@the-sighs-of-sunset requested post-final battle Hurley/Sloane, and I finally have a fic!Â
Sloane sometimes wonders how long they might have slept if they hadnât been woken by the Voidfishâs song. âSleepingâ and âwakingâ were the wrong words precisely for what she and Hurley were in the cherry blossom tree, but in terms of their awareness of the outside world, the concepts werenât entirely inaccurate.
When asked, Sloane liked to tell people that they were honeymooning. Hurley liked to laugh at her when she said things like that, but the wide, wide creak of her smile didnât discourage Sloane in the slightest.Â
âWhat are you smirking at?â Hurley asks now, perched in the branches of their shared tree, overlooking the lingering efforts to restore the great city of Goldcliff to its pre-apocalypse glory.Â
(And possibly also still itâs pre-Sloane glory. Oops.)
Sloane considers lying, briefly. It is a beautiful day, so perfectly peaceful, not a time for potentially difficult conversations. But she has spent too many days with her soul intertwined with Hurleyâs to dishonor her like that.Â
âDo youâŠever regret, that the Red God led you to this life?â she says carefully. And then she looks at Hurley fully, almost desperately earnest, and speaks her true heart: âThat I, led you to this?â
When the Gaia Sash had whispered itâs final offer to Sloane, that fateful day when the silverpoint poison ran black through Hurleyâs veins, she was already a creature of the relic, sap gathered up in channels where her blood once flowed. After all, she had been its creature from the beginning. Sloane had known from the moment she had tied the Sash around her waist that her life would be tied to the relic, and she had done it anyway. The power it had offered was too much to pass up, and in turn she offered herself up to it freely. It was less a moment of weakness and more a fatal flaw, but in that moment she hadnât harbored any regrets.Â
Sloane had never really considered herself a good person. Not that she thought of herself as a bad person necessarily, just, a person. Who made somewhat questionable choices on occasion. She was a thief because she liked being a thief, liked the challenge of planning out a heist and not getting caught at it. She liked the the grey morality and the no-holds-barred stakes of battle wagon racing. She wasnât one to play dirty on the track, but she liked the option being a possibility. She liked the freedom to make choices that elevated her above the realm of ordinary people.
When Sloane, in turn, had murmured the Sashâs final offer into Hurleyâs dying ears, she knew regretâs full weight.
She remembers the pull of the relic, the power, the rush. Sloane sometimes thinks that maybe even more than the thrall, it was fear of what might happen if she didnât take it. All of the lost opportunities. Living with that regret forever. That eternal question of what if sitting in the back of her mind. The relics werenât evil, just powerful. But power spoke to the dark places in people, the reckless places, the places that wanted. And Sloane was so full of wanting.Â
Hurley was a good person, good in every sense of the word. Seduced by fast battle wagons and thieves in black leather, perhaps, but good nonetheless. Infinitely better than Sloane at any rate. She could have been captain of the Goldcliff militia herself one day, if she had wanted it.Â
But she had wanted Sloane.Â
Hurley smiles, soft and serious, head tilted almost wistfully.Â
âSloane,â Hurley says. Just that. Just her name, and Sloane understands.
The language of trees is a slow, steady thing. Less a language of words and more a language of life force, energy exchanged across cell walls, carrying whispers that are more emotion than thought. Their time in the cherry blossom tree had taught them that slow, understanding language, had ingrained it in the very fabric of their bodies, written it into the twist of their spirits. And Sloane feels at once silly and exuberant and overwhelmingly in love.Â
She shifts herself in the branches of the cherry blossom tree, twines herself with Hurley until she doesnât know what is dryad, what is vessel, because it doesnât matter when it is all them, a beautiful tangle. Hurley brushes leaves against her sun-warm cheek, and they sigh as one.Â
They may not be legends, not yet, maybe not ever, but Sloane thinks what they have is better than any bardsong.Â
She wants to be worthy of it.Â
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