Chapter Text
The water ran red—an oozing mass of blood and viscera. Its fine, flowing form had been corrupted by Shadowheart’s presence, thickened and congealed into a sickly paste. Shades of crimson and sanguine and maroon became indistinct from each other, blended into nothing the longer the water ran, but a singular, persistent chunk of flesh held her gaze unflinchingly.
The world around her fell away; the rush of the river became nothing but static where it was once a serenade. She was useless but to stare at it, this meat, this thing. Most of the detritus flowed downriver to be forgotten, but this one persisted, wedged between two rocks. It wriggled and writhed against the strength of the current—like, even now, it was fighting for its life. She watched the way the water lapped against it: with every ripple, blood squeezed from it, seeping into the discoloured, gentle waters. Strange fascination made her watch as it squelched with a gathering of algae. Such vibrant green wrapping around such violent red…
It was difficult to know how long Shadowheart stood there, watching it. She was transfixed. She knew she needed to clean herself. She knew she needed to get the rest of it— them— off, but she just couldn’t move. As she watched the chunks of flesh bob around the water's surface, she wondered if it was her, instead, who had been ripped to pieces.
All this time, her chest felt as if it would explode under the pressure of the two souls within her. She’d felt The Wolf wrenching through her breast, determined to push her and push her and push her until her skin was wrested in half from the force of it. Until she was so full she would burst—so full she would die…!
Instead, here she stood: empty, hollow.
At last she was alone—but she was alone to reconcile the aftermath all by herself, The Wolf turned sheep. What a sick irony.
The water met her waist. She was sure her legs were frozen solid, but what did that matter when she was already made of ice? Her fingers dipped just under the surface and the river splashed against her stomach, cold but alive. It made her wonder what would happen if she waded further—if she, too, would float away as the entrails did. She imagined that would be peaceful: to watch the beating sunrise as she drifted, slowly thawing into nothing under the heat of the sun.
“Shadowheart…”
The whiteness of her hair would take some getting used to. Funny… White was supposed to be pure, unsullied, good. But her whites were caked with red, and that felt much more fitting for what she was: for in the end, black hair or white hair, what did it matter? A void was a void, and she was nothing but the space inside of her—just a deep-seated hole where her heart belonged. Well, maybe she would find her heart amongst the fingers and ears and indiscernible chunks that buoyed in the river. Then again, maybe she wouldn’t.
That little chunk still hadn’t moved. Odd. Everything flowed around it. The river was quite pretty, brown waves flicking back into blue, a speckled glimmer of the sun beginning to reflect on its surface. Shadowheart watched the way the water moulded around the rocks, splashing against their harsher edges. It would take years and years and years for those edges to be smoothed—but it was inevitable.
All things break down in time.
Fingers thumbed the flesh of her arm, and Shadowheart flinched. She twisted under the touch, but she was only met with Lae’zel’s soft gaze when she finally pulled her eyes away from the river. They’d waded into the water, still in their clothes. Shadowheart stared at them.
“Shadowheart, you need to clean yourself. You have been standing there for a long time. I am concerned.”
The sharp lines of their face were so interesting—so chiselled, so silken. Shadowheart wondered if her face would become sharper too, now that she had taken a life. Was that what a warrior looked like? Traumatised?
Hands reached out to help her. “Shadowheart, let me—”
“Get off me!” Shadowheart said, choking immediately with the need to vomit. Talking was all it took to break the dam, the daydream she’d been hidden in. Suddenly her body was all she could feel, sticky with sweat and blood. She felt them—the stringy bits of flesh caught between her teeth, dangling on her tongue like writhing worms. She clenched her arms tight around her stomach, retching into the water. Her white hair fell across her face and some of the gristle in it hit her cheek. She sobbed, her hair falling like a ghostly veil around her, though she was all too aware of her life.
Yes, the sickening truth of it all was that Shadowheart was grateful for it. For her life. She was grateful they were dead, and she was grateful she was not.
A warrior or a murderer—were they just the same?
Trembling all over, she wiped at her mouth, her gums squeezing with spit, red and yellow mixing like thick acrylic paint on her skin. She’d never wanted to be a canvas.
She clawed at her hands under the water to bleed it all away.
“I’m sorry,” she said, choking down the tears that welled in her eyes, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
“It is okay,” Lae’zel said, and Shadowheart knew that it was.
She just couldn’t bear to touch herself. Yet it still felt far worse to leave her fleshy hair bashing against her face. She scraped back the tangled mess as she lifted to meet Lae’zel’s eyes again, her hair whipping against her back in a show of self-flagellation.
Shadowheart wanted to refuse Lae’zel’s help, sick and fucking tired of needing to be comforted and protected and uplifted. She wanted some Godsdamned agency, and while sweet words were nice and helpful, they were just that: words.
But then she looked into Lae’zel’s eyes. The sun in them had not been sullied by the eclipse of Shadowheart’s own; in fact, they still shone as brightly as ever.
It hit her like a gut punch—because if there was one bright side to this, that aureate light was it: Lae’zel was alive. Shadowheart was alive. She was so fucking thankful that they were alive. And she’d done that. Shadowheart had protected them, and she’d protected herself. Maybe The Wolf had helped but… hadn’t she called it to? That change hadn’t been natural, not born of the moon but born of her—of something inside her, some light deep within—and a darkness, too, but rage had always been a motivator for her. Yes, this was something that had taken her anger and desperation and sharpened them into a deadly blade for her to wield. It was heavy and unruly, a weapon she couldn’t yet control, unfamiliar with its weight and balance in her hands.
So she could ask for help again. She could ask for help again because she was not weak—she was strong. She was so fucking strong that she’d combusted under the pressure of it. No longer was she a weak girl caged in her castle, sentried by her guard[dog] Lae’zel. No: finally, she was her own protector. She needed to be, for her own sake, and to keep the promise she had made to Jaheira.
“I would like your help—if that’s okay. Truly, I don’t think I can get it all out of my hair alone.”
Lae’zel nodded gruffly, slicing through the water to grab their canteen from the riverside. They were back a second later pressing it just under the water. Shadowheart liked the little glug noise it made, the way bubbles fizzed to the top.
“This is going to be cold.”
Lae’zel placed a gentle hand flat on her forehead, gingerly tilting her head back.
“That’s okay.”
The water met her scalp and trickled down, down, down through her hair. It was cold, just as Lae’zel had said—nearly startlingly so. Still, Shadowheart had never minded the cold; she always ran too hot for her liking. Probably just another perk of being a wolf, she guessed.
It dripped from the ends of her hair and into the ever-flowing river. The river didn’t stop to grieve the viscera that covered it. Maybe Shadowheart didn’t have to either. The river runs, the seasons change, night turns to day. Life turns to death. Man turns to wolf.
Maybe all of it was just the way it was supposed to be.
But still, she couldn’t help the sickness in her guts, even as Lae’zel said: “You acted in self-defence.”
“I know. I had to do it”—a deep sigh from within her rattling chest—“yet it was all so violent… It just feels like murder…”
“No, Shadowheart. You killed them; you did not murder them.”
“I fail to see the distinction.”
She regretted the words the moment she said them.
It was easy to forget that, tender as Lae’zel was and as long as Shadowheart had known them, there was a past she knew little about—one that clearly pained Lae’zel to speak of. Shadowheart wanted to know it, not out of curiosity, but to understand them better, and to see where the cracks in their armour lay. She no longer wanted to be the force that chinked it. No, she wanted, more than anything, to wield the warmth she felt for them and melt those cracks back together. Perhaps not perfectly, nor prettily, but in a way that was full of character—worn down by experience and patched with love.
Lae’zel was quiet for what felt like a long time, their fingers threading through Shadowheart’s hair, pinching and pulling at bits she didn’t want to think about. With each lump Lae’zel removed without a word, Shadowheart’s concern grew. She whipped around to look at them, hoping to convey how sorry she was. She did not expect the tears that welled in their eyes.
“Shit, Lae’zel, I’m sorry. I—I don’t think of you as a murderer.”
“You have nothing to apologise for. Unfortunately, it is true. I am a murderer. How else would I come to know the difference? It is only in breaking it that you envisage its distinction.”
Lae'zel, a murderer? A murderer?
No.
There were many things that Shadowheart had and would call Lae’zel—an asshole, a guard dog, a suck-up, a jailor, a warrior, a proud knight, a dutiful friend—but a murderer? It had never entered the equation. It would never. They were far too gentle, far too aware of life, to ever be labelled as such. Shadowheart had seen it demonstrated every day they were together in the castle, though she hadn’t realised it until she was free.
Lae’zel was always careful with her in a way the other guards, Dhourn especially, were not. They’d been her jailor, but they’d also been her reprieve from the four walls that closed in. They’d chatted with her, entertained her, and offered her agency where they could—even if they’d been obliged to crush it, too. They were far more complex than the label “murderer” would ever allow them to be.
These were the rebuttals Shadowheart wanted to state. But when Lae’zel’s straight and tight shoulders fell into the slouched curve of a person defeated, she thought better of it. It was clear they had more to say.
“Shadowheart, I…” For once in their life, they could not meet Shadowheart’s gaze. “I’ve torn flesh from monsters and men. I’ve laughed as they suffered. My life as a monster hunter brought me glory and entertainment, and it brought me vanity. I did not care who I hunted or hurt…
But then I was knighted, and I met you. I do not wish to hurt you. I want to protect you. I want you to protect me. Last night, I failed you. I let the jaws take you. It was my duty to stop it—and I failed. I am sorry.”
The crack of their voice reached deep inside, a fracture not just of armour but of bone. Shadowheart felt her chest cleave in two, watching the marble of Lae’zel’s sculpted form crumble before her. For the first time, she understood what Jaheira meant when she warned her to look after Lae’zel. Lae’zel had shed all their armour and offered it to Shadowheart as protection. Without it, despite both of them standing alive and breathing, Lae’zel could not withstand the emotional blow. For all they had done for her, all Lae’zel could do now was grieve that the inevitable had come to pass. As strong and steadfast as Ser Lae’zel K’liir was, even the immovable object must fall before the unstoppable force.
Lae’zel’s voice wavered, broken and defeated. “What good this heart of stone, for it to be shattered? You were in peril, and I failed to protect you. I failed . Never did I want you to know the taste of blood and violence.”
“Lae’zel…”
Shadowheart could not stop herself from reaching out and brushing away their gentle tears. More and more each day the compulsion to touch them felt not just reasonable, but right. Looking at them now, a statue vandalised by the crimes of life, Shadowheart wanted only to glue them back together again.
“What happened was not your fault. It’s not your job to—oh, well, it is, but…”
Gods, she was so much worse at this than Lae’zel was.
“Look, I—I have a responsibility to look after myself, too. You can shield me but you can’t ever protect me entirely. And I don’t want you to; it would be a repeat of my mother’s actions. Last night you were there for me but you also allowed me to be my own person. You were… the only reason I regained my senses. Gods, it's thanks to your help that I’m here at all, to experience what it is to know not just the lows of life, but its highs. I shan’t deny that I am out of sorts, having killed them. But I don’t regret it because it allowed me to protect you—and you, me. Just like you wanted. Just like I want, too.”
The tears on Lae’zel’s cheeks faded to a glimmer in their eyes as Shadowheart spoke. Such molten gold they were, that Shadowheart longed to know what it would feel like to dive in and burn; the ice that had crystallized on her skin evaporating with their mere proximity.
Lae’zel pulled Shadowheart’s hand from their cheek and held it with both of their own. “Then, let this be our vow,” they said. “To shield each other from such blows, and to ease the pain of those we cannot foresee.”
Lae'zel sealed their shared promise with a gentle kiss on Shadowheart’s hand, who found herself blushing. Yes, Princess Shadowheart and Ser Lae’zel K’liir: not simply friends, nor enemies, nor even partners or lovers…
But equals, who respected and protected each other, and dealt with the mess of joys and woes that came with it. She quite liked that.
“I will finish with your hair,” Lae’zel said, severity meeting softness. “Turn back around.”
And when dexterous hands returned to cleaning Shadowheart’s hair, Shadowheart’s numb, icy form finally began to feel how warm their fingers could be.