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Adrenaline carries Borra through the vows and half-way through the reception when his heart begins to beat too hard against his chest and breathing becomes a struggle. He stumbles toward the edge of the manicured lawn, seeking a ledge to launch himself into the air because all he knows is that he needs to be alone, up in the sky, where no one can see the tears streaking through his war paint.
She stops him. He can feel her at his back, like vines crawling across his skin.
“I’m sorry,” she says. It’s not enough.
Borra glances back at her. By the old gods, the power just flows through her now, curls and shimmers like a living thing. Magic is coming back to the world and Maleficent is its herald. But even her magic can’t fix what’s broken inside him, because true love and happy endings only happen for the main characters of history. And Borra has finally come to realize that he is a mere footnote.
“I’m going to see him,” he says, weighed down with the knowledge that he’d given up Conall’s last moments only to lead his people to slaughter. What a joke he must look to her.
Maleficent holds out her hand. “Let me take you.”
+
There is nothing left but ashes. Borra kneels where he last saw the other half of his soul, the fae who believed so much in goodness that he died for it. Small flowers curl soft tendrils around his fingers as they dig into the moss-covered ground. The noise that comes from him sounds alien and guttural to his own ears, the cry of a wounded, dying thing, an animal for which killing would be a mercy.
He falls asleep with one hand stretched out, the rest of his body curled tightly against the cold of a lonely world. He’s so tired.
+
The first thing he feels is warmth, like fresh blood or summer rain. He can feel breath on his cheek, or maybe it’s the wind. Borra doesn’t want to shatter the illusion. His eyes remain closed and he barely allows himself to breathe, let alone move. There is the scent of fresh flowers and burnt wood in the air.
“Do you know that you snore?”
If he had imagined anything Conall would say to him, in that fantasy world where he is alive again, alive and breathing and real, those words certainly hadn’t been on his list. He pops one eye open. All he can see is Conall’s face, it’s his whole world, his sun and moon and stars. He presses his eye shut again.
“I think I’m going mad.”
“I hate to break it to you, my friend, but that fox has left the burrow.”
Conall is grinning at him. Conall is right there, right in front of him. Borra’s sight is blurring and his heart is beating and they are both alive. He launches himself at Conall and they tumble sideways across the meadow of the phoenix.
+
Conall touches him like he’s the one who died. They’ve never really done this, always stuck across a divide of politics and duty, Conall trying to rein in the worst of their people’s impulses and Borra doing what needed done.
But here under the boughs of the trees in their old familiar home, left empty now as their people have taken the invitation to live in the moors, there is space and time for something new. Conall’s fingers tangle in his hair.
“There’s blood on your face,” Conall says, tracing the crimson lines.
Borra sighs. “It’s not mine.” It wouldn’t be, the fae died quick and decisively, struck into ash within seconds. Only the humans had been given the privilege of blood.
“Let me wash it off.”
+
The waterfall is clear and cold, so deep it is hard to see the bottom. Conall leads him carefully by the hand, like he is something precious that could be lost on the way. He is reverent and attentive and it takes Borra apart in ways that have nothing to do with the dirt and grime on his skin.
Borra sits with his feet in the water, his back to Conall who uses his cupped hands to let water flow over his hair and down his naked back.
“I didn’t think I would survive the battle,” he says quietly. An admission of something dark and desperate. He didn’t really want to survive the battle.
Conall leans his chin on Borra’s shoulder. “I’m glad you did.”
Borra is, too.
+
They kiss for the first time in the moonlight.
+
Borra can’t stop looking at Conall, the way the light reflects on his skin, the way he smiles every time he catches him looking from across the fire. They’ve been quiet since nightfall, enjoying the evening together with a deliberate distance - not the distance of uncertainty, but the distance of anticipation.
They share a meal of fruit and mead, Conall taking the chance to feed him small morsels with his beautiful fingers.
Borra catches the hand as it darts away and presses a kiss to Conall’s knuckles. “Let’s go to bed.”
+
His body comes alive under Conall’s touch, finally and truly. It feels like a flame, the fire of a phoenix rising from the ashes. His wings spread above them, free and powerful, and he knows that this is the truth he has been missing.
They have been so occupied with survival that neither of them knew how to live, neither dared to lose focus. Deep down, Borra knows that if he had allowed himself to love Conall like this any earlier, it would have destroyed them all. He could not have chosen the tribe above this love that so completes him. He would have tried, certainly, because he knows Conall as he knows himself, and they both care so very deeply about the last remnants of their people, but.
Looking into Conall’s eyes, he sees the same certainty reflected back at him. Borra smiles and all is good with the world.