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Broken open, Willow has nothing left in her, it seems; all the cacophony of the day and she is extinguished, her sense of self rattled so thoroughly the trees around her won’t stop spinning.
She runs like an animal, away from something hunting her, the presence of duty and fate ready to break her between its teeth. Let no one follow her. Let her world wash into stained colour and sunlight and water.
On the forest floor her clothes are filled with pine needles and sap and filth. Dirt in her eyes as she cries. Muscles pulled to taunt in a burning strain of fear and anxiety and a base instinct of adrenaline to fight her way out of a darkness that has already swallowed her whole.
How long has it been since she was like this? Was it in the forest where the other children thought she was a freak? Was it in the palace where her caregivers struck her for her wildness? Both seem as true as each other. The loneliness, and the expectations. Paradoxically isolated and surrounded.
Weren’t they supposed to help her? Weren’t they supposed to teach her? Weren’t they supposed to find her?
She remembers. The curse and the pain, the shortness of breath. How others could keep going long after she had laid down and given up. Being taken away without explanation, somewhere she had never seen, everything changing again and again and she could handle it no better each time.
People who touched her. A fear of bodies, both her own and others’. Skin like static and blood like fire.
It’s too much for her; her sanity seems to tremble under the weight, on a precipice of darkness. All this time spent living in a game of pretend she didn’t know she was playing could never have prepared her for the sheer oppressive weight of her pain, her victimization.
Wouldn’t you rather be someone you’d like to be friends with?
As tempting as it always has been, she could never escape the truth of her life.
A shivering fit wracks her body. Willow gasps for air, momentarily lucid. Someone is nearby.
Don’t find me. Don’t find me. Don’t hurt me, I promise I didn’t mean it, I didn’t want to.
“Will!”
A voice she recognises. Out of all the people who could have found her, she’d least like to be betrayed by Strohl. It’s inevitable — disgust and shame and dirty looks, scoldings for things she can’t control. It’s impossible to avoid, but oh, she would have liked very much to never have to feel Strohl hurt her that way.
“Will, what’s wrong?”
A gentle hand finds her own and Willow hisses, squirming away like a worm in the dirt and baring her teeth. A wild thing, a ridiculous thing, acting like an animal when she’d stood her ground and gave a thorough rebuttal in front of a crowd just days earlier.
Strohl doesn’t pursue her. If anything, she seems to give her distance, and Willow takes the chance to curl up at the base of a tree, keening softly. Her clothes feel like a burlap sack she’s been stuffed into too tightly, the air on her face both burning and freezing cold. Her heartbeat thrums a rhythm of desperation in her ears.
They’re quiet, for a while; Willow says nothing but softly agonised sounds, and Strohl doesn’t look at her; a few times she glances over to see her staring at a tree.
It’s damning. Why would—
“Will?”
Too long. Strohl seems to have noticed her looking. “Are you… do you need help?”
Willow shakes her head and buries her head in her arms. A pine needle scratches at her face.
“Alright,” Strohl says, and at the tone in her voice Willow feels something inside her shudder. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
That’s not how it’s supposed to go.
Fire pulses in her blood. It’s been so long since she had the strength to collapse like this — as old as she is now, she can recognize a feeling that shouldn’t be there, that always has been, maybe not the root but part of the trunk of her fear and disgust and self-hatred that drives this pulsing animal of her lapse in sanity. Like she really has become the fey creature they always said she was, a changeling in the skin of a witch.
The weight of these feelings could crush her breathless.
How could she? How could she? How could she feel this way, that sickly warmth, a heat she only now understands why she fears it, and want more?
The things she thinks of Strohl doing to her, she cannot bear to even articulate to herself.
As animal as it is of her, it is grounding to know, when her past self did not. Slowly, the storm begins to break; tremors quiet to shivers, and shivers give way to an exhausted chill. Sweat sticky on her body and brushed by the cool evening air until she is lucid once more.
Slowly, Willow sits up. “…I’m sorry,” she says quietly.
Strohl turns to look at her, blinking. “Whatever for?”
“For… acting like that.”
A frown, in response. “Why would you need to be sorry for that? You were clearly in distress — overwhelmingly so. I’m just glad I found you.”
Then, “I’m sorry for running off.”
Strohl sighs, running a hand through her hair. She usually ties it back for travelling and combat, but in the rush to follow Willow, some of it must have been pulled out by the branches overhead, and a small assortment of leaves have found their way into her hair as well. “I can’t blame you,” she says. “What with the Princess, and what Gruidae said—”
She doesn’t know, Willow realises.
“She was telling the truth,” Willow blurts out. “I am. I-I only just remembered.”
The silence that follows is deafening. Willow tries to prepare herself.
“Hell,” Strohl mutters. “No wonder — this must be an enormous shock. Gruidae said there was magic — do you think someone sealed your memories? No, that’s not important. Will.” She moves closer over the forest floor, leaves scraping in the dirt. “It’s okay if it hurts.”
Does it?
Pain seems so far beyond everything she feels in these animal episodes. Her throat closed, incapable of speech. Thunder and heat in her body meant to lash out at whoever dared touch her. Too little, too late.
But yes. It does hurt. It hurts even now; the ache of knowing. The devastation of being a victim of the universe, a world that sought her out as its target again and again until she had more in common with the dirt beneath their feet for how many pieces it’s made up of, pretending at cohesion.
Only a little bit of effort is needed to split them both apart.
“It hurts,” she mumbles. “It hurts so much.”
A sigh; Strohl shifts across the ground again and then Willow hears her speak. “Can I take your hand?”
“Um, okay.”
Strohl does as she asked. Her thumb rubs Willow’s palm, and something cracked shivers awake in her chest. When did she start crying again?
“You’re so strong,” Strohl says.
“Don’t lie to me,” Willow replies without missing a beat. Her tone is as sharp as the shards of her soul.
Strohl’s hand squeezes. “I’m not. I can’t even imagine. I know now that Halia was denied troops on purpose, but it always seemed like a horrifying accident. The universe just happened to align that way. How it must feel to be targeted like that just for your birth, I can only wonder.”
You don’t even know the half of it, Willow thinks bitterly.
“You were a child,” Strohl continues. “Who could curse a child?”
“Forden, apparently.”
Strohl sighs. “Am I making things worse?”
Willow considers this. “…no,” she says finally. “I-I’m sorry for snapping at you. It… it feels better that you’re here.”
In all honesty, it’s hard to believe. Why isn’t Strohl scolding her? Why is she being so gentle? Children like her deserve everything they get.
Ah, Willow thinks. How foolish, how self-centred. It could have been anyone.
But it was me.
And that’s the most damning part of it. How is one meant to grapple with that? How is one meant to live? The greatest injustices in stories are always levelled against the weak, the vulnerable, the ones who need saving. No one came to save her. Pretending at being a hero, she’d wanted to save her friend, the princess.
She couldn’t even save herself.
“Will.”
And Strohl. The person for whom she’d held a secret hope in her heart, to be saved by. From her inexplicable nightmares, her self-hatred, her fear and anxiety. When she was just Will, the travelling girl, it seemed vain to want to be saved. Now, as Princess Willow, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to.
“Will…”
“Strohl,” Willow replies, monotonous. “What is it?”
“It’s getting dark. Can I help you get back to the runner?”
“…alright.”
A change of clothes and a hot cup of tea later, Willow feels less dead than she did before. At some point as the sun began to set, her hair and eyes began to lose their colour, seeping out like poorly-set dye; now they were both the silver she’d been born with. Perhaps with a hint more of sky-blue.
Strohl keeps fussing over her. Is she comfortable, is she hungry, is she tired. The adrenaline of her meltdown has left her bone-tired, but she still feels restless, anxious. Some sleep will do her good, she’s sure, but a fear of nightmares keeps her in the common area.
So it’s there that Strohl makes a point of coming back to check on her. One of those times, when night has fallen, she sits next to Willow without saying a word.
“What is it?” Willow says.
“I thought I would keep you company,” she replies. “I have a guess as to why you seem intent on staying up.”
“Care to share?”
“I’ve done it myself. Nightmares are never pleasant.”
Strohl sees straight through her, as usual. Perhaps that’s part of it — her status as the princess isn’t the only revelation she’s had, and now, there are things Strohl doesn’t know about her. The weight of being the only one who knows is oppressive.
“Strohl,” she begins, then falters.
To her surprise, Strohl takes Willow’s hand. “You can tell me anything,” she says gently.
“Even things that are hard to believe?”
“If you told me that you were delivered by a stork or that your blood used to be blue when you were a kid, I’d believe you,” Strohl says, expression and tone so serious that Willow can’t help but laugh.
It feels like it’s been years since she last did, even though she knows it was only yesterday.
“Don’t make fun of me,” Willow huffs.
“I’m serious, Will.” Strohl’s thumb traces Will’s palm; an intimate gesture, and the numbness that follows Willow’s episodes is beginning to lift, giving her just enough room to be flustered by it. “I’ll always be on your side, no matter what.”
“Okay. Okay, fine.” Willow sighs.
“My name as a princess was, is Willow,” she starts haltingly. “I’ve… I think I prefer Will. But it’s going to take some time.”
“Would you prefer me to call you that?”
“No, not at all. Keep calling me Will.” She swallows, feeling her throat start to close up again. “I… I was… the curse, it wasn’t the only way I was hurt.”
Strohl is silent; at Willow’s gaze, she nods for her to keep going. A deep breath. “I don’t remember a lot of it. People being… cruel to me. In ways I think I was convinced I deserved. But of course it’s not about me,” she adds, breaths quickening. “It’s about being an elda, being a bastard, daring to act anything other than completely obedient because people can’t tolerate that in a child—”
“Hey, hey. Look at me.” Strohl squeezes her hand and Willow’s vision comes back into focus. Gray eyes angled with concern, with an expression that seems to indicate affection for the object of her gaze. “It’s okay. They’re not going to hurt you. Breathe with me?”
Willow decides to go along with it, breathing in and out with Strohl. Their hands are still entwined; Willow thinks she could get used to this, selfish a thought though it may be.
“Okay.” Another long breath out and Willow begins again. “I had… that’s not the first time I’ve been like I was in the forest. It’s been a really, really long time, though. People thought I was just… faking to get attention, or being aggressive because I was an elda, or they thought I was a fey. But it’s really scary. It’s like… I can’t control my body. I-I don’t know why it happens, or how, but they’d punish me for doing it, even though it only really seems to happen when I’m just… overwhelmed.”
“That must be terrifying,” Strohl murmurs. “I’m sorry. Would you want me to do something to help, in the future?”
Hopefully it never happens again. “M-maybe,” Willow mumbles. “We can talk about it later. And there were… other things.”
This is the one that no one will believe.
A shaky breath in. “I think,” Willows says softly, “that someone, I don’t know who, did, or used to, when I was a child, I…”
Tears break against her lashes. Why can’t she just say it?
Because to say it would turn it from possibility to fact.
“I used to get sickly warm, when I had these meltdowns, and other times,” she starts instead. “Staticky, too, sometimes. Like touching a dry blanket in winter. And when that feeling came back today, I realised what it was, and I-I think it’s something that means it was an external influence — something I don’t think was supposed to be there, a feeling because someone hurt me that way.”
Willow counts her heartbeats; one, two, three. On the fourth, Strohl speaks. “Hell. You don’t mean— no, you do. Damn. Will, look at me.” Willow does as asked; Strohl’s face is pale, and her expression is grave. “You didn’t deserve any of what was done to you. No one would, as a child, of course, but especially not you.”
Willow blinks. “Why?”
“‘Why,’ she says,” Strohl mutters. “Damn. Because you’re the greatest person I’ve had the honour to know. Strong enough to survive a host of evils wielded against you, and all without holding a shred of hatred in your heart. You keep helping people when other people would have long given up and begun hurting others instead. Every part of you is beautiful beyond compare, such that there’s no one else in the world who could compare.”
It takes a while to truly parse what Strohl is saying; by the end of the process; Willow is so flushed she can feel the heat in her face.
At least it’s not as unpleasant as the other kind.
Strohl pulls away, now somewhat flushed herself. “S-sorry,” she says quickly. “That was definitely inappropriate, considering what you just told me.”
How could it be?
Only the heat is similar in any way; the rest of how she feels about Strohl is worlds apart. The only way she could even see herself welcoming that heat is with Strohl, and only Strohl.
“It’s okay,” Willow says softly. She grabs Strohl’s hand back, and their eyes meet again. Strohl seems to relax at whatever she sees. “I… I want to be close with you.”
Close. As if that could express the breadth of what she feels.
Strohl breathes out shakily. “Are… Are you sure?”
“Not anything serious, right now,” Willow says, voice quiet. “Just… hold me close.”
The smallest of smiles graces Strohl’s face. “That, I can happily do.”