Chapter Text
Dawn; brilliant, blissful, breaking over Eternalia. A new age.
(they’ll call it fitting, later, those historians with stories to twist tell—but for now no one has time to think of all the metaphors that come with victory)
It happens like this: Marella spends the darkness of the night working tirelessly, making sure Lumenaria knows things are about to change, setting up the transition of power and doing, as always, the Collective’s dirty work.
Dawn; Marella isn’t finished, because no one is, but word of victory spreads through the Black Swan personnel and she hears it early.
First she thinks of Linh (on a different assignment, presently) and what they can finally have, but Marella is a solider at her core and she rushes to the Black Swan Lumenaria headquarters next.
Spark, she’s told, won’t be taking visitors at the moment.
Marella raises one eyebrow and shoulders past them. She doesn’t have time to be slowed. “Where are they?” she demands, barging into where Spark’s meeting with perhaps a dozen others.
Spark (to her credit) doesn’t ask who or charge Marella up for insubordination. “Receiving treatment,” she says. “They should all be fine—the Moonlark was suffering mentally and emotionally more than physically, however, so we can’t be sure there. You may see them if you like. Anything else, soldier, or can I go back to organizing a massive political operation in peace?”
“I want to talk to you about what happens after.” Marella sets her chin firm, level and refuses to feel small. “Let them live after this. Away from it all, if they want that. Don’t make them your heroes. They don’t deserve it.”
“We all need legends,” Spark says, dismissively. “There are worse things to be.”
“Are there?” Marella scowls. “You’ve used them enough. Don’t force these broken people into these new roles, parade them in front of Eternalia... you’d be doing them no kindnesses, just another cruelty.”
Spark sighs. “I know you care about them. But Eternalia needs its heroes, Marella. You’d forget this country in the name of five soldiers?”
“I would,” Marella says, without hesitation. “All I ask is this: give them the rest of their lives. And I swear, general, by whatever means I can, you and whatever else must will come to regret it if you don’t.”
She keeps her voice cold, casual. But there is iron in it just the same.
Spark studies her a moment, calculating. “Well.” She narrows her eyes, but smiles, as if to say you win, well done, watch out. “Granted, soldier. Now get out of my sight.”
Marella does, entire body slumping in relief.
Her steps don’t slow. She needs to get to the infirmary, to find Linh.
Today is beginning. Today is begun.
Dawn; and there is life after ‘the end’—so much of it, because there was no ending. There was victory, but victory does not scrawl those final words across life’s page. Nothing does. Life goes on, because there is much that needs doing, and no time to pause.
(that’s not what they’ll say, later, but a story is for after it’s over—not the people still battling through it)
Dawn. Marella needs to start breathing and finally get those she loves home .
three months later
A mile out from the nearest settlement, tucked neatly next to a hill and lying low against the earth, a wooden farmhouse hunkers down. Out from it spread rows of messily planted crops, barely sprouting from the earth in vivid greens, and a small orchard of fruit trees lanky in adolescence. The chickens squabble about their little pen.
The home is painted a fresh blue and white, not yet given time to flake, its porches still too new to creak. Tall grass rises up around it. It's big, for a farmhouse, one story but a sprawling one.
The closest neighbors whisper. In the end, they say nothing.
The other side of the bed is cold when Linh wakes up (but there’s tea steaming warm on her nightstand).
Around her legs, the sheets are tangled, leaving her top half bare. She yawns and presses her palms into her eyes.
The tea is just how she likes it. Linh takes a moment to sit up and sip at it, hair spilling around her shoulders and eyelids still drooping, before she finally forces herself to stand.
In the kitchen, Marella’s apparently freshly back in, a basket of eggs in one hand. “Sleep well?” she asks.
“Nightmares.” Linh shrugs, and at Marella’s frown, laughs and adds, “Nothing you can do about it, my love.”
She goes to lean against the counter, soaking in the sun streaming through the window and giving her soulmate a quick kiss.
Linh never thought, before, that they’d get to have this.
There are so many things she can’t forget, that none of them can. All of them know what it’s like to have horrors run amok in their heads and to wake empty, gasping, guilty at midnight, to flinch at some loud noise or something the wrong shade of red. To never manage to pull themselves out of bed some days.
But they still have this , the quiet mornings, the easy ones. And it’s so much more than Linh ever thought it would be.
(she’s pretty sure it’s all thanks to Marella—she's never said, but the Collective paid for it all and hasn’t ever asked for them to come back to Lumenaria)
Linh twists the ring on her finger, smiling.
That's the other (the best) thing she didn’t think she’d get—to be married to her soulmate, her love, her wife.
The farmhouse door swings open again. Dex and Biana walk inside, him carrying her duffel bag.
(technically, she doesn’t live here—but she still has a bedroom just for her, and it’s filled often as not)
“Morning all,” Biana says, with a dramatic sweep of one hand. “Only you three up yet?”
“Nope,” Keefe calls from the living room. There's another sound of agreement that might be Sophie.
Biana rests her upper arms flat against the counter, propping herself up by her elbows. She lets out an unending huff of a sigh.
Dex knows that, if any of them ever asked, she could tell them what’s going on in the rest of Eternalia. The politics, the people, the problems. None of them do, even if some days, the words wobble on the tip of his tongue and he almost lets them tip out.
But, in the end, he doesn’t want to know what kind of mess he left behind.
Just a week after the night they changed the world, they came out here and barely looked back. It wasn’t easy on any of them, some injuries not yet healed, but there was the driving sense that they needed to get out of there before something pulled them back in.
Eternalia’s better—getting more so by the day. Dex knows that much, and it’s enough.
The six of them end up in the living room, attempting to be quiet (mostly failing) in the spirit of not waking Fitz up. No one feels up to making actual breakfast, so they end up with two-day old homemade bread just torn into chunks.
Dex takes in Keefe and Sophie, both in the clothes they were wearing yesterday, dark circles sitting under their eyes (though that’s normal, now—or is it normal still?). “Did you ever get to bed?” he asks.
“Sophie couldn’t sleep, so I stayed up with her,” Keefe explains, shrugging.
The thing is, it’s been harder on Sophie than the rest of them. She doesn’t know how to help things grow, how to help herself grow. She knows blood and blades and sacrifice.
Dex remembers, one night, talking in hushed voices a month after the night (just days after Sophie started talking about all their horrors).
She'd said, staring forward, that she’d been telling herself for so long, during the war, that she just needed to see it through to the end. But that night, as they finally took the Council down, she couldn’t make it—not all the way.
These days Keefe and Sophie speak an odd language of intuitive kindnesses and meaningful gazes. Dex isn’t sure whether they’re together or even just getting there, and he doesn’t ask. They’ll figure it out.
Noises from down the hall. Fitz steps in, yawning, leaning heavily on his cane. “Nice to know how much you care about my sleep,” he says.
“Don’t know what you want us to say,” Biana says, “but you’re not getting it.”
Fitz laughs. His hair’s messy, gorgeously so. “Someone’s watered the garden already, right?”
A chorus of negatives greet him. He sighs, grumbles something about the tomatoes, and sits down next to Dex on the couch.
Dex kisses the side of his head, gently, and curls closer to him.
No matter how the shadows creep in his mind, every day he thanks the universe for bringing them together (for letting them stay that way).
Wind stirs the leaves on the back porch. Above, the night descends upon daylight, the sun nearly sunk already.
From the bench, Fitz gazes out at it, cane resting beside him.
His right leg hurts. It’s not unusual, the little pangs and aches there that have become part of the map of him. Fitz is still getting used to it. He can’t help out as much as he’d like, can’t walk far or fast, but Dex likes to shake his head and say that he saved Eternalia. He’s got leave to figure out the rest.
“Hey,” Dex says softly, slipping up behind him.
Fitz smiles and pats the space beside him.
Dex fills it, settling in next to him, and unconsciously they move together. They lean into each other, Fitz’s head resting on Dex’s shoulder, Dex’s arm around his shoulder.
They know each other’s lines well. They've got separate bedrooms, if they want them, but most nights one of those beds ends up cold.
“Do you ever think about going back?” Fitz’s brow furrows.
“Every day,” Dex admits. “I don’t know what’s there for me, but I want to see it. I want to see what we fought for... why wouldn’t I? And yet I can’t bring myself to do it.”
“Yeah,” Fitz says. “Me, too. And then—there’s my mom, too, you need to meet her sometime . Atlantis, my house. Maybe even Alvar.” He bites his lip, trying to keep the sorrow in. “Why haven’t I?”
“Someday.” Dex rubs Fitz’s back, gently. “Okay? Not until we’re ready.”
The sun is nearly gone. It casts strange shadows across the porch, across the fields beyond. Long grass sways in the wind. Insects hum. Somewhere out there, a coyote cries into the night.
Fitz glances up at Dex, a smile curving at the edges of his lips.
It’s all so much. The war, the memories, even just the seven of them. Eternalia, out there, waiting, not done with them yet. This peace is the most fragile thing he’s ever tried to hold.
“Breathe,” Dex whispers, almost against his lips. It’s a reminder, their reminder, to keep going.
They'll take it all one step at a time.
Fitz cups Dex’s face, running his thumb along the softness of his cheek. “Breathe.” The night swirls cold around them.
Softly, sweetly, their lips meet. They kiss and drift apart and breathe. The world doesn’t stop being what it is, too huge and complicated and messy.
He and Dex melt together here, kissing in the night, and it’s beautifully theirs. Their hearts beat and their lungs stretch, expand and their souls meet and drum out a rhythm of I love you.
The thing is: Fitz has a different world now. A better one.
It’s you, he thinks, kissing Dex, it’s you.