Exile |The Darkling|

Chapter 6: Ending

How does one describe death to another?

First, the body goes cold. A cold that is defined by a forbidding realization that the life before is no longer. The past has become the past; a distant and far idea that somehow feels like it never existed. Though, it did. In a memory, or memories, of others to live on until one day someone forgets.

At that time death has happened, it's as if no one can do anything more than fill themselves with sorrow.

Therefore, grief comes barreling in like a tidal wave of unwanted emotion.

Grief is the calamity of death—not the action itself.

Grief is a strange friend.

It's not welcomed nor invited, promoted or expected. Perhaps that's what makes it so unbelievably tragic. Grief isn't a constant; an emotion so beautifully deceiving when apparent on others but pitiful when encountered.
Grief is heavy.
Its burdensome weight tackles one to the ends of the earth and forces a reconstruction in its aftermath.

Grief is difficult to overcome.

Death is difficult to understand.

Forgiveness is difficult to give.

You had learned that in the most onerous of manners. In a time prior to the creation of the fold, you had been held prisoner by the King's army.

The frigid, repugnant cell had become your home for nearly seven months while Grisha were paraded past beaten, battered, and bloodied by the hands of the so-called 'protectors of Ravka and its people.' No one who walked past your cell in a crude manner was the enemy. The ones who strutted by, holding their head with a clear definition of arrogance, were the ones creating victims. It was their hands that were stained with blood.

Every morning they would interrogate you with the same line of questioning. "Where is he?" Followed by a "save yourself, give up his location for your people." Then, when no answer besides a snide remark was given, "How many witches are you going to let die because of your pride?" Again, no answer was provided.

The pain came then and only then. A broken arm, a leg, a wrist, your collarbone that hadn't healed from the previous month's break. Occasionally, they had knocked you out using a heartrender who had been forced to use their abilities against you. The tears that streamed down their face as they whispered sorrow-filled apologizes had become an image you could never erase from your memory.

One day you had woken up with incisions barely stitched together near the bottom of your stomach. The shift dress that had give you to wear the day you had been captured as stained with blood and the pain from the site was hardly tolerable. The woman across from your cell had cried when she told you what they said.

"They said–" The inferni was so weak that she could barely formulate a sentence without breathing like she had run miles. Her time was quickly approaching, but she still cried for you; still believed that somehow, you would get out of that prison and revenge them all for what they've done.

"–if they had the one who summons stars and didn't take something precious away, then it was for nothing. The-e-y don't wa-a-a-nt you ha-v-ve–" her sobs were one of a mother. The cries were for a future that would never exist. The vacillation of her own life; how the woman would never see her son or daughter again made her hysterical about the choice being taken from you.

"You don't have to tell me." Your voice was small; broken from the months of semi-isolation and heartbreak over what has gone on. Though, it was the fault of nothing except your existence.

"You de-e-serve to know, Y/n."

"I know what you are going to say, Irina."

"You don't deserve what's happened to you." She spoke with a conviction, an anger reserved for those who have face the unthinkable.