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“What are you doing in a place like this, Raindrop?”
Flow looks up in surprise, finding Shadow Blazer perched atop a neighboring grave, the rain burning off of the mysterious girl’s tan skin, burning off her all but glowing red dress stiched with gold. Her red and gold hair is just as waterproof, even as it seems cold without the white strands of…
Her hair is loose around her shoulders, for once.
Even her bright red and gold eyes shine with less mischief than normal, the millisecond where Flow allows herself to get lost in their eternal mysteries. It’s a strange picture, and it doesn’t belong on the wise stranger, but she’s there.
There like she hasn’t been since Her Shadow had sacrificed itself to save Flow.
Shadow Blazer leaps down, landing on a single bare foot and turning around, slowly.
“You’re… here,” is all Flow can make herself say. Shadow Blazer nods, face serious.
“I was called here,” she admits. “A voice, it says…”
Sister…
Flow shudders, as she hears the half-whisper over the rain once again. Shadow Blazer just laughs.
“Nevermind,” she says, walking forwards to lean over the carved grave Flow had been called to. “It’s impossible.”
Flow looks around, taking in the irony of their location. Anything but Shadow Blazer’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “About Your Shadow.”
Shadow Blazer crosses her arms, looking away.
“I don’t blame you,” she says. “I was just… upset. My Shadow knew me better than anyone, and… it knew losing you would hurt me.” A laugh. “The stupid thing - it thought I wouldn’t miss it , just as much?”
Flow thinks about the scream of agony Shadow Blazer had cried, eviscerating all five of the Shadows they had been fighting, all unlucky enough to be in her blast radius. How could she possibly have hurt Shadow Blazer nearly as much, had Blazer’s Shadow not saved her?
“Still, I’m sorry,” Flow offers. Shadow Blazer laughs, something dark and broken. She looks down at the grave, at James Clark , as if it meant something to her.
“Go back to your friends, Raindrop,” she says. “Enjoy a normal life whenever you can.”
Even as the rain burned off her form, Flow couldn’t miss the tears on Shadow Blazer’s cheeks.
“I’m just saying,” Skye begins, eyes sparkling with the excitement they always get at a new conspiracy theory. “The Shadows here are so old and established - we can’t possibly be the only Voidsouls born on this Earth to fight them.”
“Surely they’d try to contact us, though,” Tara argues. “We’ve sort of become big news.”
“Well no one said they were alive, ” Skye argues right back. “In fact, they’re probably dead, and that’s why there are so many of us, this time.”
“That’s… a little too morbid for my tastes,” Aiden says, pushing his ice cream away from him. Sky shrugs, their short white hair, dyed as though to become even more blatantly abnormal, bouncing as they tilt their head, while Tara shakes her head at all of them.
But Flow can’t even bring herself to get into her team’s antic today, or even their strange new mentor, and, despite her smile, all she can think about is…
Sister… come…
Shadow Blazer.
Shadow Blazer’s face, and her grief.
“Or maybe we should never have been gathered together,” Flow says. “Maybe it just leads to more suffering.”
“Whoah,” Tara says. “Flow, you don’t mean that. None of us forgot what happened, but we decided to work together.”
“But we still lost someone,” Flow argues. She cracks her spoon in half, and stares at the jagged edge, thinking about all the losses that brought them here.
Shadow Blazer’s broken expression, the impenetrable mentor and guardian in such an empty state that still couldn’t hide her tears.
It should have been Flow to die.
“I just wonder if it’s worth it,” Flow continues. “That’s all.”