Chapter Text
She clutched the report in her hand, staring at it but reading nothing. The print on the page mocked her, words proclaiming something unspeakable.
Something she refused to believe.
Privates Abigail Bellweather and Raelle Collar are MIA after an explosion in the Tarim Basin, presumed dead.
It couldn’t be true; it just couldn’t. She chose Raelle, still chooses her- there’s no way. This can’t be the end.
Scylla came to terms with the fact that she would likely never see Raelle again. She understood that, had accepted it even though it hurt like nothing she had ever felt before. Like someone had reached into her heart and ripped it out still beating; they may as well have. But still, if Scylla never saw her again that would be okay, so long as she knew Raelle was still out there. Still breathing. Still smiling that smile that Scylla loved, even if she was never lucky enough to witness its glory again. It was enough to know that it still existed. But this? This wasn’t right. If no one else could see it, that was on them, but she refused to believe that Raelle- the woman who set her heart aflame with love and light and life - was gone. Dead. No more life in her veins, love in her eyes, warmth in the hands that reached for her in the day and held her at night-
It felt too wrong, too cruel, too damn cold.
Because what was the point of a world without Raelle in it? Without her laugh, which lit up even the darkest of days when Scylla thought the hatred that ate at her soul would consume her? Without the overwhelming good that she brought into a cold and cruel world despite all of the pain she had faced?
Scylla was not going to accept this. Raelle was alive. She had to be. Because surely, Scylla would know, right? How could she lose the one thing she had left to fight for in this world and not feel it- Not feel the other half of her soul die?
“No.” She shook her head and crumpled the paper in her hand, curling it into a ball to hide the offensive message from her sight. She couldn’t look at it anymore.
“Scylla-”
She stopped Willa.
“I said , no.”
Willa tried again. “This is hard for me too, I-”
“Oh, this is hard for you? You don’t get to do that. Your death destroyed her , do you have any idea? You weren’t there to see what you did, but I was. Don’t tell me about hard. You weren’t fucking there. She needed you, and you left her.” She took a shaky breath, trying to force back the tears that pricked at her eyes. “She’s missing in action, not dead. She can’t be.” She folded in on herself. “She can’t be,” she repeated, the words barely a whisper.
Willa tried to place a comforting hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it off, pushing past her to the makeshift bedroom she slept in. She took a seat on the bed, staring listlessly at the wall as a memory came, unbidden.
“Hey, Scyl,” Raelle murmured in her ear.
“Hm?” They were lounging on her bed, enjoying a quiet afternoon off from training before the Bellweather unit left for the wedding. Scylla’s head was in Raelle’s lap and her girlfriend was combing her fingers through her hair, absently weaving the occasional small braid into it.
“Let’s run away together.”
Scylla looked up to find Raelle smiling down at her, eyes shining with pure adoration.
“And live on the beach?” she asked, returning the smile.
“Wherever, as long as it’s with you.” Raelle fixed her with a steady gaze and Scylla’s heart swelled with love. This girl, with all of her confident affection that she gave unconditionally without reservation, would be the end of her.
“That’s an awfully big commitment, Private Collar,” she teased.
“Wherever makes you happy, Scyl. That’s where I want to be.”
“Such a charmer.”
“Only for you.”
She knew, in a way, that their time was quickly running out. The wedding was fast approaching. Raelle was leaving in a few hours, but all she could do was savor these last few moments.
She wondered just when it all went so wrong. If she could roll the tapes back, could she find the exact point when she fucked it all up? Completely lost track of the mission in favor of falling helplessly in love with the one person she shouldn’t?
Maybe it was that day in Remembrance Hall, when Raelle held her and made her feel a little less alone, saw her for who she was and not what she had done, who she used to be. Or that moment in the graveyard, when Raelle told her she was beautiful and decided to trust Scylla despite the lies she fed her. Or, even more terrifying, maybe she was lost the minute she first saw Raelle on the storm range. Maybe she never stood a chance against that smile and those piercing, sky blue eyes.
The mission was a lost cause before it even began, but Scylla couldn’t find it in herself to regret a single decision she made because they all got her here, in Raelle’s arms, even if only for a few more minutes.
She closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of Raelle- of home- and wished against hope, against reason, against every logical thought in her head, for just a moment longer with the woman she loved.
Scylla took a shaky breath and laid down, curling into a ball, and finally succumbed to the tears. Not because she lost Raelle, because she could not accept that. Raelle was out there, somewhere, continuing to fight. Scylla had to believe that.
Scylla cried because the world gave up on Raelle, again , and she deserved better. The Army, Alder, even her own mother gave up on her and even though she knew Raelle couldn’t care less about her, Scylla would not be the last person to give up. She would continue to believe in her, have faith that she was still fighting, and Scylla would fight for her. Believe in her. Even if no one else would.
Scylla didn’t go to the funeral. It could hardly even be called that; there were no bodies to bury. Just empty caskets to go along with empty words of sympathy, as if the Army could possibly imagine what had really been lost.
She already knew what to expect. The whole mockery of a ceremony would be finished off with a meaningless flag to be passed off to the mourning families, like it could ever hope to replace what the Army had taken too soon. The whole thing would feel too fake, the most perfunctory of gestures from an organization designed to take advantage of people like her- like Raelle - until they were spent. Used up. Blown to bits on the battlefield or wasting away at Fort Salem, one way or another the Army would take the life of every witch there, and for what? To continue the never ending scramble for power? Keep witches chained to conscription, so their only acceptable place in society was one that made them useful to civilians?
So no, Scylla didn’t go to the funeral. She didn’t want to see Alder’s pity or the Army’s empty gestures. They gave up on Raelle, didn’t even try to find her, passed her off as dead without a second thought.
What a pity , they would say. She could have been a great medic.
Fuck that.
Instead, Scylla passed the afternoon staring at a map of the Tarim Basin, much like she had every day for the past week. She had barely slept since they got the report that Raelle and Abigail were missing. Instead, she spent every waking minute in front of the map. The constant pouring over the landscape wondering where Raelle and Abigail could be helped her become familiar with it, and on the day of the funeral she focused on one specific patch of desert. She examined it for what was likely the hundredth time, exhausted eyes searching out the long since memorized oasis. Were Raelle and Abigail there right now? They would need water, and this was probably the only source for miles around. Had the army checked there? Her mind spiraled into questions, considering every possible angle, desperately scrambling for any explanation of how Raelle could still be alive.
She brought her hand up, staring at it. She hadn’t tried to contact Raelle yet, unsure of how she would react. Would it be too cruel? Inappropriate? Would it cause more harm than good? But now, she needed to let her know. Even if the rest of the world believed she was gone, Scylla didn’t. Raelle needed to know that at least one person was still with her. She carefully traced the S onto her palm, offering up a silent prayer to the goddess that Raelle would understand her message. She held her hand close to her heart, treasuring the last connection she had to the woman she loved.
Raelle had to be out there.
She had to be. Scylla wouldn’t accept anything else. She chose Raelle, and she would keep choosing her for as long as she lived.
And even longer than that.
Thousands of miles away, on the other side of the world, a young woman fell to her knees. Her companion came crashing down a moment later. They were so close, their destination merely a hundred feet in front of them, but it felt so far away. It may as well have been another mile.
The young woman coughed. Her throat was so dry. Everything was so dry. The dust caked her hair, her face, her eyes, her throat… She couldn’t remember the taste of water, the feeling of its cool, refreshing touch. The rations they carried with them long since finished, all she could remember was the heat and omnipresent dust that had haunted her every waking moment for the past… week? Month? Day? It was impossible to tell anymore. They had no way of knowing how long it had been since Alder had left them for dead. She wished Alder had been right and that the Camarilla had finished the job; it would have been better than this much, much slower death.
Another round of coughing wracked her body and she rolled onto her side, her body curling in on itself in a desperate attempt to find some semblance of relief. Just her luck, it seemed, because it didn't work.
“You good, Shitbird?” Abigail croaked next to her.
“Take a wild guess, Bellweather.” She didn’t recognize her voice. It rasped in her throat and caught in her chest.
“About as good as me, then.”
“Pretty much.”
Raelle turned onto her back, looking up at the sky and trying to find the strength to stand again, but she couldn’t. Her legs felt like lead and her arms were barely cooperating. Everything hurt, even parts of her body that she didn’t know had functioning nerve endings. She was wondering just how long she would have to lay there before her body finally succumbed to the brutal elements and she passed out when she felt it.
Tingling.
A prickling feeling that she had last felt so long ago that it felt like another lifetime, back before she told the woman she loved that she wished they had never met.
When she broke both of their hearts with one swift blow before Scylla was shipped off to die.
“Wha…?” Raelle muttered.
She used the last of her strength, her very last reserves, to bring her hand up to where she could see it. There was no way to know that the S on her palm wasn’t just another dehydration-induced hallucination crafted by her brain just to torture her, but she figured even her mind couldn’t be that evil.
She felt a rush of emotions. She was angry at first. Angry at Scylla for her betrayal and her lies, angry at the Alder for leaving her and Abigail, angry at the world and all the ways it had managed to screw her and the people she loved over.
But then, she was confused. Scylla was supposed to be dead. Or at least, somewhere where she couldn’t perform Work, so how was she contacting Raelle? It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense anymore.
And finally, despite her best efforts, a small part of her heart stirred. A part that she hardly dared to acknowledge, could barely admit to herself, but was nevertheless still there. It stirred with hope and love and relief because despite the five kinds of fucked up this all was, Raelle still loved her. God damn it, she still loved her.
She stared at the S for a minute, eyes tracing the familiar shape, her heart wrenching a little more with each curve that her eyes followed. She could still barely believe it. Scylla was still out there, and even though she knew it shouldn’t, the thought gave her strength. She forced herself to sit up, struggling to stand but doing it anyway and pulling Abigail up too.
They reached the oasis a few grueling minutes later. Raelle drank deeply, the water coursing down her throat and into her stomach, filling her with new life and energy. With her thirst suitably quenched her head began to clear and she turned her hand over to check her palm. The S slowly faded back into her skin, as if it had never been there to begin with. As if it only appeared to lead her to safety, give her what she needed to continue on.
As if Scylla needed to save her one last time.
A cruel twist of fate, considering the nature of their relationship and how everything was a lie. Raelle let out a bitter laugh, her heart constricting painfully in her chest.
“Thanks, Scyl.”