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Damnatio Memoriae

Chapter 5: 9 - The Hermit

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You wake with a start. Sitting up in bed, you rub the tiredness out of your eyes and realize with a pang that it’s Monday again. You have classes awaiting you regardless of what your late night activities may be. As you go to pull some clothes on, you peek behind the drape covering your window. You are greeted by a flash of white and you squint at the brightness. It snowed while you slept. The outside world looked so peaceful draped in ice.

 

Bundled up in your jacket with a few extra layers, you begin your walk to campus, thankful for the convenience of housing that wasn’t far away. Your boots crunch as you trudge through snow, trying your best not to slip on patches of black ice. The sky is steel gray with spots of brilliant blue peeking through. It’s nice and quiet, early in the morning enough that most people aren’t out yet. A calm moment in your life for once. However, as you pass over a bridge, you notice there is a man sitting on a bench beneath barren trees. 

 

Each step feels like you’re walking through glass as you start to near him. You really hoped you could’ve gone a few more hours without seeing him, enough to collect yourself and steel your mind against whatever curveball he threw at you. The shame of not putting an end to him last night still prickled in your chest. You gritted your teeth and crossed your fingers for the slim chance that he would leave you alone. Your social veneer was null and void leaving nothing but stark annoyance, god help him if he tried to be serious with you at this hour. 

 

You could feel him watching you as you pass, eyes boring into you. He probably expected you to do something, to lose your buttons at him or pull some kind of threat. If you were being honest, you didn’t have the energy for any of this. 

 

“Do you like to read?”

 

You blink, your entire body halting as you processed his question. It’s been a decade or so since someone has asked you that. Out of all the things you could’ve expected him to ask, that was not one of them. You turn to look at him, he’s still watching you, head resting on one hand. 

 

“Why’s it matter to you?” You reply, squinting at him. You half expected a riddle, given his habit of confusing you. 

 

“Wouldn’t you be curious about your adversary?” His eyes glitter with something akin to fascination. Your chest tightens as he studies you. 

 

He stands to walk by your side as you continue your way to campus. How odd, to walk with the man you’ve attempted to kill as though he were nothing more than a companion in passing. The silence is deafening as his original question goes unanswered. You sigh internally. He had already intruded on your morning, maybe if you just answered plainly, he’d leave you be.

 

You exhale into the freezing air, fixing your eyes straight ahead so you wouldn’t have to look at him. “Yes, I read, but I see no point in your asking.” 

 

You fold to temptation, your gaze momentarily flickering to the side. He’s peering at you again, measuring you with his eyes. In the morning light they take on shades of blue. You lean back just slightly, vaguely unnerved by the fact that his face is far too close to yours. 

 

“You have the mannerisms of someone who has built a home in their books.”

 

You shrugged at his response. You had to admit, he wasn’t wrong. 

 

“So what if I have?” You reply, the knot in your chest wringing its hands, “Reading reminds me that I have a soul.”

 

He smiled for a moment, the corners of his mouth turning up in a catlike smile.

 

“Then by your logic, wouldn’t I have a soul?” 

 

The beast in your brain twitches and squints through the bars. He was being strange again, the same flavor of oddity as the wisteria flowers sitting on your windowsill. 

 

“There’s a folk tale I read once, about a girl who got bitten by a snake.” You begin as he watches curiously, “The stray cats, despairing for her, transform her into one of their own.”

 

Your hands are tracing little shapes in front of you as you talk, re-imagining the scenes as you walk. 

 

“She does not wish to be a cat, but in having her wish granted, the snake kills her aunt instead.”

 

He’s intrigued now, watching you speak with your hands and the movement of your eyes. He’s never seen you talk this much, a glimpse into your irrationally emotional mind. A chance to make sense of you.

 

“And who am I in this story of yours?”

 

You stare at him, studying his cold violet eyes, empty of anything that could be called a home. 

 

“The girl chooses to be a cat, chooses to spend longer trying to become human again, just so her aunt may live.” Your voice takes on a slightly bitter edge, something tinged with anger, “I doubt there is anyone in this world you would make such a sacrifice for.”

 

His pace slows and when you turn to face him, he looks like a statue paused in the snow. You can see his hands tensing and untensing ever so subtly. Was he mad? You supposed you would be too if someone insulted your humanity. 

 

“Does that make me the snake in your eyes?” he inquires, his voice dangerously smooth.

 

You ponder this for a moment, watching the clouds move across the sky. The rolling wisps seem to drift through your mind as you think, a calming silence as you consider his question. 

 

“No, not quite.” You finally reply, “Is there someone you’d unravel time for? Someone you’d spend lifetimes trying to save? If there is, you might not be empty of a soul.”

 

And with that, you leave and he does not follow. Just as you always do. Just as it is supposed to be. 

 

——— ☆ • ♧ • ♤ • ♧ • ☆ ———

 

You ran from him again, same as before. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears and exhale warm breaths into the freezing air. He could feel his hands growing numb in the cold, pins and needles in his fingertips. He was living, wasn’t he? He was on this earth with a mind to think and eyes to see. 

 

Ah.

 

But a mind and a soul are separate creatures. You tangled yourself up in his mind, seemingly fascinated and enraged at the same time. He saw the fire in your eyes when you searched the empty room for any trace of him, saw how you paused when you looked at the flowers under the floorboards. Even now, he could almost hear the mechanics of your brain as you carefully mulled over his questions. Is that why you kept returning every night? 

 

But when it came to his soul, whether he had one or not, you would falter. Your knife would shake in your hand. Is that why you ran? He chewed on his fingers in thought as he trudged through the ice. What do you see when you look at him? You were so determined to kill him, so ready to push that blade of yours into his side. You were only human, you shouldn’t be that hard to study. And yet you showed him mercy. Why would you? You must have seen something for it to affect you like that. 

 

Did he want to be human in your eyes?

 

Spots of red dotted the harsh white of the snow, a bead of blood welling up from his index finger. 

 

He hated the slashes you left in his walls. He hated your eyes and your voice and the violence of your hands. If being human meant being like you, he didn’t want it. How foolish of you to have mercy for him. 

 

And yet…

 

And yet, against his will, he found himself praying. A quiet wish that you would come see him again with your knife in hand. A prayer for the animal that stalks him. 

Notes:

oh the story about the girl and the snake is an actual thing, it’s called The Cats of Tanglewood Forest

it has really beautiful illustrations tbh

anyways. everyone gets feelings’d against their will