[mature] And you don’t know what you’ve done, but - I’ll give you a clue:

[Leilan]

Leilan

Demons run,
but count the cost...

Friendship dies and true love lies
Night will fall and the dark will rise

He’s had it, he’s done, there is no going back. No other way out, nothing to ease the increasing pain. There is nothing that soothes him, no relief in his dreams, and his nightmarish days are filled with pain and hurt and feeling miserably stupid.

He’d tried so hard. He’d failed so badly. No other girl could make him feel normal again, even though they’d all been sweet and kind and beautiful in their own way. But he just couldn’t care about them, still felt empty, for all the things he did with them. Nothing he could think of had worked longer than a few minutes, not the fighting and kicking, not the fake sort of romance that he almost-promised the girls he laid with.

And finally, after siring too many children and snapping at every horse coming close to him, he saw that what he really needed was for it to end, to stop the hurt that everyday was tied so close to the longing and regret, from taking over.

Truth is that it always had been this way. So it felt now anyway, because a mind twisted by hurt is not capable of seeing the past in a normal light. He was never truly loved, even his mother preferred her other children no doubt, especially the girls, she is no different from the other Amazons who loved his twin sister but mostly resented the fact that he was even living among them - a boy. Ew.. He never belonged, was always rejected, and Breckin was just one of the many. She just happened to be the last push over the edge.

Oh, he’d made up for it. Became the very thing they resented in men. A major flirt, taking nothing in life seriously, not even considering what a mare might feel if he engaged and left them without looking back. But who’s fault was it that he lived up to their expectations if he was treated this way? If it didn’t even come to their minds that he was capable of feeling anything at all, just the way they were?

Maybe your girlfriend would be more interested in sticking around if you weren’t so busy pouting and damaging the plant-life.

His trek up the mountain is mindless, not watching where he plants his feet. Exactly like the blue man had said; pouting and damaging the plant-life. Or maybe not pouting any longer. Just revelling in the darkness of his mind, clinging to the only emotion he could still feel without drowning in it: anger. He’s angry at the world, angry at himself; furious with the fairies. For placing him a boy among Amazons and taking his mother away when he was just too young to understand; angry at his mother for not explaining, and for leaving her other children because one was missing. Leave it to a young boy to compete with his twin sister for attention when all the women’s concerns are for the newborn baby girl.

I won’t leave until you tell me what got fucked up. - I did.

And she started it, didn’t she? Apart from the leaving, and favouring her girls, and being an Amazon and loving it. Never considering that aside from her husband, there were other boys suffering from that life. That sickening pride. That which made the Amazons feel superior and better than any man could ever hope to be and never could accomplish in their eyes.

That she proudly passed on to the Leviathans and subconsciously corrupted the shy and loving girls into man-hating maniacs.

He’s passed the treelines by now, and enters the cold of eternal winter; his eyes stare directly ahead, intense fury replacing the

madness

hurt

regret

loss

fear.

If you’re so set on avoiding me, do a better job at it and leave - me - alone!

Famous last words. He snorts and suddenly feels the ice cold winds battering the mountain. He’s up high - his escape plan, plan B, although it is still the most likely route. But out of all that happened, there is but one chance of redemption left.

A touch of magic.

So he curses at the wind. ”FAIRIES! You made me, you stupid twittery butterflies! Look what you’ve done! Look how this experiment of yours turned out! I’m done playing this stupid game, you better fix it, or I WILL!”

His demand is meaningless and stupid, and he realizes this but he cannot care about it. Still, there’s something to add. ”You know what? Screw you! You don’t even know how to help me, do you!? To make me forget about it, you’d have to go back in time and make me be born a girl! A stupid little girl that swoons over the Amazons like every other girl there did!”

And one that would never have fallen in love with the spotted girl, no doubt.

Good. He doesn’t need any of that.

Not any more.

the battle's won, but the child is lost

@[Officials] I got permission to powerplay a fairy for this, but I’ll be putting this little story into multiple posts. So it would be nice if there was a reply but it’s not entirely necessary to do so.

~to be continued~

[Ice Fairy]

They think of the mountain as a cold and lonesome place, but to an extent  that’s just what the mountain looks like because that’s what they think the mountain will be like. Perhaps, if they came with open minds, the mountain would be a more welcome place. He certainly hasn’t come with an open mind, and she is perfectly happy to oblige him with the cold and the wind and the ice…she is the ice fairy, after all.

At first, she’s only mildly interested because he expects the winter weather, and she turns a half a thought to obliging him. The storm of emotions she feels coming from him are part interesting and part irritating, enough to hold her notice. But it’s the last bit that cinches the deal; she appears behind him somewhere between “Hey fairies!” and “You stupid twittery butterflies”, waiting silently until he finishes his rampage.

“Fix what?” she says then, and her voices echoes as if in an empty cavern, though the icy wind would have nearly stolen the sound away from any mere mortal. A flick of a blue-tipped ear is all of her intentional motion as she surveys him. “You’re physically healthy. You’ve been granted a trait. You’ve got a large and loving family. ” For a moment, she reaches out and shoves some images into his head – those who are less fortunate. Blind, deaf, mute, starving, alone, dying.

Some of her sisters are soft. Compassionate. They might have taken a different tact with one of their erstwhile children who was suffering – but all she can think of is those who are suffering more, and so she stares at him from behind dark eyes and awaits a response.

[Leilan]

Leilan

Demons run,
but count the cost...

Friendship dies and true love lies
Night will fall and the dark will rise

It takes time for him to notice - but after he falls silent for longer than two heartbeats, an icily angry voice adresses him. Fix what? Like she can’t sense the emptiness, and lack of a functioning heart. The deadness.

He turns, his death-stare equalling that of the fairy. She’s coloured cold and icy, like their current surroundings. It would have befit him to respect a creature atuned to the only element he wields himself, but, unfortunately he can only reply to her words with another sneer, after the images have gone that filled his mind - probably her doing.

”Physically being the word that needs emphasisis. My vision-impaired sister has a better life than me at the moment.” He tells her flatly. And he truly believes that this is the case - their mother cares for her, and she has a beautiful son that she loves and who loves her in return. What does he have? A trait? He worked his ass off for that, but what good did it do to have it at all?

”Loving family? My mother damn well threatened me when I talked to her last!” Probably, she’d done it so that hopefully he would ‘cut the crap’ but, he had had no need of words like those; like her, he had needed someone softer - but there was no-one to be soft with him now. Not now that he was going on this self-damaging rampage.

But he’s not done. He should be, but he’s not. Now that there’s someone here who could do things to help, he just can’t help but insult them. ”But I guess you’re all so full of yourself here on this mountain that you just don’t care about us down there. So fuck you all. If you won’t help me end this feeling, then I’ll end it myself.”

Because he can’t bear it right now. He needs a break. And it’s so easy - too easy; probably not what the fairy would think of as a fitting ending, but it’s the one thing he has some influence on still. The only thing.

His feet on the mountain ridge suddeny move - sideways. With one angry look at the fairy -

takes the step

makes the fall

makes it stop.

the battle's won, but the child is lost

@[Ice Fairy] whoops, I slipped

[Ice Fairy]

The boy dismisses his family so casually, his parents and siblings just as easily as the children he has fathered as he tries to avoid facing his own feelings. That makes her angry – it’s not their fault that he’s having a midlife crisis. And he is caustic, the spite behind his words as sharp as the icicles that threaten to form in the icy world around them. She doesn’t last out at him, doesn’t put him in his place, but only because she can see the confused little boy hiding behind his angry eyes. She is caught between wanting to soften for that little boy he is burying and wanting to strike down the arrogant man he is showing the world, and that is when he steps off the side of the mountain.

The irritation wins out.

She lets him fall, and crash against the rocks below. She lets him feel the terror of the fall, and the pain of the impact, and the helplessness when his lungs don’t inflate properly against shattered ribs and he slowly loses consciousness. It’s not an easy thing, and she lets him feel it all.

When he regains awareness in Beqanna’s afterlife – on the strangely dim yet light shores of the other side of the beach, where all of Beqanna’s dead find themselves – she is still standing in front of him, resolute and stony-faced. “Is this wanted you wanted?” She asks him, dark eyes flicking from one end of the beach to the other. “Nothing ends. You just move on, and here there is no chance to solve your problems.” Time stretches between them, infinite and yet instant all at once. He can see his children growing up, their own struggles and triumphs that he cannot hope to share in. He can see her, this girl he is so in knots over, but he can’t touch her or speak to her. He has to watch her move on, grow old with someone else, raise that man’s children. Be happy. Leilan is but a blip in her memory. She waits, however long it takes, until he starts to have second thoughts.

As soon as he does, they are back on the side of the mountain. He is lying, shattered but alive. Each breath is painful, but a fall like this doesn’t kill an immortal.

Which is what she has made him. The fairy glides down to him on silent wings, and perches on a nearby outcropping wide enough to hold her comfortably. She casts a critical glance over his injuries and determines he will recover reasonably fast on his own, and that now he can’t finish the job he tried to start.

“Listen to me.” The ice is back, the echoing; she is back in her natural habitat. “You’re going to live. You’re going to live a great deal longer. You might see this as a curse. I don’t care. Someday you will grow up, and stop behaving like a spoilt weanling. When you do, you will either see this for the gift it is, or you will come back and politely ask one of my sisters or I to lift it for you. In the meantime, know this: not all children need their father involved in their life. Yours may not. But if you intentionally hurt them, you will see me again. And you won’t like it.”

And then she leaves him to recover his strength on the cliff and go home.

[Leilan]

To all remotely emotionally involved people - you may need a tissue. I know I did.

Leilan

Demons run,
but count the cost...

Friendship dies and true love lies
Night will fall and the dark will rise

The fall is scary indeed - and hurting, because the mountain isn't straight. But he's also still angry, and he just clings his jaws together and, instinctively holds his head near his chest.

But when he gets down and his head has finally hit a decent hard surface so that his consciousness is lost, and he slips away into darkness - then, for a second, there is the peace and quiet of nothingness.

He floats, he's quiet. His emotions are dulled, he remembers them but cannot feel them actively, and when he opens his eyes (his mind's eyes, not the physical ones) - what he sees is all grey, and quiet, and relatively peaceful grey - floating -

Until the same Ice Fairy is within his vision, filling up all of his peace and quiet and ruining it with words. Actual words, ice cold in tone, stony-faced, no - ice-faced. Much like he had looked at her before taking that fatal step.

They're not in the afterlife yet. He can see it; it's but a touch away. But on the other side he can also touch the beach, where the living are. He can't reach his dead siblings here, not even to greet them, and he can't reach the world of the living either. She holds him at the shimmering fault line, and tells him nothing ends. No chance to solve anything. And she shows him what his death had caused - nothing. Absolutely nothing. But that had been the point, the goal. To be nothing was better than to be depressed. He knows he wants to be a part of the living world now that he sees it, but... "They're better off without me. Don't you see?" His voice is nothing but a hoarse whisper of defeat. But the fairy continues, and it still hurts. She makes him hurt again. To see Chryseis grow up, not knowing where he went... To see Breckin move on, well, he supposes she can be happy now, finally... might be better without him... To see his mother, knowing that the last things they said to each other was in heated argument. Then his father, who knew nothing about all of this and had recently come back from the dead himself to be with his family - "Stop it. Please." He can't speak, not really, it's more a thought than that the words actually are forming in his throat. But anything, anything to stop the fairy from showing him all these things.

All these walls he built, and she just magically waltzes through them and drags the little screaming boy that's hiding there out of his cave. Away from the first cages and locks he'd built for himself, and she throws him out in the open, in the unforgiving world. There's nothing more hurtful.

But that's not the worst.

She brings him back. Suddenly he has that broken body again, feels the pain again, the physical ones as well as the emotional ones. He breaths in short, painful gasps, confused and still slightly angry but mostly broken, just broken, and listens numbly as she tells him he will live. Forever. Immortal. Gift? No, immortality is a curse to those who live in pain.

Oh shit, she's cursed him - what? Yes. Okay. Politely. Stupid fairy trickery. What's the thing about his children? Is that more than one? What does she know that he knows not? Oh, god-fucking-damnit. He can't think in this state.

Passes out again for a while.

the battle's won, but the child is lost

@[Ice Fairy] thanks...... I guess Those are good words.