i am the vanguard of your destruction

Slowly, the fire took the empty house of shades—and she would be nothing but a shadow in their minds when it was done. The reign of the Dark Empress was over. Her deeds would live in the memories of those who remembered, but when their lives winked out, one by one like candles in a snowstorm, she would be lost with them. And in time, the tears evaporating on his heat-licked cheeks would dry, and this wound would become old, a scar across his heart. He would not forget but the pain would lose its edge, until it barely hurt at all.

He knew it to be truth. He'd been through it before, after all.

But as he watched the body of someone who had meant so much to him, knowing that was a small comfort, a threadbare blanket in winter, or just the dream of a cold wind while you're slowly burning up yourself.

Besides, he didn't want to be in this situation in the first place. He didn't want to have to let her recede to nothing but memory, hoof prints in the dust of his mind. He didn't want to have a scar bearing her name across his heart. He didn't want to have to stand here, on a floating island in the middle of a nosy crowd, burning her and having his grief put on display for everyone to see.

Another block of ice sheared off of the glacier, crashed into the sea.

Who the hell even cared.

This bad, the feral, icy huntress whispered in his mind, her clear voice worried, rushed; it was unusual that her language skipped back to those early stages, but then again, she rarely rushed what she had to say. Irma took her sweet time when she talked, delivering each sentence with cold clarity and all the right words she needed—this, though, had just been a more efficient way to catch his drifting attention, and now that she had it, he realized a trickle of unease he hadn't been aware of before.

From where she perched with a quiet, unhappy Diego he saw a large stallion with flaming wings, a rack of antlers upon his head, and something sterling tangled up in them—and the fire in his chest unfurled, heart beating a little harder, a little less gently, and he turned fully from the pyre to clear his eyes. Gaucho.

And, well, it seemed like Gaucho held more hard feelings about their little spat than Mauja did.

"YOU," he practically yelled, and Mauja's ears, which had been sort of courteously flipped forward, fell flat against his neck as he pulled his head a little higher, horn spearing the sky. Well, damn, yes. Me. He wasn't here to be shouted at when he wasn't even done burning the body of one of his closest friends. His teeth clicked warningly in the air as some other Pegasus came down behind His Royal Idiot. Blue eyes flickered to her for a moment. She was familiar.. but he didn't have the time for her, now. He had an interrogation to suffer through, it seemed, and if his hunch was correct Gaucho liked to yell.

Mauja didn't want to be yelled at. He was tired. His ears were tired. His head was tired and his angry blue eyes flashed dangerously, masquerading to make up for the strength that slowly seeped out of him. And Ophelia.. she stepped in between them. Sensitive as he was, he didn't need more chastisement than that. Gaucho might've lowered his antlers at him, and yelled, and now accused him of murdering Psyche, but Mauja wasn't prone to giving in: he wouldn't have yelled back, or done something stupid, or counter-productive, or..

.. okay, well, if he'd had his way, he just would've murdered the dun on the spot for being annoying, and the fresh pain in his mind took the snake skin and his annoyance and justified it.

Besides, who would even miss the dumb buffoon?

Fury was too easy to take refuge in. Ophelia was right to stand between them. She was everything he had been and now was not, the glaciers that had been purged by the fire he'd set in black flesh. Behind her, for once the one shielded, however much a coincidence and less of an actual intended action, he closed his eyes. Breathed in, deep, through ragged nostrils, tasting and smelling the char of meat, the pervasive scent of burning hair.

He hated it. He hated watching bodies burn. Feeling it, in the heat licking his haunches. Hated the sound of it. It ground away at his resolve, and at the fragile links of his sanity. "We found snake skin upon her corpse," Ophelia was saying to the stupid dun. Mauja still lived in his world of darkness, Snö somewhere by his side, heart thundering painfully in his chest. The anger was fading.

When he opened his eyes again, they seemed lighter, glazed again with a sheen of tears; his ears were flipped back but not pressed tight against his neck, and his posture was tired, haggard.

Mauja was, in many ways, already defeated, and even wrath seemed meaningless in the face of the grief. What would more death solve? What would it be except a quick fix, a moment's refuge from the pain? Killing anyone over Psyche wouldn't bring her back, it would just leave another hole blown in someone else's life.

Ophelia, Ophelia... In the silence after her polite demand Mauja's rough voice surfaced, his gaze with its low intensity slung on Gaucho as he drew a step sideways so as to not hide behind the porcelain queen so completely anymore. "I didn't kill her," he said, quietly, forcefully, and silently he added, and for everybody's sake lets hope you didn't, either.

Because if he had, and it came to light now..
.. Mauja wasn't sure what would happen.

[ tagging @[Megaera] as well ]