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Ⅶ, oh old friend where have you gone?
Mal had spent the first year by the fields, back against the trunk of the ever-growing tree. The next year after that was at the door of the orphanage, rabbit in hand and a bitter taste in his tongue. Ana had stood at his side that year, keeping Alina away from him in those moments where he let himself fall into a helpless dream world where Yuna would walk through the old doors, a white kefta blinding in the light and a smile—no longer fake, to match.
He'd begun to grow older, childish disposition vanishing away in the same way she did. Each year that passed took the excuses he conjured up with it, and he couldn't stop the way his emotions, once filled with nothing but positive things about the woman, grew hateful. Abandonment is something he knew as a close friend—something he thought she would never do.
Alina had told him on different occasions that maybe something happened, that the white of her kefta meant that she fought, that she was unique and had Ravka to fight for. Mal refused to believe it, that she could be snuffed out like a weak flame—Yuna was strong, Yuna was as unique as the kefta strung over her shoulders and the odd way she spoke.
She was Shu in a Ravkan world, which meant that nothing could shake her, nothing could come close to pulling her away. When the conscription for the first army came, seeking those recently turned eighteen he didn't shy away from submitting his name. Alina followed him in stride, witnessing the way he'd begun to appear less and less like his old self. Mal never asked for the woman in the white kefta but that didn't mean he couldn't overhear Alina ask around.
No one knew of her, and if they did it was nothing but he-said-she-said between the members of the first army. Alina should have known the animosity between the first and second armies would leave her with nothing to answer what had happened. Although he loved that about her, he did wish she would give up as he had learned to.
It had been years travelling on the same routine, to fight and train with the first army, to keep lies from Alina and to dream of a time where a woman could tell him stories of her old hometown and protect him from the assault of loneliness.
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They had no right to speak her name, to think of her as nothing but a traitor when they could hardly grasp the truth of any situation in front of them. He clenched his fists at his side, wide strides and black kefta causing the talking soldiers to halt in place. It had existed like this for the past five years, waiting while the second army continued to condemn her for having been taken by the Shu. He may have also condemned her for it, in the beginning at least, until he remembered a single moment in time where she had made claim to understand that she would fall back into Shu Han's hands someday.
