Chapter Text
You’re sad to see them go.
Bitterblue turns from the window where she’s been staring out over the city, even though Katsa and Po have long since galloped out of sight to go raise trouble in Estill or Sunder.
They have to go, Bitterblue thinks to her with precision. They’ll be back.
Her control has improved even more under Brigan’s tutelage, and she can open a thought to Fire while letting none of her deeper thoughts through. Fire understands. For Bitterblue, it is crucial that she knows her thoughts are her own. She sighs.
I’m just so tired of everyone leaving me.
Fire reaches for her hand, entwining Bitterblue’s slim, calloused hand into her own gnarled and wrinkled one. She knows what it is for people to leave, for people to never come back or to never even be there in the first place.
My dear, I will never leave you.
And she knows the love that Bitterblue opens to her is real.
::
Almost five years later, someone enters Bitterblue’s office. Without looking up from the papers she’s studying, she speaks.
“Yes, we do need to keep the vetting process for appointees to the ministries. I know it takes up time, I know the queen should be focusing on more important things, but I need to be involved. We’re building from the ground-up here, and I’m not going to let it go wrong.”
“Sparks,” says a voice from the doorway. She looks up, surprised.
“Saf!”
He’s taller than he was, and his skin more sun-darkened, and he’s such a welcome sight that she nearly knocks over her chair in her rush to embrace him. His arms are strong around her back, but after a moment he takes her forearms and pushes her back to look her in the face.
“Sparks,” he says again, something painful and furtive in his eyes. Like he’s afraid to speak.
“What it is?” she demands. “Bad news from the Dells?”
He looks away, and she is very afraid. Of all the things he’s told her, there’s never been anything so bad he couldn’t look her in the face while he said it.
“It happened peacefully. In her own bed, with her family by her side,” he says softly, and Bitterblue knows what’s happened.
“Oh,” she says, dumbly. Oh. Oh, Fire, Fire, she thinks, pushing her thoughts out, out into empty space. Fire, answer me, please answer me. Tell me it isn’t true. Please, Fire, I can’t stand to lose —to lose—
Saf holds her in his arms again while she cries.
“She asked me to do her a favor,” he says quietly, stroking her hair, “before the end.”
::
Bitterblue dreams that night of a bridge—she’s not sure where. Looking off one side, she can see King’s City in its explosion of color and sumptuousness, the Winged River flowing far beneath. Looking off the other, she can see her own city, and her own river.
Fire is there, in a plain gown and leaning on a cane, her extraordinary hair uncovered. She looks exactly as Bitterblue last saw her, complete with the tiredness in her eyes and the obvious stiffness in her limbs. Somehow, this is comforting. It feels more as if it actually is Fire.
Fire is there, and Fire comes to embrace her, with the river a gently hushing noise in the background and Bitterblue’s own breathing echoing in her ears.
Bitterblue, says Fire, I will never leave you.
::
Bitterblue wakes up, her heart heavy with grief and love.
“I know,” she says, simply. And gets up.
There’s work to be done.