Chapter Title: Slayer of Demons
Summary: She slays her demons. That should be the end of it. It isn't.
TW: character death
A potential AU - and potentially canon, who's to say, I managed to hit a canonically grey area - from the point when Charlotte drops off a cliff in season one. Given that she never shows up onscreen after that, and we learn about five Trikru names in the next two seasons combined, this may well have happened instead ...
Now with it's very own sequel in chapter two, available at the click of a button. If this were Ao3 I'd have linked it as a semi-independent fic, but we all know the virulent dislike this site has taken to that particular idea of late.
Slay your demons, he says to her, voice calm and steady when she feels like a leaf in a storm. So she does.
She takes her knife and she takes her pain and she slays them dead.
And it's good. It's grand even. At first it is a shock - her knife slides in so easily, where she had expected steel - but after, after she feels great. Her demons are gone. She made them go away.
Life is downright swell. She is alive and her demon is dead and he can't hurt her no more. He can't hurt her family. No more ever.
And then everything is bad, all over again, and she is the bad thing and it's bad and she slays the demon.
Falling off the cliff is like falling out of an airlock. It's black and rushing air and the pain of not breathing.
She floats, and she falls, and she dies, she thinks. Then the nice lady comes and makes her better, gives her herbs and bitter things to drink, broth and meat that doesn't taste like char.
She is surprised to find she doesn't dream at all. She is unsurprised to wake. All her demons are dead. She is not a demon. the bad thing is dead. The bad thing is not her.
She is good, and when she can walk she gets to play with the horse. And there's no more bad. She's killed her demons. She doesn't have to be afraid.
She is ready to be strong, ready to live and grow and be a person who has never touched the cold of space.
The missiles come in the night, and she wakes to soft whistles and heat and light and – pain – and – the crash of the wall and the sound of – of -