Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Maybe, uh.” Erik eyes the newly finished building. “Maybe not specifically, ah. That kind of art. Over the front door. Or on the house, anywhere? Maybe we could cut out that panel and keep it at home?”

Mia crosses her arms and glares up at her artwork. She’d thought her stylized sabrecats looked pretty awesome. A perfect mix of cute and fearsome. “You could at least wait and see if anyone wants it the way it is before you get rid of it.”

“I don’t think anyone in Dundrasil is gonna want images of monsters above their front door, Mia.”

“Sabrecats are barely even monsters. And I think people here could stand to learn that monsters aren’t all bad. You sure didn’t think so, when you made me go to the Academie for a year. Half of the students are monsters.”

“Not half of — look, that’s not the point. The point is, you’re helping rebuild a kingdom that was destroyed by monsters. Which means trying to make things that people here actually want, and that means nothing monster-related.”

“Right. And nobody here actually wants what I make,” Mia snaps.

“That’s not true, Mia.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. I mean, I have at least fifty things you’ve made.”

“Uh huh. In your ‘treasure room,’” she says, wiggling her fingers in air quotes as she makes a reference to the roughly finished shed out behind the castle.

The little building itself was one of the first structures Mia had helped build. She’d still been young enough at the time that she hadn’t realized part of the reason Erik had claimed it as his own, in spite of the lack of living quarters in the early days, was that nobody else wanted it.

Now it’s the place where Erik shuts away all Mia’s little experiments with art and building that don’t turn out quite right.

Sometimes, it feels like there aren’t very many pieces he’s ended up displaying publicly, or even keeping in the living quarters he shares with El.

“I like my treasure room,” Erik says defensively.

But Mia’s not in the mood to hear it any longer. “Whatever. Do what you want with the house. I’m gonna go take a break.”

“Mia…” Erik’s voice trails after her as she stomps away.

It’s not that Mia resents having to help rebuild. In spite of the fuss she’d put up about the idea of spending a whole second year stuck half a world away from Erik at the Academie, any of the coursework there that had to do with buildings or art had been deeply intriguing to her.

The abandoned house she’d shared with Erik as a child had seemed like a miraculous find at the time, their own personal place to hide away from the world. The newer idea that they could have made it better, so the roof never coughed snow down on them and the walls held in the heat, or the notion they could have made the structure itself beautiful and valuable, is still incredible to her now.

Erik gifted her a huge blank book that first year, after she learned how to read properly, and she’d spent hours taking notes on architecture, and things she’d discovered by building little miniature models of castles from pebbles and paste, and even lessons learned from the holiday gingerbread house she’d somehow managed not to devour as soon as she put it together.

Sculptures had been almost as fascinating a discovery. The idea that you could just make new art that people would value, big enough to be difficult for anyone to steal, and become famous for doing it, kept her awake at night, doodling ideas into her book.

She started missing the view of Yggdrasil looming large in the northern sky more than she thought she would, so she sketched out ideas of a huge statue of the Tree, which she thought ought to go over well with these sentimental saps rebuilding Dundrasil.

But when she tentatively floated that idea past Erik, after she spent her first couple months trying to prove herself in simple rebuilding work, he’d hemmed and hawed and said they didn’t have the resources to spare, and besides, he thought it might be offensive to some people to have somebody making a replica of their sacred World Tree.

Erik.

Every time Mia thinks of something really amazing to build, Erik always shuts her down.

She knows he doesn’t mean to, or at least, she’s sure of it when she’s feeling charitable enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. She knows he sees it as brotherly guidance, trying to steer her in the right direction, trying to help her avoid the little social blunders he talked about making during his first years down south.

But she’s lost count of the number of times she’s gotten lost in a creative frenzy, feeling a growing sense of joy as she makes something fun and fantastic, only to have Erik come along and punch a hole in her euphoria.

She needs to leave.

It’s not the first time she’s had the thought. After all, she’s an adult now, by any measure. Dundrasil’s past the early wild rush of rebuilding, and they aren’t so short on manpower that they’ll miss one fledgling builder’s help.

But she’s more sure than she’s ever been. She needs to leave. She needs to find another place in the world that has room for a little creativity, a little vision. No big brother hovering nearby to tell her she was doing it wrong.

Sure, her work is still a little rough around the edges, but she’s good enough to make a living at it. Even the expert carpenters who have settled in Dundrasil tell her she’s more than ready to call herself a journeyman, and that she could easily earn a roof over her head and food to eat with her current skills.

She could try Heliodor. Princess Jade’s mentioned that her downtown area is starting to dabble in more quality building and a little bit of flair, now that the residents have begun to trust that there will be no sudden and unexpected taxes demanding every spare drop of their income.

And Sniflheim always has maintenance work to be done after the worst of the winter weather clears up. Sometimes they even change up the stained glass artwork after a window breaks.

Really, she could try anywhere in the world.

Of course Erik’s a big baby when Mia says goodbye, protesting and even getting a little weepy. But in the end, he says that even though he will miss her, he’s proud of her, too.

Maybe she tears up just a little, herself.

But once she gets on the ship, Mia only feels the euphoria of her newfound freedom. The wind tugs at her braid and tosses salt spray into her mouth when she laughs.

She’s not even bothered when an unseasonal storm kicks in. She’s working for her passage, but it’s a good ship, and the crew is competent enough that she’s sure they’ll make it through together.

Even if they are a superstitious lot. They cast their eyes at the dark sky and mutter about evil magic and Dark Stars, though there’s nothing to see but rain.

Still, it’s not the worst storm Mia has ever weathered. She isn’t worried.

Well, she’s not worried until one of the children of the paying passengers comes up on deck to look at the storm.

“Hey!” Mia shouts as the kid slips in the water sheeting across the deck. “Get back below!” She dashes over to catch the child before they slide any farther toward the edge of the deck. She lifts them by both hands and swings them over into the arms of the next worried crewman, who’s staggering over to catch them.

Or maybe that isn’t the reason he was moving past Mia. He catches the child, but he looks at Mia and shouts something that’s hard to hear over the pounding rain as he scurries backwards.

Mia barely has time to turn and see the unsecured oversized barrel rolling towards her. She tries her best to jump out of the way, but even as she begins the motion, she knows she’s too late, too slow; she’s only set herself up to be knocked overboard.

She manages an instant of hope that at least someone might fish her out of the ocean, and then she blacks out as the barrel hits her.

Chapter Text

When Mia wakes up, her head is pounding, and it takes her a full minute to realize someone is talking to her.

She pushes herself upright with a groan, then blinks and stares at her surroundings.

She’s in a jail cell. This isn’t her ship. Her ship doesn’t have jail cells.

Her jailer is a skeleton.

“You’re one of them Builders, right?” the skeleton says.

Mia rubs her eyes and answers with a confused attempt at honesty. “Uh huh.”

When the skeleton proceeds to insult her intelligence, make threatening commentary, and boss her around, Mia thinks maybe this was a mistake.

Of course she goes along with the orders at first. That’s one survival skill she hasn’t gotten rid of yet: wait to start a fight until you know that you can win it. She’s no Erik, trained up with the world’s greatest swordfighters and tested against the world’s strongest enemies, to barge into combat with a hero’s casual confidence.

She pastes on a mock-cheerful smile, like she used to do for the Viking in charge of the kitchen who claimed he couldn’t stand a dour face, and she quietly plots vengeance as she performs manual labor.

When she realizes how confused and nervous her smile makes her captors, the expression comes much more easily.

When she realizes how helpless they are at the simplest kind of task, she loses the edge off of her internal fury. They really do need someone like her. By the time she decides she could fight her way out of their clutches, she’s starting to consider negotiation as an alternative path to violence.

But then another storm kicks in, even more violent and dark than the first.

She tries to fix the ship. She really does. But even a master craftsman couldn’t fix this damage fast enough to save the ship. The water pours in and throws her against a wall, and she loses consciousness once again.

The next time she wakes up, Mia finds herself doing more manual labor on behalf of an entirely new set of arrogant strangers.

For her first twenty minutes on the Isle of Awakening, Mia detests Malroth and Lulu almost as much as she initially hated the crew of the ship that kidnapped her.

But then it becomes quickly clear that these two are at least as helpless as the monsters. And it’s not long before they both win Mia over with their enthusiasm for her quick patch job on the shelter where they agree to spend the night together.

Here is an audience that is never going to have grounds to criticize Mia’s work; they don’t even dare to try securing a fallen block of wood into place by themselves.

She feels a particular warmth towards Malroth, who not only berates Lulu for her demanding tone, but eagerly follows Mia around and pitches in to help however he can.

It’s nice, having someone doing the heavy lifting for her without being asked.

It’s nice, having someone look up to her for a change.

It’s really nice when even Lulu applauds Mia’s work. She might be bossy, but she’s appreciative, too, as the Vikings never were.

Mia takes a defiant minute to scratch a quick sketch of a sabrecat into the wood next to the door, in spite of all of Lulu’s urgent demands.

Lulu sees it and sniffs. “It’s nice and all, but do you really think there’s time for art right now?”

Malroth groans. “Don’t listen to her! It’s great. Do another one on the other side.”

Whether Malroth actually likes it or he’s just trying to defy Lulu again, his encouragement sends a warm feeling through Mia. And after all, even Lulu didn’t say she didn’t like it. “I’ll do another one when we get back from collecting materials,” Mia offers.

“Awesome," Malroth says. "Hey, maybe tomorrow you could make a door that looks like a giant mouth, so it’s like it’s eating people when they go inside? Ha!”

Mia grins, and she decides this island isn’t bad after all.

It’s a shock when Mia looks up at the clear night sky on the way back to their impromptu home base and discovers that, for the first time since she can remember, she cannot recognize any constellations.

Maybe the sailors were on to something, talking about dark magic during the storm.

Maybe she’s not even in Erdrea anymore. She’s heard stories from Erik and Eleven about mystical realms guarded by the spirits of ancient heroes, and strange visions from Yggdrasil.

For a minute, she’s terrified by the idea that she’s gone somewhere too far away for Erik to find her and save her.

Of course, she trips over something while she’s gawking at the sky instead of watching where she’s going.

Malroth catches her elbow and stops her from falling over. “Hey, you okay?”

Mia looks over at him, and her panic subsides.

If she is in another world, so what? Isn’t that what she wanted? A chance to prove herself as a builder and a grown-up, somewhere away from Erik’s overprotective guidance. It’s not like she’s all alone, either.

She’ll figure out how to get home later. But right now, she has some new maybe-friends and an excuse to build things, and this place looks like it could be just what she asked for.

“I’m fine,” she says. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

“Duh,” Malroth says. “You’ve got me here.”

Mia laughs, and her steps feel lighter as she heads back towards the shelter she fixed with her own hands.

Chapter Text

“Hey. Hey, Mia.”

Malroth’s voice is muffled for a second, and she looks up to see him with his entire hand stuck inside the pumpkin-head he’s wearing. As he pulls his fist back out with the gnawed-off end of a loaf of bread, he breaks off one of the jagged teeth of the mask, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care.

Mia smiles. “What’s up, Malroth?”

“Us! Come on! Let’s go climb up there!” He waves the bread up at the little cliff with the water spring coming out of it.

“Why are we climbing up there?” Mia asks, but she’s already moving along with him.

“So we can see what the party looks like when we’re super tall. Come on.”

Mia’s never had any objection to climbing to a high place and spying down on the world. She stuffs a couple of sweet rice cakes in a pocket before she leaves the buffet table.

It’s not such a high cliff. It just takes a minute to get up there.

But it is kind of a fun view, all the same. She’s put up enough lights that they can see the edges of the crop fields with the promise of plentiful food tomorrow and the day after that. The little decorative triangles of the bunting aren’t the fanciest thing she’s ever tried to make, but they add color, and she thinks it wasn’t half bad for a rush job.

From up here, it’s easy to see just how much she’s built. An entire town, and farmland enough to make sure no one has to go hungry.

She’s starting to feel like she’s earned the title of Builder that people keep throwing her way.

“You could carve a throne out of this hill and give everybody orders, like Lulu,” Malroth ventures after they’ve sat in silence for a minute. He says it in that uncertain tone he uses sometimes, when he maybe half remembers something and isn’t sure if it’s an acceptable idea.

Mia shivers. Something about the suggestion makes her feel uneasy, like a reminder of a mostly-forgotten nightmare. She suspects she’s happier not remembering any more than that right now.

“That’d be boring,” she says, rather than talking about her actual feelings. “Sitting in one place, never making anything yourself.”

“Huh.”

They sit in one place for a minute, doing nothing but watching the party, and although she doesn’t usually mind a comfortable silence, Mia feels a little self-conscious about it right after claiming it’s boring, so she jumps into a new topic of conversation.

“You know, I’ve never had anyone like you hang around me before.”

“Someone who’s bad at building?” Malroth sounds just a little glum.

Mia shakes her head and hurries to clarify: “No, no. Not that. You know I don’t care whether or not you can build; you do plenty of other things. I meant I haven’t known somebody who acts impressed with everything I build. I’m used to getting way more criticism.”

“Oh.” Malroth thinks that over for a moment. “Well, that last house you built is...probably too hard to knock down. If they decide they want it smaller later, they’re gonna have to spend all day on breaking the wall, if I’m not around.”

Mia gives him a puzzled look, then blinks in sudden understanding. A giggle tries to sneak its way into her voice as she asks, “Are you trying to criticize my work?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

She breaks into a full laugh. “No. I mean, I appreciate the thought. And if you do see a really big problem, it’s okay if you tell me. But no. I meant that it’s really nice that you’re so supportive. I’m grateful.”

“Oh.” Malroth stares into the lights of the settlement.

The silence that settles between them isn’t uncomfortable, but Mia’s just starting to think about going back down to the party when Malroth speaks again.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“With the grates.”

“What?”

“You said you’re full of grates.”

“What?”

“Did you eat them on purpose?”

Mia has to think hard for a long moment before she figures that one out. Then she gives Malroth a crooked smile as she says, “Ah. No, I said I’m grateful. Thankful. I’m...happy, because of what you do, even though you didn’t have to do it.”

Explaining it at length makes her face feel warm, but it wasn’t so long ago that her own understanding of gratitude finally caught up to the average citizen’s. Erik’s generosity had always been a given in her young life, a constant that she’d taken for granted, and to listen to the Vikings, gratitude was just a word that meant you owed them every minute of your day in return for their cold leftover table scraps. It wasn’t until she’d gone into the larger world and started voluntarily doing things to benefit other people, and she’d started receiving their genuine thanks in return, that she really began to understand the concept.

So she doesn’t really mind a little embarrassingly mushy extra exposition for Malroth.

“Oh,” he says. Once again, Mia's not entirely sure he understands, but she's fine with giving him time to process the concept.

Though to be honest, it isn’t the most comfortable thing to sit there in silence while his pumpkin-face looks away from her, inscrutable, and she’s just dropped that kind of sap into the conversation. As a distraction, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out the rice desserts she picked up earlier.

“Here,” she says, flicking a piece of pocket lint off of it before she hands one over.

She’d be embarrassed to share her pocket-food with anyone back home. Even Erik would give her flak for it these days, with his newfound obsession with manners and propriety. But she’s seen Malroth eat food off the ground, not to mention some things even she wouldn’t have categorized as food, so she doesn’t worry for a second that he’ll look down on the offering.

Sure enough, he looks over, exclaims, “Oh! Thanks!” and grabs it out of her hand. He breaks another tooth off of his pumpkin mask as he crams his fist back through the mouth of it. “These are really good,” he enthuses half-coherently around a full mouth.

Mia grins, stuffs the other one in her own mouth, and purposely talks with her mouth equally full. “I think so too,” she attempts to say.

She’s not sure if Malroth understood her muffled words, but he gives her a thumbs up anyway, and she takes a minute to appreciate how happy she is to have a friend who’s on the same page as she is.

However she got here, she’s glad to be here, and she’s glad Malroth’s with her too.

Chapter Text

The Copper Bar was fine.

The Silver Bar was even better.

The Gold Bar…

It’s not even half-built, yet. Mia’s barely even touched the job.

She sketched out the plan, sure. She even managed to lay some of the foundation before the townsfolk offered to take over, and she managed a cheeky grin and thumbs-up. Then she bolted before they even finished speaking.

Now even the Silver Bar is no good. Why didn’t she put more walls on the thing? The Gold Bar is right there, taking shape directly in her line of sight.

The Copper Bar...well, it sounds like a better idea, until she gets halfway there and her eye falls on statue-Babs along the route. Mia stands stock-still for a second, then turns blindly in another direction and starts running.

“Mia! Hey, wait up!”

Malroth’s voice is probably the only thing that could have slowed her feet right now, and she still doesn’t come to a stop, because the panicked urge to flee is still thrumming through her. But Malroth always makes her feel safer.

Even if there is a little voice in the back of her head that whispers: having a protector is no guarantee of safety.

Malroth catches up and falls into step with her, jogging alongside her. “Where to?” he asks, matter-of-fact.

“Just...not here,” Mia manages. She pays attention to where she is, finally. They’re at the entrance to the mines.

“Okay. Want to go for a ride?” Malroth waves a hand at the mine carts nearby. “I’ll give us a push!”

The panic is still coiled up inside of her, but a little reflexive smile finds its way onto her face anyway. “Okay. Sure.” Trust Malroth to just roll with it when she’s being weird.

She climbs into the first cart, and Malroth makes good on his word, pushing the carts until he’s running at full tilt, and then he vaults into the cart in the back of the chain. His laughter echoes off of the cavern walls as they fly along the dimly lit tracks. The panic morphs a little bit towards simple adrenaline as the wind of their passing blows the bangs out of Mia’s face.

By the time they reach the end of the tracks she’s laid, they’ve lost enough speed that she doesn’t bother with brakes, and she’s regained enough daring to pull the reckless maneuver Malroth gets such a kick out of: leaping out of the cart right before it jumps off the tracks and goes skidding off to crash into the wall. Malroth’s laughter picks up as he follows her move.

She’ll have to give the carts a once-over before they use them again. But it was worth it, she thinks, as Malroth grins and gives her a high-five.

Her own smile flickers at the contact, and she knows she’s being weird to stare, but she can’t help it. She watches him for long enough to remind herself three times in a row that he’s not turning to gold from her touch.

“Hey. You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says. Then, “No. I don’t know.”

“What’s wrong?” Malroth asks. He looks around with a clenched fist, like he’s checking for a monster that might have bitten her, then returns to looking at her with a worried expression.

Mia makes a quiet, failed attempt at a laugh, then looks away and shakes her head. “It’s complicated.”

“Is it a Builder thing?”

“No. Not really.”

“Oh. Can I help? Do you need something to eat? I see a mushroom over there.”

Mia waves a hand. “No. It’s just...Ugh. Come on, let’s just walk. I don’t feel like standing still right now.”

“Okay.” Malroth falls into step again as she starts walking back alongside the tracks.

She manages a couple dozen paces in silence before she blurts out, “I was a statue once.”

“You were?”

She takes a deep breath. She’s surprised she just said that out loud. Normally she deals with that part of her life by pretending it never happened, as much as she can. Not that it was the easiest thing to do, with Erik looming over her with his extra five years of height and experience as a constant reminder, but sometimes she can forget the details.

“My brother found a magic necklace and gave it to me. I put it on, and every time I touched something, it turned into gold. Then when I tried to take it off, it turned me into gold.”

“What?” Malroth’s anger is clear in his voice. “Where’s this brother now? You want me to make him sorry?”

“It wasn’t on purpose!” Mia interrupts, realizing her mistake. Another little smile inappropriately pops up on her face for a short moment. “He didn’t know. I know he felt really bad about it later. It took him five years before he figured out how to turn me back.”

“Oh.” Malroth’s scowl fades a little. “Hey, but that means you got un-statued. How did that happen?”

Mia shrugs. “Magic. He found a Luminary with magic powers to help him turn me back. And no,” she adds, heading off the Babs question before he asks, “I don’t know where to get ahold of a Luminary around here. I think they only have him where I’m from.”

“Oh, well. I guess we can stick to the plan then, right? Lure out the monster and beat it up.”

“Yeah.” Mia crosses her arms as she walks. “Just gotta build the gold bar. Out of gold.”

Malroth glances over at her. “The way you were talking yesterday, I thought you liked gold.”

Mia shrugs uneasily. “I like things. Gold used to be a way to buy them, so I used to like gold. I think I was trying to be excited about mining it, because everyone else was. But after Babs? Maybe I’m kinda done with it after all.”

Malroth falls silent for a long stretch of tunnel.

Then he says, “Hey, Mia?”

“Yeah?” she answers.

“Don’t worry. About statues. Because if you ever get magicked like that again, I’ll just beat up every bad guy in the world until the spell gets broken. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll figure out how to just...break magic.”

“Break magic?” Mia says with a small laugh.

“I’m really good at breaking things. So I’m sure I could figure out how to break a dumb spell. If you needed me to.”

Mia knows it’s not always that simple. But she half-believes Malroth when he says it. And she actually does feel noticeably better all of a sudden.

“Thanks, Malroth.”

She gives him a genuine, heartfelt smile this time, and he grins back, and she decides that she can manage going back to town, now, as long as Malroth is by her side.

Chapter Text

“Hey! What are you lot doing up there?” a skeleton shouts up at them.

“We’re contemplating the futility of existence!” Mia shouts back down from her perch on the cliff.

“What? No we aren’t!” Malroth exclaims.

“Don’t tell him that,” Mia hisses, then shouts, “Yes we are!”

“Oh,” Malroth says. Then he bellows, “Yes we are!”

The skeleton scratches the back of his skull, then calls, “Good! Carry on!” and goes back on patrol.

Mia lets out a quiet snort as she watches him leave.

“Maybe I’m not cut out for this spy stuff after all,” Malroth grumbles in an unusual moment of self-doubt.

“You’re doing fine. Look at everything we’ve already got figured out,” Mia says, taking a turn at boosting Malroth’s spirits for once. “We’ll be done tonight, and then we’ll be free.”

“Yeah, I know.” He turns and throws a pebble off their clifftop perch. It arcs out over the seemingly-endless ocean and falls without a sound. “I just wish I could do a little more to help. You’re having to do all the work.”

“You already helped a lot. But okay, here. You can help me by tasting my new recipe and making sure it’s safe to eat.”

Mia pulls a leaf off of the charred cabbage and pushes it into Malroth’s hands. He looks a little surprised, even though this is the third time she’s tried to pull this on him.

“You made up another new recipe? What did you do this time?”

“New seasoning,” she hedges. It’s technically true. She dropped the cabbage on the ground earlier and she’s pretty sure she didn’t get all of the dirt off by wiping it on her grimy clothes.

“Okay, fine. I’ll check it for poison.”

Mia’s stomach grumbles, but she forces herself to wait until Malroth eats the whole leaf, because this is the only way she can get him to eat anything at all, ever since he gave up his first ration for her, and the guard stopped offering him food for himself.

That was the only incident on Skelkatraz that’s almost made Mia cry. After so many nights in her youth with not enough to eat, and Erik making the same sort of gesture on her behalf, giving up food during scarcity is the strongest expression of care that she can think of.

She can’t bear eating everything for days on end while Malroth just watches with a smile. So she’s tried everything she can think of to get him to at least accept some scraps of her food, and this is the only strategy she’s found that works: to claim that she might die from eating a badly-prepared meal, and to ask Malroth to test it for her.

Malroth licks his fingers after he finishes, and a moment later, he says, “I feel fine this time, too. Are you sure this recipe is even different?”

“Well, I thought it was,” Mia claims. She shrugs and starts eating her own portion.

She stares down at the scorched cabbage field as she eats.

She remembers once again the time a Viking promised half a cake to her in exchange for extra work, an unheard-of treat, then made her throw it into the sea, because in her rush to get through too many tasks, she’d only brought him a half-full wineskin that evening.

Skelkatraz never had a shot at breaking her. An entire childhood of servitude didn’t break her, and none of this could possibly break her, either.

“So, you gonna be sorry to leave this place behind?” Malroth asks.

Mia looks over to find him wearing a small smirk, and she snorts. “Not likely.”

But with a full belly and the prospect of imminent freedom, she isn’t really feeling murderous towards their captors anymore.

And because it’s Malroth, Mia admits her secret idle thoughts aloud. “In a weird way, I’m kind of glad we got to plan out our escape this way, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sneaking around like this. I used to try to steal things from the Vikings, but I wasn’t very good at it. My brother’s the one who got to do all the fun thief stuff after he left home, and he wouldn’t let me do any of it, later on.”

Malroth frowns. “Why not?”

“Says he wants to keep me from getting in trouble. Says he wants a better life for me.” Mia sighs dramatically. “I guess I see his point. People don’t like thieves, and it’s actually pretty nice being popular and having everyone look up to me for helping them with all this Building stuff. I wouldn’t want to give that up. But in a way, it’s nice that I get a chance to try out the other stuff he never let me do, too.”

“Huh. Well then, I’m glad we came here together. Hey, after we escape, let me know if you want to come back sometime, and we can escape again.”

Mia grins. “Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.”

She can instantly think of a dozen things she’d rather do, like finishing the tea room she was in the middle of building before all this happened, and feasting with Malroth until they’re both too stuffed to move.

But maybe she doesn’t wholly regret Skelkatraz. Maybe there’s a silver lining to every dark story.

Chapter Text

The cold doesn’t bother Mia.

Well, it isn’t physically uncomfortable, at least. It brought back some sour memories when she first arrived, but she’s taken a stubborn pride in resisting the temperature almost as well as Malroth, even though he seems to have some kind of internal bonfire and she swears she’s seen him steaming once or twice in the snow.

What bothers Mia is feeling trapped.

And right now, she feels like she’s the one in the jail cell.

“Oi! Miss Builder!”

Mia spits a Viking-worthy curse at the dirt wall of her latest pit only a moment before the guard grabs her shoulders and hauls her out of it.

“Please go back inside and get some rest, Miss Builder,” he says. Tonight, he doesn’t even look mad, much less surprised. He just looks tired.

“I’ve mentioned you’re making a mistake, haven’t I?” Mia suddenly feels exhausted, herself, as she picks up the conversation from the day before, when the same guard caught her only a dozen paces away from her current attempt.

“It won’t be long now, miss. You’ll see. Just a bit longer and we’ll end this war for good, and your Malroth will be free and clear.”

Mia grunts, pulls away, and stomps back to the dormitory. She thinks about slamming the door shut behind her to vent her frustration, but the sight of half a dozen injured soldiers resting there stays her hand from petty vengeance, and she only throws herself into a bed and yanks the covers up over her head.

Maybe it’s strange that she feels so alone as this, while she’s surrounded by people. Allies. People who look up to her and appreciate her.

But it’s the first time she’s been separated from Malroth since she met him, and she hates it.

She hates it for his sake: he doesn’t deserve to be locked away by himself like this. She knows he was mad about it. And after the castlefolk have developed such an excessive vigilance, they’ve thwarted all six of Mia’s rescue attempts so far. No matter where she starts the tunnel, or when, or how, they always find her. She can’t even get in range of Malroth to tell him she’s trying.

He must be angry with her, and she hates that.

She hates the separation for her own sake, too.

She’s hardly ever spent time alone throughout her life. Erik was always, always there, up until her time as a statue, which doesn’t really count.

Even that year apart, while she was at the Academie, she had friends, of sorts. She managed to spawn a rebel gang of students who stained their uniforms darker and performed unladylike cursing and snuck out at night, and she earned a degree of universal respect via her passable weapon skills, even from the older students who were too prim and proper to follow her lead.

Maybe this should feel like that. She isn’t entirely friendless, here.

But it doesn’t feel like the Academie.

Instead, this feels like the weeks right after Erik’s boyfriend un-statued her. When Erik left her behind in order to go off and save the world, and Mia was all alone with only her thoughts for company.

Once again, the one person who’s always at her side, who she can always trust to have her back, is suddenly absent.

And while recent events prove that she can stand on her own, or at least together with any arbitrary collection of allies, she finds that she doesn’t like it at all.

Despite staying up late brooding, she still wakes up before dawn, and in the quiet morning hours before anyone’s up and about besides the night watch, Mia takes a moment more to think.

What has Malroth become to her?

Has she just replaced Erik with a new brother? The notion doesn't feel accurate, but it does make her feel a new brand of guilt. She’s barely been missing Erik this whole time. His absence doesn’t sting the way Malroth’s does right now.

But she hasn’t been on anything like equal footing with Erik for years, now. He went from accomplice to guardian in the blink of an eye, from her perspective. Conspiring to keep out of the Vikings’ way one minute; the next, popping off to save the world. Mia trailing behind him, still a useless child for years after.

Then again, even when they were close in age, Erik still tried to be the protector. Still tried to tell her what to do. Still sniped at her for doing the wrong things.

Malroth insults her choices sometimes, too. But it’s always felt a little different from the way Erik always does it, and anyway, Malroth’s been doing it less and less these days. And Mia’s learned that she can push back on him: he’s been open to the possibility that he could be wrong, and she could be right.

More often than not, Malroth gets excited about Mia’s ideas.

He asks her first for information or advice, too.

In fact, she thinks that Malroth looks up to her, in a way that Erik’s never really done. And she admires Malroth in turn, in a way that feels embarrassing to contemplate ever directing at Erik.

Equals. “Partners,” she mumbles into her pillow, trying out the word before she quite realizes it’s the same one Erik uses for Eleven.

Well. That’s something she’s not actually ready to unpack, yet.

So she throws the covers on the floor — someone else can tidy up after her, she thinks, still irritated with the entire community — and races out to go finish working on the war machine in the predawn light. If she works fast enough, she won’t have time for her mind to wander over any more confusing questions.

If she works fast enough, maybe she can get Malroth free by tonight.

If her hammer strikes are loud enough to wake up the crowd of over-paranoid nincompoops, that’s too bad for them.

Chapter Text

Mia holds the glowing orbs in her hands and looks at the Buggy Buggy, and for a minute, she feels a little strange about her plans.

Of course, it’s not really the same as turning a bird into gold with a touch of her finger, leaving a once-living creature to look back at her with unseeing eyes.

Whatever these pieces of Malroth are, he seems to be done with them, and she’s pretty positive he wouldn’t mind her making a creative new use of them. He keeps wanting to be involved in building things, anyway.

But it’s just enough of a parallel that Mia starts thinking back to those older days, when she wore the necklace, and turned things to gold, and fantasized about building herself a golden palace, filled with golden art, golden monsters, gold, gold, gold.

When she felt powerful for the first time in her life. When she felt like she was going to be the one Erik looked up to for her own wealth and strength.

She remembers the days after she woke up from being a statue, when she had those bizarre images in her head that felt like memories. Maybe she’d been somehow having nightmares as a statue. Vivid flashes of herself sitting on a throne with minions surrounding her, treating her as some kind of queen among monsters. Flashes of herself with a gigantic, golden body, sporting huge golden claws.

Those visions of golden monsterhood never sat right with her in the days after she regained her freedom of movement. She tried hard to forget them, because they made her feel uneasy and afraid.

She’d lived more than a few days when she felt overwhelmed with a sudden fear that she could still somehow turn into a monster like that. Something huge and cold and greedy. Something Erik would have to come and stop.

The one thing that always helped the fear subside was the unshakeable belief that Erik would definitely come to stop her and save her from herself.

But Mia glances around herself, now, taking in all the monsters who have flocked to her cause. The distinct lack of other humans anywhere in sight.

It hasn’t bothered her. It hasn’t bothered her once since she got here.

Maybe there is something inside of her that is meant to be among monsters.

“Ith there a problem, mith? Do you need to take a retht?”

Mia glances down and smiles at the little monster looking up at her in concern, and the momentary seed of self-doubt withers away. “No, no problem. I was just thinking about what I’m doing.”

Sure, okay, in the taxonomical sense, Mia's surrounded by monsters right now.

But they’re more friends than minions. She’s no cold queen commanding a mob. She’s a Builder, here to help them save themselves from themselves.

The pattern they've followed is the same as every other village of humans that started out too afraid to embrace building. They're shaped differently on the outside, but not so much on the inside.

These monsters are just people, really. They’re silly, and anxious, and cute, and she’s sure they could get along with other humans if they’ll just spend a little more time in her company to get used to the idea.

It doesn’t matter if she’s surrounded by non-human people. It doesn’t matter if she’s making a strange yellow-tiled fortress out of material associated with Malroth’s new monstrousness.

Erik won’t need to come and rescue her from herself, because she isn’t the villain in this story. And she isn’t the one in need, either.

In this story, Mia is the one who is going to play the hero.

She’s not sure exactly what Hargon has in store for Malroth, but it seems like he’s been undergoing some kind of monstrous transformation on both a physical and mental level, in the old-fashioned fairy tale sense of the word.

At this point, she doesn’t even entirely care if Malroth’s turned into some kind of giant lizard when she gets him back, as long as she does get him back. But she’s pretty sure destroying an entire reality isn’t something Malroth actually wants to do. And in recent days, his attempts at high-fiving her are a little too destructive for her to figure out how to meet his giant scaly hands with her own.

She really misses those high-fives.

So. She’s going to find him.

She’s going to save him from himself, no matter what it costs her.

It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t know what she’s walking into. She doesn’t need to assess this fight in order to know she has to take it on. Maybe this is how Erik felt, going into battle time and again: winning is necessary, so don’t bother thinking about losing.

She’s going to be the hero Malroth needs.

She’s going to be the partner he needs.

She’s going to get back the partner she needs.

Chapter Text

“Hey, Mia! I got a pumpkin pie before the kitchen closed. Wanna split it?”

Mia looks up from her diagram with a guilty start. Once again, it’s gotten late without her noticing the passage of time.

She eyes Malroth and his offering and smirks. “Split it with you? You eat even faster than I do. I’ll be lucky if I get a tenth of it.”

“Well, if you don’t come along, you won’t get any of it. Hurry up!”

Mia laughs and agreeably chases him down the hall.

“What were you working on?” Malroth asks, his mouth still half-full.

“Oh. Just designing parts.”

“Parts for what?”

Mia shrugs. “Portals and stuff.”

“Oh. To visit home?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

In all honesty, she’s pretty sure she could have had the thing built a week ago. She’s pretending it’s important to fine-tune it, to perfect all the parts.

But really, she knows they both spotted the critical bit of information she needed to be able to travel between this world and her own, back when they were rebuilding the world together. They left a little hole between this world and that, and building a magical anchor for safety was a trivial task after that job. Everything she’s been working on this week is really just window dressing.

In one of those perceptive leaps that still somehow blindsides her coming from him, Malroth asks, “Are you not happy about going back?”

She hesitates too long, then says, “I am.” It sounds weak even to her own ears.

“Are you still mad at your brother? Listen, if he says anything bad about your work, he’s an idiot. I’ll punch him for you.”

That startles a laugh out of Mia, but she shakes her head. “No, please don’t punch my brother. Even if he does something to deserve it.”

“Well, fine. Just let me know if you change your mind.”

“Right. Thanks.” Mia smirks a little. “I will.”

She looks down to see the rest of the pie has disappeared while she was lost in thought, and she sighs dramatically. “No fair distracting me.”

Malroth smirks for a moment, then says, “Don’t worry.” He leans down, reaches under the table, and produces a second pie.

Mia laughs and digs in, swatting at Malroth’s hand with her fork when he tries to pick at the crust. She curls a defensive arm around the dessert, and Malroth sits back with a grin to watch her eat.

She manages to keep eating while her mind wanders, this time.

Has she been purposely avoiding going back to see Erik?

With her mouth full of delicious pie, and Malroth’s aggressively supportive presence across the table, Mia manages to look directly at the question without flinching away.

She has been avoiding it, hasn’t she?

It’s not that she doesn’t want to see Erik again. She does. Of course she does.

But here, in the castle she’s inspired and helped to finish, in the world she’s built, she knows what her place is. She is a Builder. She’s surrounded by people who are full of praise for her and her work. They want to be like her. They look up to her.

Erik’s never looked at her that way.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realizes, she’s been afraid that he still won’t be impressed with her.

Her older brother, who went and got older faster than she did, increasing his head start on every kind of strength, when once upon a time she’d nearly been his equal.

Her brother, who regularly “rescued” her creations from the world and stashed them away in his shed, out of sight.

Her brother, the hero, who saved her, then saved the world without her.

But now?

Now, Mia’s built entire towns to her own design.

Now, she’s saved a world of her own.

Erik made friends with the reincarnation of a hero. Mia’s forged a connection with something like a god — well, when he really needed to be one, Malroth came through, and it doesn’t really matter if today he’s got his feet on the table and he’s picking something out of his teeth — not the point.

The point is, if it really needed to be a contest, she’s surpassed Erik.

And with that realization, suddenly it doesn’t matter as much if Erik is impressed with her work or not. It doesn’t even matter if he believes her about everything that happened. She knows, and Malroth knows, and her friends all throughout this world know. She is a fantastic Builder and undeniably a hero. That won’t change.

Erik’s opinion doesn’t have to define her self-worth.

And once she can look past that, she really does miss Erik. He’s still her brother. Someone who’s always cared about her. He maybe hasn’t done everything the way she wished he would, but he still came back for her and saved her when she needed it. He was the only really good thing in her life for years and years.

She wonders for a moment if he’ll be a little jealous of Malroth, the way she used to feel about El, for challenging the title of “most important person” in her life.

Mia pushes the near-empty pie pan back across the table so Malroth can claim the last couple of bites, which he inhales without hesitation.

“Hey, so it’s pretty late, right?” Malroth says, gesturing at the dark sky out the window.

“Yeah, guess it is. Should we head back to the house?”

“Actually,” he says, and a strange expression crosses his face. An unusually tentative smile. “There’s something I want you to see.”

“Okay, sure.”

Malroth leads her downstairs, then behind the grand staircase of the castle. There’s a little door there.

Malroth gives Mia another strangely hesitant look, then opens the door.

Mia peers into the dimly lit little room, and at first she thinks she’s supposed to be looking for some particular piece of furniture stashed in this new storage closet.

But then Malroth moves forward and clambers over and beyond the empty bathtub that’s sitting immediately inside the doorway, and he turns around and waits for her to join him.

So she follows suit, climbing over the tub without comment, and when he doesn’t say anything else, just watches her anxiously, she takes another look around the small space.

There’s not much else in here, except for three beds wedged side-by-side into the far end of the room.

It reminds her of the kind of chaotic building the castlefolk tend to do when left to their own devices.

But Malroth’s watching her more intently than he ever has when she inspects something she didn’t build herself.

In a sudden flash of insight, she asks, “Malroth, did you build this room yourself?”

“I helped. I didn’t build the walls, but I carried stuff in, and I stuck the candle on the wall myself. We all just thought it would be nice to have a guest room in the castle, so people can come visit, and also when you get stuck on a project until after dark, we can just stay the night here instead of going all the way home.”

Mia looks at Malroth’s bashful face, and she knows she would sooner sail herself back to Skelkatraz and lock herself alone in a cell than criticize his room design at this moment.

“It’s wonderful. I love it,” she says, and in spite of the bathtub, it’s the complete truth.

Malroth takes the middle bed, of course. Mia wonders what he’ll do in case there’s ever a third guest in the castle and they claim that one first, threatening to separate the two of them. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time Malroth’s fallen asleep lying across the foot of her bed like a cat rather than choosing his own bed.

She’s already fallen half asleep when Malroth speaks up in a low voice.

“You do want me to come back with you, right? To see your home?”

Fortunately, this is an easy answer, even barely-awake. “Of course I do.”

“Are you...Do you want to come back here again?”

“I, yeah, I’d like to. Unless you decide you like it better over there, I guess, maybe.”

“Me?”

“Yeah? I mean.” His unusual hesitation brings her wide awake with a shot of adrenaline, and she adds, “Unless you don’t want to keep hanging out with me.”

“No, I do. I mean. You want to, right?” he says.

Mia relaxes. “I do.”

Malroth sighs with evident relief of his own. “Good.”

Mia snorts, shifting into amusement now that the scary question is settled. “Look, you think I’m going to ever leave you behind, after everything? Well, you’re dead wrong. I want you with me always, as long as you want to stay.”

“Good,” Malroth says, more softly. Then he shifts back into his usual brash tone to add, “That means I can tell everyone how great you are, in case they’re too stupid to know.”

“Thanks, Malroth.” Mia smiles. “I appreciate that.”

On an impulse, she reaches out with one hand until her knuckles bump into his elbow, and then she moves her hand down to rest her palm on top of his.

Malroth gives it a full minute before he comments.

“Is this a high-five?”

Mia grins. “Yeah. It sure is.”

Another pause. Then: “Can we do it this way more often?”

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

“Cool.”

In the end, the problem of travel is exactly as difficult as Mia expected — that is, not difficult at all.

And after arriving at Dundrasil, she quickly learns that her nerves about talking to Erik about her work were built up all out of proportion to reality.

Erik gives her half an hour of a tearful reunion and his full attention while she talks about what she’d been up to, before Malroth jumps in and starts swapping stories of things she’s made.

Somehow, this immediately leads to the three of them traipsing through the castle grounds and cramming into Erik’s “treasure room” together, to Mia’s vague discomfort.

“Oh, hey I found it! Look at this one, Malroth! This was the first piece she gave me!”

“Erik, don’t show him the macaroni —”

Malroth cuts off Mia’s protest. “Wow! It looks just like a real sabrecat! Like the ones she carved in the first room she made for us!”

“I mean, I’ve made better —”

“Oh, right! Mia, look, I put your last sabrecat panel above the door in here, see?” Erik carefully steps over another old and lopsided sculpture to lead the way for a closer look.

“Awesome!”

Mia trails along, eyes the half a dozen flaws she immediately spots in her old work, and decides to resort to drastic measures.

“Yeah, speaking of that carving I did, it’s been a pretty big adventure in the other world. Did I mention that Malroth’s a God of Destruction?”

“A...what?” Erik looks over at her.

“Yeah, he can pretty much destroy anything with basically a single touch.”

Erik glances at Malroth, then at the nearby art collection, with an expression of growing concern.

Malroth gives her a faintly wounded look, so she steps over and takes hold of his hand, which seems to mollify him.

Erik looks down and stares at their linked hands.

Mia backpedals a little. “I mean, only when he wants to. Mostly uses it for good. Anyway, we’ve done a lot more besides just me building things. So maybe we can go sit and talk about that?”

“Uh, yeah.” Erik runs a hand through his hair. “Sure. Yes. Let’s close up the Treasure Room and go somewhere less fancy. I mean, more comfortable.”

Erik still looks flustered and off balance for a minute as he leads them away. Until he catches Mia’s smirk, and then he sighs. But he smiles, too.

“You’re still a pest,” he says. But he touches her on the shoulder and adds, “I’m so glad you’re back.”

Mia’s expression softens into a smile as well. “I’m glad, too.”

Malroth’s hand tightens on hers, and he chimes in, “I’m glad we’re here, too.”

Mia grins and squeezes his hand in return. “I’m glad we’re all here.”

And she is. She looks at Erik to one side of her and Malroth to the other, and she is nothing but glad.