"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
She couldn’t leave this meeting to chance, or she might lose her nerve. So Mazikeen takes to the skies as an unremarkable gull and seeks out Selaphiel as the sun gets closer to sinking behind the mountain peaks of their home.
Their last conversation could have gone so much worse, but it still twists her stomach to reflect back on it. To hear the icy venom she had shot at him, to remember the way she had grinned and felt a strange form of joy when he had flinched from her. Now she is so proud of the way he had stood up to her and it is not difficult to hope that there was a way to salvage their friendship. It had only been just beginning, but he meant so much to her.
When she finally spots him below she doesn’t let herself hesitate. She descends, landing nearby but not too close and immediately shifting back into herself while her heart lodges itself somewhere in her throat as her pulse begins to race with nerves. She’s different once again, only this time instead of more scars scattered across her coat there are none at all. Her eyes are once again that old, bright orange. Shining all the more for the tears that begin to prick at the corners of them.
She’s starting to get sick of crying again, though there never seems to be an end to the excuses for it.
“Sela.” She means for the word to be strong enough to call out to him but her voice cracks on those syllables and it ends up being little more than a whisper in the warm evening air. Firion wouldn’t let her apologize to him, but she intends to repeat those words often to the stallion in front of her (when had he grown up?). Just as soon as her voice starts to work again.
He cannot breathe.
He cannot breathe without swallowing the awful stench of death.
A new death. His mother’s death.
He cannot escape it because it lives inside him. It has sunk into the meat of his lungs. There is no breath without the reminder that she is gone and there had been no one there to save her.
And he could have gone. He could have cast himself into the forest because there is no mother here, there are no friends here. But he stays for reasons he does not understand. Perhaps because this is where his mother drew her last breath.
And everything is so murky, everything is so heavy, and he has not felt so dreadfully overwhelmed by the enormity of all of these things since he was young. Since he’d staggered to his sister’s side, curled up against her, and asked her if she thought the suffering would ever end.
It has not ended. It has only gotten worse.
It is all he can do simply to stand where he stands, practically swaying beneath the weight of it all. And then a bird descends and he shifts his focus in its direction, wondering what has brought it out of the sky. But it’s no bird at all. Mazikeen springs forth from it and he exhales a shuddering sigh.
He does not have the heart to fight. Not now. He had been someone else entirely then. He is tired, grief-stricken. He turns to leave, to avoid her, let her think him a coward. But he stops short at the sound of his name, soft and cracked clean through the middle, and he shifts his attention back to her face, her body, unmarred.
“Maze?” he asks. But he does not allow himself to hope.
Selaphiel begins to turn away from her and her heart twists. It’s certainly what she deserves. For now, though, he stops and she feels a flicker of hope.
And then her nickname in his voice erases what little chance there had been that Mazikeen wouldn’t cry and the tears that had been shining in her eyes begin to fall. Even though it is frustrating, even though now and then she does still hide what she is feeling so it will not weigh on anyone else, she has not yet started to wish for the emptiness again. She had caused pain and she deserved to feel it now - and the shimmering moments of happiness when they come around are worth it.
She nods quickly, and when she goes to speak again a small sob chokes out before she finds her voice. “Yeah. It’s me, Sela. I’m…. I’m...” Back? Better? As though having her emotions ripped out of her had been a vacation or a disease she just needed to recover from.
She takes a step forward but hesitates before drawing any closer. Everything, including the affection she feels for Sela, is shining and over-bright in contrast to the last year, but she knows that they had really only just become friends before everything had slid sideways. It doesn’t seem likely that he would accept, or want, a hug from her.
It is easier to be brave with Firion and it is effortless to return the comfort he had given her now that he needs it. But Sela? She may only ever have just her hope that they could still, somehow, be friends. And even that feels like a selfish thing to want right now as his family suffers through this tragedy.
So instead she just lets her shaky voice bridge the gap between them. “I’m so sorry.” For his loss, for everything she’d said to him last time they met. There is so much crammed into those three words.
The heart beats something out of rhythm.
A quiet plea in the center of his chest, (please, please, please), that blooms and swells until it echoes across every inch of him.
(Can she hear it?)
There is a trembling in his knees, a quiver in his brow, as the sob rakes its way up her throat and collapses into the negative space between them. She takes a step toward him and he does the same in return, though there is still such a tremendous gulf between them.
(Despite how desperately he wants to go to her, to smooth her troubled brow, to take the tears onto his own skin.)
He swallows thickly, still drowning in the stench of death. (His, hers, his mother’s, all of the death that they have witnessed). And the heart struggles to beat around the unbearable weight of it. The unbearable weight of his want to embrace her, the unbearable weight of the possibility that this might be some cruel ruse.
But he had convinced himself that she was still inside the shell she’d worn, when she had hurled her words at him, cutting him to the quick so efficiently that he should have wilted before her. When she’d told him of the things she’d endured to protect his worthless family.
Her apology sinks into the meat of that stuttering heart and he goes to her then. He goes to her and so gingerly presses his mouth to her cheek, collecting her tears before he draws away again.
(There is so much pain. Always, always so much pain.)
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, searching her face. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t save you.”
And he is. So terribly sorry.
That he couldn’t save her, that he couldn’t save his mother.
His step towards her gives her so much hope and Mazikeen can't believe she existed for so long without these overwhelming emotions. They're too much and wonderful all at once and it is beyond anything she deserves when Selaphiel closes the gap between them of his own free will with no fear in his eyes.
Of course, the gentle touch on her cheek only causes even more tears to fall and that in turn inspires a small, strangled self-deprecating laugh. Parts of her miss the days when tears didn’t come so easily, even though she knows it is a good thing. The unfortunate side effect of crying in front of everyone she knows is worth it when she’s herself again, when she can reach out to touch Sela gently on his neck before he pulls away and reassure herself that this is real.
And be able to sincerely tell him “It’s not your fault, Sela.” None of it was. “I wouldn’t have let you even if you could have. I didn’t think I was worth saving and then… I didn’t want to be saved.” She had fought against it, refusing it when it had been offered to her. So firm in her belief that she was better off as she had been, even as she had continue to rot and burn away. “But it means a lot to me that you wanted to. That you thought I…”
She chokes on the words though, unable to actually say out loud that she was worth it.
So instead she inhales and tries not to think about how shaky that breath is or how shaky her body feels, and instead offers her friend a small smile and gives him another piece of the truth. “I’m so glad you’re still here.”
It’s not his fault.
But it is, can’t she see that?
If only he had been able to tell her that it was time to kill Gale before he had sunk his teeth into her. If only he’d been able to warn her. If only he’d been able to make himself useful in all the ways he had so desperately wanted to be useful to her.
He had vowed to protect her to the best of his ability and he had failed. It is his fault but he does not argue. He just lets the truth settle a little deeper into his bones, where it has lived since she’d looked him in the face and told him that he was nothing.
He does not argue, he just watches while the truth calcifies.
There is nothing he can do to stop this fresh wave of tears and he swallows thickly, meeting her gaze. He would have died for her, he thinks, if he hadn’t been such a coward. He would have laid down his life to protect her just as she had done for him if he had not been making himself scarce instead.
He failed her and he’ll have to live with that.
He failed his mother, too, and he’ll have to live with that, too.
And perhaps this is why his happiness at having his friend back has been dampened so. Because so much has changed since they walked together in the sun and decided that they were friends.
He cannot conjure up a smile, even when she smiles at him.
Instead, he merely exhales and nods, eyelashes fluttering.
“I knew you were still in there somewhere,” he says. “I could tell it in the way you were trying to protect me even when you were trying to hurt me.”
She has been protecting him his whole life, he realizes.
“I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I’d given up on you that easy.”
He tries to say it with some levity. He tries to smile.
But he fails to do either.
It had infuriated Mazikeen when Selaphiel and Firion had both believed there was still something left of her true-self when she had been hollowed out. She had hated that reminder of what she had been, had despised all the echoes of emotions those two brothers had inspired. They had both been wrong, there had been nothing but those memories left of the Mazikeen they had known.
But now she is so grateful for their faith even when she hadn’t deserved it.
It is nice to think that protecting Selaphiel was so ingrained in her that there is some truth to his words. Even without a conscience or the love that drove her to do so many reckless things, she had still been trapped by limitations she couldn’t understand.
“I think... I never expected anyone to not give up on me. I had given up on myself. A long time before… before he…” Gale plucking out her emotions after he had killed her that second time, after she had shut down to avoid the sickening rollercoaster of emotions - it’s still not easy to casually remark upon. The words always get stuck in her throat.
So she gives up, lets the sentence drop away. “I’m very lucky, you know. To have you as my friend.” Though her voice is still soft, it’s earnest - this is one of the truths she knows without a doubt.
“It was actually your brother that saved me this time. Firion.” Thoughts of the golden stallion have a warming effect on her heart and there is a moment where her expression lightens. Where the dense clouds of her guilt and sadness dissipate just a little. “Your family has a habit of it, maybe it’ll be your turn next time.” It’s not a funny joke, but she smiles anyway as she looks into Selaphiel’s eyes - knowing even if she doesn’t manage to get a smile from him, she’s still so grateful just to be able to talk to him again.
He is no lucky thing.
He is no friend worth having.
His worth does not lie in his unwillingness to give up on her, he knows that. He suspects that she knows it, too, though he does not speak it aloud. He just shakes his head and averts his gaze, lets his heart cramp with the first death; the death he should have stopped but didn’t.
He does not argue because she is so much stronger than he is, so much fiercer, her convictions things made of concrete instead of feathers. He exhales a shaky breath and nods to indicate that he has heard what she’s said. She didn’t want to be saved, she wanted them to give up, but the brothers had been stubborn. (Firion, he thinks, a brother he has heard only murmurs of.)
“You were always bigger than he was,” he says, “Gale.” He studies the horizon, his failures slipped under his skin like blades. “I’m glad someone was able to make you see that.”
He shifts his focus back to her face and she smiles. He searches her face a long moment then, a vise clenched tight around his windpipe, and then meets her steady gaze again. No, it will not be his turn next. He is a coward, capable only of warnings, not action.
But his mouth shifts around a lopsided smile that fails to reach those glacial blue eyes. “Maybe,” he echoes.
She hopes, with his attention on the horizon, that Selaphiel doesn’t see the way she flinches slightly at the mention of Gale. The Curse was an unfinished threat out there in the world, one she needed to take care of before he harmed anyone else.
One she should have taken care of before he had harmed Ryatah.
Old internal battles of needing help but being unwilling to let anyone else put themselves in harm way rage in her constantly. The desire to not be alone anymore often wins. Past mistakes need to be avoided before she finds herself caught up in the same horrible loop. She wants to protect what she's earned, and that which she's starting to recover.
Like a friendship with Sela.
It is not a wide, shining smile that he offers her - and it does nothing to warm up his eyes - but it is something. It’s a start.
“Would you like to walk with me, Sela?” Her smile grows a little more as she waits, trying not to give attention to the nerves that arise up or the expectation of a refusal. “Let’s act like two friends should. I’ll pretend to believe you when you say I’m bigger than he was, and you can pretend to believe me when I tell you that your worth to me doesn’t lie in your ability to predict death but just in your friendship and the simple fact that you exist."
