Reynald had a problem.
Well, if he was being honest, he had a whole host of problems- all his friends were dead or insane, he lived in a former beholder’s den under a criminal tavern under the sewers, the end of the world was rapidly approaching in the form of an evil immortal dragon hellbent on destruction, nobody was doing anything about that and was instead obsessing over their own petty local squabbles, and his favorite hair gel hadn’t been produced for over a millennium. But it wasn’t like this was new. And it wasn’t like the end of the world wasn’t something he’d faced before. He’d even faced this exact end of the world before (and it was absolute bullshit that he had to do it again, but whatever).
But there was one problem specifically that was making all the rest of them worse. Which was really exactly how his life always was. He couldn’t just have a nice discrete set of problems! No, he had to have some sort of shitty problems stew, where all the problems leaked into each other and, like…. okay, so he didn’t know how stew worked. But he knew how problems worked. Oh boy did he. So, his problem. It was a fun one! Remember the part about all his friends being dead and/or insane? Yeah! Not great for a whole host of reasons, but the most currently pressing one being: who the FUCK was he supposed to talk to.
Reynald had gotten used to a certain caliber of camaraderie back with the Guild of Glorious Dorks. The people there were stable, smart, understanding, and most importantly, if they judged him for his bullshit they kept it to themselves. Sure, Reynald might not come across as the kind of guy to ask for a lot of emotional support, but he was mortal, wasn’t he? A motherfucker needed a friend now and then. Not just for the sappy shit. That was nice, and he did appreciate it, but Reynald knew he did his best work as a member of a team. Whether it was Namé when they were kids, Shelk the Invisible training him to be the best swordsage in the known universe, or his unstoppable team, the strike force that the Guild sent out when shit was real bad. Even after he’d burned all his bridges, he’d still had Cyrus and Ivan, two of his closest friends, the two people he’d always want to have at his back. Those weeks of frantic world-saving had been awful, but being with them had helped him come to terms with the self sacrifice necessary to become a Doomlord and seal Caminus away at the cost of everything he held dear. They were all he’d had then. They'd gotten through it together.
And now look at him. His social circle was pretty fucking limited by the fact that he was a thousand-year-old mythical villain, and the only people who even knew he existed were the absolute fucking worst kind of people. Almost all of them were over-sympathetic do-gooders who helped old ladies across the street and listened to other people’s problems all fucking day. Sure, there were plenty of those in the Guild, but they’d earned the right to be “understanding” and “sympathetic” by virtue of having known him since he was a shithead teen. Also because it was a lot more palatable to get sympathy from someone who could kick your ass six ways to Sunday. Since that paladin left, Reynald was pretty sure he could take any of the remaining Harpers with both hands tied behind his back and both feet shoved up his own ass. So, follow the logic here- if he talked to anyone about his problems, they’d be very understanding and maybe even pity him, which would induce in him the kind of rage that could level cities, and then because he had nothing really stopping him, he would in fact level the city. Which was not the goal. There were some really nice patisseries in Trailsend and it’d be a shame to see them reduced to smoking rubble just because he had an aneurysm from someone saying “I’m sorry to hear you’re going through that.”
He was snapped out of his thoughts by a pounding at the door. “Hey! Quit doing that to the wall!” Blinking, Reynald tuned back in to what he was doing. There was a knife in his hand. There was a wall in front of him. There were ten or so knives embedded deep into the stonework of said wall. Hmm. Yeah, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened here.
“Fuck off, the walls can handle it,” he snapped back on autopilot. It was an easier response than figuring out why his automatic reaction to being bored and depressed was “fling knives hard enough to ventilate a solid foot of limestone.”
Apparently deciding that privacy was lost on a man threatening to stab her walls to death, Enna slammed the door open. It probably wasn’t because she was mad. Reynald had actually never seen her open a door carefully. Possibly she just wasn’t used to them- Ivan still did shit like that after getting raised exclusively in dragon caves and barbarian tents. Or at least he used to. There was no telling what he did now. Asshole.
Enna folded her arms and whistled low at the fruits of his artistic expression. “Dude, are those my fucking butter knives?”
“Technically not anymore,” Reynald replied. “They’re now part of the fortifications of your compound. You’re welcome.”
She rolled her eyes at him, and good goddamn did it make him want to strangle her. Could a man get some fucking respect around here for sealing himself away to save the world from a murder-dragon? “What do you want?” he groaned, flinging the knife currently in his hand and slumping down further in the chair he was sitting in.
Enna didn’t even flinch as the knife whizzed past her shoulder to stick in the far wall of the kitchen. Dickhead. “You’ve been in that room for like two days, if you don’t come out you’re gonna be even more of an asshole than usual the next time I run into you in the kitchen.”
Reynald opened his mouth to reply, then closed it and frowned. An idea was taking shape in his head. Not a good idea, but the days of him making good decisions were about a millennium behind him.
Back with the Guild, Namé had had a little stuffed bird that she kept in her study. It was round, made of felt, and had a little bell inside it that jingled when he shook it. He was pretty sure it was supposed to be a cat toy. When he’d asked her why she kept it on her desk, she’d told him that it was her best collaborator. And when he’d done puppy-dog eyes at her and said that he thought he was her best collaborator, she’d laughed and explained that if she was ever stuck on a problem, she would explain that problem to the bird, running through every issue she was having, until the act of saying it out loud helped her realize where the problem was. And then he had made a joke, something self-deprecating, and then she’d joked back with a gleam in her eye and put a hand on his thigh, and he’d leaned in and-
Okay, enough memory lane bullshit. There was a point to this. The point being, if he couldn’t talk to his friends, and he didn’t have a cat toy, he could find something similar. And lucky for him there was a big slab of meat right there with the approximate intelligence of a bundle of felt. Reynald dropped the frown off his face and replaced it with what was hopefully a charming smile. “You know what, Enna? You’re absolutely right.”
Reynald had spent a lot of time shitting on this century’s lack of basic amenities, but he had to admit that they had somehow managed to pass down the important things, like brewing and distilling. He squinted at the glass he was holding. “And I have to put the salt on the back of my hand?”
“Yeah, it’s basically a legal requirement. From like, the Shot Police.” Enna held up her glass of foul-smelling clear liquid. “Ready?”
Reynald looked suspiciously at his own shot glass. Well, it probably wouldn’t kill him. “Yeah, sure.”
“Three! Two! One!” In unison they tipped back their glasses. Reynald inhaled at the wrong time and began choking on the extremely bitter liquor. Enna burst into laughter as he doubled over, his eyes and throat burning. Of fucking course. He felt a strong hand slapping his back, which did absolutely nothing to dislodge the foul liquid in his windpipe. He coughed, tried to wipe his mouth on the back of his hand, was suddenly and unpleasantly reminded that he’d just dumped a bunch of salt on it, and began swearing in every Infernal dialect he knew. Enna, still laughing, poured him another shot.
“Maybe don’t worry about the salt and lemon on this one?” she said, tossing hers back without so much as a grimace and flopping down on the couch across from him. This was such a monumentally stupid idea. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had alcohol. Can you lose alcohol tolerance while bound in thousand-year stasis? Who knows! The concept of “doing shots” was a new one, too- apparently the near-total collapse of civilization had inspired some ingenuity for fun new ways to drink it all away. Silver lining.
He looked down at the tiny glass on the table in front of him. Was he willing to go through with this sober? He was not. Reynald tipped back the glass, right way down this time. It tasted like absolute shit, but most importantly, it tasted like him being tipsy very soon. Okay. Fuck it. Bad choices time.
“So.” Shit, he hadn’t thought of an opener for this. Enna raised her eyebrows at him. Based on the level of spirit in the bottle, she’d managed another shot while he wasn’t looking. That was good. It meant she was way less likely to remember the absolutely awful conversation they were about to have.
“You, uh.” He could do this. He could start a normal goddamn conversation. He’d been the second-best infiltrator the Guild had, able to insert himself in any situation like he belonged there, right up until the point the knives came out. He could do this. What was a good neutral conversation topic?
“What’s the deal with you and Madison?” Yup. Nailed it.
Enna blinked at him. “What do you mean?” She stretched and sat up, resting her arms across the back of the couch.
“I mean, you guys are-“ Reynald waved his hand through the air like he was brushing away a fly. “You spend like, a lot of time together.” And gazing at each other when the other one wasn’t looking. And giving each other a wide fucking berth unless there were at least five other people in the room. It was gross.
“Hm.” Enna tilted her head to the side. “Short version or long version?”
There was no way he was listening to whatever the long version was. It probably involved a lot of hands nearly brushing and cheeks burning with concealed passion and, like, pining. “Short.”
Enna stretched again, arms reaching high above her head, wincing when her back popped. “Uh, short version is we were kinda dating but I didn't realize it, and then I fucked up and acted like a huge idiot, and then she dumped me, and then I was a big asshole about it, and then I realized I was being an asshole, so now we’re friends again.” She shrugged. “That’s pretty much it.”
That was definitely bullshit. Enna never shut up about her when she wasn’t around. “So you’re over each other?”
Enna grunted and leaned forward to pour herself another shot. “Oh yeah, definitely.” She swallowed the liquor, not looking at him. Reynald let the silence stretch while he waited for the other half of that statement.
“I mean, she’s definitely over me. I, uh. I said some shit to her that pretty much made sure of that.” Not likely, considering the way Madison had to turn her whole body away whenever Enna did anything that flexed her biceps, but Reynald wasn’t about to snitch on her. “I said that, uh, I’d never loved her and that she was stupid for thinking I did. Which was pretty wrong! Um, on both counts.” She sighed. “But, well. Didn’t realize it until after I’d already said it. So now she thinks I never cared about her, and I’m-“ Enna spread her hands out in front of her, at a loss for words.
Reynald could fill in the gaps. Madison had been hurt by whatever Enna had said, but she had still had lingering feelings for Enna. Enna probably hadn’t apologized, she’d probably just picked up the same place they’d been in before they’d started sleeping together. And Madison had let her do it, because she’d been holding out hope that Enna would feel the same way eventually, and now they were trapped in a fucked-up tragedy loop. “You don’t know how to go back.” Reynald picked up his glass, considered it, and then set it back down. It wasn’t affecting him yet, but maybe he could do this sober. “And you don’t know how to explain what you meant, why you were doing what you did, so it’s too late now.” He slouched back in his chair. “I mean, maybe it’s not a bad thing. Sometimes it’s for the best.” Sometimes it’s what you deserve. Sometimes you see the person you love most in the world looking at you with pain and anger and betrayal, and you have to look them in the eye as you push them away, because if you can endure that then you can endure anything. If he could hurt her, he could do anything for the sake of saving the world. If you burn all the bridges behind you then there’s nowhere left to go but forward.
“What? No, I definitely explained it.” Reynald blinked, then looked up at Enna, confused. “Yeah, I realized I was being a huge asshole so I talked to my friends and they helped me figure out the best way to apologize. Then I sent a message to Madison so she could back out of it without seeing me if she wanted to, and she said it was fine, and then we had a talk about why we said what we said and how I made her upset, and it really helped me understand how to treat her better in the future. It was a really good talk!” Enna was grinning that huge idiot grin she had on her face every time she talked about Madison. “I just, like, really appreciated her being so open with me after the way I’d treated her, and being emotionally vulnerable in return was like the least I could do. That’s why we’re such good friends now!”
“Wh-“ Who had taught her those four-fucking-syllable words???
“Yeah, I feel bad for not telling her I still have feelings for her, it’s basically the only thing I keep from her now. But I don’t want to make her life more complicated, you know?” She rubbed the back of her neck, apparently embarrassed, but still smiling. “It’s like, I’ve already put so much on her plate, I just want to make things easier for her from here on out. Cause she’s really great, and she deserves it.”
Reynald squinted at her. What in the actual hells. “And that went…. well?”
“Oh for sure! Honestly, this is better than where we were at before she dumped me, cause at least we both know we’re on the same page.” She grinned at him. “And, because you got to ask me an invasive personal question, now I get to ask you one.”
“Fuck no, absolutely not,” Reynald snapped. “That’s not even a little bit how this works.”
She raised her eyebrows at him again. Fucking infuriating. “Pretty sure that’s how it works, dude! We sit in the living room at midnight-thirty, we do shots, we talk about our personal lives. I talked about mine, now we talk about yours. That’s being friends!”
“Uuuugghhhhhh.” Reynald sank further into his chair. This was not going how he’d planned. Was it too much to ask for Enna to be too drunk to listen to him? “There’s nothing to ask about. You already know all my shit from the legends.” He kicked his feet up onto the table and slouched far enough down to be horizontal. He could bail out, just phase through the chair and be back in his room in the time it’d take Enna to blink. Or he could also not do that.
“Hmmmmmm.” Reynald didn’t like the way she was drawling that out, and when he looked back up at her he REALLY didn’t like the way she was smiling at him. “I dunno, it seems like there have been some… developments?”
“In what,” he said flatly.
“Maybe in the… relationship department?” She was now waggling her eyebrows at him. He was in hell.
“Go drown yourself in acid, no there aren’t.”
“Okay, okay!” Enna held up her hands in joking surrender. “Completely unrelated question, then. What’s the deal with you and Baruun?”
Reynald sighed. “Baruun’s…. he’s fine.” The guy had a very obvious crush on him, which was unfortunate for Baruun but there was no accounting for taste.
“Kind of cute, in like a stabby way?”
Reynald rolled his eyes at her. “In case you didn’t notice, we’re all going to die of Giant World-Ending Dragon sometime soon. I’m not even thinking about that.”
“Aw come on, that’s the best time to think about it!” Enna gestured widely to indicate the whole room. “If you think you’re gonna die, then what do you got to lose? Might as well go out having tapped that tight little gnome ass.”
He groaned and dragged his hands down his face. “I am begging you not to talk about Baruun’s ass right now.” This was hell, this was divine retribution for his sins, he had one hundred percent earned this and now he was paying for his entire misspent life in one torturous moment. “How do you even know his ass is tight, do I even want to know how you know?”
Enna took another sip of her liquor. “The guy spends a lot of time riding around on my shoulders, I know his ass better than mine at this point. But I think I’m not the one he really wants to be riding, you know what I-“
“If you don’t stop wiggling your eyebrows I am GOING to stab you again.”
“I’m not the one who wants to get stabbed by your knife-“
She didn’t even see the pillow move before it hit her right in the face. Not giving her time to react, Reynald sprang over the table, leaping with arms outstretched to hopefully strangle her to death. But he misjudged her center of gravity- the horns were probably heavier than he thought- and the entire couch tipped over backwards, sending them into a sprawling heap. Shit, maybe the alcohol had actually kicked in and he just hadn’t noticed because he was sitting down. Enna took advantage of his confusion and grabbed him around the torso, flipping them both over in an attempt to pin him.
Reynald was a trained killing machine who had learned from the best rogues and assassins who had ever walked the earth. His deadly instincts had been activated. In a manner befitting the leader of the Doomlords, he squawked like an angry cat and started kicking. Reynald heard an “oof” as one of his feet connected with her chest. Her grip slackened just enough for him to wiggle his arms free. He snagged another pillow as she realized she was escaping, but her attempt to grab him again did her no good. He was already whacking her on the face with his newfound weapon. Master of combat.
She managed to swat away the pillow, but that freed him up even further and he managed to get enough leverage to really smack her good. He tried to pull the pillow back for another swing- nobody challenges Reynald Al-hagir to a pillow fight and lives- but it was yanked out of his hands. Enna yelled, her head jerking to the side. There was the loud rip of tearing fabric. He fell backwards onto the coushions and propped himself up, dizzy, to see Enna sitting up and staring at the pillow impaled on her horn. She stared at him. He stared at her. Then he pitched over, shoulders shaking, holding his stomach and laughing harder than he had in centuries. Enna sprawled backwards, her laughter booming off the stone walls and only slightly muffled by the pillow still stuck over half her face. “You- it- that’s what you get!” Reynald wheezed. “You fucking thought you could go against me? Fuck- I’ve razed entire countries with a tasteful throw pillow-“ It was hard to be intimidating when you were struggling to get air in your lungs. Enna managed to rip the pillow off and toss it at him, and he didn’t even stop it, just let it bonk off his head as he laughed and laughed.
“Bet you, fuckin- bet pillows used to be made of like, rocks and shit back in the olden times-“ Enna had her arm thrown over her eyes as she convulsed on the floor.
“No, fuck you, pillows were better a millennium ago-“
“You sound like every old guy I ever worked for! Reynald, you’re old as hell, talkin’ about-“
“Listen, you had to go uphill both ways to go to the Guildhall-“
At that they both collapsed into helpless laughter again. Reynald fell onto his side, gasping for air. Enna managed to catch her breath, and by the time he had too she was propped up one one hand and grinning at him. “I think you fucked up the couch,” she said.
“You’re the one who knocked it over,” he replied, a smile still on his face.
“You tried to tackle me!” She rolled into a crouch and stood up to survey the damage. “Man, I’m gonna deal with that tomorrow.” She folded her arms, looking over the ruination he had wrought- the couch on the floor, the eviscerated pillow, the liquor bottle he’d knocked over when he dove at her that had spilled all over the table- and yawned. “You owe me for the bottle, old man.”
“Owe you what? How much does a bottle of acidic horse piss go for these days?”
Enna snorted. “How do you know what horse piss tastes like?” He could hear her whisper ooh, gottem under her breath as she leaned down to pick up the scattered shot glasses. “Since you don’t have any fuckin money, and if you did you’d owe me rent anyway, you gotta do community service to work it off!”
“Fuck you, I’m not gonna-“
She steamrolled over him like she hadn’t even heard him. “So, legally, you have to hang out with us tomorrow.” She shot him a sideways glance as she was heading towards the kitchen. “We’re getting lunch, you gotta come with, you’re gonna experience sunshine-“
Reynald glared at her back, all good humor evaporated off of his face. “You can’t make me do anything.”
“Yeah, I know!” she called back over the clatter of glasses in the sink. “But it’ll be fun!”
He scowled and laid back down on the sideways couch. Was he supposed to have fun, here at the end of the world? What was even the point-
“And we’re gonna get crepes!”
Okay. Well. Maybe he’d let her drag him out. Just for a little bit.
Author's Notes:
Written 12/4/2019. Enna and Reynald have a very fun sibling/antagonistic relationship.