Work Text:
i. It’s been days since Lizzie’s body collided with the earth like a meteor; days since Ren stood far underneath the hilltop she fell from in a tunnel teeming with old enemies and was certain the cave walls and ceiling would collapse in with the weight of her death.
They didn’t. Ren stood like he was expecting her body to fling itself onto the floor in front of him, through layers of mud and stone and granite, and then Bdubs died too. The four of them kept moving, and Cleo didn’t look at him.
Lizzie is dead, and Ren keeps moving.
The walls left in ruin after Skizz and Impulse’s siege on the Tower have been repaired, and the cacti and berry bushes guarding the perimeter have doubled. The chests are organised, and the weapons are sharp and polished. Ren keeps moving.
After a meeting with Martyn and Etho, he volunteers to go creeper hunting. They’re going to need the gunpowder for splash potions; Ren is wary of how many Scott seems to carry, and, even though they’re technically on the same side, Ren doesn’t want to be relying on him if he can help it.
Mostly, though, it’s an excuse to do something with his hands.
The meeting is dismissed and Ren doesn’t think about the empty space where Lizzie once sat.
The Shadow Alliance is just that: a shadow of what once was Ren’s purpose and duty. Protect his Queen and her allies. And now his Queen is dead, brains dashed against the rocks and bones sprouting from the skin like the first signs of spring. Only, spring never comes and all Ren is left with is this oil-spill of an alliance where he is that ugly chrome sheen straining across the surface until he finds something solid to stick to.
Night arrives, though it struggles to penetrate through Lizzie’s haemorrhage of lava still swelling against the sunken sky. Ren simply wanders, away from the torches that trace the carved-out paths and deeper into what’s left of the forest.
The mud bloats in abscesses beneath his boots, most of the grass trodden down with the constant movement of survival. The trees arch against the horizon and Ren pushes past them, bow drawn. The silence of the night is cotton in his head, and Ren is aching, with fatigue and desperation and with nights long gone, lost to the past like he simply throws memories to the wind to see which direction he should follow. The wind changes every day and Ren is losing his footing.
There’s a hiss to his right and Ren spins blindly, squinting against the darkness. There’s the lolloping movement of a creeper and he fires his bow, once, twice, and waits until he hears it drop to the ground, dead weight. Satisfied, he closes the distance and collects the gunpowder before stepping over the carcass and setting off in the direction it came from.
The thump of a body onto the floor replays in his head in time to his heartbeat. A fall from grace, a body strewn into the air like anything could save it. Like it could catch the wind and tumble to Ren’s feet and a limp finger could point him in the right direction. But there is no time to kneel or beg or sob or pray or brush a hand over open glassy eyes. The river pushes upstream, always ahead, always moving, always eroding until your own body is hollowed out and a bird can lay its eggs in your rib cage, if it wasn’t so splintered. A clamorous heart wracks against the bars, trying to crawl through the gaps.
Light pricks against Ren’s eyes and he immediately flattens himself against the nearest tree trunk. The night is complacently still. No hushed chatter or the murmur of lava. No squelching footsteps or wheezing breath. There is light in the forest where light shouldn’t be.
Ren nocks another arrow. Peels himself from the trunk and creeps forward. The light grazes against the overhanging leafs, a mourning veil Ren must brush aside and face what will be staring back at him. There is light, there is light, and Ren has to hope it is not a forest fire.
Through the canopy is a clearing. It’s as if the stars have nestled themselves between the branches, lanterns and glow berries flushing the open space in amber, with Ren as a fly encased within it. The flowers at his feet are pink and blue and white, petals and veins softly illuminated in gold.
And in the middle of it all, there is a raised bed of dirt, marked with a large, jagged stone.
Ren lowers his bow.
Forever on the outside, forever tracing the edge of the circle and never daring to step into the centre. Always slightly to the side; always with a hand against the wall searching for a doorknob or a latch or a hammer to break the glass with. Sure, he will stand atop the Shadow Tower walls and welcome anyone who needs refuge or someone to guard their back, but the moon is always behind him and he will only ever be a silhouette. The shadow that scrapes against the fence gate. The hand to help you out from the river only to be swatted away.
He should keep moving. He doesn’t have nearly enough gunpowder. The sun will rise soon and he will have wasted another night. But Lizzie is right there, right under his feet. It’s been days since her death, but Ren takes a few steps forward, careful to avoid crushing the flowers underfoot.
He imagines Joel kneeling onto the dew-wept grass, frantic hands mixing the dirt with his wife’s blood as he arranges testimonies of life into the grass like teeth in his palm: a tulip there, an orchid here. A dead man walking amongst the life of the world and the death of his.
This mausoleum of wildflowers and light gauges its nails into the wound Ren has tried so desperately to cauterise; the reality of his Queen being severed from him, like a head from the neck, poised at his heart. This Eden that Joel has salvaged from fire and ruin trails against his pressure points and he should leave. He’s here for gunpowder. Nothing else.
Something is building. A pressure behind his eyes, a tightening grip around his throat, fingers squeezing until the tips turn white and if he doesn’t move he’s going to choke. He’s too close, now. Too close to admitting reality. Too close to admitting that Lizzie is dead and gone forever and never coming back. Ren has to keep moving. It’s the only way he can cope. The only way he can continue to survive.
So he does move. Closer to the grave. Closer to his Queen. He stands at the foot of her grave, hands refusing to settle. They jump from axe to bow to pockets, before he simply clasps them in front of him, sweaty palm against knuckles. There’s an ache in his knees and Ren half-wonders if he should kneel. But that seems too grand. Too dramatic. So instead he just bows his head and stares down at the grass. There is too much he wants to tell her, yet absolutely nothing he can say. He hasn’t thought about it. He’s thought about it too much. His mind replays the one conversation with the same relentlessness of the sea to the shore. What do you care about, then?
The answer is so simple and yet Ren cannot say it. It buzzes at the tip of his tongue like swollen fruit flies thriving on the decay of a bruised apple, like anything that battered can provide life or sustenance. No, Ren is an afterthought, lingering behind his own shadow. He will wait at the fence gate. He will not avenge her execution of BigB. The alliance may be an oil spill but he will poison the seascape in her name if it means it will keep her alive for a moment longer.
Queen of Shadows, Queen of Ghosts; of the flickers in the peripheral vision and the fog of the past, as suffocating as smoke. Queen of Travesty, of a withered kingdom: charred and decomposing like a body in the ground. The Queen of Death whose knight still roams the land of the living, a dog without its master, growling at any outstretched hand.
Now Ren looks up, and the grave complete with its headstone is still stretching out in front of him. The candles in the lanterns aren’t burning low. The sky is lightening, though, refusing to still for any grieving man.
There has to be something he can leave her with, aside from a marred heart and promises he still intends to keep. His pockets are empty of offerings and trinkets, as are the pouches at his belt. No nether wart this time. No anvil. No two pulses keeping time with each other. No flowers to honour the dead or coins to press over the eyes. But there is a weight at his hip, wood and metal, a familiar heaviness. The shield that failed to protect his Queen.
He unslings it from its hook and holds it out in front of him, assessing the face of it, splintered by arrows and blades and charred from the fallout of exploding creepers. Dull metal, scuffed and nicked. Still, it is durable, unwavering, staunch against any mob or blazing red fury. And Lizzie never carried one. She always took her chances; always grappled with fate like it was something needing to be tamed instead of feared. Lizzie had trusted his shield as much as she had trusted his sword.
Ren places it against the headstone and stares at it, like he’s expecting the ground to swallow it like it swallowed her body. Perhaps her hand will uproot itself from under the dirt and snatch it back down with her. The shield doesn’t even rock. There is no breeze to tilt it. He hopes this answers her question. He hopes she knows, even if she doesn’t believe him.
ii. The walls of the Shadow Fort are solid, and Ren is starting to think that they keep him in rather than keep anyone else out.
He traces the perimeter. He could circle this route with his eyes closed. The steps are familiar. Solid stone under his feet. The grass does not rustle below. There is no wind to jostle the treetops or stir the berry bushes. The end of the world has started, and not even the breeze dares to breathe. Devastation has locked its jaws around Ren’s throat and yet he insists on keeping himself busy.
There is no one to guard. Ren is alone. All over again, he stands alone in a tower, the last few months of his life laying to waste like a corpse. The undoing; the unravelling of the ribs; learning to live with one less limb.
The nights are long, these days. The bodies around the campfire have dwindled to bodies deep underground, and time passes like a knife rooting itself in the ribcage. Ren waits to bleed out; knows that removing the knife will not help. Night is simply something that can be outlasted. And that’s all Ren can do. Outlast, endure, survive, keep moving, never slowing down, never stopping, never considering, never thinking; ignoring the possibilities and what-ifs. Lizzie is dead. That’s all there is.
He returns to the front wall of the Tower, sitting down. The landscape is hardly recognisable in the engulfing black. Spindly trees and imposing, leering structures and mountains jutting rock and snow into the sky like a fist to the stomach. The world is shrinking through fire and spilled blood and the sharp scent of gunpowder. It’s the end of the world, and all Ren can do is wait it out.
Idly, he lifts the spyglass to his eye. Faint torchlight teases amber through the shadows. Magical Mountain sits, solitary. The Southlands, left to rot. The Snow Fort in ruins. The ground is constantly shifting, clawing, never quite settling. As restless as the rest of them, Ren thinks.
Something moves. A silhouette, faintly outlined by the lit paths. It’s too quick to be a monster; too human. It’s definitely someone. Ren follows it as it scales down cliff-faces and hilltops. He hopes it’s someone semi-amicable. There’s not many people left who he wants to see anymore.
The figure draws closer and Ren recognises it in an instant. It is Joel, relentless like an omen.
Joel winds his way through trees and rivers and mottled paths and Ren waits for him, feet now planted solidly against solid stone, bow in hand, ready to draw.
Joel stands in front of him, at the wall of the fort Ren built for love, and looks up at him, red eyes impersonal. His dogs brush against his ankles, their ears back and down in warning.
“Joel,” Ren calls, careful to keep his voice challenging but not hostile. “Can I help you, my friend?”
Even with Ren on the high ground, Joel still manages to infringe on the Tower walls like bindweed. But the detachment to the universe is wearing thin, and Ren thinks of this man, hunted like a rat but feared all the same, digging a grave for his wife. Alone in the dark that presses against his skin; alone in grief just like Ren is. What is built for love endures; outlasts.
“Do you have her flowers?”
This man who tragedy adores; kissing his eyelids and cradling his hand the whole way. This man who has no sovereignty over Ren; no alliance or pact or promise. No moonlit devotions. There is nothing tying them together except for the unspoken.
Wife and Queen and ghost and corpse; skin giving way to bones deep underground. Flowers are the least Ren can do for Joel. It’s all he can do.
“Come on up,” Ren says after a moment, jumping down from the wall and into the courtyard.
Joel lands behind him a few seconds later, his hand planted firmly around the hilt of his axe. Ren’s hands hang by his sides but he flexes his palms in some peaceful sort of gesture, unsure as to what this situation means for them. A death-vested truce, for the woman whose heart still pounds within the both of them?
The patch of peonies growing against the wall are looking slightly scraggly and pathetic and Ren can’t remember the last time he watered them. He has to remember to water them. Joel stares at them, silent.
“Take as many as you need,” Ren says.
The grass cradles Joel’s footprints like something in this world believes in preservation. He kneels down by the peonies, taking the petals and rubbing them between his blood-stained fingers.
Ren looks away. He has already intruded on this man’s grief once before. If Joel unholsters his axe, he’ll hear it. There is a new shield at his hip now. Shinier and sturdier. It can withhold whatever Joel might decide to throw at him.
So when fabric rustles, Ren snaps his attention back to the man at his flower bed. Joel stands up, and looks at him, mouth drawn tightly shut.
Joel speaks. “Thanks.” It’s awkward, and stiff, and Ren is expecting to see this armistice out the door but he falters as he realises that Joel’s hands are trembling.
It’s only the one peony he’s plucked, not a bouquet for Lizzie’s grave like Ren was expecting. He’s tucked it firmly behind his ear, as part of him as the steadfast wedding ring glinting on his finger. The peony’s pink is stark against the black and crimson of his robe, almost pitiful in a way Ren can’t quite place. He is a man in mourning in a world that is relentless in its sorrow.
“If you want, you can take them all.” Ren can only look slightly below Joel’s eye line. It’s too much otherwise.
Joel just shakes his head. A mercy; a kindness?
“I—” the words tumble out like Ren just released the floodgates; a secret he’s kept for weeks. “I found where you buried her.”
Joel is explosive, impulsive, furious. He is the crack of TNT and click of flint and steel. He is the face everyone dreads; that crazed grin and singing axe and harsh, barking laughter.
The news doesn’t faze him. Ren remembers Lizzie recounting the time they killed each other, at the start of all of this. Joel fell into his own trap and Lizzie escaped only to die to a zombie. She’d laughed, like it was nothing. They both had lives to spare.
Even when Joel swung his axe into her chest, it didn’t matter. This was a language they spoke in; a love that could exist in this world. Lizzie would mutter about how annoying he was, but she’d still gravitate towards Joel if he ever came near. That is just love. Not wanting to be killed by any other hand.
Lizzie kills BigB, and spares Ren’s life.
Joel’s face cracks into a grin. It’s gruesome, ugly, manic. All of this panic, all of this anger, all this grief and love and solitude with nowhere to go, pent up and twisted into something so hulking and wild that flesh cannot contain it. It rips out of Joel like he is a plaything. It engulfs him like lava to a body.
Love is a difficult thing; tricky like water. Ren used to think he understood it. Lizzie roamed in its fields. Her and Joel. She’d curse his name with a smile. She’d follow him where he’d asked, even when she knew it was a trap. Not wanting to die to anyone else. An axe; a platform; a King—
Ren’s feet shuffle backwards. Joel’s gaze is blazing, those red eyes like bleeding hearts.
“You left the shield.” He says. It’s not a question.
Ren nods.
“It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?”
It’s not cruel; not in the way Joel can be. It’s not a blade at his throat or TNT under foot. It’s almost a joke. Almost like Joel is extending some splintered, rotting olive branch.
Lizzie’s peony is behind his ear and Ren has stopped moving. There is a grave out there, draped in light. There is an empty seat at the table. There is a filled-in crater where Lizzie’s house used to sit. There are stone walls, built and rebuilt time and time again. A fort, made to protect the love they had.
Does it not matter that the love was there? Was it worth saving? Worth protecting?
Was it worth it? Ren wants to ask him. Killing her?
Of course it was, Joel would say. Joined me on red for a bit, didn’t she?
And that’s what it is. They are ravenous, all of them, hunting for connection. Joel, the first red. Ren, the last standing of his original allies. A lonely tower overlooking a river of salmon. A reinforced tower guarding a charred forest. Ren jumped at the first offer of company. Wouldn’t Joel, too? That silver wedding band around his finger that matches Lizzie’s, just as caked in blood and dirt as the rest of him.
Ren can recognise grief. And in front him stands a mirror. Cracked, jagged, but reflective all the same. Ren’s ribs are Lizzie’s ribs are Joel’s ribs. His hands; his eyes; his heart. They are intertwined indefinitely; joined at the hip of love.
(Joel’s arrow will pierce Ren’s stomach lining. But that is later. Tonight, two men are grieving the woman they love.)
“She never carried one,” Ren says, wanting to justify himself.
Joel doesn’t respond. He tilts his head up to the sky, pinkening like bloodied bandages. Endurance is deep-set on Ren’s shoulders. Life is a challenge; a taunt from some otherly being. Another day survived. Another day to beat.
He’s not entirely certain how much longer Joel is willing to be civil. If the sun is a timer. If this type of neutrality can only exist under the shroud of darkness.
“If you ever—”
“Yeah,” Joel says. “Thanks.”
Without another look, Joel climbs back over the wall. His dogs bark in response. And he is gone. Ren is left alone, staring at the flowers of a dead woman.
He should go to bed.
iii. The peony symbolises happiness, love, and honour. Ren does not think he deserves his flower bed.
iv. Grief is a hand to hold. And if Ren stretches his other hand a little further, he might find the cold hand of a widower, before they both pull away.