I like writing depressive things with these characters. I don't know, it really fits in the context. Besides, I always wondered how everyone's lives would be after the war.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything. Except being a jerk with updates, that's toally mine.


(Sometimes, she likes to lie on what used to be his bed, inhaling the remaining scent, and wonders what could have been if things were different).

25 days after the end.

She wanted to scream more than anything. Cry, maybe. Losing everything you held close was worth doing both.

But she couldn't. Not now. Not with so many people looking at her expectantly, waiting for her words like what she had to say was their only salvation.

Which, in some way, could be considered true.

So she smiled and gave a life-reassuring speech for her people.

But she still wanted to scream.

132 days after the end.

Being a queen was difficult. She could tell. But being the queen of a destroyed world? That is not difficult, that is inhuman.

And, although she had lost her grandmother, the love of her life and many more subjects than she wanted to know less than five months ago, she didn't cry.

Queens never cry.

365 days after the end.

She finally cried. After a whole year of empty promises and trying to be strong, she finally cried.

That night, she just sat on the bed he used before, hugging the pillow. She didn't know how it was possible, but it still smelt like him.

507 days after the end.

Her birthday. She turned thirteen. She didn't want to celebrate it.

But it was celebrated, anyway.

She told herself she should have expected it. Of course it would be celebrated. No one would like to miss a party of those dimensions.

Especially, not after a war.

People needed reasons to believe happiness existed.

610 days after the end.

Sleeping in his bed became a habit. Even almost two years from that day, the bed never lost his smell.

"Luxa, you can't keep doing this anymore," Hazard complained one day.

But, despite his protests, she just buried her face deeper in the pillow and decided she would never stop.

749 days after the end.

Life was peaceful. Painful, maybe, but peaceful. Her duties as a queen had never been easy, but she tried her best.

Smiles and nice words, that's all she offered to her people those days.

Tears and sleepless nights, that's what she kept to herself.

Queens don't have weaknesses. Not in public, at least.

870 days after the end.

Sometimes, she had trouble breathing, usually due to panic attacks.

She always thought that panic attacks were Lizzie's thing.

They usually happen at midnight, when she remembered the war and all the people who lost their lives due to it.

She always felt the oxygen escaping her lungs and burning her in the process, like the hole in her chest was made of fire rather than emptiness.

No one could her desperate attempts to breathe.

1008 days after the end.

She suspected she was going crazy.

She started seeing Gregor every time she set a foot in the museum. She started hearing Boot's childish giggles whenever Temp appeared before her. She started smelling Solovet's sweet fragrance when she came a bit too close to the bed she used to occupy.

She started wondering how Henry would have looked if he hadn't betrayed her.

She couldn't differentiate between reality and her own imagination anymore.

She still thought the war never happened.

But it did.

1097 days after the end.

She liked leaving the castle at ungodly hours, only accompanied by her bond, Aurora, to see the places where the war had took place.

Like the place where Ares died. As well as the Bane.

She always knelt in that very spot and, quietly, she brushed her pale fingers against the rough dust of the cave.

The feeling of solitude always clenched her heart the following days.

1240 days after the end.

Her duties as a queen were everything except easy. But at least they kept her busy.

She feared that she would go even more insane than she already was if she had too much free time.

Because free time meant thinking. And thinking meant remembering.

And remembering was painful, not good for her mind and everything but healthy.

So maybe her duties weren't easy. But at least they kept her sane.

1303 days after the end.

Vikus found her sitting with her back against the wall in the museum, clutching a picture with blurred lines and faded colors.

As soon as she looked into his eyes, she read the words her grandfather was going to say next, and she wanted to cover her ears, erase them forever, forget them, curl up in a ball and disappear before he could say them.

But she wasn't fast enough.

"He is gone, Luxa," Vikus whispered when he knelt besides her. "You have to move on."

And, several hours later, her grandfather long gone, she let out a chocked sob.

She knew she wouldn't be able to move on.

1477 days after the end.

Even after all this time, she still wondered what would have happened between them if he hadn't to leave. If the war never happened.

After all, only seventeen days before had been the fourth anniversary of that day. She tried to convince herself that wondering wasn't wrong.

1510 days after the end.

She said to herself that life after the war wasn't so bad. That she liked her role as the queen. That everything could be fine.

She knew she was lying to herself.

Suddenly, breathing was an overwhelming task.

1602 days after the end.

It was her birthday again. Her sixteenth birthday. This was supposed to be the day when she would be proclaimed queen.

Not four years before due to a war.

She left the party before anyone else.

1603 days after the end. Present.

Freedom. That's what she longs for. Pure, unadulterated freedom.

She realises it at midnight, as always. Midnight was the time of revelations, cries and pain. Fortunately, this night has been about revelations.

She stands up quickly. She knows what she wants to do.

With a last caress, she said goodbye to his bed and to what it represented, his owner.

She leaves the castle, like many times before. But this time she doesn't wake Aurora up. It could interfere with her plan.

She finds herself at the top of the cliff where Henry died. That's where everything started, wasn't it?

And it's going be where everything will end.

It's a cold night.

Before putting in action the last decision she'll ever make, she takes a deep breath. She wants to savour this moment, she wants to savour her ending life and, most of all, she wants to savour her upcoming death.

In.

She feels the tips of her fingers freezing and her lips turning blue due to the low temperature. She's sure she'll end up as an ice statue if she doesn't hurry.

Out.

To balance her cold skin, her insides feel like they're on fire. Her own breath burns her throat and she's sure her heart just got turned into a minuscule volcano. She's never felt so warm before.

She jumps.

As Luxa falls, she can't help but let out a hysteric yet carefree laugh. Freedom.

She is going to be free.


(Sometimes, she likes to lie on what used to be his bed, inhaling the remaining scent, and wonders what could have been if things were different).

(This time, though, she'd rather fly on her own and achieve what she was looking for).


I tried to make Luxa look like she was going mad about everything related to the war, not just Gregor. But it didn't came out exactly as I planned it.