I have never written an SP fic. But the series was just so amazingly gripping and so, so hilarious. I couldn't help it. Who knows, maybe this will turn into a regular something. I own nothing. Please enjoy!
The door was pulled to, but not latched. Valkyrie reached out a hand - marred by her battles, scarred but healed - and gently swung it open wider. The warm, yellowy light of the lamp in the hall rushed in, sending patterns of bright and shadow dancing across the floor.
Alice slept on, undisturbed.
A gentle smile tugged at Valkyrie's lips. She resisted the urge to coddle her dozing sister, hugging herself instead. Rule number 4 of the Edgely household: don't wake the baby.
The first three rules were of entirely different timbre.
Valkyrie leaned gently against the door frame, watching as her tiny sister waved a chubby hand near her face. she nearly overflowed with a rush of warmth, as though she'd just sunk into a bubble bath.
Whatever, Valkyrie reflected as she eased the door closed. Sisters were better.
Suddenly she felt a pang in her chest, right where the warmth had been spreading from just moments before. Stephanie.
Wreath and Melancholia were always talking about the stream of life and death. They were really the same, but for some reason people had always preferred Life over her darker counterpart. Now Valkyrie wondered if the same was true for love and grief. Love and loss. Love and mourning.
At least she would always have Alice.
That was when the guilt struck her. It was always the same, every night. First the warm glow of love, followed by the pang of grief, and then by the heavy, dragging weight of guilt. She'd killed her sister. No matter what followed, how successful she'd been in restoring Alice's life to her, Valkyrie's sister had been dead, and she'd been the cause. That could never happen again.
And now came the terror. If anything happened to Alice, and Valkyrie wasn't there for her -
...
Tanith had found a stick.
It was a perfectly good stick, except that it was completely normal. Tanith didn't want normal. She wanted exciting, magical, useful, Valkyrie's. Specifically her magical hitting-people-with stick. Tanith wanted a stick like that. Not more than her sword, of course. No, she wanted this stick so that she could return it, do some good in her life - she needed to make up for the last two years.
Then again, normal was good for the fire.
She chucked it backwards, without looking, but she heard the clang and knew her aim had been spot-on, and the stick had gone directly into the metal bucket of firewood she was collecting. As always. She'd found an awful lot of sticks in the past two hours.
That in itself was surprising, considering she was in the middle of a battle zone. Although it was the forest. One had to expect you'd find some sticks there.
She was not expecting to find the vampire.