"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
Fool drags himself back into the center of a memory, Hyaline.
Fool sucks in a sharp, shuddering breath that reeks of Death.
Fool comes apart at the edges under a cover of darkness and thinks about the things that delivered him here. Remember me, she’d said and he had and then she had emerged in the Ruins of some great thing that had come before them and he had blinked at her and then what?
And then what, Selaphiel?
Fool could smell the death on her skin even still and he’d known, known, known, that his heart would never beat the right way. He had known, known, known that he would never be a brave thing.
Coward.
Mazikeen had turned him champion and what had he done? Fled. Fled, fled, fled and hid, hid, hid.
Coward come home to the memories.
Coward makes himself just as scarce as he once had, not fearful now but something else entirely. (He has no fear of being cast out, not anymore. He has been away so long already. So much has changed since the Darkness. He has changed.)
And yet.
And yet, he is still a fool, a coward, such a lowly thing as he creeps through the slanted shadows and remembers.
03-20-2022, 07:41 PM (This post was last modified: 03-20-2022, 08:54 PM by Mazikeen.)
Selaphiel hasn’t been the only one to make himself scarce - Malik had as well. And though Mazikeen had missed them both, she didn’t try to find them. Like the friends and others in her life that faded into the darkness she just kept hoping that one day she’d turn her head and there they’d be.
Which is almost exactly how it happens today, giving the situation a dream-like quality. There’s just no sun rising behind Sela, heralding his return like there had been in her thoughts. Only shadows that seem to bloom beneath the canopy of the forest where she walks, the deep red coat of her youngest daughters flickering in and out of her line of sight as they move around with their own intentions. Playing a game she can’t keep track of or searching for new spring flowers beneath the carpet of leaves.
Her mind is half on them, half splintering into dozens of different directions, when movement catches her attention. Her orange eyes look first to the girls she can just make out, and after confirming that it isn’t them she turns to investigate. It is still her habit to leave the residents of Hyaline alone and not pester them, but curiosity draws her forward and she can’t help but look.
Maybe it isn’t curiosity - maybe there will always be some part of her that needs to check to see if that strange noise is a threat dressed in iridescent blue.
Mazikeen’s heart leaps when she sees the icy-blue and white instead, a smile instantly brightening her orange eyes as she walks a little faster than necessary to greet him. She doesn’t go for the hug she longs for, feeling that same uncertainty that seems to happen every time they reunite. Like maybe this time he’s grown out of such friendly affections. "Still keeping to the shadows after all this time.” The teasing note is so gentle, she cannot bring herself to even feign a sharp tone with him as she instinctively checks for injuries before adding. "I'm so glad to see you, Sela."
(Will it always be so?
Will the death he failed to prevent always set his heart to screaming? Will the eyes always burn?
Will he someday be free of this physical reminder of his failure?)
She moves toward him with an enthusiasm he does not deserve, but he is grateful for the smile she wears. Because it means that she is still Maze and he is still Sela and they are still friends. And he tries for a smile with her teasing, though it is distant and stilted while he nods. It is the best place for him, he thinks but doesn’t say. Because he had tried to make himself useful in the light of day and had failed. Failed her, failed his mother.
(What she must think while she appraises him. While he goes on breathing in the reek of each of her deaths. It is such a hopeless endeavor, he thinks.)
He looks at her a long moment, searching her face. Certainly it is a sincere admission, but he cannot allow himself to believe it. So he summons up that same smile, or the apparition of one, and glances past her to the flash of movement. Children, undeniably hers. Undeniably his brother’s, too. (So what does that make him? Their uncle? He thinks of Bolder, how the young shapeshifter had called him uncle. Something twists darkly in his chest.)
“Congratulations,” he murmurs, nodding in the direction of the girls. It is genuine, if not particularly warm. If nothing else, this serves as a reminder of all of the ways he’d wanted to be useful to her and had not been.
He had not been able to tell her exactly when the time would be right to kill the thing she loved until it was too late. And he had railed against the darkness in her, tried his best to draw the light back out of her. But it had not been enough.
He draws in a shaky breath and swallows. “You’re happy, then,” he half-whispers and finally smiles something sincere.
Selaphiel smiles and it’s such a beautiful thing to see - this creature of ice sends warmth through Mazikeen’s heart. She thinks she should keep it at a simple ‘yes’ - thinks maybe glossing things over would be for the best.
But this is one of her best friends, so she replies honestly. “Some… some days it’s easier to be happier than others. But overall, yes. I am.” She doesn’t understand why speaking of her happiness causes her eyes to shine with the threat of tears so she ignores them. There are still times when nightmares startle her awake, still days when the scent of blood sends her down a path of memories she does not wish to go. But it no longer happens every day and that feels like progress.
Mazikeen still mourns the loss of her former self, the one that existed before the alliance and the eclipse and Gale - the one who was alive with fire that did more than smoulder as ashes - but she is finding that she likes who she is now too, on those good days when she is surrounded by those she loves. When each day carries her a little further away from when she had walked without hesitation into disaster.
There’s a gentleness to her smile as she continues, wishing just saying these words would make Sela believe them. “You’re here so today is one of the good days.” Even if the rest of the day had been stormy or she had been lost in her own torturous thoughts, seeing her dear friend would've been enough to make the rest of it fade away.
She wants to know where he’s been, what it was that drove him out of Hyaline when he had been so determined to stay, but she doesn’t want to press him for information he isn’t willing to give. So instead Mazikeen asks “Want to walk with me for a bit?”
