text; un: 𓅃

[hor]

❄🥶❄🥶❄🥶❄🥶❄🥶❄🥶❄🥶❄🥶❄🥶❄🥶

I am stuck in my inn room by this white plague.
My own jewelry is so cold it burns my skin.
Attempted to build a fire, but the circle box on the ceiling began to screech deafeningly.

Someone give me a proper burial when this is over.

Comments

[suetekh]

Still you. [He makes it a point to keep quiet about the other point. That was not something he looked on too fondly.

But without thinking:] I was hoping you'd be less annoying when you grew up with only Lord Sister. But I guess that woman was just as bad as Lord Brother.

[hor]

[ His throat sharpens just a little, ready to tell him off for comparing his mother to the ass in the underworld, before realizing this is another instance of Set saying something so strangely he can't ignore it.

He shuts down every time he asks directly, so Horus instead tries: ]

How was I when I grew up with Lord Father then?

[ Because that.. that's what his words imply. That somehow, he had grown up with his father, and that was what Set knew. It didn't make any sense, and yet sensible questions get him nowhere. ]

[suetekh]

Clung to him, cried over nothing, and always begging me to do something. [He says without thinking and then, a moment too late, he realizes he shouldn't have said that.]

It's how I imagined a child of his to be anyway.

[What a terrible lie.]

[hor]

[ He definitely knows something. A world in which father actually cared? Not likely, but Set's imagination isn't so great as to be able to create that on his own. Proceed with caution, Horus. Don't repeat the same mistakes despite wanting to interrogate him right here and now. ]

I'm very different. I cling to you, I haven't genuinely cried in a long time, and I strongarm you into doing things.

[ No crying or begging-- what was he, a puppy in Set's first life? ]

In my first life you were a standoffish prick who refused to give your darling nephew the time of day even though your nephew loves you and just wants you to know you're worth more than the people around you made you think so they could use you.

[ First and only life, anyway. ]

[suetekh]

[Set stills at thinking Horus might remember another life but he realizes what he means, relaxing. Sighing.]

So they could use me? Nobody has ever used me. There was never any worth or point in doing so.

[He'd always been relatively useless, no magical skills to speak out. All he could do was fight and that was that.]

I am sure you have cried recently. Probably when you were freezing to death.

[hor]

I'd still have tears frozen to my face if I were!

[ Set isn't closing off at this approach. He's going to push forward with it, even if there's a good chance Set's going to smack him upside the head for saying anything about Osiris. ]

I can tell you at least one case, but you have to promise not to get mad. Those being used usually can't see it. It's a lot easier to see from the outside when you know how the people involved are at their core. But I'm too cold to have a proper fight about it, so I don't want to say it right now if you're going to punch me. You can punch me when it's warmer.

[suetekh]

I won't punch you.

[Only because now he's curious. Who the hell had used him? He couldn't think of anything.

And also he is too cold to get into a fight.]

[hor]

[ Horus shifts slightly, letting his breath out in a puff against Set's neck and keeping his face close enough that the warm breath heats his nose just a little. He stays quiet, trying to think how he should say what he wants to, but if he pisses Set off, he pisses Set off. ]

Without military prowess at his side, Father's magnanimous attitude and the favor of his people would've been pointless. He needed people to fear you and love him, and have people know that he was the only one who could control you or else enemies would've come to take Egypt because he wasn't enough to handle them. Peace was only possible if he could make absolutely certain that you didn't think anyone else could care for you, to make sure you wouldn't act for anyone else. I was taught from a young age the stories of my father and you and the more I learned of him, the more obvious it became.

[ A beat before he cuts in with a reminder: ] You promised not to get mad.

[suetekh]

[Set listens and he isn't mad. Really, it sounds mostly impossible from Set's point of view.]

Nobody liked me from the moment I was born. I knew that without any of his doing. It isn't as if he needed to do anything to make me aware of that fact. [Set doesn't sound so bothered by this because he isn't. He had long since gotten used to the fact that he would always, always never be liked.]

I did well enough to make people dislike me anyway. [And he knows that about himself as well.] Lord brother, though...[He shakes his head.]

You don't understand because you know of only stories.

[hor]

Anubis can travel in and out of the Underworld and has sworn his loyalty to me over our father for good reason. I understand plenty.

[ He doesn't mean to say it that way, but he's cold and grumpy and he's sick of Set never seeing anything for what it is. ]

Mother cares about you. Thoth obviously cares for you. Ra may even care for you in his own way, or he never would've agreed to your being king or the terms of my ascension. You may not want me, but I like you a lot.

[suetekh]

Lord sister does not care about me. [Set remembers a time when she had never talked to him for five years. Never looked his way. He'd never been angry about it, it had simply been what it was. There wasn't anything he could do about it.

But this had changed because he saved Nephthys. Their relationship was different but Set doesn't think it means Isis cares about him.]

As for the rest, I still don't think you know what you're talking about. Even about yourself.

[hor]

You're not very perceptive, I imagine it was a bad match for how hard she is to read sometimes.

[ It's obvious he doesn't have much to say that he thinks Set will listen to. Mother was the one who told him to find his own answers, which means she certainly doesn't think Set is a villain-- at the very least, she doesn't think he deserves the ending he's written for himself if she was willing to lead Horus to find his own path when he'd reached his crossroads. If his mother hadn't encouraged him, perhaps he would've fallen back into line and accepted that Set was who everyone said he was. But she hadn't. But it's too cold to properly think and express that, and Set isn't listening anyway. So he sighs, then shivers because that breath wasn't as hot as he was hoping. He should check if Walter is near yet. ]

You don't know me and ever since I stopped pretending to be Anubis, you refuse to try.

[suetekh]

Then get over it.

[It's a bit harsh, coming from Set and especially after he's come to take care of Horus from freezing to death in the cold.]

There's no point in trying to know me and the sooner you realize that then it's better.

[hor]

Hm, I'll let you know in a hundred years if I have.

[ He won't. Horus knows in his soul he's more stubborn and patient than Set could even imagine. ]

You're a god of war, you know better than any how important it is to know your enemy. Will you accept that?

[suetekh]

You already know me well enough. You have fought me once and probably hundreds more times that I don't know of. [Set thinks so, anyway. He doesn't imagine that he wouldn't fight Horus every chance that he got.]

But whatever, it doesn't matter. You are a stubborn child.

[hor]

You can't say I know you and refuse to believe I know you in the same breath, Set.

[ He lets out a puff of air, almost a huff. His phone is lighting up between them with Walter's messages, so they're running out of time, too. ] Children can't kill or be king.