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“Oh!” Serena swats the bug on the back of her neck, but when the itching doesn’t go away, she realizes that it was her hair all along. She exhales, and her hands move to clench the thin blankets covering her lap instead. Now that Yggdrasil’s collapsed, the whole world is a little colder; or maybe it’s just Serena’s frozen heart.
She shakes her head firmly, and remembers that even in this barren world where practically everything has been taken from her, she is still lucky. Lucky enough that her friends made it, that Sylvando can still smile, that Erik regained his memory, that Arboria is still mostly in one piece and has a home for her to stay in; really, she’s lucky that she’s even alive in the first place.
Deep breath in and out. She turns her head to eye the knife on her nightstand, gleaming in the moonlight leaking through the window. She cut it – her hair – herself the other night. Gathered it in the back, held it tight with one hand and severed through it with the other.
Another light breeze wafting into the room, and then it’s silent once more. Her hair tousles and then settles back to scratch at her neck while she resists the urge to swat at it again. It’s already been a few days, but she guesses it’ll take a while to get used to the feeling. It’s awfully quiet, she can’t help but think to herself, letting her eyes wander to the other bed in the room–
‘If our leaves bloomed at the same time, do you think they’d fall at the same time, too?’
And that’s the other thing. Veronica’s dead. Serena chased her soul to the little pocket of Erdrea that is Arboria because she never would have imagined that her twin sister would ever abandon her. And Serena’s never been a pessimist, either, but she remembers how they’ve killed thousands monsters on their adventures without batting an eye, never realizing that any of them could go just as quickly, and she aches.
More importantly, though, she hopes, she fights. She supposes she’s always been more of a dreamer out of the two of them.
Her severed hair, drifting away in the wind and disintegrating into ashes – no, lighting a spark. Even now, just laying in her bed, her body tingles and her blood courses through her veins, and she can feel Veronica’s presence, like a fire kindling, through the dull nothingness that tends to blanket one’s thoughts at this time of night. She’s not sure how to describe it; it’s energetic like the buzz of a horknight’s steed, it’s painful like being completely helpless as the world crumbles and dies right before her eyes, and yet she’s never felt so alive.
Sighing, she removes herself from the sheets that aren’t doing much of anything, planting both feet on the floor and holding back a wince at the ice-cold shooting up from the soles of her feet. That tingly feeling won’t be leaving her anytime soon, and she supposes some fresh air might be better than laying and doing nothing in bed.
The door creaks loudly as she steps out, and this time she does grimace and pray that her parents are too exhausted to notice her absence. She’ll have to find time to oil the hinges, she supposes. Everything’s worse off than it was before the Tree fell, and not just entire cities collapsing and churches burned to the ground. They all are too, obviously, but they’re getting by. Or maybe she’s just spent too much time away from home to realize everything’s gotten older.
Because her feet betray her, she takes a right and finds herself in the Grove of Repose before she can stop herself. Muscle memory takes her to the tree in the center, and she closes her eyes to feel each familiar stone in the dirt beneath her on the way. This might be the only place in Erdrea that hasn't changed, and even then, it has, hasn't it?
With a huff, she slides down to the ground and tries not to cry right then and there. No more tears. That was the old me. Yes. She’s moving on, and Veronica’s soul is with her forever. She digs her fingernails into her palms to keep the fire in them contained.
“Hey,” says a voice she knows. Serena gasps, heart racing. “Can’t sleep either?”
“Erik? What on earth are you doing here?” Serena cranes her head to see her friend leaning on the other side of the tree, arms crossed. She can’t see his face, so she turns back around.
“I dunno. Mourning. I’m guessing you’re the same. These past few days have been a lot,” he responds, letting out a huff. Serena nods even though he can’t see. “I guess I was hoping that our only setback was the World Tree falling. Which sounds weird, since it’s caused so much destruction, but the little things do add up. We’ve saved a lot of people already, though.”
There’s an inevitable ‘but’ at the end of that sentence, and he hasn’t said it, but Serena hears it enough to raise an eyebrow and prompt, “what else?”
He sighs again. “It all piles up, you know. We can’t catch a break, or people will be suffering or Mordegon will finally realize the rest of us are alive and we won’t be any good dead.” The rest of us hits Serena like a great sabrecat charging straight into her gut. She hears him swallow, take a deep breath. “It just feels like we keep getting hit by curveball after curveball. I know that defeating Mordegon was never bound to be easy, but I didn’t imagine it’d be this hard. Physically and emotionally speaking.
“I guess you can never really let your guard down when it comes to life. You’d have thought I’d learned that by now, huh,” he breathes out a chuckle, but it’s humorless. “You didn’t come here to listen to me share my burdens with you, though. What’s on your mind?”
Serena smiles. “I just wanted some fresh air.” And then, because she’s never been a good liar, “I’ve been feeling restless.”
“How so?” Erik prods gently, quieter now. They’re still stitting on opposite sides of the tree, and he’s barely audible.
Serena pauses, chews on her lip, stops. “I changed overnight. I cut my hair, got Veronica’s magic and cried all my tears,” she says. “I’m not sure I recognize myself anymore.”
Erik hums from the other side. She imagines his hand coming to scratch at the back of his neck, his eyebrows furrowing as he thinks of the best thing to say. The tension in her shoulders eases slightly.
“I think I’ll be alright, though. Change is never easy, after all,” she reassures him, before he can think his head off. Then, to swallow the lump in her throat, she asks, “on another note, you and your sister are quite close, aren’t you?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, we really only had each other when those Vikings bullied us and no one from Sniflheim cared enough to help,” he says, like it’s nothing, really, but they’d all fought Gyldygga together, hadn’t they. “It’s been so long, though. It feels like I don’t even know her anymore. All those years on the run from my mistakes changed me too, but I guess they led me to all of you. Maybe there were good points after all.”
Serena squeezes her eyes shut, looks up to the sky and smiles. “I suppose we’ve both dealt with troublesome sisters that get themselves into danger, haven’t we?” she says, voice shaking. She chokes up at the end, pitch rising and betraying her.
“Serena?” comes Erik’s voice, careful and worried in the way that only his friends recognize, like she’d crumble into the dirt if he spoke any louder.
And then she can't take it anymore, fists balling up to hug herself while her face comes to her knees. Somehow there are tears left in her, as if the river in her hasn’t been drained even as she cries herself to sleep every night. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wonders if it’s because there’s two of them now. They pour over and don’t stop, and she cries and cries even harder than she did on the day she cut her hair.
Erik stood up and came over at some point, because suddenly he’s sitting beside her and pulling her face into his shoulder with his left hand and holding her back steady with his right. “That’s it. Let it all out,” she thinks he says. His touch is grounding, and she finds herself unfolding to turn her body towards him and chase it.
And it just so turns out that Serena’s the best liar, after all, because as she buries her face in Erik’s collarbone, staining his shirt with tears and snot, she’s not sure how she’ll keep going. She is a liar, because a haircut can’t heal broken bones.
But as Erik holds her under this tree while she cries herself empty, just as Eleven had done before in the terrace, she supposes Erik was right. The path to saving the world doesn’t mean no more tears, but she’ll seek out the good parts along the way.
Her mouth forms a shaky smile against him, and she silently hopes that he’ll be there for the small wins alongside her.