"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
The twins had been born early and her daughter follows their lead, as though sensing she is not a kind place to be anymore. Mazikeen feels a twist of revulsion at the combination of soft-gold and blue and there’s a moment where she wants nothing more than to shred this piece of Gale apart. The girl stands and Mazikeen stubbornly does not because this fury helps to drown out the confusing mixture of emotions that aren’t hers.
In the end, though, this newest daughter is cared for (although begrudgingly) and Mazikeen spends an excruciating afternoon with her and Malik before leaving the pair of them together with a promise to return. To her son she gives the task of picking out a name - something that starts with an M like theirs. She doesn’t care what it is, so long as it isn’t the name that Gale had picked.
And then Mazikeen weaves through the mountain passes that will take her to the coast, the very northern edges of her home. She couldn’t rely on anyone else to pry out what was trying to settle in her hollow places, so she would try something else. Away from anyone who might try to interfere. There are other places she could go to if she wanted to die, she knows, but Mazikeen does not intend to suffer scars made by anyone else on her coat - not if they showcase her death, her failures, her weaknesses. Never again will she let someone else kill her.
The thoughts that plague her, spoken by kind voices, should not be poison but they feed her anger and her resolve as the night deepens. There are no stars or moon out when she finally reaches the coast. She’s the only light, her markings casting a warm orange glow on the rocks around her.
Mazikeen’s considered the method several times. She’s not completely certain she’ll return again, but if she does she wants it to not be at the bottom of the ocean or buried under snow.
So she chooses her own claws, her body shifting and bending so she can reach the vital parts of her. Frustrated roars blend with involuntary screams but the pain is still sweet, still welcome, and she knows she has a dark bliss waiting for her at the end. However long it might be.
She tells herself she is strong enough for this but the voice that says this in her mind is not her own. It belongs to the golden light, the awe that he had placed there that did not fit with the scorn and disgust she expected from him. As her mind begins to grow hazy and her eyes have long-since been blinded by pain, she thinks of Firion and she’s not sure which part of her sends out the plea for help. Does she want him to actually help or does she just want him to find her after it is done? To make sure he knows that she would rather tear out her own heart than suffer the gift he’d left in her mind.
She’s given no time to see if he really does come like he said he would, her eyes fluttering closed as her blood spills from her in too-great of a tide and then Mazikeen goes up in flames.
The moment where there is only ash and blood left behind where her body had been is only a few seconds long but it stretches - the silence thick in the absence of her screams.
Then the fire returns, flaring with blinding light for a heartbeat. The mare lying there when it dies away has no scars at all and when her eyes flash open, they are a clear bright orange.
He monitors the golden tripwire he had left in her mind, a near constant focus on it. Never enough to intrude upon her thoughts, but enough to know where she had even brushed a touch over it. Whether it reverberated from thoughts blown in its direction. But he only receives silence in return. Only the constant and unending darkness from what she refuses to touch. It is maddening, and he struggles against the primal rage that swells in his throat. The constant battle against himself to not intrude. To not force himself into a situation where he was clearly not wanted and not simply march to Hyaline and end it.
But he restrains himself, barely.
She would ask for help if she wanted it. If she needed it.
And he would be waiting.
The frustration demands an outlet though and that is what he is doing this night. Once the sun has set, he tears himself free from form and becomes a shadow on the wind. He races along each winter breeze, whipping it into a frenzy until the trees of the forest howl and the leaves blow as he runs past them. He screams into the wind and it echoes back to him, feeding into the cycle of fury and confusion and hurt.
And it is only when that ripple of the tripwire sounds that he pauses at all. It rings like a gong in his head and he pulls up sharply, unsure if perhaps he had tripped it himself with his own intrusive thoughts or he had just imagined it. But it sounds again and he trembles with fear of what it means before he grabs ahold of the golden thread now connecting them. Grasping it tight he explodes into a cloud of shadow, following it desperately to the other end, bursting into being just a few feet away from her.
He comes just in time to see her lay there, body lifeless, the blood dripping into her eyes.
The sound that comes from him is inhuman, a scream that tears his throat. His magic booms out of him, knocking into the rocks and cliffs so that they begin to tumble further down the coast. He only has enough awareness to shield them both, the rocks sliding off and bouncing away from her lax body. The ocean’s tides reversing for several moments as the impact pushes them back. He stumbles forward blindly, falling to his knees by her side, and he barely has time to brush aside her forelock before she goes up in flames.
A cry comes from him then, sharp and agonized, as he reaches for the ash that scatters and covers his face in the blacked smudges. He should have been faster, he thinks. He should have fought harder. He should have forced her to accept his help. He should have ripped that bastard’s throat out the second he felt her pain when they last met. All of his regrets rises up like a tidal wave and he closes his eyes against them, the pain of the loss staggering, blinding—in a way he couldn’t have anticipated or begun to understand.
So he misses when the fire returns except the sudden wave of heat against him.
And he opens his eyes slowly, his face streaked with the dirt and the tears, the rubble of his destruction around them, to see her lying there with her eyes open, breath once again filling her chest.
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)
The first thing she sees in the darkness is gold that is surprisingly close and she knows she should put walls up, have some kind of defense in place, but she is dragged immediately under by the weight of the last year and a half. Both the golden light and the shadows remain but they are fainter, finding no room amongst everything that has returned to her. The seed he had planted took root and turned into a forest. The torrent of her emotions consumes her and any chance she might have of holding herself together begins to slip away further and further with each breath that she takes. It is looming over her, over them, waiting to crash and it’s only a matter of time now.
“Firion.” She croaks out, confusion causing a frown in those bright orange eyes as she sees the streaks of tears on his cheeks illuminated by the gentle glow of her horns.
She reaches for them, as though touching them might help her understand what could have caused them, but she hesitates before she can brush his skin. The need to shield herself from him has been so strong, such a constant, that she doesn’t know what to do without it. So she pulls back so she can look in his eyes, aware each moment that any cruelty from him will shatter the thin wall keeping her from crumbling and yet expecting it all the same.
The memories are coming faster, with greater weight, and her eyes widen slightly in her alarm. Because she knows what’s coming - knows that there will be tears and it will be ugly and this is a weak side of her she never would have imagined letting him see.
So for now she can hold herself together until she knows which Firion it is lying with her. The signs are all there, of course, but she’s blind to them and questioning their last interaction and what he had said to her. Thinking it must be easy to make promises to someone so unwilling to believe them. There had been no danger, no chance at reciprocation.
She wants to ask if he had meant them, to give him a chance to take it all back. Maybe he is crying because he hadn’t gotten the chance to kill her before she took care of it herself (though this thought feels unrealistic just as soon as she thinks it). Mazikeen wants to find out immediately if she needs to try to run from him again before she falls apart. Even though just shifting her body so her legs are beneath her drains more of her energy and she isn’t sure she could move if she wanted to. But he could. He can take this opportunity to leave her and then she wouldn't have the face the fact that she hopes he stays and she doesn't have it in her to pretend otherwise right now.
The weight of it all, of everything she’s done, presses closer and closer and the scrap of her resolve keeping her together continues to fray. There is no physical pain but the heartbreak and the guilt after so much emptiness incapacitates her.
And all she can manage is two quiet words. “You came.”
Coming together only to drive one another apart. Getting close to something like friendship, something that meant something more, only to drive the knife into one another’s heart. He was the worst offender, he knows. The primary cause of the division between them, especially at the start. But she had been too alert, her eye too keen, and he had known that to stay near her was to strip himself bare. Because he could only hide behind the mask for so long. He could only pretend so much when she always saw the truth of him.
So he shouldn’t be surprised at the apprehension on her face as she settles into herself. He shouldn’t be surprised by the wariness or surprise and yet it cuts all the same, the wound as self-inflicted as any that he has ever borne. He watches her wrestle with everything that must be flooding through her and he does his best to get a white-knuckle grip on his own emotions. He struggles to pull them under control so that he can be there for her and not focused on the grief that had so nearly consume him just seconds before.
He feels her reach for him and then stop and so he closes the distance himself. He presses a tender touch to her cheek, as if reassuring himself that she is alive. That she is still there and capable of breath and therefore capable of smiling or laughing or even cutting his throat should the whim strike. He knew she could, would probably still, do all three. And he can’t find it in him to care. Can’t find it in him to wish that she wouldn’t or wish that their relationship was anything but this chaotic mess that it was.
“Of course I came,” he whispers, breath fanning over her.
His magic brushes over her, hunting for any ache or pain that he could heal, but he finds nothing. Nothing for him to focus on except for the intimacy of them lying like this, his emotions so stark on his face that there was no chance of him pretending this time—no mask for him to fumble into place.
His mouth pulls into a frown as he finds her gaze and snags on it, his voice thick with tears and regret.
“I wish I had come sooner. I wish I had been there. I should have done more, Maze.”
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)
These words echo through her mind when Firion closes the gap between them, a tender touch to her cheek. The same action that had spurred her fury before, the same touch that had inspired her to tear him to shreds rather than let him know it had meant something to her, and that it had hurt so deeply to believe he had just been doing it to get under her skin (and how it had worked).
Now she leans into it just slightly as a shaky breath that might be a sob escapes her at the gentleness he uses. She cannot even bring herself to be annoyed - because she knows how close she is to breaking right here and she knows that gentle is all she can handle and even then it is so close to being too much.
And she tries not to think of someone else, of the other muzzle she’s leaned into hundreds of times, because those thoughts cause the fractures to spread faster.
Of course he says, as though they haven’t spent their entire lives pushing each other away.
A small, sad smile shines there amongst her tears and she shakes her head at his wishes and replies quietly with a truth that they both know by now. “I wouldn’t have let you.” Not when she had been hollowed out and not before when there had been dense walls built around her to shield her from his indifference.
Her instinct is to hold herself together and comfort him, to ignore her own tears and try to ease away his. She’s never once learned how to ask for comfort herself but she could give it to others so freely - it was one of the few things she carries from her parents. To bury her own pain deep enough that it couldn’t be touched while encouraging someone else to work through their own. Even when Gale had taken her eyes and heart and left her on the shore of the lake, she had responded to Sabal’s sadness - wanting to ease the suffering of her friend and only failing because she lay there incapacitated by pain.
And even for Firion, who inspires such a confusing mixture of emotions in her, this instinct struggles against the weight of her own sorrow enough that she reaches out to him again and does not hesitate this time, mirroring the gentle touch he had placed on her cheek.
She opens her mouth to say something more to him but that is when her hold on everything snaps and another sob comes out instead, a rush of air against his golden skin. Her orange eyes close against the onslaught and she twists her face away as much as she can as if that will hide the shuddering that courses through her body as Mazikeen fully and completely comes to face with everything she’s done and everything that was done to her. This isn’t just a taste of grief and disgust. It’s the entire tidal wave and she drowns in it as she cries, lying there next to Firion, who is the very last of anyone in the entire world she thought she would’ve let see her tears or see her without the protective force of her fire.
And she knows it should bother her now but there isn’t even enough strength in her for that, nor to voice how badly she wants this to be real and how afraid she is that it isn’t.
He wishes he could swallow the words as soon as he says them. Wishes that he could pretend he had never said them at all—not because they are not true but because he knows how selfish it is to voice them. How selfish it is to give voice to the fears that take root in him and force her to bear the burden of them too. So he shuts his mouth quickly, swallowing any more regrets the may bubble to the surface and he chokes on them. He leans into her touch too and lets the silence stretch between them—
until it snaps.
He feels the storm of her emotions brew and then collide around them. Feels it rise up and then crest the barricading wall before it crashes down once more. And when it does, he knows it could break her. So he doesn’t move and doesn’t leave, even when she turns away. He just breathes out and in again, draping his head over her and letting the steadiness of his dark heart beat against her—quiet and slow and there.
There is a soft noice that begins in the back of his throat, and one that he has never heard before. He murmurs it slowly and does not stop. He continues to make it as he holds her while she rides through every ounce of her sorrow and disgust—as she comes to terms with everything that she has done and, more importantly, been done to and through her. For the first time in his life, Firion remains. He does not run. Does not pretend. Does not leave because it is difficult or because it feels too real, too raw.
He just holds her as the sobs rack though her body and he sends a blanket of warmth over her as the bite of the air becomes too harsh. The gentle glow of him casts a golden light over the flames of her and by it, he can see the curves of her from where she has not completely twisted away from him.
And when he finally does say something, he doesn’t lie.
He doesn’t tell her that it’s okay or she’s fine.
He just holds her a little tighter, his voice a rough whisper.
“I’m here, Maze. I’m here.”
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)
Once the tears start, they won’t stop. They take over and she loses track of time, loses track of where she is, but the memories continue their pummeling of her heart. The guilt is too much and she understands why the emptiness had felt like a relief. Everything feels out of control now, every emotion is more vibrant than it had been before because of the contrast to what she had been for the last year and a half. Maybe this means that happiness will be brighter too but for now, she just continues to drown. The anger she can usually count on to rescue her from these depths does not rise up. As though it’s been utterly spent.
Soon, soon she’ll think about what needs to be done. Soon she’ll burn again.
For now, it is just her and Firion here on the coast. And even though the comfort is coming from such an unlikely source, it is exactly what she needs. She slowly uncurls from how she had twisted away, easing into him even though for a while his presence makes it worse. Not (only) because of their history - just because anyone seeing her like this is always frightening.
Like this as if this has happened before. But even the small handful of times Mazikeen's emotions have gotten away from her before pale in comparison to this.
Every moment that passes she becomes more aware of how she doesn’t deserve this from Firion - not the way he drapes his head over her or the soft noises that he makes like he’s trying to soothe her. Not the way his voice is rough like her pain hurts him too. And certainly not how he stays, he gives it to her anyway, and when the sobs finally begin to fade she leans into him and the warmth he provides and even moves a little so it is a little more comfortable for them both to lay on the rocky ground together.
Her voice is strangled when it comes again, raw and absolutely wrecked from her sobs. “I’m sorry.” It’s the first of many apologies that she owes and one that she’s owed him for a long time. “I’m glad you’re here Firion… but I’m so sorry.” There’s another shaky breath and for a moment she considers shifting away to give them both space... only the thought fades away almost as soon as it comes. Because she doesn't want to risk them moving just yet and have it snap them back to how they had been before. There is a fear that is both new and old seeping in to join all the others: she does not want to lose him.
Mazikeen's been taught that such thoughts are selfish and she admonishes herself but still doesn't try for any space.
Even when she opens her eyes again, Mazikeen doesn’t ask about the rubble illuminated by his beautiful golden light. She doesn’t speak any of the questions beginning to seep through her sorrow or give more attention to her insecurities and fears, she just inhales another shaky breath and feels herself relax a little more into every point where they touch.
The storm does not pass quickly, but it does eventually pass. Eventually, he feels the sobs begin to fade and her breaths begin to come in more steadily, and he feels her heart rate begin to slow. There is a moment when he considers helping her. Where he thinks about threading his magic through her to help her body relax, but he knows that it would be nothing but an artificial crutch. It would not do any long-term good and, knowing Mazikeen, she would have his head as soon as she realized what was happening.
So he keeps his magic to himself and only focuses on making himself warmer to combat the bite in the air around them. When she shifts closer to him, he happily obliges, shifting his weight so that they are pressed alongside one another. His magic once more seeps from him, this time bleeding into the ground to make it softer, supportive and firm, but cushioned unlike the hard rock that it was meant to be.
Smiling to himself, he leans down and brushes golden lips over her shoulder. It feels like a dangerous thing to do, a foolish thing, but it also feels utterly natural. He doesn’t explore any further though past the comforting touch and then just lies his head down once more, feeling the warmth of her below his cheek.
“Please do not apologize,” he manages, voice nearly cracking but his head not moving. He closes his golden eyes. “Gods, do not apologize to me, Maze.” He breathes in deep before exhaling slowly. “I could apologize to you for the rest of my life and I still don’t think I’d cover half of what you deserve from me, but I can promise that the last thing you ever need to say to me is ‘I’m sorry.’”
The shadows climb up on them further and there is a weight to them, as if a blanket was slipping over them both, and for a second, there is just them in the comfort of his magic and the peace of their silence.
And then, a question that he can’t stop, practically whispered,
“Are you really glad I’m here?”
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)
09-20-2021, 08:05 AM (This post was last modified: 09-20-2021, 08:06 AM by Mazikeen.)
As her sobs fade and she settles into this renewed life, full of the emotions she’s been without, Mazikeen’s heart aches as she realizes the way this corner of the world has been altered for comfort. The air should be cold but Firion’s body next to her is keeping away the chill, and he shifts his weight so they are pressed side-by-side, and even the ground beneath them softens. She cannot remember the last time she’s seen magic used for something so kind. Each breath is a little less shaky than the last, and she continues to relax by degrees, the tension in her body easing more and more. It returns just for a moment when his lips brush against her skin, that particular comforting action somehow unexpected and it brings with it a chaotic storm of those too-vivid emotions.
There is surprise that he wants to touch her at all, happiness, confusion over why it feels different than she remembers (not yet realizing how she is no longer a patchwork of scar tissue), and then darker things churning with them that almost inspire her to flinch away.
But she leans further into Firion instead because the repulsion and the guilt and whatever else is in the mess are not inspired by him. And even though she fears this is the first, and last, nice moment they share together - the last time he’ll want to touch her - she sinks further into how nice it feels and tries not to think about when it will end.
His response to her apologies brings a small smile to the corner of Mazikeen’s mouth where her head rests on the magically softened ground. He’s wrong, of course - she owes him so many of them. And maybe he does owe her some as well but they are fewer than he seems to think. As she watches Firion’s shadows climb over them, to distract herself from how her heart begins to race again at the sight of them (not the same darkness, not the same purpose, not even the same sensation) she replies back quietly with a small trace of humour. “How about this - I won’t apologize for the past if you don’t either.” She tells him, and even though there was a lightness to the words she needs to close her eyes because her guilt is making the tears swim again. This is a promise she won’t be able to keep. She’s going to want to say those words so often. To him, to his brother and mom, to so many.
Firion’s question does not require any thought to answer. “I really am.” If it were a lie she thinks it would be carried on a stronger voice but it is soft like the sound of the nearby waves. An acceptance of this truth - no matter whether it will cause her pain in the future. Right now, she can repay Firion for being here by at least being honest with him.
And while she wishes he knew that without asking, after all the kindness he has and is showing her, she feels a similar doubt rise up in her own mind. So because all of her defences are decimated and she cannot find a reason not to, Mazikeen follows her truth with a whispered question of her own “Do you still think there's plenty to stay for?” Memories of their last conversation have a different clarity to them without the smoke and flames obscuring her reactions. She doesn’t know if it is selfish to want him to stay, to still think she is real and worth something even as low as she feels right now. Not yet even returned to the fighter he's known.
She just knows she’s lived without hope for so long, had it torn right out of her, but she feels it spark inside of her chest again here with Firion.
It feels surreal, this moment, and he sinks readily into it. It is so easy, too easy, to think that this will be everlasting. That they will be here in the cocoon of silence in the aftermath of chaos and be able to relax into the moment with no repercussions. But he knows better than most that this would be just the eye of the storm. He knows that the anguish she had just felt was only the beginning of it. There was more to come. There was more that she would have to work through. More that she would have to feel.
More apologies to make and sins to atone for and they wouldn’t be to him.
But he doesn’t focus on that now—can’t. Not when she’s pressed against him and they are tangled together, not when for the first time ever, they are exchanging these truths to one another. It is a relief to be honest with her finally, to be able to tell her what he is actually thinking instead of the lie that he has made up in the hopes of driving her further away. Instead, he is scrubbed raw, completely vulnerable.
So he doesn’t flinch away from the way his heart clenches in his chest at her affirmation. At her saying that she really is glad that he’s here. His head nearly swims with it and his pulse pounds slowly. She is still beneath his cheek, the heat of her intoxicating, but he doesn’t move at her question. He just smiles against her, laughing sorting so that his breath fans out over her unmarred skin.
“You’ve always been worth staying for,” he admits, before continuing. “But I think for the first time, I am maybe someone who is worth staying.” It eludes to their earlier conversation, to the confession he had made when he had been so desperate to bring her back that he would have confessed anything—would have given up any truth to break through the ice around her. “I think I am finally good enough to try.”
He swallows, hard, a soft tremble racing through him.
“I would try, for you, Maze. I would.”
His mouth opens to say more and then closes, heart racing.
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)
