i am the vanguard of your destruction

And it had just gone on, the cold, heartless freakshow—like they were just watching him through a lens, discussing him in a sterile, scientific way. What happens if we poke him here? Will that make him happy? What if we look at him and ask him, as if that's somehow going to make it better? But it wouldn't—didn't, as the roaring black tide of isolation rose in the back of his throat.

Were they paying that little attention to him? Or did so little of his emotions transfer to the surface? Couldn't they see what was happening to him?

Maybe he was just whispering in a storm.

Drowned out by the roar.

So maybe, him walking away was like shouting.

For who is Mauja, to be anything less than rational? Less than polite? Distracted, yes, a bit lost in himself, yes, but always dutiful, always—rational, cold. He, who was known as the Frostheart, for winter reigned in his heart. He, who froze his own emotions until there was nothing left but arrogance and dreams and sharp, frigid logic.

"Mauja! Wait! I didn’t know," but how could you have?
"I’m sorry! I’m so sorry… don’t walk away." He paused, back still turned to them.
“Mauja, please don’t leave. I’m sorry.” I'm sorry too.
"Don't disappear." But where would I go?

And he hated them for making his hooves freeze to the ground, he hated them for blowing life into the wavering threads of guilt and shame—how dare he let his emotions cause others harm?

How dare he be this irrational?
How dare he feel at all?

Why were they begging him to stay? What did it matter to them where he was? Was he somehow the sun, robbing them of warmth and joy, when all he did was try to skulk away with his pessimism and hurt?

Couldn't he be fucking allowed to be in pain without upsetting others?

Jaws clenched together, he turned his white head around, staring at them with a pale, burning gaze. Tears darkened the fur around his eyes, glittered in the offhand sunshine as they tracked down his cheeks. He didn't even know what he wanted—from them, from him, from the world. To be left alone? To be given time and space so that each intake of breath wasn't quite so sharp anymore? So that he could ruthlessly, brutally batter his feelings with arguments based on nothing but logic, until he was once more cold and pristine—untouched, unsullied by the grimy hands of something as base as emotions?

But there was something in his heart—something blossoming in the spaces between his breaths, a slow, seeping poison. A faint, long-buried yearning, for—

—comfort?

And as he stood there, crying softly in the sunlight, he thought that, maybe, if they were wrong about me, I could be wrong about them, too.

Then all that changed.

The voice came out of nowhere. "No one can ever force you to forget someone you love." His head whipped back forward, black muzzle nearly colliding with the soft, silky one of—Raeden, her silver-gold pelt glimmering in the light. "They are yours, and no one else can tell you to forget or remember any of them." And his eyes, pale ice and still burning with the pain of loss, met hers—teal, warm, sympathetic.

He felt violated in a way he never had before—who was she to show up here? Who was she to stare into his eyes as he cried? Who was she to try and comfort him? His grief was his and his alone. She was not invited. She was not part of the equation. He had not chosen to stop for her, to show his tears to her.

Who was she to take the liberty of witnessing his sorrow?

Vulture. Thief. His eyes grew clearer, colder, as if sheer willpower could freeze the tears to ice upon his lashes, and his breath was a harsh, angry thing as he felt himself pull upon his magic—upon that crystalline darkness, the glacial cold, the depth of his madness.

He didn't even know what to do with it, with the mounting pressure in his soul. "What an entrance to our home you have made." She was berating Sacre. But hadn't she listened, the bastard? Hadn't she heard—?

He hadn't know. He hadn't known. He hadn't known. Did she think he still didn't know? Did she somehow think this was going to make things better?

His face contorted into a snarl, blue eyes blazing as the fury grew within. "And who the hell asked for your opinion?" he spat at her, voice savage. His heart was hammering, pulse roaring, and he wanted to get away—to run far, far away, erase this moment from the memories of everyone. Steal back what had been taken from him.

He was losing control. He was trembling, shaking, quivering with the rage threatening to sever every tether, every leash, every boundary. The ground trembled, too, as their corner of the world erupted in ice—little nubs of it forcing their way up through the moss and grass, a glittering, sharp carpet. A little blood slid down one of them where it had grazed his pastern coming up, but he didn't even feel it. All he had eyes for—all he had attention for—was the silver-and-gold witch and her Cerndyr, and all he could feel was a deep, hammering need to hurt her—

To take from her, what she had taken from him,
an unbidden glance of the heart.

"GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!" he roared (voice laced with fear) at her, sides heaving, lungs thick, blood screaming (—singing) for a fight—

To destroy—

To let go of the beast shrieking up from its lonely pit at the bottom of his soul, to strike, for love, for fear, for anger, for revenge, to raise the ice deep, deep into her heart—

In a hushed whisper and a puff of darkness, the scythe's blade appeared.

[ @Alysanne | Angry Mau needed cold, dark table. He's still got the staff jammed in beneath the satchel and laying across his back, but the scythe's blade has materialized on the end that lays along his neck. ]