[A completely ordinary occasion, between unusual people in an impossible world. A series of ever stranger and more unlikely events converged, leading to something entirely normal.]
I'll grant you that it's not pleasant, but there's worse ways to lose any individual body. He couldn't even get creative.
[Not that he would've been given any opportunity for such schemes, but that won't keep Emet-Selch from criticizing Varis for it anyway. The two really detested each other. And it wasn't as though Varis didn't have ample enough reason for it; with his father dying while still young, then growing up with his grandfather (who's emperor, half-revered as a god by their people, who founded their very nation--) absolutely detesting him for reasons he never, ever understood.
And then he came back from the 'dead' to disrupt everything he knew about their empire and the world itself. Varis had plenty of reasons to resent him, none of which Emet-Selch cared for in the slightest.
The line of questioning draws Mettaton another quick glance in his direction, before returning to fix his gaze on the path ahead of them, without really much seeing it. He's not surprised at the curiosity, and he absently rubs at the side of his lover's hand with his thumb as he thinks on it. This was all considerably personal, and more than he'd given out before. More than he'd consider giving to anyone else, he imagines.]
On occasion, there was one or another that I disliked less than most. A momentary fondness- perhaps I even felt some sort of hope for them. But they died, forgotten to all others, any change they wrought easily undone, and efforts lost. Mistakes to the last, and ones I grew better at not repeating.
[But without complete success. A smaller pause; being reminded of Varis calls to mind the last time he'd made the error of getting even a little attached to some transitory family.]
--The first son this body produced. [Emet-Selch never thought of any of his children as his. Only his host's. Sometimes, it was something he had to remind himself of, as with this one.] I thought... [His brows knit for a moment, a more unsure frown crossing his expression.] I don't know what I thought. But I didn't mislike him, from the time he was born.
[Why? It wasn't as though that child had been a person at that point. There was no personality or character there to get attached to, and yet--]
Excessively tall and fair, even by Garlean standards, he didn't much take after myself nor my wife. [A small sigh, and he waves the whole thing off with his free hand.] And then he died, succumbing to some absurd illness when he was around twenty. But not before leaving behind a record of his existence.
no subject
I'll grant you that it's not pleasant, but there's worse ways to lose any individual body. He couldn't even get creative.
[Not that he would've been given any opportunity for such schemes, but that won't keep Emet-Selch from criticizing Varis for it anyway. The two really detested each other. And it wasn't as though Varis didn't have ample enough reason for it; with his father dying while still young, then growing up with his grandfather (who's emperor, half-revered as a god by their people, who founded their very nation--) absolutely detesting him for reasons he never, ever understood.
And then he came back from the 'dead' to disrupt everything he knew about their empire and the world itself. Varis had plenty of reasons to resent him, none of which Emet-Selch cared for in the slightest.
The line of questioning draws Mettaton another quick glance in his direction, before returning to fix his gaze on the path ahead of them, without really much seeing it. He's not surprised at the curiosity, and he absently rubs at the side of his lover's hand with his thumb as he thinks on it. This was all considerably personal, and more than he'd given out before. More than he'd consider giving to anyone else, he imagines.]
On occasion, there was one or another that I disliked less than most. A momentary fondness- perhaps I even felt some sort of hope for them. But they died, forgotten to all others, any change they wrought easily undone, and efforts lost. Mistakes to the last, and ones I grew better at not repeating.
[But without complete success. A smaller pause; being reminded of Varis calls to mind the last time he'd made the error of getting even a little attached to some transitory family.]
--The first son this body produced. [Emet-Selch never thought of any of his children as his. Only his host's. Sometimes, it was something he had to remind himself of, as with this one.] I thought... [His brows knit for a moment, a more unsure frown crossing his expression.] I don't know what I thought. But I didn't mislike him, from the time he was born.
[Why? It wasn't as though that child had been a person at that point. There was no personality or character there to get attached to, and yet--]
Excessively tall and fair, even by Garlean standards, he didn't much take after myself nor my wife. [A small sigh, and he waves the whole thing off with his free hand.] And then he died, succumbing to some absurd illness when he was around twenty. But not before leaving behind a record of his existence.
[A living record of that momentary weakness.]
--Varis looks quite like him.
[And he would never forgive him that.]