[private] you'll wish for time to turn back around

[Nashua]

stars when you shine, you know how i feel
oh freedom is mine

Nashua offers his forgiveness because what is the alternative?

He'd be a liar (and a poor one) if he didn't admit to the complications that stared so plainly back at him. Nash wasn't blind to the ache behind Gale's eyes. And he wasn't immune to the shame that peered out behind Elio's. It makes him think of the anger that he saw in Wherewolf and his tenacity to lash out when helped was offered. It makes him think of glowing Yanhua and the sister he never knew, Aela.

This is the only family that Nashua knows. It is broken and fragmented and he will cut himself on them again and again because the alternative is to give up.

So Nash tries.
He tries reaching out to his older brother. He tries lifting his spirits by broadening his smile when Elio speaks. Because it wasn't that hard to do when they are trading boyhood nicknames and speaking of simpler times. The only tremor in his smile comes when he thinks that his red-striped brother will apologize again. If he does, Nashua might even think of braving the Mountain for the second time. At that moment, he thinks he would do anything to wipe the pain away from Elio's masked face. He can heal but Nash knows that the kind of healing he could do would never be able to take away the pain that Elio harbors.

"I'm sorry," he tells him. Sorry for the jest he had played in Taiga all those years ago. Sorry for not trying to find him sooner. Sorry for the Father they shared and for the Mother that Elio lost. Nashua's face - normally so boyish  - changes to a rare emotion for the chestnut pegasus; the lines of it fall away to expose a vulnerability that makes him appear older. He feels Elio's uncertainty palpitating between them and Nashua braves the unstable ground of this conversation because this is his family; his brother.

"Healing," Nashua says softly. "Parts of Taiga didn't escape the flames but there is talk of trying to turn those open spaces into gardens." The chestnut pegasus turns his face away from Elio and stares out between the trees, contemplating his next words as he searches the shadows of the forest. What Yanhua had told him during his last visit to Taiga left Nashua with the assumption that wildflowers wouldn't be the only new additions to the Redwood forest come spring. A smile finally starts to break on Nash's pale lips - quirked to one side - at the thought.

"I don't think Yan has stopped growing," he half-jokes and then tilts his head towards his elder brother. The two pegasi were of a similar height and as the sunlight glinted off Elio's stripes, the younger one was reminded again of how much the red-winged pegasus resembled their sire. Despite the way his face has softened with affection, there is a knot in his throat at the reminder. Nash swallows it down and tells @[elio] about more immediate things that he pulls from his mind: his travels to Tephra and Islandres, a pale girl he encountered one windswept day in Nerine, finding Gale and meeting Aedan, Leilan becoming Freyr of the North.

"And you?" Nashua finally asks, concerned despite the teasing glean in his emerald eyes. "How have you been?"

NASHUA

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