Indigo's Keeper [Indigo B2]

Prologue - Change

[This is the start of B2! You can find B1 on my profile, titled 'Indigo's Owl']

If anyone had asked Athira a month ago whether she thought her impulsive decision to save a cute blonde guy from an elemental's idiocy would lead to her emerging victorious over the literal incarnation of wrath, she'd have slapped them upside the head and moved on with her day.

Now, with Indigo's help, she had removed Rathe from her mindscape. She had reclaimed her body with the anger and claws of the monster he'd made her. The Herald's plan had failed. The Warden's Sloth experiments had come to a grinding halt. The city remained standing, its citizens mostly unaware of how close they'd come to catastrophe.

Athira just hadn't expected victory to be so... quiet.

It was worse at night, when the base was asleep and the shadows crept in to suffocate her. In place of Rathe's tantrums was a silence—a dark, looming, lonely thing that dredged up the worst of her memories and played them on loop until the guilt was heavy enough to crush her.

Thoughts of Talon and Talia spiralled into a place where the what ifs were haunting. She'd come too close to some of them. The spine through Zoe's chest. The clawed hand around Shift's neck. Any of the Wardens she'd killed in her blackout rage could have easily been Indigo instead, and in moments where the memories blurred and it was Raph or Kione's unseeing eyes in place of a Warden, Athira swore she could still taste the ashen remains of Rathe's fire on her tongue.

But then morning would come. The sun would rise. Indigo would wake, and with every snippet of conversation woven throughout the day's activities, the silence would subside until Athira could almost make herself believe that everything would be okay. The claws and spines that had almost killed her team had vanished with Rathe. The Black remained, but without Rathe constantly fighting her for control, it was manageable, even in this softer, human skin.

She was safe. They were safe.

Athira had no idea how wrong she was until the morning she walked into the kitchen of Indigo base and saw Zoe wearing a Keeper suit.

"Goooood morning, Thira!" Zoe said from the other side of the countertop, bouncing on the spot with a grin and a glow. "The usual toast with chocolate spread?"

Zoe didn't wait for a reply before she set about gathering what she'd need to make it, which was just as well because Athira had completely and utterly frozen.

Silence rang in her ears as she stared at the bright, yellow fabric of the Keeper suit. It looked new. That made sense. The last one had been missing a sleeve and had a massive hole through the torso. That kind of thing wasn't repairable. Not to mention the bloodstains. There'd almost been more red than yellow on Zoe's suit by the time—

"Bright, isn't she?" muttered Shift from his chair where he was slumped across the benchtop. "It's like our own, personal sun in the kitchen. I can barely look at her without squinting."

Athira blinked, snapping out of it. She took a breath and gave the rest of the kitchen a glance, hoping her pause hadn't been too noticeable. Raph was in his usual spot, also wearing a Keeper suit as he casually sipped at his coffee and read some kind of report from his wristlet, while Shift was still in his pyjamas and looked barely awake—something Athira supposed was her fault. Their training session had stretched into the early hours of the morning before either of them had noticed.

She slid into the seat beside Shift, who with his chin resting on his folded arms, opened one emerald eye and somehow managed to wink at her. Athira just gave him an exasperated shake of her head before she glanced at Zoe and the yellow fabric that instilled so much dread.