Archive of Our Own

“I like myself the way I am now,” she says to the others with a smile, the sunlight from Will’s one large window filtering in behind her, “so I’ll be fine, I won’t be swallowed by Nerifes.”

She’s gotten better at lying, he thinks, and something hardens in his gut at the admittance.

He lingers at the mouth of the river long after the others have started the hike back to Werites Beacon. Slipping the leaf into his pocket had been effortless on his part and while writing out the wish had been far more grueling he had done it and now stood there unable to take the final step and lower it to the river currents.

Shirley had made the process appear seamless. The image of her – up to her arms in fresh water, laughing as Chloe worried behind her - it was the most at ease he had ever seen her.

It hadn’t seemed right. Her hands had blood on them too.

He finds it odd that even with a knife to her neck and his other hand covering her mouth Shirley wakes after the lightning trap without a sound. Her eyes are wide, and he can see her hands shake, however intermittently. He lowers his hand to her wrists then and grips them with a bone-crushing strength.

“There’s no point in screaming,” he says and it takes a moment but she nods. He lowers his knife and begins to work on fastening her bonds. Her wrists are already together in her lap as if primed to be tied and he finds that distasteful.

As they continue on Shirley stares behind him at the passageway through the ruins. He doubts she see Solon’s men hiding in the shadows after all he could only sense them there himself thanks to his years of training, so when he finishes with her bonds he moves his head just so to follow her gaze to the vein of light pulsing in the wall. He recognizes it from other areas on the Legacy like the Palace, the Bridge, and particularly the veritable cages Vaclav had installed in the latter. Shirley’s breathing leaps in time to the light’s pulse.

“It’s different now,” he whispers, “you could have overpowered me with your eres.”

She looks at him as he pushes her into the shadows and a hand falls on each of her shoulders. She looks at him and frowns as if she does not believe him, and then as she cannot shrug merely inclines her head toward him.

“Why.”

Why what, he thinks as they march from the Ruins to the nearby duct. Why should she have bothered? Why had he said that? He does not know the answer to either and it irks him. It irks him the same way the placidity of her face does the whole trip to the Mirage Palace.

She may not have liked it but the fact was while he had trained to kill a man in fifty different ways she had learned how to let someone die for her in those same magnitudes.

He had been right in his first assessment of her abilities for as soon as Pippo broke her bonds Shirley had leapt into action as swiftly as any of Solon’s men. It’s odd, he thinks, he’s taller than her – they had all decided that, but she’s pulling him along like he’s nothing.

“Do you really think I could send you back,” she snaps, “when you can’t even fight right now?” She had just taken down the only guard on their way out with an elbow to his solar plexus and a sudden instance of lightning to his head. Some ninja.

“You’re weak,” she adds and lets his hand drop. Even as she goes on to outline the strength of the Oresoren he very clearly feels the desire to strike her. He remembers how she had done the same to Chloe – a slap that left he knight’s face red, but no worse for wear. He remembers them laughing together at the riverbank, and clenching his fists, he feels his fingertips begin to glow.

He could hit her and it would do more than leave a faded mark, but why bother. Why bother when maybe she’s right and anyway he’s tired of drawing all these lines stretched parallel between them.

“We’re both weak,” is what she had meant. He does not realize that until much later.

When they had all taken leave of Will’s house it was expected they would prepare their things for the journey to the Altar and meet back at the entrance to Werites Beacon. As Shirley had asked for him and Jay had nothing other than his knives to prepare he arrived at the Madame’s not long after leaving Will’s.

He finds her in the garden, although not sitting in the earth there like so many times before. She sits upon the garden bench instead, and unlike the throne that had been made for her she appears comfortable in it. There’s a regality, even a confidence, to her posture as she nods at him and motions for him to listen to her request.

Throne or not, this seems clear to be an audience, so he remains standing and she is polite; reasonable, really, when she asks him to kill her. Still, she never apologizes for making the request and that seems important. Shirley is the type of person who had once apologized to an eggbear after chasing it off with a fireball spell, and yet.

And yet, he had never actually said he regretted kidnapping her either.

A single doubt can change the very foundations of a battle. When the fate of something as great as this rests on hearts like theirs, it’s best to just take them out of the equation.

Shirley stands, hands clasped in prayer at the Altar of the Sea. He thinks now as he did the first time he came here that such a position does not suit her.

It is Senel and Chloe who move first when the monster forms out of the black mist but Jay and Shirley are united in their stillness. One with her hands clasped together and the other on his weapon - neither stumbles.

When Shirley turns her head his way he sees a plea in her eyes, alongside a gritty determination.

It suits her.

When Jay first visited the Altar of the Sea he had stepped over the bodies of Walter’s men and realized that holy of holies or not this was a battleground.

He’s right, in the end.