Chapter Text
How was he able to give a reason to all of that taken place across the last year and a half?
A pull. A gravity.
Fate, Sun be cursed. Or second chance?
Upon release from Sunstone Rock, he decided to make amends with his past, and, by the Sun, the array of places he could have started from was vast. Forbidden West with its Cinnabar Sands and the Daunt might have been a better choice – the Red Raids were especially bountiful out there. He has travelled half the known world inflicting Buried Years on every tribe Jiran eyed to enslave.
But he made his way to the Sacred Lands, catching the news of the Braves being butchered during the Proving and the tribe being devastated, once again unable to guard their borders.
And he met Her.
Tenacious, hungry for justice and revenge, yet painfully pure, as if just coming right of her mother’s embrace. Her eyes like a greenshine lit by the moonlight, her curiosity boundless, her nature like fire, and her questions to him as if she’s looking for excuse for his blood spilling habits.
Their partnership on the bandits’ camps was invigorating. Their smalltalks on all the little crossroads so refreshing.
The duel… has had him bemused. Astonished, even.
He’d trade anything for her to offer him to join her clause against the Eclipse after she rejected his proposition. She didn’t, though, and left him on that sun lit mesa with the wound he has never faced before.
But he still arrived at Meridian, and that last battle had his blood stirred, with her by his side. He wished to join her at the Spire, to eliminate whatever was messing with her. To make her see how his blood is boiling for her, how his bow is praising her.
And then she was gone. First carried away by the feasting crowd, then, as he heard, she fled from the Palace right in the middle of the feast, thrown in her honor.
With these lands left at peace but his soul all but confused, he headed West.
Now, Gauntlet Runs. As if it wasn’t a miracle enough for him to leave the petty duels aside in favor for the splash of metal hooves and the rapture of speed and challenge, the ruthlessness and sweat of the race… She showed up. She raced with his squad, raced with him with such abandon and conviction that she didn’t seem to notice how much of him there was in her. And inflicted another storm in his restless soul. Always curious, always peppering him with questions, never sated by the answers he provides, poking at his peculiarities, his Firebird stole another part of him, another breath of him.
He offered her to stay, their score now even.
She declined, but he felt she was restraining herself, still having that task ahead which stole her life from her. She looked flustered at the offer, though trying to avert his attention from it with wit. But her body betrayed her, her gestures and movements reflecting his stances, her stare ignited by his innuendos.
He has enough reasons now.
Enough of them to join her in any other fight she anticipates, to follow her to any part of the world she’s heading to, to provide her with any sort of release or outlet. Enough of them to pursue any kind of attention or connection he can get from her. Even if that would make him perpetually lurk in the shadows of her flame.
Somewhere down that winding path they must find the road that would entwine them.
Third time’s a charm, they say.