Archive of Our Own

Kenny can’t remember the last time someone had so earnestly tried to tell him what he can and can’t do, but he’d wager it’d also involved Rod Reiss.

“The hell you mean, I can’t see him?”

Rod turns his nose up at him, looking as pig-headed as he acts, Kenny thinks, and crosses his arms. “You can’t see him. He’s indisposed.”

Indisposed? Kenny scoffs. “I’ve had my knife in his arm and he didn’t so much as flinch. How indisposed can he be?” I’ve had my knife in other places, too, though he bravely resists the temptation and says none of this to Rod.

“I don’t know what to tell you. He’s not meeting with anyone.”

“Shit, well, I’m meeting with him.”

But when Kenny makes towards the stable entrance, Rod sidesteps into his path. “Uri asked to be left alone. He’s not seeing anyone.”

Kenny quirks an eyebrow. “You sure it weren’t just you he wanted to fuck off?”

But Rod, weaselly man though he is, remains steadfast, and Kenny certainly isn’t scared of him but neither is he interested in dealing with the level of trouble gutting him would bring. Though it’s fun to imagine.

He humours Rod for the time being but he came all this way to see Uri and he will. So he remounts his horse, makes a painfully saccharine show of tipping his hat and rides out far as he needs to before looping right back around to approach one of many other entrances. The Reiss estate is as massive as it is remote but Kenny knows it now as though he’s lived there his whole life. He knows he can tie his horse to the posts by the servants’ entrance and Rod will not once spot him. Taking the main entrance is a courtesy, at this point.

(He knows of the secret passages, too; Uri had shown them to him. He’s got no intention, however, of using the same tunnels generations of Reiss men have used to sneak their mistresses in and out.)

Perhaps all this is why Uri doesn’t give any sign of surprise when Kenny slinks into the antechamber of his quarters not 10 minutes after Rod had sent him away. He only stares at him from his position cross-legged on the couch. His arms rest loosely on his knees as though he were just meditating. But it’s hard to tell. Kenny had understood meditation as relaxation. Uri, with dark-shadowed eyes, swollen and red, and paled skin, looks deeper in distress than ever.

But Kenny can see he’s not busy, and he’s certainly not ill nor injured.

Uri is just… off. And Kenny’s seen it before, even if Rod doesn’t think he has. He’ll have a vacancy about him, an air of detachment, as though only his body is present in the moment and it’s simply going through the motions. The pale grey of his eyes is lost in deep pools of purple. He speaks with a coolness.

He is this way when he greets him. “Kenny,” he says.

“Your Majesty,” he nods. The words have, as they always do when they leave his mouth, an observable sarcastic bite – not that it generally bothers, Uri. “‘We becoming a recluse now?”

“I’m not able to see anyone today.”

“Mhm,” he scoffs, ignoring but souring still at the pointed comment. He instead looks Uri over exaggeratedly. “You look pretty able to me.”

“What I appear to be or not isn’t forcibly the truth.”

“Well, you really appear to be doing fuck all. What are you so busy with, Uri?”

Uri ignores him. “Rod agrees – ”

Kenny cuts him off with a bark of laughter. Uri glances at him, features pinched.

He continues, “Rod agrees that I waste too much time already… that I have too many distractions.” It sounds rehearsed.

“Well, if Rod says so,” he snorts. “I mean, ‘can’t let us commonfolk get in the way of your… lounging.”

“It’s not about that.”

“Since when do you let that asshole tell you what to do? He’s got you locked up in here like a glass doll.”

Uri shakes his head. “I asked him not to accept any visitors. We’re agreed on this.”

Kenny scrunches his face in disgust. He stalks over to Uri, who meets his gaze with impassivity even as he appears delicate as ever sat on the couch. “What the fuck is ‘this’? You running away from all your problems? You might have this giant ass mansion to hide in but they’ll still find you, Uri.”

“What problems do you think I have, Kenny?”

He sniffs. “How should I know what the fuck goes on in your head?”

“Indeed.” And Kenny is startled by the tone of abruptness and finality in Uri’s voice. He tries not to let his surprise show, but the harshness gives him pause.

“Shit, my apologies then, Majesty. How bold of me to presume to understand your absolute greatness. No, it’s truly appalling how out of line I was. How can I make it up to you? Got any dissenters what need killin’? I’ll even work overtime. I’ll work extra hard so you can, too.”

Kenny says it, as he says most things, to get a reaction out of Uri. It’s usually sweet to watch visceral disgust or wounded ego in the upper classes. Uri only stares distantly; a soft exhalation through his nose is the sole indication he’s even heard Kenny’s mockery. That, and his sad, sad eyes. It’s decidedly sour.

“Are you done?” he asks.

“... Am I done – ?” He starts to sneer, but bites his tongue. The way Uri is looking at him, has been looking at him, is quickly starting to twist his insides. He suddenly decides he can’t stand this blankness.

“Yeah, Uri, shit – I’m done.” He makes to leave but turns in the doorway to look back at Uri, who has been following him with his eyes silently.

“Kenny,” he says, “I’m sorry. I really am unwell.”

“Sure,” he agrees, and shuts the double doors behind him.

///

The journey to the Underground is quicker than usual. Kenny spends most of it fuming, walking briskly and with purpose when he needs to so people know to stay out of his way. Not that they wouldn’t know, anyways. The closer he gets to the centre of the Walls, the more his reputation precedes him.

Still, he’s not in the mood for anyone to try anything. His brief conversation with Uri keeps replaying in his head. As soon as he thinks he’s got the King figured out, Uri’ll do or say something that causes his brain to short-circuit – his instincts and normally astute judgement of character struggle to keep pace with the whirlwind of complexities and mysticisms that Uri embodies.

He’s always playing catch-up with Uri, and it frustrates him as much as it fascinates the hell out of him. Though, right now, he’s leaning more on the side of utter frustration.

And frustration at what? He and Uri don’t argue. The young King is decidedly non-confrontational for an all-powerful being, and when they disagree he can spend many painstaking hours patiently talking Kenny over to his side. He never obfuscates at Kenny’s crudeness, either; it even seems to amuse him, sometimes. But those things – patience, vision, amusement – are seen most clearly in flashes of light that pass over Uri’s grey eyes, sometimes in the softness of his features, almost never in the tone of his voice. He’s not inexpressive – you just need to know where to look to understand him. Kenny wanted to understand, too, so he learned.

Sad, purple-eyed Uri, though – Kenny is growing tired of the puzzle he remains. He grows tired that any puzzles remain at all. Uri had had him figured out from their first meeting, so why can’t Kenny solve him?

And why do you want so badly, asshole? He thinks. And snorts at nothing in particular. He needs a drink.

Later, when he’s nursing his third scotch and muttering his umpteenth curse of Uri Reiss under his breath, he observes the vagrants around him, the den of sinners he only finds himself in because every bad thing is richer underground. Alcohol. Himself. The Underground is where he can truly relax, which is to say by knowing he can’t. Alertness, distrust, apprehension – the familiar agitation of it all is comforting.

(At Uri’s side, he feels comfortable, and it agitates him).

And the alcohol does little to appease him. The frustration from earlier still simmers under his skin as he watches the lively movements inside the bar, where drunkards are being hustled and hustlers fight each other for the honour. Bony women in tight dresses emerge from the back rooms to earn their keep. There’s a poker match underway in the corner opposite him, with leathery men ‘round it who sometimes howl with laughter and grope the barmaids who top them off.

He decides he needs a smoke. He steps out the back of the bar into the alleyway. He’s not sure why he does it. A dingy place like this certainly’s got no ban on smoking indoors, and outside, everything is damp and stale, so there’s no excuse of wanting fresh air, though he thinks regretfully that he could also use some of that right about now.

Truthfully, he could no longer stand to be around so much scum. Simply sitting there his skin crawled, thinking mere proximity would have their depravity leech onto him. As though he had ever been any better, he muses. As though he were any better now.

He had considered, just for a moment, fucking his frustrations out with one of the lurking prostitutes, and the thought still makes him sick now. The cleanliness of it bothers him less than it should. Or, rather, it’s cleanliness of a different sort, because everyone now seems so inescapably unclean. Himself included. He knows exactly why it seems that way, too. He’s seen the light like some fucking Wallist lunatic and the rest is all darkness in comparison.

He curses Uri again.

There’s a woman, now, leading a player from the poker table out across the street and up the stairs into an apartment. He knows firmly that he could never be in his place again. Not fucking hollow prostitutes, not hollowing himself out to get fucked by the mindlessness of this life. There is no direction to anyone’s choices here. Not besides petty hedonism or pure survival.

And they know it, too. Every treacherous creature down here is so easily acceptant towards their own insignificance, if they’re not just delusionally unaware of it.

He thinks all this with firm impermeability until he flicks his cigarette butt to the ground and it lands by the shore of a murky-coloured puddle, where even in the dark of night, even in the obscurity of the muddied water, he can make out his reflection staring right back at him.

///

Even with the night as late as it is, Uri can’t find any sleep. His breaths come too quickly when he lays down. His mind is hyperactive. He sees images of horror behind his eyes and knows they will only be worse in his dreams.

This is how it has been for days now. He’s taken to spending his waking hours pacing or deep in thought until either activity exhausts him. This power has been inside him for years now and never has he struggled more to cope with it, has he felt more powerless. A spark of recognition had set off a chain of reactions, and now he spends his days scouring through the heads of Eldians dead and alive for the answers he seeks, finding none, having to, somehow, still live with this. And everyday it takes more of a toll.

The other week a nobleman had clasped his bare hand in greeting after the speech he had given to the Church of the Walls. He hadn’t expected it, would likely have said no, but… well. With no warning he was watching the man’s ancestor lose his head to the axe swing of an executioner, and he watched it through the eyes – commanded it through the tongue – of his own.

It had just been a flash, then. A glimpse of blood and steel and a face eternally frozen in horror before he had blinked and it was gone. But since then his dreams were often vivid windows into other ages, connected only by a thread of gore and whispers of that horrid word he’s begun to fear – tyranny.

But even though he sees those cloudy-eyed, floating heads in the shadows on his walls, it’s not the brutality that troubles him. He knows brutality intimately, though it’s not something he talks about. He can stomach the awful sights. But the pervasiveness of them, their mere existence, eats at him. He feels eroded. A stone on the shore being worn down endlessly by tidal waves of knowledge and truths. This world will never be free of violence. Neither will he.

When he falls asleep he doesn’t rest but instead orders hungry men to line the borders of their empire with heads on pikes. To terrorize the outside world. If it were just a memory, it would only feel like recollection. It feels instead like premonition. He is staring at paradise from the wrong side of the mirror and wondering why he never realized that blood just reflects blood.

Watching again and again as his family commits atrocities is only half the trouble. What makes him sick to his stomach is when he reflects on it later on; it strikes him bitterly that nothing has changed but the family motto, that he’s renounced war and pledged himself to peace but the world is still violent and paradise unattainable. Starvation is no less violent than execution, but it’s slower.

Whatever role he decides to take changes so little. Maybe the only difference between him and his forebearers is that he’s managed to delude himself into believing his violence will one day lead to peace.

He sits up abruptly, and in an instant he’s stumbling to his knees in front of the wastebasket and vomiting. The sound of his hacking must alert Rod, who’s already been keeping a closer eye on him since that day in the Church, because it’s not long before he hears a knock on the door and the creak of its opening.

“Uri!”

He cringes inwardly. Rod means well, but Uri finds it increasingly difficult to communicate with him of late. Their paths and perspectives have diverged too greatly for any meaningful understanding to remain between them.

He wipes the spit from his mouth, and rasps, “Did I wake you? Forgive me.”

Rod kneels by his side and places a hand on his back. “You’re fine, brother.” He looks him over, concern etched into his features. Uri wants to bat his arm away. “You’re pale as a ghost. Are you ill?”

Uri shakes his head. There’s no use lying – he can’t even get sick anymore. “No, nothing like that. I’m quite okay. You should go back to bed.”

“Uri, why don’t you talk to me? What’s on your mind?”

Uri offers a tight-lipped smile. “I’m a bit tired right now, Rod. We can talk tomorrow if you’d like but you really have nothing to worry about.”

Rod must be tired himself, because he accepts the excuse with only some hesitancy. “Ok. Goodnight, then.”

And he stops on his way out to glance back at Uri, who’s still sat on the floor with a queasy look about him. “I’ll send someone in with some water,” he says.

A few minutes later a young, worried-looking servant girl brings him a glass of water, asks if she can do anything more for him. He sends her back to her bed with as much sensitivity as he can muster and downs the beverage in one. The water should refresh him, but when he drinks it there’s only the taste of his vomit.

///

Uri is mid-liturgy when he spots Kenny across the hall of the Church. He leans across the stone of the walls far in the back, almost obscured by the shadows of the room and the brim of his hat. But he’s there. Uri does not falter in his speech, nor give any indication to the warmth that blossoms very suddenly in him, but he feels childishly light.

He waits for Kenny to come find him afterwards.

“You’re gonna put a guy to sleep with those long ass speeches of yours, Your Majesty.”

“It’s nice to see you too, Kenny.”

“I mean, seriously. I don’t think I retained one word of that.”

If Kenny is fishing for a reaction, he’s surely out of luck. At the best of times Uri doesn’t particularly care to defend the virtues of his speechwriting. Now, they feel more like words than ever – hollow when he says them, hollow though he sees the light of hope in the eyes of those who listen.

“Where have you been?” he asks, instead. “I haven’t seen you recently.”

Not for two weeks, since he’d been so awfully curt with him at the estate, he thinks, with a wince.

Kenny apparently remembers this as well.

“Don’t tell me you missed me! I’m deeply flattered,” he croons, then looks to ponder something exaggeratedly. “Or was it you were just missing someone to wipe your ass while you were indisposed?”

Uri’s lips curl before he can remember to keep his face impassive. Kenny’s crudeness usually doesn’t phase him but now he almost wants to bite back. He must truly not be in his right mind.

He takes a deep breath before he replies. “I wasn’t sure where you had gone off to.”

“I’ve got a life outside of you, you know.”

“Of course.”

“So if you were waiting on me with a list of names you’d better not complain.”

“There’s no list, Kenny.”

He hums, and closes in on Uri. “That’s probably for the best. I mean, it’s hard for me to hunt your mice for you when I’m out in the doghouse.”

Uri frowns. Though was that not the case? He had been pushing Kenny away, but to hear it put that way… Something sour twists his insides in an uncomfortably familiar way. He blanches, and resists the urge to duck his head; Kenny is somewhat shielding him from the view of the worshippers milling about, but Rod’s voice rings in his head telling him to watch who he abases himself in front of in public.

“I’m… ” he starts.

“What’s that, Uri? You gonna let me in the house now?”

“I’m sorry, Kenny… ” And he’s glad he’s kept his head up because he sees the instance that flickers of concern and something that looks suspiciously like guilt wash over Kenny’s face. It’s gone quickly, though. Kenny likely has a voice of his own that tells him how to comport himself in public, what weaknesses not to show…

“Shit. Don’t tell me you’re actually sick.” Kenny’s got a grin on his face and closes in on him like he’s prey, but the looming of his frame and its shadows feels not stifling but strangely protective. “Guess you oughta get back home.”

Uri visualizes the long, bumpy carriage ride home and his throat swells. “Take me, please.”

“What’s that?” Uri hears the smile in Kenny’s voice more clearly than he sees it. But he’s not embarrassed.

“Kenny, please take me home.”

“Will do, Your Majesty.”

Kenny walks closely behind him as they leave the chapel – Uri knows well the way to the stables – and people give them a wide berth. It fills Uri with a sick, selfish sort of happiness. He is ashamed for it. After all, it’s ego, and not even his own, but an extension of Kenny’s. He feels simply warm in the cloak of his reputation. Certainly no one grabs his hand by surprise. He does however, regret their looks of judgement that they cast Kenny’s way when they think he isn’t looking; Kenny might not mind, might truly relish it like he had once told Uri, but it seems so bitterly unfair and Uri wishes he could make them understand the absurd hypocrisy of their petty distaste.

He does feel better out in the fresh air. Kenny saddles his horse with few words, helps him mount it with even less. He gives him his hand to grab, pulls him up and that’s it. If he waits for him to settle in the seat at all it’s likely because he’s given pause by Uri’s arms circling his waist.

“Comfortable?” he huffs, and Uri smiles against his shoulder.

The rhythm of the horse’s saunter is more soothing than it should be. Uri is certain that had he taken the carriage ride instead he’d be fighting bouts of nausea and flashes of waking nightmares. For a longer trip, too. Instead, he’s fighting with little drive the urge to doze off against the solidity of Kenny’s back.

Kenny makes him forget who he is, all the power and duty that comes with his identity. And he’s foolish for letting that be the case. He embraces it and lets his guard down and forgets he’s clinging to a man whose family has been destroyed by his own.

His foolishness haunts him when he does fall asleep – it’s in the shape of a deer who stutters to the forest ground, bleeding from an arrow wound to an ankle – his shot.

He is someone else. He is hunting. He is King. He is just one of many young and foolish iterations of another someone else.

When he shoots the deer he is filled with glee and adrenaline. They both dull to sick satisfaction as his prey kicks its good legs against the ground, helpless. The men of his hunting party whoop as he approaches it with a skip in his step. To an outsider he might simply be putting the creature out of its misery, but there’s an intention of sympathy that he lacks to truly make it so; he wants to watch the deer as he finishes it off, wants it to watch him. Killing from a distance is always so cowardly.

So he shoots it between the eyes.

“Carry it back,” he orders three of his men, once he walks back to the party. The ones who remain congratulate him on his shot.

One asks him: “Do you prefer this, Your Majesty? Hunting as a human instead of as a titan?”

He laughs, loud and ugly. “I’m always a titan.”

“Ackerman!” he calls.

Don’t show me this, Uri thinks, from somewhere in the distance.

And Ackerman steps up to his side. He is a Lord, and technically of higher order than any other man here besides the King, but you wouldn’t know it from seeing how the King speaks to him. Not at all like the Empire’s sword and shield that he is.

Still, he even looks dutifully concerned when he looks at him. No – it’s a concern beyond duty. Something bred into him, maybe, he thinks, with a devious chuckle.

“My boots are sullied.”

Ackerman just stares.

He stares back. Gestures expectantly. “Clean them.”

And contains his glee when Ackerman falls to his knees in front of him, removing a white cloth from his inside pocket and beginning to wipe off the mud of his boots with it. “Yes, my King,” he says.

“Uh-uh,” he tuts, and pulls his boot away from Ackerman’s hands. “What, you want to just rub me off? That won’t work.” Ackerman stares up at him blankly, rag stagnant mid-air. “Use your mouth.”

There’s a beat or two filled with hearty laughs from the surrounding nobles as they stare at each other. On his knees, Ackerman doesn’t even look defiant. No front, but no depth, either. He just looks hollow. He lowers himself further, a child’s doll folded in supplication and licks the mud off his boots.

He watches down with a scornful grin and chortles with the men of his party, though he notes with displeasure that they’re becoming somewhat overfamiliar. It’s always only Ackerman he abuses like this, after all. He should throw his weight around more evenly lest someone forget their place but devotion is too seductive of a word to ignore, and there’s none more devoted than the Ackermans. He’s got the tongue of one licking mud and deer’s blood off his feet to prove it.

Yes, he feels most like a god out of his titan. The lower he stoops, the taller he stands. And the cleaner he gets, the dirtier he feels.

In a blink he’s somewhere else.

Before he can form a thought his hand is moving on instinct to cup his stinging cheek – did someone just slap him?

The source of it must be the man crouched in front of him, holding him by the shoulder as though he were just shaking him – but he’s shaking on his own, now, so the grip is more steadying than anything. He jerks slightly to free himself, but the man doesn’t budge, just keeps observing him with wild eyes from under the brim of his hat.

“Where am I?” he gasps. He shuts his eyes but only remembers hunting and intimidation and executions. “Which one am I?”

“The fuck are you talking about?” The man’s voice is gruff. Familiar.

Dammit. “Which one am I!?” he cries.

The other raises his voice, too. “Uri, what the fuck is your problem?” And in the depths of his eyes he catches concern. Concern, which pervades despite the harshness of his tongue. Concern, which wins over defiance –

His breaths come with greater difficulty.

“Never-fucking-mind. You’re knee-deep in horse shit. You need to get cleaned the fuck up.”

And when he puts his hands around him to pull him to his feet, he starts – bats his arms violently away and wriggles out of his grasp. “Get your hands off of me, Ackerman,” he snarls.

Even as he says it the fight is draining from his body. The fog dissipates and he knows that he is Uri Reiss and Kenny Ackerman is the man staring him down with inscrutable severity. He flushes with white horror and coldness.

“Kenny,” he says quietly. “Forgive me.”

The look on his face is still unflinchingly hard. Uri slumps in on himself further. He knows Kenny won’t lay a hand on him, but there’s a sullen anticipation nonetheless as to what he will say next. If remorse will turn into shame.

But Kenny just snorts, and stands. “Have it your way. I’m just telling you you look like if you try an’ get up on your own you’re gonna fall right back down.” He sniffs. “And I’m not going to stick around to hang out with you in the goddamn stables myself.”

“I’m sorry, Kenny,” he repeats. He feels so deeply exhausted. “You’re right. Will you help me stand?”

Kenny grunts in assent and this time, when he grabs him around the waist Uri relaxes into the stability of the hold. He feels excessively hot, like he’s going to faint, and he’s thankful for Kenny’s quiet solidity. He thinks of generations of Ackermans who have spent their lives being quietly solid and the remorse turns to shame, anyways.

Kenny leads him to his rooms and he makes it a couple steps further before his knees are buckling and Kenny has to hold him up entirely.

“You’re alright,” he mutters as he’s lowering Uri to the couch.

“Thank you, Kenny… ” Uri says, and passes out.

Kenny elects to light the fireplace.

He gathers some logs from the servants’ quarters, ignores their apprehensive glances, returns, shuts the windows – Uri was burning up when he had held him earlier, but now he’s shivering – strips the covers off his bed to drape over him.

He stands over Uri and watches as he stills save for the constant flickers of movement behind his eyelids. He must be dreaming.

Kenny turns his back and tends to the fire. Logically, he thinks, he should leave. Return to where he had hurriedly tied up his horse in the stables when Uri had collapsed beside him, muttering incoherencies and staring wide-eyed at nothing. He should find Rod and tell him to take care of his nutcase brother. Goddamn, he shouldn’t be crouched by his bedside; his thoughts shouldn’t only be of his well-being.

Especially not after the disrespect Uri had shown him just moments ago. That had stung. He had never before seen Uri act so much like the bratty King that Kenny had once expected him to be and he felt strangely betrayed.

But then Uri had looked betrayed, too-by his own self, oddly enough. It was a blend of exhaustion and agitation that had his anger cooling in an instant. Uri is typically a bastion of manners and grace, and not the kind a noble upbringing breeds into you but what comes naturally out of genuine good-heartedness, compassion… Kenny knows that something, clearly, is haunting him, has been for a while, that Uri is suffering.

He doesn’t know why it is that he cares so very much.

“Kenny,” he hears.

Uri is looking at him. He’s swaddled himself more tightly in the blankets and is looking at him all sad-eyed, pale and anxious.

“You back with me?”

Uri nods slowly. “I’m sorry for that, Kenny.”

“Why’re you sorry?” he shrugs. He says it nonchalantly but studies Uri carefully for his reaction – eyes flitting to the lips that quirk downwards into a small pout.

“It’s not my intention for you to keep seeing me at my worst like this… ” he says, softly, “nor for you to feel obligated to take care of me.”

Kenny rolls his eyes. “Who says I feel obligated?”

Uri hesitates, thinking. Kenny turns back to the fire and pokes at it with the irons. After a beat, he speaks. “Rod seems to think you’ve lost it.”

He glances behind him but Uri doesn’t seem altogether surprised. Instead: “Are you here to judge for yourself?”

“You think I know why I’m here?” He snorts.

And Uri says nothing, but the quiver of his lips suggests something more, an I wish you did, and Kenny suddenly feels beyond inadequate for failing to convey all the complex emotions he has. Uri is always the one with the answers, arcane as they may be. Now he is lost and Kenny has never felt more useless.

He prods at a log until it rolls off the pile, to be consumed by the flames, lazily tosses the poker aside where it clangs sharply. “Are you gonna tell me what’s the matter with you?”

Uri sighs, a soft and musical breath he’s come to learn is not so much annoyance but exhaustion. Kenny watches him consider his response carefully.

“It’s… hard to put into words,” he settles on. His eyes search the air, seeing nothing. “I’ve just been thinking quite a bit recently.”

Kenny whistles. “Good for you, Your Majesty.”

When Uri doesn’t look like he’s resisting the urge to roll his eyes, and instead keeps staring blankly at nothing, Kenny’s half-hearted joke suddenly seems very bitter. Instead: “Uri,” he presses.

Pale eyes finally meet his own. Uri’s always had a sad look about him but the depth of that sadness was what had drawn Kenny in from the start. Now, there’s a veil masking all the complexities he knows are hiding underneath. A vacancy in his stare.

“I’m not the person I was before I inherited this power,” he starts. “It’s impossible for me to be, and I’ve accepted that. But I’ve had the same dreams since I was a child and I believed that at least I could hold onto them.” He frowns softly. “Every day they feel further away. And more like dreams.”

Kenny watches the unhappy despair that slowly washes over him, like speaking his thoughts causes him untenable pain. “You’re talking about this paradise of yours.”

It’s not a question, but Uri nods anyways. “I could see it so clearly, then. Now I see everything except it.”

“Not everything,” Kenny reminds him, and Uri smiles at him sadly.

“No, you’re right – not everything.” The softness in his gaze fades and he sours. “Never the things I care most about.”

Uri keeps talking before Kenny can reply and betray the embarrassing flutters of his heart at that off-handed confession. “I see things from other lifetimes, Kenny. Not once have those memories given me hope. They’re wearing me down.”

Kenny tries not to appear surprised. Uri is usually very reticent when talk of his power arises; Kenny’s got little idea of the scope of his strength but even less knowledge on how it impacts Uri. Until recent events, he hadn’t known it impacted him at all.

There’s an obligation now, one he’s given himself, to make himself worth the trust Uri’s put in him, to not disappoint him. All this, though he still doesn’t know what to do, how to help. He has no words to soothe Uri’s distress.

“I want so badly to give the people the gift of peace but all I see is violence. It’s all I can do.”

“The world is violent, Uri,” he says. “Don’t tell me you’re just realizing that now?”

Uri frowns. “Of course not. But violence begets violence. If you were to answer it with peace… I hoped it would break the cycle.”

“Where I come from, if you don’t fight, you don’t make it.” He thinks of people he’s known in his life who were too soft, too slow to get tough – people who get eaten alive by dogs like him. “You climb over corpses to end up the one with the most power. Power is everything.”

“I can’t accept that’s all we’ll ever have. The way people sacrifice anything for power… it can’t be that way forever.”

Kenny shrugs. “That’s a damn nice sentiment. But nice is just a weakness people will take advantage of.”

Uri still shakes his head, and Kenny knows he’s battling with himself in his head over it. “It’s not up to everyday individuals to make the choice… to be violent or not…,” he reasons. “It’s as you said. They will always be cruel because they have to be to survive. It’s the nature of our world. But if the world were built differently… ”

“What difference would it make? People will find any reason to be cruel. It’s how it is.”

“Do you truly think so, Kenny?”

Uri looks at him with such sadness in his eyes that Kenny’s mouth goes dry. He snorts and looks away. “I’ve seen enough of civilization to know so. You have too much faith in people. We’re all rotten to the core.”

“I don’t believe it’s inherently so. Nor will it always be. That is a consequence of the cruelty of our current world. In better times peace would not seem so beyond us.”

Kenny wants to shake him, to snap him out of this naivety, to make him see the corruption, the depravity in the people he wants so desperately to save. There’s no saving them, he wants to shout. You’ll kill yourself trying. Instead, he grunts:

“You’re all bent out of shape trying to solve everyone’s problems but not one of them deserves it. Take it from me, Uri. I’m the bottom of the goddamn barrel and there’s nothing but shitting lowlifes here. You’re wasting your time.”

“You’re wrong.”

Kenny blinks, caught off guard by the force of Uri’s conviction. He meets his gaze and his grey eyes are stormy but resolute. “It’s no secret,” he says. “I’m a damn criminal, as wicked as they come. It’s in my blood.”

“It’s not. Your actions aren’t your own; it’s my family… that made you do what you did.”

“What I do,” he corrects. “And you’re forgetting that I have my own free will, dammit. Stop acting like people don’t have a choice in what they do, ‘cause we all make choices and then we deal with the consequences. That’s life. Not everything can be justified.”

“Do you truly believe in free will?” Uri asks, and continues when Kenny hesitates. “No matter where I look, I find it nowhere.”

“Because of you,” Kenny points out.

“Yes,” he agrees. “It’s a vicious cycle of my own making. But I have to believe it can be broken.”

Kenny studies Uri. There’s a firmness to him that hadn’t been there earlier, his eyes focused and piercing. He feels relief at the sight, but relief washes quickly away and his stomach churns with the guilt he also feels over his next admittance. “I don’t see what place there is for someone like me in your paradise.”

How can he? Uri rejects it but Kenny knows well and truly what kind of scum he is. His hands are black with blood, and he hardly cares, death and destruction come so naturally to him. The only time he ever feels shame over it is at Uri’s side. No, people like him are not suited to a life of peace, and they don’t deserve it, either.

But Uri looks so disappointed that Kenny wishes he could say otherwise. He wishes he could lie to Uri, tell him he sees what he sees, that he’ll give everything to help him build it, if he’ll have him. He can’t.

Sadly and sheepishly, Uri smiles. “I think it’s you I want to build paradise for most of all, Kenny.”

Oh.

Kenny freezes. Uri says it so softly, so warmly, like it’s not the most intimate thing anyone has ever said to him. The earnestness in Uri’s eyes is overwhelming, but he can’t look away. Instead he chuckles awkwardly.

“That might be your problem. A guy like me would get bored fast holding hands and frollicking in the grass all day. You sure you’re building something people even want?”

“People don’t always know what they want. Or they’re scared of wanting it,” Uri argues, somewhat pointedly.

“Am I scared?”

He says it as a joke, but Uri looks him dead in the eyes and says, in a firm voice, “Yes.”

He narrows his eyes. He knows Uri well enough to know his words aren’t meant as a slight or a provocation, but an honest profession. Uri’s damn earnestness.

And damn his perceptiveness. He’s not got the mind to fight him on this point because Kenny knows well by now that Uri will double down, read him intimately and uncloth uncomfortable truths that he’s – dammit – scared to acknowledge, scared to hear out loud.

So instead he surrenders a small shrug of his shoulders, says, “Are you?”

Kenny studies the lines of his face while Uri ponders. “Not of wanting. Other things, maybe, though I don’t know that ‘scared’ is the word for it.”

“What things?”

And Uri smiles slyly. “Is it power of knowledge over me that you want?”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” he defends, though they both know it’s not the truth. Kenny has a profound urge to know Uri as Uri seems to know him, and it has nothing to do with pride and power.

“The things I dread are very… conceptual, so I don’t think they will be of much use to you.”

Kenny snorts. “I don’t think there’s anything that’d give me any power over you. Shit, Uri, you’re basically a god.”

Uri pulls the blanket tighter around himself as Kenny laughs.

“You’re the most powerful person in the Walls and you hate what people are willing to do to get a fraction of what you have. Tell me, Uri, in this perfect world of yours, do you keep all of your power? ‘Cause it seems pretty damn hypocritical of you if you do.”

“You’re right,” he agrees. But says nothing more.

Only: “I wish I could show you paradise, Kenny.”

///

Kenny’s seen it before, even if Rod doesn’t want to admit it; he knows how Uri suffers, better than Rod does, though he still tries to keep it a dirty little family secret. He doesn’t approve of Kenny’s presence in the best of times, but now he actively tries to keep him away, pretending at concern for Uri’s wellbeing.

It’s a fruitless endeavour but ever so annoying.

“He’ll see you some other time.”

Rod hadn’t approached him when he arrived as he had last time, at the stables, but was instead waiting for him atop the stairs, arms crossed. Now it’s solely out of consideration for Uri that Kenny doesn’t brute force his way past.

“Right,” he says, through gritted teeth. “When he’s not indisposed?”

Hearing the excuse once more from Rod rescinded flickers of the same concern he’d had weeks ago, when he’d first seen Uri in a bout of depression, and he worries. Since they’d spoken properly he would still sometimes become distracted, often staring for long periods of time at nothing in particular, but he hadn’t been isolating himself. He’d even admitted one night that he felt more comfortable when Kenny was there.

It’s exactly why he doesn’t believe Rod when he fumbles through excuses. “He’s working,” he says.

“So am I,” he lies.

“He needs quiet. No distractions.”

“I’ll be nice and quiet for him, then.”

Rod shakes his head, and Kenny preens to see his features twitch with exasperation. “Come back later, Kenny – ”

“Come on, your Lordship. You really think I’m that much of a distraction?” He grins.

“More than you know.”

“Uri’s a big boy, Rod. He’ll tell me to get lost if he wants. Or,” he adds, eyes glinting, “he’ll ask me to stick around. Why don’t we ask him?”

And he makes a move towards Uri’s rooms, managing only a stride or two before Rod grasps his arm. He promptly lets go at the withering look Kenny sends his way.

“Sorry,” Rod says, lukewarm. “It’s not quite about that.”

Kenny feels his patience running thin. Rod sours his mood at the best of times, and he certainly doesn’t appreciate this running theme of his of keeping him from Uri. “What’s it about, then?” he grits.

“Uri is confused – he gets confused, that is, when he spends too much time in his head… using his power.”

Kenny quirks a brow but says nothing of the so very evasive way Rod describes Uri’s powers. Does he think I’m some power-hungry thief who goes mad at the mere mention of it? Instead he focuses on the troubling mention of Uri.

“Confused how?”

Rod shifts his weight, looking rather uncomfortable, like he’s carefully choosing his words. “It’s difficult to understand if you’re not family,” he settles on. “He takes a while to come back to himself, and it certainly won’t help him none if you’re around bothering him further.”

“I think his problem might just be too much bother from his family,” he says. Rod squares his shoulders haughtily.

“Then we shouldn’t let the family dog in either, should we?”

“Careful, Rod,” he snarls, leans in – “this mutt bites.”

To his credit, Rod only looks moderately intimidated. “Good thing you’ve been muzzled, then.”

“And what muzzle would that be?”

“How do you think my brother would feel about you stepping so far out of line?”

Kenny narrows his eyes. “You think you know everything that Uri wants, huh?”

“We want the same thing.”

“Bullshit,” he snaps. “There’s not one thing you have in common with him besides blood.”

And he turns from him and resumes his steady stride to Uri’s rooms. Rod is right about one thing, the bastard – it’s only for Uri that he hasn’t slit his throat yet.

Rod follows closely behind him. He tchs when Kenny walks in without knocking, and Kenny is about to snark at him until the sight of Uri inside gives him pause.

He’s kneeling on the floor by the fireplace, sitting on his heels with his hands clasped calmly in his lap. He stares at them coolly, as though he’d been expecting them, and his eyes are open: a vibrant, atmospheric purple. Cloudy. All-seeing as he sees nothing.

“Uri,” Kenny says, making his way over. Rod remains in the doorway, arms crossed.

Uri says nothing but looks up at him with wide, round eyes. His gaze is disconcerting at best, fathoms in depth and speckled with galaxies, but spite towards Rod moves Kenny to perch nonchalantly on the arm of the velvet chair by whose foot Uri is sitting. Kenny can sense Rod watching them out of the corner of his eye.

“What a waste it is,” he says, suddenly, “to spend most of one's life living in a pastime paradise.”

Kenny says nothing. He imagines if he did, Uri may not hear him, anyways.

“ ...and in remembrance of ignorance’s oldest praise.”

Brusquely Uri lurches forward, grabbing Kenny’s hand with his own pale and thin ones. Kenny has to consciously stop himself from jerking out of his grasp. “Kenny,” he gasps, just as Rod takes a step forward, arm outstretched.

“Uri – ”

“How many of them are you and me? of… you and me, Kenny?”

“Calm the fuck down, Uri.” He says it tersely to mask the sound of concern he’s afraid to reveal.

Uri seems to listen regardless, as he closes his eyes and ducks his head in respite against the armchair for a minute. His grip on Kenny lightens but does not release completely.

When he looks up to Kenny his eyes are a pale grey once again. A pale grey, and less cloudy, though he still seems lost.

“I… ”

“Uri!” Rod’s voice interrupts.

He ambles over before crouching at Uri’s side, not looking once towards Kenny, nor to where their hands are intertwined. “Are you okay, brother?”

“I’m sorry, Rod. I’m fine. You know how I get.” And he offers him a tight-lipped smile.

“You need to rest,” he says, and glances up at Kenny, who glowers in return.

But Uri replies before he can say a word.

“I’m fine, Rod, really. I’ll come find you if I need anything.”

It’s as polite a dismissal as Kenny has ever heard, and he’d write it down for later use if he ever cared at all about being polite.

Rod gives a grimace that might have been intended as a smile, and stands. “Ok. Anything at all,” he says, and leaves, though not before meeting Kenny’s wide, arrogant grin.

“See ya later, Rod,” he calls after him.

“You seem quite pleased with yourself,” Uri says, after Rod is gone. He stands as well, dusting off his robe where he had been kneeling. Kenny misses the softness of his hands.

“Sure,” he answers. “It’s a long story. Right now I’m more interested in hearing yours.”

“My story?”

“Let’s call it the story of what the fuck ever just happened to you.”

“Ah,” Uri grimaces, “that.”

“Rod said you were confused.”

Kenny doesn’t miss the flicker of annoyance that passes over Uri’s face. And then he looks down, guilty. “He’s… not entirely wrong, I suppose.”

“How so?” he urges.

“I spend much of my time…,” he hesitates, “ ...elsewhere. That is to say I’m not entirely present in the moment. I have to resituate myself.”

“Which one am I?” Kenny echoes. Uri’s eyes widen. “That’s what you were saying, last time… That you getting resituated?”

“Yes,” he says, softly.

“You know who you are now?”

Again: “Yes.”

“So who were you when you were asking about pastime paradises, then?”

Kenny watches the look of contemplation that spreads across his face. He purses his lips. “I suppose that was myself, as well. Only, with the voices of many others speaking to me.”

Kenny whistles. “You really are a nutcase.”

Uri gives him a look. Kenny grins at him.

He trails towards Kenny, sitting with his back to him on the opposite arm of the chair. “I might be, but not for the reason you think.”

Kenny says nothing, and waits for him to continue.

“Everywhere I look, people are resistant to change. They’re stuck in stagnation, living in the past… though they’re ignorant to what the past even truly means, what it represents. They don’t care.” He folds his arms, as though he’s cold, but Kenny follows the self-soothing movements of his fingers as they run over his robes. “There’s no vision,” he laments.

Uri shifts to face him. His face is a portrait of despair and hopelessness; Kenny sits with his hands in his pockets uselessly. “I don’t know how to change it,” he says, voice fading to a whisper.

You can’t, you fool, he wants to say, but can’t form the words; so he may not want to so much, after all.

“But I’m no better. My vision is unfathomable. I’ve spent most of my life living in a future paradise, looking towards a day that may never come… I feel myself fading for want of it.”

Kenny finds his voice – finally – : “I’ve got nothing to say that’ll cheer you up,” he says. “I’m of the opinion that these Walls are filled with nothin’ but brain-dead motherfuckers. I don’t know how you fix that.”

He huffs in half-laughter. “But fuck, Uri – what the fuck do I know? I’m nothing compared to you.”

“That’s not true,” Uri interjects.

But he’s persistent. “It is. Uri, you’re basically a god.”

“This power is godlike,” he agrees. “But it’s not my own.”

His eyes shimmer. “Besides that, I believe the power defeats the purpose.”

“How’s that?”

“The extent of the interference it would take to create paradise is enormous. But what paradise is ruled over by… by a child playing God, who controls everything anyone can say or do… who sacrifices free will? The point of paradise is freedom. It’s quite the paradox.”

Kenny snorts. “Indeed.”

A moment passes with no words; Uri plays absentmindedly with the fabric of his sleeve, looking straight ahead, Kenny watches him.

“So that’s it, eh? You’ve got all this power and you can’t do a thing with it.”

“I suppose so,” he agrees. And after a beat, says, “I envy you, Kenny.”

He chuckles. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes. Life gave you nothing and yet you still move through it with such freedom and… such strong will. Your power is your own.”

Kenny’s laugh is short and bitter. “I’d rather life just give me what I want.”

“What do you want, Kenny?”

“More power,” he says. Uri doesn’t seem convinced as he ponders Kenny’s immediate answer. Kenny tests the aftertaste of the word and finds it bitter, too.

“Is that what you want or is it what you’ve had to want to survive?”

“Am I not allowed to want to survive or something?”

Uri sucks in a breath. “You know that’s not the point.” And he pushes himself off the armchair, walks to look out the tall window of his antechamber, pushing aside dark curtains to stare gloomily outside. “Recently I often find myself thinking of all the everyday choices people make. I wonder if there’s much sense to them at all.”

“Since when were we humans known for making sense?” Kenny trails behind him, slow and deliberate.

Uri hums, but doesn’t look back. “Their every choice can’t be completely arbitrary. People do the things they do for a reason.”

“Sure, but a reason can be any shitty delusion they convince themselves of. Doesn’t have to make any actual sense, ‘long as they believe it.”

“We’re all living in our own worlds of delusions. Operating completely in ignorance, oblivious to the bigger picture. I don’t want to accept it, but I see it more and more everyday.”

“Mhm,” Kenny clicks his tongue, “I don’t think that’s something that’s ever gonna change… no matter how powerful you are, Uri.”

“Hasn’t it changed for you?”

The question takes him aback; Uri says it so passively he almost misses how self-revealing the truth really is. Yes, of course it’s yes. The worldview he’s adopted for most of his life has been irreparably shattered since Uri bowed for him that day. He hadn’t realized ‘til then how long he had spent in the dark.

Instead: “‘M not sure I like the implication that I was ever delusional.”

And Uri chuckles. “Maybe not.”

And Uri looks back at him from the window with the most affectionate gaze he’s ever seen, let alone had directed towards him, and he feels all the more dirty for it. He fights to keep his eyes locked onto Uri’s, tightens his hands into fists where they’re hidden in his pockets.

“Yeah, it’s changed.”

He’s not sure what possesses him to bare his soul so freely. It might be the knowledge that Uri, who is so snow-white pure, looks at Kenny like he’s the dearest thing on this massive fucking estate and it’s far more than he deserves; it might be the knowledge that Uri, who does all this, deserves to know how completely he’s turning Kenny’s world upside down.

“Damned if I know what you see in this shitty world, Uri, but I trust your vision anyways. There was no direction in the things I did until I met you. No… purpose. Not really.”

And he says it with a shrug as though he hasn’t just carved open his chest and put his black beating heart into Uri’s delicate hands.

And Uri puts those same hands on either side of his face, and it’s his head and his heart in his hands, and he holds them like they’re precious as he brings the two of them together for a kiss.

In an instant Kenny is melting into the familiar satin-feel of his lips, the cold softness of his palms against his cheeks and his fingertips brushing skin. The whole dance is familiar; Uri yields to Kenny’s movements, lets him pull them closer, lets him separate to shut the curtains behind them.

He turns back around and Uri falls onto him right away, sliding both hands under his coat to slip it from his shoulders. Kenny quirks a brow and lets him. Lets him then slip a hand into his own and lead him on the familiar path to his bedroom.

Kenny kisses him as he undresses. Uri shudders at the warmth of the hands that find his bare skin. Everything is suddenly sensory: touch, all over, cold and soft, warm and rough, textures and feelings they both lean into and even chase. And even beg for from each other, though not in so many words. Rather, in their desperate closeness, in the impatient but gentle brutality of their embrace.

They detach as Kenny steps backwards, eyes hazy with lust as Uri softly slips out of his garments. He falls back onto the bed, half-naked, looking up at Kenny with a similar look in his wide eyes, cheeks delightfully flushed, lips deliciously swollen. It’s a sight he wants to always remember.

His gaze hardly leaves Uri’s figure as he begins the somewhat arduous task of removing all the knives from his person, kicks off his boots, undoes his belt… he is placing the blades on the bedside drawer when Uri sits up suddenly.

“Your trust is beyond precious to me, Kenny Ackerman. I don’t know if I deserve it, but I won’t betray it.”

Don’t deserve it? Kenny returns to him with a scoff at the absurdity. Uri Reiss, who passes his best days with his head in the lap of a filthy sinner like him, who kneels for him, who runs his cold and soft hands adoringly over tanned skin and presses cherubic kisses to the scars; Uri Reiss, who sees everything, can’t see that it’s Kenny who will never become man enough to deserve him? Doesn’t he know how far above all the rest he is?

But he doesn’t say any of that. He embraces Uri with a new intensity instead, presses him into the sheets, with firmness but never roughness; he works him open with fingers dripping in oil and worms his head into the crook of his neck to feel the vibration of his whines. There is an urgency to his motions he can’t contain. A desperation to convey through touch all the things he can never say aloud.

“Stop thinking so damn much, Uri,” he says.

Let me take care of you, he doesn’t.

Stop living in the past.

He takes him, slow and deliberate, and deep in the way he knows has Uri shaking and shivering and twisting the sheets between his fingers.

Stop living in the future.

He holds him throughout; Uri clings onto him like a lifeline, their legs woven together, one hand in his hair and the other along his shoulder blade. Kenny’s body envelops his, skin sticky with sweat and kissing skin where there’s bare skin to be found.

Shit, let me protect you.

And he kisses his open mouth through a slow and pulsing release and hopes there’s something in it that gives Uri a reason to exist in the present.

His body is taut as he chases his own end, after, Uri watching him with lidded eyes and warm, flushed cheeks, and when he comes it’s with a pang in his heart at the look on his delicate face, the achingly adoring one that tells him I understand you, utterly and eternally.

///

Kenny is awake long before Uri. That’s typical. But it’s mid-afternoon, soon to be dusk; Kenny is used to waking before dawn, in the dark, slipping from between the sheets and dressing as Uri watches him, half-asleep. He is gone before the light. Now, though, sunlight is filtering through the windows of Uri’s room, casting a warm glow on everything, the floor, the sheets–Uri himself. Kenny is hypnotized.

He knows why he rarely stays, but in this moment his regret for it is so visceral he runs his fingers through Uri’s hair to calm himself.

For now, he just admires. Uri’s lithe body is pliant and yielding to his own where he’s sleeping curved into his side, thin sheet covering him rising and falling with each gentle breath. The rays of light warms the tones of his skin, catches in the strands of his hair; Kenny very selfishly wants to wake him up and study how the sun shines in Uri’s eyes.

He thinks this is what statues should be made for. What a waste they are on anyone else.

No, not statues – sculptures. Any medium half-able to capture the softness of his sharp lines, the intelligence, the air of angelic coldness he carries in every act of warmth. The goodness.

There is a strong urge to laugh madly at just how far he’s fallen, how quickly and how hard.

And an urge to run.

But Uri is resting on him, his breaths fall evenly against his chest, and he’ll wake if Kenny moves.

So he stays.

///

Kenny finds him just as the sun is beginning to rise. Uri is sitting alone by the lake near his estate, against a single log, and he’s so still Kenny might have assumed he was sleeping if he didn’t know any better. But he does. He’s seen it before.

When he reaches his side Uri doesn’t look up. He stares ahead at the reflections of blue and pink light on the open water, and Kenny stares at him. His complexion is warm and softly glowing, his hair slightly tousled from the spring breeze that blows in his face.

“What’re you thinking about?”

“How I’m not long for this world,” Uri replies. “How my time is almost up.”

“That so?” he mutters. Rolls a stone over with the toe of his boot.

“Well, relatively.”

“Relatively to what?”

Uri smiles. “Relative to how much time I’ve always known I’d have.”

He stares at the water for a minute more. “I have three years,” he admits. “But this world may not have much longer, either. I believe it’s soon to come to a close.”

I don’t give a damn about the world ending, Kenny thinks. I want you to live.

Instead: “What will you do until then?”

“Continue with my work, I suppose.”

“Building paradise?”

“Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream,” Uri confirms.

Kenny is a realist. He always has been. He doesn’t delude himself into distraction to avoid the uncomfortable truths of a cruel world. He doesn’t dream.

But he can.

“Uri, tell me about your paradise.”

“Ok,” he murmurs in agreement, smiling softly. “Sit with me?”

And Kenny does. He lies beside Uri and listens quietly, foolish and drunk on the strange, sad beauty with which he talks of peace and love and togetherness. He sits and lets the trivialities of nature and instinct bleed from him, onto the grass and into the ground, allows stories of a world bound together by social ties, bonds of friendship, sublime and virtuous for it.

Kenny doesn’t dream, until he does. Until he watches through Uri’s eyes the orange sun rising.