This is a WIP! It has Arya and Islanzadí finding out how to be normal! I think? I don't fucking know. Taking down tomorrow.
I don't like to post full WIPs but I am zoomies rn.
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Arya’s eyes held nothing but a subdued fire, face blank. Her voice was equally neutral, no curiosity or anger, no accusation or trepidation. “Are you sure?”
Islanzadí suppressed the urge to take a steadying breath and nodded. “Yes. You showed the court. And I…” Unable to hold it back, she sucked in a deep breath and released it, trying to let the tremor in her throat out before she spoke again. “I couldn’t look. I didn’t. And that…was not right.” She leveled her gaze with her daughter’s, resolute. “You say you refuse to hide your scars. It’s time I stop hiding from what my inaction allowed you to endure without my support.”
The queen held her breath as Arya looked down. If she refused–
But it was only a moment. Barely even a second. Arya looked back up and shrugged, a wry grin touching her lips. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you.” Despite herself Islanzadí’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline when her daughter reached a hand behind her back and, with practiced ease, unzipped and, somehow, managed to slip the sports bra she was wearing off her arms and tossed it into the laundry hamper beside the bed. “Oh, what? You just learned I was sleeping with Fäolin, you can’t think he didn’t teach me at least something useful in the bedroom.”
Islanzadí opened and closed her mouth a few times, trying to find a response as the younger elf cackled at her expression. “I…will process that after…this.”
Still giggling to herself in short bursts, Arya turned to face away and grabbed the loose tanktop at the nape of her neck and pulled it over her head.
The laughter died as the temperature of the room dropped, ghosts of air feeling both burning and electric in some places, muted and numb in others. As it always did now.
Arya disguised the steadying inhale and huffed exhale with a shake of her head. She trapped the tanktop around her upper arms and hugged it to her chest to preserve some modesty, finishing the movement by tugging her wayward braid over her shoulder.
“Ta-da.”
The silence was heavy.
Arya absolutely hated it.
Without turning, Arya jerked her head in the direction of her desk. “Wastebasket’s over there if you’re gonna puke.”
“I’m not going to puke.” Islanzadí’s voice was quiet, hollow even. It took more than a little self control for her daughter to not cast a glance over her shoulder.
The silence was not the reaction she had wanted. Hell, she didn’t know what kind of reaction would have been most favorable, really, just didn’t want silence.
She opened her mouth again to speak but stopped, unable to find words. Maybe silence was the only answer for it.
Arya felt rather than heard her mother take a half step forward before pulling back, a soft gasp at her own movement as if it had startled her. The trepidation was…oddly comforting. Like Islanzadí was realizing in the moment just what could set her daughter off, was respecting the invisible boundaries she had set.
For some reason…it made her smile. With the slightest turn of her head, eye catching on the queen standing behind her in the periphery of her vision, Arya found herself speaking words she could have never imagined saying before now.
“You can come closer if you want. I only bite Shades.”
A quiet, broken sound fell from Islanzadí’s lips. She closed the distance in an instant before raising a hand, warmth hovering just over her daughter’s ruined skin.
“Arya…” Islanzadí choked on the name. This…this was….
This was her daughter. Her Little Star. Her child, her baby, the little bundle she had held close one night after months of waiting, Evandar over her shoulder, exhausted by never happier than she was in that moment. Swearing to protect her, to do everything she could to make her life bright and filled with joy and–
Arya dropped her gaze. “Not as bad as it looks.” Her words were a mumble, not nearly as convincing as she had hoped. “Could have been worse, really. If Eragon and Saphira hadn’t healed what they did, when they did it, uh…” She trailed off, remembering the fuzzy image of her unhealed injuries Brom had purposefully blurred and Eragon and Saphira had refused to show her unadulterated. “I’m…probably not helping, am I?”
Shaking fingertips touched the giant missing swath that dropped down from Arya’s right shoulder for barely an instant before yanking back as if burned. The brevity of the contact, rather than the contact itself, made the woman flinch, followed by fumbled assurances. “It’s fine! Just…. It’s fine. I don’t care if you touch them. Glen’s been all over the damn things trying to figure them out.”
Unable to stop herself, Islanzadí stepped forward again. Slowly, trembling, the queen gently rested first her fingertips, then her palm on her daughter’s back.
Arya squeezed her eyes shut at the broken gasp that followed, the heartbreaking sound she had heard dozens upon dozens, hundreds upon hundreds of times over from mothers and fathers finding their slain children on the battlefield. Nearly the same sound sons and daughters with missing limbs and pieces let out, crushed and smothered wails into the shoulders of their parents and loved ones as they were met with the undeniable truth of their new reality.
She hadn’t made that sound when she first saw the scars in their totality. Her first instinct had been to claw her shirt the rest of the way off, mute, staring, trying to burn them into her mind before she tried to heal them. It hadn’t worked, of course. But for some reason her acceptance of them had come so immediately after the first attempt it never…never quite hit as hard as she had expected it to.
“What did he do to you?” Tears were evident in Islanzadí’s voice, palm sliding across the hills and valleys left by instruments best left unspoken, fire and metal and hide and claw. “Little Star, what…what did he do to you?”
Despite it all, Arya couldn’t help the dry grin twisting her lips. “That’s my little secret to know, mum. No one else needs to hear it. It’s mine.” The grin widened. “Durza’s dead. Can’t keep a secret with two people.”
“I’ll kill him.” The change to the Ancient Language instinctively snapped Arya’s head around, wide eyed at her mother’s oath. Islanzadí, Queen of the Elves, stood with one hand over her mouth and tears streaming down her face, words muffled but achingly clear in their intent and promise. “I will kill Galbatorix for what he’s done to you.”
It really, really shouldn’t have. But the oath made Arya chuckle. “Hey. Get in line.” She turned back to staring at the wall. “I’m not letting you skip like Eragon did.”
Whether she heard her daughter’s quip or not, Islanzadí had no response. Instead she slid her fingers up the younger elf’s spine, another gasp pulled from her throat. “You…when you’re rubbing your neck, you–”
“Can’t feel it half the time? It’s not too bad. The nerve responses come and go.”
Islanzadí’s fingertips trailed down the rift again. Stars above, she could feel the muscles moving as her daughter breathed. Not only that but she could see them, rippling with every movement and shift.
No, no, her Little Star should not, could not live with this. Badge of pride be damned, her child would not live with such scars to remind her of that monster’s touch.
Warmth was the first warning. Sparking at her mother’s fingers. The first breath of sound from her lips–
Arya was moving, shirt yanked back over her head, teeth clenched, whirling around in a burst of speed that even the queen couldn’t track. Islanzadí felt her shoulders and the back of her head hit the wall by the door first, the hand that had been tracing the scarring slamming it soon after as her daughter pinned it in an iron grip. Arya’s other hand was over her mouth before the second syllable had even reached her throat, clamping her teeth shut tight with an audible click in the whirlwind.
To Islanzadí’s utter shock, Arya did not recoil as she had before when her instincts reared their heads. Dark emerald eyes bored into lightning gold, firm, completely unyielding.
“That…” Arya cautioned, voice low. “Is a very…very bad idea. Do you understand?” Her gaze softened slightly, even if her grip did not. “I can’t let you go until you do. This is important.”
Eyes wide, completely and utterly bewildered, Islanzadí managed to nod twice.
“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth, and I need you to swear to me in the Ancient Language that you will not attempt to heal any of my scars from Durza or Gil’ead again. Alright?”
Again, Islanzadí nodded. In this she would not argue. Arya was coming through with another boundary and making herself quite clear.
The moment the oath was struck Arya released her hold and stumbled back, dropping onto the bed when the back of her knees found it. Her shoulders slumped in obvious relief, and, with a wheezed laugh, the young elf shook her head and braced her hands on her knees. “Fuck, that was close.” A broken chuckle slipped out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, that was…that was completely necessary, I should have told you when you asked to see them. Fuck! I’m so sorry.”
Shaking, Islanzadí peeled herself from the wall and in three strides was kneeling on the floor before her daughter, grasping her face in slim hands and brushing away the start of tears with her thumb. “It’s alright, Little Star. I should not have tried to cast on you without any warning. I was foolish.”
Arya choked out a laugh again. Whatever had prompted the outburst, necessitated the oaths, it had clearly rattled her. “You were doing what mums do.”
“We’re a bit different from most mums and daughters, though. Shh, Little Star. It is alright, it is over now.” Arya just shook her head. “No harm done to me, no harm done to you.”
It took a few deep breaths for the younger elf to steady herself. “I should have told you before this.” A bright, apologetic smile, showing those sharp canines and premolars, face wild and still somehow cracked at the edges of the grin. “We…we can’t heal them.”
Islanzadí frowned and, out of pure, old habit, tucked a wild shock of her daughter’s hair behind her ear before releasing her hold on her face. “Anything can be healed, Little Star. I know how you see them as proof of your resolve, but–”
“Mum, look at me.” The feral smile never fell. Grew just a bit more pained. A bit more…accepting? Arya touched two fingers to the center of her forehead. “Look at me through magic.”
The queen blinked. She had refrained from doing so earlier to respect her daughter’s privacy. But now she could feel Arya lowering the wards that prevented such a gaze catching, exposing all but her vital organs to damage, sight…stripping away all her wards but the ones that would save her from a mortal blow.
So Islanzadí just nodded and closed her eyes. Breathed in, breathed out…and opened her consciousness to the world.
Life and light flared up around her. She could feel and see it all, from the little beetles marching along the windowsill to the muted, half warded pulse of Glenwing in the kitchen down the hallway. And Islanzadí could feel and see the emerald and neon green flare of her daughter shifting on the bed, turning around and crossing her legs so that her mother could see her back through the lens of how magic and life interwove together and–
‘Sweet stars above.’
Islanzadí’s hands flew to her mouth to silence the cry wrenched from her throat.
Black threads cut across her daughter’s light. Over every scar he had left, every wound he had inflicted that still lingered on her skin, the Shade, Durza, his magic, parts of him, were sewn onto and into the scars. Stars above, she could see where they plunged into Arya’s flesh, the nerves all delicately sewn across and around with sharp thread tensioned just so. So tight and cutting into her, no start or end in sight.
They hummed with malice when Islanzadí reached out and hovered her hand above them. The words were too complex, the actual spells that had anchored them and held them fast were indecipherable even with her years of experience, dark magic fueling their directives. And yet she knew, she could feel what it wanted, and oh no, not to her, please–
Islanzadí ripped away and toppled back. She caught herself on her hands before she fell completely backward. Spots swam in front of her eyes and she shook her head to clear them, only to find her daughter staring at her. Upside down, laying on the bed with her head hanging off the edge and braid swaying to touch the floor.
That damn wry, pained grin playing at her lips. “See why I freaked out?” When her mother simply gaped at her, unable to put her horror into words, Arya shrugged and sat up, spinning around to again put her feet flat on the floor. “To be fair, when Glen and I tried to heal it together for the first time it almost killed me. So…a bit cautious on that front lately.”
And suddenly Islanzadí had her arms around her and was hugging her daughter to her chest, muffling the startled, “Oh, okay,” as tears fell to the top of her head.