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Bolaire leaves.
He leaves the city that once had been his home, his chance— "Everything starts as an illusion first." — before the machinations of Thjazi Fang had poisoned everything.
He leaves; hands himself over, vulnerable, although he knows the next time he will open his eyes is when he will be sacrificed.
After all what is his life — no the destruction of a thing, in the face of the greater good?
Once upon a time the two Fang brothers couldn't have been more different to Bolaire.
While Thjazi had taught him how to hate, Hal had shown him cameradie, friendship and family, shown him love.
"Thank you for coming," Hal says, voice warm and his hand on Bolaire shoulder, before it briefly brushes the cheek of his mask.
Now there's nothing left of it.
"This is not a thing," Hal snarls as he pushes him down, face full of distrust, all of Bolaire's reassurances and explanations falling on deaf ears.
He's dangerous after all. He must have wanted this. No matter that he had no control over it, no matter he had always told Hal as much of the truth as he could, no matter that he is confused and exhausted and terrified-
"I will be leaving in the morning," Bolaire repeats three times like a promise, like a curse and means it.
Hal releases him and in Bolaire's mind echoes the sound of a porcelean mask shattering, just like the one the man had hurled at the wall in anger just a few days prior.
"Please don't punch my master of Dramatis Arcana." Hal's voice cuts through the tension, as Bolaire grapples with the fact that he will never be able to escape Thjazi's shadow, now even more literally speaking than ever.
A spike of jealousy goes through Bolaire — not don't punch my best friend Bolaire, it's don't punch my friend Misha. It shouldn't surprise him, but he had thought… well what does it matter what he had thought.
"I need my magic teacher, so."
And Bolaire understands, Misha is a wonderful gentlman, their talks had been delightful so far (almost as fun as his and Hal's used to be) but it doesn't make the erasure of their friendship, of himself, hurt less.
But what right does he even have to protest at this point?
"I'm not alone!" the drawing of his mask says, tears streaming down its face and he desperately wishes it could be true.
Because what does he have left? A broken, unhinged sister that should have been made to love him like family, but wants to kill him? A (ex-)best friend that doesn't even look at him any more? A group of people that despite everything he does, everything he gave up, still doesn't trust him, that dismisses him at every turn?
He's more alone that he's ever been.
He forces an apology past his lips and does what is expected of him; lets himself fall back into old habits.
"Now that I know that you are the missing halfling weapon, I will die before I let someone throw you in a box." It's a threat wrapped up in sweet words.
After all he's nothing more than a god killing weapon and why shouldn't he, no it, die along with the rest of the Panto to get rid of the last trick of Rauwyn?
"I will miss our salons," are the last words Hal says to him, but after all that happened, they almost sound empty and meaningless to his ears.
"Thank you. Thank you," he says nevertheless, because maybe, maybe- "I miss-" us, he finishes in his mind, but he doesn't dare to say it. "I hope one day to have the sorts of talks I was hoping to have, and to tell you–" He chokes on the words he wants to say, but they are too many eyes on them, too many ears around. "I hope one day to tell you such stories."
"Well, nothing is quite how any of us would want it."
And he is right, so Bolaire turns to to the only person that had been kind to him since they found out the truth, that at least had tried to understand him — "Can things dream? Can things create? It's a thing that people do. Maybe you are more person than you think." — and asks Azune for help instead.
Bolaire stares at the last trace of him and Demodus Blix in his apartment.
"There once was a cat that was told it would die at the end of its story. And though it knew its doom was coming it-"
The cat scratches past the bounds it was forced into, escaping its doom, its fate; something that Bolaire will never be able to do and he just cries.