She's fucking gone.
It shakes in his fingers, trembles in the tap-tap of his shoes. She's gone.
She is several people now. Allayria, who's up somewhere in this hollow city of nightmares. Dost, who's somewhere back in that awful tundra, lying in pieces. Tara, who he left behind with those things—but he couldn't wait, when he found them, when he reached the platform he had to run, had to drive her off...
And even she, that ghostly face in front of him, is fucking gone.
Isi.
They are on the Climb of Tears, caught somewhere between the chaos and the deathly quiet, two sides of a familial coin, circling each other. Her face is a ruin—she, someone, has pulled out all the metal trinkets, all the sutured steel, and it should make her more human, more like Isi, but she's not. God, she's not.
"Finally come home, have we, brother?" his sister sneers, glinting and gleaming in silver and blood, dark flecks of blood, not just from her, not just from all those little pieces—
He grips his stone sword tighter, settling down into position, into pose. He's going to win this time, he's going to beat her. He has to: he has to get to Allayria.
Isi swings, viper-quick, and Lei throws his sword up, blocking, pushing back, only to have to leap back, dodging the follow up which slices through the air inches from his abdomen.
She's pacing around him on this narrow path, carefully, quickly, moving in that strange, animal way like before, like she's listening to a beat he can't hear. That lizard part of his brain is telling him danger, danger, danger, it's telling him she's coiled, ready to strike again—
But there it is, amongst the heat and the dust: a tiny falter, a small misstep. Not enough to derail her, but enough to make a gap, an opening in her armor, in that deadly intent. It's like a limp, like she's injured.
The metal means something, he thinks, stepping carefully back, up, further along the path, gaze flickering to each hole, each wound. Why is the metal gone?
"Isi," he asks, "are you alright?"
Her eyes widen; she recoils. He thinks for one, brief moment, she looks like his sister. And he understands what that limp is from.
With me gone, there wasn't any buffer anymore, was there? he thinks. No one to keep her distracted, keep her anger at bay.
And it's in his face, what he knows, because he's always been bad at hiding these things from her, and she knows, knows that he knows, and just as the alarm came across her face it fades, leaving something uglier in its path.
"Never felt better," she hisses and she lunges.
A block, a lurch, a swing. Her footing might be uneven, but her swipes are hard, sure. The question hasn't changed that, though it's shut her up some.
You aren't even trying, Lei-Lei.
He watches that small quaver in her hand and wonders: What am I supposed to be trying to do now?
If this was Isi, Isi when he left, Isi with long, black hair; wide eyes; a clean, pale face, Lei would be trying to catch her wrist with his fingers.
Lei-Lei, we have to hurry. Keep up, hold my hand.
"What did Mom—?" he starts, he asks, and she shrieks, reversing course, bringing the hilt down across his face, on his temple.
It pops and the world sways as he stumbles back, lifting his hands up hazily.
"The brain's the important thing," little Isi tells him gravely from the path's railing, tapping that rusty bucket on her head, but it's his head that's ringing. "You can live without an arm but not a brain..."
"You fucking left me!" the real one screams only a hands-width apart, and it's the fear, the unsaid shame sieving through him, that brings her back into focus. "You left me, you left me!"
"You left first!" he shouts back, dropping his arms because she has dropped hers, because this is how the fight is going now, trading swords for words, and the barb aims true, stings.
His hands shake like bird wings, like tree leaves, but he holds one up anyway, shoves a finger into her face as he stumbles back. Further up, further on. "You stopped, you stopped running and you wouldn't have come with me, even if I asked!"
"You were taking the coward's way out," she throws back, keeping pace, brow glittering, mouth curdling into a snarl. "You were always weak, always sniveling, I should have seen it sooner, should have known you weren't just a little baby—"
"She would have killed me and you would have let her!" he says, he bursts, and its every ugly thing he's turned over in his head, lying on top of a neat bed, in a well-ordered and cold room. He stops and shoves her now, quiet, even-keeled, Lei Chaudri, sweating and spitting, his eyes burning, hands shaking. "She tried to kill me and you let her! You let her!"
Isi stumbles back, skittering on the path, and her breath comes out in snorts, like dragon fire, the chest underneath her cold metal shell fluttering up and down, and amidst a blank, frozen face, his sister's tawny eyes glitter.
"You're right," she says, hand flexing on the sword, her voice even now, deadly cold. "I shouldn't have let her; I should have killed you myself."
It's then that he realizes Isati had been holding back. Playing, toying—whatever other sick thing. She's not playing now, not anymore.
She climbs without artifice, without frills or guise, and the intent, the instinct between the rapid swings, the wailing rain of metal, is death, death, death.
"You should have fought back," she tells him between it all, "she wanted you to fight back, you idiot."
He's in the dust, exposed, head spinning, spilling more blood, and she stands over him like a shadow, a wraith.
Not yet, is all he thinks, and he thinks of Allayria as he gropes for something—rock, root, something.
It's a tree limb that comes to his aid: ripped from a tree at the city edge above and still clinging stubbornly to a few small, white flowers. It flies into his hands without delay and he holds it up like a talisman against the looming cold metal.
And she stops, arms raised, muscles stretched, taut, ready. As the light flickers through clouds and other shapes in the sky, as the world falls into shadow, Isi's face becomes clearer.
It's like a clock with a screw loose or—Lei thinks wildly, queerly—one of Qui Wren's little machines with a cog loose.
Her face is twitching, quick and futile, calibrating and recalibrating, but stuck. Stuck on a wrong lever, a wrong thought, and all that twitching, flinching, springs tears in eyes he thought couldn't cry. Not anymore.
"Isi?" he asks.
And it clears, clears enough that she steps back, stumbles back, Isi, his sister, hands dropping to her sides, metal sliding out of them.
The monster doesn't prowl this time, doesn't advance down the long, lightning-lit hallway, screaming and raging.
It flees.
A/N: If you two could not kill each other, that would be great.
Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and just happy holidays everyone! Eat some cookies, chug some eggnog, and just chill the fuck out. That's what I'm doing. 😂
Chapter Notes: Lei recalls presenting his mother with a white flower in Prodigal's "The Making of Monsters"; Isati's advice, pleas, and taunts are from "Lightning Bug //" and "The Making of Monsters."