PSST OOC NOTE i probably won't be writing as much for blix on this run of the daily writing challenge!!! instead keep an eye on @raeflameveil, that's my alt ♥♥♥ ok love you stay hydrated bye
word count: 2533
content warning: hurt/no comfort, ANGST ANGST ANGST
summary: Blix has had a fucking time of it lately. She borrows a habit from Indy, and writes a letter to burn, followed by one to send.
mentions: @indy-et-al
(wow holy moly this got long. things will get better! eventually. but right now blix is just very sad.)
⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅
It had been a heavy few days.
Heavy was an understatement, really: Blix felt as though she could collapse from raw exhaustion, if she were being completely, totally real with herself.
After the Murloc Marauder night concluded with the Cast Company, she'd made her way home, Tilly in tow, and promptly faceplanted onto her bed. Sleep, of course, didn't come: it never did, until just before the sun rose and she was too tired to do anything else.
She curled onto her side, watching the flames flicker on the wicks of the candles in her bedroom, and idly twisted her wedding ring on her finger as she realized how much she missed Indy's ability to use natural magic to just put her to sleep.
Indy.
Blix's eyes slid shut, and she felt her throat tighten almost immediately as she turned her face aside to bury it in her pillow. Not for too long, of course - that made things dark, and she didn't like being alone in the dark.
She hadn't, ever since she'd come back.
There was always some light in the rooms she occupied; she couldn't stand the idea of that inky blackness, where she couldn't see well enough with too-weak eyes to know what surrounded her. Couldn't know if the whispers in her ears were from the dead, or from something very much present. Couldn't be sure if it came from a place with crimson trees and beasts beyond comprehension.
So, the candles stayed lit, and she replaced them dutifully each day: one at a time, so as to avoid ever being in the dark for even a moment.
But, the thought of Indy - of how tired they had both been during that first and last conversation they'd had with one another - drove an ache through her so deeply she barely knew what to do with it. After a few minutes, she pushed herself to sit up in her bed, curling against the headboard and fidgeting with her vine hand (the one Indy had planted, the night Blix proposed, Indy-Indy-Indy) as she stared absently at the wall.
With Tilly around, now, at least it wasn't physically silent. She could hear his tiny snores, even now, and that did at least help somewhat with the ache that pressed against her sternum from inside her ribcage: the very same one that told her to go back to the inn, to go talk to Indy, go try to make this right. Again.
But that was a very human emotion, and she knew that these things just take time.
She eventually pushed up from bed, entirely, opting for two things: the first being a well-deserved, long bath in scalding-hot water that left her skin red and raw from the heat and the way she'd tried, again, to scrub out the roots she could swear she felt creeping under her skin. The second was to just… write.
She'd been working on new songs, lately, and that was one thing. Music had always come intuitively - it was a part of her, so deep that you'd have to cut out her entire soul to get rid of it. But this was different. Indy had used to tell Blix that she'd write letters that never got sent, and recently, Blix had adopted the habit. It was a way, Blix thought, to at least get her mind and heart out of their cages for a while. Let those emotions go, so that they could be processed well enough to deal with in a manner that wasn't "find the most dangerous thing you hear of, and go fight it as stress relief".
Indy would be pissed if Blix got hurt, so… writing, it was.
There was a long moment where she sat, holding an ink-deprived quill in her hand as she stared down at the parchment. After a moment, she sighed. "Just tell the truth, Blix," she murmured. "That's all you have to do."
So she did.
Once she started, the rest of it poured from her - she lost count of the amount of times she cried from grief, or frustration, or just plain exhaustion, but she got it done. It was like breaking a dam, almost: remove just the right log, and the rest come tumbling free from the force of the floodwater behind them.
It was worth it, she decided, wiping at her eyes and sniffling as she tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling.
⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅
Indy,
It's been hard. Really hard.
Trying to put all of this into words in a way that won't hurt you further seems impossible. I doubt I'll ever say half of this out loud - it's got to stay in my own head, and on a paper that I'm just going to burn once I read this out loud to myself, anyhow.
I feel guilty for loving you, still. After everything we've been through - after everything I put you through? It feels like I'm stealing what's left of the time you know I'll be alive, chaining you to some inevitable source of pain that we both know you don't deserve.
I'm trying my best to remember who I was: to be that person again, as much for me as for you. I want, so badly, to run back to you again - to literally throw myself into your arms, cry all of this out, and just be us, again. I know that can't be done.
You're hurting, and the fact that you don't hate me is a fucking miracle.
By all means, you should. I left you. I died. I didn't come back for a long time, and that's because I wasn't clever enough to slip the snare. I didn't plan well enough, I didn't think anything through enough, and I signed my own execution decree with my own blood, and smiled.
We always knew that I was the type to take risks: to disregard my own life, if it meant protecting others. I'm still that way, if we're being honest. I don't think I know of any other way to be. Something in me pushes me to try and make the world a little better, a little brighter, and with all of the stories of Azeroth's heroes? Well, being "just Blix" just isn't enough, is it?
Besides. I've got to do something with this curse of mine, or I'm scared it'll eat me whole. You know that story already, though.
I think, more than anything, I'm scared that I'm just driving the knife deeper by trying to be close to you again. Wanting to see you. Wanting to do anything about this in some effort to make it right. I half-wonder if I shouldn't just let you go, against everything my heart is screaming at me.
It feels like it'd be more fair to you, somehow, if I'd just done that: told you that you deserved better than someone whose life is so short, by comparison, who'll just end up leaving you again in fifty, sixty, maybe seventy years if I'm particularly lucky. Told you that you deserved your freedom to live, and love, and find someone who could go their life with you (centuries of it!) without hurting you once.
It's an inevitability that we hurt the ones we love, though, however unintentionally… but that doesn't pardon what I did to you. Nothing ever will.
I can't just look you in the eye, say "I came back, didn't I?" and call it even. I can't help but feel like, no matter how pure my intentions may have been, that they won't ever outweigh the black spot of me doing any of it at all; it doesn't matter that my death was the result of an ignorant accident. It doesn't matter that I was trying to help others, and still save myself. Still be alive.
It only matters that I hurt you - the person I love, more than anything else - and that I can't heal it.
I empathize with how you felt, seeing the way I was hollowed out after I left the army, now. I've seen it a thousand times, in a thousand minds, and I don't need to be who I was there to see it in you, now. I just don't want to make the pain worse by… existing. Reminding you of it with my presence.
But you said that you won't walk away, and we promised each other we'd try. I don't think I could walk away from you unless you directly told me to, anyway. I don't want to. I just wish I knew what to do. I wish I could lift this pain from your heart. I wish I wasn't scared to tell you, up front and out loud again, that I love you.
I will, one day.
I meant it, when I said that you are the best thing that has ever happened to me. In all of my existence (because gods know I can't call it a "life", now) I have never known the same impact that you had on me. You kept me human when all else asked me to be a monster. You kept me hoping. You kept me home, because you are my home.
I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.
I hope that we can figure this out together. I hope we can keep joking with one another. I hope I can make you fucking terrible food as a bit, and that I can follow it up with better meals. I hope I can bring you seeds so you can grow them into flowers (because I'd never be so rude as to bring you cut flowers). I hope I can help you tend the gardens. I hope you let me pull the feathers from your hair like I used to. I hope you put the ring back on. I hope I see you laughing and happy, and I hope it's because of me. I hope we can travel. I hope the world gets safer, so we can see the darters grow in it without worry. I hope that I can perform on the stage at the inn and dedicate every single stupid sappy love song to you and wink at you from across the room while you're at the bar.
There's so much I'm hoping for, and there's so little I expect.
If you decide one day you don't want me in your life, anymore, I'll go, Indy. You won't ever see me again. I won't hold it against you: it's only fair, to ask someone who's hurt you to leave.
But I hope, anyway.
It never mattered how much time passed, by Azerothian standards, across that veil. Time doesn't mean anything, there, and that's really the operating factor: it doesn't exist, so why would the passage of it matter? Why would any wound of the heart close? It's not something you can just move past, and just as equally, neither is loving someone. Neither is remembering them, and wanting so badly to be with them again.
You made me better, every single day of my miserable fucking existence. Every single moment of it since the first time I laid eyes on you. You consumed me, in all of the best ways, and I came out of it better than I'd ever been. I hope I continue to be better, and grow with you. Because of you. For you.
You are my whole entire gods-damned heart and soul, and I would do anything for you, and I can't force those emotions on you before you're ready to hear it - but gods, Indy, you know I can't lie. I'm still cursed. I promised you I wouldn't do anything reckless: that I wouldn't leave you again, and I cannot physically lie. Not in writing, not in words, not in anything at all, and I promise you a thousand times I love you, I promise you a million times I'm not going to leave you again before it's well past my natural-born time. Even when that time does come, I'll still find any way to be with you that I can. Gnomish tech is a wonder: maybe I'll have some sort of projected consciousness, or we can find some magic that'll alter my lifespan - I've heard of it being done. I'd do anything you asked.
You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and I hope you never forget it. I hope you never, ever forget exactly how much you mean to me, and how hard I intend to fight to show you that I can hold my own, that I'm still me, that I'm still just as desperately, ridiculously in love with you as the day I first told you, that I'll always, always be yours.
It doesn't feel right, being in a home without you.
I just wish I didn't feel so fucking bad for feeling that way, but… I brought it on myself, didn't I?
I'll bring you some food, soon. Something I've made. A way to thank you for letting me back in at all - even if it's from a distance. That, alone, is a gift.
Yours, forever yours.
Blix
⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅
She did reread the letter.
She reread it once, twice, out loud - it took a few tries before she could muscle through it without crying.
And when that was done, she carried it outside, burned it to ash, and watched as that ash scattered over the sea below her home's place on the cliffside.
Blix took a deep breath, a pang of remorse and pain hitting her full-force.
"Ash is the symbol of renewal," she'd been told once. "It, in our path, will be the guide through which our forest is reborn. Never must you forget the importance of the cycle of loss and gain: for each pain suffered, there is a joy which will succeed it. For each joy felt, there will be pain which follows at its ending. All of it is crucial - and to that end, we must persevere."
She reached up, a shaking hand wiping away the tears that had tracked down her cheeks, and went back inside to pen the letter she would actually send, instead.
A clearly-printed return address was on the envelope: a record, for Indy, should she ever wish to visit. Blix prayed she would.
And in that letter, in a clear, steady hand, which had taken far too many attempts:
I'd like you to come over for dinner, sometime. I'll make your favorites, but it'd be nice to have some time that isn't totally fraught with us trying to figure out The Aftermath.
Just let me know when, and if you're game. I miss you. I'll catch you up on how badly I lost all of my pillow fights at work tonight! (Spoiler alert: Devastation. The most hilarious devastation imaginable. I still have feathers in my hair.)
- a very decaffeinated Blix
P.S. If you'd rather I came to the inn, then I'll bring the food warm! I'm not gonna pilfer the kitchens. And no instinct cooking!!!!!!!!!! This time.
She dropped it in the postbox, and hoped it would be enough as she went back inside.
read more about the daily writing challenge for this week here @daily-writing-challenge
word count: 2595 (!)
content warning: negative self-talk at times :(
summary: Blix made it to Indy. A long conversation ensues.
mentions: @indy-et-al
There wasn't exactly an art to it, getting into someone's head.
If you knew people well enough - knew the general sense of them, of the tells to look for, of the signs that someone's forgetting something, or lying, or being truthful, or in pain - those little microexpressions that most people didn't think to hide?
You may as well have a key to the fucking city.
Blix, for her part, had always been intuitively good at this; at reading people, at telling whether or not she made them comfortable. Whether or not she made them uncomfortable. Sometimes, that had been the goal: intimidation, or pressing on just the right places to make sure that she reached the sweet spot in someone's head to get the answers she needed.
This was common practice, when she was hunting occult practitioners, or people sheltering monsters beyond recognition, or murderers, or war criminals. It had become even more common when her life - her existence - had devoted itself to one great, big, eternal cycle of "hunt and be hunted".
She sat up slowly in her bed, wiping a hand over her face, and swung her feet off of the edge onto her hardwood floor to pad her way to the kitchenette for coffee. The previous day had been heavy. Too heavy, almost, in so many ways… but also, exactly what had been needed, in others.
She did the math, after the fact: she'd sprinted a clear twelve and a half miles to reach the inn that she heard Indy was working at, once her ring had gone still. She hadn't stopped except once, for thirty seconds, to rest and catch her breath so her heart wouldn't… explode, maybe? She wasn't sure if too much cardio could kill someone, but it'd felt close.
Or maybe that was the panic.
She'd flat-out burst through the front door, not knowing precisely what to expect based on the idyllic exterior of the inn: immaculately kept, and serene, sitting on a coastline surrounded by ocean breeze and the scent of salt in the air. She'd seen too many instances of that particular exterior hiding unimaginable horrors behind it to trust it, honestly.
What had greeted her was Indraste Darktalon, standing behind the bar counter as if she'd been there all her life, with a half-smile on her face and the most level tone in the world as she spoke.
"You got my message."
Blix had felt her eyes nearly pop out of her head - she'd expected Indy dead, or worse. She'd expected trouble. She'd come in with the half-shit daggers she'd carried the whole way at her side, ready to be in her hands the second something seemed amiss… but nothing was. Nothing was at all, and that panic was replaced by relief, which was immediately replaced by concern and fear, instead.
She hadn't seen Indraste in an almost inconceivable amount of time - and yet, she'd been just as beautiful as the day Blix had left her.
It cracked her heart in two as she stammered out her apology in reply. ".. Fuck. Wildflower, I thought - I don't know what I thought - I'm so sorry it took so long, I-I-I didn't have a mount and I've been on foot, so it's been me trying to get money to make it here and I just - I'm so sorry."
It didn't feel like enough. Blix wasn't sure it ever would.
She felt like she was drowning, and yet had been dragged to shore coughing seawater, all at the same time.
She'd told Indy she wasn't sure if she should even come back at all. Truth be told, she wasn't. It had felt like nothing but an opener to break that woman's heart, all over again, and Blix couldn't stand the guilt of it. But she knew, too, that Indy deserved better. Deserved answers.
Through the veil of panic, she registered Indy ushering her outside for fresh air and a place to sit down on the edge of the fountain by the patio, and she did so numbly, barely able to look over at her wife. She had dropped the sack she'd carried the whole way - necessities, she'd explained to Indy, as the latter had worked into settling down again. Things that Blix had hoped would help.
Indraste had registered the calming enchantment on Blix's blood ruby ring the moment she saw it - of course she would. Blix had agreed as Indy said that that was further justification for the pair to sit for this particular conversation.
Blix wasn't sure what she was expecting. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she'd hoped for something out of a novel: a tearful embrace, promises murmured, reassurances given. But this wasn't a novel, it was real. It was real, and so was she, and so was the druid sitting on her right pulling feathers from her braid.
The two of them sat for a long moment as Blix explained the journey: of recovering the series of journals she'd logged her entire life in, of how they had brought her back up to speed on the pieces of her own life she'd forgotten in her death. A contingency plan, in the event she ever fulfilled her promise to Indy to come home.
She elaborated, further, desperate to at least give Indraste this answer. "Who knows how long it'd have been, to me, or here, if I made it back? So... I planned for it. Recorded everything, put those journals in places that only I could find - the first being exactly where this whole thing started, because gods knew I would go back there - and the trail led forward."
Indy had looked over, rubbed at her face, and replied in a tone that was the farthest thing from warm that Blix had heard from her in a very, very long time. "You know. If you had told me you actually were making active plans in case you were going to be resurrected by - how, by the w-" The druid stopped short, taking a deep breath and pulling a feather from her braid. That gesture, alone, broke Blix's heart for the thousandth time in what conversation had already been had, and she pushed back the urge to scream, cry, beg, do anything to bring a smile back to Indy's face.
She didn't do well, hiding the flinch that came with it.
"I didn't think it'd be possible," Blix breathed. "I didn't want to give you false hope, wildflower."
That much was true: the idea of doing that to Indy had torn her apart, and she'd written of it in the journals. Of not wanting to feed false confidence, of not wanting to deny Indy what she would need: a chance to really, genuinely heal.
Too bad Blix was sorely terrible at actually allowing that, apparently.
Indy had sighed, shaking her head. "Yeah, well. The good news is you didn't. So at least there's that." A pause settled between them before she pressed talon-tipped fingers to her forehead again. "Sorry."
Sorry?
Blix nodded in return, replying in the only way she knew how. "I'm sorry, too. You deserve to be angry. You deserve to ask as many questions as you want, and to be angry. I - I hurt you, Indy, so badly. I can never, ever fully heal that. I know that. I know that I don't deserve your forgiveness, either, so I won't ask - but I'll answer whatever you want."
She'd flay herself open, if it made Indy feel even the slightest bit better. She'd do it, and she'd deserve it, and she knew that, too. But instead, she watched on as Indy asked the question she'd been holding.
"Alright. How, then."
The flatness of her tone may as well have been a stone that had crushed Blix's entire soul from her body. In some distant, terrible way, she wanted to crawl under a rock and die again out of shame. She had done this. She had done this to Indraste.
But she didn't run. She braced herself, took a deep breath… and answered. She told the story of her afterlife: of the boughs in the forest she and Indy both knew she'd been bound to. Of the cult that walked within them, who - in allegiance with the plane's epitome of war, a walking devastation of flame and horror - had targeted Blix, specifically. A second casting of a ritual they'd created, after the first had succeeded on other, lesser creatures in that plane. She explained how that ritual severed all ties to the plane - how, in some outlandish way, it restored a person to the body they'd held before that plane ever touched them at all.
None of it made sense. By all accounts, when someone died, that was supposed to be it. Final. End of the show. You leave your body behind, and you move forward.
But Blix hadn't had a body to bury at all, and clearly, there were pieces of this ritual that she had yet to understand.
She had theories, of course: anima conversion, some small piece of organic matter, using the format of someone's soul to recreate their flesh. All of it went against the laws she knew. All of it should be, by all rights, forbidden. But here she sat, alive and whole, trying desperately not to overwhelm the woman she loved so terribly that she'd nearly sprinted back to her grave out of the raw fear that she'd lost her.
When she was done, she'd given her quietest admission yet, brow knit as she felt the weight of it against herself. "Besides, I'd -"
Blix sighed, looking away. She felt the grief of what she was admitting, felt the despair of it. But she said it, anyhow, vying for some aspect of truth despite the faint feeling that she was, in fact, looking up at the distant sunlight from some deep, deep piece of the ocean. "... I'd almost given up hope I'd ever return, anyhow."
Indy had expressed her surprise at that. "I barely managed to hope my brother was alive for a century. You weren't even you."
That much was true: death had an odd way of reshaping people, Blix knew. For the longest time, for all nearly seven-thousand years of her existence after death (or, at least, the closest she could approximate), she'd held a different name, a different form, a different purpose. She had been the Dreamer, acolyte of the psyche and leader of the path of grove tenders and healers within the Forest she had reluctantly learned to call her eternal home. She had been something else, not even human - and here she sat, now, suddenly very mortal, very alive, very human, and feeling every raw inch of what it entailed. Feeling fear again.
"I wasn't," Blix murmured. "But I kept hoping, somewhere. Despite the... reshaping that death can press into you, there are parts that will always be who you were. Core components. Infallible, and innate. The part of the Dreamer that was Blix still hoped that, maybe... just maybe? I'd find that road. I'd watched living hunters walk in and out of the Forest time and again, so - when that really set in? Why wouldn't I try to remember? To hold that hope?"
She explained the thing that helped her hang on: the person, more accurately, in the form of the soul who had been her mentor. Her confidante. Her best friend, truth be told, for all of that very, very long time - who taught her what it was to retain kindness, even in a place like the afterlife she'd been chained to. Who reminded her, when needed, of who Blix was, and what it meant to be her. He had kept every bit of the human alive inside the facade of what laid overhead, and Blix could never be grateful enough.
The conversation continued: recounting of plans, what Blix would do with this second life of hers, what Indy would do in return. There were no promises of making things right, as much as they could. There were no heartfelt exchanges of love. There was barely a touch, here and there, and Blix ached to rectify it. She also knew, very well, that Indy would need time. Need to relearn what any of this meant: what it would lead to, if it led to anything at all, and what Blix's role in her life would be.
Eventually, they did reach an agreement: joint custody of the darters (of course - Tilly and Asha had missed Blix, and Blix missed them). Small jokes back and forth, to test the waters of familiarity. Blix hoped, in some way, that it helped show Indy that she was truly herself again, freed from any mantle of death that would have precluded it.
Most of that time, she struggled to read the expressions on Indy's face - still walked the line as if on eggshells, trying desperately to ensure that she didn't go too far, or seem too cold, or drive the hurt through Indraste's heart any more than she already had.
They agreed, mutually, that they'd do their best to make this work. There was an unspoken promise there, of course, from Blix: I'll love you the way you need me to. I never stopped loving you to begin with. I'll be whatever you need me to be, right now. I won't leave you again.
She wanted, so badly, to take Indy's hands and promise her that in earnest. She hoped it came across in the look in her eye, even if her mouth couldn't form the words.
She told Indy that she'd brought seed packets for Indy to start her own rage garden. Blix had her own grove, cultivated over centuries, once - it had helped take away the anger and indignance she'd felt at times. Despite Indy's initial surprise and hesitance, she eventually agreed that, yes, maybe it would be a good idea. Perfect timing, incidentally, and that thought made the fear in Blix's heart melt away just a little.
There were traces of normal, still: of the comfort that both of them felt in the presence of the other. Of a chance that, maybe, eventually they could be as they were again. Not right now: not when the wound was still so raw. Deep enough to cut a chasm directly through both of their hearts.
But Blix had, in true fashion to the spirit of her wife, been a healer for a very long time across the veil. She knew that the right treatment, the right kindnesses, that time could help it heal. It would scar. They both knew that, too.
But as Indy made a joke about a terrible recipe that Blix had made in a stint of her instinct food cooking, Blix had looked up at her and felt a little more at home.
Maybe, some way, they'd figure this out: and Blix knew that they would do it together.
As she sat over her morning coffee and her notes about the physician's book that would soon lead her to Westfall, Blix replayed the conversation in her mind as a chunky sprite darter sneezed into the drape she'd hung on the wall specifically for that purpose: it was already coated in glitter, as a result, even after just a night.
"Tilly - that was a big one, bud," she said quietly. The darter turned, blinking one eye at a time, and harrumphed before settling onto her shoulder as he pretended to read over the notes, too.
Perhaps being alive again wasn't so scary, after all.
(( OOC note: my god thank you if you made it this far! a lot of this conversation has been edited down to avoid this breaching 5k words - but rest assured, much angst was had. i'll be finishing up this challenge even if it's a little later than expected - with the winter storm rapidly approaching the east coast i should hopefully have time to write over the next few days while presumably snowed in! chances are, the last two prompts will be set in past events versus present-day. ))
read more about the daily writing challenge for this week here @daily-writing-challenge
word count: 1185
content warning: death, anxiety attack, suicidal ideation
summary: The single hope that Blix had held onto stops existing, however temporarily. Blix falls apart the second she realizes it.
mentions: @indy-et-al
If you or someone you know is struggling, don't hesitate. Call 988 (in the US) to talk to someone, and receive help.
Blix's ring stopped beating.
That was the first thing she noticed as she finally, finally crested the hill back into the region that she knew Indy was making her home in.
She felt the precise moment that it stopped, and a thousand-thousand thoughts immediately ran through her mind -
There's no way she died.
I'd feel her spirit if she did, right?
I could call on her -
Oh, gods, what about the -
She dropped the sack she was carrying, which she'd packed full of something akin to a well-deserved gift, and immediately hit her knees as she retched. She reached out immediately, punching past the now-screaming voices of the spirits that constantly surrounded her, who promised that Indraste was dead. That it was Blix's fault. That her returning to life (even if it wasn't even in her own control) had pushed her over the edge.
She felt nothing.
No trace of Indy at all, no last moment as her spirit lingered on Azeroth. Traditionally, Blix knew this meant two things: either the moment had come when her spirit had fully crossed from Azeroth to the Shadowlands, or she wasn't dead.
She knew the latter was more likely - so why couldn't she stop the fear of the former from taking charge?
Her hands shook as she tried her hardest (really, she did) to stop the wave of grief that struck through her heart. She'd been so close. She hadn't had a mount to use, hadn't had the resources to keep one, yet. She was supposed to see Indy today, and now -
She pushed back from her hands and knees as soon as the remnants of breakfast she'd eaten had left her stomach, and put her back to the trunk of a tree as she buried her head between her knees and sobbed. Deep, racking things, spread thin with whispered apologies and all of the guilt and anger she couldn't find a way to voice otherwise. It was the first time she'd cried since she came back, truly.
It was the first time she'd felt fear this deep, too.
There was one other instance that Blix could remember feeling grief this keenly. During her time past the veil, there had been a soul she'd grown close to: he was the most keen thing she had to a companion, her best friend, her mentor, the single entity she trusted above all else. His anima had been unwoven, and dispersed into the plane - and she had watched it happen, helpless to do anything else. It had been his choice, after all.
And if Indraste was dead, then that meant the only other person in this world that Blix could possibly trust was gone, too - the exact moment that she was less than ten miles out from the homestead that Indy kept.
There weren't many times that she'd considered just… letting go of all of it. Finding some insane, outlandish work to throw herself into that she couldn't come back from. This, though?
It certainly didn't help that she had three voices in her ear essentially saying do it, you don't have the spine.
She wasn't sure how long she sat against that tree; she knew well, though, that time had passed. She felt it in the heaviness that set into her bones, in the slow track of the sun across the sky. She felt the sting in her eyes after enough had passed, and slowly, agonizingly slowly, Blix Voronin pieced herself together as she clutched onto the now-still ring on her wedding finger.
You need to confirm her death, her own voice whispered to her. I know you're scared. I know you don't think this can end in any good way, but you need to master your fear and go find out. Don't take any chances. If it turns out that she's alive, then it's all worth it. Every single blister on your feet, all of the pain, all of the worry: it's worth it.
She took a few shaking breaths and looked up as she wiped at her eyes, one hand pressed hard against her chest as she coached herself through the motions. Breathe in, slow. Hold it. Breathe out, slow. She repeated this cycle an impossible number of times, until it felt a little less like she might die from the fear, alone.
She had to know. She had to see Indy with her own eyes: the possibilities, now, were incredibly thin.
One: Indraste was dead. This was the option that had terrified Blix directly into "severe anxiety attack and losing all of her food" territory. Very unlikely, given Indy's skill as a healer - but still possible, and the reason that she needed to stand the fuck up and run. Right now.
Two: Indraste had taken off her ring, as a way of telling Blix fuck off, and don't come near me. Possible, too, considering that Blix was a grade-A fuckwad for having the audacity to get resurrected involuntarily. A wave of anger hit her, at this one: she'd worked so hard to be accepting of her own death, and now? Well, it wasn't like she could go throttle the ones responsible. That'd require actually being able to locate them. She had her theories… but that was for another time. If Indy didn't want Blix around, she'd understand - but she also knew that the likelihood that Indy wouldn't at least want a bit of closure, first, was the most unlikely thing she'd heard all week.
Three: It was a message. Angry, likely, that Blix hadn't shown up yet, but that was… fully understood. It made sense. So much sense, actually, that a panicked little laugh bubbled out of her chest. The most Darktalon way to say "come find me, shithead" that Indy could, and she'd certainly taken that opportunity.
Blix felt like she was going to be sick, again.
She never started this journey with the intention of assuming that Indy even wanted her back in her life; enough time had passed that Blix knew, very well, that Indy would have done her best to heal and move on despite the wound that had been scored across her soul for the loss. But Blix knew, too, that Indy didn't deserve silence. She deserved someone who at least was brave enough to turn up, to offer answers, to let her make the decision as to what happened next.
She needed to know, at the least, if she'd ever have the opportunity to provide that.
Her first attempt at standing on shaky legs forced her to sit back down. She took a few more deep, grounding breaths, and tried again, supporting herself on the trunk of the tree at her back and gathering what willpower she had.
She wouldn't go off and die the second you're so close, she promised herself.
But just in case… she picked up the sack she'd carried for the last fifteen miles, and she ran. Ran, just as much for her own life as she did for Indraste's.
Ran, because the fear spurring her on told her there was nothing else left she could do.
(I know y'all are fiending about Indy and Blix's reunion. It's coming, I promise!!! That RP is happening tomorrow, and will be written about soon. :') Scheduling is fun.)
read more about the daily writing challenge for this week here @daily-writing-challenge
word count: 1052
content warning: death (former)
summary: Relearning your own life can be an odd thing, especially when your own resurrection isn't fully understood.
mentions: @indy-et-al
It was always an odd thing, to recall the past six thousand years. Even moreso, when Blix considered that such a span of time, in all technicality, shouldn't have been possible at all.
The figments of her life as it was on Azeroth were unclear: details long-forgotten, and yet carefully catalogued by a self she hadn't been in that time. Stashed away, where only she could find them, and left for later discovery.
For the "what if" that hung over her: what if I make it home, after all?
She hadn't expected to, after the first century.
She'd given up all hope, after the first millennium.
She'd forgotten it was an option after the fifth.
And yet, here she stood: human, alive, holding a carefully-preserved journal that - by all accounts - had been written less than two years ago in her own penmanship. One of thirteen, which painstakingly chronicled every memory, every thought, every small gesture, every story in the life of Alexandra Blix Voronin.
It felt impossible for so much to have passed, and yet almost nothing at all. It felt like, in that grand span of how time was perceived in the Shadowlands (she remembered reading a line where she'd written it's known that time passes differently, in that it fails to exist at all in the vacuum of death) that she'd entirely forgotten who she once was.
Maybe, she thought, that was part of the point of it all: for you to let go of your life, of your past, of who you were, in favor of eternal rest. Of transcending your own potential.
She certainly felt as though that had happened, of course… but it didn't make coming back to the present, as if waking from some terribly long dream, any easier. The journal she held, now, was the last of her story: it covered the last of the years she'd spent with Indraste, as well as her life as a musician. All of the details were there - names she knew again, now. Ones she had yet to recognize and associate. Carefully-detailed accounts of appearances, personalities, quirks, anything she could remember that was ascribed to a person named friend.
Most painstakingly of all, she had written a section on Indraste, herself. She'd talked of her wife, of course, throughout most of these journals - but the entry she read and re-read, now, drove a stake through her heart.
Blix,
In the event you ever recover this journal, then you've read far enough to know that Indraste is singlehandedly the most important soul in your life.
I know that it's odd, having to recall all of this: having to piece yourself together, bit by bit, in hopes of fitting into the shape that you once held. But this is, maybe, the most important piece of all.
By now, you know that there's a ring that calls you back to her. Indy is the love of my life - your life. She is everything you ever could have hoped for, and more. She's your peace, your sanctuary, the fire that asks, begs for you to just survive.
We failed her in that, but there's a second chance, now, clearly. I'm praying you take it.
I know that death changes people: you and I have spoken to the souls of the long-departed long enough to understand that on an intrinsic level. It's important that you take each and every piece of this to heart, and remember it, and live it.
She needs you, just as much as you need her. Don't you dare hurt her again, not the way you already have by giving yourself this death sentence. I don't care if it means bending yourself into a shape you don't even remember, you don't hurt her. If you can't remember how to be me? Stay the fuck away from my wife.
If you know what's good for you, then you will. Don't think I don't have a plan for that, too. I'm you, remember?
And I know this world better than you think I do.
So get off your ass, close this book, and go fucking fight already. Go remember why the hell you cared enough to write these journals to begin with, and don't you dare ever pick up that bone blade again, cursed thing it is.
Fuck dying. You have life to live.
- Your past self
Blix took in a breath, closing her eyes as she ran her thumb over the spots on the page where she knew that tears had marked the parchment. Of course she remembered Indy. Of course she remembered every part of that beautiful point in her life.
It'd been the first thing she'd properly remembered, after all: violet hair, feathers, and quiet nights spent hunched over maps and enchanting materials as she and Indy worked in perfect synchronization. It'd been music played, when Indy was brave enough to do so. It'd been days in Nagrand, pissing off Bertram (much to Blix's own chagrin) and reflecting over raw steaks and broad horizons. It'd been a flowered wedding, and a promise made just before Blix's death had come for her cloaked in crimson and with all the songs of a place she had yet to truly know:
No matter what it takes, if I have the chance to come back to you, I'll take it.
She hadn't realized just how much that had meant.
The rest of her life, of course, remained blurred at the edges. It was becoming clearer, the cracks in the glass slowly being mended to form the mosaic that had formed thirty years out of nearly seven-thousand in a place that, truly, spanned eternity.
True resurrection was, very much, confusing. It was difficult to manage, being pulled from one's grave with none of the touch of a death knight to counter the flood of emotion. It was steadily remapping the paths of one's own life, and stumbling day after day into new information that - in some manner - had already been known for your entire life.
It was remembering the love of your life.
Tomorrow, Blix promised herself.
I'll see her tomorrow.
And she continued her path through the woods from her homestead, steadily making her way across that last, small distance towards the answer she'd sought since the moment she first reopened her eyes.
(Playing catch-up! Expect a few posts over the next day or so while I get through the prompts. SO HELP I WILL FINISH THIS WEEK. The tome talked about in this post is The Doctor's Weeping Book by Greaves, a TRP3 Extended item!)
read more about the daily writing challenge for this week here @daily-writing-challenge
word count: 1145
content warning: none
summary: Cursed objects, future plans, and an inevitable meeting. Surely, nothing can go wrong.
mentions: @indy-et-al
The sunrise over Elwynn Forest was, truly, breathtaking.
Blix sat on a cliffside, waterskin in hand, as she watched it happen - with the sea air flowing freely above the canopy of the trees, she was left to bask in the late winter air as the first sunbeams thawed the frost that had settled over the grass and trees.
It was peaceful in a way that left her time to think - which, in most circumstances, could have been a very dangerous thing. Her thoughts had been a constant spiral since her return; the circumstances of it, of course, had been less than ideal… but, the ring she had purchased from Kyrathina had helped drastically for the calming enchantment woven into its blood-red stone.
She would be lying to herself, she knew, if she said the color wasn't as much of a soothing factor.
She'd been mulling over the tome she'd acquired from Niadra's library, as well - it sat by her side, now, even as she looked out past Elwynn to the golden fields of Westfall. The tome, itself, had been something definitely cursed: a physician's notes, with a rolling eye that always seemed to be searching in place of a portrait of the author on its front cover.
It didn't help that the book seemed to constantly weep, to the level of having been delivered to her in a bucket. She'd tested the tears (or so she'd thought they were) in her alchemy lab: it was the same composition as the seawater off the coast of Westfall, oddly enough.
The contents were grim, describing an unknown affliction that had swept through Moonbrook some time during the Legion's last invasion. Blix remembered those years, of course - that had been at the same time that she had been preparing to enlist in the Grand Alliance Army, and still working as a freelance monster hunter in Duskwood. As a result, she'd been largely sheltered from the actual events of that invasion - but she had heard small details of it, as well as the illness described.
The physician's notes had matched, largely, with the rumors she'd heard: a wasting illness of some sort, respiratory in nature, that took the lives of a few of Moonbrook's citizens. A local alchemist had attempted to cure it to no avail, and thus the doctor and his assistant were called to try and remedy the problem.
Both had disappeared, instead.
Blix hadn't followed up on it, on account of a report of a vampiric sighting in the north near the Hinterlands. Honestly, now? She wished she had. At the time, she'd attributed it to Westfall's state of affairs, and the tendency for disease to wipe out populations that lacked the ability to receive proper care. Somewhere, the small ghost of Indraste at the back of her mind hissed, ears pinning as she berated Blix for the oversight. For leaving those citizens to their fate.
She shook her head, looking back to the tome.
In her study of it, a note had been written in what appeared to be (oddly enough) very fresh blood: a plea to destroy the tome, entirely, before anything worse came to pass. She'd transcribed every word, every note, and every diagram out of an abundance of caution… but, she figured it was as good a time as any to make the attempt.
After all, cursed objects had a rather peculiar way of telling you exactly what to do with them… and she was already the subject of a generational curse, at any rate. What harm could it really do?
(Very much, the Indraste in her mind told her, but that was for a different feather-sprouting conversation.)
She opened the tome gingerly, mindful of its pages, and took a moment to bask in the irony of it. Blix was fully about to dismantle this book, and here she was - treating it as though it was a relic of some sort. She knew, very well, that if the comrades she'd found in her monster hunting career could see her? They would be falling over themselves to laugh. She took a deep breath, glancing up to the morning sky in faint prayer to whatever god would listen… and tore out the pages, two by two.
What came next surprised her. The book, itself, seemed to scab, that leaking seawater darkening to a familiar shade of crimson before solidifying; that scab crusted over each place that the book was mangled, and the cover snapped shut before it was swallowed whole by the affliction. Just as Blix took a good step back and away from it, the matter peeled away from the tome entirely, pieces falling to the ground and dissolving before the tome was left behind - precisely as it had been before.
Untouched. Unmarred. All pages in place.
Well.
That was odd.
She stepped forward, brow furrowed as she crouched to flick open the cover with the tip of her dagger, and blinked as a small, well-worn note fell from those pages. She picked it up, severing the twine holding it closed and unfolding it.
Blix knew the penmanship: it belonged to the doctor's assistant. She read it over once, twice - and recognized the significance immediately. This was a plea: a desperate request, to whomever found it, to go to the space where the assistant had seen a man he only referred to as "the Ferryman", and to put an end to the affliction that had settled over Moonbrook all those years ago.
A lead was a lead, Blix figured… and if she was going to make the most of it, then now would be the time.
She folded the note, standing fully after picking up the tome. The sun had risen enough, now, to bathe Elwynn in a warm, golden glow - and the distant landscape of Westfall seemed to burn with sunlight, itself, on the horizon.
There was more to this case, and to the curiously-weeping tome than she'd previously realized. Clearly, "just cursed" didn't manage to fully encapsulate its depth. Thankfully, she'd already asked Ranek for assistance - it just seemed she'd need to call in that ask a little bit sooner than expected.
Priorities, however. She had matters to deal with, first - seeing Indy, of course, was paramount. This? This could wait. It had waited years, already.
So, in the golden glow of the morning sun, Blix packed up the encampment she'd made and climbed down from the cliffside to confront another day. The only thing left behind were the ashes of a letter she'd begun to write, but decided - thoroughly - would never be sent.
Wildflower,
I'm sorry
I love you
Please don't punch me
I'm back on my bullshit
I'm alive. I know it's bound to hurt, but… I still have the ring. I'm coming to see you, soon.
read more about the daily writing challenge for this week here @daily-writing-challenge
word count: 746
content warning: none
summary: Blix is back, after a complicated series of events. She wishes she could just get the hardest part over with, already.
mentions: @indy-et-al, @ranekvilmas
when it's lovely, i believe in anything
what does love mean, when the end is rolling in?
let it go, let it stay, can we love one another
cold, is it safe to be warm in the summer?
who knows?
i said who knows?
As Blix sat on the cliffside at the edge of her homestead, looking out at the distant, clouded water of the river that divided her patch of land from the brighter boughs of Elwynn, a strange heartache settled upon her. Something she couldn't quite describe.
She knew, in the time that she had been… gone, that circumstances had changed. It had been well over a year - the world had pushed forward, new endeavors had begun, and her memory had faded to some. Some had remembered. She knew the look in Ranek's eye when he spoke to her, knew the weighted distance that laid between herself and Indraste, who she still hadn't had the courage to approach despite the call of the wedding ring on her finger saying here, here, come home, she's here.
A whisper at the back of her mind - one of those three spirits who'd found it fit to linger after this… odd resurrection she'd been subjected to - reminded her that perhaps, there was a good reason for it. Perhaps it was better this way, allowing the distance and time rather than ripping the wound open anew.
She knew otherwise. Knew that Indraste would feel the pulse in her ring, too, and knew that she would know. Knew that the time she could reasonably stay away without calling it avoidance was running drastically short, and eventually… well, she'd just have to suck it up and do something.
But she knew other things, too. Knew that the small ways she'd found to at least get an idea of Indy's wellbeing revealed things that indicated, to Blix at least, that Indy may not even want Blix in her life anymore. Present circumstances dictated an abundance of caution, more than likely, and Blix knew that she was - truly - a wrecking ball that would decimate every bit of the quiet peace that the former healer had fought so hard to achieve for herself.
It was that fear that kept Blix away, and that same fear that caused this ache in her chest, now. She knew, of course, that the only way to truly find out was to go, to just… talk to her. Make herself known, again. Accept the fear of being known, of the possibility of hearing you aren't the same person I knew, and finding her way through life again, regardless. She knew.
So why was it so difficult?
One hand came up, woven of the vine that Indraste had so, so carefully grown, and pressed at the space on her chest over her heart as she took a deep, shaking breath. She'd missed being alive, she realized - she'd gotten lucky to get another shot at it. To be able to try this, again. Eternity in death was just that, and she had no interest in sprinting back towards it right now. Towards the same door in the afterlife that she'd taken to begin with, towards whatever cacophony would wait behind it. No. This was a reprieve: a true returning, and she had the chance to love life, to cherish it, to cherish Indy again.
The idea of being able to run her hands through violet hair and pull out feather after feather made her ache for the want of it. Time in her afterlife had passed so strangely - despite its passage (what had appeared, at least to her, to be thousands of years) she still found herself so desperately enamored that it drove every instinct of herself to cling on to the memory. She'd promised Indraste, all that time ago, in a soft whisper and with tears lining mismatched eyes, that if she found a way, she'd take it.
And here she was, afraid to even go home.
Afraid that she'd be rejected.
Afraid of what she would find.
Afraid of tearing the wound open again.
Through all of it, still hoping, hoping, hoping that maybe she stood a chance. She'd take as many hits as it required: she'd endure a storm of punches and feathers and rage just for a glimmer of it. She'd prostrate herself, she'd do damned-near anything.
Blix's head had turned, however slowly, towards the direction she knew her ring was leading, and she only just realized it as she stared off towards a coastline in the distance.
So close, and yet with what felt like a universe between them.
Softly, so softly that it could barely be heard in the shadows between the tree branches, Blix whispered.
"All monsters must die bloody, and by a hero's hands, and soon," he says over brunch.
He doesn't think it's a rude thing to say in front of a monster. There are no rude things to say to monsters, only rude things monsters say.
"Don't worry," she says between bites, "You're one of the good ones."
"But I am still a monster," I do not say. I do not say that I love my claws and teeth, my prehensile shadow and my glowing eyes. That I cannot imagine giving them up even for survival, that to hide my shadow and trim my claws for them makes me feel diminished. In public I cannot say that I do not wish to be human.
They're progressives, this bunch, even if he carries a hero's banner with its proud history and none of them ask him to put it away. They know there are good monsters, monsters who can speak eloquently and hold the fork right, monsters you can be seen with in public. Some of their best friends are monsters.
They do not know the monster who is invited to brunch knows solidarity with the monster who is not. Believes and understands the monster who is not invited more than the human who does the inviting.
"Isn't that a little harsh?" says a third human, and I have not forgotten I am outnumbered. "We have ways of killing monsters without blood now, painlessly. And, of course, a monster should be allowed to live if it never growls."
He has never seen me growl. Yet how loudly and endlessly I will, when I'm out of earshot. He's talking about killing monsters who cannot stoop to civility, about mother and brother and lover who were never able to mute themselves like me, and does he not know how small a child who can only growl is?
"To growl is not to kill," I say, and all heads turn toward me. It is one of those rude things monsters say.
baratheonpilled
yousharknotpass
stormborns
pixelskylines
annaxmalina
dailybridgerton
germansingergirl
areudirty
jacobvanloon
