Rook {B.B} (3)

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Stealing Fire (9,1)

Loukas worried for Tyra. Ever since she arrived from Polis with arms coated in blood all the way up to her elbow with scratches all along her body and her barely clothed as if she had just walked out in her clothes she used to sleep. She hadn't spoken a single sentence, aside from one;

"Lexa is dead."

From that moment on, Tyra stayed in a corner of their kitchen, curled in on herself while staring blankly ahead, barely eating and barely drinking or sleeping, and not uttering a single sound during the day. Though Loukas halfway into the night heard her sobbing in the corner, attempting to muffle them with her pillow, her hand, or any other object within grasp.

Or, occasionally, Loukas would feel vibrations pounding against the ground he slept on, only to awake to Tyra having freshly bloodied knuckles and a blank stare as she cleaned them over and over again.

"Tyra, look. I can finally lunge without my shoulder hurting," Just to prove his point further, Loukas lunged towards the wooden pole they had set inside their home for him to practice, his sword making a perfect arch to embed itself into the wood, Loukas for once not wincing as he grinned at his sister with excitement.

"Isn't it amazing? I'm all healed," Tyra didn't reply, still staring straight ahead while she held her hands close to her chest.

After a few incidents where Loukas had accidentally called Tyra his sister just to watch her descend into sobs once more, sobs which he could only attempt to comfort away. Loukas knew to no longer use the word while she healed, at least until the gaping wound Lexa had left behind in Tyra's heart healed even the tiniest bit.

"You want more stew? I know the deer meat is tough, and I'm not the best cook. But it's good for you," Loukas took a bowl of his suspiciously smelling stew to Tyra's side, it wasn't his best dish but with Loukas busy watching over Tyra he hadn't had time to search for any herbs to better the rotting meat.

He scooped up a spoonful of the stew and smooshed it into Tyra's cheek like when she was a child and refused to eat.

However, unlike when she was a child and would eventually give in to opening her mouth to swallow the food, Tyra's lips remained shut, allowing the stew to slide off her cheek before dripping back into the plate.

Almost like her tears when Lexa's life was taken.

Loukas sighed, dropping the bowl of stew by his side while he sat in Tyra's view, her red rimmed eyes finally focusing in on him, a single tear passing by her cheek that Loukas wiped away with the pad of his thumb.

"I may have not known Lexa nearly as well or long as you have, but I know that she wouldn't want you drowning in your grief," Tyra turned her head so she was staring out the window rather than her brother in front of her.

"She helped you become the warrior you are because she saw something in you. Something Father saw as well. Something Mother saw. The same thing we all saw. You didn't stop fighting from the moment you came out of mother's womb tangled in your chord. You've fought this far, after losing every last one of us, after losing the only man you've ever loved. And you're giving up now?"

"Yes." The first words she had spoken, hoarse and deep with how little her vocal cords had been in use in the past few days. Words Loukas was not expecting to hear.

He had run out of nice ways to bring Tyra out of her grief, he had half the mind to just let her come to terms with it in her own time. But war was imminent, and sadly, Tyra didn't have the luxury to stay thinking and wallowing. So, Loukas would have to go with his last option. The same option their father had applied to Hadyn all those years ago.