"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
A smile toys at the edges of his mouth when she snaps at him over the nickname and his eyes light up. It feels like a chink in the armor, something that he wants to worry at like a loose tooth—like a wound. The shadows begin to swirl around his legs and he watches her with a smile that turns heated, a challenge. “Why don’t you like me calling you that, Maze?” he lets his tongue dwell on the nickname, rolling it on his mouth like a delicacy, savoring the simple syllable of it before releasing it into the air.
“I like calling you that,” he says as he takes a step forward to match the one she takes. The space between them is crowded now, and he feels her presence more acutely. Can imagine that he feels the breath that whistles between her teeth. “Maze,” he says it again and flicks his glance up to her, snagging her gaze. There’s nothing for a moment, and then two, just the sound of them breathing.
And when she speaks, the words like a gutshot, he swallows that pain down.
It wasn’t anything he didn’t deserve.
He’d dwell on the ache that pours through him later.
“I have few talents, you know that,” his lips quirk up in the corner of his mouth into a crooked smile. Something honest and vulnerable in the way that he shrugs, the way he tucks away the wounds inflicted by the truth she hurls at him. “But I would stay now for you, Maze,” again, her name rolling off his tongue. There’s another beat as she invites him in and before he steps through, he offers a confession.
“That day in the meadow,” he lets the memory slip into her mind—when they had been young and brash and he had stepped toward her as he does now. “You called it a game.” He angles his golden head to the side, letting the memory continue to play out in both of their minds. “I never understood why, but I think I do now.” His heart pounds in his chest and he wishes his magic was enough to stop that. Wishes it was enough to pour some of that emotion back into her. “It was a game, but not the way you think.”
His mouth pulls down in the corner, his face growing more somber.
“It would have been very real for me, Maze. You always were.”
And without saying anything else, he accepts her invitation and peers inside of her. The feelings that come are hard and fast and he knows his breath hitches, his eyes going cloudy the further that he looks within her. There’s something like ash coating his tongue. Death that roars in the back of his mind. His magic pounds through him, desperate to pull him back, but he ignores it and looks further in instead.
There’s rage. Emptiness. Death.
None of it makes sense and so little of it feels like her.
It feels like him.
He swallows and his chest heaves, eyes still unseeing, body immobile. His companion wakes on his back and begins to yelp and scratch at him, but he doesn’t return—not immediately. Not until he has satisfied his curiosity. Not until the dread stitches itself onto his very bones. And before he goes, he plants a single emotion in the back of her mind. Something warm and as golden as the sun he never sees. Something made up of his curiosity when first seeing her. The feeling of kinship that had frightened him. The awe at her strength when she’d torn him apart. The endless appreciation for what she’d done for his brother.
It all melds together and he plants it in her mind like a flower, the bloom unopened.
He retreats from her mind only then, his eyes unfogging, a sheen of sweat covering him. He swallows hard as his companion settles against the shallow cuts along his back and finds her gaze again.
Seconds pass between them before he finally offers one thing:
“There is plenty to stay for still.”
so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)
Mazikeen can see her mistake in the way Firion’s eyes light up and each use of her nickname feels like a cut. She snarls when he steps closer but does not back away not even when she can feel the breath that carries the name only her friends had ever called her. The one that had felt like such a triumph when Selaphiel had said it for the first time. The one she had given Firion back when she had been a stupid girl stuck as a fawn, back before he had ran. The one Sabal had cried into her skin when Mazikeen had lain in a pond of her own blood by Hyaline’s shore without eyes or a heart. The one Ryatah had whispered softly when she had come to save her for a second time.
She hates every single memory tied to that name, hates how nice it sounds on Firion’s tongue as he taunts her with it. Mazikeen isn’t made for nice things any more. She’s made for darkness and rage and curses and nothing else. Gale’s contentedness to stay in Hyaline may infuriate her but at least he doesn’t make her feel like this. There is no dredging up of past selves with him, they were both willing to leave those corpses alone.
Now she feels the same way she had in the meadow - like an animal being backed into a corner as he grins at her - so she’s surprised when that memory is pulled into her mind with intense clarity. Her red-orange widen, ears twitching at the combination of his voice and the memory. How full of life she had been then, with only a few scattered scars and her eyes dancing with a different, brighter fire. Only the anger is the same, burning hot in response to Firion and so easily needled into existence.
Mazikeen hisses a wordless response to his words but they brand themselves in her mind all the same. Even now she was so sure of his indifference, had attacked him because she believed that simple touch had meant nothing to him when it had meant so much to her and she wanted to escape that pain (and only found more).
She does not know if she believes he's telling the truth but she is saved from having to answer when he enters her mind. Mazikeen leaves her entire self open to him. There is nothing there, nothing to hide. She watches as his breath hitches, his eyes cloud, and she wonders if he can feel the way she considers trying to kill him again or if that means she’ll have to suffer his consciousness inside her forever. The satisfaction would not be worth that price.
Her breath is ragged when he returns into himself and she stares, waiting for the agreement that there is nothing, and infuriated by what he says instead. There is plenty to stay for still.
Mazikeen does something she’s not sure she’s ever consciously or willingly. She steps back and she lets the desire to run course through her. She could grow wings and fly away from Firion and his words, away from anyone who ever knew her. When she speaks, there is plenty of venom in the words but they are far quieter than she intends as she shakes her head like she can erase his words. “I don’t want you to stay.”
She can feel that something has changed in her mind but it remains obscured. There is something else in the emptiness apart from the rage but though she searches she cannot find it. She unconsciously shifts, her mind turning her into a white panther. “Take it back.” His words, his confessions, whatever he had changed in her. “TAKE IT BACK.” She screams before she shifts her weight backwards. But when her clawed forelegs come up from the ground she doesn’t lunge for him. With a wordless roar, she digs into her own skull like she can tear out her ears so she will never have to hear that nickname on his tongue again or find whatever he had planted and rip it out.
The pain is unbearable and intoxicating all at once, everything she thinks she deserves and enjoys, but she does not close her eyes - not even when blood drips into her pale lashes - because if there was any truth to Firion’s bullshit this would be hurting him too and she wants to see it.
He is expecting the violence and no small part of him prepares for it. He braces himself for impact. Readies himself for what he is sure is coming. The feel of claw and tooth. The way she knows how to lunge and go for the softest parts. He knows that he could use magic to defend himself, but he is not certain that he will. Not certain that he will not once again offer himself up for her to ravage—to take out whatever fury is building in her in the hopes that it will expunge the poison from her system.
Even when he knows that she is a wildfire and more kindling will only add to it.
A muscle jumps in his jaw as she screams at him and he only shakes his head no, refusing to remove the piece of him that he has left in the back of her mind—the part that blossoms slowly, unfurling at its own pace. But what comes next surprises him and the shock widens his eyes as he sees her shift and then attack herself. There is panic that blossoms in him as he lunges forward without thinking.
First as a panther himself, the form a familiar one. Gold as he always is, his spots remaining. He reaches for her, trying to knock her off balance, and when her feelings of rage and confusion slam into him, he shifts once more. But this time, it’s something without form. It’s golden and slick, a shadow that coats her. He wraps himself around her, latching onto the snow white of her coat and slipping between her own paws and ravaged body. He absorbs each blow and feels it cut through him, only repairing the parts that she slices open long enough to bear the blunt of whatever blow is sure to come next.
And as he touches her, he heals what he can.
The shadows of him sink into her flesh and stitch her together, cauterizing the self-inflicted wounds.
It is exhausting, and more intimate than he expected, but he holds on, and with whatever conscious thought is left, he whispers into her mind. “I’m not leaving, Maze,” this time, her name is not said with a coy smile or a flourish off the edge of his tongue. It’s steady as clings tighter to her, taking her blows.
“And I’m not taking it back.”
so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)
Mazikeen snarls at the golden panther that reaches for her, the pain from the wounds on her head blissful and blinding in the way it empties everything else from her mind. Until there is no other panther for her eyes to focus on anymore, until Firion is without form - coating her like liquid. It stuns her for a blink - this is not something she has faced before but she does not feel the same intrigue and excitement at the new. And then Mazikeen snarls, renewing her attack - trying to pry him away. But no matter how she twists, how she bends and flexes her bones to enable a greater reach, the golden shadow remains tight against her.
He clings to her, heals her, and she winces at his words as if the soft whisper of them is a fire-hot brand against her skin. Her attack turns into a wild frenzy for a few more seconds before it stops. Before she stands still, her breaths coming in gasps and her heart hammering in her chest as it races with her lungs to see which will explode first. Her eyes are wide, rimmed with white where they are nestled amongst gold.
Amongst him.
Some part of her recognizes the intimacy of this and of him inserting himself into her mind. But she cannot focus enough to even contemplate twisting this situation around, to try to find her footing and use it against him. Mazikeen had thought that fear had been one of those things torn out of her, but if not fear then what is it? Rising up inside of her in response to this steadfastness from him that she cannot reconcile with every poisonous thought she’s made herself think over the years so she could shield herself from what she had wanted from him.
She hates that she knows how much she would have found comfort in those words. How desperate she had been for any comfort at all.
This path of her thoughts builds the rage again and the scream that rips out of her is otherworldly. Like when she had she had attacked him the last time he had gotten close, she flashes between forms. This time, she moves so fast she can’t even name the shapes she takes before they are gone.
When there is finally one with wings, she takes off. Without even thinking or checking to see if he still clings to her.
Mazikeen does not have hope anymore but she hopes she leaves him behind.
She does not run from anything but she will run from him today. Like if she just moves fast enough she can escape that sliver of the sun he's left in the back of her mind.
Still, he is surprised by the ferocity with which she fights him now, when his only purpose is to slow her down, to ease her pain, to stay her hand. Had this happened in the first month that the magic had found him, he is not certain he would have held on for more than a shift. Had it happened in the first few months, he would have perhaps managed to hold on for two. But he has had several years to settle into his new power now. Years that have allowed him to explore the edges of it—let it sink into the core of him.
So he is not so easily rattled.
He clings to her every curve, every roping muscle, as she shifts and shifts and shifts. But he feels it begin to exhaust him. Physically, but even more so mentally. To know how ferociously she would fight to rid herself of him. How desperately she would try to keep him from touching her.
(And yet she returns to him. She does not fight him, he thinks.)
Sorrow slices through him. Guilt. Shame. Confusion. It blends into a heady mixture of agony and this is what finally lets him relax his grip. When she takes the shape of wings, he releases her, content that she at least is fleeing and no longer trying to tear herself apart. He falls to the earth as shadow and rises as himself once more, his body now drenched in sweat and his eyes turned a darkened, crushed gold.
His mouth settles into a frown as he watches her fly away and he ignores the thumping in his chest, the way that his head has begun to pound as though he had spent too many hours in the sun.
Before he turns to leave though, he spears one final thought to her.
“You need only think it, and I’ll be there to help.”
A trip wire buried in the golden sun planted in her mind.
A final, parting gift.
so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)
