1st of Frost, Year 4622
It loomed over him, every night, every dream — the specter of death, which would always tread so near and yet skitter far away. He tried to confront it, at times, steeled by momentary encounters with his own, jilted bravery, but never could he open his own eyes wide enough to see what followed at the end of days. There was so little the fledgling knew. He knew that death awaited everyone, and roughly where it went, but the process of departing from life was something he found impeccably strange. He remembered that moment, two years gone, where he laid facing what he could see of the clouds from a clearing of pines, his eyes reaching towards the exaltation of the heavens before they flickered to a close. It wasn't Muid he found, then, nor the coolness of a Well of Souls... it was instead the image of himself upon a tall cathedral, overlooking a murky city below. The building was the one he had chosen to marry Riven in... a personification of all of the dreams he had in life that death would rob from him.
Of course, it didn't matter to his mind back then that Riven was already dead — it was more a lamentation of what could have been. The life, the future, that he had always meant to have, if only he might have escaped his ebon chains.
Death terrified him, then. As he ruminated above that cathedral, he wept into the cobble and the murk, and felt himself fade. And then he lived.
It was a strange feeling, that: weeping over the end of one's life, only to be returned to it. For a long time, he envisioned that everything after then was a dream, his mind suspended in reality by the very wishes of his soul. It took Taelian a while before he could see that he was still alive, that he hadn't lost those dreams after all, even if the man he originally intended for them was gone. Even if his mother was gone, his father, Eleanor and Lethiril and Vendrael... he was still alive. No one else, perhaps, but always him. He made peace with that: the fact that he lived when all of the arteries that stemmed out from his heart had shriveled and passed. He couldn't imagine himself ever being happy, perhaps, but he could sublimate... he could create great works of art, he could build nations, he could alter the course of the world to a trajectory that would have seen his loved ones still alive.
And he made peace with that idea, too, only for that concept to die again, before long. He found Ford, and suddenly he was in the shoes of the man who dreamed again. Beyond almost anything else, that was why he wanted him to be his Arlaed... because if Taelian lost his meaning again, if he had to cope again with the abolishment of everything that formed his life, he did not want to live a life at all. If Ford died, the man would go with him, and then finally he would know what death was like after all. He wouldn't be spared from it, not again. Not even the son of a God ever got a third chance.
And now, there he was: choking in his bed, hacking up the contents of what looked and felt like dark phlegm, suffering an illness he thought himself impervious to for so long. There it was, inside of him — the corruption. The Bleeding of Venadak. It was in his blood, in his bones. Every manifestation that came made him shiver, and even sob, and he never let the other man see or hear or know. He was meant to die with Ford if the time came... Ford wasn't meant to die with him.
Through it all, though, he wore his smile whenever eyes could see him. He didn't know how bad his symptoms were, or for how long they would last. He only knew that he was confused, and uncertain, and even in pain. That was fine, though. Long before he'd ever imagined himself as a Draedan, that had been the natural state of his life. He was raised in the Bedlam, after all, his parents both succumbing to a disease of bubals and ulcers. What was black bile emerging from his throat, and coolness, and shivering, and pain? He compartmentalized all of it, and focused instead on that idea again: sublimating. Rather than facing his mourning, he would be the best husband and father he could ever be. He would assure that his children were not corrupted when they were born, and he had spent the better half of the last month practicing and refining his ability to construct the chambers they would very soon be moved to.
Taelian was a happy man, now, with Ford. A sick man — perhaps even a dying man — but a happy one, particularly because no one knew about all of those other, uncomfortable parts. Not even the man he very much loved. It wasn't a secret, really... or at least he rationalized it that way. It was... because he wasn't sure, and why worry the other half of his soul over an uncertainty?
The man emerged from the bed. Sometimes, he dreamt that he was much sicker than he was; he imagined himself coughing and hacking heavier, bloodier things. He remembered the claymore he'd shoved into his own chest to prove he was a Draedan to Arkash — sometimes, he hacked that up, too. It didn't really matter what it was, so long as his anxiety could conjure it up as some horrific, visceral thing.
He set all of that aside for the moment, and rubbed the side of his head, the palm slowly moving over to apply gentle pressure to the edge of his eye. His features were pensive, and cool.
"It's the new season," he muttered, not really seeking for Ford to hear him, though he wouldn't act surprised if he did. His husband had a way of stirring whenever he did; maybe it was part of being Arlaed. "This is where everything always happens, isn't it? Not grand, but simple. Starvation, illness, dying from deprived heat. Cheers to Frost."
Taelian stood, nude, and brought himself to his desk to flip through the pages of the dossier Miranda had left him. The sun had only just begun to rise, but work was on his mind. The cannery was opening in a few days. Everything was about to change.
