Tws for dysphoria (specifically related to genitals) and slight suicidal ideation. Please skip this chapter if those are things which can hurt your mental health! Next chapter on the 27th of September.
There are so many things he tries to ignore but all he can do is think with the time that's left to him as they wait for wounds to heal.
They all have so many that won't heal.
He doesn't want to but he looks down at his body, alone in a darkened room far from everyone else.
He forces himself to think of it as temporary, his body a shell, just useful for transport and the capabilities it has. His purpose now is to serve the princess and, at the right time, he can leave it behind.
The idea tastes bitter but all of his thoughts do now.
He feels empty with only half of his magic. With the rest of it he might be able to figure out a way to get his body back.
That thought plays again and again in his head.
He hadn't thought that he cared about his body, his looks, his voice, until they were taken from him.
It feels wrong, warped like a bad mirror.
He knows that he is still a man- that nothing can take that from him- he had seen the spells even if he hadn't been able to learn them and knew that it was possible for him to get his body back. He'd had people he knew, villagers and people within the court, who had been born in a body that didn't fit right and they'd been able to get it changed and he'd understood that on some level. He'd been a sympathetic ear and had discussions with people trying to figure out what to do with their body, what to keep, what to change, hoping that he could make it better for them.
He's always been useless for not knowing how to heal- a disappointment.
Still.
It doesn't compare to the feeling he has now, looking down at a body which just isn't his.
He understands now the desperation that some of them had felt to get it changed- the need for it to be different.
So he tells himself that it's fine, that it doesn't matter anyway and tries not to think about how his clothes don't fit right and takes some solace in everybody still talking about him where they don't think he can hear and that it doesn't change how they talk about it.
Fai straightens his clothes and goes to the roof and watches and waits to leave, hoping the next world might have something to ease the discomfort or at least distract him.