Work Text:
You’re dying.
It’s an undeniable fact.
No one’s said as much, but you can tell by the way Pyrrah keeps looking at you, glancing between your eyes and your stomach as they load you into the wheelchair.
You’re dying.
Slowly maybe quickly, you can’t tell much anymore. The drugs have fogged your brain and the blood is still leaking out no matter how many bandages they wrapped. Everything is growing cold and at least it's almost over you think to yourself.
The concrete is hard and cold, and you shouldn’t have crossed your legs because it makes the pain shoot through you in great waves. But it's almost over now. You do your best to not glance over at Kiki, at Pyrrha, at Nona. You don’t want to remember them this way.
So you stare straight ahead instead. All your attention is focused on Palamedes, your Warden, your friend, your love. You’re looking at his face but it’s not his, it's Ianthe Naberius. But if you stare long enough and squint hard enough your eyes, his eyes, tear up and you can imagine him instead. It's all wrong, everything has gone wrong, but at least you have a plan and several more emergency plans after this one. You know what’s coming next, you’ve gone over it, written in his hand, in your hand, with meticulous detail. The Sixth would accept nothing less. Your mouth quirks involuntarily as you think of the instructions, he never could quite get the hang of writing in your hand. You’re right handed, he’s left handed and everything was even more unreadable than his usual scrawl. Still it came through loud and clear, they would do the impossible.
And you cry one more time even though there seemed to be no more tears to give. They aren’t tears of misery, they are tears of joy, of relief. With the chess board the way it is, you wouldn’t have it any other way. Maybe in another life, in another time, things could have been different, but that doesn’t matter now. You have to play the game to end even if you already knew how it was going to go.
“Cam-” Palamedes says with the voice that isn't his.
“Warden” you whisper.
I will be your end
His body, your blood.
It won’t be long now.
Everything explodes into perfect white light. It overwhelms and burns, obliterating every thought, every feeling except pain.
Don’t look back, don’t look back, don’t look back
“Camilla!” his voice, his true voice, calls in the distance. You struggle to your feet in this body made of light and pain and run to him.
“Palamedes!” you call out and you feel the tears streaming down your face again. You laugh because he’s whole again, and you forgot how much you missed those stupid glasses.
You fall into him and he hugs you with his long arms, your tears falling onto his shoulder.
“I’m here Cam, I’m here” he says softly, kissing the top of your head. You feel his tears falling into your hair as he holds you closer.
“It’s good to see you again, the real you” you choke out between sobs, trying to take in as much of him as you can.
“You too” he smiles briefly before grabbing your arms and pushing you slightly away to look at his face.
“Are you ready?” he asks seriously, even though you’ve come this far together, even though you’re already here, he still asks. He raises your knuckles to his lips and his grey eyes, still wet with tears, pierce yours as you tremble on the answer.
“Yes, always yes” you nod, breathing in and counting to five like you taught Nona.
“How do you want me to do it?” you whisper back again at the end of five, even though no one is around to hear it, you need to say it, one more time.
“Go loud” your voices raise in unison, and you grab the front of his gray jacket, bringing your lips together for both the first time and the last time. You hear the beeping of the timer from somewhere far away, not this time you think to yourself and you grip his jacket even tighter. There’s water lapping around your ankles and getting higher by the second. You bite his lip hard enough to draw blood and the water rushes over your head dragging both you down with it.
You’re thirteen and you’re being named Warden, and the weight settles on your shoulders in a way that won’t fully become apparent for several years.
You’re seven swinging a fake sword at your sister already winning easily, ignoring the whispers of the adults watching you.
You’re twenty freezing up as you read a letter from God, excitement warring with anxiety, new Lyctors? You whisper under your breath. The puzzle of the century being handed to you.
You’re twenty sitting in a dark corner of a spaceship to nowhere crying softly over a small pouch filled with bones, whispering to yourself, I will always carry you
You’re twenty and you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror in the house you share with a 10,000 year old half a Lyctor, and a girl in the body of a friend but it's not your friend and this isn’t your body, this is hers. You’re looking through her eyes which means she must have yours, and oh what a terrible memento of you that must be. You want to cry but you don’t have time, there’s work to do, always work to do. So you write a letter and talk into the recorder in her voice and you kiss the hand of the wrong friend but a friend nonetheless and you hope it's enough. You hope she understands.
You’re twenty, you’re twenty, you’re twenty, we’re twenty-
Then-
We’re ageless, we’re limitless, we’re everything.
The water has receded and we’re shivering on the shore, naked but alive.
We take a breath and its the first breath we’ve ever taken, the air rushes into our lungs and out again and we laugh because the pain is gone, the loneliness is gone. We’re alive and whole for the first time. We are perfect. We are the love perfected by death.
Finally
We’re together
Forever