In Heart Doth He Yearn

[Rickter]

In Heart Doth He Yearn
Searing 89th, 124th Year, A.o.S.

After she'd crossed over the threshold into the other room of that open doorway, the brightness of the otherside lessened while her eyes had grown adjusted. Yet no doorway remained there once Telion had crossed to the otherside, instead, she stood in a circular room that looked to be something like a cavern of sorts. Icy structures rooted from the ceiling above as the lights that shone within danced throughout them with no singular pattern, but rather a kaleidoscope of color that resonated throughout the entirety of the room. Strangely enough it felt chilly to Telion which gave her a taste of surrealism within the dream, and when she noticed padding over her hands after an attempt at rubbing her arms; she realized she was in her wintry garb instead of the blue suede dress she'd found herself in earlier.

The Land of Nod was a strange place to dwell indeed. Yet as she looked about the room, Telion noticed that there remained five arches etched upon the stone, as if they had been doorways or passages that led to somewhere else before. "Telion?" The blonde stopped in her observations at the familiar voice she'd heard, almost certain she had just heard him say that he would not be able to cross through that doorway. Yet as she turned to gaze upon him, the sight of Rickter in his fur padded vestments stood as a central figure of the room. The poor lady had been so caught up in absorbing everything, that she either failed to notice him right away, or he simply hadn't shown up until now. "You're... really here, aren't you?"

"Rickter?" She started with a half step taken toward Him, before realizing by the glow in His eyes, that the way He presented Himself wasn't the same as before. "No... You sound like him but you're different." He thought to say something but held His tongue, a moment with His lips spent briefly agate before He closed them to swallow hard for a second. Telion gazed upon Him sharply as she thought back on it, from the moment she'd felt her memories come back, to the final night before Rickter had fallen into this seasonal slumber of his.

"You're not Rickter but you've been acting like him..." she pointed out directly with an indirect stroll to walk closer to Him. "Ever since our memories came back, I've always wondered because... You'd seem like him but then you also weren't."

"And what gave that away?" He then inquired with a raise of his eyebrows in thought.

Telion averted her gaze toward the room once more, considering her observations and what had taken place prior to her arrival here. "Rickter always had a disposition he'd maintain with others but you... You acted toward everyone, literally, with mannerisms not unlike him... just differently." To that He nodded in consideration after having spent the last few months reliving memories with Rickter, yet that didn't change the fact that only one of them would likely be reawakening soon.

"It's actually funny because I... I thought I was just reading into things too deeply. But then I saw him and..." His eyes grew sharper when He'd been a witness to what Telion admitted. "Now it's actually dawning upon me. You're the other one, aren't you?" The other Him as she'd come to known in their brief time spent together shortly after meeting Hilana and Athalia.

"I am." Lykos confirmed with a slight angle to His head. "You said that Rickter reached out to you? As in... just now?" Telion's eyes widened a bit at the state of surprise Lykos seemed in, a reluctant nod given in response as He stroked the whiskers of his chin in heavy thought. "Well that's different. First in weeks he's said or done anything..."

"Can I ask..." Telion finally weighed in still with uncertainty in her tone. "What exactly is going on? He asked me to help guide him back but... I need to understand what's happening first."

"I see," Lykos murmured with an aversion in his gaze, "so he's figured something out then..." Just as Telion stood in the light with Lykos, her wary eyes looked upon Him with a sense of familiarity and confusion. This led the Lupine Draegir to exhale steadily through his nose, before approaching the lady with a deeply sympathetic gaze. "Rickter has been kept in a state of dormancy since our memories have returned. For a brief time he and I were able to speak together..." Yet somehow that changed the closer to the truth that Lykos grew within their memories, and for whatever reason, Rickter appeared less and less prevalent the closer He drew to it.

"Something is keeping him in this state, Telion, and while I've gone over the one memory in question that should have all the answers..." His head hung down a bit in frustration.

"You mean, you haven't found the reason or the source?" The other Wolf shook his head slowly in admittance of defeat. This led the woman to gaze around the room once more, curious as to the feeling she was having now that she stopped to reflect on herself. "So then why?..." One of the archways of room began to glimmer with familiar lights that often accompanied the North Wind she'd come to know, particularly when he would often utilize his Negation magic before her. "Why do I feel an unusual warmth when I look upon this doorway?"

As she approached it Lykos gazed upon both her and the stone wall, curious as to what she meant when she expressed this warmth. "That leads to another part of Rickter," he started, "or rather, a part of us that represents who he and I are inside."

"Yet, where does it lead exactly?" She pondered as she placed a gloved hand on the surface, surprised to see that the stone beneath her touch started to glimmer also. Lykos had no answer for her, only surprise when He saw the reaction at hand. The stone wall within the archway lit up with an array of lights that shone in different patterns, brightening until a new doorway had glistened open before the mother and her fellow investigator. Cold. A deep and menacing cold threatened to seep into her skin, and yet, even as she felt the brisk drop in temperature the warmth within her kept safe. "Strange... It feels like... a blanket is around me. Comforting me even as I'm about to enter frigid temperatures."

"I think... He wants you to see it too." Lykos then weighed in as he stood next to her protectively. "The moment when he became lost and I was the one to take the mantle." Telion looked upon Lykos with widened eyes as she realized what truly remained ahead of her, as she hadn't forgotten the stories that Lykos shared with her upon restoring their memories last winter. Her heart pulsed erratically at the prospect of it, and while apprehension weighted her belly, the blonde looked from the icy room ahead toward Lykos in turn.

"Show me then," she insisted with a sense of courage in her tone, "show me everything you need me to see. I'm ready." He then looked at her with a sense of fascination before He came to smile with His blue eyes honed ahead. It was with a gentle nod that Lykos encouraged Telion to step forward, in that He would proceed to follow her within, and reveal to her the same memory He'd repeatedly visited numerous times to understand where things had changed for Rickter.

[Rickter]

It grew almost unbearably cold to the point even Lykos felt a chill jitter along his spine, if only because the landscape they had entered was the similar barren stretch of snow and ice that the Lupine Draegir accompanied Rickter on at the start of their journey. Lights did not dance within the northern skies this time, however, and there remained layers of clouds that threatened to blanket the air with snow and ice. Telion though appeared completely unphased by the sheer drop of temperature, somehow protected by a warmth not even Lykos could feel at the present moment. As they walked they reached what appeared to be a frozen object centered within the frigid fields around them.

In walking toward it she could see everything, feel every bit of the story Lykos had shared with her. From the moment he spent communing with Rickter for the first time, to the memories revisited in dreams that led to Rickter and Lykos feeling further distanced from each other. Something kept pulling them apart the closer Lykos grew to the truth, and for whatever reason, that truth is what kept Rickter locked away within the dark as Lykos sought answers. And now, now that she finally walked with Lykos to listen, to understand, and to even see the heart of the memory that both ended Rickter and gave birth to Lykos... One thing slowly became clear to the healer.

The frozen object was none other than Rickter.

Locked in a knelt with his head hung forward the man she knew and loved looked to be nothing more than pure ice. Frozen in place the moment he had given up himself in a Bargain for life, Telion could see the faint trace of light glimmering within the depths of his glacial core. "I've gone over it so many times, and yet, I still don't understand why it is that he's like this..." Lykos admitted when they finally reached him, Telion being the first to kneel down so that she could gaze upon his features for herself.

The pain and loss that wracked his face at the time remained evident even now, as if he'd felt the very life he'd Bargained away stripped out of him before he'd crystallized. "And yet, here he is." Here he had been this entire time. "You've said it before... when you first awoken, you experienced both grief and starvation like no other?" Her perplexed gaze shifted toward Lykos for answers, to which, He nodded quickly after to confirm the details to her observation. "Lana had explained how he'd used powerful Negation magic to help save her and Athalia. I'm willing to guess that was the starvation part," her attention returned to Rickter once more, "as for the grief well..."

Thoughts had to be spent on processing everything she had learned, it was a lot to soak in with just one night of dreaming. But it had brought her directly to the point of truth, and in a way, Lykos had been closer to resolving the situation now more than ever before. "You said the entire time you were down in Atraxia, even between everything you did with the sisters, there had always been a heavy feeling within your heart. Correct?"

"In time the weight grew easier to carry, but yes, it felt as though that grief was never my own." The answer led Telion to contemplate everything she saw happening before the obelisk, when Rickter had acted to protect Hilana and in doing so, fell to his knees before having to make the Bargain with the Stitchmother Herself.

"What if... it isn't warmth I'm feeling." Telion reasoned with a thoughtful gaze back Lykos, as He tilted his head with ponderance to the suggestion. "Think about it. The weight you carried in your heart, what may have felt like guilt to you might've been the absence of something else. And what did Rickter lose when he made the bargain?"

"Himself..." The Lupine Draegir flatly pointed out as that had been the obvious answer. And yet it also got Him to thinking... "Everything and everyone that made him who he was."

"Precisely." Telion remarked with a rise from her position, her gaze still on Lykos as He looked at Rickter with a sense of introversion. "You've relived the memory over and over again, so tell me Lykos, what exactly was Rickter feeling the moment the Bargain had been struck?"

"Well there was pain," He started with reflection in his gaze, "deep agonizing pain like the fire of a thousand suns. He felt the Aetherium threatening to burst out of him and didn't wish to make such an accord with Her." Though He dared not to speak the name Lykos could only guess what bittersweet amusement the Flesh Queen had in watching all of this. "He resented it and Her just as much, and rather than lose himself to the aether threatening to burst from within, he'd nearly resolved to..." And then it finally hit Him.

Those final moments. Those exact moments Rickter held onto all that he loved so dearly, every waking memory spent chasing the ones taken from him, every point in time he'd doted and appreciated the connections with the ones he had. All of that meant something before it had been taken away, and as Rickter had reluctantly resigned to give it up, the part of him that remained attached to it all had become encased in frigid ice.

Like a frozen requiem.

"He wanted to preserve whatever was left of himself. In those final moments, Rickter gave in to everything and allowed Fate to run its course. His heart turned to crystal while his soul... disjointed from everything that made him who he was."

"Then that has to be the crux of the issue, and why it is that Rickter hasn't found a way to come back yet." Telion reasoned with a sympathetic gaze fixed on the crystalline form of her beloved. "His soul is no longer disjointed... but who's to say that he hasn't felt those connections return himself? What if..." The healer looked to Lykos understandably now as things seemed to align for Him and her both. "What if you were the one who felt those connections restored and not him?"

"I..." Lykos gazed down at his own hands in retrospect after realizing the one thing he'd been missing this entire time. What took so long to sort out, such a length of time to grasp when it should've been right in front of him? Telion waited to hear an answer but with the gust of wind that blew between them, hailing her form with both powdered snow and cold, her eyes opened once more as she'd risen out of her groggy state.

Morning had come it seemed, and with it a few more questions than answers. As the mother shifted to move off her shoulder, she sat up to watch Rickter as he still remained steadfast in his slumber. "I found you..." She assured herself with her eyes glassed over with emotion. "And soon, soon I'll guide you back home."

It was a promise she made with a kiss on his forehead, the subtle hint of a smile nearly loosening at the corner of the wolf's lips in response. For now, Telion had a bit of responsibility to juggle throughout the day, but later afterward when all was said and done, she'd have everything she needed ready to carry out that promise.