One True Queen: A Wings of Fire fanfiction

37.

Content warning: discussion of childhood abuse and its ramifications, whatever the fuck Sharp-eyes did to Darkstalker and Clearsight, Darkstalker's horrible coping mechanisms, a boatload of angst and a teaspoon of self-loathing

***

Darkstalker

I wake up feeling like my skull has been crushed by a boulder.

"Whahappened?" I murmur, pushing myself off the ground. Spots dance in my vision as blood rushes to my head.

And then, it all starts coming back to me.

The palace, remade in black and white tile, and that ugly fusion-crown, the crowd of horrified onlookers watching as Emperor Sharp-eyes ripped my power straight out of me.

It's so eerily quiet, without even the steady tick tick flip flip of Clearsight's mind to keep me company—and the occasional murmur from up above in the palace. When I try to cast my mind forward into the branching timelines, I'm met with static.

"Come on, come on, come on." I growl, scrunching up my face in effort. "I enchant..." the cell would be magic-proofed anyway, and in the lack of other objects to mess with, I choose myself. "I enchant my talon to turn green."

Nothing.

I'm not deluded enough to bother trying it a second time.

And I laugh. Despite myself.

After all these years, this is how I fell.

Not Snowfox, not Polar, not death by Vigilance or Allknowing. Sharp-eyes.

It feels... inevitable. Somehow. I couldn't have kept this stunt up forever--and my magic has essentially been useless for ages, right?

Except... I think about the cloak to keep Clearsight warm, and healing my daughter's wounds, and the bracelet I made for Nebula to help him calm down. Maybe those things didn't save the world, but... they made my family happy. And that's not worthless. Not to me.

I might never get my magic back, I realize.

What am I gonna do with my life? Just rot in this black box forever?

How am I gonna save Eclipse and Shadowhunter?

I rub my temples.

There's a quiet tapping at the wall. It takes me a moment to translate: Darkstalker? Are you okay?

And what am I supposed to tell her? That my entire life has been stripped away?

I turn away, and don't say anything at all.

***

"Mommy?"

"Yes, darling?" I remember Mother answered, adjusting the blanket over my shoulder.

I shifted around, meeting her eyes. "At school, we all went around the circle and talked about what we wanted to be when we were grown-ups."

"Oh, that must have been fun." She smiled. I always thought she had the nicest smile, as a little kid. "What did you say?"

I grinned, a little sheepish at first. "I said I was gonna be, like, the king, or maybe I'd lead the army, or be a doctor and save thousands of lives? I mean, I'm the most powerful dragon in Pyrhhia, so it has to be something pretty epic. Everyone else said super boring stuff, like baker, or gardener, but I'm way cooler than that, right?"