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Zam stares into the water, her reflection echoed back in ripples across the surface, hardly more than a blur of yellows, pinks and greens. She’s different now, an ugly rot distorting her already gangly frame, never quite what it should be, always an eyesore amongst the crowd.
Her lungs still ache from the journey here – which is odd, because she doesn’t remember running at all. She’d just wanted some space, some air, to be away from the prying eyes of all those who have foolishly "forgiven" her, forced to settle at the water's edge by her body's protests and the contradictory nausea of hunger.
It’s only growing more hopeless by the day. She can’t keep fighting this, delaying the inevitable, letting it warp her further in the vain hope they’ll find a solution to the unfixable.
For now, it’s kept at bay, but who knows how long it’ll stay that way. She can’t rest knowing that even with the pact, it could still take hold and hurt someone. An alliance forged aloud means very little when it will always have the upper hand, biding its time until something finally snaps under the strain and the true imbalance of it all is revealed to the rest of the world.
She can’t keep going with all the guilt and fear burdening her every waking moment. She was the one who wanted to change, the one who left herself open to it. It’s her body which only continues to hurt everyone around her. Even Graecie has been dragged into it now; it won’t be long until she gets hurt (or worse). Maybe the academy was right, and she’s supposed to be in Lupi, a lone wolf to the end, where she couldn’t have done this to her.
Once more, a particular book finds its way into her hands, tracing familiar words, faded by time and wear. She knows it by heart; even still, the weight is comforting in her hands, holding it close as if it may shield her from the world. In this reality, she is free – her death means something, saves her friends and leaves her hollowed out of all her worldly troubles, at peace in ways she’s never known.
She had promised Graecie, once, and then a thousand times over when her resolve had wavered, that she wouldn’t go through with the backup plan. But what else is there to be done?
By the day, it’s hold over her only grows stronger, melting them both together until she isn’t sure where the line between Zam and it truly ends. She can’t know for sure if these feelings are at all true to her heart, if these thoughts are her own (this one, at least, is hers. Ringing louder than all else, the knowledge of what she must do. It is a lot of things, but it’s so far avoided committing any real harm to her body. It doesn’t want to lose its host, she supposes.)
If she dies, it’s all over. It will be gone, everyone can stop worrying and she… She has three chances, right? Granted to her by forces she can never know but curses and reveres in equal measure. Maybe it won’t work, and she’ll have to die three times over to rid the world of this curse, of her, finally. At last, she would be able to rest, a star once more.
It shouldn’t be as comforting as it is – the idea that, selfish and cowardly as it may be, none of this would be her problem anymore.
Graecie would be disappointed; she knows she would, even if she can’t fully grasp how conditional her love is, how far she can push it. Someday, she’ll wake up and see her as she truly is, realise she’s made a mistake clinging to her and move on with her life without a second thought (she hopes she can, at least. The thought of leaving Graecie alone makes her sick, but she has people at the academy to look out for her; she, unlike Zam, is normal. She’ll be okay). Zam will miss her, though. A speck of light on the horizon, only able to watch the one she adores so greatly from afar. It’s for the best. She can’t hurt her there.
She’d hoped it would find her more abruptly. Maybe in an attack or while saving someone, something much more valiant – but she supposes she’s still saving everyone from it no matter what happens. Even if she sits here until the foliage of the forest consumes her whole, or she starves, or an animal senses the rot taken root in her core and takes her out, it’ll still happen eventually whether she does anything about it or not.
It can all be over. Maybe not forever, but she can almost delude herself into believing that it will, that she has the resignation in her somewhere to follow through with something so dire.
Carefully, she sets the book on the ground, taking her spear from her hip. Surely there’s an easier way, but something in her knows she hasn’t earned a gentler fate. It has to work first try, or else it will catch on; she has to be fast, has to-
“Zam?”
Graecie stands at the edge of the forest, cast in the heavy shadows of the encroaching nightfall, her stark whites only able to do so much against the darkness. She’s blurry and out of focus, but she sounds worried, breathless as she strays from the treeline to Zam’s side. She doesn’t dare question how she found her so far away from everything; it’d probably break her.
Usually, her presence is nothing but comforting. Right now she just feels cold, adrift, separated from her body entirely, no matter the guilt it tries to flood her with. She wants so badly to be alone it hurts, but she doesn’t have it in her to tell Graecie to leave either, clinging to the part of her that still tries to catch alight when she sits beside her in the grass.
“Zam? Is everything alright?” It’s barely a whisper – too close, too warm, too real. She doesn’t dare look up.
A careful hand wraps around the one she clutches her spear with, squeezing slightly before slipping upwards, easing it from her grip. She doesn’t ask where it goes, she doesn’t want to know.
Graecie rests her head against her shoulder, settling against her in place of all the questions she surely wants to ask. Her reflection joins hers in the water, a blob of white melting into pink and yellow, distorted in its perpetual motion.
She doesn’t want to disappoint her, but every day it’s getting harder and harder to abide by that. Graecie believes so strongly that they can make it out. They can find a ritual for it, a cure, a mystical item that magically makes everything right – anything. But Graecie isn’t some omniscient deity; as wonderful as she is, she can’t fix something like this. She must know that by now. Even still, her hand finds Zam's, as if that will stop her from vanishing completely (and it will. She doesn’t have it in her to subject her to the last resort.)
Zam loves her. As much as she can love anything, she loves Graecie. There’s no battle she wouldn’t fight for her brilliance to shine on. But love can’t fix this. They both know that at this point, silent in place of tearing them apart, a constant if nothing more. It’s Zam's burden to bear; all Graecie can do is linger by her side, offering warmth and smiles and food and everything she could ever want other than the one thing she needs.
Leaning into her does nothing to fend off the chill settling so heavily in her core it may shatter her, but she leans all the same. Not tonight, she decides tentatively. It’s all they can do.