Chapter Text
It took exactly three days for Eda to cave and pull out the sweater.
Sue her.
Eda tugged it over her head and buried her face into the collar. Logically, she knew this old thing had spent far too many years in the back of her closet for the waft of rosin and petrichor to be anything but her own memories, but she didn’t care. The action alone was soothing.
She curled her fingers into the sleeve cuffs and sighed, feeling a little calmer. Raine was short, but they’d always been broad in the shoulders. As a result, all their sweaters had been a size or two big, and this particular article was no exception. The sleeves were baggy and it fell nearly to her mid thigh. Even with the weight she’d gained, recently.
Which, in reality, was probably not that much, but she was so hyper aware of the change that she couldn’t help feeling…weird, mostly. Alien in her own body.
She ran her fingers over the golden stitching on the front, declaring it the official merch of the bonesburough bardic college.
With the sweater on, she had to admit she didn’t look like she’d changed much at all.
Not that her body was receiving any of that particular message.
She grimaced and rubbed her lower back. Trying to pinpoint the source of the stupid spikes of pain that plagued her worse by the day.
“You’d be in less pain if you rested more often.”
Eda groaned and rolled her eyes.
“Save it, Lily.”
“I’m serious, Eda.”
“So am I. You’re annoying and I wish mom and dad had given you up for adoption.”
Lilith raised a brow.
“Please, the world wouldn’t have been able to handle you as a spoiled only child.”
She tossed a bottle of water and Eda caught it on reflex.
“Now sit down for five titan forsaken minutes and drink that.”
“Bite me,” Eda shot back.
She did, however, slump down on the couch with a wince.
Not because Lilith told her too.
Obviously.
But she had to admit she was pretty fucking tired these days.
She wondered if it was the stress, or…
Eda’s hand twitched towards her stomach. She frowned and pointedly moved it away to fiddle with a loose thread instead.
“You shouldn’t lay on your back so much. You’re going to damage your spine eventually. It’s better to get into the habit of laying on your side.”
Eda growled, irritation spiking.
“Lilith I swear to fuck-”
“Have you decided what you’re going to tell King yet?”
Eda closed her eyes and counted to ten.
Then to twenty for good measure.
“About?”
“The baby, obviously.”
Eda sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Funnily enough, I kinda thought figuring out how to stop the rampaging immortal turning the island into a fucked up carnival was a little higher on the list of priorities than stressing my kid out with the news that his mom got herself knocked up.”
“Edalyn!”
“What? It's true. Look- absolutely none of this-”
She gestured to herself in frustration.
“-matters. Not when we are literally struggling not to die in the end of the fucking world, Lils. There's not gonna be much to tell if we don't do something about the collector soon, because we'll all be puppets or worse .”
Lilith went quiet at that.
“I'm sorry.”
Eda huffed and closed her eyes.
“S’fine.”
“It's not.” She corrected firmly. “I'm worried about you. You're struggling and I hate not being able to do anything about it, but it's been fairly clear for a while my efforts are only adding to your stress.”
She leveled her sister with a knowing look.
“I will say, I think you'd feel better if you visited them again.”
Eda didn't have to ask who she was referring to.
She bristled.
“I thought you didn't like it when I snuck into the archives.”
“Oh, I absolutely hate it.” Lilith agreed without hesitation. “It’s incredibly dangerous.”
She sat down on the arm of the couch beside Eda and carefully placed a hand on her shoulder.
“But, I know it makes you feel better to check on them.”
Eda sighed.
She glanced off to the side and bit her lip.
“Yeah, okay.”
------------------------
The longer the collector’s games dragged on, the harder it was for Eda to find comfort in her trips to the coven head archive.
She missed Raine so much. Standing beside their stiff wooden vessel didn’t hold a candle to what she really longed for.
Their voice, their warmth, their touch.
Lately, she’d resorted to more drastic measures just to see them move, so she could pretend for a split second that there was anything behind their eyes at all.
Much to King’s alarm and displeasure.
“You shouldn’t leave your cave,” He reminded her anxiously. “If the collector finds out you’re not still in owlbeast mode-”
Eda snorted and forced a casual smirk to play it off.
“Calm down, kiddo. Jeeze, you’re starting to sound like Lily.”
“It’s not safe,” He repeated.
Her shoulders sagged.
“I know. I just like visiting Raine.”
King grumbled and held her hand a little tighter. As though she were the kid in this situation, prone to running off without notice.
She tried not to resent that too much. She knew King was mostly just cranky. The poor kid’s sleeping habits were almost as bad as hers these days…
“What’s with the sweater?” He asked. “You haven’t worn that since I was like, a baby.”
Eda swallowed thickly and forced herself to shrug.
“Meh, it gets cold down here,” She lied.
Not to say it wasn’t freezing down in the archives, but where Lilith was constantly bemoaning it, Eda was constantly under the assault of hot flashes and over sensitivity, pulling her sweater sleeve up as far as they’d go and curling up as far away from the cauldron they kept lit for elixirs as possible.
Lilith had suggested she cut the sleeves off altogether if she insisted on wearing it despite her misery.
Eda considered herself very damn polite in refraining from throwing her mug at her for that.
King released her hand when they finally got to the hideout to scramble over to Lilith, who was shoving an elixir into her grasp the second she got through the door, because of course she was.
Sisters were the worst nags. Eda wondered if it wasn’t too late to sell her like she’d wanted to when she was six.
Lilith threw a bag of hex mix at her and prodded her towards the couch. The action was enough to confirm in her head that Little Eda absolutely should have followed through on that plan. At least then she’d have grown up with a new bike instead of a a fussy pest who wouldn’t stop poking her-
Eda took a deep breath and shook her head roughly.
Fucking hell, she was irritable lately. No one likes sharing a small space with their sibling for months, but Lilith meant well, and Eda had never been so annoyed at every little thing like this before…
She cleared her throat and decided to change the subject.
“Hey, Lily, guess who King found for ya?”
“Hm?”
And then she zeroed in on Hooty’s weird…puppet self, which honestly wasn’t that much weirder than his usual self, and Eda sighed in relief at the momentary respite from Lilith’s borderline militant concern for her health.
King was restless today. His ideas about how to reason with the collector, to ease some of his power off the isles were starting get nearly as reckless as…well, probably most of Eda’s usual ideas to be honest.
Heh, he really was her kid through and through.
All the same-
“Maybe the collector could release hooty like with-”
Lilith raised her head sharply.
“No! Absolutely not. You’re already putting yourself at enough risk just for us, King.”
King looked uncertain but Eda readily agreed, thankful for, if nothing else, Lilith’s overprotective tendencies extending to her niblings and not just her middle aged sister.
Who didn’t need any protecting at all, thanks very much.
She frowned at the aggressive thought and huffed.
“Lilith is right, King. We still don’t fully understand what the collector is capable of, or his motives. Your first priority should be keeping yourself safe. The rest of us will manage.”
King whined and pressed his face against her leg.
She cooed and rubbed his skull comfortingly.
“Hey, it’s gonna be okay, baby. Seriously, don’t worry. Hooty will be just fine as he is-”
“I miss Luz.”
Her breath hitched.
Heat stung the corners of her eyes as a sudden swell of emotion rose in her chest and she fought to swallow them down harshly.
“I know, baby. I miss her too.”
She plucked him up and held him against her chest, taking comfort in the weight of his little skull under her chin.
“But hey,” She tried for an optimistic tone. “She’s in the human realm now. It sucks not having her here, but at least we know she’s safe far away from all of this mess, right?”
King sniffled.
“I guess…”
“We’ll find a way to defeat the collector,” Lilith said firmly, with just an edge of military-bred confidence that still took Eda off guard every once in a while. “In the meantime, at least Luz and her friends are far away from all of this madness.”
She gave King a gentle scratch to his scruff, and looked Eda in the eyes solemnly.
“Stars know I wish you were too.”
Eda grit her teeth and looked away.
-------------------------------
Something that would never really change, were Eda’s doubts in her proficiency as a mother.
Obviously, there’s no such thing as a perfect parent. She knows that.
But when your kids have been traumatized and hurt and have impossible burdens weighing down their tiny little shoulders, its pretty damn hard not to blame yourself.
All of this should be her responsibility. Not King’s. Not a sweet little eight year old who still had all of his baby fangs.
Titan or not.
Semi immortal godling or not.
Eda wanted to take all of this from him. She was tough, she’d handle it, or maybe it would break her, but honestly she didn’t care either way as long as none of this had to be on King anymore.
The only problem was, it’s difficult to take something that the hold refuses to let go of.
And yet-
“I think I can relate to him, you know? Maybe if we just talk, we can find a way to solve all of this! Immortal being to semi-immortal being.”
He was so little, yet so resolute, and altogether growing up far, far too fast for her.
Eda scooped her son up and held him tight, pressing a small kiss against his little skull.
She didn’t dare tell him anything less than that she was so, so proud of the kind little boy he was turning out to be.
Nothing else mattered.
Her hopelessness wasn’t going to be another burden for him to bear.
Let her kid believe in forgiveness and kindness and peaceful resolutions.
Eda held him tighter and resolved to keep her doubts to herself.
------------------------------
It’s pretty fucking funny, in Eda’s opinion, how it’s perfectly possible for the world to keep ending, over and over again.
The world had been ending on the day of unity, when the eclipse darkened the sky and her entire body had burned, flaking away into ash.
Then the collector had been freed, and the world ended more, in seeing her child in the arms of an all powerful god, and Raine’s arms slipping away from hers.
It ended a little more every damn day, with every last bone, every tree and building and witch being struck down in childish stars and bleached cold shades of blue and purple.
And now It was ending again.
Because of course it was.
With the archives cracking and rumbling under her feet and her sons weight falling out of her arms.
Ending again in darkness, and gritty stone, and a world washed in gray.
Everything felt hazy.
She didn’t understand why she was here.
Where was king? Why was she in the conformatorium?
Why the hell was Lilith dressed like a fucking gothic novelist again?
Then her sister opened her mouth, a net drug her down, and there were spears, and she-
Eda breathed through another small apocolypse and wrapped her arm desperately around her stomach.
----------------
Eda sobbed, tears streaming down her face and didn’t, for once, waste in time with self loathing for the weakness in the act.
What the hell else was she supposed to do?
Her kid was back.
Her daughter was back!
She buried her face in Luz’s hair, her tears soaking soft curls.
A warbling cry fell from her lips and Eda pulled back just enough to pepper both her kids faces with wet, smacking kisses before clutching them tightly again.
“Oh thank heck you’re okay,” She breathed with a soggy hiccup.
“I thought I’d never see you again!”
She scrubbed her tears away roughly with a loud sniffle.
“How did you get back to the demon realm?”
Luz beamed.
Oh.
Oh fuck she’d missed that so much. Her kid’s smile. Both of her kids smiling.
Her heart swelled and her eyes burned with the desire to break into another round of bawling.
“It’s kind of a long story. I wouldn’t even know where to- woah!”
Luz’s grin melted into shock.
She stared wide eyed at Eda’s missing arm.
“What happened to you?”
Eda laughed.
“Oh, uh, that’s a shorter story.”
Amethyst eyes peaked out from the crook of Luz’s neck.
She gasped.
“Is this your palisman?”
Luz nodded proudly and allowed the curious little thing to slither closer, testing the air with their tongue.
“This is Stringbean!”
Carefully, gently, Eda cupped them in her hand.
“Oh gosh,” she said reverently. “Dang, kid, they’re really-”
She sniffed.
“T-they’re, really c-cute!”
Her vision blurred and another sob tore from her throat.
Luz looked concerned.
“Woah, are you okay?”
King groaned.
“Don’t worry about it. Eda cries like, basically every five minutes these days.”
Luz’s eyes widened.
“What? Why? Is she sick? Does she have some kind of witchy illness that makes it really hard not to cry?”
King shrugged and made a so-so gesture with his claw.
“I don’t think so? I asked Lilith and she kinda looked at me weird, but said Eda’s just really stressed right now.”
“I guess that makes sense…”
Eda coughed and wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
“I’m fine! I’m good!”
She inhaled sharply and winced at the way her eyes stung, puffy from crying so hard.
“I just-I just missed you a lot, kiddo.”
Luz launched herself at Eda again for another hug.
“I missed you too!”
-----------------
They didn’t understand death.
The thousands of years old god child didn’t know what death was.
Of fucking course he didn’t.
Of course.
Eda sucked in a labored breath, King clutched tightly to her chest.
It was a relief to access her harpy form, the longer limbs and claws a layer of defense between her kids and the collector’s games. She’d been hesitant to shift, and unnamed panic welling up in her chest at the risk-
She didn’t feel any different.
But then, if anything had been wrong, how the hell would she know anyways?
There was no time to think about it.
That said, flying was harder than it had been before.
Eda blamed the traitorous weight at her stomach and the subsequent shift in her center of balance.
A bead of sweat dripped down her brow and her hips ached like hell but there was no time to stop. To breathe.
She had to keep moving.
A massive tower of blocks teetered, looming over her.
She grunted and beat her wings with as much force as she could muster.
The blocks toppled and clattered to the ground.
The environment melted again.
Eda’s legs shook as she landed heavily.
King groaned and pressed his skull against the cold floor.
“I think I barfed like twelve times.”
Eda breathed a hysterical laugh.
Shit, her lungs ached.
“W-wanna make it a luc-”
She wheezed and swayed on her feet, black spots swimming in her vision.
“A lucky thirteen?”
She tried for a smirk, but Luz and King both looked anxious.
“Eda,” Luz said carefully. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
A hysterical laugh bubbled out of her throat unbidden.
“Kid, we just got tossed around in a game of oversized Fang-ga. I don’t think anything’s okay.”
Luz frowned.
“Something else is wrong, I can tell. Eda-”
Eda waved a hand dismissively, still panting.
“Luz, I get that your heart is in the right place, but this just isn’t the time. We can talk about it when we’re a little less actively in danger of dying, okay?”
She hesitated, but the sounds of loud sniffling and crying pulled her attention away from her mentor.
Eda almost wished she hadn’t.
She knew that look in her eye.
“Luz-”
King cut her off.
“Let her try.”
He looked up at her unflinchingly.
“If any one can change their mind, wouldn’t it be Luz?”
The terrifying answer was yes, of course it was.
That didn’t mean Eda had to like it.
She didn’t like any of this.
Luckily, she had a lot of practice these last few weeks in biting her tongue.
----------------------
It goes like this.
The first stage of grief is always denial.
Even when it happens right in front of your eyes.
You can watch, horrified, as the rot over takes your child’s body.
You can look her in the eyes as she smiles shakily, like she’s already accepted her fate.
You won’t blink.
You won’t look away, you won’t breathe.
But the first stage is always denial.
A gut reaction to refuse to accept that from one moment to the next, in a single beat, one of the most precious pieces of your life is just-
Gone.
Your heart will stop.
The second step is bargaining.
Letting an immortal child try their hand at reversing the single irreversible tear in this world.
Then
Then comes the rage.
Red and blinding and-
And you stop caring.
You just need to hurt, to destroy, to kill-
Eda can taste the copper on her tongue.
She welcomes the feathers climbing up her face.
She welcomes Rage.
-----------------------
Luz bursts forth from the sky like a star, like the beacon light she earned her namesake from.
Transformed and crackling with magic that raises the hair on the back of her neck and stings her skin when she embraces her child and damn near crushes her to her chest.
She doesn’t care.
She doesn’t give two shits.
Nothing is over yet.
Unfortunately.
Luz seems to have a plan. Even the collector seems to sense his part.
Eda-
She sags down against the glyph dome, and tries to remember how to breathe.
Eda has a quip on the tip of her tongue about how she’s getting too old for this, but she knows damn well her soul deep exhaustion has nothing to do with her gray hairs and everything to do with the three bites of hex mix she’s had in the last 24 hours and the hitchhiker in her stomach who needs just a little fucking more than that, and has probably been sapping at every last reserved bit of energy in her body like King with a crazy straw and a chocolate eye scream shake.
It’s more than a little frustrating when she doesn’t have time to falter.
The rot is spreading over the isles rapidly, and Luz needs a little help drawing her first spell circle.
Eda doesn’t have the words for how proud she is of her.
If her limbs weren’t shaking, and her vision wavering, she’d probably try to tell her anyways.
She gnashes her teeth so hard her fangs creek and pushes everything down to brace Luz’s body against her own.
This is fine.
She’s fine.
She can keep going.
She doesn’t have a choice.
Luz is amazing.
Her magic clears the rot and gives way to clean, fresh fields of red. The cold wash of colors finally beginning to clear away for something warmer.
She’s so proud.
So fucking proud.
--------------------------
Eda falls when they hit the ground, hard.
“Eda!” Luz yelped.
She scrambled shakily back to her feet, swaying violently.
Luz clutched her arm, frantic.
“Eda what’s wrong?”
But there was a song echoing in the chamber.
“Raine,” Eda mumbled.
She took a step forward and stumbled.
“Eda stop!”
The whistling cut off abruptly.
“Who’s there? Stay away!”
“Raine!””
It didn’t matter how much she hurt. That she could barely see.
Her clammy claws dug into cold glass and wire frames.
She pushed forward and again, another shaky step arms outstretched, until-
“E-Eda?”
She sobbed and wrapped her arm around them tightly.
“Raine!”
“Eda! Oh, titan-”
Callused hands cupped her cheeks as they both sank to the floor.
Wide green eyes bore into her own, overwhelmed with worry and fear.
“Are you okay?” Raine asked her frantically. “Are you-is-”
They swallowed thickly and a gentle hand slid over her stomach.
Her breath hitched in unison with theirs.
“Are you okay ?”
Oh.
They knew.
Warmth seeped into veins.
They heard her.
Raine heard her.
Eda opened her mouth, shaky, uncertain words at the tip of her tongue, ready to string together.
Instead, Luz was at her side, looking serious.
“We don’t have much time.”
“Luz?” Raine muttered, staring up at her…fuzzier than normal appearance in confusion.
“Raine, can you cover Eda? Things are about to move fast.”
Their arms tightened around her a fraction and they nodded without hesitation.
Eda shook her head.
“No, I can fight-”
“You’re exhausted.” Luz cut her off firmly. “I don’t know what’s wrong. If you’re hurt, or sick. But you need to stay close to Raine, okay?”
Her expression cracked.
“Please.”
Eda took a breath.
“Okay,”
Luz nodded and her shoulders sagged, relieved.
“Alright.”
She gripped her staff and smirked.
“Let’s end this.”
--------------------------------------------------------
“Now eat this, SUCKER!”
---------------------------------------------------------
Raine’s arm was strong and steady around her waist.
The patter of boiling rain tapped against the large leaf they’d found.
Eda was so tired.
Soon, soon.
There was just one last thing she needed to do.
The putrid, rotting skull hissed when it saw her.
“Evelyn-”
Bone had never felt so satisfying under her boot.
The storm cleared just as quickly as it came.
Raine kicked up the muck with a dark, humorless grin.
“That was… extremely satisfying.”
It was also kinda hot.
Eda cleared her throat and did her best to brush the thought away.
Luz’s powers drained from her body in the form of a heck of a light show.
Eda had never been particularly pious, or spiritual, or whatever, but it was something special to see the spirit of her home, the blood of her son, drift into the sky.
Luz fell to the ground and Raine, thank fuck, was quick about helping Eda catch her, and together they all collapsed into the grass, panting.
The titan had a pretty interesting message for his son, according to Luz.
For once, she didn’t groan at the horrible butchering of comedy that was a pun, but instead laughed, probably too hard.
Sue her, it’d been a long night.
Week, months …the picture was clear enough.
“We did it,” Luz breathed, barely able to believe her own words. “It’s over.”
Eda yawned.
Her body was quickly becoming one with the soft, warm grass.
Her eyes felt heavy.
Beside her, she heard someone shift. A few moments later a warm, callused hand enveloped her own and twined their fingers.
She smiled.
Then, her eyes shot back open.
“Oh, crap.”
Luz shot up.
“What’s wrong?”
She yawned again.
“I forgot, I promised to tell you something when we…weren’t…”
Her eyes slid shut again.
“...Eda?”
“Hmm?”
“Tell me what?”
The world felt heavy and distant.
She struggled to string her thoughts together as her pulse started to slow.
“Y’gettin a new sibling.”
“...You mean like the collector?”
Eda snorted.
“Huh? No."
She yawned again and squeezed Raine's hand, smiling softly when they squeezed back.
"I’m pregnant.”
Beside her, she heard Raine huff a laugh.
There was a stunned silence.
then-
“You’re. WHAT?”
But she was already asleep.