It was as if nothing had changed.
 
Thranduil was much the same – deceitful, shrewd, cunning, and audacious, sporting the flinty grin, the specious, rebellious sanction, the stance of duplicitous beings concocted from gilded underbellies and seedy inspirations. Deimos still had no fruition, notion, of what transpired between the cogs and whirls, the springs and schemes, the plots and miscreant, mischief notations of the golden stag’s mind; he was certain it was like a spider’s web, with silk forged from steel and ire, with trails and tremors leading down too many rabbit holes. He wondered how much of the dastardly smile was forced – out of spite, out of madness, out of cold-blooded wrath, while the Lord of the North still maintained his frosty, distant composure, away from stone and rubble, but remaining tied to the icy vapors, chilling winds, and remorseless deities of a world they once ruled together. Neither lowered their heads, neither channeled or funneled respect, bravado, or loyalties; perhaps more silent oaths to power, to prowess, to potential, one harboring more skill than the other – Thranduil with his wiles, Deimos with his war. The Reaper did not deign to bow his head to someone who would surely cut it, given half a chance, and maybe the gilded monster felt the same (rage would be enough, simmering, smoldering plumes of irritation, of exasperation, could tumble over the edge of the King’s control, and he’d be a violent tirade, a vicious tempest, again and again, the same vehement song of blood and disaster). The last moments he could remember with the other had been amidst one more ridiculous meeting, where he’d scolded everyone and everything, where he’d commanded and demanded so that someone was in control of the acrimonious tirades.
 
“Miss me?”
 
His first thoughts were instant: no. He didn’t miss the dramatics, the theatrics, the pull and ploys of a character at work, of a stage that always seemed polished, of scenes rendered and tugged from some other world. He didn’t miss the sinuous, serpentine deeds, so surreptitious, so clandestine, so conspiratorial, for his gains, instead of the herd’s. He didn’t miss the utter ridiculousness of some days, new enemies brimming and brewing because of foolish, inept, impulsive actions.
 
But there were some moments he wanted again, simply because Thranduil had mastered abilities the Reaper was lacking. Flawed, faulted, imperfect, scarred, and maimed, the monstrous infidel had always been inadequate in ways others were not (conversation, discourse, diatribes that went on endlessly and without issues was just one talent he’d never snagged). He didn’t have enchantments to hide him from the world, to disguise him as another (he’d always been Deimos the Reaper, known and feared, a shadow on the horizon, a savage cretin on the move, a hunter, a predator, eternally destined to roam with a scythe and a blackened, nefarious heart). He knew the loss of Thranduil had been a blow to the Basin’s credentials and skills in covert operations. The puncturing weight of his gaze landed solely upon the chiseled devil, with his snarky smiles and his Cheshire grins, features never altering, never faltering, from their nonchalant exposition. “Your skills, perhaps.” There, he tilted his head, study in motion, perusing and piercing over the slate of the other figure, checking for new scars, for intangible levels, for ways he could understand why he’d left when the world had seemed right at his daggers, right where he’d wanted it. “I was never told why you left.”