serefin "tranavia's greatest idiot" meleski (meleski) wrote in valloic, @ 2023-01-27 23:56:00
WHO: Serefin Meleski, Jacob Frye, and Evie Frye WHAT: Serefin is in his Hell loop and it takes the combined forces of the Fryes to convince him accept his shit and snap out it. WHEN: Friday, January 27 WARNINGS: Discussions of blood and torture STATUS: Complete
The voice was his but it wasn't. This body was his, but it wasn't. Serefin had been here before, he had always been here, trapped in this room. He earned the misery of this room. That was what that voice, cruel and unrelenting, was screaming at him now. He couldn't seem to remember the time when it had just been a dull roar, drowned by his excessive consumption of alcohol. It was easier to hide behind a drunk stupor than remember that this was him too, no matter how much he tried to leave it behind.
Hell could be a place, but Serefin was certain that hell was a feeling, coursing through him as he stood in a small stone cell. How long had it been? Hours? Days? Weeks? Seconds? Minutes? Time stretched and expanded watching this endless loop. Clarity struck him, he was about to watch it all unfold again. He had said these words before, to hundreds of people, right before he—"It would appear I need to be more convincing."
A young Kalyazi monk, no more than Serefin's age, sat bound to a chair. Ostyia kicked the knees out from another boy, even younger but with similar features, who dropped beside the other man. Was it Ostyia? The memory was fuzzy, the face not the same face he knew. But this was not Ostyia's guilt, she had not tortured prisoners under the guise of war. Under the illusion that if he just found the cleric he could go home. He was narcissistic and borderline sadistic, and Serefin had not batted an eye at the information that Kacper had provided for him, who stood, also guiltless, in the other corner of the room.
Blood ran down Serefin's hand where he had nicked his thumb. Magic had been brutally simple back then.
The one in the chair was struggling, shouting the same things they always did: don't hurt him and please, always please. Serefin didn't seem to understand the word. Blood was already trickling down the older one's face, from his eyes and nose and ears; Serefin's preferred method of boiling them from the inside out, its effects already evident from the earlier interrogation attempts. He had started to inflict the same vicious torture tactics on the smaller boy as he spasmed in silent agony.
"Oh, should I stop?" Serefin had asked with uncaring disinterest, while the one whimpered on the floor. Anguish had seized the boy bound in the chair before he gave in.
They always, inevitably, broke. Serefin knew this. And despite getting his answers, he had never been merciful. His callousness extended far beyond what was necessary. With deft hands he had ripped another page out of his book, and the younger one had dropped dead. A punctuation point to a sentence that didn't need one.
The young monks had been a means to an end. Torturing others during this sham of a religious war always was. But Serefin could feel that guilt boiling up inside of him. How many others had he done this to? How many more had Serefin needlessly tortured then slaughtered in the name of reputation? How did he sleep at night? He didn't, not really. He chased the feeling away, because dealing with a problem was not Serefin's forte. Not until he was faced with it with no way out.
This memory, like the others, was his penance. He could feel the names of others trying to creep in, trying to pull the guilt free where it had been lodged deeply in Serefin's mind. He turned his face away. No, please
The room faded, reset, and Serefin was standing in a small stone cell. Again The boy, Konstantin—he remembered his name, he had asked for it in the name of good faith before he had burned through the veins inside of him—was bound to the chair, struggling angrily. Defiant and refusing to answer the questions from the hellish High Prince of Tranavia.
Serefin was picking underneath his fingernails with the tip of one of Ostyia's blades, nonchalantly. A version of himself who did not care about the lives of others, nothing but himself. Serefin deserved this. If the loop wouldn't kill him, the guilt would.
"It would appear I need to be more convincing."
Jacob knew why they were there; Serefin was in trouble and Jacob would have crawled through worse than hell to save him. But they hadn't really known what they were going to see in here. And God was it horrific. He was glad Evie was with him. They'd been warned two people might be too much but he had faith. Evie would be sensible about all this and wouldn't let any failure on his part be the reason Serefin was stuck in here longer.
But Jacob still had next to no idea how to handle this situation. He sat quietly to the side, half in shadow, watching what was happening. Wincing around the eyes. He'd seen worse atrocities, of course, but it was still terrible to watch. Serefin hadn't told him about any of this and he could hardly blame him. The fact that he was stuck in this hellish loop meant he still carried the guilt of it. Jacob took a step out of the shadows, risking an attempt to get through to Serefin.
"Maybe there's a better way to do this, love." The endearment slipped out by habit and he grimaced. "I mean, is this really how you want to get what you need?"
It was difficult to watch from Evie’s end, despite the things the twins had done themselves. But torture was never on the table. A little light annoyance or interrogation, perhaps, but the Assassins did not believe in prolonged torment in order to gain information, they preferred to give people quick deaths with less fuss and mess.
She’d known a little of Serefin’s colorful history, from the journal and pieces of information gleaned from the mines previously. Seeing it in person was a completely different experience. It was easier to remember Serefin only as a flippant young man that never took anything seriously. To have that turned around on torture was a strange visual.
Evie acknowledged that Jacob knew Serefin far better in regards of how to handle this, but she was able to keep a straight face and level head when required of her, and the only movement she gave was shifting from foot to foot. “I’ve found with the particularly stubborn ones, it’s better to be smarter and edge in, rather than drawing blood.”
This was different. Even Ostyia and Kacper rarely intervened in interrogations like this, simply bringing him information, items, people—all the little cuts to draw metaphorical blood to get what he wanted. But it wasn't them, it was, it was—
"You're not supposed to see this," Serefin said. He sounded so far outside of his own body, a dream within a nightmare, within reality. He wanted to banish the scene with a wave of his hand, but it was still holding the blade in his hand, blood soaking the sleeves of his own military uniform. His own blood, the blood he had magicked sheer unstoppable pain out of Konstantin. The same blood he was moments away from using to kill his brother, even after he pulled the location of the cleric from the monk's mouth.
Ruthless. Terrifying. A monster. He knew what the Kalyazin people said about him. What his father wanted from him. There had never been a suggestion that there were other alternatives for information. Not that Serefin hadn't attempted the less fatal options, they just never gave him results to answer the punishing demands of Izak Meleski.
The scene had frozen at some point, perhaps during the recognition of Jacob and Evie in the room. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the tableau. Didn't want to look at their faces and see their disappointment or horror.
"They weren't the first ones," Serefin explained. "We didn't have time to be patient. We are—were at war. We were winning the war. I was winning this war for my father and I did—" The words ripped out of him, harsh and angry, "—unspeakable things."
Jacob was relieved to see a change in Serefin, even if it wasn't particularly for the better. They'd been warned that people might have to work their own way out of this situation and all loved ones could do was try to help them face the feelings that trapped them here. It was unfortunate Jacob was rubbish at facing feelings.
"War tends to bring out the worst in people. Fathers tend to bring out the worst in people too in my experience." He glanced sidelong at Evie in a don't fuss, I'm just trying to connect sort of way then gave his somber attention back to Serefin. You could have told me, he wanted to say. But he knew it wouldn't reach Serefin in this horrible vision of the past. "You can't change what you did. You can only come to terms with it."
Evie met Jacob’s look, but whether it was a twin connection or just knowing Jacob’s looks, she didn’t say anything. It wasn’t a dissimilar connection, Ethan Frye had his own issues that he’d put on his children, she couldn’t argue with that. This might have been a tad far for his sense of morals. Most likely. Probably. She wasn’t sure she’d bet money on it.
She would bet money on Serefin, however. The man she had known for years now, that she trusted her brother’s life with, was not a cruel man, power hungry or evil.
“You aren’t your father.” Evie was firm about that, even if she were unsure of how helpful she could be in this case. She slipped into Tranavian, hoping to drive home the point she was trying to make. “You aren’t your brother, either.”
Coming to terms with what he had done had always been the thing Serefin was running from. Hearing it from Jacob's mouth made it seem reachable, achievable. But that also meant asking himself the question he didn't want the answer to: did he delight in breaking people or was he telling himself he did in order to stomach it? Somewhere between the first and the last, had it become second nature?
His attention snapped to Evie's use of Tranavian, before turning his face downward. He gestured out to the still-frozen scene before them, as if presenting unquestionable evidence to a jury. "I was him. Even worse than him because he had a purpose, as twisted as it was, and I was nothing but a body to do someone else's work," Serefin said back in Tranavian, sharp, short, and not in the same adoring way he would say towy nóżczko to Jacob.
Regret was evident on his face as he dared to look at Jacob again. "I was a terrible person, if not any more, for lying to the people I care about and pretending I never was."
Jacob regretted only learning a handful of Tranavian after all this time. He made a mental note to stop being a lazy prat about it once this was over. Maybe Evie would teach him so there wouldn’t be any distraction. But here and now, all he could do was grimace at Serefin’s harsh tone and focus on the words that he understood.
“Everyone’s lied to the people they care about at some time or another, Serefin. Everyone’s made bad choices. You think I haven’t done anything I regret? Things that have gotten people killed?” He took a step closer but made himself stop there. They’d been very clear about how this would work and he couldn’t just snatch up his boyfriend and make a run for it. Serefin had to fight his own way out of this. “None of this changes the man you are now. Or how I feel about him.”
Evie knew even in this hellspace, Serefin wouldn’t hurt Jacob, which kept her in her place behind him, not moving. She didn’t stop looking at Serefin, his sharp tone didn’t change the expression on her face, and even if his attention was elsewhere she kept her eyes trained on him. “We aren’t idiots, no one in this place his a squeaky clean record.” Least of all them. Assassin might have been a title they were proud of, but it wasn’t unblemished.
“What sets you above is the path you take outside of that. The ability to feel guilt is important. It doesn’t matter what this place is making you see or feel, it’s what the people important to you see when they look at you.” There was a little nod in Jacob’s direction, as if pointing to him because Jacob was what mattered in terms of Serefin’s past, present, and future.
Serefin closed his eye. He couldn't look at Evie or Jacob. He couldn't look at the scene that had decided to be blissfully still, the loop pausing for this interlude. It had for a reason, didn't it? This was the moment where he had to make a choice—live with the guilt, see the terrible things he had done over and over because this was some sick penance he believed he deserved. Or, there was an or. He could listen to Evie and Jacob, he could listen to that voice that had pulled to the surface that was reasonable and logical, the one that had forgiven him for the atrocities he committed.
He was a different person now. He wasn't his father or his brother. He was trying, and he would keep trying to right the wrongs of his circumstances, of the person he used to be. He had felt guilt, and maybe that remorse had been the only thing to save him in the end.
Dropping to his knees, Serefin ranked his hands into his hair to hide the shame. But it was shame at the guilt he had kept hidden, the shame of why it took so long to vocalize this. The blood disappeared from his hands, and the Tranavian military uniform started to dissolve into something more akin to what he wore to sleep in Vallo. The young Kalyazi monks were still there but blurring away with each second.
Serefin dared to look at the Fryes then. Breathless, he said, "I have put you both through so much and still you look at me like I have nothing to be sorry for." Now that they knew, would he ever be able to look at them the same? Would he always question it? He would have to find out if he ever wanted to move on. "I think that—I think I'm ready to leave this place now."
Jacob deeply appreciated his sister's presence, not that he'd admit as much. Maybe once they were free of this place and had a few drinks. In the moment, he could only spare her a grateful glance, softer probably than any look she'd gotten from in a while. He opened his mouth to agree with her but Serefin dropped to his knees and it pulled Jacob forward in a flash of worry. The words that followed eased the tension from his body but only just barely. Until they were actually away, this wasn't over.
"It's not that you have nothing to be sorry for, love. It's that you are sorry and we trust the truth of you more than the mistakes." He was afraid to touch Serefin and have that count as interfering. Would it start back up again? Jacob grimaced and stopped with his hand in the air near Serefin's shoulder. "I love you," he said in Tranavian. He at least knew that much. And said it with the same conviction Serefin usually said it to him. "Pull yourself out of this wretched hole and I'll remind you anyway you like, come on."
Evie let out a sigh of relief when a door appeared nearby, in the middle of a blank cave wall, identical to the one they’d stepped through to help him. She wasn’t sure if Serefin had to be the one to open it in order for them to leave, so Evie kept her hands to herself in a move that mirrored Jacob’s own unconsciously.
“Where Jacob goes, I go. Where you go, Jacob goes. You’re very much stuck with me no matter what, Serefin.” Not that she held any ill-will or blame towards him for this. It was just another reason why she never put much stock into the idea of heaven and hell, into deities and gods with ultimate control. That was forever going to be an annoyance, but the blame did not belong to Serefin. “So long as you two wait until you’re alone to do any reminding, that is.”
Smiling in hell felt against the rules, but Serefin's was a near thing, a ghost of one. He saw both Jacob and Evie reach for him, and he lifted his hand back. Sensing their hesitation, he didn't touch them but the almostness of the gesture carried the same sentiment. How had he come to know such fiercely loyal assassins? How had he been so lucky to earn Evie's friendship? How had he been so lucky to earn Jacob's love? The guilt of his past would never disappear but it felt easier to hold on to it now.
He sounded tired, but touched as he said I love you too in Tranavian back to Jacob, and then waved off Evie as he got to his feet. The door was calling to them, to him, and he was ready to move on from all of this into something brighter, figuratively and literally.
"I promise to wait, only because you asked so nicely, Dame Frye," Serefin said, slipping past them both and wrapping his fingers around the doorknob. For a brief second he thought it might not unlock, until there was a satisfying click and it swung wide. Freedom was on the horizon, and that he could smile for. As he began to step through, unhindered, Serefin added, "But I will not wait too long."