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Rupert healed the world quietly, he wanted things in order and knew his place in the world. He was a useless blue blood who decided that he could make the world a bit more orderly, a bit safer. He always believed others were worth risking his own life.
He never stopped believing that.
He looked a nightmare in the eye and tripped over the world child. No matter how much pain Cassandra Graves brought into the world she was once a nine year old girl forced to say goodbye to the woman who scared away monsters. She learned quickly that monster meant useful when it tipped off her fathers tongue.
Her father loved his son.
His son was not a mage.
Rupert sent sunscreen to his mother because she forgot her own skin burned while there were puzzles thousands of years old at her fingertips to solve. He saved bread and cheese for a nightmare because kidnapping is never justice. Rupert did not set out into the world to become the monsters he slayed.
Jack saved the world loudly. He did not understand George's need to lay down her boar's spear. He did not understand the need to stop fighting. He felt at home in infirmaries and steady with the green herbs crushed into his palms but he never could resist the call of battle. He believed every person was worth saving- he wanted to save the entire world and he believed to do that he had to fight.
Laney saved the world by breaking it open and stealing power that was never promised to her hands. Sometimes saving meant breaking. She was never meant to sow peace or sew tents. She was meant to shatter the bindings of reality again and pinch them back together.
In the desert they fill the sky with their mourning.
In the mountains they erected stone graves and placed flowers.
Grey didn't believe in saving the world but he believed in his friends and that was good enough. Besides with the friends he had saving the world came with the rest. It was so hard to learn how to be unselfish but these feckless heroes made it look something like worth it.
Cassandra Graves greatest sin (in her mind, not in the minds of those who wept for loved ones lost) was the life she saved. Sam would always be her silent shame in her fathers mission.
Jack's greatest shame was the life he didn't save. (The wet thud of a bullet, a widow weeps like broken glass.) One day they would look at each other and come to something close to an understanding. They both loved Grey although they called him different names.
Her father loved his son.
His son was not a mage.
At eleven years old Cassandra walked down to the labs with a bucket clenched in her still soft child hands. She dipped the brush into the soapy water and silently scrubbed dust from the machines. She wondered if anyone else could see the gold light sparkling in the dust. Her father said it was a needed sacrifice and he meant the deaths, not his daughters innocence.
When does a child become a monster?
When is the cost of saving one life to much?
Is it when a dragon burns a village because an orphan girl is not williing to die but she is willing to fight?
Is it when a baby brother is safe but a shadow grows in the mountains?
She wondered how much dust her nurse left behind. Or the boy who groomed her pony and slipped her sugar cubes.
At eleven her father made sure she knew the consequence of her life work. He made sure it would be her life work. He said useful and meant monster. He said righteous and meant revenge.
The mages were selfish he said. They had to be forced to share their gifts. Their lives were a needed sacrifice. Their work was righteous.
Cassandra learned to not draw gold swirls in her gravy. She became as hard as the mountain stone that surrounded her. She became obsidian and glass. She became the scariest thing in her little brothers world to frighten away all the monsters like her.
Her father loved his son.
Her father's son was not a mage.
Her Spider loved her. He saw all the great and terrible things she did, kept himself at her beck and call, spied for her (on her), contrived to destroy her family, but he loved her.
Maybe that truth was big enough to cover his lies.
Maybe she didn't look too closely.
Maybe she loved him back.
She did love him but how can a monster love anyone? Does a nightmare feel anything more than the fear it feeds on?
Her father's daughter was a monster.
Her father's daughter was useful.
When did a girl become a monster? Was it when she was nine and her father gave her a cup of tea and asked for the first time to tell him what she Saw? Was it when she was eleven and she cleaned out cages full of floating, glowing dust and believed when she was told it was in the name of progress. Cassandra will always be accountable for every death sentence she signed with her black, obsidian eyes.
Who was ever held accountable for the death of her innocences?
When does a nightmare stop being a child?
Is it when she decides she'll burn the entire world in golden fire to protect the brightest sun she's ever seen?
Her father loves his son.
Her father's son is not a mage.
Jack met this mountain pretending to be a girl in a village inn as they talked about boogeymen. He had known her before she perfected her masks. He met her when he was young enough, naive enough, to give her his name.
She had met him when his belief in heros was still fresh and nieve. When luck still clung to him like a golden shadow. When he believed in heros like he believed in saving squirrels from the little Shadows that lived in the forest.
He always believed in saving little squirrels from hidden forest shadows. He believed that he should save everyone no matter how impossible that was. Jack would always ask people to stand and fight. He would always stand and fight himself. But this was when he believed in happy endings like he believed in the sun rising. It was inevitable until it wasn't. Until the wet thud of a bullet, until a widow wept like broken glass. Until Liam didn't come home.
Until he decided he needed to learn to save people better. Jack never asked for what he didn't give himself.
Or did he? For the years he ran in the mountain he had his luck to protect him.
For years Cassandra signed death sentence after death sentence.
In a tiny room, guarded with wards and spell drawn with stolen magic a desert girl and a mountain boy broke the world and turned on a light. Cassandra saw the weight of her father's revenger and her brother's life and broke as a single light flicked bare above her.
Her father loved his revenge, his power, his money and never his children.
Cassandra loved her secrets, her spider and her brother.
Sam Graves loved the scariest thing in the world because she brought him hot chocolate when the nightmares pressed in. He always knew she was a nightmare herself and that made him feel safer.
A boy walked out of the mountains and learned how to not be selfish. Hero wasn't a compliment in every house and he never claimed the title. He wanted to be a librarian.
Several years later a stone girl was taken out of the mountain and learned how to be human again.
When does a mountain become a woman?
When does a monster become a child?