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It’s a sobering time, watching Jaheira bury the fallen Harpers.
Whatever highs that had accumulated during their victory over Ketheric Thorm had quickly dissipated in the somber atmosphere that followed after the brief celebration that they allowed themselves.
Shadowheart helps dig a couple of the graves in the hallowed earth at Moonrise Towers. Every bone in her body aches something fierce and the grip she has on her shovel trembles. Exhaustion is beginning to set in, but she pushes on.
A gauntleted hand over hers stops her latest shovelful of dirt from exiting the grave, falling pathetically over her boots instead.
“Istik,” Lae’zel growls.
Shadowheart wrenches her hand out of Lae’zel’s grip. “What?”
“You are exhausted,” Lae’zel hisses, stepping down into the unfinished grave.
The narrow space puts them dirt-streaked nose to adorably upturned nose. Shadowheart pulls the shovel closer to her chest protectively like Lae’zel might snatch the shovel from her at any moment.
“I am busy.” It’s a less cordial tone than Shadowheart would like to have taken with Lae’zel but everything that has happened as of late has been weighing down on her. Yes, they had put much of their animosity behind them as they had continued to journey together — much of their animosity was actually replaced by something more.
“There is no point in pushing yourself to the point of collapse. Our journey will continue tomorrow and we cannot afford for you to be less than fully rested and prepared.” Lae’zel does not try to grab the shovel. No, she holds her hand out, palm up, waiting for Shadowheart to hand the tool over.
No, Shadowheart wants to argue. She needs something to do. She needs something to keep her mind off of what the Nightsong had to tell her, off the phantom pain that reverberates down from the wound on her hand. The thousands of questions that she had gnawed at the inside of her skull, threatening to consume her whole if she didn’t have something else to feed it.
Exhaustion was as good a snack as anything else.
Spitefully, Shadowheart stabs the dirt just shy of Lae’zel’s feet with the shovel and heaves one more shovelful of dirt over the edge. The pathetic amount of dirt moved with that one action makes her bristle — Lae’zel was right of course, but that didn’t mean that Shadowheart had to like it. Grumbling, Shadowheart shoves the shovel into Lae’zel’s hand with far more force than needed.
Fortunately, Lae’zel says nothing of her meaningless final contribution and begins digging the grave with far more efficiency. Shadowheart settles onto the freshly turned earth next to the grave, cross-legged and hunched over in a way that the phantom sting of a cane against her side makes her sit up some, even though she doesn’t remember the face or the hand behind it.
It takes an embarrassingly short amount of time for Lae’zel to completely finish digging out the grave. Perfectly rectangular, seven feet deep. (Almost like she had added the extra foot just to rub it in Shadowheart’s face — look at my grave. Better and deeper and nicer than yours.) A frown settles over Lae’zel’s face, and despite her marked concentration at the task at hand, her mind is clearly elsewhere. Still, it doesn’t hamper her efforts. If Shadowheart didn’t know better, she would’ve guessed that Lae’zel had been a professional gravedigger in her past.
Shadowheart knows better.
She thinks.
Lae’zel goes on to dig a few more, in half the time it took Shadowheart to dig her first one.
In all honesty, seeing Lae’zel dig the graves surprises Shadowheart. She would have thought that Githyanki pride would have prevented her from lowering herself into the dirt like this, that it was literally beneath her. But here she was, surprising Shadowheart — or perhaps this was a pride thing still. They had settled their differences, and often spent nights settling into each other’s tents, but they still enjoyed competing with each other in mundane things.
Just something to show up Shadowheart even if it is as menial and tedious as digging graves. And it doesn’t take long for all the graves to be finished.
The two of them stand to the side, behind the surviving Harpers with the rest of their motley little group, as the Harpers carefully lower the bodies of their fallen comrades into the graves. Someone, Jaheira perhaps, has cleaned up the fallen — wiping away blood and matching missing limbs to their rightful owners.
The High Harper clasps each fallen Harper’s hands tightly around their Harper pin, placing the folded hands over their chest.
“Harper Chenti.”
It’s no more than a solemn statement but Shadowheart hears the name like Jaheira had shouted, a loud declaration for all to hear — for the upper planes to hear. The High Harper is uncharacteristically serious, completely different from the snarky woman who had charged headlong into a fight just hours before.
Names have power, she had once been told. (By whom, she no longer knows.) But she can taste it on her tongue in the shouted incantations amidst a battle and see it in the whispered rumours of the fae who steal foolish travellers of theirs. The way that Jaheira says it, with a reverent authority, makes Shadowheart feel like the deceased ought to spring up from their grave into life.
But the body lays still.
At peace.
“Your sacrifice will not be in vain. Your efforts are remembered. You are remembered. You are laid to rest now. When all is over, we will return your body home to your family.”
Eyes close as Jaheira murmurs a prayer. Then two reverent steps to the left, boots padding softly on the freshly overturned earth.
Partially hidden by the angle of her frame and the shadows cast by flickering torches, Shadowheart can no longer see what Jaheira’s doing as she leans over the next fallen Harper — the same ritual as before, perhaps. Shadowheart wonders how well Jaheira knows all her subordinates. The way that she solemnly lingers over each of them — Jaheira almost looks… motherly in this light.
Life incarnate bathed in cold silver light as she tucks in her children for one final slumber. When they wake, she will be gone, and the ghost of who she once was would lead her children across that final threshold.
Into the quiet rest of death.
All a gentle kindness not afforded by Shadowheart.
“Harper Elifer.”
The dead do not respond.
Shadowheart wouldn’t either.
She glances over at Lae’zel, at her deep frown and rigid posture. She thinks about how she would return to her people, soaring off to the Astral Plane when all this is over. She glances over at the other people that she has been travelling with, each with their own paths before them.
No, there wouldn’t be anyone to call her name at the end.
///
“Hey, come look at this!”
In the midst of what ostensibly should be an empty cave — there she was.
“What is it?”
“Someone died here.”
All by herself. Lying peacefully among the stones, far away from everything that she had known but could never remember. Nobody knew she was here. Even the strangers who had found her after all this time had passed (decades perhaps, even centuries — it matters not for the dead no longer live within the cage of time) would not know she was here.
The path to her Lady of Darkness would always end like this, she had known.
A task given to her and her alone. She knew that if she failed, there would be nobody to rescue her. Nobody would be coming after her.
And even if somebody had, would she know who they were? Would they know who she was?
Was.
She didn’t even know who she was.
Made to forget in life. Forgotten in death.
///
Lae’zel isn’t at her tent like Shadowheart expects.
She isn’t sure what she expects actually, not after the Undying Queen , herself, had paid their humble little campsite a visit. Sure, it was an astral visit, but a visit nonetheless.
It takes her a few moments of wandering the campsite, looking in places that he thinks that Lae’zel might be — by the fireside, double checking her tent again in case Lae’zel had somehow returned without her noticing, and then checking the fireside again. Lae’zel doesn’t really wander , Shadowheart realizes when she can’t think of anywhere else the Githyanki might be.
She’s about to give up and curse her foolishness for even trying when she spots Lae’zel on a rooftop, staring out into the distance. The silver light of the moon drapes over her like armour. Even clad in only her camp clothes, it looks like she is ready for battle.
Unfazed and protected behind thick plates of silver.
Shadowheart knows that’s not quite true. There is so much more to Lae’zel. So much that needs protecting.
Curious, Shadowheart makes her way up to the rooftop, deliberate in making noise with every step so that Lae’zel knew she was approaching. Despite being unarmed, Shadowheart has no doubts that she could easily toss her over the edge of the rooftop if surprised.
Though if Lae’zel does notice her, she certainly doesn’t show it, continuing to stare off into the distance with her hands clasped behind her back. It leaves Shadowheart standing there awkwardly on the opposite side of the rooftop, wondering what to do with herself and further wondering what she had expected to accomplish by coming up here in the first place.
“Lae’zel?” Shadowheart calls out softly when this moment stretches out too long. She winces at the sound of her own voice snapping through the silence.
“You stealth skills need work,” Lae’zel says.
“I wasn’t-'' Shadowheart huffs. There’s no point arguing with Lae’zel on this. It would only provoke a needless fight, which she’s sure the others wouldn’t appreciate given everything that is currently on their tadpole laden plates.
Some small part of her does pause, and she worries the end of her newly silver braid between her fingertips. In the past, she would have leapt at the chance to antagonize the other woman, perhaps. That past version of her has long changed, evolved perhaps. Her relationship with Lae’zel has certainly evolved, emotionally and uh- physically. She might have never imagined it before, but now — Shadowheart isn’t sure she can imagine her life any other way.
However, today — especially today, Shadowheart is concerned.
“Are you okay?” Shadowheart asks instead.
Lae’zel finally glances over her shoulder at Shadowheart, regarding her cooly. “Why would I not be?”
“I mean having Vlaakith show up and declare that she was going to hunt you down and kill you is a lot.”
“She was already doing that before she declared it for the world to hear.” Lae’zel turns back around to look up at the night sky. “At least now my faith in Orpheus is affirmed. My feet are on solid ground. There are no doubts in my mind.”
Shadowheart nods slowly. She can understand that sentiment, having Aylin tell her the truth that she could not quite remember, the life that she could not quite grasp, was enlightening to say the least. She can still feel the echoes of pain rippling across her body, the wound on the back of her hand but the pebble which broke the surface of her soul.
“Then what’s on your mind?”
“I am thinking about death.”
That gives Shadowheart pause. It’s hard not to think about death. It surrounded them at all hours of the day, from all sides. They had seen plenty of it, wading through the thick of enemy strongholds and delivering foes to death herself.
“What about death?” Shadowheart asks quietly.
“What happens to us after death,” Lae’zel murmurs. “Not in the sense where we might go — to the upper or lower planes as fleeting souls, but what happens to our bodies after everything.”
Something clicks in Shadowheart’s head. “The Harper funeral.”
Lae’zel makes a small noise of affirmation. “We do not bury our fallen like Jaheira and the Harpers do.”
That surprises Shadowheart. “No?”
“There is no such thing as rites for the dead in Githyanki society,” Lae’zel continues, gaze turned towards the silvery stars. She's present, physically, but the far away look in her eyes tell Shadowheart that she is aeons away in a plane that Shadowheart has only heard tales of. “We do not age in the Astral Plane. So we do not know death naturally. Thus, if you die, you have failed. You are weak. We discarded the weak. We did not honour the weak.”
“Then who did you honour?” The question spills forth from Shadowheart’s lips before she can stop it. She hadn’t meant to interrupt.
Lae’zel turns sharply to face her, gaze piercing. “The ones who were strong enough to ascend to Vlaakith’s side. Those are the ones we celebrate, the ones we remember.” She spits, venom flying with every word. “They are the true failures. The fools so blinded by Vlaakith’s lies that they would give everything they have for nothing.”
The anger in her voice is palpable.
Concentrated fury at everything that has been stolen from her. A heavy blade with no good place to swing it. A rusty shovel laden with the weight of all the graves that have been dug and all the ones that are still to come.
Shadowheart understands the feeling well.
If she pauses in the quiet for too long, she can still feel the tautness in her chest, the fire under her skin — an emotion that lodges sharply in her throat and makes tears well in her eyes.
“The Sharrans also did not have rites for the dead,” Shadowheart tells Lae’zel, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Nobody knew where we were going on missions, who we were going with, who we were. Secrecy was of the utmost importance. If you perished on your mission, then it was like you never existed. Nobody would know where you were, who you were.”
“That seems like a terrible way to die,” Lae’zel comments tersely with a deep frown.
“And a terrible way to live,” Shadowheart reminds her with a sigh. It was her life for so long until not that long ago too.
“Yes, of course. I did not mean to belittle your situation.”
Shadowheart offers her a tired smile and they lapse into a moment of quiet, accompanied by the faint whistle of wind and distant crackle of fire.
“When I-” Lae’zel starts to say suddenly and cuts herself off just as abruptly. Whatever she wants to say dies into a growl of frustration. She doesn’t say anything else, fists clenching and unclenching listlessly at her sides.
Something spurs Shadowheart into motion — something beyond her understanding but she’s compelled to, anyway; completely different in the way that the cold yank on her soul that Shar once felt. She takes hold of one of Lae’zel’s restless hands, smoothing out the curled fingers and interlocking them between her own.
Lae’zel looks down at their joined hands.
“I do not know what will happen after everything,” she says after a long moment. She does not pull away like Shadowheart expects. Instead, her hand closes around Shadowheart’s. “Change is coming for all of us. My hands are not meant to bring rest to the fallen…”
“But..?” Shadowheart prompts her gently, sensing some other thought lying just beneath the surface.
Lae’zel turns her gaze to her, vulnerability and hesitation colouring her expression. “If I fall to Vlaakith, will you lay me to rest?”
///
There were hundreds of bodies.
Hundreds of warriors left fallen to the earth where they had once so bravely taken up arms. Their sacrifice — if it could even be considered that by the ones that they had so valiantly paid their lives for, would be only a testament to their failure.
Their weakness.
This was the fate that was destined for them.
She lay amongst them.
No matter how exemplary, how powerful, how strong, this was the fate that awaited them. Perhaps this was fate that awaited all of them.
All the ones who were not chosen by their queen.
She lay there, forgotten amid the masses. Alone amid all the fallen. Forgotten amid her brethren.
Discarded.
Who she was, who she could have been — all tossed to the ground, trampled beneath the feet of her own people as they strove to ascend ever higher and greater; nothing more than captive pheasants striving to reach the false sky set before them by their queen.
Lived as a soldier to her queen. Died as a failure to her people.
///
“Picking out your own tombstone?” Astarion’s lilting voice echoes low and dangerously close. “Does your new Lady approve of such a macabre pastime? I imagined this to be more of a Lady of Darkness aesthetic.”
Shadowheart shoots him a glare over her shoulder. How little he knew of Sharran rites. They could never even rest peacefully in life. Shar would hardly grant that to her followers in death. Sure, she will admit that she had been studying a blank grey slate leaned up against the wall for perhaps a moment too long. But it was none of his business.
The rest of their little group search through Candulhallow's Tombstones for any trace of Orin and the rest of her murderous little cult — the rest of their little group, minus one.
Lae’zel was missing.
Taken .
Taken from beneath their noses, form twisted into a cruel skin that Orin freely paraded around in. Shadowheart swore that she can still catch glimpses of her as they travel through the city: flashes of silver armour in the dark of an alleyway, glimmers of golden eyes peering at her from around corners. It felt like Orin was taunting her at every turn.
Every fiber of Shadowheart’s being wanted to go after Orin, but they needed more information.
Which led them here, an unassuming shop within the city.
A tombstone maker, how on the nose.
“What would yours say?” Shadowheart asks him instead.
He looks surprised for a brief moment, and she relishes in that, but the moment doesn’t last very long as he recovers with a smirk. “I would not have just a tombstone. I would have a whole mausoleum. A crypt .”
Shadowheart wrinkles her nose. “How cliche of you.”
She ignores his affronted gasp and turns to Wyll, who’s flipping through one of the few tomes on a desk. “What about you, Wyll?”
There’s a long pause as Wyll looks up at her, just staring. For a moment, Shadowheart thinks that he hadn’t heard her. “I think I’d like ‘Wyllyam Ravengard, Blade of Frontiers’. But I’m not sure I should. Probably just ‘Wyll, Blade of Frontiers’,” he says after a moment longer, wistful and with a slight frown.
“It’s your grave,” Shadowheart points out. “I think you should put what you want on it.”
“There are things to consider beyond just you even when you die,” Wyll replies not unkindly — sadly, perhaps.
“Well, I’d put ‘Gale Dekarios, Wizard Wonder. Went out with a bang.” Gale cuts in, jovial and playful. He nudges Wyll with his shoulder and Wyll’s serious frown only deepens.
“Sure, if there’s anything left of you for a grave, if you really do go out with a bang,” Astarion scoffs.
Shadowheart turns her attention from the bickering boys to Karlach, who’s lifting tombstones this way and that just to peer underneath them. “What about you, Karlach?”
Karlach shrugs. “Don’t think I’ll need one. I’ll probably also go boom and there will be nothing left.”
“See?” Gale points at Astarion, still clearly joking. “Karlach gets it.”
Shadowheart expects her to crack a grin and join in with the banter, but Karlach continues to move the tombstones around in silence. It takes them all a beat to realize that Karlach was being solemnly serious for once, and they all quiet down.
As if sensing the attention on her and the sudden sombre mood, Karlach turns the subject back to her with a nod. “And what about you? You have any thoughts on what you want written on yours?”
Turning back to the empty grey slate, Shadowheart thinks about all the people that she might have known once but don’t even remember. Were they alive? Were they dead? Did it even matter?
She thinks about Lae’zel and her request. What would Lae’zel want written on hers? It would probably be in tir’su . That only felt appropriate. Probably her name in tir’su . What was that other thing that she always said?
Lae’zel of Crèche K’liir. Exemplary among Githyanki.
Did Shadowheart even have that ? Who was Shadowheart? Was that really her name? Would the person buried in a grave marked ‘Shadowheart’ even be Shadowheart?
“No,” she says at last. “I don’t know.”
///
“You did not invite her?” Lae’zel asks from behind a goblet of wine. It sits heavy in her gut, and heavier in her hand, weighed down by the exuberant atmosphere of everyone seeing one another again.
Almost everyone.
Lae’zel couldn’t see a familiar raven-haired cleric anywhere.
“I did,” Withers replies slowly. He looks at her, studying her with an unreadable expression. He sighs. “The individual you knew as Shadowheart does not exist any more.”
Lae’zel’s grip on her goblet tightens. The metal under her fingers creak ominously. “She has fallen then.”
“No,” Withers says, turning to look at the rest of their group — everyone else is enjoying themselves amidst the festivities. “She no longer remembers.”
///
Blood pounds in Shadowheart’s ears.
The roaring rhythm of her heart is all that she hears as she drops to her knees at Lae’zel’s side. The proud Githyanki warrior lays on the stone altar, still… too still — had she always seemed so small?
Maybe it was the way that her presence was always so loud, so sure, so stalwart. Maybe it was the way that she was always clad in heavy armour, gleaming plates of silver. Maybe it was the way that she always wielded a greatsword just as long as she was tall with the effort and ease anyone might wield a butter knife.
Maybe it was how Lae’zel took it upon herself to hold the line, never faltering, never retreating.
Maybe she had been protecting everyone this whole time — protecting Shadowheart, but never thinking of how she might need protection too.
“Lae’zel? Lae’zel. Lae’zel!” Shadowheart gasps, tossing her gloves to the side. Her fingers, numb from how hard she’s been gripping her spear and shield, struggle to find a pulse against too cold skin.
Orin hadn’t been able to strike a blow against the incapacitated warrior, but Shadowheart didn’t put it past the now dead shapeshifter not to have already done something to Lae’zel anyway regardless if their little party held up their end of the bargain. The rest of her party fade into the background, wisely deciding to give her the space and quiet to work as they find other things to investigate.
A thousand thoughts race through her mind as silvery magic courses from her hands. She runs through a repertoire of healing magic; motions made automatic through countless bloody battles now. Nothing catches — her magic finds no wounds stitch together or ailments to rid. Whatever power she has left glides gently off of Lae’zel too-still form like water off of polished armour.
Even unconscious, Lae’zel is still guarded.
“Let me in!” She cries in frustration, fists slamming against the frigid stone slab.
If I fall… would you lay me to rest?
Her heart plummets.
A surge of anger blazes through Shadowheart, irrational and all-consuming. She would later think back on the feeling, cradling the dying embers against her chest and wonder where such emotion came from. She had never felt such heat, felt such ire.
(She had never thought herself capable of such. Even when she found out the truth of all that had happened to her, she had not been so angry. Betrayed, more than anything else. But not this angry. Never like this.)
“I’m not burying you,” Shadowheart growls; an argument with a Lae’zel who was no longer there but still there, if only tethered by Shadowheart’s foolish hopes and sheer spite. The Lae’zel who had challenged and goaded her at every turn but offered a strong pillar of support and protection even without being asked.
“You asked me to bury you if you fell to Vlaakith. You didn’t even tell me how you wanted to be buried. And this is not Vlaakith. How dare you go dying to someone like Orin.”
She slams her fist down on the stone slab again, a mere hairbreadth away from Lae’zel’s arm and hard enough to send a pang of sharp agony reverberating up her arm and down her spine; tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. The pain tempers the fires of her rage momentarily as she shakes out her stinging hand. “Ow, fuck.”
“If I didn’t know better, I would think that you were trying to kill me… again.”
The scratchy rasp of the familiar voice sends her scrambling to attention, gaze finding slitted amber eyes looking up at her, worse for wear but alert.
“You’re awake,” Shadowheart breathes, body sagging forward onto the slab in relief. All the tension drains out of her and she feels like a limp puppet whose strings had been cut with the sudden relief of just a simple sentence. “ You’re alive. ”
“Yes,” Lae’zel says with a wince. In a rare moment of vulnerability (though, those seem to be getting more and more common with Shadowheart), she allows Shadowheart to help her into a sitting position, leaning against her side as she takes in her surroundings. She exhales slowly and they’re pressed so close that Shadowheart can feel the air fill Lae’zel’s lungs. “I am.”
///
“She couldn’t make it back in time for your festivities? I thought that time didn’t pass in the Astral Plane.” Shadowheart approaches Withers, with a teasing smile on her face. It had been some time since she had seen the ancient… being. Getting an invitation to see her old friends again was a pleasant surprise.
She was not surprised to see that Lae’zel wasn’t there. Not surprised, but disappointed.
She had half expected for Lae’zel to arrive late, mounted upon a giant red dragon, draped in the fineries of being one of Vlaakith’s chosen.
“The individual you knew as Lae’zel of Crèche K’liir is no more,” Withers tells her apologetically.
“What?” Her smile falls.
“I have searched far and wide for her. She no longer exists, in body and soul.”
///
“What is it like…?” Shadowheart wonders aloud, half to her and half to the Selûne-blessed couple who had graced the campfire with their presence that night. “Death, I mean.”
Aylin and Isobel exchange looks that Shadowheart can’t quite read in the flickering flames. The rest of their little group had long retired to their own machinations and while Shadowheart is usually one to return to her own tent after a few glasses of wine to begin preparing for the next day, Lae’zel currently rests in her tent.
Curled upon two layers of bedrolls and under Shadowheart’s blankets, Lae’zel had felt the need to be outside the crowding confines of stone walls for the night. The rest of the group obliged with her wishes, taking up camp just outside of the city instead of their usual comforts of the Elfsong. It had pained Shadowheart to leave Lae’zel alone, but she had eaten and drank her fill at dinner and the others had convinced her to let Lae’zel be for a little while.
They’d even set up the campfire in direct eyeline of Shadowheart’s tent.
Aylin exhales gently, pulling Isobel ever closer. “I have suffered such a fate hundreds of times and I cannot say that it gets any easier, little warrior. Why do you ask?” She presses a heavy hand against the thick golden line that traces downward from her ear to her neck, eyes hollow with the memory of the stroke.
Isobel reaches for that hand, pulling it to her lips and soothing the tension in Aylin’s form.
Shadowheart sighs, staring up at the heavy moon hanging low in the sky instead of the couple before her. But there are no answers in the moon that Selûne provides. Perhaps it is not a question that Selûne can answer. After all, death was such a mortal thing to contend with. What would deities think of such trivial matters?
“Just curious to know what you thought about it. We see so much of it every day. I just wonder what happens after everything. People are buried—” She thinks about the fallen Dark Justiciars that she had encountered in buried temples and hidden ruins. “—sometimes. And the world moves on.”
“The world does, there is no grace for your grief or time to linger, but I think…” Isobel says slowly. “That everybody dies twice. Truly, dies twice,” she amends hastily.
“Twice?” Shadowheart prompts, glancing back at Isobel.
“Yes,” Isobel replies with a rueful little smile. “Once when your soul departs. And once more when your memory fades with the last of your loved ones.”
///
The sun shines brightly, casting warmth on slowly healing wounds and bruises — unfortunate souvenirs from the previous day's visit to her old House of Grief. An apt name. Birds chirp merrily and flit across clear blue skies. The world continues to spin, time ever flowing as life goes on.
Two freshly dug graves lay before her; side by side with matching tombstones. Tears gather in the corners of her eyes, a wellspring of grief held back by sheer willpower alone. Not that long ago, she would have never imagined a grave for herself, nevermind personally commissioning a grave.
Two graves.
But now, staring at the hand carved stones, simple in nature but heavy in sentiment, she begins to understand their gravity.
Arnell Hallowleaf. Father.
Emmeline Hallowleaf. Mother.
She had let them go, honouring their last requests. Their deaths had not been easy. Their burials even less so. She had requested to be alone for this and everyone had complied.
We’ll always be with you.
They are not gone. No, they are still here. They are alive within her.
She closes her eyes. When it's her turn, what would her’s say?
Jenevelle Hallowleaf.
That was who she was. The frightened child who was stolen away.
Shadowheart.
That’s who she was too. A weapon moulded for the Dark Lady’s use.
There was still so much that she didn’t know, didn’t remember, perhaps would never know, never remember.
But those missing parts are as much a part of who she is as who she is not.
She could have both names. No, she would have both names.
The soft rustle of boots on grass stops abruptly, just a few steps behind her.
“Shadowheart.” It’s Lae’zel.
Shadowheart makes a small noise of acknowledgement. She sniffles, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand as she tries to recompose herself.
Lae’zel moves to stand next to her, close enough that their hands brush — a whisper of skin against skin. She says nothing as Shadowheart turns her face away, still wiping at tears, hot and embarrassing.
“You are crying.”
“No, I’m not!” Shadowheart argues, a little more forcefully than she intended.
Lae’zel doesn’t push, for once, standing there quietly, looking at her parents’ graves. “How are you feeling?”
“I never thought that I would find them,” Shadowheart says bitterly. “I wanted more time with them.”
“It is different…” Lae’zel says slowly. “After seeing all the bonds that the people of the Material Planes have, I will not pretend to understand the feelings you are experiencing. But it pains me to find you in pain. If there is anything I can do…”
“When you asked me to bury you if you fell to Vlaakith,” Shadowheart interrupts.
Lae’zel blinks, caught off guard by the sudden change in topic. “Yes. If you are unwilling, that is fine.”
Something in Lae’zel’s expression tells Shadowheart that it isn’t fine. “I never said that,” she huffs. “Why did you ask me? Why not any of the others?”
A beat stretches between them and Shadowheart can’t tell if Lae’zel is studying her intently or if she’s thinking. Maybe both. “I felt like you understood — to have never known the rituals of death either. And if I were to depart, then this would bring you some form of closure. After all, the dead are not discarded for many people here. They seem to linger on this plane — the people here carry them with them as they continue to live.” She pauses, considering. “But perhaps that was rude of me to ask if you.”
“No, not rude of you. Actually, quite… thoughtful.” To die alone somewhere, never to be found — seemed to be an unrealized fear of hers of some sort. She didn’t think that she had given it any voice or weight, but that was seemingly untrue. Lae’zel had heard her.
Lae’zel had heard her.
“Isobel told me that she thinks that everyone dies twice.”
Lae’zel doesn’t bat an eye at the sudden turn of topic. “I do not think that most people share Isobel’s view on death.”
Shadowheart smiles wryly at Lae’zel. “I think I agree with her.”
“Chk! Is this some Selûnite teaching?” Lae’zel’s brow furrows, seemingly grappling with this new information.
“Perhaps. But Isobel told me that everyone dies twice, once when your soul departs. And once more when your memory fades with the last of your loved ones.”
“I suppose… there seems to be some truth in that…” Lae’zel trails off. “Shadowheart.”
“Yes?”
“I do not know what comes next.” She looks down at her hand, opening and closing it a few times. Slowly, cautiously, Lae’zel holds her hand out to her, palm up and open. “But I know that I want you near. When all this is over, will you stay by my side?”
“Yes,” Shadowheart laughs, taking the offered hand.
Lae’zel looks immensely pleased, a small smile gracing her face — strong and proud and alive.
“Then that means, of course-” Shadowheart says brightly, turning to face Lae’zel fully. “We need to make more memories together. So that we will live on for as long as possible.”