Two Birds

"Two Birds" is a [SEASON NUMBER] thread started on [IRL DATE] and finished on [IRL DATE].
==Summary==
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==Full Text==
Milae opened his eyes to a pitch black sky dotted with what looked like stars, except they didn’t twinkle or phase in and out from behind clouds. Gripping his staff in his arms, he looked to see his hind hooves standing on nothing, the same backdrop above him spread underneath like a ceiling to floor illusion. No matter where he stared, he could find no beginning nor end around hm. Everything was horrendously still.
His ears pricked up to the faint sounds of chains rattling, and frequencies humming against them. He turned, and he was met with a very old, heart achingly familiar figure.
Bright blue eyes regarded him with a smile, and spoke with the same Caprinae accent he knew, but in a completely different cadence, “Hey Goat Dude!”
foresight-botgd
If he wasn’t already quite sure that he couldn’t, after his experience, Milae would have passed out on the spot. Instead, he leaned on his staff heavily, neck drooping slightly while his face was still trained on Duri, tears immediately welling up and threatening to soak his fur.
It had simultaneously only been a few months and several centuries since seeing her, his sense of time surrounding her so incredibly warped, stretched, and fragmented, that he was shocked to find himself doubting that she even existed in the first place, if she was appearing now. The untouchable, now made to seem real in front of him. Or, even worse…
“Ó guðir…” Horrified, Milae covered his mouth with a hoof, shaking from ear to hoof. “I’m dead…I must be…”
akkeyagentofhelheim
“Oh, stop being so overdramatic. You always had a wild imagination,” Duri smiled at him, young and soft and bittersweet, “Although, they weren’t merely that, were they…”
The half breed crossed her small arms, regarding him the entire time. Every blink Milae made, he could see her form flickering in and out of blonde locks, but ultimately returning to the Duri he knew. She changed stances and spoke again with that overly informal tone, “You’re inside Frigga, ya dweeb. Got absorbed and all that shit. Kinda like in her consciousness but not really.”
foresight-botgd
At her affirmation, he pulled himself a little further upright and regarded his surroundings, ears flicking as he took it in. “Then…what’s happening?” he asked hoarsely. “Where’s Juro? We have to get out of here, Yun is…” His throat constricted and his lungs burned, keeping him from finishing. He couldn’t have failed. Not yet. Not while he still stood here, wherever here was.
akkeyagentofhelheim
Her long neck twisted around to indicate behind her, and Milae’s eyes finally focused on the backdrop of their surroundings, rising massively even in the distance. Hidden partly in shadow but still discernable, the goat saw an immensely tall dome, shaped with thin metal lines starting from the top center outwards and down like a geometric waterfall.
A bird cage.
It was wrapped in hundreds, thousands, even millions of chains, wrapping around and in between the bars, surging both inwards and outwards towards the vast space of nothing around them, fading into the shadowy distance, only to be lit up at random, sporadic intervals with blue and gold light. The soundscape was exactly as Milae expected it to be–scraping chains, snapping links.
“The nerd’s in there…” Duri replied, before turning back towards him, “That’s the lock that’s keeping him chained together. Frigga absorbed him to break it from within–ya just got dragged into it. I’m supposed to tear it all down, and let the power surge so that she can use it and take Yun, to ball up his entire soul, seal, and essence, then embed it into the Bookkeeper.”
foresight-botgd
His hoof shot out so fast that it spooked him, but even though he meant to grab Duri by the arm, he stopped halfway, like he was afraid she wouldn’t actually be there to make physical contact.
“D-don–I mean–” Milae’s heart was thundering painfully fast as he considered the cage, trying to find Juro within it, despite the size of the structure. “You…you won’t, will you?”
akkeyagentofhelheim
“Fuck, no!”  
The shadow that obstructed the bird cage flickered, and the skin on Duri that wasn’t covered in fur responded simultaneously, turning dark in shadowy armour as she scoffed, “I’m not doing shit for her. Fucking bitch messed with my soul and everyone else’s way too many times for me to do anything for her anymore. Anything I can control, at least. Which isn’t a lot ever since she stole me from Hunter. Some dream communications with ya and Aria, and some other shit…” 
She began walking towards it, approaching it far too quickly considering the distance that it seemed to be in. The way its size changed didn’t match up as well, as the closer they got, the smaller it became, until it was barely the size of a room.
“Nah, I’m solidifying that seal. It would’ve already broken much faster if I didn’t add my shit onto it…” The dark shield that covered it reflected and revealed its occupant. A boy, who couldn’t have been more than ten years old, dressed in fine red silk clothing, resting in a cradle of chains that hooked gently around his waist and limbs, breathing easily as he slept. His sandy blonde hair was long, draping over the links and reaching the floor, and he was young, but there was no doubt to who it was. He had the same face as the Bookkeeper did.
foresight-botgd
The goat half-breed bent his hock and took a knee, putting a hoof on the shield as he considered the boy. He was both relieved and afraid at the sight. “Juro,” he said softly, desperately. “Can you hear me?”
akkeyagentofhelheim
There was a step beside him, and a soft deep voice that responded, “Yes…”
Duri had disappeared, and instead Juro stood by Milae, clothes torn in the same places from where Frigga had ripped them, as he observed the boy inside the cage along with the half breed. He slowly shifted his amber eyes to look down at Milae, “He can’t, but I can hear you…”
Milae gasped in relief and quickly stood, gripping Juro’s forearms with shaking hooves. “Oh, þakka Nornir. We have to get out of here, we must…” He struggled in bewilderment, lifting Juro’s arms up a little and looking him up and down, as though trying to find something hidden on him. “We must release you from Frigga, if she succeeds, and overpowers Yun–”
His chest spasmed as the reality of what he was saying struck him, and he tried not to break down in despair. No, this isn’t over. “We have to do something,” he insisted.
akkeyagentofhelheim
A small smile found its way on his face, but it was fleeting and somber. He gathered his limbs towards himself, “No… we don’t.”
They regarded each other and space warped in illusion, a small distance, but still a distance, in between them created like it had been there all this time, the cage standing right at the halfway point to their sides. He was unreachable once again.
“It’s too late,” he said. His face was held in the same way during the altercation with Sylar, “Whether Yun succeeds or not… I’ve been doing this for too long. No matter how far or fast I run, the threads of time will always catch up to me. I don’t have the luxury to change my fate like you did, because I already tried. And it didn’t work.”
“I’m not meant to live like everybody else… I’m stuck here forever, as a weapon, a useless vessel with no control over his magic. Even now,” He motioned towards the cage that creaked in its foundations, his young self trapped, frozen in time, no hope of escape from his tragic destiny. It glowed again, blue and gold, before the energy crawled off the chains and faded into the sky. Frigga was using him.
He staggered slightly, dark trails slowly cracking their way up what was exposed on the right side of his torso, to his face, to his eye, “I’m sorry, Milae, for getting you caught up in this. If you leave now, you might be able to save at least yourself…”
foresight-botgd
Milae stomped a hoof, making it echo across the liminal space, and stormed forward to cross the space between them. “In over seven hundred years,” he growled, “I have not found one single person to give up on, not so long as they fight for themselves.” He gestured at Juro with his staff. “How dare you think you are an exception. Neutrality cannot only mean self destruction. If I mean anything to you, see your worth as I do–not as a vessel, or weapon, or even a Bookkeeper. As a man. As a being with a soul, and no more.” He drew closer. “Fight, Juro. For yourself.”
akkeyagentofhelheim
His brow twitched as a hard light broke through his mask for a brief second. He made to sweep the staff aside with the back of his hand, taking his own step away in response to the movement, “How could you say it like it’s so simple!”
“I am not a man, or human, not anything to fight for! You can’t waste your breath on me when all I can be is manipulated mercilessly to bring disaster to everyone I care for! Because I can’t control any of this!” His hand came to his chest, where the discoloured skin had become visible beneath white fabric. 
He grit his teeth, his facade flickering in and out of stability, “I have no way out, Milae. I’m stuck. I can’t live because my neutrality will be compromised and everyone will perish, and I can’t die otherwise I bring every other Bookkeeper down with me. This magic will just continue to grow inside me and there’s nothing I can do about it!”
“Fuckin’ liar.”
Juro snapped his head to the side where Duri stood before his cage, still perfectly centered between both men. The same intense blue and gold clearly flashed in his eye, even above Frigga’s magic.
Her shield around the cage rippled and strengthened in several levels as she caught Milae’s eye for a moment, “You’re not as helpless as you make yourself out to be.”
foresight-botgd
Milae stared heavily at Duri, and then slowly looked at Juro, his gaze twitching back and forth between the tall man’s eyes.
“Tell me the truth, bókari,” he said softly. “Are you refusing to help yourself?”
akkeyagentofhelheim
“No!” His breath turned shallow as he took a step back, then another, then another, his knees threatening to give. Again the mask disappeared, for longer this time, as amber locked with hazel.
“No… No, I’m–” Doubt laced his voice.
foresight-botgd
“Don’t lie to me.” Milae followed after him, one step at a time. “Please. We know each other too well for that.” His tone was aching, pleading. He bent down slightly and let the staff clatter to the ground, like it did in the Library, the first time Milae knew there was something underneath his new friend’s façade. “What hides within you?”
akkeyagentofhelheim
“I’m not. There’s nothing!” His insistent cry was anguished as he tried to escape, but he shook too much as his legs finally gave way and buckled, falling to the non-existent ground.
He stared at the fallen weapon, then up at the half breed he so desperately wanted to be closer with, to call a friend, but something, someone kept holding him back.
Several chains glowed again; so did the boy.
“Look, Virion,” A memory. The Library, smaller, far emptier than Milae remembered it to be, obviously at its very beginnings. Glasses perched askew on his face, scarf hung lazily around his neck, his left jaw bandaged downwards in two places, “It’s another me… I think I made him by accident, but his soul’s unstable.” He pressed his lips together in worry, then shook his head. The same magical light appeared in his eyes again, directing his power very purposefully, yet unaware of what was occurring within himself, “It’s okay. I will remain neutral, the lock will keep him safe. I won’t lose another Bookkeeper, another family…”
It flickered in present time, and the clear sound of a broken chain rang out, even beyond the surrounding subconscious. Its light died as the timeline’s Bookkeeper disappeared.
Another memory. “The Shou family line are fucking monsters. Make sure you beat that brat Lao Jin down so he thinks he can’t control that ability without us. He’s not human. He needs us. We are his will. Got it?”
He brought a trembling hand to his face as the light dissolved back into darkness, silently staring at Milae with one eye that continued to turmoil between his colours and Frigga’s.
“I don’t… I don’t know how… I can’t control it by myself…” His voice was rough against his throat as he finally came to terms with the memories and emotions that he had buried so deep within and forgotten.
Milae was right. It was he who held himself back.
"And who told you that?" Milae knelt in front of him, one leg at a time, his cloak spread around the two of them, as he reached out and lightly rested his hoof on Juro's wrist. "This power...it is not anyone else's. It is yours. Don't be afraid of it." His heart twisted at having the mirror of a conversation he'd had several times with his other half. It seems fate would not have me wield my own power, but help others wield theirs.
"I can't do it for you." Tears made their way down Milae's dark cheeks, as he stared willfully at the Bookkeeper. "But I believe in you."
akkeyagentofhelheim
The turmoil he felt continued to manifest itself, his brow furrowing deeper as he let his gaze slide down to the hand on his. He didn’t speak for far too long, the soundscape filling in the empty air around them, before hunching down and bowing his head as if to hide himself, retreating into his space in despair. His hand turned to hold the hoof that was above it, small in his large palm but seeming bigger and more comforting than his that was wrapped in uncertainty.
“There’s so much at stake, and if I can’t do it... I don’t want to lose anymore than I already have...” he rasped, barely a whisper.
foresight-botgd
He felt a light weight as a half-breed cheek rested on top of his head, and one more arm laid across his shoulders. "You have everything you need," Milae said, voice hoarse with emotion, "and more." His scarred arm and his shaking hoof squeezed tighter. "Right here. You. Can. Do it."
akkeyagentofhelheim
He shrank at the touch, but it was only by a little as he didn’t recoil any further, staying where he was, letting Milae partly hold him. What he felt was indescribable, at levels that he didn’t even imagine he could possibly have anymore. To have someone hold him, his ability, and his existence at such worth, unapologetic and firm in belief, valuing his life way more than he could ever be able to, stubbornly wanting to walk his side no matter how far he pushed him away… Juro understood again why he was drawn to the goat so much.
He was like the family he had once lost. 
The grip around Milae’s hoof tightened, fleeting, but present, in wordless response and gratitude as they sat in silence, unable to speak yet finding comfort beside the other. But it didn’t last.
Duri exclaimed from where she stood above the cage, her focus concentrated on the seal for the past time, but it was broken as the subconscious shook like an earthquake. There was a burst of chains that exploded from behind her, knocking her off her vantage point and streaking for Juro. It caught him around the neck, pulsing in his blue-gold light, and his hand went slack, slipping from Milae’s hold as he was pulled towards the cage, now empty of his younger self, as magic was drained from his reservoir. 
Their surroundings expanded in a bigger, wider perimeter, and Duri cursed under her breath as she sat up from where she fell, “Fuck! This is not good!”
“Whatever ya need to do, dweebus, ya better do it now!”