Anail, Mo Rognaithe
Content warnings: flashbacks, extensive contemplation and description of scars, referenced and remembered past lab whump, referenced and remembered past gore, guilt, self-loathing, (self) victim blaming
Taglist: @bloodandbandages, @endless-whump (if you would like to be added or removed, please let me know!)
Iesin doesn’t hide his scars. He doesn’t treasure long sleeves and close necklines like Talvos does. He tears up his shirts to make them fit his wings, and often they end up as little more than a square of fabric tied behind his neck and again at the base of his spine, leaving his back and arms free to feel the brush of the air he treasures.
He is free, and he is open, and because he is Talvos can see daily the silvery scars he has left on his beloved. He can see the lines tracing the edges of where Iesin’s wings sprout from his back, and he remembers the way the muscles beneath look, flayed back and spread open for Essylt’s examination of how they twist together. He remembers the way she lifted up Iesin’s wing as he shook and his screams died in the grip of the muzzle, and he remembers they way she directed Talvos to pay attention to the way shifting the wing this way led to those muscles moving just so, and her hypotheses on how the movement affected Iesin’s flight.
He knows, now, which of her conjectures were right and which were wrong. He has seen Iesin fly, and he has traced his hands in deeper, more loving exploration across his beloved’s skin. He has seen Iesin unfurl his wings and leap into the air, and he has seen him alight, bare feet skipping across the ground as his wings catch in the breeze, or throw up clouds of dust as he drops suddenly from an unimaginable height to crouch, knees bent and a hand digging into the earth for balance, hair whipping about his face from the speed of his descent.
Talvos can see the scars on Iesin’s arms, the wide, irregular divots in his wrists where iron burned deep into his flesh. He can see the straight, narrow lines of Essylt’s scalpel, and he can remember the way pearly blood drained out of them, the way his beloved’s bones sounded when they cracked and shattered.
He knows more lurk across Iesin’s chest, up and down his legs, across the backs of his hands and the tops of his feet. Marks of impalement, of scalpels, of injections and burns all litter his beloved’s body, and Talvos remembers which he watched happen and which he inflicted himself. He knows that if he runs his hands just under the upper joints of Iesin’s wings he will find two circular patches of scar tissue that will never sprout feathers again. He knows that there are other scars up and down the breadth of Iesin’s wings, hidden now by feathers but present nonetheless.
He should see them. He does not deserve to live unreminded of what he has done. And if it wears at him, if the sight of Iesin’s face pinching as his wing twinges or the way his gait falters sometimes as if he expects his stride to be cut short by a chain connecting his ankles breaks Talvos open a little – if it does, it is the least of what he deserves.
He deserves it, but sometimes the weight of it is so heavy.