Chapter Text
It’s over.
It’s well and truly over.
She wasn’t the only one he came for, it turns out. The first, yes, the most violent, but not the only. He came for their siblings, for Ocean and Rose.
And they asked her to stop him. To help them, to bury him in water, to kill him.
They are gods, they should not die. And yet now he sits on his throne, and he does not move, and Blaze cannot quite find it in her to mourn as she knows she should.
The Nether is still fractured. There’s nothing that can be done to reverse it, not her damage nor Ender’s. They both changed it on some fundamental, intrinsic level, and you cannot undo that sort of change.
So many are gone, so many have lost loved ones. So much has elapsed between- between Ender’s attempt on the fortress and now. So much of it is little more than a blur, a haze in Blaze’s mind, lost to the darkness of her thoughts.
But it is over.
He cannot hurt them anymore, he cannot hurt her anymore.
But he has left scars that will never heal, she thinks.
Blaze looks over her shoulder from where she sits in the war room, the council room, the same room as it has always been. She looks, and there is nothing.
She looks and there is no one.
Gingerly, tentatively, she unearths that fear from her ribcage, lets it show on her face, some desperate attempt at the impossible.
There is still no one. There is still nothing. An empty chair, a silence, and nothing to break down her walls.
No one’s even tried.
She made them hastily this time. She made them sloppily. A single nudge, and they would crumble, a brush simply from standing too close.
And no one has even done that. There was always distance, but never has it been so potent. Never has it ached quite so much.
She should be here. She saved them. She broke her promises and it hurts that she did so but Blaze knows she would have done it in every universe, in every timeline. Because she did it for her.
There wasn’t even a body, a hair, anything left to bury. Her possessions were always simple, it was her smile that made her shine, her eyes that made her precious, her being that made her Sandy.
And she is not here.
Blaze’s palm burns, and her face crumples, cracks shattering her façade, and a part of her wishes she could rip the limb from her body and toss it into the void. She presses her lips to it instead, and sobs into the empty room.
There are no hands to wipe her tears.
There are no arms around her.
There are no gentle words spoken into her ear, no fingers carding through her hair.
There is simply an empty space, and Blaze is at such an utter loss as to how she survived this way for so long.
She is at an utter loss as to how she is supposed to survive this way for the rest of eternity.
There is more Nether than just the Void Blaze was forced to create. It still stretches on, broken in so many places. It is still her responsibility. Her nucleus of power is safe now, but her people still need her.
Except she is not here as their Empress, now. She is their height, unarmed, hidden under a cloak.
There are so many in mourning, so many so hurt by her failure to protect them all.
There is no one to tell her it is not her fault. She continues to blame herself, as if it might wish that empty space away. She knows it will not.
People do not give her much attention as she passes. This soulsand valley is choked with them, each paying their respects, burial mounds plentiful among the bones. Something twangs between Blaze’s ribs, a vicious thread of jealousy. She does not let it surface, she simply passes through, a nameless, faceless mourner.
She spends tides out here, in the Nether proper. Tides simply walking, seeing for herself all that has been done. All that had to be done.
She walks until she finds an empty valley, until the sands crunch beneath her feet, and then finally, she stops.
Finally, she allows herself to rest.
She said she would wait, all that time ago. She said she would weather eternity, just for her. She said she would hide, too, but that promise was broken.
Blaze can only hope this one isn’t. There is no way to know, besides her own death, and although she has learned that it is now possible, she knows it will not be for a long, long time.
The Nether thermals blow cold through the valley. They whistle through bones, through crevices, a sound that many think of as the voices of the dead, speaking again. Blaze listens, but she cannot hear that laugh. She cannot hear those kind words.
She sinks to the ground, then. Quietly, carefully. She presses her hands into the dark sand, feels the energy of so much lost life course between her fingers. It is a power she will never touch, never use. It is not hers. It is not right.
But she feels it nonetheless.
She sits like that for a long time. Alone in a valley of the dead, of souls yet to pass. She feels them, in what little way she can. She lets the sand pile up around her, dimming the fire that she is made of. She doesn’t mind. It’s the least she can give.
“I’m sorry,” she says eventually, voice small. “I’m so sorry.”
It breaks her yet again. She has been broken ever since that moment outside the Fortress.
Tears of lava fall into the sands, hissing, sizzling. But where rock would usually form, cooling particularly in the frigidity of the valleys, smooth, rounded shapes form. Glass, dark in colour, yet shining vibrant blue in the light.
She lets it rest.
“Sandy, please forgive me,” she whispers, once her voice has returned to her, once her sobs have subsided. “I failed you, I lost you. I’m so, so sorry.”
She doesn’t know if she’s here. She doesn’t know if she’s even able to wait for her on the other side, or if Ender killed her in some intrinsic way. She hopes it was painless.
“I should have just… taken you.” Tears spring to her eyes again, and she slams a fist into the sand, pressing her forehead to it. “Rules be damned, I should have just let myself be yours.”
Of this all, that is what she regrets most. She mourns the loss of her citizens, yes, it breaks her from the inside out. But this… is different.
Mortals speak of two things, love, and grief. They say they are one. Love, for when someone fills your every thought, for when they become your everything, for when you become theirs. And grief, for when your purpose is lost. Grief, for when you are empty, grief, for when you look over your shoulder and there is no one there to greet you.
She never truly understood. Fundamental laws aside, there was always something missing. She could care for others, and she did, and she was saddened by their passing, and that was all. The natural way of things. She was always going to lose them, it made no difference. She cared for them regardless, but it did not go any deeper than that.
Even with her family, she’s not quite sure what she would call it. They are strong and steady, they always have been. Had been. Things are- are different now. But she does not feel this way about what happened to her own. She does not feel exactly this way to what happened to her people, either.
What she feels, she now understands. Love. Grief. The aching of a heart, the longing, the despair. It wracks through her body, ensnares her in its ruthless clutches, and she feels.
“I’m yours,” she tells the valley. “Sandy, I was always yours. I will never be anything but, I should have told you.”
She thinks she knew regardless. She thinks she always did.
There was always that something about her, about her eyes. She looked at her and saw a person, not a goddess. She looked at her and saw an individual, not an Empress. She looked at her and she saw her, not her mask, her walls, her power or her position.
No one had ever seen the person below. Blaze isn’t sure if anyone else ever will.
It was always- it was always just them, when they were alone. Nothing else mattered. No one else mattered. Blaze mattered. Her emotions, her pain, her fear. Sandy saw it and nurtured it and cared for it, burnt herself on it and never complained.
But she was too scared. Blaze was just as much of a coward as Ender was, she still is. For all of Sandy’s kindness and assurance, she is just like her brother. Letting her fear overtake her. Letting her cowardice keep her from the people she did not know she loved, because she did not know she could love.
And now she is alone. She lost her, before she was even able to have her in the first place.
“I still think of you,” she tells the sands. “I still look to you, every tide. I still get surprised when you’re not there. What am I supposed to do? Sandy, how do I live without you?”
Her fingers clench where they lie buried, searching for something to hold, anything to hold. There is nothing.
“I was your ember, but you were my fire. My flame, my everything. You taught me how to be a person, but it hurts.” By the void, does it hurt. “I miss you,” Blaze says.
There is nothing she can do. She knows this. There is nothing anyone can do. There never will be, and there never was. It will always hurt. She will always miss her. There will always be an empty space at Blaze’s side.
“Wait for me,” she breathes. “I’m coming, I promise. I will see you again.” She clings to that promise, those words Sandy said to her when the war was fresh, when the war was the only thing that hurt. It feels like a lifetime ago.
It was one of those promises that cannot be made, not truly. One of those things that lies so far outside of anyone’s control, one of those things where the sentiment means more than the words. But it is the last tether of hope Blaze has left, the last thread that Sandy left her, when she was ripped out of her grasp.
She will not let it go. She will wind it around herself so tightly until she is utterly bound, so that when the time finally comes—if the time finally comes—she can follow it to its source. She will not be afraid this time. She will not be a coward. She will not be her brother.
Blaze does not know how long she spends in the valley. She does know that the thermals have started to bury her, that sand falls like a curtain off her back as she rises, that her light is all but dimmed entirely.
There are still blue-shot glass pearls below her, the sands crystalised in the heat of her grief. Most, she leaves. They belong to the valley, to the souls that pass through here. But one she takes. It isn’t perfect, a little small, a little misshapen, but Sandy told her that her imperfections are what make her perfect.
She always knew exactly what to say, somehow.
She always knew exactly how to say it, exactly when to say it.
And she always said it, even if they both knew she shouldn’t.
So Blaze takes the glass in her palm, the same palm that burns with emotions she knows she will never be able to name, and she presses her lips to it.
“Wait for me,” she says to the sands one last time, and it is her who turns to leave.
The thermal winds whistle again, and Blaze feels them on her skin. They are almost warm, a gentle caress. And this time, she hears it too. Distant, just like it was that first time. Bright, just like it always was.
A laugh, carried from somewhere beyond.
There is a new figure in the space at Blaze’s side. Their name is Malla, and they float, pale and pink-ish. They are not Sandy. They do not see through Blaze’s walls, they do not have a tail to coil around her ankle, they do not speak of the Nether in the same way.
But they are welcome nonetheless.
Those walls, the ones that used to stretch further than Blaze herself knew, they are smaller now. Still present, but surmountable, by those who wish to try.
She does not quite open her ribcage, as she had before, but she lets people in. She is not simply their Empress, their goddess. She spends time with her people, amongst them. There, she is simply Blaze, and she is learning about what it is to live.
She learns about sadness, about the different forms it takes. Loss, of course, mourning. She shares that with all her people. She stands level with them to farewell their dead, helps them to rebuild what was broken.
She learns about happiness, too. Laughter is such a warm feeling, and it twangs her heartstrings more often than not, but that is okay. She has learned that, too. That sadness and happiness can exist together.
Sometimes, people ask her who she lost. She tells them. She tells them of golden fur and brown eyes, of the fastest mind and the kindest words. She shares Sandy with all those who inquire, because Sandy shared so much with her, it feels only right.
The Nether is broken, yes, damaged in so many places and so many ways. There are things that will never be how they were, places that will forever be left in ruin, people that will never get to cry or smile again.
But that is not the whole Nether. As ever, Sandy was right. The Nether heals. Life is returned to places it was taken, settled and nurtured and blooming. People celebrate, they dance around fires and share their food with her, and pull her into their throes and she joins them. She is not a very good dancer, Blaze learns. She thinks it would have made Sandy laugh.
And it still hurts, to look over her shoulder to share this moment with someone who is gone. It will still always hurt.
But there is blue-shot glass strung around her neck, and a warmth echoing in her palm, and a promise wound around her heart.
She is cared for.