i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high
Aela’s retort to his assertion that Heartire was so loud beneath her carefully constructed mask stirs a sort of curious and abrupt understanding within him. Their grandmother had kept that facade at least partially intact even through their mind link. Only Reave breaking through as unexpectedly as he had had allowed him to see beneath it, even if it was only for a moment. And the woman that Aela sought to emulate was a pale reflection of the truth, like the surface of the ocean on a calm day, hiding the surging riptides beneath.
For Reave, loud was so normal that Heartfire’s calmness had struck him as odd.
And so when she asks about Lilliana, Reave shrugs, saying simply, “No louder than normal.”
And perhaps too it had something to do with the circumstances of his birth. For a moment, he is awash in those memories, the grief - his and Brazen’s and Lilliana’s - as Brazen’s life had faded from her eyes before turning to stone. He had been born into a maelstrom, and everything since then had seemed positively calm in comparison. At least, until the light has seeped from the sky and everything had been overlain with a thick miasma of fear and despair.
But even Heartfire had echoed with faint traces of grief as she stood over his mother. He had thought it odd at the time that there was not more of it. Had perhaps even resented her a little for not grieving her daughter more. Now though, he knows better. And in the moment, he picks out the threads of her remembered sorrow. Not for Brazen, who hadn’t truly died, but her eldest son. The heart shattering grief and rage. The furious vow to avenge his death. The sickening satisfaction of watching the orchestrator of his death choke on her own blood as she thrashed her life away. He lobbed it between them, a memory long forced into dormancy brought to light.
Heartfire would be furious if she knew.
Then, as flashes of Nerine recede from his vision, he smiles too. To him, the north was one and the same, Nerine as much a part of it as Taiga and the Isle. The moors could not be separated from them. Not without destroying everything Heartfire had tried to build. But he understands her resentment now. Heartfire had been her rock when she had needed one in the same way Lilli had been his in the wake of Brazen’s death.
And so, plucking from the memories Heartfire had inadvertently left him, Reave counters, “Are you sure your anger isn’t clouding your judgement?” He eyes her with a speculative blue gaze, understanding now so much more than he had earlier. “How will you ever be something more if your prejudice blinds you?” He grins then, devilishly wondering if she would pick up on the words he plucked from memory.
reave
@[Aela]