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The air roared with electricity and the sounds of battle. The Witch let out a feral scream, hands crackling with arcane power as she dragged more and more of Junkenstein’s zomnics back from the grave, aiming to overwhelm the four guardians that stood between her and the castle doors. A flash of lightning illuminated the cobblestone square with a splintering snap of thunder, highlighting the shoulder and torso of the Alchemist, who was, in a most unfortunate coincidence (at least for her), out of position, ankle-deep in the shallow water near the ramparts. Moving across the battlefield like a whirlwind, the force of nature that was the dreaded Witch of the Wilds had the Alchemist by the throat in seconds, slamming her up against the crumbling wall lining the castle proper with an animalistic snarl. Though she let out a sharp breath of air as she collided with the rough-hewn stone, the Alchemist seemed otherwise unfazed, defiantly meeting the Witch’s glare, her own mouth curling in disgust.

“No potions to save you this time, hag,” the Witch hissed, her nails digging into the flesh of the Alchemist’s neck deep enough to draw blood. “What have you to say to that?”

“You don’t frighten me, Witch,” the Alchemist said, measured, teeth bared in a sneer. Her good eye flashed. “Regardless of whether or not you kill me here it will be you who will pay for the sins you have committed.”

The Witch laughed, high, mocking, and malicious. “After I kill you – you will belong to me, I promise you that. Perhaps I can reunite you with an old friend.”

For just a moment, the Witch saw a fragment of a reaction crack the Alchemist’s cool façade, and, triumphant, she tightened her grip on the other woman’s neck, hand spasming with the sheer energy of the arcana thrumming in her veins.

Lightning crackled through the roiling clouds above, throwing the square into harsh brights and shadows once more, and it was Fareeha pinned by the throat to the wall. The Witch stumbled backwards, magic sparking aimlessly into the blackness. Another crash of blinding white light and Fareeha’s throat was slashed, a burn over her heart, skin ashen, and cold, cold, cold…

The Witch slammed back into the waking world screaming. Her magic was still pouring off of her in waves, sputtering against the dry leaves she pressed her forehead into, propped on her forearms, trying to ground herself. Ragged breaths tore past her lips, and she focused on the sound – harsh and loud in her ears – until she was able to stop shaking.

Once she could take in air without gasping, she shuddered, twisting to look over her shoulder. Fareeha’s still form – sleeping, not dead – was visible in the darkness only due to the slanting shafts of watery moonlight falling across it through the matrix of branches above.

The Witch – Angela – sat up, bringing her knees in so she could rest her chin against them. She watched the slow rise and fall of her partner’s shoulder and hip, banishing thoughts of her dream to the edges of her mind. Still, they continued to jab at her, mocking, reminding her that no matter how far she ran – no matter how many people she helped, no matter how much she healed – she couldn’t escape the atrocities she had committed against both humanity and laws of the natural order.

“It will be you who will pay for the sins you have committed.”

The Alchemist – Ana. Fareeha’s mother. The friend of a man the Witch had twisted and shackled for her own malicious purposes (not that that had mattered after long; the Reaper had vanished after the second and final battle at Adlersbrunn Castle and not come back. The Witch had been furious. Angela hoped that he had found some kind of peace in the end.) – had been correct, as usual. Angela was bound by her past, forced to relive her time as the Witch of the Wilds over and over again, in night terrors, in the few people she and Fareeha ran across in their (so far aimless) travels, even in Fareeha herself. Sometimes Angela would blink, and, in a reversal of her most recent nightmare, see the bloodstained face of the Alchemist in front of her. And although the altercation as it had occurred hadn’t ended with the Witch murdering her in cold blood – a well-placed shot from the gunslinger had seen to that, on the actual night of the battle – how close it had been continued to haunt her. Angela drew her index finger across the scars littering her neck, the reminders of her defeats. The proof that, as hard as she was to kill, as much power as she wielded, she was, in fact, still human. Her heartbeat (quiet and low, but still present) was another.

Fareeha was a third. The way that she would smile, or press small touches into Angela’s back, wrist, side, to ground her, her laugh, her mere presence: they were anchors. When Angela started to lose herself in history, or slip back towards the darkness she had thrown off – despair sending her in a downward spiral towards something lesser – Fareeha refused to let her. Fareeha had dragged her out of what she had been, reminded her of why she had wanted power in the first place, and shattered the illusion that that power – which she had gained, and grown, and controlled, and been utterly ruined by – could give her what she wanted. Angela had found a reason to really, truly live again in her – and the Witch of the Wilds had winked out of existence.

Or not. For everyone else, at least. The Witch of the Wilds was still alive and well in the minds of the world, and that – beyond anything else – was why Angela would never really be able to fully shirk her past mistakes. She couldn’t, when she was constantly reminded of them.

A hand on her wrist stopped her from looping back into her circular line of thought. Angela jumped, looking down to see that Fareeha had flipped over, facing her, eyes slitted open. Their unnatural glow tossed strange shadows across the planes and dips of her face, but the expression in them was warm and tired, matching her voice as she said quietly, “Angela. Ya albi. You can’t let your past define who you continue to decide to be.”

A pinprick drop of water hit the top of her hand, trickling down the curve of her thumb. Angela raised her other to her face, surprised when she swept dampness from the corners of her eyes.

“'madik la yaerifuk. It’s late. You can tell me in the morning if you still want to talk then. C’mere.”

Fareeha held out an arm, and Angela allowed herself to be tugged down against Fareeha’s side, chin slotting perfectly against her collarbone as it always did. The comfort of Fareeha’s presence and an arm around her waist acted as nothing else could, and within seconds, Angela could feel sleep like a warm wave beginning to overtake her.

The Witch and the Returned fell asleep tangled together on a bed of dry leaves, in an unfamiliar wood, with the whistle of the wind in the branches and the silver of the moon in the sky. And, unbothered, the world continued to spin on.