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It all happened in an instant.
One moment, the Mighty Nein were holding their own against a large Minotaur-like beast. The next, a massive slam of its hooves shook the very ground they stood on.
And all of a sudden, Beau notices Yasha precariously at a cliffedge, having been launched over there by one of the beast’s giant haymakers.
A cliffedge that broke apart with the seismic slam and fell, taking the aasimar with it.
“YASHA!”
Beau shouldn’t be that worried. Her girl’s an angel, she can always fly to safety, she should be fine!
…Oh wait… did she already used her wings today, I don’t remember, oh fuck…
Okay. NOW she is worried… to the point where she is already jumping after her, hoping she can catch her in time.
The wind blasts her face as she descends, tucking her arms into herself to accelerate. She can see Yasha coming closer to her… as well as coming closer to the jagged rocky spires below.
Almost there… I’m almost there…
Beau clutches her cape tightly, ready to bamf herself and Yasha to safety the instant she can grab her.
Wait… is she still unconscious? Could she still use the cape if Yasha’s not willing in her current state?
“YASHA! WAKE UP!” Beau tries to scream, but the wind swallows her words up. She’s not gonna make it…!
Fuck! Yasha, no!
Yasha’s far too close to the rocks. Beau’s just out of reach.
She has no choice. She has to bamf away.
Yasha, I’m sorry…!
In the few seconds before impact, she sees Yasha finally wake up and immediately realize what’s happening. She sees the aasimar flex and try to summon her wings.
The wings do come out. But… it’s not the brilliant white feathered ones.
It’s her old skeletal black wings. And her hair… it also ended up back in black.
No… NO!
Beau squeezes her eyes shut, bracing herself for what she’s about to do. She has to use the cape to save herself. She has to!
She must use the cape.
She has to.
She doesn’t.
She continues to plummet.
She hears Yasha impact the rocks and the scream of pain coming from her.
Only, the sound wasn’t that of rocks. It was steel.
A sound intimately familiar to Beau.
It’s just like back then.
Her eyes peek open to confirm it.
Yasha’s been impaled. On multiple Skingorgers.
Just as she herself was stabbed, only from the back instead.
Just a few seconds too late… Too late to—
Beau jolts awake, sweating and gasping for breath. She frantically looks at her surroundings, looking for Yasha.
She’s still where she was last night, curled into herself, sleeping peacefully. And her hair is still as white as ever.
They’re in their bedroom in the cottage. It was just a nightmare about something that didn’t really happen.
It wasn’t real. Yasha didn’t “fall” again. They’re both alive, and they’re both safe in their own home.
Even so, she can’t go back to sleep right now. She needs something to take the edge off… or something else.
So Beau reluctantly gets herself out of bed and puts a nightgown on, slowly opens the door and sneaks her way downstairs.
It thankfully doesn’t take her long to find the means to make a quick cup of coffee, thanks to the enchanted doodads gifted to their home by Caleb and Veth. So Beau makes herself a cup and sits down in the living room.
A few moments pass before the monk gets a little restless and grabs a notebook from the table. It’s the work she had put aside the other night, intending to finish it in the morning. She had wanted to brush up on a case assigned to her by the High Curator regarding the whereabouts of two missing people. But at the time, she was just so exhausted from working such long hours that she instead brought it home.
Now, though, it’s right in front of her. Perhaps focusing her attention on her work will distract her from that horrible nightmare.
The sky is beginning to brighten outside.
Beau’s been at her work for the past few hours, going at a slow pace. Her coffee would have gone cold by now had the mugs not also been enchanted. That along with her nerves is all that keeps her awake.
She finally feels like she’s made headway on her research just as she hears footsteps coming from the stairs.
“Morning, Yash,” Beau croaks out, the first words she’d said out loud. Gods, she feels like utter shit, she’s not even looking in her direction…
But the angelkin doesn’t respond. At least, not right away. Instead, Beau hears her footsteps retreat into the kitchen, presumably to start cooking breakfast.
Thankfully, the sounds of the kitchen serve to break up the monotony and to help Beau focus a bit more on her work. But after a while, she closes the notebook and rests her quill in the inkwell before taking another gulp of warm coffee.
Eventually, she hears Yasha approach the table and place Beau’s breakfast in front of her. Spider pancakes and bacon, the breakfast of champions. And then she hears a chair being pulled and finally she sees Yasha enter her periphery.
And the moment she does, Beau is taken aback.
Contrary to what she had thought earlier, she hadn’t been sleeping peacefully at all. Her two-toned eyes are surely just as red as her own, her now shorter white hair is tousled and messy, and there are tear tracks across her face.
“Yasha?”
The angelkin looks up to meet Beau’s gaze and offers a smile. “Good morning, baby. You okay?”
It’s a simple greeting and question, not much to it. And Yasha’s not been one to use a lot of words to get across what she’s feeling.
Still, at this moment, it’s enough for Beau as she returns the smile with her own.
“I am now, honey.”
Yasha just nods. She clearly knows that Beau had a nightmare, and she clearly had one too.
But at the end of the day, they weren’t real. They didn’t really happen.
“Yeah. Me too. I love you, baby.”
The brightest smile she’s seen Yasha give her shines through the gloom, despite the signs on her face. It’s about as bright as her wings in the dead of night.
Those are the real wings she remembers, not the blackened ones that she saw. Not anymore, not after that glorious day on Rumblecusp.
Beau can’t help but smile inside. Now that was a fall that she remembers quite fondly. She’d done a lot of “falling” in her life. Falling on hard times, falling from grace, falling out of favor, or just falling headlong into danger. Hell, she had been certain so many times before that she would just end up the “fall guy” if things went south with the Mighty Nein. Thankfully, that never happened, and instead she ended up with a blessed found family.
But that day, that “maiden flight” on the island after they whipped Vokodo’s squid ass all the way back to the Astral Sea and beyond? The best fall ever.
Because what else can truly compare to falling in love?
“I love you too, angel.”
And Yasha, she’d been no stranger to “falling” either. Beau likes to think that she had a hand in catching her and saving her from herself, just as Yasha had done so many times before, even when they weren’t together yet.
They are certainly going to talk about what their respective dreams were later. Preferably after they share a bath together. They have time to talk, get real and fall apart much later.
But for now, this is enough. The day has only just begun, after all.