"All's well that ends well, I suppose," murmured Lailah, the first anyone had spoken since they'd settled down for the night.
The party had kept traveling for a few hours after Sorey's return, but only because they all needed something to do with themselves. Lunarre's blood and ashes had been washed away mere moments after his soul had scattered, but Rose and Alisha still sensed the stain of death hanging over the sodden earth, so Sorey had suggested camping elsewhere.
"Yes, all's well that ends well," agreed Alisha, her voice a sigh as she sat back wearily. She'd finished her food first and eaten more than the others besides, but Rose didn't blame her for a second; the Squire's stomach had been even emptier than the others' ever since she struck that killing blow, and she hadn't trudged through any less mud to get here.
"Maybe tomorrow will be less eventful," suggested Mikleo, heaving a sigh. "Of course, Sorey will have to go hunting again, but if Symonne said she'd wait for us at the gate to Camlann… that's a few days away, isn't it?"
"At the very least," put in Lailah, gazing somberly into the heart of the campfire. "I doubt she'll be able to affect us from that distance, so long as she intends to stay there."
Rose pursed her lips. "Was she using her illusions?" she asked, glancing around at the group. Her own interactions with Symonne had thankfully been brief, if infuriating as always, but she didn't recall seeing any displays of power. Then again, she remembered abruptly, she had felt something in the ring…
Alisha nodded hesitantly. "I think Symonne kept me from finding the others," she responded. "Buying L-Lunarre time to get the ring back. But then, her domain just… vanished, with no explanation. Not all of it," she clarified. "Just enough for me to see through it, to Sorey."
"So that's it," mumbled Rose mostly to herself, turning the ring thoughtfully on her finger. She'd punched an Alisha-sized hole in a seraph's blessed domain, and she hadn't even lost consciousness. Had it become easier, she wondered, to use Symonne's abilities against her…?
"I—I'm sorry," burst out Alisha, sounding as though she'd been meaning to say it for hours, and Rose jerked her head up to find her scowling intently at the fire. "I… should have left him to you. I shouldn't have presumed…"
"Hey, don't worry about it," interrupted Rose, scooting closer to her and resting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Last time I tried to kill him… his malevolence almost got to me. Could have been a lot worse," she added, "but it was a closer call than I'd have liked. He always did get under my skin, some times more literally than others." Her fingers found the bite mark on her neck once more, and again it did not ache as she pressed it: he was gone.
There was a long and dark silence, which—to Rose's slight surprise—Dezel shattered. "Well, all things considered, I'd call today a success," he shrugged. "Alisha pulled out a thorn in our side. Sorey brought back some food, just like he said he would. I don't see why you're all so depressed," he added, but his voice had become quiet, and he was staring at his boots as if talking to himself.
If Dezel meant to lighten the mood, his words could not have elicited less cheer if he'd tried; Rose winced at his tactlessness. He'd never liked Lunarre, but to refer to him as nothing more than a thorn in their side—didn't he know she had once thought of him almost like a brother? He'd traveled with the Scattered Bones; he'd seen their bond for himself…!
Edna, however, had a different (and less obvious) problem with Dezel's phrasing. "You used to be the first to complain about referring to animals as 'food'," she observed, narrowing her eyes and twirling her parasol, and Mikleo moved out of the way to avoid getting smacked. "Did being a dragon give you a taste for killing, or something? Is that it?"
"Of course not," retorted Dezel, sounding as though he was trying to snap at Edna, but he looked distinctly unnerved for reasons Rose couldn't quite place. "Maybe I'm just… hungry enough to make an exception," he added, but he didn't meet anyone's eyes, and his words sounded almost like a question. Uncertain, uneasy, and almost desperate.
"I don't think I brought back enough for all of us," added Sorey, looking alarmed. "Just those of us who need it to live. This is all there is," he added, gesturing around the campfire. Most of their makeshift plates had already been emptied.
"O-oh," was Dezel's only response, more awkward still, and he turned several shades redder as he fidgeted with the brim of his hat. "Never mind, then." Even as he spoke, Rose offered him a leg of whatever bird she was munching on—but he either chose to ignore her, or didn't notice, so she shrugged and bit into it herself. If he didn't feel like salvaging some of his dignity, that was on him.
"Can I… ask you something?" began Sorey after a brief hesitation, and Dezel nodded once, with an apparent effort—as though dragging himself out of his thoughts. (He really was thinking much too much, reflected Rose, more and more alarmed.) Sorey cleared his throat, his gaze hardening into solemn resolution. "What's it like, being a dragon?"
Dezel tilted his head, his expression becoming guarded. "Why do you ask?"
"If we're going to face Eizen on our way, I'd like to know what he feels," responded Sorey quietly, glancing over at Edna's stony countenance. "That's all." Though his words were simple and true and revealed no ulterior motives, Rose guessed he was as curious and concerned about Dezel's subtle shifts in personality as she, and that perhaps his experiences as a dragon had affected his mentality as a seraph.
Dezel gave a humorless bark of laughter. "If you're that curious, you're going to be disappointed," he responded, shaking his head. "I remember transforming, and I remember Zaveid's last words. But as for everything in between… it's like no time passed at all."
"I… see," responded Sorey, looking crestfallen. "Thanks anyway."
"We're not going to face Eizen," mumbled Edna, so quietly Rose could barely hear it over the crackle of the campfire. As she spoke, she glanced in the direction of Rayfalke—shrouded in swirling clouds, visible only by the occasional flash of lightning in the night. "I don't feel his domain," she explained; her voice seemed strained, an odd combination of relief and disappointment. "My brother… isn't here. He always did like to travel."
"What a time to take a vacation," remarked Rose, frowning. If they fought Eizen sooner rather than later, they'd get more practice dueling dragons, and they could lay him to rest as had basically been Zaveid's dying wish… as well as Edna's living one. Still, if they could manage to avoid conflict on that scale, they would be able to conserve their time and energy, reaching their destination and rectifying the source of all this conflict sooner.
"He might've sensed what happened to me," sighed Dezel, leaning back casually on his hands. "Purification was kind of a one-time offer, going off what Zaveid said—so maybe he got scared you'll have to kill him instead, and flew away."
"Dezel, how could you say such a thing?" gasped Lailah, too shocked even to glare at him. Rose scowled fiercely, her jaw tightening; it wasn't like him to be so flippant. It was one thing to dismiss Lunarre, but Eizen?
Dezel shrugged, but something about the motion seemed forced. He seemed as uncomfortable with his own behavior as the others; why was he doing this to himself as well as everyone else…? "It was just an idea," he muttered, pulling his hat down farther over his eyes, and the wind stirred restively around the campfire as he felt everyone staring. "S-sorry…"
No one reacted to his awkward apology, whether to accept or reject it, and they lapsed into a brooding silence. Something was wrong, and even if Dezel didn't want to talk about it, Rose had to know—if only for the sake of maintaining the peace within the group. But how was she supposed to get him to open up when he'd shut down like this…?
"Bedtime?" asked Lailah, after several minutes, and Sorey and Alisha nodded after a brief hesitation. It may not have been good to fall asleep right after mealtime, but Rose could tell they were all struggling to fend off exhaustion both physical and emotional. Besides, the prospects of further conversation seemed unbearable, thanks in no small part to Dezel's perhaps inadvertent insensitivity.
"I'll take the first watch," volunteered Rose, and Dezel vanished into her immediately. Sorey and Alisha nodded, but said nothing, and the seraphim all disappeared into their vessels just as quietly. It was almost as though they were afraid to speak, thought Rose, or afraid of saying the wrong thing. "Good night," she added, in an effort to persuade somebody to respond, but no one—not even her own seraph—answered her.
That watch seemed like the longest of Rose's life, but only because she had still not found a solution by the time Lailah emerged to take over. It took a long time for her to get to sleep, and even then, her rest was fitful; she'd almost rather have taken the ring's nightmares over the vague and unsettling results of her own imagination.
Rose surfaced many times over the next several hours, but by the time she fully awakened, Mikleo was sitting vigil… and there was an emptiness inside her she couldn't place at first, until she realized Dezel was gone. Fear flashed through her head so that she felt lightheaded, but she forced herself to sit up and stretch. "Where's Dezel?" asked Rose, sitting up and stretching.
"He's your Prime Lord," pointed out Mikleo, crossing his arms. "Lailah didn't even tell me Dezel left, so if he's not inside you, I don't know where he else he'd be." Rose half expected a snide snicker from Zaveid before she remembered he wasn't there to laugh anymore, and her heart ached. They hadn't mentioned him much after his passing, but she could tell they all missed him during the lulls in conversation he had once filled.
"I'm gonna go look for him," decided Rose, already reaching for her knives.
Mikleo pressed his lips together briefly, a frown flitting across his face. "Be safe," he responded as her tired fingers fumbled with the belt buckles. "You know it's dangerous out there. If you're not back in a quarter of an hour, I'm going to wake Sorey so we can look for you."
"No need," remarked Dezel's voice, and Rose and Mikleo both jumped, turning to find him leaning against the side of the cave—hat and jacket glistening from standing in the rain. "What are you doing awake?" he added to Rose, crossing his arms and staring at her in surprise and suspicion. "Go back to sleep. Everything is fine."
"No, it's not," responded Rose, finishing strapping on her knives, and got to her feet. "We need to talk, now," she added, stalking towards the mouth of the cave and grabbing Dezel's arm along the way to drag him outside with her. "I'm not gonna lie awake worrying about you again, and if you're awake too, the least you can do is make sure I don't have to anymore."
"Let go of me," protested Dezel, but something about his words seemed halfhearted—almost resigned. She doubted very much that he was only putting up a show of resistance… but he definitely wasn't as averse to the idea as he could be, since he could easily have disappeared into her and given her the silent treatment if he really didn't want to talk. It wasn't much, but Rose would take what hope she could find.
"Not a chance," she responded, and tugged her seraph after her without so much as a glance back at Mikleo… although she caught Dezel looking helplessly back at him as if to ask for help.
As they strode together through the rain, thick and heavy as ever, Rose's fingers slipped from his slick jacket to his fingers before long. His hand curled reflexively around hers, and though they did not acknowledge their connection in words, Rose felt distinctly breathless at the ease with which they had established it.
"There," suggested Dezel after a minute or so, pointing to another shallow cave in the cliffside, and Rose pulled him beneath the rocky protrusion above it, surprised and grateful for his assistance. Knowing Dezel, he probably just wanted to get this over with as soon as possible, but it was still helpful. As they came to a halt under the overhang, he took back his hand; his influence stilled the winds around them, and Rose took a deep breath of sweet stormy air.
"You're keeping secrets again, just like you did in the early days," she told him, struggling to keep her voice calm so as not to sound too accusatory. "And speaking of which, as your Shepherd, I have a right to know what's wrong. So… what's going on?" she asked, looking him in the eye. "Is this about your oath, or what?"
The wind picked up briefly before Dezel forcibly calmed it again. "I don't know what you're talking about," he muttered, turning his face away—unable to hold her stare.
"Your oath," repeated Rose impatiently, crossing her arms. "You know, the self-made contract that lets you use the power of purification so you can keep being my Prime Lord?" she added pointedly. "I know I can't make you tell me, especially if it's something you can't say, but…"
"It's not my oath," responded Dezel, with the kind of immediate certainty that comes only with the truth, and Rose gave a light sigh of relief and exasperation. "I already told you, I'm just getting used to being me again. Leave me alone."
The sense of finality in his words stung more than he probably knew, but Rose persevered. "Yeah, that's what you told me, but you told Sorey you don't remember not being you," she pointed out. "Other than supporting your own domain, and being able to see, what is there to get used to? It should be the same as always, right?"
"That's not what I mean," replied Dezel, clenching his fists in passionate frustration. "I'm not… myself, anymore, so it's taking a long time to get used to being me, because I'm a different me than the me I used to be," he added, adjusting his hat in irrepressible agitation as Rose tried to work out the meaning behind his convoluted words. "If that makes sense."
Rose punched him none too lightly in the arm. Did he really think that being a dragon had changed him at his core in some way? Sure, his behavior was a little weird, but that didn't mean he was a different person or something. "You'll always be you," she told him resolutely. "Even through the hellionization, I can still tell you're the same Dezel we know and… love." Rose couldn't stop her voice from snagging in her throat before the telltale word, and prayed he thought nothing of it.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Dezel seemed to have bigger problems to think about. "Am I?" he challenged her, his voice disarmingly bitter. "Listen, Rose, can you tell me what makes someone who they are?" he continued, moving on so quickly that she had no time to interject an affirmative. "The things that shape their identity—why they act the way they do."
Rose frowned at him, trying to gauge his reason for asking, but knew without thinking that offering any further questions would cause the end of their discussion once and for all. "Experiences shape personality," she responded tentatively. "Or so Brad always told me, anyway. But what does that have to do with…?"
"Exactly," interrupted Dezel, letting out a long breath, and the air swirled restlessly around them, though no rain made its way into their cavern of secrecy. "Experiences. And… memories."
"Memories," repeated Rose slowly—and a second later, she understood; her heart seemed to shudder to a halt and freeze over. Why Dezel seemed unfamiliar with ideas she knew they'd discussed before; why the little quirks that had previously defined aspects of his personality had vanished—why he had insisted that being himself took some getting used to—
"Do you understand, Rose?" asked Dezel, grimacing, and turned away in sadness or in shame. "There are so many gaps in my memory, I barely know anything about anyone anymore. The things I remember… they're so few and far between, they're almost meaningless." He swallowed, and his voice cracked as he finished, "Who am I, Rose?"
All at once, the artificial distance Dezel had maintained for the last several days vanished, and he was standing right in front of her again. This seraph was the same whom had held her so soon after awakening; this was her Prime Lord, lost and vulnerable. Her throat turned tight at the defeat and distress in his tone, and she took a couple steps forward.
"I told you, you're… yourself, and that's all there is to it," responded Rose, resting a cautious hand on his arm, and was pleasantly surprised when he did not shrug it off. "Don't force yourself to be someone you're not, even if that someone is who you used to be. Okay?"
Dezel frowned in apparent puzzlement. "You're not… angry?" he asked, glancing at her sideways. "That I didn't tell you sooner?"
Rose sighed. "Well, I was, but you kinda took that right away from me as soon as you explained yourself," she told him thoughtfully, and found as she spoke that no traces of her previous annoyance remained, or even her anxiety; in fact, she felt strangely calm. Perhaps this was what it felt like to be at peace; this was reality, and they had no choice but to accept it and move on. "So I'll let you off the hook, since you're suffering for it anyway," she added. "But I don't want you to suffer."
"Says the one who's suffering," muttered Dezel.
"I'm not suffering," countered Rose, raising her eyebrows. Certainly nowhere near as much as Dezel, anyway, and in more minor ways. "I mean, sure, I'm a little disappointed that you can't remember all the same things I can, but you obviously know me, right?" she continued. "Since you said my name as soon as you woke up. And it makes me… happy," she added, choosing her words carefully, "that I'm one of the things you remember."
Dezel gave the ghost of a smile. "Of course you are," he told her, his tone as confident as if that had been a given from the start. "Finding you for the first time has always been one of my earliest memories, but it stuck with me even through the transformation. I don't remember anything before then, though," he added, looking her up and down. "My life… began with you."
"With me," repeated Rose softly, her heart swelling. She was his vessel, she reminded herself; that was probably all he meant—but it was still comforting.
Dezel nodded. "That's my only clear memory till I lost Lafarga and started seeking revenge," he responded. "And then my life goes back back to being hazy till I set out on this journey with all of you. I remember a handful of moments from then on, but other than those…" He trailed off, shaking his head.
Positioning herself more carefully in front of Dezel so that he had to look down at her, Rose grasped both his shoulders firmly. "It's not like a lot of our exact experiences are important right now anyway," she told him, and meant it. "It's enough that you're still here. And if you need me to explain anything, I can fill you in as we go." She braved a smile, squeezing his arms gently. "Sound good?"
Dezel pursed his lips, hesitating. "It's… not like there's just emptiness in between my clearer memories," he explained eventually. "There are a few general thoughts and feelings I can remember, too, that tie everything together. Not always specific, but important." He paused, swallowing in sudden nervousness. "Two in particular. My obsession with revenge, and… then…"
Rose blinked up at Dezel as he turned his face away, flushing noticeably in the dim lantern-light. She didn't want to get her hopes up about what he meant, but the decision didn't seem to be in her hands; her heart rate jumped, and she forgot momentarily how to breathe.
"It still doesn't make sense to me… since I'm missing the memory that first triggered it, if there even was one… but it's all I have at this point," continued Dezel haltingly. "And it's not like me to tell you about it, I know that much—but I'm not the same me anymore, so who gives a damn?" His voice had become a mumble, as though he spoke primarily to convince himself.
Dezel took a deep breath, opened his mouth… and said nothing. For an unbearably long time, cold and breathless, Rose stood in place, still holding his arms. Neither of them moved, or even seemed to breathe; they had become statues, frozen in a half-embrace, doomed to stand in the rain until the end of the world—awaiting some sort of closure.
But forever came more quickly than anticipated; less than a minute of relative silence passed them by before Dezel finally spoke. "R-Rose," he began, and she almost started as the wind curled just as unexpectedly around her, but he gave her no time to brace herself for the coming storm: "I think… I might… love you."
…Finally. Now that everyone has stopped reading because of that month-long hiatus, I'm finally, finally, finally giving those [Rose, Dezel] brackets in the summary some use! Good gods, this has been almost fifty chapters in the making. I remember when the entire story was only going to be thirty-five. Gotta love telescoping processes…
lazycat66: There's no getting rid of you, is there? :)
ViolettaXYZ: Heh, if I abandon a story I usually stick a warning in the summary. I have no plans of letting this one drop! It's just, as you say, other fandoms grabbed my attention (I'm looking at you, Hakuōki), and school means my time and energy is a lot more limited. But yeah, Dezel has had a lot on his plate, so he's been… standoffish. Thankfully, that seems to have fixed itself right up!
