"Summon the Starchild, quickly!"

"Send word to the Council!"

She's trying – she's trying, so hard – but the bleeding won't stop, the wounds are too many.

Nami can heal, but she's no Soraka.

Diana lays before her, a picture of cracked armor and bloody steel. The Tidecaller has always known the woman to be exceptionally pale, but her pallor is now beyond unearthly. She takes shuddering breaths, silvery eyes glancing back and forth without focus as the blood pools around her, color draining from her face with every passing second.

"Diana," calls Nami, tremulously, "can you hear me?"

The woman coughs in response, chest rising unevenly as the air rattles in her lungs. She tries to force the water into her wounds – to purge the impurities and soothe the pain – but it just seems to slosh uselessly at the armor. Right now, all she can do is clear away some of the blood.

"I just... wanted to believe," Diana whispers, words pushing through her teeth with a hiss. "W-was I wrong?"

For a moment, she doesn't say anything – can't, because she doesn't know what to say. Diana's eyes slide over and meet her gaze, but they're empty, almost as if they're not really looking at her. The woman coughs again and gasps in another wavering breath, face wrenching in pain.

"Leona!" she cries out, with a strangled voice that fades back into a feeble murmur. "Leona... I... Was I w-wrong?"

Diana is crying. The tears slip down her pallid cheeks and mix with the blood, rich and red and flowing. It is stark against her white hair and white skin, and it is horrifically beautiful.

"Leona?" she asks again, voice almost pitching into a whimper. A trembling, bloody hand reaches upwards.

The Scorn of the Moon is dying – but she is so beautiful, Nami thinks. So beautifully sorrowful. It is like the sight of a gasping dolphin on land, the grotesque poetry of its slow death, heart-wrenchingly fascinating and painful to witness all at once. In Diana, and the dolphin, there was that dreaming of better things. That yearning for what could not be granted.

Here is the moon, she realizes, reaching for the sun.

"No," says Nami, at last, and she takes Diana's hand in hers. Something, some great emotion is constricting her throat, forcing a knot in it so that it's difficult for her to speak. "You weren't wrong."

Diana smiles then – a faint, weak smile as her hand feebly squeezes the Tidecaller's. Blood leaks from her blue lips. Nami shuts her eyes tight and forces back the tears, shakily pressing the cold hand to her face.

"L-Leona. I loved... you," Diana manages, exhaling through trembling breaths.

"...I loved you too," Nami sobs.

She can hear the thunderous sound of footsteps, the urgent shouts, but they are far off in her perception – like a cascading waterfall in the back of her head. The clip-clop of hooves resound.

"I'm here!" says the Starchild.

When Nami opens her eyes, it is far too late.

.

.

.