Fall
̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶̶ ̶{o
Xander wasn't sure if he had been unconscious, or if the ringing in his ears and burning in his irises just made it seem that way. He found which direction seemed like down, and immediately threw up the remnants of his last meal.
"Ugh..." he shivered, and through touch alone tried to pull himself up to his knees. "Savos? Mirabelle? What...ow, my head..." he shook it, as blurry shapes slowly manifested themselves around him. There was a weight in one of his hands; cool metal, large and unwieldy. The doorknocker...he tried to shove it into his tunic.
"Alexander!" He heard a voice, and turned to it. What was probably Mirabelle was slumped against a pillar nearby, also struggling to stand. They were still in the hall of the elements. In the centre...
The Eye wasn't even visible anymore. There was a blue green sphere of energy that dominated almost the entire room, this one completely opaque. Savos and his opponent were nowhere to be seen.
"Are-ugh. Are we safe?" Xander asked.
"I...don't know." Mirabelle replied, standing. "None of this is..." she looked back at the exit. "The way is clear. Savos seems to have...sealed it somehow."
Xander wasn't so sure. It might have been his imagination, but...millimetre by millimetre, was the sphere expanding?
"Yeah." He shook his head. "We should go check everyone's okay. Oh, no, my sister-"
"Wait." She held up a hand, scrutinising him. "Why didn't you bring down the barrier?"
Oh no. "I...we really should go, people might be in danger-" distract her, distract her long enough to come up with an excuse-
"No, hold on." She walked towards him. He backed up. "Why? You weren't hit by the Eye, were you-"
"No-" wait no, that was a good excuse- "I mean, maybe, I-"
"Then why did you stop firing? You would have had it if you'd..." she trailed off. "Did you run out of magicka?"
NO!
His body's response was visceral, far more so than it had any right to be. He jerked and stumbled back a few steps, adrenaline spiking again, fight or flight response screaming in a way that was definitely not healthy. "I...I can explain." No. No she's realised.
"You weren't doing anything before, so you...why did you run out so fast?" She took in his expression and held her hands out. "Xander, if something's wrong, I need to know-"
"Nothing's wrong!" He yelled, clenching his fists. "There's nothing wrong with me, why does everyone who knows always think that!? I'm not broken! This is just who I am! I can't-" he was shaking. It's like the Synod. No, no, no it's like the Synod all over again-
Mirabelle frowned. And then there was a moment, he saw the moment, where she realised. "You mean..." she blinked. "But...but the storm atronach..."
She knows, and now she'll hate you, and she knows that you lied to her-
He kept on walking backwards, towards the edge of the room. She kept following, backing him into a corner. Stop looking at me like that stop looking at me like that please stop looking at me-
"Xander, I-" her eyes glanced over his head, and widened. "Xander stop-" she darted forwards and reached an arm out for him.
NO! He jumped backwards, legs crashing against the wall of the room while his back hit nothing but air-
Don't touch me stop looking at me- he just wanted to vanish, he just wanted to vanish and fall through the floor and go somewhere that he wouldn't have to face the mortifying horror of her understanding him, he wanted to-
Fade.
"FEIM!"
The word tore through his body almost on instinct, different to before, it had meaning now, he knew it, he was it, and everything flashed a silvery blue just as he realised that he had been backing up to a window, the window smashed in the chaos, and he was tipping backwards-
Mirabelle's outstretched hand phased completely through his own.
Ethereal, Alexander dropped out the window of the College of Winterhold, and plummeted down to the ice below.
...Yeah.
I did set this up, remember. 'Decades of meditation in silence or a bunch of traumatic events', was how I said one could learn to Shout. Not sure if the latter has ever happened in canon (except, you know, to the Dragonborn) but I'm basically working with it being the same as inner peace from Kung Fu Panda. Years of meditation, or one really, really bad day.
This was Xander's really bad day.
Next chapter normal time next week. And I'm an asshole, so it's going to be an interlude.