Even In The Grave, All Is Not Lost

To Stay

A/N: so this was supposed to be ready earlier this week but then I was struck by inspiration and wrote a bit more which meant it needed another few days of proofreading. But I figured you guys would prefer to have 500 extra words even it meant waiting another day. Still, normally I proofread over weeks or months, so the ending of this chapter is still a little rough. Sorry about that.

. . .

"Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person."
― Madeline L'Engle

. . .

"Why didn't you leave?" Seeing the confusion on Luna's face, Raven shrugged. "That day on the dock. You could have left."

She looked slightly bemused. "Would you have preferred that I did?"

Raven snorted. "Hardly." Even without the fate of the world resting on her continued presence in their lives, Luna was good company. More than good company, actually. As much as she hated to admit it. "But you wanted to go. I know that."

Luna's expression faded into empty dispassion, the change so seamless as to be unnerving. "There are a lot of things I want but don't act on."

Well, she'd come pretty close to acting on this.

"That's not why you chose to stay. You were willing to act, to leave." She'd been desperate to convince the nightblood not to but only a small part of Raven had actually believed she might succeed in the effort. She was no-one to Luna. Little more than a stranger. What chance did she have to change her mind? What could she offer her?

But Raven had remembered the look on her face when she'd held Adria in her final moments. The devastation there. The love.

That had been her first glimpse into the person Luna was, beneath the rumors and stories.

Beneath the legend.

And she'd thought. . . someone who cared that much about a child who wasn't even theirs, would be incapable of sitting back and watching the world burn, watching yet more children die.

Not when she could do something to stop it.

Something that didn't require her to dirty her hands like taking the Flame would have.

It had been a gamble. A half-formed hypothesis.

But it had held true.

Still, she'd seen Luna's own desperation in that moment. How badly she'd wanted to get on that boat, sail away from the promised devastation to come; from watching more people die - some of them even for her own sake, like Nyko.

When Raven refocused on her now, she realized Luna had been watching her carefully for however long they'd drifted into silence, her hands having ceased in their motion, netting abandoned.

But she still hadn't answered.

That was unusual. Luna was honest to a fault and had rarely shied away from questions in the past, especially when Raven was the one posing them. But here they were.

She opened her mouth to ask again, though it was probably pointless - if Luna didn't want to share, she wouldn't and Raven could more than understand that, she wouldn't push if that was the case - but Luna chose that moment to break her silence.

"I've gotten very good at running away," she said carefully. "I started when I was thirteen-years-old and I'm not sure I ever stopped." Her gaze wandered to the netting in her hands, tracing the rise and fall of one knot. "But I realized this was one thing I would regret running away from. If you're right, and my blood can save everyone, then I want to try. I'm tired of watching people die."