#terzo emeritus | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nharelysan · 33 minutes ago

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NO STOP THIS HURT ME ☹️☹️

Going to post my fics here too so time to start with something cheerful. I lied it's very angsty. I can only appologise for this.

Heavy angst for Omega / Terzo.

In which Omega broke protocol and brought Papa III back only for him to be a shadow of his former self.

Find it on A03 here:

I BROUGHT YOU BACK WRONG

"What time are you making my food, Ghoul?"

Omega's hands tightened on the wet plate he was washing. It took every ounce of restraint within him not to snap it in two. It had become a nightly routine for Omega: cook for Papa Terzo, feed him, wash up and tell him, repeatedly:

"You already ate, Papa. I'm washing up."

As he said it for the third time this evening, his voice cracked a little.

It wasn't that Terzo had forgotten about eating again that made the bile rise in Omega's throat. It wasn't that he had already answered this question twice since Papa had finished his food. It wasn't even the demanding, absent tone in which he addressed his question. It was how he adressed him. Ghoul. Papa never called him Ghoul. Not once. Before.

Before... well, that was a long time ago. Terzo never would have had Omega cooking and running around after him to clean up like some sort of servant, for a start. Much to the scoffing of the upper clergy Terzo had delighted in cooking for Omega. He had been a wonderful cook, everything from Rigatoni alla Vodka to Quesadillas, something that Omega fondly remembers him discovering on their first American tour with the Ghost project, and not shutting up about them to the point where he was going on about them during their sets. He had been a wonderful cook. He had been a lot of things.

Now he was an empty husk, and Omega his keeper.

"You brought him back."

That's what Imperator had said.

"You defied me, and the Clergy, and brought that useless old bastard back, so you can babysit him."

The threat was thinly veiled and Omega picked up on the not-so-subtle subtext. He was not just to be his keeper. Now he was his guard. But, to Omega, tending to him day by day and never letting him out of his sight it felt more like... warden.

Dragging footsteps approached and Omega sighed heavily, turning to look at the dark-haired man as he wandered into the opulent adjoining kitchen of his Papal quarters.

The Ghoul's amber eyes met the smaller man's mismatched ones, one the color of moss and the other icy. He looked into them and saw to his relentless dismay that they remained alien. These eyes that looked back now were not how he had known them. These eyes were cold, glassy and vacant. Dead. The crow's feet next to them simply an echo of the smiles he used to wear for his Ghoul. His Omega.

Once those eyes of Terzo's were full of light, life, and... love. There was no point in denying it, his Papa had told him often enough. Love for him. Absolutely unmistakable in its blazing intensity. But where had it gone? Oh, how he would give anything to see that look again, even for a moment.

Omega didn't even pretend to understand humans. To him they were just so fucking fragile. As he looked at the former Papa, he felt a lump form in his throat. It wasn't fucking fair. Even now, still so beautiful, and yet over the years he had had to slowly watch his Papa lose little bits of himself.

A creature of Satan like Omega could never understand why their maker would put them in a dying vessel. Ever since these creatures are ripped from their mothers' wombs they start to die. Steadily and surely youth bleeds into old age and they wither away.

He thought that this was not unlike the roses that his Terzo, ever the romantic, used to cut for him from the rose bushes in his private garden.

"For you, Caro."

He would say, inhaling deeply from the petals before pressing the stem, diligently stripped of every thorn, into Omega's waiting palm.

But then it would wilt, and brown, and droop and die. For an immortal, the span of a few days is less than the blink of an eye. Hardly worth acknowledging. Omega treasured each flower all the same.

Both roses and humans had such short little lives, the latter seemingly so completely filled with relentless suffering. God certainly must have a sick sense of humour to inflict that on his children.

Terzo knew this too and he fought it with all his might. He had always known, in all his wisdom, that it was just as difficult for his eternal Omega to witness the slow decay of his love as it was for him to have to endure it himself. Ageing was kind to Terzo but it took from him all the same. The relentless pull of time showed itself in the way Papa became a little slower, a little more tired, the ache in his back and knees intensifying. There was little either could do as the years wore on and the lines on his face became deeper, the ringing in his ears louder, and came the appearance more and more grey hairs that Terzo would do his best to eliminate with the frantic application of box dye number twelve: 'midnight black.'

Siblings often would label him arrogant and vain. How were they to know that his efforts were to ease the aching heart of a creature that would never know what it was like to be slowly stripped of youth?

But that was then. The man in front of Omega now was indifferent. Indifferent to his grey roots and his heartbroken Ghoul.

Undeniably, there was something very wrong with him. It had been this way ever since his resurrection. Omega regarded the thin, white scar that laced the loose flesh, another insecurity brought fourth by the years, around his throat.

Perhaps it was his fault. Ghouls were not supposed to perform such rituals. He had been told so. He hadn't cared. He had gone against the Clergy, the very foundations of the Ministry itself, when he had drawn the sigil in his own blood on the floor of the chapel and begged the seven Princes of hell by the light of seven black candles to give him back his Papa. To relinquish his love from the depths of the pit.

He had payed dearly, too. He had been stripped of his Quintessence. Perhaps this is the closest he will ever come to the human experience of growing old he had felt there on that cold flagstone floor as his power was drained from him.

Omega, in this pact, had surrendered his element and his place in hell by Satan's side. By accepting these terms to have this human back, the Ghoul had condemned himself for an eternity in the darkest depths below. This was the price: a debt to be repayed by him on Terzo's return to the pit, after which he would never be able to return to the Earth above.

Back then he had thought it was more than fair, but now it just seemed like a cruel joke. He cannot even attempt to help Terzo with his elemental Quintessence. He has been rendered utterly useless. They both have.

Perhaps it is more cruel to have brought his Papa back in bits than to have left him alone in the depths.

But what other choice was there? He could not have returned to hell without being banished, and Imperator would never allow it. It was her final act of cruelty, to seperate the two of them for daring to love eachother. For Terzo to have given his heart to a lesser creature. Sex was fine, even encouraged in the eyes of the upper Clergy, but to fall in love with an inferior? That was detestable.

So Omega could not go back not while she lived and The Fourth remained a hapless puppet. And Terzo would be waiting. Alone in the depths of the pit without him. He really had had no choice but to attempt the sacred rite to bring him back. He had been struck down too soon. It was not his time to go!

However, with each passing day Omega had begun to realise that somehow he had fucked it up. He must have. Why else would his poor Papa be acting like this? Like he was somehow trapped between two worlds. Alive, but not. Lights on but no one home. He simply wasn't here anymore.

Worse it had gotten, too. Every day it was like another piece of him went missing. The life drained from his eyes, his posture became rigid. He no longer seemed to desire anything other than base functions; sleeping, eating, wandering aimlessly through the grounds. He was like a ghost. It was as if he aged the seven years he had been dead in one instant and his mind had wandered into some sort of purgatory.

"Papa..? What is it you want?"

Omega managed, snapping himself out of his spiralling thoughts as he turned to face Papa. His Papa. His beloved.

"You've taken off your mask."

Terzo said flatly, as he regarded him with a furrowed brow.

"You look... familiar."

It was like a slap. He wanted to scream. He wanted to grab Terzo by his skinny shoulders and shake him. Shake him until he could see him again. Until he could recognise him. Or until his neck snapped and his renewed suffering could end. 'Familiar? Familiar!? Don't you know who i am!? Don't you know who you are to me?! Don't you know what i have done to have you here?!'

Instead he just stared, mute and aching.

Terzo sighed and for a split second he looked like himself again. Take away some of the lines and the silver streaks in the temples of his disheveled hair and Omega could have almost thought this was his Terzo.

The one who commanded congregations and audiences with confident swagger. Terzo, who always had a witty sarcastic comment ready. Rebellious and idealistic, who still dreamed of a better world: his sprawling city of Meliora and its art deco skyscrapers reaching up to the heavens like a middle finger denouncing the tyranny of God.

His Terzo who adored children and apologised for swearing in front of them. His Terzo who loved women and their beauty and celebrated the joy of the female orgasm with pride for all to hear. His Terzo who loved Ghouls and treated them as equals and not as mindless tools to be used by the Ministry as they see fit. His Terzo who loved one Ghoul in particular, and would crawl into bed with him and wrap his arms around his waist and kiss him and hold him and tell him it was all going to be alright even when he didnt believe it himself...-

"Omega."

Omega's heart stopped dead in his chest.

"Yes...?"

Terzo blinked.

"That's who you remind me of. He was... he was my Ghoul."

He said, staring off into the middle distance somewhere.

"I summoned him when i became a Bishop. You don't eh... know him do you? No, that's presumptuous of me. You don't all know eachother. Hell is a big place. I think I've been there... i... don't quite remember."

It was the most he had said about anything in weeks and suddenly all Omega wanted was for him to shut up. He felt his throat burn from the sheer effort of holding back his tears.

'I'm right here! Why can't you see me? I brought you back, Papa...-'

"Papa...-"

Terzo waved a dismissive hand at him.

"I'm rambling again, scusi. I just... i miss him."

When Terzo looked at him, it was like he was looking straight through him. It hurt. By Satan himself oh how it hurt.

Omega placed a gentle hand on Terzo's shoulder.

'I brought you back wrong.'

He thinks.

'Something went so...-'

He flinches as Terzo jerks back.

"What are you doing, Ghoul?"

Omega felt his heart break right then.