Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

When he comes to, he’s on his knees in a world of white.

His body feels leaden and numb in a way that makes some part of him, deep in the recesses of his mind, cry out in alarm. But the world is cold and yet warm, weightless and yet heavy, and numb while full of a dull layer of pain.

His chest spasms as he coughs, and he tries and fails to catch himself on his hands when he falls forward. He digs his elbows into what he vaguely recognizes as snow, bracing himself against the racking coughs. He tastes copper as something sticky drips down his face and to the ground, the endless white giving way to drops of red that seep into the snow and dye it crimson.

The blood and phlegm stuck to his face itch, and he slowly, painfully reaches up to wipe it away. His hand is heavy, and at first he dimly thinks that it’s exhaustion weighing it down, but he feels the scrape of metal against his face instead of flesh.

Ajax forces his eyes open again to look down at his hand. He blinks, and the sight of black claws gives way to his own fingers, pale and nearly blue with cold, wrapped around sapphire blue encased in silver. His hands both shake as he raises his other one, placing a finger on the burst of color in this world of ice and snow.

The gem hums under his touch, and he would have dropped it in surprise if his fingers weren’t locked and frozen around it.

He’s so tired. The urge to slump over into the snow is nearly overpowering. It’s a common way to die in Snezhnaya, pulled away from the land of the living in the Tsaritsa’s chilling embrace. There’s little shame in it.

And yet, Ajax can’t. He won’t. He will not give up, not after he’s come this far.

Taking heaving breaths that shift aching, battered ribs, he pushes himself back up onto his knees. He plants his hands on the ground, through the snow and onto the frozen soil, and pushes, bringing one foot under himself, and then the other, until he’s standing on shaky legs.

The sudden headrush threatens to knock him down again, but he grips the blue gem’s metal casing, the edges digging into the flesh of his hand sharply enough to shock him back into the present.

He forces his eyes to focus on his surroundings beyond the snow coating the ground. He sees dark trees and frost-laden pine boughs, and the realization strikes him with full force — he’s back in Snezhnaya, maybe even around Morepesok.

The thought of home is dizzying, so much so that he sways dangerously as he steps forward.

Ajax doesn’t know how long he stumbles in the freezing weather, braving Snezhnaya’s icy weather while dressed in nothing but his inner layers with his shortsword at his waist. All he knows is that it feels like an eternity.

His vision is starting to go dark when he sees a flash of color amongst the muted shades of the forest.

“Mama, come quick!”

Oh. He knows that voice. He’s heard it since he was a child. Ivan, his mind supplies as he feels himself fall to his knees.

“Maria!” the voice calls. It sounds more distant now, even as Ajax watches the muddled shape that’s his brother come closer. “Mama, I found her!”

“Maria? Maria!” a different voice cries. This one is uncharacteristically shrill and strained, and yet so familiar. His mother. Dazedly, Ajax wonders who she’s calling as gloved hands cup his face.

“Maria, your hair! Your clothes! Oh, she’s freezing! Is that blood?” Absently, Ajax registers that his mother means him. “Archons, is that a Vision? ” Oh. That’s what that gem is.

Someone drapes a warm weight over Ajax’s shoulders and pulls it around him tightly. “Mama, your coat!” Ivan protests. Their mother huffs and someone pulls the hood over his head.

Strong arms manhandle Ajax until he’s suddenly being hoisted into the air and held against something firm but soft — Ivan’s chest. Ajax carefully brings his hands up to curl into the fluffy furs his brother is wearing. When Ivan speaks, Ajax can feel the low rumble of his voice. “Mama, we have to hurry. You’ll both freeze if you’re out here much longer.”

Their mother must agree, because they pick up the pace as she calls for her husband and second son. “Dmitry! Victor! We found her!” She repeats it quite a few times until Ajax hears a sigh of relief.

“Maria!”

There are racing footsteps and then the hood of Ajax’s coat is being pulled aside to make room for hands that clutch his face and freezing lips that press against his forehead. It’s his father’s voice, he knows, and his father’s hands, and when Ajax forces his eyes open, his father’s worried face.

“Maria,” his father chokes out, overcome with emotion.

The name stings, and Ajax frowns. He opens his mouth and tries to correct them, but finds himself croaking broken syllables instead. No matter what he tries, the words won’t come out, and his father is shaking his head and gently rebuffing him. “Shhh, don’t speak, it’s okay, I’ve got you, Masha.”

The world shifts, and all of a sudden Ajax is far closer to his father’s voice. Ajax shakes his head again, because that’s not the right name, that’s not him, they’ve got the wrong person. His voice is too rough and raspy when he tries to speak again, and the words give way to a hacking cough. His chest spasms and it hurts, because now that he’s warming up, that numbness is fading and pain is blooming everywhere but especially his chest, and he can’t breathe. He turns his face to the side and manages to cough up something metallic and sticky that slides down his face and settles uncomfortably on the sleeve of his father’s coat.

Everything hurts too much for Ajax to understand what’s happening. He thinks he hears cursing, and a pitchy voice telling someone to find a doctor, and the world passing by more quickly before his eyes slide shut.

His consciousness is starting to fade, and Ajax struggles instinctively. There’s nothing to fight, though, not when he’s bundled up in warm arms, safe and secure. He lets the darkness take him.

Ajax wakes surrounded by warmth.

For a moment, he’s terrified that he’s back in the Abyss, that he had dreamt of his family and Snezhnaya in some sick, twisted nightmare.

But there’s the weight of a quilt over him, and he had never had any sort of blanket in the Abyss. Skirk hadn’t given him any, and it was too hot to sleep with one anyways. When he opens his eyes, he recognizes the ceiling of the room he shares with Tonia and the sight of his own curtains in the daylight.

He ignores the dull throb of his head as he turns it slightly to see his mother sitting next to him, needle in hand as she mends what look like Ajax’s own clothes. That makes sense. They got pretty roughed up in the Abyss, even if Ajax had done his best to sew the worst tears shut himself.

“Mama?” he says, and it comes out as more of a croak.

His mother’s head shoots up and she spins to face him, dropping the needles she’s holding to fuss over him. “Oh, Masha, you’re awake!” Her hands cup Ajax’s cheeks and he can feel them trembling.

“Dima, she’s awake!” she calls breathlessly. “Come, Masha’s awake!” His mother pushes his hair out his face, and Ajax looks at her, sees her properly, for the first time in months. The creases of her face are deeper than he remembers and her dark eyes are both frantic and relieved. Her hair — red like Ajax’s own, because he’s always had his mother’s hair — is messier than usual.

“Maria!” her father calls as he stumbles in. It’s that name again. Ajax grimaces. “Maria, you had us so worried!”

“How—” Ajax’s voice cracks and he clears his throat. “How long was I out?”

“You’ve been sleeping for three days,” his mother answers. “Dr. Gorokhov said all we could do was wait for you to wake up.” She runs her hand through his hair again. “We weren’t sure you’d make it,” she adds softly.

“Archons, what were you thinking?” his father questions, voice thick and eyes rimmed with red. “You were gone for days. And— and we just found you nearly frozen to death!” Ajax’s breathing hitches when he sees his father’s fingers curl to form fists.

“And the d—”

“Where’s my sword?” Ajax demands. His parents recoil.

“What?” his mother asks.

His father’s expression clouds as he clenches his fists. “Do you mean my shortsword?”

Ajax bristles, sitting up even though his body protests. “Give me my sword,” he hisses. He hasn’t parted from the shortsword since he first took it, and without it at his disposal he feels woefully vulnerable, especially in the face of his father’s anger.

“Maria!” his father shouts sharply, and Ajax feels something bubble up in his chest, something hot that stings like fear and burns like fury.

“Stop calling me that!”

Both his parents stiffen, staring at him with wide, disbelieving eyes that make Ajax feel cornered. He bares his teeth in a pale imitation of the creatures he faced in the Abyss, knowing that his flat incisors and dull canines hold none of the threat their pointed fangs did.

“What are you talking about?” his mother asks, pressing her lips into a thin line. Ajax crumples his quilt in his fists.

“It’s Ajax,” he says almost petulantly. “Not,” Ajax scowls before continuing, “Maria. Don’t call me that,” he finishes with a snarl. He feels like a child, and like an animal, and like something in between, trapped like a toddler wanting out of their crib or a tiger clawing at the bars of its cage.

His parents share a look that makes Ajax’s blood boil. They must notice the way his jaw clenches, because his father sighs, clears his throat, and tries again. “Ajax,” he starts carefully, gingerly, as if he’s reaching his hand through the bars of the tiger’s cage, as if Ajax is some wild animal ready to claw and bite. In the back of his mind, Ajax notes that he would, if he thought he had to. Nothing is below him now. “What happened? You… you were gone for three days, and— the doctor said your ribs are broken. You’re covered in marks, and bruises, and— what happened?”

When his father finishes, Ajax is still staring at him blankly. “Three days?” he chokes out. There’s… there’s no way that’s true. He remembers it so clearly — waking to the stifling heat of the Abyss day after day, sparring with Skirk, taking down one east after another.

“Do… do you not remember?” His father glances at his mother worriedly. “Dr. Gorokhov said that he saw no evidence of a head wound.”

Ajax frowns, staring down at the quilt in his lap. His fingers curl in it, pulling at it so harshly that he thinks it might come apart at the seams.  He opens his mouth to tell them about the Abyss, but no sound comes out and he shuts it. He could tell them that he remembers it all too clearly, remembers the scalding splatter of fresh blood on his skin, remembers the searing pain as the flesh of his arm rent, remembers the sound of his own screams. He could tell them that he remembers every day of his transformation from human to monstrous in perfect clarity.

But then what? Would they believe him when he told them that one moment, he was a boy, and the next, his body was breaking and reforming to make room for the inhuman, for sharp claws and a form too large to feel his own? That his ribs cracked and his joints popped when he crossed the point of no return? And if they did believe him, what then? Would they be satisfied knowing that they had a monster in their daughter’s stead?

No. Ajax resolves to spare them the horror, not entirely for their sake but also for his own, because he knows that he will already disappoint, but doesn’t want to see the look on their faces if they know the whole truth.

“I… No… I don’t remember anything,” he lies, because it’s easier. Easier than tearing his heart out and showing them how it has hardened. “I think I fell and got hurt. It was cold, and I hid somewhere, and I think I fell asleep.” It’s not entirely a lie. He did fall, and he did get hurt, except it wasn’t cold at all, and there was no time for cowering in the Abyss.

“My head doesn’t hurt, though, I don’t think I hit it,” Ajax tacks on quickly, because he doesn’t want them to worry or fuss.

His mother purses her lips anyways. “If your head hurts at all, or there’s anything wrong, you’ll tell us, won’t you?” She doesn’t know what she’s asking.

“Of course,” Ajax lies, his best imitation of who he used to be before the Abyss, when he was still his parents’ daughter, quiet and pleasant. When he tries to feign a smile like he used to, though, his lips won’t move. He tries again half-heartedly, but his body won’t lie again, not like it used to.

“Still,” his mother says pointedly while smoothing her skirt, “I think we should send for the doctor. Memory loss is concerning, and… perhaps he can make sense of this ‘Ajax’ nonsense.”

Ajax feels stitches pop as he grips the quilt with white knuckles. “It’s not nonsense,” he starts to protest, but it turns into a hacking cough that scrapes against his throat painfully.

She hands him a cup of water. "You need rest, Masha. I’m sure you’ll forget this silliness once your head clears, hm?"

Ajax is too taken aback by the cup in his hand to be angry. He can’t remember the last time he drank any. The rivers of the Abyss are all filled with murky, putrid water that Skirk had said would make him sick if he drank it. Ajax had found the comment both insulting and amusing — he wasn’t enough of a fool to drink something so foul. 

The water is tepid, presumably from sitting there for hours as his family waited for him to wake, but the second it touches his lips, he starts gulping it down desperately. For months, the only thing he’s tasted has been the salt of his own sweat and the tang of blood. He hadn’t really missed water while he was in the Abyss, where his body felt no hunger or thirst, but he finds himself terribly parched now. His mother warns him to be careful, but he chokes anyways, letting out a wet cough and catching his breath.

His mother raises a hand, maybe to pound his back as he coughs, but she seems to think better of it. Rightfully so — the idea of anything hitting his aching back and ribs makes him cringe. Instead, she takes the cup from his hands and places it back on the nightstand, next to something that shines sapphire blue in the sunlight.

It’s the Vision — his Vision. His father must have noticed when Ajax spotted it, because he lets out a long sigh.

“You refused to let us take it from you, even in your sleep,” his father recounts. “We had to pry it out of your hands because you were gripping it tightly enough to hurt yourself.”  He gestures at Ajax’s hand, where his palm and fingers were bandaged.

“I… have a Vision,” he says slowly. It’s the kind of thing Skirk would laugh at and call him stupid for saying. No kidding, kid, great job stating the obvious. Thinking about Skirk again is painful.

He almost misses her after three months spent together in the darkness of the Abyss. He owes her his life — she saved him when he was at his most vulnerable and taught him the ways of a world so different from his own. At the same time, though, he’s struck by a biting bitterness. She had kept him in the dark. She hadn’t told him the truth of his presence in the Abyss. And yet, he finds himself resenting that she did tell him. Maybe then, he wouldn’t have had to grapple with the truth: that he’d been a monster all along.

He would have been ignorant, free from the truth and from the Abyss’s terrible secrets, the ones that whisper in the deepest corners of Ajax’s mind, gnawing at him from the inside. Skirk had called it the Abyss’s Foul Legacy, a gift it leaves to its children even after they leave its dominion. It had felt like anything but a gift. The transformation burned as if he was standing in fire, and he heard the sickening pops and cracks as his body twisted into something foreign and inhuman. Even now, in his own body, Ajax feels the echo of its heat in his chest, still simmering in its slumber.

Ajax is surprised, however, to find the hum of something different alongside it. It’s cold and biting, and it feels like it hisses like steam inside himself when it brushes up against the embers of the Abyss. He reaches for the Vision and the energy seems to arc and pulse. When he touches the smooth surface, it glows azure, and he feels the purr of power racing through his body. It courses up through his arm and passes through his chest, crisp and sharp and new.

For a moment, it is just Ajax and this new part of himself, keen-edged and cutting like a blade, the offering of a power he can mold and shape sitting in the palm of his hand.

Ajax hears his parents gasp, and he jerks back into reality, the light and siren song of his Vision fading away to the softest thrum.

“It’s beautiful,” his mother says softly, lips curling into the first smile Ajax has seen on her face since he woke up. Ajax feels a little dizzy at the sight.

His father steps forward, resting a hand on his mother’s shoulder and reaching out to place his other one on Ajax’s own. “I’m so proud of you,” and it sounds like the truth.

Ajax knows that it won’t last.

Recovery is a slow process, supposedly. Ajax wouldn’t know.

Dr. Gorokhov, while kind, does not have the potent healing salves that Skirk did. Instead, he settles for pungent herbal creams that make Ajax’s head spin and bandages he carefully wraps and warns Ajax not to pick at. Ajax always scrunches his nose at the warning, indignant at being treated like a child but well aware that he was, in fact, planning on doing just that.

The doctor is a regular visitor to their household, stopping by every evening to check on Ajax’s condition. He says that Ajax should stay in bed for about five days, give or take, with minimal activity beyond that. And he does, in fact, say Ajax .

“It’s not recommended to cause the patient distress,” he had said, stroking his thick beard. “ It’s detrimental to the recovery process.”

Ajax hates Dr. Gorokhov, except for the fact that he doesn’t.

He’s known Dr. Gorokhov since he was little, and the man has always been kind. Whenever Ajax was sick, the doctor would always give him a caramel, soft and sweet, alongside a gentle smile.

He had been too young to understand what it meant when the doctor said that his own daughter had been just like Ajax, or why the doctor’s eyes were so sad when they lingered on Ajax or his toys. When he was older, he had commented to his mother that Dr. Gorokhov always looked like the puppy Victor’s friend had taken in — shaggy and mournful. She had scolded him before gently telling him about a fever that raged through the town like a wildfire, leaving an empty nursery in Dr. Gorokhov’s home.

But, more than that, the doctor is the only one to refer to Ajax by his name without the pacifying, cloyingly sweet tone that his parents always use, as if they’re playing along with one of Tonia’s games. The doctor is the only person who seems to see Ajax as opposed to someone he isn’t.

If only Dr. Gorokhov didn’t keep telling Ajax to rest, and take it easy, and to please stop stumbling around the house.

It’s just that Ajax can’t stand being idle anymore, not like he used to.

Before, he had a habit of sitting at the window, letting his head loll to the side as he stared out at the snow and rare glimpses of blue sky. He would let calm numbness wash over him and daydream, then. Some days, he imagined himself exploring the rolling hills of Mondstadt, while others, he visualized navigating the crags and cliffs of Liyue. All of those days, though, he imagined himself as Ajax, even back when he lived as Maria instead.

But now, the idleness of bed rest feels like torture. He was never left alone with his thoughts for this long when he was in the Abyss. There was always something else to do or think about. He washed his clothes and mended them. He tended to his injuries. He practiced his forms, with or without Skirk’s supervision. When he lay down to sleep, it came quickly, and he dreamt of nothing.

After the Abyss, Ajax’s room feels too peaceful. He knows, of course, that he’s the only person there, since Tonia has been sleeping in their parents’ room. He knows there’s nothing waiting in the shadows or crouching behind his nightstand, knows this to be true, and yet he always feels like he’s being watched. Every so often, he swears that he catches movement in the corner of his eye. He jerks awake multiple times every night, scrambling to sit up despite his body screaming in protest.

They’ve been giving Ajax painkillers, but the pills leave him groggy and dazed, too unaware of his surroundings to feel safe. He tried to convince his parents that he didn’t need them, but they wouldn’t budge. Instead, in the mornings, when they give him his medication, he takes the one for his fever and hides the other under his tongue until he gets the chance to wrap it in a handkerchief with the others and tuck it in his pillowcase. It means that there’s nothing to spare him from the pain, but Ajax will gladly make the sacrifice.

Pain keeps him sharp. Pain means he’s alive. He’s long acquainted with it after coming to know it in the Abyss, where any and every moment meant the difference between life and death. Pain is inevitable in combat. If he lets it stop him, if he grows unused to it, then it might cost him dearly later.

There’s nothing to fight here, though, and without something else to occupy his mind, all that’s left to think about is the pain.

Ajax tries to keep himself busy. He forces himself out of bed and makes his way to the kitchen to help with dinner, but his mother catches him in the act and forces him back to bed. On another occasion, he tries to sweep the floors while he knows his mother is at the neighbors’ house. This time, Victor catches him and pries the broom out of his hands before getting to sweeping himself. Ajax can’t even complain about the way he calls her Masha , struck by his emphatic insistence. Even Tonia shepherds Ajax back to bed on one occasion when she finds him limping out of his room.

She pushes him back to his bed and clambers on top of him once he’s lying down again. “Masha,” she whines, leaning against Ajax’s chest. He clenches his fist, forcing down the waves of frustration that fill him at being forced back into stillness and at being called the wrong name again. Carefully, he uncurls his fingers and rests a hand on her back, his other one stroking her hair gently. He won’t take this out on her.

“Ajax,” he corrects, voice tense instead of gentle like he had intended. “It’s Ajax, Tonia, not Masha.”

Tonia frowns. “But you’re my sister,” she gripes, and Ajax does his best not to bristle.

“Not anymore, Tonia, I’m your brother now, and my name is Ajax. Not Maria,” he says with a poke of her nose. Tonia giggles. “Not Masha,” he adds with another poke. “Ajax.”

“Can you call me that? For my sake?” Ajax asks her, and Tonia takes a deep breath, pressing a finger to her chin in exaggerated consideration before breaking into a grin.

“Okay!"

Ajax is glad to see her smiling. Tonia had taken his disappearance badly, according to their parents.

She had been the one to find the letter in the morning, apparently, and had brought it to their parents in confusion. They woke Ajax’s brothers and immediately set out to look for him, leaving the younger children with the neighbors. When Ajax’s parents and brothers went to fetch them sans Ajax, the reality set in and Tonia became inconsolable. She had been terribly worried until Ajax was found, sullen and barely touching her food. This continued until Ajax was rushed into the house, wrapped in his mother’s coat and nearly frozen to death.

Ajax can tell that Tonia still hasn’t quite recovered yet. He often catches her peeping into the doorway, as if checking to see if he’s still there. Their parents have done their best to make sure that Tonia and Anthon leave Ajax alone, for the most part, fearing that the children might accidentally hurt him or harm his recovery.

Ajax knows that it’s also out of concern for his siblings’ safety — this new Maria, this Ajax , is unpredictably different.

He’s angry where Maria was subdued, defiant where Maria was quietly obedient. Violent where Maria was gentle.

The next day, having woken up, Ajax had asked for his clothes and shortsword again.

They had been dressing him in his old nightgowns, the ones that were worn soft with age and fell loosely over his form. They had been comfortable, once, but now he is too aware of their long skirts and the way they drape over his chest. He wants his old clothes, the ones that had been handed down from Ivan to Victor and were being saved for Anthon even though there was another son who needed them in between.

His mother was angry; she scolded Ajax for acting entitled after he had stolen his brother and father’s belongings and put his family through hell.

Ajax didn’t tell them that he had actually gone through hell. 

Instead, he stared at his mother with the wide eyes and racing heart of a frightened animal and fled.

Or, well, he tried to flee, because throwing off his quilt and planting his bare feet on the floor through the pain was as far as he got before his knees buckled pitifully. His mother reached out to catch him and then the world narrowed down to the feeling of something gripping his arms, of feeling trapped and vulnerable, and he couldn’t breathe and everything was hazy and all of a sudden he was shoving what was holding him away from him with as much strength as he could muster.

“Let go of me!” Ajax had barely recognized his own voice — it was high and strained and much too loud.

“Maria!” his father’s voice boomed.

They were being loud, loud enough that Ivan rushed in. “Mama!” Ajax heard his brother cry. He blinked the fog away to see their mother in their father’s arms, wide-eyed and shaking. “Holy shit! Maria, what did you do?”

“I—” Ajax’s chest heaved as he stared at his mother and then down at his hands. “I didn’t mean to.” The rush of adrenaline had started to fade and Ajax couldn’t help but let out a grunt of pain as he fell back onto his bed dizzily.

“Th— the doctor said that you need rest, you shouldn’t be up,” his mother said shakily. She stepped forward hesitantly to raise the quilt so Ajax could settle himself under it.

From then on, they’ve all been more wary around Ajax, taking care not to upset him. It makes him feel like a child, like none of them respect him. He wonders if they ever really respected him in the first place.

Ajax knows that they don’t trust him, because when he managed to sneak into his parents’ room to fetch his shortsword, he hadn’t found it in its usual place. He didn’t find it in the dresser or cabinet, either, and when Anthon leaned into the doorway to see what he was doing, Ajax resigned himself to the truth that his parents had hidden his weapon from him.

Instead, he settled for sneaking some of Victor’s old clothes out of his brothers’ room. They weren’t the ones he had grown used to in the Abyss, but they would make do. At least these weren’t worn ragged and full of patchy mending. He carefully tucked those under his bed for later.

Ajax can’t say that he was surprised when he overheard his parents speaking in hushed whispers outside his door, asking the doctor about if there was something wrong with his mind. His father had asked whether there was anything they could do. His mother had gone so far as to ask if there was some sort of medication that could help Ajax, anything that could bring their daughter back.

Ajax dug his nails into his palms until they stung as the doctor carefully explained that this was likely some sort of trauma response, that something might have happened in those three days to trigger such behavior. Perhaps something that happened during his disappearance, or perhaps even something before that, judging by the healed marks peppering Ajax’s skin. Either way, Dr. Gorokhov firmly explained that he was not interested in drugging a child in such a manner, especially not for something like this.

Ajax hadn’t thought the idea so outrageous. He’s barely a child anymore, really. Barely human, at that. Even the doctor has picked up on it, marveling at Ajax’s rapid healing. Ajax wonders how long it will take before they notice anything else.

Something tugs at his cheek and he blinks to see Tonia scowling up at him.

“Pay attention, Ajax!” She says haughtily, and Ajax lets himself laugh. It rings hollow to him, but Tonia seems none the wiser as she sits up straight on his lap. She lifts her chin up in an unsuccessful but very amusing attempt to look down her nose at him.

“Yes, Princess Tonia?”

“Well, since you probably don’t want to be a princess anymore, you can be my knight!”

Ajax stares at her speechlessly before he feels the corners of his lips quirk just the slightest bit.

“It would be my honor, Princess Tonia.”

His five days of bed rest seem like an eternity, but eventually, they’re over.

In the morning, Dr. Gorokhov carefully explains that Ajax should be very careful not to overextend himself. Some effort is good — Ajax needs to stretch his muscles — but he must be careful not to strain his injuries. That would do more harm than good, according to the doctor. Ajax nods along absently throughout the lecture, gritting his teeth at the way the kindness chafes as Dr. Gorokhov finishes his lecture.

Finally, finally, Ajax is free.

Clumsily, pulls the clothes he had stolen out from under his bed, unfolding them on his bed and painstakingly putting them on. His body aches from the stretching and his fingers stumble as they tie the laces at his collar and waist, but Ajax feels like he can breathe a little bit easier once he looks in the mirror and sees himself in something other than his nightgowns.

He stares at his Vision on the nightstand, shining cerulean in the sunlight streaming past the curtains. It stayed there for the entire five days, moving from its spot only when Ajax picked it up to hold and marvel at it.

He knows from his father’s stories that a Vision is a scrap of the grace of an archon, the power of a person’s dreams in the palm of their hand in the form of elemental power. Ajax’s Vision is blue, darker than the sky and brighter than the sea, and the curved symbol inscribed within it promises the power of water.

Still, no matter how many times he tried to call on it and connect the way he had that first time he truly held it, it hasn’t responded. It remains quiet, humming so softly that Ajax nearly thinks it’s dead.

Pursing his lips, he tucks it in his pocket and makes for the kitchen.

They’ve given him a cane to help with his balance, and he reluctantly uses it to hobble to the table for breakfast. He finds Victor and Tonia sitting next to each other to make room for Ajax at the end of the table, where he can have the most space. If things were different, he might have been more grateful. Now, it just feels like being unnecessarily coddled.

“What are you wearing?” His mother asks sharply, and Ajax barely suppresses the urge to bare his teeth.

“My clothes,” he says tersely, and Ajax watches his father rest a hand on his mother’s as if telling her to let it go. She obliges, but Ajax can feel the burn of eyes on him anyways.

He lowers himself to sit next to Tonia and stares at the food set out on the table. There’s more than usual in a greater variety. “To celebrate your recovery,” his mother says with a tight smile. They both know that he hasn’t recovered, not in the way she wants him to. Ajax knows that he never will.

Before, he might have found the array of food delightful. Now, it’s nearly repulsive. After his return, water had brought welcome relief. Food, however, felt alien. He’s been living off of broths and porridges, soft and mild enough that his body doesn’t reject them. Anything else feels foreign in his mouth and too heavy in his stomach. In the Abyss, he had always felt light and empty, free from the weight of a full stomach. His body complains at the treatment, but he makes do.

Ajax reaches for Tonia’s fork and knife to slice up her food like always, and she offers him a smile. “Thank you, Masha!” she chirps, and Ajax knows that it’s not on purpose, that she’s just a child, that it’s just an accident. She doesn’t mean it.

And yet.

“Don’t call me that!” Ajax growls before he realizes it. Tonia whimpers. His grip on the wooden utensils tightens until he feels something give, the fork splitting unevenly down the middle. Ajax absently feels the jagged ends dig into the meat of his palms. He hears multiple cries of protest.

“Mash— Ajax,” a voice begins. “You’re hurting yourself. Let go.” Ajax is too focused on wrangling the flash of fury, the instinct to lash out like a wounded animal, to process the voice as Victor’s. Fingers try to gently pry the utensils out of Ajax’s hands, startling him. He jumps to his feet, dropping the splintered wood on the table and knocking his chair to the floor with a loud thud.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Woah!” Ajax stares at where Victor’s hands are up placatingly. “It’s okay, I won’t touch you!”

The thing about the Abyss is that the only touch there was to be found in its depths was pain. It was the ripping and tearing of flesh, the sinking of fangs in skin, the desperate fight for life. Touch meant pain, even when it was Skirk at her gentlest. Skirk was never a very physical person, save for during sparring, and most of their contact was limited to that and her tending to his wounds. Skirk’s hands were careful when she stitched his wounds, but it had still hurt. So had the vulnerability — Ajax had been at her mercy.

The thing about being on the surface is that even though Ajax knows that his family is harmless, his body doesn’t believe it. He doesn’t believe it. He knows that they’re about as dangerous as the snow hares Ivan sets traps for outside, that they are soft and fragile and human in a way that Ajax isn’t — not anymore.

And yet, despite rationally knowing that his family wouldn’t hurt him — they still think he’s their sister and daughter, their Masha , a girl instead of a monster — and that they couldn’t do it even if they tried, he finds himself fearing their touch.

He can tolerate his father’s doting caresses and his little siblings’ poking and prodding at the best of times, when he can steel himself against the discomfort and need to either fight or flee. He can’t deal with it now, with splinters in his palm and blood seeping from the gash in it.

There’s silence for a moment as they gape at Ajax as if he’s someone — something—foreign, before a few sniffles herald the beginning of Tonia’s sobbing. Ajax feels himself trembling where he stands. His father is frowning. His mother and Ivan look furious. Victor seems hurt. Anthon is tearing up, and Tonia… Tonia’s wailing.

It’s too much. Everything is too much. Tonia is crying and Ivan is standing up and Teucer’s little face is twisting as if he’s going to start sobbing too and—

He runs.

He leaves his cane where it had fallen on the floor and forces his body to move, reaching for his coat as he rushes out the door. The sudden brightness hurts his eyes as he stumbles through the snow blindly, ignoring the calls of his name behind him.

The freezing wind is biting where it hits his face and the cold makes aching pains of his body flare, but he pushes on until he can’t see any houses and he’s surrounded only by snow-covered larches and the clouds of his own breath.

He’s struck by a sense of familiarity.

The last time Ajax was in this forest, he had been at its mercy, prey to its howling beasts. Now, the only sound he can hear is his heartbeat in his ears and the rush of wind through the trees. Now, he knows that he is far greater a monster than anything in this forest is.

He’s torn much fiercer creatures than anything in this forest apart.

What’s a wolf compared to a rifthound? Wolves’ claws and fangs aren’t dripping with toxins, not like rifthounds’ dizzying corrosion. Even the largest wolves are dwarfed by whelps, and their bodies are made of soft flesh and warm blood. Ajax would have no trouble dealing with them.

He had had his shortsword then, though. Now, he’s unarmed.

No — that’s not true.

Ajax is never unarmed, not anymore. Not when his body itself is a weapon. He can feel something whisper inside him — the hissed call of the Abyss. It burns in a way that makes him sick to his stomach.

There’s a hum in his pocket, and he instinctively reaches to feel the shape of his Vision through the cloth. When he slips his uninjured hand inside to touch the Vision directly, it feels electric, like touching a doorknob and feeling the shock Victor calls static.

Ajax pulls it out slowly, eyes widening in surprise when he sees it’s glowing. It feels like it did that first time he touched it, like it’s something alive, pulling Ajax towards it. It calls to him, bursting with a wordless promise of power.

Slowly, awkwardly, he starts to draw on the Vision’s power. At first, he tries the same thing he does with Foul Legacy. He pulls at the feeling of fear, the heartstopping thrill of terror, the raw desperation of killing or being killed . His Vision hums as if to say, not quite, and the yawning darkness in his chest rumbles restlessly. 

Ajax stops immediately, too afraid of waking that monster sleeping inside his chest, curled around his heart. It settles, and he sighs in relief.

His Vision doesn’t fade, though. It still pulses in his hand, beckoning him to try again, to call on it properly.

Tentatively, he tries again, feeling blindly for its connection to him. He feels the brush of something frigid, threads of biting cold that he follows to a tangle of desire, of want, where there is more than the need to survive — where he finds the yearning to live, the longing for something more.

Ajax wraps himself in the threads of want, that knot of hoarfrost, a core of hope covered in the rime of resolve. Ambition.

It comes to him easily, painlessly, naturally . The power of his Vision washes over him, and he wonders why it was ever so difficult to connect with it in the first place. Perhaps because he was searching outside of himself the whole time, seeking power in his Vision instead of in himself.

He lets it rush through him, from his chest and through his arm to the fingertips of his empty hand, watching with fascination as drops of water form just above his skin. They tremble in the wind, his control over them tenuous, but they are there. When he wiggles his fingers experimentally, they burst, his hold over them falling apart like the droplets that sprinkle over his hand.

It’s no matter. Ajax is no stranger to hard work. He is no stranger to starting from nothing. He stepped into hell wielding a sword for the first time and returned as familiar with it as a second limb. He did not reach that point by waiting for Celestia to bless him with talent. He fought for his skill, reached for it with his own hands until it was his after months of rigorous training under Skirk’s tutelage.

Ajax can do so again. He will do so again.

He flexes his hand to try again and cringes as the movement pulls at the gash on his hand. Ajax raises his hand thoughtfully and looks at the injury. His blood still runs red, dark where beads of it slide down his hand to drip onto the snow. It looks human. Ajax wonders if it even is, anymore. Has his transformation affected even the blood in his veins?

Gingerly, Ajax picks at the splinters with the fingers of his other hand. They’re clumsy and shake in the cold, though, and his efforts are mostly futile. The cut still stings, and he can hear Skirk’s voice in his mind.

“Never forget to tend to your wounds,” she had said. “They may be easy to ignore now, but infection isn’t.” When Ajax whined, Skirk had added, “If treating a small injury hurts your pride this badly, then imagine what dying of such a thing would do to your fragile ego.”

Ajax supposes that she was right. He won’t be able to patch this up here. His tongue darts over his lips, burning against his chapped skin, and he sighs.

He can better tend to this at home, where his parents keep medical supplies in the case of an emergency. It’s a relic from his father’s days traveling, he thinks, a worn bag full of salves, bandages, and other medical supplies. Some of them are old enough to make the labels nearly indecipherable. Others are new, bought at the market or from Dr. Gorokhov’s stock after their own stores ran out.

The thought of going home is maddening, however. His parents will make a fuss, worrying over him and scolding him for his actions. He’ll have to face his siblings. His mother will be angry, still, and the idea of it all makes Ajax clench his jaw. He’s tired of being judged. He’s tired of being questioned and ignored and pushed to his limits.

Before, maybe, when everything made him angry but nothing was worth acting over, he would have let it go. Now, though, Ajax can’t. He can’t remember how to hold it back, how he ever did it in the first place.

The last time Ajax was in this forest alone, he had been lost and hadn’t known which way led home. Today, he knows exactly where he’s standing. He’s still not sure about where home is.

The trip back to the house is more trouble than he’d like to admit. Without the rush of adrenaline, the aches and weakness make trudging through the snow torturous. Still, Ajax has been through worse, and before long, he can make out the dark outline of his house against the hazy Snezhnayan sky.

Ajax stumbles more than he walks to the door, leaning heavily on the doorjamb as he knocks forcefully. His numb knuckles barely sting at the impact.

He barely keeps his balance as the door swings open. “Masha,” his mother breathes, and Ajax finds himself pulled into her arms.

“Ajax, Mama, not Masha,” he corrects tiredly, voice muffled by his mother’s shoulder. She scoffs, and Ajax can feel his blood boil despite how cold he is.

“What were you thinking? Your father and brothers are out looking for you,” she scolds, drawing back to grasp his shoulders. Her grip is just too tight to be comfortable, as if she’s holding onto him so that he can’t run off again. Ajax can’t find it in himself to deny her.

“Archons, you’re freezing, get in here,” his mother fusses. “And your hand!”

This, Ajax can deal with. He pulls away and raises his hand to look at. It’s nothing too bad, really. He just has to clean and wrap it. His mother tries to grab his hand and take a look at the injury herself, but Ajax tugs it out of her hands instinctively.

“I’ve got it,” he huffs, and his mother’s hands hang there in the air, frozen alongside the frown on her face.

He shrugs off his coat and hangs it on the rack before making his way to the kitchen. “Let me help you,” his mother tells him as he tugs the first aid kit out of the kitchen cabinet with his uninjured hand.

“I said I’ve got it,” Ajax repeats, voice steely with impatience.

He digs through the box for tweezers, rubbing alcohol, and gauze, wetting the gauze with the alcohol and wiping the tweezers with it. It might be excess caution, but Skirk was right. Ajax must survive at all costs — he’s not about to risk it over unsterilized tweezers.

Fitting the tweezers into his healthy hand, he starts trying to tug the splinters out. His hands are clumsy with cold, though, and he can’t seem to grasp the splinters properly. At best, he manages to dislodge them painfully, but never fully extract them.

In a fit of frustration, Ajax flings the tweezers onto the table.

“Ajax!”

His mother reaches for the tweezers before he can think to snatch them up again, and he makes a sound of angered protest.

“Let me help you,” she says, “you’re just going to hurt yourself worse like this.”

She’s not really wrong, and Ajax is tired of struggling — especially in front of his mother. He sighs and offers her his hand, steeling himself against the feeling of her holding it.

His mother’s hands are firm and assertive as they open his. She clicks her tongue as she looks over the mess of splinters and blood, adjusting her grip on her tweezers. This is his mother — sharp edges dulled by age and years of motherhood, unyielding and resolute. Ajax finds himself thinking of Skirk, of her solid gloved hands and the way they held him, tended to him, efficient and effective, intimately familiar with injury and bloodshed.

Skirk never treated Ajax like something delicate. She believed in him and saw his strength and resilience. She saw Ajax , at his best and at his worst, in a way his mother refuses to. He misses Skirk, he realizes, and the thought is a little dizzying.

He doesn’t have time to dwell on it, however, because the front door swings open and Victor trudges in. “Nothing,” he says, sounding discouraged as he stomps the snow off of his boots at the entrance. “Don’t worry, Mama, we’ll fi— Ajax!”

Victor hurries over, glancing over Ajax and then peering at the gash in his hand. “Are you alright? Are you hurt anywh—”

“Archons, Victor, I’m fine,” Ajax snaps, tired of being treated like something fragile and delicate, not after he had sacrificed ever part of him that was soft and weak to claw his way out of Abyss with his own hands. There’s a flash on hurt on Victor’s face, but Ajax is too frustrated to care.

Their mother takes a deep breath and sits up. “Vitya, go and fetch your father and brother. Let them know that Ajax is home safe, so there’s no need for them to keep freezing out there.”

Victor purses his lips the way he always does when he wants to argue, pressing them into a tight line before he nods reluctantly. “I’ll be right back.” He pulls his coat more tightly around himself and rushes out the door.

“Be nice to Vitya,” his mother admonishes, pulling out the last of the splinters, a big one that makes him wince, “he’s only worried. He thinks it’s his fault you got so upset.”

“It is,” Ajax grumbles, because Victor just hadn’t known how to leave well enough alone.

His mother reaches for the bandages and Ajax snatches them out of her hands. “Ajax!” she scolds, “he only wanted to help. He’s been concerned about you.”

Ajax pauses in the middle of wrapping his hand. “The only thing he needs to do is keep his nose out of my business. I’m not one of his books,” he spits, tearing the bandage off the roll with more force than was necessary.

“But you are his sister,” his mother presses. Ajax watches her expression change as she realizes her misstep. He’s done. He’s so, so done with this.

“No. You’re right. That’s the problem.”

He plucks the tweezers off the table and throws them and the roll of bandages back into the first aid kit haphazardly.

“I’m not his sister. Not anymore.”

He clenches his jaw and storms upstairs and into his room, slamming the door behind him.

Ajax stands there for a moment, panting heavily and leaning his head back on the door. He just… he just needs to breathe. He’s stronger than this. Better than this.

When he opens his eyes, Tonia’s staring at him from his bed. Her eyes are red and damp with tears, and Ajax hears her breathing hitch with a sob.

He stiffens and tries to walk over to the bed, but his knees buckle until he’s stumbling to catch himself on it. Tonia squeaks and Ajax watches the tears spill over and drip down her face. He takes a deep breath and pulls himself onto his bed to sit next to her.

“Hey,” he says softly, reaching to rest a hand on her shoulder. She flinches away, and Ajax feels something in himself harden. “What’s wrong?”

“You ran away again,” Tonia accuses wetly, pausing in the middle to take a heaving breath, “and, and I thought you wouldn’t come back.” Ajax recoils at the pang of guilt in his chest. “I— I thought you’d left me.”

“I would never leave you, Tonia,” he assures her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close. “I came back, didn’t I?”

Tonia frowns, her reddened face scrunching in a way he would normally find amusing if it didn’t mean she was hurting. “But… but what if you don’t?” She sniffles loudly and wipes at her nose with her sleeve. “I don’t want you to leave again. You can’t!”

Ajax pulls her close to his chest, stroking her hair with his hand as she sobs into his shirt. “I’m never going to leave you, Tonia,” he says, and it feels like a lie. “I pinkie promise. ” He bounces her gently in his lap. “You know what we say about pinkie promises. You make a pinkie promise…”

Tonia lifts her face from his chest with hiccupping breaths. “You keep it all your life,” she finishes hesitantly.

“You break a pinkie promise—”

“I throw you on the ice.”

Ajax nods encouragingly, wiping Tonia’s tears away with his thumbs. “The cold will kill your pinkie that once betrayed your friend,” he prompts.

“The frost will freeze your tongue off so you never lie again!” Tonia finishes firmly before breaking out in giggles.

Ajax offers up his pinkie and Tonia curls hers in it. It’s warm and sticky with snot, but he doesn’t mind.

“You really won’t leave? You promise?” Tonia stares at him expectantly, eyes shining with hope.

“I promise,” he repeats, voice thick with a false confidence he manages to force out just for her.

When the sun begins to set, once Tonia’s asleep and Ajax has slipped out of her arms, he steps into the kitchen.

Victor, Ivan, and his parents are sitting at the kitchen table, a twisted reenactment of the day’s disastrous breakfast. When Victor sees Ajax, he jumps with surprise while Ivan simply huffs loudly. Their parents glance at each other uneasily.

“Vanya, Vitya, why don’t you go to your room? Your mother and I need to speak to Ajax, and he hasn’t even eaten anything all day,” their father tries. He sounds tired, even to Ajax.

“But—” Victor protests, raising his hands questioningly before Ivan huffs and slaps a hand on his shoulder, pulling Victor into their room and throwing the door shut with a loud thud.

Ajax’s mother sighs, standing and smoothing her skirt before she makes her way to a pot on the stove. “Have some dinner,” she says tonelessly, ladling some soup into a bowl. She sets it at the table with a spoon and waits expectantly.

Ajax sighs and sits down, picking up the spoon and swirling it in the broth sluggishly.

“Don’t play with your food,” his mother snaps, sitting down opposite Ajax.

“Elisaveta,” his father warns. He runs a hand over his face and stands up. “Ajax, we need to talk.”

Ajax scoffs, dropping his spoon into his bowl and rolling his eyes. His mother hums warningly.

“This can’t go on,” his father begins, pacing around the kitchen table with a hand rubbing circles at his temple.

“What can’t go on?” Ajax asks blithely, feigning ignorance.

His mother frowns. “Don’t play dumb with your father,” she threatens.

Ajax rolls his eyes and lets out a sigh. “Fine,” he sneers.

“You— You disappeared, Ajax, and you haven’t been yourself,” his father begins, running his hand through his hair the way he does when he’s frustrated. “You want us to call you this different name, to call you our son.”

“Because I am your son, and that is my name,” Ajax snaps, crossing his arms at his chest. “I don’t see why it’s so hard to accept.”

“Because we’re worried, Ajax!” His father throws his hands up in exasperation. “We’re worried, because you came back to us unconscious and seriously injured, and the doctor said that you had injuries from months ago, and we didn’t even know you were hurt back then! Did we miss something? Was someone hurting you?”

Oh. That’s… unexpected. But also very funny. Ajax hadn’t expected this to come from his lying about the Abyss. It’s… funny. And also infuriating. His lips twitch, and then his body spasms with a gasping laugh, the kind that makes him feel like he’s choking on air.

“Do you think this is funny?” Through the tears of laughter in his eyes, Ajax can see his mother’s face twisting in anger.

“It is, though, isn’t it? You’re so mad and worried, now! Now, about stuff from months ago!” He lets out another barking laugh. His parents look stricken, and it feels like there’s a knife in Ajax’s hands, in his parents’ chest. This, he knows what to do with. He knows how to make things hurt. Ajax twists the knife. “You think you deserve to be worried now? After just overlooking everything before?”

There’s a truth to the words he’s spitting at them. All of those physical marks that Dr. Gorokhov found, the scars and scrapes and bruises, all of those are from the Abyss. Not before, like his parents think. They didn’t overlook something hurting him — not physically, anyways. But Ajax had been in pain, back then. He had felt trapped and miserable, and nobody had noticed. Nobody had cared. They just looked over him, through him, past him, but never at him.

He’s more bitter about it than he had expected.

“You only care now because I ran away! Because you can’t ignore me anymore!”

“That’s not true!” His mother shouts, slamming her palms onto the table. “We’ve always cared about you! We would never ignore our daughter!”

“I’m not your daughter!” Ajax roars back, loudly enough that his brothers must have heard it from their room. Ajax finds that he doesn’t care. His chest heaves as he catches his breath. “I never was. And you didn’t even care enough to see it.”

“What are you talking about?” His father’s voice is strained with anger and confusion.

Ajax’s fingers curl into tight fists. “I’ve never been Maria. It’s never been right. It’s never been me.” It’s maddening, how difficult it is to say the words he had always desperately wanted to say. He forces them out anyway. “I hated it. I hated being Maria. Being Masha. Being a girl. Being your daughter.”

“You never said anything,” his father says softly. Somehow, this infuriates Ajax the most.

“You wouldn’t have wanted to hear it! You were perfectly happy to let me be miserable! You’d rather I be miserable now, and still be your daughter instead of me!”

“Ajax,” his father pleads, and for once he doesn’t say Ajax’s name like it’s a tragedy. “We would never want you to be unhappy.”

He reaches out for Ajax’s face and Ajax is so taken aback that, this time, he doesn’t flinch or shy away. His father’s hands are warm and calloused as they cup his cheeks, so terribly gentle.

“We love you,” his father says gently, lifting a hand to push the hair out of Ajax’s eyes. “We’ll get through this, Ajax, because nothing matters more to us than you and your siblings’ happiness. You… You just need to let us in. Let us help you. We can get through anything together, okay?”

His father draws Ajax into his arms, cradling Ajax’s head against his chest. Absently, Ajax notes the scrape of a chair against the floor, steps leading away and away. His father holds him more tightly.

He doesn’t understand, Ajax realizes. There is no getting through this.

There’s no undoing what he’s become.

The glass is freezing under Ajax’s fingertips as he pries the window open.

Outside, the world is still. Mercifully, there’s no wind to sweep snow into Ajax’s room as he climbs out. He carefully balances himself on the windowsill, shutting the window and eyeing the distance between the second floor window and the ground below.

Before, perhaps, he would have been too frightened to take the leap. Now, however, the risk is nothing to him. He’s taken far worse falls. Ajax takes the plunge.

Midnight in Morepesok is silent, and the sky is a splash of black ink on pristine paper, cloudless against the moonlit snow and towering conifers. The loudest sounds here are those of the wind and its frenzied whistles and howls.

Ajax lands quietly in a crouch the way Skirk taught him, limber and poised in the way a lynx hits the ground gracefully with padded feet. Ajax had been clumsy about falling at first, too tense and too nervous to relax enough to spare his bones and joints the pain of the impact. With practice, though, he had mastered the skill.

He straightens, shifting his scarf to shield his nose from the biting night air as he heads into the forest for the second time since he ran away.

Victor once told them all about the rainforests of Sumeru, and how they’re always full of life, even at night. In Sumeru, the sun shares its bounty with the land, warm and giving. They say the trees there grow hundreds of meters into the air, and Ajax remembers wondering if they could brush the clouds at that height. In Sumeru, the foliage is so magnificent that it is somehow dark on the ground even in broad daylight, where the leaves rustle with wildlife and the air is sticky and carries the chirping of crickets and frogs.

Snezhnaya is nothing like that. The air is dry and frigid — it cracks your lips and chills you to the bones. The earth is hard and frozen, hostile to crops and native plants alike. In the silence of Snezhnaya’s snow forests, sound is an error instead of a song.

An owl hoots, long and mournful. Any prey scurrying about should take shelter — the hunt is on.

As for Ajax, he pushes forward, not caring about the crunch of snow under his boots or the huffs of his breath.

It’s game that has to worry for its safety tonight, and Ajax is no cowering prey animal. There’s nothing in this forest that can harm him in any way that matters.

The things that can truly hurt Ajax aren’t physical anymore. It’s the way his parents look at him with a dying hope in their eyes, still clinging to the idea that he is still the same person at heart. It’s the way he’s so, so furious with them, but still finds himself leaning into their touch. It’s the heartbreak in Tonia’s eyes, startled and wounded in a way that makes Ajax feel sick.

It all makes him feel sick, until the broth he had choked down after his parents’ intervention is churning in his stomach and threatening to come back up. Ajax swallows it down.

Some part of him, in the Abyss, had so certainly believed that coming home would make things better — that the Abyss was a hell of fear and injury and exhaustion, that home was a haven of warmth and comfort and safety. Standing here now, though, on the surface, on the frozen ground of Snezhnaya, he feels more lost than ever.

Even admitting it to himself pains Ajax, and he curses as he turns to slam his fist into the bark of a tree. The scraped skin of his knuckles burns familiarly, and the rush of anger and urge to destroy come easily. He knows this — the sick draw of violence, the phantom taste of metal on his tongue.

He knows this — the call of power.

His Vision is heavy in his coat pocket, and its dim blue glow is eerie in the darkness when he pulls it out. This, at least, makes sense.

Closing his eyes, he reaches for his Vision the way he did that first time, wrapping himself in threads like puppet strings that promise strength, power, a way forward. He takes a deep breath and pulls, raising his other hand and channeling the energy up and through his arm to the palm of his hand.

And then there’s water, hovering above it, clear and wavering as Ajax keeps his focus on holding it together. It’s a strange sensation, like trying to scoop up water in cupped hands without letting any leak out. The water trembles above his hand, dripping occasionally where he loses his hold on it.

Ajax manages to hold onto it for half a minute or so — he forgets to count. He regrets it when the bubble bursts, splashing his hand and coat with water. It’s freezing in the Snezhnayan winter, but Ajax pays it no heed.

Taking a deep breath, Ajax tries again. He focuses on the water, on its shape, its form, its weight in the air. He thinks about anything other than his parents, his family, the life he’d come back to and found unlivable. He watches ice crystals creep along the bubble’s surface and finds that, if he tries hard enough, he can move the water enough that it doesn’t freeze over instantly. He counts the seconds until he reaches a minute, and then two, until the bubble falls apart halfway through minute three when he exerts a little too much force onto it.

Again. Ajax counts to five minutes. He shifts his hand and the bubble hovering over it and, in a fit of curiosity, hurls it at the nearest tree like a ball. It holds together until it bursts against the bark, leaving the tree unscathed.

At first, he’s miffed. He’s not sure what he was expecting, but, well— vision holders wield the power of the gods. Ajax has grown up hearing about their incredible feats. He was maybe expecting a little more than just a splash.

It makes sense, though. Water… water is dangerous, but particularly in large amounts. Enough water will drown someone. The massive, crashing waves of the ocean are enough to sink ships. Like this, in a small bubble above Ajax’s hand, water is harmless, save for the risk of frostbite in the subzero temperatures.

Ajax pulls the water back to his hand and stares at it. If he wants to make this power into a weapon, he needs to be clever about it. The bubble floats above his hand unassumingly, and he slowly shifts his fingers until the water’s form narrows until its edges are sharp like a blade. His hold on it still trembles, and the edge wavers between keen and rounded, but he lifts his hand and the water-blade with it and slashes at the tree.

The blade bursts like the bubble did once it hits the tree, Ajax’s control shattering into hundreds of tiny droplets. Still, when he reaches for the tree bark, his thumb runs over a dip in the wood where the blade scored it. The cut is ragged, and torn bits of wood threaten to pierce the meat of his fingers, but it’s there.

It’s tangible proof of this new power and its potential. Ajax feels the sting of a cut on his thumb and brings it to his mouth. The taste of blood blossoms on his tongue, as strong and metallic as ever.

Thank the Tsaritsa that this, at least, makes sense.