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It did cross his mind to speak to Thancred.
Arkao remembered Thancred in that time, after Lahabrea had used his body as a vessel. All the drinking he did, as though he might perish the moment he was left to a sober thought. And now here he stood—one of the most resilient and self-assured men Arkao had ever met. What caused the snap? What turned self-loathing misery to getting up, picking yourself up, and getting on with it?
But when the group turns in for the night, wanting to get some rest before heading back to Sharlayan, Arkao goes to his own room, alone. He aches in new places. Between Terium, to dinner with Zenos, to Mare Lamentorum—it has been perhaps the longest, most exhausting day the system has had in a while.
As Arkao manages concern of the final days at arm's length, still numb to the fact, and hoping to get some sleep—the anxiety rises higher, like bile in his throat.
Zenos. In his body.
Feeling every part of him. The way his heart beat in his chest. The warm breath on his lips. The cold tips of his ears. The scars that marred his wrists and abdomen.
Arkao sits at the foot of the bed he was given as he and Domin look down at their bare body in the dim lamplight. Domin guides Arkao along, moving their hand slowly, gently over themself. Pressing the familiar pads of their fingers into skin, touching here and there. Trying to find anything, anything.
In the end, they turn up with nothing. Not a single sign that Zenos had ever been inside them. Yet it still feels hollowing. They are used to sharing a body, of course, but never with someone else, and never while they themselves were not in it, but a different body. Domin has been seething, but Arkao, Arkao is utterly fucked up about it. Though the specific situation is new, the nature of it is not. His stomach is in knots. Looking at himself, he feels alien in his skin. The long limbs and chest that rose and fell do not belong to him anymore.
Arkao finds himself, for the first time since she went dormant, utterly aching for Isa. Without her, a vital functionality seemed to be missing, and he did not realize it until now, when it was too late. Not that he could have saved her. Not that he should have. And still he felt a pang in his gut that she was not here to kick this mess he'd made of himself back into the shape of a human.
Even had Zenos led a virtuous life besides,
Domin could tear his pretty blond head off for this.
They give up their search. Domin reclothes the body against the biting Garlean cold.
"You need to sleep," Domin keeps reminding Arkao.
Arkao ignores him many times, before finally shaking their head. "Not now…"
Domin digs their nails into the blankets of their cot. "I helped you look over our body. There's nothing more we can do," he thinks. Then, out loud: "Stop whimpering like a kicked lapdog and go to bed."
For the span of a few heartbeats, Arkao remains staring emptily at the ground. But then he does as he's told.
As Arkao lays their head down, Domin adds, "You don't need Isa." A pause. "We don't need them."
Arkao says nothing.
"If we had Isa—"
"Don't want to talk about it…"
"—the amount of times we've been poisoned by now would surely increase tenfold. And the amount of times you got—"
"Stop it," Arkao snaps.
Domin stops. Content, at least, that Arkao was assertive. Proof in itself that Arkao did not need Isa to be strong. He just needed him.