Icicle Dance
by Cryptographic DeLurk
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AN: The Imilshipping in this fic is in many ways more hypothetical than realised, but please know they are first cousins here, and that their relationship has romantic undertones. Also it's a relationship heavily defined by manipulation and codependence as I've written it, so consider yourself warned.
Thank you. If it suits, please Read & Relax.
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It was so cold here it ached.
Mia had thought she'd seen the worst of it the latest flu season in Imil. She'd travelled house to house, delivering cures in the soft, silent nights – nights that dragged on without any promise of rest. The stars were her only companions, even the Goddess seemed missing. It was too dark to see her lighthouse in the distance.
But that cold was nothing compared to the dry winds whipping through the valleys here. It was desolate and bitter, and it hurt pins and needles to even breathe.
She huddled up next to Alex when it was time to make camp. That other boy, too, Ivan.
She hadn't forgiven Alex. And she didn't like the other boy. Didn't like either of them, to be frank. But it was too cold to be bothered by who would be allowed the privilege of intimate warmth. And maybe a little too late as well. She wasn't sure what she had left of herself to take back.
The southern edge of Tundaria was covered in fog and ice, and when they stopped the next day to rest, Mia wandered towards it. The ice crunched under her feet, and she watched around her as the world, and the only person she knew, disappeared in the mist.
Alex found her though. Under the pull of his Psynergy, the fog around him collected and condensed into small crystalline pellets, and fell to the ground.
"Mia, don't wander out too far," he said. "You don't know when the glacier will end, and you'll slip over the edge."
Mia remembered him catching her hand at the edge of Apojii. She was glad he made no move to reach for her now. She clutched her hand to her chest, and followed him silently back to the others.
"Why did we walk out this far? Why are we here?" she asked once she got back. The wind whorled over the plains again, and Mia forced herself not to cower or curl in on herself, to stand tall in her demand for attention.
No one seemed inclined to answer regardless. They generally failed to explain things to her, and to the tag-along boy, Ivan. Although perhaps the boy didn't need to be told at all. She'd caught Saturos raving about mind-reading magic, although she didn't really believe him.
They walked north again, up a cape that let out over the Western Sea, and came to a high tower of stone. She asked again, as they neared the entrance.
"Why are we here?" Menardi repeated back at her. "It hasn't occurred to you along the way? This is why! You see this place, girl?" Flames swirled around Menardi, melting the stacks of icicles that had fallen down from the ledges above to bar the entrance. "Everywhere will be like this – once alive, now dead and desolate and crumbling! Unless we return alchemy to the world, everywhere will be like here!"
Mia pursed her lips and met Menardi's gaze. They had had these words before, and she only needed to look at Menardi, cold and unresponsive, for the accusations to form.
"Oh, give me a break!" Menardi snarled. "You think your promises to your Clan, your promise to watch over the Mercury Lighthouse mean anything to me?! If it was your village falling into the rift, you'd see how little any of your convictions actually mean!"
When Mia answered this raging with frozen silence. Menardi lunged forward, flames burning in her eyes. But Saturos caught his friend's shoulder softly.
"Let it go, Menardi," he urged. "It's no use trying to explain." He caught Mia's critical gaze and gave a mocking smile. "She wouldn't understand."
Saturos and Menardi entered the tower first. The boy, Ivan, was standing near a pile of snow a hundred metres behind. He was creating small whirlwinds on top of the snowfall that sent snowflakes fluttering up into the air like leaves. Mia thought bizarrely of asking him if he missed his fallen friends, then snuffed the intention out like a candle.
Alex walked up to stand beside Mia as she entered the tower. He smiled, amused by the confrontation he'd declined from interfering with.
Inside was a ledge overseeing two pools of icy water leading to an opening. There was a burst of flame from inside, and then Saturos and Menardi exited that centre room.
"Something there?" Alex asked.
Menardi scowled. Saturos rubbed the back of his head. "Well… we'll have to revisit it later." Then he startled suddenly. Quick as anything he reached down to pick a rock off the floor, and chucked it towards Mia.
It soared over her head, and hit the wall near the entrance, next to where Ivan had slunk in behind them. He startled belatedly out of his trance, and stumbled to the side as if there were still a rock to dodge.
"Quit it, whelp! Stay out of my head!" Saturos snapped. "You'll all get to see what's in the room when we get back to it!" He met their eyes challengingly in order – Ivan, Alex, Mia – and then looked down at the pools of water to the sides of the room. "Well, get to it and drain the water already!"
Menardi shot him a look. She disliked it when he undermined her authority by giving the orders. But Mia didn't pause. She used Parch on the pool on the left, while Alex worked on the one to the right.
They marched single file through the tower. Menardi at the front with her scythe at the ready, as suited the leader. Then Saturos and Alex. Mia followed her cousin, and Ivan trailed behind in the back. It was, in many ways, mundane. The first three took care of almost all the fighting. And Menardi would decide how to proceed in dismantling the traps and unlocking the trick doors and passageways in these ruins, receiving input from Alex insofar as he would always tell her when her conclusions were incorrect, but would never tell her the right answer. Saturos mediated their bickering when he could, and occasionally would be sent to drag Ivan forward from the back of the line on demand that he perform Jupiter Psynergy. Alex handled most of the Mercury Psynergy, so there was not much for Mia to do but look at the walls and the ruins and dissociate.
At least not until they came to the ice. They all slip-slided when their feet hit the smooth plane of frozen ground, and Mia cried out as they toppled over a ledge. It wasn't a large drop, and she managed to land on her feet. But they were on another floor of smooth ice, and she was about to slip and topple over again, when Alex reached out and caught her hand.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
He squeezed her hand, and Mia thought about the last time he had held her hand…
She hadn't been wearing her mittens then, having stripped off her fur coat in the warm tropics of Apojii. She had been looking over the ledge at the falling water dropping into the rift. She couldn't figure out if he had pushed her, or if she had just tripped, but he grabbed her bare hand in his gloves and held her there.
Held her there several moments too long. She couldn't track the progression of the man who stared coolly down at her, from the small boy who had cried at their grandmother's hearth when his father had never made it back from a routine trip to Bilibin. She wasn't sure she knew him.
"Alex?!" she screeched a plea. She'd been doing such a good job of not speaking to him except when necessary. Of keeping all the emotion out of her voice. She did not want to beg to him to save her. But she only had one foot positioned perilously against the edge of the world, and below her the rift was vast. There would be no wind to buffet her fall the way there had been, perhaps, for that little Jupiter Adept at Venus's peak.
Alex held her there a moment longer. Then smiled. "Do you really doubt me so?" He pulled her up.
They had gone from there to a large plateau on another island in the Apojii Archipelago. They had climbed the cliff face and Mia, who had left Imil with soft, fatty arms that often left her needing to be carried whenever there was climbing to be done, now had enough muscle to pull herself up without anyone taking her hand or bearing the weight of her body. She had climbed to the top of the plateau, and climbed down through the interior, and when Alex was done studying the stone monument at the centre he beckoned her forward.
"See?" he asked. "You could be capable of so much, if you'd only let yourself be, Mia. Don't be so blind." And he pressed her towards the stone.
…
Somehow Alex here on the ice in Tundaria's tower reminded her more of a different Alex though. The one she had thought she'd known in Imil. No, she must have known him at some point, just somewhere along the way she had lost track.
Alex reached for her other hand and spun on the ice and Mia, by either design or muscle memory hastened to balance herself and fall into synch with his dance.
"Doesn't this remind you of all the times we went skating in Imil?" Alex asked.
It did, actually. Mia put a gallant effort towards keeping her expression stern.
But in spite of it the chill of the room and Alex's easy smile across from her reminded her of autumns out on the frozen river. After Alex's father died. But before their grandmother was overcome with the illness that first took her from them, and then broke the hearts of Mia's parents so that they'd follow soon after. Before things had changed too much. When Alex was her father's apprentice and star pupil, both a member of their immediate family and apart from it.
They'd crawled across the icy river on hands and knees to get to the herbs on the other side, and Mia's father had pointed out the different types and how to harvest them. But on the way back her and Alex had grown the courage, or the recklessness, to stand up straight and not bother to spread their weight evenly out across the ice. They laughed as they ran and slid across it, and her father watched with an exasperated fondness. Alex and her chased one another up and down stream, over to ponds that had frozen over. And then they caught each other, somehow, and spun around joined hands like a centrifuge, afraid only to let go. Alex was always so good with Psynergy, and clouds of snowflakes solidified above them in the sky. And Mia tilted her head back as she spun and watched these small flurries superimposed over the fluttering leaves of the apple and cherry trees by the banks.
Their grandmother said that they should get married when they came of age, to the groaning protest of her father.
"There is no one else to carry on the Mercury Clan," Grandmother had said.
"Ellis and Aila's kids… Justin… Megan…" Father replied.
"-will never be able to master Ply and the rest of our arts," Grandmother finished firmly. "It's been bred out of them. We never would have even considered such distant relatives with such frail powers as part of the Clan, once."
"But times have changed," Father said.
"Have changed enough."
And Mia and Alex had measured the strangeness of a union between them against the strangeness of breaking this sacred lineage and alliance between them. It seemed strange and unpleasant to think of each other in such a way, but it was perhaps even stranger to think of a world where they had to share themselves with people who were not held to any of the same duties or promises, who were not like them and would never be like them.
These warring impulses were balanced against one another on a scale. Until their grandmother died, and then Alex broke every foundation for the Mercury Clan that held them together, destroyed every pretext for a bond between them.
And yet Alex was still here holding her mittened hands.
"Whenever we used to do this it ended with us falling face-first into a heap of snow," Alex said wistfully, playing on her nostalgia as they spun around one another. "We'd get soaking wet."
Mia felt herself soften. "Father would carry me home afterwards. And bundle us both up in blankets and sit us next to the fire."
"And I always said you looked like a slime monster, bundled up in a blue blanket like that."
Mia puffed her cheeks. But even if it had been annoying at the time, it was a fond memory now. Sometimes she had even played along with Alex's game, and pretended to be a slime monster trying to attack him.
"Mikka," Alex said, referring to his uncle and teacher by name, "would show us how to process the herbs we'd brought back with us and make medicine. Or leave us with a book to study between us… I was always waiting for your eyes to catch up so I could turn the page."
"Mother would bring us crepes with cherry jam as we sat there and studied and dried off. You would make fun of me when I got jam on my cheeks, and Father would wipe my face off for me with his napkin," she finished the story for him.
"Did you want things to stay like that forever?" Alex asked.
Mia stopped the grimace that tried to command her expression but- "No... Yes? I don't know…"
It wasn't that she hadn't wanted to grow up. If anything she had been eager to grow older. To grow more responsible, more capable, hardworking and helpful. She'd been eager to see how her relationship with Alex would develop, and her relationship with the rest of her clan, and with the people of Imil. She just hadn't wanted it to include so much death and betrayal.
"Remember when we used to play hide and seek, and I'd become upset, sometimes even brought to tears, if you didn't find me fast enough?" Alex asked. "You never failed to comfort me when you happened upon me. After a while you would attempt to coddle me even if you found me in a timely manner, before I had worked myself into a fit."
Mia smiled in spite of herself now. She let her face drop down to the ice. Alex let go of one of her hands, and they slid across the ice side-by-side in tandem for a moment.
"You're very kind, Mia," Alex said.
This seemed absurdly funny to her, but she bit her lip until she calmed. She took a few more loping strides out in front of him on the ice, and then turned back around, to grasp his other hand again.
They resumed spinning, holding hands and pulling back against one another. And Mia missed this Alex so much, the one that she thought might have once held her in admiration as a child. The humour had returned to her, and a giggle began to bubble up in her throat. First without much force, and then with more urgency. And Alex was beginning to have to stifle his laughter too. And it built between them encouraged by the other until Mia was caught in a full fit of laugher.
She laughed. She smiled and laughed, a loud joyous thing that spread warmth through her chest and condensed like steam on the way out her lungs. They spun around together on the ice, and behind Alex's smiling face she caught glimpses of the others. Ivan and Saturos – who looked baffled. Menardi – who seemed more restrained. And it occurred to her they might have never seen her this happy and expressive, in all their time travelling together. Which only made her laugh harder.
Alex was laughing just the same way back at her, like they were children again. And together they spun and laughed and spun and laughed, swirling across the ice. Right until they toppled directly into the Mars Djinn, Reflux, and the world spun into fire and ice and battle.
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She would have forgiven him a lot, to be honest.
"What have you done, Alex?"
The beacon had lit while she was away, washing the entire northland with eerie blue light. There was a surge of power that flowed out over her, and she felt the spells she used to keep the gnomes and bears at bay come to her with renewed strength. She fought her way north towards town, with her basket of herbs only half full, but she found Alex first.
"What have you done, Alex?" she despaired. There was no way anyone could have climbed to the aerie without him to let them through the entrance.
She would have forgiven him a lot, if he had just asked for forgiveness. For abandoning her to care for Imil's people alone on the heels of the loss of her parents. For returning only to desecrate the holy lighthouse they were meant to guard. Had he just apologised and promised not to leave her again, she would have forgiven him.
"I've only done what I must," he said cryptically, "and unleashed the power of Mercury that is rightly ours."
She'd beat at him weakly with closed fists, and he continued to offer vague and contradictory explanation for his actions and whereabouts. She was unable to illicit from him the response she needed, or otherwise ask for it.
"One would think you'd be pleased, Mia," Alex finally said. "With the beacon lit, and the Water of Hermes flowing freely from the fountain, the village of Imil will not likely be troubled by illness in the foreseeable future."
Mia stopped short. She was standing close enough to him that he might embrace her, but he didn't. "What?" She felt completely forlorn.
"If you go back to town you can see for yourself," he said.
Mia considered this. "And you? What will you do? Disappear again?!"
Alex said nothing for a long moment. Then-
"You know, I can't stay the same Alex you knew forever."
"You won't leave again!" Mia insisted. "I won't let you!"
"You can't stop me."
"Then I'll go with you!" she said. "You will wait until the evening when I can get my affairs in order, and I will go with you!"
They bickered for a time, but Mia felt Alex wavering. Finally he passed her a slip of paper, where he had detailed the location of a rendezvous point.
Mia hiked back to town.
The Water of Hermes had already been distributed amongst the people and rumours of its powers circled everywhere. She met with Megan and Justin, arranged for them to look after the town while she pursued Alex. It didn't matter how poor they were at using Ply. Even with their minimal powers, they could collect the Water of Hermes and distribute it amongst the ill in the town.
She would never forgive him for this. Never.
She packed her things in a hurry. Leaving behind everything but the necessities. She brought her staff, her clothes, some food. She left behind all her books on medicine.
It was far before the meeting time they decided on, but when she looked at the slip of paper and directions he had left her, she realised she did not expect him to hold to their agreement. She crushed the paper in her mitten and ran out the door.
She did manage to catch up to him within the span of a few days. It was lucky he was travelling with such a loud and conspicuous group. She met Saturos and Menardi who he was travelling with, and the brown haired boy Felix and his sister, and the scholar.
She would never forgive him for this: She had lost her whole family. She'd lost the meaning of her clan's purpose in guarding the lighthouse. The people of Imil no longer needed her to keep them in good health. There was no purpose she served. There was no one and nowhere that needed her.
She wouldn't forgive him if he didn't need her either.
As if he had peered into her soul and seen this, Alex plucked the brooch lightly from its resting place on top of Tundaria Tower. He studied it, and then glanced to where she was pulling herself up the steps to meet them at the peak.
"Come here, Mia," he said, when she had finished climbing.
"What do you think you're doing?" Saturos protested.
"Didn't I do my part in directing us through this tower? And I reached this prize first, didn't I?" Alex said. "It's mine then, and I think I'll decide to whom it goes."
"Don't give it to the girl…" Saturos sighed. It was a weak protest. He and Menardi had gotten their pick of the treasures they'd already unearthed.
Menardi watched critically. "If this ends up blowing up in our face, I expect you to take responsibility," she finally decided.
Alex gave a mocking bow. Mia had still not approached Alex, as he requested, but he seemed unbothered as he crossed the top of the tower to her. He reached for her coat, and pinned the broach right above her left breast. She felt the strange energy pulse into her from its ruby red gem.
Alex's hair fell smoothly over his face, as he looked down to fasten the pin.
"I would have thought you'd want to keep this power for yourself," Mia said.
"Oh, there are definitely powers out there I intend to keep for myself." He smiled. "But I don't mind sharing some of this with you. Besides-" His gloved hands ghosted over the edges of the brooch and then reached up to press the hair out of her face. "It suits you."
The top of Tundaria Tower was not as high as a lighthouse, but the view over the ocean was vast, and Mia thought she saw Cape Agulhas at the tip of Gondowan.
When they descended, they found that their way back into the tower was blocked by a slab of cracked earth.
After a few seconds debate, Menardi sighed and waved her hand in acquiescence. Alex turned back to beckon for her. Mia watched her companions as she approached the front of the line. Ivan looked at her with something like anxiety. Saturos gave her a smile that looked like a grimace. Alex's grin was somehow equal parts encouraging and inscrutable. Even Menardi's stern face seemed to contain something like respect though. She nodded shortly, like she approved of whatever she had seen in Mia's face.
And then Mia stood in front of all of them, in front of all these people that needed something of her. She placed her hand against the cracks in the blockade and took a deep breath, relishing the silence before the slab exploded in flying bits of rubble and a cacophony of sound.
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