i am the vanguard of your destruction

[ Warning for some bad language, I wasn't sure if you minded or not but if you do let me know and I'll edit it out and find other words to use in the upcoming posts <3 ]

There had been entirely too much yelling as of late. He was tired of it, sick to the bones. He couldn't even think. He didn't even know the time of day, or what day it was, or how many had passed since he'd discovered Psyche's body and shit had just gone all wrong, everywhere. His world was burning, and he along with it.

So when he'd found himself forced back onto the scene of her death, there had, of course, been more yelling. His name rang loud and clear over the sky island; he flattened his tired ears to his neck, but it couldn't block the sound out. He knew who it was, though. Kahlua. Kahlua, who had run away from the crime scene without a word. Kahlua, who hadn't seen the fucked-up stand-off that came after. Kahlua, who hadn't witnessed some fucking moron trying to rip him from someone else he cared for.

Tolio. Kou. Psyche. And after a fashion, Ophelia. Or maybe not. Or maybe just for now. For a little while.

He was tired. He was tired, and he hurt—there was a constant throb in his chest and head, a little reminder of all he had lost or was losing. They had shouted at him, more than one of them, about different things, until their voices grew blurred in his memory and he could barely recall what it had even been about. What they'd said. Who'd said what. If he'd said anything back.

It was a black, bleak mess, and most of all, he just wanted to fall asleep and never wake up again. Swallowing, he turned to face the incoming storm, because he had no other choice; the framework of Helovia kept him grounded, and with a haggard, beaten look he watched her stomp up to him. Yelling rarely meant good things. Stomping up like that rarely meant good things. So, what had he done this time? What precious little heart had he broken? Whose idea of perfection had he ruined, and whose kind, loving soul had he hurt with his flawed attention?

“You promised you would come back to the Edge,” she was saying, and for a moment—for a brief, precious moment—he thought she was angry because he'd been delaying his trial for what, a year? That it was no more than that. Just the same old thing. For a moment, he thought that things would be fine, but then she went on, “I’m glad you didn’t.”

She drained his world of color. She drained his world of warmth, and feeling. His heart beats felt hollow; the ground spun under his feet, the surroundings turning into a nauseating blur. “Just imagine all the lies you would have told, and I would have stood up for you.” His shallow breathing grew faster and faster, sides barely heaving. He felt cold. Clammy.

This wasn't happening.

What the fuck was going on.

She was abandoning him.

He was losing her. Like he lost everyone. Like he would lose everyone.

He didn't even know where it had come from. Just imagine all the lies... But he hadn't planned on lying—he would've gone to the Edge for truth, to clear his name, to make them understand that it had been an accident and nothing more...

“But I guess I should have guessed… once a murderer, always a murderer.”

It felt like an eternity, standing still as a statue aside from the rapid movements of his stressed breathing, eyes glazed over. Once a murderer.

Always a murderer.

And then it hit him, a punch straight in the solar plexus—he hadn't even had a chance to defend himself. A murderer.

He didn't want to believe it. He didn't want to acknowledge the hunch he had, to look at the theory, examine it, but fuck how could he not? It was too recent in his mind, her body still crackling in his dreams as he woke roaring, sweating and shivering—crying. He was losing everything he had. And everyone just kept yelling at him.

"Fine!" he spat at her, the death of his expression shattered as a veil of blue rage ignited in his mind. The glass cast of his eyes burned up in the fire, and his ears fell back as he thrust his head higher. He'd had it with this shit. They called him Frostheart, and they called him Ice King, and they called him monster and murderer and at the first sign of anything, they blamed him. He was tired of it. He was tired, so very tired, and he was tired of being sad, and tired of weeping, and tired of caring about others, or caring if he upset them, or caring about any fucking thing at all. He was tired of being tired.

So he was angry instead, burning the tears up in the furnace of his fury.

"Have it your way, then! HAVE IT YOUR FUCKING WAY, KAHLUA! Because you know what?" And from his high perch he stared hotly at her, a sharp note of pain reverberating through his every word, and dancing behind the flickering fire of his gaze. "I've had it with this shit. I've had it with being treated like this." You were supposed to be my friend. "But I guess I'm just a filthy murderer," he hissed through clenched teeth, struggling to keep the tears away. "So it doesn't matter if you stab me in the back. I guess, it doesn't matter, because in your mind, I was always a murderer, wasn't I? Wasn't I?" Why else would you so readily jump to this conclusion?

She didn't even ask questions. Just assumed. And he'd had it with that, too. What kind of friend was she if she instantly assumed the worst?

"I don't need the Edge's forgiveness," he went on, his voice rock hard, just like his heart. Murderer. "Because I don't fucking care." Not anymore. He'd wanted to clear his conscience. Stop having to look over his shoulder. Now.. now, he just wanted them all to burn, and he hated them anyway, so what the fuck did their forgiveness mean to him anyway? Nothing. Coming crawling for it was just weak. Pitiful. Pathetic. If he wanted something he'd take it and he knew the truth everyone else closed their eyes to—that he wasn't guilty of this. He didn't care what they thought anymore.

He wanted to say he didn't care what Kahlua thought, but he did.

It hurt. This hurt. But it had to hurt. He had to purge himself of this.

He had to lose everyone. There was no other way, so he bit down on the pain, shouldered through.

Was this the way he had to live? Was this the only way to live? As the Bane?

He had been silent for just a second, his thoughts reeling. He still felt sick, but he stared down at her with all the smoldering judgment he could muster—all the darkness and all the rage, every dark damned thing that lived in his soul. His breath punctured the Birdsong air as white clouds, fueled by the ice in his veins.

"You know nothing of my murders," he finally said, a harsh whisper dripping venom and pain.

He had no more to say. He'd done enough damage. The words in his mind were burning up, consumed by a soul-agony so hot it made his bones ache.

Was this what he wanted? Was this how he wanted to live? He asked himself again, but he found no forgiveness—for too long he had lived as a dog and let the world kick him as it pleased. He was done with it.

So he swallowed the tears back, fed them to the blue wrath, and turned to try and walk away.

He'd been so dumb, thinking anything would ever change.

i am the vanguard of your destruction

“No!”

And he agreed. With every cursed fragment of his heart, he agreed; back turned and eyes cast on a distant horizon. This wasn't how it ought to end. She didn't want him to walk away, with the truth and his dark, bitter secrets. She didn't want him to disappear, an ice revenant with burning eyes and bleeding thoughts. She didn't want him to leave her, because he was a monster, just another accident waiting to happen. She wouldn't permit him to leave, because she thought he was a murderer.

He didn't want to walk away, either. He didn't want this, the memory of her tears burned into his aching mind. Hadn't he hurt her enough? Hadn't his spiteful words been enough?

How much more would he have to hurt her, to make her let go of him?

How much more could he hurt her, before his fragile defenses broke down and the flood of his tears and empathy put out the fire of his rage?

She stood before him, staring stubbornly with sky-blue eyes made glassy by tears. Blocking his path. Begging for more pain. He swallowed. For how much longer could he be her nightmare? How much longer could he pretend? Flat, angry eyes glared down at her, heart stumbling and falling in his chest. Once.. once, this wouldn't have been so hard. He wouldn't have cared at all, because her brow was unadorned—he would've gladly proven her right and walked away without much worry. His lips would've curved into a small, cold smile, and he would've told her that he was her ending, and that would've been that.

“Tell me, so I can figure out who the hell you really are!”
Why, if she could figure that out, he was quite interested in knowing it himself.

Angel and demon, beautiful and evil. His cold breaths counted the moments silently, despair gripping his throat and his chest. He had to.. he had to.. he had to keep pushing her away, for her own sake, even if meant instigating a witch-hunt after his own frosted hide.

And for his own sake, because sooner or later, he would lose her, too—more than he had lost her today.

But the only things he found upon his tongue were lies and somewhere, at some point in time, he had promised the gale that he would be honest.

"I am a sword drenched in the blood of those my wielder calls enemies," he finally said, voice as stony as his eyes. The edge of raw fury had gone out of him, burned up along with the pain, leaving only gray ashes and marble armor in their wake. He didn't want to care anymore but he still did. He could hear it, his heart gasping for breath between each beat. He wanted to turn his red-rimmed, dry eyes away, to stare at the horizon instead of her tear-stained stubborn resilience, but he couldn't. He couldn't. Even in the midst of this, he owed her as much.

Owed.
Once a dog, always a dog. He didn't have enough spine and fangs to be a wolf.

Angrily his ears clenched against his neck and his teeth clicked in the air, as violent a display as anything coming from the Frostheart; frustration blossomed and ran rampant through his blood, frustration at himself, at the world, at everything.

It didn't matter that she blocked his path. He had no freedom anyway, because he had told her the truth: he had always been a tool. He had always existed for a cause, a reason, some kind of crusade—and maybe he had led it for a while, but he had still been slave to his own whims and ideals. He had existed for it, his entire life shaped around its central belief and the cornerstones of his faith the foundation for his every action, or lack thereof. For years he had roamed the world, listless and apathetic, because his cause had been taken from him, and there had been no hand to grasp the blood-slick hilt of his loyalty and command him.

He found a certain irony in the fact that Kahlua, Sunshower and such a gentle spirit, still commanded enough of his heart that if she but reached out, he would follow—if she but wanted this weapon walking, it was hers.

As long as she dared to use it.
But he couldn't believe Kahlua capable of pointing him at anyone and asking him to deliver their hearts to her. He was a life-thief, but had no strength of his own to justify it.

He had been silent for a long time, lost in the twisting pathways of his thoughts. And suddenly, he wasn't so sure at all that he could do this, push away this woman-child and forever bar her from the light in his soul.

Or maybe it was the other way around—put a lid on the light and cast himself in darkness.

But he was angry, and he felt betrayed, and he had lost so fucking much already.

Did, then, forcing himself to lose her as well make it any better? Was it the easier or the harder way out? And with as much as he had said, or hadn't, could she still find forgiveness in her heart for him, if she knew all of the truth? So hadn't he already wrecked it?

Could he have accepted her absolution anyway, knowing what he knew—that she didn't know the entire truth about all the blood he had spilled?

A sword drenched in blood... He felt his heart clench. He didn't want a life of peace. He didn't want to sit by idly in the sunlight and twiddle his ears as bunnies frolicked around him in the flowers.

He needed something to believe in. Something greater than himself. A reason to fight.

It wasn't about Torasin anymore. It wasn't about the Edge's forgiveness; he had been honest when he said he didn't care. It was, he realized, all about Kahlua.

A single sparrow of fire ignited in the air by his shoulder. For a moment it hung there, useless and uncertain, little flaming wings flapping in the air before it sped off, dissipating with a small crack and a burst of fiery light.

"The name she held, was Psyche," he heard himself say, voice rough. Why did he tell her? Shut up shut up shut up. Once he started he wouldn't be able to stop, and then she would know, and his act would've been for nothing because he wouldn't have pushed her out at all.

But maybe she wouldn't want to be his friend anymore, anyway.. and for honest reasons, and not just assumptions.

He didn't want to forgive her, but without the anger it was hard to hold on to the sentiment—faced with her tears, with some twisted demand of understanding of who this demon of light was.. how could he deny her that? He was still the same, just stripped of his icy crown and his blue rage. Still the same Mauja, witch-hunter and mercenary, failure and hero, the sword someone else wielded. A weapon left to gather dust, blood rusting him in his neglect.

"She was one of my oldest, closest friends, and the mother of my eldest daughter."

He felt deathly calm, detached—composed, dark, strong somehow, despite the way his mind floated through shadow. These words danced dangerously close to the place in him that hurt the most.

"And you think I killed her," he finished, choking on the bitterness.

i am the vanguard of your destruction

"I have damned myself."

It had been years since he had offered Ophelia the truth about himself, but he still remembered the moment—golden, blazing light that finally caved in against the darkness, the high-pitched shriek of his demons, and the earth cracking open beneath his feet. Even at its core it had been burning with gilt light, so fierce it had hurt his eyes.

And through it, with talons clutching his poll and a heart linked to his, he had fallen.

A sickening rush; a waterfall of pure light, spiraling through the planes of his own soul, and hunted by the same.

He had come nowhere since then. Maybe, he'd even been walking backwards, fractured heart stumbling and growing colder, harder, darker. Where there once had been purpose, there was nothing, only cold, empty spaces and apathy—his own brand of listlessness. The world had lost its meaning and colors so thoroughly that if not for two owls—two owls godsake, two damnable owls the spirits of Helovia had seen fit to bind him to—he would've closed his eyes already, to never open them again.

That, and maybe, just maybe, the memory of joy.

Of hope. An echo of a song, the shaft of sunlight spearing through the cover of clouds to alight upon a point somewhere far ahead, far away from you and your shadows, a scent half-forgotten, half-remembered, drifting past on a warm breeze but gone in an instant.

Something so intangible he wondered if it had ever been real—something that was only chemical balance, but so elusive.

He could remember smiling (even as he plotted the death of her brother). He could remember laughing, feeling alive, something genuine and enjoyable, and not just the thrill of the hunt.

Oh, he had always thrived on darkness, on violence and the cold, the cynical, the systematic eradication of something. But, blind as he had been, he had still had those things he had now lost; living with his eyes closed to what he dreamed of, he had been able to smile, and laugh, and feel alive, and not just only when the frost-fire pumped in his blood.

Was there ever anything that would justify it again? Was there ever a reason valid enough to go hunting? He did not believe in justice—the coward's vengeance.

He didn't believe in vengeance either.

He didn't believe in anything.

Not even himself.

Mauja the Frostheart, the man who breaks every heart he comes within twenty paces of, including his own. Mauja the Ice King, who was shattered like a glass statue and is now fragments melting on the ground. What had he ever accomplished? What had he ever done, except send his people into battle and watch them die against a foe they had made generations ago?

Stupidity always came around to bite you. Why were the lives of his kin more important than theirs?

What good did anything ever do? Everyone should just stick to themselves, live their lives in isolation and never give a fuck, and never do anything at all. A quick, quiet end to the era of stupidity—their lines would bleed out like water soaked up by sand and then dried by the harsh desert sun.

The world would be cleansed.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” don't be, “What am I supposed to do?” and you're asking me? He could smell her fear, see it in the twitch of her body each time he moved—each time he reminded her of who he was, what he could do, and the beast in him was hungry for more of it.

Because, when you're bored and nothing's fun at all, why not terrorize someone a little?
Nice. You a-hole, Mauja.
Filling up the empty spaces with even more emptiness.
Hollow feelings, faux impressions, memories crafted from memory and neatly inserted into labeled slots—simply because they were not apathy he wanted them, but to get them, there were actions required, and those actions.. he found himself not wanting to carry them out against her, as she stood up to him, weeping; crumbling.

He drew in a deep breath. The air tasted of salt and fear. And he let it out, a quivering snort through wide nostrils.

Fuck it all.

"Don't ask the devil for advice," he told her flippantly, voice cold but there was something else there—not the blue rage, not the tears freezing in his soul, and not the bitterness, nor the bone-deep sorrow.. just the husk of it all, the bones of the beast, the armor of the monster as it crawled out from its hole and into his soul, sitting there comfortably, smug and snug and contemplating how to best devour the world. "And don't ask me either," he went on, trying to outpace the thing awakening in his mind. He had to reach Kahlua before it did.

The words kept tumbling out, "Because I think I'm about to lose my mind."

i am the vanguard of your destruction

I don't know where to run anymore. His breath came out in frozen clouds again, heart thundering recklessly in its cage of ribs—but it was stuck, and no matter how it tried to flee it couldn't get away.

It was, after all, suspended there, somewhere beneath white bones and red muscles. And the darkness was fluid, liquid and cold, slipping through ice-crusted veins and whispering in the back of his mind, little tendrils of doubt and anger reaching out to grasp him. It held him when nothing else did, and within the structures of the blue violence he could collapse without falling apart completely, and—

“Come back to the Edge with me.”

—and she was anchoring him with her words, her voice, her eyes. She gripped his mind with careful hands, held his quivering attention with the lightest of touches. I hate you, he wanted to say, to spit the words out into the air between them and watch her crumble, feel her let go, drop him and let him spiral into the darkness.. the darkness, where there was nothing but the beast, and where things made sense in their simple, plain, and cruel logic. But the ice in his veins froze his heart and the words in his throat along with them. He couldn't bring himself to say it, to force her aside. The only thing he wanted, and desperately so, was to flee.

But there was one, small woman standing in his way, her sky-blue eyes the shield she wore, and he wondered idly if she even knew how brave she was.

He didn't want to be here anymore. He had thought he'd stopped running from things, but the truth of it was that even if he didn't physically flee, he never faced them down either. In his mind he ran in circles, dodged and danced, but always running.

She was in his path, and he didn't have the heart to run her down.

And so, he wanted to hate her for forcing him to face the darkness threatening to overwhelm him.

It hurt. His mind hurt, his thoughts too erratic, too wild, too hard to contain and hold down; they kept slipping, and no matter how much he tried they always escaped his grasp and wormed away, to the point where he wasn't sure what he'd been trying to think of in the first place. The Edge? The fickle concept of sanity? Kahlua? Psyche, Snö, Ophelia, and that stupid old goat? Death and destruction? Ice and fire?

He had gone north. He'd told them the truth. He'd told them what had happened that night so many years ago, when the cold, distant stars became witness to slaughter, and the winter failed to claim the life it should've taken. Mauja had lived. It was old, that wound, the scars covered with dust. Oh, maybe he—none of the unit, really—hadn't been ready for a mission of that magnitude. Maybe they should've kept in mind how young he was, despite his prowess. Maybe a thousand other reasons that didn't place the blame on him when all he wanted was for them to yell that it was all his fault.

Maybes, maybe nots, but just as bringing Gaucho his knees wouldn't bring Psyche back, that kind of wisdom couldn't make up for the fact that he had died under those stars.

Wet, red blood freezing in the disturbed snow. Cold and beautiful, and he had listened to the slow throb of his own heart, and the sound of death rattling out of empty lungs one by one.

“It wasn’t your fault,” but it was, and he felt himself give in. He had no defenses left. He raised his head and closed his eyes, hid behind the curtain veil of white as the tears he thought had frozen pooled beneath his lashes. Her words washed over him like water and light, soft and cool at the same time, but he could barely understand what she meant anymore. She spoke of blame and killers and some she Mauja had no idea who she meant, until the silence returned. His world was dark, but it was a different kind of darkness now—absolute, and almost comforting. “What can I do for you?”

He had no words to offer her—no salvation, no absolution, not a single thing. She didn't even have a horn to run through his chest.

So he said nothing, and saw nothing. He was a perfect statue, motionless and regal, head held to the sky—and if not for the small details, hair blowing in the wind and sides gently rising and falling, he would not have seemed alive at all. He had nothing left to defend himself with, and nothing left to give.

Slowly, one tear freed itself from his lashes, and tracked a glistening path down his cheek.

He had nothing left to give, except all the tears he had left unshed for too many years.

i am the vanguard of your destruction

It's a dream that's going cold...

The world was a quiet and dark place behind his eyelids, much like the state of half-sleep he sometimes found himself in before returning fully to consciousness—almost like lying in a pool of water, suspended by some power greater than his own, simply floating in the stillness and listening to nothing but the silence of his thoughts. He had disappeared, fled not in body but in mind, delved deep into the ice and its fractured halls, swept far down into places older and deeper than this pain. The landscape he fled to was reminiscent of the Heimasborg, the first home he had ever known. It was safe, secure, strong and steadfast, even thought it was a monument of his bloody past. It seemed ironic that he took refuge in the halls where memories haunted him.

And he hated himself for having run once again, for having abandoned Kahlua out in the sunlight, and for not being able to hold on to his anger. She had come in his moment of weakness and driven swords into his chest, shown him what he was to her, how thin her trust of the ice was—and for a moment he had bitten her back but then he had simply raised his hands and given in, unable to push her from him even when she only brought him more pain.

He wasn't sure solitude would be painless either, though. And.. and in this thick, warm darkness blanketing his tired mind, she brought something else as well.

Comfort.

Warm air blew against a cooling cheek, tickled water-heavy lashes and stirred the long, silken locks of his hair, but she could not breathe life into the body of ice. Mauja remained motionless, something in his heart stumbling, falling, and finally shattering against a hard, distant floor.

He didn't want to curb the feelings with logic and rationality anymore. He didn't want to tell himself he was being dramatic, or that it was just change, or that things might change again, or.. anything, really. It hurt, like letting go, but for a single agonizing moment it was a pure pain, a cleansing flood rushing through stale veins. His stillness broke with a choked gasp, more tears breaking free to slide silently down his cheeks as her head pressed down his neck. She gave the only remedy she had, because he said nothing, put neither names nor faces on his demons.

He didn't believe in peace. He didn't believe in justice. Inaction made him restless. They had no future because he didn't believe he could change that much for her.

And he would never want to drag her down into the darkness with him.

The familiar reaction was a stir somewhere down in the dusty corners of his heart, Medusa raising her head and asking quietly if she ought to turn him to stone again—and turn her away, because if he accepted her warmth now, would it hurt her later when she saw him dressed for battle in his armor again? Spattered with blood?

He was born restless.

Suddenly he flung his head around, horn pointing to the sky, until his cheek and jaw collided painfully with her back. Fervent need and closed eyes made for bad aim, but the moment he touched her, found her in that collision of strong bones and jutting surfaces, he grew soft again, slid his head over the curve of her spine. He had no words for it, nothing quite explaining what he felt as he tried to hook his head over her back and hold her as close as she would let him.

He knew only that for once, he had stopped staring indecisively at all the half-closed doors around him, and simply thrown himself through one of them.

i am the vanguard of your destruction

And I've only got my brittle bones to break the fall...

He was a fortress, sitting somewhere in the slanting sunlight and looking innocent enough—inviting enough, with his whitewashed walls and stained glass windows, ice-rimed doors ajar and something curious in his arrow-slit eyes. He was a fortress guarding the bared, beating heart of a wounded wolf (dog), the desolate ramparts testament to one thing: he let no one in.

In fact, he rained death upon any who came too close, came after them snarling and biting, until they were far enough away again.

His heart was not empty, but his life was.

He had wounds that were old. Some were scars, some were still open, some were infected and some simply bled, and no matter what he did, he could not nurse himself back to health. He had, after all, been trying to do that for years. So he froze himself over, locked the pain away and tried to forget about it. The halls that had been filled with life and light and joy grew empty and quiet, a thin cover of dust settling over all that had been pristine and beautiful. Dust motes still hung golden in the rays of sunlight, they continued their slow and elegant dance, but there was no one there to witness it.

Mauja sat alone upon his frozen throne, crown upon his head and bleeding heart in his hands.

And now he had her at his walls, had her fucking standing at the doors, innocent blue eyes peeking in at the barren courtyard—leaning against the nearest wall. After all those years, another soul allowed to lay eyes upon something that was part of his innermost secret.

He was getting lost in it. Drowning in it. In the thought of it—a sickening, intoxicating rush of fear and daring—and the feeling of it, of the warmth from her skin rubbing against his with each breath, and the sensation of not only being allowed to hold, but being held. Of.. no. He could not think it. Dared not think it. Saw only that fortress in his mind, and the small shape of Kahlua, and he wondered what would happen if he dared let her in—what she would find.

He didn't know. After all, he'd sat bleeding upon his throne for years, and never bothered to go looking to see what the dust had hidden inside his soul.

Mauja swallowed. He was tired of the constant ache in his heart, he was tired of the confused, empty spaces, and he was tired of being afraid. He wanted to let her in, to finally let someone see him, but it was frightening, daunting, because he did not know who he truly was. Not anymore. And maybe he had never really known anyway.

“Come home with me,” she whispered and he wanted to say, I am home, but the words could not launch themselves off his tongue. And so he remained silent a little longer, head pressing down on the warm curve of her spine, soul purging itself with tears. He had loved and lost and kept on losing, but..

.. had he ever been loved, by any other than his family? At some point he remembered having given, perhaps not much, but he had given, and the world had kept on taking until he had had nothing left. And so, he had given less and less, until he barely gave at all. For all the love he had once had, he had received nothing in return. Was it, then, so strange that he had become what he was? That he didn't truly recognize, nor trust, when others tried to give to him?

She'd been trying to take him home for a year, or more, with different reasons and as different things: lost newcomer, friend, convict, ..forgiven?

Why did he keep resisting? Why, when she gave so willingly, could he not accept? Why was it so hard, to dare to give a little of himself again?

Kahlua was whimsical. Kahlua had shown him that her trust didn't go so deep—that she was afraid. But somehow, he still thought that she could keep a little piece of him safe.

And that even if she didn't.. that he would live.

"Yes," he finally whispered against her back, heart in his mouth.

[ this took a very long time to write and was very annoying and I am not sure I like it at all. ]