Even In The Grave, All Is Not Lost

Could You Make It On Your Own?

A/N: so this chapter and the next one contains two brief flashbacks. The first (in this chapter) is when Luna is about sixteen, the second (in the next chapter) takes place a few years before present day.

. . .

"And between the sand and stone

Could you make it on your own?"

- Wherever You Will Go by The Calling

. . .

"So, did the Flame Keepers teach you how to do this?"

Luna shook her head in answer, counting the fish that hadn't managed to escape from their nets during the chaos. It should have taken less than a minute but her mind, which had become sluggish and chilled in the aftermath of their fall, struggled to keep count. Every few seconds, she found herself having to start again, her patience wearing thinner and thinner. "No. These kinds of survival skills weren't of much interest to them. They taught us a bit about hunting and the like, enough that we could get by for a short time if we ever found ourselves stranded alone, but more than that wasn't necessary. Commanders don't live alone and they can rely on others for their needs."

This was something she'd only come to take stock of after her Conclave.

It was a significant lack of foresight on the part of her mentors. For all of Titus' teachings on the necessity of isolation when it came to being the Commander, he had failed to grasp just how dependent each and every novitiate was on the company of others.

But, then, emotional solitude was far different from physical isolation - and Titus was a devotee of the first.

Of course, there was always the chance that this oversight had been intentional.

An attempt to make nightbloods as dependent on the people they served as those very people were on them. A binding trap. If that was the case, then she felt a renewal of contempt for her teachers.

"So who did teach you?"

"Derrick." Luna said no more, though she knew Raven had to be curious of this name that would occasionally arise in conversation between them. Of everyone, he was the hardest to speak of. The memory of his death - of her own role in it - rushed to the surface, just as it always did; an onslaught she struggled to stand fast against. She would become accustomed to it eventually, just as she had her brother's. But not yet.

It had taken her years to find peace with Sol's memory and Derrick had only been returned to the water little more than a moon ago.

The pain was too fresh.

His passing a blistering wound rather than a scar.

Thankfully, Raven seemed to get the hint and didn't pry. She was more likely than most to understand those things that needed to be left alone.

(inwardly, Luna cursed herself. All the time she'd spent trying to coax the other woman into discussing more painful topics and she was the one shying away.

But Luna knew her limits. And she knew she was teetering close to the border of one right now. If she ever discussed Derrick in full, it would have to be when her emotions were back to a more steady equilibrium, not when her skin felt like a cage she wanted to leap out of)

"It's a good catch," the mechanic observed, seeming almost surprised by the fact as she looked down at their nets. "I was thinking we'd maybe get one or two."

She was right, though Luna was experienced enough not to share her surprise in their good fortune. She'd known when she suggested this method just how bountiful it was likely to prove.