Chapter Text
The sun rose, again, a bit earlier today than yesterday. I made the blankets warmer and the lighting as well, natural light pouring in through the window. Soon it will be time for Thistle to get up, he thinks. "Delgal" will come soon to prompt him to get up, dress him, hurry him to eat meal and so on so forth.
It's "Delgal", not Delgal, because really it's just Yaad. With his awkward mouvements in a body that's not his and his dopey character, far the the jolly, confident and warm Delgal Thistle used to know. Still, it feels wrong to not call it Delgal when it walks around in his skin and bones. Thistle doesn't have the energy or willpower to work out a decent logic for this, but it doesn't really matter. Not-Delgal knocks on the door now. It's a ridiculous action, of course he can enter. Why would Thistle oppose himself to it when there is no desire to stop it?
And so he enters, and frowns. Yes, Thistle is laying in bed motionless with his eyes half open. Yes, he is in the same position he was put in last night before bed. Yes, his hair is a mess. It's thick and long and the curls make it look even more tangled. Yes, it looks pathetic. But is such a pityful, pained look necessary ? Does it have to be on Delgal's face when his eyes land on the elf? This new Delgal does many useless things anyway.
There is no need to dress Thistle nicely: he doesn't care what he's wearing. There is no need to give him a favorful meal: he won't enjoy it much anyway. There is no need for him "Delgal" to do all of this by himself, actually, any servant could. Whatever reasoning he has for it is unintresting to Thistle anyway. Most of all, he doesn't need to leave the door open once everything is done and Thistle is sitting on the bed again, to signal he's open for visits.
But it's the new Delgal, not the real one, so of course he does these things.
Morning quickly stretches into an afternoon. There's nothing going on in Thistle's room. He stares at the wall, the ceiling, the terrible book that half elf left on his shelf for him to read "when he'll be up to it". Even with his desires, Thistle wouldn't have any more intrest in the cheap romance rag like this looks to be. Then again he'd have to read it to judge it properly. Maybe he will. He doesn't not want to. Maybe he's more likely to read it now than before after all.
The door creaks open. Dragon. No, Falin. That name he uses, unlike Yaad. Yes, the girl who was his dragon. A very kind soul with an exacerbated maternal instinct, seemingly amplified by the small dragon still inside her. She, too, looks at him with those eyes. "Poor little thing" she thinks. Or at least that's what Thistle deduces from her look. She looks less uncomfortable and more sorry than the fake Delgal. She's sorry. For him.
They all seem to think he's "trapped", that behind this lack of energy and self care is the same Thistle as before, just conviently without the same obsession with Melini, right? Wrong. Idiots. This person is dead. It's not that Thistle is too "sick" to pull his own blanket, ask for more tea, eat his own meals. It's just that he doesn't want any of these things. He's not stupid, he knows he should want them but he just doesn't and he does not have the energy to pretend he does.
Falin sits on the bed next to him. The sheets twist and stretch as she does so. Out of all the stupid, naive visitorshe he gets, he likes her better. She doesn't make a big deal out of things.
-"I got to see a bunch of colorful fishes near the shore. You should have seen them, they were oddly unafraid of the boat, but it was so cute."
She began. Of course she's talking about the boat trip. When she comes back, she always does. She'll be gone in a week, then back in two, three, maybe four. Then she'll have new stories.
"They were a lot like the blade fish in the dungeon, just jumping around above the water. You should have seen them, really... but anyway, that's my journey, how have you been doing ?"
A pointless question, but somewhat less enerving coming from her soft spoken voice. He shrugs, but he does turn his head to look at her when he does so. She smiles.
"Well, you look better at least. It seems you've gained back some weight and your hair looks healthier. Though..."
She takes a sliver lock between her fingers, but a whole clump comes along, driven by the knots. His hair had really become a hot topic, huh? Well, after all it was quite noticeable, and the perfectly neat and elaborated braids had been replaced an untied and unkept mass a while ago, which surely was disturbing to many.
"Would you like me to brush it out for you?" The feathered lady was practically beaming when she asked that. He stopped himself from just shruging once again, she was tooth rooting sweet and deserved a proper answer.
"Yes, please." No, he didn't necessarly want it enough to give that answer, but he did anyway. Once again, he didn't not want to, and a clear response always made the woman smile, like she had accomplished something. She did it, she made him talk. Which is an accomplishement, because that's what he's reduced to now.
The woman picked up a comb, sat behind Thistle and started running it through his hair as good as she could, while humming a cheery tune. The last person to have combed his hair for him before the incident was... well, he can't remember the name, or the face. It was a servant. Probably. When he was still very small. Most likely. The point is it was odd for it to happen again now. Even more so since it was taking so very long. Longer than it should. Was it longer than when he did it himself because of the knots, because he had more adequate tools and because he was more experienced? Surely, but it still doesn't excuse such an excessive lenght of time.
Something about it felt wrong, and it increased everytime someone did it. Not the same wrong as when he was carried to different places or even spoon fed during the first few weeks, that wrong he could just brush away with a mental flick of the wrist, since it didn't matter.
No, it was a deeper wrong, the kind that actually bugged him. Which was rare. Few things truly bothered him now. Delgal-the-wrong's pityful look, the winged lion statue right outside of his room, and now this.
Just as he thought that, he heard a distinctive snap. It's distinctive because he's heard it a million times before: a comb breaking into his hair, giving up on the amount and thickness of it. It was common, but right now it only served to fuel this wrong feeling, along with a brief note of anger, and a faint feeling a shame deep in his stomach which he couldn't quite place the origin of.
Falin started panicking when half of the comb stayed in her hand and she struggled to get the other half out of his hair. "Panicking" may be an overstatement, even her panic was calm and softspoken as she apologized about the comb.
"It's alright, it wasn't important" Thistle explained to her like to a panicked child that just broke a vase, an extremely rare switch in the parent-child or perhaps older-younger sibling dynamic that had settled between them. But this interaction did stir something in what was left of his mind, despite his deeply stoic state.
After that, the woman was quick to go. She had many people to see after all, intresting people, colorful people, warm people. She closed the door on her way out, another thing she had over the other Delgal.
Thistle moved only his eyes to look up at the clock. He can't quite remember lunch, though it is already the afternoon so it must have happened. The clock says it's 6 hours past lunch, meaning 1 hour until diner. Not an intresting calendar for the elf, but one that allowed him to know when he was sure people would come into the room and bug him with the importance of doing this or that.
He got out of bed, unprompted. He didn't stretch, tidy his hair or straighten his gown. None of that mattered. He took a step, then another. His fingers reached out for the doorknob and twisted it. The door opened with a loud noise. It really was an old place after all. The Lion statue greeted him with it's sharp fangs and perfectly carved details. One thing that bothered him. It was okay. He was on his way to fix another. He walked through the hallways, quiet like a ghost. He saw no one and no one saw him. He passed a few corridors, and heard a few people working or laughing behind the closed doors of a few rooms, the ones with light pouring from underneath the door. Eventually he reached the kitchen. Not the main kitchen, with the staff, just the dwarf's personal kitchen. Of course at this hour he was in it, hunched over a hot stove, focused on doing his thing. So focused in fact, that he didn't notice Thistle walking in, and opening the drawers. So he figured a long time ago, if he didn't talk or in any other way made his presence known, he was essentially invisible to the average person. A skill he might use at times. He reached into the drawers, pulled out a large pair of scissors and left the same way he came: unnoticed.
Sitting on the floor of his room, a hand mirror rested against the wall, Thistle didn't even bother to close the door all the way. No one in the halls anyway.
His hair was suprising smooth and and he was able to run his hands through it without too much trouble: apparently the comb had given up so close to its goal, so sad. With this newly combed hair, Thistle was able to make a braid out of it. It was easy, muscle memory did its thing it seems and the motion came on its own. He couldn't tell why he braided it really, it made even less sense as he raised the stolen tool. All that effort went to waste the second he closed the scissors blade right above said braid, which then fell gracelessly on the floor with a muffled sound. There. Maybe, people would stop bothering him about it.
But just as he was focused on the small, rare satisfaction he was feeling, footsteps made their way to his ears. Big, heavy and clumsy footsteps. He didn't bother to look up as the cracked door opened whole as the new King entered with a loud and dramatic gasp.
"Thistle!"
Laios called as if he was going to lecture a child or a dog. Thistle was neither of those things, so his name really didn't belong there, spoken in such a tone. But that's always how the new King was. To him, since the incident, Thistle was this pathetic fragile being that could break off with a strong wind, and that needed care and protection 24/7, as if he didn't try to kill him several times and displayed immense power the first few times they met. In a way, he wasn't entierly wrong, but it's the way he used it to excuse treating him like a thing or someone that could not be reasoned with like an adult that bothered Thistle a little more everyday. Maybe it would make the list of his pet peeves one of these days.
"What did you do??"
The King ran over and knelt next to him, looking at him like you'd look at your little sister that just drew all over her face with ink or your dog that destroyed the couch.
Thistle simply looked at him. He didn't turn his head, just his eyes. There was no sense of an apology or any kind of reaction behind those eyes, only an acknowledgement of Laios' presence, and maybe a slightly bitter "so what?" expression. Quickly enough, the scissors were ripped from his hands and the braid picked up from the floor. It was so long.
"Where did you even get scissors? Why would you cut your hair? Oh, when Yaad finds out you were left alone with scissors and no one noticed he is going to freak out..."
"I wanted my hair short." A quick, dry response. No need for more.
"Well then you could have asked someone to- wait... what?"
"Having it long was bothering me. So i wanted to cut it."
The King looked at him with a dumbfounded expression. As if something crazy happened, like Thistle just jumped out the window or his dad walked in or something. Sure, Thistle didn't usually speak that many words at a time, especially not to this pathetic excuse of a king, but was it that bad?
"You... wanted... to cut it? You wanted to?"
Oh.
OH.
That's why. That's why the King looked so shocked and suddenly happy.
If Thistle had any fucks to give to the King at the moment, he'd be somewhat repulsed by the sight of this important grown man fussing over something like this, an accomplishement that wasn't even his. He had to admit it though, sitting there with the produce of his own doing in the mirror, felt good. A kind of good he hadn't felt in a while. Something to fill the hole in his chest: the feeling of a desire being fulfilled. Of course, now that it was fulfilled, there was no more desire and Thistle was back to square one, but if just one was formed, then another could be formed later, or a million more. And that same fuzzy feeling of satisfaction would come again.