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She wakes up with her head in Imogen’s lap, Imogen’s fingers combing through her hair as she jolts up from a sharp crack across her cheek.
She wakes up and there’s a gnome-looking lady with white hair and a scar across one eye leaning over her, studying her. The gnome pulls back, but her brow remains furrowed.
She wakes up and FCG’s voice is incredibly loud in her ears. “Laudna! You’re back!” and he sounds thrilled, exuberant, and she’s filled with confusion. Her eyes dart around the room and there’s someone pretty who looks like they might be familiar, wielding a bow and aiming an arrow straight at her.
FCG draws her attention back to them, “Are you back? Are you okay?”
Quieter, moving from behind her to beside her, Imogen asks, “Is it you?”
There is not enough time to think no space to breathe there isn’t – Is it you? Or is it –
Chetney jumps in, “Say something only Laudna would know, quick!”
She looks at Chet and struggles to say something, for her vocal chords to rub, for the air to pass through them. She looks over at Orym and then back to Chetney.
Rocking back and forth on his wheel, FCG frets, “Uh-oh, she can’t speak?”
And finally, finally, her voice works mostly like it’s supposed to. It comes out weaker, wispier, and so much rougher than she recalls it being for a long, long time. “I don’t…” she looks around before settling her gaze on Imogen. “Have you found anything else out about your mom?”
It feels like the room collectively lets out a strained breath.
She’s introduced to the strangers treating her like a bomb with an unknown timer. When the gnome says it’s just her, that Delilah isn’t around anymore, Imogen lets out the most relieved sigh. But she’s not so sure that getting rid of Delilah could be that easy. And despite Imogen’s assurances, she doesn’t trust these people, not the ones she was sacrificed for.
She wakes up and she is groggy for most of the day, feels more dead than she usually does, floats around on auto-pilot, made easier when she’s holding Imogen’s hand.
It’s getting harder to hold Imogen’s hand. Oh, Imogen is there and treats her gently when she’s within reach, but there’s a distance between them now. She can feel it in her shadow, creeping up through her boots, when Imogen moves away and lets others come between them.
Her attention feels foreign, translucent. She can focus on the conversation for a couple of minutes at a time, even contribute a little, but she loses the time and space in between. One moment they’re in the house she woke up in. The next they’re out on the street. Then she’s in the castle. They’re going to eat.
It’s like she blinks and–
She wakes up and there’s potato soup in front of her. The others purposefully left the spot beside her for Imogen, but even though she feels delirious, like reality — if this even is reality — bends in waves around her, she knows Imogen like no one else does. She knows that her friend, her best friend, first looked for any other seat than the one beside her.
And her heart breaks when Imogen finally sinks into the chair, accepting her fate.
She’s pretty sure it doesn’t happen in real-life, that it’s the echoes of her resurrection, but every so often she hears Orym’s voice around the periphery. You deserve to be more than a footnote in Delilah’s story.
Please. Come back.
There are people here who need you.
And they’re lovely words, truly, she would love for them to be real, to be honest, to be truthful.
But the only person who ever came close to needing her, and doesn’t actually need her at all, can’t wait to get away from her.
She’s left wondering what the point of it all was. They wasted precious time coming after her, fighting off Delilah, traipsing around the horrors of her mind, boxes open and emptied. They used up precious favours for someone who will only hold them back.
She was already dead.
Why is she back?
She doesn’t have an answer and she doubts any of the rest of them have much of one either.
She wakes up and she doesn’t know why.
Lady Vex’ahlia gives her a ring, says it will protect her, but she can’t help wondering what for? Everyone has already put far too much effort into getting her undead again. But Orym tells her to take it and his words calling her back to the land of the living drift back through her head, so she slips it on her finger.
The weight is different from the ring Imogen gave her. Maybe she’ll need to give Imogen’s back, even though she loves it and she’ll miss being able to look at it and touch it.
Maybe this ring will help her bear the loss of the other one.
The group is getting ready to go to bed in the castle and she’s fine with that, she wants them to have a comfortable night. But she can’t. She can’t do that. No matter what all they’ve done for her, she can’t do that.
She’ll spend her night alone. Try to get her thoughts into some sort of cohesive thing. Maybe in the morning she can be who they remember her to be. Maybe in the morning, they will say goodbye and they will leave her behind now that they recognise how weak she is, how much of an anchor she is, dragging them down, down, down to depths unknown.
At some point, Imogen tries reassuring her that they’d do it again, that it wasn’t a big deal, that she’s not a nuisance. Imogen even says she missed her. So much.
Her traitorous little heart sinks its talons into that too deeply, pulls it too sharply into her chest.
When the time comes, it will hurt to remove it, like bisecting her heart and plucking it right out from her ribcage.
She tells them to have a restful night, that she’s going to go sleep by the Sun Tree. Wants to let some of the hope and healing seep into her bones from its roots.
She wakes up and there are fancy sheets strewn along the ground and the whole lot of them are sprawled across them underneath the tree. Fearne is cuddling Orym. Imogen, maybe because she was once more pushed into her old normal place by everyone else, is beside her. Imogen’s head is on her shoulder.
Maybe she didn’t want to be alone, after all. Maybe it’ll take more than one night to wrestle her thoughts and her mind back to the land of the living.
Maybe she can have this one indulgence as a departing gift.
She is exhausted, but she lies awake long past when everyone else falls asleep. Her heart thuds sluggishly in her chest.
Imogen against her is a comfort, one she does not deserve, of course, never has, but in the last thirty-odd years, she’s learned to take the rare good things when they come along. Not to ask questions. And the last two years have been great. They’ve been the best.
When she is left behind, reliving those two years will sustain her for decades, if not more than that. She can live a week, a month, inside each step they’ve walked together.
She could live a year within the confrontation between Imogen and Delilah in the tree, could go without food if only there’s the echo of Imogen shouting out, “Delilah Briarwood, we’re going to sunder you.”
That all means so much. Imogen was so angry. She glances down at Imogen now, eyes closed, the tiredness more apparent in sleep than when awake. She hopes Imogen rests well.
Orym’s voice and Orym’s voice alone once more ripples through her head.
She wakes up from being dead and the only question that haunts her is why didn’t Imogen try to bring her back.