[ It is so close she can almost taste it. That familiarity, being home -- but it's --
It's cold. Accepting, yes, but cold. It's lonely, in this cold, in the dark. Like being in the Empire Ever Dark, or trapped within Catherine's own Mantle of Woe, like those years she had spent a prisoner, a shade, a specter only good enough to be kept a prisoner for her killer's use. She would be pulled out if needed, from the shadows, the dark, the loneliness.
She breathes in, she breathes out.
A memory of what she thinks of home is. Of a pain so biting, that it ached within her. She'd once told Catherine, that she'd fed her a poison so sweet she craved the taste of it, and that was what she thought of now. Home. A warm fire, friends, jokes, something she'd never had. Not the cold sterility of her mother's Halls, the control she'd held -- the fact that her father had taught her magic just so he could whisper that she was a dear one -- and the friend she'd been forced to murder, when she'd been just a child.
She remembers Catherine's sad eyes, when she'd asked her: "How long have you been pretending to be one of us, Akua?" She remembered the sad look in her eyes, when she'd asked. Akua had not answered, and now...
Now she wonders, if she let herself fall into this dark, would it be the same? Would she still have been pretending, all this time?
Could she accept, that she may have been deceiving not only herself, but everyone else? Was sacrificing her life for nothing? Had giving up Everything, from the potential to become Dread Empress, her people, the Age of Wonders, and herself nothing?
Had she given up everything just to watch it be destroyed in the end? Could she accept that? ]
No.
[ She said, through a throat that felt raw, and strained. She reached out, and grasped the wrist of the man before her, the one that had been stroking her hand, and she gripped it, hard. ] Take it from me, Amos Burton, before I force this torrent the other way.
[ She can feel it, that burgeoning burst of something, and she starts to push against it, rail against it. She cannot. Will not allow it to undo the sacrifices she's made, for herself -- and for others. She'd taken hundreds of thousands of souls, she will do no more. ]
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It's cold. Accepting, yes, but cold. It's lonely, in this cold, in the dark. Like being in the Empire Ever Dark, or trapped within Catherine's own Mantle of Woe, like those years she had spent a prisoner, a shade, a specter only good enough to be kept a prisoner for her killer's use. She would be pulled out if needed, from the shadows, the dark, the loneliness.
She breathes in, she breathes out.
A memory of what she thinks of home is. Of a pain so biting, that it ached within her. She'd once told Catherine, that she'd fed her a poison so sweet she craved the taste of it, and that was what she thought of now. Home. A warm fire, friends, jokes, something she'd never had. Not the cold sterility of her mother's Halls, the control she'd held -- the fact that her father had taught her magic just so he could whisper that she was a dear one -- and the friend she'd been forced to murder, when she'd been just a child.
She remembers Catherine's sad eyes, when she'd asked her: "How long have you been pretending to be one of us, Akua?" She remembered the sad look in her eyes, when she'd asked. Akua had not answered, and now...
Now she wonders, if she let herself fall into this dark, would it be the same? Would she still have been pretending, all this time?
Could she accept, that she may have been deceiving not only herself, but everyone else? Was sacrificing her life for nothing? Had giving up Everything, from the potential to become Dread Empress, her people, the Age of Wonders, and herself nothing?
Had she given up everything just to watch it be destroyed in the end? Could she accept that? ]
No.
[ She said, through a throat that felt raw, and strained. She reached out, and grasped the wrist of the man before her, the one that had been stroking her hand, and she gripped it, hard. ] Take it from me, Amos Burton, before I force this torrent the other way.
[ She can feel it, that burgeoning burst of something, and she starts to push against it, rail against it. She cannot. Will not allow it to undo the sacrifices she's made, for herself -- and for others. She'd taken hundreds of thousands of souls, she will do no more. ]