Michael and Moira sit at the table as the red, red sun finally sinks below the horizon. They are smiling at each other. Their demons are smiling at each other. And for a moment, when Michael laughs like a leaky mug, Moira leans over the railing and looks into the deep, dark pit of him and sees--what? He does not even remember. Michael worries he will have to reel her in, put his shaking hands on her chest and pull her back from the edge before it swallows her like it has swallowed him. 

She lean back on her own and, inwardly, Michael lets out a breath he had not meant to hold.
He is not all poison - there are beautiful things in Michael, like the sun and the sand and the sea, and possibly they are larger than all that black - but sadness has a way of compounding when it is touched by another.

He is not surprised to see the ghost of old fear float across her face - it is there in his own wide eyes, his racing heart, a smile that is so gentle it is almost not there at all. When the last threads of light die out across the space between them they are both pale-faced in the blue of the night, now lit only by the string of lights lining the room. She does not look powerful now, does not look like a phoenix risen from her own ashes with the vengeful fury of any other lore-beast. She does not look like the Moira that stood before their Court in a wreath of sunlight with all of Denocte on her sturdy back.

She does not look like any of these things. She looks like Moira, worried and breathless, so scared of Michael and his soft voice and his laugh like apple cider. It is like a fist around his heart and he has to remember to breathe.

At first he doesn't answer her, just watches, head tilted just enough to study her properly, expression schooled into something other than the fist around his heart or the way he is screaming please in his head over and over, until it has stopped being a word altogether, just a sound, just a hymn in the dark of the bar and the far-off rumbled of the other patrons. He does not want her to drown. He is not to be drowned in. He does not know how to keep her afloat, either.

She ducks under his nose, and Michael can smell the perfume of her hair, more delicate than he had expected, somehow, and not at all like the ash and glowing coals of the rest of her. He prays for--something--with closed eyes. Strength. Guidance. He doesn't know. Michael breathes in the essence of her, all her sadness and fear and shackles, and he exhales through his nose in one long breath.

He lifts his own chin from her head, and then Moira's, and their eyes meet, fire on ocean.
"You are not vulnerable."

He stares at her for as long as it takes the bartender to cross the floor, lay another drink at the edge of the table, and walk away, huffing. He is searching her--her face, her eyes, her mouth, her dark and impossible hair. His telekineses is still holding her, too gently, as if he is scared she might break in his grip. She is not vulnerable. She could never be. He begs, "What do you have to confess?" 

drowning never felt so much like flying as it does right now

The music is quiet, crooning. Michael can see the string lights in her eyes, small as the star-freckled sky and just as dark. The murmur of other patrons has become almost comfortable now: this is it, this moment that separates them, a moment on the precipice. He holds her so gently, like he's afraid, though he isn't. 

Michael knows now that there is no fear on earth that could grip him any tighter than he lets it.
Isra is not all monsters and gods. Sometimes she is still an aspiration. Sometimes.

Moira turns her eyes down, under lashes that bat like a wing, and Michael lets her go, as he has let many things go before her. Letting go is as easy as opening the hand and tipping it -- all the sand falls out in wet clumps or streams, with only a stray grain or two that sticks to the palm, the fingers. He lets her go like a bottled letter, green-glassed and waiting.

He lets her go like he had let everything else go: with little more than a hitched breath, not a second thought. This is simply the way of things. It always has been. It always will be.

What do you want, Michael?
This, he thinks. It isn't so hard to draw new lines on a map. It isn't so hard to point yourself toward a new star, a brighter star. She takes stock of his suffering and does not see that not everyone is owned by their trauma or drowned in the blood of their hemmorhaging heart. When she is looking away he takes just a moment to be very sad, in a way that he recognizes but can't quite name, in a way that is as familiar to him as his own skin.

And still, at the end of the day, nothing is lost.
Michael lifts that same strand of hair off her forehead and rests his lips on the space left behind. He closes his eyes. He breathes slow: in, out.

What are you doing to me? She asks. He wants to say it. He wants to say it so bad it hurts.
Instead, Michael says, "Pushing you, a little too far, I think." before kissing the space between her eyes as gently as he can before. He leans back, smiling like the sun. It is genuine, and kind, and loving. Perhaps it says more than he ever could. Michael picks up the drink left behind on the table, grimaces as it burns its way down his throat, then smiles, again.

"You can tell me when you're ready. Do you want to go home?"
He wishes he could say it in a way that doesn't sound like old ships, or breaking waves. He wishes he could say it like it wasn't an apology. He can't.

drowning never felt so much like flying as it does right now

drowning never felt so much like flying as it does right now