Azra'il - POV
I continued to follow Morgana through the emptying streets, watching her as she struck out towards the northern wall. There was a promise she had no intention of leaving unfulfilled.
The house with the blue door was simple enough to locate. Small, unassuming, fronted by a rather neglected herb garden, the sort one commences with such hope, only to abandon when life grows far too strenuous.
(She said she would come. And she did.)
Morgana knocked at the door.
The boy from earlier opened it, sporting the same wide eyes, the same grubby face, but now possessing something entirely different. Hope.
"Lady of the Wings! You came!"
"I told you I would." Morgana smiled, stooping down to his level. "How fares your mother?"
"Her fever has broken a little. But she still cannot rise."
"May I see her?"
The boy nodded vigorously and tugged her inside by the hand.
The house felt even smaller within than it appeared from without. A single room divided by curtains of faded fabric, an improvised kitchen huddled in one corner and two pallets in the other. The unmistakable scent of infirmity lingered in the air, sweat, scorched herbs, and sheer, weary desperation.
On the larger pallet lay a woman beneath thin blankets. Her face was waxen, her eyes hollow, her breathing ragged. A man sat beside her, clutching her hand, her father, I presumed. He scrambled to his feet the moment he caught sight of Morgana.
"My Lady! We did not expect... that is, Tam said he had asked for assistance, but I told him not to bother you—"
"He was quite right to seek me out." Morgana touched the man's shoulder with a featherlight grace. "May I examine her?"
The man nodded, retreating to provide space.
Morgana knelt beside the pallet. She pressed her hand to the woman's brow, checking the fever in the traditional fashion first. Then, she rested her palm over the woman's chest and closed her eyes.
I watched the precise moment the magic began to flow.
It bore no resemblance to Kayle's magic, there was no fire, no blinding effulgence. It was something far subtler. A dark, purple energy pulsed softly beneath Morgana's palm, seeping into the woman's skin like water being drawn into the thirsty earth.
Morgana's wings flared slightly, an unconscious reflex, and the shadows within the cramped room seemed to deepen for a heartbeat.
The boy, Tam, watched on with eyes wide as saucers.
After a long moment, Morgana opened her eyes.
"A lung infection," she said, her voice composed. "Left untended for far too long. Yet, there is still time."
She produced a larger vial from her satchel, quite different from the one she had given the lad earlier, and pressed it into the father's hand.
"A spoonful every four hours. Diluted with warm water and honey, if you have any. She will begin to cough quite violently; that is a favourable sign, as it indicates her body is expelling the illness. Within three days, she ought to have the strength to sit."
"We... we haven't the coin to pay you—" the man began.
"I did not ask for payment."
"But—"
"If you truly wish to thank me," Morgana stood, dusting off her knees, "see to your garden. The rosemary and mint there merely require water and attention. When they flourish, bring a portion to me."
The man blinked, clearly incapable of comprehending how such a thing could constitute fair payment.
But Morgana was already turning towards the door.
"Veiled lady?" The weak voice drifted from the pallet.
The woman had opened her eyes. She remained pale, she remained frail, yet there was lucidity there now. And gratitude.
"Thank you," she whispered. "For coming."
Morgana smiled, that rare sort of smile that lights one's entire face from within.
"Rest now. And do listen to your son more often. He is a brave lad."
Tam puffed out his chest, positively beaming with pride.
Morgana departed the house with the same silence with which she had entered. The father trailed her to the doorway, still desperately attempting to offer thanks, still trying to offer something in recompense. She refused it all with effortless grace.
(She does not do this for gratitude. Nor for recognition. She does it because... it is simply what she is.)
[Subject Morgana demonstrates consistent patterns of community care without the expectation of reciprocity.]
(I suspect it is more than that, Eos. It is purpose. It is simply her manner of existing in the world.)
Night had fallen, and Morgana continued her trek through the now virtually deserted streets. She ought to have been heading home. Her father would be waiting, likely with the supper cooling upon the table. But her feet steered her in another direction. She climbed narrow alleys that wound their way near the outer walls.
The ascent was steep, irregular, the sort of path designed to deter visitors. Yet Morgana climbed with the familiarity of one who had done so a thousand times, her feet finding every step without a glance, her body moved entirely by muscle memory.
At the summit of a flight of stone stairs, partially hidden amidst derelict warehouses, sat a watchtower. Forgotten. The torches were extinguished, the door dangling by rusted hinges. No one came here.
No one ought to come here.
Yet, the stone steps were polished smooth. Worn away by years of feet that climbed when the rest of the city slept.
The platform at the peak offered a view of the entire city on one side, the city they had built, spread out beneath the shroud of night with its myriad lights and sounds, and the Petricite forest on the other, vast and silent and ancient.
Morgana sat upon the edge. Her legs dangled over the abyss. Her wings unfurled, stretching languidly, shaking off the tension of the long day like one finally shedding one's shoes upon returning home.
She gazed out at the stars.
She did not weep. Morgana was never the sort to weep readily. Yet there was a sorrow upon her features that was somehow worse, without a peak, without an outburst, without catharsis. Merely present. Constant. Like a bass note droning perpetually beneath everything.
The sort of sorrow that arises when one reaches out and finds only air.
"When was it we lost our way, Kay?"
The voice was so quiet the wind nearly snatched it away. Speaking to the sister who was not there. To the version of Kayle that existed before the armour.
"I recall when you held my hand without need of request. When you laughed. When remaining by my side was not a threat to your fortress."
A long pause. Wind. Indifferent stars.
"When did embracing me become a weakness to you?"
Another pause. Heavier than the first.
"I am still here, you know. Waiting. With my hand still extended. For whensoever you choose to take it."
I observed her profile against the nocturnal sky. The curve of her cheek illuminated by the faint celestial glow. And there was something there, in the manner she spoke of Kayle, in the cadence of her name, in the way her entire body inclined towards the absent sister like a plant leaning towards the sun, even in the darkness, that I recognised.
I recognised it from too many lifetimes. From too many guises. From too many names.
It was not my place to put a name to it. Perhaps Morgana herself could not. Perhaps it was the sort of thing that eludes all language, for every available word is too trifling, or too errant, or far too terrifying.
But it was there. Unmistakable. Pulsing beneath every syllable like a second heart.
Then, the sound of footsteps reached us.
The strike of boots against gravel caused Morgana to straighten. Not out of fright, but out of recognition. She knew that step as she knew her own breathing. The weight, the rhythm, the cadence.
She did not turn.
Yet, everything about her altered. Her posture. Her breathing. The angle of her shoulders. Like an instrument attuned by the proximity of another; involuntary, inevitable.
Kayle appeared at the top of the stair.
Her wings were retracted. Nearly invisible against her back. Folded so tightly they seemed not to exist at all. In the plaza, they were a declaration of power. Here, climbing a derelict tower in the dead of night to meet her sister where none could witness, she had concealed them.
She had exchanged the ceremonial armour for modest garb. No gold. No gleam.
And in her hands, the basket of sandwiches.
She paused several paces distant. The silence between them was a living thing, heavy with everything that had transpired at the tribunal, with everything left unsaid in the square, with years upon years of words withheld.
Then, she cleared her throat.
"Father prepared far too many sandwiches. I shall not manage to consume them all alone."
Her voice lacked every shred of tribunal authority. Merely the voice of one attempting to justify her own presence in a place that required no justification, yet unable to exist without one.
Morgana did not turn immediately. I saw the corner of her mouth twitch, not precisely a smile, rather the reflection of one who hears exactly what she anticipated, and yet feels her chest tighten regardless.
"May I sit?"
The question was whispered. As if she required permission to occupy space beside her own sister.
"Always."
Without accusation. Without demand. Without the "finally" any other soul might feel entitled to utter.
Kayle sat.
Keeping a distance. A cautious, measured distance, neither too close, nor too far. The basket placed between them. Barrier. Shield. The final line between herself and a proximity that terrified her in ways I suspect she herself did not fully fathom.
"He made those with goat cheese and herbs." Kayle stared down at the sandwiches as if they were complex documents requiring rigorous analysis. "The ones I fancied when I was small."
"I know..."
Kayle took one. Bit into it. Chewed mechanically, and I caught the precise moment the taste reached her. The tremor in her jaw. The slower blink. Her shoulders dropping a single millimetre. The flavour of a time when she was merely a girl with a sister and a loving father and no podium.
The breeze brought the scent of the Petricite forest. Ancient timber that seemed to stifle magic itself.
Morgana looked towards the basket between them.
Without a word, she picked it up and moved it to the other side.
The gesture was simple. Moving a physical object. Yet its significance was far from simple; it was Morgana removing the final excuse Kayle possessed to maintain distance. No words. No confrontation. Simply creating the space and leaving the decision to her sister.
Kayle perceived it. Her jaw tightened. Her gaze flicked to the space now vacated between them.
Yet she did not recoil. She did not replace the basket.
And gradually, so marginally it might have been an illusion, the distance dwindled. Centimetres. Small adjustments of posture that could have been for comfort, could have been mere coincidence.
They were not.
Until her shoulders were all but touching. And I saw Kayle register the proximity, the slight stiffening, the instinct to retreat, and then choose to stay. Like a woman placing her hand near a flame knowing it shall burn, and deciding the warmth is worth the agony.
There was something in the way Kayle existed near Morgana that differed from how she existed near any other living soul. Her body leaned toward her sister in small, imperceptible movements, as if an invisible thread linked the two, pulling harder the nearer they came.
And simultaneously, she resisted. Resisted with ferocity. That distance was not merely professional armour. It was survival.
"I witnessed the trials today," Morgana said. "All of them."
Kayle grew rigid.
"And?"
"And nothing. I simply witnessed."
"If you intend to criticise me—"
"I have no intention of criticising you, Kay."
Silence. The rigidity thawed gradually, like ice that softens rather than melts. And beneath it, something heavier.
"That man." Her voice was low. "The one with the wife and the child."
"I know... I wished to make him suffer more." The words were wrenched out. Reluctant. "Not because the law required it. Because I wished it. When I saw that drawing... that injured little girl without a mouth..."
Morgana waited. Without haste. Without pressure. With the patience of one who understands that Kayle only unbarred certain doors when she felt certain no judgement lay upon the other side.
"I wished for the fire to last hours... for the flame to torture him for hours." Kayle swallowed. "At times, I fear this rage shall consume me entirely. That I shall cross a line and find myself unable to return."
She did not utter the name. She did not have to. Mihira loomed within the silence like a spectre.
"You have crossed no line." Morgana's voice possessed a firmness that sliced through the gloom. "That man deserved every flame. Kayle, I spend my days believing that even the deepest shadow possesses a fissure of light."
She gazed down at her own hands.
"Yet, there exist abysses where light simply cannot enter. Where no soul remains to be redeemed. What you felt was no failure. It was the visceral reaction of something living against something that had died within."
"But what when I err?" Kayle looked at her. Really looked, without evasion, without flight. Searching. "What when the rage speaks louder, and I am unable to discern the difference?"
Morgana held her gaze. And I saw what transpired when the two truly beheld one another, sans mask, sans performance, sans the secure distance they maintained from the remainder of the world. Kayle sustained the look for three seconds; three seconds wherein her face was entirely unshielded, entirely vulnerable, entirely present, and then, upon the fourth, she bolted. Brusquely. Like a woman pulling her hand from a flame.
Morgana did not avert her gaze. She continued to look upon her sister with that quiet intensity I found impossible to classify and had ceased attempting to.
"Then I shall be there," she said. "To pull you back."
"You cannot be there perpetually."
"I can endeavour to."
"Why?" The question was torn from her. "I push you away. I wound you. I cast you out. Each time you extend a hand, I slam the door. Why do you still come?"
"Because you are my sister."
The reply was simplicity itself. Yet the way it emerged, the way Morgana's voice enfolded the word "sister", the sheer weight she placed upon it, as if endeavouring to make a modest word contain something immense, told me there was more. Far more than she confessed. Perhaps more than she permitted herself to realise.
"And I never abandon those I love."
Kayle turned her face away. The tremor in her lip. The glint in her eyes. Years of discipline warring against a thing no discipline could contain.
The breeze grew chillier. Morgana shivered, a somatic reflex; it was not that she truly felt the cold.
But Kayle moved.
Her right wing unfurled. Slowly. With the hesitation of one performing a thing she knows not if it is permitted, not by another, but by herself. By her own ordinances. By her own ramparts.
And it enfolded Morgana.
The soft heat of the light warming the air between them. Drawing her closer without the need for hands to perform what the mouth was too cowardly to utter.
"It is cold. You shall grow ill."
Another excuse. For Kayle was incapable of offering tenderness without cloaking it in a pretext; incapable of drawing near without pretending it was for an ulterior motive; incapable of touching her sister without inventing a practical reason to justify what her body enacted entirely of its own volition.
"Kay..." Morgana's voice teetered between a laugh and something far more fragile. "We haven't grown ill since we obtained our powers."
Silence.
"...Shut up and eat your sandwich."
Morgana laughed. Light, genuine, vibrant. The sort of laughter that spills out when the chest is too full to contain it and demands release. No mockery. Relief. Tenderness for this impossible creature who commanded her to "shut up" when her heart demanded she speak an entirely different dialect.
She pressed no further. She understood that forcing the moment would shatter it. She merely snuggled in. She let the wing enfold her. She rested her head upon Kayle's shoulder.
And I watched the reaction course through Kayle's body like an electric current. The stiffening. The breath that caught. The instinct to retreat, to shield herself, to seal herself away and shove Morgana aside. And then, the moment wherein she elected to do none of those things.
Her shoulder relaxed beneath the weight of Morgana's head. The wing tightened ever so slightly. Her eyes closed for an instant.
"Thank you, Kay."
Kayle did not answer with words.
The wing said quite enough.
I observed them both and felt a constriction. In the manner they aligned. In the manner the body of one moulded to the other with the naturalness of things designed to exist in unison. In the manner Kayle, who permitted no other living soul to touch her, dissolved beneath the weight of her sister's head upon her shoulder as if it were the singular thing in existence capable of stilling the turmoil within.
There was something there that I knew. That I recognised from too many lifetimes, guises, and names. Something I lacked the capacity to name, neither for them, nor for myself.
[You are thinking aloud.]
(I did not utter a sound.)
[Precisely. You are thinking aloud within the silence. I recognise this particular silence of yours.]
(It is the silence of one who knows they ought not to be watching, yet finds it utterly impossible to cease.)
[For what reason?]
(Because it is beautiful, Eos. And because it shall soon reach its end.)
At some point, Kayle leaned her head against Morgana's. Lightly. Testing if it were permitted.
Morgana did not move. Did not react. Did not do a single thing that might spook her sister back into the confinement of her armour.
She simply remained.
And her head remained.
And the two existed there together, within that space which belonged not to the remainder of the world, no tribunal, no titles, no city below and its suffocating expectations. Merely two women sharing sandwiches from their father within a forgotten tower, beneath stars that demanded no explanation.
Morgana's hand stirred. Slowly. It found Kayle's hand in the space between them. It did not grip; it merely touched. Finger upon finger. The sort of contact that offers without demanding.
Kayle looked down. At her sister's hand atop her own. And I saw the entire war unfold upon her features within two seconds: the terror, the yearning, the shame of the yearning, the fury at the shame. Layers upon layers of things she knew not how to untangle.
Her fingers closed around Morgana's.
Tightened.
And did not let go.
Neither spoke.
There was naught to say. Or there was everything to say, but everything was far too grand, and the silence served them far better.
I reflected upon the years to come. The bickering. The estrangement. The day chains would appear, and wings would be fettered, and the chasm between them would become an abyss that no basket of sandwiches could hope to bridge.
But for now, they possessed this. Intertwined hands, braced shoulders, and a wing of fire that lacked the capacity to lie.
It would have to be sufficient.
Because, at times, what exists is all we have.
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💬 Author's Note
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Alright… quick pause because I NEED to talk to you all. 😐
First:
👉 What do you think about how I'm developing Morgana and Kayle's relationship?
Like, genuinely:
- is it working?
- does it feel off?
- is it too subtle?
- or are you all like "author… I see what you're doing 👀"
Because this relationship is one of the MOST important parts of the story, and I'm building it very slowly, through details, silence, small gestures… so I really want to know if that's reaching you.
Now about Kayle:
👉 What do you think of her so far?
The goal here is NOT to make her just "the rigid justice character."
She has conflict, she has fear, she has unresolved issues, and her emotional repression is at CRITICAL levels.
So tell me:
- are you enjoying her like this?
- or do you feel like she needs a slap to wake up? (valid)
And VERY important:
👉 Is there any Kayle player reading this fic?
If there is, I REALLY want your opinion. Like:
- "does this feel accurate?"
- "does this Kayle feel like a Kayle main or is she missing more divine judgment?"
- "is she balanced or does she need a nerf?" 😭
Now… the slightly dramatic part (but real).
I've noticed the chapters have been getting very few comments.
And honestly:
💬 comments = author fuel
When there are comments:
- I get excited
- I want to write more
- I feel motivated to keep going and even speed up chapters
When there aren't:
- I start thinking "hmm… is no one enjoying this?"
- I begin to doubt everything
- my motivation goes from 📈 to 📉 real fast
So if you're reading and enjoying (even silently in full ninja mode 🥷):
👉 please leave a comment. Anything.
Seriously, it can be:
- "I'm enjoying this"
- "Kayle is stressing me out"
- "Morgana perfect as always"
- "this is going to hurt and I'm already suffering"
- or even just a dramatic "."
It helps A LOT.
I read everything, seriously. And it genuinely makes a difference in my motivation to keep writing.
Anyway…
Thank you to everyone who's following this story and suffering with me through this emotional chaos disguised as a calm narrative. 😌
And tell me:
👉 Are you on Morgana's side… or Kayle's? 👀