[ Sorry x 10000 ]

It almost seemed cruel, to pin every hope on her—a creature not bound to him by anything other than the fragile links of light between them, a creature with no obligation to (love) him as one had to (love) one's kin—as he had time and time again bashed his heart against the rocks of Snö's heart—to pin everything on her with that question, that hesitant, trembling question. To look to her for salvation, when the dawn could only come from within.

But she was there, anyway. Unasked. Like he had happened to be there for her when she fell apart.

Except he didn't fall apart—he just became this frozen mess of pieces, hairline cracks and missing chunks. Where she had exploded in a cloud of crystal dust and shards, he grew still; where the pain had come flooding out of her eyes like a violent torrent, his tears were calm and composed.

She wavered in the wet focus of his gaze, the bright spark sitting in the middle of her eyes—

—it seemed to flash—

—and her lips turned into something, and he clung to the silence, too afraid of her answer, of.. of what it would do to him. If.. if it would be the last blindfold torn from his frost eyes, the last cover blown, there deep in the maze of his chest—if it would cast him out into that chaos raging around the temple of his wicked thoughts.

All those things.. he had forsaken. All those things, he had ignored—all those things that had been too difficult, and instead of handling them, he had denied them, and, of course—

“Yeah. You do.”

—that means that you get confused, because you're putting a lid on your own compass. And of course you can't know where north is if you're not looking.

I.. do..?

He.. had a heart.

Frostheart.

Deadheart.

And suddenly, there was no going back—there would never be any returning to that pallid, ice cold armor he had fallen out of. There wouldn't be an Ice King anymore, because—because.. because he had a heart. Because Sarazheha had been right.

Just because Roskuld said it was that way. Because.. the lightning bolt, the light she had provided far in the frozen north, said that he had one. Because it was a painful truth spelled out in his veins.

He didn't say anything—because there was nothing to say.

He just laid there, but something in him compelled him to shift, just a little, so that that rock didn't dig into his shoulder quite so painfully anymore, and to stretch out his crooked hind leg so it didn't cramp the same way—

All these little things to make it more comfortable, because worth had been reinstated on his soul.

She settled back too, a warm shield against the cold darkness of the night—a flame against the desolation of the stars.

They were bright in his eyes, too bright, as he just laid there, staring up with a fairly vacant expression (because there's nothing underneath there's nothing underneath there's nothing—), too shocked and dumbfounded and confused to think anything at all. He tried, but couldn't; goaded himself by whispering I have a heart in his mind but like something that's too painful to touch he shied away, found himself thinking of other, inconsequential things—

—little bits and pieces of another life—

—and her soft voice pulled him, gently, from the roads his mind roamed.

"Yeah," he echoed her quietly, the word almost a sigh falling from dark lips and tired lungs—and something in those pale eyes sharpened again, swirled and spun and settled on her.

Hearts.

"It's alright."

But it isn't.

"Everything.. is going to be alright,"

because it was never about me and now I can forget, forget, forget—

Bury the knowledge beneath the surface of the snow, and wait for the wind to blow and smooth it out, until no one would know what he knew and—

It's not how I want to live, came the small, terrified voice in the back of his mind.

But it was the only way he knew how.

".. hey," he went on, still tentative, still soft, "what.. what's eating you?"

Don't lie sleepless over the evil I've done,

and it felt like it had to be more than that.

Or maybe he had just forgotten that he'd asked her before, that night—lost the answers in the haze.

[ @[Roskuld] ]

lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .