EDIT: damn, I forgot, the second is lowkey but anyway: trigger warning for mentions of suicide and sexual assault
[X] Just what she feels comfortable telling
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"Just hearing her name is painful…" Lucilia sat at the edge of the bed. She ran her hands through her hair, head down. "Where do I even begin?"
Lirra shuffled in front of her and kneeled. Then, with a trembling, hesitating hand, she grabbed Lucilia's.
"I… I don't need to hear everything." She gently stroked her hand, hoping to soothe the bard if only a little. "Just tell me what you're comfortable telling."
It was slight, but Lucilia's breathing steadily grew calmer. It was still nowhere near relaxed, but it was a start.
"What I feel comfortable telling?" She forced a small, bitter laugh. "Lirra, I'd rather do anything but even think about..." Lucilia swallowed, letting her sentence trail off. "No, it's not your fault. I'm sorry, but it's… hard. I've spent a lot of time and effort to try and forget anything, even the smallest minute of the time I spent with her, but I can remember them. Every breath, every gaze, every caress… every single possible mistake. I'm afraid of what will happen if I actually try to recount our story."
Her eyes strayed to the side, towards the sealed bottle, before she turned them back towards Lirra with an effort. Eventually, she started talking again.
"She was one of my family's maids, and came from a small village to the capital to support her family. I can still remember the first time I saw her… so cute, pure as snow, more beautiful than anything I'd ever seen." Eyes closed, a faint smile appeared on Lucilia's lips before, an instant later, her brow furrowed and it disappeared as she took a shuddering, pained breath. "So very different from me or anyone I knew back then. It was love at first sight."
Lirra nodded gently, waiting for Lucilia to continue.
"It was back then that I actually started getting actually good at the lute and other instruments, all to woo her." She let out a small chuckle and a melancholy smile came to her lips. "And it worked. We got together and it was the best year of my life, but..."
Lucilia's hands tightened and Lirra could feel her trembling. Obviously she had expected that things would go awry in that story, or Lucilia wouldn't have so much difficulty telling it.
"You're not forced to tell anymore, Lucilia. It's… alright to avoid pain, to try and forget," soothed Lirra when she saw tears welling in the bard's eyes.
"No. No, it's not. Not when I'm the one who killed her!" Lucilia snarled through gritted teeth. "Not when I..." she repeated quietly as tears climbed over her long lashes and started running down her face.
Lirra's eyes widened at that, confused. Lucilia, killing the one she loved? She had to admit she did not really know her very well, but she just couldn't fathom her doing something like that.
She awkwardly stayed in front of her, doing her best to try and calm her although she didn't know how. She just waited in silence, stroking the bard's hands gently, patiently waiting for her to calm down. Eventually, after much hesitation, she rose to her feet and leaned forward to hug Lucilia, who cried all the more, as if she'd stopped trying to stop her tears.
As she stood, gently caressing Lucilia's hair, Lirra wished she could say something, anything, that would help ease the bard's pain. She remained silent because no word could. Perhaps if she knew more about what happened, she could have tried, but even so there was nothing she could change.
The dead were gone, no matter how much one wished otherwise.
All the regrets in the world, all the little things you had wanted to say but decided to postpone for another day would not matter and couldn't change anything once it was too late. These were the only things left for the living, and to hope otherwise was a delusion.
One had to try and hold onto the good memories, those moments that made all this loss and anguish worth it.
What other choice did the living have? Only the gods could try to interfere, but even them had fallen in the end.
Eventually, after Lirra's shirt was well and truly soaked, Lucilia pulled out of the hug and wiped her tears. Her face looked about as good as she likely felt; her red makeup had run over it, making it look as though she was soaked in blood. She passed a hand over it, dying it in the same colour and pulled out a handkerchief with a grimace to try and clean up.
It took a few minutes, during which the two girls awkwardly looked away from each other, until eventually Lucilia broke the silence.
"Well, so much for my cool and collected image… I wish you didn't have to see this."
"No, I… I'm happy I did. I mean- I don't want you to be sad and to cry, but if you do… if you… you're hurting, I don't want you to suffer alone." Lirra wrung her hands as she spoke. "I… I was pretty useless, but I want to try and help… I want to be there, with you. That's… that's what friends are for, right?" she ended shily.
"Friends… yes, you're right." Her eyes were still sad, but although faint, a genuine smile appeared on Lucilia's lips. She sat back on the bed. "Well, I should finish telling you that story..."
Lirra sat next to her, at a small distance before scooting closer until their shoulders almost touched.
"No, you don't. Have to, I mean. It's… since you started, you apologized a lot and told you owed me that story, but… you don't. I came to apologize for keeping secrets from you and somehow you made it all your fault. That's..." She looked down, hesitantly. "That's not good for you, Lucilia."
She felt a weigh on her head and raised her eyes to realise it was Lucilia's hand, ruffling her hair.
"Thank you, Lirra, but… I want to. Call it an urge to trade a secret for another, or because you look like… her, or because you're a Gravedigger or because you're adorable, but as bad as it feels, I think telling that story will make me feel better… eventually.
"Now, where was I? Ah, yes. The best year of my life." She said that line with disdain. "I was such a fool. We spent as much time together as possible while keeping our relation a secret. In retrospect, I don't think it really was much of one, or that my family would have cared as long as they didn't know that I genuinely loved her as opposed to it being a fling.
"Anyway, with being so close to her, it wasn't hard for me to see that something was... troubling her. She was tense, stressed… sad. And try as I might, I couldn't do anything to help her. I couldn't even manage to get her to tell me what was going on. To help her, I tried to spend more and more time with her. If only I knew..."
Lucilia bowed her head, putting it in her hand and took several long breaths before she could continue. Lirra was about to tell her she really didn't need to tell any more when she spoke again.
"They found her body in the gardens, resting in a pool of her blood, wrists slit." Lucilia's voice was flat, without emotion. Or rather, there was so much emotion inside her that she had to numb it all to be able just to continue speaking. "Just like that, she was dead. She killed herself not a hundred meters from my chambers and I didn't learn of it until it was too late."
Lirra saw Lucilia's hands - her entire body - trembling and grabbed one and squeezing it tight. The least she could do was try to help her finish her story as best she could.
"I… tried to convince my parents to let her rest on my family's warded ground, but I couldn't. A mere servant girl, one who killed herself on our grounds… all I managed was to stop them from throwing her body out like so much waste.
"I couldn't bear the thought of my beloved rising again as a… a monster that would wear her face and sully her memory, so I searched. I searched for a way to have her rest in peace, and finally learned of one of your own residing in the lower city. It's no wonder, really. With a city as big, and only so much warded ground, there had to be or only the dead would be residing there.
"It took quite a bit of coin but he… took care of her body. And then, he… with a smile, hair still ablaze with embers, he turned to me, and… told me what echoes he heard from her pyre."
With the time it took before Lucilia could continue, her body wracked by sobs, Lirra was very worried about what she was about to learn.
"She killed herself because of me. She had to take care of her family, and mine could have not only fired her but made sure she would never find work in the capital again, at least in all but the most unsavory parts. So when I made my move, she… she felt she couldn't refuse. I… I thought she loved me like I did, but all I did was… was..."
"Stop!" Lirra interrupted her, sparing her having to finish that sentence. "You… that..." But even so, what could she say? "He must have… misunderstood, or something. Why would he do that? We should try to ease the living's pain, not… that."
Lucilia turned her eyes towards Lirra's own.
"Did he? Should you? We can try and justify it all we want, and hope all the same, but in the end the only person who really knows is him… and her." She turned away, eyes lost. "In the end, the simple truth remains that I killed the woman I loved, and did worse besides."
Lirra followed her movement and turned her head away too, before squeezing her eyes shut. Her hand was still holding Lucilia's.
"This is why I came here. I couldn't live with what I did, and couldn't even do as she did."
She slowly pulled her hand free from Lirra's.
"There is no happiness to be found in this Academy… we all came here for a reason."
At that, Lirra turned back to her, and grabbed both of her hands, forcing Lucilia to face her.
"You're wrong! I… I'm happy I came here! I'm happy I met you! And Chloe, and Melkorka! Tanwen… it's debatable, but still! Don't… don't say that." Lirra's voice softened as she kneeled in front of her, bringing her face to the same level as the bard's, with how slouched she was. "I… won't say that what brought us here was… nice. But that shouldn't dictate our future. Remember what I said in the forest, back when Melkorka asked me why I picked the Sword?
"Coming here is a new beginning, a new chance for a new me, so I decided that this new me would be something I could admire.
"If what he said was true, what happened… is terrible, but it… you weren't, you just... didn't know. I won't ask you to… just ignore it, or forget it, but… if you… if you hate yourself so much..." Lirra choked on these words but persevered, looking straight in the bard's eyes. "Become someone you can love."
She pulled Lucilia's hands closer, over her heart.
"Don't just… come here to die. I beg of you, I've… I've had enough of Pyring the people I love."
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[] Just write the rest already, it's been two months damn it.
No actual vote this time, I just didn't want to make you wait any longer and the next scene would be during the week, so... I don't know, discuss, tell me to write faster... something.
And damn does the 90' anime episode theming I have for the threadmarks not work with updates like this one.
] Just write the rest already, it's been two months damn it.
