Maite sat next to Styxx, the dry earth hard beneath her. Oded remained the ever-vigilant sentinel several paces away, unable to hear them speak, but watchful of every move. She glanced over, taking her old friend in completely. The things she saw, the way he limped ever so slightly when he moved, it broke her heart. What had they done to him?"Did... Did my pride do this to you?" He glanced over at her question and looked down at himself. A bitter half-smirk curled on his maw.
"Actually, no. Most of it was done by the purgers or when I was being trained. A few are from fighting in the war and when..." He trailed off and cleared his throat. He lifted his right paw, flexing it weakly. "One of my seconds did this before throwing me to the Time Lords. Apparently I'd pissed him off too often."
"Styxx-"
"Please, I don't want to talk about that." And he truly didn't, not when he had her back in his life. Styxx didn't want to think about the time he'd spent fighting her pride, maybe even her family. He knew Torvald was a commander like he was, but he'd never seen the lion. And no doubt her brother hadn't been old enough for the battlefield. Time Lords gave their soldiers plenty of time to mature in body and mind before sending them into war.
He didn't want to think about her great-grandfather, the patriarch of her family, the head of the inquisitors who had tortured him for days before his mother had rescued him.
She was quiet for a moment. He was just on the verge of apologizing for upsetting her when she spoke again, "Do you live around here?"
Styxx looked around them, taking a moment to remember where "here" was, and shook his head."No, I live deeper in the desert. There's an oasis near, but it's another, ah, a friend's territory." She turned a small frown on him, studied his face. With anyone else, he would have drawn away when her paw rose, in fact he almost did. Old habits were hard to suppress in the face of even older trust. But she just put her paw to his temple and Styxx allowed his eyes to close.
"Do you still get headaches?" A chill went up his spine. He had only ever met one other seer, Blaise had been the only creature he'd ever told about his visions.
"Not as often as I used to. Do you know what a seer is?"
"Yes, time lords and ladies were given our names by the seers." He relaxed at the equal parts respect and nonchalance he heard in her voice.
"My pride didn't trust them. They were unnatural and those who were accused were often executed. Seeing one being put down as a cub was the only thing that kept me alive," Styxx replied, his eyes opening to watch her as he spoke. "I have visions of the past, but I don't see anything. I just hear someone's voice, something they'd said before. I don't even hear the person they were talking to, just what they said, and only if I'm around them."
Maite drew back a bit and blinked, though her paw remained on his face. His sad eyes seemed to bore into her soul.
"They give you headaches?" It was all she could manage to ask while her brain processed that new piece of information about him.
"Only when I'm bombarded with them. More than just one or two lions around me and I can barely make things out sometimes. Just words pounding in my head." Gods, no wonder he escaped to this place. There was next to no chance that he'd run into someone else and have to deal with that.
"Did you... I mean, do you..."
"Hear yours?" Maite nodded when she couldn't finish the question. For some reason she was a little relieved when he shook his head and gave her a small smile that wrenched at her heart. For a moment, she saw her cub-hood friend in the scarred warrior before her. "No, I never have. You've no idea how much that meant to me, that I could be with you and only hear your voice as you spoke to me."
Maite felt heat rise in her cheeks and ears when he said that, how he pressed his face closer to her paw.
"Guardian? Doctor?"
"Before, yes. The Doctor's too far away now, and your Guardian is sitting far enough that they are just whispers that I can't make out. But there have been only three other creatures in my entire life that have been silent like you."
"Only three?" He must have heard them every day of his life! How was he not insane from it, how could he tune them out? Styxx nodded slowly as she let her paw fall back to the ground.
"My friend in the oasis, a hare kit, and the goddess that helped me escape."
She was quiet after that, unsure of what to say to him. The short time she had known him, all the dreaming and worrying she had done. His loss had broken her heart. Too often she had been sick with worry for him. She hadn't needed to worry for her family, they could take care of themselves. But her Ettore had no one. Galen had been something, but he would never have been enough to truly protect her friend. And Styxx would never have gone to Galen for comfort, not like he'd come to her. She'd always known he was too proud, or perhaps too damaged to reach out again. To find him out here after all this time was a miracle, quite literally the work of the gods, and she couldn't deny how it threw her off balance. The depths of which she had, and still cared for him... She didn't know what to do.
"Are you happy?" The question caught her off guard. Was she happy? Of course she was! She had found him out here, even if he didn't seem to be her Ettore anymore, he was still her friend. And maybe...
"Of course. I never thought I'd-"
"That isn't what I mean. Are you, have you been happy? Out here?" Oh. Her head dipped slightly.
"I suppose so. It's... different out here. There isn't the constant threat of war, but there are so many other dangers. But the creatures out here, the rogues and some of the prides I've seen are.... I realize how arrogant the Time Lords are. The Doctor told us why he did what he did, I don't agree with him, but we were doing something wrong. It's a nice change. I miss my family, but..." She trailed off with a small shrug.
Styxx felt his heart go still. She missed her family, but... Had she ever missed him? His gaze finally settled on her and traveled down to where her paw fidgeted, the one she'd cupped against his face. She hadn't been wearing the necklace he'd made for her, he'd felt some of what little hope he had left plummet when he'd realized this fact. So when he looked down and saw that she was idly toying with the heart-shaped stone where it hung around her wrist...
"You-" His voice caught and he cleared it in an attempt at masculine pride. "You kept it..."
Maite looked up at him, blinking for a moment before following his attention. She smiled when he realized he was referring to her necklace.
"Of course. I promised you forever. The cord wasn't long enough to wear around my neck anymore, I haven't been able to... I haven't had the heart to make a longer one. I didn't want to let go of even a small part of it," she replied and he watched her stroke the charm again in a caress that sent a tremor down his spine. He didn't know what he could say to her, she'd kept it all this time, for him.
"Styxx?" The question in her voice brought his gaze back to her face. "You never told me, do you know what this symbol is?"
A muscle worked in his jaw. He couldn't say it, couldn't even move his head in a nod. He wouldn't lie to her again, never again.
Maite looked back down, a small smile on her face as she remembered her adventures.
"I met a lion, oddly enough in another desert, by the sea. He saw the charm and asked where I had gotten it." When she had told him a friend had made it for her, she remembered he had smiled and said it must have been a very good friend, indeed. "He said in his land, it was the symbol of the heart, the center of life, the mind, the soul. Did you..."
"Galen told me about it. He'd seen it when he'd been in the roguelands." His ears flicked back as the muscle in his jaw continued to flex, his teeth grinding against one another. "It belonged with you. There has never been anyone else that I could have... would have given it to."
"Styxx..." He watched the tears fill her eyes and threw caution to the wind. To hell with the Guardian, Styxx moved closer to Maite and wrapped his paws around her, pressing his face against her neck.
"It didn't feel right, to tell you then. I didn't really understand it at the time. Arie, Maite, you've had my heart from the moment you walked into my life. I don't think I even had one before you." And he hadn't had one since. After that day, he'd felt like a part of him had been taken away, he'd barely been able to live without it. Truthfully, there were days he was surprised he'd lived through everything.
"I missed my family..." Styxx felt that newly returned heart start to crack as she whispered into his mane. "But I would have given anything to have you with me."
He drew back with a small frown, his good paw moving to press against her wet cheek.
"Not being there for you, not having you here with me, the things that could have happened to you and not being able to help in any way, not having you to share my secrets with, out of everything, that hurt most of all." She glanced down at his scars, gently touching the ones on his forelegs, feeling him shiver when she did so. What had been done to him? His right paw, the one he'd used to draw with when she'd showed him how, it was ruined. It looked like it had been impaled on something, he could barely move it, she doubted he was even able to release his claws anymore. His burn scars had been bad enough, but now he was covered in claws and bites. The fact that he was a Dal'ek, wore the bracers of one, the scars, clearly he had fought in the war he claimed still went on.
He'd fought because he'd had no other choice, been captured and brutalized by her pride, maybe even her family. And she hadn't been there. Her Styxx, he hadn't belonged there. It all made sense now. The beatings he suffered, the burns, they had been to purge his will. And like the idiot he always said he was, he fought it every step. Look what they'd done to him for it. The tears flowed all the more as she thought about just how much pain had been inflicted on her Styxx. And he was hers, damn it all. She'd lost him a long time ago, not even the gods were going to take him away from her again.
"If I could have had any wish, it would have been that you'd been with me when the rocks came down. That we could have been trapped outside together."
"But if I had been, I..." He paused, uncertain about how to tell her. There wasn't a doubt that he should, he'd already told her that he was a seer. What harm could there be in telling her his mother, his real mother was a goddess?
"What?" Styxx pulled away from the embrace, needing to have his space with the memories he was about to drudge up. He was only in this area because he had needed the time to sort himself out, after being presented with yet another blow to his life.
"My mother, Aara hated me." He slowly wiped the tears from her cheeks as he spoke.
"You can't really mean that-"
"Maite, please, I need to say this." His eyes met hers just long enough to see her silent nod before glancing away to continue. "She tried to kill me more than a few times. Before I met you, after I met you. I think in the end, my father had her killed for it. I never understood what she would always screech at me, that I wasn't her son, that her body never would have created a... weakling like me. It wasn't until I'd been freed from the Time Lords and escaped the valley, after I came here that..."
Styxx paused running a paw over his mane.
"My friend is another seer. He told me they weren't my parents, that a young goddess had given me to Aara to replace her dead son. The goddess who saved me." His eyes once more rose to hers, his vision stoic as he studied the confused surprise on her face. "She's still looking for most of her children, my brother and sisters. If I hadn't been in the Valley, it's doubtful she would have found me again." It was the only upside he had, that in being left behind in the hellhole of the Dal'ek pridelands, his mother had been able to find him, to rescue him, to give him a link to her in the future. It had given him someone else, he had the chance to have a true, real family if he wanted it. A mother that maybe cared about him, even loved him.
"Your mother is a goddess?" Styxx felt his maw quirk a bit to one side, unsure if it was supposed to be a smile or something else.
"She is. I could call to her, but I don't think now's a good time."
"No, no, that's okay," Maite rushed out, shaking her head furiously. She'd always believed in the gods, but she'd never known one. It was one thing to believe in something that was abstract and would never enter one's sphere, but to know that they actually did exist, were flesh-and-blood, that they could have mortal children... wait... "You're not a god, are you?"
Styxx actually chuckled a little and shook his head.
"No, my father was mortal. Apparently when gods mate with mortals, a seer is born."
"That... Galifrey would kill to have that kind of knowledge. I think I'm glad they don't, or if they do, it's secret."
"It isn't all it's cracked up to be, I can promise you that."
And he would know. Maite lapsed back into silence as she processed all of this, everything. Her Ettore was Styxx, had been a Dal'ek. Only he wasn't truly, he'd been born of a goddess. He'd been raised by such terrible creatures and yet he had been kind to her, thoughtful. He was a seer, he made it sound awful, and...
"Styxx... I loved you. I think I still do." Somehow she knew he needed to hear the words. They were different lions, now, having grown up apart and in such differing circumstances. But the feelings, the warmth in her heart, it was all still there, just waiting to be built up again. She wouldn't let him doubt that.
To hear her say that, to finally hear those words and his name in her voice, his world finally seemed to right itself. Everything started to fall back into place after they'd been shattered when she'd disappeared. But then, he felt the same doubt she hesitated at revealing. They were no longer cubs. Honestly, they were virtual strangers. And yet he saw through her. She was still the soft-heart that had drawn him to her. She didn't see the Dal'ek or the warrior, she couldn't have to stand between her friends and him, to protect him. All she saw was her friend, the cub who'd made her laugh and whom she'd told stories to. Had taught to draw. What she would think if she saw his collection.
Still, he wasn't sure if that was all she saw, and if she would accept the damage time had done.
"I'm not the same as I was..."
"Neither am I. But I'm willing to learn who you are again, if you are."
"In a heartbeat," he replied and drew her close again. He didn't think he would ever grow tired of holding her.
(WC: 2,837)