Archive of Our Own

Lochlann breathes, and breathes again.

He can't quite believe he can still do it- breathe, that is. The cut-off between fighting for his life, and safety, victory, the threat to his life dead on the floor and none more coming after him or his, passed too soon for him to properly register its change. His blood burns with a cold, spitting sort of fire, and he can't stop his eyes from raking over the room just in case anything that should be still, isn't.

Or anything that shouldn't be still becomes alive again.

Part of him wants to turn away from the sight laid out on the floor before him, a black pit that is just beginning to realise what his eyes are telling him, just beginning to comprehend the enormity of his new reality and can do nothing but pull the rest of him down into that grief-soaked darkness- no, no, no- but the bigger part of him is numb, having long since drowned out the sound of the banshee’s endless howl in the background, and so he takes in the scene once again.

There weren't many of them that made it as far as the council chambers. Lochlann’s estimate would be twenty-five or less, but he could conduct something approximating a final count later. Just- later. Aside from him, Princess Rose, Prince Connor, and Aaron, they were mostly made up of whichever doppels from the Downs disliked the idea of an unsympathetic dragon on the throne enough, or simply trusted Aaron enough, to join their force. Lochlann could see some human bodies as well as animal- mostly rodents and small creatures that could do as well in caverns as in forests. They died well. Lochlann found himself mourning them. He'd struck up an odd friendship with a hare doppel, who had watched him as warily as he had watched her, and yet turned to glare at whatever he was glaring at whenever anyone had come too close to the Princess. He believed she had been copying him. He couldn't see a hare’s body among the dead, nor the body of the boy she'd worn. 

Most of the bodies were surrounding the corpses of three dragons. Lochlann had recognised the human form of one as a woman who had been doppelled at the battle at the enclaves in spring, but she had reverted back to her birth form as a dragon upon death. He couldn't tell which of the three dragons that, at the end, had entwined themselves into a three-headed pile of claws and teeth, scales and wings, her doppel had been. Had she been the mother-of-pearl one, who’s scales even now almost dazzled him to look at with the way that pinks shifted into pale shades of blues and yellows and purples and oranges even as the sun crawled through the sky? Was she the slate grey dragon that reflected silver, who had died with bared teeth and an indignant flare to it’s eyes, like it couldn't believe the death that met it there? Or the one as green as the boundless depths of the Lord Of Seasons’ forest, many vibrant hues of fern and emerald and oak and sage evident in the chips hacked into wounded scales and cracked claws. Lochlann couldn't see any echo of the person he had known the face of, but not the name, not the family, the origin, the dreams and flaws. He wouldn't.

He didn't see any echo of his king in the golden dragon, either. Not since it had stopped pretending, not since it had dropped the mask and showed them, as casually as if displaying One King smouldering to embers, exactly how they had been tricked, and never noticed for a second. He hadn't seen his king’s patient strength, his steadfast determination, his love for his people and his willingness to shoulder the burdens of the whole of his people in the dragons glittering eyes, even human and familiar as they had looked, even as Lochlann’s sword was driven through its chest. Even as King Orin lay at it’s feet, human to the last. The body of his king, may his soul not wander, was near completely obscured under the claws of his dragon copy as it had shifted to it's true form on death. Lochlann resists the well of grief that tugged him to unearth Orin's form from under the creature that has stolen his face, but he remains planted where he is. He would remain alert, guard his charges with every breath he still takes until backup, or a besting foe, arrived. 

In his arms, neither Rose nor Connor move. Connor’s fingers still are tangled in Rose’s cuirass, woven between the leather cords that held it together. His other hand is held in Rose’s, the two of them tightly locked together. Rose had- had been wounded pressing her remaining hand to the injury that bloomed from Connor side, at that awkward spot beneath the ribcage that made it hard to apply pressure to. Lochlann is no medic, and he wagered neither is Rose, but he still holds a bloody hand to that same spot now, just in case it will do anything. Just in case it will save him. Her other hand is now trailing in the space between them. Lochlann could imagine that once they had fallen asleep much like this, hands tangled in clothes and reaching towards each other.

The door swings open behind him. His sword is still where he'd dropped it before running over to Connor and Rose. With the twins still held in his arms, he wouldn't be able to reach for it anyway. 

He looks up. In the doorway is Aaron, until they move and Lochlann realises it’s Aaron’s doppel. Aaron had done his best to hide his other half from everything to do with the attack on the castle, and Lochlann had thought the young wolf had agreed to remain behind. He walks forward slowly, picking deliberately through the carnage on the pads of his feet, barefoot much like Aaron used to be before the previous autumn had settled fully into winter. His name is Quiet-Step-Stalking-Pouncing, and he isn’t Aaron.

“Aaron is dead,” Quiet-Step-Stalking-Pouncing says simply. The wolf stops just out of reach of Lochlann, between him and his sword, which is a good thing because he thinks he might have run the creature wearing his friend's face through for the news he bares. As it is, all Lochlann can do to anchor himself against the well of grief and hopelessness that rises in his throat, chokes him, threatens to bowl him over and sweep him out to see like the roar of waves beating against Salt’s Mane is cling to the children in his arms and keen to the tune of banshee cries that are still echoing across the plateau. Orin is dead. Rose and Connor are- are dead. His grandmother is dead, countless castle staff and good guardsmen, and their entire, feeble, noble band are dead. Aaron is dead.

He cries over the bodies of the two children he couldn't save, loses himself entirely as if the call of the banshees were sirens, dragging him down, down beneath the waves of nothing will ever fix this, the world is broken forever, what point is there of living on when everyone he holds close is dead that invade every sense he has, leaving him with nothing but the sensation of gasping rawly for breath that refuses to come. He is blind to the world, nothing there to orient him in a world that may as well be him, Rose, and Connor on a boat in a storm for all that gravity makes little sense to him. There is no such thing as down, no such thing as light or sound, only the burning he feels in his lungs and his throat and his eyes, only the weight of two of those he considers his dearest friends, those he swore with a silver heart to guard and protect, those children, who still yesterday held strong opinions about whether they were yet thirteen-and-a-half, cold and dead and gone, their weight pressing against him like a damning toll, like freezing metal against bare skin.

It feels like death.

Aaron growls, suddenly, sharply. Lochlann jerks alert, his racing heart and ragged breaths making fear, icy and sharp, an easy substitute for the formless immensity in his heart. He tracks his eyes around, unseeing, from point to point until they catch on movement- the wolf, shifting in place with sharp, darting movements, his eyes fixed on something behind Lochlann, but when he twists around, pulling the twins closer, the room is still and empty. Quiet-Step-Stalking-Pouncing’s eyes are glittering silver, and unmoving from whatever spot he tracks. Bit by bit, the world becomes more real, until the growl fades from Quiet-Step-Stalking-Pouncing's throat, and when he blinks after a long moment, his eyes return to Aaron’s cloudy grey. Lochlann never noticed how little wolves blink before.

The doppel stares at him, echoes of Aaron in how his brow creases, how he stands in utter stillness as he thinks. “You have had your late wake for the dead. Their souls do not wander. You have performed your duty. You have done all you can.”

Lochlann stares at him as Quiet-Step-Stalking-Pouncing nimbly picks his way closer, watches numbly as Connor, then Rose, are tugged from his arms and laid, with every ounce of the respect Aaron would have done it with, gently on the floor. Then the wolf-boy’s arms are around his, and he is pulled to his feet, the both of them stumbling slightly as Lochlann’s feet fail in their attempts to hold him steady.

“Come on,” says Quiet-Step-Stalking-Pouncing. “The skin-stealers will be here soon. We must leave before that. The dragons will be coming.”

Lochlann stares at the corpses of the last hopes for humanity. “What will we do?”

“What Aaron does best.” Quiet-Step-Stalking-Pouncing pads neatly over to the remains of the red-gold dragon, crouching by its side, and standing with- with King Princes sword. He twirls it in a figure-eight, a skill Lochlann knows Aaron never mastered, because he spent a very enjoyable few hours laughing at him for it. Quiet-Step-Stalking-Pouncing moves like the sword had been in his hands for years, not that he hadn't even had hands three or so weeks ago. “Pretend that I am Marcus.”