a/n: so... writing for micolash was a challenge - i'm way too used to writing and drawing well-kept pretty boys such as laurence. i had fun working on this, though.
damian/micolash is a part of this fic, but it's not the main focus. i felt as though i should clarify.
"The truth is, Damian, Laurence and I aren't as different as he makes us out to be."
Micolash stares at the yellowed papers scattered over his desk, chewing absently on the ragged edge of his thumbnail. Though outside is cold and dark, the windows glittering with the first frost of winter, inside is warm and dimly-lit with the brassy glow of candlelight.
If Master Willem were here he'd scold Micolash, tell him that it's far too late and that he's already falling asleep, and what is it with you meddling in the restricted archives of the library especially at this hour? You're a smart lad, Micolash, go get some rest, you should know better than to tire yourself out.
(To tell the truth, Micolash doesn't bother hiding his research about transcension simply because he doesn't need to. Master Willem's presence may intimidate other students into behaving, but with Micolash time and time again he's only given him a slap on the wrist.)
Refreshingly, no one's stopped by the library tonight. Caryll or Rom would gulp and gently remind him that it's past midnight — even though Caryll would probably poke around quietly when they think no one's looking. And while Damian's presence is far more welcome for him, there are nights where he just wants to be alone.
And even then, Micolash thinks as he dips his pen into ink again, Damian would know to leave me be. He's one of the few people who properly understands that much.
He should know better, though, that moments of peace like these never last for too long. Signs: The sound of heeled boots clicking upon the hallway in a half-remembered pattern, the swishing of white robes with heavy, draping sleeves.
"Fancy seeing you here so late at night, Micolash."
He'd first met Laurence about a year ago, when the latter had first come to Byrgenwerth. He'd been a teacher's pet, Master Willem had immediately been taken with him — Laurence challenged his teachers, but quietly so, with words cloaked in sugar as opposed to Micolash who never cared and still doesn't care for inconspicuousness.
Laurence is, without a doubt, everything Micolash is not. While Micolash is wiry, dark hair an oily mass of curls sitting on his head, misty blue eyes set within a face far more creased-looking and wizened than any twenty-year-old's face should be, Laurence is different: Softer and daintier, light red hair with the longer strands tied in a thin braid, warm long-lashed brown eyes. A crescent-moon earring dangles from his left ear.
Micolash smiles thinly. "You could say the same for yourself."
"I wasn't planning on stopping here for long, though." The way the light illuminates Laurence makes him look almost like a statue, or a porcelain doll. "I simply forgot some of my notes here and wanted to pick them up before tomorrow so I wouldn't tear my way through Byrgenwerth in a panic."
The peculiar thing about them, Micolash thinks to himself as his spindly fingers run over papers, is that though he and Laurence traipse around each other in circles (the cat in a box isn't a metaphor for co-existing possibility, but rather a math equation — something they've long bickered about) they can read each other. It's just that their roundabout way of playing games makes it all the more fun.
He raises an eyebrow. "I'm certain the teachers here wouldn't be too harsh on you for forgetting your notes one time. Besides, you can always stop by the library tomorrow once it opens up before class to pick up your work."
"It must have slipped my mind, then. But I see no point in wasting time when I'm here now."
Laurence's words are a perfect mask, but his hands lie: The pads of his fingers tracing over shelves to come away darkened by dust, perusing through volumes in faded gold print. If he really had accidentally left some notes behind, then why is he spending all his time looking through the shelves and not at any of the desks where he would have been working?
"I do find it interesting that you've left your papers in one of the restricted wings to the library…" He trails off, but is tempted to finish his sentence with something like Is there something you're not telling me? But Micolash supposes that much was enough.
Laurence looks first to the scattered papers that have twisted eyes etched upon them in dark ink, the spidery-thin handwriting, and then to the knowing, sly grin Micolash wears. Sighing a little, his hand falls away from the shelf.
Micolash cackles softly. "Look, there's no need to act so secretive about it. I'm not supposed to be here, either."
"Do you promise not to tell?"
"Laurence, do you know me as a promise breaker or liar?"
Even though it looks like his breath has locked in his throat, Laurence still exhales and begins to speak.
"I… I'd grown curious after our explorations down in the labyrinths. About the Blood."
Laurence had surprised him then: Muddying up his well-kept robes and being the one to march ahead even in the dark twisting mazes underground. But they'd found the Blood, and the beasts it had twisted those Pthumerians into.
"What about it?"
"Its healing properties. I'd checked the normal wings of the library earlier today for any information that we might have about it, but I couldn't find much. Strange, really."
As if on cue, wind whistles outside in tandem with a sudden boom of thunder. Falling rain steadily rattles the windows, its clear dripping down the brittle glass distorting the view into Yharnam outside.
"Oh, thank goodness," Laurence sighs, "I'd been waiting for it to rain all day. It's been so humid lately…"
He's trying to change the subject — far from a stranger to lying, but he doesn't particularly care for it.
"I see. We've been lucky that the weather hasn't been too harsh during our excavations in the labyrinths. Wouldn't you say so?"
Laurence sighs a little, mouth twisting into a slight frown. He ceases rummaging through the old tomes stacked on the dusty shelves and pulls up a chair to sit besides Micolash.
"Sorry for trying to change the subject on you, Micolash," he says, voice sweet as caramel. "It's a habit of mine I need to unlearn."
"Old habits die hard."
"I do want to find out more about the Blood. But ever since what happened only a few weeks ago, and the way Master Willem spoke of it, I don't think I can even look him in the eye about the subject." He laughs but there's no verve nor any warmth to it.
"There's no guarantee that'll last. You're his favorite, after all.
That much is true. Laurence hides behind what looks like effortless poise, listening intently yet not questioning things as Micolash is so prone to (and furthermore, Laurence doesn't receive the sharp looks Micolash gets from professors when he pries too much into matters that no well-behaved student at Byrgenwerth is to discuss. His intellect is the only reason he's still here; that much is why the both of them so much as deserve to be here).
"I've been his favorite for a while now. He treats me as though I'm a child . 'Fear the Old Blood' — goodness, it's like the sort of horror stories grown-ups tell to children to get them to eat their vegetables or go to bed on time. It's ridiculous."
Blood-boiling, Micolash thinks to himself. Infuriating. Hypocritical.
The air at Byrgenwerth since then has tasted stale, with all the chilliness of a trapped grave. It's as though Willem wants to suck all the color and purpose out of this place — Byrgenwerth is a place of study, of knowledge, where they are to be granted eyes to see truths upon truths with, to be gifted hands to mold that knowledge. And Willem wants their newer eyes to be gouged out and the fingers on their hands to be lopped off. Micolash has pushed and pushed trying to find a way out, but all he can meet is stone.
(Though Micolash's intellect is far too valuable for Willem to so much as consider expelling him, he knows that he grates on him. The fact that the feeling is mutual is a small comfort.)
"Goes against the point of all that this place stands for," Micolash spits out. "I can't stand it either."
"It is a bit hypocritical," Laurence muses. Even expressing frustration, his voice is as smooth and soft as silk. He's trying to stitch together some semblance of restraint — that's something Micolash has come to notice about him; though there are times he may show the slightest bit of frustration he's still pulling at a needle through thread trying to keep everything in place.
"We're not children. We are men. That hypocrite said so himself — that we are made men by the Blood. Yet he scolds us as though we don't know what we're doing. We know about how they affected the Pthumerians, we've seen the worst of what goes on here behind closed doors. I just don't understand, and the fact that that old fool won't so much as let us try to understand is infuriating."
The room goes quiet, save for the trickling of rain on the brittle windows, at those last few words. Laurence's face twists — it's hard to pick out what he's feeling just by the way his lips press thinly together alone, but Micolash guesses it's something like even after his outburst Laurence is still trying to maintain poise. To stay guarded; it's a habit.
"That," Laurence admits quietly, "Is why I'm here. I don't want to be left in the dark or treated like a child. But I can't risk Master Willem hating me for it — I know it's against the rules, but I feel like perhaps if he just understood…"
He peels back the edge of one of Micolash's papers, squinting down at the scribbly sketches of what they'd found in those dungeons upon the paper, ink smudged.
"...I don't know. I really don't. I'm just sick and tired of dancing around and never actually doing anything."
"Well," says Micolash, "At least you're not alone in that regard."
Laurence, Micolash thinks, has the right idea, but the wrong way of going about it. He has a head full of vague philosophies and literature, and communicates in poetry. Micolash doesn't care for that sort of ornateness, and doesn't think the Blood is really what will help them.
(Yet as they read long into the night, Micolash doesn't say a word about it. Though for the most part he's not one to hold back the truth, he's not quite willing to say something like that to a person he sees as a friend.)
Through the acrid, bitter smell of vomit, Micolash catches a whiff of perfume — something opulent, like jasmine, mixed with peony and red apples.
Laurence is hunched over the toilet, gloved fingers gripping onto the porcelain edge. He pulls back for one moment, displaying puffy pink eyes and spit smeared on his lips, before bending back down again. Micolash slides into the grooves of the loyal friend with ease by curling his fingers around Laurence's hair to keep his head in place as he throws up.
Those nights at the Fishing Hamlet spent with the moon hanging pristinely silver even in the cloud-covered sky all passed by so quickly; sometimes Micolash isn't even sure if all of that was real (of course, it's getting more and more difficult by the day to discern what's real and what's a mere fictional dream, but the tang of dried blood here is a constant Micolash hangs onto that as evidence of reality).
The corpse swaying near imperceptibly, pale hair spilling over the rope's knot, was real. It hadn't happened like it had in the pulpy mystery novels Laurence would talk to him about: There was no open-mouthed scream when they'd found Maria, no falling to knees wailing. Just Gehrman's face crumpled up on the verge of tears as he undid the knot too late and cradled her lifeless body close, then Laurence twisting his gloves in his hands to say that he was feeling nauseous.
"Laurence."
Can Laurence even hear what he's saying? He strains against Micolash's fingers and then he goes limp for a moment, gasping stickily into the toilet bowl.
He twists at a handful of hair again to alert him. "Laurence, can you hear me? Is anything else wrong?"
More wet, heavy breathing fills his ears — clogging, burning, drowning.
All at once, Laurence jerks his head back up again, a thin thread of vomit-tinted spit sliding down his lower lip. Stress twists up his face, his red hair is disheveled and shining flat with sweat. Even when he clings to Micolash with all of the desperation of a child, Laurence manages beauty easily; the sweet, faint scent of flowery perfume makes Micolash sick to his stomach.
"I don't think there's anything else wrong with me." Laurence's voice is hoarse, tongue dipping out of his mouth to nervously wet his lips. "Just nausea. I hope the worst of it's over."
There's a thickness to his voice as though he's about to burst into tears, but both of them are too tired for crying.
"I'm sorry," is all Micolash says, and he means it — in more ways than one.
He can't fathom the pain of losing someone as close as Lady Maria himself since he's been so alone that he's never so much as had to confront the prospect of loss, but if he brushes his fingers at it tentatively enough he can get a glimpse of what it might be like to be in Laurence's place: Knees pressed down on the cold marble floor, salty tears mixing with puke.
And yet—
This could have been avoided if you and the rest of them didn't try to keep up that pretense of care.
Lady Maria will be remembered as a tragedy — poor, struggling Lady Maria who showed nothing but kindness to her patients at the research hall, how could they have known that she was masking so much pain? That's what they'll all say at her funeral; they'll all be dressed in somber black and remember her as that bright-spirited young Cainhurst woman. But Micolash is selfish to the bone and doesn't hide it, he'd dug his scalpel into the corpse of Kos for himself because he wanted the eyes that their beloved Mother had. Laurence hid behind a veneer of wanting to help the rest of them, and look what they've done now, they've all got blood on their hands, it's just that Micolash knew they'd get blood on their hands. He's not here to cling to some grand metaphor about helping others. That's where Laurence failed, and that's what he wishes he could tell his old friend.
Maria couldn't handle being a part of your façade, she knew her hands were dirty. So she escaped the only way she could think of.
"Do you need any help?"
Ludwig's standing just outside the bathroom, broad shoulders brushing against the doorframe. He's here to comfort Laurence, to calm him down, and that doesn't surprise Micolash one bit: He has all of the elegant pride and faith of a knight, far from a wide-eyed idealist but someone who believes their transcension is to help others even if he only works at the sidelines and keeps their — Laurence's — secrets. There's a keyhole Ludwig can look through, and he's chosen to deliberately cover it up with a scrap of cloth.
I'm surprised that he hasn't been eaten alive yet, let alone gone the way Lady Maria was.
So Micolash steps aside and lets him comfort Laurence, hovering over him and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Laurence's face is sickly pale when he snaps his head up again for a split second before dipping back to look face down at the toilet bowl — it isn't the stench of cloth-covered cadavers that makes him sick, nor is it what he's done (Micolash and he have long since realized that they will have to go far in order to be granted even a glimpse of Kos' grand vision). It's that the woman who's gone now is someone he knew. Someone he'd thought to be untouchable.
"Just go wait outside, Micolash," Laurence says. "I'd prefer to be alone with Ludwig."
Of course you would.
"Yes, I understand. I'll make sure to give you all the time you need."
Micolash shuts the door behind him with a discreet click , and silently bemoans all of the lies they tell.
"We have got to stop meeting like this. Don't you ever tire of these games of cat-and-mouse?"
He says it in that playful, lackadaisical tone that Micolash has long since learned to identify as false. Laurence has spit out the mouthful of wine mixed with sleeping draught Micolash had given him when he'd stopped by — he may be as gilded as the Church he founded, but Laurence is no fool — and the way the cerise drink drips down his chin makes it look as though he's been drinking blood.
(Not that that isn't essentially what he's been doing, Micolash notes.)
The creaking of rusty metal comes to a halt as pale, stringy-haired Damian sidles up next to him. "Caught yourself a possible key to Kos?"
"More like he snuck in here to fetch a spy. Besides, I wouldn't want to do something like that to an old friend. And I'm sure if the Church found out that their precious Vicar was here they'd throw a fit." He lets out a crackling laugh. "No doubt that their First Hunter Ludwig would run me through with that blade of his if he knew I had his dearest here."
Damian snorts. "A secret lover? How cute. I wonder if it's anything like what you and I have—"
"—We both know I'm not the type to keep my secrets."
Laurence strains against his ropes; the placid expression he wears is beginning to twitch and shift. "The relationship between Ludwig and I is as professional as can be. I don't know what you're talking about."
"The love letters you'd leave lying around at Byrgenwerth ready to send off to him tell quite a different story. And what about those little trysts of yours you'd gush to Caryll and I about?"
"Yes, and those were simpler times."
Simpler times when we weren't in a race to find that great truth. When we were young and didn't really know each other at all. At least, I don't think you knew me.
"Half a year," says Damian, lacing his bony fingers together. "Half a year of the Church spy reporting back information on Mensis to his superiors."
"Which spy might that be, Vicar Laurence? Was it that Edgar boy?"
Laurence rolls his eyes as if to say, If you've caught me by now you probably know it was him. Then — ever the expert at maintaining a mask — he starts laughing.
"Boo-hoo. You've caught your wicked mastermind after inviting him over in the guise of a peace treaty, it would seem. Of course, you know if you did any physical damage to me that it would be found out quick enough that Mensis had something to do with it. And you'd be in far worse trouble."
"I never said anything about hurting or maiming you, Laurence." He bumps an elbow against Damian, who scoffs and smiles sheepishly.
"Perhaps you ought to listen to our mutual friend Edgar, though? After all the juicy details he filled me in on, you ought to allow the Church to inspect you."
"What, pray tell, sorts of 'juicy details' might Edgar have told you of?"
Laurence's expression grows stony at Damian's words. "Experimenting on your own students, for one thing. Don't you think about how some of your students are as young as thirteen or perhaps younger, and you're the one harvesting their bodies to achieve some great transcension—"
"Well, Laurence," Micolash says quietly as the rustling of paper, "Don't you think about the Fishing Hamlet? All those who'd suffered and died during the massacre? Or perhaps during the Pale Blood, how it had been an oh-so-happy accident that after so many people had gotten sick and some had even died that your Church had the Old Blood to share among the ones afflicted?"
"Entirely different business from what the Church does, we were formed to help others—"
"So you help others even as you keep those assassins prowling around in the dead of night? You help others through means of the Old Blood even if it means pouring poison into Yharnam's waters so that they've got no choice but to come to you for guidance? But of course, you're their savior, Laurence."
His eyes rove over the spilled wine now dried against Laurence's chin, the coldness in his dark brown eyes; that's a fundamental quality about Laurence — he always grows rather quiet during moments like these. Amidst the mild, sweet smell of perfume he wears and the wine's scent made saccharine with sleeping draught, Micolash catches something else. Smoke.
(Tomorrow they will let Laurence go, because there's not much either of them want to do or can do. Besides, there is something wryly entertaining about how they keep running around in circles the way they do — at least to Micolash.)
"I never hid my truths," Micolash says. "I know what I want, and the worst of it is dismissed as too outrageous to believe."
Micolash has never been one for casual interest. It all always ends up morphing and twisting into obsession, into extreme fascination. Damian always paces a few steps behind him — deliberately so, out of caution and because he knows he'll never be able to quite catch up — but he stays behind as Micolash's obsessions wax and wane. Kos, though, is a constant.
Tonight is repetition. Bony hands with prominent knuckles cut and trace, cut and trace. There's the slick sound of metal pressing at blood-coated skin, poking away at organs. Phantasms squirm their way out of the boy's mouth — another sign of failure. They're so close to that truth yet so far away, they'll touch at it so closely that sunspots dance before their eyes and then fade away in an instant. Tonight is dyed in what looks like madness to everyone else, but it's only Micolash who knows the truth and accepts that his work isn't child's play.
We did it once with Rom. She'd gone willingly, even if she hadn't wanted to know the half of it. We should be able to do it again.
(This one's named Johann. He was thirteen, going on fourteen as he'd liked to remind his professors. He was prone to sneaking into the kitchens for an extra cup of coffee even though the adults had scolded him for being too young, liked mathematics. Johann was prone to getting into verbal spats with the other students, but he idolized Mensis' headmaster and always sought him out for advice first.)
(What was most important about Johann, though, was his bloodline — Queen's kin.)
"You know," says Damian, elbow-deep in flesh, "I doubt he'll survive to next morning."
His eyelids flicker, as though trying to crawl his way out of a dream. "Well, I doubt that someone as young as him would be able to make it for very long."
"It's worth the try, though." Damian fishes out a Phantasm, squirming and glowing-blue, shapeless body splattered in gore. "Like you always said — with the end result being more important than the means of the process, after all."
"Indeed."
Johann's eyes — blue? Green? Gray? Some muddled combination of the three? It isn't relevant now — are glassy and dull, no doubt from the heavy anesthesia they've put him under. Nothing about this lump of flesh and extracted organs that'll cease being a person soon enough matters; they need a key and they're trying as best they can to find it, just as they've done so many times before.
We could be close this time, Micolash thinks to himself. There've been students who've outright lied about their heritage when asked, just eager to feel important. It's always irritating how they sully things, but there's something amusing about them wanting to feel so important. We've had to work sparingly, though — Johann's parents are dead, so they won't be asking any questions about what happened to their precious son. I suspect the last place they'd expect to find him is on the dissection table, though.
Though his heart races, he and Damian work in companionable silence. This is a testament to their quiet devotion that they've shared towards one another since their Byrgenwerth years. But Byrgenwerth was child's play, and Master Willem had them blindfolded out of what he'd claimed to be fear for their safety. Now, though, they are grown and those years are behind them. Micolash is grateful for it, without the shackles of watchful eyes like back then he's come closer and closer to the truth. They'd caught a glimpse of it with Rom, all they need is a little while longer…
"We'll have to slow down a bit after this one if we don't succeed, though," Damian says at last. "We've been lucky that most of Yharnam just dismisses us as ghoulish loons. Let's be sure to keep it that way."
Micolash snorts, the sharp edge of his scalpel passing over pale, bloodied tendons and bone. "Seems like most of our fellow Yharnamites aren't the sharpest ones out there. No one batted an eye when the Healing Church brought their cure right around the Pale Blood epidemic. They just accepted it as a miracle."
"Because they worship the ground that Vicar Laurence walks on."
"Call it cliché but you two are about as different as night and day. he's got that mask of respectability and goodness on his side and the Church adores him, we don't hide a thing and people turn their heads away — that or they're just too stupid to pick up on everything we do."
"...I wait for the moment you admit that Laurence is the prettier one between him and I."
"Now why would I say that to you?"
"You're plenty capable of being a bully, Damian."
"Surely you're overestimating."
"I've long accepted it and it doesn't bother me."
Come morning when the sunlight peeks in pale gray through the small windows and Johann lies still. His fingers curl stiffly around empty air, face slack. Micolash checks, and checks again, but there's not even the most frail and sputtering heartbeat to be found. They'll have to dispose of their fresh cadaver now.
Micolash grinds his teeth, runs his tongue along his receding gums. He can hear Laurence's voice in his head: You torture your own students for nothing, Micolash. What happened to what we once had? We used to be such good friends, but now we've grown so far apart…
We've always been far apart, though, his thoughts retort. It had only been harmless for a while, though. You think in metaphors and purple prose, you like to twist truths or eliminate them entirely so that they match your story's taste. I think in equations and predictions, if you match the correct numbers you get the correct answer. But here we are, in a race to try and reach the same conclusion, you could've saved trouble if you'd just admitted from the start that you fit right in with my lot.
He turns the bloodied scalpel over in his hands.
I won't mourn, though. I just need to focus on reaching the truth I've spent so long searching for.