The Fall of The Phoenix

Consequences

AN: I've never been a fan of the whole "evil was defeated, and they all lived happily ever after" thing. My name is, after all, Arwen. Frodo was the hero of my bedtime stories, and I have never forgotten hearing the line "I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me" for the first time. There is a happy ending coming, rest assured, but I think that it would be a disservice to this story to pretend that simply winning the final battle got us there. Grief and trauma are very real emotions that lots of people deal with. Though Phoenix and co are not real people, the things that they have been through aren't experiences that people would walk away from mentally unscathed. The next few chapters will show them dealing with their emotions and learning to heal as best they can. Then, yes, there will be an epilogue where we see where they all wind up after doing some healing. We're just not there yet.

Slight Disclaimer: If people say or act in ways that seem out of character in this chapter and the next, please remember that grief causes people to act unpredictably. That being said, many of the moments that might seem shocking will be explained and/or apologized for soon. Additionally, please remember that this story is written in first person from Phoenix's point of view. There are many characters that she is not super close with and/or holds a very idealized version of in her head. Sometimes, we can think the world of someone only to have them surprise us.

As always, thank you for sticking with this story and our characters.

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The Aftermath: The Smoke Clears

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Chapter Forty-Eight: Consequences

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The ashen sands of time disappeared as the sun rose over the battlefield, but my own golden magic had returned to my limbs and death lingered all around us. It took some convincing for Jay to let go of me so that others could haul me to my feet, but eventually I was upright once more.

Things seemed to move very quickly after that. I was both hugged and shouted at once everyone realized that I was mostly alright, and I couldn't find it in myself to ask them to stop, despite how badly my head hurt. Already the weight of what I had kept from them--of what the consequence had nearly been--was setting in. Despite my exhaustion, I knew that there was just as much to be done after the war had come to a close as there had been before it. There were explanations to be had, hospital rooms to visit, and funerals to be planned now that the final battle was over, but all I truly wanted was a bed.

It had been so long since I had laid down and truly been able to rest.

It wasn't until we were all in the Great Hall, bodies lining the floor like an eerie echo of the stories of the last war that we had grown up on, that someone voiced what I had been thinking.

"You look tired, Phoenix," Roxanne said softly, but the entirety of our family fell silent as they turned to look at her. In another life, I might have thrown my arms around her then and squeezed her as tightly as I could to show my gratitude. In this one, I simply let the force of my thanks leak through my mental defenses and hoped that she could feel it. "How long has it been since you've had the chance to rest without having to worry about the war?"

I shrugged, unsure as to whether I would know the answer even if I could be bothered to try and think about it. It seemed that an impossible amount of time had passed since the war consumed my every waking moment (and many of my unconscious ones as well). In fact, I was not sure at that moment that I could even recall what time was like before Hastings got his hands on it.