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ASHƎ
She was a storm: sudden;
powerful;
violent;
devastating;
She couldn’t see well beyond her lightning, but she felt it. Every nerve was alive and firing and burning, and the fucker was dying. He was dying and they were winning - they were going to fucking win. Then Ronin ripped the beast just barely out of her path, and she was about to redirect herself and finally just finish this -
Ashe wasn’t quite sure what happened next. An.. explosion. She registered Percy’s scream, and she felt pain, searing pain, and there was brilliant white light and an impact that hurt - Silence. Ashe’s ears were ringing terribly, and she groaned from where she lay upon the ground. She coughed first, inhaled a rattling breath around the sharp aching in her chest - her ribs - her back - her burned and cut and bleeding skin. She picked her head up and found Percy, galloping some distance away - she couldn’t tell if he was harmed or not. She assessed with half-blurred vision, every breath hurt.. But they won. She looked through the dust and smoke and debris for her companions. Roana: hurt but alive. Remi: hurt but alive. Ronin: hurt but alive. He was - Ronin wasn’t moving. Ashe pushed herself up and… she didn’t quit understand it. What she saw. The beast was dead, blown apart, and Ronin was just… laying there. ”Ronin?” Her voice was quiet, it hardly worked, and it rasped from her throat as though he could hear her so far away. She was lurching to unsteady feet, but she didn’t feel it - only the world moving around her even told her she was moving. Shaking. Her eyes didn’t leave him, the captain, her brother, she stumbled forward but.. Something happened then, something bright and he was standing. Ronin was okay, he was fine. Injured and spent, a harsh gasp left Ashe as she lunged forward. She ignored her hurts, her weariness, she didn’t care because Ronin was okay. She ran for him, for that pit he was in. ”Ronin!” They needed to share a drink - ten fucking drinks and celebrate in the guildhall. There was a savage, panicked dread that kept trying to slip between her thoughts of elation at seeing him stand after not seeing him move. Something was wrong. She couldn’t feel anything. None of it mattered in the face of Ronin so bloodied - he had been right there when the demon exploded, but he was fine, he was fine, he was fine. She lurched down into that pit without thinking or feeling - Remi got there first - less hurt than she, but he was talking to - to.. Safrin and.. no. Ashe came behind Remi, to his side, before Ronin. She didn’t realize there were tears streaking clear paths down bloodied cheeks, and she heard Remi say it then: ’Please, you can’t go.’ Ashe snapped wide eyes at Ronin, and her heart stopped working. ”No -” she choked. ”Ronin, no..” She looked up at her - the goddess she might have felt some kind of awe at if Ronin weren’t… She looked back at Ronin with tears spilling hot down her face, and a sob cracked from her chest. ”You can’t -” Her tears strangled her words and she reached out for him, for his hand, for any part of him with her heart racing, her chest heaving. This was wrong, he was fine, he was fine - he’s fine he’s fine he’s fine. She wasn’t going to lose him, not after everything, not when she had been so fucking stupid and just ran away from everyone and hadn’t spent any real time with him in so fucking long. She would never forgive herself for this. Her friend, her brother. ”Ronin,” came her broken whisper. ”Please..” and utterly magnificent. |
art belongs to Jaecarys
