Prompt: "fantasy/rpg au type thing where reim's a cleric but he can't quite manage to heal break enough to save his life" (from Fluffy)
Rating: T
Warnings: Character death. That seems to happen a lot.
This was my first time writing Reim's perspective-I still don't know that I have a good grip on it. And so, this bit is a little out of place here where the rest of them are Xerxes's introspections mostly, but whatever.
Not good enough, not good enough, not good enough—
It's not as though he's unskilled—rather, this is what he's most good for, the one reason which he can stand on a battlefield at their sides—but though magic is powerful it isn't meant to fix the kind of wounds which have formed slowly, eaten into the entire body from inside. It's meant to reverse a moment's damage, to stitch up gashes and reset bones—it's not as though he lacks the knowledge to do such a thing, to work what many would call miracles. But no matter what he knows, no matter how he tries—
—he's still not breathing any better, he's still not coming to—
Silently he's begging, begging for something to change, but even as he's pouring out his spirit (literally, as it were) and offering it as tribute for this person's life it's not working, it's not good enough—as though everything in him isn't good enough, as though this is some inevitable, ironic Fate that was chosen for them long in advance, that he'd be unable to repair the one thing he's wished he could fix for a very long time.
He looks so well, so peaceful now—everything on his surface is as well as it's ever been—as the cleric collapses, his own consciousness flickering.
—it seems so unfair; he wouldn't even let himself be saved in the end.