He'd come here on a market day, hoping that the smells and sounds would throw off his pursuers. They hadn't. I know what happened, I've seen it before: any humans close to the fighting would have died almost instantly, crushed between beings whose power they could barely comprehend let alone resist. Distance would not have been much relief. Long corridors of rubble mark where Isley's arrows went astray; collapsing buildings, destroying homes. His colossal blade severed what was once the village bakery, and his hooves and weapons left deep wounds in the ground. I know the Abyssal One survived this battle, but my hometown did not. Any survivors have long since abandoned this place, and the only life I sense here now is the slow burn of growth and decay.
I know I should be angry, seeing what's become of where I was born and raised, but I'm not. This place died to me long ago, and Isley, and his demons and their masters, are gone. If anything, I expected this. Helen's hometown was as it has always been, and since half the towns in Mucha were destroyed in the fighting, it stands to reason there would be nothing left of mine. She's there now, surrounded by people who look like her in ways I don't, searching for her way of life. I wouldn't have come here, but she thought I should, and if there's one thing I trust in this world it's her instincts.
I leave the square and keep walking. Every so often, I see fragments of something I remember; the shape of the empty streets, a fruit tree in an overgrown yard. They remind me how irrelevant my memories are to what this place has become. I find myself thinking of Pieta, half a continent away to the north. The cold darkness of that place is nothing like the bright sun of this Southern summer afternoon, but that town also came between Isley and the Organization, and I have ghosts here too.
It's not long before I reach the church on the outskirts. Its walls still stand, but the roof is falling in, and any gods that dwelt there are long gone. Behind it, the wide sweep of the churchyard rises to a low hill crested by a ridge of cypresses. I wade through the knee-high grass to the southeast corner where three gravestones sit half covered by brambles. It's summer now, when before it was autumn, and I've grown quite a bit since then, but I am still suddenly, jarringly, aware of the last time I stood here, watching the gravediggers heap earth on a plain pine box, and of the person whose mangled corpse it contained.
"Hello Catherine," I murmur, and her name feels strange in my mouth "It's me, Deneve." I don't believe she can hear me, not really, but the same impulse that brought me here compels me to keep talking.
"I've changed since I was last here. The village threw me out after you died, and I got shipped off East to the men in black. They made a claymore out of me, a silver-eyed slayer. I don't think you know me if you saw me now; I don't think you'd want to." I scowl, furious with her thoughtlessness.
"Did you think of that when you hid me? Of what happens to the girls who don't die? No, I don't think you did, did you. Nobody ever does."
"I'll tell you what happens. They strap them down, and gag them, and tear their organs out as they scream and cry and beg for mercy but that's not the worst part. No, that comes after when you can feel the monster they forced into your body stirring inside you and even then, even then, you're too much of a coward to die. That's what you bought for me Catherine!" I'm shouting now, scaring sparrows from a nearby shrub "Horror and death! That's what I got because you didn't fucking think!"
I slam my fist into the rough fieldstone stone of her grave marker as I scream the last word. It shatters into chips and dust as I buckle under the memory of a bloody mess that I cannot picture, and a terrified child who spent the last instant before the yoma found us knocking her stupefied little sister to the floor and rolling her under the bed. Mama and papa had filled most of the space with boxes and there was only room for one. I will go to my grave wondering if she knew this. I suppose it doesn't matter. Either way, she died for me, and nothing I can ever do will change that.
"I can't do it Kate," I say when my voice comes back "I can't live up to you. I tried to avenge you, but I couldn't, not truly. I was too afraid. I'm sorry. I'm only human. I've slain so many yoma, and done what I could to protect my comrades, but it's never been enough."
I'm burning with inadequacy but it's not enough to break me, not anymore. Instead I find myself thinking of Clare, weeping in the snow beside a girl who died for her.
"Don't forget the weight of the lives you carry," I told her "Or do you want to kill Jean, Flora, and the others again right here?" Other people's problems are always so simple. I shake my head, marveling at the inadequacy of my words, but they were enough for Clare and they wouldn't be worth much if I who spoke them didn't heed them.
"I suppose that's it, isn't it," I observe "These debts can't be paid. All we who owe them can do is live, and try to make them mean something." Clare brought down the most powerful monster ever to walk the earth. I think of what I have done.
"I've killed a lot of monsters, and told quite a few people things they needed to hear. I've tried hard to protect others. Sometimes I succeeded, other times I failed," Undine's sword lies heavy across my back "I helped destroy the Organization. It turned out they were the ones who made the yoma, so maybe I've avenged you after all. I suppose it doesn't really matter now, does it." I realize as I'm talking that Kate has been dead longer than she was ever thought makes me feel old. Old. I suppose I will be old someday. There's not much in this world anymore that can kill me, after all, and though this is the first time I've felt like this, I doubt it will be the last. I laugh, rueful.
"Listen to me; rambling at nothing like a crone who's lost her wits. I never expected this, you know, most warriors don't make twenty. Some might say I'm lucky, perhaps I am, though I haven't always felt like it. My life has been hard, Kate, but I would rather be alive than dead. I guess you felt the same way about me, so maybe it's a good thing I think this." I draw Undine's sword and remove the pommel, opening the hollow hilt. Then, I pick up one of the fragments of my sister's grave and place it inside. Standing, I make to leave.
"Goodbye, Kate," I say "and you, as well, Mama and Papa. I've not forgotten you either. I never will." Then I turn, and walk back down to the roadl. I don't know where I'll go next, or what I'll do, but I'm in no hurry to figure it out. It's as Helen said, I have plenty of time after all.