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zara-renata · 1 month ago

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Even the rocks on the roadside - Sylus's POV | ao3 | part 1 | the Sylus series

Summary:

Sylus tries to get some paperwork done in his office while you sleep. He receives a call that turns his night upside down and makes him regret some strategic choices he's made up until this point in conquering your heart. This is Sylus's POV on 'Even the rocks on the roadside in the N109 Zone could tell'. This part is most understandable if you read mc's POV first.

Notes:

Sylus x gn reader, Sylus x mc, Sylus's POV, second person POV Enemies-to-friends-to-lovers This story contains: pining, self-recrimination, angst, canon character death, grief, hurt/comfort from Sylus's POV, allusions to Sylus's lore that is just me taking shots in the dark because Infold is taking its sweet ass time providing us with his next myth memories. It could end up being completely wrong. Mentions of: fear of (domestic) violence, violence that occurs in game, mc with self-esteem issues, injury, boundary crossing typical of Sylus in game.

There was a time when Sylus wondered if he would ever have this again. A settled satisfaction, threaded through with an anticipatory challenge—a foundation that serves as a defensive bulwark against all of the enemies gathered against him, along with the challenging thrill of hanging over the edge of the ramparts, precision sniping to pick them off efficiently at the gates.

He’s waiting for you to wake up—you, the cornerstone in his foundation, you, the thrilling challenge dangling like a priceless jewel just out of his scope's reach. He has been adrift for years, amongst the stars. Behind enemy lines. Behind bars. Waiting to be called home again—to come in from the cold.

But now he’s finally home, and you’re in his bed, just down the hall. He has wanted you here again from the moment you sped away on your motorcycle after the auction, tires squealing under a spray of gravel, clearly relieved to be rid of him. But he knew he had to let you go, despite how it felt like you were pulling the marrow from his bones, the skin from his muscles as you went. Taking with you all of the parts of him that he needed to remain strong as he carved his way through the night between stars without you. He has felt… restless through the long hours and days and weeks ever since. Reports from the twins and Mephisto are never quite enough to calm him as you exist out there, away from him—his heart, walking around unprotected in a world full of horrors who are not him.

He knows you’re capable. He knows you’re smart, and can take care of yourself. But he has also collected enough puzzle pieces of the current you to know the cost of your strength now—and now, the compulsion to shelter you, to shield you from anything that could possibly hurt you, is a constant thrum under his skin.

He leans back in the leather chair as he sits behind his desk, shaking his head a little to rid himself of the memory of all those years without you, and the long stretches of worry when he’s not with you now that he’s found you again. Because his heart is here now. Just down the hall.

He is tempted to return to his bedroom right now. To slip into bed next to you and pull you close. But he wants to exploit this time to get through some work that needs to be settled sooner rather than later, so he can focus solely on you once you wake up. He’s having a hard time focusing right now though, with you finally, finally, right here. He hasn’t asked, before now, for you to come to him in his home. He has been trying to show you that he’s willing to go to any length to meet you where you are, emotionally, physically—exposing himself, time after time, to the harsh sunlight of Linkon City, to the risk of being recognized as he pulls up to your building, of running into your partner who despite his sleepy facade, helped you get into the N109 zone in the first place, and could possibly be aware of Sylus’s true identity. He will continue taking these risks, for as long as it takes, until you’re ready to come to him, to meet him in his world, and stay in the free moments you get from your calling.

Because it is clear to him now that your work as a hunter is a calling, and not just a job for you. He can’t think of your work as a hunter as simply work, because he now sees how intrinsically you have bound your work to your sense of self, thus creating an identity that justifies, in your mind, why anyone would value you. As if you, all by yourself, are insufficient.

A notion that he would like to disabuse you of sooner, rather than later. But for now, he must focus on his immediate work. He flicks his gaze to the open contract on his tablet, to the papers that need final checking and then signature. All of the things Aidan, his legal counsel, could and should be doing for him. But they were friends before Sylus hired him. And as a friend, Aidan insists that Sylus is aware of the details of everything he signs, that he makes a deliberate choice regarding his business and the risks he’s willing to take, in the event that Aidan isn’t there to advise him. Their world is dark, and dangerous, and people die so easily. Despite all of Aidan’s foppish vanity, he’s a good friend, and a good lawyer. Forcing Sylus to be aware of why Aidan gives the advice that he does is part of Aidan’s … care, as a friend. Sylus snorts and thinks that his retainer fee should be reduced proportionally for every minute he has to spend away from you because of legal paperwork.

With a snap of his fingers, the stack of papers twirls up into the air, caught in the tornado of his evol. He lets it swirl, enjoying the sound of paper fluttering. He considers letting the sheets spin fast enough for the paper to shred itself, which in his opinion is the only proper response to the insulting clauses that he will not be accepting contained on the pages. But Aidan will grumble about having to reprint the damn things, since the man inexplicably prefers redlining the drafts with a physical, old-fashioned fountain pen instead of doing everything digitally. Sylus sniffs. He and Aidan are friends, after all. The appreciation for fine, tangible things is something they share, in an era where everything comes and goes with the impermanence of data drifting through the air, lost when the cloud’s servers explode along with Sylus’s casually planted explosives. Speaking of fountain pens… he lifts one such sharp little writing utensil with his evol, and sends it sailing like a throwing knife through the paper tornado. It hits the wall opposite his desk with a satisfying thunk, and he lets the papers drift back to his desk, now with some of the pages neatly punctured. That will have to satisfy him, for now. He’s so bored, trying to focus on his work instead of you, when you’re lying warm and safe in his bed.

Instead of going to you like he wants, he exerts some measure of self control and glances down at your phone, fiddles with the little charm on a sturdy ribbon he added to it tonight. A kitty’s paw, for his kitten’s phone. It was silly, and cute, and when he saw it dangling in a boutique window one night on his way to a meeting in the N109 zone, he had gotten it for you on a whim. Adding the charm is not the only thing he has done with your phone, however, while you have been asleep tonight. Sylus is looking forward to seeing the look on your face, once you realize what he has orchestrated for you, because you refuse to do it for yourself. It’s always entertaining to watch you go through a whole spectrum of emotions when you discover one of his little plots—shock, disbelief, anger, frustration. Sometimes, when he’s very lucky, you’re amused. But in the end, always, acceptance. Sometimes the acceptance is resigned—at other times, it’s with a side of relief that he thinks you don’t even realize you feel, once he has removed all obstacles and objections for you, gently funneling you down the path he wants you to take. Because everything he does, he does for you. For your benefit. For your health. For your pleasure. He rather likes this win-win situation, because when you’re benefited, and healthy, and pleased, so is he. He has accepted much worse deals, in his long years of wheeling and dealing. But with all things involving you, he never has to settle, because you are the reward, in the end.

He doesn’t read back through the texts “you” have sent to your doctor, or your boss. He simply basks in the satisfaction of a successful ruse, and the anticipation of being able to help you heal from the open wound you’ve been curled around for months, and probably years. If that means he also gets to have more time with you, well. Who is he to not enjoy a perk of the task at hand?

He sets your phone back down, and gazes past the large snake’s tongue plant in a dark pot next to the window in his office. The night is cold, and dark. The skyscrapers in the distance glitter in the distance, malignant growths in the corrupted valley below his base. He can see the wind gusting by the periodic swirls of dust and pebbles that drift across the N109 zone’s bleak landscape. He’s glad he’s in here, warm in his office, and that you’re in there, warm in his bed, instead of either of you having to be out on this bleak autumn night. He hates this place. He has done his best to create a base and a home as a refuge within this tainted region, but it never quite blots out the desolation beyond its walls. Despite his distaste, it’s best this way. The view serves as a constant reminder of everything he has yet to accomplish. Everything he has yet to avenge. All the work that he must unwaveringly do, even as he tries to lure you deeper and deeper into his world before he breaks both of you out of it again.

He sighs, and is about to give up and check on you, just for a moment, to soothe this ache of distance, distance that is actually so short compared to how far he has been from you for years. But now that you’re here, so close, he has only a diminishing ability to bear even the shortest of space between you. He pauses when his own phone vibrates on his desk.

He considers not picking up so that he can see you faster, but sees that it’s Luke calling. He hits the speaker icon.

“Speak.”

“Uh, boss?” Luke’s voice comes through the speakers, and Sylus recognizes that tone of voice. The tone of voice that says, You’re not going to like what I have to say, but I promise it’s not my fault this time… Sylus pinches the bridge of his nose, preparing to tell Luke and Kieran to handle whatever it is, because he will not be taking one step further away from you tonight, even if his empire is on the verge of collapse.

“Who else, Luke?” he says. “Speak.”

“Do you know where your hunter is?”

Luke and Kieran may be many things, but they aren’t cruel. They like pranks, but the harmless kind. They have gone through too much, survived too much, having only each other to rely on, to turn Sylus’s feelings for you into fodder for a joke. Sylus stands, turning speaker mode off and bringing the phone to his ear. He strides towards the door as he speaks. “I left my kitten in my bed, asleep, while I went to take care of some paperwork in my office.” He pauses. “Is there a reason you’re asking me this?”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure we just passed someone on the hillside road to base who looks, like, a scary amount like your hunter. With no shoes on. Or coat.”

Sylus doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t think. He ends the call, shoves the phone into his trousers, and begins to jog. He flings open the door to his bedroom, slamming his hand on the sensor next to the door. The room is immediately bathed in a soft, warm glow from the recessed lighting. He can see, even from here, that his bed, the bed he left you sleeping peacefully in, is empty.

Sylus doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t think. He turns, and begins to run.

***

Sylus has a sword in his chest, and this time he is the one who put it there.

He doesn’t know why you left without saying a word. He doesn’t know why you didn’t come find him when you woke up. He doesn’t know why you didn’t take your clothes, or your shoes, before you went. This not knowing is driving him insane. As he steers through the dark night in the Phantom MPV— not a tank, and not the cybertruck, he thinks with disdain, one of his assassin friends, Taé, accused it of being when she saw him roll up in it to a meeting right after it was delivered—the vehicle he had customized for you and for Noah to drive when you were visiting him in the N109 zone and he couldn’t be with you—his mind races, trying to identify what would have motivated you to flee his house in nothing more than a thin sweater and a pair of shorts.

He is not surprised that he didn’t hear you. You could be stealthy, and fast, especially on your bare feet. And the base’s security system is programmed to unlock every door and vault, every safe room and vehicle, for you through facial recognition. It is not programmed to keep you in or out. Not since those first three days, when he couldn’t bear for you to leave yet. When he needed you to expend all of your hate and fury on him, long enough for him to maneuver you into working with him in the future. As a result, he wasn’t alerted when you left tonight.

He is surprised, however, as his headlights carve through the dark night and suddenly illuminate Luke and Kieran’s Ferrari SF90 XX Stradale and broken glass glitters in the sudden illumination on the driver’s side of the car. He’s surprised at the look on your face, as you drop a large rock from your limp hand and it lands heavily on the roadside next to your feet. The look on your face that can only be described as pure, anguished fear.

Sylus feels the expression on your face like a sword through his heart. You’re looking at him through the windshield of the Phantom like he is the culmination of all of your nightmares, personified.

You didn’t even look this scared as he was strangling you, which feels like a whole lifetime ago now for him. You’ve come so far since then. You let him so near, since then. You’ve allowed him in your home, in your bed, in your arms, sharing the same breath. But now you’re looking at him like the monster he knows himself to be, but you can’t know. Not yet.

He yanks the emergency brake on the SUV and gets out, leaving the engine running. He strides over to the driver’s side of the Ferrari and leans down to see Kieran’s wide, dark eyes, and a bruise already forming around his neck, sharply contrasting against his light brown skin.

“You good?” Sylus asks.

“Yeah, boss. But I think your hunter is rather distressed,” he answers, his voice unusually gravelly, probably from how hard it looks like you had gripped his throat.

Sylus straightens, and takes a long look at Luke. He trusts that Kieran is okay when he says so. But Luke… having to stay still, while someone hurt his brother, even if it was unintentional—Sylus knows that it would have taken a monumental amount of self control on his part not to react to protect Kieran. Luke looks back at Sylus, mouth set in an uncharacteristically grim line. But he nods, almost imperceptibly. So Sylus gestures for him to get in the car, and he goes.

Sylus doesn’t look back as Kieran begins to pull away, turning all of his focus on you now. He watches as you close your eyes, and he watches the way you’re clenching your fists, the furrow of your brows, the way you’ve holding yourself just a little bit hunched, shoulders drawn up. As if you’re waiting for… He wants to shake his head, to rid himself of the thought. But you look like you’re ready to take a fist to the stomach, and in a rush—the kind of intuitive flood that has saved his life more than once, where all the contextual clues of a situation coalesce into utter certainty without him even being able to retrace how he came to the correct reading of the situation—Sylus realizes what you’re doing. What you’re waiting for.

There is a sword in his heart, and he is the one who put it there, this time.

Sylus bitterly hates to disappoint you, and he bitterly hates to keep you waiting, but what you’re expecting right now is not something he can ever give you in this life—not again. You will have to make do with his coat, and not the fist you’re expecting. He shrugs out of it and in a flourish has it wrapped around your shoulders. You’re shaking so hard. He wants to sweep you into his arms and carry you to the SUV, but he knows, just as he knows that you were waiting for violence from him, that if he touches you now, without asking, he may break whatever tenuous thread is keeping you in place right now before him instead of careening away from him again.

He waits for you. He’s waited for you for lifetimes. He can wait a little longer for you to open your eyes and look at him.

Finally, you do. Sylus takes in the look of terror bleeding into confusion, your eyes so big, so bright under the red moon. He sees himself in them. He never wants to see anything else in them. But along with himself, he sees your confusion. How tired you are. How scared you are. He sees regret. None of these things are acceptable to him.

“If you wanted to go for a run, sweetheart, you could have just told me. We have a perfectly functional home gym, equipped with treadmills with big screens that make you feel like you’re running on a serene mountain path or along the beach. There’s no need to endure the desolation of the N109 zone’s ‘scenery’ when you’re here with me but want to work out.”

You don’t respond to him. Not even the ghost of a smile. “What’s wrong? Crow’s got your tongue?” He tries to lift the corner of his mouth into a smile that he does not feel, in an attempt to draw you out of the shell you’ve retreated into. He can’t help himself—he lifts his hand, and touches the corner of your mouth. He’s immensely relieved when you don’t flinch.

But your face. Your eyes. You watch him with the wariness of prey resigned to being torn apart, instead of killed cleanly. You watch him with the resignation of the condemned who knows that before the headsman’s axe, it will be the rack, who expects the laziness of the four horses when their flanks are slapped before the quartering.

Sylus hates it. There isn’t a word for it in the human tongue for how much he loathes the look on your face, in your eyes. He’d rather you put a sword through him again, than ever see that look on your face again.

You ask if he’s angry with you.

As if you could ever be capable of doing anything that truly makes him angry. He’ll carry this sword in his heart until the end of time and never be truly angry with the choices you made that led to it being lodged in his chest.

He needs to touch you. He needs to hold you. He asks you, again and again, but you won’t release him from the torture of this unmet need. It was easier to bear, when you weren’t right in front of him. Before, he could survive through endless years without you in his arms. But his tolerance for the feeling of being bereft, the emptiness of his hands and his arms, is approaching a breaking point, the closer he is to you. You’re so close, he can almost taste you. He just needs you to say yes.

You ask if he’s demanding your consent to hit you. To hurt you. To cause you pain.

He takes a deep, slow breath. He can scent you, even in the wind, even from this distance. Your smell, the loveliness of the sweat drying on your skin, the faint aroma of your shampoo still lingering in your hair. It helps. He is able to calm himself, a little, instead of tearing out his own heart and throwing it at your feet, which is what he wants to do as he realizes that you actually think he’d be cruel enough to demand that you give him permission to hurt you.

He tells you to ask your questions. But you don’t. He asks you why you don’t want to return to his home. You let out that same terrible laugh, the laugh from outside the arcade, when you were asking him why he wasn’t already used to being disappointed by you. The laugh he never wanted to hear from you, ever again.

And when you finally answer him, through chattering teeth, as your body shakes so hard it looks painful, that same realization floods through him again, along with the despair—the despair that he hasn’t felt since he realized that you had blamed him for your family’s death, the despair that he had pressed like a bruise and then resolved to discard because he was not giving up on you, not in any past life, and certainly not in this one—the despair courses through him like slow poison now.

He has been so arrogant. Congratulating himself on how swiftly he has been able to win you over. He interpreted your willingness to let him touch you, to come to your home, to sleep in your bed, as progress in building toward what he ultimately wants from you. You, in his arms. Your trusting heart, in his hands. Your soul, entwined with his until they’re indistinguishable. He had thought that because someone as closed off as you—someone who engages in so much self-protection—allowed him so close, that you were steadily coming to accept him, all of him, from the beginning through to tonight, as he laid you as carefully as possible in his big bed, as he ran his fingers along what he thought was your trusting face, peaceful in sleep before he left the room.

He’s made so many mistakes, from the very first moment he lifted you in the air with his evol and wrapped his hand around your throat.

He wills himself to stay still. He wills himself to refrain from using his evol to fling the SUV across the desolate landscape. He wills himself to keep his mouth shut, to keep the roar of self-recrimination and grief and rage at this life that has been so cruel to you, at all of his missteps as a result of not understanding how hurt you were before he ever found you again, from clawing its way out of his throat because you might think he’s furious with you, when it’s he and not you who put the sword in his heart this time.

As he stills, he studies you. Your bare, bloody feet. Your legs, goosebumps drifting up your skin to the flimsy shorts fluttering a little in the wind. Your arms, still hanging stiffly at your sides, as if you’re forcing yourself not to wrap them around yourself, forcing yourself to remain unprotected in the face of his rage. Your lovely face, with your teeth clicking so loudly it drowns out his own need to bellow into the night of this awful place.

It doesn’t matter what he wants, right now. He will do as he has always done in the face of setbacks. In the face of bad luck. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong play. He will re-calibrate, and he will fucking try again. He will tuck every puzzle piece he has collected of you in this life, and he will use it to do what matters. And what matters is what you need.

“Can I, please, touch you,” he begs. He will drop to his knees, if that’s what it takes.

But unlike all the other versions of you he has known, you don’t ask him to debase himself until you’re satisfied in the wake of his missteps. You just nod, a tiny little movement, and the relief flooding through him has him wanting to get on his knees simply out of gratitude for the benevolence of your heart in this life, a life that should have hardened you instead of leaving you with all of your tenderness exposed.

Finally, finally, he lifts your shivering body in his arms, and he carries you back to warmth. He convinces you to let him take you back to his home. The quiet resignation that he interpreted as acceptance, less than what? An hour ago? soaks your answer, which is just a nod against his chest. He hates it, now. But the nod of assent has to be enough for him, for now.

He takes you home. He carries you to his bedroom, the place where you woke up alone, in the dark, probably disoriented and afraid. The answers to the questions he had while driving to find you slam into him, each so much more obvious than the last. How could he have been so careless? Oh yes, Sylus the plans within plans man, the master strategist. He let the person dearest to him wake up alone, in the dark, in the place where he had imprisoned and tortured you.

You shake in his arms, the whole way. Wave after wave sweeping under your skin, no matter how tightly he holds you against himself.

Finally, he sets you on one of the vintage scroll benches in the bathroom. He gets the shower going, determined to warm you up as soon as possible. He’s going to punch through the wall if he has to feel you shiver for much longer. And then, because you have not asked it of him, he kneels before you, and looks up into your exhausted, drawn face.

“Your clothes need to come off,” he says, a fact and a question. Will you let him remain near you as you peel back the last layers of your armor, after everything he has done to you?

You just nod. It’s enough for him, for now. He tries to remove your clothing as gently as possible, to treat you with the care due to spun glass, although he knows you’re more resilient than titanium. Your skin is soft underneath his knuckles as he lifts your sweater, as he slips the silk sleep shorts from your strong legs. He settles you in the shower, and the warmth of the water is welcome after the chill autumn wind. He peels his own clothes off, and finally, finally, pulls you into his arms, letting the spray of the shower hit you full on, hoping that this will be enough to warm you through, with the warm water streaming down your chest and his warm skin at your back.

Ever since you burst back into his life, Sylus has had an ache in his chest, even when you’re right there, as if he can never get close enough, no matter how tightly he holds you. He needs to be inside you. He needs you to be inside him. He would carve himself open and pull you in, carry you in his chest where his heart should be, where you belong. If he could. If you would let him. He knows you’re not ready yet. He knows that this strange compulsion isn’t necessarily healthy, and not possible. So sitting here, holding you in the shower, so tightly against him as the steam and water envelop you both—it will have to do. Satisfaction courses through him as the shivers racking your body begin to slow, the waves of goosebumps having already disappeared. He could sit here with you until the sun collapses in on itself, and all the stars blink out, one by one, at the end of all things, without boredom and without regret.

But you have other ideas, as usual. You grow still in his arms, your body melting into him, but then he hears the first strangled sob catch in your throat, and he realizes that you’re weeping. The sword through his heart is nothing compared to the lance of pain he feels as you begin to howl, your keening filling the bathroom and echoing. At first he’s afraid that you’ll try to tear away from him as you start to shift in his lap, but as you turn and collapse back against him, your chest heaving against his, your arms wrapped so tightly around his neck, that insatiable ache inside him pulses. You’re here. As close as you can get, without peeling back his skin and slipping inside. You seem to be drawing comfort from his body as it holds you. He’s glad for it, because what is the point of having a big, strong body if not to shelter you? He has no words to give you—what can he say to someone who has lost everyone you held dear? Who has been treated so cruelly by fate and by the people who should have cared for you the most? Himself included.

He has no words of comfort, because the one person he has to lose, that he has already lost, again and again, is now weeping in his arms, and it’s entirely his own fault this time. The only thing he has to offer you right now is the strength in his body. So he simply holds you tighter, tries to hum you a little lullaby, rocks you gently. He hopes it is enough, for now. He holds you, and he hopes he can try again, and again, and again, until he gets it right. Before you tell him to go and mean it.

#love and deepspace #love and deepspace sylus #lads sylus #l&ds sylus #lnds sylus #sylus x reader #sylus x mc #love and deepspace fanfiction #my fanfic #some of you asked for this so here it is #i hope it makes sense and isn't repetitive #sylus's singular obsessiveness makes me worry that i am only writing him one-note and that's not the intention #but it was an interesting challenge this week

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