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Chapter Text

Rayla buckled to the ground, hitting the sand with a thud. There were dirt streaks on her face and probably sweat and dried blood in her hair but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She gritted her teeth and turned her head to the sky and the sob that reverberated from her core tore her entire mind, body, and soul, ripping apart at the seams and unraveling.

The ocean was far too close, taunting her with waves that seemed to laugh in her face and retreated just before washing over her toes, like a dance she’d never learned the choreography to. It knew.

It knew that it was afraid of her, knew that it was a symbol of death, relishing in it like a sadist. And it was mocking her by streaming along the beach so calm even when her whole being was restless.

Her grief often felt like the ocean. Stretching on and on, pointlessly endless because she didn’t even know for sure what had happened. What had happened to three of her parents, and the one she did know, hadn’t–she blinked back burning tears–hadn’t wanted her.

The ghost of the girl she once was tailed her the way she chased a ghost, too, in an endless cycle of the scraps of people chasing vengeance and running from anything good there had once been everywhere. Life-ruiners, going to places that ruined lives. A scrap heap where no one with potential, hope, had to look.

It lurked in the darkest, most jagged crevices of her heart.

An echoing reminder, a remnant of the boy she had left behind.

The cliff she had tossed her own life over.

The hand that was once purple and limp and would never work the same ever again.

The man she had been forced to turn against.

The parents she had loved, then hated, then loved, then hated, and was now confused over, even though she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know and that is the problem, where they could be, if they were even in this life, looking out at the same serene ocean,or… not. Just… not. Not existing, not breathing, not thinking– which she had half a mind to do to herself, too, because what of it she was doing was barely enough as is.

It enveloped her, the lack of closure, the whiplash, the loneliness. The grief. The aching, all-encompassing remnants of the life that she abandoned and was abandoned by. It all pressed and pushed against her lungs, hammering and demanding to be let out like Pandora’s Jar, until they were filled with the same taste of her tears, the salt stinging in her nose and the melancholy clawing its way into the bloodiest pockets of her beaten soul. A hug she couldn’t escape no matter how she howled and thrashed and screamed and sobs until she was turned inside-out.

The voices were still lingering in her mind, a haunting and forbidden tune, playing like the sounds of the traitorous ocean, background noise that was somehow simultaneously calming and utterly terrifying, setting every hair and nerve on end, demanding that she run far and fast and never stop, because that was all she ever seemed able to do. Run. Flee. Coward.

“You are worthy, Rayla. You're brave and strong, and you care about others. You’re a hero.” She smiled as her sweet little brother’s voice rang in her mind: “Knowing you is definitely worth losing a hand for,” as crystal pure as he was, as she hoped he would stay, and the guilt– her breath hitched.

She was terrible, she was a failure that suffocated herself as heavy as the cloak of night suffocated the sky–

“You’re too good to feel this bad about yourself!” But no. She didn’t deserve this. She would never again deserve to hear the voice that was so sure of her, that unfailingly believed in her with starry, shining eyes even when all she’d wanted was to let go and give in and give up, that was once so openly passionate about showing her how to simultaneously accept and reject the bitter floods of rejection. How to weather them and ride them out, but he’d never once stopped her from breaking down and succumbing once in a while– Well, never truly succumbing, because he’d put himself between her and anything, and that was why she had to leave, because she couldn’t let him get swallowed up by that tidal wave.

Not him. Anyone but him.

His voice that appeared in cacophonous currents that tumbled through her mind, some notes an overwhelming scream like lost souls drifting aimlessly across the waves for eternity, and some barely-present whispers. He had kissed the shores of her anguish when she was tired, so tired, of holding up the walls, and he had embraced the ripples of her joy when she had allowed herself to lean into the euphoria he’d brought for her– all for her.

And she’d shoved him back into the tumultuous brink, leaving them both to drown alone, when they could’ve at least drowned together.

Moisture streamed down her face, stinging water droplets falling with poise on her neck, harshly reminding her of the gentle, curious fingers inhibited by newness that had swept over her calloused skin, tracing her ugliest scars with rare enamor, and dreaming of his memory was a sweet indulgent torture she both dreaded and craved–

And speaking of memories, his voice, his voice, “You let him live, but you’ve killed us all!” reverberated in her head as a merciless torrent. That was the only thing she should hear. The only thing that was right about who she was. She ruined everything.

And the guilt drowned her.

Her wails rang out as hopeless and grief-stricken as the shell of the translucent ghost she now was.

This is why, this is why, it was so hard for her to open up, to talk to people, to say her feelings, because she was scared– no, she was petrified beyond belief, of being humiliated, of being shaken off, of being…honestly of just being, and now she was cripplingly alone.

This was the grave she’d dug for herself, fresh soil pinning her in place staring back at her. But it was better than the searing imprints burned into her eyelids, faces she’d see every time she closed her eyes.

She squeezed herself together, pressing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs, making herself seem as small and tiny as possible, as if that would wring out all the pain in her battered spirit.

Echoes of footsteps, through the silver-tinted grove, and whispers among neighbors of the most shameful betrayal, her parents' cowardice, shadows containing and concealing secrets of plots: Kill the king and his son, and then the pattern continued. The footsteps that grew heavier as she forced herself through the darkness of the woods that were suddenly turned against her, no longer home; the roots a tripping hazard, the shadows hiding any danger one cared to dream up, traipsing toward her doom like a lamb to slaughter.

“I wish I could say that we will see each other again, but I don’t know if we will.” as she pulled a cloak over her head and left clandestinely, leaving nothing but a tear-stained missive even as it killed another tiny, shriveled bit of her soul. There were so few of those left, it seemed, each day leaving her lighter and number in a way that maybe she should’ve thanked. She’dve killed for numbness once, anything other than feeling like complete and utter shit.

But there had been love and hope for peace sprinkled in there, however fleeting, however breathtakingly temporary.

“I’ll see you again, Rayla” quickly countered with “You better. I know where you live!”

“My lips were getting way ahead of me and–” Would she ever kiss him again? See him again? “Shut up.” To herself or to Memory-Callum, she wasn’t sure.

“We changed things! We made a difference!”

And that almost made it worse because she was painstakingly aware. She knew exactly what she had thrown away, whose precious heart and hand and gaze she had been clutching in the palm of her hand and then plunged into a icy cold sea of abandonment and betrayal.

Her body heaved, and similarly to how the relentless waves crashed loudly against the wood of ships, testing their resilience and sailing away soaked, her grief pummeled into her chest like lightning rippling across a surface, over and over, till her heart was drenched and throbbing.
And just like the ocean, which went deeper than anybody could fathom, the blackened depths of her despair were deeper than anyone would understand.

Chapter Text

Callum’s grief was like the moon, altering forth in phases.

The grief was the poetry that rang in his ears, and the air that filled his lungs. Every encumbered breath that reminded him of the life he still had even though so many, more deserving souls, no longer did.

The grief was the premature drop of his stomach when he first witnessed the agonized expression on his father’s face. His very last shuddering, gasping breath, one his mom had told him to look away for, to leave the room, but the way he curled into his mom’s soft, warm chest and apologized because he never could again was impossible to tear his watering eyes away from. Those first wails of gut-wrenching agony that were shaped like a knife, a double-ended sword, sharp and pointed enough to wedge itself between the gaping wounds and tear viciously.

“Callum, I want to talk to you about life.” Flickering forward in the hushed way his mother would rub his back and remind him to “breathe, just breathe Callum,” and the way he would hold her legs and how she would spin him around when the corners of this new castle were too vast and intimidating. The craters running its length down the silvery fragment representing the delicate climb of his little fingers when he would braid her hair while she told him stories of the strongest man she ever knew. The strongest man Callum would never truly have the pleasure of knowing, and later asked him to promise her through breathless gasps and beaming smiles that he would protect, protect, protect, “Take care of your brother.” The fragility of life, running his fingers through nature’s stillness and soaking its grace into his skin, inhaling the beauty until it was tattooed in his lungs, pulsing like the heart that was too big for his body, in his ribcage.

The grief was the few fragile memories he had from the days with her that felt like a whole lifetime instead of mere weeks, that wicked trick of time that didn’t heal him, reinforcing the serenity she had brought him under her lighthearted teasing and the heartbreak she had caused under her moonlit illusions. His longing built from the shattered remnants of her presence, her luminous essence. As long as she was away, as long as he wasn’t near enough to sprinkle stardust in her milky hair and cast gleams on her blood-drenched scars, kiss her illumination until she understood, “I know that, and you should too”, he was only half. Reaching aimlessly, crying out for the moiety that was no longer there, that had wrenched itself away under the guise of heroism and death “I love you Rayla. I really really do”. Rejected him in the end and left him with fear and grief, like they all had, even though he would ruin his very core and spirit for her a million little times.

The grief was his panicked cry of mourning, the stricken shriek of “Dad!”, almost complete, almost heard, almost there, just like the relationship with the man his heart promised as his dad. Never quite as futile as he once tricked himself to believe but also never quite fully reassured of the last little fragment that was missing, even though the virtual emotion behind it was the same. He could still remember the shape of his smile, that he had winced under the pressure of once upon a time, the sound of his laugh as it rumbled in his chest, the closeness of it fresh in his mind from those few nights he had been carried to bed, flustered and blushing, but loved. Undeniably cherished

The grief was the facade he put on, “you doing okay?”, the aimless show of ravaged resilience, even though the moon never set, the tainted reminiscence of all he had lost never sincerely vanished. It lurked instead, hid shamelessly in the guilt of the burden that now hung on young shoulders, but was keen enough to camouflage against the pale sky and conceal behind the clouds. But the moon revolves around the world, so he would try to swallow it down and revolve around his world, “you mean everything to me”. Give more parts of himself to those starry blue eyes, breezy laughter, and beautiful shining smile, until there was nothing left in his barren soul to give, the same way the moon bestowed everything to the sky until it was hollow and dark. Millions of instances all throughout his childhood where he had rushed to care for him, to carry him up, and would do again in a single heartbeat, shimmering the last of his courage during the coldest and loneliness of nights until it was purposed for him, the way the moon projected onto the world, but it still wasn’t enough, he still wasn’t good enough for the only child he would spill his own blood for without hesitation.

Sometimes he was sure that half his mother’s lost soul had been given to Ezran and half had been given a new home in Rayla. And so he couldn’t give up, no matter how heavy it got, not when even a fraction of her could still be there, in the people he loved. So he yearned and ached and fought, fought against the overpowering grief, so that one day, maybe, just maybe, he would be as beautifully radiant as the moon.