Lyselilla

by lynara-valessie

A girl gets reborn into Naruto's warring states era, dies, then is reincarnated once more—this time, in the Harry Potter world. Only, it's a crossover, and she doesn't know what to do. Honestly, though? She's there just for the ride, family of killers and all. It's rather…familiar. [SI-OC as Lord Voldemort's daughter; cross-posted on AO3]

2. Born of the Serpents — II

LYSELILLA

Born of the Serpents — II

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

[July - October 1981]

---

"You know, you could try looking a little bit sadder about it." Her cousin quips, groaning as he stretches his legs from the strain of their earlier match. He wiggled his feet a bit, letting the tension flow out of his body. She does the same, flexing her fingers from the stiffness that she acquired over the past hour. They were sitting on the bleachers, clad in their sportswear, enjoying a moment alone together during the break. "I'm quite insulted you're not more agitated over the loss."

The girl rolls her eyes. "It's just a game. I have many other things to worry about. Besides, we both know your team won on a technicality."

"Lies and slander," he replied immediately, though his tone was playful, "I caught the Snitch in time. You dived and dipped at the last minute—and barely caught up. And yet, you still didn't."

"Well, aren't you just glad? Now, go stand in the corner and brag about it to Potter. I'm sure your feelings of indignity would be soothed once you lord the victory over him. And shoo, begone—I need to change. All this sweat is agitating me." He laughs as she pushes his arse off the seat, but nonetheless moves away as she walks around his outstretched lower limbs. The boy stayed right where he was as he waited for his name and position to be called into the pitch once more, and she headed straight down into the dressing room to the sides.

When she gets there, she quickly sheds her gear and enters the showers, then takes a minute to try and calm herself as a sudden wave of dread and nausea passes over her. The teenager crouches down, head on her knees; water sliding off her pale skin in the dim light of the room. She swallows.

One, two, three.

Breathe.

Four, five, six.

Breathe.

Seven.

She gasps, setting a hand down on the cold tiles as she falls to her knees.

Drip, drop, drip, drop.

The dementors. The damned things were what made her lose her concentration during the game—caused her to call to mind a rather painful flashback, one which had frozen her form on her broomstick as she flew up in the air.

(Hikaku holds her tight in his arms, rocking her back and forth as the worst of her panic recedes. He was there with her as her sibling had been mauled by wolves. The Hatake that attacked them did what he could to survive, she knew, but the reality of their loss is no less grating at her very sanity. Twins, they were twins; Arata had not been fond of his elder sister in the least nor had she deigned to care much about him, but they stayed stuck together in their trauma no matter the separations that plagued them.)

The coldness seeps into her toes and she exhales a shaky sigh, willing herself to forget about stillborns and miscarriages and babes that never took their first breaths—of those that never truly made it out into the world.

•⸻•

•⸻•

Valaena supposes she is a hypocrite to her own designs. After all, she tackles her stress with a very plain and uncomplicated line of action: she does nothing. Not that she could, anyways, at least not in full; but still—the fact remains that there is not much that she can do.

Cataclysms start with an ambition.

Everything is going to be alright, she tells herself everyday, as more and more of the war effort passes, we're safe here.

(For now.)

Now that Barty is occupied and Regulus is gone, it falls to Thomas and Catelyn to look after her once more. Inside her, there is a deep sense of guilt that brews—that, even if this reprieve with her parents is what she had wished for, it does not change the ultimate truth of the matter: they have suffered a loss, and it is one that they all feel. Her uncle meant much to the two females, and even more to his lover—this was clear. And even if the eldest present did not hold to the same sentimentality as the others did, something told her that Regulus still left an impact on the man.

And so, here they are.

Catelyn holds her daughter every night to make up for the time they have spent apart together, all those weeks ago. Honestly, it did not even cross the girl's mind—it had been quite a while since it happened, and it has been overshadowed by Regulus' death and Barty's current anger. Her mother does her best to give her a succinct explanation on what actually occurred at that time, but she speaks in such ambiguity that it becomes apparent she did not want to truly dive into the heart of the matter as much as she could—as if she is protecting her child from a horrible truth on her person. But Valaena can opine that something major—something terrible—had come to pass.

"I'm truly so sorry that it took me so long to be back with you." The silver-haired beauty whispers to her, as the babe is taken to her breast; warmth a welcome sensation once more. Valaena is half-asleep, though she can sense her father moving about in the background as the other speaks to her. Then, the woman turns to her husband. "It's just…it's all been so overwhelming. I-I didn't know what to do. I…I feel like a monster, not…not a mother. That I don't deserve to be with you or Valaena, after everything. That I've just ended up to be another shade in Jane's glory."

"Do not compare yourself to her." Thomas responds, and there is a minute rustling of his robes as he sheds them and comes over to where they sat. "We've discussed this so many times. What we grasp now—this conflict today—it'll be much more than what your mother and your grandfather could have even conceived, then. We have the audacity to do better than they did. And for what it cost…it'll remain with you and I, yes, but Valaena—and all those who would be with her—they'll stand straighter, they'll walk prouder."

"How could you ascertain it? The dreams—"

"I won't claim to know or comprehend what you've seen, Catelyn. But understand this," the man begins, leaning close as he took both her and his child into his embrace, "I won't leave your side, no matter what. Beast you may see yourself to be, but you've done what you can. Was it for a noble cause? Perhaps not, for most. Have you done the right thing? Again, likely not, as many would say. Would there have been another way to go about it? Maybe. But does that make you any less of a person to try what you did? No."

He trails off, then sighs. "I'll admit what happened with the ministry was…not entirely…"

Catelyn chuckles bitterly, and the babe stirs, staring up at her parents as the two hold an intense eye contact.

Thomas lays a hand on his wife's hand—the one supporting Valaena—then presses his forehead to his partner's.

"It is what it is. I won't deny that much. But above all else, I want my child to have her mother. And that is what matters to me."

The girl truly is needy, she realises soon after that. The lord praises his lady often enough to the point that it appeared…like an unhealthy dependency, on the woman's end. That is another aspect of this marriage that the babe grumbles at, with how similar it is to how she had been, once upon a time. Though, her own fixations were subtler and quieter.

She cannot yet distinguish the hidden implications as to what truly emerged when her parents left for those horrible weeks. But the effects of it are very much evident, and there is a forced calm in the air as they progress. To her interest, it is the man that acts as a stabiliser for both her and her birth-giver, who then uses the two of them as a clear focus for whatever goal he tries to preserve.

Over countless heartbeats, or perhaps in another two months and a half, she is able to realise more and more of this new reality of hers; cultures, politics, nation-building, communities, and other social whatnot's that have blended in with the sheer scale of mortal conception. Valaena learns of them during Catelyn's birthday, which happened in late August.

It was a sombre affair—in contrast to her own celebration, anything these days would have seemed so; and what she remembers of that day is now juxtaposing so strongly against the shrouds of mourning.

(Her twin brother was born exactly four minutes after she had been pulled out into the world. It was interesting to note that, in classic cultural fashion, one of them had been labelled the curse of the family. Oh, but it is not the second-born child that receives the scorn—it is her that her sire decides to brand his washout and whipping toy.

Neither her or her sibling understood it…but she had known, deep down, that he likely saw her as the one to seep out their mother's life because she was the first to crawl through that wet canal. Then, a fallacy of composition arises, and both boy and girl are cast into a pit of cheerlessness as they panned out the idea that both of them were inadequate in his eyes.

But she was always aware of why—and she had already resigned herself to it.

He hates her because she is female, he hates her because she is better than her womb-mate, he hates her because she is the greater babe; he hates her because she broke what used to be normal for him, he hates her because she turned out to be so freakishly powerful, he hates her because she is the first to tear her mother's flesh apart.

The child that he nearly casts into a well grows into a legend, and he stews in the animosity of not having been the one to become a god in his own right. Why, if he was more than a simple human, then perhaps he would have had the ability to save his wife.)

(Her paternal grandmother clucks at such a thing.

"You might have loved her, boy—but listen well. This is nothing more than the heavens' judgement for you. When a man spreads his seed and marries a bitch, and the witch who deigned to grace him spreads her legs for the beast that he is—then they have no one else to blame save themselves, when the demon that makes its escape from her stomach unleashes its own cruelties upon the world."

The old woman sneers—and it is more as if she was the one staring down at her son, despite her smaller stature.

"You are the reason that Seika is dead. Your daughter is yours, in every step of the way. Nothing more, and nothing less.")

Valaena basked in the moment, regardless of what plagued them three. It was a precious gift to spend such a time with Thomas and Catelyn, no matter that a cloud of darkness has descended upon their household.

"Mama, Papa! Us, us! To-ge-ther!" She crowed, as Tinsel helps in feeding her mushed foods. Some chicken, then a few soft fruits, and finally a bit of yoghurt. The elf beams when she expresses her appreciation. "Me, me! I love you! Us, us, us!"

Her mother hums and smiles, while her father smirks outright. They are seated in a secluded dining area, on one of the upper levels in the castle. It is near their chambers, only two or three hallways down; a place that acted as both a feasting space and a common room, with large windows that faced the other side of the fortress. This is where she finally gets a gander of the scenery opposite the sea: a settlement that bustles with life, teeming with the presence of the mundane, just barely out of a vision's reach.

It surprised her that the Dark Lord himself had even considered living so near to a city filled with muggles. She was told that they resided within the boundaries of a coast in southwestern Spain. The Old Palace's location itself is…it is tricky to even describe. Technically, its fortalice lies right by the very end of the island—a few miles off from a certain historical stronghold, midway through the distance within the gulf.

Oh, wow, she had laughed then, imagining it as the knowledge settled with her, all that blue was really just the Atlantic Ocean.

Catelyn says something about Cádiz and Almería and the 'Great Split'—a history or the other pertaining to what is now known as 'The Old World'. It is a long-winded drawling that she does not truly pay attention to. She assumes all this refers to Westeros, or whichever parts of it still remained. Earths were rearranged, lands and peoples displaced and made to adapt. Time passed, red sands were buried underneath a crack in the earth, with redder blood dissolving into hyaloid cubes of the marine. Valaena tries her best to focus on all the information, wondering what became of the Seven Kingdoms, and those characters that she had once watched on a glass screen.

Everything of the Old World seemed to have started from classical antiquity, with the rest easily occurring somewhere between the Iron Age and the High Middle Ages. And the seat of House Martell, while it was still unclear to her how and where it placed in between the histories surrounding Europe, was caught up in a strange division of lands—resulting in its point by a large body of water, instead of being beside a desert, in a map.

The rest of the anniversary is spent in strolling ignorance. Even Thomas took a break from his usual work. The trio ends the day sprawled in a king-sized four-poster bed, with both grown people making casual remarks on inane matters like recollections from the past—Hogwarts, especially—and their plans for the future, for their child's education and eventual steps into the bigger world.

"I haven't seen much of that far into the decade, yet. Just smaller and smaller scenes…within the year." Catelyn giggles as Thomas makes a funny face at Valaena. There is a hint of sadness to her tone that she does not miss, however. "Aside from that, I do think I'm getting symptoms again."

"So soon?"

"But aren't you glad?"

He joins in her amusement, chuckling. Valaena tries to climb his lap and he allows it, keeping her balanced as she stood on his thighs and played with his hair. It is worn long, grown out to mimic the true lords of the past. Currently, the man's shoulder-length curls sported a Celtic heart knot in his braid, right in the middle of a half-do. She clumsily runs her fingers on that entanglement, and he kisses her brow.

"I suppose I am."

He hoists her up by her arms, and she admires him from above as he returns her gummy grin. "How would you like a brother or sister, my love? Do you want a playmate? Perhaps we can take you to meet your cousin, once it's safer to do so."

"She and Draco would get along well, I think." The woman quips. "I always find her enveloped by comfort when they're together."

"Tinsel told me about a lavender rain."

"Mm…" Catelyn shuffles over to the father-daughter pair. She lays her head on her husband's lap, closing her eyes. "A haunting song in the air. Pink and violet in the fog."

Valaena regards their talk with mild bewilderment, the abstractions ticking into the significance of what her being-there brought.

She is magical royalty, and the Dark Lord's child to boot.

This arrives with several heavy disquietudes, namely: one—that she would likely be a strong tool not only for her family but for others to seek as well; two—that she might come to be praised as much as she would be loathed; and three—that there could be no happy ending for her, irrespective of how she spins the tale to reassure herself. After all, 'evil' is always defeated in these stories. A part of her rankles at the indignity.

Why must it be so?

That night, when she is snug between Thomas and Catelyn as they slept, she perpended on her future, as the two had exchanged earlier.

The pair stayed in cataphor the whole time, only occasionally adjusting themselves in the bed as their limbs twisted and turned. With all that she has seen in her dreams, she knew that they needed it. Her breathing remained slow and steady, as she observed her parents. They are so…untouched, like this. It is a spell, this instance; where Catelyn was just the maiden who married her heart's desire, and not a princess of the courts—and Thomas was only the man who cared for her, not the cold leader of a cult. Mere husband and wife, plain father and mother, a facile his-and-her to denote their bond.

If there is one thing that people will always believe, it is what aligns with what they want the most—and it is always the closest to what they hope is true. And in this, what fuels her casuistry is the sheer need to have someone be with her, no matter how short-lived their time may be.

Valaena wriggles her way deeper into the shelter of her parents' cocoon.

(Cataclysm, cataclysm, cataclysm. Is this the ambition that she wishes to preserve?)

It matters little if changes took root today, tomorrow, or the day after that—they were all bound to arrive.

There is something so utterly surreal when such, then, substantialises in the swevens of her slumber.

Here is how she distinguishes what is fiction and what is true: the real is absurd, and the slants are ordinary. A detective said it best; and when her rest saunters to let her mind wander to the most improbable teething troubles, there is naught that she could do save to accept it as it was. And even if the world seemed to indefatigably conspire against her and all that her family had worked for, even if she herself cannot muster the strength or courage to face the light of the next morning nor the silence of the next few seconds, she knew this: the life that they have built inside their home is worth it.

All mishaps and misapprehensions will serve their due, and one day she might realise that they are not all for nothing. Someday, when all the chances have finally come and passed, and all the right moments have aligned, she will learn that the journey was deserved and the lessons were of use.

That is in the future, though.

Today, she gets hit with a dose of the uglier truths.

Her ability to spectate over others in the present moment is a curse that lies in the cruel irony of knowing, yet being rendered impotent to act on outcomes and consequences. And with it, cosmic forces remain indifferent—and the wheel of time rolls on, relentless in its motions.

This is what she comes to cognise: her family line is all sorts of convoluted.

A wonderful parallel, isn't it, ashling?

Shut up.

First, she must begin at the start, at the point in which her topical subsistence and the tuition she once possessed collide.

She is Lord Voldemort's daughter, born in the summer—Spring?—of the year nineteen-eighty, exactly as the yellow star reached its midpoint in a canvas of azure. The girl's mother is a princess, as she recalled; a Martell, with Targaryen colouring. Her suspicions are proven when she recces on Barty, who meets with dodgy individuals in a city in another nation. They bargain on prices; and this is where she figures out that he was sent to retrieve a clutch of dragon eggs—the Valyrian kind, as he specifically heads to a ministerial building to steal them, the items and the species practically extinct if not for the efforts of one Esther Jane Martell during the Global Wizarding War.

Her grandmother played a crucial role in the conflict—having been born and married to the Dark Lord of then.

Gellert Grindelwald.

Esther Jane was the bastard daughter of Gellert Grindelwald, conceived through an affair with the last 'pure' Martell, Desella; making the man Valaena's great-grandfather. This arrives with the realisation that House Grindelwald is actually House Targaryen itself, only operating beneath a changed name. The spectre from the gold frame is revealed to have been the reason why the magical inharmony extended far past its muggle counterpart—with it ending in the year nineteen-fifty instead of the original nineteen-forty-five. She married her own father, upholding a grosser level of her paternal family's traditions of heavy inbreeding, and then set out to unleash destruction upon the world as she entered her late youth.

("Let's have a game, shall we?" She adopts an air of faux innocence; lips in an alluded leery lour, eyes widened just enough to be doe-like, a faint flush of colour staining her cheeks. The businessman before her emits a whine from the back of his throat, then gulps as she strides closer to his form. One step forward, then two silent taps of her feet, then three paces more.

And on the fourth tread, she stops.

Stares.

Smiles.

Stays quiet.

Until the thirteenth second passes—and the intense amethyst in her gaze vanishes into a blinding cochineal. There is a spiralling pattern that surrounds the pupil—like an iris folding, lines done in a seemingly endless swirl, layer over layer, getting smaller and smaller as one peered into her eyes.

"It'll be fun, I promise.")

The dragonlord family from Old Valyria has persisted, even until the present time, despite all that has happened since. The time that the babe read of, the period of turmoil and magic that she had admired, lived on—if barely.

There are two other actual blood relations that she becomes privy to.

One of them is Lucius Malfoy himself—Catelyn's half-brother through Abraxas Malfoy; twenty-seven and eager to please, high in the ranks of Thomas' circles. The man shared a few striking resemblances with his sister; most notably the sharp edges to their brows, the pointed chins, and the delicately-upturned noses. But it is his sheer affection that makes her blink with a bit of surprise, when she sees him cradling his infant son. Draco, she realises; puling and impish, with tufts of a similar gold-platinum atop his crown sticking out as he tries to grab at his father's ribbon tie.

The Malfoys are not directly related to the Grindelwalds—to the Targaryens—at least not officially, but there have been suggestions about several distant ancestors conceiving children from discreet unions.

Barty discusses the nature of his fellow Death Eater's relationship with his dear friend, with a female elf that she discerns is Winky.

"The prat's been mooning non-stop over his heir." He mutters, taking a swig of some drink in a bottle as he roomed into an inn. "I'm still angry at Ellie, and I've wanted nothing more than to rip through 'Laena's mind lately—but gods, at least the sweet girl's a far cry better than the boy. You'll love her, Winky, you will."

"As you say so, Master Barty." The companion replies, voice just as high as Tinsel's, though notably feminine. "How is the young Miss Martell in her days?"

"Oh, merry. Energetic on a fine hour. 'Eulus made all sorts of complaints when I left to answer Father Dearest's summons—she'd grabbed at one of the leaflets, apparently—and I remember laughing about it to Priscilla, the day after Tinsel fixed the mess. Valaena'd popped by the balcony, next—that girl's accidental magic is no joke—and nearly gave everyone a scare as she walked free."

Her godfather groaned as he stretched, then took a seat on the edge of a bed. Its frame was a rickety thing, creaking when he sat. "Nearly slipped through the railings, that silly girl. But she knows when to behave, y'know? It's strange—her awareness of everything. Sometimes, it's as if I'm seeing someone…older, when I stare into her eyes."

"But Winky does not understand. Why is Master Barty wanting to peek into Miss Martell's head?"

"She's…Regulus and I thought that she might have a form of the dragon dreams. It's wild. Jane, Catelyn, and now Valaena—that's three of them in a row. I'm sure old Lord Malfoy'd be very proud once he learns about it. His lady love, his daughter, and his grandchild; all exceptional in their own ways. Coupled with the fact that his childhood friend's the fucking Dark Lord—well, then, isn't everything just grand?"

There is a minute hitch in his breath. Then, a forced chuckle. Winky walks over to the young man and pats his knee in an attempt at comfort, big eyes sad.

("I seem to recall your own advances with Abraxas leaning towards such a manner.")

Valaena surmises that Jane must have frolicked with her schoolmate at some point or another, resulting in her mother's conception. Given the latter's age being the same as Barty and Regulus', the pair would have made off between nineteen-sixty to nineteen-sixty-one.

"At least Valaena's away from Rhaenar. Gods be damned—Ellie would've torn down the entire Greater Court if he even so much as heard a whisper about the girl."

Ah, yes.

Her other uncle.

Gellert's son.

Rhaenar Grindelwald.

Catelyn's elder half-brother as well, born to Jane: in his early thirties, standing six-feet-one with a swimmer's build, hair in a pure silver wave akin to his mother's—and, curiously enough, fuchsia faded into his eyes, with the barest tints of Tyrian purple. Born at the tail end of the Global Wizarding War, just before his father had been defeated by the wands of the most powerful wizards of the living age; the current heir of House Grindelwald, a man who also shares his day of nascence with his sister.

He was sterner, stricter, and harsher than Thomas—and she had no reason not to paint him in a problematic light when the proof of an individual more bedevilled than her father himself splayed wide in front of her, in her dreams.

He is one of the last of his noble house; with the only other two people who bore his blood being his half-sibling—diluted as her relation to the family may be, and a great-grandfather who ruled as lord—the latter having been the person responsible for arranging the union between Jane and Gellert. Valaena pities Rhaenar, truth be told. In his lone affairs, he so obviously pined for Catelyn—often penning several letters to her at a time, even sending along trinkets that she spies her mother tucking away out of sight and reach. Her marriage to Thomas is known to all, the girl knew. But the existence of the pair's daughter was not.

The man is active in politics, and is behind several legislations that were taking effect in the lower hierarchies. He also took his own bigotry to another level; the Sacred Twenty-Eight is considered to be a mere higher-middle class in the wizarding world—making the Greater Court essentially rule supreme—and Rhaenar, as someone born to one of the so-said greatest magical families of all time, makes each step he takes cause ripples that demonstrate such a thing.

Thomas is of wary him, to an extent. Putting aside his brother-by-law's extensive influence with his fellow nobles, his silver-haired junior was also putting in effect several crimes that were meant to sabotage him—actions which would have filibustered against the governments should they have come to light.

A skilled manipulator, with a rather worrying infatuation with his younger sister. Valaena frowns as she dreams of him, when she teeters and totters around him with her immaterial form; trying to figure out how he postured in her life. And in result of these rather tiring unveilings, she begins to plot.

It dawns on her, then.

This is it, this is him, this is the last piece of the puzzle, she freezes as she watches her uncle write up an analysis on the magical theory of reincarnation, Mama, Papa…Uncle Rhaenar.

(Kyō, Izuna…Tobirama. She has found his equivalent in this equation.)

Political ramifications be damned.

There is a spark of want that ignites within her—to meet these other relatives of hers that her mother keeps her away from; an intrigue that threatens to devour, the longer she goes on with her late stages of infancy. And with Rhaenar in the picture, she now acquires the third in the trio she yearned to see—the triangle that so closely correlates to what she had been a part of, before.

Valaena toddles around her parents' chambers, gazing out into the sea once more. And that night, she ruminates on the life that she is desperate to mimic and have again. Of freedom, of happiness, and of love—in which she can gain safety, laughter, and echt aplomb.

The girl kisses her father, then her mother; and then she dreams of their futures together, and of all that they could achieve side-by-side.

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

(Even before the last of her family died, she was a snarky child, anti-social in the way that she never learned how to communicate with her peers. It is a familiar theme. In the year that follows her father's death, she focuses solely on her training—developing a deathlike and death-seeking predisposition to force herself into calmness. There is nothing to fear when she is like this, not anymore. It is a new feeling, that freedom, but she realises better than to savour it for too long. Everything turns ruthless and cutthroat. Like any other veteran shinobi, she is harsh and cynical.

She only begins to unfold from the trauma of that effected control when her elder cousins pull her out of her introverted shell. Perhaps that was an oversight, on their end; for the second that she took an interest in anything that was not her weapons nor her scrolls, the letch for comfort arises—and it plays into the lines of infatuation, the depravity making her as importunate as she was.

"Filthy little swine that you are," a disgruntled elder curls her lip, "seducing the heir in such a debauched manner. You truly deserve your titles.")

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

"It's very telling that you stayed, regardless of your own wishes. You can't deny what you feel about this, can you?"

"I want to be here just as much as you do. That is to say—not at all. Neither of us are happy with this arrangement."

"So—why play along, then?"

"Because you and I know well enough that neither of us have anyone else to turn to."

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

"I still don't understand why you're sending me off for this. It's a glorified elementary fight—am I supposed to keep children happy, now?"

"A gesture of trust."

"Is it really?"

"Do you doubt me?"

"Well, no. It's not that. I'm just…taken off-guard, is all. Is this a punishment for what happened at the trial? Am I suffering your displeasure?"

Thomas and Catelyn are both idling in a receiving room in a lower level, with Valaena left to roam as Tinself serves them a smattering of late noon delights. She laid her hands against a stone sill, staring up into the bright sunshine as they conversed.

The two were talking about an issue that arose with a group of rowdy heirs, friends who balanced on the edge of defying pureblood customs; causing a ruckus, that, while not truly scandalous in its own right, was still enough to create a large scene at one of the annual early autumn Court galas. On days where she felt particularly empathetic, she might have bothered to pay close attention to the deeper imbalances at work. Surrounding supremacists were not happy—and she would not be shocked to discover minor accidents happening within the succeeding weeks.

"Gods, no. You'd've been a writhing mess beneath my wand. No, Catelyn." The man scoffed, snorting. "I'll admit I wanted you to come off from the recent events—you've been cooped up in this castle for far too long. And mind your tongue—I only wish for some reprieve for you."

She glanced away, chastised. "I don't like it. I have my reprieve here—with you, with our daughter."

"And are you productive?"

The silence was pregnant and awkward.

"No. You will sort out this petty tussle, and you will glide around the lords and the ladies as the summer draws to a close. Besides, we need to prepare for the rites. It's still early—" Thomas grunted as Valaena ran over to him, hitting his leg in the process. He picked her up, and set her down on his lap, letting her play with his braid again. "Though, it could be a good time to make an announcement about our children as well."

Apprehension, a grit of the teeth; lilac eyes doubtful, afraid. "You aren't answering my question."

"This isn't a punishment, for Merlin's sake. Is that so hard to believe?"

"Then why send me to deal with Greengrove and Blackthorn? Why must I be the one to placate them? There are other errand-girls for us to let sway. I want to keep staying with you, while you're still here with Valaena."

"You still hold the love of many, despite what you've done." Is the gentle reply. Her father stops her from trussing his hair up too much, and he holds her hands in his larger ones, palms warm as she looks down. Valaena slumps against his chest instead, and he absently strokes her cheek. "No others will take kindly to me—you know this. But there are countless who would forgive you, should you claim you acted within or underneath my influence."

Catelyn makes a minute face of amusement, though it was smothered. "A pretty face to distract them from the ugly reality of it all. Is that what I am to you, now?"

Thomas produces a sound of irritation. "Tell me, then. Are you aware of what everyone on the other side whispers about us? About you?"

"I don't bother with that rag that other people even deign to call a newspaper."

"That newspaper, despite its controversies, has done much to kickstart the earlier days of my campaign. I hold you at a much higher position than everyone else, Catelyn—but there's no denying that I've given you much flexibilities when it comes to being my wife." Valaena cringes at her sire's tone and remark, and she buries her face into his robes so as not to witness her mother's expression.

That would sting, she swallows, to be told you're not doing well enough.

"And that newspaper is also the lead source of information for the common man. All of them are. Now that you've made your own stance clear—now that you've proven you're loyal to me—my infamy would pass on over to your name as well. And they'll use that, won't they? You want to be nothing like your mother—and yet, you don't want to do anything that would actually change their minds." Another low sigh. "I'm giving you a chance to rebuild your image. How is that a punishment, Catelyn?"

"I saw it. If I leave for this petty disagreement between those lesser lords, you'd spend your days with—"

"I thought we've made it clear between the both of us that your visions could be altered—not to mention that they're not even complete, sometimes. There is no other female—save for Valaena—that I'd even have the mind and energy to care for. Why do you keep insisting that Bellatrix has to do with anything at all?"

Now, this increasing bout of jealousy on the girl-woman's end was not entirely without its ample reasoning. Should her mother dare to openly admit it, her father would argue with her enough to let it wither into wasteful witters. What her motivation was, is rooted within whatever legacy Jane had brought in the past.

And today—it likely stood as a matter of pride. Nothing else in the world existed to be grander than such an aspect of a person. It pushed them forward; pride led to drive, drive led to success, and success led to pride. A glorious cycle, a virtuous circle. Valaena believed in it—that strength within a will; in the mind's refusal to back down and take reality as it was. That was why they were all still there, together.

Her mother grates when she is subtly reminded of it.

Bellatrix Lestrange, as far as she was concerned, prowled far off in the corners of another city. The lady, she found—instead of the untameable woman that her mother and godfathers have ranted about—seemed more to be a rational creature who deserved her title and place within the ranks of the snakes. More than unhinged when given the opportunity, yes, but staider than the utter beast that Catelyn likes to spit hatred upon. The babe sees the dark-haired woman praise her grandmother, once—Jane, that is—as she speaks with who she assumed was Narcissa; with straightforward respect and glorification, which she knew would have felt backhanded should her Mama overhear.

The sweet bird stands abruptly, on the verge of a shrewish spew, but her sensible mate remains undeterred. The argument is not really an argument, at this point. Catelyn's fears are not abated, yet still, Thomas is cool all throughout their back-and-forth.

If a criminal on a street can learn how to set his or her dignity aside for the promise of earning coin and a better tomorrow, if a knife to the gut would be all it took for a weak person's honesty to cave—desperation overriding common sense; then her mother is the dog following the scent of blood, hungrier than the human, sharper than the sinner's blade, ennui compelling her to trail after the food dangled in front of her nose.

Valaena thinks it goes like this: Catelyn is vulnerable to the thought of being compared to Jane—brought about by the previous war, whatever happened then, and most probably the childhood she endured within two decades afterwards; and she is once again on the brink of snapping, should another woman take her place in her husband's line of sight.

"Nothing else would suffice—no one else—for your needs. She's everything that I'm told to be—what my mother would've loved, no?"

("Is it truly so difficult for you to follow the lines?" Junichiro drawls. He smacks her hands with that damned bamboo stick again, and the three-year-old whimpers at the pain on her knuckles. Whack, whack, whack. The bones collide with the wood; the skin reddens and peels. She grits her teeth. "Your brother's been making leaps in his kanji practice. Why is it that the so-said smarter of you two is struggling to read basic hiragana?"

"I'm sorry." She mumbles. "B-but it's so—"

Whack. The child gasps, retracting her hands from the table—but it only serves to give him cause to hit her in the side. She quailed, trying to decrease the pain by shielding her sore hip with the bone of her elbow.

"I want no excuses from you—and I will not tolerate any form of illiteracy in this household.")

That is when her father gets up as well. He approaches Catelyn in seven quick strides, his child still carried on an arm. After a circle around the coffee table—red-brown, lined with bronze and topped with a glass surface, and she briefly catches the eye of her own image in its shine—Thomas cups the girl's jaw and presses a thumb to her bottom lip. Valaena glances down, peering at herself, features scrunched up as the humming in her ears now sounds like it was laughing melodiously.

Serpent, serpent, serpent—clever, clever man, it says, he knows how to whisper something so shapely to the untrained ear.

"Why are you hesitating? I've given you all that you could need, provided you with more privilege than anything I've ever afforded for the Black witch. I've gone so far for your lord's favour, reclaimed your home, and gave you a child of my seed—two, now that another's growing inside you. And you—despite everything that I know you've done—I let stay by my side. Haven't I given so much to you, Catelyn? What becomes enough to satiate your wants? And when does it happen?"

Her other parent cracks at that—a very, very, very slight note of pure hurt in her voice as she spoke. "You've never said the words. Not truly. More than almost everything else, that's the only thing I wish to hear from you."

"What words? What are you talking about?"

Another quiet—though, this time, it was more deafening than ever.

One second.

The babe wondered what was happening.

Two, three, four.

What face is Catelyn making?

Five, six.

She hears a rustle of clothing.

Seven.

"…nevermind. Nevermind, my Lord. I apologise. Forgive me. I…I spoke out of turn. The pregnancy's getting to me." Valaena's head whips around to stare at her mother, shocked. Never had she used such a remorseful or deprecatory shift to her voice, even when the woman came across an occasional upset. When she looks back to her, her gaze trails down: Catelyn is in a curtsy, refusing to lift her own eyes until she was given permission to even move. Defensive and dissatisfied, but still demure.

"I'll do as you asked."

Thomas, having gone through the ken of his wife's hormonal motions, only sighs and nods his head in acknowledgement. There is no recognition in his scrutiny—no indication on whether or not he realised or at least cared about the near-overt suggestion in her words. But there is an inkling of an emotion in him—something unreadable to the child, but still there. "Go, then. Tinsel, do as you will."

"Yes, Lord Thomas." Came the response, hushed and hurried. The elf waits on his mistress.

"Catelyn."

"…yes, my Lord."

With each step she took, the weight of the woman's despair bore heavily upon her shoulders. Valaena falls deeper into her own pit of questions, running over several things in her mind. She stays curious as her mother's shadow retreats into the direction of her private chambers—which she alone inhabited, not the one she shared with her spouse.

Does she deserve such doubts? Or was this just a show of her insecurities? The girl's fingers clutch tighter onto her father's shoulders, the ultra-fine serpent stitching smooth beneath the tips of each digit. Is Voldemort the type to be unfaithful?

Valaena dismisses the thought. But it becomes easier to understand, then, that the type of affection and attention that Catelyn sought was as elusive as the morning mist, evading her grasp like a delicate impulse slipping by her: something sleepy, but never sleeping—like a dream she dreamed, in frustrated slumber, to repeat; the incessant urge to grasp what is barely inside her hold, smothered into wisps right as it materialises in her grip. In simpler words: she was frightened of being merely a fleeting fancy.

(She and Izuna have not been kind to one another in her younger years. The boy was half a tensome years older than her, envious when his elder brother paid her his attentions as she excelled with her training.

Little runt, he would call her, an intruder's breed.

The two of them fought constantly. From every communal activity—meals where they sat with their other extended families, baths where she proceeded to avoid him to keep up the pretence of her initial alleged sex, to sacred ceremonies where he liked to sabotage her efforts to pay respects; to even private going-on's that they kept to themselves—with his own careless habits at taverns and comfort houses, and her peaceful dalliances at libraries and sick-wards; if either of them happened upon the other while they loafed in relaxation, they would do what it took to ruin the experience.

It is not really so surprising that the only thing that they agreed upon—without complaint—was the pleasure they gained from having sex together. The sensation of having him inside her—in whatever way suited him—makes her wish it could last forever. Always, always, always; his touch is never a miss.

The bastard deflowers her on her thirteenth birthday, in the dead of daylight, right in the middle of a meadow. Wildflowers bend to the breeze, and she closes her eyes tightly, feeling herself coming undone over and over again. She does not talk much to him as his hips slam against hers, focused only on the friction between them and the brimming sensitivity that he never fails to bring out of her body.)

"Your mother's a romantic, and she's desperate for my approval." He comments boredly—to which the babe hums a tone that is of ragging, of reproval. She slaps his cheek, then droops her pout in a lean against his jaw. Rude and silly man. But Thomas only kisses her in return—holding her high up, then planting his lips on her temples, on her chin, on the tip of her nose. The child squeals at the blatant show of affection.

"I understand this might be painful—seeing her and I like this." He responds to her noises with a warm smile, chuckling; and an inkling of undecipherable emotions flutter in her stomach as the next words leave him. "But she isn't always her right self, my love…and even for all that she can suppress it, I can only hope that you don't inherit that same…irrationality."

Paranoia.

They sit on an armchair, and he sighs as he finishes the last of the food on his plate. Valaena glances back at the open sky, off to the sides; light pouring in from a tilted angle as the time glides like sand in a glass. Phosphenes float in her vision. One more hour until the afternoon, and she would be handed back with the other elves in the castle to be supervised as her father goes off to finish his correspondences with important figures.

Finally, when lunchtime passes and she is left in her rooms again, the girl frolics and recreates the scene she witnessed earlier today with her dolls.

"Lyn-Lyn, no, bad! Wrong, Lynnie!" She mimics the middle-aged man's subtle frustration, moving a black-haired doll—Regulus gifted it to her during her birthday, a pretty thing that even sported a tiny replica of Slytherin's locket on its neck—and shook the habit as if she was angry. Its gowned counterpart—also a present from her uncle, this time in an attire that she has never seen her mother actually wear, a mauve with white trims—is acted in a dramatic cry. "Tom-Tom, puh-lease? Lo—Lord? Lor-dy. 'Eu-lie, 'Mi-us. Gran-na, bad. Bella-belle!"

When Thomas ends his tasks and visits her again, he even goes so far as to join her, clearly absorbed in his daughter's dumb delights. She supposes it is also a manner in which he could gauge her intelligence—an exposure to more and more of her personal development.

"…and so, the lord and his princess dance with one another, as everyone looks on. They don't care for the stares they receive. They are inside their own world—living stars that twirled around each other as they basked in their love." He narrates the last words of a story in a practised enunciation—Valaena imagines that he had done this sort of thing before, entertaining those who bothered to interact with him at the orphanage where he was raised in. Babies, perhaps. He was very good with her, after all.

Her father helps her up and holds her hands, and then, they enliven their leisure with a rhythm of their own. The song washes over her, and they sway gently, feet careful as they go across the polished floor. Thomas bends down somewhat, just to support her motions, and her tiny hands squeeze his with an unyielding grip of perceived innocence.

"Boo-hoo, you've got me crying for you. And as I sit here and sigh, say 'I—I can't believe it's true!'." He sang softly, his voice tinged with tenderness and emotion. The babe gazes up at him with wide, trusting eyes; marvelling captivated by the sight and sound of his doting.

"Boo-hoo—I'll tell my Mama on you. The little game that you played has made her baby oh-so blue."

She giggles.

"You left me in the lurch, you left me waiting at the church! Boo-hoo—that's why I'm crying for you. Someday, you'll feel like I do—and you'll be boo-hoo-hooin', too."

They spin in circles until she tires out, to which she then demands to be held up once more. He laughs when his child grumbles. "I could understand your mother's feelings better now, I think. I suppose I'm a romantic old fool when I'm spending my time with you, eh?"

Valaena is as comfortable as she can be when he rocks her, head buried into the crook of his neck as he speaks in a much more sedate inflexion. Let her retain this twang of infinity, and she could say in genuine joy that it is a second of pure truth that she speaks in a full sentence.

"I love you, Papa." She murmurs, eyes beginning to close.

"I love you too, Valaena." He returns, holding her tighter.

(That is what Catelyn wants to hear, she thinks. Oh, flower of summer; if only the sun that feeds you would not try to burn you, first.)

It is the first time that she hears him say it, but it certainly is not the last.

Not for her.

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

("It's alright." He smiles sadly, but there is a hint of deviousness in that fucking grin of his. "You don't need to say those damned words, and you can hate me all you want."

She could feel her heart pounding so fast against her chest, and he seemed to enjoy the moment more than ever, feeling the tension in her body.

"You can try to hate me, Kyō—but you'll always come running back to me.")

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

"Aren't you upset that they keep turning you away?"

"Should I be?"

"Your apathy is rather disconcerting for everyone."

"And you? What do you think?"

"I think you wouldn't care, regardless of what I thought. I suppose I respect that part of you."

"Funny that you should mention it—considering you yourself are the same as I am."

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

They follow a routine, come the next few weeks. When her mother leaves during the day to live out her father's commands, it is then him who resides with her in Sunspear as the static runs its course. This is when the humming inside her ears becomes a non-stop discordance—ringing in the way church bells racked and numbed the senses as they resounded. Valaena does not dwell on it for too long, only enjoying what she can while she still has it. And although it is a sorry affair, on her end—that she persists with that lone sadness—her best suffices, and she is as content as she is allowed to be in a long, long while.

"You are worth the world, you know that?" Thomas mumbles effetely when he gives her a cleaning. Usually, it would have been the other elves who took care of her—three are her main guardians: Rosy with the ribbon on her wrist for rollicking, Basin with the belt for a bath, and Coral with the chatelaine chain for circuits and catering. Tinsel was the Head Elf, and while he looked after her from time to time, he was primarily tasked with her mother and her companions in the castle.

"…there used to be a time when I feared looking at my reflection. That I'd have to truly face myself, eventually. And back then, I'd never even entertained the thought of having a family, much less gaining a wife. I'll admit I was hesitant when I first met your mother."

He scrubs her down, and she shivers in pleasure when his hands massage her scalp. The shampoo, a cherry-scented thing, flows sweetly into her senses. Her father's tone is riddled with rancour. "I suppose my early life consisted of constant disappointments, with my parents being who they were…it could've been better, but I'm glad things turned out the way they did—because, well…I'm happy to have you."

Valaena ascertains the date.

It is now the middle of September, in the year nineteen-eighty-one.

(Dread. Fear. Anger. Indignation. Anxiety. Desperation, desperation, desperation—)

In her most recent fits of slumber—if they can even be called that, anymore—she is floating over an ocean. A storm brews above her; and the clouds are grey, and the sea is choppy. But she is dry and warm; and she is safe, and at peace. She remains in the embrace of the aqua, form half-buried beneath its coldness as the lightning flashes across the sky. It is a lovely place to dream. And as she drifts along, the sea below seems to part; a path opens up, like a gateway—and it gently moves her, as if by a wind in the water. There is a beautiful island ahead of her: gleaming in white and gold, liquid silver sharp against its sands, but there are no rocks in the rush and bang. It is plain, but it is wonderful.

Minutes tick on, and when Valaena stirs—opening her eyes and stretching out her limbs—she is finally beginning to feel like someone in a human body. The density of both her flesh and blood seeps, but it is not a bad thing. In those scant seconds, her heart beats without the purple bruise of the spiritual and the eccentric.

Sunspear is…empty. When the last half of the month comes to pass and she is given more freedom to access the other parts of where she had lived for all this time, this is what she thinks: her home is not quite what it seems—much bigger than she anticipated, yes, but still lacking in so many aspects of life that she had not even paused to consider. It is a picturesque scenery, with the warm tones of each wall and crevice adding to an effect of near-sacredness to its appearance—like a church well-worn and well-torn. But, save for her family and the helpers they are surrounded by, there is nothing and no one else to inhabit or vivify it.

Lorn, listless, liminal, lethargic; a sunny playpen for the mind to view and say, 'Yes, what a funny existence.'.

The symbolism of each vision is not lost on her.

(She can see it for what it is.)

(A warning, and a promise.)

This is what becomes of your home, then, the humming whispers, and she feels a quick draw of her own breaths escape her, nothing mortal can last. Not even the most infinite of your love, or the memories that come with it. Everything will hollow out—and it will look like this.

Why must it be so? What's the point in having me know this? She responds in kind, tracing along each groove on marble and stone when she explores. Why can't you just leave me be?

This is how you are, this is how it has always been, this is how it will always be. Never forget that.

(Amaranthine, amaranthine, amaranthine; ashling, ashling, ashling. Born to the serpents, thrown to the fires. To the sun, to the stars, to the waters, to the fields. In blood and bone, to minds marked by madness.)

The landmass that was once a display of pure light then becomes one with the steely billows—and she is drowning, drowning, drowning; dragged into an endless depth as her throat is clogged and her eyes are filled with salt. They sink together, before she even gets the chance to swim towards it. The intertidal zone caves in, swaying down into the pelagic—and her form flails as much as it can, until finally, her entire being is submerged past the benthic, and she is surrounded by creatures of the abyss, her own primal panic stark in her chest.

Sunspear is the island illuminated by an eye of the heavens, where Valaena is the weight of the wind-weathered granules sitting atop it, and they are declining—and together, with her home, they collapse.

(Her favourite force of nature will always be fire. To be honest, it is not even truly an element, in itself—and for her, it is more a ceremonial destruction told in pretty circumstances: just as she likes it to be, just like how she sees herself. A symbol of rapture, of rage—and most of all, of rebirth. No matter how many times she is cleansed beneath the streams of a waterfall for a misogi, no matter how often she is made to wash her mouth and hands in a chōzu, no matter how the Kaguya worship the waters and the moon that made it rise; that hot chemical reaction will never not be out of sight, nor out of mind.

So, then…it is ironic, in its own right, that she dreams more of water these days. That the flames of ardour—which a part of her Uchiha blood revered—begin to flicker dangerously; embers blinking like every other celestial sphere in the sky dimming into oblivion.)

Valaena wakes, again and again and again.

And again and again.

And again.

Again.

And again, and again, and again—

In a never-ending cycle of her own psyche, cursed to repeat whatever fate befell aberrant little things.

She starts to question if she is following the right course of action. When her father includes her in his escapades in his office and lets her play around as he works, as her mother comes back and cradles her once more; when both parents tangle with each other de novo, as they wrestle in the sheets and conceive another growing babe in the girl-woman's belly; she searches for an answer: was this…what she was meant to do? To hurt, because she is being cared for by someone; to be terrified…of someone being kind?

Her entire form is frozen as Catelyn repeats what Thomas said, multiple evenings after; a flush of heat across her cheeks building when she hears how the words are uttered in longing and pure remorse—like she is begging for forgiveness, even if the babe herself did not know how to respond. In all her years, the side of her which was still so incredibly naïve to the most simple displays of affection, drooled at the image of plain contrition.

"You are worth the world…" Her mother cries, when Thomas is off taking a bath; hoarse and sniffling. There is something in her gaze, an intense torture; akin to how she had been when she took flight from her child right after she returned. The babe is confused, and reaches for the woman—who hugs her so stiffly, that she fears her infant body might get squished.

"You deserve so much better. More than these damned sins I've committed against you and your father. Someday, I hope you can forgive such a wretched person like me."

The child wanted to be Esther Valaena Martell, and yet she still cannot move past Uchiha Kyō—but even still, she plays along.

She was going to be Valaena, just for them.

The killer decides to give these people what—whom—they desired.

She will pretend.

But the emotions that flooded her with their touch, with their love, with their acceptance—

They felt real.

To be held in their arms like, regardless of who they thought she was.

And this was enough.

(It needs to be. It has to be. Not for anything else—never for anything else.)

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—I'm so sorry," Catelyn sobs quietly, gasping and heaving, "g-gods, I am so sorry."

"What? Why, Mama? Why, sad?" Valaena is worried, and more than alarmed. "Mama? What, wrong? Mama, Mama."

(The changes take place.)

She is inconsolable.

When the child gurgled gently—coos an attempt to offer a soothing melody to her distraught mother—the woman only laid her back down on the bed to take a second to herself, bent over on the edge as she clawed at her hair. The soft silver-gold tassel stretched in her grasp, tautened; and despite her best intentions, the babe's efforts to calm her remained futile. She wiggled and fussed, attempting to reach her cheek, to offer a balm for wounds she could not see.

Yet, Seika's grief was a tempest too cryptic to be pacified by the pats of a puny hand.

And then, just as the shadows of despair seemed to deepen, a presence filled the doorway. Thomas stood there, red eyes filled with hesitance…and care. Mim, but genuine.

At the sight of him, her mother's tears ceased abruptly, replaced by a forced smile that masked her pain. She wiped her eyes quickly, as if erasing the evidence of her sorrow. The girl and her father mirrored each other's frowns at the transformation in Catelyn's demeanour. She recognised the façade—that brave front she had put up, ever since that day with the argument regarding Bellatrix. A faint furrow formed between her brows, and it is then that she knew her mother hid a secret—a skeleton in the cupboard, in particular one that she was not quite ready to reveal.

"My flower…" Thomas begins, sitting beside his young wife. She grimaces, sighing and setting onto the silks of the slumber pad; ignoring the mister she holds dear, and sleeps on her side. Valaena suffices with it.

As her father approached and enveloped his lady in a warm embrace, the babe's gaze remained fixed on her other companion. In that fleeting moment of connection, she saw a truth that transcended words; and though she could not comprehend the entire complexities of it, she understood one thing: her mother needed more than coos and chubby fingers.

It stays with her, that.

You are worth the world…but will your efforts be enough for it?

(A simple joy in Thomas' boyish grin, an intricate keen in Catelyn's snarl; and Sunspear is a witness to both. Their island is inundated, slowly and surely—'til the world has determined that it has grown tired of waiting, and pushes the skerry down whole.)

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

(The Demon, the Witch, and the Ghost—such were the titles bestowed upon their little love triangle, as she reads on the history papers. She headed to the village library as soon as she had been able to, curious as to what was written about her. Seven steps into the archives where documents about the Warring States Era were kept, she senses a peculiar chakra signature. Masked to the point of being nulled—though it is not enough to hide from her; a volatile and crackling energy that gave her the distinct impression of a feral mutt on command, leashed at just the right strain to keep it from attacking its owners. She snorts to herself, ignoring the ANBU guard as she flips through an account penned by a name she recognised.

Uchiha Kagami, said the paper in her hold, in bright blue characters. A slight fluttering of her lashes is the only indication of a flinch. She thinks of that boy, that annoying—but nevertheless amusing—nephew of hers; beloved by many in her clan, revered by the village people. He narrates a rather flattering tale, one which sympathised with both the clansmen whom he shared blood with and the mentor that raised him into a young adult; but there is only a pair of paragraphs that startles her, as she finishes her perusing.

She stills as her eyes run over those lines, again and again and again and again; sadness caught in her throat, tongue bitten with a fang so as not to gnarr. Her grip on the paper slackens in a laboured ease. Later that night, she travels up to the Hokage mountain, standing in the same spot where she remembers a scene in which two childhood best friends spend time and look down upon the village together, before her lover ruins their moment.)

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

('It doesn't matter what it is that Uchiha Kyō had done—only what it is that we think she did; this is what most would say of the Witch of the Blue Fires. There are no ways to know what truly occurred between her, her family's, along with her rival clan's heir(s). We have only the story presented to us on a plate of pearl-stringed controversies: the catalyst for the first village's construction. Many blame her for the madness that leached at Uchiha Izuna in his later years, as well as the continued apathy that Senju Tobirama displayed since her death; and they would not be wrong.

But one must remember that she had been a mere girl as it all happened, groomed into the muddle that two prideful men could not keep to themselves; fifteen, much too young, with a future that she might've lived, had she never become an artist for the blade. And so, it might not matter how her reception went—but this is how it should be: the warrior-maiden shouldn't have been torn into half in consequence of her elder lovers' gross misconducts, not when it is her kind that Konohagakure no Sato was made for, to protect—the audacity to dream, the innocence of children.')

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

She ponders upon her previous existence, when her family ganders and gallivants through the gardens.

This is what the very cosmos demands from her: a reminder of one of the vilest to grace the nations, a creature that comes from the womb of baseness. It stood as what Uchiha Junichiro and Uchiha Tajima desired—little demon, killer, killer, killer; and it is what Esther Catelyn Martell and Thomas Marvolo Gaunt wished to see—pretty baby, child, child, child.

She is neither and both at once. Her duality is no genuine dyad at all; no matter that her mind is still Kyō, and that her body is Valaena. Everything that makes her, her. The soul, the essence, is still the same; it remains one.

And it is as if she had never left.

(Always the haunting aberration, always the trapped youth.)

She fiddles with lilies and hibisci, pulling at each trumpet-shaped bloom and ripping them off from their sepals. They must be wailing at the horrid tears, at the manner in which she has crushed their delicate whorls. Her father reprimands her for it, tapping a flick on her fingers. Regardless, though, he walks her through the greenery—complimenting several plants and they might even be used in subjects such as Potions or Herbology. Some of the orchids that they pass by have been grown by Barty. When her thoughts pander to him, the girl shuffles closer to her sire's legs, shaking them off the way stems doubled back with a bounce when ridding themselves of morning dew.

("Kreacher, take the locket and go—")

How strange—how funny—is it, to be thrust into a role so ominously symbolic of what came before? The thing is; all this is not a role to her—it is literally who she had been, in her past life, both the babe she is now and the mother she clings to as well. Not that anyone else was aware of that, but still. She provokes herself to smile and pose for them…just as she did before.

It is nostalgic.

(It hurts.)

Her parents are leading her to a section of the castle where they can wade into a shallow area of the waters. The Sunspear she resides in is perched part-way up on a sand island, with a few boulders to provide barriers at the end. Waves of white-blue-green lap at the shore, kissing pale yellow powder that warmed their feet. Thomas sports a loose white button-down shirt and black trunks, to be removed once they slipped into the cool; curls untied and tousled as the wind blew. Catelyn's hair flows freely along a sheer pastel sundress, with a low back to reveal a fine spine. Their daughter dodders off, outfitted in a garment of a softer fabric, holding onto a fistful of crushed petals she took from the garth.

If tomorrow comes without either of me, with no Kyō to honour the past nor Valaena to smile in the present, she lazes by the first undulations on the wet ground, then what's the point of living again at all? Why, why, why am I here?

She throws the flowers into the water, splashing around like an idiot.

And when she stares at the image of the little girl in that pure blue…

The child gasps.

It…is really just her again, only with red eyes. The same face that she had glimpsed in a flat surface of bronze as a three-year-old, before, ripples with the crests. Regardless, it is still undoubtedly Uchiha Kyō once more. But these windows to her soul were wearier, sadder, and just a shade angrier than the forced glee she used to possess.

You are a corpse. See?

(Only four people in her second life had loved her truly, she thinks.

There is no true kind regard that she gets from her twin brother. He gives her admiration and respect, as was her due. But there is no familial affection there; not the kind that she remembers from stories she read on a screen of real bonds long past, none of the connectedness that she witnesses her friends and their friends and all their mothers and fathers and siblings display.

Hikaku was the first. They bond deeper when she is betrothed to him, a day after she slips up and her actual gender is revealed to all. It is a punishment, the clan elders say; but to her, it is nothing less than a boon. She is still counted within the main line, and if they married, their children would be just as 'pure' as purity gets with their cursed blood. He takes the news well—all things considered. The young man cared little for what appeared between her legs; he still saw the child he was tasked to train, the cousin he swore to protect—the person whom he shared blades, fire, and food with.

Madara comes next. Originally, the boy is confused—wondering why she needed to shy away like that. When he learns of the horrors inflicted upon women and children, he sulks and seethes, looking back upon his brothers as they lounged in the compound's plaza. Her lips twitch when he declares a quiet promise to her—about better worlds and better people—knowing the path that he will take in the future, should the worse come to pass.)

(And finally, there are Izuna and Tobirama.

She is uncertain on which of them fell first, though what she is sure about is that she had been attracted to both at once—appealed by the sheer thrill of being desired by two notable men from opposing lines. Selfish, sardonic, surreal.

Izuna resents her from afar, in their earlier years. She does not know what changes his opinion of her, when he eventually comes around and tumbles with her in the sheets and no more the dirt. Tobirama chances upon her in a moment of mere idyll, in the forest where the village is to be made. They collect herbs together, the adolescent led to think that she was some simple civilian girl who got lost along the way.)

With her prettier recollections of the past, she is this: simultaneously blunt and sharp, two opposing forces of the mind in collision, both fact and fiction joint together, a mesh of impossibilities and improbabilities that she had never even believed in. On that pretty island, she is this: living again, primarily concerned with preserving what she can as it tarried before her.

In the sickening humidity of flesh and armour, she: dances around each victim as the undeniable victor, cheats her way through every virtue, forgets at will the morals she used to wish she could keep, and satisfies herself with the highs of her homers. At the sickening warmth within the breasts of her new parents, she: squirms in delighted abandon, digging for more and more and more, spun around in a brimming somnolence.

"Careful, ashling. Don't wade too deep in." Catelyn reprimands her quietly as the woman dipped in with her, crouching down as she floated into her arms. A spray of seawater hits their faces, and they both giggle. "We can't have you choking, now, can we?"

Thomas sheds his shirt and lays it down on a nearby boulder, keeping it in place with a charm or so. Valaena croons as he joins them, reaching up to feel his skin as he walks to them. Smooth and wiry muscle makes contact with her fingertips, and then her palm—and soon, she is sandwiched between them both, her mother's delicate frame pressed against her back. The adolescent does the same as her daughter, placing a hand on her husband's chest, then sliding it onto a shoulder as their child wriggled between them.

They kiss—and it is not even filled with the kind of passion that she associates with sex or energy. It is done just for the sake of feeling of having someone by their sides, with the delay of that melancholic yearning trailing in the space of their banded mouths.

(A flash of Izuna appears, massaging her tongue with his, as he pushes her against a holy tree in the middle of that deserted land. The air is thick and heavy with an ominous energy, emanating from the very trunks and roots of the lumber—green-brown-red leaves cascading in ill-omened signals as the sun shone hot above them. But instead of fearing this atmosphere, they bask in it; and she ignores the presence of that mass of shadow lurking by the edge of the crater, she does not bother to care for its yellow eyes as she beheld her beloved.)

Valaena lunges at Thomas and copies Catelyn's motions—shocking both of them as she clings to his neck and gives him as many sloppy pecks on his jaw and lips. Then, the man laughs, and they all drift further into the mouth of the moana. Her feet splashed in the shallows, sending droplets into the air that sparkled like diamonds under the sun's caress; and her laughter echoed through the expanse, a melody that danced along with the sea breeze. Their little family spends the entire afternoon bundled together there; and the babe pretends as if everything is fine.

That it has been, and that it will be.

She squeals in joy, yet all the same, a sense of dread washes over her.

(It was all a joke, a cruel taunt to see how long she would be able to keep up the façade.)

The water rises. As soon as the waves crash against her skin, Valaena shrieks with pure delight. They tickle her skin, sending a thrilling tingle through her. She looks to her parents again, witnessing them both in the same state as her; a grin on their faces as they experience this for the first time, as a family. Catelyn walks over to her husband once more, once the water is up to her collarbones. She touches her chest, right above her beating heart.

"Yes," her mother murmurs, "this is heaven."

She takes Thomas' hand, and slowly flutters over towards a deeper spot. Both of them are at peace…playing like the sad children they truly are on the inside. He goes for a dive, letting the water swallow him. The woman joins him, agua now reaching her shoulders; and the babe can feel it surrounding her, touching them everywhere. Their bodies seem to be made for this: baltering with filial ecstasy, whelved beneath deliberate innocence. Her child paddles as she then runs those dainty fingers over the silken salt, their mirth oscillating louder as they trifle.

Her father returns, then gives both females a light splash. It flies towards them like a fountain, drenching them; and his spouse gasps, breaths now coming out in rapid pants as she laughs again.

"No!" Seika grins, and splashes him back. "Thomas!"

This continues for some time. Soon enough, they are all coated in the last blankets of the season. Everything races…and she is alive. Valaena nuzzles her way into the crook of the adolescent's neck as she leans forward; and she can sense it, how their lips connect again—and their contact is deeper, livelier.

There is nothing else here.

Just Thomas, Catelyn, and Valaena.

Together, in the warm Spanish sun.

Do you even remember who you were, before the world had decided what you should be?

(Aberration.)

No, she bobs up and down on the surface, shrieking with laughter, and I don't know if I even want to.

Surely you must, ashling.

No, she repeats, no, no, no.

Still, it is a thought that tells her to twine into her twitterpated tantalisation.

Who are you?

That is what she asks herself when she peers at both hue and contour in the waters; all buoyant on the sodium chloride, limbs in a near-prone hover that makes the girl-woman fret and cluck. She pouts and grumbles when she is lifted out, then watches her father take another dive, still considering her own question to herself.

When he reemerges, he takes her and places her onto his shoulders—causing her to actually scream in elation, pulling at his hair with that uncontrolled infant urge to tug and lark. He yelps, attempting to detangle his curls from her vise, to no avail.

When she loses her hold on him, she falls back sideways—cheek stinging as she is hit with an entertaining momentary slap, courtesy of the sea—and she goes under, bubbles escaping through her nose as her eyes are tingled. She glimpses a dark-haired woman gazing forlornly at a wall cloaked with constellation-covered cretonne, curling her face into a pernicious cry. With wild curls like Bellatrix, and a high-necked Edwardian-esque gown that lustred in black and silver and gold; an Urnes-style brooch featuring a fierce kraken pinned onto the space of cloth between her breast and collarbone.

Walburga, she freezes, mourning Regulus.

And suddenly, Valaena is clawing for air—just as her uncle had done, with her throat clogging and her mind numbing as she dipped deeper in.

One.

(Sharp pulses in her œsophagus, beads of oxygen leaving her.)

(A hot spring by the mountainside, snow drifting like the stars that were littered in the sky.)

("Master Regulus!" An elderly elf weeps, leathery fingers circled stiff onto a priceless locket. "Master Regulus!")

Two.

(A breezy burning in her lungs.)

(Panting as she bounced on her lover's hips, thighs quivering as their breaths mix into one.)

(A lightless cave, a bottomless pit.)

Three.

(Hands on her body—dragging her all the way down, down, down—)

(He grins, ice crystal lashes fluttering as he spills himself deep inside her.)

(Dead people wrapping themselves around a young man's form, like vines and wildflowers on an abandoned stone wall.)

Four—

"Valaena!" Two voices chorus.

"Ashling—"

"Love—"

The said girl kept smiling, posing, giggling; putting up a front for her parents, acting like the Esther Valaena Martell that they expected her to be.

And she—

She—

Valaena felt so alone.

Those limbs she had been familiarised to have been carried in pull her up, and she sneezes, magic going awry once more. It is a very fraught happenstance for both of them—how the clear sky dims, how the winds howl and whistle, how the fine particles of the dust cloud their vision; and they cough as all this happens, those glistening threads of power making them flinch in wonder and trouble. Once again, her mother attempts her damnedest to calm her. This was not a show of distress, however. No—this was a break in character, verve pumped in folie; and it is a newer side of her that she exhibits to her sire, the one that she tried to temper when her first realisations about this world came to light.

(Oh, who would know better than a child, on what happiness was? Not on what it is meant to be—rather, what it truly is, at the moment; at what exists before the babe, the basics of bliss that none save something so biological can only be bound to. This is it—this is the only thing that mattered. Heedless of the truth that she was joyful in solace, in orra Elysium; uncomplicated definition, positive primality.)

Instead of a foggy wall of sound, where her ears are clogged and pressure strains inside the lobes, the tinkling from that old sorry fairy music box rings—its melody meandering in the air like a cherished secret; and as her father pats her on the back to make her spit out what she swallowed, the girl gurgles out the tune. It makes nothing abate. And so, her parents wandlessly cast invisible shields to keep off from the attack. Catelyn rubs her eyes, making a small note of inconvenience.

"Ashling—" She sets her down on the boulder where Thomas laid his shirt. The man dries them all with a brief spell, and the babe squirms, not letting the lady get a word out before she speaks.

"Wa-ter! Wa-ter! 'Eu-lie, 'Eu-lie! Sea! Sea! Sea! 'Eu-lie, wa-ter!" Valaena sing-songs, waving her hands around. Both adults' heads whip to her in confusion—but she sees it, that peripheral pause on her Mama's end, a very vaporous torment at the implications of her lisps.

Catelyn knew.

("He fooled us, and she let him?")

When? The girl squints, shoving her fist into her mouth in pretend-stupidity. And why did you let him do it?

(She ignores that it had been her who decided to let go of that bright boy of the lion-star, she refuses to recognise that it is her fault that the other partner is grieving at all.)

Mother and daughter survey one another, as if sizing each other up, measuring and deciphering how much of the truth each was aware of. The woman's hair was a crown of silver silk, strands glowing like spun snow in the sunlight. No more gold, no more lively blush. When she leans in to caress her jaw, the child absentmindedly runs her fingers through its glistening depths, the soft texture and fragrant scent a comfort and a respite from the chaos around them.

She knows, ashling. Better than you do, than your father does. Desperate she might be, but that flower is no fool.

"Christ." Thomas rubs his face, then sighs. "Valaena, are you alright? Catelyn, how is she?"

"She's fine," is the response, with a deep boring of her gaze still peering into her own, "darling—spit it out."

"Sea!" The babe repeats. "Sea! Wa-ter!"

"Yes, water." Her father drawls, then approaches them again. He inspects her, but her hold on her mother's hair remains secure.

(Oh, pain. Of her first death, of the one that followed, of which would likely happen again; of auguries, her past August musings. She wonders if her future now will be any worse than the last. Pain of being torn in half—between wanting to change something and weave out chain reactions, and pulling herself back in some twisted cautionary reluctance; the pain of not being able to do anything, anyways.)

She remembers the date, she recalls how reality sets in, and she feels that affright flood her system. Her magic slows. The abruptness of it all makes her vomit, the acids flowing in freeform as she steadied on that high rock. Valaena hacks and gags. Thomas grimaces as he does his best to make her jet it all out—doing some first-aid that she guesses he might have learned from his earlier schooldays, where he learned how to cope with and damn his mortality before he learned how to embrace and rape magic.

The child groans, retching out her saliva and bits of her breakfast as it occurred. Her parents sigh in relief when she finishes, and they limit their playtime with her just in case something happened once more.

Another glimpse of Walburga zooms past her vision—beating her fists against their family tapestry, sobbing and falling to her knees, leaning her forehead against the wall as she breaks down; a man whom she deduces is Orion crouching beside her, taking his wife into his arms—silent as her collapse continues. They stay there, at the foot of a noble tracery, pining for sons that would never return. Valaena cannot say how much they might have felt for Sirius, wherever he was, then—nor can she compare it in full to what they would have given Regulus. But she can posit it with clarity; their boys, their family, their home—or what could be said of it, and the starting point of where their kinship was enclosed. At the very least, they were once a group of linked hearts.

One.

"Wa-ter—Re-gu-lus!" She says again, voice hoarse. Catelyn clicks her tongue, then wipes her daughter's mouth. The two adults bring down their spells, once her involuntary sandstorm finishes. "O-rrie, 'Bur-ga? Sad, sad, sad. O-rrie, 'Bur-ga, sad."

"What?" The man looks at her with a sharp glint in his eyes. Then, they shift to his spouse, who shrugs. "Valaena, my love—what? How much do you…"

He shakes his head. "Catelyn, a word after this."

An unspoken agreement.

"…of course."

Two.

Her old self haunts her—as if all the hurt and tears that she had shed, before, is encasing her for a second—Third?—time. She thought that she had left it behind, she thought that she could finally be the person that she wanted to be.

But, in truth…

Oh.

There was no way out.

There was no escape from any of it.

Three.

Esther Valaena Martell is meant to be Uchiha Kyō, she realised, in this life and in the next.

It is what the world wanted, it is what the world expected of her.

It is who everyone needed her to be, and what she is meant to be.

And she…could not change it.

Not really.

Somehow, in some way…she would always be Kyō.

(All's bane, all's misfortune; a harbinger of every jinx, qualm, and rue conceivable. That is what most have labelled her, when they are frozen in the wake of her works. Even without pushing an effort to, she is still much a rack and ruin—in and of herself, she is the villain. Some kind of female Judas, with the goddess Eris' habitual recreations; or a martial Jezebel, with a pathetic sob-story. A walking self-made unmaking, set up to fail by her own very nature. This is true for both the first and the second lives: the mediocre bitch and the spiteful romantic, the depressed commoner and the thieving liar.

She can sense it, now. Her, as an individual—she would never be free of this cosmic joke. So, she makes do with every advantage—having moments of her own, between every little joy she claws to protect, for herself.)

Instead of a deafening placidity, she wills a jubilant visage to settle. The organ inside her chest cavity is beating at an alarming rate.

(Panic, panic, panic. She had little idea on what to do. Her entire world is being turned upside down once more.)

Unbidden, and in a rush of thought—

Four.

The three of them come to an outdoor mezzanine. A recluse space, just by the base of the castle—accessible from the building itself, of course, but still meant for alfresco activities. It stretched out from the main structure, an architectural embrace that clung onto the pale red sandstone; a view with its support given the privilege of being within and above the elements. Lounging seats made of rattan stand there, with rugs and chair drapes in bold kilim and bargello lining the floor and surfaces, pillows designed with crewels scattered about, and a wooden fire pit situated in the middle.

The sky paints itself in shades of yellow and pink as they rest for the while, faces cast with a warm glow; and her breath is taken away when the water shimmers like a thousand dancing jewels. They lie beneath a canopy, rocking from a breeze, and she toddles around as her parents call for Tinsel to bring food, and Rosy to watch over her as they all take a break.

"Here it is, Little Miss. Careful, careful." The elf with the ribbon on her wrist gently guides a bottle of warmed camomile to her lips, which she drinks with a satisfied hum. She reclines on one of the benches as that honey-like sweetness flows down to her stomach. "That's it, there you is."

The pair keep to themselves as they discuss what Barty and Regulus have long hypothecated. Only, this match's judgement is somewhat skewed, just a bit awry from what the other lovers suspected. The boys knew she dreamt of the present, whereas her mother thought they shared the same strand of divination. Her parents are off by a wide margin; yet still, she offers them no corrections as they pour over their ideas, all too uncertain on how to even begin with anything.

She still could not believe what was happening to her—this repeat of lives that have long come by. And as Thomas and Catelyn sigh together, as the elves pitter-patter about, as the skies are overfull of colours, she thinks: would anyone ever love me for being myself?

(The one that had been just as much of a human—before Uchiha Kyō and Esther Valaena Martell, that is. She cannot reach far back enough to dig and pull up the memory of who she had been, in her very first life. But here, now, she supposes it is…rather paradoxical: absolute bliss and unending torment, agony and ecstasy—this hurt, born from the mistake of forgetting, of willing herself to forget, and of the bittersweetness in wanting to remember. She lies back on one of the pillows, and mentally grumbles about the inconveniences of reincarnation.

Damn this penance, damn this purgatory; damn every point of no return. It is life and it is death, it is being and it is nothingness; it is real and it is unknown, it is comforting and it is miserable. She is alive. She wants to die. She wants it to keep going forever. But she also wants it to stop.)

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

(A beautiful killer, but a monster all the same. That is her only fair justification of what she eventually becomes. She could have used her power for actual good, for a better change. So…why did she not?

"Because you're a coward," she answers herself, gaze blank as the bodies of the soldiers from the island of whirlpools bloat and float and gurgle and go under, "the boldest craven of them all. Absolute preservation…above most else."

She…does not want to die. Or, at least, she does not want to feel anything as she does. That is what most strive for, is it not? Or perhaps it is only her kind, the ones never content to lie in easy acceptance.

Then again, even if she does decide to let the course of reality go as it insists, she will not do it without compensation for what she has to withstand. Destruction and recreation; she will not be discarded in nix.

The eddies are a gaping maw, and she nearly lets herself walk towards them, just to see what would happen.)

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

"There's nothing to be disappointed by, if you set no expectations to be met in the first place."

"That's conformist."

"It's contentment."

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

It turns out that the fire that she had previously seen—all those months ago—was created from Catelyn's courses. Her worries about her mother being a Death Eater were not unfounded, then. Valaena concludes it with simultaneous slaphappy applause and horrified bewilderment; both proud and awed, possessive and amused. Apparently, her deeds had been born from an act of retribution against the courts. For what, she is not certain. But this is what she learns, in the few weeks before that dreaded Halloween night comes.

"Tell me more about myself, Tommy." Jane says one day. Sick and tired of her constant isolation in her own chambers, she requested her old schoolmate to set up another lining of frames throughout her girlhood home. With Tinsel's help, he obliged, though it had not been with an amount of snide gentlemanliness to him.

Her father is in his solar, relaxing with her, playing with a doll as her grandmother strutted to and fro in her portrait; and the two bantered like nothing has changed, as if the years of their youth were never even a concern to begin with.

(Izuna's lips quirk into a very minute smile, and he chuckles as he gives her a kiss. They are in her girlhood home, tucked underneath the warmth of her blanket. It was the morning after she had cried herself into exhaustion. He nuzzles his face into her shoulder, sliding an arm over her form and tangling their legs together. She leans into him, squeezing his hand; grateful for his…comfort, however awkward it had been for them both last night.

"This isn't going to change my opinion of you. This doesn't change anything of what happened before." She pinches his side, which only serves to let him hold her tighter. "You'll always be a bitter little boy to me."

He responds with a snort. "But you've never once let me stop. And despite what's happened—you've taken it all as it is."

They are comfortable in her futon. The girl eyes their discarded clothes in her room; their cloaks messily draped over a stack of books and scrolls, hair ornaments in a pile by the doors that led to her engawa. The blades they possessed lie by their side, at a hand's reach, ready to be unsheathed at a moment's notice.

"You're beautiful, like this." He tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, and his breath ghosts over her own; two airs of apprehensive ardour. His prodding is different today: more tender than passionate, more sparing than erotic. Perhaps her mental breakdown allowed him a step back in perspective.

"You glow."

She rolls her eyes. "I don't feel beautiful. I should sic 'Ada on you, for last night."

"Madara would only laugh at your misfortune, you runt. And don't act as if you weren't crying about it."

"I was crying about my father, you bastard."

"Mhm, that's surely it." Her cousin snickers, knowing damn well he drove her past what she could physically handle. A distant part of her itches to strangle him for having taken advantage of her grief like that. But she is stilled, urges hampered by the need for control. "Uncle Junichiro would surely agree."

It is the morning after the day he died. The memory of yesterday flashes within her mind's eye, each exact second and detail captured like prints onto wood and stone. Izuna sought her out directly when they returned to the compound, arriving in her living space at the same time she fell to her knees in the shock of her flashbacks. The next hours are a haze, but she is aware enough to discern that they were not kind either, for all that she is encapsulated by this bubble of easy-going relish.

Not now, she thinks, even as they playfully hit one another, not now.)

"Crouch's son could barely even meet my eyes, that day. Er, well—so did my girl. Neither of them could. Depressing thought. I haven't been such a hag in the decade that followed the war, have I?"

"Why are you asking me? I've never been privy to your personal affairs."

"You're the last thing I remember." Valaena briefly glances at the woman. Her cheeks were puffed out, a petulant pout postured onto her lips as she leaned on a desk in her painting. "Come on—tell me something. Anything."

"The last thing you remember." Thomas drawls, raising an eyebrow. A snort catches in his throat, before he stares into the fire in the pit. He sighs. "I'm not entertaining your ego."

"Hardly that. Not even a sliver? I've spent at least thirty years in this damn wall-box, Riddle. It's maddening."

Oh, yes. He'd know about that, wouldn't he?

Horcrux.

Thomas does not answer her, instead studying his daughter's toy with interest, noticing immediately the many ornaments and accessories that it is wearing. The puppet in her hands was a gift from Rhaenar to Catelyn; bisque, body fitted in blanche blue with white lace frills, and a thin veil on her head. Its detailed features preserve a puppy-eyed glare, with its lashes extended dramatically down. The thing talks, if nothing else; casually and conversationally like it is a true person, in a whiny yet whimsical sort of voice.

Valaena snatched it, after popping—by accident—into a bodega by the pantries. Her mother discarded the item, as told to her by Rosy, the woman frustrated when her brother would not quit in his attempts to get her to return to his side.

"A portrait? Oh! You're that dragon-maiden, aren't you? The Grindelwald girl." It speaks, peering to the side. Father and daughter watch it in amusement. It is clear that whoever crafted the figure did not trouble themselves much about traditional ideas of fashion, or perhaps intentionally tried to be unusual. She finds herself intrigued by the present regardless, wondering about its origins and whatever Rhaenar might have done to enchant it.

"What a pleasure, I suppose. All the others wouldn't shut up about you, when I was made. It's been a decade and near a half since I last heard a whisper about your exploits, so getting out of Rhaenar's clutch was a load off! Though, your daughter's been a right pain—stuffing me into that dusty closet! Hmph! I am a Dellie Darling! At least your son had the good sense to put me on a nice shelf, in Dragonstone!"

"Oho? A trinket from my supposed children's childhoods?" Jane said, bent over to get a better view of the doll. Valaena let it move. "You'll tell me more about myself, won't you? I'm afraid my dear friend isn't being very helpful right now. You see—you and I, I think we're similar. Mounted on walls, cursed to wait out the time—with no true source of information from the outside world, from those who're actually still alive."

"And for good reason," her father dragged out his tone, "considering how much trouble you've wrought. Hogwarts was one thing. The Wizarding World was another."

Basic chitter-chatter, boring causticity; Valaena concentrates on their words as best as she could, though she cannot help but glance over at her toy and the portrait more often than she should.

"Queen of the Skies, they said! With that black beast of the green fires. You tore down those…æroplanes, was it? Aelerys was a far cry more destructive than any mundane invention could've hoped to be. There've also been rumours you planned to imperiurise Franco into doing your bidding, too, if it wasn't for your husband." The so-said Dellie Darling—whatever in the hells that name meant—informs her grandmother. "Honestly—you've got me stumped. That awful mudblood needed to be put down—Grindelwald could've even played the saviour to right the way things were."

Why is your kind so riddled by this complex? It's so counter-intuitive, her ears ring once more, no wonder you all drive yourselves into early graves.

Beats me.

"Grindelwald needed the muggle world to weaken itself before wizardkind made its appearance. Don't underestimate the levels that any human would go to, to defend themselves." Thomas corrected her, making a face of disapproval at her admissions. "All things aside…it's best he didn't side with…well. Nevermind it. How do you know so much about that, anyways?"

"Rhaenar likes to go on tangents about Daddy Dearest's conquests. The Grindelwalds' glory days, he calls it. And you're making a resurgence for Gellert now, aren't you?"

He frowned, stroking Valaena's hair. "Don't repeat it in front of my child. She's already aware enough to realise what all this talk might be."

Jane was in a rhapsodic bluster. "You're both wrong."

(Seika, sweet, cease your slyness.)

"Who?" Thomas shot back in confusion. "What're you talking about?"

"Your little babe doesn't dream of the future, Tommy Riddle," the woman tittered, teasing, "for all that Catelyn and I had a similar branch of the Sight. Though, I would be surprised if Little 'Laena did know about this past wizarding war you refuse to share with me."

Little blue Dellie diva grunts, cotton-stuffed carpal joints pointing a finger at Valaena. The babe grasps the extended digit, assuming the role of a fascinated child. It blinks its soulless green eyes at her. "She doesn't seem like a dragon-dreamer."

Why are we all acting as if the thing is sapient? It's sentient and intelligent—I'll give it that—but I hardly believe it truly even realises what it's saying.

"It doesn't matter what she dreams of now—leave her be." Her father shakes his head, standing and settling his child down onto the armchair. She complains when he removes the figurine from her seize, babbling out a series of gripe-laced raspberries. It laughs in a melody, tickled when she sticks her tongue out at him. "Valaena, love, let go."

"No! Bad Papa!"

"The princess wants to play! I say you let me remain. I'd have no other company save for the dust of another bloody ledge you'll put me on."

"Language." He admonishes.

"Oh, come off of it, Tom." Jane grumbles, crossing her arms. "Why can't you leave that doll with me, then? I'd love to have another afternoon amusement."

"My name is Clara, thank you very much." It huffs. "Catelyn named me."

"My girl's plaything, hm? Why on earth were you in Rhaenar's possession, then?"

"Because of you." Clara tilts her head, groaning when Thomas successfully pulls her away from Valaena. He immobilises her and locks her into a glass cabinet—one stacked with rows and rows of vials and bottles, the babe makes out several titles of poisons, to her own bafflement—the poppet eerie, akin to those in films she has seen in the past. It is muffled. "Not this again."

"You'll stay right there, for now…" Shirty fret. He stares at Clara for a good while, to Jane's perplexed scoffs, before he turns and gathers Valaena. She blows through closed lips, to a finger shushing her on his end. "I'd rather you not tell Esther about anything—though I don't think you'd listen, anyways."

"Saying it out loud doesn't change anything, lover-boy." Her grandmother mocked him. "I'll figure out one way or the other."

The man leaves with his daughter, giving them the silent treatment. She looks over his shoulder, before laying her head on it and fiddling with the ends of his curls.

(Tobirama ensures she is kept in an inescapable grip as he moves with her. She feels his warmth, his softness, his breaths. All of it—it is divine. His words—their vows and promises to each other—fill her with a sense of peace, of happiness, and of belonging. At that, life is simply wonderful. At that, nothing else exists save for the continual carnality they are covered in. At that, he is all that she needs in their mythical moment, and all she could ever want in that elusive eternity.

At that, he takes her heart, and crushes it within a fist.

"Don't say the words." He begs her, soon after. They have yet to separate, and so, it becomes difficult not to cry in his embrace. "Please…don't say it. We've gone too far. We can continue this, but don't ever say it to my face."

"You just said it yourself. We've gone too far." She challenges. "There's nothing stopping me."

"I am, now."

"Why?"

"Quit acting like you don't have your cousin's scent on you, Kyō."

But he leans down, and he kisses her; sadly, subtly, subduedly. And at that…she spurns him, even while he begins to restart their amorous pothers. It does not hinder his actions, so filled with gingerliness despite the prick of his statements. Neither of them deny the blatant truths; but perhaps it was real, the budding romance amidst their physicalities. And maybe she had been better off, in the days before they fell into the pits of what became them today.

"Is that it? Are you jealous of Izuna leaving his marks on my body?"

"I want you to choose." Tobirama bites her bottom lip. His gaze burns right through her, but she gives back that intensity with just as much regard; heated, hard-won. "You can't have us both. I'll indulge in this with you. But you need to make your choice."

And at that; she posits that being so lovesick and love-torn was…valid, the emotional collusion notwithstanding. But it does raise a question: where did she even see herself going with this?)

Her parents are not good people.

This is not an opinion, this is a fact.

When Thomas bathes her once more and puts her to bed that night, he recounts a shred of news on the war. This time, she does bother to pay close attention—for the singular fundamental point that he and his following are at the stretch where they are close to victory.

(She does not get the right to grieve, she is not allowed the freedom of guilt. This is the peak she was positioned upon—perfect behavioural paradox; and this is the grave she will be gathered towards.)

"I think we can announce you and your new sibling when we participate in the Yuletide rites with your Uncle Lucius." He pulls the blanket over their bodies. Her mother is with the said man—Valaena dreamt of her visiting Malfoy manor, making polite talk with her brother and nephew—and had opted to stay there for the night to reunite with her paternal family. "Your grandfather would also be there. I suppose it's high time that I told Abraxas what I've gotten up to with his daughter."

"Papa 'Ra-sas? Gran-na Jenny!"

"Yes," he sighs—already having surmised that she was far, far smarter than he or his wife realised, ever since Jane told him of his daughter's true level of intellect, "Your Grandfather Abraxas. One of my…closest companions. He's a kind man, all things considered. A right twat, but he's…he'll love you."

"Twat! Twat!" She giggles, to a roll of her sire's eyes. But they are fond, and they are filled with amusement. "Papa 'Ra-sas, twat!"

"Bad word, my sweet. In any case, we can finally make our little family public…at the cost of angering many in the Sacred Twenty-Eight." He muttered. Valaena grunts as she turns on her side, but keeps an ear on his statements. "Arcturus Black would certainly take it as an insult. Abraxas and I never made it easy for him. After what happened with your Uncle Regulus, Orion might just drop his contributions to the cause. But we're so close, darling. Just a few more out of the way…and it's all ours."

What will be?

Why, this part of the world, of course.

It is not just a glaring insecurity—it is an objective weakness: her denials of the horrors that persisted outside her home. She does not want to destroy this meticulous daydream she has constructed for herself, this castle that she has built in Spain.

("This isn't like the last war. This is something more. If we lose—it'll be worse than the wedding, it'll be worse than the walk. You've seen what they're both willing to do. I love her, I love Ellie, I do—but this is too much. It's becoming too much.")

(Oh, Seika.)

If she had no morals or ethics, she would say that she does not care.

(Indeed, she really does not. With a pillow-upped loftiness, she will not claim to do so. But for the sake of seeing her life as it is—for the argument of narrative reliability, yet for a contra-diegetic persuasion; for a reader's perception—or to whatever and whoever else might be in direct observation of her decadence and degeneracy; she has to. After all, what kind of story would she have, if there were no interesting plot points to be pushed forward? Consumers of media like troubled protagonists, do they not?)

(Pretty empathy, empty promise.)

She does possess a code, though.

Liar, liar, liar, that sonorous energy, if it had eyebrows, would have raised them and waggled them in stupefaction, but oh, does it really matter, at this point?

"That lavender rain that your mother worries over, whatever it is, be damned. As long as you remember where you come from, and do your best to do what you can, I will always be proud of you. You could be better than I was. Am. Will be." Thomas waits before she falls asleep.

"You'll always be loved. Never forget that." He follows up, as if he was trying to convince himself of his own affections; because it was unfamiliar, because he was touched at the density of such an ache in his chest, because he needed her to realise it. "You are enough, just as you are. You'll always be enough. You're right where you need to be, and your mother and I are happy with what you give us."

("There are many things wrong with the world. But never forget who you are, or where you stand. Most of all, never forget where you belong, hm? That's with us. You'll always be with us.")

Valaena suppresses a choked laugh of a sob.

"Tell me something about myself, Clarita." Jane is giddy, in the deader hours of the night. The child examines every detail with great care as her grandmother poses the question again. The thing levels unimpressed eyes of glass at her through the refined pane of the cabinet. "What was I like? Tommy's greedy. It's as if he doesn't want to ruin what happiness I have left, like I had any as a painting to begin with."

A groan. "What's the harm? I can only go so far to scream at him from the mercy of this canvas."

"Well, he wouldn't be wrong in saying that you were trouble, you know." It sniffs. "You could've been the amalgamation of centuries—but you were just another failure in history. One more note to follow in your predecessors' sins. I admired you from afar, as much as a bloody doll can do so, anyway. You'd always seemed so untouchable. Near all the other Dellies were modelled after you. Esther Jane this, Esther Jane that; and every little girl loses her mind at a princess finally riding a dragon again. You could've been the greatest of all your blood, but everything you were fell short of even just a short-lived victory."

"But why is he hesitating to tell me about it?"

"Oh, but he respects his wife, in his own way. Catelyn was good, she was pure. The kindest child I've ever known." Three notes in mourning, a trill of nostalgia. "And she loved me, because I was the only doll who didn't look like you. We made many good memories together. I suppose that your Thomas is just keeping me in line, so I don't fuss up. You were a horrible mother."

Jane appeared struck. "Surely not."

"Mm…you fell to madness, as all of you poor inbreds go."

"You're mouthy, for something meant only to look pretty."

"You were the same. They all crowded around you, in the end—mounting your pretty head on a display. And that lovely tongue of yours was just as quiet as your Aelerys, as he fell." Clara blinked owlishly through her case cage, being able to do nothing but that. "Rhaenar wanted nothing more than to have you."

Flower, flower, flower; darling of the summer rains.

"Other than that…I fear the man who lives more than the spectre who wails. If Catelyn's husband tells me not to tell you anything, then who am I to go against his wishes?" Valaena's grandmother glares at the tiny model's words. Her displeasure is shown with a scratch of her nails against the painting's barrier; a strange swipe done to an invisible force on the wall. "I want to see her babe again. Valaena, was it?"

(Mother, Mother, Mother…)

Oh, Catelyn.

"I want nothing to do with you. Lynnie left me in that closet! Nice to meet you, Lady Grindelwald, but it's all your fault—if you hadn't done things as you did, then perhaps Rhaenar wouldn't've been such a mutt over his sister, and perhaps she'd still take me!"

"But what did I do?"

"All the wrong things." Jane grows quiet, offended but decidedly open-minded to hearing more. "You had so much freedom. You wasted it all."

Valaena exits the dream, not wanting the reminder of something that hit too close to her.

(Today, heaven and happiness are a demon being choked and chained, and a damsel sobbing as her knight saves her; and love is a beast in lament as the saviour took the woman for himself.

And—oh.

She lives as all of them at once: the monster that weeped, the killer who thieved, and the victims of circumstance.

"You could be better…you could have it all—but you never change." Her voice breaks as she seethes at her own reflection in cracked glass, vision blurred with tears. In a flash, the heel of her palm connects with the jagged rime. It slices her skin. Red, red, red. Eyes, threads, lilies.)

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

(She hides in plain sight, set in a lower vantage; beneath a copse of trees, by the base of a plateau lined with rice terraces. Her body is on high alert, face trained upward in a weary wariness; usual feeling absent, buzz in helicoid. Her target takes a knee before his baby girl, taking the toddler's hands in his, planting kisses all over her face—eliciting excited squeals from the child.

Envy, anger, indignation, hatred, yearning, sadness, pity—it is all tamped down, taken out of question. No, she cannot allow herself to let any of it rise. She would not, she refuses to. If she does, she will repeat her revolutions of etterath.)

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

"What are children, but love made flesh?"

"Natural procreation, necessary biology."

"You were born out of a bond between two."

"Social contract given life, then. Willing or unwilling."

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

Halloween arrives.

(She is on the verge of falling apart.)

But nothing happens.

Absolutely nothing.

(What?)

She holds her breath the entire day, not a second spared for a false internal ease; waiting for an indication that her father will leave the castle to fuck off to the United Kingdoms and do his business.

But he only remains right where he was: with his daughter, with his wife; inside safety, inside paradise. He stayed. The infant teared up as her parents glided within their chambers, swaying and laughing together to some non-existent tune. She makes to join them. Her hands clutch at both their legs—they stumble with matching guffaws—but they do not deny her a dance of her own. With linked hands, they circle the stone, mirth in sync. Thomas—Oh, Father, blessed with the light of the setting sun—spins Valaena; once, twice, thrice, four times. Another twirl. She bumps into Catelyn—Mother, crowned with lonely moonglow—who picks her up and throws her into the air. The babe shrieks.

(And with the leap, her hope rises.)

Oh, love.

She continues being passed around from parent to parent, all the while they are locked within this fierce embrace of solidarity. Her overwhelm is evident when, finally, she groans from dizziness. Too much in too little time, she recalls; her regard has gone further and farther than she once expected as she awoke in this reality.

"Love!" Valaena sniffles, out of the blue. "Love!"

What a word. Yet it can never describe the feelings she possessed for them.

Not even close.

But she is eager to express those emotions inside herself; no matter what becomes demanded of her, she will try.

(She wanted to scream. She wanted to shatter every glass window, to burn the entire palace down. She wanted to ram her knuckles through each noblefolk's chest, to mar every one of their smug faces with a branding rod. She wanted to destroy something. Anything. Their perfumed silks, their adorned heads, their metal-laden fingers, their painted skins, their entire gaggle of gag-worthy get-ups; their luxuries, their privileges, their trades, their sentiments, their whole tangibility.

But she does nothing. Instead, she takes a deep breath and stills herself. Control is key, always. Always. Even her insanity is done with a limit, even that is calculated. In point of fact; she is nonchalant towards the rules of the court. She is there to win one prize, she is there to claim a single worthless treasure. The prince who has asked for her favour is powerful; and with him, many have lined themselves up for her approval as well. Countless soldiers and assassins from rival clans have seethed with envy at her audacity, countless weeks have been spent by her own to doll her up, countless dreams of gratuitous violence have made their passage through her pretty skull.

The ballsy bastard who has dared to demand a dally with her is a shallow man; declaring a 'sure' love for a beauty he believes is his by right and string. He is brave—she will give him that. It is as if he merely puts her up to be a mammal in a menagerie, tamed and trotted, bound to his arm to be bedded and bred; she is the exotic wildling, and he, the fearless conqueror.

"You and I will come to affections," he offers, as they are served tea in one of the gardens, "and you shall see that my intent is true."

"As His Highness wills it to be," she demures, suppressing a grin as she takes a sip of the green warmth, "this one shall follow.")

Valaena was born to two of the greatest families of all time. Ancient bloodlines, with even heavier legacies to uphold.

But that does not matter, not so much as the people who truly have been by her side to live it all out with her.

And she would never let anyone take that from her.

(Not again.)

"Shh, darling—what's wrong? Are you hungry? Did you hurt yourself?" Thomas crouches down to inspect her. Catelyn is nowhere as composed as him, though she, too, attempts to shed light on what troubled their child.

"Hurts, hurts." She grabbed his hand and placed it on the spot where her heart would be. "Papa, it hurts."

"Where?" Her mother intones, pulling out—oh, a wand. Right—she had gotten so used to either of them not even bothering with the instrument around her, that she forgot about it in the first place. "Show us, ashling."

"In-side, Mama." The girl wobbles her bottom lip for emphasis. "Bad, bad, bad."

("It burns, right here. Just as it had all those years ago, with Mother. Piercing—an ache begging to leave. Like the scratching of a knife on a plate, or the silver scraping my gums.")

She had never embodied so much hatred towards a single way of living, in all the years that have passed along with her.

Love.

(What a cruel thing.)

It had exposed her, mocked her, and ridiculed her—and to the worst part of it all: it never stopped. A part of her thirsted and hungered to make her parents hurt, in the same manner which she and Izuna went at each other like witless brutes for a dash of pride and pleasure; to enact deeds on their bodies and their minds for having the nerve to exist as they are—as if it was any of their folly to begin with. Insolence in ignorance, mercy-middled mummery. Yet, still, this same face…harsher, rabider, crassier; she is afraid of what she might become, what she might just do to these people if she cannot will herself under submission.

But still.

But still, Thomas Marvolo Gaunt and Esther Catelyn Martell give her their all; neither aware of her appetencies, even if the latter seemed to be in the loop more than she should be. Red-black and silver-violet swarm her, and she hiccups in nubivagant relief.

(Oh, dear castle in Spain.)

"My love?" Her Papa asks again. He kisses her fists, prying them away from her insistent rubbing and scratching. "Tell us."

Valaena trembled. Eyebrows raised, face reddened; a crestfallen confusion formed in her throat.

"Happy, happy," she fusses as the cloth collar of her dress itches her neck, "but it hurts."

(Such irony.)

She opens her mouth to add more, but it is in that same moment that Tinsel apparates into the room with a pop; startling her. Her parents do not react, though.

"Master Barty has arrived—my Lord, my Lady." He bowed, ears drooping.

Oh, he's back? She brightens up. Oh, he's back!

"'Mi-us? Here? 'Mi-us?" The babe warbles, pain forgotten. She turns to the elf, who nods his head. Valaena squeaks, hopping from foot to foot. "Un-cle Bar-ty!"

There is no hesitation at all, on her end, when she dashes out of the room. Catelyn makes a strange strangled noise from behind her, along with a lunge at her daughter that does nothing to stop her energetic buzz. A self-imposed task hangs on her shoulders; she teleports from place to place in the castle to reach her godfather, sorely missed—and when she gets to him in the Great Hall of Sunspear, her childish stupidity echoes in the expanse.

The towering sandstone archways allow her voice to reverberate. Valaena shouts and yells as loud as she could for her uncle—alerting him of her advance; and there he is, still as the stone statues in the hall, tired and sad, near a beggared sight in the majesty…like a wing-tattered mess of a desert hawk in the heat, about to be swallowed in fire and sand. Barty leans on the frame of a latticed window. There were heavier shadows in his eyes—and the blue is colder, meaner, emptier. She can recognise that weight from afar—the crippling megrim born from war, a bitter wishing to do more. It is that state of mind where time itself slows, and the world outside falls away; and the only worthwhile pursuit becomes a need for justice, for some knotted version of revenge.

There he is; she climbs up his leg and claws at his robes. She is being deliberately insensitive. Forget all idols, heroes, gods, and legends; who would care if she indulged in this bit of humanity, of immaturity? Certainly not those cosmic jesters, abysmal storytellers though they are. Jealous governments, jealous common men, jealous families; all of them be damned, Barty has returned. The thirty-first of October arrives, and everything is fine once more. He frowns at her, but does not discourage her attempts to be reunited with him. It is a high period for her to stop killing time, and start killing the moral monstrosities that kept her back—at bay.

Because look! There is that mad, mad mad, desperation once more. It is not in those soft blue eyes, now—it is in his voice. But there it is, and it is there, oh—and he is no longer pretending with her. There is love, too, yes, but that unabating sturm und drang has returned. For a few seconds, it is not the-man-who-has-feared-for-her standing in the way—it is the-man-she-should-fear. It is all an unholy mixture of a humane beast, here.

"You're back!" Valaena's peals of laughter are near-unnatural in the silence of the space. It is not unlike waking from ordinary sleep—though, this time, the phantasm is chained with worse stakes. "Missed you, missed you, missed you! I love you, 'Mi-us!"

("Dream of me."

That is her last request, before nothingness overtakes her. There is no one left of her family, and she finds that it is…fine.

It has to be.

It must be.

"Don't forget…" At that, Izuna presses their foreheads together, and she can hardly even make out the contours of that glaring crimson colour. "I existed.")

"Yes, Valaena, I'm back. I'm…here. I'm here again. I'm here again. " Barty murmurs, crouching down. Hah.

His hand snakes around her tiny waist, and with a muted grunt, he carries her. She is fond of him, truly. Unlike her parents, neither he nor Regulus had particularly reminded her of anyone from the past—it is not as if she had any close friends to share full comradery with—and so, him and his lover were figures that laid within abject neutrality, at least, when it came to her impure infatuations. Where Thomas and Catelyn's being-Izuna-and-Kyō inspired within her a covetous animus that propelled her to heights she never thought possible, to follow risks she never thought she could take, to let loose all the rage that she has held inside for so long; Barty and Regulus being-no-one-at-all at the beginning pushed them in favour of a blank slate to be forgiven, and they are what she decides they should be.

"It's been a while, hasn't it? I wonder what sorts of shenanigans you've gotten yourself into. You've gotten bigger and louder." His touch sears, but she bares it. Valaena acts as she does as if he were her father—with a dumb vigour, terrorising whatever high spirit she can. Her godfather hums a sad sigh. "Blessed be, sweet girl."

"Blessed be, 'Mius…happy Samhain." Her mother greets as she appears from the corner, with her husband at her arm. The two nod respectfully at him, who then responds with a terse bow to the Dark Lord. Then, a knee; and the significance of such an act does not pass her by. "You came home at the right time."

(Home, home, home. Hm…what are the implications of such a word, even when the two of them still have not made up with one another?)

"My Lord." Stilted, awkward. Barty shifts in his stance to shuffle off a brown bag from his free shoulder. She tilts her head at it, curious. He manœuvres it so his leader can take it with ease. The other man smiles genially, having expected it, and notes the interaction between both his—technical—underlings. "…Ellie."

Oh, are those the dragon eggs?

Valaena's gaze is fixed on Catelyn, waiting for a possibility that could arise. For either of the two friends to lash out once more, for them to draw those bloody spell-sticks and brandish them at each other in a fit of rue. She waits and waits and waits and waits—for what had occurred to present itself, in amused tragedy, again; that chase around the fortress, that back-and-forth of fury and indignation, that clumsy aggression that the growing youths have proven themselves to be adept in. One second, then two, then three, and four—seven, thirteen.

For what dragged on like an eternity, they stood in that standoff, the gulf between them almost as insurmountable as the inlet where this palazzo was erected. The woman had always relied on her friend's honesty and counsel, and their bond had been unbreakable; this much had been clear from the get-go. In her first year of infancy, this is what the child had observed: Barty and Catelyn were friends long before Regulus entered the fray, but it might have been Thomas that solidified their relationship, in a twisted manner of thought. Somehow, in some way, the middle-aged bastard was a driving point of passion between them three. So, to see the last members of their trio now, still halved apart by that incident—inadvertently caused by her father himself—it is saturnine.

And so.

And so, the miracle of recoalescence that Valaena wanted does not come, and the sun only sets outside the windows.

There is nothing here.

("He and I will come to love one another, he said," she recounts the royal's assertion, accompanied by a lazy swipe of the pipe into her mouth, "he and I will be the handsomest couple to exist."

Hikaku smirks, taking the device from her and swallowing a bit of the smoke as well. They lean back on the floor of her engawa, cloud-watching after a day of non-stop paperwork assortment. He puffs out a stream of the white air, contemplative.

"Bellies filled with rice and wine, all for the price of a kinder swine." She continues, rolling over to her side and trying to gain another series of coughs and wheezes from her elder cousin. "I bet he'll squeal like a hog at the end."

"It's good to dream." He scratches at an old, faded scar on his cheekbone. "Even better to let it bloom for as long as it takes, so we can savour the victory when the wait is over."

"What's the difference if we kill him now? It'd just be the same man underneath: flesh, blood, and bone. And nothing else. He's as fancy as flowers can be, but he'll come back to being meat no matter what."

"No committing regicide, Hime." Oh, but he likes calling her that—and it does work as a cute pet name, at least, for half the time. It would have made more of an impact on her, now, if their subject of conversation was less piteous—if she had any more sympathy to spare for her to-be gꜵler.

"Shoganai, Hika. That's the way of the world."

Hikaku cackled at her sweet mocking.)

Halloween arrives when Esther Valaena Martell is one year and six months old; and the hours in which her father's defeat should have happened are nigh. But nothing takes place, and all that does occur is a stiff conciliation between her mother and her uncle.

Barty and Catelyn are forced to dine together, after she receives him with hesitance in the Great Hall. At Thomas' behest, they controlled themselves. For the sake of objectivity, they agreed to set aside any hurts for now and function as a unit. They muddle through several instances to be as amicable as they can be, even after all that has gone by; and Valaena is, once again, a spectator. She stands back and watches, only ever cheering on their first accomplishment on the path of…well, healing.

(Lie, lie, lie.)

And with that, she dreams—but they have nothing to do with her spying abilities, no. These are true fantasies, they are the trippy falsities that she creates. What would their lives together be like, when the war is over? She could not help but picture a different life—where Regulus did not have to go off running into a rigid nightfall, where she herself is not tucked away from the public eye, where there is no unheard sound that she suffers, where the ambitions she bled for to realise come alive; where the better tomorrow is a better today, and the childish impulse is a statement of reality rather than a penchant in her belly.

Just them, her uncanny family, forever locked into a crystal orb—utopia, and only them; a universe where the people who mattered stayed in an inescapable whirl. A flight of a glass globe down a house's staircase, but one that never broke; and it is fun, and it is fine, and it is fantastic.

"Soon enough, ashling." Catelyn whispers when she tucks her daughter into bed. Thomas is off doing Dark Lord activities for tonight, and her mother once again has to fit the role of his trophy wife. Both of them bask quietly in a grey-blue light, lying content in their shared heartache. "I wish we could be like this all the time, without end."

Halloween arrives when Esther Valaena Martell is one year and six months old when her godfather returns to them, and he resides in a nearby chamber, adjacent to the rooms that he almost destroyed before. There is now also a bump forming on her mother's stomach, an indication that he had paused at with freudenfreude—becoming privy to another secret to be unleashed unto the world, later on.

(Love, love, love.)

(What is it good for? Oh, everything and nothing all at once.)

"Happy, happy, happy—but it hurts?" Valaena responds to the woman. And there it is, an infinity of herself in that lilac gaze. She wonders if Catelyn is anything at all like her spouse when glimpsing their own reflections. Oh, is this what gods see, when they turn to their mortals? She thinks of the riddles in the dark, and idealises far-away realms. Enchanted forests, talking animals, and benevolent spirits who wandered in the sleeping world; dangerous roadsides, terrified innocents, and bloodthirsty criminals who stalked as the world slept.

The woman's eyes grew heavy with fatigue, her lashes casting soft shadows on her rosy cheeks. "Happy…but it hurts."

She chuckled bitterly, but held her even closer. "Something like it."

"Why? Mama, no sad. Happy, happy."

"I am happy, my love." Catelyn laughs, and it is so intoxicating to see a version of herself be this…maternal.

("How do you feel about legacies?" He asks her, as he sits on a spot of dry ground by the riverbank. She shifted closer to him, their shoulders nearly touching.

"The same way I always wonder if peace might one day find its way to the Nations." She drawls, casting a sidelong glance at him. He is a memory of early springtime snow, remaining etched in the hearts of those he protected; impact a lasting burn in the village he will help shape, a testament to his brother's enduring influence. There is an ache in her chest at the thought of it. "There's no such thing as breaking a cycle. You only add to it, 'til the last one becomes unrecognisable. It's the same sort of violence, at the end of the day—only less volatile, only less vindictive."

Raw red slants against villainous violet, and he distances his tone. "Still. Don't you find comfort in the idea that your descendants carry a piece of you, and uphold what you've spent so long to protect?"

They both ignore the matter of relevance at stake—the price of failure, a darker future.)

Something in her shifts as she hears the woman repeat her name. Esther, Esther, Esther. Jane, Catelyn, Valaena. Hidden star, guiding light in the absence of illumination. Cunning queen, sly consort, loving daughter. Growing fast and speeding off—like an inferno of passion, ardour, fervour, frenzy, and ecstasy.

Lady Seika presses tender lips to Kyō's little forehead.

"You deserve the world, and all its ashes." A gentle laugh. The child's blood freezes. "And all ruin, and more."

(Liar, liar, liar.

Killer, killer, killer.)

Halloween arrives, and nothing happens.

And everything is good.

(For now.)

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

(Anything and everything can be historical, but history itself did not necessitate truth—after all, any victor can take the liberty of assuming their role as the victim. That is why they are remembered as heroes, of course. Free will, it all comes down to the struggle of being so inherently human and being extrinsically humane: to make do, to express gusto, and to achieve what biology demands.

It is a vulnerability…but she weaponises it, baring that bit of folly as an advantage. She is the evil of every epic, doomed to suffering as any creature is; but her descent is not without its own destruction. If she goes down, then all will do so, too. If she does not get what she wants, then neither can anybody else. It is as simple as that.)

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

"You're not weak, love—you're tired."

"Not enough…I don't think I get that privilege yet."

"…no one should ever."

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

A man spends his day with his godchild, a little girl who seems to have an infinite amount of curiosity and an unbreakable will. They sit outside on a familiar stone bench—and the babe takes her uncle's hands, staring into his eyes. Blue and red, this time; sky and dawn, sea and fire, water and blood.

She asks him one simple question.

"Stars, 'Mi-us," she points to rangi, upthread in this liminal space—drawing out the vowel in an innocent inquiry, "Un-cle 'Eu-lie, you?"

What are stars to you, Barty?

"Ah-ah-ah, sweet girl," he hesitates, as if understanding what she said, "would you truly want to know?"

As if feigning in sensing his reluctance, she almost decides to say no. But she wanted to hear his words, anyway—so, she nods.

You are a fool, Esther Valaena Martell.

The answer is simple, but grand all the same.

"The stars, 'Laena, are the witnesses of æons gone by." He lifts her onto his hip, and doing as she did, directs his finger to a bundle of the shining dots in the sky. A constellation, he murmurs, as her eyes follow his fingers as he traced through the air. Leo, leo, leo; courageous and valiant and resolute—and much too young for the low lake to have eaten whole. "There is Regulus, for which your uncle'd been named after."

"Li-on! Star!" she giggles. He smiled indulgently.

"Yes, inside Leo. And there are the stars of Perseus, for which your cousin—whom we would've had together, had 'Eulus lived—would've been named in honour of."

"Why?"

Once more, he comprehended her intent to pump out a satisfying response, despite the lack of context behind her sudden onslaught of idiosyncrasy. And when he further explains it all, he does not dumb his intellect down for her. No, he treats her as if she is older than she is, likes someone with the mental capacity of playing on par with him. "Because stars are sacred to other families. For some, they're markers of the seasons. For some, they're a traveller's guide. For your uncle and your cousin, the stars are what gives them their identity."

She tilts her head. "I-den-ti-ty?"

"Yes, sweet girl. The stars are the witness to their lives; always watching, and always shining."

"…oh."

(Esther, Esther, Esther. Queen, consort, daughter. Star, light, idol.)

Valaena ponders for another few seconds, deep in thought, before Barty lightly taps her on the forehead. "What seems to be the problem?"

"Mama, sad. 'Mi-us, sad. I love you. Sad, sad, sad. Happy, but it hurts."

What were the stars to you and mother?

"Stars cry. It hurts."

(The killer resurfaces.)

He does not move, staying unbreathing as his goddaughter holds his gaze. When he opens his mouth to answer, she finds that the weight in her heart lifts—if by a miniscule degree. It becomes easier to pretend as he tells her an unabashed truth, affected by only the slightest bit of surprise as he remembers his dead lover.

"The stars…Regulus' family loved them, because they were worlds that no one else can reach, the one place where everything could burn and everything could be untouched by the flames. The stars are cold, after all—" and Valaena knows the descendants of the Greyjoys did not need the assurance of silks and satins, "but the sun was a favourite of his. In their own way, it's how he and your mother first connected to one another."

She buries her head into the crook of his neck—just as she used to do when she was just a few months old, mewling and mumbling inanities that never made any sense; fiddling with the tail of a crocodile green ribbon tied to the inner lining of his coat. In the quiet of the night, when sleep eludes her and the blackness of the world taunts, they both delve deeper into this depressing loss. The man who holds her is made of unfulfilled dreams, the searing regret of choices made and opportunities missed.

But once again, it is not empathy that fills her; it is resentment, a festering anger at the unfairness of it all.

(Is this divine justice? Is this how she pays for her sins?)

Uchiha Kyō curses the universe for granting her what it denies Esther Valaena Martell now.

Let me have it again.

(A bitter soul, condemned to roam in search of something she can never wholly attain. And so, the remnants of the person she once was watches, wonders, and seethes in the silence of the reincarnation—forever trapped in the prison of her own design.)

"But the sun—burns, burns, burns."

"And yet, even in the fire, it's one of those that've watched over us for our entire lives." Barty exhales shakily. "Conception to passing. Ouroboros. And Regulus Arcturus Black has returned to it. Now, he's with the stars—and with them, he's looking out for us."

One more spark of joy in those soft blue eyes of his.

"The stars are what we'll become when we go back to dust. Just as every flower wilts and bends to the earth. The stars are where we'll be, once it's our time to watch over other people." Barty kisses her crown, babe-silken hair nuzzled against his nose. He is not even talking to her, anymore. "But for now, we content ourselves with knowing we live, in honour of the stars themselves."

Fool, fool, fool, the voice in her head echoes, killer, liar, whore.

Valaena knows, deep down; that, no matter how many nights she sleeps in, no matter how many mornings come, nothing of the narrative she loved will ever be the same again.

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

(Before she leaves him for one last time, Tobirama gives her something that he could never express in words. It is a break from infinity—a respite, before the storm that disrupts their natural order slashes through. He tries to make every moment between them count, as if by some foreboding he felt that they did not have much time before something happens. And, well, it is only seven days later that the first steps are taken for Konoha—though, then, neither of them were even aware of it.

He kissed her lips, her neck, her ears, her shoulders, and her breasts—but the place where his lips most often found was her throat; it seemed like a place filled with pure, raw lust—both his and hers—and she had mused then, if it was ever symbolic of anything, aside from how he wanted to make sure to explore every inch of it.)

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

"Gods become men, just as well as men become gods—"

"—and the world spins as it is, regardless of circumstance."

•⸻•

•⸻•

You sound hesitant while talking about your family. I'm sorry—I didn't mean to be intrusive.

Not hesitant, no—quite the opposite. I'm just surprised at how well you knew Esther Jane. I wouldn't've taken…well, you, to be the…empathetic…type.

Empathetic.

The tone is amused, even on paper. She casts an awkward glance to the side, unsure of how to proceed. But the horcrux writes another message before she can; and as she reads that near-immortal—yet still so ever-disappearing—spread of words, she wonders if there is more to his relationship with her grandmother than the mere precedent of friendship that he offered.

She was a lonely girl. I merely wondered why.

Oh, the troubles of high society, she snorted as she made a quick response, but that doesn't answer my question. My apologies if this is insensitive—but you had nothing to offer her. Why did you approach, anyway?

No offence taken. Though…you might be interested to know that it was her who had the initiative to interact with the little orphan boy. She knew something about me, I suspect.

Oh?

Yes, oh.

(Not those damned dragon dreams again.)

She laughed bitterly.

Oh, indeed.

(It was all planned from the start.)