i am the vanguard of your destruction

And the lines blurred—

The world would not let him be in his reverie in peace; it would not grant him this curious moment of having a very one-sided conversation with a dead body whose soul he had loathed. It stole the peace from him, it stole his reconciliation with the fact that he was a giant ass and had hated the shadows in his mind more than he had hated the actual dragonmother lying dead before his feet. Brutally, the words rattled through his skull, a dark-eyed accusation that left him bewildered and lost—much again that child trembling in the darkness, looking for the comfort it would never find. "If this is justice—" says the one who had taught Mauja what it feels like to well and truly burn; the one who confessed to not regretting fighting in that war. He had grown, since. Older. Maybe more harassed by the terrors of the world.

But why was he talking about justice—? Why was he accusing Mauja of thinking this was just? He felt himself shift away, as if Aaron's breath was fire and his words a whiplash, a sting across his skin; what had he done to deserve this? This.. this baseless accusation, the darkness of those eyes which had now turned away? His soul still smelled of rage, a tense vibration in the air, and it made Mauja sick to his core to feel. He felt weak. Shaky. Like someone had punched straight through his ribs and grasped his heart with a hand of darkness, squeezing and squeezing, until he grew cold with fear and clammy with sweat—

But he didn't—he was just standing there, looking lost, surrounded by his quiet harem of nuzzling mist-rabbits. Tembovu stood beside him (when had he gotten there?) and eloquently told Aaron to shut up; Elsa lingered nearby, a white blur in the periphery of his awareness. What was going on? And Amaris, a daughter abandoned by her mother (—and he, a father abandoned by his daughter), was telling them to stop it. Mauja agreed. The tension made him nauseous, afraid even, some kind of nameless terror chasing his pulse and coursing through him like disease. With each beat of his heart came a wave of weakness, of his hearing fluctuating and vision darkening.

And all because one stallion had accused him of thinking this was justice—

(—justice is the coward's vengeance—)

—and justice is bullshit, but Amaris was talking about it too, saying Mirage would've agreed with him (and he glanced down at her body, still wondering what everyone was talking about), how she never had wanted this, but hadn't known how to stop it either, and he knew what that felt like, too. Sometimes you simply unleashed forces you could not control, and no matter how hard you tried it just got worse.

"There is no justice," he said, voice fleeting and quiet, into a moment of silence; why was everyone going on about justice? He had thought about it earlier, hadn't he? About that trial? Did they somehow know what he thought? His blue gaze rose, hovering somewhere in the vicinity of the dragongirl's face, as if trying to find something tangible to hold on to. But there was nothing there, and he could not comprehend what she asked of him, so his gaze fell again, to the black body lying before them, listening with half an ear as she asked for her mother to burn.

Not yet, he thought as the red dragon ceased its song and left the gold to mourn alone. His white head lowered, black muzzle trailing tentatively over a slowly cooling shoulder he had never dared touch in life—and in death her coat was velvet-soft, unresponsive. Her mane was silken and smooth, too, moving lightly as his lips ghosted along her neck to her ears. His breath on them elicited no response, stirred fine hairs but there was no flick of them to escape the annoyance of his words; "I did not murder Torasin. I came for your trial—I came late, but I came for it, but you were already gone by then. I came, even though I did not trust you to judge me fairly."

It was the least he could do, wasn't it? To tell her the truth? He hesitated a moment, then— "He died smiling," he said quietly, backing away, eyes flickering restlessly between those gathered. He felt naked, stripped of his armor, stripped of his grace—he had revealed pieces of something not many knew about, he was undone in a circle of strangers, a lost and broken man barely reminiscent of the stone-cold King he had once been. He had admitted to having intimate knowledge of Torasin's death. He had admitted to being afraid.

Psyche had been a hawk to him. His anger was the shape of a swan, and his restless grief was sparrows; what was Mirage? A dragon? He could not call forth dragons to burn her. And it couldn't be some dumb bird, or some snide remark like a magpie—no. Mirage had been graceful. He didn't want to call her a worthy opponent because in truth, had she been an enemy? Sure, he still thought she'd done a lot of dumb shit in her life, but ... so had he.

"I don't know what to burn her as," he finally said, as if everyone knew that the so-called Ice King commanded fire. "A falcon? Something smaller, and kinder, like a dove? I just—I don't know," and genuine distress crawled through his voice, through his eyes, across his face, as if it was a great failure that he did not know which bird he associated Mirage with and as if he could not recall ever having hated the mare, "—please, help me." And those lost eyes focused on Amaris, begging her to tell him which birds to make for her mother's funeral pyre.

[ For the record, Mau isn't exactly aware he said 'justice' out loud. ^^ @Aaron @Amaris @Elsa ]