Cas' Memories

It didn’t make sense. Dragons, monsters, wild walkers – kirin now too. Even her own master with his strange power running through her blood. All of it mixed together, none of it adding up.

All of this ran through her dreams this night. The fire behind her was all but burnt out; she hadn’t cared to stoke it, and if something were to attack them, she probably wouldn’t notice.

All the planets suspended in the heavens above, the stars glimmering in every colour imaginable, glorious galaxies twisting through the blue. She can’t see them. Even Slate at her forepaws and her idle stroking down his dark scales had become part of the background scenery.

She didn’t notice the presence until it was practically right beside her, and even then that feeling was so normal now that it took Vela’s voice calling softly out to her to snap her out of her thoughts.

And then she was back in reality. It doesn’t look like winter in this plane, but a chill drifts on the wind nonetheless. Vela had come tentatively up beside her, a scale’s breadth between them with her sleepless, worried expression haloed by blue and pink stars.

Maybe it was just the surprise of her suddenly being there, but her heart flutters nervously.

She quickly shakes that off. Something is wrong. “Can’t sleep?”

A bit of the nervousness melts off Vela’s face, but none of the exhaustion. “Just thinking…”

“Want to talk about it?”

Quiet settles between them, Vela hanging onto her thoughts for now. Cas shifts closer, there if she needs her, but lets her mind drift again. Not to the thoughts that had been haunting her, but to something not so long ago at all. This sky is only a shard of what that one was, and on that night they were huddled far closer together than this.

Why does that come to mind…?

Vela’s voice draws her back again, finally opening up. Kirin, makers, atonement. Any other time it would have sounded crazy. At this point she’ll believe anything.

And it makes her feel even more frustrated. Because none of this makes sense, and everyone has just left them to put the pieces together on their own. Thinking of everything Vela had told her before, her eyes lit so brightly by fiery crystals beneath or her soft voice whispering secrets as they press together beneath an alien sky, it makes her angry too. Angry that any of this happened, and that it had to happen to her.

But the lightning brimming within flickers out as the last trembling words leave Vela, her expression cracking with them. She quickly turns away but can’t hide the first few tears or the hitch in her breath.

Cas freezes, panic welling up in her. Her words felt all wrong coming out, like she wasn’t saying the right thing, and now this… When has she ever had to comfort anyone like this? Cephi must have been hiding it, and even when he cracked… What had she done about it, just a little broken kid herself…?

She has to do something before Vela shakes herself off and says that it’s fine when it isn’t. She squeezes her eyes shut – this still doesn’t feel right – and gently leans into Vela just enough to barely brush against her.

And then her snout is buried in milky white fur. It takes several seconds for the wires in her mind to uncross enough to realize that Vela and her are now so close and tangled together that she can probably hear her pounding heart. “U-um – ”

“I’m sorry,” she quickly cuts off. “Just let me stay here for a minute…”

The breath that leaves her is shaky for some reason, but she manages to relax. “Okay.” And then, almost without thinking, she drags out her wing out from Vela’s side and drapes it over her. Like Cephi used to do for her.

Vela’s tears don’t stop. If anything she presses into her tighter.

“I didn’t want to find out,” she eventually murmurs, her tears and trembling mostly gone now. About the kirin. About the Grey. “I don’t know how to deal with it…”

For once, she knows exactly what to say. And nothing about it feels wrong. “We’ll deal with it together.”

She feels Vela freeze against her and doubt creeps in. The silence between them is no longer empty and filled with drifting, aimless thoughts, but electric and alive. Was it wrong after all…?

And then Vela lets out a long shuddering breath, finally allowing herself to relax. “Thank you. For staying with me. I don’t know what I’d do…”

She doesn’t say anything. It’s only what you’ve done for me.

Whatever this mess is, whatever it means, and whatever it takes to get to the end of it, she won’t let Vela do it alone. There’s still the festering old doubt of what exactly she’ll have to do to prove it, but she shakes it off. She can’t. She can’t believe anything else right now.

She can’t bear to lose the one who followed her into her own darkness…

Vela eventually drifts off, leaving her to thoughts a little hopeful as darkness slowly makes its way for dawn. Only then does she remember the wing still holding Vela tight against her, and heat creeps into her cheeks as she shoots a wary glance at the others and then down at Vela sleeping peacefully on her forelegs.

In the darkness it hadn’t mattered, hadn’t crossed her mind. It had felt… natural. But with the prospect of the others waking up soon, she has to fight the urge to squirm away, to put distance between them, to hide it. Yet she can’t bring herself to do it.

But it was normal, right…? She’d probably slept like this with Cephi a few times, and Slate too, but…

But why does she feel like she wants it?

Uncertainties bloom in her then. This isn’t any different. Why would it be? She just isn’t used to being in this position, to be the one someone came to for comfort, that was all.

It’s an easy explanation. But the weird, anxious, twisting feelings don’t go away.

Shove them down, something in her whispers. Shove them down.

For the moment, she does. For now she’d let it happen. For as long as she can, she won’t let herself think.