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The pouring rain is drowning out every sound, every smell. Leona is drenched before she is properly out of the temple, and by midday she has probably lost every memory of feeling dry.
It’s not like she will find Diana by conventional means - she has never been too good at tracking, and Diana would know better than to walk down on one of the roads, too slow and hurt to win a fight against the Ra’Horak guards. Leona goes to all the places she knows Diana liked to hide at when they were younger, fleeing from lessons or duties or punishment.
With every grotto, every hidden clearing, the clump in her throat grows. She goes to the cave – their cave – last. It’s not fear, but then maybe it is, because if Diana is really waiting at the place they first kissed – what does it imply?
Diana has begged her to run away with her, and Leona has refused.
Diana is sitting on a boulder in the middle of the cave when Leona enters, staring at the water flowing steadily out of the well.
“Did you run away again?”, Leona says in the silence of the cave, and Diana turns her head away from the spring. “You know priestess Buford will just make you scrub the entire library later.”
“She can scrub it herself.”, Diana responds, and twirls a stick between her fingers. “Maybe the old bat will do us a favor and choke on the dust.”
“Diana!”, Leona gasps out, somewhere between outrage and laughter. “You can’t just – just say things like this!”
Diana quips an eyebrow at her, and a smirk plays around her lips. It’s ridiculously attractive, Leona thinks. Like most things about Diana.
“Why not? It’s not like there’s anybody but us here, right?”, Diana shuffles to the side, to allow Leona to sit beside her. “Or will you tell on me, Leona?”
“Maybe I will, this time.”, she threatens as she sits down, but they both know hell would freeze over before Leona would actually do anything like this. “They won’t let you go to the dance then.”
“And you would go with Atreus? He would step on your feet all evening, and I would have to swoop in to save you.”, Diana says with a snicker.
“He’s not this bad of a dancer.”, she defends him, because Atreus has really been trying lately and she feels a little bad for mocking him. Diana leans back and howls with laughter, and her good mood is contagious.
“That’s like saying”, Diana presses out between laughs, “Buford isn’t this old.”
Leona rolls her eyes, but she isn’t really annoyed. “There are older priests than her.”, she says, and at this point she’s just keeping up the discussing because Diana’s grin is intoxicating.
“And there are worse dancers than Atreus”, Diana says, and bows down to pick one of the blue flowers growing in the cave. “I’m not one of them, though.”
Leona leans forward. “Prove it”, she whispers, and Diana pulls in a sharp breath, and gets up. She raises her hand and puts the blue flower in Leona’s hair, her fingers brush Leona’s cheek as she does.
“A dance, milady?”, she says, her voice rough, and Leona nods and lets herself be pulled up.
Diana hasn’t lied. She is a far, far better dancer than Atreus, but then maybe Leona is biased – Diana could step on her feet at every step, and this would still be the best waltz she has ever danced.
The smell of blood hits her in the face the second she enters the cave, and there is a body on the ground. Leona dashes forward, but it’s not Diana – it’s one of Ra’Horak soldiers that left to search for her. His neck is cut open, and Leona swallows down a scream.
Diana is armed with a blade.
She finds the rest of the patrol as she climbs further down, in a similar state. She breathes trough her mouth now, because all the blood is making her feel ill. They found her, Leona thinks, they found Diana. And she slaughtered them like she had killed the priests.
So, she has been here, in this cave. Waiting for Leona, who had been too much of a coward to come here right away. She might have missed her, she might have been able to save the patrol, make Diana hide instead of going for an attack –
“You should have stayed in the temple.”, Diana’ voice says, and Leona freezes.
Diana is standing right behind her, and Leona hasn’t heard her move, hasn’t heard her approach. Even now, as she can feel her breath on her neck, she can barely hear the other woman exhale. Diana could kill her just as easy as she killed the patrol, Leona doesn’t even have a hand on her sword.
“Thought you knew me better.”, she says instead, because it’s the truth – there never was another option for her other than to run after Diana. She turns, just in time to see Diana’s face go hard, her lips thin. She’s covered in blood, and Leona can’t tell if it’s hers or the guards. Maybe, probably both.
“Yeah, I thought so too.”, Diana says. Her hair is completely blonde, and there is a silvery shimmer on her forehead. Leona just stares. The power around them is palpable now, making Leona break out in gooseflesh. “Seems we were both wrong. Why are you really here?”
Leona’s swallows. Diana has begged her to run away with her, and she has refused, and whatever strange transformation has been happening to Diana, it is complete now. She spills power like raindrops, like static dancing over Leona’s skin.
“You killed over a dozen man, Diana. For me.”, Leona whispers. “And you believe I wouldn’t come after you?”
“Then do what you came for.”, Diana says, and hands her her weapon. “Because I’m tired, and I won’t run from you.”
Leona stares at the blade in her hands. At Diana, whose face it still stone, whose posture is desperate composure, her head held high. Baring her throat, in a way. “You think I came after you to kill you?”, she says, her voice cracking, and Diana just swallows. “You think I’ll just … take this and cut you down?”
“Like I cut down the entire Solari council right in front of your eyes.”, Diana responds. “Like I would have done to any- and everybody in this temple if they had stopped me from leaving. You can probably name each of the guards I left by the cave entry. We both know this isn’t something we can come back from.”
Leona makes a step backwards, her hands shaking around the handle of the blade she was still holding. Diana is right, she can name the people Diana killed today. She knows one of them is a father. She attended another’s wedding a few years ago. She can’t think about it right now, or she will collapse.
“This power, it comes with a price. I will rebuild the Lunari, and short of killing me there is nothing either of us can do about it.”
“They will send more guards after you.”, Leona says, and Diana nearly smiles at the words, her power still crackling in the air.
“And we both know how that will go for them unless you end all of this. Your blade would be a decent way to go, I think.”
“I won’t kill you, Diana!”, Leona nearly screams at her, and Diana flinches. “I won’t – the reason you did this is because they told me to execute you. You knew I wouldn’t, so you killed them, right? You think anything changed within the last hours?”
“I fucking stabbed you!”
“You missed my heart on purpose, so they don’t blame all of this on me, and we both know it!”
“Then you choose me?”, Diana says, and Leona knows, this is her last chance, but now it’s doesn’t mean running away with her anymore. It means joining her on her mad conquest to rebuild the Lunari, abandoning the Solari altogether, being hunted as a heretic –
She freezes, and Diana smiles sadly at her. “Yeah, I thought so.”
It’s so unfair, Leona wants to scream. To force this choice on her – Diana or the rest of her life – is unfair. She wishes Diana had never gone search for the temple. Had never told the truth about what she had found. She wishes, Diana and she could have stayed in her bed forever, wishes the morning had never come. A single perfect moment, before everything had broken.
“I should leave, I think.”, Diana says, still watching her. And then, before Leona can do anything, her eyes flutter, and the power around her disappears in a heartbeat. She stumbles, once, and this is all the warning Leona gets before Diana collapses right where she stands.
It feels like it has been seconds, and yet it feels like it has been an eternity when they stop dancing. Neither of them moves, standing in the middle of the blue forget-me-nots and holding each other. Leona’s hart is racing as if she’s run a race. She’s nervous – maybe for the first time on a very long while - she’s nervous around Diana.
They have danced around each other for years now. Casual flirting, touching each other more than friends should do, knowing all these little secrets about each other neither of them would tell another soul. They have never made that last step towards each other, and now Leona is questioning why they never did.
“Would you dance with me like this on the ball?”, she whispers, and watches Diana’s pupils widen. “In front of everyone?”
“I would do a lot of things if you asked.”, Diana whispers back, and Leona pulls in a breath.
“Diana,” She knows her voice is going deeper when she says her name, and Diana swallows. Good, she thinks. In for copper, in for gold. “Go to the dance with me. Please.”
Diana lets go of her hand and puts her palm against Leona’s cheek. She stops for a second, as if she asks for permission, as if she wants to give her time to back away. Leona leans forwards instead, pressing her lips against Diana’s, and she feels how Diana lips form themselves to a little ‘Oh’, how Diana’s body goes soft against her for a second, and then Diana puts a hand in her neck and pulls her closer.
What little hesitation Diana might has had; it disappears with the speed of tinder burning up in a wildfire. It feels like they both waited for this for years, and maybe they have, because there isn’t any hesitation now. Diana’s tongue is on her lips, and Leona opens her mouth, all too eager to taste her. If Diana is wildfire, Leona is all to eager to be consumed by her.
They separate what feels like hours later, gasping for air, and Leona can’t stop smiling. “We should have done this years ago, god.”, she says, her voice rough and breathless. Diana has a dirty grin on her face that makes Leona weak in the knees.
“Well, I’m not going anywhere.”, she responds.
(Except that she does.)
It’s the arrowhead in her shoulder. Diana has broken off the shaft, but the metal is still in her flesh, and the skin around it is red and swollen. She is burning up with fewer now, and her breaths are coming ragged and shallow. How she’s held herself up, Leona doesn’t know – but then, Diana had wanted her to kill her. Maybe she wanted to die standing. Leona feels ill at the thought.
She half carries, half pulls Diana further in the cave until it widens. Leona drops her right beside the little spring and starts getting rid of the armor to get to the wound. She works methodically, tries to shut off any thought she doesn’t need to keep Diana alive. She has healing potions, but she needs to get the arrowhead out of her shoulder and clean the wound first.
She isn’t sure if what she’s doing is right, but well, there’s nobody else out here who would give first aid to Diana just a few dozen meters beside the patrol she killed. There is so much blood by the time she finally pulls the metal free, and this time its surely Diana’s. Leona pours a little bit of the healing potion on the flesh, and watches as it knits itself back together. She opens Diana’s mouth and pours the rest of the potion in.
Diana would have died out here if she hadn’t come after her, Leona is sure. She’s still burning up, and Leona can watch as the swelling goes down around the now fresh, red skin. She knows blood poisoning if she sees it, and it’s a small miracle that Diana was still standing when she found her.
If it hadn’t been for the weird power she possesses, she’d have passed out hours ago.
Leona washes the blood off her with the spring water and takes off her jacket, to lie Diana down on it. She doesn’t look like she’ll wake up anytime soon, and Leona needs time to find out what to do. The little blue flowers are blooming again, and she can’t think about them, can think about how Diana put one in her hair once. She will collapse again otherwise, and she can’t afford that right now.
She’s still staring at the flower’s half an hour later, not a single decision made, when Diana stirs. She opens her eyes slightly and looks at Leona, and for second they both just stare in each other’s eyes.
“What did you -”, she whispers, her voice rough, and Leona clenches her fist.
“Stopped the blood poisoning from killing you.”, she responds, and Diana closes her eyes again, letting out a low breath that sounds like an ‘ah’. “Would have been a stupid way to go.”
Diana moves her head just a tiny bit, too weak to nod. “Yeah.”, she responds, still sounding like death, and something in Leona clenches, because Diana wasn’t meant to sound like this, wasn’t meant to nearly die. None of this was ever supposed to happen. “Don’t’ go.”, Diana whispers, and there is a lump in Leona’s throat, big enough that she can breathe.
“Sleep.”, she whispers, and the corner of Diana’s mouth twitches, almost as if she’s trying to smile but can’t really get the expression to form. Then, her body relaxes, and she’s asleep again within minutes, leaving Leona to stare at the flowers.
Leona falls asleep eventually, leaning against the cold boulder, her hand just inches away from Diana’s. When she wakes in the morning, she has a wreath made of forget-me-nots in her hair and Diana is gone.
She tells the priests she was tracking down Diana the other side down the hill for two days and lost the trail at a small town that is in the opposite direction of where she actually saw Diana last. She doesn’t have to force the upset mood, to anger, the hurt – its bubbling in every word she speaks.
They find the dead soldiers later that day, and Leona can’t fall asleep anymore without seeing their blood on her own hands. She can’t wake up without Diana’s smell that’s still clinging to her bed. Her room is like a mausoleum for Diana. It’s the little things that make her nearly break – a forgotten sock in the corner, the second toothbrush she still has in her bathroom, Diana’s favorite cup that’s still in the sink.
Leona knows she should throw it all out, but she can’t – it feels like accepting this new reality, and she’s not ready to do so – not while Diana’s shadow lurks in every little corner in the temple.
Sparring with Atreus, she draws blood, and nearly hyperventilates even as he laughs it off and swallows a health potion down as if Leona hadn’t just bashed her shield in his face and nearly broken his nose. It was a hit Diana had always parried with ease, and Leona hates how every time she thinks about Diana it’s in past tense now. They were supposed to grow old together, were supposed to mock each other’s crows’ feet and grey hair.
“It’s a shame you have to get used to less skilled sparring partners now.”, Atreus jokes, rubbing his nose as the bleeding stops. Leona clenches her fists, and she can see the guilt as Atreus realizes what he just joked about.
“Shit, I’m sorry, Leona -”
“She never even told me she loved me.”, she says.
“Because she didn’t. People don’t do things like this to people they love.”, Atreus responds and makes an awkward gesture towards Leona’s chest, where Diana had driven her sword through it, missing her heart by less than an inch. Leona thinks about how she watched the Ra’Horak guards circle Diana without helping her, and she wants to scream.
They don’t talk about Diana for a long while.
Leona attends the funeral of the soldiers Diana killed, holding the hand of a small girl. Her father had been among the Ra’Horak guards that had found her in the cave. She watches blankly, as they lower the caskets in the ground, unable to cry or say anything. She feels as if their blood stains her hands as much as it stains Diana’s.
The wife of another soldier pledges bloody vengeance at her husband’s grave, and she can’t think about anything but how this woman will walk into her own death, not a single chance to overcome the powers Diana possesses. A small, hidden-away part of her is glad about it, glad because it means Diana is safe, and she hates herself for it.
Atreus throws her another pitying look, and she finally flees.
The bruises on her tights are turning green, and she can’t stop thinking about how Diana’s mouth left them there, just four days ago, and how things will never be the same.
The flower wreath has wilted by the end of the week.
She doesn’t cry, this time.