a line at the edge

Ashe the woods are lovely, dark, and deep but i have promises to keep    She didn’t look away from Ronin’s smiling face, but she listened to Remi in silence. His voice hummed into her where her head leaned against him, and she perfectly understood what he meant. Ashe was prone to violence, of course - bloodthirsty on even the best of days at that. But she understood the rage that came as the counterpart to helpless pain. ”Everyone knew him in Northaven,” she added quietly. ”Soon enough, everyone would have known his name here just as well.” She frowned and sniffed back the gathering tears again, eyes guttering. ”It makes me angry too.” Pointlessly, uselessly angry at no one and everyone and nothing and everything. Angry that there was no one she could point her blade at and snarl ’You did this.’ Ronin was just…    Ashe glanced over the top of the painting where the infant lay in her bassinet, the dragonling keeping such careful watch over her. She swallowed as her chest caved in, bringing her to curl a bit closer against Remi. ”We’ll tell her everything,” she answered, but the words rang hollow. She had been only told about her mother for fifteen years of her life with little to no memories of her. She had her mother now, a miracle in itself, but… Her lips pressed together and she took a careful breath, pressing closely against Remi and looping her arm around his waist with his squeeze.    ’I love you, Ashe.’    Round blue eyes darted upwards to Remi, lips parting in surprise as he went on. Two years now she had been learning how to be loved, how to connect with people beyond a single person. Two years of struggling to accept it when anyone told her they loved her, and loving them fiercely herself, often knowing without it needing to be spoken that people for some reason cared about her. Two years, and still it shook her down to her bones to hear Remi say it. With his smile, she offered him a wobbling one in return, her eyes filling and blurring. Everything left unsaid with Ronin…    "I love you, Remi,” she replied with a voice that sounded far stronger than she felt. Fire-blue eyes held sea-glass green, and it was a struggle not to crumple then and there. ”You’re my brother, you know that right?”    Her smile wavered and fell, and she looked back to Ronin’s portrait with her chest tightening. ”Ronin too.” She leaned her head against Remi’s chest and his solidity, as if reminding herself she hadn’t lost him too. ”But he probably didn’t know it,” she went on, her voice breaking. ”I never here, Remi, I missed so much, I was so fucking stupid --” She had to cut off, emotion constricting her throat as her eyes finally overflowed again. She pulled in a shuddering breath, her free arm wrapping tightly around her center. Those brilliant blue eyes stared back at her, captured in pigments and brushstrokes, and it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.    The weight of grief was crushing, but the regret… Gods, the regret. ”I should have been here.” Idiot, idiot girl. ”He pushed me to be better, to do better for as long as I’ve known him. I would have joined the Guard under him, I should have fucking joined the guild when he asked it of me, I…” She had been gone. Ashe was notoriously defiant and chafed against authority, but she would have followed Ronin to the ends of the earth if he asked it of her.    ”I let him down.”    Her fingers dug painfully into her side as she let those words hang in the air. There was such a gleaming darkness in her, and endless rift cleaved straight through her core. It was a chasm that stretched wider and wider in every moment of existing in a world without Ronin, in knowing how unworthy she had been of his faith in her. ”I’d like to join the guild,” she said softly. Too little and too late, idiot girl. ”Kalt will too.” and miles to go before i sleep.