The Cave

Reyes just nodded mutely.

Sometimes it was just better not to question the craziness going on in his life.


"A long time," he admitted, keeping his gaze on his face, even after he looked down and away. It was hard to tell if he was crying or if it was the rain, but the way his voice was shaking suggested that it was the first of the two. "It's been so long that I've lost track of the exact numbers, but I know its been thousands of years."

It was a different sort of thousands of years. The last time they had met and had a conversation like this, Maahes had been younger. He had been less frequently summoned, and the time he had spent in this realm had only been a century or two at most. This time, he had lived through every single one of those days. Those months. Those years. That was something he wouldn't mention to James. He never talked about it; it was something that no one would ever be able to really understand.

He peered a little closer. James was undoubtedly crying right now. He could see the tears running down his cheeks, mixing with the rain droplets as both fell. He fished around in his pockets before holding out a handkerchief. Tissues probably would have been better, but he still hadn't found ones from places other than Earth.

Thousands of years again. He couldn't imagine how much could've happened in that time, and how much Maahes would've changed, but if Maahes had changed even a fraction of the amount that he had, then he was different. Which he could tell.

Maahes seemed... better.

"It's been only months. For me," he said quietly.

James looked away, seeing Maahes search his pockets in the corner of his eye, but paying it no mind. Through his blurry vision, he caught a glimpse of the glass woman down below - and a feeling of pure dread washed over him. He hoped that she hadn't heard any of their conversation through the pouring rain, or that she hadn't seen Maahes's brief transformation. With her being who and what she was, he has a feeling she wouldn't care so much as Kartiel would, but there was still that worry. But the concern was mostly for his damaged pride.

He didn't want anyone else to see him cry. He hadn't wanted Maahes to see either, but it was happening.

He wanted to blame the tears on the stress of the current moment, but he knew that it was a culmination of events. And Maahes's presence just happened to come at a time that he was... particularly vulnerable. Which he would've hated with anyone else, but at least he knew - or felt like he knew - Maahes was... safe.

"I'm... sorry you have to see me like this," he muttered, voice weak and warbling. "You just - caught me at a... bad time."

He shook his head. "It's alright," he promised, taking a step towards James. Crying was never something to be ashamed of when other people were around. Maybe the last Maahes that James interacted with might have thought so, but he was a different person now. It was a terrible thing to avoid; bottling it up would only make it grow worse to the point where it would finally explode in a burst of feelings.

He wasn't sure if he was going a step too far, but he went and pulled James into an embrace. He was certain that his younger, childhood self had done that at some point, but there were some things that were easier to get away with when you were a child. This was one of them. Still, James needed the comfort, and hugging him was the best thing that Maahes could come up with.

James's initial desire in response to the hug was to pull away. His entire body tensed up, and he was stiff as Maahes's arms came around him, and he knew it was awkward. He could feel his throat closing up as he kept trying to fight back the tears, and he balled his hands into tight fists, trying to let every emotion escape through the pressure of his white knuckles. But it didn't work.

He didn't know how many seconds had passed. But where in one moment, he was rigid and immovable, in the passing seconds, his muscles loosened, his shoulders began to shake, and he found himself burying his face in Maahes's shoulder.

He was sobbing.

And he couldn't even put words to what he was feeling. It had been so long since anyone had embraced him - the real him - without deceit or ulterior motives in mind. It had been so long since he'd cried. It'd been so long since he'd seen a friend who still cared, or still wanted him around.

He hugged back; weakly, with arms shaking just as much as the rest of him. He tried to say something. Some kind of apology. Some kind of explanation. But no words came, as they were all swallowed by sobs.

Maahes remained exactly where he was, arms still wrapped tight around James, and let him sob into his shoulder. Crying wasn't something he could ever truly do. He could make it look like he was crying, but spontaneously bursting out into tears was something his essence simply wasn't capable of. But despite not being able to understand what it was like to suddenly start crying when you were trying your very hardest not to, he was able to understand what it was like to be so sad that you couldn't stop yourself from letting other people see it.

He hadn't done it much recently, to tell the truth. He had only just begun to know Vala, and even with her he had mostly kept his feelings to himself. Sometimes it was just too hard to explain the reasons for his sadness to someone that wasn't him. Doing so would involve explaining his life story. Even Annie had only known bits and pieces of his past, just enough to sate her curiosity and not enough to paint a complete picture.

Maybe what James was going through right now was like that. Something that was so inherently tied to who he was that he couldn't bring himself to explain what was causing him to cry. Or maybe he was just wishing to find someone else like himself, someone who could almost understand what he had been going through these past thousands of years.

But that didn't matter. This was about James, not him. He could think about his feelings later - right now, James needed someone to comfort him and make him feel better.

"I'm sorry," he finally managed to get out, barely understandable. He began to pull away, slowly, as if he didn't want to, but he didn't know what else to do. "I'm not - you don't need to -" he stuttered between sobs, desperately trying to control himself and only falling more and more apart with each word. "I just need to -"

He left Maahes's arms, and turned around, kneeling inches away from the ledge, and curling into a ball beneath the pouring rain. He didn't know why he insisted on doing so. There was a part of him that longed to be held but he didn't know how to receive it. He never let anyone see. No one ever saw how he really felt. And now in one moment he was completely laid bare, and there was nothing in his power he could do to hide it, no matter how hard he tried. And he could only imagine what would happen if any of the others saw, or looked out to see what was happening. He dreaded the moment that he would have to force his mask back on again, wondering if he would be able to do it now if need be. He hugged himself tighter, hiding his face between his knees.

He just wanted to be invisible.

Maahes quietly walked over to him, the rain pounding against his skin and clothes as he sat down next to James. His feet dangled over the edge of the cliff. He might have been afraid of James falling, but heights didn't scare him. Not when he could easily take on the guise of a bird and fly himself to safety, or come up with some other creative way to avoid hitting the ground below.

He sat there for at least a minute, trying to figure out what he should say in a situation like this. It was hard. No matter how many times people opened up to him - which was surprisingly often, considering how rarely he grew close to any specific person - he never could figure out a surefire way to comfort them.

"Don't apologize for being upset," Maahes finally said. He looked over at James, rain droplets rolling off of his hair and down his face. He was getting absolutely soaked, but he didn't really care at the moment. "You can't help it, and you seem like you really need to get it out."

James pulled his head out from the shelter of his arms but didn't dare look over at Maahes. He took in a few shaky breaths before he was able to say words.

"I-I'm not s-sorry f-for f-feeling," he said, tears still streaming down his face. "I'm just sorry you h-had to s-see." He looked down, trying to blink away the rain and the tears, but in vain.

"I haven't. I don't -" his voice caught in his throat. He swallowed, forcing it down. "You n-never really learned who I was in m-my home world. Or what I -" his voice caught again. This time the lump in his throat was too big to swallow. He looked away, clenching his fists again as he fought again for his voice.

What he wanted to say was that - as much as Maahes had proved to be kind at heart, he knew very little about Maahes, and Maahes knew very little about him. Maahes didn't know what happened before and between their encounters. He thought that there was no way to explain all of that in a short sentence, or anything even somewhat manageable in the state he was in at the moment. He didn't know how to explain the nuances of his situation and his history without going deeper than he even knew how. So he closed his eyes, to be sure he wouldn't see Maahes's reaction. Seconds upon seconds multiplied as he tried to convince himself to say something honest instead of what would just close the conversation faster.

"I can't keep going like this, Maahes," he finally whispered, landing on something in between what he meant and what he felt he should've said. "I'm not going to make it. I'm going to self destruct."

The words were dangerous ones, ones that he wasn't sure he was prepared to handle. Back during his time on Earth, a phrase like that would result in him gently steering the person in question to therapy. But they were nowhere near a place like that, and he doubted that the place James came from - Nye? - had therapists. It looked like he was going to have to sort James' feelings out, even though he had barely been able to do the same with his own feelings in the past.

He thought long and hard on what he wanted to say. It was a thing that he couldn't easily answer, and he was afraid that saying the wrong thing would push James in the wrong direction.

He took a deep breath.

"What do you remember of me when we last met?" he quietly asked. He knew the question seemed like he was coming out of nowhere, but there was a good reason to what he was asking. He had been different then. In a cruel twist of fate, their positions had been reversed. Now it was Maahes who had a grip on himself, and James was the one who was quickly slipping away. But, back then, things had been different. "What was I like then?"

James finally looked over at Maahes briefly, trying to figure out his train of thought.

"You were... more guarded. Less... open. Kind, but withdrawn. And... lonely. If I read you right."

After a minute, Kendrik tapped Reyes on the shoulder. "Are ya okay?" Kendrik said, voice shaky as he slowly warmed up. He knew he should have taken off his wet clothes, but this wasn't the time or the place where he'd be comfortable with that. "Ya seem kinda...stunned, I guess." Kendrik wondered why - this was weird, but not nearly the strangest thing that the hound had been through. Surely the same applied to Reyes.

In the meantime, Jaron threw himself onto the sandy shore. The brown sand was littered with huge gray boulders; Jaron hid behind one and shifted into his bipedal fox form. He placed his head between his knees. Nobody should've seen him as the wolf. Kendrik excepted, of course. Now they knew was a hybrid, and soon the insults would start. He pushed aside the sand beneath him to better hide himself.

Adeline made her way out of the forest, walking very carefully. She had already slipped several times where the foliage was wet from the rain. She paused and waited, since the two men up on the cliff edge seemed to be having a moment. Finally, she interjected herself.

"Excuse me!" She called, wincing at how loud her voice was, "could I borrow a pair of shoes?"

James had expected the glass woman to interrupt at some point but he hadn't expected that question. He found himself staring at her blankly for a moment before he started to quickly pull off his shoes, and he held them out to her wordlessly. He wanted to say that it was with a pure and generous heart that he did so, but his main motivation was to get her to leave as soon as possible.

Adeline nodded her thanks and slipped them on. She was slightly surprised- she didn't expect him to actually give her his shoes. She tied the laces as fast as she could.

"Right then," she didn't want to keep talking, since she could tell he wanted her to leave, "do you know the quickest way out of here?"

James looked back at the opening of the cave, and he swallowed in an attempt to make his voice sound less hoarse and less like-he-was-just-crying than it was.

"Until I found this cave. It was forest and rain for miles. But inside the cave behind the wall there is a beach, somehow. I don't know what kind of magic that is, or if that's a way out or in. But it'll take you away from here with the rain. Apart from that, all of us are lost here. None of us really knows the way."