Mal felt a rush of emotions wash over him as he stared at the figure before him; disbelief, love, despair, and hatred, all competing for the primacy in his hierarchy of feelings. Disbelief in so far as with all of the people throughout all of time, she would be the one that Azrael would seek out to guide their way in this moment. Love, buried deep within him, another’s memories long dormant, stirring back to life in the far recesses of his mind. Despair at the memories of regret and neglect at how this other him had treated her in life in his fanatical pursuit of power and prestige, and at the memory of her final sacrifice in an effort to save him…other him…from the wrath of the Red King. And hatred; pure, raw, unadulterated hatred at the very whims of fate that had brought all of these memories flooding back to him in this terrible montage of happiness and regret and inevitable sorrow.
Mal stared intently at her face, regarding her through another man’s eyes. She was speaking, he knew, but her could hardly hear the words, and instead fixated on trying to memorize every detail of her face in an effort never to allow her memory to slip away again: her curly red hair and luminous silver eyes, the constellation of freckles that dotted her cheeks, the slight point to her ears and her thin, mischievous smile.
A flood of memories came next, fragmented and broken, skipping forward and back through time in a scattershot highlight and lowlight reel. A winged pair, one in red and one in purple, flying through the sun-soaked sky. Her tender ministering to his grievous wounds. Him fighting his way to her in the thick of battle. Her tears of sadness at his words, or at his lack thereof. Her form lying crumpled and still upon the golden sands, motionless except for the insistent and futile tugging upon her red cloak by the concerned desert breeze which tried to prod her to move, to wake, to cry out, to alert the world around her of her presence so that she might be saved.
But no one would see her, Mal knew. She would die alone and forgotten, for the mere idle pleasure of the cruel fates and their morbid sense of humor. And here now, Mal knew that there was finally a chance to save her, an opportunity to alter her destiny. Why else would Azrael have brought her to them here and now, before the trajectory of her life with Vashir would drive her inexorably to her lonely end? This was a chance to give her a new life, a life she deserved, a life free of him. Wasn’t it? Unless her purpose her was a coincidence on a level he could not comprehend, or else some cruel joke instilled to inflict as much pain and confusion as possible?
These thoughts danced around in his head as the group followed after her in a gala of confusion and doubt and helpless rage. Later that evening, Mal watched over her as she slept and thought long and hard about what, if anything, to say to her. He needed to say something, but he would not have long he knew, and he also knew that these words spoken here, in this very moment, might have repercussions that could resonate throughout time itself. Her sacrifice had saved Vashir’s life, and Vashir’s sacrifice had been one of many that had managed to save the world. Would warning her away from him alter the course of history or would the raging river of fate simply reform around her and provide another means for Vashir and his companions to succeed in their mission to drive Tiamat back to hell?
If Vashir had died there in the halls of the Thir-king without Lyra’s sacrifice, then the rest of the Redeemers would have perished in the deserts of Gulg, since he was the sole Redeemer left standing at the end of that conflict. Then Vashir could not have stabilized Arnia and Oni following the fight with the Sultan’s guards and then Oni could not have brought David and Ixen back to life, however he had managed that particular miracle. And then the group of them would never have been able to defeat Tiamat within the bowels of the earth. Mal realized then that the entire fate of the world had been carried upon the backs of those five people, and they in turn had been carried upon the back of this woman who slept on the ground here next to him, blissfully unaware of the magnitude of her importance to the entirety of humanity.
Vashir tried to cry out in anguish at the sheer enormity and ultimate helplessness this knowledge carried with it, though somehow Mal was able to keep him quiet in this moment. Mal looked down at the small recording device in his hands and at last settled upon the message he would impart to arguably the most important person in the world. He could not save her, but he might be able give her some comfort in the desperate times to come. In Vashir’s voice he whispered, “Know, that even in the dark and lonely times, when power seemed to be his sole focus, that you were the only true source of joy in his life.” The device in his hand clicked and whirred and committed this message upon the cogs and gears and then stood still, ready to repeat this message as often as it needed to be heard.
He might have been able to prevent Vashir’s anguished cries before, but he could not prevent the Psion’s tears from running down Mal’s cheeks now, and flow freely they did.