[Serrate]

They travel alone. People stare, but she doesn’t look. It is only them again in a wasting dream. Hers was the first back she curled against, spine prickling from loathing and feeling returning from winter’s cold. It had meant nothing. It had meant EVERYTHING. The Queen flees from the wall and the things that lurk behind it. In her jaws she holds her comet’s tail. In her jaws dangles something that lost its name the moment the last drop of blood wicked from severed throat to thirsty earth. In her jaws she holds the universe imploding in on itself. In the dust that follows, it remakes itself because in the wake of disaster we all must reshape ourselves.

Derringer.

She lays the thing without a name to rest in the darkness of the castle’s cavernous belly. Light filtering from cracks in stone left dust swimming in her eyes. In the shadows things with skittering legs lay in wait. She beckons. They come. She doesn’t want her daughter to see. She doesn’t want the swinging arm of justice to know what falls when the lethal cut is made. Glazed over eyes would not turn sweet wine bitter. She had a task to do. The King already attended to hers. Justice is served. The things in the dark feast.

In the hours that follow, the Queen makes trips to and from the castle depths. She speaks with no one, mouth stuffed with flowers on each return journey and empty as she ascends into the light once more. As the insects carve roads through her troubled past, she prepares a bed of flowers. She arranges her dirge in red, blue, violet, yellow, white. Hours pass and what once was ceases to be. The universe implodes. It remakes itself. What’s left in the fading autumn light filtering through the cracks of something old is what lays beneath it all. Beneath the greasy fur and sagging flesh. Beneath the gelatin and swollen things. She was just a skull, pink like a newborn.

The Queen, a mother, still-- treats her like one, gingerly pulling her from the mound of death eaters and settling her in the spiral of fleeting color and life. In the growing evening, she holds a quiet funeral. She sits, silent for a long while, setting sun sending splintered shadows over the curve of the things that lay beneath it all, in the end. She breathes in the heavy scent of flowers, brought in from miles away but with roots here all the same. This had been the dream, all along, hadn’t it? It was too late now. It was too late to show her now.

She talks to her, as light gives up its hold and surrenders to night. She’s always been known to have conversations with the deceased. Through her lashes she looks into the depths behind where eyes once lay. She stares and stares and stares and she wishes and wishes and wishes. “Derringer,” she says softly, and her voice echoes in the tomb she has made. Derringer. Derringer. Derringer.

“You were the last one,” she doesn’t smile, the pale pink jaws more than capable of sucking the humor from the room. “Sincate died to mother back then. You know that. And you, now, you were my last sister—” her voice cracks and whatever was left of her thought trails and buries itself in the ground. She’s put down roots, can you see them, Derringer? That was the dream. It was always the dream. She couldn’t show her. She could never show her.

“I’m sorry,” she starts again. “For the things I have done.” Her sister once apologized to her. She hadn’t accepted it. “For the things I allowed you to do.” The comet flew on, and behind her the tail did things. Horrible things. Unspeakable things. She would live with that for the rest of her days. Derringer no longer had to. “I’m sorry that this is how it ends,” she continues, softer still, a faint buzz settling against the drums in her ears. “Though it always had to, one day. Didn’t it. Didn’t it?”

She blinks her eyes, and for a time she is silent again, alone with the flowers, the severance, the tears heavy on her cheeks. There was so much to say and none of it really mattered. This had not been the final chapter she would have written. This was not the parting pages she had asked for. But it was done. She told her daughter who signed the warrant that she would have done the same.

WOULD. SHE?

“I… wanted…” so many things “To LOVE you. I WANTED TO LOVE YOU, DERRINGER!” It was true, she knew it as she spoke, voice ringing and rebounding back on her, jarring and settling with the buzzing. “You never let me, you never wanted it, and here we are, because!” Because in the end, neither of them could change. They wouldn’t. They could be sorry. They could forgive, or they could not. One could chase the other, on and on into eternity, but that was the funny thing! Eternity was a LIE they told themselves, because all things come to an END.

There is nothing eternal in Derringer now. She is finite. THEY ALL WERE.

“Would you have mourned me?” she asks. She has a lot of questions. They weren’t answered before. They aren’t answered now. There is no voice lurking behind her ear to ensure she stays on her toes. But it doesn’t matter. She knew the answer. She’d always known the answer. To this and more, to things she did not know, she knew it no longer mattered. There was nobody in this world that would mourn Derringer as the sister she hated most would. That much she knew without asking.

Morning comes, and with it, her private memorial ends. There would be no more verbal spars. There would be no more subtle (and not) challenges. There would be no more warm backs on the bitterest night of winter. She rises, and with her she carries the things that once were, leaving the wilting flowers of summer to lay as testament to their final conversation. It had been as one sided as it always was.

She ascends to the castle courtyard, moss eaten walls and muted sunlight her pallbearers. She sits, weary in body and soul. She lays her sister to rest at her feet. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs once more, for her sister’s ears only. She knew Derringer would not like the days to come. It didn’t matter now. She has to remember that. IT DIDN’T MATTER NOW.

She takes a deep breath. She weighs her choices. She knows the next step along the path, but in knowing, she knows the way is treacherous and the stones sharp. There were easier roads. Dark, comforting places where she might lay with her sins a while longer. She itches, ferociously, a thousand burning white lines on her skin. That is not the right choice. That is not the right choice. BUT IT’S THE EASY CHOICE.

Not for the first time, she forges on. She chooses life.

She calls to them. The ones that must see. The ones that must know. The Arbiter. The Executioner. The Witness. This was their burden to bear, this coffin heavy with the story thus far and the chapters yet to come. They had to come now, they had to take their share of the weight, because she knew, as readily as she knew Derringer would have never put herself in her sister’s place—

She could not do this alone.

[Absinthe]

color=#DBCFB4

'Can you help me sleep?' she asked before, and they obliged, and sleep she did.

Even in her dreams she is asleep, resting on the skins of those who had taken from her.

Absinthe stirs only once in the night, when her field of vision is nothing but color. Bright color, swirling together and creating new colors, brighter and more beautiful than before. She whimpers, stiffening her body before relaxing once more when her entire world is black again. Despite her pains, in the night, she looks at peace.

Strangely, though, when she wakes up, she feels the opposite. Her entire mind is in pieces, she is scrambling to pick them up, but the edges are sharp and she keeps dropping them. They never stay in tact, and when they fall, they break again. She is left picking up piece-after-piece and getting no where. Some day, it will all be as fine as grains of sand. But that day is not today.

Today, she gathered half the pieces and sat content with her haul. Today, she would be productive.

It wasn't the beams of sunlight breaking through the leaves above that woke her- although they weren't helping- it was the call of a Queen. Both eyes shoot open and her head raises, ears swiveling and nose working until she identifies the source's direction. She knew this was coming.

Absinthe rises, shaking the dirt from her coat, and heads to the castle. She does not search for her cohorts, but moves alone, as she preferred since coming home. As the castle and its courtyard come to view, so does the Red Queen, and her mind cries for her to stop, to assess the situation. Her body, however, does not listen, and like anyone tired enough, she prepares to concede and accept consequences for her actions.

There is not much to say when she arrives, but a glance is given to the freshly laid skull, and she stiffles a laugh.

"I would've thought her bones to be black," she snirks and prepares to spit on her matron skull, but stops only as she sees her sister and brother in its place. How would she feel if someone desecrated their bodies after death, despite their lack of connection? "Mm," she speaks as her head turns from Serrate, back to her mother.

And with that thought still buzzing in her head, she drops the pieces she'd collected and shoots her spirit between her teeth, watching as it lands on top of Derringer's skull and drips into the hollowed socket.

Finally.

After all this time.

She smiles.

[Gaius]

A lot of it didn’t feel real.

It wasn’t as if Gaius was anything shy of murder, or death for that matter. He wasn’t disturbed by the severed head, the budging eyes, the awful smell. He’d been accustomed to that madness since he was young, being treated more like an object than a son, more like a tool than a being. Somehow this wasn’t completely different, was it? He’d originally sought out to find the woman he’d devoted loyalty to and instead he came home with her head. Of course he wasn’t the bringer of bad news, the executioner with blood on his hands— but he was a witness, an enabler, a key piece in this gruesome, unfortunate puzzle.

To this day Gaius didn’t know what to expect, but he certainly didn’t think that when he’d agreed to Absinthe’s wishes of murdering her mother that it would actually happen, let alone he be there to witness (and even help? Don’t forget, you attacked her too!) the deed. With a swift shake to his head, he’d been within a recovery stage; not only physically but mentally. He hadn’t seen anyone since being tended too, not even Absinthe; although her well being did strike a concerned chord in his heart for reasons he didn’t really understand. She wanted it, she mocked him for his loyalty and his believes in her character— and yet when the returned Absinthe seemed far from the boisterous, fiery thing she was when he’d seen her first. It made him consider how he too, saw—and contributed, even—countless deaths, torturous things and he felt…. something, this time.

Like someone took a great axe to a section of his heart. Was it love? Maybe not, it didn’t have a chance to be something like that, but it was something else.

Undoubtedly his Queen and companion felt the same. Her call came, and like a trained dog to a whistle, Gaius followed suit.

Adorning his healing scar, his vision seemed mostly unaffected; those red hawks focused on Absinthe once she’d come within sight, dancing across her marked body and landing on her own face as he approached. Their scars were like mirrors, as if Derringer wanted to give one last laugh to them both by branding their faces with not only a memory but a reminder of their deed. Next he glances to the Queen. His expression is stiff, wounded, even, as he recalls their last interaction together was far from pleasant. Something seems off with her, though, and he remembers now that she had been gravely wounded. A fight, a loss, yes— So much loss. First her son and now her sister. How could he forget? He'd been so lost in his own mind, his own concerns; Gaius felt an indiscernible weight hit his shoulders. Now wasn’t the time.

Finally, his head tilts down to view the remains of her. A skull, just like any other wolf, perhaps a bit larger than most, but it was still just a skull. Somehow this revelation didn’t settle anything in the male’s gut. He didn’t know what to say. Was an apology even appropriate? Absinthe’s commentary nearly fades into a whisper as he slowly closes his eyes.

Even after death, he isn’t sure he can forgive her.

When his eyes reopen they are upon Serrate. The Queen, now his Queen, the last one he’d ever try to devote himself to. Gaius thought Derringer was the stronger one, but perhaps there was more power in the woman who stood unabashedly as her sister’s skull sit at her feet. Sucking in his gut, he waited for her words of commandment or mourning, but for now he remained silent. His words did nothing but betray him, instead he chose to pay his respects through actions.

Finally, he bowed.

[Akira.]

Serrate sang a summons at the base of Akira's labors and wished on a black star that her daughter would not come. The sea granted the whim, salt and thunder against the rocks below the she-king. It drowned out all else, even when it did not boom, and it was this power that lulled the restless to sleep, to peace, to the deep blues and echoing whalesong. Be safe, be calm, be deaf.

Ask Kariya. He knew.

A head rolled in the grass and dew, a head with jelly eyes and a swollen tongue. A turncoat warmonger stared into old horrors. A staunch warrior stared into the inevitable anguish that chased her. A queen stared at her sister in ribbons and doesn't know how to feel when each strip of flesh is a different offense, when there are so many strips, when the hair thin spaces between bloody ribbons reek but still seem so fresh in comparison. It's so easy for the ones who stare into the past to find false nostalgia in congealed grease.

Akira perched at the peak with rose eyes fixed on the misty distance. Sea thunder filled her ears. She missed her mother's call.

----

Serrate spared her daughter the theatrics but nothing else. Akira knew, from the scent of Absinthe beneath the tree, from the overwhelmed tremor in her father's eye (the sky is shaking, she thought, out of nowhere) and the mess by the wall. She stood at the chokepoint and before the puddle of stinking mess with her ears twitching. Her lip twitching. Her heart a writhing mass that was at least still alive—

It was more than she could say for
her

aunt.

(Aunt covered in ants, probably)

She almost laughed. It was so absurd. Instead she cried, and the tears were hot, and the tears were big, because, oh God, she had sent Absinthe after her aunt, and she could pretend on every false star alight in entropy's maw that she never meant to KILL HER only bring her to TRIAL but it was a LIE because she KNEW in the way her broken, tragic cousin pined for death what sort of judgment she'd bring. It was only TEETH on TEETH on FLESH on BONE.

I would have done the same, she imagines her mother saying, then corrects it because that's not what Serrate said at all.

I WOULD HAVE KILLED HER MYSELF.

That was it, the flame, the crown, the thorns and the old gods full of old stories and old TRIALS, come to end. Akira felt it on her head and it burned with lapping celestial flames while the other bit cold, cold, like iron, like winter, like the mountain and sea that called them from the stinking mud, an old place of old thoughts and old religions that cry out for a blood price—

(You'll do, she had told her aunt once.)

Derringer, who found this place for them to live. Derringer, loved by her niece for no good reason.

Derringer, who tried to take down her mother.
Derringer, who mutilated her cousin.

Derringer. Sentenced to death. By a girl-king who handed a sword to her unhappy cousin and said, "judge her."

Akira licked her lips and bore her fangs and cried over a bitch soaked in a little girl's blood. But she was her aunt, too. What a fortress they could build if each sin committed by Gemini's denizens were a stacked stone. The King was no better. Maybe no king was better.

A howl rose from the castle. Akira tore away from the glistening fly pool and turned her shining eyes to its tip above treetops. She knew her mother wouldn't yell at her. She knew her mother wouldn't blame her. That made everything so much worse.

Perhaps she wouldn't have gone. Perhaps she would have ran to find Jonas instead. But the Queen didn't just call the King. She called the long fangs Akira sent to trek the wild for Derringer, and she couldn't let them face this alone. On heavy paws, she loped toward her mother.

--

In the shrinking distance comes waves of rank flesh—infected bites and sour pad sweat and the grime of the dead. Her ears almost pin but she forces them to stay up while her tail, like the cat she so adored, thrashed like its own wild temper. She saw the sickly white back of Absinthe and the sturdy build of Gaius and her mother with a skull between her paws. Anxiety was a swarm in her entire body and she wants to run, wants to fight, wants to scream at something, anything.

She saw Absinthe.

She saw her head turn.

She saw her FACE and CRACKED EYE and the WRECK her aunt LEFT BEHIND.

The swarm toiled, it was not insects, it was a storm, it was plumes of burning ash over a mountain. The girl Akira had loved her aunt and the King Akira wanted her alive so she could KILL HER AGAIN FOR WHAT SHE'D DONE TO HER COUSIN.

HER MOTHER.

SHE WANTED TO DO THIS TO HER MOTHER.

Closer, closer, she's nearly there, and she sees Absinthe spit on the skull of her tormentor, and she see's Absinthe—

Smile.

Akira felt her heart wince. Yes. This was the wreck Derringer left behind. This was the wreck Akira handed a weapon to. Did it HELP? God, she couldn't see how it could have.  Don't hold onto this, Absinthe. You don't have to bear it anymore.

Her steps become purposeful, her tail stills and raises high. She feels the weight between her shoulders and sitting between her ears and doesn't care. She'll add more. She'll add all of it. She'll carry it for you because that's what a King should do. She'll carry YOU.

Akira came before her cousin, her aunt's paramore, her Mother and Queen. She licked her lips and the tips of fangs threatened to show as she looked down at the thing that was once Derringer. She drew a shuddering breath of their filth, held it to her heart, and released it hot and burning into the air.

"Absinthe," she began.

"I'm glad you're safe."

[Serrate]

She waits, eyes and heart heavy. It drags her down, and with each breath she must choose. Through will alone she fights where no one can see. She chooses life, again and again. The skull of what was is there to remind her, always, of what lies at the end. She waits, and they come to her. She hadn’t given them a choice. But still, they could choose. They could run far from this place. They could fling themselves from the cliffs into the sea. They could do many things, far from where the Queen could see, could reach.

(Like MURDER her SISTER.)

Here they were, though, arriving one by one like a grim procession. She looks to the first, the Executioner. She doesn’t return the choked laugh, the smile, the shield against the things that have happened. I would have killed her myself. Oh, she and Derringer were cut from the same cloth but spun in different directions, divergent paths that intertwined and spelled fortune and disaster at once.

Her eyes drop as Absinthe spits upon the skull. She understands. That was the worst part. Faced by the hollow sockets of her own mother, would she do the same?

(You would have killed her, too.)

Next was the Witness. Still she says nothing, regarding him in the same reserved, level manner as she had the first. They had all been tied, tangled in sticky strings that tugged and pulled. All led back to Derringer. To the thing at her feet. Had any of them hoped for a better future, or had they always known? The comet flew on without her tail, momentum driving her forward as she grew cold in the empty space around her.

The last was here. She ached to go to her daughter. To comfort her and find comfort. To warm the ice that threatened to consume her in the future without her other half. But Akira was not her daughter today. She was the Arbiter. She was the King. Her expression, worn as it was, softens despite herself, if only for a moment. It was hard, to make these choices. It was harder still at a tender young age. She knew. SHE KNEW.

“...Thank you. For coming.” she speaks at last, her voice cracking. Just once. She swallows and straightens, forcing down the night before and looking instead into what tomorrow must be. “You must be tired. I won’t keep you from your rest for long. I want a safe and full recovery for both of you.”

How could she say it with Derringer’s skull between her feet? She’s gone. She’s DEAD. They had KILLED HER. Like Sincate she fed the worms and turned to DUST. Fleeting. Finite. MORTAL.

“This is a… difficult thing.” And foolish to think that they needed her to tell them that. “I… haven’t called you here to thank you. To reward you. I needed you here.” This was the grim truth. There were no favors, no rewards. What could possibly taste sweet in the face of such atrocity? Nothing. It would all turn to ash in their mouths. “I need you to witness. To know.”

She looks to each of them. The Arbiter. The Witness. The Executioner. Then she looks to the thing that once bore a name. She looks at it, so small, naked, bare. “We lay our dead beneath a willow tree by the sea,” she says quietly. “The people who built this place. Our daughters. Our… sons.” She swallows, shuts her eyes, tilts her head up and counts to the stars and back. She counted stones, once. Do you remember, Derringer? “Our pack. So that they might feel the wind off the ocean and we can remember them.”

She lowers her head again, opens her eyes. She takes in the thing that once was before she says, lowly, “But she’s not ours. She hasn’t been for a long time. That was her own choice.” She found this place, nestled amongst the mountains. To think it hadn’t gone wrong until she left was a sneaky, dirty lie. “That’s not the place for her. For Derringer.”

She lowers herself slowly to the ground, cradling the fresh, pink, sickening thing between her forepaws. She at once forgives herself for the things she has done. The things she will continue to do. She takes a deep breath. She embraces the cold dark of life without and reaches for her sister, closer and more intimate than any moment in her life from now into the beyond--

She takes Derringer between her teeth and she bears down. She’s made her choice. She’s said goodbye.

The skull cracks between her jaws, a hairline fracture, a whistle through a space that should not be there. In that moment they are the same once more, celestial bodies orbiting one another in the dark. All is as it’s always been. All is as it always will be--

But Derringer breaks. The halves fall in two.

(Serrate has always been stronger.)

The twins sever, once and for all. The halves fall, clattering to the cracked flagstones. She carries on while the other stops. Sometimes things in Gemini don’t come in two, after all.

The Queen takes a haggard breath. Then, with renewed tenacity, she clutches the pieces of her lost, forfeited life, and pries a fang from the jaw. Tenderly she lays it with the other pieces. Her eyes water and she blinks her storied past away.

She looks to the unfortunate few that shared this tragedy. She’s so sorry to have brought them here. She’s so sorry for the interwoven tapestry that was the story they all contributed to writing. She was not innocent. They were all complicit. There was no fixing what had been done. Only what came next. “I didn’t call you here to reward you,” she says quietly. No. This was no reward. Nothing could undo this. “I can only ask more of you. I’m sorry.”

Goodbye, Derringer. Goodbye to everyone that’s like you.

“We can’t allow anything like this to happen again. I can’t do this by myself. I need your help.” She’s asking, her childhood burning beneath her fur. “No child should have to suffer. Not here. Not in Gemini. Please.” Route out the ones that would hurt anyone innocent. Anyone small. “I need you to help me. We can protect them. We can stop people like her.”

She pauses to pry another of the long canines from the shattered pieces. No child should have to bear this burden. No child should have to fear the whistling cracks that shouldn’t be there.

“I need you to be the Long Fangs.”

Catch those that would dare harm a child. Rip their heart out. Sunder.