She recognizes it's a dream and wakes up. All she can remember is a gray haze, like sheer fabric twisting and turning in her mind, and a woman she couldn't see but knew was there, arms outstretched in a blind mind's eye. Something about it fills her with yearning, but she rolls over and throws her pillow on her head to drown out the thoughts that tell her what it is.
She gets through the day with eyes half-open. Others notice and try talking to her, but if their words didn't register the first time they gave their condolences, they certainly won't now. She can barely hear them as they say it anymore.
The days are faster the less she's invested in them. From a passenger's point of view, she doesn't like it.
She doesn't sleep. She isn't anxious, but she is restless. She tries to force her mind towards a gray sheer fabric and the blind confidence of a woman because that's the last thing she remembers about sleep, but she pushed those thoughts out last night. She can't get them back now.
The sun rises over her sleepless, impatient form. She doesn't feel tired or like much of anything.
Maybe this is her new normal.
She doesn't know what to do.
The luxury of deciding for herself eludes her. She's so used to taking orders, but now she's on her own. No one needs her anymore; perhaps no one wants her. She can't imagine anyone is avoiding her or doubts her skill. She also can't imagine there is a place for her.
Her companion is the closest thing to a companion- the other woman abandoned in this mess. She is strong-willed; more enviable is how she still doesn't miss a second to grieve. Unlike her companion, she doesn't know what that's like. She doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know why she hurts.
All she can do is hold the hand of the companion while she cries and try to absorb a little bit of understanding. It's selfish not to share the pain, after all.
She dreams again. She rarely dreams coherently; rather, in a confluence of feelings, sensations, and soothing sounds that are pre-selected to help her sleep in peace. She has never woken up groggy.
The sheer returns. She recognizes it off the bat. It spins lazily in place, so slow that it drifts like a cloud. Then it picks up the pace, faster, faster, a tornado around a form that twirls in the center of her mind, saying her name over and over, soft yet forceful, Beruka. Beruka. Beruka.
She lets it sweep her away, a repressed thrill in the motion, caressing her with kindness and excitement. She tries to remember her training but it is half-hearted at best because she doesn't care. She doesn't even try to figure out the woman behind the voice until she wakes up and curses herself for her unprofessional behavior.
She hasn't lost a step awake.
She's as good an assassin as ever. Just as strong, just as accurate, just as intelligent. Long ago Beruka vowed to herself that nothing would stop her. This is proof.
So why does everyone keep asking if she's okay?
She clearly is.
She kills just as well as she usually does. What more proof do they need?
She dreams again. This time she hopes she'll be swept away. On cue, she's enveloped by fog, cradled by the sheer like the child she is. She burrows into it, craving its safety, excited to be in hiding where nothing can get her.
Beruka…
She stops when she hears her name in the distance. Her heart falls through her stomach as she recognizes the voice. It's her.
Beruka? Beruka calls back, her name the only word she knows.
Beruka…
Beruka!
The call-and-response continues for a minute, as the other voice gets closer and drowns her voice out. She misses the sound of it. It sang like a bell with perfect rhythm, like she had never heard herself speak before. Now, all she hears is the voice of this other woman, the purr both passively seductive and suffocatingly motherly.
She thinks the question what do I do now but she doesn't hear her voice repeat the words before she wakes up.
Beruka asks Selena what she plans to do now. Selena shrugs casually, but Beruka always notes the sharp intake of breath when she talks about the new now that they both must face. How she always tears up.
"Why are you so sad?" Beruka asks like the child she is. Instinctually Selena bucks up, but looks again at Beruka and sighs with all of the bad that will ever happen.
She's forgotten how to speak. Beruka prays that she'll remember. She hopes Selena dreams of sheer shelter and beautiful phantom women because she needs it and deserves it far more than the one privileged by its comfort.
When she dreams of it again, it feels more hollow, more malleable. Whatever she thinks it means, it does. When she discounts the ideas, it no longer means that.
She sees the sheer change from the perfect lines of transparent and gray to something… fuzzier, catchier, more… realistic. A solid surface that she sees herself walk on. Nothing but gray, with the fragments of sheer in her eyes turning into sand that obscures her view and dances in her eyes even when she closes them.
Beruka…
Beruka flinches at her voice but says nothing. The voice still hurts her in how clear it is, how understanding, how it is just like hers, only more real, not gone, not dead, not given the fate Beruka meant to give her when they first met but never would think to again…
Beruka looks ahead at the distant sandstorm. Specks are still in her vision
Will you be there? She asks.
There's no response.
Beruka doesn't deserve the emotional intelligence that others show her. She has not mourned. Selena has mourned. Selena misses her. Selena has known people and has lost one more. Beruka lost the only person she has ever orbited her goals around and nothing has changed.
She assumes.
She sees Selena polishing her sword. She has polished it thrice since their last fight. She wants to tell Selena that it is pristine by now, but something in her understands the necessity of the practice.
It's just like her dream. The less one thinks, the more they do.
She wants to ask Selena if she is all right. She knows the answer, but still wants to ask. She manages to refuse the desire and instead remind Selena that they've got some time between battles. Selena looks up, surprised at the sudden verbalization, but weakly nods. She doesn't stop polishing the sword.
"Okay," is all Beruka says.
Leaving feels wrong, but Beruka figures that it's the right thing to do. The first words she hears from Selena in so long are an imbalanced, bitter "take care."
Beruka takes that as an order, but she hasn't a clue as to how.
The castle is gray sheer.
Time does not pass here the same way that it does outside of the dimension that Lilith granted the army. A year here is a day in reality. Beruka feels the minutes tick by and abandon them whenever she wakes up in their astral home, minutes that she will never get back.
They have not left the castle in a week, chafing Beruka with the inactivity. She wants to fight. She wants to continue. But she can barely remember what they're doing. Whenever she thinks about it, it's formless, and she wants to demand that Corrin proceed, proclaim that they have no time to waste, that they may lose it all if they stay.
Yet the princess is mourning the loss of her sister. So many are. People are grieving over the loss of their kin, their partner, their battle buddy, their lover, and Beruka was none of these things to her. She doesn't have the right to mourn.
That doesn't explain why it hurts so sweetly when she hears her liege's voice in the sandstorm. Why her gut keeps dropping into a gloomy swamp that threatens to drag it under to a world where she has a spot reserved.
I am here.
Maybe it's because she's a liar and she'll never be back.
Beruka wakes up feeling like she's had something taken from her.
Selena is polishing a different sword. Beruka admits that she would like to battle now. Selena thinks she means a training match, and she does so love being the best. Beruka didn't mean that but decides if it makes Selena happy, it's good enough, so they spar. Beruka is getting a little rusty, and they both notice.
"I wish our army was still fighting," Beruka muses, releasing her polished sword.
Selena cringes at the callousness of the way she drops it, but Beruka knows no other way. Instead, she points out "well… everyone's mourning. We'll go when we go." She's talking again.
"I just want to know what happens."
Selena cocks her head.
"I'm forgetting a lot," Beruka admits. "I don't want to lose it. And the more I am here, the more I will forget."
"Forgetting what happens?"
Beruka shrugs candidly. "I would just like to know what will become of me. Whatever it is, I'll accept it."
Selena sighs in a way that reveals too much empathy. Too much caring. Like Beruka is the one she cares about too much. Beruka pinches the bridge of her nose and stands up. "Don't worry about me," she tells Selena as she's set to go.
"Wait."
Beruka stops out of courtesy. Selena sighs, but it's not a second language; it's currently her first.
"What is it?" Beruka asks, gesturing her further ahead with outstretched arm.
Selena's voice shakes for a moment. Beruka catches it, and it pains her. "Someone has to worry about you," she says with lazy, insincere spite that reads like the words we are all we have.
Beruka nods and an apology stays on her tongue. It suffocates her as it grows throughout the day but she still breathes.
Beruka sees the sandstorm.
It's not all in shades of gray. The sheer leaves her, making her feel naked. She feels the light from the overbearing sun, but none of its heat. In the sandstorm is a goddess with blonde hair and white armor, a perfect erratic dance that transfixes Beruka, as she knows that even as they look different, it's her, it is her.
My lady, Beruka tries, but the words turn into the sands of time.
Beruka…
Beruka stares in awe.
Will you be there?
Beruka doesn't nod, but the unspoken yes permeates her presence.
Will you be there?
I'll be wherever you need me to be.
Will you be there?
Until the end of time! Beruka shouts. How could you doubt me? I have always been there! I am always here! I am always…
Her voice stops as it breaks.
You swore you'd always trust me, she whimpers breathlessly. So, please trust me. Please.
The voice smiles.
Good. My cute girl.
Beruka wakes up as the moon reaches its zenith.
She lies in her bed for a couple of hours, drenched in cold sweat and confusion. She can't go back to sleep and memories of the sandstorm repel her if her mind acknowledges them. Beruka knows that this is nothingness, that she has nothing to remember, nothing to answer for, no relevance in the matter anymore now that her liege is gone.
Camilla was not her mother, but now that she's gone, a child is all that she's left Beruka as.
She leaves her room to try to find something else to be.
She nearly breaks when she sees Selena, and she doesn't know why. There's a release of emotions but they all stay in her gut, never breaking the skin. Selena is hunched over on the edge of a cliff. She won't jump and won't fall over, but the real reason she is there, Beruka deduces, is that Selena can deny that tears are falling if she never sees them hit the ground.
Beruka sits next to her, and Selena sniffles to rein her tears in. Beruka shakes her head and apologizes for interrupting.
"Interrupting what?"
"You were clearly grieving."
Selena sighs again. "Pathetic, right? I mean… she's not the first person I'll lose. Or the last. Hell, she was just my liege." A liege that Beruka swore her life to protect, an oath she failed to meet. A hollow loss that eats her insides like cancer, consuming her into the nothing that she is.
"I envy you."
A sigh. "Yeah, well, don't."
"I wish I could mourn," Beruka admits. "I truly do."
Selena shifts her weight. She's closer to the cliff's edge and Beruka is scared. "Are you… just not sad?" She asks fearfully.
Beruka doesn't know how to mourn. She may never learn. But whatever this is, it hurts so badly.
Selena is the only one who understands why.
Her voices leaves her as she admits "I'm just not sure."
Beruka wakes with her head on Selena's lap when she hears rocks chip away and shouts.
Selena doesn't wake up, but the surface of the cliff eyes them hungrily, its mouth widening. She orders Selena wake up, wake up, wake up, but it's no use. Her body is hollow and lifeless, the sand in the storm that Beruka cannot move, cannot shout awake. The more Beruka screams her name, the less it sounds like a perfectly measured bell and the more it sounds like agony and desperation as the cliff breaks nearer and nearer to their bodies. Beruka will fall if Selena falls because there is no point in her staying on the surface otherwise.
"Selena! Wake up," she begs. "Please, please, wake up. Please don't leave. Please don't leave m-"
"Are you there?"
Beruka hears the voice. It doesn't come from Selena's body, but it is Selena. At this moment, Camilla never existed, but the structures she left in Beruka's mind do.
A mind which, right now, is owned by Selena,
She shakes Beruka awake. In the blink of an eye, Selena transforms from a lifeless body to a concerned and weary woman that now makes sense to Beruka, that now holds all the answers. "Are you there?" Selena asks as Beruka rubs her eyes. They're on the cliff, and Selena has wrapped her arms protectively around Beruka. It's close. Closer than Camilla ever was. Selena is not as affectionate, but she is more honest.
Beruka is barely awake, groggy and grasping for a waking form. Unable to find one that lasts, she closes her eyes and hugs Selena with all her might. It's unlike her. There's honesty in Beruka's world again, a goal she needs to meet, and it is all her doing.
She whispers Selena's name like an incantation and falls back asleep under its effect.
She never dreams of the sandstorm again, but it is always in the distance, holding her but never approaching, like Camilla herself.
Beruka asks Selena if she's okay when she wakes up again. Selena goes to sigh but thinks better of it when she sees the sincere fear in Beruka's eyes, the child she always was corrupted by the concern of the very idea of what cannot come to pass coming to pass.
"I'm surviving," Selena promises.
Beruka nods thankfully. That was all she needed to know.
"And you?" Selena responds.
Beruka closes her eyes. "I'm just happy that you are," she admits.
"From retainer to retainer, or from friend to friend?"
Beruka doesn't verbalize. The way her arms tighten around Selena speak of a deeper level regardless, of an equation with need thrown into the mix.
Selena smiles. It's the first time Beruka can ever recall her smiling. "Yeah, I get that," she promises.
"Good," Beruka chirps. She knows that no matter where they go next, remnants of this evening will follow shape what becomes of her and her path.
She knows where she is now.
When she gets up to leave, she leaves with Selena. The world starts to turn again with them.