theosism

Sanguine is a pretty much constant presence in Valkyrie's life, watching her grow up from thirteen to eighteen. She may hate him, but he's always there, in the background. Part of what made his death so heartbreaking to Valkyrie was that she had grown used to his presence. He was always there, he was always going to be there. And then one day Tanith turned up saying he was dead. He was never gonna be there again. He filled up a small niche in her life that she didn't even realize was there until she finally felt that hole in her soul where he'd been taken away. They were never close and they never liked each other, but they knew each other. They were comfortable with each other. But Valkyrie never really gets a chance to mourn him, because, as always, she has to stop the world from ending and frankly I don't think she had the emotional maturity at the time to understand why she felt the way she did about his death.

And so, nothing about Sanguine again until Bedlam rolls around.

The very first thing I would like to point out is that Valkyrie is buried in the ground, where she panics due to her fear of small spaces. And then someone comes. Someone wraps their arms around her and pulls her up from the dirt. Someone saves her from her prison. And that person is Sanguine. The person who sets off the dream by saving her is Billy-Ray Sanguine.

And what makes it hit even harder is the way he talks to her. The way he tells her to get up, to fight, the way he asks what happened to her. How she became so weak, so unlike the Valkyrie he'd watched grow up. The Valkyrie he'd been so proud to fight. It may be Valkyrie finding yet another way to self-hate, but there is a REASON that she envisioned the person questioning her on this being Billy-Ray, and that reason is that he knew her. She knew he knew her. He was around the longest, of course he'd know what she was supposed to be like.

It also hits in the guts that she doesn't remember him dying. If she doesn't remember his death, then the little hole in her soul that he left? Filled, at least temporarily. She knows that something is wrong, that he cannot be here, that that piece of her soul is supposed to be empty, but she cannot for the life of her remember why. She cannot mourn Sanguine because she doesn't remember he's gone, because why would he be gone? He's always there, in the background. He's known her ever since she was thirteen years old.

And finally, getting to what my mutual said, she refers to him either by his first name or his full name, but never really by the sole last name that we've known him for throughout the series (and the name I've been mainly identifying him with in this post). A first-name basis. He did that for her as well, even before his death. Drugged Valkyrie calling him in that way was, in a very real way, her admitting to herself the familiarity she had with him. She had friends, people she loved, who knew her less well than he did. And that was her way of admitting it. Right before he tunnels back under the dirt and leaves, just like he always did.