Life: a bitter, solitary existence. A void between aching ribs. A spinning darkness, with only two stars. Two tiny pinpricks of life. Two desperate, loving hearts suspended between wings, but for all the wisdom of a spirit leopard they could not balance out the violent heaves of his soul.

They loved him. They loved him and they tried so desperately to bear him up—but their love was painful to him, agonizing in its intensity, and as he spiraled deeper he did all he could to block it out. To not feel it. To hold himself together, when the opposite was what he needed.

But all it did was add guilt to an already burdened mind.

They loved him and he loved them but he was too afraid to let them back to the spaces they had inhabited so comfortably—too afraid to feel their soft, constant presence, and the warmth they fed his frozen heart. It was what he needed, but it would undo him, and.. the prospect of that frightened him more than he wanted to admit. All his life he had been in control, perhaps not of events (you never were, huh) but of himself. To give in would be to lose the last of what he had, because right now, all he had was that: control. And even that was slipping, the harsh wind freezing tears in the corners of his sky-blue eyes.

If Mauja had a frost heart this was not a season of thaw and melt. Perhaps it was being purged by a raging fire, but more than anything it was the slow death of a glacier, fragments breaking off to crash into the seas with a deep, resounding boom.

So he wandered the north, alone but not alone, because he had two shadows floating in the sky—but alone because he pushed them away again and again, until even Irma's quiet persistence grew tinged with confused hurt, and Diego.. he understood even less, uncharacteristically flying close to the white owl. She had to give him what Mauja could not, and it was all wrong, but he wasn't strong enough to do anything differently.

She was saying something, but he didn't listen. She said it again, and he still didn't listen, just pressed his eyes shut and wandered. The Steppe was flat and still snow-covered anyway. It wasn't like he could fall off the face of the world and die if he walked blind. Again Irma's cold voice battered against his skull, but he just pressed his ears flat to his neck and turned into the darkness.

Her battering ceased for a moment. He sensed great, great annoyance. She had been patient with him. When he had been lost in time, she had kept him sane, she had told him they still lived, that all would be fine—she had loved him when he had been unable to love himself, and even when he had been ready to let them all die, she had not felt betrayed, because she had understood. She had been disappointed, yes, but she had still loved him.

She still did, but she was an owl—there was only so much she could comprehend of his misery, and when her understanding slipped, when her quiet, constant love wasn't enough...

It frightened her.

And fear, as much as his unwillingness to listen, made her angry.

ARAMIS! she finally yelled, her voice a clap of thunder rattling his mind, her surge of wrathful annoyance rushing through his blood for a heartbeat. He stumbled. Paused. Opened his eyes. Irritated, the white owl swerved away, followed after a moment by Diego, a last, pained look cast from amber eyes in Mauja's direction. He swallowed. Aramis..?

Irma was seldom wrong, and she certainly wasn't now. By the entrances to the frozen caves where he'd lost yet another friend the hound lay, blood and gore spread out on the snow as he gorged on some animal unlucky enough to have been trapped by his sharp fangs. "d'Artagnan..."

Fear: of life itself, of his own weakness, and of what his friend would make of it. The friend he so desperately needed. The friend he.. the friend he wasn't sure he could bear losing.

The friend he was afraid he would lose, simply because the King was Dead.

The friend he so very desperately needed.

Mauja blinked the wind and tears from his eyes, and drew nearer with careful, frosted steps. "Aramis," he greeted the hound, remembering his small, round puppy shape rolling about his own feet and toying with the long strands of white hair. The beast was more regal now, more refined, and, Mauja thought, probably less playful. He didn't pause at the guard, though, simply stepped past him and his meal into the frozen darkness of the world, chasing after fifty shades of red.

[ @[imi] this is long enough as it is lmfao xD ]

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