Love in the Time of Trepidation

Chapter 20: A Grieving

A few months ago I'd made a tweet saying I hadn't made anything heartbreaking in a while. I knew full well what I was planning. Did it qualify? Chapter 20 time.

Chapter 20

A Grieving

If the world around her had ended, Akari didn't notice.

She knew things were happening, had happened, but in the face of her brother's death, she simply couldn't compute them. All too often, she would find herself staring blankly ahead at the white fields of the Alabaster Icelands, having not a thought in her head. She wanted to, and on the rare occasion something came to her, it was not something pleasant. Instead, she could only see Volo's face, the leer upon his eyes and lips as he stabbed into her brother's back with her own knife.

That face from her nightmares was all that stuck with her.

She was unable to sleep, refused to eat, and not even her lips could make a sound since her screams on Lake Acuity had died down. No one talked to her, with some avoiding her, while others made mumbles of giving her space. She didn't care. None of it really mattered anymore. Not them. Not the Nobles.

Not even the blood-red sky that wept from the very peak of Mount Coronet, a storm swirling around as it taunted her. Called her. She refused to answer.

It was something around the third day following the destructive battle that had raged over the Icelands that there was a change in activity around her; one she had enough presence of mind to register. Starting with the sight of her brother's body being lifted into a cart, Akari knew that their time in the place had ended. They were returning to Jubilife.

"Akari, won't you eat something? It's still a journey back," said the kindly voice of Laventon, now having joined them. He looked heartbroken every time she saw him, and it twisted the knife further. Part of her already wished to throw that weapon away, but she lacked the strength to even do so. She also lacked the energy to respond to the professor. "Well, if you need some, just ask. We're...we're bringing him back today."

The only thing Akari could muster at that was a nod. Unable to formulate any other response, her eyes trailed off, to the Poké Ball that Laventon had been entrusted with, and to the flute sitting in her lap. Decidueye had been unconscious, unaware of what had befallen his partner, and Akari could find nowhere in her heart the ability to tell him. She couldn't even find it in herself to seek out the plates that had once been such an obsessive object of her search.

All she had was the locket that Rei had entrusted her with, one that her fingers curled around, as if she could crack it in two.

She had tried, if just for a brief moment. Inside, she wanted to break a great many things. She wanted to revert to that rage that had driven her and kept her going for so long, even if it had been a lie the entire time. That had lasted only a brief moment, up until when Adaman and Irida had checked on her, told her something about removing the plates from Avalugg and the gigas. When she heard that, something snapped, and with every effort, she had tried to snap her flute in two, as if doing so might change something. Anything.

But she couldn't.

The flute would barely bend, let alone break, and she was left with it in her possession, an endless reminder of what her actions had wrought. That alone made her want to scream again.

All of the constant distortions in the air did not help, reminding her and all of them that something had changed across Hisui, altering the space they lived in. From a boy laying on a patch of grass in defeat, to the one she'd seen face him in the Coastlands being defeated, himself. All of it were memories and echoes of the past and future that served nothing but to drag her down in her present.