Drift
Pairing: Maeve/Sinbad
Rating: M (adult themes)
Setting: After Season 1, assuming Season 2 never happened
All standard disclaimers apply
He wakes alone. What did he expect? He dreamed the sweetest ghost lay nestled in his grasp, bright as the diamonds she cried, but dreams cannot survive the dawn. Not here. He opens his eyes and the orange sky, the empty space beside him, choke the breath from his lungs. She's dead—he knows she's dead. But the feel of her body tucked tight against his chest was so real.
Firouz and Doubar have risen, their discarded blankets crumpled in careless heaps, eddies of ash settled in the creases. Maeve and Rongar are dead, the Nomad lost. These are unchangeable, immutable facts, facts he must accept no matter how much his dreams deceive. They taunt him with phantom sensations, the virulent poison of regret for words left unsaid, desires unfulfilled. He never dared ask her for anything when he had the chance and this is his penance—the awareness of his own blindness and cowardice, he who has never in any other circumstance been blind or cowardly. Only with her. No one ever prepared him, told him there would someday come a woman as vital as his own heartbeat. Or that, once he found her, she'd need convincing.
No one told him the sea would claim her before he even began to try.
He has to tell the others today. No more stalling. He's still captain, no matter how badly he's botched command. Half his family is gone because of his misguided orders, they're never coming back, and it falls to him to somehow explain this to the two remaining members of his permanent crew.
He rises woodenly, knowing he spent hours lost in bitter dreams but feeling no better rested for it. He still feels phantom pains, the barnacled hull of his lost ship ripping through skin and muscle, the far worse wound in his chest where her ghost lay cradled until dawn. It's the sweetest false memory—soft warmth, the scent of magic and skin—but the dream isn't worth the pain of waking. He'll take a lifetime of sleepless nights instead and consider himself blessed.
Stumbling over nothing, he blinks leaden eyes at the blighted landscape, his mind sluggish as the slimy, stinking waves. He sees without seeing, sleepless nights and the ache of unrelenting duty, of loss, blanketing his vision as smoke blankets the sky. He plods heavily to the pyres, long lines of shimmering heat, heaps of ash and tumbled bone, green wood spewing sullen smoke and flame. Beyond, the graves: deep pits he helped dig, yawning open to the scorched sky. The remaining colonists cart loads of charred, cracked bone and ash, caught between desire for reverence and the numbing enormity of this task. He is a hero, but he cannot help them now, not in the ways they need. That task is for Omar, were he the sort of monarch to care, and otherwise for their god, in whom Sinbad no longer believes, if he ever did in the first place. Capricious gods, selfish gods—these he has witnessed firsthand. These he understands. He does not hold faith in any other kind.
Dim-Dim told him continually as a child that everything happens for a reason. Sinbad stopped looking for reason weeks ago. That road leads only to dead ends, bitter and bleak—rocky canyons of doubt, double-blind traps laid by unseen enemies who somehow look so very much like himself. Anyway, the question is pointless now. The damage is done, the colony decimated, city leveled, farmland sown with ash and blood. Only the dregs of Omar's army remain, most of his soldiers and allies fallen.
Rongar and Maeve fallen, the price the sea demanded for the dead children Sinbad stole.
The question of what comes next looms as dark and threatening as the ruined sky, the singed orange haze he's powerless to escape without his ship and half her crew. Omar will take him along when he leaves, if that is his wish. He can return to the mainland. Learn to live without a heartbeat. Men do so every day. He never dreamed he would be one of them, but he never before knew what it was to cradle something precious in his hands and then crush it. Leah was taken from afar. He killed Rongar and Maeve himself.
The pyres roar, incessant background noise which does not stop, day or night. It matches the dull roar in his ears, the rushing, rising cry of warning or despair. He used to know the difference, so attuned to every nuance of bodily intuition, but he lost the translation somewhere between one breath and the next. The tide follows him, ever follows, silent judge lapping at his ankles, rising toward his knees, threatening each slow step. Balance has always come easily to him, living astride two elements, a legged man tied to earth, a soul claimed by the deep. With each new wave that balance falters, worn away like so much sand, and he knows his own actions are at fault. He obeyed a human king and took from the sea what was not his to take, then sent his people into the heart of the vengeful ocean. The result was foregone—perfectly earned, ruthlessly fair.
This does not mean he knows how to live with it.
Somewhere beyond the rushing cacophony of sheer noise in his head, another sound reaches him. He's not sure when he first notices the angry voices, only that pitch and volume rise quickly by the time he rouses enough to attend.
"Kill them, then! Butcher them all. Better that than a slow death drowning in their own blood!"
He knows that hoarse, smoke-dark bellow, knows the furious, voiced intake of her lungs, struggling in the noxious air. His mind whirls, and the wailing cry within grows louder, pressing painfully on his eardrums. Despite the orange sky, the taste of blood and smoke on his tongue, he's still dreaming. He must be. She's dead. He doesn't remember dying, too, which means this is a dream. That voice can't be real. Maybe nothing is real anymore. This is a distinct possibility to his reeling mind and a sweet refuge he will gladly embrace. He'll sink into dreams forever, so long as he never has to wake up, never has to face again the reality that he failed the person who means more to him than his own heartbeat.
The sky shimmers, waves of heat glimmering like sunlight on a gentle sea. Mounds of wood and rotting human flesh and flame stand between himself and two arguing figures, wavering in the heat like a mirage. Is she real? Is anything? Her form dances like fire, a woman clothed in fire; she flows like the reflection of flame on water. He looks at her and sees wings—winged horses felled by choking clouds of smoke, fish freed from their element, gliding on currents of air. She's perfect and immutable in this moment, like a harbinger of war or peace, waiting for his action to know which way to fall, which stone to cast.
A dream, then. Her copper hair whips in hot billows of stinking air, moving like a cleaner flame in this world of unrelenting, bitter fire. She stands defiant as she argues with Omar, her pale skin pricked with shining sweat, her elegant features sharp as the words that spill from her tongue. She's so incredibly beautiful. She's so herself. Truculent. Hostile. She refuses to retreat even in the face of this sultan who will use any means to subdue her. And Sinbad knows she's not real. She can't be. He sent her past the breakers and the sea took her, the price for the stolen children who drift, endlessly drift, even as their bodies lie broken on these pyres and refuse to burn. He's dreaming. He'll dream of her for the rest of his life, wings and secrets, talons and laughter, the soft promise of peace trapped in the darkness of her eyes, a promise he could not interpret until far, far too late.
Except this mirage makes no sense. In dreams, she's gentle. She cradles dead children, mourns their passing with diamonds as she effortlessly parts them from the waves. She lets him hold her, as she never does in truth, and the living heat of her body, the beat of blood under her skin, under his fingers, quiets the storm within. She's soft as water—soft as the mercy of water.
Not now. He stares through the shimmer of fire, watching his warrior advance on her adversary. This Maeve is not gentle. Proud and defiant, she plants her feet and faces Omar in the ashes of his ruined colony, tall and aggressive and so brilliant she shines brighter, purer, than the flames which surround her. Her red hair twists and whips her skin in the sour-smoke wind.
"Do not test me, witch!" Omar warns. "My regard for your captain will not save you from the consequences of disloyalty." He stalks forward, every inch the savage sultan of his youth. He is a hard man, and an unforgiving one. Maeve is nothing but a female in his eyes, and a low-born, foreign one at that, a lesser being meant to obey his directives. That she does not agree infuriates him, and he is angry enough and entitled enough to act on this anger. Like the sultan of Sinbad's dreams, who cut into the belly of a beast of myth, he advances on the woman of flame. With an imperious hand covered in both honestly-earned calluses and priceless rings, he gestures to his soldiers.
No.
No.
Sinbad moves before his mind catches up with his body. This is a dream, and he does not care. He can't let this happen. Maeve is his people, and his purpose, his only desire, is to protect what is his. He lurches forward, his sleep-deprived, clumsy body stumbling over smooth ground, splashing in the invisible tide as it sucks at his balance, his bearings. It yanks, climbing higher, threatening to keep him from the most important task he's ever set himself. He struggles against it with frantic, clumsy movements. Maeve isn't just his people. Dead or no, dream or no, she's his person. He stands, a grown man on dry, desiccated ground, the relentless waves attempting to stop him as once again he watches a bully threaten a girl with hair like living flame.
But he's not a little boy anymore. Not this time. And, dream or no, this woman means...everything. He fights desperately against the tide, throwing his whole self into this battle, every shattered bit left inside him. Inch by inch he regains his footing in the ash, the dust, and lunges forward. He stumbles past the pyres, the tide sucking at his foundation, past towering heaps of wood and flesh and flame smoldering between him and the ghost he'll follow even into death. They scorch, singeing his flesh when he steps too close. He barely feels as skin bubbles and peels, breaks and blisters. Maeve is already dead and logically he knows this, her body lost to the deep, drifting forever in the dark rhythm of the waves, but he pushes forward even so. She moves, he moves. She breathes, he breathes. The moon and the tide, the wind and the sail. That's the deal. Dream or apparition, nightmare or curse, that's always been the deal. He just didn't realize, couldn't parse the translation, until it was too late.
She hisses at Omar, spitting venom with her taunts, her words blades honed razor-sharp. She's undaunted by his threats, the approaching soldiers. "I'm no more a witch than Cairpra! You wouldn't dare insult her. Watch how far it gets you with me." She mocks him openly. Her headstrong fury makes her fearless, as always, and as always, Sinbad thinks she's glorious. Pigheaded and insane and going to get herself killed again, but he doesn't love her any less for it. He's never loved her any less for it.
Glorious or not, ghost or not, he needs her to survive this encounter. He can't lose her again, not even in a dream. Once was too much. He struggles through the unrelenting tide as it sucks at his legs, hinders his steps. He needs her. He needs so much, and somehow all of it seems rooted firmly in this one perfectly imperfect soul, like the knot at the center of a spider's web, the tree at the heart of a forest. Every answer to every prayer he's ever uttered, spoken and unspoken, lodges behind her delicate breastbone, the hidden sweep of feathered wings deep in the shadows of her eyes. Once was too much. He will not survive losing her again. He struggles against the implacable tide as it sucks at his legs, hinders his movements. He's never needed anything in his life before, save the elements. But now, suddenly, he needs. He's positive his heart's frantic rhythm will stutter to a sullen stop if Omar gets his way and his soldiers cut her down.
"Cairpra is an honorable sorceress and a loyal subject!" Omar roars as two soldiers close in, sabers drawn, flame reflecting along the flats of their blades. "No barbarian from the far wilds could ever be half the woman she is."
Maeve bares her pretty white teeth like a predator, drawing back her lips in what might be a smile if there weren't such danger gilding its edges. She's not helping diffuse the situation at all, but then, she never does. She's fire at her core, and fire, once kindled, must be coaxed back down. It cannot bank on its own.
Sinbad knows that look. She hasn't reached for her blade yet but Omar pushed her too far. The fire in her dark eyes burns. "My loyalty is earned, not handed over to the nearest male who calls himself a king." Her gaze narrows. She can be bitter as gall when she chooses, spilling the unbalanced chaos of her half-trained magic in thin wafts of airborne flame, and Sinbad can feel the surge of power growing swiftly within her tall, unwavering form. "I'm here in this hell for my captain. Not for you." She ripples like fire, her anger a living, breathing thing, its power bunching like a lioness poised to strike even as her body stands firm and she spits her defiance at the sultan. She's perfectly brilliant, and she's going to get herself perfectly killed. "When was the last time you listened, really listened, to anyone who wasn't yourself? Can't you see what you've done here? Can't you feel the danger? Do with your living subjects as you will—that's none of my business. But give the children back to the waves and have done with this. Admit defeat. Not even a sultan can upset the aught of the elements without paying a terrible price."
"This is my land!" Omar bellows.
"And you murder any chance of reclaiming it just as you murder your allies who remain!" She clenches her fists at her sides with the effort it takes to rein in those wild tendrils of magic. He watches her tremble, her physical form impossibly strong but also such a frail vessel for the power she's capable of wielding. Both Dim-Dim and Cairpra say all she needs to unlock her full potential is faith in her own capability, but so far this has eluded her. As much as Sinbad wants to see her succeed, he prays today is not the day she gets out of her own way and breaks through this self-imposed impasse. Omar would not survive. It's possible no one within a league would.
Then again, maybe he's wrong. Maybe he does want her to destroy that barrier and eliminate the threat Omar poses. Something wild clutches his throat, a feeling beyond terror, as the sultan's soldiers close in. It digs and rends at his body with jagged, serrated blades. Not again. He can't survive this again. Knowing she's lost is one thing. He cannot stand here and watch her die as he watched Leah.
But he's too far away. There's no way he can reach her before the soldiers do. He watches their advance as he once watched the advance of al-Disar on another girl so many years before. Everything inside him cracks open at once, raw and bleeding, all of the silent cries inside pooling in the spent dirt at his feet, swirling in invisible eddies of water drawing higher around him, covering his hips, his waist, weighing him down, keeping him in place as he struggles desperately to run.
She shifts, her near shoulder tilting back, her head turning gracefully on her elegant neck as if that erratic intuition of hers can sense his presence, his desperation. Her face is filthy, streaked with sweat and ash, and pain claws deeply into the core of her, below the anger seething on the surface. It fuels her anger, bleeding one to the other, in her eyes stark knowledge, as if everything he is, everything he's ever been, is laid bare before her.
She accepts it all. Every weakness. Every failure. And those perfect, fire-bright, wing-flanked eyes offer him a challenge in return.
Save me from myself.
It's a plea. A dare. An opening deliberately given to save not only her, but himself as well. Hell, maybe this whole damn colony.
In this instant, the shadowed flash of silver wings in her eyes, he knows the truth. She's real. This is real. Reality slams him with the power of a sea-borne wave. She's alive. Comprehension dawns side by side with mounting horror as he stares at her red, sweat-streaked face. Suddenly it's all so clear. In his dreams she teases him. She smiles and lets him touch her, lets him soothe the tumult inside with the silken warmth of female skin. She's clean and bright, laughing barefoot on golden sand, her lovely body swathed in finest sheer linen or silk. The woman standing before him is far too real for any of that shit. She's filthy, booted and leather-clad, sword sheathed at her hip, furiously angry as she picks a fight with a man she absolutely should not, and Sinbad is about to watch her die if he can't rise to her challenge and save her. The tide flows higher, attempting to drag him under. The relentless undertow holds him back, steals his footing. He won't reach her in time.
But he has no other choice. And so, as he did as a young boy when he knew he could fight the waves no longer, he stops trying.
The difference? This time he knows how to swim.
He ducks below the waves tugging at his balance, willingly sacrificing his footing, his tie to land. He accedes to the desire of the sea, the force of the waves, accepting that this may be the moment the water takes back the life it claimed so many years ago. He breaks away from the earth and dives.
For a very, very long moment, though he breathes the hot, stinking exhalations of the pyres and tastes smoldering flesh on his tongue, he hears, not the flames, but the beautiful silence of the deep. It presses at his ears, peaceful yet heavy, too heavy, the power of the sea surrounding him once more, and it's like coming home. His booted feet remain landbound, he continues to breathe scorched air, but somehow he's swimming, too. For the space of a heartbeat he's afloat. He moves as he would under water and the waves part for him, flow with him, as they have since he learned to swim like a creature of the sea. Later he will be unable to explain this, but in the space between heartbeats he's beside her. And, somehow, he's still upright. Still breathing.
Like a sailor seeking the stars, he's oriented entirely to her, not the looming threat of Omar or his soldiers. His hands rise to cup her face, her delicate, angular jaw, the hollows of her cheeks. She's lost weight here in this hell. Probably they all have. His thumb sweeps over a high, arching cheekbone, and only then does he realize his hands drip wet with salt water.
She's not a dream, but he's shocked nonetheless by the solidity of flesh and bone under his palms, the grit of sweat-damp ash on her skin. She stares at him, a note of grim triumph glimmering like flickers of sunlight among the rustles of beating wings in her eyes.
His.
He never dared claim such a thing before, but he's done wasting time. She can argue with him later—if they get a later. Nothing is certain in this world except its end, and so, because he cannot stand another moment so far from this person he believed lost, he dips his chin and reaches for her. His mouth touches hers, soft as sweet water, hot as fire.
The world rips itself in two.
Her magic is erratic in nature and she has, he's discovered, very little control over what it chooses to do. Dim-Dim made strides in teaching her but then he was lost and she's had to continue on her own. Without a guiding hand, they've learned through much trial and error that her spark responds best not to rituals and incantations but to the raw command of her volatile emotions. It's not correct and it's not safe, but it's how they get by with a half-trained sorceress in their midst.
The soldiers lift their weapons, hackles rising in response to the power unleashed when his mouth touches hers, the raw force whipping fragile human bodies like a furious wind. Every instinct drilled into Sinbad through long years of training tells him to draw his blade as well, to fight to protect the female he's claimed, his person, the woman he will do anything to keep.
But anything, in this case, means trusting her instead of his own dwindling strength. It means pouring all of his energy, the last vestiges of his legendary prowess, into the caress of his mouth along hers, the spiking flame of her breath, the rough glide of his chapped lips against the curve of her scimitar smile. Her vicious double-edged broadsword remains sheathed at her side; he follows where she leads, gripping her rigid biceps and not the bronze hilt of his gracefully curved saber. He'll follow her anywhere, the tide to her moon. That's the deal, and it does not change with circumstance.
The ground rumbles and breaks, cracking open as his mouth locks firmly with hers, hot and heavy, the furthest thing from gentle. She does not fight him, instead pressing her leather-clad torso firmly against his, so tight he swears he can feel the pulse of her heartbeat, wet and red, thrumming with life. She's hot and sweaty, filthy with ash and dirt, smoke and blood, human and animal both in this moment. Tall for a woman, still her head tilts up to meet his eyes as she shakes his hands from her biceps and her arms lock around his shoulders. She's strength personified, dark-forest eyes, the sweep of her lashes like the beat of feathered wings. She blinks. He blinks. His world calms as sudden faith stills the frantic ringing in his ears. The tide retreats, if only a little, baring his hips, freeing his thighs. Once more: she blinks. He blinks.
"Trust me."
Her words echo down the centuries, echo the night he drew a blade along her skin and she sat silently and let him.
Always. Despite the ominously rumbling earth beneath him, despite the way he shakes as the world cracks open at its seams, he feels oddly calm. Removed from it all. She's alive, she's safe in the circle of his arms, and everything else falls away. She whispers her words into his mouth, breath for breath, heartbeat for heartbeat. The tide laps at him, but he remembers how to swim. His tongue burns with the taste of fire and salt water, and if this is the last moment he gets, it's enough.
He's not sure he speaks his vow aloud. He's not sure he needs to. She returned to him from the deep, which is not possible. The sea never returns what it has claimed. He thought he lost the final dregs of his faith when he lost her, but he finds them again in the whisper of wings in her eyes, the taste of her pain on his tongue. She's fire and poison and bitter regret, heat and passion, the fiercest flame he's ever dared and the sweetest promise he's ever been gifted. Soft flutter of wings settling along feathered breasts, quirk of black-pricked eyes cocked toward movement in tree-dappled glens. He kisses her mouth, tastes desire and desolation, sharp as daggers, hot as blood. She traces the cracked, salt-stung plea on his lips with her tongue, feeds him the reassurance he requires to remain standing.
And, as his arms cradle her proud body tightly, he feels magic rising within her and the answering surge within himself, the secrets and power he rejected as a child. Dim-Dim heard the promise of magic on his skin and told him to choose a different path. Sinbad has never regretted that choice and he does not regret it now, though he does wish he knew what the fuck was going on.
The awareness of magic has been part of him for nearly as long as he can remember and it shudders and crackles as power invades his body, his space, splitting him open like overripe fruit. Her blistering-hot skin touches his, fingers tracing the back of his neck, mouths locked firmly in a bruising kiss he refuses to break, not even for the magic building dangerously around them. He wants to take up residence within her, curl himself into a tiny ball beneath her ribs, where he can rest next to the reassuring beat of her heart. The taste of magic burns his tongue, clean and sharp and ginger-hot. Her body is strong, her will stronger. He can only pray they'll see eye-to-eye when this moment ends. He can't lose her now. She's a soul of fire housed in a body firmly tethered to the earth while he is a creature of sea and air, a sailor who bargained with the waves as a child and racked up a reckoning he does not fully understand. Their beings are wholly opposed, polar opposite, and nothing about their union makes any sense at all.
None of it matters. He surrounds her in muscle, the firm bands of his arms snapping down, tethering her to him as he senses the storm about to break. He cannot protect her from whatever will happen, but he is a hero and so he tries the only way he knows how. Vaguely he feels the sultan and his soldiers stumble as the earth trembles, falling back warily, suspicion written deep in their auras and directed firmly at the woman he holds bruising-tight. He doesn't give a fuck what they think. Her fire wraps around him, invisible tendrils of delicate power, and when it touches the tide tugging inexorably at his being, all hell breaks loose.
No. Not hell.
Not heaven, either.
The elements themselves respond like a thousand of Firouz's exploding sticks to the union of all four disparate forces, Maeve's lit spark unlocking something beyond either of their control. It's not her magic, and yet it is. The pure forces of nature react violently as the base magic within him, the potential he deliberately chose not to train, touches her half-controlled spark. The earth's warning rumble crashes into a true quake, a natural reaction borne of grief and mourning, terror and fury, horror and deep resilience. Something wild breaks free as flame meets salt water. Thick steam erupts from deep fissures as the earth cracks and splits, bursting around them like jets, so hot it blisters his skin. His filthy clothes soak instantly and his vision clouds, obliterating his ability to see anything but her.
He doesn't care. He doesn't need to see. His mouth remains locked firmly with hers, breathing her breath, tasting the burn of her magic, the heat of her tongue, and nothing else in the world matters because nothing else exists.
Thunder cracks the smoky sky, shattering the orange-brown crown arching over the earth. It rattles his bones, crashing directly above, and his heartbeat falters for an agonizing moment. Is this death? If so, he accepts it. He will accede to anything which comes as the price of her kiss. He does not loosen his hold, unafraid of whatever they've unleashed but adamant that it will not part them. Not even the elements can do that now. Red lightning edged with flame strikes the ground, searing through steam, and he feels the scorching shock, all the hair on his body rising like the hackles of a wolf. The flavor of that strike was all Maeve, but contained far more power than she's capable of and there are more, erratic crashes which split the sky and bridge the distance between heaven and earth. He presses his palm to the perfect curve of her lower back, the sweet female dip where she's so supple; she yields beautifully for him, her body arching with fierce grace as she takes the force of his kiss, roughly presses back with her own. He's never had a gentle kiss from her, and now is certainly not the time.
He feels the earth under his boots begin to sag and crumble, and against his will Maeve rips her mouth from his. He would remain here with her as the world falls down, but she winds a sharp fist in the shoulder of his shirt and yanks. "Move!"
He'll follow her anywhere, the tide to her moon, even as her insistence breaks the bubble of calm encasing him. The sky splits wide and he shudders at the force of the heavy raindrops pelting down, splashing in the ash and dust. He stumbles as she pulls, immediately missing the heat of her breath on his tongue, the tendrils of her magic caressing him like feathered wings. The tide sucks at his legs but he knows this feeling and he's regaining confidence even as the world shatters. He can swim. He won't drown.
Water cannot resist gravity and it rushes headlong into the fissures broken open in the earth. Rain hammers down and the ground rumbles and heaves, threatening to throw him to his knees. This time the invisible tide buoys him, and it's his turn to catch his sorceress when she stumbles. Together they stagger and pick their way through the elemental chaos he knows she did not create. Magic for her has always been a fight, each victory hard-won and paid for with a physical sapping of strength. No way did she do this. Not by herself.
Horses break free of their enclosure and flee, men and boys scattering like rats from sunlight as they seek refuge from the cataclysm unleashed when his mouth met hers. With grim determination Maeve does not follow the soldiers' flight inland. Instead she leads him firmly toward higher ground, boots skidding on sliding earth and stone as they scramble up the headland flanking the ruins of Omar's lost colony. He follows without protest as a sailor follows the stars. She's heat personified, a blinding spark amid the blistering steam and choking smoke. They only pause when, ash-scarred lungs burning for breath, neither can continue. Red wets her lip as she pants; he tastes the same on his tongue. They turn, his hand gripping hers tightly, staring at the tumult below. This perch is not safe, loose earth below their feet moving like water, but for just a moment they wait, chests heaving as they fight for air. He can't remember the last time he took a satisfying breath. Before the pyres, he's sure. Before he lost her.
But she's not lost. She clutches his hand, her sweaty grip so tight she leaves bruises like calling cards. He loves it. This pain is pure—it's hers. It's raw terror and mindless relief, and he's shocked by the sudden realization that she turned to him. Gave and accepted comfort as he has never seen her do with another human being. She hoards her pain away, shown only to wilder creatures which share her wing-flanked spirit.
And now to him.
He'll make himself worthy of that trust; he swears it.
Her dark eyes meet his, so wide and so open, full of more than he's ever been able to parse before. Her magic crackles and buzzes like invisible lightning, those beautiful tendrils of flame. This feeling made him wary when they first met—the power he can scent and taste so clearly, feel rolling along his skin—because she's so raw, so green. He's not sure when the touch of her magic became his home, but he never wants to lose it. It's alien to his being, fire and earth to his wind and water, but it's hers.
"What happened?" He coughs, bringing up stinging ash and blood.
"Not what I intended." She fights for breath but even so somehow manages to glare at him as if this miscalculation is his fault. Maybe it is. He doesn't understand anything anymore, only that he craves the quiet peace hidden in her eyes and if he could only find it, the secret leafy place she hides away, he would be whole again.
He cannot even see that soft darkness now, hidden behind the roiling churn of her hotter emotions. She's still angry, and scared. He guesses she has a right, and almost wonders why he feels no fear as the world tears itself to pieces, but he's too tired to question. He has nothing left.
The side of her fist slams into his chest, hard and unyielding. "You were supposed to come protect me!"
"I did!" He gained her side even from too far away, yielded to the tide's inexorable tug, and instead of drowning it brought him to the only thing now keeping him afloat.
"No—you were supposed to argue with Omar! Pull me away, demand he release us from this fucking nightmare! Get us banished! Not kiss me and maybe trigger the end of the world!" Her breath falters and she doubles over, that deep, wracking cough cutting short her frantic tirade. Maeve can hurl insults at top volume for truly prodigious lengths of time without running out of breath, but not here. Not now.
He blinks slowly at her heaving form, his sluggish brain trying to fit these shards of evidence into a whole truth. "You deliberately picked a fight with Omar?" he demands, hauling at her arm when the sliding shale threatens to plunge her further down the slope. "So I would act?"
"Yes!" She straightens and meets his eyes squarely, brazenly unashamed of her actions. Her chest heaves as she fights for breath. "Being here is killing you!"
"Me?" He's fine. He's always fine. He's captain; he has to be. "It's killing you! Why do you think I sent you away?" A strange dull cottony sensation prevents him from feeling emotions fully, but there's a faint internal churning heat which has nothing to do with the elemental fury raining down. He thinks that's anger, though he honestly doesn't know anymore. He does know what that wet red smear on her furious lips means, and he drags his thumb across it. He holds the crimson streak between them like evidence of some deadly secret.
She curses and wipes her fingers roughly along his own lips, almost a slap. The red stain stands out starkly on her pale skin. Her eyebrows arch and for a moment she looks as if she truly will slap him. "Everyone is bleeding! That's not what I mean, and if you can't realize that you're even further gone than I thought." The fury in her eyes gentles, dying down like a flame starved of fuel. They feed each other, he realizes abruptly. He needs her like life, but she needs him, too.
Her hands touch his face, soft like feathers, dripping wet as rain pours down and steam plumes from the quaking earth. Their boots scrabble for purchase on the sliding hillside, but the moment stills around them. "I didn't intend this. You didn't follow the plan."
"You didn't tell me the plan," he protests. She ignores him.
"But there are greater forces at work. It's possible I shouldn't blame you, at least not in the state you're in."
He's not in any state, except utter acceptance of what they've done and the consequences. Because she's here, she's real and alive and touching him, and his mouth remembers the texture of her lips, the taste of blood and sweat and magic not his own. He touches her wrist, circles the smooth skin and sharp bone with his fingers, so close to his own face as she holds him. Her breath pants from her mouth, quick and tense.
"Balance," she says. He has no idea what she means. Their feet skitter and skid on the moving hillside, but he's buoyed by the tide he believed for so long meant to drown him. She turns his head gently with her hands, away from the earthly beauty of her face, toward the earthly destruction below. "Balance." Her voice rasps and she licks at her lips as if this will fix the deeper damage. "I think...I think it was necessary. But I didn't do it."
"I know." He reaches for her with his free arm, fairly sure she won't kill him for it right now. His hand closes around wet leather, draws her into his side, needing the reassurance of that pressure, the heat of her body, the crackling roil of her magic. "But you did something. Opened a door."
"We did."
Close enough. Whatever barrier they accidentally broke through when his mouth touched hers, this finale is a foregone conclusion. Balance. He sees it now. The elements have reasserted control. Deep fissures rend the earth, cracking wide paths he only just trod as the world quakes to its core. The sea, sick with rotting fish and choked with ash, heaves like a belly overfull with wine and spills its borders, flooding the lowland in rushing waves thick with desperation and fury. They splinter the boundary between land and sea, obliterating the shoreline, the harbor, overrunning the ruins of the city like an invading horde. Raindrops greasy and black with soot wash the sky, pelt the ground as it tears itself to pieces in shaking, undulating waves. It moves like water as the sea spills into fissures, steam rising, rain flinging the sky down upon the wreckage. Pyres collapse like towers of sand taken by the waves.
He can feel the righteous anger of the sea oozing from his pores, vibrating through him like Maeve's fire, the invisible tide driven to a foamy froth. He's a vessel for that power, as helpless as a ship in a storm. Beside him, Maeve tucks herself against his ribs, spilling heat and reassurance even as her body trembles like the earth beneath them.
Men pray and wail as they flee, hardened soldiers sobbing like barely-weaned toddlers, lifting eyes and outstretched hands to a sky which holds no god. Sinbad does none of these things. Maeve is beside him, her heartbeat steady and strong, and as long as this remains true he fears little. The elements can do as they please with him, exact any price for his theft of the dead, so long as that price does not include her.
Billows of smoke and steam and clouds of driving rain obscure his view, but he watches as the pyres crumble under the force of the flood, the dead children who would not burn falling with the waves into the bowels of the earth, a different deep claiming them at last. Will this right his wrong? Restore balance, as Maeve believes? He doesn't know, but he feels an easing of the terrible anger he does not own, a softening of the strain tugging at his flesh. Something within...settles. The children are gone, returned to the elements. He is not so naïve to believe the sin of his theft at his sultan's command is now forgotten, washed away like blood in sand. There will likely be another reckoning someday, another toll laid by the sea. But he cannot worry about someday now. He stares dully at land split open under a weeping sky, the sea rushing to fill wounds he knows he helped cause when he answered Omar's call. The slate is not wiped clean. A price still must be paid. But Maeve is beside him, heartbeat to heartbeat, and for now this is enough.
She turns to him, dark eyes crackling with residual power. "Balance." That word again, and this time he thinks he understands. Somewhere inside, where the taste of magic tingles on his tongue and long-dead voices whisper his name, he feels it. Human violence threw off the natural balance, and only violence can right it. He accepts, and loathes, the necessity.
His mouth seeks hers again, the heat of her breath, the reassurance of her skin, her fire. She is not a soft creature, no matter the shape of his dreams. Like he—even more than he—she was forged in loss and sacrifice. He does not know her story but he can taste its result like a symphony of color on his tongue. Blood and bitterness, anger and vengeance. The world is not a fair or just place. She battles its cruelty with an iron will all the more shocking for the foundation of self-doubt which cradles it.
Her dark eyes feather over him, the lightning-hot crackle of magic beginning to settle within her, banking for the moment. The world rumbles and pulls itself to pieces around them, but her filthy hand cups his rough, wet cheek, fingers lingering where a stray ember caught his skin. The pain is unspeakably beautiful.
"Are you glad?"
Is he? He doesn't know. He's...numb, to be honest, numb to everything but her touch, the suddenly soft regard in her deep eyes. He doesn't even feel relief—not yet. Because they're still standing on a crumbling hillside as the world shakes and writhes and tries to implode. "Are you?"
"Yes." She does not hesitate. "I didn't do it. All we did was open a door, I think. If that. But if I could have done it myself I would have. Days ago."
No sorcerer, not even Dim-Dim, can call down the wrath of an element which does not choose to respond; Sinbad has known this since childhood. And she's only half-trained, her power fickle at best. She—they—may have opened a door, but the elements wanted this. Were waiting for it, begging for it. He now realizes he's been feeling it for days, as she must have been, too. They were demanding a return to equilibrium.
"Don't leave again." The words fall somewhere between a command and a plea, a captain giving orders and a man who will not survive being left behind.
Sharp eyes rake over him. They're both drenched through, hot and sticky as rain hammers down and steam and smoke rise, filthy and ashen-muddy. Her chin lifts slightly and her shoulders shift back, an expression he knows very, very well walling off her warmth like a slammed door. "You were the one who—"
"I know. I was wrong." He tried to protect her the only way he knew how, but it didn't work and wasn't worth the price of the past two days. "Don't leave again."
She blinks slowly in acknowledgment. Rarely does he admit he's wrong. Rarely does he apologize. But he's made so many mistakes lately, and he'll never be able to put them all right. He's not even sure it matters, so long as she stays.
"I'm here. You may come to regret it, but I'm here." Despite the destruction unfolding below, a small, knowing smile hovers at the corners of her mouth. She can be an utter nightmare, and she knows it.
His head shakes, a quick, decisive jerk. "Never." He knows who she is, and he knows what he needs. She's his person.
"All right, then." Exactly what and how long she's agreeing to, he doesn't know. But for this moment, it's enough.
He sucks in a deep, shaky breath. The sky is as much liquid as air, hot and choked with dirty steam and dirtier rain. It reeks of rotting fish and human flesh, ash and smoke. The captain in him bellows in his head, insisting that he must do his duty, find the rest of his crew and ensure they remain safe. But the strange thrumming pressure of the elements stills the grating voice: they're fine. They have done no wrong, and while they're likely scared and Firouz fuming at the unscientific nature of this cataclysm, there is no penance to exact from his men. Still he knows he should seek them—it's what a good captain would do.
But as he looks through the rain and steam at the seething earth below, he knows he could never cross it. "Can we stop this? Close the door? I need to find the others." He's exhausted, but the tug of duty will not let him rest.
"Sinbad." Muddy hands cup his cheeks, cradle his face as she would a bird fallen from the nest. She touches him like she touches her hawk, with the care and reverence he believed she reserved solely for other creatures. "What did I tell you? This isn't your mess. It's not yours to fix."
She told him so in a dream, standing in the shallows of clear, lapping waves which do not exist in this hellscape. Or did she? He doesn't know anymore. Dream and reality blur and merge, and he's so fucking tired. Just so...tired.
"Let the world right this wrong. Regain its voice. Our friends are fine. You are not." She meets his gaze squarely as he attempts to dredge up indignation at her accusation, but he's bled dry. He has no anger for the woman he needs like air. He blinks, mud in his eyes, gritty and rough. "No man, not even you, can control the elements. And no captain, not even you, can protect your crew from everything." Her fingers tighten along his skin. "What makes you a legend is that you know this, and you try anyway. But it's time to put the hero's mantle down now. It's time to be smart, not strong. Smart enough to know when you've had too much."
He's never considered himself particularly intelligent. Capable, yes, but that's not the same thing. She is, however, and so, because he trusts her far more than himself today, he lets her take his hand and turn him away from the chaos below. She angles them firmly toward the top of the shaking headland.
Climbing above the polluted sky is impossible without wings, but surprise filters through the dull haze blanketing Sinbad's mind when they pant and sweat and haul each other to the top of the headland. His hands and knees plant themselves not in dust or ash or fetid sludge, but grass. Calm or numbness takes him; he's unsure which and does not care. The fury of the elements seeps from him like water sinking through sand, leaving him empty and reeling. He does not rise to his feet, knees abruptly failing and muscles trembling as the invisible tide ceases to buoy him. It ebbs away, as a tide always must, a certainty he ceased believing in weeks ago. The resulting peace is a void too heavy to bear alone.
But he's not alone.
Exhaustion flavors his breath like ash on the wind. This numbness brings more pain than he can possibly express. His back bends, finally truly at the end of endurance.
Soft hands pull him from the brink, her firm voice refusing to let him shatter. "Not here. A little further. Then you can rest, Sinbad. It must be a choice, if you ever want to get back up again. Not a surrender."
He's not sure he sees a difference anymore, but he trusts that she does. And he follows, because that's the deal. He doubts he can rest anyway. He's slept perhaps a handful of hours in the last ten days, bits of dream and nightmare shredding the edges of reality, rendering him disoriented and useless. When he sleeps, people die. Doubar. Rongar. Maeve. He cannot bear to let go of this rigid control when it could happen again the moment he shuts his eyes.
But she is insistent—bossy, really, which he secretly adores. He drags himself to his feet despite his body's attempts to shut down, her hand on his arm and then her shoulders under it, supporting him despite his bigger frame, his bulk which feels heavy as lead to his own muscles. She guides him to the edge of the bluff overlooking the far side of the island.
Here there is no settlement, a dangerous reef precluding human interference with the narrow, sandy beach below. She eases him down, deliberately placing his back to the devastation he helped wreak, the burned and blackened wreckage and the earth broken open, still leaking plumes of steam even as the quakes calm and the ocean recedes back within its borders. Rain pours over him. He begins to shake, but he doesn't feel cold.
"I know."
Does she? If so, she knows more than he.
She pushes him firmly, almost aggressively, and he yields to her hands, fumbling lengthwise on wet green grass, the smell of mud strong and clean, staring at the churning gray sea below. She folds herself along his back though she's not really large enough to be the big spoon. Her hand slips between his arm and torso, then up to press near his collarbone, adhering herself firmly to his back. The heat of her skin through wet leather and linen soothes the agitated animal within, or perhaps the boy who has forgotten how to sleep.
She does not command him to try. Whether she assumes he will or recognizes he cannot, he doesn't know. Instead, she presses her cheek gently to his, sheltering his face from the pelting rain. Is it the embrace of a warrior holding a wounded companion? Or a mother shielding a child? How is he supposed to know? He does not remember his mother's hands, and no woman has ever cradled him like this.
"I won't let you fall."
They lie close to the edge of the bluff, but that's not what she means and he knows it. He wants badly to say it back, to turn and put his arms around her, too. His body refuses to roll; his arms refuse to rise. He clings desperately to the touch of her breath on his skin, the gentle rhythm which lulls him like the tide. This thing alone, the truth of shared body heat, the tiny movements of a living form curled around him, tethers him to this world, prevents him from free-fall.
Time passes. She's aware he does not sleep, but she does not command, does not scold. She does not speak. Her body anchors him in soft silence and she lets him breathe. Rain ceases and night closes in. His men do not appear—either they cannot find their captain or they keep deliberate distance. The voice of duty still argues that he must rise, must lead, but Maeve's will is stronger and she is also correct—there is only so much a single man can do. Even a hero. Even him. He thinks he passed that point a while ago, but he couldn't begin to guess when.
Night drifts around them. The rain ceases but Maeve's warmth remains steady at his back, her arms never relenting. She holds him tightly, as if she knows her grip is the bandage holding him together until the bleeding eases. The scent of smoke still pricks the edges of his awareness but here atop the quiet bluff he smells, for the first time in too long, the sea—clean salt brine, unchoked with rotting fish and ash. The cataclysm and natural currents washed away the worst of the poison and the tide flows clear beneath him.
Maeve does not move, save to shift gently at his back, her fingers now and then ghosting his cheek or hair. She gathers no wood, lights no fire when darkness descends, for which he's grateful. He cannot bear the crackle of flame or scent of smoke, however clean. He drifts slowly, neither awake nor asleep, staring unseeing at the ceaseless black of the night sea. No glimmers of starlight dance silver-gilt on the waves, but he senses their movements without sight. The tide lies dormant within him, no longer a danger though the potential will always remain. Something within him has broken, and as a shattered bone heals weaker than before, so too will he always be vulnerable to the invisible deep.
He accepts this without struggle. He wears other scars far more openly.
When morning breaks, Maeve inhales a deep breath against his back. She's willing the fragile promise of dawn into her blood and he mimics her inhalation, itself a form of prayer. She has been silent a very long time, which is not like her at all.
Or is it? He's not sure he knows anymore, his mind still sick with lack of sleep. She's loud and aggressive, yes, but full of stillness, too—secrets and sullen silences, flashes of darkness in the shadow of her brilliant fire. She is too many things to name, too complex for one man to ever fully unravel, and he is either tired enough or wise enough to accept this without trying.
Below, down the steep drop of the bluff, the sea is...blue. He blinks, the word for the color dragged slowly from the gritty depths of his mind. He cannot remember the last time he saw it—
—except yes, he can. He sat in the stifling heat of his ship's galley and held Maeve's wrist cupped in his palm, the blue lace of her veins the web of life keeping him together. He moves, his muscles screaming with effort, and clasps her hand now, pulls it from sentry duty guarding the beat of his heart. She yields, allows him to tip her wrist toward the rising sunlight. They're there, tiny delicate lines weaving the fragility and strength of this soul, this person. He presses his mouth just there, as he wished to do all those nights ago, wished but did not dare. Cracked lips touch silk-soft skin. She inhales swiftly but says nothing.
The sea glitters, thin, early sunshine painting the waves blue and silver as dawn, delicate and pink and perfect, glitters on the horizon. The first narrow sliver of sun shimmers like a cascade of diamonds. Wind blows off the water, salt-fresh, untainted by smoke and death. Gulls cry. Surf pounds.
Maeve breathes. He breathes. His eyes burn as light lifts, but he has no tears to shed.
He hears no crackling flames, no screams of death or wails of mourning. All is...good. Not soft. Not sweet. Nature is a hard mistress, as he's always known, but not a cruel one. The give and take of life makes sense here, unlike what lies behind him. Maeve placed him intentionally to face the dawn, not the past. He will never forget, and he knows they must eventually return to face what remains after the cataclysm. He loves her for this mercy nonetheless. He breathes: in, out. Salt-soft wind. Gulls. Grass—speckled with ash, yes, but wet and green. Still growing. Somehow, life endures. He watches an ant's steady progress up a blade, across his cracked thumbnail. With a sudden ferocity which shocks him, he wishes to be part of this somehow. A force for movement—creation. Not destruction. He wants to be the fish set free to fly, skimming the tops of the waves on quicksilver wings. Tawny sand gleams below the bluff, a thin strip, pale buff, not golden as his dreams. The pink and blue of the new dawn feels so tenuous, so fragile, and he does not trust that it won't shatter into sullen flames between one heartbeat and the next.
But the woman who remains unflinching at his back is real. He cannot doubt her any longer. His aching body turns slowly, finally, easing to his back in wet green grass. She's filthy, ash and soot washed to a greasy gray sludge and dried on her skin, in the hopeless tangles of her hair. Her snowy linen shift is beyond hope, soft leather overskirt not much better. To him, she's more beautiful than the rising dawn. A fragment of the stillness of the night remains lodged in his chest, soothing the edges of his frayed heartbeat, secret peace like treasure hidden away for safekeeping. This is her gift, a crumb of the sun-dappled glens and shifting wings he glimpses in her gaze. She looks at him just as she always has, direct and guileless. She shows no pity, which he could not bear from anyone, especially this woman. He's loved her from the start, though it took the death of his soul to admit it.
"Doubar says you've done this before."
It's not what he means to say, and not what he should say after a night of safe harbor in her arms. She does not share herself readily, not her body and not her story, and he's already had more than he ever believed she would allow. Prying only builds her walls higher.
But something has changed. Maybe during the cataclysm, maybe before. She does not pull back, does not slap him or storm away. No curses in any language spill from her mouth. Instead, her head tips to the side, the tilt of an inquisitive bird. She blinks. He blinks. The cool rustle of feathered wings soothes the fire which attempts to kindle in her eyes, leaving nothing but the faintest glowing ember. Her mouth parts; several heartbeats pass before she speaks. He does not rush her.
"It's harder when it's your own people. Faces you know. Pieces which once held meaning."
Sinbad has no people—only his crew. No tribe, no kin save Doubar. For the first time, he might be grateful for that lack. Having nothing means having nothing to lose and he's already lost more than he can bear.
"How old were you?" His voice cracks. He blames his ash-torn throat, but they both know better.
"Which time?"
She moves abruptly, distressed but not angry, breaking contact as she lifts herself to her seat, a position which feels less vulnerable. Pain wracks him when her body disentangles from his, but he will never blame her for it. Vulnerability is not something she does well.
That's fine; neither does he.
Instead of tearing from his side as she so often does, she extends a steady hand. He does not wish to move from this spot overlooking the sea, the remembered warmth of her body lingering along his skin, but his sleepless mind obeys blindly. She pulls him upright and he manages to remain so even as his head spins, a chaotic mess he cannot control.
"It gets easier. I promise." She breaks eye contact, her gaze shifting toward the eastern horizon, the discordant hum of tension gathering along her gracile shoulders. "It never goes away. I can't promise you that. But you learn to breathe around it."
This is a feeling he knows well. He's breathed around the scar of Leah's murder for most of his life. How many scars trouble her breaths, he wonders? How deep must they run?
He does not ask. She's uncomfortable, beginning to grow agitated, and he knows she will not answer. This is all she's prepared to reveal, and he will not push. She is who she is, and he loves her too much to cause deliberate pain. He changes the subject instead.
"You never let me touch you before."
"You never asked."
He does not choose to argue this, because there's no argument to be made. They've both consistently misread signals from the beginning, and he's certain they will continue to do so. But she's his person and he loves her desperately. He grazes a fingertip along her cheek, lingers just at the corner of her full mouth. "I'm asking now."
He can count on his hands the number of times his skin touched hers before yesterday. This is the first he's dared without a flicker of doubt. Her dark eyes study him, the whisper of leaves and gentle beat of wings held deep within. He hears the surf, swears he feels the echoing rhythm of blood beneath her skin. This is another kind of magic, gentler than the fury released yesterday but no less powerful.
"Yes," is all she says. It's all she needs to say.
