Series: Leagues and Legends by E. Jade Lomax
(Written post book 2, before book 3)
Sixteen and a half, christened in blood and fire, George the Dragon Slayer breathed deep and choked on it.
Her lungs filled with smoke. Ash on her tongue made her gag, made the world taste like the yawning gulf in her gut. There was a hill covering the bones of everyone she'd thought she knew. There was a village who's lives she'd decided were worth saving, this blood on her hands. There was a corpse, a creature who's years were cut short because she had decided her life was worth it too.
No matter how far from the wreckage she went, she would never leave this behind. She would never try. This had been her choice, this blood and smoke, and she had known it would never be scrubbed from her skin.
A red haired shadow insisted she had done right. She didn't believe him, but she breathed a little easier. Jack Farris would do that for years, be a burning beacon that cleared the smoke a little, washed away the taste of ash, made it easier to breathe new air.
That's what plants do - take in old air, push oxygen out, make it breathable. Jack was a Beanstalk, a Forest boy who hadn't yet grown into something with an edge. Who hadn't yet shattered like broken glass and left to mend himself.
He left, and George choked. She had forgotten how to breathe without her Giantkiller at her back. She had never learnt, sixteen and a half, sacrificed and then sacrificing, to see her own worth. She had become nothing but the spear and blood on her hands, a body stained with ash.
Jack Farris was sunshine and burning purpose, and it had been so easy to feel right by his side. She had never shed her guilt, but she had felt it perhaps was bearable, that easy faith watching her with a smile. It had been so easy to tie her life, her worth, into his trust and care.
He left, and she pulled herself up from the ashes. There was no Forest boy to remind herself to breathe for - no humming Mage, either, just the widow and child she couldn't help but think she had let down. They weren't hers to breathe for, she decided. The only person she could breathe for, every moment of every day, was herself.
She dragged in air, choked on smoke, and breathed again. She was no Beanstalk, but some seeds need a touch of fire to sprout and grow. She breathed in, breathed out, told herself she had a life that was all her own. She could follow, yes, throw her lot in with others and their precious beating hearts, but she couldn't hang her life on them.
Jack came back - different, grown, fractured rather than shattered, to the eyes of those who knew. He came back and George felt her lungs clear, felt herself breathe easy.
But he was not hers to breathe for. He did not deserve the weight of her smoke filled lungs. She did not deserve to need him just to breathe. She deserved so much more, and she knew she had to walk away.
They would always have each other's backs. She would always love his sunshine smile and sarcasm, just as he would love her steady presence, her laugh, the easy way she knew every scar and fracture in his soul. But she deserved to love herself without him there to tell her she was worth loving.
This was not about Jack. This was about George and her smoke filled lungs, learning she could breathe alone.