#but everything else just lights a fire of ire and anguish in the depths of my heart.

[astramachina]

no. no absolutely not. "this name that has stumped every scholar ever is actually the name of an island in Scandinavia and somehow nobody caught that" cut the shit. you're devising a way to lower the speed of light to one-tenth of its capacity and yet a Norwegian word stumped all your collective asses i am going to rip out someone's throat.

[enavance]

swansong.

( ao3 link. )

𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐬,   𝐨𝐡,   𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐬   . . .   𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐥𝐟𝐬 𝐮𝐬,   𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐢 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐚𝐝𝐞.

oblivion has never felt so empty.

oblivion has never felt so cold.

freezing,   sharp in its cut,   bone   -   chilling in its slice,   bitter in its piercing sting.   it lays its glacial hands upon everything in its path and drags it all down into the depths of an abysmal void,   endless in its bleak and dark emptiness,   and yet all the same,   it is filled with every imaginable horror to tear any soul asunder.

it coils around warm,   living flesh in thin,   ghostly wisps like haunting wraiths with fraying hands of brittle bone,   fragmenting,   fracturing,   splintering,   tracing skin in its pin   -   prick needling touch,   leaving traces of its phantom touch that ever remain steadfast in their haunting,   in the heavy,   suffocatingly thick miasma following in pursuit to envelope everything in its vicinity.

no hope remains.   there is nothing.

nothingness is a heavy weight,   a sinking sensation burrowing into the pit of her stomach.   she has burned out all of her light.   devoid of warmth,   devoid of even the smallest kindling fire that once lit her world and its dawning horizon in the shrouds of ever lingering darkness,   there is no strength left within her.   each shifting bone,   every twisting tendon and twitching muscle,   is agonizing.   agonizing in the physical pain of movement,   and agonizing in the emotional detriment in the realization that moving would mean ruination.   it means finality.   certainty.   an end to an end,   an end which she isn’t ready for.

but it is already over.   it has already ended.

but for cherry,   it hasn’t ended completely,   not until she takes that first daunting step,   the first step in leaving,   in leaving all of this behind once and for all.

all of this emptiness,   this boundless well of sinking,   drowning,   darkness,   she must leave it behind.   the world goes on,   she knows this intimately,   beyond everything and all else,   and still,   she cannot find it within herself to rise,   to so much as shift in place,   to reach a hand forth and crawl.

perhaps it is the wound in her back,   a deeply carved gash in the lower back of her torso and trickling blood sapping what little strength that remained,   but   . . .   it is so much more than that of her dwindling strength.   her will falters.   her will and drive to rise,   her will to continue on and press forward.   there is so much that she has lost already,   and she finds herself at a painful crossroads once more,   faced with an insurmountable loss and a world   -   shattering wellspring of grief that pulls her beneath its surface,   but she cannot even drown.   a prisoner to torment that cannot even hurt her,   and yet she cannot escape.   forever bound,   chained like a beast to a vision that has met its fate.   it’s too late.   there is no changing it.   it has become of the past,   something she must move on from,   but she clings and she clings and she clings,   and by the gods,   does she cling.

the darkness engulfs her.   it swallows her.   it consumes her.   it is all around,   pressing upon her shoulders,   sliding over her body like a softened blanket that sought to bring her comfort.

his arms.   she feels them.   the weight of them,   their warmth.   she feels his chest upon her back,   his arms circling around her torso to pull her in.   she feels his breath upon her head,   soft,   gentle,   like a low   -   passing wind sending stray burgundy strands flying astray.

she sees the crinkle to his eyes.   a crinkle in disdain,   annoyance,   ire,   amusement,   laughter,   love.   his twisting lips,   his rolling eyes,   those flaring nostrils whenever he delivers a dramatically punctuated huff.

the rising lilt of his voice when something tickled his sense of humor,   whenever his characteristic sarcasm met his tongue.   it irritates her,   and yet she’s endeared nevertheless.

their traded blows,   in her flying fists catching in his palms,   in sharpened quips and biting wit.   he set her temper ablaze as much as she to him,   but too often,   she caught herself smiling so crookedly in all of her subtleness and finds a matching glimmer in gilded eyes.

he is a withering rose of hardened thorns.   thorns not yet dull,   just as sharp,   and just as deadly,   but his petals fray.   they wilt and curl and dry and brown and fade into dust.   there is much of his world,   of his every love and passion and burning stars,   that he has lost.   in all of his flaws,   in all of his misgivings,   in all of his faults and deepening cracks in stone,   he does this for love.   love of his world,   love of his home,   love of those he once held dear and lost.

cherry understands this far too well.

she was never meant to save him.   there was never going to be away to help him.   even if she offered him her hand,   he would have broken her wrist to tear her world and every shard asunder to resurrect his own.   and though she understands his pain,   his grief,   there is no justification for the methods to his madness.

there was little choice,   but this.

put an end to someone she’s grown so painfully fond of,   even for all of the times she wished to wrap her hands around his throat and bring her claws down into his flesh,   or lose everyone else,   everything else,   that grows heavy in her heart.

she hears his voice in her head,   even now.   in all of his snark,   his every snide and tearing remark,   in all of those rare moments of softness and vulnerability.   he shared much of himself,   with all of his wealth of knowledge that opened her eyes to a life that once was,   of his,   of hers.   it set a deep rooted yearning within her.   its gnarling,   thorned brambles curled around her heart and squeezed in this dying moment,   now,   in their shared dying gasps,   and she catches a glimpse of an age long lost,   a life of a being whole before its fracturing.

a being who looked much like herself,   yet different all the same.   this woman looked so happy.   blissful,   at peace,   dancing digits elegantly gliding against the palm of a man whose face she’s come to know far too well.   dizzyingly drunk in one another’s intoxicating gazes,   honeyed warmth,   a bleeding glow.

and then,   it shatters.   it explodes into a million fragments as the star explodes,   a bursting supernova.   light tears through each crack until it blinds her vision and forces her eyes shut to drown it out.   when they open again,   she returns to the dark.   she returns to the silence.   to the cold,   to the emptiness,   to the frost that nips at her fingertips and inches along in her veins.

this arena held light,   once.   the city beyond disappeared,   but cherry knows that it yet remains.   why,   then,   can she not see it   ?

each blackened skyscraper has been snuffed of its light,   and they melt into the shadows and their chilling embrace.

she could see the sky,   once,   the shimmering of the water’s surface and the splitting sunlight beaming down into the ocean’s sapphire blues.   now,   there is nothing.   not a single onze of light,   nothing.

it is desolate,   and she is alone.

cherry is alone,   blood staining the torn fabrics of her clothes and broken bits of what little armor remained.   blood smeared upon the metallic curves of her glaives,   her fingers and her palms and splattered droplets upon her wrists.   she killed him.   she killed him,   a man she held beloved,   flawed as he was.   she knows it was her only choice,   that he was too far gone in his madness.   there is no bringing back someone from the brink that the likes of emet   -   selch had fallen into.

he left her in the aftermath of their battered wake and wells of destruction with knowledge of a world that once was,   of the truths she has been seeking,   but she has been left with more questions than any answer she ever received.   and now,   there is no one left to answer them.

she hears him,   now.   his final whispers,   hushed and fading and trembling,   his one final,   dying gasp.

cherry blinks,   and as if it all had been naught but a dream,   the light returns in a flood.   she sees the broken wires and frames of amaurot’s buildings scraping their skies,   the unnatural glow of the horizon in its light cast over them like a veil that in any other world would have been seen as a holy shroud,   hallowed in its divinity and the grace of its touch.   her chest heaves with each pained,   gasped breath,   ragged and hoarse,   blood thick in the pit of her mouth.   she remains,   lying flat against the violet stone,   palms pressed upon its smooth surface as she takes what strength remains to hold herself up and tilt her chin and stare from eyes that fight to stay open.

he is there.

she can see him,   now,   but she knows that this is it,   that this will be for the last.

she stares beyond a glimmering crevice,   a gaping wound coated in blood and the remnants of fading aether.   her head begins to spin and throb as her eyes roll upward to stare,   and it is all that she can manage before she collapses into the ground again.

cherry stares upon his face,   cheeks soft and lips and a nose so familiar,   and she knows she has only moments to drink him in for the final time before he becomes but a memory to fragment and break as time travels on.   there is an anguish to her eyes,   a pain unearthed unlike anything she has felt in years.   she never wanted to be cornered into this position again.   damn her and her weakening heart.

silence pervades as they look upon each other’s eyes in the stillness of their shattering world.   it crumbles around them,   and yet,   it matters not.   there is naught but this single,   fleeting and ephemeral moment,   and their intertwining souls.   cherry,   for once in her life,   cannot find even a single word to edge upon the tip of her tongue.   grief strikes her far too deep in the knowing of what is to come     —     a world in which he does not exist,   and she is forced to overcome it yet again.

when she hears a gasped breath,   a soft inhale with his parting lips,   she musters another burst of strength to straighten further still,   steadying herself as she watches him,   eyes melting and basking beneath the glow of his burning countenance.

“     remember,     ”     hades begins,     “     remember us,   celestina.     ”

she visibly flinches,   at the sound of his weakened voice,   at the sound of her name so few have uttered that still wrought its knife into her chest,   but it felt like a passing hymn from his tongue in the fading softness in his voice,   now.   it’s reminiscent of all of those rare moments they shared in quiet,   in solitude,   her head upon his chest,   his cheek pressed closely to her furred ears.

hades’s gaze is firm,   and she is beholden to them,   the pools of golden eyes and his haunting,   somber tone.   he does not break his stare for even but a moment.     “     remember   . . .   that we once lived.     ”

reaching a hand out,   cherry straightens enough to come to her feet,   posture broken,   wound still bleeding with a small pool of her blood at her feet.   her own voice is hoarse,   cracking and weak,   faint and scarcely a voice at all as she whispers,     “     hades   . . .   ”     she cannot manage anymore.   her head lowers into a nod instead,   and she soon collapses to her knees,   but she keeps her eyes fixed upon him.   she will not lose him.   she will not have him fade out of sight.

grinding her molars together,   her jaws clench as she forces herself to stand again.   it takes everything within her,   but cherry trudges forward,   closer and closer until she stands before him.   a bloodied hand grasps for his gloved one,   and she squeezes his fingers,   just enough to pull him down closer.   she spares only a few agonizing seconds to close her eyes when their lips meet,   weak and lingering,   but they open as she feels him beginning to fade.   he is as a wraith,   fading right before her eyes,   and the phantom trace of his fingers remain warm in her hand.   emet   -   selch nods,   lips curling into a diminutive smile,   and cherry feels acid tears burning the wells of her eyes.   they explode in a bursting torrent,   running hot like oil down her grit   -   stained cheeks.

“     i will not forget you,   emet   -   selch.   hades.   i   . . .   i will not let you fade.     ”

and just like that,   he is gone,   a whirlwind of aether scattering into the lifestream,   only to fade into an oblivion that she cannot reach.   he would not return.   he could not ever be.   once more,   cherry valla finds herself completely and utterly alone and drops back down to her knees,   trembling,   shaking,   and wonders how soon until she wanders to the edge of the earth for death to claim her,   too.

her vision blurs and her eyes draw to a curtain close,   his final act,   their swansong.

cherry doesn’t even realize as the twins come behind her,   singing praises of victory,   of her lone triumph against emet   -   selch.

how can she let go of all that she’s learned   ?   how does a wound this big find a way to heal   ?

there is no warmth.   there is no light.

she sinks into oblivion,   and the cold and darkness swallow her whole once again.