ALL TOO WELL || druig x reader

chapter four: ajak's goodbye

The silence was deafening when you and Druig approached her.

Ajak lied on the floor before you both, unmoving, skin as grey as a statue, life completely drained from her body. This was worse than anything you'd ever experienced in your time alive.

You didn't know what to do, didn't know what to say, as the two of you stood over her lifeless body.

"How is this even possible?" Druig whispered, fists balled. You could sense the rage and sadness radiating off him in waves. You always could.

"I don't know," you swallowed, holding back tears and forgetting who you were even talking to.

"Ikaris said that a deviant absorbed her power," Druig said, looking up to the horizon. "I didn't fully believe it until now," you inhaled and exhaled, too stunned to speak, too afraid that you'd collapse.

Everything came back to you in waves.

Her smile. Her poise. Her ability. She was the closest thing to a mother that you'd ever had in that time before Babylon rose to existence; before everything fell apart. If there was a way for you to go back, you would have. Just to feel her touch, gaze at her golden face, bask at her power and strength and love.

She was the best of you, of the Eternals.

And now she laid dead.

"The last thing she ever said to me," you began, struggling to suck air into your lungs. Druig looked at you immediately. "Do good things, like you always have and always will,"

Druig swallowed painfully. "You've always been good," he croaked.

"I don't think so," you let out, as your tears finally began to overflow. "Not anymore. Not like she would have wanted,"

"She wanted you to live," Druig continued, his voice filling more and more desperation. "You lived. On your own, to your own agenda—,"

"Only because I had to," you interrupted him, and finally your eyes found his. "Only because I refused to be the last one by her side when everyone else had gone," his face softened, but his gaze stayed stern. You were always impressed by the way he felt everything so vividly. "If I'd stayed, I would have felt even more useless than I already was—"

"You are not useless," he boomed suddenly, stepping towards you with fire in his eyes. "You were never useless back then, and you're not useless now—,"

"You don't know me anymore!" you screeched back at him, but still he didn't halt, he kept approaching until you were face to face, chest to chest. Ignoring the rolling tears down your cheek, you kept your eyes glued on his. "Maybe you knew me once, but you don't know me now,"

"I never got the chance to," he said, seething.

"Because you left!" you screamed. He shut his mouth immediately, but you could still feel the red pumping through his veins. "You left, Druig," you repeated. "Do you know what that felt like?"

"You didn't come with me," he said, his voice raw. "Do you know what that felt like?"

"You used your power on me, tried to take over my mind," you stood up straighter, not once faltering or fumbling your words. It'd taken you a while, but your backbone was real. And you weren't going to give in. "How dare you force me to choose,"

"I knew you wanted to follow me—,"

"How could you have known that—?"

"Because I know you!" he was the one to yell now, and for a second you thought you'd look away. But his eyes; those eyes; they had you stuck in place without the need for his power to shine through. "All that talk of what lay beyond Babylon and you really didn't expect me to know,"