Work Text:
What Kris wants to say to Susie more than anything, as the two of them watch the moon slink from one side of the lake to the other, the night escaping their grasp, is "I'm sorry".
They imagined it, them still looking out at the lake as the wind ruffled their hair, Susie looking straight at them in her piercing way. Sorry for what, she would say, and Kris would stare out at the lake for a good long time. It would take less time for them to list what they weren't sorry for than it would to confess their sins.
Finally, haltingly, they would start from the beginning. They were sorry, they'd say, for ever passing Susie a pencil during class, that first day she arrived in Hometown. They were sorry for wearing apple-scented shampoo, strong-smelling enough they could feel her drool over their head. They were sorry for being so silent, at first, for letting her push and kick and shove them around and mistakenly believing that would make it easier to distance themselves. They were sorry for catching the apple she'd thrown at them, that day, for taking a bite from it just over hers. That, they would think to themselves but not say, was their original sin. They were sorry they'd ever found her eating chalk in the school hallway. More than anything, they'd emphasize, over and over again, they were sorry that the Kris she knew wasn't the Kris who had made a promise years ago, before they had ever known the girl they were going to meet was her, with her shining hope and burning spirit.
Back then, their betrayal was to be against two strangers they had never met. How would they have known that the Girl would be the truest friend they had ever known, that the Prince would sacrifice anything, even their own life, for the two of them? And if they had known, would it have been any different? They owed this to Noelle, after all, to the Holidays who had lost their oldest daughter because of them. Because they couldn't save her, couldn't find her.
Still, they were sorry. Sorry that they had let the Knight hurt and beat their friends. Sorry that they said nothing as they kept acting upon this grand stage, as they already knew how the story would end. They were sorry for ever letting themselves get attached, sorry for ever letting Susie get close, and sorry that they didn't just rend their SOUL from their body and call off the entire plan then and there.
She would curse and scream at them, they were sure. Grab them by their shirt collar, shake them and beg them to say they were lying. They wouldn't be. And then, throwing Kris to the ground like the dirt they were, Susie would leave and take their whole heart with her.
The trees on the shoreline shake in the breeze, their leaves making a slow descent to the ground as they wither and die one by one. There is a faint song echoing from the other side of the lake. Susie's tail thumps softly against the earth, moist with the aftermath of the evening's rain.
In the end, Kris says nothing.