@rowanivar
location: Grazie's, a booth with a view.
notes: u fucked with the wrong bitch
It had been a month since all of this had ended. Since the war had come to a close and Rowan had told her that Gabriel wasn’t coming back. She’d waited for him in The Void, waited to bring his soul to the other side so the two of them might have one, final goodbye. The two of them were never saying farewell, it didn’t seem like it was the nature of Emma and Gabe’s relationship. Once upon a time she’d been a coward who’d folded up a note and left it behind, a few tearstained words in lieu of an actual parting. He was the one person Emma didn’t think she’d ever been able to say goodbye to, the one person that Emma hated imagining being apart from. Not even Micah had had that title before, not Emory either. Rowan was arguably new but indelibly important because for all that she was she knew that she had the witch to thank.
It had been a month since all of this had ended, and while Emma had seen Rowan scarcely here and there the palpable shift between them was evident. She would pass his shop under the light of day, sometimes visible… Sometimes not, and she’d watch him through the window as he spoke with his employees, or he consulted with a client. Once he’d caught her eye and she’d waved, then he waved back; they both smiled, and then Emma had kept walking. Appointments to keep, business to attend to, that sort of thing. Yes, she was dead, but the renegotiation of the contract she’d made with Kore gave a chance at liberty that she’d never known in life. Purpose and a sort of fulfilment that she’d always lacked before.
Micah was in Emory and Abel’s hands now, their father’s as well. Emma wouldn’t feel this light if she didn’t trust that those that surrounded her brother now were more than capable of keeping him grounded. He, too, was embarking on a new and exciting journey. The life of an eladrin; Micah had never wanted that for himself, in fact, she suspected there was likely a part of him that hated it. When Emma was a little girl she’d spent her nights filling her head with beautiful, fanciful tales. With stories of princes and fairies, of a Queen that Emma would come to learn was her grandmother. In her childhood she’d have felt lighter than air at the prospect, but the truth was that life was only ever what you made of it.
Emma was free now, free to see the world that had been denied to her. She could dance until dawn, she could pilgrimage across the wastes, she could trek through the Amazon, or she could spend an entire afternoon reading by the beach. Agency and privilege that she owed in part to what Gabriel had given up; hope, chance, and freedom. The reaper would never forget anything, she refused, she would remember every moment that this realm had suffered, and she would remember every moment that Gabriel had fought. Her beautiful, broken warrior, the dhampir who’d walked through fire more times than she could count. He’d survived the cut of The Eye’s knife, not once, but twice. He’d withstood the fires of the end of the world and still managed to be the sort of man that Emma had always known him to be.
She would never forget him, but neither could she squander his gift, and she would not allow Rowan to do the same on her account. For strength Emma returned to Gabriel’s statue, unbeknownst to her this was the beginning of a sort of anniversary. November 20th would be the place of their appointment, where she’d sit beside his statue and tell him of her tales and of her journeys. Emma would tell him of the people she’d met, and the places that she had seen. She would tell him that she missed him, her dear friend, her lover, and her confidant. She missed the way his eyes battled sadness with a smile, and how he managed to breathe life back into a woman who’d thought herself a shell.
So, in an inconspicuous diner with a nice but quaint view, Emma sat opposite the third component of what had been one of her most significant relationships to date. “I heard you joined the Amaranthus,” Emma commended, they were a proud coven, powerful, and slipping over the precipice of reform. “I’m proud of you.”
