And now, for something completely different. Well, not completely. The thoughtful and meditative tone remains, and there's no shortage of light, but this one goes to some darker places than I'd expected. Why? Because Harry's catching Sunniva up on what he's been doing with Shou-Lao, and Shou-Lao is someone who believes in starting at the bottom before building Harry up. He will force Harry to know himself – and in the process, he will bear a surprising resemblance to a benevolent Count Dooku (not entirely surprising since I've been writing Dooku as a teacher recently, but even still). I think it's some of my better writing, actually, though how well it lands... we shall see.
Sunniva had had a fair few preconceptions about her kinsman before she had met him, and many more questions. The fact that he had cheerfully, impudently, greeted her as 'auntie' had raised yet more. She was quite aware of all her siblings and their children, and he most assuredly was not one of them. Yet she had not detected any lie in his words, either.
Happily, he seemed more than willing to explain just how this was possible.
"Time travel," he said cheerfully.
"You travelled in time?" she echoed, surprised.
"Well, to be strictly accurate, my teacher dropped me through a time portal and told me to have fun," he replied dryly, and shrugged. "Which I have, for the most part."
She stared at him. "That, at least, explains your reticence to all you met," she said. "Why you did not even give your name."
"Yeah, names have power," he said idly. "And a way of getting around. This might be eons before humanity is meant to figure out writing, but even if I wasn't going to run into beings a bit more advanced, I wasn't about to take too many chances. Just in case."
He waved a hand around at the Middle Folk, the 'human', inhabitants of K'un L'un by way of demonstration.
The party had broken up shortly after her arrival, and now, they were walking through the city, heading towards one of the quieter gardens. She attracted open stares, while he attracted merely the odd curious look and a few cheerful greetings in a tongue she did not recognise, that he returned easily enough.
One thing she had noticed fairly early on was that they tended to be fairly well dressed and educated, in the sense she would expect from at least a late agrarian society, perhaps early industrial – writing would be just one of many things they knew.
"There are worse things than caution," she agreed. "Though I do not see much caution in giving the power of the Phoenix to a –"
She hesitated over the word and those keen green eyes focused on her, several expressions flickering over his face; injured pride, familiar irritation, and cynical amusement. Finally, it settled on something more wry.
"A child?" he asked mildly.
"You are fifteen," she said, with some consternation.
That consternation was only increased by the fact that he could pass for some years, some centuries, older than he was. It was all in the attitude. Well, some in the looks (the white lock certainly didn't hurt, nor did the scars and ropey muscle), but dancing and mischief notwithstanding, his attitude was not of an exuberant youth fresh from the play-room and either swaggering with poorly judged bravado or full of self-consciousness. This was someone powerful, confident in that power, and wise to its limits.
Not arrogant; there wasn't that sense of sprawling ego or belief in one's own invincibility. No, if she was any judge, those scars had been earned, and their lessons had been well learned. Including that power, no matter how great, always had limits.
All were traits to be proud of, to be sure, and far less infuriating to deal with than the alternative.
But they were distinctly unsettling to find in one so very, very young.
"Fourteen or fifteen, depends how you count," he agreed. "My body spent a little while separated from my mind in a faster time-stream. Mind, even without that, it's been a few months since I got here, and I was about fourteen and a half then."
He stopped and looked at her steadily.
"I know that I'm young to have this power, auntie," he said, now measured and firm – acknowledgement, yes, but there was no yield. "Perhaps too young. The way I got it wasn't exactly conventional, or for the reasons a Phoenix host usually gets it." He glanced off into the distance, to where she instinctively knew that Shou-Lao had chosen to rest. "In some ways, I'm more like our host than I am like you, or another Phoenix."
"You received it at birth?" she asked, startled.
"Not quite," he replied. "Though metaphysics being what they are, I might as well have done." At her puzzlement, he waved a hand. "It's complicated, and I can't really explain it without revealing things about the future that I shouldn't."
"Then it would be best to keep your own counsel," she said, frowning, inwardly mulling over what he had just said.
He nodded. "I'm young to have it," he repeated. "But I need to. So, I've learned to manage it, how to wield it wisely, which is part of why I was sent here."
"You do not just mean to this city," she said with absolute certainty.
He looked up at her and smiled warmly. "Like I said," he replied. "I've been waiting for you." His expression sobered as he saw the troubled look that had to be lingering in her eyes, sensing it threaded throughout her being. "I know that by Asgardian standards – many human standards, but especially Asgardian standards – I am still a child. I'm definitely young, and I have a lot to learn. But I think you've encountered enough humans to know that… this world changes you. Things move faster, here. People grow up quicker. My father and uncle have spent a few years here, and apparently they've grown up more in four years than in four hundred on Asgard, easily."
"That is true," she conceded. "And the fact that even before I arrived, I knew that you had held such power for months at least without losing control even once, despite facing multiple battles, said a great deal about your capability. By implication, it said more about your maturity, too."
She sighed gustily, casting a tired look at him.
"I can tell that you do not appreciate my worry, or my outrage on your behalf, and I understand that in growing up here – as you have implied – you have grown up far faster," she said. "But you must understand, the vast majority of those of your age in Asgard are still in their sparring halls and school-rooms, and will be for many years yet, innocent of harsh the realms can be. In these peaceful times, even the most precocious and adventurous rarely engage in the kind of battles that you have, let alone the ones you bear the scars of, before the end of their first century. For many others, it is closer to their first millennium."
She cast him a pleading look.
"I feel your strength, and your assurance," she went on. "I have heard tales of your deeds, and hear me now, nephew-mine: I am proud." At that, he flushed bright red. It made him look both his actual age, and really rather adorable. "But please understand that I am unsettled, and that I have reason to be. You have more battle scars on your body than I do, and I am more than a thousand times your age. And those are just the ones I can see! As for your mind…"
She trailed off, this time in muted horror. Her nephew, however distant he may be, had been in the kind of psychic wars that even she, a Phoenix host with decades of experience, could only imagine. She had seen damage like this before, yes, usually after the fact, and rarely had anyone who had endured such things – and this was just the healed scarring! – even been able to move or breathe by themselves, let alone be walking, talking, and apparently, entirely (or at least mostly) sane.
He smiled wryly. "It's mostly intact, I assure you," he said.
She frowned. "I am assured, but I am not comforted," she said. "You are clearly strong, and no doubt far more so than I yet know. You are also already showing wisdom beyond your years, again, likely more than I yet know. I acknowledge that, I respect that, and I will try treat you as you act, not how I believe you should be. You are more than your handful of years, I can feel it. I just mourn the fact that for whatever reason, whether it is good or not, you have had to be."
She sighed.
"I do not know," she said. "Whether the reasons are good or bad, and I do not know you. Not yet." She took his hand, looking him in those bright green eyes, imploring him to understand. "But I would very much like to. As far as that is possible."
He smiled, and this time it was not warm and assured, but somewhat shy.
"I would like to get to know you too," he replied quietly, and mischief sparkled again in his eyes. "Auntie."
She eyed him, trying to hide her amusement behind a censorious look. "Tell me, nephew mine, is a little a filial respect too much to ask for?"
This time, the reply came with a truly impish smile. "That would depend on how you define respect. Auntie."
She shook her head and chuckled under her breath. "You are incorrigible," she said. "Are you like this to all of our family, in your time?"
"Nah," he said, sticking his hands in pockets and grinning. "Sometimes, I'm worse." He shrugged one shoulder. "I can be serious," he continued. "For most of the last year, I've been very serious." He inhaled, then exhaled slowly. "I was sent here to learn, yes. And one of the things I was sent to learn was how to rest more easily. I'm away from those I love, and I'm not entirely happy about that –"
She tilted her head at the way his emotions shifted when he said that. It was not a lie, but it was a definite understatement.
"– but it's certainly not indefinite," he went on. "And more importantly, I'm away from my burdens, too. I can go back to basics, clean slate, and not worry about anything beyond… me." He wrinkled his nose thoughtfully. "I think it's what they call 'self-care'," he mused.
"'Self-care'?" she echoed, bemused.
"Exactly what it sounds like," he said, shrugging. "Looking after yourself. I've spent the last year and a half – the last few years, really, but this bit in particular – bouncing from crisis to crisis. I can't go into details; time travel, you know how it is. However…" He trailed off. "Tell me, auntie. Do the words 'Dark Phoenix' mean anything to you?"
Her head snapped around, eyes widening, every sense suddenly keyed up for combat, her power flaring and rising. "He is free?!"
"Hmm? Oh, no," he said absently. As she settled down and prepared to reproach him in the strongest terms, he added, "though not for lack of trying." He looked at her and sighed. "One thing I've learned about the Phoenix is that it's about change. It doesn't stay in a single state, or contained, forever."
"Which explains his periodic attempts to escape, the thinning of the Seal, his Avatars and his Captains," she said. "But you mean something more, don't you?"
He pursed his lips, considering what he could say. "I do," he said eventually.
"You think he will escape."
"I have it on very good authority that he will, sooner or later."
"Nothing is inevitable," she argued, then exhaled. "But some things are very, very probable. You are certain?"
"Oh yes," he said. His tone was quiet, a touch grim, but more… resolved. With a rush of absolute horror, she saw just what he was driving at.
"You think you are meant to fight him," she realised, numb. "That you will be the one who closes the circle that he began. Yet how can you be certain? I stand before you, proof that the Phoenix has taken hosts from the Nine Realms before you. Why must it rest upon you? You are –"
She stopped, doing her best to swallow the words. He looked at her, but did not call her on it in a fit of pique or bruised pride. Instead, his expression was calm, steady, and, yes, resolved.
"Sunniva," he said gently, and this time, the playfulness was gone. A kind of wisdom had taken its place. "I have faced him, mind to mind – when the Norns tested me, he reached across time, trying to understand me, to bend me to his will." He smiled faintly. "I got a few burns. He got one hell of a surprise." The smile faded. "I have taken enough of his measure to know this: I have faced worse. Only once, but I've done. I can beat him." He raised a hand to forestall her. "But I don't know if I will. Yes, I've beaten worse, but when that happened… the circumstances were fairly special. Phoenix fire gave me an advantage then. Here? He knows Phoenix fire. Mostly." He shook his head. "Surtur is a different kind of enemy."
Sunniva tilted her head frowning, feeling the edges of his thoughts. His mental defences were remarkably adept. Not perfect, but strong, without being brittle, with more sophistication than she had expected. If she had to guess, she'd say that even without the Phoenix, he was a very formidable practitioner of the mental arts – most likely a natural, a prodigy, to have acquired such skill so quickly. In any case, she wasn't minded to pry.
However, one thing he clearly had yet to learn that being a Phoenix made one more than a psi-talent of any kind. Echoes of meaning and intention wove around him, what was hidden being reflected by what was hiding it, and then, well. Why restrict yourself to simply reading a mind, when you could read a soul? It wasn't always so clear, or revealing of details unless you delved deep, but even a glimpse could show you what you needed to see.
She saw scars. Scars from wounds so awful, scars that whispered of tales so horrible, that for a terrible instant she was caught between the heartbreak of entropy, the bone-deep fear of an uncertain future, and the rage of a supernova, delving into the blood-fury of the Warrior's Madness, and the flames of the Phoenix roared up to meet this new fuel with terrible eagerness.
"No," she hissed. "No, I will not. I am one with the Phoenix, and it is one with me."
Into those flames instead she poured her love; for her home, her world, her friends and her family – even the early buddings of it for this young kinsman of hers; and her hope; for the civilisations she had seen rise and rise again, some under her protection and some entirely in their own right, for the coalescence of new stars and the renewal of old ones, and for better days ahead – for this strange world, if none other.
"You are promise," she whispered to herself. "Promise of a brighter future for this world. Promise that even the youngest of us can endure, if not alone. A reason to hope."
She opened her eyes. The ground around her feet had burned to the bedrock for ten feet around. Now, it was putting forth grasses and saplings beneath her feet. She wriggled her toes, boots now burnt through, letting the feeling of grass weaving amongst them, of pure and innocent life, soothe her.
She frowned. Sloppy. Unforgivably sloppy.
"How did you do that?"
She looked up, blinking, into a positively awed pair of emerald green eyes. Up to this point, she had mostly seen either someone aged before his time, or with shades of the ageless fey youth of the Alfar, and more than a touch of impish mischief. Now, she saw suddenly saw the awestruck boy.
"I," she began, before pausing. "What, exactly, do you mean?"
"You were losing control of the Phoenix fire," he said, staring at her, again, in something like awe. "But you didn't reel it in. You didn't make yourself calm, exactly, you certainly didn't find your centre. Instead, you fed it something else. You, consciously, found balance not by reaching for the centre, but by tilting the balance back the other way. You didn't control your emotions, let them flow past you, release them, whatever. You used them."
She stared at him. "You don't know how to do that."
"No, I'm in absolute shock because I definitely know how to do that."
She raised an eyebrow at him. It was meant to be forbidding. Truthfully, it probably just looked worried. Her distant nephew just grinned, before sobering.
"Seriously? No," he said. "I've had to learn a lot about fronting up to my emotions, including a lot of things that I had buried – pain, anger, fear, that sort of thing. So many things that I repressed over the years. It's how I coped, and how I, initially, coped with Phoenix fire."
He must have felt the sheer wave of horror that washed over her, because he actually rocked back half a pace and winced.
"Yes, yes, I know, terrible idea. Found that out the hard way. Point is, first, I tried to squash it. Then, the way I learned was mostly about avoiding the use of Phoenix fire at all, because for several reasons that I can't go into – but, which, let's face it, you'll probably figure out – I can't exactly use the Phoenix freely back in my own time."
He waved a hand.
"Anyway, I've learned to deal with the sort of things that would lead to uncontrollable bad feelings that would feed the Phoenix. But mostly, it's been pretty passive. I stay balanced, I reel my temper in if it gets out, I keep the Phoenix on a leash. I've been assured that emotions aren't bad, I've been taught not to let them rule, but…"
He stared at her and shook his head.
"But what you did… I've never seen anything like that, it goes against everything I've learned," he went on. "Though, now that I think about it, it does make sense, in theory, and…" He trailed off, hope, caution, and confusion warring in his eyes.
"And you are young, and you have no shortage of passion in your heart," she finished gently. "Of course you do. Youth aside, we are of the same blood, and there is a fire in that blood that has nothing to do with the Phoenix." She nodded slowly. "I think I now know why I was drawn to follow you, why you were sent to this time. We were meant to meet. And, I think, this is what I was meant to teach you."
She reached out and rested her hands on his shoulders.
"You have been taught not to let your emotions rule you, nephew, and the fact that you stand before me as you are says that you have been taught well," she said. "You are able to centre yourself. To centre oneself is one means of control, and it is a good start, a very good start. It means that your emotions have not mastered you. It means that now, I can show you how to master them."
"Like you did," he said, a touch of uncertainty about him, as if seeking confirmation of something he still couldn't entirely believe.
She smiled fondly. "Yes," she said. "That and so much more." She half-turned, slipping one arm around his shoulders. "Come," she said. "Tell me what you have learned so far."
"So you'll know where to start."
"Yes," she said, then squeezed his shoulder gently to get his attention. "And so I can know you better, kinsman. Tell me all, nephew. Tell me all that you can."
Those green eyes sparkled. And, sure enough, he proceeded to do exactly that.
OoOoO
Months before…
Harry stood in one of the courtyards of the main palace in K'un Lun. Well, palace might not be the way to put it. It was an administrative centre of sorts, that much he could tell from a bit of exploration, and the council that led the city much of the time met there. Judging by some of the more ornate rooms, it was also where formal events were held – though that could just as easily be beauty for the sake of beauty, or extravagance for the sake of extravagance.
The true power in K'un Lun might not use it often, might often reside elsewhere simply due to what he was, and he might be very different to his twisted relatives. However, Harry rather suspected that, in some ways at least, he wasn't all that different. He certainly had the same penchant for dramatics that the late and very much unlamented 'Dave' had had, after all. And the association between dragons and wealth was a very strong one – strong enough that it probably had some basis in reality.
Now, though, Shou-Lao the Undying had shown one of those very significant differences: he was standing right in front of Harry, not as a dragon the size of a mountain ridge, but as a man. In that form, he was tall, as tall as Harry's own father, with broad shoulders, but there was something more sinuous about him, something more like Harry's uncle. Big he might be, but Harry had no doubt that he could turn on a penny and in the blink of an eye.
He had a hard face the colour of teak and of indeterminate age, its sharp planes and angles emphasised by his tightly cropped dark hair, his almond shaped eyes gleamed a pale gold, and everything from his expression to his stance radiated calm confidence and power as steady and assured as the roots of the mountains themselves. More to the point, despite the relative simplicity of his clothing and the total lack of adornment, there was no doubt of his Authority, fully deserving of the capital letter. This was someone who had nothing to prove and who damn well knew it.
And, Harry added to himself, someone who was not easily impressed. He looked at Harry with the assessing eye of a teacher examining a prospective student, and no more. Someone else might have bristled. Harry, on the other hand, was a bit more sanguine about it – for one thing, he was quite used to being around people who weren't really impressed by anything. For quite another, he was one himself.
When the ancient dragon spoke, he was brusque and to the point.
"If you think that you are simply here to learn new and interesting ways to defeat your enemies, to slay them or worse, you are sorely mistaken. Your education in that regard has been thorough. You know how to fight, you have it refined to a fine art. You are a perfectly forged living weapon; swift, precise, and utterly deadly. You are a master of destruction. Yes, you know how to wield power. What you lack is the ability to truly control it."
"I've learned to control my temper," Harry replied evenly, stifling a sting of irritation.
That earned him a cool look and sharp correction.
"You have learned to direct it, to turn it into something cold and deadly. That has its place. But it is not the same thing."
Harry frowned, but did not argue, and Shou-Lao tilted his head slightly.
"Your strength of will is beyond doubt," he acknowledged. "It can hold far beyond expectation or reason, resisting all temptation. That is something that I both respect and honour. But an icy rage is still a rage. A caged inferno is still an inferno. Ice melts. Cages break." Those gleaming golden eyes returned to him. "As you well know."
Harry's frown turned to a grimace, and he nodded reluctantly at this pointed reproof.
"You have not mastered your anger, instead, you unleash it and you rein it in," the elder dragon said. "You feel the weeds of it; with this guru I see in the fire of your life – like me, a grandchild of the Phoenix, of sorts. He has opened the doors." As Harry's eyes widened, the dragon smiled a thin, knowing serpentine smile. "There are more ways to read a person than through the arts of the mind. You already seem adept at one of them; their most subtle actions and reactions, the language of the body. You look for it in everyone you meet. Good. It means that you are not too focused on your gifts. As to others... you will learn."
Harry frowned again, but this time out of curiosity and a profound disquiet, instinctively shoring up his mental defences and wondering what he might mean. Was that a reference to the so-called Soulgaze? A question for another time.
"So has your... 'therapist'," Shou-Lao went on, seemingly peering at something for a moment, as he carefully pronounced the unfamiliar word. "Interesting. A mental healer of some kind. One that I am sure you sorely needed. She shows you how to cope. With them and with others, you have explored them, you have learned their names, how to live with them, their touch and their sting. But the roots are buried deep into your heart. You have learned to touch them, some you have even ripped out, leaving the wounds to heal. And yet."
"And yet what?" Harry said after a moment, more sharply than he meant.
The dragon did not take offence, instead continuing to study Harry. "And yet those wounds are still there. So are many of those roots."
"Healing is a process," Harry replied irritably.
"It is, and one you are too tentative about," the response came, quick as a whip and twice as sharp, the words that followed cutting him to the bone. "You fear that they will reach beyond your heart, that their poison will infect the fire within you. You fear what that fire will do to you. So, your control remains: Strong. Rigid. Brittle."
Harry flinched, and Shou-Lao watched him for a long moment – for a response with the Phoenix, Harry realised. None came. His expression didn't change, but there was a hint of satisfaction, and just the slightest relaxation. Even one of the greatest of Surtur's dragons would fear unbridled Phoenix fire. No, not even – especially.
"You have begun to learn the why of your power, and the nature of it, but until you understand it and that which you bury, you will always risk losing control," he said, calmly and concisely. "Sooner or later, it will master you. Your power is a weapon without equal. Your mind and soul must be up to the challenge of wielding it wisely."
"'For justice, take me up. For mercy, cast me away. I am Curtana. Wield me wisely,'" Harry murmured to himself.
Shou-Lao didn't reply, but smiled faintly.
"That is what I am here to learn," Harry said. It wasn't a question, but Shou-Lao nodded all the same.
"Some of it," he said. "I came to such philosophy late in life, and I am no guru, nor am I a healer. I am a teacher, yes, but above all… I am a test." Those golden eyes seemed to smoulder. "And rest assured, young Phoenix: you will be tested."
Harry straightened his back, squared his shoulders, and met that gaze with one of his own. "All right then," he said. "Let's get started."
OoOoO
Sunniva surfaced from the shared memory with a mild start, and another re-evaluation of her nephew's talents. He was definitely a natural psi of some form, strong and relatively experienced – such a thing was not lightly done, let alone that smoothly and without overlap and overflow from other memories, whether they were from the giver or the recipient. Yet he had done it as if it came naturally to him.
If she had to guess, either he had grown up with others similarly strong and comfortable in their abilities that such things were natural to them, or he had grown up very deep in the confidences of loved ones. Or, perhaps, she mused, he had grown up with psionics as his primary method of communication. It was possible, she'd seen it happen before, and if that little hive-mind she had encountered was an indication of where mortal kind's future lay... He spoke easily, it was true, but he switched just as easily to mind-talk.
Or, she thought with a brief sigh, her guesses were all completely mistaken. She might be exceedingly familiar with Asgardians, and increasingly so with the Middle Folk of Midgard (at least, sufficient that she didn't completely misunderstand them), but her nephew freely admitted that he was from another era entirely. And unless she missed her guess, that era was probably generations, if not eons, away. Oh, he certainly hadn't said as much, but he plainly hadn't grown up in Asgard, yet he had treated Midgard-as-it-was as something completely different to the world he had grown up with, so much that it was almost entirely alien to him.
"I understand why you were unfamiliar with my method of emotional regulation," she said, gathering her thoughts. "At least where the management of Phoenix fire is concerned."
He nodded. "It's pretty different to what I was taught," he agreed. "That teaching wasn't to lock things away, quite the opposite – more to the let them flow past me. If they're a river, to treat them as currents and let them flow around and away from me, or just dabble my toes in them, and not let them carry me away. Opening doors, and letting things out, but not just unleashing them, letting them go."
He smiled wryly.
"Sometimes easier said than done," he added. "As you might imagine."
"As I know all too well," she said softly. "It is a sound basis, and a good way to return to balance. But as I said, there is more that can be done with them."
Her nephew nodded. A small part of her wondered about his name. He had naturally avoided giving it, and had been dubbed Starlight-in-his-Eyes, Earendil, Lone Wolf, and much else. Some names fit aspects of him, others fit the whole of him. Should she offer to give him a name? Would he take amiss to it, or would he receive it gladly?
The confidence and self-assurance he had displayed so far was no doubt real, speaking a maturity far beyond his years. Yet she had also seen how he'd lit up when she'd simply expressed a desire to know him better, sparkling with a child's uncomplicated delight. At first glance, that was simply a sight of the innocence beneath the scars, and in some ways it was.
Yet she saw with more than mortal eyes, and Shou-Lao had been entirely correct when he had told her nephew that someone's story could be read in the fire of their life. She hadn't delved deep out of respect for his privacy and pride, but she had glimpsed enough; loving family, yes, but late in coming, before… shadows. Sadness. Loneliness. She had turned away at that point, not wishing to see what she should not. At some point, for some reason and for far too long, this nephew of hers had been starved of love. Enough that expressions of it from kin, those from whom he should have expected it, were not merely taken for granted – on some level, there was still an element of shyness, of surprise that someone should want to know him.
Oh, if this matter had not been properly dealt with in his time, to her satisfaction, then it didn't matter if she would have to reach through the Gates of Time or the Veil of Death; she would have words with whoever was responsible. That, or with their shrivelled souls over the smouldering atoms of their corpses. She wasn't picky.
She set this aside. Time enough for that later, when she was sure he would not take amiss to such suggestions. Some might, out of wounded pride. Others, out of exasperation. Others still… out of a desire not to reanimate what was dead and buried. Besides, she had greater priorities.
Yes, she did.
Even if the part of her that was more Sunniva of Asgard than Sunniva of the Phoenix was loudly calling for her daggers, because some things should be done up close and personal, and was now being sat on by the part of her that was Princess Sunniva because there was a time and a place Sunniva Vésdottir.
"Auntie."
She looked up at her nephew, who was wearing a kind smile, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. Had he seen past her own defences? Or learned to read the fire of her life? Or –
"I can't read your mind, but I can read your face," he said gently, and yes, Shou-Lao had said that of him. He smiled slightly. "You're a bit of an open book, I'm afraid."
She scowled instinctively. She had spent a lifetime at court learning to control her expressions, thank you very much!
"Perhaps only to me," he amended, then added dryly, "one way or another, I've become quite good at that. Apparently I take after my mother as far as that's concerned. Since it's helped keep me alive, I can't say I'm complaining." His expression softened. "I can feel some of what you're feeling, a glimpse of what you were thinking as I shared the memory. And you are far from the first of my loved ones to be unhappy with what has happened to me."
He tilted his head and examined her shrewdly.
"It isn't the battles, is it?" he guessed. "That, you've mentioned you're adjusting to, if it was just that… no. Ah. It's the other reason." He smiled wryly. "My earlier childhood."
Her expression must have spoken for her, because he nodded.
"I can't say I'm surprised," he said, distant and clinical. "I won't give you the details of how or why it happened, but I will say that my… immediate family had no idea of it. In the true extent of what happened, no one did, rather by dark design. Why? Well, that's another matter. Call it a mixture of someone trying to eliminate a threat and creating it instead, someone else wanting to play god, and others who were afraid of what they did not understand." He smiled thinly. "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hatred. Hate leads to the Dark Side."
The last part escaped her, and the phrase had the ring of a quote, but the meaning was clear enough.
"All told, I was not safe where I should have been, and thanks to said dark designs, no one who should have known about it, did," he continued, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his clasped hands. "It's how I got to be so good at burying those darker little emotions of mine. So good that I didn't even realise they were there. Not a good mix with one of us."
He looked over at her, and the gentle wisdom was there again, the eyes of someone aged before his time – but, perhaps, not necessarily the worse for it, in the end.
"It's past, auntie. It is done. The people responsible? Two are ruined, having lost everything that ever mattered to them. I pity them now, I really do. I won't say I'm not angry, I certainly am, and there's resentment too… but mostly pity. One is similar, or near enough. Him…" He trailed off, expression darkening. "He is done."
He took a deep breath. "And the last, who started it all… he took everything from me. But he lost even more in the process. He condemned me to years of misery, but he condemned himself to worse. Far, far worse. Really, I'm not sure if I could have punished him better if I'd tried. He's crawled his way out of that nightmare, and… he'll come around again." Those emerald eyes turned flinty. "And I'll be waiting."
He shrugged.
"In the meantime, I won't waste any more time on him than I need to," he went on. "He's taken enough time from me. I don't feel the need to give him more." He flickered a half-smile. "Which isn't to say that I'm not going to enjoy finally dancing on his ashes just a little bit more than I probably should, when the time comes."
She returned the smile, this one a bit more wistful than his own. "You are a more patient and forgiving person than I am, nephew," she said.
That amused him. "Up to a point, auntie," he said. "Only up to a point." He shrugged. "And learning from our noble host has helped me work through a few things."
"The caged fury," she guessed.
"Yes," he said softly. "Anger, and pain. The two always tied together. That was one of the biggest blockages, shall we say. It was relatively easy to work through in the end, and I think it'll become easier still once I learn from you. It'll be easier to stop being afraid of it and to actually use it without having to worry constantly about holding myself in check. Or at least, not the way I used to."
"What were the others?"
"Two. Well, one, really. Again, they're connected: shame. Shame, and guilt."
OoOoO
"All right," Harry said. He looked bruised, bloodied, and sweaty, but satisfied. "That's anger dealt with."
It was a rather prosaic summary to something that had taken weeks, without food or rest – the deeper he'd sunk into the Phoenix, the less such things had seemed necessary. Truthfully, Harry had expected it to take longer, but telepathy sped things up a great deal, especially in the way Shou-Lao used it. It wasn't like usual telepathic connections, which were steady and controlled, avoiding excess exposure of one mind to another. Instead, it was closer to his link with Carol, or to Jean and Maddie, somehow deeper, more emotional – no, that wasn't right.
Rather, it was empathic, perhaps, conveying instincts and intuitions, perceptions and understanding. No, he thought, revising his conclusion. It was closer to when he'd been learning with Betsy, particularly when she'd taught him to dance, and to Doctor Moonstar, Dani, when he'd opened himself up and let her help him. Not entirely, of course, not as he had to Carol, but it was like the controlled opening of a dam.
"Well," he amended. "The worst of it, anyway. I won't be bottling it all up until I snap into a blind rage any time soon."
"You have made significant progress," Shou-Lao acknowledged. "Though slower than I would like." He eyed Harry. "Half-human, half-Asgardian. I have seen evidence down the eons that persuades me of the theory that hybrids can attain greater strength than their progenitors, the sum of two parts being greater than the whole. I believe this applies to you in many respects. One of them, unfortunately, is stubbornness."
"Yeah, that one's been a double-edged sword for me," Harry replied ruefully. He looked around rather dubiously at the courtyard. Some of it was rather scorched. Other parts had vanished entirely. Most of the rest would, to even the most unobservant eye, have fairly obviously been recently repaired. Shou-Lao himself was concealing a limp. "I'm sorry about the… process, by the way."
"You needed to purge," Shou-Lao replied with a shrug. "We could make no progress without it." He followed Harry's gaze. "What has been damaged can be restored, what was destroyed can be replaced." His lips twitched into a smile. "Consider it a lesson on the other side of the Phoenix."
"And I needed to do it with someone who could contain – no, re-channel – it," Harry said, nodding. "Around whom I did not need to be afraid." He glanced up at Shou-Lao. "If you hadn't shifted us into the Mirror Dimension –"
"Then you would most probably never have overcome your fears," Shou-Lao said calmly.
"It still spilled over, a little bit," Harry pointed out. "Maybe those fears weren't exactly irrational."
"Fear is not rational," Shou-Lao retorted. "Understandable, yes. Necessary, sometimes. Useful? Occasionally. But here, fear held you back. Fear of pain, of suffering, and of loss – both inflicted and received… but of yourself above all."
He folded his arms.
"You have finally begun to understand an important lesson," he said. "One that as children of the flame, we know in our bones, but we can take lifetimes to accept: Everything begins. Everything changes. Everything ends. Nothing is static, nothing is changeless, and nothing is truly eternal. The only constant is change. The more we fight to avert it, the more we seek to cage it, the more it slips away from us, through our grasp and past the bars. All we can hope to do is to guide that change, and to embrace what we have, while we have it."
"Sounds like something a mentor once told me," Harry replied. "'Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today... is a gift. That is why it is called the present.'"
Shou-Lao raised an eyebrow. "Trite, but not untrue," he remarked. "We find our peace in this moment, and that moment is indeed a gift, for so long as it exists. And the past must not be allowed to hold us back. Your rage… the wounds that have festered have been purged of it. They will still be raw, perhaps all the more so, but now they can heal. Yet there is more."
Harry closed his eyes. "Let me guess," he said quietly. "Guilt."
"And shame."
Harry looked up at him, unconsciously hugging himself.
"Don't I have reason to be?" he asked softly. "The lies are bad enough, though those, I've come to live with, though… maybe not for much longer." He shook his head. "I'm still deciding where I stand on that. But those lies? Those are for a reason, arguably a good one."
He looked up.
"But I have innocent blood on my hands – worse, family blood." His expression turned haunted. "Not for any good reason, no. I knew better. Oh, I knew. I just didn't care. All that mattered was that they were in my way."
OoOoO
Sunniva reared back, exploding away from this vision, her eyes wide and horrified as she met her nephew's sad gaze.
"Kinslayer," she whispered.
"At least several hundred times over," he said quietly. "Yes."
There was a long, long silence, as Sunniva struggled with instinctive revulsion and denial, part of her shrieking about how could this be possible?! This boy, sweet and wounded, aged beyond his years and wise with it, a Kinslayer? One of those who were most faithless and accursed? How could –
She stood up, her stomach roiling and bile rising, whirling away from him as much to get away from that sad look in his eyes as anything else. It wasn't an appeal for understanding, it wasn't begging for forgiveness, much less self-justification. It was just full of sadness and acceptance. What was done, was done, and it could not be changed.
Minutes passed, slow and unsettled, rolling into hours, as thick and all-consuming as quicksand. The moon had long since risen, and now, it was beginning to set. And all the while, they remained in the clearing; Sunniva drowning in the quicksand of that memory, those words searing themselves into her mind over and over again, of the crime that brought all things crashing down; him silent and accepting.
"No," she said.
There was no reply, but psi-senses be damned, she could feel the puzzlement.
"I refuse to believe that that is it," she said, turning around. "Let me see all of it."
He tilted his head, then nodded mutely.
OoOoO
"That is perhaps a harsh interpretation."
Harry looked up at the dragon, sceptical. "Really? I thought it was pretty clear, myself."
"I see your life, unveiled of bias and guilt," Shou-Lao reminded him. "They were your flesh and blood, yes, but only in the most technical sense. Yes, they were true innocents in their own way, and you obliterated them. This is truth, stark and inarguable."
Harry flinched.
"They were also an army made from your flesh and blood, and that of your cousin, and that of others you cared for. They were bred to kill and to conquer, and to destroy would could not be taken. Their wills had been suborned from their conception, twisted into little more than automatons. You spoke truly, at the time: together, even considering the limitations of their lack of will, they had the raw strength to rend the Astral Plane itself, to shatter the world they stood on a dozen times over. They were under the command of a madman who would have burned down all in his ignorance and his ego rather than be denied, and they had no ability or understanding to deny him. In eliminating them, you did what a Phoenix host is supposed to."
"Then I do not want to be a Phoenix," he whispered.
"You know very well that wants and desires have little to do with reality," Shou-Lao said harshly, his voice carrying an increasingly reptilian rasp, an earth-rattling depth, as those golden eyes began to glow, slitted like a cat's. "You think that you are the only one who has slain their kin?"
Harry swallowed. "No," he said. "No, I suppose I'm not. I…"
"You did not think," Shou-Lao said bluntly, voice settling, presence shrinking back into himself. "You were wrapped up in your guilt and your shame that you did not think. You let it blind you."
Harry looked up at him, this time with a hardness in his own eyes. "Your relatives at least had the chance to choose otherwise," he said. "You did."
"And your created kin could not."
"If I'd broken the control –"
"The only way you could have done that would have been to dismantle the structures and the programming within their minds," Shou-Lao said implacably. "The results, had you succeeded, would have been empty shells. You would not have succeeded – the task was too complex, their numbers too many, and your experience too limited. You would have been trying to unravel hundreds of puzzle boxes while being attacked and at least distracted from all sides. The results would have been fairly predictable, with a selection of possibilities: you would have been overwhelmed; you would have lashed out and destroyed them anyway, in self-defence; you would have erased all their minds in trying to clear them or subdue them; or the struggle between you and them as you tried to both hold them off and heal them while they tried to subdue or destroy you would have caused irreparable devastation."
He took Harry firmly but irresistibly by the jaw.
"You entertain thoughts of another way, I know. But you will listen to me: they were doomed to die."
"You can't be certain of that," Harry replied roughly. "You can't. You can't just… say that like it makes it all right."
"I suppose nothing is totally certain," Shou-Lao conceded. "And it does not. But I have known war unlike anything even you have seen, young Phoenix. I was bred for it, just as they were. Yes, given the chance, they could have made lives of their own. But they had no such chance, and not because of you. Even my father, and his creator, allowed us minds of a sort. These were made to be weapons of destruction, and beyond that, they were empty shells. They could not be reasoned with, because there was nothing to reason with, and they were too powerful to be subdued."
He released Harry's jaw, and sighed.
"Yes, perhaps a few might have been subdued," he conceded. "But even then, if you had done anything other than face them head on, you would have opened your flank to the rest in such a way that even they could not ignore."
"If I had done things differently, if I hadn't lost control –"
"You had not been taught how to maintain control. You had undergone things that would have driven a lesser being far beyond the remains of sanity you retained. You were not thinking because you were in no state to think," Shou-Lao said implacably. "Perhaps a cunning scheme could have neatly disabled them before they were forced to face you, but none knew of them, the only one capable of such stratagems was blinded."
There was a long silence.
"Perhaps," Harry said quietly. "But that doesn't change what I did. Or why I did it – because it definitely wasn't simply 'Phoenix work'. I destroyed them, at best, because part of me thought they might be a threat, but mostly because I was angry that they were in my way."
"No," Shou-Lao said simply. "It does not. But what is done, is done. The situation was created by dark designs, not your own, and you had no good choices, even if you had been in a state to make them. Indeed, had you been sane enough to do so, that hesitation might well have been your downfall."
"That isn't comforting."
"I did not mean it to be," Shou-Lao replied. He looked at Harry, for once, a gentle kindness in his eyes. "You have shown so much compassion to those in need of a second chance. Even when they did not believe they deserved it, you had no doubt. Be fair, young Phoenix. Show yourself that same compassion."
OoOoO
This time, the emergence was smoother, not a sudden break. This time, the gazes were blurred, full of tears; on Sunniva's part, a silent request, on his, an agreement.
She looked at the fire of his life, letting herself be guided by instinct and nudging, to the parts that Shou-Lao had seen and spoken of. She only skimmed, for knowledge of the future was dangerous. Yet she saw clearly, and she saw enough.
It took only moments, though it felt like years, years that piled on the horror she felt anew. The nightmares were new, but the reactions… they were so heartbreakingly familiar. She too knew what it was to lose oneself in battle-rage, the Warrior's Madness. All of their family did. And here, now, she understood why, better than anyone. Then, an instant after she had seen all, she pulled him into a tight embrace.
"There were no good choices," she whispered.
"I wish," he began, then stopped, endless sadness pouring out from him, regrets clearer than words.
"I know," she whispered, rocking her nephew back and forth, as if that small act could comfort him. It did, if only a little. "I know."
They remained like that for a long time, silent sorrow meeting absolution by one of the few sufficiently placed to understand. It was not a denial of what had been done, or even the nature of what the act. It was acceptance, acknowledgement, and understanding.
It was forgiveness, to one who was still learning to forgive himself.
Well.
That happened.
Seriously, I wasn't planning a chapter like this, but sometimes the muse takes me and does as she will. I think this is for the best. There's a third blockage that Harry hasn't really discussed yet, one he's touched the edges of – fear. It's related both to anger and to guilt, and really, that's the one Sunniva's going to help him deal with. She's the one who's going to help him spread his wings.
A notation on Shou-Lao's teaching style: Harry's not there to learn techniques, forms, or spells. He's here to learn about the Phoenix, which is both alive and manifests with unique twists depending on who wields it, because each person is unique, with their own perspective on the universe. If the Phoenix is a martial art, it's Jeet Kune Do – the only limitation of the Phoenix (beyond the usual) is that it has no limitation. The Phoenix is not beyond understanding or distillation, there are guides, ways and means, as well as general things you can do, but they're intentionally pretty loose. Why? Because the more you confine it, the less effective it is. It's why a lot of Gorakhnath's teaching of Harry has been philosophical, teaching him to think and trying to get him to open his mind to the universe, rather than box the universe up and fit it into his mind.
Still, we shall get around to the practicalities soon enough. Sunniva has plenty of those…