A/N: This is my first ever Amnesty fic. Spoilers for Episode 28. I just finished listening to Amnesty this past week, and the weight of this moment hit me quite hard.
Let me know what you think!
-Dear Aubrey…
x
The triumph and joy and strength that had begun to well up inside of her heart instantly vanished as she stepped forward through the gate once more, the entire magical world shifting and melding into the wintry landscape she knew so well. Yet, everything was different.
The first thing that caught her attention was the chill. Sylvain's climate could never quite match the icy cold of Kepler, being as far up in the forest as they were. However, she had been half-expecting that, fingers already poised to summon forth the tiniest bit of flame to keep herself warm.
Any thought of sparks instantly faded as the distinct scent of gunpowder hit her nose. Letting out a slow, confused exhale as the colours finally faded and stilled into the snowy terrain of Kepler, she blinked, whispering under her breath, "But… why?"
She had stopped the forces from attacking. There was no reason to fight, right?
Glancing around quickly, she took stock of the would-be battlefield. It was oddly somber, with not a smoking gun to be seen. Instead, the crowd just stood silently, heads bowed and hands tucked into pockets. Half of the crowd shifted uneasily, but not out of fear of an ensuing attack; their odd expressions matched more of those who had finally realized some terrible truth, and were unable to process it all.
"What's going on?" she muttered again, flicking fire-engine-red hair out of her eyes to take in the rest of the crowd.
Those who were not shifting away uncomfortably no longer looked ready for war. Instead, they all appeared… sad. Mournful. A group of people were huddled around the center of the clearing, with more and more people parting with every breath, beginning the long journey back into town. As the crowd thinned, Aubrey's eyes could finally catch hold of who lay at the center of the group.
Ned was lying on the ground. By his side, Mama and Sheriff Owens kneeled, heads bowed and voices too hushed to hear.
Aubrey started, scurrying over to her friends. As she drew close, she cleared her throat, her breaths escaping her mouth in little puffs of steam in the evening air. "What… um… a lot to take in, here." Glancing around, she called, "Janelle?" But the woman wasn't there, no matter where she looked. Back to the kneeling duo near Ned, she whispered, "Mama?"
x
-I'm taking your advice and heading out for parts unknown. But I need you to know how sorry I am for the impact that I have had in your life. I am a thief. I have always been a thief. But I have never been a robber. There is a huge difference. I never ever wanted anyone to come to any kind of harm in any of my capers.
x
At the sound of her voice, Mama looked up at Aubrey, and the expression on her face was enough to make the magician stumble backwards. Despite her normally taciturn, rugged nature, Mama's eyes were reddened and puffy, cheeks shining from tears halfway-dried. With a gloved hand, Mama swiped away fresh tears which spilled upon seeing Aubrey, before letting out a long, weary sigh.
Aubrey merely blinked at her, unsure of what to do. What could she do? What could she say?
What had happened here?
Mama murmured heavily, "How did it go on your side, Aubrey?"
It took her a moment to comprehend the question asked. Sheriff Owens looked up to watch her curiously, and suddenly, she was brought back into the reality of it all. "Oh- uh…" Stumbling over her words, she explained briefly what she had accomplished in Sylvain. "-and… um… what… is Ned okay?"
Her eyes still refused to land upon the familiar outline, after all.
"No. He's not." And Mama sighed again, eyes falling back down to Ned's still body. With an absentminded touch, the woman brushed away some of the snow that had begun to accumulate in a light dusting on Ned's jacket.
The snow was building up on Ned's jacket.
He wasn't moving.
No. Aubrey's heart twisted twenty ways at once as she finally dared to look at her former friend- her current friend, her partner-in-crime, her teammate-
Mom's killer.
And yet, the more she looked at him, the more her stomach began to tense into an iron knot in her gut, weighing her down. It threatened to bring her to her knees with its meaning. She refused- at least, that was until she saw the numerous wounds around his neck, his shoulders, and the sizeable bloody stain seeping out from beneath him.
No- "Does he need—I can try to heal him," she whispered, finally dropping to her knees. She yanked her hands out of thick gloves, closing her eyes and reaching deep inside of her, focusing not on the pallor of Ned's face, nor the red slowly filling her vision. Instead, she just focused her heart on the one thing she needed at the time, more than anything.
"Hi, it's me, Aubrey," she recited through clenched teeth. "Please, I need your help. Now, more than ever. Remember how you helped me with my friend Dewey? Can you help Ned like that, but not actually make him a ghost this time- we just need his wounds healed. Please?"
And with that simple, yet tentative, plea, she could feel power rush through her heart and out of her fingertips, bathing her hands in a warm, comforting glow. The planet had understood, and it was helping her heal Ned.
"It's gonna be fine, Ned," she breathed, focusing all her energy onto that light, pushing it onto him.
x
-The fire that took the life of your mother was an accident. A horrible accident that was not supposed to happen… but it did, and I am to blame. I am not asking you to forgive me. I don't want you to forgive me. I want you to always keep in mind that no matter how small a wrong action may seem, wrong is always wrong. And it can easily cause events to quickly spiral out of control.
x
And yet, when she opened her eyes, Ned's wounds weren't healed. His usually ruddy cheeks, his lighthearted energy- none of it was to be found. He was just… cold.
She fell backwards onto her bottom, scuttling away for a moment as her eyes locked onto his chest. It wasn't moving still. Her heart began to race in her ribcage, her breaths growing quicker and quicker. Calm down, the logical part of her mind insisted. Her panic squashed that thought instantly, instead trying to rationalize what was happening. This was just a bad dream, right? This couldn't be real- they couldn't- Ned couldn't-
She spun around to look at Mama, begging, "What—Ma—Mama… what happened? Is—is this the—this is the shape shifter, right?"
Mama didn't wipe away the other tears which began to fall on her cheeks. Instead, she simply stood, manoeuvring around Sheriff Owen's shell-shocked body to meet Aubrey. The woman reached out, intending to wrap her large arms around Aubrey's smaller form.
Aubrey recognized that, but she instinctively recoiled away, stumbling back to her feet. "No," she squeaked, drawing her arms around herself protectively. "No!" Even when Mama reached out again, Aubrey tripped backwards again, falling onto the damp, chilly snow with nothing but fear and understanding rocking her very core.
x
-No, I don't want you to forgive me, Aubrey. I want you to hate me. I want you to focus all your hatred on me. And that will free up all the love in that big, remarkable heart of yours for the rest of the world. Hold tight to that pendant. Try to have Duck's back. And become a better person than I.
x
She began to tremble violently, curling in on herself. Her legs felt numb, her body still- but her mind was working faster than it ever had before, the memories flooding into her head too much to bear. What did it mean? This couldn't be- Ned was the Ned Chicane, he was the bastard who had taken away her mom, he was the asshole who had burned down her home and stolen the Flamebright Pendant, he was the dick who had lied to her face for months while play-acting at friendship-
-but Ned had also bought that godawful van and done that terrible paintjob on it, and he had also opened up his home and his life to her, a newcomer to town, and he had made terrible jokes and loved French onion soup and been terrible at fighting and ran campy horror movie channels and-
"No, it's not—this is—we won, right?" She gasped, reeling over. The reality of it all was nowhere nearly as intense as the sheer guilt that wracked her soul. "Like, we stopped it, because…" Her mind begged for the words to come, for someone to just disprove this- "this can't-" it couldn't be true, it couldn't-
And Mama came close to her and enveloped her in a soft, warm embrace, but Aubrey just shook. More and more violent was every spasm, every quake. As Mama shushed her and soothed her and wept silently into Aubrey's hair, the redhead looked brokenly at her friend, still motionless on the ground.
"Ned can't be dead, Mama, because I- I-" Her voice caught in her throat, hysteria dragging it an octave higher into a broken squeak as the words she had been denying finally came out. "Mama, I told him to leave. I was…"
I wasn't a good friend.
How had it all come to this?
Amongst the chaos which ensued barely a breath afterwards, Aubrey's grief was tucked away into a little pocket in her heart- that was, until she received the letter.
And as she read the letter, she could just imagine the tenderness the older man had put into writing every word. Every letter was shaky and clumsy, the creases in the paper even more worn due to the fact that she could see where he had written words of apology and erased them a hundred and one times, the faint pencil marks still barely visible under the words he had chosen to write in the end.
And as her eyes passed over that final signature over and over again, obsessively and meticulously, engraining every word into her memory forever, she knew that he had meant every single apology he had tried to inscribe onto that page. But, at the end of it all… what he had decided to write in the end rang even truer.
So, Aubrey wept for the loss of the man she had come to call a friend. Whom she still called a friend.
And the pain didn't go away.
x
-With love, Edmund Kelly Chicane.
-fin-