Work Text:
You are not ready to leave the past behind yet. Waiting until the end of the world would not be enough to calm the serpent stirring in your soul.
But you do not think you have a choice.
A new world is coming, and you will no longer have a place in it. There will be no one left to direct your revenge against.
For a long time, finding a reason to live was easy. It did not matter that you couldn't push the memory of your father's last look from your mind – before foreign eyes appeared in his face. As long as you had something, someone, to fuel the fire that had started burning in you too soon, you would have no regrets.
You could never have followed the path the usurper had chosen for you. You might have tolerated it, if it had not been for the memory of your mother's tears. If, like your sisters, you had only tried to forget, no one would have avenged you.
If your brother was the only one you could still hit, you would. If his father had not paid for his sins, at least he would have done it in his place.
He caused your father's death. He killed the man you loved when he tried to avenge you. He took your son from you and led him to a senseless end. If only you could keep hating him, keep believing that fighting him would do any good, you would.
But now that the end has come – and it was not even your hand that brought it – now that there is no one left to burn with you, all that remains is the void.
You cannot stay. You have no reason to anymore. There is no one left of your family among those you wanted to save, and no one left to destroy. You thought you would be consumed before reaching this moment. Your path is falling apart, and now you are lost in the darkness.
Whoever comes now, your fate will not be sweet. And even if there were no punishment waiting for you, even if you had no one to run from, this will no longer be your world. Others will tread on the lands of your father and your brother, and you will not understand their words. You will grow old hidden in the shadows, unwilling to face what will remain when the fog clears.
There is still only one way out.
You always held on to the hatred you felt for your brother to survive. But he is all you have left, and you are all he has left. Maybe you were always destined to be the only ones in the end.
You are not ready yet to sever the only thread that still ties you to your story. You have nothing to fight for, not even revenge.
But you will be waiting, praying that the waters will wash away the ash from your heart, until the emptiness has finally gone away. Maybe, in a future you cannot yet imagine, there will still be a place for you.