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caeslxys · 1 month

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the salt and the skin

Hi! I have been deeply beset by a disease that can only be cured by writing about Imogen Temult’s intensely ingrained mental illnesses. Yeah it’s contagious. Honestly this fic should probably be labeled as some type of biohazard.

Also on Ao3!

The first time Imogen told Laudna about the storm it was, appropriately, storming.

Laudna’s eyes had been swallowed by a blackness darker than that of the night surrounding them, catching and reflecting even the most minuscule scatterings of light in a way that made her gaze look full with shooting stars. She had taken her leather-shielded hand to hold in both of hers as she listened. It was the first time she could remember someone taking her hand simply to hold.

She said, here is what she knows of the storm: it is unrelenting, it is violent, it is hers.

After—as they lay for the first time in a shared space, hands locked together in a promise at their sides—Laudna fell asleep before her, eyes wide open. Imogen had spent minutes watching light shows reflect in them, enchanted utterly. She thought, without really considering the weight of it then: beautiful.

When she finally fell back asleep, she did so with the comfort of knowing she was never out of Laudna’s lightspun gaze.

———

In the time that has passed since that night the same things that have changed about the storm have changed for her and Laudna—which is to say, nothing at all.

(Which is to say, absolutely everything.

In the time that has passed since that night Imogen has become familiar with the difference between the chill that follows Laudna’s skin and the chill that follows a corpse with her face. In the time that has passed since that night Imogen has learned the difference between running from and running to. In the time that has passed since that night Imogen has learned the difference between losing and being left.

Here is what she knows of grief: it is unrelenting, it is violent, it is hers.

It does not escape her that the first time she heard her mother’s voice was in a storm.)

———

On the twenty-seventh day of Quen’Pillar, as the falling leaves and spines begin to create a shoreline on the bordering forest in a glaze of varying orange and brown shades, Gelvaan celebrates the Hazel Festival.

This, like all other celebrations in Gelvaan, is celebrated with hastily put-up stands and stages and games, the best and biggest cattle and produce hauled in on freshly cleaned wagons—some sporting their previously won ribbons as intimidating trophies—and various flowery dedications to various different gods.

The Hazel Festival, as her father explained it, is a celebration of love and divine intention—the concept and promise of soul mates. As the superstition goes, if there exists another half of you, then you would find them here. People would arrive with bouquets of freshly picked flowers, hand-written letters or hand-crafted food, wandering the small stream of Gelvaan townsfolk with the belief that they were about to stumble upon the great love of their life.

It always seemed so silly to her, which means it was something many of the people in that town held very close to their hearts.

Her father told her that they met there. He and her mother. Maybe that’s why it seemed so silly.

But here, in the dark and with the taste of honesty staining her lips, she has the passing thought that she’d like to take Laudna one day. Maybe not to the one in Gelvaan; somewhere new, somewhere that feels syrupy sweet and slow and that sticks to your skin like a joyful glaze when it's over. Somewhere that stains. She wants Laudna to have to lick her fingers clean. She wants to bring her a bouquet of flowers.

But, for now, she is in a chasm that might as well be endless telling Laudna things that she deserved to hear in any other way. She should have told her about how she feels about Delilah’s presence in their room, holding her hand, holding her lips to the skin of her throat in a threat and a promise.

She should have told Laudna she loves her at the Hazel Festival.

Instead she says “I love Laudna,” with the same tense hesitance you would feel pulling a trigger and follows it with a “but” that bursts from her chest like a bullet that precedes “I’m disgusted at the idea of Delilah looking at us all the time.” that leaves her smoking mouth like an accusation. She watches her careless aim land true in Laudna’s chest, sees the conflicted hitch and stutter of her breath from even the short distance separating them.

It ricochets; it strikes her, too.

———

During the trial of trust, when Laudna says she loves her, Imogen’s response is: “I think you’re a doppelganger right now?”

Which is silly. They’ll laugh about it later. It also makes her want to die as soon as it leaves her lips.

Because, the thing is, she knows Laudna. She knows Laudna and she would be able to tell if it wasn’t Laudna if she had been blinded or deafened or made senseless altogether. Her tether, her anchor. She would know. She should have known.

In the same way she should have known the moment they landed in Wildemount that Laudna was in Issylra. In the same way she should have known the moment she fled that Laudna was in the Parchwood. In the same way she should have known twenty years ago that Laudna was coming to her.

Not that any of it matters. She didn’t know. She didn’t know that she was in Issylra—the Parchwood—The Hellcatch—in front of her. It feels as close to sacreligious as Imogen has ever truly felt. Heretical. Like she should be punished or brought down altogether. And, really, maybe she should be. The exercise was to trust one another.

What kind of trust was it, to instinctually keep trying to reach into her friend’s minds? To summon a hound to stand between them all as they stood at the very precipice in case? If she’s honest, she doesn’t truthfully feel like any of them deserved to be called victorious.

She wonders, briefly, if the other side is lacking here, too. Ludinus, Otohan. Her mother. Is it trust that binds them? Is it faith?

The brief thought of it, that her mother has found her own version of the Hells—maybe her own version of Laudna—drives into her chest like a fist.

But none of that compares to—Laudna’s face, fumbling into disbelief at the accusation; Laudna’s grasping, empty hands; Laudna’s nervous, darting eyes. Laudna’s screams, cutting through the night off the bow of the Silver Sun. Laudna’s bleeding fingers, dripping black onto shattered, pink stone.

If it was sacrilegious of her to doubt Laudna’s intention, it is damnation she feels take root in her ribs as a hound aparrates at her side. It bursts forth with a growling howl, its decaying hackles raised, its bright green eyes trained on her, sharp and dutiful. For her to doubt Laudna—for her to make Laudna doubt her—

Well. She supposes it’s fair.

She glances at it, her Cerberus. She says, “Hi, baby boy.”

It calms. Across the fountain, face blocked by the angle of her own extended hand, Laudna calms, too. “Yes.” Laudna utters, “Good boy.”

She closes her eyes as she, Orym, and Chetney breach the barrier surrounding the fountain and drop their ivory sticks into its grasp. She reaches for Laudna’s mind one final, unsuccessful time, the plea for her not to lunge dying unheard in the folds of her mind.

(In the moment, as Morri applauds their upward failure of a success, she doesn’t register the way her now red-scarred fingers come up to brush against the now-bare skin of her temple. She should have known.

Next time, she will.)

———

When Fearne finally makes up her mind and readies herself for taking the shard, Imogen’s eyes are on Laudna and how a line of tension shoots up her spine and draws her shoulders together like folding, skeletal wings. How, as Chetney reaches into the bag of holding, she silently steps away.

Imogen hasn’t been wearing her circlet, has lowered herself once again into the rapid waters of her too-open mind for hours now, but she doesn’t need to be in Laudna’s mind to know what is passing through it.

It makes her sick, the thought of that vile woman in Laudna’s mind or soul or presence. It makes her more sick to think of Laudna spending even a moment around her influence alone.

(When Laudna had come back—when they found her, out at the tree line of the Parchwood—she had run. She had taken a moment to meet Imogen’s exhausted-elated-terrified eyes and sprinted in the opposite direction. She ran for fear of what she was capable of doing, of who she was capable of hurting, of both her lack of control and abundance of power.

She thinks of Laudna running from her and from her and from herself and, briefly, envisions a storm in the place where once she stood.)

She doesn’t really register that she has moved until Laudna is already in her arms.

“You can put your head in my shoulder. Til’ it’s over.” She whispers, one hand burying itself in Laudna’s hair and the other wrapping possessively around her waist, “I can tell you what’s happening, if you want?”

Laudna doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and then, into her neck: “You’re warm.”

She feels the barely-there press of lips to her carotid and tries valiantly not to let the shiver it sparks pass through her. Instead, she takes the hand in her hair and presses lightly, moves so that every point of their bodies that could be connected are. She says, voice silk-soft, lips brushing a metal-armored cropped ear, “So are you.”

For a moment it feels—well, intimate in a way she’s slightly embarrassed about displaying in front of the others. Slightly.

But then Laudna is murmuring “shut up, shut up, shut up,” into the skin of her shoulder and—she can’t help it—she smiles. She giggles. It is pure pride. Her brain in three parts: loving Laudna, hating Delilah, wanting to tell Laudna it’s okay to bite her shoulder to drown out the voice if it’s too loud.

She does not do that, and instead whispers the incantation she has all but ingrained on her tongue from countless back-and-forth trips on too shaky gondolas and grief insurmountable—she says, in some dead language or a command—calm.

She thinks, as the spell leaves her and Laudna’s tense body melts completely—as Fearne’s body rises into the air, encompassed in flame—as Chetney’s grip on the tools he has taken out to hold for comfort, and then on FCG’s raging body, turns white-knuckled—as Ashton flinches and almost doubles over from another shock of pain that passes through them and then as healing energy into Fearne—as Orym bounces anxiously on his heels like a flea or a warrior looking to strike—as FCG’s eyes flicker red and his tiny healing-hands become something violent—as her mother says her name through the roaring of a storm—I’m not running anymore. I won’t run.

She imagines, as Laudna pulls back when things have settled and her taloned grip releases Imogen, that her skin has formed new scars in the shape of Laudna’s hands. She holds the idea in her mind in place of an oath.

———

That night, she gives in.

It’s inevitable, really, no matter which way you look at it she and the storm and the moon have always been meant to collide. To swallow each other whole. It’s better that she does it on her terms.

Laudna agrees. It’s good that Laudna agrees. The best, actually, because she was hoping that she’d say no. She was hoping that she’d say no because she doesn’t actually want to be swallowed whole by the storm or the moon or the concept of a mother. What she wants is for Laudna to say no, and to take her hand and walk her out of the room—the house—the feywild—this entire situation—and into whatever is next. Because the truth of it is, no matter how many people go into her dreams with her, she still feels alone.

In the end, she tells herself as red bleeds into the nothing behind her eyelids, the future she has been fighting for has never been her own. The hope she holds like water in her hands was never meant for herself. Her last fight. Her last hope. She stows them away like weapons. She thinks, They’ll owe me. She thinks, They’ll free her.

Except, when she gives in—when her friends fall away, as they always do, and she is left alone and cradled and warm with the echo of her desperate mother’s voice ringing in her mind—it’s everything. It’s twenty years of nightmares and ten of minds on minds on minds and months of grief and love and wrath all wrapped up in a bow and labeled “purpose”.

She feels like a child. Or what she imagines most children felt like. Weightless. Like if she’s simply good enough there will be someone who loves her there to wrap her in a hug or a blanket and tell her she did well. Who will carry her tiny half-asleep form to her room and tuck her in and kiss her forehead and say “good night.” Like she could close her eyes and let the darkness swallow her and know someone left a light on.

It’s everything. So when she wakes to her friends hovering, groggy faces she is only guilty for a moment at the spike of disappointment that shoots through her at the sight of them. And only guilty for a second longer when her eyes land on Laudna who is still, also, endlessly, everything.

It’s not—she’s not really there for the next few seconds—minutes—hours. All of their voices come through as if she is submerged in something thick that pulls every time she tries to break for air. Or maybe a lack of air altogether. There are still stars behind her eyelids every time she blinks.

At some point in their conversation two things finally register in about the same amount of time. One: her mother had called for her. Her mother had been there. Her mother had sounded like she was crying. And two: Laudna is holding her hand.

Laudna has been holding her hand, maybe. For a few moments and a few years. It's this, her tether, that finally brings her back to—well—Exandria.

The others are—asleep? No, they’ve—that is, she and Laudna—have moved. To their room. They had a room? Have they spent a night here already? If time is a soup then she has made quite the mess.

Regardless, Laudna is holding her hand. It’s everything.

Then there is shifting, slow and slight.

“Imogen.” She hears her whisper, voice dropping to that low husk that her choked, only lightly decayed vocal cords must reach to achieve a tone so soft. She doesn’t ever mention it, but Imogen knows how sometimes kindness exists like a war in Laudna’s body. In the way her throat rebels against the scratchy dip of her voice, in the way her bones ache when embraced. It hurts her to be so soft. For Imogen, she does it anyway. “Imogen. Would you like to lie down?”

She doesn’t respond—she doesn’t think she responds—just squeezes Laudna’s cool hand in her warm one and laces their fingers together in lukewarm knots.

She feels Laudna’s hands take and cradle her close—holds there, chests rising and falling against each other like lapping waves for an amount of time Imogen doesn't bother to count—and then she twists and shifts and lays her down like a sleepy child on their shared pillows. She tucks her in. She stands.

“I’ll be back.” Laudna husks somewhere above her. “Rest, darling. I won’t be but a few minutes. I’m sure Nana has a pitcher of water somewhere around here that I won’t have to—I don’t know—make a deal for, or something.”

She thinks she feels the tiniest beginnings of a grin pinning her lips up as Laudna's steps slow near the door, hesitate—begin to close—and then open the door long enough to peek in and say: “Pâté is with you, okay, I’ll be right back. I’ll try not to bargain what remains of my soul for water, but—you know—as they say—what must be done and all—okay, bye” punctuated by the croaking sound of their door pinching shut.

Definitely a grin, then. “Pâté,” she says, dream-drunk, “Your mom is the best.”

She feels Pâté land on her chest with a soft, somewhat wet flop. His tiny feet pitter like he’s excited or dancing. He says, “I know. She’s the whole package.” And then, after letting loose a rattling sound that could be considered a yawn, he asks, “Can I get cozy, then? While we wait for mum?”

Imogen, eyes still blissfully closed, let's loose a breathless laugh. Her hand blindly makes its way to the ball of fur and viscera and bone and love on her chest and scritches, “‘Course, Pâté. We’ll wait together.”

He hums. She feels him turn in one, two, three circles on her chest before finally curling up and settling in on her skin. He makes another rattling noise that could be a yawn or maybe a purr and says, “You’re warm.”

She is undeniably smiling when she responds, “So are you, buddy.”

———

When Laudna comes back minutes or hours later, Pâté is fast asleep on her chest.

His little body rattles with what she assumes are snores, softly vibrating against her collar. She holds a finger to her lips as Laudna goes to shut the door behind her. Laudna makes a face like she’s about to burst into tears.

She doesn’t. She instead turns to—softly—shut and lock the door, and then turns soundlessly again in her direction. She takes a breath. She smiles, “I’m not going to lie, I was kind of hoping you’d be asleep when I got back.”

She hums, low in her chest. “Why?”

Laudna looks at her in that somewhat blank way she does when she thinks the answer to something is quite obvious. She says, “Because you need the rest.”

She hums again. Laudna treks the distance between them and sits softly beside her, her sharp hip just barely pressing against the bend of her waist. Her bony hand catches Imogen’s cheek—or, maybe, Imogen’s cheek willingly falls into her hand—regardless, suddenly she finds herself held. A thumb brushes under her eye with the barely there gentleness one uses when full with fear for something breaking in their grasp.

She leans forward and over her, dark hair falling around them like a curtain of ink, blanketing them in shadow, encompassing her entire vision. She asks, breath falling upon her lips like a torrent or a phantom kiss, “Are you alright, darling?”

Imogen lifts up the barely there distance to press their lips together, sighing into her mouth. “Careful with Pâté,” she whispers when she falls back, a hand splaying on Laudna’s chest to keep her from fully settling in atop her, “he needs the rest, too.”

Laudna opens her eyes as if from a good dream—and then rolls them. She lifts a hand to wave in the air as if swatting at something. “He’s dead.” She says, like it’s an obvious thing—which, it is. But. “Besides, if he dies from exhaustion or something else ridiculous then I’ll just bring him back.”

Imogen frowns. “I don’t think he’s dead. Not, like, dead-dead, anyway. ‘Sides, he’s comfy. I’d feel bad if we woke him.”

Laudna hums, then. “Yes, he is. Comfy. And also dead.”

Her turn to roll her eyes. “Where’s his house?”

Laudna sighs like the world is ending—which, well—and leans down for one more soft kiss and then back and up and off of her entirely. Imogen tries—valiantly, she might add—not to openly wince at the loss.

She watches Laudna brace her nonexistent weight against the bed in a way that would cause the mattress to dip if it were anyone else, and instead just presses with the barely there imprint of her palms into the silk. She reaches for Imogen’s chest, cups Pâté’s tiny form in her hands; Imogen brings her hands together overtop them both. When Laudna looks at her, her eyes are full of shooting stars.

“Can I?” she asks, “Please?”

Laudna stares at her for a few slow heartbeats more, a little like she is stunned. Eventually, she leans down over their joined hands and kisses her fingers. Again. Moves her thumb to run over her knuckles like she is wiping away a stain. “Of course.”

Her body still feels a little gone, a little floaty, as she brings her hands to catch Pâté’s tiny body in their joint grasp, lifts herself up against the headboard, and then swings her legs over the side of the mattress. She sways to her feet slowly, slightly wobbly, eyes never leaving from the curled-up ball of fur in her hands and on her chest. Laudna’s hands have moved and are pressing into her biceps from somewhere behind her, steadying.

She lifts her head long enough to find where Laudna had placed Pâté's little home across the room, its golden-brown wood resting silently atop the possibly skin-covered drawer by the archway that opens into a vine-wrapped, flower-lined balcony.

She half-shambles, half-stumbles her way over with Laudna on her bleary-eyed heels. It feels infinitely important—it’s always felt important, but—that she is gentle. That Laudna sees her be gentle. It is more important than she has words to describe that Laudna could leave or fall asleep or be elsewhere and feel and know that Pâté would be put softly, lovingly to bed. That he would be tucked in. That Imogen would leave a little light on for him if he asked. She looks down at Laudna’s most special little gift and drops a tiny, feather-light kiss against his skeletal head. “G’night, buddy.”

He mumbles out a gargled sounding, “G’night, ‘mogen.”

She smiles, pulls apart the tiny curtains that act as a privacy sheet to his home, tucks him in as well as she can, runs one last soft finger down the length of his beak and just like that—she can’t help it—she starts to think of her mother.

She wonders how gently Liliana held her, when she was so small and helpless and vulnerable. She wonders if Liliana ever sang to her, ever held her little hands and kissed her stubby fingers. That memory—the one that Otohan conjured or summoned or triggered—her mother had caught her as her toddler legs had stumbled; she had smiled and wiped her tear-stained cheeks and lifted her into her arms and held.

The phantom memory of a mother and the phantom memory of Ruidus begin to overlap—how long had it been, before Laudna, that she was shown gentleness? Before Laudna, two decades into her life, was it her mother? Before her mother, before she was ever given a name, was it the moon?

How was she meant to—how was it fair to expect her to—is it so evil of her, to wish? She won’t—she won’t—because she knows that it’s wrong no matter how desperately it feels right. But the—the venom she catches pooling in the depths of Orym’s gaze, sometimes, when he talks about the moon and the vanguard and she—she gets it—of course she gets it, of course she understands—but it’s not like she’s ever genuinely entertained the thought of joining the vanguard—of joining Otohan—but the moon, Ruidus, Predathos—she won’t—the silence, the comfort—her body, radiant even among the stars—running, tripping into her mother’s arms—she won’t—

“Imogen?”

A chilled hand on her shoulder, gentle, gentle, gentle.

Breath enters her empty lungs in a shock-sharp inhale. Light enters the world again—natural, silver-white moonlight like a stripe of paint from the open balcony; warm, flickering orange from the candle by the bed—and the temperature goes from freezing to scalding to cool as she collapses back into her body like debris flung from orbit. Laudna’s hand on her skin; she crash-lands back home.

On impact, she whispers, “Laudna.”

A moment of hesitance and then a soft, cool pair of lips against the curve of her neck and shoulder. Her hands circle to wrap around Imogen’s waist. She asks, again, voice feather-fall soft, “Are you alright?”

A moment of hesitance and then her traitorous mouth, her traitorous heart: “I don’t know anymore.”

Laudna presses another, more lingering kiss to the space below her ear, then moves to run her nose along the curve of her jaw. She whispers there, in a way that she feels the words press against her skin, “That’s okay.”

Imogen finds her hands against her belly and twines them together as tightly as she can—tether, anchor, home. Her breath trembles.

They don’t say anything, holding each other in the space and the silence. Laudna presses gentle, gentle kisses to anywhere on Imogen that she can reach—neck, shoulder, ear, jaw—until Imogen turns to meet her there, barely capturing Laudna’s bottom lip between hers and then moving in again, more insistent. She feels Laudna’s lips pull into a smile against hers. Imogen notes that she’s becoming familiar with the feeling. The thought pulls her own smile forth.

But they haven’t kissed like this before, at this angle, in this room. There are so many other perfect kisses they have yet to discover.

It doesn’t make sense that she only kissed her a little over a week ago. She should have kissed her a month ago, the moment she came back on the floor in Whitestone, the moment they arrived in Jrusar, two years ago in Gelvaan. She should have kissed her a hundred more times than she did the day that she first gathered the courage to kiss her in the first place and then kissed her some more. She should’ve bought lipstick so she could leave a stain.

Laudna pulls back first, half-laughing and half-sighing at Imogen’s attempt to give chase. She leans back in to press a quick kiss to her nose—new, perfect—and then dips down, seals their foreheads together, looks up at her. She asks, “Would you like to talk about it?”

No, not really. “I think I’d need another week to even begin to process what’s happened to us in the last three days, to be honest.”

Laudna nods. “Yes, understandable. It’s been a lot.” She pauses, as if to see if Imogen will respond, and then says, “Still, I’d like to listen.”

She’s perfect. That’s it, really.

Imogen finds her hand and brings it up to her lips, kissing each finger once and then each knuckle. She whispers, “I’m not sure I know how to.”

Laudna kisses her cheek. “That’s okay, too.”

When she pulls back she also pulls forward, taking Imogen’s hand in her own and guiding her. She twines their fingers together, and then they are on the balcony.

Catha shines more brightly here than she is used to in the Material Plane. There is no bloody red or pink shine of Ruidus to speak of after their work at the key. It is navy-dark, struck through with silver cuts from Sehanine’s light. There are moving, shifting vines wrapped around the stone-skinwork railing of their little alcove, purple and yellow and orange and bright, vibrant green dancing and swirling and alive around them.

Laudna gasps, her lips forming a perfect, excited “O” when she notices the little movements. “Hello, there,” she says to the vine, “Sorry to disturb you. Would it be impolite to talk to my girlfriend out here, for a minute?” and then, her hands coming up like claws and her voice deepening to the tone she uses for her most important and dramatic of questions, “Is this, like, your domain?”

The vines shake back and forth as if to say knock yourself out or maybe well I can’t stop you.

Laudna grins, “Oh, perfect. Excellent. You're much less ferocious than your feywild-forest-flower friends.” Her brows furrow, a single finger coming up to tap nervously against her lips. “Hm. I hope that wasn’t insulting.”

Before Imogen can stop her she reaches forward and lightly taps the vine with two fingers, sharp teeth exposed in a smile, “You’re perfectly ferocious as well.”

The vines shutter as if to say fuck off and then pull back and vanish, leaving clean stonework behind.

Laudna pouts. Imogen takes and tangles their hands together. “Maybe next time.”

She sighs, all dramatics, “I’m beginning to believe plants hate me as much as people do.”

Imogen knocks their shoulders together. “People don’t hate you.”

“Objectively untrue. Regardless,” she says, waving Imogen’s immediate attempt at a counter aside, “Are you ready? For tomorrow.”

For the key? For Ruidus? For her mother?

She shrugs, “As I’ll ever be. You?”

”Oh, I think so.” She leans her bony hip against the balcony wall. “It’s been a long road. To get here. I never doubted you would.”

Imogen scoffs. She leans against the wall, too. “A long road is certainly one way to describe it. A shitty road, would be another.”

Laudna tilts her head at her, raven-like. A rope of black hair falls into her face. Imogen clenches her fingers around her arms in an effort not to reach across the space and brush it behind her ear. She says, with the upward tilting, insecure cadence of a question, “It hasn’t all been shitty, though?”

Imogen heaves a heavy breath. “No,” she says, fingers still digging into her own skin, “No. Not all of it.”

Laudna hums. There is still hair in front of her eyes. “But quite a bit of it.”

”Quite a bit, yeah.”

Quiet. Some likely incredibly fucked-up feywild bird flutters its incredibly fucked-up feywild wings and takes off into the moonlit night. Imogen turns and balances her weight on her elbows, leaning over the wall. The vines from earlier are just over the edge, as if eavesdropping. She says, “But not all of it, Laudna.”

”I know,” Laudna whispers, “I agree.”

”About not all of it sucking absolute ass or about it sucking absolute ass in general?”

”Yes.”

“Awesome.” Imogen chuckles, “I’m glad we agree that everything sucks.”

”But not everything-everything.”

”This is getting pretty circular,” Laudna steps closer, “How do we make it suck less?”

Kiss me, Imogen thinks. “I have no idea.” Imogen says.

“Because, you know,” Laudna continues as if Imogen hadn’t spoken at all, “I think you’re…so capable. Truly. And I really haven’t ever doubted that you’d make it here—“

”—to the moon?—”

”—from the moment it became apparent it was possible, yes—but, really, even then—anyway. I just…I want to protect you. On the moon, but also here,” She lifts one dainty hand and presses her finger against Imogen’s forehead, “I know the dream was a lot.”

Imogen grasps Laudna’s wrist where it is in front of her face, leans forward to press a kiss against the veins there and then again at the tip of that same finger. “It was.”

Laudna shifts closer, still, leaning over her just slightly. “Do you feel any different?”

Imogen finally, finally allows herself the gift of brushing those stray hairs back, lets her fingers linger against Laudna’s gaunt cheek. “Yes and no.” she admits, eyes on the silk-soft hair tangled in her fingers to the side of Laudna’s face, “I’m not sure how to explain it.”

“That’s alright. Maybe I can help you find the words. You just—well, I…don’t want to, you know, but. You’ve just seemed a little—“

”Out of sorts.”

She sees Laudna’s breath stutter and then release. “Yes, I…I didn’t want to pressure you, or anything. It’s been a lot, so much. And you don’t have to—I trust you. I do. But if you…if you need or want help, then I would like to offer it. Is all.”

Imogen swallows. “I meant it, earlier,” bursts from her chest, her heart, “When I—That I love you. That I’m—in love with you. In case that wasn’t, um, clear.”

Laudna, for her part, looks genuinely surprised. Which is itself surprising. Not in the least because she had said she loved her, too; but, also that Imogen realizes that she very simply is not super good at hiding it.

Quietly, softly, Laudna’s lips part. Her eyes go a bit glassy. She shifts forward slightly, leaning into her palm still on her cheek. She says—whispers, really— “I know.”

Imogen inhales. Exhales. “You—well, that's good. That’s great.”

Laudna smiles against her skin. “You’re warm.” she whispers. She presses a kiss there, to the crease of her palm. “I love you, too.”

Imogen inhales. Exhales. “Well. That’s good. That’s great.”

”Mhm.”

”I don’t—“ she licks her dry lips, “I don’t know what to do now.”

Laudna hums. “Yes you do.”

”Right.” she says, “Okay.” and then she’s kissing her again.

”I’m going to ask you—“ a pause, another kiss, “I’m going to ask you about the dream again, when—“

Imogen pulls back. Laudna’s lips are kiss-swollen and shiny. It makes her want to break something. She asks, “When?”

Laudna sighs. Her eyes open to find her slowly, and then stop half-way, hanging over her iris’ heavily. Her eyes are dark. Hungry. She says, “When I’m done.”

Imogen’s eyes fall back to her lips. “Right.” She whispers, “Okay—“ and then the rest of her sentence and the rest of her breath and the rest of her thoughts are stolen from her.

———

“Now, then.” Laudna starts. She wipes the back of her hand across her uptilt lips. “What’s different? Do you have gills? Webbed fingers? Though, I supposed I’d have noticed that much by now—”

”Laudna—“ she heaves a laugh, lungs still desperate, voice a little hoarse, “God, let me catch my breath first.”

Laudna’s tongue runs lightly between her lips. She is above her, still, grey-ish arms bracketing either side of her. There is hair in her face again, sweat-stuck to her skin. Imogen is too mesmerized by the way that it splits her into like running ink and catches the nearby moonglow in a contrasting showcase of light to bother to want to brush it away. Chiaroscuro personified.

She tilts her head, bird-like and uncanny. Her eyes, shooting stars. It makes Imogen want to pull her back in. “Shit, Laudna,” she whisper-giggles, “You’re so fuckin’ beautiful.”

Laudna stutters and then grins, all too-sharp teeth. She says, teasingly, ”It’s nice to not be the breathless one for a change.”

Imogen’s laugh leaves her like a strike to the chest, “Oh, that’s a good one.”

”I thought so.”

Laudna leans down, kisses her again. Imogen sighs into her.

This—the intimacy of it—is still so new and beautiful and exciting and—well—frankly, they've both discovered that they’re ravenous. For each other and for love and for touch. That first night—at Zhudanna’s, her body still thrumming hours later with the electric echo of their first kiss—Imogen had taken Laudna’s hand after they passed the threshold of their little makeshift and borrowed home and led her to their windowless room, their small bed. She had asked: Can I kiss you again?

It was indescribably wonderful, and took approximately two lung-heaving, feather-light minutes in the aftermath to discover that Laudna was starving. Voraciously hungry. Thirty years of nothing and then—suddenly—this. Suddenly them. Imogen could hardly stand the handful of weeks apart.

Which is to say, Laudna has a tendency to lose herself in her, a little bit. It has quickly become one of her greatest prides.

Except—well.

Imogen falls back, separating them. “Sorry,” she whispers, “What were—what were you sayin’?”

Laudna pouts. ”Asking.” She corrects, “Well—maybe theorizing, but mostly asking. You said—earlier—it feels different?”

Imogen nods. She reaches up to brush her fingers over Laudna’s cheek. “Yeah.”

”Is it…good different? Or bad different?”

Imogen nods. “Yeah.”

Laudna nods, too. Imogen watches something like self-consciousness settle on her shoulders. She isn’t sure what to do about it.

Laudna braces to press a kiss to her cheek and then rolls over. When her skin hits the light it makes her look made of marble. Like a statue. A work of art.

She bends across the space and tugs the blanket up and around them both, reaching around Imogen to make sure she is covered completely. Imogen uses the opportunity to press her lips to the skin of her bicep in passing thanks.

She settles back against the sheets. “I love you.” She says. Somehow, it sounds like a plea. “And I’ll support whatever it is you decide you want to do.”

Imogen turns on her side to mirror her. “Even if—if it’s giving in completely?”

Laudna's eyes are dark. Hungry. “Whatever you decide, Imogen.”

Imogen swallows. She feels like she’s choking. Something is rising in her, clawing at her chest and stomach and ripping its way into the world. Laudna’s eyes are so dark. There is a hound in her chest. Imogen swears she hears the echo of its howl, somehow, in her own chest. In the breaths between heartbeats, something is growling.

The howl, her eyes; it rends her completely. With blood in her teeth, she says, “My mom was there.”

It leaves her like a strike of lightning, seeking the quickest way to earth, splitting and bursting apart her ribcage as it rips from her lungs. Or like a hound, pent-up and caged, let loose to hunt and sprinting, snarling to the nearest indicator of meat. Or like sickness, like bile, burning.

That’s the bursting, bleeding, burning truth of it: her mother was there. On Ruidus, at the key, in her dreams for as long as she has had them. Guiding her or warning her. In the end, isn’t that a form of love? Isn’t that what a mother would do? She felt so held, there at the center of Ruidus, in the eye of the storm, in Predathos’ hand or maybe its jaws. Her mother had screamed for her. Her mother had cried for her.

And she can’t remember the feeling of her mother’s warmth, but she can remember the sound of her voice: Run. Imogen.

Does Predathos have a voice? Would it mourn her? Would it leave?

“What did she do?” Laudna—like a thunderclap, or a resonating howl, or a hand on her heaving back—takes and wraps their bodies together like twisting vines. She presses their foreheads together. Her eyes are still dark. “Imogen. What did she say?”

Laudna would. Laudna would mourn her. Laudna would tuck her corpse into bed before leaving her.

”I don’t—she just—called for me. My name. She said no. Laudna.” Laudna’s hands on either side of her clenched jaw, Laudna’s lips centimeters from her own, Laudna’s hand in hers in the middle of the storm. “She sounded like she was crying.”

She feels the well in her eyes overflow, cutting down her cheeks. Laudna makes some gasping sound and leans in, pressing her lips to the skin and the salt. “Imogen. Imogen, I’m sorry. Imogen.” She pulls back. The dark in her eyes is gone. “Darling, what can I do?”

Imogen shakes her head. They’re close enough that each passing arc causes their noses to bump. “I don’t know.” She says, voice tight. “I don’t know. What if I fucked up? What if she left to protect me and I wasted it? I don’t know anymore, Laudna.”

Laudna kisses her, lightly, a barely there press of their lips and then gone. Like she isn’t sure how else to respond. “What happened? When you gave in? What did it feel like?”

Imogen trembles. “I—you all—left. Were pulled away. It brought me in and then—my mama—but it—“ here, she sobs, “it was warm.”

Laudna’s body stiffens around her, arms locking like rigor mortis around her waist. She doesn’t exhale for a long, long time. When she does, it passes over her lips like a torrent.

“My mother taught me to sew.” she starts. “Did I ever tell you that? We didn’t often have enough money to go get new clothes so we made our own. Anyway, the first time it was because I ripped a hole in one of my shirts out in the woods—I was digging for worms—and when I came back I was all in a huff, expecting to be in so much trouble and felt so terrible for ruining clothes I knew she made for me.”

She pauses to press a kiss to Imogen’s hairline, “She took the ruined thing out of my hands and taught me how to fix it.”

She inhales. There’s the tiniest stutter in her chest that makes Imogen want to level another city block. “I used to think about her quite often. Everytime I found myself trying to sleep on the floor of some cold, abandoned cabin, all alone, I remember wishing she were there to teach me how to fix it.”

Their eyes find each other again, snapping together like magnets or puzzle pieces. Laudna’s eyes are full of shooting stars again. “I just—I’m just sorry, Imogen. I’m sorry I don’t know how to fix this. I’m sorry she doesn’t.”

No longer the snapping wolf, no longer the lightning strike or the thunderclap or the bile or the hand; Imogen breaks.

“God, Laudna. It feels like—like I'm mourning her.” She sobs. The words loose from her throat like an arrow held taut for too long, aimless. “But, Laudna, she isn't—she was never gone."

It is an ugly, sharp, irrational thing, her grief; she feels it drive like icicles into Laudna’s already chilled skin and dig rot-guilt up from under the warmth of her own when the weight of it tugs her over and into Laudna further. She wishes, fleetingly, that she could wear her grief as prettily as she thinks Laudna does. Laudna slips into hers like an old coat or an old blanket—scratchy, filled with holes, utterly familiar in a way that settles onto her shoulders in some poor facsimile of comfort.

Imogen’s is always, always this: an implosion. An excavation of the self. Her body nothing more than a dig-site of scars with histories older than she is.

“She’s my mama, Laudna.” It is a pathetic plea, it drops with the weight of a stone into water from her lips, “She was always with me. I never knew her. I love her and I loved her. She was dead. I have to kill her. I have mourned so why am I still mourning?”

The last word rips out of her in two tones, caught in the hiccup-choke of a sob into Laudna’s shoulder.

"Oh, darling." Laudna whispers, her lips against Imogen’s temple petal-soft in a way that makes the guilt dig deeper, sugar and salt. For a moment she only holds her. Presses kisses to the side of her head. And then Imogen feels air fill her chest, hears her lungs expand with the accompanying sound of bones like a creaking ship at sea or a growling hound. She says, with all the wisdom of someone who has lived and died and lived again, "Mourning is just…love in a transitive state.”

She shifts, catching the wet guilt dripping from Imogen’s face and forming lakes of grief at her collar, rivers of it down her chest. It makes Imogen’s breath catch, watches the moonlight catch in the momentary proof of her on Laudna. She continues, more softly, “It is…an adjustment to distance. Not gone—just far."

At this, Imogen glances away from the stain of her to meet Laudna’s eyes. She hesitates, breath a pathetic stutter in her lungs. She asks, “Are we still talking about my mother?”

Laudna watches her. And watches her. And then, voice like a bleeding wound or creaking branches or whining rope: “Death could not take me from you.”

“Don’t—“ she begs, “Do not—Laudna—“

”It can’t, Imogen. She can’t.”

Imogen sobs, reaches up desperately to cradle Laudna’s face in her hands. “I don’t want you to be another voice in my storm, Laudna. I can’t. I won’t.”

Laudna's gentle, cool hands gather her own callous, warm ones together at their collar. She asks, "Can I tell you something you don't want to hear?"

A laugh breaks out of Imogen’s lungs, desperate and sad. “You already are.”

Her grip on Laudna's hands is not gentle, it is clinging. Clawing. She imagines that when Laudna pulls away, her wrists will bear the bruise of her.

She says, in that same creaking branches voice, "You would have been fine without me."

She pulls away—tries to—hears her voice from outside her body saying, "No—No, I—" but then Laudna's fingers are entangled in hers like roots and Imogen is—she's—clinging, too.

"Don't say that." She cries. There is thunder in her voice. A precursor and warning. "I love you. Don’t say that.”

Laudna’s hands release hers to wrap around and claw at the skin of her hip, dragging them close again. Her eyes are swimming. “You’re so strong, so capable, and you are going to live. Your storm won’t take you. You will outgrow it.”

”You are, too.” Imogen demands. Because it is a demand, of herself and of the world. “You’re going to live, too.”

Laudna says nothing. Imogen continues, “I won’t let her have you, Laudna. If I can outgrow my storm, you can outgrow her.”

Laudna’s face is choked up in grief, now, in a way that Imogen has never really seen. “I just mean—“ she starts, chokes, starts again, “I just mean—my mother taught me to sew. And I did. And I think maybe your mother taught you to run. And you did. And I don’t think it’s…it’s understandable, that you wish she had taught you how to sew instead.”

Something in her, some roaring thing—the storm, maybe—cracks her skin at the words. She thinks if she were to look at her hands right now there would be new scars.

Laudna takes her ruined hands into her own; she tries to fix them. “But I can teach you how to sew, Imogen. I can—and then when I'm—gone. You can still sew. Or cook or—or paint or—whatever it is, Imogen. Imogen.”

Imogen rushes in; she kisses her. What else is there to say? What do you say when I love you isn’t big enough anymore? How do you say I don’t want you to teach me how to sew, I want you to teach me how to hunt?

Maybe there aren’t enough words to encompass them. Maybe they’ve created their own expanse of love and devotion here, between them. Maybe they’ve spent two years carving a space for the other in the ether of the world.

Everything they’ve found, all of the information they've picked up on the Gods and what makes or breaks or conjures them in these past months—faith. Both the call and the creator, the word around which divinity molds itself. And her faith, her divine call into the dark—her unanswered pleas on her knees in Gelvaan, on her knees at the altar of the Dawnfather Temple in Whitestone—if they can pick and choose whose faith they deem truthful, then what does it mean to be truly faithful?

The confidence in the callous hands of a blacksmith as he brings the hammer down, striking metal into shape. The gentle hands of a gardener digging into the soil, preparing it for life, removing that which would otherwise ruin and rot. The small hands of a child held in the soft, guiding hands of their mother. Are these not examples of divine faith?

Would the Dawnfather's hands hold her face so gently? Would the Wildmother's lips press so softly to her brow? Would the Changebringer's fingers dig just so into the skin of her shoulders, sweaty and heaving in the aftermath of her storm?

What could the gods offer her that Laudna hasn't? What would they ask in return for what Laudna freely gives? What faith of hers have they earned?

If faith is the ultimate test of love and passion and trust—than whose altar but Laudna's would she kneel to?

If godhood, then, is as simple as a state of faith and belief then maybe she alone can love her to the point of divinity. Immortality. Imogen could make a God of her. Maybe, she thinks with Laudna’s bottom lip caught between her teeth, maybe one more kiss will do the trick. Maybe one more. One more.

Eventually a sob—Imogen’s, of course—breaks them apart. Her head falls into Laudna’s neck. Laudna’s arms cross behind her back and press her close. She runs her taloned fingers over the bare skin at Imogen’s shoulder blades, the base of her neck, down every popping vertebrae. She is breathing at the normal human rate—for her it is heaving. She kisses Imogen’s temple.

“No one can take away the love for the mother you wanted. Not even the mother you have." She says into her hair, and then pulls away and down—kisses her. Keeps kissing her. When she separates to speak it is by centimeters, “And no one can take me away from you. Not Delilah. Not Otohan. Not Predathos or The Matron.”

And then, into her trembling mouth, “If we are apart, then I am within.”

Imogen lets out a wrecked—choking—dying sound, “Yeah—Yes. Laudna, I—“ desperate and clumsy and broken, she brings her shaking hand up to Laudna’s face and presses her finger to Laudna’s forehead, “Here. As long as you’re here.”

Laudna nods, brings her own talons up to Imogen’s face in a mirror-gesture, “Here. As long as you’re here.” And what is left for Imogen to do besides to rush up and in and in and in. Again and again and again.

Here, in Jrusar, in their room at Zhudanna’s, in Zephrah, in the Feywild, in Bassuras, on the moon, in the storm. In the evening, in the morning, in the middle of the day, in the depths of the night. Crying, laughing, bloody, triumphant. Again and again and again and again.

Better halves, Imogen thinks—into Laudna’s head and then, endlessly, into her own, Better wholes. I love you. I love you.

“I love you.” Laudna gasps aloud, ripping away and then rushing back in, “Imogen. Imogen. As long as you’re here. I love you.”

Imogen nods, gasps, and then neither of them say much at all.

———

In the end, Imogen doesn’t say: I lied. When I promised to move on. I lied to you. Nor does she say: I’m sorry. I’m not disgusted by you. I could never be. I love you so deeply that every time I look at you I am remade. She doesn’t say: I sundered her once. I’ll sunder her again. If you’ll let me, I’d plant a new sun tree in your mind. One that makes you think of picnics and not nooses. One that makes you think of the view and not the fall.

She does not say: I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can kill her. Will you do it? Can we trade?

She tucks these confessions away in the divots of her mind right alongside her circlet. She hopes the weight of them, the promise of them, will help to keep her runaway feet firmly rooted.

———

(After, Laudna falls asleep before her, eyes wide open.

Imogen lays next to her, one hand softly running up and down Laudna’s exposed navel, the other curled under her own head as she allows herself to trace the profile of her face.

It is late enough—or, early enough, maybe—that Catha’s light cannot breach the shared darkness of their space. Or maybe it does, and is swallowed entirely by the pitch of Laudna’s eyes.

Laudna’s eyes—the empty, dark swirl of them—Imogen remembers her gaze full with stars—captures her attention. The shadows in the room paint Laudna an even deeper dark, cutting her features into shapes that catch the barely there impression of light that Imogen’s weak, mortal eyes require to capture form.

With no light, with nothing to reflect in her sky-locked, sleep-awake stare; Laudna appears hungry. Like even in sleep, she is hunting. In the dark, she takes the form of a predator.

Watching her, Imogen thinks of Ruidus and of the storm there and of the one in her mind and of the one that takes the shape of her mother—reaching and watching and waiting for her, the entirety of her life—like an animal, like something waiting in the grass for her to make a mistake or lose her footing—waiting on the opportunity to close in on her—to consume her or to change her—

She reaches across the space.

Gently, mournfully, she closes Laudna’s eyes.)

#critical role #imogen temult #laudna #imodna #liliana tumult #writing #I don’t think I love this anymore BUT. at least it is Finished and I can Move On. To Other Equally Distressing WIPs #i have a full blown liliana character study locked in the chamber of my brain. she is in there.#and delilah is right next to her. in a away i am just like the gay girls #also sos. this is the first time i’ve posted fic anywhere but especially on here in YEARS and why the FUCK #did they take away being able to simply add a line break. or am i dumb. i couldn’t get the HTML to work either orz #Also post-posting update. I am now recognizing a collection of formatting errors specifically on this version that I am like. h about.#But Whatever. The Show Must Go On

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skyward-floored · 7 months

Text

Whumptober Day 6: Made to watch, “It should have been me”

This took way too long to finish and didn’t even end up the way I wanted to in the end exactly but it’s fine! It’s fine!!!

*cries*

Warnings: blood & injury, being electrocuted, slight torture-y elements.

Read it on ao3

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“Link. Hey, Rancher, wake up.”

The serious tone of voice dragged Twilight from his comfortable sleep, making him blearily open his eyes. He found that his head was under the thicker blankets the inn had provided for their beds, and he reluctantly poked his head out, frowning at the cold that met him.

Warriors looked down at him, arms crossed and face unreadable, and Twilight blinked at him, still waking up.

“What’dya want?” he mumbled, squinting at the window. All he could see was dark grey. “...Wars, what time is it?”

“Early, I don’t know. About dawn I guess,” Warriors shrugged, and unceremoniously pulled Twilight’s blankets off. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

“What?!” Twilight sputtered, and grabbed for his blankets. “Give me those! It’s freezing in here!”

“I know right? It’s awful. These people have no clue how to keep an inn warm, I mean it’s snowing outside.”

“Captain,” Twilight growled, seriously annoyed now. He’d been having a rather nice dream about a warm, sunny field with goats in it, up until Warriors had decided to drag him awake. “Why are you up so early, and why are you waking me up so early?”

A smile twitched at Warriors’ lips. “Why Rancher, I thought you country folk were used to waking up at the crack of dawn.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate sleeping in on a freezing morning when we’re at an inn for once,” Twilight bit out, snatching back his blankets and wrapping himself in them. “What do you want.”

“Sheesh, you’re cranky this early,” Warriors said with an eye roll. “Anyway... do you remember what we were talking about last night after dinner?”

Twilight stared at Warriors, and pulled his blankets back over his head.

“Rancher come on, hear me out!”

The blankets were peeled back again, and Twilight looked up at Warriors’ face, only barely apologetic. The captain gave him a grin, and Twilight groaned, sitting back up with no small reluctance.

He was wide awake now, he supposed he might as well hear what the captain had to say.

“Fine. What.”

Warriors cleared his throat, looking excited. “Okay okay, so last night Wild and Wind wouldn’t shut up about how similar they think we look, right?”

Twilight nodded, frowning a bit.

The night before, after they’d all eaten dinner and were sitting around talking, Wind had asked the others if they’d ever noticed how similar Twilight and the captain looked. Wild had immediately agreed, a grin on his face, and the others had quickly hopped on board as well, loudly debating their similar features.

Some of the arguments had been valid, and Four had put together a surprisingly long list of resemblances between Twilight and Warriors that Twilight was inclined to believe, but several of them were just ridiculous. Even when Twilight voiced this, he was immediately shot down, and Wild and Wind wouldn’t let the matter drop, repeatedly bringing it up until Twilight and Warriors couldn’t stand it anymore and went off to bed.

“What does that have to do with dragging me out of bed at the crack of dawn?” Twilight asked, and Warriors grinned, holding up two green tunics.

“It’s so we have lots of time to prepare. I think we should show them just how similar we really are.“

Twilight sat up a bit straighter, paying more attention now as he looked between his and Warriors’ tunics.

“Oh?”

“Let’s switch clothes. Just for the day. We’ll give them a shock,” Warriors grinned, and Twilight found himself grinning as well, picturing the looks on Wild and Wind’s faces. “Maybe get them to knock it off with the twin jabs too. What do you say?”

Twilight reached out and took Warriors’ tunic, and gave the captain a smirk.

“Show me how you usually pin your scarf.”

(...)

Wild and Wind’s reactions were, to say the least, exactly what Twilight had hoped they would be.

Warriors and Twilight had quickly dressed, then stationed themselves so they weren’t facing the stairs, their differences harder to notice from the back. Wind had come down to breakfast soon after, yawning into his hand, and had tugged Warriors’ scarf to ask him when they were going to leave.

Except Warriors had been Twilight, and Wind nearly jumped out of his skin when he looked up and realized who it was he was actually talking to.

Wild had had a similar reaction, though it had taken him a bit. He was most of the way through breakfast before he’d suddenly jumped up and pointed between the two, face so gobsmacked that Twilight nearly choked he was laughing so hard.

After the chaos had died down and they’d finally finished breakfast, they’d headed out from the inn, a light flurry of snow falling on their heads. Warriors and Twilight stayed in the wrong clothes as they traveled through the snowy forest, responding to the wrong names and just generally confusing the others.

It was driving Wild crazy, and Twilight was loving every second of it.

A few small flakes fell on his head, and Twilight shivered a bit as the wind blew at his face. The weather was even colder outside the inn, and the Links had all bundled up in their thick clothing, Wind and Four looking especially chilly. Twilight actually wasn’t bothered too much by the cold, especially with Warriors’ scarf wrapped warmly around his neck, and he noticed with a smirk that Warriors himself looked quite content in his wolf pelt.

“You know, you smell like a wet dog, Captain,” Legend mentioned offhandedly. “Look a bit like one too. You’re giving Wolfie a run for his money.”

Warriors shot him a look from under the hood of Twilight’s pelt, and Legend smiled innocently.

“Well perhaps so, but I’m much warmer than you are,” he pointed out, and Legend’s smirk fell a bit.

“Well at least I’m not swimming in clothes made for someone twice as muscled as me.”

The two continued to exchange jabs, and Twilight shook his head in exasperation. Warriors may have been wearing Twilight’s clothes, but it didn’t change his personality a bit.

“You look nice in the captain’s scarf Twi,” Four said at his side, his own hood up to block the snow. “The colors set off your eyes.”

Twilight chuckled. “If you say so. It is rather soft,” he admitted, holding up a bit of the rich, blue fabric. “It definitely does the job, but I don’t know how he handles this thing in warmer weather.”

“I could ask the same of you,” Warriors said back, and Twilight shrugged. “All this fur must be awful if you’re ever anywhere warm.”

“Oh I manage.”

The conversation stopped for a bit, and Twilight looked around at the road they were following, noticing with some concern how high a couple of the drifts of snow were. If the snow had blown across the path like that anywhere, some of their shorter members were going to struggle.

“Think I’m going to scout ahead a little,” Twilight said, tapping Time on the shoulder. “I’ll see if I can make it to that bridge the villagers were talking about, see how much snow we’re dealing with.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Time replied. Then his face twitched into a smirk. “Don’t trip on your scarf.”

Twilight snorted and shook his head, already walking away.

“Hey, I’ll come with you,” Warriors offered as he jogged up to join his side, and Twilight looked at him in surprise. But he nodded and made room so they could walk side by side.

“You didn’t have to come you know Captain. Not that I mind, but just because we swapped clothes doesn’t mean we have to be together the whole day,” Twilight mentioned once they were out of earshot of the others, and Warriors shrugged, looking around at the woods.

“Eh, I wanted to. Besides, I was getting real sick of Legend calling us the ‘wolf twins’.”

Twilight barked out a laugh, and he and the captain continued ahead through the snowy woods, silent and cold.

They were quiet for a while as they outpaced the group, the snow falling softly around them. Twilight had no clue who’s time they were in, but wherever they were, the forest was beautiful, covered in snow and ice, flakes falling silently around them.

Twilight felt almost like he was in a storybook walking through the picturesque woods, and the unfamiliar clothes he was wearing only added to the almost otherworldly sense. It was odd having a scarf around his neck, but he didn’t mind the way it flared out behind him when he walked. It was sort of fun.

Twilight looked over at Warriors, keeping pace next to him, and studied him a minute. He had to admit to himself that Wild was right, at least a bit. With the pelt’s hood up covering his lighter hair, Warriors really did look almost exactly like Twilight.

“What’s that look for?” Warriors asked, and Twilight blinked, realizing he’d been staring.

“I was just thinking,” he admitted, and looked Warriors up and down. “I hate to admit it, but the others are kind of right. We really do look similar.”

“Yeah, I know,” Warriors said, and his eyes took on a distant look. “...Did you know there’s a statue of you in my time?”

Twilight startled. “What?”

“Well, there’s ones of a bunch of us actually,” Warriors reprimanded, and met his eyes. “Even Wolfie. We didn’t realize just how many there were until we were clearing out the Temple of Souls after the war. We were making sure there wasn’t any leftover dark magic or monsters, but we mostly just found statues, and... paintings.”

Warriors shook his head as if to clear it. “Anyway, I originally thought the one of you was me. We were so similar-looking, especially at the time with the hats and everything, it took a while until we figured out you were a separate hero entirely.”

“Well, that explains why you recognized most of us when we met,” Twilight said with a smirk, and Warriors chuckled.

“Yeah, I’ll admit I cheated. I don’t know if I saw one of everyone though, now that you mention it. I wonder—”

“Wait, shh,” Twilight said abruptly, holding a hand out.

Warriors went silent, and Twilight swiveled his ears around, the snow softly falling on their heads.

The woods had gone even more silent then before, no birds, no wind. Twilight knew he had heard something, but he wasn’t sure if it was just a twig snapping from the weight of the snow, or something more—

An earsplitting screech rang out through the woods, nearly sending Twilight and Warriors to their knees. Twilight’s heart stopped at the familiar sound, but before he could even grab his sword or raise his head, something crashed into him and threw him against a tree so hard he nearly blacked out.

He heard a shout through the ringing in his ears, and forced his eyes open, gasping at the sight of a Shadow Beast mere inches from his face.

No, no how is this possible it can’t— does this mean— the Twilight Realm—?!

Twilight struggled to grab his sword, but the Shadow Beast tightened its grip, and it held him so tightly against the tree Twilight was worried it would break something.

He looked frantically around for a way to get out, and saw that while Warriors wasn’t pinned like he was, he was completely surrounded. The captain was looking around at the shadow beasts with a worried look in his eyes, and he made frantic eye contact with Twilight. But before either of them could do or say anything, Twilight heard footsteps crunch through the snow nearby.

He looked up, and felt ice drop into his chest.

Zant stood in the center of the clearing, like a blot of spilled ink against the pristine snow. Twilight stared, praying that he was somehow mistaken, but as Zant strode forward, there was no doubt that it was the usurper himself.

He barely seemed to notice Twilight, giving him only a single glance, then stalked over to Warriors, standing just inside his army of shadow beasts.

“Hero of Twilight,” Zant said with a hint of glee in his voice. “It’s been so long, did you miss me?”

Warriors flicked his eyes over to Twilight, then back to Zant, a glimmer of confusion in his eyes. Zant was clearly referring to him, and Twilight stared at them both for a second before realizing what was happening.

Oh sweet Ordona, he thinks Warriors is me.

Warriors obviously realized what was going on as well, for he quickly smoothed his face of its confused look, casually pulling the hood further over his head. Twilight thrashed against the Shadow Beast, opening his mouth to shout, but one of its hands moved to cover it and his cry was cut off.

Warriors glanced at him again, then exhaled, and tightened his grip on his sword.

“That’s right Zant, that’s me,” he said steadily, even adding a bit of a twang to his voice that made him sound vaguely like Twilight. “The Hero of Twilight.”

Twilight thrashed even harder against the shadow beast holding him, but the monster didn’t budge, no matter what he did.

Wars you idiot it’s me he wants!

“Hmm... you’re scrawnier than I remember...” Zant hummed, leaning down to stare at Warriors’ face. “I suppose you haven’t been doing so well without your little shadow? So sad that she shattered the mirror the way she did.”

Twilight ignored the sting the words left in his heart.

“How have you returned?” Warriors demanded, never lowering his sword. “The last I heard, you were dead.”

“Ah, it was my new glorious god! The Creature of Shadows!” Zant crowed, twirling in place. “He has allowed me this return so I may have my revenge on those who have wronged me, in exchange only for his allegiance!”

Zant abruptly stilled, voice dropping into the tone he used when he sounded more sane.

“And you, Hero of Twilight, are the first on my list.”

Warriors barely had time to leap away as Zant drew twin swords and jumped at him, avoiding his attacks and striking back as best as he could.

Twilight clawed at the Shadow Beast holding him, desperate to help the captain, but it only struck him across the face, and retightened its grip. Pain exploded across Twilight’s face, but he ignored the sharp pain in his nose, watching Warriors fight with an increasing panic.

He couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t even call out advice or encouragement with the Shadow beast covering his mouth, just sit here and watch, with his nose throbbing and blood trickling down his face.

When he was the one who should have been fighting in the first place.

Warriors fought almost like he’d faced Zant before, neatly dodging his attacks and easily matching his swings. At any other moment Twilight would have admired his technique, but he was too worried. Zant’s speed was nearly impossible to keep up with, and Twilight could see Warriors was quickly tiring.

Right about when Twilight was growing truly panicked, Zant stepped back, pausing in his frantic attacks.

“This has been quite fun, but I’m afraid I didn’t come here to fight,” he said coolly, and his helmet shifted, revealing his mouth pulled up in a smile. Warriors paused as well, but kept his sword up, still ready and willing to fight.

“Then what do you want?” Warriors said breathlessly, and Zant’s smile twisted into a grin.

“To make you suffer.”

Two shadow beasts leaped at Warriors from behind, catching him off guard and throwing him to the ground. They pinned his arms and legs in a similar manner to Twilight in mere seconds, and Warriors’ sword went flying, Twilight letting out a muffled shout.

Zant stalked forward, his weapons skimming the snow on the ground.

“I should have killed you back at the Spirit’s Spring long ago, but now I’m almost glad I didn’t. I think I prefer to draw it out,” Zant said in a voice filled with glee as he stood above Warriors. “I’ve waited to repay you for stealing my rightful throne for a long time, Hero.”

“Rightful throne? It was never your throne to begin with,” Warriors scoffed, and gritted his teeth as Zant pressed the tip of his sword to his cheek.

“It should have been!” Zant hissed, and dragged the sword across Warriors’ face, leaving a bloody line in its trail. “I am the Twilight Realm’s rightful king! It is my throne, and I am it’s ruler!”

“I’ve met the true ruler of the Twilight Realm,” Warriors gritted out, and Twilight’s brain stalled for a second. What? “and you’re not her.”

“I am the rightful ruler!” Zant shouted, and dug the tip of his sword into Warriors’ shoulder, pulling a gasp from his lips. “Say it!”

Warriors glared. “Midna is—”

“DO NOT SPEAK HER NAME!” Zant shrieked, and lit his swords up with a dark, crackling magic.

Warriors’ eyes went wide and Twilight let out another muffled shout, but the two of them could only watch as Zant stabbed the blades downward into Warriors’ arms.

Lightning ripped across Warriors’ body, and he screamed, his back arching with electricity.

Twilight had never heard him make a noise like that.

He kicked out madly against the shadow beast holding him, but its grip never budged, and he couldn’t do a thing as Zant slowly removed his swords, leaving Warriors to gasp for breath, twitching slightly in the snow.

Tell him you’re not the one he wants, Twilight mentally begged, watching in horror as Zant repeated the action, making Warriors scream again. Tell him you’re not the Hero of Twilight, Captain!

“I am the Twilight Realm’s king,” Zant practically hissed as he yanked his swords out of Warriors again, leaving him shaking and bloodied on the ground. He thrust a blade under Warriors’ chin, lifting it so he was forced to meet his eyes. “And you and that imp are nothing but insignificant worms under my feet.”

“I... th-think she’d say the opposite,” Warriors rasped.

Zant howled in outrage and lunged forward, but it was then that Twilight finally managed to bite the Shadow Beast’s hand with enough force that it removed it from his mouth.

“I’m the Hero of Twilight!” he screamed, and Zant froze, turning slowly towards him. “I’m who you want Zant, leave— leave him alone,” his finished thickly.

Zant didn’t move for a second, staring at Twilight in silence. Then he turned back to Warriors, grabbing him by the collar and lifting him up so they were practically nose-to-nose.

The hood of the wolf pelt fell back, fully revealing Warriors’ bright blond hair, and marking-less face.

“A fake!” Zant roared in outrage, and threw Warriors to the ground, the captain still twitching with electricity.

He turned towards Twilight, practically shaking with fury.

“You,” he spat, small crackles of energy leaking from his sleeves as he approached. “You. Hero of Twilight. How dare you—”

A golden arrow flew across the clearing, and buried itself right into Zant’s shoulder.

Light burst outward and Zant let out a primal scream, clutching at his arm. More arrows followed, and Twilight heard the Shadow Beasts cry out as well, but he couldn’t see very well due to the sudden increase of light. The monster holding him let go, and Twilight didn’t stick around, catching a glimpse of armor and knowing the others would deal with the monsters.

He made a beeline for Warriors, stumbling a little as he ran. His head still hurt where the shadow beast had slammed him into the tree, his nose was bleeding all over his face, and his whole body was sore, but he wasn’t planning on stopping.

“Captain, are you with me?” he asked as he slid to his knees, and Warriors blearily looked up at him, eyes bright with pain. “Warriors, can you hear me?”

“You... you got a little...” Warriors croaked, reaching up like he was going to wipe the blood off of Twilight’s face, and the rancher waved him off, hands fluttering over the captain’s bleeding body. He was still twitching occasionally, blood soaking his clothes, and the cut across his cheek was bleeding steadily, dripping blood into Twilight’s pelt.

“By the gods Captain, you’re an absolute idiot,” Twilight said with a surge of guilt and horror, putting pressure on what looked like the worst injuries. “You should’ve just told him who I was, why didn’t you?!”

“He wanted... you. Better this way,” Warriors breathed, and gave Twilight a bloody smile. “I am... sorry I... I wrecked your tunic.”

Twilight glared at him, then untangled the scarf from around his own neck. “Permission to get your scarf bloody?”

“‘S only fair,” Warriors chuckled weakly, and Twilight bundled it over him, stemming the flow of blood.

Warriors let out a cough, a twitch running through him again, and Twilight helped him sit up when he tried to himself, the captain leaning heavily on his shoulder. He moved his head so it was resting more easy, and looked at the blood on the captain’s cheek, guilt still laying heavy in his chest.

It should have been me.

“...Rancher?”

Twilight looked over at Warriors again, wincing at a screech that rang out much too close by.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t regret it,” Warriors said firmly, shivering with another tremor. “Not... not at all. Don’t be... guilty.”

Twilight looked away. “Well what am I supposed to do then?”

Warriors gave him another bloody smirk.

“Y-you could say thank you.”

Twilight felt a smile twitch onto his face against his will, and he snorted out a laugh through his still-bleeding nose, lightly bonking his head against Warriors’.

“Fine. Thanks.”

Then he turned and looked Warriors directly in the eye, pushing aside the still heavy guilt in his chest.

“And once you get a red potion in you, I want to know how on earth you know Midna and Zant.”

Warriors smiled as a triumphant cry came from the battle around them.

“Sure thing.”

#this is all over the place but if I mess with it anymore I WILL go insane #so here: be free little fic #linkeduniverse #linked universe #lu twilight #lu warriors #linked universe fanfic #whumptober #whumptober 2023 #day 6 #it should have been me #made to watch #writing from the floor #Zant is hard to write and I discovered this the hard way #he’s crazy and scary and childish and weird and I don’t think I found that balance #gahhhh whatever #not happy with this

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