Most of the time, he kept Mauritz’s urn tucked away in his powered-up subspace, where Lex didn’t need to see it. He hadn’t been particularly subtle in his pointed avoidance of the urn, of even remotely acknowledging it. His behavior, Lilitu knew all too well, spoke to how hard Lex was biting his tongue. How hard he was fighting the impulse to say something he suspected he might regret.
Honestly, that reaction from Lex hadn’t surprised Lilitu much. Keeping Lex and Mauritz separated had always been a challenge when Mauritz was alive, but a necessary endeavor. Lex had always tried to coexist peacefully, but the strain that had inflicted on him had always clearly shown itself in Lilitu’s eyes. On top of that, it hardly seemed fair to make him endure it more than absolutely necessary when, out of him and Mauritz, only Lex bothered putting in any effort. Better for everyone that Mauritz simply not have the chance to showcase several of his less than pleasant behaviors.
Better, now, that Lex not need to choke back any perfectly reasonable objections about how many centuries it had been since Lilitu would’ve been socially permitted to put Mauritz’s urn away. To bury it, to see it entombed somewhere, to hide it away in a closet in one of the many abandoned buildings on Arcalís where Lilitu would never need to deal with it again. Arcalian mourning customs did entail a period of carrying the deceased’s ashes or a piece of their remains around (a bone fragment, usually). But even if any of Lilitu’s people had survived long enough to judge him for how he performed those rituals, they were several centuries past the point of being even remotely necessary.
Better for the urn to stay out of sight. Always in the back of Lilitu’s mind, but nowhere that Lex needed to see it.
Tonight, though, Lilitu had powered up for long enough to remove the urn from his subspace. He’d almost stayed that way, considering how cold it was, but—no, not safe to do that, not even for the sake of the warmth. Leading anybody from Chaos to the home Lex had built up and then invited Lilitu into wouldn’t have been good for either of them.
Sitting in the same room as the fireplace, tucked against the wall beneath one of the windows with his legs curled up, Lilitu held the urn in his lap. It felt warm right now, but who knew how long that would last. Moonlight from outside filtered down, dancing over the urn’s stained glass, illuminating it so that Lilitu could more or less perfectly make out the design of Arcalian lilacs (which did not, as he’d learned over the summer, much resemble Terran lilacs beyond having a similar color; too much strength and pride in the Arcalian flowers’ stems, too much volume in their blossoms and the way their petals twisted out from their shared center). The heavy, silver chain that had once kept the urn fastened around his neck drooped between his legs, scraping against the floor every time he shifted.
Once upon a time, Chrysanthos Samara—Lilitu, before he’d taken on a name more suited to his inability to protect his people or those of Lex’s people who’d been born on Arcalís—he’d commissioned this urn for his lover. Not because he’d planned on Mauritz passing on, but as a sign that, even when Mauritz did, Lilitu would see that he received the same kind of care that Lilitu had always given him.…… The love that Lilitu had always given him even when Mauritz tried to demand that Lilitu prioritize Mauritz over his duty to their people, or interrogated him about harmless conversations with aides or off-world dignitaries just because they had happened to be men and allegedly to Lilitu’s tastes, or privately accused Lex of having any intent to “steal” Lilitu from Mauritz as though Lilitu had been little more than a doll for Mauritz to parade around on his arm.
Shivering, Lilitu pressed his lips together tightly. He splayed a hand out over the stained glass. For a moment, he could’ve sworn that the curve bending toward the neck and the metalwork that held the glass together felt indistinguishable from the dagger that he’d once stuck between Mauritz’s fourth and fifth ribs. His stomach turned, and somehow—in defiance of all logic—he could’ve sworn that he picked up Mauritz’s scent again, more clearly than it had seemed in the Chaos-tainted fog on Dagon. As he cradled the urn to his chest, Lilitu would’ve sworn that he heard Mauritz’s voice making his last request all over again: Don’t let them take me, sweet boy.… Don’t let them have my mind.… Let me die as myself.
Please, don’t ask me for that, Lilitu had begged him. Please, you could still pull through.…
Then, that bleary, faded smile had strained the edges of Mauritz’s face. Exhausted as he was, he’d found enough gall to say, Not this time, sweet boy.… Have I not given you everything for which you asked ******** no.
Mauritz hadn’t even honored it when Lilitu had stopped calling himself Chrysanthos, and yet, he’d had the ******** nerve to say—
Lilitu’s stomach lurched as though he might be sick. He couldn’t be here right now. He needed to be……not-here. Somewhere outside.
Setting the urn aside, he fumbled to his feet. Left Mauritz’s ashes there against the wall, even knowing that Lex could—and almost definitely would—find them there.
As much as he wanted to simply power up and run out into the night, Lilitu hesitated for one reason. Nothing to honor the man he’d loved and murdered. The man he’d forgiven time and time again, no matter how many times Mauritz promised him something—how many times he’d promised that he would do better next time, that he would ******** change—and then failed to make any effort, never mind delivering actual results. Lilitu only hesitated for Lex’s sake, stopping to scribble a note down on one of their little pads.
Went out for a quick patrol, Lilitu wrote down, working carefully to keep his English script (the letters he was improving at but still learning his way around) from turning into Arcalian. Needed to clear some ghosts out of my head. Will return soon. I love you, always.
wc: 1,076.
