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It’s been a long fucking day. The battle is over, it’s been fought and lost, the dead in piles or strewn on the ground everywhere around her. The smell of dirt and ash and blood hangs heavy in the air, and Wren can’t help but shudder.
Haniwa vigorously rubs at her arms again, probably thinking it’s the cold making her shake. Wren is freezing, still in her wet clothes, and she’s so exhausted that she wants nothing more than to lie down among the dead, her dead, her soldiers, but she knows that she’ll never get up again if she does.
Wren wants to sob when Haniwa tries to make her stay again, tempting beyond belief despite her duty to her people, her family, her home back in Trivantes. She does sob when the other girl reveals the necklace Wren gave her what seems like forever ago. The kiss is bruising, but she can’t help herself. All at once, it lights a fire in her, burning brighter than the Godflame herself, but it is also a wet, pitiful thing, tears and despair drowning her beneath their waves.
This is goodbye. It seems like all they ever do is say goodbye.
Wren wishes with every fiber of her being that it was different, she wants so badly that it hurts, and she can feel the same in Haniwa as both their hearts break.
And yet, she still holds on to a small ember of hope, tucked deep inside so it won’t go out. Their nations may be at war, but they aren’t. They will make it through this. They have to. One day, when all this is over, they’ll meet again.
She thinks Haniwa must’ve come to a similar revelation. Or perhaps it’s a more active decision. God knows that the girl is stubborn enough to try to dictate fate itself. For a moment they breathe each other’s air, and when they part, they manage to give each other watery smiles, a fragile promise, a goodbye for now.
With that, Wren turns and goes, starting the long trek home, though she knows that a piece of it will always belong to the girl at her back. One day, she promises. One day.