SPECTATOR
By MargaritaDaemonelix
Chapter 7
You've never seen Aisha in such a bad condition. You thought her panic attacks when she first moved to Ruben were bad, but this… This cannot be good for her.
It took you a few hours just to calm her down after she tried to explain what happened. Though you didn't understand all of it, you got the general idea: Aisha tasered a guy who was being a creep to her, and accidentally killed him.
She didn't get much sleep that night, and you still feel guilty that you slept and she didn't. The following day, she was up before you were, mindlessly making herself coffee.
You knew it wasn't safe in Ruben anymore, so you suggested that the two of you visit your sister in Feita. Aisha didn't even respond. She just left the kitchen and started packing.
As the two of you continue walking, just beyond the borders of Ruben City, Aisha doesn't speak. Normally you'd be trying to get her to shut up, but she's silent. It feels awful.
Your backpack isn't too heavy-the both of you decided to pack light to travel. Someday, maybe you'll return to Ruben for the rest of your things and hers, but right now you only really have one change of clothes and your papers in your bag, along with some food and what little money you still have. Aisha's bag consists of similar contents, though you're pretty sure she brought at least one book with her.
She has so many books, more than you've ever seen. Most of them are stored in individual plastic bags in a large storage box in your closet. A handful are on her desk, and she's already given away a few. Growing up, the only other place where you'd see that many books was at the public library, and even then they weren't as well kept or as diverse as Aisha's books. Sometimes, when you crack open one, you can't even read the table of contents.
Aisha is a genius, you've discovered. For one, her parents aren't from Elrios, or Empyrean. She herself speaks both Elrian and her native language fluently. She has books in traditional Sanderian and she reads them just as well. You wonder how she manages to juggle so many languages.
You remember the first time you took one of her books, she punched you in the face for putting the book face down. You later learned that doing so damages the spine of the book.
"The bane of every librarian", she called it.
"Elsword."
You turn to face Aisha, who has moved to sit in the shade of a tree. "I'm tired," she says. "Let's take a break."
You can't argue with that logic, so you drop yourself next to her, sighing as the tension in your shoulders dissipates when your bag slides off.
Aisha seems to be studying you again. "Tell me about your sister," she says simply, stretching her legs out in front of her. "I want to know her like you know her."
"Uh…" What could you tell her about Elesis that wasn't an insult to either? "She's scary if you piss her off."
Aisha snorts. "No shit, Sherlock," she says. "No, like, what kind of person is she? How did she end up living in Feita? Weren't the both of you born in Ruben?"
You smile. "Time for a little Sieghart family history," you declare, lying down in the grass. "Elesis… Elsa is brash."
"More than you?" Teases Aisha.
"Maybe," you reply, shrugging. You immediately regret doing so, in lieu of your sore shoulders. "She's brash in the way that if something interests her, she'll charge in without a second thought. She used to take on kids twice her size when we were really little, because she thought-no, she knew she could take them on and win."
Aisha smiles. "It runs in the family, doesn't it."
"Nice try," you tell her, smiling wryly. "But yeah, Elsa did a lot of things without thinking about them first. So when I was fourteen-that would have been when she was about seventeen, I think-she, ah, you remember the uprising in Altera five years back?"
Her eyes go wide. "Your sister went to participate in the protests at the age of seventeen?" She asks incredulously.
You shake your head. "Not just participate. She was one of the four leaders."
Aisha's silent. "Wow," she murmurs. "Wow."
"After the protests, she sent me a letter telling me about it," you sigh, reaching into your bag for your water bottle. "She was the youngest of the four leaders. Out of the other three, two of them were a couple, and the third was their friend. The third one ended up handing all of them over to the authorities. My sister was caught near the Altera-Hamel border."
You breathe in. "Because she was legally a minor at the time, they couldn't put her in a prison in Lanox," you explain. "No one actually ended up in Lanox after the protests. They sent my sister to Feita, they dropped the surviving guy back in Velder, and the other guy ended up in Sander, I believe."
The two of you sit in silence for a while. "How did your parents even let her go?" Asks Aisha, looking down at you as you lie in the grass. "My mother would never have let me go to something like that."
"Well, Lowe and Anne aren't like your mother," you tell her. "For one, they're not our biological parents."
You can't help but chuckle when Aisha's neutral expression turns to one of shock. "Incredible, isn't it. Mom has pink hair and Dad has brown hair, what did you expect?" You tug on a lock of your own hair. "Besides, Elsa and I both have red eyes. That's not a Ruben thing."
"You think you aren't from Ruben?" She asks, eyes wide.
"Well, it's a theory," you admit. "Elsa and I never really talked about it much before she left for Altera, but we talked about it a few times in our emails since then. She thinks our biological parents might have been from somewhere else, maybe Elder or even from overseas. I'm not entirely sure, but I think our parents might have left us in Ruben and returned to the city they came from."
"How old were you when you were adopted?" She asks.
"Maybe about a few months old," you admit. "I can't remember anything about them."
That's a lie, and you know it. Even from your earliest memories, you can pull out little snippets. The warmth of a loving hand covered in cold rings and soft silk. The deep chuckle of your biological father. A lazy afternoon of sitting under a tree as pink petals glazed in sunlight drift around you.
"I hope they're alright…" Aisha sighs, pulling her hair out from behind her and letting her pigtails rest on her shoulders. "If they've passed on, I hope they can rest in peace."
You smirk. "Now your turn, Grape," you suggest. "Tell me a bit about your family history."
She looks like she's about to smack you. Her eyes become alive with dark flames for a moment before she looks away and blinks. "My… Family?"
"If you're comfortable with it," you say quickly, wincing at your own words. "If you don't want to talk about it-"
"No, no, I probably should," she says, gazing down into her lap. "My parents came from a little town in Empyrean. They immigrated here because it was being turned into an industrial area. I was born in Bethma."
"Have you been to Empyrean?" You ask.
"Once, when I was really little." Aisha pauses. "My mother tried to take me once after my father died. I didn't go with her because I had school and there was the nationwide literacy test I needed to study for. It drove her nuts, but eventually my aunt Speka convinced her to let me stay."
The name instantly clicks with you. "Isn't Speka the name on your ID? Speka Cerise, isn't it," you recall.
Aisha nods. "Yes. Aunt Speka was a little… Mentally ill," she confesses. "She had a wide imagination and she loved reading, just like my mother… But she was also bipolar. It plagued her from her childhood. She committed suicide when I was twelve. Jumped off the roof, the old hag. We didn't know what to do."
She's silent for a while. "After Aunt Speka died, Mother's condition got worse and worse," she says, tracing circles on her leg with her fingernail. "When Mother died, I lived with my grandfather for a while as we tried to keep the house. It didn't work. We lost our case. Grandfather died after we lost the house. I think that was really the final straw for him, after losing everyone else."
She leans back on the tree and smiles. "And here I am now, sitting under a tree nearly a light year away from any sense of civilization," she jokes.
"That's not entirely true," you argue, "We're technically beyond the cities now. We could start a revolution out here and no one would know."
Aisha laughs, a crystal clear noise that pierces the silence of the forest. "We really shouldn't be starting any revolutions," she says. "The last handful of uprisings have all ended in failure."
She holds up a hand to count off her fingers. "Revolution five years ago failed-no offense," she begins. "There was a coup d'etat led by a young woman in Sander six, maybe seven years ago. She was caught and found guilty of treason. Actually, she was supposed to be executed but someone busted her out before it happened. They never found her after that. Before that, there was a family of scientists from Elder who were executed for plotting against the government. And before that…" She shivers. "I've only heard theories. I hope they're not true."
You look at your watch. "It's half past two," you realize. "Time to get going."
As you sit up and pack your water bottle back in your bag, Aisha touches your shoulder. "Thank you," she says. "I was really feeling crappy until now."
"What are friends for?" You respond.
It doesn't occur to you until later, as you're trudging down the road, that it's the first time you've ever considered Aisha as your friend.
Unknown location, 7:51 pm.
The two of you have been walking for four, maybe five hours now. The sky is getting dark, and you can start to feel the evening chill creep into your jacket. Your feet have been protesting for hours, and only now can you feel the pins and needles blossom under your heels.
"Hold on," you tell Aisha, who's in a similar condition beside you. "We should take a break."
You're in an older section of forest, where the trees are taller and more dense. The paved road has diverged into a dirt path, one that extends into the forest and twists into darkness. The plants on either side of the path fall over onto the path, as if trying to seduce you with their poison.
Aisha stops. "There's a clearing about fifty metres ahead," she points out. "We can go rest there."
The fifty metres it takes for you to walk there feels like fifty kilometres, like fifty years. As soon as you make sure there's nothing on the ground that could be potentially dangerous, you drop like a rock.
Beside you, Aisha is already lying on the ground, taking in deep gasps of air. "How much farther to Feita?" She asks, rolling onto her side to pull a flashlight out of her bag.
You scan the forest over. "There," you tell her, pointing at the mountain in the distance. "Feita is situated around that mountain. My sister said there was once a temple in that mountain where people prayed for a goddess to bless their crops."
Aisha squints at the outline of the mountain, rapidly fading in the dying sunlight. "That looks about a million years away," she complains, taking a light jacket out of her bag and laying it on her arms crossed over her chest. "How long do you figure it'll take us to get there?"
You rummage through your bag, finding your near-empty water bottle. "If we keep going at the rate we're going at now…" You down the remainder of your water. There's another bottle, and if you're lucky, you'll find more soon. "... We'll probably get there in three hours from our current position."
"That sounds good to me," she sighs, snuggling into her bag, which she's turned into a makeshift pillow. "We can leave early in the morning and get there early, maybe we won't have to go through so much shit with the security."
She closes her eyes. "Wake me up when it's my turn to…"
She doesn't even finish the sentence before she's out like a rock. You can hear her softly snoring. For Aisha to be snoring, she must be exhausted.
You're just as tired as she is, but for your own safety and hers, you force yourself to stay awake. There's a small sliver of sunlight that is still visible over the ridge of the trees ahead. You sit down next to her, forcing yourself to keep your eyes open in the intense light.
"Look Aisha," you tell her, despite knowing she's already fast asleep, "look at the sunset."
As the last rays of sunlight die overhead and the stars begin to twinkle, you can't help but wonder if you'll see such a beautiful concentration of colour again.
Unknown location, 6:21 am.
"Wake up, Elsword, we need to go."
You blink. The sun's rising again, and the field is beginning to light up.
"Time to wake up."
You nearly scream, but you hold yourself back. Aisha is leaning over you, with a shit-eating grin and sharp, awakened eyes. "What the fuck, Grape?" You splutter. "Do we really need to go over this at like, what, six in the morning?"
"Six twenty," she confirms, stepping away from you. "Besides, it wasn't my idea to leave early in the morning."
It was her idea, but you know it's pointless to argue against her. As you sit up and rub your eyes, a blade of grass falls onto your arm. You shake your head violently, causing grass to rain down around you.
It instantly wakes you up, though, which is a bonus. "Come on," says Aisha, already packed and ready to go. "Feita is just up ahead. We need to get going."
You stumble to your feet and follow behind her, mindlessly walking as you gather your things. You reluctantly open your remaining bottle of water and take a cautious sip.
The plants on the side of the path seem to curl in towards you as the two of you walk down the path, stepping through an overgrown patch. "Why are they growing towards the path?" You grumble. "Aren't plants supposed to like places that aren't tainted by human feet?"
"Well, in this case, the path has more sunlight than the other parts of the forest," explains Aisha. You mentally slap yourself for accidentally activating Aisha's teacher mode. "Plants like these rely on the sunlight to photosynthesize, though I can't see why-OH MY EL."
She stops dead in the path in front of you, causing you to bump into her. "Look," she whispers, pointing at the plants on the other side of the little forest patch.
"What's wrong with them?" You ask, scanning them over. They're serene and standing as still as ever.
Then it hits you.
The plants are dead. They're ashen gray, preserved perfectly in an eternal tableau. Even the trees seem to be struggling to live.
The strangest part of it all is that there's a clear border between the forest of the living and of the silent. Where the gray plants end, the growing, green ones begin. There's even a tree that's dead on one side and thriving on the other. A thin, eerie blue line separates the two, like a ghost whispering in the ears of the surviving plants.
"Aisha, what's going on?" You whisper.
"I… I've never seen anything like this," she admits, voice just as low. "Let's just keep going and hope we don't stumble out there."
At first she walks along like normal, but in a few moments she picks up a run, and you have to speed up to catch up to her. The branches and straggling leaves that appear in your path are only minor nuisances. Above all, you just want to get away from that border of life and death, and stay far, far away.
There's a small ridge up ahead. Aisha slows to a stop there, panting and gasping for air. "I never want to see that ever again," she gasps. "Oh my fucking El, what was that?"
"It wasn't natural," you agree. "Let's take a break.
Aisha turns around, and gasps. "We're almost there! Elsword, we're almost there!" She cheers, grabbing your hands and jumping around.
You look over the ridge and find yourself staring right at the city where your sister lives.
Feita.
Just outside Feita City, 9:17 am.
You get more and more discouraged the closer you come to Feita.
As you and Aisha walk on towards the city, you begin to notice little things. Fires are burning. Structures, destroyed. You hear screaming and crying, even from a distance.
One thing's clear. Something happened in Feita, and it was likely overnight.
When you're about a hundred metres away from the city gates, you see a person jogging over to you and Aisha. As they draw closer, you begin to make out features. A woman, with blonde hair tied in a high ponytail. There's a layer of dark blood near the tips that make the rest of her hair seem green in contrast. When it sways in the wind, you can see the individual strands align to reveal the original blood splatters.
"Hello there!" Beams the young woman. "Welcome to Feita! As you can probably tell right now, it's not in the best condition… Can I help the two of you?"
"We're here from Ruben," says Aisha. "We walked here, we've been walking for the past day. Please, if you could offer us a place to stay…"
The woman smiles sheepishly. "Ah, that's not really my call, I'm sorry," she admits. "I only got here last night, right before the bombing. I can take you to see a higher-up, though."
The words higher-up lick in your half-conscious mind. "Elesis Sieghart," you blurt.
She stares at you. "Excuse me?"
"Could you take us to Elesis Sieghart please?" You plead. "She'll explain everything, please, I beg you-"
"I can take you to Elesis, of course. My friend-" she winces. "My friend is pretty close to her. But why would you want to see her of all people?"
"Elesis is my sister," you tell her. "My name is Elsword Sieghart."
She studies the both of you for a moment. "You'd better come with me," she decides. "And your name is?"
"Aisha Landar," says Aisha. "And you?"
"My name's Rena Lire," she says, shaking Aisha's hand, then yours. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
Rena is kind, if anything else. She smiles more than she speaks, even though you can see that she's just as tired as the two of you. She doesn't look older than thirty, but she seems to be looking for something. She keeps looking you over, as if trying to see the similarities between you and Elesis.
There's a series of guards at the base of the city built into the mountain. They check each of your IDs in turn.
"Rena Lire, pass." She smiles brightly at them and goes through.
"Elsword Sieghart, Ruben citizen... Pass." You nod and enter the city.
"Speka Cerise… This ID card says your condition is an error, miss," says the guard, frowning. "Forged?"
"Yup," she says nonchalantly, pulling another one out of her purse. "Try this one. At least the name on it is actually mine."
He swipes it. "Aisha Landar. Condition unknown, presumed dead. Pass."
She snatches the card back from him and follows you and Rena into the city. "This is why I really should only carry one card," she gripes.
All around you, there are signs of destruction. Shops have caved in. People are crying. A little girl is being lifted away on a stretcher. A group of people are trying to put out a fire. You feel sick to your stomach all of a sudden.
Rena had mentioned a bombing. Was the Alteran government responsible for this?
Soon, you enter the mountainside part of the city. It's mostly housing and hidden bunkers of food and supplies. In one of her emails, your sister told you that there was a hidden library in one section of the mountainside city, where one of her younger friends, Allegro, works on coding and uncovering old news articles. You wonder if she'll let you see it.
As the three of you wander deeper into the mountain, Rena stops in front of a large, busy doorway. "I really need to get back to the hospital," she apologizes, "but I'll have my friend bring you to Elesis. He knows her better than I do."
"Wait," says Aisha quickly, causing Rena to stop and turn around. "You said hospital?"
"Yes," frets Rena. Only now do you see the rolls of bandages strapped to her waist, the first aid kit she carries on her back. "So many people were hurt after they dropped the bomb. Thankfully, the majority of the damage is to the buildings, but… The hospital is filling up quickly. My prior occupation gave me some knowledge of healing and medical care, so they need me there…"
Without a moment's hesitation, Aisha speaks. "Take me with you."
Both you and Rena stare at her like she's insane. "I've read enough books on these things," she argues. "I can help."
Rena sighs. "We really do need more help," she admits. "Elsword, I'll get Raven to take you to see your sister. Wait here."
They disappear into the building. After what feels like an eternity, a tired-looking man squeezes his way out, wrapped in the long white coat of a doctor. You doubt he's actually a doctor, but he looks like he could slice you in half with his gaze alone. "Rena sent me to take you to see Elesis," he grunts. "Name's Raven."
Amidst all the excitement, your mind connects the dots. "Raven… You were one of the leaders of the revolution with my sister, weren't you?" You ask.
Raven doesn't respond. You can't help but notice that one of his hands is a silvery prosthetic.
You pass by what has to be a thousand people and doors before Raven finds the passage he's looking for. The two of you climb a staircase up to a second layer, before crossing a hallway and taking another staircase down two floors.
Finally, Raven stops. "There you go."
There are so many people swarming in and out of the door that there's literally a man standing at the door as a security guard. "Hey, Raven," he yells. "Heard they transferred you to nurse duty. What're you doing back here?"
"Rena's orders," he shouts back. "Got to bring this kid up to our Red Haired Knight up there."
You're kinda pissed that he'd called you a kid, but you can't make your voice heard over the din of the crowd.
The man at the door looks at you. "Are you Elesis' brother?" He asks.
"Yes," you yell, hoping it reached him.
"Good," he replies just as loudly. "She could probably use some moral support right now."
You fight your way through the crowd into the house. There are people moving in and out, placing papers down on every flat surface and snatching them back up in moments. You can hardly breathe in the mess, so you hold you breath and squeeze through the bodies, up the stairs.
The upper level suddenly becomes familiar to you. Your sister has sent you multiple photographs of this house. You might just know it better than anyone else here.
You run to the end of the hallway. On the right is the closet next to the bathroom, as expected. On the left is a half-open door.
Elsa's room.
There's someone arguing inside. "Elesis, there are just too many people for the hospital to manage," says someone. A male voice, possibly in his teenage years. "We can't just put them all in there. We're going to run out of hands and supplies.
"Are you saying we should let them die, then?" Her voice is rougher, coarser than you remember, but it's still her. "Allegro, do you even realize what you're saying? These are people! With families!"
Without bothering to consider it, you turn your shoulder to the door and burst in.
The boy at the window, who you presume to be Allegro, is caught in his speech, his voice faltering as your sister turns around in her office chair. Her hair is still up in that pineapple crown you used to tease her about, and the necklace you bought her for good luck before the uprising is still lying on her chest.
She's still Elesis. Still your sister.
"Sis," you call out, your voice cracking. "Elsa."
She stops mid-sentence, her words dropping like hailstones. "Elsword, she gasps. "Oh my El."
You run halfway across the room as she leaps out of her chair to intercept you. "It's been five years," you exclaim, burying your face in her hair. It smells smoky, like wood chips.
"It's been too long," sighs Elesis, her grip on you softening.
"Please don't just up and leave again," you tell her. When she doesn't respond, you squeeze her shoulders gently. "Elesis?"
You can only barely catch her before she falls to the ground, unconscious.
"Sis? SIS!"
A/N: seriously guise protect your books don't put them face down it will destroy the spine of the book I have yelled at my sister one too many times for this reason. also don't move people who have passed out that's not safe and remember you need sleep my friend went for two days without sleep and threw up in the middle of class
Thank you to user EternaPhoenix and guest user The Guest for reviewing! Can I just say I cried tears of joy when I saw the reviews
To answer your question, EternaPhoenix, yes, I am a female writer! Although I do know some guys who watch Yuri on Ice too... More like our squad dragged them in. a moment of silence for the fallen souls
Another announcement! Starting tonight, I will be posting each chapter on Archive of Our Own! This is for users who prefer to read on AO3. Personally, I'm more accustomed to Fanfiction's interface, since I only got AO3 very recently, but most of my friends operate mainly out of AO3, and I'm sure lots of you guys do too! I'm also going to be linking my tumblr tag for Blink on AO3, which includes blueprints, maps and character reference sheets, as well as clothing design changes. The author's notes will also be a slightly different to accommodate, but overall should remain unchanged. Hope you enjoy!
~MargaritaDaemonelix
