Work Text:
There was much the head mage Alexander Stowe longed to do, now that the world had settled down and his arm was paralyzed.
He longed to fly on Simber's back again without fear of losing his balance. He longed to swim, to feel the pressure build in his chest as he held his breath, Spike Furious at his side. He longed to carry his little sisters, one fast asleep in each arm, back to their room for a nap. He longed for the rush of adrenaline at seeing a new island on the horizon and wondering if they would be met with new friends or new foes.
And he longed to paint again. Many things, really, but there was one thing in particular he wanted: to paint Sky, to eternally capture her studying something, the concentration on her face, her arms lifted and her hair between her fingers as she tied it back.
Alex thought of it often, when she drifted off to sleep next to him, or when they ate, or when they sat outside on the beach together, or any other countless times throughout their languid days spent together. He could've painted her over and over and over again, in every situation. He wanted to forever memorialize her quirks and mannerisms, replicate the way the sunlight scattered through the leaves across the freckles dotting her cheeks, note every scar on her skin where she'd survived the worst and the exact way she held a pencil or a needle or a freshly-picked flower that she fancied.
He pictured a gallery wall filled with nothing but paintings of Sky, so lifelike that perhaps they felt compelled to move, to push out of being flat renderings and gain 3-D form. That wasn't the intended purpose, of course, but he was fascinated with the idea of capturing her in such perfect detail that the thought didn't leave his head. He'd done it once before; if only he still could, he would've tried again and again for that.
No, really, what he wanted was for the whole rest of the world to see her framed in the way she was in his mind. She deserved that much, he thought—to be preserved forever as an important part of history, but so blissfully alive that no one would forget that she had been a real, adventurous, intelligent, kind person. He wanted everyone to know how amazing she was.
Alex wanted nothing more than to gift that to her, to prove that she was his everything, that she was appreciated and cherished and fantastically human. It would prove his devotion to her, immortalize his love for her in the only way he really knew how. Maybe then she'd stop feeling like there was something missing that Warbler had taken from her forever. There would be no words needed, no physical touch, no future in an eternal version of a moment in time.
His arm was still paralyzed, so it was impossible—but he considered it.