The realm of mist

[Maeve]

A distant gaze, eyes lost in the greyish fog, Maeve listened to his words carefully, letting the pressure in her chest dissolve slowly. Just by the sound of his voice, she knew he didn’t want to leave the dream anymore than she did, and that had a somewhat soothing effect on her. She closed her eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply, letting her shoulders fall tranquilly as she sighed, channeling the mixed up fears and thoughts and other sensations that were spinning in her head and in her heart.

When she opened her eyes again, she felt a lot calmer and a lot more focused than she had been a minute ago, even though a slight agitation still remained in the pit of her stomach, but that was a fuzzy sensation Maeve was used to. Whenever Sinbad was nearby, whenever her thoughts drifted to him, whenever she looked at him, it seized to her. And as much as she tried to deal with it, as much as she tried to suppress it and ignore it, it was always there. Now more than ever. But Maeve was way too stubborn to even consider acknowledging it.

Shrugging the nebulous feeling off, Maeve nodded to his words. “I suppose you’re right…” The redhead wished to go on, but she didn’t know where to start. There were so many things she wanted to say, so many questions she wanted to ask, but she simply didn’t know where to begin. Managing to quickly sort out the incipient disorder in her mind, her thoughts wandered to the crew; to Dermott, Doubar, Firouz, Rongar…”How are they?” Her voice was soft yet coloured with concern.

[Sinbad]

It was interesting and yet unsettling to watch how her features changed, literally from one moment to the next. Her posture becoming more relaxed, just like her expression. More relaxed... and something else. Something bordering on a feeling of sadness that evoked Sinbad´s protective instincts. In this place where his senses could focus on nothing else but her, because there was nothing else, these minute changes were all the more poignant.

He had stopped short. He didn´t know why, but it had to be something in her voice. There was a ring to it that gave him the feeling that if he wanted to keep any control over his emotions at all, he had to stay focussed. But he wasn´t even sure that this was what he wanted.
"Dermott´s all right." he heard himself say before he even thought about how he should best answer her question. It didn´t need consideration, it just felt most natural to start with Dermott. She had always been so protective about him. "The others are, too."
Her question had been evading, or at least he talked himself into that. She hadn´t asked about him and therefore spared him the torture of having to find a couple of finely woven lies to answer a question about how he had been. "They miss you." That, for sure, was no lie. And those three words went further than just for his crew. A lot further.

[Maeve]

Maeve pressed her eyes shut, preventing them from watering as she swallowed the lump forming in her throat. And event though a huge relief came over her as he mentioned Dermott (a consideration that profoundly touched her since he ignored how deep her connection ran with the hawk but knew how dear he was to her nevertheless) her chest tightened again and she didn’t trust her voice to be steady enough for her to speak without betraying too much of her longing for them. For him. That’s why she started pacing again, turning away from him and avoiding his gaze at all cost as she tried to sniffle back a sob subtly. He was probably unaware of it, but what he had said meant a great deal to her. Knowing that she had a family back in the real world, for that’s what the crew had become to her, missing her meant the world to her. It meant that there was something for her to go back to, if she ever broke free from the alternate realm she was trapped into that was.

Fighting to keep her composure, Maeve took a deep breath and faced him again, praying her voice wouldn’t break. “I miss them too.” As soon as she said so, the sorceress knew that it wasn’t just directed at the others, but immensely directed at the man whom she was now deeply staring at. Then, without warning, she felt something break inside her, as if one of the numerous emotional walls she had surrounded herself with was suddenly crumbling down, but Maeve clenched her teeth, refusing to let anything show, or at least, trying to.

[Sinbad]

Her restless pacing around, averting her face now and then told him everything he needed to know and made it even harder for Sinbad to keep up with it. There was some strange feeling in his chest by now, as if something was tightening in on his ribcage, slowly pressing air from his lungs. He forced himself to ignore that feeling, but didn´t completely succeed.

He knew she would have hated to see herself how she appeared to him now - vulnerable, lost - and he would never have told her that. But he could tell that she was struggling and telling himself that he was the stronger one for now (which was a blatant lie, insisted on by his own vaning pride) made it impossible for the captain to just stand there and watch her. He didn´t even have to admit anything to himself, to her, to anyone for what he did next. It was a natural reaction to console a friend , even though it ran much deeper. When she looked at him, he couldn´t help but admire her. She probably had more control over her face than he had right now, but he didn´t care. Standing there so lost in the mists of this place, trying so desperately to cling on to her composure was something he could barely watch. Something that he definitely couldn´t watch without giving her at least some reassurance. Giving them reassurance.

He had been standing a few small steps away from her because her pacing had led her here and there, but now he stepped closer again, his hands reaching out to place them on her shoulders. Keeping distance she knew she might want, but unable to fight his protective instincts. He forced himself to smile, trying to give this awful atmosphere a lighter tone. He probably failed. "Hey, don´t look like that." he said, his voice sounding like that of a man who was trying to be more cheerful than he was. "you´ll get out there eventually and then you´ll just throw up a signal fireball and we´ll be right there to pick you up."

[Maeve]

Her first instinct when he touched her would have been to break the contact immediately, to shrug him off and pretend she didn’t need his comfort and pretend she was alright and no way near the breaking down point, but she did none of that and remained right where she was. She didn’t shrink back for the simple reason that appearing strong and tough right then would have been absurd since he had already seen past her fragile and unsteady composure. Forcing herself to pretend otherwise would have been like lying to herself, something she was pretty good at.

The redhead listened to his words carefully, but what he said didn’t really reach her, it was the way he said it. Maeve had given up a long time ago into believing anything about escaping her small prison since nothing ever appeared plausible and realistic enough to arouse optimism in her, even in its smallest measurements. That’s why his words echoed deafly in her ears. However, the small feverish hope that tainted his voice rang way deeper than any other sound. The silent promise he was making her just now was one he would probably never be able to keep. There was no way out of the realm. No way to break free or break in. The Celtic firebrand had accepted that reality a long time ago and listening to Sinbad trying to cheer her up and restore some of her hope was just killing her.

Maeve shook her head sadly and lowered it, attempting to hide the pain and sorrow plastered across her face. “Don’t.” She didn’t want him to feel responsible. She didn’t want him to blame himself anymore than he already did for what had happened to Dim-Dim, and for what was now happening to her. She knew how heavily guilt could weight on one’s shoulders, she was bearing it everyday since what had happened to her brother, and it was a burden she refused to inflict upon Sinbad. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” As her voice wavered, she was glad her fiery curls were veiling her face.

[Sinbad]

She didn´t shrink back from him and he saw that as a good sign even though good for what he couldn´t clearly tell. It was strange, he briefly thought, how they could be talking and yet say so much more, each of their words having a much deeper meaning to it which they tried unsuccessfully to hide.

At her words he shook his head slowly, the smile he had managed for a moment, the smile he had believed might work to let her see things a little brighter, fading again. What had she been through these last few months, he wondered? What was that place she was at? Was it like this place? If so, how could he blame her for pushing away what little hope he could muster? But still: He had made that promise to himself and not even Maeve would keep him from staying true to it. Sinbad could be as stubborn and unrealistic as a young boy if he wanted to, and this was one of the cases where he wanted to. No matter what his reason told him, his heart would never accept something like "She´s never getting out." Or was it? Was his heart starting to fear just that? He wasn´t even sure any more if his promise wasn´t a hopeless one, but still, standing here, seeing her like that, feeling what he was feeling, he couldn´t tell her anything else but the promise he had made the day when she had gone.

"There are enough promises I didn´t keep already." he said. "When I jumped after you in that storm I promised I´d drag you out." It was interesting how normal his voice could sound if only he concentrated on it and pushed away the memory these words evoked. "I didn´t live up to that, so don´t try to talk me out of this one." Again, a faint attempt to lighten up his words towards the end.

[Maeve]

Maeve’s eyes remained on the ground until the sorceress managed to get a good enough grip on herself. Then only was she able to raise her head up to meet his gaze. Searching his eyes for any sort of weakness that she could have used to fight back and change his mind, the redhead sadly realized that this was an argument she could not win. He would never agree to give up, even if she pleaded him to, something Maeve would never do. Matching his obstinacy right now would simply take her nowhere, even if it would feel pretty good to argue at this point. But the issue was too dangerous to bicker on any further.

Deciding to change the subject since it was obvious it would be impossible to affect his judgment, Maeve offered him a sad sorry smile and brushed off his hands softly, stepping away. With every breath she took now, she could feel her self-control returning and her stubbornness kicking in. Now was the time to confront him with a matter in which she might have the upper hand.

“Speaking of that…horrible night…” Maeve started, recalling the terrible storm but fighting to stay remotely detached from its memory. Frowning, she cast Sinbad a disapproving glance and went on. “What on earth took over you?”

[Sinbad]

The abrupt change of subject didn´t come from nowhere. It matched with her stepping back from him, but he still hadn´t expected a reaction like that at this point. He looked at her and blinked in confusion, trying to make sense of what she was referring to. What had she seen of what had happened? Had she noticed what had been going on on deck of the Nomad after she had fallen off? Weirdly, he had imagined her to be struggling in the waves for a while before Dim Dim took her under his care ... somehow.

"Er... like, when?" he asked, eyeing her with a clearly questioning look, slightly taken aback by her sudden reproach.

[Maeve]

Maeve stared back at him, slowly becoming aware that her sudden question didn’t make sense to him. After all, she still hadn’t told him that she had occasionally been watching him and the crew during the last couple of months so he couldn’t possibly know the extent of her knowledge. And that was probably a good thing, Maeve thought uneasily, recalling bits and pieces of what she had witnessed during her absence. But she shrugged off the feeling.

The night of the storm, when she had hit the ice cold water and struggled in its choking grip, she had heard Doubar’s voice faintly, thundering in the wind, the big man yelling his brother’s name. She knew then that he had jumped. But before she could reach him through the angry waves, a white light had surrounded her and her world had gone black. The next thing she remembered was waking up on the beach’s realm and Dim-Dim filling in the blanks, confirming her worries. Sinbad had dived in after her. At that moment, she hadn’t even given a damn about the fact that she was now trapped in an alternate dimension; she was just worried sick about him.
But he had made it. And Maeve could still vividly recall the relief that had taken over her as Dim-Dim had assured her of her captain’s safety.

“Why did you jump?” She rephrased her previous question, with the same reproaching tone, making it obvious that she was aware of his reckless move and blaming him for the fear that had obsessed her that night. “You could have killed yourself!”

[Sinbad]

Sinbad opened his mouth in surprise, trying to understand how she could know about that. Had she even been able to see anything through the water and the waves and the darkness? Unlikely. But it didn´t really matter for the moment, what mattered was that she knew, whether Dim Dim had told her or she had just added one and one from what he had said earlier.

What was more dominant in his head right now was the question itself. He dimly realised why she was using that tone against him, but that feeling was overlayed momentarily by his will to justify himself, because he deemed it more important. More obvious. Sure, it had been a daring thing to jump into the sea that night, but he hadn´t even thought about that. It hadn´t mattered. And he knew that he would do it again if he had to. Without giving it even as much as a second thought. "I´m not that easily killed." he gave back in a tone that nearly matched hers in reproach and had something of a kid defying an older when it was pointed out to him that he had done something stupid.

[Maeve]

Sinbad really had a way of infuriating her. Angrily, Maeve put her hands on her hips as her mouth turned into a smirk. The way he had just slyly defended himself with his typical boastfulness just added fuel to the fire raging in her chest. “No, but stupidity comes to you rather easily, doesn’t it?” Her tone, even thought slightly light-hearted now, was still betraying how anxious she had felt because of him. The sorceress was well aware that it could have been the end of him that night and that she would have been the reason for it. Maeve wasn’t about to forgive him for that.

“You had a whole ship struggling in the waves! Jumping in after me was a pretty silly thing to do if you ask me, captain!” Sarcasm filled her voice as she deliberately pronounced the last word in a provocative manner. Truth was, her anger wasn’t totally directed at him but at…someone else. Someone she hadn’t had the guts to mention yet.

[Sinbad]

Sinbad gave a short, joyless laugh at that. He knew he had his moments when he would abandon all reason and he also knew perfectly well that whenever that happened, it was around her. He had usually prided himself for being someone who knew how the world went. Becoming a captain at an age where others still were cabin boys, he had grown up rather early - even though part of him never fully had. But when it came to Maeve, all his reason and street wiseness would just go overboard. Literally.

"Well, and I also had you struggling in the waves with no one around." he gave back, his tone matching hers, deliberately picking up on her choice of words. "while I had a whole crew look after the Nomad." The latter of course wasn´t really an argument. A good captain didn´t just jump overboard. But that didn´t count as an argument anyways, because the first part of his exclaim was what counted most.

[Maeve]

Maeve’s inquisitive frown, caused by his little dry laughter, turned into a glare halfway through his statement. She couldn’t believe he was actually bold enough to place her in a damsel in distress kind of position just to make it look like he had had no choice but to dive in and save her. This was a border of protectiveness she definitely didn’t like him to cross. But, she caught herself thinking, her anger towards the whole situation was only based on her pride and on her stubbornness and was rather ridiculous at this point because deep inside her, in the corner of her heart she didn’t like to explore, she knew the reasons for which he had jumped, and those reasons, had the situation been the other way around, would have made her jump too.

Crossing her arms on her chest defiantly, Maeve cocked her head to the side. “Right. So you immediately assumed that I needed you to save me.” Then, casually walking past him, the redhead risked something, half hoping he wouldn’t follow her on her little hint. “Too bad you ended up saving someone else.”

[Sinbad]

Sinbad had no idea why she was saying this. Even though he could imagine that her words were a backlash of what must have sounded cocky and overly protective (but he was still certain she had seen right through this anyways), they still hurt. He hated to admit it, but they hurt and that was obvious in his eyes.

He shook his head in bewilderment and confusion, having no idea how all of this connected, how Maeve knew about all of this, whether it had been Dim Dim or any other kind of magic. He didn´t get why she brought this up just now because for him these two incidents were not connected in that way. Bryn was a friend by now, but that was an entirely different matter. Maeve had always acted strange when there were other women around (oh well, so had he when there had been men giving her more than one look...), but in this place, under these circumstances, it just wasn´t something he was ready to deal with. His voice betrayed that when he spoke on.

"How does that come in?" he said, his voice a good deal softer now, the sentence sounding less like a question and more like a statement. "I saved her, but..." he paused, gathering his composure. He had still trusted his words but, unless in the moment of bewilderment earlier where he had not heeded his words, he was now trying to choose carefully. He noticed that the mists around him were retreating, just as if they were lurking, watching, leaving him stand even more in the middle of nowhere. "... do you have any idea how often I blamed myself for failing to save you?"
His heart felt painful, making a few agonizing beats. His words betrayed quite a bit of what he had been through these last few months. How often... every time the sea had been slightly more uneasy than normal, reminding him of that night. Every time he had allowed himself to think into that direction when staring out at the sea on his nightly watches at the tiller. He hated himself for these bold words, but he couldn´t help it. Even though he would never admit it out loud, he had always been embarassingly aware of the fact that he was one of the kind of people that wore their hearts on their sleeves. He had tried to forget that in the last few months, a simple, halfway effective way of trying to protect him from the loneliness, and now it was coming back to him with a vengeance.

[Maeve]

As soon as the words left her mouth, Maeve knew she had gone too far all at once. Seeing the pained look in his eyes, she kicked herself inwardly for how cruelly unfair she was being with him. He had only tried to save her, Maeve kept repeating to herself like a mantra, trying to contain the suffocating ache encircling her heart like a vice. That ache kept increasing with the tiny angry voice in the back of her head, getting louder and louder by the minute, forcefully telling her to confront him with everything he had put her through in the past few months without knowing it. He hadn’t been the only one to suffer and Maeve desperately wanted to simply lash out on him about everything he had done that had affected her on the other side more than she cared to admit. The sudden recklessness, the growing carelessness, the dark rashness, the ravenous flirting…How helpless she had been, witnessing all the changes in the boyish loving sailor she had known.

Now, the reason she was so mad at him for jumping in after her was plainly due to one of her absurd green-eyed reasoning; the blind and possessive jealousy that always took hold of her whenever another woman got too close to him. If Sinbad hadn’t jumped in after her, he never would’ve ended up on that island, he never would’ve ended up saving Bryn, the brunette never would’ve ended up on the Nomad replacing her, and Maeve never would’ve felt so fiercely brushed off and forgotten.

But that whole incongruous reasoning seemed so meaningless now, as Maeve gazed at his sea-blue eyes, so wounded and so vividly hurt. Because of her. Biting her lower lip as she felt a lump forming in her throat again, Maeve slowly nodded, her brown eyes fixed on his. The gesture was small and silent, and Maeve truly hoped it was displaying how sincerely sorry she was for what she had said. After a moment that seemed like an eternity to her, she finally trusted her voice to be steady enough to let a few words out. “But you have to admit you have a good poker face.” Even if the redhead knew how much he was blaming himself for her current situation, she needed him to understand that his actions from the past few months would have led anyone to believe otherwise, espacially her.

Then, noticing the fog was dissipating around them, Maeve frowned suspiciously, wondering if it was a good or a bad sign.