"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
Is it fear that he feels now? Something wide and yawning open between them—some chasm that he is not sure he knows how to cross. It blossoms in his chest, gnawing at his bones, and he wants to address it. He wants to put a label on it so that he can understand why he feels the way that he does—why he is so afraid to look her in the eye. Why he doesn’t know where they stand and what he can do about it.
It is because he doesn’t think he deserves it?
Is it because he can’t imagine a world where she would want him?
He is never more aware of his weaknesses than when she is looking at him, and he feels himself splinter apart on the fault lines of his own cowardice when she speaks. That part of his heart that never matured past his youthful fear wants to run, wants to ruin it, wants to do anything but sit here and face it.
But she touches his cheek and he stays.
He holds back the demons that rise in his throat and feels the shadows churn around his legs.
A muscle jumps in his jaw as everything he feels glows bright in his eyes and he studies her. “You can’t know what you’re asking,” he finally says and there is grit in his voice, in the tightness of his mouth, in the way that he studies her with an intensity he can’t dampen. “You deserve better than having me of all people close, Maze,” her name is still soft on his tongue, despite the hoarseness in his throat.
“You deserve the world, and I would try to give it to you, but I’m not good enough.”
He wants to step closer and hold her. He wants to push her far, far away, like he had when he was young. Had that been a mistake or the smartest decision of his life? He can’t tell, since he ended up here anyway.
“I love you, and I don’t think I’ll ever love you the way you deserve.”
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)
11-13-2021, 06:41 PM (This post was last modified: 11-13-2021, 07:20 PM by Mazikeen.)
Mazikeen
He doesn’t run, which is a very good start. And what he says inspires such a confusing mixture of ‘I’d like to kick him in the head and see if that inspires some sense’ and ‘I want to pull him close and never let him go’ that there’s really no doubt that she loves him back.
As if the way her heart is racing could not have given that away.
Everything he had just said to her is something she can hear herself saying right back - and maybe that means she needs a good kick in the head too.
Picking where to start her response feels like dancing on the edge of something, except she’s already decided which way she’s going to jump and it doesn’t frighten her. “How about we don’t talk about what we think we deserve. We’re not going to agree on that, we both think a lot of the other and not enough of ourselves.” Mazikeen says this with a sad smile because she is pretty sure she had the love she “deserved” already. And she watched him kill their daughter and then rewind time so that she could do it; she’d woken up by the shore of Hyaline’s lake after that love had eaten her heart and eyes; she’d ignored all the ways he had hurt their son when he was bored. She had traded away and then lost everything that made her who she was to that love and was still dealing with the chaos left in the wake.
This didn’t feel like that, this didn’t feel like what Mazikeen deserved. This wasn’t an all-consuming wildfire that would leave only ashes behind. It was a golden light she could grow under, she could strive for.
“I don’t want the world, Firion. Someone else can have it. I want you.” She can’t help the grin that grows as she says that, the way this feeling radiates through her even while he’s trying to convince her of something she doesn’t believe (that he’s not good enough). “Whatever pieces you’re willing to give me, whatever love you can. I’m not scared of you, of this. I’ve already lived through hell, and getting to see you every day is nothing like it… it’s been…” The exact words elude her. She doesn’t know how to describe how much it has meant to her that he’s stayed, how absolutely surprising it felt to actually share all her pieces and how natural it felt to just be with him.
And she didn't - or couldn't - believe that all the kindness and comfort he's given her has been false.
“Instead of what you think I deserve… tell me what you want, Firion. Is it the same as me?” She swallows, unable to break her gaze away from his as she continues. Everything is written there in her eyes clear as day, the hope that keeps her voice soft - nerves finally showing with the way a tremor runs through her. “Can it be enough if we love each other and we keep trying to be better than who we were in the past?”
This isn’t how he had imagined this moment going, but then again, he’s never been particularly good at knowing how things will go with her. They have been a frustratingly dead-end when it comes to communicating since the first time they met, all those years ago with youth still rounding their cheeks. They had always known to push and pull, prod until they hit the weakest parts. They had known how to get under one another’s skin. How to toss the sharpest barbs until the other was left bleeding out.
So he isn’t surprised that they fumble now.
That he manages to say the wrong thing and she corrects him. That they are both so very gentle with how they treat the bud between them—the petals on it just barely unfurling. He laughs softly underneath his breath and shakes his head, amused after all these years that they managed to find their way here.
He finds her gaze and holds it and all the breath leaves him. All of the mirth. He is stripped bare by her question and he has no defense—nothing with which he could possibly hold her off or push her away any more. This is it, he thinks, and there should be fear to be this vulnerable, but he feels none of it.
“I want you,” his voice is throaty, heated, and he moves his golden gaze up to study her face. “I think perhaps I always have, but I was terrified to admit it. Terrified of what that could mean.” He swallows and feels the intensity of the need to go to her and pull her close, but he restrains, for now. He grits his teeth against the need and feels that tension bloom in his chest, drowning out every thought in his head.
“It’s enough for me,” he finally says, voice hoarse.
“I love you,” he repeats and the miracle of it has not dulled. “I love you, Mazikeen.”
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)
Though there is still space between them, Mazikeen can feel the heat in his voice and the dazzling, insane, incredible words he says to her on her skin like a touch. She nods, understanding his old fears and knowing she had felt a version of the same thing. Knowing she had hid behind anger and resentment for so long just to avoid even admitting what else there could have been.
Not now though. She doesn’t hide a single part of her, not from him.
If this is what comes with going soft, she cannot find it in her heart to mind at all.
The distance becomes too much. She steps forward, closing the gap between them again and letting his presence ground her like it’s been doing ever since she woke up in this new life and he was the first face she saw. Mazikeen doesn’t know if she would’ve been brave enough to say it first - it would have just been so easy to convince herself that this was one-sided and her feelings would just be a burden. Or even that maybe the feeling that shines through her when she’s with him is just the result of an exaggeration with her over-bright emotions. Or that she was just so afraid to be alone she would have fallen for anyone.
With her head pressed against him now, none of those fears get the chance to surface. This is real, this is enough. She believes in the gentle steadfastness of this moment, in the miracle that somehow they managed to find their way here. Mazikeen can’t say she is glad for everything that has happened to them because it led them here - there has been too much pain, there is too much still happening - she just knows that in this moment she’s happy they found their way here at all.
It is a different feeling than it was before. There’s no ticking clock, no looming threat, no promise to keep involving death.
Which somehow makes this more frightening.
But despite that, it is so easy to say (and mean) this string of words she once never would have allowed herself to think was possible. “I love you too, Firion.”
He sighs with relief when she closes the distance. An exhale that brings her closer to him, his body wrapping around her as if she was the first drink of water of a dying man. He drops his mouth to her shoulder and presses a kiss there—tentative still and so very different from the hungry, insistent way he had touched her all of those years ago. When he had been foolish and terrified and so very young.
But not now.
Now they come together and it is as natural as breathing. As right as rain. He touches her softly and quietly, as if in worship, as if she is a revelation (and she is, she is). “I have loved you my whole life, I think,” he confesses into the soft curves of her as his mouth continues to trail down her shoulder and then up her neck. “I loved you when I first saw you. My heart knew before my head could catch up.”
Perhaps that is what scared him so much when she had first offered to run with him. How his heart had leapt at the offer—at the chance of a future with this young woman. How clearly she had seen him in those moments before he had obscured it. Before he had pushed her away as quick and far as possible.
His heart pounds in his chest at the impossibility of this moment and for a second he closes his eyes, pulling her close against him. “I can’t believe we’re here,” another confession, this one said quieter and to her, as if the very air may break the moment. “I can’t believe you didn’t kill me first,” this time a laugh.
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)
Only their agreement not to talk about deserve keeps Mazikeen from drifting down that road, keeps her from giving any attention to the thoughts screaming at her saying she may be something worth loving now but she had not always been. So she focuses on the present, on the way a soft noise is coaxed from her as his mouth trails up her neck. The pleasant touch paired with the too-kind words is almost too much, but after almost a year of having Firion close Mazikeen finds it easier to remind herself that kindness is not always chased with cruelty.
And then there is a laugh from her too when he says he can’t believe she hadn’t killed him before they got here. But she can’t unstick her tongue to joke about that - she had tried, after all. Even if her anger and hatred had just been a mask for something else.
Something she's only just been able to see clearly lately.
Naming the feeling, saying that out loud to him, had been the easy part for Mazikeen. It was everything else, all the little things and confessions that fed into it that were harder to say. Pieces of herself she would be offering up for scrutiny, holding out in the open for him to take. And because it is Firion, because she trusts him, even though it is hard to share these pieces - she continues to try. She sorts out the thoughts spinning in her mind and gives him quiet confessions in exchange for the ones that he offers her. “Sometimes I think this, us, is a dream but then I wake up and you’re still there.”
The brush of her lips against his golden skin is soft, as though testing to see whether he was really here even now. “I’ll never stop being grateful that you didn’t give up on me and that you stayed. It's one of the reasons why I love you.”
“I think… I think there was love there all along for me too but the first time I could've known if I wasn't so deep in denial was when I first heard you laugh. Really laugh. When I stuck my tongue out at you.” That day in the meadow, before they had sharpened their blades and started taking stabs at each other, before she had tried to kill him. But she lets the darker end to that meeting fall away as she smiles, shaking her head against his neck and at her past-self. Marvelling at how obvious the reason for her aggravation towards him was in hindsight. “The way it affected me… I just refused to even think about what that meant.”
Mazikeen remembers being haunted by that laugh, feeling it taunt her and linger in the air. Even the clarity of those meetings with Firion in her memory should've been a clue.
“Better late than never, right?”
Now she can let the smile grow into a warm and wonderful thing against his skin as she takes her time exploring the black rosettes that stand out against the gold - learning the powerful lines of his neck and enjoying the game of seeing if she could coax a reaction out of him like he had her. It is a miracle that they are here together and it feels like they have all the time in the world to simply enjoy being a safe harbour for each other.
His shadows curl in closer around the pair of them, crawling up legs and on their back. It is a soft and simple thing, but he feels the heat of it in his belly—feels the simple pleasure in having her tucked against him and the rest of the world fade away. His grief won’t, he knows. It is there lingering in the back of his mind, a painful gnashing of teeth, but he does his best to turn away from it. To let it sit there. It will be waiting for him when he does step away from his moment; he will only need turn to face it again.
But he blocks it from his thoughts.
Blocks the pain from permeating every thing in his life and does what his mother always wanted for him: he lets his guards down. He doesn’t try to run away or push her away. He doesn’t deflect or use his father’s sarcasm as a weapon. He just rests in the moment, allowing himself to be vulnerable. “I am afraid I only specialize in nightmares,” he quips, just a little, his golden eyes bright, “so I promise this is real.”
But there is a hidden smile in his voice as he laughs at her memory, his heart squeezing tight in his chest that she would have held onto any piece of him at all—any part of those first encounters. “You always did surprise me,” he whispers, nipping her gently. “It was so hard to try and keep myself from you. From how you made me feel. From the reality.” A pause, and then, “I think if I had faced it then I would have had to face a lot of things that I wasn’t ready to yet, so it was just easier to push you away.”
Firion rolls his shoulders and then leans his head down to press his cheek to her shoulder, draping there and feeling the hum of her pulse, his magic wrapping around them in a warm breeze.
“This is better than a lot of things. Never included.”
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)
