Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Two days after the city of Timberain was saved, Castti and Malaya walked out of the royal library together. They paused a few steps away from the building and took in a deep breath, relishing in the welcome coolness of nighttime air on their skin and in their lungs. Castti let out a sigh a moment later before she started off toward the inn where the rest of the travelers were waiting. Their group was set to depart from Timberain come morning, but for one more night, they could enjoy their triumph over Trousseau. 

Ever since they had first found one another, Castti and Malaya had been inseparable, constantly piloting their shared body as a pair rather than trying to face life alone. No words could ever describe how relieving it had been to finally open up to each other after all the time Malaya had spent hiding. There was nothing to fear anymore though. As long as they had one another, they would find a way to endure. Recovering their memories and facing Trousseau had been difficult, but they had come out of it on the other side. It was a testament to their strength, and neither one of them would dare to forget it. 

As soon as they woke up from their extended and well-deserved sleep after saving Timberain, they had set off to the library to do a bit of reading. If they existed as two souls in one body, then there had to be others who did as well. That research had practically consumed Castti and Malaya’s every waking hour over the last two days, and they were perfectly fine with that. Sure enough, their investigation had borne fruit, and they had found a few studies and journals written by people in their same situation. Finding someone else in person who understood them in this way was far easier said than done though, so for the time being, they would have to settle for just leaning on one another and the rest of the travelers. 

That was what Castti admittedly worried about. She had been spending all of her time on the road with the rest of the travelers over the course of the last half a year, and they knew her well. Malaya had been there all along, always watching but never announcing her presence, but none of the other travelers had been given the chance to understand her the way they had come to know Castti. Malaya was quiet and shy by nature, her secrets having driven her into hiding even after Castti woke up in Canalbrine. Trying to ease her to open up to others was far easier said than done, but Castti wanted the world to know she had been putting in the effort. Reading about people like them had helped Malaya to open up, but it was only the beginning, and Castti knew she could help her do more than just convince her to start to consider talking to others. 

Castti pushed open the door to the inn slowly, and she found the rest of the travelers all gathered in the common space inside. They were enjoying a rowdy game of cards with a few of the soldiers who had helped to clear the city streets a few days ago. Judging by Ochette’s boisterous laughter, she was winning the current hand. Temenos looked mildly miffed by the cards he had been dealt, and Throné nudged him in the side to tease him about not being able to find the upper hand. Agnea looked similarly displeased, and Hikari cast her a glance of sympathy across the table. Partitio was staring at his cards with a frown, trying his best to make heads or tails of them, but his bewildered expression was still marked by joy. Even Osvald had a light smile on his face as he watched the game unfold from a nearby chair. He looked up from his book every few lines to watch the hand unfold before him, though if Castti had to guess, she would have assumed he wasn’t reading as much as he wanted people to believe he was. 

“They’re great people, aren’t they?” Castti asked internally with a small smile on her face. No one had noticed her yet, and she was fine with that. It gave her the chance to watch the game from the sidelines, to see the people she loved enjoying themselves after the horror they had witnessed a handful of days prior. 

“They are,” Malaya confirmed before going silent once again. Castti could feel her shift uncomfortably within the domain of their shared mind. Malaya was still adjusting to the idea that she could be open with who she was after spending so many months hiding and only coming out to fill a purpose. She was more than just the duty she felt she owed to Castti though, and Castti was determined to prove it to her. 

“I think you should try to talk to them,” Castti said, and she heard Malaya let out a small gasp of surprise at being called on her quiet demeanor so bluntly. “I know you’re nervous about socializing after not doing it for so long, but I think you should try it. We’re going to be on the road with them for quite some time to come. Beyond that, you’ve been around them for months now. I bet they would want to get to know you for who you are now that you’ve shown yourself.”

“But what if–” Malaya tried to cut in. 

“No buts, Malaya,” Castti interrupted in return, a smile that was mischievous and content in equal measure spreading across her face. “It’s time you made some friends as yourself. No more making friends while pretending to be Castti. You need friends as Malaya.”

Malaya went quiet for a long time at that before letting out a heavy sigh. “Fine.” If she was being honest, she was terrified of having to open up to other people. Talking to Castti was one thing since the two of them shared a mind and body, but it had still taken months for Malaya to be comfortable enough to talk to Castti, and it took the rest of the travelers directly interfering to convince her to say anything. Everyone else had been aware of her existence for months, at least to some extent, but they hadn’t met Malaya herself until very recently. Knowing of her and knowing her personally were two entirely different beasts, and she knew it well.

Admittedly, Malaya felt almost bad about inserting herself into a dynamic that was already so established and fleshed out. The rest of the travelers had been getting to know one another for months, and she had only just appeared to them as herself recently. She didn’t want to take away from their time with Castti when she was such a crucial member of the team. She would feel awkward having to start over with everyone she had watched and known so well even if they hadn’t been able to return the favor. What right did she have to make them try to reach out to her?

Doubting herself was Malaya’s first mistake though, and Castti made that abundantly clear when she let out a small sigh and responded to her anxieties openly. Malaya still wasn’t used to the two of them having such strong internal communication since their amnesic walls had been so high for so long, so Castti speaking caught her by surprise. “They’re going to love you,” Castti assured her. “I know they want to get to know you better. All you have to do is take that first step, and everything will fall into place. I promise. You’ll be fine.” Just to add a bit of emphasis, Castti closed her eyes and stepped into the world of their head. She pressed a kiss to Malaya’s cheek before taking her hands in her own, a smile on her face. “They’ll love you as much as I do. I promise.”

Malaya gripped Castti’s hands a little bit tighter at that, and she nodded. “Yeah… Okay,” she agreed. She had no idea where to start when it came to talking to the rest of the travelers, but if Castti believed she could do it, then she owed it to them both to try. They all had to start somewhere, right? It had taken ages for them to open up to one another on the road, and while Malaya was entering the dynamic somewhat late, at least everyone already knew they could trust each other. Hopefully, that would make the initial plunge that much easier. 

“Hey, Castti! Malaya!” 

The sound of Partitio’s voice snapped them both out of their trance, and they opened their eyes together to see the merchant waving one hand over his head with a bright smile. “Want me to deal you in for this hand? I bet you’ll have fun,” he told them as he held up the deck of cards in his other hand. The previous round of cards had clearly ended while Castti and Malaya were talking to each other, and they hadn’t even noticed. It came with the territory of drifting off into their internal world, they supposed. 

Castti took a step back at that, and Malaya found herself in control of their body fully. After a few seconds of contemplation and shock at Castti’s retreat, Malaya nodded. “Yeah… Sure,” she agreed. Castti was right. She wasn’t going to be able to make any friends unless she actually made an effort to do so. She owed them both that much. 

Malaya sat down in between Ochette and Hikari in the circle, and when she did, the rest of the travelers watched her silently, noting that she was the one in control. They had started noticing the differences between Castti and Malaya almost immediately, and neither one of them could ever hope to say just how validating that was. No matter what, even if they hadn’t met anyone else like them, they would always be understood. They would always be seen. They would always be loved.

Ochette leaned her head over so it was resting on Malaya’s arm, and the apothecary looked down with a fond smile. It would take time for her to fully establish these relationships, but she was fine with that. She would get there eventually, and it would be worth it in the end. 

No more hiding as Castti. It was time for her to be Malaya as shamelessly as possible.

Chapter Text

Malaya pulled her hair tightly into a ponytail before brushing out the wrinkles in her trousers. She let out a small sigh before looking up to meet the gaze of her reflection. After a few seconds of watching herself in the mirror, she smiled, reaching for her satchel before starting off toward the door. 

The travelers were en route to Gravell, but along the way, they decided to stop for a few days in Oresrush to gather supplies for the stretch to Gravell. They weren’t stopping off in Crackridge after the complete disaster that had been their first trip in the city, so they would need extra food, water, and fuel to make sure they reached Gravell in one piece before their encounter with Harvey. Oresrush was the perfect place to take a moment to breathe. 

More than that, it was the perfect place for Malaya to try and find her footing as herself. She had promised she would make a difference in her relationships with the other travelers, and she intended to make good on that vow. That came with a lot of strings attached though, and the first was her being given the chance to control the body she shared with Castti all on her own. Castti had been resting while giving Malaya a chance to take charge over the last few days. After ages of mostly managing life on her own with very little input from Malaya, Castti needed a break, and Malaya was happy to give her one. Her being in charge for the day meant she was doing things her way, and that started with wearing pants instead of a skirt. She admired Castti’s ability to maintain her composure and agility even in a dress, but Malaya did not possess the same affinities and grace. Wearing pants and tying her hair in a ponytail rather than a bun felt like the least she could do for herself as she tried to find her individuality and what it meant to her. 

The travelers had already spread out for their day of gathering supplies for the trip to Gravell, and Malaya was glad to join them in the effort. She was going to head back to the tavern to see if she could hear anything about the road leading to their next destination. If there were any changes in the weather or disturbances in local monster behaviors, then she would need to know as soon as possible to try and draft up a travel plan. 

Apparently, Malaya wasn’t the only one who had thought to go to the tavern. Almost as soon as she entered the building, she was hit with a sudden blast of noise originating from a table near the main counter. Partitio was taking this chance to catch up with his old friends, and all of them were chatting and smiling gladly as they exchanged stories from the last few months. Malaya caught Partitio’s gaze as soon as she stepped inside, and he waved to show that he had seen her. She returned the favor with a nod and a bite on her bottom lip. She still wasn’t used to the idea of talking to the other travelers as herself, and she could only hope she fixed that sooner rather than later. Partitio was confident and open, but given how quiet Malaya was by nature, that could be as intimidating as it could be welcome depending on the circumstances.

Malaya approached the corkboard on the wall of the tavern before pulling a few pages down from the tacks. There were a handful of listings for jobs, most of them related to demolishing the slaver’s building on the outskirts of town and chasing out every Blacksnake who had been left behind. Nobody had posted anything about troublesome monsters in the area though, and Malaya was willing to take that as a victory. As soon as the group left Oresrush, they would need to rush to Gravell to meet Harvey in combat before he could harm Elena. Beyond that, they would be operating on limited supplies, and they couldn’t be put in a position that would force them to stop in Crackridge. That was where all of them drew the line, and Malaya agreed fully with the sentiment. Hopefully, she would never have to go back to that damn city again.

Malaya sat down at one of the tables as she flicked through the pages she had pulled from the corkboard. This was one thing she knew the original Malaya had done a lot while working with Eir’s Apothecaries. She was the best when it came to scoping out the path ahead and coming up with a plan for how to handle their work in future cities. That was one thing Castti had admired about her, and as such, it was a trait that had appeared in the Malaya her mind had created as well. Malaya’s grip on the pages grew tighter at the thought. She wondered if she would ever be able to compare to the original Malaya–the real Malaya as far as she was concerned–when she felt so small when placed beside the legacy her source had left behind. It was a ridiculous thing to get caught up in, but that didn’t stop Malaya from thinking about it to the point of exhausting herself. 

While Malaya was caught up in staring at the papers in her hands and only barely registering what others were saying above the static of her self-loathing, Partitio had finished off his conversation with the rest of his friends. He exchanged one last laugh with them as he pushed himself to his feet. “Excuse me, fellas,” Partitio said, not that Malaya heard what he was saying in the slightest. “I need to talk to my friend here about that tincture before we leave town. I’ll catch up with y'all in a little bit.” Partitio approached Malaya at that, placing one hand on the table in front of her as he tilted his hat politely in her direction. “Mornin’, Malaya.”

The sound of her own name was enough to pull Malaya out of her trance, and she glanced up to Partitio quickly enough that it made her hair leave behind a dull sound as it roughly and suddenly collided with her shoulder blades. “Oh… Partitio,” she greeted in return, immediately hating just how curt her voice sounded. She was supposed to be trying to open up to the rest of the travelers, not clamming up the instant one of them spoke to her. Malaya cleared her throat in an attempt to regather her bearings as she put the pages in her hands back on the table. “Do you need something?”

“I was hopin’ you could help me with whippin’ up somethin’ for my friend Joe’s lady friend. She’s come down with a devil of a cough, and I figured you’d be able to help,” Partitio explained. “D’you think you’d know what to do ‘bout that?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Malaya replied. She was much better at communicating through concoctions and tinctures, and if that was what Partitio wanted to hear more about, then she was happy to oblige. She reached into her satchel before pulling out one of the tried and true cough remedies Castti had learned when she was first starting to hone her craft in the Apothecaries’ Guild. Malaya pressed the bottle into Partitio’s hand and nodded. “Don’t worry about paying. It’s on the house.”

Partito flashed Malaya one of his signature grins, and despite herself, she smiled a little bit brighter at the sight. “Thankee kindly!” He moved to turn back to the rest of his friends, but he paused halfway through and looked back to Malaya. “You know, Malaya… Somethin’ ‘bout you has always struck me as… Familiar.”

Malaya blinked once and then twice. “Familiar?” she echoed. What sense did that make? Partitio hadn’t known she existed until a few short weeks ago. Well, he had probably figured out that Castti had a few strange hobbies related to talking to herself, but that was different from actually being introduced to Malaya. What about her could be familiar to him? She shook off all those thoughts before continuing to speak. “Is it because I remind you of Castti?”

“No, that’s not it,” Partitio replied with a shake of his head. “You remind me of someone else… Come to think of it, I think I might’ve seen someone like you right here in the tavern…” He trailed off for a moment before his eyes went wide, and he snapped his fingers as his smile returned with even more light and force than before. “That’s right! I met an apothecary here before I left Oresrush on my journey, and she reminds me a lot of you.”

Once again, Malaya stared at him, only passing the time through how many times she blinked. Once, twice, thrice, and then she finally spoke. “You… You met an apothecary who reminded you of me?” she asked. Was it possible Partitio met the original Malaya? Could they have crossed paths at some point before Healeaks fell? What was she even doing in Oresrush in the first place?

Partitio, completely unaware of Malaya’s silent crisis, continued with a nod. “I did. She had dark brown hair and tanned skin, and she wore the blue of Eir’s Apothecaries too. I think she was passin’ through town as part of a bigger journey. She didn’t stay for long when she was here,” he explained. “She sold me some cough medicine for my pops. In fact, it was a pretty similar medicine to what you just gave me.”

The pieces came rushing into place a moment later, and Malaya nodded. “That… That makes sense,” she murmured. “Before Eir’s Apothecaries went back to Healeaks, we were traveling the western continent. I think we split up a few times when we were in this general area.” The original Malaya had wanted to go back to the Wildlands for a brief taste of home. She had been born in a small village on the border of the Wildlands and the Leaflands, a settlement that had since faded into little more than a whisper on the wind. Still, as long as the apothecaries were in the area, Malaya wanted to indulge her nostalgia, and that manifested with her going back to the Wildlands for a spell without the rest of the apothecaries while they were settled down in the Leaflands taking care of sick patients for a few nights. 

“The more I look at you, the more you look like that apothecary I met before,” Partitio continued. “Her voice sounded a lot like yours–same lower cadence and all that. She had her hair tied up like that too, and she wore pants instead of a skirt.” He looked down at Malaya’s attire, gesturing to the notable difference between her fashion choices and Castti’s preferences with one hand. Partitio went silent for a moment, weighing the blessings and curses of posing his next question, before he met Malaya’s gaze again. “Do you think I could’ve met… The original Malaya?”

For a long time, Malaya didn’t know how to respond to that. She knew the answer. In fact, it couldn’t have been clearer to her. Against all odds, Partitio had met the original Malaya there in Oresrush. There must have been a significant time difference between Malaya passing through town and him setting off on his journey given the timeline of what happened at Healeaks, but that made sense. Oresrush had crawled its way out of decline by the time Partitio left town, and that must have taken at least a month and a half. It was the perfect fit given when Eir’s Apothecaries had been doing the rounds on the western continent, and Malaya couldn’t believe it. Someone other than Castti remembered the person she had originated from. Someone else could say they knew who the original Malaya was. She was similar enough to the original Malaya that Partitio recognized her through nothing but her mannerisms and preferences.

When she finally reminded herself to respond again, Malaya nodded. “Yeah… I think you did,” she said softly, her words coming out far quieter than she had wanted them to. The idea of being remembered in a way that didn’t even belong to her had hit far harder and deeper than she could have ever imagined. It was like a punch to the stomach in the sweetest way possible. The original Malaya could be remembered for more than just her death at Healeaks. Someone else still remembered her months after her departure, and through some chance of fate, that someone was a person in Castti and Malaya’s traveling party. 

Partitio’s smile went bright again at that, and Malaya couldn’t help but think of how much he had in common with the sun, always shining even in the darkest of hours. It was something she needed whether she wanted to admit it or not. “Imagine that,” he remarked. “I never would’ve guessed it ‘til now, but I’m glad we figured that out.”

“It’s a nice thing to think about,” Malaya confessed, her smile small and wistful in comparison to Partito’s radiant grin. “As weird as it sounds… It’s nice to know there are other people who remember her. I know I’m not the same person she was, but… It’s still good to know there are others aside from just me and Castti who know she existed.” Malaya was quiet for a beat, and she let out a shaky laugh, ignoring the tears that were already springing to life in her eyes. “Memories have always been such an important thing for me and Castti, especially after everything that happened in Healeaks, so… It’s nice to know someone else still remembers her after all this time. It… It means a lot to me.”

Partitio stepped behind Malaya, placing a gentle hand against her back that she practically melted into. Her previous isolation while pretending to be Castti had left her admittedly starved for any touch she could get, and Partitio’s presence was particularly comforting in the face of the brutality of the past. “I’m glad I remember her too,” he admitted. “I know a lot happened that day in Healeaks, but… She’s never gonna be forgotten. I’ll make sure of that myself.”

Malaya nodded at that, rubbing at her eyes with the heels of her hands. The sensation of gloves against her eyes felt weird, but she couldn’t be asked to take them off. That would just expose her scars from the rain incident in Healeaks, and she really didn’t want to do that. “I’m glad you’re here, Partitio,” Malaya confessed. With an internal laugh, she thought about how much Castti was going to tease her for this later. Malaya’s first truly emotional moment after showing herself to the world was with Partitio of all people, the same man who Castti had spent countless hours poking fun at and teasing on the road. The irony was striking, but as long as there were tears in her eyes, Malaya couldn’t bring herself to care much for the details. 

“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” Partitio assured her. He sat down in the seat beside her, his hand still an anchor against her spine. Malaya looked up to face him, and he smiled bittersweetly in her direction. “I know it’s not the same, but… I wanna thank you for everythin’ she did. You’re not exactly her, and I know that, but… The original Malaya did a lot to help me and Pops out of a bind. Even though she’s gone… It’s nice to know some piece of her is still here. Thanks for everythin’ back then, Malaya. It means a lot to me.”

Those words were all Malaya’s defenses could take, and before she knew it, she let out a noise that rested somewhere between a sob and a laugh in her throat. She hadn’t realized going into this conversation that she would need to hear something like that so much, but there she was regardless. She rubbed at her eyes once again before nodding, gladly embracing the warmth of Partitio’s touch along the way. “I know it’s not the same as it would be coming from her, but… You’re welcome, Partitio,” Malaya told him thickly. She took in a careful breath, ignoring the way the air rattled against her ribcage on the way out. “I’m glad I’m here. I know it’s because of something horrible, but… I’m glad some piece of her and the rest of the apothecaries can live on through me.”

“You’re doin’ good work for them, Malaya,” Partitio reiterated as he held up the bottle she had given him in his free hand for emphasis. “Even though you’re not the same person she was, you’re doin’ what she would’ve done. That means a lot to me, and I know Pops’ll feel the same way. I bet Joe’s girlfriend will agree too. Thanks for this, Malaya… And for everythin’ else too.”

“You’re welcome.” Malaya sobbed and laughed again at that, and she shook her head before rubbing at her eyes for a third time as tears streamed freely down her cheeks. “I promise I’m not normally like this. I’m still getting used to this whole emotional vulnerability thing.” 

“Well, you won’t be in it alone,” Partitio reminded her. “The rest of us will be here for you no matter what. That’s what friends do, right? It took the rest of us some time to open up to each other too. You’ll get there soon enough. I know you will.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Malaya vowed. “No matter how hard it gets… I’m going to give it my all.” It wasn’t much, but it was the promise she had made to Castti, and she wasn’t going to forget it. Beyond that, Malaya owed it to everyone who had died in Healeaks. They may not have been able to see the dawn, but she had been given that chance, and she wasn’t going to waste it.

“I know you will,” Partitio smiled. He pushed himself out of his chair as he wrapped his fingers around the bottle Malaya had given him in earnest. “I’m goin’ to drop this off with Joe so he can pass it off to his girlfriend. After that, what d’you say to us sharin’ lunch before we leave town? I know the best food to order here.”

“I’d like that,” Malaya nodded with a smile of her own. The tension in her chest began to lessen at his words, and while she doubted she would be free of tears for quite some time to come, it was a start. Regardless of how long she cried after that, she was happy, and that was all that mattered.

“It’s a deal then.” Partitio flicked a leaf off his hand in her direction, and Malaya caught it in both hands as he walked back to meet with the rest of his friends. Even after Partitio had turned his attention fully to his next conversation with his longtime companions, Malaya smiled as she unfurled her hands to look at the leaf he had given her. It wasn’t much, but it was a statement, and it said far more about Partitio’s business than any card ever could have. 

As Malaya looked down at the silver leaf, she let out a small laugh under her breath. It had only been one conversation, but it meant its weight to her in gold–or perhaps silver in this case–and she couldn’t have been happier for it. She was going to look forward to her meal with Partitio, and she’d look forward to their future on the road together even more. 

It was just as Castti had said; Malaya needed this, and she loved it more than words could possibly say.

Chapter Text

A few hours had come and gone since Crick’s unceremonious arrival in the Stormhail inn. Malaya summoned her strength for a small healing spell, and the tension in his face dissipated ever so slightly. The movement was miniscule, and beyond that, Crick remained motionless. Temenos raised his staff as well, but his spell was considerably weaker, the light at the top of his staff flickering out quickly due to his lack of energy. He hadn’t been able to conjure a full spell in hours, but he tried regardless until his strength flowed away and he fell backwards against his chair once again.

Most of the travelers had gone to sleep, and that included Castti. The timing had been poor on all fronts with Castti and Malaya finally meeting Eir minutes before Crick was dragged in for healing. After they had stabilized Crick, Castti planned on staying up all night to tend to Crick’s wounds, but Malaya had insisted on her talking with Eir about everything that had been uncovered over the course of the night. Castti had agreed, albeit hesitantly, and retreated into the recesses of their mind with Eir. She had hesitantly gone to sleep about an hour ago, and Eir had followed suit soon afterward.

That left Malaya alone with Temenos awake through the graveyard shift of the night. Crick had long been stabilized, but no one wanted to leave him alone on the off chance his condition worsened when they weren’t paying attention. The rest of the group had descended into an uneasy sleep, uncertain as to what they were meant to do but too tired to push themselves to stay awake. Malaya was only conscious through sheer force of will, and she was sure the same applied to Temenos as well. 

He hadn’t breathed a word to her ever since they were left alone. Instead, Temenos spent his time staring blankly at Crick’s sleeping face. Color was starting to return to the knight’s features at long last, but the underlying fear of something going wrong hung heavily in the air around them. Until Crick was back on his feet and fully recovered, that fear would remain, and if Malaya had to guess, she would have assumed Temenos’ anxiety would linger long after Crick returned to the rest of his life. In fact, she didn’t need to guess it; she already knew the truth, and Temenos did too.

Malaya knew she needed to say at least something to break through the silence. She couldn’t just leave Temenos alone with his own thoughts. That was a disaster waiting to happen, especially when he was in a fragile enough state as it was. Knowing she had to speak up and figuring out what to say were two entirely separate matters though, and Malaya didn’t even know where to start with the latter. She had to at least try and pull Temenos out of his own head, but every conversation starter she came up with fizzled away on her tongue as soon as it appeared in her mind. She hated overthinking and doubting herself like this. It had been happening more and more since she showed herself to Castti as the need for her protection subsided, and she hated it more than she could ever admit aloud. 

In the end, Malaya opted to throw caution to the wind and just talk. “How are you feeling?” she eventually settled on asking. She couldn’t ask him if he was alright; the answer was obviously no, and she didn’t want to encourage him to lie to her by giving him a poor question to open their conversation. There had to be something else for them both, and it all began with honesty. 

Temenos looked up at Malaya slowly, each motion weighed down by lead and exhaustion. His eyes were weary, and he didn’t even bother falsifying a faint crescent of a smile in her direction. Instead, he simply sighed. “Terrible,” he confessed, his voice coming out hoarse. It was a miracle he was even still upright and conscious after all the energy he had expended to save Crick’s life out there in the midnight snow. Sheer fear was holding him together, and Malaya could see it in every miserable wrinkle between his brows. 

“Maybe you should talk about it,” Malaya suggested even though they both knew she couldn’t necessarily force him to do anything. Pushing him to open up when he was in a fragile enough state as it was would only bite them both, so all she could do was try to lead him in the right direction. It was certainly tempting to attempt to persuade him to open up through brute force, but Malaya knew that wouldn’t end well even if it was what he so desperately needed. Temenos was just as agonizingly stubborn as she was, and it was one of many reasons the two of them found themselves awake well after midnight in the candlelight of his inn room. 

Temenos thought about her words for a long time, rolling them over in his mind like a piece of evidence he had found on the ground. In the end, he let out a long sigh, his posture slumping forward to match the unfortunate curve of the chair behind him. “I was foolish,” Temenos finally muttered. His tone was not self-loathing in the slightest though. It was a mere statement of fact, and he treated it as such. “I knew it was dangerous to leave him alone. It was dangerous for any of us to be alone after this afternoon. Assassins tried to kill us both, and I still…” He sighed and shook his head with a bitter scoff. “Some shepherd I am. I almost led my lamb right to the slaughter.”

“But you were there when he needed you most,” Malaya pointed out. “You can curse yourself all you want for not seeing the trap for what it was. Still, the fact of the matter is that Crick is here with us, and he wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t gone out to check on him. You saved his life out there.”

“I wouldn’t have needed to save him if I had been a bit smarter,” Temenos retorted, and Malaya sighed at that. He was right about that much. Even so, dwelling on their past mistakes wasn’t going to get them anywhere. Temenos had to know that too; it didn’t stop his hatred of his misdeeds from spiraling out of his control, but he knew it all the same. 

Malaya was halfway tempted to reach across the bed to take Temenos’ hand even with Crick’s unconscious body between them on the mattress, but her fingers remained still. “Regretting what you could have done isn’t going to fix anything,” she reminded him. “The fact of the matter is that you’re here now. So is Crick. We can’t go back into the past to undo all of our mistakes, so we simply need to learn to live with them.” It sounded so simple when she said it that way. If they tried hard enough, they would be able to move past everything that burdened them… But they both knew it wasn’t quite that easy. The traumas of the past would not be so easily defeated. If that was the case, neither one of them would have still worried late into the night long after their bodies should have caved in on themselves. 

Temenos didn’t respond to Malaya for a long time, instead just continuing to look down at Crick’s face silently. Crick’s chest rose and fell slowly with each passing breath, a movement Temenos didn’t seem to believe in even as he saw it right before his eyes. Doubt was what he did, and he doubted more than ever after he had seen his love bleeding out in the snow. Of course, Temenos would never be so open as to call his relationship with Crick what it was. Malaya knew Temenos was too smart for that. Love implied attachment, and when fighting against an entire institution, attachment would get little lambs killed. It was no wonder he tried to go off on his own during investigations half the time, abandoning even the travelers he had come to know as his friends and found family. In some twisted way, he wanted to protect the rest of the travelers too. He just didn’t know where to start. How could anyone know where to start in the midst of a war like this?

Malaya had learned a lot about Temenos over the course of her time pretending to be Castti. She had figured out that the best way to deduce his true thoughts and intentions was through observation. If she watched him closely enough, then she could see the moments he truly let his guard down fully. His shoulders drooped with a decades old exhaustion when he spoke of his long missing brother, for example. In moments when he thought no one was looking, Temenos would press his hands together in front of his chest and pray not to the gods but to his own belief in himself and that which he saw as sound. He was not a man of trust, and he did not expect others to trust him in return. He doubted everything, and that included those who dared to stray closest to him. His smiles rarely reached his eyes, and in that horrifying way, Malaya knew Temenos mirrored not only her but Castti as well. They lied for the sake of others and themselves, and sometimes, it seemed as if they knew nothing else but the thrill of the falsity on their lips.

“Are you angry with me?”

The sound of Temenos’ voice pulled Malaya out of her thoughts once again, and she glanced up to see him staring at the wall just above the headboard of Crick’s bed. “Angry with you?” she echoed, her eyes going wide. “Why would I be mad at you?”

“I exposed you,” Temenos reminded her, his voice rubbed raw in too many wrong, horrifying ways. “If I had not intervened, I imagine you would have continued to hide forever. You were content to do that in your own way. I was the reason all of that stopped. And so, I must ask… Are you angry with me for exposing who you truly are?”

For a long time, Malaya didn’t know how to answer. How was she meant to respond to something like that? At the time, she knew she had certainly been upset with him, but it hadn’t been for the reasons he expected. Malaya had felt safe acting as a silent defender. She had done what was necessary to keep herself and Castti safe, and if that meant hiding, so be it. The role was comforting, something to ground her against a world so cruel it could have crushed them all if it so pleased. Stepping out of the shadows felt forbidden, and more importantly, dangerous . She didn’t know what would happen if she spoke up about who she was, and she feared the backlash from forces out of her control. She feared being turned away from those who she had come to love before they ever knew her name. She feared losing everything again the same way she had in Healeaks. The pain still ate at the cavity in her chest where her heart should have been on her latest and darkest nights.

But instead, Malaya had been met with open arms and comfort. All of them had accepted her for who she was. Hikari had thanked her for being there for Castti, and she had come to love him as a friend in a way only the two of them could learn to bond. Ochette leaned against Malaya when she wanted a bit of physical affection, something Malaya was all too happy to provide. Partitio smiled at her in the same familiar way he grinned at everyone, like they were old friends picking up from where they had left off years before. They all changed which name they called her by when they realized she was the one in control. Malaya had feared stepping out of her shell, of being known, but her nerves had all been for nothing. They loved her for who she was, and she loved them for everything they were in return. 

Malaya shook her head as she brought herself back to the moment at hand. “No,” she confessed. “The truth of the matter is that this was bound to happen one day. I was doing my best to avoid it, but I wouldn’t be able to outrun it forever. I couldn’t hide forever. You gave me the push I needed to let myself be seen. Hiding myself and my emotions wasn’t doing me any good. It was just making things worse, and…” She stared down at her hands, noticing every minute detail about her bare palms. “I’ve been a lot happier since then. I know I’m more than just what I can do for others now, and… I’m glad to be here. I didn’t like it at the time, but… Now, I don’t think I could have asked for anything better.”

Temenos nodded slowly, and he leaned his forehead against his hand like he was nursing the opening curses of a headache. “For a time… I wondered if I had done the right thing,” he admitted. “You’re right when you say it was something that needed to happen sooner or later. Still… You were hiding for a reason, and forcing you to talk about it… You’re not a criminal like the killers I’ve chased and caught in the past. You’re…”

Malaya let out a small huff through her nose. “Me,” she finished for him, and he nodded once again. There was no other way for them to describe her as much as they hated to admit it. Malaya was a special case among everything they had seen across their adventures, and she would continue to stand as her own unique individual long after they had all parted ways. Her secrecy was a beast separate from the lies they had seen woven around their journey, and she would forever be an exception in a way no one could quite describe without meeting her personally.

There was an undercurrent to the words Temenos spoke though, and Malaya knew what it meant without him even needing to come close to the implication. Temenos had regretted calling her what she was because he feared she would do the same to him. If anyone had the shameless stubbornness and confidence to drag Temenos out of his dark shell, it was her, and he knew it just as well as she did. For all his apparent confidence, Temenos feared what others could do more than most, and Malaya was one of the most terrifying people of all in every agonizing way a friend could be. 

“I… I’m glad to see I did the right thing,” Temenos confessed as he pulled his head out of his hand. “I didn’t know what would come of it at the time, but… It’s nice to see you opening up more to the rest of us. You’re not the only one benefitting from that, you know. All of us are.”

“You could stand to benefit from something like that too, you know,” Malaya reminded him, and Temenos’ gaze once again fell to Crick’s sleeping form. “I know you’re trying to put on a brave face for the sake of everyone else. I can see it clearer than you think. Still… You don’t need to keep doing that. It’s okay to be open with what you’re feeling for once. I…” Her hands clenched into fists, and she let out a restless sigh. “I know what it’s like to lose the one you care about most. Hell, I’m here because of who Castti–who we –lost in Healeaks. Hiding all of that… It’s not good for a person, and it’s not going to help you either. You need to be honest with yourself and the rest of the world for once. You don’t need to doubt everything forever. Sometimes, it’s okay to just… Be for a little while. Sometimes, the hardest things to do are the things we need to do the most.”

For a long time, Temenos said nothing, and Malaya couldn’t help fearing she had crossed a line. Would Temenos even respond at all to being so firmly called on his cagey tactics like that? She hadn’t the slightest clue, but she didn’t regret what she had said. Even if Temenos detested her for her honesty, Malaya would stand by what she had done. Temenos had stood by his actions even in the face of uncertainty after he revealed her existence to the world, and the least she could do was return the favor for him in his hour of need. 

Temenos slowly unraveled himself once again, but when he returned to his proper posture, he let it all melt away a moment later. He deflated slowly but surely, the air from his body evaporating in favor of the tears that had so readily and recklessly come to life in his eyes. He let out a broken sigh that tripped and caught on itself multiple times in the back of his throat. For the first time ever, Malaya saw Temenos for who he truly was beneath his robes, dramatics, and ambitions: an exhausted man who had never given himself a moment of rest in a bid to outrun his grief and fear. The world was a horrifying place, and he knew it all too well. He had internalized it years ago, and in doing so, he had shut himself out from his own heart. Fear was a powerful motivator, and his doubts had been pushing him onward for longer than he could ever hope to remember. He defined himself by his doubt, and he feared what he was without it when he finally let himself just be honest, just be Temenos.

Seconds after finally allowing himself to crumble, Temenos let out a small strangled sob that snuffed out the silence just as quickly as it had closed in around him. He let one hand come up to hide his mouth, but he soon abandoned his efforts, instead pressing his palms against his eyes with enough force to make stars explode against the backs of his eyelids. “I… I’m terrified,” Temenos admitted softly. “I don’t know where this is going to lead any of us, and I… I don’t know how I can think about any of it after… Someone else could get hurt, and we may not know the truth until it was too late. I can’t let that happen again. I can’t lose anyone else.”

Malaya rose from her seat and walked around the edge of the bed before coming to stand just beside Temenos. She placed a careful hand on his shoulder, leaving him the room to escape or push her away if he so chose. “I know me saying this isn’t going to make it any better, but… You can trust me if you want to talk,” she assured him. “Hearing that and actually committing to it are two different things though, and… I just want you to know that you’re not alone.” Malaya’s grip on his shoulder grew ever so slightly tighter. “Sometimes… The things we need to do the most are the things we fear the most too. It’s okay to be scared. Just… Remember you’re not in this on your own. You never will be.”

Temenos nodded at that, but he didn’t bother to put on a mask of composure as he had in every other conversation they shared previously. Instead, he leaned slowly against Malaya’s hip. He looked as if he didn’t even have the energy to keep himself upright anymore, and so, he simply chose not to bother. He was a puppet whose strings had been cut, and staying awake was all he could do for himself anymore. 

Malaya wrapped her arms carefully around his shoulders, and much to her surprise, Temenos returned the favor. She crouched down so she was closer to being on his level, and when she did, Temenos practically launched himself into her arms. She almost wondered just how long he had been holding himself back from unraveling completely, but she already knew the answer. As long as Temenos had lived, he had lied, and there was only so much he could do to keep the act together after all that had happened that night. 

“It’s alright,” Malaya whispered into his silvery hair as she rubbed gentle circles across his back. She knew deep down that nothing was fine the way they both needed it to be, but they would still find a way to make it fine. That was what people like them did, after all. They were healers, and that craft extended far beyond the boundaries of mending physical wounds. “No matter what, I’m here. Just… Let it out.”

Temenos nodded imperceptibly against her shoulder, and Malaya pulled him in a little bit tighter as her eyes swept shut. He just continued to cry, not bothering with holding himself as he had in the past, and for the first time, Malaya and Temenos understood one another completely. She had never imagined she would see Temenos fall apart quite like this, but now that they were there together, she knew it was necessary. Regardless of what they were comfortable with, regardless of what felt safe, they needed to push their own limits every once in a while. Temenos had been right to expose her for who she was back in Wellgrove, and she had been right to call him out for hiding his emotions that night too. Whether they wanted to admit it or not, they had a lot in common, and those miserable similarities were enough to keep them anchored through the longest night of their lives. They would be alright so long as they were together, and no amount of pulling from the gods would be able to rip apart their embrace now.

Temenos cried against her until he had no tears left to shed, and Malaya simply held him as closely as she could. She hadn’t realized just how much they had both needed this until after it began, but now, she wouldn’t take it back for the world. It was a shame Temenos had only found honesty after such a brutal twist of fate, but at the very least, he wasn’t there to face it alone. He never would be again as long as Malaya had something to say about it. 

The following morning, the travelers saw Temenos with red eyes and tear-stained cheeks. They did not ask what had happened because they did not need to. They already knew, and Malaya knew they were proud of both her and Temenos even in the noncommittal silence.

Chapter Text

The travelers arrived at the New Delsta Anchorage late that night, so it wasn’t a difficult choice for them to all agree they could save their investigation until morning. Throné had wanted to come back to her hometown to look around for any clues as to where to find the keys to her freedom, but the entire party was too tired to really take a search of the city in stride that night. When the sun came up, they would be able to look around New Delsta in full. 

To put it simply, Castti had been exhausted over the last few weeks. The group had just returned from Conning Creek after taking Elena to Clarissa, and leaving her had been a monumental task for them all. Castti had been doing her best to scrub the images of bruises across Elena’s skin from her mind, but it wasn’t working as well as she needed it to. Between that and her own recent spike in flashbacks, her anxiety was keeping her from sleeping at night. The long boat ride to the Brightlands was enough to finally lull Castti off to sleep along with any questions she could have had, but it had been a long-fought battle. 

Unfortunately, the same did not apply to Malaya. She was still awake on account of a constant, uncomfortable instinct of needing to fight for her life. It had been an underlying fear ever since she and Castti first had that random glimpse of a past memory of being attacked as a child, but being in New Delsta made it worse for some reason. It was as if the city itself was trying to battle them as they tried to move beyond the past.

Malaya had been staring at the ceiling for what felt like an eternity, but she hadn’t made any progress in forcing her body to sleep. It had been hours, and the clamor of the city outside had finally died down to a manageable level of background static. The stuffy air of the inn room was starting to suffocate her, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to stay there any longer than she already had. She needed to get out of the inn even if it was just for a few minutes. Maybe that would help her to collect her thoughts again.

Malaya pulled on her satchel and grabbed her axe wordlessly, slipping out as quietly as she could to make sure she didn’t wake her roommate. Throné had always been an easy person to wake, and Malaya didn’t want to disturb her when she was bound to struggle enough throughout the rest of the group’s investigation of New Delsta. She needed her sleep while she could still get it. On top of that, Malaya couldn’t have been able to maintain a full conversation even if she wanted to. She was just too damn tired, and she didn’t want to risk a brush with dialogue if she could avoid it.

Malaya’s head was a blur full of cotton as she started to walk away from the inn. New Delsta was a city that never slept, so even this late at night, there were people milling about the streets. Most of them were Blacksnakes trying to fumble for control in the wake of Mother and Father’s deaths. Malaya ignored every one of them and instead started for the edge of the city. Her legs continued to carry her onward even after that. She barely processed where she was going or what she was trying to accomplish for much of the journey. All that mattered was the crisp sensation of wild air slipping into her lungs with each breath. Her destination was unimportant in comparison to her desire to live for a few fleeting seconds.

It all fell into place as she stopped in front of the tree. 

Malaya’s fingers clenched into fists that bunched up the fabric of her trousers. Of course she had wound up back at the New Delsta Anchorage. She had done her best to not linger at the harbor after the group docked the Grand Terry there earlier in the day, but she wouldn’t have been able to stay away forever. She knew it all too well. How could she not? The tree was exactly the same as she remembered it, and more importantly, the two snowdrops blooming at the base of the roots were identical to their impression in her memories as well. Malaya swallowed dryly before she sat down on the grass in front of the flowers. They were resilient to have found a way to survive in the face of the poison rain. Then again, the power of love had always been persistent and enduring in the face of hardship. That was what made it so alluring and dangerous. 

Malaya would have been lying if she said she knew what to say. She felt as if she had a million things to say to the other Malaya, the one who had given way to her existence in the first place, but she couldn’t muster the proper words to voice any of her thoughts. In the end, she swallowed dryly and folded her hands just a bit too neatly across her lap. “Hello,” Malaya greeted, her voice coming out clipped and hoarse. There were already tears starting to well in her eyes, but she did her best to stifle them. “I… I always knew I would have to talk to you one of these days, but I can’t think of anything to say. I’m sorry.”

Malaya let out another careful breath as the wind ruffled the petals and leaves of the two flowers. She wanted to apologize for everything that had happened. She wanted to say sorry for having to take Castti’s memories of her old lover. She wanted to beg for an undeserved forgiveness for what she had done to take the other Malaya’s place. No matter what, Malaya would never be able to fill the hole in the world and her heart that her inspiration had left behind. Castti hadn’t mentioned it, but Malaya knew it was still a concern. Something like this wouldn’t be able to continue undiscussed forever.

Malaya’s hand came up to rub at her eyes, and she stopped trying to restrict her words to something even vaguely sensible, instead just letting herself speak. “I’ve been looking after Castti ever since Healeaks,” Malaya murmured. “I know that’s what you would have wanted. I guess that’s why our brain chose you to be the one to do it. Out of all the apothecaries… It was you. Of course it was you.” Malaya took a second to breathe, but it did nothing to stabilize her internally or outwardly. “I had to hide everything from Castti at first. It wouldn’t have been safe for her to know what happened right away. All of that… It’s too much for one person to bear. Then again, I suppose that’s why all of this happened.”

Despite Malaya’s best efforts, a few tears slid from her cheeks down to the ground below. One of them splashed across one of the petals of the right snowdrop, and for a few seconds, she could have sworn she saw the outline of the original Malaya collapsed there on the ground against Jeyah, her breathing growing increasingly ragged as the poison killed her inside and out. The vision was gone just as quickly as it had appeared, but it would never be far from Malaya’s mind. That was the price she paid for survival. It was a burden she had wanted to keep Castti safe from, but she wouldn’t have been able to hide it forever. Eventually, the truth was going to come out. The truth always found a way into the light.

Speaking only seemed to become harder as the seconds crawled on, but Malaya kept trying regardless. “You… You always knew, didn’t you?” she asked softly. “You knew there was something… Different about us. You knew we were more than one. If anyone was going to figure it out, I suppose it would have been you… But it’s a shame you never had the chance to tell Castti. I… I think she would have liked it better coming from you than from me.”

Malaya rubbed at her eyes once again, and a sob tried to work its way out of her lips. She suffocated it before it could escape though, forcing herself to continue speaking around the knot in her throat. “I’m sorry for replacing you,” she confessed through her tears. “I know I’ll never be you. No one could ever take your place, and… I know Castti feels the same way. You two were in love, and now… Castti’s still struggling to remember all of that because of me. It feels wrong that I had to take it from her in the first place.” A beat passed in silence. “She still loves you. We haven’t had the chance to talk about it with everything going on, but… She misses you every day. I can feel it. And… I miss you too.”

The sound of the waves lapping at the shore filled Malaya’s ears, and she let out a harsh bark of a laugh. “It’s so selfish of me, isn’t it? I didn’t even exist until after you died. What right do I have to miss you? We never met, at least not when I was myself.” Malaya could still remember it like it was yesterday. She had been suspended in darkness, her body in slumber while her mind was alive. The first taste of life she had came with the horrifying flashbacks of seeing eyes roll back and flesh burn against purple fire in Healeaks. It had been too much for her, and she knew it would be too much for the other silhouette waiting there in the shadows with her. Malaya knew what she had to do before she even knew her own name. She took every memory Castti had of leading Eir’s Apothecaries, and when she did, her identity illuminated itself to her. She was Malaya. 

But what right did she have to be Malaya? She had only experienced Castti’s time in Eir’s Apothecaries through stolen memories. She had been a part of Castti back then, and she hadn’t existed as herself until after all of the people she had treasured through those lost reminiscences were dead and gone. Malaya was the form their mind had chosen to give her when she first came to life, but it didn’t feel right that she held that name or wore that face. She was a parasite, stealing the identity of the person Castti had loved most because she could find no true heart of her own. 

“I didn’t mean to take all of that from you,” Malaya continued, her breathing going ragged from the prolonged effort to silence herself. “I-I didn’t mean to replace you, and… I hope you can forgive me for it even though I know I don’t deserve it.” She paused to steady herself, but it didn’t work, so she just kept talking instead. “I-I’ve been doing everything I can to look after Castti. I know it’s what you would have wanted.” A beat. “I talked to Partitio. You went to Oresrush just before Healeaks, didn’t you?” Another beat. “He thanked me for what you did. It… It doesn’t feel right to accept that though. That was something you did, not me.” 

There was something else for her to talk about. Malaya hated how merciful she found the distraction, but she didn’t try to fight it, instead gladly letting the conversation drift in a different direction. She wouldn’t be able to keep this farce alive forever, but even just a few extra seconds would go a long way to foolishly mending that familiar, old agony in her chest. “We met a lot of new people,” Malaya supplied. “Partitio is one of them. He… He’s been great to me. All of them have, as a matter of fact. Opening up to them has been a struggle, but… They’ve helped a lot with… All of this.” 

She paused once again and offered a frail smile that shattered just as quickly as it had manifested. “They’ve… Accepted me for who I am. I know it’s not easy to deal with all of this, but they’re making the most of it. I don’t know what we would do without them. They were the ones who helped us to stop Trousseau.” Malaya shook her head. “They’re not Eir’s Apothecaries, and they never will be, but… They’re not trying to be. They’re our new team. No matter what, I know they’ll be here for us… Me and Castti, that is.” She let out another heavy sigh. “Though I suppose Castti is the only one who really deserves it.”

Malaya leaned back, her hands gripping at the grass below in a vain attempt to keep her heart held together through some red string of love and fate that had been cut before she was even created. “I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I-I know saying sorry isn’t ever going to be enough after all I took from you, but… I want you to hear it. I mean it with everything I am too. I didn’t want to replace you. I never did. I still don’t.” She tried to breathe again, but her efforts fell short just as they always did. “It’s so ridiculous. I really thought hiding the truth would make it all easier. Castti wasn’t able to handle it back then, but I don’t think she ever would have been ready. She wasn’t ready when I told her either. I just told myself she was. Gods, what right did I have to take her memories of her lover from her? Why was I created in a way that makes me seem like a replacement for you?”

Unable to hold back her tears any longer, Malaya finally let herself weep openly, and her tears continued to water the ground at the base of the twin snowdrops. “I-I’m going to keep looking after Castti. I know it’s n-not the same as you b-being here to do it for yourself, but… I-I want to keep her safe. She d-deserves that much.” She reached out her shaking hands to cup at the petals of one of the snowdrops, and the breeze blew the flower against her fingertips. “I-I’ll never be you, and I know that, but… I-I want to do what I can to h-help. It might not be much, but… I’m going to try.”

Malaya paused for a long time and watched the flowers dance, almost as if she was expecting a response from someone who had been dead for months. When no answer came, Malaya continued to sob, pressing one hand against her face while using the other to gently cup at the snowdrop before her. She would never be the original Malaya, and she knew it. Even so, that wasn’t going to stop her from looking after Castti however she could. It was what she was made for. Their mind had created her for a reason, and it was to protect Castti through thick and thin. The original Malaya may not have been around to do it, but her successor was going to give it her all in her place. It was selfish to think she would be able to do anything for Castti given her status as an inferior imitation, but Malaya was fine with being greedy if it was for Castti’s sake. 

That was one thing she had in common with the woman who had inspired her creation. They would do anything for Castti. That common vow bound them together across the river of life and death, and it would continue to do so until the day Castti’s body finally gave out. The original Malaya had given her life so that Castti could live, and her heir had kept every secret she needed to for the sake of the one she loved most. It hadn’t been pretty for either one of them, but it had been enough to help them to survive, and in the end, that was all that mattered. 

Malaya knew she would never be able to measure up to the legacy the original Malaya had left behind. Even thinking of herself on the same level as her felt like an act of treason. Calling Castti her lover was yet another betrayal regardless of how true it was. She was not the woman who she had been created to follow, and she never would be. She could just hope she would be enough to defend Castti for as long as her services were needed. 

Malaya leaned against the tree gently as her body refused to support her own weight under the stress of her open sobbing. She looked down at the snowdrops through her tears, watching the petals and leaves dance as all lovers should. The waves continued to clash gently with the nearby shore, and Malaya closed her eyes, she could almost see what that day must have been like for her predecessor. She could have sworn she could see the outline of the skiff against the sea, Castti’s collapsed form at the center of it all. It was a cruel twist of fate, wasn’t it? Malaya had been born the very day her inspiration had died. One could not exist so long as the other drew breath. Her existence was a selfish one, and she could only hope she would be able to make it into something helpful with this stolen time she had been granted. 

Malaya could have sworn she felt a gentle hand fall upon her shoulder, but it bore little similarity to the sensation when it came from inside of her mind. She wondered in passing if perhaps the ghost of the woman who had given rise to her existence was there watching over her. There was no way of knowing, but the breeze seemed to blow a bit differently around her. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. 

When Malaya next closed her eyes, she could have sworn she heard the wind whisper, I love you. 

When she opened her eyes, she saw nothing but the snowdrops, the roots of the tree, and the ocean that had forged her.

Chapter Text

The day Ori woke up, the sun was shining. 

The dawn had been restored, and the weeks spent in perpetual darkness were little more than bitter memories of a bygone past. Vide’s fall may have seemed like it signaled the end of the travelers’ time together, but they had one more duty to perform before they could part ways in full. Their journey took them back to a city they detested, and while the cultist citizens of Crackridge had not gotten any kinder with the end of the world, one person had. 

The decision to revisit Ori was a simple and unanimous one. Regardless of how close the various members of the party were with her, they still wanted to see how she was faring after her plans had failed. None of them could have expected what the reflection of the Sacred Flame showed them in the shadows of the Fellsun Ruins. The Ori they had known was kind, optimistic, and quick-witted in a way few others were. She was all smiles and joy, but thinking back on it now, those grins never quite reached her eyes. The light never found its way through the thick walls of her heart, and the first traces of true love came a bit too late for her to stop herself entirely. 

But she had a chance. Despite it all, Ori had survived, and she had all the time in the world to make things right. What she chose to do with that time was her own decision, but she would have a team of kind, loving people there to guide her next steps no matter what. Ori had not chosen love or life immediately, but the travelers had chosen her anyway, and they would never dare to abandon her. 

Ori came out of the darkness slowly, and for a long time, all she did was stare at the ceiling of the inn room that had been made hers ever since her attempt on her own life. Eventually, Partitio was able to convince her to talk a little bit about everything that brought her to that point of hatred and collapse, but it wasn’t a conclusive exploration of all that Ori had been through. She wasn’t ready for that yet, and there was no way of saying when she would be. Regardless, she would not be alone when she was finally open to sharing the truth. The travelers had vowed to stay there with her for as long as it took her to recover. It was slated to be their final act as a group of eight, and they would not sacrifice that kindness for anything when their friend needed it most.

In the week and a half since Ori awoke, Castti, Malaya, and Eir had fallen into a predictable routine of looking after her. They brewed a tincture to help with the lingering pain of her stab wound when they first woke up, and Ori would take it at the same time each day. When they brought it to her, they would stay for as long as she wanted them to. There was always variation therein, but the consistent thread was that she never wanted company for long. Through some blend of stubbornness and grief, Ori insisted on isolating herself for as long as she could get away with it. The travelers were always there on the other side of the door if she found herself seeking company, but she never sought them out. Somehow, it was too gargantuan a task for her weakened body and heart, and she couldn’t be asked to try and work through that barricade of effort. 

Malaya was the one in control on this particular morning, and as per usual, she woke up early and got to work on Ori’s medicine. Soon, she wouldn’t need any at all, but Malaya was happy to make what Ori required in the meantime. The task was predictable and simple, and sometimes, the busywork was exactly what Malaya needed. She had gotten better at sitting with her own thoughts in her own silence, but doing something with her hands always assuaged her darker worries when they found her. She liked to feel productive and purposeful above all else, and she doubted that would ever change. 

When Malaya entered Ori’s room, her patient was already awake on the bed. Just like every other morning, Ori’s eyes were trained on the ceiling. At a first glance, it didn’t seem as if she was paying attention to the world around her, but Malaya knew better than to fall for that. Ori was smarter than she seemed, and she had played the part of an eager puppy for long enough to hone her skills of deceiving others to a refined dagger point. Even when she was exhausted and worn down, Ori was trying her best to hide how she truly felt, and Malaya was beginning to fear the scrivener would never let her walls down at all. The two of them had a lot more in common than either one of them wanted to admit, and that was perhaps the most terrifying part of their circumstances.

Malaya sat down on the wooden chair just to the right of Ori’s bed, the daylight of the rising sun streaming in through the window warming the skin on the back of her neck. “Morning, Ori,” Malaya hummed, her voice coming out as a low but soothing rumble in her chest. The scrivener’s eyes flicked over in Malaya’s direction for the briefest of moments before she turned her attention back to the ceiling. “I’ve got your medicine.”

For a few seconds, Ori remained still before letting out a heavy sigh and forcing herself into a seated position. Malaya handed her the bottle of medicine before Ori downed it all at once. Past patients had complained about the taste, but Ori never said a word about it. If her journal was any indication, she had likely gotten used to eating whatever she had access to years ago regardless of how much she enjoyed the taste. It was to be expected of someone who had grown up surrounded by war and heartache with seemingly no end. Either way, Ori pressed the bottle back into Malaya’s hands a moment later before laying down once more. She went back to wordlessly staring at the ceiling immediately after the fact, barely seeming to notice that Malaya was there even though the apothecary knew Ori was all too aware of her presence. 

Malaya was halfway tempted to let that be the end of it. Ori clearly didn’t want to talk to her, and Malaya didn’t want to push her too far and risk upsetting her. On the other hand, the only person who had heard anything substantial from Ori in the last week was Partitio. Maybe she needed a bit of encouragement from someone else to finally start opening up about everything on her mind. Malaya knew how dangerous it was to be left alone with one’s own thoughts, and she wouldn’t wish a prison of the mind’s creation upon anyone. She had been put in that position due to both her own stubbornness and the pressures of the world in the past, and she detested it. As easy as it would have been to give Ori space, Malaya couldn’t do it. Not anymore. 

Instead, Malaya put the bottle back in her satchel to be cleaned out later before folding her hands and resting them on her lap. “How are you feeling?” she asked. She knew questioning if Ori was okay wouldn’t end well; of course she wasn’t okay. If she had been, she wouldn’t have tried to stab herself to death. If Ori was okay, none of this would have happened in the first place.

Silence was the only response Malaya received for a long while, not that she had expected anything else. Ori had been through a lot, and if she wasn’t ready to talk yet, then Malaya wouldn’t be able to force her. The best thing she could offer was a place to share her woes when she was open to the idea. An extended hand was the only blessing Ori could receive until she was willing to return the favor. Malaya just hoped that would be enough. 

Before Malaya had the chance to fully lose hope in the conversation, Ori swallowed dryly, her lips pressing together tightly against her teeth. “Why are you doing this?” she asked softly, her voice coming out scratchy and weary. Her eyes were just as distant as before, but there was a new glassy sheen to them now that caught Malaya by quiet surprise. 

In all honesty, Malaya didn’t know how to answer that question. It was vague, but in Ori’s mind, it was all she needed to say. Malaya could have asked for elaboration, but she didn’t want to let this chance slip away as long as she had it. If she pushed Ori, then the scrivener could have told her to forget about the question entirely, and Malaya refused to take that chance. She had no idea what response Ori was looking for, but she was going to try and give her at least something. 

“I want to help you,” Malaya eventually settled on saying. “A long time ago, someone dear to my heart vowed to extend a helping hand to all those in need. I want to do what I can to uphold that creed. You may not see yourself as someone worthy of help, but I do.” Ori’s fingers tightened into fists, and her irises seemed to shake before she forced them into stillness once more. “You need a chance right now, and even if you think the world has given up on you… There are people that never will.”

“But I shouldn’t have a chance,” Ori snapped back, still refusing to even think of looking in Malaya’s direction. “I’m not supposed to be here right now. I should’ve died in that damn cave, but I couldn’t even do that right. What’s the point of anything if I can’t even do the one thing I was there to do in the first place?”

“That was what they told you, was it?” Malaya asked, and Ori’s shoulders knotted themselves together with tension. “The Moonshade Order taught you that your life was only as good as the despair it could bring to other people. You were a sacrifice from the start, and you were fine with that? You really wanted to die?”

Ori groaned and rolled over, turning her back to Malaya in the process. “Don’t ask leading questions like that,” she demanded, her voice stern but not harsh. “This wasn’t just about me. I thought there was no point to being alive anymore as long as the world was such a horrible place. They agreed. We were all going to die anyway. What would the difference have been if I died then or later?”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Malaya reminded her, keeping her voice as even and gentle as she could manage. “Did you really want to die? Were you really hoping to go to sleep and never wake up?”

Ori’s fingers clenched for a moment before relaxing ever so slightly a moment later. “I…” She shook her head, and a few tears stained the pillow beneath her. “I really thought I did. I was sure I did, but then… Partitio… All of you…” She shook her head, though the motion was stifled by the pillow’s presence. “I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t want any of you to give me hope again. You just had to go and make everything so damn complicated. I… I really thought I was happy with dying, but then… Then…”

A small sob tore its way from Ori’s lips, and silence fell between the two women. Malaya let out a small sigh and leaned back in her chair. “When did it start?” she questioned softly. “When was the first time you wanted to die?”

For a long time, Ori was silent, biting down with ferocious grief on her bottom lip in an effort to silence her sadness. Malaya halfway wondered if Ori wasn’t going to respond at all, but just when that fear was about to settle in, Ori finally spoke. “I don’t know,” she admitted thickly. “I feel like I just… Always have. The war with Ku… It was too much to handle. I saw so many people die, and I didn’t understand why it happened. Why were they all dying while I was still alive? Is there enough nobility in war to spare children but to still force them to see their neighbors slaughtered? I never understood why I was still alive. My body wanted to live, but I… I don’t know if I ever did.”

Ori let out a heavy sigh and gripped the pillowcase between her fingertips. “I didn’t understand why any of it had to happen,” she confessed. “Hinoeuma was at war, and all anyone there knew how to do was kill each other. When I first left the desert with my brother… I was angry. It was like the rest of the world didn’t care. As long as the war hadn’t been brought to their doorsteps, they had no reason to care. It felt like my world had ended every day for years, and nobody could be asked to give a shit. That was what solidified it for me… No one deserved to live. It wasn’t just Hinoeuma. That horror was everywhere, and nobody did anything to fix it. It was all apathy, and it always would be.”

Ori growled angrily, her grip on the pillowcase growing ever tighter. “But then you all had to show up and make it so much harder. I didn’t want to live until all of you came along. I didn’t think anyone deserved to live until I met you all in Clockbank. Everything was so simple back then. The world could just be evil, no questions asked. But then… It all changed.” Her fingers relaxed ever so slightly. “I hated it… But I liked it too. It was all so wrong, and… It still feels like it is. I don’t know if it’ll ever feel right again.”

Malaya tilted her face up so she was staring at the ceiling the same way Ori had so many times over the last week and a half. Her body was protesting the words she was about to speak before she could fully form them, but she pushed past the war in her throat with everything she had regardless. “You know… There was a point where I felt the same way,” she admitted. “It was right after what happened in Healeaks. Our body was asleep, but I was alive, and… I was angry. I didn’t understand how someone we loved and trusted so dearly could do something so horrible to those he loved.” Malaya let out a joyless laugh. “Castti was the reason I snapped out of it. She’s always been so kind. I was so angry and scared after Healeaks, but she still found the strength to love even people who hated her. That reminded me that there was hope in this world, and… I’m glad she reminded me of that. I don’t even want to think of what would have happened if she hadn’t.”

Malaya swallowed around the knot that was rising steadily in her throat and forced herself to keep talking despite her body’s screaming and begging for her silence. “I didn’t understand why I was here for a long time. I knew that I had to protect Castti, but… I was just an inferior imitation of the woman she loved. What could I do when I hadn’t even been able to stop the genocide in Healeaks? When I hadn’t existed in time to fix anything?” She shook her head and turned her attention back in Ori’s direction. “Why did I get to live when so many others had died in order for us to be there? It made no sense to me, and… It wasn’t until I reached out to Castti that everything started to come together. I learned I’m more than a replacement for the other Malaya. I’m more than just the purpose I can serve to help other people. I deserve to exist even if I don’t always feel like it.”

Malaya’s thumbs rubbed together gently, and she watched them move with a practiced softness she had learned from those she loved most. “We wanted to die at one point too,” she continued. “It’s hard to walk around carrying the ghosts of every person who sacrificed themselves so you could keep living. The pressure was too much for us, and…” She remembered the way she had almost wanted to surrender there in the woods near Cropdale, to let all of the darkness drift away in favor of a peace she hadn’t known in all her time existing herself. It had felt so easy, and yet… “It was only thanks to the people we love that we didn’t do it. I didn’t want to hurt Castti, Ochette, or anyone else. Castti couldn’t do it to me or our other friends either. Coming back from that was hard, but… We did it. We’re still here, and I’m happy we are.” Malaya looked up, and she allowed herself to smile ever so slightly. “I’m happy you’re here too, Ori.”

Silence continued to reign over their conversation for a few moments after Malaya fell silent. Slowly but surely, Ori began to roll over so she was facing the apothecary once again, and when she did so, all the tears in her eyes made themselves bitterly clear around her exhaustion. “I… I didn’t know,” she murmured. “I knew everyone in the Order was trying to keep an eye on you, but I didn’t think–”

“I didn’t think so either,” Malaya confessed with a dark laugh even though she knew discussing her darkest ideation was not the same as the Moonshade Order seeking her demise. The spirit of death hung over both ideas though, and for Malaya, that was enough of a connection to draw. “I didn’t think I wanted to die until that moment, and… It felt so easy. I almost convinced myself that was what I really needed. I don’t know what would have happened if Castti and Ochette hadn’t been there to remind me there’s more to life than the pain I’ve suffered, but… I don’t want to think about it either.” She looked down to Ori’s clenched hand with a somber smile. “You might hate that you survived, but I’m glad you did. All of us are.”

“But I didn’t deserve to,” Ori countered, her tears threatening openly to spill free. “I worked with people who did horrible things to you and all of your friends. I messed everything up. Why am I still here? I didn’t want to live until the last second after I had already stabbed myself. What about my life was worth saving?”

“You were,” Malaya said simply. “I told you before that I want to extend a hand to all those in need, and that includes you. I know you don’t want to accept my help, or anyone else’s for that matter, and there’s probably nothing I can say to change your mind until you’re ready to make that difference for yourself. Still… There are a lot of people here who care about you, and thinking of them brought you back for a reason.” She reached out and took Ori’s fingers in her own, creating patterns with her thumb across Ori’s shaking knuckles. “I’m not going to tell you that you have some higher purpose, but… I will tell you that we’re all happy you’re still here. You came into our lives whether you like it or not, and now that you’re here… We’re never going to let you go. Maybe you don’t have the same purpose you thought you had before when you were going to sacrifice yourself… But that’s okay. Sometimes, just living is enough, and… I’m glad you chose life in the end.”

That was all it took for Ori to practically launch herself into Malaya’s arms, and the apothecary gladly accepted the embrace. Malaya hid it by pressing her face into Ori’s shoulder, but she was starting to cry in the silence as well. “I… I don’t want to die anymore,” Ori whispered, speaking the words fearfully as if they were a betrayal to the gods themselves. “I don’t know if I ever did. I wanted the world to be good, and all of you… With you, I felt like it really could have been. For the first time, I wanted to wake up in the morning, and…” She hugged Malaya a little bit tighter. “I don’t want to lose that.”

Malaya rubbed her hand in gentle circles across Ori’s back to soothe the younger woman, and she smiled ever so slightly. “Then it’s a good thing you’re still here,” she murmured. “No matter what, you’ll never be alone. This life wasn’t made to be handled on your own anyway.” Malaya pulled Ori in a little bit tighter. “Thank you for living, Ori.”

Ori sniffled and pressed her face against Malaya’s shoulder, not bothering to restrain the sob that escaped her a moment later. “You’re welcome.”

Chapter Text

The path forward after the group left Timberain was easy enough to chart out: they needed to go to Gravell to save Elena from Harvey. After that, they would simply have to see what they needed to do next. Until then, they could rest well knowing they were leaving Timberain a better place than they had found it. Trousseau’s poison rain plan had been stopped completely, and with him dead, no one needed to fear another incident like that. 

For the first time in weeks, Castti was finally calm enough to maintain a level head. She had certainly been better, but she was starting to climb out of her anxious rut after struggling to keep a grip on her composure for what felt like an eternity. With Healeaks and Timberain both in the past, Castti could focus on herself at long last. She had felt better after stopping Trousseau, but she still needed more time before she would be back in peak form. 

To the surprise of no one, Castti was exhausted after pushing herself so much over the last few weeks. Once she heard the truth behind Healeaks, Castti buried herself in her work and neglected food and sleep as a tragic consequence of her anxiety. They wouldn’t be able to fully make up for that lost sleep, but Castti and Malaya could still take it easy until they were back to feeling like themselves. At this point, that was the best they could do. 

Castti especially needed to lie low and let herself recuperate given how intense her recollection process had been. That left Malaya in charge of their shared body on the journey out of Timberain on their way up to Gravell. They were set to stop off in Wellgrove for the night, and while it would be a brief stay, everyone was looking forward to sleeping in a bed rather than in cots on the grass. 

Malaya would have been lying if she said she liked Wellgrove. She had come into the city uneasy given the rumors of a Blacksnake orphanage being in the town, and as it turned out, she had been right to worry. In the time since the Rondwell family had fallen from grace, the Blacksnake corruption in Wellgrove had only grown worse. Even when Partitio started to revitalize the city, there was an underlying feeling of anxiety dancing around in everyone’s peripheral vision. Alrond had done as much as he could to crush the Blacksnake activity following Mother’s death, but Malaya’s distaste for Wellgrove never quite faded. She doubted it ever would. 

After all, even if she pushed through that initial wave of anxiety surrounding the Blacksnake garden, there was something else that followed her through the crowded streets of Wellgrove. This was the city where she had been exposed by Temenos. Back when it first happened, Malaya hated him for it. She had gone so far to try and keep her existence a secret, but Temenos had cast that mask aside all while wearing that obnoxious smirk of his. Malaya’s rage had cooled with time though, and now, the city was little more than a muted frustration to her. Sure, being in Wellgrove was better than sleeping on the ground, but she didn’t have positive memories of the city either. She wished the group could have skipped it, but she couldn’t make a strong enough argument for that, so she instead remained silent. 

Staying quiet was no problem for her at all. In fact, it was in Malaya’s nature to remain secluded and silent. Up until very recently, she couldn’t speak out unless she felt it was time for Castti to regain a few of her memories without running the risk of exposing herself for what she really was. She had thought it would be safest for Castti to think of her as a ghost or a phantom rather than tell her the truth. Now, Malaya was happy she had been forced to open up, but talking to Castti and talking to the other travelers were two entirely separate beasts. 

The latter was the reason Malaya hadn’t tried to suggest they skip over staying in Wellgrove. She hadn’t talked to them enough to justify them needing to consider her feelings on the matter. How could Malaya even ask for that accommodation in the first place? Would it have been right to tell the others to avoid Wellgrove because Castti had a mental breakdown there on their last visit even if it meant they had to skip out on buying supplies? It wouldn’t work, and Malaya was already fully aware of it. She knew Partitio would want to visit Alrond as long as they were in the area anyway, so there was no point in putting up a fight. 

Castti had gone to sleep at some point in their mind on the road to Wellgrove. Her exhaustion had finally gotten the best of her, leaving Malaya as the only one in control of their body. Castti needed the rest, and Malaya was more than happy to take on the burden of handling the world so she could breathe for a while. She wasn’t used to being around the rest of the group, but she would still take on that weight if it would grant Castti a reprieve. 

Malaya hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her conversation with Castti back in Timberain ever since she took full control though. Castti wanted her to make friends as herself rather than by hiding who she was, but Malaya didn’t know how she was meant to do that. Reaching out to the travelers about this would feel strange, and that was the bulk of the problem. She needed to make connections on her own, but Malaya felt bad about inserting herself into a dynamic that everyone else had been enjoying and expanding for almost a year. She didn’t want to intrude on something that didn’t naturally include her. The other travelers reached out to her to invite her to join them, yes, but that did little to assuage her guilt. She knew where she stood, and it was outside of their circle.

That wasn’t to say Malaya didn’t want to make friends. Of course she did. She had been alone with only her own thoughts for too long, and she needed someone to rely on… But she couldn’t reach out to the travelers. It wouldn’t be right. Malaya didn’t know who she was going to make friends with if it wasn’t the travelers, but she would figure something out. 

In a vague attempt at something like self-comfort, Malaya found herself walking the familiar path to the Wellgrove tavern after hours spent at the inn. She couldn’t say she felt entirely satisfied with her physical appearance, but she didn’t know what to do about it either. She far preferred a pair of pants to Castti’s regular dress, but Malaya felt too guilty to change out of it. This was Castti’s life first and foremost, and Malaya didn’t want to intrude on that. 

Perhaps that was where a majority of her issues came from, Malaya mused as she slid onto a barstool near the counter. She was desperate to not cross any lines of taking Castti’s life as her own. She had been happy with just looking after Castti for the last few months, so why did she need to go beyond that?

And more importantly, why did Malaya want to?

She was being selfish. Of course she was. Malaya was a protector above all else, and she couldn’t step out of those boundaries just because she wanted to. It wouldn’t have been right. It was wrong for Malaya to want more than she already had. She needed to push her treacherous thoughts out of her head as soon as possible. It could start to impact her ability to look after Castti, and if that happened, then–

“Mind if I sit here?”

Malaya nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of a voice just to her right, and she glanced up to see a young man wearing muted brown and gray clothes and a matching flat hat. It took her mind an embarrassingly long time to catch up with what she was seeing to tell her this was Alrond. He had that odd habit of sneaking out into town while dressing up as a commoner. The rich were different, Malaya supposed. 

She was so shocked to see Alrond of all people there in the tavern so late in the evening that she couldn’t bring herself to do much more than nod numbly in his direction. Alrond was already sitting down even before she gave him her approval, and Malaya doubted he would have left even if she told him to. He didn’t seem to notice her hesitation though, instead shooting her a surprisingly bright smile for this time of the night. “I hear we have something of a celebrity in our midst,” Alrond continued. “The one and only savior of Timberain.”

Malaya’s cheeks went pink and warm before she could stop them. “I-I didn’t do that much,” she stammered. All she had really done was push Castti in the right direction to figure out what ingredients she would need to blend up the remedy. Castti had been the real star of the show, and Malaya wouldn’t have had it any other way. 

Alrond’s features twisted with muted confusion. “That’s not what I heard. I was under the impression an apothecary in blue had saved the day with a tincture to counter the poison rain.” 

Malaya realized a bit too late that Alrond didn’t know about there being a difference between her and Castti, and the heat that had rushed to her face turned traitorous and scalding in the blink of an eye. “I… It’s complicated.” Alrond arched an eyebrow to silently ask her to continue, and Malaya sighed restlessly. “I know it might seem like I did that, but it wasn’t really me. It was…” Malaya cut herself off with a shake of her head. Why was she explaining this to Alrond in the first place? Surely he had better things to be doing than listening to her ramble on about the difference between her and Castti. 

For a few heavy seconds, Alrond stared at Malaya with unreadable eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” he eventually settled on telling her. “How about you start from the beginning?”

Malaya knew she should have swung her legs off the side of the barstool and excused herself to the inn for the night. She didn’t want to bore Alrond with all her complaints of not feeling like a person when it didn’t matter all that much… But despite her best judgement, Malaya found herself nodding and starting to explain herself. “When we were here the first time, you met Castti as one of Partitio’s friends,” Malaya began. “Castti… She’s not the only one in this body. I’m here too, and… My name is Malaya.”

“That’s why you seemed so different tonight,” Alrond realized with a dawning light in his eyes. “I thought something about you was off, but I couldn’t quite put a finger on it. That makes a lot more sense.” 

Malaya continued to stare at him for a short while longer, unable to figure out how Alrond could find any of this even remotely normal. She would have expected him to be shocked to hear that the Castti he had known–albeit only in passing–was only half the picture of those who occupied her body. Instead though, he was greeting her with the same warm smile Malaya had seen Partitio, Agnea, and all of the other travelers wear back in Timberain. She didn’t understand any of it. Why didn’t they think of her as an intruder? That was all she could ever find herself to be. 

Alrond noticed her hesitate for just a bit too long though, and his smile began to droop at the corners. “For someone who just helped to save Timberain, you seem awfully sad,” he went on. “A leaf for your thoughts?”

Once again, Malaya’s mind told her to forget about all of this and just go back to the inn… But she was talking before she could convince her body to move. “I feel weird being here,” she confessed. “I want to do what I can to look after Castti. It’s the reason I exist. Going outside of that… I feel like I’m crossing a line of some kind. This is Castti’s life, not mine. I don’t want to get in the way of that.”

“Why can’t it be both of your lives?” Alrond asked. Malaya opened her mouth to respond but found no words, so she pressed her lips together again a moment later. “As far as I can tell, you’ve been focused quite a bit on business as of late… But I think it would help you a lot to take a step back and think about enjoying yourself.”

“But that’s not what I’m here for,” Malaya insisted. “I appeared because I needed to look after Castti. Now though… Everything has been solved. She saved Timberain, and there will never be another poison rain incident. I’m covering for her while she catches up on a bit of rest, but–”

“You can say all you want that you’re not here to enjoy yourself, but I won’t be buying that quite so easily,” Alrond protested. “Every person deserves the chance to be happy. You may think of your purpose as being all about business, but there’s more to life than that.” He gestured to his drab clothing with one hand. “Do you think I would be out here dressed like this if I didn’t enjoy it, for example?”

Malaya once again tried to respond only to fall short. In the end, she sighed and chose to turn her attention away from Alrond to instead stare at the distance between herself and the wall. “I feel wrong for being here,” she reiterated. “I was created to protect her, but I don’t think she’s going to need that anymore. I don’t think she’s going to need me anymore.”

“And has she told you that?” Alrond questioned. When Malaya didn’t immediately answer, he knew what her response was going to be. “You can’t assume things of people haphazardly. I’m certain you would feel much better if you listened to what she had to say about all of this. If she really wanted you to leave her alone, then she would have said as much. I doubt she would string you along for something so important.”

“I… I guess not,” Malaya murmured. He was right about that not being in Castti’s nature. Of course she wouldn’t do something like that. She was too kind and loving for that… But what if she was just trying to find a way to let Malaya down easily? The fact of the matter was that there was no point for Malaya to be there anymore. Her purpose had been fulfilled, and Castti had remembered everything Malaya had been keeping from her. Why was Malaya still there if she had no reason to look after Castti now that everything was resolved?

Alrond adjusted his posture slightly in the chair, and he chose to stare off at the wall just like Malaya. “If you ask me, you’re the one getting in your own way right now,” he told her. “I know a thing or two about hiding who I am, but I always do it because I want to, not because I think it would make others happiest. As far as I can tell, you’re getting too caught up in your own thoughts and failing to consider what those around you would really think.”

Malaya wanted to protest, but she knew there wouldn’t be much of a point in trying. Alrond was right, wasn’t he? If she really wanted to know what was going on with Castti’s thoughts toward her, then Malaya would just need to ask her for the truth. Making out of character assumptions about Castti wasn’t going to help either one of them. The best way to resolve this would be to talk about it… Though Malaya had no idea how she was going to go about something like that. 

“I… I don’t know what to do about the others either,” Malaya eventually confessed before she could hold her tongue still enough to prevent the thought from escaping. “I want to spend more time with them. They’re all such great people, and they love Castti so much, but… I don't want to get in the way of everything they’ve already been developing for the better part of a year now. It wouldn’t be right. I don’t want to force myself into a place I don’t belong.”

“I ask again… Did any of them directly tell you that they don’t want you around?” Alrond challenged, and Malaya shook her head slowly. “Then there’s your answer. Do you think people like that would feign interest in you? At the very least, I know Partitio to be too earnest for that… And he keeps company that believes in the same things he does.” He looked over to Malaya, and she found herself turning to meet his gaze as well. “I think you should give them a chance. You could spare a chance for yourself too. You certainly need it.”

Malaya swallowed around the knot that had risen in her throat. “Do you really think they would want to get to know me?” she asked softly. Castti had insisted on her trying to make friends, but Malaya hadn’t been able to bring herself to do anything with that concept yet. It felt like too massive a hurdle to overcome. If Alrond was right about all of this though, then… 

“I’m sure of it,” Alrond confirmed with a surprisingly warm smile. “Your entire group is full of incredible people. You just need to be willing to reach out to them to say what you need first… And if you ask me, that starts with shedding this disguise of yours.”

“Disguise?” Malaya echoed, her eyes going wide. She looked down at the outfit, pretending she didn’t wince when she saw that she was still wearing a skirt. “These are just clothes I found in Castti’s bags.”

“But you’re not comfortable in them, are you?” Alrond questioned, and Malaya hesitated before shaking her head once again. “Then it’s time for you to change things up enough to feel happy in your own skin.”

Malaya couldn’t help snorting playfully in response. “That’s awfully rich coming from someone who hides his identity every time he goes out into his own city.”

“I’m choosing to do this,” Alrond reminded her. “I would never force someone else to hide who they really are for the sake of something like this. It wouldn’t be right… And it’s not right when you force yourself to hide who you are for the imaginary benefit of others. If you ask me, I think you need to take a step back and be honest with yourself. Stop making assumptions about everyone. The rest will fall into place from there.”

Malaya thought about it for a few long seconds before nodding. “I… I will,” she whispered. The previous teasing gleam in her eyes subsided in favor of a fragile but sincere smile. “Thank you for talking to me about all of this. It really does mean a lot.”

“What can I say? I know a thing or two about performances… And I think you need to stop yours,” Alrond replied with a smile that glowed just as bright as his words. He swung his legs off the barstool and turned toward the door. “Next time you’re in town, feel free to come by the mansion. I’d love to hear how everything is going, Malaya. Until then, good luck.”

Alrond was gone before Malaya could even think of asking him to stay, and she let out a heavy sigh as the door tapped shut behind him. He hadn’t even bought a drink, instead seemingly only popping in long enough to give Malaya the company she so desperately needed. She appreciated it though; she had needed that reality check more than she could have ever imagined. 

Alrond was right about everything he had told her. Malaya couldn’t assume how others felt about her without ever giving them the chance to explain themselves. It wasn’t fair to them, and it wasn’t good for her either. She couldn’t make any friends unless she was willing to let herself be vulnerable enough for them to actually talk to her, and Malaya was the only one who could make that change for herself.

If she was going to start embracing life as more than just Castti’s protector, then she would need to take Alrond’s advice in full. Malaya wasn’t comfortable in Castti’s skirts and dresses, but she didn’t need to silently yearn for a pair of trousers. She could just pick some up from the Wellgrove department store that night before it closed. That way, she would be able to dress according to her comfort going forward. It was a small step, but it was one she knew she needed to take.

Malaya rose to her feet with a small but genuine smile on her face, and she started toward the door en route to the department store. She certainly hadn’t expected to find such deep companionship in the tavern of a city she disliked, but she wasn’t complaining about it either. Alrond had given her the push she needed, and Malaya was going to put his advice into action. He was right about her putting on a performance for those around her, and it was high time she finally made herself stop. 

From then on, Malaya was going to let herself be known. It was terrifying and thrilling simultaneously, but she had to take the plunge one day. In order to find love, she would need to step beyond the comforts of the mask she had worn for so long. 

And for the first time, Malaya knew she would be able to do it.

Chapter Text

Malaya didn’t think she would ever feel ready for this. 

The party’s time in Merry Hills had come and gone, and they were resting at the inn for one more night before they returned to Cropdale to visit Agnea’s father and sister for a few days. It was all she wanted to do after winning the Grand Gala and truly becoming a star. No one could have refused Agnea a request like that even if they tried. She was just too sweet to deny, especially after she had proven herself on the highest stage in all of Solistia. 

Unfortunately, Malaya now had to learn the price of having to listen to Agnea when she requested something. She had spoken with Agnea the day before they arrived in Merry Hills about everything that she had been thinking of recently, and now, she was being expected to hold true to her word. Agnea had wondered why Malaya was so stiff about discussing her feelings, and Malaya had explained that she didn’t feel she had a right to as long as she was just an inferior imitation of the original Malaya who had died back in Healeaks. To that, Agnea had requested that she speak with Castti to see if she was really nothing but an imitation as she claimed. Malaya couldn’t possibly think of anything she wanted to do less, but she knew she would need to do it sooner or later. 

Whether Malaya wanted to admit it or not, Castti was starting to catch on. She did her best to not probe the subject in a way that would make Malaya uncomfortable, but she still watched Malaya just a bit too closely like she was expecting her to cave in under the pressure of some unknown phantom when she was pushed in the wrong direction. Malaya wanted to assure her that everything was fine and she had nothing to worry about, but she knew that would have been ingenuine. She couldn’t do that to her without at least trying to tell the truth. It wouldn’t have been right. Malaya was many things, but she liked to believe a liar and a hypocrite was not one of them. 

And so, once the rest of the travelers settled in for the night, Malaya eased herself back onto her bed for the night. She was tempted to stare up at the ceiling until some magical force swooped in to keep her from needing to have this conversation, but she already knew it wouldn’t be quite so simple. Malaya swallowed back all of the anxiety she had been doing her best to ignore up to that point and retreated into the recesses of her mind. This was a conversation that would need to happen at some point or another, and running from it wouldn’t help anyone, even if Malaya wished somehow it would help her.

Castti was already waiting for Malaya at the table in their mind’s reconstruction of their home in Healeaks. She was humming as she toyed away with a handful of herbs. Malaya wasn’t certain of when a garden had started growing outside their mental version of their old home, but it had certainly helped to keep her, Castti, and Eir entertained when they weren’t in control of the body. If nothing else, it helped the time to go by a little bit faster, and for that, they would always be grateful.

Castti was so lost in thought that she didn’t even notice Malaya had arrived in front of her until after Malaya shifted back and forth between her feet twice. With that, Castti looked up with a smile that shone brighter than the sun. Malaya’s heart fluttered in her chest. She couldn’t have possibly found a better woman to fall so completely in love with. “Ah, Malaya!” Castti greeted. She set the herbs down and gestured for Malaya to join her at the table. “How is everything going? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Malaya replied automatically even though she knew that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Castti seemed to figure that out too, and her gaze softened just enough to make Malaya wonder if she was pitying her. “I… I just wanted to talk to you about something. Do you have a minute?” Malaya almost wanted Castti to say no so they could forget all about this. It certainly would have felt easier for her. 

But Castti was never one to refuse the requests of others, least of all Malaya. “Of course,” she smiled. She moved her chair a bit closer to Malaya before reaching out to take her hands. The touch was every bit as comforting as her smile, and Malaya’s heart threatened to give out on her once again. “What is it you wanted to talk about?”

Malaya’s throat nearly closed up on her entirely from that one question. She had known for ages that she would need to do this, but that didn’t make actually doing it any easier. How could she phrase this in the first place? Castti hadn’t said anything to make Malaya feel this way, and yet, she had been struggling beneath the weight of her anxiety for as long as she could remember. She hadn’t breathed a word of it to Castti in all that time. How could Malaya even think of opening up about it? Somehow, just imagining what it would be like to express her insecurities made her feel as if she was waiting to be stabbed through the chest. 

“I… Um…” Malaya stammered and tried to start her sentence again at least three more times before she let out a heavy sigh that nearly made her ribcage cave in. “I wanted to ask what you think of me.” She fiddled with the hem of her shirt for a few seconds more before the silence grew long enough to nearly suffocate her. “Is… Is it okay that I’m here?”

Castti’s grip on Malaya’s fingers tightened. “Of course it’s okay that you’re here, Malaya,” she assured her. For some dark, forbidden reason, it didn’t make Malaya feel any better. “I don’t think any of us would be here at all if you hadn’t been there to help us after what happened in Healeaks. I’m so glad you were there for me. I don’t think I can ever say it enough.”

That only made the tightness in Malaya’s chest heavier, and she bit down on her lip with all the force in the world. As long as they were within the confines of their own mind, Malaya didn’t need to worry about breaking the skin, so she gladly used it as the sole output for her quiet rage with herself. “But are you really okay with me being here?” she asked before she could hold herself back. “I’m not… I’m not her. I’m not the real Malaya. You two were in love before Healeaks happened. You would have been getting married soon. How is it okay with you that I’m just… Here after that? I’m not her. I’ll never be her. Doesn’t it bother you that I’m imitating the woman you loved?”

Malaya only realized everything she had said after she had finished talking. She wanted to pull her hand out of Castti’s grip and hide somewhere until all of this fixed itself. She yearned for some distant miracle to somehow pull all of this together when she didn’t need to be there to see it through for herself. Malaya didn’t know if she would be able to stand just waiting there with Castti for any longer than she already had. Her being there was wrong, and if Castti hadn’t thought it before, she almost certainly did now. 

But Malaya selfishly stayed right there, enjoying the sensation of Castti’s fingers pressed around her own. She couldn’t bring herself to meet Castti’s gaze, but she could feel those sapphire eyes following her every move regardless. Malaya felt tears start to rise in her eyes, but she made no attempts to stem their flow. That would only alert Castti to the fact that they were there at all, and Malaya couldn’t take a chance on that. She had taken enough risks as it was. 

“Do… Do you really think that?”

Every muscle in Malaya’s body clenched, and she looked up slowly to find Castti’s eyes. She didn’t think she had ever seen Castti looking so… Heartbroken. Somehow, Malaya’s desire to run and hide multiplied tenfold from that sight alone. “I… Well…” Malaya tried to choke out, but it was only becoming harder to talk as the seconds passed by. 

“Malaya, I could never think of you as a replacement,” Castti went on, pulling Malaya’s hand in close, and for a moment, Malaya thought she saw greed in Castti’s eyes too. “You’re not just an imitation of her. You’re your own person, Malaya. I don’t know where I would be without you, and I don’t want to think about that anyway.”

“But I’m not her,” Malaya somehow spat out. “I’ll never be her. I’m just… I’m not her. I never have been, and I never could be. She was the love of your life. You two would have done anything for each other. I know that. I remembered all of it even before you did. Me being here… It feels wrong. It feels like I’m trying to replace her somehow. No one could ever replace her though. She saved your life back then, and… Here I am, trying to be her when I know I never will be.”

“You’re not trying to replace her,” Castti cut in. “And she saved both of our lives, not just mine. She saved all three of us. You know that.”

“But…” Malaya swallowed around the knot that had risen in the back of her throat, but all that did was spark more tears to life in her eyes. “But none of this is right. I shouldn’t be here with you. I don’t know how you can stomach any of this. I’m not the woman you loved. You can see that, can’t you? So… Why are you treating me like I am?”

“Because I love you,” Castti answered effortlessly. “Malaya… I know who you are. You’re an incredibly strong woman. You’re the reason any of us are here today. If you hadn’t taken away my memories of being in Eir’s Apothecaries… I very likely would have fallen apart under the weight of what happened in Healeaks. You were right. I wasn’t ready to handle all of that, and you could see it. Because you hid everything from me until I was ready… I’m able to stand here today. All of us are. I don’t want to listen to you sell yourself short because you don’t think you’re good enough. You’re everything to me, Malaya. I mean that.”

“But I’m not her,” Malaya continued to argue, but her resolve was growing weaker by the second. “It should bother you that I’m standing here looking like her and acting like her when I’m not her. Why don’t you hate me for it?”

“I could never hate you,” Castti insisted. Her grip on Malaya’s hand grew tighter, and secretly, Malaya loved it more than she could ever hope to say out loud. “You mean everything to me, Malaya. She… She was really important to me too. I won’t deny that. She was everything to all of us. Now… I know that she’s gone. Still… I’m honored to have you in my life. You’re not an imitation to me. You may have been based on her, but I know that you’re your own person too. And… I love the person you’ve become ever since you started to show yourself.”

Malaya couldn’t hold back the sob that forced its way from her lips at that, and she let one hand come up to rub at her eyes while moving a bit closer to Castti. She should have pulled away, should have kept fighting, but she already knew Castti wasn’t going to let her. Castti hadn’t said anything about it up to this point, but she knew how long this had been building for, and she wasn’t going to let Malaya get away with hiding it for any longer than she already had. 

“I’m already fully aware of where the line is between you and the other Malaya,” Castti went on. “You’re not her, and she’s not you… But I love you both. I miss her every single day. I grieve for her each time I wake up in the morning. She did so much for us to be here. All of Eir’s Apothecaries did. But you… You’ve honestly made that grief a lot easier to handle.” 

“I… I have?” Malaya asked. The guilt in her chest started to build again, but this time, it was for a wildly different reason. Even so, it felt much more suffocating than it had any right to. 

Castti nodded, and Malaya realized she had started to cry too. “I don’t know where I would be without you. When I thought I was going to die from everything that had happened… You were there to catch me when I fell. You’ve been there to guide me through recovering my memories, and I’m beyond glad you have been. I don’t think I would have survived uncovering the truth if I had been doing it all on my own. I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t there.” Her grip on Malaya’s hand tightened impossibly more. “If you hadn’t been there… I don’t know if I would have been able to handle losing Malaya.”

“But I’m not her,” Malaya weakly insisted. It was a losing argument, and she could feel it, but she still felt the need to push the point. If she wasn’t completely honest, then she would be betraying Castti, and that was the last thing Malaya had ever wanted to do. 

“I know that,” Castti repeated. “I know that very well. Even so… I’m glad you’re here. I don’t want you to sit here and talk about yourself like you don’t matter. I’m tired of you treating yourself like your life is worth less than mine. You’re here right now, aren’t you? You’re alive. You have worth no matter what, and I don’t want you to act like I shouldn’t care about you. I’ve already lost one love, Malaya. Don’t pull another one away from me too.”

Malaya’s sobs couldn’t hold themselves back any longer, and she practically collapsed forward into Castti’s waiting arms. Castti gladly pulled her in tight, holding onto Malaya for dear life like she thought she would turn to ash if she let go for even a hair of a second. “I’m so glad you’re here, Malaya,” Castti whispered into her hair. “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want you to push yourself away because you feel like you deserve it. You deserve to be happy , and if you can’t see that, then… I’ll just have to believe in it enough for the both of us.” She pulled Malaya in closer. “Don’t do this to yourself anymore. Please.”

Malaya wanted to keep fighting. She was desperate to make this into a greater argument somehow, to convince Castti to see things from her point of view, but she couldn’t do it. No matter how sure she was that it was the right path to take, Malaya couldn’t bring herself to follow it. She couldn’t find the words to try and fill the silence either, instead just letting Castti hold her. Maybe this was what she had wanted all along. Maybe she had just been too much of a coward to admit it. 

Castti’s fingers began to trace out circles across Malaya’s back, the same comforting gesture that they had both used with other people so many times. Malaya doubted it would ever lose its perfection no matter how many times it was brought to life. “I’m never going to think of you as anything less than a person, Malaya,” Castti went on. “You can act all you want like you don’t think you deserve this, but I know you do. You’re every bit as alive as I am, and I want you to treat yourself like it too.”

Malaya swallowed around the knot in her throat again. “Even though I’m–”

“Especially because we’re here together,” Castti interrupted. “You may not think of yourself as a real person, but I always will. This life is ours to share, and I need you to see that. You deserve every bit of joy anyone could give you. I owe you my life, Malaya… But I don’t want you to act like you need to owe others all of yours.”

Malaya pressed her face as deeply as she could into Castti’s shoulder, embracing that scent of warmth and pollen that had always given her a reason to be even in the face of an apathetic world. “I thought… I…” Malaya realized after she started speaking that she didn’t have a way to finish that sentence. She didn’t know if she ever would. “I don’t know what I thought. I guess I just wanted to be of use to you. That’s all I’ve ever really wanted. But now… You’ve remembered everything. I’m not here to guide you anymore. I just feel like an imitation of the woman you loved, and I don’t even have a purpose to justify being here now.”

“You don’t need a purpose to live, Malaya,” Castti insisted. “You wouldn’t say that to me or anyone else in our party. You wouldn’t say it to anyone else in the world. Sometimes, being alive is the only purpose we need. You don’t need to prove yourself to be worthy of being alive. I’m happy that you’re here, and I want you to be happy that you’re here too. Can’t that be enough?”

Malaya hesitated for much too long before allowing herself to nod. Castti was right. Malaya would have never asked for another person to prove that they had a purpose. She would never have wanted them to justify being alive. Her work as an apothecary had taught her to see the value in all lives, and even when people insisted that they had no reason for being, Malaya would breathe life back into their bodies anyway. That was what it meant to heal. There was no need to find a purpose to live, a justification for their continued existence. As long as a person was alive, they had earned it, and Malaya couldn’t deprive herself of that and call herself a healer. It wouldn’t be right by her or any other person in her life, and she knew it. 

“Thank you, Castti,” Malaya eventually choked out. “I… I didn’t know how you would react when you heard about all of this.” As she said it aloud, Malaya realized just how ridiculous that sounded. Castti had given her a chance when she hadn’t even granted it to herself. Malaya had only ever treated herself as an extension of the services she could provide to Castti, had forgotten that she had a purpose just because she was alive. She was more than what she could do for other people, and she had said as much to Castti countless other times. Why had she never been kind enough to extend the same honesty to herself? What made her an exception when she knew there was no difference?

“I would never try to push you away, Malaya,” Castti murmured. “I know why you were afraid, but… I’m never going to do that to you. I don’t know where I would be without you. I’m glad you’re here. I really am.”

Malaya nodded, the motion barely noticeable where she was pressed against Castti’s shoulder. “I’m glad we’re here together too,” she confessed. At the end of the day, Malaya loved being there. She really did. Even when she accused herself of selfishly taking the spot of someone who should have still been alive, Malaya was glad to have been given the chance to know Castti. Malaya had come to life because she wanted to protect Castti, but there was much more to it than that. She loved Castti more than anything, and she couldn’t have said it enough. Malaya had performed the greatest act of love in being there for Castti when she did not know how to care for herself, and she would do it a million more times as long as it would safeguard the one she loved most. They were everything, and they were together. If being there with Castti was greed, then Malaya would gladly be named a sinner by every faith in Solistia and beyond. 

When Malaya and Castti finally pulled away from one another, their fingers remained interlaced between them. Castti’s thumb shifted slightly, and Malaya was aware of every tiny space it covered on her hand. “Thank you for being here for me, Malaya,” Castti murmured. “Thank you for being alive.”

Malaya’s fingers tightened around Castti’s in the softest and sweetest way. “Thank you for having me.” She leaned in, closing the distance between them in an instant. Malaya wondered if the kiss was every bit as lovely as Castti’s past embraces with the old Malaya had been… But moments later, she pushed the thought from her head. Even if it wasn’t the same, it didn’t need to be. Malaya was different from the woman who had inspired her creation, and she shouldn’t have held it against herself. It was not her burden to bear, and it never would be. She was her own person, and she was glad she could finally see it. 

Castti stood slowly, waiting for Malaya to follow her in the silence. Malaya didn’t miss a beat, following Castti into the bedroom of their old home in Healeaks. Castti and Malaya had always shared a bed there, and one of the best parts of each day was coming home to the arms of someone who loved them most. Castti sat down first, and Malaya joined her before pulling her in for another embrace. Castti fit perfectly into her arms, and Malaya wondered how there could have ever been a doubt about where she belonged. 

Malaya didn’t know when they laid down or when they fell asleep. She just knew that when the morning came, she and Castti were still curled against one another, searching for any comfort they could find from the thrill of being there together. Malaya and Castti gladly let Eir take control for the rest of the morning as the travelers packed and set out from Merry Hills toward Cropdale. When Eir needed help, they would call for it. 

Until then, Malaya and Castti would stay there together as they had always deserved and always loved, and Malaya would wonder how she had ever thought she could let this go. 

But she knew she never would again.

Chapter Text

Malaya didn’t like Claude. 

She was far from being the only one who hated him. In fact, Malaya knew none of the travelers had anything positive to say about Claude. She was even certain none of Claude’s allies–assuming a man that unpleasant even had any–would have a nice thought of him. Claude was a miserable black hole of the goodness in the world, sucking others in and making sure their light was suffocated beneath his bright but dark smile and lilting apathy. 

Malaya had thought at first that time would heal the wound Claude left behind. He hadn’t targeted her directly, but he had still frightened Castti enough to shake free a few lingering memories. Malaya had been sure that with enough time and distance, she would begin to forget about everything Claude had done. Maybe she would be able to move on and pretend he hadn‘t been there in Lostseed at all. That would be for the best for all of them in her mind. 

That had been before Eir revealed themself. These days, Malaya knew Claude wasn’t going to be fading from her mind any time soon. He had been responsible for so much more than any of them originally expected. Claude wasn’t just Throné and Temenos’ father; he had been Trousseau’s ancestor too. Claude had recognized Trousseau as one of his own–as a snake who had managed to escape the nest–and decided to turn him to the darkness before anyone could realize what he was planning. Trousseau wouldn’t have spread the poison rain over Healeaks if Claude hadn’t interfered. Claude’s connections and horrible influence ran deeper than anyone could have ever imagined, and Malaya hated it. 

She had done her best to push Claude out of her mind. She couldn’t think about him every second of every day no matter how tempting it was to fantasize about ripping him limb from limb. One death hadn’t been enough for him, and Malaya wished she could kill him again and again. Nothing productive could come of that hatred though, so Malaya forced herself to move on. It wasn’t easy, but it was the best thing she could do for herself and everyone else. 

That didn’t stop Claude from infiltrating her darkest thoughts on a few late nights when sleep escaped her. On nights like that, Malaya stared at the ceiling long after everyone else had drifted off into slumber, halfway expecting Claude’s sickening smirk to manifest in the ceiling before coming down to steal her joy in one swift motion. Malaya knew it wasn’t realistic, knew it couldn’t be possible after what the travelers did to him, but she feared it regardless. And so, she was stuck awake watching the world pass her by until exhaustion finally brought her along with it. 

Malaya tapped her fingers against the bedspread, the sound muffled by the comforter. She wished she could have gone back to change it all. There was no way to undo the damage of the past, but when it came to Claude, it was difficult to not think about what it would be like to make everything end differently. Malaya wished she had been more assertive back when Trousseau first went to talk to him. She shouldn’t have left him alone with Claude at all. If she had just taken his hand and dragged him out of that wretched city–or better yet never gone there in the first place–Healeaks wouldn’t have happened. None of it would have happened. Eir’s Apothecaries would still be alright, and Claude wouldn’t have the blood of an entire town on his hands. Neither would Trousseau. It would be better that way for everyone. 

“Malaya?”

Malaya’s breath froze in her lungs, and she slowly turned her head over to look at the other bed in her inn room. Throné was wide awake, her cheek pressed against the pillow as she watched Malaya quietly. Apparently, Malaya’s assumption about Throné having fallen asleep an hour ago was wrong. Then again, Throné had always been the best about faking those sorts of things. “Can’t sleep?” Throné went on even though they both already knew the answer. 

“Something like that,” Malaya shrugged, the motion stifled slightly by the pillow beneath her head. She was quiet for a few seconds, wondering if she should admit to what she knew Throné was thinking about or not. In the end, she realized neither one of them would be getting any sleep until they committed to working it out. There was no point in avoiding it. “Thinking about Claude?”

Throné snorted, a noise between a laugh and a sob rising out of her throat along with it. “When I am not?” she muttered. A lot had happened since the group was in Lostseed–such as everything they saw in Stormhail–but Throné’s mind had never really left that hollow city. How could it? Claude’s revelations had shaken her to her core, and it would have destroyed anyone else who was caught up in the crossfire too. Everything Throné had fought for had been soaked in blood, and Claude had laughed at her for it all the way into his grave.

Malaya turned to face Throné fully, and she could read every exhausted thought in the thief’s head. Throné hadn’t been given as much time to talk to Temenos as she would have liked because of Crick’s attempted murder and subsequent recovery, but she had been thinking about him constantly. Learning that one of the people you had been traveling with for months on end was your sibling would have rattled anyone. Throné had already been grappling with enough that day in Lostseed, and it was just the cherry of misery on top of a sour cake of revelation. Claude had done so much to harm her and everyone she loved, and Throné would never amend the damage he had left behind. It didn’t matter how much work she did to fix New Delsta or free the Blacksnakes from their locks and chains; the traditions of Claude’s damn garden would linger, and the pain spread outward from New Delsta. It wasn’t just about one city’s suffering. The entire eastern continent had suffered because of Claude, and there wasn’t a thing any of them could do to fix it. 

Even though she knew what Throné was thinking, Malaya sighed and spoke once more. “Do you want to talk about it?” The words came out shaky and uncertain, like she was afraid of what would happen if Throné decided she didn’t want to talk or think about it. Malaya couldn’t have blamed her for wanting to push the subject away; she certainly wanted to forget everything about Claude, and she had much less to do with him than Throné. 

A few seconds passed in painful silence before Throné let out that laughing and sobbing sound again. This time, the noise was strangled, like Throné was trying to force it down so as to not seem pathetic. She could have never appeared that way to Malaya, but fear always found horrible ways of bringing out those old anxieties in aching hearts. “Yeah,” Throné agreed. “I… I think I’d like that.”

Despite it all, Malaya found herself smiling. Back when Throné first joined the rest of the group, she rarely ever discussed her emotions. The reasoning was understandable; she had been raised to believe that expression was weakness, and if she let too many cracks in her armor show, then she would be stabbed in the back. Even so, Throné wanted to fight for a better future, and her desire to make a difference in her life was all it took for her to begin unraveling the steel that armored her heart. She had come a long way, and even if she feared she would never truly be free, Malaya knew better. The fact that Throné was trying at all was proof that she would make it to that brighter future one day. She was fighting for something better, and soon enough, she would find it. Malaya was sure of it for the both of them. 

Throné didn’t notice Malaya’s observations, and she instead turned her gaze up to the ceiling with a vacant frown. “I don’t know how I can stop thinking about him,” Throné admitted. “He’s my father. All of the Blacksnakes I knew were siblings. There was no ‘recruitment’ in another town. Mother may have thought that was what it was, but it all came down to raising other snakes that came from the same source. Claude was behind all of it, and he didn’t care what he was doing at all. None of it mattered to him. He could kill and destroy as many people as he wanted to, and no one was ever there to stop him.”

“We got to him in the end,” Malaya reminded her. It felt like a hollow consolation, especially after everything Claude had already done before the group arrived in Lostseed, but it remained true. “He would have just kept on with his destruction if we hadn’t gone to stop him.”

“But we didn’t know even when we arrived in Lostseed,” Throné countered. “No one knew what he was doing. He just got away with it for all those years, and even now… It’ll take decades before everything goes back to the way it was before him. Hell, I don’t even know if New Delsta has a history to go back to. He’s the reason the city developed so much. He’s responsible for so much, and… None of us knew about it.”

Malaya swallowed around a knot in the back of her throat. “Is that the worst part to you?” she asked carefully. “Not knowing the truth behind everything, I mean.”

“Yes,” Throné replied without missing a beat. “None of us had any clue what he was doing or who he was to all of us. We just… We all ate each other alive because he made us think it was necessary.” She paused for a heavy moment before pressing her eyes shut like she thought the forced gesture had some vague chance of bringing her peace. “And we didn’t know who he was. We didn’t know who we were to each other.”

Malaya nodded, and Throné’s fingers curled into a tight fist around her pillowcase. “A lot of the Blacksnakes hit on me over the years,” she said softly. “I didn’t feel the same way. I’m glad I didn’t act on anything. None of us knew, and there was no way for us to know. Claude just left us with all of that. He had to know what was going to happen when he put so many people in such horrible circumstances, but he did nothing to stop it. Hell, he even welcomed it.”

“I’m sorry,” Malaya murmured. “I know that’s not going to fix what he did or change what happened, but… I’m sorry you had to go through all of that. I’m sorry you didn’t know what was happening until it was too late.”

“I don’t think any apologies or sympathy could fix it now,” Throné confessed. “He’s dead, but that doesn’t feel like enough. How can we really say he’s gone when he still haunts New Delsta? When he still haunts me ?” Her voice snagged on that last thought, and a full sob finally found its way free of her lips. Throné instinctively clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle her cries only to remember she was in safe company and didn’t need to worry about that. Slowly, she tore her hand away from her lips and settled for letting it clench at the pillowcase again. “I hate him so much, and… I wish there was something I could do about it now.”

Malaya hummed, and she swung her legs over the side of the bed before walking over to Throné. She sat down on the edge of Throné’s mattress the same way she had the first time the thief began to break down over what happened in Lostseed. Once again, Throné welcomed the gentle brush of Malaya’s fingers against her cheek, and she seemed to almost yearn for the way the apothecary freed her face of her tears. “I know that saying sorry won’t solve the problem,” Malaya whispered. “But I still want you to know that you deserve better than what he gave you.”

Throné was eerily quiet for a long time, and Malaya felt her body grow tense. “What about you?” Throné asked slowly, almost as if she feared the question. As soon as she registered the words, Malaya feared it too. “Castti said you had been to Lostseed before. Do… Do you remember anything about what happened?”

Malaya’s eyes widened. She hadn’t ever told Throné what they remembered. Right after Eir revealed the truth of their time in Lostseed, Castti and Malaya had been pulled away to heal Crick’s wound from his battle against Cubaryi and Kaldena. The chaos had forced them to turn their attention elsewhere, and it had stopped them from telling a soul about what they had learned. The rest of the travelers had been so distracted by everything happening that they hadn’t thought to ask if Castti or Malaya had remembered why Lostseed had felt so familiar to them either. 

Malaya should have known it was inevitable for their silence to come back to haunt them. How could it not? Throné had been wide awake through countless sleepless nights thinking about Lostseed. Whether she liked it or not, Throné had committed every fragile detail of Lostseed to memory, and that included what Castti had said when they first arrived in the broken city. It was always just a matter of time before she decided to push the question again. 

That didn’t mean Malaya knew how to answer it though. In fact, she just wanted to change the subject and pretend Throné had never asked her about it in the first place. How could she tell Throné that her father’s crimes ran far deeper than they could have ever imagined? How could Malaya force her to see that Claude was indirectly responsible for the massacre at Healeaks that had ruined Castti’s life and created Malaya in the first place? How could she confess that Claude had nearly sought Castti to forge more snakes for the nest, more fuel for the fire? 

An eternity passed in silence, and Malaya’s fingers fell still on Throné’s cheek. She hadn’t even realized she had stopped comforting the thief until after she forced her mind to root itself back in her body. “I…” Malaya swallowed around the knot in her throat as she demanded her fingers to continue wiping Throné’s tears. The motion was graceless and clunky now, a far cry from the comfort of a few moments prior, but at least it was something. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”

Throné’s shoulders went tense once again. “You remembered?” she asked, and Malaya nodded so slightly the motion was almost imperceptible. After a few seconds of thought, the truth dawned on Throné. “It was Eir. When you first found out about them, everything came into place… Is that right?”

Malaya nodded. There were tears steadily rising in her own eyes now, and she had no idea if she would be able to smother them before she had to speak again. “Yeah,” Malaya eventually replied, not caring how obvious it was that she was crying. “We were in New Delsta to buy supplies with Trousseau. A man found us in the inn and asked us to come with him. Castti thought something about him was odd because Eir was telling her something was wrong, and… She left. Trousseau stayed to talk to him. He thought Claude could tell him something about his father.” Malaya couldn’t help laughing at that, and she shook her head. “At least Castti and I were able to spare you from having to kill another relative.”

Throné remained quiet for a moment before she hummed. “I can’t say I’m surprised,” she muttered. “I’ve thought about it a lot over the last few weeks, and… I had a feeling Trousseau had something to do with him. He just looked too much like… Him.” She fell silent for a handful of seconds. “Are… Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” Malaya confessed. “Claude… He scared us all.” Scared didn’t even feel like the right word for it. Malaya was beyond relieved that Eir and Castti had decided to leave when they did. She didn’t know what would have happened if they stayed with Claude any longer than they already had, but she didn’t want to think about it either. It was just too much. 

“He scares me,” Throné admitted. “He’s dead. I know he’s dead… But I keep thinking something else is going to happen with him.” She changed her position ever so slightly so she could take in as much of Malaya’s gentle stroking across her cheek as possible. “I… I’m so tired of being afraid of him.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Malaya asked. She was halfway tempted to tack on an acknowledgement that she wouldn’t be able to completely fix the damage Claude had done, but she already knew there wasn’t much of a point to it. She had said that more than enough tonight. 

“I don’t know,” Throné muttered. Another sniffle and corresponding sob broke the silence, and she rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I hate him so fucking much. It feels like everything should just stop now that he’s dead, but… The world is still moving. I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not.”

“I wish I could give you a clear answer,” Malaya told her. “But no matter what… I want you to know that you can come to me. Claude did a lot of horrible things, but you don’t need to face it on your own. You deserve better than to let it eat away at you forever.”

Throné tried to stifle another sob, but it only halfway worked. “I don’t know what to do with myself,” she confessed. “I don’t want to give him any more power over me, but… Now that I’m free, it feels like I’m more trapped than ever. I did exactly as he wanted me to. I killed my own flesh and blood, and I didn’t know it until it was too late. I couldn’t just stay there in New Delsta, but I don’t know how I can get back to life knowing what I do now. It’s so much.” 

Malaya nodded and continued to brush her fingers across Throné’s cheek. “I wish there was something I could say to make all of this easier for you,” she admitted. “But I don’t think there’s much that will fix this.” She paused for Throné to rub at her eyes again. “Even so, I can tell you that you’re not alone in dealing with it. You have all of us here to look after you. I know you don’t think you have anything to do with your life now that Claude is dead… But you can stay with all of us. We’d be more than happy to have you. No matter what you need, all you have to do is come to us. We’d do anything for you, Throné. We can’t undo the damage Claude did to you and the rest of the Brightlands… But we’ll still be here to help you get back on your feet.”

For a few seconds, the air between Malaya and Throné was perfectly silent, almost like they both feared what would happen if they dared to break it with their confessions of grief. Throné finally allowed herself to break the quiet with yet another sob, and she rubbed furiously at her eyes. “Thank you, Malaya,” she whispered. “I don’t think I can say it enough.” 

Malaya allowed herself a small crescent of a smile, and she opened her arms to offer an embrace. Throné was far from a touchy person, and even when she let people get close to her, she was picky about it. The travelers were the first people she had allowed herself to open up to in this way, but it had taken a long time for her to really be comfortable around them. Malaya hadn’t been expecting the thief to take her up on her offer of a hug. She just wanted the thief to know the opportunity was there if she wanted it. 

Throné looked up at Malaya for only half a second before she pushed herself off the mattress and into the apothecary’s arms. Malaya drew her in closer, rubbing comforting but firm circles across Throné’s back. The thief was crying freely now, but Malaya couldn’t bring herself to care about the tears staining her shawl. This was what they both needed, and it was high time they acknowledged it. 

Less than thirty seconds after their embrace began, Malaya found herself crying too. She hadn’t realized just how much stress she had been bottling up about Claude until she released it through her eyes. Throné didn’t acknowledge her grief, but she didn't need to. They had both been ruined by the same horrible man, and they knew it well. As long as they could rely on one another, everything would be fine, and they knew how to lean on each other better than most. The travelers had taught them both a lot, and they would not dare to forget it. 

Malaya and Throné continued to cry late into the night. Neither one of them was entirely certain what time it was when their eyes finally went dry, but they didn’t bother to check either. Malaya didn’t return to her bed once they were finished. Instead, she and Throné just stayed curled over each other, unable to bring themselves to part so soon after their breakdowns. They needed each other. Even if the rest of the world turned its back on them, they knew they could rely on one another, and that was all that mattered. 

When morning came, Malaya awoke to find Throné still curled up in her arms. She simply smiled against Throné’s shoulder before letting her eyes sweep shut once more.

Chapter Text

Out of all the travelers, Malaya had the least experience with Osvald. 

This was nothing surprising. Osvald was easily the quietest of the travelers, preferring to keep to himself unless there was something he thought needed to be said. He cared for everyone, and they all knew it, but he would not begin a conversation unless he had something to say. Osvald would not speak for the sake of hearing himself talk. There was always a deeper meaning to it. 

Malaya had figured this out quickly. Osvald was the first person to call her and Castti out on their habit of talking to themselves, and Malaya had learned to fear him almost instantly as a result. It was nothing against him specifically, but at the time, she had a secret to keep, and she wasn’t certain if Osvald would have helped her to hide it. Malaya was cautious around Osvald, and soon enough, Castti learned to be too, not that she ever registered it as such. It was just subtle enough to be out of reach, just small enough to qualify for plausible deniability. 

Ever since Malaya had been revealed to the world, she had gotten closer with all of the travelers. She had a reason to speak with almost all of them under some set of circumstances or another. The travelers were happy to invite Malaya into their lives, and she was glad to join them for any activity no matter how small. While Malaya still felt as if she was a few steps behind the rest of their relationships, she was catching up quickly. 

The sole exception to this rule was Osvald. Malaya and Osvald got the fewest opportunities to speak out of all the travelers by far. When he wanted to discuss something serious, Castti was almost always the one around to share the conversation with him. Castti had talked to him about Elena after she was first recovered from Harvey’s grasp, and the conversation had been every bit as agonizing and tense as Malaya had expected. Castti had told Osvald about the bruises she found on Elena’s arms, and Osvald nodded along, hiding his rage because he did not know what would happen if he released it in full. No one else really knew either. 

Somehow, the grief was even scarier than his anger. At least Osvald’s rage gave him something palpable to focus on, a grounding point to push him ever forward. When he grieved for everything he had lost and all the years his daughter had been mistreated, Osvald grew terrifyingly quiet, not daring to share his thoughts with anyone despite knowing they needed to be voiced sooner or later. It was easy to tell when Osvald was thinking of Elena. There was always a softer edge to his face when he remembered that his daughter was alive, but his eyes grew as sharp as they were sad when her time with Harvey came to mind. Osvald didn’t know what to do with the truth, and Malaya doubted he would ever feel comfortable with it. How could he? The daughter he had treasured so dearly had been abused by the man who ruined his life. It was a miracle Osvald hadn’t dropped everything to help with raising Elena again after she was found. No one would have blamed him for choosing to, and yet, he had not. 

Tonight, the travelers were staying in the Montwise inn. It had been the closest stop to rest for the night, and after the hell of the last few weeks in Stormhail, they wanted an actual bed to sleep on rather than the ground. They were all exhausted when they shuffled into Montwise, and they retreated to their rooms quickly with the hope that sleep would come just as soon. 

Malaya could already tell it wouldn’t be quite so easy for her. Montwise was a significant place to her and Castti, and she absolutely despised it. Eir had said their body was born there in Montwise, and that was where their father had lived too. Malaya had no idea if the man was still alive after more than a decade away from him, but she didn’t care to find out either. All she wanted was to get back on the road. She would feel better once she was out of Montwise. 

That was what she was telling herself at the very least. Malaya already doubted it would be that easy, but she couldn’t bring herself to admit it openly. She hadn’t truly been given the time to process what Eir had told her and Castti that night in Stormhail. None of them had spoken about it to anyone outside of their head, and while Malaya had thought that was for the best initially… She was starting to doubt it. Maybe this was something that needed to be discussed. That was probably the only way they would be able to leave it all in the past, assuming it was even possible to shed something like that in the first place. 

Malaya sat down on the couch in the inn’s main room, a frown on her face as she watched flames crackle in the hearth. She wished to nurture the fire with her own palm just to feel its warmth–just to feel alive–but she forced her hands to remain folded on her lap. Malaya wanted to sleep so the time would pass by faster, but she knew it wouldn’t be that easy. She hadn’t really thought through or talked about everything that Eir had mentioned, and Malaya didn’t think she would truly see peace until she did. 

But how could she bring it up? How could anyone mention that they had been through such horrible things and not remembered any of it? Malaya remembered the way she had reacted when Hikari told her about Mugen. She had wanted to march straight into Ku to wring his neck for herself. She still wanted to do that if she was being honest. Malaya didn’t want to risk dragging anyone else down with her truth. It felt wrong. They deserved better than that, and even if they didn’t know it was a question in the first place, Malaya was happy to give them what she had felt they earned. 

“I see you can’t sleep either.”

Malaya nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of Osvald’s voice. She whirled around quickly enough for her ponytail to hit her in the cheek, and she saw the towering scholar standing in the entryway to the hearth room. Malaya stared at him for a second, waiting for her heart to get itself under control, before she nodded breathlessly. “Yeah,” she admitted. “I just can’t keep my eyes shut.” It was a poor lie, but at this point, it was as good as any other. Osvald wouldn’t know the difference. 

Much to Malaya’s surprise, Osvald didn’t hesitate in sitting down beside her, and she realized a bit too late just how tall he truly was. It was easy to be intimidated by him, but Malaya didn’t let that old fear take grip of her again. Instead, she continued to watch him wordlessly. “We need to get on the road again early in the morning,” Osvald went on. “But I can’t bring myself to sleep just yet either.”

Malaya hummed, and the truth slapped her in the face just as hard as her ponytail had moments prior. Osvald couldn’t sleep for much the same reasons she was struggling to rest for the night. Montwise was where they all found out Elena was still alive. Montwise was where Osvald first saw his daughter rush into the arms of a man who had hurt her so many times. Montwise was where Osvald realized he had failed his child, his own flesh and blood, far beyond the reasoning of monsters and men. 

Malaya could have let that revelation sit in her chest and not mention it. The option was tempting… But it was not what she reached for. Instead, she swallowed down her nerves and continued to watch the fire rage. “You’re thinking about Elena, aren’t you?” Malaya didn’t know why she phrased it as a question; it may as well have been a statement with how confident she was in its truth. 

Osvald nodded with a rumbling hum of his own. “I am,” he confessed. “I wish there was more I could do for her right now.” His fingers clenched into a fist, and Malaya watched them silently. Osvald had wanted more than anything to go back to Elena and raise her as he should have been able to for the last five years. However, he knew that introducing himself to her and then leaving would have only made things harder for her. Osvald had other business as long as there were still people out there who had associated with Harvey. He would not let anyone else fall victim to his old enemy’s machinations, and if that meant keeping his daughter at a distance… It was a price he would have to learn to pay, but that did not make it an easy decision. 

Malaya’s thumbs twiddled together helplessly, the friction only barely managing to bring her back into her body. “I’m sorry,” she suddenly blurted out, only realizing what she had said once it was too late to take back. Malaya felt Osvald’s gaze shift in her direction, but she did not rise to the challenge to meet his eyes. “About what Harvey did to Elena. I… I’m really sorry.”

Osvald hesitated for a long while, his eyes unable to decide on if they should watch Malaya or the flames in the hearth. In the end, he decided on the latter, and Malaya wondered if he was thinking of the cruel irony of him witnessing fire again too. “There was nothing you could have done,” Osvald settled on replying an eternity later. “You had no way of knowing he would… He would…”

Malaya’s chest went tight. Osvald let out a strangled growl, and when she finally found the strength to look up at him again, she saw that he had raised one hand to press it against his eyes. There were tears glistening across his eyelashes, but he refused to let them fall out of some sense of duty to his pride he did not truly possess. “I’m sorry,” Osvald muttered. “You shouldn’t have to see me like this.”

“Don’t apologize,” Malaya told him immediately. “I know it’s hard. Learning someone did that to a person you care about… It’s awful.” Her fingers drifted across her body to find her upper arms, looking for a reason to squeeze down on the fabric and skin beneath. She didn’t say anything about what she had heard from Hikari or Eir in the inn of Stormhail. Malaya couldn’t break Hikari’s privacy and trust that way, and she couldn’t bring herself to mention her own pains either. Somehow, it felt like it would only distract from Osvald’s struggle, and the last thing she wanted to do was put him in a position like that. He was going through enough as it was. 

“I wish I could have been there for her,” Osvald confessed. “I should have been there for her. A father should look after his children. Instead, Harvey…” His fingers tightened around his temples. “I should have done more for her. She shouldn’t have ever had to go through that.”

Malaya raised a shaking hand before she set it on Osvald’s shoulder. Much to her surprise, he did not shun the touch, instead just letting her keep her fingers poised against his coat. She wanted to say something to reassure him, to insist that everything would be okay… But she knew otherwise. The scars of abuse ran deep, and they were something a person could never truly forget. Even after Eir worked overtime to seal away the memories Castti had of their childhood, the body still remembered. They had felt twinges of it when they met Claude in Lostseed, that old burning of danger that could not be escaped. It was an oppressive phantom, something a person could try to outrun, but they would be dragged back under the shadow of their pain again eventually. Elena was so young too. She was only ten years old, and yet, she had been through horrors most would never see in a lifetime. What had she done to deserve that? How had the universe seen her fit to face such awful things? What use were the gods when they had done nothing to protect her?

“You can’t blame yourself,” Malaya found herself saying. She wanted to offer advice about how to help Elena, but she knew she would never truly find success in that field. She could not counsel Osvald about something she doubted she would ever understand for herself. Her experiences did not seem to help her here. If anything, they were a chain around her neck, and Malaya doubted she would ever escape them. “What Harvey did… It was out of your reach. You got to her in the end. You saved her when you could. She’s alright now.”

“But she’s not,” Osvald insisted. “After being hurt like that… She can’t just move on. No person can pick up the pieces without help, and she’s…” A strangled sob pushed its way from his lips, and Malaya’s chest clenched. She had heard Osvald scream before, but she had never heard him cry. His quiet grief had never quite devolved into tears, or if it had, she had never seen it. Malaya felt as if she wasn’t supposed to be there, like she was intruding on something sacred. And yet, Osvald did not push her away. “She’s my daughter, and someone hurt her. I can’t fix this the way I want to. No one can. Killing Harvey wasn’t enough. I… I wish I could undo everything he did to her. It won’t be enough, but…”

“I’m sorry,” Malaya repeated. She wanted to say it again and again until her tongue bled, but she knew it wouldn’t get them anywhere. Malaya’s fingers rubbed soft but purposeful circles across his arm. “Elena deserved much better than that.”

“Harvey convinced her he was her father,” Osvald went on, his words coming out as little more than desperate rambles of the cursed man he knew he was. “He taught her that love can mean pain. That’s not what love means. A parent should look after their child no matter what. It’s… It’s not right that she had to…” He let out another sob. “I should have been there for her.”

Malaya found herself freezing in her tracks at Osvald’s words. A parent should look after their child. Her mind cast itself backward through hazy memories of a man she could not recall clearly and did not want to. She may not have known his face, but she recalled the fear bitterly well. Malaya knew it would live with her for the rest of her life. Her father– their father–had not looked after them as a parent should have. Instead, he… Malaya didn’t want to put it into words. It was too cruel, though she couldn’t say who it would have hurt the most. 

“Malaya?” 

She didn’t realize just how long she had gone still until after Osvald’s voice reached her ears again, and she shook herself out of her haze before clenching her hands into helpless fists. “I’m fine,” Malaya forced herself to say. She needed to be. She shouldn’t have been so bothered by all of this. She was there to hold onto the memories of Eir’s Apothecaries that Healeaks had forced them to suppress. The abuse of years long gone was something Eir and Castti should have been worried about. Why was she so distressed about something she hadn’t even existed to experience? And yet, she still felt that pain in her bones, something so deep and all-consuming that it threatened to swallow her at the first sign of fear. It wasn’t Malaya’s terror to bear, so why did she still feel it?

Malaya didn’t know what she had or hadn’t said wrong, but Osvald didn’t believe her insistence. He studied her face for a long time, and Malaya resisted the urge to back down first, knowing that if she averted her gaze before he did, it would give away something she couldn’t afford to share. Osvald continued to watch her for a few seconds longer before something else in his eyes seemed to splinter. Malaya desperately wanted to excuse herself back to her room, to hope Throné was already asleep and wouldn’t ask her about why she looked so rattled, but she couldn’t force her legs to move. 

“What happened?” Osvald suddenly asked, and Malaya found her muscles clenching all over again. There was something unreadable to his tone, and she wished she knew what she was supposed to do about it. Above all else though, Malaya knew that he had figured it out. She hadn’t been doing a good enough job to hide it, and he–

Osvald’s arm suddenly curled around Malaya’s shoulders, and she fell helplessly against his chest. She didn’t think she had ever felt this small before, and she couldn’t tell if she hated it or loved it. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. Osvald didn’t repeat his words from before about a parent needing to look after their child, but he didn’t need to. They could both feel the lingering kiss of that brutal honesty they knew could break so easily under the touch of the terrible. 

“I… I shouldn’t let it bother me,” Malaya muttered. She couldn’t tell if she was saying the words for her own sake or to convince Osvald, but she didn’t care much for either purpose either. “It’s something for Castti to think about, and–”

“Does it hurt you?” Osvald suddenly cut in, and Malaya’s words died on her tongue instantly. When she didn’t respond, Osvald filled in the silence for her. “You can’t just talk yourself out of something like this.”

“I know,” Malaya said, hating the bitterness in her voice. “I just… I… I don’t want it to bother me. I need it to not bother me.” Tears were readily rising in her eyes, but she refused to let herself acknowledge them, instead clenching her fists impossibly tighter. “I didn’t mean to put all of this on you. I know you have a lot going on with Elena, and I–”

“You shouldn’t have gone through it either,” Osvald told her, and his hand began to trace invisible circles across her upper arm. It was identical to the motion Malaya had granted him a few minutes prior, and she found herself wanting to fully crumble in his arms for the simple thrill of being honest for once. “I know you want to help Castti, but pretending nothing happened won’t do either of you any good. You said it yourself. No one can outrun this on their own.” Malaya’s chest went tight, and the only thing keeping her rooted to the present was the calloused, perfect touch of Osvald’s large but gentle fingers against her arm. “A parent’s job is to look after their child. They should never hurt them. Never.” Malaya couldn’t tell if he was pushing the point for his own sake or to persuade her, but she didn’t mind it. Somehow, Osvald saying it made it feel more real and honest. 

Malaya sniffled before she could hold herself back, and she raised one hand to her eyes against her will. “We first started figuring it out when we found Elena,” she confessed like it was some forbidden secret she would be killed for sharing. “Everything felt just a little too familiar, and when we thought about it… It wouldn’t go away. It only got worse with time, and now…” Malaya let out a noise that should have been a wet laugh, but it came out as more of a sob. “I don’t want to think about it.” It hurts too much to acknowledge. “We grew up in Montwise. This was where it all happened.” 

Osvald’s hand stopped for half a second, and Malaya could feel him contemplating revenge in the silence. He was wondering if he would be able to get away with hunting down the man who had hurt his friend so dearly, contemplating the logistics of leaving him to burn with his sins too. When the silence dragged on for just a little too long, Malaya shook her head, the motion muffled against his chest. “It’s been over a decade. I don’t know if our father is still here, and I don’t remember what he looks like anyway. I don’t think it would matter even if I did.” 

Osvald hummed, the sound low and rumbling in his chest. Malaya could feel it with where her ear had wound up pressed against his coat. He went back to rubbing circles across her arm. “I’m sorry,” Osvald repeated. “You shouldn’t have had to go through that. No one ever should.”

“I’m sorry too,” Malaya murmured. “For what happened to Elena. I know none of us could have stopped it sooner, but… She deserved better than she was given too.” She didn’t say that she was beyond glad that Harvey was dead, but she didn’t need to. They both knew it. 

“You deserved better too,” Osvald insisted, and Malaya found herself moving a little bit closer to him. Osvald wrapped his other arm around her at last, and she felt a few traitorous tears from both of their eyes stain the other’s clothing. “And if your father couldn’t tell you that… Then I will.”

That sentiment was the last blow Malaya’s defenses could take, and she didn’t bother with holding her sobs back when they next shook her body. Osvald just pulled her in impossibly closer, and Malaya wondered if this was what the love of a parent should have been like. Osvald was only nine years older than her, but his spirit felt so much older, aged by all he had endured and the horrors he had witnessed. Then again, Malaya knew she felt older than her body was too. It felt like the only way she could have ever survived. No child should ever have to endure what she, Castti, and Eir had. It didn’t matter if Malaya had only appeared after their body was an adult. She could feel their pain just as easily as she knew her own, and she could not escape it forever. She never could have outrun it in the first place, not as long as it corroded the gold in her soul until all that remained was worn, terrified gray. 

But for once, Malaya didn’t think she needed to run from it. She didn’t have to pretend her suffering had never happened for the sake of defending those she loved. Instead, she could sit there in her hurt. Malaya didn’t know if she would ever be able to make peace with what she had been through, but she could still give herself the space to feel every jagged emotion that stabbed at her lungs when she breathed. She deserved that chance just as much as anyone else, and depriving herself of it would help no one. 

Malaya lost track of time as she and Osvald sat out in the inn’s hearth room. They said nothing as they held one another and just cried. Malaya barely remembered them getting up from the couch to go back to their inn rooms, but when she awoke the next morning, she was not in the room she had been meant to share with Throné. Instead, Malaya was pressed against Osvald’s chest in his and Temenos’ room. He was cradling her with all the love a father should have given his daughter. Since they had both lost one or the other, they could find that comfort in each other. It was a shallow bandage to the deep wounds of the past, but it was the best they could give themselves and one another that night. 

After that night, Malaya stopped distancing herself from Osvald. They never had another conversation on the same level as that talk in the Montwise inn, but they didn’t need to. They understood one another without the need for words, and sometimes, what they didn’t say was just as important as what they did. 

Every once in a while, Osvald and Malaya would hold each other and say nothing, and yet, it was enough.

Chapter Text

If there was one thing Malaya had learned since starting to talk to the rest of the travelers, it was that hate was a powerful thing. 

She had been born from love, the deep, all-consuming urge to help those she cared for no matter the cost. She would have done anything for those she adored, and she knew they understood it too. Malaya loved so much it almost hurt, and she never asked for any affection in return. She wanted to ease the pain of those who suffered around her, something she had always done as an apothecary, but it took on a new meaning as long as she was with the travelers. Malaya was able to cultivate her own warmth now as her own person, and she adored seeing it come to life. 

But along the way, Malaya had learned just how effortless it was to tip over the edge into the territory of hatred. It hadn’t happened easily, and Malaya was often left to sit with her feelings for much longer than she was willing to admit, but eventually, she felt the deep rage of a cruel world and how much it could taste like love. Malaya wanted to defend the people she loved more than anything else, and in doing so, she had come to hate the people who had dared to hurt them in the first place. 

Perhaps the best person to embody this was Hikari. Malaya seemed to hate the easiest when he was around. Hikari was full of love, and he wanted to bring warmth and light to the rest of the world. He smiled in the face of any and all pain, always insisting on forgiveness even for those who perhaps did not deserve it. Hikari would fight when he needed to, but he preferred not to, and his blade had been honed in times of peace because he refused to wield it during times of hatred. He had given his all to the world, and he had asked for nothing in return. It was as beautiful as it was damning, and Malaya admired it. 

Deep down, she knew that was why talking to him in Stormhail had hurt so much for them both. Hikari had hid his pain well, and at first, Malaya hadn’t even known it was there. It was only after they left behind Castle Mei that Hikari allowed the cracks in armor to show, and it was only because of his deep, aching exhaustion that his defenses dropped that much in the first place. If Hikari had his way, he never would have revealed the truth of his past at all. He claimed it was irrelevant and unnecessary to his future, but Malaya knew the truth. He didn’t want to burden his friends with the knowledge of what he had been through, and so, he buried it as deep as he could stand to. 

Malaya thought often of the night they had shared in the Stormhail inn. Her rage and grief had been aimed in a million directions, but she left a safe pocket amidst the primed daggers for Hikari. He stared at her with a reserved darkness in his eyes, and Malaya had wondered just how many people had known of his pain and chose to not acknowledge it. As long as they could go on with pretending everything was fine, they cared little for the truth. Hikari could suffer all Mugen wanted, but the world would never admit it. The truth of Ku was that the strong trampled over the weak, and Hikari, in all of his quiet strength and dreams of peace, had been widely considered the weakest of all. 

Malaya didn’t like hating people. It had come so easily to her since that night in Stormhail, but it always left her feeling hollow. She detested Claude for the countless lives he had ruined without ever casting a thought to those who crumbled and screamed beneath his heel. Even so, Malaya knew that rage was somewhat distant because of Claude being far from the heart of the pain he had exacted. Malaya couldn’t express how much she hated him without it threatening to light a fuse in her stomach that she could never extinguish, and so, she let the numbness of fear creep in instead. 

She wanted to hate Trousseau for what he had done, and while she came closer to it than Castti, that wasn’t saying much, and Malaya still couldn’t shove him entirely under the same umbrella as her greatest enemies. At one point, he had been family, and Malaya felt that grief in a way that came too close to being love. It toed the line and threatened to kiss her cheek or perhaps slice it open with a dagger, and she didn’t know what to do with it. 

Mugen, however, was the easiest person for Malaya to hate. He was distant but bitterly close, and Malaya could see fragments of him in Hikari when she truly concentrated. Mugen had been nothing but terrible to the people of Ku, and Hikari had been his first and greatest victim. Hikari hid it with a smile, and for the most part, he fooled the world. Malaya was not the world though, and she wished there was more she could do than sit with him on sleepless nights and cradle him when the tears came. 

Malaya kept a close eye on Hikari during the invasion of Ku. She couldn’t have kept herself away even if she tried, not that she would have ever dared in the first place. Hikari was too important to her to take a chance on that, so she would stay as close as she could to make sure he remained steadfast in the face of his brother’s reckless slashes of a blade. Every once in a while, Malaya could have sworn she caught a glimpse of sorrow in his eyes, and even as he cut his brother down, that love never quite faded. In many ways, hatred was love, and for Hikari, it all came out as grief for what could have been but never was because of Mugen’s decisions. 

The night after Ku fell, a grand festival was held. Hikari and Agnea went out to speak with Yomi after she strayed from the celebrations, and the rest of the travelers trailed after them. The confrontation had been intense, and yet, Hikari never wavered. He offered to let Yomi kill him even though he knew the rest of the travelers would never let her get away with it. Malaya had to wonder if it was because he hated himself. He claimed that he wanted to give Yomi the chance to express her love of all that had been taken from her, but Malaya didn’t understand it. How could something like that be love? How could offering his life to shaky hands on the heels of his victory be love?

After the travelers returned to Ku, they scattered for the remainder of the evening. They were given rooms in the castle, and at various points of the night, they retreated to their beds for the first night of sweet rest in ages. The fall of Ku took a massive weight off their shoulders, and they hadn’t realized just how great the pressure had become until after they collapsed in their rooms. 

Malaya bid all of them goodnight as they peeled away from the group, starting with Agnea followed by Temenos, Ochette, and Partitio. After that, the rest of the party pulled away with little protest, but the city of Ku would not sleep around the castle. They could feel the excitement in the air, and it was every bit as intoxicating as the mead that Kazan so gladly encouraged everyone to drink. 

Even so, Malaya did not let herself lose focus from the alcohol. She drank very little, keeping her attention focused solely on Hikari for as long as she could stand it. She had to be careful with her staring so as to not cue him or anyone else in as to what she was doing, but Malaya had learned subtlety when she was first hiding in Castti’s body, and she had long become an expert at it. She couldn’t quite say for certain if Hikari had figured out what she was doing yet, but she didn’t sit with the question for long either. 

When Malaya started to walk back toward her room for the night, she moved slowly, keeping her eyes and ears open for any signs of Hikari. She already knew he wouldn’t want to rest so soon after everything that had happened. Hikari had put on the mask of unfettered jubilation for his people, but Malaya knew him better than that. She knew of the lies he told when he was trying to convince the world he was in a better place than he was because they were the same lies she had grown used to telling too. It was almost frightening how similar they could be when they wanted to be and even when that wasn’t their goal at all.

Malaya hadn’t told him yet about what she and Castti had heard from Eir. Even after they were introduced to the rest of the travelers, Eir had chosen to not say a word about it. They knew it was a sensitive subject, and they didn’t want to open up discussion about it until Castti and Malaya were ready. Personally, Malaya didn’t think she would ever be ready. Even just talking to Osvald about Elena had been overwhelming enough, and she hadn’t even admitted to her history on her own terms then. If she had her way, Malaya never would have breathed a word of it to anyone. She wanted to bottle up that pain and forget about it forever. Hatred felt a lot like love, and here, Malaya hated the father of her body because she loved the other people in it too much to not hate him. 

Malaya felt the same way about Mugen. She hadn’t been given much of an impression of him during the fall of Ku, but she was fine with that. Malaya knew everything she needed to know about him, and that was more than enough to make her stomach rupture with a flaming grief that threatened to burn her heart to ash. Mugen had treated Hikari as poorly as he could get away with for years, and nobody had ever dared to stop him. That was the truth of Ku. People could get away with whatever they wanted as long as they had the power to do it, and Mugen had more strength than any other. Hikari wanted to defend those who had been left to suffer under his brother’s rule despite being one of the greatest victims of Mugen’s tyranny. Malaya couldn’t put a strength like that to words–the strength to not let that love like hatred consume him–but she admired it more than anything else. If Hikari couldn’t agree with her on his own, then she would do everything she could to make sure he knew how much she believed in him no matter what it took. 

Just as Malaya had expected, she found Hikari wandering the halls of Castle Ku long after most of its occupants had gone to sleep. For the first time since Stormhail, Malaya saw Hikari as the person he was when he let his defenses truly crash. He was exhausted, and that kindness in his eyes was fighting for a purpose. Hikari cared for others more than he cared for his own potential for destruction, and Malaya loved it as much as she hated it for the same reason. Hikari and Castti had a lot in common, she realized. Maybe that was one of many reasons Malaya was so desperate to make sure he understood how much she loved him. 

“Hikari,” Malaya greeted. She knew she should have tried to open this conversation with a bit more tact, but she didn’t bother when she realized she was every bit as tired as Hikari. The invasion of Ku hadn’t been as emotionally taxing on her, but she had still fought in all the battles necessary to win the war, and it was weighing on her body and mind quickly. Malaya hoped she would be able to fight through the haze long enough to talk to Hikari. She had to at least try. 

Hikari only snapped out of his own thoughts when he realized Malaya was there, and he blinked once, twice, thrice before coming back into his own body. “Ah… Malaya,” he returned, and that hollow exhaustion to his voice nearly burned her to nothingness then and there. “Is something the matter? I hope the accommodations are sufficient for you.”

“They are,” Malaya assured him. “I just… I wanted to talk to you for a bit about everything that happened today. It feels like with everything going on… You never really got the chance to think through it all.”

Hikari opened his mouth to protest, but he realized just how pointless it would be just as quickly. After a few seconds more of contemplation, Hikari nodded and gestured for Malaya to follow him, though he may as well have not bothered. Malaya couldn’t have left him alone if she tried. She didn’t think he wanted to be alone either. That darkness in his eyes tasted just a bit too much like fear, and Malaya nearly felt copper on her own tongue at the thought. 

The ramparts atop Castle Ku were oddly enough the most peaceful place in the palace after the battle ended. Hikari’s hair whipped in the breeze, and Malaya’s ponytail tangled with his before pulling away like retreating fingers moments later. For a few moments, they simply stood there together, looking out over the rest of the kingdom in the silence. A few short days prior, they never would have had a chance like this, and now that they had it, they couldn’t let it go without a fight. 

Malaya waited for Hikari to talk for what felt like an eternity before realizing that he didn’t know how to start this conversation either. He didn’t even know why Malaya wanted to talk to him in the first place. That realization was enough to remind her that her tongue worked too, and she leaned over one of the stony walls, her eyes unable to decide if they should watch Hikari or the people down in the city below. “How are you feeling?” 

Hikari continued to stare at the streets for a handful of seconds longer before trying to shake his head. He only got halfway through the motion before giving up on it. “As fine as I can,” he confessed. Hikari’s fingers clenched into a fist before he released it again. “My shadow seems to have left me after the battle against Mugen.”

Malaya’s heart stiffened before remembering to keep beating. Back in Stormhail, Hikari had told Malaya about his shadow. Hikari’s shadow had first appeared after the encounter that killed his mother, and all he had wanted was to tear the world apart in his grief. Hikari had come to afterward and not understood how deeply his world could have fallen apart when he remembered it as little more than a blink. 

Perhaps the more damning admission had been that Hikari was jealous of Castti and Malaya. Looking back, Malaya could see the evidence hinting at that long before they first talked about it. Hikari had been insistent on Malaya talking to Castti as soon as possible, and he had even thanked her for being kind enough to love Castti. Hikari had been so firm about encouraging Malaya because he wished his shadow was the same way. He had been fighting with the other resident of his mind for so long that he hadn’t thought peace was possible even though it was all he had ever wanted. 

Malaya didn’t know how to continue the conversation, but she tried her best regardless. “Are you alright?” She was halfway tempted to ask him how it had happened, but somehow, she knew that wasn’t the right direction to take this. Somehow, she doubted even Hikari knew what had happened. 

Hikari shrugged loosely. “I’m not surprised,” he confessed. “I didn’t want to keep fighting him, but he was trying to make me hurt my friends. I couldn’t let him do that.” Hikari’s hand reached for his blade instinctively, and he tightened his grip around the hilt before forcing it to loosen again. “He first appeared after my mother was killed. I never wanted anything to do with him. I’ll admit that freely. I didn’t want to hurt him, but he wanted to hurt me.”

Hikari let out a loose laugh, and he rubbed at his eyes with his other hand. Malaya doubted he had even realized he was crying. “I didn’t realize how much I wanted to connect with him until after you appeared,” he went on. “There was a part of me that wanted to hope he wanted to protect me the same way you protected Castti. I’m not entirely certain of what he wanted, and I suppose I’ll never know now. I still feel like he’s a part of me, but it’s… Different. I feel stronger, but at the same time… There’s a hole left behind where he used to be.”

“I understand,” Malaya assured him. It was a comprehension that ran far deeper than simple words, instead appearing as a churning swirl of emotions in the pit of her stomach. She knew the truth instinctively more than she could ever put it to her tongue. Hikari was like her, and even though his relationship with the shadow was far darker than what Malaya and Castti had come to hold, he still understood. They would always understand each other. 

Hikari leaned over the edge of the wall a little bit more, his chin nearly dipping low enough to touch his chest. “I know I should be relieved,” he muttered. “I want to be relieved. Still… I can’t be.” Hikari’s fingers clenched into fists again, but this time, he did not make them relax. “I wish things could have ended differently.”

“With the shadow or Mugen?” Malaya asked, just barely making her voice loud enough to be heard. She fell to the same posture Hikari was using, and somehow, the city seemed to grow impossibly smaller below them. 

“Both,” Hikari admitted with a dark laugh. “I never wanted to hate either one of them. I… I was scared when the shadow first appeared. Mugen had been treating me like dirt for years. I thought that was just the way life was, but the shadow… I hated him for what he had done, but there was a part of me that wanted to think it had all just been misguided. I wanted to believe that maybe he would protect me if Mugen tried to hurt us again… But he didn’t want to be a protector. He wanted to kill Mugen, and… Maybe there was some part of me that wanted to kill him too.”

“It doesn’t matter how much you wanted to make things right with Mugen,” Malaya muttered. “If he was going to hurt you in return, then there wasn’t much of a point to it.” She wanted to reach out and pull Hikari into a tight hug, to numb both of their pains just by sitting there together, but she forced her arms to remain still. 

“I never wanted it to be like this,” Hikari murmured, wrapping his arms around himself to fend off the chill of hatred and death that strayed too close to love. “I wanted to love Mugen. I wanted us to be a family. I would have done anything to be his family. He… He made his choice, and I thought I had made peace with that, but every time I think it’s simple… Something happens to change that.”

“You shouldn’t have had to make peace with him hurting you,” Malaya said softly. “I don’t know why he treated you the way he did, but it’s not right. It could never be right. I… I wish people would have been there for you.” I wish I could have been there for you. 

Hikari shrugged, the motion jerky and graceless. “That’s why I want to change Ku. I don’t want anyone to hurt like I did. I don’t want anyone to suffer ever again. It’s not necessary. It never will be. I don’t care if others disagree. Hurting other people is a choice, and it’s the wrong one to make.”

“You’re right,” Malaya nodded. “And… It makes me so angry that it happens anyway. I know you can’t bring yourself to hate Mugen even after everything he did, but I most certainly can. You shouldn’t have ever had to deal with that. You shouldn’t have been treated like that. No person deserves it. And now…”

“He’s gone,” Hikari finished for her, and Malaya nodded again. Hikari hummed against the wind. “I want to say I’m glad to not have to face him anymore, but… He was family. I stopped thinking of him as that a long time ago, but even longer ago… There was a little boy who looked up to his brother and wanted to be just like him. There was a little boy who wanted to be cared for rather than exiled. There was a little boy who wanted to be loved, but he never was.” Hikari let out a sobering laugh that rumbled in his chest like a sob. “Perhaps it’s selfish, but… I still act on his behalf even though no one else did. I don’t think I ever quite got over that.”

“You shouldn’t be expected to,” Malaya told him. “You didn’t deserve any of it, and now… I’m glad Mugen can’t hurt you or anyone else ever again, but I wish there was something more we could do to make it right.” As far as Malaya was concerned, Hikari learning to hate Mugen was an act of love. He may not have seen it that way, but she most certainly did. Hikari needed to love himself enough to let go of the image of a man who would never treat him as he deserved.

“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure no one else is hurt the way I was. It may not be much after all Ku has been through, but I need to do what I can. It feels like the best I can offer.” Hikari looked up at Malaya with a sad smile. “I wish it was enough.”

“I wish people had done more for you when you were a child,” Malaya murmured. She reached out to take Hikari’s hand, and while his muscles stiffened beneath her grasp, they relaxed again seconds later. “In that way… I guess we got lucky. Castti and I, that is. Eir was there when our father was…” She only realized what she had said after the words left her mouth, and her heart stopped as she looked up at Hikari. He was staring at her with the same wide eyes and grief that she had come to identify in her own gaze, and Malaya’s heart stopped for a split second. “Forget I said anything.”

Hikari placed his other hand over Malaya’s, and she realized it had started to shake. “That’s why you’re so defensive then,” he whispered. “You understand too.  You went through it too.” Malaya barely mustered a vague excuse of a nod, and Hikari pressed his hands tighter around hers. “I’m sorry.”

Malaya shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t remember all that much about it,” she confessed. “I know enough to know it happened, but Eir’s been keeping a lot of it from me and Castti. They won’t be able to hide it forever, but… There’s still some value in trying to move slowly, I suppose.” She laughed darkly, her eyes falling shut before her tears could fall. “I was so angry when I heard about Mugen because… I don’t know. I hate that someone so kind could go through something like that. I hate him because I love you. You didn’t deserve it, and now… Mugen’s gone, but that pain is still here. It feels like it’ll never go away.”

“You didn’t deserve it either,” Hikari insisted, and Malaya tilted her face away on instinct. She didn’t know why she bothered. Her tears had started to work their way out from behind her eyelashes anyway. “I… I must admit that I don’t know how to feel now that Mugen is gone. I doubt I ever will. Still… I’m doing my best to find closure. I don’t know how to make it right, and I don’t know if I ever will. Even so, I want to close this bloody chapter of Ku’s history. I don’t want to let my hate of Mugen destroy my love for Ku. Maybe it’s the same thing at the end of the day. I’m not sure. I do know that I want to make the future brighter than the past I endured. It’s all I can fight for, and I’m never going to let it go. No one should have to go through what I did, and if I’m the only one trying to make things better, then so be it. On my watch, there will never be another Mugen.” Hikari didn’t bother to explain what part of Mugen he was trying to stop, but he didn’t need to either. Somehow, Malaya already knew, and it was that hatred of love that told her everything. 

“You’ll be a good king,” Malaya said as she pried her eyes open again. She was looking up at the moon where it sat proudly at the center of the obsidian sky, but its image grew distorted as she blinked other tears out of her eyes. “I wish Mugen and the shadow could have seen the good in you that the rest of us do.” 

Hikari smiled, and Malaya felt one of his hands leave her own. “I want to make Ku a better place for everyone. I wish things could have been different in the past, but now that I’m here… I’m going to change the future. I promise.” He wrapped his arm around Malaya’s shoulders, testing the waters for a full embrace. “And I’ll make sure no one ever has to go through what we did.”

Malaya rushed into Hikari’s arms without missing a beat, pressing her face against his shoulder. “I wish they could have seen you now,” she whispered against his shirt. “But if they’re not here to protect you, then I will be. If they won’t love you, then I will. I know it’s not the same, but… I hope it helps.”

Hikari’s smile deepened against Malaya’s cheek. She didn’t need to look up to see he was crying too. “Having my friends around always helps,” he assured her. “And… I’m glad we had the chance to talk about this, Malaya. I’m glad we had the chance to meet.”

Malaya nodded, and a jagged warmth of love and hate spread throughout her chest like vines seeking sunlight. “I’m glad we met too.”

Chapter Text

Merry Hills was fast approaching. 

Since first joining one another, the travelers had gone on countless journeys and learned more about the world than they could have ever imagined. For the most part, they had all accomplished what they set out to do. Trousseau had been stopped, the calamity of the Night of the Scarlet Moon had been averted, and Mugen’s conquest had died with him. The travelers had done just about everything they had planned on when they first began this adventure, and the end of their quest seemed to be in sight. 

The sole exception to that rule was Agnea’s journey. She was the only one who had not yet seen her goals fulfilled. The party was on the way to Merry Hills to see it through, but they had not reached the city yet. When morning came, they would begin the rest of their journey to Merry Hills, setting out from their camp and arriving just in time for the beginning of the festival. Agnea’s chance to prove herself before Dolcinaea had almost arrived. The only obstacle in her way now was the span of a few short hours. 

Malaya was excited for her in a way she didn’t think she ever had been before. In the past, the mention of one of the travelers’ journeys ending always left her anxious, lighting a fire in her stomach that could only be extinguished by the sweet release of a climatic battle. That was not the case tonight though. Agnea’s dream would not be reached in combat or bloodshed. She was different from the rest of them, and every member of their ragtag group knew it. She was special in a way most others could only dream of. Agnea saw the light in the world, and she was determined to make it real even as others began to doubt if hope could truly endure. She wasn’t just a performer; she was hope itself, and soon enough, she would follow that star all the way to the dream she had been chasing for as long as she could remember. 

Malaya was glad to finally have been given a break from the sway of combat. She knew how to handle herself in a fight, but that didn’t necessarily mean she enjoyed having to swing an axe in order to survive. In fact, Malaya wanted nothing more than to be free from the constant need for battle. It was necessary, and she would never dare to imply otherwise, but she yearned for something different. She needed something new, and she knew the group’s trip to Merry Hills would finally give her what she was looking for. 

Malaya had been put on the first night shift for their last night of camping before they reached town. She sat in front of the fire and watched it crackle silently, an uneasy but content smile on her face. Malaya wasn’t even the one performing, and she could feel her nerves threatening to suffocate her all over again. She vastly preferred it to the penetrating anxiety that had come with facing Trousseau in Timberain or the bone deep exhaustion that preceded the Night of the Scarlet Moon, but it was tiring to grapple with even so. Malaya tapped her finger absentmindedly against the dirt in an attempt to rid herself of that nervous energy, but it didn’t work as well as she would have liked. She couldn’t say she expected anything else though. There was a lot on the line in Merry Hills. This was Agnea’s chance to become a star, and no one wanted to even entertain the idea of her falling from grace after how far she had come. 

There was a bit more to Malaya’s anxiety than just that though. She had been wound up ever since the group arrived in Montwise on the way to Merry Hills, and while talking to Osvald about everything had helped, she couldn’t seem to soothe her nerves fully. There was always something she was afraid of, and she hated it. If Malaya was being honest with herself, her anxiety long outlasted the group’s return trip to Montwise, and she had no idea what to do about it. She doubted she would ever know. 

On nights like this, Malaya wanted nothing more than to find a corner and hide in it until after her anxiety finally died down and faded entirely. She yearned to numb that rattling fear in her stomach and do whatever she could to make sure it never returned. Malaya knew that wouldn’t be possible though, so she instead stared at the fire like she thought it could lure her away from all of her misery if she gave it the chance. That was never quite enough, but it couldn’t stop her from at least trying to find peace anew. 

If Malaya was being honest, she knew exactly where her anxiety was coming from. It was sourced from the same dark place all of her fears had always stemmed from: Healeaks. Even after defeating Trousseau, Malaya found herself thinking of the town that had forged her from black blood and loving touches. She had done everything in her power to help Castti understand the truth of the past, but there was always something that kept her from embracing her history in the same way. Malaya could play the fool all she wanted, but she was fully aware of the truth. She was afraid of who she was in a way few others needed to fear. She was an imitation of someone else, and she didn’t think she would ever be much more. 

Malaya knew she couldn’t bottle this up forever. Of course she did. She had walked Castti through her emotions countless times, and Malaya had learned from her lessons even though she wished she could ignore them. That wasn’t even factoring in Eir’s quiet threat to go to Castti on their own if Malaya left this waiting for too much longer. There would come a time when Malaya would need to be honest about her insecurities regarding the person she was copying… But that didn’t make facing it any easier. If anything, it only made Malaya’s fears worse. She didn’t want to admit how anxious she was to Castti or anyone else. It felt forbidden somehow. In many ways, it may as well have been. 

Malaya thought often of the night she had strayed from the rest of the group to sit under the tree near the New Delsta Anchorage. She wondered just as many times if the original Malaya had ever received a proper burial. It wouldn’t change the woes of her present, of course, but it would at least do something to assuage the guilt that lived in her chest so effortlessly. If the original Malaya had been buried, then it would be like she had truly been laid to rest. If she was at peace, then Malaya wouldn’t feel as guilty for taking her place. 

Malaya knew she would never quite measure up to the woman she had been constructed to follow. She was built of Castti’s perceptions of the original Malaya. She had been forged by idealistic love and trauma, not flesh and blood. It was difficult to not feel like she was an intruder of some kind. Even months after Castti first encouraged Malaya to open up and tell the rest of the group how she felt, Malaya still found herself fearing that she was pushing her way into a place she did not belong. Did the other travelers feel the same way? Would any of them ever tell her if she was sticking her nose in where it was not wanted? Were they too kind to give her the mercy of a swift end to her intrusions?

Before Malaya could interrogate those questions further, she heard the rustling of fabric off to her right. She glanced over to see Agnea rolling over in her cot restlessly, and a tension Malaya hadn’t known was there dissipated from her shoulders. Of course it was just Agnea. No one was awake, and they weren’t going to question her on what she was thinking at the moment. She was safe to continue on as she was. There was nothing to–

“Malaya…?”

Damn it. 

Malaya glanced over at Agnea slowly, almost as if she thought the dancer would go back to sleep if she didn’t answer immediately. As soon as Malaya saw Agnea though, she realized there was no way for the dancer to go back to sleep. Agnea had never fallen asleep in the first place. Malaya wasn’t the only one nervous about the next morning’s journey to Merry Hills, it seemed. Then again, if anyone was justified in their anxiety for the following day, it would be Agnea. She was the one who would be taking to the stage when they saw Dolcinaea again. 

“What is it, Agnea?” Malaya asked softly, taking extra care to not wake any of the other travelers. She resisted the urge to watch them all out of the corner of her eye, knowing that no matter how much she stared, it wouldn’t keep them asleep if they were truly destined to awaken again. The only thing she could do was hope for the best no matter how vague of an idea that was.

“Can we talk for a bit?” Agnea questioned. “I can’t sleep, and… I think talking about everything would help.” There was something hopeful but nervous in her eyes, and Malaya recognized it immediately. Agnea wanted to take this as a chance to bond with Malaya. They didn’t talk as much as they should have, and while they were still on friendly terms with one another, they had never set all of their pretenses aside to just chat. On the eve of the greatest day of Agnea’s life, she felt there was no time quite like the present to solve that. 

Despite the storm of self-deprecation and existential dread raging against her skull, Malaya found herself smiling. “Of course.” She patted the ground beside her, and Agnea shuffled over to sit on her left without missing a beat. Agnea’s head began to droop onto Malaya’s shoulder, and the apothecary’s smile only deepened. She hadn’t realized she needed this too… Not that she would ever admit it to the rest of the travelers. Somehow, that felt like treason waiting to happen. 

A few seconds passed in silence before Malaya adjusted herself slightly to give Agnea a better position to lean against her. “Are you nervous?” Malaya didn’t know why she had bothered asking that at all; of course Agnea was nervous. Merry Hills was going to change her life whether she was ready for it or not, and no amount of preparation could possibly brace a person for a competition against the greatest star to ever grace Solistia. 

“Very,” Agnea replied with a tinny laugh. It was the fake giggle she used when she was trying to seem like she came from the city, a far cry from the hearty, loud laugh that Malaya had come to love from her so much. “I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I know I’m ready for it, but…”

“That doesn’t change how nervous you are,” Malaya finished for her, and Agnea nodded again. Malaya wrapped an arm around Agnea’s shoulders, and the dancer gladly leaned in close against her. “Why don’t you tell me just what has you so anxious? Maybe I can help you talk through it.”

Agnea hesitated for a long moment before she let out a sigh that made her shoulders nearly cave in on themselves entirely. “I… I keep thinking about my mother,” she confessed. “She was the greatest star of her time, and now… I want to do everything I can to make her proud of me. I don’t want to fail now. It’s not just about me. It’s about her, Pala, Papa, and everyone else who ever believed in me. I don’t want to let any of them down.”

“You could never let us down,” Malaya assured her. “I know there’s a lot on the line with this performance, but you don’t need to fear disappointing us. We’re all happy to be here with you no matter how tomorrow goes. You’ll always be a star to us, and that will never change.”

“I know,” Agnea murmured. “I just… Mama was so good at what she did. I want to do everything I can to follow down that path too. What if I mess this up? Will everything still be okay if I can’t beat Dolcinaea tomorrow?”

“I know it will be,” Malaya told her. “You’re the best performer I’ve ever seen, Agnea. If anyone can handle this, I know it’s you. I understand this is terrifying, and there’s a lot on the line, but… You don’t need to be afraid. We’re all here for you, and even if you stumble, you’ll have the rest of us to fall back on. I promise.”

Agnea nodded slowly, but Malaya could tell by her pointed silence that she didn’t entirely believe what she was hearing. It was nothing against Malaya or the rest of the travelers, of course, but instead a matter of fear and contradiction that lived in her chest just beside her heart. No matter how many times others assured Agnea that she would do just fine during the competition, she still feared that she would fail, and that lack of confidence in herself was a far greater danger than Dolcinaea ever could have been. 

“I’m scared,” Agnea confessed, the word coming out fragile on the wind. “I don’t want to let anyone down. I don’t want to disappoint Mama. She was such an amazing dancer, and I… I don’t know if I’ll be able to honor her memory if I mess this up tomorrow.”

“You don’t need to be perfect to honor her, you know,” Malaya said, her fingers tracing gentle circles across Agnea’s upper arm. “Your mother loves you more than anything. I can say that without a shadow of a doubt. You could never let her down. You’ve come this far, and you’ve defeated countless people who would want to stand in the way of your dream. You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met, Agnea, and if anyone can do this… I know it’s you. If you can’t find the confidence to believe in yourself, then you can let the rest of us have faith in you until you can get there on your own. That’s what friends are for, right?”

Agnea curled up against Malaya’s body a little bit tighter, and Malaya could feel the dancer’s smile in the silence. “Thanks, Malaya,” Agnea whispered. “I don’t know what I would do without the rest of you here for me. It really means a lot.”

“We're happy to be here,” Malaya smiled. “As far as we’re concerned, you’ve already done us proud. You’re going to do an amazing job tomorrow, and if anyone disagrees… Well, they can bring up their complaints with the rest of us.” 

Agnea laughed, and this time, the sound was genuine in a way that glowed with all the light in the world. Malaya didn’t need to look at her directly to know that happy tears had risen in her eyes, and she didn’t comment on it. Instead, she just continued to hold Agnea as close as she could. “I’m going to make the most of this,” Agnea vowed. “I’m going to make Mama proud. I promise.”

“You’ve already made the rest of us proud. I’m sure your mother feels the same way,” Malaya assured her. There was something pulling at her chest in the silence, but she didn’t know how to acknowledge it, so she instead chose to not say anything about it. Somehow, it felt wrong to talk about herself when Agnea had come to her for help with her own problems. 

Malaya may as well have not tried to hide the truth though. Agnea didn’t take long to figure out something was wrong, and she tilted her head upward at an impossibly awkward angle just to have the chance to meet eyes with Malaya. “What about you?” she asked. “I can tell you’ve got a lot on your mind tonight too. What is it?”

Malaya hadn’t expected Agnea to get to the heart of the matter so soon, or if she was being truly honest with herself, at all. Then again, she shouldn’t have thought Agnea would leave this alone forever. Agnea was perceptive, and she could tell when people were hiding things from her. She knew how to get to the heart of a situation too, and Malaya had been a fool for thinking she would be able to get away from that. “I… I’ve had a lot to think about lately,” she confessed. It was an understatement and did nothing to actually answer Agnea’s question, but it was the best she could bring herself to say at the moment. 

Agnea wouldn’t be satisfied by something so vague though, and she turned to face Malaya properly after pulling away from the apothecary’s gentle embrace. “What are you worried about?” she questioned. Malaya hesitated for a moment too long, and Agnea pressed her hands together on her lap. “You do so much to help the rest of us, Malaya. I think it’s time we did something to help you out. You just talked to me about something that was bothering me. Let me return the favor.”

There was an argument Malaya couldn’t exactly refute. If she tried to argue it, she would only end up in deep trouble with Castti and Eir. Malaya was always telling them to be a bit less self-sacrificial and look after themselves for once, but how could she lecture them on that when she didn’t hold herself to the same standards? After a few seconds more of stiff silence, Malaya sighed. “I’ve been worried about who I am,” she admitted. “I’m not the same person Castti fell in love with, and it… I don’t know. I feel like I’m trying to replace the old Malaya somehow.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Agnea said instantly, and Malaya felt heat rise to her cheeks. She didn’t think she had been called on this so obviously since she spoke with Alrond back in Wellgrove, and that felt like a lifetime ago now. “You’re not replacing anyone. You’re here for Castti, and that’s what matters most.”

“But there’s someone else who should be there for her too,” Malaya murmured. She knew blaming herself for the form she had taken wasn’t going to help anyone, especially since she couldn’t exactly raise her inspiration from the dead, but that guilt cared little for life or death. It just wanted to eat her alive. “It feels wrong.”

Agnea nodded in soft recognition. “You know… It sounds like we have the same problem,” she realized. “We both want to follow in the footsteps of people who aren’t here anymore. It’s hard to get out of their light or shadow when they’re not here to guide us away from it anymore.”

For some reason, the observation seemed to take all the air from Malaya’s lungs like a punch to the stomach. “Yeah,” she agreed, the word coming out as a thin wheeze. “I guess you’re right.” She hadn't thought about it that way, but now that Agnea had said it, Malaya didn’t think she would be able to ignore it ever again. 

“But it sounds like you’re more afraid of what Castti will think of you for being like the old Malaya,” Agnea went on, either not noticing how much her words had shaken Malaya or deliberately choosing to not release her momentum. “Maybe you should talk to Castti about it. I know she wouldn’t have any problems with this. You’re a lot harder on yourself than she will be on you.”

“I guess you’re right,” Malaya murmured. She knew Agnea was right, and Eir had said as much, but forcing herself to believe it felt forbidden somehow. Acknowledging that she deserved life just as much as anyone else felt wrong. Castti thought often of the wrongness that came with standing in the rain, but to Malaya, her deep wrongness came from the idea of being human. Why did she need to be cursed with the same affliction that had led to the downfalls of so many others she adored?

Agnea moved back toward Malaya again, slotting in effortlessly in the place between the apothecary’s torso and arm. Malaya gladly pulled her in for yet another embrace. “We’re all happy you’re here, Malaya,” Agnea said softly, the words every bit as tender and loving as a prayer. “And we think you should give yourself a chance to be happy you’re here too. Our group isn’t complete without you.” Agnea’s hand found Malaya’s and gave it a gentle squeeze. 

Malaya didn’t realize there were tears in her eyes until after they had already started to fall. She rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, pulling in Agnea selfishly close just for the thrill of having another person there with her. “Thank you, Agnea,” she whispered breathlessly. “I… I really needed to hear that.”

Agnea squeezed Malaya’s hand again. “All I ask is that you talk to Castti about this instead of keeping it all inside to yourself. I… I know how hard it is to want to talk to someone who’s gone, and while I know it won’t fix all of your problems with wanting to talk to the original Malaya… I don’t want you to keep yourself away until you can’t talk to Castti anymore.” Agnea pressed herself up a bit closer against Malaya’s body. “For my sake, can you talk to her?”

Malaya smiled despite herself, and she nodded, keeping the motion small so as to not disturb the dancer in her arms. “Of course,” she agreed. If she was being honest with herself, talking to Castti was long overdue. She should have done it ages ago, but she always found an excuse to not say anything. At least Agnea was there to hold her accountable now. Hopefully, that would be enough to finally push Malaya over the edge into committing to talking to Castti. She needed it to be enough. 

Agnea smiled, and Malaya heard it in the Crestlands air around them. “Thanks for talking to me, Malaya,” she murmured. Once again, she squeezed at Malaya’s hand, and for a flutter of a second, Malaya could have sworn she felt Agnea’s warm pulse against her own. “And thanks for being there for all of us.”

Malaya didn’t wipe away her tears when they fell this time. “I’m happy to be here, Agnea.”

Chapter Text

Malaya and Eir’s relationship was… Complicated. 

To be more specific, their relationship was many things, but complicated was the easiest descriptor to pull out of the bunch. It made sense given the circumstances, but that didn’t make it any simpler to deal with. Malaya and Eir had found one another just before they were forced to drop everything to save Crick’s life, so they hadn’t been given much of a chance to talk with each other initially. Malaya had always known Eir was there, but that night in Stormhail was their first chance to see one another face to face. Eir knew about Malaya too, but they had chosen to keep their presence a secret for a wide variety of reasons she couldn’t even hope to understand. 

Since then, Malaya and Eir had fallen into a routine, but it was taking much longer to develop than it had with Castti. Once again, it was to be expected since Eir had spent so many years alone and away from Castti and Malaya, but it was still harder than Malaya would have liked to reach out to them. At least they were finally making progress now. There was a lot they had yet to learn about each other, but they were starting to work through their relationship, and that was all Malaya could really ask for. 

Malaya had been struggling more to deal with everything Eir had revealed to her than talking to Eir themself, and she couldn’t tell if that was an improvement or not. She had wasted countless late nights staring up at the ceiling of inn rooms across Solistia hoping to find some vain understanding of the past that had created Eir, but she never quite found anything tangible. Then again, what reason was there to be found in something as miserable as abuse? Malaya didn’t know how they had lived with it for so long. The mere thought of their body’s history was driving her up a wall, and she had known about it for only a fraction of the time Eir had held the truth to their chest. 

In the time since revealing the secrets of their memories, Eir had taken over for Castti and Malaya when they needed a break from controlling their shared body. They seemed to know whenever the two women were in need of time away from the physical world, and they handled the situation with effortless grace. Malaya couldn’t help but wish she could respond to pressure in the same way. She had done her best to deliver Castti to safety and understanding after she lost her memories, but compared to Eir, Malaya’s work seemed haphazard and messy. She didn’t have the years worth of experience they did, and while Malaya was glad for it, she almost yearned for that understanding too. Eir seemed to know so much more about the world than her, and she had no idea how she was meant to make up for the gulf in their skills. 

The travelers were making their way to Canalbrine to catch a ship to the eastern continent, and Castti had taken over their body for the evening. That left Malaya and Eir in the realm of their mind, though neither one of them seemed eager to seek out the other. Malaya and Eir were more similar than they were different, often preferring the company of silence than open conversation. Malaya appreciated the acknowledgement Eir was giving her by offering her space, but she couldn’t help wondering if there was something she should have been saying to them. They wanted to talk to her about something. Malaya could feel it. They were watching her almost constantly, but each time she tried to look up to catch them in the act, they found a way to avert their gaze at the last possible second. It would have been impressive if it wasn’t so damn frustrating. 

Malaya couldn’t say how long they had been dancing around each other before she finally got tired of it, and she let out a heavy sigh as her head sunk into her hand. “You don’t need to stare at me like that, you know.” Malaya wished she could have said what she was trying to get out of this conversation, but she already knew she would need more time to figure that out. 

Eir went still at Malaya’s words before pressing a fake smile across their lips. The sight of it almost made Malaya sick. “My apologies. Old habits die hard.” That was another thing Malaya had learned about Eir; they were almost too formal in everything they did. It was like their stern choice of words was another wall they were putting up between themself, Castti, and Malaya. How could she even begin to understand them when they weren’t giving her a chance to reach out? What was she doing wrong? How could she make up for that distance on her own? 

Malaya shook her head passively, and Eir said nothing in response. She began to tap her foot beneath the table, and Eir continued to stare at her while pretending they were looking at anything and everything else. Malaya knew she was going to tire of their competition of carelessness soon though, so she let her hand fall away from her cheek to press against the wood of the table. “Eir…” She only realized after she had spoken that she had no way of finishing that thought, and she clamped her eyes shut like she thought it would give her the answer she sought. It did not. “Why are you staring at me? Is there something wrong? Should I be worried?”

Eir remained quiet for just a bit too long before shaking their head. Malaya felt it more than she saw it, but she didn’t pry her eyes open again to prove her instincts true. “You have nothing to worry about… Nothing more than usual anyway.” Eir forced themself to look away from Malaya, and she bit down on her bottom lip quietly. Something about this conversation bothered her, but she couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was. Eir had never been open with their emotions, and Malaya had thought she was used to it by now, but she was wrong. Oh, she was horribly wrong. 

“Have you spoken with Castti?”

Malaya opened her eyes and looked up at Eir to see them staring at her with that piercing gaze that seemed to spear her through the chest and beyond. Malaya’s heart skipped a beat. “Spoken with Castti about what?” She already knew what they were referring to, but she wasn't going to admit it without a fight. It didn’t feel right. After all, that would mean facing the fact that Eir had been eavesdropping on her thoughts, and Malaya wasn’t going to give them the dignity of admitting that without voicing it themself. 

“Your feelings toward her,” Eir explained, and Malaya’s chest went tight again. “I know you have a complicated relationship with your creation.” That was certainly an understatement. Malaya hadn’t spoken a word of the night she went out to the tree near the New Delsta Anchorage to cry where the love of Castti’s life had died. And yet, Eir had figured it out anyway. She shouldn’t have been surprised. They hadn’t yet shown themself by that point, but Eir was always watching. They did everything they could to make sure Castti and Malaya were safe, and if that meant haunting them on sleepless nights, then so be it. 

“I…” Malaya shook her head. “I haven’t talked to her, and I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell her about it either.” A distant part of Malaya’s mind told her that she was lucky. If Eir was planning to expose her, then they would have done it already. They weren’t the type to avoid important subjects, and if they thought something needed to be revealed, then they would do it. 

But at the same time, Eir wasn’t quite as direct as Malaya’s fears wanted her to believe. They had hidden for years upon years, managing to get away with the illusion of nonexistence for far longer than Malaya had ever thought to. They were good at what they did, but their directness could only take them so far. They could only do so much before the weaknesses of their sheltered years would start to show itself. Eir was only as strong as they were willing to be at any moment, and even the strongest of protectors needed to be vulnerable every once in a while. 

“I see,” Eir hummed, and Malaya held back a wince. Eir was going to sell her out soon if she didn’t take care of this on her own. She could tell. But how could Malaya talk to Castti about this? It felt wrong in more ways than she could ever hope to count. She couldn’t put a burden like that on Castti’s shoulders when she was dealing with more than enough as it was. It wouldn’t have been right. Malaya couldn’t do that to her. Castti was already grieving, and Malaya couldn’t make it worse. She knew that was all talking would do. 

“Are you afraid?”

Eir’s voice cut through the silence again before Malaya could overthink herself off the cliff of her own fear, and she blinked at them a few agonizing times before replying. “What are you talking about?” Of course she was afraid. If Malaya thought the conversation with Castti would end well, then she would have done it already. Instead, she was sitting there in her indecision and terror because she couldn’t think of a better way to handle her miserable situation. 

“In general,” Eir clarified, though that did little to explain anything about the question. “I understand that we haven’t had much of a chance to talk about what you heard from me in the Stormhail inn. I know that’s a lot to hear about all at once, and… I wanted to check in with you. I know this is happening a bit late, but it’s worth doing late rather than never, isn’t it?”

Somehow, that was much worse than talking about Malaya avoiding speaking with Castti. Malaya had been doing her best to block out everything that happened in their childhood. For a long time, she had thought she didn’t have a right to feel that pain. How could she say that she had been hurt when she hadn’t yet formed in her own right when it happened? It didn’t make sense to her… But if Hikari and Osvald had taught her anything, it was that emotions defied all reason. Malaya had been doing her best to tease those demons out of her heart since then, but it was a slow going effort. She didn’t feel ready for any of it. How could anyone? 

“I’m terrified,” Malaya answered before she had the chance to remind her tongue to lie. “I… I hate thinking about it.” When she closed her eyes, she could have sworn she felt it all over again. The pain was still remembered by their body even long after Eir had sealed the memories away to keep them safe. It didn’t matter that Malaya hadn’t yet been created by that point. She could feel the agony easily, and it threatened to suffocate her if she wasn’t careful with it. 

“I can’t blame you,” Eir said with a hint of what was almost a smile. “It’s a lot to think about, isn’t it?” They let out a small laugh, but it lacked any sense of humor. “My first memory was of pain at the hands of this body’s father. I didn’t know much, but… I knew there was something more important than just me at stake.”

“Castti,” Malaya finished for them, not that she needed to bother. That was the reason both of them had formed in the first place. They were there to keep Castti safe. It was all Malaya had been telling herself since she awoke in the darkness of their mind after Healeaks. What was she if not a vessel for truth? Castti had needed a guide, and Malaya had appeared to her to make sure she found her way back to understanding. It had been a long, bitter journey, but it was worth it in the end. 

Eir nodded slowly. “If you ask me, that’s the best part of all of this. Even though the circumstances were terrible, we’re here for something greater than ourselves. We’re all parts of a greater whole. It’s incredible to be part of something like this… It’s incredible to be here because of love.” They looked back to Malaya, and she realized too late that they had looked away at all. She resisted the urge to squirm under their piercing gaze, feeling as if her heart had been cleaved in twain all over again. “But there’s more to life than just what you can do for other people.”

Malaya suddenly wanted to melt into nothingness and fade into the cracks of the floor beneath her. She knew that wouldn’t save her, not as long as Eir was there to say something about it, but she still yearned for any walls she could create between herself and them. “What are you talking about?”

“There’s more to our existence than simply the services we can provide to others,” Eir went on. “I believe that people are here for a reason, but sometimes, a greater purpose isn’t that reason at all.” Their hand suddenly fell on top of Malaya’s knuckles, and she resisted the urge to jump out of her skin and into the empty air between them. “When I first appeared, all I wanted to do was keep this body safe. It felt like the only thing I was made for… But there’s much more to life than that. It took me a long time to learn that. I think it’s time for you to learn it too.”

Malaya wanted to speak, but she couldn’t find the words around the sudden knot in the back of her throat. How long had she been silent for? Did the answer even matter at all? If Eir noticed how much she was floundering, they chose to not let it show, and she silently thanked them for that tiny show of mercy. “I was there when we escaped from Montwise. I was the one who got us on the road in the first place. Back then, I… I thought my job was done. I had gotten us away from there, and that meant we could go back to the way things were before. Castti could take over our life again, and I could consider my duty fulfilled… But I couldn’t seem to stay away. There was always something else that needed my attention, and I kept coming back.” They laughed again, and the sound felt like sandpaper to Malaya’s ears. “I was a bit hasty in thinking Castti would be able to handle everything alone. The point of this love in the first place is not being alone. I was a fool for forgetting it.”

Malaya looked away, and Eir took that as the cue they needed to continue. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years here, it’s that you cannot measure yourself in the metrics of what you think your purpose is. There’s much more to life than that.” Eir forced themself to smile, but it faded just as quickly as it had appeared. “It wasn’t easy holding onto so much and thinking it was the only reason I was alive. If the rest of the world and all of its people get the chance to define themselves by more than the services they can offer, then we have a right to do the same. What makes us so different?”

“Nothing,” Malaya forced herself to say. She didn’t know how much she believed it, but she knew it was the answer Eir was searching for, and so, it was the response she would offer. The nagging feeling in her stomach to run away and forget about all of this returned with a vengeance, but she did her best to suffocate it. 

Eir seemed to see just how desperate she was to run, but they chose to not say anything about it. “Exactly. Nothing. There’s not a difference between us and the rest of the world. It doesn’t matter if we were created from the mind rather than born into this body. We’re still alive, and that’s all that matters.” They offered Malaya another striking glance, and she resisted the urge to squirm all over again. It was like they were doing this on purpose. It wouldn’t have surprised her if they were. “I was there when Castti formed Eir’s Apothecaries. We did it together, as a matter of fact, though I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now. I wanted to leave Castti to this new life of hers, but… I couldn’t do it. I wanted to live. I thought I was selfish for it at the time. I had served my purpose, and I thought I had no right to drag her into my needs… But as soon as I let myself open up to all of the apothecaries, I started to feel better. It wasn’t an immediate solution, but it was a step that needed to be taken.”

“You cared for all of them too,” Malaya realized. “You weren’t in charge of the body during Healeaks, but…” Eir had been every bit the leader of Eir’s Apothecaries that Castti had been. Without them, the group never would have found its name in the first place. Even though Eir had never revealed themself to the rest of the team, they had been there watching over its members in the only way they had ever been taught how. They were a silent observer, and in the end, they hadn’t even been able to grieve the deaths of every person they had ever come to know and love. 

“There’s a reason you wound up holding onto the pain of that day. There’s a reason it was you and not me,” Eir said darkly. They wanted to laugh just for the sake of adding something to punctuate the thought, but they couldn’t bring themself to bother. “I couldn’t take it. I lost everything that day too. All of us did. It wasn’t easy for any of us. I may not have been there directly, but… You wouldn’t ask me to ignore the pain of what happened, would you?”

“Never,” Malaya told them immediately. “I… I didn’t know you were–”

“I didn’t want you to know,” Eir cut in with a shake of their head. “We’ve lost a lot in our time… And it has taught me more than ever that we need to treasure that which we have left. That starts with looking after ourselves and each other.” Eir’s hand suddenly reached out to take Malaya’s fingers between their own, and she nearly jolted out of her body from shock. “You would never ask me to forget the pain of Healeaks. I wouldn’t ask you to ignore everything that happened in our past either. We’re here together, and we grieve for all we have lost together.”

“I…” Malaya wanted to argue the point, but she already knew she wouldn’t succeed. In the end, she let out a heavy sigh and looked away from Eir. “It doesn’t feel right. I wasn’t there.”

“But you were,” Eir insisted. “All of us were. When one of us suffers, the others will as well. That’s why we need to do the best we can for ourselves and each other. That’s our duty. We cannot degrade ourselves to the failure or fulfillment of purpose. We are alive, and that’s both the problem and the beauty of it all.”

Malaya stared at the spot where her and Eir’s hands were intertwined, and she held back an exhale she already knew would cave her body in over itself. “I don’t…” She didn’t what? Did she even know? Malaya already knew the answer to that. She leaned over the table carefully, letting her cheek touch down on the wood. “I’m tired.”

“So am I,” Eir agreed. “But I want you to keep trying to face the future. I know you’re afraid of talking to Castti… But you need to do it sooner or later. You need to accept that the pain of others can be yours too. You need to stop treating yourself like something that needs to be done. I only started to feel better about myself after I connected with Eir’s Apothecaries. Without them, I would have lost myself entirely. Humans need others to survive. You would never tell one of your patients to isolate themself if they were struggling. So why do you insist on doing the same? Why do you treat yourself as a purpose to be carried out instead of a human being? What makes you different?”

“Nothing,” Malaya repeated. “I’m not different.” She pressed her free hand to her chest just to feel some imitation of a heartbeat against her fingertips. “I… I want to be with the others. I do. I just… I can’t help feeling bad about it. I feel like I’m taking from Castti somehow.”

“We’re here together. We cannot take from that which was never a single person’s in the first place,” Eir reminded her. “We are here together for a reason, and that is to live. You have every right to get to know others that Castti does. This is not her life that we are intruding on. This is our life. It belongs to all of us. If you can’t see it, then I’ll tell you as many times as you need to hear it.”

Malaya took in an uneasy breath before pushing it out between trembling lips. She felt at her best when the other travelers were there to help her. She could deny it all she wanted, but she knew where her hopes would always lie. She wanted to get the chance to know others. She wanted any chance she could get her hands on to embrace the love of the world even though it felt selfish. Malaya wanted to live, and no amount of hating herself for existing could ever cure her of the dreadful affliction of love. She cared more than anything else, and the flame of her own passion seemed to want to burn her alive most days. Maybe it would be alright if she let it. 

“Talk to Castti,” Eir instructed. “Tell her everything. She needs to hear it… Unless you would prefer that I tell her for you. I’m not above playing dirty for the sake of helping those I love. Sometimes, healing is an unpopular path to take, but it needs to be walked.”

“I’ll do it,” Malaya assured them. “You don’t need to talk to Castti. I… I’ll take care of this.” She didn’t know how she was going to do it, but she had to try. Malaya needed a bit more time to sit with her feelings before she tried to put them to words, but she would get there soon… Not that she thought any length of time would make this easier to face. Malaya didn’t know if the words would ever come the way she needed them to when it was time to talk to Castti. She didn’t know if she could ever understand what she needed to say in the first place. 

“Good.” Eir’s fingers tightened around Malaya’s for a whisper of a second. “I love you, Malaya… and I know I’m not the only one. I can’t let you fall apart because you think it’s what you deserve. No person deserves this… And I’ll say it as many times as I need to.”

Malaya nodded carefully, barely holding back tears but not fully restraining them either. “Thank you, Eir,” she murmured. “I… I’m sorry for everything you went through. I didn’t…”

“It’s not my burden to bear alone anymore,” Eir said with a sad smile and tears Malaya already knew would not fall. “With a family like ours, it never could be.” They looked around at the room around them, a mental reconstruction of the living room of their old home in Healeaks. So much had changed since they were last there, and Malaya didn’t know if she would ever be able to track the shifting of the tides in any physical way. She didn’t know if she could track it mentally either.

Instead, Malaya simply nodded, closing her eyes against the waves of tears threatening to spill free. “Right… Family.”

Chapter Text

The Stormhail inn was a void forgotten by time. 

Malaya couldn’t say how many hours had come and gone since she, Castti, and Eir first settled down to help Crick. She could feel the ache of exertion in her bones more than she actively remembered just how long she had been sitting there. It had been ages since treatment started, and while it had been a bit touch and go for the first two hours, Crick had since been fully stabilized. Temenos had finally managed to catch a bit of rest, curling up against Crick’s chest despite how inadvisable a gesture like that was. Malaya hadn’t bothered to pull them apart. She already knew that asking Temenos to leave was a vain effort. At least he was getting a bit of sleep. 

When midmorning arrived, Malaya and Temenos traded places in their watch over Crick. His face was still stained with tears from their conversation the night before, but no one asked him why he was so upset. They didn’t need to. Malaya didn’t explain it either. Instead, she retreated to her room, making sure everyone promised to wake her up if Crick needed her help. Malaya didn’t want to leave her patient behind, but she knew that if she stayed on her feet for any longer, she was going to collapse. Eir had been telling her and Castti to take it easy for almost as long as Temenos had been asleep, and at long last, their insistences had won out. 

Malaya wanted to say the rest that followed was soothing and calm after the night of chaos that had preceded it. Unfortunately, her mind had other plans, and her dreams delivered her as far from peace as they could. She didn’t remember the nightmare vividly when she woke up, but she could tell by the way her hands shook and tears threatened to spill from her eyes that it had been about Healeaks. Of course she would have a dream about Healeaks at a time like this. She couldn’t rest for any longer than a few minutes at a time with so much on the line, and stress always made their nightmares worse. Malaya shouldn’t have expected otherwise. 

As tempting as it was to try and get some more rest, Malaya already knew her mind was going to resist that idea for as long as it possibly could. She rolled over, trying to bury her cheek a bit deeper into the pillow. She needed to get more sleep regardless of what her mind wanted. After Crick was in a good enough condition to get up and walk around, the travelers needed to leave Stormhail. It was a miracle they hadn’t been chased out of the city by the Sanctum Knights already. As soon as it was safe for Crick to leave, the travelers would be taking him and running to the nearest port so they could all hopefully wait the chaos out on the sea. The Grand Terry would hopefully be enough of a sanctuary to keep the Sacred Guard from finding them. 

Of course, Malaya would need to rest first. She was almost as likely to collapse as Crick at this point with the way her legs shook with each step she took. Malaya’s brain refused to take the bait though. It didn’t matter how desperate she was to sleep; it wasn’t going to happen. She sighed, finally giving up on rest as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. A headache was starting to pound at the edges of her skull, a warning to not push herself any harder than she needed to. Malaya wished she could listen to it without ending up as the Sacred Guard’s next target for assassination. 

Malaya stayed there for a few moments, just sitting at the edge of the mattress and staring down at her hands. She remembered Eir had taken their gloves off at some point the night before, meaning the darkened scars from the poison rain of Healeaks were on full display. Malaya’s teeth ground against each other. That explained the nightmare then. Castti had learned ages ago to keep her hands covered at night if she wanted to avoid succumbing to the phantoms of what had happened in that forsaken town. Eir had forgotten in their exhaustion, it seemed, and Malaya had paid the price for it. 

She tore her gaze away from her hands by force, instead choosing to stare up at the wall near the door. Malaya had been given a lot to think about in the first few days after Healeaks. Their body had been asleep, recovering from the poison rain the best it could, but Malaya was very much awake and active. She had come to awareness while floating in darkness, and she immediately knew a handful of critical truths. Her name was Malaya. She held memories no person should ever have to face. Her duty was to protect Castti, the other entity in their shared body. Malaya had always known there was someone else there–someone she now knew as Eir–but back then, she hadn’t known who they were. All that mattered was protecting Castti. 

In the darkness, Malaya saw Castti too. She looked like she was crying even in sleep, and Malaya had reached for her with shaking fingers to rub the tears from her cheeks. When they touched, Malaya was met with a deep, aching grief that threatened to swallow her whole. She did not let it take her immediately though. Malaya needed to defend Castti from the darkness waiting in their immediate past, and she did so gladly. Nothing could have stopped her from helping Castti in those early days, and regardless of how difficult it had been, Malaya would have done it again in a heartbeat. 

Malaya had been given three days in the shadows to regain her bearings before Castti woke up. Those seventy-two hours had been agonizing, and while Malaya was glad she was the one holding the memories instead of Castti, remembering was horrible for her too. When she closed her eyes, she could have sworn she was back there in Healeaks. She felt as if she had been cast into the darkness of death rather than just the haziness of her own mind. Malaya’s entire body threatened to shut down on her even though it wasn’t a physical pain, at least not fully. She couldn’t diagnose where the ache was coming from, but it followed her everywhere she went. Even now, Malaya didn’t understand why she had struggled so much in those first few days. The pain had eased with time, and she didn’t think the psychological sting had tried to eat her alive since then. It was difficult to say for certain with hazy ideas like this. 

But she was certain that she knew what it was like to die. Malaya had come back from the brink, but it had come at a price. The black scarring across her body’s arms would never fade, and Malaya knew it. Trousseau had come close to stealing her life that day in Healeaks. At the time, Malaya had still been a part of Castti. Healeaks was the reason that Malaya peeled away from her, and in doing so, she had taken their memories of that fatal day with her. Malaya knew what it meant to nearly die. That fear was all she had known in the darkness after her world caved in, and she knew it would haunt her for the rest of her life. 

Malaya reached for her gloves and tugged them on before she could grow lost in the flashbacks of what that day had done to her. If she focused on it too much, then she would feel as if her lungs were closing up on her. Castti would call it a panic attack, but Malaya felt as if it was much more personal than that. It wasn’t just fear or panic; it was trauma, carved into her flesh as mottled black scars like the same veins she had tried to treat on others. She couldn’t think about this anymore. Malaya was there to protect Castti from the darkness of Healeaks, but she was not invulnerable to it, and she needed to tread carefully so as to not send herself spiraling. 

Malaya walked over to the room that had been set aside for Crick the night before, pulling the door open with a bitter frown. She didn’t know how long she had been asleep, and it was damn near impossible to mark the passage of time in the Winterlands anyway. The cloud layer overhead was simply too thick. Malaya didn’t bother with trying to figure out what time it was either. She just needed a distraction, and hopefully, helping Crick would do something to ease the threat of collapse in her chest. 

Much to Malaya’s surprise, Crick was awake by the time she arrived. That was enough to give her pause in the doorway, and for a long moment, all she could do was stare at him. Crick looked over slowly, his eyes shining but sad. He looked exhausted. He should have been asleep, trying to recover in any small way he could after the injuries he had suffered, but there he was, awake for some reason Malaya couldn’t even begin to fathom. “Ah… Castti,” he greeted. Right. He didn’t know about Malaya yet. Crick struggled to find his words for a few seconds longer before he settled on perhaps the worst way to continue the conversation. “Good morning.”

“You’re awake,” Malaya said simply. She could explain who she was later on. First, she needed to make sure Crick was alright. She sat down in the seat beside him, examining all of his injuries carefully. The bandages had been replaced at some point recently. Malaya already knew Temenos was the one responsible. 

“I am,” Crick replied. “I woke up a few hours ago. Temenos said he would help me while you slept.” He looked away from Malaya, biting at his bottom lip tersely. There were a million things he wanted to say but couldn’t find the words to voice, and Malaya wondered if he was holding out on an explanation for why he was still awake. “I… I heard about what you did for me last night. Thank you.”

“It’s just what we do,” Malaya assured him. “To extend a helping hand to all those in need.” Something in Malaya’s mind filled with pressure, and she ignored the hisses of a headache lined with Trousseau’s wild laughter. Instead, she reached out and felt for Crick’s pulse on his wrist. “How are you feeling? Is everything alright?”

Crick hesitated before shrugging. He only realized how bad of an idea that was after pain raced through his body, and he matched it with a wince. “I… I feel as fine as I can,” he confessed, avoiding looking Malaya in the eyes all the while. His denial was an admission of guilt, but she did not press the point, already knowing it would lead them nowhere until he was ready to talk. “Everything hurts.” There was the understatement of the century. Crick had nearly been slashed in half by Kaldena’s blade. It was a miracle there was enough blood left in his body for Castti, Malaya, and Eir to bring him back in the first place. 

Malaya reached for her satchel, realizing belatedly that she had forgotten to grab it before she left her room. Before she could leave to grab it, Malaya’s eyes found the bag leaning against the foot of the bed. Eir had left it there before going back to their room the night before. That was right. Malaya grabbed the bag and pulled out a small bottle containing a pain reducing medicine. She deliberately avoided looking at the bloodstained treatment log in the satchel, knowing it would only make her headache worse. Castti had been coughing up blood for the first day and a half after Healeaks, and it was her darkened blood that stained so many of the pages. The reminder made Malaya’s head pound anyway. 

She shoved the pain as far away as she could before helping Crick to sit up. “Here. Take this.” Once Crick was vertical enough to swallow down the medicine, Malaya tilted it down his throat. Crick winced at the bitter taste, but he didn’t complain about it. Malaya pressed a cup of water into his hands next, and Crick accepted it gladly. Even after downing the entire glass, Crick couldn’t seem to fight through the awful taste of the medicine, but he said nothing on the subject. 

Once Crick was back on his pillows, he let out a relieved sigh. He refused to meet Malaya’s gaze, instead looking up at the ceiling overhead like it would somehow grant him the salvation he hadn’t known to search for until that morning. “Thank you, Castti.” 

“Malaya,” Malaya corrected. “Castti’s not here right now.” She hoped that was enough for Crick to understand the situation. She didn’t feel like explaining it, especially given the fact that she hadn’t even been given the chance to tell the rest of the travelers about Eir yet. So much had happened since they first showed themself the night before. It was a miracle Malaya’s dreams hadn’t been plagued by the recovered fear of being abused. Gods above, she had forgotten so much. 

And yet, she still couldn’t forget what she wanted to ignore the most. 

Crick watched Malaya for a few seconds, not entirely certain of what she was saying but nodding along anyway. “I see.” Malaya could only imagine that he would ask Temenos about it later. Crick had always felt safest talking to Temenos out of all the travelers. They were all friends with him, but his connection with Temenos had always been something special. If Malaya had to guess, she would have said that Temenos was the reason Crick had managed to come back in the first place. 

It was a shame true love hadn’t been enough to save the original Malaya. 

The thought sent another streak of pain racing through Malaya’s head, and she decided to shuffle through her satchel to find a salve to make for the sake of getting out of her own mind. She didn’t think it would work, at least not as well as she needed it to, but she was at least willing to try. Malaya tossed the materials into her pestle haphazardly before she started to grind them together, hoping Crick understood why she had gone silent. He had no way of knowing, but Malaya could still pray he didn’t push the point more than necessary. She didn’t know how she would have handled it if he wanted to talk, and so, she simply chose to not think about it. 

Crick gladly followed Malaya’s lead in lapsing into silence. She watched him out of the corner of her eye. He had improved vastly since the night before. His breathing had evened out, and while the air in his lungs was still slightly restricted by the bandages around his chest, he was in a much better state now than he had been when he first arrived at the inn. There was something troubled but distant in his eyes, and Malaya recognized the glassy sheen of dissociation easily. It was to be expected, she supposed. Crick had nearly died, and if not for Castti, Malaya, Eir, and Temenos, he would have. Something like that would stay with anyone long after it ended. 

Then again, Malaya didn’t know if a near-death experience ever truly ended. It had been months since Castti remembered Healeaks and even longer since the day Trousseau had torn the world to pieces. The barrier of time did not stop Malaya from remembering it though. She wanted to say she had come back from Healeaks and grown stronger, strong enough to face Trousseau, but Malaya knew the truth. She had been struggling each day since the village crumbled beneath the poison rain, and Malaya doubted she would ever be able to pull herself together the way she wanted to. She couldn’t expect to sleep in peace ever again either; as long as there was a chance she would see Healeaks when she closed her eyes, Malaya would always fear letting slumber take her. 

Crick shifted anxiously on the bed, moving carefully so as to not exacerbate any of his injuries. “Do… Do you think I’ll ever be able to move on from this?” he asked, almost afraid of the question on his lips. Even now, he refused to look up at Malaya directly. 

She paused in fiddling through her supplies before getting back to work again moments later. “What do you mean?” 

“I almost died,” Crick muttered, saying it as quickly as he could so he wouldn’t have to acknowledge the weight of his words. “I came so close to…” He shook his head like that would banish the thought entirely, but it didn’t work for either one of them. “I know how hard something like that is to live with, and I… I don’t know what to do about it.”

Malaya understood immediately without needing Crick to explain it in more detail. He had dreamed about what happened to him in the catacombs beneath the Sacred Guard’s headquarters. How could he not? He had nearly been torn apart by Kaldena’s blade, and if not for Temenos feeling that something was wrong and going to investigate, Crick would have been found dead in the snow when morning came. It was a miracle he was alive, but life would not help him to outrun the phantoms of what he had endured the night before. They had roused him from slumber as soon as he was aware enough to know what the ghosts were whispering to him.

Malaya let out a shaky breath, hating just how close his words hit to home. She had been struggling to sleep because of her own brush with death, and even though months had come and gone since then, she could never seem to find her peace again after that day. Malaya would have been able to sleep if she had found rest since Healeaks, but there she was, exhausted and very much awake against her better judgement. “I…” 

Crick pressed one hand against his chest, his fingers seeming to want to tear the wound out of his body even though it would do him no good in the end. “I doubt I’ll ever forget what happened last night,” he confessed. “Even before I woke up, I was thinking about it. I can’t stop thinking about it. I just… I want to think about anything else. I’m tired of it.” His voice snagged on itself, and Crick clamped his eyes shut to keep tears from spilling overboard. They were trying anyway, and he didn’t make an effort to stop them when he realized just how pointless it would be. 

Malaya wished she couldn’t have related to him. She really wished she could have addressed this purely from the unbiased eyes of a medical professional. She wanted to tell him that she knew how to help people cope with trauma, and as long as he was willing to work with her, Malaya would do everything in her power to help him pull the pieces of his life back together… But what life was there for him to go back to now? His profession had betrayed him, and even if Crick wanted to go back to being a Sanctum Knight, he would always remember what had happened the night Kaldena and Cubaryi turned against him. He had seen pure, horrific treachery at the hands of those he had thought he could trust, and Crick could never go back to his old life after that. 

Malaya wished she didn’t know what that pain was like. She wanted to offer him all the optimism in the world even though undying hope was more of Castti’s modus operandi than her own. Malaya wanted to say that everything would be alright… But she knew it wouldn’t be quite that simple. How could it be? Malaya had lost everything in a similar manner, and she knew she would never return to the way she had been before Healeaks. Trousseau had tried to kill her and everyone she had ever loved, and in most of those cases, he had succeeded. There were no Eir’s Apothecaries for Castti, Malaya, and Eir to go back to anymore. They were the only ones left, and they were not enough to keep that old memory alive. The grief was so deep that it felt as if it could kill, and it was a mystery how Malaya had managed to pry herself out of bed long enough to see Crick when it tried to suffocate her in her sleep. 

Beyond that, Malaya felt the pain of her close call with dying deep in her bones. It seemed to haunt her everywhere she went. No matter how much she tried to remind herself that she was living in the present moment, that she was safe, that Trousseau was dead, that she wasn’t in Healeaks anymore, it never worked. Malaya could feel that agony just as easily as she could feel the air in her lungs. It never left her alone. How could she ever truly be alone when there were so many ghosts trying to reach for her when she closed her eyes? 

Crick was still staring at her, and even though he knew nothing of Healeaks or what Castti and Malaya had seen there, it was clear that he still understood enough. He knew that Malaya had been through a similar experience that nearly tore her to pieces, and he grieved for her in ways that felt like stabs to her lungs with each traitorous breath she took. “I… It’s not easy,” Malaya finally settled on saying when she remembered that she needed to reply to him. “It’s never going to be easy. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but…”

Crick looked away from Malaya, not wanting to force her to look him in the eyes when she was struggling to explain herself so much, and she couldn’t decide if she preferred that or not. “I know what it’s like,” Malaya confessed, and for some reason, the vulnerability felt like it was going to make her heart stop then and there. “To be betrayed by someone you care about. To lose everything. To remember what it was like to nearly die. It’s… It’s awful.” Malaya’s fingers clenched around the loose fabric of her trousers, but the gesture did nothing to offer her salvation or safety. “It’s hard. I don’t know how it could ever be easy. Still…”

Malaya didn’t know how she was going to finish that thought, and her hands shook to prove it. She had taken the memories of Healeaks so Castti could find a way to keep moving forward, but on days like this, she had to wonder how she had done it in the first place. How could anyone just get up and keep walking toward the dawn after something like that? Malaya wondered how the world hadn’t stopped, and yet, she already knew it never would. She needed to keep her eyes trained on the horizon no matter how hard it was. She owed that much to herself, Castti, Eir, and every other person she had left behind. She owed it to every person who had ever loved her and who she had loved in return. Malaya needed to find a way to keep moving forward, to keep hoping that the world could improve. She wanted to help however she could, and she couldn’t lose herself to hopelessness and helplessness if that was her ambition. She needed to extend a helping hand to herself too, and in doing so, she could help Crick too. Whether she liked it or not, they were mirror images of one another, and Malaya knew what she needed to do for him. 

“You can keep moving forward,” Malaya finished. “I know it feels like the world is ending and that you’ll never be able to rest again, but that’s not true. There’s always something to look forward to. I promise.” She reached for Crick’s hand before she knew what she was doing, and he held her fingers gently in return, surprised by the touch but not pushing it away. 

Crick wanted to smile, but he couldn’t find the strength to let it creep out. “I’m… I’m scared of sleeping again,” he admitted. “I’m exhausted, but each time I close my eyes, I feel like… I’m going to see it again. I don’t know what to do. I’m still alive, and I’m glad I am, but… I’ll never forget last night.”

“No, you won’t,” Malaya confirmed. “But you’re not facing it on your own. I know you’re afraid. The gods only know I was terrified when I was in your position. Still… You’re not alone. You’re going to need to stay with all of us for a while so we can keep you safe from the Sacred Guard. In that time… If you ever find yourself struggling to sleep, you can reach out to me. I’d be happy to stay with you.” Maybe I’d feel better if we were struggling together. Malaya blinked, and she saw Healeaks explode against her eyelids, but she did her best to bury the image and look back up at Crick again. 

If he saw just how troubled she was, he didn’t say it openly. She thanked him for the mercy and held his hand a bit tighter. Crick finally let himself smile. “I’d like that,” he murmured. “And… Thank you for talking to me. I needed that.” 

Malaya nodded, and she found herself smiling too. She knew she looked every bit as broken as Crick felt, but she couldn’t bring herself to mind it too much. They had both been through unspeakable horrors, and they deserved to sit in whatever peace they could find. It wouldn’t completely save them since nothing could keep them safe anymore, but at least it was something. Malaya hated having someone else understand what it was like to nearly die, but she was selfishly glad she wasn’t the only one who knew that pain anymore. Crick wasn’t facing this alone, and Malaya wouldn’t need to either. Their circumstances were different, but they would make the most of it together. That was all that mattered. 

Crick finally drifted off to sleep again with Malaya there in the room with him. She didn’t release his hand as he rested, and through some miracle, that seemed to fend off the nightmares he had been trying so desperately to outrun. Crick’s face never contorted with the pain of a night terror, instead remaining blissfully at peace for as long as she watched him. When Malaya’s own exhaustion grew to be too much for her to handle, she leaned her head forward and pressed it against the mattress off to his side. She fell asleep with her fingers still tangled between Crick’s, the touch soft and lazy but everything she could have ever asked for. 

Malaya didn’t dream of Healeaks again that day. Even after someone carried her over to her own bed, her dreams never returned her to the village of her creation and damnation. She was safe at last, and she knew it even in sleep.

Chapter Text

Malaya was exhausted. 

A few hours had come and gone since Castti and Ochette first wandered off into the woods near Cropdale after sensing something was wrong. None of them had known what to expect specifically, but Malaya had been envisioning a brief conversation with Wooly-Ooly before they went back to the town to meet up with the rest of the travelers again. She certainly hadn’t imagined they would run into strange hands with even stranger dark magic that seemed to corrupt anyone and anything that got too close to it. 

But above all else, Malaya hadn’t expected it would have such a massive impact on her and Castti. The dark claws had revealed things that Malaya hadn’t even realized she felt, and she didn’t think Castti had known about it either. One minute, they had been certain they would be fine despite suddenly being caught alone in the woods. The next, they could hear voices of the past beckoning them toward what seemed to be a dark pool. 

They all knew they shouldn’t have indulged the voices, but it had seemed so easy . Even Eir had stopped fighting when they crouched down in front of the shadowed reflection in the grass of the woods. The voices seemed to be beckoning Castti, Malaya, and Eir into the darkness, and none of them had bothered to fight it. At the time, it had felt every bit as natural as breathing. 

But now, Malaya was horrified. She hadn't thought she wanted to die, but she had been proven wrong before she could even think of mounting her defenses to fight back. None of them wanted to die. They needed to keep living for the sake of every person who had ever sacrificed themselves for the three of them to live… But it would have been so simple to follow the darkness to its end. The phantoms of Eir’s Apothecaries seemed to be watching in the trees, and Malaya almost wanted to dip her hand into the shadows and finally return to the darkness that had created her in the first place. She had thought she was beyond thinking of herself as a poor replacement for the original Malaya, but sitting there in the woods… Malaya realized that she hadn’t healed as well as she thought. 

Malaya was beyond glad Ochette had been there to pull them all back. She didn’t know what would have happened if Ochette had been even a few moments too late, but Malaya didn’t want to think about it either. She instead chose to treasure the Beastling for being there to help when they needed her most. Malaya couldn’t have possibly thanked her enough for everything she had done. 

But at the same time, Malaya didn’t want to see Ochette again. Shame burned in her chest as strongly as the Sacred Flame itself, and there was nothing she could do to ease its screams. Ochette shouldn’t have had to see any of them in such a vulnerable state. Malaya hated putting her problems onto others, but she especially didn’t want to put her problems on someone so much younger than her. She had hesitated when talking to Agnea outside of Merry Hills, and while she knew it was a conversation that needed to happen sooner or later, Malaya regretted talking to her sometimes too. It shouldn’t have fallen to any of the travelers to keep her afloat when she started to struggle. What good was she if she couldn’t take care of herself?

No, she couldn’t let herself think that. Malaya had spent the last few months trying desperately to kick the bad habits that came with hating everything about herself, and she couldn’t slide back into old routines now. The rest of the travelers wanted to help her. That was why they were there. Malaya couldn’t have convinced them to walk away even if she wanted to, and the fact of the matter was that she didn’t want to. She loved being around them even on the days she thought she deserved it the least, and Malaya wanted to spend the rest of her life with the people who had given her a chance when she hadn’t even spared one for herself. 

Malaya practically collapsed onto her bed back in the inn after the battle against the dark hands. The rest of the travelers had been filled in by Ochette, and Malaya had overheard the entire conversation from beneath the crack of the inn room’s door. She didn’t know if Ochette was trying to be quiet or not, but she wasn’t doing as good of a job as she could have been. Then again, Malaya supposed that was part of Ochette’s charm. She shone brighter than the sun and burned even hotter. It was no wonder the Sacred Flame had chosen her or so she had claimed during the Night of the Scarlet Moon. Ochette had more than earned the honor in Malaya’s opinion. 

But Malaya couldn’t face any of them right now. She felt too miserable in too many ways to even think of lifting her head long enough to speak to a single one of her friends. Even when the conversation outside went silent and the door to the inn room cracked open, Malaya remained still. She couldn’t believe she had almost given in and ended it all just because some dark specters had told her to. She had thought she was doing better. She had been certain she was doing better. 

Malaya knew deep down that she couldn’t hold this against herself forever. It wouldn’t have been right. She had explained to countless patients over the years that recovery was not linear and that it took everyone a different amount of time to come back from a horrific event or injury. Castti, Malaya, and Eir had been through more in the last year than in their entire life leading up to that point. Between the massacre at Healeaks, forgetting everything, remembering it again, and then being thrust from one horror to the next on the way to Timberain, it felt as if they hadn't truly been given a chance to process it all. That didn’t even mention everything that had happened on the other travelers’ journeys. The world spun too quickly, and Malaya was going to make herself sick if she thought about it. She was exhausted, and she was barely surprised that she had almost lost control of her heart so completely in the forest. She had seen all of her friends die. She had watched Castti crumble under the weight of a trauma she never should have experienced. She had killed Trousseau with her own two hands. How could any person hold themself together after all of that? How could Malaya ever want to continue with so much weight hanging on her shoulders?

“Malaya?” 

Ochette’s voice cut through the silence like a knife the same way it had in the forest, and Malaya’s shoulders went stiff. She was laying down on her bed and facing away from the door, but if she had to guess, she would have assumed that Ochette was much closer to her than the entrance of the room. Ochette took another few steps forward, her soft footsteps padding against the carpeted floor of the inn. Ochette walked around the bed before sitting down just beside Malaya’s head. “Can we talk?”

Malaya was tempted to turn her away, to claim that whatever she had to say wasn’t something that needed to be spoken. She wanted to pretend that she hadn’t so easily and readily given up everything in the forest. It shouldn’t have been Ochette’s problem either way. Malaya was the one who had let the shadow get to her in the first place, and Ochette shouldn’t have needed to bother herself with it. Even so, Malaya found herself nodding even as her mind screamed at her to stop Ochette from speaking again. 

Ochette laid down beside Malaya, perfectly slotting in the empty space left against Malaya’s chest. It was a tight fit given Malaya’s current position on the center of the already small bed, but Ochette didn’t seem to mind. If anything, she seemed happiest when she was as close to Malaya as she could have been. Ochette was warm, as if a flame had been pressed directly against Malaya’s body. In many ways, that wasn’t far from the truth. “How are you feeling?” Ochette asked softly. 

Malaya’s throat closed up on her before she could find a way to respond. There were a million ways she could have answered that question, but none of them would have been good for her or Ochette. Malaya was tempted to launch into a self-deprecating tirade about everything she had done wrong in the woods and how she should have known better than to slide backwards like that, but she remained silent. Instead, she simply shrugged, and it was the most she had managed to move in the last few hours. 

Ochette nestled a bit closer to Malaya’s chest. “I was really worried about you,” she confessed, and Malaya felt as if ice had been poured down her spine. “I really care about you, Castti, and Eir, and… You scared me back there.”

Malaya’s heart stopped for a split second. Of course she had scared Ochette. Malaya shouldn’t have exposed her to something that horrible in the first place, but now that she had, there was no going back. Malaya did her best to swallow back the self-hatred that once again threatened to spiral from her lips, but she couldn’t stop it entirely. Instead, tears rose to her eyes, and she barely managed to push out a sob before it could destroy her from the inside out. 

“You’re always doing so much to look after other people,” Ochette went on. “But it seems like you never give the rest of us a chance to help you. We don’t want anything bad to happen to you. We’re your friends, and… None of us wants to lose you.” Ochette took Malaya’s hand and began to rub circles across the back of it, a gesture she had learned from Castti at some point on the road. It felt like fire against Malaya’s skin. When had she taken her gloves off? Did she even want to remember?

“I’m sorry you had to see us like that,” Malaya finally managed to say, but the words threatened to suffocate her again each time she pushed a new syllable out. Ochette shouldn’t have been subjected to that, but she had been because Malaya hadn’t been strong enough. She should have known better than that, but because she hadn’t–

“Don’t apologize for that,” Ochette instructed, her voice taking on the solemn edge it had when she had told Heig off for what he did to Glacis. “Don’t feel bad for all of us having to see you when you were struggling. We want to help you, but we can’t do that if you don’t give us a chance to help you.” Ochette pressed Malaya’s hand tighter to her chest, and for a moment, Malaya could have sworn she felt the Sacred Flame lick at her fingers through Ochette’s ribcage. “I love you, Malaya, and I don’t want you to hurt like that.”

Malaya wanted to find the words to respond to Ochette in whatever miserable way she could, but she couldn’t seem to dig them up no matter how hard she tried. Luckily, Ochette was happy to keep talking. “You know… I never knew my parents,” Ochette went on. “They passed away not long after I was born. Master Juvah took me in when I was a baby. My whole life, he’s been looking after me like I was his own, but… I still wished I could have a mother and father like other people. He was always training me to inherit his position as the leader of Toto’haha, and I’m glad he did, but… I wanted something else, you know? I wanted something… Normal. Something without duty attached to it.”

Ochette once again pressed herself a little bit closer to Malaya, and the apothecary could hear the smile in her voice. “When I met up with all of you, I felt like I had a real family. You and Castti have been like mother figures to me. I don’t know what I would do without you. Ever since we started traveling together, you’ve done so much for me and everyone else, and… I care about you a lot. I don’t want you to ever forget it, okay? No matter what, I’m always going to love you.”

Malaya felt the tears in her eyes only redouble their intensity. Ochette hadn’t spoken much of her family, and now, Malaya could see why. The travelers felt like the only traditional family Ochette had ever had, and even then, there wasn’t much tradition among them to speak of. Ochette had always loved so fiercely, following it all the way down no matter what it meant for her. She cared for the travelers more than anything, and Malaya had always loved that about her. No matter what, Ochette never gave up hope. She was strong even in a world that had never made space for her. She had stopped the Night of the Scarlet Moon through sheer determination, and she had never asked for anything in return. She was light itself, and Malaya was glad she had been given the chance to sit in her warmth for even a short while. 

“I don’t know what happened back there,” Ochette continued. “I don’t know what those hands told you, but… I know what they were trying to get you to do. I… I don’t want that to ever happen again. I want to be able to help you, Malaya. I love you so much, and… I-It hurts to think that you don’t care about yourself like that.”

“It’s not…” Malaya didn’t know how she was going to finish that thought, so she ultimately decided not to bother. She didn’t know what to say to that. Ochette was right in more ways than one. Malaya had never wanted to admit it when she had a problem. She had picked that up from Castti and Eir. When they grew scared or anxious, they would bottle it all up and pretend it never needed to be acknowledged again… But they couldn’t shove their emotions aside forever. With anyone else, they would say as much gladly, but they could never seem to find the same grace for themselves. They were all hypocrites to the bone, and Malaya knew it. 

“I love you all,” Ochette repeated. “I really do. And… I want to be there for you. I-I don’t want to imagine a world that doesn’t have you or Castti or Eir in it. So please… Don’t do that again. I know you’re scared, but you’re not alone. I promise.” Ochette curled over herself this time, gripping as tightly to Malaya’s hand as she could stand. It was as if she thought Malaya would slip through her grasp like sand if she let go… And given the events of the day, Malaya couldn’t blame her for fearing it so deeply. 

Malaya couldn’t hold her next sob back, and she stopped trying to halfway through it. “I… I didn’t realize it was that bad,” she confessed. “I thought we were doing better. I was sure we were doing better. Then… Those voices in the forest… They made it seem like giving up would be so much easier, and… I almost believed it.” Malaya pulled Ochette in a little bit tighter. “I didn’t mean to scare you. None of us did. We didn’t… We didn’t think that would happen.”

Ochette rubbed at her eyes for a moment before rolling over and pressing her face against Malaya’s shoulder. “I don’t know what I would do without you,” she murmured. “But I’m glad I was able to reach you in time.” Ochette pushed herself impossibly closer to Malaya, and the apothecary drew her in as tight as she could. “Do… Do you want to talk about it? What made you do all of that?”

Malaya faltered for a long moment. She didn’t know if she would be comfortable talking about something so vulnerable with Ochette not because she didn’t trust her but because it still felt… Wrong. Ochette was fully capable of looking after herself, and Malaya knew that, but it struck her as wrong to put something so heavy on a girl so much younger than her. Nine years was a long time, and Malaya didn’t want to force Ochette to carry a weight that didn’t belong to her on top of everything else she was already dealing with. 

But at the same time, Malaya knew she would never be able to live with herself if she accidentally convinced one of her friends that she didn’t trust them with the truth of her struggles. The travelers had been there for one another ever since they first began their journey together, and Malaya had fallen in love with it again each day. Ochette wanted to help her, and it wouldn’t have been right for Malaya to deny her that right. It wouldn’t have been right for her to push away one of the people she had come to care for most in the world. 

So Malaya let out a heavy breath and pulled Ochette in as closely as she could. “There are a lot of people we couldn’t save when we were in Eir’s Apothecaries,” Malaya started, not trusting her voice to remain steady. She forced herself to keep talking anyway. “Being an apothecary means getting used to loss. There are a lot of people we just can’t save. Rosa was one of them, but she wasn’t the first one, and she won’t be the last either. When we were in the forest… We thought we heard all of their voices. It wasn’t just the people we couldn’t help as apothecaries. It was everyone who died in Healeaks too. They… They made it sound like they wanted us to join them. It would all be easier if we just gave up and… Let the world pass us by.”

“But that’s not true,” Ochette insisted. “They wanted you to survive. You know that. They wouldn’t want you to give up like that. You… You can’t leave the rest of us like that. You know that, right?”

“I do now,” Malaya assured her, only realizing after she had spoken that the word now probably didn’t do much to ease Ochette’s fears. “It’s always been hard to be surrounded by death like that. We knew it came with the territory of being an apothecary, but it still… It still stung.” Ochette nodded against her chest. “Castti has always felt guilty for surviving. She didn’t understand why everyone else we loved back in Healeaks was gone while we were still here. I don’t think any of us will ever understand it. Eir… Eir has been fighting for ages to keep us afloat, but they were so tired when those voices started to talk to us. They’ve been pushing back against the world for us to survive for so long, and they… They want a break. All of us do.”

“What about you?” Ochette asked. “What peace did the voices make it sound like you could find?” 

“I hated myself for a long time,” Malaya admitted without a beat of hesitation. “In some ways, I guess I still do. I… I’ve always been based on the woman Castti loved most. Castti and Malaya–the original Malaya–were engaged when Healeaks happened. They were in love, and it was… It was beautiful.” Malaya shook her head. “I always felt like I was trying to replace her. Castti told me that’s not the case, and I believed her, but… There in the forest, it was like everything I had heard didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was… The darkness.”

Ochette looked up at Malaya with wide eyes. “I’ve never thought that,” she told her. “I always loved having you around, Malaya. I could tell from the start that you were shy since you didn’t talk to the rest of us all that much, but I was still glad you were there. I love spending time with you. I always will.” Ochette pressed her ear against Malaya’s chest, searching for the perfect spot to hear her heartbeat. “You’re alive, and that’s all that matters. As long as you’re here, you deserve to live. That’s what I think. I know you’ve been through a lot, but… You deserve to be here. I don’t want you to ever think otherwise, okay?”

Malaya nodded, and the tears behind her eyes only grew stronger. “I won’t,” she softly swore. “I-I didn’t want to leave… I knew that was what it looked like, but… All of us want to live. We’ve been scared for a long time that we don’t deserve it after everything that happened, but… We truly want to be here with all of you. We really do.”

“Then stay with us,” Ochette instructed. “I don’t want any of you to go anywhere. You belong with all of us, and… I know things are scary, but you’ll never have to face it alone. All of us are here.” Ochette’s eyes swept shut. “I’m here for you, and I’m not going to let you go just because some stupid shadow says you need to leave.”

“We won’t be going anywhere, Ochette,” Malaya assured her, starting to run absentminded fingers through the younger woman’s hair in the silence. Ochette had always calmed her down easily. It was like nothing else mattered as long as they were there together, but unlike the voices in the forest, it was a true peace Malaya could treasure. Ochette had welcomed Malaya from the start, and Malaya couldn’t have possibly thanked her for it enough. In a time when Malaya hadn’t known what to do with herself or what she wanted her place in the world to be, Ochette had been there to catch her when she fell. What more could Malaya have possibly asked for? 

“Good,” Ochette hummed. Her hand found the hem of Malaya’s shirt, and she worked the fabric between her fingers. “Can… Can I stay in here with you tonight?”

“Of course,” Malaya replied immediately. She didn’t think she would have been able to pry herself away from Ochette even if she wanted to. Throné would understand why they had an extra guest, and in the worst case scenario, she would be able to room with Agnea for the night. Malaya trusted Throné to figure it out on her own; for the moment, all she wanted to focus on was the warmth that Ochette brought to her. 

“Thanks, Laya,” Ochette whispered. She curled against Malaya’s chest tighter, and a matter of seconds later, her breathing evened out in sleep. She had exhausted herself in the battle against the shadow, or more likely, she had exhausted herself with worry over Malaya. As tempting as it was to let that guilt consume her, Malaya did her best to fight it off. She deserved to be there with Ochette, and no amount of perceived wrongdoing would change that. 

Malaya stayed awake for a few minutes more after Ochette drifted off, just combing out the tangles in the Beastling’s hair. Soon enough, sleep threatened to swallow her, and Malaya happily let it. She was tired too, and trying to keep herself awake wouldn’t help either of them. There was a distant part of Malaya’s mind that feared she wouldn’t wake up again in the morning… But she did her best to silence it. No matter what it took, Malaya would wake up again. For the sake of all of her friends, she needed to. 

Malaya cried for the last few moments she was conscious, and she could have sworn that Ochette held her a bit tighter even in sleep. That brought on a whole new wave of tears, but Malaya didn’t bother with holding them back. She was alright. They were both alright. As long as they were together, they would survive. 

Malaya dreamed of the Sacred Flame that night, and she knew it was because of Ochette.

Chapter Text

None of them could wait. 

A few months had come and gone since the travelers all went their separate ways. They treasured their adventures together more than anything, but the time had come for them to handle their own journeys without one another. It had been a bittersweet parting, but they had all known better than to believe it would be the last time they saw each other. It wasn’t a permanent farewell; it was simply a ‘see you soon.’ 

And soon had come in the form of a show Agnea was putting on. She had garnered enough acclaim and attention across Solistia to land her a place in the New Delsta theater she had seen Dolcinaea perform at so long ago. She had asked everyone to come if they were able, and she gladly sent tickets to anyone and everyone the travelers had met on their journeys. The travelers were given front row seats by Agnea herself, and none of them would have missed it for the world. 

New Delsta was alive with an activity Malaya had never seen from it when she, Castti, and Eir arrived. The city had once been shrouded in darkness due to the terrifying reign of the Blacksnakes, but Throné had done everything in her power to dismantle those shadows. Now, New Delsta shone brighter than ever. It was the perfect setting for a perfect show, and Malaya couldn’t have possibly been more excited. 

“The others are all here, aren’t they?” Eir asked even though they didn’t need to bother. They all already knew the answer to that. 

“They are,” Castti replied. She had long given up on trying to keep her talking to Malaya and Eir internal, and she spoke freely into the excited, buzzing air now. If anyone noticed her seemingly talking to herself, they didn’t comment on it. “We should go and find them.” 

Malaya nodded, and she pressed her hands tightly against her chest. She had never been the best in crowded, bustling environments like this, but she could barely bring herself to care now. This was what all of them had needed ever since the fall of Healeaks. They were safe, and there were people there who loved them more than anything. The road there had been long and hard, but their victory had been well-earned and hard-fought. Malaya wouldn’t have given it up for the world. 

“Come on,” Castti said, and Malaya knew she was talking to her. “There’s no point in hiding. Why don’t you come with me to say hello to everyone?”

Malaya gladly fell into control of their body alongside Castti, and Eir stepped forward too. They had grown better at sharing their body over the last few months, and now, they could all pilot it effortlessly and simultaneously. Warmth settled into Malaya’s chest at the thought. This was everything she could have asked for and then some. She didn’t think she had ever been happier, and Malaya didn’t want to search for a greater joy either. This was enough. 

As Malaya, Castti, and Eir navigated through the streets of New Delsta, that warmth only continued to blossom and grow stronger. Every person they had come to love since meeting the rest of the travelers was there and waiting for them. With the endless night over at last, everyone was free to embrace the joy of a new dawn. As sentimental as it was, the thought brought a tear to Malaya’s eye, and she rubbed at it with the heel of her hand. She was halfway tempted to try and hold her tears back, but she ultimately didn’t bother. On a day like this, crying from joy was expected and encouraged.

When she first appeared, Malaya had never imagined it would be possible to be loved by so many people. She had been certain that once her purpose was fulfilled, she would go right back to being alone, and she would have been fine with that… Or so she thought. It was hard to believe she had ever thought herself content with staying in Castti’s shadow for the rest of her life. Now, Malaya couldn’t have forced herself back into the darkness again even if she wanted to. She loved being alive, and she loved all the love that came with it even more. 

Being there in New Delsta brought on an onslaught of emotions Malaya didn’t think she would ever truly be ready to face. She couldn’t have been happier to see a new dawn, but at the same time, she wished everything could have ended differently. She wished she hadn’t been forced to sacrifice so much and lose even more to make it that far. The people of Healeaks deserved better. Eir’s Apothecaries should have been standing there with her now. Trousseau should have never been corrupted by Claude and the siren song of the Moonshade Order. The grief for what could have been was enough to nearly cave in Malaya’s heart then and there. 

But she wouldn’t let it ruin her. Malaya had fought to make it this far, and she wouldn’t give up simply because the world was full of tragedy. There may have been darkness in the world, but there was light too, and Malaya would prove it again and again no matter what it took. She could mourn for what would never be, but she needed to look to the future too. As long as she was alive, there was hope, and Malaya would never yield it again. 

When Malaya closed her eyes, she could have sworn she felt the whispers of Eir’s Apothecaries all around her. She liked to think of herself as a realist, and she didn’t want to get her hopes too high on something that may as well have been impossible… But the idea comforted her all the same. She wanted to think of the original Malaya looking after her and blessing her new life even if it was far from what they had expected. She hoped for the same from the rest of the friends she had lost too. If the souls of Eir’s Apothecaries were truly looking after her, Castti, and Eir, then Malaya was glad for it. She wished she could have done more for them, but she wouldn’t let that grief consume her. They would want her to look to the future and find a new life for herself. Malaya was sure of it. 

And she most certainly had found a new life. Malaya missed the travelers terribly, but she was glad she had been given the chance to know them at all. Now, they were all back together again, and they could continue a new journey together. Nothing ever truly ended with them; they simply saw a new beginning, and Malaya would run toward it with everything she had. That was what hope meant, and Malaya would never let herself forget it. 

As Malaya walked through the streets of New Delsta with Castti and Eir, her cheeks burned from smiling so much. She had never imagined the future to be full of such hope and light, but now that she had seen it, she would never let it go again. The past had brought her horrors beyond what any person should have ever known, but she had survived. She had come out of it on the other side, and in doing so, she had made friendships and found connections unlike anything else. Malaya was happier to be alive in that moment than ever before, and she would never forget that radiance again. 

When it came time to settle down in the theater, Malaya sat with the rest of the travelers as her lips and eyes stung from constantly grinning. She looked out over them all as she waited for Agnea to take to the stage, and in the clamor of the audience, Malaya silently thanked them. She never would have become the person she was then if not for the guiding hands of others, and she couldn’t have possibly expressed her gratitude enough. Life was not worth living if it was spent alone, and Malaya couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to share her life with. 

By the time Agnea finally arrived on the stage, Malaya had completely given up on trying to hold back her tears. She had no reason to bother. She was the happiest she had ever been, and Malaya deserved to express her joy. Life was worth fighting for so she could experience moments like this. Malaya felt the perfection of the theater and the speech Agnea gave deep in her chest, and she promised to commit every detail of this to memory. She, Castti, and Eir had lost themselves countless times to the tides of amnesia, but they would not lose this. They would not let this love be taken from them. 

To love was to be changed, and Malaya never wanted to go back to the way she was before. 

As long as her friends were there, Malaya was alive, and that was enough.