Title: Tell Me

Rating: PG

Summary: An unknown woman wants to make reparation for her sins. Death fic.

"Tell me," she begged. "Tell me I lived a good life."

Her voice was cracked and broken with age. She sounded parched, as if she had lived through a drought that had lasted a lifetime. Her skin, though wrinkled and aged, still clung tenaciously to a fragment of the beauty it once possessed. Limp red hair framed her face, and even her eyes were held nothing of life.

"Tell me," she persisted.

It was the one thing I could not do for her.

"Tell me, Adria."

I was not Adria. I was not her long-dead daughter; I was not a delicate, fiery haired fairy girl. If she had the ability to understand the world around her, she would know that I was her caretaker. She might even suspect me to be more.

"You need to rest, ma'am," I told her, tucking curly, inky black hair behind my ear. I leaned over her, adjusting the blankets that covered her, inhaling the scent of old woman and looming death. Not so long ago, I would have gagged at such a smell. Now, I was immune to it.

She shook her head. "Adria, please." Her hands closed over my wrist in a surprisingly strong grip. "I need you to tell me… Tell me I didn't waste my life."

Looking down on her, my gaze softened. "I did not live your life," I told her. "I did not see you live your life."

"Does it matter?" She asked the question absently, as if the asking itself didn't matter. Her head turned and her eyes settled on the curtained window. "Draw back the drapes, Adria, dear. I want to see Domino once more before I die."

Invisible hands seized my heart. I couldn't let her see what her world had become. Sand storms ravaged the planet's now barren surface, stripping bare the bones of any foolish enough to leave safety. Even the strong castle we lived in would soon be worn down by the constant wind.

"Rest, ma'am," I told her, smoothing her hair from her face.

"Adria!" Her voice was filled with motherly consternation. "Do as I say."

For the first time during my long stay with the aged queen of Domino, I wondered if I ought to correct the old woman. Aubrey, I would say in a quiet, pleading voice. My name is Aubrey. Please call me that instead. It was something I was allowed to do, but I could not bring myself to correct her, to cause her that pain.

"Is it not enough that you will not offer your mother assurance in her last hours? Now you must deny me this as well?" she demanded.

My heart bled for her. I could not be aloof near this woman. My soul resonated with her own too much. Still, I could not give her the assurances she needed. I could not tell her she had lived a good life.

"Adria…" She was pleading again, and her voice was weaker. This wasn't one of the last hours, I realized as I looked down at her. This was the last hour.

I shifted until I sat beside her on the bed. Her head was near my thigh, and she turned toward me, looking upward. There was a moment, as she gazed up, that her eyes cleared of age and death enough to see me.

"Who are you?"

I moved my left hand, sliding my fingers between the ones on her right hand. I didn't do anything else, not yet. I merely sat beside her as I considered my words, our fingers alternating against the white blankets over her bed.

"I am no one," I said after a moment. It was not a lie, since I could not lie to her, but it was only half of the truth. I was no one, but I was someone who could have changed this end.

"I'm cold, Adria," she whispered, her moment of lucidity finished.

"I know," I told her. I reached inside myself and drew a single flame of my essence from my body and let it flow into hers. When it should have ended, I channeled more. A steady stream of power connected us, a tiny flicker of flame linking kindred spirits. It was enough to clear her mind just a little more. I needed her to hear me.

"I am no one but a wanderer."

Her blue eyes focused on me and her gnarled fingers twitched beside my own. "You are a fairy of fire, like me," she said, her voice full of silenced accusations.

"No." That was the truth, in no way bent or slanted. I was no fairy.

"You are not Adria."

"No."

"Who are you?" I wasn't surprised that she didn't pull away from me. Despite the disgusted vehemence in her voice, she recognized what the little stream of power flowing into her was doing for her.

"I am a lost wanderer," I told her in quiet tones, "who weaves fate on the loom of her body. I am a catalyst and I am a deterrent."

She snorted. "You are feeding me your own strength to put off my death. My body might be dying, but my mind is still sharp," she replied.

I arched an eyebrow as I glanced to her. "You are lying," I pointed out. She did not argue.

"Why are you here?"

"I can't atone for the mistake I made, but I wished to try," I murmured.

I wasn't looking at her when she stiffened beside me. The wall was the focus of my gaze. I was too afraid to meet hers.

"What was your mistake, weaver of fate?" she inquired.

She called me by an ancient title, one that made me want to scream with rage and frustration and longing and pain. She couldn't know what those words meant to me, but they meant the world. She had become my world.

"I doomed an entire people, an entire civilization, an entire planet, and an entire dimension." I couldn't tell her why. Remembering hurt too much.

"Why?"

Of course she would ask.

A ghost of a smile appeared on my lips. I hadn't truly smiled in years, and wouldn't for years to come. Destroying millions of people killed one's desire for one's own happiness. "Pride. Perhaps hubris."

We sat in silence as my fire fed her life. I didn't allow myself to dwell on the ironic fact that I was sustaining a representation of the people I had killed.

"Can you tell me if I led a good life?" she asked me. "Can you tell me if my life… meant something? If it was worthwhile?"

"No." My reply was instantaneous. "I did not live your life. I did not see you live your life. I can't judge it, for better or for worse."

"I feel like I'm dying without having done anything worthwhile," she admitted. "I feel as if I have no legacy. My husband and daughter are dead."

"I killed them." It was funny how conversational my response sounded.

"I realize that now." It was funny how she didn't seem to mind. "I can have no legacy through my daughter. Do I have one at all?"

I laughed. "Does anyone?"

"Do you?"

I sobered. This conversation was not going at all how I wanted it to.

"Tell me," she commanded, her voice just like any queen's ought to be and not at all like an old woman's.

I shook my head. "I can't," I told her, though I could tell her. I just didn't want to tell her.

Her only response was silence. I knew she was waiting. Another ghost-smile curled my lips up slightly. She understood me, though she probably didn't realize it. We were so similar. I might have suspected we were each other's Other if not for the fact that my people did not have Others.

The silence became unbearable to me after thirty seconds had passed. "My people have collective memories," I explained. "In the past, there were many who wouldn't hesitate to slaughter my people. We didn't have time to teach our children how to protect themselves, so when they were born, we simply gave them the memories of all who had come before. Eventually, children were born with the memories already intact. This allowed them to use their powers to protect themselves from a young age."

It hurt to say, since I had done much the same to her people. Though I had not been the hand that made them bleed, I was the one who, through inaction, had caused it.

She let out a wistful sigh. "So when you die, your children will have your every memory."

"Yes."

"I wish I could do the same. But my daughter is dead. There is no one I could give my memories to."

I hesitated, thinking. I had no doubt that every judicial counsel and board would try to hang me for what I was about to do, but I was my mother's daughter, and I had no problem scarring the shit out of the lot of them.

"If you die while my power courses through you, all your memories will become my own," I told her, turning my head to watch her reaction.

Her blue-green eyes widened.

"You will die as one of my people, and I will give you the full respect demanded at the death of one who weaves fate."

She gazed up at me and in unison, we turned our eyes to the ceiling. I sensed, through our bond, her thoughts sliding over each other. She mused over the option for a full minute before speaking.

"I would like that."

Without another word, words were not needed, I changed the flow of power running from me to her. It didn't course through her body now; it wasn't rushing through her veins and arteries to keep her alive. Instead, it traveled to her mind, running along the paths of neurons. As her breath slowed, memories poured from her to me.

I couldn't smile, but I wanted to. She had lived a beautiful, full life.

The last of her breath fled her body and I drew my power and my hand from her. Stepping from the bed, I gazed back at her. Her eyes were closed and there was a smile on her lips.

I dropped into a low bow, one leg folded under my body, one extended in front of me. I raised one arm in gesture to her. "To Bloom of Domino be all honor and graces given," I murmured. As I stood from the bow, I began a song of mourning. The song called to the strings of fate and they responded accordingly. Soon, everything in the room was ash.

I changed the song. No longer was there a need to mourn. Now there was only celebration. Again, the strings reacted to my voice. The ash was gathered in a gentle wind, and it solidified into a small, glassy orb. I plucked it from the air as I finished singing. Reaching behind my head with my other hand, I unclasped my necklace and strung the orb onto it. It nestled between my breasts next to a small sapphire with a metal ring encasing it.

I glanced about the room once more before fleeing from it. There was only one thing left to do. I reached the end of the inner court. Standing before the door to the outer court of the castle, which had been worn away by the sand storms, I took a deep breath. I wondered how much it would hurt. I wondered if I would care.

Pushing the door open, I stepped out. Wind and sand tore at me. Blood blossomed from wounds all over my body. I never had a very high pain tolerance, so it was only through great force of will that I was able to stumble through the outer court to a door leading to the front of the castle.

Opening that door with my torn up hands was one of the hardest things I had ever done.

When it was finally open, I collapsed through it. My entire body roared with pain, and I couldn't bring myself to want to move.

A wry smile quirked my lips.

Drawing the remainder of my strength, I whispered, "I claim this world. I will be its lifeline and its source. I will be the well of its power."

The winds halted and the sand in the air fell. It was almost as if the planet was in shock. It wouldn't have surprised me to learn the planet had been shocked. It had been years since one of mine had claimed a planet, had shackled himself to a world.

Blood pooling around me, I sighed. "Take me in, you silly rock," I told the planet.

Almost immediately, the earth seemed to greedily drink in the blood that was on its surface. Moments later, grass sprouted. The wind died, and the sand fell from the sky. More grass grew, and from the grass came trees.

I closed my eyes, falling back in my mind. I gathered up all of myself and wound it tight. Then I slid from my body, severing all ties to it, and into the welcoming heat of the planet. My body would bleed out, but that blood would feed the planet until it could live again. The only part of me that would remain would be my necklace. The sapphire and the orb of Bloom's ash would never wear away.

"Grandmother," a small girl with milk white hair said, her brilliant golden eyes looking upward, "I thought you said Domino was dead."

Stella stepped from the ship in shock, her husband, Brandon, and her granddaughter, Sola, at her side. She stared at the beautiful planet before her, pristine and seemingly untouched. She knew it couldn't be so. Not twenty years ago, someone had come to Domino and turned it into a wasteland.

Turning, she uttered a small gasp. From the trees rose the castle where Domino's masters had once ruled. Though it had been ruined from the sandstorms, the forest had grown it new walls and new roofs.

"It was dead," Stella murmured to her granddaughter.

Sola moved with grace from the ship to the edge of the forest, my forest. "Grandmother, look!" she exclaimed, holding up my necklace. My sapphire winked at her in the light while Bloom's orb gazed stoically.