Archive of Our Own ^beta

The tattoo hurt. It wasn’t a blazing or physical kind of pain, but a deep ache of the heart, a weight settling deep in your chest at the sight of the purple ink. The ripples of the water of the Reach lent an unsteady wavering to your reflection, matching your all too hasty heartbeat.

Being back here was too much - too many memories echoing back into your skull, too much sorrow. Zenos had called your - affliction, a voice at the back of your mind whispered - Resonance, marking you as something powerful, something strong - but a tool. A weapon to be used and thrown away, as ineffectual in defeat as you had been in supposed victory. The Scions had called it a gift, an artificial Echo. You knew better: it was a weight, a collar made of memory and shaped by suffering.

But now that collar felt - cracked, somehow. The simplicity of the choice had been something that you had been running from a long, long time. You had always known, deep down, that brutality could never bring you peace, could never break your shackles, but what else could you do but slaughter and slaughter or be slaughtered in turn? How could a single person shirk the yoke of empire without being crushed under the wheel?

And yet - you’d watched them do what you thought impossible, watched as your defeat and despair sublimated into hope with a mighty chant of Gyr Abanian victory, watched peace treaties and resolutions be made - all led by the woman in the red dress who’d offered you freedom. Your choice, she’d said: take the easy oblivion and give up the guilt, give up everything - or live with the pain, stand up, and do what you could have all along.

You’d taken the sword. You’d stood up and looked the woman in the eyes, watching the blue irises shift from resigned anger to determination - and you’d realized who she was.

There wasn’t time to think, no time to do anything but fight and protect and then feel the bitter satisfaction that standing on the right side of history brought. Years and years, so many lives taken, so much death - and the worst part was the knowledge that if you had run at any point past the start, you likely wouldn’t have been there to stand up today. One choice had set you on a path of no return, the only possible outcomes a lifetime of slaughter or a meaningless death - but the Scions had broken those outcomes on a spear of light.

You’d saved them, saved innocents from eternal servitude (the irony was not lost on you), saved her.

Nothing could take that away from you. No one. The old man’s words had stung, but it was the bitter kind of hurt that came with knowing someone else’s truth had no room for you and your mistakes. In a way, you had taken them through the center of your chest, impaled by a deep bone-aching sadness that there would be no forgiveness, not for you - but what did it matter? You were still standing there, wounded or not, gritting your teeth and forging ahead. You knew what must be done, and you knew the cost of acting, in weight of memory and aching heart.

Nobody said it would be easy.

The tattoo hung starkly in the rippling mirror, the distortion just enough to obscure the finer features of your face. You allowed yourself, just for a moment, to see another woman gazing back - fairer hair, piercing blue eyes - but that same tattoo, a flare of purple reaching through buried sadness. Tears came then, unbidden, hanging in your lashes but not daring to fall until you blinked them away. The little drops plinked into the water one after another, a flood of ripples shattering the illusion. It was just you again.

“I’m sorry, Yda,” you whispered, a thought you’d pushed down for nearly a decade suddenly forcing its way out, “I’m so, so sorry. You saved me, and I repaid that with our own people’s blood.”

It felt good to say it at last, relief at facing that fear that had gnawed at you for years - even if the sorrow of asking the forgiveness of a dead woman cast those emotions in an azure hue. Yda was - so many things; your savior, your rock - your friend. You hoped her spirit would find solace that you had finally found your way home to honor her memory - her end, you realized with a pang, that still no one knew the full truth of but you.

You remembered the kindness in her eyes, that bright blue resolve - and running, those eyes set in your memory, that gentle hand on your head a ghostly comfort, sobs shaking your small frame with every step.

The recognition that had finally hit you that day not so long ago - those same blue eyes staring back at you with barely contained fury and maybe the barest glimmer of understanding - was at once both comfort and hurt. Determination, maybe, at making good on this chance you had been granted. What a wicked coincidence, that the woman you had faced in a battle to the death and lived by her mercy, that you might have slaughtered like every innocent had the Scions not broken your advantage, was her sister! More than your own life had been spared with your defeat - Yda would not, could not, have ever forgiven your victory.

In that moment you’d made your choice, as sure as the sunset - you’d protected her - Lyse. You’d protected all of them. You could do nothing else from now on, nothing else but fight and save, for everyone you now cared about. For those you had taken - for those you could yet spare.

You looked away from your reflection, gazing across the Reach to see her by the war table, grinning with confidence, brows set with the decisiveness her sister had shared. A sad smile drifted across your lips at the memory.

You’d tell her someday, you promised yourself. Fear welled up at the very thought, the threat of blame, of seeing betrayal in those blue eyes - but you had already seen worse than betrayal. Nothing could compare to that feeling, knowing that the eyes you stared into were the same as ones that had given you kindness and hope, now dimmed in death. Forgiveness couldn’t be something you sought from Lyse - your actions had to tell the story.

She deserved to know the truth.