Work Text:
“Kit,” Elora said, in a long suffering voice. “Please stop playing with the magic artefact.”
Kit, caught in the middle of tossing the artefact from one hand to the other, nearly fumbled the catch. Elora rolled her eyes and Jade snorted. Elora turned back to the book, squinting a little in the growing gloom, searching through the ancient pages. Jade picked up the whetstone again, gliding it down the edge of her blade.
It had been a while since they’d been out roving like this, but some things you just couldn’t just leave up to anybody. Spooky sorcerers in the hills called for the experts. Especially when it transpired the original guardians were long dead and the current activity was soldiers of the Wyrm trying to get their greasy mitts on…whatever it was Kit had already gone back to absent mindedly playing with. Jade hadn’t got a good look, too busy carving her way through soldiers of the Wyrm while Elora blasted the new protégé into goo and Kit handled whatever tentacled monstrosity they’d summoned to guard them while they undertook the ritual the three of them had barely interrupted in time. Nothing too taxing.
“I think I have it!” Elora announced. “Oh. That’s…interesting.”
Kit hesitated, looking down at the thing. It didn’t look particularly threatening, a short length of engraved wood with a little notch in the end, but she’d been wrong before.
“Interesting in a “could blow up in my hands” way?”
“No, you’re ok.”
Kit immediately went back to twiddling it.
Jade shuffled round to Elora’s side of the fire, reading the book over her shoulder. Then she read the passage again in the hope it would make more sense.
“An enchanted crochet hook? Really?”
Kit shrugged.
“Like it makes any less sense than that bewitched tea cosy.”
It was a fair point.
According to Elora the sect who had once dwelt in these caverns had thought of people’s lives like skeins of wool. It wasn’t the worst interpretation Jade had ever heard.
“So the magic stick does what?”
“Well, when both moons are in the right position, like tonight, among with a whole host of other ritual prerequisites, it lets you cross your own thread.”
Kit caught the polished wood mid spin, running a thumb across the carefully engraved runes.
“Wait, you mean…like…time. You can go back in time?”
“Only your own.” Elora scanned over the cracking pages again. “Yeah. Your own. You loop round for a day, but you can’t break the pattern.”
“So I couldn’t hop back and say…” Kit bit her lip. “Couldn’t say, “dad, don’t go after the cuirass”?”
Elora shook her head.
“You’d break your own thread. Disturb your path to here so there’d be no you to go back.”
Kit forced the kind of smile that made Jade want to hug her.
“Guess that would have made things too easy.”
Jade watched Kit roll it between her fingers.
“You could still see him though,” She said, wanting to lift the mood. Kit made a non committal hmm. “Or, Elora,” she turned to see the Empress had put her book away. “Would you want to see anything? Anyone?”
Elora shook her head.
“Bavmorda had my mother killed the day I was born. The midwife who got me away didn’t last the day either. I wouldn’t know who my father was if he was stood in front of me. I guess…” now it was Elora’s turn to force a smile. “I guess it would be nice to see Graydon again, but we’re going to get him back. We’re going to. So I don’t need a magic trick to see him as he was because I am going to see him again. And given his experience with shapeshifters I’d probably just scare him.”
The hook was put to one side as they ate, Kit’s talents more suited to laying out the bedrolls still. She settled herself close to Jade as they ate.
“How about you? Would you want to go back to something?”
Jade hesitated, pushing a morsel around her bowl with her spoon.
“I guess I…I mean, it would be nice. Other than that glimpse in Nockmar it’s hard to remember what my mum looks like.”
Jade was too focused on her dinner to see the look pass between Kit and Elora.
“You’d have to go when you’re a kid, wouldn’t you?” Kit pondered aloud, twiddling the hook like a baton again as Jade banked up the fire to keep them warm through the night. “Or you’d recognise yourself and freak. Have to stay out your own way.”
“Well that’s you out the question then,” Elora teased, and Kit laughed, nodding.
“There’s a few days I’d love to see again. You know, that perfect day you look back at.”
“Just got to hope it lives up to your memories,” Jade said, and Kit rolled her eyes.
“Ok, party pooper. There’s not a perfect day from your childhood you’d like to live again?”
Jade shrugged.
“Most of my childhood was shovelling shit and wrangling horses, til Ballentine took me under his wing. There were festivals and things sure, but there wasn’t really…” she paused. “I guess…there’s a lot I don’t remember about the Wild Wood, but Scorpia told me once about this autumn feast. Different camps of Bone Reavers coming together.” She fiddled with the pendant her sister had give her, thumb stroking across the polished stone.
Elora raised a hand and Kit tossed the hook over. She passed a hand over it, making a sigil in the air, feeling the magic resonate through the wood, its hidden core. They’d interrupted the ritual. They hadn’t unwound all the preparation. And celestial alignment like this didn't come around too often. Jade didn’t see the little nod as Elora passed it back to Kit.
Jade didn’t question it when Kit pulled her close for a goodnight kiss later, only wincing slightly as her thumb caught on something sharp tangled in Kit’s clothes. She definitely was carrying too many knives these days.
“That did sound like a good day.” Kit said, trying to sound casual but failing. Jade shrugged, embarrassed. “You know, a kiss is a better distraction than a slap. For future reference.”
Jade blinked, confused, and then saw the knife in Kit’s other hand. She looked down at her thumb, seeing the blood welling from the shallow cut.
“What…” she started, and then her brain made the connection. The blood on her thumb. The blood on the knife. The hook in Kit’s hand.
“Think about that perfect day,” Elora whispered in her ear, and Jade was too startled to do anything when Kit pressed the hook into her hand and closed it round it. Then her voice wasn’t working, Kit’s face stretching and blurring at the edges. Jade felt herself fall, tipping backwards towards her bedroll.
Jade landed in the leaf litter, sunlight streaking through the tree branches above.
She tucked the faintly glowing hook into tunic and heaved herself to her feet, trying to get her bearings. It was an unfamiliar patch of woodland, but clearly the Wildwood. Clearly autumn. And she had to be close to…to herself, if Elora was right. The thought made her dizzy. It was one thing to see the past, they’d all had enough visions, but to walk through it, smell the scent of the earth, hear the rustle of the leaves…it was too much.
Maybe it hadn’t worked. Maybe the thing had just dumped her in a random patch of wood, or maybe it was a dream. How could she even know?
The footsteps jolted Jade out of her spiral, one hand reaching for her sword. Which she wasn’t wearing, because she’d taken it off before lying down for the night.
“Who the hell are you?” asked an accusing voice. A familiar accusing voice. Ok, definitely the past then.
She didn’t have the scar yet, her hair wasn’t up in knots and she didn’t carry herself with the confidence bordering on arrogance that Jade knew. This gangly young teen was about as far from the Scorpia Jade knew as it was possible to be. The way her hand went immediately to her though knife was all too familiar.
It was almost embarrassingly easy to take the knife off of her, twisting it from her grip and sending her flying with a move Scorpia herself had taught her. Would teach her. The tenses were giving her a headache.
“That’s not a very pleasant welcome,” Jade said, offering the knife back, hilt first. Scorpia looked suspicious as she took it, snatching it as if she was worried Jade would pull it out of her reach. “I’m looking for your camp.”
“What camp?” Scorpia challenged, and it would have been funny if Jade’s brain wasn’t swirling.
“Look, you’re Venoma Scorpia, right? Kael’s daughter? You need me to draw your father’s mark? I’m one of you.” The words didn’t quite stick in her throat but they came close. Scorpia squinted suspiciously, but seemed to accept it.
“How’d you get out here like that?” She demanded, gesturing at Jade. It was a fair question. No pack, no supplies, no visible weapons, no armour, no warm clothing. If Jade was out here for real she’d be in big trouble.
“Had a run in with some less than friendly people,” Jade lied. Well, it wasn’t untrue. She’d had plenty. Scorpia’s suspicion softened a little. She jerked her head over her shoulder.
“You must have walked right past. Come on.”
Jade followed Scorpia into the camp.
It was smaller than the one she knew. Less people, but still busy. The smells of cooking foods, the thrum of chatter, the whirl of a life she’d never known.
“Tria!” Scorpia called, as they approached one of the larger knots of people. “Found another stray come for the feast.”
Jade should have been expecting it. Should have been braced, should have been prepared. But when her mother turned to her, surprised but welcoming, it was like she’d been hit by a runaway siege engine.
She was in brighter clothes than the nightmare in Nockmar, an axe in her belt, but it was the fame face, same dark hair. She frowned slightly, taking Jade in.
“You quite alright, stranger? You’ve gone pale.”
Tria drew close, and Jade didn’t know whether to run or to throw herself at her. She compromised by freezing in weak-kneed panic. She nearly flinched when she reached out, laying a hand across Jade’s forehead.
“You don’t feel sick. That’s good, we don’t have many healers in camp at the moment, can ill afford a flux running wild right now.”
“just…tired,” Jade managed. “It’s been a bit of a day.”
“Too many days like that lately.” Tria said sympathetically, winding a friendly arm around Jade's shoulders and leading her across the camp. “Stick with me, stranger, I’m sure we can find something not too taxing for you before the feast. You have a name?”
Jade, said Jade’s brain. But there was already a Jade with Kael’s mark running about the clearing somewhere and that seemed like asking for trouble. And it was hard to think of anything but her mother's arms. “Claymore,” was all she could come up with, voice coming out in a squeak, but Tria didn’t bat an eyelid.
“Well come along then, Claymore. Let’s get you warmed up and doing something useful.”
Jade found herself sat at her mother’s elbow, with a steaming mug of acorn tea and a great bowl of peas to shell. It was slightly awkward work with her cut thumb, but she’d endured far worse and would have done worse still to spend time like this. The chatter of the men and women as they pitched in on the work was like a warm blanket. This was the life she would have had had it not…Jade had resolutely looked the other way when a gaggle of children had run past, but it couldn’t be long now. And there was nothing Jade could do to spare her.
She tasted bile at the thought, and her hands shook when she tried to wash it away with the tea.
“You sure you’re ok?” Tria asked, clearly concerned. Jade nodded. “How come you’re out here all alone?”
She hadn’t been expecting the question, had no story prepared.
“I’m supposed to be meeting my friends. We got…separated.” Which was one way to phrase ‘they tricked me into taking an enchanted trip to meet my mother’, Jade supposed. “They’re not Bone Reavers.” She wasn’t sure why she said it, but Tria sighed, set down the knife she’d been using.
“These woods are dangerous for outsiders these days. I wish it didn’t have to be so.”
The conversation picked back up again, Jade letting herself sink into what should have been so familiar yet felt so alien, letting herself drink it all in like cool water in the desert. Tria laughed at some joke Jade hadn’t caught and Jade wanted to etch the sound of her laugh and the curve of her smile into her heart so she could never forget it again.
Tria kept Jade at her side throughout the feast, whether from concern or suspicion Jade couldn’t tell, but she was hardly going to complain. She tried to ignore the tiny mop of red hair further down, sat with the other children, focusing on passing plates, trying foods that should have been so familiar but now she only knew from fleeting visits to Scorpia.
The music broke out when the eating was done, but Tria pulled Jade away from the festivities. Jade scanned the treeline, one hand on her knife. The prickling of déjà vu was strong, but there were no trolls in the trees this time.
“You’ve been lying to us, Claymore. And I’ve let it stand. But here it’s time for truth.”
Jade swallowed hard.
“I don’t know…”
“Yes, you do.” Tria smiled. “There’s magic in these woods, you know? I’m no sorcerer, but it doesn’t take a sorcerer to see the way you’re bathed in magic. If it were water you’d look like you just crawled out of a pond.”
That was going to hard to argue against. Hell, was this how Kit felt when Sorsha caught her sneaking out the castle?
“It wasn’t the magic I saw first though.” Tria continued. “it was your eyes. Those beautiful eyes. You really think a mother wouldn’t recognise her child’s eyes?”
Jade’s mouth went dry.
“So here I am. Looking at my baby’s eyes in the face of a grown woman. A woman so wrapped in magic she’s dripping sparks for those who can see, wearing her big sister’s necklace, except Scorpia’s still wearing hers.” Jade’s hand strayed to it automatically, the traitor. “And from the way you look at me like a well loved ghost, I can guess why you’ve come. Just not how. Don’t…” Tria’s face twisted. “Don’t tell me. Don’t upset the future. If this is who you become I wouldn’t want to change that, Jade. Not for the world.”
Jade nodded reluctantly. Every fibre of her being wanted to disobey, to tell her, warn her. But even at the thought she could feel the fabric of reality start to creak, the chilly winds of the infinite starting to howl.
Tria pulled Jade into another hug, gentler this time, Jade squeezing back.
“Are you happy, where you are?” Tria asked softly. “Are you safe?”
Jade wanted to lie. But if this was the only time she’d speak to her she didn’t want to taint it with more untruths.
“Nobody’s safe, and my place is where the fighting is thickest, where the danger is most. Because if I’m not there everyone I love is at risk. But the people at my side, the ones I love, they do what they can to keep me safe. And I them.”
Tria nodded, eyes a little watery.
“That’s the family spirit.”
“But yes…mum…” the word was unfamiliar on Jade’s tongue and she didn’t miss how it made Tria smile to hear it. “I’m happy. I’m loved.” Her hand went to her neck again, not for Scorpia’s necklace but for the chain and it’s ring. Tria took it carefully, examining the three intricately engraved woven bands of khromium. “I am so, so loved, I…”
The words failed. She buried her face in her mother’s neck, let her sooth her.
“That’s all I could have asked for.” Tria whispered into the crown of her head. “I love you, Jade. Never forget that.”
“I love you, mum.” Jade’s voice was thick with tears. Tria sshhhed her, rocked her a little, Jade feeling the child she hadn’t been allowed to be since being picked out of the wreckage by the rangers.
“How long do you have?”
“Elora said a day but…” Jade saw Tria’s shock. She gave her a watery smile. “Bandu’s out of the sack, I guess. My partners are…the stuff of legends. Some days I look over at them doing the impossible, being the impossible, and I’m just…me. I’ve got my muscles and my sword and my mind. Sometimes I wonder what they can possibly see in me.”
“But they see it. Even when you can’t.”
Jade nodded.
“In so many ways I am so, so lucky. I have love in my life that I didn’t even dare dream of. But I just wish…” she looked at her mother, and she didn’t need to say it. Tria pulled her close again.
“Can we stay like this? Just for a little longer?”
“We can stay like this til you have to go, if you want.”
“I’d like that,” Jade said, voice small. Tria started to hum something, the melody of a some song, some lullaby Jade had forgotten that she had even forgotten.
All too soon Jade felt the world start to stretch, the slow sensation of falling growing. Tria nodded before Jade could explain.
“I can see our sand has run it’s time."
"It's not enough."
Tria gave her a sad smile.
"It never is. Never could be. A thousand lifetimes wouldn't be enough. But this, this impossible day? Thank you, Jade. Thank you for this.”
“I don’t want to go." Jade didn't care how small, how sad, how childish she sounded. "I don’t want to lose you again.”
“I know, little gem. But we cannot stop the turn of the world, and your loves need you back. We’ll see each other again, eventually.”
Jade kept hold of Tria’s hand, and when her grip slipped, the tides of magic pulling her inexorably back to the present, the last thing she saw was Tria’s smile.
Jade’s back hit the bedroll. Kit and Elora’s face hovered above her, made blurry with tears.
“Jade? You ok?”
She didn’t trust her voice, throat too thick with emotion, but she managed to nod. Kit moved first, more attuned to Jade’s body language, but Elora was close behind, both wrapping themselves round her.
“Good tears?” Kit asked gently, and Jade nodded again.
“Best tears,” she managed. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“You deserved it.” Elora said firmly. “And so much more.”
Kit made a noise of agreement. Jade gripped onto each of them tight, too tired, to overwhelmed to talk, to think. She let the exhaustion pull her under, warm and safe between her loves.