a/b: A bit of a dreary short one that doesn't do much, but it is kind of a two-parter with the next instalment. Read on, fair reader!


I n s o m n i a


Agravaine's dead and she doesn't spare him much of a thought. Helios too, but she never really cared. Just broken puppets on broken strings, tossed aside, and they aren't what keep her awake.

She does feel alone now in the bleak forest with no one left, though, because everyone's dead and she almost wishes she could join them. There's silence in her hut and the torches are out, but it's a full moon and a white, white glow is the last light left. Eventually she tires of sitting at her lonely table in the silence and she goes out in the darkness, just one more shadow against an endless night.

The moon's too bright for sleeping tonight.

It's all but soundless out there and the air is cool, but restless, almost, as if the rain that's fallen is trying to reach catharsis after a storm. Wind catches her hair and she shivers, eyes darting left and right. She doesn't have to be scared because she's powerful beyond anything that waits out there, but she feels the fear creep in anyway. She's good at hiding her emotions but she never could stop feeling them.

If there's one thing she can't get off her mind it's that look Arthur turns on her sometimes when he forgets to hide it. It's such a raw look, like he's staring her soul in the eye, if souls can do that, and it feels like fire and ice meeting because he's just so warm and beautiful and golden while she's grown so cold and frozen. Sometimes she thinks there's a sheet of perfect crystal ice encasing the love she used to have.

She kind of misses love.

It's not that she doesn't love him. She does. Deep down she thinks she always will, because God knows she could never extinguish the simmering feeling she's always had for him (she'd laugh, if it weren't such a tragedy). It's always there, that deep connection to him, no matter how much she swears she hates him. She's got control over everything, the fire, the earth and the rain, yet she, the great High Priestess she's become, she can't even get one wretched princeling out of her head.

It's laughable, really, what they're doing. They're just hypocrites (and isn't everyone?), because they act like friends, act like lovers in the night, and then when they wake up in the morning they're just enemies to the bitter end all over again, and they hurt each other, only to soothe those same wounds with whispered words and wistful caresses at nightfall.

None of that matters because he's not hers anyway.

He loves someone else, and that's just fine (a lie of course, but she tells herself it's not) because Gwen's his future and his safe choice and she's the one who's supposed to walk into the sunset with him like some pretty fairy tale. It's only when night falls, absolute night, that Arthur strays.

She doesn't expect him tonight, of course. She shouldn't expect him any night, but it's not her fault she's got no control over hope (it's always elusive when she wants it). But she knows tonight she's going to sit against the old oak tree and stare into the forest alone, because Arthur's not coming tonight. Arthur mustn't come tonight.

It is his wedding night after all.