A funeral march for the passing of gods - Shadow And Bone- Nikolai Lantsov/OC

Victories and forget-me-nots

**prepare yourself for some heartache, some great pain, some sweet romance and bitter grief**

Athena wouldn't know. She wouldn't know that Ivan died with a smile on his lips, his mind screaming at the irony of his own end, at how both he and Fedyor have seen the last ray of sunlight upon putting themselves in front of danger to protect their loved one. Athena wouldn't know that he died with the image of a white washed weeding, with the image of them three telling stories in her spacious office, drinking kvas on the mahogany floor. She wouldn't know he died peacefully, with happiness hiding behind his pupils. She wouldn't know he died unafraid.

The only thing she would know was that he loved her. And that his love for her killed him in the end. So much destruction, so much pain, so much grief starting to overflow. She wouldn't know that a part of her would go with him, leaving behind a wasteland painted in flowers that would never die, would never grow, would never have true life inside of them other than the powers once sitting in her veins.

Athena used to ask herself whether or not she would ever be capable of creating atrocities out of her own pain. The sight of the fold, covered in grass and forget-me-nots, was its own atrocity, masked by beautiful petals, trying to hide the many thorns, the many bodies painting the sand underneath red. It was not sainthood, it was not a martyrdom, it was not a sacrifice. It was her own form of destruction, her own ruined heart screaming for the world to hear her, screaming for the world to bring Ivan back.

Who would know her now? Who would be able to sense her heart changing when it doesn't, who would sit beside her at the funerals to come and hold her hand, hold her standing against the merciless takings of the world? Who would share her many bottles of kvas, her late hours, her world? Who would be there to worry silently for her when she put herself in danger, who would stop her from drinking too much, working too long, hiding too often?

The fold was a canvas of her pain, of her many sorrows, of all these questions that would remain stuck in the air. The clergy would see it as an act of penance, as a blessing on the fallen, as a sacrifice demanded of a daughter that shared her father's sin by simply being born. The people would see it as a miracle, an offering of constant spring, a compensation for the thousands of years of darkness. Athena would see it differently. As a mocking insult, as a weakness. She created life out of sand, out of her father's pain, but she couldn't mend her own. Not even in her greatest acts of immoral deeds could she ever bring Ivan back to life. Merzost was useless in the hands of the unexperienced and for a moment she would wish she was more like her ancestors, greedier. Maybe then Ivan would be alive, maybe then her heart could remain whole.

Around her, the world continued. It kept moving. Mal would come back to life, by virtue of Athena's magic deciding to give him another chance at an easier existence. Nikolai would plumet from the sky, his only saving grace being Zoya and her summoning. Alina would give instructions regarding her martyrdom and hold onto her soulmate for dear life. Soldiers would lay fallen, waiting for a burial, for a proper funeral.

Athena would stand still, holding onto Ivan, her only pillar of stability in such an ugly world. The sun would finally shine upon the remaining of the fold, and her grief would go up tenth fold. How dare it come out of the clouds when so many have died for this? For this country, for this saint, for this cause? How could the world continue when everything has crumbled?

In those seconds, Athena wished the pain was there again, wished for the pressure on her temples, for the rush in her blood, for the sensation that everything in her body was broken beyond repair. She should have died. She knew it too well, the moment she asked Ivan for that final sacrifice. She knew she would not survive it. And still, she did. And now, her best friend was laying on the tacky grass, surrounded by blue petals, and red carnations, unmoving, at peace.