#ficsandthings

The war ended, now what?

The ferocity of the battlefield has calmed, leaving Ace and her fellow soldiers to help tend those wounded and left dead in the wake of Apocalypse. She rushed around, helping her friends however she could, using the basic healing techniques her veteran father taught her years ago to stunt bleeding and erect crude tourniquets with her arrows. At that moment, she was still needed. She was still moving about and focused on those around her. The distractions around her were too demanding for her to look inward to truly understand the severity of the battle they just fought. Thankful for the adrenaline shaking through her bruised body, she would not fully process the events that happened that day until she was on her way home to her father and their modest store.

After that day, home seemed like such an elusive place. Could she really settle down again? Go back to her quiet, but happy life in her father’s general store with her siblings and pretend that nothing ever happened? She wanted nothing more than to return to business as usual and forget the last few weeks, but she knew deep down she couldn’t. Never once had she imagined that this would be where her life would take her; to a foreign city for a ball, back to her now dead villain of a mother, to a half-sister, and to the incarnate of destruction threatening to rip apart all she held dear. She became aware of all that she lost and all that she was fortunate of still having. Maybe she got a bit scarred along the way, but it was one of the side effects of combat that she slowly began to accept. Her father would see her with a few more scars, the most notable running up the left side of her face, following the contour of her sharp cheekbones. She feared that something in her fundamentally changed, something that would make her unrecognizable as the Aeislynn who left home. And she was right.

Of course, at a glance she was still Ace: all green-gold eyes and brown hair by her face pulled back in two braids with freckles dotting along her nose and cheeks. Anyone who knew the Greycastles would see her on the street and know that she was Stedd’s girl. But it’s almost as if a rope was cut within her, making her unsteady. She felt a tiredness that ran deeper than the lack of sleep or from the physical demand of fighting. She found it culminating in the sudden heaviness of her father’s sword. She wanted nothing more than to shrug it off of her waist to be free of the burden, but a voice in the back of her mind told her that would just transfer the weight to her other sword. Then her bow, her quiver, her belt of hand-axes. She would keep shedding parts of her until there would be nothing left and then what? What else would be the source of blame for the feeling of stone in her heart? It rattled her and shook her to her very core.

When she opened the red, worn front door of Stedd’s Homestead, hearing the familiar bells chime their merry jingle of a new customer arriving, she exhaled in relief. The shop was the same. The same everyday items of food and wares along with some seasonal items, each in their proper place, just as she left them. Everything just as it should be. It was her home too after all.

“Just a moment!” Stedd called out to her, his body hidden below the checkout counter. His potion-filled hand blindly waved to her, thinking she was a new patron. 

She stood in place, waiting to see his face as he popped up with health potions and tonics to restock a shelf. She dropped her pack with a loud clang on the wooden floor as Stedd straightened up to meet her eyes. Practically throwing the bottles in his hands to the ground to free his arms, he rushed up to her and wrapped her in a hug. She felt the tension that wound her up so tightly relax as she embraced him, tears (of happiness? Relief?)  trickling down her cheeks. His finger swiped along her face, feeling the rough skin of her newest scar. He barely flinched at the texture, holding her closer to his chest. She sighed into him, the heavy and broken pieces of her beginning to meld back together. She knew it would take some time to feel like she fully recovered from the war and maybe she wouldn’t ever truly be able to comprehend what happened, but she knew one thing: being home was a start.