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The streets of Tir Asleen are thronged with people tonight, joyous and elated at the dual return of their missing Prince and the long lost Empress. Taverns overflow, there’s music from every window, the doors of the palace kitchens have been thrown open and the main courtyard is lined with tables, free food for the populace who keep pouring into the city. The people haven’t known a party like this since the defeat of Bavmorda. There’s never been a celebration this elated in all the long years of Jade’s life.
Inside the empty rooms of Ballantine’s house, there’s nothing but silence.
Jade’s bare footsteps are soft, her worn boots standing neatly by the door. There’s no fire crackling, no breeze shifting the papers left unresponded to on the old oak desk. No low voice offering advice, a drink, a joke, support.
Except in Jade’s head, where his voice echoes.
Training you, raising you—
She hasn’t allowed herself to think about his words since that night in Nockmaar. Her mission was to push forward, ever onward, right to the end of the world and back. There has been no time to remember, no place for it.
She’d done what she was told – set her sights on what she wanted and had not looked back. And it worked; the advice had been good, solid enough to see her through. She’d kept moving forward and forward and hadn’t looked back.
Hadn’t realised it was following her until the moment it caught up.
The battle is over. Tir Asleen rejoices. Tomorrow morning Jade will go back to the palace and take a seat in the war room and together they will lay out their plans for meeting the Wyrm. Tomorrow afternoon Jade will propose leading an embassy back to the Wildwood and both Kit and Elora will – in unison – back her up. Tomorrow evening the city will gather again and, as the sun dies, will hold a memorial for all they’ve lost. Graydon, Kase, Merrick, Keen. At Elora’s insistence – ignoring the line dividing the realm that the Barrier draws – honors will also be given to Silas, Allagash, Hubert, and Anne.
Tomorrow Jade will speak for Ballantine.
There are no bodies to bury or burn. Ballantine lies in a shallow grave in the Pitiless Pass. The returning party didn’t cross through that way – they took the Voluptuous Vale. Airk made a joke, Boorman made it worse, and Kit closed the distance between herself and Jade and laced their fingers together. “If you want to go back through the pass–”
“It’s fine,” Jade had whispered back. “I’m fine.”
She regrets it now, of course. She should have taken the pass, and visited the little cairn of hastily piled stones. She should have laid her hands on the stone at Ballantine’s head and she should have told him that they’d made it to the Immemorial City, that she had stayed by Elora’s side, that the Crone was gone, that Airk was safe.
That she hadn’t let him down.
But they’d taken the Vale instead, and Ballantine lay where he was at the top of the pass, all alone.
And now in a city growing in population by the hour as word spreads about Elora’s return, Jade’s alone too.
The house, someone told her (she can’t remember who, her mind’s acted strangely since her return, the face above the uniform blurred) was in her name, now. Ballantine had no blood children to pass it to.
Jade runs her hand along the wall. She doesn’t know what to do with it. With any of it. She used to think she belonged here. Briefly, for an evening, she’d thought she belonged in the Wildwood. Now she thinks she might spend the rest of her life torn between two places, desperate to belong to either, impossible to belong to both.
The world was so much simpler when they were camping on the side of the road, Kit’s arm thrown across her body like Jade was her own personal queen-sized bed. Now they’re back and tonight Kit is at court at the side of the future empress, feilding dignitaries and lower lords with her mother and brother, and Jade stands alone suffocating in the absence of the man she watched evil twist into its own shape before he begged for his death.
Begged Jade for his death.
I’m so proud of you—
Jade cuts off her memory with a bloodcurdling scream as she snaps round and slams her fist into the wall. Pain lances up her arm, a bright fresh version of the darker, older, rotting pain that’s been sitting in her bones since his death. No, since before that. Since he first turned his corrupted eyes on her, since he drew his sword like she was his enemy—
—and still called her kid, like she was his daughter—
The next time she smashes her fist into the wall the new pain is worse.
The old pain doesn’t shift.
It’s deep, too deep, like it’s part of her. Like it's poisoning her. Like she’s rotting from the inside just like he did. And every! Time! She hits! The wall—
Nothing changes.
Her vision has completely tunneled, seeing nothing but the wall she wants to destroy (the pain she wants to destroy) so she doesn’t see Kit until Kit has lurched across the room and grabbed her wrist before she can scream again. “Jade, Jade, Jade, stop!”
“No–” Jade snarls as Kit wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her away from the wall. She tries to slip away, but Kit keeps hold, and Jade’s clumsy and blind and broken, the only way she can break Kit’s hold on her is to sink heavily, sobbing to the floor.
Kit (doesn’t let go) hisses a “Shit–” and goes down with her, pulling Jade into her arms. Jade screams again and thrashes, still fighting, not against Kit but against this world that’s left her with this empty house and two hundred moons of unanswered (and now, unanswerable) questions and the visceral memory of what Ballantine’s body felt like when it broke beneath her sword.
But Kit holds on.
Jade kicks out a foot and it slams against the wall, her body twisting outward like the sob that needs to come out is too big to contain, curling inwards like the sob is a sword through her own heart. This pain in her, she wants to claw open her chest and tear it out.
When she screams, she screams against Kit’s chest, and in its reverberation Kit feels Jade’s pain tearing through each chamber of her heart. She wraps her arms tight around Jade, holding the back of her head, and they’re rocking slightly, unconsciously, like Kit’s mother used to do a long, long time ago. Kit closes her eyes and presses her face against Jade’s hair, shaken by the sound of Jade’s scream and her ragged gasps of air (down the street, in the distance, a group of young people are laughing, singing.)
Kit has been scared before; over and over again, in fact. Scared of people leaving her, scared when Scorpia threatened Jade’s life, scared when the mines of Skellin swallowed her up and scared worst of all when she held her father’s sword at her brother’s throat. But the way Jade, in her arms, is losing strength… that scares her almost more than anything.
Jade’s scream fades into jagged sobs, her breath between each one is vocal and raspy and raw. As the fight bleeds out of her, her limbs become heavy, ungainly, limp. Kit keeps holding on.
“Jade?” she asks, and in her voice is a plea because she doesn’t know what to do. Jade has no answers to give, and her breath heaves in again through a pained throat that tastes of copper. Kit can smell it too, the blood on her hands – it makes her panic even more, she needs help, nothing in life’s ever prepared her for Jade breaking down on her like this. Some great hero she is, some friend.
“I love you,” Kit tries, but it only causes a new sob to rack through Jade’s body, and it’s making Kit want to scream, too.
Leaning against Kit’s chest, Jade is heavy as a corpse. Nothing is scarier than this.
Kit raises her eyes to the ceiling as if there’s help to be found above, but her eyes catch on the violent evidence of Jade’s fight against the wall. It isn’t broken, the wood is too solid for that, but desecrating the whirl there’s a dark and angry smear of blood, and when Kit lifts Jade’s hand she sees how bad it really is. How many times she must have smashed her fist against the wall before Kit came diving in.
At least… Kit thinks, feeling hellish for the thought, but at least this kind of pain she knows how to help with. Shaken from what she’s just witnessed, and ignoring the tear tracks that have cut down her own face, Kit picks her course.
“C’mon, Jade,” she says, trying to get Jade to sit up on her own. It’s not easy, Jade’s face crumbles anew and Kit’s movements bring fresh tears and what if Kit is messing everything up?? But she doesn’t know what else to do so – “C’mon, you great lump, can you stand?”
It’s only the newfound strength Kit’s earned through days upon days upon weeks upon moons of walking that get them to their feet – Jade’s certainly not helping. Dimly she’s aware that she could, but she’s so very past caring about mortal things like standing up, because tomorrow she will have to stand steady and strong at Ballantine’s memorial while she listens to Sorsha speak of his lifetime of service.
Tomorrow Jade has to stand steady and strong and speak of his life as her father. Speak of everything he gave her. Try to forget everything he took from her. Try to forget the sound her sword made that night in the rain.
Kit hauls her to her feet. Muscle memory, but mostly Kit, keeps her from falling. Muscle memory, and Kit, take them both to Jade’s bedroom.
Part of Kit is still panicking that something bad has happened to Jade. Over and over she tries to catch Jade’s eye and Jade’s gaze keeps slipping away; it’s not like her, Jade’s never afraid to look her in the eye. Like sending out a search party to look for her, Kit attempts a joke, but she regrets it before it’s even out of her mouth: “if you’d wanted to put in a new window, I would’ve brought you a hammer…”
There’s no response from Jade at all. No twitch of a smile or groan, no release of breath, no ‘shut up, Kit’.
It’s wrong, it’s wrong it’s wrong it’s so wrong. Kit never should have let Jade out of her sight. Kit never should have trusted they were safe in the palace walls. She’s stupid, she’s so damned stupid. “Show me your hand,” Kit says, kneeling down in front of Jade, who sits where Kit lowered her on the bed. Jade looks down at the mess she’s made of her knuckles, they’re bleeding, they’re bruised, they’re probably broken.
When Kit takes her hand, Jade closes her eyes. But Kit’s attention doesn’t stop at her knuckles. She pushes Jade’s cuff up, right up her arm, fingers gently searching her skin first on her right, then her left. Kit loosens Jade’s collar and asks permission (it stirs Jade’s eyes open, but she just stares at her hand and thinks of Ballantine’s blood, more tears streaming in silence down her face) then opens her shirt, pushing the fabric aside, searching her front, her stomach, her back. There’s no wound she can see, no infection, nothing like the one Graydon wore, or Ballantine.
Kit sits back on her heels and looks up at Jade, whose eyes are hollow, whose face is red and slick with tears, whose bottom lip is trembling unstoppably, whose breathing is broken as her heart.
“Okay,” Kit says, and gets to her feet. She’s gone a moment, returning with a wide bowl Ballantine once used to make flatcakes, and cloths he once used to dry dishes. Kneeling once more in front of Jade, Kit takes her bleeding hand and gently squeezes a soaked clothfull of water over her skin. Jade winces, it’s cold.
“I’m sorry,” Kit says, and does it again. Together they watch the water cut a path through the blood, watch it drip pink into the flatcake bowl. Jade makes a sound, low in her throat, something that Kit can’t translate into anything more specific than a deep unhappiness. Kit leans forward and presses her forehead against Jade’s arm for a moment, the position is a little awkward from where she kneels, but she feels Jade tip toward her.
Feels Jade’s cheek rest heavy on the top of Kit’s head.
Kit’s paying attention to every one of Jade’s breaths (still not convinced she’s not dying) and for a long moment they stay like that, pressed together, the bowl of bloody water awkwardly balanced on Jade’s lap. Jade can’t smell a thing through her utterly blocked nose, but the press of Kit’s hair against her face, it’s…
It’s not soothing, waves of grief keep rising in Jade too roughly for anything to soothe her but… but it’s Kit’s hair, and Kit’s head is keeping hers up, Kit like a ballast to stop her sliding off the bed onto the floor. Jade doesn’t want to stop leaning her weight into Kit. She trusts nothing else to keep her from falling.
Eventually, Kit has to say something, though. “Alright, you have to let me finish your hand,” she swallows, and turns her head to press a kiss against Jade’s arm before slowly pulling back, making sure Jade isn’t going to crumble when she does. Somehow, Jade stays steady, and though the tears don’t stop, they’re silent now; they keep falling like soldiers.
With a care that Kit reserves only for the most precious things in her life (Jade and her father’s sword) Kit washes all traces of blood from Jade’s knuckles. None of the kitchen cloths are as soft as she wants them to be so Kit uses the tails of her own shirt to dry Jade’s hand. The fabric is warm from her body, and Kit makes slow, gentle passes under Jade’s palm, between each and every finger. Jade’s hand feels feverishly hot in Kit’s, but until Kit can get her to one of the palace healers (and Kit doesn’t think Jade will be moving, tonight) there’s not much she can do but bandage it up.
By the time she’s done, Jade’s tears have almost stopped. Kit slips her hands around Jade’s face (it feels feverishly hot, too) and looks her in the eye, and this time, Jade’s eyes meet hers for a moment. “Hey,” Kit says, with the wateriest attempt at a smile.
“Hey,” Jade’s voice is hoarse, and her face falls, again. “Sorry–”
“No, no no,” Kit blurts out suddenly. “Shut your face. No. Fuck, Jade, don’t be sorry.” She pushes the bowl away so there’s no chance of it spilling as she wraps her arms around Jade, pulling her in. Jade’s face instantly soaks Kit’s neck, but the only thing Kit cares about is that one of Jade’s arms has found its way around her back and is holding on, though not very tightly, to Kit’s shirt. “I love you,” Kit says again, though she’s instantly worried that it’s the wrong thing to say, that it’ll make Jade hurt even worse like it did before, but like so often in her life the words are out of her mouth before she can stop them.
Jade clutches her fist into the folds of Kit’s shirt, and curls tighter, smaller, into Kit's body. Guilt stabs at Kit’s stomach for failing to find the right thing to say, at her naivety; as if I love you stood a chance going up against Jade’s grief on its own. Kit doesn’t know if anything stands a chance against the dark power of Jade’s grief, right now. She’s absolutely certain she doesn’t. She’s never felt like more of a child.
So when Jade croaks “you too” into Kit’s neck, Kit nearly bursts into sobs herself. Tears do fall, caught in Jade’s hair where Kit’s face is lost, and Kit holds on tighter.
"So much," Kit murmurs, rocking them gently again. "So, so much, Jade."
And Jade nods against her neck. She doesn't speak yet, but she nods, and time stretches on for a while, till Kit’s knees start to hurt against Jade’s plain wooden floor. But Jade’s hand is faintly grasping at Kit’s back, and to move, Kit would have to pull away from that, and she absolutely can’t handle the thought. Her knees can just… suck it up.
When Jade does speak, it’s sudden – she gasps in a breath and the start of her sentence is almost lost in it. “I don’t know how I’m going to do tomorrow–” She pulls back, just a little, staring up at an angle in a brave attempt to compose herself, though she feels so very far past composure. Her head hurts so badly it's like she’s taken a quarterstaff to both temples, the butt of a sword between her eyes.
It isn’t like her to doubt her own capacity for anything, not to anyone, not even Kit, but the soul-deep fear she can’t escape is this: she cannot survive tomorrow. She won’t be able to speak. She won’t be able to do him justice. Jade’s voice cracks again and her good hand grasps at Kit’s front, clutching at the open neck of her shirt, desperate for help. “How am I supposed to do it, Kit?”
“I— I…” Kit’s face is frozen and lost; Jade, who asks for so little, is asking her questions she has no answer to and it devastates Kit that she has nothing to give. “I don’t know,” her own voice is childishly young. “I don’t know, Jade, my dad never got a funeral.”
Jade breathes deep and trembling, but it’s not a sob, not this time. She feels so deeply wrecked and wretched, but also a strange sense of quiet, like the first change in the wind that signals the storm is passing through.
“But—” Kit continues, the need to help Jade is so strong it’s forcing her to speak without having any idea what she is going to say. “I’ll be there? I mean obviously I’ll be there, but like, right there? If you want me? I’ll stand right beside you. I’ll speak? If you want me to? Instead? Jade, Jade, I’ll do anything…” Kit grimaces at how badly it’s all coming out, but she covers Jade’s hand with her own, and presses it against her heart, and the way Jade sniffs, it’s encouraging, somehow.
Jade’s lungs heave, but she can feel Kit’s heart racing under her palm, right where the Lux went in. She can feel Kit’s fingers curled securely around Jade’s hand, and her thumb is stroking the back of Jade’s fingers. Her wounded hand lies like a dead animal in her lap but… but Kit’s hand on her good hand is everything. She nods, again. She doesn’t think she’s saying yes to Kit speaking for her, because… Jade knows she has no choice but to find the strength to speak tomorrow, but yes, yes, to Kit at her side.
“’Cause I meant it— well…” Kit’s still stumbling toward something, picking her path terribly, she’s so ashamed of how badly she’s grasping for the right thing to say. “Not that I really said it, before? When I said… all of it. All of it,” she repeats, with a sudden burst of hope that she’s on the right track. “When I said I needed you in my life, I – I should have said I’ll be in yours, as well. For all of it. For everything good, and for everything – fucking terrible. All of it. All of life. I’m there. I love you.”
“I love you,” Jade rasps back, and she’s debris, she’s absolute fucking debris in the wake of the monster storm that just tore through her, but if she’s a ruined city then Kit’s there, sitting in the centre, waiting for her. Jade tips her head forward, and their foreheads meet, bowed over Jade’s ruined hand. “I love you,” she says it again. It’s not rebuilding anything, it can’t, just yet, but when Jade searches for the pain that had been going rancid in her heart, it’s not there anymore.
It still hurts, everything still hurts, but it’s a clean pain.
Jade leans her head against Kit’s, even heavier. “I’m tired, Kit,” she whispers. Her eyes (sore and swollen, lashes still soaked) are closed, but she hears Kit’s breath and there’s a steadiness to it there wasn’t before.
“Get into bed,” Kit says, and finally (her knees protest) climbs up off the floor. Jade swipes her eyes with the back of her hand, and looks down at her shirt – it’s soaked. It’s disgusting. She’s a little dazed that any one person could produce that much snot.
As Kit pries off her boots and belt, Jade tugs at her own shirt. It’s not easy to escape from, with only the one hand, but she manages to untuck it completely before she realises the next step isn’t going to be possible.
“... Help?”
“I gotcha,” Kit says, now dressed in just her own soft shirt, and carefully pulls Jade’s shirt up over her head. She’s extra slow, extra tender, to make sure she doesn’t bump Jade’s hand at all as she eases it out of the sleeve.
When Jade lies down on her narrow mattress, her entire, exhausted body sinks in so deep she groans in relief. Even to be able to feel relief, right now, is… a relief, though she’s not so sure she’s earned it yet. After tomorrow, maybe after tomorrow.
“Budge over,” Kit says, crawling into the bed behind her, and Jade shifts a little, then Kit’s knees are pressing into the backs of her own, Kit’s arm is wrapping around her middle to pull their bodies even closer together, and Jade doesn’t have to shift at all; there’s room. If they’re going to curl this close, there’s room. Eyes still closed, Jade feels Kit rearranging her hair. The feeling of Kit’s hands tug a tiny smile from the corner of Jade’s mouth.
“I can help you wash it, tomorrow, if you like,” Kit says, her hand smoothing over Jade’s curls. They’re drenched at Jade’s temples, from her tears, and Kit… Kit kind of wants the excuse to sit behind Jade and spend an hour gently working on her hair.
“Yeah,” Jade murmurs, into her pillow, as Kit offers her a vision of the easiest part of tomorrow. She searches for Kit’s hand with her good one, Kit laces their fingers together, and Jade pulls their hands close to her body, nestled against her heart.
It’s not just the easiest part of tomorrow that Kit’s offering her, she thinks, as the heavy blanket of sleep weighs her down. It’s everything, it’s all of it.
“You’re my life,” Jade’s voice is so low and sleepy, she’s barely awake enough to wonder if Kit heard, but she feels Kit press a kiss against her shoulder, and that, the feeling of Kit behind her, is the last thing she knows before sleep takes her in.