Reprise – Chapter 4

Wait.

I stand where all possibilities converge. I did fail.

I must inure myself. I retrace the light-drenched path to where it forks into darkness.

Endings never truly begin. From before conception, our fate is determined. Yet, humans are pattern-seekers. We might all scratch a mark on a line and say, 'From here out is the final chapter.'

That mark was Udyr.

He arrived alone, just a man without his entourage of spirits, yet he spoke as before, contemptuous and assured. If the tidings he bore weighed upon his heart, he kept that from us all.

Sejuani had learnt she was with child. Earlier resolutions were no bulwark against sheer organismic terror. Screaming, she clawed at her swollen belly until Volibear had to restrain her. Casting aside her dignity, she slept with men, brutish and beautiful, as though it would reconfigure her brain to accept her state.

Eventually, she concluded the pain was in her body, so her body had to die. She built her own funeral pyre and cast herself upon the flames. Bristle lay down next to her ashes until he passed away in his sleep.

Volibear disappeared. His despair was too much for others to behold or comprehend.

Olaf killed himself by leading a foolish charge against me. Lissandra smelt weakness and invaded. With all his guile, Udyr stalled her but he had to concede half their territory to save two thirds of the Winter's Claw.

I was their only hope. Even if my foes hated me, they respected I had an army and knew how to lead it. Warriors who couldn't abide assimilation followed Olaf's example and fell in battle.

Finally, the people of the Freljord marched under one banner. The day had set on our conflict, yet I had failed. Without Sejuani, I was but a shadow without a sun.

I couldn't infer what was real or not. I had no fantasy with which to compare the dismal present. Luckily, I wasn't needed. The Watchers were a monolith, not an unpredictable, messy alliance. Lissandra enjoyed her traps, but they were the ploys of a constant rival, not one which wavered between love and hate. Anivia's cold arithmetic and Tryndamere's earthly cunning were enough to protect our lands. They didn't need my supposed genius.

Udyr was a great help. He clashed with Tryndamere, as comparable souls often do, but he soon earnt everyone's trust, along with their ire. He was plainspoken and easy company. While he had little sympathy for my broken heart, he acknowledged it was a mortal wound, and assumed I was no longer a factor in his campaign. Others tried to heal me through patience, logic or tears. Udyr accepted my condition without argument.

I retreated further into my shrinking world. Rumours alleged I was dying because of my link to Sejuani. People had always wondered if we were sisters of blood or fate. Without her as the southern cross to my polestar, I lost all significance. Alive, yet not living, I passed into myth. Tryndamere was our nation's leader. My part was over.

Soon, I came to believe I was holding Tryndamere back. He persisted in seeking my judgement, even as I echoed his conclusions, time and again. I'd long underestimated my dear husband and I wanted the world to share my epiphany. Tryndamere was no bloodthirsty relic but a tenacious and empathetic leader, who would be present in a way that I never could.

I was fully prepared to close this chapter and end my life, give myself to the wastes… yet I had made a promise to one little Demacian.

I considered leaving without a word. After all, I needed no supplies. Even in my diminished state, I could hunt my way to the border. My bloody talents remained. However, I could not abandon Tryndamere to the pain of questions unanswered.

I explained I had to choose between two deaths, a quick one which secured my place in history, or a slow one which paid off my debt. He said he couldn't bear any more loss, that I was all he had left. I had no words. He collapsed over my desiccated form and I stroked his back and hair, mourning the life my sexuality had stolen from us.

Eventually, he recovered, and insisted on whatever option kept me alive the longest. He could fight for a better world so long as I was in it. I told him he would find another reason because he had done so before.

We parted, and he kept the secret of my survival, and our wedding band.

In Demacia, I couldn't reveal my presence to Jarvan, but I had no means by which to find Quinn. The land was kinder than the Freljord but I didn't know the seasons or the flora. The mushrooms made me hallucinate. Wild animals congregated where I'd seek shelter from people or daylight.

I longed for a cave to call my own, but the Demacians loved building castles near rock formations. I was delirious and exposed. With nothing to occupy my thoughts, I could find respite only in exercise, masturbation and sleep.

Occasionally, I broke up the monotony with a mushroom binge, but the indulgence left me sick for days.

Months passed, and sleep became impossible. I dreamt I lay next to Sejuani's corpse, and when I woke up, she was still there, grey and bloated as if she were pregnant. I howled, lost in a reality of my own, crawling on all-fours in case I fainted from exhaustion or madness.

I imagined bright Valor against the bright Demacian sky, bold, untroubled Valor. Quinn stirred longing and regret, but Valor soared above our concerns. I latched onto his freedom and followed him as I would a constellation.

After circling identical plains, I found myself lying in a wheat field, staring into the sun as if it would render me blind within and without.

Yet it wasn't a sun, it was a young woman with golden eyes and red hair. She gathered me into her arms and we cried. Finally, my pain found expression in something other than death or madness.

Quinn cradled me as if I were a bird with broken wings. She had grown stockier during our time apart, her thick arms cut free of their sleeves. I nestled into her, losing myself in her expanse. My little bird was now larger than I was, in body and will. I said things, and they made her sob like a child at her parent's deathbed.

Her private lodge was no shack, but a miniature fortress, complete with foundations. Jarvan had spent a large sum on his prospective queen. However, the inside was a pigsty. Quinn lived by herself, and was averse to cleaning up after any activity, whether that was dressing game, fletching quarrels or traipsing through the woods. Her bed was more akin to a nest, composed of animal skins, unwashed clothes and a rug while the sheets were strewn across the floor, mottled with stains like rings on a plague victim.

She was apologising for the state when I rolled out of her arms and claimed the nest for myself. It was grimy and comforting. There were endless layers of defence to draw across my bones. I'd improvised similar shelters in the past, and understood the appeal. From the safety of the darkness, I told Quinn everything that had occurred.

She fell on top of me. I could feel her weight through the mounds of cloth and fur. She said it was all her fault for wanting me back.

I asked if she had really wanted me back, and she didn't answer.

I commandeered her bed and her life. She fed and watered me. Whenever she was called by Jarvan, she served him during the day then snuck away under the moon and stars. This left her grumpy and tired. She scowled with poorly concealed resentment as I ate with shaking hands. I welcomed her candour.

We weren't intimate. On occasion, I would wake up in her clutch, underneath limbs heavy with sleep. During these moments, I could reach out into nothing and run my hand through our guilt, thick as water.

My strength returned so I began cleaning her lodge. She didn't thank me. Instead she protested my efforts and apologised for not cleaning it herself. I heard a territorial reflex underneath her contrition. Gently, I claimed no judgement. She'd lived on her own long enough, and she had more pressing matters than her own comfort. I just wanted to give her a better life in return for looking after me.

Quinn yelled that I owed her nothing. She'd forced dependence upon me. She wasn't going to keep me in servitude, as a housekeeper or a…

Or a what? I asked.

She didn't respond.

I took her hand. We would never be free of our situation. Our relationship would never be pure.

But it didn't have to be.

Quinn was needy and submissive that night, a far cry from the strong provider she had become. She looked up at me, ashamed at her regression, but I knew she would rise and fall many times over the course of her life, or a single day.

Following that, she allowed me in. I became her angel of the hearth. I made her home presentable, and tried to cook using Demacian ingredients. Neither of us knew how to cook for taste, so we bonded over shared incompetence. I would treat her after a long day by welcoming her in skimpy outfits. My little puritan seemed hesitant to play along but, one evening, she brought me elaborate lingerie and scurried outside in embarrassment.

She crept back in to find me bouncing with joy. Needless to say, neither of us slept that night, or the night after… or the night after that.

I could play "wife" for only so long. I began practising archery again. Quinn taught me gymnastics, thawing my frozen joints. I remembered that I was still young, only twenty-seven winters, while Sejuani would have been twenty-four. I was doomed to recall her age forever.

Deprived of human contact, I learnt everything about Quinn's life at court, and drew graphs to help manage her relationships. I pinned them up on our walls, replicating my old war room. Eventually, I caved into my restlessness. I dyed my hair so I could explore but my accent and, unexpectedly, my walk betrayed my heritage. I had to explain I was a refugee then hastily withdraw. Quinn was agitated. I think she'd tried, and failed, to convince herself this would never happen.

Two months later, she came back with a goggle-eyed Jarvan. Quinn babbled that she had to tell him before someone else did. He paced like a heron, occasionally pausing to gape in horror. The rafters fell behind his gaze. He mentioned the lodge was tidy for once and asked if it was my work. When I answered yes, he collapsed into a chair, muttering something about Quinn needing a woman after all.

She'd told him about my presence weeks ago. In the meantime, Jarvan had sent Xin Zhao to assess the consequences of my departure. He found a mourning but stable nation. Tryndamere was undisputed king of all tribes. He'd strengthened his alliance and regained some land from the Watchers. Anivia stood by him, openly proud of the man he'd become.

There was no dissent. Few people suspected Tryndamere of killing me for the sake of power. His grief was too pure.

Despite the lack of chaos in my wake, Jarvan mustered a weary sermon about my dereliction. He said I couldn't hide forever, that I'd need an alias and Lux's goodwill. Even if I could secure those, I was a disaster waiting to happen. Curiously, he lingered after his warning, and even ate with us. I knew something of his trials, and he jousted with Quinn as an equal.

Upon leaving, he spied the diagrams I'd drawn to help Quinn socialise. Underneath his breath, I heard, 'Waste of a subtle mind'. He told me to, 'Look after Sir Quinn, by caring for him, you care for Demacia.'

Quinn played with the short, fuzzy hair at the base of her skull, embarrassed yet obviously thrilled. Garen, of all people, had started it, referring to Quinn as a brother-in-arms. An amused Xin Zhao had followed suit, and the masculine terms proved contagious. I guess Demacia had an easier time accepting a queer woman as a man. Jarvan, to everyone's surprise, joined in sooner than most.

However, it didn't surprise me. Poor Jarvan was trying to drown his affections by seeing Quinn as male. I considered running after him to explain it wouldn't work, but thought better of it. He'd figure things out on his own.

I asked Quinn if she'd rather I saw her as a man. She shrugged. When she was with me, she wanted to be something different from one moment to the next… and wouldn't have it any other way.

That evening, I wept in happiness for Quinn, and lamented how Sejuani had fallen to the same ordeal. Quinn listened without judgement and responded with tears of her own. Her beautiful heart was big enough to shelter a rival she'd never met. I could only hope that Sejuani found some peace there, more than she ever found with me.

The next morning, I felt a chill. As Quinn dressed, I asked how Lux was taking this new development. Quinn flinched as though suddenly becoming aware of a close threat. She chewed on her words for a moment. Lux had been very quiet, watching her with a scowl then doggedly maintaining eye-contact when observed.

From what I knew of Lux, she begrudged people who were more radical, and Quinn's gender-flipping was the bleeding-edge of high society. Lux must have felt she was losing the only woman close to her age in Jarvan's entourage. On top of that, she'd expressed interest in Quinn and likely didn't know what she felt any more. Betrayed?

A season later, Jarvan returned with ill-tidings. Lux had gone missing, and burnt everything she couldn't carry. Many of his sources were compromised, and he didn't trust his purifiers, Lucian or Shauna, to be merciful.

I began to realise why Jarvan had retained Quinn. It wasn't mere sentiment or propaganda. He needed an operative who wasn't tainted by vengeance, bloodlust or magic. As Lux had been partial to me and Quinn, he beseeched us to track her down before the worst happened. Quinn looked at me as if it were my decision. I leapt at the chance to be of use.

Jarvan seemed unhappy, as though he'd led me into a trap and felt instant remorse. He stated that our journey might send us across Runeterra. If we wished to live unburdened lives, we could settle in a different country, far from here. I could see his logic. He was averting the potential crisis of my discovery. Quinn could go missing in action with her honour intact. Jarvan would provide for her family… no, her entire village.

Quinn was inconsolable. She barked out words between clenched silences, that she had wanted nothing more but to serve Demacia. Quinn didn't put it in so many words, but she now had to choose between her people and a ruined woman to whom she'd foolishly pledged her love. In her rage, I thought she was going to hit me.

That's not true. I merely hoped she would.

Jarvan haltingly offered that there might not be a Demacia if Lux wasn't brought to heel. There was little to go on but a feeling in his old wounds and a tense, cryptic exchange with Sona, but he'd earnt his intuition. Jarvan was not a stupid or sheltered man.

Quinn didn't come to bed. She slumped in a chair, hands clasped between her spread knees. Eventually, she said, 'You want this, don't you? This is your chance to make a difference again, to make things right.' She interrupted my response. 'You deserve it. I can't sentence you to this half-life. We're going.'

I asked her how she felt. She replied, flatly, 'Don't all young men want to see the world? No, I'm unhappy, Ashe, and I feel as though I've wasted my life up to now. But I can change how I feel. With you at my side, I could learn to see the good in anything, even this. It will take time, is all.'

I asked if she wanted me to leave.

'Don't leave me.'

That was an order, not an answer.

'No, I don't want you to leave, not now, not ever. If I could turn back time, I would drag you into my life again and again. After all, what is a knight without his lady?'

Or a country?

'Ever since you showed me the lights of the Freljord, I've wondered, in private, if "country" was too small a word. The seed you planted has yet to blossom, but it aches for the sun.'

She's changed. She's more eloquent when she speaks like a man.

'I'm still changing but I need time. Forgive me.'

There was nothing to forgive.

The next day, I stood on a hill, beneath the watchful glare of distant clouds. I'd buried myself long enough that it felt novel to portray this unique animal called "Ashe" to the world. I was rediscovering Runeterra, myself and the relationship between us all.

In my wake, a figure prowled, looking over their shoulder like an orphan plotting revenge for their razed village. I'd abandoned my life to claim another's. My promise to Quinn was no excuse. The choice was mine.

Everything was in tatters. After losing the Freljord and Sejuani, how could I save Demacia and Lux? Was Quinn still my lover and friend? Would he… she… resent me for the rest of their life? Would we spend the rest of our days apart from everything we once knew, with just our regrets for company?

Quinn turned, slower than a sunset, falling deeper into my shadow. Stricken with guilt, I begged her to let me go.

Her smile glittered more than anything I'd seen.