Darkstalker
After we got away from Scorpion Den, I carried my wife into the mountains, as far as I could go before I had to come down to land, exhausted.
We landed between jagged mountain peaks, hovering over a lush green forest, seemingly abandoned, and found a cave hidden enough as to barely be visible from overhead. I set Clearsight down, wincing as I looked at the state of her injury, and fell asleep beside her.
We've remained there ever since. Clearsight resting as much as she can force herself to, trying not to worsen her injury. Me, looking after her as best I can.
She sleeps through most of the day, or maybe she just doesn't want to speak with me. And I go hunting.
We've slipped into some kind of a routine; a strange sense of normalcy. After I think we've been here a month, it starts to feel real to me.
In the morning, when I leave, she says, "Off to fight in the war?" like she always does, still half-asleep.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. I guess I deserve it.
"We're out of bandages."
"And you think you can get us more?"
I sigh. "Honey."
She's quiet for a long time. She wraps herself up in a blanket, like those shawls she used to wear
"All right. Just... be back before dark. Okay?"
***
I fly over the forest for a few hours, trying to hunt. This landscape is so similar and yet so foreign: I don't recognize any of the trees or the little bushes that grow beneath them. Their leaves have all turned a bright, burning shade of orange as a brisk wind blows through the valley.
I almost catch a fox, but I get distracted by the dew glistening on the leaves, by the brilliance of their colour. I've never seen autumn like this before, and after all I've been through, all I've survived, it takes my breath away.
I wish Clearsight were here.
She's seen it from up in the mountains, but it's not the same.
I spend a few hours in silence, in pursuit of the fox, which keeps evading me. I didn't sleep well last night, and I'm too sluggish and slow. But eventually, I think it stops noticing that I'm in its pursuit, because it stops at a small pond to drink.
I close in behind it, and kill it in one quick movement.
Well, look at that. Maybe I'm not useless after all.
A dragon steps out of the bushes, and I flinch, immediately readying myself to go in for the kill, imagining monsters sent by Sharp-eyes to kill my wife and I while we're weak.
"Calm down already, I'm far too old to be dangerous," an old SkyWing says, adjusting her glasses. "Although I can still fly like someone half my age, I'll have you know." Her scales are a soft orange, the colour of a fading sunset.
My heart is racing, every muscle in my body tensed and ready to spring into action. I let out a breath.
"You can't just sneak up on dragons like that. Don't you know there's a war on?"
"Oh, are they back at it again? Honestly, I stopped paying attention to that stuff years ago. It's nonsense. I can't keep up with it." She rolls her eyes. "Whatever issue they're all killing each other over, I'm sure it's not going to involve my little cottage in the middle of nowhere."
"You have a cottage here?" I ask. Clearsight and I picked this valley specifically because we were sure no one else was here; that we could be safe and alone. I've been wandering around this valley for a month now, hunting for food every few days. How could we not have noticed?
"I've been here for decades; I should be asking you what you're doing on my turf. Especially since you're a NightWing, and aren't our tribes at war or something? I thought I heard that," she says wryly.
There's something about her that seems familiar: the slight twinkle in her eyes, her smile like she's hiding something.
She reminds me of someone, and I can't place who.
"Not anymore," I say. I want to explain the war to her, but I don't know where to start, and part of me is convinced that she's better off not knowing. There's not a hell of a lot she can exactly do about it. "My wife and I fled the Night Kingdom. Then we ended up in Scorpion Den. Now we're here, just for a while. She's injured, and she's not going anywhere for at least a couple months."
Jay furrows her brow. "What happened to her?"
We had an argument in the middle of a battlefield. It went about as well as you could expect.
"She got a spear in her chest. I had to take it out and do the stitches. I think it's healing. I've been trying to rinse it out with water and change her bandages every couple days."
Jay furrows her brow, thinking.
She gestures at the fox.
"Are you gonna eat all of that? Just the two of you?"
"Probably not," I admit. It's a lot of meat, and it'll be hard to finish all of it before it starts to go bad.
"I used to be a medic in the army," Jay says. "I've seen wounds like that before; I know what can go wrong with them. If you give me some of your prey, I can give you medicine."
I think for a moment.
She's just an old lady, who doesn't want to have to deal with hunting. And we don't need this much anyway. What's the worst that could happen?
***
Jay leads me back to her cottage. I can see why we wouldn't have noticed it, now: it's tiny, and surrounded by trees. When she built it, she only took down what she absolutely had to, letting the branches obscure her home from view. The small cleared area of land around the house has been filled with thousands of herbs; the air thick with the smell of lavender and thyme and rosemary. Bees buzz over the few plants that are still flowering. It's so bucolic, so sweet. Once upon a time, this was everything I dreamed of.
Why is she so scared of being found?
I think about what I know of Queen Carmen, and suddenly, the puzzle isn't so hard to solve.
I expect her to bombard me with questions about my backstory, but maybe she understands what it's like to run away from something, because she doesn't say a word.
"Do you want some tea?" she asks as she unlocks the door. The hinges squeal violently as it opens.
I want to turn her down on instinct, but really, what am I afraid of?
It would be odd to poison me, when she's just asked me to share my food.
"I'm not going to poison you, if that's what you're thinking. I mean, I could, probably, but I'm not that crazy. As long as you're not going to bring anyone else into this valley, I couldn't care less if you stay here for a while. I don't own this valley. Peppermint or chamomile?"
I clear my throat. "Peppermint."
"I'd offer you sugar, but I haven't had any since some trader last came through this valley a few years back," Jay says, putting a kettle over the wood stove and adding another log to the fire.
"That's fine," I say with a sigh. "Don't worry."
The cottage is really just one big room plus a little storage closet. It's nice; cozy, if totally chaotic: shelves filled to the brim with herbs and medicines, scrolls piled up on every surface.
"You never gave me your name."
"Peacemaker," I say, reaching out to take the mug of tea she's passing me.
"Peacemaker. How cheerful," she says with a sigh. "Your parents must have been very idealistic."
I laugh, unable to help myself. "Yeah. They really were."
Jay closes her eyes, stretching out her wings. "You seem like the type who's always on the run from something, Peacemaker, so let me give you some advice: don't get old in the middle of a valley with no one to look after you but yourself," she says, groaning. "If you have a choice, that is."
"Isn't there someone who could help you?"
"I don't have dragonets. Didn't want to have to watch them grow up and just get drafted to fight and die in Carmen's army," Jay says, shaking her head. "I used to have family, but... that's all gone now. It's for the better this way. I don't mind it, being alone. I just don't have the strength to do it all myself anymore. So I'm used to the house being a bit of a disaster."
I think about my mother, all those years she spent alone in my childhood home after Whiteout and I left, after Father was gone. I was never far away, but what would her life have been like if she was totally on her own?
Jay finishes her tea and gets up. "So, tell me about your wife. You know, it would probably be easiest if I could just see her."
I glance at Jay. I don't want to ask her to fly all the way to the top of the mountain any more than I want to try to move Clearsight before she's ready. Besides, I don't want to reveal any more information about our situation than I have to, for Jay's good as much as ours.
"I.... don't think that'll be necessary. Or possible. She's in a lot of pain, and... she can't move more than a few steps without it hurting too much."
"And you said it was a stab wound on her chest?"
I nod. "A really deep one."
"Well, I can give her something for the pain. She's going to need to rebuild a lot of muscles before she's fully back to normal; there's no medicine I can give her for that. How are you doing on bandages?"
"We're running low," I admit. "We took as many as we could from the hospital, but..."
"I have a bit of a stockpile of supplies." She pulls out a loose floorboard, rummaging around for a moment before passing me a bundle of bandages wrapped in blue cloth. "Take some, if you need it."
She doesn't hesitate even a little and it startles me.
"Thank you. Really."
"It's a favour. I know you'll repay me," she says, rolling her eyes. "You don't need to grovel."
***
When I return, Clearsight is sleeping. I walk quietly, trying not to wake her as I build a fire and settle down the bag of medicine.
I lay the blanket over her shoulders, proud of myself for still not waking her.
But when the wood starts to crackle, she jumps to attention, looking around. "Hello? What's–oh. Honey. You're home."
The fire grows slowly, smoke pluming up into the sky.
"I got you more medicine," I say.
"What?"
"Yeah, I met this weird old lady while I was hunting today. She's lived here for decades. I think she had some kind of disagreement with Queen Carmen, so she just ran away. Anyway, I said she could have some of our prey if she gave you medicine. She used to be a medic in the army for a while."
"And you're sure we can trust her?"
"She seemed harmless enough. Anyhow–we've got, like, something to help numb the pain, we've got something that she thinks we'll help the wound close faster–honestly, I don't really understand it, but you can take a look at the little labels she put on the jars if you want to."
"Thank you," Clearsight says, and I think she means it.
"Oh, and there's some bandages at the bottom of the satchel, and a blanket."
I watch the flames dance, watch the sky grow dark.
"Do you think Scorpion Den has fallen by now?" Clearsight asks into the quiet.
Almost certainly.
I picture the city on fire. It was never my home, but it was somewhere we rested our heads. Now all those memories have burned to nothing.
It's just another place we left our history behind, never to return.
I nod. "Look, there's nothing we can do about it now. The best we can do is find our kids and make the most of the time that's left."
"I still think of our life there. Is that stupid?"
I shake my head. I think I left a part of me in Dragonfly's childhood home. I think I'll never be the same.
"I don't think I'll ever forget it," I say, more to the cave floor than to her.
We exchange a glance, and I know she's seeing it flash through her mind like I am. I know she feels it in her bones: the screaming, the fighting, the horror. The war.
I look away quickly. Even after all this time, I'm still too scared to face it.
***
In the night, Clearsight wakes up screaming, jolting me out of a dark, dreamless slumber.
For a moment, I'm frozen. I don't know what to say to her anymore. For a moment, I can't breathe through the lump in my throat. Then I reach out hesitantly, not quite touching her, saying, "Hey. I'm here. It's okay."
Is that still something I can comfort her with?
"I had a prophecy," she murmurs, still half asleep. "I–"
"It wasn't a prophecy," I remind her. "We don't have powers anymore."
"Sharp-eyes, he had the dragonets, and–"
"We don't have our powers. We're nobodies, Clearsight. We're hiding in the mountains, trying to find our kids. That's it. That's all we are now."
The words leave my mouth before I can think them through.
For the first time, the truth of it sinks down into my bones. I know it to be absolutely undeniable, now and forever.
It feels like admitting to a crime.
I feel Clearsight's frantic breaths start to calm.
"It just... it felt so real."
"I know."
***
The next day, I fly down into the woods for lack of anything else to do. I leave while Clearsight is still sleeping, embarrassed to face her for some reason I can't explain.
I wander through the trees, trying to hunt unsuccessfully.
I think so much it makes my scales crawl, makes me wish for blood and horror and screaming violence to fill the silence around me, to take me as far away as I can possibly get from myself.
It's never been a pleasant place to be.
I think about the war, and the one that came after it. I think about everything my wife knows about me, and all the things she doesn't.
Eventually, I end up right back at Jay's cottage. I find her working in the garden, harvesting herbs in a manner so meticulous it borders on comical.
She looks up, squinting.
"Peacemaker. I was wondering if I'd see you today."
I wish I had something to offer, something to disguise my pathetic desperation. Instead, I say, "Well, I thought maybe I could help out. Around the house."
"Doesn't your wife miss you, being gone all these hours?"
She's probably glad; just to not have to deal with me. The thought she might feel otherwise honestly never occurred to me.
"I just get bored, being stuck up there in the mountains," I answer, fidgeting with my talons. "That's all."
I know from the look in her eyes, she doesn't believe me for a moment.
"Then get to work. This garden is a mess. These brambles are gonna swallow everything up if I can't get them dealt with."
I don't know what I expected her to say, but that wasn't it. Silently, I thank her for it, because the last thing I want to do is talk right now. I've had enough honest conversations to last a whole lifetime.
I stare at the patch of brambles, threatening to swallow the immaculately maintained beds of medicinal herbs. They've tangled together, thorns sharp as daggers. I try to untangle them, and think of the timelines my wife used to see before her.
I imagine it would look something like this.
I follow them back to the root, then try to hack through the tough stalks which refuse to give way. I excavate around their roots until I'm staring down a hole at least four feet deep.
"I don't think these are coming out," I say, glancing over at Jay, who's watching me with a look of vague concern.
"Yeah, you think?" she asks. "I just cut them back to the ground every few months. You didn't have to dig a hole to the Lost Continent, Peacemaker."
"Oh." Somehow, it seemed implied.
"Here, I have this little saw I normally use," she says, tossing it in my direction.
I catch it, sawing through the roots of the brambles until they're severed completely. I drag them into the woods a little ways to break down, the thorns catching on my talons and wings.
"You're covered in blood, you know," Jay says, looking down at me disapprovingly when I return.
I glance down at my talons, finding them marred with a million small cuts I don't remember getting.
"Oh."
"Do you want me to clean those up for you?"
"No. It doesn't hurt. It's fine." I know it will later, but right now it doesn't, and I don't trust her enough to let her get close to me.
She raises her eyebrows. "All right, kid. If you say so. I think we're done out here for today. Do you want tea? I can get you chamomile, or peppermint."
Kid.
I want to laugh. It's been a decade at least since I felt young.
***
"You know, I'm lying to you," I say as I drink my tea. It's probably a stupid thing to say, and I'll probably regret it later, but right now I couldn't care less.
Jay looks impressively unfazed.
"Oh, really?"
"My name's not even Peacemaker." I sip at the peppermint tea, feeling the chill numb my throat. My father always used to like this tea, but only when mother let it get cold. On a good day, she used to leave his tea out in the winter chill to cool before she brought it to him. On a bad day, I'd watch it sit beside him as he read for hours. I don't know why the memory returns to me now. It doesn't matter.
They're all dead anyway.
"It's Darkstalker."
I expect her to balk; ask for an autograph; start screaming; bring out the torches or stones with which to kill me. Anything. Instead, she just blinks. "Oh. Okay. Well, I'm not relearning your name, so too bad. It'd take me months to get it straight, and let's face it, you're not going to be here that long."
When I'm silent, she looks at me intently.
"I'm getting the sense there was a reaction you wanted here."
"You really don't know much about the world out here, do you?"
"I like it that way," she says with a shrug. "You should try it. Maybe you'd stop thinking the universe orbits around you."
"I do not think that."
"My husband used to be like you, before he died." She shakes her head, sighing. "I mean, I loved the dragon, but what a dolt. I'm sure your wife feels the same way. News flash: I lost track of who's who after Queen Gila took over the Sand Kingdom, and I'm not going to keep up with it even if you force me at knifepoint. Don't try to explain it to me or I swear, I'll send you packing for the next valley over."
I can't help laughing at that.
"All right, then."
When Sharp-eyes comes here, she's not going to be able to run.
She's not going to be able to leave it all behind anymore...
"I really think you should stop running off and leaving the poor dragon alone all day. If I were in her place, I'd be furious."
"Well, trust me. She doesn't want my company right now. I'm not much of a comfort to her."
"Oh, so you got in a fight? How do you think it'll help resolve it if you just don't talk to her for weeks on end? Honestly, she's a saint. If I were her, I'd have flown away and left you to figure out your own problems. What do you think she is? A statue you can just leave sitting there for hours on end, waiting for you to come back and remember she has feelings too? Honestly."
My cheeks flush. Maybe she's right, but I don't want her to be.
"You don't know how bad it was. If... if we didn't need each other to survive this, I don't think we'd still be together. I'm scared..."
I think about my marriage like a gaping wound I'm too scared to look at. So long as I keep running, I can avoid the realization I'm afraid of more than anything: that the problem is too big to be solved.
That there's something fundamentally and incurably wrong with me.
"Scared of seeing what the damage is?" she asks. She sighs. "I get it. Honestly, I do. But you're being absolutely ridiculous. It's only going to get worse if you don't look at it."
"I know," I say. It's easier to admit to her than to the one who really needs to hear me say it. "I've known for.... months. I'm just–"
"No, no, stop right there." She rolls her eyes like a petulant dragonet, and I can't help but laugh. "I don't want to hear it. The truth is, Peacemaker, or Darkstalker, or whatever your name is, that you just don't want to do the work."
"It's more complicated than that–"
She raises her eyebrows. "Oh? Is it, really?"
I bury my face in my talons.
"I'm scared of–feeling useless. I guess. I'm scared I'll try to fix it, and it'll just make it worse."
"I bet you did real well in school, didn't you?" she says. It should sound like an insult, but it doesn't come out that way somehow. "I bet a lot of dragons have told you you're the most special thing to ever grace this continent."
"They sure have," I say quietly.
"I'm sorry," she says, and I know as I meet her eyes that she understands, without needing explanation. "It does things to your head."
"Sure does," I say with a sigh, finishing the tea.
"You should go home. Talk to your wife," Jay says, resting her talon on my shoulder. "Maybe it's not as bad as you think, kid. Oftentimes, it really isn't. And you should use more words when you speak. You're not going to get a prize for being vague and mysterious and forcing someone else to decipher you. You're just going to lose a marriage."
***
As I stand at the precipice of her doorway, Jay passes me another satchel filled with medicine and looks me up and down.
"I hope I won't be seeing you again, for a little while," she chastises me. "Your wife needs you, Peacemaker. Far more than I do."
I sigh, rolling my eyes. "Yes. Of course."
She swats me with her wing. "I mean it." The hint of a smile crosses her face. "This isn't where you're supposed to be. You have to promise me, as soon as you can, you'll leave this place."
I'm quiet for a moment. Some small part of me could stay here forever, if I'm honest. Maybe it's not perfect, but it's safe and bucolic; insulated from the horrors of war. If we wanted to remove ourselves from the story, this is about as far away from the action as we could go.
Most of me is sick to death of it already.
"I will. I swear it."
"Good."
She pulls me into her wings sharply and unexpectedly. I'm frozen, unable to pull away. She doesn't say a single word, and she doesn't need to.
"And don't be sappy and stupid, wasting time trying to say goodbye. I've seen hundreds of dragons pass through this valley. Don't think I care about you especially," she reminds me, laughing a little.
I pull away. For just a second, she reminds me so much of my mother it takes my breath away. The resemblance fades as quickly as the mist that hangs over the valley at sunrise: here and then gone.
***
I can't stop thinking about Jay's words as I fly home. Clearsight is sleeping, but she wakes when she hears me come down to land. She gets up, padding across the cave floor.
"Oh, you got in a fight, did you? Let me guess, you're fighting in the IceWing-SkyWing war now," Clearsight says through a yawn. I can't tell if she's joking or not.
"I made the mistake of helping Jay try to take out some brambles. Look, you can even see some of the thorns." I show her my wing, feeling ridiculous. "I have an alibi."
Three moons, how did I shatter her trust so badly she doesn't believe me, even now?
I know the answer, and that makes it even worse.
She didn't want to feel this way–jaded and scared even in our marriage.
Hasn't she been through enough?
She hobbles over to me with the bag of medical supplies. "All right. Sit down. You're never gonna get all these thorns out on your own."
Our eyes meet for a moment too long. It feels too intimate; too honest. But somehow, I can't bring myself to stop her from helping me.
"Would you stop squirming? I got stitches without any anesthetic and a spear pulled out of my chest, I think you can handle a few thorns," Clearsight mutters.
She runs to the stream and gets a cloth damp, then wipes the dirt and blood off my wounds, her brow furrowed in concentration. I wince, even though she tries her best to be gentle. I hold still, scared of scaring her off if I so much as shift slightly. We stay like that, for what feels like hours.
"There," she says. "I think they're all gone. You really are prone to injury." She sighs.
We're both silent for a long time. She rests her talons on my shoulders, but she doesn't move closer.
"Did you finish the fox from yesterday?" I ask her.
She shakes her head. "I saved a little for you. I figured you might be hungry."
The gesture makes tears spring to my eyes. I wipe them away quickly.
***
I lie beside Clearsight that night, listening to the rain drip off the ceiling, pretending to be asleep as if that will help her rest. She needs it far more than me.
"I know you're not sleeping, Darkstalker," she says after an hour of this. "You can stop pretending."
I'm quiet for a moment, silently furious she saw through me. I still don't understand how she does it so well.
"How'd you know?"
"You keep tossing and turning and sighing so loudly," she says, laughing a little. "Once you get to sleep, you're normally still as a corpse for the first three hours, and then you start thrashing around furiously, and then you're still as a corpse again."
"What, have you been watching me sleep?" I ask, strangely defensive. How much else has she figured out, if she knows me that well?
"I've known you for over a decade," Clearsight says with a sigh. "I don't know why you keep forgetting."
We're both quiet for a while, listening to the storm outside.
"So what's keeping you up, then?" I ask.
"Oh, nothing," Clearsight says. It takes me a moment to realize she's mimicking me, down to the dramatic sigh.
"Come on," I say, nudging her. "Don't I still get to know what you're thinking?"
I lost that right when I betrayed her trust.
I wouldn't have done it if she hadn't given me no other option.
"This is taking too long, Darkstalker," she says finally. "What if our kids are already dead, because we've been sitting in this cave for so long, waiting for me to get better?"
"You're almost ready," I remind her. "It's not that far off."
"We've been here too damn long. Even when I am ready to fly again, it's going to be slow. This is going to take me months to bounce back from. We don't have that kind of time."
"Where are you going with this?"
"Maybe you should just leave me here, Darkstalker," she says softly. "Maybe it would be for the best."
My first thought is, See? Jay didn't know a thing about my marriage. She hates me just as much as she thought. In the sting of it, there's an odd sense of victory.
"You're already halfway there," Clearsight mutters. "I know you are. I can see it in your eyes, every time you avoid my gaze and refuse to say a word to me. You don't want anything to do with me anymore, and–fine. Then leave me here, and I'll get out of this mess on my own," she declares with teary eyes. "I can do it. Believe me. I don't need you."
Her voice is thick with tears, and the sound of it still makes me sick even now. I want to cower; want to run.
"I'm not going to do that, Clearsight."
"Why not?" she taunts me. "Out of duty? Out of obligation?"
"Is it that hard to believe that I still love you?"
She falls quiet, looking at me like I've just slapped her in the face.
"Yes. It really, really, is."
How could I hurt her so badly?
What kind of monster am I?
"Clearsight, I am not leaving you here. I'll carry you to the Ice Kingdom if I have to. We're going down with this ship together. That's just the way it's going to be. I love you."
I reach out, silently begging for forgiveness. Instead, I'm met with calcified indifference and tear-stained cheeks.
"You've got a funny way of showing it," Clearsight mutters.
***
I wake up to find Clearsight sitting by a fire, just outside the cave. It's the first time I've seen her moving around all month.
"Honey!" I cry, immediately getting up and rushing over to the fire. "You're up!"
She looks up from the rabbit she's cooking over the fire. Wait. A rabbit.
"I had a nightmare, I woke up early," she says quietly. "I couldn't get back to sleep. And then... this thing literally wandered into the cave. It was pretty easy. I think I'm going to go for a walk, when this is finished cooking."
Is she really ready to start getting back at it? Or is she just so frustrated, she's going to hurt herself worse trying to speed up the process?
It's what I would do. I don't know about Clearsight.
"I'll go with you. I don't want you to be out there alone, if something goes wrong."
"Oh, I see how it is," she says, rolling her eyes. "You're allowed to take care of me, but if I do it back, then we have issues." There's no bite to her tone; it's just an observation, really. It still feels like an attack.
"This is entirely different."
"Is it?"
Neither of us have the energy to fight, nor the heart to push the issue any longer.
"I thought we weren't going to do anything alone anymore. I thought that was the deal," I say. The rain is starting again, the sky rumbling with thunder. I count the seconds before the flash through the clouds; it's too distant to be a worry.
To that, Clearsight says nothing.
"***
I walk slowly beside Clearsight, hoping she'll mimic my pace and go easy. I want so desperately to fly down into the valley and go to talk with Jay, even though I know I can't; not right now. She's right: Clearsight needs me.
Although no one lives here any more, enough dragons have walked along this mountain to create compacted paths through the rock, worn down from constant use. I lead Clearsight along them, standing close to the edge, so I could catch her, just in case.
She grimaces a little with each step, but she doesn't stop. After a few moments, she's breathless.
"Are you all right?"
She nods. "I don't remember just walking being this hard. I think... lying still for that long did not do wonders for my stamina."
"Does your wound still hurt at all?"
The scar, though messy and jagged as a result of my haphazard stitching, is looking more and more healed each day.
"Only a little. I try to distract myself from it as much as I can," Clearsight says.
We don't have much more time left before we have to leave this place.
I'm glad; I'm sick of sitting here and waiting. But some part of me can't help thinking about what we'll be flying toward: a place I never wanted to return to for all my days. Not just the Ice Kingdom, but the tundra between it and the desert: a no-man's-land. In my mind, it's still stained with blood from the battles I once fought in it.
It won't be like fighting in the war. I'm sure it's all so different now. I'm sure the scars from all those years of fighting have started to fade.
But the thought of returning to the place Serenity died with my wife is unbearable.
She'll know. She'll have to know. I'll have to come clean... I'm not strong enough to hide it from her, not when we'll be spending days flying through it...
"Are you going to be okay? Going back to the Ice Kingdom, I mean?" Clearsight asks, as though reading my mind. She's so good at that, it's almost uncanny.
I clear my throat, looking away. What am I supposed to tell her? "I have no choice. I have to be."
***
"I think it's time," Clearsight says, looking over at me.
I know what she's going to say somehow, but I still ask anyway. "For what?"
"To take out my stitches."
The words bring back the echo of memories I wish I'd forgotten: the fight, the battle, the blood. My wife's eyes staring into mine as she told me that if I didn't do this, she would have to do it herself.
The memory of stitching her wound closed even as she writhed in agony still makes me grimace.
"If we don't take them out now, I think the wound might close around them. I only did this once or twice, honestly, at the hospital most dragons... didn't survive long enough to get to this point," Clearsight says. "If you can't handle it, I probably could. It shouldn't hurt."
I look away for a moment, feeling the nausea rise in my throat.
If that moment had gone even slightly different, you might be dead.
I know it didn't happen. I know it's fine, or as fine as it's going to ever be. But then I'm back in the moment, covered in blood, holding a needle and thread, and my wife is telling me–
"No. I can handle it."
I turn back to her, putting on my best brave face. I know she doesn't believe it, but I thank her silently for pretending to.
In the kit of medical supplies we took from Scorpion Den, there's a small pair of scissors, meant for cutting thread or bandages. I take them in my talons, breathing deeply.
"So, I just–cut each of the stitches, and pull out the thread?" I ask.
"Pretty much."
Our eyes meet, and it's too much: too close, to sudden, too vulnerable.
I stare down at the wound: encased in scar tissue, still tender but starting to heal. I carefully snip each of the bonds that hold it together and pull the thread out. I can feel the beat of her heart, racing.
"Is that okay? It doesn't hurt?"
"It's fine," Clearsight says softly, as though afraid of being overheard.
I ruined you. I made you hate me, I made you wish you never loved me. I gave you the worst timeline. I ruined every single sunny day; I shattered the future you worked your whole life to obtain–
But I wouldn't have done it if she hadn't insisted on treating me like a helpless dragonet.
"I never wanted to hurt you," I admit, after it's finished.
"You can't love someone for the rest of your life and not hurt them some small way or other," Clearsight says, shaking her head. "You don't mean to, but it just... happens. You get in fights. You let each other down. Nobody's perfect."
"I just couldn't stand by and do nothing. You have to understand that."
"I know," Clearsight says with a sigh. "I always knew that. It still doesn't make what you did right. I... how can I trust you again? When you lied, and I almost believed you? How can I ever feel safe with you?"
She wanted to love me forever and I broke her trust entirely. I gave her every reason to hate my guts.
"You weren't going to win the war, honey. You knew that. But you still did it anyway. That's what kills me. You almost ruined everything and for what?"
She's right; I always knew I was never going to win. But I wanted to so desperately.
"I wanted to still have a part in this story," I say, shaking my head. I should be angry at her, but I can't deny it: everything she said is true. "I wanted to be the hero. I know it never could have worked, I just... had to give it one last try."
Clearsight shakes her head. "I think I did too, in my own way," she admits,
"How do you see through me? Every time?" I ask. Tears well in my eyes. I can no longer hold them back.
"I know you," Clearsight says. She takes my talons in hers, and I think, she loves me. Even after all this time.
I don't want it to be true. It's almost worse that way.
That she could find something worthy in the smoking wreckage; in the empty husk that I am without power. Without glory. Without anything to serve. Oh, it's so overdone. I've read this plotline in a scroll before and cringed.
I want you to hate me. I want you to prove me right. I want you to leave me alone forever, I want you to fly off and wash your talons of this whole mess.
"No matter how you feel about it, I will always know you," Clearsight says. She hesitates, as though about to reach out and brush away my tears, but she doesn't.
I set down the scissors onto the floor of the cave, The sound echoes, and neither of us speak as it reverberates.
I swallow back the lump in my throat.
"I love you too."
***
The next morning, I wake early, packing our things up into bags. The storm has cleared now, and the air is filled with the whispers of birdsong, carried by the bitter wind. The mountains in the distance glisten with snow.
I think of Jay in the valley below. I want to visit her house one last time, but I don't have the time, and I don't know what I'd say.
I notice a small bunch of flowers growing at the edge of the cave. I point them out to Clearsight, and she smiles. It's the first spark of genuine joy I've seen in her in so long.
I pick them carefully with the scissors we used to take out her stitches, and bundles them into a makeshift bouquet, then present it to her. It's the kind of thing a better version of myself would do.
"Here. For you."
I can see her melting, just a little.
"Thank you, dear," she says. A gentle smile twists across her mouth, dripping with weariness but still persisting for half a second at least. She tucks the flowers into her bag.
"Are you ready?" I ask. I can see myself for a moment, asking her that question: again and again, throughout our lives, as we stand on the precipice.
She hesitates for a moment. "As I'll ever be." She looks over at me, squinting into the sun.
I look down at that valley, whispering a silent thanks as I fly over it with my wife at my side.
***
I hope everyone liked this chapter! I apologize that it took so long- during finals, I was still writing, but no way was I going to make myself edit a chapter, so it took a while. But school is done now and this has been my number one priority to get done! If it makes you feel better, the next chapter after this is like 80% drafted, so that should come out quite quickly.
I can't decide so I thought I'd let you guys choose, since it really matters more to you than to me: do I leave the April Fools chapter up in this book, or do I archive it in Moonbeam for posterity? I love the comments so much and don't want to lose them and don't want Timeline readers in the future to not get to see them, but also feel like maybe it disrupts the flow of the story? Let me know your thoughts. I am torn!