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"What's going on?"
Jester looked at her, getting back on her feet, eyes wide and tearful as they found hers. Her lower lip quivered, like she was shivering. But she was immune to the cold. "I'm sorry, Yasha." Beau stood next to her, refusing to look up and at her.
"While they were... coming to rescue us--," Fjord began, gold-tinted falchion at his side, a professional straightness to his back that was in direct conflict with his slumped shoulders.
"We lost him," Nott finished. There were tears in her eyes, too. Large and yellow and slit-pupiled and so, so sad.
Yasha felt her whole life flash before her eyes like lightning. But where usually, lightning would fill her with a sense of comfort, with a sense of home, this one scared her. Crackling, deadly energy that could split the very clouds that were dark and overbearing above, blanketing the sky for miles and miles. There was nothing beyond it. Only grey stretching for as far as the eye could see. But she wasn't looking at the sky. Instead, she was looking down, at the snow-dusted ground frozen beneath her feet, cold seeping in through the soles of her shoes.
The packed earth must've been hard to dig, a rational part of her brain wondered. A part that was devoted solely to survival, naturally, shamelessly analysing a situation for her own good. There was nothing good to analyse here. Nothing at all. There was only the slight flurry of snowflakes, the wind biting her skin broken up by hot tears snaking their way down her cheeks. She didn't recall advancing on the site, but her feet carried her on instinctual leylines. On a magnetic field that had existed for months. A gravitational pull towards her best friend's grave.
"He tried. He tried to get to your side, he tried very hard." Caleb's voice sounded rough, yet his words were soft, empathetic. A sentiment entirely lost on her.
Mollymauk Tealeaf's grave was situated on the highest point of a low hill. Surrounding it were more hills, natural dips and flat summits that dappled the landscape. Some small brush and meagre, sickly trees provided shelter to birds hiding from the snow steadily falling onto the ground. From up here, the view of the chokepoint below was clear, deep wagon tracks showing where it was frequented. It would be impossible to tell which one had belonged to the Iron Shepherds' wagons and which were those of mere merchants, travellers, salesmen and -women. There also -- and Yasha hated herself for checking upon hearing Nott's words -- was no dark spot in the sand where blood must have soaked into the ground. No deep slice where Molly had been struck down, pinned him to the ground. Nothing indicated where his life had ended.
She hadn't been there. Not really. She was bound and gagged and semi-conscious in the back of one of the magically concealed carriages, hearing close to nothing of the fight as she slipped in and out of involuntary, arcane sleep.
Yasha felt boundlessly guilty for having been so out of it that she didn't hear. That she wasn't there, in whatever way she could've, to bear witness to her friend's end. Instead he'd been alone. Fighting to free her from a predicament she'd gotten herself into out of carelessness. Out of stupidity. What growing up in Xhorhas hadn't taught her about checking her back travelling with the Carnival and the Nein had. And still. Still she'd let down her guard, still she'd been overwhelmed. Taken during a small moment of false security. And in her hazy state, even with so many pieces of the puzzle missing with the others' choked words, her blurred memories of everything that had transpired, Yasha pieced together something she was utterly appalled at. It was her fault. She was directly responsible for Mollymauk's death.
Behind her, surely, the others were talking. But it was barely audible, barely discernible through the blood rushing in her ears, hyper-focusing on the crunch of a thin layer of snow below her feet as she approached. She barely registered the slight indents in the snow where Jester had kneeled down previously to adorn the gravesite with the Moon card of Molly's tarot deck.
Mollymauk's coat whipped around in the cold wind, bright red contrasting the bleak, dead grey surrounding it. And it was all too colourful, all too bright for the dreary winter-landscape. Glory Run Road did not deserve to see it. Part of Yasha, a greedy, selfish, wounded part, wanted to reach out, take the coat, rip it from the primitive wooden cross it'd been propped up on. Wanted to take it, hold it up to her chest, where it belonged. Feel the soft woollen threads against her coarse fingers, follow its intricately stitched designs she'd watched Molly sew into it by the light of many a campfire. Deft hands creating patterns that swirled around each other, tapestry-like. Fit for an altar. Fit for a god.
But even if she did, it would be cold, devoid of life. No body warmth. It would smell like damp and cold. No lavender, no peach. No Mollymauk. And even if it was almost too much to bear seeing it here, even if some person, any person, could come by some day and steal it away, she couldn't get herself to disturb it. Yasha would never let go again if she got a hold of it. She didn't trust herself to be reasonable. Not here, not now. Of all the places and times, this was not one of reason.
She wondered how there was the sound of a heartbeat in her ears when her heart was six feet under. Her chest felt empty, caved in and scraped clean. A familiar ache and yet it managed to overwhelm her as if it were the first time that she felt it. Nausea rose in her gut, so all-encompassing that her vision flickered for a moment, turning black and white and lightning-struck.
"It happened again."
Her words hung heavily in the air, mixing with the light snowfall, drifting to the ground and onto the earth that held onto Mollymauk's body for her now. He was right there. Just below them all. She could reach him, if she tried. Take him. She didn't move. She hadn't run this time but still, the outcome had been the same. Another beloved body in the ground, another senseless death on her shoulders, another albatross above her head, tethered to some red part inside her ribcage. She didn't know any one person could feel this much pain without dying instantly. But somehow, for some cruel joke of a reason, she was still alive. While Mollymauk wasn't. It wasn't fair.
He shouldn't have had to die for her. It should've been the other way around. Paying her debt, finally. Balance. Yasha standing her ground to protect the one she loved. But the universe didn't care for fairness. It cared only to take and take and take from her, even if she thought she'd given all she possibly, humanly could, it found yet another way to take even the very air she required to breathe, stealing it right out from inside her lungs with a thief's skilful elegance and an executer's uncaring efficiency.
Yasha braved the last few, miserable steps towards the grave. And then, as all things do eventually, Yasha fell to the ground. Her knees hit the hard dirt below the thin veiling of snow, Mollymauk's coat now rising taller than she, its shadow crossing her form as it moved on the oncoming storm. She stared at the ground, her eyes fixed on the place where Beau and Caleb and Nott had dug and shovelled earth back on top. Tears dropped onto the snow, melting it upon impact. Her back was turned to the rest of them, but she could feel where their eyes bore into her, picking her apart like raven's beaks, trying to find something there. Some sort of purchase. Some indication of what to say, what to do. But there wasn't anything. There was nothing. Yasha was completely and arrantly empty.
The first word Molly had ever said to her, to anyone. "Empty." A broken man, a dirt-smeared face, a ruined, moth-eaten history. A smile that was fake and painted on until it wasn't. Empty. M. T. Mollymauk Tealeaf.
For someone who claimed to be so devoid of things she'd never met anyone as full of life as him. An overflowing cup, always more than happy to spill over and into anyone who cared to listen. Anyone who had the privilege to share in him. He was the sun, the moon and the stars. A lifesaving piece of timber during a cold night. But no matter how many times he started a fire, there was always something left to be burnt on another day. Molly never ran out of sparks.
Until now. Now, the sky was dull and sunless, the air cold and stale. And Yasha was alone.
The weight of a hand on her shoulder ripped her out of her one-track thought. Her heart skipped a confused, sudden beat, but the hand was smaller than she remembered. It filled her with insurmountable rage. Another hand. Beauregard and Jester were flanking her, like they had any right to be there. To encroach upon her. They had no idea. This was not something to share. This was Yasha's. Her fault, her grief. Her Mollymauk.
Somewhere deep inside of her, there was thunder. Always thunder. An animalistic, primal storm that roared and roared until it passed her lips and burst through to the outside world. The intensity of it shook her, shoulders trembling where two hands rested. And then Yasha stood once again. She rose to her feet, still growling but now it was beginning to morph into something else. A mournful, baleful cry echoed through the valley. Something that people and wolves alike would be able to identify as the purest, most distilled, most innate anguish. Something small animals fled from. Something Yasha had kept locked away for too long. And she felt herself shatter with her own pitiful scream.
She felt her muscles tense as her wings, blackened, barren like the crowns of the few trees sparsely speckling the hills around them, erupted from her back. Skeletal and pulsing with a dark energy that matched the waves of nausea rippling through her body. Jester and Beau's hands slipping from where they'd been placed, Yasha turned her face skywards, still howling. Even though the storm was miles away, she felt the surge of energy as if it stemmed from her own veins. A flash of lightning. Another. Another. One for every tear that fell from her face, one for every heartbeat that mockingly resided behind her ribs and refused to give in.
And she screamed: It's not fair!
And the storm answered: No, it's not.
Yasha lapsed into white-hot silence. With a grim finality, she placed her hand atop the marker declaring Mollymauk's grave to the world.
"I think we're pretty fucking lucky," he had said, once, in the dead of night. They'd been camping underneath one of the circus carriages as the rain pelted the wood above them. His prized possession patchwork coat served as a blanket for both of them, sharing body heat and comfort. Yasha must have let out a sound of doubt. She didn't feel very lucky. Most of all, she felt cold. Molly, as he tended to do, he was quick to jump into an animated elaboration. Yasha was used to it by now. She let her eyes flutter shut as she listened to her friend talk.
"I mean, look at me. No, actually, scratch that. Look at you! Tall, dark, handsome, people would murder to be one of those, let alone all three. Sure, you're currently literally sleeping in the mud but at least tomorrow you won't, once we've put up the circus tent. Oh no, tomorrow evening you will be in an inn, all warm and tipsy and you will be handing papers to people and they will look at you and think 'isn't that one lucky bastard woman. Gets to travel the world while I'm stuck here, uh, ploughing the fields or whatnot'."
He chuckled to himself at his villager impression. Yasha felt her lips curl into an involuntary smile as she turned to watch him. (She wished, now, she had let him know how much she liked listening to his rambling stories). In the darkness, the moon's light faintly illuminated Molly's profile as he continued.
"And by the gods, they'll be right. All of this freedom, all of this--this wonderful madness, and in the interim we manage to give the people just a glimpse into it all. Show them what living's all about. Even if they gotta go back to the field the next day, don't you think they're gonna remember the previous night? Our performance? They'll never forget, and they'll always wonder what it's like to be us. But you and I, we don't have to guess. No, we know. We know what it's like to have the world bow to us, Yasha. We're the king and queen in this chess game of a life. Most other people won't ever even get to play."
He blinked at her, undoubtedly proud of his analogy. And then he turned away from her, without a word and Yasha almost told him good night but then he was back, his hand wet from where he had stuck it out from below the wagon.
Between his index finger and thumb he was holding a small green plant, no larger than a daisy. Yasha eyed it with curiosity.
"What is that?" she whispered. Children trading secrets. Molly grinned and beckoned for her hand. She held it out to him, trusting.
"It's a four-leaf clover," he explained, placing it in Yasha's upturned palm before gingerly yet confidently closing her fingers around it, one by one, pulling them in with his own. "It's lucky, or so the superstitious say. Physical proof to you that I'm right. Because of course I am. Don't ever forget that. It's absolutely vital for the next time you ask me whose turn it is to clean the animal's cages and I tell you that it's yours. I'm right, moral of the story." Yasha shoved at him, playfully and Molly went along with it, theatrically groaning like he'd been badly wounded. She couldn't help but let out a small laugh in the dead of night. He joined her, laughing louder than her. (He was always like that. More than other people.)
"Sleep, now, lucky Mollymauk. It's been a long day."
She gently lifted her hand off of the marker, off of Molly's snow-dusted coat and began to leave.
"Yasha!" her friends' voices rang out behind her, harmonising with her own deep-cutting sorrow yet unable to penetrate the high-pitched nausea fogging up her head. She put her hand up, no lucky clovers inside. When she spoke, her own words were heavy, lifeless, iron-hewn.
"I'll find you when I'm ready."
Her skeletal wings moved slightly to rid themselves of snowflakes that had begun to accumulate on top of them before flickering out of existence entirely. And then she wordlessly continued to walk away from her friends. Away from Mollymauk's grave. But she knew, no matter how much distance she put between herself and him, it wouldn't even begin to span the emptiness inside of her.