I am a shrine of my sister's fear

Amel’s perspective on Zrayuu’s death.

And she must have been scared too, right?

My sister, she must have been scared.

As she sank her feet into the wretched ground she would die on, as she turned to face the man that would inevitably be her end, as she let his spears pierce into her body, she must have been scared.

I could see it in her eyes. The last time I saw that flash of blue she tried so hard to hide, a flash of fear swept across her face. Collapsing with the slowest passage of time, she looked me in the eye, and she was scared, she was so fucking scared, but she smiled at me.

Because she knew that she had saved me. Damon stumbled away, cursing at the untreatable wounds she’d left him. Her plan to stop him had finally been initiated. If the plan was successful, and she knew it would be, because she would never allow herself to be wrong, then the world would be saved. I would be saved. 

Her death was her way of atonement, and it was her way of assurance. Through her death, she was reassuring me that everything would be fine, that she had taken the worst of the blows and buried it deep within her, so that I wouldn’t be as hurt. She died so I would have one less scratch on my body.

Now I’m here, alive, sitting in the garden we were supposed to share, in the house we were supposed to live together in, surrounded by the warmth of the sunlight that we should have felt together. I trace the few burns and scars that are left on my skin from the aftermath of my sister’s plan with my fingertips, and they tell me that once again, Zrayuu was right. My comrades and I were successful in overthrowing Damon’s empire, and I was successful in saving Vhayan from himself. She was right to let herself perish, because she was right to trust us. 

She was right to let herself be scared.

Each breath I take is a reminder that I am here, she is gone but I am here, I am fucking here, and I should be satisfied, no, grateful, of this result. Her death is evidence of her love for me, and that’s what I always wanted, right? To be loved by her, to be shown through her actions that I am loved, I am important, I am—

I am scared.

The split second of honesty Zrayuu allowed herself in her last moments on this world, the anxiety that pervaded through the blood that was spurting out of her body, has haunted me ever since. Because she was scared all her life, and she never let herself be released from that fear, even in her death.

Every day, I am alive, and my sister is scared. 

Every day, I am scared, and my sister is dead.