#angst+2

It had been a few months since the fire, and Big Mama had only seen him a handful of times. Once after the fire had died, once at the memorial service for Lou and once at the funeral where an empty casket was interred. Big Mama let him have his few months to wallow and mourn without her going after him, just as she said she would at the first sight of his stricken face and black robes. But she was done. Her anger and grief were still fresh and Draxum was the only one she hadn’t been able to properly express it too.

The lab stood silent as a grave when she arrived, more solemn and cold than it had ever been. The guards let her pass without much ado - after all, she pulled and had rank and held no qualms about tying them up. Big Mama knocked on the door, trying to remain polite until she got her hands on Draxum’s throat. She heard the mumble of two voices - Draxum’s gargoyles no doubt - behind the door, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Eventually, the door opened and she saw their eyes peering at her through the crack.

“Hello!” she said, forcing cheer. “I’m here to pay a little visit to Baron Draxum.”

“I’m not sure we should let you in-” Huginn began.

“The boss is really going through some stuff right now,” Muninn continued. “Maybe check-in next week? We could easily pencil you in for- hey!”

Big Mama pushed through them, shoving the two and the door aside to come in. The halls were dim and dark, barely lit. “Now now, I simply must insist! Where is he? I thought you two practically lived on his shoulders.”

“We do but he needed to be alone,” Muninn said. “And I don’t think-”

“He’s down in the Crypt. You know, below,” Huginn interrupted. Muninn shot him a look. “She’s not exactly going to leave, is she?”

Big Mama ignored the rest of their little spat and made her way through Draxum’s home. Some of it had been built within the past few hundred years, but most of it had been magiced from the surface down to the Hidden City. Those were the oldest parts of the home, dating eons back before she or even Draxum had seen the light of day - parts like the Crypt. The chiseled stone staircase in the back of the home, weathered by time, led down to it. It was dark, cold, and when she was younger it had made her skin crawl. Now it was simply a place and death merely a fact.

Her footsteps echoed off the stone and were the only sounds in the Crypt, empty, hollow and hallowed. She got to the bottom and was confronted with rows of the dead, their statues looking down at her, unblinking as she passed by. Draxum’s ancestors lined the dark stone walls, the candles flickering on their pedestals bringing light to their features, making them look alive despite the state of the stone. Big Mama walked past each proud and noble figure. She didn’t know who they were - Draxum probably did, as the last of his line. The past was always taught as a parable and a lesson in his family, never forgotten. Halfway down the line, she began to recognize the faces. The split in older and new was stark. No gradual shift, but almost clearly delineated and sudden.

Granted, they had all died in the same time frame, but nevertheless still suddenly and before their time.

Draxum’s parents, aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings alike all laying at rest next to each other, together as they had been in life. They had been her playmates and friends, fellow fighters in the war against man. A battle they ultimately failed to win, and the cost had been horrifically great, as evidenced by the row of graves her heels echoed off of.

Big Mama traveled farther and deeper down into the crypt until she found what she was looking for. Draxum was kneeling on the floor in front of a statue, candles fresh and brand new on the pedestal. He was still in black robes, and from the back, he looked disheveled, his red hair mussed and unbrushed. His helm laid on the floor at his side. He hadn’t noticed her presence yet, too enraptured with the newest addition to the dead above him. The stature of Lou Jitsu stared down at them, softly smiling. A hand was extended down and out to them, and the flickering candles made it look like it was actually him, soft smile about to become a smirk and a quip about to escape from it. There as no body interred there, the tomb behind it empty. Big Mama watched as Draxum raised a hand up, gently resting on the extended stone one. It lacked the normal confidence she associated with the gesture, overly cautious and restrained.

Before she could let herself even fathom the idea of given him a smidge of her pity, she coughed into a hand to get his attention. The hand snapped back down to his leg.

“Go away.”

The command was quiet but hoarse, and Draxum didn’t bother to grace her with a glance.

“Absolutely not, Baron Draxum,” Big Mama replied. “Not after I came all this way-”

“Go away.”

She ignored him and continued, stepping closer. She had very much to say to him. “It’s been such a long time since I last saw you and we have so very much to discuss-”

“Go. Away.”

“To be fimple, I-”

“GO AWAY!” Draxum shouted, turning to lunge at her, and barely stopped himself from the full motion, coming to stand. The roar echoed around them, and Big Mama, truly, had never seen Draxum in such a state.  He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, eyes bloodshot and strained, as though constantly forced to hold back tears - Draxum never cried. Refused to, more like it. His hair was just as much of a mess from the front as it was in the back, and his armor was dull and unpolished, as were his horns. Draxum turned away from her, proud shoulders slumped, and sank to the ground. “Just leave me in peace.”

Big Mama seethed, scowl coming to line her mouth. How dare he rage at her! That’s what she was here for! Not to watch him mourn at the foot of Lou’s statue. Even now, Draxum had found a way to be selfish when it came to Lou, setting up a statue in his own family crypt to come and act so pitifully- no, selfishly, while she and everyone else had to go to the one in the Nexus Arena! And to think of what his family would say if they saw the human standing among their ranks…

And in Draxum’s own spot on the burial row, she realized, recognizing the two statues of Draxum’s siblings flanking Lou. Their memory was fresh, still, if not a bit hazy now from the centuries and all the ways everyone had tried to forget what had happened. Anther the Poet and Proelia the Shieldbearer stood proudly there, and Big Mama’s resentment of Draxum grew. If anything-

“You should be buried there, Draxum,” she hissed. He slowly turned to look at her.

“If that’s meant to imply I should have died instead of Lou, or if its indignation at me putting Lou there instead,” Draxum replied, dull and annoyed. “I don’t care. It’s my spot, and I’ll do with it how I see fit.”

He turned back to the statue. Big Mama supposed she felt both to be more than true. She had loved Lou as much as she could have, but constructing an edifice for him in some place so venerated was something she couldn’t fathom. Battle Nexus? Yes, obviously. It only made sense. But then again, Draxum had made little sense to her, in all his stubborn pride.  She watched as he continued to kneel, unmoving in his trance and train of thought, unmoving in the devotion he had for someone now dead. Dead because of him, and now he himself sat among the dead.

Draxum, she thought, never let things go. Suppress them deep down into his memory to be shocked at their reappearance and be driven by the force behind them, perhaps, but never let go. He’d hold onto whatever he wanted if it held meaning or gave him purpose, even if unattainable, even if it ended up dragging him down right next to Lou’s spot here. Selfish and stubborn, wrapped in nobility and devotion and black robes at the base of an empty grave, surrounded by the remnants of the past. Soon enough, Lou would join them, living as a fond memory in their minds, maybe tinged with regret, maybe even anger.  Maybe tinged with smoke and flame, smoldering the edges as everything fell apart.

Big Mama wondered if such thoughts plagued him. Maybe they did, but sometimes she doubted he was capable of self-reflection.

“I hate you,” she whispered, more for herself. She couldn’t tell if Draxum heard her, but couldn’t care even if he did. He showed no signs of even acknowledging her presence anymore, so, with one last glance at the two lovers, she turned on her heel, abandoning them to be stuck in the past.