Work Text:
It’s over - isn’t it?
Beau walked through the battlefield, the ring of the battle that ended almost as quickly as it began played in reply in her mind - war for two factions; ideals. Huge slabs of metal plate lay surrounded by spent ammunition rounds,
The guns they belonged too shattered beside the dead Boar’s who carried the bullet spitting metal coffins and those IronBorne fanatics who died where they fought or cut and ran when the titan fell.
It was easy to spot, like a memory from two months ago - misshapen and put back in front of her eyes.
There lay another Giga. Already a deep crimson to match the gores and carves that brought the great tyrants weapon of conquest low.
A part of her pictured someone hanging over it, those memories like embedded leeches in her soul; Yasha screaming to the sky as her symbol of safety lay brutalised. But Yasha wasn’t there - this wasn’t her ‘Big Boy’; this was a caged and coerced behemoth of killing potential shackled in a way she was tragically getting to know too well by this point.
*There were some creatures on this plane that speak to great purposes - we- the people of this land should not have been allowed the opportunity to wield them…*
Well, it was free now.
There were three figures she needed to find - two she hand every faith she could think of in, but all the same, she desperately needed to know we’re alright.
Not far from the dead Giga, Dynamo picked a scent, tracking familiar paw prints following a trail of blood a hundred meters or so into a secluded cave down the ravine.
“Good girl, c’mon let’s find her.” She said, making her way down the side with her Deinonychus and silently inside the eerily quiet cave.
The light was dim, but for a lit torch near the end of the cave, silhouetting three forms. Silently, she motioned for her mount to watch the entrance as she crept further inside, straining her eyes to make out the shapes of the figures, two lay down to the ground, the other stood stock still facing them.
Some traitorous part of Beau set the scene, the tyrant standing over his work, triumphant. But no, she knew that figure and he was shorter than who still stood.
“Yasha?” Beau called out softly, earning her second clue when one of the two other forms shifted, four paws readjusting, glancing to the sound briefly before returning to watching the still standing sentinel.
Careful step by step, Beau approached, her eyes adjusting to the light as she neared the torch wedged into the ground. The ground grew redder, pooling from the second mass. By the time she reached close enough to easily tell Yasha’s silent frame and her Ravagers watchful gait, she could scarcely recognise the mass of metal chitin and gore that she assumed had one been him.
She’d done it.
“Yasha?” Beau finally called out again, a couple feet from her.
Yasha stood stock still, her hand clutched her greatsword for dear life, but it didn’t shake. She stood there unblinking at the mass where he once assumedly stood, maybe crawled - gods, she hoped he crawled.
There would be time enough to ask later, for now. “Yasha. I’m here you did it.” She reached out a hand as she spoke.
Yasha’s body reached in sync to her words, a single shaky inhale - her eye blowing wide and the sword clattered to the ground as Yasha followed it down, crashing into Beau’s arms.
“B-Beau.” Was all she made out before she dam broke; a wellspring of emotion filling since the moment he stopped breathing as she fell into the smaller woman’s arms and sobbed in great heaving waves.
“Hey-hey, there we go. Let it out, my big gorgeous victorious Valkyrie badass - you’re alright; you did it.” Beau cooed, holding Yasha as she felt the tears well in her own eyes.
“I-I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it,” she wracked out in heaving breaths, “I didn’t know if- what power he might still have over me, even then as he was.”
“Did he..?”
“-No. I didn’t let him, I couldn’t let him - I was resolute. I didn’t b-bow.” Yasha blurted out, her voice suddenly strong again, “but I didn’t let me finish him - I let the new life; my new life…” Yasha trailed off, arms suddenly crushingly tight around Beau.
Beau nodded, head brushing against Yasha’s neck as she glanced back to Yasha’s loyal mount, who remained all the while where she’d seen him.
“Salvation” She said softly, staring at the Ravager, he who’d been with Yasha since that very first brutal day in her new life, she wondered what he was feeling - wondered if it was the same as she was. Pride.
Yasha’s grip tightened in response, silent concurrence as Frelsun finally left his post and joined his master - his faithful companion side, head nuzzling into her hip.
“It’s over, isn’t it?” Yasha’s shaky voice managed after a moment, laced in hopes she didn’t want to cling to for fear of them falling away in her hands.
“Yeah, it’s over.”
