Chapter Text
Sometimes, Jill thinks, Shiva pitied her.
Through her eyes, when she lay down to sleep, Jill had seen mountains and forests teeming with life, grand temples on market day and battlefields that spanned the breadth of entire claims. Left to heal or die or exist until she was useful, she had lived the lives of holywomen, huntresses, shepherd's girls and queens. Their loves, anguish and joys were threads of colour in the tapestry the Glacian wove in her place between worlds and shared with her new Dominant.
But if given her choice, Jill would not have dreamed at all. She did not want the joys and anguish of strangers. She did not want to remember her life or the wholesale death of whoever was on hand to teach her a lesson. She would have prayed for it if she could.
“Metia will not tell you how to be or how to feel,” her mother had explained to her. Jill remembers being pulled close as she trains her sight on the red star with a beringed finger. “She and her ladies watch over us and listens for our prayers. From Her place in the heavens, She has the ear of Fate and, sometimes, She may be so moved as to intercede. Though never for strife, and never for death.”
The woman who doled out their histories beside the great hearth had died during the height of summer from a wasting illness. Her son’s keening, the one that had stayed behind when his brothers joined the march, went on for days. It carried up to their bedchamber and had haunted them both.
“Who would ask for death?” Jill had asked her mother
Poor little daughter, what little she knew of the world. But her mother did not say this, instead she smiled. “I will pray that you need never know.”
It was then she had to learned how to pray in the old way, passed from mother to daughter since before the Fall. If the stars could see her, then Metia would hear. It was simple.
There was comfort in it, for a time. As to what prayers Metia heeded was the Red Maid’s business, but Jill's pleas for the suffering and loneliness to end had gone unanswered.
It was childish to think that they would have fallen anywhere but fallow ground on the Patriarch’s isle. There were no stars beneath the Comraich and she would not invoke anything before the Ironblood’s faithful when her own flesh and spirit were profane.
But they owned her no longer. She had not awoken in a cell or in chains to be dragged along to the next stage of their crusade against the wickedness that was Storm.
With a bit of effort, she had found a quiet place above the Furrows where moonglow trickled down. It was bright enough to see where someone had been practicing their letters with charcoal and the grey smears where they had wiped away earlier efforts. The marks she had seen during her ascent made sense now. There was other childish litter strewn about, a tangle of ribbons and a leather ball to name a few.
Even in her life before, Jill had not known children to be so blithe or trusting. Here was a different world, though the one Jill knew followed her. Her day in the stores had not ended well. Jill had so desperately wanted to cling to Hortense, anyone really, but it could not be so. She went back to the infirmary and did not say another word. Tarja, whether it was by her considered wisdom or mercy Jill did not care which, asked only that she eat something and try again when she was ready.
Tonight would be different. It had to be.
At first she didn’t have the nerve to begin what she had come here to do, clasping and unclasping her hands as she riffles through her memories. Those of a certain quality had built up over the years, still fresh despite how unwilling she had been to inspect them any closer than she ought.
A wooden soldier, worn smooth by countless hands, watches her from its post in the dust. There would be no use trying to sort one from the other, so she finds Metia at her post and begins in ernest.
Jill prays that children of the Hideaway would never know what it was to fear for their life or see it as a burden. She prays that those forced to march alongside her through the Republic would be delivered from their bondage. It was too late for Lady Marleigh and her women, but Jill asked that they be shown a sliver of mercy when it was revealed she would not be returning with what was left of the crusade.
They had been kind to her, whenever they could afford to be. Lady Hanna too. So selfless and good. Jill prays that somehow, maybe, that she too had escaped the dark hand of fate.
She prays that Tarja would find the answers needed for her work. Jill had seen how she lingered over the Brands of each of her patients, studying the depth of the ink and the way it bled into the surrounding skin. She railed against what had been passed down and refined for generations. They all did here, in their own way.
Jill did not know Cid beyond a few anecdotes, but please - please- see him safely back again. His people cared for him, that much was clear, and he cared enough to go on a wild goose chase across half of Storm for folk he did not know. It was not just anyone who would set to building a place where Bearers could be free.
There was another man who shared the same blasphemous idea. Kind, yes, but it was a foolish person that mistook his humanity for weakness. But he had died and the world had ground to a halt.
For a moment Jill is back in his crumbling palace. She can smell smoke from the blackpowder charges they used to breach the gates and hear the cries of those who were the first to realise their fate. Then their hands were on her, pawing and pinching before they knew what she was. She was simply another offering for their priests or their own sport if she was not deemed fit.
She had screamed but there was no one to follow it. Her governess had lost her match with a raider and his maul, the handmaidens were bound for something worse. All other hope of rescue had retreated with the Duchess or had perished at Phoenix Gate.
Jill gasps as grief shreds through her.
She opens her eyes and she finds herself standing in the cold and the dark. The moon had hidden itself away, but the stars looked on over her misery. Shadows stir in the corner of her eye but she dares not dwell on them.
The Archduke was dead and gone, wiped clean from this earth. Just like his sons.
She had prayed for them both, and it had done nothing.
They were all dead and she was still here, weeping and undeserving of grace.
Damned and alone.
Cursed.
Jill had knew she could not stay here. There was no use pretending that she might belong one day.
Jill scrubs away her tears and makes her way down, mapping all that she knew of the Hideaway. Her aches and ills had settled as much as they ever would and the main hall was quiet, though it would not be for long.
She might beg a bit of bread from the mess, but where had her blade gone? It was decent enough to be sent for repair with their smith, but he never left good steel lying about. A mandate from their lead Cursebreaker, to deter hopeful members from doing themselves a mischief.
Perhaps it did not matter. She never had the desire to wield it.
“There you are.”
Jill turns to see Tarja draws closer with a basket and shears hanging by her side. If she were by any means normal, she would have turned her face away to avoid the healer's discerning eye, but impulse had long since been trained out of her.
Jill straightens herself. “What is the hour?” she asks coolly. Tarja always had a notched taper burning by her desk, a special privilege for her craft.
“The fourth, though it would be closer to the fifth by now,” she readily answers. “Amata said you couldn’t sleep when I came in, though she didn’t know where you’d taken yourself off to.” Tarja takes a moment to look pointedly at Jill’s hands, clasped just so before her. “I see you’ve found the Hideaway’s hideaway.”
The charcoal. It must be. She makes no move to dust her hands.
“The children are talkative,” she explains instead. That much was true. A group of them had wandered into the storehouse to beg this or that from Hortense while she was there. They spoke loudly where they might be found later in the day, glancing over at Jill and her books with the subtlety only a child could be proud of.
“I think they want to see you again,” the woman had said, a touch apologetically. “Tomes tells them with every story he knows. Boudica has always been a favourite of theirs, with a few liberties made for little ears. I doubt they ever thought that they’d ever meet a princess, let alone one that bears Shiva like her.”
Desiree had turned to Jill with a merry look in her eye. “Gav has been especially excitable since he heard tell of you.”
“Gav?” Jill had asked. She knew Tett and Crow, but the rest were nameless to her.
Molly chortled from her corner. “A rather large child of ours. You’ll meet him soon enough.”
I am sorry, Gav.
“I gathered,” Tarja says with a wry smile. “They’re always on the lookout for someone new to humor them.”
No, no, no! They could never know her.
“Jill?”
The panic begins to rise in a way she had not felt for some time. Her back tingles with the ghost of a lash. She is pinned in place, as they were.
“They will die because of you.”
She was told she must see. It was the only way she would learn.
“Jill! Look at me.”
“Abomination!”
Cold fingers brush against Jill’s hands. She had not realised she had clenched them to a knot. She tears them out of reach and takes a step back. Words tumble from her mouth before she can stop them.
“Don’t touch me.”
Save yourself!
She sees Tarja draw back and guard whatever had been brewing behind a mask of perfect equity. “I am sorry, Jill. I won’t do that again, but I would like to know what you’re thinking.”
Jill cannot, she will not, let Tarja into that dark corner. She did not deserve to bear the burden of what she had done. What she was. It would be hers alone for the rest of her days. Jill shakes her head. It is all she can manage.
Tarja sets the basket down behind her. “Hortense told me what happened yesterday,” she says gently. It was the tone she reserved for fretful mothers and the dying. “The mind cannot be set like a bone and left to heal. It takes time, Jill, and effort. But you have already come far.”
Somehow, Jill finds her voice through the malignant lump rising in her chest. The Hideaway, treacherously, begins to blur. “I cannot…” she chokes out. “I won’t..”
But she cannot say the rest.
“You don’t have to,” Tarja assures her. “Whatever it is you think you must do, there’s always another way.”
“I left them to die,” Jill whispers.The pain in her chest goes with the admission. All that was left was bone tired defeat. Her legs give way beneath her and she sinks to the ground. “I deserve to be alone.”
Pity, sadness and something else played behind Tarja’s eyes as she sinks down to join her. She tucks her skirts neatly beneath her knees.
“I disagree.”
It was her right to, but Jill knew better. Every sordid detail of her life came crashing through again. She owed Tarja the respect of an explanation, however brief.
“Everyone I’ve ever loved, anyone who showed me kindness…” Lord and Lady Murdoch. Lord Elwin and his brother. Marleigh. Her mother. The woman that had helped bind her feet for the ill fated march into the Defile.
Joshua. Clive.
“...They’re all dead.”
Tarja thinks on this. Jill envies her reason. She could feel herself trembling.
Weak.
“The man who saved you in the Defile,” Tarja says quietly. “He still lives.”
Jill barks out a laugh. It was harsh and foreign, mocking her as it bounces around the empty space. “Not that was his plan.”
There’s an intensity in the way Tarja considers Jill, more so than even a moment ago. Jill regrets the hand she had played. Beyond the indignity of throwing a life away so callously, Tarja knew her a little better now. She did not think the healer would forbid her leaving, it was plain that choice was a pillar in Cid’s doctrine, but there would be a reckoning before she gave way.
“And what else do you know of him?” she asks.
“Nothing,” Jill admits, “beyond his name and creed.”
She had tried to place him from what little she recalled from their fight. At the time she did not care who she faced, only that there was someone. She went and she did, as she had for her most of her life. It was easier if she did not dwell on specifics.
She figured Wyvern to be one of the same. A part of her sympathised with his conclusion that oblivion was better than trudging his way further through life.
Sometimes, things could be so simple.
Tarja lets out a long breath. She looks back over her shoulder towards the infirmary. “He and Cid are due back today,” she says. “Whatever it is you have planned, I think you should hold off until you’ve had a chance to meet with him.”
“What good would that do? You said he never set foot in the infirmary.”
“Because I would not allow it before you could decide for yourself. He-”
Tarja snaps into silence. Never one to waste anything, she considers her next words carefully. Jill shifts in place, unwilling to draw more attention to herself. Already the sun had begun to rise and the Hideaway with it.
Finally, Tarja arrives at her decision. Gracefully, she stands and offers a hand to Jill.
“Come with me,” she says, “And I will tell you.”