The flames are licking higher and higher. In a moment, the lab itself will be going up. Maree presses her lens up to her eye and thinks she ought to be feeling something about the fact that everything she's worked for over the past year is going up in fire, but she doesn't seem to care. There's nothing inside her but a numb horror, because Mizzix was working in there.
Maree tries to think what her life will be like without Mizzix. There won't be cups of coffee that never tasted the same because someone had been tinkering with the coffee pot. There won't be arms around her waist at strange hours of the morning, and a happy voice whispering equations in her ear. There won't be waking up with a warm, exhausted bundle in her arms. There won't be anything, in fact, that holds the fabric of her life together. And the only thing she can do is push her optical lens up her nose and stare at the bright flames.
Sudden, shrill sobs reach her ears, and she looks over and doesn't understand what she's seeing. "No!" screams the short goblin, struggling against an Azorius arrester. "You have to let me go back in there, I have to get Maree's notes, I have to–"
"Mizzix!" Maree feels her stomach lurch, and she's running across the wet cobblestones and throwing herself at the goblin. "I thought you were dead!"
The goblin turns to her, drooping and completely unprepared as Maree throws herself into her arms. Both of them go down onto the cobblestones, which is going to hurt Maree's knees later, but she doesn't give a fuck.
"It's all my fault!" Mizzix moans. "Oh, Maree, I'm sorry, I didn't cut off the energy to the manalines, I'm such an idiot!"
"I don't care," whispers Maree, and her face is wet, which is odd, because it's not raining. "I remember most of what I did, I can reproduce it, I don't care."
"You don't–I thought you were going to kill me yourself." Ah, that's more like the normal Mizzix. Maree dips and kisses her.
"We can do that later," she says. Her heart-rate is slowly returning to normal. "You can just get me some more funding, can't you?"
Mizzix blinks at her. "Wow, you were really worried."
"Yes, I was! You idiot! Don't do things like that!"
One long-fingered hand reaches up and tweaks her nose. "I didn't know you cared that much."
Neither had Maree. "Well, now you do," she says.