Cas' Memories

Things have been awkward. Happens after having a mental breakdown in front of people she’s only known for a few weeks.

She doesn’t know how to feel anymore. Suddenly she has no more desire to push away the people she’s been fighting tooth and claw to not even like. It feels like her anger has been lifted -- maybe not all of it, but a lot of it. She’s letting herself relax, her usual scowl lighten from “totally unapproachable” to something more neutral.

She was right. Without her anger, she really is nothing.

She just finds that she doesn’t mind the feeling.

When Vela asked her to walk with her, looking shy for the first time in her life, she almost instinctively turned her down. And then she realized that she had no reason to, that she never had a reason to.

If Vela had asked if she hated her not long after they first met, the answer would have been “Obviously”. Nothing personal. She’d hated everyone.

But the truth was, those feelings had faded fast, and she hadn’t even noticed until they were gone. Their presence had become quickly tolerable. And then maybe something more than just tolerable, though she never would have admitted it.

She still hated the people who had wronged her. Her parents. The gods. Her patron. And she’d had a lot of misplaced hatred for other people, Slate though he was as much a vessel as she, Vela and Kadoren whose only crime had been to be kind to her, but it was gone now.

It wasn’t Vela’s fault that Cephi was dead. It wasn’t her fault that she’d chosen to live.

If anything, that was on Varah. But honestly, she couldn’t bring herself to wish that Vela had stayed dead so someone else could take her place.

And it doesn’t matter, because it wouldn’t have been Cephi who was chosen, Cephi who refused to fight, would never have willingly spilt blood. She had no clue what was going through her patron’s head choosing her, but she’d always had that on him.

Vela talks on about her early years reborn as they rest on the few stones not coated in slippery moss, the waterfall dancing in the pale blue luminance. Cas finds she doesn’t mind the talk. She usually prefers her solitude, but this is… nice.

“Part of the reason I came after you is because I didn’t want to be alone anymore…” she finishes. “And I don’t want you to be alone either.”

Vela casts a wary eye to the dragonet staring impassively at her broken reflection. “We could be friends? I… I want to be friends.”

She freezes at that suggestion, tearing her eyes away from the tentative smile as an old feeling she’d squashed down with everything else rushes up to the surface. She knows she couldn’t hide that expression, and she hopes Vela interprets it more as surprise and less as abject horror.

Except for Slate, who was stuck with her, and Cephi, who was dead, she’d never really had a friend before. For so long, she’d stayed as far away from other dragons as she could. Yesterday she couldn’t have cared less what Vela or Kadoren thought of her.

The weird thing, though, is that she wants it. She wants them to like her. She wants...

Her tongue is paralyzed along with the rest of her, so she can’t bring herself to reply. But Vela doesn’t seem to mind leaving the offer open for now. She hops up, shaking her mane of water droplets. “Come on, it’s late.”

She prances off down the worn stone path, pausing to let Cas catch up. Some feeling is growing in her, a strange spreading warmth in a soul that had grown so numb she didn’t feel the cold anymore. Something little more to her than a distant memory, nearly lost.

As she passes Vela, she hesitates so long that she almost loses her nerve. Before she can think, she brushes quickly by and scurries off ahead, a contact so brief and feather-light she almost hopes she doesn’t notice.

Yeah, no chance of that. The second she pauses to glance back, Vela’s already overtaken her, and her show of affection is far less subtle. For once, the contact doesn’t make her cringe. It’s a feeling she’s not used to, but… it’s nice.

It’s just a moment, over too soon as Vela prances on ahead beaming in a way she would before have found infuriating.

This time, she almost manages a smile.