"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
08-12-2021, 02:24 PM (This post was last modified: 08-12-2021, 02:28 PM by Selaphiel.)
selaphiel
these days i don’t pray when i close my eyes
He has condemned himself to the shadows, just as he had in the beginning.
Este had said she thought nothing was eternal but this feels so much bigger. It feels endless, all-consuming, though he does not yet have a name for what it is. It is not the same suffering, but something else entirely. A darkness that splinters outward from the center of his chest (has he learned yet that there is something strange about the heart? Something not-quite-right about the way it beats? Does he remember when it changed?).
It is an itching restlessness. The feeling that something might go catastrophically wrong at any moment. Because he has watched from some great distance all the ways his friend has changed over time. But he had promised her some time ago that he would not leave her and he hasn’t. She had given her life for him and he understands that he owes her his.
There are so many things he does not understand, Selaphiel. Because, though he has grown into his body and lost whatever physical things identified him as a child, he is still so young. He remembers still the conversation they’d had about the now-king in the days before he had come to Hyaline, how she had been tasked with killing him and how it had occurred to him suddenly that he would kill her first. And he had and here he is now.
But it is not for him to understand, he thinks. So, he stays in the shadows and he will stay there until she calls on him. He will stay in case she should ever need him.
He catches sight of her one sun-dappled afternoon, though, and he remembers the way they had taken together. And perhaps it is because of this memory that he emerges from the place where he has hidden himself away from the light. Or maybe it is something else.
But his heart seizes, bucking against its ribbed cage when he approaches, and his eyes burn with a memory that does not belong to him. “Maze,” he says, quiet, nostalgic.
Not much lingers from before she had been changed, but there are some echoes. The way she still cares for her children and for Bolder (as much as she is capable of it), the way she hesitates over changing Hyaline’s policies on non-shifters to open up the kingdom, and her views on the angelic residents.
Gale occasionally wishes to hunt them, to see what angel tastes like, and every now and then Mazikeen finds herself curious as well. Not enough to act on it, not yet. Both Ryatah and Selaphiel had rooted themselves into her heart through gratitude or friendship and while she no longer feels the same connection, the memories of it persist. Haunting her, encouraging her to avoid them so she does not have to answer the question of what she feels for them now.
Because she is sure it will be nothing at all. Just an emptiness.
There may be a day when she wishes to purge Hyaline of its angels, chase them out so she is no longer plagued with any ghosts of her past self, and the longer she goes without seeing them the longer she can delay that day.
But Selaphiel finds her today and instead of brushing past him or shifting into something that can carry her away, Mazikeen just stares at him and freezes in her wanderings.
So much has changed since they last spoke. How has it only been a year since the death he had warned her of? A mere two years since the eclipse ended?
She is not in danger of tears this time, those things that came too quickly to her before have no place in what she’s become. But hearing her nickname, something that has become rare these days, makes her shadowed heart ache in a strange way. An echo of sadness and pain that instantly makes her annoyed.
“Selaphiel.” His name is not an easy one to spit out, soft and fluid as it is, but she tries anyway. Her eyes are a deeper, redder version of orange than the last time they spoke. The only physical change that happened when Gale had pieced her back together from bits of herself.
“Still haunting the place, I see.”
She aims for indifference in her tone, but it still displays her annoyance. He’d told her once he would not leave her - would he now if he knew how little of his friend remained in the horned mare that stands before him?
(How it had delighted him to hear her say Sela once, because it had meant that they were friends. Because it had taken such a tremendous effort for him to call her Maze that day so soon after the sun had returned and he had self-consciously admitted that the eyes were so sensitive to the light when he’d been born in the dark. And she had invited him to walk with her and they were friends, the proof had been in the way they’d called each other by these abbreviated versions of each other’s long, complicated names.)
The sound of it, Selaphiel, has the opposite effect now.
His heart stutters and seizes, a vise closes around his windpipe, and he exhales a shuddering breath.
There is no ignoring the hint of annoyance in her tone either. (Has he imagined it?
No, he has not imagined it.)
He flinches, visibly recoils.
He does not know what has changed, only that it has.
(Does she blame him for not stopping the death? Can she still feel it the same way he can? With the vicious clenching in the chest, the burning in the eyes? Does she fight for every breath?)
He blinks at her, his friend, understanding that they are not friends anymore. But his loyalty has not changed. It will never change. He owes her his life, even still.
“I told you I wouldn’t leave you,” he tells her, not for the first time, voice unsteady. But it’s the truth and he exhales, long and slow, fighting hard to maintain his composure despite the way everything inside him is collapsing. This is the only thing in which he was ever resolute: his servitude to her.
But he has suddenly been reduced again to the terrified boy he’d been, waiting to be ejected. Has he overstayed his welcome? Is he no longer useful? He knows now that he had not imagined the edge of annoyance in her tone.
She’s pleased when he flinches, glad to have landed a blow when he is inspiring such confusing things inside of her. Though she may not be overly concerned with fairness anymore, this exchange feels appropriate. Gale had removed her affection and she wishes he had taken the memories with it. It is a strange thing, to stand before someone she loved once and feel nothing but the hollowness she’s grown to hate because it reminds her of when there had been nothing there at all. Not even any anger to pull on to shield her from the range of emotions she has no access to at all.
She had loved this boy, hadn’t she? Like everyone she met, he had woven himself into that wild heart of hers. Likely the first time they had met too, when she had saved him and he had tried - and failed - to heal her.
Glowing markings arc down her back as Mazikeen suffers these memories, wondering how it was possible for someone to care to such reckless lengths.
Her ears flatten in annoyance when Selaphiel’s unsteady voice repeats his promise. “The mare that you said that to died again. She isn’t here anymore.” Mazikeen bites back at him in a cold voice before something shifts in her gaze as she sees another blow she can land. Even now, she's sure she will not physically harm him but there are other strikes she can make as her red-orange eyes burn in their intense stare. “Can you sense that death?” She asks him quietly, but there is nothing soft about the words. “Can you feel how he tore into my belly just to vent his frustration over what he turned me into?”
Another memory that aggravates Mazikeen now, even though so much time has passed. She is annoyed that she had let so many into her heart, annoyed that she had let herself be killed.
She lands her blows and he does not bother trying to hide the way he reacts to them. They sink deep, carve the marrow out of his bones, pollute the bloodstream. And he tries and fails to drag in a steadying breath.
She has smelled of death for as long as he has known her. From the very first moment their paths crossed in the darkness. He had known one of them would die and it had been her and he had continued to smell the truth on her. Still, he can smell it. And he had tried to prevent the death that he can feel pulsing in his chest and in the eyes that still burn.
But the death she speaks of now had not been discernible from the rest. He does not feel it in his belly because he had not gotten the chance to warn her. He had not tried to stop it.
He swallows, searching her face. For what, he’s not sure. Any trace at all of his friend, perhaps. But she is gone and he understands that now. But he’s not ready to let go, not yet. Because even if the mare he’d made the promise to is dead, he wants to be the sort of man who keeps his promises. Even if it doesn’t matter. Because there might come a day when they are reunited again and he will be here waiting for her whether or not she wants him still.
He will not fail her because she has never failed him.
So he wilts and he flinches and he recoils but he does not give her what she must really want from him. He does not leave her.
Instead, he goes on looking at her. And his brow is dark with confusion and hurt and his mouth is twisted into some kind of grimace. And he is a thing built to bend but there is strength in him, too. Because he is the son of an archangel and a dark god. He is built to bend, not break.
The quiet pulses between them for a moment before he asks, “what has he done to you?”
There is a plea in his voice but there is a strength there, too. As if he might drag his friend out of the depths of whoever this is standing in front of him.
“You could die a hundred deaths, Mazikeen, but you are still you,” he tells her, “I don’t know what he’s done to make you doubt that, but… I know who you are at the heart of it. You can’t hide that from me.”
Each flinch is less sweet than the last, which only aggravates Mazikeen more. She wants her blows not just to land, but to chase him away. To make him move so she no longer has to face his icy stare that is somehow still warmer than what burns inside of her.
What has he done to you
This question is going to echo in her mind for a long time, she can already tell. Mazikeen can name every single emotion that Selaphiel should be inspiring inside of her, all the ones she no longer feels. It is so easy to see that this would have broken her heart once, that stupid reckless heart of hers. But where that desolation once would have been is now only anger. It’s all she has and it aids her as she becomes a giant bear, her fur black except where her markings glow. She snarls at him, at herself, wanting both to tear out his eyes for looking at her like that and her ears for hearing his words.
But her claws only flex in the soil for now, as though holding onto the earth could hold her together.
Why couldn’t he just leave.
“You’re wrong.” Her words do not carry her fury - they are hollow things. Without her anger, she is empty, and she wants Selaphiel to see this. Wants him to know that there is no point in clinging to what had been torn out of her - wants him to understand that there is no hope she can ever be the same. “There is nothing in my heart. He took it all from me.”
His resolve should wilt in the face of the beast she becomes.
But he is foolish in his loyalty and he remains, steadfast. Even as her claws sink into the soil between them. Even when she tells him that he is wrong, when she says that there is nothing at all left of the friend he’d known.
(And he does wonder where things went sideways, certainly. When it became the father of her children who did the killing instead of the other way around. And his own heart clenches like a fist with regret because he could not tell her when to do it. If he could, perhaps this could have been avoided. Perhaps he could have saved her in more ways than one.)
He retreats, but only barely. Because he has never seen a creature like this. But he grits his teeth and stiffens and he stays, even still. She will have to kill him, he thinks, in order for him to abandon her.
(He does not know that the body will not let him die, not yet. Even if she were to sink those terrible claws into the meat of him, if she were to plunge those awful teeth into his throat, the ice in him would rush to heal him before death could truly come for him.
She had sacrificed her life for him for no reason at all once.)
He shakes his head but does not immediately speak. Instead, he simply studies the beast stood before him, seething. And when he does finally speak, it is quiet.
“He has taken nothing from you that you cannot get back,” he says and though it is quiet, it is fierce, “you are stronger than he is.” He doesn’t know this to be true, but he believes it with everything he is.
Selaphiel steps back and Mazikeen cannot resist stepping forward to keep the distance between them the same. She wants his fear instead of his affection, instead of his friendship.
She does not know why her claws continue to flex into the soil instead of his skin. Did she really still care about the rule she had set, protecting the residents hear from being hurt? When Gale had poured bits of his black soul into her had that rule bound her as well as him?
His quiet voice irritates her further and she growls at his kind words, more of her those markings cracking through her black fur, framing her eyes that darken to a deep, rich blood-red in her fury. The idea of getting her emotions back isn’t one she’s ever considered - why would she ever want such a thing? It bothers her that so much of herself has been shaped by Gale until she doesn’t even know who she is without him - she remembers how lost she had felt after biting off his head.
But time had begun to eat away even those remaining echoes of her emotions. Would she even care now if something happened to him? To any of them?
“I don’t want it back.” She flings back at Selaphiel, bristling as her sharp teeth are revealed with a snarl. “I am stronger now than I was then.” There was no doubt about that in her mind. How could she have possibly been stronger before with all that weighed her down, all that kept her stirring and restless? “So many weaknesses. So many pressure points in just your rotten family alone. I wish I never met any of you.”
She does not allow him to retreat.
She matches him step for step, this smoldering beast with her terrible teeth and her terrible claws.
And he cannot tell the stench of this death from any of the others.
Is it her death he smells or his own?
Will she kill him?
There is a tremor in his pulse, a kind of shuddering in his breath, but he does not try to separate himself from her any further. There’s no use, he realizes, because she will only pursue him. He could unfurl his wings and take to the skies but it would only be a matter of seconds before she was after him, he thinks.
So he stays and he stares at her with those pale eyes.
And her scathing words sink bone-deep, kick the air clean out of his chest.
They could have buckled his knees if he’d let them. But he clenches his teeth, eyes burning, and shakes his head just barely. She’s right, he knows. She is more familiar with his weakness than anyone, really. Because she had been forced to come to his aid that day in the darkness when she’d sacrificed her own life to keep him safe.
His nostrils flare and his heart pounds out a staccato beat but he does not allow himself to look away. He doesn’t have it in him to speak with a barbed tongue, so he only shakes his head and says, “you don’t mean that.”
And he narrows his eyes, feigning a bravery that does not quite reach all the way into his pounding heart. He narrows his eyes and takes one small, stilted step toward her, lowering his head to maintain eye contact when he asks, “and since when do you care about power?”
“Oh, I mean it.” Mazikeen tells him with a grin that's hollow to the core, her sharp teeth flashing once again. “Maybe your mother should’ve just let me die, then none of this would have happened.” Not their friendship, not anything that had been born after the eclipse had ended. Mazikeen does not blame Ryatah in the slightest, but it is too easy of a shot to take that she cannot resist it. Twisting herself further and further from the friend that Selaphiel had made and feeling like she can breathe a little easier with the difference.
She is pleasantly surprised when Selaphiel doesn’t back down again, when he meets her gaze and even takes a step forwards. This bravery is not as sweet as his fear, but it’s certainly more interesting. Is there a spine there, under all that ice?
“I’ve always wanted to be stronger than I was. My motives have just changed.” Before, Mazikeen had wanted power and strength so she could protect others from the darkness, from monsters, from whatever came at them. Now she wanted to be those things. Gale’s dreams of chaos are rooted inside of her, clinging to her bones in the shadows he left behind. And that’s the real truth - she isn’t herself anymore at all, she is just an echo of him but she does not yet care about that distinction.
