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This shade could not be him.
Torn and twisted, edges frayed and luster for life gone, he was a creature ever-cornered, ever-frightful, ever-haunted. Shadows in and around his eyes, shadows at the scowling corners of his mouth, shadows nipping and dogging his dragging heels. Shadow inside and out, his heart incased. A visible shadow darkened his wake, cast by his unwieldy flesh that Hades would never, ever pour his soul into.
But when he looked -- when he dared to meet tarnished eyes and see what laid beyond the weary, pale gold -- it was his soul indeed which looked back.
When he met the monster, he had asked, “Who are you?” even though he’d known the answer.
“No need to act obtuse,” the shade had replied, “shame and embarrassment has never suited me.”
Disgusted by the sight before his eyes, Hades back-pedaled as the shade stepped forward.
Almost immediately, his back hit a wall that he’d hoped not to be there.
Raising his hands, the shade curled its mouth up at the corners. He looked as a cat might with the broken-winged canary, as a thief gloating over ill-gotten riches, as an alligator at a drowning gazelle -- he would covet Hades, he would have and hold his heart and drink his splendor and wring dry whatever meager scraps were left, for Hades was to be the shade and the shade is of what Hades had been.
Except, somewhere along the line, the shade had lost his will to be.
Hades existed in whole and in part. The shade was but a shade, twisted and torn and frayed and dulled and everything else a lonely life too-long lived did to a once-magnificent being.
“Stay back,” Hades warned then, though it was he with his back to the wall and he in charge of his own safety.
“If I do, I fear I might never remember what it was to be as you are,” the shade replied.
Gloved hands reached for his face. Hades raised a hand to defend himself.
The shade flicked two fingers toward the heavens, then to the hells. Force unseen slammed into Hades’ arms, pinning them to the spaces beside his head. As the shade grabbed his chin in a harsh grip, darkness clogged the air, Creation turned thick and putrid by shadow. It effectively blocked his attempts to summon his own magicks to counteract the shade’s.
He was too strong. It, this facsimile of a being once known and once happy, was too strong.
Left to defend himself by what meager methods the physical form allowed, he raised a knee to kick out at the creature.
Too slow and too obvious, it side-stepped his kick and then took the chance to neatly slide into his space. Pressing along his front, it chuckled, low and grating and hateful and hungry--
“Where did I go wrong?” it asked, even as it put claws to his chest and shoved him flat to the wall. It stuck its face, yet grinning that terrible, smug grin, directly afore Hades’. “The ten thousand-year and million-gil question. Look at you! Wide-eyed and frightened. I haven’t seen such an emotion in myself for a millenia. You’re acting as if I’m something to be fearful of.”
“Aren’t you?” He gasped back. “Look at you. I’ve never seen a soul more ragged.”
The thing barked a laugh in his face. “Never, you say! Hilarious! I see souls far worse than mine every moment of every never-ending day.”
“Perhaps what you see are merely your reflections,” he retorted, disturbed and unsettled by the entire exchange and unable to keep his mouth shut around it.
The shade cackled. The sound was a low, crackling wheeze from what Hades assumed were dust-filled lungs amid an otherwise empty ribcage.
“Yes. Reflections of my failure, perhaps,” it mused between its unnerving noises. “Sorry. Our failure. You didn’t think I came about without your help, did you?”
He didn’t know what it was talking about. He didn’t want to know. He struggled against its grip.
“Denial is equally unbecoming on souls such as ours,” it said, easily holding him in place even as it allowed him to writhe and thrash. “It shall do you no good. Nor shall your wit, nor your heart, nor your will. You will fail, and in that horrific failure, they will die and I will survive.”
Though it shouldn’t have made sense, Hades knew what the other referred to: a great Sundering, a greater loss, and the greatest duty yet. He would neither rest nor succeed in anything meaningful after those Final Days. He would fight, and fight, and fight, and still they would be beyond hope, beyond reach, their sacrifices twisted and torn and turned Dark by Her despairing Light, and he would never rest til he corrected his wrongs in allowing Him to fall in the first place--
And he would never rest.
As these thoughts crowded his mind, Hades struggled further, until there were bruises upon his arms from the other’s invisible binds and bruises upon his heart from the terrible, disgusting and disgusted rot inside the soul that couldn’t possibly be his. He struggled until he realized that it was fruitless and, worse yet, its impossibility was what the monster enjoyed. Then he ceased his attempts, whereupon the other proved his theory right by immediately frowning in displeasure.
“Would you break so soon?” the shade asked him, tilting its head with scorn. “Why have you ceased? We’ve barely begun.”
“I’m no plaything,” he replied, his soul shivering before the other’s casual disdain. Such easy disrespect for another did not exist in their paradise. It, more than the bindings, struck fear into him.
“Until we succeed,” it whispered back, its scorn lighting into rising anger just like that, as though it were some mortal beast cornered by a predator twice its strength, “we will be whatever we must. Perhaps if you hadn’t clung to your comforts, if you’d merely been willing to push yourself a bit harder in serving their needs, we wouldn’t have lost them for so long!”
“I did my best,” he protested, though he swore he knew not of what the shade spoke on til that moment. In his mind, he recalled anger and affront at the shade’s insinuation. In word, however, it took all he had not to begin cowering. “We all did. It was not our fault, it was Hers--”
“What is She but a product of our shortcomings?” it snarled, its rage growing and growing, heating the Darkness in the air. It squeezed tight, invisible talons around Hades’ throat, cutting off his breath. “Had you served Him better, had you elected to raise another to Azem’s seat rather than wait eons for that person’s return when you knew it wasn’t happening, if only you had been better or, at least, been enough.”
Hades tried to shake his head, tried to deny it. He managed a thready breath and nothing more.
The being before him dragged its claws down his chest. Rending streaks through his robes, it split his skin. Black soot gathered and spilled from the marks, for he was it and it was he and he had no heart left to speak of, only a shriveled, dust-filled husk with which he would do what he must.
“The greatest sorcerer of our time,” the shade spat, “unable to stop our closest friend from leaving. Unable to move on from Azem’s absence in the Convocation hall. Unable to cease dallying with Hythlodaeus even when your time would have been better spent at work. Unable to stop another primal’s summoning, despite being of the first to ever summon any primal. Unable to-- oh, but if I go on, we will never leave, will we?”
Hades wished to move, if only to scrabble at the pain crushing his windpipe. He wished to not be under the shade’s disappointed gaze. He wished not to be where he was, his eyes growing hazy with tears borne not only of no oxygen, surrounded by the dark flames of his burning city, his home, his paradise, lost because of him and his--
“We will never succeed,” the shade accused, “until you accept your failure!”
“If I do,” he replied, in thought and not word for he suffocated under the other’s sorrow, he choked on dust in his throat and ash on his tongue, the fire devouring all he’d ever cared for, “I’ll become you forever more.”
“What good were you?” the living dead demanded. “At least I can still stand. At least I can face what must be faced and finish what must be finished. You allowed the Great Sundering; I will survive, and achieve the Great Rejoining.”
He had failed because he’d been full of hope.
He’d hoped Azem to return. He’d hoped they were right in what they did. He’d hoped for Hydaelyn’s to-be followers to see reason.
He’d hoped his home never to fall. He’d hoped what multitude they’d sacrificed to be enough.
The world had no need for hope.
“You were me,” Hades protested still, desperate to be remembered as the person and not merely his work. He protested because when he was dead, he knew none others would. “You would forget what little there is even left of me?”
“I remember those who knew you,” it replied, its pale eyes close and its bone-dry lips ghosting over Hades’ tear-streaked cheek, its skin sallow and its soul empty of all that had made his existence as Hades worth living, “and they were undoubtedly the best of us.”
.
.
.
When Emet-Selch woke in the dark of underwater ruins, it was with salt on his tongue and a dying gasp in his chest. As nightmares hardly compared to memory, both faded quickly, and so it left him with nothing at all.