Elegy

Summary: Some say it was revenge for killing his loved one. Some say it was pain. Some say it was grief. Implied past D/G.

A/N: Written quickly while I should be sleeping. I'll probably regret it in the morning. Future!AU.


They say the Immortal Emperor doesn't feel. They say he isn't even able to. In the whole of five millenia, there has never been any feeling showing on his beautiful alabaster face, no smile has ever touched his thin lips, no tear has ever left his cold gray eyes. There's just – nothing. No rage, no fury, no annoyance, no serenity, no peace.

The Immortal Emperor is unfeeling and distant.

That, in itself, is a blessing. The earliest chronicles vividly describe what happened in the first days of his reign when his fury has been unleashed upon the Church of Unification, the Southern continent and some native species called rakh. The Church has survived – shaken, broken and reformed beyond recognition by the very hand and mind that have shaped it into existence all those thousands of years ago. The Church, now called The Church of Compassion, has survived. The South and the rakh haven't.

Some say it was revenge for killing his loved one. Some say it was pain. Some say it was grief. No one knows, and no one is insane enough to ask. The Immortal Emperor walks and breathes the night, and rules with a fist of iron and fae and nightmares. Some say he's lost his capacity for feeling even before his rise to power, back then, when he's been the Hunter.

They are all wrong.

There's a sculpture of finest, rarest golden nu-marble in the Emperor's always darkened rooms, crafted by the Emperor's own hands. It depicts a man in his middle to late thirties, with shoulder-long hair and the build and height of a warrior. It's a figure found in every church, every cathedral across the two remaining continents though this one shows the Holiest One in a unusual position – sitting relaxed on a rock, his ever-present sword propped against it, chin on the fist of one hand, the other stretched out in invitation. The sharp angles of his face are softened by the slightest curl of sensual lips and a hint of mischievousness in the crinkle of expressive eyes.

It's here, kneeling before this particular statue of Holy Damien, Lord of Compassion, it's here that the Immortal Emperor weeps.

FIN