i am the vanguard of your destruction

But would he have left without saying goodbye?

"Am I pitiful now?"

"I think I will not return to the mountains."

With Snö lying broken in her own blood on the sands, Mauja would've—gladly—taken leave of his sanity without second thought of those who still loved him. Selfishly, he would've abandoned any and all sense if it would've dulled the aching, bleeding, beating roar in his chest. He would've done it, and it would've defied looking back, and he would've become d'Artagnan—ripping chests open and punching them straight in the heart.

But Mauja had not been offered the choice of ignorant bliss, had not been given a path of forgetful darkness; he had been left out in the cold world, every voice like glass shards rubbed under his skin, every word a war waged against his soul, until their stubbornness had driven him back to his feet and forced him to go on.

"I am searching for my father, Mauja the Frostheart, although I hear he goes by the Frozen Light now."

Do I—?

Deep in the heart of the woods, Mauja's eyes flickered open to the sunlit world. A note of confusion threaded its way through his consciousness—Frozen Light? The words were unfamiliar in his mouth, jagged edges and unknown imagery.

He had spent years mocking the title the world had stuck on him so long ago, and now it seemed the tides had turned without him even noticing. Slowly, he shrugged. Maybe it was something from a snippet of a conversation with someone, something mockingly said, the Light of Dawn—somehow transmuted into Frozen Light.

Lost in the thoughts of his own naming, it took him a few seconds to realize what he was actually supposed to realize.

Glacia was here.

Glacia had come looking for him. Glacia had come looking for a home. Glacia, who had nearly drowned in the Endless Blue, saved only by this faux-light angel standing in the foggy forest, dumbstruck. Glacia, Glacia, Glacia, the lost little child of the north, looking for him—

And it takes all that he can give to not see her lying broken and bleeding upon the sand, glacial eyes frozen in death—

What the fuck was she doing here? Had something happened to Sialia?

Love warred with selfishness and grief—he loved because it was in his nature, he loved because he had no say in it, he loved even when it hurt and when he wished he didn't. But.. he was so tired. What if she would come here, looking for him, for his affection, his dedication, his guidance and his presence, only to find him cold and distant, lacking? What if she would turn out like Snö, a cold-hearted bitch raised by blizzards and wolves, to the point where she could not admit that she loved him, only because he had been much the same way?

Life threw him a second chance, but what did that matter, when it would make nothing better for Snö? She was dead. She wouldn't be happier just because he didn't mess up her little sister.

He hadn't even noticed it but suddenly he was there, watching as Tembovu greeted his little girl—and she wasn't so little anymore, nearly filling out the sturdy frame she'd got from him. "Is he still king?" And it hurt, listening to her voice, to her confessions, because it was like seeing himself through the eyes of another—through their experiences, their thoughts, and it felt like distance. Like.. something out of a story—something not quite real. Someone not quite real, a transient walker who drifted in and out of existence like a dream. She didn't 'know him well' and yet she knew that about him—that he drifted. It made him laugh, bitterly, in the shadows.

[ @Glacia @Tembovu ]