Why would he do that? He's having so much fun!

The way Seva's voice sounds is just... amazing.

The muscles in his legs twitch and his hips shift minutely from side to side and he holds his breath and gasps for air and holds it again.

“Stop—stop stop not again—”

Beautiful, he's beautiful, precious perfect lovely heartbroken treasure—Ziraga wants to make him suffer like this for hours, bask in his rage and his pain—

He pulls his mouth away just as it's starting to feel like Seva might be about to come, and pins him to the bed and stares into his eyes.

he stopped he stopped maybe i won’t come again maybe i won’t shit on his memory again maybe he’ll just kill me next

Relief, terror, grief, panic.

Then disgust, rage, violation, misery.

and now he’s in here again you’re in here again do you not have enough ways to rape me already GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT

...oh.

Under normal circumstances, Ziraga has exquisite control over his mental contact with his human slaves, probably better control than any other wizard. He has to, because he hates it when he ends up changing something about them by accident, and it's much, much too easy to do if he's not paying close attention.

It's probably been six hundred years since the last time he did something to someone's mind that he didn't fully intend to do.

His careful self-control collapses like a paper castle in the rain.

He loves this beautiful furious terrified boy. This weak soft fragile ephemeral mortal. He doesn't even know his name—he hardly ever bothers learning names, not from people who'll last a hundred years at best if he takes good care of them—but suddenly he's the most important precious perfect thing in the world, suddenly it hurts to be hurting him, it hurts to have ever hurt him—

—he can't be in love, that's stupid—he can't be in love with a human, that's worse—he can't be in love with a human, if the other wizards ever get the faintest inkling of it they'll take his beloved mortal away and torture him to death just to be cruel, just to gain an advantage over Ziraga in the endless game—and he'll break the truce and destroy them over it but that won't solve the problem—

—he can't believe this is happening to him—he can't believe he didn't notice this happening to him—what did he think he was feeling, when he admired his strength, his courage, his anger, when he wanted to dive into his mind and wrap himself in it like a blanket—he should kill him now before the other wizards find out and use it against him—he should kill him now before Seva himself uses it against him, he's pouring his whole heart out into the mind of someone who hates him for very good reasons and it hurts and he can't stop—but he doesn't want to kill him, killing him would be terrible—

—there's probably no solving the hatred without mind control and the prospect of mind control is even more disgusting than usual, he's not doing it, he hurts even thinking about it, but maybe he could at least make the boy less miserable if he tried—it feels very important that Seva be happy and safe and have everything he wants—it's terrifying to care about anyone this much and ten times as terrifying that the person he cares about knows it and hates him—

—and there's still a part of him that wants to hold Seva down and rape him and hear the pretty sounds he makes when he's in pain, but his whole soul flinches from the horror of hurting him like that—he wants Seva to like him, to want him, so they can do beautiful things together, but he is never going to have that, even if Seva might forgive him after a few hundred years he'll be dead long before then and Lord Death does not yield his people to anyone—

All this tumbles through his mind and straight out into Seva's, a torrent of raw emotion, before he finally, finally manages to blink. He's still on top of Seva, still pinning him to the bed, but there's no force behind it anymore and he no longer looks sensual and predatory. He looks lost and sad and frightened and like he may be about to collapse.

He’s choking and shuddering like he’s been stabbed in the gut.

“Get off,” he says, and Ziraga doesn’t need to read his mind to know that he’s lost-terrified-confused-overwhelmed-hurting.

It takes a moment for it to occur to him that he could do that, for him to parse a flat imperative from a human as anything other than an absurdity—but then he does, immediately, and curls up on the other side of the bed, watching Seva in a daze of emotional agony.

...he stares at him across the bed.

Then he starts to laugh — an agonized spasm of a laugh that shakes his shoulders and wracks his body with tremors.

It’s probably a relief when the laughter turns to open sobbing.

...he doesn't... know what to do.

He hasn't felt this lost in centuries.

He wants to comfort him—but—he is not actually able to do that, there is no power over earth or sky or fire or the souls of men that will solve this problem for him—

He cries for almost half an hour straight — sobs until his eyes are dry because he doesn’t have any tears left, until he’s not making any sound anymore, just shaking.

Then he lies down and curls up on the bed, hides his face entirely in his knees.

“...not gonna let me go.”

"??"

“You’re not gonna let me go.”

It’s a little unclear, what let me go really means.

Yes, there's that, and— "I'm not sure how you think you know what I'm going to do about this when I don't have the first clue—"

A bitter laugh.

“Right. Never been in love before. Makes too much fucking sense.”

He makes a frustrated noise.

"...someone's going to find out about you and then you're going to die. And then I'm going to wreck everything taking revenge. Of course I've never been in love before; if I had, you'd know because I would've had to go to war over it."

“...why is any of this happening,” he says, dazed.

"I wish I knew!" He gestures helplessly. "You're—just—" Apparently he has no words for what Seva is just. But whatever it is, it fills him with pain and deep affection.

“A human you stole out of the woods who hates you and won’t do what you want?”

Self-consciously bewildered, plaintive, desperate: "Yes!"

“...you couldn’t bring me back if someone killed me?”

He frowns thoughtfully.

"It... hasn't been done. I'm not sure if it can't be or if no one's cared to try."

"Could you bring him back, if you tried?"

"There are reasons we don't try. And even if there's a way to do it that would work, I don't know what that way is. But... I'd try it anyway, if it was you, I'd try everything I could think of." He frowns slightly. "It would... be a bad idea, but I would."

"–why am I good enough to bring back if he's not?"