#hooooooooly cow this is the longest thing i've done for sormik week yet

[somefinelipstickonthatpig]

Room for One More

"...it’s…also kinda sad, isn’t it?” he says. “To think everything that has happened to us is all just fate? That everything’s predetermined and we’re heading towards some inevitable point?”

“Maybe,” Mikleo mumbles. “Or maybe that makes it easier to deal with.”

Sorey blinks. He looks to the seraph beside him and again Mikleo doesn’t meet his gaze. “Is easier better?”

Mikleo shrugs. He doesn’t know anymore.

Sormik Week 2017 - Day 7: Camlann, Family/Fate

[Read on AO3]

They meet just outside of Elysia. Grassy earth passes quickly under hurrying feet. The night sky is open and with joy in his lungs, Sorey wraps his arms around Mikleo as soon as the water seraph is within reach. He squeezes him tightly, breathless with gratitude. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” he cries and it’s a wonder the other seraphim of the village don’t hear him from here.

Mikleo stiffens; his hands are at his sides. His cheeks dust with red. “What, did you really think I would just let you leave Elysia on your own?”

“I really, really hoped not!” Sorey says, but he doesn’t loosen his hold. His chin tucks into a teal shoulder. “But I guess I shouldn’t have doubted you. You always come through, Mikleo!”

“You always come through, Mikleo!” Sorey says in Marlind, the adrenaline from the battle with the drake still coursing through his veins. He places his fisted hands against his waist, a wide grin splitting his face.

Mikleo huffs with a sour-eyed grape look to the human. “Well, I should hope so. That was a tough one.”

Sorey laughs through the exhaustion so evident in his form. Dirtied and scratched from head-to-toe—Mikleo wonders sometimes how his childhood friend can still somehow radiate like an embodiment of sunshine even after such a harrowing fight. “Yeah!” he enthuses. “I’d probably be dead if it wasn’t for you and that bow, haha. That’s pretty nifty!”

‘Nifty’ isn’t sure what Mikleo would call an ancient weapon they had both just armatized to use and to save his best friend’s life. But sure. It’s ‘nifty.’

It does not escape his notice as they turn to head back into town that there’s a slight limp in his human’s gait. A tentative step and then something like a half-hop and drag that Mikleo assumes is supposed to look like another step. He frowns. “Sorey,” he starts—but whatever he wants to say dies on his tongue when those green eyes turn to him, expectant and innocent.

“What?” Sorey asks.

Mikleo sighs.

With Sorey, sometimes, you just have to pick your battles, Zenrus had once said. Mikleo doesn’t think he’s ever heard better advice.

“Just…be more careful next time, okay?”

A considerate hum. “Okay!”

“Mikleo! Be more careful next time!”

Mikleo dangles into the abyss, saved only by a hand on the back of his collar. He blinks for a moment into the darkness beneath and thinks he can hear the crumble of rock finally hit the bottom.

Oh.

It had all happened so fast; the water seraph wasn’t sure when he had fallen. Sorey was rambling about this newfound side of the St. Mabinogio ruins and the Shepherd’s mural on the wall when he had turned away. Mikleo remembers that. He had offered a different perspective on the illustration and then suddenly—

“You know, I can save myself,” Mikleo says with a frown. “You don’t have to catch me.”

Sorey just grunts as he pulls up his friend from the newfound hole in the walkway. He pants with breath Mikleo doesn’t need to take as the seraph dusts himself off and stands.

Sorey looks up at him and pouts. “Yeah, well. You could just say ‘thank you.’”

Mikleo pauses. His amethyst eyes turn to his human. Green stares back and he sighs. He turns. He holds out a pale and slender hand, which Sorey takes. “All right. Thank you, Sorey.”

He lifts Sorey to his feet, who pops up with a bounce.

“You’re welcome!”

“Thank you, Mikleo.”

Sorey says it so simply and so quietly, that at first Mikleo forgets they are talking about losing his best friend. He forgets that they are in Lastonbell and that they are looking up at the stars. He forgets that Sorey just told him he wants to become a vessel for an imminently powerful seraph and that it may be the only way to save the world.

He swallows down his fear and nods. People have given up more, he thinks. In the whole history of the world that Sorey and himself have wanted to explore with their own two hands and feet, there are others who have lost more than he will in these coming days.

It should be fine. It’s a good plan.

Mikleo wonders if this is what courage means, to feel how Sorey’s hands remain so steady when his own shake the instant the human reaches to hold him.

“I’m sorry,” Sorey whispers into his hair.

Mikleo shakes his head.

“I’m sorry,” Mikleo says as he sits next to Sorey on the inn bed in Loghrin. His legs are brought up to his chest, his pale hands resting against his knees. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, no,” Sorey urges. The Shepherd leans forward from the headboard and into the water seraph’s space. All day, the human hasn’t strayed too far from Mikleo’s side; not since the Iris Gem completed its story. Not since the answers they were given don’t match up with the answers they were hoping for. “It’s an interesting thought. I’ve never looked at it like that before.”

Mikleo can’t bring himself to look into too-green of eyes. He sighs.

Sorey leans back. His own legs lie out in front of him, hands loosely lying in his lap. Mikleo wants to hold one, but he wonders if it would be welcome. Sorey tilts his head to look at the ceiling. There’s a thoughtful expression on his face.

“But it’s…also kinda sad, isn’t it?” he says. “To think everything that has happened to us is all just fate? That everything’s predetermined and we’re heading towards some inevitable point?”

“Maybe,” Mikleo mumbles. “Or maybe that makes it easier to deal with.”

Sorey blinks. He looks to the seraph beside him and again Mikleo doesn’t meet his gaze. “Is easier better?”

Mikleo shrugs. He doesn’t know anymore.

“Is easier better?” Gramps asks, turning the spit over the fire between them with slow care.

“Ye…“ Sorey stops himself. He thinks about it. His young green eyes flicker to their elder and then back to his hands and the way they turn the prickleboar meat. In the firelight, Mikleo thinks Sorey’s eyes look especially like the sun. “…n-no…?”

Zenrus chuckles. He turns to Mikleo. “All right. And you, Mikleo? Is easier better?”

“Well, yes,” the answer comes with surprising ease. Mikleo straightens up with pride as the lightning seraph across from them makes a soft and pleased sound. “Because why do something the hard way, if doing it a simpler way achieves the same results?”

“He brings a good point.” Zenrus turns again to the younger of the two. “Well? What do you say, Sorey? Will you defend your position?”

“I…” Sorey blinks hard and frowns. Two tiny hands come up to ruffle the sides of his own head. His Elysalark earrings jingle and he huffs. “…I…I don’t know! It’s hard.”

“Why is it hard?”

“Because…” The young human child sighs with an exaggerated sound. Those green eyes look away. He folds his hands under his bare knees, digging into the earth. “…because Mikleo’s right. But…”

Zenrus watches him for a long moment. A thick, white eyebrow raises. “’But?’”

Sorey frowns and lowers his eyes to the spot right before his knees.

“Sorey?”

He shakes his head. His shoulders slump. Mikleo has the image of a small candle snuffed out, enveloped by shadow. “Never mind.”

Mikleo fights off the smug feeling that crawls over him. He always did enjoy winning an argument over Sorey.

“Never mind,” Sorey sighs into the night.

Lailah, leaning against the balustrade at their room in Ladylake, shakes her head quickly. She nudges the Shepherd’s elbow beside her with persistent pokes. “No, no! Tell me, tell me!”

Mikleo doesn’t look up from the book he is reading. He reads the same line twice, the side of his head pressed against his knuckles, propped up on the arm rest of his chair.

When Sorey finally speaks, he turns his head to listen.

“I’ve always thought…” the young man begins, and then sighs again. His finger traces the woodgrain of the railing. “…so like, it’s easier to stay inside and read books, right? You don’t have to go anywhere and you don’t have to do anything, and you still get to learn about new things and hear about all these cool places and stories and it’s great, right?”

“Right,” Lailah follows with a nod.

Mikleo presses his chin into the palm of his hand, his eyes gazing at some fixed point on the adjacent wall.

“But then, you miss out on experiencing it all for yourself, too,” Sorey says quietly. “I think that’s why the Celestial Record and other books about the stories of the world are so cool, because after you read about ‘em, you can go visit ‘em and see their stories for yourself.”

Lailah hums and it’s a soft, musical sound. She presses a thin finger to her chin, thoughtful. “But isn’t that dangerous? Sometimes those ruins aren’t very safe.”

Sorey shrugs. He straightens up and rocks back to the heels of his feet, hands grasping onto the railing to keep himself from falling back. He grins to the sky. “Well, yeah, but maybe that’s why sometimes what’s easier isn’t always better. Y’know?”

“Ah!” Lailah brightens. “I think I get it, yes.”

Mikleo turns to his book. He doesn’t remember the next page he reads.

He doesn’t know if he gets it.

“I think I get it.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

Mikleo can’t turn to see the fire seraph sitting behind him, though he wishes he could. Lailah’s long, pale hair curls in the grass beside him. His eyes drift to the pillar of light down the hill, protruding from a city lost deep within ruins.

“You’re afraid,” Lailah says it so simply and so quietly that at first Mikleo forgets that they are talking about seeing his best friend again. He forgets they are sitting on the outskirts of his and Sorey’s hometown, staring at the only thing he has left of his other half. He doesn’t know if he wants to remember. “You’re afraid he won’t wake up. Right?”

Mikleo sighs and closes his eyes. He presses his forehead into his crossed arms over his knees. Lailah’s fingers in his hair are nimble and gentle, gathering his long locks back behind his ears.

Her voice is just as tender. “You needn’t be. He’ll return to you.”

Mikleo takes a breath. “How do you know?” he asks into his arms.

“Because I know Sorey. And Sorey would never not choose to see you again.”

Mikleo swallows. “What if he doesn’t have a choice?”

Lailah hums. She holds Mikleo’s hair up as she ties it.

Mikleo doesn’t know what he wants to say to the silence.

“Sorey was never afraid,” he murmurs instead. “He chose to leave Elysia to save Alisha. He pulled the sword in Ladylake and made a pact with you. He took that same sword and drove it through Heldalf’s chest.” He takes a slow and deep breath. “He made his decisions his own, no matter how difficult they were.”

There’s a distinct smile in Lailah’s voice. “He did,” she hums. “But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it?”

“No,” Mikleo agrees.

Lailah finishes fluffing the water seraph’s hair with her fingers before she comes around to his side. Mikleo lifts his head to her. The fire seraph watches him closely.

Mikleo lowers his eyes and sighs. “Camlann, I think, is what bothers me. Sometimes I think about how Gramps took Sorey and I and raised us, knowing what we would become. I think about how Sorey was practically groomed to become the Shepherd, and how you were waiting for us in Ladylake. How you knew who we were and what we would become, too, the instant you knew our names. How everything was so…”

Lailah doesn’t say a word. Her hands are folded in her lap neatly. Her green eyes never waver from his profile.

“I think about how this is Sorey’s purpose, in a sense. How he was destined to become Maotelus’ vessel right from the start. He was going to be the Shepherd that purified the whole world and I wonder if we realized everything sooner, if we could have said no. If Sorey would have wanted to. But now…” Mikleo sighs and it’s heavy. “Now that he’s fulfilled his purpose and fate’s finally done with its Shepherd, I wonder if he will even get the chance to wake up.”

“I see.” Lailah nods. She folds her hands together before her. Her gaze is soft and knowing. “You wonder if fate will be kind enough to find room for one more in the world—just for the sake of happiness, yes?”

Mikleo looks to the fire seraph.

“You want to know what I think?”

He nods.

“I think fate is what you will,” Lailah begins. Her hands fall to her lap again, smoothing out her dress. “It’s not easy to believe that, I know, but maybe in the end that’s what courage really means:  to hold out and fight for the future you want, even if it doesn’t fit in with fate’s plans. I think that if you want to see Sorey again, you need to be brave just like that. For a little while longer, at least.”

“Lailah,” Mikleo murmurs with a small, chiding smile. “I don’t think I have any power over whether or not Sorey wakes up.”

“Just be brave, Mikleo. Do the hard thing,” Lailah urges. Her smile is contagious. Confident. “It’ll be better. I promise.”

“Just be brave, Mikleo,” Mikleo whispers to himself. He dusts off the plaque with his gloved hand and squats, trying to read the letters. “Just be brave.”

He tilts his head up to view the artifact before him:  a statue of another Shepherd from eras and eras past.

Mikleo sighs and straightens. He stares at the statue as if it could give him the answers he’s looking for: maybe not even the ones he wants but the ones he needs. “You know how to wake Sorey up, right?” he asks it.

The stone does not speak back.

Mikleo frowns. His eyes roam over the cloak covering the figure, so similar to the one Sorey wore centuries and centuries ago. He wonders, briefly, if this will work. He takes a breath. The hard thing, he reminds himself. He folds his hands and bows his head. His eyes shut tight.

“Please, please, please,” he whispers. It’s the only words he can muster. It’s the only words he’s got. “Please, please…!”

But when he peeks open his eyes, the statue remains the same and nothing has changed.

Mikleo sighs. His hands fall to his sides. “Fine,” he murmurs under his breath. “I’ll try something else, then.”

But the earth rumbles under Mikleo’s feet as he turns away. A fragment of a conversation from centuries past sharply occurs to him—something about ruins being dangerous and roads far less travelled—then the ground opens up from underneath him. He starts to fall.

Ah.

He thinks of another part of the St. Mabinogio ruins, not nearly this deep, where he had fallen and a hand had grasped him by the back of his collar. ‘Yeah, well. You could just say—’

—Mikleo doesn’t expect the hand that grabs his.

His head snaps up.

For one moment, it is like he has forgotten how to breathe.

The next, suddenly, there’s joy in his lungs.

“Thank you,” he breathes as he dangles over the abyss. He raises a hand to cover the one over his own. He grips it tight. “Thank you, thank you.”

Sorey just smiles above him. It’s like the sun.