Noveni had always been good at turning the blame to him. For months he'd wallowed in liquor, moaning that he'd betrayed his wife, his mate, the only woman he'd ever love.
But then, Aldos decided with a stubbornness he hadn't had in years, perhaps the last bit was true. He'd never been especially keen on women. He and Sterdecan—sweet, gentle Decan—had lain together for years before he'd met her. But she'd come along with her slim frame and fragile disposition—desperate fabrications—and somehow Decan hadn't been quite able to hold his attention anymore. There were spells involved in that if he cared to look for them. Charms and incantations that mimicked infatuation. No doubt she knew them all. Hell, she'd probably used them on the boys who'd stolen her away, leaving sheep's blood in the sand.
With a sigh, he took the potion from the bedside table. It was obvious now why he was here. This Telvanni had some business with his wife—no one ever had business with him; not really—and he thought somehow Aldos could lure her in. Well, if that was what he wanted, so be it. He'd help. The man had been kind enough to give him a roof over his head and there'd been food the day before, though he'd been too sick to eat it. More than he could say for anyone in Cheydinhal. They'd taken his house. Hell, they'd tried to take his bedroll by the river. He didn't have anything in the world except the clothes he'd come with—wherever they were—and the fact that he was married to a wanted woman.
There were, he decided, downing the potion, worse things than being manipulated for a comfortable bed.
*
For the first time in years, Fathis found himself intrigued by something other than a daedrea. It was a pleasant, if maddening surprise. This Othran fellow was not quite the grief stricken drunk Ancotar had made him out to be. And Noveni certainly not the late, loving wife the Black Horse Courier had reported. There was far, far more swimming just beneath the surface of this little incident and Fathis had unintentionally stumbled headfirst into it. Far easier, perhaps, to simply have sent a letter to Mannimarco via some sort of dremora and had it done with. But now…
Damn, but the mer was interesting.
Fathis paced his laboratory, trying to concentrate on anything—even a night eye potion if that was the most complicated thing he could manage tonight—and failing miserably. Now was not the time to act. He knew this. He'd placed the seeds in Aldos' mind and now all that was left was for him to put two and two together, come to resent his supposedly late wife and spring to Fathis' aid. Once this idiot Noveni was dealt with and sent back to Mannimarco in pieces, they could put this whole matter of forced association behind them and get on with their lives.
Only, Fathis found, he didn't want to.
And that in itself was odd. Man and mer held no real fascination for him anymore. They did what was he expected them to do. Nothing more, nothing less. Generally speaking, they were the most boring, predictable excuses for life he'd ever encountered. Daedra, on the other hand, did not function on such a strict set of laws. They had their honor and that was it. Beyond that, if they wanted something and its taking would not dishonor their kin, they leapt for it. It kept things interesting.
But Aldos… Aldos was not unintelligent. He'd begun to shout, yes. He'd begun a insensible argument about a series of circumstances he'd had no control over affecting a series of circumstances he did. And while the argument he'd meant to start was totally erroneous with very, very slim basis in fact, he'd stopped.
He'd stopped. He'd had the courage, the sheer, unadorned bravery to begin an argument with a Telvanni whilst naked and he'd actually stopped to have an epiphany. And not the sort of epiphany that led to shutting up out of self preservation. He'd had an actual thought.
Fathis suspected he might even have had more than one.
It was possible Aldos was actually quite clever. He'd had the presence of mind to realize the argument he was having was not one he was actually having. And while lolling in the streets singing about cliffracers—which, incidentally, tended to fly rather low in an annoying and generally suicidal fashion—wasn't the most intelligent thing, Fathis suspected that without the mead, this mer was.
And that was the intriguing thing. Because this was not a man who had any expertise in magic. Dunmer though he was, he was as like related to an Ashlander as to anyone worth knowing. Fathis would bet his favorite Xivilai Aldos could not conjure dust much less any sort of daedra…
And yet.
There was potential there. A burning sort of unrealized potential that Fathis did not see in his apprentices and did not want to see in a common drunk who was only his means to an end. Hell, the means to which end he belonged was easily achieved by other, more direct means. Aldos was only a means to Fathis' brief amusement—a means to his satisfaction in killing that damned n'wah who kept throwing soon-to-be dead men in his direction. He was not especially valuable.
And yet.
Fathis glowered at the wall, and when that failed to produce a result, glowered at his Xivilai instead. He was not interested in man or mer. This was a fact that had followed him from his adolescence and well into his adulthood. There was nothing bound solely to Nirn that could capture his attention for any length of time.
So how was it that this mer had?
*
By midmorning, Aldos had stopped throwing up at half hour intervals everything he'd ever had to drink in his entire life. The potion, whatever had been in it, had been meant for a purgatory and while his stomach still had the decidedly tetchy edge that warned food would in no way be tolerated, he felt rather better.
At least he felt a little less like dying, which was something of an improvement.
Exhausted, though with a vaguely pleasant outlook on life, Aldos finally went to sleep.
*
"How is he?" Fathis asked the apprentice that had entered the room without turning from his work. The letter at hand needed to be just vague enough to entice Noveni herself to come down while specific enough to entail what would be lost if she didn't and it was, at present, demanding his full attention.
"Sleeping, Master Aren," the woman said with the mix of fear and adoration in her voice Fathis liked to see in his apprentices. Generally, it meant they were too damn stupid to see he only used them as maids and henchmen. Ancotar—he'd been just clever enough to take offense to it. Fetching bastard had diverted an entire shipment of alchemy equipment and run off to a fort where he could practice alone.
All told, Fathis rather liked him.
"Sleeping?" There was something wrong with the last sentence. The wording just wasn't right… "The potion's run its course then?"
"Yes, Master Aren. He wouldn't eat his breakfast though."
Fathis paused a moment, scratched out an offending comma and turned to look at her.
"He's refusing to eat?" Well, he'd been interesting while some of the mystery had held. But the truth remained, men and mer were never as interesting the morning after. "How mundane."
But the apprentice only looked at him with that wide-eyed panic that usually precipitated active thought and took a tentative step away from where Medrike crouched in the corner, sharpening his axe.
"Not refusing to eat, as such," she offered in cringing, maddening half-speak.
"Oh, just say it, would you?" Fathis snapped. He had to finish and send this letter before he finally appeared in court—the count here at least knew better than to admonish him for his constant absences, but he did not need an old man's assassin sent to bother him for not fulfilling his side of the contract.
The girl cringed again, backing away a little farther from Medrike who had yet to acknowledge her existence.
"He said, thank you, but no," she managed, her voice barely trembling. "He said he appreciated the thought but that he wasn't up to eating."
Fathis stopped, put the quill down and fixed the apprentice with his full attention.
"He appreciated the thought?"
She nodded, her lips pressed into a white line, still eyeing the Xivilai.
"And he isn't trying to starve himself?"
A shake of the head this time and another worried glance at Medrike. Fathis leaned back in his chair, digesting this.
"You may go," he told the woman after a moment had passed, still absorbed in his thoughts, the letter on the table forgotten.
He watched as she fled the room, marveling at her speed in a detached sort of way—skooma, perhaps?—and thinking about the mer in his spare room. Somehow, he'd managed to make willful disobedience intriguing.
How very interesting…
*
When Aldos woke again, it was with the distinct impression that a great deal of time had passed and that someone was watching him.
"You're awake," he heard next to the bed.
"Yes," he agreed without bothering to open his eyes. "And trying not to be."
And then, as the thought occurred to him, "Thank you for the bed. It's been long enough since I've slept in one."
He could feel the Telvanni watching him and chose to ignore it. Normally, he knew that was the sort of mistake you only made once. But then, he was still weak and naked in another man' bed—wasn't that an interesting picture after all these years—and if there was anything he could do to stop the mer from killing him, he wasn't sure what it was. Better to die attempting to sleep than watching the knife fall at any rate.
"You surprise me," the mer said at last and Aldos got the distinct impression it unnerved him. "I would have thought you'd be upset."
Begrudgingly, Aldos cracked an eye to stare at him. He looked… well, Telvanni. And Aldos had never been very good at reading anyone's expressions, let alone the ice-mask of subtle amusement the Tels were so good at. But there was maybe a flicker of something in his voice that made him wonder just what the mer was thinking.
"You haven't taken me from anything more spectacular than a half-empty bottle of matze," he told him, watching the Tel's eyes flash with some unnameable thing. "And I feel rather better than I have in months. So you have my gratitude."
There it was—that flask of something in his eyes again. It almost looked as though the man were… puzzled. As if he didn't know quite what he was looking at.
"You're from Morrowind," he said at last and Aldos was fairly certain it wasn't a question. Slowly, he pushed himself sitting. The change in altitude left him lightheaded, but it'd been… months, really, since he'd had a proper conversation. And he liked this man, even if the was Telvanni and something of an abductor.
"Yes," he agreed. "So are you. Did Noveni steal a few of your ancestors? She did that quite often, I'm afraid."
The Telvanni blinked—his only tell, Aldos guessed—and stared him in the eyes like he was expecting to see something that was not there.
"You knew she was a Necromancer?"
Aldos took a deep breath, passing a hand over his eyes. He was very, very tired of Noveni. It was such a novel concept, though and interesting in its irritation. He—the man who had spent months drunk out of his head, talking about her to anyone who would listen—did not want to hear another gods-damned word about Noveni.
"I knew, yes," he said, and suddenly the real story came tumbling out in a rush, missing all the flowers and charm and drunken-eyed visions of the past. "I wasn't happy about it, and I barely had anything at all to do with it. Though, if I had, maybe she'd not have been so gods-damned stupid about it. She raised an Ordinator, you know. An Ordinator who'd been dead for upwards of a week and walked him through the middle of fetching Vivec. Vivec. As if they wouldn't notice."
He glared somewhere over the Tel's shoulder, at the memory of being so doggedly stupid as to avoid the temple just because she'd asked him to. At forgetting Sterdecan entirely as though he'd never existed, as though he hadn't left the man's bed to cavort off with some clueless, corpse-licking wench.
…at the memory of waking up walking in the middle of Balmora with her next to him, not knowing where he was or how he'd gotten there, but with the rising sense of panic that something wasn't right.
"Oh, from a distance, I suppose the stench of him could have come from the water," he continued, a long deferred anger in his voice. "But the daft guar sent him into the bloody treasury. Even if he'd been intact—which he wasn't; his eye was missing and attracting flies—but even if he had been intact, he was a bloated, walking corpse. And when the Ordinators caught her, she told them I had done it. I can't even set foot in Morrowind without those bastards after me. Do you know what she said? When they had her in the Ministry of Truth? That I was a powerful mage keeping poor, defenseless Noveni under an unbreakable charm spell for years on end." He resisted the urge to lash out at something, anything, and settled for avoiding the mer's eyes instead. It needed to be said. It was a poison that had been too long buried under gods only knew how many charms, but damnit he didn't need to see the amusement in his would-be savior's eyes.
"I can't," he finished quietly, with something like dignity turned out like a torn pocket, "even cast a light spell."
*
Fathis did not know what to say to that. For the first time in a long time, Fathis did not know what to think. Faced with the truth like a hard, bitter cherry stone, he found he was not the man he'd thought he was. Unaccountably, he liked this man. For all he was a drunk and a barren waste of magic, he liked him. And there was no logic to it. A week ago he'd have written this man and everyone off as intellectually inferior.
And yet.
He was intelligent. He could string a sentence together. He had thoughts unlike half the daft mudcrabs the Arcane University sent him. And Fathis knew, though the man didn't say as much, that he knew as well as anyone he'd been had.
"I doubt you're the first to have been taken in by a well-placed charm spell," he said softly, and the look on the man's face was so heartbreakingly grateful, immediately Fathis was glad to have said it.
"I'm Aldos," he murmured, holding out a hand with that look in his eyes and Fathis took it with the distinct impression he'd given something he'd never meant to give but didn't have the heart to reclaim.
"Fathis Aren," he said. And then, unable to think of anything else, "Are you hungry?"
*
Noveni would be in within the week.
Fathis paced irritably through his lab, thinking this was news that should have made him happy. His dremora lord had hunted the woman down without being seen, had left the letter in an ominous location that suggested she could find herself missing her head at any moment, and Fathis was not happy. The woman who had been throwing idiots at him, who had killed albeit briefly his favorite Xivilai was now a paranoid mess on the other side of Cyrodiil and yet.
Fathis was not happy.
Muttering curses, he sunk down in the chair before his long table filled with alchemy apparatuses and bits of dead Necromancer and rubbed at his eyes. It didn't especially help. No, forcing himself to think of all the fear he was inspiring elsewhere was useless. His thoughts were fixed on a target rather closer to home.
Rather in his home.
He sighed, ignoring the hopeful look his Xivilai was sending him and tried to think. It was hopeless, though. As hopeless as it'd been this morning—as hopeless as it would be until Noveni lay stewing in her own bodily fluids and Aldos trotted along home.
In the end, it always came back to those Aldos.
The man fascinated him for no reason he could easily discern. He was a drunkard. An intelligent drunkard but a drunkard nonetheless and there was nothing at all Aldos could give him he didn't already have in spades—nothing he could say Fathis hadn't heard before.
And yet.
And fetching yet he persisted in seeking out the man's attention. The look the man had given him—that mixture of hope and gratitude and tentative belief—haunted him. No one had ever looked at him quite that way before. He was used to looks of fear and admiration, blatant lust from dremora and the cold hearted court bastards, but to see hope. It didn't sit well with him. The knowledge that he had inspired such a raw, inelegant emotion rattled behind his ribs like an empty, searching maw, looking for something Fathis didn't know the shape of to find.
He rather suspected he was losing his mind. And not in the Telvanni way.
He sighed and leaned against the table, elbow smearing the ink of a few very important formulas he'd have to get an apprentice to recopy. There was a headache building behind his eyes, stress—actual stress; from this of all things—jangling through his nerves and if that wasn't bloody enough, Fathis could hear footsteps in the hall.
He turned, meaning to shoot some sort of unpleasant spell at the apprentice who thought the next idiot to disturb me with anything less than a crisis will be an idiot missing a head didn't apply to him and found Aldos standing there instead. The spell scattered from his fingers like stardust—I meant for it to, truly—at the sight of the man standing there. It was one of the few times Fathis had seen him dressed and sober and the man seemed taller somehow. His clothes were neat, his black hair combed back into some semblance of order, broad shoulders straight and filling the doorway as if it'd been built just for him.
"Is all well with you?" he asked and while he had a commoner's accent, it was still Morrowind, soft-spoken and rough like gravel in a stream. Fathis froze and melted at the sound of that voice, an uncomfortable mix of any dozen things he'd never felt before and would rather never feel again washing over his skin. "Your students are creeping around like something's about to explode."
"That would be me, actually," he said and flashed the man a grin only slightly tinged with pain. "Did you need something?"
Aldos wasn't convinced. He moved inside with that quite, even step, ignoring the Xivilai entirely to stop by Fathis' side. Fathis stared back at him, one eyebrow cocked, struggling to look as smug and collected as he always had. But there was something in the searching man's gaze—a sort of… actual concern marring the lines of his mouth and Fathis couldn't remember the last time anyone had cared whether he were well or sick.
"You haven't been sleeping," Aldos said at last and Fathis felt the loss of the man's gaze like a physical thing as his eyes slid away to cast around the room. "You haven't been working either."
"I been managing other things," he snapped without quite meaning to, unnerved that this—sober, attractive creature—drunken fool could take one look at him and know what he had and hadn't been doing.
But Aldos only looked at him unafraid and unconvinced and said, "You should go to bed."
Irritation shot through him like lightening, masking bigger, unmaskable things Fathis nevertheless ignored.
"My apologies," he snarled and he wasn't attracted to the man, wasn't afraid of what that meant, wasn't afraid that everything he'd believed about himself and the world and everything might be wrong. "I wasn't aware my routines were so bothersome. Is there anything else I could change to better service you?"
Aldos only smiled, a look in his eye that said I know what you're not saying, and kissed him.
It was the worst possible moment for Noveni to arrive.