sword, broken
Summary: Shannara Chronicles, TV series. The sound of beings fighting and dying all around her fades away, and then, there is only silence. OneShot/Introspection- Diane Tilton.
Warning: Drabble-esque. Angst.
Set: Spoilers for S01Ep10 – Ellcrys.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
A/N: I'm not quite happy with the series in itself. It was interesting, but some of the plot and some of the characters I just couldn't connect with. I'll wait for the second season (hopefully?) to form my opinion, I think. (Oh, and I've only ever read one of the books, but it's been ages and I don't remember anything anymore.)
These were the two characters I liked most.
i.
It breaks.
She can hear it clearly, feels it within herself. The weapon has been a part of her for so long now that its destruction shatters something inside her, something buried so deeply that she has almost forgotten it herself.
She has trained for you for you always for you this since she was old enough to lift a wooden practice blade.
It happens like this: a battle, an opponent, a second in time. A sword, rising.
Instinct and muscle memory have her arms come up, her blade parrying the strike that would have decapitated her otherwise. No amount of surprise can break through the tunnel of battle focus and make her miss a step, a blow, nothing ever is able to distract her. She catches the blade aimed for her head, feints and thrusts back, and her opponent's helmet drops to the ground with a ringing sound. His blade comes up, again, meets hers in a clash of steel on steel that shakes through her entire being, she lifts her eyes to her opponent's face and that is when she feels her sword shatter: she looks at her enemy and sees the face of her dead lover.
The sound of ending is lost in the midst of the battle of demons against gnomes and elves and the poisonous black blade pierces her side, drives deeply into her flesh and tears out again, and it is only when she hears the King's shout that she realizes what has happened.
Anders engages his brother.
ii.
Once upon a time there were three brothers.
She has known them all. Four children, a girl, three boys, how many afternoons did they spend in the forest, how many times has she argued with them? How many, many days have they lived side by side, as children, as teenagers, as adults? Discussing and laughing and arguing. Playing together, learning together. Growing up. Together.
And then one of them left, cruelly, and they remained: a woman and two brothers, all of them broken in ways too different and too similar for them to remain the way they once were.
Two brothers, two men.
One of them brilliant, almost blinding, with his bleach-blonde hair and his bright eyes, his mind shining with determination and charisma. Naïve, sometimes, and beautiful to look at. A pillar of strength for his friends and his family. The crown prince, carrying on his dead brother's responsibility. A good man, honorable, full of dreams and kindness and passion, and she loved him.
One of them calm, quiet, almost subdued, his dark hair and his gaze dulled and disillusioned. Nothing shining in him, not in the way he spoke nor in the way he behaved, the grief and guilt nobody else but her could see screaming at world through his eyes. A kind man, warm and softhearted once, now cold and cynical, and she loved him once but after he did not love anything but wine and women and his niece, and she hated him.
And now, both men are dead.
Anders died with his Aine and Arion died with their last hope. She has wondered before if he ever really loved her or if she just was the prize he took to show his brother his, Arion's, final victory; but that cannot be true because Arion was far from perfect (elves are even less perfect than mankind, she thinks) but he never was a cruel man.
(Except that she can hear him plead for Anders to kill him, and she thinks no, no, please do not burden him further, let me do it, I beg you, beloved-)
iii.
The world behind her eye lids is quiet, the sounds of the battle fading away.
She is dying, and she knows it.
they say when you die/your life flashes/in front of your eyes
There is no pain. No guilt, no fear: none of the burdens she has carried for so long. Peaceful, she thinks, with an inaudible sigh. Calm. Finally, there is only silence. It is not her dying and the world continuing to turn but her fading away and the world (her world) coming to an end, slowing down and down and down until it stands, still. It is like everything around her disappears while she is. She has not expected it to feel like this; so little like her life is ending, so much like she is just coming home falling asleep. Alone on the familiar, hard earth under the endless, star-specked night sky, and then not alone anymore.
anders
Dark eyes, grief-filled, dim; a man who lost everything and himself and refuses to look both forward and back. She has seen him in a thousand different situations, a million times in her life. Every time, his eyes were the one thing she was drawn to, helplessly, and it is ironic that she does not remember them full of mischief and love anymore but only bleached by sorrow, self-deprecation and overwhelming guilt.
Once upon a time there was a kingdom only held by a fragile balance, with so much between peace and war, grief and happiness. There was a king and a father grieving for his murdered son, a man blaming his younger brother and a princess weeping for her lost parents between them: between the man Anders Elessedil had been, and the man the world saw then.
It happens like this:
He makes them believe. He makes the impossible possible and puts himself forward and begins to fight. Breaks through years of intrigues, decades of anger and centuries of hate. Makes them believe again. And the expressions of the men bowing to him, surrendering, accepting his right to the throne and pledging their loyalty to him once and for all; are a mirror to what she always knew he was.
long live the king
Anders Elessedil is crowned king, and she knows oh Ellcrys I lost him that he will be the one to unite the races, to save them from the demons: to protect their world from itself. There is seldom a man born to be king, but sometimes, fate makes a man out to be one. Anders is one of these man, whether he wants it or not. She knew – deep, deep down she always knew – she just never trusted her heart. Or maybe she was too afraid of it, of trusting what she knew was to come, what she desperately wished not to happen but knew could not be avoided. Now she allows herself to believe in a future again. And she weeps inwardly for the pain and grief it must have caused him: to lose everything, in order to gain power.
To lose her.
But she lost him, too.
Somewhere in grief, darkness, alcohol – somewhere along the road she lost the man he had been, and turned away. Never turned back to see the man he had become because it had hurt too much. That was what has cost her her future. (Her future with him died the day she found him in the forest, three days after the attack and Aine's death, and he looked up at her with eyes red-rimmed and glassy, and told her to leave. And they argued, and she left. Or maybe it died when he saw her kissing his brother, and he turned away.)
[Oh no please no no no please]
She lost him, or he lost her. They lost each other. It did not really matter anymore.
But she never stopped loving him. In this moment of perfect clarity, there is nothing she is surer about than this. As she knows, with absolute certainty, that he will save their people. Anders Elessedil, third son to Eventine Elessedil, would do what his father and his brothers before had failed to do: he would unite the people of the world, and save them from themselves.
iv.
[Diane]
They say when you die, your life flashes before your eyes.
She only sees the face of the man she loves.
The world is silent, the darkness complete. There is a light somewhere beyond the field of her vision, a silver shimmer so warm and beautiful she feels like weeping. Something in her wants to reach out, wants to touch and feel the peace that radiates from it. Another part still hesitates, knowing don't look back, love, there are no dreams behind us that peace never was her way.
It happens like this:
Another flash of silver, right in front of her. Splinters of steel and determination: the shattered remnants of her weapon spread out all around her. The pain blossoms within her fiercely, tearing at her, and she breathes through it. Fixes her gaze on the horizon she can only sense and breathes.
[Diane!]
This, she thinks, is the right way to go. A broken sword is of no value. There was a time when she was of use, and there are times coming when she will not be anymore. And that is fine with her. She just wishes-
A soft laugh, the huff of an invisible breath.
She tenses, pausing, strains her hearing. There is something around her, invisible, but not dangerous.
Do not give up just now, you know. Swords can be forged new.
What-
The voice is warm, and tentatively humorous. I always knew there was more to the way he looked at you.
What are you talking about? Who are you? She is not quite sure which question to ask first, which one is the more important one. Impatient, she tries to see something in the silver-dappled shadows surrounding her, but there is nothing. Simultaneously, the pain is back.
anders, oh anders
But it does not matter, not anymore. She is dead. She might have loved, and lost, but do they not say it was better than to never have loved at all?
Now come. This wound is deep, but not necessarily lethal. Did you not show me how to dress wounds like that? Heed your own teachings, will you? There is sorrow in the voice, deep and centuries-old. He did not want you to die.
[Stay with me! I beg you, beloved, do not leave me-]
She turns away. Just leave me alone.
You lack conviction. Stop this half-hearted attempt to fade and fight, instead. You are a fighter, are you not? Or do you want to die like a coward?
I am not a coward!
That is the spirit.
Will she ever be able to forgive herself for loving both Arion and Anders? Will she ever be able to forgive herself for loving the one more than the other? And if she cannot, will she be able to continue on?
Will it be enough?
To love, and to fight, and to love while fighting and living and losing? Will it be enough to be at his side, even if he does not look at her the way she wishes him to anymore?
(Because she was there, in that fateful moment before the battle, in an empty hall and with empty hopes and fears drowning them, and instead of kissing her he kissed her head-)
[Do not leave me!]
She knows the answer.
v.
Diane Tilton opens her eyes.
Welcome back, Aunt, Amberle whispers with a smile.