AN: Another oneshot! This one works as a sequel to my oneshot "Invincible", since a lot of people demanded me to continue it. It is still an independent story and I think it makes sense on its own (somehow), but you don't really understand what's going on for a long time (which is nothing bad).
Again, it's about Icy (what did you expect?), who I feel undying love for (which you already know). Enjoy!
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The crunching sound of gravel beneath her feet announced her arrival already, even before she had opened the small front gate. With a quick glance to both sides she reassured herself that she truly was alone.
She was.
The little fenced area usually never was completely empty, but after the destroyed Magix had recently been partly restored, the re-opening party for everyone's oh-so-favorite city was for once more important than a bleak place with a bit of grass and gravel.
Icy wavered.
She was inside the cemetery now, the small gate a few steps behind her, the gravel path stretching out in front of her, inviting her to take a few more steps. She made only two before she stopped again.
It didn't need detective's work to find the grave she was looking for. There was only one that stood out. None of the graves were exactly neglected, but compared to this particular one, all the others looked bleak and sad.
"Of course" Icy muttered quietly. Hadn't it always been like that? Hadn't everyone looked bleak and sad next to her? Next to all the attention she had always gotten?
It had been five months.
A cold hand clutched itself around Icy's heart at the memories, colder than usual with a grip so tight that it almost took her breath away.
Almost.
Icy hadn't thought about it in five months.
She took the last steps, not too many; the cemetery was small. Her grave was right opposite the gate; Icy didn't even need to take a turn. Which was good, because whatever she did, she wasn't able to take her eyes of the big gravestone. It was huge - almost as tall as the witch herself - decorated so beautifully it was almost ridiculous.
Flowers piled up next to it, on top of it and in front of it, even months later. They were all fresh; they couldn't have been here for longer than a day. Candles were lit and a photo of her rested peacefully in middle of all the flowers.
In a short fit of rage, Icy kicked the portrait with all the force she could summon, breaking both the frame and the glass. When the obnoxious redhead still kept smiling at her from behind broken glass, she picked the photo out of the mess she had created and ripped it to a million pieces.
-/-Rip-/-
She cursed her for causing her misery, even now that she was dead.
-/-Rip-/-
She cursed everyone else for making a fuss about her, even after such a long time.
-/-Rip-/-
Why did they care so much about her? She was dead!
-/-Rip-/-
She cursed her for having ever existed.
-/-Rip-/-
She cursed herself.
The photo was gone – all that was left was a small pile of unrecognizable confetti on the ground.
She cursed herself for not being as unaffected by it all as she should have been.
A sudden wind took the pieces with it, swirling them up in the air until they were gone.
Guilt. It was guilt she was feeling, that was the entire reason why she was here.
"Not gonna lie" she said quietly, a dark chuckle hidden in her voice somewhere, "I really thought coming here would make it all go away."
Icy had dreaded this place for five months now. She herself had ordered someone –anyone, she had so many people to order around now, what did it matter? – to bury the pixie here, right there somewhere in this small, insignificant cemetery. There hadn't been an official funeral; she had forbidden it more than she had forbidden anything else. The last thing she needed was sentimentality – Bloom's death had been supposed to be as negligible as that pathetic and worthless life of hers.
However, Icy now realized that forbidding funeral services and tributes had probably been the exact wrong move. The fairy's grave was so colorful and joyful it almost made Icy puke. The people of Magix loved to rebel and disobey, no matter how hard and relentless the punishments she set out for traitors were. She locked people away, with no intention of ever letting them out again. She had cut out the tongues of everyone, who was badmouthing her and she had threatened them with an eternal winter more than just once. She had gone as far as demanding for heads to be chopped off, which had inflicted a reasonable amount of fear in her minions for a while.
But they still would not be loyal to her.
They were still looking up to her, the redhead, who had 'died the death of a martyr'. They hated Icy with a passion, they hated her for taking over Magix, they hated her for deciding over them, they hated her for being merciless and cruel, they hated her for existing.
But most of all, they hated her for killing Bloom.
Icy hated herself for killing Bloom.
Not because she wanted the stupid pixie to be alive, not at all. She had never felt more liberated than in that time the fairy had been gone. Yet nobody had told her the consequences of driving an icicle through someone's heart. Nobody had told her about the moment of seeing the life leaving someone's eyes, nobody had told her how it felt to have somebody dying right in your arms.
Nobody had told her how cold a dead body felt.
She hadn't realized all these things herself at first either, not in the heat of the moment and not during her ultimate victory. It was in her dreams, where it haunted her, in her nightmares, where she got to kill the pixie all over again, again and again, until the life had left her eyes a hundred times, until she had died in her arms just as often, until her body had gotten colder and colder and colder and colder...
Icy was cold a lot lately.
Darcy and Stormy were worried about her, she knew that, but she knew as well that they would never admit it. Just like she would never admit to being cold.
"You deserve to be dead" she said frostily, still looking at the grave and wrapped her arms around herself.
"None of them actually miss you" she added with a nod to the many flowers and bouquets.
"They simply seem to enjoy disobeying me."
Deep down Icy wished for her first words to be as true as her second.
She grinded her teeth a little, rubbed her shoulders when another sudden wind made her shiver and kept staring at the gravestone in front of her.
Her visit hadn't been as satisfying as she had hoped for it to be.
She reassured herself that she was still alone by looking over her shoulder for a second. The last thing she wanted was somebody finding her here, somebody spreading the word of her being weak and sentimental.
That she was feeling guilty.
They would never respect her if they came to believe those lies.
With a sigh that sounded too desperate for her taste, she finally tore her glance away from the grave.
"Have fun rotting" Icy said as she turned around and walked back into the direction she had come from. The gravel's noises seemed to mock her.
"See you tonight" she mumbled quietly, hoping that she hadn't heard. After all, that was the point, wasn't it?
The dead rarely talked, but who said they couldn't listen?
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END