she does not hear his footsteps. he is a ghost on this mountain, just like the rest of them, so when he speaks, she startles. moxie wakes with a start, folding over herself in a dazed attempt to get between her mistress and the intruder. 

freya recognizes him instantly. the brush of cold against her cheeks makes stringent coals, frozen over in a midcentury hearth, begin to warm. she coos moxie into complacency and the dratini slithers back into her lap, though she does not relax.

"why does anyone come to a graveyard?" she says. she considers rising, considers reaching for the swordbow leaning up against sophia's grave. her gaze darts there and back. 

"sit with me," she says instead, "and tell me - do you remember?"

jayden cross

☉

if some part of them lives on, it's not here. they know that much now. the veil is thinner than ever before and the dead, if they want to, never truly stay dead. which makes it all the more confusing that it was not sophia or theodore that awaited her at the edge all those moons ago, when instead she found her birth mother. 

did they not have things left unsaid? 

did they not forgive her, in the end?

"something like that," she says. the people they were, the people they never were, technically, are as good as dead. no one left to remember them by, not even himself. 

save for her.

"it's better if you don't remember." she stiffens when he nears. he could kill her, quite easily, if he wanted to, if she put her defenses down. "but...you feel it, i think. the connection. right?"

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they were jailed then too and isn't that always the way the story ends? they break one set of chains only to find themselves in another. even the dead, it seems, are beholden to rules on the other side.

"yes," she says, "i do. just like melusine does. just like vodnik does."

they never really talked about the before. not in the ways that were painful, that reminded them of the divide if they were to ever leave. she looks away from the grave and looks at him and says, "do you have anyone here?"

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☉

the two of them had found solace in their desire to return home, and companionship when the rest of them gave up on the dream. ice crawls over him and though no blood drips from his nose, she can feel it - the remembering. she does not move away, nor does she move toward. 

she stays, like she had those countless nights, a resolute ally by his side. 

and she says, "i won't forget." not after she spent countless nights lying awake, eyes bloodshot, blood dribbling over her lips, smearing the page as she scratched with fervent urgency anything and everything she could remember. she burned galar into herself, stuffed that dream inside a mind too small to comprehend it. 

they're similar in that way, wounding themselves for the ones they love. bearing the weight of the world so no one else has to. 

her skin reddens where the frost nips and she winces, but she takes his hand, twining their fingers together. 

"mine did too," she says softly.

"i never wanted to be buried." she wanted to burn. she wanted her ashes scattered, left to soak in the blood and the mud, staining the earth until the rains eventually washed her away. left only to become a memory. 

"but now, i think maybe i do, if only because i want the people i love to know they can visit me. they can pretend i'm close, even if they know it's not real." she stares at the graves in front of her and uses her free hand to wipe wetness from her eyes. 

"does it hurt?" she asks, thumb dancing over frost, "having the ice in your veins?"

jayden cross

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there have been a dozen and one blips in her journey, pockets of self-actualization where she thought to herself i am happy and more importantly, i am glad to be alive, but somehow, this is different.

she stares at her guilt, names etched into stone, and she feels the weight of her life, and she is so heavy with it, so full of it, and to think it might be robbed of her is too cruel a thought. it is not until now, with a demon at her side, that she learns she has come to fear death.

she sees their smiles, feels their laughter, blown over her by a cold wind. 

"i loved them," she says softly. "sophia was a strong woman, but not hard. like water, like the tides. theodore, he had the fullest, deepest, rumbling laugh. she taught me how to shoot. he taught me how to fly."

the gravel shifts and her bones creak, small smile on her face replaced with tired, drawn confusion. 

"they kept a secret from me, about my heritage. my birthright. i think they knew my mother."

if you die, i can visit you in sootopolis.

"i think they knew i was a draconid."

homesickness crawls between her ribs, clinging steadfast despite her shuddering breath. she bites her lip, catches the sob, but salt wets her lips. tears silently tumble and she thinks, with great sorrow, if i die, jayden, won't it be at your hand?

her chin brushes her shoulder as she turns to look. his pale skin is scored with silver. her own, eerily similar, twinge at the memory of fangs in her neck, the rip-tug pull of madness from her veins. 

"i told myself that too, that i was poison anyway, when i let tapu fini take control." but she was wrong. it was wrong. 

they deserve better than this.

"there's a cottage," she says, "by the bluffs near my estate. hidden in a copse of trees. i want to be buried there." gently, carefully, she lifts his hand, uncurls his fingers and presses his palm to her chest. her heart beats. her blood, warm, gathers pink around his touch. 

"will you grant me that?"

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it's not uncommon, but she can think of only one other bearing her father's first name, and her lips thin at the realization. she doesn't ask for clarification; she doesn't ask for him to paint the line that divides them, drawn in the snow with blood. 

he asked me, you know, to rip out what's left of my heart.

we could have been kin.

his hand against her and hers, crossing that barrier, trailing up his arm and to his frostbitten neck. palm against clavicle, fingers on the hollow and sides of his throat. lifeblood, pulsing, but cold, so, so cold, and she knows it must be a fate worse than death. 

"no," she objects, but her voice is small. wo-chien drank from her sorrows and only once has anything ever felt as pervasive as the feeling of that rotten creature gorging itself on her soul. pink mist teases the edges of her vision. 

she will live on poison no longer.

"i chose joy."

her hands redden and pain is sharp and handsome on her arm, but she does not move. she does not flinch. the body is a relentless thing, so determined to leave its mark, to reach outside itself and leave more than an intangible memory in its wake.

but he is a blizzard and she is yet too small to turn winter to spring. 

he could kill her. she knows this. her heart quivers and every part of her skin prickles in anticipation. this, though. this poignant instance with death all around them - this is not their battlefield. here is their elegy. to his daughter. to their makeshift family. to the sunlight they managed to find in that dark and terrible place.

"i won't forget you," she promises, blinking through a watercolor haze. "but this is now, and now, and now. live it, feel it, cling to it, jay, and don't think about your thereafter."

she exhales.

"just stay here with me a little while longer, and hold my hand, and stave off the end of the world."

jayden cross

☉