He does his best to move on.
Does his best to pull himself together, stitch together the gaping wound that is his heart. He builds something of a life with Mazikeen. He remains rooted where his entire life has been spent running. He builds and he ignores the fact that his very flesh cries out from the injustice of it all.
Sleep does not visit him, not anymore.
Were it not for his magic, he supposes he would have descended into madness long ago, but the demonic power that now thrums through his veins is enough to keep him whole. It shields his mind from fracturing completely and he holds onto it with whatever strength he has left. And when Mazikeen sleeps, he leaves.
Perhaps not in body, for often he chooses to rest next to her regardless, but in spirit. His mind closes in on itself like a dying star and he throws his power out in increasingly wider circles. He practices every night until he casts it further and further. Until his magic does not splatter against the cosmos but instead spears through them like a hunter—precise and deadly and desperate. Searching and searching for purchase.
Until he finds it.
Slippery as it may be.
He finds that thing which feels like her and the relief is so tangible, so potent, so overwhelming that he nearly collapses beneath the weight of it. Nearly loses his grip on the magic that keeps him there at all. It takes everything in him to leave behind the trail that he does as he slips away from her—so fast, so fast.
When he lands again, back in Hyaline, his breath his short and his body slick with sweat. He pulls himself to his feet as quickly as he can and plunges into the night, casting his magic over the kingdom and the rest of Beqanna until it picks up on her. Alive. Here. Again. He folds the fabric of distance between pinched fingers and steps through the shadow portal, spitting out near the archangel in a moment.
He pulls her to him before he says anything, crushing her close and burying his head in her neck. “Mom,” he whispers against her, the shadows pulling tight around his legs with the same smothering force of his own relief. “You’re here,” is all he manages, his voice thick with tears unspilled.
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)
@Ryatah