[private] Desolation comes upon the sky // Brennen

[Scorch]

"Brennen."

His name left her charred lips with more sobriety than it had in some time, a reflection of how she knew he was feeling; true, a year or more had passed since the murder of his daughters, but that... That's not something that you can come back from. Her heart clenched empathetically, and in its own pain, too; her own share of children had died, and though the pain receded now and again, it never lessened when she stopped to remember it.

She drew closer to him, silent for now as they stood there, secluded from the rest of the world in a thicket that seemed nigh on impenetrable. It didn't smell like his pretty wife, Galilee, but it smelt a lot like him, as if he hid himself here when everything became too much to deal with. Her eyes flashed to the trees that tucked them in so close, finding vines and imagining roses along their lengths; she smiled at the though, tears pricking her eyes. She couldn't quite place why her eyes became wet; but so much had changed, and so much would never, ever be the same again... And Brennen knew this best of all.

Inhale. Her eyes slid back to Brennen, and though she didn't know it, they'd shifted to their natural green; even in all her nakedness and all her scarring, she presented herself to him with an utmost trust and vulnerability. She didn't have to think about it, didn't even question the natural instinct which lead her head to his shoulder where it then rested with ease. A touch between friends, one of consolation and comfort, one of empathy and understanding. The words themselves came less easily to the mare, though she'd never had trouble running her mouth in the past. But as her mind traveled back to Rain and to Ea, and to all the children who'd been gone long enough that they may well have died without her knowing, she simply couldn't find the words.

But maybe, just maybe, he could.

"Tell me about them, Bren." She shifted her head slightly, getting more comfortable against him, even though no one else could have ever made her more comfortable (except perhaps one stallion, but her mind wandered elsewhere tonight...). Her eyes closed gently as she awaited a response, but the image of Galilee did not interrupt her, and the thought of her loving husband Hestoni stayed at bay, too. In her mind, at this moment, they were simply old friends mourning the loss of their own children, born from their own spouses... and for the moment, that was all she could do.

We love you, mom.
I love you too.

[Brennen]

The advantage of both being male and taking an extraordinary long time to really settle down: he has a lot of children. He feels no shame in that, though the recent resentment of one of his daughters had made him take some time for introspection on the topic. And he has lost children before now – some he has simply outlived, some he has never met, and he has even lost some before to violence. This time was different; a heavier sorrow, a lingering fury. Perhaps it is because Khaeli was so little – not a grown woman gone to fight in a war, but a little girl barely fledged. Perhaps it is because they were not just casualties of a war that claimed many lives, but specifically targeted because someone knew it was a good way to hurt him. Perhaps it is because of the magic that was gifted to him shortly afterward – his control has been intermittent and uncertain, and his temperament has reflected that.

Whatever the reason, the grief this time is harder to deal with. And his mate is just as lost – they have both fought through their periods of mourning to raise two more daughters, Taeryn who had been just born when Khaeli and Alonwy had disappeared and little Raeva, now just fledging herself. Each have been the life raft for the other in the deepest currents of depression, as well as serving as shoulder to cry on and wall to rage against for their other children who have felt the loss most keenly. Despite the fact that they seem, on the outside, to be managing well, there are moments when they cannot bear to be comforted any longer.

It’s in one of those darkest moments that he’s stolen away, that’s when Scorch finds him. Not that she’s better at finding him that his heart, Galilee who brings out the best and most reasonable side of him, but more than Galilee knew this was not a time in which he wanted to be found. Most likely, she was off keeping a careful eye on mom-I’m-almost-two-now Taeryn and look-at-what-I-can-do Raeva. He wasn’t expecting her, but her presence is not unwelcome. He can sense, rather than having to turn and see, the way her eyes linger on the vines and tree surrounding them, so reminiscent of her Jungle. Unlike many, her mere presence doesn’t grate on his oversensitive nerves; instead of two discordant notes, her presence is a soothing chord; he doesn’t have to slam down shields to protect himself.

Scorch’s touch warms his skin where they have contact, and he leans into the comfort an old friend can offer. No matter what he has with Galilee, and their bond is still strong, he and Scorch share a multitude of old memories and experiences that have left them irrevocably changed. Emotional bonds are complicated – she has the love of her life, and Brennen has a mare he loves as much as any other mate he’s taken – and theirs is too old not to have it’s knots. When she speaks, it brings images of all of his children to the forefront, but he lets the older losses fade away and keeps the freshest pain just behind his closed eyelids. “Alonwy was graceful, and poised. She never wanted to be anything powerful in life, but she would have made a great mom herself some day. She was so gentle with the little ones, even when all of her brothers had totally lost their patience.” She may not have been the ‘most fun’ sibling, but she was the one the littles had always run to with scraped knees and bad dreams. “Khaeli was still just a baby, but she was so bright. Everything was exciting to her, an adventure to be conquered, an enemy to be vanquished. She would have made a great Amazon.”

He opens his eyes, then, and runs his nose down her neck with a sigh as the images of them fade from their impression on his eyes. Someday, they will be memories he thinks of fondly, sad but bearable. Someday he won’t feel like he needs to go to war and destroy things to avenge them. Someday. But he can feel the magic stirring inside him in a way that he knows spells questionable results and so he reaches for a distraction - “Tell me about yours.” he says, burying his face in her next where her mane might once have been.

[Scorch]

She could feel her friend's grief in the tension of his muscles, in the way he held himself rigidly and as if he were boneless all at once. Her heart ached to feel it, her overabundance of empathy bringing her more sorrow than the situation necessitated; she'd always presented herself as hard-skinned and harder hearted, but anyone who took half a second to look closer knew that quite the opposite was true. Though her youngest child was by now at least twenty years of age, being so close to Brennen made her mind go back to when they were all just babies, leaving the mare sick-hearted and in need of one whose heart ached similarly.

In need of him.

He accepts her presence as if it were as natural as the vines around them, though in truth, she'd traveled far to vist her friend. In the initial silence of their reunion, her mind's eye goes back to when they themselves had just been children, foolhardy and quick to lash out, squabbling on the open Tundra ice when she had been kept prisoner under her brother's laughing and well meaning watch. She strained herself trying to remember whether he'd been at one of her births, and smiled bitterly when she remembered the goodbye he'd said to her as she died some decades ago. This wasn't exactly matching wits, but in many ways he could not have known he meant back then, Brennen did need her; and she, in turn, was more than happy to oblige for one so dear to her heart.

He leaned into her touch, reminding her for a moment of Hestoni. Despite their lifelong connection and the undeniably potent aspect of intimacy in their relationship, she'd been avoiding him during this autumn season; she couldn't stand the heartache of getting her hopes up for a child this year, not after nearly five of being reunited with her husband and nearly five of being devastated by a barren womb each winter. Her love for her fioco was unbridled and as devoted as ever; but emotional bonds are complicated, and this new chapter of their marriage left Scorch feeling disheveled, worthless, and broken. So she pushed the image of her husband far, far away, instead burrowing into the comfort of an old friend with whom there'd never been true heartache. She burrowed into the simplicity of it; into the seeming innocence of the good feelings their connection brought.

He inhaled, and she perked her ears, ready for his answer. With his words Brennen painted vivid pictures of his daughters, girls that Scorch had perhaps seen in passing but who she'd never truly met. Alonwy reminded the old mare of Wrynn, her most nurturing and least power-hungry child, a girl who'd been gone for near decades, though her twin Leilan had shown up after a lifetime of solitude. And Khaeli - Scorch smiled to think of Sarkis, her most boisterous daughter who saw the light in everything, and who was somewhere out there in the vastness of this existence. She'd reappeared once, since the reckoning; but the little love had since disappeared, lost to the pull of the Beyond that none could say to have escaped at every step of the way.

Her eyes were closed by the end of his spiel, but she smiled gently when she felt him shift away to run his nose down her neck. He paused, asking her of her own children; and as her breath caught in her chest at the thought of speaking her pains aloud, Brennen  buried his face into the curve of her bald and scarred neck, lending her the strength she needed to share herself with him. In that touch alone, she learned to love the stallion (though in truth an unspoken love had long since developed between the pair). In his touch, she found support; in his touch, she found relief.

"Back when Kagerou ruled the Jungle, I became pregnant for the second time with Hestoni." Her eyes unfocused as her memory played back, but she leaned her head towards him absently, deepening their embrace. "I spent that pregnancy as a prisoner in the Valley, and Hestoni was, at the time, a slave to Carnage, and so could not be with me. When I gave birth... Sorry. When I gave birth, our daughter wasn't breathing; but I named her Rain for the storm that she'd been conceived in, and I. I stood guard over her body for days until the Valley's wolves became too bold, forcing me away. When they left, all that remained of Rain were her bones... And I took two of her ribs back to the Jungle with me, where they became a part of my tattoos, crossed upon my breast."

With this last sentence, Scorch disconnected from Brennen, bending her neck as if to look upon those precious bones; but of course, all that remained of her tattoos was a hand-sized red rose and a vine to match. She straightened, feeling a little sick; but when she curled herself back around Brennen, the feeling passed. It had been decades since that time.

"More recently, Ea and her husband passed from this life into the next, as Kagerou and her husband had, and as Hestoni and I had, too. I raised her from a young age to be the Queen of the Dale, and she was always serving in nature, and stoic. She held herself with a poise and regality that she certainly hadn't inherited from me, hah hah. Though it pains me that I couldn't be here with her at the last, I know that she forgives me."

Here, Scorch choked; she'd never told Brennen of her ability. Trembling somewhat, she pulled away from him, meeting his honeyed gaze with that of her natural green. "But I am lucky in that I can speak to my daughters whenever I please... A part of my grandson's ghost-magic attached itself to me when he brought me back from the Afterlife." My muscles steady as I speak, my voice turning more logistical than emotional. "I could connect you to your daughters. Let you have the goodbye you deserved."

Please say yes, daddy.
My eyes moisten at the sound of Khaeli's voice, ringing through my skull.
"They're asking for you."

[Brennen]

Few are still living who remember Brennen as a young man. He is, after all, over seven decades old. Those who will not live forever have already passed – but she is no young spring chicken, and she was dead for a while. The first time, he had been sad, but that had been it. They’d been friends, casually, the foundation for something deeper laid upon the permafrost in the Tundra and the dark soil of the Jungle. The start of this friendship had been between two wary young creatures, each deeply passionate about their Kingdom, thrown together time and time again by circumstances beyond their control. It had been later that their worlds had been torn apart – later that they lost so much and were left adrift to sink or swim in the new world.

She’d died, but she hadn’t stayed dead. It had been in this second life that their tentative friendship, forged in times many living couldn’t remember, had been tempered to what it was now. They were kindred spirits, and love came in many forms. A stranger who came upon them now, pressed against each other, and did not know them would assume they were lovers. Anyone who came across them and did know them would perhaps assume worse – neither of them are, after all, unattached. Scorch has her long-time husband, one who died alongside her and lives beside her again now. Brennen has a mate and a Queen as well; not his first or only, but one he has been quite loyal to for a time now. He loves Galilee – they are not exactly exclusive, much to the confusion of some he thinks would be better off too mind their own business, but he has been very much pickier in other dalliances since she came back into his life.

The bay king, though, loves her as well. Loves her in much the same way he had once loved a painted queen of the waterfall – enough to generally keep his distance, maintain a close friendship, and watch her love her mortal lover until the end. Perhaps it is a fault of his – to love so deeply, even those who are better off loving another. For now, he just savors the contact that she shares with him, and listens quietly to her stories as she had listened to his. It helps, to have shared the lives of his lost. They start to be less of an overwhelming wave of grief threatening to crush him, and more of a warm blanket of memories like his other children who have been lost. Those he knows of, and those who like many of Scorch’s children have simply disappeared into the wild world, never to be seen again. (Once, Brennen had though no loss could hurt as deeply as losing Bethanie in the midst of battle, but losing Khaeli on the cusp of her life was at least its equal).

His attention sharpens, focuses as she pulls away, meeting his eyes again. For a heartbeat the bay stallion is confused, a frown darkening his face, but then those amber eyes widen when he realizes what she’s saying. Brennen is not unfamiliar with the ability to speak to the dead; he has a granddaughter and several further descendants who can, but it hadn’t been something he understood or could help them with, and often had pretended it didn’t exist. Kellyn, especially, was a volatile creature and a strange one; once after speaking to traveling in ghost-time she’d come back pregnant, and the sire many years deceased. It had seemed best to avoid asking her to use the skill, when it resulting in things like that.

But Scorch is more stable than Kellyn had ever been, and she doesn’t pair the ability to speak to the dead with the ability to move through time (that he knows of). Indecision wars in his face for several long, quiet heartbeats. His own fear of knowing how they passed plays a major role, but so does his desire simply to get a proper goodbye. The silence stretches, he begins to grow tense, and then his friend speaks again – says they are asking for him. And that is the end of Brennen’s hesitation. “Please.” he croaks the word, forcing it past a veritable mountain in his throat. “Tell them that I love them. I didn’t mean to fail them. I was trying to protect them.”

[Scorch]

He hesitated, stuck on the brink of wanting and needing and not knowing the right answer; in the depths of his honeyed eyes, Scorch watched the shattering and remaking of Brennen's heart as if that precious organ laid in the dirt at their hooves, a spectacle of grief and love that could rival even Scorch's emotional outbursts in its animatedness. The atoms of her life-long friend's bones could practically be heard breaking, the fracture of his skeleton a musical orchestra that left its audience sick and crying; there's beauty in pain and there's grace in death, but though they spoke now of ghosts and of an afterwards, the mare still found herself breaking alongside him.

They're asking for you.

In a single moment, everything changed; the hesitation in the failing of his heart and bones disappeared, giving way completely to brokenness as his voice came forth to claim its rightful goodbye to his departed children. Please, he croaked, the word a prayer as much it was a request. Above her watery eyes, the ugly mare's hairless brow furrowed in an attempt to keep herself together, for his sake; she couldn't break down too. The least her life long companion deserved was a rock to stand on as everything around him fell to pieces. He had a kingdom, he had a following, he had magic; but in this moment, all he needed could be found in the deep recesses of Scorch's mind. His children.

He says that he loves you. He didn't mean to fail you. He was trying to protect you.
We know, and we forgive him, though there's nothing to be forgiven. He did right by us at every step. And we have each other now... Tell him that we will be okay.
The mare swallowed, barely certain she could find her corporeal form's voice if given days to do so.
...I love you, daddy. Khaeli's voice, warbling in its failing attempt to be positive. Tell him we love him too. Alonwy's calmer drawl, resigned. It's the strength in her voice that pushed Scorch from this reality to the one she knew better; as if seeing color seep back into a grayscale world, the mare found Brennen's eyes.

Stepping closer, Scorch barely noticed as their bodies pressed closer than yet before; her mutilated lips found the sensitive hairs of Brennen's inner ear, the words his daughters had said passing from mare to stallion in an almost otherworldly fashion. As she delivered the message, her eyes closed and she leaned her soul onto his, finding comfort in the familiar pain she found there, finding a spark of passion for her friend that had never been there before. As her existence seemed to spiral around in a hazy dissociation fashion, Scorch came to realize the breadth and depth of her profound love for Brennen; she relived their every interaction, reevaluating their jokes and their secretive glances and the unfailing support they'd had for each other, especially of late. With the last whisper of the children's I love you's fading between them, Scorch paused, her gut twisting in a way that begged to be untwisted. A spark that hadn't been there before.

And Brennen, she murmured, too quiet for any but him to hear. I love you, too.
She wore her heart on her sleeve, and he wore his under wraps; some might observe that the two were incompatible, but in the moment of grief and love and intensity and passion, all the reasons why not where replaced with reasons why. In the moment of haze and hormones and nearly unmatched trust, her mouth slid down his ear, over his bare neck, down to his shoulder; her teeth grazing against him, pronouncing a need that neither of them could ever have imagined possible... And yet, in the heat of the moment, neither could deny that that need was perfectly legitimate. That they had earned this. That, in so many ways, this made sense.

She didn't need to say more; in the ways of old, their bodies now spoke for them.

[Brennen]

The world is standing still around them after Brennen speaks. He stands, rock still on the outside but quavering on the inside. Scorch holds his gaze, steady, and that is enough to keep him from totally shattering. There’s minute changes in her facial and body language, and he watches it but he doesn’t see. At this point, he can’t do anything but wait for her response. Anything else would be a total overload on his brain; even now, the tight hold he’s forged on his magic is slipping. The water some distance from them on the shore begins to tremble, as if of it’s own accord, which residents may have noticed over the past months but not as much recently.

Her eyes go unfocused and strange and he can feel something moving in the air around them, currents of power he knows he could tap into now, if he wanted. Avenues of the magic he hasn’t tried to explore, better left to those who have already mastered them, unless dire need arises for him to try. The bay stallion keeps his eyes trained on her face, waiting. As the moment stretches, it almost reaches the breaking point but before it can snap like an overstretched rubber band, Scorch steps closer to him, pressing their bodies together and relieving the tension. Somehow he raises his head or she lowers hers, negating the slight difference in their heights and allowing her to whisper into his ear. Brennen almost crumples again, but she has slid into the empty space between them, bracing him up.

A pause, after she shares the girl’s words, and he is silent to process. He has no doubts that it is the words of his daughters – he wouldn’t have doubted Scorch anyway but the words ring in his head in their voices, because it is them. The overflowing passion and youth of Khaeli, the ageless calm of Alonwy. He is taking a shuddering breath when she speaks again, and it catches in his throat. His control slips another notch, and flowers and new leaves start to bloom in the foliage around them where there shouldn’t be any.

Scorch has had one lover, one mate, for always.

That isn’t how Brennen has lived his life. Currently, he is mostly monogamous, and most of the world has mistaken that for completely monogamous. And he loves Galilee, and their family, in a way that is different from how he has loved others. She is certainly the first to settle down beside him, the first to be the Queen to his King, the first who was not someone politically powerful when Brennen became enamored. But she is not the first he has loved, and she won’t be the last. Nor is Scorch the first for whom he suspected he had feelings on which he had accepted he would never act. He’d loved another before who had been devoted to another, and he had learned how to be friends and nothing else. He’s accepted, in the part of his mind that is allowed to consider it, that Scorch would only ever be a good friend, a best friend, who loved her husband.

She is still a best friend who loves her husband, just as Brennen still deeply loves Galilee, but her words change everything. He shivers at her touch but leans into it, lowering his head and returning the light touch along her shoulder, down her side before he lifts his head back to whisper in return. “I love you too.” Little lights spark along his skin, and hers, tingling and fizzing faintly but not causing any harm. “You’ve always been something special.” Brennen waits for her to move again, to initiate, because he doesn’t want to regret it. He doesn’t want to regret a moment of it, because it’s something he doubts they will ever let themselves do again, in the light of another day. It feels right now, and he doesn’t want it to feel any other way tomorrow.