Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Wow! I didn’t expect this!”

Kurena spins on her heels in the center of Lena’s room. For a moment, she thinks she can hear her voice bounce off the empty walls. 

“There’s nothing! Even Shin has his books and some other things. Lena, you need to decorate!”

“I-I’m sorry…” Lena stutters, “Between moving and starting the military initiatives so quickly, I guess it hasn’t crossed my mind.”

Anju puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Now, now, Lena. This sort of thing can’t be ignored. You’re a young, lovely lady after all. Next off-day, we should take some time to spruce the place up.”

Lena returns her smile with one of her own, but she hates the way it feels on her face. She knows they mean well, but their words echo in her chest. 

They echo because she feels hollow.

–

“Your Majesty, I know you take your work seriously and all, but you could spare some time to have a personality.”

Shiden bursts through her bedroom door and sits on her bed, uninvited of course, but that’s one of the things Lena likes about her. Her freedom to say and act how she feels– to express herself without remorse– is a trait Lena wishes she had. 

“We 86 never owned anything in our lives and even we have nicer rooms than this. How are you gonna bring you-know-who in here if it looks like a morgue?”

“You know that is the last of my worries, Shiden,” she replies with a sigh, sitting down next to her. Shiden’s nonchalant aura always helps Lena unwind, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Another thing she likes about her.

“Well, just think about it. Hopefully we’ll be here for a while. Maybe setting down some roots isn’t a bad thing. It’s been years since I had a place I could repeatedly come back to. And let me tell ya, it feels great!”

Roots burn easily , Lena thinks while pulling out the battlefield schematics they planned to review. She supposes whether they review them here or in her office doesn’t matter. It’s empty all the same.

–

She watches Shin take in her room, red eyes lightly scanning his surroundings. There’s no judgment in the stare, only the gaze of a soldier familiarizing himself with a new place. Relief? Embarrassment? Desire? She can’t put her finger on the emotion that rises in her chest. It echoes in the hollow pit like a pebble thrown into a crevasse. 

Still, the words pass through her lips before she can help it.

“Are you surprised?” she says with a quiet smile. Shin looks at her with a question in his eyes. She sounds…surprisingly sad.

“Everyone says the same thing,” she walks over to the small, prison-like window and puts her hand on the windowsill, admiring her vase full of marigolds. “‘We expected a girl like you to have a decorated room!’ Everyone was so surprised when they came in. I didn’t expect such a reaction...”

She leans on the wall and looks over the room with Shin. In comparison to her mother’s manor, this is an unlivable space. None of the luxury and comfort she grew up knowing. No armchairs to climb to sit on her father’s lap. No vanities to display her mother’s gaudy jewelry. Only white walls, white sheets, and cold floors. 

Perfect for a white pig.

“Everything got destroyed during the large-scale offensive last year. There’s no photos to put up, no dresses, no blankets, no family treasures. All the fanfare left… with my mother.”

Shin has to stop himself from reaching out to her. Sometimes he forgets that the Lena he knew– the girl he called at the Revolutionary Festival who wore ballgowns and ate luxurious meals with her mother– fought a war he knew nothing about. Within walls that were torn apart. Destroyed in a blaze of blood and hate. The two years they were separated changed them both, in ways hard for him to recognize.

“It is liberating in a way,” Lena continues, staring at the ground. “A fresh start. With you and all the others. They’re so surprised by my room but…I don’t really mind. It helps me stay focused on what matters. This war is the only thing that matters.”

Lena is different. The same in a lot of ways– ways that he loves– but different enough to notice. Solemn glances out a window. Small smiles with nothing behind them. Red eyes early in the morning.

War leaves no one unscathed, no matter the size of the wound.

He’s moving before he can realize it and brings Lena into his arms. He sets his chin on the top of her head, wades his hands through her soft hair, breathes in her violet scent. Lena doesn’t cry, but wraps her arms around him in return. Embraces from her father, mischievous glances from her mother, the laughter of neighbors and friends– she would trade every material item she ever owned in order to see them one more time. But maybe Kurena, Anju and Shiden have a point. Maybe she is right.

Maybe a fresh start isn’t so bad.

–

Theo gives her some of his drawings later that week. Stuff I made that I don’t want anymore, he claims. She doesn’t know if this is Anju and Kurena's or Shin’s doing and doesn’t ask why he includes tape in the bag, but she does take the girls up on their offer to help her hang them in her room. Anju brings a small mat she knitted for the foot of her bed. The pink yarn is somewhat garish, but Lena loves it all the same.

A week later, Shiden hands her a jar filled with a menagerie of pebbles and rocks. Just little things I pick up while hunting. I tried to grab all the pretty ones for you, Your Majesty. It’s childish and silly, but Lena loves the way the gem-like stones sparkle like a kaleidoscope on her bare walls. She puts the jar on her windowsill so the light can make the colors dance. 

Shin brings her flowers once a month to refresh the ones in her vase. It’s ironic, she thinks, after all these years of struggling with the sole goal of leaving him flowers, he is the one to give them to her. But when she salutes a vase of camellias instead of chrysanthemums, when she sees her room filling with new possessions and feels the warmth of the people behind them, her chest slowly fills as well. She can’t help but feel that she has changed for the better, if only a little.