Aru Shah Jokes and Short Stories

Never Wanted To Lose You (Mini x Rudy)

a/n: trying my hand at angst 'cause why not?

—

Ten years was far too long to hold on. To hold on to the barest memory of a person, the faintest way his hand fitted in hers, the way his lips tasted, the way his laugh sounded in the breeze of a spring day.

She knew it was too long to hold on, but she couldn't help but think of these memories. Especially when these memories were much more welcome than the last ones she had of him.

She'd much prefer the ghost of his touch, the way he held her hand; than the way he weakly gripped at the sleeve of her shirt, his hand slick with blood, that faint sparkle in his eyes fading.

She'd much prefer the taste of his lips on her own than the salt of her own tears making her mouth burn, as he croaked out: "I... love you."

She'd much prefer hearing his laugh in her head, than his screams of pain in his last few moments of life.

Yes, ten years was far too long to hold on, and those ten years had shaped her into a different person: sharper, angrier, crueller. Sadder.

The old fears burned away, leaving behind a wrath— a wrath against war and the waste it left behind— the innocents left to die, the innocents whose only crime was to exist.

Because that was what he'd been. What they'd all been. Innocents, forced to fight a war, who miraculously survived, but one of them did not survive the aftermath.

She'd tried to blend in, but the voices made it hard: the voices at the back of her head, the voices in the graveyards, the voices at the pyres: Save me, save me, save me...

They all morphed into his voice: Save me, save me, save me...

I couldn't.

When the voices had first manifested themselves, she'd cried all night.

But slowly, she'd tried to live with them. She'd passed med school. The voices (voice?) mocked her at the graduation ceremony: Save me.

She knew it wasn't him. He wouldn't use that tone with her. He wouldn't. The voice was filled with a sneer.

So she'd learned to live with them. Him. Not-Him. She didn't know what to call it anymore.

—

No movement, she thought, to herself, her gaze sweeping across the seemingly empty field. She twirled Dee Dee in her hands, watching as a wave of magic swept across the field, as if a wall of illusion was around it.

She squinted, wondering whether the illusion would reveal itself— but it didn't. It shimmered mid-air, like static.

A bead of sweat ran down the back of her neck, as her arms started to ache, with keeping up the invisibility spell, and trying to peel back the illusion, layer-by-layer.

The latest Council missions were getting more and more taxing lately, but they weren't without reason: there were rumours of an army on the rise— an army of the undead that could sense demigods. She was reminded of the Heartless they'd fought when they were thirteen, and that wasn't a welcome memory.

She'd removed the invisibility shield around her, leaving her exposed to the night air, and gods knew what.

She felt jittery— not just nerves, but something else, something alive. An energy that thrummed in her veins, electricity jumping from nerve to nerve, in a way that she'd never felt before.