The floor is dark, and it will probably stain.
Edea Kramer frowns at this, and considers what it means that she can think of the floor being stained, that she can think past the amount of blood she has already wiped away: from the floor, from herself, from the broken and shredded body of the woman lying on the bed in the corner of the room.
She hears Ellone in the back of the house. Ellone does not think of the stains on the floor. Ellone thinks, and Edea knows this, of the pain of the woman in the corner. She thinks of the man somewhere in the world who must surely have already known, and how of quickly the distance between two points can grow when the person at the other end might not be there when you arrive. Ellone thinks of dying.
She was the one who found her, after all. Washed onto the shore, wrapped in tangled hair and streaking the sand red with every roll of the tide. Ellone, forced into two crippling realizations: who it was she saw, and the hideous confirmation of a truth she had always known, but had never seen proven.
Irony, by definition, carries with it a sense of morbid realism.
Edea, however, thinks of the stains on the floor.
It will always be a reminder.
She almost laughs. There is nothing that is not a reminder, and that is what she will say, no matter how it ends. You can tear down your home and build it anew, you can burn all the old pieces of your life, you can drink teas and tonics to block out the dreams, and live a fabricated existence as husband and wife, and your past will wash up with the tide and bleed all over your bedroom regardless.
The stars will still shine, she will say, and the moon will still glow. And they will be the only reminder you need.
There is no change in the corner of the room but Edea walks to the bed, and looks at the bandaged arms and the sunken grey of Rinoa Heartilly's face. She is not beautiful like this. She is wan, and Edea realizes how much of her beauty is set apart from her looks. Without her joy, her love, her power, she looks like anybody else who is walking on an edge somewhere, trying to decide whether to jump, or turn back to where there is warmth.
And they say we don't have a choice.
Edea knows she had a choice, and Rinoa knows it, too. Edea saw the blade coming down, and made the decision to die, and in that decision Rinoa was born.
And Rinoa now makes the decision not to die.
Edea pities her.
There is no life under her skin, but there is the sense of power. The witch is all that remains. Waiting, hunting.
She does not know what sort of death awaits someone like them who chooses to fight the witch, but she cannot believe it is worse than what she witnesses now. What happens to a body that should be gone? What happens to a heart, to lungs, to a brain, when the blood loss is so severe? Who will be there, when the body comes back?
"He… Squall should be here soon."
Ellone's voice is thick, and she has left the room before Edea can turn to face her.
How soon?
Edea brings her fingers to Rinoa's neck and inhales deeply on contact. The tightness that has wound around her heart since her first meeting with Rinoa so many years ago, that has waxed and waned in strength without rhyme or pattern dissolves, if only for a moment, into something fuller, something ecstatic, and Edea slides the rest of her hand down Rinoa's neck so that her fingers are in her damp and matted hair, and her thumb moves along her jaw.
It is there, and it calls to her.
Come back.
There is not enough of Rinoa left to fight. The feeling of fullness grows and presses against her, inside-out, and Edea closes her eyes.
Come back.
Her fingers tense. She can feel heat pooling on Rinoa's neck where she rests her hand, and can picture the light moving through her, moving towards release, moving towards a host that will serve it. She could take that light right now, bring it back inside her, bring it home. Rinoa would die, quickly and with no more pain, and the hollow places she can never quite fill would burn once more. She would be whole. She would-
"DeeDee!"
The child runs on the beach, blonde hair bouncing in a ponytail. She is clutching something, and wears the look of pride that only children manage to pull off without agenda.
"DeeDee, look! Shells!"
She drops a handful of shells at Edea's feet. All small, and all unbroken, in shades of cream, peach, and slate. She squats beside them and starts to sort them out by color. "White, pink, bwoo… Aren't they pretty?"
They are, and Edea tells her so. But not as pretty as you. The girl giggles, and tells Edea she wants to be a seashell. Edea asks her if her daddy has ever told her about mermaids and she lights up. Of course he's told her. He's told her everything about the sea, and Edea has to stand up before the tears that have formed in her eyes start to spill…
…and spill they do. Tiny circles that fall like splotches of ink onto the deep purple sheets beside Rinoa's pale arm.
Like drops of blood.
There are such things as second chances. Pushing out of the wreckage of a dream gone wrong into something stable, something happy, with love, and family, and hope.
Is this why? Is that hope why you fight?
She sees the blonde child again, not with her father's looks but her mother's, as her mother, as the serious, bossy girl who never could find her place. She sees her waving from the backseat of a car that would take her down a long and circular road, and Edea slowly pulls her hand from Rinoa and rests it instead just below her navel.
She would have given up everything, then. To bring a child into her arms without knowing she would have to say goodbye. Edea wonders now if that would have been enough. If the cold and empty spaces inside of her that threaten, regularly, to consume her entirely, could have been filled by motherhood, and she cannot say for sure. For all the happiness she knows in her time spent around the closest she will have to a grandchild, she knows her smiles are often fake, and she struggles around the weight inside of her to smile. To laugh. To play pretend. The pain when she only wants to hold the girl to her chest and sob into her golden hair; to mourn the life she never got to live.
In seconds, her hand is cold. There is no glow beneath Rinoa's skin where Edea knows there has been heat. She is still and pallid, and Edea visualizes the witch slinking away, moving deeper into its failing host, bitter over the missed opportunity.
"You're a fool," she says, and is surprised that her eyes burn, not with sorrow but with anger. "You always have been."
She will never admit that she is jealous, nor to the part of her that has always wanted to see Rinoa fail for being able to recognize her weakness.
The coldness in her hand persists, and Edea takes a step back, shakes her hand, and finally turns and walks towards the door. She should be with Ellone. It's never easy, learning your entire history was based on a false assumption, nor is it painless feeling something as strong as the thing that haunted your childhood bounce off a wall you've always had and never known was there. She will cry. She has already cried and she will cry some more, and Edea owes her the dignity of her open arms. And anyway, Squall will be here soon.
Can he…really save her?
If it's still possible. If there's enough there to save, he can.
Edea knows he will.
She'll need to change the sheets now.
One more reminder.
One more thing Rinoa has taken, and one more thing Edea has allowed her to have.
And, she thinks, stepping pointedly around the dark spot on the floor, she'll want to buy something to hide the dark stain of so many memories she never wanted, and will never escape.