Work Text:
Marian once wrote her first and last letter to Bea.
She said the kindest thing she knew- you will live through this. She didn't know if this was a promise or a curse.
Bea once watched the sister in law that she thought she'd never meet walk out of her bakery to shatter in peace. Bea didn't know how many times this girl-woman-child-sister-mage-aunt-so many titles- had been told her emotions were unseemly. But Bea thought if she looked hard enough she'd be able to count them like links in chainmail.
Bea handed the tall, aristocratic boy who stared after the breaking girl an ax and mentioned there was wood to be chopped. Practicality and filling hands were the kindest things she could give.
People all start small. A shutter shattered, empty hands reaching, a burning pryer in a winter forest. A prayer whispered while hidden in a farmers cart.
In the desert they fill the sky with their mourning.
In the mountains they returned the dead to the ground.
What do you do when a village decides your worth is greatest in your death?
You bury them. It was the only thing George knew how to do. She had to learn to walk away. It took more than burying the village that tried to kill her before she learned how. It was after she slayed the dragon they damned her too she walked.
A spear blessed with dragon's blood, held by a girl damned to a death she did not choose, that was a story too big for a mountain top covered in white flowers.
Did children play on the hill where her village lay buried? Did lovers kiss, caress and whisper promises on that hill?
Marien left the forest and found a seaside city slum that needed a guardian. She may have called Robin an idealistic, foolish, dreamer but she desperately wanted to believe in that dream herself. He had claimed a city, she claimed a slum. Bea stayed in her bakery and ran a war covered in flour. George wandered the entire mountains after she walked away. She learned that home meant whistles in the air, fresh baked bread and a sun splitting grin on a tiny redheads face.
She learned home meant her own skin.
Laney walked away from one life and it's boxes and into another. She thumbed her nose at these new boxes, all with a smooth face and her mothers most careful smile. Home was where only boxes she built lived. She wondered what that home would eventually look like.
Quietly and privately Bea respected her mother in law but she never liked her. Bea never did forget counting her sister in laws vertebrae as the younger girl broke. She never forgot how precious Laney's first real smile felt. Laney learned to wear her armour long before she learned how to break the world apart and someone had once told her she needed it.
Miz Eliza remembered the exact pattern of every curse she ever broke and forgot sun spells on every dig she ever went on. She taught Rupert how to love old things, how to bury yourself in something important. She also taught him what her back looked like as she left again.
She taught him how to say how can I help you in ten languages.
Cassandra taught her brother that nothing could ever touch him. She taught him that she was the scariest thing in the world. She showed him what a nightmare looked like bringing a scared little boy coco. She taught him to run, to hide, to study, to lose himself in written words on pages. She watched him read books in his head as she forced herself to not draw gold swirls in her gravy.
She never wanted him to learn to stay, to fight but he learned those lessons because her lessons kept him alive.
Bea knew what it meant to have every inch of her hollowed out, to not know if her lungs remembered what breathing was or if her feet still knew how to walk. She woke to a cold hearth and shattered shutters. She walked out to greet heroes and instead watched them break on her step. She knew what it was to have grief press so deep into her bones she no longer knew a time where it didn't hurt to expand her ribs and breathe.
She loved a man who whistled the world golden and she loved him after she laid him in the ground.
Kindness is a matter of perspective.
Mari walked away from one forest that needed protection, that needed Robin, that needed someone. She walked away and handed the responsibility to John. She walked and others followed. She found new ground, new people that needed protection. She remembered a smiling fool who said he'd protect them all. She planted her feet in a slum and declared it hers. All there would have her protection.
Bea stared in the eyes of the people who scolded her for ghost stories and told them to be safe. She asked for a ride, a wagon, a place to hide, a bit of food, a secret kept, a whisteled warning, she asked and asked and asked and people gave. She kneaded bread and stuck pins in maps and declared that the boogeyman would not chase her from her home.
Rose and Snow declared they would create a haven for all those who wanted somewhere to stand and fight. They would help those who wanted to flee because you are never obligated to give your life for a cause. Not even when the cause is just, is right, is worth dying for.
Nothing is worth dying for unless you choose to take the mantle.
George wanted to lay down her spear but she knew she'd pick it up every time there was a call to do so. She wanted to learn about potatoes and how they fed nations, at how their close cousins could be deadly. How sometimes deadly things are beautiful.
What did Cassandra want? She didn't know. She had wanted her Spider, but he was cold with a bullet from a man he trusted buried squarely between his eyes. She wanted Sam safe and here he was, running around with the Giantkiller. Her father made her life his work and she accepted with tiny open hands.
She had been a child when she was given this work. She heard special and knew it meant useful. She heard righteousness and was too young to know it meant revenge. She wondered if chamomile could ever taste anything but bitter.
It couldn't. Not to her black and broken tongue. A boy in a room that didn't exist in the minds of the people who left it once gave her chamomile and then never did again. Until he forgot. Until he remembered again
.
Even when he forgot she knew the tea was kindness. She wondered if this blue blood knew how to be anything but kind. He did, she'd seen him kill when needed, stand when others would fall. She wondered who taught him he didn't need to be a nightmare to hold power. She wondered if he even knew the power he held.
She wouldn't tell these feckless idiots her secrets. She wouldn't lay her soul bare to them. They could puzzle out the mystery themselves.
Rupert didn't need to remember when he saw her weak. Jack didn't need more reason to kill her. Laney put her in that room in the first place and she owed the little mage who wasn't the least of all.
Rupert gave her bread, cheese, apples and never chamomile tea. What did she owe him?
Jack saved her brother, what did she owe him?
Laney's brother lay dead in the mountains by her men's hands. What did she owe her?
A hole ripped itself into a magical barricade and a boy with one leg who was becoming a man who was her brothers best friend let her walk out of it.
It was kindness.
It was making her someone else's problem.
It was giving her to fate and chance.
It was kind.
Kindness is a matter of perspective after all.