Work Text:
"It changes everything."
Cricket turns to leave and Willow's heart breaks.
The traitorous voice in her mind whispers that this might not be something she can fix this time, and a feeling akin to dread fills her.
Cricket has rarely scared her. He's been a witness to her fear more times than she can count, but not since his absence at the Sumner's has he really been responsible for it. And yet, two steps away, three, there is an ice-cold grip around her throat, a terror that threatens the breath in her lungs, and Willow is left frozen in the throne room with the remains of a monarchy she helped see destroy.
Any relief, any joy, any sense of victory lingering in the back of her mind vanishes, ripped from her chest and jolting her heart from the comfort it's lived in for blissful months.
It'll be okay. It'll be fine.
Because it has to be.
It's fine.
Her hands tremor, her breath shudders. Willow knows the tears are falling but doesn't have the resolve to stop them quite yet, the shaking of her form an almost laughable mirror of the way she's just been shaken inside.
It's fine. It has to be.
Was she meant to lie, when any person in the city could have revealed the depth of the destruction dealt to the RBARA and those nearby? Was she supposed to break the trust they had in each other, leave him to find out alone?
(Like he left just then, without looking back.)
She understands, and she understands nothing at all –
(Willow wants to tell him she loves him, can't bear the thought he won't hear it, an instinctive fear that he wouldn't say it back.)
– and she is adrift, in a sky with no stars, no earth beneath her feet, unmoored and unsteady, endless dark and she can't see a way home.
Cricket is five paces from her and he's never felt so far.