Ruairi | Water | Freyja

Things come. Things go. Sometimes special things come into one’s life, stay for a short while, and then leave. Ru wasn’t naive to a seemingly universal cycle nor the understanding of whatever kind of self-enlightenment and mindfulness the concepts were supposed to teach. That knowledge aside though, he had never heard a phrase that spoke well to the anger that manifested with the idea of letting certain things go. There was a lot he could comfortably live without, and in retrospect, he knew there were times in the past when he believed he could live without Freyja. At his angriest, most bitter, most petty, and perhaps most wounded, he believed Freyja an unnecessary and irrelevant part of himself and his past. But he could not summon that feeling even under her threat of impending absence.

Ruairi could, however, understand why men clipped the wings of their birds, if not for love, then for the sake of maintaining companionship. Even given everything to survive in the safety of a cage, if given the chance, they would still ascend to a freedom well beyond the side of their keeper. It was a nice thought to have that kind of well-meaning control over any form of relationship, but Freyja was everything no one could control. She even eluded her own sense of control at times which both humored and concerned him.

In moments like these where he calmly strode through the halls toward a destination his intuition guided him to, he could have shown strength by practicing the encroaching reality of letting her go, which if it wasn’t for his sake, then maybe hers. As he neared the library he became more aware of the sound of rain, which he knew with certainty was neither natural nor of his direct doing. The entrance provided a space where he could silently observe the strange phenomena that was Freyja. His gaze briefly traveled upward as he considered what thoughts running through her head or emotions flooding her veins evoked the magical response. Rain, for Ruairi, was indicative of the feeling he loathed the most: sadness. For one emotion it had such a large spectrum of definitions, and for a second he wondered if Freyja would miss him the way he would her. Not that his pride would ever allow him to directly make such an earnest admission.

Their gazes had tethered when he found himself quietly looking back at her huddled form. It wasn’t weakness, he decided, to indulge himself in her company. After all, she had been with him at a low even when he hadn’t asked for her to stay. She could have walked away then, and he could have walked away now. But repaying the favor felt more in line with something he might do as he evenly paced in her direction and assumed a seat beside her. As Freyja had begun speaking and he began thinking, his gaze cycled between intently studying her expression and absolutely nothing in particular in the spaces beside them.

Despite disagreeing on her definition with or without her presence of magic, Ruairi did not express that. It’s not like he would have any first-hand experience with what it must have felt like without her natural magic. He could ruminate on what he might have felt, and in theory, even if he felt something was missing, he wasn’t entirely certain that the lack of his water magic would make him feel any less of who he was. Though he purposefully avoided any deeper contemplation into that ‘what if’ scenario. Furthermore, he felt disagreement boil and bubble in the back of his throat as Freyja made it seem like her leaving was also an effort of kindness to him. Though that sensation quickly evaporated with her final statements. He had been careful to conceal how much the word she used had affected him. Love. It made his bones sink to the floor, his heart beat strangely, his thoughts unravel into a barely contained spool of chaos, and an uncomfortable enough sear along his back to ground him.

Something of a sigh pressed through his nostrils as his hand casually, albeit strategically, positioned itself splayed over his mouth as he stared with a lack of internal insight into his own inner workings at her. She meant what she had said to a degree he found cruel, and for reasons he was denying himself to accept. The clearing of her throat prompted his attention to shift to an unfixed point within the library. There were things too heavy on his tongue for him to speak and things so tumultuous tearing him apart that he decided not to even try to react to what Freyja said in any capacity. Instead, he had absently watched her excuse herself from him and the ruin she often left for him to gather himself from.

The entirety of the planning efforts that went into celebrating Ruairi at such an invested level felt uncomfortably foreign to the blond. Of course, the ceremony was not to celebrate him alone but rather the union that was not-so-subtly displeasing to his parents. Still, little to no expense was spared and he couldn’t help but feel fragments of resignation for why he couldn’t have had even a fraction of this kind of involvement from his parents for his birthdays as a child. His existence was his parents' accomplishment, which he had caught the hint of early on, but even if they had felt no need to indulge in a celebration of himself that he would have enjoyed, he could see now it wouldn’t have killed them to pretend as they were doing now.

Many parts of the planning for the ceremony were things Ru did not care for, but he was decisive in terms of the guest list. He had to be. Even if the veil of high society left him with little room to manipulate the flow of attendees. So many in the circle that revolved around his family were anti-fire extremists, and Ru had little control over that. There was one particular man Ruairi was keen on inviting regardless of threat though. The one who had been there when he and Freyja were children, a bystander to her near-drowning, and a bystander to the curse on his back. So many times he had looked that man in the eyes, eaten with him, and even attempted true commitment to his daughter, who the water element ensured to exclude from the guest list. But he wanted to look him in the eye with the things he knew now, to smile and pretend things hadn’t changed, and imagine what it would be like to inflict a pain ten-fold of the one that man had allowed to have been inflicted on him as a child.

In the midst of it all, between the formalities of arrangements and other undesirable expectations that were little more than forced onto the pair, Ruairi had only considered it to truly be hell when his mother assigned them a tour with one of the manor gardeners to decide on a floral theme composed of strictly native flowers to the realm. The best Ru could do was absently nod and hum through the suggestions and mind-numbingly thorough explanations of how various collections of flowers would be synonymous with things that didn’t fit whatever he and Freyja were. They turned a narrower corner to begin a winding path back toward the manor only for the blond to bump into Freyja, which he intitially hadn’t thought much of until he spared a glance down toward her. For a second he had briefly been reminded of their time in the sanctum, how for just a little while they were able to cohabitate so comfortably and freely with each other and exercise a bout of rebellion. It was enough to make him smile as he contemplated acting on an idea he wasn’t sure would be received well or not in a state of sobriety, but he reached his arm out to more or less playfully shove her into the wall of shrubbery that lined their passage forward to get a head start. “Tag, you’re it,” he had smiled with a smug playfulness.

Counting on a brief period of shock and for Freyja to humor him by engaging, the blond got as far ahead as he could to keep the game in the garden and disregard the person they had been assigned to tail. It didn’t feel as fun as when they had been drunk, or in the dark, and he knew he had an advantage here, but was it so wrong to want to preserve the feelings that came with things like this?

The game stretched from garden to manor, through floors and various corridors. Ru could have made the game impossible for him to lose, but he had also considered that his advantage would give Freyja an incentive to give up and call it quits. In a way he prayed was not obvious, there were moments where he rigged the game against himself, even only for the sake of continuing the game and not for anything else that could compromise his pride. Even so, Freyja had managed to corner him just before the entrance of the library, which lately felt like a catalyst to too many things greater than them. Similarly, they were both winded to a noticeable degree, but it was her proximity that kept Ru reluctant to move or give any notable reaction to the moment that too closely mirrored a moment lost to the present.

The water element waited for Freyja to declare her win, but even then, somehow she still looked like she had lost. It reminded him of the one-way conversation that had taken place in the library not so long ago, of the things she said to him and how much he hated himself for wondering if saying he missed her would change anything. If it would mean something to her. When she was this close to him he couldn’t hide from all of the times he had chosen her, and how many more she had not chosen him. They were paired, supposedly connected in a way that transcended all other connections, and still, they didn’t really have each other. The question of whether things could ever be different was something Freyja purged whenever Ru got close enough to feeling brave enough to think about it. The tension beneath the silence remained even after Freyja had walked away from him, like she did before, and like he presumed she would always do.