now you can see, spring becomes autumn
leaves become gold, falling from new
ever and always, always and ever
no one can promise a dream come true
time gave both darkness and dreams to you
Raine's visits may be fewer and farther between these years, but her questions come to torment Yuan constantly.
He finds himself thinking about her words more and more often, reliving the war he's tried so hard to forget. So he tells her shortly, as he should have told her long ago, that the knowledge of the past must die with him as it should. Let him fade into anonymity, that he can find the peace she was never granted, and that her brother refused to seek!
That visit is the last Yuan sees of Raine for years, but his restless thoughts of the past do not stop in the drought of her absence. Doubt pushes aside the regret and anguish that fill the void of his heart, and he wonders for what seems like the first time whether he was wrong.
Yuan's resolve steels again when Raine returns six summers later without so much as a warning, her eyes threatening a storm. To his relief, she comes neither to apologize nor to forgive him for their latest and most devastating feud, but because she's finally started to recognize that the rest of the world turns too swiftly for half-elves, and this is the only sanctuary she can find.
"My daughter is a married woman," says Raine stiffly, after the customary silence that follows the usual meaningless pleasantries. In a way, she finds solace in the ritual, unaltered whether she's been gone weeks or years, and unaffected by the nature of their latest parting. "As of yesterday."
"Congratulations," says Yuan tonelessly. There is no need for falsified sincerity when both of them understand that Raine did not come here to share good news—and even if she did, that all his well-wishes would be in vain.
"It… makes me remember something the Pope said, long ago," says Raine, and there's an unusual undercurrent of agitation or perhaps desperation in her ordinarily calm tone. "How half-elves are incapable of understanding the terror of growing older, while our children do not age."
As Raine swallows the implication still stuck in her throat, unable to speak the rest of her sentiment aloud, Yuan gives her an ironic smile. He will take pity on her, of a sort, and say it for her. "And you've realized the terror of not aging as your daughter grows older," he says coolly, and Raine flinches. "Is that it?"
"Yuan, what have I—what have I done?" asks Raine, her quavering voice surprising them both by breaking in the middle. "I've brought a child into the world who will die hundreds of years before I do, and who will live hundreds of years longer than her husband." Raine does not seek comfort or sympathy, knowing all too well that Yuan will offer neither. She seeks only the knowledge that she is not alone, stuck between disparate streams of time.
Shaking his head, Yuan gives a long exhalation. "I've heard it said that our lineage is a curse. Those of us with elven blood were born of human desire for power, beauty, longevity… all the things they can't hold onto long enough. Our birth is a punishment, or so I've been told." More times than he cares to count—by the human who was not his father, by his elf-loving traitor of a mother, by strangers from all places and all eras.
"Then why do we suffer for it?" asks Raine, bowing her head, and in her tone is such a tempest of emotion that Yuan doesn't know how to respond. He senses a deep and directionless fury, almost vindictive in its conviction, and a futile and abiding regret unassuaged by the hollow reassurances of her well-meaning friends. Even those of her innocent brother.
Should Yuan add his frustration to Raine's fury, his melancholy to her fears? Or should he try to soothe her with corrosive words on an acidic tongue? "All living things suffer for their parents' mistakes," he says delicately, recalling something she told her brother long ago, but cannot help but add his own spiteful twist: "We just suffer a little longer, that's all."
Raine looks up at him, and the usual veil crashes over her eyes like the sea, but it does not douse the fire burning in their depths. "Yes," she breathes. "And… why is that? What did we do to deserve this?"
Yuan shrugs. "We asked the same question, you know," he says carefully, naming no names. He doesn't want to encourage Raine for more reasons than he can count. "Even after thousands of years, the only answer any of us found was the Age of Lifeless Beings. Thanks to you and your friends, that's no longer possible, so you'll have to find an alternative yourself."
"So will you," shoots back Raine, crossing her arms. "You're a part of this world, too, like it or not."
Though Raine thinks she is stating the obvious, Yuan's eyes widen. He hasn't thought of himself like that for thousands of years, accustomed to operating on the edges of reality as a fallen angel from a decaying religion.
"I'm not," mutters Yuan, though Raine notices that he cannot quite meet her eyes, and wonders why he insists on living in denial. "I shouldn't have been a part of this world for thousands of years, so I'm doing my best to stay out of it now. My only wish is to look after the one thing I know is worth protecting." He turns his face up to study my tree, grown strong over the years with him to watch it. "That isn't half-elven rights anymore."
Raine gives a strangled sigh. "That isn't what I'm asking," she says, weary in her helpless frustration, but falls silent as she realizes that she doesn't know what she is asking. For some wisdom lost through the ages, ingredients for a spell to repair a heart broken from the beginning. For an answer to an answerless question.
Yuan once sought the same, but the only verdict he ever reached was that all worlds are built on shattered souls, and that the one she helped build is no exception. But something, glistening desperately in her eyes, prevents him from saying it. Somewhere deep inside herself, she already understands. "I'm… sorry for your loss," he murmurs instead, and Raine realizes that she is crying.