#VALshrue

[cemeterything]

VAL and Shrue dynamic that only exists in my mind moodboard

[cemeterything]

okay fine. i will draw one (1) VALshrue. for the people.

[cemeterything]

i should never have joked about VALshrue shipping now i'm imagining shrue plucking a depowered and shellshocked VAL out of whatever empty between-lands she's taken to wandering aimlessly through after the war is over and bonding over being former agents of state violence turned traitors who have no purpose anymore. it takes several weeks for shrue to persuade VAL to take a bath (she doesn't trust shower blocks because they remind her of her cell and doesn't want to wash away the only remaining evidence of what she did at first). they wash her hair and it's the first time in either of her lives that someone has done something gentle and kind like that for her. one day VAL says unprompted that she did try to make up a genuinely decent family for shrue, and they understand it as an apology or at least an acknowledgement of the turmoil they were put through. there's much they've both done that's unforgivable even to them, but they're surprisingly good at providing each other with a reason to try to do better with the second chance they've made for themselves. crucially they do also sleep in each others' arms not so much out of affection or even touch starvation as a mutually assured destruction pact if one of them tries to kill the other in their sleep.