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Slamming his office door shut behind him, Enver sighs and heads for the cabinet with his whiskey. The amber liquid is in the glass faster than he’s paying attention, his body moving automatically.
He sits heavily in his chair, taking a sip of the liquid as he looks at the empty seat in front of him.
He moves his arm, and frowns at the sensation.
He strips his rings, gauntlet, and metal sleeve from his skin quickly, and regards the fading bruises on his arm unhappily.
Taking another drink, he presses into the largest bruise forcefully with his thumb. Grinding the digit into it until he feels the familiar sting. But he continues to irritate it, insistent on bringing back the color the bruise once held.
He couldn’t lose it. It’s all he had left of them. Of the last night before…
Their body trapped under his, bruising grip on his arms as he drove into them.
He curses and takes another sip. His eyes closing as he continues to abuse the patch of skin.
The way their breath hitched near his ear, their legs wrapped around him.
Losing them was never something he’d actually considered. They seemed larger than life, a master of death itself. Untouchable by its icy grip. He’d always assumed only time or they themselves would take the Bhaalspawn.
He hadn’t been prepared for what the reality of life without them would be. Hells he hadn’t even realized how ingrained into his life they had become. Now it felt like ten years had come and gone in an instant.
An entire decade of the most captivating and infuriating being he’d ever met. From a fragile tentative alliance to reaching for them on the other side of his bed many mornings.
He missed the way they brought out the worst in him. The absolutely vile and wicked schemes and thoughts they stoked like fire within him. Even joining in on the bloody path they carved, and reveling in the gleeful smile they fixed on him when they both stood covered in viscera.
Though he loathed to admit it, he missed the… other feelings they brought out in him. Not the wicked or lustful. But the softer ones he tried to fight away for the longest time.
The feeling that coiled in his chest as they looked at him with a softness he didn’t know their features capable of. Knowing his own face reflected the same weakness. Yet ultimately… not caring that it did.
The touch of another had always been violent, lustful, or seeking. That is what it always was to him. He himself used them to his own advantage.
While their arrangement started with a lustful frenzy… something they often repeated, it evolved over time.
Their touch went from just violence and seeking release to the softest brush of their hand on his back, careful fingers fixing his hair, and the softest brush of their mouth against his own to wake him in the morning.
The irony that a being created for murder had touched him more softly and meaningfully than any other in his life wasn’t lost on him.
Before he knew it, the Bhaalspawn had became one of his primary focuses. The vision at the end of the plan was no longer him standing alone ruling over all in Bane’s name, but them standing beside him as equals.
Bizarre thoughts of domesticity plagued him. Living together, waking to their face every morning, marriage. Things he couldn’t admit. Things Bane nor Bhaal would ever allow. But things he wanted nonetheless.
But he grew used to what they had. Their form under his most nights, holding onto him with a bruising grip as he held them to that moment. Where only the two of them existed for a short while. Where he’d pull them to his chest and wake to them still in his arms. The way they’d linger long enough in the mornings to shave his face and lace his shirts. Since they insisted they just wanted to hold a razor to his throat, and he couldn’t be trusted to lace his own shirts properly.
Then they’d shave him so gently. Their gaze focused as they did it perfect every time. Not a single cut on his face. A fact they would act disappointed about, but one he knew was a lie. If they had wanted to cut him, they certainly would have.
He was unsure exactly when they’d seized so much of his subconscious thought, until they were gone. He was never truly aware how alone he was most of his life prior to their entrance into it. It was just how life was, how he was. Until they were there for a decade showing him something different.
He spent all day surrounded by those already tadpoled, blackmailed, or just plain stupid. Everyone beneath him. Those who agree implicitly or would be horrified to find everything lurking beneath the surface of him. Everything he’d done, everything he planned to do. He might as well been alone.
Then each evening his chambers were empty. Void of he himself most nights now, opting instead to go to his workshop or stay in his office. Sleep came seldom, whether it was the threat of Orin, the amount of work he had, or the aching sense of incompleteness in his chest.
As he sat in his office pressing on the reddening marks on his arm, he feels a sense of shame he pushes past. Shame that this behavior is ridiculous. He’s the Chosen of Bane, he should feel nothing about the death of a Bhaalspawn. But they plague him nonetheless.
He woke up each day and followed Bane’s will, marched ever forward on the plan of the Absolute, to rule Faerun in his name. He took no time to grieve, he’s worked tirelessly. He’s shown no other his despair.
This… this one thing he needs. Those final bruises on his skin couldn’t fade away. He wouldn’t let them. It was all he had left of them, and as long as they marked his skin, his Bhaalspawn wasn’t entirely gone.