"What in the hells," Gale hisses as he steps into the room. He's wearing a jacket due to the changing weather, but it's not at all up to temperatures like these. "There also appears to be only one bed. Should we... ask to change rooms?" He sounds uncertain. With the number of people offered the free stay, between those who need the shelter and those who are curious about the mystery around Kelesis, the place is probably full. He frowns and sets his leather satchel down. "I was hoping to take a nice long bath..." But he had imagined a proper bath tub in a separate room with soap and fluffy towels, not a hot spring out in the open.
Pom rubs the back of his neck. He's slept in tight spaces before, so the single bed doesn't cause him much discomfort, even if he will be sharing it. While an intensely private person when it comes to himself, Pom has plenty of experience with public bathing under his belt. He looks from said bed to the bath and back, wondering how about uncomfortable Gale will be, watching him set his satchel aside.
"Somehow, I don't think we're getting a bath like this in any other room." He meanders into the bathroom: the basin set into the floor reminds him of the springs in Seliana, their waters heated by a combination of geothermal energy and the Steamworks. They were always a good place for hunters to wind down in their evening hours after a long hunt, and while Pom enjoys the commodity of having a daily shower in Karteria, he misses the ease the springs brought his muscles. He tests one of the spigots, and finds the water already warm, inviting.
He turns it off, setting his sights on Gale again. "If you wanna change rooms, we can, but I ain't opposed to this. Kind of reminds me of home, actually."
"They we'll stay," Gale says without hesitation, wanting Pom to be happy.
He's certain that if the room reminded him of Waterdeep, Pom would gladly
stay even if it was a little uncomfortable. Besides, his home city has
harsh winters, so it's not like he's not used to the cold.
"We'll make the best of it. Do you want to try out the hot spring?" As soon
as he's said it he realizes that it's not clear whether he's offering to
let Pom go first, or suggesting that they try it out together.
Embarrassment slaps color into his cheeks, even though they've seen each
other naked multiple times by now. The owlbear loves the idea, supplying
carnal thoughts that Gale shakes his head to try to dismiss. "Ah, I mean,
well... I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable."
That gets a smile from him, one wider than he'd normally wear; maybe it's the fact his mouth can stretch wider now, or maybe Gale's suggestion tickles him that much.
"Pretty sure I'm not the one turnin' red at the idea," he replies smoothly. Sharing a bed with Gale when he's uncertain of how the man feels about him outside of a nightmare brought about by pure torment? That's a bit embarrassing for Pom, but nothing he can't handle. He's spent a lot of time burying his feelings rather than confronting or understanding them. His current form - several inches taller, a whole lot hairier, and barely able to fit into his clothing? Definitely embarrassing, and he wouldn't recommend it, especially in front of the man he is utterly infatuated with. His looks are so much of who he is, who he tries to be - so far from who he doesn't want to be, and this bestial shape only reminds him of what's beneath his skin.
But the idea of sharing a hot bath with his roommate, even if he is said object of infatuation? That's almost normal by comparison. Practically routine.
"You can keep your clothes on, if it'd make you feel better. We usually did in Seliana. Wouldn't be the first time we've seen each other naked, but hey, maybe there's something new to see now that I look like this."
Pom's comments make Gale turn a shade redder, though he scoffs as if it's a
ridiculous thing to say.
"If we keep them on, they'll be soaked when we get out, might even freeze."
That's not a problem he couldn't handle as a wizard, but it is an
inconvenience.
"We'll keep our undergarments on," he decides. "Though, there may I'm have
be sometime new to see... Oh me, I mean." He shifts uncomfortably.
"Something felt different when we crossed into the city. Could you... Look
for me? Like you did at the beginning?"
Worry draws around him, settling into his brow. "Anything you need. Come on."
He sets his own bag down and turns the water back on, letting it run. The basin itself is as deep as the tubs in their row house, and wide enough to fill most of the room - it's plenty big for the two of them, but will take some time to fill. At least the steam will warm the air.
He pads back toward Gale, balancing on his changed feet while he waits for him to remove his clothing. "What feels different? You hurting still?"
Gale slides out of his jacket first, seeing it aside while he explains.
"No. Well, yes, I am, but that's not what I'm concerned about." He tips his
hood back, and at first, it's easy to miss the difference. Gale already had
owlish plumicorns on top of his head, but those have been replaced with
soft brown cat ears. Even Gale doesn't seem to notice that change.
"I felt... Something new grow in." He reaches for the ties to his wrap
shirt but hesitates. He doesn't even change in front of Tara. Then again,
Pom has seen him naked before. This isn't romantic or sexual anyway.
Dismissing his hesitancy like a spell he's finished with, he strips out of
his shirt. Now the changes his corruption causes are far more apparent.
Those lines creeping out from the circle on his chest crawl over most of
his body like vines swallowing an abandoned building.
"My back," Gale says, turning so Pom can see. A pair of wings, no bigger
than a goose's, lay folded up against his back
Pom waits politely for Gale to undress, too concerned to even think about that moment of hesitation. His eyes trace the way the Corruption has spread through Gale, following the lines that trail from the mark on his chest down to the bandages on his limbs, as well as up his neck toward his eye. The feathers may hide some of the signs, but they're still there for the scrutinizing eye - or at least one relatively familiar with what Gale used to look like.
The wizard turns for him, and the change on his back is far more obvious. Pom steps closer, reaching a hand out and carefully slipping it between the secondary and primary feathers. Some of the pinions aren't yet fully matured, soft down brushing him between the plumage.
"You got wings back here," he murmurs. Gale didn't have wings before - Pom examined him in his full Shift, and he'd have surely noticed.
That leaves the question of where they came from unasked, but Pom has his theories.
Gale sucks in a breath, not really surprised, but perhaps sensitive to
touch in these newly formed appendages. When he shifts, the wings flutter a
little, but the movement isn't a conscious one yet.
"Owlbears don't have wings. Owls do, they're birds, not as far as I know,
no variety of owlbear has wings," he states. Goosebumps crawl over his bare
flesh, the steam not yet enough to completely warm the air.
Continuing his examination, Pom stretches one wing carefully, feeling the musculature. It sure feels as though it belongs there, and moves like it, too. He remembers when his tail suddenly remained after Shifting, and wonders if it's a similar situation. He looks back to Gale to keep talking, only for his gaze to land on the back of the other man's head for a moment too long.
With the wing still in one hand, he reaches to brush a couple of fingers against what he is certain had once been feathers in Gale's hair, tips where they came to a point almost like ears. There's fur there now, solid skin.
Gale shivers again, but this time it has less to do with the temperature.
That 'huh' makes him slap a hand to his head, feeling for the cause of it.
It isn't difficult to find. "Ears?" He blurts. "Owlbears certainly don't
have ears like this." There's a touch of rising panic in his voice at the
thought that his body is undergoing more changes, becoming uglier, more
monstrous. He reaches over his shoulder, grabbing and feeling his own wings
roughly, like their appearance is a further offense. It occurs to him that
it wouldn't be difficult to rip them off.
Though he removes his hand as Gale slaps at his new ears, Pom recognizes the shift in his tone, the way he grabs at his wings. He's been there himself a number of times, lying awake at night, clawing at his own scales along his sides, trying to stay human by forcibly removing that which isn't. It never helps.
"Hey. Hey!"
He lets go of the wing and steps in front of Gale, taking his hands and pulling them away. "You gotta be careful. You might break the feathers."
But he knows that's not what Gale is concerned about, so he tries again after a beat.
"It's probably the city, you know? It does weird stuff to us Augmented. I mean, look at me."
"Break the feathers," Gale repeats with scorn, though not for Pom. "What does it matter? They're not good for anything." He can't see them well over his shoulder, but that tells him that they're small, nowhere near big enough for even gliding. Stupid useless wings. Eli had helped him cut off his useless extra digits, why not be rid of these as well?
"Kelesis does do weird things to us..." He doesnt mention that he thinks what it does is show them their futures their inevitable selves. "But at least it doesn't torture us."
He looks from the filling tub to the bandages that can't stay on his hands if he's going to get in. Sighing, he decides that they may as well have nothing hidden between them and starts to unwrap them. His arms are a horror. Those black lines creep down them from his chest, particularly the left one. His hands are gnarled with scar tissue from fingers removed and regrown again and again and again. The putrid black boils that mark arcane radiation circle the orb on his chest like stars in a spiral galaxy, radiating out and over his arms. He curls his lip in disgust at everything he's been hiding. "Guess wings and ears aren't so bad in comparison, hm?"
Pom wants to argue, but is left wordless at the sight of Gale's arms. Free of their bandages, he can see them in full, truly take in not only what the city has done — scar tissue and healing wounds from torture — but also what Gale has done to himself out of some desperate need to reconnect with his magic. Pom didn't ask much about what Gale was doing with the Katalyth, what experiment was worth all this - he felt as though he didn't have the right to ask. Maybe he should have - maybe knowing someone cared would stop him from any further self-affliction.
Discomfort flits across his expression, anguish mingling with it as it meets at the bridge of his nose.
"They might not be so bad by comparison, but... that don't mean you gotta make it worse on yourself. I don't—"
He shakes his head, fighting to shut all he's feeling back in - the anger at Patho-Gen, the frustration with himself, the way his heart aches when he thinks about all Gale has been through.
"I still don't understand why you did this to yourself. Why you felt like you needed to."
Asking Gale why he needed to do magic is like asking a shark why it needs
to swim. Because it's natural, because it's all he knows, because he might
die without it.
"Look at what happened after. If I had reliable access to my former power,
I might stand a chance of protecting us." They had taken half the Augmented
and tortured them in ways he still doesn't fully remember. "Besides, I'm a
wizard. I don't know how to be anything else."
Gale sighs and unfastens his pants. Removing the rest of his clothes
reveals a feline tail extending from his tail bone, another new
development. It flicks as he steps down into the water, sinking in up to
his shoulders. "Coming?"
As much as Pom wants to say he still doesn't understand... he gets it. He understands painfully well what it feels like to want to protect someone, to do horrible things in order to do so. Hell, he had to become something else entirely — someone else entirely, and while that someone else is a better person, his hands are still stained, ruined. Even his new persona hasn't been as good as he should be.
He opens his mouth to retort, but ends up staring at Gale's new tail instead. He lets it go without remark, figuring Gale will find that change out on his own soon enough. Pom instead busies himself by pulling off his own clothing. While he has plenty of scars from years past, he has not nearly as many recent ones as Gale. The only surprise he's hiding his how much fur he has under his clothes now, patches of hair and scales coating the majority of his chest. The fur isn't the purple of his pompadour, but closer to a deep indigo - a mismatch that will bother him when his focus isn't elsewhere.
He steps into the basin. While the water doesn't come quite to his shoulders, he has to admit that the weight off his feet is immense. Unfortunately, it does little to mitigate his worry. He fights with himself another moment before he finally finds his voice again.
"You could learn. Learn to be something else, if you had to. You're smart."
"And I could probably amputate my own foot if I had to, like a fox in a
trap, but I'm not so much of an animal yet that I'm ready to start cutting
off parts of myself."
He sighs and shakes his head, knowing that Pom can't really understand. For
the other man, magic is still something strange and dangerous that he's
barely getting used to through exposure. Pom sees it as something Gale
does; Gale sees it as who he is. "It's not just a vocation that I'm skilled
at. The first time I did magic, I was little more than a babe, barely
walking. I don't remember my life before magic. I lost my powers once
before, because of this." He lightly touches that bruised looking circle.
"And it was the lowest point in my life. I had to relearn everything, claw
my way back to my former powers, and I can do that again. I don't know how
to give up, though."
It takes everything in Pom to not remark about how Gale literally has cut parts of himself off — or had Eli do it, rather — but he lets the wizard continue uninterrupted, deciding it's not worth explaining how he found out that tidbit of information by going behind Gale's back and cornering Eli outside the theater. He moves to the edge of the basin; there's a tray there lined with various soaps and oils, clearly meant to float on the water. He starts gathering it up, along with some rags and sponges, all fancier than anything he's ever used in his life.
"I get it," he says, his back still turned to Gale. "I get being born feeling like... you're made for one thing, and one thing only. It ain't all you are, but... that's what you make it sound like. What you come to believe."
He swallows the knot in his throat as he dances around the subject of his own past, keeps it as vague as it always is. He's more specific as he angles toward the topic of Gale himself.
"Difference between us is it's what you want to do. Who you want to be. Whereas I couldn't get far enough away from it."
"Then it isn't the same," he says simply, still more direct than he had
been before Patho-gen took him. "There's being a natural at something,
that's part of it, but that's where the similarities end. There's also
loving it so much you wouldn't choose anything else."
He sinks deeper into the water so that his head rests back against the edge
of the basin. "You never chose your former life. That's why you dance
around it when you talk about it, right? Your choices say as much about you
as your talents." He tilts his head. "What exactly did you do that you
still carry so much guilt over?"
Pom's hand trembles as he sets the bottles onto the tray as delicately as his Shifted fingers, so large and clawed and made for nothing but destruction, will allow. He was right before: Gale is smart. Gale can also see right through him when he chooses to do so.
"I don't—"
He starts to lie so smoothly, so easily; he's done this dance a hundred times, and even those who know about his past in Karteria only know because he chose to tell them, forced himself to. He wanted Northly to realize he wasn't a good person; he wanted Mel to see that he understood her. What does he want from Gale?
That's not an easy question to answer, as every outcome is full of contradictions. His more intimate feelings aside, Pom wants Gale to realize that no, their pasts aren't entirely the same, but it's close enough that they can commiserate. Pom wants Gale to see himself the way he sees him, even if he knows the importance of being seen the way one desires to be seen entirely too well. He wants them to be honest with one another, but the thought of revealing who he is under that dandy persona makes his stomach turn, even after all this time of living together. It only gets worse the longer it goes on, the more monstrous they become.
He looks to the tiny bottles on the tray, wetting his lips as he tries again. It's better Gale knows now, when it's easier to walk away.
"I was a poacher. A thief, a killer. Whatever I needed to be. I didn't choose that life, but I reveled in it all the same."
Gale lets him work through his thoughts in silence. He cares for Pom, so
much so that he thinks he could drown in it, but he doesn't know how to be
soft anymore. He still knows how to love, but like Pom, his clawed hands
aren't made for handling things gently.
"I wonder which of us has killed more people," he muses after a moment of
silence, "I never kept count. Did you?"
That Gale, too, has killed people somehow doesn't surprise Pom. His mind comes up with a dozen justifications, all of which are good enough for Gale, but not for himself.
He shakes his head. "No. Count don't matter so much as how I felt about it."
"Somehow, everything is different when it's you. You hold yourself to
different rules, harsher standards," Gale says. His gaze is strange now,
unwavering, almost unblinking. "You enjoyed it. So did I. The thrill of
battle, of victory. The adrenaline rush! The sound and smells of people
burning alive, not so much, but—" He winces with the intense feeling of
deja vu that hits him.
Pom turns to face him, tray still in hand, his temper hot as the water. Gale makes it sound like it's no big deal - that his past is nothing that should stay with him, weigh on him, dictate who he is and what he does now. He's been hiding for the entirety of his new life; he modeled himself into someone and something else, all for sins that Gale makes sound mundane, commonplace, acceptable.
The steam fogs his glasses, but he can't bear to remove them, not when he can't hide the rest of himself. Gale's gaze cuts him straight through, and he goes on the defensive before he can stop himself.
"There's no thrill when they don't fight. When you gut people just because it makes you feel good. When you take all they've got and don't even leave them with their lives, all for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Did you do that? How many of those did you do?"
Gale leans in a little, unwilling to back down. "So you liked hurting
people who couldn't fight back? Taking from those who couldn't defend
themselves? What's stopping you from doing it now, then? You're bigger,
stronger. I doubt there are many people who could stop you. So what's
stopping you?"
He splashes a little water in his face, almost painful, all challenge. "I
think you didn't know any other way. I think when someone showed you a
different path, you took it. I think you changed."
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"Somehow, I don't think we're getting a bath like this in any other room." He meanders into the bathroom: the basin set into the floor reminds him of the springs in Seliana, their waters heated by a combination of geothermal energy and the Steamworks. They were always a good place for hunters to wind down in their evening hours after a long hunt, and while Pom enjoys the commodity of having a daily shower in Karteria, he misses the ease the springs brought his muscles. He tests one of the spigots, and finds the water already warm, inviting.
He turns it off, setting his sights on Gale again. "If you wanna change rooms, we can, but I ain't opposed to this. Kind of reminds me of home, actually."
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"They we'll stay," Gale says without hesitation, wanting Pom to be happy. He's certain that if the room reminded him of Waterdeep, Pom would gladly stay even if it was a little uncomfortable. Besides, his home city has harsh winters, so it's not like he's not used to the cold.
"We'll make the best of it. Do you want to try out the hot spring?" As soon as he's said it he realizes that it's not clear whether he's offering to let Pom go first, or suggesting that they try it out together. Embarrassment slaps color into his cheeks, even though they've seen each other naked multiple times by now. The owlbear loves the idea, supplying carnal thoughts that Gale shakes his head to try to dismiss. "Ah, I mean, well... I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable."
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"Pretty sure I'm not the one turnin' red at the idea," he replies smoothly. Sharing a bed with Gale when he's uncertain of how the man feels about him outside of a nightmare brought about by pure torment? That's a bit embarrassing for Pom, but nothing he can't handle. He's spent a lot of time burying his feelings rather than confronting or understanding them. His current form - several inches taller, a whole lot hairier, and barely able to fit into his clothing? Definitely embarrassing, and he wouldn't recommend it, especially in front of the man he is utterly infatuated with. His looks are so much of who he is, who he tries to be - so far from who he doesn't want to be, and this bestial shape only reminds him of what's beneath his skin.
But the idea of sharing a hot bath with his roommate, even if he is said object of infatuation? That's almost normal by comparison. Practically routine.
"You can keep your clothes on, if it'd make you feel better. We usually did in Seliana. Wouldn't be the first time we've seen each other naked, but hey, maybe there's something new to see now that I look like this."
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Pom's comments make Gale turn a shade redder, though he scoffs as if it's a ridiculous thing to say.
"If we keep them on, they'll be soaked when we get out, might even freeze." That's not a problem he couldn't handle as a wizard, but it is an inconvenience.
"We'll keep our undergarments on," he decides. "Though, there may I'm have be sometime new to see... Oh me, I mean." He shifts uncomfortably. "Something felt different when we crossed into the city. Could you... Look for me? Like you did at the beginning?"
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He sets his own bag down and turns the water back on, letting it run. The basin itself is as deep as the tubs in their row house, and wide enough to fill most of the room - it's plenty big for the two of them, but will take some time to fill. At least the steam will warm the air.
He pads back toward Gale, balancing on his changed feet while he waits for him to remove his clothing. "What feels different? You hurting still?"
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Gale slides out of his jacket first, seeing it aside while he explains. "No. Well, yes, I am, but that's not what I'm concerned about." He tips his hood back, and at first, it's easy to miss the difference. Gale already had owlish plumicorns on top of his head, but those have been replaced with soft brown cat ears. Even Gale doesn't seem to notice that change.
"I felt... Something new grow in." He reaches for the ties to his wrap shirt but hesitates. He doesn't even change in front of Tara. Then again, Pom has seen him naked before. This isn't romantic or sexual anyway. Dismissing his hesitancy like a spell he's finished with, he strips out of his shirt. Now the changes his corruption causes are far more apparent. Those lines creeping out from the circle on his chest crawl over most of his body like vines swallowing an abandoned building.
"My back," Gale says, turning so Pom can see. A pair of wings, no bigger than a goose's, lay folded up against his back
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The wizard turns for him, and the change on his back is far more obvious. Pom steps closer, reaching a hand out and carefully slipping it between the secondary and primary feathers. Some of the pinions aren't yet fully matured, soft down brushing him between the plumage.
"You got wings back here," he murmurs. Gale didn't have wings before - Pom examined him in his full Shift, and he'd have surely noticed.
That leaves the question of where they came from unasked, but Pom has his theories.
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Gale sucks in a breath, not really surprised, but perhaps sensitive to touch in these newly formed appendages. When he shifts, the wings flutter a little, but the movement isn't a conscious one yet.
"Owlbears don't have wings. Owls do, they're birds, not as far as I know, no variety of owlbear has wings," he states. Goosebumps crawl over his bare flesh, the steam not yet enough to completely warm the air.
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Continuing his examination, Pom stretches one wing carefully, feeling the musculature. It sure feels as though it belongs there, and moves like it, too. He remembers when his tail suddenly remained after Shifting, and wonders if it's a similar situation. He looks back to Gale to keep talking, only for his gaze to land on the back of the other man's head for a moment too long.
With the wing still in one hand, he reaches to brush a couple of fingers against what he is certain had once been feathers in Gale's hair, tips where they came to a point almost like ears. There's fur there now, solid skin.
"Huh."
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Gale shivers again, but this time it has less to do with the temperature. That 'huh' makes him slap a hand to his head, feeling for the cause of it. It isn't difficult to find. "Ears?" He blurts. "Owlbears certainly don't have ears like this." There's a touch of rising panic in his voice at the thought that his body is undergoing more changes, becoming uglier, more monstrous. He reaches over his shoulder, grabbing and feeling his own wings roughly, like their appearance is a further offense. It occurs to him that it wouldn't be difficult to rip them off.
cw: self-harm
"Hey. Hey!"
He lets go of the wing and steps in front of Gale, taking his hands and pulling them away. "You gotta be careful. You might break the feathers."
But he knows that's not what Gale is concerned about, so he tries again after a beat.
"It's probably the city, you know? It does weird stuff to us Augmented. I mean, look at me."
cw: self-harm
"Kelesis does do weird things to us..." He doesnt mention that he thinks what it does is show them their futures their inevitable selves. "But at least it doesn't torture us."
He looks from the filling tub to the bandages that can't stay on his hands if he's going to get in. Sighing, he decides that they may as well have nothing hidden between them and starts to unwrap them. His arms are a horror. Those black lines creep down them from his chest, particularly the left one. His hands are gnarled with scar tissue from fingers removed and regrown again and again and again. The putrid black boils that mark arcane radiation circle the orb on his chest like stars in a spiral galaxy, radiating out and over his arms. He curls his lip in disgust at everything he's been hiding. "Guess wings and ears aren't so bad in comparison, hm?"
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Discomfort flits across his expression, anguish mingling with it as it meets at the bridge of his nose.
"They might not be so bad by comparison, but... that don't mean you gotta make it worse on yourself. I don't—"
He shakes his head, fighting to shut all he's feeling back in - the anger at Patho-Gen, the frustration with himself, the way his heart aches when he thinks about all Gale has been through.
"I still don't understand why you did this to yourself. Why you felt like you needed to."
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Asking Gale why he needed to do magic is like asking a shark why it needs to swim. Because it's natural, because it's all he knows, because he might die without it.
"Look at what happened after. If I had reliable access to my former power, I might stand a chance of protecting us." They had taken half the Augmented and tortured them in ways he still doesn't fully remember. "Besides, I'm a wizard. I don't know how to be anything else."
Gale sighs and unfastens his pants. Removing the rest of his clothes reveals a feline tail extending from his tail bone, another new development. It flicks as he steps down into the water, sinking in up to his shoulders. "Coming?"
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He opens his mouth to retort, but ends up staring at Gale's new tail instead. He lets it go without remark, figuring Gale will find that change out on his own soon enough. Pom instead busies himself by pulling off his own clothing. While he has plenty of scars from years past, he has not nearly as many recent ones as Gale. The only surprise he's hiding his how much fur he has under his clothes now, patches of hair and scales coating the majority of his chest. The fur isn't the purple of his pompadour, but closer to a deep indigo - a mismatch that will bother him when his focus isn't elsewhere.
He steps into the basin. While the water doesn't come quite to his shoulders, he has to admit that the weight off his feet is immense. Unfortunately, it does little to mitigate his worry. He fights with himself another moment before he finally finds his voice again.
"You could learn. Learn to be something else, if you had to. You're smart."
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"And I could probably amputate my own foot if I had to, like a fox in a trap, but I'm not so much of an animal yet that I'm ready to start cutting off parts of myself."
He sighs and shakes his head, knowing that Pom can't really understand. For the other man, magic is still something strange and dangerous that he's barely getting used to through exposure. Pom sees it as something Gale does; Gale sees it as who he is. "It's not just a vocation that I'm skilled at. The first time I did magic, I was little more than a babe, barely walking. I don't remember my life before magic. I lost my powers once before, because of this." He lightly touches that bruised looking circle. "And it was the lowest point in my life. I had to relearn everything, claw my way back to my former powers, and I can do that again. I don't know how to give up, though."
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"I get it," he says, his back still turned to Gale. "I get being born feeling like... you're made for one thing, and one thing only. It ain't all you are, but... that's what you make it sound like. What you come to believe."
He swallows the knot in his throat as he dances around the subject of his own past, keeps it as vague as it always is. He's more specific as he angles toward the topic of Gale himself.
"Difference between us is it's what you want to do. Who you want to be. Whereas I couldn't get far enough away from it."
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"Then it isn't the same," he says simply, still more direct than he had been before Patho-gen took him. "There's being a natural at something, that's part of it, but that's where the similarities end. There's also loving it so much you wouldn't choose anything else."
He sinks deeper into the water so that his head rests back against the edge of the basin. "You never chose your former life. That's why you dance around it when you talk about it, right? Your choices say as much about you as your talents." He tilts his head. "What exactly did you do that you still carry so much guilt over?"
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"I don't—"
He starts to lie so smoothly, so easily; he's done this dance a hundred times, and even those who know about his past in Karteria only know because he chose to tell them, forced himself to. He wanted Northly to realize he wasn't a good person; he wanted Mel to see that he understood her. What does he want from Gale?
That's not an easy question to answer, as every outcome is full of contradictions. His more intimate feelings aside, Pom wants Gale to realize that no, their pasts aren't entirely the same, but it's close enough that they can commiserate. Pom wants Gale to see himself the way he sees him, even if he knows the importance of being seen the way one desires to be seen entirely too well. He wants them to be honest with one another, but the thought of revealing who he is under that dandy persona makes his stomach turn, even after all this time of living together. It only gets worse the longer it goes on, the more monstrous they become.
He looks to the tiny bottles on the tray, wetting his lips as he tries again. It's better Gale knows now, when it's easier to walk away.
"I was a poacher. A thief, a killer. Whatever I needed to be. I didn't choose that life, but I reveled in it all the same."
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Gale lets him work through his thoughts in silence. He cares for Pom, so much so that he thinks he could drown in it, but he doesn't know how to be soft anymore. He still knows how to love, but like Pom, his clawed hands aren't made for handling things gently.
"I wonder which of us has killed more people," he muses after a moment of silence, "I never kept count. Did you?"
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He shakes his head. "No. Count don't matter so much as how I felt about it."
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"Somehow, everything is different when it's you. You hold yourself to different rules, harsher standards," Gale says. His gaze is strange now, unwavering, almost unblinking. "You enjoyed it. So did I. The thrill of battle, of victory. The adrenaline rush! The sound and smells of people burning alive, not so much, but—" He winces with the intense feeling of deja vu that hits him.
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Pom turns to face him, tray still in hand, his temper hot as the water. Gale makes it sound like it's no big deal - that his past is nothing that should stay with him, weigh on him, dictate who he is and what he does now. He's been hiding for the entirety of his new life; he modeled himself into someone and something else, all for sins that Gale makes sound mundane, commonplace, acceptable.
The steam fogs his glasses, but he can't bear to remove them, not when he can't hide the rest of himself. Gale's gaze cuts him straight through, and he goes on the defensive before he can stop himself.
"There's no thrill when they don't fight. When you gut people just because it makes you feel good. When you take all they've got and don't even leave them with their lives, all for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Did you do that? How many of those did you do?"
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Gale leans in a little, unwilling to back down. "So you liked hurting people who couldn't fight back? Taking from those who couldn't defend themselves? What's stopping you from doing it now, then? You're bigger, stronger. I doubt there are many people who could stop you. So what's stopping you?"
He splashes a little water in his face, almost painful, all challenge. "I think you didn't know any other way. I think when someone showed you a different path, you took it. I think you changed."
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