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i.
you dream, more often than you should, of blood.
(coating your hands, sticky and slick, underneath your fingernails no matter how hard you scrub. pulsing underneath your touch as desperation feeds into miracles, again and again and again. staining your clothes and your skin despite all your efforts. how many people have you killed in the past three years? your hands were made for healing, but they will never be clean again.)
there's a hole in your sternum, leading to where it shouldn't; the remnants of a resurrection you’re still not sure you deserved. you suppose you’ll never know.
ii.
it starts like this: your parents made a mistake.
to their credit, your parents made very many mistakes, starting with having children at all. but your parents made a mistake, letting you go aguefort, at least from their perspective. letting you go to a place where your mind could run free, where you could ask all the questions your mind always itched to was, to them, a mistake.
dinner goes as expected, really. they don't want you back, just your power. your brothers barely look at you.
funny, you think, how being chosen means you rarely got to make a choice.
iii.
people don't think you take things seriously. you don't know how to explain that you’re the way you are because you take everything too seriously.
(you don't know how to approach anything with less than your whole heart. it's not in your nature; when you set your mind to something, it consumes you to a fault. that goes for denial by double– there's nothing that can get past your walls when you don't want it to.)
your caticlysmia isn't endearing, anymore. you're scared you're pushing everyone away inch by inch. you're too much, but you don't know how else to be.
iv.
there are three scenes that replay in your mind at night: the second before you died for the first time, the unicorns horn piercing your back, and cassandra…
the fresher the wound, the harsher the sting.
for a life cleric, it feels like so much of what you touch turns to death, turns to decay, turns to stinking rotting flesh. you've touched the corpse of a god. you've felt the bones of another. you think about forgetting all of it, at least once a day.
it only doubles when buddy dawn ends up bleeding out before your own eyes.
v.
you can't stop chewing your lip to shreds.
tracker takes one look at you and she knows– though to her credit, she doesn't mention it until you're back safe in Kei Lumennura.
you're outside, shaking off the lingering adrenaline from saving lydia barkrock’s life, her voice ringing behind you.
“that bad, huh?”
“Well, you know…”
recognition in her eyes, the kind that only comes from months and months of sharing lives, bodies, love.
“...yeah.”
the silence stretches, contorting into a screen between the two of you. familiarity but not familial.
above you, twilight and dust sparkle in the moonlight. you breathe.
vi.
you feel like an interloper at modred, most days.
you shouldn't, really; been there longer than ragh and lydia, been there longer than aelwyn and her increasingly infrequent visits. but with tracker gone, you're just…
adaine’s scared of being a burden. you already know you are.
(it's not as if jawbone and sandralynn would ever ask you to leave, and even if they did, you have places to go, houses to stay in. you're not going to be shunted back to elm valley if anyone can help it. but guilt sits on your tongue like corn once did; intrinsic, unsatiating.)
vii.
bobby dawn sits in front of you, too close to all the men you hate to your rotted core, the kind of men who saw that Helios chosen was someone who looked like you, and you want scream.
condescension thick on his tongue, filling the room with patriarchal patronization as he delivers your death blow with a saddened, concerned look you wouldn't ever trust.
(so many adults have failed to lead you to this moment: pastor amelia, your parents, bobby dawn himself. it's been years since you've been a kid, it seems. if ever.)
you thank him, and you leave.
viii.
“how you doin’, kid?”
it's nearing midnight– jawbone is almost always asleep by now, but the entire house is crackling with apprehension, to say the least. tomorrow, three of you go to your death.
“you know…”
“scared?”
you laugh, a little hysterical. “I don't know if I have the right to be. it's my fault we're here to begin with.”
“I don't think I'd agree with that.”
“why do you…” there's words on the tip of your tongue that you've been thinking all year. you swallow them, and shake your head, “i should get to bed.”
a conversation for another day.
ix.
what you remember from the last stand is this:
the sensation of swallowing an eyeball whole, choking on it like blood gurgling out of your mouth. desperate prayers to a dead god and one you gave up long ago. the smell of butter and blood and bile.
at the end you all stand there victorious, exhausted, hollow. it shouldn't have been as easy as it was, but you killed a dragon freshman year and raised yourself from the dead the next. this is chump change to saving the world three times over.
so why doesn't it feel better, then?
x.
you're silent most of the ride back from bastion city.
what a weird day. you felt guilty dragging your friends into this mess, but instead you see gorgug’s shoulders slope, riz’s jaw unclench millimetre by millimetre. for all intents and purposes, y'all did good.
and you can't stop thinking about buddy dawn.
(the way kipperlilly’s blade sliced the skin. blood pooling down chest. he asked you once you and what God? and neither of them could save him today.)
fig burrows into your shoulder, half asleep and mumbling, “you good?”
you don't answer. you don't know how to.
xi.
here's the thing:
finding out that people think you're just running for president as a bit stings. it being kipperlilly makes it worse when it should make better, easier to dismiss.
(but maybe, just maybe, you have no fucking clue what you're doing.)
it's weird, right? this year's been such a fucking slog and you feel out of place in your own skin and your own life and now there's someone who wants you dead– (okay, that part's not new but still) –and she doesn't know shit about you in the end.
you have your friends. she has hers. yours are better.
xii.
you bite your tongue, your mouth filling with blood as you watch adaine say everything to sandralynn that you’ve wished you could for months.
(you’re similar in so many ways, in the same ways that mean she’ll always be your sister. you think back to freshman year, two kids who grew up too fast, running from their shitty families towards one they don’t even know is possible.)
something’s caught in your chest, distracting enough that you miss adaine wandering off. but sandralynn catches the look in your eyes, grabs your hand.
she doesn’t say anything. she doesn’t need to.