HEARTS IN DARKNESS: EPILOGUE

[yourkeepers]

When dawn finally comes, you find them.

They're hanging in the grand hall, bound - almost cocooned - in inky black thread. The bodies of the victims, the ones without their hearts, are now miraculously whole. Cold and untouched, as if those terrible wounds had never been carved into their flesh.

They hang in various positions of rest, some limbs tangled and suspended, others simply hanging limply. Their eyes all all closed. The searchlight's body is still dull silver. The singer's hair dangles long and dark. The oracle's robes pristine.

It's like they've been left here for you, within your reach. The rest is in your hands.

Comments

[seerchlight]

Lights's ear flicks in Satandir's direction, trying to actually take in the sentiment for what it was. He wasn't dead. It shouldn't matter, right? What does anything matter if you make it out alive?

But then Brimstone holds him and he feels his ears reflexively pull pack, their expression at the mercy of his emotions. He hiccups the way one does when they are crying but are trying very hard not to, and as she begins to wipe away his tears he folds in against her, wrapping an arm around her waist for support.

He never really knew if this kind of thing would be okay between them, but right now it doesn't really seem to matter. For a moment, he just feels like a child.

[subtleserenity]

She holds him tighter when he reciprocates, eyes closing as she masters her own emotions. This is familiar, somehow, horribly so. It's only a vague memory, like most things are, but there had been someone else she'd held like this, someone else who had been hurt beyond just physical wounds, and whom she'd saved. She wants to put that bullet through the kitchen fire's head even more now.

The heat of her anger has cooled, though. It's still there, but with Lights alive and the fire probably worse off for being allowed to survive and suffer as he is, the dragon of rage screaming out for vengeance in her has taken to lying low. "We got you back, and no one's doin' that to you again," she says at length. "This place ain't right. Things don't get to workin' like they're meant to. Forge is gettin' rid of that dagger. Won't be able to cut on no one no more, and that fire ain't movin' for a spell, neither."