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From the day he was born, Steve’s life was mapped out for him.
There were certain expectations tied to being a Harrington, and Steve did his best to meet them. Joined the city guard at sixteen, became captain like his father and grandfather and great-grandfather before him.
“It is lonely at the top,” Steve’s father used to tell him.
Sometimes he wonders if that is why they chose this place to be his prison. His punishment for falling for a criminal, for betraying them to save the man he loves.
A magical vault on a floating island, miles and miles in the sky. Set at the center of an eternal tornado, guarded by dragons and griffins and manticores.
If there's a top of the world, it must be this place.
And lonely it is. Terribly, dreadfully lonely.
His cell messures a few feet in either direction. He cannot see the walls - they're the same blinding white as the floor and ceiling - but he knows they're there. He has spent hours running his fingers over every inch of them. There's no door, no windows, no bed. No colors. No sound. He tried to scream, in the beginning, but the magic swallows even his own voice.
He is starting to forget what it sounded like. Starting to forget what colors are. What touch is. He clings to the memory of brown eyes gazing into his, of lips laying blazing trails across his skin, of a rumbling, boisterous laugh. He dreads the day it'll slip from his grip.
It starts as a high whirr in his ear, a pulsing throb in his skull. The same sensation he knows from taking a hit to the head. This is it then, he thinks dully. He's going mad. It is the only explanation.
Why else would the pressure-thrum in his head keep getting louder, like the echo of fists pounding on a wall? Why else would he be seeing things that aren't real? Shadows moving behind the white, like silhouettes through a paper screen.
And then he blinks and the white splinters.
The colors return first. The white shatters like a mirror, raining down all around him, and the shards are drenched in a sunset sky - blues and purples and oranges and the brilliant glow of stars.
Sensation rushes back in through the cracks. The caress of wind in his hair, on his skin. The taste of dust and smoke on his tongue. The scent of magic, sharp and angry in the air - and beyond it, something else. Something familiar. Tobacco and sandalwood and leather.
In the center of the falling mirror shards stands a figure, dark against the white. Black armor gleaming in the dying light, dark hair billowing around it like a halo. Eyes so much deeper than in his memories.
The figure opens its arns. Steve stumbles towards them as if a rope has been wrapped around his hammering heart. Muscle memory moves his tongue. The name that tumbles from his lips is the first sound he hears.
“Eddie.”