Title: Hearts and Violets
Summary: It is an often forgotten fact that most wizards live a long time; practically on the cusp of immortality if they are great. Perhaps this is a good thing, or they would be bothered quite a bit more than they often already were. Schmendrick/Amalthea (Unicorn) if you squint. Light references to the original book and the book's sequel Two Hearts.
Disclaimer: I own not the characters, nor the franchise and make no profit off of writing this.
Warning: Mentioned death of characters, inter-species platonic relations, oddities. Sequel to Standpoint.

-:-
…In the moon's pale light
You looked at me
Nobody knows your heart
When the sun has gone I see you
Beautiful and haunting but cold
Like the blade of a knife so sharp so sweet
Nobody knows your heart

All of your sorrow, grief and pain
Locked away in the forest of the night
Your secret heart belongs to the world
Of the things that sigh in the dark,
Of the things that cry in the dark..."

("Mononoke Hime Theme Song" - English version)

It was a surprise, and yet not, that the lady of a unicorn would find her magician wandering the roads in the middle of the night when she was on the cusp of slipping into exhaustion on the side of the road among little flowers she didn't know the names to on her third month of travelling (long stemmed and grand, bottles at the top and rather like the end of a white cat's tail). He had simply lit a torch in the dark out of a broken stick (fallen from a great oak, less than a string of grass along the end) and nothing but a clumsy whisper. She'd almost run off with a bellow of fright at the sudden onslaught of a face in the dark, but… she'd known him before he'd had to say a thing and had simply stood her ground among the half-green, half-yellowed grass in the ditch, him still on the road, but bowing to greet her.

He hadn't changed from where she'd left him on the hill that morning that felt not so very long ago, but long enough.

But there was no Molly and no Lir with him.

"Did you know that for people with magic and animals of the other realms that time passes differently?"

That was the first thing he said to her before sitting down beside an old tree stump (some kind of fruit tree that bore little yellow and orange colored edibles for her and other lesser creatures, but not human beings; doubtless that was the reason it was cut down in the first place) with eyes still on her, before falling asleep. He knew, perhaps as she did, that she wasn't going anywhere and simply laid herself down to place her head in his lap. He was no young virgin maid, but she didn't care for those in the first place. In the second place, his lap was a far cry warmer than the air and chill of the night in itself.

She fell asleep far more easily than she had since she'd left him and Lir and Molly.

Molly and Lir were dead. She could gather this before he even said anything the next morning—waking up before her to gather herbs and roots washed in a nearby river (the dirt upon them had been tough and hard on his thin fingers and some that had been watered down clung to the scrapes he'd made along the lining of both thumbs and pointer fingers, merging with light flecks of blood to remind her that he was indeed real) for himself and her if she ever got hungry. Molly had died a few months ago in her bed; heart stopped and light and Schmendrick had cried a long time before turning her into something (he wouldn't tell her what; a surprise that was as he had never tried to deny her anything before on either four legs or four) that splintered into light fragments and had settled somewhere in the sea.

Lir, he'd explained to her while pulling dried leaves and bits of grass from his matted brown hair (there was no hat on his head, she'd noticed; a little part of her that remained from humanity almost absorbed and fascinated by the fact—that hat that made him a magician in sight as her horn to a simpleton made her a unicorn) as he sat on the tree stump in the ditch, "Died a hero in his old age. I wouldn't have thought he would take to fighting another immortal since that last dragon's head he'd tried to give you to earn your interest, but it was for the right reasons, I suppose."

There was a bolt of something forlorn and angry in her at the way he said that. To speak of Lir like he was nothing had her stand from where she lay in the grass to tower over his bent form and rise like a caper to either frighten or tramp the earth at his feet and scream agony on him. How dare he-!

'And yet…'

Her ears flattened back on themselves against her lofty soft hair (butterfly wings folding to change course in the winds—up and down and to the side) before she turned from her position aloft in anger and back to the ground. Her hooves made dents in the grass they would not have before they'd ever met, but she paid little mind to that as she eyed his form. He was lacking in any real emotion and detached from the thought that she would have sullied her cloven hooves with his red blood in her anger. It was disconcerting and more and she did not like how his eyes went a somber dark as her horn lit up in its way (perhaps he wanted her to hit him if those dark bruises beneath his clothing she could smell and sense were something to go by; attempts at earning his death by fists thrown among the drunken of taverns in separate kingdoms and outlaws he'd stolen petty trinkets from so that he might perk up at the thought of his own punishment for not saving Molly). Her tail lashed about like that peg-legged cat in the castle and she sighed; his voice going on to relay the man a unicorn had loved and specifics of his fate.

"There was a gryphon tormenting a town on the border of Lir's kingdom. A great beast of snowy feathers and paws bigger than any lion who ever lived. It had been stealing…" he paused, trying to recall, head tilting to one side and the unicorn could see a tear running along the underside of his ear and into his hair—it was matted from blood!—before he turned his head to her again and continued, "Ah. Children. It had been stealing and killing children, and Lir didn't like it. The fact any more than the sound, I could suppose."

She nodded for him to continue (she did not like how that tone of voice he'd held when they had met had resumed its place about his person—as though it had not left when he'd gained his magic and mortality; as though he'd lost what he'd fought for and was nothing but a nameless immortal again) and was complacent when he stood from his seated position to start walking again the way he had been heading the night before they'd fallen asleep together—it was the direction she had been traveling for a long while in search of him, he knew. It was towards Lir's kingdom, but farther off, closer to where the sea began and she was grateful as she (and he, of course) was less likely than anything to run into her own kind in that direction. She didn't want them to recognize her and ruin this exchange of spoken word that they would never understand as she, Amalthea the Last and the (still, he should be, but he cannot tell as he has changed and is worn and aged, but at the same time not at all—a moth before a hot and new candle; wings shining but all dust and not as beautiful as a butterfly, "…he is no magician now…") magician, would.

"What happened?"

Schmendrick shrugged, not at all concerned with the appearance of himself in daylight (dried blood along the stitches of his clothing that hid his body like he'd hidden her human form in his own shabby robes as a courtesy that first night where she'd struggled in her human body with fear of the feeling of mortality upon her and rotting; scabs of more blood and dirt along his hands, arms, his lower lip) and the fact that the unicorn he'd spent a good chunk of time trying to gain the approval of was eyeing him with regret for his injuries made out of heartbreak and misery she had not been around for to correct or ease, "He took a horse, he suited up in his best armor, brought his best sword and spire-rod and left a note to one of his court magicians and ladies that he would face the gryphon alone. It came easy enough to him in the forest."

(…Great paws with poison claws reached out and caught on the horse's rear, cutting deep and causing a scream to echo from the poor beast, and then another scream from the magical creature itself as carefully gilded sword struck through thick skin and bone and blood into a heart. Just one…)

The unicorn's eyes held the truth of what happened even before Schmendrick spoke again, a stiffness in his gate that never should have been there after all the unicorns in the world had been set free before him and bestowed their joy in gifts of spirit while running past him from waves of the sea.

She was suddenly struck by the fact that she'd never touched his skin of her own volition (as he had touched her in either accident of trying not to fall into a river or freely to keep her from crying after Haggard's awful words at her hesitation to save her own people; kindness in a way free of expecting anything in return that the unicorn could never recall having given herself—except perhaps to Molly in her tears when she'd asked where she'd been, and to Lir when she'd felt love for the first time or when he needed a favor returned for his attempt to save her from the Red Bull that had lead to his death) and glanced at the cuts along his fingers as they tromped up a hill blooming wild Marigold (which Schmendrick picked at and pulled up to put in that old sack of his, in case he needed "a cheap substitute for Saffron, later") and clusters of Morning Glory blooming fresh before them. She didn't like the feeling guilt set into her as he continued.

"When they engaged in battle, he was lucky enough to strike it when it took its first blow at his horse; his sword struck right into its heart—one of them anyway. It went down and he thought it was dead, but he got too close to its limp form. If he had simply cut off its head…he might have survived. He still managed to kill it, but…I'm sorry," Schmendrick paused, apologetic and about to continue but was surprised when she stooped her head down at his shoulder and her smooth neck rubbed along the length of his arm, up and down.

He stopped in his pace and looked at her. Not like Molly, not like Lir.

"Is something…"

"I missed you," she said, mellow and honest. That color of his eyes changed when she looked at him, that statement sinking into him like sea water soaked into beach sands. They weren't empty like ordinary humans and she realized that she had been gone longer than she thought she had been—decades and his physical form hadn't changed. Magic had failed him again, she could tell.

The guilt increased when she looked in his eyes and could not see herself; just the ocean years ago, Molly and Lir with him on the edge of what had been Haggard's kingdom. She wondered what he was seeing in her eyes as his hand with the least amount of scrapes along his fingers came up to his neck and rubbed at a bruise she could see the outline of along the lining of his clothing. It was like seeing him at the Midnight Carnival, young and eager to please; less depressed than she knew he was.

Without hesitation and quite unlike she was so long ago, when he was about to drop his hand to his side, she canted her head and tucked her nose into his palm. Her softness and this strange aloofness with which she presented to actually touch him—the magician who had gained mortality like he'd so wanted after taming magic and lost it in merely a few decades later—sent his limbs to quivering and had her allow his hand to drop and clench like the other into a fist. She couldn't imagine why, but he seemed terrified before her now.

"Schmendrick?"

His shoulders jolted at his name from her lips and he sucked in air so it sounded as if he were about to choke on it, rattled to his core and she had no idea what to do (there was liquid in his eyes now, and she was struck again with a dark, strange feeling because she had never thought that crying was something he was able to do; he'd stood strong against humiliation with Fortuna and Haggard and everything else and while she knew he felt sorrow for himself she still never thought he'd be able to do something like that which was so…human). Her horn quivered as he tried to compose himself and she reared a step or two back when he gave one loud, sharp laugh that seemed more like a cry with the tears running down his cheeks and his throat clogged in emotion she didn't really know. She didn't understand.

"…I'm sorry," he sighed, straightening as much as he could while clearing the streams of salt water from his own face and still shaking a little as he brought up the other hand and (hesitantly, shy and seeming as if it were such a wrong thing to do so when Molly and Lir had done much more—Molly with clothing the Lady Amalthea and comforting her when needed, Lir with kissing her pale lips and hands and embracing her like lovers so often do…that she really didn't need to think about at the moment) moved a piece of hair from worming into her ear, kind, "You've just never called me by my name, my lady."

As much of a smile she could give as herself was what she gave to him, "I know. I wanted to now, though. If that's alright?"

The image in his eyes changed much like her own; from the ocean years ago to that bright blue that echoed an image of her in human form needing comfort, and glad of his (if only for that one moment in seeing him as more than King Haggard's poor clown). Her own eyes reflected both him and a golden morning in the wood escaping from Captain Cully's outlaws on the road.

His mouth worked into a smile at her words and motions and, much less hesitant, he gave a fancy bow and said much like himself, amusing and kind, "Anything for you, my lady Amalthea."

She bowed her head down towards him and moved forward so they could carry on and out of the reach of the woods she had come from along the road, a light and beautiful sort-of laugh leaving her lips as he sidled next to her much like the morning after he had freed her from that cold iron-bar cage and she had freed and fought the harpy. Familiar and almost as they were before years separated them.

(What could her own kind give her compared to this? Walking along to a destination undecided and comfortable in conversation where her own people preferred silence or almost selfishness; nothing could be better and if she had it her way, she would never go back-will never go back as long as she or Schmendrick lived.)

The magician opened up his little carry bag and pulled out a pair of oranges, juggling and talking about things that had happened, things that were happening in the kingdom that had been Lir's and now was unattended for the time being. He mentioned a unicorn that had been changed into a human by a compassionate magician near the edge of Lir's kingdom; a male with a long, tapered sword that had begun to fancy a little runaway maiden he had defended after she'd tried to warn him in his past form from being slaughtered by bandits looking to steal his horn. Schmendrick thought they might make the trek there and see if perhaps they should give the younger magician a hand.

Amalthea seemed uncertain of this—the magician, the unicorn, the maiden should be made to learn things with as little help as she, Schmendrick, and Molly had been given—until Schmendrick mentioned the field of violets in that little area that was wide as a lake and twice so beautiful. She had never seen a violet but once and he was glad to hear that.