#the og concept is all abt the rest of the teams handling these things but brain melted and so doomed duo time babyyyy

[randomwriteronline]

based on this post by @legend-as-old-as-time

He's standing there. Right behind him. He can't hear him, but he can feel him - feel his eyes on the back of his head, his hand as it goes to awkwardly cradle an arm, something like a slight breeze.

Tahu doesn't move.

Something tells him he knows what he's about to say.

"So it was supposed to-"

His hand shoots back, pointing in the other's general direction: "Don't you dare," he threatens. "Don't you even dare say that."

The Toa of Ice remains quiet for a second, maybe stunned.

Then, timidly: "I'm not Kopaka."

"That doesn't change anything. You're my brother, and you better not say that."

"I meant - I'm not-"

"I know that! You think I wouldn't be able to tell your voices apart?"

Immediately he sinks a hand into the vents of his Hau's cheeks and chastises himself with a wordless growl.

"Sorry about that," he mutters: "I shouldn't have gotten angry."

"It's alright," Matoro reassures him softly. He hesitates, breathes deeply, ponders what to say for a few more seconds. "For a moment it felt like he was here again."

They allow a long beat of silence to pass.

Afternoon is bleeding into evening, but the sky isn't growing dark yet - might not for a few hours still. They're entering the drought season in the desert, Tarduk said; good thing they've got underground aqueducts that reach into the mountains, or things could get dire quickly if the autumn rains didn't bring in enough reserves.

It looks warm, of an orange color as sweet as certain ripe fruit. It might be the lack of water. Aqua Magna maintained some amount of blueish hue with its immense ocean no matter what hour of the day it might have been.

Neither have moved. It drives him nuts.

"You don't have to stand there like that," Tahu says without looking, "If you want you can sit down with me."

He still doesn't turn when the quiet steps get closer and closer, nor when the brine-covered joints creak gently or when the Toa of Ice gives a short grunt as he does indeed take a seat at about half a bio of distance from him.

He feels Matoro glance at him every now and then, with the slightest fear, but he never steps out of line, never tries to talk.

Maybe he scared him, by telling him off like that.

Tahu grumbles to clear his throat.

"How was he, by the way?" he says, and he tries to sound casual.

Matoro spends a second or two to compose his thoughts: "Like you," he replies a little lamely. "You were - are - were the same person."

"So he was a self-assured bad-tempered idiot?"

That tears a little laugh out of the other, which Tahu counts as a small victory: "He used to be, a little bit. I had to tell Turaga Nuju I couldn't translate an insult he hurled at him once because I was afraid he would have burnt us to a crisp. But I think he got better with time."

"I'm glad to hear that. If I really have changed at least in one universe, that's good news for everybody."

Another sheepish chuckle trails off: "Well, it's... Truth be told, I didn't know much of him," Matoro admits. "I heard what Turaga Vakama said to the others, about his failings and his successes, but there wasn't... There wasn't a real connection, between me and him."

That tracks.

"Maybe you should talk to Jaller," he whispers. "He was devastated. And the Nuva, of course."

He's seen that. In bits and pieces, vague little hints and unplanned outbursts, but he's caught the same tells he'd seen on the Mahri and in Kopaka - the ones he knows.

But he doesn't want to talk to them. Not yet. None of them are ready for that conversation, least of all himself.

This is easier, despite... Despite the whole of it.

It's a bit simpler.

A bit.

"Did you know him?" the other asks suddenly. "Your... Me, I mean."

"Not much." Tahu replies, and there's a little sigh of relief that leaves Matoro that he really can't reprimand or blame him for: "We were as close as you were with me, so not at all. But he was a good being - reliable, skilled. Compassionate. I'm glad I could call him brother, if only for a little."

Shadows grow longer the more they don't talk.

They both shift uneasily as they notice their slow encroaching approach - old habits die hard, and too vivid memories courtesy of the Makuta make them harder to kill - but their purplish color soothes them along with the dusty ground beneath them.

Matoro is cold. He exudes cold, but not like Kopaka: chill wafts from the Nuva of Ice in a constant and steady stream, creating an aura at least three or five inches thick that from his body blurs into the world around him, so that those who stand too close get the gist and leave him some space; for Matoro it snakes across his limbs and trickles off of him in wisps and plumes, like invisible smoke reaching upwards, and it slips onto others almost by accident - more of a tacit comfort than a thorny shield.

It still gives off a strange feeling when it meets the heat blooming from Tahu.

"Well, since you're here to hear it for yourself," the Toa of Fire announces with an almost casual tone: "You are very loved."

He hears the other startle from the surprise.

"What?"

"You are very loved. I don't know how much you - he - you two knew that, but you are."

He hears his fingers fumble for a moment, scraping each other as he plays with them to figure out what to say: "I... Thank you? Why are you... What does this... I don't understand."

"What is there to understand? You're very loved. People miss you."

"Your Mahri don't seem to enjoy the sight of me."

"They're still grappling with the fact that you're here despite being dead. I'm fairly sure that's what the rest of you go through when you see me." Tahu turns further away from Matoro, searching for familiar shapes into the side of a mountain. "We didn't have time to do much immediately after, for... Him. Not that grand gestures would have mattered much, everything got destroyed pretty quickly. And we're nowhere near as morbid as the Agori are-"

"The Agori?" the other's voice tilts in genuine confusion. "What about the Agori?"

The Toa of Fire gives a breathy cackle: "Do you have any idea how many funerary rites they have? There's at least three for each tribe, and those are only the ones Turaga Nuju held for you."

The air grows slightly warmer.

Matoro briefly forgot how to breathe.

He stares intently at the back of Tahu's head, not shy or sheepish anymore, too completely stunned to do much else.

He speaks again at last, voice so faint it's barely a breath: "Why?"

"I told you. You are very loved."

He keeps staring.

Tahu, very pointedly, does not turn to meet his eyes.

Why can't he turn to meet his eyes?

Why can't he just look at his face?

There's an answer of course. A simple, logical answer, an obvious answer, a clear answer, an answer that sits right on the tip of his metaphorical tongue, in the antechamber of his crystal brain, just waiting to be aknowledged.

If only he could find it.

There's still so much light despite being evening.

The seasons on Aqua Magna didn't bring this extreme a change.

Suddenly, 'days becoming longer' doesn't sound as silly as it had seemed when Berix first told them about it.

"He didn't have to," Matoro whispers. "The Turaga didn't have to. He should have been celebrating that Mata Nui had been saved, not mourning me. Not so many times."

The other waits a moment before replying: "He lost a close friend. Maybe he had too much grief to handle it all in just one funeral."

The Ko-Toa looks away.

His hands scrape against the ground he sits on as he tightens them into anxious fists.

"Would you have done it?" he asks: "If it had been you instead of me here, too, would you have done it too? Chosen Mata Nui over your life and your self?"

"Would you?"

"... Yes."

"Me too," Tahu nods - so certain, plowing through the paralyzing terror of death so that it cannot catch up to him until it's too late. "If I'd been in your place and the only options were either me, any of my siblings, or the universe, I would have sacrificed myself. Jaller and Kopaka are good leaders, they'd know how to make sure the rest of you were safe. And you'd have the Turaga too."

"But we wouldn't have you."

"And we wouldn't have you."

"I'd say a traslator isn't really comparable to the leader of the Nuva."

"He would be to the Mahri. And Nuju."

He should turn around. He should look him in the eye and tell him what he's going to tell him while staring directly at him, so that the words get burned into his brain.

Why in Karzhani's name can't he do that?

"I would have fulfilled my duty as a Mata, and nothing else," he speaks, gazing into a mountain he's stopped really seeing Great Spirit knows how long - a while ago by now: "You took it upon yourself to lose everything for the sake of everybody else. When you compare the two, I see no reason why I'd be any more mourned than you."

"Not even by Turaga Vakama?"

What a strange question.

What a really strange question. Is this another parallel he's trying to draw? He doesn't think he could ever be described as anything to Vakama other than his Toa - one of his Toa, one of six.

What a strange question. The most he's brought the Turaga was grief and annoyance, as far as he can remember, because he was hotheaded and stubborn and stuckup. Vakama knew Matoro better than he knew Tahu, arguably. He wouldn't mourn him as inconsolably as Nuju had.

What a strange question.

"It was as if he'd lost Toa Lhikan all over again."

Tahu does not move.

That has to be an exaggeration.

"He could not conclude his speech to the Metru. He could not even meet the Nuva at first. He had hoped his vision really had been just the result of wires crossed wrong, just this once."

Matoro watches him as the heat around Tahu dissipates slowly, as he stiffens like magma cooling into obsidian.

The purple shadows lean further into the finally darkening skies, coming down, down, down the mountains, down the dunes, down the vegetation that dots the landscape, towards the city that stands in-between the sands, as they continue to sit near each other in perfect silence.