Work Text:
It had been hard to talk, back in the beginning, as hard as it would be to believe later, when everything was shared, when words were endless, a poor simulacrum of the effortlessness of thought shared in a single mind, attempting to bridge between one shattered in two.
It had driven SkekGra mad how slowly his other half spoke. It felt like it took an age for him to spit out a single sentence, and longer still to consider his words before speaking.
The Skeksis felt there was so much inside him. So many words that needed to be said, so much in him he needed to share. What he felt, what he saw, the vision he was granted, the thoughts and feelings that threatened to consume him. Emotions he had only the shadow of memories of. Painful feelings he’d not realized he and his kind had been running from. Or, at least, had not admitted, even to themselves.
Guilt. Shame. Regret.
Self loathing.
SkekGra had never hated himself.
He’d hated so strongly, and took such pride in it,as all skeksis did. Hatred and contempt for anything and everything that was not themselves was a skill and a virtue to them. He hated those he conquered, and it was a fiery hatred that guided his blades through flesh and made him smile and laugh as he tore his way across the lands of Thra, claiming and maiming, in the name of the Lords of the Crystal.
He’d hated the Skeksis. A bitter hatred, sour like puss and bile. Hated the Gelfling. A disgust and discountenance that might have felt like pity, if he’d really known what that was. Hated Thra. Hated the three sisters and the three brothers. Every star in the sky and every creature in Thra he could hate, at any moment, with the ease and grace of a master. For what else could he have considered himself but a master of hate? Of disdain? Of contempt?
But he had never hated himself. He hadn’t known one could. He could hate everything another Skeksis did, as he himself did the same, but could not hate that which he did, nor himself for doing it. It felt so different then, impossible to compare. Now he couldn’t see where the difference could have possibly been found.
Skeksis had no concept of remorse. When Skeksis failed, when they failed the emperor, when they failed their fellows, when they failed themselves, they must be punished. They had to have pain inflicted from the outside, for there was nothing in them to punish themselves.
Except, it seemed, there was. In SkekGra, at least, now. And SkekGra had no idea what to do with that notion. No idea what to do with a pain that attacked him from inside his mind, his heart, a shriveled thing though it may be.
And the Mystic was no help.
UrGoh said so little. And that which he did say took so long and made so little sense that it may as well have been nothing at all.
Skeksis did not share, not beyond what they needed to to get what they wanted in return. And words were no different. One said and listened as much as they needed to get the words and listening ear they desired and only that much.
With UrGoh, SkekGra felt as though his words poured from his mouth only to spill to the floor, wasted. He bared his soul, if he could be said to have one, laid the rawest parts of himself bare...and got nearly nothing in return. A short, cryptic message. And one that took so unbearably long to say! SkekGra had no patience for it.
Patience.
Is a virtue.
And there was no virtue in Skeksis. There was nothing of value. There was nothing good at all.
Sometimes, when he looked at UrGoh, SkekGra hated him, too. Not in the way he’d hated him before(and how he had hated him, indeed). Not for being all that he loathed and wished to rid himself of, but for, now, being none of it. Casting in bold relief the things the Skeksis had onced prided himself on, and now reviled. For making him see the things he truly wanted to purge from himself were those only his own. Hated that all the good and pure in the self they’d been as GraGoh split into the Mystic, and the foul and dark warped itself into his own form. Hated his other half for making him see those parts as the foul, despicable things they were.
But mostly, when he looked to his other half, he just felt sad. Sadness, despair…those, Skeksis already knew. And knew them well.
It should be no surprise, perhaps, that the first attempts at real conversation often took place over meals, when food forced SkekGra to slow his words and gave him something to occupy his hands while waiting for a reply. And, while everything else about their cultures differed, shared meals seemed like one point that held significance for both of them.
The Mystic prepared their food nearly always. SkekGra had never had to. The Gourmand had always been in charge of arranging the feasts of the Castle of the Crystal, and the Podling slaves always in charge of preparing them. Even when on his many campaigns, SkekGra had not needed to prepare his own rations. Beyond a simple roasting of meat over a fire or chopping of a plant into pieces small enough to eat without risk of choking, he ...didn’t really know how. A lack of knowledge of a menial skill was a badge of pride in the Castle. It meant one was of a high enough position with enough servants to never have needed to learn. Here, in the vast expanse of desert, it felt only like incompetence.
Their food was scarce, their meals bland. The meals of a people not consumed by greed, blinded by the pursuit of pleasure and extravagance.
It was during such a meal that SkekGra spoke, unprompted of course; UrGoh never spoke first.
“We feasted at the Castle,” he said. “Every night. A feast. We never just ate. It was always an occasion. A celebration that warranted indulgence. Gluttony. If there was none, one would be created. And that in itself was cause for celebration. For a feast.”
He stared down at the bowl of bland porridge in his hands.
“We feasted. As much as we could eat. As fast as we could. As many different flavors and textures as we could find,” he continued. “And it was good. Fantastic even. Always delicious, always extravagant....but it was never enough. We would be sick before we were satisfied. We were never satisfied. We ate like we were starving because there was nothing that could fill us. To not have was to want and to have was to want more. It was never enough.”
SkekGra fiddled with his spoon, stirring it through the thick paste. He felt no desire to eat. He hungered, for there was no end to the hunger of Skeksis. Not for food, wealth, power, or bloodshed. But he did not feel like eating.
“A far cry from a people who are content with only what they need. Contented with...porridge.”
The Mystic gave a soft “hm”, and continued slowly, so infuriating slowly, spooning his own grayish mush into his mouth.
SkekGra wanted to throw his food into their small cooking fire. That or into the woods, either way screaming as he did so.
Why in Thra did he even try? Why could he not seem to stop himself from trying? From seeking a response? Why could he never be satisfied with silence? Never satisfied. Not with anything. A Skeksis through and through.
Just as SkekGra was about to excuse himself to walk off his frustration, UrGoh spoke.
“Contented...or...complacent?”
SkekGra tilted his head, confused.
“Heh?”
UrGoh tilted his head in a similar manner, but in contemplation instead of confusion.
“A pail with a hole...in the bottom...and a pail…which is never filled...are both...at the end of each day...empty…” he said. “But the former...might still...if only for a short time...carry water…”
SkekGra clicked his jaws together, chittering angrily.
“Always riddles with you!” he snapped. “Can you never just speak plainly?!”
“I...can.”
SkekGra gave him a look and for a moment he might have thought he saw a twinkle of mischief in the Urru’s eye.
“Contentedness...is a balance...between what one has...and what one desires. There is no...end...to Skeksis...desire…” UrGoh continued.
SkekGra supposed he should at least have counted himself lucky he got any response that could be called in any way straightforward, even if it was really just a recitation of what he’d himself already said, but it somehow cut him much deeper coming back to him than it had leaving his own mouth.
He hung his head. He wished he hadn’t spoken. He always did.
“But...to Mystics’...no beginning…”
SkekGra blinked, having thought Urgoh had finished speaking.
He looked up to see a contemplative frown upon the Urru’s face.
“One can never...have all...one desires...if one desires...all…” he said. “But one...who desires nothing...will always...have nothing...they desire.”
For once, SkekGra was the one who took a long moment to consider how to respond. Before his vision and subsequent outcast from Skeksis society, he’d considered the Urru’s lack of drive as a negative, of course, but only inasmuch as he saw it as a weakness; a lack of will to take that which one wanted. Since rejecting those ideas, he’d considered it to not be a lack of drive as much as a contentedness with what they already had and a sense of peace he found only enviable.
“But...to desire nothing is to have all one desires, is it not?” SkekGra asked. “Regardless of what one has?”
The Urru hummed.
“In the…same way that…to desire everything…is to always get…what one desires…no matter…what one…gets.”
SkekGra blinked.
“Do you…envy me that desire, UrGoh?” he asked.
There was a long silence, even for UrGoh, before he at last answered,
“No.”
SkekGra deflated slightly.
“But…” UrGoh continued.
SkekGra perked up again.
“I mourn…the empty space… in me…where envy…might have lived.”
For the second time in his exceedingly long life, SkekGra’s perception of himself, of the Skeksis, the Urru, and even the UrSkeks, tilted, like a mirror shifting its angle. Nothing within changed yet, in being recontextualized, everything was different.
SkekGra had never loved himself. Not truly. He'd thought he had. What else could such fervent obsession be, if not love? Would such devotion, such dedication, not be love, were it to another?
But it was not himself he served. He could not have. He had not known a self to serve. He spent his time running from it, drowning it in blood and revelry. It was the emptiness, the hunger within him, that he fed when he feasted, with the hopes that whatever self he was would starve for it.
Was that not hatred?
Suddenly, it didn't seem so clear.
Hate and love, opposite, and yet somehow the same. Like light through a prism, it shifted with the angle from which it was viewed.
For the first time, in his very long life, SkekGra found himself at a loss for words.
The two halves of what had once been the UrSkek GraGoh said no more between themselves that night yet, so filled with thought and contemplation, SkekGra, for once, was content with the silence.