Chapter Text
Runaan’s blade slices through the air at a nonexistent opponent, embedding itself into a tree. He yanks it out with a grunt and darts up into the tree tops. Nimbly, he races along the branches, haphazardly slashing his duel weapons in front of him. The anger inside of him, the raw emotion he’s had to keep hidden all day while facing the council bubbles to the surface with every breath as he gets closer and closer to the opening in the trees.
Runaan stops running when he reaches the clearing, staring up at the new crescent moon in the air. The sliver of light illuminates the forest floor below him. His eyes burn with tears, but he’s trained too hard to let them fall. He’s worked too hard for this to ruin him. It shouldn't've happened, but it did and now he has to pay the price.
The branch creaks beneath his weight and Runaan leaps down. He snaps around in the air, slamming the flat side of his sword into a tree. With the other sword he swings, cutting deep wounds into the trunk of a great oak.
One, two, three, four, five, six lives gone and only one of them was supposed to die.
His entire fucking party died and it’s his fault.
With his right blade dulled, he flings it into the woods, where it thunks into another tree. These stupid, stupid swords that took the blood of another but couldn’t save Runaan’s companions blood from being spilt.
Runaan stabs down into the hardened dirt, the metal scrapes against rock at he pulls it back and repeats the action. And he just does it over and over and over again. Not sure whether he’s envisioning the human noble he was supposed to kill, or the guards who murdered his friends or himself, but it doesn’t matter. Just that something is paying for his mistakes.
Finally, mercifully really, the metal breaks. It shudders before snapping and Runaan lets his trusted sword fall uselessly to the ground.
Sinking to his knees, finally letting his exhaustion and injuries take control again, Runaan presses his palms into his eyes and waits. He’s not sure what he’s waiting for exactly. Just for something to take away the deep wound he feels for his failure. But even in the small sliver of moonlight, he can’t find peace.
The rage just simmers out leaving him numb and weak.
Runaan finds himself standing and yanking his intact sword from the tree. The once sharpened blade is now dull, nicks and scratches twisting along the metal. It’s just as broken as the other, but maybe he can make the excuse that it’s general wear and tear and not a tantrum he threw in the woods.
He slides it into the sheath on his back and walks with his head low through the shadows of the trees.
It should be beautiful at night here- Xadian summers are always perfect, nothing like the brutal heat in the Human Kingdoms -but it’s not. It’s just grey, and green, and dull blue. It’s just the white hair dangling in front of Runaan’s face that’s turnt grey from dirt. It’s just the pounding in his head and the longing for comfort.
Runaan wants this monotone gone, wants his color back even though it’s only been minutes- maybe hours- since he last felt.
Runaan easily scales the wall of the military base, though they would’ve let him in through any of the main entrances. He climbs through the still open window of his private quarters, slumping into a chair.
Quickly, Runaan find his mind grows heavy and his lids slowly droop until he’s fallen into a deep sleep.
Only, his dreams don’t provide any solace tonight. They’re filled with the monsters he had to face. The dark faces of his companions, the paling face of the nobleman who’d ordered a small group of thieves to invade Xadia.
“You’re to cut the group off at its roots, tear them from the earth.”
And maybe that’s what made it so bad, so painful.
The mission had been completed so the council doesn’t care about the lives lost. They see it as just another soldier fallen in the line of duty. Not as the beloved elves that had practically trained Runaan. The thieves were cut off at their root, but they hadn’t cut the elves back all that far in turn.
Runaan could retaliate- he
wants
to- but there’s no one to get angry at. No one to kill anymore. Just the empty aching in his chest and the broken blades resting at his side.