i cannot ease the burden of your fears; or make quick-coming death a little thing

[ofnwch]

In mastering the dominion of fire, Vortigern had to understand its fickle ways as well as he knew himself. Life-giving, and a breathing thing, it was also capable of such great destruction, and agonising death. Among the ancient tongues he studied to crack apart its arcane secrets, some had called it the living death.

He did not deal in flame, now. Now, his greatest ally was ice.

It meant destruction in its own, too, in its own slow way. If fire blew souls from the body as quickly as it reduced flesh to cinders, then the creeping cold of this new magic followed their path, and was capable of drawing them back. Of preservation, of manipulation.

Fate had failed him. To take back what he had sold felt only correct.

The sky is white as snow, the sun hidden and diffused through blanketing winter clouds. At the edge of the giant expanse of lake, as clear as a mirror, Vortigern is kneeling. Listening. His heart still beats, but it's a sluggish, lazy thing, pushing blood through his veins out of a sense of duty and resentment, but this is mere physiology. Ice, death, doesn't remove all kinds of pain. Sometimes it crystallises it. A permanent part of him, now, woven into the walls of his heart, his nerves, his viscera, in the process of reconstruction.

As he winds magic around himself like a veil, his skin greys. His green eyes shine blue. He plunges his hands into the water, impervious to the sting of the cold as he reaches. He knows the fresh pain of Catia's life leaking away in his arms, between his fingers, staining his clothing; but he has mourned his wife for far longer.

Comments

[ddiofn]

Always she had been able to soften him, before.

before.

Elsa, eyes closed a moment when he leans so near, is unsure by what gauge to measure if she believes his words. If he would lie to her. It is self-evident, now: he would. How can she know if he does, when she knew none of what was in his heart until it was plunged into her body? Time has passed, that much is clear, and the cold and clawing thing she thinks must be her own heart says Vor, I know him, and another, quieter voice whispers still? and is not yet unkind enough to wonder ever?

Her nod is a shaky assent. Not here. She doesn't know where here is, precisely, but if he means to take her away from the water then she is glad of that, at least -

at least that. And then, the rest.

She pushes herself up.

[ofnwch]

Vortigern moves as she does, first to get to his feet so that he can best bring her to hers. Embattled might be a good way to describe him; with time, with the elements, with himself, bright eyes tired and his garments less fine than she is accustomed to seeing. He wears leathers and fur, a cloak he removes from his shoulders to wrap around her. Coarse wolf fur tickles her throat. It is warm. It should be warmer.

Around them is a land unfamiliar to her. Mountains capped with ice loom in the distance, in shapes and configurations she's never seen. The forest is winter-bitten and hardy, the lake half-iced.

He glances back at the water before he puts his arm around her, guiding her from flat rock to beaten earth. "We're far from Camelot," he says, quiet. "From England. In a land far east, by my measure, on which no Briton has yet tread."

[ddiofn]

Her gaze travels up those distant mountains, and back down to the cold ground beneath her; to the cold man at her side, who is and is not a stranger. The darkest parts of old familiarity, and her still off-balance, still finding her footing from moment to moment as to in what moment, precisely, she is.

"Why have we come here?"

A concession, in choosing that question above many others - above repeating the one he did not answer. We is not concession so much as hope that feels vain; wrapping her hands around what once made sense and willing it to do so again. In her last gasps he had been apart from her in a way she'd been blind to until it was too late; she needs to believe he has brought her back for something other than what drove him then.